Jeanne d'Arc
I46 THE COMMONWEAL June 12, I929 each serving as the centre of its own working popula- tion. Belt lines tunneling water and land will serve the commuters over the lengthened distances between...
...a people that would die when it closed the road to Cal- vary...
...Rheims, where the king was crowned while Jeanne knelt close by, is not yet healed again of the wounds of conflict...
...And nowhere else in the western countries has this radiance shone so bright and so sanctified as in those lands where the Frank and the Gaul refashioned the task of Rome...
...Jeanne hastened toward her tragic destiny, wholly unconcerned with either herself or the treacheries of men...
...but her obedience to this was of the same character as that of the least of the faithful, who hearkens to good counsel and resolves in his heart to follow it...
...It is true that the British Labor party enjoys considerable success...
...It is not the unskilled worker who can show any enthusiasm for a consummation which it will take a decade of careful and laborious effort to bring about...
...her grandeur the fact that she had received orders...
...And so, spontaneously and yet ever so care-fully, he restored the idea of Jeanne d'Arc...
...Meanwhile it would be understating the case to say that it has done as much for union labor in this country as the theories of class conscious- ness have for the more radical groups of Europe...
...Indeed the gravest charge made by the progressives is directed against the Communists: they have "undermined the faith of the rank and file in the possibilities of the organized labor movement...
...If there must be 2o,ooo,ooo people in one city, this is undoubtedly the way to deal with them...
...There is no doubting its truth, no question- ing its motives...
...One good reason for the solidity of the American Federation of Labor has been its steadfast opposition to the ideas of class consciousness and class war, and its realization that only an ideal of co6peration, of "teamwork"mthat most characteristically American of slogans--could eventually win for labor its just share in the rewards of industry...
...The key to most of the contem- plated changes is, of course, the development of air- craft like the autogiro, capable of rising in an almost straight line...
...One wishes, therefore, to enrol Jeanne among the noblest of those who are to guide the new movement of Catholic Action...
...As avowed, its reason for being is the failure of other societies to state the cause of labor effectively in America...
...Charles P6guy, born of the poorest of the poor in Orl6ans, had found his way through the phil- osophies, the social doctrines, the theories of his time...
...It is possibly to be found in the discontent of active-minded men with the slackening of enthusiasm in union labor...
...Another, certainly, has been its non-polltical char- ter, with which the progressives find dissatisfaction...
...but surely, some time before the thirty-six years are up, the wise man will move to northern Canada...
...Naturally enough, the world of Satan has always battled fiercely against this illumination...
...Who does not, in a measure, repeat those words out of the depth of his heart...
...And when the nineteenth century was closing, the tide of scepticism bore nothing so precious as her memory, imprisoned in the laughter of Renan and Anatole France much as a peerless gem might be hidden in the rags of fools...
...Summon to mind the martial genius which guided all this clashing at arms, and you have with few exceptions the names of the very greatest captains--Napoleon, Von Moltke, Foch, Vauban, Marlborough...
...P6guy, con-scious always of the throng of his people about him, then gradually became conscious also that this was a people irretrievably doomed to Christendom...
...That means reading into her story a modern individualism and belligerence which would have astounded no one so much as her...
...first, the failure of the American Federa- tion of Labor to cultivate a "class" feeling among the workers, and its inability to alleviate the unemploy- ment which has come with industrial prosperity...
...That was all...
...And a move- ment which is essentially controversial in character should not fail to do this...
...Then, suddenly (well-nigh as suddenly as her own coming from the green hills of Lorraine) there was a change...
...We urge independent labor party action as a substi- tute for the useless and confusing non-partisan policy which results in the selection of public officials com-pletely dominated by employers...
...tomlessly false...
...And the realm of the "eldest daughter of the Church" was intact--not redeemed of its sins, indeed, but free to work out its redemption in so far as men can and do...
...But the American worker cannot be persuaded that his legislative necessities are the same as those of the Englishman's...
...The voices spoke and she fol- lowed...
...In a manner he was the pool in which those chaotic years looked for their picturema pool clear in itself, but muddled with bizarre reflections...
...The Maid of Orl6ans was not a "leader" but a follower, nursed as P6guy says in that humility which Christianity has accepted as the very rhythm of its life...
...Its lustre is in a throng of deeds and books, all of them "gesta Dei per Francos...
...American Federation of Labor officials attribute this to the national prosperity, forgetting, perhaps, that a great part of their last convention was devoted to complaints against the numerous ills which have accompanied the new industrial revolution...
...and the necessity for innumerable land- ing fields will naturally create a new type of city archi- tecture...
...and he called his book The Mystery of the Charity of Jeanne d'Arc...
...This in turn depended not so much upon the skill of generals or the astuteness of statesmen as upon the simple readiness of the peasant and the artisan--true kindred of Jeanne~to obey a command humbly...
...Belt lines tunneling water and land will serve the commuters over the lengthened distances between offices and homes...
...Perhaps if President Green can have something more "realistic" than the Com- munists to point to as an illustration of the wrong way, he may find it easier to enlist champions in the cause of the right way...
