Week by Week
324 THE COMMONWEAL July 3I, x929 and the pulse of the world another. There exists a will for peace, but it is too passive to be an affection. We are merely eager to muffle the drums in order...
...And it is unsafe...
...Russia has made an effort to invade China with economic and propaganda agents, Britain has been greatly disturbed, and Nanking has finally repudiated Moscow...
...What shall one say to this...
...Wickersham's letter, was not expected to accomplish The anything...
...BOOK-DEALERS and publishers are in conference for three weeks at Columbia University this summer in order to discover how to make every book a best-seller, or at least how to Best-Sellers prevent any book from failing to inOnly terest a respectable number of purchasers...
...It is about Mr...
...The attitude of the public mind, he declared, is "nebulous at best...
...This tide is not ungenerous, is certainly not compounded of hard-fisted misers...
...From a distance, however, he is not unattractive...
...We have all been pleased to note signs of a new vigor, courage and independent intelligence in China, but the pity is that it seems to have been accompanied lately with a spirit of hostility and suspicion...
...We suggest that the German government is in the right position to act as mediator and representative of the neutral powers...
...Yet the man who so suavely accepts reelection, which is sure to follow on his decision to run, will win victory at the polls not because he is the best man for the position, but because he is the best of the candidates who will seek the election...
...He must know, too, that the prohibition agent is not merely an officer of the law with the assumptions, privileges and immunities under which he operates today...
...Could this government be formally invited to consider the problem...
...Wilson then admit that it has had its chance...
...On the other hand, the old generosity, honor and willingness which found such resplendent emblems ten years ago cannot be satisfied with mere acceptance of the courageous ~lan with which Poincar~ and Briand have persuaded their country to assume the burdens and the risks involved...
...Hylan nor the fulminations of the press, indignant at the non-solution of important city problems, will avail to change their resigned acquiescence in the Mayor's continuance in office...
...Could not the Pope's counsel, as expressed above, be enlarged to imply the need for an exchange of views-and still more an exchange of charity--between the groups...
...The query is important precisely because the situation is dark and because ugly conflicts have, in the past, arisen out of similar darknesses which might have been dispelled by foresighted, mediatory action...
...THE most effective criticism we have seen of present-day exploitation of the African savage is that attributed to the veteran missionary In Blackest P&e Aupiais...
...In answer to the admonitions of Secretary Stimson, the Nationalist government says, "As signatories of the Kellogg pact we shall not resort to war unless necessary m selfdefense...
...Engineers have been developing rescue devices, but if a submarine happens to go down in deep water, neither rescue nor even salvage are possible...
...Foreign Policy Association a bulletin summarizing the events with such lucid...
...Accordingly one feels it well within the range of possibility that something like a "volunteer capital levy" be raised to pay off a generous part of the French debt...
...There is always the danger that the achievement will fall so disproportionately short of the desired goal as to be ridiculous...
...And therefore Poincar~ is very correct and practical in realizing that immediate, unconditional ratification of the Mellon-Berenger debt agreement is the only possible French policy...
...Perhaps for modificationists the only way out consistent with good nature is to agree, in return for a promise, to Dr...
...In one direction, however, the conference has made progress...
...One ventures to speak of this matter because there is still far too much disposition to believe that higher priestly education is a waste of time...
...But there are a few sober facts which seem ominous...
...Over his art he seems to have written the motto: "No road leads from poetry into life, and none from life into art...
...It is a program which should be given the widest publicity so that it may encourage unprosperous authors to be up and doing in their summer vacations, and to keep them, if they are tempted to think of the cold winter ahead, from despair...
...And certainly one cannot but regard it as singular that, inside a Church which exactly fifty years ago recommended the point of view of Saint Thomas so solemnly, there should persist a feeling that brain exercise is at least mildly heretical...
...No fault can be found with the entertainment of this ambition...
...The bishop agreed heartily, but felt that the hierarchy did not have either the time or the opportunity to deal with the matter...
