Week by Week
114 THE COMMONWEAL June 5, 1929 WEEK BY WEEK SUNNY skies marked the inauguration of Gerardo Machado y Morales as President of Cuba for an additional term of ten years. The impressive...
...vjURIOUS to learn what publishers might do to please a college-trained audience, the Inland Daily Press Association submitted questionProfessors naires to university professors in eight and the states of the Middle-West...
...And now they are so docile that almost every day offending cigarette signs are being taken down somewhere, and billboard agencies are June 5, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 117 promising never to accept such again...
...If revolution lurks on the horizon, will the State Department continue the HughesRoot interpretation of the Platt Amendment, or will it revert to Knox's interpretation...
...ALTHOUGH the solemn procession in which, it had been reported, Pope Pius was to end officially the period of Vatican imprisonment seems Peter the t0 ^ave ^een postponed, only a few Ado tl weeks remain until that great event will have occurred...
...Poster companies in this country went far before they were tamed by City Beautiful committees, aided by a valiant daily, weekly and monthly press...
...The question arises: what may be expected from the constant throttling of new forces to serve humanity...
...President Hoover and Mr...
...all constitutional liberties have been suppressed . . . countless assassinations have been perpetrated by orders of the government through its agents," must stand the burden of proof...
...The question is of importance precisely because, from time immemorial, one of the tests of a law has been its behavior in practice...
...An attempt was made to scare the farmers into thinking it was an I. W. W. move...
...SELECTING the National Law Enforcement Commission was not a job for a summer afternoon...
...During the past year, a committee of Mexican beet workers organized meetings to enlist support for a petition they hoped to present to their employers...
...Under his supervision, Mr...
...It is as fine an achievement as we have seen in years...
...Indeed, the record has made us feel proud of the order and more grateful than ever for our common faith...
...and antagonism to communistic propaganda...
...It is another thing entirely to find that inert devices— films, compounds, innocuous-looking bottles—can change, instantaneously, into dispensers of death...
...One must sympathize Energy...
...It declares that at first the resentment of the natives held the advertisers in check, at least it kept them from "plastering their slogans on the portals of the sacred places...
...We think that an anthology of similar remarks from the writings of statesmen and political philosophers might well be compiled and lengthened almost indefinitely...
...It is no desire to please a cultivated audience which animates the publishers of nine-tenths of the papers in any association...
...Acting on a wise realization that giving and receiving ought to be combined in the business of education, the sponsors of the program enlisted both the student body and outside authorities...
...It is not likely that Mr...
...The professors would have in their newspapers more accounts of foreign affairs, more emphasis on news of industry, commerce, religion and education, more special correspondents and more courage...
...A dictator perhaps, the Cuban surmises, but a benevolent dictator...
...and that every new invention calls for another expenditure of carefulness and exacting timidity...
...We are inclined to believe that it could hardly avoid doing so...
...One may therefore wish this work of the Knights of Columbus continued and growing success...
...But when these were left unwatched for a moment, they suddenly flung aside the harness into which they had been strapped and appeared as brute forces destructive of everything in their path...
...Indeed, "no section of the city is sacred against the ubiquitous advertising sign," according to the China Weekly Review...
...Professor Bernard Fay, writing in the Yale Review, takes issue with the last half of this neat antithesis, but so pleasantly, and granting us so much by the way, that we feel illuminated rather than corrected as we read...
...efforts to promote social welfare work —guidance, religious instruction, industrial education —among the Mexican people...
...Thus, for the first time in history, crime promised to present a united battle-front to the forces of law and order...
...Less obvious but no less convincing is the tourist habit, which sends through Europe solid wedges of our countrymen who are impervious simply from lack of culture, to irritate and be irritated in turn...
...At any rate, two conclusions force themselves upon the mind: first, that man is not the master of the universe, but only a crude conniver and borrower over whom cosmic control is resolute...
...Right Press forcibly the pedagogues responded, and their comments, as might have been expected, were not flattering...
