Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK SEEN in retrospect, the career of William Howard Taft recalls personages from the early history of the nation. Since the days of Hamilton and Jefferson, no man has been so...
...X (the author in question) was the personification of the authentic non-combatant...
...His conclusions are interesting: "If the price of maintaining the present position of this country in the world cotton trade is to be a submarginal standard of living for the cotton grower, then the price is too high, and it becomes our duty to point out the true situation to the grower and to urge the only course which appears open-substantially to reduce his cotton acreage and devote more of his time and attention to producing for himself those necessities of life which a political and economic maladjustment prevents him from acquiring through the normal process of exchange of his labor...
...We have in mind the tragic condition of the organized Catholic total abstinence movement, once so strong and flourishing, now wrecked and ruined...
...If that be true, our war literature may help us, if it is becomingly revealing...
...We are sure that he aimed to exemplify this same reasonableness in his work as an executive and a judge...
...Yet all his fine certitude of yesterday about the light waves which reveal that planet has vanished in a hundred new and unsolved mysteries about the atom and the very nature of light itself...
...This is, at least, a credible explanation of his blunt hostility to the Young plan...
...Doubtless he was occasionally too much of a literalist...
...1 HE recent announcement that the Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society has gone into the hands of a receiver is a piece of news which prob- ably will be interpreted in very diverse Impoverished and even contradictory fashions...
...Beginning with the assertion that "the present system of cotton production is certainly the most inefficient of all our major industries," Mr...
...Having reviewed the book, he pointed out that there was only one author about whom M. Cru permitted himself to remark: "I believe that he is authentically a poilu...
...we think this ought to be considered in any critique of his career...
...The abuse of strong drink by those addicted to overindulgence, and the reckless drinking of boys and girls will certainly be firmly checked...
...If this were Senator Heflin's bailiwick, we could see a reason...
...we cannot expect them to act in any other way...
...One remembers, for instance, the reasonableness of his attitude and speech during the war...
...There were no newspapers in Protest the days of Moses and Solomon, but if there had been, undoubtedly the newspaper's way of performing its art and mystery would not have gone without comment...
...After all, what is authenticity...
...Narrow streets and the highest buildings in the world result in a confusion which cannot be relieved without knocking down the buildings or scattering them into what are now suburban districts...
...Even the years which Howard intervened between his Presidency and Taft his accession to the Chief Justiceship Mr...
...The astronomer may proclaim proudly that the telescope he invented has found the planet whose existence his mathematics had prophesied...
...the Old Guard apparently had resigned itself to defeat, and we were all beginning to hope that the resulting bill would be somewhere within reason...
...the senators who abandoned their original positions as soon as the smell of pork came unmistakably to their nostrils were only doing what other senators have done before and will do again...
...Anyway our sentiments are for this plan whatever the cost...
...But what was Thibaudet's surprise upon receipt of a letter from a veteran who had known the "authentic poilu" in question and who reported: "That remark is a bit exaggerated...
...It would seem that for every invention of man which brings the stars within our grasp, there is another invention to multiply space within the very palm of our hands-a sort of law of conservation of space by which we can never make the world outside seem smaller without having the world within seem larger...
...practical or impractical from the chauffeur's viewpoint, it is the first plan we have seen which recognizes the inalienable right of a pedestrian to cross the street...
...The trend in Germany is to the right, which is no longer even chiefly a monarchistic right...
...Authenticity is, according to our critic, the rarest of literary virtues...
...But who will agree with M. Cru...
...It is not so certain, however, that both have been definitely concluded...
...Albert Thibaudet, the genial French critic, replies to this question with an interesting tale...
...To censure them would be unfair, and beside the point...
...Both actions were What about inevitable...
...GERMANY has assented to the Young Plan and Dr...
...There is also the ever-accelerating race between those things which annihilate space and those things which open up new spaces, as it were, beneath our feet...
...But there is more than the drama of his conquering intellect to this latest achievement...
...The funds will go to the militant crusaders of the W.C.T.U., who perhaps even more than the Anti-saloon League are the driving force of the prohibition terrorism...
...Neither senators nor representatives are in a position to judge wisely and impersonally of tariff schedules...
...And though it is not pleasant to think that those reasons will some day diminish in vigor, they nevertheless probably will...
...In a curious way, man's own powers seem to warn him of his need for humility, leading him on from discovery to discovery, only to multiply mysteries threefold each time he thinks he has reduced one of them to a commonplace...
...Since the days of Hamilton and Jefferson, no man has been so continuously in the William federal service...
...I HE disappearance of the Total Abstinence Society of Massachusetts, however, has a particular interest for Catholics...
...It seems to us improbable that a man of this stamp would go angling determinedly for the position now occupied by Von Hindenburg...
...The vote trading which has changed all this of course is a well-established political practice...
...His character invited respect and his geniality evoked the kind of popularity which is not dependent upon a title...
...We tremble between two worlds, the world of vast distances bridged by the telescope, and the minute world of the atom in which, to our bewilderment, other and equally vast distances are being opened up by the microscope...
