Week by Week

...To us the report of his progress is at least an epic poem...

...his contributions to Catholic journals and magazines...

...The answer is one which will commend itself particularly to the understanding of the Times...

...Publicly he is known for his editorial association with the Catholic Citizen of Milwaukee, the Michigan Catholic of Detroit, and the Catholic Columbian of Columbus...

...We recall that Mr...

...His great desire was to gain converts, and much of his literary work was directed toward that end...

...He had, of course, no newspaper and the freedom of speech so abundantly provided nowadays was denied him...

...Meanwhile information regarding the expensiveness of beauty may be gleaned from available figures...

...Not since the time of the crusades has the western world been so closely joined in opposition to an alien doctrine...

...Our critic adds: "It is unfortunate, but I do not see what is to be done about it...

...For years it has been common knowledge that Cardinal Gasparri placed unlimited confidence in the man charged with the mission of fostering peace between Germany and the Allies in 1917...

...Having no desire to popularize Rabelais, whose point of view now seems to lack subtlety and insight, we shall cease using him as an example...

...One also believes that prayer cannot be too earnest or too active...

...He will tell us what is in their hearts...

...and the amount available is contributed in almost equal proportions by the city and the public...

...But this reasoning would not hold in France...

...This means that the ruling body in the Soviets, certainly a small minority of the Russian people, confront the spiritual opposition of hundreds of millions among their fellow-men...

...We salute him...

...THUS we are back to our familiar problem...

...It seems to us that Professor John Berdan, of Yale University, has discussed the problem very lucidly in a paper contributed to the current Saturday Review of Literature...

...The citizen of Minnepitpaugh, Minnesota, hardly realizes that the sixteenth century was not erotic, but that the intimacy of life in those days "caused a knowledge and acceptance of the physical that has no parallel today...

...inspired in its inception...

...Mexican Economics THOUGH the Mexican national budget has shown a deficit during several years so that a "downward readjustment" of the debt was a normal though disturbing phenomenon, industrial figures for the past year indicate more clearly than ever the decline of the unfortunate country...

...The Times and Connie Mack THE New York Times, though we blush to say it, has been taken in discourtesy, and the fact that it was unintentional must aggravate rather than relieve what we should like to think of as its embarrassment...

...Cardinal Pacelli Takes Office PERHAPS no office in the world is more important than that of Papal Secretary of State, and probably no appointee to it has been more universally approved than Cardinal Pacelli...

...O'Neill devoted himself to the Faith, which was the source of the principles to which he clung, and the justification of his being...

...But we do not tremble for Father Schebesta...

...Saint Francis de Sales wrote for a young lady, but talked shop with a frankness which more recent writers on religious topics avoid as they would sin...

...The plumbing is better there and the ladies (one hopes) more sensitive...

...from a dozen quarters came letters enlightening us as to first, his training under Father Wilhelm Schmidt, Director of the Mission Museum at the Lateran, secondly, his connection with Saint Gabriel's, centre of learning conducted by the Society of the Divine Word in Austria, and thirdly, his great work among the forest dwarfs of the Malay Peninsula...

...In ways known to learned men, he will demonstrate their physical relationship to their neighbors, the Negroes, and to us...

...The figures for 1929 show that imports from the United States increased 15 percent, while exports to the United States declined 6 percent...

...Of those which remain unfamiliar, it seems to us that the pigmies, so like men and yet so unlike, offer the most interesting possibilities...

...finally because the award was founded to recognize service beyond self in all spheres of activity, not alone the cultural, and this purpose was emphasized in the selection of Connie Mack...

...We trust it will...

...Privately he will be remembered with gratitude for the fine example of his own life and his constant zeal...

...W. Curtis Bok replies that the award was one which gave his father particular pleasure because of Connie Mack's years of effort to free baseball from undesirable associations, because of his fine sportsmanship, integrity and modesty...

