Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK certainly the cause of peace and disarmament is one that every sane person has a heartfelt interest in furthering, the modern world is of such a complex organization that even...
...It has always been sensible and profitable to sell reprints at a low price...
...It may affect the future much more profoundly than the success or the failure of the Soviet government's Five-Year Plan...
...But new books to sell at a dollar—or even fifty cents—simply had no place in the business scheme of things, even if the publisher might regard them as tributaries to advertising power...
...True, Distinguished hig fifst name ig Harold but he jived Service t^at down definitely at Viestraat Ridge, Belgium, when with some others he crossed an exposed terrain under fire to bring water and rations to his company—Company C, 105th Infantry, Twenty-seventh Division...
...It is perhaps the most spectacular confrontation since John Wesley's mother refused to speak to John Wesley's father for twenty years because he did not accept the claims of the banished and papistical James...
...Christian opposition to divorce and to temporary unions has not been an arbitrary rule imposed for the purpose of making people unhappy...
...Dreiser occasionally lets a normal, decent character flicker for awhile in his tales, but only so rarely and palely that such characters reflect little on the total impression...
...Claudel sought new scenic effects...
...The high p, , motives of these men, their heroism, . and their enterprise, as well as their Hennepin rjcn simplicity, make their records the best reading we have about the primitive wildernesses of our continent and the Indians...
...When the respectful silence is finally broken, it is broken by his wife's unequivocal statement in opposition...
...Whether the prayers are said by the Pope himself and those present at his daily Mass in the palace of the Vatican, or 626 THE COMMONWEAL October 22, 1930 whether they are said by a humble priest in Africa, Haiti or in the slums of New York or New York's cathedral: everywhere throughout the world, at almost every minute, Mass is being said, and will continue to be said, and the prayers will follow for Russia...
...Why not let the images suggested by poetry and sound be exhaled like smoke and be caught for a moment on a screen, gradually to disappear and give place to other visions...
...Why, in a word, not make use of the cinema ? . . . Why not use the screen as a magic glass in which all sorts of images and of suggestions, more or less dim in outline, may pass, move, join or part...
...We cannot honor too highly the strength of character which has preserved these convictions intact for their possessor under the peculiar difficulties which her situation suggests, nor the courage which prompts her to make them public...
...years and centuries may pass in apparent frustration of her work...
...The Roman question seemed to have become insoluble...
...This is recalled to us by the recent unveiling of a statute to the Franciscan Father Hennepin in Minneapolis, on that city's main arterial highway, Hennepin Avenue...
...Then to triplicate the •p...
...1 HAT publishers and sellers of books have not always enjoyed complete immunity from the microbes of depression is, of course, more than Quandaries natural...
...She does not mention her husband by name, but when she says that "there cannot be two types of Christian marriage," she does not need to...
...WEEK BY WEEK certainly the cause of peace and disarmament is one that every sane person has a heartfelt interest in furthering, the modern world is of such a complex organization that even the T00 most laudable ends must be attained Many only after consideration of the indirect Men effects of their attainment...
...Prince Albert de Ligne, present ambassador to America from the country from which the humble missionary friar came, delivered the principal address at the civic ceremony...
...He was the first white man to enter what are now the limits of Minneapolis...
...Firms which have spent a great deal of money promoting the work of their best-selling authors normally regard them as property assets...
...tors, perceiving that building to be a synagogue, forbore to pursue...
...1 HE curious fashion in which life runs counter to the probabilities in so many ways, was again borne in upon us with the announcement of the New premiere in Berlin of Ambassador Paul Adventures Claudel's drama, Christopher Columof Columbus bus...
...The situation had not been settled by any unusual action by the Pontiff, but by canon law, which, on the condition of the Catholic education of any children born to the couple, allowed no possibility of exception...
...complication, his name is Reilly...
...The statue of Father Hennepin in the habit of a Franciscan and holding aloft a crucifix, is not only a fine testimonial to the spirit of the missionary, but also to those men in our generation who do not let that spirit go unrecognized...
...Yet it was solved...
...Simply that the position of the Church was clear and unchanged...
...That in itself is marvelous...
...The case in hand is the administration's announcement of its intent to reduce the personnel of the navy by 4,800 men...