...Formerly the Total Abstinence Society "was for many years engaged in charitable work...
...Its membership comprises thousands of prominent people of many religious faiths, although the main membership is composed of well-known Catholics...
...I HE ninth planet of the solar system, far beyond Neptune, has at last come within the field of Harvard's telescope at Flagstaff, Arizona...
...We can now add one more example, the blackest yet, of how the welfare and desires of the people can be disregarded when the making of tariffs is a matter for politicians instead of a commission of experts to decide...
...Since New York is not prepared to do any of these things for fifty years, we think that hope for the speeding up of auto traffic should be forgotten, and the present years given over entirely to the convenience of the walker...
...Schacht...
...Perhaps in no other European nation could such a man as Dies de Rivera have become dictator, which is not meant as a reflection on Spain...
...Lights It would cost $500,000 to install this system, but that is not an astonishing amount of money when New York is preparing to spend something like a billion a year to solve its traffic problems...
...He made conservatism attractive during an era when feelings ran pretty high in the civic climate...
...The opposition against prohibition is only weakened by reckless or sinful drinking among its opponents...
...Others may say: "Trying to make a whole people total abstainers by law has so manifestly failed that the total abstinence, and even the temperance societies are closing down in defeat...
...Here the chronicles of sergeants and generals, reporters and novels, are classified, compared and adjudged with a rigor worthy of a drill-master of marines...
...H. M. Tomlinson comments incisively on the fact that "the public is now showing a desire to read, sometimes The War with wide approval, stories of warstories of what we will agree to call the as an Epic War...
...So there you are...
...Moreover the soul of Spain-the Catholic spirit-was expressed through him: love of country guided by the greater love of God, as was symbolized by the friar's habit which clothed the dictator on his funeral bier...
...His security was partly due to the fact that the many factions in Spain which were opposed to him were also opposed to each other, but he never made the gravely false step which would have enabled them to unite...
...It may be that this capitalization of recent martial horrors implies a mistake in perspective, a failure to correlate rightly Verdun with Jena and the fall of Constantinople...
...a plan is hardly in operation before it is found inadequate...
...These truths Mr...
...One is reminded of Defoe-whose tribe, since 1919, seems to have increased mightily...
...Schacht reorganized the national currency and supervised the national finances with a resolute skill any government in the world would value highly...
...They found it hard to come to grips with this man...
...That will now cease...
...It is good news that this is happening...
...Bishops and pastors in many parts of the country are taking the matter firmly in hand...
...Its organ, The Commonweal, is not a commercial enterprise: it stands in the same relationship to The Calvert Associates as the National Geographic Magazine stands to the society publishing it, or as the Survey stands to the Survey Associates...
...THE Calvert Associates were incorported eight years ago under the laws of the state of New York as a national membership society which is devoted to educational and patriotic purposes...
...Believing in constitutionalism judiciously, he avoided conceptions of the state which embodied "mystical" elements...
...The first manful inquisitor appears in the person of a French professor, Jean Norton Cru, whose book reflects ten years of hard work performed in a spirit of duty...
...It would be hard to think of a better claim to friendly remembrance...
...Hjalmar Schacht has resigned from the presidency of the Reichsbank...
...We do not now have in mind those Catholics who believe in and give their support to legalized national prohibition...
...The results are to say the least disconcerting...
...Clayton deduces from financial statistics which have certainly not been doctored, however much allowance one may make for the traditional inconstancy of statistics...
...for one thing he was not anxious for personal or political vengeance, and this alone would have sweetened a record much less creditable than his...
...One of its chief objects is to break down sectarian separation in all social and cultural activities intended to be for the common good of this nation...
...1 HE Bible lists a number of things which are inscrutable, too mysterious to be understood...
...NOW that reading of war records has become popular, critical scrutiny of those accumulated is to be expected...
...Our author declares with evident vigor: "We know that the pomp and majesty of war, the sombre and throaty calls to national honor and great traditions, in the light of latter-day knowledge, are all as ugly and distressing as the thoroughly sincere fight for nuts in the zoological department where nuts are enjoyed...
...During the whole war he was considered unfit for service, and was a field clerk whom I heard boast many times that he had never been nearer the front than Tarascon...
...The difficulty of providing for the proper control of traffic in a city like New York is that congestion is always on the increase...
...Another reason for our bias is that efforts to speed up auto traffic may as well be abandoned anyway...
...Sound and enduring principles guided and directed the Catholic total abstinence and temperance movements of the past...
...It will be immeasurably strengthened by reasonable restraint and sobriety among Catholics...
...The way of a ship in the sea, the way of a man The Calvert with a maid, and other puzzles are Associates named...
...Its The Small seclusion from human sight for thou-Shall Be sands of years has been broken by the Great sheer force of human intellect-by the force, that is to say, which makes the mind of man far more imposing than the mysteries of the physical universe itself...
...But though he was not the man to lead the mind of the country, he did much to educate its temper and to teach it the value of poise...
...In the last analysis, his real task was to mark time, which he did with an admirable finesse...
