Week by Week
460 THE COMMONWEAL September II, I929 especially by those of us who are obliged, because of our own devotion to truth, to criticize and at times to oppose, not science in itself but the...
...The actor's triumph at the Hague was Mr...
...Contrariwise, when it is vigorous, timely, emphatic, and in addition has been put into effect by the clergy and the laity, the Church and society gain great goods...
...Mr...
...the signposts are to be marked "To the ideal" when they should read "To any compromise between the ideal and the practical...
...It follows Mr...
...His stock is "sufficiently strong to carry him through numerous terrestrial upheavals, through desiccations and glaciations...
...O'Brien may have had in mind the work being done by the Paolini, who among other things have established numerous homes and asylums for the wretched in Italy, and exert upon that country a very considerable influence through their libraries, newspapers and magazines...
...Moreover, the cockroach is "well attuned with physical law and the environment's seeming caprice...
...inclined to believe that But we are a man who the Hague stands to gain more in the way of personal prestige out of this meeting is M. Aristide Briand...
...Haifa has been partly destroyed, and the random rage of the Arabs has even spent itself upon an Orthodox Greek community near Beisan...
...Of particular interest, accordingly, were Mr...
...It is true that in the United States, at least, under the present administration, there seems to have set in a helpful reaction which may for some time delay the advance which had been so marked toward the setting up of a federal bureau of education...
...Shaw's political "window dressing...
...John Macrae, president of E. P. Dutton and Company, has followed the latter's pubMr...
...The Moslems consider her formal guarantee of Zionism in the Holy Land to be a direct invasion of their own centuries-old rights there...
...THE extent to which the press must join in the work inevitably increases, and to this fact the Knights, with their national an d local magazines, their bulletins and pamphlets, are paying more and more attention...
...but man will go on preferring these whims to the "facts" which constitute, when interpreted by the cockroach school of philosophy, such solemn nonsense as we have been considering...
...Its only importance comes from the sad fact that this fantastic nonsense will no doubt be eagerly quoted and used in periodicals and journals that will spread its falsehood far and wide...
...First of all, of course, the judges would have to set up some standard of what really is bad journalism...
...A dozen Jewish colonies in northern Galilee have been attacked...
...Because the present lieutenant governor, a prospective and logical candidate, has a Catholic wife, the call to arms has early been sounded by those Democrats who could swallow the bitter dose of Republicanism to escape the ague of Rome...
...The important thing is that it September II, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 46i was Briand who fixed the date of evacuation...
...But he does, unwittingly of course, pretty fully explain the reason why a good many of us will go on preferring the idea of God to that of the Second Principle of Thermodynamics, or even to the Star-Dust-Drift...
...In the current G. K.'s Weekly, he points to the curse of every controversy--"the power that the papers and the politicians possess of putting the question in their own way...
...Where everyone else was nationalistic without pretense, he was with or without it something more than the Premier of France...
...It is, perhaps, recognized by you (according to your various inherited traditions and spiritual tenets) as the Tendency, or Evolution, or God, or Fate, or the Will to Live, or the Second Principle of Thermodynamics...
...It is brave to Apologizes admit error publicly, even in the face of a $2oo,ooo libel suit, and if Mr...
...Any hopeful vision of harmony in a party which has been sorely harassed by the conflict between wets and drys, klansmen and anti-klansmen, Hoovercrats and Smithsupporters, becomes blurred, in consequence...
...They have violently protested the police order for the disarming of all Palestine Jews, and have besieged the Foreign Office to be allowed to re-form the Jewish war veterans into a defense corps...
...Here one can learn something of the extent to which forced labor has invaded the moral and physical rights of the natives...
...He showed himself especially well acquainted, and sympathetic, with Catholic Action as it is being prosecuted throughout Europe, and asked for America a program which would be not only disciplinary, operating from within, but social and operating on the world at large...
...he was the personal workman of the plan...
...The stimulus this must prove to the German spirit is certainly the most obvious result of the Hague conference...