...Dreiser's work, most normalminded Americans must regard with nothing less than horror the idea of the epitome of our literary expression being pointed out as stories of the struggles of a bell-boy who commits murder, the unrelieved misfortunes of weak women and the arrogance and unpleasantness of virtuous ones...
...On the contrary, its championship of the indissolubility of marriage has been based on the idea of giving men and women innumerable chances of beautifying their union by achieving harmony and that contentment of mind and heart that enables them to develop to their capacity...
...Of course, Mr...
...1 HERE was something a little less than laudable in the recent enterprise of the Italian press and certain Roman correspondents of the AmerConditions iCan press which reported rumors and to a counter-rumors and inspired revelations Sacrament about the special dispensations being arranged in the Vatican to cover the marriage of Princess Giovanna of Italy and King Boris of Bulgaria...
...Dreiser is one that familiarly excites the barnyard realists to cries of "Philistin...
...Sacrifice and prayer are the chief instruments of religion, and because the Church relies upon them first, foremost, and always, her victories are assured...
...W ITH unperturbed pace, deliberate speed, majestic instancy, the Wickersham Law Enforcement Commission continues its deliberations...
...in no other way could the life of a book be prolonged so indefinitely and the popular audience for good literature be expanded so far...
...October 22, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 627 1 HERE is no page of American history, we believe, more interesting and exciting than the exploits of the early Catholic missionaries...
...1 HIS custom of united prayer after low Mass was instituted by Pope Leo XIII...
...Take for instance the matter of cheap books...
...Inge's paper as merely a challenge to her husband...
...For the administration to throw out of work such a large number of men who would have little prospect of finding new employment and who immediately would enter into competition with men now unemployed, would be not only inhumane, but also a flagrant betrayal of leadership...
...An impression was somehow created in the popular mind that, to use an expressive journalese phrase, the hand of the Pope was being forced...
...WHAT paradox is this!—a modest candidate for political office has been found...
...Inge's paper...
...The bishops and clergy and the laity have been called upon "to unite themselves most earnestly and intimately with this desire and injunction of the Sovereign Pontiff...
...Even so the major ills which of Book now afflict them may be said to have Buyers been poisoning their organisms long before last November, though the virulence happens to be more evident just now...
...It is a deeply Christian document, voicing with dignity, understanding and a moving sincerity the traditional ideal of marriage, on both its practical and its mystical side...
...But—and this is the sad truth— there have been other gobblers-up, and the sin if it be one is not new...
...The trade reports that book sellers are profoundly hostile to the idea, that publishers who failed to succumb to its charms are smiling all over, and that its protagonists are thinking hard...
...JdUT it is unfair to regard Mrs...
...But the schedule went wrong...
...Marriage," she says, "signifies a great deal more than that two people should live together with the sanction of the state...
...And now the dynamo is set, so to speak, in a new direction...
...And it is a good deal more important...
...The Ecclesiastical Review in its current number publishes the Pope's decree, so that our American clergy will now take action...
...Its mighty current will flow for the accomplishment of another great desire of the Church: "that the persecuted children of Russia may have peace and freedom of worship...
...Besides the strangeness of the French poet's finding his first audience in Germany, which we know is readily explained, and which in no way do we wish to imply is unfitting, there were in the production additional matters for wonder...
...His narrative being one which he could not force into the small compass of the dramatic unities, he resorted to a device, the idea of which he has described in the current Yale Review: xN A musical drama whose characteristic is the transformation, under the action of time, of disconnected events into one melodic line, why should we admit immobile scenery...
...Dreiser success, or applaud the bestowal upon him of so notable a distinction as the Nobel prize...
...Wickersham has most recently admitted that the commission is still trying to decide what its investigations should cover on the subject of prohibition, and indicated that he and his ten colleagues would devote the greater part of their time from now until December to the prohibition question, bravely ending: "If prohibition proves unenforceable, this commission should say so...
...News despatches tell us that, during the Yom Kippur services just concluded, a group of nationalists of the historic German city— members of the Stahlhelm, a fire-eating and intensely anti-Semitic organization—fell foul of a group of Communists...
...We do not use Dean Inge s...
