THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
AP
2.
. OF 03
v, too
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS.
VOL. C.
OCTOBER, 1914, TO MARCH, 1915
NEW YORK:
THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD
120 WEST 6oxH STREET
1915
CONTENTS.
American Philosophy of History
Fifty Years Ago. James J.
Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., ScD.,
An Interpretation : Ernest Dowson.
Katherine Bregy.
An Irish Champion of Women.
Padraic Colutn, . . .
A Returning Caveman. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Autobiography, Is Hamlet? Vin-
cent McNabb, O.P., .
Bacon, Roger, and the Celebration
at Oxford of the Seventh Cen-
tenary of His Birth. Mary
Segar, .....
Belgium, The Catholic Poets of.
Joyce Kilmer, .
Cardinal Allen. Bertrand L. Con-
way, C.S.P., ....
Cardinal Mercier, Primate of Bel-
gium. William P. H. Kitchin,
Ph.D.,
Catholic Poets of Belgium,. The.
Joyce Kilmer. ....
Catholic Revival, Walter Scott and
the W. H. Kent, O.S.C.. .
Catholic Womanhood and the So-
cialistic State. Helen Haines, 519
Caveman, A Returning. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D..
Charities, Our Catholic. William
J. Kerby, Ph.D.,
Christian Name, The. D a n i e I
Quinn, .....
Completing the Reformation.
Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
i, 180,
Critics. Dr. Gore and His. A. H.
Nankivell, ....
Crusade, Was the War of 1912 a?
Elizabeth Christitch. .
Cuba, Protestantism in. Richard
Aumerle Ma her, OS. A., .
Dr. Gore and His Critics. A. H.
Nankivell. ....
Ernest Dowson : An Interpreta-
tion. Katherine Bregy,
Fabre, Jean Henri. John Daly
McCarthy. Ph.D.,
Foreign Periodicals,
i 19. 270, 403, 697
Generations, Some Changes in Re-
ligious Feelings in Two. James
J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., ScD., .
Germany in the War, The Aim of.
Andrew J. Shipman.
Giants, Last. John Asycough,
History Fifty Years Ago, American
Philosophy of. James J. Walsh,
M.D.. Ph.D.. ScD., .
Is Hamlet Autobiography ? Vin-
cent McNabb. O.P., .
Jean Henri Fabre. John Daly
McCarthy, Ph.D.,
Joyce Kilmer : The Poems of.
Thomas Walsh,
Last Giants. John Ayscongh.
Literature and Religion. Father
Cuthbert. O.S.F.C
Lourdes, The Eucharistic Congress
at. Mary Segar.
Martyrs According to Bernard
Shaw. Daniel A. Lord. S.J.,
" Mexico for the Mexicans."
Dudley G. Wooten, .
" A Touch of the Fever." Thomas
B. Reilly. ....
Martha. Katharine Tynan, .
On Pigeon River. Jeanie Drake,
Minimum Wage Laws to Date.
John A. Ryan, D.D., . . 433
473 Modern Fiction, Nuns as Depicted
in. Mary V . Hillmann, . . 324.
193 Nuns as Depicted in Modern Fic-
tion. Mary V. Hillmann, . . 324
500 Our Catholic Charities. William
J. Kerby, Ph.D., . . .145
721 Oxford: Roger Bacon and the
Celebration of the Seventh Cen-
745 tenary of His BirtH at. Mary
Segar, . . ... .48
Paris and the War. Charles Baus-
san. . . . . . . 767
48 Poems of Joyce Kilmer, The.
Thomas Walsh, . . .301
591 Pope Pius the Tenth. M. P. Smith, '
C.S.P., 90
239 Primate of Belgium, Cardinal
Mercier. William P. H. Kitchin,
Ph.D., 736
736 Protestantism in Cuba. Richard
Au.merle Maher, O.S.A., . . 206
591 Recent Events,
125, 274, 408, 555, 702, 848
155 Reformation. Completing The.
Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
616 i, 180, 307
Religion and Literature. Father
721 Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., . . .289
Salamanca To-Day and Yesterday.
145 Thomas Walsh, . . . 463
Scott,* Walter, and the Catholic
349 Revival. W. H. Kent. O.S.C.. . 155
Shaw, Bernard, Martyrs According
to. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., . . 577
307 Socialistic State, Catholic Woman-
hood and the. Helen Haines, 519, 616
14 S.ome Changes in Religious Feelings
in Two Generations. James J.
355 Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.D., . 625
Some Old-Time Devotions in Time
206 of War. Marian Nesbitt, . . 230
The Aim of Germany in the War.
14 Andrew J. Shipman. . . .531
The Eucharistic Congress at
193 Lourdes. Ruth Egerton, . . 56
The Warfare of Theology with
662 Science Twenty Years After.
James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.,
843 Sc.D.. .... 62
To-Day and Yesterday : Salamanca.
Thomas Walsh, . . . 463
625 Towards Evening. " Senex.'' . 637
Twenty Years After : The Warfare
531 of Theology with Science.
776 James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.,
Sc.D .62
Wage Laws to Date, Minimum.
473 John A. Ryan, D.D., . . . 433
Wage Legislation for Women.
745 Edwin V. O'Hara. . . . 443
War, Paris and the. Charles Baus-
662 son, ..... 767
War : Some Old-Time Devotions
301 in Time of. Marian Nesbitt, . 230
776 Was the W r ar of 1912 a Crusade?
Elizabeth Christitch. . . .355
289 Where Extremes Meet. A. Ray-
bould. . . r . . 26
56 With Our Readers,
134, -283, 424, 564, 712, 859
577 \\omen, An Irish Champion of.
Padraic Colum. . . . 500
799 Women, . Wage Legislation for.
Edivin V. O'Hara, . . . 443
STORIES.
O'Loghlin of Clare. Rosa Mulhol-
603 land, . 76, 215, 330, 504, 644, 784
488 On the Stroke of the Hour. Flor-
35/ ence Gilmore, . . . .671
CONTENTS
in
The Crucifix. Percy James Breb-
ner, . . . . . - 45 1
The Old Door in the Wall. Annie
Jolliffe, . . 169
POEMS.
The Undying Flame. Hamilton
Bogart Dox, .... 745
" To Prepare The Way." Julia C.
Dox, . . . . .366
A Franciscan's Prayer. Enid Djn-
nis, ...... 487
A Mediaeval Song of the Passion.
Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., 45
Another Year. 5". M. D., m . 462
Expression. Armel O'Connor, 238
His Coming. S. M. D., . 377
Lyre-na-Geeha. Alice M. Cashel 766
Off To the War. .Michael Earls,
S.J.,
Pius the Tenth.//. R. S.. .
Robert Hugh Benson. Edith M.
Coyle, .....
To Alice Meynell. Armel O'Con-
nor, . . . .
The Answer. Helen Haines,
The Voices of the Dead. T. J. S.,
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Achievement, .... 685
Abide With Me 838
A Drink Handbook, . . . 696
A Garden of Girls, or Famous
Schoolgirls of Former Days, . 268
A Great Soul in Conflict, . . 825
A Handbook of American Pag-
eantry, . ' : ; . .. *" . 691
A Layman's Retreats, . . . 393
Altar Flowers and How to Grow
Them, . . ' . .117
A Naval History of the American
Revolution, . . . .106
An Introduction to the Mystical
Life, 837
A Set of Six, . . .825
A Teacher's Apostleship of Prayer
in Schools, . . . . 696
Athanase Mezieres and the Louis-
iana-Texas Frontier, 1768-1780, 109
Atlas Hierarchicus, . . 394
A True Boy and Rogers of Sea-
forths, . . . . . . 696
Benedict XV., .... 696
Bibliography of the Relation of
Secondary Schools to Higher
Education, ^ 696
Candle Flame, . . . .261
Can Insurance Experience be Ap-
plied to Lengthen Life ? . . 842
Catholicity, 683
Celtic Memories and Other Poems, 693
Centenary Number of the Downside
Review, . . . . 402
Charles Dickens, . ., - . '' . 116
Choice, . . -554
Christ and the Powers of Dark-
ness, . . . . .831
Christian Citizenship, . . .106
Comedy, . . . . .104
Concise Dictionary of Proper
Names and Notable Matters in
the Works of Dante, . . 553
Credit Union Primer, . . . 696
Daily Communion, . . . 696
Daily Mass, ..... 696
Danish Elementary Rural Schools, 696
Education for the Home, . . 842
Egypt in Transition, . . 101
Essays, . . . . . 249
Essays, Political and Historical, . 546
Europe Revised, .... 838
Familiar Spanish Travels, . . 265
Father Faber, . . . . 1 1 1
Figures de Peres et Meres Chre-
tiens, . . . . .118
Five Birds in a Nest, . . . 841
Footprints of the Ancient Scottish
Church, . . . . .in
France Herself Again, . . . 547
Francis Thompson, . . . 105
From Court to Cloister, . . 113
From Dublin to Chicago, . . 684
Galileo and His Condemnation, . 116
George the Third and Charles Fox,
Germany and England,
Gideon's Band, . . .''.' .
Gitanjali, . . .
God, Man, and Religion,
Gothic Architecture in Spain,
Grace, Actual and Habitual, .
Heroes and Heroines of Fiction
in Modern Prose and Poetry,
Highways and Byways of Shakes-
peare's Country,
Hints on Preaching, . . .
History of Roman Private Law,
Holy Mass, . . .
Index to the Works of John Henry
Cardinal Newman, .
Indians of the Yukon and Tanana
Valleys, Alaska, . -. .
Ideals and Realities,
Irish Literary and Musical Studies,
Justice in Mexico, .
Keystones of Thought,
La Paix Constantinienne et Le
Catholicisme, ....
La Survivance Franchise au Canada,
Later' Poems, ....
Leaves From the Notebook of a
Missionary, . . '.'"'.
Le Demon de Midi, . .
Letters and Addresses on Woman
Suffrage, .....
L'Eucharistie La Presence Reelle
et La Transubstantiation, .
Life Histories of African Game
Animals, ..;'.
Life in America One Hundred
Years Ago, . .
Limitations of Armament on the
Great Lakes, ....
Lord Clandonnell, . . .
Lourdes, . . ,
Meditations on the Rosary,
Men Around the Kaiser,
Modern Theology and the Preach-
ing of the Gospel,
Monsignor Dupanloup Un Grand
Eveque,
Music in the Schools,
Mustard Seed,
My Book,
My Lady Rosia, .
Mysticism in English Literature,
National Education, . _ - . - 1
New Testament Stories,
Nicholas Breakspear (Hadrian IV,),
Notes on Novelists,
Notre Dame de Lourdes,
Oddsfish! . . f .
One American's Opinion of the
European War,
Ontology, or the Theory of Being,
Our 'Failings, ....
Our Lady of Dolors,
Outlines of Ancient History,
615
13
365
66 1
323
179
682
396
394
261
837
399
267
695
552
262
400
696
116
266
402
680
118
118
681
394
269
841
118
103
386
696
841
694
838
692
693
118
696
678
116
267
679
696
833
113
695
118
539
688
545
398
696
840
IV
CONTENTS
Outlines of the World's Literature,
Outside the Walls, . . '. .
Panama, . . . ...
Pan-Germanism, ....
Parish Life Under Queen Elizabeth,
Perilous Seas, . .
Pierre Vinton, . . . ' .
Pius X., . . '. , .
Poems, . . .
Poems for Loyal Hearts,
Police Practice and Procedure,
Practical Questions on the Sodality,
Practical Talks with the Christian
Child
Rambles in Catholic Lands, .
Religious Art in France of the
Thirteenth Century, .
Religious Poems of Richard Cra-
shaw, .....
Report of the International Com-
mission to Inquire Into the
Causes and Conduct of the Bal-
kan Wars, . .
Restatement and Reunion,
Richard of Wyche, Laborer, Schol-
ar, Bishop, and Saint, 1197-1253,
Romanism in the Light of History,
Ronald's Mission,
Round About Home,
Rural Schoolhouses in the United
States,
Saint Augustine, . . .- .
Satire, .....
Saturday's Child, . . ...
Self-Training for Mothers,
Shipmates, .....
Sister Mary of St. Francis, .
Songs of Sixpence,
Sons of the Sea Kings,
Spain Under the Roman Empire,
Spiritual Instructions for Religious,
St. Bernardino : The People's
Preacher, . . . .
Ten Reasons, ....
Thanksgiving After Holy Commun-
ion in Union With the Sacred
' Heart ' / .
The Absolution of Recidivi and of
Occasionarii, ....
The Art and Craft of Letters,
The Art of the Low Countries,
The Beautiful, ....
The Beginnings of the Church,
The Blessed Sacrament and Catho-
lic Unity, ....
The Broken Rosary, and Other
Tales, .....
The Case Against the Little White
Slaver, .....
The Case of Belgium in the Present
War,
The Century of Columbus,
The Charm of Ireland,
The Children of the Kingdom,
The Church and Anti-Clericalism,
The Church and Usury,
The Consolidation of Rural
Schools, .....
The Continental Drama of To-Day,
The County-Unit Organization for
the ' Administration of Rural
Schools, .....
The Crucifix, ....
The Democratic Rhine-Maid,
The Drink Question,
The East I Know,
The Education of Character,
The Epic. . ...
The Facts About Belgium,
The Future of World Peace,
399 The Glories of Ireland, - f ';
393 The Gospel of St. John,
829 The Heart of the Antartic,
541 The Holy Eucharist in Art, .'
250 The Holy Land of Asia Minor,
261 The Home of the Seven Devils
688 The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass,
696 The House of Deceit, ,
.827 The Ideal of the Monastic Life
254 Found in the Apostolic Age,
839 The- Inglethorpe Chronicles, .
268 The Intellectual and Cultural Re-
lations between the United States
840 and the Other Republics of Am-
540 erica, . .
The Ivy Hedge, ....
115 The Life and Writings of St. Co-
lumbam, .....
251 The Lives of the Popes in the
Middle Ages, . . .113
The Lost Boy, ....
The Man Behind the Bars, .
no The Ministry of Art,
395 The Mirror of Oxford, .
The Negro Year-Book,
264 The New Man,
395 The Nine Offices of the Sacred
268 Heart,
837 The Oxford Book of Spanish Verse,
The Passing of the Fourteen,
696 The Pearl of Great Price,
554 The Period of Discovery,
104 The Philosophy of Religion,
835 The Poet and Nature and the
834 Morning Road,
841 The Priest and Social Action,
265 The Prophet's Wife,
390 The Question of Miracles,
831 The Red Ascent, . .
683 The Renaissance, the Protestant
836 Revolution, and the Catholic
Reformation in Continental Eur-
251 ope, ......
262 The Romance on El' Camino Real,
The Secret Citadel,
The Seen and Unseen at Stratford-
113 on-Avon, . . .-.'".
The Shield of Silence, . .
686 The Spirit of Cardinal Newman,
104 The Spirit of Father Faber,
829 The Spiritual Message of Dante,
679 The Tourist's California,
694 The Triumphs Over Death, .
The United States and Mexico,
696 1821-1848, ....
The United' States and Peace, ' .
841 The Unworthy Pact, . . ..
The Upper Room, . .
696 The Ups and Downs of Marjorie,
The War and America,
397 The Widow's Necklace,
676 The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman, .
684 The Wisdom of Father Brown,
690 The Wolf of Gubbio, .
696 The Worst Boy in the School, .
676 Those of His Own Household,
Through the Brazilian Wilderness, .
842 Time or Eternity? and Other
692 Preachable Sermons,
To the Land of the Caribou, .
Venerable Philippine Duchesne
842 Vexilla Regis,
839 Vocations,
688 What Shall I Be?
1 06 What Think You of Christ?
839 Where No Fear Was, .
830 William Pardow of the Company of
105 Jesus,
842 Within the Soul, '.
828 Yourself and the Neighbors, V
822
836
687
553
267
267
112
686
256
117
696
685
837
252
402
832
388
255
696
100
696
107
695
117
115
263
680
552
686
393
39i ~
257
117
114
550
687
399
399
678
694
267
107
538
266
677
266
54i
116
398
834
401
842
392
689
114
39i
835
691
696
112
68 1
687
386
268
253
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. C.
OCTOBER, 1914.
No. 595.
COMPLETING THE REFORMATION.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
IV.
AVID HUME, of Edinburgh critic, diplomat, libra-
rian, and historian who died in 1776, devoted no
little attention to " philosophical criticism," between
whiles, during the course of his checkered career.
He was destined to furnish the real turning point in
Kant's mental life, for he was a critic and a skeptic, thus combining
in a single person two tendencies, one of which the critical
Kant heartily welcomed and made his own, whereas the other
that of skepticism he rebuked most solemnly.
To Hume, philosophy was nothing more than " an exact analy-
sis of the powers and capacity " of the human mind. The study of
" reality " formed no part of it. Berkeley had reasoned that com-
pletely away, Hume thought, leaving the philosopher with no other
domain ,to explore but that of experience, the contents of which,
when duly itemized, would comprise the sum of the knowable.
Among these contents Hume found no " self." Try as he might,
he could never quite succeed " in catching himself on the point of
any of his perceptions." To which a wit rejoined, No wonder!
A man going out of his house, to peep in at the windows, should
hardly expect to find himself at home. Failing, in his examination
of experience, to discover any trace of an abiding self, Hume de-
clared the mind an unsubstantial reality a mere cluster of conscious
states sympathetically strung together. Spirit as well as matter
Copyright. 1914. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. c. i
2 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Oct.,
was thus reduced to the vanishing point nothing permanent ap-
peared anywhere in the entire world of experience. The doctrine
of the fleeting had found its first clear modern voice.
The idea of " causality " proved naturally of engaging interest
to a mind so thorough-paced in the ways of skepticism as was
Hume's. Taken at its face value, this idea implied that we do know
something of the laws that govern the extra-mental, real world.
It was necessary, it was universal, this idea that every event has
a cause, and how could it come to us, with these two features so
plainly stamped upon it, if the world was as fleeting and contingent
as Hume imagined? Why should a passing, ephemeral universe
strike off an idea of this necessary and universal kind ? Do streams
rise higher than their source? Hume paused to collect his wits.
The necessity inherent in the idea of " cause " is created by feeling,
he said, not by reflection upon objects. " We consider only the ex-
perienced conjunction of the events, and as we feel the customary
connection between the ideas, we transfer that feeling to the
objects."
Ah ! yes, quite true, so far as it goes, this explanation, but to
" happen together " and to " belong together " are quite different
ideas. Custom is no breeder of necessity. I may have the idea that
nature is uniform, but it is a long step from uniformity to neces-
sity. You cannot identify the two, even in gravitation, or Newton's
laws of motion, for these may be interfered with, nay are, every
time I throw a stone in the air, and a roof intercepts its down-
ward flight.
Hume's mind was not very clear on this difference between
the "uniform" and the ." necessary," as may be seen from the
argument which he advanced elsewhere in disproof of miracles.
Better believe the great majority who never saw a - man rise
from the dead, than believe the few who say they did. Really?
' Your honor," said an offender at the bar, about to receive sen-
tence, " you have accepted the testimony of six witnesses who de-
clare they saw me intoxicated. I can produce a hundred others
willing to swear they did not see me in that condition." Needless
to say, his honor knew the difference between " general " testimony
and " special," as the culprit soon discovered, to his cost. The
bench would have ruled likewise, had Hume appeared before it,
to cite those who did not see in refutation of those who did.
The reader will have perceived, no doubt, with what interest
Kant read these suggestive passages of Hume, which spoke of the
1914- ] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 3
mind's tendency to feign the " universal " and the " necessary " its
proneness to put connections between things, that existed only be-
tween ideas. For twenty years Kant had gone on separating the
rational from the real, in order to impound the skeptic and the
pietist in two disconnected enclosures. But his purpose had lacked
a " justifying " principle, his separatism had been of the arbitrary
sort that needed bolstering. Now, however, the skeptic had played
into his hands unwittingly. Hume had furnished the very ground-
principle that Kant so sorely needed to relieve his thought of the
charge of arbitrariness, and Hume would be " hoist by his own
petard," before Konigsberg was through with Edinburgh. If one
of these purely mental, wholly unreal, connections existed; if the
mind, in the single case of the idea of " causality," transferred to
objects something it did not find there, but drew from its own
inner self instead why might there not be many other cases besides
the solitary one mentioned by Hume ?
Kant saw that his fortune was made, philosophically speaking,
if he could but generalize this single instance, and prove reason
addicted to the habit of inventing relations that were not in things.
To this task he set himself with fixity and determination. Space
and time all the categories, in fact, one after another were over-
hauled, and made to appear as original intuitions of the mind itself
contributions of the subject, prior to all experience of objects.
He could now reduce the public in human thought to the private -
which had been his consuming desire for many plodding years.
The skeptic would thus be silenced, rationalists, of whatever sort,
be made to beat the air, and pietists might wrap themselves in the
flowing robes of security till the great assize. Pietism and science,
like Abraham and Lot, would divide the world between them, the
one to deal with moral, the other with physical, experience. Reason
would henceforth be compelled to stay at home to keep the mind's
house in order, and to cultivate strictly domestic habits globe-
trotter that it used to be ! True, there would have to be consider-
able mishandling of the mind to accomplish this change in char-
acter, this " sudden conversion," and carpenters rather than psychol-
ogists would have to be put at work, to build up the extra rooms
required for the proper housing of the critical idea but what mat-
tered that, when it was question of setting up the individual against
tradition ? Necessity is the mother of invention, and knows no law.
Clearly, therefore, it overtaxes credulity itself, to ask us to
suppose that all this tampering with the human mind grew out of
4 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Oct.,
a casual reading of Hume; that it represents a genuine philosoph-
ical discovery, on Kant's part, free from the slightest taint of per-
sonal or religious purpose. What idealizers men are of their heroes
and mental prototypes, especially if the latter, like themselves, build
only to destroy! It is as if one, seeing an architect plan away,
first the roof, then the foundations of a building, should cry out in
admiration of the genius who could make the very air support his
structures.
Hume roused Kant from his " dogmatic slumber." Let us
hasten to say that the denial of this fact forms no part of the pres-
ent theme, is not necessary to its purpose. But let us add also and
instantly, to give the truth its ///// expression, that, so far as dog-
matism was concerned, Kant had been a very light sleeper for
twenty years back. His was no " rude awakening." He was half
if not three-quarters awake, when he heard Hume whispering. It
would be truer, therefore, to say that Hume had made him wide
awake, than that he had suddenly and rudely roused him. Had
his slumber been as deep as historians of philosophy are so fond of
picturing, his response to Hume's call would not have been so in-
stant and sympathetic as it proved to be. It was really the re-
echoing of his own thoughts from another mind, that startled him
into complete alertness. Hume was more the occasion than the
cause.
The philosopher of Konigsberg and the critic of Edinburgh,
both nodded, however, like Homer, when they thought and said
what they did of the principle of causality and its origin. Hume
declared this principle mental and not real, because of an unpardon-
able oversight: He mistook half the process of analysis for the
whole. This mistake escaped the observation of Kant who did
not look his gift horse in the mouth any too closely, being more anx-
ious, it would seem, to ride it than to discover if it were sound. It
becomes necessary, therefore, for the truth-seeker to undertake the
investigation omitted by Kant. Only in this way can he hope to see
for himself, whether it was true prophet or false, to whom the sage
of Konigsberg pinned his philosophical faith and system, when he
abandoned tradition to follow in the dissenting Scotsman's wake.
The reader will be patient, if the considerations run from more
shallow into deeper waters. After all, it is not on the surface
that truth dwells, and only by diving deep can we reach its most
precious pearls.
The question that engaged the attention of Kant and Hume
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 5
was this: Is the principle of causality analytic? Both answered in
the negative, and the modern world of thought has accepted their
answer as final, that is, not subject to revision. Let us reopen the
question, to see for ourselves whether it was ever right to close it.
The principle of causality needs to be formulated, before we
enter upon the discussion proper. In its widest and general form,
it may be stated in the proposition : " Every being has its reason of
existence in itself or in another." Formulated in this general way,
the statement is as applicable to God as to things, and means simply
that every being has principles which constitute and explain it.
But it is the world of things we have in mind, usually, when speak-
ing of causality, and so there is a more restricted formulation of
the principle than the one above quoted, as may be seen in the
qualified statement : " Everything that begins to be has a cause."
Here the meaning plainly is that what begins to be cannot be re-
garded as self-explaining, self -productive, or self -existent, since
the reason of its existence is not in itself, but in another, to which
it is accordingly related by a relation of origin and dependence.
Of course, the reader has wit enough to know that the popular for-
mula, " Every effect has a cause," is too absurdly redundant to be
entertained, much less countenanced by the sober-minded. Let crit-
ics sharpen their wits upon it as waywardly as they will. It is not
the proper way of stating the principle of causality, and a refuta-
tion of it, in this faulty form, has no more to do with proving the
notion unfounded, than a man's incorrect English with the truth of
his utterances.
The principle thus clearly and correctly formulated, we are
in a position to answer the question Is this principle analytic?
It all depends on what you mean by analysis, for analysis may be
either direct or indirect, absolute or comparative. If you define
an analytical judgment as one, the predicate of which is essentially
contained in the subject, considered in itself, apart from all things
else, the idea of causality is most certainly not to be called an analy-
tical judgment, because it does not fall within the lines marked out
for it by the definition. But what right have you so to define
and limit the nature and function of analysis? That is the real,
though neglected, question. You cannot point to a single analytical
judgment, unless it be a pure verbality, that would prove amenable
to any such description. Instead, therefore, of testing the idea of
" causality " by your definition, go back and test your definition in
the light of experience, and you will find that you have mistaken
6 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Oct.,
half the meaning of analysis for the whole. There is comparative
as well as absolute analysis, and you have omitted the former al-
together. To be complete and correct, therefore, an analytical judg-
ment should be defined as one, the predicate of which is contained in
the essence of the subject, considered either absolutely or relatively;
that is, either in itself, or in its essential relations. And when the
range of analysis is thus completely defined, so as to cover the bear-
ings as well as the belongings of a thing or notion, we shall not be
puzzled, as Kant and Hume were, to account for " new " elements
in our analytical judgments.
All analytical judgments that are not mere redundant phrases
add a new element to the direct analysis of " being " or " reality,"
and this new element is in the form of a relation, it is not a portion
of the absolute content. Take the principle of identity " every
being is its own nature," or the principle of contradiction, " a thing
cannot be and not be, under the same respect, at one and the same
time." Here there is manifestly added to the bare notion of " be-
ing," the essential relation of identity with its constituents, in the
first case, and temporal identity with itself, in the second. You
could never get this notion of identity out of the analysis of un-
related " being." You have to compare being with itself, or with
its relations to non-being, to discover the principle, even of identity.
If our analytical judgments added nothing new or explicit to our
knowledge; if this mind of ours merely said that a watch is a watch,
or A is A which latter is set down in the books as the principle of
identity! it would be in very truth the stupid shuffler of truisms
and manipulator of inanities, that Hume and Kant imagined it was,
when they limited its analytical power to the absolute predicates
contained in the subject, and cut it off from the relational ones that
come as much within its reach and purview as the former.
Now, if it be true that comparison is a fundamental feature and
accompaniment of all our analytical judgments, the principle of
causality should form no exception to the rule, and this proves to
be the case, when we submit the matter to reflection. The predicate
" cause " cannot be found in the subject " being," or " a being that
begins to be," unless you compare " being " with something that
precedes. And so, quite naturally, Hume and Kant, looking for a
notion where it was not to be found, did not find it, and rushed
forth to tell the world of their startling discovery. Look! they
cried. The concept of " beginning " comprises only two ele-
ments: first, a specific reality, this or that; and second, a relation
I 9 i4-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 7
of that reality to a previous moment of time in which it was non-
existent. Neither of these two elements, they pointed out, implies
the idea of a " productive power." All that they imply is a relation
of succession. How then did the idea of " a necessary cause " ever
arise? they asked in blank amazement.
From a psychological feeling of expectancy, born of the habit
of seeing things occur so often in succession, said Hume. No, said
Kant, it is a general habit of the human understanding to think the
connections of things, without reference to actual experience. The
causal relation is a pure creation of the mind. And so, Hume re-
stated the principle of causality, making it read : " Every phenom-
enon has an antecedent ; " whereas Kant wishing to prevent all
further use of the principle in proof of God's existence so redefined
it as to limit its application exclusively to the intra-mental world.
" Every phenomenon has another phenomenon for its cause," was
the, way he chose to put it a manifestly incorrect statement, since
the idea of cause does not necessarily imply that every cause is also
an effect.
This analysis of the empiricists, from Hume onward to our
own day, is incomplete. These men do not analyze fully all that is
logically contained in the concept of "beginning." In fact, they
leave out the chief element, for there are three elements, not merely
two, in the concept of " things that have begun." Productivity
is of the very essence of physical causality. Between the instant
when the existence of a thing is complete, and the instant which
precedes its beginning, a productive power or energy is at work,
and this third element of " productiveness " cannot be suppressed,
so as to leave nothing more than " mere sequence " or " blind in-
stinct " in the notion. Only by a superficial analysis can such a
conclusion be made plausible, and neither Kant nor Hume took
pains to make theirs thorough. Hume said there is a connection
of fact, and let it go at that, not troubling himself further. Wherein
he much resembled the man in the story, who, coming to the end
of one road, and seeing the sign-posts directing him along another
that was really a continuation of the first, flatly refused to follow
the directions indicated, declared the way no thoroughfare, and
discontinued his journey, not for lack of light, but from sheer ar-
bitrariness of will. It did not suit Hume's ruling whim as an em-
piricist, or Kant's as a pietist, to exhaust the possibilities of analysis.
Philosophers never seek to undermine their own positions. Let
us see, however, what would have happened if Hume and Kant had
8 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Oct.,
continued their logical journey along the road of comparative
analysis, instead of turning back.
When I reflect on the idea of " a being that begins to be/' I
have a very real, no empty intuition that this being includes within
itself a radical inability to account for its own existence, unaided.
I consciously see, and do not blindly believe, or instinctively create
this essential insufficiency, this radical inability, this tell-tale mark
of all the things that come into existence. Not by any Kantian men-
tal compulsion, or by any " domestic law of the mind;" not by any
Humean sort of sympathy with the agreeable and the desired, nor
yet by any pragmatic feeling that it should be so, do I say that there
must be an antecedent, a " something-else," to explain this incipient
being that once was not, yet now is. It is an objective necessity,
derived from reflection on the very character of the objects them-
selves, that compels me to think and say there must be a " pro-
ductive " cause.
My mind neither invents, nor furnishes, but discovers, recog-
nizes and sees this " relation- to-another." It is a necessity belong-
ing to objects, and reflectively discerned as such. I must therefore
admit it as an objectively evident connection between things, not
as one which my mind puts there by an idiosyncrasy of its own,
without regard to the objective facts of experience. I do not get
the idea of cause, be it noted, directly from the idea of " beginning."
That is where Kant and Hume were right, so far as they went, their
fault being in having stopped analyzing when they were only half-
way through. I get the idea of " cause " indirectly from the idea
of " beginning." All that this latter idea directly reveals is the es-
sential relation of want, lack, need, and demand of " another "
for its own explanation, since it is manifestly not self -accounting.
In other words, the idea of " beginning " directly reveals the idea of
an essential relation of insufficiency, and when / look into that
essential relation, I find myself brought face to face with the ne-
cessity of a " cause," and I see that necessity as real, objective
inescapable, undeniable. So that the idea of " cause," while not
contained in the essence of the subject " beginning " is really
contained in the essential relations of that subject, and, conse-
quently, the principle of causality is an analytical proposition, guar-
anteed by objective evidence, and true of the world of objects, not
merely of the world of ideas. It is not a creation of the mind's
subjective prejudices, but a recognition of the evident.
Why then did Kant and Hume deny that the principle of causal-
1914- ] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 9
ity is objectively evident, and set it down for a matter of sub-
jective persuasion only? It is not difficult, in the light of the
foregoing, to see how they came to this underdrawn conclusion.
Hume and Kant both overlooked the fact that, properly speaking,
all logical evidence is the evidence of indirect inclusion. They failed
to note that the idea deduced ("productive cause," for instance)
is always external to the idea ("beginning") from which we
deduce it, though the connecting bond or link ("insufficiency")
is internal an index-finger, so to speak, attached to the subject,
and pointing to the related predicate outside, as to its source and
explanation. In other words, the internal link which reflection
discovers in the " subject " is the means and justification of our
arguing to " something-other " in the predicate.
Evidence means more than the direct inclusion of the idea of
the predicate in the idea of the subject. Things are not hermits,
neither are ideas. You cannot divorce the subject from its rela-
tions, and set if off, apart, Kant- fashion, as an unrelated thing.
Its relations are as much within it, fundamentally speaking, as are
its individual and absolute contents. Our vision of the latter may
be direct, of the former oblique, but it is a vision in both cases,
and we cannot limit the mind's power of sight to what is absolutely
contained in a subject, we must also extend it to what is relatively
contained there, unless we would confound the principle of causality
with the principle of identity which seems to be what Kant and
Hume came pretty perilously close to doing, if they did not actually
commit the deed.
The sphere of evidence, of evidential truth, is much wider than
Hume and Kant thought it was, and that is the point we have tried
to bring out into relief in the past few pages. And we shall not
consider it a waste of argument on the desert air, if some minds
are thereby enabled to see, that the Kantian categories are a prison
only for those who choose to live and think behind their bars.
Not a conclusion which either of these thinkers drew but had its
source in a false limitation of the mind's power of analysis. Con-
sider, for instance, what Kant did, under the influence of this ar-
bitrary restriction of the field of evidential truth. Defining an
analytical judgment as one that analyzes an unrelated idea, and not
finding the idea of " cause " in that of " beginning " by a direct
analysis, he leaped at once to the conclusion, that the principle of
causality is not an objective analytical judgment, but a subjective
hoax. The conclusion he should have drawn is this : that the idea
io COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Oct.,
of cause is not discoverable by a direct process of analysis. This
would have been the truth, but not the whole truth, for comparative
analysis still remained to be tried.
Did Kant examine this alternative, did he institute a compara-
tive or relative analysis, in addition to the absolute one that had
failed ? Not he. The half-truth he had discovered was too much
in accord with his general purpose for that. He was unable to
find, through a direct examination of the idea of " beginning," the
two features of universality and necessity which are essential parts
of the idea of " cause," and so he characterized them as " new ele-
ments," " foreign additions " to the notion, and said they were sub-
jective contributions of the mind, that had no foundation in expe-
rience. He did not take the fact into account, that the addition of
new elements which is such a mystery to direct analysis is a
commonplace to the analysis that proceeds by comparison ; and this
oversight led him to invent a whole new series of judgments, the
predicates of which are not contained in the idea of the subject.
These he called " synthetic judgments a priori," but they are really
nothing more than a gathering-up of those elements of thought,
for which comparative analysis is perfectly capable of .accounting,
without any aid from the " synthetic " mind. And they never would
have created in philosophy the turmoil they did, these so-called
" new " judgments, if Kant had analyzed the dual nature of analysis
completely at the start, instead of splitting it in halves, and making
the mind responsible for his own negligences for his own incom-
plete and faulty conception of the nature and range of man's analyti-
cal powers. And the world would not have witnessed the strange
spectacle of a man accusing the human mind of inventing that which
he himself had not taken the pains or the right way to discover!
Only one thing more remained for Kant to do, and that was to
throw the particular instance of causality, as he saw it, into a
general principle. To accomplish this result, he had recourse to
the supposition that there existed in the human mind a native pre-
disposition to connect all phenomena, without consulting the data
of experience. The mind, he said, is a universalizing intelligence.
Well, so it is, but its work of universalizing is dependent on the
data actually furnished by experience, and is not an arbitrary, sub-
jective exercise of activity on the mind's part. In supposing that
the human understanding acted on its own initiative, irrespectively
of the objective material presented by the senses, Kant made an
unfounded assumption, the effect of which was to extinguish all
IQI4-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION u
objective evidence for the principle of causality, all real knowledge
of it by the mind of man. The idea of " cause " was thus taken
out of the sphere of the known, and transferred to that of " belief,"
" faith," " instinct," " mental prejudice." It ceased to be a law
of things, and became a law of thought merely subjective alto-
gether in origin, and, therefore, without applicability to the extra-
mental world. The idea of God, thus deprived of the support of
this principle, no longer appeared as an intellectual conviction, but
simply and solely as a matter of moral persuasion. Pietism had at
last been translated into philosophy. The end of the journey had
been reached, and it was the same as the beginning disbelief,
namely, in the power of reason, and a reposeful confidence in will
and moral sentiment. Fideism putting out the eyes of faith and
glorying in the deed!
We have already indicated the illegitimacy of the reasoning,
by means of which Kant sought to eliminate all real and objective
value from the idea of causality. But a few more points insist on
being added, and we yield to their insistence. First of all, you
cannot conclude from a principle's being innate to its being purely
and exclusively subjective in origin, character, and value. To sup-
pose harmony existing between the laws of nature and the laws
of mind is a far more rational hypothesis, as hypotheses go, than
to suppose divorce. So that even on a priori grounds the kind
Kant so liked to stand upon ! his theory of a mind acting in com-
plete disregard of its objects has nothing to commend its acceptance.
But this is not the only consideration to be urged against it, nor the
most deadly. His thesis is not only unproven, but incapable utterly
of proof. Suppose, for the sake of argument, we should grant the
purely mental origin of the principle -of causality, and accept the
truth of Kant's position, which we do not, of course, would it fol-
low, even then, that the principle did not faithfully represent the
character and interaction of things in the physical universe.
Not in the least. It would be a strange situation indeed, if
the transit of planets, predicted by scientists,, were " subjective
prejudices of the mind " in no sense representative of the actual
physical occurrences. No blind act of faith guides the scientist
in his calculations. Say what you will, about " a sense of expect-
ancy," it is not an exhaustive analysis of causality, and the fact
remains that the man of science sees, logically and mathematically,
the rational necessity of the transit's occurrence. Evidence, not
faith, is the star upon his coat. And then again finally, this time
12 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Oct.,
Kant's theory is unintelligible. We can readily understand how
a blind mental force or habit may drive us at times to saying or
doing things in our own despite. But what we cannot understand
is how a force, supposed to be blind, should fill our minds with
light the light of evidence, such as we undoubtedly possess and
enjoy in the case of the idea of causality.
It is too much to expect us to believe that night is the author
of day, or that we should leave the conscious sphere of evidence,
blow out all its lights, and go back into the dark-room of the human
understanding for real enlightenment. This appeal from the mani-
fest powers of light in human knowledge, to those of darkness, as
if the former were the latter's messengers, is an attempt to " go be-
hind the returns," that has no justification in reason. For, as-
suredly, there is something radically wrong with the theory that
would have us say, " We see not " when we actually see ; that would
have us proclaim the inevidence and the evidence of an idea in one
and the same breath.
No ! " First principles," and " causality " among them, furnish
their own evidence. They cannot rightfully be transferred from
the column of the known to that of the believed. They are not a
matter of instinctive acceptance, but of evidential sight. The prin-
ciple of " causality " is, therefore, not a " municipal law " true only
of the mind, but of the very universe itself and its wheeling worlds.
It is no invention of the human understanding, but a truth of na-
ture, and along its pathway, as along a silvery lane of light, the
reason of man is capable of seeing its way back to the " Cause of
Causes," Who is in all things, though not of them ; immanent with-
out being identical; transcendent without being remote or aloof.
Those who would have us abandon this principle have never been
able to prove that we should, and the story of their own drif tings
over the shoreless sea of idealism, which we shall next proceed to re-
late, is the story of minds unpiloted, blown about by every wind of
doctrine.
PIUS THE TENTH.
" Instaurare omnia in Christo" (Eph. i. 10).
BY H. R. S.
Lo, God from silent city on the seas
Had snatched earth's simplest man and held him, pale
And dazed, above the glory of the hills ;
Then pierced his trembling soul with one command :
" Stretch out thine arm. Restore all things in Christ."
" Not I, O Lord? Be pitiful and spare! "
" I shall not spare. For I have chosen thee,
Such as thou art, to go before My face
And wage My battle As I call a bird
From out the east, so from afar I call
The man of My own will. For I Myself
Have spoken. Yea, and I shall bring it there
To pass I give salvation unto Sion
Stand dauntless forth." 1
He shuddered, and obeyed.
That heart, whence tenderness flowed out in streams,
Put on the breast-plate of His justice then
And met, invincible, the fiery dart.
The field is won And with the night there falls
A silence on the camp. . . .
He hath restored
To man Christ's Godhead in its plenitude,
And Christ in Living Bread to cleansed lips
For daily food. He hath restored to Christ
The little ones whose breasts are Bethanies,
Where Christ is Guest and Host, and it is morn.
To Liturgy restored its primal chant,
Majestic voice of praise.
The nations crash;
War wraps its shroud the world around God folds
His saint in peace. Restorer is restored
To Christ, in Whom all things are made anew.
1 Isaias xlvi.
DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS.
BY A. H. NANKIVELL.
HE latest Anglican crisis finds its centre of interest
in the Bishop of Oxford. Whether that is chiefly
due to his personal force of character, or to his of-
ficial position, it is a little hard to say. Antece-
dently one would have supposed that Dr. Sanday
was the man of the moment. He it is whose dramatic intervention
at the psychological moment has brought to naught the counsels of
the bishops, and given them all their work to do again. But we
may test the situation in two ways, and they yield the same result.
The starting point of the present controversy is Dr. Gore's Open
Letter to his clergy on The Basis of Anglican Fellowship in Faith
and Organisation. This bore immediate fruit in the Canterbury
Resolutions of April 3Oth, and in Dr. Sanday 's reply to the Bishop
of Oxford, entitled Bishop Gore's Challenge to Criticism. Then
Professor Gwatkin came forward in the name of the aggrieved
Evangelicals, to show cause why authority should not be invoked
in defence of traditional beliefs. And a Catholic layman intervened
anonymously to inquire why the ancient Church has an authority
for Bishop Gore, which the modern Church has not, and to suggest
" development " as a solution of many problems. And finally Dean
Strong of Christchurch, Oxford, made a really valuable contribu-
tion to the discussion in his criticism of Dr. Sanday and defence of
Dr. Gore. Thus it is clear that the literary debate has arranged
itself around the defender of traditional Anglicanism, and not
around the champion of moderate modernism.
The same result will be obtained if we ask ourselves- what would
be the result if the controversy were carried to such a point as
to involve the exclusion from the Establishment of either of these
leaders ? The withdrawal of Dr. Sanday from communion with the
Protestant Church would be attended with feelings of deep regret
among a large number of persons, who revere his character and
admire his scholarship. But to suppose that it would cause any-
thing like a panic in the Church of England, or even in the Broad
Church party, is to misunderstand the situation altogether. There
are far too many people who have not so much as heard of the
1914-"] DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS 15
existence of Dr. Sanday, to permit of any widespread consternation
at his departure. Whereas the loss of Bishop Gore would be as
severe a blow to his Church as one could well imagine.
It will be best, then, for our present purpose to take first the
Bishop of Oxford's Letter, paying special regard to that part
of it which has been made of urgent importance by the action of
Dr. Sanday, and passing more lightly over those parts of it which
concern controversies which are for the moment in abeyance.
Dr. Gore begins by complaining that the present tendency of
the Church of England is " to avoid questions of principle." In his
opinion this has not always been the habit of his Church; and
he instances to the contrary the seventeenth century and the Trac-
tarian Movement. For him there is no question what the Church
of England has " stood for " since the Reformation. To quote his
words :
It has stood for what can, I think, be best described as a
liberal or Scriptural Catholicism: that is to say, it has stood
to maintain the ancient fundamental faith of the Catholic
Church, as expressed in creeds and conciliar decisions of the
undivided Church, and the ancient structure of the Church, as
depending upon the successions of bishops, and the require-
ments of episcopal ordination for the ministry, and the minis-
tration of the ancient sacraments and rites of the Church by
the methods and on the principles which it believed to be
primitive. On such a basis it has claimed to stand as part of
the Catholic Church; and at the same time it has associated
itself with the Protestants in what is believed to be their
legitimate protest and appeal their protest against the ex-
aggerated claim of the mediaeval Papacy and the mediaeval
accumulation of dogma, and their appeal to the primitive
Church, and especially to Scripture, as the sole final testing-
ground of dogmatic requirement.
He goes on to explain that this twofold affinity with Catholics
and Protestants, " on the basis of an intelligible principle," is the
source of the comprehensiveness of the National Church. But com-
prehensiveness necessitates a firm grasp of common principles, and
this is now imperilled by the claims put forward by the liberals,
the Evangelicals, and the Romanizing party. " These movements
appear to be facing straight away from one another with a markedly
disruptive tendency; and the great body of the Church has been
strangely blind or indifferent to what has been going on."
16 DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS [Oct.,
The Bishop says rightly enough that " in one sense the ques-
tion is a very broad and large one. It is the whole question of
what is really true, and can claim to be permanent in Christianity."
But unfortunately after making this admission, he " drifts " away
steadily from this most hopeful and profitable line of thought
to a merely legal discussion of the legitimate limits of Anglican
thought, or rather of clerical opinion. It is hardly too much to say
that he almost wholly neglects the investigation of what is true, and
confines himself to inquiring what is permissible. And that is why
his treatment of the question is so completely uninspiring.
Dealing first with the claim of liberalism, he tells us that an
advanced school of Biblical criticism has come to the conclusion that
what are now called " nature-miracles," in contrast to miracles of
healing, are unworthy of credit, " not chiefly on groun.ds of the
evidence in each particular case, but on grounds of general scien-
tific and historical principles," 1 and that a number of clergymen share
these views, and in consequence reject a great part of the Gospel
narrative. Some of these again have been led to believe that our
Lord anticipated an immediate end of the age, and so they find
themselves unable to think of Him as an infallible Teacher. The
Bishop tells us that the existence of these views among a consid-
erable section of the clergy will not be denied. And he emphasizes
that they claim not merely that their views are true, but that they
have a right to hold them as ministers and teachers of the Estab-
lished Church.
He goes on to say, as it were in passing, that he has tried to deal
elsewhere with the criticism in question, and that he considers it to
be based " on a mistaken view of natural law, and on something
much less than a Christian belief in God." And he refers his readers
to the Bishop of Ely's treatment of the question in his preface to
The Gospels in the Light of Historical Criticism. And then he
wanders away into a wearisome and technical discussion of the ob-
ligations involved in the assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles and the
1 The position of these persons is not always very clearly expressed, but it ap-
pears to be that while some miracles may be explained by the supposition that they
are due to laws and forces of nature with which we are not yet fully acquainted,
others are impatient of any such explanation. For example, it is not conceivable
that the advance of science will ever reduce to natural law the multiplication of the
loaves at the Feeding of the Five Thousand. The latter, that is the real miracles
as contrasted with the merely apparent ones, are simply rejected as alleged breaches
of the universal order, which is the first presupposition of scientific investigation.
In other words, although they say, with Professor Huxley, that a miracle is a mere
matter of evidence, and a law of nature, a statement of the results of observation,
they habitually think of the laws as necessary and unalterable.
I9I4-] DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS 17
use of the Prayer Book and Creeds. Here he gets into difficulties,
for it is not pretended by any considerable party in the Anglican
Church that the condemnation in the Athanasian Creed of those who
fail to keep the faith whole and undefiled can be taken au pied de la
lettre. " But," he explains, " there is a great difference between a
personal affirmation of belief and the joining in the general proposi-
tion of a canticle." And this must mean that he does not consider
the Quicumque milt to be a Creed in the strict sense.
In his treatment of the Apostles' Creed, he adopts a line of
argument of which more will be heard. Objection is made that
when we say that He " sitteth at the right Hand of God," we are
using language that is plainly symbolical, and that our modern view
of the universe does not permit us to localize heaven and hell with
the same precision as our ancestors.
Human language [he replies] is practically limited by what
lias fallen within human experience. With regard to what
lies outside present human experience, we can only be taught
in symbolic language language which is in a measure
diverted from its original purpose But the central glory
of the religion of the Incarnation is that God has revealed
Himself, distinctly, within human experience, in words and acts,
some of them miraculous. Thus to apply the theory of sym-
bolism to explain away the record of those events within hu-
man experience is precisely to misapply the theory and
to evacuate the Incarnation of its special and unique glory,
which is the glory of literal fact.
Passing by the Bishop's personal defence of himself from the
tu quoque charge of heresy, which the liberals are not slow to bring
against him, we come to his formal appeal to his Church to pass
judgment on the liberal claim. He does not ask for prosecution or
persecution ; he is willing to give the fullest liberty for tentative pro-
posals and free discussion. But he does insist that the bishops must
make it clear that when a man has finally made up his mind in a
sense adverse to the Christian tradition, he cannot any longer legit-
imately " exercise his ministry in the Church/'
We may summarize more briefly the rest of the Bishop's Letter.
He says that the root question between Evangelicals and High
Churchmen is " whether episcopacy is of the esse of the Church."
And he frankly admits that this claim, and those related to it,
arouse an intense resentment when made by Anglican clergymen,
VOL. C. 2
i8 DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS [Oct.,
which they do not when made on behalf of the Roman Catholic
Church. But he insists that the Anglican Church has always acted
so as to satisfy those who believed in the necessity of the episcopate,
even though it has not required a definite assent to a declaration of
its universal necessity. Federation, 2 therefore, with nonconformity
at home or in the mission field involves the consequence of disrup-
tion. And if disruption is to be avoided, Evangelicals must be con-
tent to act as if episcopacy were of the esse of the Church, whatever
they may privately hold to the contrary.
The Bishop is somewhat quaintly embarrassed when he comes
to deal with the Romeward Movement. Oddly enough he finds it
difficult at first to lay down any reason why a clergyman who accepts
all but the whole cycle of Roman doctrine, should not remain in the
shelter of the comprehensive Establishment. For in dealing with
the liberals he has already given reasons why he does not think
it fair to press home the assertions of particular Articles of Re-
ligion. And it appears that nearly fifty years ago the Church
of England withdrew or abandoned her assertion that " no foreign
prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath or ought to have
any jurisdiction or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within
His Majesty's said realms, dominions, and countries," which, as
he truly observes, was a very sweeping declaration; and the state-
ments which survive in the Articles are in his judgment too vague
and easily glossed to be sufficiently decisive. So he has to be content
to rest his case on the " constantly reiterated and emphatic principle "
of Protestantism, the acceptance of Holy Scripture as limiting the
dogmatic requirement of the Church.
As a supplement to this he pleads not unjustly the principle of
consistency. We shall not quarrel with him when he says, that
" Romanism without the Pope is an extraordinarily irrational and
inconsequential system of ideas." And finally he thinks that practi-
cal loyalty to the Prayer Book will exclude the ideas and persons that
the Church of England is better without. In conclusion he cannot
resist the impression that "the Church of England has a
bad time ahead of it." And he looks forward to disestablish-
ment as the remedy for the lack of definite principles which he
deplores.
Apart from other matters which clamor for criticism, the Catho-
lic reader will be struck by the apparent absence of any conception
2 This, of course, could only be true, if Anglican Orders were valid. But then
they are not.
I9I4-] DR - GORE AND HIS CRITICS 19
of faith in the Catholic sense as forming a necessary factor in the
Christian life. To an instructed Catholic, faith is believing without
doubting what God has revealed by the testimony, teaching, and
authority of the Catholic Church. According to Dr. Gore, the
clergy of the Church are to be at liberty to doubt what they like
and to publish their doubts without censure, as long as they do not
" finally and seriously disbelieve " the few doctrines to which their
own Church stands committed. In other words, his Church is not
seriously regarded, even by himself, as being, in its own phrase,
" a faithful dispenser of the Word of God." It lacks authority
even in the judgment of one of the most loyal of its sons.
Professor Gwatkin's pamphlet, entitled The Bishop of Oxford's
Open Letter, need not detain us long. It is brilliant, smart, and
superficial. Any reader who has the faculty of enjoying mere clever-
ness apart from worthier qualities, will heartily enjoy this; the
more serious and the less humorous will grieve. He practically
charges the Bishop with seeking to gain a party advantage in a
serious crisis. " Your plan is to make Tractarianism the official
doctrine and official practice of the Church." And the substance
of the reply is that he is not going to walk into the trap. He
does not like the new Protestantism ; its theories of the supernatural
seem to him seriously defective. But it alarms him less than the
Romanism patronized by the Bishops of Oxford and Zanzibar. And
for the rest, "If my neighbor walks in darkness, I will rather pray
God to cast His bright beams of light upon him than help to stigma-
tize him in the Church, and drive him out from what you hold to
be the only means of grace which God has promised." This is
perhaps the best part of the Letter; the worst could hardly be quoted
in the pages of a Catholic Review.
Returning to the main line of the controversy, we note that the
Bishop of Oxford's Letter produced an immediate effect. His de-
mand that the episcopate should make a plain declaration was met
by the Upper House of the Canterbury Convocation, which passed
Resolutions on April 3Oth at the instance of the Bishop of London.
After repeating Resolutions of an earlier date which affirmed that
" the historical facts contained in the Creeds are an essential part of
the Faith of the Church," the Bishops declared :
These Resolutions we desire solemnly to reaffirm, and in
accordance therewith we express our deliberate judgment that
the denial of any of the historical facts stated in the Creeds
goes beyond the limits of legitimate interpretation, and gravely
20 DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS [Oct.,
imperils that sincerity of profession which is plainly incum-
bent on the ministers of Word and Sacrament. At the same
time, recognizing that our generation is called upon to face new
problems raised by historical criticism, we are anxious not to
lay unnecessary burdens upon consciences, nor unduly to limit
freedom of thought and inquiry among clergy or laity. We
desire, therefore, to lay stress on the need of considerateness
in dealing with that which is tentative and provisional in the
thought and work of earnest and reverent students.
A further Resolution repeated the declaration of the Ordinal
about the necessity of episcopacy " in the Church of England."
By this means the Bishops stole a march on Dr. Sanday, who
was preparing a protest which was intended to prevent this declara-
tion being made. His manifesto entitled Bishop Gore's Challenge
to Criticism, did not appear till May Qth, and then contained a pref-
ace explaining that events had moved too fast for him. The effect
of it was none the less serious; it appears to have almost entirely
neutralized the episcopal declaration. But this is due much more
to Dr. Sanday's great prestige at the universities, than to anything
of weight in Dr. Sanday's argument.
He begins by complaining that Bishop Gore directly impugns
the sincerity of a number of persons " who are allowed to be good
men," and calls on the Anglican episcopate to condemn them. He
complains that the submission which the Bishop requires is "more
an act of the will than of the mind; it may mean the suppressing
of the intellectual conscience." He affirms that the resolute
pursuit of truth requires a high and austere sincerity; and this
is conspicuously displayed by those whom the Bishop con-
demns."
To the main accusation he replies that the charge of insincerity
breaks down. In the first place Dr. Gore sometimes writes " as if
he believed that a Christian takes his views, on authority, straight
from the Creeds." If that were true, Dr. Sanday admits that there
would be no room for a corrected interpretation. " But," he says,
" few persons regard the Creeds as in this sense ultimate. They are
summaries of Scripture which derive their authority in the last resort
from Scripture." Consequently, he goes on to argue, if we modify
our understanding of Scripture, we modify our understanding of
the Creeds.
Dr. Sanday then sets forward his great reasons for understand-
ing the Scriptures, or rather the matters which they relate, in a new
1914.] DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS 21
and strange sense. The principle argument is that from the dif-
ference of times. " Creeds composed fifteen, sixteen, seventeen
centuries ago cannot possibly express with literal exactitude the
mind of to-day. Its whole intellectual context is different." His
chief example of this is the rise of historical criticism. " Our con-
ception of the Bible has been deeply affected It could not be
otherwise We are therefore obliged to take the Creeds in a
broad, general sense as subject to criticism." And here, and I think
only here, we get a plain positive statement of belief from Dr. San-
day : " The central truth which it is most important to guarantee is.
the true Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; that our Lord
Jesus Christ is truly God and truly Lord, very God and very Man."
And he adds, " the man who in his heart of hearts really believed
less ought not to be where he is."
He then proceeds to attack Dr. Gore's personal position in the
matter of criticism, which is, broadly speaking, that it is often
neither possible not needful to discriminate in the Old Testament
between story and history, for in the Old Testament the element of
fact is not generally important to us; but that in the New Testa-
ment where it is important, and sometimes vitally so, we have the
assurance of good contemporary evidence. Prof. Sanday prefers to
maintain that the writers of the New Testament had acquired a habit
of mind from the study of the Old, which is fatal to their reputa-
tion as reliable historians. :< Their minds were full of Old Testa-
ment narratives, and there was a natural tendency to assimilate
their narratives to them Even St. Luke, whose preface
breathes the spirit of a sober secular historian, is entirely at one
with his fellows in regard to miracle." The last sentence most
flagrantly displays the animus of Dr. Sanday's criticism.
In the third part of his paper, Dr. Sanday begins to draw some
distinctions to which he attaches great importance; though he ad-
mits that the public will regard them with impatience.
I know [he says] that to the end of the chapter it will be
said that miracles are denied, that the Virgin Birth is
denied, that the Resurrection is denied, that our Lord's infal-
libility is denied. It would not be candid of me if I were to
pretend that there is not a foundation of truth in each
of these charges. But in every single case there is some
important limitation or qualification which ought to be borne
in mind whenever the charge is repeated. To omit this is
always to import an element of injustice.
22 DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS [Oct.,
At this stage Dr. Sanday breaks the sequence of his argument
for a moment, in order to associate himself definitely with the group
of writers whose proceedings are under discussion. He explains
that it is only during the last two years that he has been led to go as
far as some of them. And he is not sure now that he goes quite as
far. But he goes on to explain why he dislikes to use the word
" infallibility " even in reference to our Divine Lord ; he thinks it
more probable that the nature-miracles were attributed to Him in the
form in which we have them by " the imagination of the early
Church," than that they happened " exactly as they are described ; "
and in regard to the Birth of our Lord, he believes " most emphati-
cally in His Supernatural Birth," but he cannot so easily bring him-
self to think " that His Birth was. . , .unnatural." In the case of
the Resurrection, he wishes to be understood as accepting it, but not
in the sense of admitting "the actual resuscitation of the dead Body
of the Lord from the tomb."
In the last section he explains at some length the process by
which he arrived at these extraordinary conclusions. He denies
that his attitude was based " on a mistaken view of natural law, and
on something much less than a Christian belief in God." He says in
words that recall sayings of Professor Huxley, that he did not doubt
the power of God to make what exceptions He pleased. He only
asked for better evidence of His will to make them. And then he
goes on to draw a distinction, which he never fully explains, between
events that are supra naturam " exceptional, extraordinary, testi-
fying to the presence of higher spiritual forces," and events that are
contra naturam, or " involve some definite reversal of the natural
physical order." Are we not justified in saying that in his case,
as in Huxley's, it is not really the nature or quality of the evidence
that is really in fault, but the substance and content of it?
Dr. Sanday maintains that after the critical processes have done
their work, the residuum of miracles really contra naturam is ex-
ceedingly small, and that each of these taken separately may be
explained by the growth of legend around a basis of historic fact.
Finally there remain only " the two great events, the Supernatural
Beginning and Ending of the Lord's earthly career." The reason
why these two only remain is, of course, because the rest have been
got rid of forcibly and at any cost. Dr. Sanday then presents to
us a universe of faultless uniformity, in which there are two, and
two only, alleged failures to conform to law. He appeals to our
common sense. Supposing the Creator really had worked miracles,
I9H-] DR - GORE AND HIS CRITICS 23
is it likely that He would have worked only two ? Those are not his
words ; but they are certainly the substance of them. This is what
he actually says :
It was quite impossible for me to dismiss from my mind the
prccjudicium which had been gradually forming itself against
the permanent validity of the conception of miracles contra
naturam.
And more precisely on page 30 :
There has been just this one little submerged rock in our
mental navigation of the universe. If we look at it from a
cosmic standpoint, how infinitesimal does it seem! And yet
that one little rock has been the cause of many a shipwreck
of faith. If it is really taken out of the way, the whole
expanse of the ocean of thought will be open and free.
Finally he takes leave of his hearers in a bewildering atmos-
phere of protest and paradox.
I would ask leave to affirm once more my entire and strong
belief in the central reality of the Supernatural Birth and the
Supernatural Resurrection But I must in candor add that
although I believe emphatically in a Supernatural Birth and a
Supernatural Resurrection, and in all that follows from these
beliefs, I know that is not all that the Church of the past has
believed.
Taking up Dean Strong's able pamphlet, The Miraculous in
Gospels and Creeds, we find ourselves at once in a healthier and
more invigorating atmosphere. Indeed there is comparatively little
that might not have been written by a Catholic. By a lively and
convincing illustration, he brings home to the reader that Dr. San-
day's claim to teach whatever he may be convinced is true without
reference to the standards of his Church, cannot be rightly enter-
tained so long as he is a servant of that Church. And then he adds,
" It would appear that Dr. Sanday himself recognizes limits beyond
which it is impossible to go and retain Church membership ; if this
is so, the difference between him and Bishop Gore is one of degree
and not of kind."
The Dean then addresses himself to Dr. Sanday 's principal
argument, based on " the difference of times." He observes that
24 DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS [Oct.,
lapse of time affects such statements as those under discussion in
two ways. Historical facts are gradually lost, and the links which
bound those which remain to the general life of mankind, one by one
disappear, and so lapse of time makes it increasingly difficult to
determine what actually happened. But further, and this was Dr.
Sanday's point, there is a change of " intellectual context." "The
world is conceived in different fashion, under different categories
and principles, and the old language which men once used of it ceases
to be used." Here Dr. Strong insists that we must remember that
it is the view of the facts that changes, not the facts themselves.
" If in any case the statement of the facts is in itself an assertion of
the theory, then when the theory changes, theory and alleged facts
disappear together ; in other cases change of theory makes no
difference to the facts alleged : in these cases the same facts will be
alleged, only the form of words in which they are described may be
changed. Illustrations of this are supplied in hundreds by natural
science. The facts and events observed are described in new words,
but the facts themselves are unchanged."
The whole of this criticism is of great value, and should in
justice be read as a whole, and compared with Mr. Bal four's chapter
on " Beliefs, Formulas, and Realities " in The Foundations of Be-
lief. The application to the principal case in point is worth re-
peating.
In the Creed we assert that the Lord was born of the Virgin
Mary Now this is certainly a strange and startling asser-
tion : but it is not a theoretic statement at all ; it is an assertion
of a fact in perfectly intelligible terms, and it must be either
true or false. Lapse of time makes no difference whatever.
if the statement was true when it was first made, it is true
now in exactly the same sense.
The questions relating to the Resurrection and Ascension are
treated ably on similar lines, though there are things in it which
a Catholic would have expressed differently.
Passing over the very Anglican discussion of the miraculous in
the Old and New Testaments, we come to a piece of shrewd criticism
on the use of the word nature. " As applied to the world it some-
times means the created order apart from man, sometimes the
created order including man. As applied to man, nature means, in
some contexts, man as he ought not to be, in others, man as he might
be and ought to be Natural law again covers the observed
1QI4-] DR. GORE AND HIS CRITICS 25
uniformities of the material world, and at times is construed as
excluding freedom of will." He examines Dr. Sanday's use of the
word, and concludes that " natura in the phrase contra naturam
means simply the uniformities of matter and motion, and that in
the other phrase the meaning is different but not defined." He
complains that Dr. Sanday " knows nothing " of any serious as-
sault upon the mechanical view of the natural world. This view
" fails of course to explain the miraculous, because it excludes any-
thing of this kind from the first. But it also fails to explain all
psychical phenomena, all the movement of history, and all that can be
reasonably called religious. In a word, Dr. Sanday's view of the
universe is hardly distinguishable from that of the Deists."
The Dean then traces ground familiar to almost every Christian
thinker, when he compares the activity of man to the miraculous
power of God, carefully noting, however, that the action of man
just lacks the touch of creative power which these acts of God dis-
play.
And here we must take leave of this able apologist, with regret
that we have not space to do him better justice. With the exception
of what he has written, there is little enough in these papers to
warrant a hopeful view of the religious future of England. The
approximation by some Protestants to the sacramental doctrines of
the Catholic Church is, we begin to fear, more than counterbalanced
by the loss of all sense of authority and security in matters of faith.
It is absurd to suppose that Dr. Sanday's position is anything but
a makeshift, or that the down grade will cease at the point that he
has now attained. There is no finality in the process to which he is
committed, short of the complete acknowledgment that nothing
worth knowing can be really known.
WHERE EXTREMES MEET.
BY A. RAYBOULD.
ARIS, gay, thoughtless, pleasure loving, irreligious,
depraved Paris the centre of the world's fashions
as of its follies, the haunt of pleasure, the hotbed
of vice and sin and side by side with this the Paris
of the saints. In no city of the world, and perhaps
at no period of the Church's history, has Christian charity flour-
ished as it flourishes in Paris to-day. To make a study of Catho-
licity as embodied in the charitable and pious organizations of this
one city, is to see in one bewildering glance the power and wonder
of the Church; the Church that knows how to employ every
talent great or small, every force weak or strong, every particle of
vitality which she can command, in the service of her Divine
Founder and in perpetuation of the Christian ideal.
If the test of genuine Christianity be love of the brethren, the
Church does not fail to give the guarantee of this test by the various
works in which she embodies and expresses this love. The keynote
of the Church's power is charity, not merely that charity which
ministers to the spiritual wants of her children, but that kindly
benevolence which extends to the social and material wants of all
who come within her pale. Nowhere, perhaps, in the world is this
note heard more clearly ; nowhere, perhaps, has this spirit of Chris-
tian charity found a more perfect expression than in this very city
where the Church's name has become a byword of scorn.
Someone, M. Joly, I think, has said that the virtue of piety
is a peculiar gift of the French people; this may account for the
fact that in spite of persecution on the part of the secular powers,
all religious institutions become fruitful on French soil, and par-
ticularly those in which piety seeks to express itself through works
of active charity. We cannot forget that Paris has given to the
world and to the Church two philanthropists whose names alone
suggest all the heroism of Christian benevolence. It is to the
Paris of St. Vincent of Paul and of Ozanam that we must turn if we
wish to study the length and breadth, the height and depth of that
charity which reaches to every class, which touches every wound,
and which welds the whole Catholic community into one society
1914.] WHERE EXTREMES MEET 27
bound together by the cords of brotherly love, and sustained by the
laws of mutual aid.
Before considering the various charitable institutions which
exist in the French capital, it will not be without interest to cast
a glance on the " parish," which is the centre round which all these
institutions revolve, the parish as it exists in Paris to-day. In
France the foundation of the parish dates back to remote ages,
even to the times of the Gauls, and before the Franks had established
their monarchy. But in the early ages of the Christian Church, in
this country the power of the secular clergy was much limited and
controlled by that of the religious orders. It was only at the be-
ginning of the eleventh century that the position and power of
the secular clergy became defined, and it is from this time that we
see the parish take its definite and important place in France.
From this time the clergy begins to possess power in the State, and
to exercise certain prerogatives; holding the offices of notaries,
arbitrators of peace, directors of schools, etc. At the end of the
eleventh century the right of the parish had become fully estab-
lished, and it had already assumed an aspect not unlike that which
it possesses to-day. This institution of the parish in Paris
was to produce in time men like Gerson, St. Vincent of Paul, Mon-
sieur Olier, 1'Abbe Cochin, and so many others whose names have
become world-known. But whatever power the secular clergy ac-
quired hi Paris, this power was at no time attributable to wealth.
Perhaps this accounts for the high moral standard with which it
has been accredited. Even in a picture given of the French clergy
just before the Revolution we read, " It must be acknowl-
edged that of all the existing institutions, that of the parish clergy
is the one which has the least fallen away from its original
ideals."
At the present time Paris possesses seventy-seven parishes
within the city and ninety-three without. Each of these parishes
has the cure of from sixty thousand to eighty thousand souls. The
Cure, or parish priest, directs the affairs of the parish, assisted by
his vlcaires or curates, and sometimes by other priests not directly
attached to the parish. The number of vicaircs varies from three to
seven or eight, and their work is of course proportionate to their
number and the requirements of the parish. Since the Bill of
Separation the financial resources of the clergy depend largely upon
the offertories, rent of chairs, donations, etc. The Church in Paris
is reduced to poverty, but not to destitution, and as the Catholic
28 WHERE EXTREMES MEET [Oct.,
population realizes more and more the necessity for providing for
religious cult, contributions will increase, and the poverty of the
churches will be diminished, provided the government makes
some concession with regard to the restoration and maintenance
of the churches. This question of the churches is one of burning
interest at present to French Catholics. The government, moved no
doubt by no other sentiment than hatred of religion, has in some
instances refused permission to restore the churches, even when the
necessary funds have been offered or promised by the Catholic body.
M. Barres, in his recent work La Pitie des Eg Uses de France, has
attracted the sympathy of the whole world by his eloquent pleading
for the cause of the French churches. When not directly interfered
with by the secular powers, the French are not ungenerous to the
needs of their clergy, as is proved by the fact that since the Bill of
Separation several new parishes have been established in Paris.
The clergy, too, have taken active measures to provide for the
maintenance of the churches. At the parochial conferences and
diocesan synods an inquiry is always made into the financial condi-
tion of each parish, and the distribution of the " Denier du Culte "
provides for the poorer churches. This " Denier du Culte " ( fund
for religious worship), which has been established since the Bill
of Separation, is a fund raised by dues or offerings, and which is
equally divided between the parish in which it is collected and
the diocese, which by means of this fund is able to provide for the
poorer parishes. At the same time it cannot be denied that the
clergy have often to suffer the results of poverty, and so far as their
personal needs are concerned, have to be content with little more
than the bare necessaries of life. Parochial work in Paris is ex-
tremely arduous, and often above the strength of those upon whom
it falls, so that the lives of many young priests are sacrificed to the
duties of their calling. But notwithstanding these drawbacks voca-
tions to the priesthood are numerous, and in this field of labor where,
humanly speaking, there is all to lose and but little to gain, there
are never wanting zealous souls ready to step in and fill up the
ranks of those who have fallen.
Now that the clergy can no more exercise their religious zeal
in the schools, and as it is impossible to have a Catholic school in
each parish, besides the fact that the government puts every possible
obstacle in the way of the Catholic schools, the priests have to rely
on the " patronage " for the implanting of Christian principles, and
for that religious instruction and preparation for the Sacraments
1914.] WHERE EXTREMES MEET 29
which have become impossible in the schools. Among the charit-
able institutions of Paris the " patronage " takes the first place.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Abbe Allemand
founded in Marseilles a work for the preservation of the young;
this work was extended and developed in the same town by the Abbe
Tinon Dinard. Shortly afterwards the idea attracted the favorable
attention of the Conferences of St. Vincent of Paul in Paris, and
M. Melun, aided by the famous Sister Rosalie, undertook and
succeeded in establishing several " patronages." These institutions
survived the dispersal of the religious orders, and, passing under
the direction of the secular clergy, have since been much extended.
At the present time there are four hundred and sixty-six of these
" patronages " in Paris, two hundred and twelve for boys with forty-
five thousand associates, and three hundred and fifty-four for girls
with sixty thousand associates. The idea of assisting and pro-
tecting the young has always been a feature of charity in France, and
the claims of youth have always found there able defenders.
The <( patronage " is a sort of club, has its own buildings with
classrooms and recreation halls, and often large playgrounds at-
tached. The " patronages " are under the direction of the secular
clergy, but much of the practical work in connection with them is
clone by secular persons, who devote themselves voluntarily to the
instruction and amusement of youth. Their fundamental idea
is to supply whatever may be lacking in school or home, to offer
to youth not merely a refuge from temptation and idleness, but also
practical aid in the pursuit of study, and in the acquiring
of arts and handicrafts, which may later be a means of subsistence
or of harmless pleasure. The " patronage " strives further to
develop social and economic aims, and to establish a permanent
link between clergy and people.
Here every boy and girl is given ample opportunity for
continuing and supplementing school studies, and for learning useful
trades and industries which may prove invaluable in after life.
The " patronage " organizes free lectures and conferences, provides
for courses of study, and offers the advantage of lessons not only
in the primary subjects of elementary education, but also in lan-
guages, painting, music, singing, cooking, dressmaking, laundry
work, lace making, embroidery, etc., and often also contains a
workshop where boys may learn iron work, carpentry, etc.
Some of the " patronages " even provide courses of open air
instruction for the study of botany, farming or gardening. Nor
30 WHERE EXTREMES MEET [Oct.,
do they fail to make a special point of offering every facility
for games, gymnastics, and military drill. They encourage the
boys to achieve prowess in bodily exercises by prizes, and by giving
certificates for " aptitude for military service," facilitate entry into
the army later.
In connection with some of the "patronages" an open air
scheme has been established. This consists in drafting off the deli-
cate children, during the holidays, to the country, where they are
quartered upon the villagers at the expense of the " patronage," or
are sent to country houses rented for that purpose. These vacation
colonies are catered for by charity, and the children are sometimes
cared for by secular persons who devote themselves to this work.
Indeed very much of all this work is done by men and women of
the world, and often by those belonging to the best Parisian society.
The chief aim of the " patronage " remains of course always a
spiritual one the salvation of souls and the protection of the young
from temptation and sin, but this does not militate against utilitarian
ends, nor does it hinder social and industrial aims. Every endeavor
is made to band its associates together by the ties of mutual
aid, to encourage in them a sense of social responsibility, and so to
prepare them for the later civic and social duties of life. With
this end in view it tries to develop habits of industry and thrift, of
honest work, and the desire to excel in trades and handicrafts. It
furthers economy through the organization of syndicates and sav-
ings banks, and insurances against sickness and old age.
With regard to the practical means of subsistence of the " pa-
tronage " and its various branches, much money is scraped together
through the pennies of the poor themselves. The associates may
be poor, but they are capable of contributing something; the children
are proud of bringing their pennies; the parents out of gratitude
also make some offerings, and what is wanting is supplied by the
generosity of those who are interested in the good work.
The whole idea rests upon a realization of the fact that
the young are the pillars of society; that in the words of Abbe
d'Hulst, " we must have children. They are absolutely necessary
not only to keep the world from coming to an end, but also to keep
it from going to sleep. Without young people the world would die
of inanition. And they must have boldness and self-confidence;
nor would I refuse them the right to look upon the past somewhat
compassionately, otherwise they would hardly have the courage to
attempt to do better things."
IQT4-
WHERE EXTREMES MEET 31
But the " patronage " proper does not confine its work ex-
clusively to the young. It is hoped, for instance, in time to extend
the open air scheme not only to sickly children, but also to tired and
delicate parents. Already one apostle of the poor, M. Enfer,
has decided to receive the parents into his vacation colony next
year. The "patronage" also continues and spreads its work through
workmen's clubs, trade societies, and social unions, and through
various organizations for the furthering of industries and arts.
The clergy have become so interested in the labors of the artisan
class, and in the industrial question, that they have taken over the
management of several workshops in Paris. The Abbe Weisneg
has a mechanical workshop at St. Hippolyte, the Abbe Aigong has
a carpenter's shop, and at St. Denis de la Chapelle, where the Abbe
Rudynski acts as master of iron works, the engines have become so
celebrated that he receives orders from the chief railway companies.
All these industries form a bond between clergy and people, a
bond much needed since the separation of Church and State.
Passing from these works of social philanthropy to purely
charitable institutions, the Society of St. Vincent of Paul takes
naturally the first place. This Society which has spread through
the whole world, is so well known that it is unnecessary to describe
its aims. But having had its origin in Paris and being particularly
adapted to the needs and character of the French people, its scope
in the French capital is necessarily wider than elsewhere, and in no
city is this Society so popular among all classes as here where
Ozanam, member of the University of Paris and Professor of
the Sorbonne, conceived the divinely-inspired ideal of uniting works
of personal devotion to his intellectual labors, and of founding
to this end a brotherhood of charity among men of the world.
An ideal which has since borne such admirable fruit in the fertile
soil of the Catholic Church.
The Society of St. Vincent of Paul counts among its members
in Paris not only fathers of families and men of the world, but
also students and boys from the polytechnic and other schools,
and yearly recruits its strength from the ranks of the young. It
is popular even among the religiously indifferent, and has among
its members many who are not actuated by motives of piety. It
would seem that among the French, charity is regarded not so
much as a religious duty, but as a necessary social obligation.
The personal benefit of helping others, the advantage of con-
sidering life under its different aspects, and the utility of coming
32 WHERE EXTREMES MEET [Oct.,
face to face with misery, are looked upon as sufficient compensations
for the loss of time or money involved. If we remember the essen-
tial egotism of human nature, we may see the utility of laying stress
upon the personal advantages to be gained by the exercise of charity.
Everyone who wishes to have a clear outlook on life, and to
arrive at some understanding of the elements of which society is
made up, must come in personal contact with the misery which con-
stitutes so large a part of the human problem. If practical Chris-
tianity is impossible without benevolence to the poor, practical
social aims are equally impossible without understanding the con-
ditions under which the poor exist. It is good for everyone to see
suffering and want, not merely as a means of drawing nearer to
Him Who sanctified in His own Person both poverty and pain, but
also in order to understand the relations of man to man, and to
obtain some grasp of the laws which should govern human conduct.
It is perhaps this idea which has of late made charity so popular
not only among the religiously minded, but also among many who
see in its exercise the possible development and perfection of human
character. If the great works of charity in Paris are inspired and
directed by Christian sanctity and heroism, they are sustained and
made feasible by the efforts of many who can lay no claims to
holiness or heroic self-sacrifice. The wonder of these works lies
in the fact that they are so organized as to absorb and utilize in the
service of God so much human material which would otherwise go
to waste.
This interest in charitable works is always fostered by the
clergy, and in the seminaries where formerly religious and intel-
lectual questions formed the whole interest, a new spirit has sprung
up; here also social and industrial problems claim their votaries,
and the students and young priests go through a course of training
which enables them later to direct and organize the various philan-
thropic and industrial movements which are so closely connected
with all parochial work. Every " patronage " has its chaplain, and
this post is coveted by the young priests, who make it part of their
ambition to extend the existing charitable schemes.
For the actual work of relief and personal service of the poor,
the clergy rely largely upon the religious communities of women
nuns who though no longer allowed to act as educationalists, are
suffered to remain in other capacities. The little visiting Sister
of the poor is a common sight in Paris, trudging along, her basket
on her arm, or climbing the stairs which lead to the dwellings of
1914-] WHERE EXTREMES MEET 33
the poor, and in spite of the prevalent anti-religious feeling, she
generally passes unmolested on her way. Sometimes three or more
of these Sisters take up their abode in the poorest quarters of the
city, where they can be at the immediate beck and call of all who
need them, and where they devote themselves to cooking and wash-
ing for poor families, or in taking care of the children during the
absence of the parents, or in nursing the sick members of the com-
munity doing, in fact, whatever their hands find to do, and doing
it not only with Christian kindness, but also with right good will,
and indifference to the hardships of the task. These Sisters (be-
longing to different congregations), sometimes in religious, and
sometimes in secular dress, are aided by a large society, " Les
Dames de Charite," composed of ladies of the world, often of the
best society, who under their fashionable garments hide the hearts
of heroines and saints, and who spend all the hours which they can
snatch from the duties of home and society in nursing and visiting
the sick and poor, and in giving a touching example of devotion
and self-sacrifice. Another society, " Les Dames de Calvaire,"
goes to even greater lengths of heroism, its members having chosen
as their special care those who are afflicted by cancer and other
loathsome diseases. Here we see women of the world who daily
imitate the saints by the self-denial of their actions. Surely even
Christian love can go no further than this! Others devote them-
selves to the protection of young girls, to providing for the children
of unmarried mothers, to the rescue of the fallen, and to the keeping
of creches and kindergartens, where the infant children of the
working class are kept during those hours when their parents work
in the factories or elsewhere. Indeed it would be impossible to give
any idea of the number of associations and confraternities which
exist among the laity in Paris for the relief of the poor, the tending
of the sick, and the protection of the young.
It would seem as if the immediate presence of evil called
into play every spark of human heroism and divine love to be found
in the hearts of the faithful, and as if every member of the Church
felt himself bound to take some part in the work of human regenera-
tion which is going on around him. There is no class which does
not contribute something of time or thought, something of self-
sacrifice or of money, in order to further these different charitable
schemes. And the Church, which knows the secret of utilizing all
these stray seeds of human endeavor, knows also how to unite in this
common field of charity both saint and sinner, ardent and luke-
VOL. C. -3
34 WHERE EXTREMES MEET [Oct.,
warm, zealous and indifferent, finding place and useful work
for all.
Nowhere perhaps in the whole world do we see as in Paris
this wonderful meeting of extremes, not only the extremes of good
and evil, but extremes even in the realms of good. It is in this gay
and thoughtless city that we see such a wonderful mixture of
exalted spirituality and practical common sense. Here we find so-
cieties of prayer and penance, with ideals so spiritual, and aims
so mystic, that they recall bygone ages and the miracles of the saints,
and side by side with these, other Christian societies with aims so
modern, and ideals so utilitarian, that it is difficult to recognize in
them the supernatural origin to which they owe their being and
success. Here in this city of pleasure, more perhaps than elsewhere,
do we see those confraternities of prayer and adoration whose
members know how to turn night into day, when it is a question
of pleading before the altar or working for the salvation of souls :
societies of reparation and expiation guilds which ask of their
members nightly hours of prayer, and works of vicarious suffering,
incredible if we consider the circumstances under which they are
practised. And we see working hand in hand with this mystic
spirituality, other associations whose members know no bond but
that of a common faith and desire to help their fellowmen societies
so purely humanitarian in their aims that to the casual observer
they might seem to be actuated rather by the spirit of socialism
than that of religion. Here there is place and use for all, for the
sublimest yearnings after the supernatural and for the simplest
aspirations of brotherly love all working together with perhaps
no other tie than that of fidelity to the same faith, and loyalty to
that Church in which all find their highest inspiration and their
abiding security. And here in this city where the Church is so
cruelly persecuted and defamed, we see, as perhaps nowhere else,
those miracles of grace and conversion, those wonders of devotion
and self-sacrifice, those works of charity and holiness, for which it
would be impossible to account were we to forget for a moment the
sources from which they spring.
ON PIGEON RIVER.
BY JEANIE DRAKE.
HEN Lieutenant Richard Carroll reached the moun-
tain district in North Carolina to which he had
been sent, it was with hourly temptation to swear
over what he felt to be the proverbial wild goose
chase. A needle in a haystack a spring of water
in the ocean might be as easily found as a deserter in these, his
native wilds. In the presence of the two men specially detailed
with him for this service, it was " his not to reason why, his but
to do " his superior's orders, if he could; but in any case to main-
tain a respectful, soldierly silence concerning them. With Corporal
Brown, however, a man to be trusted, he could let himself out a little.
" In the name of heaven, Brown," he cried, ruefully, when they
were alone together, after rations and quarters for all had been
arranged in the old mill ; " what are we to do here ? To waste
time as we have been doing for the last week, tramping over a
country where no railroad has ever been, into every manner of
gap and hole and thicket, up and down, round and about, hither
and thither, and not a soul among these stupid natives able to guide
or even give us a word of direction ? "
" Not willing, maybe," said Brown, dryly j " but able enough.
They're not so stupid as they look. You see, Lieutenant, these
here mountaineers ain't noways in favor of the war. They ain't
got no cotton, and they ain't got no slaves. They don't give a darn
for the Confederacy nor States' Rights. Nor they don't give a
darn for the Union, neither. All they want is to be let alone up
here on their mountain tops, to play quoits with horseshoes, and
hunt and chew tobacco and drink whiskey, and watch their women
diggin' and hoein' and spinnin' and weavin' and workin' generally
for them. And to conscrip' them and haul 'em down to a flat
country to be set up in another man's quarrel, with nary a rock
or hill to get behind that ain't their notion of fightin' and strikes
'em as hard usage."
" All the same," said the Lieutenant, looking thoughtfully at
the remains of their supper of corn bread and greasy cabbage, "if
we find this fellow, he'll be shot. Fill your pipe; the tobacco's
pretty fair. The Confederate service is that scarce of men just
36 ON PIGEON RIVER [Oct.,
now. that we can't let even an unwilling mountaineer desert in the
face of the enemy without making an example of him for the good
of the rest of the homesick, slouching lot. But first catch your
hare, of course; and while this particular hare goes doubling and
winding through the Blue Ridge and keeping just out of reach, our
men are, maybe, having another good fight down by Wilmington
and we not in it and they laughing at us ! Confound Bedloe ! "
And he kicked the smouldering logs in the fireplace, and they
sent up a shower of sparks, crackling and sputtering, which pre-
vented his hearing the door open without any conventional warning;
and when at a word from Brown he turned, a girl stood in the
doorway. She was young and slim, but quite tall, and looked awk-
ward in such short, limp calico skirt as she wore. It was blue,
home-dyed, and exposed bare, sunburned ankles and feet. Her
features were at first hidden by a lank sunbonnet of the same stuff
as her gown, but when she presently took it off and twisted it in her
hands, both men were struck and puzzled by a likeness to someone,
but whom they did not remember.
" Well, my girl, what is it? " asked Carroll.
Gazing at him with perfect directness, and after the leisurely,
bovine manner of the mountaineer, she took her time to answer.
He had begun to feel amused yet restless under her stare when she
said:
"Air you'uns the captings of this yere troop?,"
" I command the squad, yes."
" I been a-thinkin' ' after another pause and stare "thet
you all 'ud need vittles. Folks round yere's mostly gone an' their
cattle."
This was, indeed, a state of things familiar to her hearers,
since they had made their entrance to this rampart of hills through
the Gap below. As at a sound rabbits scuttle into their holes in a
warren, so at rumor of the soldiers' approach, had each cabin and
field been deserted, and the domestic animals likewise hidden some-
where. But for a stray chicken or an occasional wandering " razor-
back," anything but sparse grazing on chance vegetables would have
been impossible.
" Why do they run away? We mean no harm to any of you,"
said Carroll, impatiently.
' They ain't a-knowin' thet," replied the girl, simply. " Thar's
a few ole men an' boys lef to conscrip'. Anyways, I stayed on;
for you'uns kaint hurt me much sence you took away my twin."
" Your twin ! What's your name? "
1914.] ON PIGEON RIVER 37
" Marthy Ann Bedloe."
The men's eyes met. Bedloe was the deserter they were after
a boy of eighteen. The likeness was clearly recognized now.
" Them's my bread and cabbage," said she, waving her bonnet
at the table. " Your men came over to my place an' up an' took 'em.
I'd best sell you what I can, I reckon'. I got sorghum an' eggs, ef
you'uns '11 buy 'em."
" I'll see to that," said Carroll, " and pay you for the supper."
He put a Confederate bill into her hand, which she took without
thanking him, her eyes intent upon his frank face and well
set-up uniformed figure. He noticed that the hand was slim, though
brown and work-roughened, and that she had abundant auburn
hair and soft, dark eyes with long lashes, and he said as much to
Brown, after she took herself very slowly away.
" Yes," said Brown, indifferently, " but she'll be like all these
mountain women, the dickens of a hag at thirty. Bedloe's well
enough in looks her twin, she says and I believe her, for he's
her image; but as useless, awkward a galoot as ever I saw, and
never could be learned to wash his face or carry arms straight.
He'd be a good riddance to his company; only, if we have much
more riddance, there'll be no company."
" I don't much like the idea of hunting her brother under
her eye. We might go further up the river."
" Take my advice, Lieutenant," said Corporal Brown, " and
make this headquarters. We've got at last into his own country
and among his kin. He's most apt to be lurking round here some-
where."
So they settled into quarters at the old mill, from which the
miller and his family had fled up the mountain ; and for some days
grew familiar with the great rugged eminences towering calmly
and silently above, and the lovely banks and green hill slopes and
valleys of the Pigeon. Carroll, with a soldier's quick resource,
made himself comfortable in the miller's one living room, which
Brown shared with him; the two privates sleeping in the mill shed,
dusty and piled high with bags of corn. But by day he had the
premises pretty much to himself, for each morning Corporal Brown
went forth with the men, rarely returning until nightfall, and
leaving unexplored no log cabin nor tobacco house nor stable nor
cattle shed through these mountains. He did better when, relying
on his own knowledge of the region, in which he had once before
traveled, than when an occasional uncouth ox-driver or lank mule-
rider in butternuts was taken as guide. For then, from impene-
3 8 ON PIGEON RIVER [Oct.,
trable surface stupidity and hidden, suspected craft, came furious
exasperation, and such evenings saw Corporal Brown return to the
mill in a frame of temper which his men learned to respect and
shun.
During these absences, Lieutenant Richard Carroll, anxious as
he was to be rid of this job and again with the army, fared passably
well. By temperament a lover of the grandly beautiful in nature,
his surroundings impressed and thrilled anew each day one from
the low country pine flats. So cordial he found this crisp, cool air
that he would stop in his tracks to throw back his head and square
his shoulders, and breathe it with conscious exhilaration. Then
Marthy Ann Bedloe would watch him with a responsive smile, which
only reached and softened her eyes.
" You look right peart/' she broke out on one of these occa-
sions, " an' I been a-worryin' because I ain't hed no milk to give
you. Hed to sell the cow when Hank was took off."
" Was he all you had? " asked Carroll, looking across the road
down a hollow, to where her little clearing with its forlorn log hut
showed scant and miserable against the grand background of crag
and sky.
" Yes, we'uns is orphins, an' twins. He could plow an'
plant better'n me. We hed a older brother died o' measles down
in the army. Name was Aurora Boralis. Our mammy named
him; purty, ain't it? Her own name was Mourning Walker Bed-
loe."
" Name of her family, Walker? " idly watching how the long
lashes actually cast a shadow.
" No o o. She jes' took thet ar name when she hed con-
viction o' sin. Like's this yere yearth was jes' a vale o' sorrow.
But she tole she done dance at her own in fare; an' she ust to set
a mighty heap o' store on dippin'. I ain't ever danced in my life.
An' I ain't hed no snuff to dip sence Hank went."
" It would be a pity," said Carroll, " to spoil those white teeth
with tobacco." He was recalled to himself by seeing a crimson
rise and spread under the tan of round cheek and neck. " It seems
to me," he remarked, abruptly changing the theme, " that there
ought to be trout in that river," transferring his gaze to the
pellucid dancing water, rippling and eddying on its way over shining
rock and clear, transparent depth.
" Thar's oodels o' fish. I ain't no gret hand at catchin' em ;
but I kin take you to whar they'se thickest. An' my chickens I been
a-fryin' for ye is mos' gone, an' turnips, too."
I9T4-] ON PIGEON RIVER 39
Then her helpful but uncoventional comings and goings which
had necessitated an occasional bolting of the door on which she
never knocked, were varied by fishing excursions led by her. When
all were supplied with breakfast, which she cooked as well as brought
over, and the Corporal's party started, Carroll would get an im-
provised line and spend most of the day whipping the stream, wan-
dering up and down its charming banks, above and below the forks,
finding, under the girl's direction, clear pools here and there, and
shady deeps. Sometimes he was full of the angler's exultation at
playing, and landing at last a lusty, wily, all but unconquerable
speckled victim; while, at others, he was content in this glorious
September weather to sit dreamily for long spaces without a tug
at the line, his eyes feeding unconsciously on the beauty of shining,
rushing, crystal-clear water and fern-clad rocks and green hill and
forest, and his thought wandering afar. His guide would stay
patiently near in either case, with hardly a word for hours, motion-
less almost as one of the rocks in steady, unwavering observation
of him. This, at first annoying, came to be little regarded, and her-
self scarcely more than a feature in the landscape in which her blue
cotton gown was a value. Then, with basket full or not, a sharp
mountain appetite would at last remind him that he had had but a
slight lunch, and that it was supper time. Then she would trudge
ahead of him again over foot-log bridge or, where there was none,
wade through some shallow ford, skirt kilted high, her shapely
ankles gleaming and splashing through the wetness.
" Ef you ain't used to trampin'," she said with a wistful note,
" I guess you gits plumb wore out. I wisht now I hedn't burnt
the canoe for firewood. But sometimes I jes' ain't got spunk to
cut more wood sence Hank went."
" You mustn't cut a stick while we're here," he commanded,
and she nodded her head in submission. He began to hew diligently
at a nearby tree on this occasion, while he wondered a little as the
sun dipped down and flashed a last ray or so from behind the peaks,
at Brown's unusual lateness. But when the moon presently came
up, and yet no sign of the returning party, he was too hungry
to wait longer, and took his supper where Marthy Ann had spread
it on the miller's bare pine table. She came in and out, building
up the fire, straightening things scattered, clearing the table after-
ward. Then, when he thought her finally departed to her cabin,
came back suddenly in a disconcerting way she had, and found him
risen and filling his pipe, and gazing meanwhile at an ambrotype
he had set up on the mantelpiece.
40 ON PIGEON RIVER [Oct.,
" Thet thar someone you knows to your place? "
" Yes."
" Looks like you thought right smart of her. She ain't bad
lookin' ! "
" I am to be married to this lady some day." Then, to him-
self, " When this cruel war is over."
She gazed long upon the sweet and gentle face, but said no
more. Only, whereas she had made an unregulated clatter in her
previous ministrations, she now moved with curious stillness, and
closed the door so softly after her that he did not know when
she went.
Very sleepy at last he turned in, still wondering at the Cor-
poral's delay; and had his first nap, when the quick, sharp yelp
of Marthy Ann's dog across the road awoke him. He got up and
looked out, expecting to see his party ; but no one was in view along
the moonlit road, and from the back door of the hut, which had no
window, he heard her quiet the cur. Then her figure appeared in
the front entrance, and he drew back instinctively. She looked
long at the mill, then stepped out, and crossing the road, picked
up her skirt and waded into the ford. It was so late in the night
that the moon, round and full, rode overhead and gave almost
perfect light. Why, he hardly knew, but already in shirt and
trousers, he only waited to take belt and pistols, and was quickly
out of the door and on her track. He lingered a moment in the
shadow of the great, idle mill wheel, but she did not yet look be-
hind her, emerging from the ford on the other side, and disappearing
into the wood. He waded in at once, the sound of his coming
drowned in that of the stream dashing over rocks, and entering the
forest close behind her managed to keep her in sight along the
narrow trail. At first she would sometimes turn and look, but he
instantly stood motionless in shadow, and after a while feeling
secure she stopped no more, but kept her way steadily and swiftly.
Now did his recent tramping stand him in good stead, for the
road began shortly to ascend, and the climb was a rough one.
Twice when his foot struck a stone which rolled he awaited dis-
covery; but she paid no heed now, thinking doubtless that it was
some small wandering creature of the night.
On she went, panting a little now, higher and higher, and he
was wondering if they would cross the mountain. But, when
nearly at the summit, she turned to the left, making her way through
an almost impenetrable thicket. Whatever the object of this ex-
pedition, it struck him as a courageous one for a mere girl alone
1914.] ON PIGEON RIVER 41
in the night in this desolate place. Suddenly she gave a soft
whistle like a young partridge's call. An answering whistle came
from a short distance ahead, and she pushed on a few steps farther,
where from an overhanging rock cavern a form advanced to meet
her, and said : " Thet you, Marthy Ann ? I was af eard you wasn't
a'comin'.'
Nearly at the same moment, Lieutenant Carroll laid one hand
on his shoulder, a pistol in the other hand, and said : ' You are
my prisoner, Hank Bedloe." The deserter made a movement to-
wards his gun leaning in the cave entrance, but stood still again
feeling the cold muzzle of the pistol. " Marthy Ann! " he cried;
and she, stunned for a second by the shock of dismay, would have
reached for the weapon, but Carroll swerving with his prisoner
stood between her and it.
" Marthy Ann," said he, " you must go ahead of us down the
mountain and lead the way back. I have two pistols; but there is
no need to threaten. You must see there is no help for this thing."
She paused, but : " Forward ! " cried the Lieutenant, short and
sharp, and with a sort of broken sob she turned to go back the way
they had come. Never would Richard Carroll forget that midnight
descent of the mountainside under the moon. If a suddenly
snapped twig or a stone disturbed made him start at the thought
of ambuscaded rescue lurking in the shadows, his mind was oftener
full of pity for this wretched brother and sister the girl his own
willing and kindly handmaid for these past days.
" It was my duty to take, and I have taken him. The rest is
no affair of mine," said soldierly habit within. But as her slender
figure moved down the pathway ahead, he could still fancy the
dumb, animal, moving appeal of her eyes. So kept the inner voices
jangling and tormenting him; but his hand was firm on his
pistol, and his eye, keen and steadfast, covered deserter and guide
alike.
After an interval long or short he scarcely knew so full it
was with whirling thought, once again he heard through the uni-
versal stillness of the night the rippling and rushing, the murmur-
ing and dashing, of the Pigeon over its rocky deeps and shadows;
and once again they came forth singly from the shadow of the
wood, and forded the shining, singing river. On its farther bank
Carroll paused a moment.
"Halt!" he said, his voice just higher than the Pigeon's
cadences. " Go home now, Marthy Ann, and to bed. I will see
that he has some food before he sleeps."
42 ON PIGEON RIVER [Oct.,
With a look at her brother, and a movement as if she would
have touched him, she went in obediently at her narrow door.
Startlingly like her was this twin brother when the Lieutenant
could see him anew by candle and firelight. Even the little rings
that curled on her brow and neck were alike waving about his,
escaping from the wretched old hat he never thought of removing.
He had the same mute softness of the eyes, and with more than her
slow awkwardness, he looked even younger. He devoured avidly
and clumsily the fragments of the supper which the officer gave
him, and tumbling down on the sheepskin to which he was directed
was quickly asleep.
His captor, fully dressed now and wrapped in his cloak, sat
near or paced the floor until the night wore away. With day's first
beaming over the mountain tops appeared the Corporal's party, after
long pursuit of a will-o'-the-wisp, it seemed. Corporal Brown was
in a state of irritation, only to be soothed by news of the quarry
ensnared behind his hand.
" That's some satisfaction," he declared vindictively, " for all
the briers and mud holes we've been tramped through on an all
night fool's errand. If I'd a known the boy that offered to take
us 'straight to Bedloe' was some far off kin of his, I'd a mistrusted
he was leadin' us away from here a purpose; and I'd have taught
him something before he gave us the slip at last. Well, we've got
the fellow, and when do we start, Lieutenant? "
" After your men rest a bit. We can take the road this after-
noon, and march all night with the moon we'll have. The sooner
the better."
The prisoner was now in the mill room where the Corporal's
men already snored, and Brown guarded him for the hour. Punc-
tual to her time, Marthy Ann brought over the hot pone and chicken
and hominy of the breakfast; and Carroll coming in after found
her gazing at his ambrotype, which he had accidently left out
of his pocket whence he had taken it during the night.
" She's moughty purty," said Marthy Ann, and gave it to him.
Then she stood at the opposite side of the hearthstone, bonnet in
hand, facing him just as he remembered her at first, but pale this
morning.
" Thar ain't no sort of a chance for him no sort of a way? "
she asked slowly.
" I'm not his judge," he said gently, " he has to be tried first."
" But you know. It's just shootin' him to pieces, ain't it, when
you'uns gits him down thar? "
1914.] ON PIGEON RIVER 43
He would have lied, but felt it useless, knowing she must hear
sooner or later. She looked out a minute where the great water
wheel's idle bulk crossed a window ; then her eyes traveled back to
his face : " Hank an' me, you see, we'se twins, an' all the fambly
thar is. It'll be sort o' lonesome 'ithout him." Then she went
away in her lingering fashion.
After noon, all being in marching order, the two privates sen-
tinelled the mill door outside. The officers spoke within in an
undertone. " The sister must see him alone for a while, Brown,"
said the Lieutenant, with a side glance, " say for half an hour.
We can wait in the inner room and the men at the door. There
is no window and no other way out."
So the compelling, pathetic eyes gave Marthy Ann a last inter-
view with the twin brother, with whom she had worked and played
through their short life. The time having expired the Lieutenant
with some noise opened the door between. The boy stood with his
head and face against the piled-up grain bags. The girl, hastily
and awkwardly taking her hand from his and putting her apron to
her eyes under the drooping sunbonnet, went out without a word,
crossing the road at once to her cabin, and thence to the woods be-
hind, with evident desire to hide her hurt like all wild things in
denser solitude.
"Forward! March!" The deserter walked from the mill,
absolutely unsoldierly in lagging, uneven gait. The little squad took
the road, the Lieutenant feeling some relief that he had been
spared the prayers and tears and sobs of more civilized anguish;
wondering, indeed, though with a certain self-reproach, if these
" humans," as they were called up here, differed much from the
cattle or fowl who daily, unconcerned, beheld their mates taken
from their side to the slaughter.
