Week by Week
WEEK BY WEEK T T SUALLY when Congress has passed a highly con*J troversial bill and the President has signed it, press and public philosophically fold their hands and take a breathing spell....
...The measure was undoubtedly very unpopular...
...There was also the Australian, Sir Douglas Mawson, who has steadily had the same attention paid his activities in the British press as Byrd has had in the American...
...This has got under the administration's skin...
...Wherever his conclusions are positive, they are Catholic...
...That Irrepressible Ball...
...IT MAY be that the talkies have done all sorts of things to the legitimate drama, including the rape of its profits and the lowering of its tone...
...We must do this, in charity and common sense: the contrary is not even arguable...
...Their only stable nucleus so far has been Stalin...
...Allport's typical city youth, snatched from one outside group to another often at cross-purposes with it, with "no one to help him organize these conflicting elements into a single workable pattern for his own life," is a haunting figure...
...Hoover has made a hopeful pronouncement...
...it passed the Senate and was signed with expressions of dissatisfaction even on the part of its proponents...
...vjURRENT observers of the nation's greatest sport have noticed the remarkable centrifugal characteristics of the baseball now in use...
...It was playing at the old, old game of eating your cake and having it...
...What no aggregation of movies on earth could affect is the educative value of the theatre for those who work in it with no more thought of profit than actuates the student generally...
...Senator Caraway has likewise affirmed in the Senate what many people have long suspected—that the famous Mr...
...The Democrats are preparing their fall campaign on the strength of an economic depression whose continuance they hope to be able to blame on Grundyism...
...But the stock market and the commodities markets are from Missouri...
...It will not be necessary to build a large army of wets, foresworn to march fiercely upon the polls and decree the slaughter of Volsteadian ideals...
...The campaign, which ended in so overwhelming a majority for the Ambassador to Mexico, was really settled on a wetdry basis...
...A very tiny man can now provide himself with four bases by simply giving the ball a start...
...Is it possible to restore to him his birthright: life where "communion with whole individuals" will make him whole...
...Perhaps, after fifteen years of publicity swallowing, the American people is beginning to grow wary of boosting pronouncements by interested persons...
...I know of no other manufacturing industry," he said, "where the sale price of the product is fifteen times the actual cost of production of the article sold...
...Even New Jersey drys might have bowled over a few thousand wet champions with little in their favor excepting honest thirst...
...We are all committed, in our degree, to bolstering up this or that community substitute for what, in the old patriarchal, self-sufficient domestic unit, would have been a family activity...
...But how can it have occurred to anybody that a Pontiff who has fired broadsides at Mussolini and Moscow would descend to paltry innuendo when he has something to say about morals in the United States...
...There has already been an exchange between Washington and Downing Street on the subject...
...Insull tried to silence the Ambassador, but the Ambassador refused to be silenced, and every lover of courage has applauded his action...
...Morrow Smiles to work promptly getting at the truth of the matter, realizing as he did that the Pope would not have indulged in such an allusion at such a time...
...Indeed, most of them have probably ducked, or begun to think of patenting portable dugouts, under the barrage of homers...
...and they exist under the direct shelter of the indifference and legal amorality which the amendment, considered as a piece of bad political philosophy, has fostered...
...And the Rests Christian Century has editorially disowned the bishop...
...So eager is this leather-covered sphere to be uncribb'd and unconfined that it has doubled the average game score, fiercely assaulted umpires and doubled the bill for broken windows...
...And as luck would have it, the world power conference has been in session in Berlin...
...It is not yet settled whether his policy of centralizing all decisions in a small group can be maintained...
...The thought suggests itself that similar enlivening in the various domains of our sportive and workaday endeavor would have interesting, if grotesque, effects...
...Young people would be associated in a community which, having for its chief object nothing more serious than entertainment, could not help flowering culturally and spiritually...
...Indeed, it would not surprise us to learn that drinking had fallen off among high-grade criminals...
...Cardinal Mundelein, however, set Mr...
...WE HAVE entrusted to Mr...
...But no...