...IN THIS country the campaign against billboards has recently lost intensity, partly because the campaigners have had success enough to A Little permit themselves a rest, partly because (-,-, ,. the ladies' clubs have been so busy in Gloating ., . . . . .. J & their new war against cigarette propaganda...
...The second part is devoted to religious activities: distribution of literature and objects of devotion, which are supplied free of charge to pastors who ask for this material...
...fully as much with the physicians in charge as with those who suffered the loss of some beloved friend or relative...
...Has humanity, the destroyer and tamer of wild beasts, built a fresh jungle round itself, more fearful than the forest...
...very bad housing conditions, resulting in a scandalously high infant death rate (in one district, fifty-seven out of 104 families lost 152 children) ; layoffs from industrial employment which leave thousands of Mexicans dependent upon charity during the slack season...
...and a misapprehension of the relation between Mexican labor and the white worker...
...This is the old Mexico Communist or Red Socialist group...
...but time after time the tiara was seen beyond the Alps, even as the red robes of a cardinal are seen today...
...Will the Lord grant that some day, in a city appointed for that purpose, a similar meeting shall bring together the apostolic Pope, now free, and the representatives of dissident ecclesiastical groups...
...THE fifth annual report of the Mexican Welfare Committee of the Colorado State Council of the Knights of Columbus does not sound Colorado interesting but it really and truly is...
...A certain kind of film, based upon the use of powerful chemicals, was then invented for the X-ray...
...Compared with the way things are done in Shanghai, our lot is a most felicitous one...
...Stimson, if they do not wish to repeat the June 5, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 115 anomalies of Nicaragua, should be prepared for such an unfortunate eventuality...
...Surely both must know that the answers will have no effect on the constitution of the daily press...
...Talk to him of special correspondents 1...
...Yet with cautious eyes he looks toward Washington...
...Not many school fences, and no abandoned village halls, which should have been kept inviolate as monuments to the olden time, were free of the bright devices of advertisers, but this was as near sacrilege as they approached...
...But we must wonder no less why so many professors (700 out of 1,500) should have answered these questionnaires than why the Press Association should have been interested in academic criticism...
...But so potent has been Machado's curb that, in face of an admitted opposition, all three organized parties supported him in the election of last November and no candidate opposed him at the polls...
...INO DOUBT the explanations offered for the explosion which wrecked Dr...
...Hoover's Commission...
...They dislike the abundance of criminal news, and the romanticizing of morons...
...Nevertheless such a situation is commonly the breeder of armed resistance...
...Aviation has already claimed its thousands of victims, quite independently of the havoc it caused during war time, and as it develops will doubtless reap truly impressive holocausts...
...Into the cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, which stands beneath the hill of Fourviere beside the Saone, thousands were crowding to witness the splendid array of prelates over whom Gregory X sat enthroned...
...In other words, new energies were discovered and combined in order to accomplish a task which had hitherto baffled man...
...Meanwhile the students were giving five-minute talks, staging an open meeting for the exposition of the Leonine Rerum Novarum, and competing with one another in literary and poster rivalries...
...The most naive journalistic error into which any reader can fall is to suppose that the news policy of the paper he reads is controlled by its news editor...
...Efforts were made to "exert a quieting and steadying influence," through personal interviews and other means, with the result that a friendly conference between the two sides was finally held...
...the French are profoundly like us, but the likenesses are masked by a different tongue...
...Crile's Cleveland clinic and transformed an institution for saving How Shall and healing life into a merciless abatWe Control toir are sufficient...
...Capone would imprison himself at a time when he might participate in such a beautiful scheme...
...A GENERALIZATION of our own, which we have privately enjoyed for many years, ran as follows: The English are profoundly unlike us, but Entente t'ie differences are masked by a common P ,. , tongue...
...Certain of these radical groups are under the immediate direction of the Mexican government, or at least are working here with its knowledge, approval and financial support...
...In a miniature fashion, the Cleveland disaster reproduced the chaos which follows a volcanic eruption, wherein energies stored up by nature for cosmic purposes suddenly run riot...