...so we await with interest some further announcement which will reveal how the responsibilities of this leadership are being met...
...Meanwhile another ill is prominent...
...It will jr tj soon hold the world's record for sustained flight without coming to earth, torceable jts rare contacts with our mundane sphere being limited to cryptic messages and promises of keeping going until exhausted...
...Cited for gallantry for this, within the month he was cited again when he was shot while aiding a wounded comrade...
...The congregation presumably went on with the atonement services...
...Her reward will come in their proportionate power for good...
...To behold them gobbled up in one fell swoop can be neither pleasant nor encouraging...
...The sexton of the synagogue detached himself from his devotions to shepherd the forty into a small inner room where they would be safe, and then telephoned for the riot squad...
...1 HE disconcerting report comes from Stockholm that Theodore Dreiser is being prominently mentioned as a possible winner of this year's Nobel prize in literature...
...Bishop Kelley pontificated at the dedicatory Mass...
...Soon there will flow forth out of millions upon millions of souls a current of supplication...
...We refer to the action taken by the Pope in decreeing that throughout the world the prayers after Mass, said by priests and people together, are in future to have for their main intention the salvation of Russia from the terrible evils now afflicting that unhappy country...
...While there are many things in American life we could wish improved, still we are not so annoyed by them that we could wish Mr...
...It means, or should mean according to Christian concept, that two people have decided to weld together all the power for good that each possesses, and share this force with the whole world...
...This fact is now plain once again...
...Presently the police arrived and scattered the encompassing foe, and the Stahlhelm marched forth from sanctuary, free and unhurt...
...Recently tendered the Distinguished Service Medal, he requested that, "as I don't want to capitalize on my war record," the conferring of the medal be deferred until after he has finished running for the nice, safe peacetime job of sheriff of Hackensack, New Jersey...
...It will from now on never cease to throb and pulsate throughout the world, wherever and whenever low Mass is said, until its petition has been granted...
...Movements, values, clusters of forms and appearances continually decomposed and recomposed, this is all the cinema and it is also all music...
...It seems to me, therefore, that these two arts are naturally destined to contract an alliance, the formula for which America, better than any other country, might help the artist to discover...
...Bitter and painful may be her temporal defeats...
...Those who retain a repugnance for murder, robbery and that new kind of blackmail called racketeering must feel the next thing to impatience with those prohibitionists who lack the basis of wisdom which Saint Augustine defined as considering all things in their right proportions October 22, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 625 1 HE public debate between Dean Inge and his wife on the subject of Christian marriage suggests the saying about a man's foes being those of tj T , his own household...
...at any rate, there is no record of their protesting or interfering...
...For the expression of the finest nuances of feeling, memory and thought, why not utilize the infinitely subtle harmony of shadows...
...We vaguely recall something about the mentalities of twelve-yearolds as the standard of movies producers, which would leave ample room for producers of books for adults...
...These incidents supply a rather melancholy commentary on the leadership by fact-finding experts that we were promised, and they are rather a sad reflection of a present obsession on that cuckoo's egg of prohibition that was laid in our basket of laws...
...The author—sharing Tolstoi's and some others' sense of the incongruous behavior of actors forced to sing in conventional opera, yet desiring for the great theme he was presenting the magic, the evocations of music —solved his problem by the use of orchestral accompaniments to lines spoken or chanted by the actors, orchestral comments on the inarticulate emotions of the principals when the drama is tensely silent, and at other times the articulate comments of choruses...
...The reorganization and decommissioning of vessels is a highly technical matter, allegedly dictated by the terms of the London Naval Treaty, and unlike the discharge of the men, cannot be subject to question by other than specialists...
...The quality of mercy is not strained...
...While the incident admirably illustrates the steadfastness of the Church, which is often bewildering to outsiders because they see it from the differences and hurrying changes of their points of view, and project their confusions as discoveries, it also illustrates admirably the Church's attitude toward marriage...
...Always the prayers after Mass were raised for the Church's liberty, though the vast majority of Catholics no longer consciously remembered for what purpose the dynamo of spiritual power had been set going...
...and the vicHonor to Israel Shall It Be Dreiser...
...c ** 0 roes in any invidious sense, tor Mrs...
