Week by Week

WEEK BY WEEK Germany and Poland THE importance of the recent negotiations between I Germany and Poland does not seem to have been realized generally on this side of the Atlantic. With Germany...

...This opinion was not acceded to, although the door was opened wider to those who have legitimate dissatisfactions...
...As a matter of fact, contracts for four cruisers now under construction in private yards include figures from two to three million dollars higher than estimates for the two under construction at Puget Sound and Mare Island...
...If any man can be found having sufficient patience to read through these tomes stuffed with rhetorical monologues, second-hand science and perilous figures of speech, they should at least supply him with a knowledge of everything which the normal mechanist has to say for his theory of life...
...Its recorded career, though brief, has been devastating, and so widespread that data have been collected from all over the world...
...thus every American schoolboy knows that the cricket fields of Eton won the Battle of Waterloo...
...And, "We will reduce our naval strength in proportion to any other...
...Investment trusts have been accused of using their earnings in a boom market to sell stock...
...And soon a commercial treaty will be concluded, removing one more obstacle to the development of that friendship which would be the only satisfactory answer to the problems arising from the existence of the Polish Corridor...
...Senator Blaine, insurgent Republican of Wisconsin, should be credited with inquiring why, in view of the prohibition laws, there were any tariffs on imported liquor...
...In addition, trips of investigation were made to those European medical centres which have conducted promising work in encephalitis treatment...
...Of course he has found an admirable successor in Archbishop McNicholas, of Cincinnati...
...Both countries have made great sacrifices...
...The first is interested in "drawing up a balance sheet, such as a man of ordinary cultivation can today prepare, of our positive knowledge of the world and of ourselves, amply annotated with theories and even with hypotheses still undergoing verification...
...A Wet Tariff THE final days of the special session of Congress draw wearily to a close but even in the tedium of tariff schedule deliberations there is some inherent humor...
...We have noticed in particular the sketches of the Calverts, so interesting to those who look back upon the colony of Maryland as to a kind of spiritual heritage...
...This does not, perhaps, outline what may be called a very rosy immediate situation...
...Organizing against Encephalitis A FEW months ago The Commonweal published an article which outlined the symptoms and the ravages of epidemic encephalitis-the scourge which has come to be popularly (and incorrectly) known as "sleeping sickness...
...ment...
...He would enlarge the State Department, enter the World Court, strengthen the Kellogg pact and codify international law...
...but the Matheson commission is the only clearing house for such information and theories in existence at present...
...Perhaps that is why anything, however anomalous or irrational, which has crystallized under the name of "tradition" in Europe's seats of learning, has always seized upon our imaginations...
...Here is a work of the most far-reaching implication to the peace of the world, yet it has received only cursory attention in the press...
...Probably no other man in the world could have won so immediate and wide a hearing for that plan...
...And here now, finally, is the exposition and the defense...
...If he so decides, no one will feel that the companies have been unjustly dealt with, especially as two of them have already received contracts, each for one of the ships...
...their reward is the end of the numerous financial quarrels which have engendered so much hostility between them...
...Perhaps it was agitated by the revelations proving that members vote dry and dine wet, and did not understand there was no further need to protect an American industry which no longer oificially exists...
...but the social entity called a gentleman has altered, says Mr...
...In the confidence with which he spoke of international agreements, and in the suggestions he offered, he went as far as anyone has gone since the time of Woodrow Wilson...
...It may simply be indicated here that all observers have been deeply impressed and somewhat astonished by the trend of events...
...Hoover: Further Comment THE real strength of President Hoover's Armistice Day address was the sincerity with which it was uttered, and the impression which that sincerity must make upon a Europe not unacquainted with the man...
...Of course the importation of liquor, except for medicinal purposes, is legislated against, and alcoholic liquor for this use should not be burdened with a tariff...
...Indeed, there is substantial agreement only on its melancholy results, and the fact that it is apparently spreading throughout the world...
...And the dramatic simultaneity with which that quality has directed its manifestations is also deserving of praise...