...These made provision for a single term, but they also specifically excepted the President...
...Mariana, the Spanish Jesuit economist of centuries ago, based his attack against the coinage mandates of the crown on the fact that people neither would nor could obey such an edict...
...One cause for discontent there seems to be that the International Settlement has been invaded by the billboards in recent years...
...The toll of lives which the automobile and other transportation machines exact is a really fearful price to pay for comfortable speed...
...It is brimful of both facts and charity...
...It was known that or bcarrace riyal gangsters had decreed his death years ago, and although he had found immunity under the protection of a skilled bodyguard, it was reasonable to suppose that he should weary in time of a routine which demanded such unceasing vigilance...
...The last gave addresses regarding various aspects of the proposed Action—religious, social, cultural—and dignified the occasion with their presences...
...The Crowder resolutions, which were aimed particularly against the possibility of a clique of professional politicians capturing the political machinery of the country, have been supplanted by constitutional amendments...
...Between men who are too busy to serve In Behalf anc* men not competent to serve there , , T is, in this case, no shade of practical or tne i.aw difference> But Mr Hoover emerges with a first-class assemblage of respectable citizens, scarcely none of whom looks like a forbidding reformer or an elaborately embossed figurehead...
...Though it must be conceded that some Mexicans are not very good Catholics, the extent to which they are is rightly viewed as an influence making for the conservation of sanity and industrial peace...
...Repeated yet widely-spaced despatches from the island have indicated that political disturbances have been met by effective, if not summary, action by the President...
...For it is there that developments in Havana may register more profound meanings...
...JVECENTLY a week was set aside by various colleges and academies throughout the country for the fostering of Catholic Action, which Education subject we have commented upon on . . various occasions...
...But Professor Fay believes that, in spite of these things, the common understanding will endure, that America will continue to stand to the Frenchman for stimulus and adventure, and France to the American for liberty and enlargement of mind...
...In and the more than one respect we believe that Mexicans nere is the first batch of sound, helpful, stimulating information about Mexican immigrants to the United States yet offered to the public...
...Here, certainly, is room for indignation...
...Most of the things asked for," says the program, "have been a part of the Knights of Columbus Mexican welfare committee program for the past five years...
...His wish for the reunion of Christendom was as strong as the reigning Holy Father's...
...They are disappointed with the dependence placed upon untrained men for important assignments...
...We heartily agree, and we wish to say what a refreshment it is to come upon such unstrained and happy conclusions in this especially trying period of uneasy assurances and open apprehension...
...1 HESE facts may have no deeper significance in regard to Cuban politics than the unwillingness of a people to disregard that principle of democratic government which opposes one man's protracted holding of executive power...
...Obvious by reason of its importance is the Mellon-Beranger settlement, and the utter good faith with which the mass of Frenchmen repudiate and the mass of Americans endorse it...
...It is a desire to please the advertiser...
...They are disgusted at the average daily's compliance with the tricks of publicity hunters...
...One of these, invoking the Platt Amendment, took the form of an appeal to President Hoover for intervention...
...Obviously the charges of the Union Nacionalista that "the suffrage has been once more emasculated . . . civil guarantees are non-existant...
...1 HIS last is dealt with very frankly...
...The data gathered by the report may be divided into two sections...
...116 THE COMMONWEAL June 5, 1929 INDUSTRIALLY speaking, we have long since been familiar with this problem...
...Professor Fay recognizes, with that cheerful candor which gives such reality to his utterances, that there are definite circumstances just now which tend to drive the two nations apart...
...How many will be grateful for having lived to see this hour, which so triumphantly restores the normalcy of the Catholic life 1 We contemporary folk can realize only with extreme difficulty that the Popes used, in olden days, to travel far and wide, thus continuing the apostolic journeys of Saint Peter himself...
...For Professor Fay, cold to the thesis of French-American similarity, is warm, eager and accurate on the subject of FrenchAmerican friendship, defending its genuineness in the past and predicting its continuance into the future...
