Communications
COMMUNICATIONS THE PALESTINE REPORT New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—I note with surprise the article of Vincent Sheean on The Palestine report, featured in your issue of April 30. While the...
...It took advantage of its power to place upon the statute book an act of intolerance as gross as the Act of 1649, but it outlawed Catholics and Anglicans instead of Unitarians, Jews, Quakers and unbelievers...
...The connection does not seem clear, unless on some a priori assumption that being a Catholic Calvert, father or son, must necessarily have been intolerant, with which assumption we are not here concerned...
...Saville's letter Father Cuevas also writes me that he accepts the statements it makes as to the donor and the label with these objections: "(1) It is not a genealogical record...
...For all this he adduces not one iota of proof...
...The "white gate" to which she referred, was to her the gate of death...
...My sympathies with Zionism are non-existent," and that he resigned his position with the North American Newspaper Alliance during the Palestine riots "because I thought my newspapers would be hurt by printing my despatches...
...It is a weak document, from which one gathers that on the whole no one was really to blame —or no one of any social position...
...You may have noticed that Father Cuevas suggested that, as the Codex had not yet been named, it should be designated as the "Codex Saville," in honor of Mr...
...This measure was not complete in theory—and could not be, since the open profession of atheism must seem as treasonable in a Christian society as the profession of religious belief now seems in atheistic Russia—but it was certainly complete in fact, so far as Quakers, Jews and Unitarians were concerned...
...Sheean's language as regards the Zionists recalls very vividly his testimony before the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry in the course of which he declared: "I am a non-Zionist...
...Without entering into an apology for the Zionist movement, the inconvertible facts are that in the twelve years of the Zionist experiment Palestine has made such progress economically and culturally as it has not made in twelve centuries, and that this is due to the efforts of the Jews who received virtually no help from the government...
...Sheean's story is that the Zionist results in Palestine are ignoble...
...To argue that because toleration in 164.9 was not the same as toleration in 1930 it is intolerance appears to be a claim much like the following: since anesthetics in 1830 were not the same as anaesthetics in 1930, they were really eye-openers...
...that Britain has consistently betrayed the Arabs in order to benefit the Jews...
...The matters (A) and (B) referred to by Father LaFarge were pointed out by me not as reflecting on Calvert as a Catholic but as disclosing in him and in his enterprise both a Catholic and a Protestant complex which clearly explained the Act Concerning Religion which imposed death and confiscation on all who were not Trinitarians...
...The intemperateness of Mr...
...Marshall H. Saville, in recognition of his services for the preservation of the ancient history of the Latin-American countries...
...and the native police went over to the mob...
...Mary F. B. Judkins...
...The principle of each act was the same...
...Despite his profession to the contrary, Mr...
...Sheean's sudden volte face after differences with the Zionist Organization of America, over a proposed lecture tour, it is difficult to reconcile their publication in a responsible organ of public opinion such as your own...
...Calvert himself was a Catholic...
...that the land question is the root of the entire matter...
...Who then was to blame...
...Luke and the higher British Officials...
...The Intelligence Service, we are told, was incompetent...
...Marshall does not appeal at all to history but to legal abstractions which, so far as we can see, have never been actual in history...
...2) it does not refer to caciques or priests...
...Sheean's memory is curiously short lived if he cannot recall the testimony offered to the Commission on November 16, by H. C. Luke, chief secretary of the Palestine government, that from August 17 to August 23 he was seeing members of the Zionist executive and the Arab executive in an effort to relieve the tension...
...Has Mr...
...THE ROADMENDER Claremont, N. H. TO the Editor:—It may interest your reviewer of The Roadmender, by Michael Fairless, to know that this was merely the nom-de-plume of a young English girl, who was a High Anglican...
...While the views expressed by Mr...
...Even on that showing one would have thought that some blame belonged to Mr...
...Father LaFarge cannot justly impute to me an a priori assumption that, being Catholic, the Calverts must necessarily have been intolerant...
...Sheean to be sympathetic to Zionism in order to render an impartial appraisal of the report...
...When one recalls that this is the same grand mufti who was arrested for complicity in the riots of 1921, jumped his bail and fled the country in order to escape serving sentence this latter-day attempt carries a suspicious import, to put it mildly...
...Saville has written to me that in the collection of the Heye Foundation, which includes the Codex, it now bears this label: "Codex Tetlapalco on native paper...
...The loyalties have been observed: when other public schoolmen are 'in a tight place' it is not good form to 'let them down.' These commissioners have even extended the mantle of their charity to the Arab leaders, dignified persons of old family...
...3) most of it is not of post-Spanish times...
...It seems highly regrettable that prejudice and innuendo should be represented as fact by one who in the face of actual conditions is determined to give a clean bill of health to everyone except the Zionists...
...Sheean, afflicted with poor memory, did possess, however, the gift of clairvoyance, it seems...
...And yet a ghastly massacre did occur: Jerusalem was in the hands of the mob for several days, and in the outlying country Jews were slaughtered by the hundred, and their farms destroyed...
...AMERICA'S OLDEST BOOK New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—As the editor of the publications of the United States Historical Society allow me to express our appreciation of the generous notice given the latest volume of our Records and Studies, in The Commonweal of April 23, and the paper it carries, by the Reverend M. Cuevas, S.J., on a pre-Columbian codex recently added to the collection in the Museum of the American Indian in this city...
