Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK T TNTIL the report, now completed, of the League ^ of Nations Mandates Commission on the Palestine riots of last year is published, which will be several weeks from now, official...
...More recently other exiles have come back into the Spanish fold, and one thinks that the country is earnestly seeking to adopt a governmental order similar to that of Belgium...
...That city's telephone traffic engineer has been reading The Forsyte Saga, and simultaneously (it would appear) pondering possible names for a new exchange...
...We strongly suspect that it was through Father Hudson that Brother Joseph's decision ripened into fact...
...whose trouble, indeed, is not that we fall too often into sin, but that we are too often blackjacked into virtue—let these, Mr...
...BROTHER JOSEPH DUTTON'S career is nearing its close...
...SOMETHING should be said about Bobby Jones...
...It is to be expected, however, that the Declaration sooner or later will have to be considerably amended...
...It is a psychological fact, though a most ungracious comment, that for the imagination's purposes, half as much would go twice as far...
...1 HE Lay Retreat Movement, apparently just discovered by Mr...
...When he wins it is no longer news, and when he loses it is not a sport upset but a scientific curiosity...
...He never claimed to be a thinker but tried hard to remain a poet...
...and then ensued a great deal of earnest identifying...
...But to date nobody has found out anything much more specific than that there are gangs and rackets...
...Humdrum existence—making money, chatting with friends—no longer satisfied him, and after he had come into the Church something constantly urged him to seek out a work of heroism...
...Their dependence, until the Jewish national home is thoroughly established is, and must be, not any representative governing body such as is normal to western communities, but the promises of direct help and special protection from the British government embodied in the Balfour Declaration...
...Beyond that there was little unanimity of opinion, some favoring a new constitution and others advocating a return to the old...
...He had been a captain in a Civil War regiment...
...His reply, just published—that there has been no stoppage of Jewish immigration, but that it must be "determined by the absorptive capacity of the country"—will beyond doubt be construed by his questioners as a favoring gesture to the Arabs...
...Scrutiny of Lingle's affairs revealed the opportunities which now confront the bright young man who goes in for crime news—tips of several varieties, cronies in gangland and on the police force, the ignorance of one's employers...
...He saw the last hours of the famous missionary, stricken with the ghastly plague...
...I HE universal Church daily offers especial prayers for the well-being of the Sovereign Pontiff...
...The retreatants would arise at noon, imbibe a couple of Manhattans before a hearty breakfast, followed by a service of ribald songs...
...The trouble is not merely that everything that can be said has already been said The to the point of satiety...
...If in addition the League Mandates Commission actually advocates a "constitutional," that is, presumably, a parlimentary, regime, it is hard to see how the Balfour Declaration can endure at anything like its par value...
...Damien's Molokai was then talked about everywhere...
...it is also that Impredicable there is a certain difficulty of approach Jones inherent in the subject himself...
...The consequence is that Hackensack is to have an exchange called "Galsworthy," so that, for one ticket-taker in Grand Street who did not recognize the author's face, there will be an indefinite number of New Jerseyites to whom his name is a household word...
...The party lines are drawn so tight that running an independent is much like telling the family you will run the town yourself...
...A night-club hostess would be in charge of Mr...
...He went down with a friend to see the riackensack performance, and either because he was Makes absent-minded and had forgotten his Amends purse, or because he was prudent and chose not to spend money unnecessarily, he requested the doorman to pass them in...
...The order for the rest of the day and far into the night would be in consonance...
...The number of addresses he delivers, all of which demand care lest some misconstruction be laid upon this and that word, is remarkable...
...That means concessions, compromises, protection...
...And it is simply too much for our money...
...We do not recall the exact words of the reply, but it was pitched to the same note of ironic incredulity as the classic "And I am Napoleon Bonaparte...
...Now, at long last, Hackensack comes forward to pay the debt of courtesy to the distinguished writer which America then incurred...
...One knew that at the time and could since Unsettled observe almost breathlessly the swift n . currents which all but carried public " opinion to extremes...
...We cannot take it in...
...There have been times when one wondered if the quality was as good as the reception...
