Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK \X7"HILE some rumors of impending improvement ' ' are current in the realm of business, the social results of the depression are of course more obvious than ever. Addressing a...
...1 HE citizens who determine the fate of France have recently developed a number of impressive peculiarities...
...If we are to have a strong, indigenous art, this must be its matrix...
...There is no country in the world where trained Catholic opinion is so articulate or so fearless on this most important matter...
...The Catholic Church, like every other democratic society, simply cannot limit its membership to "first-rate men" from the intellectual point of view...
...If the law sponsors the plan and Equity retains its control over actors and actresses, the offending drama would have to be taken as'far west as Hawaii in order to meet with favor...
...That was true as late as 1909, when America's "big four" first lifted the famous Hurlingham Cup...
...It deals with the eternally repeated allegation that the poor are "our worst breeding-stocks...
...MlSS SUCKOW makes her point by a clever and illuminating play on words...
...On the other hand, the middle-class mental defective must be very defective indeed before he is 'put away,' or even brought to official notice...
...This paragraph is written before the concluding game of the 1930 international match, but one of its outcomes may be safely predicted: it will make the public still more "polo conscious...
...Chesterton's classic (recently republished) Eugenics and Other Evils...
...Proceed without fear, favor or prejudice, use your best efforts, and apply all knowledge you have or which you can command to the end that the truth may be disclosed...
...That more and more Th M money is spent on the sport every year e °S is less important than that more and Royal Sport more peopie heartily enjoy it...
...They are not patient or trustful enough...
...Scientists: L. de Broglie, W. Schmidt, L. Delattre, A. Audollent, M. E. de Jonghe, M. Teissier...
...Blending courtesy and tact with efficiency, the American forces guaranteed for such citizens as would follow them a pleasant and honorable welcome...
...Hoffman Nickerson's contention that prohibition enforcement is a more grievous and less justified inInauisitors fraction of human liberties than the _.j , ' mediaeval Inquisition, it is interesting Old and New {n the Hght of thaj...
...This may be, in part, because the whole problem of desperate poverty is of long standing there, and theories and counter-theories of alleviation have had a correspondingly long time to develop...
...When the recent war was over, many who read propaganda and news reports vivid with the reddest kind of hate recalled with sorrow the words which Grant spoke after Appomatox and the program which Lincoln outlined for the whole era of Reconstruction...
...It is the "folks" ideal—the dominating conception of the community as bound together into almost the compactness of a family by those things in which its units resemble one another: gregariousness, ambition, kindliness, humanity...
...WE RECENTLY spoke of the conference of Anglican bishops at Lambeth, and its majority report in favor of birth control...
...His command of the army of occupation in the Coblentz sector ended with the respect and affection of millions of people...
...Every good philosopher changes his mind, but none ever Mencken throws his system overboard for anand the other...
...It must reckon with the circumstance that Tom, Dick and Harry—who sometimes cannot even read—want to get into heaven too, and that sometimes their qualifications for admission are better than those possessed by the very choicest highbrows...
...their inherent ability as at least equal...
...Mencken might properly act as the butler...
...The national pride in their prowess, however limited, was real, and gave the first incentive to the present wide publicity...
...This is the thing that is especially ours, among the nations of the world...
...It was largely because of his splendid American common sense that a fund of $3,000,000 was raised and spent to save a multitude of undernourished German children, the resources of whose parents had vanished...
...In order to forestall the recurrence of such disasters in the future, he said, industrial engineering must consider the close relationship between diminished buying power and reduced production...
...1 HE democratic reproach that polo is "a rich man's game" has ceased to be true in spirit, even if it is truer than ever in fact...
...But at all events responsibility for salacious shows would be taken from the theatre and lodged with the public...
...Hearst in the role of hero...
...INEVITABLY and automatically the opinions of Mr...
...still he must not harden his heart to the point of refusing to delay or mitigate punishment, as circumstances may require from time to time...
...AN IMPORTANT question of our time has to do with the relation of the American environment to the American artist, especially the literary "Folk" Lore artist- How is it to be answered...
...But he was likewise mindful of immediate and sometimes dire realities...
...Miss Suckow is not a major novelist, but she is gifted and honest, and by dint of taking the American locale and its inhabitants quite simply and seriously, she has done some fine work which imparts a good deal of authority to her conclusions...
...It is undoubtedly also due to the high intellectual vitality that the Church in England shows in all fields today...
...It grows out of our history, is wholly consonant with our national character, controls our lives...
...Those conclusions are marked by what may be called an astringent optimism...
...Far more likely to win favor soon is another "remedy" sponsored by Mr...
...Yet even so the situation is really not so bad as it would seem...
...Hence, their business is to mitigate, enrich, "civilize" it into the proper artistic utility...
...Since then, a number of factors have combined to promote a widening enthusiasm for the game...
...1 HE particular article which we have in mind appears in the Month for August, and is from the pen of G. C. Heseltine...
...Sociologists : Imbart de la Tour, Karl Winter, John A. Ryan, F. Dessauer, K. Schmidt, L. Sturzo...
