London and Rapidan
548 THE COM | ball full advantage means running for a touchdown. With the attitude behind it we are equally out of sympathy, for it assumes that the world at large shares with those...
...Much has already been accomplished: England plans on fifty instead of seventy cruisers...
...France has just launched the fastest IO,OOO-tonners in the world, and Italy plans to better them...
...But the modernization proposition is so colossally expensive that the construction of a new canal would involve a smaller outlay...
...We were moved to speak hard words, some time back, of the May that was allotted to us this year...
...It invades the city in a tide of mild light and divine crystal air...
...OURSELVES AND OTHERS URING several years phenomena of intolerance and efforts to achieve spiritual generosity have alternated quickly, like traffic lights...
...Both France and Italy insist upon regarding the Anglo-American accord with suspicion...
...There is, of course, another and a most important reason...
...even in conservative newspapers it has been interpreted not as a pacific move, but as a hostile one, not as the end of arms for aggression, but as the beginning of a military alliance which would combine the greatest fleets in the world...
...Nobody expected that these activities would result in a wholesale suppression of what is termed "bigotry," but is nearly always a logical reaction to impressions superficial in character and crude of outline...
...548 THE COM | ball full advantage means running for a touchdown...
...When spring troubles the world, he thinks of Pinehurst and Bermuda, and frequently goes there...
...more than facts could stand for...
...and though the leaves in the park shrivel unregarded and the autumn moon above us shines unseen, the city is paradise enow...
...It is weather in itself, Platonic weather, practically, unaided by any of the props which make the rural pageant so triumphant: as, carpets of leaves, fields of goldenrod, bonfires, vistas of russet and gold...
...Not unamusing would be a record of the various moods in which the British Prime Minister has delivered himself on the subject of a naval agreement with the United States...
...The only difficulty is this: to be socially effective, the conference method must be employed almost constantly...
...Snowden's stand for the rights of dear old Britain had its influence, too...
...The desecration of Catholic graves in Salem reported on the very day that the Massachusetts May Tercentenary began, is a significant omen...
...Possibly Salem and neighboring towns have been harboring a real grudge, not so much against Catholics as against newly arrived racial groups as yet incapable of adjustment to conditions...
...The conception that our people should be formed in one democratic mold by the same set of "nationalizing influences" was MONWEAL 549 i i 9 and misapprehensions for debate ought to prove valuable...
...Ex-Governor Smith, when he soft-pedaled the issue between an all-American waterway and a Canadian one, must have realized the situation...
...Secretly or otherwise, the American is always ashamed of injustice...
...We believe, however, that true significance of the coming meeting lies in the workaday hope that it may prove simply another one in a long series of such conferences held throughout the country...
...But no abiding agreement can be reached unless there is some assurance that the rest of the world will conform to it...
...Stimson...
...With tonnage and gun calibre restricted, they are concentrating on speed...
...Not a statement of his was allowed to pass without a word from Washington to show that the United States was not officially so ready as he to regard the negotiations as successful...
...Come, long sought l GOVERNORRoosevelt of New York, after a trip of inspection, recently issued a half-hearted endorsement of that dream of New Yorkers, the modernization of the Erie Canal...
...And these tactics gradually had their effect on him...
...Nothing is better calculated than such an experience to rivet attention upon what is certainly the most serious and baffling of our cultural problems...
...With the attitude behind it we are equally out of sympathy, for it assumes that the world at large shares with those who take football critically and professionally a deep interest in seeing the stronger team win...
...but, unhappily for those jealous of the prerogatives of New York City, the grain shippers consider finance first and metropolitan prestige second...
...The place of meeting is Harvard University, the dates are November tz and 13, and the discussion outline is virtually the same as that followed at a conference held at Columbia University last year...
...One of the things which makes heaven so desirable a place is that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, while a glimpse of that divine ordering is given to men on earth whenever the weak rise up to slay the mighty, and the humble layeth low the proud...
...More important still is acknowledgment of the principle of parity, which means the end of competition, and the elimination, thereby, of one source of friction...
...The sponsors of the idea were merely working in what seems the only practical fashion to spread the habit of sizing up other people fairly...
...Mr...
...It should have been understood from the beginning that human beings will insist upon being groups and that the real distinction of democracy lies in its wish that no group be comprised of slaves...
...At least this is what the proponents of the plan believe...
...MANHATTAN'S choicest month is upon her--the one brief season which quiets the heart of the city dweller and makes him glad to stay New York where he is...
...No doubt one cause of recent forms of clannishness was the bad "tolerance formula" of a generation ago...
...And when the matter is referred to the taxpayer, he may cast his vote with an eye to his purse...
...Accordingly, there is a demand for the right locale, for adequately trained discussion leaders, and for truly representative audiences...
...Almost immediately everybody who had a reason for being different hastened to erect barriers of defense...
