Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK "JUDGING from statements made by Dr. Clarence •* True Wilson before the Senate Lobby Committee, it seems correct to say that the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition ...
...In 1906 the famous Anglican Cistercians settled there and revived the monastic traditions which had been dormant for 500 years...
...Indeed the deep-laid schemes of these sinister folk included getting the consent of the Pope "for all Sisters of Charity, all nurses, all the inmates of nunneries, to register and to vote, with the expectation that they would make it unanimous for a son of the Church...
...it must have been with a sigh of relief that they saw Lloyd George's Liberals at least abstaining from participation in two recent votes of confidence...
...The result is pretty evident: a lobby which represents a small fraction of the citizenry is going to be up against something more difficult than the ridiculously hypothetical electoral schemes of the Pope, or Dr...
...Nor were Catholics the only plotters...
...in his death France has lost a spiritual leader and a patriot, who felt it his duty to remain in Rheims through all the horrors and perils of war until, at the very end, he was removed by the French government...
...In this centralization greater cooperation can be had and that vital factor in any publication—the subscription list—raised to the point where much-needed advertisement must follow as a natural sequitur...
...If anyone but college students had done this, it would have been lese-majeste...
...But what of the Caldey buildings which were heavily mortgaged...
...Felix Warburg is more significant...
...Surely when differences are forgotten, these eternal instances of friendship will remain...
...it was aimed directly at the upbuilding of a sound and wider circulation for all its members...
...Cardinal Lugon is dead...
...the great mass of "news" and the flood of "interpretative" articles in the press are so thoroughly self-contradictory as to inspire no confidence whatever...
...and to relinquish the declaration would be from the viewpoint of British imperial prestige unthinkable...
...Anticlerical governments honored them with decorations...
...Hence, when the Colonial Office recently withdrew immigration permits from more than three thousand Jews, permits which the Palestine administration had already approved, it was not remarkable that Jews the world over should have seen in the action a concession to the Moslems...
...The All-India Moslem Conference on Palestine, in April, declared roundly against permitting Palestine "to be used as a dumping ground for Jews of the entire world," and asked for the revocation of both the Balfour declaration and the British mandate...
...The Monks ^ut lt 1S meet tnat a^ should realize r f i j what it is and should help it with prayer...
...Clarence •* True Wilson before the Senate Lobby Committee, it seems correct to say that the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Morals Unholy has ^or tne second °f its chief objects YTT defending the United States against the machinations of Rome...
...Van Dyke's ancestors...
...the result was that unemployment in England jumped up nearly 50 percent...
...Neither the Zionist nor the non-Zionist group seems to expect any results from the new commission which the MacDonald government is sending to Palestine "to investigate land and immigration questions...
...Yet Cornell undergraduates have done it, and done it very cleverly...
...After the general election, the Labor victory was so precarious that political prophets were safe in prognosticating hard sledding for the new government...
...This under a government pledged to find jobs for everyone...
...American Protestant as well as Catholic laymen contributed munificently to the restoration of the University of Louvain in one case and of Rheims Cathedral in the other...
...And in his person, as in Cardinal Mercier's, is summed up that extraordinary American generosity which, without ostentation, has made possible the restoration of France's mutilated artistic monuments...
...giving workers a rounded human life cannot destroy art if one's definition of a rounded human life includes art...
...They did as they were bidden and for a year have been chanting, ploughing and watching at Caldey...
...But they are heavily in debt and not yet securely established...
...The result has been a growing belief among ignorant Indians that the British raj has ceased to exist...
...Both requests were necessarily disregarded: to establish the parliament (which has been throughout not so much an Arabian desire as a symbol and a challenge) would be to relinquish the Balfour declaration...
...Imagine the Socialist howls had a Conservative government faced the same circumstances...
...They wrote elaborate letters to the leaders of the Republican party, in the government and out, inviting them to attend a dinner to be given in honor of a founder of up-state Republicanism, one Hugo N. Frye...
...There are unconfirmed rumors of negotiations between Mr...
...But, after all, things are heading for a point where no Methodist can run qua Methodist either...
...It was then that the Holy Father advised the Belgian Trappists at Chimay to make the necessary effort...
...The naval conference turned out only a half success...
...In addition, the indefinite holding up of immigration is said to deprive the Jewish communities of eastern Europe of their only hope of escape from increasing economic misery...
...1 HE day of the innocent practical joke is not yet dead...
...This has complicated the situation considerably by giving rise to what might well be called "private" riots, the most important being those between Moslems and Hindus and between Indians and Burmans...
...The British have been very careful not to play into the nationalists' hands by severe measures of repression...
...The editors of the Berry Patch column of the Cornell Daily Sun turned the trick...
...In 1914 they became Catholic to the last monk...
...It is going to face the fact that the more than fifty million Americans who belong to no church —plus a good many more millions who belong to some other church—are becoming frightfully weary of everything that Dr...