...and it is seldom that a career extending from service as a trooper in time of war to brilliant activity as his nation's representative blends so much color with so great an achievement...

...indeed we do venerate its lighter moments as we should the sight of elephants making gay among the meadows...

...Chesterton, discussing English literary reticence (which has since virtually disappeared) saw the cause in the abundance of feminine readers...

...The Travels of Father Schebesta EXACTLY a year ago we noted the departure of Father Paul Schebesta for the pigmy tribes of Central Africa, and declared in passing that we did not know with what order or institute he was affiliated...

...One Protestant group after another has endorsed the Holy Father's letter and appointed a day of prayer for those who suffer persecution...

...Convictions for this class of crime are, of course, automatically followed by the death sentence...

...The publicist, generally speaking, does not want to confine his assertions within the meagre limits of what is actually known...

...But anyone who has followed the press carefully knows that there were many incidents and achievements which, though relatively of slighter importance, were none the less dramatic and far reaching in their effects...

...Under the circumstances anything like swift recuperation is out of the question...

...Since few places outside the United States could now raise that much money for such an object, one comes upon a further reason why illustrious canvases and statues are migrating to these shores...

...He has taught his readers to look for easy imitation thinking and magical promises under the heading, Science Says...

...This feeling is evident from projected schemes of railway building, which look far ahead into the future...

...Or so, in our unsteady knowledge of Africa, we suppose...

...The import figures are $13,300,000, the export figures $8,750,000...

...Science versus Publicity A SERIOUS abuse of our time is the stepping-down and mistranslation of special scientific findings into those ringingly affirmative "popularizations" which are constantly fed the believing public...

...This is a great, perhaps a decisive, moment in the history of mankind...

...he wants to sell his wares...

...Josephine Daskam Bacon comes out bravely for a policy of neglect...

...He belongs to a family noted during centuries for legal and diplomatic ability, and his own achievement is closely identified with several of the most stirring incidents in recent history...

...For Rabelais was essentially that...

...The normal young American, she says, is suffering from the indiscriminate zeal of his parents and teachers...

...The President's annual address states that "great and splendid benefactions" designed to defray building and acquisition costs have outdistanced by more than seven leagues "the funds for administration" accumulated some years ago...

...A much better case than most people think can be made for realism, which takes things as they are and does not romance about them...

...For in this day, how few are the authentic quests left to the exploring spirit...

...It would permit a commutation of severity in some special cases in which leniency is now technically barred...

...Cardinal Pacelli's experiences in the post-war period then culminated in the signing of the Concordat between the Vatican and Prussia...

...The public, generally speaking, does not really want to be protected from fairy-tales masquerading as facts: it wants-for all of its multitude of personal reasons, ranging from ignorance and wilfulness to sorrow and active despair-to be justified in believing them...

...There will be no ease, and there will always be the danger of fever...

...Father Schebesta will tell us all about them...

...Certainly every Catholic organization should give public evidence of its concern and grief...

...And there is every reason why tact and firmness should combine to eliminate interference which has its source in purely human conduct and considerations...

...This was a virtual outline of the progress made toward effecting better relations between Britain and this country during the past decade...

...It is a vicious circle nobody has been able to render virtuous...

...Thus the fates bind us in friendship to a man whom we have never seen, and who is unaware of the devouring interest with which we follow his every step...

...It is imperative that we live through it with something more than indifference...

...Is the broad diction of older writers as much of a dragon as we have been accustomed to suppose ? Or should a frank knowledge of the physical go hand in hand with discernment of spiritual realities ? To some extent the answer doubtless hinges upon national cultures...

...We have faith in this man...

...and his books, which include The Wit and Wisdom of John Ayscough, and Stepping Stones to God...

...A deficit of $883,384 appears, therefore, to remind the public of the inadequacy of all mundane things-and to suggest that something must be done in a hurry...

...But it would be indecent longer to withhold the news...

...Bacon could be made educational dictator for a week...

...That such a halt is in order, at least until we take our bearings and catch our breath, is much more certain than that it will occur...