"What is it?" he called at some delay; and found that
Bedloe wished to remove the rough, cowhide shoes painful to his
unaccustomed feet. He watched while the boy, seated on a stone,
took off the coarse foot coverings, and thought : " His feet are as
slim and as brown as Marthy Ann's." Then, as the prisoner rose,
Carroll met his eyes, and was confused a moment by their expression
of extremest terror. The next, Bedloe sprang past the men, and
was already quite a distance down the road, his bare feet pattering,
before the Corporal's gun was leveled and he was calling: Fire!
Fire ! " Speeding after the fugitive whizzed a pursuing flight of
bullets. He was now above the ford at a point where the water was
swift and deep, but here he plunged in and, half-wading, half-swim-
44 ON PIGEON RIVER [Oct.,
ming, slipped and scrambled among the sheltering rocks, partly
submerged, against which the balls scattered spray.
" If you let him reach the other side," warned the Lieutenant,
" he'll get away." And one of the soldiers, dropping on one knee
and taking careful aim at the figure sliding from one rock to the
next, fired. The deserter fell over upon the face of the rock,
and the rushing water rolled his body to and fro. The men waded
in and brought him out hanging limp between them.
"Dead?" asked Carroll.
" Still breathes, Lieutenant."
" Bring him in to Marthy Ann's."
They laid him on a small bed, gay with patchwork, now
rapidly crimsoning, and the soldiers went back to pick up their
guns. Corporal Brown, seeking to discover the source of a thin
stream of blood down the cheek, drew off the hat firmly wedged
over the brow, and down came a long coil of waving, auburn hair.
" Oh ! " he said, and with the hand of a father of girls in-
stantly fastened it up, covering it again with the hat. There was
absolutely nothing to be done but moisten her lips, death being
so near. She opened her eyes and looked into Carroll's face.
" 'Tain't no use to foller. He's too fur off by now."
" No no we will not. My poor child ! " and he took her
hand in his. She smiled with a look of almost content, and made
the effort to lay her blood-stained cheek against it.
" She's moughty purty." she whispered, " an' you thinks a
heap of her, I allow." Then she quivered slightly throughout her
shattered young body, and the spirit was gone.
' You see, it's this way, Lieutenant," said Brown, raising him-
self up and rather avoiding his superior's eye, " 'tain't no manner
of use to go ramblin' these mountains after a boy we'll never
catch now that his sister ain't here. The men think we have him
and can bury her as such. You can tell the Colonel; but the ex-
ample to the regiment will be the same. If you'll just give orders
about the grave, I'll tell the men that we'll bring the body our-
selves. It's light."
So it came to pass that one of the privates stuck a bit of
wood, on which he had whittled " Hank Bedloe," over the grave
of Marthy Ann near the banks of the Pigeon, in which the tender
water willows dip and flutter, and the lusty trout go leaping to-day
as in that last wonderful summer of her life.
A MEDIAEVAL SONG OF THE PASSION. 1
DONE INTO MODERN ENGLISH BY FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.
SUMMER'S come and Winter's gone,
The days begin to lengthen;
All the birdies everyone
With joyous song bestir them:
Yet does hard grief hold me in bond
Though all around me thrills the sound
Of gladness.
'Tis all for the sake
Of a Childe so sweet,
My sadness.
That princely Childe so debonnair
Whose mind is fashioned rarely,
By wood and hill He sought me out,
Nor lingered on the journey;
At length in dire captivity,
Because of an apple on a tree,
He found me.
With His own wounds
He broke the bonds
That bound me.
That Childe so high-born and so free,
To me He bent Him lowly ;
1 The religious songs of mediaeval England are all too unknown to the general
body of Catholic readers. Yet in thirteenth-century and fourteenth-century English
literature, there are not a few gems which ought to be known and prized by English-
speaking Catholics. It is satisfactory, therefore, to learn that an anthology of
English mediaeval verse is shortly to be published in the Catholic Library Series.
The Song of the Passion here rendered into modern English, belongs to the four-
teenth century, and is in the Midland dialect. It has been edited by Morris in
Old English Miscellany.
46 A MEDIAEVAL SONG OF THE PASSION [Oct.
For me to Jews He then was sold,
Who did not know Him, surely :
" Upon a tree on yonder hill,"
They said, " We'll nail Him fast and well,"
All ruthless;
" But first we'll heap
All over Him
Shame soothless."
Jesus is that Childe's fair Name;
King of all the world, He;
Yet those Jews made game of Him,
With their hands they smote this King
And tried Him sore; then on a tree
They gave Him wounds, first two, then three,
Most spiteful;
Of bitter drink
They offered Him
A cupful.
Yet had He not been nailed
Upon that cruel tree,
He Who is our true Life,
Naught other would it be
But that in hell we all should boil
And never taste refreshment: all
Would fail us.
Nor castle tower
Nor baron's power
Could save us.
Mary, favored with all grace,
Maid and mother, there she stood;
Upon the ground her tears fell fast,
And all her tears were tears of blood.
1914-] A MEDIEVAL SONG OF THE PASSION 47
The course ran with His blood,
And none who saw His face,
Would know Him.
He was so drawn
As deer when slain
At hunting.
So death he took that gentle Childe
Upon a high rood tree;
With His own blood He washed away
Our sins whate'er they be:
And on the flood He passed down
And broke the gates of hell that frowned
So proudly;
And chaced them out
Who gods them thought
Ungodly.
Then on the third day He did rise,
And on His throne He set Him;
He'll come again at Judgment-day,
And give each man his tithing.
Groan he may and weep alway
Who dies in sin; for him 'tis aye
Outlawry.
But grant us, Christ,
With Thee to rise
In glory!
ROGER BACON AND THE CELEBRATION AT OXFORD OF
THE SEVENTH CENTENARY OF HIS BIRTH.
BY MARY SEGAR.
N the literature of chapbook and drama, in the works
of Pope, Butler, Sir Thomas Browne, and Byron, 1
indeed in tradition generally, Roger Bacon lives to
posterity as a magician: a grotesque figure of a
magician consulting his strange oracle, a brazen head,
which had the power, unique among the talking heads of history,
of exploding at intervals with a deafening noise and a cloud of
sulphurous smoke. 2
A mere handful of men in each century 8 realized dimly that
Bacon was more than a magician; but he was born two hundred
years too soon. His quickness of vision had outrun the minds of
his contemporaries, and if there were many as learned as he, and
some with as great constructive ability, there were not many enough.
For a man with ideas much beyond the level of those of his age,
whether in the moral or in the intellectual order, there can be
nothing but sorrow. It is the man in whom the Zeitgeist reaches
its highest expression, who in literature is hailed a genius, and who
leaves his mark on all succeeding generations. In science it is the
man who arrives at a new and illuminating conclusion from data
which all the world knows the man who goes one step farther,
not the man who sees possibilities to be realized in the dim future.
Him only posterity can acclaim, and so it was fitting that we of the
subsequent ages, we of the day in which his visions have material-
ized, should honor Roger Bacon, and hail him a true prophet.
May it not also be hoped that the celebration by the great
University of Oxford of the seventh centenary of the birth of a
great mediaeval, is indicative of a turn of the tide of popular interest
*For a full and most interesting account of the references to Roger Bacon
in English literature, and of the confusion of his brazen head with the brazen
nose of Brazenose College, Oxford, see an article by Sir John Sandys in Roger
Bacon Commemoration Essays.
*To accuse a man of possessing a talking head was to accuse him of witchcraft.
Virgil, Pope Sylvester II., Grosseteste, and Albertus Magnus were said to have had
them by enemies.
'It was chiefly his work in mathematics and alchemy that was appreciated till
the seventeenth century.
I9I4-] ROGER BACON 49
in the direction of the Middle Ages, and that after centuries of
obloquy the " dark ages " are at last to have their due.
One wished that the most formal part of the commemoration,
the ceremony of the unveiling of the statue 4 by a former President
of the Royal Society, Sir Archibald Geikie, and its acceptance by
Lord Curzon on behalf of Oxford University, could have taken
place in an older building. Merton Library would have been ideal,
bat-haunted, dim, and smelling of parchment, steeped in reminis-
cence of the Middle Ages, and a place where Roger Bacon had very
likely been. A welcome sight, and the one real touch of
medisevalism, were the brown habits of the friars, who joined
with the scarlet-robed doctors of science in offering a sincere hom-
age to the friar scientist of the thirteenth century.
Three friars were there in an official capacity, Father Pascal
Robinson, O.F.M., Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C, and Father David
Fleming, O.F.M., as delegates from the different branches of the
Franciscan Order. Besides them were delegates from the Univer-
sities of Cambridge and Paris, from the French Academy, from
the Vatican Library, and from many Continental and American
universities. Quite fittingly University College, Cork, was repre-
sented by its Franciscan Professor of Mental Science, Father Ed-
win, O.S.F.C. Had Roger Bacon been born in an age when his
ideas were fully understood, had he been entirely tactful and entirely
successful in his dealing with men, and a prime favorite with his
own Order and in the Universities of Paris and Oxford, he could
not during his lifetime have been honored by a more representative
gathering. There would have been of course one notable omission :
America would have sent no delegates. Yet America has a special
reason for doing him honor. For Roger Bacon dreamed of that
passage westwards to India from Spain, which more than two cen-
turies later Columbus realized. 5
There is something paradoxical, something both sad and hu-
morous, in this tardy reparation to a man who suffered and was for-
gotten for three hundred years, and who was to begin to be fully
4 Robert Greene, in his Honourable History of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay,
published 1590 (a play that was very popular in the early years of Elizabeth's reign),
suggests that a statue should be put up in Oxford, and that all Europe should
do honor to Bacon, the greatest of mediaeval magicians.
5 The Cardinal Petrus Alliacus, in the Imago Mundi (printed in 1480), quotes
without acknowledgment what Bacon had said about this passage westwards. Colum-
bus read it, copied it out, and quoted it in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella.
Humboldt believes that this had more to do with the discovery of America than the
Toscanelli letters.
VOL. c. 4
5 o ROGER BACON [Oct.,
recognized only after the lapse of seven centuries. It is a strange
thing to celebrate the birthday of a man for the first time seven hun-
dred years after he is born, and to erect a statue to him when no one
can know what his features were.
Had the statue presented to the university been a mere con-
vention, the strangeness of the occasion would not so cogently have
struck the assembly ; but Mr. Hope Tinker's piece of work is extra-
ordinarily alive; it brings back the man real and living from out
of the obscurity of ages. In it are the keenness, the imagination,
the sensitiveness, the mental grasp, the nervousness, and the im-
prudence of Roger Bacon. In his lifetime Bacon was keenly and
vividly alive. He cannot write even of mathematics without mak-
ing his readers feel across the gulf of seven centuries that they are
dealing with a man, a man to be admired or a man to be challenged.
Bacon possessed in a most unusual degree the power of grasp-
ing the real nature and value of things their essence and their
possibilities. This power is one of the essentials of genius; and
like all geniuses who get anywhere, Bacon was a tremendous
worker. 6 He did not stand alone in his century, a solitary figure
trying to keep alight the lamp of learning, as has been so often said.
He had colleagues as learned as he in many branches of learning.
Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, and Chancellor of Oxford
University, was in his own way a great natural philosopher, and,
like Bacon, was enthusiastic for the study of Greek and Hebrew as
aids to the right understanding of the Scriptures. 7 Undoubtedly
Roger Bacon was much influenced by Grosseteste. 8 Edmund Rich
(St. Edmund of Abingdon), Adam Marsh, and later Walter de la
Mare were also among his friends, and he knew Albertus Magnus.
Albertus Magnus was perhaps a greater physicist than he, and Jor-
danus Nemorarius more learned in mathematics.
"He says in Opus Tertium, " Men used to wonder before I became a friar
that I lived owing to my excessive labors." We hear of his broken health, of his
difficulties of every sort, and in spite of all a close attention to work and an extra-
ordinary thoroughness. He cannot trust copyists, he says, so " anything difficult
I have to write four or five times before I get what I want." It was not the
minutiae of the different branches of learning which attracted him for their own
sake. If this had been so he would have followed one branch of science or letters,
and made it completely his own. It was rather a seeking after perfection in his
method. Details of science or language interested him only in so far as they were
significant of some larger law.
T Grosseteste anticipates the action of Colet by two hundred years in inviting
over to England veri greed. Grosseteste's guest was one Nicholas Graecus, who be-
came a member of his household, and spent his time making translations and teach-
ing correct grammar.
'See Life of Grosseteste, by R. W. Stevenson.
1914.] ROGER BACON 51
Bacon's actual knowledge was considerable, but this nowadays
must be judged relatively to his time, but his mind, his power of
seeing the point that mattered in things, was of the greatest. This
we can judge by an absolute, not a relative, standard. His keen-
ness of vision did not extend to people, he did not understand the
characters of men, and see their capabilities as he knew the nature
and possibilities of things; or if he did he was too impatient to use
his knowledge.
His recklessness and irascibility gave him the reputation of
pugnacity, and this lessened his influence. He saw far and truly
into all realms of knowledge, and felt keenly that amongst his
contemporaries many and they were men who enjoyed consider-
able repute were seeking to perfect their knowledge and skill
on quite wrong lines. Already, too, some of the schoolmen were
losing touch with reality by overloading their ideas with termin-
ology. Instead of helping these men by leading them step by step
from the known to the unknown, by building on their knowledge,
and using their methods to lead them to his own, Roger Bacon
denounced them fiercely as " asini " and " stultissimi."
Not only did he abuse the Dominican teachers, but he did not
spare the members of his own Order. This irritation at the wordi-
ness and lack of inspiration of his contemporaries was a constant
motive force in him. Had his heedless behavior not led to incar-
ceration and prohibition from publishing his books, this feeling of
irritation might have done no harm to his scientific work. It was
undoubtedly impersonal, and it was undoubtedly born of his whole-
hearted love for truth. It was not that he loved men less, but that
he loved science more. He was strong enough to stand alone in his
work; so sure was he that he was right. It was only after real
hardship and ill-treatment that he shows his need for sympathy,
and his delight in it. It was when Pope Clement IV. sent him a
secret message ordering him to send on his work. 9 Then, delighted,
Bacon set himself to write the Opus Mafus.
Never for a moment, in all his troubles, was he led into any
disloyalty towards the Church; his faith was such that it never
crossed his mind that it could be shaken by knowledge. He had
9 In his delight he writes, " The Head of the Church has sought me out
the unworthy sole of its foot I feel myself elevated above my ordinary strength.
I conceive a new fervor of spirit. I ought to be more than grateful, since your
Beatitude has asked me for that which I have most ardently desired to com-
municate, which I have worked at with immense toil and brought into light after
manifold expenses." Op. text (Brev/er), quoted by Professor Tuttle, Commemora-
tion Essays.
52 ROGER BACON [Oct.,
vision enough to see that there was no antagonism between faith
and knowledge. His great desire was to confirm the reign of
Christ upon earth by a better knowledge of the Scriptures, and
this was to be brought about by a more thorough mastery of lan-
guages and science. 10 The science of words and the science of ex-
ternal things were the handmaidens of the mistress-science, theology.
He firmly believed in the Divine Inspiration of the Bible, but he held
that unless men knew the languages in which it was originally
written, and unless they knew the nature and qualities of all external
things, they must miss a great deal of its spiritual significance, for
the properties of things and the ways of wild creatures were in the
mind of the Creator when He inspired its writing.
Though it is his vision and his grasp on essentials that make
Roger Bacon one of the world's geniuses, yet his actual achievement
in the different branches of learning he took up \vas by no means
inconsiderable. Indeed his vision was closely dependent on it;
as it must ever be except perhaps in philosophy.
Chief perhaps among the innovations for which he is famous,
is his esteem for experimental science, the mistress of all the sciences
and the end of all speculation. " There are two modes in which
we acquire knowledge," he says, " argument and experiment. Ar-
gument shuts up the question and makes us shut it up too : but it
gives no proof, nor does it remove doubt, and cause the mind to
rest in the conscious possession of truth, unless the truth is dis-
covered by way of experience," etc. 11 The significance of this utter-
ance is that it was made at a time when argument and syllogistic
reasoning were the basis of scientific study. He held that scholastic
science was too greatly concerned with intellectual definitions, and
the supposed causes of natural events, and neglected the accurate
observation of these events. 12
Several of Bacon's contemporaries knew more of the details
10 He says some striking things about authority which led him to be suspected,
and deplores the attitude of his contemporaries towards the Fathers. They seem to
him to be given the same credence as the Scriptures, whereas the Fathers were but
men and had only the faculties of men (Opus Ma jus). To quote only one instance
of his loyalty, he begs the Pope to put a stop to the scandalous way in which the
Paris teachers were still farther corrupting their already corrupt text. He com-
plains that more attention is paid to the commentary, The Book of the Sentences,
of Peter the Lombard, than to the text itself. He adds that " so great a work
as daring to interfere with the sacred text could not have been accomplished either
by the doctors of Paris, or by any other person without the authority of the Holy
See. It could not have been and ought not to have been done without this author-
ization : it would have been improper," Opus Minus.
Majtts. "Opus Minus.
1914.] ROGER BACON 53
of mathematics than he, but he characteristically seems to have un-
derstood its spirit and its scope. Yet it was applied, rather than
pure, mathematics that he valued mathematics as the handmaiden
of his mistress of sciences. His aim was to base all science on ob-
servation and experiment, and for these experiments to use the
methods of mathematics.
Bacon sometimes repeats himself, but in doing so he is quite
consistent. He had three dominant ideas. He saw the possibility
of a closer correlation of all science, and he works out the relation-
ship of every science to the greatest science of all, theology and
the interpretation of the Scriptures, and he constantly reiterates
thac the method of scientific investigation must be experiment based
on mathematical law.
Before passing on to the consideration of his ideas about the
study of words, it is interesting to note that he foresaw the motor
car, the aeroplane, high speed engines, self-propelled ships, and ma-
chines of wonderful power.
In his three chief works, the Opus Majus, the Opus Minus,
and the Opus Tertium, he asserts the necessity of a study of Greek
and Hebrew if the Scriptures are to be rightly understood. He has
a good knowledge of the history of the different translations of the
Bible both before and after St. Jerome, and seems to understand
thoroughly the principles on which any critical correction of Scrip-
ture texts must proceed. 13
He takes a great delight in words, and attributes to them a sort
of mystical power. This is perhaps due to the influence of his age,
but more probably to the fact that he had a wonderful power of
relishing everything. It was this artistic gift which helped to make
him so great a scientist. He hoped to compile a grammar and a
method of study of Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldean. The
Greek grammar alone was completed. 14
In the fifth part of the Opus Majus he treats of optics and
perspective. The exact conformity of this science to mathematical
law made it one of his favorites. He describes in it the construc-
tion and use of the telescope, also of spectacles, but whether he
actually made and used them is open to question. Probably he did.
In his treatises on alchemy, chemistry, and medicine, 15 me-
13 See the article entitled The Latin Vulgate in Commemoration Essays, by H. E.
Cardinal Gasquet.
14 It is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and was
published in 1902.
u Communa naturalium. Opus Tertium. Opus Majus. De arte Chymia, etc.
54 ROGER BACON [Oct.,
diaeval and modern ideas struggle for the ascendency, for whilst he
bases them on experiment regulated by mathematics, he professes a
belief in astrology, and longs to find the elixir of life. He com-
pounds what he calls the Philosopher's Egg, but his directions for
making it are vague and cryptic. So vague are his directions for
making gunpowder that it may be doubted whether he had it in
mind at all. Possibly he was thinking of some sort of Greek fire. 16
Of general ideas in physical science in which he was ahead of
his time, he seems to have known that nature abhors a vacuum, and
to have held opinions on energy and force very like those of the
present day. He believed in the indestructibility of energy, and the
possibility of the measurement of force by mathematics. 17 He had
formed a sound plan for the revision and correction of the Cal-
endar, 18 but his friend Pope Clement IV. died before the work
could be begun.
Such is the range of the man who was but rarely mentioned
by serious students during the two centuries following his death,
and who lives in the literature of the subsequent five centuries
as a magician who invented a clever explosive. The seeds sown by
Roger Bacon had to lie unproductive in the ground, till in the
course of time the soil became favorable to their growth.
By a strange coincidence another Bacon, two hundred years
later, in his Novum Organum and his De Argumentis, developed
the ideas of his earlier namesake, and lives to posterity as the
Father of the Experimental Method. It is the tragedy of a man
born out of due time, but it is also the tragedy of a man with a
temperament which needed tolerant and understanding friends, put
into circumstances where every hasty word he uttered was supposed
to be fraught with profound significance a man who had far
outstripped his contemporaries in the vision he had of the pos-
sibilities of scientific study.
Had Bacon's idea of an experimental method based on mathe-
matical law, been adopted and developed by his immediate success-
ors, the effect on all subsequent scientific study would have been
incalculable. Had Grosseteste and Bacon been able to inspire their
generation with their own love for pure Greek, the efforts of Colet,
Grocyn, Linacre, and Blessed Thomas More in the late fifteenth and
"See an essay in Commemoration Essays entitled Roger Bacon and Gunpowder,
by Colonel W. A. L. Hime, R.A.
"Quastiones naturales et primo qu&stiones libri physicorum Rogeri Bacon,
lib. iv.
"Opus Ma jus.
1914-] ROGER BACON 55
early sixteenth centuries would have been unnecessary, and those
who hold that the Renaissance as an intellectual movement had
any vital influence in England would have found great difficulty in
upholding their view. There would have been less of a break,
perhaps no break at all, between the culture of the Middle Ages
and the enthusiasm for letters, with which in the sixteenth century
the greater accessibility of books was attended.
The fifteenth century and the Wars of the Roses cuts through
the history of letters and science in England, and Englishmen of
subsequent ages, encouraged by Protestantism to regard the earlier
period as sunk in superstition, have not cared to investigate its
intellectual achievement. They have been taught to regard the
beginning of an enthusiasm for letters as brought about by the
Renaissance, and fostered and encouraged by the Protestant Ref-
ormation, and the history of science as beginning in 1625 with the
incorporation of the Royal Society.
The recent Oxford celebration is especially significant, in that
it denotes the rolling back of the mists which for so long have
hidden the Middle Ages, with their wealth of inspired achievement,
from the view of the modern world : and this to us is even more
valuable than the proposed publication of Robert Bacon's unpub-
lished works, much as this project is to be welcomed.
THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS AT LOURDES.
(July 22-26, 1914.)
BY RUTH EGERTON.
UR journey at its beginnings with an Italian pilgrim-
age from Milan was a long hot one, but when we
got away from the Riviera route, with its perpetual
tunnels and patchy views of the blazing Mediterra-
nean, and arrived at Toulouse, it became bearable.
Moreover at Toulouse the " movement " all en route for Lourdes
became evident. And as we waited for our train in steamed the
through express with the sumptuous "wagon" attached specially for
His Eminence, the Cardinal Legate Prince Granito di Belmonte, and
we had our first vision of him blessing and smiling from the window.
At Toulouse we abandoned the Italian pilgrims to their fate
they were going to stay three or four hours there, and visit the
tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Church of St. Saturninus, and
went on direct, and so to speak, with the Legate to Lourdes. The
little town (it only has about eight thousand inhabitants of its own)
was decorated from head to foot balconies, windows, arches, flags
flying of Papal colors yellow and white, or the blue and white of
Notre Dame de Lourdes. More than two hundred thousand Catho-
lics of every nationality were going to and fro to the grotto or the
churches. Everything was beautifully arranged, and another feather
has been added to the famous Mayor Le Case's cap. No civil force
was employed; no soldiers or mounted police, of course, provided
by the government, but to all appearance entire order was main-
tained by the well-known voluntary force of the brancardiers the
men of all ages and all ranks who voluntarily give their services
all the year round to help the sick pilgrims, carrying them in
their chairs from their houses to the famous piscine for the bathing.
After a great reception, a speech of welcome by the Mayor and
Bishop of Lourdes, a mounted guard of the native basques heading
his escort, the Cardinal Legate drove to the bishop's palace, where
he took up his residence for the period of the Congress. And on
the next day, the twenty-second, work began. In the Upper Church
of Our Lady of the Rosary, night and day, thousands were
TQT4-] THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS AT LOURDES 57
thronging for the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
In the Lower Church, from one A. M., Masses were constantly of-
fered one after the other, at all the altars.
At the grotto the same was occurring, and near it at the
fountains people were drinking the miraculous water, or filling
flasks and bottles with it to take away to less fortunate ones at home.
Cardinals, archbishops, bishops, every type and nationality of priest
and faithful, were filling up the entire square and all round the
grotto, and so it went on for the whole period of the Congress.
From about nine A. M. the different " sections " (there were
about twelve), representing different countries, opened; and the
various speakers delivered their speeches or read papers all on the
great central subject of the Congress, viz., " The Adoration and
Worship of God in the Blessed Sacrament." At our English section
we had three Australian bishops, several well-known laymen, sev-
eral English-speaking guests of other nations, and one well beloved
by all Americans, His Eminence Cardinal Farley. His Eminence
was presiding over our section the morning that the Cardinal Legate
paid his visit there, and the English cheering powers were well
tested that day.
With an indescribable magnificence the first big open air gather-
ing of the Congress took place on Wednesday afternoon, July 22d.
Imagine a large square, or rather almost a beautiful garden, stretch-
ing for perhaps a quarter of a mile, until it ends in the main street
of the town at the other end the beautiful Church of the Rosary
(so well known to all by pictures), with the great flight of steps lead-
ing up to it, and its stone parapet and balustraded roads on each side
winding round and up to the Upper Church. The Cardinal Legate
arrived, preceded by eight cardinals in their scarlet, and over two
hundred archbishops and bishops in their purple, and took his
place on the special velvet throne on the raised platform, which
commanded an unbroken view over a black seething sea of people
thousands and thousands for the most part standing, and standing
thus patiently for three hours and more. How can one describe
these things ? And how can one convey in words the feeling that it
is Lourdes Lourdes, " the city steeped in the Grace of Mary," in
which all is happening ? The President, Monsignor Heylen, Bishop
of Namur, opened the Congress with appropriate greeting to the
Cardinal Legate, and informed us also, in the course of his speeches,
that the Cardinal Legate had approved of the plans of the League
for promoting these International Eucharistic Congresses. We
58 THE EUCHAR1STIC CONGRESS AT LOURDES [Oct.,
learned that for the future every two years, instead of annually, the
International Congress would be held the intervening years being
dedicated to diocesan or provincial Eucharistic Congresses, and a
special appeal being made to all bishops to enforce greater atten-
tion regarding the education and instruction of the people by their
priests in the meaning and aim of the International Eucharistic
Congresses.
The Bishop of Lourdes and Tarbes, on behalf of his people,
spoke the official welcome to the Cardinal Legate, and then fol-
lowed the solemn reading of the special Brief to the Congress of His
Holiness Pius X. After this the Cardinal Legate, amidst storms of
"Vive le Legat," stepped smilingly down, and went on to the reading
desk to deliver his address to Congress. This will by now be known
through the press to all Catholics. It was what might be ex-
pected of a prelate of such well-known saintliness of life, and such
intense charm of personality; and its forcible appeal to each and
every class of men and women, ending with its almost command
to fathers and mothers, to come to, and to bring others daily,
to partake of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, stirred everyone
present.
Speeches in every language succeeded one after another that
afternoon one of the briefest certainly was that of Cardinal Logue,
Primate of Ireland. Very clear and very to the point; and we all
knew what was " the point " at the Congress.
Cardinal Netto, of Lisbon, was enthusiastically received. Poor
Portugal! The multitudes seemed desirous of showing their sym-
pathy with the horribly persecuted Catholics there, by their warm
sympathetic expressions to their Cardinal. As one of the jewels
among all the speeches we heard, perhaps that of Cardinal Lugon, of
Reims must be put first. Every afternoon throughout the Congress,
till its formal ending again by the Cardinal Legate on Saturday,
these hugely attended gatherings continued.
In the evenings, always about eight p. M., the whole of the Place
du Rosaire, in front of the churches, again swarmed with people,
mostly men ; and this for the traditional torch processions. These
are quite unique and beautiful in their simplicity. Everybody car-
ries his or her candle, with the little Lourdes shade round it stamped
with the picture of the statue of our Lady in the Grotto, and
then all walk from the church round the entire length of the
square, till all are back facing the church and its steps all the while
the entire throng sings to a simple well-known air the story
1914-] THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS AT LOURDES 59
of Bernadette Soubirous and the Holy Apparition of the Immaculate
Conception, ending with the refrain " Ave, Ave, Ave Maria,' 3 turn-
ing up their lights as they sing the refrain. The effect of this done
by perhaps some one hundred thousand persons is very striking.
For one second, after the hymn is ended, all is still, and then is in-
toned the great symbol of our faith, Credo in Unum Deum. The
whole countless multitude takes up the words, and sings from begin-
ning to end the creed of the faithful, and when it is ended all throng
into the churches to pay their act of homage to their Lord in His
Tabernacle on the altar.
Every day the Cardinal Prince di Belmonte added to the little,
gracious, spontaneous acts with which he always and everywhere
gains the hearts of the people among whom he is staying. When
the despairing brancardiers had with difficulty got him to his car-
riage through the surging people, all eager to kiss his ring and
be blessed, when he had taken, instead of five minutes, three-quarters
of an hour to get from the grotto to where the coachman was
waiting, voluntarily and suddenly he ordered the carriage to be
again stopped, and getting out he walked inside the railings around
the entry to the baths, where a patient row of cripples and sick were
waiting their turn to enter, and there not only blessed and spoke
to each, but took from a sad mother a little child very little and
very hopelessly ill it seemed took it and held it to him, and blessed
and quieted it. He went back to his carriage, and it was harder than
ever to get him through the crowds. On another occasion we saw
His Eminence reduced simply to running away; smiling though, as
he did so, and Monsignor Heylen who was with him, had to follow
suit laughing, and so did the crowd around laugh, and the bran-
cardiers who had at last managed to close the gates which separated
the people from the Prince.
It was certified in all the local papers, etc., that on Sunday,
July 26th, the last day, His Eminence would say Mass not as hitherto
at the Grotto, but would pontificate at High Mass at ten o'clock
at the altar placed for the purpose outside the church. The celebra-
tion of this Mass was a magnificent spectacle. On one side of the
altar facing the Legate on his throne, were the eight cardinals under
a scarlet awning; on the other side all the archbishops and bishops
and prelates. Above these and to each side leading up till they
reached the square front of the Upper Church, were only clergy,
either vested in surplice, or in cassocks. In great, many-colored
rows high above the altar on the topmost bridge, all the districts
60 THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS AT LOURDES [Oct.,
round Lourdes were represented by their flag-bearers, who simultan-
eously dipped their flags at both the Gloria and at the Elevation.
In front, below facing the altar, were benches filled with Knights
of St. Sepulchre in flowing white mantles and cocked hats with
plumes, the Scarlet Knights of Malta, and all the carnerlerl cham-
berlains to the Pope besides some of the more celebrated speakers
at the Congress. Backing up all this pomp and color came the
people, everywhere around, filling up the housetops near, and all the
hills within seeing distance. It was a tremendous sight. One
might have supposed the whole world Catholic. At the last moment
before the state entry of the Legate, large baskets of flowers were
carried in, and the contents strewn along the way he was to pass
to the altar. At the end the Papal Blessing was given, and in an
hour the place was almost empty, and all were preparing to celebrate
finally the Great Eucharistic Triumph, for which these days had been
the prelude.
Towards two-thirty p. M., again the whole world was hurrying
to and fro, either to their fixed places, or to try to procure one, from
whence to witness and take part in the Procession of the Blessed
Sacrament. More decorations, if possible, had been added boys
in scarlet led by a priest carrying large, open baskets of flowers
to strew before the Blessed Host, passed by; an escort mounted of
the basque men rode along, and finally at three P. M., the great
seemingly endless procession got under way. Cardinals, arch-
bishops, over six thousand clergy, the Mayor and municipal authori-
ties, hundreds of children, dressed in yellow and white, and blue and
white, the band crashing out its music, and then, no longer vested
in pontifical splendor, but robed as any priest may be robed, and
bearing aloft, as any priest may bear aloft, His Lord, slowly and
stately, passed the Cardinal Priest, representative of Christ's Vicar
on earth, with the Most Sacred Host. Perfect silence fell upon the
crowd, and except for the bell announcing the passing of Our
Lord Himself, nothing was heard. The cortege wound its way along
the little streets of this singularly favored city, until after three hours
it re-emerged in face of the church, and the whole square was filled
with people on their knees. Then commenced the soul-thrilling
" blessing of the sick;" the one high voice of the "priest of the
sick " rings out in the well-known invocation, " Lord, we love You !
Lord, we adore You! Lord, save our sick! Mother of God,
pray for us ! Lord, make me walk make me see make
me hear. Hosanna ! Hosanna ! Hosanna !
1914.] THE EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS AT LOURDES 61
Like thunderbolts come the responses taken up by the expectant
hundreds of thousands, and the Cardinal Priest passes from beneath
the great white and gold baldacchino, to walk slowly down the line
of the yearning sick ones " Lord, save us who are sick." Then
he passes again under the baldacchino, goes up the great steps, and
then mounts and mounts, until again he emerges at the upper square,
where another altar, with large ostensorium outlined, has been
placed, and commands the neighboring hills, almost the entire town
of Lourdes and from whence he can be seen by every soul within
a distance of two miles ; then the hush which ever accompanies the
Elevation of the Blessed Host at Benediction, then the far-away
music again, and down on their knees fall the entire mass to receive
the Pontifical Blessing. Again silence reigns, and then, \vith one
uprising of the crowd, comes the universal shout, " Long live the
Legate," " Long live Pius X.," " Long live the Pope," shouted in
every language.
So ended the memorable Congress; memorable for its scenes,
and most memorable, we know now, because the " Pope of the
Eucharist " declared to the world for the last time his ardent desire
that every day Catholics throughout the world should go to the
altar, and there partake of Jesus, the Bread of life, in the Most
Blessed Sacrament.
THE WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE TWENTY
YEARS AFTER.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D., SC.D.
N the September issue of this magazine 1 I traced the
change that has taken place in the attitude of reas-
onably informed people in English-speaking coun-
tries during the forty years since the publication of
Professor Draper's Conflict Between Religion and
Science. The fact that that volume appeared in the International
Scientific Series, confirms the opinion of conservative thinkers, that
not a few of the contributions to that series represented scientific
positions not only grossly exaggerated, but because of their very
exaggeration indicative of an animus against religion.
Professor Draper's book is literally a caricature of the history
of science, yet it was almost the only book on the history of science
that was generally read by teachers of science in this country at the
time of its publication. Nothing that I know shows more clearly
the superficiality, the lack of scholarship of the majority of those
who taught science a generation ago here in America.
Twenty years after the appearance of Professor Draper's book,
President White published A History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology in Christendom. It is interesting to note the change of
opinion in the score of years since Draper's publication. The very
title of the latter work is a clear indication. President White tem-
pered the issue very much; according to him it is not a conflict be-
tween religion and science, but a series of conflicting incidents ; he
calls it warfare between theology and science. Had he called his
book The Warfare Between Theologians and Scientists, the title
would have voiced more accurately the thesis he endeavored to
present. Unfortunately President White did not allow for the hu-
man elements that enter into these incidents; or, if in his own mind
he made such allowance, he wrote on the supposition that there is a
more or less necessary disagreement of theology and science. He
represents theology as constantly fighting scientific progress, and as
constantly yielding before its advance; and in the end compromis-
ing so as to save its principles or, as far as possible, its prestige.
If President White had only emphasized the human element in
1 Science and Religion, Then and Now.
1914.] WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE 63
his accounts of disputations between theologians and scientists, he
might have made an enduring contribution to the history of human
thought. Scientists and theologians have always disagreed when-
ever novelties were introduced, and they will always continue to
disagree under such circumstances. This is not, however, the fault
of the theologians as such, for they have not disagreed more with
innovating scientists than have other and more conservative scien-
tists with their progressive colleagues. While theologians have
often unfortunately not been as ready, as we might wish, to welcome
newly-discovered truth, neither have the scientists themselves been
ready. Scientists, as well as theologians, refused to accept Co-
pernicanism. For a full century after Copernicus' death, mathe-
maticians and astronomers refused to take his theory seriously.
Even Francis Bacon at the end of the first quarter of the seventeenth
century in Galileo's time, declared that the Ptolemaic theory ex-
plained the difficulties of astronomy much better and more satis-
factorily than the Copernican system, and for that reason he refused
to give his adhesion to Copernicus' teaching.
The same story recurs practically in the history of every science
whenever a really epoch-making discovery is made. When the
discovery is of comparatively little significance, or does not revo-
lutionize men's ordinary modes of thinking, it may slip into the
current of human thought without disturbance of any kind. A
great discovery, however, always brings down the deprecation of
many contemporaries upon the daring innovator. Take, for ex-
ample, the discovery of the circulation of the blood. Every step
in the demonstration of this great truth was not only not welcomed,
but on the contrary deprecated. Aubrey tells us that he had heard
Harvey say " that after his book on the circulation of the blood
came out, he fell mightily in his practice; 'twas believed by the
vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the physicians were against
him." A little later Steno, demonstrating that the heart was a
muscle pump, added another link to the chain of demonstration of
the circulation of the blood. Men not only refused at first to ac-
cept this new finding, but said harsh things about the youthful
anatomist. A little later still Malpighi demonstrated the existence
of the capillary blood vessels, and solved the mystery as to how the
blood passed from the arteries to the veins. One might expect that
this great discovery, which put an end to all cavil with regard to
the circulation of the blood, would bring its author great prestige.
It did after a while, but in the meantime it brought down on the de-
voted head of Malpighi some very bitter attacks from the Galenists
64 WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE [Oct.,
of his day, and this bitterness took on a phase of personal enmity,
which finally led to the burning of his house. We may talk of
odium theologicum, but we must not forget the odium scientificum.
Scientists have never been over ready to welcome new truths that
contradicted the old ideas which they had accepted for a lifetime. I
venture to say that there is a hundred times as much opposition in
the history of science to the introduction of new truths from scien-
tists, than there is from theologians. It is human nature, and not
theology or religion that counts in the matter.
President White had the opportunity to write this story of the
controversies between scientists and theologians, who are after all
two sets of men, each studying science in its own way, but he pre-
ferred to generalize and set the opposition between the abstract con-
cepts of science and theology. As a consequence his book was inter-
preted as an attack on religion, though there seems no doubt that
it was not intended as such.
Indeed the book accomplished one very positive good. It made
it very clear that the so-called Reformation far from bringing that
freedom of opinion and liberty of teaching which is so often claimed
followed it, had precisely the opposite effect. As Professor Paulsen,
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Berlin, said in his book
on German education, " the restrictions on instruction as a con-
sequence of the reform movement within the petty states and their
narrow-minded established churches, well nigh stifled the intel-
lectual life of the German people." He declares that the fear of
heresy was even more intense in the Lutheran universities than in
the Catholic institutions of learning. President White brings out
in many ways how much Protestant theologians hampered science,
and shows how unwarranted is the ordinary appeal of Protestants to
Church opposition in the Middle Ages as due to Catholicity, since
at all times there have been endless disputations between scientists
and theologians.
What is particularly interesting for us, however, is the signifi-
cant change that has come in the twenty years since the publication
of President White's book with regard to the details of the subject
matters that he has treated. The development of our knowledge of
the history of science has literally wiped out practically all the as-
sumptions on which he based his arguments. His facts are wrong
or incompletely given. This was not all his fault, but mainly that
of his times. Had he but known it, books had already just been
published in Europe, or were being prepared for publication, that
made a large number of his contentions utterly ridiculous. What
1914.] WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE 65
may be called a Renaissance of the history of the biological sciences,
and particularly of the sciences related to medicine, has taken place
in the past twenty-five years. Puschmann in Vienna, Pagel in
Berlin, Nicaise in France, and Gurlt in Berlin have literally revolu-
tionized our knowledge of the history of medicine and of surgery.
Their work is being admirably continued by such men as Sudhoff,
of Leipzig, Neuberger of Vienna, and by the Societies for the
History of Medicine, which now are active in practically all of the
European countries. As a consequence, the International Medical
Congress, for the first time in its history, included last year in its
London meeting a section in the History of Medicine. It has at
length come to be recognized that medical history is not merely a
hobby for dry-as-dust students, but an important department of a
great intellectual discipline.
It is this development of the history of medicine that has left
President White's raft of supposed facts high and dry on the shore
of time. He assumed in his book that because he knew nothing
about medicine and surgery in the Middle Ages, no progress was
made with regard to them. For such a lacuna in human progress
as he thought he found, there must be some reason. What better
reason could be alleged for his purpose than that the Church sup-
pressed intellectual effort, and especially discouraged medicine, be- '
cause that decreased Church revenues from prayers, relics, pil-
grimages, and the like. There is his argument. He has used it
over and over again, and the only drawback to it is the falsity of its
premise. Instead of there being no medicine and surgery, there was
a magnificent development in these departments, and the Church
was the patron and support of it in nearly every possible way.
How amusing it is, for anyone who knows the history of medi-
cine, to read President White's constantly recurring declarations that
there was prohibition of dissection by the ecclesiastical authorities.
The universities were all under the control of the Church, and there
is abundant evidence that dissection was studied and practised wher-
ever there was sufficient development of science to look for it.
President White represents Vesalius the Father of Modern Anat-
omy who after having attended Louvain and Paris in vain, had
gone to Italy because he found such ample facilities there as dis-
secting in fear and trembling lest he should be discovered by the In-
quisition. At that very time every artist in Italy was making dis-
sections quite freely. We have literally many hundreds, probably
even thousands, of sketches of dissections made by the Renaissance
VOL. C 5
66 WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE [Oct.,
artists, some of them before, many of them during, Vesalius' life-
time.
As a matter of fact it was the Church authorities who by their
action made dissection possible. There has always been a strong
natural feeling of abhorrence against the mutilation of the human
body. Most men are quite willing to devote their own bodies, when
they have no further use for them, to dissection, but I have known
thoroughly scientific physicians refuse to have the bodies of near
relatives opened for purposes of investigation. This feeling of ab-
horrence was so strong in America three generations ago that dis-
section was made extremely difficult, and bodies could only be ob-
tained by so-called " resurrectionist " methods. The Church au-
thorities in Italy overcame this natural abhorrence, and made liberal
regulations by which unclaimed bodies were allowed to be used for
dissecting purposes. We have the record of certain of the monastic
establishments, in which strangers died, furnishing dissecting ma-
terial to artists in return for pictures painted for them. Exactly the
opposite of President White's contention is true. The Church
helped, and did not hamper dissection.
President White insists in a number of places that Church op-
position was mainly responsible for the failure of surgery to de-
'velop. One finds a number of such interesting expressions as these :
" As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with survivals
of pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of medical science
down to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility of the Church
to the shedding of blood withdrew, as we have seen, from surgical
practice the great body of her educated men; hence surgery re-
mained down to the fifteenth century a despised profession, its
practice continued largely in the hands of charlatans, and down to a
very recent period the name of 'Barber Surgeon' was a survival
of this. In such surgery the application of various ordures relieved
fractures, and a touch of the hangman cured sprains ; the breath of
a donkey expelled poison; friction with a dead man's tooth cured
toothache." In another place he says that " so deeply was the idea
rooted in the mind of the universal Church, that for over a thousand
years surgery was considered dishonorable; the greatest monarchs
were often unable to secure an ordinary surgical observation ; and it
is only in 1406 that a better beginning was made when the Emperor
Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonor should no longer attach
to the surgical profession."
It would take too long to answer in detail all President White's
false statements, but some of them I cannot but comment on. Ac-
I9I4-] WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE 67
cording to President White, surgery remained down to the fifteenth
century a despised profession. As a matter of fact, during the two
centuries before the fifteenth, some of the greatest surgical textbooks
ever written were composed, and they are the subject of the most
active interest at the present time. " Its practice," he says, " con-
tinued largely in the hands of charlatans." We know now that
some of the greatest minds in Europe were engaged in surgery, and
they left magnificent treasures of experience in their textbooks.
Most of the writers of these were clergymen. At least one was a
bishop. They invented not only one, but several methods of
anaesthesia; secured union by first intention; did the finest kind
of plastic work in the repair of tissues wounded by swords; made
excellent studies in orthopedics, operated upon the brain for tumor
and abscess, on the thorax for fluids, and on the abdomen for a
number of different conditions.
President White says that " until the Emperor Wenzel issued
his decree that dishonor should no longer attach to the surgical
profession," no beginning of surgery was made. As a matter of
fact the two centuries immediately preceding this date which he has
chosen as the end of ecclesiastical suppression of surgery, have come
in the minds of those who know the history of medicine to be con-
sidered the greatest surgical period in modern history. There is no
doubt of the genius of the men who took up the specialty in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, nor of the marvels that they
accomplished. They systematized the treatment of fractures, in-
vented all sorts of apparatus for the reduction of dislocations, and
the maintenance of injured limbs in position, and so far from be-
lieving the foolish nonsense about the breath of a donkey expelling
poison or a dead man's tooth healing toothache, they discussed
various toxic substances with a scientific knowledge often surpris-
ing; they filled teeth with gold, but also with tin, and anticipated
many supposedly quite modern developments in the surgical special-
ties, that is in the treatment of the eye, ear, throat and nose.
President White in many parts of his book emphasizes the
traditions of the use of a number of absurd materials, some of them
excessively deterrent, as remedies in medicine, and of course attrib-
utes this foolish credulity to the influence of the Church, and to
what he calls theological pseudo-science. Indeed the good President
of Cornell, doubtless with the best intention in the world, devoted
much more space to the story of superstitions in medicine than to the
real history of medicine. Even the doctrine of signatures, which has
come and gone many times in medicine without any reference to
68 WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE [Oct.,
theology, finds its place in his scoring of unfortunate religious in-
fluences over the medicine of the Middle Ages.
There is no doubt at all that all of these quite absurd remedies
were frequently employed in the Middle Ages. As President White
tells the story of them, however, the reader is apt to conclude that
no other remedies or modes of treatment except these were known.
As a matter of fact, as I have said, there was a magnificent develop-
ment of medicine and of surgery during the Middle Ages, and we
know this not from vague traditions, but from literally dozens of
textbooks that have come down to us, most of which were, fortu-
nately for us and for human scholarship, printed in the Renaissance
time, and which were just beginning to be reprinted when President
White wrote his volumes. The histories of medicine for thirty
years before that time, however, had given abundant hints of the
contents of these textbooks, and more than sufficient information to
keep any serious student from concluding for a moment that the
traditions of medical superstitions of all kinds which had come down
to us from the mediaeval period, represented the medicine of that
time.
Let us suppose for a moment that the history of medicine in our
time should be written in the way that President White has sketched
mediaeval medicine for his readers. Suppose that some writer of,
say five hundred years from now, should neglect our textbooks of
medicine and surgery, and should write the story of our medical
life from the traditions of popular remedies, which he might still be
able to collect because they had been preserved on account of their
very strangeness and absurdity. This historian of the future
would tell how for years the American people of the twentieth
century were ignorant enough to spend millions of money annually
advertising the virtues of, and many more millions in paying for,
tonic remedies that contained only alcohol, diluted and colored and
rendered bitter by a very slight addition of drugs. In this very
year of grace 1914 the government has just proclaimed that scores
of so-called " tonics " and " cordials " which people have been taking
as medicine, must be taxed as alcoholic beverages. The awful
abuses that have been practised in the name of tonic medicine with
the production of alcoholic habits, and the deterioration of mind and
body, would make one interesting feature for our future historian
of his sketch of what he might be pleased to call medicine.
Then there are wonderful electrical remedies. Electric belts
that are sold by the thousands, and have never a tittle of electricity
in them ; electric insoles, one made of zinc and the other of copper,
1914.] WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE 69
worn in the shoes, and a current of electricity goes up one leg and
down the other; electric rings, electric medal batteries, and all the
other abuses of popular misinformation. Then there are the cancer
cures a new one every month or so, often approved by physicians,
most of them founded on quite absurb theories, nearly all of them
meant only to exploit popular ignorance for the benefit of the knav-
ish inventor. Then come the tuberculosis remedies. Practically all of
them do harm, but all of them are announced as " sure cures."
There are widely-advertised remedies all effecting harm being sold
by the million of bottles every year.
We have the record of many more superstitions in medicine
during the nineteenth century than in any other century of medical
history. Perkins and his tractors that were supposed to contain
the electric secret of life, and cure many diseases, yet that had no
physical effect, came at the beginning. Then there was mesmerism.
It took us a century to unravel that mystery and we have not un-
raveled it yet and there are still many people deceived by hypno-
tism and cured by it, though physicians condemn its use as harmful.
About the middle of the century came spiritualism, which re-
ceived its prescriptions from the other shore, and worked wonders
of healing. At the end of the century came Dowie, who claimed to
have healed over one hundred thousand cases; and at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century appeared the climax of Eddy ism,
which cures every ill under the sun by simply proclaiming that there
is no ill, that there can be no ill.
Suppose the future historian of the relations of science and
religion or theology and religion tells the story of all these foolish
divagations in a single century of human kind, and represents them
as the serious medical conclusions of our time. How absurd we will
appear to his readers, and what a curiously false notion of us it
will give the people of that future time. This is the way that
President White has written the story of mediaeval medicine and
surgery, in so far as he uses it for his purpose of bringing out the
warfare between theology and science. The old foolish remedies
had no more to do with theology than the modern foolish medical
practices have to do with it, and no more to do with scientific
medicine and surgery. Medical superstitions, like the poor, we
have always with us. There were never so many of them as now.
Not alone in these matters of less significance in the history
of medicine has President White gone far afield from the real
story of science as we know it now, but in much more impor-
tant departments, and, above all, in biography, where mistakes are
70 WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE [Oct.,
much less pardonable, he has grievously erred. He might easily
be pardoned for errors due to his unfamiliarity with his subject,
but that he should have read the meanings that he has attempted to
read into the lives of such men as Vesalius and Copernicus, is quite
unpardonable. It makes it very clear that President White, in his
anxiety to make out a case against theology, was quite willing to
pervert the signification of incidents for his own purposes. As
a consequence he created a tradition in American academic life that
is only now being cleared away. The effect on the graduates of
Cornell has been particularly unfortunate, and many of them are
surprisingly unable to see realities in the history of science, because
of the unfortunate twist given to their mental faculties by the
atmosphere of Cornell in their time. This is not said with bitter-
ness, but noted with surprise, and meant to be a contribution to the
psychology of some scientific minds which vaunt themselves so
free, yet prove so often to be shackled by prejudices and dogmatic
assumptions that are far more shackling to perception than any
religious dogmas ever were.
The biography of Vesalius, who so well deserves the name
of the Father of Modern Anatomy, has suffered most in the Ameri-
can mind from President White's references to his history. Supposed
by the Cornell tradition, as I have said, to have done his work in
fear and trembling, this great scientist was in reality one of the
happiest of mortals during a long and successful academic career.
Very early in life he became interested in biology from reading
Albertus Magnus. Even while an undergraduate at the University
of Louvain, he dissected small animals. Later he went to Paris
in order to get further opportunities for dissection, particularly of
human material, and because this proved too scarce for his enthu-
siasm, he studied the bones in the catacombs. Disappointed he
returned from Paris scarcely twenty-one years of age, and succeeded
in getting the skeleton of a malefactor who had been hanged, and
studied it very carefully.
There was only one country in the world where he or anyone
else in Europe could secure opportunities for all sorts of graduate
work. That was Italy. The nearer to Rome the better the oppor-
tunities. In his early twenties Vesalius is to be found at Padua,
and there for the next twenty-five years he did some magnificent
work. At the age of twenty-five he was appointed Professor of
Anatomy at Padua. He was under thirty when his great text-
book on anatomy, one of the most precious of bibliographic treas-
ures in the history of medicine, with its magnificent illustrations,
I9I4-] WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE 71
was published, and gave him European fame. But he was inter-
ested not only in anatomy, but also in surgery and medicine and
diagnosis and therapeutics. He was the first to diagnose an aneur-
ism on the living subject. He came to be looked upon as the great-
est physician of his time. It is not surprising, then, that the Em-
peror Charles V. offered him the position of imperial physician.
It is still less surprising that Vesalius should have accepted it.
His family for three generations had been the apothecaries to
the family from which Charles was descended. After Charles'
retirement, Vesalius became the physician to King Philip II. Un-
fortunately, while in Spain, he made an autopsy on a person in
a cataleptic state, who died under the knife. In order to atone
for this unfortunate occurrence, he made a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, whether by choice or by order of the Inquisition is not
definitely known. On his return he died after shipwreck on the
island of Zante.
Out of these details President White has constructed a lurid
story of bitter persecution of Vesalius by the Church authorities.
He has him dissecting in a closed cell, " with windows and doors
bolted and barred within, which betoken the storm of bigotry which
rages without." The persecution against him is supposed to have
been due to the fact that Vesalius " put an end among thoughtful
men to this belief in the missing rib, and in doing this dealt a blow
at much else in the sacred theory." Nothing could well be more
absurd, in the light of history, than any such declaration. This per-
secution is supposed to have practically forced him to give up his
teaching for the post of imperial physician, as if that dignity would
not have tempted any medical scientist at any time.
President White adds, " Naturally all these considerations
brought the forces of ecclesiasticism against the innovators in
anatomy." However much they might be presumed to do so, if men
thought as President White presents them as thinking, all these con-
siderations actually did not do any such thing. Not only did
Vesalius have no difficulty about dissection in Italy, but, as I have
said, every artist of the generation before his time made dissections
quite freely, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci have all
left us a number of sketches of their dissections, and indeed this
phase of artists' dissections in Italy during the Renaissance, mainly
before 1500, though Vesalius was not born until 1514, is so signifi-
cant, that an important English publishing house has just an-
nounced as one of a series of books on the history of medicine the
story of these artist dissectors.
72 WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE [Oct.,
Vesalius could not obtain material for dissection in Paris. He
went down to Italy precisely because there was such abundant op-
portunity for dissection, and such absolute freedom in the matter.
The nearer to Rome the easier it was to obtain dissecting material,
and the more common was the practice of dissection. A number of
the Papal physicians of Vesalius' time, some of whom had been his
assistants or colleagues at Padua and Bologna, and were afterwards
professors at the Sapienza at Rome, are famous for what they ac-
complished by their dissections. Such names as Eustachius, Colum-
bus, Varolius are among them, but there were many others whom we
know in this previous Renaissance time to have practised dissection
quite freely. Every document that we have about Vesalius points
him out as in entire sympathy with the ecclesiastical authorities of
his time. Indeed it would have been very surprising for him to
have been the medical attendant of Philip II. otherwise.
There is a well-known painting of Vesalius at work in his cell
by Hamann, which is now at Cornell University. President White
has described it in his work, volume two, page 54, as follows : " By
the magic of Hamann's pencil, Vesalius again stands on earth, and
we look once more into his cell. Its windows and doors, bolted and
barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without;
the crucifix to which he turns his eyes symbolizes the spirit in which
he labors ; the corpse of the plague stricken beneath his hand ceases
to be repulsive! his very soul seems to send forth rays from the
canvas, which strengthen us for the good fight in this age." A
prominent place in one of the principal buildings of Cornell has been
given to the painting. Probably no student goes through his course
there without seeing it, and having this lesson of bigotry impressed
upon him. There is absolutely no truth in the picture. 2 Vesalius
might well have had the crucifix before him always when dissecting
because of his deep piety. He was not only not in the slightest
danger of the ecclesiastical authorities, but it was they who actually
secured for him the dissecting material that he was using. Any-
time during the first half of the nineteenth century in America, he
would not have been able to secure it. But the Church authorities in
Italy allowed for scientific purposes the dissection of unclaimed
bodies, and of malefactors.
^ *When I was at Cornell this picture of Vesalius, prominently hung in one of
the*k .most frequented portions of an important building, was supposed, from the
inscription under it, to present a horrible example of Church opposition to science.
I believe tnat it * s s tiM presumed to do so in the student mind at least. Any such
perversion" 1 of the plain facts of history is a disgrace to the scholarship of any
university.
' M '
I 9 i4-] WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE 73
It is almost more amazing to read President White's account
of Copernicus and his theory. A case must be made out for Church
persecution of Copernicanism, not only in Galileo's time, but from
the very beginning. Accordingly every possible fact is twisted to
this purpose. Copernicus dedicated his book to the Pope. The
innuendo is that this dedication was in the hope of dispelling the
storm that Copernicus foresaw as sure to arise over his theory. In
a note President White mentions the fact that Copernicus defended
his theory at Rome in 1500 before two thousand scholars, and that
a professor of mathematics and astronomy taught the system in
1528, and was made Apostolic Notary by Pope Clement VIII. , but
only to add that these meant nothing in the light of subsequent
history. President White likes to brush aside possible objections
by relegating them to notes, and suggesting that they are quite un-
worthy of consideration.
After the dedication came the question of the significance of
Copernicus' preface, and this too contains matter for President
White's purpose, or that can be turned to it. This preface suggests
that Copernicus had propounded the doctrine of the earth's move-
ment not as a fact, but as a hypothesis. From what we know of
Copernicus, nothing would be more likely than that this humble
seeker after truth should have emphasized the fact which no one
must have known better than himself, that his theory was as yet only
a hypothesis. Copernicus had not made many observations, nor
were those that he made very carefully computed. He reached his
great generalization on the strength of these by native genius, and
that marvelous intuition that so often helps great men to reach con-
clusions w r hich prove eventually to be true, though the reasons they
have for them are not such as appeal at the time to the generality
of men as demonstrative.
As a matter of fact, not only was Copernicus' theory a mere
hypothesis, but the astronomers and mathematicians did not think
of it as anything more than that for a full century. Even Francis
Bacon, as I have said, refused to accept it a century later, because
it did not explain the difficulties of the heavens nearly so well as the
Ptolemaic system. Not a single one of the reasons advanced by
Galileo for the Copernican theory maintained themselves, but all
have been rightly rejected, and when he advanced them no as-
tronomer or mathematician was teaching the Copernican theory, nor
was it taught for a considerable period afterwards. It was not the
theologians, but the mathematicians and astronomers who refused
to accept Copernicanism, and it was following these because of the
74 WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE [Oct.,
disturbing character of Galileo's teachings for other principles that
the Church insisted that Copernicanism should be taught as a hypo-
thesis not as a truth.
Probably no one knew better than Copernicus himself how ab-
solutely theoretic was this new doctrine of his, hence his declaration
in the preface which President White insists on considering as an
apology either forced on Copernicus himself, or written by the man
to whom he had entrusted the publication of his work, and who thus
hoped to forestall criticism of it. As a matter of fact nothing could
have been more scientific than the announcement that Copernicanism
was a hypothesis. To know Copernicus' simple, unpretentious ways,
is to appreciate at once that it is just the sort of thing that he would
have written. Great genius that he was, he passed his life in quiet,
fecund obscurity as the canon of the Cathedral of Frauenburg, using
his medical knowledge for the benefit of the poor and a few friends,
and pursuing his studies without any attempt at seeking applause or
prestige, satisfied only to be allowed to go on with his work and
fulfill his ecclesiastical obligations, and in the midst of the Lutheran
movement opposing the religious revolt, and helping Bishop Ferber,
his lifetime friend, to keep his diocese in the old Church.
The epitaph that he chose for himself at the end of his career,
is typical of the man and of the simple humble way that he had of
looking at himself and his work. He asked that these words should
be inscribed upon his tomb. " I ask not the grace accorded to Paul ;
not that given to Peter; give me only the favor which Thou didst
show to the thief on the cross." Even this beautiful epitaph, however,
President White twists into an attempt on Copernicus' part to shield
himself after death from the persecutions of the Church. He says,
volume one, page 124, " Even death could not be trusted to shield
him. There seems to have been fear of vengeance upon his corpse,
for on his tombstone was placed no record of his lifelong labors, no
mention of his great discovery ; but there was graven upon it simply
a prayer." Could there be a conclusion more absurd? It
is on such utterly nonsensical reading of meanings into history that
the story of the opposition between science and theology is built.
Of course President White made much of the Galileo case.
Some one hundred and fifty pages are devoted to this subject. As
Cardinal Newman said, the Galileo case is the one stock example,
and for that very reason has to be made much of. It is really the
exception which proves the rule of non-opposition to science, since
it is the one case that can be quoted in many hundreds of years.
No student of the matter would agree with the presentation made of
1914.] WARFARE OF THEOLOGY WITH SCIENCE 75
it by President White. Huxley, after having visited Rome, wrote
to a friend that he had looked into the Galileo case, and thought that
the Pope and the cardinals had rather the best of it.
In spite of the persecution of him, Galileo lived a long and
happy life, and the late M. Bertrand, Perpetual Secretary of the
French Academy of Sciences, declared that " the long life of Galileo
was one of the most enviable that is recorded in the history of
science. The tale of his misfortunes has confirmed the triumph of
the truth for which he suffered. Let us tell the whole truth. This
great lesson was learned without any profound sorrow to Galileo;
and his long life, considered as a whole, was one of the most serene
and enviable in the history of science."
The usual impression is, and President White has fostered it,
that Galileo was in prison for years, and that he came very near
having to pay with his life for daring to have opinions of his own.
The picture of Galileo in a dungeon working out a demonstration of
his theory, and declaring "e pur si muove" " and yet it moves " is
a favorite one at Cornell. Galileo was of course never even for an
hour in such a prison. He was committed to the care of a friend
for a time, and later placed under the wardenship of his own son,
while the principal part of his punishment consisted in having to
say the Seven Penitential Psalms as a penance daily for some time.
Galileo himself remained a faithful Catholic, quite confident that
everything would work out all right, and that the truth would come
to light in its own time ; regretting his own hastiness, and recogniz-
ing how much he was responsible for the troubles that had come to
him. Of all this of course there is not the slightest hint in Presi-
dent White's book.
After reading Professor Draper's and Professor White's vol-
umes, it is easy to understand how university men in this country
for whom these books were supposed to represent authoritative ex-
pressions of American scholarship, could not possibly conceive of
any defence of the Church. It is easy to appreciate, too, that,
laboring under the impressions produced by such books, they could
not understand how any intelligent man could continue to give his al-
legiance to the Church. The surprise of course is, that these books
should have so been taken on faith, because it was a literal taking on
faith by so many supposedly well-informed readers. Now the facts
that these books so presented are known, and the books themselves
merely serve as indices of the lack of scholarship of a generation
ago.
O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND.
j /ce ins
.xcus himseh,
HE corkscrew ^publication o/ a natural staircase into
a valley, v^ 1 of it- As a nj' is greener perhaps than
anywhere el&an the annou The sea at the foot of the
vale is graduallyo&ernicu. 1 to the traveler by the part-
ing of rounded and ten .teed bosses of bare mountains,
which reflect rainbow-tinted lights from sky and
ocean, and take an ethereal coloring more exquisite than the beauty
of fresh flowers or the splendor of jewels in the sun. These are the
hills, and this is the valley of the Burren of the Kings, and small
be the wonder if the Kings of Burren fought hard to hold their
own.
In the heart of the vale, and up the sides of the barren gray
rocks, as far as the grass can dare to creep, are the little cots and
homesteads of the natives, flanked by the rich dark foliage of the
elder trees, that in season shake out their fairy-like, white blossoms
round humble chimneys, exhaling the pungent fragrance of burning
turf. Here and there the gable of a ruined church or a wrecked and
deserted dwelling, or perhaps a melancholy mouldering group,
still shows where the struggle of soul and body for leave
to pray and live was for centuries carried on in this smiling
region.
One morning in the summer of 1746 a girl on a pony was coming
down the road-staircase, the gleam of a white gown observable only
by the goats and the landward-faring gulls, even when the rider with
her unconventional garb and gear dropped into the grassy slopes be-
tween the road-flights, making short cuts into the valley. The
girl on the pony was not in a hurry. She was young, and there was
always plenty of time to spare in Burren. A few people were work-
ing in the fields, the women with their heads tied up in handkerchiefs,
for the sun was strong. The solitary girl who was going down into
the valley carried her black hat in her hand, reckless of sunburn or
sunstroke. It was a long ride to the goal she had in mind, but she
was taking it leisurely, rather as one who was anxious to spend the
hours than to save them. Sometimes she dismounted, and while her
pony munched the sweet short grass she sat for a while on the gray
rocks, from which ferns and foxgloves rose up or dangled, and al-
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 77
ways there was a deep shadow in her eyes as if from a habit of
sorrow or of bodily suffering.
Down on the level road in the valley she went more quickly.
Salutations were given her by those who met her, little children
curtsied to her, and she nodded to all with a smile that brought a
brilliant momentary light in her eyes, and was lost again in the
shadows of her deep preoccupation. As she rode on the land grew
more bare and lonely, and at last the gray mouldering walls she
was bound for came in sight. She had reached Corcomroe Abbey,
an ancient Cisterian monastery that saddens with its shattered
beauty a lonely spot between the gleaming crowns of the Burren
Mountains. She left the pony at his grass, stepped through a gap in
the broken wall, and entered the chancel by a doorway of finely
cut stone, crossing the grassy floor that hid a little world of mor-
tality, and reaching the sanctuary where the sunshine burned like a
sacrificial fire on the altar stone, and illuminated the carven pillars,
their capitals formed of weird human faces, strangely grouped and
typical of distinctly different nationalities.
Familiar with the place, she walked leisurely in and out of the
grassy aisles, where Gothic arches are so built up to stay ruin that
their openings have become parts of the solid wall. In the chancel,
roofed with the blue heavens, she stood musing. An army was buried
under her feet. That might be hard to realize. But everything,
thought the girl, is as hard to realize. One's own existence and the
reason for it are inconceivable. Brona at nineteen might not have
had these thoughts if she had lived pleasantly amidst happy sur-
roundings, but her days were bitter, and the purposelessness of
things of this world sometimes dogged her better nature like a
haunting shadow of evil, and threatened to destroy her faith.
In this mood her own existence seemed as unreal to her as the
dead warriors above whose heads she now stood, trying to imagine
their forms, their armor, their noise, to build them up again out of
their dust that had been flesh like her own, like the warm round
wrist that she touched speculatively with her slender fingers.
Not less of dust was she, who for the moment appeared to be
something real and of lasting material. Whence come, whither
bound? For all her latent faith, inherent and invincible, Brona was
a. mystery to herself, and her sad musing habit which sprang from
the deadness of her life, like some pale weed out of an uncared-for
grave, led her often to this silent, forlorn ruin that once had been so
vigorously alive with human movement, so loud with prayer and
music, so resonant of the noise of war and dismal funereal cries, a
shrine of God, sometimes a barrack for soldiers, a tomb where Masses
were offered for the repose of the fallen brave. This is all that the
78 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Oct.,
greatest, the fiercest, the saintliest come to. The grass of the field,
the nettle, the wild duck, and the dust and clay of which all are made
lying undistinguished beneath them.
She felt a solemn pleasure in gazing on all the features of the
place ; the blue heaven above ; the lofty windows of sharply-cut stone
round which the ivy hung ; the clustering faces on the pillars frowning
and smiling in the strong sunshine; the heavy shadows that draped
the central walls; the intense light on the forlorn sanctuary, on the
altar stone; the sedilia with its arches of exquisite carving;
the stone effigy of the King that lay in an alcove of the sanctuary,
in crown and sceptre, with long locks, short robe, long cloak and
quaint pointed shoes, the costume of the Irish Kings of his century.
Flitting noiselessly about the place the girl finally gravitated to this
spot beside the King's tomb, and resting on a pile of loosened stones
and hardened earth, the upheaval and accumulation of ages, she sat
gazing at the fallen King, marking the chips and notches in his mould-
dering grandeur.
II.
The girl's position in life was sad and difficult enough to ac-
count for her grave brows, and her habit of serious meditation. Hers
were the days when the Penal Laws were still in force in Ireland.
The price was on the priest's head, and death the penalty of his minis-
trations of the Mass and Sacrament. If a Catholic gentleman still
held his ancestral house it was on sufferance, as a castle of the air
that might be blown away at any moment by the breath of the " dis-
coverer." Any enemy or covetous person, a traitor in his family,
a kinsman, or even an unworthy son of his own, might report him as
a " discovered " Papist, and take possession of his property in the
name of the law and as the guerdon of treachery.
Such an Irish Catholic gentleman Brona's father was, Morogh
O'Loghlin, of the ancient family of the O'Loghlins, Kings of Burren,
who continued to live modestly under the shadow of the ancient castle
of his forefathers, contented with the state of peaceful insecurity into
which Providence had ordered him. Devoted to study, he found for-
getfulness of danger and difficulty in his own library, enjoying in
imagination the privileges of ancient Greeks and Romans, and tast-
ing with relish the liberty of life on the prairie, the sierra, and the
desert. His gentle manners and cheerful philosophy had won him
the respect and good will of his neighbors in the county, and though
it was known that he harbored a Popish priest, fingered a rosary, and
even wore a small crucifix under his garments suspended round his
neck, no one of those favored by the law had risen up to take ad-
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 79
vantage of it to dispossess and bring ruin to one so admirable in his
endurance of adversity.
Neither the son nor the daughter of Morogh shared his pa-
tience under the burden of their disabilities, but chafed at the chains
on their youth the odium and insult cast on their religion. Brona
who had lately come home from the school in France, where she had
been sent after her mother's death, had found with amazement that
she was in some sort an outcast among the women of her own degree
in her native country. On learning the inevitableness of her fate
she had accepted it with courage, and wrapping herself in her pride
she had kept close to her father, resolved to seek no countenance from
a world that was disposed to think ill of her.
Her brother Turlough was of a totally different mind, and re-
sented furiously the injustice under which he was obliged to live.
He also had been educated in France, and, restless at home, spent
most of his time in Paris. He was as much disposed to be a king as
any of his Dalcassian forefathers, and as eager for supremacy as
those who delighted in wars for the maintenance of it, while abiding
by their own admirable laws in times of peace. Turlough hated war
as destructive of all pleasure, but as there were now no admirable
laws to be obeyed, he did not feel bound by any laws in existence in
his day. He scorned Morogh's philosophy of endurance as a mean
contentment with slavery, and took advantage of his father's self-
denying generosity to remain where he could live on a common footing
with other young men of his rank, drowning in amusement the future
of degradation prepared for him in his own country.
The connection of the west of Ireland with France and Spain,
traditional and practical, made it easy for the young man to live among
gay friends in Paris, winning popularity by his handsome face and
the charm of manner, half Irish and half French, which distinguished
him when happy, but was unknown to the gloom of the Irish home
which his presence darkened. Links with the Continent had always
been kept up by the O'Loghlins. Morogh's sister Aideen, the Mar-
quise de Chevriere, had married in France, and having lost her husband
early she had returned to live with her brother, not denying herself an
occasional visit to Paris. While Brona was there at school in one
of the ancient convents now evacuated, her visits had been more
frequent than now when her niece preferred to share her father's over-
shadowed life, rather than escape into the pleasanter milieu which her
aunt had desired to provide for her. Secretly the Marquise admired
the gay expensive tastes of her nephew more than the simplicity and
quiet fortitude of her niece, and out of her own purse she contributed
generously to enable the young man to make a brilliant figure
in the salons and drawing-rooms of Paris.
8o O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Oct.,
III.
The old castle of the O'Loghlins was in a half-ruinous condition,
part only being habitable, but attached to it was a more modern dwell-
ing, connected with certain apartments of the ancient structure, which
were still sound and available for the uses of life. The new dwelling,
which was about a hundred years old, was two-storied and straggling,
with thick walls and low-ceilinged rooms, part thatched, and part roofed
with the curious large thin slabs of the Donegore stone, of which so
many uses are made in the County of Clare. With its back to the
castle for shelter it faced the sea, and the approach to it was a narrow,
hilly byroad, boring its way through the outskirts of a magnificent
wood which wandered away on one side in the direction of a desolate
stretch of bogland, encrusted here and there with rocks and ridges of
limestone, and flecked with pools deep as mountain tarns or shallow as
rain puddles. Besides their primary uses, woods and bogs seem to
have been designed by nature as shelter for the secret Mass, affording
untrackable pathways for the feet of proscribed priests and their ad-
venturous congregations. Above and beyond all rose the rounded
bastions of the bare Burren Mountains, gleaming with opalescent color,
like fortifications of some fairy realm, bulwarks of some jewelled
citadel in a dream.
Within, the O'Loghlin homestead was comfortable enough in a
spare way, the antique furniture almost all of foreign workmanship,
with here and there a solid oak piece hewn to shape by native hands,
black and polished by the usage of time. The dining-room and draw-
ing-room were in the newer building on the level ground facing the
cliffs and ocean, the library was an apartment of the old castle on the
same flat, near it a spiral stair leading up to the " peel tower," with
its round room also in good preservation. In a corner of the library
flooring was a trap door, leading down by a flight of steps to a sub-
terranean passage, giving on the seashore through a natural gateway
of the towering rocks that menaced approaching ships with wreckage.
Such passages had been originally designed for escapes and secret ar-
rivals in time of war, and were often availed of for the reception of
smuggled goods from continental ports in times of peace.
O'Loghlin had no taste for trading, but there were others in the
county who contrived, in defiance of danger, to amass a fortune by
such methods, and it was probable that the small chamber at the en-
trance to the subterranean passage had been used for the stowing away
of valuable contraband goods. It was ill-ventilated, yet with sufficient
air through apertures contrived in the stone work above ground to
enable life to exist within it, and at the time of this story it was the
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 81
hiding place of Father Aengus, an Irish Franciscan friar, chaplain of
the O'Loghlin household, and spiritual administrator and comforter,
by stealth and at the risk of his life, of the penalized Catholics for
miles around.
The little dungeon was a cell which the humble son of St. Francis
was glad to inhabit. A crucifix on the wall, a table with books and
writing materials, a bed in the corner, were about all its furniture.
When no particular scare was abroad, no warning of a visit from the
priest-hunter, Father Aengus would give his company to his friend
and protector, Morogh, and would sit with him in his library talking
or reading. In times of danger he was buried in his cell, the door of
which was not to be found except by the initiated. The greatest
danger of all was faced when Mass was said on the rock altar of the
bog, and the people were assembled to assist at it, or when the priest
ventured across the land to the cots and hovels of the faithful to take
the Sacraments to the dying. Each time his going forth from his hid-
ing place under O'Loghlin's roof was likely to be the last. That night
the stars might look down on his corpse floating in the bog pool, or
swinging from the roadside tree.
Meanwhile the soul of his sainted patron of Assisi lived behind
the pallid brows and soft, brown eyes of Father Aengus, eyes where
human tenderness and the strenuous energy of mystical devotion
burned their imperishable fires. A slender figure in gown and girdle,
brown as the bog-earth traveled by his sandalled feet in His Divine
Master's service, he came and went by the secret stair, sometimes
scarcely seen for days, at other times showing a cheerful and com-
forting face to the household. Beloved by all, from Morogh to the
servants who whispered his name and watched at every outpost for his
safety, he was worshipped by the countryside at large as God's visible
messenger to the afflicted, a hero of the Cross, who daily courted death
to carry them the saving grace which would enable them also to die,
when necessary, with courage.
A lamp was always burning in his cell where no daylight ever
entered. One table was piled with books, the lives and writings of the
saints, another was covered with papers and pens and ink. Linked in
spiritual descent with those Irish Franciscans of the ancient and
demolished and ruined friaries of Quin (Quinchy the arbutus grove),
of Ennis and others, Aengus, namesake and follower of the Rapt Cul-
dee, kept a record of these evil days in Ireland, and of the harvest of
glory reaped from the rack for God, writings to be conveyed when
opportunity might arise to the heads of his Order in countries where
Christian and Catholic worship was happily free.
VOL. c. (3
82 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Oct.,
IV.
The Marquise de Chevrieres had the prettiest and most friv-
olously appointed chamber in Castle O'Loghlin. One could here see
that though Aideen was Irish by birth, she was by a second nature a
Parisian. Curtains of brilliant silk made much of the sunlight that
.got through the narrow windows, and many odds and ends of
feminine fancy lay about among properties and furniture that had
evidently been exiled from a French interior. While Brona was rid-
ing homeward, her aunt was busily engaged examining and
spreading out on exhibition a quantity of pieces of rich
silks, velvets and laces, evidently taking great pleasure in her
occupation. Now and again she went to the window that looked
inland, and when at last she saw the girl on her pony ap-
proaching by the road between the bog and the wood, she threw over
her head and shoulders a light scarf of a color very becoming to her
white hair dressed high, her dark eyes and healthy complexion, and
taking her way out of doors went quickly up the road to meet her
brother's daughter. Brona sprang from her pony, and walked beside
her aunt back to the castle.
" MacDonogh is here," said Aideen, " and has brought letters,
besides a lot of interesting things. His ships got in the night before
last. He is talking with your father. I think he will stay until to-
morrow. No, Turlough is not coming. Now, don't blame the boy.
How can we expect him to bear this dreary life? Yes, of course it
is expensive in Paris and he wants money. I am sending him some.
It is my own affair."
" You are unselfish. He is not," said Brona. " Father needs
him."
"We can do very well without him. Your father lived about
the world a good deal when he was young. Let Turlough do the
same. He can settle down later on. I wish you had a little of his
spirit, Brona, to go abroad and enjoy yourself for awhile. There is
plenty of time before you, apres, for a life of old maidenhood in a
country suffering under tyrannical rule."
" Now, Aideen," said Brona, " how can you talk like that ? Have
you not left your gay Paris to live with us here, willingly? "
" That is different ! " cried the Marquise. " I have had my
happy youth. I have lived my life. My husband gone, I have no more
concern with the world. But you, who ought to have all that before
you."
Brona shook her head. " Nothing of the kind for me, dear
auntie. Put it out of your mind. Mere glitter and excitement do
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 83
not make me happy. Paris, as I hear of it from Turlough, disgusts
me. Better the grand hills and the forbidden prayers than such
goings on as I hear of."
" You ought to be a nun ! " said Aideen impatiently.
"Ah, no," said Brona. " I am not good enough. If I am restless
and depressed here, I should be worse either in a convent or at
Versailles. Were I as resigned as father I might be content in a
cell, or if I were as easily uplifted by pleasure as you, I might take
my fling abroad and come back here the better for it. But as I am
just myself "
She gave her pony to a servant, and followed up the stair to
Aideen's room, where the rich fabrics and other prettinesses were dis-
played to her by her aunt.
" See what charming clothes you might have, child, if you were
not so obstinate ! "
Brona laughed at her aunt's childish delight in the pretty things
that she no longer coveted for herself, and by that laugh the girl was
transformed. The grave face became irradiated, and the ripple of
clear, musical notes that fell from her, would have taken a stranger
by surprise contrasting with quiet seriousness of her usual speech.
" What a pity we can't exchange ages," she said, " you to be
young. I to be '
" Not old ! Don't say it, my dear. I am not old, nor do I in-
tend to be. But come and let us take these presents to our friends
below stairs."
The Marquise seized a bag of parcels. " Here's something for
everybody," she said. " My friend in Paris has attended to all my
commissions."
" This is how you spend all never leaving yourself a penny,"
said Brona, peering into the bag ; and then they went down the stairs
together to the housekeeper's room, where about a dozen individuals
were gathered from outdoors and indoors, summoned by a whisper
that had been running round the house for half an hour, beginning
at a back door, making a circuit of garden and stables, and coming
back again by the front entrance.
Ribbons and kerchiefs and smart aprons for the girls and women,
vests and caps and ties for the men and boys, besides rosary beads
and a crucifix for everybody. Thanks and blessings in Irish were
freely poured out in return, and repeated in English to make them
doubly emphatic. Thady Quin, the butler, and Mrs. MacCurtin, the
housekeeper, had first of all leave to choose the best to their taste,
the younger people in turn afterwards. Aideen, giving orders for
the evening and the next morning, was appealed to by whispered re-
marks and questions.
84 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Oct.,
" God bless Mr. MacDonogh, and we hope he has brought good
news from France ! "
For all reply the Marquise -put her ringer on her lip, which
seemed to say that there was no bad news, and there was safety in
silence. But the anxious were not satisfied. Norah and Bridget mur-
mured together as they made ready the visitor's bedchamber for the
night. The best embroidered counterpane was put on the bed, the
finest linen sheets and the woolliest blankets. The best of every-
thing in the dwelling was for the guest. An antique silver font was
taken from a hiding place and hung by the bed, a little blessed water
was put into it, and a bit of the blessed palm of last Easter was
placed above it.
" Sure nothin' will happen for one night, and if it does there's the
hole under the boards."
As MacDonogh came up to his room to prepare for dinner, he
was waylaid in passages and on stairs. Mrs. MacCurtin in her best
cap curtsied to him in a dark corner.
" God bless you, sir, and have you a word of news from my Dan
that's own body-man to Lord Clare ? "
" Dan? Dan MacCurtin? Of course I have the best of news. I
know him. A splendid fellow! No news is good news, ma'am, and
you may give God thanks for it."
Mrs. MacCurtin burst into tears and vanished.
Further on Norah and Bridget, their task finished, were lying
in wait in a passage, when the tall burly figure of MacDonogh came
tramping towards them.
" Beg pardon, your honor, but how is the boys you took from
us last year? Sure we don't know if they're living or dead. And is
it comin' back they are to us at all, at all ? "
"Oh, you girls!" said MacDonogh. "Would you bring them
back to be hanged, drawn, and quartered ? "
The girls wept into their aprons.
" There now ! They're well enough, as right as a trivet. I'll
give your love to them all."
" Shan O'Hare," faltered Norah.
" A great fellow ! Will be a general," said MacDonogh.
" But you're not goin' to take Brian Conor with you this turn,
sir?" said Bridget. "There's work for him here with the master."
"Is it refuse a fine recruit like Brian for the Brigade?" said
MacDonogh. " Where's your patriotism, my good girl ? If Brian
wants to come I'll take him."
The girls lowered their heads with groans and retreated tear-
fully, while the guest passed into his room, followed by Phelim, the
boy who had been told off to wait on him, and who was also a
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 85
candidate for membership in the Irish Brigade under Lord Clare in
Paris.
MacDonogh was in fact a recruiting officer for the Brigade, as
well as a clever merchant, doing a thriving trade in smuggling wines
and silks from foreign parts and exchanging them for tallow, wool,
and hides in his native country. His vessels, coming and going,
brought news as well as goods from France and Spain, and conveyed
the recruits required to keep up the standing regiment which held
its place in Paris until dissolved by Louis XVI. in his days of evil
fortune, when at the dissolution he presented the Brigade with a ban-
ner bearing the motto,
1692-1792
Semper et Ubique Fideles.
V.
After dinner the little company sat in the library, Morogh, his
sister, Brona, the guest MacDonogh and Father Aengus, who had
been pressingly invited to leave his cell for the moment, no danger
being imminent. A huge turf fire burned on the wide flagged hearth,
for though it was spring the sea dews were chill and the winds were
sharp. The group in their various costumes made a picture. Aideen was
in the French dress of the. day, gay and elegant, for she held that to
make a pleasant appearance does something towards creating cheer-
fulness in sad and serious surroundings and circumstances. Brona's
gray woolen frock, with a blue girdle, protested against elaborate
fashions, Morogh and MacDonogh were in the gentleman's dress usual
at the time, and Father Aengus wore his brown gown and cord of the
Franciscan Order. A tall screen of Spanish leather made a rich
and sombre background for the figures at one side of the hearth, and
behind in the shadows of the more dimly lighted part of the room,
rows of books were to be seen covering the wall from the floor even
up to the very ceiling.
Morogh, a pale man of placid countenance, with thoughtful brows
and somewhat worn and weary eyes, was unusually bright and lively
in enjoyment of the rare visit of his friend, yet in every particular of
manner and appearance he was in strong contrast with MacDonogh,
who was a big florid man, loud of speech, with a certain reckless-seem-
ing dash that covered a good deal of wary prudence not to say oc-
casional cunning.
" Here is the letter," said MacDonogh. " The date is six months
old. I found it waiting for me in care of a safe hand. I was in Spain
when it was written. A good long way to come round to get a letter
from France ! "
86 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Oct.,
Morogh took the letter, and read it aloud in a low voice, while all
the little company listened with the keenest interest.
PARIS, October, 1746.
DEAR MAcDoNOGH :
I congratulate you on your marriage, but trust it will not induce
you to retire from the Irish Brigade. I hope you do not forget the
memorable day we had at Fontenoy, and the other glorious days in which
they had a share. Your promotion goes on and all are wishing for
your return. With your assistance and O'Brien's the ranks are near
filled up. I hope to see you soon. How does my old friend and rela-
tion Capt. Dermot O'Brien get on? How is Morogh O'Loghlin? Are
they in good health and permitted to live and pray in peace?
Yours,
CLARE.
To MONS. A. MACDONOGH,
Co. Clare, Ireland.
" He doesn't forget his friends," said Morogh, folding the letter.
" Pity that he will die over there, unmarried, and that his line will
come to an end."
"We hope not. We hope not," said MacDonogh. "A noble
French wife will not bring him any fresh danger. And since even
I have now got a wife in France, what may not be expected to
happen? "
" My nephew will do the same, I hope," said Aideen briskly.
" Turlough ? I don't know. He will need to get a bit steadier
first," said MacDonogh with a change of voice.
Morogh sighed and shifted in his chair.
" He does not make himself happy here," he said.
" How could it be expected ? " Aideen hastened to say.
" He is young. He will improve," said MacDonogh. " We must
give him time." The big recruiting officer regretted the words that
had roused pain in the mind of his friend and host.
"Aye!" said Turlough's father, "aye!"
" You were not always a contented stay-at-home, yourself," said
Aideen.
" No," said her brother, " I took the full benefit of my youth in
many scenes and societies. You are right to remind me of it, Aideen."
Brona said little. Her eyes were on her father's face. More
than any other she knew how deep was his disappointment in Tur-
lough. She shared his sorrow, a grief that at nineteen was enough
to overcloud her days with even a bigger shadow than was cast by
Penal bondage.
"You have more letters to read, Morogh," said Aideen anxious
to divert her brother's mind from Turlough's affairs, of which she
knew more than he did.
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 87
" Very interesting letters," said O'Loghlin, " life is not so hard
when one has friends. Here is one from honest Charles Lucas, who
never forgets that he is a Clare man."
" Or that he began life as an apothecary in Ennis," said Mac-
Donogh. " What is he doing now ? Is he still fighting the Corpor-
ation of Dublin who disfranchised him? For a man who is not a
Papist he has had a rough time of it."
" He has got the better of them. He is returned to Parliament.
Anything that can be done for his Papist friends he will do."
" That will not be much," said MacDonogh. " He will ruin him-
self over again before he will be of any use to us. There is nothing
for the Papist but war, and war at present is not possible."
" Impossible nowhere but here," said Aideen. " War everywhere
except where it ought to be ! England and France plunging at each
other. You and your Brigade fighting for France, and your own
country with the assassin at her throat."
" Sh sh dear lady ! " said MacDonogh. " No use showing your
teeth when you can't bite. Better fight as at Fontenoy than no-
where."
Aideen shrugged her shoulders, French fashion, and looked at
her brother. Fear of injuring him was stronger in her even than her
desire to indulge here in the freedom of speech she had been ac-
customed to in Paris. Morogh changed the conversation by pro-
ducing another letter.
" This is from Mrs. Delany," he said, " my old friend of so many
years ago."
" The Dean's wife of St. Werbergh's ? " said MacDonogh. Cer-
tainly you have an odd assortment of friends, O'Loghlin. Now, where
did you make accquaintance with this comfortable, prosperous English
dame, who is enjoying on her husband's ill-gotten spoils from Pa-
pists all the best the world can give her, while you and yours suffer
that she may thrive, and are pinched to ensure her plenty of pin
money? "
" Let me see," said Morogh, " I met her first in Paris, in, I think,
1718, the year of the Quadruple Alliance. She was then the almost
child-wife of the brutal old Cornishman, Pendarves. Her uncle, Gran-
ville, had forced her into the marriage two years before by way of
providing for her and we were all amazed at the dignity and modesty
of the young creature, and her patient endurance of so pitiful a fate.
My memory holds her as one of those figures never to be forgotten.
I first saw her then, and not again till I met her as a widow, in Lon-
don living with her mother and sister, and declining all invitations to
make a fresh venture into matrimony. Many a one she disappointed,
for she was a charming creature, but no one ever had a right to com-
88 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Oct.,
plain of her treatment. About 1730 she came to Ireland to stay with
the Donnellans in St. Stephen's Green, and I met her at Dr. Delany's
in Stafford Street in company with Swift and Stella."
" And became one of her lovers," said MacDonogh laughing.
A shade crossed Morogh's face, and Brona darted an indignant
glance at the guest, and then raised her eyes to her mother's portrait
that hung on the opposite wall.
"My wife was with me then," said Morogh quietly.
" Pardon ! " said MacDonogh.
" After that," continued Morogh, " I met her frequently in Lon-
don, for, as my sister reminds me, I was a good deal about the world,
and interested in many people, before I settled down to be a proscribed
Papist in my old home in my native country. I have always had a
warm and pleasant feeling for Mrs. Delany, and when I heard of her
marriage with the worthy Dean, three years ago, none of her friends
were more rejoiced than I was to know that she had found happiness
with an affectionate husband."
MacDonogh was evidently not in sympathy with his friend on
all points, and his^ face showed it now, but before he could speak
again Aideen averted danger by turning the conversation on the King
of France.
" Has Louis profited anything by his illness at Metz and the
counsels of the Bishop of Soissons?"
MacDonogh laughed.
" When the devil was sick
The devil a saint would be :
When the devil was well
The devil a saint was he,"
he said. " The Bishop is still in banishment from the Court in con-
sequence of his temerity. Chateauroud is gone, of course, gone the
way of all flesh, but Pompadour is reigning. Louis will never be any-
thing but a vulgar profligate, and the people who were frenzied with
anxiety about him in his fever, fearing his death, are losing their
enthusiasm, and are suffering horribly throughout the country. God
knows what will be the end of it. Wise men say there will be a
revolution."
" They worshipped his predecessors, why not him ? " said Aideen
scornfully.
" Louis XIV. was an outrageous and vainglorious spend-
thrift," said MacDonogh, " but his audacity and magnificence dazzled
the multitude, who saw in him a splendid figure, and were proud of
him, vices and all. But this man is all low vice and vulgarity, no
splendor, no bravery of style even, and the disgusted people are
gnashing their teeth at him."
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 89
" He may yet repent," said the Franciscan, who had scarcely
spoken except to ask some questions about friends of his Order in
the places lately visited by MacDonogh, who had brought him letters.
" As a coward, at the last," said MacDonogh bitterly.
" Even that," said the friar mildly. " The Lord made no con-
ditions except just repentance."
Then he slipped away, and left the group of friends to talk
round the fire while the wind whistled like a war bugle in the chimney
and through the chinks of the doors, and the ocean rollers beat like
the roll of drums on the not far distant shore.
At four o'clock next morning the house was astir, for Mass was
to be said in the secret cell, and all the household were preparing to
receive the Sacraments.
" The best opportunity I ever get," said MacDonogh," and I am
not going to lose it," and there he was on his knees on the steps out-
side the cell with all the Norahs and Bridgets and Dans of the house-
hold, waiting to go to confession with the rest. When all that was
done, and Brona had lighted the candles on the altar in the little
dungeon chapel, the door was shut and the Mass was said, and every-
one in turn partook of the Lord's Feast. Morogh and his sister and
daughter in line with the humble members of the household, all being
there but Thady Qtoin, who was on watch to avert the tragedy of a
surprise, and was busy in the dining-room preparing for the family
breakfast. As he spread the cloth and arranged the table, he talked
to himself, going frequently to the windows to take a sharp observa-
tion up and down the country.
" For they might have a spy set on MacDonogh," he said. " Now,
what would I do if they walked into me this minute? Where could
I say the family all did be? Out takin' a ride, may be, or down to
the shore to bathe? The whole o' them? MacDonogh and the
Master, and Miss Brona and the Marquee herself? And Honor Mac-
Curtin on a pillion, or in the sea, rheumatism an' all? With them
troops o' girls and boys thrapesin' after them? No, I don't think the
- King's regiments would be believin' y', Thady Quin, so it's only to
the heavens above that you have to look for deliverance. And be at
your prayers, my man, while you do be handlin' the cups and saucers,
for the Lord won't be angry if you break a plate or two through the
distraction of an ' Our Father/ and it's angels will be pickin' up
the pieces ! "
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
POPE PIUS THE TENTH.
BY M. P. SMITH, C.S.P.
N August 2Oth the Church was called upon to mourn
the death of Pius X., a Pontiff who for over ten
years had endeared himself not only to the children
of the household of the faith, but to all who either
came in personal contact with him, or who knowing
his motives and acts, lament the passing away of a truly good and
great man.
Until about the first of August, the condition of the Holy
Father was that of a man strong for his years, but the dread
spectre of war, the sudden emergence of this awful conflict which
has precipitated practically all Europe in the greatest and most
destructive war known to history, was, in large measure, the reason
of his collapse; the burden of it weighed upon his spirit, broke
his power of resistance to what otherwise was an ordinary re-
currence of bronchitis.
More than any Pope within living memory, Pius X. belonged to
the people, and he appealed more than any of his illustrious predeces-
sors to an age which is democratic ; by birth, training, and all the
outward manifestations of his thoughts and actions, he was a simple,
plain man, a man of the people. More than that, he was always the
priest, the man of God, mainly, nay wholly, intent on spiritual things,
on the religious well being of those committed to his care. The
dignity and honor of bishop or cardinal, the supreme majesty of his
unique office, though ever fitly borne, never obscured the simple
piety and benignity of the man himself. Hence when he passed
away there came a wide tribute of veneration from those who owned
no allegiance to him as members of his fold, and it was well ex-
pressed in the message of condolence from our President, Mr. Wil-
son, who characterized him as a lover of humanity, one whose
passing away made the world poorer. We are too close to the
events of his reign to get the proper perspective, or to gauge the
full character and results of his administration; but it is certain
to stand out in history as an era of apostolic vigilance, of great
reforms, and of widespread beneficence.
Before passing in review his pontifical activities, let us first
1914.] POPE PIUS THE TENTH 91
present his personal qualities, and the various steps which eventually
led him to the Chair of St. Peter. In Pius X. we may truly say
that the words of Scripture find a wonderful application, that " the
path of the just man is like unto the dawn which advances unto
the fullness of the day." No one could have foreseen its full
development, but the onward progress of the bright- faced pious little
schoolboy into the exemplary seminarian; to the zealous young
curate ; upwards to the energetic and influential parish priest ; then
the able rector of a seminary; the honored Canon and Vicar-
General ; the wise and strong Bishop ; the venerated Patriarch and
Cardinal who was a popular idol, and finally the altogether unlooked-
for choice which made him Supreme Pastor, is as perfect an epic as
the life of anyone could furnish. The capable fulfillment of all these
duties prove him to have been a remarkable man, not on account
of any manifest brilliancy, but in virtue of strength of character,
unceasing industry, luminous sagacity, sincerity of purpose, and
disinterested devotion to souls.
The story of his life is as follows : Joseph Sarto was born on
June 2, 1835, in the little town of Riese, in the province of Venetia,
Italy. His parents were industrious poor people, who managed,
though with difficulty, to bring up their large family of ten children,
and give them rudiments of education, and impress upon them by
precept and example the principles and practice of Catholic piety.
Giuseppe, or Beppo as he was familiarly called, was a bright, hand-
some and devout child. His capacity for study and love of learning
were such as to win the interest and good will of his parish priest,
who undertook to give the boy the rudiments of Latin, taught him
to serve Mass, and induced his parents to send the child to a more
advanced school at Castelfranco, four miles from home.
Whether in a little donkey-cart or trudging on foot, Joseph
and Angelo, his brother, were happy, docile scholars, well inclined
to study, and not averse to play or work, and the future Pope had
then a sense of humor, a fund of pleasantry which was a helpful
and a saving grace in the higher and more difficult situations that
were to come. Such was the boy's progress that the good paroco
used his influence, and obtained for his protege a scholarship in
the seminary at Padua, which he entered after passing his fifteenth
birthday.
Ordained priest on September 18, 1858, his first appointment
was to the curacy of Tombolo, a small village, and he soon won all
hearts by his devotion and tact. He organized a choir which was
92 POPE PIUS THE TENTH [Oct.,
the admiration of neighboring parishes; encouraged and brought
the young men together in sports and athletic exercises ; tastes and
characteristics which, marking the beginning of his ministry, did
not fail or wane when he was raised to the highest position in the
Church.
After a stay of nine years as curate, he was promoted to be
parish priest at Salzano, a good-sized town near Venice, where his
untiring zeal for another period of nine years marked him for
further promotion, and a wider field of labor. He became, in quick
succession, Rector of the Seminary of Treviso, Canon of the Cathe-
dral there, and Vicar-General of the diocese. In these various posi-
tions he made the impress of his character, strong at once, prudent,
yet ever progressive; he encouraged saving-banks, interested him-
self intelligently in social and agricultural betterment, and improved
the course of studies in the seminary over which he presided.
It is probable that he was brought to the knowledge and favor-
able consideration of Leo XIII. by Cardinal Parrochi. Work such
as he performed merited recognition, and Canon Sarto was named
Bishop of Mantua in the year 1884. Here he found himself con-
fronted with many difficulties. Owing to the adverse action of the
Italian government, this See had been vacant for ten years; many
of the parishes were without priests ; vocations to the ministry were
few ; some of the priests were disaffected ; the funds of the diocese
had been wasted; the people were greatly divided on religious and
political issues, and Freemasonry was rampant. His first care was
naturally for the increase and the betterment of the clergy; and in
this matter he personally gave the example of an all-embracing zeal.
He visited in turn and with minute care every parish; fostered
vocations; never wearied in hearing confessions; preaching, and
going into the formation of catechetical instruction. He founded
a newspaper to defend Catholic interests; inaugurated courses of
lectures ; proved himself to be not only active, but full of resources
and initiative ; in making headway against opposition he was pleas-
ant, and with genial wit overcame prejudice, with a result that
in the nine years of his administration, Mantua became a model
diocese.
The Patriarchate of Venice had become vacant in 1891 by the
death of Cardinal Agostino. Among those who might have worthily
filled that high place, the energetic Bishop of Mantua seemed the
most fitted. He was accordingly summoned to Rome in the sum-
mer of 1893, made Cardinal of San Bernardo alle Terme, and three
1914.] POPE PIUS THE TENTH 93
days later named Patriarch of Venice. It was hoped that owing
to his conciliatory disposition, and the fact that he was a Venetian,
the appointment would be acceptable to the government. Quite
unexpectedly the government made contention that the former right
of nomination \vhich had belonged to the Austrian Emperor fell
to Italy as his successor, and hence the exequatur was refused.
The dispute dragged on for months. Cardinal Sarto begged to
remain in Mantua, but the Pope was inflexible, until the happy
chance of obliging the civil authorities in another matter presented
itself, and the government gave way and conceded the exequatur
in September, 1894.
With these higher honors came also the proofs of higher
abilities. The municipality was unsympathetic, but the people ac-
corded their new Patriarch a hearty welcome. His pastorals and
other public utterances were at once full of tact and religious fervor.
" We must fight," he said, " against the capital crime of modern
times, the sacrilegious enthronement of man in the place of God.
We must light up with the precepts and counsels of the Gospel all
the problems which the Church in the past has successfully essayed
education, the family, rights and duties. We must strive to bring
peace to earth and souls to heaven." Putting himself always at
the service of his clergy and people, he revived interest in preach-
ing and instruction; advocated reform and effected it; interested
himself in the better housing of the poor; helped to settle disputes
between capital and labor; met anticlericalism by uniting the re-
ligious and conservative elements of society, and fused them into
accord with the moderate liberals. Nor did he neglect his duty. as a
citizen and a subject. He deplored the assassination of King Hum-
bert in a touching letter to his clergy and people, celebrated a solemn
requiem in San Marco, and later paid a visit of condolence to Queen
Margherita. When it was a question of laying the corner stone of
the new Campanile, it was a matter of doubt whether he ought,
or was expected, to participate. He himself laid the stone
after an address which won all hearts by its tact and sincerity.
His home life was as simple and frugal as his charities were con-
stant and prodigal. Too poor to be a Msecenas, he yet loved and
encouraged art and artists.