...Advertising had almost convinced Chicago in us t'iat t^ie metropolis of the Middletv» ,. .. West was no worse than any other town Meditation , , . „ . , . , ¦', , (and it really isn t) when the news or the Lingle and other killings spoiled everything...
...Mencken feels, would "do a lot of good to multitudes of suffering men...
...Nobody was more deeply impressed with the situation than Father Hudson, editor of the Ave Maria, who had long before sent aid, in the form of ecclesiastical equipment to Damien...
...But Reinhardt has always triumphed over such doubts by his success in evoking what was best in contemporary poets and actors—the fundamental test of a director's greatness...
...The imagination cannot really keep up with such a prodigy of skill and stamina, and after a while it stops trying...
...He has created a throng of diverse enchantments, magic worlds born for an evening, made of colored light, rhythms, human voices and faces...
...Hope seems to reside chiefly in the possibility that the gangsters will some time get themselves reduced to two, whereupon the familiar drama first enacted by the Kilkenny cats may be staged in the vast stadium to the delight and edification of all...
...Virtually all the impressive theatrical artists of modern Germany have learned from him...
...1 HE Zionists have opposed the measure just as determinedly, since the Jews are outnumbered in Palestine by something like six to one...
...He will almost beyond question win the American amateur this fall...
...That a man no longer in the prime of life should have dealt so resolutely with all these is an extraordinary phenomenon...
...Mencken says, make another kind of a retreat as antithetical to the Manresas of the country as hell is to heaven...
...but it is no longer possible to get into a frenzy of excitement over what he has done...
...He is twenty-eight years old, and has held the world's major titles twelve times since he turned twenty-one...
...Three days, a week of this regime, Mr...
...Father Tabb, Charles Warren Stoddard and others had immortalized the leper island...
...In fact that Thor of "^r> Baltimore waxes so enthusiastic over Mencken's the idea that he proposes—see The Manresa Way of Escape in the American Mercury for July—to adapt the method of Loyola to the cure of his favorite bete noire, the Babbitt...
...The doorman demurred...
...Politically speaking, Chicago is so nearly divided between two parties that elections can be swayed by lawless elements in control of enough votes to swing the decision...
...These have been offered with especial fervor For Our during recent days, owing to reports Father, that Pope Pius was in ill health...
...We noted some weeks ago that both British and American Zionists are outspoken in their charges that Britain is hedging on those promises as much as she dares to...
...TRIBUTES to Max Reinhardt on the occasion of his twenty-fifth anniversary as a director have come from pretty nearly everywhere...
...Galsworthy," he protested...
...But what...
...So far in this fabulous year, he has won three of them over again: the two British championships and the American open, in which he played the most brilliant round ever recorded in a tournament...
...Infirm, almost blind and worn out by eightyseven years of active life, the man who Damien's went ^a^ a century aS° t0 assist Father c Damien among the lepers of Molokai has now been brought back to Honolulu for medical care...
...The recent suspension of 2,300 immigration permits into Palestine was made the subject of challenge to Lord Passfield, the Colonial Secretary, by a deputation of British Zionists...
...It the Pope has for some time been noted that he shoulders so many tasks with such vigor as to have aroused long since the fears of his associates...
...Most trying of all have been the great undertakings of his reign—the inauguration of Catholic action, the numerous canonization proceedings, the settlement of the Roman question and the subsequent argument with Mussolini, the conflict with l'Action Frangaise and the trials incident to the status of the Church in Mexico and Russia...
...But let the majority of us who, lacking the temptation, are perforce exemplary...
...and to him was confided that sublime mission of service and sanctity which all the world has envied...
...r RESH supplies of murdered Chicago gangsters have helped out conversation just when it was beginning to flag...
...Accordingly Henry Bidou's tribute seems pertinent: "He applied not a formula but an infinite number of formulas, according to circumstances, or the works he was interpreting, or the suggestion of his own fancy...
...The admiration and gratitude of the faithful will, undoubtedly, be reflected these days in the increased fervor with which petitions will be offered throughout the entire Christian world for the continued health and renewed vigor of our Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ...
...But I am Mr...
...As to the institution of a "constitutional regime," that sounds like the representative parliament for which the Arabs have been insistently clamoring...