...The question is: what does this editorial writer of 400 years ago mean to us...

...He will come smiling through every hardship, and he will return to teach us what he has learned about the pigmies...

...It is a noble work...

...Investors in Mexico are necessarily committed to a long pull and must seek to recoup through exploitation of natural resources...

...Experience and native tact have combined to make him one of the sanest among diplomats...

...He is watched for complexes as carefully as we were watched for measles during an epidemic...

...The High Cost of Art OWNING canvases is not just a matter of pride and enjoyment, as the latest news from New York Metropolitan Museum will show...

...Obviously nine modern readers out of ten note only the obscenities of Rabelaisian diction, and hardly one in a thousand understands the allusions...

...A similar falling off is discernible in the government revenues...

...Let us hasten to add, on the other hand, that Sir Esme's departure is a genuine international loss...

...In following the states which have already adopted this eminently right-minded provision, New York would not, of course, be solving her whole problem of criminal justice, any more than they have...

...From here he will again enter the Ituri forests to study the pigmy settlements found in the region of the Tchuapa River branch emptying into the Congo on the left bank...

...Even more serious than the misapplication of this or that particular method is the conscientious crowding of the child's cultural schedule, so that "he never gets time to find his own level, pick his own companions or spend his personal leisure-and everybody has a right to some personal leisure-as he wishes...

...May one believe that a European's sighs over a departing Titian are not wholly without a note of relief...

...We liked this note in the ambassador's speech-the laying of emphasis upon a sensible recognition of world facts rather than upon sentimental "union of language and of hearts" such as builders of air castles so frequently advocate...

...Current inquiry into Russian conditions can seldom take advantage of informed observers, whose experience endows them with authority...

...No monument of bronze or marble could be more enduring than this testimony to a lay missionary...

...Father Schebesta spent the greater part of 1929 in the forests along the Ituri River, affluent of the Congo, and now moves toward the Ruwenzori Mountains near Lake Edward...

...It is too late to reform Rabelais...

...Obviously it cannot be argued that we are more spiritual as a result...

...In our own case, education of youth has doubtless been the dominant concern...

...He will do more...

...We wish he had made it New Haven...

...It is fortunate that one who has thus amply proved his worth is available at a time when the purpose of the Church in the world has once again become so startlingly clear...

...Connie Mack to receive the Philadelphia Award, established by the late Edward Bok, it pictured some member of the Committee as saying, " 'Gentlemen, Connie Mack brought us $100,000,000 worth of publicity free.' In the twentieth century," added the Times, "that settled it...

...For we cannot do without the spoofing of the Times...

...Although no final accounting of the receipts from the petroleum industry has as yet been made, it seems doubtful that the sum will equal the $6,500,000 gleaned during 1928...

...But his books were essentially commentaries on the life of the time, of which he had a vast if somewhat cynical knowledge...

...The deficit is about one-half the total administrative cost...

...Because certain youngsters obviously are candidates for special artistic training, whole classes and companies of them are required to undergo it, though "most of this constructive work they are set at is unnatural, self-conscious and imitative...

...Sir Esme, who was received into the Catholic Church during 1898, will be remembered with especial kindness by his coreligionists, many of whose interests he shared while here...

...Nothing must be more carefully shielded against the inroads of old age, the effect of bad neighbors and the elements...

...We have said this before, venturing to add that science itself must provide the chief antidote (as indeed scientists more and more realize) by an ever-growing sense of corporate responsibility, a patient willingness to disclaim and to correct...

...Noting that many old slogans had grown shabby and ineffective, Sir Esme dismissed talk of war as fantastic and inane...

...Meditating on the matter further-as one is constrained to do practically every time one picks up a newspaper-it must be admitted that there are grave difficulties in the way of such a program of correction...

...Its sponsors claim, with every appearance of humanity and reason, that this added flexibility of procedure would work in two ways to effect a more exact administration of justice...