...And for Antarctic Imperialism 254 THE COMMONWEAL July 2, 1930 two years the American public has read avidly newspaper accounts of his doings...
...For there has been a corresponding growth in the Protrait of Stalin On With the Play number of people whom Stalin has used and exalted, only to ostracize and deprive of their power at the first sign of independence or resistance...
...second, that industrial and mechanical civilization is inevitably destroying this group...
...A disintegrating romantic conception of liberty and freedom is this, a conception with a deep human appeal...
...Whether or not all this is really to the advantage of the sport is a favorite topic of debate, even among those who never spend an afternoon watching Babe Ruth and his now numerous rivals...
...It is not the bibulousness of "high-grade criminals" that motivate their raids on society, but the fact that there is money to be made...
...It is, we hope, possible, but it will be steadily harder, and will involve more than even a memory of Dr...
...Later Admiral Byrd, on several occasions, made it clear that his party did not wish to make territorial claims in the extreme southern continent...
...The answer, according to Senator Caraway, is that the Republican party was paying for that very campaign...
...Allport's fine words: "No artifice of the social scientist can replace this relationship...
...v OR—disregarding now those rootless beings who merely condemn the family as a clog and an anachronDefending the Family ism—we all know that some compromise must be made with modern civilization...
...Bootlegging and highjacking on a large scale, the organization of gangs to carry it out, the bloody warfare on other gangs, the corruption of policemen and judges for "protection," all might be directed from thug headquarters in the coldest sobriety, and yet all indubitably are linked up with prohibition...
...Yet the danger in doing it is fatally clear...
...But his observations of the psychological and social phenomena that have to do with family life are so sage and dispassionate that he must be counted the friend of established morality, even if not its participant...
...IN REFUSING to believe that "the remarkable and striking increase of major crime throughout the country is at all directly due to prohibition," the New Freeman uses an argument that is amusingly off the point...
...Indeed he might find excellent material for such a critique in the Tribune itself...
...It will take all that we believe as Catholics about the sacredness of marriage, the divine symbolism of the family, and the oneness of virtue which can link these intimate truths to the larger needs of charity, in one organic whole...
...No one denies the second of these facts...
...Senator Watson is beaming with steady optimism...
...their machinations must be investigated by Congress...
...All they have to do is to hunt out, in every part of the country, standard-bearers as effective as New Jersey's own...
...Hoover and the Republican party have not condemned in no uncertain terms the infamous whispering campaign against his opponent...
...Statisticians and sociologists who grow grave about the increase of law-breaking under Volsteadism have not asserted, so far as we know, that the racketeers and underworld Napoleons are developed by drink...
...a great many people wondered what academic knowledge there was to get in the frozen South which could prove worth nearly a million dollars...
...Charles Willis Thompson, veteran political writer, the task of commenting upon events in New Jersey...
...On March 5 of this year the Chicago Tribune published a story to the effect p . - that, in an address to the Roman clergy, * the Holy Father had criticized the the Tribune ! young people of the United States and ' had intimated that the laxity of their morals was setting Europe a bad example...
...It may be that in the same proportion the number of people capable of assuming responsibility has decreased...
...During the war he was food administrator for Kentucky...
...Those who oppose the Eighteenth Amendment may, therefore, deduce a moral from the event...
...There must be a plot...
...Watching stocks dart, generally down, after the fashion of the last few weeks is to suspect that they may have been invented by some financial Spaulding...
...There are always a few such men in the world, men inspired by a peculiar, abstract love of freedom, which has little or no relation to justice or good sense, and which, if given free scope, would end by splitting the world up into little city states, each very proud of its liberties and each having as many chips on both of its shoulders as is physically possible...
...The bulk of crime now committed," runs the editorial, "strikes us as of the kind that is planned and carried out by men who are cold sober, for men who are not cold sober could not plan it competently or carry it out successfully...
...Meanwhile the administration has made up its mind to be thoroughly modern about it...
...The same factors which have operated in the past will, in the last resort, determine the future of Sovietism," Scheffer concludes...
...Allport, professor of social and political psychology at Syracuse University, does not approach the problem from the viewpoint of established morality...