...and we believe they typify the fairness and accuracy with which this whole work has been conceived...
...It would merely have seemed more convincing and easier to read...
...This lends particular interest to its first report, and particular value to its plan for an intensive two-year study of several hundred victims of the disease at the Neurological Institute Building of the New York Medical Centre...
...It now appears that this was actually done more than a year ago...
...What Not to Do With Money SLOWLY recovering from the recent plunge into financial abysses, the nation has searched rather diligently for a reliable diagnosis of the past and a convincing index to the potential future...
...The great majority of observers, however, seek to use psychology as the best explanation...
...Critics of this have suggested that part of the executive control ought to be lodged with the Catholic Press Association...
...Hoover is still the man who fed the starving during the great war...
...William J. Matheson, has just published a report of the ground covered thus far...
...Several factors in the creation of this psychology have come in for frank, though as yet not wholly dependable, criticism...
...Houghton Mifflin were kind enough to send us...
...At Eton, if an authority like Mr...
...As ancestors they excel Charlemagne or Alfred the Great or Napoleon...
...Here is an old man, veteran of many political battles and famed for the aggressive nationalism with which he fought out the last months of the war...
...The commission which has been directing, for that interval, the investigations made possible by the generosity of Dr...
...Boys still go there mainly to play cricket...
...and this alteration is disastrously altering Eton itself, along with the other great public schools...
...And the purpose...
...Surely the desire to prevent a recurrence of some of the miseries which he witnessed in those days has been with him since, and this is the result...
...Shearer at the Geneva naval conference...
...While the value of radio addresses remains pretty much a topic for conjecture, there is every reason why spokesmen for the Church should utilize this certainly very promising method of address...
...Good and bad characteristics are, it would seem, neatly assorted...
...the work can be done there as well as anywhere...
...Thus some of us have yearned over the sabres and steins of Old Heidelberg by which, respectively, the students' brows and chins have been cicatrized, and their heroic potative powers developed, for generations...
...There have been, of course, ever since 1915, when the first scientific record of epidemic encephalitis was made, a growing number of separate workers engaged in isolating its symptoms and experimenting in its treatsurviving American brewers who are still permitted to brew the drink that heals...
...IT IS reported that the President may refuse to grant more contracts for our new cruisers to the three shipbuilding companies which were represented by Mr...
...The translations and digests of these records form the nucleus of a library which should have tremendous practical and historical value...
...The Bishops' Meeting CATHOLICS will be deeply grateful for the abundance of news which has been made available regarding the recent annual meeting of the American bishops...
...As a result, one goes upon excursions into history, anthropology, natural science, metaphysics, comparative religion and many kindred subjects, at a pace which makes Mr...
...Drinking in German universities has been so curtailed since the war that its artistic aspects are admitted to be lost, and the Reichstag is considering a bill to make all dueling illegal...
...What a light it sheds on the quality of the Mulvahills of West Meath...
...Not pure humor, for pure humor cannot be derived from perceiving the failings of others, but nevertheless humor which will aid the digestion of the forthright...
...Bolitho, has become less individual, less self-sustaining, more of the herd...
...Whatever theory be accepted as most satisfactory, one is sure that the complexity of the financial world has been demonstrated to quite a few persons...
...One has only to read with more than customary industry...
...Certainly there is something to be said for the notion that we shall not avoid war by pretending that we can make it comfortable, gentlemanly and "humane...
...Scholarship in the stricter sense-or education in the broader one-has only begun to take an interest in the American past...
...And perhaps those scientists who insist that the cause of peace can best be served by developing all the possibilities of chemical and bacteriological warfare are on the right track...
...Traditions Wanted WE AMERICANS have been brought up humbly to confess that our education is utilitarian and unhallowed by antiquity...
...And yet it is a romantic idea...
...A rabid anticlerical all his days, Clemenceau has carried over into senility the rationalism which virtually dominated his country during the years of his maturity...
...The tenor of his activities reminds one not a little, in fact, of the Progressive campaign in 1912...
...Paul...
