Week by Week
344 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I9z9 rope" leads one to recognize the circumstance that the work of Versailles is, in several important respects, vastly out of date. It has, for instance,...
...THOUGH his opportunity comes through the regrettable illness of M. Poincar~, the times are now appropriate for the return of Aristide Briand Briand to leadership in France, just as three years ago circumstances were ripe Returns for his exit...
...Nevertheless Lithuanians in this country will hear the slogan, "Back to Lithuania I" shouted at them from every office that is interested in Atlantic berths or tickets to Atlantic ports...
...MUCH interest attaches to the "fundamental law" which has just been promulgated for the new state of Vatican City...
...and that the sequence of Golgotha upon Palm Sunday has been, and will inevitably be, the rhythm of Catholic history upon earth...
...August 7, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 347 Even the most dyed-in-the-wool red would admit that the situation which was precipitated by girls and boys in their early teens, or younger, screeching and kicking and assaulting the police, was ill advised...
...The party of Mr...
...In his desperate efforts to establish an alibi and prove that he is a traveler, not a tourist, he incarcerates himself in fusty old castles and drags himself through picture galleries which he does not want to see...
...While such important groups as labor continue to hold aloof from any thought of marching toward victory in party formation, more than a few idealistic urges are headed straight for the voting booth...
...Schmidt, that while the adult Eskimo in his loneliness is astonishingly resistant to disease, he loses all this advantage when he moves into town to live, and especially after he comes in contact with white men...
...Thus for years the governors of Connecticut, finding it impossible to comply with the three-day provision, have shelved it, and their action until now has not been questioned...
...Crowds gathered from all the counties of the Free States worshiped God, recalled the sacrifices and the greatness of past days, and dedicated themselves anew to the important tasks of the present age...
...Later on a High Mass served as the occasion for an address on Religion and Music, possibly the finest in the book...
...THE decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court declaring invalid almost fifteen hundred laws passed within the last six years because they Lawless had not been signed within three days after the close of legislative session, Connecticut illustrates once more the conflict between law and reality which grows out of failure to adapt the technique of government to the changing times...
...Indeed, despite the occasional visits, sometimes unpremeditated, of transatlantic flyers, it seems to us that the problem of isolation for Greenland might take care of itself...
...Even if the Magyar government or the Church has not thought of signalizing the occasion, the suggestion has been supplied by astute and far-sighted business men...
...The seriousness of this is aggravated when it is considered that more prisoners are being received with a life sentence or its equal, and the sentence for some crimes is more than in previous years, which means that prisoners confronted with long terms of confinement are more apt to become restless and desperate, working on the theory that they have little to lose and perhaps something to gain in an attempt at disorder or escape...
...Meanwhile the famous "ring of states," once drawn like a cordon to the south of the defeated Teutons, has become a dangerous battleground for French and Italian rivalry...
...It is the Democrats who continue to grow vexed and volatile over this and a dozen other dynamitic themes...
...For one thing, his diet is changed, and we can understand that ordinary foods would sit but ill upon a stomach adjusted to sea lion and whale meat...
...and it still regards Mr...
...Then follows the "special treatment" which is, in its way, extraordinary...
...His prothe Future gram for "an intense country life," as outlined in a new book which has been receiving great attention in Spain, could not have much of a hearing in Germany, England or America, where economic circumstances have forced the growth of another kind of existence...
...The point is dealt with in the current Outlook by Mrs...
...For a time it may have looked as if Mr...
...The final result may well be a new sense of unity among the Irish people...
...Not to be outdone, the dictator has made public certain facts regarding the constitution soon to be proposed...
...Europe will, therefore, refuse to sacrifice it unless ~ome wave of folly gets the better of wits...
...Poincar~, called at the eleventh hour, managed to form a Cabinet of union, and was almost immediately a steadying influence...
...But its prosperity will mean security for American investments, and this is all which may reasonably be expected...
...Schmidt desires...