...errors are negligible, others are sources of infection...
...Why is it, people asked during the election, that Mr...
...The next time a world power conference is held abroad, it will be held where the American Ambassador is not a man qualified from long experience to make any unpleasant and embarrassing remarks about the industry...
...The present American tariff is an exception...
...Indeed amateur theatricals, if properly managed, inculcate moral as well as literary virtues...
...it appealed to men's love of adventure, but that was all...
...Stalin's course is not yet run, nor is that of the Soviet State assured...
...For the moment it suffices, however, to observe that the one great venture to have followed in the wake of baseball is the market...
...Sackett chose to say was that the power industry had some washing to hang out...
...They exist, in their present awesomely vicious proportions, to supply the market which Crime and Prohibition July 2, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 255 Sandino Again the Eighteenth Amendment, considered as a concrete prohibition, has created...
...Or fancy dollar bills which rushed to the salesgirls even faster than they do now...
...It was an excellent subject for a typical Tribune editorial, and one promptly appeared (in the lingo favored by McCormick journalism) telling "Rome where to get off at...
...He made this particularly clear in Australia...
...Paul Scheffer in the current issue of Foreign Affairs...
...Doubtless, however, not every candidate could have ridden to victory so gloriously...
...How this crafty "Russian of the Russians," whom Lenin characterized as "crude and narrowminded," rose to the almost unparalleled position he now occupies, is something no occidental intelligence will probably ever be able to understand...
...But how deeply and helplessly our whole society is set against the first and third, it requires an analysis like Dr...
...Now he is Ambassador to Germany...
...Each pronouncement has sent security prices down until they have now almost reached the November low level...
...But perhaps there is no plot...
...One ventures the guess that future history text-books will head their sections on the Byrd and Mawson expeditions with a boldface catchline something like this: "1928-30: The Partition of Antarctica...
...Its International Consequences...
...One can imagine him there, safe from harm, yet terribly unhappy and eager to be back in the fight for a free Nicaragua, an ignoble coterie of interested followers egging him on...
...Insull got wind of it beforehand and tried to avert so unpleasant a contribution to an otherwise "constructive" conference, for what Mr...
...A year ago he was constrained, to put forward the complicated formula of 'centralized democracy' as exemplified in the Soviet Union...
...It is only through one another as complete personalities . . . that we can attain to genuine selfexpression...
...We have been besieged for ten days now with a steady fire of the most approved highpressure publicity...
...Then he became interested in the coal industry, one intimately connected with electric power...
...Doubtless the Holy Father could venture some helpful criticisms of American youngsters...
...Its author, Dr...
...Secretary Mellon has foretold wonders and signs...
...But if we may be pardoned an additional reference to the matter, it would seem appropriate to surmise that the tribe of Morrow is destined to increase...
...His personality electrified the issue, won public applause for insight and courage, and virtually launched what may prove to be a very interesting political career...
...The rest of the world always has a soft spot for its Sandinos, its Michaeloffs, its Louis Riels, its John Browns, yet the rest of the world usually ends by having sorrowfully to hang them...
...He considers three sets of facts: first, that the family—a group of complete, interacting entities whose common love is "enriched by a variety of mutual experiences, interests and points of view"—is the necessary matrix for the development of a healthy and integrated personality...
...Naturally not every dramatic society can hope to rival this one, which has many rare and fortunate advantages...
...The result would be, of course, the incidental improvement of the national supply of solons...
...They are developed by other people's desire to drink...
...WHEN Rear Admiral Byrd sailed off to Antarctica nearly two years ago the objects of his expedition were described as purely scientific...
...1 HE Caraway-Cannon-Tinkham-Walsh incident is closed and the net result of the whole business is that the bishop called Representative TinkThe Lobby ham's bluff, whereat the representative Committee called the bishop's bluff...
...r ROM 1907 to 1912 Frederic M. Sackett was president of both the Louisville Gas Company and the Louisville Lighting Company...
...Think of a football which might be tossed gently from one end of the stadium to the other, or kicked clean over the last tier of seats...
...Samuel Insull...