...British Zionists are threatening to agitate for the repeal of the mandate...
...Art being only the expression of the frustrated lives of artists, he explains, the stimulus for it disappears with the full and developed existence made possible by a communized society...
...We shall enjoy watching the outcome...
...We would point out to M. Eisenstein, in passing, that he has begged the question...
...Yet the need for placable measures is clearly imperative...
...June ii, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 147 INDIA continues to indulge in riots, apparently without organized plan and with remarkably little violence, all things considered...
...The good news leaked out, and in spite of the cold silence of most of the daily press, there has been considerable Homeric laughter over the whole episode...
...MacDonald will undoubtedly be allowed to pull Tory chestnuts out of the fire of events until that fire shows signs of blazing less hotly...
...He cites the improved conditions of labor under Bolshevism, and triumphantly parallels it with the almost complete disappearance of interest in the theatre...
...Of course it turned out that Mr...
...Editorial offices will doubly welcome a new edition of the Catholic Press Directory, and Catholic writers will gain new encouragement in announcements covering the short story contest and awards...
...Dacca, Bombay, Lucknow, Dharasana have all seen extensive picketing, salt riots, processions and speech-making...
...Louis Lipsky, president of the first group, should feel that the political interference with Jewish immigration constitutes reason for citing Great Britain to the League, and depriving her of her mandate...
...Ecclesiastical statisticians have asserted, moreover, that all signs of growth have disappeared...
...MacDonald and the Mahatma, which might result in an offer of dominion status—an offer which would certainly weaken the nationalist position...
...The cancellation on political grounds of projected immigration which had been declared right and necessary on economic grounds, is generally held to be serious violation of 148 THE COMMONWEAL June 11, 1930 Great Britain's promises...
...But the conAssembled vention did more...
...Frye was a completely fictitious character, existing only in the minds of college humorists...
...One would have thought that in this age of careful public relations experts and tiresome Hugo N. high seriousness, it was impossible to Frye: Sturdy set people laughing by a public hoax...
...Cardinal Mercier died too soon after the bitterness of the war to have forgiven entirely the enemies of Belgium...
...It would have ended in disaster if the charity of the earl of Rothes had not provided a new shelter for the community at Prinknash Park, Gloucestershire...
...The Afghan frontier, the "port of entry" for Russian agitation, has continued to be the seat of serious guerilla warfare between the tribesmen and the British, the latter centered at Peshawar...
...To these sundry temperate remarks, the spokesman for the League of Divine Origin appended not a few statistics to prove that his organization is on the job...
...Vice-President Curtis, Secretaries Wilbur and Davis, Senator Grundy, Representative Ruth Pratt, Chairman Huston of the Republican National Committee and many lesser lights replied, declining, but expressing their pleasure at the honor done to one of the founders of the party, "that sturdy patriot who first planted the ideals of our party in his region of the country," as Mr...
...This was followed, in May, by a conference in London between government officials and an Arab delegation from the Holy Land upon the project of establishing there a parliament in which the real proportions between Arab and Jew should be duly represented...
...But the whole situation is so confused that no prophecy is safe...
...But financial support from non-Catholic quarters stopped, as was inevitable, and a period of struggle followed...
...Under the Soviets, it appears, there are no difficulties because there is no art...
...1 HERE are, however, a few details which seem to have been overlooked in this analysis and declaration of war...
...r ALESTINE is actively in the news again, this time as a result of the gathering disaster in India...
...Or, it is possibly more correct to assert, against the machinations of all other religious groups...
...MacDonald that it should have been so...
...No one realizes all this better than the Tories...
...This under a regime pledged to anti-imperialism ! Thus has fate played with Mr...
...It is perhaps natural that Mr...
...1 HE world war made two prelates of the Church into what can only be described as international and non-sectarian heroes...
...They are known to be sympathetic with their coreligionists in Palestine, and they are growing more and more restless as Gandhi's nationalist campaign progresses...
...c • *. prevail in Russia...
...Means for this end were found in backing the work of a Circulation Vigilance Committee to be carried on as an integral part of the work of the Association...
...It was lucky for England Poor Mr...
...Cardinal Lugon was blessed with enough years of life after the armistice not only to have forgiven his country's enemies but to have made of his Cathedral a haven for pacific moods...
...as it is, one can be heartily amused and pray that more undergraduate humorists will invent equally innocent and fun-provoking diversions...
...we do not yet know if it was even so much...
...When he pleads that further investigation cease "because Palestine has already been overinvestigated," and urges that the immigration ban be lifted at once "for suspense is very acute," one feels the real gravity of the situation, and the cruel definiteness of the Labor government's dilemma...
...Warburg, as chairman of the Jewish Agency, speaks for Jews of every shade of opinion, and is himself distinguished by particularly liberal and benevolent views...
...India is in a mess, and has to be kept peaceable by force...
...In the New York World Sergei Eisenstein, the famous film director who screened Ten Days That Shook the World, and The Cruiser Potemkin, makes this claim, evidently with tremendous pride...