Leo. XIII. died in July, 1903, and Cardinal Sarto was sum-
moned to attend the forthcoming Conclave. The incident of the
return ticket is too well known to be here repeated, but it is thor-
oughly in accord with the man. The Conclave was of brief dura-
94 POPE PIUS THE TENTH [Oct.,
tion, and its result unexpected, by none surely more than by him
who was its choice. Cardinal Sarto had not distinguished himself
in those employments which ordinarily give one prominence; he
had never been in the diplomatic career; he had not acquired a
reputation in academic or curial ways; he was a complete stranger
to the non-Italian Cardinals, and but little known even to those
of Rome. It was a tribute no less to the democratic spirit of the
age than to the inherent democracy of the Church, that the son of a
peasant should be raised to the most exalted position.
The first Encyclical letter of Pope Pius X. merited and re-
ceived great praise. In it he set forth his ambition and his pro-
gramme, which was " to renew all things in Christ." Society, said
the document, was oppressed by great evils, apostasy, revolt, in-
difference, false science, and it would be the ambition of the Pontiff
by means of a devoted and a learned clergy, by increase of religious
instruction, by active efforts in behalf of the poor, and for social
justice to bring it back to Christ, the Healer."
Our space will admit only of some brief analysis of the main
documents which emanated from the Vatican in the years which
followed his accession. There was a Motu Proprio on Church
music, and serious and detailed efforts were prescribed to bring it
back to the norm approved by the Church and suited to worship.
Leo. XIII. had treated the subject of labor, of a just
wage and Christian democracy, with a masterly hand, and as a
consequence there were organized both in Italy and France various
associations to give the principles he had enunciated practical appli-
cation and existence. The most-widely spread of these was that
called in France " Le Sillon " the plow which soon obtained a
great membership, and gave promise of considerable amelioration
for the agricultural classes ; but over-hasty in acquiring membership,
implicating itself too closely with Socialism and politics, it soon got
out of hand, and caused the gravest anxiety to bishops. The same
was true also in Italy, and the Pope was forced to restrict and
check these tendencies in both countries, and to bring back the
movement to safer and saner plans the faith was not to be sub-
ordinated to democracy. Class hatred was to be eliminated, not
fostered, and in matters touching the faith the admonition of the
bishops or the Pope was to be sought. At first these utterances were
ungraciously received, some organs of the press spoke of them as
reactionary and arbitrary, but their wisdom was seen later, and, in
general, secured the submission of the leaders.
1914.] POPE PIUS THE TENTH 95
The two most momentous events of the entire reign of Pius
X. were, first, in the political order, the separation of Church and
State in France, and in the more religious and dogmatic sphere, the
question of " Modernism." To be brief about each : The spirit
shown by the French government towards religion in general and
the relations established by Napoleon a hundred years ago, which
were embodied in the Concordat, had even in the days of Leo XIII.
awakened the most lively anxiety. It was only too evident that
the Freemasons and anti-religious politicians of France were fully
minded to disrupt the peace, and to persecute the Church; to
secularize all teaching, and to expel the religious.
Frenchmen have been credited for a long time with a great
regard for the amenities of life and intercourse; for a passionate
love of justice and liberty; with a determination to heal up national
discord, and to make ready for the inevitable revanche, for the
prestige which belonged to them in arms and in territory forty years
ago. It must be denied, and wholly disbelieved in, if MM.
Combes, Briand, Clemenceau, Viviani, and the rest are to stand
as representatives of national honor. For conduct more unseemly,
for disregard of truth and justice, for persecution more unmanly,
petty, refined, cruel, and far-reaching, they stand on the highest
step of infamy, and deserve the pen of a Macaulay to find fit char-
acterization among his worthies of the Revolution.
The programme they determined to enforce ruthlessly in-
cluded the confiscation of Church property, the expatriation of
thousands of religious, and the complete enslavement of the Church.
Pius X. was essentially a man of peace, much was he willing to
sacrifice, much he could not hinder, but the sacred liberty of God's
Church, the rights of justice, of property, of letting the little ones
come unto and know Christ, never, not one jot or tittle of these
would he yield.
There were many other incidents and encroachments on the
rights of the Church before the final rupture occurred. The sti-
pends of the clergy were withdrawn, though this money was in
reality only a partial compensation for the Church property which
had been confiscated by the French government at the time of the
Revolution. Moreover, Catholics were now to be turned out of
their churches unless they formed certain parish organizations,
called associations cultuelles, in which no provision was made for
control or direction by the bishop. This provision was simply
intended to put Church property and its management into the hands
96 POPE PIUS THE TENTH [Oct.,
of laymen, who might not be practical Catholics at all ; it was mak-
ing Congregationalism the prevailing form of French Catholicism.
The alternative was a hard one surely, viz., to begin all over again
without churches, without the support the clergy had been accus-
tomed to, and all this in the face of a hostile government.
But the Pope was resolute and determined. In his Encyclical
of February 28, 1906 Vehementer Nos he reprobated and utterly
condemned the law, the proposed associations, and exhorted the
French bishops and people rather than submit to such injustice to
abandon all. The result has justified his action. The govern-
ment has not dared to drive Catholics from the churches ; religion
has taken on an increased vitality ; attendance has been augmented ;
new churches have been erected; the Pope is free to name bishops
without government sanction; there has been a wonderful rallying
to the practice and the defence of religion, especially on the part
of the leading literary men.
It has been, moreover, part of the cross borne by Pius X. to face
distressing situations both in Spain and Portugal. The rupture of
diplomatic relations with Spain; the riot in Barcelona, in which
religious houses and churches were destroyed; priests and sisters
killed, are some of the sad consequences of this revolt. As for
Portugal, the situation has been even more hostile and embittered,
and there is no present prospect of settlement; persecution, im-
prisonment of priests and nuns, confiscation of Church property are
still in progress.
Were these conflicts with governments the only sad pages in the
annals of the late Pope's pontificate, they would be amply sufficient
to call for sympathy for him who bears the solicitude for all the
churches, but to them must be added some account of an intellectual
movement, called Modernism, which seemed to menace the founda-
tions of the faith, " once delivered to the saints."
A foremost characteristic of our times has been religious un-
rest, the advance of intellectual and scientific endeavor in certain
fields, notably in history, in comparative religion, and criticism, and
the putting forth of new philosophies, and ever-new forms of undog-
matic religion. All Christian Churches have experienced the force
and the hurtful consequences of this centrifugal movement, and
it has been one of the .primary and most anxious cares of the
Catholic Church to safeguard the integrity of the faith, to main-
tain the sound form of words and doctrine, and by a necessary
consequence to repress and condemn error. So widespread were
1914.] POPE PIUS THE TENTH 97
the occasions, so new and subtle the forms of these errors, that the
movement of those inside the Church, who denying the substance
of Catholic faith yet wished to retain the name and form of Catho-
licity, became dangerous, and a special Commission of the Holy
Office had been formed to study these teachings and draw up a list
of them. This Commission, under date of July 3, 1907, issued a
Syllabus, in which sixty-five errors were noted and condemned.
Pius X. followed up this condemnation of the Commission by a
powerful, strongly-reasoned and even, we may say, by a drastic
Encyclical, entitled Pascendi Dominica Gregis on September 8, 1907.
He condemned the system, which he called Modernism, as being
"the meeting-ground of all heresies;" in particular he reprobated
the separation of a historical from a religious Christ; the reversal
of the Incarnation by the Modernistic denial of the entrance of the
Divine into the domain of fact; the degradation of faith to the
region of sentiment; the reduction of authority from an Apostolic
to a mere presidential basis; the substitution of the Bible and
revelation in favor of interior revelation. The force, the analysis,
the compendious resume of Modernistic teaching were recognized
on all sides, even where its teaching was rejected.
Nor did the Pope rest content with the general form of con-
demnation; books were proscribed, authors and writers summoned
to recant, or receive censure and correction; the bishops were
commanded to take practical measures to extirpate whatever might
favor the Modernistic side. What was most unusual, almost un-
precedented, an oath was imposed later on the clergy, prescribing
their adhesion to the teachings laid down, and their rejection of
what had been banned. Thorough-paced as was this action, it
struck squarely at the new teaching and eradicated it. We cannot
say that this result was gained without opposition, and even the loss
of some who had figured prominently as writers and teachers, but
the faith, the future training of priests and people were in jeopardy,
and the Pope knew that half -measures would not answer the require-
ments of such a crisis.
Work far more congenial in itself, and more in accord with
his own character and temperament, were the reforms in various
.matters which Pius X. inaugurated and carried through during his
administration. His mind was naturally constructive, and his long
pastoral experience as Bishop had brought home to him the need of
simplifying and giving clearness to many matters concerning
law, order, and discipline. A simple enumeration of the more
VOL. c. 7
98 POPE PIUS THE TENTH [Oct.,
important of these, will show at once how far-reaching were his
plans; how sound and practical was his understanding of modern
requirements. These reforms dealt with the reorganization of the
Roman Curia; the codification of Canon Law; the reform of the
Breviary; the regulation of study in seminaries, the work of the
Biblical Commission. He appears to have had the -great and happy
faculty of infusing his energy and determination into his working
force, and of getting things done.
But unless we added his decrees and reforms about the recep-
tion of the Holy Eucharist, we should deprive the late Pope of one
of his chief merits, and a merit which had the most popular and far-
reaching effect in the Catholic world. Desirous of restoring all
things in Christ, nothing could be better calculated to that end than
to re-awaken and cultivate the devotional life of the faithful by
frequent and even daily Communion. In a Decree in 1906, the
Pope recalled the practice of the primitive and early Church. He
repeated the exhortation of the Council of Trent, and in formal
terms provided that the faithful of all classes are to be allowed and
admitted to Holy Communion, if only they were in the state of
grace, and came with piety and a right intention.
More startling still for many was a subsequent Decree on
August 8, 1910, setting the age for children to receive their
First Communion, " which was about the seventh year, or later,
or even sooner," and that they, too, if adequate knowledge were
present were to be allowed daily Communion. Pius X. wished,
with apostolic zeal, " that little children should be suffered to come
unto our Lord, and not be deprived of the sap of interior life."
In spite of the objections made at first against it from many quarters,
the wisdom of the Decree quickly became apparent to all, and it has
been wonderfully fruitful in good results.
Pope Pius had more than his share of trials in the decade of his
reign; one which brought out the paternal tenderness of his heart,
and which showed, on a larger scale, that prodigal devotion to the
poor and the distressed which was his lifelong tendency, was the
awful visitation of the earthquake that befell the coast towns of
Sicily and Calabria in December, 1908. He sent forthwith a relief
party, made instant preparation for the reception and housing of
survivors in Rome, and charged himself with the maintenance and
education of five hundred orphans there. Moreover, the re-
sponse to his appeal was so generous, that he became as by right
the almoner of the Catholic world's benefactions; hundreds still
1914-] POPE PIUS THE TENTH 99
live on the bounty he provided, and thousands will continue to
bless his memory.
His sacerdotal golden jubilee gave a fitting occasion for the
Catholics of the world to make manifest their affection, sympathy,
and loyalty to himself and his great office. He had let it be known
that he wished for nothing for himself but prayers; should gifts be
presented, he desired that they should be of a character that would
enable him to help poor churches. He himself celebrated the Jubilee
Mass in St. Peter's on November 16, 1908 the deferred date of his
anniversary and the overwhelming tribute of veneration voiced by
four hundred bishops and fifty thousand people in attendance was
reechoed throughout the world.
The special affection which Pius had for our country, was
shown constantly on occasions both great and small. In giving to
our national Church two additional members of the Sacred College
of Cardinals, in according interviews to American pilgrims, and
impressing on them the ineffaceable cordiality of his welcome.
Imperfect and necessarily brief and fragmentary as our review
has been, if it but serve to renew sweet and abiding memories of
one who was simple and strong and holy a Great Shep-
herd true to his office, a Pontiff full worthy of his lineage, a Pope,
unflecked and radiant in the intense light which beats on the Fisher-
man's throne it will in some measure have served its purpose.
IRew Boohs.
THE NEW MAN. A Portrait Study of the Latest Type. By
Philip Gibbs. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00.
We hear a great deal to-day from novelists, playwrights, essay-
ists, and journalists of the New Woman, but they forget to tell
us of the evolution of the New Man. Mr. Gibbs, a brilliant Catholic
journalist, proposes to draw his portrait for us in the present volume.
The New Man, unlike his fathers and his forefathers, has no
fixed convictions. He has no authority to whom he can turn
for guidance, because he has denied all authority. He is an agnos-
tic in all matters. Why should a man have only one wife ? Why
should a woman be ostracized if she has a child without going
through an ecclesiastical ceremony ? Why should any kind of action
be called sin, and any kind of action be called virtue, when all men
and women are under the irresistible pressure of hereditary instincts,
of economic conditions, of mental influences which impel them to
do the things they do? Why should certain classes of people en-
joy the good things of life because of the accident of birth, while
others, by another accident, are the serfs of a ceaseless drudgery?
The New Man considers scholarship a drug in the market.
The masters who teach him have no respect for duty and discipline,
for the virtues of obedience and honor; for the dignity and grand-
eur of knowledge. They teach him the methods that are likely to
make money, how to fight by cunning and by force for the good
things of life; how to do the least amount of work for the greatest
amount of pleasure. The New Man has no definite religious belief
of any kind. He considers it bad form to express with any violence
his views on matters of dogma. He is tolerant as the last of the
Romans to the old gods. He regards clergymen either as deliberate
frauds of an amiable, harmless kind, or as men of inferior intellect.
The New Workingman has no higher ideal than that of mater-
ial prosperity. He feels that he has no use for God, and can do
without religious emotion. His aim is to drive the capitalist into
the last ditch, and then enter into the heritage of the world's wealth.
He is perfectly aware that the governing classes are afraid of him,
and throw him sop now and again to keep him quiet. He accepts
the sops, and utters new threats.
The New Aristocracy has been created by machine-made
wealth, by commercial activities, and by successful gambling with
1914.] NEW BOOKS 101
stocks and shares. It is not at all exclusive. It measures a man
mainly by his wealth, and does not inquire too closely how he came
by it. As long as he can join in the game and pay the entrance
fee he is welcomed. The New Aristocracy has practically aban-
doned the old excesses, which used to be the ritual of mammon wor-
ship. It holds with Epicurus that pleasure is the chief good, but
imitates its master in the belief that moderation is necessary in
order to enjoy pleasure perfectly. Pain must be thrust aside, and
by pain is meant not only physical agony, disease, and discomfort,
but everything which hurts the senses, such as ugliness, squalor, vul-
garity, harsh noises, bad smells, shabby clothes, the sight of other
people's misfortunes, and anything which hurts the intellect, such as
deep thinking, hard study, unpleasant facts and unpleasant truth.
The New Suburbia is peopled with fathers without authority
over their wives and children, restless, discontented souls, given
to gambling in every form, shirking the responsibility of parent-
hood, full of snobbery, and utterly unhappy in its irreligion and
worldliness.
The New Politician has no political prejudices, but a great
deal of political ambition. His chief desire is to be on the winning
side, so that he may get a chance of office. He soon learns that
independence is absolutely fatal to his chance of success, so he
supports his party, right or wrong. As for the people, he keeps
them in good humor by promising them everything that they ask
for. He soon grasps the fact that public speeches are only for
effect, and that the real business of politics is conducted behind
the scenes, by secret negotiations between the leaders, by bargaining
and bribing between various groups and interests, and by compro-
mise and diplomacy.
Altogether the book is a very severe indictment against the
New Man, an'd like most savage onslaughts it sins by excess. A
clever word painter can take every age from the time of Adam and,
picking out the evils that predominate, draw a picture that will fill
the beholder with dismay. In enforcing his point, Mr. Gibbs ex-
aggerates, oftentimes grossly, but his criticisms might well be taken
to heart by this age, which is in sore need of many of them.
EGYPT IN TRANSITION. By Sidney Low. With an Introduc-
tion by the Earl of Cromer. New York : The Macmillan Co.
$2.50.
Mr. Sidney Low in the work before us has written an ex-
102 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
cellent account of the political, social, and administrative condition
of Egypt and the Sudan in that stage of transition which followed
Lord Cromer's period of reconstruction and financial readjustment.
He believes that the British occupation of Egypt is the most honor-
able episode in the recent history of the English race. He says:
" It has been a difficult experiment, which seemed foredoomed to
failure; it is creditable to many Englishmen and some Egyptians
that it has been, on the whole, a success."
When the English first blundered into the country in 1882,
they had no idea of either conquering or annexing Egypt. Alex-
andria was bombarded merely to save the lives of Europeans threat-
ened by a military rabble, while Lord Wolseley was sent with an
army to restore the authority of the Khedive, weakened by the
revolt of his mutinous colonels. England has been restoring or
maintaining the authority of the Khedive ever since. The few
English troops in Egypt are not a British garrison, but merely the
remains of the army of occupation. The English officers are not
technically in the British service, but are temporarily lent to the
Khedive to assist him to drill and discipline his army. The British
civilian officials who assist him with the administration and manage-
ment of his finances are paid by him and not by England. Nomi-
nally he remains the executive and the supreme power in the state.
As the author well states : " It is government by inspection and
authoritative advice. We leave the administration so far as may
be in native hands ; but we tell the native administrators what they
ought to do, and we provide European supervisors to see that they
do it."
The greatest of these gifts of England to Egypt were the
Assuan dam and the Assuit barrage, which will finally solve the
problem of the irrigation of Egypt. It has been estimated that as a
result the annual rental value of lands in middle Egypt has been
increased by $13,000,000, and their sale value by $132,000,000.
The prosperity of Egypt depends in great part upon the River Nile,
and the immense potential resources of the North African river
basin will only be developed to their highest capacity under Eng-
land's direction and control.
The most unsatisfactory feature in the condition of modern
Egypt is the administration of criminal justice. Life and property,
especially in the Delta region, are less secure than they used to be
in some provinces of European Turkey. Arson, robbery, and
murder decrease very little, while homicidal attacks, housebreaking,
1914.] NEW BOOKS 103
forgery, cattle poisoning, and other offences tend to increase. More
than half the crimes reported go unpunished, and many notorious
criminals are lightly acquitted in the native courts. Mr. Low
thinks that the Capitulations have now a baneful influence, but
we do not think that he has considered the matter comprehensively.
If they were removed, Christians would, in the long run, have a
poor chance for justice in the native courts.
In speaking of progress in the Sudan, Lord Cromer in his
introduction attributes it to the fact that the form of government
there is singularly adapted to the special requirements of the coun-
try. Broadly speaking, the Sudanese officials have been left to
themselves without any interference from London, and the agents
employed have been carefully chosen, well paid, and allowed most
generous leaves of absence.
Mr. Low declares that the English are not popular in Egypt.
Feared and respected they may be, but loved they assuredly are not.
LIFE HISTORIES OF AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS. By Theo-
dore Roosevelt and Edmund Heller. Two volumes. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $10.00 net.
" The chief purpose of the present publication," as the authors
tell us in the preface, " is to give our own observations, and in some
cases to add what is already known, regarding the life histories of
African game animals, so that sportsmen who combine love of hunt-
ing with a taste for f aunal natural history and outdoor observations
of all kinds, may direct their efforts along new lines of investigation,
and towards a more complete understanding of the life histories of
the various species."
The specimens of game animals familiar to the writers were
those secured by the Smithsonian African Expedition of 1909-1910
under the direction of Colonel Roosevelt, and now preserved in the
National Museum at Washington. This collection consists of some
six hundred specimens of big game mammals from British East
Africa and the Upper Nile regions, and comprises more than
seventy species or races, nearly all of which are represented by a
series of various ages and sexes. Besides this collection, Mr. Heller
has examined a number of other collections in Washington, London,
Berlin, Paris, and Brussels.
After a few introductory chapters on the history of British
East Africa, the nature and derivation of its fauna and flora, the
problem of concealing and revealing coloration, the authors discuss
104 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
in turn the lion, the leopard, the cheetah, the hyena, the hippopota-
mus, the giraffe, the various species of antelopes, the rhinoceros,
the zebra, and the elephant.
The two volumes give a very full and detailed account of
the behavior of these animals in their natural environment. They
are intensely interesting.
THE ART AND CRAFT OF LETTERS. London: Martin Seeker.
25 cents per volume.
If the little series now being issued by Martin Seeker, of Lon-
don, may be judged by the three volumes submitted for review, it
should prove of real interest and stimulus to lovers of English
literature. It is precisely the charm of these initial volumes that
they are not too narrowly " instructive " that they take much for
granted, and that their art is always more in evidence than their
mere craftsmanship.
Comedy, by John Palmer. This little dissertation on Comedy
is a delight, even if it does leave the question of the comic definition
almost as unsolved at its close as at its beginning. It is the sort of
question the clever mind can ramble around very amusingly and
fruitfully without solving at all! Using as starting point Horace
Walpole's aphorism that " life is a comedy to the man who thinks,
and a tragedy to the man who feels," Mr. Palmer proves succes-
sively (and successfully !) that no true Englishman can thus separate
thought from feeling; that hence he cannot, save by accident or
the French tradition achieve true comedy.
i
Satire, by Gilbert Cannon. The rich subject of Satire is treated
by Mr. Cannon with much satiric insight, and no small ability in
epigram. His contention that " every work of art is an act of
faith," his arraignment of those pale, negative virtues which " have
no pride in their purity," and of the deep-rooted British vice
of humbug the " fear-of-giving-y our self -away disease " could
scarcely be better. Neither could his fancy of Icarus as the typical
victim of satire, " which is as a glass to concentrate the heart of the
sun upon all those who attempt to rise on wings of wax." Less
satisfying are his formal definitions of satire itself; and some
few of his judgments would seem to betray a superficiality which
quarrels strangely with the depth, even the sublimity of others.
Now it is true that morality is not in itself an exciting subject
1914.] NEW BOOKS 105
that it is, after all, merely the rough foundation of high living.
Yet a verdict which can speak seriously of " the only perfect moral-
ity, which is perfect stagnation," will need revision for people who
wish to think vitally. And for obvious reasons, people who wish
to think vitally are the only ones who really enjoy satire. For
if satire be anything at all it is the light sword-play of destructive
idealism, just as invective is its heavy artillery. Without a deep
and impassioned and bitterly disappointed idealism, there could be
no satire worth the name. For a' that and a' that, Mr. Cannon's
book is eminently readable, and as our French cousins might put
it " gives furiously to think."
The Epic, by Lascelles Abercrombie, has been treated by the
author with a dignity befitting his subject. The distinction between
" authentic " and " literary " epics is not only admirably drawn,
but a rarer virtue it is never pushed too far. And considering
the limitation of his ninety-five pages, Mr. Abercrombie has covered
the heroic stretches of epic achievement (all the long way from
Homer to Victor Hugo) with a tact and inclusiveness scarcely to
be overpraised.
FRANCIS THOMPSON. By John Thomson. St. Louis: B.
Herder. 90 cents net.
All lovers of Francis Thompson will welcome this second edi-
tion of John Thomson's life of the poet. Thompson's sad life is
too well known to bear repetition. The most interesting part of
this volume, therefore, is the author's estimate of the poet's place
in literature. He says of him: "In the qualities peculiarly his
own the combination of insensuous passion and spiritual fervor,
courtly love and saintly reverence, ecclesiastical pageantry and litur-
gical splendor ; in his mountain-top ecstasies and the remoter flights
of his wonderful imagination he stands absolutely apart from any
other English singer." The author believes that it will take some
time before Thompson will come to his own, for all great poetry
advances but slowly in general estimation. Its appeal is always in
the first instance to the more discerning thinkers, and only later on
will it reach that larger body who follow blindly the lead of the
critics. Our author compares him to Crashaw, asserting that he
often outstripped the latter, even in his own special glory of " mix-
ing heaven and earth." He is " all compact of thought " thought
elaborated with exquisite subtlety, and an endless profusion and
106 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
variety of metaphor and simile drawn from a thousand sources, but
most happily from his profound knowledge of the Old and New
Testaments, and from the philosophy, dogma, and liturgy of the
Catholic Church.
Our author says of The Hound of Heaven: " Certain it is that
no mystical words of such profound power and such soul-stirring
sweetness have been written in modern times. As a religious poem
it has no superior."
CHRISTIAN CITIZENSHIP. By Rev. Thomas Wright. 20 cents
net.
THE DRINK QUESTION. By Rev. Joseph Keating, SJ. St.
Louis : B. Herder. 20 cents net.
We welcome these two latest brochures of the Catholic Social
Bureau of England. In the first pamphlet Father Wright sets
forth clearly the Christian concept of the State its origin, its func-
tions, its rights, its duties, and its power. He also discusses the
true relations of Church and State, and the loyalty, patriotism,
respect, and obedience required of every citizen.
In the second pamphlet, Father Keating gives a clear analysis
of that vast sociological problem, the drink question, and shows to
what extent and in what way Catholic principles are concerned in its
solution. He says in conclusion: " Until the habits and prejudices
of generations have been altered, until public opinion in this regard
has become not merely rational but Christian, the solution of the
drink question lies in the hands of resolute men and women inspired
by love of God and of their neighbor, and united in associations
pledged to take all lawful means to overthrow the tyranny of drink
by example, by instruction, by legislation, and by prayer."
A NAVAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. By
G. W. Allen. Two volumes. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co.
$3.00 net.
Our struggle for independence has from the beginning excited
the attention and received the critical study of historical scholars.
From social, commercial, political, diplomatic, and military points
of view this interesting field has been worked over most thoroughly.
But the naval history of the American Revolution has never been
subjected to an exhaustive inquiry. Mr. Allen has supplied this
need by his researches in the archives of our country and in those
1914.] NEW BOOKS 107
of England and France, as well as in private collections, newspapers,
and other original sources.
These two volumes form most readable and interesting study.
In conclusion he says : " That the maritime achievements of the
revolutionists resulted in the keeping open the intercourse with con-
tinental Europe, especially France, and the diversion of supplies
from the British to the American army. The injury done to the
British navy was almost negligible, and to British commerce far
from disabling, to say the least. It is certain that the revolution
would have failed without its sailors. In spite of its shortcomings,
the record of the American marine during this critical period was
an honorable one."
In a series of appendices the author gives us a complete bibliog-
raphy, the navy regulations of the period, the instructions of the
Continental Congress to commanders of privateers, and a list of the
vessels and the officers of the Continental navy.
THE OXFORD BOOK OF SPANISH VERSE. Chosen by James
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, F.B.A. New York: Oxford University
Press. $2.00 net.
The well-known Professor of Spanish at the University of
Liverpool, Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, has added an anthology of Span-
ish poets to the now famous collection of the Oxford books of verse.
He starts with the earliest Spanish lyric known, the Razon de Amor,
and ends with a few living poets like the Machado brothers of
Seville, Villaespesa of Almeria, and Jimenez of Moguer. A
scholarly introduction traces the history of Spanish poetry from the
thirteenth century to the present day, while the notes contain short
biographical essays of all the authors cited.
Though the most ancient poets in this volume are given without
any modernization, the author has thought it inadvisable to deter
readers by reproducing throughout the peculiarities of spelling
found in old editions of later poets. Modernization has, however,
been sparingly used till the age of Cervantes, with whom modern
Spanish literature may be said to begin.
THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO, 1821-1848. By George
L. Rives. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $8.00 net.
Mr. Rives, in two lengthy volumes, has presented a consecutive
narrative of the events which culminated in the Mexican War of
1846 and the peace of 1848. For a fuller understanding of the
io8 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
political conditions of the time, he has deemed it necessary to relate
the French seizure of Vera Cruz, and our controversy with Great
Britain over Oregon. He believes firmly that the events which led
up to the war between the United States and Mexico have been
very generally misapprehended. Americans have falsely regarded
it as a mere episode in the struggle over slavery, while Mexican
historians have untruly, he thinks, treated it as an inescapable
result of American aggression in Texas. He admits, however, that
each of these views embodies a sort of half truth, and his work is
written with the purpose of disentangling the whole truth. r
The story of the Mexican War is given in detail, although the
author assures us that he had no intention of writing a military
history. The book is valuable for its estimates of many well-known
Americans who figure in its pages Houston, Fremont, Clay, Cal-
houn, Van Buren, Polk, Buchanan, Webster, Scott, Taylor, and
Archbishop Hughes. The author is most outspoken at times. Van
Buren was " usually a follower, rather than a leader of public
opinion, and anxious to find out what the people wanted before he
declared himself." Houston he calls " a vigorous personality, full
of gross faults such as drunkenness and with some great merits."
Calhoun was " a man in whom the powers of intellect always pre-
vailed at the expense of good judgment. His contemporaries de-
scribed him as a thinking machine." Polk he pictures as " devoid
of imagination and a sense of humor, but. an excellent administrator,
and master of his cabinet." Buchanan was a " man of undoubted
abilities, which were hampered through all of a long life by constitu-
tional timidity and a lack of resolution and strength of will." Fre-
mont he considers a liar and a blusterer, who acted in defiance of his
orders, doing what he could to sow strife and bring about war."
Scott " was his own worst enemy." A love of paradox, extraor-
dinary vanity, and the restless pen of a ready writer were his chief
defects. He was withal a diligent student of military affairs, and
his personal courage was unquestionable.
President Polk declared in a letter that General Taylor was " a
hard fighter, but had none other of the qualities of a good general."
But the American people regarded this estimate as a prejudiced one,
prompted by the envy of an administration which dreaded Taylor's
coming forward as a candidate for the Presidency. As a result the
Whig newspapers did proclaim him their candidate, although he
was a Southerner and a slave-holder with no experience of public
life.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 109
These two volumes should be read by every American Senator
and Congressman, for most of our failures in the past in dealing
with our Latin-American neighbors have been due to ignorance
rather than to malice. The American sympathy at the present time
with the so-called patriots of the Carranza and Villa type in Mexico
is certainly due to a misapprehension of the facts in the case, in-
sincere utterances of a pseudo-patriotism having been taken by too
many at their face value.
ATHANASE DE MEZIERES AND THE LOUISIANA-TEXAS
FRONTIER, 1768-1780. Documents published for the first
time, from the original Spanish and French manuscripts,
chiefly in the archives of Mexico and Spain. Translated,
edited, and annotated by Herbert Eugene Bolten, Ph.D. Two
volumes. Cleveland : The Arthur H. Clark Co. $10.00 net
Professor Bolton, of the University of California, is the leading
authority to-day on the history of the Spanish Southwest and the
Indian tribes of Texas. In these two handsomely printed volumes,
he has gathered together a great number of original documents
regarding the Louisiana-Texas frontier at the close of the eighteenth
century. They centre around Athanase de Mezieres, a well-known
Indian agent and diplomat of that period, and afford us a great
insight into the history of what are now Texas, Western Louisiana,
Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
These documents tell us a great deal about certain unknown
phases of our history, namely, the encroachments of American
frontiersmen upon Spanish territory; the lively trade in captives
conducted between the French of Louisiana and the Indians of
Texas; the trade between the same parties in horses and mules
stolen by the Indians from the Spanish settlements; the life of the
outlaws of Oklahoma and Arkansas ; the fur trade of the Southwest
conducted from Natchitoches to the Arkansas post among the tribes
of the Red River Valley; the annual wood-cutting and cattle-kill-
ing on the Guadalupe River and beyond by the residents of San
Antonio.
Spain was most anxious to win the allegiance of the border
tribes known as the Nations of the North, and realizing that the
services of a Frenchman would be necessary, they selected de
Mezieres for the task. He established a Spanish administration in
the Natchitoches district, and made many exploring expeditions
among the Indians of the Red, Trinity, and Brazos Rivers. His
no NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
letters constitute a most authoritative account of the Indian tribes
of the Southwest, and throw a flood of light upon life and political
conditions in that region. A lengthy introduction by Professor
Bolton gives an excellent view of Southwestern Indian his-
tory and Spanish policy. He has been at great pains to gather
these documents from the archives of Mexico and Spain, and from
the Bancroft and other private collections. He has also made an
excellent map, which gives the location of the various tribes, the
routes of the many expeditions, and the location of the missions,
presidios, Spanish towns, and Indian villages. A thorough
analytical index concludes the work.
REPORT OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION TO IN-
QUIRE INTO THE CAUSES AND CONDUCT OF THE
BALKAN WARS. Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. Division of Intercourse and Education. Publication
No. 4. Washington, D. C. : Published by the Endowment.
We read with the greatest interest this Report of the Interna-
tional Commission of Inquiry into the recent Balkan Wars of 1912
and 1913. Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, the President of the
Commission, had associated with him seven men of the highest
standing from Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and
the United States. Their aim was to give the public an impartial
account of all the facts concerning the origin and conduct of these
two wars, with a view of bringing about some day the substitution
of justice for force in the settlement of international differences.
It is a sad commentary on their earnest endeavors in the cause of
peace, to find the whole of Europe involved in one of the most dis-
astrous wars of history within five months after the publication of
their report.
The main divisions of this work deal with the causes of the
two wars, the theatre of operation, the actors in the drama, the
various nationalities engaged, the inevitable violation, or rather the
non-existence, of an international law in the anarchy of men and
things, and the economic and moral consequences of the wars, and
the possible prospects for the future. It is clear that every clause
in international law relative to war on land and to the treatment
of the wounded, has been violated by all the belligerents, including
the Roumanian army, which was not properly speaking belligerent.
The report is nothing practically but a long list of executions,
assassinations, drownings, massacres, rapes, and slaughter of prison-
1914.] NEW BOOKS in
ers. Is it too much to hope that when the report of the present war
in Europe is written, it will be the prelude of the days of arbitration
and peace ?
FOOTPRINTS OF THE ANCIENT SCOTTISH CHURCH. By
Michael Barrett, O.S.B. St. Louis : B. Herder. $1.80 net.
In this volume Father Barrett has gathered together many facts
relating to the Catholic faith which once held exclusive sway in
Scotland, as in the other countries of Christian Europe. As
he tells us, they have been gleaned from various sources not easily
accessible to the ordinary reader, and known as a rule only to
antiquarians. The information conveyed under different headings
will serve " to trace the footprints left by the Church of old on the
shifting sands of time, footprints so faint in many instances as to be
already nigh effaced."
Out of the thirteen cathedrals which once were the glory of
Scottish Catholics, only one remains in its entirety. The others
have been either wantonly destroyed, or have perished through per-
sistent neglect and the ravages of time. Our author reconstructs
these cathedrals for us, and tells us all that is practically known
of their interesting history.
Before the Reformation there were in Scotland forty collegiate
churches and ninety hospitals for a population of about five hundred
thousand. It will always be recorded to the shame of the Reforma-
tion that it not only attempted to destroy every vestige of the ancient
faith, but that it suppressed even charitable institutions and seized
their revenue. No attempt was made for a long period to replace
the heritage thus fradulently snatched from the poor and strug-
gling.
The devotion of mediaeval Scotland to the Blessed Virgin
is proved by the dedication of churches and chapels in the name of
Mary, by the traditional place names of the country, by special be-
quests in Mary's honor, by pilgrimages to her shrines and wells,
by the veneration paid to her images, and by the cherished hymns
of the people.
FATHER FABER. By W. Hall-Patch. New York: P. J. Ken-
edy & Sons. 40 cents.
The life of the founder of the London Oratory has long been
out of print, and amid the rush of our twentieth century life we are
in danger of forgetting one of the most amiable of that noble band
ii2 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
of converts who entered the Church about 1845. It ^ s we N> there-
fore, to recall their deeds of courage and of sacrifice; and particu-
larly to renew our gratitude for those devout books and hymns
which were Father Faber's contribution to the needs of those days,
and to which thousands of English-speaking Catholics owe a deep-
ening of their spirituality, a quickening of their zeal, and additional
fervor in their personal love of our Incarnate Lord. This summary
is meagre, but it will serve to keep green the memory of one who was
a burning and a shining light to many souls.
WHAT SHALL I BE? *By Rev. Francis Cassilly, SJ. New
York : The America Press. 1 5 cents.
The writer presents in brief and simple form the true Catho-
lic principles on the subject of vocation. He complains of the
rigorist authors who, for the last three centuries, so hedge the
approach to religious life with difficulties and restrictions as to
frighten or repel from it many aspiring hearts.
He writes in the spirit of the decree of July 16, 1912, which
was framed by a special commission of Cardinals appointed to
examine the Abbe Lahitton's La Vocation Sacerdotale. The decree
states " that vocation to the priesthood by no means consists,
necessarily and according to the ordinary law, in a certain interior
inclination of the person, or in special promptings of the Holy
Spirit, to enter the priesthood. On the contrary, nothing more is
required of the person to be ordained than a right intention, and
such fitness of nature and grace, evidenced in integrity of life and
sufficiency of learning, as will give a well founded hope of his
rightly discharging the office and obligation of the priesthood."
THE HOLY SACRIFICE OF THE MASS. By Rev. Joseph J.
Baierl. Rochester, N. Y. : St. Bernard's Seminary. 50 cents.
This little book, arranged and illustrated for school use, con-
sists of explanations of the subject matter as well as questions and
answers, forming a very efficient summary of the most important
points. It is divided into four parts : The Mass ; the things need-
ful for the Holy Sacrifice; the prayers of Holy Mass; the cere-
monies of Holy Mass. We hope in a future edition that the
answers will follow immediately upon the questions, instead of al-
lowing explanations to intervene. There are eighty-three questions
in all, and the excellent suggestion made for the division of the
work will considerably lighten the task of the catechist.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 113
THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. By
Rev. Horace K. Mann, D.D. Innocent II. to Hadrian IV.,
1130-1159. $3.00 net.
NICHOLAS BREAKSPEAR (HADRIAN IV). The only English
Pope. By Rev. Horace K. Mann, D.D. St. Louis: B.
Herder. $i.oonet.
Volume IX. of Father Mann's history, contains the lives of
six Popes, Innocent II., Celestine II., Lucius II., Blessed Eugenius
III., Anastasius IV., and Hadrian IV. In an introduction of some
sixty pages, the author gives a brief but excellent sketch of what he
calls the flower of the Gregorian Renaissance (1130-1305).
Father Mann has also published the Life of Pope Hadrian in a
separate volume, because of its interest to English readers. He was
ill-advised in prefacing it with the introductory chapter of his ninth
volume, for most of the matter is irrelevant, referring to another
age altogether. He might have revised the text a little, for to one
unacquainted with the previous volumes of his history, too much
is taken for granted.
FROM COURT TO CLOISTER. A Sketch by M. A. New York :
Benziger Brothers. 75 cents net.
Madeleine Luillier, better known as Madame Sainte-Beuve, who
was later foundress of the Ursulines of Paris, was one of the great
ladies of the Courts of Henry III. and Henry IV. of France. A
valiant woman in troublous times, she passed through many dangers
mid a corrupt court, in which her ardent nature sometimes led her
into grave peril. Madame Sainte-Beuve herself, who never became
a religious, is depicted with sympathy and understanding; not so
the cause to which she devoted her energies and her life. The
tale is interesting, but there is a tone of partisanship when touching
upon the politics of the period, while a certain unfamiliarity with
Catholicism betrays itself.
THANKSGIVING AFTER HOLY COMMUNION IN UNION
WITH THE SACRED HEART. Translated from the French
of the Rev. G. Villefranche, S.J., by Irene Hernaman. New
York : Benziger Brothers. 75 cents.
This book though small will be of exceeding value to those
who frequently receive Holy Communion, and the translator has
VOL. c. 8
H4 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
done a good service in bringing it before the English-speaking public.
The author does not give a series of prayers, but after stating the
acts to be made, he indicates their motives, and suggests numerous
ways of making them for ourselves. He thus leaves us something
to do in the matter of choice and appropriation.
We can easily understand that this work received an enthusias-
tic welcome in France; no one will fail to appreciate the spiritual-
ity with which it is permeated, while at the same time its practical
good sense will recommend it to all. The translation is well done,
and the publishers have given it to us in handy size and tasteful
binding.
THE SECRET CITADEL. By Isabel C. Clarke. New York:
Benziger Brothers. $1.35 net.
Godfrey Denne a conceited, domineering and selfish non-
Catholic marries, after some opposition, a most devout Catholic,
Melanie Ettrington. To win her he makes all the required promises,
but in his heart feels confident that one day he will convince her of
the uttter folly of Catholicism. The story treats of his mean at-
tempt to wean her away from the practice of her religion. He takes
her to his handsome palace near Tunis in order to separate her
from the influence of her Catholic relatives, and to make it difficult
for her to attend Mass. An anticlerical French architect urges
him to fight boldly against the most stupendous organization the
world has ever seen.
Melanie conquers in the end. Her husband finds it impossible
to storm the secret citadel of her heart, which is ever true to the
Catholic faith. The shock of her mother's death brings her to the
point of death, and by a miracle of grace wins Godfrey to Cathol-
icism.
The story is well written, the plot well conceived, and the in-
terest well sustained from the first page to the last. The book should
be circulated widely among young women, because of its powerful
presentation of the right view of the sacrament of matrimony.
TIME OR ETERNITY? AND OTHER PREACH ABLE SER-
MONS. By Rt. Rev. J. S. Vaughan, D.D. New York: Ben-
ziger Brothers. $1.75.
Bishop Vaughan modestly tells us that as these sermons were
reprinted soon after delivery just as they appeared in the public
press : " they necessarily lack the careful arrangement, the choice
1914.] NEW BOOKS 115
diction, and the finish that are looked for in more labored compo-
sitions/' We found the sermons so carefully and logically ar-
ranged, we are sure they will be welcomed by priests, and
we hope also by many laymen, who will find them encouraging and
helpful.
RELIGIOUS ART IN FRANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CEN-
TURY. A Study in Mediaeval Iconography and its Sources
of Inspiration. Ey fimile Male. Translated from the Third
French edition by Dora Nussey. New York: E. P. Button
& Co. $6.00 net.
M. Male has limited his study to French art in particular,
because he is convinced that Christian thought was not expressed
elsewhere so fully or so richly as in France. In the whole of
Europe, for example, there is no group of works of dogmatic art
in the least comparable to that presented by the cathedral at Char-
tres. He says rightly that there is little to be learned from other for-
eign cathedrals, when one knows Chartres, Amiens, Paris, Rheims,
Laon, Bourges, Le Mans, Sens, Auxerre, Troyes, Tours, Rouen,
Lyons, Poitiers and Clermont. He makes the thirteenth century
the central point of his study, for " it was then that art with admira-
able daring tried to express all things."
Our author tells us he has profited by the detailed research
of the scholars of the past sixty years. He owes much to reviews
like the Annales Archeologiques inspired by Didron, the Bulletin
Monumental of De Caumont, the Revue de I' Art Chretien of Canon
Corblet, and the Melanges of Abbe Cahier and the Abbe Martin.
He has seen personally the works of art of which he writes; has
consulted countless engravings and drawings in the museums which
describe works of art no longer extant, and numerous miniatures
in the manuscripts of the libraries of France.
The illustrations are excellent, and the translation remarkably
well done.
'THE PERIOD OF DISCOVERY, by Joseph V. McKee and
* Louise S. Roemer (New York: The Century Co. 50 cents,
net), is an historical reader planned to meet the requirements of
the public school's fifth year in history and civics. The stories are
told in the form of fiction, though they are based strictly on facts,
the greatest pains having been taken to give the pupils accurate
knowledge of the dress, customs, and ideals of the men dominant
Ji6 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
in the period of discovery. The verses at the end of each chapter
add much to the interest of the book.
A HOUSE party in Scotland, a great deal of clever badinage, a
** practical joke with serious consequences, make up the story of
The Widow's Necklace, by Ernest Davies. (New York: The
Devin-Adair Co. $1.35 net.) Incidentally it demonstrates the old
adage: " Evil communications corrupt good manners." The story
is excellent as a detective story, clean, and amusing, with a well-
sustained mystery; but it is not uplifting; detective stories seldom
are.
TN fifteen instructions, published under the title My Bark (St.
* Louis: B. Herder. 60 cents net), the Abbe Petit pictures the
Christian as a traveler on the ocean of life, sailing for the port of
eternity. The constant thought of our last end is the compass of
the vessel; the rudder is reason supported by faith; the oars are
examination of conscience, confession, and mortification; the sails
are vocal and mental prayer ; the flag at the masthead is the Sacred
Heart of Jesus; the anchor is obedience; the cause of shipwreck
is sin, and the harbor to which we should be headed is heaven.
CHARLES DICKENS, translated from the French of Albert
^ Keim and Louis Lumet by F. T. Cooper ( New York : Freder-
ick A. Stokes Co. 75 cents), forms a valuable addition to The
Great Men series. There is little new in the volume save the few
references to Dickens' visit to Paris, and his estimates of Victor
Hugo, Lamartine and George Sand.
r PHE scholarly editor of the Bombay Examiner has written an
* excellent pamphlet of a hundred pages on the condemnation of
Galileo, entitled Galileo and His Condemnation, by Earnest R. Hull,
S.J. (Bombay: The Examiner Press. 15 cents.) We notice
that the author omits to mention Favaro's critical edition of the
trials and decrees of the Galileo case, published at Florence in 1907,
and says nothing of the works of Berti, Schanz, Pieralisi, Reusch,
Bourquard, Jaugey, Vacandard, and Aubanel.
IDEALS AND REALITIES (New York: Benziger Brothers.
* 90 cents net) is a series of enjoyable and genial essays by
Edith Pearson. They discuss the poems of Adelaide Proctor,
1914.] NEW BOOKS 117
Alfred Noyes, and Father Ryan; treat of abstract themes such as
Compensation, Sacrifice, Sympathy, and Silence after the manner
of Emerson; give us biographical sketches (Caroline Chisholm)
and travelogues (Irish Visits), and at all times foster in the reader
the author's own love of ideals and good reading. We regret to
say the author's style is not altogether equal to her ideals.
THE amateur gardener anxious to supply cut flowers for the
decoration of the altar, will inevitably discover that the ordin-
ary flower garden fails to supply a sufficient quantity of the par-
ticular flowers most in request, i. e., white ones. An excellent little
handbook, Altar Flowers and How to Grow Them, by Herbert
Jones (New York: Benziger Brothers. 90 cents net), gives the
results of the author's many years of experience as an amateur
gardener. His work will be welcomed by many an amateur gar-
dener.
TN The Pearl of Great Price, by Vera Riccardi-Cubitt (New
* York: Benziger Brothers. 60 cents), we read the story of not
only one family, but of many who suffered for the faith in the
cruel days of " Good Queen Bess." In following the fortunes of
Lord and Lady Irevorne, we see again the rack, the gallows, and
all the tortures with which our forefathers in the faith wisely
purchased the pearl of great price.
TN The Romance on El Camino Real, Jarrett T. Richards (St.
* Louis: B. Herder. $1.35 net) has given us a series of vivid
pictures of California's life in the early sixties. The story centres
about a young lawyer who goes West to win his fortune. Viewed
as a novel, the story is too long drawn out, the characters too
numerous, and their speeches interminable. As a series of character
sketches, we enjoyed the volume greatly, for we felt that only an
eyewitness of these scenes could have described them so well.
TN The Inglethorpe Chronicles (New York: Benziger Brothers.
i 75 cents), Theodora Kendal wishes to bring out clearly the
faults of the average middle-class English child, which appear to be
vanity, detraction, selfishness, inquisitiveness, cowardice, conceit,
and grumbling. We are confident that the writer will do more
effective work among children when she learns the art of con-
cealing her too obvious moral purpose.
n8 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Notre Dame de Lourdes, by Henri Lasserre. (Paris : P. Lethielleux. i fr.
50.) It is sufficient to say that this work is the source from which all later
accounts of the famous apparitions are drawn, even when their writers visit
the sacred shrine itself. To all times it will remain the standard history
thereof. The faithful witness of a contemporary and devoted historian.
L'Eucharistie La Presence Reelle et La Transsubstantiation, by Pierre
Batiffol. (Paris: Librairie Victor Lecoffre. 4frs.) This is the sixth edition
of Monsignor Batiffol's well-known work on the early history of the Real
Presence. Part I. treats of the witness of the Gospels, St. Paul, the Didache,
St. Clement, St. Ignatius, Hermas, Pliny, and St. Justin. Part II. discusses St.
Irenaeus and his contemporaries, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, Clement of Alexan-
dria, Origen, and St. Dionysius of Alexandria. Part III. deals with the Sacra-
mentary of Serapion, St. Ambrose, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Basil, St. Gregory
of Nyssa, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Augustine. We trust that this im-
portant work will be shortly translated, for it is the best treatise we possess on
the primitive history of the Blessed Eucharist.
La Paix Constantinienne et Le Catholicisme, by Pierre Batiffol. (Paris:
Librairie Victor Lecoffre. Afrs.} This work is a continuation of the author's
L'Eglise Naissante et Catholicisme, which appeared in 1908. He promises us
a third volume to complete the series, Le Catholicisme Romain de Saint Damase
a Saint Leon. The theme of the volume before us is the relations of Church
and State from the time of the Severi to the days of Constantius II., the son
and successor of Constantine the Great.
Figures de Peres et Meres Chretiens, by Abbe H. Bels. (Paris: Pierre
Tequi. 2 volumes. 4frs.) In these two volumes the Abbe Bels gives us brief
sketches of the parents of many of the Saints, such as St. Francis Xavier, St.
Aloysius, St. Jean Baptiste de la Salle, St. Teresa, and others. These confer-
ences will prove helpful to priests in charge of sodalities of married men and
women.
La Survivance Frangaise au Canada, by the Prince de Beauvau-Craon.
(Paris: Emile-Paul Freres. $frs. 50.) The Prince de Beauvau-Craon has
written a bright, superficial sketch of his tour through Canada in the summer of
1912. On nearly every page he bespeaks his astonishment at finding Old France
still living in the French Canada of to-day. The mothers lull their children to
sleep with the French songs of the seventeenth century, and the French cures
preach to their flocks as a cure of old in lower Normandy. The people, al-
though happy under English rule, have in their hearts a great love for Catholic
France and a most strong attachment to its language. The book is well written,
but contains nothing strikingly new.
Monsignor DupanloupUn Grand Eveque, by Emile Faguet. (Paris:
Hachette et Cie. 5frs.) The famous French litterateur, Emile Faguet, has
written a most sympathetic sketch of the life of the Bishop of Orleans,
Monsignor Dupanloup. A Catholic will differ from Monsignor Faguet in many
of his views and principles, but he must needs thank him for his well-written
tribute to a fearless and saintly prelate of nineteenth century France.
perfobicate.
The Catholic Church in Uganda. By Dom Maternus Spitz,
O.S.B. Following the explorations of the middle nineteenth cen-
tury, Sir H. M. Stanley resided for a time during the year 1875
with King Mtesa of Uganda, or the " Land of Drums." Mtesa's
interest in what Stanley told him of the Christian religion, caused
him to call upon the Church Missionary Society for help, and in
1877 the first Protestant missionaries reached Uganda. Meanwhile
the International African Association had been founded at Brussels,
under King Leopold II., " for the exploration of the Dark Con-
tinent, and for mere humanitarian and philanthropic commercial and
scientific purposes."
The appeal of Cardinal Lavigerie, Archbishop of Algiers, that
the Church take her part in the work of civilizing Central Africa,
and the interest of Pope Pius IX. in the newly-explored country,
resulted in the White Fathers taking upon themselves the burden
of evangelizing Uganda. After one year of travel, five mission-
aries reached the shores of Victoria Nyanza, and six months later,
June, 1879, Mtesa, despite Protestant opposition, received them at
Rubaga, the capital of Uganda. Mtesa in the beginning treated the
missionaries most cordially, but Mohammedan surroundings and
suspicion, aroused by the policy of Germany and England on the
East Coast, brought about a prohibition of all Christian teaching,
Catholic or Protestant. The prohibition was not, however, en-
forced on the Catholics, and in March, 1880, four catechumens, the
first fruits of their labors, were baptized. The opposition, however,
soon increased, and in 1882 the missionaries withdrew to neigh-
boring kingdoms to permit the storm to blow over. In 1883 the
mission of Uganda became a vicariate. The following year Mon-
signor Livinhac, superior of the mission, was consecrated Bishop,
and took charge of the vicariate. In 1885 tne missionaries re-
turned, and were welcomed by the new King, Mwanga. Neophytes
and catechumens multiplied despite their absence, but hardly had
the Fathers recommenced their work when persecution broke out.
The Mohammedans coerced the king, and in two years more
than two hundred native Catholics perished. A second Moham-
120 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct.,
medan persecution brought an equally disastrous result. Of those
who died for the faith, twenty-two have been declared Venerable,
and the process of their beatification has commenced. In 1891 a
third persecution of the Catholics was directed by the representation
of the East African Company, a company exploiting the material
resources of Africa, and protecting the Church Missionary Society.
After the withdrawal of this company in 1891, the British govern-
ment paid the White Fathers ten thousand pounds for their losses.
Since then the Fathers have labored with remarkable success.
The territory is now divided into three vicariates, and the Mill
-Hill missionaries, the Sisters of Notre Dame d'Afrique, and the
Franciscan Sisters of Mill Hill have taken up the work. " Pagans
and Mohammedans, British Governors and Commissioners, explor-
ers and travelers, have only words of praise and admiration for
their self-imposed sacrifices." In 1913 one of these vicariates,
Victoria Nyanza North, reported 126,690 Catholics, 97,135 cate-
chumens, two native priests, 114 native students in the two semi-
naries, 39 native sisters, 715 schools with 24,544 pupils, St. Mary's
High School with 204 pupils, and 55 charitable institutions. The
other British vicariate, the Upper Nile, is equally flourishing. The
Tablet, August 8.
Rudolph Eucken's Philosophy. By Dom Daniel Fenling,
O.S.B. Professor Eucken is the staunch opponent of naturalism,
an untiring teacher of the necessity of some spiritual life. His
idea of religion, however, is of the vaguest; he does not admit
miracle nor sacrament nor defined doctrine. His concept of the
life of the spirit appears pantheistic, and he follows absolutely the
German rationalistic schools in all matters relative to the origin and
doctrines of the Christian Church. The Dublin Review, July.
France in the Orient. By E. Bourgine. In 1902 Sheikh Ab-
dul Hagk of Bagdad published in La Revue an article entitled
Islam's Last Word to Europe. Therein he declared that modern
Islam is eager for progress and civilization, but it must be a progress
and civilization completely independent of all Trinitarian ideas.
Only France, the defender of " lay " religion, the creator of the
religion of universal reason in the revolution of 1789, can give Islam
the free thought which it demands. The other Powers of Europe
are, officially at least, too closely bound up with Christianity. The
policy of France towards her religious educators would seem to
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 121
justify this hope. This fatal policy was instigated by Gambetta
at the solicitation of Bismarck.
Of the forty- five thousand pupils now in French schools in the
East, forty thousand are in schools conducted by religious congre-
gations; but the teaching staff, owing to the law of 1905, has been
reduced from two thousand to one thousand in the last twelve years.
Free thinkers have weakened religious faith and with it patriotism,
its inseparable companion. Revue du Clerge Franqais, August.
The Church Quarterly Review (July) : Rev. C. F. Rogers
discusses the history of baptism by affusion and submersion in the
early Church, and shows that history and art agree that affusion
was the normal custom, while the evidence for submersion from
the meaning of the word and from isolated texts of the Fathers is
slight, or practically nil. The Rev. W. K. Lowther Clarke com-
pares Christian and Greek Miracle Stories, showing the superiority
of the Gospel records to the cures ascribed to pagan healers.
The Dublin Review (July) : Mr. Balfour on Beauty, by Albert
A. Cock. We are as far off as ever from agreeing as to the ultimate
nature of beauty and the sublime, says Mr. Balfour. While in
the Romanes Lectures (1909), he took up a frankly subjective posi-
tion, in his Gifford Lectures of this year he admits and emphasizes
the judgment factor in appreciation. He insists that the ap-
peal and value of works of art lie in a communication of the
personality of the artist to the personality of the beholder. A
Poet of the Streets, by W. M. Letts. Poets do not usually sing of the
streets, but T. A. Daly, the American poet, is an exception. He
writes from three points of view; his own, the Irish, and the
Italian. Mr. Daly is a true Franciscan. Like his great master,
he finds his brothers and sisters everywhere ; the poor emigrant, the
laborer, the old Irish gossip, the lame boy, the stray dog, are all kin
to the poet. Monsignor Benson, in his Cardinal Gasquet, brings
out the three elements which cause the universal satisfaction felt in
England over the honor conferred upon Abbot Gasquet : that he is a
truly great scholar, a thorough Englishman, and a remarkable per-
sonality who has endeared himself to all.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (September): A passage in
the Catechism of the Council of Trent says it is difficult to make so
122 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct.,
perfect an act of contrition as thereby to blot out one's sins. The
Rev. T. Slater, S.J., considers that this is one of the points of doc-
trine which have no greater weight than a theological opinion, and
that Catholics are left free to hold the more consoling opinion, as
stated, for example, by St. Francis de Sales. M. M. Riordan re-
views the moral condition of clergy and people in England on the
eve of the Reformation, his estimate being generally favorable.
Rev. J. D. Folghera, O.P., in Conversion and Perversion shows
how logically the Church approves the former and condemns the
latter act.
Le Correspondanf (August 10) : Francis Jammes records his
impressions of the Eucharistic Congress at Lourdes. Jacques de
Coussange describes the Exposition at Malmo and Christiania as
illustrating the comparative progress of Sweden and Denmark dur-
ing the past century. De Lanzac de Laborie welcomes Frederic
Masson's Napoleon and His Family, a study of the Hundred Days.
Victor Guiraud's criticisms on modern French writers receives
complimentary notice from Pierre de Quirielle.
(August 25) : Vicomte du Motey presents some recollections
of his childhood in Alsace during 1870-1871. Andre Cheradame
describes the situation in Bulgaria at the beginning of the present
war. A memorial sketch of the late Jules Lemaitre, the critic,
by Fortunat Strowski. Henri Joly who for twelve years, in
the name of the Society for Social Economy, has been placing
orphan children in the African colony of Sainte-Marie-du-Zit in
Tunis, describes this colony and the general French situation in
northern Africa.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (August i) : Historical Gleanings,
by E. Vacandard. The conclusions of Joseph Dahlmann's study
on St. Thomas the Apostle is that, although the A eta Thomce has
no great historical value, India certainly received the Gospel in the
early centuries of the Christian era, and perhaps in the Apostolic
a g e> Baronius, the third centenary of whose death is being com-
memorated, was twice nearly elected Pope in 1605, but was vetoed
by the Spanish government because he denied that St. James was
ever in Spain. The title " Company of Jesus " aroused such
keen opposition in Rome, that Sixtus V. had prepared a Bull con-
demning it, when he suddenly died. Abbe Escudier defends
against Monsignor Duchesne, the tradition of the evangelization
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 123
of Provence by SS. Martha, Mary, Lazarus, and their friends.
The Life of St. Cyprian, by M. Paul Monceaux, and that of
St. Athanasius, by Abbe Bardy, are among the best in "The Saint's"
series. The Congregation of Montaign has recently had its story
well told by M. Marcel Godet. Founded by Jean Standonck, one
of the Brothers of the Common Life, it consisted at first of eighty-
four members, who entered other religious Orders, and did much
to uplift the monastic and clerical life of the late fifteenth century.
Its increase and influence were checked by the death of the founder,
and its too austere rule caused many to leave. It had really ceased
to exist long before its official close in 1744. Its influence on the
Society of Jesus has been much exaggerated. In A Model
Theatre, the Bon Theatre of Paris, J. Bricout finds one sufficient
answer to the charge that the theatre is necessarily bad. Established
several years ago, with excellent scenery, and a corps of able actors
presenting a varied repertoire, it has had a continually increasing
success. The eight hundred seats, at prices ranging from two to
ten francs, are ordinarily entirely filled. M. Bricout considers that
the actors are really doing, as they wish to do, the work of an
apostolate.
(August 15) : J. Bricout undertakes to show briefly why the
works of Bergson have been put on the Index. M. Bergson .affirms
free will, but seems to confound it with spontaneity; asserts that
the memory of images is independent of matter, a statement hard to
reconcile with experiments on cerebral localizations and aphasia;
denies the permanence and identity of the ego, and thus precludes
the possibility of any real memory; states, without proving it, that
all reality is psychological; and, by many illustrations, which be-
come practical personifications, makes the past (seemingly some
conscious divinity) create the present. He rejects the established
proofs for the existence of God, but gives no clear ones of his own,
and seems to reduce God to energy. Creation he declares no mys-
tery, but only what we ourselves experience when we act freely.
He minimizes the value of intelligence, and denies the existence of
absolute truths. In condemning Bergson the Church but protects
her children against error.
fLtudes (August 5) : Marie- Joseph Rouet de Journel recon-
structs the position of Catholics in St. Petersburg in 1814. Though
faithful to the law which forbade proselytism, the Jesuits received
many distinguished converts, and even received special favors for
i2 4 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Oct.,
their colleges from Alexander I. But, known to be sworn enemies
of Illuminism, Freemasonry, and the Socinian Bible Societies, they
could not stand against the influence brought to bear upon the Em-
peror after his return from the Napoleonic wars. Joseph Guil-
lermin describes the conversion of Monsignor Benson, and declares
his novels the work of a true apostle. Henri du Passage defends
Christian Sydicalism, the name and the reality, as understood and
practised in France. Alexandre Brou summarizes the missionary
efforts of the Jesuits during the past century.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (August i) : Rene Aigrain
praises the critical sense, the fine taste, the patriotic and religious
spirit evidenced by Victor Giraud in his two-volume work on con-
temporary writers. Gustave Bardy commends P. de Labriolle's
study of the Montanist heresy, the first important examination since
that of Bonwetsch in 1881. The question at issue, in that second and
third century crisis, was the relation between the gift of prophecy
and the authority of the hierarchy. Without condemning private
inspiration or attempting to fetter the liberty of the Holy Spirit,
the Church proclaimed that the first mark of the true prophet is
obedience to the external authority of legitimate superiors.
The Stimmen aus Maria Laach (July 19) is for the greater
part devoted to topics bearing on the one hundredth anniversary
of the restoration of the Jesuits. The spirit and work of the So-
ciety are well defined under the article All for the Greater Glory of
God. Retreats, according to the method of St. Ignatius, Apostle-
ship of Prayer, Jesuit Mission work, are also treated. Father
Huonder, S.J., devotes about twenty-two pages, giving close refer-
ences to the early historical sources of the Jesuit Order. Catho-
lic growth in Germany is well brought out in an article (Diaspora)
showing statistics of Catholic parishes in the non-Catholic provinces.
The fact is lamented that Balthasar Gracian, one of the best
thinkers of his day, has been practically ignored in the History of
Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century. The new Belgian school
law (May, 1914) 4s a model of justice and fairness to all Catholics
and non-Catholics. This article shows what patient struggle can
do for the school question. Admirers of Robert Southwell will
read with pleasure the article entitled William Shakespeare and
Robert Southwell, for the writer favorably compares the latter with
the former.
TRecent Events,
The progress of the war from day to day is
The European War. naturally engrossing the attention of all; yet
the chief duty would seem to be the under-
standing of its causes, in order to see what is at stake, and to dis-
cover the seed out of which this accursed harvest has grown.
This may not be altogether possible ; the publication, however, of the
German and British White Papers (reprinted in this country by the
New York Times), affords a better opportunity than usual, for
they give an account of the events which took place in the momen-
tous week which immediately preceded its outbreak, and of the
efforts made to preserve peace, and by whom those efforts were
made.
In the almost complete breakdown of modern civilization,
involved in the methods which have been adopted, the violation of
the rights of neutral states, the laying of mines in the open seas,
the dropping of bombs on peaceful inhabitants, to say nothing of
the burning of towns and the slaughter of non-combatants and of
women and children, the one thing that is admitted by all to be
wrong is the waging of an aggressive war. The question then arises
at whose door is to be laid the guilt of aggression. The White
Papers to which we have referred, place it in the power of anyone
to form a judgment.
It will be remembered that the ultimatum presented by Austria-
Hungary to Servia was the immediate cause of the outbreak of
hostilities. No reader of it can fail to see that the author of this
note must have had in view the waging of war at least with Servia,
for no state wishing to retain its independent existence could have
yielded to its demands. Yet Servia yielded an almost complete
compliance, and this is the important point to be noticed it
was after consultation with Russia that she thus yielded.
This fact disposes of the contention that Russia has been the
aggressor. In fact it is known that Russia was not prepared for
war, and did not expect to be ready for two years to come. More-
over, the German official account, as appears from the White Paper,
admits that the note to Servia was aimed at Russia as the repre-
126 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
sentative of Slavdom, the fear of which has dominated Ger-
many ever since the confederation of the Balkan States, which led to
the first Balkan War. It was not until after Servia's qualified
acceptance of the ultimatum had been summarily rejected by Aus-
tria, that Russia mobilized her troops, and then only on the borders
of Austria-Hungary. There is, therefore, no evidence that Russia
took the aggressive, nor any proof, or even allegation, that she had
been making any definite preparation for immediate warfare. It
was, indeed, the general opinion in Germany that Russia was not
prepared.
The part which Great Britain took was, as soon as the ulti-
matum had been presented to Servia, to make a proposal for
a peace conference between the Ambassadors of the Powers not
directly interested France, Italy, Germany, and Great Britain.
Russia, as evidently being a party, was not invited, although the
proposal was made before mobilization had been ordered by the
Tsar. Servia's reply to Austria's note was made on the twenty-
sixth of July last, and was rejected on the same day within an
hour. Sir E. Grey's proposal for a conference was made on the
same day, and was at once accepted by France and Italy. Germany
was the only Power that opposed the conference, on the ground that
it amounted to a proposal for arbitration, a course which, in the
opinion of the German government, could be adopted only at the
request of Austria and Russia. Previously to this the German
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had expressed the opinion
that the question was one to be settled between Austria and Servia
alone, and that there should be no interference between the two
countries. This attitude Germany maintained almost to the end.
Great Britain's first efforts for peace were, therefore, unsuccessful,
But Sir E. Grey, not being willing to be baffled, did all he
could to promote an agreement between Russia and Austria by
means of direct conferences between those two Powers, and not
without some degree of success; for even after the mobilization of
the two Powers, conversations were held both at Vienna and St.
Petersburg, with a view to limiting Austria's action, while respect-
ing the territorial integrity of Servia, and to the obtaining from
Servia satisfaction of Austria's demands so far as these were just.
But Austria, while willing to respect the integrity of Servian terri-
tory, would give no assurance as to her independence, and would
not put off for a single hour the taking of war measures against .
Servia. At first Austria-Hungary categorically refused to accept
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 127
any form of mediation, although when too late her attitude on this
point was modified. During these discussions, it is to be noted that
Germany had refused to use her influence at Vienna, so far as the
relations between Servia and Austria were concerned.
Having failed a second time in his efforts to maintain peace,
a like failure attended Sir E. Grey's efforts to keep Great Britain
out of the conflict. Along with Germany and France, Great Brit-
ain was a guarantor of the neutrality of Belgium. Accordingly
on the thirty- first of July he made representations to France and
Germany to learn what course these two Powers would adopt.
France at once replied that she was resolved to respect the neutrality
of Belgium, unless compelled to act otherwise by reason of its viola-
tion at the hands of another Power. In reply to the same request
the German government delayed giving any answer, and in fact
made no reply. It was not until the fourth of August that it
was learned that Germany, while disclaiming any intention of an-
nexing Belgian territory, declared herself forced to disregard its
neutrality, owing (as was alleged) to her knowledge of the French
plans. On the same day the British Ambassador at Berlin was
ordered to demand his passports, as the British government felt
bound to take all the steps in its power to uphold its treaty obliga-
tions.
It cannot be alleged that Great Britain was bound by any strict
obligation to enter the war for the sake of France. No treaty,
in fact, existed imposing such an obligation either with Russia or
with France. In fact, in the course of the negotiations, Sir E.
Grey made an offer in the event of Austria or Germany making
a reasonable proposal for the preservation of peace, to support such
proposal at Paris and St. Petersburg, and in the event of its being
rejected to inform these two Powers that Great Britain would find
herself unable to offer them any support in any war that might
result.
Can it be said that France was the aggressor? The policy of
the French government for many years has been to do no more than
prepare an adequate defence of French territory. In fact, there was
a strong peace party in France, and on the first rumor of an im-
pending conflict demonstrations were made in Paris against any
warlike step being taken. As to the events which immediately pre-
ceded the war, it was Germany that took the first steps. On the
thirty-first of July the German Ambassador in Paris demanded
from the French government an answer by one o'clock the next day
128 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
as to the attitude it would adopt. That was the day on which
Germany had sent its ultimatum to Russia. In reply to the German
demand, the French government expressed its failure to com-
prehend the reason for such a request, as there was no question at
issue between the two governments and, in order not to give any
excuse for an attack, and to avoid any danger of incidents on the
frontier, ordered that the French troops should be withdrawn ten
kilometres from the boundary. This was done even after the Ger-
mans had made incursions across the border.
As to Belgium, no one will accuse her of aggressive action
against Germany, although she has won the admiration and applause
of the whole world by the heroic stand which she has made in
defence of her liberties. To use the words of Mr. John Redmond :
" In no quarter of the world has the heroism of the Belgium people
been received with more genuine enthusiasm and admiration than
within the shores of Ireland, and there is no compliment which it
would be possible for the Irish people to pay to Belgium that they
would not willingly pay, and there is no sacrifice, I believe, which
Ireland would not be willing to make to come to their assistance."
No one acquainted with the facts will lay the blame of ag-
gression at the door of Servia. Ever since the annexation of Bos-
nia and Herzegovina, Austria-Hungary has treated Servia as an
enemy. The conquests which she had made in the first Balkan War,
by which the long-desired opening to the sea had been secured,
Austria-Hungary compelled her to relinquish by the establishment
of the new state of Albania. It was Austria-Hungary that en-
couraged Bulgaria to attack Servia, an attack which led to the
Second Balkan War. The Agrane and Fried jung trials showed
how unjust were the suspicions entertained by the Austrian govern-
ment: that Servians were intriguing for the dismemberment of
Austria. And if there are aspirations in Servia for the union of
all Serbs, is there anything criminal in that? The murder of the
Archduke, if complicity in it had been brought home to the Servian
government, would, indeed, have rendered it necessary that full
and complete satisfaction should be made: but of this complicity
there has been no proof, only assertion. The assassins, in fact,
were Austrian subjects.
Evidence that seems conclusive that Russia was not the ag-
gressor, is afforded by the fact that the Ambassador of Austria-
Hungary at Berlin expressed as late as the twenty-eighth of July
his conviction that a general war was most unlikely, as Russia
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 129
neither wanted nor was in a position to make war. This opinion
was shared by many in Berlin.
This is the case as presented in the British White Paper. The
German White Paper is different in its character. That of the
British consists solely and exclusively of the communications which
passed between the British Foreign Secretary and the representa-
tives of its government at the various capitals. There is nothing in
the way of note or comment. The German White Paper consists
largely of an historical memorandum. An endeavor is made to
prove that Servia has been guilty of various attempts to dismember
the Austrian Empire, and that in these attempts she has been sup-
ported by Russia. The murder of the Archduke is laid at the door,
not of the Servian government directly, but of individual Servian
officials, although the government is accused of furnishing the
weapons which the assassins used. The ultimatum to Servia is
given, together with the reply of Servia, and the comments on that
reply made by the Austrian government point by point. This part
of the White Paper is followed by the texts of communications be-
tween the German Chancellor and the German representatives at
the various courts, as well as of a half dozen direct communications
between the Kaiser and the Tsar. These documents number
twenty-seven in all.
A study of these documents will show that the German govern-
ment refused to interfere between Austria-Hungary and Servia,
and, in fact, justified and approved of the ultimatum. When,
however, it was seen that Russia would not tolerate an attack upon
Servia, the Kaiser tried to mediate between Russia and Austria-
Hungary, the latter Power giving the assurance that it would respect
the integrity of Servian territory, but refusing to guarantee its
complete independence. With this Russia was not satisfied, a thing
which did not please the Kaiser. He expressed to the Tsar his
opinion that Russia should remain in the role of a spectator of an
Austrian-Servian war. The Tsar replied by asking the Kaiser to
exert strong pressure on Austria in order that an understanding
might be brought about. No reply to this request was given, and
as Russia would not demobilize, two days after, on the first of
August, the German government declared war on Russia. The
whole weight of the decision, in the opinion of the Kaiser, rested
on the shoulders of the Tsar.
The opinion of the Kaiser, however, is not accepted by all.
There are those who think that the guilt of aggression must be laid
VOL. c 9
130 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
at the door of either Austria-Hungary or Germany. The answer
to the question which of the two is the more guilty, is at present
a matter of conjecture. Austria, indeed, it was that sent the note
to Servia: but did she do it proprio motii? The opinion of the
writer of these notes is that the military authorities of the
two empires had at last succeeded in gaining that control for
which they had been striving, and that they forced the hands of
the Emperor-King and the Kaiser against the better judgment of
each. Moreover, even these authorities did not wish or expect
to bring on a general war ; the Austrians wanted to open the way to
Salonika ; the Germans were willing that Austria should do this for
them; as this would facilitate that increase of German influence over
Turkey which has become so prominent a feature in German world
policy. As Russia was thought to be unprepared, it was believed
the war with Servia would be localized, and that thereby they
would be left to exercise their will over Servia. A mistake was
made as to the course which Russia would take ; a mistake of which
we now are witnessing the terrible results. For Russia's entrance
into war, by virtue of the treaty between the two Powers, involved
that of France. The entente between France and Great Britain
did not necessitate Great Britain's taking any part in the conflict,
especially as, it is believed, Germany had given assurances that the
northern coasts of France would not be attacked by the German
fleet. It was only when the neutrality of Belgium was violated
that Great Britain's decision was made.
But after all, the recent events have rather been the pretexts
than the causes of the war. These causes must be looked for in
what has taken place in the time which has elapsed since the close
of the Franco-German War in 1871. Dreading an attempt of
France to recover Alsace-Lorraine, Germany maintained and in-
creased the army, and the belief became universal that as the exist-
ence of the Empire was due to military force, it was by military
force alone that it was to be maintained. Then came the era of
commercial expansion, for the protection and fostering of which a
navy was required. Last of all, the dread of the predominance
of the Slavs took possession of the German government, and further
increases of the army took place. Year by year from the Kaiser
to the messenger-boy, the belief in the superiority of the German
people, of the invincibility of the army, grew stronger and stronger
until it became a national conviction that Germany had the right
to dominate the whole of Europe, and that nothing was to be done
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 131
except by her consent. Nor were her desires limited to Europe;
the seizure of a part of China is an evidence of an ambition that was
world-wide. The enmity felt for Great Britain is due to the fact
that that country possesses colonies which Germany covets as an
outlet for her surplus population.
The army was to be the instrument by means of which the
primary aims of Germany were to be realized. By those who have
lived in Germany, it is said that it is impossible for anyone who
has not had that experience to realize how great is the arrogance
of the military caste, and the submission which is exacted by it
and paid to it by the rest of the population. Its teachings have not
been concealed, but have been revealed without shame by several
military writers. Of these General Friedrich von Bernhardi is
one of the best known, and anyone wishing to learn the spirit of
German militarism cannot do better than read Germany and the
Next War, a cheap edition of which has just appeared in New
York. He will there find a candid exposition of the doctrine that
Germany must, regardless of the rights and interests of other
peoples, fight her way to predominance. Brute strength, reenforced
by science, is to be supreme in international relationships. "The law
of love/' says von Bernhardi, " can claim no significance for the
relations of one country to another Christian morality is per-
sonal and social, and in its nature cannot be political."
Doctrines of a similar character have become practically uni-
versal in the leading universities. The Chair of Modern History at
Berlin was held for twenty years by Heinrich von Treitschke. Dur-
ing these years he was the most influential teacher of that German
culture to which so many are willing to pay homage. The main
thesis of his teaching was that world-dominion was to be won by
Germany by means of military power, while Germany itself was to
become an expansion of Prussia. It should, indeed, be noted that
the word Prussian should rather be used than German in connection
with recent events, for all that has happened is due to the ascend-
ency which Prussia has attained over the more or less reluctant
States in the German Empire. As an example of Treitschke's teach-
ing, may be taken his proposal with reference to Holland, "Why talk
of founding colonies? Let us take Holland: then we shall have
them ready-made." The ideas of Treitschke have completely con-
quered the army, the bureaucracy, and the universities; and in
virtue of the power of the universities, his teachings have deeply
pervaded the schools of the country, at least of Prussia.
132 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
Mention must be made of another influence which has been
powerful in moulding modern Germany, that of a man of whom it is
hard to determine which is the more loathsome his life or his teach-
ing. This is Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. In his eyes only that
which is strong is valuable. Christianity is a religion for slaves.
For mankind it is necessary to create a higher, stronger, and domi-
nant race. Of such an ideal Prussian militarism aspired to become
the embodiment.
The civil administration has completely assimilated the same
ideas, and has carried them into effect. Deutschland iiber alles is
not only a song but an ethical principle. The German Chancellor
regretted, indeed, the necessity of violating the neutrality of Bel-
gium, but as such a violation was necessary, in order that Ger-
many's plans might be carried out, no law human or divine would
stand in the way. " We must hack our way through." The For-
eign Secretary was astonished that the " mere scrap of paper " which
guaranteed the Belgian neutrality, should have any weight in the
question of peace or war. That any regard should be paid to such
a trifle was utterly beyond his comprehension.
How far the Kaiser is himself responsible is a question hard to
determine. There are those who think that he has been overriden
by the military caste, and who look upon him as having for long
been the maintainer of the world's peace. He was, in fact, on the
list of candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize. But even if this
credit is to be given to him, he cannot be exonerated from the
responsibility for the present war, for it could not have been en-
tered upon without his consent. Others there are who lay the
whole of the responsibility at his door. They remember how he dis-
missed Bismarck and took into his own hands the control of the
Empire, and that he has never listened to any advice except such
as was agreeable to him. He it was who initiated the world policy
of the German Empire, and the building of the new navy, which
was to be its instrument. At all times and by every means he has
encouraged the war spirit. The strongest claim which he has been
accustomed to make upon the loyalty of his people is that he is their
" War Lord." The mailed fist has been so often the appeal which
he has made for the realization of his wishes, that it has become
proverbial. If then in the present instance he has yielded to outside
pressure, he cannot be acquitted of responsibility for the formation
of that opinion to which he has had to yield.
And what shall be said of his responsibility for the brutal way
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 133
in which the war has been waged ? In this case the responsibility is
wholly his. Fourteen years ago, addressing his troops on the eve of
the expedition to Peking, on the twenty-seventh of July, 1900, their
War Lord addressed them in the following terms : "When you meet
the foe you will defeat him. No quarter will be given ; no prisoners
will be taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy.
Gain a reputation like the Huns under Attila." This reputation has
been gained for all time by the treatment of Louvain and of the
Belgians. The Kaiser's advice has been followed; his commands
have been obeyed.
The point at issue in this war is of the most momentous im-
portance. If the Kaiser wins, military ideas will dominate not
only Europe, but the world, for all unsubdued countries will have to
make themselves ready for self-defence. If the Allied Nations win,
the least they will demand will be that effectual steps shall be taken
to secure permanent peace, free from the anxiety by which they
have been harassed for so long a time. Moreover, an answer
may perhaps be given to this question what right have a score or
so of men to doom to destruction hundreds of thousands of their
fellow-beings, and to bring upon them the unspeakable horrors of
which the world is now the witness ?
Dark as the present hour is, the prospects of a bright future
are not wanting. The fact that this country has concluded with
twenty-six different nations, among whom are included Italy,
France, Great Britain, and Spain, treaties by which any disputes
which cannot be settled by diplomacy, will go before a permanent
International Commission, is a proof that the movement towards
a higher civilization is not going to be stayed in its course by
reactionary governments or peoples.
With Our Readers.
appeals coming from all sources, non-Catholic as well as
1 Catholic, to the Holy Father that he use his influence to bring
about peace among the warring nations, may serve to point out the
position held, and the work done, by the Papacy in saving mediaeval
Europe to civilization.
An extraordinary thing is that these appeals now frequently come
from those who have seldom said a good word for the Catholic Church
or its supreme Head, the Pope. Do not such longings prove that,
as in the heart of every man there is a sense of the supreme worth
of spiritual things and a conscience which tells him that truth and
justice should prevail, so, from that same heart, when a world crisis
demands it, comes the prayer for a power upon earth, that, standing
above things temporal and independent of them, should use its in-
fluence to the end that truth and justice may reign.
* * * *
WITH all the modern talk of state supremacy, every honest man
knows that state supremacy, taken comprehensively, is the worst
kind of temporal and spiritual tyranny. It leaves no dignity, no in-
dividual worth or liberty to man.
Personal liberty is a spiritual right, and all men who love it will
invariably look for a spiritual power to defend and champion it.
Some may permit theories, opposed to and destructive of it, to run
their course so long as such theories have no practical effect. Some
may not see the subtlety of the attack, nor recognize quickly how they
are surrendering little by little their greatest inheritance.
* * * *
IT demands a widespread and imminent danger to arouse a people;
it demands something like a catastrophe, for example, to bring out
all the fraternal charity that dwells in men's hearts. For a long time
before the danger becomes imminent, many may have sanctioned,
pursued, and defended methods that were really unjust, most sub-
versive of human rights and human liberty.
The tendency to further state supremacy, characteristic of some
modern schools, has been pointed out times without number by
students of contemporaneous history. Never were the high-sounding
phrases of democracy, progress, advance, truth, justice repeated more
eloquently than to-day, and yet, have they not become, in great
measure, mere shibboleths of vaguest meaning? The one thing clear
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 135
about them is that they do not mean what they once meant. What we
have left of the genuine meaning of them has substance, logically and
historically, only from Catholic doctrine.
* * * *
FROM its first days even to this day, the champion of spiritual
liberty for man is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is
the only power upon earth that dares, or has ever dared, to tell states
and governments that there is a province in which they have no
authority. She is the supporter and champion of the state, because
she is the champion of authority, of justice, and of law. She is also
the representative of God. States and governments are human, and
are not all-supreme. They may err ; they may sin ; they may attempt
to deprive individuals of their inalienable rights; they are not them-
selves beyond all law and authority.
The one Power that since the days of the ancient world, even
until now, has declared that truth unflinchingly, is the Catholic Church.
And now, when a great darkness envelopes the world; when all
Europe is maddened with war ; when men are sacrificed to death with-
out counting the cost; when countless homes are made desolate and
countless children orphaned; when nations lie in ruins, and their
people face decades of desolation and misery ; when every human heart
is depressed and saddened, men turn again to the light that has shone
through the centuries, the spiritual, God-given and God-protected light
of Rome, that once again they may be shown the way of peace. In-
stinctively almost they repeat the cry of the poet :
O Rome ! my country ! city of the soul !
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee.
letters from the ready correspondents that write to the daily
press, and that murmur against God because He allows the present
terrible European war, or read into it the failure of Christ's mission
and of the Church, are a sad index of the lack among such correspond-
ents and their sympathizers of anything like real religion. Even when
written in a temperate spirit and with show of reverence, they bespeak
a smug self-satisfaction ; a cheap, agnostic attitude that is both pitiable
and appalling. Of God's supreme dominion over us, and of that
humility which is the first grace of a creature, they contain no echo.
Their writers have evidently studied, or rather been impressed by, the
school of modern practical agnosticism that would drive God and
Christ and all positive religion out of everyday life; that considers
none of these things essential or even very important in the conduct
or the government of society. Because of such teachings God
has been driven officially from the government, from the school,
136 WITH OUR READERS [Oct.,
from social and business life, and relegated to individual privacy,
where He may be welcomed if the individual so wishes. But no public
encouragement must be given to such a welcome; no public expres-
sion be made of our eternal relations to Him; religion is decidedly
a private matter, and in its great problems and responsibilities the world
can get along much better without dragging it in.
This summary may seem to some over-severe, but it is undoubtedly
a fair synopsis of the theories upon which many act and talk and
write to-day; and it is equally a fair presentation of the tendency
that is receiving a wider and wider acceptance.
* * * *
TT7HEN individuals have for a long time ceased to associate God
VV in an intimate way with the conduct of life, when they have failed
to apply the truth that the thought of God should be with man from
his rising up in the morning till the end of his work and his pleasure
at night; when they forget that God and His revelation should direct
man in every field of his activity, social, educational, philanthropic,
economic, business, political, every field without exception, they are
powerless in the face of a cataclysm that proves beyond question
the insufficiency of man in himself. Having lost, or never having
learned, the real relationship between man and God, which comes
to us only by thinking upon Him and by serving Him, they do not
understand the terms of the problem. Many of them with characteris-
tic human weakness seek the " someone else " who is to blame, and,
though perhaps they realize it not, they blasphemously make that
" someone else " God.
Upon God they thoughtlessly and ignorantly place a responsibility
which belongs to man. For to man God has surely and definitely
entrusted the earth and the things of earth; to man He has given
intelligence and free will, and we know that man has the power
through the one to deny the Giver, and through the other to disobey
Him. Man may pursue methods and adopt standards absolutely at
variance with the methods and standards God has laid down in His
revelation and in the teachings of His Church. Man may cultivate
ambitions, desires, plans of material betterment and advancement;
of pleasure and of debauchery ; of dishonesty and of injustice and all
this in spite of the fact that God has told us long ago to what all or
any such ambitions and such desires eventually lead.
* * * *
IF the habitual neglect of His law begets injustice and war upon
earth, it is, we say, blasphemy to attribute the result and the
problem to God. War and its horrors are the direct outcome of man's
powers and efforts and plans. If all men kept the law of God there
would be no war. That the just may be attacked and compelled to
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 137
suffer, is due to the fact that there exist those who are unjust; and
the problem is essentially no greater than that which we see every
day the just man begging his bread, and the unjust and the dishonest
flourishing like the green bay tree. They who find reason for complaint
in this are but poorly versed in the message of God to man delivered by
His own Beloved Son, the Just One, persecuted and crucified for us
sinners. Of one thing we may be certain to those who love God
all things work together unto good.
BUT the primary requisite for this spiritual vision is that man must
love God. Love is not a mere sentiment nor a reasonless emotion ;
it is a reasonable service, a filial loyalty; the consecration to God of
the powers whereby man may know and serve God intelligence and
free will. By these same powers man may deny and disobey Him.
When bestowing them God knew that man might pervert them. By
giving man the powers of intelligence and free will God made
him man. Without these he would possess neither dignity nor
knowledge nor moral worth. Yet their very possession means the free
choice on the part of the individual man of good or evil. God be-
stowed them that His own glory might be reflected through righteous-
ness in the children of men. He saw that man might in a measure
defeat His holy purpose ; man might make the earth and his own soul
a wicked place a place of sin, of injustice, of dishonesty, of jealousy
and hatred, of war and death. If it is so cursed the responsibility is
upon man. No one deplores it more than God Himself; He could
not prevent it unless He chose to make man otherwise than he is, and
deprive him of all self-worth and all responsibility.
* * * *
GOD'S absolute Will encompasses the earth with perfect
love. He will have all men to be saved, and to come to a knowl-
edge of the truth. No thought nor action nor desire of man is foreign
to Him. He is " Our Father." He knows us better than we know
ourselves. He cares for each and everyone of human kind with a care
greater than that of the mother for her first-born. He watches over
us more keenly than ever shepherd watches his sheep. With Him the
very hairs of our head are numbered. Through means infinite in
number, external and internal, He calls to us, warns us, exhorts us,
inspires us. The evil deeds of men are, so to speak, a wound infinitely
grievous to Him. His Only-begotten Son upon the Cross is the evi-
dent testimony to us of how far sin and injustice and all wrong doing
are opposed to His Will; how, in truth, they aim at the very death of
God just as truly as they aim at the destruction of His Will in this
world.
138 WITH OUR READERS [Oct.,
FOR the evil and the cruelty of men, men are to blame. Out of the
evil good will come, and it will be seen in the end that the glory
of the Lord is all in all. The Prince of Peace is one day to come
triumphant. To those that love God all things work together unto
good.
God does not reveal fully His purposes to us. He is, as the
Prophet says, a hidden God ; for He is infinite ; we are creatures. His
purposes are infinitely wise and merciful, begotten of His infinite
knowledge and love. If they were revealed to man more clearly than
they have been, man would not be any more ready to accept them.
THE importance of a well-supported and intelligently-edited Catholic
press of Catholic books and pamphlets that explain and de-
fend Catholic teaching and the Catholic position, is none too widely
recognized. Impressive sensible things that we can see with our
bodily eyes appeal to us; material or numerical progress encourages
and arouses our zeal; but interest in Catholic intellectual work de-
mands, of course, intellectual effort; and nature, even when aided by
grace, gives this tardily. Moreover, the things of the mind work
secretly ; we see only their result, and we do not see them immediately.
But it is a fact of experience that where the children of the
Church understand her doctrines and are able to defend them, the
Church itself is strong; that where her children are intellectually and
spiritually lazy, the Church is weak. This should suffice to arouse
every Catholic to a sense of his duty in this most important matter
of Catholic literature.
AN interesting contribution to the evidence of what a strong
intellectual defence will accomplish for the welfare of God's
Church, is given in a recent publication by Dr. Peter Guilday, entitled
The English Catholic Refugees on the Continent. Though not with-
out its shadows, as all human history must be, the story is one of the
most glorious in self-sacrifice, courage, and heroism that the world
has ever known. It tells of the work done by the Catholic religious
men and women of England who were driven by Protestant persecu-
tion from their country, and forced to find homes on the continent,
and particularly in the Low Countries. Many of the battles and
sieges of the present war recall towns and cities made forever memor-
able by the foundations of these exiled Catholics. The history spans
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.
It might be thought that these homeless religious had enough to
do to secure homes and the means of livelihood, without thinking
much of intellectual work. In the light of how uncertainty harassed
I9I4-] WITH OUR READERS 139
them, and hatred hounded them, and English spies watched their
every move, Catholic literature might for them be considered a
luxury. But while they labored to build homes, they labored also to
defend and explain Catholic doctrine; to show the weakness and ab-
surdity of the Protestant position. " Their activities many and
varied," says the author, " were of a far higher intellectual order
than those of the continental Protestant exiles in England."
" Their history is the history of a race of men and women who
built better than they knew, and the result of their labors proved
to be the foundation of that strength and courage which brought
about peace and toleration at last. The first fruit of their work,
known as the English Counter-Reformation, showed itself even be-
fore the permanent foundation at Douay." " English Protestant theo-
logical circles had been fairly demoralized by the formidable attack made
upon their doctrines by the Louvain School of Apologetics. This
attack brought the Anglican Church face to face with the fact that
the despised and vilified Catholic theologians possessed a strength of
logic and doctrine that fairly threatened the flimsy fabric which had
been built out of the views of the ancient Church."
* * # *
'"PHE literary work of the exiles caused consternation in the Establish-
1 ment. "For our fugitives at Louvain," says Bishop Jewel, "began
during the last year (1564-5) to be in violent commotion, and to write
with the greatest asperity against us all. Me alone they have attacked
by name they began to bark in their holes and corners, and to call
me impudent, bold, insolent, and frantic boaster. Four years after
(1564) one Harding unexpectedly came forward I replied to
him last year as well as I could I had scarce finished my work,
when there suddenly flies abroad a Confutation of my Apology; an
immense and elaborate work, and filled with abuse, contumely, false-
hoods and flatteries he must be answered those country-
men of ours at Louvain disturb us as much as they can." " There
came out last summer," Cox writes from Ely, " an immense volume
by one Nicholas Saunders, who is, they say, a countryman of ours;
the title of which is The Monarchy of the Church our friend
Jewel is dead, and has left among us but few equal to him. It is,
therefore, both your concern and mine to cut off the heads of this
hydra." " De Silva, the Spanish Ambassador in London, writing
to Philip II., says that the books sent from Louvain had done in-
calculable good in spreading the growth of the faith. In reply, the King
told his Ambassador how gratified he was with the Apologetic School
of Louvain, and urged him to forego no opportunity of encouraging
and strengthening the work of the English exiles. The list of names
connected with this work of defending the faith, includes Sanders,
140 WITH OUR READERS [Oct.,
Harpsfield, Harding, Allen, Stapleton, Marshall, Dorman, Rastall,
and others, whose works constitute the strongest breakwater Catholic
scholars have ever made against Anglicanism. What Louvain accom-
plished between 1559-1575 the English College of Douay continued.
From its foundation, in 1568, until the end of the Thirty Years' War,
the English Catholic exiles, religious and lay, were to be found in
the front of the battle-line formed by the Counter-Reformation
against the heresies of the times."
Dr. Guilday promises to treat more in detail the intellectual
activities of the exiles in a second volume.
THE respectful comments, and, in many cases, the enthusiastic
eulogies published in the secular press on Pius X., immediately
after his death, are not only encouraging signs of a better understand-
ing and a friendlier attitude on the part of non-Catholics, but also
a strong reason for the hope that a widespread wave of anti-Catholic
hatred will not soon sweep over the country.
It would be impossible to reprint even a small number of the esti-
mates. The New York Sun said : "His wonderful experience from peas-
ant boy, daily trudging miles to and from school, through the grades of
the priesthood, to the supreme position he reached, left him unspoiled
in modesty, a stranger to avarice, and in his relations to his sacred
charge a true custodian and faithful trustee Will not this splen-
did example of -the cardinal virtues, so naturally displayed, influence
men's minds long after the political and polemical questions that arose
ui his time have faded from all except historical memory? "
Another editorial of the same journal which was copied exten-
sively throughout our country ended with these words : " Writers
of Church history may dispute whether he was a great Pope. But
Giuseppe Sarto, who bought a return ticket when he went from
Venice to the last Conclave, was not a man to care much for the
verdict on such questions. The verdict for which he incessantly
urged his millions of followers to strive, the verdict which he prized
above all glory or worldly success, the verdict, which is his without
reservation, is: he was a good man."
The Washington Post declared that: "Among all sects and
creeds there will be genuine regret that so fine a mind and so gentle
a spirit should be lost to the world at such a time."
The Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph: "The deceased Pontiff
won the respect of the world for his moderation and humility."
The Philadelphia Press: " Pius X. was at once the man of the
Church and the man of the people, venerated and loved by his own,
admired and respected among those who are not of his fold."
I9I4-] WITH OUR READERS 141
The Boston Post : " For America and Americans Pius X. had a
warm interest and affection, as his elevation of two illustrious Ameri-
cans to the Cardinalate testifies. He was proud of the Church's
progress in this country."
The London Times published on August 2ist a lengthy and highly
appreciative estimate of the character and work of Pius X. We quote
from it in part:
The policy of Pius X. has had many critics, not all of them outside the
Church he ruled, but none has ever questioned the transparent honesty of his
convictions or refused admiration for his priestly virtues. But the Roman
Church mourns in him something more than a saintly priest and a great bishop ;
in him she also deplores a great Pope. In the sphere of Church politics his
reign has witnessed grievous disasters. It has seen the separation of Church
and State in France and in Portugal, and the whole process of " dechristian-
izing" national and social life, of which that measure was the symbol. Un-
prejudiced judges cannot blame a Pope for rejecting all compromise with a
policy which, on the admission of its authors, was deliberately aimed at the
destruction of the faith it was his mission to uphold. Compromise, it has been
said, ought to have been possible, but there are principles which Rome cannot
waive or abate. Pius X. conceived that such principles were jeopardized in all
the accommodations with the new system which were suggested to him. It
was no light thing for him to impose upon the faithful clergy of France and
of Portugal a course which brought to them the loss of their revenues, their
homes, and even of all legal right in their churches. But his decision was to him
a question not of expediency, but of right and wrong. He gave it in accordance
with the dictates of his conscience, and the wonderful obedience which the
priests whom it impoverished have shown to his commands, has filled with a
just pride his children throughout the world.
It is not, however, because Pius X. did in this question what any other
Pope would almost certainly have done, that his own Church believes he will
hold a distinguished place in the long line of Roman Pontiffs. It is in the
internal affairs of that vast and elaborate institution that he has done work
which promises to leave its mark upon the ages. It has not been work of the
kind which strikes outside observers. It is no exaggeration to say
that Giuseppe Sarto, the child of the laborer and the dressmaker, has made
greater changes of his own motion in the domestic discipline of the Roman
Church than almost any of his predecessors since the period of the Council of
Trent, or perhaps since the days of the mediaeval legislators who declared
the Canon Law.
MANY of the new productions presented at the opening of the
present theatrical season, call for fresh and vigorous protest
from all clean-minded people. The plays of which we speak deal
with sexual immorality and marital infidelity. Their disguise as
problem plays has been worn away; they must be classed as appeals
to the vulgar and the prurient. All who patronize them are abetting
the agencies of evil.
142 WITH OUR READERS [Oct.,
WE read a few days ago a letter in the London Times, which ex-
pressed distrust of the French Catholic religious, men and
women, in Belgium. The writer said, " All the French expatriated
religious Orders should be carefully watched, as they are bitter
enemies of the French government, and before the war joined hands
with Germans and Austrians." Mr. Wilfrid Ward replied at once,
and the Times published his letter in a conspicuous place on its
editorial page.
" May I protest," wrote Mr. Ward, " against this unfounded
calumny? I have personal knowledge of many of the communities
which were driven by M. Combes from their native land, and, in
many cases, deprived of their property, and the cause of France has no
more devoted adherents On the face of it the idea that men and
women whose fathers, brothers, and nephews are fighting for their
country should intrigue on behalf of the enemy is a ridiculous
one. Your correspondent evidently belongs to a class of mono-
maniacs not uncommon in my youth, though now I hope nearly ex-
tinct."
The charge of course is born of the fanaticism of one who will not
see. Thousands and thousands we have seen a published estimate
of fifteen thousand of the best sons of France, whom she robbed and
persecuted out of the country, have returned and are serving under
her colors.
THE fate and the fidelity of these Catholic religious recalled the
following passage in the work by Dr. Guilday, already men-
tioned, in which he speaks of the conduct of English exiles of three
hundred years ago:
" Hand-in-hand with a love of God and of His holy Church, went
a love for their country, and a loyalty to their sovereign which have
never been equalled in similar circumstances since nation took its
place apart from nation, and men imbibed that affection for the land
of their birth which no number of years spent in exile will ever
obliterate or destroy."
NO sooner was it announced that the American troops would be
withdrawn from Mexico, than Rev. Francis P. Joyce, U. S. Army
Chaplain at Vera Cruz, sent the following message to Rev. Lewis
J. O'Hern, C.S.P., of Washington, D.C. :
" Request transportation to Galveston for five hundred priests
and Sisters destitute on our departure and in danger.
" Vera Cruz, Mexico, September 17, 1914."
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 143
Father O'Hern at once called at the White House, and was as-
sured by Mr. Tumulty that he would lay the matter immediately
before President Wilson.
On the advice of the Secretary to the President, he also brought
the matter to the attention of the State Department. Mr. Bryan was
away, but the Acting Secretary at once sent a lengthy communication
to Carranza, informing him of the report that had reached Washing-
ton, and requesting a guarantee as to the safety of the priests and
Sisters at Vera Cruz.
We do not know what this reply of Carranza was, and frankly
we do not feel that he is to be trusted. The money appropriated by
Congress cannot be used by the Department of State except for the
relief of " American citizens " in Mexico, and so the situation is a
grave one.
That the danger is real there can be no doubt. In a long dispatch
to the War Department, under date of September I7th, General Funs-
ton, commanding the American forces in Mexico, recommended that
the troops be withdrawn slowly, and mentione/1 the presence of three
hundred priests and nuns who would need protection. It is to be
hoped they will not be abandoned to the mercy of Villa and Carranza.
Heaven knows they have suffered enough already!
The representative of the Red Cross Society, who has just re-
turned to Washington from Mexico, reports that the Sisters have
suffered worse than death at the hands of the Constitutionalist soldiers.
They were subjected to every indignity imaginable. In some cases,
having been pursued to the roofs of the buildings, they preferred death
to dishonor, and leaped to the pavement below. Surely the Washington
government, which is morally responsible for the present regime in
Mexico, must recognize its duty in the present grave situation. It
must recognize that it will be morally responsible for the acts of a
government which it has placed in power. And it will be justly stig-
matized before the civilized world, if it permits such a government to
inflict upon innocent men and women indignities and cruelties far worse
than death.
We have faith in President Wilson, and believe that he can be
relied upon to take immediately such action as will secure protection
and justice for these unfortunates.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York:
Thanksgiving After Holy Communion. From the French by I. Hernaman. 75
cents net. From Court to Cloister. By M. A. 75 cents net. A Layman's
Retreats. By H. Owen-Lewis. $1.25 net. The Ideal of the Monastic Life
Found in the Apostolic Age. By Dom G. Morin, O.S.B. $1.25 net. The
Spirit of Cardinal Newman. 50 cents net. The Spirit of Father Faber,
Apostle of London. 50 cents.
J. FISCHER & BROTHER, New York:
The Choir Manual. By G. Burton. 80 cents net.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York:
A Garden of Girls, or Famous Schoolgirls of Other Days. By Mrs. T. Con-
cannon, M.A. $1.00 net. Teacher and Teaching. By R. H. Tierney, SJ.