...4) it is not about 1530 but from 1442 to 1536...
...The grand mufti, like Mr...
...Sheean will occasion no surprise to those who know Mr...
...It is not necessary for Mr...
...What I say here will reply sufficiently to the remarks concerning myself with which you honored me in your editorial of April 23...
...The Act Concerning Religion was enacted in 1649 by the unanimous vote of a council and legislature largely Protestant...
...Bernard G. Richards...
...Having seen Mr...
...Ought they not have foreseen what would happen when the Arab press became rabid ? Are they not responsible for maintaining an efficient intelligence service, and a police which will do its duty...
...Sheean forgotten that his eminence Hmin El Husseini attempted to leave the country, just before the riots occurred, but was prevented when the French government refused him a visa to Syria...
...All this he rounds out with the contradictory statement that the same Britain which, one paragraph above had betrayed the Arabs, at the instigation of the Jews, is not a slave, and May 14, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL will not be led by Jewish influence, to witness the Inquiry Commission's report...
...that the Palestine administration and the grand mufti had not the gift of clairvoyance...
...Brailsford, a distinguished Socialist and member of the Labor party, would have every reason not to desire to embarrass the present government, and yet he writes: "The report on the responsibilities for the recent massacre will not help our good name...
...5) at any rate it is not Tetlapalco but Tetlapulco...
...He adds that the Codex was a gift to the Museum from the wife of Mr...
...In regard to this Mr...
...George G. Heye, its chairman and director...
...Both claims belong, in my opinion, to the fiction of history...
...Thomas F. Meehan...
...J. M. Kenworthy, M. P., and Colonel Josiah Wedgwood, M. P., and such outstanding organs of public opinion as the London Times, Manchester Guardian, New Leader, the Statesmen, Spectator, among others...
...that in a land populated by some seven hundred thousand Arabs, only 2,000 land transfers have taken place, for which the Arabs were paid highly inflated prices...
...By far the greater number of the Calvert settlers were Anglicans and Protestants...
...that the Arabs have benefited from this rehabilitation of the country...
...Probably a genealogical record of caciques or priests, from post-Spanish times about the year 1530...
...and (B) that his father had obtained the charter from a Protestant king...
...This is not the kind of report which will promote a higher level of capacity among British officials abroad, nor will it raise our reputation, that we should take so lightly a pitiful and tragic failure on the part of a British administration...
...Marshall seems partly right and partly wrong in the contentions he advances...
...Such religious toleration as there was in Maryland, and the condition of religious liberty ultimately established in her constitutional order, was owing, I think, to the familiar consideration that because of the great variety of religious conviction and thought within her borders the application of the principle of the extermination of heretics by Protestantism or Catholicism could be prevented only by establishing religious liberty for all...
...I have always expressed the view that intolerance as a divine right was asserted universally by the one Church which embraced all believers down to the Reformation, and that the principle of intolerance has characterized Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Catholicism...
...MARSHALL REPLIES New York, N. Y. TO the Editor:—The Reverend John LaFarge, S.J., in his letter in your issue of April 16, states as follows: "Mr...
...The fact in the case is that the Maryland colonists (not merely in the Act of 1649 but in all their official declarations up to the time that an immigrant Puritan minority assumed control of the government) established a measure of toleration on the basis of religion unparalleled in American or even European history...
...This was not the first massacre that has occurred under the British flag in Palestine...
...But it is highly important that he should not invalidate his own case by conveying the impression that he is an agent of the grand mufti...
...That is a highly respectable conclusion, worthy of these public schoolmen...
...It was approved by the local governor, who was a Protestant, and confirmed by Calvert in England...
...Charles C. Marshall...
...The Editors...
...that the government knew of the Arab propaganda accusing the Jews of designs upon the Arab holy sites, without taking any steps to nail the lie...
...It is not my intention at this time to examine the findings of the Commission's report which have been scored as a weak document and unfair to the true situation in Palestine, by such representative personalities as Lord Cecil, Viscount Chelwood, Lloyd George, H. N. Brailsford, Lieut...
...Marshall finds a connection between the Puritanical features of the Act of 1649 and the two long-preceding facts: (A) that Cecilius's father had returned to the religion of his ancestors...
...that one-half of the revenue of Palestine is supplied by the Jews who are one-fifth of the population...
...With these remarks, we think that the discussion must be considered definitely and permanently closed...
...Roman Catholics, that it was the result of Calvert's Catholicism...
...All of which, coming from so distinguished a historical authority as Father Cuevas, will, I am sure, be of special interest to students of our American antiquities, and to all your readers to whose attention you have called the discovery of this oldest Mexican historical Codex...
...The burden of Mr...
...She died many years ago, and dictated the final chapters of the book from a bed of suffering, shortly before her death...
...The rabble, no doubt, and a few newspapermen...
...By 1680 the Protestant majority had very largely increased...
...Protestants will claim, I presume, that all of religious tolerance that happened in Maryland was the result of an overwhelming Protestant majority...
...The deduction in the case is not that a conception of religious toleration was first put into effect by the Maryland colonists, but rather that these were the first to practise an attitude toward members of other faiths such as now prevails in the United States...
...May I quote the view of H. N. Brailsford, writing in the New Leader of April 4, on the Inquiry Commission's report...
Vol. 12 • May 1930 • No. 2
