Week by Week
572 THE COMMONWEAL October 9, I929 their closets are trembling with fear. And when it seemed as if the United States and Great Britain might reach an agreement tending to alter the character...
...It would be most illogical to perin Colombia mit this event to sink into oblivion merely because Colombia's geographical identity is so vague, and the way to Bogota must be as darkly mysterious to us as the customs of Kamchatka or the precise location of Nishni-Novgorod...
...It is as improper as it is typical of metropolitan elections that campaigns should pivot around so irrelevant an issue as the murder of a gambler...
...Meanwhile, waiting for the dawn to illumine (as it may eventually) the dark alleys which appear to make the nation's capital the most gigantic and fancy-full speakeasy on record, one may be grateful for the airing which the Shearer matter is receiving...
...It was a very dull sort of writing, guaranteed to exhaust any reader who had to follow zts tortuous course through two fat volumes...
...THE lectures will be given in the Pius X Hall at i3oth Street and Convent Avenue...
...Then the world war began, achieving for French Catholics something like a restoration of their civic position but bringing with it untold misery, the loss of churches and priests, and the moral disaffection of many...
...Facts dissolve in the presence of ridiculous spectres...
...Washington's attitude toward the financial problems accru...
...If such things were true they ought not to be aired in public...
...From the horns of this dilemma there is no escape for either the district attorney or Mr...
...Not only will they be open to the general public, but a special effort is, in fact, being made to bring them to the attention of the general public...
...Blackshear's stand, or if he did duplicate it, we cannot imagine his superiors finding it a question "for himself alone...
...And when it seemed as if the United States and Great Britain might reach an agreement tending to alter the character of ships to be built in local navy yards, the ineffably mysterious program of Mr...
...That they are implicitly quite in harmony was made dear by Miss Becket's fine definition of the Girl Scouts' play program: the teaching of "fun that is not subject to the possession of material things and is, to a certain extent, dependent upon the individual's own approach and spirit...
...in scientific study but not in sophistic emancipation...
...Willebrandt, we do honor to her disinterested ideal, but if she will consult Mr...
...We recognize the fact that within the rank and file of the Church there is perhaps as large a percentage of prejudice toward the Negro as anywhere else, and this we deplore...
...Indeed it would now seem that more properly than any other place, Colombia might claim title as the natural and familiar breeding-ground of poetic justice...
...Obviously here is a realm in which every assertion sounds credible, in which any kind of rumor looks like fact...
...it is whether he was within his faith as a Christian...
...But without it there is no value in the new biography...
...Shearer...
...But mud-slinging still persists as the American politician's favorite electioneering sport...
...He sincerely believed that spiritual influence is first of all the result of a "loving will," which has confidence in the recipe of charity rather than in the rule of force or feverishness...
...You discover an obsession, because that is the easiest way to give his life a pattern...
...He gives reality to whatever he may touch...
...In April Mrs...
...There is no reason why the number of Catholic women in positions of leadership and influence should not be proportionately high...
...As to Mrs...
...But we do know that, if they do not, it is not at all because they are unfitted for the high uses of industrial life...
...It is an answer which proves nothing except that the Brooklyn rector has "in no manner violated the canons of conduct governing his official action...
...We regard him, generally speaking, as an arid and, in the moral sense, an inhuman philosopher...
...The lecture hall, while admirably adapted to such a purpose, is not large, and it is very probable that only those who at once make application for season tickets will secure accommodations...
...It is likely enough that, sniffing a patriotic danger in the talk-laden air, he merely set out to provide himself with ways and means calculated to dissuade humanity from walking over the edge of (to his mind) a diff...
...For the question is not whether Mr...
...Underneath the pacifism which this attitude sometimes implies, one discerns a popular struggle Over the shaping of a definitive national policy...
...Russell really has got hold of one of them...
...To his business you pay as little attention as possible...
...But hard though it be to accept such a declaration, the fact remains that the prevalent image of our government has very much in common with an old and horror-laden romance...
...This is what the new biography has come to, and it is manifestly unfair to make Mr...