$1.00 net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York:
The Prayers of St. Paul. By Rev. W. H. G. Thomas, D.D. 60 cents net.
The Son of Man. By A. C. Zenos, LL.D. 60 cents net. The Joy of Find-
ing. By Rev. A. E. Garvie, D.D. 60 cents net. The Beginnings of the
Church. By E. F. Scott, D.D. $1.50 net. The Holy Land of Asia Minor.
By F. E. Clark, LL.D. $1.00 net. Modern Theology and the Preaching of
the Gospel. By W. A. Brown, D.D. $1.25 net. Plays. By J. Galsworthy.
$1.35 net. To the Land of the Caribou. By P. G. Tomlinson. $1.00 net.
The Wolf Hunters. $1.25 net. The Prophet and His Problems. By J. M.
P. Smith, Ph.D. $1.25 net.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR Co., New York:
Yourself and the Neighbours. By Seumas MacManus. $1.25.
CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL PRESS, New York:
The Century of Columbus. By James J. Walsh, LL.D. $3.50.
THE ART BUREAU, Albany :
A Memento of the Death of the Holy Father Pope Pius X. 5 cents.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
Saturday's Child. By Kathleen Norris. $1.50.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
Concise Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of
Dante. By P. Toynbee, M.A. $2.50.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
The Holy Eucharist in Art. By P. D. C. Wirz, O.S.B. $1.00. Poems for
Loyal Hearts. By Rev. Wm. Livingston. $1.25. The Spiritual Exercises
of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Translated from the autograph by Father C.
Mullan, SJ. 60 cents.
LE COUTEULX LEADER PRESS, Buffalo:
Novena for the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington, D.C. :
The Lumber Industry. Present Status of Drawing and Art in the Elementary
and Secondary Schools of the United States.
JOHN JOSEPH McVEY, Philadelphia:
Hints on Preaching. By Rev. Jos. V. O'Connor. 25 cents.
B. HERDER, St. Louis:
Our Failings. By Father S. V. Oer, O.S.B. $1.10 net. Commentary on the
Seven Penitential Psalms. By J. Fisher. 30 cents net. Choice. By M. S.
Daniel. 75 cents net. The Priest's Daily Manna. By J. C. Schmitt, D.D.
$1.80 net.
OFFICE OF CITY MISSIONARY, St. Paul, Minn.:
The Scope of Charity. By Rev. James Donahoe.
CENTRAL BUREAU OF THE CENTRAL VEREIN, St. Louis:
The Teaching of Sex Hygiene in Our Schools. By Rev. F. Heiermann, SJ.
Pamphlet. 5 cents.
R. & T. WASHBOURNE, Ltd., London:
Doctrine Explanations: Baptism and Extreme Unction. By the Sisters of
Notre Dame. 2 d.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. C.
NOVEMBER, 1914.
No. 596.
OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.
HE meeting of the National Conference of Catholic
Charities held recently at the Catholic University in
Washington brings to mind again the vast charities
of the Church, and the philosophy which comes to
expression through them. Four years ago when the
first meeting of the Conference occurred, THE CATHOLIC WORLD
published an interpretation of it, and called attention to the hitherto
uncatalogued forces which express themselves in it. When the
Conference first appeared it gave promise of inspiring service,
and of stimulating self-knowledge of our charities. That promise
has been kept. The meeting that was just held displayed a con-
sciousness of purpose and a definiteness of organization which
usually come only with years and experience.
The meeting was attended by four hundred and forty dele-
gates, of which over three hundred came from outside the city of
Washington. Twenty-four states and fifty-three cities were repre-
sented. There were present bankers, lawyers, business men of
every type, Brothers, Priests, Sisters, and women who represent
nearly every form of charitable action. Some of them occupy posi-
tions of great responsibility in the civic charities of our country.
Others of them have achieved enviable distinction in our own
ranks. Practically all of them were splendid types of the large
mindedness which includes the social welfare within the circle of
deep personal concern. The meeting was marked by extraordinary
Copyright. 1914.
VOL. C. 10
THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
146 OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES [Nov.,
earnestness and a tempered enthusiasm, which had all of the ele-
ments of fascination. The papers and the discussion were, on the
unsolicited testimony of the delegates, of a high order of merit.
Dozens among those in attendance who are familiar with the spirit
and processes of similar conferences in the field of philanthropy,
declared without reserve that they found more immediate practical
help and definite guidance here than they had ever found in any
other meeting of the kind.
The National Conference appears to have taken a permanent
place in the national charities of the Church. A sentiment of per-
sonal attachment to it and to its purposes, seems to lodge in the
hearts of those who have identified themselves with it. Large num-
bers of delegates find that the Conference is an experience in faith
as well as in charity. Reports were brought in from every part
of the country represented, telling of the awakening of new impulses
in social service, of the refining of standards of work and of stimula-
tion which is always the sign of vitality and the promise of growth.
The aims of the National Conference are thoroughly repre-
sentative. They are the following:
1. To bring about exchange of views among experienced
Catholic men and women who are active in the work of charity.
2. To collect and publish information concerning organiza-
tion, problems and results in Catholic charity.
3. To bring to expression a general policy toward distinctive
modern questions in relief and prevention, and toward methods
and tendencies in them.
4. To encourage further development of a literature in which
the religious and social ideals of charity shall find dignified
expression.
Every one of our agencies of relief in the United States has a direct
interest in the accomplishment of these purposes. That accomplish-
ment will make for efficiency in work, refinement in motive, and
depth in spiritual sympathy.
The organization of the National Conference of Catholic Char-
ities is not yet fully representative. Undoubtedly many years will
be required to make it so. However, its four committees, which
have a membership of one hundred in all, do represent the different
parts of the country fairly well. These members serve as advisers to
1914.] OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES 147
the chairmen of the committees, and the programme of each biennial
meeting represents the net result of consultation among them. There
are many large cities which have either few or no representatives
among the delegates present at our biennial meetings. Of course,
the National Conference will not be fully representative until it. rep-
resents all sections of the country. If, however, we take into account
the organization of the committees, the composition of the pro-
gramme, the delegates in attendance at meetings, and the total paid
memberships in the Conference, we may say that from these several
standpoints it is fairly representative of the problems, the spirit, the
methods, and the aims of the Catholic Charities of the nation at
large.
On the other hand, however, the religious communities of
women have not yet identified themselves to any great extent with it.
Not over fifteen Sisters have been at any one of the three meetings
already held. A larger number have, however, taken membership
in the Conference. Although practically all of the sisterhoods
applaud the aims of the Conference and encourage it, and many of
them are thoughtful enough to say so, yet neither their works, nor
their views, nor their methods have come to adequate expression
in the meetings or in the reports of the National Conference. Head-
way in this direction will probably be slow. The circumstances
which make the cooperation of the sisterhoods difficult are well
known to all of us. We respect unreservedly the judgment and the
traditions which make them slow to identify themselves with public
movements. We may expect, however, that as the sisterhoods
gradually widen their vision they will see their special works in
relation to all works of the same kind, and as they see their activities
in relation to the welfare of the Church as a whole, they will dis-
cover that the National Conference offers welcome opportunity
to them for just the kind of experience and expression which their
larger interests demand. Fortunately most of the delegates, if
not all of them, are in more or less intimate relation with the sister-
hoods. Through this happy circumstance a sympathetic relation-
ship is established. That makes us certain that neither in principle,
nor in method, nor in any fundamental view, will the work and spirit
of the National Conference be far removed from fullest sympathy
with the great sisterhoods which are the power and the glory of the
Church.
The communities of Brothers which engage in many forms of
relief work, have been fairly well represented at the meetings of the
148 OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES [Nov.,
Conference by delegates who have taken active and creditable part
in all of its deliberations. Steps are under way at this moment to
provide increasing opportunity for representation of the brother-
hoods in future meetings of the Conference.
Although the organization of the Conference is not yet fully
representative of our charities, the approval which it enjoys is repre-
sentative. The Holy See, the Apostolic Delegates, and the hier-
archy in this country have given it most cordial and encouraging
approval. The Conference may therefore continue in its develop-
ment, with every reason to believe that it has a real work to do
for our Charities as a whole.
II.
As is proper the Conference has no policies of its own. It
never votes upon any problem which it discusses. It never touches
the work of actual relief, nor does it in any manner affect the
organization or activity of any agency in the field. It endeavors
in the main to assemble the talent, and to organize the experience
of which our charities possess a creditable abundance. It permits
every meeting to obey its own spirit, and to express itself in its own
way. Divergent points of view and unlike temperaments are
brought together in the expectation that they will clash. Psychology
calls it clash while logic calls it debate. This is, of course, simply
one of the incidents of progress. The flash of debate quickens
vision, and shows the way toward the deeper unities of feeling and
thought of which we are always conscious. The Conference
matches judgment against judgment, and view against view. It
leads us to the comforting discovery that our fundamental agree-
ments in relief work are solid and numerous, that our perils are
common, and that our differences rarely reach beneath the accidental
aspects of our work.
The Conference acts directly upon its members in many ways.
Those whose views are narrow, and whose vision is local, make the
uncomfortable but profitable discovery that larger knowledge and
wider insight command respect, and will not be denied. This
makes us docile. Those who are of broad vision and tolerant
impulses, are sometimes reminded that breadth of view is not always
truth, that compromise is not always sanctioned, and that toleration
is not always virtue. This makes us orthodox. There are some
whose standards in relief work are so small that they live in an at-
1914.] OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES 149
mosphere of lasting security, and in the consciousness of great
achievement. Such standards shrink in the presence of the nobler
ideals and wider vision which a Conference always brings to ex-
pression. Thus we are made humble. Some of us make a phil-
osophy out of our temperaments. We receive our deserved punish-
ment while in attendance at a Conference. Some of us shape our
principles in the hope of hiding our limitations.- A Conference
exercises salutary corrective influence upon those who make this
mistake.
There are currents of thought and policies of statesmanship
in academic and philanthropic and political circles which touch our
charities at many points, and would do them harm. The National
Conference offers convenient opportunity to study these movements,
to understand them, and to reach a proper attitude toward them.
In particular, the Conference becomes a graduate school in practical
leadership for those who are called upon to represent our charities
in many fields outside the Church.
These are no mean services to charity. The National Confer-
ence has an ambition to perform them well. No other single or-
ganized activity in the American Church has undertaken this com-
plete service. Here the Conference rests its hope for the future,
and upon this ground it bases its appeal for sympathy and interest.
It would be tedious to attempt to review the discussion of the many
problems which were brought to the attention of the Conference
at the meeting just held. Four topics are singled out for hurried
attention.
III.
The Conference registered one important note of disappoint-
ment in ordering a suspension of the work of compiling a National
Directory of Catholic Charities. It began this work in 1910, in-
tending to make it its first permanent contribution to our self-
knowledge. At the 1910 meeting the delegates remarked fre-
quently that our Catholic charities were not known to one another.
It was discovered that agencies engaged in dealing with identical
problems in different cities, and even in the same city, were un-
known to one another. Delegates who complained that the Catholic
Church was backward in certain kinds of social work, were as-
tounded to find that in other cities, such works were flourishing.
There was a consciousness of a general lack of relation and associa-
150 OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES [Nov.,
tion. This had led to the creation of the National Conference,
and this led the Conference itself to order the compilation of an
authentic National Directory. The work was begun promptly in
that year, and it was carried on intermittently since then as other
duties of the Conference officers permitted.
Naturally the work had to be done through correspondence.
The services of the Catholic press were asked and were cordially
given. Systematic correspondence seeking approval from the
authorities in the Church, and seeking direct relation with those in
authority in our great communities, was begun and maintained.
As a result of the most persevering efforts, the files of the National
Conference show at this date that complete information is on hand
from ten dioceses; incomplete information is on hand from fifty-
three dioceses; there is no information whatever from thirty-two
dioceses. Out of a total of over a thousand institutions in charge
of Religious in the United States, information is on hand from
five hundred and thirty. A last effort was made in June of this
year when a personal letter was sent to five hundred and twenty-six
institutions, asking that the simple directory blank be filled out
and returned. But thirty-eight replies were received to the five
hundred and twenty-six letters. When these results were presented
to the Conference at its recent meeting, it voted to suspend work on
the directory for the present. Evidently we must await a day when
the larger interests of the Catholic Church will inspire its agencies
to cooperate with more generosity to serve the impersonal and gen-
eral interests of the Church, no less than in its immediate and daily
tasks. An optimist finds ready warrant for believing that we shall
yet have a directory of the Catholic charities of the United States,
in the spirit of progress that is making its way in our circles, and
in the measures of self-defence to which our institutions are some-
times driven by those who have little sympathy for them and for
their works. History has its paradoxes as well as logic. Some-
times our enemies accomplish for us by indirection what we our-
selves find it impossible to do.
IV.
The sentiment of the National Conference this year was
strongly in favor of some kind of systematic instruction in relief
work, to be offered to those who are willing to take it. Whether
this instruction be imparted in a school created for that purpose, or
1914- ] OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES 151
in round table talks at regular intervals and confined to specific
phases of the work, or whether efforts be made to take advantage
of courses of instruction given for other purposes, are questions
with which the Conference did not busy itself. The newer and
wider view of poverty asserted itself on all sides. Relief that
stops short of prevention appeared to be but a small part of the
duty of charity. Preventive work carried on without due regard
to the processes in poverty, and to its implications, seemed inade-
quate as well.
The quantity and variety of information of which one has real
need, make necessary some kind of systematic training if our work
is to be done with any credit. Of course, exceptional men or
women may not need teachers or a school, but average men find
their power increased a hundredfold when they are instructed,
and when the elements of method and of intelligent action are
presented to them in some formal manner. Labor unions, juvenile
courts, departments of municipal administration, city ordinances,
hospitals, courts, labor laws, voluntary associations of many kinds,
a rich and wonderful literature, are of real interest in varying
degrees to everyone who raises his hand to ease the burden of
poverty. If the poor are the most neglected class in society, they
have need of the most intelligent service that society can offer.
He would be a strange man who would maintain that the charity
interests of society alone have no need of the institution of schools
or of courses of instruction, when all of the lessons of history
tell us the contrary.
The delegates to this year's Conference were conscious of all
of this. No one in attendance could make any mistake in under-
standing its spirit. All endorsed with cordial enthusiasm the
earnest and stirring appeal that was made by speakers for such
instruction as would bring our works to the highest pitch of
efficiency.
V.
The institution of City Conferences in Catholic Charities was
discussed at the second general session of the Conference. The
mind of the audience was unmistakably in favor of that step. The
aim of a Conference is to bring together at stated intervals all of
the Catholic workers in our larger cities, in order to spread knowl-
edge of our problems, of our resources and our limitations, to
152 OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES [Nov.,
promote mutual acquaintance, comparison of views and discussion
of methods. It was pointed out that neither the difficulties nor
the expense of travel stand in the way. It was said with no little
force that not a single difficulty can be stated which would reflect
any credit on those who admit much force in it. City Conferences
in our charities would serve our city charities just as the National
Conference serves our national charities. The immense resources
of our agencies of relief are not used adequately, because we are
not well coordinated. To borrow a figure happily introduced in
one of the section meetings, a City Conference may be likened to
an assembling plant where the parts of the automobile are put
together, and the machine is made ready for operation. A City
Conference of Catholic Charities assembles leaders, agencies, ex-
perience, talent, and coordinates them in a way to promote efficiency
and development.
But one city occurs to mind wherein an attempt has been made
to establish a City Conference, that is St. Louis. The report on its
organization made at the National Conference, showed that it had
to survive many gratuitous difficulties before its existence was made
at all secure. But one diocese occurs to mind wherein there is
established a Diocesan Conference, Pittsburgh. There are possibly
fifteen dioceses in the country which have Diocesan Directors of
Charity. It would seem that the creation of either city or diocesan
conferences might fall happily within the jurisdiction of such di-
rectors.
The discussion of this step in organization brought out many
interesting things. It represented the City Conference rightly in-
deed as a great and impressive assembling of our charity interests,
as a training school in writing and speaking, as a factor which
would win over to the cause of charity many who are indifferent
to it, and as the prolific source of a very profitable literature of relief.
If the enthusiasm of the delegates to the Conference survives the
inroads of time, we may hope to see the impulse toward the estab-
lishment of City Conferences develop much strength within the next
few years.
VI.
The Conference voted unanimously at its concluding session
in favor of the creation of a National Catholic Charities monthly.
The resolution as a whole was as follows :
I 9 i4-] OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES 153
Resolved, That a permanent body of five members of the
National Conference of Catholic Charities be established for
the dissemination of correct information, and the defence of
the legitimate claims of Catholic charity in principle as well
as in practice.
That this committee be known as the Educational Committee
of the National Conference of Catholic Charities.
That its chief aim be to collect information, and to receive
the same concerning every branch of Catholic charitable activ-
ity throughout the world, but more especially in the United
States, for the purpose of diffusing such useful information
among Catholic people, and of arousing their interest, as well
as enlisting their support in this good work.
That a National Conference of Catholic Chanties magazine or
periodical be edited under the direction of this permanent com-
mittee, to be issued monthly or bimonthly during the year to
subscribers throughout the country.
That this Educational Committee consist of the Right Rev-
erend President and the Reverend Secretary of the Conference,
together with three members to be designated by the Executive
Committee.
That the whole Conference pledge its support to this period-
ical, as a medium of information and encouragement in the work
common to all its members.
The Conference expressed the same mind as regards a monthly
publication in 1910. It had been anticipated by the national meet-
ing of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Richmond in 1908, when
that thoroughly representative body declared itself in favor of a
monthly publication devoted to our Catholic Charities.
The St. Vincent de Paul Society has published a quarterly
for the past eighteen years. The demand for a periodical of more
frequent appearance which will work close to the whole frontier
line of modern charities, has been strong and definite. The St.
Vincent de Paul Society held a meeting during the days of the
National Conference, and unanimously voted in favor of converting
the Quarterly into a monthly. It took steps to work with a com-
mittee of the National Conference for the purpose of bringing both
actions to a common issue, and of assembling all of our charity
forces to the support of a single publication which will represent
them. This action of the St. Vincent de Paul Society equalled its
noblest tradition in its spirit of unselfish zeal.
The publication which both organizations have in mind, is to be
154 OUR CATHOLIC CHARITIES [Nov.,
devoted exclusively to the technical charities of the Catholic Church.
It would devote itself to all Catholic charities in many ways not
heretofore thought of or attempted. It would aim professedly to
inform its readers of vital movements within the Church and out-
side of it : to publish detailed information concerning all particular
works and movements in its field. It would devote itself to the
encouragement of the development of the literature of relief in its
four fundamental aspects of investigation, interpretation, direction,
and inspiration. 1 Such a publication once it were well established,
would serve every good purpose of the modern press.
VII.
We believe that we foster the noblest concept of Christian
charity that animates the modern social conscience anywhere. We
are certain that we obey the law of God in working among the poor,
and that at the same time we serve the highest purposes of human
progress. We realize that this work is exacting as well as impera-
tive, and that there is no choice left with the Christian other than
that of doing it nobly and with consecration. However powerful
our motives and exalted our sanctions, we shall never be released
from the duty of seeking the best in human wisdom to help us in our
task. It is the spoken hope and the cherished ambition of the
National Conference of Catholic Charities to serve all of these pur-
poses in a way creditable to both our faith and our cherished aims.
1 See The Literature of Relief, in the October, 1912, CATHOLIC WORLD.
WALTER SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL.
BY W. H. KENT, O.S.C.
HE present year of grace, 1914, now nearing its close,
has been notable for a number of very various cen-
tenary anniversaries. And those who are fain to
follow the new fashion of celebrating such occa-
sions, may well be bewildered by the abundance
of conflicting claims on their attention, for there are centenaries
of peace and war, of learning and letters, of events that mark
an epoch in civil or religious history. Thus, to take but a
few instances, some are commemorating the hundredth anni-
versary of the Peace of Ghent, or of the restoration of the
Jesuits, while others, looking further back, are celebrating the two
great victories of the Gael at Clontarf in 1014, and Bannockburn in
1314, or the birth of Friar Roger Bacon seven hundred years ago.
But for lovers of literature, and, we may add, for students of
religious history, one of the most interesting and significant of
all these anniversaries is the centenary of Sir Walter Scott's great
historical romance, which was first published, as we need hardly say,
anonymously in the summer of 1814. The year that saw the first
appearance of Waverly may well be accounted an epoch in the
history of English literature. And now that the book, with all its
goodly company, has stood the test of time, and still holds its own,
we are, or should be, in a position to form a just estimate of its
worth and significance.
We are well aware that some fastidious critics are disposed
to disparage Walter Scott and his writings, and even dispute his
claim to- be accounted a great man. His metrical romances, we may
be reminded, are not poetry at all ; his prose is not of a high order ;
and his stories, however interesting, to an earlier and less critical
generation, can scarcely be read in these days. In a word, they
would have us believe that this great master of historical romance
is now a spent force or a fallen idol. Such things are freely said
in these days, when critics seem to claim a larger license of audacity
than that which Horace allowed to the old poets and painters. But
admirers of the master, though they may be amused or indignant,
can afford to regard these utterances without any alarm. And, if
156 SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL [Nov.,
need be, they can confirm their own faith, and confound the critics
by the consideration of a few significant facts and figures.
There can be no doubt that many other authors have really
suffered the fate which is said to have befallen Walter Scott
and his writings. It will often happen that books of little or no
real worth enjoy a season of fleeting popularity. And others, again,
that have genuine merit sooner or later go the same way; because
they are but the rude efforts of a pioneer who is breaking new
ground, and those who come after him can profit by his example
and improve on his methods. Now, when we remember the im-
mense number of novels and historical romances that have been
written in the past hundred years, many of them by writers of rare
gifts, it could scarcely surprise us to find that something of this
kind had happened to Waverly, and the rest of the famous series.
The once popular author might still retain the credit of opening
a new path in literature. But men of the present day would have
no need of his books when something better was available. This
is, perhaps, only what might be anticipated by some foreign student
of English literature, having some acquaintance with its history, and
knowing how much has been written in the past hundred years, but
without any evidence as to what is being read at the present day.
But is it really the fact that the once popular Waverly novels
have been superseded, and are now become food for oblivion?
The answer is not far to seek. For we have only to glance at the
shelves in any bookseller's shop, or to look at the lists of the various
new popular libraries and cheap series of reprinted classics, to find
an embarrassing abundance of fresh editions of these forgotten
novels. Certainly, if our modern novelists have really surpassed
and supplanted Sir Walter and his works, it must be confessed
that the publishers and booksellers of the present day are not equally
wise in their generation. For why in the world should they waste
their substance in . printing and publishing these endless editions
of books that no one wants and no one reads? A candid inquirer
who begins by looking at the facts for himself, will more reasonably
argue that this abundant supply must be taken to indicate a very
considerable demand for the novels, and, making every allowance for
copies that remain unsold and books that are bought and never read,
it seems safe to conclude from the continued issue of so many edi-
tions of all sizes and prices, that the Waverly novels are still very
widely read after the lapse of a hundred years. And the mere
fact that these old books should thus maintain their ground in spite
1914.] SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 157
of all the changes of popular taste and fancy, and in the midst of a
great and growing crowd of younger rivals, shows plainly enough
that they belong to the true literature which the world will not
willingly let die.
There are some books that win a passing popularity for some
considerable time, though competent critics will not admit their
merit. But it is safe to say that only those that are really great
books will survive so long as this. And Scott is one of those whose
genius has been recognized both by the high priest of criticism and
the voice of the people. How high he still stands, may be seen from
the fact that a leading literary critic of the present day has ex-
pressed the deliberate opinion that the four greatest novelists in
the English language are Henry Fielding, Walter Scott, Jane
Austen, and Charles Dickens. And if others with equal right to
speak as experts might possibly support the claims of Thackeray
or Charlotte Bronte to rank with them, few would be disposed to
refuse Scott a place in this select company. It may be remarked,
moreover, that of the above four names, Dickens alone is likely to
enjoy a wider popularity than Walter Scott. Hence, if we combine
the testimony of critics with the favor of the people, it will be seen
that the author of Waverly must be one of the very first of English
novelists.
It may be said that the fact that a book is widely read and
highly praised by the best critics, does not always show that it is
really a favorite. For some books may be read as a duty rather
than a delight. And even a novel may be read as a lesson in history
or literature, or because it is a work that one is supposed to read.
Moreover, a critic may feel constrained to acknowledge high merit
in a book, though it does not give him pleasure. But it can hardly
be said that this is generally the case with Scott's novels. It is not
always easy to analyze one's own motives. And if some read
certain books because of a real, or imaginary duty, they may also
say they like a book because it is supposed to be the correct thing
to do so. Even the pattern of propriety, Mrs. Pendennis, who would
have shrunk from a conscious falsehood, said she liked Shakes-
peare and didn't. But some of us need have no fear of any such
sacrifice of truth to literary convention, when we profess our un-
failing delight in Scott's novels. If, as the proverb has it, " the
proof of the pudding is the eating," the proof of the praise is the
reading. And to read a book again and again is surely the best
proof that we take delight in it, and love it for its own sake. This
158 SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL [Nov.,
has certainly been the present writer's own experience with the
works of Scott and Thackeray and Dickens. But he would be
sorry to try the same plan with some more modern fiction. To read
some books once is to read them once too often.
It may be well to put this point first, for it is on this that
there is most misunderstanding. And after all it is the primary
function of works of this kind to give pleasure to the reader. To
adapt the philosophical definition of beauty to this particular form
of literary art, we may say that a good novel is one that is read
with pleasure. If the book conveys moral lessons or historical
knowledge, but is dull and dreary, it has missed its mark, and cannot
be called a good novel, nor can its moral or historical lessons avail
to justify it. For they can do little good while the book remains
unread. And if they are to find readers on their own merits, they
had far better be delivered apart as simple lectures or exhortations.
We can welcome a true work of art which pleases and instructs or
edifies at the same time. And an author who can give us this de-
serves the praise bestowed by the poet in the familiar line :
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci.
But it is idle for a book which is merely useful to pretend
to please when it doesn't. Such books are only calculated to create
a prejudice against those of a better class, and give one the impres-
sion that instructive or edifying books must needs be dull and
wearisome to the reader. And partly from this cause, partly from
the misleading reports of readers, who for one reason or another
were incapable of appreciating his merits, too many of those who
have not made acquaintance with Scott, have formed a false im-
pression of the character of his writings. No doubt there is a
subjective element in the various judgments passed on books or other
works of art. There are differences in natural capacity on the part
of readers, as well as on the part of authors. All have not the same
natural or acquired tastes. And some may corrupt their taste by
injudicious reading. But the pity is that many of those who could
best appreciate the beauties of such an author as Walter Scott,
may be kept from his works by the reports of those who fail to
understand him.
It is something of a relief to turn from these blind guides, and
think of the vast multitude of readers who have found unfailing
delight in these books during the past hundred years. Even if
1914.] SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 159
this were all that he had done, it is surely no mean thing for one
man to have given so much pure pleasure to his countrymen and to
many others in every land. But it would be a great mistake to
imagine that only those who read his books owe a deep debt of
gratitude to Walter Scott, and have good reason to honor the
memory of the man who gave Waverly to the world a hundred
years ago. For besides this we have to reckon up all that has been
done by the indirect influence of his writings. And even if we
look for a moment at literature alone, we may easily see how much
more would have been lost to us if Waverly and the rest of that
goodly series had never been written. Those who know these
works well, and who also know something of the glories of later
literature, can trace the influence of Scott on many of its best
and brightest pages. That influence is naturally most obvious in
later English novels and historical romances, but it is by no means
confined to the field of fiction or to one land alone. Some readers
may remember how greatly the Northern novelist was gratified,
when Alessandro Manzoni told him that he himself had first been
moved to write historical romance by the example set in the Waverly
novels. And the Italian master's candid acknowledgment of his
indebtedness was immediately repaid by a generous and graceful
compliment. For Sir Walter answered that he should henceforth
regard / Promessi Sposi as his greatest achievement.
After his own realm of romance, it is in the field of historical
studies that the influence of Scott has had the most conspicuous
and far-reaching effect. And if it were possible to eliminate from
this branch of English literature everything that owes its origin,
directly or indirectly, to the Waverly novels, a large mass of mer-
itorious works would disappear altogether, and many others would
be notably diminished or changed in character and contents.
Here it may be well to add that while later English and Scottish
historical literature owes much to this master of romance, more
recent research in this field has enabled the critics to detect not
a few mistakes or inaccuracies in his vivid pictures of the past.
To some this might seem to diminish, if not to destroy, the his-
torical value of his stories. But while it is well to have these mis-
takes of the novelist and of earlier histories set right by the more
exact methods now in use, our scientific historians in their turn may
still have something to learn from Scott's moving romances. And
if he sometimes falls short of the accuracy in detail demanded by
critical science, in point of impartiality he is, on the other hand,
160 SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL [Nov.,
superior to not a few professional historians. For these writers,
in spite of their desire to be accurate and scientific, are too often
biassed, however unconsciously, by their historical theories and re-
ligious beliefs or political opinions. Hence, their pictures of men
with whom they are in sympathy are real and true, while the figures
of their opponents are fictitious or distorted. But the true artist
has no use for monstrosities and abstractions. And the truth of art
saves the truth of history.
We have a notable example of this in Old Mortality, which
deals with a stormy period of civil strife and religious fanaticism
and persecution, where an historian can scarcely escape doing some
injustice to one side or the other. Moved by his own sympathies,
he is only too likely to enlarge on the crimes and cruelty of his
enemies, and extenuate the offences of his friends. He is thus, in
too many cases, an artist in black and white, or in Ruskin's forcible
phrase, " in lampblack and lightning." Thus the great Whig his-
torian of this period leaves us with the impression that the followers
of Claverhouse were monsters of iniquity, while their Cameronian
victims were like sheep in the fangs of ravening wolves. Tory
critics, on the other hand, leave us with the belief that fanatical
crime and cruelty was punished with righteous severity. But the
picture painted by the master of romance leaves a more impartial
impression. For the reader can recognize a true nobility of char-
acter in both the contending parties, and sympathizes in turn with the
wrongs endured by the victims on both sides. In this respect this
vivid masterpiece of romance might well serve as a pattern for
historians.
This historical quality of Sir Walter's work should have a
special interest for Catholic readers, for it was by this power
of painting a faithful and impartial picture of the past that he was
enabled to play an important part in the great religious revival, and
though no such result was foreseen or desired by him, his writings
were, however indirectly, the means of bringing many thousands
of his fellow-citizens into the Catholic fold. Some readers may
wonder how this can be true of books written by one who lived and
died a Protestant, and was by no means free from a traditional
prejudice against Popery. But the statement can present no diffi-
culty to those who are familiar with the obvious historical and
causal connection between the Romantic movement in art and letters
and the Catholic Revival. No one who has studied this story, can
doubt that the influence of the literary and artistic movement on the
1914-] SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 161
religious renaissance, was as real as the influence of Voltaire and
Rousseau on the men of the Revolution. As a general rule, the
historical effect wrought by books is only rightly appreciated in later
years. But in the case of Walter Scott, the influence of his works
on the religious movement was felt and frankly acknowledged at
the time by the great Oxford leader.
On this point it may be of interest to cite the testimony of
Cardinal Newman in a paper originally published in an Anglican
review, and subsequently reprinted in the first volume of his Essays
Critical and Historical. In this paper on the Prospects of the
Anglican Church, Newman is reviewing the various causes which
contributed to the remarkable revival of Catholic doctrines and
principles in England, and the surprising success of the movement
then in progress. And this is what he has to say on the part played
by the romantic writings of Sir Walter Scott :
During the first quarter of this century a great poet was
raised up in the North, who, whatever were his defects, has
contributed, by his works in prose and verse, to prepare men
for some closer and more practical approximation to Catholic
truth. The general need of something deeper and more at-
tractive than what had offered itself elsewhere, may be con-
sidered to have led to his popularity ; and by means of his
popularity he re-acted on his readers, stimulating their mental
thirst, feeding their hopes, setting before them visions which,
when once seen, are not easily forgotten, and silently indoc-
trinating them with nobler ideas, which might afterwards be
appealed to as first principles. Doubtless there are things
in the poems and romances in question of which a correct
judgment is forced to disapprove; and which must be ever a
matter of regret; but contrasted with the popular writers of
the last century, with its novelists, and some of its most ad-
mired poets, as Pope, they stand almost as oracles of Truth
confronting the ministers of error and sin. 1
This is surely one of the highest tributes ever paid to a great
writer. And for some of us may well outweigh all the words of
the modern minor critics who decry Walter Scott and his writings.
It might be possible for a keen observer to form this favorable
judgment of the effect produced by these romantic poems and
novels, even though he had not himself felt their fascination. For
though such a man might have only come upon the books in maturer
1 Essays Critical and Historical, vol. i., p. 267.
VOL. C II
162 SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL [Nov.,
years when his mind was already formed, he might still be able
to estimate the effect they would be likely to have on other and
younger readers. But it may be of interest to note that this was
not the case with Newman, who could speak on this matter from
his own personal experience. Thus we find him in 1871 writing
as follows to James Hope- Scott, who had just sent him a copy of
his abridged edition of Lockhart's Life of Scott:
Thank you for your book. In one sense I deserve it; I
have ever had such a devotion, I may call it, to Walter Scott.
As a boy, in the early summer mornings, I read Waverly and
Guy Mannering in bed, when they first came out. At five it
was time to get up. And long before that, I think when I was
eight years old, I listened eagerly to the Lay of the Last
Minstrel, which my mother and aunt were reading aloud.
When he was dying I was continually thinking of him, with
Keble's words :
If ever floating from faint earthly lyre.
It has been a trouble to me that his works seem to be so
forgotten now. Our boys know very little about them.
From this it will be seen that Newman was one of the very
first readers of Waverly, and thus came under the spell of the
master at an early and impressionable age. And those who are
familiar with the Cardinal's own writings, know how his interest in
Scott's works still remained with him in later life. He was read-
ing Guy Mannering in his early boyhood when it first came out. And
after the lapse of half a lifetime, we find him quoting the same
book with happy effect in the first of his Lectures on the Present
Position of Catholics in England. His intimate familiarity with
the Waverly novels is turned to still better account in the mem-
orable quotation from The Fortunes of Nigel, which comes as a
climax to his caustic commentary on the Kingsley correspondence.
And even in such an abstruse philosophical work as The Grammar of
Assent, an apt quotation from Peveril of the Peak serves to illus-
trate his theories on the subject of Natural Inference.
As the above letter to Hope- Scott shows us, Newman's per-
sonal devotion to Scott had in it an element of gratitude. This
is clearly seen in the allusion to the lines in which Keble asks the
prayers of those readers who have derived any profit from his writ-
ings. And we may well believe that Newman's prayers had some
1914.] SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 163
share in bringing Sir Walter's own family into the Catholic
fold.
The part played by Scott's writings as a contributory cause of
the Catholic Revival, has thus been traced for us in sympathetic
terms by Newman himself and his disciples and biographers. But
it may be remarked that the connection has been as clearly seen
and as forcibly described by one who regards the whole movement
with very different eyes, to wit, that typical British Protestant,
George Borrow. In the course of his polemical appendix to the
book of that name, the Romany Rye gives full vent to his hatred of
Popery and priestcraft and Jacobitism. When he is denouncing
the Catholic movement at Oxford and elsewhere, he insists that
the writings of Walter Scott are the fons et origo mail. And when
he is confronted with the objection that the Popery, at any rate,
came not from Scott but from Oxford, his answer is ready to hand.
Now, what these honest folks say is, to a certain extent,
founded on fact; the Popery which has overflowed the land
during the last fourteen or fifteen years has come immediately
from Oxford, and likewise some of the Jacobitism ; Popish and
Jacobite nonsense, and little or nothing else having been taught
at Oxford for about that number of years. But whence did
the pedants get the Popish nonsense with which they have
corrupted youth? Why, from the same quarter from which
they got the Jacobite nonsense with which they have inoculated
those lads who were not inoculated with it before Scott's
novels.
And speaking, as it would seem, of that sermon which Newman
always regarded as the beginning of the movement, Borrow says
with bitter scorn, " Oh ! that sermon which was the first mani-
festation of Oxford feeling, preached at Oxford some time in the
year '38 by a divine of a weak and confused intellect, in which
Popery was mixed up with Jacobitism. The present writer
remembers perfectly well on reading some extracts from it at the
time in a newspaper, on the top of a coach, exclaiming, 'Why, the
simpleton has been pilfering from Walter Scott's novels !' "
As might be expected, Borrow does not omit to notice the fact
that as one result of the movement to which his writings had con-
tributed, Walter Scott's own descendants had eventually become
Catholics. To us, this naturally appears an appropriate reward
for the good that has thus been done by his means, or as a blessing
won for the master's family by Newman's grateful prayers. But
164 SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL [Nov.,
Borrow, regarding the matter from his Protestant standpoint, sees
it in another light, and considers it a Divine judgment on the
house of a man who had done so much harm by helping in the
revival of Popery.
As we recall the great novelist's services to the Catholic cause,
and this bitter abuse which it has brought on his devoted head, it
is a satisfaction to reflect that the first fit critical appreciation of his
life and works came from a Catholic hand. Readers of Macaulay's
life may remember how the Whig historian was asked to review
Lockhart's Life of Scott in the Edinburgh, and how he declined
the task for very sufficient reasons. With a just sense of his own
limitations, he confessed that the critical appreciation of works
of art was not his strong point; and as a review of Lockhart's
book must be in great part an appreciation of Scott's novels, the
objection was not easy to answer. But even if this were not suf-
ficient, Macaulay felt that his own estimate of Sir Walter's char-
acter was not one that could be appropriately .printed at such a time
in a Scottish review. It was suggested that Jeffrey might be asked
to write the article. But whatever may have been the reason the
result was that no such article was written for the Edinburgh, and
for some other reason, possibly the difficulty felt in criticizing or
praising Lockhart's book in his own organ, the Quarterly also re-
mained silent. (Thus the first important review was Carlyle's
article in the London and Westminster Review, subsequently re-
printed in his Miscellanies, vol. iv.) This is certainly a characteris-
tic piece of vigorous and original writing. But as a review of the
biography and as an estimate of its subject, it is eminently unsatis-
factory. Admirers of Lockhart's great biography, now very gener-
ally regarded as second only to Boswell's Johnson, must feel that the
critic has misjudged a masterpiece, and lovers of Scott will marvel
yet more at the hard fate of their hero in the hands of this advocate
of hero-worship. If the other reviews had remained silent before
Carlyle spoke, now, at any rate, there was need of some rejoinder
to this literary miscarriage of justice. And the answer came ap-
propriately enough from the pen of a Catholic critic.
So far, when we have had occasion to quote the opinions of
Newman or Carlyle or George Borrow, we are only referring to
books that are widely read, and familiar to many of our
readers. But we are afraid that comparatively few will at once be
able to identify this critical rejoinder to Carlyle's article on Scott
and Lockhart. For this reason it will be well to explain that we
1914.] SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 165
are speaking of the paper on Sir Walter Scott which the late Mr.
Thomas Arnold contributed to the pages of the Rambler in May,
1860. The critic, as the reader may remember, was the Catholic
son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and the brother of Matthew Arnold.
The writer in the Rambler begins by noting the remarkable
fact that " since the appearance of the biography of Sir Walter
Scott by his son-in-law in 1835, none of the leading reviews, with
one exception, have attempted either a comprehensive criticism
of the work itself, or a thorough analysis of the character of its
subject " that one exception, as we have seen, was Carlyle's
paper. " The Westminster Review alone," says Mr. Arnold, " pub-
lished as early as 1838, before the publication of the concluding
volume of the Life, a long and remarkable paper on Scott from the
pen of Carlyle. This article has since been reprinted among the
writer's miscellaneous works. Yet, striking and suggestive as it is,
and graphic as are many of its touches, we are not sure that the reti-
cence of other journals was not a wiser course than the hasty verdict
of the Westminster."
There is no need to linger on Mr. Arnold's vindication of
Lockhart's labors as a biographer, or on his critical appreciation
of Scott's own writings. But it may be worth while to cite one
striking passage designed as an answer to Carlyle's verdict on the
merely worldly character of Scott's ambition. " One knows not,"
says Carlyle, " what idea worthy of the name of great, what
purpose, instinct, or tendency that could be called great, Scott ever
was inspired with. His life was worldly: his ambitions were
worldly. There is nothing spiritual about him; all is economical,
material, of the earth earthy."
Against this Mr. Arnold shows how Scott was dominated by
a lofty idea of patriotism, and of upholding the social fabric in
which his own lot was cast. And, after this, he gives us the fol-
lowing striking account of the part played by three great men of
letters in a critical period of English history :
If England [he says] is still " a land that freedom chose;" if
in her national life there is no discontinuity, but the past and
present still mingle with and temper one another in an in-
extricable network of links and fibres ; if we would rather have
our old England than belong to any nationality in the world,
though perfected and organized after the most approved revolu-
tionary mold, we must remember that it was these idealess,
soulless worldlings, who are the object of Mr. Carlyle's dis-
:66 SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL [Nov.,
paraging sentences the Scotts, and Burkes, and Johnsons
who, winning the intellectual battle saved their country even
from engaging, much more from sinking, in the internecine so-
cial strife which ruined France. First, when the elements
were getting electric, but the storm was still far off, came the
English Johnson, confounding, like another Socrates, the Soph-
ists who were laboring to import and naturalize the Voltairian
philosophy, and securing for the cause of the old and received
ideas that intellectual ascendency among the upper ranks of so-
ciety which in France the scoffs of Voltaire and the heavy metal
of the encyclopedia had transferred to the side of skepticism.
Next, Burke, the Irishman, when the thunder-cloud first broke,
stood firm against the exciting influences of the heated atmos-
phere; and addressing himself especially to the political ques-
tion, demonstrated how empty and delusive were the current
cries, how sordid the motives of their utterers ; and predicted,
with marvelous sagacity, the exact course of declension which
the revolution would take. The last among these heroes of
order was the Scotchman, Sir Walter Scott. In a somewhat
different province of human affairs, he fought substantially the
same battle which Johnson and Burke had fought before him.
The elemental strife was now raging with doubtful event, and
all the massiveness of his character, all the force of his will,
all the resources of his mind, were employed to sustain British
society under the exhausting struggle, to harden and confirm
the old inveterate pertinacity of the race, to speak words of
encouragement in dark days, and raise high the song of vic-
tory when fortune smiled once more. Of such a man it is not
true to say, as Mr. Carlyle has said, that there is "nothing spirit-
ual " about him ; that all is " of the earth earthy." True, your
Atlas makes less noise than your Enceladus or Briar eus; but
these will, sooner or later, be whelmed under Mount Etna,
and heard of no more, while the pillar which supports a world,
the moral prop which stays society from rushing into ruin
and collapse, will be valued more and more with the lapse
of years, and consecrated to perpetual honor by the grateful
veneration of posterity.
Mr. Arnold, it may be added, attributes Carlyle's failure to
appreciate Scott to the philosopher's theory on the true functions
and dignity of a man of letters. " The author of Sartor Resartus
and of Past and Present, would fain have invested the modern writer
with the attributes of a Hebrew prophet; despairing of religion,
he would have set up literature as the guide of life, made the author
1914-] SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL 167
the only authentic preacher, and the publication of a book synony-
mous with the evangelization of a people." A man holding this
lofty, if somewhat exaggerated idea of literature, might well be dis-
posed to misjudge one who apparently wrote books for no better
object than that of winning wealth and fame for himself by giving
pleasure to his readers. And even to some who do not take such
a high line as Carlyle, it might seem that Scott lived on a lower
plane than those writers whose main purpose it is to edify or instruct
their countrymen.
But, to go back to a topic on which we have already touched, it
may be remarked that these admirable ends are far more likely
to be served by a true artist exercising his gifts in their most
natural way, under the inspiration of genius and according to the
laws of his art, than by one who is preoccupied with other con-
siderations. A story written for the purpose of imparting moral or
religious principles, or illustrating a period of history, will almost
inevitably fail to secure its effect. But these novels and poems,
which apparently aimed only at that pleasure in fair forms which
is the native end of, art, have really had a far-reaching effect on his-
torical studies, and as Mr. Arnold and Cardinal Newman have
shown us, have helped to sustain the state in an hour of danger,
and have contributed to a great religious revival. And the reason,
as we have seen, is this, that the truth of art secures the truth of
history.
The instinct of the true artist will save him from the pitfalls
that beset the polemical historian. And we may see this clearly
enough, when we contrast the Catholic influence of Scott's novels
with those pages in which Borrow's otherwise admirable books are
marred by his hereditary hatred of Popery. Turn from those to
the other pages where he draws his pleasing pictures of the tramps
and gypsies whom he knew and loved so well, and you recognize the
hand of an artist, and feel that the likeness is true to life. But when
he shows us the solemn absurdities of the " man in black," we feel
that he is dealing in monstrosities and abstractions. It is evidently
meant to be a hard hit at Popery. But the discerning Catholic
reader will only regret to see a man of such real ability beating
the air and making himself ridiculous. This poor piece of polemical
but unhistorical romance was obviously designed to vindicate Prot-
estantism, but it is easy to see why it is hopelessly ineffective, while
Scott's romances, which were not written to promote Catholicism,
really had that desirable result.
i68 SCOTT AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL [Nov.,
Much the same may be said of the excellent moral influence
exerted by Walter Scott's writings. In this he presents a pleasing
contrast to too many modern novelists. But here, again, there is
no reason to suspect him of any desire to pose as a moral teacher
who writes for the purpose of edification. And for this very reason
he was all the more likely to fulfill that useful office. For it is
enough that the author is a good man and true to himself. For his
work is in a manner himself, and gives faithful expression to the
noble ideas by which he is inspired. It must be remembered, more-
over, that whatever may be its beauty of outward form and musical
language, a literature which is tainted with immorality and exerts
an evil influence in so far falls short of artistic perfection. For
the beauty of true art, like that of the king's daughter, is not only
in the fair form of words and the harmony of sweet sounds that are
pleasing to the ear. It is likewise within, in the beauty of fair
thoughts and noble ideals and harmony with everlasting law.
Judged by this standard, the work of Walter Scott may rightly
claim a higher place than much of that modern literature which
a mere sensuous criticism would set above him. And those who
are familiar with his writings, may well rejoice in the fact that in
spite of the crowd of younger rivals by which they are surrounded,
they still hold their own after the lapse of a hundred years. For
when we come to compare them with some of our modern novels,
we can hardly do better than give a new application to Newman's
words, and say that whatever fault may be found with the poems and
romances of Walter Scott, when contrasted with the popular writers
of the present century, "they stand almost as oracles of truth con-
fronting the ministers of error and sin."
THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL.
BY ANNIE JOLLIFFE.
HE object of my great curiosity for sometime was an
old door set in a crumbling, smoke-begrimed wall,
which formed the end of a short alley, called Ivy
Court, turning out of a street which I frequented
daily. The door had once been green, now the little
paint which was left was of a dull brownish color. There had been
some ornamental stone work in the bricks above, but this had fallen
down, and weeds were growing out of the interstices. There was
nothing very remarkable about wall or door ; why it should interest
me so much I did not know. Perhaps because I was lonely, and my
life so strange at that time. I had been brought up in a bright, happy
home, with every luxury money could buy, every wish gratified
almost before it was expressed by loving parents who were devoted
to me, the only child left to them out of a large family. I fully re-
turned their affection, though I think I feared, more than loved, my
father. For there were times when I could tell there was some secret
which made my mother silent and sad, and my father stern and cross,
though no trouble or difficulty was ever mentioned before me, and
when I tried to question my mother on the subject, she refused to
enlighten me, and begged me never to ask again, so I went on my
own way, enjoying my careless and happy youth, and I was nearly
twenty before any sorrow came to me.
My father died suddenly ; then I found that he had lost all his
money, leaving myself and my delicate mother to poverty, and a
dishonored name. My time was fully occupied in adapting myself to
my new life, and taking care of my dear mother, who was never
quite the same again, though she tried hard for my sake to be brave
and uncomplaining. In three years she also died, and I was alone.
When all was settled, I found I should have just enough money to
keep me from actual starvation, and it was clear that I must work.
Fortunately I was strong and full of energy, and I made up my mind
to go to a large city, away from all my former friends.
My one talent was drawing: from my earliest years I had
been devoted to it. I had been well taught, and therefore I hoped
I might find some way of making money by my art. This might
170 THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL [Nov.,
have been a work of time and difficulty, but for the kindness of a
former drawing master. At one time years ago my parents
had helped him with money. He and his good wife were most grate-
ful and never forgot us, so that when, in this crisis of my life, I
wrote to him for advice he was only too delighted to help me. He
soon procured me some work, which would not at first be very re-
munerative, but might lead to something better.
So I went to the great city, and by the help of these kind people,
I found a quiet and comfortable lodging, and settled down to my
work, which was at some distance away. Every day I walked
there and back. The nearest and most agreeable way led me through
a street called "Lime Walk;" it was composed of small houses,
occupied, it seemed, by working people; there were little gardens
in front of all the homes, and it amused me to see how differently
they were kept.
I began to take an interest in these poor people ; I knew all the
children by sight, and often talked to them. From this street ran
Ivy Court, which ended in the old wall and the door, which so much
excited my curiosity. It was a very short, narrow, stone-paved
alley, only a few houses on each side, and these appeared to be un-
inhabited and dilapidated. Over the top of the old wall, I could see
tall trees, which led me to believe there was a garden behind it,
but I could see no house, nor did I ever see the door open. I
asked my landlady if she could tell me anything about this
desolate and apparently deserted place ; she knew nothing, and had
scarcely noticed the place, and evidently thought my curiosity
childish.
One spring morning, as I was passing quite early, I saw stand-
ing by the door an old woman, poorly dressed, carrying a basket
of provisions. I hesitated in passing, and saw her pull a string
which I had not noticed before ; a bell tinkled, the door opened of
itself, and the woman passed in, shutting it behind her. " So that
is the inhabitant of the place/' I said to myself, " how abject and
poor she looks."
As I passed through Lime Walk, some months later, my eyes, as
usual, turned to the old wall. I looked at the fine plane trees, and
fancied an old-fashioned garden, and longed to see it. To my great
surprise I noticed that the door really was a little way open ; with-
out thinking of what I was doing, I walked quickly towards it and
stepped inside. I found myself in a square flagged courtyard; to
my left were the backs of houses ; facing me was a wall correspond-
1914-] THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL 171
ing with the one by which I had entered; behind this second wall
must be the garden, for the branches of the trees hung over into
the yard.
On my right, against the back of some tall building, stood a
small dwelling house, only one story high. But how unlike a poor
hovel ! There were two windows, shaded with pretty white lace cur-
tains ; two window boxes of scarlet geraniums made bright spots of
color, a canary was singing joyously. A door in the corner stood
wide open, and just as I was beginning to realize my own rudeness,
a figure appeared in the doorway saying, " Come in, my dear, do
come in."
She was neither poor nor abject; she was a dear little old
lady, with a sweet face, bright brown eyes, and snowy hair waving
on her forehead, surmounted by a dainty cap of white muslin.
She was dressed in black, on her shoulders a white muslin fichu
which crossed in front, and was fastened with an old-fashioned
cameo brooch. She was evidently lame or decrepit, for she leaned
heavily on a stick. As I hesitated to go forward, she cried out,
entreatingly,
" Oh, please come in, my dear. I have waited for you so long."
I followed her, as she slowly made her way through a long
and narrow room, into which the outer door opened. She led
the way to the far end, and begged me to be seated in an easy
chair which stood beside the open window; she herself sank into
another, for her exertions seemed to have left her breathless and
exhausted. Meanwhile I was taking a rapid survey of this mys-
terious place. There was a fireplace at one end of the room farthest
from the door; on one side of it stood a tall cupboard of carved
oak; on the other was an open door, through which I could see a
pretty, well-furnished bedroom.' There were easy chairs, an old-
fashioned chest of drawers, a large table, and one or two small
ones, and a dresser on which was arranged crockery of all kinds
and a grandfather's clock. But what struck me most, as being out
of keeping with the rest of the room, was a very large oil painting
in a massive frame, which occupied most of the wall opposite where
I was sitting. There was time for only a hasty glance, when the
old lady began to talk again.
" To think that you have come at last, my dear, how glad
I am."
" But surely you do not know who I am, so how could you
expect me ? "
172 THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL [Nov.,
" I saw you in a vision of the night, dear. I have waited many
years for my boy to come back to me. Then one night in a dream
I saw a young lady, in a white dress and hat, standing out there in
the yard in the bright sunshine, and I heard a voice saying, This
is the lady who will bring your boy back to you.' I saw it three
nights, so I knew it was true, and I have been watching for you
ever since."
"How long ago was that?"
She shook her head sadly, and answered, " I don't know ; may
have been two years, or may have been ten, I can't remember. I
know it's many years since he went away. I've kept count of that.
Oh, my boy, it's been weary waiting so long for you."
She looked up, over the fireplace, and I saw hanging there an
oil painting of a very handsome young man. "Your son?" I
asked.
" My son, oh, no, he was a gentleman, but more to me than a
son. I loved his mother dearly, and I brought him up from a baby."
Again she became silent, but as I rose to go, she exclaimed,
" You are not going to leave me, you must have some tea, and after
that you can tell me what you know of him."
I thought the poor old lady was slightly mad, and that I had
better humor her.
While she was busied in her preparations, I examined more
closely the large picture. It represented part of the interior of
an old church, with massive pillars and arches, and an ancient
porch, cool and dark. Through the open door, the summer sunlight
formed a striking contrast. On the porch, on a stone bench, sat
an aged man with long white hair and beard; his thin hands were
clasped on the head of his stick; his whole face and figure expressed
weariness and sorrow; his gaze appeared fixed on a grave, bright
with summer flowers, in the churchyard outside. Close by, in the
brilliant sunshine, stood a beautiful girl, and by her side a young
man, the very personification of youth and strength; beyond the
church gate some children were playing on the grass beside the road.
The whole picture was wonderfully attractive.
" Who painted this? " I asked.
" Why him, Harry Melcombe, of course," she answered, in a
tone which implied reproof at my ignorance. "He was only twenty
when he did that, in this very room; it was his studio then. He
thought that picture would make him famous, but nothing came of it,
and now it's mine, and I am keeping it till he comes back. But now
1914.] THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL 173
let us have our tea. I am always at my best after a cup of good tea.
I'm sorry, though, I have no cake for you. I prepared for you at
one time, but you were so long coming. Why was it? "
" I had no vision telling me to come."
" Not before, but you must have had it at last, or why did
you come ? "
Then I told her how much I had been interested in the doorway,
and seeing it open had stepped in to look.
" The gate open," she exclaimed, " then it must have been
unfastened all the morning, and they might have got in! "
She seemed much troubled about this, so to divert her thoughts,
I asked, " Do you live here alone ? "
" Oh, yes."
" But how do you manage about your house, you surely cannot
do the work yourself?"
" No, Sarah Phillips comes in most mornings to clean up and
do my errands. I don't mind her. I've known her all her life;
her mother was cook when I lived with Mrs. Melcombe there,"
pointing to the wall over which the plane trees hung.
" Oh, did you live there once? "
" Yes, till the master died; if you look you can see the place
in that wall where there was a gate that led from the garden to this
studio where my boy used to paint. There is a fine old house in that
garden; when it was sold after the master's death, the entrance
from here was blocked up; they would have this too if they could;
they're trying to turn me out, but they won't. I'm going to be here
till my Harry comes back, please God."
" Does no one come to visit you? " I asked.
" Only Father Morris ; I don't open to anybody else."
" How do you know who is outside, you cannot see ? "
" He and Sarah ring twice, then I pull the string, and so I will
for you, but you must remember to ring distinctly twice."
I now said I really must go.
:< You'll come again soon, and bring him, won't you ? "
" I cannot promise that, but I will come and see you again
if you like."
" Well, well, we can wait, and sometime you will be shown
how to find him. You see it has come true so far; you were sent
to me exactly as I saw."
" I should like to know your name," I said.
" I am Mrs. Kezia Bowen, but they always called me Kippy,
174 THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL [Nov.,
so I must be Kippy to you; it will be good to hear the old name
after so many years ; now what shall I call you ? "
" My name is Vanda Waldegrave."
" Oh, Miss Waldegrave is much too long for me, and I should
not like to call you Vanda ; so let me think I know ! I will call
you 'Comfort,' for you have comforted me to-day, and I am sure
you will in future."
The next day I sought out the good Jesuit Father Morris, and
from him I learned her history. She came of well-to-do parents,
and had a good education, but at sixteen she married, against the
wishes of her friends, a very undesirable man a sea captain. She
traveled about with him, and had a life of trial and many adventures
till his death. At twenty years old she found herself a penniless
widow, in a foreign town. While traveling she met a young man
and woman on their honeymoon, to whom she was able to be of
service. Shortly afterwards the young bride was again taken ill
in a hotel; her distracted husband sent for Mrs. Bowen to nurse
her. The illness proved to be scarlet fever; Mrs. Bowen's good
nursing really saved Mrs. Melcombe's life, and they became much
attached. She lived with them till the wife's death a few
years later, when Harry, her only child, was about a year old.
Kippy promised to be a mother to him, and well she kept her
promise; she took entire charge of him, never leaving him night
or day, devoting her whole life to him. As the boy grew up, he
returned her affection and loved her as a mother. From his earliest
years he showed great talent for drawing, and determined to be an
artist, and from this he never wavered, though his father had
planned quite a different career for him.
Mr. Melcombe was never the same man after his wife's death,
and took little notice of the boy during his childhood, so that as he
grew up there was very little sympathy between father and son.
The boy was not bad or vicious, nor was he as good as his adoring
foster-mother believed, and as time went on he had frequent dis-
agreements with his father. Kippy always did her best to help
him/ and often gave him her own savings to shield him from the
anger of his father when he had been too extravagant.
By the time Harry was twenty he had painted several really
good pictures, and was looked upon as a most promising artist.
Then he had a serious quarrel with his father; no one, not even
Kippy, knew what it was about, but it ended in Harry leaving
home quite suddenly and never returning. Kippy was broken-
1914.] E OLD DOOR IN THE WALL 175
hearted at parting with her darling, but he told her to wait patiently,
and some day he would come back, or send for her, and on that hope
she had lived ever since.
His father did not live long after this; he left an annuity
for the faithful Kippy, and would have given her a nice cottage
to live in, but she begged so hard to be allowed to live in the old
studio that Mr. Melcombe had it made into a dwelling place, and
settled it upon her for life. She never believed her boy was dead,
and was sure when he came back he would look for her there.
When Mr. Melcombe's effects were sold, Kippy tried hard to get
the large picture, which was Harry's greatest work; she found she
could only have it by buying it, and cheerfully devoted all her sav-
ings for the purpose. At one time she was a very active woman,
but prolonged illness had left her crippled and lame, and she never
went out now, except occasionally to Mass.
"Her old friends have died or gone away," he added, " and
she will not admit strangers, so, if she is willing to let you visit her
sometimes, it will be very kind of you to do so."
I told him I had been afraid she was rather mad.
" Oh, no, her mind is all right, but she continually dwells on
this thought of Harry's return, and has a morbid fear of being
turned out of her home. Some years ago when those stores in
front changed hands, they wanted to buy the studio, as it
is built against the back of their premises, and someone called on
Kippy about it. Since then she has lived in fear of letting anyone
come in, but I think you will in other respects find her an interest-
ing and intelligent woman; she is grand in her long and unselfish
devotion to Harrison Melcombe."
After this I went often to see the dear old woman, and became
much attached to her; she was always pleased to see me, and very
grateful for my visits. But it was very pathetic to see her look
at me when I entered her room, and I grew to dread her constant
question, " Any news of my boy ? " and to see her face change from
hopeful expectancy to patient sadness at my reply; but after a
moment she would look up with her sweet smile and say, " Well,
we must wait, and meanwhile my dear Comfort is always
welcome."
The time came round to the anniversary of my first visit to her.
I found she had got quite a little feast for my tea cakes, straw-
berries and cream " to celebrate the first coming of my Comfort,"
she said. As I looked at her attentively during tea, it struck me
176 THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL [Nov.,
that she seemed much older and more fragile, but she was bright
and cheerful as ever. Her talk as usual turned to her boy.
" He'll soon come now, I think, for I don't believe I can live
much longer, and I must see him again before I die."
" But do you not think it is just possible he may be dead? "
I asked. ' You know it is so long since you heard of him."
" Oh, no, his father believed he was dead, but I knew better ;
he would not have left his Kippy without a word; he would have
sent a message, or left it to be sent in case of his death; no, no,
he's alive; and means to come back to me some day; he never
thinks how hard it is for me to wait so long; that was always
Harry's failing, he was so thoughtless."
As winter came on she grew more feeble, but at first refused
to have anyone to stay with her. I managed to bribe Sarah Phillips
to go in frequently, and soon Kippy was glad to give up her little
housework, and by degrees Sarah was installed there altogether.
But Kippy's strength continued to fail rapidly. I installed a
nurse for the night, whilst Sarah Phillips took charge of her in the
day when I could not be there, but every spare moment I devoted
to her. One wet stormy evening, when I had left her comfortably
settled for the night, I set off to walk home. I felt that my poor
old friend would not need me much longer; the end could not be
far off. Arriving at my own door I suddenly remembered a promise
made to a friend to go to a certain shop, and explain about a frame
she very much wanted. " It will do to-morrow," I said, for the
shop was some little distance, and no car would bring me near it.
But at once I thought better of it, and started off.
When I arrived at the shop, a young man, who was about to go
in, stepped back, and held open the door for me to enter. Some-
thing in his face arrested my attention. I seemed to have known
him before. While waiting I wondered who he could be; he was
unmistakably of good breeding, handsome, and distinguished look-
ing. I heard him ordering a frame for a small water color draw-
ing which he had brought. As I glanced idly at the picture which
the shopman was measuring, I saw, to my surprise, that it was
a sketch of the large oil painting in Kippy's room! The shopman
said, "It shall be done to-morrow, sir. What name and address? "
and the answer was " Mr. Harrison Melcombe, Palace Hotel."
Then I knew where I had so often seen the face before in the por-
trait over Kippy's mantelpiece.
I followed him out of the shop, never reflecting how I could
1914.] THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL 177
speak to a stranger, thinking only of Kippy and her longing to see
her boy nor thinking that this young man might not be her lost
darling. As he was waiting to cross the street, my hesitating " I beg
your pardon," caused him to turn in surprise. I don't know how
I began, or in what words I told my story, but somehow I made him
acquainted with the facts of the case.
" You must be speaking of my father," he said; " I know he
lived in this neighborhood in his youth, and that he once painted
a large picture from the sketch you saw, which only came into my
possession when my mother died, a year ago."
" And your father? " I asked. " Oh, surely he is not dead."
" He has been dead ten years."
" Oh, poor old Kippy ! but you must have heard your father
speak of her; you will see her, won't you, and talk to her of him? "
" I will see her gladly, to-night if you like; he never told me
much of his early life, yet I do remember his once saying to me
that if he ever went back to his native city, he should first look up
his dear old foster-mother. He had heard that his father was dead,
and had left everything to a distant relation, so there was nothing
to call him back."
Nothing, I thought, but one patient old woman who trusted in
his promise, and waited year after year for a word from him ! As
we walked on together, he told me how his father had traveled about
the world for some years, and eventually settled down in California,
where he met his wife.
" Did he continue to paint? " I asked.
" No, I believe he gave that up. I fancy he led rather a wild
life before he came to California, and after his marriage he had
enough to do to manage my mother's large estates."
I thought it advisable that he should not see Kippy that night,
so he agreed to meet me in Lime Court early the next
morning. He quite understood my feelings on the subject, and
readily agreed to make the most of that one poor little speech of his
father's, and to take care she should not find out that her boy had
lived in comfort and prosperity for years, without sending her a
word, or even giving her a thought.
When we met at the green door in the morning, I said to him,
"I will go in first and see how she is. What we shall say afterwards
I do not know if you only had a message for her ! We must keep
the truth from her if need be, so that she shall die happy, and mind
you are intelligent about your father's picture and the portrait of
VOL. C. 12
178 THE OLD DOOR IN THE WALL [Nov.,
himself; look at it well as you go through the sitting-room, and
then you can tell her if you think it like him."
But our plans and worries were quite unnecessary. She saw us
pass the window, and as I appeared alone at the door, she cried out,
' You have brought him at last, Comfort; I knew you would.
Come in at once, Harry, my boy."
She raised herself in bed, and throwing her arms round his
neck, she murmured, " God has been very good to spare me till you
came home, Harry, and now I can give you back your big picture ;
aren't you glad I kept it for you? "
He rose to the occasion and answered,
" Very glad, dear Kippy, and I thank you so much for all your
faithful devotions."
She was quite exhausted after that, and lay quite still, till a
slight movement on Harry's part aroused her.
' You won't go away ! You won't leave me again ? Promise
me, it won't be long; I am going fast."
" I promise I will not leave you, Kippy dear," he answered.
" Ah, now, I know you are indeed my boy, that is the way you
used to. speak when you were a child."
She lay still, looking so radiantly happy, with her hand in
Harry's. She would occasionally rouse herself to smile on him,
and once she asked,
" You know your father is dead? "
" Yes."
" You must not feel hardly about him, dear, he believed you
were dead, or he would not have left his money to your cousin.
I hope you are well off, dear boy."
" Yes, very well off."
" That's good, and are you married ? "
" No." She turned to me with a smile. " Was not my vision
true, Comfort? A real comfort she has been to me, Harry, and
you'll look after her when I'm gone, won't you? "
" Indeed I will."
She spoke no more after that, and we thought she was uncon-
scious, but occasionally she opened her eyes to look at us. So we
sat beside her till sunset, when with a slight sigh, and a happy smile
on her face, the faithful spirit passed away. Harry has fulfilled
his promise. We have a house in the country where an honored
place is given to the large picture, and Harry's portrait hangs side
by side with that of the faithful Kippy.
THE VOICES OF THE DEAD.
BY T. J. S.
The Voices of the Dead,
Whose calling from above
Comes as the joy of heaven
To those who fear and love.
"Thou takest, Death, earth's best,
Beggared are we who live ;
For pain that must abide,
What solace canst thou give? "
" I take him not away,
He was but loaned to thee;
And now I make him thine
In lasting charity.
" Silencing call of sense,
His voice shall reign supreme.
From him into thy soul
Shall benediction stream.
" Above the noise of earth,
Above the lust and strife,
His quiet call shall sound,
Leading thee on to life.
" What I am worth to thee
Shall deepen in thy soul ;
Both urge thee in the race
And lead thee to the goal.
" In loyal thought of him,
Now by God's vision blest,
The unseen shall be seen,
And thou shalt know God best."
The Voices of the Dead,
Whose singing low and clear
Comes as the joy of heaven
To those who love and hear.
COMPLETING THE REFORMATION.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
V.
HE history of the modern anti-intellectualist move-
ment, from Kant's time on, is the recurrence of the
same central principle under various guises the su-
periority, namely, of the sentimental over the ra-
tional, the gradual identification of the " real " and
the " true " with the " experienced " and the " felt." It is a tale
that lends itself to a shortened telling, because of its underlying
unity of thought and purpose.
Kant, it will be remembered, separated the intellect from the
will, the speculative reason from the practical. Only by separating
these two powers could he disparage intellectual, and extol moral,
conviction. The end, it would seem, justified the means. And
although Kant's system, as a whole, may be said to have perished
with him, not so its spirit, which still survives the dead body of
doctrine whereof it was once the animating soul. Kant was the
creator of a method rather than the founder of an enduring philos-
ophy, and the method he created consisted in dismembering the
human mind, in divorcing its faculties, in disorganizing its powers.
That method it is which he bequeathed to modern philosophy, and
we shall now see to what lengths it drove his residuary legatees.
Kant lived to see his life work suddenly eclipsed by one not
to be mentioned in the same breath with him for ability, yet around
whose superficial thought the age gathered, as it always does, when
someone says something to its suiting. In 1799, Schleiermacher
reduced religion to sentiment pure and simple, striking off the ad-
jective " moral," as Kant, in his own high-handed way, had stricken
off the adjective " intellectual." We have, said Schleiermacher, a
feeling of absolute dependence on the power that animates and up-
holds the universe. This feeling is the very essence of religion.
Reason may subsequently pry into this feeling, morality may blos-
som forth from it, but neither the rational nor the moral has any-
thing to do with the taproot of religion undefiled. A pure and
perfect harmony, discerned by the listening spirit, hovers around
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 181
all human actions, and " manifests the essence " of the world far
better than the pale white light of intelligence reflects it. Religion,
he said, is just such an aesthetic emotion as this, independent of
reason for its origin, and of morality for its development. How
Kant would have scorned this reduction of religion from a moral
to an aesthetic emotion, especially to that of music, which he class-
ified as " inferior " and " unsturdy." But he himself had not
scrupled to reduce religion from an intellectual idea to a moral
sentiment, so that, in principle, at least, his rebuke of Schleier-
macher would have recoiled inwardly upon himself. The founder
of the " divorcing process " should not complain if his example
was imitated, and an absolute separation decreed between religion
and all things else. Logic is logic, in error as in truth.
It is impossible to calculate the mischief wrought by this falla-
cious separation of sentiment from reason. It is the " original sin "
that vitiates the entire philosophy of the Reform, and makes " com-
mon sense " gasp and stare at the extravagances of view to which it
insidiously led. Do we fear because we tremble, or do we tremble
because we fear? The former, says Professor James, in his theory
of the emotions : it is the tremblings that cause all our fears. He
had to invert the truth of experience and scandalize a common
sense," in this statement, because, like Schleiermacher and Kant, he
imagined that the mind did all its feeling and experiencing down-
stairs, and then ran upstairs to do its thinking two separate opera-
tions which it never intermixed. So we tremble first and fear
afterwards, in theory, though in practise no one yet not even Pro-
fessor James or Professor Lange ever " experienced " that order
of events.
There must be something wrong with the instrument of logic
when it puts the cart before the horse. What is it? As we have
had occasion to point out more than once before, intelligence corn-
penetrates sense, and our rudimentary concepts of the " good," the
" true," the " noxious," and the " pleasant " are practically simulta-
neous with our earliest impressions. Restore this fact of corn-
penetration, banish the fiction of a compartmental mind, and what
becomes of the sentimentalist theory of knowledge and religion?
It falls with the fallacy, the groundless supposition, on which its
whole superstructure is reared. The champions of experience do
not follow it themselves, they lead it into alien paths, and make it
point in the direction they trace out beforehand for it. It was not
enough to disrupt the Church, it would seem the mind, too, had
1 82 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Nov.,
to have its solidarity broken, lest the inner unity survive, after the
outer had been shattered. When Solomon proposed to divide the
child for which the rival mothers contended, it was the real mother
who cried out in anguish No! The spurious claimant does not
appear to have been so disheartened over the prospect of division.
Why should she? It was not her child!
But the " divorce proceedings " did not stop at the separation
of the sentimental and the rational. Religion had yet to be com-
pletely divorced from knowledge, from reality also, and this di-
vision was effected by Albrecht Ritschl, in 1870, when he attempted
to rewrite theology from a purely subjective point of view, treading
over old ground already broken by Kant. The content of one's faith
did not matter, he said, so long as the foundation was sure, and
what is that but an experience of ideal values? He accordingly sub-
stituted " judgments of worth " for " judgments of existence,"
reduced the realities of religion to subjective ideals, and sought
shelter behind the contradiction that a believing heart might coexist
with an agnostic intellect. Christianity was thus made to dwindle
to a set of spiritual impressions, with no physical, historical, or
philosophical background for support. All its relations were sup-
pressed, save those that concern the emotions of the individual.
Christian dogma, so far from being a true, though inadequate,
apprehension of reality, as Catholic theologians teach, became a sort
of mental knight-errantry a pursuit of hazy ideals, forever sought,
yet never to be won. Knowledge ? There could be no real knowl-
edge of religious truths in such an airy view. Christianity is un-
dogmatic, and a man need not trouble to inquire, much less to
believe, that the facts narrated in the Gospels, concerning the person
and work of Christ,- are historically true, or the veriest of inven-
tions. Keep your religion in one chamber of the mind, and your
science in another. Let your intellect be as agnostic as it may, pro-
vided your heart hold true to what your mind discredits. The
insulators are at work on Christianity!
It is the same seeking of an asylum for religion, a house of
refuge for pietism, that dominated the thought of Kant. And it
stands condemned by the very fact that the human mind is a soli-
dary whole which can neither invite nor harbor contradiction. Prot-
estantism is wiping the slate of history clean, to rewrite it in
accord with its own principles. The complex is being simplified,
the part is usurping to itself the place of the whole, and impersonal
objective truth might as well be non-existent, for all the notice
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 183
that is taken of it. Sic volo, sic iubeo: stat pro ratione voluntas!
Was not truth, like the Sabbath, made for man? Well, then, we
will accept so much of it as suits our temperament, and declare the
rest corruption. It is a facile method, but when we inquire into
the authority behind it, we find nothing but arrogance the pre-
sumption, namely, that any and every individual has the ability
to discover for himself the " simple essence " of Christianity.
Will not some of these omniscient beings please pause long enough
to tell us when, where, and how they acquired this extraordinary
ability? Or rather, will not someone first prove that the essence of
the Christian religion is simple? because that is the real question.
To criticize everything but one's own point of view and procedure,
is to make audacity the criterion of truth, supposition the touch-
stone of reality.
Cardinal Newman recounts the fable of a lion, shown through
a baronial demesne by the master of the house. The tables in the
hall fell away into alabaster lion's paws, the mural decorations por-
trayed the king of beasts in every conceivable posture of inferiority
to man. Upon being dismissed, the lion was asked how he had
enjoyed his visit. Very much, he said, only, only things would
have been quite different had lions, and not men, been the sculptors
and the painters. The moral of which, so far as it concerns the
present drift of our theme, is that the sturdiness of Christianity has
been similarly misdealt with by self-assured critics who paint things
not as they are, but as the painters would have them be. They see,
in other w r ords, what they wish to see, no more. The " intent " of
their thinking has not a little to do with the " content " of their
thought.
Professor James went so far, on one occasion, as practically to
identify " wishing " and " willing " with " knowing " and " be-
lieving," when he said that the purpose of a man's thought created
the sum and substance of his thinking. The statement is false,
when thus unduly generalized, and yet we have often wondered if
Professor James was not accurately here describing the mind of the
modern critic, where purpose certainly plays the predominant part,
diminishing the real " content " of ideas, in accord with the preju-
dices or preferences of the analyst. True of minds of his own
type, he made the statement true of all; universalizing what was
particular, extending the psychology of a specially indoctrinated
class to the race at large. His mistake lay in making the indict-
ment general.
184 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Nov.,
Ritschl's attempt to combine agnosticism and religion was
naturally followed by others in the same direction. Fries and Wette
put forth the theory that religion is a sort of " presentiment," in
support of which no rational justification can be offered. The heart
feels, but when the mind tries to analyze this feeling into ideas, the
whole thing evaporates, so they say, and becomes wraith-like. All
that can be done, therefore, is to study the history of this world-old
emotion of man, called religion. And in doing so, care must be
taken to separate the feeling from the ideas in which it struggles to
find expression through the ages. For religion, child of darkness,
is ever striving to array itself as an angel of light, ever endeavoring
to translate its blind emotion into a rational idea. But in vain.
The ideas to which religion gives rise in the course of history are
mere symbols of the unknowable, not an actual growth in knowledge
at all. To recover religion in all its pristine and perpetual purity,
we must look for an original, mysterious emotion or feeling, not for
an idea, bless me! no, not for anything like that! Let's take the
things that come first, first! The history of religion must be re-
written, with all ideas left out contaminations these, that crept
in from philosophy, without anybody's noticing it, till the critics
made the great discovery.
Loisy and Tyrrell were more influenced by this insidious
thought than by anything else. It is the false inspiration of every-
thing they ever imagined or wrote, and had they devoted as much
time to their accepted starting-principle, as they did to elaborating
the conclusions which it suggested, they would have seen that it was
not history that needed to be rewritten, but their own misconception
of it that should have been revised.
For, clearly, it is impossible to regard history as the mere
observation of fact by reputable witnesses. There is no fact
perceived or observed by man, that is not accompanied by some
interpretation, spontaneously, immediately. Intellectual, rational
elements are present in all that a man observes, as well as elements
of sense and physical sight. An inchoative interpretation accom-
panies the perception of every fact. No man does all his thinking,
after he has done his observing. He does his reflective thinking
afterwards, it is true, but reflection is only a prolongation of the
thinking which he did spontaneously, while facts were occurring or
being observed. The intellect is no " detached apparatus," and
only an interested psychology could ever so regard it. " Pure "
thought, " pure " feeling, " pure " observation, pure this or pure
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 185
that, are abstract inventions, philosophical myths. The mind of
man is not a tessellated checkerboard, with one little square for
sentiment, another for ideas, and still others for will, desire, and
purpose. To say, therefore, that feeling occurs independently of
ideas, that intuition goes on without rational apprehension, or that
facts and scenes are observed, without thought having any part in
the process, is to say something so radically at variance with the
truth of psychology and the psychology of truth, that any system,
built upon such a groundless assumption, totters to its fall, of its
own weight.
" Modernism," from top to bottom, is honeycombed with the
fallacious spirit of separatism just mentioned. It is built upon the
general assumption that ideas express feelings, not objects, and
that they rise out of sentiment, only to fall back again into this
their parent sea. Ritschl, Fries, Wette, and Harnack had already
advanced this sentimentalist theory, and Sabatier had gaily dressed
it up for the popular eye, before Loisy and Tyrrell made it their
point of starting, to draw therefrom the conclusion that we are
forever in the presence of two unknowables the Divine and the
human. The dogmatic formulas of the Church, they said, afford us
no real knowledge of God, even partial. They are symbols of the
unknown, which tell us how to act, but reveal not the object of
our seeking in the slightest. In fact, revelation is only an in-
terpretation of our own religious sentiment, not a manifestation
of divine truth, made by the Lord of all to the sons of men. How
is it that men will persist in drawing consequences from a point
of view, without ever submitting to criticism the point from which
the view is taken? There are many reasons, of course, but the
psychological one seems to be that every evolution of thought is
regarded as a real progress, every reaction an advance. The love
of the novel is stronger, apparently, than the love of the lasting
and the true. And the desire to be abreast of the times has led
many to race past truth bruised and battered by the wayside.
Two views more, and we are at the end of our historical sur-
vey. The reader will have noticed that Reformation thought has
been running steadily in a subjective direction for three hundred
years. Philosophy has become idealistic, and realism of whatever
sort has had no one until very recently to do it reverence, and then all
too poorly and without heart. The reigning system all along has
been that of absolute idealism which locates all objects within the
Divine mind, and goes so far as to identify the physical universe
i86 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Nov.,
with the mind of God Himself. " Nothing is but thinking makes
it so." It must be said of this attitude, however, that it still re-
tained the idea of absolute truth, even though it denied the inde-
pendent existence of the physical universe. Beneath change it saw
permanency, and in matter, mind. It refused to court the irra-
tional, it would not pin its faith to the fleeting.
This theory of an absolute mind, this insistence on an un-
changing truth, drew the fire of the pragmatists. It had to go as
part of the old regime, and make way for the new era of the
irrational. Bergson and James proposed in its stead a relative ideal-
ism the doctrine that the world is " mind-in-motion," and that
there is nothing absolute anywhere to be found. According to
Bergson everything is thought matter itself being nothing else
than thought " slowed down " and slackened in its forward paces.
The first and most perfect form of reality, he said, is " becoming,"
" change," " progress," " motion." Any kind of thinking which
would introduce repose or rest into the moving reality of the world,
mutilates the latter's nature, destroys its character. Consequently,
we must regard all speculative ideas as foolhardy attempts to catch
perpetual motion at a standstill. Our notions must be as active
and as changeful as the stream of reality out of which they bubble
forth. Only by keeping them filled with action, like shifting
picture-films, may we hope to catch the fleeting truth, and register
the push and rush of the world to its flying goal. Action is knowl-
edge, knowledge action, and nothing substantial greets us in "the
passing procession of events. We think to act, we do not think
to know.
The late Professor James drew his inspiration from the
same one-sided founts. He identified knowing with doing, re-
duced knowledge to a mere matter of personal utility, and criticized
all intellectual ideas as barren, lifeless, and uninforming. And he
made this criticism appear plausible and effective, by restricting the
idea of vitality to the sense-powers, instead of allowing it to extend
over the whole mind, which is what he should have done, if he con-
sulted truth instead of his own personal preferences. By this ex-
pedient of restriction he triumphed, as all sentimentalists do, with
the unwary. He analyzed very closely the content of religious
experience, and the psychological conditions that govern their oc-
currence. But in doing so he failed to notice that every individual
brings specific ideas to his religious experiences; and that the dif-
ferences in these previously acquired ideas are such as to preclude
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 187
the possibility of the experiences themselves being regarded as
identical in all cases.
This was a serious oversight, for it led him to think that re-
ligious ideas came from the experiences, when, as a matter of fact,
it is the other way round. This oversight was also responsible
for his claiming that religious conversions are all sudden uprushes
from the subconscious, with no specific elements in them whatso-
ever, to distinguish the case of the " holy roller " from that of the
Catholic saint. He investigated only the emotional type of con-
version for which, as a Protestant, he had an inherited preference.
The higher types the intellectual, namely, and the moral, in which
the history of the Catholic Church abounds, he did not take into
account at all, when framing his theory, merely noticing them, so
to speak, in the preamble as he approached his subject.
Luther's doctrine of faith as a " saving experience/' independ-
ent of morality, knowledge, and effort this was for him the glor-
ious essence of religion. Practical utility is the sum and substance
of the religious idea in the history of the human spirit. Religion
has nothing to do with metaphysics, or with a knowledge of God.
Luther and Kant did not do their work thoroughly, he thought,
when they allowed any of the " Roman Catholic metaphysics," even
a shred of rational truth, to survive. And the Reformation will not
be complete, so long as a single " truth of reason " remains unex-
pelled. The world itself must be made to square with Protestant
principles, and be turned into a world of experience only sur-
charged with feeling, overflowing with practical opportunity, plastic
to the individual's touch, rilling all men with its mysterious, irra-
tional, unaccountable urge and driving-power. The anti-intellect-
ualist movement has reached " its lonely peak in Darien." Further,
it would seem, it cannot go. The Reformation has ended explicitly
just where it implicitly began in the irrational. Luther, Kant,
and James shake hands across the years. The " rational " has been
ostracized, " feeling " reigns supreme, Micawber-like we wait for
" something new to turn up," we know not what. And this is
progress !
Professor James' own words are well worth transcribing in
this connection. For a long time he wavered between empiricism
and rationalism, the structural and the dynamic theories of the
world and life. He found himself in a dilemma. The world is
"many " and is " one " at the same time. Which horn of the
dilemma should he choose? " I saw," he says, " that I must either
1 88 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Nov.,
forswear that 'psychology without a soul/ to which my whole psy-
chological and Kantian education had committed me I must, in
short, bring back distinct spiritual agents to know the mental states,
now singly and now in combination, in a word, bring back scholas-
ticism and common sense or else I must squarely confess the solu-
tion of the problem impossible, and then either give up my intel-
lectualist logic, the logic of identity, and adopt some higher (or
lower) form of rationality, or, finally, face the fact that life is
logically irrational." 1 After testing each of the alternatives, Pro-
fessor James decides in favor of the last that life is logically, fun-
damentally irrational. " He hesitates for a long time to accept this
appalling alternative," says Professor Kallen, " but under the in-
spiration of the French Jew, Bergson who, incidentally must be
referred back for the source of his subtle and stupendous (?)
vision to James himself he takes the step." 2
We know of nothing more interesting to the student of human
thought than this " personal confession " of Professor James. It
contains four statements: he finds himself standing at the cross-
roads leading to the "one" and to the "many" respectively; he
makes his choice, turns to the left, and goes down the latter road;
the prejudice of his " psychological and Kantian education," he
admits, "had committed him" to this choice; he waves a parting
salutation to Hegel, Royce, and Bradley the last he saw of them,
they were going down Unity Avenue at a brisk pace, discussing the
" intellectualist " logic of identity, no doubt as he swung into
Variety Street, headed straight for the Dismal Swamp.
Now 7 , we do not blame Professor James a particle for refusing
to accompany his confrere, Professor Royce, down the aristocratic
avenue of absolute idealism. It is too much to be asked to believe
that the road under one's feet, the flowers by the wayside, the
dogs that bay a welcome or a warning, the horses that champ the bits
of their iron lot, the genial sun overhead, the walking-stick in one's
hand, and the " animated dust " that hurries along in the shape of
two highly educated human beings, are all one and the same thing
fundamentally a glorious " unity-in-difference," as it is technically
called.
Reason deserves all the ill things said of it by Professor James,
when thus employed to crowd out the reality of the " many " in the
interest of the " one." Or, should we not say, rather, that the
1 A Pluralistic Universe, William James, p. 208.
2 Boston Transcript, Wednesday, June 16, 1909, p. 26, col. 3, par. 2.
1914-] COMPLETING 7W REFORMATION 189
philosophers who misuse reason, are alone to blame for having
brought it into disrepute ? " Intellectualist " logic of the " identity "
sort he might well forswear, and be none the worse for having for-
sworn it, either. It proves too much and, therefore, nothing. It
grabs at all things, to grasp no one of them fully in the end. It
affords the strange spectacle of a man's reasoning shocking his
reason and scandalizing his " common sense," by the thesis that
the physical world is a world of divine ideas the very mind of God
Himself bared directly to human inspection.
The amount of uncontrolled speculation, like the foregoing,
of which philosophers themselves have been guilty, might well
justify one's exclaiming: Reason! What crimes have been com-
mitted in thy name? A sprightly bit of verse so well and playfully
sums up the effect of this over-stretching of reason, that it may be
quoted in the course of this sober study, without offence to the
literary proprieties, and with no wish to belittle the moderate and
controlled kind of intellectualism which we are here defending.
It is the abuse of reason, not its use, that stands condemned.
PHIL. B.
A message to me from the Oracle came:
" Wouldst know thyself," said she,
To Radcliffe College at Cambridge go,
And study Philosophy B."
I started in with an open mind,
From previous wisdom free,
And fully expected to answer the Sphinx,
When I'd studied Shilosophy B.
From Descartes' clear and distinct idea,
" Je pens-e, done je suis,"
I learned that I was a consciousness,
When I studied Philosophy B.
Spinoza no individuals found:
" All being is one," quoth he ;
So I learned I was nothing if not a la mode,
When I studied Philosophy B.
Then Leibnitz came with his doctrine of force,
To make matter and mind agree,
And a windowless monad I called myself,
When I studied Philosophy B.
190 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Nov.,
I was quite complacent till Locke appeared:
" You're only a blank/' said he,
And I learned I was just an experience,
When I studied Philosophy B.
Now Berkeley came and politely said
There was nothing the matter with me;
So I learned from him I was simply idea,
When I studied Philosophy B.
But Hume took away my conceit, for he proved
I could have no identitee:
A mental modification was I,
That studied Philosophy B.
I'm glad I've a little dog at home,
And I trust he will still know me,
For I don't know who or what I am,
Since I studied Philosophy B. 3
Professor James frankly confesses the prejudicial influence of
his Kantian education, and so well he might. He makes the same
separation between the " empirical " and the " rational " as Kant.
He draws the same sharp line of demarcation between the work of
" reason," on the one hand, and the work of " sense," on the other,
the only new feature which he contributes to Kant's thought being
the conception of the categories as " dynamic " and " floating "
rather than as " static " and " fixed." But this contribution, so far
from removing the original vice of separatism, inherited from Kant,
merely makes it more lively and animated not changing its nature,
but brightening its features. The same fideism, that is to say, the
same uncritical reliance on instinctive belief, is manifest in the
psychologist of Cambridge as in the philosopher of Konigsberg.
And this instinctive belief is pitted against man's scientific or dem-
onstrated knowledge, as if our rational ideas and instinctive no-
tions were the products of two radically different knowing-powers
that had no continuity or connection with each other.
Both Kant and James forgot that reason is empirical as well as
speculative, and that the latter function is a continuation of the
former, not an independent undertaking. When the continuity
of reason and sense is recognized, the hollowness of the fideist
position in Kant, Loisy, Tyrrell, Ritschl, Sabatier, Harnack, and
8 Flora L. Mason, in The Independent.
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 191
James stands revealed. These men would have us prefer sentiment
to conviction, feeling to certainty, in other words, they would have
us stop at the beginning of the knowing-process, instead of pur-
suing it from the imperfect to the perfect and finished stage.
All this contrast, division, and severance, introduced between
the " instinctive " and the " rational," was originally created by
religious feeling, when Kant sought to make philosophy an appendix
to pietism an " apologia pro vita sua " that was neither philo-
sophically pure nor purely philosophical. There was, there is noth-
ing in the psychological evidence to lend credence or support to
any such antagonistic theory of the human mind, or the objects of
its knowledge. Subject and object, the " empirical " and the " ra-
tional," the " many " and the " one," come to us in an original
synthesis united, not separate. Our perceptions, it is a well-known
fact, are of wholes, not of parts. The first apprehensive act of the
mind reveals the presence of objects as concrete individual unities.
The parts come distinctly before our notice only when we analyze
the wholes, and it often seems to the analyst that their piecing-
together is impossible. But we should not forget that, whatever op-
position or incompatibility the parts may seem to have among them-
selves, they have none, actually, in the concrete individual or col-
lective wholes to which they belong and in which they are discovered
coexistent. The oppositions are all created by abstraction, and
melt away when we return to concrete thinking.
What more opposite, for instance, than spirit and matter, sub-
ject and object, relation and substance, " external " and "internal"
and yet in this " muddy vesture of decay " which we all put on for
a while, we find these so-called " incompatibles " dwelling amicably
together. The things that are farthermost apart in nature are found
to be closest in communion. There may be star-dust in our frames
and animality in our natures, but there is something more than
earth in the dust that God has animated, and something more than
time in the vision with which He dimly fills our eyes. One could
hardly imagine anything more contradictory and impracticable, in
the abstract, than the American form of government. The legisla-
tive branch may block the executive, the executive the legislative,
and the judiciary in turn may block both. It looks as if all the
wheels of government might be stopped. Well, this abstractly im-
possible government of ours, with its system of mutual checks and
balances, has worked admirably in the concrete for nearly a cen-
tury and a half, and bids fair to continue doing so indefinitely,
192 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Nov.,
notwithstanding the triple incompatibility written into its consti-
tution. Solvitnr ambulando, as was the ancient reply. to the soph-
ist's proof that walking is impossible.
But not only do we know things as individual unities, we know
them also as related agencies. Relations are seen, like an electric
spark, leaping from object to object, and this little flash of light
reveals a connecting bond. We perceive a word in relation to
a whole sentence; that noise in the other room as something that
has fallen and struck something else; that cry just heard as the
voice of a man in straits or of children at their rompings. Every-
thing has its context, its connections, its relative setting; and
fraternity is as much a mark of the " many " in nature as it is of
men. Things differ, but they agree also, and both the fact of agree-
ment and the fact of difference have to be taken into account.
We cannot choose either to the exclusion of the other, and remain
faithful to the data of experience. We have to accept both facts,
under penalty of taking half the truth for the whole, which has
been the fashion in philosophy since Kant's time.
Professor James would interrupt us here to say that the world
is too complex, too rich, too varied a thing to be grasped as a
unity, or to be spread out thin in the form of an abstract idea.
He would have us go down Variety Street with him, and admire the
" passing show," the " flux of experience," the procession of " men-
tal images " for the latter was his only world nature being for
him a sort of " mind stuff " that yields to " psychic treatment," and
offers itself for refashioning in accord with one's " practical" needs
and purposes. Alas! The theory of universal plasticity shows as
yet no signs of leaving dreamland for the planet which we inhabit.
We decline the invitation of Professor James to accompany
him down Variety Street, where all things met with are different,
and nothing looks like anything else. Neither shall we go down
Unity Avenue with Professor Royce, where all things are so much
alike that the differences are only apparent mere surface gleams
of the fundamental identity, the rational idea, that envelops them
all. The agnosticism of the one and the gnosticism of the other
are equally uninviting. Fortunately we are not reduced to the
extremity of choosing either of these two roads. Another and a
wider way lies open, though philosophers have not frequented
it much of late the avenue of Complete Evidence, the road of
Common Reason. In a final study we hope to point it out, and
then leave the reader to his own reflections.
ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION.
BY KATHERINE BREGY.
The wisdom of the world said unto me :
" Go forth and run, the race is to the brave ;
Perchance some honor tarrieth for thee ! "
" As tarrieth," I said, " for sure the grave."
Dowson: Sapientia LUJKT.
T is to be doubted if really happy people are ever very
thoroughgoing aesthetes. That fine and hungry and
never-to-be-gainsaid quest of beauty the " nos-
talgia," as Fiona MacLeod called it, " for sweet, im-
possible things " at first perhaps an instinct, at the
last emphatically a cult, is rather an escape from life as men too
commonly know it. It is a protest against and a denial of what
we call realism. And very happy people, like very healthy people
("comfortable men," in the poet's words), have small sympathy
with any such protest. But if the aesthete be not happy himself,
he adds none the less to the ultimate happiness of others. More
highly sensitized to pain alike and pleasure, he blazes the trail where
they shall follow. There is even a sublimated aestheticism discover-
able in many of the saints and mystics ; in the joyous abandon of
St. Francis' Canticle of the Sun, or in St. Gertrude offering to
her divine Spouse the delight she found in a bunch of luscious
grapes during Lent!
Whenever life grows a little tight, a little gray, one of two
things is imminent a wave of laxity or a wave of aestheticism.
Only the crude mind will confuse these two, in spite of certain super-
ficial resemblances. For as everlasting exemplars, we have the
thirteenth century on one side, on the other, the Renaissance; we
have the English Restoration period, and for Mid-Victorian Eng-
land the new discovery of beauty. Ruskin and William Morris had
felt passionately the machine-made ugliness around them: then
came the young enthusiasts to whom this new awakening meant a
crusade! Some followed the Pre-Raphaelites, some the sunflower
or the peacock, some the Celtic revival these men always a little
pagan, but often more than a little Catholic as well. Walter Pater
VOL. c. 13
i 9 4 ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION [Nov.,
is perhaps the typical protagonist : Lionel Johnson's " unforgettably
most gracious friend," who influenced a whole generation of Ox-
ford students, and who left along with the stimulating if perilous
mandate to crowd as many great passions as possible into our fleet-
ing hours at least two maxims worthy of immortality. The first
defines the perfection of culture as " not rebellion but peace." The
second bids us, for really great harvesting, " treat life in the spirit
of art " never vice versa.
But the march went on beyond Pater. Wilde came, hovering
always between the great artist and the great poseur; rising to the
summit of even popular acclaim, sinking to the easier abyss of
popular obloquy. Arthur Symons was of the band, lover of Renais-
sance lore, of old streets and gardens, and of the rhythmic ballet.
There was Aubrey Beardsley, the delicate bizarre, sensuous, cryptic
Beardsley. And of them, too, their friend, their coworker, and
more than most their cosufferer, was Ernest Dowson.
He has been scarcely remembered. He was not, as Beardsley
was to so amazing a degree, vivid in his exoticism. Child he was,
and singer also, of the twilight dusk. In the happier moments,
fireflies lighted his way; or he lay dreaming quietly, like his own
Pierrot, in the white, subdued radiance of the moon. The waking
hours held the real darkness, and theirs were the blacker dreams.
It is easy, of course, to strain sentimentalities too far : but for those
who know the story well, it is scarcely possible to picture the Dow-
son of the last decade walking cheerily along a sunlit road at noon-
time ! And having said that, one has implied all the frailty, the
abnormality and aloofness of his sad life; all the exquisite remote
grace, the enmity to obvious things, the weariness and pastel per-
fection of his work in literature.
Ernest Christopher Dowson was gently born and even deli-
cately bred. His great uncle was a man of letters and the friend
of literary men Alfred Domett, for awhile Prime Minister of New
Zealand. His father was an amateur of books and an invalid. At
the time of Ernest's birth, the second of August, 1867, tne family
was living in Kent; but much of the boy's youth was spent in Italy
and France, because of the perpetual mandate by which his father
was " ordered south." Hence it happened that Ernest grew up in
beautiful, semi-tropical countries; in particular strips of country
where there was much leisure, much interest in all expressions of
sensuous loveliness, and a certain forced detachment from humdrum
workaday life. He read much and studied desultorily. He was
1914.] ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION 195
familiar with his classics, and of course ! with the modern French
school of Beaudelaire and Verlaine. It would seem that the only
" regular" period of Dowson's education was the few years spent
at Queen's College, Oxford ; and even this regularity was not with-
out detours into the hectic youthful world of hashish, day-dreams
and nocturnal revellings. Dowson left Oxford without taking his
degree (he was then but twenty years old), and divided the re-
maining twelve and a half years of his life between London and
his " cher pays de la France." The fragmentary facts of this later
career we owe mainly to the pen of Mr. Arthur Symons, whose little
intimate memoir (written shortly after his friend's death) is still
by all odds the best analysis of the poet's genius and personality.
" I cannot remember my first meeting with Ernest Dowson," he tells
us. " It may have been in 1891, at one of the meetings of the Rhy-
mers' Club, in an upper room of the 'Cheshire Cheese,' where long
clay pipes lay in slim heaps on the wooden tables, between tankards
of ale ; and young poets, then very young, recited their own verses
to one another with a desperate and ineffectual attempt to get into
key with the Latin Quarter." Ernest, who had " enjoyed the real
thing so much in Paris," did not, apparently, frequent many of these
amiable hothouse conferences; but to the first published volume
of this Rhymers' Club, he contributed poems notable even among
such notable companions as Lionel Johnson's lines upon King
Charles' Statue at Charing Cross. One of Dowson's most powerful
and perfect lyrics, the Cynara lament, appeared that same early year
(1891) in another exotic publication, the Century Guild Hobby
Horse. He has left nothing more finished nor more arresting than
this youthful creation; the posthumous poems are only less fresh,
scarcely ever more mature, in their artistry. His was a genius
which knew little development: like many another highly concen-
trated personality, it would seem to have sprung to birth fully armed
and caparisoned. All his decisions were reached early not one of
his sentiments'was outgrown. Indeed, there was a curious integrity
in that simple yet sophisticated nature. One cannot conceive of him
as a really innocent child nor as a really experienced man, but always
as the youth stung by exquisite dreams, hand-tied in the grip of
sordid and insistent realities.
Shortly after leaving Oxford, Ernest Dowson was received
into the Church. It was a step which could have surprised very
few of his circle. Not at the height of the Oxford Movement was
Rome more regnant over poetic England than during those curious
196 ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION [Nov.,
early QO'S. Patmore, Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell London
still held these. From Oxford came the young group which had
grown up about Pater: Lionel Johnson, who was received in 1891 ;
and Beardsley, who accepted the sublime convention of Catholicity
just as he was beginning, in his art, to accept the " convention
of nature," all too close to his death in 1898.
The artistic side of the Church was, indeed, much the vogue
amongst these young Oxonian aesthetes. They were intoxicated
with incense : even those who did not take Catholicity to their
hearts, toyed with her and got themselves most delightfully satir-
ized in Lionel Johnson's Cultured Faun. But this is not to imply
that Dowson toyed. It is the unique agreement of all who knew
him that he was never insincere; that through a thousand seeming
contradictions he maintained a delicate permanence and unity of
spirit. Not that he claimed frail, sweet-tongued vagrant of the
Breton coast and London streets! to live a consistently Catholic
life. Ernest Dowson made no humblest pretence at consistency
in anything; and that, perhaps, is why no sensible person could
accuse him of contradicting himself. But to his striving, stumbling
pilgrimage, Faith was, none the less, the candle set upon
a hill.
He had, too, his little love story : a story of what Mr. Symons
has called " the most exquisite and appropriate impossibility*;" not
the less fatal and final because it was sketched in pastel colors.
The girl was of French extraction, the daughter of a poor but not
ill-born emigre who had set up a restaurant in some out of the way
corner of London. Dowson dined there every evening; after
dinner he had his game of cards with mademoiselle, while madame
la mere sat by. They were the only happy hours, it would seem,
in the brief tragedy of his later life : wistful, half-silent hours dis-
tributed over some two years. Eh bien this little ideal romance
of the shy modern Dante did not appeal to the thrifty French
mother! So one day mademoiselle became in her own turn ma-
dame: a marriage had been arranged between Dowson's Beatrice
and the waiter at her father's restaurant. Ernest did not rant.