...and though one may regret that the way was barred for so long, it was doubtless imperative that the conflict between faith and arrogant nationalism should end itself through the catastrophe of a world's war...
...THOUGH one ought never to comment upon a scientific discourse without having consulted the footnotes, Cape Town's remoteness may Tankards serve as an excuse for relying upon and Psycho-newspaper accounts of the presidential analysis address of Professor W. E. Dixon to a section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science...
...As Premier, M. Briand should be in a better position to handle relations with Poland and Jugoslavia, two friendly countries whose obstreperousness in their own neighborhoods could easily embarrass France, to relieve tension along the Mediterranean, and to arrange for the evacuation of the Rhineland...
...THE I927 report of the Association contained a warning: "Crowding is very serious in the state prisons, as is indicated by the fact that more than I,OOO prisoners are not housed in cells...
...Under the circumstances this is something of an admission...
...Seldom, however, does the Has the point induce action of the beneficial Artist a kind we see reflected in a book entitled Soul...
...But we remember that agrarian nations have existed before and still exist, and that the conditions of living there are neither more nor less deplorable and disturbing, than in the industrialized countries...
...But a measure of the apathy with which we in America regard some of the most important problems of civilization is that this grim warning went unheeded in New York...
...But there are several ancestral lapses, difficult to live down...
...It is the quest of the individual soul, and in this quest cities or plains are but the immediate extraneous circumstance...
...The French Premier, conscious always of the economic and political importance of the Americas in any picture of the modern world, has adroitly accompanied his homilies to the continent with invitations to the new world...
...If this is correct, Dr...
...A party of "individualists," as Mrs...
...Yet there is a very special Democratic weakness, which hampers the business of "getting breaks...
...Hoover were going to create an oasis inside the G. O. P. area for the advocates of drought, thus transcending that skilful inditterence to Volsteadism which characterizes so many among the Root-Hughes-Coolidge crowd9 But now it is fairly evident that the said oasis will be used principally for a good long nap...
...Any question on this t929 Steamships visitation meets the natural explanation that Poland is now celebrating her tenth year of independence...
...For one thing it has been increasingly easy since the war to forget that there may exist such general hopelessness and despair as we are now thus startlingly brought to think about...
...Rome, which naturallyCivitatem possesses a better memory for such things, thinks of the event in terms of comparison with the final sad public appearance of Pio Nono...
...This plan appears to be a compromise between the Italian idea of parliamentary government and the notion which still persists in comfortable countries like our own...
...x93 ~ has proved to be a bad year, anniversarily speaking...
...Dublin inaugurated the ceremonies with a votive Mass in Phoenix Park, attended by many thousands and indicative of the faith of the country...
...If the point had been made six years ago the decision would have been the same...
...To me it seems not unlikely," said the Professor, "that the substitution of tea for beer is not wholly unconnected with the tendency of highly civilized nations to become supersensitive and neurotic, for this is the ground-work upon which drug addiction is built...
...It is said that the Catholic Union is now large and flourishing...
...Such a warning from 346 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I929 the past should be sufficient, he says, to warrant Greenland's continued isolation...
...But "in case anyone thinks that a real right or interest has been injured by an administrative mandate, he may appeal to the Sovereign Pontiff, through the mediation of the Counselor-General...
...Thus the Secretary of State, the Governor and the Counselor-General are in active control, but the manner in which they perform their duties is subject to constant papal supervision...
...THAT the artistic temperament is problematical from a religious point of view has often been conceded...
...Spain is in the fortunate position of being able to shape her own future, or so the Premier believes, and he says that it should be one "very different from those countries, completely overmechanized, whose great centres contain and protect all vices, and even crimes, and in which noises stupefy and make difficult the repose of the soul so that things moral, chaste and even courteous are disappearing from the relations between men...
...Now the throng has witnessed an emergence which summons to mind again the entry of Christ Himself into Jerusalem amid the plaudits of the crowd...
...Not a single one of the important post-war financial problems has been referred to it for settlement...