...In doubtful cases, he should be very careful not to believe too easily what may appear probable, and yet in reality is false...
...By those who devote themselves intensively to what they call "American folk lore," by which they mean Indian or Negro folk ore, or fields of local or special legend and song...
...Green declared that employees guaranteed a certain sum each year would be in a better position to make use of credit facilities which stimulate business...
...WHATEVER may be the merits of Mr...
...By those who find in the national scene material for bitter and strident satire...
...Poets: Paul Claudel, F. Jammes, Ruth Schaumann, A. Miegel, G. K. Chesterton, Padraic Colum...
...And finally, on the question of defective mentality, this plain statement is made: "I will not question that the proportion of mental defect in the nation is rising, but it is difficult to imagine what sort of survey can show that it does so as a consequence of the greater prolificacy of the lower classes...
...If they merely continue to run away, they do it the wrong of withdrawing from it the desperately needed elements of variety, taste, creativeness and do themselves the wrong of cutting off forever their native air...
...Of late, however, the emphasis has been laid on les Americains, suspected of niggardliness on the subject of war-time obligations...
...It is just a starter to which might be added other names of people who come as near to being first-rate as the human race can now come...
...HlSTORY can afford to be mindful of Major-General Henry T. Allen, whose death on August 30 brought to a close activities which alA r- j ways manifested the noblest American A (jood...
...Mencken joined up, the present hole in Catholic intelligence would be filled up with a protruding bulge...
...it is the latter who do not measure up...
...The 42,000 spectators who took the supremely inconvenient trip to the middle of Long Island for the opening game give assurance of that...
...but an utterly uncompromising disciple of Nietzsche, such as Mr...
...Mencken has been during two decades, simply cannot marry without going into catastrophic intellectual reverse...
...You are an unprejudiced impersonal instrument whereby the government is seeking the true facts of a given situation...
...We have arranged them in groups of halfdozens, neatly classified for purposes of reference...
...contention to ob...
...There are to be formed (a) a panel of 200 persons supplied by the American Arbitration Association as representatives of the public...
...Witness the ousting of William Randolph Hearst...
...Mencken have lost caste...
...The effect on the prestige of France in this country is nothing short of disastrous...
...and if the present drift continues, even ordinary peace-time relations will be badly strained...
...Add six men of affairs from Mr...
...Even now the thought of the United States going to war in the future to protect French civilization against an enemy is as inconceivable as perpetual motion...
...Wilfor the liam Green declared that "for more Jobless than a year many people in practically every community have had the blighting hand of poverty laid upon them...
...Foremost in time, if not in potency, has been the drive and skill of the American international players, who have acquired a virtuosity and a prestige beyond anything dreamed of in all of polo's previous history...
...There was Eugenics in nothing geographical in our criticism, England— since we were concerned with the conAddendum tent of the resolution and not with the country in which it was formulated, but it is pleasant to find occasion for giving England a mark, and a very high one, in the opposite column...
...Philosophers: Maurice Blondel, J. Maritain, R. Guardini, Joseph Geiger, J. Chevalier, M. Grabmann...
...But from over here it looks exactly like a scene in opera bouffe, with Mr...
...Well, as Mr...
...Decency In several respects it seems the best idea yet advanced...
...Green—the five-day week and the curtailment of working hours...
...Let your investigation be painstaking and searching, fair and impartial, thorough and comprehensive...
...Is a French desire incompatible with the wish of some other country...
...Whether they pursue it here or abroad, they are missing that first requirement of art, that the artist shall grow from his own roots...
...Frank Gilmore outlined the plan which the Actors' Equity Association will Equity and suggest to the New York legislature as Theatrical a substitute for the existing Wales law...
...Such a record may well be the envy of soldier, statesman and citizen...
...Nevertheless it has the advantage of not having been hard to draw up...
...It was not only forty-five years ago, when America first entered the international lists, that interest in polo, and a knowledge of it, were the property of an exclusive Long Island sporting set...
...That is, she is hopeful of our environment, even if critical of our aesthetes and intellectuals...
...There is no "folk" ideal really characteristic of America...
...To the Parisians this action may have seemed something like poetic justice...
...b) a committee of nine—actors, dramatists and producing managers—to symbolize the theatre...
...Chesterton says, the people are always right...
...It is to the effect that while some Catholic ecclesiastics are shrewd and others charming, the Church as a church is an intellectual mess and is steadily growing worse...
...There is none where the wrong social economist who tries to head off social misery by heading off population, or the wrong-hearted eugenist who has no understanding of the quality and value of human life, receive so straight an answer...
...It is a glorious sport, in which pace, power and courage are at their highest premium...
...Their physical stamina emerges as actually superior to that of their social betters...
...there is, instead, something equally positive, which the American passes over only to his loss...
...Dengler, "be fair, be honest, be truthful, be fearless of facts even though they do not support your theory...
...Problems and circumstances change, but men's minds run along very similar channels...
...Addressing a large audiNo Joke ence at Syracuse, New York, Mr...