...This is all so sensible that one wishes Mrs...

...his co-authorship of the American Catholic's Who's Who...

...During the coming weeks speakers and writers should make a determined effort to secure the facts and gain as much publicity for them as is possible...

...The chief support of hope for peace is, however, the strengthening conviction that sound economics is incompatible with bombs and bayonets gone on a rampage...

...One can imagine the kindly ruth-lessness with which she would halt what pedagogues refer to as the wheels of educational progress...

...For More Letting Alone UNDER the title, Our Harassed Children, in the North American Review, Mrs...

...He concedes that "according to our American conventions" the old author is "shocking...

...In his work and his private life Mr...

...They adopt wholesale for his supposed benefit all sorts of theories suited only to abnormal conditions or special cases...

...What is needed, therefore, is the price of a trim new Rodney planked down as an endowment...

...And we suggest, hesitantly, that during that year he will be encountering in the real and living the substances of our most terrible dreams: jungles where no light enters, foul swamps, reptiles and savage beasts...

...It was very quickly apparent that our ignorance was not generally shared...

...A picture is harder to house than a human being and requires more unremitting care...

...The conscientious scientist who speaks of the technical limitations of investigation, and the scrupulously hedged and tentative nature of its results, is heard coldly by both the public and the publicist...

...Amending the Penal Law BALANCED and reasonable men, whether they believe in capital punishment or oppose it, must regard with favor the amendment to New York's penal law recently proposed to the state legislature, with the approval of the Committee on Criminal Courts, Law and Procedure of the New York Bar Association...

...Many who mourn his passing find their tears ones of gratitude for the great gift of faith which he was instrumental in bringing to them...

...IT WILL be a year, no doubt, before word of him again comes our way...

...Because "there are timid, under-vitalized children who will greatly benefit by wise drawing-out and judicious stimulation," the ordinary healthy child must submit to projects for "developing his initiative...

...The amendment empowers trying juries to bring in a verdict of "guilty with a recommendation for mercy...

...Sir Esme Howard IT WAS fitting that Sir Esme Howard, retiring as British ambassador to the United States, should deliver an exceedingly characteristic address to the American Pilgrims...

...and so long as laboratories continue to furnish data, he will continue to evoke from them the superman and universal cures-to his own profit...

...And so I tender my respectful sympathy to the ladies of Minnepitpaugh...

...To this Mr...

...But if this is to be another crusade, of prayer and sympathy, it is imperative that it be correctly preached...

...Sundry Rabelaisians GARGANTUA'S creator is remembered with touching fidelity by a large group of French savants, who have found out pretty nearly everything about this sixteenth-century editorial writer...

...Half the religious heresies of the world emanate from people who failed to content themselves with the bare facts of faith...

...and, on the other hand, it would decrease the number of questionable acquittals which result from the unwillingness of juries to condemn to death certain offenders whom they do not think deserving of death...

...If Mexico cannot get on without capital, capital in turn cannot exist without security...

...But we hope that the incident will not long act as a depressant in its councils...

...In its comment on the selection of Mr...

...But the gain would be clear and measurable...

...The situation as a whole inevitably means a return to prominence of those land and oil problems which have so profoundly troubled diplomacy during the past decade...

...A Lay Missionary IN THE death of Scannell O'Neill American Catholicism and Catholic journalism lose a diligent spirit...

...The conscience of Christendom now addresses public opinion-the active mentality of mankind...

...All the lands have been visited before, and most of the tribes have already posed for photographs...

...And one wagers that half our moral divagations arise from inability to see man as he really is-a creature whom the Lord evidently intended for more humdrum purposes than he will sometimes concede...

...Much of American prudery, he goes on to remark, "is due to American plumbing...

...The requirement now prevailing in regard to "a murder committed in the course of another felony" is that it be categorically considered murder in the first degree...

...This week is therefore in the nature of an anniversary, and our radiant good luck it is that he should again be in the news...