He did not fight for the joy he had never really considered his
own. He seems to have expected, from the very first, that it would
be taken away from him. Only, he plunged more deeply into that
strange, bitter sea of dissipation which had already become his sea
of forgetfulness. But the seal of that early, unfulfilled love was
upon his life and upon his verse sacramentally, for better, for worse.
1914-] ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION 197
Mademoiselle (let us forget, if we can, the mar lag e de convenance!)
was set up like a Virgin above his altar forevermore. Very gently,
very reverently, he wrote of her:
I would not alter thy cold eyes
With trouble of the human heart:
Within their glance my spirit lies,
A frozen thing, alone, apart ;
I would not alter thy cold eyes.
And in a still more exquisite poem, Amor Umbratilis, the re-
nouncement goes a step further:
I have no songs to sing,
That you should heed or know :
I have no lilies, in full hands, to fling
Across the path you go.
I watch you pass and pass,
Serene and cold: I lay
My lips upon your trodden, daisied grass,
And turn my life away.
Yea, for I cast you, sweet !
This one gift you shall take :
Like ointment, on your unobservant feet,
My silence, for your sake.
It was an early poem, quietly sung; but of the quietness which
survives many tempests. Later, in hnpenitentia Ultima, there
flamed a different mood of love since love, surely, has many moods,
and may be fierce or fine or tender with equal truth. Here we have
Dowson's challenge to fate and time and death and change, his ul-
timatum to Almighty God Himself all the more arresting because
the poet dealt so little in ultimates or challenges. The " virilists "
have pronounced him, with small mincing of words, a weakling;
well, it is not weak to ask one grand passion of life, and then to
pay the price. It may be foolish and it may be futile, but it is not
weak ! Let the stanzas sing for themselves :
198 ERNEST DOIVSON: AN INTERPRETATION [Nov.,
Before my light goes out forever, if God should give me a choice of
graces,
I would not reck of length of days, nor crave for things to be;
But cry : " One day of the great lost days, one face of all the faces,
Grant me to see and touch once more and nothing more to see.
* * * *
" But once before the sand is run and the silver thread is broken,
Give me a grace and cast aside the veil of dolorous years,
Grant me one hour of all mine hours, and let me see for a token
Her pure and pitiful eyes shine out and bathe her feet with tears."
Her pitiful hands should calm, and her hair stream down and blind me,
Out of the sight of night, and out of the reach of fear,
And her eyes should be my light whilst the sun went out behind me,
And the viols in her voice be the last sound in my ear.
Before the ruining waters fall and my life be carried under,
And thine anger cleave me through as a child cuts down a flower,
I will praise Thee, Lord, in hell, while my limbs are racked asunder,
For the last sad sight of her face and the little grace of an hour.
One more love poem, this time a profession of faith, and we
are done for the present. The publication of De A more did not
come until after Dowson's death, but all that was best, highest,
most steadfast in his soul soared into it. It would not be true
(although it would be easy!) to picture Ernest Dowson as a poet
bf one single emotion: that is never quite true of any poet. But
one would not go far amiss in remembering him as the poet of a
single, vitalizing passion. Driven by that wind alone, his fragile
sail made boldly across the unplumbed sea. Now the touchstone
of all love lies, obviously, in the things we count " well lost " for
it in the number of years which seem as one year when we are
serving it. Suffering, cheerfully borne, is the ultimate test of artist,
lover and saint alike. The poet we have been considering had his
sincerely spiritual moments, and he wrote of them with a sad and
reverent conviction. He had also, it would seem, his sincerely
carnal moments; but when he wrote of these, it was with a forced
gaiety that is without conviction. But it is notable that in only
one poem has he accepted loss high-heartedly, and acknowledged
the ministry of pain. And for this reason, De Amore registers the
high watermark of his passionate inspiration. It is a praise of
love unfulfilled, unreturned, uncrowned by all " the certain peace
which happier lovers know." It sings, almost, as a Middle Age
1914-] ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION 199
troubadour might have sung, the pride of the servitor who asks no
guerdon in the Court of Love :
Grows not the world to him a fairer place,
How far soever his days
Pass from his lady's ways,
From mere encounter with her golden face?
* * * *
Is she not still a star,
Deeply to be desired, worshipped afar,
A beacon-light to aid
From bitter-sweet delights, Love's masquerade ?
Though he lose many things,
Though much he miss:
The heart upon his heart, the hand that clings,
The memorable first kiss;
Love that is love at all,
Needs not an earthly coronal;
Love is himself his own exceeding great reward,
A mighty lord !
Lord over Life and all the ways of breath,
Mighty and strong to save
From the devouring grave ;
Yea, whose dominion doth out-tyrant death,
Thou who art life and death in one,
The night, the sun;
Who art, when all things seem:
Foiled, frustrate and forlorn, rejected of to-day,
Go with me all my way,
And let me not blaspheme.
There had been his moments of blasphemy his turnings aside,
often enough, to bitter-sweet delights. Indeed, it spells folly and
the obscuring of values to deny the degradation of our poet's final
years. He was drinking almost to madness. He haunted the
docks and market places, alternately quarrelling and consorting
with strangely squalid bedfellows. He fled, it would seem, from
all the delicate ideals which had failed him or which he had failed.
Having broken his viol in the midst, he took solace in discord.
There was never any " half world " for Ernest Dowson : there was
only Elysium and the underworld! Even in his dear Gallic
lands, where vice itself has learned to go daintily vestured, he would
have none of its daintiness. So it came about that an exquisite
200 ERNEST DOW SON: AN INTERPRETATION [Nov.,
poet died at the cottage of a bricklayer in the impossible suburb of
Catford. He had been talking feverishly to the one friend whose
care and charity had followed him. All night he had talked, of the
future, of new beginnings. Then came the tell-tale cough, and the
sudden swoon which ended his struggle. It was upon the twenty-
third of February, 1900, that Ernest Dowson passed to the judgment
seat of God, Who was his Father. Four days later the Church
whom he had not failed to claim for Mother, laid the broken body
in consecrated ground, and followed the bruised soul with her piti-
ful, asperging prayers.
So much for the eternal mercy. But in the eternal justice
of things, Dowson must go down to history as a literary decadent.
Never as a literary degenerate that would be a cruel and false
arraignment! Decadent art is not yet corrupt or corrupting. It
is a tired art, pale or feverish : too tired to work its fine dreams into
any approach toward a fine reality ; too tired to fight, to reconcile in-
consistencies, to pierce through the obvious smoke of conflict that
it may, in Francis Thompson's fine words, " see and restore the
Divine idea of things." But none the less, it has its moods of
beauty. If it be art at all, it captures something of the multitudi-
nous vision and experience of man ! In Ernest Dowson's work the
memorable moods, the moods most perfectly and poignantly ex-
pressed, are delicacy and disenchantment. They are not the robust
or heroic virtues of literature : none the less we take them for such
as they are. There was an almost infinite delicacy in Dowson's
viewpoint and in his simple yet subtle craftsmanship : a sympathetic
delight in all delicate things in clouds, and childhood, and the
white hands of women; in the whimsical Pierrot, and the silent
peace of old churches huddling close upon some crowded street.
Often he chose quaint French forms for the expression of these
aloof beauties : a villanelle of sunset, a rondeau to Manon, a refrain
of love or sorrow or farewell. Not one of his contemporaries
(not even the delectable Austin Dobson!) knew better how to use
the airy and archaic beauty of these delicate verse forms. But
where Dobson used them for blitheness, the younger, sadder Dow-
son made them serve a haunting and persistent melancholy. It is
the saving grace of the poet's sometimes morbid outlook, of his
often excessive sense of tragedy, that he never tore a passion to
tatters. What shall one point to in its kind more gracious, more
eloquent of suggested, unspoken things, than the lines Ad Dom-
nulam Suam, beginning:
1914.] ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION 201
Little lady of my heart!
Just a little longer
Love me : we will pass and part
Ere this love grow stronger.
Then there is the fine restraint of his Valediction:
If we must part,
Then let it be like this ;
Not heart on heart,
Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss ;
But touch mine hand and say:
Until to-morrow or some other day,
If we must part!
Perhaps the most deliciously delicate of all is the little fan-
tastic comedy published in 1897, The Pierrot of the Minute. It is
like nothing so much as a white butterfly in the gardens of Ver-
sailles; always supposing that butterflies sojourning in the neigh-
borhood of the Trianons should flutter to the music of a gently
whimsical irony, as well as a gently whimsical tenderness !
As for the poems of disenchantment, their name is legion.
Here also delicacy prevails, but it is the ominous autumnal delicacy
of fair things nearing death. Scarcely half a score of times do the
verses reach the sinister power of Bedlam; only once or twice
does their hopelessness quite darken the sun. For the most part
they are the songs of a heartsick boy,
Not sorrowful, but only tired
Of everything that ever he desired !
He is tired of love and of life, since he has rubbed the fresh-
ness from both of these; tired of beauty and of work; tired of
body and of spirit, and of all the brave things he has abused. There
was never anything more insidiously weary than these plaints of
Ernest Dowson. They weigh us down with their suffocating sense
of dissolution. The pages teem with requiems, vesperals, farewells,
and salutations to " death, the host of all our golden dreams."
Edgar Poe, also, had this preoccupation with the Valley of the
Shadow; a preoccupation which may fairly be described as one
hallmark of the decadent genius. There is, indeed, something in
Dowson's poetry and more in his prose to suggest the work of Poe.
In both the French influence predominated; but Dowson's touch
was more refined because more restrained. The prose sketches,
which he himself loved better than his poems, could be gathered
202 ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION [Nov.,
easily into a single volume no stouter than the single volume of his
collected verse. A few of the best were first published in the beauti-
ful adventure of the Savoy Magazine others in a book called
Dilemmas while with Mr. Arthur Moore he shared responsibility
for two novels. The stories themselves are slight things, exquisitely
observed, deeply meditated, sometimes witty and always fastidious
in their expression. Often, as in Eyes of Pride or Countess Marie of
the Angels, they tell a little sophisticated love story always ending
unhappily. Or else, as in that extraordinary prose-poem, The Visit,
and the better-known Dying of Francis Donne, they are, like many
of the poems, studies in death. There is no denying their haunting
quality; they smell of the grave; but terrible as they are they
stop short of the horror of Poe's post-mortem colloquies. One
almost forgives the morbidness of the theme throughout Francis
Donne, for the delicate artisty and realism of its closing pages:
He opened his eyes, and seemed to discern a few blurred
figures against the darkness of the closed shutters through which
one broad ray filtered in; but he could not distinguish their
faces, and he closed his eyes once more. An immense and
ineffable tiredness had come over him, but the pain oh, mir-
acle ! had ceased And it suddenly flashed over him that
this this was Death ; this was the thing against which he had
cried and revolted this utter luxury of physical exhaus-
tion, this calm, this release. The corporal capacity of smiling
had passed from him, but he would fain have smiled.
And for a few moments of singular mental lucidity, all his
life flashed before him in a new relief: his childhood, his
adolescence, the people whom he had known; his mother, who
had died when he was a boy the friend of his youth who
had shot himself for so little reason; the girl whom he had
loved, but who had not loved him All that was distorted
in life was adjusted and justified in the light of his sudden
knowledge. Beati mortui and then the great tiredness
swept over him once more, and a fainter consciousness, in
which he could yet just dimly hear, as in a dream, the sound of
Latin prayers, and feel the application of the oils upon all
the issues and approaches of his wearied sense; then utter
unconsciousness, while pulse and heart gradually grew fainter
until both ceased. And that was all. 1
So much for the " aesthetic " treatment of physical death. It
could scarcely be better done albeit we may think what we
1 Reprinted in the Bibelot of March, 1912. Mosher. Portland, Maine.
I9H-] ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION 203
like about the utility of doing it at all. Personally, we may have an
entirely vulgar penchant for life and laughter and God's sunshine.
That is beside the point ! Moreover, the poet, has forestalled any
such banal criticism. He was French not only in form, but in the
logic and sequence of his thought. The remote, Horatian melan-
choly of his early work deepened as time wore on, until, upon the
last page of his posthumous Decorations, we meet one of the bitter-
est cries in modern literature. It is a terrible arraignment of deca-
dent art and life, the self -arraignment less of a man than of a
school.
We cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity,
muses the poet; and then, with sudden anguish,
Twine our torn hands ! O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust!
Such words out-preach the preacher and leave the moralist dumb.
Surely, for such as Dowson, life is become its own exceeding great
regret !
But after all, {here is no defiance, very little diablerie in all this
disenchantment. It was less a conviction than a sentiment with
Ernest Dowson: the sentiment of a tired boy, a rejected lover,
a runner who had lost the race. Perhaps its chief evil is that it
vitiates the rest of his work. Critics (severe critics who are fond
of checker-board definitions!) insist upon asking whether the devo-
tional strain, also, were less a conviction than a sentiment ? Doubt-
less, it was both nothing in human nature being quite so simple
as the checker-board philosophers would pretend. There is, in
truth, the best of all reasons for believing in the sincerity of Dow-
son's religious poems. They express exactly the sort of religious
emotion most native to what we (none too kindly) call inefficient
people. Lord, I believe help thou mine unbelief! That is the
one prayer open to no charge of hypocrisy; and it is the cry which
trembles upon our poet's lips when he kneels for Benediction before
the altar " dressed like a bride, illustrious- with light," or sings
the praises of Carmel, or kisses (as Villon might have kissed!) the
habit of the austere Carthusian. To each poet his own sacrament !
To Patmore the mystic chant of Bride and Bridegroom to Francis
Thompson the pageant of the sun-bright Eucharist but to Dowson,
204 ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION [Nov.,
meetly enough! the sacrament of death and the dying, Extreme
Unction. His song of it should be better remembered by Catholic
anthologists : there is scarcely another page of his work more simply
dramatic in its appeal. Yet even higher is the strain throughout
Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration a thing of almost sculptural
beauty, which, if it had not come to us from the hand of Ernest
Dowson, we should perhaps have attributed to the convert-poet
whose life ran so strangely parallel, that rare scholar and fine
dreamer, Lionel Johnson:
Calm, sad, secure; behind high convent walls,
These watch the sacred lamp, these watch and pray :
And it is one with them when evening falls,
And one with them the cold return of day.
These heed not time ; their nights and days they make
Into a long returning rosary,
Whereon their lives are threaded for Christ's sake ;
Meekness and vigilance and chastity.
* * * *
They saw the glory of the world displayed ;
They saw the bitter of it and the sweet;
They knew the roses of the world should fade,
And be trod under by the hurrying feet.
Therefore they rather put away desire,
And crossed their hands and came to sanctuary,
And veiled their heads and put on coarse attire,
Because their comeliness was vanity.
* * * *
Calm, sad, secure ; with faces worn and mild ;
Surely their choice of vigil is the best ?
Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild;
But there, beside the altar, there, is rest.
By his friends, Dowson is said to have been the most reticent
of men. His readers will scarcely find him so. It is true he was
of those to whom the part is more than the whole manifestly
because the part can be seen with reasonable perfectness. It is true
also that, knowing too well the riot of the unharnessed will, the
realism of crude and ugly facts, he never for one moment permitted
these to obtrude upon his work. He was all an aesthete in the fas-
tidious choice of his material. But how inalienably his own were
the very delicacy, weariness, disenchantment we have found through-
out his work: the paucity and perfection of it technically; and
1914- ] ERNEST DOWSON: AN INTERPRETATION 205
spiritually, the quivering hunger after purity and peace! Falling
himself unnumbered times, Dowson never quite forgot the stead-
fast mountain tops. If he could have forgotten, indeed, the loss
would have been greater, but the heartbreak might have been less.
We have spoken of him as the poet of a single passion the passion
of his hopeless love. But having the grace to be a poet, he trans-
muted this love into a symbol of all remote and inaccessible loveli-
ness: of the Ideal which changes not (albeit we change!), of the
spirit which is " when all things seem." And then, with that blend-
ing of vehement self -revelation and baffling aloofness common to
the artist of every age, he wrapped his symbol in the classic robe
of Cynara. And at the feet of Cynara, thinking not at all of men's
judgment, the young poet who was never to grow old laid that one
surpassing lyric gift for which men have thanked and consented
to remember him :
Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonce Sub Regno Cynarce.
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara ! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head ;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara ! in my fashion.
* * * *
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind ;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long :
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara ! in my fashion.
^
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire :
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
If that tragic thing had not come from Ernest Dowson's hand,
one feels instinctively that neither Johnson nor any other could have
given it to the world. What if there should be gathered into those
brief stanzas the faith, the wistfulness, the insufficiency of a whole
life?
PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA.
BY RICHARD AUMERLE MAKER, O.S.A.
T is now about fifteen years since the United States
Senate adopted the Platt Amendment, which gave to
Cuba her status as a nation, and guaranteed to her
independence even against herself. Since that time
Cuba, as a nation, has been the theatre and the sub-
ject of an experiment which is unique in the religious life and
activities of the modern world. This experiment will furnish the
answer to a question which many men have asked, but which has
gone unanswered, because the conditions for the proper and fair
working out of the answer have never been fulfilled. The question
broadly is this : could Protestantism as a whole, or any of its bodies,
given an absolutely free hand and favorable conditions, accomplish
the proselytism of a nation which is even nominally Catholic?
To prove that the Cuban experiment is a definite and conclusive
test of the power of Protestantism in this direction, it is necessary
to establish three things: First, that a determined and systematic
effort has been made and sustained by the various Protestant mis-
sionary organizations ; second, that the Catholic Church has not been
in a position to offer any hindrance, official or of any kind what-
ever, to the Protestant campaign ; third, that outside conditions have
been favorable to the side of Protestantism. These three essentials
have been at hand in Cuba to a very marked degree.
Before the Spanish-American War was fairly over, and long
before it was thought that Cuba would be independent, Protestant
missionaries, men and w r omen, came flocking into Cuba, literally by
the hundred. They were well equipped. They were good men and
women, zealous for the work. They were supported by the en-
thusiasm and the money of powerful mission societies. They knew
that their work would not be sporadic. Knowing the resources that
were behind them, they knew that whatever they did could be done
with a view to permanence. They had every incentive and en-
couragement, both as individuals and as members of appreciative
Church organizations, to do and to show the very best work that was
possible for them.
1914.] PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA 207
Before the end of the year 1900 every considerable village in
Cuba had at least one Protestant minister cura Americano, as the
Cubans call them with, generally, two or three women auxiliaries.
They were furnished with money either to build churches or to hire
or buy suitable halls, which could be made to serve very well as
churches. They received good salaries from their mission so-
cieties, and were able to live creditably without asking any money
from the Cubans to wkom they preached. Now this ability to
build churches out of hand, to invest and to spend money, to make, in
fact, a showing of opulence and power, does not appear among the
apostolic requirements of missionaries. The injunction, " Taking
neither script nor staff," would seem to discountenance it. But
there were peculiar conditions in the case of Cuba and the Cuban
people, which made this show of wealth and financial strength
much more important and effective than would be thought.
During the last seventy years of the nineteenth century, that
is, loosely covering the period of political unrest in Cuba, there
had not been a single important Catholic Church founded in the
country. Hardly any were built at all, and very few even re-
paired to any extent. Men went through life and died without
ever hearing of a church being built. Cubans djd not think it
was being done any more. The Spanish government during those
years, always with an incipient revolution at its elbow, had no money
to spend on churches.
Again, the ideas and the habits of thought of the Cuban people
are essentially Spanish. Under the frothy talk of nationalism
and devotion to the Republic, the mass of the white people of
Cuba is thinking just what the mass of the people of Spain is think-
ing and has been thinking for the last three hundred years. How
many people in Spain ever saw a Protestant? From the pulpit
the Spaniard perhaps sometimes heard of Protestantism, but it
really had no meaning to him. He had never seen. Nor had he
ever talked with a man of his own kind who had seen. It is a
fact that the average Spanish peasant or villager the kind that
comes to Cuba has a far livelier idea of the power of Mo-
hammedanism in Morocco than he has of the Protestant peoples.
He has seen men who were shot by Mohammedans he believes in
that. Now, to the Cuban, with his mind thus set, the spectacle
of Protestantism, in the existence of which he had only vaguely
believed, suddenly appearing at his side with money and power,
and doing things that the Catholic Church had been unable to do
208 PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA [Nov.,
within the memory of man, was, to say the least, impressive and
disturbing to his conceptions.
I have gone to this length to show that, whatever we may think
of the spiritual or Scriptural aspect of such a missionary campaign,
the fact remains : The effort of Protestantism to proselytize Cuba
was a serious and a powerful one, one well calculated to command
the respect and attention of the Cubans.
The main body of the missionary work in Cuba has been done
by the four leading Protestant organizations : Episcopalians, Metho-
dists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. The first of these has spent
one hundred thousand dollars yearly in Cuba for salaries and
running expenses since the year 1900. This does not include
real estate purchased or buildings erected, which items are carried
as investments. The figures for the three other organizations are
not available directly, for the reason that their bookkeeping is
divided among the several auxiliary societies working sometimes
with, and sometimes independently of, each parent body. These
figures often overlap each other, or are returned as general mission
expenses, so that only expert accounting could determine just what
money has actually been spent in Cuba each year by each body.
This, however, may be set down. The three other organizations do
not pay as large individual salaries as do the Episcopalians, nor are
their properties so costly in maintenance ; but they each have larger
numbers of workers. Remembering that there are many other
Protestant organizations in Cuba, spending more or less money;
and that many individual Protestants living in Cuba are giving their
time and money to private missionary work, it is well below the truth
to say that four hundred thousand dollars are being spent annually
for the conversion of Cuba.
Turning to the reports of the 'Audencia (Comptroller's Office)
of the Spanish colonial government, we find that for the years 1860
to 1895 the average yearly appropriation for the salaries and main-
tenance of the parishes and pastors of Cuba, falls just a little short
of one hundred and ninety thousand Spanish dollars. This sum
was appropriated. How much of it really reached the parishes or
the priests is problematical. However, that sum served for the up-
keep of the men and the churches that ministered to all Cuba. And
it was considered enormous and oppressive. In fact, that very tax
is one of the stock arguments of the Protestant preachers in Cuba.
Figures, however, despite the axiom to the contrary, do sometimes
lie. Comparisons by statistics are often no comparisons at all.
1914-] PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA 209
These figures are brought in to show the one fact that Protes-
tantism has made a determined, systematic, and sustained effort to
proselytize Cuba.
The Catholic Church has been in no position, official or in-
fluential, to hinder in any way the programme of Protestantism in
Cuba. Since 1898 it has had no more to do with the government
of Cuba, or any part of that government, than have, for instance,
the Seventh-day Adventists. The American military government
found the Catholic Church in Cuba without, practically, any visible
means of support, except the personal jura stole? of the parish
priests. The stipends which had been paid by the Spanish govern-
ment to the parishes, were founded on the fact that that government
had from time to time confiscated the properties which individuals
had left to the various parish churches. The fact that those sti-
pends were paid at all, was an admission by the Spanish government
that it had taken private property, and stood under a legal obligation
to make a definite return to the churches. By the Treaty of Paris
the government of the United States, as guardian for the not yet
existing government of Cuba, assumed that obligation. In other
words, the United States took up the debt of Spain, and agreed to
see that it was settled, for whatever it would be necessary to pay.
The burden of proof thus devolved upon the Catholic Church
to show its titles and the values of property acquired during a period
extending back over three hundred years. In many cases the deeds
had been lost or had actually perished of age. To anyone who has
ever attempted to follow a deed through the fog of legal Spanish
phrase, the only wonder is that the Church was able to prove title
to any of its properties. In the end the government offered the
Church a lump sum of money in release of all claims. This sum
was not quite equivalent to the value of one single piece of property
which the Church had held on the Havana water front. The in-
terest on this sum, when it finally became available, was used for
the seminary, and for the support of such priests as were positively
indigent. The point is this, the Catholic Church had no money,
no resources, with which to meet the money and the showing of the
Protestants. In these fifteen years one very small Catholic church
has been built, and three others have been repaired ; this by private
subscriptions.
The Church had no influence, direct or indirect, by the use of
which it could in any way hamper the work of Protestantism. The
military and civil governors of Cuba during the first American oc-
VOL. c. 14
210 PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA [Nov.,
cupation were American Protestants. This does not m'ean that they
took any active part in the campaign to Protestantize Cuba. But
they certainly were not Catholics. They were, with one exception,
fair in their dealings with the Catholic Church, just as they were
fair with the English-owned railroads and the Spanish-owned to-
bacco companies. Even General Brooks, the exception, in estab-
lishing civil marriages by magistrates and marriages of Cuban
Catholics by American Protestant ministers, was acting fairly, ac-
cording to his point of view. But his was a Protestant point of
view. His action, in itself, implied a reproach and a rebuke to the
Catholic Church, whether or not it was so intended. And the de-
mand for that action came not from the Cuban people who were af-
fected, but from the agitation and clamor of Protestant workers,
who had no proper interest whatever in the matter. Certainly,
under an American and practically Protestant administration,
the Catholic Church could do nothing to block the way of Protestant
progress.
There have been two Cuban administrations before the present
one. The first President of Cuba, Estrada Palma, was a Protestant
schoolmaster. He was chosen for the nomination primarily be-
cause, being an Americanized Cuban and a Protestant, it was
thought that he would be backed and supported by the influence of
the American government. He did receive the whole-hearted sup-
port of the government until, in the beginning of his second term
as President, it was found that he was negotiating, through Sir
Lionel Garden, whose activities we have recently experienced in
Mexico, for the transfer of a large part of the Havana water front
to an English railroad corporation. Then the American govern-
ment " allowed " Estrada Palma to be deposed by the revolution of
August, 1906, and there came another period of American occu-
pation of Cuba.
That second American occupation worked powerfully in
favor of Protestantism in Cuba. For, when men saw the down-
fall of the first Cuban republic, they said: This is the end;
the American flag and forces will never leave now; Cuba is an
American colony, it will never be anything ielse. The future of
Cuba seemed to be settled definitely. Cubans and Americans in
Cuba, alike, believed that Cuba would inevitably become an Amer-
ican state. As Cuba should become more and more American, the
influence and the prestige of Protestantism in Cuba would auto-
matically work up to the level and the proportion which it holds
1914-] PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA 211
in the United States. The Catholic Church was powerless to help
or hinder this development.
These calculations were, it is true, upset by President Roose-
velt's action in establishing the second Cuban republic. But the
Gomez administration which was set up, was composed of groups of
men who were not likely to favor in any way the Catholic Church.
The most active of them were frankly unreligious or anti-religious.
Several times during the years of that administration, bills were
brought up in the Cuban Congress which were aimed inimically at
the Catholic Church. And those bills were only dropped upon the
friendly advice of the American Minister, that the United States
would disapprove, as a matter of sensible politics, any action un-
friendly to the Catholic Church. That the Church has never in all
these years been able to offer any hampering opposition to the
spread of Protestantism in Cuba, is more than proven by the facts.
That the circumstances of the situation have not only not been ad-
verse to the work of Protestantism, but have even been directly
favorable to it, is patent from the most cursory view of the
matter.
The United States came into Cuba as the saviour of the Cuban
people and the guarantor of their liberties. The political changes
in Cuba consequent upon the Spanish-American War, meant very
little to the average Cuban, compared to the economic changes which
he foresaw. And it was easy to believe that social changes would
be even greater, and more sweeping. To the usual Cuban planter
or trader, the American occupation of Cuba in a political sense really
meant very little. All his life he had been hearing hectic words
of patriotism, but the examples that he had seen had only taught
him to bury his money, and pray for the coming of any power strong
and intelligent enough really to rule Cuba, and allow him to go
about his business unmolested.
But in the case of economic changes it was different. He
saw that the whole course of trade would be turned toward the
United States. Business to an ever-increasing extent would have
to be done in the English language. He must learn the language
himself/ or, if he were too old, at least he must see to it that his
sons had American business training. They must go North to
school or college. He found that there were four or five Protestant
schools in the United States to every one Catholic school. He
found that the State universities and agricultural colleges, particu-
larly of our Southern States which were nearest him and generally
212 PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA [Nov.,
the least expensive were, in effect, Protestant schools. Cuban
boys did not go to Protestant schools because they were Protestant
schools. But they did go by the thousand to Protestant schools.
Protestantism had its opportunity with those boys. Those boys,
as a fact, returned to Cuba without any religion whatever. But the
circumstance that they went in large numbers to Protestant schools,
should have worked to the advantage of the spread of Protestantism
in Cuba.
Again, the Cuban could not believe, and does not to-day believe,
that the money of the missions in Cuba comes from voluntary
private subscription. That would be a thing entirely outside of
his experience. From the beginning he was convinced that the
American government supported those missions. And that convic-
tion gave to the missions a prestige which they could not otherwise
have obtained in Cuba.
The American people who have settled in Cuba have been
largely from the Southern States. The proportion of Catholics
among them is of course very small. The average Cuban, especially
outside the city of Havana, believes that all Americans are Prot-
estants. And he believes that if Cuba is to be American it is also
to be Protestant. Protestantism, too, has been powerfully aided in
its Cuban campaign by the numbers of school teachers who have at
various times been engaged in the public school work of the country.
Just how it should have happened that a very large proportion of
the teachers appointed by the Cuban department of education, espe-
cially in the early years when that department was under American
army officers, should have been at the same time active Protestant
mission workers is not easy to explain. Their work was very
valuable to the Protestant cause, for they reached children and
families with whom the avowed workers would not ordinarily have
come into contact. Every single circumstance of the whole Amer-
ican invasion of Cuba has been favorable to Protestantism. There
is not a solitary fact or condition in the whole situation of which
Protestants could complain. Nor is there an excuse to which they
could point to discount a failure.
Is it unfair to speak of failure, when only the half of a genera-
tion has passed since the beginning of the Protestant experiment
in Cuba? To say that because Protestantism has made no definite
progress in Cuba in fifteen years it will, therefore, never make any
progress, is too much. But to say that after fifteen years of the
fairest and most favorable trial, Protestantism is to-day in Cuba just
1914.] PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA 213
where it began, is to state a simple, bald fact. There were no Cuban
Protestants then. There are none now.
After all the years of powerful effort, after all the expenditure
of money and enthusiasm, there is not to-day a single established
Protestant congregation of Cubans. There are those who go with
some regularity to the Protestant meetings, for one reason or
another. And there are those who go for no reason at all. And
of course advertising and music will gather audiences anywhere.
But even those who go with some regularity to the Protestant
services, do not, as a rule, fail to have their children baptized in
the Catholic Church. When these people come with their children
to the parish priest, and he happens to know that they are in the
habit of going to the Protestant churches, he usually finds himself
with a small-sized riot on his hands. He tells them that they are not
Catholics, and that since they show no indications that they will
bring up the children Catholics, he cannot baptize them. But long
before he has reached the end, they are protesting to high heaven.
Are they not Catholics! Were they not born Catholics! Were
not their fathers before them Catholics! What if they do go to
the American priests (curas Americanos) is it not all one? Have
they not their saints there and the Virgin? And one must confess
that it is just a little misleading to see a disciple of John Knox
giving out May devotions to the Blessed Virgin, or to hear a Metho-
dist preacher praying to St. Joseph. When, however, the priest
asks those people why they do not bring the children to the ministers
for baptism, their only answer is a Latin shrug. They do not
know how to express the real answer, which is almost an innate
knowledge with all Latin peoples, that, whatever they may get from
Protestantism or from anything else, the Catholic Church really
holds them eternally in birth and life and death. They will never
learn to look elsewhere for the vital things.
That Protestantism is failing in Cuba is attested by two
widely-separated facts. First, there are to-day thirty per cent less
missions and fifty per cent less workers than there were six years
ago. Second, the whole attitude of the missions and the preaching
has undergone a complete and radical change. All over the island
men and women workers are giving up the struggle and coming
home. There is no future in sight for the work. The mission so-
cieties also at home are becoming wearied of the constant strain.
For years they have been giving glowing and wonderful promises
of the things to be done in Cuba, and these promises are overdue.
214 PROTESTANTISM IN CUBA [Nov.,
In the beginning the missionaries preached aggressively against
the Church, its idolatry, its fostering of the superstition of the
people. In this they were good and logical Protestants. But to-
day they are falling back, for attractions, upon the very things they
so bitterly condemned in the beginning. They crown statues in
their churches, observe the feast days of the Church, and where
formerly they went to all lengths to emphasize and mark the differ-
ence between Protestantism and Catholicity, they now assume every
robe to hide those differences. It is a confession of failure which
cannot bring respect. Cuba seems, then, to answer the question set
forth in the beginning of this article. Protestantism had in Cuba an
opportunity which probably it will never again have in this world.
It has not been able to rise to it. It found there a people willing
enough to listen to it. It found the Catholic Church in a state of
helplessness, crippled by seventy years of revolutionary unrest. It
rode the very crest of the wave of American progression. It was
assisted by every possible circumstance. And in fifteen years it has
nothing to which it can point as accomplished by the power and
spiritual strength of Protestantism.
O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND. ...
VI.
FTER breakfast the next morning MacDonogh took
horse, and rode off to spend the day recruiting for the
Irish Brigade under Lord Clare, who at that time main-
tained a standing regiment of sixteen hundred men at
Paris, ready for active foreign service when required.
When he had gone O'Loghlin called his daughter into
the library, and read to her the kind letter of Mrs. Delany, to which
he had only alluded the evening before.
" MacDonogh, though a brave and true fellow, is a bit of a bigot,"
he said smiling, " and we need not discuss everything in his presence.'"
DEAR MR. O'LOGHLIN [said the letter] : I have heard that your daughter
has returned from school, and it seems to me that the County Clare
will be rather a sad place for a young girl at present. Will you lend her
to me for a few weeks, during which I may try to give her a little
pleasure and amusement? You know me well enough to trust that I
will take every care of her, and will shield her from all annoyance
on the burning subject of religion. Indeed, intolerance and tyranny are
less cruelly in evidence here than in the country parts. You know
D. D.'s liberal-mindedness of old, and that I pretend to be nothing but
a mere Christian. Do, please, persuade your girl to come, and believe
me always Your sincere friend,
MARY DELANY.
During the reading of this letter several changes had passed over
Brona's countenance. Surprise, disapproval and something like in-
dignation followed each other in her expressive eyes.
" You don't wish me to go, father ? " she said.
" I do wish it, Brona," said Morogh. " Why not? " he added as
the girl sat silent, with opposition gathering strength on her dark
brows.
" Oh, why ? " she exclaimed. " Why should I go out among
these people who hate us, call us idolators rob and murder us ? "
" Hush ! my dear, you are surely not speaking of the kind woman
whose letter I have read to you ? "
" I do not believe in any of them," said Brona passionately, fold-
ing her hands tightly together on her knees.
" You dread the Greeks, even when bearing gifts," said her father
with a little playful smile. " Well, Mary Delany is not a Greek. She
means friendship when she offers it."
2i6 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Nov.,
" I could not live with them! " cried the girl piteously. " I could
not help showing my distrust of them, could not make myself agree-
able to their patronage. Let me stay with you, father! I am as
happy here with you as it is possible for me to be in this world."
" I am disappointed," said Morogh, sinking back in his chair. " I
thought I saw a little ray of brightness but if you deny it to me "
A wild look of pain swept the girl's face.
Disappoint! Deny! Oh, would one ever get to the bottom of
this well of misery ? It was too much for her. She dropped her head
and hid her face in her hands.
O'Loghlin looked at the bowed head and his heart ached.
" Brona," he said, " don't make yourself too unhappy about the
matter. Think it over, dear, and bring your own naturally sound
judgment to bear on it, then let me know your decision. Just
at this moment impulsive feeling has got the better of your common
sense."
Brona burst into tears, stooped beside her father's chair, and
kissed the hand that rested on the arm of it, then silently hastened
out of the room.
Aideen who met her rushing up to her own retreat in the " peel
tower," came to Morogh to know what had happened to agitate the
girl, who was usually so controlled and self-contained.
" Oh, she must go ! " cried Aideen on hearing all about it. " She
will end by doing it to please you. Though you may appeal to her
common sense, her decision will be of the heart rather than the head.
She will gratify her father."
Morogh was hardly consoled by the suggestion that he was to
win by giving his child pain, instead of the pleasure he thought to
provide for her. He sighed and retired behind his book, leaving
Aideen to her pleasant anticipations of a coming change for her niece,
who she believed would be happier in Dublin than in Paris, and who
must surely benefit by a little experience of life beyond that of her
convent school or of her home in the Burren. The event proved the
Marquise right in her reading of Brona, for next day the girl came
to her father to offer the sacrifice of her will with so much well-as-
sumed cheerfulness, that Morogh dismissed his fear of affectionate
coercion, and replied to Mrs. Delany's invitation with a lightened
heart.
Then, for a week or two Aideen was in her glory, preparing a
fitting wardrobe for her niece.
" My love, I never knew you were so beautiful," said Aideen,
embracing her as the girl stood before her arrayed for the first time
in one of the pretty Pompadour costumes of the day.
"Don't be silly, Aideen," said Brona. " If clothes make beauty
" They discover it. They illumine it," said Aideen enthusiasti-
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 217
cally. " People in Dublin shall not say that the beauty of Clare women
is on the decline, or that they dress like Hottentots."
The question of how Brona was to travel from the County Clare
to Dublin, no easy journey in the year 1747, was solved by the thought-
fulness of the good lady whose invitation Morogh had accepted for
his daughter.
" Miss Ingoldesby, a friend of ours," she wrote, " is returning
after a visit to arrange a household for her nephew, who intends
settling down on his paternal property of Ardcurragh, near you, and
she will be pleased to take your daughter under her wing. For her
return journey to you I shall take care to provide an equally desirable
escort."
Brona, having yielded, made no further allusion to her sacrifice
of her will and inclinations, but braced herself to endure what was a
severe trial to her pride and natural shrinking from strangers, an at-
titude not to be wondered at considering the circumstances into which
she had been born and had grown up. To be forced into the society
of strangers who persecuted her faith, was to her like being thrown
into the arena to fight with wolves. Seeing that her father and Aideen
with their cosmopolitan experiences could not understand her, she
locked up the unconquerable pain and dismay in her heart, saying to
herself that she would have courage enough to live through the ex-
perience, that it would pass as all things pass, and that she would re-
turn when it was over to the refuge of her home.
On the evening before her departure, after Aideen's maid had
packed the trunks, and all was ready for the morrow's journey, she
stood at the window of her high room and looked out on the weirdly
beautiful mountains in their silver-gray and violet veils, and from them
glanced round the chamber which she loved as a hermit loves his cell.
White curtains and a small white bed, with a large crucifix above it,
an ancient statue of the Holy Mother in worn silver, a long Irish
rosary of amber beads, with silver tubular links and crucifix hanging
on the wall, a table with books and desk and a couple of hard chairs,
were all the furniture visible. As she looked round this cell of her
prayers and dreams, which had seemed to her on her return from
school rather cold and lonely, she could not remember that she had
ever found it anything but the sweet home of her separate and solitary
soul. Half the night she spent on her knees wrestling with her un-
willingness to leave it, praying that it might be left to her by the
cruelty of the law, entreating God that her father might remain un-
discovered by an enemy till her happy return. Next morning the
private coach that was to convey Miss Ingoldesby to Dublin called
for Miss O'Loghlin at an early hour, and Brona smiled her good-bye
to her father as brightly as if her anticipated pleasure in the visit
to his friends had been as great as his own.
218 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Nov.,
VII.
The journey to Dublin of Miss Jacquetta Ingoldesby and Brona was
tedious, the coach stopping only to change horses or to allow of sleep
at two places on the way. Miss Ingoldesby had shrunk a little from
such close companionship with a probably rather uncouth young Irish
Papist from the back of the bogs, and wondered what Mary Delany
meant by transferring the creature from her native wilds to civilized
society in Dublin. Her manner, accordingly, was at first cold and
distant to the young person, and Brona was left a good deal to her own
meditations. As the journey proceeded, however, the elder woman's
attitude to her fellow-traveler changed, and when they arrived at Del-
ville near Dublin, then the home of the Delanys, she delivered over
her charge with a word of commendation.
"I think I have brought you a rather remarkable young woman,
my dear Mary," she said, " she has given me several surprises by the
way. Of course these stately old French nuns give a manner and a
finish. I did not know she had been at school with them."
" We must be careful with her," said Mrs. Delany. " Her father
gives me to understand that she is an obstinate little Papist. I was
glad to hear it. I do not like half and half people."
" Well, I am off to England to-morrow, and I wish you safely
through with your visitor, for I think she has a will of her own," said
Miss Ingoldesby just before they descended to dinner, and while Brona
was dressing in that nook of Mrs. Delany's " peaceful bowers " which
had been assigned to her.
At dinner a pleasant company was assembled, including Miss
Delany, a niece of the Dean's, and Mr. Greene, a young man to whom
she was engaged to be married; Miss Ingoldesby, a couple of young
barristers from Dublin, Mrs. Barbour, the poetess, whose home was
close by in the village, and Mr. Hugh Ingoldesby, the nephew in
whose domestic interests Miss Jacquetta had paid her visit to the
County of Clare. So closely did his aunt hold this young man en-
gaged in conversation on the subject of her efforts for his comfort
that the dessert was on Mary Delany's beautiful polished mahogany,
and the pierced silver " coasters " were going round the table with
the wine, before Ingoldesby had found leisure to make observation of
the rest of the company. Then, his eyes traveling towards the Dean's
dinner companion at the other end of the board, he had to lean forward
a little to see the lady fully, and after a few moments of silence, dur-
ing which he gave his aunt a rather absent-minded answer, he said
abruptly :
" Who is the remarkable looking girl sitting beside the Dean ? "
" A bitter little Papist, low be it spoken ! Turn your eyes else-
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 219
where, my boy. She will not appreciate any interest you may take in
her."
" I am sorry for that," said Ingoldesby, " for it is a face that will
create a good deal of interest."
Miss Jacquetta reflected with satisfaction on the obstinacy insisted
upon as characteristic of Miss O'Loghlin, and did not tell him that the
interesting young person was a neighbor of his in the county in which
he was to establish himself, but pointed out to him the charming
flower-wreaths formed of shells on the ceiling above their heads, the
ingenious work of their hostess, far more exquisite than the carved
stucco it imitated.
After dinner, however, Mr. Ingoldesby lost no time in requesting
an introduction to Miss O'Loghlin. Brona was sitting a little aloof
from the other young people, who were making merry together with
their own familiar quips and jests and catchwords, and sat with a little
the air of a spectator of a novel scene. The pretty French costume
which Aideen had charged her to wear on the first occasion, was
curiously in contrast with the face above it, giving to seriousness a
touch of something like tragedy.
Mr. Ingoldesby was presented and received with " rather the air
of a queen receiving a subject," as Mrs. Delany said afterwards to her
husband. " It will do him good. Our friend Hugh has had sufficient
favor from fair ladies, and played the king often enough in different
social milieus. It is amusing to see our little Papist from the bogs
exacting tribute from him."
" Take care, my dear," said the Dean. " There are burning ques-
tions in the air. Don't let us play with fire."
" Oh, have no anxiety," said his wife. " The girl is a rock of
principle, and no Ingoldesby will ever be tempted to draw nearer than
is convenient to a proscribed maiden."
Hugh sat down beside the sphinx-like stranger, and felt unusually
uncertain of how to proceed further. But he was not daunted, and
endeavored to draw her out. No, she was not very well acquainted
with Paris. French society did not attract her. Yes, the Burren
Mountains were strangely beautiful. One must know them to believe
it. Her answers were short, if intelligent, and she made no spon-
taneous effort at conversation. Only once she looked up quickly with
a flash of feeling that illumined her countenance in a startling manner,
and she was beginning to say a few words to account for it when Mrs.
Delany approached her with :
" My dear you are shockingly tired I know, and would like to
get some rest. No trifle is traveling to Dublin from the County Glare.
Miss Ingoldesby has gone to bed. Do you not wish "
" Thank you ! " said Brona. " You are very kind. Traveling by
coach is more fatiguing than walking "
220 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Nov.,
"All those miles?"
" No," said Brona with her first laugh since she left home. " I
am a good walker, but
Ingoldesby and his hostess were both so surprised by her laugh,
and the change it made in her face, that they neither heard nor said
more for half a minute, while Ingoldesby gathered up the stranger's
fan and other frivolities as she had called them to Aideen, and then
" good-night " was all that was necessary before Brona made her
escape.
" That laugh broke the ice," said Mrs. Delany to Ingoldesby when
she was gone. " There is deep water under the ice. Don't let us
drown her."
She had suddenly realized that the Dean was right, and that,
whether of fire or water, there might happen to be danger in the air.
Here Miss Greene and Miss Delany approached Ingoldesby with
messages, which they asked him to convey to their friends in England.
"I am not going to-morrow," he said "but I am sure my aunt will
attend to these matters much better. Shall I ask her? "
" Not going? " said Miss Delany.
" I find I have still some business in Dublin."
" I am surprised. Miss Ingoldesby expects your escort," said
Miss Greene.
Ingoldesby smiled with a slight bow, and the young ladies went
off to confer with their hostess on the change of affairs. Journeys
were serious undertakings in those days, and so was the conveyance of
letters and parcels. Miss Ingoldesby was decidedly dissatisfied at
finding that her nephew was not to accompany her, but he departed
with her next morning to see her off from Dublin, and for a few days
he was seen no more at Delville.
After the early breakfast Mary Delany took her young guest
all over the house and grounds. The evidence of perfect freedom and
security in this happy and prosperous house impressed Brona, in con-
trast with the sadness of her own home, with its overhanging cloud of
danger, and she was silent as she passed from one to another joy-
fully-displayed detail and circumstance of prosperity.
Mrs. Delany began to fear that her guest was going to prove un-
conquerably shy and dull, but found her more sympathetic in the
garden, which was the name given to the whole extent of the pleasure
ground of Delville. Brona was introduced to the brook with its high
bank and hanging wood of evergreens, the long walks covered with
great trees and bordered with flowers. 1
" The robins are as fond of this place as we are," said Mrs.
Delany, " it just holds a few of them as well as D. D. and myself."
1 For further description of house and grounds cf. Autobiography of Mrs. Delany,
vol. i., pp. 281, 286, 287.
1914-] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 221
The fresh air and the peep at mountains and the sea seemed to
restore some of her natural vigor to Brona's spirits, and color flowed
into her cheeks and light into her eyes. The natural sweetness and
happy peacefulness of it all, the air of protected liberty and joyful
security everywhere around, appealed to her latent power of sym-
pathizing generously in the good of others which she could not share,
and for the moment she looked on her surroundings with the eyes of
her kind entertainer. The clear tones of her voice were heard ring-
ing with admiration as Miss Greene and Miss Delany came up a side
path to meet them, half afraid of the grave stranger of the night be-
fore, and relieved to hear her cries of pleasure and her laughter.
After this success Mrs. Delany was encouraged to proceed ener-
getically with her plans for giving pleasure to this " half-frozen girl "
from the gloomy wilds of the Clare of the proscribed. During the
following week many visitors passed in and out of the gates of Del-
ville, and excursions were made into Dublin to see the sights and the
people. The Parliament house in College Green was visited, St.
Patrick's Cathedral, and Christ Church where Strongbow the invader
lies beside Eva his wife, daughter of the Irish King; St. Werbergh's,
the church where Delany officiated, and Stafford Street to look at the
Dean's old house where Mrs. Pendarves used to meet Swift and Stella
and Morogh O'Loghlin, as members of the lively Dean's Thursday
dinner parties.
A great surprise was in store for the charming Papist (as the
Dean called her to his wife), when she was informed that a nun had
been invited to dinner to meet her.
" Privately, you know, my dear. She is Miss Crilly, a relative
of my husband, and we are on excellent terms with her. She will
be exceedingly pleased to see you."
That was a quiet family dinner, and Miss Crilly proved to be
a plain but pleasant-faced elderly lady, dressed in black with collar
and coif of white, who made herself very agreeable, and was evi-
dently a favorite with the family circle.
To return her visit Mrs. Delany and Brona were driven the next
day to her " nunnery " in King Street, a hidden convent of Poor
Clares, where they spent a lively afternoon, drinking tea, seeing " the
pretty chapel," and entertained by Mrs. Delany, who played the nun's
organ (the gift of the Countess of Fingall), greatly to the delight
of the Community.
Brona was drawn into many corners by the Sisters, whispered to
and petted with joy, and warmed and comforted by their sympathy.
" I knew you would enjoy that visit," said Mrs. Delany as they
were driven homeward. And after this surprising and unexpected
experience, Brona began to feel really happy at Delville, glad to send
pleasing reports to her father without hurt to her sense of honesty.
222 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Nov.,
The week ended with a little dance at Delville, such as Mary
Delany loved to get up in a hasty unceremonious way, beginning
early and ending early, and greatly delighting her simple friends and
neighbors of Glasnevin village and surroundings. At the " little
rout " in question, the company were all matched in couples. There
were Miss Delany, the Dean's niece, Miss Greene, sister of her fiance,
Mr. Parker, the curate, and his sister Miss Parker, two Mr. Swifts,
young men of the village, and another young man a nephew of the
Dean's. Mrs. Barbour the poetess, in whom Swift was interested,
who lived in the village of Glasnevin, came " though the gout was on
her."
Such an entertainment was a complete novelty to Brona, who
had never danced except with her schoolfellows on the polished floor
of her French convent, but after a little hesitation she paired off with
Mr. Parker, the curate, and threw herself into the fun of the moment,
much to the satisfaction of her benevolent hostess. She was in the
act of flying down the middle in a country dance, when Hugh In-
goldesby came into the room, and stood near the doorway to watch
the performance, his eyes arrested on the moment by Brona's laugh-
ing face and flying figure.
" I think we have cheered up our gloomy little Papist rather
successfully," said the Dean coming to welcome him.
" A miracle ! " said Ingoldesby.
" A bright creature enough, only under a cloud," said the Dean.
" She positively radiates enjoyment," said Ingoldesby, still fol-
lowing Brona with his eyes.
" So, so ! " said the Dean laughing. " But don't get too much
interested in her, my dear fellow. No good could come of it."
Ingoldesby did not hear him. When the dance was over he
made his way to the spot where Brona was waiting for a cup of tea,
which her partner had gone to fetch her.
" Will you dance with me ? " he asked.
" Oh, yes," she said, " if you are not afraid of the blunders of
my school dancing."
" I am not a dancer myself," said Hugh, " but I would like to
learn from you."
" It is just a pleasant romp," said Brona. " Our minuets at
school were far more prim and stately."
"That was in Paris? "
" Yes."
" All your life has been spent between Paris and the County of
Clare?"
" I am only beginning to feel that there are some other places
in the world."
" You find the new experience pleasant ? "
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE ' 223
" Too pleasant in contrast with the County of Clare, which is
my home."
" My home is also in Clare. Do not depress me."
" It need not be sad for you. There will be nothing to depress
you. But the music is beginning. I really want to dance."
" And so do I." And they danced: A memorable dance for
Ingoldesby.
VIII.
The next day was Sunday, and Mrs. Delany, stepping from her
carriage at the entrance to St. Werbergh's Church, was met by Hugh
Ingoldesby, who handed her out.
" Miss O'Loghlin is not with you ?" he said.
" You forget that she is not one of us. I tried to persuade her to
come, or to stay at home. We have dropped her at their little secret
place on Arran Quay."
" Heavens ! " said Ingoldesby under his breath. " A girl like that
an idolater ! "
" No, don't flatter yourself that you have such an excuse for
persecuting her."
" What does it all mean, then ? "
" I have to call for her on my way home. Not exactly desirable
for the Dean, but"
" Let me go and fetch her," said Ingoldesby. " I will bring her
to meet you, and so save "
" Oh, no ! " said Mrs. Delany, but Ingoldesby had lifted his hat
and was gone.
The lady followed her husband into the church, and Hugh walked
towards Arran Quay, wondering how he was to find the secret wor-
shipping place in which Miss O'Loghlin had hidden herself. He
walked up and down, and observed people passing in at a small dingy-
looking door, in twos and threes or one at a time, and all with a
frightened or guilty look as if dreading to be caught in the act.
" This is the place," he said at last, and next time the door opened
he passed in with the rest.
He went up to the top of a high, narrow stair that creaked under
his feet, and entered a dimly-lighted room, where people were packed
together in a kneeling crowd, and where on a low mean altar candles
were burning and vessels of gold were shining. Before the altar a
thin dark man was robing himself, putting a richly colored vestment
over a white gown. And then some young boys gathered to his side
and the Mass began.
Ingoldesby had squeezed himself into an obscure corner, and
stared at the spectacle of the altar, which was to him just what he
224 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Nov.,
had been taught to call it, a " mummery." How strange and unac-
countable was the scene, people daring death for such an experience
as this! And where was the unhappy girl he had come to seek?
Was she too assisting at this worse than pagan travesty of religious
worship ?
At last he saw her, kneeling in the front near the altar, just
caught a glimpse of her, squeezed in between two, stout, meanly
dressed women, herself covered all over in a black silk cloak, her pure
features in profile almost screened by her black hat. Her hands were
clasped and raised to her chin, her eyes fixed on the altar.
" What is the thrall? " asked Ingoldesby of himself. " Why does
this girl, with family troubles on her head, turn from God to pray
to what ? It is a mystery."
When Mass was over she was one of the last to move, and when
he saw her rise he went down and waited for her at the foot of the
stair. Then he explained to her that he was to take her to meet Mrs.
Delany at St. Werbergh's, and they walked along the quay together.
Conversation was difficult. Ingoldesby was feeling too much shocked
and pained to know what to say, and Brona had put on her breastplate
of steel. She was the first to speak, but only about the river and the
buildings along its sides and the bridges. Before long they met the
Delany carriage -coming to meet them. Brona was picked up, and
Ingoldesby walked towards his club, pondering deeply by the way.
Hugh Ingoldesby had never given a serious thought to religion,
except as placing it foremost among the disastrous things of existence,
the cause of wars and persecutions, the instigator and perpetrator of
cruelties. His ancestor had been planted in Clare by Cromwell, and
his people had held a place there as staunch Protestants, upholders
of English Church and State. His father having died while he was
a boy, he had lived with his widowed mother in England, and received
an English educational training. After the death of his mother,
his aunt had tried to fill her place, but Hugh was by that time past
feminine tutelage. Leaving his university he had been seized with a
strong desire to see the world in all its continents, and had spent a
good many years of his youth in gratifying the wish. All that being
done he had been stationary in England for the last year or two, and
only quite recently had bethought him of taking up a position in Ire-
land on his hereditary property.
It had not entered into his mind as an objection that he would be
living in a country where the people were suffering persecution, where
men and women burrowed in holes to escape observation, and priests
were hunted like wolves. He had a general idea that the Irish were a
bad stock, and that any ills they suffered had been brought on them
by themselves. A few Protestant and English, or of the Anglo-Irish
type who had conformed sensibly to the religion and ways of living
1914-] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 225
prescribed for them by their masters, would, he deemed, be friends
enough for him in the shooting or fishing season, and for the rest of
his years he would live where he might please. He had arrived at a
time of life when it had become rather interesting for him to go and see
the ground on which so many fierce battles had been fought, where
struggle never came to an end, where superstition yet reigned, and
where he was assured romance was still afoot on the hills and in the
glens, while the rest of the world had settled down to make the best
of common sense. He was even beginning to feel a little curious as to
whether he belonged at all in any of his parts to the Celtic race,
or was wholly English accidentally born in Ireland, whether the words
Dalcassian or Milesian had any significance for him, or were only
decorative quantities in the dream-talk of a people whose history was
a make-up of inventions and delusions. That a creature like Brona
O'Loghlin could be found among the ignorant Papist population of the
country deserving to be treated no better than rats, was an amazing
fact never recognized till to-day when he had seen her on her knees
in that mean crowd, jostled by bargemen and fish women, and pray-
ing like any Hindoo fanatic, with her eyes fixed on something that
he could not bring himself to designate or even to think of.
As he sat in his club room that Sunday evening staring at the
wall, with his unread English paper on his knee, he told himself that
it did not matter to him if the girl were an Egyptian priestess, and
prayed to a cat or a bull.
But another wave of what he called curiosity crossing this angry
thought washed it out, and he got up suddenly, put on his hat and
walked out to Delville where he dropped into the evening family circle,
to the surprise of everybody, so unusually late was the hour.
IX.
He was rewarded for this friendly visit by an invitation from
his hostess for the next morning, when the Lord Lieutenant, the Duke
of Dorset, and the Duchess were coming to honor the lady of Del-
ville by breakfasting with her. Such breakfasts were Mrs. Delany's
favorite form of hospitality. Dinners had become such luxurious en-
tertainments, that the Dean's wife did not feel inclined to " show away
with such magnificence."
Breakfast was prepared in the beautiful old drawing-room. The
entertainment passed off delightfully, the great people walking through
the interesting rooms on that floor, and requesting to be played to on
the harpsichord by their hostess. In the afternoon, when they had
retired, Ingoldesby who had been in attendance on the vice-regal party,
looked around for Miss O'Loghlin.
" Oh, I think that as early as possible she retired somewhere with
VOL. c 15
226 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Nov.,
her embroidery," said Mrs. Delany, "but not before his Excellency
remarked her face as new to him, saying he had not seen her at Court.
I made a pretty excuse for her without betraying the little cloven foot
peeping from under her charming pompadour dress, which by the way
is so quaintly unsuited to her style and at the same time so fascinatingly
becoming to her."
Mrs. Delany, while speaking, was called away by the Dean, and
Ingoldesby proceeded to walk through the gardens alone, hardly ex-
pecting to find Brona. Yet he found her in a little summer-house,
which was a favorite resort of Mary Delany and her husband.
" Am I intruding ? May I sit beside you ? I will go away if
you bid me," he said, but looking so pleasant and manly, so ready
though reluctant, to keep his word and depart if necessary, that it
would have been difficult for anyone to wish for his absence.
" Oh, no," said Brona, " this bower is none of mine, and it really
holds two. Mrs. Delany says it just holds herself and D. D. and
the birds. I have been watching her pet robin hopping round. He
can't think why I am here instead of his mistress and without
crumbs ! "
" May I wind this silk for you?"
" Thank you. You wind in this direction."
" Are there many birds in Clare ? " asked Hugh, having caught
the right trick of winding a skein of silk.
" Birds in Clare? Ah, the birds of the cliffs of Moher. There
you have a different voice of nature."
"As how?"
" Wait till you hear them."
" I shall do so. Seabirds ? But they don't sing."
" They speak, cry, scream, denounce the ills of some world that
is beyond our ken. It is a war of voices. One does not think of mere
birds when one is listening, and when one goes away one is haunted
by something that is neither of man or bird."
" I must hear them. May I go with you some day where they
are to be heard ? You know Clare is to be my home as well as yours.
I shall be glad to have friends there before me."
Brona shook her head very gently, and put a few fine stitches in
the petal of an embroidered flower.
" My place is only a very few miles away from your father's
place," Ingoldesby went on. " At much greater distances people are
neighbors in the country."
Brona was silent for a few moments, and lifted her face to look
at a thrush that was shouting melodiously from the top of a high tree.
" That is the music of peace and prosperity," she said. " Is it not
sweet? Our birds in Clare shriek of war and hardship."
Ingoldesby was thinking at the moment more of the rare outline
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 227
and coloring of the uplifted face than of her words. He noted the
rich creamy tint of the cheek, in which the carnations went and came,
the eyes like sea water, gray, green or blue, the generous curve of the
dark yet delicate eyebrows that hinted of Brona's Spanish mother, the
clustering locks above the low forehead. A rare face, full of latent
strength, though touched with the softness of youth. The lifting of
the face had suggested the experience of Sunday, and Hugh said with
an impetuosity that might have answered his own question as to his
Celtic blood!
" Miss O'Loghlin, why did you go up that crazy stair yesterday,
and into that crowd so unfit for your presence ? "
Brona looked amazed. "Why did I go? If Mrs. Delany "
"I know she took you there consented to gratify her guest. But
why in the name of heaven did you want to go ? "
" In the name of heaven," said Brona slowly. " That is just it."
Ingoldesby made an impatient gesture.
" Mr. Ingoldesby, you came here to-day, because you were bidden
to meet a great personage. I went to meet a greater. If you had not
come to welcome that Vice-King, he would not have missed you. If
I had not gone my King would have missed me."
She spoke simply and quietly, but she had turned white from a
deeper feeling than indignation, and her eyes were full of tears.
Ingoldesby heaved a sigh.
"If there is a God, is He not everywhere?"
" He is everywhere."
" Then why go to a pestilential den ? "
" Because you have seized His churches our churches," cried
Brona with a sudden blaze in her eyes turned full on him.
" I did not take them," said Ingoldesby. " I do not want any
churches. I do not believe in them."
" Let us say no more then," said Brona. " I am in your power.
For myself I should not care, but you can ruin my father if you
will."
" Great heaven ! You know that it would be impossible."
" I do not know. It is an incredibly cruel world as I have found
it. You are part of that world "
But here Mrs. Delany interrupted them. She had come to look
for Brona.
There was no opportunity for resuming the conversation that
evening, and as Hugh Ingoldesby walked back to Dublin in the clear
starlight of a June night, he told himself that he did not want to
know anything further of this unaccountable girl, who shocked even
more than she charmed him. What was to be thought of a country
that produced such bewitched and bewitching beings, keenly intelligent
on all points but one? Devotees of an intolerable creed? Eyes ca-
228 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Nov.,
pable of flashing green fire, mouth of childlike tenderness, but ready
in a moment to take a set of determination? A man could not be in
sympathy with a woman like that. To draw near her would be to
submit to thrall.
A week passed, of busy days with his lawyer, and of mixing in
the society of his many friends in Dublin. He felt that he had quite
shaken off the strange impressions which had of late so disturbed his
calm, self-contained habit of mind. Papists and Papistry were noth-
ing to them, there were too many other charming women. Having re-
covered from his curious attack of mental irritability, he felt sufficiently
in good humor to turn his steps once more to Delville. Mrs. Delany
was busy gathering sweets in her garden, and met him with her laced
muslin apron filled with lovely blooms.
" You are just in time," she said. " I shall want you for dinner
to-morrow. We have friends coming. The table was nicely filled,
but as Miss O'Loghlin went off unexpectedly this morning there is
a vacant seat."
" She is gone ? " said Ingoldesby. " I thought you said she would
stay another month."
" So I hoped. But there was a summons home, and she would
hear of no delay. As a proper escort offered at the moment we could
not try to keep her."
" I hope no special trouble."
" I don't know. Her brother has returned from Paris, and her
presence was urgently required. I suspect that the visits of Mr. Tur-
lough O'Loghlin to his father's house are not productive of much
happiness to his family."
"She has a brother?"
" The proscribed heir of a proscribed father without the strength
or grace to bear what my old friend Morogh endures with dignity. I
imagine that Brona has influence over her brother, and that altogether
she is the person who keeps up a sort of mental equanimity in the
household."
"What others are there?"
" Only an aunt, Irish, my friend's sister, but an almost naturalized
French woman, devoted to her brother's children, but silly on the sub-
ject of Turlough, while she expects superhuman wisdom from Brona."
" What a fate ! "
"For whom?"
" For Miss O'Loghlin, of course. Brains carrier and peacemaker
in a miserable home, and in a country no better than a charnel house
from what I hear."
" She loves her people and her country, and none of them are
wanting in brains. The conditions of life all round her are painful
indeed. I wanted to do something, but the evil goes too deep."
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 229
Ingoldesby was silent, and Mrs. Delany, raising her eyes to his
face, saw something there that prompted her to speak further.
" It is better that neither you nor I should interfere too much.
Whatever I may do, you can do nothing."
" I have no desire to try. The whole situation is repulsive. I
have changed my mind about going to take up a residence at Ard-
curragh. There would be endless vexation and no kind of advantage
to anybody. I will return to England immediately."
" I think you will be wise to do so," said Mrs. Delany gravely,
speaking rather on her own thought than on his words. You could,
as you say, do nothing to alleviate suffering. You might only bring
further trouble to a young creature already over-weighted."
"As how?"
" Now, Hugh ! I have known you since you were a little boy,
and I may venture to warn you. We have seen you unusually in-
terested in Miss O'Loghlin."
" Surely I am able to guard myself."
" It is not for you that I am uneasy. You need not put on your
' all the Courts of Europe ' air with me. What was the song some
one sang the other night?
He gave his bridle rein a shake,
Said adieu for evermore!
You may not be that hero of romance, but remember that my
friend's girl is just out of her convent, where her mind has been filled
with high ideals. You are the first man she has known except her
father and brother. She may have found you attractive."
" You flatter me."
" I don't mean to do so. Circumstances may bestow on you
graces not your own. When you ride away she will be left with an
added difficulty in her place in the world, which you describe as a
charnel house. You tell me you are going to England. I have no-
ticed you a little unstable in your resolutions of late. If you are think-
ing of going go."
Ingoldesby was silent, and Mrs. Delany glancing at him saw that
he looked pale and disturbed. He left her abruptly, without thanking
her for her counsel.
A week later Mrs. Delany said to her husband : " I wonder what
has become of Hugh Ingoldesby." The Dean came home that evening
saying: " I went to look up Hugh at his club. He has left Dublin."
"For England?"
" No, for Clare."
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
SOME OLD TIME DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF WAR.
BY MARIAN NESBITT.
URING three days we made litanies, supplicating the
mercy of God, that He would deign to grant us
peace." Thus writes the great Charlemagne, in a
letter to his wife Fastrada, relating his victory over
the Huns, those barbarous hosts whose invasions
were ever accompanied by indescribable horrors and overwhelming
disasters, the briefest records of which are the most pathetic. Take,
for instance, that of the annalist of Corby. " The Huns," he says
(A. D. 917), " laid waste the monastery and all the country round
about." And twenty-seven years earlier, another writer, alluding
to the Huns in a letter to the Bishop of Verdun, reflects upon their
incursions in the following words : " These wars and desolations
are sent to punish our sins, and lead us to mercy. In all ages,"
he adds, " they have been employed for that end." Here we see
that battles and violence were regarded in the light of a correction,
or penalty, allowed by heaven, for as St. Augustine tells us : " Times
of war are sent according as God judges fitting, in order to punish
the human race" (De Civ. Dei., v. 22).
The same idea has Veen expressed in slightly varying terms
by wise and holy men at all periods of the world's history; and
thus it has ever been the custom at such times to implore the Divine
clemency as is done to-day : " Spare, O Lord, spare Thy
people, and be not angry with us forever." Fasting also, and pray-
ing, as we see, was the case when Charlemagne, after taking counsel
with his spiritual and temporal advisers, ordained "a fast of three
days, with abstinence from food and wine, till None, at which hour
all must repair to the church and sing litanies." This he did before
going forth to contend against the pagan hordes.
Still earlier, L e., A. D. 472, Sidonius Apollinaris thus writes to
St. Mamertus : " It is reported that the Goths are in motion to
invade the Roman territory, and it is always our unfortunate coun-
try that is the gate through which they pass; but what sustains us
amidst the horrors surrounding us, and gives us confidence in our
sore peril, is not our fortified ramparts and instruments of war,
it is the holy institution of the Rogations." He, therefore, ordered
1914-] DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF WAR 231
the litanies to be sung in procession round the walls of Clermont,
that he might obtain peace from the assaults of Euric.
Another very favorite practice during the Middle Ages, was
the singing of the celebrated anthem Media Vita, to invoke the
protection of God against the enemies of the Church, and to procure
peace. " So profound were the emotions inspired by this antiphon,"
we are told, that in the thirteenth century it was deemed necessary
to caution the faithful against attaching to it too great an impor-
tance. Its popularity was degenerating into superstition, and men
were disposed to look upon it in the light of a charm, by which
death could be averted and enemies destroyed. That such was
in truth the case, is proved from the fact that, during times of war,
the contending armies would both chant it for this intention, till at
length, by a Synod at Cologne in 1316, its use was forbidden, unless
with the express permission of the bishop. It used, however, to be
sung every year, down to a comparatively recent date, in the monas-
tery of St. Gall, on the Monday in Rogation week, when priests and
people walked in solemn procession to a lonely valley situated be-
tween lofty mountains, where the river was crossed by a bridge,
and the wild, desolation of the spot lent something awful and mys-
terious to the scene.
The history of this ancient hymn is exceedingly interesting;
indeed, its origin is quite poetic, it having been composed by one of
the members of a noble family in Zurich, named Notker Balbulus,
who, leaving worldly ambition and worldly honor, retired to the
Abbey of St. Gall, where he became a monk, and rapidly rose into
prominence on account of his learning, knowledge of the Sacred
Scriptures, and skill " in music and poetry." " No one," the
monastic chronicler tells us, " ever saw him unless either reading,
writing, or praying. He wrote many spiritual songs; he was the
most humble and meek of men, and most holy. The sound of a
millwheel not far from the abbey, inspired him to compose a beauti-
ful melody suitable to some religious verses;" then, looking down
into the deep gulf at Martistobel, the sight of the great danger
incurred by some workmen building a bridge over the abyss, sug-
gested to him that famous antiphon which has come down to us
through the centuries as the Media Vita, the words of which are
as follows: "In the midst of life we are in death; what help
shall we seek except Thee, O God, Who art justly angry because
of our sins. Holy God, Holy Omnipotent One, Holy and Merciful
Saviour, deliver us not to the bitterness of death."
232 DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF WAR [Nov.,
The story of this monk-poet in the early ages seems to show
us, as in a mirror, that vast multitude of cloistered souls, men and
women, who behind their quiet convent walls lived out their lives
of praise and supplication ambassadors of peace; mediators be-
tween a sinful world and a justly offended God; angels of mercy,
ever imploring pardon for violence, crime, and wrong ever more
and more closely uniting themselves to the spirit of Holy Church
in her ardent and insatiable longing for true concord amongst the
nations and tranquillity for their people.
Prayers for deliverance from present or impending war are to
be found throughout the Liturgy, as well as in the Divine Office.
From the first Sunday of Advent, when we pray that we may not
be subject to human dangers, to the last after Pentecost, we find
the same strain running through all; whilst on the festivals a
similar idea prevails. For example, on the Feast of the Invention
of the Holy Cross, the Church beseeches God that the sacrifice
which she immolates to Him " may deliver us from all the iniquity
of wars." Again, how often she places these words on the lips
of her faithful:
Far from us drive our hellish foe
True peace unto us bring.
Again, we have the hymns for the Feast of St. Michael, and for that
of All Saints, and the prayers for peace on the Nativity of Our Lady,
and on the festivals of the Visitation and of her Immaculate Con-
ception. Again, in the Divine Office, as has been already said, these
constant references to peace are not wanting; at Matins; at Lauds,
when we sing of serving God " without fear," and having " our feet
directed in the way of peace;" at Prime, when these beautiful words
sound in our ears, "Love, peace, and truth;" at Sext, and None,
and again at Vespers, everything serves to remind us that tran-
quillity of heart amongst nations and between individuals is the best
gift that heaven can bestow. How strongly this was felt, we find not
only from the regular Offices of Holy Church, but from many
ancient local liturgical sources, notably in certain litanies in use
in the monastery of St. Gall, one of which contains these lines:
" We seek perpetual peace. Look down upon us, O Christ, and
give us the lasting joys of healthy life." And again, in the hymn
for the Feast of St. Gall, " times of peace " are specially mentioned.
It is interesting also to discover in some ancient service books
1914-] DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF WAR 233
the ritual of a Mass for peace; whilst in an old sacramentary,
found in the Abbey of Vauclair, at the prayer Hanc igitur obla-
tionem, there were added the following words : " which we offer to
Thee for peace and charity, and the unity of Holy Church, and for
all Catholic people, for those who are in dissension and discord,
that all may be restored to charity and concord."
It is significant of the troublous days of the ninth century, that
in the archives of the Canons of Modena there is a sacramentary of
St. Gregory the Great, in which we note a Missa contra tyrannos;
and old annalists frequently record with thankfulness the fact that
different feasts have been kept "without any molestation;" thus
Baronius tells us that, in 1099, " the Lord Pope celebrated Christmas
in great peace." In truth, such examples are too numerous to men-
tion, though the Church in the Middle Ages never curtailed or
suspended the solemn commemoration of her festivals on account
of war, and the resulting dangers to which the faithful might be
exposed; rather did she increase the beauty and stateliness of her
functions, in order that the laity should redouble the ardor of their
prayers. For this end, too, the civil authority usually lent its aid.
Of Charlemagne, it is said that " Before all things he sought the
defence, and exaltation, and honor of Holy Mother Church, and that
the people should have peace and justice;" whilst Louis le Debon-
naire is accused of not having made sufficient provision to ensure the
public peace, and of causing innumerable crimes, such as homicide,
perjury, rapine, sacrilege, oppression of the poor, etc., by his useless
and injurious expeditions.
Again, history tells us that the bishops reminded Louis, brother
of Charles the Bald, that the office of a Christian king is to defend
the Church, and to secure the tranquillity and peace of Christendom.
Moreover, in the Roman Or do for the crowning of an emperor,
the Pope asks the monarch if he wishes to have peace with the
Church, and he answering thrice, " I wish it," the Sovereign Pontiff
adds, " And I give you peace, as the Lord gave to His disciples,"
at the same time kissing the emperor on his forehead and chin,
and lastly his mouth.
It has been truly said, that "the symbols of majesty were all
designed to indicate the pacific end of power." When being in-
vested with the royal robes, which descended to the ground, the
Emperor Otho, in 936, was admonished to persist in maintaining
peace unto the end, and the archbishop, giving him the sword,
said : " Take this sword, with which you may expel all adversaries
234 DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF WAR [Nov.,
of Christ, barbarians, and evil Christians." In another coronation
ceremony, we find the sceptre presented in the following terms :
' Take the sceptre of the kingdom, that you may govern all men of
good will in tranquil peace."
The semi-sacerdotal character attaching to royalty in mediaeval
times was not confined to the French nation only ; it was a religious
idea common to all Christian countries, and is well expressed in the
words of an old writer, who says that " the Pontiff has the keys
of the temple, the sovereign, of the kingdom in the church,
the pontiff, in the tribunal, the emperor, both for peace; the one
for that of the souls, the other for that of the bodies. Such was
the ancient concord between the priesthood and the empire." In
the state, physical force would ever seem to have been considered
secondary to peace; and it was significant of the spirit of the age,
that in the arms of Ghent was a lion, crowned, sleeping on the
knees of the Blessed Virgin.
At no period has the Church attached great importance to any
special form of administration; if the monarchical government
prevailed, for the most part, throughout Christendom during the
ages of faith, it did so because it was found more conducive to the
peace of the world. " What we want is peace," says an old his-
torian, " and what we must avoid is discord." Thus did men uncon-
sciously strive to carry out the principle laid down by the Angelic
Doctor, who holds that the relative merits of all forms of rule lie
in their greater or less fitness for maintaining peace. 1
To return, however, to the pious practices of the faithful in
times of war. In 1260, when the cities of Italy were torn by dis-
sensions, " the devotion of the flagellants," says an historian of that
time, " prevailed in Lombardy. Then hermits came forth from
their caves, and entering cities, preached the Gospel. The citizens
of Asti, with the bishop and clergy, went in procession, and kneel-
ing down in the public places, cried aloud : " Grant us, O Lord,
mercy and peace." In those days many discords were appeased,
and elsewhere we read that " men began to lash themselves at
Perugia/ Peace was then made between many at Bologna;
and twenty thousand men came from thence to Modena and lashed
themselves," with the result that " all discords and wars ceased
there and in many other cities."
In 1261, another chronicler tells us that, "by means of the
devotion of the flagellants, who went about crying, Peace ! Peace !
*St. Thomas, De Regimine Princip., lib. i. 2.
1914-] DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF WAR 235
many enmities and wars both new and old, in the city of Genoa
and throughout Italy, were exchanged for peace."
In France, in 1349, according to the chronicles of St. Denis,
eight hundred thousand persons, from the highest to the lowest, are
said to have practised this devotion. Another curious and interest-
ing custom appeared half a century later, in Grenada, where a num-
ber of men and women, clad in white linen, went in solemn procession
through cities and towns, singing canticles, and praying to God for
the safety of the human race, and at intervals kneeling down and
crying aloud : " Mercy, O Lord, mercy ! " This penitential exercise
spread rapidly through Spain, and thence into Gaul, England, and
other countries, as we see from the words of the old annalist.
" In 1398, there was in Italy and other Christian countries," he says,
" a certain wondrous movement of religion and ceremonies called
'the white-robed.' ' Four members of this company " came in that
habit " to Ferrara, on the first of September, and on the second,
which was Sunday, " one of them preached in the great church, and
explained the cause and manner of the constitution, and related the
miracles which had occurred in Spain." A large concourse of
people listened to this discourse; and on the eighth of September,
" the Feast of St. Mary, the illustrious Lord Marquis of Est, with
his consort, the Lady Ziliola, and all the courtiers and nobles, with
the Bishops of Ferrara and Modena, and the Patriarch of Jerusa-
lem, and many other prelates, and all the clergy, assisted in the
procession, clad in white, to the number of about thirteen thousand."
After other processions, " the said four persons departed to Padua,
Trevisa, and elsewhere, establishing in each place the same cere-
monies, by this means bringing all kinds of enemies to concord and
peace."
" Truly it was an incredible and admirable thing," exclaimed
the learned Leonardus Aretinus, writing of the terrible troubles
that led to these processions ; for " at that time," he tells us, " there
was no rest from war." The " peregrination," as he calls it, of the
white-robed ones " lasted generally ten days, and the fast was on
bread and water." There was free access to all towns, even those
but lately the most hostile, and " no one then attempted any kind of
deceit or oppression."
It must be noted that opinions differ as to the country where
this devotion originated; some authorities believing that it first
began in Ireland and Scotland; others in Spain; and others again
in Provence. The latter view is that of George Stella, an eyewitness
236 DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF WAR [Nov.,
of the processions in Genoa, in 1388, when the Stabat Mater was
sung, interspersed with special verses having reference to the desire
for peace. One of these ran as follows :
Advocate, whose heart is breaking
In the death of Christ partaking,
Hear Thy people's cry to thee.
" Children of twelve," he tells us, " sang the alternate strophe,
the rest being chanted in full chorus, and at the end of every three
stanzas all joined in singing, 'At the Cross Her Station Keeping,'
often falling on the ground, and with a loud voice crying thrice,
'Mercy/ and thrice, Teace !' afterwards repeating the 'Our Father,'
and some short prayers in Latin. This devotion," he adds, " was
practised all through the Genoese territory/' Enemies were recon-
ciled, feuds ceased, and goods which had been seized in war, were
now restored to their rightful owners. Even persons who had at
first derided the processions, " were moved with zeal and the fear
of God." Some noblemen, who were spending the summer in their
country villas, left their houses, and, joining the crowd, put on
white. Immense numbers flocked to the churches for confession,
and at the Mass at break of day received the Body and Blood of
Christ; after which the people of Genoa, of all classes and ages,
men, women, and children clothed in white, followed the clergy to
the cathedral, where the venerable Archbishop James de Flisco
awaited them, mounted on a horse, " because," says the chronicler,
" through old age he could not walk ; but the horse was covered
with white." And then the whole procession moved on to the gate
of the Monastery of St. Thomas. " On one day the Brothers of the
Order of Minors (Franciscans) bore the sacred relics of their
church; and, on another, the Dominicans carried theirs;" whilst
the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed came out
and joined them, girt with a cord.
A few years later, a Dominican (Friar Jerome) gives us
another interesting account of this same devotion. In the month of
September, 1400, he tells us " there was a wonderful event in Italy,
for at that time multitudes of men and women clothed themselves
in white, and went about carrying the cross or the banner of some
saint; and when the Body of Christ was elevated at the Altar, they
used to cry often, 'Mercy! Mercy!' And I remember, while cele-
brating at the altar of St. James, that I was terrified at this new
and strange kind of clamor. But they walked in procession like
1914-] DEVOTIONS IN TIME OF IV AR 237
brothers, some singing 'Mercy,' and others Stabat Mater And
they fasted nine days and went barefoot. Some bishops and some
monks went with them to lords of states and castles, too; and
preached to them, and many were reconciled, who before had been
mortal enemies. And they went thus, singing day and night."
In 1399 we read that "six thousand English and French had
lately gone to Rome, clad in white;" and, in the same year, a great
throng, " numbering ten thousand and more," assembled on the
mountain of Fara, not far from Bergamo, and all unanimously
cried out, peace and mercy! "In the name of the eternal God,"
says the old chronicle, " and of the Blessed Virgin Mother Mary.
Amen; and to their praise, and the glory of the blessed martyrs,
Alexander and Vincent, I record and write, that on this twenty-
seventh day of August many Masses were said on that moun-
tain by the Bishop of Milan, and Brothers James de Urio, a Domin-
ican Friar, Petrus de St. Pelegrino, and Aloysius de Scalve, of the
Order of St. Francis, and all the clergy of Bergamo; and then,
on that mountain of Fara, peace was made between many citizens."
Again, we are told by the anonymous author of a Paduan
chronicle, that " this devotion so pleased the people, that many
on their deathbeds gave instructions that their bodies should be
clothed, after their decease, in the white habit, and carried to the
grave by men similarly clad."
Evidences of this custom are also to be found in English
testamentary documents of the Middle Ages. Before leaving this
subject of the white-robed ones, it may be mentioned in passing,
that Dante would seem to have foretold these processions, when he
says, 2 seventy-seven years prior to their inauguration, " I marked a
multitude that walked as if attendant on their leaders, clothed in
raiment of such whiteness as the world has never seen." Every-
thing in the Liturgy and ceremonial of Christ's Church, which has
been called by the Fathers " The House of Peace ;" all her prayers ;
even the very buildings, however humble, in which the Adorable
Sacrifice is offered, seem to breathe a holy and a solemn tranquillity
" this place was built in peace."
If we recall the ordinary of the Mass alone, how many refer-
ences to peace recur to the mind ; how many reminders that this is
the Supreme Sacrament, in which Almighty God reconciles the
world to Himself. It will be remembered that the beautiful
devotion of the Forty Hours, now so familiar to us, in-
a Purg. 29.
238 EXPRESSION [Nov.,
stituted by a humble Capuchin Friar, Joseph of Milan, to
commemorate the interval during which the Sacred Body of our
Lord rested in the Sepulchre, was specially intended as an exercise
suitable for times of public calamity or danger. This brings us
back to our starting point the necessity of penance, fasting, and
supplication when war, and the horrors of war, hangs like a cloud
over the nations; when scenes, which, to use St. Jerome's words,
" the mind shudders to contemplate," are before our eyes. Peace
in Israel : such was the prayer during the ages of faith ; and surely
it should be on every lip to-day. Battles, bloodshed, devastation
of territory may be at times unavoidable that question we are not
called upon to decide; the point for us is to imitate our Catholic
forefathers in their faith and in their practise, crying often, in the
depths of our hearts, " Let mercy and peace reign among us."
EXPRESSION.
BY ARMEL O'CONNOR.
I WOOED Thee with a gift of song
Easily, at the start;
Soon learning lips go surely wrong
That hope to shape the heart.
I claim Thee with unuttered thought,
Too large for frontier'd speech,
Knowing that all mere sound had sought,
Unfettered Love may reach.
I praise Thee with the pondering
Of one in Nazareth;
Her silence, an immortal thing
That measured Life and Death.
CARDINAL ALLEN. 1
BY BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P.
HE old Protestant notion of the settlement of religion
under Elizabeth as the joyous rebound of the whole
nation from a hatred of superstition to the pure truth
of Calvinism and Zwinglianism, has been proved false
in the light of contemporary evidence now open to
the scholars of the world. Objective writers Catholic and non-
Catholic alike have repudiated the unfair and dishonest version
of Burnet, Macaulay, and Creighton, and have shown conclusively
that the change in religion brought about by Elizabeth and her three
ministers, Cecil, Walsingham, and Bacon, was due to coercion of
the cruelest kind, which thought nothing of principle, or of human
life and suffering. The one Englishman, who did more than any
other to offset the reforming zeal of Elizabeth, and save from utter
wreck the remnants of the ancient faith, was William Allen, Prin-
cipal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, President of Douay and of
Rheims, and Cardinal.
Of the three great Tudor Cardinals Wolsey, Pole, and Allen
Allen is the least known. Yet he was Wolsey's superior as a
scholar, and Pole's superior as a writer and a controversialist.
Strangely enough each of them failed to accomplish the chief
task he had determined upon. Wolsey unwisely lent him-
self to Henry VIII.'s dishonest scheme of the divorce, which led
eventually to the breach with Rome ; Pole lived to see his work nul-
lified by the folly of Mary's Spanish marriage and her overzeal
which threatened the stability of his work; and Allen in his last
years let himself be drawn into the political arena, which was, as
our author says, " to fill up the cup of sorrows of his afflicted fel-
low-Catholics in England, by throwing into it the seeds of fierce
and bitter internecine political strife."
Cardinal Allen came of an ancient and honorable race of the
Aliens of Rossall Grange and Toderstaffe Hall, in the county of
Lancashire. His ancestors had lived on the same spot for cen-
turies, comfortable country gentlemen, leading useful and God-
l An Elizabethan Cardinal, William Allen. By Martin Haile. St. Louis : B.
Herder. $6.00 net.
240 CARDINAL ALLEN [Nov.,
fearing lives. William Allen was born at Rossall Grange, which
his family held on lease from the abbots of Dieulacres, in 1532.
He was educated at home under the watchful eye of his parents
until his fifteenth year, when he was entered at Oriel College,
Oxford. His academical career was noted for the rapidity of his
advancement in learning, his extraordinary industry and exactness
under discipline, and the singular modesty and integrity of his
life. He became Bachelor of Arts in 1550, and was in the same
year unanimously elected fellow of his college. Whitaker, in his
history of Richmondshire, 2 says, that to obtain his degree, Allen
must "at least, have professed himself of the reformed religion,"
but there is not the slightest evidence of his apostasy: in fact,
whatever evidence there is points the other way. A conjecture
made two centuries after the event ought to be set aside as
worthless, especially when we know fully the nature of the man.
Allen's College is mentioned by Turner, afterwards Dean of Wells,
as "a stronghold of Popery" at this very time. In 1556 Allen
was chosen Principal of St. Mary's Hall, and Proctor of the Uni-
versity. Whether he ever met Cardinal Pole is uncertain, but that
the fame of his attainments and learning had reached the Chan-
cellor of the University is beyond question. It is most probable
that the canonry of York conferred upon Allen, still a layman, in
1558, was bestowed through the influence of Cardinal Pole.
Elizabeth came to the throne, November 17, 1558. With a
packed Parliament and a subservient House of Lords, she suc-
ceeded in passing three bills, which effected the severance with
Rome, established the Royal Supremacy, and decreed uniformity
of worship according to the revised second Prayer Book of Edward
VI. " The battle raged so fiercely over the Supremacy Bill, and
passions were so aroused by it, that it has become impossible to
follow the measure through all the stages and changes necessitated
by violent and strenuous opposition in both houses." 3 The Act of
Uniformity was opposed by the whole bench of bishops, and by
nine lay peers; several of the latter must have absented themselves
on one pretext or another, for that momentous measure was passed
by a majority of only three votes. The bill thus became a law
without a single episcopal vote in its favor. When the Oath of
Supremacy was tendered to the bishops, they all, with the one
exception of Kitchen of Llandaff, declined to take it, and were at
once deposed from their sees. The majority of the clergy followed
*Vol. i., p. 444. 8 Dom Birt, Settlement of Religion Under Elizabeth, p. 90.
1914.] CARDINAL ALLEN 241
the example of their prelates, and refused to take the oath. The
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were equally loyal to the
old faith, but Elizabeth simply removed the heads of houses and
professors just as she had deposed the bishops, and men of the
New Learning were put in their place. William Allen staid at
Oxford until 1561; his departure then became inevitable, as his
biographer and secretary, Nicholas Fitzherbert, tells us, on account
of his untiring zeal in encouraging the timid to steadfastness, and
giving counsel to the doubting to stand firm against heretical at-
tacks.
After a year in Flanders, he fell ill, and was advised by his
physicians to try his native air as the only means of saving his life.
With the penal laws in full force, the remedy would appear to have
been little less dangerous than the disease. He went to England
fully aware of the risks he ran, for he was most anxious to help
counteract the evil effects of the legislative alteration of religion. In
those early days of doubt and hesitancy, many Catholics were shel-
tering themselves under what was known as " occasional conform-
ity." Both priests and people persuaded themselves, as Allen put
it later in a letter to Bishop Vendeville, " that it was enough to hold
the faith interiorly while obeying the sovereign in externals, espe-
cially in the singing of psalms and parts of Scripture in the vulgar
tongue, a thing which seemed to them indifferent, and, in persons
otherwise virtuous, worthy of toleration on account of the terrible
rigor of the laws." 4
The question of occasional conformity was submitted to the
Pope, Paul IV., who decided, as might be expected, that there could
be no compromise with heresy, and no alliance between the ancient
Church and the sect of the day. William Allen finding " that
not only laymen, who believed the faith in their hearts, and heard
Mass when they could, frequented the schismatical churches
but many priests said Mass privately and celebrated the heretical
offices and Supper in public," 5 set to work at once to combat this
fast spreading error. Although a mere layman, he was listened
to as one speaking with authority, a fact which speaks volumes for
the estimate in which he was held at this early date by his Catholic
fellow-countrymen. He went from house to house insisting on obe-
dience to the commands of the Holy See, and circulated in manu-
script his treatise on the authority of the Church, which was printed
abroad two years later under the title Certain Brief Reasons Con-
4 September 16, 1580. 5 Knox, The Douay Diaries, vol. i., p. 23.
VOL. C. 16
242 CARDINAL ALLEN [Nov.,
cerning the Catholic Faith. He remained in England two years,
and so stiffened the resolution of the Catholics of Lancashire, that
it remained, according to his enemies, for three centuries " a hotbed
of Popery," and furnished him the chief supporters in England of
the seminaries he was to establish abroad. Such activity incited
the wrath of the authorities, who did their utmost to apprehend
him. He was forced to go in turn to Oxfordshire, and Norfolk;
and after a brief visit to Oxford, he escaped to the Continent,
never to return.
He went at once to Malines, where he was ordained priest
in 1565. In May of that year, he published his well-known work,
A Defence and Declaration of the Catholic Church's Doctrine Touch-
ing Purgatory and Prayers for the Souls Departed. He made
Malines his home for the next two years, lecturing on theology at
the College of the Benedictines. His book on purgatory soon came
to the notice of Elizabeth, and a warrant was at once issued for his
arrest. While the Queen's writ was being published, Father Allen
wrote another book on confession and indulgences some four hun-
dred and twelve pages which put him in the very first rank of the
controversialists of the day. Scholarly, clear, lucid, accurate, he
always writes with the tenderest love for those who had made ship-
wreck of the old faith. In the fall of 1567 he made a pilgrimage to
Rome with his old master at Oriel, Morgan Philipps, and Dr.
Vendeville, then Regius Professor of Canon Law at the University
of Douay, and later on Bishop of Tournay. Dr. Vendeville had
wished to lay before the Pope, St. Pius V., a plan for the
conversion of infidels, but the Pope was too busy at the time
to give him an audience. On his way home, he expressed his dis-
appointment to his friend, Father Allen, who at once took the op-
portunity of pleading the cause of his persecuted brethren in Eng-
land. The result of this conversation was the founding of the Col-
lege of Douay, which was to accomplish so much for the preserva-
tion of the faith in England during the days of persecution.
The college was opened on Michaelmas Day, 1568. The Papal
confirmation and approval being granted a few months later, Father
Allen was made president, and Bristow, " his right hand," a fellow
of Exeter College, became his prefect of studies. The first mem-
bers of the college were two Belgians, Raverton and Colier, who
with John Marshall, Dean of Christ Church, left shortly, because
the poverty of the college was more than they could stand. Some
of the other pioneers were Risdon, who later on joined the English
1914.] CARDINAL ALLEN 243
Carthusians at Bruges; Wright who labored long on the English
Mission; Storey who became a Jesuit; Darell of New College and
Morgan Philipps of Oriel ; Stapleton the controversialist, and Cam-
pion the martyr. Father Allen's seminary was really the first
seminary established under the new rules promulgated by the Coun-
cil of Trent. The course of study was as generous as the diet was
meagre. Special attention was paid the study of the Bible, the his-
tory of the Church, and the controversies of the day, every student
looking forward with gladness to the day when he would be sent
to face death on the English mission.
During the first ten years of its existence 1568-1578 the
college sent forth from its walls seventy-four priests, fifteen of
whom died for the faith. Cuthbert Mayne enjoys the distinction of
being the proto-martyr, and the story of his life may be found in
Dr. Allen's Brief History of the Glorious Martyrdom of Twelve
Reverend Priests, published in 1582. The college had to struggle
along in the direst poverty for some years, for Elizabeth had pro-
hibited the sending of money from England, and many of the Eng-
lish exiles had suffered on account of the failure of the Northern
Insurrection, and the revolutionary movement in the Netherlands.
The Pope came to its rescue with a pension of one hundred gold
crowns a month, equivalent to one thousand crowns at the present
day. This was in 1576. Everything was in a most flourishing
condition at this time, for there were eighty English students in the
seminary and sixty at the university. But within two years the
revolutionary party came into power in Douay, and a new governor
appointed by the Prince of Orange and the States, commanded all
the English to depart. In the Holy Week of 1578, the College
was transferred to Rheims. Within eight months the Calvinistic
faction was expelled, the city and the magistrates, representing the
old order of things, asked Dr. Allen to return. He refused, for
another removal would have been troublesome and expensive, and
the state of the Low Countries was far from being settled.
Knox, in his historical preface to the Letters and Memorials of
Cardinal Allen, says that Allen's political activities only began about
the year 1582, but later investigations make it plain that they dated
at least six years earlier. Still he never allowed the peace and quiet
of his college to be disturbed by any mention of politics. Nothing
perhaps is more remarkable in his career than the rigid separation he
maintained between his life* as president of the seminary, and
his life as a prominent factor in affairs of State. He forbade
244 CARDINAL ALLEN [Nov.,
absolutely all political discussions among the students, and all allu-
sion in school questions and controversies to the vexed question of
depriving and excommunicating princes.
Dr. Allen was certainly most active in political schemes for the
furtherance of the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the over-
throw of Elizabeth. When Gregory XIII. consented to have an ex-
pedition sent to England in his name, with one of the Colonnas as
Captain General, he summoned Dr. Allen to Rome for consultation.
Gregory XIII. was only paying back Elizabeth in her own coin
when he sent aid to her revolted subjects, but aggressions so feeble
and poorly planned as those of Stuckley, Fitzgerald and San Gius-
eppe, might, as our author says, " well excite the risibility as well
as the anger of the terrible queen." Had Philip II. given his aid at
the time, these attempts might have been successful, but to act
without him was pure folly. If, as seems probable, Dr. Allen
advised the sending of these expeditions, it did not speak well for
his political sagacity.
Again we find Dr. Allen in Paris in the year 1582, busying him-
self with the schemes of Esme Stuart, Lord of Aubigny, and cousin
to the King of Scotland, James VI. Two years were spent in try-
ing to interest the King of Spain and the Duke of Guise in Aubigny 's
plan for the overthrow of Elizabeth, but the affair came to the
knowledge of the English government, and the Duke of Lennox died
without accomplishing anything. We know that Dr. Allen wrote
most enthusiastically of this enterprise to the Pope, Gregory XIII.,
describing two interviews that he had had with the Duke of Guise in
Paris. He seemed to share with Father Persons the opinion that
the majority of the people of England were prepared to rise against
their queen on the mere appearance of French or Spanish troops.
Father Persons' influence on Dr. Allen was supreme, and the latter's
long absence from his native land had caused him to get out of
touch with the deepest instincts of the nation, despite the constant
intercourse that went on between Rheims and England.
Another instance which shows how foreign were his ways of
thinking from the majority of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, was
his written defence of the treason of Sir William Stanley, who had
delivered Deventer over to the King of Spain. Dr. Allen charac-
terized this treason as " a lawful and a laudable act," which so as-
tounded many Catholics in England that they deemed his work " a
forgery of some malicious man to Vnake our cause odious to the
world."
1914.] CARDINAL ALLEN 245
Memorandum after memorandum was laid before the Pope
by the Spanish Ambassador, Olivares, urging the elevation of Dr.
Allen to the purple, because of his staunch advocacy of the claims
of Philip II. to the English crown, and as a first step towards the
long talked-of English expedition. The Pope finally yielded in
the Consistory of August 7, 1587, in the hope that Philip's attack
upon England would be made without delay. But the dilatory King
allowed a year to go by, thus giving Elizabeth ample time to pre-
pare. Dr. Allen himself expressly states that his cardinalate was
due to Jesuit influence at the Court of Spain, and chiefly to Philip's
great friend, Father Persons. It is rather amusing now to read of
Cardinal Allen's drawing up a paper for the guidance of the King,
containing " suggestions as to the way of filling up the churches and
offices of the King and kingdom of England, if God gives the suc-
cess which is hoped for from His mercy." The Armada went to its
defeat a year later, and the English Catholics, despite their cruel
treatment by Elizabeth, were loyal to a man in repelling the Spanish
invaders.
To his dying day, Cardinal Allen remained convinced that the
only hope for England lay in Spanish interference. We can imagine
his chagrin, therefore, at the utter defeat of the Armada, and
Philip's abandonment of the enterprise. Our author regrets and
rightly that Cardinal Allen should ever have combined with the
spiritual warfare, which he so well understood and in which he was
so entirely successful, a political campaign of which he understood
so little, and the consequences of which were so disastrous.
Cardinal Allen's tact and large-mindedness are never so appar-
ent as in his dealings with the dissensions in the English college at
Rome. From the outset the English students were ever setting
forth their grievances, whether the college was under the Welsh-
man, Dr. Clenock, who was singularly lacking in the talent of gov-
erning, or under the Italian Jesuits, who were disliked because of
"the open penances in hall, and the surveillance and espionage,
which," as Ely says in his Certain Brief Notes, " had they been at-
tempted at Oxford and Cambridge, the offenders would have risked
being torn to pieces." A third reason was the favor supposedly
shown to those students who showed any inclination to join the
Society.
As a matter of fact, sixty-nine Englishmen had become Jesuits
between the years 1556 and 1580, and yet the number sent into Eng-
land had been surprisingly small. Mr. Haile writes :
246 CARDINAL ALLEN [Nov.,
There were seldom more than four or five Jesuits at a time
in England, and even so late as 1598, eighteen years after Cam-
pion and Persons arrived in the country, they numbered only
sixteen, of whom one was in prison. The same proportion held
good among those who fell in defence of the faith. During
the forty-four years of Elizabeth's reign, although the persecu-
tion raged even more hotly against the Jesuits than the seculars,
one hundred and sixty seminary priests were martyred to seven
Jesuits, one Benedictine and one Franciscan. Of the Jesuits,
four Father Briant, John Cornelius, Roger Filcock, and Fran-
cis Page were all secular priests, who joined the Society
shortly before their death.
Cardinal Allen was always called upon to play the role of peace-
maker. We find him called to Rome to restore harmony and good
will between the students and the authorities in 1579, and again six
years later he pours oil upon the waters by having the Pope, Sixtus
V., appoint William Holt, an English Jesuit, to take the place of the
Italian Father Agazzari.
Besides the four works above already mentioned, Cardinal
Allen wrote a Latin treatise on the Sacraments, which was highly
esteemed and used by Cardinal Bellarmine ; an Apology for the two
English colleges of Rheims and Rome; a Life of Father Campion;
a Defence of English Catholics, against the lying and slanderous
pamphlet of Lord Burleigh; 6 Instructions Concerning the Govern-
ment of Seminaries, and probably the famous Admonition, which
the appellant priests ascribed to Father Persons. His controversial
writings so angered the English government, that it not only issued
a writ for his arrest, but did its utmost to have Henry III. deliver
him into its hands. Secretary Walsingham had deputed, moreover,
the notorious Egremont Radcliffe to assassinate Dr. Allen as well
as Don Juan of Austria, as Radcliffe himself confessed on the scaf-
fold. Removal by assassination seems to have been part of the
politics of the sixteenth century, for we recall Catherine de Medici's
attempt upon Coligny, which prepared the way for the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, and Philip II.'s approval of the plan to assas-
sinate Elizabeth. Many politicians of that day looked upon the
murder of an enemy not as a crime but as an act of war, as part and
parcel of the general attack upon an enemy against whom hostilities
were opening. It is hard for us at the present time to realize this
viewpoint, and it is good to remember that the Popes never gave
Published lately by the Catholic Library of England.