...The concordat, so we were informed, stipulates that Italian priests who have separated from the Church are to hold no civil office where they could have direct influence upon the public...
...and strangely enough his anthologies are among the best of all his works...
...WE BELIEVE that the custom of giving publicity to interviews granted by the Pope to visiting American bishops is highly commendable...
...Naturally enough, not every conjecture which has been raised is answered here...
...There exists a will for peace, but it is too passive to be an affection...
...Miss Vera the Lateran Micheles has, in fact, prepared for the Accord...
...A sum equal to five dollars for every American citizen raised in this fashion would be almost as effective as the despatch of the Rainbow division itself to France, and its beneficent effect cannot be estimated...
...EARLY as it is, the anti-war treaties have already lost some prestige in the Orient because of the curious utility to which China insists on putting them...
...THE HOLY WAR 'O ONE is quite sure what sort of modification Mr...
...We admitted that laymen who professed to being educated were occasionally in danger of the suspicion of "wanting to know more than the clergy," and pointed out that in one or two instances an accusing finger had even been pointed at our humble selves...
...and of course the value of closer relationships is obvious...
...And will it, when mature, actually do the work expected of it...
...It is in this way, no doubt, that future students of history will look at him, just as some of us regard, not altogether unamiably, the murderous doings of Mohammed and Attila, of Alexander and Tamerlane...
...But the public reaction to prohibition in I932 is unguessable and a Democratic standard-bearer may perforce have to be a dry...
...And at the right moment a rule prohibiting resolutions of a controversial nature was invoked to stop a vote on the now famous letter, and also, perhaps, to keep the meeting from becoming at all significant as a conference of governors...
...Others are actuated by a genuine, humanitarian interest in Europe, or more generally in mankind...
...It describes the international organization and administrative practice of the Church, setting forth numerous facts often ignored or misunderstood...
...Is it out of place to suggest that one reply might be found in an application of the Rainbow principle...
...Here is employment for some industrious senator...
...Such a problem must, he said, be taken up by those directly concerned...
...First, the number of such men is not large but exceedingly small...
...According to Dr...
...Solely considering the empire state, which is wet and where he is considered a wet, Mr...
...The sale and possession of liquor does not "as yet" occupy a very low seat "among our commonly accepted mores...
...The factors in the situation are exceedingly vague, and the news is mostly rumor...
...Coolidge's latest essay was released, and in it he declared that the President is coming "more and more to stand as the champion of the rights of the whole country," because in "hours of timidity the Congress becomes subservient to the importunities of organized minorities...
...The difficulty is to discern a proper method...
...Then the submarine and the airplane had still to prove their utility in peace, and where the plane has succeeded, the submarine has failed...
...Better candidates might be had if more men of unimpeachable probity and ability made themselves available in the field of politics, but it must remain for the voters to demand the type of political leader they prefer...
...It is simply that great energy of public opinion which the Rainbow did not represent...
...But something of this "frustration" is evident in almost all his work...
...July3I, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 325 EIGHT of the nine members selected to constitute the Farm Board have met in conference...
...We must insist that he be regarded as an ordinary police officer, bound not only to defend the law but also to observe it...
...We do not accuse Mr...
...After discussing the Lateran treaties, His Holiness "spoke of the necessity of the bishops occupying themselves with forming an intelligent clergy, cultured and conversant with the intellectual necessities of the times...
...Of course there is a purely human aversion to loquacity about one's ambitions...
...He was at home in old Venice, in the cities of the renaissance, in the Orient and in Attica...
...The report of the recent audience of Bishop Schrembs is particularly interesting...
...In practice, therefore, the ruling means that the public will, which recognizes the Catholic faith officially, is to refrain from establishing the authority of a direct dissenter from that faith...
...As had been anticipated, Mr...
...Nobody knows much about the size and quality of the army which Stalin controls, and it is admitted that, as such excuses go, his justification for a martial step might be fairly impressive...
...and the aesthetes of the time really came near believing him a magician...
