Week by Week

...We do not here pronounce upon the necessity of the beating...

...The utter baselessness" of these guesses did not mar their efficacy as incentives to sell...

...W HAT Catholics may learn from their Protestant friends is also suggested by Bishop Berry's article, though he himself does not formulate the suggestion...

...In the last two years in New York, it has recently been revealed by Albert W. Whitney of the National Casualty Underwriters bureau, that while casualties among grown persons from traffic accidents have increased 35 percent, and among children under school age, have increased 15 percent, these accidents for children of school age have decreased 24 percent...

...with such a geographically divided and far-flung empire as that of Great Britain, ties of affection and good-will in the long run will be more binding than restraining laws...

...Like them, these guilds, whether owned by doctors or laymen, would be private enterprises operated for private profit...

...Can we imagine the Churchman—to bring the matter home—advocating this principle if there were a question of special privilege for a Catholic foundation in the United States because it was financed by "the Pope at Rome" ? W HATEVER the outcome of the present imperial conference in London, we must be impressed by the spirit in which this congress of nations meets...

...Its author, Mr...

...Shuster's journey was an invitation received from the Vereinigung Carl Schurz to visit Germany, confer with its great leaders, and examine at first hand its more notable institutions and various social movements: economic, political, intellectual and religious...

...This is divided into three parts: both the Amendment and the Volstead Act are to be reDemocratic Battle Sad-Eyed Finance pealed...

...The platform adopted by the party convention can, as a matter of fact, be accepted as a shadow of 1932 pronouncements...

...This is a plausible but rash assertion which we believe the Churchman would not support on reflection...

...These patrols—usually honored pupils extremely serious and proud of their duty, and wearing distinguishing arm bands or caps—are credited with doing the most good, while training by lectures and movies in the lethal perils of traffic is held responsible for a large measure of the effectiveness of the patrols...

...It is the very practical business of getting Life-Saving across streets safely which, under vari^j . ous auspices, is being taught in the Education , , r T, u ? *u i schools, lhe result or the work seems to be apparent...

...The Free State desires that the last vestige of the old imperial control be loosened for the paradoxical, and therefore typical, reason that with this loosening the bonds will be made stronger...

...the right to control the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages is to be restored to the states...

...the Catholic properties in overwhelming proportion were the creation of the alms and the actual handiwork of the faithful...

...Medicine The American Medical Association convention recently produced a powerful minority report favoring such organization around the centres furnished by existing county associations, and pointing out that the alternative might very well prove to be the commandeering of the whole profession by the government...

...Evans Clark, director of the Twentieth-century Fund founded by E. A. Filene, of Boston, has made a detailed study of the incomes and the disproportionate medical expenditures of some thousands of typical families of the poor and middle classes...

...current trend in the modernization of education we hear about, has our wholehearted support...

...CjrREAT interest attaches to the activity of Democratic hosts in New York state, if only because Governor Roosevelt is one of the likeliest of existing candidates for the presidential nomination...

...There seems to be no doubt that the federal government can do something in this important matter, even though during twelve years it has been attempting far too much...

...The resulting financial activity was a severe blow in itself to recuperating industry...

...It would seem to propose that a native people are not to be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their own labor and love on an equal basis with the institutions financed and introduced by foreigners...

...If Catholics, for instance, would organize to study, understand and apply the sociological teachings of Pope Leo XIII, as laid down for American Catholics in the Reconstruction Program of the United States Bishops, and in the Bishops' Joint Pastoral Letter, and would link up their own activities along that line with the reasonable and approvable efforts of others, we would soon be well on our way toward a real reform of some of the worst evils which are now afflicting society...

...George N. Shuster, managing editor of this journal, on October 4, for six months' stay abroad, The Commonweal, A which already owes so much to his vigCommonweal orous and creative editorial judgment, Voyage to sav nothing about the inestimable benefits which have come to it through his writings, must console itself by the thought of what it will gain through his absence while doing its best to make up for what it is bound to lose...

...and the New York Democrats are to provide legislation which will regulate the traffic within the commonwealth and "definitely and effectively banish the saloon...

...To return to the ancient status in regard to liquor would be to ignore the true implications of the temperance movement...

...McGilligan...

...A liquor commission having much the same powers as the Interstate Commerce Commission would afford the kind of cooperation no state ought willingly to ignore...

...Stocks, securities and produce all sold off noticeably, and the psychology in charge was morbid...

...Clark mentions as a tentative yearly premium for an average family— $150—one cannot but feel that the certainty of securing for this sum a year's complete medical and hospital service for the entire domestic group would cause a run on Mr...

...Bishop Berry must also know that the Catholic school is a rock of offense in the eyes of a great body of his fellow citizens...