...Again, the more ambitious National Conference of Jews and Christians has invited men to consider together some of the more baffling problems of tolerance...
...But October brings him home without repining...
...It is only too probable that the names and motives of the perpetrators will never be known...
...Summer takes him to Maine or Canada...
...Where is the expectancy of peace ? It is only too apparent that, for the present, fidelity to the pact is obscured by the most violent of suspicions...
...Should it ever become possible to enlist ~oo,ooo people in this discussion, the movement for true tolerance in our country will be supported by an intelligent group all the more powerful for not having been specifically organized...
...To prove that Boston is eager to bring about an era when such deeds shall be impossible may well be one reason for calling the Calvert conference...
...The obvious question is why this should be, when all nations have so recently affirmed their faith in the Kellogg pact...
...Quite the opposite is true...
...Harvard is a background aga!nst which proponents of charity can speak hopefully, knowing as they do both the authority of the institution and the candor of its mind...
...It is weather that bears the same relation to weathers elsewhere as music does to the coarser arts...
...And unless the auspices are right, the floor will go to a trouble-maker--to a man interested not in seeing whether he has "got the other fellow right" but in proving that he can make the rest of men angry...
...This Canals would provide an all-American waterway between Great Lakes ports and the sea, and assur~ to New York City the grain shipping which has made Montreal such a prosperous export centre...
...Why not admit the rightness of diversity therefore, and stake out the proper boundaries of individuality...
...Hoover and Mr...
...MacDonald may repeat as often as he wishes that his country will not build against the United States, and he will cause no great uneasiness in England by so doing, but he has every Britisher's alertness for signs of hostility on the continent and in the Pacific...
...But the fury which was here loosed upon the final resting places of priests and nuns, which tore down monuments and smashed crosses, is almost more of a blight upon the fine old town than the memory of witchcraft trials...
...This question, or something like it, has governed the discussion of religious differences held under the auspices of a number of groups...
...MONWEAL October 2, 1929 LONDON AND RAPIDAN R. MACDONALD, a very honest man, would make a poor poker player...
...He became cautious, wary...
...It is really tragic for everyone that the MacDonaldDawes-Hoover conferences should not have been received more cordially upon the continent...
...And perhaps the response to Mr...
...and it is still nearly impossible to tell which way the United States is going...
...One need only say that Hawthorne who studied the evil of which his folk are capable would never have imagined such a crime as this...
...We hereby declare that account closed...
...Both are suddenly dissatisfied with their capital ship ratio of 1.75, and both are wrangling over cruisers...
...At any rate, from a white-haired evangel of the peace he has become the watch-dog of British security...
...However unreasonable they are, one thing which will ngt ~luiet them now is an agreement between the United States and Great Britain...
...It has not even been claimed that one could report, after a conference, that so and so many "cases of intolerance" had been cured...
...Some form of adult education is essential, and open discussion is the best method of adult education...
...Japan, too, hints of increasing her capital ship ratio to 3-5...
...Example is the most telling of influences, and so the spectacle of men openly voicing their grievances...
...Or Catholics have met to discern whether their ideas regarding the world outside the Church were based upon the requisite charity and understanding...
...Sometimes, as in the well-known Fairfield experiment, Protestants have met to test their attitude toward Catholics...
...It is therefore a pleasure to notice that the Calverti Round Table, of Boston, will conduct a seminar concerning the relations between Catholics, Jews and Protestants...
...If the questibn were one of national pride then, obviously, the MiddleWest would wish their products to be routed through American ports...
...We know of no other good recipe for spreading that habit...
...We can only wait for the general conference, tentatively scheduled for January, and hope...
...the United States is ready to October 2, x929 THE C O M 9 i i| ii i i reduce her total tonnage from 305,000 to 285,000 tons...
...When the cold really in breaks, he will see Palm Beach or October California, if not in actuality then in ardent fancy...
...Though Massachusetts has been commendably free of major conflicts between the groups, intelligent people realize that the situation may change for the worse almost instantly...
...He has run into continental opposition which was certainly unexpected...
...Australia, in consequence, is alarmed...
...Granted these things, discussion of religious differences generally leaves the participants thoroughly satisfied with their own positions, but quite convinced that these must include fairness and accuracy of judgment...
...Throughout the larger part of the summer he was as enthusiastic as an editor, much too enthusiastic for a statesman, and it was prophetic to observe how his attitude contrasted with that of Mr...
...But that is no excuse for an attack upon the dead...
...There are immediate as well as specific reasons for calling such a meeting...
...Neither will follow the lead of England and America for abolishing the submarine, and in this they are supported by Japan...
...October weather in New York may be called quintessential weather...
...His cultural history is a perpetual emphasis upon magnanimity though it is also a catalogue of varied meannesses...
...Perhaps it was impolitic to have gone into these matters privately instead of in a general conference, thereby arousing suspicions which, however ridiculous, will impair the worth of any lasting work we may hope to accomplish...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 22