...It now appears that both these traditions are menaced...
...Senor Vasconcelos managed to inject into his effort a fund of political education and of constructive suggestion which any nation might well envy...
...Others are discussing the part played by foreign buyers, and wondering how many of these have been cleaned out to an extent which precludes their earnest participation in another advance...
...Events in Mexico 1 HE campaign south of the Rio Grande has run its course, although the issue is not sufficiently clear, as we write, to justify interpretation...
...The second concerns the news service supplied by the National Catholic Welfare Conference...
...It begins to look as though we Americans would have to grow some traditions of our own...
...If both prove distressing to minds which like caution and accuracy, one must not forget that it is precisely the chance to arrive at facile syntheses which is the glory and the danger of modern culture...
...What is particularly noticeable in Mexico, however, is the comparative absence of bloody disturbances...
...WHAT commends the idea, at first, is that it offers security to those nations which are most in fear of blockade, and consequently most suspicious of any effort to reduce naval strength...
...THE preliminary work, as embodied in the report, has included an exhaustive survey of the history of this strange and sinister malady...
...That a red man, a black man and a white man should have the same ancestor, that an Eskimo, a Sussex peasant and an ancient Roman should be proved to have sprung from a common stock, would not impinge upon the imagination so startlingly as that these three strongly separate types and these three completely different destinies, had one origin...
...William Bolitho is to be believed, the danger is less specific and thus more deadly...
...But it carries infinitely more hope for the future than it did before Dr...
...It is hard indeed to think of another sentence extensive enough in denotation to match it...
...The Final Clemenceau WE SHALL not review In the Evening of My Thought, by Georges Clemenceau, a copy of which Messrs...
...It may mean getting and following competent advice, based upon a thorough scrutiny of available industrial information...
...There were a number of clashes, to be sure, but the mere fact that an opposition candidate could go where he pleased and say what he liked is a most reassuring phenomenon...
...The first is the acceptance, contingent upon settlement of the financial problem involved, of the National Broadcasting Company's offer to provide a nation-wide weekly Catholic program...
...Anyhow, the Senate gravely approved, with only two minor committee changes, the whole schedule of the spirits and wine tariffs...
...The author, who had spent a considerable period collating and checking his findings, indicated the desperate need of research on this mysterious and incapacitating disease, and suggested that private philanthropy could not more finely show itself than by endowing such research...
...For the Senate has again been up to Volsteadian pranks...
...Here and there one may come upon an error of fact, or a verdict with which one does not agree, but when the usual allowances for human nature have been made the total achievement seems genuinely distinguished...
...Two immense volumes of mechanistic apologetic, which probably got themselves published primarily because the lustre of a famous name might help (as the blurb tells us) to "arouse passions and excite controversy...
...Wells seem verily a snail...
...It has always seemed to us that committee control of a news service would be impractical-that, granted adequate direction, it will prosper better without outside supervision...
...Allen Johnson is entitled to be known simply as the "Doctor Johnson" of our time...
...Matheson's humane and charitable spirit prompted this first concerted effort to meet it...
...With Germany agreeing to compensate from its own treasury the Germans who suffered from the revision of the Upper Silesian frontier, and with Poland promising to cease the liquidation of German property, a fair start has been made toward clearing up one of the ugliest situations in Europe...
...And which one of these descendants, we cannot help wondering, are the Mulvahills of West Meath oroudest of now...
...We are glad to welcome this solution of the problem...
...A new concern with our national literature, seen as something far more extensive than the work of a few New England poets, is active in the schools, and the current absorption in biography has at least this advantage, that it resurrects dominant personalities all of whom have left some imprint on the social mind...
...We expect a very lively and prolonged debate over the value of the President's suggestion as a preventive of war...
...The fear of war is the beginning of peace...
...Certainly the government would not suffer...
...It cannot be too low for us...
...American Biography ANOTHER volume (the third) of The Dictionary of American Biography having appeared, one may pause to applaud this unusually important publication...
...In the light of such developments, Dr...
...There are seven navy yards equipped to build the new ships...