...The test will most probably come when Stalin disappears...
...The skill of the players—all of them amateurs—the excellence of the dramatic fare and the good nature of the audience all combined to make one wish the example thus set could be widely followed...
...A VERY interesting, dramatic and complete portrait is drawn by Mr...
...Allport's to make clear to us...
...He should know something about power...
...Sackett Talks who financed the bishop in his campaign against Al Smith on religious grounds was merely a dummy for the Republican national organization...
...Jameson July 2, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 253 Mr...
...Ever since early in 1929, when a force of American ^marines and bluejackets made his country far too hot for him, the "bandit" pleader has been living in retirement in \ Merida, Yucatan, not far from the ¦ glorious monuments of his ancestors...
...Is it possible, that is, while promoting community causes and works of social service, to keep the moral centre of gravity still within the home...
...The outstanding achievements, to his mind [Byrd's]" says the New York Times, "were the claiming of new land and mountain ranges of more than 125,000 square miles for the United States and the discovery of carbonaceous material in the Queen Maud Mountains, including the probability of vast deposits of coal and possibly metals...
...The more exclusively he has become this, the greater the danger to the situation which his energy has created...
...1 HE most notable magazine offering of the month is a powerful and not very cheerful plea for the family, which appears in Harper's...
...The next step is to do it openly...
...But even if the initial purposes were quite modest and achievement in harmony with them, the good results would still be memorable...
...But against Morrow they were helpless...
...AUGUSTINO SANDINO is back in Nicaragua...
...One thing is certain...
...We agree that "there is little wonder that he tends to grow up with no point of view at all, or else drifts into some form of egotistic and precocious dissipation...
...The echoes reverberated in many places—indeed we made a rather nice collection of them, now unfortunately mislaid...
...It was a romantic business...
...We have just been privileged again to witness the annual prize play contest which makes the Dramatic Union of Our Lady of Lourdes parish, New York City, a veritable display of amiable rivalry...
...For the first time in the history of the United States a major, reputable party in national affairs has made use of religion as a political weapon...
...Nothing is so dead as The Tariff an enacte^ measure a week after its en^t jy actment...
...Now he has made public receipt of a letter from His Holiness denying that such a statement as the Tribune credited had been made, and expressing himself as deeply hurt that any such rumor could have got abroad...
...The utterances of the administration and business conditions will be worth watching in the light of each other for some time to come...
...It naturally seemed queer to an American reader of the British press to be finding, last winter, daily articles headed, usually, The Expedition to the South Pole, and then to discover that these articles had nothing to do with Admiral Byrd...
...his dismissal of trial and companionate marriage, for instance, while decisive, is not, as we should say, complete...
...Henry Ford, the New York World and the Scripps Howard papers, and wicked Wall Street have been made into strange bedfellows...
...The fact is that the Union is ruled by a dictating minority which is dictated to by another minority to which a dictator dictates...
...Mr...
...An American could easily be forgiven for supposing that Byrd was the only explorer in those regions during the last few months...
...Scheffer gives a fascinating account —by all odds the best we have seen—of the political intrigues which, beginning in the lifetime of Lenin, have ousted one after another of the Soviet leaders...
...Thest minorities are in constant change...
...third, that the devices for replacing the family's vanishing functions—the play clubs, community centres, health organizations and so on—increase the difficulty in exact proportion to their own success...
...What more natural than that the American Ambassador should deliver an address of welcome, and what more unforeseen than that his address should contain a real discussion of the power industry in terms which were very embarrassing to Mr...
...And so ends that tale, for the effective finis of which we are all deeply indebted to His Eminence...
...Stalin alone remains—the Mount Everest, as he himself declares, of dictators...
...Foreign nations have been protesting vigorously and talking about reprisals, although only Canada has acted...
...Finally the proverbial colored man is discovered in the Antarctic woodpile...
...This letter was corroborated by the testimony of Monsignor Spellman, an American who happened to be present when the address in question was delivered...
...It would not surprise us either, but we cannot see that it has much bearing on the case...
Vol. 12 • July 1930 • No. 9