...but it is almost inevitable that this movement will be resumed sooner or later...
...That we can make the choice may strike the philosophers of materialism as being merely one of those "minor whims" of man which hasten his defeat by the conquering cockroach...
...Oh, no...
...But l If only that obscene cockroach, and the false philosophy of which it is the appropriate image, did not crawl out of some crack in the writer's head (so to speak) and defile the splendid vision of the starry heavens which is the main theme of the article...
...Therefore, what the bishops of England and Wales have said possesses its application to the American situation, because what they say is based solidly and irrefragably upon principles which are common to all Catholics in all parts of the world...
...It is no wonder that Monsignor Beaupin writes in the Chronique Sociale de France: "Where the missionary apostolate exhausts itself to save souls, forced labor turns them from Christ and the Cross, causing them to look with horror upon a nation which calls itself Christian, and whence come their apostles," It is no wonder that P~re Aupiais, responding to the charge that the natives are lazy and incorrigible, has only scorn for their accusers...
...Few things are more certain than that the condemnation of birth control by Cardinal Hayes is precisely the same condemnation that Catholic bishops throughout the world would, and do, give to birth control, and that they follow the lead of, and are absolutely supported by, the central authority of the Church...
...But he is not far wrong in concluding that the toleration of intolerance crops in strange and sorry harvests...
...Shaw's formula, Mr...
...WE VENTURE to suggest to those who control the annual prizes awarded by the Pulitzer fund established for the purpose of stimulating The Year's and rewarding notable achievements in Worst News literature, drama and journalism that a prize for the year's worst news article might be a good thing to establish...
...The cockroach "has a straight line ancestry of two hundred million years or more...
...to be led into the Socialistic party by promises of new and better sovereignties...
...If the same men want war . . . they can put the question, 'Should we defend our country?' Everywhere the same difficulty exists and is the root of all demagogy and dangerous power in the state...
...2) The state is entitled to see that citizens receive due education sufficient to enable them to discharge the duties of citizenship in its various degrees...
...However, his second thoughts on book clubs as a method of selecting and distributing books, still coincide with his first...
...This is further increased by the fact that, according to Father McNabb, England has a system of education which is "compulsory and socialized to a degree almost without parallel in the world, even in Soviet Russia...
...How "caprice" can coexist and function in a world, or a universe of worlds, controlled by unchanging law the writer, even though so ambitious in theme and thought as to handle universes and cockroaches with equal facility, does not explain...
...Shaw acterized himself as a "bourgeois Socialist," expressed the certainty that, "owing to the ignorance and political imbecility of the people, it is difficult to get things done, though the most extraordinary things can be done without people knowing anything about it...
...IT HAS usually been taken for granted in this country that Mr...
...CATHOLICS will echo from their hearts the words of solicitude and compassion which Cardinal Hayes has addressed to the afflicted Jews in The Palestine through their national orPalestine ganizations here...
...Democracy looks to the people...
...And unless the judging group can cater to Wawa or Tombstone taste, as well as to Greenwich Village taste or Park Row taste, the ranks of subscribers will inevitably be decimated...
...But they meet only to part...
...She has reduced her bill by more than one hundred millions annually, and she has won financial autonomy...
...For one thing it was The Knights the Council's first opportunity to welat Milwaukee come officially the signing of the Lateran treaty, the adjustment of the religious situation in Mexico, and, through Supreme Knight Martin H. Carmody, to express the hope "that with this era of restored peace and goodwill our brothers in Mexico may again resume their fraternal relations...
...A sensational and notorious Fort Worth preacher, who has been tried and acquitted of both arson and murder, is demanding by sermon and radio that no Catholic woman be permitted to function as First Lady of Texas...
...Snowden surrendered part of his gains after he had established the fact that England could exact them...
...The man in Wawa or Tombstone is not unwilling to be guided--another's assuming the burden of selection is actually a boon-but he must be guided to what he likes, not to what a faraway group of editors thinks he likes, or thinks he ought to like...