...For the cold iconoclasm of Voltaire and his followers, her miracle became the petty business of a dream...
...Its extraordinary lucidity is apparent in a host of saints...
...One of the titles which Our Lord gave to Himself and the Church was "Light of the World...
...Curiously enough, it is just in stimulating interest and activity that the progressives may be of some value to organized labor in this country...
...Is it not of signifi...
...In the story of Jeanne, all folk-lore became splendidly real...
...The idea of a mutuality of interest between labor and capital has been strongly developed in this country (by capital, the progressives would add) and it certainly promises the only tolerable relationship for the future...
...Crowds of little children could be fed once more when she had gained a victory...
...It gleams through the history of a score of councils...
...Orl6ans was saved not by shouting but by listening...
...The city she defended against the British has recently observed her memory with triumphant ceremony, to which Cardinal Lepicier, himself a son of Vaucouleurs, came as special legate from the Holy See, and at which no people was more splendidly represented than the English, whose enemy the Maid once was...
...Her story is as plain and straightforward as the chronicles of Caesar...
...It is as if the court of heaven had decided that a host of "marvels," summoned up by popular imag- ination during a thousand years to incorporate hopes, ideals and moral judgments, should suddenly be crys- tallized in the stark virility of this Maid...
...But not all of these together ride so imperially through the forests of oblivion as the girl who watched the sheep in the meadows of Lorraine, and in whose heart was heard the order of Michael the Archangel, of Mar- garet and Catherine to the dauphin's support...
...It should be obvious, however, that the immediate, real and personal force behind the movement is not to be discovered in any of these statements...
...Certainly it is difficult to fit in their program with the temper of America...
...Her virtue, he declared, was humility...
...She was to him not a pattern of knighthood or a model for soldiers, but a saint of the people...
...sec-ond, the failure of the Communists to understand American labor and its psychology...
...canoe that every attempt to unify labor politically, even in the interest of a candidature, has failed...
...The letter which the papal envoy bore from Rome to Orl6ans for the centenary reads in part as follows: "It pleases us thus to give a plain proof of our devo- tion to Jeanne d'Arc, and of our continued benevolence to all of Catholic France...
...Hardly had P~guy written than the war broke out, and Francem which had repudiated Christ officially and even, to a considerable extent, removed Him from the hearts of the people--saw that she could be saved only by emphasizing her mission as the custodian of Christen- dom, the scion of Charlemagne, the conqueror of the crusades...
...Except as such an instrument, as an opposition party, in other words, loyal in its own way to the cause, it is not easy to see how the progressives will accomplish much...
...President Green can, and here is one true mark that he has the leader's vision...
...Her's was a procession not of malediction but of charity, not of war for victory but of "war that war might cease," not of ambition but of the people's mercy...
...THE POLICIES OF LABOR T HE Labor Age movement for a more militant trade union policy has taken on the respectability of organization with the launching of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action...
...It will be active, energetic, aggressive...
...In the second place he has had the opportunity in recent years to demonstrate his convictions...
...And it promises, in the name of a newly formulated program, to be coherent...
...JEANNE D'ARC F IVE hundred years have gone since the siege of Orl6ans was raised by her whom the old chron- iclers called Jehanne la Pucelle, and whom the Church now venerates as Saint Jeanne d'Arc...
...When we have learned that lesson, the world may be redeemed...
...A motion to delete this criticism was suppressed, and so the new movement offers a definite appeal to those who believe in a more drastic and common action for labor than has been existing in America, but one untainted with regard for the Third International...
...Many wars and battles have been fought since I429, almost on the same ground...
...And this ought to indicate that no great share in prosperity has yet reached the worker...
...First of all he remembers that it was not until the labor movement in this country dropped all the political pretensions with which it began that it enjoyed anything but a precarious existence...
...and it is strange that since Jeanne's time, one has almost been able to measure the spiritual constancy of France by the constancy of her fame...
...The granaries were no longer aflame...
...Of course she had received a very special "command...
...It is much more likely that interest has been dulled because of the fact that, like everyone else, the American Federation of Labor has been unable to suggest a remedy for these new ills other than the adoption of a five-day week...
...In the haunted shadows of Jansenist cloisters there was no place for her gleam- ing sword...
...I46 THE COMMONWEAL June 12, I929 each serving as the centre of its own working popula- tion...
...The name is some-thing of an indication of its character...
...Families could live tranquilly again...
...The impression that Jeanne was a kind of roystering June I2, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 147 crusaderma kind of Carrie Nation, indeedlmis bot...
...She will not be an incentive to all kinds of fantastic "originality" or window-smashing, but a positive reminder that nothing can be accom-plished which is not done in the genuine spirit of the Churchmwhich is not born of the mysteries of humil- ity and obedience and charity...
...And as that is a solution which it will take a long time to get the manufacturers of this country to accept--a time, considering the suspiciousness of capital, which will only be prolonged by violence--there can be no rousing interest for it...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 6