...If an expressed preference is withheld, one is warranted, however cynically, in concluding that they get precisely what they want...
...Wilson thinks that prohibition has never had a chance, by which he means that drinking in itself has not yet been made a crime...
...Why not raise it...
...So far as we have been able to learn, not a single one of the so-called "modernist clergy" in Italy has taught any but a religious subject...
...The United States is not on speaking terms with Russia, and the hands of Great Britain are tied...
...The question arose when a Mexican resident in the United States was found guilty of having obtained a visa without mentioning the circumstance that he had once spent 326 THE COMMONWEAL July 3~, ~9z9 some nights in jail for violation of the Volstead Act...
...WEEK BY WEEK HAT some manner of a fight between Russian and Chinese troops has occurred at a point along the route of the Chinese Eastern Railway in Manchuria seems undeniable...
...Naturally, though unfortunately, the citizens do not get excited about such a state of affairs, and no amount of recriminations from the recrudescing Mr...
...And failed...
...Hoover's address to Farm Board them stressed the point that no hasty solution of any one problem is desired...
...We are merely eager to muffle the drums in order that our peace and our possessions remain undisturbed...
...If we should say yes to this scheme, what would he promise ? Suppose that after four years of enforcement by the military there should still remain a widespread opposition to prohibition...
...ONE period in Austrian literature may be termed definitely closed, now that the tragic death of the most famous poet to have figured in it Hugo yon has aroused much the same emotions as those stirred by his own melancholy Hoffmansthal plays...
...And Judge Hand decided it was not...
...But for the present he is much too close for comfort, and if you have been living recently in Buffalo, Aurora, Illinois, International Falls, Minnesota, or Tecumseh, Oklahoma, you might say that it is time we began to put some distance between ourselves and him...
...Roosevelt of reasoning thus...
...Numerous industries and individuals profited greatly by the war, and are now anxious to safeguard acquisitions of commercial power and good-will...
...Meanwhile attention has been concentrated upon the development of existing co6perative machinery...
...In all likelihood funds might be obtained on the basis of a conditional bond issue, the terms of which called for a return of the capital given if budget circumstances eventually warranted it...
...Only the book-buying public (although we have never come in contact with it we are assured it is a large one) knows that, and its tastes change so rapidly, its selections depend upon the right conjunction of so many things, that any information squeezed out of it this summer will be useless in the fall...
...We feel that the laymen is often in danger of ignoring spiritual or theological points of view, and that the clergy in turn are now and then unaware of journalistic standards...
...That would dispose of political difficulties no government can circumvent, and would reap a heavy interest of gratitude...
...He shoots in the name of Providence, as though the kingdom on earth were to be carried with a gun...
...Roosevelt need not have been so cautious about the wet-dry debate which he himself precipitated by reading the Wickersham letter...
...There are those who do not wish the richest nation in the world simply to increase its wealth at the expense of another which sacrifice has made poor...
...Every member of the Board is equipped with experience and much more besides...
...This last can, however, be administered with considerable thoroughness, since $I5o,ooo,ooo are available...
...Time and time again the Pope has spiked these delusions...
...Hugo yon Hof[mansthal, best known in this country as a librettist and author of Reinhardt's version of Everyman, was the "marvelous boy" of the Viennese I89o's...
...There ought to be a Catholic Academy of America--somewhat after the pattern of the existing Mediaeval Academy...
...Even the Anti-saloon League will not accept so simple a definition of his status...
...But in seizing control of the Chinese Eastern Railway, it had already used force to settle, in its own satisfaction, a dispute which might so easily have been submitted to friendly neutral nations for arbitration...
...Though born a Jew, Von Hoffmansthal was haunted all his life long by the Christian faith, but it appealed to him mostly as an aesthetic experience, a treasury of symbolism...
...Wilson is all for the bayonet and the machine-gun, but Mr...
...Yet he had a truly marvelous ability to reconstruct, in measures of pale loveliness, the materials of great literature and art...
...We shall even venture to say that it would deserve a generous endowment, whatever Mrs...