...For the confusion and expense into which its decision now throws the state, the Supreme Court is not to blame...
...Democracy has not been able to compromise, or to live at peace with itself, since the Civil War...
...It will be interesting to watch the scheme in action...
...The hundreds of thousands who knelt for benediction, who enjoyed the regal splendor of the ceremony, and who acclaimed the man in whom the destinies of Christendom are for the moment centered, could not well avoid feeling that a new vitality had entered the conduct of the Church...
...The value of this hint will be appreciated when it is observed that though lives of the Doctor are numerous, he is one of the few dead Englishmen who have not yet been "psyched...
...It can always strike a melodious note at the end of a convention with some species of compromise...
...And so the news that Father Hudson, bowed down by ill health and increasing years, has been relieved of his editorial work must be received with the most sincere regret...
...A Democratic convention, however, cannot compromise...
...A change in the law is now inevitable, for Connecticut cannot afford to court a repetition of this ludicrous position...
...Meanwhile, all signs of stormy political weather in Spain have vanished and the "revolution" seems to have gone into hiding...
...Germanic influence in what used to be the Hapsburg empire is limited to one republic which, however, possesses the most important distributing centre in the whole of southeastern Europe...
...WEEK BY WEEK T O THE world at large the triumphal procession which ushered Pope Pius XI from the Vatican to Saint Peter's was a sign that the Church has definitively accepted the Lateran treaties Exeunt in and ended the official seclusion of fiftynine years...
...That this analysis of the situation has been justified by the recent blow-ups is now recognized by everyone, and not least by Governor Roosevelt, who has ordered a study of the Baumes Laws making life sentences mandatory for fourth-term offenders...
...Really an anti-war conference body, its significance lies mostly in the political effectiveness of the public opinion it can muster...
...Emily Newell Blair, who as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee has seen not a little of campaigning...
...that easy adjustments frequently imply spiritual failure...
...It may be that Mr...
...O. Henry's picturesque tale of the creation of a Central American demand for shoes by sowing cockleburrs in the streets bids fair to be eclipsed by this evidence of ingenious modern enterprise9 DEMOCRATIC BIRTHMARKS FFORTS to give political form to civic ideas are numerous in diverse parts of the land...
...It has, for instance, visualized a Russian republic allied with the victorious powers and receiving tribute from Germany...
...Indeed it combined something of Oliver Wendell Holmes with more than a little Saint Francis de Sales...
...THE revolt of more than a thousand prisoners at Dannemora, and a week later of seventeen hundred at Auburn, are things which many of us Prisons in have been content to suppose could not New York happen in our time or land...
...He had organized a Catholic Union of the Theatre, and his volume consists of the Sunday instructions given to this group...
...Schmidt is convincing on this subject, and also when he refers to the disastrous consequences of the opening of Labrador...
...He may be mistaken, but he has risked a genuine effort to be wise...
...Chesterton was asked how he obtained "inspiration," he replied, "More beer l" It would appear, therefore, that Cape Town has been listening to a subtle and venomous attack upon Mr...
...Johnson becomes the first great psychoanalytic patient and may be warmly recommended to diverse practitioners...
...Serenity cannot be won by national action...
...But having arrived at such literary inferences from a scientific lecture, it may be well to await the complete text before proceeding farther9 IT IS estimated by passenger agents that approximately eleven thousand Poles, residing as either naturalized citizens or aliens in this Anniversaries country, will have visited Poland durand ing the year...
...Every...
...Now this lack of agreement and this insistence upon personal beliefs is to a considerable extent the weakness of all "liberalism" as opposed to "conservatism...
...Blair says, it "insures its defeat" by giving uncontrolled rein to the expression of opmlons...
...Therefore he bores foreigners when he does not exasperate them...
...It is even recorded that one of the most important among the critics of Primo de Rivera has declared the general to be "a man of extraordinary intelligence and astonishing tact...