...This threat to a basic American industry-not to mention this deplorable adventure in muckraking--has only one possible justification...
...IN COLOMBIA a poet has been nominated for the Presidency, according to the Associated Press, and where others may be hesitant we hurry Who's Who to attach a conspicuous value to the news...
...Finally, Mr...
...That is why, in our view, women belong there...
...The American Federation of Labor, at least that part of it influenced by Mr...
...First came the conflict with the Third Republic, which ended in the dissolution of the concordat, the secularization of ecclesiastical property, the disbanding of religious communities and other important losses to the Church...
...WE HAVE been reading much about the difficulty of the small-town libraries in keeping up with the current output of fiction, and when we once Advice to ventured to wonder why they try to keep up with it, we were promptly reLibrarians minded that a library exists to serve its community, and that what American communities want in the way of literature is fresh fiction...
...Making his appeal as a proponent of reform that is to be wider than the "mere political," this doughty individualist has succeeded in getting his speeches printed and widely distributed...
...In a measure, none of us finds the narrative quite credible...
...In his work as an apologist, the Cardinal was likewise guided by the conviction that nothing could be gained by emptying vials of wrath upon the outside world...
...One feels that Mr...
...Henry Ford says that the female mind Mr...
...There can be no surprises in its history...
...The general extension of the work depends upon the availability of the right kind of leaders, as Miss Conway pointed out...
...A course of public lectures in the history of sacred art has now been announced, to begin on October 25, and to continue thereafter with two lectures monthly until April 25...
...Finally the open conflict between the Papacy and FAction Fran~aise precluded any immediate hope of unification among the faithful and, indeed, brought new disarray which only time can master...
...The importance of Mr...
...Ford after he has made the intensive investigations we recommend above, she will know why we are sure that that ideal will never assume any considerable actuality...
...And thus it avoids the whole point at issue...
...The recent celebration of Mexico's century of freedom from Spanish rule, enthusiastic though it seems to have been, is not the only evidence substantiating the point...
...The coming of the Prime Minister should symbolize this opinion and convey its will effectively to others...
...For advertising purposes, it insists upon a relationship with him, but it must irk the great man no end to have this bastard call him father...
...His purpose in coming here was certainly legitimate: to arrange for the production of his books and plays, to establish a literary following on this side of the water...
...Indeed, they could do nothing else...
...and if they once get wind of the fact that General Butler is in line for a new job~ ticket sales on the Baltimore and Ohio are sure to decrease...
...Ramsay MacDonald will squeeze out of his visit to America every drop of stimulant calculated to MacDonald revive good feeling between England and the United States...
...It is with some satisfaction, therefore, that we have read in a recent issue of the New York Times an essay in which the late John Cotton Dana made the point that many libraries are performing an unnecessary service with their enlarged fiction departments...
...And it is with genuine dismay that one beholds sober gentlemen, accustomed to business enterprise on a grand scale, placing their interests ahead of the destinies of the nation and their minds in the thrall of tomfoolery...
...That is because the Church realizes as one of its duties the dispersal of such nonsense, and will not ignore it...
...There is nothing to indicate that the Mexican is conscious of a "new era of co6peration" between his government and that of the United States...
...but we also know that no Catholic priest would dream of duplicating Mr...
...On the other hand, it is obviously desirable that the real strength of American and British public opinion should be revealed in advance...
...Not every fighter goes to battle so handsomely attired, so eager-and so unperturbed...
...Thousands of men can write a good phrase, and thousands can transmute a dull record into a lively story...
...Thus, "liberty" for the Church might not mean everything which the old concordat had implied...
...But it had its virtues: of solidity, of unpretence...
...We have excellent authority for the statement that pressmen in the national capital have been riding to the neighboring metropolis regularly in quest of inspiration...
...Ford must have got his generalizations on this subject at the same booth and counter where he found his famous obiter dicta on the reading of history...
...and (2) purchase and develop interest in books of science, philosophy, politics, morality and religion...