...Wilson is headed back for the styx where he belongs...
...The forces which supported Al Smith—we seem to recall that they comprised several million citizens —were characterized by Dr...
...Art is, in essence, the product, not of frustration but of highly developed individuality...
...Finally the meeting was signalized by its pledge to enter whole-heartedly in the commemoratory ceremonies which the George Washington Bicentennial Commission has planned for the observance of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of our first President...
...Wilson represents...
...And if the present situation does not change suddenly, Mr...
...MacDonald, and the Tories are delighted...
...Only the southern tip of the great peninsula remains relatively peaceful...
...The membership of Bishop Cannon's church, throwing in all branches and even "heretics," is less than 10 percent of the country's population...
...The problem of what the Indian Moslems, The Jewish- 70,000,000 strong, will do in the near Moslem future is a vital one at the British Dilemma Colonial Office...
...y Twenty-five years ago Caldey Island was almost entirely a desert: all the human habitations there were limited to the ruins of a fifteenth-century priory and to the lighthouse on the last weather-beaten headland to the west...
...Modern politics in general are so wofully dull and devoid of color that such a hoax is almost a public service...
...The opposition of Mr...
...Other features of the association's work, we are pleased to note, have been continued...
...Convinced that Catholic willingness to serve the nation must find some other outlet than office-seeking—that, indeed, it cannot be too distinterested or too modest—we shall find plenty of comfort in the sure knowledge that Dr...
...England, by contrast, has had exceedingly good luck in having him as Prime Minister through the crises of the last few months...
...But we readily accept his thesis that communizing society will tend to destroy art, and his observation that this has already begun to happen in Russia...
...Wilson as "the worst combination that ever got together to scuttle the ship of state," led by villains who covered up their "diabolical designs by lecturing the Christian people of the land on tolerance...
...The sensation was tremendous...
...Yet it is a question whether we would Aesthetics of a^ endorse their abolition by the method /-, • that, characteristically, is beginning to Communism -i • r> • tt j ^i...
...Meanwhile Conservative economic policies are gaining ground, even in the Labor camp...
...The trade-union bodies are beginning to favor imperial preference and protection of home industry...
...Cardinal Lugon IF NO purpose other than focusing attention on Catholic journalism had been served, the success of the twentieth annual convention of the Catholic Catholic Press Association in Asheville Press would have been assured...
...Unemployment almost as bad as it has ever been in history, India driven into even more open revolt by an unfriendly and hard-handed Tory imperialism, the London conference further handicapped by an intransigeant, Conservative admiralty...
...This under a Prime Minister pledged to reduce armaments and improve British foreign policy...
...As it is, all the things have happened to Labor which Labor was declaring would happen to the Conservatives, and Labor has been unable to do much about it...
...In October the Wall-Street crash heralded a period of world-wide depression of which we have not yet seen the end...
...Patriot indeed, that it would be impossible to perpetrate a public hoax...
...It is worth while, however, to call attention to one exception to this rule, an article by a German correspondent named Colin Ross, published in the Living Age of June 1. It is as illuminating as anything that has so far been said on the whole subject...
...Whatever denies man's uniqueness and separate vision, and makes him an undistinguishable item among his fellows, with no function outside of the social purpose, will impair his divine power of creating beauty...
...There was some rumor of their being bought over once more by an Anglican brotherhood...
...Henry Van Dyke of Princeton, for example, followed a natural "predeliction" in supporting Tammany Hall—a predeliction which does not astonish Dr...
...Cardinals Merrier and Lugon won the respect of all citizens and subjects of the Allied nations, and even subjects of the .central powers have never found much with which to reproach them...
...It may well be that no Catholic candidate can run triumphantly for President, in view of lingering fear of "Roman domination" and of the weakness of the Democratic party...
...American Jews, whose financial support of the Palestine experiment makes them particularly important, are also united in outspoken criticism of the government's action...
...Most of the chief India in nationalist leaders are in jail—Gandhi -r .1 long since, Madame Naidu, Gandhi's three sons, and a number of other less important leaders whose names are unfamiliar to Americans...
...ZIONISTS and non-Zionists alike have expressed bitter indignation at the measure...
...1 HE difficulties of the disinterested love of art in America, as we are often reminded, are real enough...
...Wilson, "because his father was a Presbyterian preacher of the same stripe...
...Here he welcomed German prelates and invited German laymen to become friends of French laymen...
...JVlANY American Catholics know of the Cistercian establishment in Caldey Island, off the coast of Wales, and not a few have contributed to it...
...Davis eloquently put it...
...Sparta, that perfect community, had no artists...
...RAMSAY MacDONALD has certainly had about as bad luck as is possible for a hard-pressed politician...
...no prophet could have guessed that that same hard sledding would keep the Socialists in power...
...The general strike called at the end of last month among Palestine's Jewish laborers is but one of many disturbing protests...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 6