1914-] CARDINAL ALLEN 247
the slightest countenance to such a false and brutal doctrine. Pope
Pius V. has indeed been accused by non-Catholic controversialists
of advocating assassination with regard to the Huguenot leaders in
France, and with regard to Elizabeth of England, but not the slight-
est evidence has ever been brought forward for this false accusation.
Ever since the Council of Trent had declared the Latin Vulgate
the authentic version of the Sacred Scriptures, the Popes had been
anxious to publish a corrected recension. Pius IV. had appointed
a commission of Cardinals for that purpose. In 1579 Cardinal
Montalto urged upon Gregory XIII. the importance of preparing
a more correct edition of the Septuagint as a preliminary to the
recension of the Vulgate. Cardinal Caraffa was appointed to take
up the matter, and among the scholars whom he chose to assist him
is found the name of Cardinal Allen. How much work he did on
this commission is not known, but he must have spent some time
upon it during his five months stay in Rome in the winter of 1579-
1580, and again on his return in 1585. This corrected edition of
the Septuagint was finally published by Sixtus V. in 1587. He was
unable to complete the Vulgate, for we find Pope Gregory XIV.
appointing a new commission in 1591. Fitzherbert speaks of Car-
dinal Allen's labors on this commission, as well as his work in the
two Congregations of the Index and the Affairs of Germany. On
the death of Cardinal Caraffa, Cardinal Allen was appointed by
the Pope apostolic librarian, and one of his labors in this office was
the correcting of the text of St. Augustine, which he undertook in
cooperation with other scholars. Death alone prevented him from
completing it.
We must not forget that we owe our English Bible to Cardinal
Allen. Soon after the transference of the English College to
Rheims, he commissioned Gregory Martin to work on a translation
of the Bible. Personally he preferred to keep the Scriptures in the
original, but as many corrupt versions were in circulation, he deemed
it necessary to have a faithful and correct text that Catholics might
trust. Martin began his translation on October 16, 1578, and it
was revised and corrected page by page, as it proceeded, by Bristow
and Cardinal Allen. The New Testament was completed in March,
1582, and the Old Testament in 1611, Dr. Allen collecting all the
necessary funds about $25,000.00 for the publication.
Martin did his work well. Henceforth the English-speaking
Catholics were to have a correct translation of the Bible,
which they could confidently quote in answer to the faulty Protest-
248 CARDINAL ALLEN [Nov.,
ant versions, gotten up to promote the theological errors and
heresies of their translators. It put an end to the many Protestant
versions then in use, and caused the publishing of the King James
Version of 1611. The translators of the Authorized Version made
great use of the labors of Gregory Martin, as is clear from their
adoption of many of his renderings.
Some superficial writers have spoken of the Douay Bible as
overloaded with Latinism, and have ascribed this fault to the
fact that the translators and revisers were exiles, who had grown
unfamiliar with their native tongue. Martin forestalled this ob-
jection by declaring that he followed the Vulgate to the best of his
ability, because it had been declared authentic by the Council of
Trent. He preferred to follow a bit closely the Latin text, rather
than endanger the true sense by the use of more familiar words.
All concerned with the translation were Oxford men, and all but
Allen himself had but lately left the university. Scholars of late
have come to acknowledge the excellent English of the Douay Bible.
As a writer in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, November, 1870, well says:
" Martin's translation is terse, close, vigorous, grand old English
of the very best era of English literature, coeval with Shakespeare,
Ben Jonson, and Spencer."
Cardinal Allen will always be held in reverence for his scholar-
ship, his skill and earnestness in controversy, his indefatigable
labors in maintaining the faith in England by his continual supply
of learned and holy missionaries, his translation of the Bible, and
his general character of sweetness and charm of manner which did
so much to quiet the dissensions of the English Catholics of his
time. His one fault was his entering into politics, for which he was
absolutely unfitted, and his submitting to being made a tool of
by the King of Spain. His political prejudices were with him even
to the last, for one year before his death we find him drawing up a
strong indictment against Henry of Navarre for his " pretended "
conversion. Luckily for France and for the peace of Europe, Clem-
ent VIII. believed in Henry's sincerity. The Pope's solemn abso-
lution of the King ended the thirty years of religious wars in France,
and made France a powerful ally of the Holy See.
flew Boohs.
ESSAYS. By Alice Meynell. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. $1.50 net.
Never less than an event in letters, on either English-speaking
side of the Atlantic, is the publication of a new volume by Alice
Meynell. Last year gave us the collected Poems; this year we
welcome the promised edition of the collected prose essays: in
both cases a new grouping, with slight additions, yet with all the
charm of well-known, well-treasured friends. For the " novelty "
of Mrs. Meynell's work is always a thing quite apart from the acci-
dent of a first or twenty-first reading. It is a matter of the inher-
ently fresh and unique viewpoint the " eye of a fresh mind," as
George Meredith once so perfectly christened it.
No lover of the best in modern prose, no lover of that now
rare entity, the essay, and surely no lover of the most fastidious
fruits of Catholic culture, can afford to be without this weighty
little book. In it, under such alluring sub-titles as Winds and
Waters, Wayfaring, In a Book Room, Arts, The Darling Young,
or Women and Books, we find gleanings from Mrs. Meynell's
choicest work, both early and recent. Blithe, familiar passages
from The Spirit of Place greet us ; tender, gay and understanding
pages from The Children; reveries delicate and profound from The
Rhythm of Life, The Colour of Life, and Ceres' Runaway. Nature,
studied with the poet's truth ; books, known with the poet's love and
the poet's humor; the fine arts, interpreted by a sister art; life,
translated by a poet who has lived largely these are the subjects
of Alice Meynell's essays. It is not too much to say that the chief
beauties of her prose come from her being a poet. But there is one
patent virtue of her criticism which comes, we suspect, from her
being a woman: and that is her understanding of womanhood!
Slight enough is her patience with the weakness, the sentimentality,
the inefficiency once considered feminine: just as slight as her
patience with the cheap emotion, the " refuse rhetoric," the lachry-
mose piti fulness of certain non-virile veins of literature the mod-
ern " pathos " which she describes as " bred now of your mud by
the operation of your sun. Tis a strange serpent; and the tears of
it are wet." But she can, and does, rise gallantly enough to the de-
fence of all underrated womanhood (if any such be left) to Steele's
250 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
Prue, for example, or to Mrs. Johnson. And she points out as
the chief immorality of Victorian caricature, both of pen and brush,
that it vulgarizes woman and particularly woman in her love and
her motherhood.
Alien enough to our syncopated daily haste are the fine-spun
thought, the subtle sensitiveness, the under-emphasis, the large and
quiet harmonies of Mrs. Meynell's work. There is, indeed, nothing
of dailiness in it : how could there be, after her shocking discovery
that noon was the hour of complete mediocrity? But the mystery
and exultation of the dusk are there and the sweet-eyed discovery
of the dawntime and the passion, the meditation, of long nights
lighted only by the " spacious vigil of the stars."
Not the least memorable of Mrs. Meynell's gifts to the modern
world she so well understands, and so deftly criticizes, is the gift of
high composure. " Without anxiety, without haste, and without
misgiving are all great things to be done," she writes upon one
of her pages. And upon another comes a passage which might
well serve as the Credo of her own work in literature : "To letters
do we look now for the guidance and direction which the very close-
ness of the emotion taking us by the heart makes necessary. Shall
not the Thing more and more, as we compose ourselves to literature,
assume the honor, the hesitation, the leisure, the reconciliation of
the Word?"
PARISH LIFE UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH. By W. P. M.
Kennedy, M. A. The Catholic Library No. 9. St. Louis : B.
Herder. 30 cents net.
This scholarly study shows us in detail how the Elizabethean
reformation affected the everyday life of the people. The author
has comprised a great mass of detail within a very small compass,
and has written in a most objective manner of the parish clergy and
churches of those sixteenth century days of corruption and hypoc-
risy. He concludes as follows : " Parish life under Queen Eliza-
beth was in no healthy state. Lack of respect for authority was
evident in clerical life, and in the parish services. Religious dif-
ferences were accentuated by penal laws. Moral standards did not
exist. The entire local government was honeycombed with abuses.
There was no such thing as privacy. Spying was not only com-
mon but was encouraged. Education was in the widest sense neg-
lected. Genuine religion was so uncommon as to be almost neg-
ligible. A general irresponsibility characterized the various grades
1914-] NEW BOOKS 251
of society. It is almost impossible to find anything to praise, and
much which space has excluded remains for blame. Whatever may
be said of Elizabethean England in its relation to nationality, for-
eign affairs, and literature, it must be confessed that the state of
parish life was deplorable. To the Catholic missionaries, fired with
enthusiasm, England presented a pitiable picture of moral anarchy.
To the honest Puritan at home the parishes of England were little
better than heathen. The Elizabethan ideal of national religious
unity failed in its own day, because it neglected the true foundations
of character. Subsequent history has also proved it a failure."
RELIGIOUS POEMS OF RICHARD CRASHAW. With an In-
troductory Study by R. A. Eric Shepherd. Catholic Library
No. 10. St. Louis: B. Herder. 30 cents net.
In an excellent introductory, Mr. Shepherd defends Crashaw
" poet and saint " against what he styles the grumbling essay of
Francis Thompson. Thompson maintained that Crashaw's is es-
sentially a secular genius, " allured to religious themes " not by
the religious lesson, but the poetical grandeur and beauty of the
subject; " he sings the stable at Bethlehem, but he does not sing
its lessons of humility, poverty, self-abnegation." In answer Mr.
Shepherd writes : " What Thompson complains of in Crashaw is the
ecstasy of the convert. Crashaw wearies Thompson by his breath-,
less dwelling on the facts of redemption, the means whereby it
was accomplished. Thompson comes to hear Crashaw preach on
the Nativity, but Crashaw leads him to the creche and kneels
before it. Thompson desires to hear a sermon on the Atonement,
but Crashaw turns and contemplates the crucifix. Thompson
seeks to be instructed, but Crashaw cannot teach ; he can only sing
hymns." Mr. Shepherd and Francis Thompson both agree in class-
ing the Hymn to St. Teresa and The Flaming Heart among the best
of all Crashaw's work. In the latest edition of Francis Thompson's
Essays, we notice that the above strictures on Crashaw have been
omitted.
ST. BERNARDINO: THE PEOPLE'S PREACHER. By Maisie
Ward. The Catholic Library No. n. St. Louis: B. Herder.
30 cents net.
Maisie Ward has done a good piece of work in this brief life
of St. Bernardino for the Catholic Library. Although not so well
known to-day as his father, St. Francis, or his fellow-patron of
252 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
Siena, St. Catherine, he was called in the fifteenth century the
second founder of the Franciscan Order and the Apostle of Italy.
Although himself a learned man, and promoting learning in his
order, his strongest appeal was preaching in Franciscan style to
the people. He understood the poor so intimately that he was
able to speak to them as one of them. He was a reforming Saint, ,
reforming his order and his country by the power of his genius and
his holiness. He was accused at Rome of heresy, because it was
said he taught in a novel and dangerous manner devotion to the
Holy Name of Jesus. He was acquitted by both Martin V. and
Eugenius IV., one of his most steadfast friends, St. John Capistran,
eloquently vindicating his orthodoxy. He founded convents of
the Observance in many towns of Italy, and was most successful
in reconciling the Conventuals and the Observants. The present
volume contains a number of his sermons, which give us some idea
of his power as a preacher.
THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. By Rev.
Horace K. Mann, D.D. Volume X. St. Louis : B. Herder.
$3.00 net.
The tenth volume of Dr. Mann's monumental work begins
with the pontificate of Alexander III. (1159-1181). Even Vol-
taire said of him that mankind owed more to Alexander than to
any other man in the Middle Ages, and that, if men had not lost
their rights, it was principally owing to the exertions of Alexander
III. For eighteen years of his reign he had to combat the Emperor
Frederick, who supported four anti-popes against him. England,
Ireland, France, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, the Greek
Emperor, the whole Cistercian Order, and the two Sicilies stood by
Alexander III. during the schism. The support of the Greek Em-
peror was due more to the desire of humbling Frederick than to
any love for the Holy See. The Lombard League did excellent
service for the Pope against Frederick, utterly defeating his army
near Milan, and thus helping in a measure to put an end to the
schism. It built a new strongly fortified city for purposes of
defence, and named it Alessandria in honor of the Pope.
During this pontificate we notice the beginning of those finan-
cial troubles, which at no distant date were to cause the Popes to
use most unsatisfactory methods of raising money, and which were
thus to result in great evils later on.
Dr. Mann relates in detail the contest of St. Thomas a Becket
1914.] NEW BOOKS 253
with Henry II., the proceedings of the Council of the Lateran,
the relation with the Holy See and the Eastern Church, etc.
The chief interest in the life of Lucius III. ( 1 181-1 185) centres
about the Cathari and Waldenses, and the Inquisition's action in
their regard.
Most of Urban III.'s (1185-1187) pontificate deals with the
quarrel between Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the monks
of Christ Church, a lawsuit which took fifteen years to settle. The
next two Popes, Gregory VIII. (1187) and Clement III. (1187-
1191), were both friendly to the Emperor Frederick. The principal
work of Clement was in connection with the Third Crusade. He
succeeded in making Richard of England, Philip II. of France, and
Tancred of Sicily take the Cross, but the Crusaders fought among
themselves before going to the East. The Crusade was not an utter
failure as some have said, because the settlement made by Richard
and Saladin was in effect the settlement of the whole Eastern ques-
tion for a century after. A new Latin kingdom was founded in
Cyprus, and every important seaport was regained in Syria, with
almost all the land owned by the military orders.
The position of Pope Celestine III. (1191-1198) at the time
of his accession was desperate. Outside the city of Rome was
Henry VI., angry with the Papacy for favoring Tancred in Sicily;
inside were the Romans, equally angry with it for refusing to
help them to obtain possession of Tusculum. The Pope had turned
a deaf ear to the demands of the Romans, but the Emperor Henry,
once crowned by the Pope, ordered his garrison to hand over the
unsuspecting city of Tusculum to the Romans. They completely
destroyed it, killing and horribly mutilating most of its inhabitants.
Henry was excommunicated by the Pope a number of times, and
most deservedly, for he was one of the most barbaric despots who
ever sat upon a throne. His destruction of Tusculum, his murder
of the Archbishop of Liege, and his treacherous imprisonment of
King Richard of England, were only a few instances of his cruelty.
Luckily he died of fever at the early age of thirty- two.
The volume closes with a brief account of the life and teach-
ings of the Abbot Joachim of Fiore.
YOURSELF AND THE NEIGHBORS. By Seumas MacManus.
New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.25.
Throughout this narrative of Irish life, with its simple, sig-
nificant events, its touching characters with their fund of humor,
254 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
charity, and poetry, sounds the true note of genuineness that brings
with it the tear and the smile. There is, therefore, something dis-
tinctly familiar about all of these characters, the tyrannical post-
mistress, the " Masther " with pedantic speech, the gentle Father
Dan, and Barney, the Priest's boy,, who " realizing his position as
part of that great structure against which not even the gates of
hell shall prevail," shouldered " what he considered his due share
of the parish cares." Even the " Come-Home Yankee " and the
red-haired beggarman are not strange figures to such as under-
stand the warm, open-hearted character of the dear Irish people,
who love their own with a strong affection, and to whom the poor
are " equally entitled with yourself to the roof that God raised over
you, and to a share of the bite that you struggled for."
We know that the author has lived among the Irish moors,
has drawn his knowledge at first hand; nor has he missed his
" atmosphere " a word perhaps too trivial to apply to the faith
and poetry of an ancient and much persecuted race. Like Raftery,
the fiddler, who shaped the hardest heart like clay, he too has caught
the " sighin' o' the sae and the whisperin' of the Sidhe among the
sallies, and the heather-bleat's complainin' on the moor. The love-
liness of the skies and the loneliness o' the bogs and the whistlin'
o } the blackbird and the singin' o' the lark and the marchin' o j the
fairies on the moor, and the beat of their ten thousand ten times
little feet at the moonlit dance upon the rath."
For the lover of Irish lore who has smiled over the pages of
My New Curate, has felt his heart go over the footlights to Peg,
and thrilled to Teresa Brayton's Songs o' the Dawn, we can but
repeat our first recommendation, and add that if he has a drop of
Celtic blood in his veins, and a long evening at his disposal, he will
find a rare treat laid up for him.
POEMS FOR LOYAL HEARTS. By Rev. William Livingstone.
New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.25 net.
We are pleased to welcome this little volume from the hand of
one so much esteemed and beloved as Father Livingstone. As the
title suggests, these poems deal with the truest objects of the heart's
loyalty, God, friends, and country.
The opening lyrics, some twenty in number, sing of nature
in its relation to the world of spirit. The analogies are original,
and some of the descriptions very graceful, as, for instance, the
following :
1914.] NEW BOOKS 255
Spring should come but Winter lingers ;
All the world is cold,
Waiting till the fairy fingers
Shall her robes unfold,
Waiting for her minnesingers
And their songs of gold.
Or again:
In Cherry Lane the blossoms blow
In wreaths of white around the trees,
And spread their petals wide as though
They longed for nectar-seeking bees.
* * * #
In Cherry Lane the sunbeams steal
Through many a leaf and branch above,
And tender shoots come forth to feel
The touches of a wondrous love.
The author is at his best in these nature lyrics. In other of
his verses written for specific occasions, there is perhaps a little
straining after rhymes but this is a demand which even poet
laureates do not always meet successfully. Small defeats of this
kind, however, may be overlooked in view of the purity of the
underlying sentiment, and the sudden spiritual truth that .presents
itself to the reader. The lines Before a Crucifix are beautifully
simple and effective:
Ah ! wounded Love ! my worthless lips I press
To these, Thy carven feet,
Cold as the stones that felt their warm caress
On Sion's dusty street.
How blest those stones and they who walked on them
All stained and cracked and worn!
How doubly blest who kissed Thy garment's hem,
Though dust-begrimed and torn !
Then blessed am I, though far removed yet free
Thine image here to kiss
Were not Thy garments, till they vestured Thee,
Just earth-born things like this?
THE MIRROR OF OXFORD. By Rev. C B. Dawson, SJ. Lon-
don: Sands & Co. 75 cents.
All of the guides to Oxford written of late years have been
made to harmonize, with the Protestant tradition. Wherever ques-
256 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
tions arise regarding the religious storm which burst over the uni-
versity in the sixteenth century, statements are made, and inferences
drawn, which in the light of present knowledge can no longer be
sustained. As Father Dawson adds in his preface : " Much is said
in these otherwise admirable guides to Oxford, which to the adher-
ents of the old religion is needlessly offensive; and on the other
hand much that is deeply interesting to them left untold."
The present Oxford guide contains a most interesting historical
review of Oxford, its religious orders, its churches, its colleges and
halls. The best part of the volume is the attitude of the various
colleges during the turmoil of the Reformation; and the fidelity
often unto death of many of Oxford's sons to the Old Faith.
THE IDEAL OF THE MONASTIC LIFE FOUND IN THE APOS-
TOLIC AGE. By Dom Germain Morin, O.S.B. Translated
from the French by C. Gunning. With a preface by Dom
Bede Camm, O.S.B. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.25
net.
Many who know Dom Morin only as a patristic and liturgical
scholar, will welcome these devout and original conferences which
he delivered some twenty years ago to members of his own order.
His aim throughout is to demonstrate that the life of the primitive
Christians is the origin and model of the monastic life. Dom Bede
Camm tells us truly that the whole work " breathes the simple piety
of the ages of faith, and is impregnated with that peace of heart
and liberty of spirit which are characteristic of the true son of St.
Benedict."
The ideal of the monastic life consists " in raising gently, very
gently, the level of all the powers of the soul, enlarging peacefully
and regularly all the avenues through which God comes to it, so that
it may be filled with all the fullness of Him, Who, to use St. Augus-
tine's words, is the Food of the strong : Cibus sum grandium; cresce
et manducabis me."
The Benedictine ideal of poverty " sets no limits to the in-
crease of the material goods of the monastery," and far from being
rigorous and singular, is consistent with a certain general air of com-
fort. This comfort, however, supposes the absolute renunciation of
the least appearance of superfluous enjoyment. Dom Morin denies
that relaxation came into the Benedictine abbeys as the result of
riches. He admits this in exceptional cases, but adds that " history
has proved that monastic communities have never been more fer-
igi 4 .] NEW BOOKS 257
vent within, or more beneficent without, than when at the zenith of
their power and riches."
Our author is rather severe at times upon what he styles " more
or less artificial systems of modern asceticism."
THE RENAISSANCE, THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION,
AND THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION IN CONTINEN-
TAL EUROPE. By Edward Maslin Hulme, Professor of
History in the University of Idaho. New York: The Cen-
tury Co. $2.50.
Time was when a book in English on this subject was almost
certain to give offence to Catholics, either by its partisan animus or
by its failure to appreciate correctly the genius of that mediaeval
civilization which Protestantism displaced. But in recent years
things have changed a good deal in this regard, so that we now have
non-Catholic studies of the Renaissance and Reformation periods,
which, while reflecting their authors' temper of mind, do not grate
on their readers' sensibilities. Such works, even when not on the
highest plane of scholarship, are exceedingly useful, if only for the
reason that they help us to see ourselves as others see us, and so
keep us from being narrow. A reverence for objective fact, so
that no statement will be consciously untrue or misleading, is all
that we can look for. Indeed, it may be questioned whether we
have the right to demand any more than this, for a man's historical
writing, if it is to be vital, must be informed by his philosophy, and
as long as that philosophy is the progeny of honest observation
and reflection (as we are bound in lack of positive evidence to the
contrary to assume), he not only may, but must, study the past in its
light. Within these limits only is impartiality practically attain-
able, and, consequently, when we take exception to a work like the
above, we do so as a rule not on the score of its history so much
as on that of its theory. It is not the statements in detail that we
consider, but rather the presuppositions, the inferences, and the
deductions.
These remarks are apposite in a review of the present work.
Its author is evidently not a Catholic, and his book is not of the kind
that a Catholic would write yet it is not one that a Catholic can
entirely object to. Not that we would cry amen to everything he
says. For instance, the Luther he pictures in chapter twelve is,
to our way of thinking, not the Luther of history. But to point
out " errors " here and there would be neither thorough nor fair :
VOL. c. 17
258 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
not thorough, because it would not reveal the basis of our general
disapproval; not fair, because it might beget in the minds of our
readers the notion that the author is either unscholarly or prejudiced
or both, whereas we are convinced that he is neither. In a book
covering in five hundred and fifty-six pages so wide a field, the
general impression left by a perusal is of more consequence than
the separate elements that go to produce it. This impression we
hold to be not entirely warranted, because the author interprets his
facts in the light of a false presupposition that recurs as a sort of
leit-motiv throughout the work. The following passage suggests it :
Individuality sank from sight still further in the Middle Ages.
The Church taught that individuality was rebellion and sin.
Conscience, which is the individual judgment of what is right
and wrong, might exist between man and man, but not between
man and God. Man must not be content to live his own life.
Instead, it should be his aim to live over again, as far as pos-
sible, the life of the saints, the life of Christ. He must divest
himself of selfhood. Instead of seeking to create he should en-
deavor only to imitate. All utterance of the carnal self was
fraught with danger or with sin. Self-abnegation, self-annihila-
tion was the goal of the mediaeval Christian life. It was a sort
of Buddhism, save that the Nirvana of the Christian was God
and not mere oblivion. The spirit of implicit faith, of unques-
tioning obedience, inculcated by the age of faith, was destructive
of individuality; for mere right-doing in obedience to external
commands leaves the power of individual thought and judgment
in abeyance. It empties action of all rational significance. The
ideal of life of the Middle Ages was one closed about with the
circumscribing walls of a cloister. Yet its vision, though nar-
row, was lofty. It ignored as much as possible the world of
nature and the world of men, but it opened upon the infinite like
" the chink which serves for the astronomer's outlook upon the
abysses of heaven" (p. 60).
Now we do not propose to analyze this travesty of mediaeval
asceticism; it is due not to any lack of acquaintance with the salient
facts, but to a vision distorted by a false conception of the factors
most conducive to personal liberty. " Individuality " is an elastic
term. It may mean anything from rational self -development, which
is the aim of Catholic morality, to pure selfishness. But, taking it
in a reasonable sense, the surest way to kill it is to make a fetish of
it. If each of us is an individual, he is also part of a society,
and his own development can never really conflict with that of
1914.] NEW BOOKS 259
humanity as a whole. The one who forgets this is the first to
suffer. This was an essential part of the Church's message to the
non-Roman races, for when she first encountered them they were
barbarians. Now a barbarian society differs from a civilized society
precisely in this : that its members possess an over-developed " in-
dividuality," there is not enough corporate activity, wars between
tribes and even between families are of frequent occurrence, and
such central authority as exists is not any too seriously regarded.
The civilizing of such peoples is therefore bound to proceed along
the lines of a (relative) suppression of that " individuality " by
bringing prominently forward the place and function of each unit
in the social organism, and the duty of subordinating one's private
interests and activities to the common good. If in a given case
such suppression goes too far, that is not the fault of the method,
but merely an instance of the tendency to depreciate one aspect of
the truth when we have to insist on another. To accuse the me-
diaeval Church of suppressing individuality, is to over-state the case;
she was obliged to lay stress on the opposite phase of human de-
velopment, and could not attend to everything at once. The school-
master who demands that a boy give less time to baseball and more
to study, cannot for that reason be set down as opposed to sport.
Moreover, the monastic ideal, which the author regards as one
of the means whereby personal development was hindered, was in
reality the very opposite. A monastery is the last place on earth
for a lazy-minded man ; in that age it was to many the only avenue
of escape from social conditions wherein their personality would
have received either an exaggerated development or no development
at all. And, furthermore, there was within the limits of the monastic
profession itself a variety sufficiently vast to suit the different tem-
peraments of those who wished indeed to imitate Christ and the
saints, but to do so according to their own innate possibilities.
The Catholic ideal, then as ever, was not to suppress the individual
in favor of the Church, but to develop him through the Church.
If she taught the Communion of Saints, she also taught individual
responsibility and personal immortality. One need only recall the
freedom we had almost said fierceness of discussion in the me-
diaeval schools, and the regulations of the various craft-guilds,
whereby the individual's personal rights were secured, and his self'
development fostered far better than they are by the labor unions
of to-day, to bring home to one's mind the conviction that the fact
to be noted is not that the Church did so little in these directions,
2<5o NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
but that in an age dominated by the feudal idea (itself an attempt
to rectify a too vigorous individualism) she succeeded in doing so
much. On the other hand, Protestantism, having exaggerated one
phase of the truth, is now making the world pay the inevitable
penalty. This is how Mr. Belloc puts it :
The first and most salient character discoverable in non-
Catholic thought to-day is the undue extension of authority
You may perceive, as a note running through the modern world
wherever the effects of the Reformation are most prominent in
it, a simple unquestioning faith in mere statement You will
notice the almost childish repetition of known names in proof
of doubtful or quite unprovable assertion. 1
Yes, the wheel is coming full circle. The very ardor of their
search for freedom has made them miss it: they have lost their
life because they were too bent on saving it. Liberty implies
authority; and a society that insists on this is not suppressing
individuality, but guiding it in the right path. The real foe is
Protestantism, which is quenching freedom by its over-eagerness
to be free.
These considerations will suggest why we do not welcome
whole-heartedly the present work. A false concept of liberty, and
of the conditions requisite for its preservation, leads its writer to
picture the Reformation as a step in advance, whereas on a larger
view it was really the principal foe of the Renaissance, and con-
sequently of all sane and legitimate progress. At the same time
the book deserves perusal on the part of matured Catholic students ;
for in religious history, setting aside those facts that bear directly
on the immutable dogmas of the Church, it is only by the presenta-
tion of various views, in a spirit of wise and tempered " individ-
ualism/' that the true view can be approximated. For facts can-
not speak for themselves. They need an interpreter, and each
one who honestly essays the role deserves, if not our entire agree-
ment, at least our gratitude, and this we hereby express to Pro-
fessor Hulme. He has written a work that reveals wide knowl-
edge of a period peculiarly difficult to master. And if at times he
reads into it ideas and motives which we do not perceive therein,
we cannot but recognize the serious scholarship and breadth of
sympathy which keep him from that sort of writing which at one
time was associated almost with the very idea of a non-Catholic
historian of the Reformation.
1 See THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1912, The Results of the Reformation,
pp. 801, 803.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 261
PERILOUS SEAS. By E. G. Robin. New York: Benziger
Brothers. $1.25 net.
The scene of this story is laid in the Channel Islands, chiefly
in Guernsey ; the period, the early years of the French Revolution.
The author writes as if the intimacies of the household of the
faith were a novel but delightful experience; a feeling which the
characters, who become Catholics in the course of the story, fre-
quently express.
To those unfamiliar with the history of Catholicism in these
islands, it will be a surprise to see how utterly it had been stamped
out in the years between the Reformation and the coming of the
French emigres. No trace seems to have remained save the ignor-
ance, hatred, and prejudice of the sects. There is plenty of local
color in the primitive customs, festivals, and superstitions of the
natives. The sturdy Guernseyman, slow to modify his prejudices,
is won by the gay fortitude, the living faith, and the charm of the
French exiles, and this little corner of the world receives, for its
kindness to the unfortunate, the gift of the truth faith.
CANDLE FLAME. A Play for reading only. By Katharine
Howard. Boston: Sherman, French & Co.
" Cryptic and gnomic " are words applied by admirers to
other books by the same author, and the terms are equally applic-
able to this one. In thirty-two pages of wide margin and few
words, a story is told in which the old superstition of melting a
waxen image, in order to compass the death of a rival or an
enemy, plays an important part. But " I grieve about it some,"
is neither " gnomic nor cryptic," but incorrect English, indeed
there seems to be little meaning in the whole play. The pub-
lishers, however, have done their full share towards making the
book attractive.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN. By G. E. Street. Edited
by Georgiana Goddard King. Two volumes. New York:
E. P. Button & Co. $2.00 net.
No one can afford to travel in Spain without having Street's
well-known book for a companion. Although fifty years old, it
still remains the best work in English on Spanish architecture.
Every lover of Spain will be grateful to the editor for bringing it up
to date, and for widening its range. Most tourists rely on Baedeker,
the best part of which is carved out of Street, and the rest inac-
262 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
curate and inadequate in the extreme. The author tells us that the
interest of his work is threefold first, artistic and archaeological;
second, historical; and third, personal. The notes gathered on
several journeys have been put in the form of one continuous tour,
and the concluding chapters give a resume of the history of archi-
tecture in Spain, and a short history of the men who as architects
and builders have given him the materials of his work.
HOLY MASS. The Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Roman Liturgy.
By Rev. Herbert Lucas, S.J. Two volumes. St. Louis : B.
Herder. 30 cents each.
These two volumes are by far the most important of the Catho-
lic Library Series that have appeared. Father Lucas says in his
preface: " The attempt to write yet another book about the Mass,
while, for English-speaking Catholics, Dr. Fortescue's work on the
Roman Liturgy holds the field, may be deemed, perchance, both
presumptuous and inopportune." The author is too modest, for
there was plenty of room for a shorter and more popular treatment
of the same subject. Father Lucas' first volume is more popular
than the second, which deals (chapters x.-xiii.) in a rather erudite
fashion with the difficult question of the development of the Roman
Canon. Father Lucas, while admitting that the scholar need not be
deterred from investigating the structure of the Roman Canon out
of a mistaken feeling of reverence, still thinks that he can vindicate
for the Roman Canon a more or less perfect organic unity. He
does not agree with those writers Baumstark, Buchwald, and
Drews who imagine that they see in it a kind of patchwork, of
which the chief portions are thought to have somehow got out of
their right place. The question at any rate is still sub judice, and
perhaps never will be completely solved.
TEN REASONS. Proposed to his Adversaries for Disputation in
the Name of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Mem-
bers of our Universities. By Edmund Campion, S.J. St.
Louis : B. Herder. 30 cents net.
As Father Pollen tells us in his scholarly introduction, the
Decem Rationes was a last and most deliberate free utterance of
Campion's ever memorable mission. The book was finished and
sent to Father Persons on March, 1581, and its Latin prose, al-
though pronounced by critics of our day as somewhat silvery and
Livian, suited the tastes of that day to perfection. We can under-
1914.] NEW BOOKS 263
stand its popularity and effectiveness, for, "it is bright, pointed,
strong, full of matter, bold, eloquent, and convincing." The trans-
lation is by Father Rickaby, who warns us not to be surprised " to
find in this little work quite as much of rhetoric as of logic
and not to be surprised at the vehemence of the language. Com-
pared with his opponents, Luther, for example, Edmund Campion
is mere milk and honey."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. By George Galloway, D.D.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50 net.
Dr. Galloway has written for the International Theological
Library a lengthy and vague treatise on the philosophy of religion.
To discuss its six hundred pages adequately from a Catholic view-
point would require a volume. We will call attention merely to a
few of his utterances. For example : he is wrong in rejecting the
ontological, cosmological, moral, and historical proofs of the exist-
ence of God. He tells us that " as proofs they break down, and
that they suggest probabilities of greater or less degree; but they
carry no conviction to the minds of those who demand cogent logic.
God in the sense that spiritual religion demands can never be
reached by any deductive argument." He then proceeds to quote
the pragmatist Professor James as warrant for the thesis he does
not prove. " The attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual
processes the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutely
hopeless." 1 The theistic proofs, according to our author, are merely
the symbol of the general movement of the religious mind, which
carries the spiritual self beyond its environment, beyond the world,
to gain a deeper ground of thought and life in the Being Whom
it calls God." This is delightfully vague and decidedly untrue.
Speaking again of authority in religion the author tells us:
" that the idea of a merely external authority in religion cannot be
consistently defended. After all, the force of an appeal to such an
authority lies in the recognition which it evokes, and authority to
be spiritually valuable must be accepted by the spirit. Now it is
vain to expect that all the doctrines based on the testimony of a
Church or of sacred writings will be accepted in this way; for they
do not form a perfectly coherent whole, and in the interests of
harmony it is necessary to select and criticize This- means that
the final court of appeals is within rather than without, in the witness
of the spirit rather than in an external authority." In these words
1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 435.
264 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
our author proves himself a Protestant of the Protestants, makes all
religious truth utterly subjective, and reduces the principle of au-
thority to the interior witness and assent of the individual soul.
He tries to make out that this is not a fair inference, but " cogent
logic " declares that it is.
RICHARD OF WYCHE, LABORER, SCHOLAR, BISHOP, AND
SAINT, 1197-1253. By Sister Mary Reginald Capes, O.S.D.
St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.50 net.
The history of St. Richard differs greatly from those of the
bishops of his time. Unlike St. Thomas of Canterbury or Stephen
Langton, he was not a statesman. For the most part he kept aloof
from the strife and turmoil that then agitated the life of the Church
in its quarrels with the king, although we do meet him at Court as
the friend of the persecuted St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury,
and again as a suppliant pleading for the rights of his own See of
Winchester. As a scholar and a saint, life at Court was most dis-
tasteful to him, and, save for his early contest with Henry III.,
his life was on the whole very peaceful.
He studied at Oxford, Paris, and Bologna, and, on his return
to England, became in turn Chancellor of the University of Oxford,
and Chancellor of the Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Edmund.
Chosen Bishop of Chichester, it took him two years to obtain pos-
session of his See, and then only after Pope Innocent IV. had
threatened King Henry with excommunication. The only fault
that his biographers allude to in his life was a certain impetuosity
and severity of character, which appears in some of the anecdotes
connected with the administration of his See. These show us, as
our author points out, that his sanctity was not, as might almost be
thought of his master, infused from the beginning, but had to be
acquired by dint of hard blows and much self -conquest.
He loved and was beloved by his clergy. Some writers have
considered him somewhat severe in his dealings with them, but
when we call to mind the license that prevailed everywhere at that
period, we can readily understand his course of action. He had a
great love of the poor, and when money failed him he was known
to sell even his horse in order that the poor might not appeal to him
in vain. He was always a genial host, though he differed from
many of the worldly prelates of the time by refusing to allow vast
sums to be spent on mere entertainment. He ate scarcely anything
himself save a little bread and wine, but he never demanded the same
1914.] NEW BOOKS 265
austerity of his guests. Much of the night he spent before the
altar, either in the cathedral or in his own private chapel.
One great testimony to his virtue is the fact that the censorious
Matthew Paris, who has a bitter word for all -his friends, never
mentions St. Richard's name save in terms of the highest respect
and esteem. St. Richard was generally beloved, not because of his
great intellect or his statesmanship, but on account of the spiritual
attraction of real holiness, based on a genial and tactful nature.
The news of his death plunged all England into mourning.
The present life is based on the earlier lives of the Saint by
Ralph Bocking (1270), John Capgrave (1450), the Chronica Ma-
jora of Matthew Paris, Richard Stevens (1692), and an anonymous
Italian life of 1706. It is excellently written.
FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS. By W. D. Howells. New
York : Harper & Brothers. $2.00 net.
Mr. Howells has written an entertaining, gossipy account of
his trip through Spain in the fall of 1911. He tells us nothing
new about Spain, but he says the old things in a most delightful way.
As a non-Catholic he cannot enter into the spirit of Catholic Spain,
although he asserts that he has been attracted by her history and
literature from childhood. There are the usual Protestant refer-
ences to the martyrs of the Inquisition, the folly of indulgences,
the mediaeval gloom of Catholicism, Bloody Mary, and the like,
but they are made in ignorance and not in malice. Mr. Howells is
at his best when he describes the scenery along the route, and the
comfort or discomfort of hotels and trains. The personal note is a
little too dominant at times, but perhaps no one will read this book
who is not already a lover of Mr. Howells and his excellent literary
work.
A S the memoir of Sister Mary of St. Francis, published some time
** ago by the late Miss A. M. Clarke, was out of print, one of.
the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur has written a new life,
Sister Mary of St. Francis, edited by Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B.
(London: R. &-T. Washbourne. $1.35 net), which would set
forth more fully the intimate details of the spiritual life of this noble
woman. Dom Bede Camm well says " that many besides myself
will be profoundly edified and delighted by this simple record of
a beautiful life, for it gives glimpses of the secret motive power
of the generous activity of one who worked night and day from her
266 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
quiet retreat at Namur for the Catholic cause in England." We
are confident that it will be read in many a convent refectory, and
the lessons of its life told to many a young novice aspiring to
religious perfection.
TN The Ups and Downs of Marjorie, by Mary T. Waggaman
* (New York: Benziger Brothers. 45 cents), Marjorie Mayne,
a little foundling full of mischief, is selected out of a number of
orphans at St. Vincent's to share the country home of the good
Miss Talbot. Her " downs " are many. She falls into a half
frozen mill-dam ; she innocently strips the Hill Crest Conservatory
of all its rare flowers for Miss Talbot's altar ; she is all but kidnapped
by a villainous old gypsy, when she leaves the house at midnight to
find the mythical pot of gold which will save her dear friend's
home. The story leaves her very high " up " at the close, for she
discovers a rich grandfather and lives happily ever after. The
story is in Miss Waggaman's best vein.
IV TR. GRAVES is well known to all true lovers of Irish music and
Jrvr poetry. In Irish Literary and Musical Studies (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.75 net), he has collected a number
of lectures given before the Irish Literary Society of London, the
National Literary Society of Dublin, and the students of Alexandra
College, Dublin. He gives us appreciative notices of James Clar-
ence Mangan, Sir Samuel Ferguson, Joseph Sheridan, Le Fanu,
William Allingham, Dr. Joyce, and Edward Bunting. He writes
critically and enthusiastically of early Irish religious poetry, giving
specimens of his own perfect translations.
TN The Unworthy Pact, by Dorothea Gerard (New York: Ben-
* ziger Brothers. $1.37), the story is told of Adrian Belmont,
who, despite a good Catholic education, almost entirely lost his
faith. He was leaving England for India when an uncle died,
intestate, and Adrian fell heir to the estate. The discovery of a
will, however, complicates matters, and brings Adrian to a dan-
gerous crisis in his life. How he acted therein our readers must
discover for themselves.
r PHE Jesuit martyr, Robert Southwell, is well known to all literary
^ students as one of the best minor poets of sixteenth century
England, but very few know of him as a writer of classic prose.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 267
Catholics owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Trotman for his careful
editing of The Triumphs Over Death (St. Louis: B. Herder. 30
cents), and the touching letters of the martyr to his father, brother,
and cousin. The appendices contain a brief account of the four
manuscripts used by the author, biographical sketches of Robert
Southwell and his relatives, and a rather strange and unproved
theory that a certain John Trussel was responsible for some of the
writings attributed to Shakespeare.
WH. BUTTON, in Highways and Byways of Shakespeare's
Country (New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.00), tells us
that he has known Shakespeare's country nearly forty years, and
that he has wandered about it on many a holiday. Moreover, for
many years he has been storing his bookcases with the literature of
the subject, from the immortal Dugdale down to the Rev. Thomas
Cox of 1700, to the latest voyager on the banks of Avon. The
reader who has the leisure to visit Warwickshire and its neighbors
can find no better companion for his journey.
IV/TY LADY ROSIA, by Ferda Mary Groves (New York: Ben-
*W ziger Brothers. $1.25), is a stirring tale of thirteenth cen-
tury London and Avignon. Our interest is kept alive throughout
by night affrays, abductions, escapes from prison, combats with the
French, pictures of the Papal Court at Avignon, and the love of
the hero Bernard le Bevere for the heroine. The portrait of St.
Catherine of Siena is well drawn.
HOME OF THE SEVEN DEVILS, by Horace W. C.
Newte (New York: John Lane Co. $1.25 net), is a tire-
some, immoral story. The author solemnly assures us that the
monastic life is " a cowardly shunning of the rough and tumble of
the world, and that all religious houses are parasitic."
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS sends us a small volume en-
^ titled The Holy Land of Asia Minor, by Rev. Francis E.
Clark, D.D. ($1.00 net), the contents of which are best described
by the sub-title, " The Holy Land of Asia Minor is the Seven Cities
of the Book of Revelation" (known to Catholics as the Apocalypse),
" their present appearance, their history, their significance, and
their message to the Church of to-day." The book aims to be a
helpful guide not a commentary on the letters of St. John. It is
268 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
quite within traditionary lines. A few sentences here and there are
amusing, as claiming continuity for Protestantism with these an-
cient churches, but the whole is reverent in treatment.
nONALD'S MISSION, by Henriette Eugenie Delamere (Phila-
" delphia: H. L. Kilner Co. 60 cents), presents a rather diffi-
cult task for a little boy of nine years the conversion of a renegade
uncle and his family, bequeathed to him by a dying father. The
legacy was handed on through his mother, who left her boy to the
care of this worldly uncle. The brave little fellow persevered
with a courage beyond his years, until he had fulfilled his mission.
author of Practical Questions on the Sodality, Reverend
James A. Bowling, SJ. (Chicago: Loyola University Press),
has been well fitted for his work by long experience as the director
of a Young Men's Sodality in a large congregation. His little
booklet will be found useful as a guide, and will aid in unifying
the aims and practices of a sodality.
1T7E think the title of this book, A Garden of Girls or Famous
" ' Schoolgirls of Former Days, by Mrs. Thomas Concannon,
M.A. (New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.00 net), is a very
happy one for stories of girlhood, and these blossoms are culled
from various gardens: England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy,
and our own United States. In these days when the types fre-
quently set before the eyes of the young are not uplifting, it is well
for our young girls to revert to these examples, excellently and
attractively presented, of true womanhood in the making.
WITHIN THE SOUL, by the Rev. M. J. Watson, SJ. (New
' ' York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 75 cents.) In England and
in Australia this little work has been a favorite for some time.
It consists of charming and helpful little essays on many -subjects
affecting our everyday life. The very brevity of the essays is a
help, for if we can spare only five minutes a day for spiritual
reading, this is a suitable book ; each essay leaves its impression on
the mind, and a kindly helpful thought to bear us company through
the trials of the day, uplifting or comforting as our need may
require.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 269
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Le Demon de Midi, by Paul Bourget. (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie. Two
volumes. 7 frs.) This latest novel of Paul Bourget's came before the public
eye quite prominently when it was read at the Caillaux trial in Paris a few
months ago. He says himself that the theme of The Noon-day Demi was sug-
gested to him by a conversation he once had with Melchior de Vogue upon the
sincerity of Chateaubriand.
Paul Bourget had recalled Sainte-Beuve's characterization of Chateaubriand
as "an epicurean with a Catholic imagination," and had maintained boldly
Chateaubriand's insincerity. De Vogue had protested vehemently against Bour-
get's estimate. According to him, Chateaubriand was a Catholic in thought and
conviction, although at the same time " une creature d'entrainment etnotif et
de desir desordonne."
Louis Savignan is the Chateaubriand of Paul Bourget's novel. The
Catholic party of his district persuades him to run for deputy, promising him
the backing of Calvieres, a wealthy manufacturer married to an old sweetheart
of Savignan. The necessities of the campaign force Savignan to be a constant
visitor at Calviere's home, and his old love for Genevieve returns. She, an
utter unbeliever, despises her husband for his lowly and vulgar manners. He
discovers Savignan's letters of earlier years, which Genevieve had preserved.
She is about to elope with Savignan, when he is recalled to a sense of his
dishonor by the sudden and tragic death of his son.
This son Jacques is in love with Therese Andrault, but she unfortunately
has fallen under the influence of the modernistic Abbe Fauchon, a combination
of Tyrrell, Loisy, and Murri. He finally marries Therese, an unlooked-for con-
clusion, which brings back her modernist father and mother to their senses and
to their faith.
Louis Savignan has, after a great deal of hesitation, been persuaded by his
son to write a caustic review of the Abbe Fauchon's famous book, Hakeldania.
Calvieres, realizing Fauchon's anger at this strong refutation of his pet doc-
trines, goes to him with Savignan's love letters, and obtains his promise to
publish them in his review. What a splendid way of proving the utter in-
sincerity and hypocrisy of the follower of Rome! Therese informes Jacques
of the Abbe Fauchon's intention, and the son at once hurries to the Abbe's
home to obtain the letters. In the scuffle that ensues, the Abbe picks up a
pistol, and accidently kills Jacques. The boy dies bravely without a word of
accusation on his lips, and his death is the means of bringing back the Abbe and
Therese to the Church. His father has lost the faith because he has sinned
against the light. His friend, the Benedictine Dom Bayle, manages to reconcile
Genevieve to her husband. Paul Bourget has a wonderful power of laying
bare the innermost workings of the human soul. He reveals to us in the
present volume the subtle pride of the modernist Fauchon, the stupid simplicity
of the weak Therese, the perfect loyalty of the devout Jacques, the continuous
fighting against the light of Louis Savignan, the domineering conceit of
the wealthy bourgois Calvieres, and the absolute disregard of duty in the well-
born, unbelieving Genevieve.
Like most Frenchmen he cannot refrain from the theme of illicit love.
There are in these two volumes a number of scenes, sensuous and immoral
to the core, that might well be omitted. With all his power, we cannot but
deplore them. Paul Bourget's art would have lost nothing, and decency would
have gained much by their omission.
periobfcals.
NOTE: The digest of the contents of Foreign Periodicals is very limited
this month, because the periodicals in question have not reached us. A like
condition will probably prevail until the present European War ends.
Catholicism in Togoland. By Dom Maternus Spitz, O.S.B.
The colony of Togoland on the west coast of Africa passed un-
conditionally on August 26, 1914, from the possession of Germany
to that of England. Its size is variously given as thirty- three thou-
sand and fifty-two thousand square miles, and its population as from
one to three millions. Rich in natural products, valuable wood,
and fertile lands, the colony would be a paradise for colonists and
traders were it not for the unhealthy climate, so that government
officials are allowed to leave there after eighteen months' service,
and merchants, as a rule, do not stay more than two years. The
native population, belonging to the Sudan negro stock, is divided
into various, entirely distinct tribes; gay, peaceful, and hospitable,
these are also, as far as they have been touched by Christian civiliza-
tion, industrious and promising.
Opposition to missionary enterprise has come from many
sources : fetishism, polygamy, secret societies, the drink evil, the
climatic conditions, and the variety of languages and dialects. But
the Catholics have not been idle since the erection of the Vicariate
of Dahomey in 1860, and particularly since the mission of Togoland
was separated from this vicariate in 1892, and entrusted to the
Missionary Society of the Divine Word. To-day there are in Togo-
land (itself made a vicariate on March 16, 1914, with Bishop Wolf,
S.V.D., at its head) 47 priests, 15 brothers, 25 sisters, 12 principal
and 1 60 out-stations, 17 churches, 22 chapels, 228 catechists and
native teachers, 197 schools with 8,463 pupils, 17,052 Catholics,
and 6,425 catechumens. These results have been attained through
the excellent schools and the varied scholastic and agricultural in-
terests of the missionaries. The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Oc-
tober.
Catholics Under the Irish Parliament. By Michael MacDonagh.
That the people of Ireland were, during the eighteenth century,
excluded from the Parliament of Ireland and denied the franchise,
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 271
solely on account of their faith, is a fact well-known but always,
to minds accustomed to twentieth century tolerance, startling and
inexplicable. Their exclusion came within three months of the
Treaty of Limerick, October, 1691, and was brought about by en-
forcing an oath of allegiance, supremacy, and abjuration to which
no Catholic could subscribe. Protestants having Catholic wives
were in 1697 put under all the political and civil disabilities of Catho-
lics. Persons abjuring the Catholic faith were forbidden in 1753
the right to vote, unless their abjuration had taken place six months
before the election. The mass of the people naturally stood wholly
apart from the elections, and had their own parliaments for the re-
dress of grievances in the local lodges of Whiteboyism. The rising
of a Catholic commercial class in the towns, agitation through a
Catholic committee, the French Revolution, and the establishment
of the Republic of the United States, aided the work of enfranchise-
ment.
In the year 1793 the followers of the national creed were for
the first time styled " Catholics," and not " Papists/' in the Speech
from the Throne. In the same year by the passage of the Relief
Act, Catholic forty shilling freeholders were made eligible to vote
in the counties, and in such of the more open boroughs as had the
freehold and potwalloper franchises. But its effect in many coun-
ties was but to increase the influence of small landlords whose
tenants were Catholic, and to endanger, to that extent, the predom-
inance of the great territorial families. The Irish Ecclesiastical
Record, October.
The New Catacombs at Valkenburg. By Rev. Edward F.
Ryan, S J. In the southeast corner of Dutch Limburg, in a peace-
ful little summer resort called Valkenburg, there has been going on
for the past four years an attempt to reproduce the most striking and
the most famous portions of the catacombs of Rome.
Herr John Diepen of Tillburg conceived the idea of construct-
ing genuine Roman catacombs there, and in 1909 secured the appro-
bation of the Holy Father and of the Commission for Christian
Archaeology. Dr. Cuypers, the architect, Visschers, the painter, Sig-
nore Bevignani, then superintendent of the catacombs, Monsignor
Wilpert, Professor Marucchi and others assisted. No pains were
spared to secure archaeological fidelity. The first portion of the
work was thrown open to the public in July, 1910, the concluding
portion in July, 1912. Mr. Diepen has entrusted the whole enter-
272 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Nov.,
prise to a Board of Special Commissioners, including the Bishop and
the Governor of the Province, so that the preservation and further
development of the new catacombs seems assured. The Irish Eccle-
siastical Record, October.
Lord Strathcona. By Maurice Lewandowski. With the death
of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal on the twenty-first of last
January, Canada lost the man who, more than any other, had raised
her from a provincial wilderness to the rank of a powerful and prac-
tically independent nation. Born in Scotland in 1820, Donald
Smith, at the age of eighteen, entered the service of the Hudson
Bay Company, and remained actively connected with it until 1874.
Elected a member of the Federal Parliament in 1871, he began, in
connection with Mr. James J. Hill and Mr. George Stephen, the
various railway projects which led in 1885 to the completion of
the Canadian Pacific Railway. This national highway has not
only developed Western Canada, but brought Canada and all other
colonies into closer touch with England, thus meriting for the man,
whose foresight, daring, energy and perseverance accomplished it,
the well-deserved title of " Empire builder."
Raised to the peerage in 1897, he declined the post of viceroy
of Canada; in 1899 he supported at his own expense during the
Boer War the famous cavalry troop, called " Strathcona's Horse."
President of the Bank of Montreal, member and officer of numerous
societies, Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen, Governor of
the Hudson Bay Company, and Canadian representative in London,
he filled all these posts with exceptional credit to himself, and bore
the honors which came from them with exceptional simplicity.
Deeply religious, he spent much and wisely in charitable work, and,
though not a Catholic, he assisted that other noble pioneer, his
friend, Father Lacombe, and gave the use of his house to Cardinal
Bourne during the Eucharistic Congress at Montreal, besides five
thousand dollars towards the expenses of that celebration. Le
Correspondant, September 25.
The Irish Theological Quarterly (October) : Rev. J. Kelleher
concludes against the existence of any "true, objective standard of
value beneath market prices," and holds that actually these are
regulated by the non-moral principle, that " value measures human
motives," which is the foundation of modern economic theory and
practise. Many may be surprised " to be told that there is any-
1914-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 273
thing at all objectionable about non-moral subjective prices. After
all, they would say, is not each man himself the best judge of what
any commodity is worth to him ? This much, at least, may be
said in favor of this position, that it does not attempt to disguise
the true nature of market prices. Its merits, from the social and
ethical standpoint, will be considered in a subsequent article."
In a technical discussion of St. Jerome's Latin text of St. Paul's
Epistles to Titus, Philemon, the Galatians, and the Ephesians,
the Rev. Hugh Pope, O.P., finds himself " compelled to call in ques-
tion the truth of a generally received proposition, viz., that the
present Clementine Vulgate text represents St. Jerome's correction
of the Latin text of St. Paul's Epistles as it existed in his day."
" It should be clearly understood that St. Jerome did not trans-
late the New Testament; he only revised it." And even if the
present pages " do not prove that St. Jerome never revised the
Epistles as a whole and we are far from saying that they do
prove this they at least show that the present Clementine text
differs to an extraordinary degree from the text St. Jerome would
have liked to substitute for it. And it must be noticed, too, that
he never speaks of what he would have liked to have done, but
at least in Ep. xxvii. of what he apparently had already done
in the year 383 A. D.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (October) : Rev. D. O'Keeffe
considers Roger Bacon's account of the main sources of error in con-
temporary speculation, his criticism of mediaeval learning, and his
conception of the experimental method. Rev. J. Brosnan places
The Malice of Lying in this : that it is a perversion of the intellect,
a God-given faculty. " A lie being a direct unnatural use of reason
is intrinsically wrong and always sinful." Father Brosnan criti-
cizes other views on this subject.
c. 18
IRecent Events.
One of the immediate results of the war
The European War. which has now entered upon its twelfth
week, was the marvelous way in which the
various parties and factions in each State laid aside their differences.
For some time before its breaking out, France was in a state of the
utmost confusion and disunion. A relentless and active political
movement existed for the purpose of driving out of office the Presi-
dent of the Republic. In support of this movement the Radical
Socialists, who form the most numerous of the political parties
of the country, were using their utmost efforts, and were supported
by one of the most influential of French statesmen, or at least of
politicians, M. Clemenceau. No day passed without attempts being
made to discredit the head of the State, and to drive him from office.
The Caillaux trial was at once the effect and the cause of a
more or less deep-seated corruption which had permeated French
political life. M. Caillaux had been Premier of France during the
negotiations which followed upon the dispatch by the German gov-
ernment of a war vessel to Agadir in 191 1. He was one of the most
prominent of the men to whom the guidance of French policy has
of late fallen. But he was being subjected, and with much greater
justification, to attacks upon his personal conduct and private
character, similar to those that were being made upon the President.
These attacks so exasperated his wife that she shot one of the most
aggressive of her husband's opponents. When brought to trial,
although her guilt was undoubted and indubitable, yet she was
acquitted on account of the political influence of her husband. That
politics were able to bring upon the administration of justice
so great a humiliation, indicated that they were not merely corrupt
themselves, but able to spread corruption to what should have been
the source and mainstay of the well-being of the nation.
Such was France before the German declaration of war a
France internally and fundamentally divided. All, however, was
changed from that moment. In an hour all divisions passed utterly
away. Every rank and class, every creed and party, became as one
in defence of their country. The reconstituted Ministry of M. Vi-
viani includes representatives of every Republican Party, from M.
Ribot, who voted against the Separation Law, to members of the
Extreme Socialist and even of the Anti-Militarist Parties. No mem-
ber of the Right indeed was included in the Cabinet, but this did not
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 275
indicate any lukewarmness on their part, for none have proved
themselves more ardent in the defence of their country. All the
cliques and groups and blocs have disappeared.
Much the same effect was produced in Germany. Even the
Social Democrats, who for so many years have declared to the
world their hatred of war and of the armaments which have been
the cause of the present conflict, although they refused to shake
hands with the Kaiser when he offered his hand to the members
of every creed and party in the Reichstag, have not made any
overt opposition. In fact they have entered the ranks without
protest, and have even sent members of the party to Italy for the
purpose of persuading the Italian Socialists to give to the German
cause the support of their country. Germany presents to the world
as undivided a front as that presented by France.
It is interesting to note that the militarism which now holds
control of German policy, and which is chiefly responsible for the
present war, so far as it is subject to any religious influence, is sub-
ject to that of the most Protestant type. The Court and military
party is the party of uncompromising, intolerant, hyper-orthodox
Lutheranism. The Evangelical ministers and professors in Germany,
feeling keenly the isolation of their country, have issued an appeal to
their fellow Protestants in Great Britain and' this country, which, to
put the matter in the mildest way possible, shows the most astounding
ignorance of the real facts. For the violation of the neutrality of
Belgium, which the Chancellor of the Empire openly confessed and
acknowledged to be a wrong, these ministers deny Germany's re-
sponsibility. The Chancellor affirmed no more than that France
was ready to invade Belgium, and even this assertion was without
foundation. The ministers and professors assert that Belgium
had agreed to allow France to pass through her territory, and that
consequently Germany had the right to act as she has done towards
the Belgians : a statement wholly baseless and untrue. The Tsar,
it is asserted, has openly proclaimed that the war which he has
entered upon is to be a decisive campaign against Teutonism and
Protestantism. It would be rash to say that such a proclamation
has never been issued : but the writer of these notes has followed
with the closest attention the course of events, and no such proclama-
tion has come to his knowledge. On the contrary, it is made clear
by the evidence of the British Ambassador that Russia was forced
into the war by the action of Germany, after Russia and Austria had
arrived at an agreement to settle the question about Servia by
referring the points at issue to The Hague tribunal.
276 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
To the defence of the war it is not only the orthodox that have
rallied, but materialists like Haeckel, higher critics like Harnack, and
men of a higher type like Eucken. The latter especially is desirous
of securing the good will of this country. Any hope of success
which he may have, depends upon his finding advocates who have
a higher regard to truth than has hitherto been manifested, and a
greater respect for the people whom they wish to convert. To tell
us, as has been done by one of the foremost defenders of the German
cause in this country, that our press is under the ban of London,
and that it shares its every hypocrisy; that we have no right to
pride ourselves on our dignity as free and enlightened men, being,
as we are, the devoted slaves of every English ducal roue; that we
ourselves are hypocrites whose own house is full of atrocities; and
that every town and every police force is steeped in graft atrocities,
is not the way to win our sympathies. Nor has Herr Dernburg
taken the right way to gain our faith, when he asserts that the
White Books issued by the various governments are concocted for
a purpose, into the secret of the making of which he has himself
been initiated. It is true that he has been a minister in the German
government, and his experience in its service gives him some right to
speak ; but his right to speak for other governments may with safety
be denied. For example, in support of his contention that the
British White Book is inaccurate, Herr Dernburg cites the fact that
the report of Sir Edward Goschen, dated August 8th, was published
as an addendum to the White Book. But this fact is no proof what-
ever of incorrectness or omission. This document could not have
been published in the original White Book, since that Book contained
only the correspondence previous to and including August 4th. The
telegram which Sir Edward Goschen sent to his government from
Berlin on August 4th, though accepted by the telegraph office there,
was never sent to its destination.
About Austria-Hungary, so far as external appearances go, the
same thing must be said, but not with the same degree of certainty.
Very little information has been given to the world at large about
the situation among the various nationalities that make up the
heterogeneous Dual- Monarchy. Rumors, however, have not been
wanting that it is with the greatest reluctance that the Slav nation-
alities have taken part in the struggle, and that the most skillful of
manoeuvring has been necessary in order to bring about the appear-
ance of unity. One thing, however, seems certain, and that is that
the Poles in Austria-Hungary have not responded to the Tsar's ap-
peal to give to him their support, by uniting themselves with their
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 277
brothers in Russian and German Poland for the formation of the
new Poland under Russian auspices, which the Tsar has promised
to form. Poles, in fact, have been fighting against Poles.
The prospect of war has had the same effect in Russia as in
France and Germany. The Empire has become as one man in its
support. No longer is there any quarrel between the reactionaries
and the constitutionalists of various shades. No part of the vast
Empire holds back. The Finns are as loyal as the Poles, and even
the badly treated Jews have formed regiments for the defence of
the country in which they have found, if not a home, at least a
dwelling-place. The Revolutionaries who have been proscribed
and in exile have returned to fight against the common enemy.
The ardor and enthusiasm of all are beyond bounds, and
are shown in a way worthy of note. The curse of Russia for
a long time has been drunkenness, and of late the Tsar has been
making many efforts to put an end to this evil, and has even sacri-
ficed a large part of the revenue derived from the sale of liquor,
of which the State has a monopoly. Upon the mobilization of the
army he issued an order prohibiting altogether the sale of vodka
an order which has been obeyed with the most perfect willingness.
Indeed, it is said that the surprising victories which have been
obtained by the Russians are due to this enforced sobriety.
Like the rest of the States involved, Belgium has been an
absolute unit, not only in the beginning of the war, but in main-
taining its heroic resistance. In order to emphasize this union
the Catholic ministry admitted into its number the leading Socialist
of the country M. Vandervelde and in the face of the strongest
army in the world the Belgians have maintained a staunch and united
defence of the neutrality to which their government was pledged.
The most striking example of all of the unifying effect pro-
duced by the war, is to be found in Great Britain and Ireland. On
the eve of its outbreak dissension and contention were rampant. A
great conflict between capital and labor, to be fought to the bitter
end, was upon the point of breaking out. The feeling between the
two chief political parties was so strong as to amount almost to
ferocity, and no terms were forcible enough to give expression to
the animosity which animated each side. Above all in Ireland the
contention between the Nationalists and the Ulsterites had reached
such a pitch that civil war seemed unavoidable. Both parties were
armed, and all the means which had been tried to avert a conflict
had failed. The moment, however, that war was declared, almost
every trace of disagreement vanished. Without a dissentient vote,
278 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
every demand made by the government was agreed to. A thing
never heard of before, was the vote of an unlimited credit by the
House of Commons. That which chiefly decided the Nationalist
members was the violation of Belgian neutrality, and the subse-
quent treatment of the Belgian nation has been the means of con-
firming and strengthening their determination to support Great
Britain to the end. There were, indeed, a few dissentients. Lord
Morley, Mr. John Burns, and Mr. W. B. Trevelyan resigned their
offices. No one of the three, however, has by any public utterance
done anything to embarrass the government. Mr. J. Ramsay Mac-
Donald, Mr. Keir Hardie, and a few labor members have given
expression to open criticism, and have received some little support,
but the overwhelming majority even of the representatives of the
Labor Party have been warmly on the side of the government.
Mr. MacDonald was obliged to resign his office of President of the
Labor Party. The unanimity in support of the war and of the
means taken to carry it on, has been far greater than existed in favor
of the Boer War.
The most striking exhibition of the unanimous feeling in sup-
port of the war was the spontaneous rally of the various component
parts of the British Empire. The Dominions of Caijada and New
Zealand, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Union of South
Africa, and the various colonies throughout the world of their own
free will came to the mother country's support. Large numbers of
native Princes of India made offerings of various kinds, some being
even desirous of serving personally with the troops. Among these
was the Aga Khan, the temporal head of the Moslems, who wished
to serve as a private soldier. In South Africa, indeed, some hesi-
tated to support the offensive measures which were being taken by
the government against German West Africa, but these formed a
small minority, although there has since developed an active opposi-
tion in the shape of the revolt of the leader of a single commando.
This remarkable demonstration of a worldwide willingness to
enter upon a war of magnitude greater than that of any ever
waged before, after so much has been talked about peace, and after
so many treaties of arbitration had been made, after the Peace
Conferences at The Hague, and the building of a Palace of Peace in
order to consecrate and perpetuate the work of those conferences,
is enough to dishearten the well-wishers of the human race. And,
indeed, if the aggressor in this instance were to be victorious in the
end, there would be good reason to be disheartened. The hopes
of the world are centred upon the defeat of the offender against
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 279
civilization, and the barbarities which have been perpetrated will
only serve the purpose of manifesting more clearly than ever before
the iniquity of war, and to strengthen the hope that this may be
the last. Even out of this overwhelming evil good may result.
It is this hope that has animated our government in making the
treaties with Great Britain, France, and Spain, of which mention
was made last month. These treaties have now been ratified by
the Senate. The Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, is still continuing
his efforts to negotiate a like treaty with Germany. Their scope
is not so wide as was that of others which were negotiated by Mr.
Taft, which failed to receive the ratification of the Senate, but they
are a step in the right direction. In all differences between the con-
tracting parties a respite of time is to be given. Mr. Bryan calls it
a " cooling-off period." This period is to be provided by the inter-
position of a joint International Commission. This commission
is to be permanent, and is to be composed of five members, one
nominated by each of the two signatory governments from its own
citizens, one nominated by each from the citizens of a third power,
and the fifth to be agreed upon by the two governments, and chosen
from the citizens of another neutral State. The commissions are
to have the right of initiative, but they may be moved to act by
one or both of the parties to the dispute, and they are to act before
The Hague tribunal is approached. They are to have a year in
which to make their report, and in this way to bridge the gap
between diplomatic negotiations and arbitration. The governments
are not bound by the commission's report. They reserve the right
to act independently after it has been submitted, but its moral
authority will in all cases be very great.
Nothing very definite can be said about the objects which the
States involved in the war have in view, or upon what conditions they
will be willing to make peace. No formal statement has been made,
except that of the Kaiser, who publicly declared before his assembled
subjects that he would not sheathe the sword until he was able to
dictate his own terms. Russia, France, and Great Britain have
entered into a compact that no peace shall be made except by the
mutual agreement of each and all, and Japan later on gave in its
adhesion to this compact. Russia, it is said, aims at the delivery
of the races held under German subjection, such as the Poles and
the Danes, as well as the restoration to France of Alsace-Lorraine,
together with the complete indemnification of Belgium, and an en-
largement of its territory. Her main preoccupation of course is the
position of the Slavs in the Balkans and in Austria-Hungary. What
280 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
Russia has in view in regard to them in the event of victory, is as
yet merely a matter of speculation.
France's action so far has been so purely one of self-defence,
that no ground exists for forming an opinion as to her aims except
of course that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is included in
them a thing which will fill its inhabitants with joy. The British
government has given no intimation as to the terms on which it will
be willing to make peace. It may not have formed any plans, for it
has no expectation of a near end to the war. From the first it laid
out its plans for a period of three years, with the possibility of its
lasting longer. Influential writers, however, declare the British
determination to be to fight to a finish, whether to complete victory
or to utter defeat. " She is firmly and irrevocably resolved not to
stay her hands until German militarism, its causes and its effects,
are destroyed once and for all. She is determined that the institu-
tions and forces that have brought this unspeakable calamity on the
world at the instance of the William of Hohenzollern, and with the
acquiescence of his subjects, shall be crushed beyond repair." There
are others who go even farther. Strange to say it is among the
peace advocates, that even the destruction of militarism is not looked
upon as a sufficient reason for bringing the war to an end. That
would be but a superficial victory, for its cause would still be left
in existence, capable of producing like evil results when the oppor-
tunity presented itself. This cause is the possession by Kaisers and
Tsars of the power to make wars without the full and
free consent of the people. The war is, therefore, to go
on until the people of Germany and of Russia and of every other
country shall rise to make Kaisers and Tsars impossible; until
all military despotism shall be swept away, and all upholding of
privilege against the common people. Whether so desirable an end
is practicable or not in the Old World, the event will prove. That
it has been realized in some degree in this New World of ours,
makes the prospect brighter for those who are still the victims of a
vicious system.
As efforts have been made to defend the action of the German
government for its violation of the neutrality of Belgium, it is well
to place on record the admissions of the Chancellor of the Empire
in his speech before the Reichstag on the fourth of August, the
day after an ultimatum had been delivered to Belgium by his
government. " Gentlemen, we are- now in a state of necessity,
and necessity knows no law! Our troops have occupied Luxem-
burg, and perhaps are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 281
contrary to the dictates of international law. It is true that the
French government has declared at Brussels that France is willing
to respect the neutrality of Belgium as long as her opponent respects
it. We know, however, that France stood ready for the invasion.
France could wait, but we could not wait. A French movement
upon our flank upon the lower Rhine might have been disastrous.
So we were compelled to override the just protest of the Luxem-
burg and Belgian governments. The wrong I speak openly
that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as
our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened, as
we are threatened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, can
have but one thought how he is to hack his way through."
These unequivocal admissions of the Chancellor that his gov-
ernment, by entering Luxemburg and Belgium, had been guilty of a
violation of international law, and that in so doing it had done
wrong, while France, on the other hand, had given assurances of
its willingness to respect Belgian neutrality, make it impossible to
doubt the culpability of his action. But even this confession is an
understatement of the case. The violation of neutrality by Ger-
many was a breach not merely of the general principles of inter-
national law, but of a special treaty to which Germany was a party,
the obligatory character of which had been recognized by Prince
Bismarck in 1870. This treaty between the Five Powers, England,
France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, was signed on June 26, 1831,
and was imposed upon Belgium as a condition of its existence.
" Belgium shall form a perpetually neutral State. The Five
Powers guarantee her that perpetual neutrality as well as the
integrity and inviolability of her territory By just reciprocity
Belgium shall be held to observe this same neutrality toward all
the other States, and to make no attack on their internal or external
tranquillity, whilst preserving the right to defend herself against any
foreign aggression." No one accused Belgium of having violated
in any way her obligations under this treaty until after the war had
broken out. Assertions, however, thereupon appeared in the German
press that French and British troops had marched into Belgium be-
fore its outbreak. Had this been the case it is very unlikely that the
German Chancellor would have been ignorant of it, and still less
that he would have kept silence about it. It has, however, been
categorically denied by the Belgian government that before August
3d a single French soldier had set foot on Belgian territory, and
that before August 4th there was a single English soldier.
The German Chancellor's excuse that France stood ready for
282 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
the invasion of Belgium is a pure assertion, unsupported by any
proof, and contrary to all reasonable probabilities. France knew
that if such an attempt was made, it would involve her in a conflict
with Belgium as well as with Germany. Moreover, she was only
too glad to have Belgium as a buffer state between herself and
her enemy. To every student of the course of events immediately
preceding the outbreak of the war, and immediately following it,
the one thing that is evident is that it was Germany that was
ready, and that France was on the defensive. France, indeed
stood ready for invasion, but it was for being invaded and for
the defence of her soil. Nothing need be said about the cynical
avowal of the principle that necessity knows no law, except that it
has always been the plea of tyrants, and that it is derived from the
teachings of General von Bernhardi. " Might gives the right to
occupy or to conquer. Might is at once the supreme right, and
the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war.
War gives biologically a just decision, since its decisions rest on
the very nature of things."
These notes cannot be brought to a better conclusion than by
the insertion of the appeal of Cardinal Gibbons on behalf the people
of Belgium, whose country has been ravaged in a manner which no
words can adequately describe. Funds are being raised in this
country to give some little relief to the vast numbers who are in
want of everything. Catholics have taken a prominent part in this
generous work, and they will, we trust, continue to do so for the
relief of Catholic Belgium.
" The sufferings of the Belgians," said the Cardinal, " probably are beyond
words. Only a short time before the outbreak of the war I traveled through
their bountiful country. Then I saw naught but peace and prosperity. Fields
of grain were awaiting the harvest. The people were happy. No one then
saw the cloud of war approaching. But now Belgium has been drawn into war
without quarrel. The kingdom has become the battlefield for other nations.
The people have been driven out of their homes. Innocent of any wrongdoing,
they have suffered. Into France, England, and Holland they have been driven,
without funds and without means of getting enough to keep them alive. For
years and years many of them have worked to build up the homes which fell
before the ravages of war. All their efforts went to naught. The bread-
winners of many of those happy families have fallen in that war a war in which
Belgium had no part in the making. And now those families must look else-
where for support. They cannot look to France or England, for those countries,
too, are in the throes of war. Therefore, when the appeal of Belgium comes
to us, we should heed it. They are a people in distress without home and
without country. All in this country who are able should aid them, regardless
of their sympathies in this war, for Belgium deserves the sympathy of all."
/ With Our Readers.
PRESIDENT WILSON'S request that all God-fearing persons
1 should offer prayers for peace met with a country-wide response.
Only one voice was raised in protest. The Society for Ethical Culture
through its president, Dr. Felix Adler, took exception to the Presi-
dent's proclamation. Dr. Adler applauds the definite object which
President Wilson had in view ; he is eager to support the President's
efforts, but he regrets the method which the President invokes. The
method is prayer, and that we should pray is a matter of regret to
Dr. Adler and the Society for Ethical Culture.
It is reported that Dr. Adler believes in what might be called
" acute " prayer the delight that transports a beholder of some won-
derful beauty in nature. But habitual prayer, or prayer as converse
or union between man and God, he does not admit.
* * * *
IT is well for those who may be deceived by the title " ethical cul-
ture " to know what in reality this Society teaches. It drives out
God from the affairs of men, and champions a practical humanitarian-
ism. The perfection of man rests with man himself, and prayer can
achieve nothing that human power itself cannot secure. There is no
merciful God Who redeems us from our errors and our sins; no
loving God Who guides us when we cannot guide ourselves, and Who
saves us from our own follies. It will be seen then that the teachings
of this gociety are neither true ethics nor true culture.
IT 7E wish that we might reprint in full the article on the late Pontiff,
VV Pius X., which Hilaire Belloc published in The British Review
for September. The warmth of the appreciation and the insight into
the character and work of Pius X. are exceptional and brilliant. " It
is a commonplace," writes Mr. Belloc, " that the institution of the
Papacy has outlasted all others. But what is not a commonplace is
the enduring marks of that Papal institution; its continued principles
continuously vital and continuously restored."
* * * *
n^HREE vital characteristics differentiate the Papacy from every
A other organ of authority which it has seen rise, flourish, and
decay. First, the Papacy is not like a government, fearful of its
existence and perpetually readjusting itself to meet change. It is a
succession of men, the method of whose choice has varied through
two thousand years, yet each of whom succeeded his predecessor, and
284 WITH OUR READERS [Nov.,
all of whom stand for one thing. Secondly, continuity of the Papacy
has not been established by any mechanical principle. It has never
become fossil. Thirdly, the Papacy has preserved its vital initiative.
The Pope of the day does actually govern. Around this institution
there has never arisen that fatal divorce between reality and appear-
ance which clothes every ancient institution whatever, and which at
last ruins all. Out of the million examples that might be chosen
Mr. Belloc selects two Gregory the Great, by his personal decision
sending missionaries to Britain, and thus reestablishing civilization
there; and Pius X., by his personal decision ruling that the offers
of the French State should not be accepted, and that the Church in
France should lose its goods and refuse an accommodation with its
despoilers.
* * * *
MR. BELLOC considers the note of Pius X.'s reign to be simplicity.
" It stood composed of a few very clear principles like a care-
fully constructed classical thing of cut stone standing against a flood."
The manner in which Pius X. met two opposing forces in the flow
Modernism and the Persecution in France serves as illustration.
" Note how in each of these it was that unexpected mark of sim-
plicity which stood out. There was an absence of what friends call
breadth and enemies compromise, and an absence of what all men call
subtlety: save, indeed, the subtlety that always accompanies clear
thinking and whose sharpest manifestation is irony." " It was odd
that so powerful a weapon should have seemed to so many at the
time so weak. It was mortal. Modernism is dead and how quickly
it was killed ! And what a long business it usually is to kill stupidity."
* * * *
IN the French struggle " the same admirable and almost startling
simplicity was apparent." The Government held out what was
the property of the Church as a bribe. If the Church would accept
a form of administration that was not Catholic but Presbyterian, she
might have the material means whereby to live. But " Pius X. met
the situation with just that reassertion of principle which was the
note of those few strange years wherein it almost seems as though
a man inspired by sanctity had foreseen the immediate future of
Europe. He resolutely refused anything whatsoever save the full
and exact admission of the Church's rights, and since these were
denied he sacrificed against much strong advice from devout and
good men, and against the results of all immediate calculation, the
bread and meat of the Church in Gaul. He sacrificed what a nation
sacrifices when it loses a campaign, and he made no compromise in
any detail whatsoever.
"When this war is over and when the vast liquidation of so
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 285
much in Europe is concluded, no long time hence, it will be seen
that the action of the Saint was prophetic."
SHE is indeed a valiant woman who in this day speaks of " a melan-
choly and mean reform." Reform is considered to bear its own
unquestionable credentials. In the present installment and, indeed, in
her entire series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly, Miss Repplier
has the courage to tell the modern world some old but very wholesome
truths that should help to guide many who have strayed, back to the
right path.
" Lady Poverty " was once considered to have an honorable and
a high office ; but now she bears a name disgraced ; she is the source of
all social evil, the great curse that must be lifted from the shoulders of
men. And because she has thus been thrown down from her pedestal
by much of the present reform literature, all effort is pictured as vain,
resistance hopeless, and the world as monstrously cruel. " The de-
moralizing quality of such literature," says Miss Repplier in the
October Atlantic, " is its denial of kindness, its evading of obligations.
Temptation is not only the occasion, but the justifier of sin a point
of view which plays havoc with our common standard of morality."
" And this is what our Lady Poverty, bride of St. Francis,
friend of all holiness, counsel of all perfection, has come to mean in
these years of grace ! She who was once the surest guide to heaven now
leads her chosen ones to hell. She who was once beloved by the
devout and honored by the just, is now a scandal and a shame, the
friend of harlotry, the instigator of crime. Even a true poet like
Francis Thompson laments that the poverty exalted by Christ should
have been cast down from her high caste.
All men did admire
Her modest looks, her ragged, sweet attire
In which the ribboned shoe could not compete
With her clear simple feet.
But Satan, envying Thee thy one ewe-lamb,
With Wealth, World's Beauty and Felicity
Was not content, till last unthought-of she
Was his to damn.
Thine ingrate, ignorant lamb
He won from Thee; kissed, spurned, and made of her
This thing which qualms the air,
Vile, terrible, old,
Whereat the red blood of the Day runs cold.
" These are the words of one to whom the London gutters were
for years a home, and whose strengthless manhood lay inert under
a burden of pain he had no courage to lift. Yet never was sufferer
more shone upon by kindness than was Francis Thompson ; never was
286 WITH OUR READERS [Nov.,
man better fitted to testify to the goodness of a bad world. And he
did bear such brave testimony again and yet again, so that the bulk
of his verse is alien to pessimism 'every stanza an act of faith, and
a declaration of good will.' "
* * * *
IN striking contrast to the brave, hopeful testimony of Francis
Thompson, "the dismalness of serious writers [of to-day], espe-
cially if humanity be their theme, is steeping us in gloom. The ob-
session of sorrow seems the most reasonable of all obsessions, because
facts can be crowded upon facts (to the general exclusion of truth)
by way of argument and illustration." " But," Miss Repplier con-
tinues, " no artist yet was ever born of an unsufferable sense of un-
happiness, no leader and helper of men was ever bedewed with tears.
The world is old, and the world is wide. Of what use are we in its
tumultuous life, if we do not know its joys, its griefs, its high emotions,
its call to courage, and the echo of the laughter of the ages ? "
And the weakness, therefore, of many sociological writers is that
they denounce and do not discriminate. They " write of an American
city in terms which Dante might have envied. Nobody, it would seem,
is ever cured in its hospitals ; they only lie on 'cots of pain/ Nobody
is ever reformed in its reformatories. Nobody is reared to decency
in its asylums. Nobody is apparently educated in its schools. Its
industries are ravenous beasts, sucking the blood of workers ; its poor
are 'shackled slaves ;' its humble dwellings are 'dens.' " Against
the champions of the invective style, Miss Repplier concludes with
this passage :
" The workman and his family have a courage of their own, the
courage of the soldier who does not spend the night before battle cal-
culating his chances of a gun-shot wound, or of a legless future.
It is exasperating to hear a teamster's wife cheerfully announce the
coming of her tenth baby; but the calmness with which she faces
the situation has in it something human and elemental. It is exas-
perating to see the teamster risk illness and loss of work (he might
at least pull off his wet clothes when he gets home) ; but he tells you
he has not gone to his grave with a cold yet, and this careless confidence
saves him as much as it costs. I read recently an economist's sorrow-
ful complaint that families, in need of the necessities of life, go to mov-
ing picture shows ; that women, with their husbands' scanty earnings in
their hands, take their children to these blithesome entertainments
instead of buying the Sunday dinner. It sounds like the citizens who
buy motor cars instead of paying off the mortgage on their homes,
and it is an error of judgment which the workingman is little likely
to condone; but that the pleasure-seeking impulse which social
workers assign exclusively to the spirit of youth should mutiny in
1914-] WITH OUR READERS 287
a matron's bones suggests survivals of cheerfulness, high lights amid
the gloom.
" The deprecation of earthly anxiety taught by the Gospels, the
precedence given to the poor by the New Testament, the value placed
upon voluntary poverty by the Christian Church these things have
for nineteen hundred years helped in the moulding of men. There still
remain some leaven of courage,, some savor of philosophy, some echoes
of ancient wisdom (heard oftenest from uneducated men), some laugh-
ter loud and careless as the laughter of the Middle Ages, some slow
sense of justice, not easy to pervert. These qualities are perhaps
as helpful as the 'divine discontent' fostered by enthusiasts for sorrow,
the cowardice bred by insistence upon trouble and anxiety, the rancor
engendered by invectives against earth and heaven. No lot is bettered
by having its hardships emphasized. No man is helped by the drown-
ing of his courage, the destruction of his good-will, the paralyzing
grip of
Envy with squinting eyes,
Sick of a strange disease, his neighbor's health."
THE sad and sudden news of the death of Monsignor Robert Hugh
Benson, means a great loss to the whole Catholic world. His
literary work is well known to our readers, nor have we space to dwell
upon it here. Monsignor Benson was a man who, through personal
experience, was exceptionally well fitted to interpret the Church to
non-Catholics, and to this experience were added gifts of extraordinary
power in the use of the written and spoken word. He stood pre-
eminently high among our Catholic authors, and in zeal and labor
for the cause of Catholic truth he was unexcelled. To hear him speak
on the worth and dignity of the life of Catholic faith, and particularly
on the religious and contemplative life, to be warmed by his warmth,
was a veritable inspiration, and thousands owe to him a quickening of
their own personal spiritual life, and a better understanding of those
who consecrate themselves in prayer to God. His own lofty and im-
passioned exposition was but an echo of that which gave life and
power to his own soul; for in himself he showed forth the virtues
that make the true Catholic. Though the object of much flattery he
was ever graciously humble ; though gifted with genius he was always
willing to learn and be informed; though successful and popular he
welcomed criticism and correction.
A zealous priest, he had the priest's true instinct: a consuming
love of souls; and he spent himself in their behalf. God, we trust,
will give him a great reward, and the thousands who have received
of his help will add their prayers to ours for the peace and glory
of his soul.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
What Think You of Christ? By F. H. E. Cahusac, M.A. 35 cents. The Con-
version of Casare Putti. By W. Hall-Patch. 35 cents. The Prophet's Wife.
By A. C. Browne. $1.25. Vocation. From the French by Rev. P. R.
Coniff, SJ. 10 cents. Meditations on the Rosary. By a Brother of the
Little Oratory. 35 cents net. The Story of St. Dominic for Little People.
By M. S. Ellerker, O.S.D. 35 cents net. The Meaning of Life and Other
Essays. By Rev. A. Goodier, SJ. 35 cents net. The Crucifix, or Pious
Meditations. From the French by F. M. Graf ton. 35 cents net. Fine Clay.
By I. C. Clarke. $1.35 net. The Holy Bible. $1.00 and upwards. Lord
Clandonnell. 60 cents net. By S. M. Christina. The Worst Boy in the
School. By C. M. Home. 45 cents net. A Broken Rosary, and Other
Stories. $1.15 net. By M. A. Finn.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York :
Mysticism in Engish Literature. By C. F. E. Spurgeon. The Troubadours.
By Rev. H. J. Chaytor, M.A. English Monasteries. By A. H. Thompson,
M.A. King Arthur in History and Legend. By W. L. Jones, M.A. Goethe
and the Twentieth Century. By J. G. Robertson, M.A. The Beautiful. By
V. Lee. 40 cents each. Romanism in the Light of History. By R. H.
McKim, LL.D. $1.25 net. Outlines of American History. By H. Mattingly.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
Simplicity According to the Gospel. By Monsignor de Gibergues. 60 cents.
The Red Ascent. By E. W. Neill. $1.00 net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York:
The United States and Peace. By Wm. H. Taft. $1.00 net. Collected Essays
of Edmund Gosse : Gossip in a Library; Portraits and Sketches; Critical
Kit-Kat ; Seventeenth Century Studies; French Profiles. $7.50.
E. P. BUTTON & Co., New York:
Germany and England. By J. A. Cramb. $1.00 net.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR Co., New York:
Those of His Own Household. By Rene Bazin.
MCBRIDE, NAST & Co., New York:
The Open Door. By R. Wright. $1.35 net.
GEORGE H. DORAN Co., New York:
The Lost Tribes. By G. A. Birmingham. $1.20 net.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York :
What Can I Know? By G. T. Ladd, LL.D. $1.50 net.
THE AMERICA PRESS, New York:
Freemasonry and Catholicism in America. By Rev. M. Kenny, SJ. 5 cents.
B. W. HUEBSCH, New York:
Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism, and Socialism. By J. Spargo. $1.25 net.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
The Case of Belgium in the Present War. Restatement and Reunion. By B.
H. Streeter. $1.00.
FUNK & WAGNALLS, New York:
The Revolt of Democracy. By A. R. Wallace. $1.00 net.
THE CENTURY Co., New York:
The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution, and the Catholic Reformation in
Continental Europe. By E. M. Hulme. $2.50.
MITCHELL KENNERLEY, New York :
The Lay Anthony. By J. Hergesheimer. $1.25 net.
NORTH AMERICAN Civic LEAGUE FOR IMMIGRANTS, New York:
Needed A Domestic Immigration Policy. By F. A. Keller. Report of the
Bureau of Industries and Immigration for the Twelve Months Ended Sep-
tember 30, 1914.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, New York:
The Cooperative People's Bank. By A. Desjardius. (Pamphlet.) 15 cents.
J. FISCHER & BROTHER. New York:
Cantica Sacra. (For church and home.) By Rev. R. S. Keyzer. $1.00.
HENRY HOLT & Co., New York:
The House of Deceit. Anonymous. $1.35 net.
HARPER & BROTHERS, New York :
The Seen and Unseen at Str at ford-on- Avon. By W. D. Howells. $1.00 net.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., Boston :
The Ministry of Art. By R. A. Cram, F.R.G.S. $1.50 net. The Wolf of
Gubbio. (Comedy.) By J. P. Peabody. $1.10 net.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington, D. C. :
The Lumber Industry. Parts II. and III.
J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co., Philadelphia :
Heroes and Heroines of Fiction. By Wm. S. Walsh. $3.00 net. Essays
Political and Historical. By C. Tower, LL.D. $1.50 net. The True Ulysses
S. Grant. By C. King. $2.00 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
Outside the Walls. By F. B. Musser. $1.25 net.
THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN Co., Milwaukeee, Wis. :
Catholicity. By T. A. Lacey, M.A. $1.00 net. Roman Catholic Opposition to
Papal Infallibility. By W. J. S. Simpson.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. C.
DECEMBER, 1914.
No. 597.
LITERATURE AND RELIGION.
BY FATHER CUTHBERT, O.S.F.C.
RANCIS THOMPSON began his essay on Shelley
with these words : " The Church, which was once the
Mother of poets no less than of saints, during the
last two centuries, has relinquished to aliens the
chief glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness
she has preserved for her own. The palm and the laurel, Dominic
and Dante, sanctity and song, grew together in her soil : she has
retained the palm, but foregone the laurel. Poetry in its widest
sense, and when not professedly irreligious, has been too much
and too long among many Catholics either misprized or distrusted ;
too much and too generally the feeling has been that it is at best
superfluous, at worst pernicious, most often dangerous. Once
poetry was, as she should be, the lesser sister and helpmate of the
Church ; the minister to the mind, as the Church to the soul. But
poetry sinned, poetry fell; and in place of lovingly reclaiming
her, Catholicism cast her from the door to follow the feet of her
pagan seducer. The separation has been ill for poetry; it has not
been well for religion." In a footnote the writer tells us that when
he refers to " poetry in the widest sense," he means poetry " as the
general animating spirit of the fine arts." So that practically his
complaint is that the Church has, or had at the time he wrote, for
two centuries practically severed itself from the arts in their highest
forms, both to their loss and her own. The fact is undeniable that
Copyright. 1914.
VOL. C. 19
THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
290 LITERATURE AND RELIGION [Dec.,
in the new vital developments of art in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, whether in literature or in painting, the main stream has
run outside the Church, and has been but little influenced by Catholic
life. The same must also be said of philosophy and to some extent
of theology. To progressive thought the thought which creates
new epochs in the world's history the Catholic body has been
in the position either of a stranger or of a professed enemy.
The admission of the fact implies, however, no disparagement
of the Church. The main purpose of the Church is not to create
new secular periods in the world's life : she is not set by her divine
Founder to create poets, or philosophers', or scientists, but to make
saints, to teach the redeeming Gospel of Jesus Christ, to warn men
against the evils of the world, and to bear witness to the truths
which come not from the natural intelligence and life of man, but
from the supernatural revelation of God in Christ. Once we
recognize this truth, it becomes intelligible how in certain circum-
stances the Church may find herself compelled by practical necessity
to stand apart for a time from new developments in the world's life
in defence of her own dogmas or institutions ; or, as we may say,
to concentrate her energies upon preserving some vital truth to the
neglect of those things which are less vital to her existence. And
the Church was preeminently in this position during the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. She was battling for the principle of
authority in religion; she was defending herself against heresies
and schisms. Moreover, the new spirit of the time which gave rise
to the new poetry and literature and philosophy, was also the same
spirit which was in rebellion against her authority, and questioned
her historic teaching and institutions. Her attitude, therefore, was
naturally one of suspicion or repulsion. And this attitude, neces-
sarily taken up by the authorities in the Church, communicated
itself to her loyal subjects, and Catholics as a body held themselves
at war with the secular spirit, nor did they feel themselves free to
discriminate between the good and the bad in its creations. So the
good Catholic looked upon the new poetry and philosophy and all
the new thought with much the same feeling as Englishmen during
the same period regarded Frenchmen, and as the French to-day
regard the Germans, that is to say with suspicion and prejudice ; or
vice versa.
That the Church has lost something by this long attitude of
hostility and suspicion to the world's thought and art, everyone
must admit who considers the subject; on the other hand but for
1914.] LITERATURE AND RELIGION 291
this attitude she might have lost more. A state at war cannot
develop the arts of peace; but the arts of peace must at times be
sacrificed for the sake of preserving national existence. And that
was the situation in which the Church found herself in regard to the
secular movement of thought in the sixteenth and succeeding cen-
turies. Her authority and existence as an institution were chal-
lenged on all sides ; and she was forced into an attitude essentially
and almost exclusively defensive.
But such an attitude cannot continue indefinitely. The Church
not only has to defend her dogmas and maintain her authority:
she has to gain the world. Secular life and thought can never be
to the Church as a mere outcast. She may be compelled to do battle
with the world, but her ultimate aim is to win over the world and to
incorporate it with all that is vital in its life into her society. That
purpose is of the essence of the Church's existence; were it other-
wise, the Church would not be Catholic : she would be no more than
a mere sect. By the very claim and charter of her being, she must
take into her religious life and consecrate to the glory of God what-
ever properly belongs to the life of man. Not only can there be no
antagonism between the truth of her dogmatic teaching and the
truth of secular life, but it is her purpose to bring the truth of
secular life into conscious relationship with her dogmatic truth.
Not only are the natural progressive developments of the
world's institutions not in essential antagonism with the Church's
dogmatic position, but the Church must incorporate these develop-
ments into the social organism of Catholic society. If we look
back over the history of the Church, we shall find that this is what
she always has done. She took over the Hellenist mode of thought,
and with it fashioned her theology in the early centuries of the
Church ; she adopted Roman institutions as the basis of her hier-
archical institutions. Later on in the Middle Ages she incorporated
the new dialectic into her theology, and engrafted feudal ideas
upon her hierarchical organism. In each of these cases, it must be
remembered, the Church thereby allied herself with the secular
thought and feeling of the age, and so far wedded the world to
herself and brought it into the service of Jesus Christ, and made
its institutions a subsidiary means of grace. These are patent
instances,* which easily suggest themselves to every student of
Church history, of the interaction of the Gospel and the world's
wisdom in the building up of the body of the Church. But the
influence of secular literature upon Catholic life taking the word
292 LITERATURE AND RELIGION [Dec.,
literature in its proper meaning as a fine art has perhaps been less
well considered. And yet of all human institutions, literature exer-
cises the deepest and most lasting influence upon human life. There
is much truth in the saying that the writers of a nation's ballads
determine its history. There can be no doubt of the enormous
power whether for good or evil, which a literary work exercises
over the minds and lives of men. Literature is not merely the ex-
pression of men's thoughts ; it is the expression of their souls : it
gives voice to the desire and emotion of the heart as well as to the
ideas of the brain : and it voices both mind and heart in the same
word. That is where its power lies : it evokes thought, but evokes
it as an object of the heart's love or hate, admiration or disdain.
It transforms ideas into ideals, arousing desire as well as thought.
For good or for evil, literature is, therefore, a power to be reckoned
with. This is certain: in all the great moments or periods of a
people's life, when a people's spirit is awakening from somnolence to
action, you will find literature at the back of action, urging the
people forward, and enthusing their effort with a sort of religious
sanction. It is so in secular history, and it is so also in the history
of religion.
One has but to look back upon the history of the Church to
see how much Catholic life owes to literary writers for its own de-
velopment and its conquest of the world. It may, we believe, be
maintained that the imperial policy of the Papacy in the early
Middle Ages, owes much of its success, humanly speaking, to the
poet who sang :
O Roma felix, qua tantorum principum
Es purpurata pretioso sanguine:
Excellis omnem mundi pulchritudinem. 1
In that hymn, one of the finest imperial anthems ever written, the
imagination and heart of the Catholic world glowed again with
the new ideal of imperial Rome as the centre of the Catholic world,
consecrated for all time by the blood of the two chief Apostles the
princes of the earth. Even to-day one can hardly utter those
majestic lines without a warming of the heart and a more conscious
loyalty : to us they clothe with beauty an acknowledged truth ; and
it is the beauty of truth which begets complete loyalty.
1 Written by Paulinus of Aquila ( + 802). Cf. Blume and Dreves : Analecta
Hymnica, Medii fiLvi : Tome 1. (Leipzic, 1907), p. 141. A popular adaptation of
this hymn was O Roma nobilis, sung by pilgrims to the tombs of the Apostles. (Cf.
Anal. Hymn, ut supra, Tome li., p. 219.
I9I4-] LITERATURE AND RELIGION 293
Again, how masterfully the dogmas of the creed are wedded
to the course of nature making the earth itself utter the Christian
revelation in the ancient hymns of the Fathers : for example, the
Sterne Rerum Conditor, or Nox et Tenebrce et Nubila. Those
hymns undoubtedlypopularized the dogmatic teaching of the Church,
and popularized them in the best sense of the word. They invested
the creed with imaginative beauty, and made the dogmas of the
Church a crowning revelation to those religious musings of the heart
as it ponders upon the mysteries of the natural world; and in so
doing they captured the people's imagination, and won their heart
in a way that no dry dogmatic treatise ever could win it. And it
was not only in hymnology that literature assisted the Church to
win the world. The true literary mark is upon the most effective
prose writings of the early Church. Whatever may be said of the
merits of the imperial Latin of the Fathers as compared with classic
Latin, they nevertheless frequently give us true and enduring litera-
ture. The Confessions of St. Augustine is perhaps the best known
piece of literature of its period. But there is a true literary flavor
in the sermons of St. Leo and of most of the well-known Fathers ;
and no doubt those who possess a full knowledge of Patristic
writings could give us even better, if less well-known, examples.
Still the sermons of the Fathers are perhaps a good witness to the
fact that literature entered powerfully into the life of the Church at
that time.
Coming to the Middle Ages, one is at once struck by the part
literature played in the reconstruction of Catholic piety; from
the awakening of dramatic art in the convent school of Hroswitha
to the later mystery plays ; from the pathetic hymns of the twelfth
century to the passionate outpourings of Jacopone da Todi, from
the vivid prose of the Cistercian monasteries to the highly pictorial
Meditationes of the fourteenth century: all the avenues of litera-
ture were occupied by the Catholic spirit, and became the delectable
training grounds of Catholic thought and action. Literature in
those days was favored by the Church, and was her busy handmaid ;
and those were the ages of faith.
We need not, however, dwell upon the fact that at various
periods in her history the Church has produced true literature:
the fact is evident to anyone who has given the least thought to the
matter. But what is not so clearly recognized is the influence upon
Catholic life of what is commonly known as secular literature.
Everyone, indeed, acknowledges the debt which the classic writers of
294 LITERATURE AND RELIGION [Dec.,
the early Church owe to the Greek and Latin writings of the pagans
in the matter of grammar and literary style ; but the influence of the
pagan writings upon the mind of the early Church went much
further than literary style. The Christian writers took over not
only the literary form of the pagan authors in so far as this com-
mended itself to their judgment, but they took over the inspiring
thought of the pagans, and having first purified it of its grossness of
error, incorporated it for all time into the Christian consciousness.
Thus they rescued from the midst of disaster the emotion of
imperial Rome in the vision of its ambition and splendor, and
carried it over into their own vision of Rome as the centre of the
Christian world; they took the animating thought of the pagan
mythology, and with it searched out the splendid symbolism of the
Christian revelation in nature, as in the hymns already referred to.
The pagan mind, as uttered in its literature, was taken over, even
more than pagan diction, and became a directive influence in the
formation of Christian literature and thought. The result was
twofold: the mind of the Roman world, formed by the pagan
traditions, was eventually led to find in the Church a true and
higher response to its own inherent aspirations; and the Church
gained a world-development, that is to say, it became the acknowl-
edged interpreter of the Roman world's deeper and most vital truth :
that particular aspiration towards truth, which as is the case with
all great human developments whether in thought or action lay at
the back of the old Roman life.
We will take another and more vivid instance more vivid be-
cause its inception and fulfillment are both within a short period of
Christian history. It comes from the Middle Ages. The latter
half of the twelfth century is remarkable for, amongst other things,
a new outburst of Catholic piety. Previous to that the Church
had fallen upon evil days. Discipline had become lax; piety was
formal and soulless. The Catholic world lay under a deep spiritual
depression: good people were in despair of better days; the mass
of men were indifferent. Then into the midst of this depression
entered a new feeling of returning spiritual life; and religion began
again to have a living interest for the Christian world. It really
began with the Crusades, but in its more spiritual aspect the new
religious interest grew up in the monasteries, and especially in the
monasteries of the new order of Cistercians.
Now the central motive of this new religious awakening was
the idea of the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ. The new piety
I9I4-] LITERATURE AND RELIGION 295
was evoked by a new realization of the Catholic teaching concerning
the Personality of our Lord. In the earlier times Catholics had
indeed believed that Jesus Christ was Man as well as God; but
their worship centred more upon the belief in His eternal Godhead
than upon the Godhead manifested in our human flesh and blood.