...Really, one cannot greatly blame the very imaginative Mr...
...The accusation has Dilemma been made by certain political candidates, on the basis, apparently, of more than suspicion, that criminals have been officially protected...
...SEVERAL lurid phenomena to the contrary notwithstanding, campaigning in Mexico has proceeded with unusual calm...
...AFTER some hesitation, the immigration authorities have decided that Ernst Toller, the German poet and dramatist, may enter this country A German and look about for three months...
...Their fitness for the mechanical field is admittedly more debatable...
...True, Poet Arrives Herr Toller has spent five years in prison, but his offense was political, and moral turpitude could not be charged against him...
...If George McManu~, the accused, is guilty and can be judged guilty, why was he not tried before ? And if further time was needed to secure evidence of his guilt, why has the district attorney been moved by political considerations to act prematurely...
...On April t, I9oo , he first saw the light of day, and on April 8 he was baptized, being given the name of Leonard (William) in honor of his father, an ironmonger, who had it in turn from his grandfather, also an ironmonger, who had first brought the name, and the craft, from Pennsylvania, whither he had arrived as a boy from Glasgow, Scotland, in I8ao, to Detroit, in Michigan Territory in I832...
...Major 576 THE COMMONWEAL October 9, I929 La Guardia, the Republican candidate and the one chiefly responsible for the dilemma's posing, can add heavily to his score...
...Russell...
...We hope that, following the example of Mrs...
...In noting the circumstance that no fewer than three of the distinguished speakers are not members of the Catholic Church, no further proof need be adduced in support of the statement that the sacred arts, even when brought as these lectures will bring them, within the limits of Catholic Christianity, are the precise reverse of sectarian in their subject-matter and in their appeal to the interest of the cultured public...
...We cannot recall any other course of lectures which more happily combines fundamental importance and a high degree of popular interest...
...It is true that pistols Eccentric have cracked briskly in the state of Mexican Vera Cruz and that several minor inciVoters dents have added sensational color to the presidential campaign itself...
...In view of the circumstance that anticipatory commitments might well prove embarrassing at a conference bound to weigh the pleas and demands of other worId powers, "safety first" is indispensable in diplomatic correspondence...
...Mysterious agents whisper to each other in the dark, "super-salesmen" loom majestic with power over the representatives of the people, and (for all we know) the least of our senators has bartered his soul to Satan at a handsome figure...
...Rightly or wrongly, we feel that we know his eminent Victorians about as well as their intimates did, and much better than if he had not written about them...
...Willebrandt, operates to give artificial prominence alike to her successes and to her failures...
...it is not enterprising or precise enough, and not fond enough of Women of responsibility...
...And so it is eminently necessary to reckon with future relations between Connecticut and California, as symbols for all the sovereign states...
...That is what makes the whole modern feminist situation so anomalousmand so fascinating...
...This question needs to be weighed in conformity with facts...
...The subject of liturgical drama will be dealt with by another eminent authority, Professor Karl Young, of Yale University...
...HAVING received the Eucharist for the last time on a day which marked the fiftieth year of his llfe as a priest, Cardinal Dubois, archbishop of The Paris, died leaving several important Cardinal of goals for which he had struggled manNotre Dame fully nearer but still unreached...
...Lytton Strachey responsible for so unlike an offspring...
...Mabel Walker WiUebrandt, on the other hand, feels that there is at least a potential parity between the sexes in all fields of competition, and that it is imperfectly realized because of the mistaken emphasis, even today, upon the woman worker's mere womanhood...
...A home is a place where children are born and brought up...
...Though this is not at all original, when judged by the tradition of the 574 THE COMMONWEAL October 9, 1929 Church, it does possess a promising freshness in so far as the great prelate's own time and his own people are concerned...
...After all, he is a radical socialist, and has the courage of his convictions...
...As a matter of fact, the yearning for independence from the "colossus of the North" seems to be stronger than ever...
...has no real place in the world of indusSpeaking try or mechanics...
