Communications
August 2i, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 405 COMMUNICATIONS WHY? Saint Paul, Minn. O the Editor :--Catholic literature accessible to me in the periodical rooms of public libraries is uniformly...
...None of them can he ever forget, as long as he lives, for he apparently has a memory that might have startled Lombroso...
...One Hapsburg Heir The Balkan Pivot, by Charles A. Beard and George Radin...
...No doubt a resort in my paper to the newspaper use of "alleged" or "reputed" would have been "playing safe...
...How Harford County folk regard this declaration is not without interest, and perhaps value...
...on October 3 Aus...
...One does not quite know why the story ceases just where it does...
...It cannot be due to the Church's opposition to "sumptuary" legislation...
...We search in vain for the faintest suggestion of independence," he writes...
...2. What did' they mean to do after organizing on February 22, 1775, and then adjourning to the next day (February 23, 1775) and on the latter day providing for the organization of "military companies" and the necessary procurement of "arms and ammunition...
...Without doubt it is an important workwimportant as a sociological document, if not as a novel ERNEST BRENNECKE, JR...
...the Editor :--In a communication published in TheO Commonweal of July 3I, Mr...
...Malone's article, published in The Commonweal in its issue of July 31...
...There is neither...
...they were putting their county on the map...
...It cannot be that Catholic leadership is actually--as has been alleged---so "peeved" at the necessity of recognizing that a worthy social cause could and did originate outside the True Church, that it refuses to sanction it...
...It was Christie who had drawn into herself all those floating intimations of the mystery of a glrl's soul, gathered here and there, like cowslips in green valleys, which were above everything so precious to him...
...The description of the forcible seizure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria Hungary, in the sentence "when, at last, thirty years late, Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed," is peculiar, when the steps leading up to this seizure are remembered...
...and I submit, in accord with Harford County sentiment of long standing, that the statement is charged with the spirit of the great Declaration...
...join the forward-moving procession...
...and actually is unwilling to tend support to any cause, however feebly guided, which seeks to free the "weaker brethren" from the enslavement of a world-old habit, as well as to restrain some who are too vicious to be a "brother" to anyone...
...Whether he did have I neither think that he did nor think that he didn't...
...He asks, "Will she let me make love to her...
...As to their dedaration's having been first--"first" may be a relative term, susceptible to fall before research...
...A less buxom but slightly more articulate young lady, Christie, the daughter of an incestuous old bookseller, has also attracted Wolf, and in a very disturbing fashion...
...Obviously this belated adolescent is a formidable person to be invading his peaceful native Dorset countryside, as the story opens...
...Meantime, when the Theodore Maynards die and go to heaven, as we know all lovers of good music do, they can sit in lofty dwellings listening to celestial concerts...
...If he means for a reference to Great Britain or George III or a renunciation of foreign allegiance, I gladly meet him, not part way, but all the way...
...Our hero has contracted with the lascivious and ghoulish Squire Urquhart to collaborate with him in the writing of an indecent book of local tradition...
...O the Editor :--May I break into this conversation on what we shall sing in church...
...But look at this...
...He discovered that the peculiar glamour which had always hovered for him like a diaphanous cloud round the impersonal idea of girlhood, had concentrated itself upon the image of Christie...
...Burnett sets up a straw man with the intimation that I had fathered it...
...The matter and style of this insufferably pretentious yarn are drenched, as is Wolf at times, with the mingled scent of honeysuckle and the pigsty...
...The lady begins dutifully to disrobe--whereupon Wolf suddenly remembers the face of a tramp he has seen...
...thereby help to mitigate the aptness of the all-tooprevalent taunt that the Church exists solely for the clergy...
...Slip off that sad-looking dress, Chris !" he cries...
...Mr...
...I had noticed it myself...
...I have no doubt but that William Paca, a member of that Congress and a signer of the national Declaration, who was born almost upon the spot where the Harford Declaration was signed, fully informed the Congress of the patriotic proceedings in his native county...
...and in reading fourteen chapters spread out over 325 pages, there will be found little reference to the former Turkish system of government, or to the pre-war forms o~ Serbian administration...
...His own fervid explanation of this event is a trifle too lengthy to admit even of paraphrase here...
...Edmund C. Burnett, of Mr...
...Edmund C. Burnett takes issue with certain phases of my paper, The First Declaration, which appeared in an earlier July number...
...HELEN HUGHES HIELSCHER...