...As we recently pointed out in these columns, what has happened in Massachusetts has also happened among the Catholic crusaders for and followers of the personal practice of total abstinence...
...The secret of his hold upon the public is, it may be, not hard to divine...
...The great mystery has become small-but the small mystery has become astoundingly great...
...The telescope-man's invention, and mathematics-man's power of abstraction, have combined to carry man once more beyond the limitations of his senses...
...The further fact concerning the Massachusetts Total Abstinence Society recorded by the Associated Press, that before applying for a receivership the society voted to transfer its funds of $15,000 to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, "as being the organization most nearly now carrying on the work for which the society was established," throws a revealing light upon the rather paradoxical situation existing among the opponents of Bacchus...
...Previous celebrations of the founding of Maryland have been properly credited to The Calvert Associates...
...And looking about to see where this essential quality is manifest Mr...
...FOR the second time the Senate has approved the increased rates on sugar and cement, which definitely kills the hope that the new tariff would The Senate's not be out of all proportion to the coun-Change of try's basic needs, as these are generally Heart understood...
...A month ago the Senate coalition seemed to have the tariff situation well in hand...
...They need to be revived and put into active operation once more...
...But we see no shadow of a reason for denying us the notice which is essential to our public work and prestige...
...We need to remember that Germany has underwritten this plan solely for reasons of expediency...
...Yet this year our name was blue-pencilled by practically all the daily papers...
...Nor does this necessarily mean "political ambitions" of the kind frequently hinted at in many sections of the press...
...widening the streets or building them on several levels...
...In talking to soldiers at cantonments, he avoided the easy fury which wins a hand for the demagogue and nevertheless inculcated courage and purpose...
...But the virtue of writing is light, not rhetoric...
...His six years in office were troubled by a shaky peseta and half a dozen near revolutions, but until the last year his ability to weather the storm was not seriously doubted...
...But the effects of the slump in Cotton prices has started no end of discussion, some of which has a bearing upon basic Unfleeced political facts...
...AS ONE step in its program for better traffic control, New York City is reported to be considering a system whereby corner lights would show red Four-Stop in all four directions at certain intervals...
...Will not the editors of our daily papers be kind enough to tell us why: for what good reasons, The Calvert Associates are considered to be different to the many other incorporated organizations engaged in public work of an educational, benevolent or cultural type ? WHETHER the cotton market has a bottom is a query few people would answer very categorically just now...
...The daily press of New York did not fail to name the Jewish Congress in connection with the demonstrations against religious persecution in Russia held by that organization...
...True the Senate rates represent something of a reduction from the schedules so generously endorsed by the House, but by the time a compromise has been reached it is safe to say that the high tariff interests will have obtained everything that they had hoped for, and a little more...
...Certainly in no other nation would dictatorship have been so calmly assumed and so undramatically preserved...
...Humanity has struck its tents again," Mr...
...They did not become invalid because the national government happened to become the temporary instrument of an organized oligarchy of fanatics and sentimentalists...
...PRIMO DE RIVERA is dead before his successor in the premiership of Spain has had an opportunity to prove whether or not the change was De Rivera for the better...
...He can find no explanation for the fact that when The Calvert Associates sent to the press of New York the announcement of its seventh annual celebration of the establishment of religious liberty in America, the press almost unanimously omitted all reference to The Calvert Associates while giving full publicity to the partial list of the patrons and notable speakers who are cooperating with The Calvert Associates in the mass meeting in the Metropolitan Opera House on March 25, the two hundred and ninety-sixth anniversary of the landing of the Maryland pilgrims...
...Tomlinson winnows pretense from sincerity in a fashion which hundreds of readers are sure to find interesting, if not authoritative...
...But as we see it Europe was upside down after 1914 with unparalleled completeness and finality...
...Taft often placed at the beck and call of the government...
...The Germans must realize, since they have their wits about them, that Dr...
...Clayton holds that the real problem is competition between producers working in a tariff-protected country and the "cheapest labor in the world...
...Perhaps "something new in history" is really happening...
...The supposition that he may wish to take a lead in the formation of conservative public opinion in the Reichstag and outside seems more realistic...
...they should be relieved of the responsibility and the temptation that goes with it...
...The writer of the present note has been a newspaperman-not merely a literary journalist but a daily newspaperman-for many years, yet he too is baffled in this matter...
...Some Drys will say: "The nation being now one of total abstainers (by law) there is no further use for private or semi-public corporate action to fight the evils of drinking...
...The cotton farmer, raising a crop which is partly designed for export sales, finds that the tariff does not protect him personally and that it "reduces the amount of dollar exchange that is available to consumers abroad for the purchase of his cotton...
...He was not a brilliant success, certainly, but the answer to that may be that his job was not a heroic one...
...IN THE current Yale Review, Mr...
...It may, therefore, well be possible that future political circumstances in the Reich will reflect the shadow of the former bank president...
...Of particular interest, we think, is a pamphlet written by W. L. Clayton, a New York broker, and bearing the title, What Price Cotton...
...Tomlinson quotes from somebody, "and once more is on the march...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 21