...We might learn that there are far more friendly and informed observers of our Church than we are apt to suppose when we permit ourselves to be annoyed or angered by misunderstandings or opposition...

...WlTH the departure of Mr...

...Shuster will continue to write for The Commonweal from abroad: "whenever there is something to discourse about and the normal joys of sightseeing do not interfere," was the way he himself expressed the matter...

...Just one clause is likely to be substantially different and that is the declaration anent prohibition...

...We might also learn that the highly practical, and often really admirable, manner in which non-Catholics, Christians and Jews and unbelievers alike, put into practice their deepest principles for the benefit of society in general furnishes an example which Catholics should learn to follow, particularly along lines of cooperation with those others in all ways which do not compromise or deny their own religious principles...

...WHAT We May Learn from Our Roman Catholic Friends, is the title of a short but important article written by a retired Methodist Learning bishop, Dr...

...When one considers the actual sum which Mr...

...Political rumors of the most exciting kind were believed in Wall Street, where the news all but elevated Herr Hitler into a German dictatorship, abrogated the Young Plan and mobilized a French army...

...The decision in question has been rendered by a district court of the state of Coahuila, in the case of the Archbishop of Saltillo, and declares that the house owned by the Archbishop, in which he lives, is really his own property, and not the property of the state...

...Bishop Berry is to be thanked and congratulated for a notable lesson in true cooperation...

...He will not, however, confine himself to Germany, as Austria, Italy, France and perhaps England will also be visited...

...To begin with, it is a questionable statement of fact...

...The warning must have proved effective, for since it was uttered there has come an important judicial decision which it is not probable would have been handed down had there been grave public evidences that stubborn individuals or groups were disobeying their own Church authorities, as well as the authority of the state...

...Patrick McGilligan, Foreign Minister of the Irish Free State, and General Hertzog, Premier of South Africa, all the members of the board agree that the matters before them are purely economic...

...Within a fortnight the leading tabloid of the city has printed such a story...

...By pooling the resources of groups of physicians, and cutting down the present disastrous overhead, as well as by certain other features peculiar to this plan, they would make it possible to give the public a scientific service now only dreamed of, at a moderate price...

...Intrinsically there is the same reasoning in this case as that of Mr...

...The Barnes Committee, assembled for the purpose at the President's suggestion, found that, while conditions throughout the world could not be termed utterly ideal, commerce was tugging along at a good pace considering the maladies of the past year...

...The result is a set of blue-prints for the general creation of "medical guilds" patterned upon the famous Mayo Clinic, and the various other less spectacular but efficient group clinics operating throughout the country...

...And there are many such ways...

...Next, the Churchman would seem to advocate an extraterritorial right of property for religions which admittedly are alien to the majority of the people of Mexico...

...DURING the past week business seems to have been almost its normal self...

...With this intelligent work on the pedestrians bearing such excellent results, we recommend sentences of full courses and credits in safe driving, to be taught in the jails, for those potential maimers and murderers who drive through traffic lights or otherwise violate the safety regulations...

...It would thus constitute, in effect, an insurance against sickness—that desideratum which is universally admitted, and which has baffled all efforts thus far to bring it about in anything like a complete or satisfactory way...

...W HAT this "moderate price" would come to in real dollars and cents would be fixed, in Mr...

...CjUR conviction on the subject of censorship has always been that it is defensible and necessary in theory, but unsatisfactory and dangerFor a ous in practice...

...1 HE Archbishop's warning was rendered necessary by certain "scandalous and discordant efforts which have lately been made, a year and a half after the Church and state crisis settlement has been reached...

...Even so, the price is worth paying if the purchase actually means a growing awareness of world conditions and realities...

...With the public and the medical profession alike dissatisfied with the prevailing conditions, we cannot see why Mr...

...But apparently the shock of the fact that they were actually doing so unsettled and unnerved everybody...

...Clark's membership blanks that would exhaust them in a day or so...

...The distribution of this cost, however, would be different, since the fixed price spoken of above would be a yearly payment or premium exacted from every subscriber to the guild, sick or well...

...Except for Mr...

...Existing figures which he cites seem to show that the figure per patient treated would be less than half the average per patient treated by private practitioners now...

...Another intelligent plan gets 594 THE COMMONWEAL October 15, 1930 an airing in the current Atlantic Monthly...

...The primary cause of Mr...

...Joseph F. Berry, and from recently published in the Binghamton Friends Sun...

...W E HAVE expressed before this our interest in, and sympathy for, the various projects for reducing the high cost of illness in our time and Group country by the organization of medical Practice in service units of one sort or another...

...No doubt, Bishop Berry's own experience with and interest in what might be regarded as the technical aspects of religious organization and discipline, such as financing, the problems connected with church discipline, and so forth, quite naturally led him to study such features of the Catholic Church...