...So when the news appeared that fifty children under Communistic direction (it would be unfair to them to say "of Communistic convictions") rioted on a Cunard pier, the common inclination was to pity the youngsters and to condemn the adults who led them...
...The first is, of course, the Civil War-a point so deeply etched upon school and other history as to be one of the few national facts everybody remembers9 The second may be seen in the program of Bryan, with which the present is totally out of sympathy...
...It will call for a governmental assembly quite distinct in character: one group of representatives are to be chosen by the people, another group by the government, and still a third group by the "economic organizations...
...Elsewhere in this issue we are printing an analysis of the situation in Virginia, so typical of the drift we have indicated...
...It can recognize the fact that its enterprise hums round the half-dozen important capitals in its area, and that adroit political decisions may control economic valves...
...The The average tourist, he holds, is not a Goodness of nuisance perennially bent on lording it Travelers over porters but a "quiet and longsuffering poor fellow...
...In some ways, of course, Democracy comes of excellent stock, and such writers as Claude Bowers have traced this lineage well...
...Other men can be found to carry on the endeavor to which his life has been devoted, but none will ever supplant his personality...
...It might gradually curb its Nordic and Latin manias...
...Le Credo des Artistes, by P~re M. S. Gillet, provincial of the Dominicans in Paris...
...and Poland, once conceived of as a kind of wall which would both hinder the Reich's eastward progress and permit Franco-British egress, is, potentially at least, in the position of a nut caught between the jaws of a cracker...
...Bryan may rend hearts and stir the enemy to wrath...
...Poland and the steamship companies...
...Whether that influence is welded into political unity or not, the fact remains that Vienna is rapidly becoming a centre of German Danubic control...
...Whenever that failure manifests itself, law is disregarded, forgotten with the consent of everyone in the interests of accomplishment...
...One interesting aspect of these centenary meetings is the practice of saying the commemorative Masses in honor of persons instrumental in furthering the cause of emancipation...
...and, on the whole, things will move tranquilly in the United States so long as labor does not grow politico-conscious and as agrarianism does not seriously threaten to mark its ballots differently...
...Inevitably, of course, Europe will struggle for a more favorable credit balance than it can now point toward...
...One need hardly be told that Europe can never achieve what we here understand by the term "united states...
...Chesterton's methods...
...On the other hand, 348 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I929 Professor Dixon observed that beer "depresses the higher faculties of the mind and does not exaggerate their activity...
...The demonstration against Boy Scouts who were sailing for the International Jamboree in England, even had it been peaceful, was inane and futile...
...He has been thoroughly highbrow-beaten by the world, so that he dares not follow his natural ben...
...Since that time a silence, vast and profound as a divorce between worlds of the spirit, has brooded under the bells of the enormous basilicama silence which blended indignation and regret, penitence and longing...
...Hygienic education of the natives had not been attempted...
...In the meantime there have been few moments when this remarkable man could have shown to his best advantage at the head of the government...
...All roads through the world are open to the Sovereign Pontiff, as they were to Peter the Fisherman...
...One may also point to the circumstance that, as Briand has put it, the new concept of unification does not emphasize any kind of antipathy to the United States...
...We suspect the sole reason why John Brennan has spoken with kindness is the circumstance that he himself has often been a tourist...
...John Brennan achieves originality by saying a kind word for the traveler...
...What bearing this has on the opportuneness of opening Greenland is a question which might puzzle anyone unless he had learned, through Dr...
...Seeing the division of the social order into city dwellers and country dwellers, the Premier believes it possible to impute a separate morality and aesthetic to each...
...We need to bear in mind always that one part of the Christian mission is necessarily expressed in conflict...
...Her shrewd and thoughtful paper is devoted to proving that whereas the Republicans are interested in winning, the Democrats are set on "thinking...
...A detail worth noting is that the Vatican flag is "composed of two parts vertically divided...
...To the multitudes who were heretofore unaware of the very existence of such a junior Communistic society, the Young Pioneers of America have furnished a most unfortunate introduction...