...When he finally accepts payment for this labor from the naughty old cove, he suffers what a simpler person would call an attack of conscience, and loses his precious "llfe's illusion...
...many of them center about his trusty walking stick...
...Mankato, Minn...
...THE FIRST DECLARATION Bel Air, Md...
...and then it was as if a will within him that was beyond thought, gathered itself together in that frozen chaos and rose upward--rose upward like a shining-scaled fish, electric, vibrant, taut, and leaped into the greenish-colored vapor that filled the room...
...Does the Church prefer to help him stumble, in order that its "grace may abound...
...E~Ak C. SHORT...
...We must attend Mass, for that is something quite apart from the music, and we would like-please--to have the hymns sung that appeal to our devotional spirit rather than our artistic tastes...
...Moreover, thinks he: "I hope I shall find some girl who'll let me make love to her . . . tall and slim and white...
...That the members of the Continental Congress were aware of the bold action taken by the Harford patriots, and that they fully appreciated its significance, is apparent to those of this day who know the sequence of events which followed in its wake...
...Such "thought" apparently saturates every moment of Wolf Solent's existence...
...We will be rampaging through banks of rosy-tinted clouds, flinging flowers at each other, and singing at the tops of our not very musical voices, "Oh Lord, I am not worthy," though we know perfectly well it is not "plain chant," and other such hymns as stirred our devotion when we were still pilgrims and sojourners...
...for in the words of Pins IX, the liberty to do anything "is a liberty of perdition...
...It is this mechanical attitude of mind which renders a book that should be absorbingly interesting, somewhat heavy...
...We are sorry for all the Theodore Maynards, with their delicate aesthetic digestions, but we are in the majority, and will be for a hundred years to come...
...Gerda also has post-marital adventures9 She apparently accepts the guilty attentions of a young sausage-monger named Bob Weevil, and later on seems to be yielding to the wicked blandishments of one Lord Carfax, a suave Londoner...
...SAMUEL W. BRADFORD...
...Be this as it may, I have so far failed to find that, prior to March 22, 1775, any body of men duly elected by the people and organized in a regular parliamentary way, has ever taken such a bold stand in defiance of British authority and given such expressed determination to sever all allegiance therefrom...
...Those Harford men took themselves seriously...
...Matthew Page Andrews in his Tercentenary History of Maryland, Volume I, page 562, while himself taking the literal view as regards a reading of "independence" in the Harford declaration, has this on the priority factor: "The claim is made that it is 'the first declaration made and signed by any organized body (viz., the duly elected Committee of Harford County) the context of which could be interpreted as treason, and action taken against the signers.' " I observe that Mr...
...I'd like her to be very white . . . with a tiny little mole, like Imogen's, upon her left breast...
...It ought by now to be evident even to publishers that the Church has been too long on the shady side of social programs, too long the bulwark of those who refuse to budge from robber castles of vested interest...
...His view of the subject is not only very interesting but also quite correct...
...but in this benevolent interval he does feel constrained to "suggest" an improvement for such a publication as The Commonweal, as distinct from the regrettably large proportion of Catholic publications which appeal only to the sub-grade school mentality...
...Perhaps The Commonweal can supply an intelligible answer to a query which persists as I scan its pages from week to week: "Why is Catholic leadership seemingly so truculent in its attitude toward the Eighteenth Amendment, and the crusade which ushered it in...
...Why not counsel your constituency to exhibit the sportsmanship becoming to the dispenser of Christian forbearance...
...I would like to have anyone investigate and study the following queries, and then give an honest expression of opinion as the result thereof: I. Why did the Harford Committee, which had met as a mass meeting Committee in June, 1774, state in January, 1775, that, having "discharged the trust" imposed "to the best of our skill and judgment," they asked to be discharged and that a new Committee be elected by the people ? What had they in view...
...Why not add "hum control" to its equipment...
...There is nothing in my article to indicate or suggest that I thought Jefferson so did...
...Burnett battles away at this, too...
...I'd like to make love to her out-of-doors.., among elder-bushes.., among elderbushes and herb Robert...
...406 THE COMMONWEAL August 2I, 1929 3. What did the Provincial Convention of Maryland have in mind when, in July, x775, it "dissolved" the Harford Committee and only permitted it to exist as a Committee of "observation" with a membership of only eighteen...
...I have also read the criticism, by Mr...
...nearly a thousand pages are here piously devoted to the transcript of what must be but the merest fraction of it...