...The legend that has grown up around this young giant of the greens differs from all the other sporting legends of our ballyhoo-ridden times in being true...
...CerManager by tamty tne man wno started life as a A , . poor boy in western Germany and who Acclamation r ,. ; . lL , . :,.£,, now lives in the proudest castle in balzburg is proof of the fact that the world pays what it applauds...
...Mencken's retreat...
...The conduct of General Berenguer has been exemplary for sanity and patriotic idealism...
...The newest dramatic writing has, it is true, served a different master, and Rheinhardt's work is definitely bound up with the neo-romantic protest against naturalism...
...What is certain is that a drift toward republicanism was apparent even among supporters of the monarchy, like M. Sanchez Guerra...
...H. L. Mencken, has received his official endorsement...
...W HEN Mr...
...She would have with her a corps of dancing girls, waiters and bartenders, and a booklegger offering Rabelaisian printed matter...
...The reasons why Brother Joseph went to Molokai are not, however, so mysterious as they may seem...
...He fails to state if these are to be drafted for 314 THE COMMONWEAL July 23, 1930 certainly he must realize that at present his Babbitts, who need look neither long nor hard to discover all that he proposes to give them, would not willingly join his pilgrimage...
...However, it is p , . known that the Commission's investigations have led it to a much severer criticism of Great Britain's policies, before the Jewish-Arabian clashes occurred than was expressed by Britain's own body of inquiry, the Shaw Commission...
...WEEK BY WEEK T TNTIL the report, now completed, of the League ^ of Nations Mandates Commission on the Palestine riots of last year is published, which will be several weeks from now, official secrecy will Britain in surround the document...
...That things remained fairly tranquil may have been due to a stalemate among the military factions, General Anido favoring a new dictatorship and his opponents sponsoring nothing more drastic than a constitutional monarchy...
...July 23, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL PRIMO DE RIVERA'S departure from the scene left Spanish politics more than relatively awry...
...Stevenson had written his stirring defense of the missionary...
...The League investigators have evidently come to the same conclusion as was reached by most informed opinion last August: that the withdrawal from Palestine garrisons and police depots of their normal armed strength was responsible for the scope and violence of the rioting, if not for its outbreak...
...The report is also said, on excellent authority, to touch upon the Wailing Wall controversy, and, further, to embody a recommendation that a "constitutional regime" be instituted in Palestine...
...At any rate, his trip to Molokai was an expression of American Catholic idealism in just the same way as contemporary missionary effort in the Orient voices current aspiration and courage...
...The recall of M. Santiago Alba by Alfonso himself is extremely significant, since this enemy of the dictatorship and refugee in France was regarded by all sides as the sine qua non of a peaceful settlement...
...He is alike taken by the book and impressed by the phonetic correctness of the author's name...
...Bobby is widely loved because he is genuinely modest, because he mingles a boyish intentness with the artist's grim obsession with perfection, because he is a model of sportsmanship...
...Thus his hypocritical congressmen who vote dry and drink wet, his "political bosses, newspaper editors, chain-store magnates and other evil men" who are constantly beset with temptations may be left to holy houses, there to give themselves to plain living and high thinking...
...As to the first—the legal division between hostile religions of a spot sacred to worship in the history of both—it will be interesting to see what specific suggestions the published findings make on a matter which probably cannot be peacefully compromised...
...Efforts by the King to unite political leaders in favor of some definite program led, at least, to the discovery that even the most conservative among them opposed a new dictatorship...
...England's proverbial talent for "muddling through" seems here to be offered a test case of unusual and serious difficulties...
...Physicians have, of course, pretty well diagnosed the fundamental disease...
...Galsworthy visited us, a few years ago, his play, The Mob, was being put on in Grand Street...
...and he not only revealed to the world the forgotten genius of Biichner but kindled anew the creative activity of Schnitzler and Von Hoffmansthal...
...Pertinax, in his remarkable book on the Roman question, draws a particularly graphic portrait of the Holy Father, who insists upon maintaining personal contact not merely with the heads of the Sacred Congregations and the administrative bureaus but also with the clergy and laity of all lands...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 12