...The question rises as to whether the state should not be empowered to exclude a tourist who is unlikely to prove a comfortable visitor equaUy with the man whose past is discovered not to be free of moral turpitude...
...In March there will be two lectures on sacred literature by the Reverend Cornelius Clifford, whose competence to deal with this subject is thoroughly established...
...Ford as to woman's absolute place...
...In place of the telltale Life and Letters, most of them have extra fancy titles, meant to give them the display appeal of novels, and it is only by reading the descriptive note that one discovers their secret...
...Their authors are not usually men of standing in scholarship or criticism, but bright enough fellows, nevertheless, who write uniformly well, have a knack for telling a story, and who have picked this avenue to a literary career as quicker, more profitable and on the whole pleasanter than the job on a newspaper which their parents and teachers advised them to secure...
...Bancel La Farge in February on sacred paintings...
...But we expect that he will soon be heard from in connection with other than literary affairs...
...while a day of keeping his eyes and ears October 9, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 575 open in any typical home would cure him completely of the notion that decisions do not often have to be made there...
...and yet, if it were granted through the sincere desire of the nation, it would be a vast improvement over the old status of continued hostility which had gained nothing for anybody...
...The introductory lecture will be by Professor Edward Kennard Rand, of Harvard University, one of the guiding lights of the Mediaeval Academy of America...
...But a few facts do emerge as a constant in this situation, and Mr...
...Women will never cease to be thought of as women...
...Bertrand Russell bounds into our midst with the information that American civilization is over-feminized, that American women are over-romantic, and that the American family is disintegrating in consequence, since it is regarded primarily as the vehicle of sentimental compatibility and not as a child-rearlng unit...
...Nicholas Brady, chairman of the Board of Directors, our Catholic women leaders will give their influence and their suggestions for development and direction where these are thus eagerly sought...
...The Commonweal will deal with this important matter in more detail in a subsequent issue...
...It is conceivable that Connecticut might rival Belgium in activity and resources...
...Justine B. Ward, to whose initiative the Plus X School of Liturgical Music owes its origin and much of its high success, will bring the course to its conclusion with two lectures on liturgical music...
...IT Is with some surprise that we find ourselves declaring for Mr...
...In theory the en Route difficulties to be surmounted are acute but not of primary importance...
...and the Catholic membership cannot but benefit by the explicit inclusion of the Catholic social outlook in its directing counsels...
...New York City is about to see in the Rothstein murder trial an example of how the two Political will work together...
...The list of speakers is in itself the best guarantee of this...
...BRIEFLY speaking, one may say that this formula has three significant applications...
...572 THE COMMONWEAL October 9, I929 their closets are trembling with fear...
...In this particular instance, the Walker administration, which is on the defensive, is in no happy position...
...The figure for national membership quoted by Miss Conway was 2oo,oooAthe same estimate as was made in our pages a few months ago by Miss Elsa Becker, in her article on Scouting...
...Finally, he applied this formula--which is really a Christian version of the golden mean--to all the intellectual and social problems of the time...
...One believes, however, that the country is anxious to surmount these outbursts of passion and to face the business of elections seriously...
...Strachey's work is beyond question...
...It is, however, imperative that negotiations entered upon for a reduction of naval armaments should not arrive at a futile impasse this time...
...Of this number, about onetenth are Catholic girls...
...To them "patriotism" meant not co6peration with the authorities charged with government of the country and improvement of its international position, but uncompromising hostility to the republic and unquestioning loyalty to an "ideal France" identified with a specific culture, form of government and social tradition...
...It is interesting to note (of course on the basis of what information one can get) that "patriotism" is markedly a theme which both candidates stress vigorously...
...The formula is rather simple...
...MacDonald's government and our own has been uniformly pleasant in tenor, though caution has become steadily more marked as time proceeds...
...Miss Alice Conway, Girl Scout regional director of the movement, Leaders asked that Catholic women turn their attention to its purposes and its needs, and associate themselves in larger numbers with its operating committees and its various local councils...
...and, on the other hand, we would never undertake to match certitudes with Mr...