...Meanwhile he has met, "made love to" (that is, impaired the virtue of) and married the witless Gerda, who makes up for her dumbness by being gifted with an anatomy as seductive as that of Helen of Troy...
...9 . . 'I have hurt her feelings,' he said to himself, 'in the one unpardonable way.' " He has "outraged" her "deepest selfrespect...
...New York: Simon and 8chuster...
...WHAT SHALL THE FAITHFUL SING...
...The Commonweal, especially, under a name which bespeaks support for things pertaining to the common weal, is well equipped to find a happier key in which to pitch its weekly song...
...4. What did the members of the Harford Committee intend to do when, in September, 1775, a number of the signers of their Declaration began recruiting and enrolling men in military companies and taking command thereof...
...He has written in the fullest consciousness of the fact that many critics, who have been desirous or content to record themselves as sensitive to its very peculiar brand of mysticism or pseudo-mysticlsm, have compared it favorably with the work of Emily Brontt, Hardy, Dostoievsky, Shakespeare and Sophocles...
...recognize that the world-wide movement for suppression, of alcoholism is as unselfish in aim and method as it is possible for human activity to be--that everywhere it is a move for social amelioration...
...We won't have to sit with them, for there is no "have to" in heaven...
...It cannot be that it is because the Church is so overpoweringly solicitous about so-called "personal liberty," except as an argumentative weapon for its own purpose...
...I'm on the fence...
...Even the rhythm is there...
...It cannot be that a Church claiming direct descent from Jesus of Nazareth--assuredly opposed to anything tending to hurt a man--actually prefers to bolster those whose business it is to debauch human wills and sensibilities...
...It was a formal pronouncement, a manifesto, a true declaration, a telling the world...
...This writer makes his precarious livelihood by work, not by argumentation and not by giving counsel to weekly magazines...
...One may add that it is both humorless and pointless !--although it is decorated with hundreds of altogether unaccountable exclamation points[ The undersigned, perhaps flippant, reviewer has been deliberately generous with quotations, mainly in order to save the person who still maintains a decent respect for intelligence from wasting his time with Wolf Solent...
...Minneapolis, Minn...
...August 2i, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 405 COMMUNICATIONS WHY...
...It cannot be that a hierarchy perpetuating itself by the appeal to authority in religion and morals has so little respect for the source of its own laws that it distrusts also any legislation initiated outside of its own tutelage, and prefers a policy of rule or ruin in the case of republics...
...If the Church persists in blocking this onward procession, the necessity will speedily confront it, is actually confronting it, of fighting it in Mexico, in England, in Poland, in Germany, in Denmark, in Japan--in fact wherever a social consciousness has emerged and won the right to speak...
...It is pertinent to point out that this Harford statement was not a communication, address, memorial, pledge or resolution drafted to be presented to some higher body...
...Malone seems to think that Jefferson probably picked up . . . and later embodied . . . in the Declaration of Independence...
...The whole volume is permeated with the idea that there is only one way to describe political functions...
...Wolf has lost his position in London for interrupting a classroom session with a sudden outburst of mad and obscene language...
...THOMAS J. MALONE...
...While it may be true that the words "at the risk of our lives and fortunes" were used in the Virginia Convention of March 20, 1775, still the use of them by the Harford Committee on March 22, 1775, shows that Jefferson in Virginia and the Harford patriots in Maryland were souls with the same thought, and the same line of thought naturally found a place in the national Declaration a year and more after the Harford Declaration had revealed it...
...He quotes the "risque of lives and fortunes" wording of the Harford declaration and adds: "which Mr...
...The persistent note "Non-Catholic, ergo fanatic" suggests the AC hum...
...Again, I nowhere implied, of course, that the Harford men were the first to use that current phrase of the period, "risk of lives and fortunes...
...Did not Saint Paul say that "If meat causeth my brother to stumble, I will eat no meat henceforth...
...In our Father's house there are many mansions...
...Judge Walter W. Preston, of the Third Judicial Circuit of Maryland, comprising Baltimore and Harford Counties, says in his History of Harford County, Maryland, I6O8-I814, page Io1: "This association [of Harford County citizens] with the leading men of the colonies, bore fruit in the passage of a resolution by the Committee of Harford County on the twenty-second day of March, 1775, which may properly be called the first declaration of independence made by any representative body in America...
...There is no index, nor is there a map...
...for the Church assuredly has no hesitation in imposing fasts, feasts and food prohibitions which--to a gaping heretic--are futile...
...He "reels awkwardly to one side," and begs her to desist...