...It is possible, moreover, that this threat to the smaller publisher of more individual tastes will be limited by the moving-picture link...
...The nationalists broke ranks and fled for sanctuary to the nearest open building...
...Challenger Inge's position, as defined in her article in the Sunday Express, comes a great deal nearer to coinciding with our own beliefs than does her husband's, as defined in his recent book, Christian Ethics and Modern Problems...
...While admitting a certain turgid, dogged impressiveness in Mr...
...but the triumphs come at last...
...Pope after Pope followed Leo, each a "prisoner of the Vatican," each protesting against the lack of proper and necessary liberty of action as head of a supernational Church, and each in other ways doing what could be done to secure the restoration of the Church's rights...
...Why not open the door of that indistinct world where ideas are born from sensations and where the phantom of the future mingles with the ghost of the past...
...A bas le Philistinl", we cannot help expressing a liking for the realism of pleasant front yards, and quiet homes, courageous men and women, and some cultured ones...
...Whether princess and king, or bobbed-haired girl and green young man, the Church does not hastily join them, but seeing them assume the responsibilities of continuing the race, dignifies the importance of their mission with a sacrament...
...Not satisfied with his ventures upon new worlds of musical effect, Mr...
...We merely cite the old proverb to express our sense of the dramatic situation which is created by the publication of Mrs...
...In the case of the men, however, we wonder what the administration will do to put into practice its widely heralded admonitions to the country's employers that, at this time of business depression and unemployment, it is a patriotic duty to keep on the job those who are at present employed...
...It would be tragic that people should feel that they could enter into marriage either as a cold-blooded or hot-headed contract, ignoring the spiritual values of the union...
...More than sixty years passed on...
...the work finally is done...
...While our attiude toward Mr...
...an obsession further revealed in Chief Justice Hughes's recent report on the congestion in our federal courts, and the fact that of the 35,000 criminal cases there pending, 20,000 are prohibition cases...
...Being the first Pope elected after the overthrow of the temporal power, and finding his direction of the universal Church gravely hampered by his lack of independence, he ordered that certain prayers should thenceforth be said by the clergy and the faithful after low Mass, mainly for the restoration of pontifical independence and the settlement of the Roman question...
...Anthony Falls, and companion of La Salle on some of the latter's most famous adventures, was conceived and executed by the Knights of Columbus of Minnesota in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Father's coming to Minnesota...
...If our standards of honor are not maintained within the home, Christian character as a whole must deteriorate...
...George Doran, is buying up prosperous authors through a plan which ensures book publication, magazine serialization, eventual reprinting in a chain of newspapers and valuable movie contracts...
...The world at large is so impressed —or possibly so buffaloed—by her distinguished husband that it received without a murmur his plan for the general social and state recognition of two kinds of marriage, temporary and permanent...
...Those who had a hazy idea about such matters, suggested knowingly that this was just another case of persons with influence being able to obtain irregular and special favors...
...The high ideals toward which we have been striving since the coming of Our Lord, not alone in marriage, but in our general conduct, private and public, must inevitably be lowered...
...W E DO not know whether the Jews of Frankforton-the-Main would take it kindly to be called good Christians, but we are at least sure that their recent example is in conformity with the loftiest Christian counsels...
...This business of supercompetition may be legitimate but the effect upon other publishers must be obvious...
...When truth finally caught up with rumor, what was revealed...
...Wellsubstantiated rumor has it that Mr...
...It has been abolished...
...The latter, over a hundred strong to the formers' forty odd, enjoyed the good fortune that attends the heavier battalions throughout military history...
...Hearst, through his trusty agent, Mr...
...The project of honoring Father Hennepin, discoverer of St...
...IN THE midst of the tremendous world debate concerning Russia, there has occurred one event which has passed without notice in the press except Prayer for a few Catholic journals, yet it may and well be that it was of far greater conRussia sequence to Russia, and to the world, than the great hubbub over the Soviet's dumping of wheat on the market abroad or its manipulations in the Chicago grain pit...
...They supposed, no doubt, that the work they had so well begun would be finished even better, and ranging themselves in easy attitudes outside, they waited for the fun to begin...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 25
