Communications
COMMUNICATIONS HENRY IV Jersey City, N. J. TO the Editor:-I desire to express my hearty appreciation of the recent letter of Mr. C. Bachem on Shakespeare and the inferior taste that has developed...
...Will you tell me, a convert, that the prize is not worth any sacrifice of time and thought and convenience that I may make...
...No longer will the farmer exist to take pride in the crops produced from soil he called his own...
...Meynell's Views, seems to be singularly unfortunate in the opinion of a compatriot and sincere admirer of that deeply-lamented lady...
...THE EXPERTS LOOK AT UNEMPLOYMENT Washington, D. C. TO the Editor:-The mild criticism which M. D. Ashe directs at me in his letter in The Commonweal, January 22, is based upon a misunderstanding of the paragraph with which it deals...
...While there is no question of arguing with the blunt fact of an existing letter in the actual possession of your correspondent, there is the danger, verified in your columns, that such a letter could be used to prove too much...
...For the rest, I agree entirely with the position taken by Mr...
...As I looked over the happy countenances of the proud fathers and mothers of those who were in the cast, I thought how joyful and consoling it was to them to see their sons manifesting the fruits of a perfect training in English, elocution, and especially a taste for what is wholesome and pure...
...Their professors are masters in their work...
...Margaret Reardon...
...however, by the aid of natural-born stubbornness, but thanks most of all to the patience and helpfulness of my instructor, I found my way with increasing ease especially on Sundays having no commemorations, until June 1, the Sunday within the octave of Corpus Christi, when I successfully followed the mass throughout...
...To me urban civilization is not quite what our country lacks at present...
...And if colleges present Shakespeare as cleverly as these young thespians, enthusiasm and encouragement will be aroused...
...Christopher I. Fitz Gerald...
...Something very vital to America, if not to American "commercialized industry" will disappear, the rural home...
...He would solve the farmer's problem by doing away with the farmer...
...Then again, perhaps I have all the more right...
...whose precious treasure the liturgy of the mass has always been...
...Meynell is beyond dispute...
...The cultivation of spiritual, ethical and even intellectual values can never become general or notable in a society which is immersed in materialism...
...Take a fella your size...
...Hurley's recent suggestion that some two dozen gentlemen might prevent war by withholding the materials, seems unworkable if we consider the probable answer of the political powers immediately concerned, "While you hamstring us what will we be doing...
...If fantastic plans be in order why not borrow an idea from boyology, or the prize-ring...
...On First Fridays, of course, with the new mass not yet published in any missal, I am out of luck...
...Modern industry and urban life generally have made a vicious attack upon family life...
...it instinctively discriminated between the wheat and the chaff, and it would have instantly rejected prohibition as a national measure if it had been brought face to face with that measure worked out in its present-day disgusting details...
...The "sincere idealism" of Mrs...
...Martin Hughes, O. S. F. C. FARMING AS A BUSINESS Convent, N. J. TO the Editor:-Mr...
...Every scene was perfectly set-a difficult task for Henry IV...
...MRS...
...In more than one of the speeches he delivered during the last presidential campaign and in more than one of the pronouncements that he has made since he became an occupant of the White House, he has given expression to this materialistic philosophy...
...It proved that an American audience can digest solid and noble food, as well as be attracted by the "tittle-tattle" to which Mr...
...Stewart, as an economist, is very probably correct...
...Ashe...
...No two onto one...
...WEIGH IN THE FIGHTERS Dorchester, Mass...
...Rev...
...He believes that "mergers of small farm units into cooperatives and pools for the distribution of farm products is not only sound and desirable but inevitable...
...Absurd...
...Here is the record: In 1928, on the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, for the first time I tried to follow the mass with a prayer-book, not a missal, and was completely lost...
...And they received it...
...a fact doubly deplorable, since the one unconsciously responsible for it was on the intimate terms of correspondence with her...
...Stewart...
...But thanks to the glib clap-trap of certain twentieth-century literature, "idealism" can be and is twisted to cover the essentially inane and bizarre...
...Meynell's judgment, usually so sane and reliable, can now be called into serious question...
...TO the Editor:-It would be a perilous adventure, on the eve of the London Naval Conference, to say what its outcome will be...
...Rev...
...Stewart in his solution of the farm problem quite disregards the farmer as anything but a producer of economic utilities...
...Colleges make it their duty to study dramatic classics...
...In contrast to the threatened collapse of the urban home, family life still flourishes on the farm...
...All came to see what was high in mind and pure in heart...
...After many years as a director of parish dramatics in which I have seen the value of the taste of genuine plays decreasing, slowly but surely, Saint Peter's Players seem to offer a good solution to the problem...
...Everything was so natural to them-the elocution, stage presence, gestures...
...Meanwhile, the audience was held with the charm of Shakespeare...
...Born and raised in a church which has a prayer-book and accustomed to following a liturgy and understanding, it, I could not be content on entering the Catholic Church to "hear mass" and not follow it even if others could...
...The Reverend Edwin V. O'Hara, in an article, The Rural Community and the Family, said, "The farm may rightly be described as the native habitat of the family...
...Of course, nearly as absurd as firing on ships of commerce or bombarding the non-combatant populations of cities and towns...