...The author further on comments on the treasonable nature of the declaration...
...The solemn pledge given by the Harford Committee to "carry into execution" the "resolves" of the Continental Congress (the Bill of Rights which has been "spurned" by the British ministry) was a direct, concise declaration of independence of all British rule and control...
...The more intricate portion of it is variously described as Wolf's "inner life," as his "indulgence in a secret mental vice," as his "life's illusion," as a "strange ecstasy . . . an intoxicating enlargement of personality that used to come to him from imagining himself a sort of demiurgic force . . . a crafty, elusive cunning of his own, a cunning both slippery and serpentine, a cunning that could flow like air, sink like rain water, rise tike green sap, root itself like invisible spores of moss, float like filmy pond scum, yield and retreat, retreat and yield, yet remain unconquered and inviolable...
...the opus is endless, in both senses of the word...
...There came a moment's sinking into nothingness, into a grey gulf of non-existence...
...There are a lot of us feel that way...
...The Commonweal invites its readers to send in communications on all topics of public interest, regardless of whether or not such topics have been previously discussed in its columns...
...New York: The Macmillan Company...
...He denies that the statement of the Committee of Harford County, Maryland, of March 22, 1775, was a declaration of independence and that it was first...
...The Austrian emperor had received Ferdinand of Bulgaria with sovereign honors on September 23, I9O8...
...forgive non-Catholics their hysteria...
...But--the query persists: "Then, just why...
...It is indeed complicated and highly colored and scented stuff...
...I ventured the opinion that he might have had the Harford wording in mind when he wrote...
...O THE mentally retarded young schoolmaster who is the hero of this astonishing tale, " 'thought' took the form of slowly stirring vegetable leaves, big as elephants' feet, hanging from succulent and cold stalks on the edge of woodland swamps...
...2.50...
...All literalminded men will agree with him...
...for where the Harford pledge uses "solemnly," the Jeffersonian uses "mutually...
...5.oo...
...O the Editor :--Catholic literature accessible to me in the periodical rooms of public libraries is uniformly antagonistic to the Eighteenth Amendment...
...I like good music--classic music too--but I must confess to a weakness for the simple church songs that I heard when I was a little girl in a church where there was no organ and where the choirmaster beat time with his foot...
...He plunged into a very strange aspect of his feelings, as he stood on those cobblestones and stared at those dark shadows...
...August 2I, I929 T H E C O M M O N W E A L 407 BOOKS Life's Illusion Wolf 8olent, by John Cowper Powys...
...However, as having possible bearing on the purely academic question of whether Jefferson may have had the Harford declaration in mind, one will note that the Harford wording, "We . . . solemnly pledge ourselves to each other, and to our country," employs the terms "pledge" and "to each other"-both of which are found in the closing of the Declaration preceding "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor...
...ONE adequately acquainted with the history of theO Balkan question, or with the fierce tribal fights between the Obrenovitch family and that of the Karageorgeviches, will be satisfied with the present book's uninspired legal description of the form of government and its ramifications, adopted by Jugoslavia since the world war...
...Throughout these incredibly dreary proceedings, Wolf suffers thousands of minute but "important" experiences...
...Thomas J. Malone, as published in The Commonweal and republished in the Baltimore Evening Sun, in regard to the Harford Declaration of Independence...
...5. Why did John Hancock, the presiding officer of the Continental Congress, write, on July 8, I776, a letter to the Provincial Convention of Maryland, then in session, and enclose therein an official transcript of the national Declaration of Independence, and ask the said Provincial Convention to promulgate it as the members thereof should think "most proper" ? 6. Why did Daniel of St...
...O the Editor:--I have read the article by Mr...
...But there is such a thing as suggestion of the spirit despite absence of the letter...
...The Harford Committee retained them in their archives...
...Any reader can see that...
...Four hundred pages later she calmly presents him with his opportunity...
...Thomas Jenifer, the presiding officer of the Provincial Convention of Maryland, write, on July I6, 1776, a letter to the Harford Committee and enclose the original Hancock letter and the transcript of the national Declaration of Independence, and ask that body of patriots to promulgate the same without the slightest request to have these important papers returned...
...One of his family, Aquilla Paca, was a member of the Harford Committee and a signer of its Declaration...
...9. . He recognized now that there hovered over the personality of this other girl.., that evasive aura of mysterious girlishness, the platonic idea, so to speak, of the mystery of all young girls, which was to him the most magical thing in the whole world...
Vol. 10 • August 1929 • No. 16