...S. A. Capone in Philadelphia aroused suspicions that this eminent Chicagoan had courted arrest, The Tailine anc* welcomed the sentence which gave , c , him a year in jail...
...So the impression got abroad that he had deliberately sought asylum, despite the assurances of his wife that while he had often dreamed of the tranquil life to be led in the Bermudas, Hawaii or Europe, he had never once spoken romantically of such a resort as the Philadelphia hoosegow...
...First comes an analysis of the social problem: race feeling, expressed in "White Trade Only" signs, and a juridical situation which means that when a Mexican is accused of crime he is also almost automatically convicted...
...Interest," declares one observer, "grew daily with cumulative force...
...It is a distinct achievement which deserves applause...
...To these disasters modern men are, almost cynically one may say, accustomed...
...From reliable information at hand at the time it was known that the I. W. W. was not a serious influence among the Mexicans...
...Look for the controlling figure not in the city room, surrounded by copy-readers, but down among the ledgers, and the adding machines or in a little cubicle of a sanctum not very far removed...
...Intelligence as well as earnestness is reflected in it...
...The X-ray was invented to cure disease and remove suffering...
...One wonders, however, whether this group will be willing to accept the President's theory of law...
...Many accounts of in Action what has been done have reached us, and from them we select as representative that supplied by Rosary College, Chicago, which institution is conducted by the Dominican Sisters for the benefit of young women...
...A generalissimo acceptable to all the leaders had been selected...
...Secretary Stimson, by his settlement of the Diaz-Sacasa-Moncada feud in Nicaragua, has certainly implied that the United States claims the right to act to prevent conditions from arising in Cuba which might be harmful to foreign investments...
...Is a legislative enactment subject to scrutiny by the moral reason, or must it be swallowed automatically...
...Now, however, two despatches from Chicago lead us to suspect that it was a mistake to discount the representations of Mrs...
...To the residents of late mediaeval French and German cities, the Holy Father was, of course, never a familiar figure...
...Capone...
...But, we are told, another effort is really being made to win the Mexican laborer in Colorado for communism...
...Few disasters have been so tragically associated with beneficent motives ; and for this reason the mind is driven to reckon with a problem, a possibility, which seems inseparable from contemporary life...
...Bugs Moran and other leaders were to direct the operations of their respective gangs...
...This was the policy which dictated the landing of American troops during the rebellion of 1917 and the arms embargo to the rebels in 1924...
...With all this of course we are in agreement...
...FlRST reports of the incarceration of Mr...
...The first is that lawyers of great skill in these matters have been hired to free her husband...
...and this was a large part of what we meant in the first place...
...To think of so much youth being poured into the mold of a great, beneficial idea is to attain new confidence in the future...
...One memorable instance comes to mind from reading the latest volume of Monsignor Mann's history of the mediaeval Popes—the scene at Lyons, during 1274, when the Latin and Greek Churches met in common council...
...The second is that before the arrest, Chicago gangsters had decided to bury the hatchet, or the machinegun, so to speak, and form an alliance...
...But nowadays the offenders are powerful enough to do as they please: "One frequently is greeted with the spectacle of a devout Chinese burning prayers in a thousand-year-old brazier, glistening beneath a blue tiled temple roof over which flames some placard bearing the legend of a patent medicine, or enumerating the merits of the latest model of the Wessex Twin Six...
...Meanwhile the scene of active combat has been transferred, of all places, to Shanghai...
...The impressive occasion was marred by no emphasis upon Inauguration tne Pecuh'ar and contradictory history . tt of General Machado's retention of in Havana . ,. ^ ^ . , ,. , semi-dictatorial power: peculiar because it has further diluted the electoral code which General Crowder recommended as a guarantee for fair elections, and contradictory because the President was originally elected by a party pledged to a single term, and was insistent in declaring he would not accept reelection...
...It is quite probable, however, that a similar and more pertinent list of observations could be extracted from the private and public opinions of Mr...
...Capone, Mr...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 5