...4) To parents whose economic means are insufficient to pay for the education of their children, it is the duty of the state to furnish the necessary means, providing them from the common funds arising out of the taxation of the whole community...
...Irrespective of the question as to whether this compulsory socialized system is or is not a good thingmfor to debate that matter would be outside the knowledge of The Commonweal--it is certain that, in England as in the United States, there has been a remarkable and disturbing growth of the movement wholly to secularize education, and to "nationalize" it, in the sense of entrusting its main supervision and direction to the federal authorities...
...This will not be at once...
...Hoover, who has recently rewarded his Texas supporters by the appointment of a leading Hoovercrat to an important federal post...
...Meanwhile, Jewish subjects of the empire are understandably bitter, not only over the lack of precaution which permitted the present acute tragedy to develop, but also over the way it is being handled...
...Snowden's...
...Chester-gland...
...For, not content with telling us about the great discoveries of astronomical science, the writer brings in his own interpretations...
...Just as the Pulitzer prize for the best news story of the year not only rewards its writer, and encourages other reporters to do their best to handle news facts in the most interesting and valuable manner possible, so the prize for the worst news article of the year should punish its writer adequately, and discourage others, so far as possible, from similar performances...
...A pronouncement from the Vatican is certain to come and will differentiate between birth control and illegal operations...
...the mob is...
...The revolt of all Islam would be a simple problem beside the composing of the racial, economic and religious quarrel which is rending Palestine today...
...For, after all, no matter what modifications or compromises or special arrangements may be entered into by Catholics in the United States or in England, or Italy, or Mexico, it remains true that nothing short of the complete application of the principles maintained by the bishops can be the ideal which Catholics aim to achieve: "(I) It is no part of the normal function of the state to teach...
...All informed newspaper men, one would think, should know such a plain fact...
...She continued: "If it were not for Catholic opposition, the birth control movement would be universal...
...462 THE COMMONWEAL September II, I929 unintentionally, no doubt, on the reporter's part, yet none the less colossal...
...It has a choice of roads but it must not be misled by the signposts...
...At the Milwaukee meeting Mr...
...There is no more valuable medium for correcting and eradicating misbeliefs and erroneous opinions than the printed page when properly presented, but we cannot hope to see developed a strong Catholic press and literature unless we encourage it by our support...
...The crisis will be weathered, of course, but only then will the deepest difficulties begin...
...Margaret Sanger, in which she is quoted as saying that the birth control movement was progressing so favorably "that she expects a favorable attitude from the Vatican in a short time...
...But we also think that much more should be done to diffuse and make operative the great and helpful social and intellectual benefits of that document...
...Gilbert K. Chesterton, the democrat, agrees with his old, and beloved, enemy...
...So that even where England won, it was not at the cost of her allies...
...Its supporters and its opponents are too close to the world of books and writers to understand the psychology of the person whose reading is greatly limited...
...And she will give up her title to the sums overlapping between the Dawes and the Young plans in order that England may get the extra reparations she demanded...
...So far as the nations are concerned, the immediate psychological advantage is all Germany's...
...For despite the attention given during the past month to the effect of a concession to England, it is now realized that whatever progress the English have made is altogether obscured' by the advance of Germany into equality with the governments of the Allies...
...Where or when that guidance and direction is weak or faltering, still more when it is ignored or anyhow neglected, both the Church and society must suffer...
...460 THE COMMONWEAL September II, I929 especially by those of us who are obliged, because of our own devotion to truth, to criticize and at times to oppose, not science in itself but the destructive and at times even diabolical ideas and teachings based (though how unfairly and how wrongly...
...IN A letter to the New York Times, Mr...
...Apparently, he "today is just as good as ever he was...
...The Lone Star voters do not elect their governor until next year, but according to Mr...
...The Union suggests "that the personnel of schools, professors and pupils, as well as catechists, should be exempted from forced labor...