...The photograph depicts thugs and hold-up men at the moment of capture: that is, bloody, disheveled and semi-conscious after their beating by the police...

...But we are too well aware of his manifold interests, and of his happy faculty for expressing these interests, not to be certain that our pages during the coming months will be richer and more profitable than ever before...

...If, as is more than possible, that story becomes the seed of a similar criminal monstrosity somewhere else, that paper will be morally responsible for it...

...The properties of the Protestants are of their own creation and cost...

...One point selected by him for approval is of greater general concern than matters of organization and financing, for when Bishop Berry extols "the vigilant care it [the Church] gives to the religious training of its children," he is well aware, of course, of the fact that as matters stand today the Church can only give such vigilant care through maintaining at vast expense of money and energy its own school system...

...While it was obvious that Progress oniy an armistice, not a true treaty in of peace was effected by the general Mexico agreement that led to the reopening of the churches, events since then, and more particularly the growth of a spirit of good-will and conciliation which fosters reasonable negotiations, give substantial cause for hope that fundamental questions may in time be approached and dealt with equitably...

...We make an even stronger protest against the news story which prints the details of abnormal and perverse crimes...

...He has told them that, "once the Pope sanctioned the terms of reconciliation" between Church and state, "within the limits of the Catholic conscience it is not right for any Catholic to rebel and constitute himself a judge of the supreme authority of his Church, for obedience to the Church is not limited to dogmas but extends to the fullest extent to administrative discipline...

...Two causes would combine to keep the premium charged at approximately this level: the reduction in overhead costs, referred to above, which would follow from the pooling of offices, staffs and equipment...

...The decision sets a precedent which may have very important consequences affecting the application of the laws relating to the nationalization of church property...

...October 15, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 593 The New Imperialism those of the Catholics came largely from the government which, in a way, has merely taken back its own," says the Churchman...

...We find ourselves in substantial agreement with him...

...It may even prove beneficial to the Methodists, and other religious bodies, in Mexico, whose property, it was recently announced, would be seized...

...Clark's scheme, by painstaking actuarial investigation...

...In Philadelphia, where school children street patrols were not allowed, the death rate went up 15 percent...

...Russia, too, came in for its own—though it should have been obvious months ago that the Soviets, committed to carry through their grandiose plan or go into hiding, would try to sell wheat in the open market for what it would bring...

...But the open markets were nevertheless in full retreat...

...Such details are not needed as deterrents to the normal majority, and they have a dreadful message for other deformed imaginations, as is seen by the fact that one of these pathological outrages is usually followed by others...

...Clark's plan should not be tried out...

...While it is yet problematical whether the strict letter of this suggestion will be accorded in the political sphere, oddly enough in the economic sphere it is the central government that is, so far, most emphatically stating its leanings toward the loosened bonds of free trade...

...Governor Roosevelt is known to have disagreed in a measure with these dicta, and to have insisted upon favoring a modicum of federal control...

...and the periodical medical examination which would be insisted upon for all subscribers, as a preventive, and hence a sound economic, measure...

...There are ten of these features, ranging from the Church's "remarkable esprit de corps" to the loyalty shown by Catholics "to the historic doctrine" of the Church...

...After making it quite clear, with courteous firmness, that there are some things in the teachings and policies of the Catholic Church which as a Protestant he cannot accept, Bishop Berry proceeds to enumerate "some admirable features which Protestants would do well to imitate...

...Here are the representatives of 450,000,000 people, five self-governing dominions, a prince of India and the Foreign Minister of the Irish Free State sitting down together in the same spirit of cooperation as a meeting of a board of directors of a great industrial plant...

...we do say that these triumphant exhibitions of what the strong-arm squad can do when it really puts its muscle to it, can have no conceivable effect except to brutalize the sensibilities of the mass of readers...

...However, if the power Bigger lay with us, we should be willing to sink Blue-Pencil our scruples for once, and limit with an iron hand the use (it is generally by the tabloids) of a certain type of news story and a certain type of police photograph, which afflict the reader with increasing frequency...

...For Mr...

...It is to be hoped that the example set by him in really studying the spirit as well as the exterior system of the Church, as a result of which study he finds so much to recommend in the Catholic Church, may be followed by others who at present are offended, or anyhow puzzled, by those very features which this informed student finds admirable as well as imitable...

...COMMENTING on this intention of the Mexican government to extend its confiscation of church properties to the Protestant buildings, beginning with the Methodists', the Churchman, Episcopal, protests that this would be more unjust than was the government's confiscation of Catholic property...

...The general approval in Mexico of President Rubio's message to the Congress pledging respect for religious liberty, was extended also to the emphatic warning given to certain overzealous, or perhaps chiefly political, Catholics, by Archbishop Ruiz y Flores, the apostolic delegate...

...He finds them admirable and recommends them to his fellow Protestants...