The idea of our Lord's relationship with His eternal Father had so
caught their imagination, that their devotion, one might say, was
almost wholly engrossed with the super-human in our Lord : they
loved the mysterious rather than the visible. But the people of the
later Middle Ages were of a different character. They were in-
tensely human in their sympathies and interests. They thought
with the heart more than with the mind ; and their loyalty was given
to persons rather than to systems or mental qualities. One reason
why religion had lost hold of the people was that in the speculative
and legal aspects in which it was presented by the religious teachers
of the ancient empire, the faith had become too much a matter of
abstruse metaphysical ideas or of legal formulas. These things
might appeal to an Alexandrian or Roman mind of the fifth century :
they were practically Chinese puzzles to the mind of the new peoples
who had grown up since the dissolution of the empire. The early
mediaeval folk might assent to them as mysteries taught by the
Church who knew what they meant, but Catholic piety offered no
sufficiently evident motive or ideal upon which the heart of these
peoples might wax warm and intimately worshipful. Again, the
moral goal upon which the older Catholics had centred their spirit-
ual energies the creation of the Catholic state or society evoked
less enthusiasm in these later Catholics. What they really thirsted
for was not a living state, but a living man. They were instinct
with that devotion to personal individuality which separates in char-
acter the old Germanic type of people from the Hellenic.
So in the new devotion which sprang up in the twelfth century
towards the Sacred Humanity of our Lord, the later mediaeval
people found just what they needed to renovate their faith and in-
spire their religion. The worship of the Divinity in the humanity,
brought the Divinity home to their own conscious life as human
beings. The worship of the God-man gave them a concrete ideal
of that perfect manhood which was of more immediate interest
to them than the perfect statehood. But the point is this:
that new devotion which did so much to renovate the life of
the Church, has an undoubted relationship with the new secular
literature of the time, and as undoubtedly drew part of its inspiration
296 LITERATURE AND RELIGION [Dec.,
from literature. The secular literature we refer to are the
chivalric romances and the minstrel songs of France and Germany.
All the inspiring religious literature of the period and it is one
of the most vital periods in Church history throbs with the same
fundamental emotions and ideals which gave the romance and
minstrel song their tremendous power over the imagination and
heart: only in the one case the immediate motive was found in
purely secular satisfactions, and in the other in religious. Whilst
the minstrel's song throbs with an earthly love, St. Bernard's writ-
ings throb with the love of Jesus Christ; but it is the same funda-
mental sentiment and ambition the conception of life's satisfaction
found through personal love only directed to different goals. If
St. Bernard had not found a higher satisfaction in the religious
life of Clairvaux, he might well have developed into a courtly
Trouvere as did Marie de France his contemporary. But happily
for Christendom he brought the new poetic emotion with him into
the service of religion, and so became the morning singer of the
awakening piety which was to people Christendom with saints, and
send a glow of spiritual energy through a Christendom grown
devout.
One might say with some truth that had there been no minstrel
songs of troubadour or minnesinger, there would have been no
religious singers of Clairvaux nor any of his kind: had there
been no chansons d'aventure, we should lack those religious
writings, such as the Meditationes, which did so much to foster
mediaeval piety; and who can tell the loss that would have been
to Christendom? Nor had there been no chivalric romances would
there have been a Franciscan Order in the Church, such at least
as it actually appears in history.
The influence of the new chivalric literature in the formation
of the Franciscan Order deserves special attention; for the tem-
perament and character of the Order, and its unique power over the
heart of the thirteenth century, were derived at once from the
Catholic faith and from the spirit and idea of the new romantic
literature. It is well known how St. Francis' mind and ambition
were formed in his youth by the song of the troubadour and the
tales of romance, and how when he was converted to the service of
Jesus Christ he carried over into that service the spirit of knightly
adventure and song which he had learned from that literature. But
he was not only spurred on to adventure in the service of God by
the examples of the legendary heroes of romance; he actually
1914.] LITERATURE AND RELIGION 297
moulded his daily conduct and that of his disciples upon the prin-
ciples of conduct which were set forth in the chivalric tales as the
traits of the perfect knight, and the rules of chivalric honor. Thus
Jesus Christ became to him his liege-lord, to Whom he and his friars
were bound by personal fealty, and Whose word was the absolute
law ; poverty was no mere legal ordinance, but an ideal embodiment
of virtue, whom he worshipped as the knight of chivalry worshipped
the lady of his love; obedience was conceived as a voluntary accept-
ance of service in the cause of Christ; chastity as the reverence due
to the consecrated womanhood of the Gospel. The service of the
lepers was a service of chivalrous pity; the dependence upon alms
was a knight-errant 's dependence upon the hospitality of the road.
When St. Francis styled the true Friars Minor " Knights of my
Round Table," the designation conjured up to his imagination and
that of his brethren the romance of chivalry pressed into the
following of Christ.
People sometimes ask they asked it of Francis himself why
on renouncing the world he did not enter one of the existing Orders,
the Cistercian for example. Francis' answer was simply that God
had called him in a new way. But he might truly have said only
he was not given to philosophizing that he was called to bring into
the service of religion the spirit of the world as expressed in the
minstrel's song and the chivalric romance. Here then in the history
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we have an instance of the
action of secular literature upon the religious life of Christendom.
On the one hand it leads to a new literary expression of Catholic
piety; on the other it becomes a formative influence in a great re-
ligious Order; and through both channels it contributes to the
upbuilding of the visible life of the Church.
But one might go even further and show how the secular litera-
ture of that time, even apart from these responsive religious develop-
ments, popularized Catholic thought and sentiment. Much of the
romance literature can hardly be called Christian at all : it voiced
a gross and scarcely decent naturalism ; on the other hand there was
a vast field of romance which was permeated with the purest Catholic
emotion. Christian sentiment found its way both into the song
of the minstrel and the tale of chivalry; and with the Christian
sentiment the new literature far from losing any of its imaginative
charm or passionate conviction, developed an even deeper human
feeling and compelling sincerity of heart. And in this way secular
literature was itself redeemed, and became a factor in the redemption
298 LITERATURE AND RELIGION [Dec.,
of the mediaeval mind. Indeed such a romance as the Parzival of
the poet Wolfram would do more to bring home to the imagination
and heart of the people the ennobling sanctity of pure conjugal love,
than would most of the preachers' sermons; and thus become the
most effective antidote to the moral poison instilled by the profane
singers and story-tellers. Thus in various ways did the chivalric
literature of the Middle Ages play a constructive part in the forma-
tion of mediaeval Catholic life.
Now let us try to imagine what would have been the result
if the Catholic heart had proved irresponsive to the new literature
of that day. Suppose St. Bernard I speak now of St. Bernard
as a type, not an individual had not appeared, and that the only
song the Church could have sung against the songs of the minstrel
singers, had been the song of Notker : Media vita in morte sumus,
or the song of St. Peter Damian : Urbs beata Jerusalem, what would
have happened? The Catholic faith and the new secular spirit of
the age would never have come together: a yawning gulf would
have separated them in the imagination and emotion of the time.
The Urbs beata Jerusalem, beautiful as it is and embodying an
undying truth, would have left the spirit of the new singers alto-
gether estranged from the Church. " We cry for bread and you
give us stones," they might have said with justice: not that the
truth and emotion of St. Peter Damian's song is itself " a stone,"
but it was as a stone to them in their present desire, it threw no
light upon the mystery of their felt delight in human life, but be-
longed to quite another order of experience. The new world-
spirit uttered in the new literature would have been left to wander
apart from the faith; and the Church would have lacked that
mediaeval development of piety which is now so exquisite a heritage
of the faith.
These reflections upon the action of the Church in regard to
secular literature in the past, go to justify Francis Thompson's plea
for a more sympathetic attitude on the part of the Catholic mind
towards the world-literature of the present day. And already, even
when Francis Thompson was penning his plaint in 1889, ne P er ~
ceived a change coming over the Catholic body in this respect.
" There is a change of late years," he wrote, " the wanderer is
being called back to her Father's house; but we would have the
call yet louder, we would have the proffered welcome more
unstinted." Those words were written nearly a quarter of a
century ago; and in the intervening period the welcome has
1914-] LITERATURE AND RELIGION 299
surely become more unstinted; and the world's literature can
hardly be said to be banned from Catholic company. There is no
need to supply a list of Catholic writers whose work finds its place
in our national literature to-day : though such a list would probably
come as a surprise to very many readers, both Catholic and non-
Catholic. The true literary leaven is permeating even our religious
and devotional writings; adding enormously, we need not say, to
their strength and persuasiveness.
Now what does this point to? It indicates that Catholicism
is getting once more into touch with secular life, national and inter-
national, social and intellectual; it indicates that Catholic piety is
becoming more virile and of the open air type; it indicates further
the dawn of a new constructive era in Catholic thought and life,
responding to the felt needs of the new spirit which has trans-
formed or is transforming the world into a new thing. The Catho-
lic faith is no longer standing merely on the defensive; it has
begun to enter a claim to a rightful possession of that spiritual
movement, moral and intellectual, which for long past has been
exploited to the injury of the Church and the denial of the Catholic
faith. Now we can say that Catholicism is beginning to speak to
the present world in a language it can understand, and with a
sympathetic understanding of the underlying aspiration and need
of the world's spirit. And that is a first requisite for the world's
conversion. Hitherto one of the chief obstacles to the Catholic re-
ligion was that Catholics were out of touch with the world's litera-
ture: at most they read it with simple suspicion. Undoubtedly
this new constructive period of Catholic life upon which we are
entering has its dangers dangers which have been brought pain-
fully home to us in what is known as Modernism. The danger
lies in the reaction of the sympathies of Catholics against the mere
attitude of suspicion of the past, and in a weakening of the loy-
alties which made the strength of the Catholic position in its opposi-
tion to the world. That is a danger we have need to beware
of at this present time. Yet the danger should not discourage us.
The same danger dogged the progress of Catholic reconstruction
in the Middle Ages. Its presence should only warn us to keep
fast by our Catholic loyalties with one hand, whilst we stretch out
the other to the world around us. It were the basest of disloyalties
to our faith and the Church, were we in restiveness at the assertion
of the Church's authority, to sit down idly and let the world pass by.
Such disloyalty in the long run were more fatal both to oneself
300 LITERATURE AND RELIGION [Dec,
and the Church at large than even open rebellion. The disloyalty
of sheer inaction is not less immoral than is the disloyalty of active
opposition. Even when inaction is due not to a disloyal sulkiness
at the assertion of the Church's authority, but to timidity because
of recognized dangers, the result may be injurious both to one's
own religious life and to the life of the Church at large. One
appreciates the loyalty which lies behind the timidity, but the
timidity itself is not wholly good. It is apt to paralyze the intel-
ligent action of faith at a time when intelligent action is urgently
needed. For unless the Church can show herself the true inter-
preter of the world movement in thought and aspiration which is
now such a mighty force in the world's life, and unless, too, she can
meet the world's demand in a language which will be at once
intelligible and powerful to convince, not only will the world pass
by, but in passing it will desolate the Church.
But the very genius of Catholicism is against any such even-
tuality; and already, as we have said, her reconstructive genius is
at work. Yet is it in some sort a duty on the part of the Catholic
body at large to fall in with this reconstructive purpose. And
especially is it the duty of those who in one way or another have
the direction of the Catholic mind. Whilst on the one hand it is
their duty to protect the minds of Catholics against the dangers with
which present-day literature abounds, it is also their duty to cultivate
a right appreciation of that literature: upon their achievement in
this matter depends, humanly speaking, the future of the Church
as the saving Mother of the people.
THE POEMS OF JOYCE KILMER.
BY THOMAS WALSH.
N the simple directness of much of the recent poetry
of America and England, we come upon a new
beauty as well as upon a new danger; a word or
phrase rich from its contact with some classical coin-
age or memorial of the music of the greater masters
has carried into some vogue not a few poets of limited visions and
mediocre song. On the other hand, too many of our younger
poets seem to follow in the wake of the younger painters, and have
given over the proper concern, with the music and message, to
indulge in a fad that amounts merely to speculation and experiment
in dubious degrees of frankness and in uncertainties of technique.
In the utter freedom of some recent poetry there is, no doubt, a
great deal of nature; but the critic's real concern is with art, and
we have not forgotten that one of the first requirements in art, as
well as in life, is restraint. Ars est celare artem; but how much of
art is concealed in many of our younger poetical radicals, is an
inquest that must be left for the clairvoyant. Some of these young-
sters are cleverly hit-off in the course of Mr. Joyce Kilmer's quat-
rains on Old Poets. He declares that :
The pleasantest sort of poet
Is the poet who's old and wise,
With an old white beard and wrinkles
About his kind old eyes.
For these young flibbertigibbets
A-rhyming their hours away,
They won't be still like honest men
And listen to what you say.
The young poet screams forever
About his sex and his soul,
But the old man listens and smokes his pipe
And polishes its bowl.
There is no peace to be taken
With poets who are young,
For they worry about the wars to be fought
And the songs that must be sung.
302 THE POEMS OF JOYCE KILMER [Dec.,
But the old man knows that he's in his chair
And that God's on His throne in the sky,
So he sits by the fire in comfort
And he lets the world spin by.
Mr. Joyce Kilmer, in spite of his youth, has already done
yeoman service in the cause of arts and letters, and it is to be
regretted that he cannot be claimed for one of the higher seats
of Catholic learning. An unusual alumnus of Rutger's College
and Columbia University, he seems to have been deeply affected,
even before entering the Church, by the old Catholic English poets
of the Tudors and the Restoration, and by their direct descendants,
Coventry Patmore and Francis Thompson.
It is one of the cheap and easy critical fashions of the day to
pick out the traces of older and famous works in the writings of
every newcomer. Mr. Kilmer is to be congratulated that he has
kept his ears and eyes open, and has had the courage to follow 7 and
live with the best thought and vision of his time and of the ages.
What has become of the American poetical school that all remember,
which proclaimed its self-insulation in renouncing literary, and even
civilized, traditions? The croak of a frog, they said, was to them
the most adequate sermon. Some of them, indeed, have stolen back
within the ragged edge of tradition; but the majority, the most
consistent with their creed, having nothing to say, are silent.
Mr. Kilmer's new volume, Trees and Other Poems,* bears an
unconscious protest against such poets; for this new singer
" trees " are a symbol in the manner of the great literatures, of all
times and tongues ; but his " trees " are realized also in the dis-
tinctively modern manner combining with the older dignity the
new poetical intimacy of our young American lyrical school. He
sings to us of :
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks to God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray ;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair ;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
1 George H. Doran Company, New York.
1914.] THE POEMS OF JOYCE KILMER 303
If, on the one hand, Mr. Kilmer shows a proper sense of the
beauty as well as the limitations of the " merely nature " school,
he displays, on the other hand, his deep and manly scorn for the
Little poets mincing there
With women's hearts and women's hair
who profane and make ridiculous the poet's profession, and draw
suspicion and discredit upon literature in the minds of the unlettered.
In his poem To Certain Poets, Mr. Kilmer complains :
The merchant's sneer, the clerk's disdain,
These are the burden of our pain
and we have his positive creed in the beautiful little song entitled :
POETS. 2
Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.
Light songs we breathe that perish with our breath
Out of our lips that have not kissed the rod.
They shall not live who have not tasted death.
They only sing who are struck dumb by God.
This message is developed in the final stanza of his ballade to
Folly:
Our minds are troubled and denied
By study in a weary school.
O for the folly of the child !
The ready courage of the fool!
Lord, crush our " knowledge " utterly
And make us humble, simple men ;
And cleansed of wisdom, let us see
Our Lady Folly's face again !
The readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will be quick to detect
in these extracts the peculiar note of the Catholic tradition in
letters ; it is the wise joyousness and childishness of a Brother Leo
of the Franciscans ; it is the blithe lyrism of the early carol singers
8 THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July, 1913, p. 506.
304 THE POEMS OF JOYCE KILMER [Dec.,
with something of the recurring note of Francis Thompson who
sang:
Look for me in the nurseries of heaven.
It is that sort of intimacy with sacred things which, no matter
what its delicacy, always sets the Puritan mind aghast, that familiar-
ity with the divine which misleads so many non-Catholic readers of
Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, and frightens even some of our
prim and precious Catholics in the later poems of Patmore. For
Mr. Kilmer, however, the poet of The Angel in the House 3 is more
significant as yet than the seer of The Unknown Eros, although the
little ode, Pennies* which appeared originally in these pages, bears
something of Patmore's later development in the metrical art.
In The Citizen of the World* also originally published in THE
CATHOLIC WORLD, we find a beautiful hymn in the manner of
Francis Thompson, whose work comes again to mind when we read
the splendid stanza of Mr. Kilmer's Stars: 5
Christ's troop, Mary's Guard, God's own men,
Draw your swords and strike at hell and strike again,
Every steel-born spark that flies where God's battles are,
Flashes past the face of God, and is a star.
There are other phases of Mr. Kilmer's Trees and Other Poems
that will doubtless receive more attention from the critics than
will be given to his religious verse. There is his charming poem
of the dreamer Martin who
exhaled romance,
And wore an overcoat of glory.
In another poem, Delicatessen, we learn of the magic and grandeur
possible to him that
Leans across a slab of board
And draws his knife and slices cheese.
Another poem that will undoubtedly win press laurels for
its author is the pathetic, half -humorous story of Dave Lilly,
some of the stanzas of which must find room in many albums and
scrap-books :
8 THE CATHOLIC WORLD, February, 1913, p. 601.
*Ibid., August, 1914, p. 585-
"Ibid., May, 1913, p. 196.
1914.] THE POEMS OF JOYCE KILMER 305
Well, Dave is dead and buried and nobody cares very much j
They have no use on Greylock for drunkards and loafers and such.
But I always liked Dave Lilly, he was pleasant as you could wish ;
He was shiftless and good-for-nothing, but he certainly could fish.
The other night I was walking up the hill from Williamstown
And I came to the brook I mentioned, and I stopped on the bridge and
sat down.
I looked at the blackened water with its little flecks of white,
And I heard it ripple and whisper in the still of the Summer night.
And after I'd been there a minute it seemed to me I could feel
The presence of someone near me, and I heard the hum of a reel.
And the water was churned and broken, and something was brought
to land
By a twist and flirt of a shadowy rod in a deft and shadowy hand.
I scrambled down to the brookside and hunted all about:
There wasn't a sign of a fisherman; there wasn't a sign of a trout.
But I heard somebody chuckle behind the hollow oak,
And I got a whiff of tobacco like Lilly used to smoke.
It's fifteen years, they tell me, since anyone fished that brook ;
And there's nothing in it but minnows that nibble the bait off your
hook.
But before the sun has risen and after the moon has set,
I know that it's full of ghostly trout for Lilly's ghost to get.
The Waverly celebration in England commemorating the one
hundredth anniversary of the appearance of Walter Scott's great
novel, was signalized by Mr. Kilmer's splendid poem in The London
Spectator. It is seldom that an American litterateur has received
such honor from the English critics, and in his Waverly Mr.
Kilmer shows that he was well worthy to be the chosen laureate of
their great centennial.
Trees and Other Poems is the second volume that has appeared
over Mr. Kilmer's name; in the first, The Summer of Love, the
reviewers remarked unusual artistry and fine feeling. It seems
to be certain that they will immediately recognize the great strides
the poet has made in poetical comprehension and construction, and
that Mr. Kilmer will be awarded, without murmur, a sure place
among the finest singers of our time.
vor,
COMPLETING THE REFORMATION.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D..
VI.
ODERN philosophers are pickers and choosers : their
theories of the world do not take the whole evidence
impartially into account. Only on such selected por-
tions of it as their pre judgments approve are they
willing to build. And the result naturally is that
philosophy fails to secure a broad and proper start. Limitations
of method pass over into limitations of mind : negations stalk where
light once led us kindly through the encircling gloom.
Not a single constructive synthesis has appeared since the
Middle Ages, of which one might truly say that it incorporated
the thought and conviction of humanity at large. Breadth of base
is lacking, however high the thought soar or wide it sweep. We are
strangely conscious of being in the presence of one man's private
thinking, and this impression dampens ardor, it does not invite
that assent which we feel wrung from our very withers by truth
objective and impersonal. The touch is lacking that makes the
whole world kin we have to pinch ourselves to realize that we
are the object of address. Inverted pyramids the systems all seem,
resting at times upon so small a fraction of the total evidence,
we wonder how the superstructure keeps from crumbling upon its
base. We are dimly aware that something is at fault, even though
we may not be able to put our finger on the spot.
Each thinker, we notice, has a habit of singling out some one
element or other in experience to the exclusion of all the rest
he calls it his " centre of perspective ;" and from this, as from a
source that is all-containing, he either proceeds to deduce the whole
world of truth and reality, after the fashion of the idealist, or
refuses to deduce anything at all, contenting himself instead with
the admission of the brute and bare fact of change Charles Dar-
win's world of perpetual mutation, to which there is no rational key
or clue. The latter attitude has recently come into favor with the
pragmatists who, it would seem, are more given to knocking loudly
at the door of philosophy, and then running away, than to crossing
its threshold and facing its inner problems. The raw materials of
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 307
knowledge receive full consideration at their hands, the finished
products none. " The wild horse is from their point of view better
than the tame one, the uncut diamond than the cut, the volcano than
the cannon."
What strikes us as passing strange in both these views, es-
pecially in the latter, is the breaking of the continuity that really
exists, and the introduction of separations that do not exist at all.
Four such separations are conspicuous. Sense is separated from
intellect, actuality from potentiality, the work of analysis from the
work of synthesis, the reflex reason of the individual from the
common reason of the race. And to this fallacy of separating the
inseparable and dividing the undivided must be added another
equally pernicious and unwarranted that of building on a por-
tion of the evidence instead of taking the whole of it, preliminarily,
at least, into due consideration.
These two fallacies let us call them separatism and selectivism
are the anti-intellectualist's stock in trade, his working principles,
his props of reliance; and they suggest the criticism we would offer
of him in all his historic varieties of manner and of mood. Simply
by closing up these false gaps of severance which he has opened,
and by rebuilding the bridges which he has destroyed, will philos-
ophy be enabled to recover ground never really won from it by
victorious argument.
But first cast a hurried glance over the work of the system-
builders, and see for yourself the habit of picking and choosing
that underlies it. The evidence as a whole never succeeds in getting
itself considered, before the world-builders are up and away with
that part of it most to their suiting. Descartes selects the rational
consciousness, Berkeley the spiritual, Locke and Hume the em-
pirical, Kant the moral. Spinoza and Leibnitz choose substance for
their point of starting; Fichte the ego ; Schelling the indeterminate;
Hegel the immanently active; Schopenhauer the striving will;
Hartmann the unconscious; de Lammenais the social reason; Mill
the permanently possible; Spencer the unconditioned; James and
Bergson the new and changing. Who can read the tale and not
see that the habit of selecting has laid hold of the human mind?
Not that much fine analytical work has not been accomplished
in these continual attempts to distill all truth and reality, drop
by drop, out of a single principle. It is only natural that man's
analytical powers should undergo considerable brightening when so
steadily set to the task of filtering the " many " out of the " one."
308 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
Here as elsewhere necessity has been the mother of invention, and
in more senses than one, we fear, though we do not pause to press
the point. For, whatever be the advantages it may have brought
in the way of sharpened wits, this habit of selecting has made
modern philosophy a series of " one-man-views," with nothing
particularly cogent about any of them to win that " decent respect
of mankind " which only impersonal truth the common fund of
solidary notions existing in all minds is capable, it would seem,
and deservedly so, of winning.
Now it is curious, to say the least, in the history of the anti-
intellectualist movement which we have been engaged in reviewing,
to find the choice always leaning towards the particular in human
thought as against the general; towards the deliverances of sense
rather than the pronouncements of reason; towards the private
as distinct from the public side of the soul of man. Why should
thought incline so heavily to one side of a very old, much mooted
problem? Science, you will say, and Charles Darwin especially
these account for the tilting of the scales. Partly, but by no
means wholly.
One cannot help seeing the influence of Reformation principles
in this persistent effort to make the " many " of sense displace and
supersede the " one "of reason. The religious notion of unity
could hardly fall into disfavor without dragging the philosophical
notion down with it to a common ruin. Things have a way of
happening by pairs in history, and philosophy is more frequently
of late an echo of social and religious thought than an original,
unimpassioned voice. Making all due allowances, therefore, for
the influence of the idea of " natural selection " since 1858, and
the biological manner of approaching and handling problems which
it suggested, it would be hard >even with this generous pinch of
concession to explain the return of modern philosophers in such
numbers to Heraclitus and his doctrine of a world in flux, unless
we also took into consideration the impetus which the Reformation
way of thinking gave and still gives to the category of variety in
opposition to that of unity. It has been the anti-intellectualist's
favorite choice, from the day Kant cut the universal off from the
particular, and the rational from the real, to the day James pro-
fessed pluralism and fortuitousness in general against the idea of a
rationally planned and ordered world. The scientific influence is
merely an eddy in the religious stream. The attempt now being
made to deprive human knowledge of all rational foundation and
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 309
character, is but the continuation and completion of the movement
set on foot by the Reformers to derationalize Christian faith. The
thesis that knowing is experiencing covered only the truths of
religion at first, now it is made to cover all the truths of life from
the toothache suffered by a fellow being to the fact that two and
two make four.
But and this is the crying question! can knowing and ex-
periencing be thus ruthlessly divided for the purpose of contrast-
ing the former unfairly and unfavorably with the latter, or do
the two form continuous, uninterrupted parts of one and the same
knowledge-process? In other words, can the two powers of sense
and intellect be separated and made discontinuous and independent ?
The answer will lose none of its force, and may gain a mite in
piquancy if cast in the form of a dialogue. Imagine sense engaging
reason in familiar converse somewhat after the following fashion :
" Look here, old fogey, I'm going to ask you a favor. I want you to
admit that my way of looking at things is better than yours, and
that I am far more to be trusted than you. You're a good analyst
in fact, you never were anything else and you missed your voca-
tion sadly when you thought yourself an architect, and went into
the truth-building business somewhere about Aristotle's time. The
world is not a unity, as you seem to think: it's just a hodge-podge
of infinite varieties. Abdicate in my favor, follow my report of
things, and do not expose yourself to still further criticism from
these angry philosophers."
Reason, we imagine, would be quick to reply to this insolence
on the part of sense : " Why, you and I are partners, not rivals.
My work is a recognition and continuation of yours, not a separate
undertaking. You gather information not so much for me as
with me, and I would have you understand that first of all. I see
more in your report of reality than you do, but I put nothing there
that I do not actually find. I'm empirical as well as speculative
I always was and these two functions of mine are continuous
they are not disconnected, unrelated actions. Who put that idea
into your head Kant?
" I thought so. Kant had a queer idea of my doings. He re-
garded you as my competing rival, and did not realize that you
were just one of my companion powers. He dissolved our partner-
ship, or thought he did, which amounts to the same thing. He
was a pietist, if you remember, and pietists were never known to
like anything but their own private brand of religion and philosophy.
310 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
They'd like to universalize that, but nothing else, and as I refuse
to perform that private labor for them, they do not take kindly to
me, and say I'm a de-vitalized creature. Have you never noticed
how these pietists speak of you as living and of me as dead?
But it takes more than words to stop the circulation between your
life and mine. It is a trick of these moderns to confine vitality to
one-half of the mind your half, their half, the pietistic half
and to cry out 'static and stagnant' when they speak of me. They
say I pay no attention to experience. Whose experience ? Theirs?
Well, I might plead guilty to that charge, and not suffer loss of
worth or character. But, tell me, do I not pay attention to your
experience to the things you bring before me for inspection and
is not your experience indivisibly mine also? Let us continue
our cooperative partnership, and wait till these critics understand us
rightly. Prove you trustworthy and myself not? That would be
a pretty how-do-you-do, would it not, and add a splendid jewel of
consistency to my crown."
It will be seen from the dialogue just concluded a literary
expedient to avoid the lingo of the schools that sense and reason
furnish one continuous report of reality, not two independent
and contradictory versions. There exists, in other words, between
man's rational ideas and his sensible experiences, a bond of union
and link of parentage which no amount of sophistry can sever.
The " one " is, therefore, in just as good standing among our no-
tions as the " many," and equally entitled to consideration. It is
not a question of choosing either, but of recognizing both. Where
there is solidarity, it is wrong to imagine disunion.
The method of the modern philosopher, however, is to institute
a choice between these two notions, and so we find all his efforts
directed towards proving one of them worthless. If he be an ideal-
ist, the fact of change is belittled; if a pragmatist, the fact of
permanence is argued into insignificance. Thus James and Berg-
son would have us believe that the notion of unity, substance,
being, stability call it what you will is an invention of reason
pure and simple, impossible in a real world that changes every mo-
ment and is never exactly the same at any two successive instants
of its duration. Permanence is not a feature of reality, they say,
but a projection of the mind a logical distinction made to look
as if it were real. What place, they ask, can any such static notion
claim or clear for itself in a world all dynamic that knows no
law but that of ceaseless change? As well might a man, upon an
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 311
escalator standing, claim absolute repose and immobility for his
relative position of rest upon the moving stairs ! In a universe
that science has shown to be a process, not a fixity, why continue
to entertain a notion that contradicts the very essence and onrush
of reality? Why speak of things being, when reality never is,
but always is becoming f
The philosophers who argue in this drastic fashion, argue truly
but not completely, and the second adverb takes away the compli-
ment paid by the first. They are perfectly right in saying that we
can never get an adequate conception of any finite reality merely by
considering it from the static point of view. Abstract thought
always takes things from this standpoint, it is true, but abstract
thought is never exhaustive of the total concrete reality, nor
does it set itself up as such. In the fullness of concrete being,
" power " and " action " are met with, the point of view changes
from static to dynamic, and we find ourselves in the presence of
change, growth, evolution, or decay. To be full and fruitful,
therefore, our philosophical analysis of experience must try to grasp
reality and understand it not only as being, but also as becoming.
The kinetic standpoint should add itself to the static, so as to
round the latter out and keep the picture moving.
But should the former supplant the latter altogether and dis-
place it? That would be to court extremes and to avoid telling
the truth completely. If the static point of view does not exhaust
the total concrete reality, neither does the dynamic. We have to
be two-minded, or else let the world go mad, and ourselves along
with it. You cannot expect an orchestral effect from the twanging
of a single string in philosophy any more than in music, and
when Professor James said that he could not hear the music of the
spheres, he meant that he could not hear it with his one-idea philos-
ophy a statement that might be true and yet mean no more than
an individual hardness of hearing or poor means chosen.
Consider the idea of substance, for instance, round which the
tide of battle rages. Does this idea imply an innermost core of
being that goes on nonchalantly existing, without ever in the least
undergoing the rub of change? Were that the case, the dynamic
philosophers would have won before the debate opened. But sub-
stance is not insulated in this static way from the effects of power
and action, and those who so regard it have chosen one of Don
Quixote's windmills to ride at in full tilt. True, substance may
appear to abstract thought as unchanging, but to expect to find it
312 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
thus in concrete reality is to look for the inert in the midst of the
active, as if the former existed anywhere in absolute aloofness from
the latter. And this is the wild hunt in which the " new philos-
ophers " would have us join them the pastime of running down
an imaginary quarry.
There is no such quarry to be run down and spitted. Existing
substance is ever undergoing real, though only accidental, change.
However we view substance whether as having powers through
which it acts, or as acting of itself immediately in either case
the total concrete existing reality is ever being affected, determined,
made better or worse, through the actions taking place within or
upon it. It is not possible to insulate substance from the effects
of action. That would be to reify an abstraction, to confound
a thing's way of being with the mind's manner of conceiving
worse still, to cross two distinct points of view the incomplete
standpoint of abstract, and the complete standpoint of concrete,
thought.
When we do not cross these two viewpoints, quite another
problem emerges than that of choosing either horn of a dilemma.
The question that really confronts us then is the value of the dis-
tinctions which the mind makes in the concrete reality, especially
the distinction of substance and accident, permanence and change.
Is the concrete reality composed of distinct co-principles which we
discover and recognize, or is it a thing so simple as to offer no
grounds for distinction? In other words, does the mind project
unity and permanence into reality, or are these distinctions really
there for us to acknowledge and draw? That is the real question.
And becloud the issue as you may by this theory of knowledge or
that, you can never prove, you can only allow yourself to become
sophisticated to the extent of claiming, that these distinctions
are mental inventions, not aspects or features of reality.
Things are, things change; they exist, they become. The con-
tinuous actualization which we see going on is not a process merely
of becoming; it is the undergoing of change by things already
constituted in existence, and becoming more and more what they
are, not something entirely other. It does not follow that if a
thing changes, it never is, but always is becoming; it simply fol-
lows that it is and also becomes. We should not divide or subtract,
but add. The actual and the potential are concretely united, even
though they are not in the same logical category. Not all growth
is transmutation, nor all change a passing into something else.
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 313
The grown man is but the child developed; and the fact that
the psychologist recognizes a continuity of consciousness between
the two, shows that there is something permanent beneath the play
of change a real, no less than an empirical, personality. " Sub-
liminal self/' " nuclei/' " centres/' " disappearing and reappearing
constants " what are these phrases of the schools but attempts
to avoid in language what cannot be suppressed in thought the
fact, namely, of permanence, of self-identical continuity. Apart,
therefore, from the learned disbelief into which anyone that wills
may argue himself by an overdose of theory, the fact of the matter
is that we cannot make a complete philosophical analysis of expe-
rience without recognizing the presence of the actual alongside
and beneath the potential.
We may of course it is the sad privilege of the learned
bring the notion of actuality into undeserved ridicule and contempt,
by imagining it as an inner coil or core of being impervious
to change. But such ridicule lacks point, and reveals the confusion
of mind under which those labor who employ it. To refute a
false Image of actuality is not to refute the concept or to impugn
its worth. Otherwise it would follow that the notion of action
would likewise have to be given up, for we imagine action as a
flux, though we know such not to be its nature. It does not follow
that, if we exercise the imagination wrongly, the intuitions of
the intellect are thereby discredited. Thought is distinct from
the imagination, depending on the latter for its sustenance, not
for its worth. When, therefore, we clear away the misconceits with
which the issue has been clouded, we find ourselves brought face
to face with the actual and the potential everywhere in creation.
It is a dualistic world we live in one that stubbornly resists
the blandishments of the monist, to make it appear simpler than
it really and truly is.
Such is the evidence when we consult it fully and do not
mutilate the report. The dynamic and the static, while distinct and
irreducible, nowhere appear as isolated or disjoined. Nature
strikes and keeps a balance between them, and so must we. No
such thing as mere permanence, no such thing as mere change,
greets the searcher's sight, but a complex reality that is and changes,
partly both, wholly neither, wherever he may look. It is not the
actual or the potential, the rational or the empirical, but the actual
and the potential, the empirical and the rational, the entire way
through. Conjunctions instead of severances, links instead of bars,
314 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
hyphens in lieu of minus signs! Experience itself in its cours-
ings rubs out the lines of division which Kant drew: our notions
cannot be cut like cameos nor shuffled after the manner of cubes.
They live, and a common mental life floods all their connecting
links and attaching fringes. Defective circulation among the mind's
ideas is a thing unknown.
And as with our ideas or mental states, so with our ideals
also : these know no isolation, either, though one would never
think so, to hear the single-barrelled theorists speak. Professor
James wrote disparagingly of the ancient philosophers who did
not share his belief in the floating, fleeting character of the world.
He would have all men think as he did or be anathema, forgetting,
when he turned philosopher, the very principles which no one more
than he had so clearly discovered and emphasized in psychology.
The following quotation will show what we mean:
The history of human thought, broadly considered, reveals
an unbroken conflict between two contrary visions of reality;
the temporal with the eternal, the historical and dramatic with
the statuesque and pictorial, the dynamic and functional with
the structural and inert. Considered culturally, the dramatic
view may be called Hebraic; the structural Hellenic. The
Hebrews saw the world as a history. For them the inwardness
of reality lay in the movement of events. The Greeks saw
the world as an immutable hierarchy of forms; for them the
true reality was the inert order of being. Not that either
people was unaware of the opposed view; the Hebrews could
see in the march of events the unfoldment of an eternal divine
plan; the Greeks more than once envisaged reality as flowing.
But neither people placed both views on a par. In the long
run change and movement were for the Greeks identical with
evil and illusion ; were just imperfect reflections of the eternal
order of reality; while for the Hebrews these were in the
long run the very soul of reality, and the static, the inert, were
conceived as mere moments in the march of time mere ex-
pressions in the service of an omnipotent, unceasing activity.
The opposed views met in Christianity. Christianity is a
compromise between Hebraism and Hellenism a compromise
in which the Hellenic vision was apparently subordinated to
the Hebraic. Augustine's maxim " Credo ut intellegam " (" I
believe in order to understand ") gives this view color. It
appears to subordinate reason to practise, understanding to the
urgency of life. But the fact is the reverse. That accommoda-
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 315
tion of the prophets and Plato, of Revelation and Aristotle, of
which Christian philosophy consists, robbed history of its con-
tingency and time of its reality. This contingency, revealed in
the certainty of the Hebrews, that the attitude of God toward
man changed with the conduct of man, was incompatible with
the Hellenic notion of the omniscience of God. In fact, He-
braism supplied only a fresh language and new symbols for
the Hellenic conception of reality : it failed to modify its power
or to alter its character. It did inevitably add to the problems
of philosophy the puzzle of " free-will " but it added hardly
anything else. In the end, when the issue between the two
views was sharply draw r n, authority decided in favor of Hel-
lenism. The decision, rendered at the end of the thirteenth cen-
tury, and reasserted at the Council of Trent, made Thomas of
Aquin the official philosopher of the Church and turned into
a heretic Duns Scotus, the only one of the scholastic thinkers
who had a genuine insight into the metaphysical background
of Hebraism. 1
A plague on both your houses! these two visions of reality
are not contrary, but complementary. The history of philosophy
is not another war of the roses the white rose of reason and the
red rose of experience. It was not Hellenism that Christianity
adopted, but the full and complete evidence of reason both spon-
taneous and reflex namely, the real and the ideal, the permanent
and the changing, the empirical and the rational; not either, but
both. It was not an affair of choice or subordination, but a
recognition of the duality of nature and of truth. Emphasis on
this side or that there assuredly was, but to the point of exclusion,
elimination, or severance never! whether with St. Augustine, St.
Thomas, or Duns Scotus. We do not meet with the spirit of
exclusiveness until modern times. From Socrates to the Middle
Ages the common base of reason is accepted, and instead of
choosing between the notions of unity and variety, philosophers
undertook rather to reconcile the respective claims of each, which
is quite a different attitude altogether from that of trying to sup-
press the former in the interest of the latter. Let the purely
deductive systems perish nobody is particularly interested in the
fate of theories forced upon experience without inductive warrant.
But please do not class the mediaeval systems with such as these.
The scholastics are not to be held up to ridicule for having built
upon the whole evidence, and modern thinkers crowned with a bay
1 Boston Transcript, Wednesday, June 16, 1909, p. 26, col. i.
3i6 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
of glory for having built upon a part. Because pragmatists and
modernists shut their eyes to the permanent, is no reason why others
should be condemned for having kept them open. You cannot crush
an adversary merely by reciting and urging your own mental limita-
tions against him.
The statement that " the decision rendered at the end of the
thirteenth century and reasserted at the Council of Trent, turned
Duns Scotus into a heretic " will be news to the Franciscan Fathers,
who have recently petitioned that the subtle one be canonized. And
we have a distinct recollection, too, that Scotus was not without
friends in the committee rooms at Trent. Aquinas was an intellect-
ualist, Scotus a voluntarist, you will say. Yes, but in their day and
time these designations meant distinctions, not exclusive attitudes
as they do now. The Fathers of the Council might as well have
condemned the Saints for preferring to love God rather than to
know Him, as to condemn Scotus for emphasizing the importance
of the will. St. Thomas did not become the official philosopher of
the Church until 1879, and then it was his " synthetic wisdom," as
opposed to the modern habit of dismembering, that received timely
commendation in the famous Leonine encyclical. No such uncon-
trolled statements as those found in the above quotation, could
ever have been written by one acquainted at first hand with the
history of Catholic philosophy and theology from the sixteenth to
the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
As to the Hebrews who figure so prominently in the quotation,
it must be confessed that they had no philosophy as such. To
represent them, therefore, as believing exclusively in a world of flux,
is to attribute special philosophical significance to phrases essentially
of religious import. Not thus did they sing of the Permanent One
Who changes all things like a garment, yet Whose own years fail
not and never shall. That the Hebrews regarded the attitude of
God toward man as changing with the conduct of man, and that
this position was incompatible with the Hellenic notion of the
omniscience of God, is a statement hardly less questionable. It
takes anthropomorphic expressions of the Scriptures literally, and
ignores the fact that the doctrine of God's omniscience was a belief
of the Hebrews long before it became a thesis of the Greeks. There
may be incompatibility between the immobile and the active, there
is and can be none between the latter and the immutable. No cause,
as cause, changes by its action; it is because it is a mixture of po-
tentiality and actuality that it changes. Is it not high time we
1914-] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 317
were done with this overworked antithesis between Hebraism and
Hellenism? Ever since Matthew Arnold chose this suggestive
pair of words for one of his chapter headings, it has ceaselessly
gone the rounds, though no one who has tried to think the antithesis
out has ever succeeded either in letters or in philosophy. The
phrase has shown in neither of these fields a fitness entitling it to
survive, and for a good reason : the ideas or the ideals of different
peoples are incapable of being walled off in any such stone-mason
fashion.
In fact, wherever you look, except, perhaps, in the little corner
of Greece, where Parmenides and Heraclitus are wrangling over
the respective merits of the " one " and the " many," you never find
exclusiveness of choice, but emphasis and stressing. It is hardly
fair, because one philosopher dwells upon the permanent in life,
another on the passing, to call the former a static thinker, the latter
a dynamic one. To be a thinker of the last-named class, it is not
necessary to believe in the theory that the essence of reality is
change. All we need really do is to investigate the fact of change,
and make due allowance for its inroads, so as to keep our judgments
concerning the permanent fresh and balanced. It is by no means
essential that we recognize the following portrait of the " modern-
ist " as that of all dynamic thinkers past, present, and to come.
He views time as a pyramid inverted,
Poised deftly on the apex of the Now;
Or ship whereon, by order preconcerted,
His post is always neighboring to the prow,
The spot where, as in mockery inserted,
The figurehead his emblem shades the bow;
Each barge, each headland, swims into his ken
Ten seconds ere it greets his fellowmen.
He deems that God Himself is journalistic,
Each daytime's issue, smoking from the press,
Remanding by succession fatalistic
All earlier dates to chaff and nothingness ;
Each form, howe'er ingenious or artistic,
Born with the day, exhales with day's recess ;
Time like a broom or snow-plough is designed;
Ahead lies substance vacancy behind.
His glance is still round far horizons playing,
Where gas-jets loom like planets to the eye ;
He loves in lettered fields to walk a-maying,
Where through the drifts peep buddings faint and shy ;
3i8 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
For him the only ore that tempts assaying
Is that new-minded, bared freshly to the sky.
The past is but time's ash-heap dim and gray:
Hades is synonym for yesterday. 2
" For him the only ore that tempts assaying is that new-mined,
bared freshly to the sky." From this one would imagine that the
mind never caught glimpses of unity in the midst of variety, but
saw only the next variant coming, and galloped off in its direction.
Is this true to experience ? Do we never find the notion of unity
crossing our vision until we have run down every one of its parts
to the farthermost detail? Must we drain the cup of experience
to the dregs before we can tell what it is we are drinking? a
statement which none but a toper might be expected to approve.
Are we obliged to fathom all that is contained in the idea of variety
before we are really entitled to frame or entertain the idea of unity?
Were that the case, did we have to keep the notion of the " one "
waiting until we were through analyzing that of the " many,"
philosophy would have to be put off to the Greek Calends.
But notice. The whole argument to discredit the notion of
unity rests on the assumption that analysis and synthesis never
go on together, but always separately; that we must finish analyz-
ing before a synthetic conception is feasible. Nothing could be
further from the actual course of our mental life than this supposi-
tion. It is the third of the fallacious separations which we are
engaged in pointing out, and as glaring in its defects as any of
the others. The notion of unity and diversity are solidary and
complementary all our notions are. You cannot grasp a single
element or feature of reality without seeing it in its context, back-
ground, relationships, and setting. Analysis is constantly leaping
over into synthesis, suggesting it, calling for its mate. The two
processes intermingle and clear each other up. Unity flashes out be-
fore me in the midst of variety when I least expect it. Larger wholes
than the one I happen to be studying come swimming into my ken.
I am reading a book. Long before the last chapter is reached,
or the intervening detail unfolded, I have caught the plot and
sequel. In the midst of war's alarms, I observe from the press
reports that the left of the Allies' line is being pushed further
and further back, until it looks as if it would be cut off from,
or crumpled in confusion upon, the centre. Suddenly the plan of
the general staff streams like a meteor into my sight it is strategic
2 Atlantic Monthly, August, 1914, p. 279.
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 319
the whole thing, a movement to gain time which the opposition
forces cannot afford to lose. An incident has revealed it all, and
yet I did not know the variety of movements in detail before the
unity of plan came luminous before my vision. Wholes come to
me, though but parts are before me for inspection. I am looking
down into the well of analysis, and behold, I see the stars !
Analysis is never finished, and never can be. Omne indi-
viduum ineffabile, the old scholastics said there is something more
to be learned of everything, and the faculty of perfect comprehen-
sion is not ours. Synthesis is never finished, either. Like an
" inner military line," it is constantly receiving fresh accessions
from analysis for its replenishment. At first a faint pencilling, it
grows thicker with each new incident, and more bright. I do not have
to know the simple, therefore, in order to know the complex, neither
do I have to be at the end of analysis before I may, nay must begin
to build. Nothing compels the deferring of the notion of unity
until all the depths of the notion of diversity have been sounded.
Both come to me, if not hand in hand, at least neighborly halloing.
And if it be true; as we have just endeavored to show, that
analysis and synthesis, so far from excluding, constantly involve,
stimulate and refresh each other how can and why should the
notion of unity or of permanence be deprived of all footing and
support in experience ? Where does the " modernist " get his
" centre of perspective " in the sole and solitary fact of " change? "
There is no " centre of perspective " in a living chain, such as these
two notions form with all our others. You cannot detach one of
the links, and then either evolve the others out of it by a dialectical
process, or cast them aside as beneath notice. In the round-robin
report of reality which the mind draws up, the head of the table
is not where MacGregor sits. You must accept the whole report
provisionally, at least, you must let all the evidence in for united
consideration and review. Whether you adopt the report in full
afterwards or not, upon critical reflection, is another matter. Crit-
icism rightly comes, not before we consider the report of experience,
but before we decide upon its adoption. Like everything else, crit-
icism has its place, and its place is after experience, not before it, un-
less, like Kant, we should deem our pre judgments as of more schol-
arly worth and scientific value than actual investigation and study.
This habit of prejudging the results of experience instead of
investigating them, is at the bottom of all modern criticism, philos-
ophical and religious. Take the writings of Professor Harnack,
320 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
Royce, and Eucken, for instance, and consider the methods em-
ployed. These men have much to say on the contamination of Chris-
tian thought in the course of ages. But how do they discover these
alleged contaminations ? Simply by singling out this element or that
from the complex solidary whole in which it lies livingly embedded,
and declaring the rest corruption. Professor Harnack 3 singles out
"fellowship" for invidious distinction; Professor Royce 4 "loy-
alty;" Professor Eucken 5 "activism or an independent spiritual life."
Everyone of the three writers has his " essence " of religion, and ex-
hibits it to the public as the well of evangelism undefiled. But what
assurance have they or do they give that the essence of Christianity
is simple, in the first place, let alone its being as simple as claimed ?
None whatever. It is not Christ and His teachings, but their
Christ and their select cullings from what He preached and taught.
They merely give us the little bit of historical Christianity that
happens to have survived in their own souls remnants of its
seamless robe of truth. They arrogantly claim that this portion
surviving with them is the very essence of Christianity, whereas it
is nothing more than a piece from its wreckage a broken spar.
They have no such ability, as they claim, to determine the essence
of the Christian religion for themselves or others. No one has, no
one can make the complex simple, by an act of choice and will.
Their whole process of thought and argument is really a personal
confession of their own limitations of belief, not an objective study
either of Christ or of the religion which He founded. They take
themselves for standards, prove nothing, claim everything, and
whoso believes more than they, investigates where they dogmatize,
studies where they prejudge, let him be anathema and corruption.
What patronizing pedantry, what pretense, what arrogance to build,
model and reconstruct religion, not on the full base it has in reason
and in history, but on the individual and relative type of one's
own temperament and preferences. Talk of dogmatism! There
never were dogmatists like unto these. There's such a thing as
modesty even in dogmatics.
The habit of prejudging, some examples of which we have
just considered, reveals another fallacious separation the last but
not the least in this widespread modern process of disjoining: the
separation of the reflex reason of the individual from the common
reason of the race. This is the parent fallacy, out of which the
*Das Wesen des Christenthums. 'The Problem of Christianity.
8 Collected Essays of Rudolph Eucken, English translation.
I
1914.] COMPLETING THE REFORMATION 321
others spring. It first came into being in philosophy when Des-
cartes introduced his methodical doubt, wiping the slate of history
clean of all the convictions of his kind, to reassert those only
which were clear, as he saw clearness. But it was Luther and Kant
who gave this fallacious separation its real start when the former
deprived faith of its intellectual character, and the latter extended
the same deprivation to human knowledge itself. Religion and
philosophy thus lost their cosmopolitan character, shrivelling up
into private concerns. The common convictions were despised,
philosophy reechoing the contempt of the Reformation for reason.
The reality of the external world, its knowableness, the existence of
God, the rational principles of morality which are all common
convictions and evidential data went by the board. If the in-
dividual thinker chose to throw out a line of thought which would
rescue these truths from the engulfing waters of skepticism, well
and good : that was his affair.
But to allow common reason either the right or the chance to
validate its claims before the tribunal of reflection; to build one's
system of thought on these evidential data as a whole; to let
the entire evidence in, in other words, and then, by critical analysis,
to discover and reaffirm its truth that would never do for the
new aristocracy of intellect odi profanum vulgus et arceo. Inde-
pendence was the thing the independence of one's own reflex
thought and philosophers began to cultivate this to the exclusion of
the spontaneous rational convictions which they share in common
with their fellowmen. They took their pick of the elements fur-
nished by common sense, and raised their theories on a part of the
evidence instead of slipping the whole of it underneath for founda-
tion. The result was naturally a number of logical structures that
remind one of " sky-scrapers," without the excuse which the latter
may plead for their rearing, to wit, scarcity of land and need of
room for business.
This reduction of the evidence from its full sweep to one
decidedly more narrow, is without all warrant but that of will.
Necessity compels every thinker to seek the basis of his thought in
some element or other of common sense and common reason; and
if one element is good, and worthy of choice, why not all what
magic vests the one chosen with more reliability than the ones
that are left untaken? No man can build on his reflex reason
alone it is a borrower, not a lender, creating not the building-
material it uses, but finding it already gathered in and garnered by
VOL. C. 21
322 COMPLETING THE REFORMATION [Dec.,
the reason we call spontaneous. It is wrong, therefore, to prejudge
the results of experience, or to single out one element beforehand,
as a test of all the rest. The mental law of solidarity our notions
are all intercommuning forbids our taking such liberties of method
with the objective evidence.
Reflex reason has its rights, but so has spontaneous reason
also, and to acknowledge the one, while supremely disdaining the
other, in everything it does not suit our whims to borrow from it,
is not indicative, to say the least, either of fairmindedness or
consistency. Socrates had the right idea. He was no Heraclitus
trumpeting forth in the market place the dubious glory of a world
in flux. He looked into all the evidence, impartially, thoroughly:
he extenuated nought, and nought set down in malice. But alas!
the poor, barefooted old man who was forced to drink the hemlock
for his belief in the notion of unity, has had no followers of his
breadth of method since the Middle Ages!
A return to the complete evidence will alone rescue philosophy
from its present anarchy. Philosophical truth is individualized
nowadays to such an extent that it has no appeal to the great
commons ; it sounds like a voice in the wilderness with no humanity
in its cry. So much has philosophy become a hermit's reverie, that
it has no message for democracy which king demos can understand
without being educated out of his common sense and indoctrinated
with the sense that is not common, to receive it. Why should the
spontaneously rational convictions of the millions, to which each
day's experience brings a fresh confirming, be regarded as more
suspect than the analytical powers of some doubting Thomas perched
on his lonely peak of negation in Darien?
That impersonal synthesis which common reason imposes on all
men; that fund of common notions existing in the minds of the
millions; those suggestive lines of unity which spontaneous reason
traces for us to deepen, not to blot out by reflection has it been
a gain or a loss for philosophy to have turned its face away from all
this in an individual direction? Let the destroyers answer from
the ruins. The completing of the Reformation has been the deplet-
ing of religion and philosophy profiles of both, full-sized portraits
of neither. And not until the great synthesis broken in religion by
Luther and in philosophy by Kant is again restored; not until we
relearn the lesson of seeing things steadily and seeing them whole,
will philosophy and religion regain the democratic character which
they both had in the Western world before the Reformation.
THE ANSWER.
BY HELEN HAINES.
MARY Immaculate!
Thy Maker is calling,
Alpha and Omega has need of thee.
Choice of the ages
Prepared and perfected
What is thine answer to Me?
Mary Immaculate!
All Heaven is pleading
And just are the souls who languish for Me.
Assembling are powers
Dread and ensnaring
What is thine answer to Me?
Mary Immaculate!
Earth's sinners are waiting
A Saviour pledged to the wood of a tree.
But My Word must be
Made Flesh, torn and bleeding
What is thine answer to Me?
Mary Immaculate!
A herald is speeding
In ravishing glory kneeling to thee.
His salutation
Majestic and awful
What is thine answer to Me?
# * *
Mary Immaculate!
Thy God heeds thine answer.
Veiled My Omnipotence shrouded by thee ;
Thy fiat submissive
Puissant and lowly
One with My Own Mystery.
NUNS AS DEPICTED IN MODERN FICTION.
BY MARY V. HILLMANN.
DISTINGUISHED writer, who for obvious reasons
must be unnamed, in taking leave of some of the
Sisters of a certain religious community which she
had visited, remarked, as if she had made a surpris-
ing discovery, " I did not notice here any of that
unnatural peace and calm usually associated with convents."
" We don't look troubled, I trust," returned one of the Sisters,
laughing at the unintentional implication.
" Oh, no ! I did not mean that," the lady replied. " But you
all seem to be busy women with something on your minds."
" To admit that we really possess minds would in itself be a
departure," remarked the Sister in recounting the conversation to
me, " but boldly to announce that we have something on them is
distinctly radical. It is fortifying to be assured of such a person's
convictions, however, for all the afternoon I had the uncomfortable
feeling that she was. gathering material."
* You, no doubt, will make your appearance in a short-story
as a pale, anaemic-looking nun with sad eyes," I suggested.
"Yes," she laughed. "Are not my looks deplorable? I
suppose it is women like me who are responsible for the conventional
nun of modern fiction, with her weary heart and tragic ways.
Most 'pensive nuns' of my acquaintance, however, have acquired the
look from nothing more romantic than neuralgia or indigestion."
" I'm thinking of writing some stories about nuns, myself,"
I observed.
' You can't do it," she said emphatically.
"Why?"
' You can't write about the experiences of nuns any more than
nuns can write about the experiences of, say, pugilists or cowboys,
chiefly because you don't know enough about them. That's why
stories about nuns are usually such a fizzle. The writers don't
know what they are talking about, and, in their attempts to be
realistic, they simply become maudlin."
We were in the stack-room of the college library, where I was
pretending to help Sister Constance arrange the English books in
1914-] NUNS AS DEPICTED IN MODERN FICTION 325
order. She and I had been at college together, and when I ran
out to the old place for a week-end visit, I dogged her footsteps
as far as I was permitted.
" Here's a man who was obsessed by the popular idea of the
subject," she said, pushing a volume of Wordsworth toward me.
" You remember, 'Unhappy nuns whose every breath's a sigh ?'
But he's excusable ; he was a poet."
" Telephone call for you, Sister. You're wanted in the main
building," said a messenger at the door.
" I'll be back in a minute," she smiled as she left me.
I knew she wouldn't; so I settled down to browse among the
books with the purpose of learning just how the nun is depicted in
modern fiction. " Wordsworth was a romanticist," thought I,
" and, as Sister said, a poet therefore not quite responsible for the
flights of his imagination. Let me see what a genuine, up-to-date,
American realist offers his readers. William Dean Howells ! Ah,
he won't be maudlin ! " No nuns, I knew, figured in his more
recent works in The Son of Royal Langbrith, in Silas Lapham, or
in Julia Bride.
" I'll begin with his earliest," I told myself, and so proceeded
to scan the pages of Their Wedding Journey.
Regrettable results of my research ! Our pioneer in realism, in
a novel ostensibly photographic in method, becomes sentimental
yes even maudlin when he writes of the lives of the Canadian nuns.
His travelers, a complacent, ordinary couple on their honeymoon,
" pitied the Gray Nuns." (One wonders whether the sentiment was
not reciprocated.) The Sisters are described as entering the chapel
in line:
The two young girls at the head were very pretty, and all the
pale faces had a corpse-like peace. As Basil looked at their
pensive sameness, it seemed to him that those prettiest girls
might very well be the twain that he had seen there so many
years ago, stricken forever young in their joyless beauty. The
ungraceful gowns of coarse gray, the blue-checked aprons, the
black crape caps were the same ; they came and went with the
same quick tread, touching their brows with holy water, and
kneeling and rising now as then with the same constrained and
ordered movements. Would it be too cruel if they were really
the same persons? or would it be yet more cruel if every year
two girls so young and fair were self-doomed to renew the
likeness of the youthful death ?
326 NUNS AS DEPICTED IN MODERN FICTION [Dec.,
The sentiment and the language of the passage suggest the
Gothic romances of the Radcliffean school. It is difficult to be
realistic on all occasions.
" Deep sorrow " or " lofty rapture " are the forces, according
to Mr. Howells, which impel young girls to become nuns. I found
myself chuckling over the idea. I wondered how many of my nun-
acquaintances and they are many had experienced either. In
our college, as in most Catholic colleges throughout the country,
the graduating class usually contributes at least one or two mem-
bers to the community of Sisters in control, and these candidates,
however well they may have succeeded in concealing from us the
depth of their sorrows, are ordinarily not young women distin-
guished for the altitude of their raptures.
We who are left outside never think of the convent walls as
built, to borrow Mr. Ho well's words, " to immure the innocence of
such young girls as these, and shut them from a life we find so fair."
Indeed, we deem them rather lucky to be settled so soon after
graduation, whereas we are forced to hunt about for a " career,"
or, on a venture, accept the married state which offers no novitiate.
" In this book, at any rate, Mr. Howells does not suggest the
hackneyed idea that they have been disappointed in love," I said to
myself, as I replaced Their Wedding Journey on the shelf.
I looked round for A Chance Acquaintance. I remembered
that Canada is the setting also of that quasi-novel. The book
was out. I recalled, however, one scene into which nuns enter.
Two Ursulines are seated on a bench under a tree in the convent
garden. One is elderly and stout; the other is young and ethereal
perhaps between twenty and thirty. The older nun is holding the
younger one's hand, and, in Mr. Howell's imagination, offering
consolation and advice to the younger, whose downcast eyes and
drooping countenance are irrefutable proofs of her love-lorn condi-
tion. Ah, yes! She has been disappointed in love, Mr. Howells
thinks, and the older nun is telling her to be brave and strong, and
with years the pain will wear away. As a matter of fact, what the
old nun was probably saying to the young one was something like
this : " My dear Sister, you are very foolish to give so much time
to the correction of those themes. The girls simply throw them
into the scrap-basket. It would be better for you and for your
pupils if you would get a little more fresh air and exercise. At
your time of life you need both, and everyone is talking about how
pale and thin you are. Did you ever try olive oil ? "
1914-] NUNS AS DEPICTED IN MODERN FICTION 327
Somewhere else Mr. Ho wells speaks of the " mute blank life
of the nun," and asks, with a resignation admirable in a realist,
" But, indeed, since there must be Gray Nuns, is it not well that
there are sentimentalists to take a mournful pleasure in their sad,
pallid existence ? "
From Mr. Howells I turned with hope to a genuine sentimental-
ist, arguing that since a realist had proved to be sentimental, a
sentimentalist might possibly be realistic. But James Lane Allen
is a sentimentalist to the end. His nuns are of the conventional
type, wearing out their sad lives in apathetic service and futile
regrets. The following passage is characteristic : " Here when the
sun is hot, some white-veiled novice may be seen pacing soft-footed
and slow, while she fixes her sad eyes upon pictures drawn from
the literature of the Dark Ages, or fights the first battle with her
young heart, which would beguile her to heaven by more jocund
pathways."
Mr. Allen's nun-heroine, a true story-book type, with eyes
" large, dark, poetic, and spiritual," and shorn hair, " of the palest
gold," most unrealistically lying " about her neck and ears in large
lustrous waves," saw human life " a vast, sad pilgrimage to the
shrine eternal." " She had rushed with out-stretched arms towards
poetic mysteries and clasped prosaic reality."
"Too bad Mr. Allen didn't clasp it," I said impatiently to
myself, flinging the book aside. " If he had been well-informed,
he could have had her give up the life of a religious after the
novitiate. Two years and a half are long enough for any person of
sense to know whether or not she likes a thing. Sister Dolorosa
was a ninny." But Mr. Howells and Mr. Allen are men. They do
not understand. And, besides, as Mr. Hilaire Belloc might say,
they are not of "the faith."
" There's Agnes Repplier. Her nuns ought to be real," I mur-
mured, scanning the titles of her little volumes. " A woman a
Catholic a convent-bred girl. Ah, here's her charming book on
boarding school life surely to be classed with pleasant fiction
In Our Convent Days." I had read it before and had enjoyed it, as
most people do enjoy what Miss Repplier writes. Now I eagerly
glanced through it to test her characterization of nuns. They are
kept, for the most part, in the background, and it was a happy idea
of Miss Repplier's to keep them there, for, as she has depicted them,
they are noticeably lacking in the quality pronounced by St. Teresa
as more desirable in Sisters than piety, namely, common sense.
328 NUNS AS DEPICTED IN MODERN FICTION [Dec.,
The one Sister whose character is clearly drawn, the " Reverend
Mother," is a colorless creature, " not without literary tastes of an
insipid and obsolete order," who " discoursed sleepily " to the grad-
uates " about the books she had read in her youth." At this stage
of my discouraging research, my friend returned to the stack-room.
" I am ordered into the city to-morrow to hear Paderewski
play," she remarked.
" Isn't that fine ! " I exclaimed. " Don't you miss things like
that since you've become a Sister ? "
She laughed.
'' 'Are you, too, without understanding ?' Don't be absurd !
People frequently ask us that. They forget the spiritual compensa-
tions in our lives."
"That's just it!" I agreed. "And that's what's the matter
with all these story-book nuns."
" Yes, that and something else," Sister observed. "Story-book
nuns are generally devoid of the saving sense of humor."
" Are there any real nuns in the fiction you have read ? " I
asked.
" Yes in Father's Sheehan's Luke Delmege there are some."
We got down the book, and I glanced over several passages
pointed out by Sister. They were refreshing :
It was early morning, and Father Tracey went straight to the
altar and celebrated Mass. Margery was privileged to bring
him his humble breakfast, for Margery was a great favorite.
It was very amusing to see the young Sister putting little
dainties into the old priest's plate, and the old man carefully
putting them aside. Sometimes Margery succeeded by clever
little stratagems.
" Most people don't eat that, Father. They say it isn't nice.
7 wouldn't eat it."
" Indeed ?" the good old man would reply, as he gobbled
up the dainty. And then he would gravely shake his head.
" Why don't you brush your hat, Father ? There, I've done
it now. Can't you send up that old coat, and we'll have it
dyed here? There now, you're horrid this morning. You
came out unshaved."
And Father Tracey would blush like a girl, and apologize
for his negligence.
" You want me to be like that grand brother of yours, who'll
be our bishop some day, I suppose. Ah, me! These clever
young men ! These clever young men ! "
I9H-] NUNS AS DEPICTED IN MODERN FICTION 329
And Margery, with her hands folded under her scapulary,
would silently pray that her grand brother might some day
be even as this poor despised old priest.
The other nuns in the novel are quite as normal as Margery,
whose religious name is Sister Eulalie. They are just cheerfully
busy women " with something on their minds," forgetful of their
own selfish interests in the service of the Master.
" But outside of Father Sheehan's books, Sister Constance,"
I asked, " don't you know of any real nuns in fiction? "
' Yes one," she said, " the aged nun with a wart on her nose
whom Thackeray describes as rescued by Henry Esmond from some
rude soldiers on the Continent."
" Well? " I inquired expectantly. " What about her? "
"That's all there is about her she was an aged nun with a wart
on her nose. That's all Thackeray knew about her, and that's all he
ventured to say. He was a realist, and an artist, besides."
" I've decided not to write stories about nuns," I remarked.
" I'll write stories about college girls, instead."
" A wise decision," Sister Constance observed. " Stick to it
at least, until you've joined the community."
O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND.
X.
N a brilliant summer morning Hugh Ingoldesby wakened
in his house at Ardcurragh in Clare, in the room in
which he was born, and where his father had died.
Of the second event he had no more memory than of
the first, and all his recollections of his mother were
associated with far other places. He had arrived so
late the night before, that driving up the avenue he had seen nothing
but the heavy darkness of trees in the sky, with the stars glittering
above them, and a great block of a house with lights in the windows,
and high chimneys barely discernible. Entering the gloomy hall,
floored with black and white flags, and the large lonesome-looking
dining-room lined with portraits, his impressions had been anything
but cheerful.
By morning light things looked less sombre. Miss Jacquetta had
done her work thoroughly, and the fresh paint and well polished
furniture showed the neatness and proper care of present prosperity.
Richly colored hangings softened the upright lines of the tall windows.
Old mirrors reflected the waving green of the trees and the high golden
clouds sailing above them. In the morning-room where Hugh at once
decided to live chiefly, these features were noticeable, but a visit to the
portraits in the dining-room was far from exhilarating. Here frowned
the lowering countenance of the man established in Ardcurragh by
Oliver Cromwell, followed by other masters of the house, who turned
the same unwelcoming gaze on their absentee descendant. His Dutch
great-grandmother was of a type particularly unattractive to Hugh,
but his own fair-haired mother, who had evidently given her com-
plexion and perhaps some other traits to her son, pleased him so much
that he resolved at once to separate her from her uncongenial com-
pany, and transfer her to his own apartments.
He was satisfied to find English servants around him. His aunt
had been thoughtful for his comfort in that as well as in every other
respect. After breakfast his favorite man, long in his service, was at
the door with horses, engaging to take the master for a ride, while
giving him the benefit of the six weeks sojourn in the country, which
had put Jonathan Judkin in possession of a great deal of information
which he was anxious to impart. Leaving the long darksome avenue,
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 331
with its clamorous rooks behind, the riders came out on an open road,
with a distance of violet hills and low woods on one side, and on the
other a vast extent of green and brown, of field and bog, with water of
pool and stream gleaming like the flash of swords and shields when
parting clouds left them shelterless under the bare eye of the noonday
sun.
" What air! What light! What a splendor and loveliness of na-
ture ! " said Ingoldesby to himself. Then turning to Judkin, " Can
you tell me where are the people, the inhabitants of this beautiful
region ? "
"The people, sir?" said Judkin. " Do you see that row of low
hovels between you and the wood over yonder ? More like dirt heaps ?
That's what they call a village. And do you see the wisps of smoke
rising out of the hill nearer to us? More of them live in holes down
there."
" Human beings ? "
" Like rats and weasels what they are ! " said Judkin. " Un-
happy, unsightly creatures. Sunk in superstition. I wonder the law
doesn't put gunpowder under them and blow them all up."
" The law is hard on them as it is," said Ingoldesby. " What
is their particular criminal superstition ? "
" Why there's the Mass, as they call it, carried on in the bogs
and woods where nobody can catch them, and I hear that it ends up with
the ceremony of drowning a young child in the water holes of the
bog."
" Softly, Judkin ! The Mass is a fact, I am afraid, but the drown-
ing business is an exaggeration. These people profess to be Chris-
tians/'
" Not they, sir. They worship stocks and stones, and know noth-
ing about God. Their priests hide in holes, and come up out of th^
earth and down out of ruined walls, nobody knows how or wnen."
" I see you have got all the news, Judkin. You and the law have
no mercy on them."
"And their gentry defy the law like the lowest," persisted Judkin.
" There's young Turlough O'Loghlin come over from France with a
splendid Arab horse, and goes riding about on him, though he's not
allowed to have any such property."
"Turlough O'Loghlin!"
" Yes, sir. Son of Morogh O'Loghlin over yonder. One of the
worst of the lot."
" A worthy gentleman, Judkin, as I have been assured by friends
of his who are also friends of mine."
" Don't have anything to do with him, sir. The Protestant gentry
could hunt him if they liked, and pity it is they spare him, say I. He's
332 . O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
one of the 'massers,' and has a priest hiding in his house, a French
rascal and outlaw, and you or me could put a rope around his neck
any minute and swing him from a tree. That's your worthy gentleman
for you, sir, a lawbreaker and a blasphemer. Then there's a fine
French lady, a Marquise or something, lives there and keeps house for
O'Loghlin, and has a thing they call a rosary, of gold beads a yard
long, and a gold idol hanging to it, and says her prayers to it. Lydia,
Miss Ingoldesby's maid, when she was here, got a sight of it some way
or other. There's a young lady, too, has come home from Dublin
they say she's handsome, and the poor devils in the village there adore
her as if she was one of their saints or idols."
" Perhaps she is good to them, Judkin."
" Oh, maybe so. I believe she's as bad a heathen as any of the
lot. But the pick of them all is this Turlough with his Arab horse,
swaggering about the country with his clothes cut French fashion,
showin' off his impudent defiance of the King and the law of the land."
They were approaching a turn of the winding road. As Judkin
ceased speaking shouts and the sound of a scuffle arose, and the riders
pressed on to see what cause of disturbance might lie beyond the huge
drapery of ivied trees that formed a curtain in front of them.
" D me, if it's not Turlough ! " said Judkin savagely ; and
added with a laugh, " he's catching it ! "
The sunshine was blazing on the bare handsome head of a young
man on horseback, well set up and foppishly dressed and appointed,
who was laying his whip about the shoulders of a man who had seized
his horse by the bridle. Another young man about the same age as
Turlough was leaning from his own horse close by, and laughing at
the fury of O'Loghlin.
" It's Ralph Stodart," said Judkin. " His father ousted O'Ken-
nedy last year, and the young fellow is as big a cock o' the walk as
Turlough, and has the law on his side for it."
" I'll give you five pounds for your horse," shouted Stodart with
a roar of laughter, flinging as many gold coins on the road. At the
same moment the man smarting from the whip-lash, struck Turlough
a blow on the head with a cudgel that felled him from the saddle to
the road, where he lay unconscious, head and shoulders in the dust.
" This is shocking conduct," said Ingoldesby riding up and
frowning at Stodart.
"Who are you?" asked Stodart insolently. "It is the law. I
paid the price for the horse and it is mine."
The man who struck the blow was disentangling Turlough's feet
from the stirrups, and letting his legs drop on the road, where he now
lay stretched at full length.
" Is he dead? If so this is murder," said Ingoldesby.
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 333
" You mind your own business," shouted Stodart. " It's no
murder to kill a d d Papist."
" There's a kick in him yet," said Stodart's man who had struck
the blow.
Stodart dismounted and got on Turlough's horse, and his servant
took the bridle of his master's horse and mounted his own; and the
two men rode off laughing and shouting back to Ingoldesby to " look
to the carrion."
" We can't leave him here," cried Hugh. " We must put him
across my horse and walk back with him to Ardcurragh."
" Can't we take him to his own people ? " said Judkin. " What
do we want with the heathen at Ardcurragh ? "
" The distance is too great to his father's house, and it would be
a terrible shock to his family." Hugh was thinking of Brona.
" It would be no loss to the world to let him lie where he is,"
grumbled Judkin.
" I've heard you talk of your Bible, Judkin," said his master.
"What about the Samaritan?"
" Oh, the Bible's one thing and this is another," said Judkin.
" If we did all they did in those old times it would keep us busy.
Besides, there were no Papists then. Howsoever your orders must
be obeyed, sir."
Turlough was carried to Ardcurragh as suggested, and put to bed
in the best spare bedroom, an apartment that had seen many gener-
ations coming and going through the heavy mahogany door, and
sleeping and waking in its funereal four-post bed, wrapped round by
curtains of dark tapestry, with obscure sinister befigurements folded
in their depths. A carriage was sent post haste for the nearest doc-
tor, and Ingoldesby, having seen the patient regain consciousness, left
him in the care of Judkin, and rode off to Castle O'Loghlin to break
the news of the accident to his family. As he rode he had a vivid
realization of the strange, unlikely ways of fate, that will seize a man's
horse by the bridle and turn him out of his course on the highroad
into byways he never dreamed of.
He had been wishing to meet Brona, and wondering how he could
best make an approach to acquaintance with her people. He had
imagined her, with all her lights out, sitting in the darkness of the
proscribed, here in her home, far from the gay scenes of prosperous
life in which she had so delightfully shown her natural capacity for
happiness. He had said to himself that she would be inaccessible to
him in her present position and circumstances. And now, here he was
hastening to her as one the urgency of whose mission could not be
denied. Half way down the bowery road that led to Castle O'Loghlin
he saw her coming slowly towards him, and slacked his rein the bet-
334 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
ter to see her before she perceived or recognized him. She wore one
of the wide lemon-colored sun-hats of the women of Tuscany, tilted
back from her brows as she walked in the shade. She was looking
at the far-off hills with their blue distance in her eyes, when, suddenly
seeing him, a gleam of undeniable gladness lit up her face. Hugh
riding up to her, could scarcely remember the words he had intended
to say to her.
" I thought it was my brother," said Brona with a little bright
laugh, and held out her hand.
Ingoldesby sprang from his horse, and held the hand a moment
longer than was necessary. Then he walked beside her, feeling that
this man was not Hugh Ingoldesby, but some other unknown to him.
The truth had struck him a blow in the face. Be she heathen,
Hindoo, or whatever the world would call her, he, the hater of all
mummeries and idolatries, loved this Papist woman.
" Your brother yes," he said, and his voice sounded to himself
as if from far off. " I have seen your brother, Miss O'Loghlin. He
rode out this morning, did he not? He has not returned."
" What of him ? " cried Brona, alarmed.
" An accident. Don't be frightened. I left him tolerably com-
fortable in my house at Ardcurragh. He provoked an outrage. He
has lost his beautiful horse and got a shaking though nothing worse
than that, I hope."
" Oh, poor father ! " said Brona. " He has enough without this.
Why?"
" Your brother ought to live in France. This is no place for one
of his temper."
" Ah, if he would. But is he in danger ? You have been very
good to him. Tell me the truth."
" I do not think he is in danger. The doctor will let us know.
I am sorry for such an occasion of making your father's acquaintance,
but I greatly wish to be introduced to him."
Morogh had gone with Aideen for a walk towards the sea, and
Brona hastened to follow and bring them back, leaving the visitor
alone in the library.
Ingoldesby looked around the room with a sense of interest that
was part sympathy and part curiosity. The interior, though full of
brooding peace, had a suggestion about it of mental life and vigor.
The books that lined the walls were evidently books in use, not kept
in the formal unbroken range that declares the owner who is proud
to possess, but scarcely cares to read them.
"A man need not be lonely here," thought Hugh, taking down
an early edition of Don Quixote, " at all events not a man of many
languages."
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 335
Then he came before the portrait of Brona's Spanish mother,
her identity declared by the delicate dark brows which enhanced the
brilliance of the darker woman's eyes, and gave such a rare and
lovely setting to those of her Irish daughter, with their coloring of the
sea and hills.
Morogh came in, anxious but calm, Aideen followed weeping.
" Why will he not stay in Paris where he has friends ? " she said.
" We have no friends here."
" Nay, is not this a friend?" said Morogh. " My son has given
you much trouble, sir. We cannot put an old head on young
shoulders. Perhaps when he has lived as long as his father, he will
have learned resignation to the will of Providence."
Ingoldesby invited Aideen to come to Ardcurragh, if it pleased
her to take personal care of her nephew. And the Marquise gladly
accepted the invitation, promising to be ready when the carriage
should come to take her.
XL
Turlough had suffered from concussion of the brain and a dislo-
cated shoulder. He was now convalescent, with Judkin still in at-
tendance, and with his aunt ensconced in rooms near to his. In-
goldesby had set no limits to his hospitality, despite his prejudice,
which in this case was more for the young man's character than for
the religion he professed. He paid Turlough occasional visits, but
felt his guest's effusiveness more like flattery of a powerful friend
than like manly gratitude. Judkin had ideas of his own, which
he shared freely with his master.
" That youngster's no chip of the old block," he said. " Not a
drop of Papist blood in him. He cares for neither Pope nor King
is furious because his old family is put down in the dirt doesn't
know why he isn't as good as you or Stodart, or any of the Protestant
gentry."
" Well, sir," said I, " why do you worship idols, and support
witches and priests that have to hide their bad deeds in holes and
corners ? "
" I don't," he shouted.
" I was afraid for his head, and didn't contradict him. And
after a while he began envying you and admiring everything round
him, and complaining of his own ill fortune. So I didn't know what
to say to him after that, and I sent for the Marquise to come to him,
and I left them there."
But the patient soon tired of the foster mother who had petted
and spoiled him as a boy, and who still wanted to look on him as her
baby.
336 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
" Can't I have my sister to see me ? " he asked querulously.
" She's pleasanter to look at than my aunt."
" You ingrate ! " said Hugh, but he could not feel as angry a's
he wished to feel because of the opening given him to invite Brona
to Ardcurragh. Brona was appealed to, and was directed by her
father to gratify her brother, and when the Ardcurragh carriage was
sent for her she got into it willingly.
Many hours of the following summer days she spent with Tur-
lough in the pleasant rooms assigned to him in his convalescence, or
walking with Ingoldesby in the big wandering gardens that straggled
away into the woods. During these walks Ingoldesby took pains to
keep all subjects of painful interest aloof, to allow nothing but matters
of mutual interest to suggest themselves for discussion. Thus a
number of golden days went past. Ingoldesby had ceased to remem-
ber that there was such a thing as religion in the world, and Brona
forgot that there was cruelty, only felt that a holiday of sweets had
been granted to her, and that she might enjoy it as she had learned
to enjoy happiness while at Delville.
When Turlough was well enough for a long drive, pleasant ex-
cursions were made. Hugh claimed a visit to the cliffs of Moher as
a boon promised him. Brona reminded him that it had been promised to
him only by himself, but the drive was taken on a day glorious enough
for any pageant or holiday. Nature seemed laughing at poverty and
desolation, sunshine making such a glamour in heaven and on earth,
the air so quickening and refreshing that humanity would seem, for the
moment, to have nothing to complain of and everything to exult in.
When the road approached the ascent to the cliffs Aideen re-
mained with Turlough in the carriage, and Ingoldesby and Brona
climbed the green slopes that led to the heights. At the top they
followed the beaten path skirting the cliffs, and stood to see the wide
Atlantic Ocean filling all the view and sweeping the horizon, studded
with its Irish islands, its line broken at one side by mysterious dis-
tances of mountain ranges ghostly and uncertain as if belonging to the
spiritual world, which is never seen by us and yet never quite unseen.
Nearer to them were the freakish masses of separated cliff, torn
from the coast by some primeval earthquake, weird shapes with names
as uncanny, defying the green rollers that beat them from inward and
outward, and lash them with spume as from a caldron.
" That is the Hag's Head," said Brona. " Legend tells that she
was hurled with the rock to where she stands, and bid to remain there
like other petrifactions of humanity."
" Was that a punishment for crime in prehistoric ages ? "
" Something like that. There is a suggestion of savage wicked-
ness about the shape, isn't there ? "
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 337
" Are we expected to believe these legends ? "
" I think not. Poetry is one thing. Faith is another. But who
condemns the old, old, fairy tales? Is not good to be gathered from
them by analogy ? "
" True," said Ingoldesby. He could not bring himself to say,
not then that faith like hers and fairy tales were one and the
same thing to men like himself, who were in possession of their reason
and common sense.
As they moved on the air became burdened with a confusion of
strange sounds, like echoes of some distant angry tumult.
"The birds!" said Brona.
Already wide wings rose and fell above the summit of the highest
cliff, and turning a corner they beheld a spectacle that might startle
the most experienced in this world's wonders.
A long line of cliffs, seven hundred feet high, stood forth majes-
tically in the green flood, and marched away to the distance where
the water-world rises to meet the cloud-world and the cloud-world
stoops to meet the water-world. The cliffs folded and unfolded their
gigantic masses in black landward curves, their walls upright as the
walls of a fortress built with hands, their faces carved in terraces
whitened by the birds, so that one seemed to look on some weird
white city created in this fastness of nature by an unheard-of civiliza-
tion as intelligent as any evolved by the races of men.
The titanic walls, with their solid darkness and chalk white
terraces aloft above the green ocean, were the least amazing part of
the scene. Birds filled the air, making it thick and white as steam
with their winged bodies. Huge and white-winged when near, in the
distance below they looked like the white butterflies that wheel round
a lavender bush in June. Diving into the waves, soaring against the
clouds, hurling themselves on the black cliff-walls, perching on the
whitened ridges, they never ceased their piercing cries, whether of joy
or of pain, of strife or of fear. Who, listening, could attempt to dis-
entangle the myriads of voices or to imagine their meaning? In-
goldesby stood silent.
" How do you feel it ? " asked Brona.
" A magnificent bit of creation. And you? "
" I know it so well ! " said Brona. " Fear, effort, warfare,
triumph, cruelty are all to me in these cries. Do you hear that
dominant note, about twice in every minute, that comes cleaving down-
ward and scattering the other voices ? "
"I hear it," said Ingoldesby. "Who is he, this bird despot?
What message, what threat, what sentence does he deliver?"
" They say he is an alien who has gained mastery over the mul-
titude, and that scientists do not know him, have not named him.
VOL. c. 22
338 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
So the people say. I am not learned enough to try to verify this.
But he sounds like a tyrant, does he not ? "
" His harsh orders, condemnations, denunciations whatever his
cries may mean, are not well taken. There is a clamor of weak
remonstrance or angry rebellion raised after each of his fierce utter-
ances," said Hugh listening.
" We may speculate forever," said Brona. " It is one of the
mysteries of nature."
" Oh, your mysteries ! " cried Hugh with sudden pain in his
voice. " Nature is always accessible. You lose your life groping in
mysteries, loving them, satisfied with them."
" God wraps Himself in mystery as the sun is veiled by cloud,
but His face shines through like the sun, and gives us all the light arid
warmth He intends us to need."
Hugh gazed at her as she turned her eyes away from him to the
white mist of wings and ocean foam between her and the far horizon
of light, and something in him gave way, caution, prudence, patience
or what?
" Brona," he said with passion, " come out of the mysteries and
live with me in the sunshine. Give up dreams and be a real woman.
I love you. Be my wife and you shall never regret trusting yourself
to a strong human man, rather than to visionary priests and their
idols and bugbears."
" Hush ! " said Brona softly but with white lips. " You do not
know what you are saying."
" Do I not? Am I not a sane man? Do I not know that you
have learned to love me? Have you not allowed me to see it? Or
am I contemptibly vain to imagine it? You are too honest to deny it,
if it is true."
Brona's lips moved, but no sound came. She only shook her
head.
Hugh trembled with passion. Brona was still silent while that
imperious note of the dominant bird rang down the air in her ear like
the voice of conscience, louder and more masterful than all the clamor
of weaker voices of heart and imagination that shrieked within her
against the penalizing of happiness.
" Speak, Brona ! Tell me that you will at least try to love me,
that you will come out of the shadows and live with me in sunshine."
" It is impossible," said Brona. " You know, if you reflect a
moment, that it would be your ruin in this world and mine in eternity.
If I did not conform to the law within a year you would become one
of the proscribed."
" You would conform. I would not quarrel with your secret
dreams."
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 339
" Peril my soul ? Deal treacherously with my Creator ? "
Hugh made an impatient gesture.
" Do you look on me as a condemned wretch lost for all eter-
nity?"
" No. For you are in ignorance of the truth, and we are all to
be judged according to our lights. What would be heinous sin in me
is no sin in you. Let us talk of this no more. Oh, why have you
spoken, and spoiled our friendship? I was so happy in having a
friend. Why why?"
Brona stood off a little and bent her face on her hands.
" Because love is so much more than friendship."
" I am sorry, for friendship was so great and so sweet to me."
She turned away and began to walk down the slope towards the
highroad.
Hugh followed her, deploring his rashness and vehemence.
" I am sorry for being so hasty. Listen to me. Our friend-
ship can remain. For your father's sake, tolerate me. I may be of
service to him. Don't be afraid of me. Give me your hand as a
friend."
Brona put a little cold hand into his large warm grasp. And then
they saw Aideen below on the road, signalling to them to return to the
carriage.
On the next day Turlough returned to his father's house. It was
true that the home of the O'Loghlins was none the happier for his
presence. He fretted at the dullness of life, envied Ingoldesby, sat
in his room staring at the ocean, on which he longed to see a ship that
would take him back to France. He would not walk on the public
roads, lest he should meet Stodart riding his Arab horse, and he dis-
dained to mount any of the " garrons " kept by his father merely as a
sorry means of locomotion when necessary. Grumbling incessantly at
the hard fate that had driven him back from Paris, and created diffi-
culties about his return to that refuge of his discontent, he made
Aideen miserable by his appeals to her for the removal of impossi-
bilities. The usually cheerful spirit of the Marquise was crushed.
She tried to bear the brunt of the young man's ill-humor, and to save
his father and Brona something of his sullen hints and querulous com-
plaints. When overcome to tears she would repair for counsel to the
retreat of Father Aengus.
" I cannot send him to Paris at present," she said. " I paid his
debts but a short time ago. I must save up more money before I can
do it again, and he has not patience to wait. His father cannot and
will not increase his allowance, and even if he did there can be no re-
turn to Paris till the debts are paid."
" We can only pray for him," said the priest.
340 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec,
" Have we not prayed ? "
" Evidently not enough. God requires more. Could you per-
suade him to come and talk to me ? "
" Alas, no ! " said Aideen. " The counsels of religion irritate him.
If God does not give him on the moment what he wants, he will
have nothing to do with God."
The Franciscan's face fell into lines of a more fixed sadness.
" Yet, for our prayers God may give him what he will not ask for
himself a changed heart," he said.
Morogh, among his books, relieved the trouble of his mind more
and more by reading, and Turlough kept as much as possible aloof
from his father, the only person whose presence seemed to put a check
on his complaints. Despite Aideen's efforts Brona was not spared.
If she offered to walk with him or took her needlework to his room,
he seized the occasion to reproach her for failing to make use of her
opportunities of improving the family fortunes.
"What was the use of your visit to Dublin?" he said. "Why
did Aideen spend money on you? Why do you not encourage In-
goldesby? Anyone can see "
Brona gathered up her needlework and left the room. But at
the next opening for conversation, her brother took up his reproach
where he had broken it off.
" If you want to live like a nun, why do you not go back to your
convent ? "
Both of these thrusts made deeper wounds than he could have
imagined or understood. Ingoldesby's appealing words were always
in her ears, while before her eyes were the letters of the saintly Mother
Superior, whose faithful love had followed her from the Convent of
the Annunciades in Paris, suggesting that at some future day she
might find it her vocation to take up the sweet yoke and light burden
of the religious life, escaping from the perils and temptations of an
afflicting world.
She had already suffered the indelicate attacks of her brother for
the unprofitableness of her short season in Paris, where she refused to
consider the matrimonial overtures of more than one noble and wealthy
Frenchman. One, particularly favored by Turlough, had followed her
to Clare, and departed in such ill-humor as Turlough feared might
somehow prove injurious to himself. But these matters had not
weighed on her, seeing that her father was the happier for her fidelity
to him and his fortunes. The pain she now carried with her to her
tower was more poignant than could be caused by any of the stings of
her brother's ill-temper and unkindness.
What had become of the peace of that high chamber towards
which the Burren Mountains gazed perpetually with their mysterious
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 341
smile? Her little lamp still burned, its red flame typical of God's
love. Her chosen saints still looked on her from the wall, welcoming
her to tranquil hours when she escaped from melancholy or terrifying
experiences. There was the spiritual mother's last letter from the
convent open on her desk, beside her own half-written response, which
she found so difficult to finish without confessing the personal anguish
that had fallen so unexpectedly on her heart. It was not through want
of confidence that she had withheld the confession, but with dread of
making real what she resolved to treat as unreality. Now it was too
terribly real. She looked round at her household gods which had
imaged her ideals, met the calm eyes of her saints, with their lofty
gaze speaking to her as the statues spoke to Mignon :
" Was hat Man dir du armes Kind gethan?"
There was no one able to help her but God.
She went on her knees before the ancient crucifix with its tragic
figure.
" There is still God," said Brona.
XII.
The bog that lay over beyond the O'Loghlin woods was a wil-
derness stretching far towards the mountains in deeply colored lines of
dun brown, blurred and blotted with green and purple. Flecked with
gleaming pools of water, studded with gray masses of limestone in
fantastic shapes, here and there a witch-like bush of thorn, it is lovely
to the eye as a vision of dreamland. There was a never failing
animation in its stillness and solitude, caused by ever moving cloud-
shadows, sun-flashes and floating mists. Beckoning spirits seem to
invite the unwary traveler, but to explore it is perilous beyond all
imagining. Only those who know the safe track that skips from stone
to stone and from one solid green boss to another, can venture to
travel towards its distances. About the centre of the bog and in the
direction of the rising sun was the secret altar, a gray pile chosen for
its flat top and rude reredos which looked as if prepared by nature in
some of her earliest upheavals for the purpose to which a persecuted
people had devoted it. Close by in a cave, with opening hidden by a
dense thorn bush, the sacred vessels and vestments were concealed, and
not far off was a higher rock, on which a scout watched while Mass was
proceeding and until the congregation had dispersed, creeping through
cuttings and behind bowlders, taking many a circuitous route to reach
their homes.
Confessions were made behind the screen of a rock. Candles
were lighted by means of a flint and steel while Father Aengus vested
himself. These preparations were made by starlight, and Mass was
342 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
said in the first gleam of dawn. Morogh, Aideen and Brona and some
of their servants were among the communicants. The first rays of
sunrise struck their uplifted faces, and when all was finished the
resplendent risen sun gave a solemn benediction from the top of the
highest mountain. The people dispersed as they had come. Father
Aengus had departed at the risk of his life to give comfort to the
dying. Brona lingered to succor an old woman, who devoured the food
she had brought her while relating the too usual tale of her needs and
sorrows. Coming homeward Brona was overtaken by Ingoldesby.
" You look tired," he said. " Where have you been and what
have you been doing to yourself ? "
" It is better that I should not tell you," she said smiling.
" You distrust me."
" No."
" At all events I am coming to warn your father that a search
party is likely to visit his house this evening. Fortunately I met
Father Aengus an hour ago, and advised him to stay away from the
castle for a few days. He was not disturbed told me cheerfully that
he had many hiding places. It is well ; as I believe Colonel Slaughter-
house will be about the country for some time to come."
" We are accustomed to such attentions," said Brona, " though
not, I think, from that particular gentleman."
" He is an old acquaintance of mine, and thorough in doing his
duty as he understands it. With your permission, and on your
father's invitation, if he will give it, I mean to sup at your table this
evening. The Colonel will have called at my place, and in my absence
come on here at once. His finding me in your family circle will be an
advantage to you."
" Will it not injure you? "
" No. My name, for good or for evil, will bar that."
Here Turlough joined them. Having espied Ingoldesby from a
high window, he descended to seize one more opportunity for im-
proving his acquaintance with the man he admired and envied.
Brona hastened to prepare her father and aunt for the threatened
visit. The news spread through the house. The servants went to
work to efface all signs of the Faith, hiding every emblem of religion.
Brona gathered together the company of her saints and locked them up
in a cupboard concealed in the wood-sheathed wall, last of all kissing
her crucifix and hiding it in a niche behind the panelling.
In the middle of supper the search party arrived, a small number
of men on horseback headed by Colonel Slaughterhouse. Thady
Quin, well instructed, invited the Colonel to enter, as if he had been an
invited guest, pleasantly expected, and the dreaded visitor found him-
self in the dining-room, shaking hands with his friend, Hugh In-
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 343
goldesby, who introduced him to Mr. O'Loghlin and his family. The
Colonel had ridden a long way, and had been disappointed of the
hospitality he had looked forward to as sure to be awaiting him at
Ardcurragh, and the sight of a bountifully spread board and comforta-
ble welcoming faces, including Ingoldesby's, disarmed his soldierly
wrath, and cooled his enthusiasm for a triumph of discovery. He felt
a little awkwardness at announcing the cause of his visit.
" Pleasure first and business afterwards," said Hugh smiling. " I
can recommend Mr. O'Loghlin's game, and as for his wine "
The hungry Colonel did justice to all the good things before him.
Aideen had provided unusual dainties, and there was no doubt about
the wine, which was of the best, direct from France and Spain.
Besides being a lover of good wine the Colonel was an admirer
of wrought silver, and Hugh skillfully drew his attention to some
beautiful specimens of foreign workmanship in use on the table, as
well as to the Waterford cut glass that so generously contained the
wine. Added to these attractions was the spirituelle charm of Brona's
beauty, which was only enhanced by the pallor of the moment, and
which was not unnoticed by the stern soldier, who seemed to forget
that he had come among these hospitable friends as an enemy, until
reminded that he had business to do, and had better do it before the
shades of night set in.
" It is a mere matter of form," he muttered apologetically. " Mr.
O'Loghlin will excuse me."
The house was explored in a perfunctory manner, the men who
had been liberally entertained by the housekeeper feeling as little
anxious as was their Colonel to give annoyance.
" You have pledged me your word that there is no Popish priest
in this house at this moment," said Slaughterhouse to Ingoldesby.
" I have given you my word," said Ingoldesby, " and when you
are satisfied I will ride back with you to Ardcurragh, where I hope
you will be my guest for as long as you can manage to stay. I can
promise you some good sport."
So the search party departed under Ingoldesby's escort, and
Castle O'Loghlin again breathed freely.
Only in the housekeeper's room was the good faith of Ingoldesby
questioned.
" He's as sound as a bell," said Mrs. MacCurtin. " Don't talk to
me about bad stock, Thady Qliin. A man is what he is. I tell you
Ingoldesby's a rale good friend of this family."
" God send he is ! " said Thady, " but I know their tricks. See
how quick he wormed himself into favor with the master, and even the
Marquise that has always her wits about her, And to see his eyes when
he looks at Miss Brona! As for Turlough that's a trouble to us
344 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
all you don't know what he'll end by makin' of him. Then this
Slaughterhouse comin' as his friend "
" An' goin' away peaceable for that reason," said Mrs. MacCurtin.
" Suppose he had dropped down on us unbeknownst ! Father Aengus
in the middle of us! And the crucifix where it ought to be! Much
good your wise talk would ha' been to us then, Thady Quin ! "
" I'm not new to it," said Thady. "If Father Aengus had been
here he would have circumvented them easy. Many's a time I told you
how my father before me, when things were worse than they are now,
lived in a sufferin' family."
" Oh, indeed you did," said Mrs. MacCurtin tartly.
" And when the enemy came down sudden, what did the priest
do? 'Where's your livery, Mack?' says he, and in half a wink of
an eye his reverence was dressed in it. The mistress snipped off a bit
of her own hair, and plastered it down with soap the handiest thing
on the holy Father's tonsure, an' wasn't it the priest himself they were
huntin' that opened the door to the villains, and then attended table
when they were eatin' all before them ! "
" Had they no hiding place ? " asked Norah, who had never heard
the story before.
" The ruffians had got wind of it, and searched it. But they found
nothin', for in them days a priest had no belongings, wore an old sack,
and slept in holes in trees, or in under an old ruin."
" Isn't it mostly the same now ? " said Mrs. MacCurtin.
XIII.
As they were at breakfast at Ardcurragh, Colonel Slaughterhouse
gave Ingoldesby his impressions of the people at Castle O'Loghlin.
" O'Loghlin himself seems a good sort of fellow, a bit of a philos-
opher, a little too fond of books for a soldier like me. The Marquise
is a French woman to her finger tips has been a handsome woman.
Is a little too anxious to conciliate. Turlough I do not like. A mean
fellow. Would lick my boots if I let him. The girl "
Ingoldesby drew a hard breath. He did not like to hear Brona
alluded to as " the girl " by Slaughterhouse.
" A rare kind of beauty lost in this wilderness," continued the
Colonel, " hardly opened her lips. Looked on me as a wild beast
come to gobble them up, I suppose."
"Must have been agreeably disappointed," said Ingoldesby.
" Have some game pie, Colonel ? "
" Thanks. I have breakfasted. She is too good for this hunted
life. Why not take her to Paris? "
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 345
" I understand that she prefers the County Clare," said Ingold-
esby. "Have a smoke, Slaughterhouse, and then we will go for
some sport."
" Now, what have they done with the priest fellow ? I am not
going to spare him. Not if I find him outside of their house. A
sneaking friar, I am informed, a foreigner, one of the worst."
" Try to remember you are on holiday," said Ingoldesby.
"Oh h! I wish I could. I hate the service. But why are
the Papists such obstinate pigs? Can't they make the best of life
as the law allows it to them ? "
" A problem to you and me," said IngoMesby.
" Your duty does not oblige you to discover and punish offenders."
" No."
" So it does not trouble you to see people running their necks
into the noose. By the way, I nearly got up at three o'clock this
morning when I heard their bell ringing from somewhere Mass bell
I take it."
" That was a little trick of your imagination," said Ingoldesby.
" They have no bells. Centuries have passed since they dared to ring
a bell. They keep their trysts without summons of that kind."
" But I heard it," said Slaughterhouse. " I am utterly devoid
of imagination a much misleading quantity."
" Then it was some peculiar accidental chime the clash of the
wind with the sea," said Ingoldesby. " Come along, if you are ready.
My people are waiting for us."
The day passed pleasantly, and next morning Colonel Slaughter-
house and his men went their way. Ingoldesby rode with them many
miles, and saw them out of the country.
" It hasn't been very satisfactory, but I shall come again," said
Slaughterhouse at parting. " I mean to keep wideawake, with my
eyes on the County Clare."
As Ingoldesby rode home, he pondered the fact that he did not
know Slaughterhouse intimately enough to decide whether his admira-
tion for Brona would prove chivalrous and helpful, or would be an
added difficulty and danger to her family. Were he to press a suit
on her she would take an attitude that would quickly betray
herself and her father. How would rejection act upon the Colonel?
Would mortification embitter him, and provoke him to a revenge
easily accomplished? Would he continue content with hunting the
priest out of doors, and leave the O'Loghlins at peace in their home?
There was no sleep for Hugh that night. Life seemed to have
become horribly complicated. Thinking showed him no way out
of difficulties. Jealousy was unreasonable. Brona was as far re-
moved from him as if she had been a nun in her convent. But if
346 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
Slaughterhouse were to become an enemy, how could he protect her?
While he lay trying to pick hard knots of future trouble, a storm
arose and blew against his windows from the direction of the wood.
Was it an echo in his brain of the Colonel's fancy about a bell ring-
ing in the night, or did he really hear such sounds, clear and sonorous,
coming at intervals on the wind ?
" The gale clashing with the voices of the distant sea," he said
to himself as he had said to the Colonel, and listened for another
weird note, the unmistakable note of a bell. Sometimes faint and
musical, sometimes loud and deep, as the soughing of the trees seemed
to carry it this way and that way. Unrested and disturbed in mind
he fell asleep at last, and was awakened by Judkin, who knew all about
the bell that haunted the wood, and was surprised that his master
had not heard it before.
" The Papists say it's rung by angels," he said, " and our people
say devils. Some that have sense tell that long ago when the 'massers'
were hiding their things a bell got into a tree, and the tree grew round
it, and it never could be found. They say your grandfather, sir,
cut down many trees, full sure he had tracked the sound, but gave it
up. It takes a big wind to ring it, and still there's many a storm
when it doesn't ring at all."
The idea seized Ingoldesby with fascination. Sometimes he
haunted the woods with thoughts very curious to himself, and lay
awake at night listening, but the bell did not ring again, though
the weather continued windy. The knowledge that these eerie sounds
would be sacred in Brona's ears, impressed him with a sort of
reverence for the legend told by Judkin. Brona hiding her crucifix,
as he knew she must do, came vividly before him as he saw in imag-
ination the " massers " dropping their bell into a hollow tree.