...Shaw's shrewd but sharp advice: "Don't oppress the public mind with the vision of a Socialist government that won't let you alone for a solitary instant, that will not only dictate in the daytime what you shall do, but what sort of night shirt you shall wear...
...What will it accomplish under more favorable conditions...
...Their political incompetence or apathy may never be destroyed, but the effort to destroy it must not cease...
...The "window dressing" should be made much more attractive than that...
...In a summer school speech, ton and Mr...
...There are other Catholic publications of a broader scope than these, which should also have a place in the Catholic home...
...It is, in a sense, law...
...It needs only an easy extension of our imagination to see behind him the other men and women of science in other observatories, and in laboratories and libraries and a hundred similar fields of work, all engaged upon other parts of this "research magnificent...
...He is not the unique "lord of creation...
...The Christmas message from Cardinal Hayes two years ago, she said, against birth control, was received badly at the Vatican...
...FUNDAMENTAL differences between Socialism and democracy have seldom been so beautifully demonstrated a's by recent discussions in EnMr...
...McDonald undoubtedly goes too far in imputing explicit and direct responsibility for this state of affairs to Mr...
...WE REPEAT that Great Britain's task is a hard one...
...Upon the guidance and direction of the bishops of the Catholic Church, themselves led and directed by the Bishop of Rome, the health and progress of the Faith which means also the progress and health of society in general, within and without the visible organization of the Church---depend more than upon any other human factor...
...Evans McDonald of Dallas, Texas, seeks to bring the spotlight recently centered on the political After campaign and issues in Virginia, to his Virginia, native state where, he feels, parallel Texas conditions exist...
...But how effectively this will restore Britain's reputation on the continent remains to be seen...
...George Bernard Shaw, who charMr...
...that there should be guaranteed to the laborer freedom to fulfil the duties of his religion on the day appointed and whenever possible, the weekly day of repose to correspond with the day determined by his religion...
...We of The Commonweal have tried our best to chart and guide our course in relation to practically all the social topics and problems discussed by us in the light of the authoritative and inspiring doctrine laid down in that document...
...His services are drafted against his will, he is herded into work camps, and subjected to conditions which result in a death rate sometimes as high as 4 ~ percent annually...
...FOUNDATION DOCTRINE HAT sturdy and salty champion of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the English Dominican friar, Vincent McNabb, has been directing attention, in articles in Blackfriars, to an event which at the time of its occurrence passed without attention or comment, but which in his view was one of the most important social happenings of this century...
...the impresario's was M. Briand's...
...But what will be most to Briand's advantage is that from first to last he identified himself as the champion of the Young plan...
...The World's article is ludicrous...
...Sanger could be named to be entrusted with information so revolutionary (if true) as that the Vatican would disavow Cardinal Hayes and approve of birth control, The Commonweal would offer a special prize of its own for the name of that individual...
...On a smaller scale, the Knights of Columbus have been undertaking the same work in this country, and therein lies their most conspicuous value...
...The formal declaration of principles or teachings by the hierarchy of a country is always a momentous thing...
...that the worker receive a wage sufficient to assure his subsistence and that of his family, and that his wage be paid him periodically under conditions favorable to the practice of economy and saving...
...THE abuses of the forced labor system in Africa, about which The Commonweal had occasion to comment some time ago in connection with White the work of P&e Aupiais, are the basis of a memorandum which the Catholic Justice Union for International Study presented to the International Labor Conference held recently at Geneva...
...They follow a sadly familiar course...
...upon the measurable results of scientific investigation...
...During ten years of adversity it has demonstrated an astonishing buoyancy...
...Carmody stressed the importance which the organization places upon its official organ, Columbia, and he said: "While we may well enjoy a proper sense of pride in this contribution to Catholic literature, we should not be unmindful of our duty to support loyally other Catholic publications...
...In other words, these fundamental privileges and compensations have been denied the native...
...Some sort of confirmation is given this view by the willingness with which Mr...
...He was the conciliator...