...In the meantime, the farmer's land will be combined with several other such pieces of land, a number of capitalists will finance the vast undertaking, and the wheels of a "commercialized industry" will turn speedily, efficiently...
...As long as I live, I shall look with envy on those reared in the Church, with years under the shadow of her wing that I have not known...
...I had no intention of defending the materialistic philosophy which is implicit in some parts of the Report on Recent Economic Changes, although I can understand how the members of the committee have come to accept that philosophy...
...Hoover himself...
...The youthful Players must have been thoroughly drilled in Shakespeare...
...Most of that paragraph was "writ sarcastic...
...But while we mourn her, we cannot refrain from a certain gratitude that she has been spared the sight of the degradation of the country she loved so much, and this by the very project which, at the time of her writing, seemed so full of promise...
...Even so, they are contrary to all experience...
...MEYNELL'S VIEWS Providence, R. I. TO the Editor:-The letter which appeared in The Commonweal of January 15 under the heading Mrs...
...Rev...
...Bachem's statements was recently impressed upon me when I enjoyed the pleasure of seeing Henry IV presented by the Stratford Players of Saint Peter's Preparatory College, Jersey City, in a local theatre...
...Weigh in the fighters...
...no ship to fight out of its class...
...Our chain retail stores and merged manufacturing plants have demonstrated conclusively the assets of big business in dollars and cents...
...But, as an admirer of, and believer in the rural life of our country, I am strongly opposed to Mr...
...one ship against one ship of equal weight, power and speed, the nations that are neutral to referee the fight and control the fighting...
...C. Bachem on Shakespeare and the inferior taste that has developed in modern drama...
...John A. Ryan...
...If "desirable" is to be taken only in application to the total amount of yearly profits on agriculture in our country, Mr...
...Robert Stewart, whose article, Farming as a Business, appeared in The Commonweal for January 8, will perhaps dismiss any mention of farming as a mode of living in this advanced year, 1930, as the result of "loose and unsound thinking in the field of agricultural economics...
...Stewart's statement, "There are still too many farmers...
...According to his theory, the farmer must move away from his farm, shut himself up in a factory or possibly add another member to the list of unemployed in one of our large cities...
...To them, at least, the theatre-goer looks for an ideal...
...It is my opinion, however, that Mr...
...in a word, every aspect of dramatic art...
...And if civilization is to progress, there must still be a continued movement away from the farm and toward the city," continued Mr...
...The result is, that Mrs...
...We shall not be amiss, however, if we pay our respects to, or even give three cheers for the Latin mind which has brought to the sufface the submerged thought that the only conceivable naval parity is at zero, for when we take the number one or any of its multiples we face immediately, the ponderables of tonnage and guns, speed, need, bases, etc., as to which there can be no equation...
...then, having the Saint Andrew's Missal put into my hands by the priest from whom I was receiving instruction, I still was frequently lost at mass...
...It was not a memory lesson, but a most impressive delineation of the characters of this magnetic play...
...and, were it labor to follow the mass, will you seriously tell me that that is a reason "authentic and important...
...Joseph A. Shovlin...
...It helps to look out the liturgy the evening before, but the Saint Andrew's Missal is so arranged that there is no "stupendous reference work" involved...
...These young thespians demonstrated that a laugh does not depend upon the many inventions, most of them puerile, of the modern comedians...
...Bachem rightly refers...
...Many I saw there were neither alumni nor alumnae of colleges...
...and one can frequently follow without looking it out beforehand, as, for instance, last Sunday, which was both the Sunday within the octave of the Epiphany and the Feast of the Holy Family, with the commemoration of the octave, with the necessary pages clearly indicated by number...
...Unfortunately, it is not only the men who wrote the Report that subscribe to this false theory that social welfare consists in unlimited production for the unlimited satisfaction of unlimited physical and emotional wants, but the chairman, Mr...
...Perhaps I have little right to speak, for I have been a Catholic but fourteen months...
...The truth of Mr...
...POPULAR LITURGY Mount Vernon, N. Y. TO the Editor:-May I comment on this sentence in your editorial, Popular Liturgy, in the issue of January 15: "It is not always easy to turn from one part of the missal to another, and the reference work required by some editions is stupendous...
...Meynell's idealism was of the genuine order...
...Life on the farm will have run its course...
...the projects of a united civilization, and of a great nation freed from the undoubted evil of alcoholism, are ones that would naturally receive the whole-hearted endorsement of such a gentle and peace-loving spirit...
...The Commonweal invites its readers to send in communications expressing individual views on all topics that are of public interest, regardless of whether or not such topics have been previously discussed in its columns.-The Editors...
...Mary Townsend Rowe...
...While he does occasionally throw in as a sort of afterthought the reflection that all this material well-being is consistent with the pursuit of moral and spiritual goods, these observations are of quite secondary importance in his speeches and writings...
...Honesty compels me to admit that I had attended mass almost daily since November 21...
...Nevertheless, while Italy's suggested zero is conceivable it is not achievable in the present state of the laws of war, nor ever, without divine aid, which is the last thing that our self-complacent civilization would ask for...
Vol. 11 • February 1930 • No. 14