...We must insist that his powers are police powers and not military powers and not law-making powers...
...Particularly must Japan, watching every development in the situation as having a possible bearing on the future of the South Manchurian Railway, regard the Chinese interpretation with distrust...
...They involve economic and financial problems of the greatest importance...
...The situation is typical too frequently of an American election...
...As a cargo carrier it has no merits...
...Wickersham, whose committee is to study the enforcement, not of one law, but of all laws, must know well enough that it is this attitude which has already resulted in the violation of laws much older than prohibition...
...that martial law has not been proclaimed in New York and Maryland, and, presumably, in Montana and Wisconsin...
...Wickersham was telling the governors about the new job all cut out for them, Judge Learned Hand was busily consulting the dicMoral tionary...
...Unrestrained optimism regarding the answers to these queries may be out of place, but there is no doubting the excellence of the personnel chosen to discuss them...
...It is fortunate that one of the more acute maladies has temporarily cured itself...
...but diverse and sundry conjecturers ought to be grateful for so succinct a compilation of facts...
...For months Mr...
...We may see a move diametrically opposed to the spirit of the Kellogg treaties...
...Grundy might mutter in her beard...
...These considerations are enough to convince most of us...
...Finally the most important aspects of the present treaties are set forth with as much fulness as the average reader requires...
...And he said that they are not lazy, but that because of the generosity of nature and their system of collective ownership they are unable to understand the incessant labors to which the European is impelled by necessity and competition...
...Love of books," declared one of the speakers, "is the cause of many bookshop failures...
...VERY shortly after the announcement of Mr...
...Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, the British government may be expected The shortly to restate its proposal for the outlawing of the submarine...
...When it is, the submarine will go...
...Will Dr...
...Secondly, no source of possible unfriendly relations between church and state in a country like Italy is half so dangerous as malignant opposition of former clerics...
...But they are not enough to convince France and Italy so long as the present tension exists along the Mediterranean...
...And accepting it, for the moment, as a certainty, has gone far toward satisfactorily explaining the New Yorker's course at the recent governors' conference in New London...
...They involve possibly the peace and security of the entire world...
...Ways of benefiting through local interest, racial appeal and religious loyalty will be examined, for instance, and if the directors are as wise as they should be, they will not neglect the possibilities in prejudice, unfavorable criticism, censorship and suppression...
...If, once a year, they consult together, they cannot be expected to develop a sudden interest in an obsolete ideal, which is about what state sovereignty has ultimately become...
...And there is a measure of the distance that so completely separates P~re Aupiais and his confr~res from the exploiter...
...As for the position of the missionary in Africa, it is "to civilize, not merely to produce...
...Two things must, however, be borne in mind...
...Meanwhile he has not escaped the measured criticisms which have been leveled at him from many quarters, and which an unavowed candidate might have hoped to escape...
...Can it be affirmed that bootlegging constitutes a "moral turpiTurpitude tude...
...It is asserted often enough that being in charge of a parish is incompatible with anything save earnest pastoral work, and the existing demand for men sometimes precludes recognition of the existing demand for minds...
...that the first offense has not involved a prison sentence...
...Less than two months ago the market seemed without a bottom, and glances toward Washington were numerous and hungry...
...To insist on this, of course, is to admit that we have no sense of humor...
...Another is under the thumbs of men who in ten years have not been known to demonstrate any humor but ill humor...
...He belonged to a generation, and sums it up better, perhaps, than anyone else...
...Everybody realizes now the vast popular tide which moved silently against the entry of the United States into the war, and which eventually overwhelmed too eager attempts to weld the nation with Europe...
...The address of the Association is t8 West 4 t Street, New York City, and the price is $.2 5. This bulletin is, of course, a summary and not an interpretation...
...The posSubmarine sibility of reaching an agreement is constantly borne in mind by this government," he says, and since we have recently had demonstrations enough of the undesirability of the submarine, the times should be more propitious to such an agreement than in I92I, when the British declared for it at Washington...