...We have in mind when we say this the pastoral letter sent forth by the American hierarchy after the close of the world war...
...When one subjects this statement to the analysis of a little common sense, the wonder grows ever more keen that any newspaper could publish it...
...O'Brien's speech should encourage the Knights to continue these activities, and to expand them as rapidly as possible, especially since Mr...
...Safed, ancient seat of Jewish learning, has been fired to the accompaniment of butchery like that of the attack on Hebron, and an epidemic threatens those huddled within its ruined walls...
...According to Mr...
...IT WAS a memorable meeting which the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus recently concluded at Milwaukee...
...Strangely enough one of the fundamental faults of the system has been given little attention...
...Quin O'Brien's remarks on the present status of the Church Universal...
...Both champions recognize the strategy of beclouding the issue--a trick which is practised wherever government by the people is established...
...but it must prevail for ends which that will thoroughly comprehends and desires...
...for nobody wants war...
...This may lead to the formation of more clubs, or the division of existent clubs, so that members can subscribe for only one specific type of reading...
...Macrae lication of a letter retracting several of his gravest charges...
...Eventually it must be recognized that he was the dominating figure at the Hague...
...British official communiqu6s continue to be optimistic, but the list of outrages which we described last week has steadily lengthened...
...When it won, he went to victory with it...
...The rapport between him and Stresemann, established some years ago at Geneva, was never more apparent, but here it was Stresemann who was the follower and not, as it has elsewhere appeared, Briand...
...Ramsay MacDonald (classified no doubt as a "modified Socialist") will be able to get any legislation through without the people's knowing what is happening...
...And if anyone less likely than Mrs...
...The preponderant will of the people must prevail...
...WEEK BY WEEK T WAS Mr...
...3) The state ought, therefore, to encourage every form of sound educational endeavor, and may take means to safeguard the efficiency of education...
...In them is, finally and definitively, the power of government...
...Our hope is in the Catholic leagues of France which have so consistently declared for the suppression of this slavery, and our faith in those stout-hearted missionairies who will never be silent or inactive...
...We know that other Catholic journals have done the same thing and that a very considerable number of our most influential clergymen and teachers have made the bishops' joint pastoral the principal text-book of many sermons and writings and much school work...
...As to his being the image, no matter if faint or distorted, of God, his Creator--well, the writer thinks that, as it cannot be love, in spite of what Dante said, that governs the heavens and controls the motions of the earth, man can only be a creature of the ultimate material force moving and shaping everything, which, he says, should be called the Drift...
...But in so doing the state must not interfere with parental responsibility, nor hamper the reasonable liberty of parents...
...In the article under examination for instance, no fair-minded reader can help but be deeply impressed not merely by the marvelous facts recorded about the depths of space in which our little world goes on its course amid millions of other stars, but by the vision which we are afforded of the patient, dedicated astronomer in his observatory, set apart amid the multitudes of men concerned only with the meaner affairs of life, to study the heavens, and chart the mysteries of the universe...
...LEGALpeace between the Book-of-the-Month-Club and Mr...
...Thus, because the Harvard astronomer, like many other astronomers, finds that what used to be considered as mere star-dust is really a mass of unnumbered stars and planets, millions and millions of miles away and millions and millions of times larger than the earth, therefore mankind, "a lucky accident" brought into being by some sort of chemical change in the all-pervading "star-stuff" out of which everything comes into being (though how the star-stuff came into being remains a mystery) is and can only be one of the briefest and most evanescent forms of matter...
...The one creature which really seems to be the favored child of the Star-Dust-Drift is the cockroach...
...It was the issuance by the bishops of England and Wales of a proclamation of the principles underlying the Catholic attitude on education...
...Don Marquis should call Archie's attention to the fact...
...They will proportionately resent the High Commissioner's current reiteration of that guarantee...
...or again it may lead to the failure of the clubs altogether...
...These remarks, both in general and in particular, have application to the deep interest which the proclamation of the English bishops should have for Catholics here in America...