...That year will be the nine hundredth since the death of Saint Emeric, son of Saint Stephen, the great patron saint of Hungary...
...Thus the memories of several bishops have been honored, and we hope that the name of John England, pioneer bishop of Charleston, will not be overlooked...
...THE spectacle of children on a rampage, particularly a public rampage, is always disagreeable...
...one remembers the semi-panic which ensued when it became apparent that Briand was to fail, and the dizzy plunges of the franc while control of the government wavered between him and Herriot...
...But it can shape common policies and common hopes without giving them, once and for all, the rigid formulization required for the League covenant...
...The judiciary is organized in the customary manner, with a court of first instance, a court of appeals (the Rota) and a supreme court (the Segnatura...
...Disorders of a minor sort we have expected and been prepared for...
...The yellow half is nearest the pole, the white portion bears the tiara with the keys according to a design determined upon...
...Yes, the tourist is normally only too willing to behave conformably, if merely to avoid being likened unto certain among his more gold-plated countrymen...
...And if the organization's ideals are voiced in such boorish rioting, the idea of converting any Boy Scout to it is preposterous...
...Indeed the latter are probably as much interested in European anniversaries as the countries involved or their nationals...
...GREENLAND, says Dr...
...But M. Briand is proposing a necessary supplement--an agreement to achieve unity on the basis of actual facts...
...When the case reached the Supreme Court it was brought out that the act was signed only two weeks after the legislature had adjourned...
...ONE feels that great benefits are destined to accrue from Ireland's observance of the Emancipation centenary...
...In other words: economics has forced itself upon the political consciousness, and much of the machinery is antiquated...
...ANYBODY who has edited a journal during even a brief period will realize that the fifty-four years which Father Daniel E. Hudson has Fifty-four devoted to the Ave Maria signify exYears of haustive toil and almost infinite charity...
...In I926, lines of difference between him and the forces led by M. Herriot were so bitterly drawn that he was out of the picture...
...He may be assured that countless friends will be as interested in his nobly earned rest as they have been in his daily toil...
...The Court could only rule on the law, which in this case was clear...
...It was shrewd, clear-headed writing, but wise with kindliness and the lessons of saintly and mystical writers...
...Therefore what is written about him is so uniformly unfavorable...
...There is to be no senate, but a Council the thirty members of which are to be selected from among the best men in all groups...
...As such the League of Nations never has had and never will have economic effectiveness...
...Accounts of the various eelebraDublin tions testify to the harmony of feeling which prevails, to widespread popular Remembers interest, and to the eagerness of nonCatholics to join in the applause given to what is after all an achievement of charity...
...Look through the files and you will see the names of almost all Catholic writers identified with the epoch-scholars, leaders, poets, novelists, essayists...
...The legislative, judicial and executive powers are all lodged in the Sovereign Pontiff, who may delegate these as he sees fit to appointed officials...
...In short, it might prevent not the collapse of Europe (of this there is little danger) but the continued anaemia of Europe...
...Careful research of calendars, encyclopaedias and histories has only brought forth the fact that in 93 o, Vytauto, obscure yet respected king of Lithuania, saw the last of earth...
...Editing The story of this publication, which is the oldest and most widely distributed among Catholic cultural reviews in the United States, takes one back to pioneer days and through a host of struggles on behalf of literary expression...
...But that grievances, real or imagined, could lead almost three thousand men into organized rebellion was a possibility which seemed altogether too remote and absurd, for the United States, at least...
...Even more impressive possibly was the Mass at Cashel, upon the famous rock which used to be the scene of the coronation of the kings of Munster...
...WRITING in a recent number of the Irish Statesman, Mr...
...Defense of the status quo is a tremendous advantage when everything is going smoothly...
...Then followed the Wilson bid for anti-Allied sentiment, and the subsequent repudiation of this by a declaration of war...
...Surely it ought to be when one considers this excellent effort in its behalfman effort which may legitimately be envied in many parts of the world...