...He is of the prophets, particularly of the prophets who were also conquerors in blood...
...IF WE interpret correctly the remarks attributed to Mr...
...The way to do this is to deflate him: to prick his sacrosanct illusion...
...What he wants, apparently, is not a chance but a set-up...
...Threatened with deportation, the poor fellow was brought into the circuit court over which Judge Hand presides...
...La Piana (himself once a priest) this means the dismissal from office of many prominent Italian university professors, and so strikes a great blow at the country's intellectual advancement...
...We suggest, however, that a still more glorious opportunity awaits him who can remove the "nebulousness" from the public mind...
...Now on this same day, Mr...
...Might not a less harassed France deal leniently with a harassed Germany and thus restore normalcy to Europe...
...THE Conference of Governors, which received such disturbing publicity as the result of Mr...
...time we began to speed the day when the historical imagination might be free to give us whatever profit and pleasure we are ever to derive from his existence...
...How can this be perfected...
...ity that we cannot refrain from hoping that many of our readers will send for a copy...
...War and serious war at that is, therefore, far from being out of the question...
...Clarence True Wilson's article in Collier's headed Call Out the Marines, it is in itself a comment on that article...
...He dreams, perhaps, of a kingdom in heaven assured to all who kill in the creed of the Eighteenth Amendment...
...Roosevelt's ambition to be a candidate in I932 that some political writers have been concerned...
...Von Hoffmansthal's versions of Catholic masterpieces--versions which, in some instances, have attained to world-wide popularity--are all remarkably well done, but suffer from the fact that indispensable vitality and sincerity have somehow ebbed away...
...To these wise observations he then added another: Congress can, if it so desires, make an act of transgression against prohibition a "moral turpitude...
...We must insist that our government go about the business of prohibition enforcement with the quiet efficiency which is to characterize the Hoover administration, and not with the frenzy, the fanaticism and the hysteria that characterize a holy war...
...Would it not make for a better world, they argue, to adjust the financial balances accruing from the war on the basis of that very generosity to which we once looked for the conquest of militant nationalism...
...Clarence True Wilson's demand for a bigger and more zealous war...
...The question, incidentally, is characteristic of the stupid and cruel attitude against which the missionaries protest...
...So MANY questions have been asked about the Lateran treaties that a source of information accepted as trustworthy and impartial ought to What Is be more than welcome...
...And so it is not for us to approve or disapprove of him as though he were the common urban variety of policeman, or a rustic constable...
...In effect, then, its whole policy in the affair has been to take what it could get and then invoke the treaties to preserve peace...
...Wickersham had in mind when he suggested to the conference of governors that the national and state prohibition laws might "be modified so as to become reasonably enforceable," but the implication is clear that he does not consider it possible to enforce these laws as they now exist without recourse to violent measures...
...AMONG recent opinions regarding this whole subject none seems to have attracted so much attention as Professor La Piana's brief article in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin...
...If our enthusiasm is not greater, it is because three weeks is a short time, and also because we are convinced that neither publishers nor book-dealers, even with the sympathy of Columbia University, can ever discover what makes a best-seller...
...One confronts, for instance, the baffling business of the debts, so hard to ignore and so impossible to cancel...
...He said that they are willing to work when they have a reason for working...
...The history of the relations between Italy and the Holy See is then given in brief, with clear explanations of the Law of Guarantees and the policies of Fascismo...
...We believe their meeting together is safely termed a great step forward...
...there is some occult satisfaction in the pattern of his fierceness, as, from a distance, there is satisfaction in the spectacular manifestations of other things cruel in themselves...
...These queries are not merely idealistic...
...In no Blessing the other way can the counsels of Rome be made so familiar to the average perIntellect son...
...A spectacular rise in the price of wheat, due to unfavorable Canadian weather, has moved thousands of growers squarely into easy street...
...No one expects Mr...
...Will they have been persuaded...
...324 THE COMMONWEAL July 3I, x929 and the pulse of the world another...
...WHILE Mr...