...Optimistic market diagnosticians who argued that the value of stocks must increase because the producing wealth of the country is increasing have been soundly trounced by their foes and probably will not retort until "the situation changes...
...To France and Italy, for instance, it is an argument for the relinquishment of the submarine...
...During the spring there were many debates in Congress about the problem of keeping these yards in a healthy working condition...
...Now one reason why his remarks on food ships were everywhere selected as of greatest importance may be that the suggestion rises so naturally from his own experience...
...One fact emerges as a constant in all these inquiries: there is a wide divergence among even the most authoritative men as to the symptoms of epidemic encephalitis, and there are three totally separate theories, each with unexceptionable backing, as to its cause...
...The book is, however, a phenomenon which seems to invite meditation...
...Concerning armaments he said that America does not wish "one gun or one armed man beyond that necessary for the defense of our people...
...Who Builds the Cruisers...
...But how futile a venture it all is has been demonstrated perfectly by Clemenceau...
...CLEMENCEAU, it is clear, remains perennially conscious of his ambition and purpose...
...One fancies it is stated at the close of Volume I: to "attain the noblest emotion of the humanity of the universe...
...Sensible investing may, after all, be more than a matter of getting aboard the bull band-wagon...
...Give a dozen laboratories enough time and money, and they will make war so terrible that no nation would dare have recourse to it...
...There is no doubt that, given time and such an opportunity as this, the science of medicine and the dedicated workers which it attracts in such illustrious numbers, will perform a miracle in this field also...
...We are of the opinion that such a man, who would have to be exceptionally ascetic and self-sacrificing, could then render the spiritual community no little good by reducing the subject-matter to a definite number of topics and appending some clarifying comment...
...but those who have followed his career, and who know the intelligence it has revealed and the courageous self-sacrifice it has entailed, will deeply regret that ill health has sapped the energies of Archbishop Dowling...
...If he had written his book fifty years ago, it would have made exactly the same points...
...The third matter, finally, is the withdrawal from the Bishops' Administrative Committee of Archbishop Dowling, of St...
...That is reserved for next week, when we hope to summarize as much as can be learned of the Mexican situation...
...The editors have spared no pains to secure the best available contributors, and these in turn have usually made it a point of honor to consult the pertinent sources of information...
...We hope it means that our neighbor to the south has now been fed up on violence and is settling down, in a spirit of sincere desire for normal living, to the business of reme.dying its affairs-a knotty enough undertaking...
...Other families may scatter their worth down the centuries, but the Mulvahills of West Meath have chosen to concentrate upon one age, giving it one of its greatest financial geniuses, one of its supreme political idealists and one of its most radiantly human and incorruptibly honest political rulers, in a single burst of symphonic splendor...
...In both cases political philosophy occupied the centre of the stage, and the endeavor to convince an electorate contrasted strangely with the usual formalities of electioneering...
...One can only hope, with the official resolution, that "Our Lord in His great goodness may restore health and strength" to him...
...If France has no need for harassing a blockade of its own shores, and if it is prevented from establishing a food blockade on its enemy, then it has no great need for the submarine...
...It is impossible to overestimate the importance of such a dictionary...
...President Hoover can solve that problem very simply by awarding them the rest of the cruiser contracts, and at the same time rebuke the shipbuilding lobbyists in the one way they can understand...
...Though much that was determined was of a purely administrative character and so does not lend itself to comment, we wish to call attention to three matters of particular interest to ourselves...
...Senators should take care lest it be charged that they are favoring, for a consideration, those few Corner in Descendants THE statement of Miss Jean Stephenson, a Washington genealogist, that Woodrow Wilson, Andrew W. Mellon and Alfred E. Smith all were descended from "one ancient Irish family" is what one might call inclusive...
...To the world at large, Mr...
...Commenting on the influence of world gold shipments and the disturbed condition of credit, the always intelligent bulletin of the National City Bank is cheered by the thought that no important failures resulted from the decline in stocks...

Vol. 11 • November 1929 • No. 4


 
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