...Blackshear was within his rights as a rector of the Protestant Episcopal Church...
...It is well for citizens to realize that Washington is not an exotic town, aloof from all that characterizes the nation's life, but a fair sample of the country as a whole...
...Woll, will not like it, and the poet will not like that section of the American Federation of Labor...
...Without it, we should much prefer that an author write his life of that incorrigible poet, Leonard MacTavish, or that benevolent bandit, Bloody Bill Barnes, in the old honest fashion...
...We have looked into some of these and found them counterfeit in the sense that they are blithely sure in their estimates and judgments without managing to impart anything like the same certainty to the reader...
...it belongs in the home, where inventiveness and accuracy are not called for, and where the making of decisions is not often necessary...
...And because he interpreted so well the experience and spirit of the Church, it is difficult to believe that his memory will not prevail even as his living presence did...
...ing from the war has, no doubt, been accepted as tentatively final, so that little actual discussion of it can be expected...
...His success was flattering enough to encourage a whole multitude to emulate him...
...There an order of things for which men have always feared to hope comes into existence and has its full day...
...We do not say that they belong nowhere else...
...He will be deeply interested in the special character of labor in this country, and may not be able to refrain from making a few disparaging remarks...
...Out of his experience in all these periods of turmoil, Cardinal Dubois evolved a formula of action which is likely to survive him as a guide to a new ecclesiastical order in France...
...in firmness of attitude but not in fanatical rigorism...
...WE SECOND warmly the appeal made recently by the American Girl Scouts at the October meeting of the National Catholic Women's Council Catholic in Washington...
...What Mr...
...The Cardinal, while agreeing that much room for improvement exists, particularly when the Catholic social ideal is reckoned with, felt that advancement could be hoped for only if as much as possible was attained through concerted action...
...this, says Mrs...
...Centralized as our governmental and financial agencies have become, the citizen too frequently identifies them with the whole country, forgetting that the mere geographic outlines of America point the way to a totally different future...
...We do not know whether they do or not...
...Then you let him go to make a really magnificent fool of himself to the extent of some 3oo pages...
...There remains a number of more specifically diplomatic concerns, some of them thorny enough...
...We are afraid to indicate what the immediate response to his program would be, but we cannot see how a library which perseveres in it can fail to increase its ultimate effectiveness in the community it is meant to serve...
...It is a gift not so easy to imitate...
...California may house a people more numerous than the population of Germany...
...Of course we are all expected to know that Colombia has had a rather unusual history in modern times, that on one occasion it forced the United States to pay $25,ooo,ooo through the nose...
...It becomes very really a question concerning, not the Reverend William Blackshear alone, nor the bishops alone, but everyone who is interested in seeing men live together in tolerance and mutual good-will...
...What if the rest of Washington has been indulging in something else ? In the interests of amity the matter should be ignored, because the information about alcohol which Senator Howell is publishing sounds perilously like an endeavor to steal some of the credit from Baltimore...
...BLOODY BILL BARNES HIS autumn the publishers are again offering us many biographies in the "new" fashion, "written with all the grace of fiction"--lives of great and near great men of letters, politicians, actresses and villains retake your choice...
...It looked easy enough...
...Great and noble deeds are to be expected in a nation capable of that...
...Importance Nevertheless, such a happy combination is precisely what has been effected by the Plus X School of Liturgical Music, of the College of the Sacred Heart...
...For a It is hard to understand how a man who Nobler senses the responsibilities of public office Washington as keenly as Senator Brookhart usually does could so forget himself as to allege that liquor had been consumed at the New Willard Hotel, in the very presence of the chairman of the Finance Committee...
...You find a subject, preferably a man who was very fond of eating and drinking...
...People happen to be vitally interested in a program which will curtail the chances of a new war on a gigantic scale, They have been convinced that competitive ship-building, like competitive armament of any kind, would tend to make the United States a party to aggression in world affairs...
...But there will be those who feel that even such service to truth is no adequate compensation for a gross lapse in good taste...