...To have done so would effect a piece of adroit political maneuvering and he ought to be happy, not disturbed, that many observers have noted and acclaimed it...
...Now The Commonweal is proud of the fact that it has been able to publish the work of distinguished priests, religious and laymen under one banner, as it were, but has no disposition to ignore the circumstance that such cooperation is far from enough...
...So between them, the Conference and the essay summarize one of the most notable changes in the practice of government in this country, with the President being forced toward the exercise of "dictatorial powers," and governors being recognized as not much more than press agents for the industrial advantages of their respective states, or as official welcomers to tourists and fraternal conventions...
...And how can they be answered...
...One also Skirmishing hears that excited civilian crowds in both countries have been gossiping in Manchuria about mobilization, national honor and sundry ultimatums...
...At its worst, therefore, his writing may fairly be compared to trinkets of precious stones, or even (with a severe critic) to boxes of bonbons...
...He had written three remarkable dramas prior to his twentieth birthday...
...After he had testified before the International Labor Bureau Africa recently to the abuses of the African work camps he was asked if it were not true that the Negroes are lazy and unwilling to work, even when offered good wages...
...It seemed tacitly agreed that Governors the Conference should do nothing which Meet might distinguish it from a gathering of librarians, let us say, or county judges...
...Will he, and those who stand with him, suggest modification then...
...And so America, like the rest of contemporary humanity, feels no lilt in the communal step, no dream of giving past the brim of the cup...
...he is a law unto himself...
...Walker's decision, word issued from Hyde Park, New York, that Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt is not "a candidate for President" (whatever that may mean...
...Coming so soon after Dr...
...It has given nothing to science beyond tempting Sir Hubert Wilkins with the possibility of a voyage beneath the polar ice cap...
...This idea has given birth to several European organizations, but we feel the matter could be done here in a genuinely American way...
...that the standing army of the United States has not yet been utilized in the cause...
...THOSE opponents of the present administration, now entrenched in the New York City Hall, have at last heard the dread word--the Mayor Coy is a candidate to succeed himself...
...And not, we can imagine the old priest saying to himself, by a superior righteousness...
...Can any preventive measure be taken...
...P~re Aupiais answered it by saying, first of all, that private property means nothing to the blacks who can be justly July3I, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 327 paid "only in the coin of economic determinism...
...It immediately became obvious that the defendant ought not to be escorted to the docks unless the offense he committed was actually a turpitude...
...He is classed not with the guardians of the law, but with the law-makers...
...We hope that this much of good may come from it...
...To recognize this truth is simply to use one's common sense and one's knowledge of human nature...
...The declaration was accompanied by a rather nettled comment on "the purely speculative and wholly false insinuations or statements about any consideration 328 THE COMMONWEAL July 31 , I929 i which I am giving to national candidacy...
...It may yet develop that this naive diplomacy has been suggested by not uninterested western powers...
...Roosevelt to consider himself as a candidate for the White House at the present time...
...It is true, apparently, that any "ex-priest" may be removed from a teaching appointment...
...One of them is at the point of a sawed-off shotgun...
...But there are situations in which it is not usually possible to indulge a sense of humor...
...NOT long ago we were talking with a bishop and remarking that some way ought to be found for bringing intellectual workers among the clergy and the laity upon a ground they could share in common...
...that when he enters a home without warrant, or shoots on suspicion and investigates afterward, the government shall seek his punishment, just as the state now seeks to punish a policeman who has been too free with his authority...
...If the outlook is not more favorable then, it is because the probability of war is not yet replaced by the probability of peace...
...He is no more to be approved, or disapproved, than a bolt of lightning...
...Walker has attempted to Candidates appear before an apathetic public as uncertain about the all-important matter...
...For the present all that can be said is that it contrasts sadly with the rhetoric of fairness and peace as uttered at Nanking...
...Beginnings The Board is to be an advocate not of drugs or surgery, but of dietetic and calisthenic treatment...
Vol. 10 • July 1929 • No. 13