...464 THE COMMONWEAL September II, 1929 The diocesan organ, as a medium for conveying the general news of the diocese, and the activities in which the ordinary wishes to interest the faithful should be supported...
...Carmody's summary of the year, and the report of Supreme Secretary William S. McGintey, indicate such substantial results...
...And man, of course, according to the Times writer, after "his short and brilliant career on the face of the earth," a mere matter of a few millions of years, is a late comer to the scene of the Star-Dust-Drift...
...When the kings of finance . . . happen to want peace they can put the question, 'Do we want war?' to which there is only one answer...
...So important indeed is the statement that The Commonweal believes it in order to reproduce it in full...
...As Father McNabb points out, in addition to the significance which any utterance of the episcopate of any country should possess for the citizens of that country, in this particular instance the fact that they issued their statement on the eve of the last general election in England, the result of which was to bring the Labor party--which others prefer to term the Socialist party--into power, gives the whole matter the most sensational interest...
...THIS asking of the wrong question is, of course, but a phase of Mr...
...As the chief merit of a good news article undoubtedly must be its truthfulness, it follows, naturally, that the distinguishing mark of a bad news article must lie in its falsity...
...Snowden's stand, outside of its effect on domestic politics, was meant as a reassertion of English influence in European affairs...
...This is exactly where Mr...
...It was an interview with Mrs...
...The president of the Moslem Supreme Council has even warned the government that the whole Mohammedan population of Syria, Arabia, north Africa and Egypt may revolt ; and while this is discounted, the Syrian situation is admitted to be alarming...
...Other characteristics--the merit or the faultiness of its literary style, and so forth--are very minor considerations...
...There is grateful Tragedy reading, too, in the report of the emergency fund which, in compliance with the Jewish tradition of prompt and lavish charity, has been raised in America almost over night, and will be dispatched to the area of disaster in weekly allotments until the need for special bounty has passed...
...He has only to call his measures by some September II, I929 THE COMMONWEAL 463 other name than that which people associate with them and there is no limit to the things he may do...
...Snowden who injected the dramatics into the Hague conference and who gave it a spectacular ending by surrendering some part of the concessions he had won to gratify the hopes Winners at of the smaller nations...
...Macrae was overhasty and unwise in some of his accusations he is to be commended for saying so...
...Of course France will evacuate the Rhineland, but that is something which Briand has desired almost as eagerly as Stresemann himself...
...These failings are to be capitalized...
...In fact, there are many things he does not explain...
...With this statement no one can disagree...
...Socialism, on the other hand, asks the question, "Should the people rule...
...We feel this particularly in view of the fact that the general press apparently ignored the whole matter, though the statement is one which should be known to that general public as well as to Catholics...
...There is no need to go into them in any detail...
...And we honor the man we read about, and are grateful to the man who writes about him, and the great newspaper which brings to its million readers such a fascinating and essentially valuable contribution to human knowledge...
...McDonald "the bitterness of the I928 campaign is already being exploited for advantage in I93o...
...His objections are supported by many others among publishers and public...
...The people are not to have their "ignorance and political imbecility" eliminated...
...For ourselves, we feel that we have done enough for the worthy cause by suggesting it, and by nominating our own choice for the year's worst news article, which was published in the New York World on August 3 ~ . IT CONTAINED only a few words--less than two hundred but it was a masterpiece of mendacity...
...We leave it to others to invent and apply the appropriate form of booby prize...
...Therefore, as man is not so well adapted --his worst enemy being himself--some day, the writer tells us, some "conservative cockroach" crawling over the skull of the last man, and he a dead one, may be able to observe: "A relic here of another highly specialized organism which failed to recognize the laws of the universe, which preferred the minor whims to the search for survival, and which missed its great opportunity to inherit the planet, perishing an early victim of the world's subtle chemistries...
...Germany will pay half the costs of occupation after September I, and all the cost of evacuation...
Vol. 10 • September 1929 • No. 19