...A dispute had arisen over an act passed in I923 confiscating certain land desired for a state institution...
...344 THE COMMONWEAL August 7, I9z9 rope" leads one to recognize the circumstance that the work of Versailles is, in several important respects, vastly out of date...
...Though of course Law in merely an application of canonical prinVatican ciples, it defines a number of matters City lucidly and so clears the air of misconceptions...
...In practice, therefore, all responsibility for the conduct of the government must be borne by the Holy Father, even though the normal routine of affairs will hardly impose upon him added local problems or tasks...
...We are all agreed, then, as to the primary cause...
...How much truth there is in the following remarks not a few realize perfectly: "He has fought his way to our shores past implacable officials and customs officers on many borders, who exceed in their vigilance those dragons who barred the progress of the heroes of old...
...The fluctuations of the franc were the French government's most serious problem, and his successive administrations had been powerless to stabilize it...
...Reading them one admires the frankness with which this remarkable priest has grasped the difficulties incident to a profession too often described as a sure recipe for degeneration...
...Waltman has exaggerated a trifle, but you can skim a good deal from his remarks and still have a heady brew...
...Now we seem to remember that when Mr...
...For upward of a year the wardens of both prisons have been aware of a growing restlessness...
...P~re Gillet first set before his audience, in a series of excellent discourses, the Christian ideal of life and the major virtues...
...Finally one comes upon that antipathy between northern city and southern domain which every step of the route between A1 Smith the...
...And the Prison Association of New York may reasonably ask "Why ?" Some time ago Governor Smith recommended that Auburn be abandoned, and that an adequate modern prison be built in a more satisfactory location...
...The onlooker's indignation is, of course, The generally aroused by thoughts of parChildren's ents or guardians who have probably Riot failed to apply the slipper...
...The question, therefore, suggests itself: why is all this sort of thing associated with the Democratic party, and why does Republicanism escape it...
...Roosevelt's break in t912 not merely as a black spot on that great leader's record, but also as an exceedingly dangerous rebellion which all but ruined the nation...
...WE ARE assured that the Seville and Barcelona expositions--at both of which countless memories of Spanish-American history were revived Fair --have made for the happiness of the Weather country and the tempering of political in Spain discussion...
...Or go around to the other side...
...Now Russia is bound more closely to Germany than perhaps ever before...
...That weakness is attributable to heredity, as definitely as any birthmark...
...SINCE he has such a taste for country contentments, and holds to the pleasant dream of seeing his nation established as an agrarian state of small Arranging communities, Primo de Rivera is fortunate that he is a Spaniard...
...Hygienic Isolating and moral problems affecting the future of the Eskimos there have first to be Greenland solved...
...Nevertheless the best part of the Ave Maria has always been the editorial comment of Father Hudson himself...
...It is a place where ideas may be bandied about like basketballs, where resolutions must be fought, and where such fiery programs as those which used to emanate from Mr...
...And with its position in those far northern latitudes, we are content that all should be as Dr...
...Bay Schmidt emphatically (he is a Danish scientist of reputation) must not yet be opened to the white man...
...Under his management the country has gradually regained prosperity, while M. Briand, free to August 7, x929 THE COMMONWEAL 345 devote most of his time to foreign affairs in these three years, has arrived at an understanding with Stresemann, established himself formidably at Geneva, and in general prepared the way for a foreign policy which he may now begin to develop...
...Masses were said for Moli~re and Corneille, so that the opportunity for discussing the work of the dramatist and actor was as genuine and apparent as a sign on the Boulevard des Italiens...
...They will merely regret that nearly three score years have passed so irrevocably...
...because of this, twothirds of them were swept away...
...An effort has been made to give each event a public character, and the government always maintains an official representation...
...Hoover is welded together by the conviction that it alone can "save the country," and therefore personal ideals of civic conduct must remain purely subordinate matters...
...We were told recently by an excursion promoter that at present the transatlantic lines are preparing for the eastward passage of Hungarians in I93I...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 14