...It is an overlapping service, for the typical American home prefers, and gets, its fiction in magazine form...
...You describe at length those evenings on which his appetite for ripe goose resulted in acute indigestion, and you tell what came of his stomach troubles...
...Unless his favorite authors are Petronius and Boccaccio you say nothing of his reading...
...You devote a chapter to each of the several occasions on which his six stout serving men carried him to bed...
...Walker, who is responsible for his official...
...From it we fled at the first opportunity, but the time comes now when we must return to it, all prodigally penitent...
...The Reverend T. Lawrason Riggs, chaplain of the Catholic Club of Yale University, will give the December lectures on rubrics, Mr...
...On his return to Germany, we may expect an ill-natured play about Gastonia, or something equally reprehensible...
...THE first annual meeting of the Protestant Episcopal bishops of the United States was presented with the delicate problem of making some Jim Crow answer to the many protests against the Religions Jim Crow rectorate of the Reverend William Blackshear of Brooklyn, and met it by stating that "the question of expelling Negro members from his congregation is one concerning himself alone...
...The correspondence exchanged between Mr...
...But no one in our time has equally with him the gift of divining a state of mind in a word, a gesture, not by comparing and reflecting upon similar words and gestures in the life of his subject, but by recreating the very moment in which the word was written, the gesture made, thereby permitting us to substitute ourselves for the subject, and to feel that what is being said about him is truly said...
...And the other mayoralty candidates can also be expected to make the utmost out of the material which has been so providentially offered them by this legal opportunity...
...Meanwhile, we have no hesitancy in requesting all our readers who are in or near New York to communicate with the Director of the Pius X School of Liturgical Music, Convent Avenue and West I33 d Street, New York, N.Y...
...Shearer appealed to interested parties as just the right thing...
...We are convinced that he has made known to us the real Queen Victoria...
...In consequence, the district attorney, despite his belief that he has not sufficient evidence to convict, has decided to try for murder a man who the police themselves do not think is the actual killer...
...Shall it be conceded that the day of progressive inner development is over, and that the future lies in the conquest of imperial dominion...
...October 9, x9z9 TH E C O M | i UNLESS carefully laid plans go awry, Mr...
...And so he suggested that librarians reduce their purchases of popular current fiction and divert the extra funds to (I) secure and promote circulation of "those few hundred novels which are generally accepted as the best...
...The many years of his episcopacy, associated with sees as different actually and historically as Verdun, Rouen and Paris, were marked by several important crises...
...MONWEAL 573 WE AGREE that the movement to dry up Washington is probably very necessary, but regret that it is not at all in keeping with the city's tone...
...POLITICS and justice rarely make a successful team...
...Indeed, one feels that the Senator from Iowa has been indulging in new biography...
...The campaign oratory, especially that of Sefior Vasconcelos, is of an unusually high order...
...What there is to recommend them we know not, unless it is an abundance of what the reviewers have been calling "gusto...
...WEEK BY WEEK I NTRINSIC importance and a high degree of popular interest do not always combine harmoniously in the treatment of art and letters by writers and teachers and when religion also enters into the Of the combination, the general public is apt to Highest pass by on the other sid~ of the way...
...He believed in a religious-minded syndicalism but not in communistic revolt...
...The first has to do with nationalism, as that was conceived of by reactionary French Catholics during the war period...
...A little first-hand observation of typical men and women workers in industrial occupations would teach him which sex is generally more precise and more responsible, and would acquaint him with the fact that he encounters feminine initiative there so seldom, for one thing, because women are penalized, as women, for displaying it...
...Under conditions such as have been revealed through the Shearer inquiry, all careful concern with such plain truths is impossible...
...Ralph Adams Cram will speak in January on architecture and Mr...
...WOMEN have been getting a good deal of advice lately...
...Some of his gifts are widely distributed...
...Washington has still a very long way to go before it can hope to regain the confidence of this mysterious but fascinating southern land which conditions so large a part of its Central American policy...
...Dana thus properly desired was that the public library should exploit fully its possibilities as an educational agent...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 23