...Harry M. Dengler, field supervisor, a certain parallelism to those laid down for Inquisitors by Bernard Gui, a fourteenth-century hunter of heretics...
...The General had an eye for the sacredness of intangible traditions, and saved the French from the blunder of destroying old Ehrenbreitenstein—which, incidentally, whole generations of poets had loved...
...Another answer has been gaining substance and significance...
...Now certainly a few admissions are in order here...
...Miss Suckow does not deny that it has limitations and dangers, that it has tended to bind the individual too tightly, to press upon him irritatingly and even cruelly...
...Scarcely a dozen really first-rate men subscribe to its ideas," we are told, despite 1,800 years of unrelieved propaganda...
...Five persons selected from (a) and two chosen by (b) will convene as a jury whenever anything like a man-size complaint is advanced against a given production on the score of public morals...
...She finds the former developing its own underivative character and strong, unique qualities according to the soundest social laws...
...Conviction of the play would be followed by immediate withdrawal, no appeal being granted...
...Resentment of Washington's stand may be human, but it really should not be conceived of as politics...
...It was General Allen who, more than any other man, revivified those old ideals...
...The proportion of mental defectives among the poor is well known...
...Schopenhauer could talk pessiGreat mism and still eat sausage with gusto...
...Advocating "steady, continuous employment with an annual income for wage earners," Mr...
...By , llTr „ ,, those who flee abroad from our "standand i«olks ardization," our "barrenness," our "materialism," to live the "leisurely and civilized life," in some European country, preferably France...
...Let the love of truth and mercy, the special qualities of every good judge, shine in his countenance, and let his sentences never be prompted by avarice or cruelty...
...In its lucidity and humanity it is worth being set with Father McNabb's writings on birth control, or Mr...
...Gerard's list...
...serve in the instructions given to several new prohibition agents at Washington, September 2, by Mr...
...This charge it examines from the viewpoint, not of Christian morals, but of biology, economics and inherent intellectual and ethical powers...
...But, to narrow the issue down to sheer mentality, we may further concede that if Mr...
...The mistaken goal of our aesthetic philosophers, she says, is the "folk" ideal...
...As already introduced into several industries, it has the advantage of limiting costly labor turnover as well as of freeing workers from the uncertain ups and downs of a daily wage...
...Its most recent proponent is Miss Ruth Suckow, writing in Scribner's for September...
...But she steadily maintains that by every law that our escaping artists recognize or invoke, it is their only real hope...
...With all its faults this composite list is, after all, an array of possible guests to a dinner at which Mr...
...He should be a brave man, ready to face death if necessary, but while never running from danger in cowardly fashion, he should never be foolhardy in rushing into it...
...An increasing number of colleges have more recently fallen into line by actively promoting the game, and this, too, has found its echo in the press...
...It is worthy of the great past...
...In spite of all this, however, an editorial in the most recent issue of the American Mercury contains an item of interest...
...Then, of course, there are the Italians and the British, who require constant watching...
...Quite apart from their utterly French normal interest in the welfare of their j country they have a passion for national success which occasionally strikes the observer as slightly (if also dangerously) humorous...
...He should be unmoved by the entreaties or the bribes of those who appear before his tribunal...
...It is difficult to overestimate the bad impression created—an impression less of a powerful foe than of a quaint cattishness incompatible with everything we have learned to know or love as the French mind...
...nor, on the other hand, should he stubbornly refuse to believe what may appear improbable, and yet is frequently true...
...Man for man, they are seen to produce fewer economic parasites than the middle classes...
...The names of the jurors will not be made public, but the decision reached by the majority of the seven will have a marked effect...
...There is much to be said for the plan...
...An INQUISITOR, said Bernard Gui, should be "diligent and fervent in his zeal for religious truth, for the salvation of souls, and for the destruction of heresy...
...Naturally a great deal depends upon the character of the jurors and ability to withhold publicity from the press...
...But adoption depends so entirely upon the attitude of corporations and their executives that any immediate reliance upon the idea seems quite futile...
...IvEPLYING to an editorial which appeared in America, Mr...
...The army has helped, also, since polo is played by officers and often by enlisted men...
...Then down with the other country I One is prepared for this with reference to the Germans—traditional enemies who came so near to winning in 1918 that the remembrance of it is still unpleasant...
...Quietly, and with no sign of malice toward the theories he is devastating, the writer builds up his demonstration of the unchallengeable soundness of the everlastingly challenged poor...
...Critics: Henri Bremond, Josef Nadler, Hilaire Belloc, Hermann Bahr, Rene Doumic, Charles du Bos...
...they are not, in a word, original enough...
...1 HE following list of distinguished living Catholic intellectuals is a little haphazard and perhaps arbitrary...
...Novelists : Sigrid Undset, Paul Bourget, F. Mauriac, E. von Handel-Mazzetti, S. Kaye-Smith, Franz Werfel...
...Artists: Vincent d'Indy, Maurice Denis, Paul Thalheimer, Georges Desvallieres, Eric Gill, A. Cingria...
...spirit...
...In all your investigations," said Mr...
Vol. 12 • September 1930 • No. 20