What a strange faith it was that seized on all earthly material as
its own, and even associated common things with God by invoking
His blessing upon their use, things made by the hands of men, for
His service. He had given up the idea of idolatry in connection with
Brona's religion. He knew that her crucifix was nothing to her except
in as much as it imaged the martyred Arch-Hero of her spiritual
warfare. Her fidelity, so maddening to her lover's impatience, had
become beautiful to him as a feature of her character.
XIV.
The visit of Colonel Slaughterhouse had not improved Turlough's
spirits or temper. He had felt bitterly the evident contempt of the
English soldier, not realizing that he was despised for his cowardly
1914.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 347
subservience to the enemy, rather than as the son of a proscribed
father who might at any moment be dispossessed of his property.
He had also seen the stranger's admiration of his sister, and her avoid-
ance of such notice. He returned to his reproaches of Brona for her
want of generosity in withdrawing from the attentions of those who
were powerful to spare and to protect. He, Turlough, had done his
best to propitiate Slaughterhouse, and he cultivated the good will
of Ingoldesby at every opportunity. But the attitude of his father
and sister rendered all his efforts useless. These two were deaf to
his complaints and appeals, and Aideen, who was the only one to
listen to his ill-humored speeches, was a weak creature, who wept
silently at his threats and revilings.
As he sat sulking in his own room, or wandered about the bit
of beach between the sombre cliffs, throwing pebbles in the sea, and
longing for a boat to take him to France, he chafed at Aideen's emptied
purse, and growled in thought at MacDonogh, who, though he had
carried him home in his vessel when Paris had not left him a sou,
would not, if he arrived again to-morrow, take him back there penni-
less. Neither would MacDonogh, who was growing rich on his smug-
gling, lend him money, though he pretended to be a friend of the family.
Altogether life had become intolerable. When Ingoldesby invited
him to Ardcurragh such pleasure as he tasted there was tinctured
with the bitterness of envy; and yet here he had a ready listener
to his repinings in Judkin, who thought it a monstrous thing that
a fine handsome, young gentleman of ancient family should be obliged
to lead a slave's life, because of the fad of his people for praying
in holes and corners rather than in a decent church.
Judkin's conversation was much more to Turlough's taste than
Ingoldesby's, and through an Englishman's eyes he saw the folly
of the Irish Catholic in losing this world, which was an undoubtable
reality, for the sake of holding on to his own fantastic notions of a
world to come, the very existence of which, from any point of view,
was problematical.
" Why can't your good father be content to be a Christian, sir? "
said Judkin, encouraged to speak his mind. " Look at my master !
Look at me ! Look at England ! All of us Christians ! "
" Are you ? " said Turlough dubiously. He was only twenty-one,
and his catechism was fresh in his mind.
" Of course we are, according to law. We obey the law and don't
bother about particulars. Look at Paris ! Are we better or worse
than Paris?"
" Better and worse are everywhere," said Turlough sullenly. " I'm
not better and not worse myself than many a one."
"That's what it is to be a Christian," argued Judkin. "Then
348 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Dec.,
why not walk into a Christian church and show yourself? You're
losing- the sheep for the ha'porth of tar, as the saying is. The sheep's
the family property and the tar's nothing but the bad name of Papist."
" You're putting the cart before the horse as another saying is,"
said Turlough with a grim smile that looked strange on his young
face. " My people would tell you that the sheep is the faith and
the property is the tar. But at all events the property and the
determination are my father's."
" All might be yours, sir, if you had courage."
" I haven't," said Turlough, and turned on his heel and left him.
Ingoldesby felt no pleasure in the visits of the discontented youth,
yet persisted in giving him the hospitality he so eagerly accepted,
with some idea of keeping him out of mischief, and with the intention
of relieving his family of his disquieting presence. He easily per-
ceived Turlough's preference for Judkin's society to his own, and often
allowed the visitor to choose for himself in the matter. Sometimes
he had the impulse to offer him money to take him back to Paris,
and keep him there for a time, but prudence withheld him from the
step, assuring him that nothing could come of it but greater embarrass-
ment for everybody concerned.
Hugh also felt that his kindness to the restless young man
was amply repaid by Morogh O'Loghlin's increasing friendship and
trust in himself, by Aideen's gratitude expressed at every opportunity,
and above all by the look of restful confidence in Brona's eyes which
now met his gladly whenever he appeared. And the fact that Tur-
lough had become a link between him and the family at Castle O'Logh-
lin, moderated his dislike of the graceless member of the family,
and enabled him to tolerate one who under other circumstances he
would have carefully shunned.
Occasionally he took solitary walks across the bog and moor-
land, learning the track through the wilderness, and finding an unac-
countable pleasure in pursuing that devious track, with its strange
and lawless purpose, and its double danger to feet that persistently
traveled it with a heroism pitiable to the uninitiated. He knew now
how to avoid the treacherous bog-hole and the stretch of soft slushy
earth that looked solid and trustworthy, but lured to death by suffoca-
tion in wells of liquid mud. He desired to be familiar with the way
to the spot where the secret Mass was said, and to locate it in his
memory, with a feeling that some day occasion might arise for leading
a spy or a search party astray, to hinder a surprise of daring law
breakers, of whom Brona would probably be one.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
THE CHRISTIAN NAME.
BY DANIEL QUINN.
OT from the very beginning were Christ's followers
conscious of needing a differentiating name for
themselves. Not from the first did they realize that
they were a society totally unlike any other, and that
they had completely severed all religious communion
with others, even with the Jews, and were an absolutely new and
distinct unit in the world, a new creation. Naturally then, in the
first years of their existence, they designated themselves by no name
exclusively theirs and exclusively indicative of their life and belief.
But nevertheless a name soon came, and this was the undying name
of " Christian."
But before the appearance and adoption of " Christian," other
appellations were in use, though not of general acceptance in any
official way, and not used by outsiders. The designation of " dis-
ciple " was frequent for the early followers of Christ. Christ was
regarded as the great Teacher ; so were His followers " disciples,"
especially those who had accompanied Him on earth. From those
companions and first pupils and personal followers of the Master,
the name of disciple continued for some years to be extended to new
believers, who had learned and accepted the doctrine from the
original disciples. Those against whom the unconverted Paul was
raging 1 were " disciples of the Lord." On his return to Jerusa-
lem, after his conversion, it was " disciples " whom Paul sought out
and was reconciled to. 2 When Paul and Barnabas arrived in
Iconium, it was " disciples " who were filled with joy at their com-
ing. 3 And in speaking to the presbyters of Ephesus, Paul warns
them against false teachers who will mislead " the disciples." 4
In view of their mutual love and their belief in one divine
Father, it is no wonder that they called one another " brother."
And if they did not use this name reciprocally amongst themselves,
at least their teachers applied the name of " brothers " to congrega-
tions and communities. When St. Paul was in danger of being
maltreated and even slain by the Hellenists in Jerusalem, those who
came to his assistance and brought him to safety in Csesarea were
" brothers." 5 In Jerusalem when the report came there, regarding
*Acts ix. i. "Acts ix. 26. 'Acts xiii. 52. 4 Acts xx. 30. 'Acts ix. 30.
350 THE CHRISTIAN NAME [Dec.,
how Gentiles were accepting the word of God, and how Peter was
associating with them, it was " the apostles and the brothers " who
heard this surprising news. 6 St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans,
salutes certain Christians in Rome as " brothers/' 7 If " brothers "
was not an actual and official name for the members of the new
society, its wide prevalence in those early days is a charming proof
of their consideration and estimation of one another; as it is also
somewhat in harmony with the communistic tendency 8 which pre-
vailed especially in Jerusalem for a short time. In pragmatization
of this spiritual brotherhood, the first believers were organized into
local groups or congregations, and these into larger groups, and
these again into a single grand unity, which embraced all members
in one religious fraternity.
One potent characteristic of the early Christians was, that they
were conscious of their moral goodness and holiness. They made
no sham secret of their opinion regarding themselves. Demonstra-
tive self -depreciation and self-abasement may be always present as a
mischievous disease amongst the sincerely holy and religious; but
these diseases were perhaps less in evidence in those earnest ages of
nascent Christianity. The primitive Christians not infrequently
were called saints. They continued to use this designation on into
the second century. 9 St. Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, which
was written about the year 63, addresses them as " saints :" " Paul
and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ
Jesus who are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons." 10
Passing over other appellations, such as the " elect/' 11 and
the " faithful " 12 or the " believers," a name may be mentioned
which was not intended to be one of honor, although in itself it was
not contemptuous. This was the name of " Nazarene." The Jews
could not consistently call the new believers " Christians," or any of
the other names enumerated. They could not concede what was so
openly implied in these names. Accordingly when the followers of
Jesus, especially those of Jewish race, began to be inimical 13 to their
former coreligionists, the Jews frequently called them " Naza-
renes" 14 or in Hebrew "Nezerim." Down to the present day a Jew-
ish name for Christians is " Nozri " or " Nazarenes." 15 And in the
language of the Koran, likewise, Christians are called "Al-Nasara."
Christ may at times have been opprobriously referred to as a
Acts xi. i. T Rom. xvi. 14. "Acts ii. 44, 45; iv. 32-37; v. i ff. ; vi. i ff.
Harnack, Mission, i., p. 340. "Phil. i. i.
"Matt. xxiv. 22, 24; Mark xiii. 20-22; i Peter i. 1-2.
"Acts x. 45; i Tim. iv. 3. "Acts ix. 2; xviii. 25; xix. 9; xix. 23.
"Acts xxiv. 5 ; xxviii. 22. " Jewish Encyclopedia, s. v., Nazarenes.
1914.] THE CHRISTIAN NAME 351
" Nazarene." Opprobrium was, for example, implied in the
utterance, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" 16
With similar contempt the Jews would apply the name of
" Nazarenes " to His followers. This usage was mostly a local one.
Perhaps the Christians most often called " Nazarenes " were
those of Syria. They may have accepted the name, and made use
of it themselves. Ariston, a Syrian Christian of Pella, who wrote
in the middle of the second century, calls them " Nazarenes."
These peculiar Judaizing Christians of the Hauran continued to
exist in Pella and in Kokaba, and other places round about the Dead
Sea down into the fifth century. St. Epiphanius mentions them,
and calls them " Nazarenes." 17 Theodoret was the last writer who
ever referred to them as existing.
But of all our titles, the most characteristic and most beloved
and most persistent is the one derived from the Master's Name. It is
quite probable that this was the first general designation for all
the faithful, the first name which became acceptable both to the be-
lievers and, in the course of time, their enemies. Even when this
new name of " Christian " did come into use, it did not absolutely
demand a recognition of the fact that the Jewish Christians were
seceders forever from the synagogue and initiators of a new life.
For as there were Pharisees and Essenes and Sadducees amongst
the followers of Moses, why could there not also be Christians?
The circumstances under which this name first appeared are in-
teresting. In the city of Antioch many, both of the Jews and of the
Gentiles, were being attracted by the new religion. Barnabas was
sent from Jerusalem to aid and direct in these numerous conver-
sions. Such a tendency to conversion did Barnabas find in Antioch
that he hastened to Tarsus in search of Paul, and prevailed on him
to come and assist in reaping the harvest. For an entire year did
both teach in Antioch, and so notable were the numerous converts
that people gave them a more definite name, and called them Chris-
tians. 18 The name must have been coined at Antioch about five or
ten years before the middle of the first century. Its appropriateness
and the effective way in which it distinguished these new believers
from the Jews and Jewish proselytes, as well as from the Gentiles,
caused it to be quickly adopted by friends and eventually by foes. 19
Its authorship is a matter of obscurity. It probably was not
made by the Christians themselves, and especially not by converts
from Judaism. These had not yet sufficiently reflected on their
"John i. 46. "Panarion xxix. 7. "Acts xi. 26.
"Acts xxvi. 28; i Peter iv. 16; cf. James ii. 7.
352 THE CHRISTIAN NAME [Dec.,
religious isolation to feel the need of a separate name, and to devise
it. Others might more easily observe the wide gulf by
which Christ's followers were cut off from Judaism. But from the
first coining of " Christian," all must have seen the aptness of the
title. Whenever a general designation was needed, " Christian " was
freely used. It, therefore, appears quite frequently in the Apolo-
gists. In other Christian literature, however, its use is rare enough
in the first two centuries. Of the Apostolic Fathers, Ignatius is the
only one to employ it. 20 And he was a native of Antioch. In the
Teaching of the Apostles it occurs but once.
It is not likely that the Jews should have coined this name for
the hated separatists. They would not be so ready to admit that
Jesus had any right to the title of " Christ " or " Messiah." But to
rate the followers of Jesus as " Christians/' would seem to be mak-
ing such an admission. It likewise is improbable that the uncon-
verted Greeks or Romans should have made this name. They at
that time regarded the Christians simply as devotees of the Jewish
religion, or at least as a Jewish sect. The conjecture of Renan 21
is, therefore, gratuitous. He thought that " Christian " was a
designation first devised by the Roman police for police purposes.
A most likely supposition is that while the name was not a crea-
tion of the believers in Judaism, nor yet of the Christians themselves,
it was however made by a class of people who knew of the peculiar
differences which distinguished the Christians, and who were inter-
ested in the distinction. It is easy to imagine that the name was
used first amongst the proselytes ; and that those proselytes who ac-
cepted Christ and His teaching, used it to distinguish themselves
from the proselytes to Mosaic Judaism. Or, conversely, it may have
been the Jewish proselytes who used it of the others who were ac-
cepting Christ. Proselytes of both kinds were quite numerous at
Antioch at that time.
A curious variation of the name became prevalent amongst the
populace of Rome. To them " Christos," as a man's name, would
seem anomalous. But there was in common vogue a proper name,
" Chrestos," similar in spelling and almost identical in pronuncia-
tion. The populace at times in their ignorant confusion called the
leader of the Christians not "Christos" but "Chrestos;" and to
this same populace the Christians likewise were known as "Chres-
tians." As "Christians" they were regarded simply as the followers
of some Jewish agitator, who bore the very ordinary name of
" Chrestos." As " Chrestos " means " good," it may have been
" Harnack, Mission, p. 295. ^Apotres, p. 234.
1914-] THE CHRISTIAN NAME 353
with incredulity and sarcasm that the vulgar undercurrent of Rome,
and elsewhere, called the Christians the " followers of the good
man." In his life of Claudius, the biographer Suetonius mentions
an edict of prescription which was issued in the year 51 or 52, by
which Jews were expelled from Rome. Amongst these were also
Christians. Suetonius, in connection with this prescription, men-
tions " Chrest " as a leader of turbulent Jews. It may be difficult
to know what confusion was in the mind of Suetonius. Perhaps
he meant, truly or in mistake, an individual Jew of Rome in that
day; and perhaps he meant, by accident or intentionally, the
" Chrest " of the populace who may really have been the " Christ "
and Jesus of the Christians, and whom Suetonius in his careless
knowledge may have supposed to be still living and in Rome. The
turbulence which occasioned the edict of expulsion, may in part have
been contentions and conflicts between orthodox Jews and others
who had become followers of Christ; Judceos impulsore Chresto
adsidue timultuantes Roma expulit 22 Of course this corrupt form
of the name could not be acceptable to the Christians themselves.
Tertullian objected to it; perperam Chrestianus pronuntlatur a vobis
nam nee nominis certa est notitia penes vos. 23
The next great name in the history of the Church is that of
" Catholic." This was gradually made an official title by the
Christians themselves, after they had become desirous of emphasiz-
ing universality or catholicity as an essential note of their faith.
Thus they well distinguished themselves, who held a world-wide and
everlasting belief, from other Christians who were professing
opinions destined to remain local and ephemeral. Clement of Rome
does not use this name, as controversialists of to-day so frequently
remind us ; and in his time it may not yet have been created. But the
fact of catholicity was apparent in the Church from the beginning.
It was Ignatius of Antioch who first used the word, so far as we
know, about the year no; hopou an e Christos lesous, ekei he kath-
olike ekklesia 2 * The term " Catholic " soon became frequent in its
theological sense. In the Letter on the Martyrdom of Saint Poly-
carp, written about the year 155, occurs the phrase " the bishop of
the catholic church in Smyrna." The genuineness of those words
may possibly be disputed. No doubt, however, attaches to another
venerable document, the Muratorian fragment from about the year
1 80, which also contains the expression " catholic church." By the
fourth century " catholic " had become a theological term, and the
28 Suetonius, Claudius, 25; cf. Dion, lx., 6. M Apologia, 3. 2 *Smryn., viii., 2.
VOL. C. 23
354 THE CHRISTIAN NAME [Dec.,
original lexical meaning of the word had ceased to be active. Fi-
nally " catholic " appeared even in the Creed. 25
From the very first " catholic " was a name which emphasized
one of the notes of the new religion, the universality of it in every
way. Possibly its chief use, almost from the first, was to distinguish
the real Christians from the sects, the orthodox from the heretical.
And as heretics were in evidence almost from the beginning, so also
was this name. This distinctive meaning, of separating the ortho-
dox from the other Christians, is contained in the word " Catholic "
used in the celebrated edict of Theodosius issued in 380, wherein
he defines who of the Christians are to be called " Catholic Chris-
tians," namely, those who practise the religion which " the Apostle
Peter delivered to the Romans, and which the Pontiff Damasus, and
Peter, the Bishop of Alexandria, now follow; according to the
discipline of the Apostles and the teaching of the Evangelists, they
believe in the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in equal
majesty, and in the Holy Trinity." And it was in this sense that
Pacian used it 26 in writing : " Were I to enter a city, I should find
Marcionites, Apollinarians and others such who called
themselves Christians; by what surname should I recognize the
congregation of my own people, were it not catholic Christian
is my name, Catholic is my surname." 27
With the various heresies, another word came into use to
designate those who adhered to the true doctrine. These were the
" Orthodox." In this sense " Orthodox " implied what " Catholic "
does. Whoever is Catholic is Orthodox, and whoever is Orthodox
is Catholic. But there did come a time of geographical and his-
torical distinction between these two names. After the schism be-
tween the East and the West, the Latins held firmly to the ancient
title of " Catholic," while the Greeks jealously retained the designa-
tion of " Orthodox." It is interesting to note that this division of
titles is somewhat characteristic of the peoples that preferred them.
The Eastern Church used to prize belief and learning, " didache"
While by " Catholic " the Western Church well expressed its char-
acteristic emphasizing of rule and authority and universalism. The
Latin looked to domination ; the Greek to dogma.
For long ages, from the fourth century, all orthodox believers
were and were called " Romans." The three names of "Christians"
and " Catholic " and " Roman " were then practically identical.
"Caspari, iii., pp. 149 f. ; Zezschwitz, System der Catechetik, 116 f . ; 127.
* Pacian, Ep., i.
*Cf. Newman, Athanasius, ii., p. 69. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1900.
WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE?
BY ELIZABETH CHRISTITCH.
ROPAGANDISTS of a beneficent work or a philan-
thropic idea are often called " crusaders," even when
their exertions entail no great physical hardship, and
encounter no direct opposition. The name of " cru-
sade " has lost its original signification, and is not
connected in the casual mind either with warfare, the Cross, or any
religious movement. We have crusades for pure food, sound liter-
ature, fresh air, and dress reform, but taking the word in its older
and higher sense, we ask if the war waged by the Balkan States
against Turkey in 1912 merits the title of " crusade? "
At the very beginning we will say that the acts of the Balkan
Allies compare favorably with those of their mediaeval predecessors,
and future historians will, we believe, have few scruples in classify-
ing the First Balkan War as a belated crusade. Religious zeal
alone has seldom inspired warfare. When it has done so, the mode
of procedure and the result did not always redound to the credit of
humanity. Justification or excuse for wars of religion is a thank-
less task; but the Christian combatants of 1912 did not pretend
that they were actuated solely by the wish to glorify Christendom.
Their aim was twofold; emancipation of their coreligionists (with
compensation for the sacrifices incurred in the struggle), and the
substitution of Christian for Mohammedan government in terri-
tories inhabited mainly by Christians.
As a long-time dweller in the Peninsula, conversant with people
and conditions, and as one brought into close contact with the par-
ticipants in the struggle, I venture to give my experiences as a useful
quota for those who seek an answer to the questions :
Was there solidarity among Christians, as such, when marching
to dislodge a common enemy?
Did Christian services precede, accompany, and follow the mili-
tary operation?
Was public reverence of the Cross a feature of the campaign?
i. e., was there restoration and rehabilitation of the Cross in
places whence it had been banished or where it had been
humiliated ?
356 WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? [Dec.,
Has Christianity benefited through the action of the troops by
the establishment of Christian institutions in the southeast of
Europe ?
It is possible to reply in the affirmative to all these questions.
When mobilization was decreed, the rallying point in all the
villages was the church, and here the men kissed the Crucifix, and
were blessed by the priests before they started to join their units.
Telegrams were exchanged between the clergy of the four States,
and national antagonism disappeared as by magic. I spoke with
Bulgarians, Greeks, and Servians, and from each and all I got the
same impression; faith had been revived, and with it came a new
sense of brotherhood. From men in responsible posts loud pro-
testations of Christian fraternity with their allies was of course
obligatory, but among the masses I found cogent proof of its reality.
It was even supposed that a single generalissimo would be appointed
to command over all the armies, and no objection was raised against
any of the presumed candidates Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the late
King George of Greece, Nikola of Montenegro, or Peter of Servia.
Not only did national rivalry, but sectarianism, often more bitter,
fade before the larger issue. In Albania, Catholics and Orthodox,
in spite of extraneous influence, worked at the outset in harmony.
The Catholic tribes, it is true, took no active part in the fighting,
but they helped the Servian troops by spying for them, providing
food and shelter, and they were allowed a share of the spoils when
the battle was over. A service of thanksgiving was held in the Catho-
lic church some miles distant from Alessio, when the town fell into
the hands of the Servians. The Catholic churches throughout
Albania were considered the natural meeting-ground by the Chris-
tian troops, irrespective of creed. It was the same elsewhere. The
Bulgarian Exarchists and Greek Patriarchists forgot their differ-
ences, and thought of themselves only as Christians risen together
against the old enemy. Whenever the invading troops came upon
a cross, they rushed towards it joyfully, feeling that here was sanc-
tuary. A Servian officer told me that when his scouts had crossed
the Drim and found the first church, they ran back with delight
to tell him that they were now among friends. ' The people speak
only Catholic," they said, " but they are Christians like ourselves,
for they have the cross all right." (It was at a much later date
that dissension crept between liberators and liberated.) Catholic
nuns decorated their convents in honor of the troops that had freed
Albania from Turkish rule. Very pathetic was the belief that this
1914.] WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? 357
unanimity of Balkan Christians would find a counterpart in the rest
of Europe; and many even prophesied that the Christian Powers
would help in the work of driving out the Turk. The average
Balkanite failed to realize how little their monitors practise what
they preach, and how far they are from Christian concord among
themselves.
If the bond of union was drawn closer among Balkan Christians
by the proclamation of war, as we have just seen, the mustering of
the troops amply evidenced the Christian character of the under-
taking. By Christian I mean open championship of the cause of
Christ, and not practice of the virtues inculcated by His Gospel,
although these too were present in a remarkable degree. The allied
kings vied with each other in accentuating the religious aspect of
the campaign. There was less parade, but more sincerity in the
rank and file. The Montenegrins did not doubt that they were
called upon to avenge the catastrophe of 1389 when the Christian
banner was trampled on Kossovo by Sultan Murad. " Za Krst
tchastan i Slobodu Zlatnu " (" For the Cross of Glory and Golden
Freedom ") was not merely an official war cry. It was on the lips
of every man from the start; it was shouted in crucial moments of
the fray; and remained a formula of consolation for the be-
reaved. There was an extraordinary impulse to profess publicly a
belief that had long lain dormant. Churches usually empty
were thronged with worshippers. There were fiery discourses
from the pulpits, in which nationality played indeed a prom-
inent role, but in which precedence was always given to the duty
of Christians towards one another. Sermons in Balkan countries
are, as a rule, more concerned with racial problems than with the
exposition of Christian doctrine, or, at best, creed and nationality
receive equal attention. In October of 1912 there was a recrudes-
cence of religious fervor. At the door of Belgrade cathedral I
met a notable agnostic crossing himself devoutly. He was one of
thousands who had abandoned outward observances of a faith which
had ceased to appeal to their minds, and who now thronged to
light a candle at the shrine of the "Bogoroditsa" ("Madonna") for
the success of the Christian arms.
The fervor of the clergy was genuine. The priests on
the battlefield acquitted themselves of their duties in a manner
that showed they were permeated with the true spirit of their
mission. The dying were solaced with the last blessing, and no
grave was wittingly left unhallowed. Many fell with their flock,
358 WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? [Dec.,
the Greeks being especially conspicuous for bravery under fire.
Several Bulgarian and Servian priests also charged with their troops,
and great numbers were wounded without having actually partici-
pated in the battles. Breakfast was more often omitted than morn-
ing or evening prayer. Whenever feasible the " Otche Nash "
("Our Father") was recited together before beginning an attack,
and after victory the Te Deum was intoned; or if this was im-
possible the Crucifix was solemnly venerated. Throughout the
campaign the soldiers sang hymns, and even parts of the regular
Church liturgy, with which they were more familiar, as a rule,
than were their officers. The salutation " God be with thee," and
its response, " With thee likewise/' became universal, although it
had previously been discarded by the townspeople in favor of the
more modern " How are you ? " or " Good health ! " The peasants
who bore the brunt of the fighting were convinced Christians.
Their simple faith was the overwhelming force that shattered the
Turkish battalions.
On November i8th, the Danube Division was facing the Turk-
ish army at Monastir. The Third Battalion of the Seventh Regi-
ment was ordered to cross the Black River, and occupy the village
Chakriks. It was a manoeuvre to divert the attention of the Turks
by feigning an attempt to hinder their retreat on Lerin, while the
right wing of the Servian army moved forward. The Commander
of the Third Battalion at once saw that his men were called upon to
die without even the joy and inspiration of battle. The Tsrna Reka
(or Black River) is here broken up into nine divisions, some of
which were from six to ten feet deep, while others had overflown
so that the flooded expanse was altogether eighteen hundred yards
wide. The road led over nine bridges, each of which was a perfect
target for the Turkish artillery advantageously posted on a height
commanding the river. No more terrible operation was ever de-
manded in war than the passage of the Black River ; and the Com-
mander of the Third Battalion realized it as he marshalled his com-
panies in the order of fourth, third, second, and first. The first to
stand out as volunteer was Milivoy Stoyanovitch, a sergeant, who
with four picked men took the lead. The column was composed of
rows of five the width of the road at distances of from thirty to
forty steps. Each man, as he put his foot on the first bridge, took
off his cap, made the sign of the Cross, and went forward calmly to
his death. As each row fell silently into line, their comrades behind
audibly commended their souls to God. The Turkish batteries
1914.] WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? 359
waited to mow the men down until they had reached the third
bridge, and then all the guns opened fire.
"Poor boys! " said my informant, " we saw them fall one by
one and slip into the flood like logs, but still the column went on,
five after five, marching like machines. The Servian artillerists
around me cried like babies as they watched the tragedy. Our
cannon roared incessantly, my men making superhuman efforts to
protect our infantry on the Reka. We succeeded in partially si-
lencing the Turkish guns, and when the clouds of smoke lifted we
saw the remnants of the Third Battalion marching forward steadily
as before. When they came to the other side, the Turks threw
down their weapons, and fled in terror as from a phantom army.
The preternatural force that inspired these men to sacrifice their
lives was certainly drawn from religion."
In the terrible combat of Bakarna Gumna a soldier kept calling
at intervals : " Lord Jesus Christ, remember I have a wife and
three children !"
On several occasions the leaders in an assault shouted to their
men : " Forward, Christians ! " although this was avoided when
there were Jews in the ranks. The Jews, however, fraternized fully
with their comrades, and joined in the " Our Father " when recited
aloud in moments of extremity. The bond of humanity was in
evidence among all the armies of the Balkan League during this
First War. I was highly edified by the attitude of the Servian
wounded towards the Mohammedan Albanians occupying the same
hospital ward, even when these admitted that they would give no
quarter if the Christians were in their power.
" Do not blame them," said a corporal, with his arms and one
leg in splinters. " They act as they are taught. We are told to
forgive our enemies after we have conquered them, and so we do.
But these fellows must follow their creed and kill without mercy."
Not only was their public invocation of Christ on the battlefield
a common practice, but the Christian combatants prayed of their
own accord in groups; and individual soldiers often had recourse
to God.
After the regrettable Second War, the war between the Allies,
a Servian officer wrote me : " We are sick at the notion of the
Turks' return to Thrace, and it takes away all the satisfaction of
our defeating the Bulgarians. Now the Crosses will be given
pulled down, and Europe will applaud the restoration of the Cres-
cent. Nice specimens of Christianity they are, while they enjoy
360 WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? [Dec.,
the benefits of Christian civilization we made possible for them
by our resistance all these centuries! If the Balkan peoples were
like Western Christians, the world would have been Mohammedan
long ago."
At Bakarna Gumna the Commander of a detachment was or-
dered to undertake a desperate move, and the following dialogue
took place :
" This is a feigned attack, my Colonel ? "
" Yes, while we demolish the Turkish battery on the left."
" Thank you, Colonel. Understood ! All my men, Colonel ?"
" All ! And God keep your souls. Good-bye ! "
" Good-bye, and do not forget our Parastos (Requiem Service)
when you get to Prilep."
The detachment then swung forward and went straight to its
doom.
In some parts of the re-conquered territories the " priest " who
was deputed to welcome the victors, had forgotten the liturgy, so
that he could not officiate even at a graveside. The soldiers, on
several occasions, relinquished their hard-earned rest to fetch the
army chaplain, so that their dead comrades should be buried with
Church rites. Macedonian priests who had abandoned their call-
ing as thankless and dangerous under Moslem rule, still preserved
some of their traditional authority over their co-nationalists. These
divli popovi (wild priests) were often pointed out to the invading
hosts as representative men with whom to treat. The spiritual halo
still surrounded them in the eyes of liberators and liberated. One
of them in a village near Kotchana held up an ikon before which
the troops filed, venerating it as they passed. When asked by an
officer what the ikon was, he said it was a " picture of the Servian
eagle." A sergeant examined the faded painting and declared the
" bird " represented the Holy Ghost, and the ikon was one of the
Holy Trinity. A collection was taken up then and there for the
purchase of a new ikon.
In Tetovo a frightened priest was turned out of his bed at
two A. M. to sing a Te Deum for the capture of the town. The
church being overcrowded, a great number of the troops stood out-
side under pouring rain. I had ample opportunity of becoming
acquainted with the crude conception of their obligations by these
Christian warriors.
" My father told me before I left home," said a patient in the
Sava Mala Hospital, " that the plunderer would be the first to die,
1914-] WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? 361
and sure enough a comrade of mine who took a copper pan from
a house in Prilep was killed in the next engagement."
When Turkish soldiers fled from besieged Adrianople to the
Allies' outposts, the Servians and Bulgarians vied with each other
in tendering relief. Coats were pulled off and flung over the shiv-
ering figures of the fugitives. Hundreds of hands were extended
to offer bread. One regiment consented to share food for three
days with one hundred and sixty Turks; but this, let us say, was
mere humanity, and we are chiefly concerned here with the pecul-
iarly Christian manifestations of the campaign. After the fall of
Adrianople a memorial Mass was celebrated at Chernomania,
where in 1370 the Servian King Vukashin fell in a last effort to
withstand the in-coming Turk. The spot is known in Turkish
by the name of " The Servian Disaster." Here on the rising be-
tween Mustapha-Pasha and Adrianople on the right bank of the
Maritsa, the Danube and Timor Divisions were drawn up, Generals
Rashitch and Stepanovitch at their heads. An imposing array of
army chaplains assisted the celebrant, and the troops spontaneously
joined in the requiem chant. At the words, " Lord give rest to
those who fell in ages past, as well as now, for faith and father-
land," every man knelt on the damp soil.
The Rev. M. Putnikovitch tells me that the last request of
many of the dying on the battlefield was for burial with Christian
rites, and a Parastos memorial Mass as soon as possible. The
favorite word of encouragement on the eve of combat was : " Who
loses his soul for Christ, will find it, and he will be saved."
An Englishman, eyewitness of the charge on Tarabosh led by
Plamenats, thus describes it. " I saw the glitter of a sword lifted
high in the air, swiftly trace the sign of the Cross, and then sink.
Immediately another sword was seen in the same spot, repeating
the sign, and likewise disappearing. This went on till I had
counted seventeen, and then I closed my eyes, sick at watching the
futile loss of life. When I looked again the holocaust was still
going on, the banner quivering as it was snatched from dying hands
by the next victim. Despite the horror of that fruitless butchery, it
holds an inspiration for humanity. It was the triumph of spirit
over matter. These men were sublime."
One of a Servian company ordered to capture the town of
Kavadarats related the adventure to me as follows : " We crossed
the Reka in a leaky boat, four men at a time, and transported the
horses in the same frail vessel. The enemy was not in sight, and
362 WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? [Dec.,
we formed in perfect order on the opposite bank. Ten riders were
sent to parley with the citizens, seeking out in the first place, and as
usual, the Christians So we marched gaily towards the town,
smiling at the groups, of which some seemed to be entire families,
who walked back with us. The Bulgarian schoolmaster stopped us
at the gates while he delivered a short address, and a Servian
lady gave our Commander a bouquet of flowers tied with a ribbon,
on which was embroidered, 'To the deliverers of Kavadarats.'
Then came presents of fruit and flowers, and invitations to
enter any house we liked and share the evening meal. But first
of all we went to the church for a Te Deum, after which our Com-
mander addressed the crowd, which was headed by fifteen leading
citizens. He thanked them for their welcome, and congratulated
them on their freedom. 'Henceforth,' he said, 'there would be equal
laws for Mussulmans and Christians. All shops were to be open
to-morrow and business to proceed as usual.' '
This is how fifty soldiers captured a town of several thousand
inhabitants, one of many equally peaceful conquests. The trium-
phal march of the army, especially in Novi Bazaar, meant nothing
more than a reunion of Christians. At Preshava a soldier told me
that the priest came in his vestments to bless the troops as they
passed through the town.
The director of Christian schools round Tirana in Northern
Albania read the following address to the envoy of the Servian
Metropolitan :
" Reverend Sir: Now that we see among us a figure wearing
the Cross on his breast, proving to us that after five centuries of
persecution Christianity has come again into its own, we have but
one feeling : that of gratitude to God, and to those who risked their
lives in order to give us freedom. The Labarum of Jesus Christ
is among us, and we know that it means freedom of conscience and
the progress of civilization. No righteous-living Mohammedan
has aught to fear. This is what you teach, and what we mean to
follow. Long live our brave deliverers !"
The relatives of the men forming the Twentieth Regiment of
Servian Infantry, in a testimonial to the Commander, General Gav-
rilovitch, said : " We thank you for your fatherly care of the
regiment which stormed the fort that held Shukri Pasha, and we
admire in particular your good example during six months of hard-
ship, for you communicated your firm trust in God to the heart
of each man, and thus led them to victory."
IQI4-] WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? 363
At Mitrovitsa the Commander of the Ibar troops gave a ban-
quet in honor of the jubilee of the army chaplain, Theodor Prokitch.
At its close the old priest rose and presented two antique silver
Crosses to the parish priest of Mitrovitsa. These Crosses had been
bequeathed to the giver by his grandfather, likewise a priest, with
the behest that he should pray on them daily for the Servian Church
in Macedonia. The Crosses were then passed from hand to hand by
the officers, who kissed them reverently.
Entire villages in the vilayet of Salonika thronged to meet the
Greeks, cheering and pressing forward to kiss the guns. As the
Bulgars advanced through Thrace, the people welcomed them by
throwing off their turbans and making the sign of the Cross. No
Turk, however coward, would have done this; they were crypto-
Christians, professing for the first time their belief.
At the conclusion of peace there was no relaxation of the
religious spirit, although the fraternal sentiment which the war had
engendered no longer held good. It has not been sought to prove
here that the Balkan armies were blameless or even worthy Chris-
tians, but that they were in a true sense crusaders. Reverence
for the Cross was ever present among them. The suprem-
acy of the Cross was still the first care of each ally, for the
restoration or erection of the sacred symbol followed wherever
a footing was gained in the Peninsula. Indeed they vied with each
other as to who should be the first to plant it. Religious services
were held in old and new capitals, and at Uskub on Easter Sunday
the Servian Crown Prince received the Blessed Sacrament at four
A. M., together with a great number of officers and soldiers. When
the Skupshtina met, the deputy, Rev. Milan Juritch, affirmed the
religious character of the war upon which the allies had been
engaged.
What took place in the little village church of Kolara on the
first Sunday after the return of its decimated contingent, serves
as an illustration of the prevailing disposition among the peasant
warriors. The parish priest, Rev. Milan Popovitch, embraced at the
porch the maimed and crippled who came on crutches, or were borne
on stretchers by their comrades. When Mass had been celebrated,
he pronounced the following allocution : " In the Name of Christ
I welcome you back, my dear flock, congratulating and thanking
you for having extended Christendom. I rejoice to see that so
many lives have been spared, but you and I are united in mourning
for the dear ones we have lost. Their names will ever remain
364 WAS THE WAR OF 1912 A CRUSADE? [Dec.,
holy to us, for they have suffered in a holy cause, and their widows
and orphans will be to us a sacred trust. My heart goes out to
those among you who, I see, have lost their limbs. Let each know
that according to the extent of his misfortune will be the measure
of honor paid to him in this village. Dear brothers, so severely
tried, we will all be your servants, whether to work in your fields,
or to look after your personal wants. We venerate you as the
chosen among the soldiers of Christ."
The following is a characteristic obituary notice translated
from the Voice of Montenegro : " My best thanks to General Vesh-
kovitch and to Commander Mikish who attended the funeral of my
father Dika, and of my brothers, Jevta, Misha Bogdan, and Ratko,
all killed at the assault of Bardaniol; and thanks likewise to all
who were present at the Month's Mind of my husband Nikola, killed
in the battle of Mokra, and of my sons Mileta and Zaria who died
of wounds received on the same field. All my household have
now died for 'Krst Tchastan i Slobodu Zlatnu,' leaving me proud
but bereaved. MARIA RADOVITCH."
The impetus given by the war to the erection of Christian
churches, is already evident to the traveler in the Balkans. At
Mykonos, a Greek named Plumiscus has partially completed a
chapel erected in commemoration of the safe return from the war
of his nine sons. Some of the new churches in Macedonia have
already been dedicated, and others that had fallen into disuse been
restored. In the Balkan States themselves there has likewise
been a revival in church-building. The villagers of Stashina Reka,
Suvo Dania, Bogove, and Sitaritsa have combined to build a church
at Stavama as a tribute to God in thanksgiving for the victory of
the Christians.
Wherever the Allies were forced to withdraw, Islamism again
resumed its sway. The Turkish Mosque of Alessio was converted
by General Jankovitch's orders into a military hospital, because
from the half-defaced Cyrilic inscriptions on the walls, it was
evident that it had been first a Catholic and then an Orthodox
Church before it became a Moslem temple. The intention of re-
storing it to Catholic worship could not be effected, owing to the
Servians' forced retreat from the land they had conquered. With
their departure it again fell into the hands of the Mohammedans.
With nations, as with individuals, faith is proved in the great
crises of their existence. The faith of the Christian combatants
was earnest, ardent, and courageous. It has been sealed with
1914.] ROBERT HUGH BENSON 365
blood. Their conduct was not always marked by fidelity to Chris-
tian teaching; but the Balkan campaign of 1912 may assuredly be
numbered among the military expeditions universally known as cru-
sades. Foremost among the mixed motives that drove the modern
crusaders to attack Turkey and establish themselves in her place, was
fundamental loyalty to their professed creed. Conviction of the
truth of Christianity gave them the strength that consciousness of
fighting for a just cause alone can give.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON.
BY EDITH M. COYLE.
AFIRE with God you preached His Word to us,
His Jewels of Truth whose glory you had caught
And held, and into which you steeped your mind
And heart and soul these Jewels in glittering heaps
You laid before our spirit's eye. We knew
Before you came the worth of these, God's Pearls ;
But some seemed dulled and others black appeared,
Because the mists of worldliness had crept
Between our souls and them and hid their light.
You came. Close to your heart the Jewels were clasped,
But one by one you brought them forth flinging
Aside the mists that dimmed their light for us.
With master touch you fingered them. You told
In language strong and sweet their worth, their price
Which we had for the time forgot. And soon,
The mists all gone, the fire of the Pearls .
Shot shafts of light and fed the tiny spark
Of love of God that never quite dies out
Within our hearts. The spark to steady fire
Leaped, spread, and wrapt itself about our being.
You went your way. Your work for us was done,
Dear man of God ; and now with God you are.
Forget us not; and pray that to the end,
The flame you helped to light may ever burn
And show the way that leads from earth to God.
"TO PREPARE THE WAY."
BY JULIA C. BOX.
SAW there was something wrong when I entered
the breakfast room. Mother and Aunt Martha are
usually happy and placid as two pussy-cats, though
Aunt Martha is prickly enough with most people, be-
ing afflicted with an aggravated case of New Eng-
land conscience and an illogical mind. She is constantly inter-
preting her prejudices as principles, and insisting on everyone living
up to them, which of course nobody does. George Walters says
he loves to study Aunt Martha because she is so versatile: one
moment she is claiming all men as brothers, and the next she is for
annihilating the ashman because he leaves tracks on the cellar floor
and is a Roman Catholic, for she saw him cross himself when the
furnace room ceiling fell on his head. If you could hear Aunt
Martha say " Roman Catholic," you would appreciate my feelings
when I found out what had upset breakfast's accustomed calm.
As I said, I saw at once something was the matter. Mother had
the little pucker between her eyes that means worry. I tried to
kiss it away, but it came right back. Aunt Martha looked stiff
and uncompromising enough to frighten an army of Patagonians,
who are perfect whales George Walters told me so, he knows all
about them. There was an open letter beside mother's plate.
"Whatever's the matter?" I asked.
Aunt Martha shook her head slow and solemn, " Susan, do
you think you ought to tell her ? "
Aunt Martha is always doing lovely things for me, so I over-
looked this. I am almost twenty, and mother and I have talked
over everything together for years. Mother handed me the letter
and Aunt Martha swallowed hard. This is what I read :
MY DEAR SUSAN:
I have been on the missions steadily the last three months,
and am pretty well tired out. A vacation of two weeks has
been given to me, and I have decided to spend at least part of
that time in my old home town, since I am so near. It will be my
first visit in more than twenty years, and I am looking forward
to seeing you with keenest pleasure and the baby, it's high
1914.] "TO PREPARE THE WAY' 367
time I made her acquaintance. If you can put me up without
inconvenience I shall be glad, but please do not put yourself out,
dear Susan, for I can be very comfortable at the hotel.
Faithfully and affectionately your cousin,
JOHN.
" I'm the baby ! " was my first thought. " But who is Cousin
John? I didn't know we had one."
" Cousin John was Uncle Israel's only son," mother looked as
if she might cry; she always does so when she speaks of Uncle
Israel. She was his favorite niece, and lived with him after her
father died, and he left her this house, where I was born and where
we have always lived.
" But I thought his son was dead," I protested.
" Dead to us." Aunt Martha's voice wore heaviest mourning.
" Goodness me! What did he do kill someone?"
" He broke his father's heart."
" Now, Martha," mother began.
" Susan, you know it is true. He deliberately made himself
an outcast from his family, despite all his poor father could say
or do."
" He did what he thought was right."
" Susan ! Right ! Do you dare defend him ? "
When I told George Walters about it afterwards he said he
knew she was breathing fire.
" I trust he needs no defence in this house, Martha." Mother's
dignity is the gentlest possible, but even Aunt Martha succumbs to it.
" Why, Susan ! " she gasped almost pitifully, " do you mean
are you are you going to ask him here?"
"Of course he must come here. Where else should he go?
It is his father's house, and should have been his, and he is our own
flesh and blood, and was like a brother to me all through my girl-
hood, and never said a reproachful word when the house came to
me instead of to him. Of course he must come here."
I never heard mother so vehement. Aunt Martha was more so,
" But Sarah, Susan, Sarah would you expose the child to such
a a danger? If she should be led astray!"
" Sarah " meant me.
I had stood enough. "Mother," I cried, " is Cousin John a
murderer or a leper, or what? Tell me at once."
" Your Cousin John, dear, is one of the most charming and
cultivated of men."
363 "TO PREPARE THE WAY" [Dec.,
" Then why" I began.
Aunt Martha interrupted me, " Your Cousin John," she said
in despairing and desperate tones, " your Cousin John is a Roman
Catholic priest."
To say that I was surprised is putting it mildly; but what I said
was, " Isn't it good the blue room curtains have just been done up."
Mother beamed at me, " Why so they are. Why, Martha,
Sarah hasn't had a thing to eat all this time; do pass the child
the toast. Here's your coffee, dear."
Naturally I talked it over with George Walters at my earliest
opportunity. George has been my friend ever since I can remem-
ber, the Walters' place and ours are back to back, and from the time
I started to kindergarten George big-brothered me. He is older
than I, and so sweet to mother. She thinks everything of him.
George just laughed when I told him about Cousin John and
Aunt Martha.
" It's the queerest kind of a go, Tippy," he said he will call
me by my baby name in spite of all I can say or do " to think of
Aunt Martha, genial soul, having to break bread with a real Roman
collar." It is a fixed habit of George's to speak of Aunt Martha
as a " genial soul " she is about as genial with him as a glacier.
She thinks George flippant because he jokes about Dr. Phipps, the
rector of the Episcopal church, whom Aunt Martha admires.
" We'll have to consult Jack Flemming."
Jack Flemming is a bosom friend of George; he is quite
handsome and a general favorite, but I do not care much for him,
for he is always laughing at me.
" Why Jack Flemming ? " I inquired haughtily. Though I had
taken it so coolly before mother and Aunt Martha, deep down inside
I had a silly feeling that there was something queer about having
a Catholic priest in the family; nobody I knew had anything of
the sort. It would be strange to have one round. What would
the girls think! The silly feeling came to the surface; I didn't
want Jack Flemming to know.
" He's an R. C. you know, and can put us on to all the ropes."
" Jack Flemming a Catholic! Why, the idea! "
"Huh," said George " huh " is another of his fixed expressions
"if I thought I could get as much out of religion as Jack Flemming
does, I'm not sure I wouldn't try it myself."
I took a leaf out of Aunt Martha's book. " Be careful, you
may be led astray."
1914.] " T0 PREPARE THE WAY' 369
"Astray from what?" George Walters asked.
I had forgotten to question Aunt Martha, so I did not know
how to answer.
Jack Flemming seemed to think we should be immensely set
up at having a priest come to visit us. He and George went to the
station together Sunday night in George's auto to meet Cousin John.
Cousin John was evidently very tired, but also very courteous. The
silly feeling that I had had, went away the minute I saw him, and
I was glad he belonged to us. He didn't look at all like our min-
ister, Mr. Pengally, though the latter is smooth-shaven too, but Mr.
Pengally if he is the minister is just Mrs. Pengally's husband and
the father of the eight little Pengallys ; nor like Dr. Phipps, who is
fat and well worldly it's the only way to describe him. Cousin
John is so beautifully clear-eyed you can almost see into his soul;
I know he can see into mine. When he said, " So this is little
Sarah," I shrivelled on the inside, remembering I had been afraid
of what the girls would think !
He and George Walters seemed to understand each other at
once. When George told him he was an Episcopalian, and Cousin
John asked "high or low?" and George said that owing to his
father being broad and his mother high and his grandmother low,
that he guessed he was a " scrambled " one, Cousin John laughed
quite heartily.
" I've met others," he said, " but they do not often admit it,
Mr. Walters."
The first cloud on the horizon rose when Cousin John an-
nounced he had arranged to celebrate Mass at St. Patrick's during
his stay, and that we were not to be disturbed by his early rising.
" Then you will want a six o'clock breakfast," said Aunt
Martha at once.
" Not at all," Cousin John answered, " I shall be back to break-
fast with you at eight."
" You must have your coffee before you go," continued Aunt
Martha, who is not used to having her decisions questioned.
" Surely, John," added mother, " it is no trouble."
He laughed gently. " No, my dears."
" Absurd," fumed Aunt Martha. " Of course you can't go
out in the early morning without a bite to eat."
" Martha," said Cousin John, " I hope to-morrow morning to
receive the Body and Blood of our Lord. Do you know of any
article of food worthy to take precedence of such a feast? "
VOL. c. 24
370 "TO PREPARE THE WAY" [Dec.,
Aunt Martha was silenced. George Walters said he would
come for him in the auto, and we could go too if we liked. Aunt
Martha said no, but not so frigidly as one might have expected,
and mother said she and I would come.
Aunt Martha came into our room after we went upstairs, and
said of course it was right that we should go with Cousin John, as
he was our guest, hut we should go as outsiders who could have
no part in the superstitious practices we would witness. I asked
her if she thought Cousin John was superstitious, and all she said
was, " There, Susan, what did I tell you?" but she knew perfectly
well he was not.
It seemed odd to be going out so early to church, but it was
lovely with the sun just coming up and everything so quiet and
fresh.
Jack Flemming was waiting for us at the door. He told us
to go in while he took Cousin John round to the sacristy. I did not
know then what a sacristy is, but I have found out since. Aunt
Martha had often deplored the bad taste of Catholic churches, but
nothing in St. Patrick's, at least, supported her charges. And
beyond the fine altars and the beautiful windows there was some-
thing else, not natural, a feeling, an impression that made me
realize I was in church. I never had just that same feeling in any
other church, and I had attended a good many. George said after-
wards it was the same with him.
" I suppose, Tippy," was his reflection, " it's because with us
God's in His Holy Temple on Sundays only, and we have to wait
till Dr. Phipps says so before we know it. But Jack says in the
Catholic church God is really and truly there all the time. I cannot
quite see it, of course; but it would be great to think that way; it
makes everything seem so much more worth while."
We were sitting at the back of the church, but Jack made us
go way up in front where we could see, and then presented us
with little paper " Mass books," Cousin John had sent us, that
contained the prayers and an explanation of the ceremonies. It
was hard to follow, because I wanted to watch Cousin John and
the book at the same time. I don't know what Cousin Martha
would have said, but mother and George knelt and stood up when
Jack did, so of course I did so too.
There were just a few people there. Some Sisters from the
school and Jack and two or three others received Communion. I
could not help thinking I had never really seen Jack Flemming
1914.] "TO PREPARE THE WAY' 371
before. I didn't wonder that George thought so much of him.
There is a place in the Mass where the book says the priest prays
for those he wishes specially to remember, and somehow I knew
Cousin John was praying for us, mother, and dear old prickly Aunt
Martha, and Jack, and George Walters, and me.
And wasn't it strange that to us who make so much of music
and want everything so beautiful and artistic, that this little plain
place, half -dark, and with not so much as an organ note, but just
the occasional bell and the broken murmur of the voices of the
little boys who waited on Cousin John, that even to us outsiders
and strangers it meant something that our own churches never
had meant.
George came into breakfast with us. He wanted to see how
Aunt Martha was bearing up, he explained.
She was divided between melancholy and grimness. ;e Was the
ashman there? " she inquired with frigid politeness.
"The ashman, dear?" mother answered her, "Tony? Why
should he be?"
"As he is the only Roman Catholic I know, Susan, I thought
he might be in the congregation."
Tony is ever a bone of contention between Aunt Martha and
me. He has " ashed " for us as long as I can remember, and he's
just the best, most patient, willing old man that ever was, but
Aunt Martha cannot forgive his occasional spills on the cellar steps.
" I wish he had been there, and I would have sat with him,"
I cried hotly. It hurts me to have Tony sneered at, he is so old
and poor, and we do not even know his name. He says " Tony "
is enough.
" That is the sort of companionship you must expect in the
Catholic Church." I knew Aunt Martha was sorry the minute she
said it; she had snapped it out before she thought of Cousin John.
He was not at all disturbed. " Martha," he said, " it is a curious
fault for a Christian to bring against the Church, that it harbors
the poor and the ignorant. Our Lord chose to live among the
poor and the ignorant, and chose them for His friends; the rich
and the great had to come to Him."
Aunt Martha is pure gold if she is snappy. " I beg your
pardon, John, I am ashamed to have said such a thing I I never
will think it again." The poor dear looked as if she might cry,
but Cousin John wouldn't let her. He started to talk of old times,
and I heard more about the family tree and all its ramifications that
372 "TO PREPARE THE WAY' [Dec.,
morning than I had ever heard before in the whole course of my
life.
Jack Flemming brought Father McDonald, the priest at St.
Patrick's, to call that evening, and he was almost as charming as
Cousin John. I heard Dr. Phipps say to Mr. Pengally that the
Catholic priests had no education, but that is not true, because
Father McDonald studied in Rome, and has traveled all over, and
Cousin John knows everything, and it was splendid to hear them
talk.
But George Walters wanted to know something, and when
George wants anything he goes straight after it. Cousin John had
been with us several days before he got his chance.
" Please tell me, Father Andrews," he began, "do you honestly
believe Christ is really and truly present in in what you call the
Blessed Sacrament that He is not there figuratively or symboli-
cally, but literally, bodily present?"
When Cousin John is talking about family or everyday affairs,
he is just Cousin John, but so soon as religion comes in he is some-
thing far more. It is not a change that comes to him, but an
addition. You forget Cousin John and you see the priest, and yet
as priest he was more my cousin than ever. I cannot understand
it, but it is so.
Aunt Martha nearly jumped off her chair at George's question ;
she had avoided all religious discussion since the ashman episode.
Cousin John, the priest, looked straight into George's soul.
George told me afterwards it went that far.
" I know He is," was all he said.
Aunt Martha groaned.
" May I ask how you know ? " George was tremendously in
earnest; he never even noticed Aunt Martha.
" I have His word."
" You mean the Church teaches that. But I want to know
where the Church got it? "
" From Him."
George looked baffled. Aunt Martha could not stand it. " It
is not in my Bible," she asserted fiercely.
Cousin John turned to her, " May I see your Bible, Martha ? "
I ran to the sitting-room, and brought mother's Bible to him.
" You believe that this is the Word of God, Martha ? " he asked.
Aunt Martha put an extra stiffness in her always stiff back-
bone. " I believe every word in that book is God's Word, but,
1914.] "TO PREPARE THE WAY' 373
John, you needn't hope to convince me that your views are right
and mine wrong by reading me any of the accounts of the institution
of the Lord's Supper. Of course His words are figurative there."
He began to read out of St. John what Christ said about " Ex-
cept ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood ye have
no life in you."
When he finished Aunt Martha said, "Of course that is
figurative. Christ always taught in parables."
" In the original Gospel the words do not indicate a figure of
speech as in the parables. And in the parables, you remember,
Martha, when our Lord was questioned He interpreted them for
His disciples, but here He simply repeats and amplifies His first
statement, and those who heard it did not receive it as figurative.
They said, This is a hard saying. Who can hear it?' and they
walked with Him no more. Martha, can you honestly believe that
He Who was ready to die to save them would have let them leave
Him merely because they could not understand a figure of speech?
Think of His ministry among them; His unfailing and exquisite
courtesy ; His tenderness for their weakness ; remember His stories
of the prodigal son, the kind Samaritan, the good shepherd, for-
giveness and mercy and love reaching out beyond all limits, across
all barriers; He urged them to come to Him as little children. Is
it likely that He would have let them go simply because they were
ignorant or stupid? They knew it was no figure of speech He
uttered; they were accustomed to figurative language. He made
a simple and direct statement, and repeated it. They accepted it
as such. This is a hard saying/ they said, and they went back
and walked with Him no more."
Aunt Martha's grimness had melted into a sort of pitiful
bewilderment ; my darling mother looked as she does when she says
her prayers. I was quite frightened. George Walters spoke :
" By hek! " said George he has lots of those expletives, and
they shock Aunt Martha dreadfully " taking it that way makes
the whole thing clear as daylight."
" How else would you take it ? " Cousin John asked.
" Well, 1 guess I've scrambled that too," said George, but not
a bit irreverently, and Cousin John understood.
He laid his hand on George's arm. " 'Will you also go
away?' " he quoted; " do you remember St. Peter's answer to our
Lord's question? "
" Yes," George's voice was very low, but there was something
374 "TO PREPARE THE WAY' [Dec.,
in the way he said just that one word that made me very glad and
proud of him.
Aunt Martha pulled herself together. " It is eleven o'clock
and after. George Walters, your mother will be looking for you;
it is high time, I am sure."
George never resents Aunt Martha's " throwing him out," as
he calls it; she has done it since kindergarten days. " Yes'm," he
agreed meekly.
After we had gone upstairs Aunt Martha rallied and tried to
argue as usual, but mother would not talk. I read that chapter
Cousin John had been reading. I have always read a chapter
morning and night that way, but I never before thought how much
it all meant. When we said our prayers, mother kissed me on the
eyes and whispered, " God grant we may find and follow the true
light wherever it may lead." Somehow I felt very close and safe.
The next morning after Mass, George had an errand to do for
his mother, and as it meant quite a ride I went with him. He
could talk of nothing but Cousin John and what he had said. That
is George's way; when he gets an idea in his head he cannot rest
till he has settled it.
" Tippy," he began at once, " I believe your cousin is right.
I forgot to go to bed I got so deep in it. I read the whole business,
the Gospels and St. Paul too, everything I could find they said about
it. Surely Christ would never have let those who had been follow-
ing Him, go off that way if He had used only a figure of speech.
He was telling them something important, something that was the
crux of all that He had told them before, and they knew it. They
knew it was the big thing, the important thing, and they could not
accept it, so they went away. If Christ did not mean exactly what
St. John says He did, that whole chapter means nothing. If you
don't take it literally it's childish."
" George," I asked, "are you going to be a Catholic? "
George drew a long breath. " I'm going to be an honest man,
please God," he said, " and if that means being a Catholic, why I
guess I'll have to be one."
" I guess so too, George," I told him ; I forgot all about the
dangers of going astray.
The first thing we saw as we turned our corner was the ash cart
with a front wheel gone, and ashes dumped all over the walk. Of
course there was a crowd around it, and they all began to talk at
once.
1914.] "TO PREPARE THE WAY" 375
" He fell right on his head."
" The wheel come off that easy."
" His back is broken they say the blood was awful."
" They took him right into your house, Miss, your ma said to,
maybe he's killed."
I did not wait for any more but flew into the house, and there
was poor old Tony with his head all bandaged, stretched on the sofa
in the sitting-room. Dr. Langley was beside him. Blood was on
the floor and on the covering thrown over Tony, who was fearfully
pale, and who moaned feebly. Dr. Langley shook his head at
George as if things were very bad. Mother was spreading a white
cloth on her little work stand. "Cousin John has gone for Father
McDonald," she said, " he told me to put these things here."
" These things " were the two candles and the crucifix Cousin
John had put up in his room; there was some holy water too, and
a glass and a spoon.
George said he would go for him, but as he reached the door
Cousin John came up the path. Father McDonald was not with
him, and the crowd at the gate fell back, and the men's hats came
off, and one or two of them knelt. George ran back and picked up
one of the candles mother had just lighted afterwards he told me
he did not know how he came to do it, perhaps Jack Flemming had
told him, in any case it was the right thing to do. I started to say
something, but mother caught my hand.
" Hush, dear," she said softly, " it is the Lord."
We all dropped to our knees, even Aunt Martha. We knew
He was there.
I had never seen anyone die before; I had imagined I would
be frightened, but fright was far from me. My mother washed
poor old Tony's work-worn hands and feet for his anointing, and
Aunt Martha and I helped. Tony clasped the crucifix and whispered
again and again, " Jesus, Mary, Joseph," as if he were speaking
to very dear friends. Cousin John was praying : " Go forth, O
Christian soul," he read, and on and on, and at the last, " May
Christ, Who vouchsafed to die for thee, deliver thee from ever-
lasting death May He absolve thee from all thy sins, and
set thee at His right Hand in the portion of His elect. Mayest
thou behold thy Redeemer face to face, and, standing ever before
Him, gaze with blessed eyes on the Truth made manifest."
And all this was for Tony, our ashman, whom I had been sorry
for, because, poor faithful fellow, he had had to work so hard and
376 "TO PREPARE THE WAY' [Dec.,
been so poor. Suddenly he seemed very rich, and I knew he could
never be tired any more.
He had no family or friends save those he had so humbly
served, so mother kept his body with us until he was taken to the
church, and we all went with him, and for the first time I heard a
Requiem Mass. The music was very solemn, and the Mass! the
Mass was Christ offering again His life and death just for Tony,
the ashman. I knew in my heart the Catholic Church must be His
Church, for only God could have thought of anything so beautiful
as that.
Cousin John had to leave Saturday night to open a mission Sun-
day. We all went with him to the station, and Father McDonald and
Jack Flemming were there too. Cousin John told Father McDon-
ald that he would be back soon, and that he expected Father
McDonald to have us fully instructed and prepared for our reception
into the Church. Father McDonald looked as if he could not
believe his ears.
"Why, why, do you really mean it? All? Of course I am
delighted, but really, do you mean it? "
" Really," Cousin John repeated.
" Most astonishing astonishing isn't the word, it's incredible ;
but how did it happen? "
George Walters answered him, " There was a man sent from
God whose name was John ? "
It was true, and there was another man whose name we did
not know, but we called him Tony. I think God sent him too.
HIS COMING.
BY S. M. E.
THE wars of time had spent their might,
The stars their silent watches kept;
An angel's voice broke thro' the night,
A glory spread its golden light;
The world still slept.
An angel's song chimed peace, good will,
While stars their silent watches kept;
They heard, the shepherds on the hill,
Heard that glad cry that echoes still,
But earth still slept.
A Child had come on earth to save,
While stars their silent watches kept;
In His sweet Blood sin's wounds to lave,
His Life upon the tree He gave !
The world still slept.
His Mother clasped Him to her heart,
The stars their silent watches kept;
Her little Son Who might not rest
Long on that heart the sword-point pressed ;
The world still slept.
Will it ne'er wake, this world of men ?
The stars still silent watches keep
O must we ever say that when
His dear feet come, they pass again
By us who sleep?
RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUVAIN UNIVERSITY.
BY WILLIAM P. H. KITCHIN, PH.D.
HE civilized world heard with a thrill of horror and
indignation that the noble University of Lou vain, the
glory of Catholic Belgium, had been destroyed. How
much more deep and lasting must the regrets of her
alumni be, to whom every stone of the quaint old
city was familiar, who owed their professional training to her, and
who still numbered old comrades within her walls ! It was my good
fortune to spend three delightful years (1899-1902) there, studying
at the Seminaire Leon XIII. , under Monsignor Mercier, then Presi-
dent of the Ecole Superieure de Philosophie, and to-day Cardinal
Archbishop of Malines. Perhaps a few personal recollections of
the university, of its studies, and of its life, may not prove unin-
teresting at the present time.
Louvain combined the systems of both English and continental
universities, inasmuch as a student might live in a college if he chose,
or board with some of the townspeople while following the course
of lectures. For ecclesiastical students there were the Seminaire
Leon XIII. , the College du Saint Esprit, and the American College ;
while the College du Pape, the College Juste Lipse, and some smaller
ones were available for lay students. The courses began in the
third week of October with the Mass of the Holy Ghost celebrated
at St. Peter's, the parish church of the university. The whole
teaching staff assembled at the holies and donned their caps and
gowns. First came two mace-bearers, then the Rector Magnificus,
always a priest, resplendent in purple soutaine and biretta, and black
gown, trimmed with a deep red velvet collar. With him walked
the Vice-Rector, and immediately after them the Doctors of Divin-
ity, distinguished by the red tassels in their caps, then the other
clerical and lay professors, in number about one hundred and twenty.
Down the narrow Rue de Namur they came, past the book stores
and ginger bread stalls, a picturesque procession, followed by dense
throngs of pushing, laughing, shouting students, across the tiny
Grande Place and into the church, to beg God's blessing on the
studies of the opening year. The next day was spent in entering
the students' names on the roll books, and other routine work, and
I9I4-] RECOLLECTIONS OF LOU VAIN UNIVERSITY 379
then the classes commenced in good earnest. The lectures began
at eight A. M., and generally lasted an hour. From one P. M. to
three P. M. there was recess for dinner, at which the cafes and
restaurants would be packed with lay students. For the modest sum
of fifteen dollars a month a student could enjoy two excellent meals
a day. In the afternoon classes were resumed until six. In addition
to the ordinary lectures, there were special cerclcs d' etude like the
German Seminar where promising pupils, under the direction of
their teachers, might follow original research or pursue private lines
of investigation. The results of these studies, when found worthy,
were published in one of the many reviews coming from the presses
of the university.
At the Ecole Superieure de Philosophic the higher course of
Thomistic philosophy, occupying three years, was given. There
Monsignor Mercier had grouped an elite corps of professors around
him, and pupils came from all parts of the world to imbibe the
purest draughts of neo-scholasticism. The various philosophical
treatises published by him and his confreres have been translated
into four languages; while their quarterly review, La Neo-Scolas-
tique, made Catholic scholarship esteemed even in the most prej-
udiced and exclusive of circles. No less than sixty exchange
reviews came to the Ecole, and the students were allowed to read
them twice a week. Monsignor Mercier's lectures were by far the
most popular and well-attended; to this result both the scientific
eminence of the man and the extreme lovableness of his character
contributed. He counted no trouble too great if it meant help to
an earnest student; and he answered every objection, even the
most futile, with unfailing courtesy and good humor. A peerless
psychologist, with a dozen subsidiary sciences at his finger's ends,
Monsignor Mercier's humility was as striking as his learning, and
he had not the slightest hesitation in admitting his ignorance if he
was really uninformed on a particular matter. I remember on one
occasion his deducing a proof of the existence of God from human
language. He presented an immense array of facts to support
his contentions, and then added quite simply : " Of course, gentle-
men, in linguistics I have no personal competence, I have merely
summarized for you the studies of others." The admission only
gains piquancy from the fact that he spoke six languages fluently,
and had some acquaintance with several others. On another occa-
sion, emphasizing the need for clearness and precision and quoting
Boileau's famous line, " ce qui se congoit bien s'enonce clairement "
380 RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUVAIN UNIVERSITY [Dec.,
he said, " So at least I find it, gentlemen ; I express badly only
what I myself do not thoroughly understand."
In addition to his university lectures Monsignor Mercier was
head of the Seminaire Leon XIII. } and assisted by Abbes Nys and
Simons, he looked after the spiritual needs of the forty seminarians
committed to his care. He treated all his pupils as his friends, he
sat at the same table with them, and partook of the same food.
When honors came to him, he took them into his confidence, for he
considered that the distinctions won by him shed lustre on the
seminary and its inmates. One evening he came to supper looking
somewhat preoccupied. As soon as the meal was fairly started
he tapped on his glass with a knife the signal always used to
announce a little speech. " My dear friends," he said, " there's
a piece of good news that concerns me, and I want to have the
pleasure of telling you myself. Your president has been elected a
member of the Royal Academy of Belgium." And while we clapped
and huzzaed him, he stole quietly away. If he happened to go
away during the session he always wrote to Abbe Simons, and the
letter was pinned up in a corridor so that all might read it. Thus
the spirit of his seminary was eminently paternal; he looked on
all his pupils as his children and treated them as such.
One of the events in our scholastic year was the December
pilgrimage to our Lady of Montaigu, a famous shrine of the
Blessed Virgin about twenty miles from Louvain. Those who
were strong and zealous enough walked, and monsignor always
headed the cortege. It required six hours good walking to cover
the distance, and we used to leave Louvain between eleven and
twelve at night so as to reach the shrine early in the morning.
Hymns and prayers along the way, monsignor celebrated Mass on
arriving, and we received Holy Communion from him, while a gala
breakfast taken in one of the nearby restaurants brought our
religious picnic to a most pleasant close. This shrine of the Blessed
Virgin is particularly dear to the Flemish peasantry ; they have the
curious custom of walking round and round the church reciting
the Rosary, and every time they pass the principal altar of flinging
an offering into the sanctuary. The incessant noise and movement
and the ringing of the coins on the stone pavements, seem strange
and distracting to a foreigner, and by no means conducive to devo-
tion.
In vivid contrast to the President of the Seminaire Leon XIII.
was the Professor of Psycho-Physiology, Abbe Thierry. Son of
IQI4-] RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUVAIN UNIVERSITY 381
a wealthy baroness, all the good things of the world were his, when
at thirty he turned his back on them all to enter the Church and teach
science at the Ecole S. Thomas. He had studied psycho-physiology
several years under Wundt at Leipsic, and taken his degree with
the highest honors. At Louvain he built and equipped a magnificent
laboratory at his own expense. But though his knowledge and
zeal were unquestionable, his teaching talents were poor. His
delivery was entirely too rapid ; he delighted in using metaphorical
and far-fetched expressions, and his efforts at explanation generally
rendered the darkness denser than before. Furthermore, whether
for ascetic or other reasons he absolutely refused ever to look any
of his pupils in the face, and he addressed his class with head
tilted in the air, and eyes fixed on a distant imaginary landscape.
I think he was the only man I ever met who had reduced to per-
fectly evident practice St. Francis de Sales' maxim, {f il fant voir sans
regarder." On the other hand Maurice DeWulf, lay Professor of
the History of Scholastic Philosophy, was an excellent teacher,
to whose flowing periods it was a pleasure to listen. His lectures,
published under the title of Histoire de la Philosophie Medieval e,
have gone through five editions, and have been translated into
several languages; while his collection of ancient Belgian Philos-
ophers has been highly praised by specialists. He was peculiar in
that he never laughed, rarely even smiled; and so permeated was
his life and home with philosophy that he called his little son Plato,
and his daughter Scholastica. Abbe Deploige, who became Presi-
dent of the Ecole Superieure on Monsignor Mercier's promotion to
the cardinalate, specialized in social sciences, and published numer-
ous studies on social and economic questions.
Although it is concerning the professors of the Ecole S.
Thomas that I am most qualified to speak, yet one could not live
long in Louvain without coming into contact with many a celebrity.
Undoubtedly the most popular of all the figures of the university
was Monsignor Cartuyvels, Vice-Rector for twenty-five years.
Without distinction as a scholar, he was the best orator in Belgium,
and for that reason frequently selected to preach Advent and Lenten
sermons to the students. His flow of words was unending, and so
great was his facility in speaking that he was said never to have
written a sermon. His appearance was imposing, his voice full,
sweet, and resonant, while a glorious crown of silvery- white hair
gave him a most venerable look. Monsignor Lamy, famed as a
Scriptural scholar, was a plump, rosy-faced old gentleman, for all
382 RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUVAIN UNIVERSITY [Dec.,
the world like a simple country parish priest. Other notabilities
were Abbes Cauchie and Ladeuze, editors of the Revue d'Histoire
Ecclesiastique ; Abbe Carnoy, founder of cellular biology and editor
of La Cellule; Professor Denys, famous for his discoveries in bac-
teriology; and Dr. Van Gehuchten, specialist in nervous diseases
and editor of La Nevrose. Distinguished visitors were constantly
passing through the city, and, whenever possible, arrangements were
made for them to address the students, so that we might know at
first-hand what was being done elsewhere, as well as the aims of
other scholastic centres. Thus Monsignor Battifol, at that time
Rector of Toulouse University, came and exposed his methods of
patristic studies; Baron Kanzler, a pupil of De Rossi, gave some
conferences on Christian archaeology; Pere Ollivier, accompanied
by Pere Lagrange, exposed the hopes and ambitions of the Biblical
school of Jerusalem.
At the great Jesuit scholasticate, which was not connected with
the university, were also to be found many men whose names are
well-known in Catholic scholarship. The Jesuits gave a three years'
course of theology for their own novices, and any others who chose
to attend. This course was followed chiefly by the novices of
religious orders, for instance, the Peres Missionaries de Scheut, the
Peres des S acres Coeurs, the Premontres Canons. There taught
the lamented Pere Genicot, as fine a professor as ever entered a
rostrum, with a marvelous gift of rendering clear the most abstruse
and perplexing questions. His well-known Moral Theology has put
all priests under an obligation to him, and will long preserve his
name from oblivion, but it gives only a poor idea of the charm of
the great teacher's living voice. He had a habit of enlivening
the seriousness of his classes with an occasional humerous anecdote,
and the ease, grace, and simplicity with which he expressed such
things in church Latin was a constant wonder to me. There, too,
Pere Vermeesch, well known since in apologetics, directed a short
course of Canon Law; and Pere Charles Huyghe gave brief but
pregnant commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles. Pere Lahousse, who
published several lengthy treatises on philosophy, had by that time,
I think, given up teaching, but we used to meet him constantly on
our bi-weekly walks a dapper, courtly, and courteous old gentle-
man, who always walked by himself, and read philosophical period-
icals as he strolled along.
An interesting feature in university life were the sales of
books which took place every month during the session. There were
1914.] RECOLLECTIONS OP LOUVAIN UNIVERSITY 383
only three book shops of any size in Louvain : Desbarax, who dealt
in religious and theological works, and Peeters and Fonteyn, whose
specialties were science and literature. The former published a
quarterly catalogue, but never sold his books by auction; the two
latter did a large business by the monthly sales of the libraries and
smaller collections, which they were constantly accumulating. In
fact the entire book trade of Belgium flowed sooner or later to
Louvain, since libraries were continually being sent from Brussels,
Antwerp, Ghent, and other cities to be disposed of among the
students and bibliophiles of the city on the Dyle. A catalogue of
the books on sale for two cents was published a fortnight previous
to the sale, and crowds of students and amateurs thronged the
auction rooms on sale day. Academic books on any subject could
usually be had for one- fourth their cost, but rare volumes, ex-libris,
autograph or presentation copies, always fetched their full value;
the bidding for these was extremely keen, and sometimes ran to
three and four figures.
The feasts and seasons of the ecclesiastical year were always
carefully observed at Louvain, and even the wildest and most
harum-scarum students showed that the faith was strong within
them. The Lenten and Advent Conferences were always followed
eagerly; the lay students went frequently to confession; on one
occasion it took the late Cardinal Goossens more than an hour to
give Holy Communion to the students who presented themselves;
but it was above all on the feast of Corpus Christi that the faith
of the university and of the city found the fullest expression. The
Blessed Sacrament was carried by the Dean of Louvain, assisted by
the cures of the different parishes; all the professors, all the
students, all the religious orders walked in procession ; the garrison
formed a guard of honor, and at each Benediction military honors
were rendered to the Sacred Host; the streets through which the
cortege passed were strewn with flowers and in places carpeted,
the houses were decorated, and every window filled with lighted
candles; it was, in fine, a glorious manifestation in the most public
and solemn manner of the people's belief in the Real Presence of
our Lord a manifestation such as we frequently read of in the
Ages of Faith, but becoming ever rarer in our material and irre-
ligious times.
The conferring of the doctorate in theology at Louvain a rare
and coveted distinction demanding six years of post-graduate work
was always a gala day at the university. The whole professorial
RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUVA1N UNIVERSITY [Dec.,
staff in cap and gown would assemble at the College du Saint-E sprit,
which adjoined the Halles. The Cardinal of Malines, with all his
suffragan bishops, headed the procession; then came the Rector and
his mace-bearers, the Doctors of Divinity and their colleagues cler-
ical and lay. Everyone displayed all the badges of honor, both
academic and civil, that they could muster, and took care, if I may
so speak, to appear in full warpaint. Arrived at the Aula Maxima
of the university, the candidate for the doctorate was placed in a
high pulpit facing all the notabilities of Belgium, and hundreds of
curious eyes as well; and for three hours he had to defend a hun-
dred theses against the keenest reasoners and most erudite theo-
logians of the Netherlands. Rival professors of contending schools
of thought would assemble fairly spoiling for a fight, and deter-
mined, if the wit of man could accomplish it, to put that budding
doctor in a quandary. There the Jesuit Father De San, reputed
the keenest metaphysician of his day, would come to let the uni-
versitaires see that there were more secrets in heaven and earth
than were dreamed of in their philosophy; or the Dominican Father
DeMunnyck would object on the crucial theses of Thomism; or
Abbes Cauchie or Van Hoonaacker would propose difficulties from
Church history or Scripture respectively. It was really an intel-
lectual treat to hear two accomplished word- fencers thus contending,
to witness the swift parry and thrust of answering syllogism and
subsumption. But so well trained are the candidates for this crown
of academic honors, and so many years have they spent in arduous
study, that failure is practically unknown amongst them. After
the mental joust is over, the new doctor is invested with cap and
ring, solemnly welcomed by the accolade amongst his elder brethren,
and a grand banquet, at which his health is enthusiastically drunk,
terminates most agreeably the day's celebration.
The lectures came to an end June 25th, and nearly a week was
allowed for review. During this period of " grinding " for the
examinations in university slang le temps du blocus the town
assumed an unwonted appearance. In the daytime students might
be seen trudging countrywards, carrying their notebooks, to study
in the shady alleys or in the woods surrounding the city. At night
the town was as silent as the grave; and in almost every house
lights proclaimed that their occupants were burning the midnight oil.
The examinations commenced the first week in July, and lasted
nearly the entire month. For every degree a written thesis had to
be presented, and in the case of the doctorate this thesis was to
I9I4-] RECOLLECTIONS OF LOUVAIN UNIVERSITY 385
attain the dimensions of a volume. But it was the oral examina-
tions that the students chiefly dreaded. For there they had to dis-
play their learning not only to their professors, but to their fellow-
students as well. At the head of the hall allotted to each faculty
the professors were seated side by side at a long table; while the
students to be called during the day awaited their turn at the
opposite end of the hall. The various professors examined pupils
simultaneously, while the comrades of these latter, and any strangers
who cared to drop in, looked on from a respectful distance. When
each day's quota had been examined the hall was cleared, the
faculty began their deliberations, the professors compared their
marks, decided what students had failed and passed, what distinction
to accord to the fortunate ones; then the doors were opened and
the momentous result announced to the waiting crowd. The names
of the successful candidates and the honors they acquired were
forthwith posted in the university corridors. The pupils who
failed in the July examinations could present themselves anew for
examination at the opening of the courses in October. After ob-
taining a degree, university etiquette required of lay students that
they give a celebration in honor of the event. For many this
celebration simply meant drinking not wisely, but too well ; and one
might see these hilarious roysterers parading the town in carriages,
adorned with wreaths of flowers and other fantastic decorations,
and proclaiming to all the world their academic success literal
exemplifications of the German drinking song,
Gaudeamus Igitur
Juvenes dum sumus.
To-day all this is a thing of the past ; no academic procession
will pass this year through the streets of Louvain, no thronging
crowds of students fill its lecture-halls. The buildings are in ruins,
the libraries in ashes, the professors dispersed many, no doubt,
broken down with bitterness, disappointment and hardship, dead.
And the eager, careless students have become frantic, maddened
men, athrist for vengeance, seeking blood, being sought themselves
for slaughter. Ah God! that such horrors should be after two
thousand years of Christianity, after fifteen centuries of Christian
education! But Louvain will rise from her ashes, more glorious,
more potent than before, to continue throughout coming centuries
and in future generations her dissemination of Catholic ideals and
Catholic scholarship.
VOL. c. 25
Books.
WILLIAM PARDOW OF THE COMPANY OF JESUS. By Jus-
tine Ward. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.50.
It is well that this biography was written at such an early date.
Father Pardow left but little in finished writing, and hence the
worth of gathering together at once all the notes and records that
remain and of putting in book form the living memories of those
who knew him. The author has given us an interesting and in-
structive tribute to Father Pardow, beloved of thousands. All
who knew him will welcome the book, and we trust that many who
did not know him will take advantage of such a happy introduction
to this noble priest.
As a young lad William Pardow cried because he was not al-
lowed to enlist in the army during the Civil War. As a priest and
a Jesuit he once said, speaking of those who fought and suffered for
Christ, " I too can bleed." In the work of training his character
to the high ideals he had set before him, he was always the soldier
who knew that life was a struggle. He must fight for the crown,
and he fought valiantly. If he was severe with others, he was more
severe with himself. If he was emphatic and aggressive in declaring
the truth, it was because he saw the truth so clearly. It is amazing
how he welcomed criticism and correction from every source. This
habitual view of his spiritual life as a struggle, and a warfare, that
must be carried on till the end, is brought out very clearly by the
author. At the end, he insisted that he be clothed in his habit, for
a soldier should die in his uniform. His incessant labors for souls;
the hearing of confessions ; missions ; retreats to clergy and laity
instruction of converts show clearly how zealously and unselfishly
this priest, simple and sincere, eloquent and apostolic, lived and
died in the service of his Lord.
Of course the volume will be subjected to all sorts of criticism
because it treats of one who died so recently, and who was widely
known. The author may take Father Pardow as an example when
criticism comes, and learn from it. She has done a good piece of
work.
LIFE IN AMERICA ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. By Gaillard
Hunt, LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. $1.50 net.
A learned book is often uninviting to the general reader, but
the present volume by Gaillard Hunt is both learned and delightful.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 387
It is a fascinating picture of life in our country one hundred years
ago. Its detail and intimacy are such as only a master could have
handled.
The reader is not bored by any academic discourse; he is
brought directly into touch with the actuality of life one hundred
years ago. He walks with the people in public and private ; knows
what principles guided them, what hopes inspired them. He sees
their home life and their growing children ; he knows their virtues ;
their weaknesses, and their sins. He travels with them ; hears their
songs ; learns what they ate and wore ; how and what they cooked ;
how they amused themselves ; how they were cared for in sickness ;
how they helped or neglected the poor; how they complained of
social injustice; how they observed Sunday and made religion a
matter of everyday life. And through all the reading he will be
entertained, and instructed also, we hope, by reflections on how
changed a nation we are from one hundred years ago. He will see
a wonderful, almost a miraculous, growth, and he will ask himself
is our national strength proportionate now to what it was then?
In answering the question he will do well to remember two things :
first, that the people then were as a people religious, and even
orthodox ; and, secondly, to use the author's own words, " that the
world has grown since 1815, but the individual has withered."
In the chapter on religion, Mr. Hunt states that " there was
really no connection between the national government and religion,
complete separation having been required by the fundamental law."
It is very important to remember, however, that this did not mean
that the people and their leaders were irreligious. Some of those
leaders- intended the separation to be an exaltation of religion as
something above and beyond the reach of government. The Vir-
ginia Bill of Rights purposely refused to use the word " toleration."
Furthermore, the fathers of the Republic held that religion and
morality were inseparable, and that national virtue could not exist
without religious faith. The States were of the same mind, and so
strong was the conviction of many that they thought the State ought
to support the one in order to obtain the other.
"In 1815, the great Catholic denomination, now the largest of
all, was hardly as large as the Presbyterian. It had begun actively
as an American institution in 1790 under the bishopric of John
Carroll, and when he died in 1815 there were Catholic schools,
convents, and colleges, a Catholic press, and at least one hundred
priests."
388 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
The book has an extensive bibliography and a complete index.
It is an easy introduction to American history, and a pleasant,
profitable volume for readers of all ages.
THE MINISTRY OF ART. By Ralph Adams Cram, Ltt.D. Bos-
ton: Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.50 net.
Mr. Cram in the title of the present book has struck the key-
note of his philosophy of art the conception of the universe as
founded on a sacramental basis, where, from highest to lowest, the
spiritual shines through the symbolism of the material; and the
belief that art shares only less than religion in the intimate revela-
tion of this " inward grace." The spiritual significance of beauty
he believes to be the accumulated " experience and achievements "
of the human soul.
Art, he continues, is not only the expression of the age, the
true historical record of the race, it is more : it is the language of
the soul, " the only adequate expression in time and space of spirit-
ual things." We must bear in mind with this definition, the modify-
ing clause, or we are liable to draw, from other of his observations,
the inference that the raiment is more than the body, the seal more
than the living hand that stamped it.
We might enter into detailed criticism Mr. Cram's book
tempts it, but we will refrain and say that Mr. Cram has
undoubtedly given us a convincing and suggestive argument with
regard to the mission of art, its significance, and its power. He
has imbibed the spiritual message that animated such men as Dante,
Perugino, Raphael, the architects and masons of the great cathe-
drals who have left no record but their work, and all the "soul-
children of the Catholic Middle Ages."
But Mr. Cram has practical suggestions to offer as well as
theories. He advocates a repudiation of the degenerating forms
of art, " of the intellectual superstition of the period of modern
enlightenment," which has succeeded the triple outbreak of the
Renaissance-Reformation-Revolution, and a return to the sincerity
and poetry of early forms. Particularly does he long to see the
restoration of the Gothic. But if he deplores the revolt of con-
temporary art, he also condemns a sterility that from reanimation
cannot push on to re-creation.
He desires to see art-training become an integral and not a
disjointed feature of education. Until this idea of art as an es-
sential and not a mere trimming and accessory of life has penetrated
1914.] NEW BOOKS 389
our modern civilization, he cherishes little hope for the develop-
ment of a great creative impulse among us.
Also, our author laments " the disappearance of the individual,
independent, and self-respecting craftsman," and urges the responsi-
bility "of the architect to search out the individual craftsmen
and to bring them into alliance with himself."
This free field for the exercise of personality was always
accorded the artist and the craftsman during that greatest and
most successful of building epochs, the Middle Ages, and that
it is now denied is due quite as much to the grasping nature of
the architect as it is to the progressive degeneracy of the crafts-
man
In the end, and that we may finally get back to the old
and ideal state of things, we shall have to restore the ancient
guild idea, and as well the workshops assembled around some
great architectural undertaking. If a cathedral is to be built,
or a university, or a public library, with the turning of the first
sod should go the raising of temporary workshops, and the
assembling of the varied workers that will be brought into
play for the embellishing of the fabric.
On American architecture in particular Mr. Cram has some
pertinent observations to make. He dislikes the sham of much of
our present-day effort, and reminds us that " the things that count
are structural integrity, vision, and significance." He sees indica-
tions, however, of a great revival of art, initiated, he believes, in the
last century through the Oxford Movement, and which has " kept
pace, step by step, with the growing consciousness of her Catholic
heritage which, for now three-quarters of a century, has penetrated
the Church of the English-speaking race." Would that the "Church
of the English-speaking race" would take to heart the following
words spoken by Mr. Cram with regard to contemporary art, but
no less fitted to her " whose feet are on the shifting sands." " Back
to medievalism we must go, and begin again. And as to continuity,
that indispensable succession that alone insures the vitality of art
while it parallels that apostolic succession which alone insures the
divine vitality of the Catholic Church, it means that we are not at
liberty to pick and choose among the tentative styles of a crescent
Christianity, but that we must return to the one style "
At least, we trust that one so thoroughly in sympathy with all
things Catholic, as is Mr. Cram, will come to see the analogy, and
appreciate his own advice.
390 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
SONGS OF SIXPENCE. By Annie Farwell Brown. Boston:
Hough ton Mifflin Co. $1.25 net.
Seldom do we find one who can truly appreciate the child's
point of view, and, laying aside the dignities of a grown-up, enter
into its spirit of freshness, and naivete, and wonder. Stevenson
and Carroll, Thompson in his Ex Ore Infantium, have dis-
covered the secret, and if the name of our present writer is not
to rank among such as these, she has, nevertheless, drawn very
close to the " still, small voice " of childhood, and has lost few of its
lispings.
Without seeming to stoop to the childish world, Miss Brown
has, in the external order, at least, found the art of becoming a
child. There are songs written for various occasions and in many
moods some serious, most of them playful dealing with the
everyday things of nature, of child-life and child-imagination.
Among observations in the realm of animal life, there is none
more frankly realistic than the following :
I've noticed how the woolly lamb
Dislikes the rain and dew.
I wonder if he fears to damp
His little garments through ?
How very horrid it would be
If they should shrink when wet !
He cannot take his woollies off
And wear another set.
More serious, but no less original, are the lines on the crescent
moon, " Finger-Nail Moon," as it is christened :
Little Moon, little Moon,
Delicate and white,
You are like the finger-nail
Of an Angel bright.
You alone are plain and clear,
Him I cannot see,
Stretching out his tender hand
Over land and sea.
Little Moon, little Moon,
When you are not there,
Then I know the Angel's hands
Must be clasped in prayer.
1914.] NEW BOOKS 391
The foregoing examples are drawn from a wealth of such
verses. Charming quotations might be multiplied indefinitely, did
space permit. That Taller Poems, and nearly all those in which
the writer slips out of child-land, should be of less interest, one
can readily understand. So thoroughly has she become acquainted
with this realm, that we would wish to chain her there forever.
However, Miss Brown does remain there throughout most of the
book, and in the closing pages gives us that pretty legend of the
Christ-Child and those " First Friends," the animals, who stood
about His crib a legend of the times before the world grew up.
TO THE LAND OF THE CARIBOU. By Paul G. Tomlinson.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.00 net.
Every true lover of the woods and the open sea, will read with
pleasure the story of the trip of the Spray. Some years ago a num-
ber of Princeton men purchased a yawl for Dr. Grenfell, the well-
known medical missionary of Labrador, and a crew of under-
graduates under the care of an expert Newfoundland skipper was
selected to sail the boat along the coast from New York to Labrador.
Many of the adventures of the boys in the story are founded upon
the actual experiences of the cruise, although the author has touched
up the details a bit, so as to make his young readers long the more
ardently for the joys of salmon fishing, caribou hunting, and cruis-
ing among the fogs and icebergs of the North Atlantic coast.
THE RED ASCENT. By Esther W. Neill. New York: P. J.
Kenedy & Sons. $1.00 net.
" In ancient days the cliffs outside of Jerusalem were the battle-
ground for many warring chieftains. They have witnessed so much
bloodshed that they have been rightly called the- 'Red Ascent.' But
cannot the path of every man, who struggles to attain the heights
of idealism, be likened to that bloody road ? "
This valiant effort, as typified in Dick Matterson, convert and
seminarian, form the main theme of the present tale which, as our
readers know, was published as a serial in THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
Duty calls Matterson from the seminary to the aid of his family.
He takes charge of the farm, and labors long, under the most
trying difficulties, to rebuild the family fortunes. An unsympathetic
father and a charming but frivolous sister make the task none the
easier; and little by little he begins to loose his grip on the loftier
purposes of life. The glamour of prospective wealth, which looms
392 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
suddenly near, serves but as an added temptation. A sudden and
unforeseen catastrophe, from which the hero escapes unscathed,
restores, however, all things to their proper balance, though the fate
of Jessica, the very delightful heroine, is a trifle unconvincing.
The story is entertaining at all points, the characters animated
and interesting, and we feel sure that the book will be deservedly
popular as a gift for the holiday season.
THOSE OF HIS OWN HOUSEHOLD. (Madame Corentine.)
By Rene Bazin. Translated by L. M. Leggatt. New York:
The Devin-Adair Co. $1.25 net.
The spiritual significance of Bazin's works, though uttered
through the medium of French thought and local custom, applies not
alone to his own country, but wherever Christian idealism still pre-
vails, or is heroically maintaining a struggle for existence. In The
Nun, The Barrier, Davidee Birot, Bazin has treated with remarkable
pow^r and insight the great religious problems of the day and
treated them conclusively, for, without seeming to moralize, he
has pointed unmistakably to their solution. Catholicism, vitalizing
every thought and action of the individual, extending from the
individual to the nation till the whole be leavened, this is the answer
he would propose to the distracted modern mind.
In the present work, Bazin has selected a theme more personal,
but not lacking in the significance of his more avowedly religious
books. It takes us to Brittany, the land of the fisherfolk, and of
the sea, and relates for us the story of two of its inhabitants, Guil-
laume L'Hereec and Corentine, husband and wife, separated through
early misunderstandings, and at last reunited by the loving tact
of their little daughter, and the rugged old grandfather. The
story is simply told, as befits its Breton setting.
The book from beginning to end will hold the reader. The
work of translation is, in places, not altogether smooth, but these
slight deficiencies do not obtrude themselves unpleasantly for, on
the whole, the translation is good, and the interest of the reader
will not lead him to be hypercritical. Rene Bazin, past-master of
description and analysis, has in this book created an atmosphere
and developed characters that will impress themselves indelibly on
the mind. He has moved us to listen to an effective sermon on
domestic peace, on the love of husband and wife, united more
strongly in the child, and on its power to subdue pride and obliterate
the past.
I9I4-] NEW BOOKS 393
THE QUESTION OF MIRACLES. By Rev. G. H. Joyce, S.J.
The Catholic Library No. 13. St. Louis: B. Herder. 30
cents net.
Father Joyce has written this treatise against those modern
liberal Protestants who profess a non-miraculous Christianity.
Speaking of the modern denial of miracles he says : " These ten-
dencies towards the denial of all supernatural interference have
found no foothold within the Catholic Church. In her teaching
there is no hesitation or ambiguity. She points, as she has ever
pointed, to the miracles of Christ as one of the firmest grounds of
our belief in His claim. And she asserts with confidence that the
age of miracles is not past, but that God still manifests His power
by such events."
The present volume sets forth clearly the true idea of a miracle,
its possibility, its proof, its evidential value. Special chapters are
devoted to the miracles of the Gospel and to ecclesiastical miracles.
Father Joyce shows how untenable are the objections urged against
miracles, and how overwhelming is the evidence for their actual
. occurrence.
A LAYMAN'S RETREATS. By Henry Owen-Lewis. Edited by
Edmund Lester, SJ. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.25
net.
This little volume contains the notes left by Mr. Owen-Lewis,
an English convert, of nine retreats that he made under the Jesuit
Fathers at Manresa. As Bishop Hedley remarks in his preface,
this book is valuable, not only because it brings out clearly the great
features of the admirable Ignatian spiritual groundwork, but also
because " it lets us see a soul in the process of purifying and ele-
vating itself by the spiritual exercises and makes us follow
him in his genuine acceptance of practical Christianity regular
prayer, strictness and self-denial in food and recreation, carefulness
in speech, considerateness to others, loyalty to the Church, and the
courageous profession of Catholic life."
OUTSIDE THE WALLS. Tributes to the Principle and Practice
of Roman Catholicism. From our Friends Fuori le Muri.
By Benjamin Francis Musser. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.25
net.
This is an excellent book to put in the hands of a prejudiced
Protestant who sees red whenever the doctrines and practices of
394 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
the Catholic Church are mentioned. He will certainly read with
surprise the many beautiful tributes which his brethren, clerical and
lay, have given to the celibacy of the priesthood, the Church's strong
stand on the marriage question, the zeal of her missionaries, the
labors of her religious orders, and the efficacy of the confessional.
GOD, MAN AND RELIGION. By Ernest R. Hull, S.J., Editor
of the Bombay Examiner. New York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons.
25 cents.
This is the first of a series of apologetical pamphlets which
Father Hull is preparing on the importance of religion, the truth
of revelation, and the divinity of the Catholic Church. This volume
deals with the existence of God, His chief attributes, the nature
of the human soul and its final destiny, the relations between the
soul and God, and the necessity of religious worship and moral
service.
The book is intended primarily for unbelievers and doubters,
although it will enable Catholics also to realize more fully the
meaning of what they believe, and increase their intellectual knowl-
edge of God and man.
LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF A MISSIONARY. By
Rev. W. B. Hannon. St. Louis : B. Herder. 75 cents net.
Father Hannon has given us about one hundred good stories
from his missionary note-book. They set forth in an impressive
manner the evils of drunkenness, irreligion, human respect, cov-
etousness, mixed marriages, Masonry, and spiritism.
ATLAS HIERARCHICUS. By P. C. Streit, S.V.D. St. Louis:
B. Herder. $10.00 net.
In view of the great development of Catholic missions and the
increase in bishoprics during the pontificate of Pius X., Father
Streit intended to publish an enlarged edition of his Catholic
mission atlas of 1906; but at the special request of the Roman
Curia he published the present volume instead, which he had called
an heirarchical atlas. This unique volume gives a general sketch
of the various dioceses of the Catholic world, together with their
divisions, statistics, history, ethnography, etc. There are thirty-
six maps which are the last word in modern chartography, and an
index of nearly twenty thousand cities and mission stations.
The work is published in five languages, German, Italian,
1914.] NEW BOOKS 395
French, English, and Spanish. It is a volume that should be in
the hands of every Catholic, and on the shelves of every library of
the world. We regret to state that the English translation is full
of misprints and grammatical mistakes.
RESTATEMENT AND REUNION. By Burnett Hillman Streeter.
New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.00.
After reading Mr. Streeter' s book, we realize fully the dismay
felt by zealous High Churchmen at the inroads of Modernism
and unbelief in the Church of 'England. Most of his restatement is
a symbolic reinterpretation of the creeds in the light of modern
German rationalism, and his notion of reunion is an illogical,
" comprehensive " alliance or federation of think-as-you-please
Churches. Our author believes that " the future of Christianity
depends on its being proved to be possible to dissociate belief in the
Divinity of Christ from any necessary dependence on the Virgin
Birth;" that " as the interpretation of Scripture has been revolution-
ized in our time, the creeds must also be reinterpreted;" that it is
absurd to select sixty-five books of the Old Testament and the
New and call them alone inspired ; that " the language of St. Paul
was in no sense philosophic, but picture thinking (sic) derived from
contemporary Apocalyptic," as, for instance, his conception of the
Person of Christ : " that the traditional statements of the doctrines
of the Incarnation and the Atonement are out of touch with modern
thought;" "that the original type of organization in the primitive
Church was not intended to last."
Mr. Streeter says a great deal about the need of authority in his
book, but of course it is not the infallibility of the Catholic Church,
which " is the tyrant's claim," but an authority which " does not
coerce minorities or believe in the right of compulsion, but consists
solely in moral prestige." An authority, in a word, that will allow
a man to be free to hold any doctrine that he pleases, and to obey
a command when it suits his fancy. Will you say that this is il-
logical ? Our author will reply " that the man or the Church with
a gift for logical system is the most likely of all to reach wrong con-
clusions." Are we reading Alice in Wonderland?
ROMANISM IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY. By Randolph H.
McKim, D.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25 net.
The very title of Mr. McKim's book is a good indication of
what the reader may expect to find in the author's unfair and
396 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
insulting pages. Such a travesty of Catholic teaching, such a
multitude of false statements, such unqualified approval of un-
believers like Zola, Blanco White, and McCabe, we might
expect to meet in the pages of the Menace or the Liberator, but
not in a work written by a minister of Christ. We feel confident
that many of his confreres must be ashamed of such an incompetent
and unscholarly defence of the claims of Protestantism. A man
that tells the American people that Cardinal Gibbons is a liar and
a modernist in one breath, is simply beneath contempt. What
enemy of Mr. McKim could have advised the publishing of this
poorly-arranged and poorly-written hodge-podge of dishonest anti-
Catholic polemics?
GITANJALI. By Rabindranath Tagore. New York: The Mac-
millan Co. $1.25 net.
Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet, has presented us in
Gitanjali with a number of "Song Offerings/' chiefly religious in
character.
" Presented " is perhaps an infelicitous word, for in reading his
lines we have rather the impression of stumbling by accident into
some shaded retreat, where a player, unaware of our presence,
blows on his reeds, than of flinging wide our window to some street-
singer who warbles for our pleasure, or still more sordidly for our
pennies. There is undoubtedly the childlike and unconscious note
in his thought, the quality of " overheardness." His delicacy of
diction, his imagery of nature, though a bit too decorative and
unvigorous for our Western taste, cannot fail to cast at least a
superficial spell. But let us not go farther, nor attribute to that
spell an esoteric quality or significance which it does not possess.
The East has glamour, but it is the glamour of the mirage mocking
our pursuit.
It may be that the reader will think he has found a likeness
to Christian thought in many of Tagore's utterances. But we must
not be deceived by mere words ; the body does not always express
the soul. A graceful superstructure on insecure foundations is
a shame, a " house built on the sands." Penetrating, then, beneath
words that might seem to carry at times almost the message of
Christian mysticism, this is the skeleton that reveals itself :
Thou settest a barrier in thine own being and then callest
thy severed self in myriad notes. This thy self-separation has
taken body in me.
1914-] NEW BOOKS 397
Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch in the allness
of the universe When I go from hence let this be my
parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable
In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play, and
here have I caught sight of him that is formless.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail
vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with
fresh life. I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of
light, and pursued my voyage through the wildernesses of
worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.
And again when it shall be thy wish to end this play at
night, I shall melt and vanish away in the dark, or it may be
in the smile of the white morning. Nothing shall be left for
me, nothing whatever, and utter death shall I receive at thy feet.
Such fragments will sufficiently manifest his philosophy : Pan-
theism; the all-sufficiency and comprehensiveness of this "play-
house of infinite forms;" the almost endless wanderings of the soul
through its many rooms, and its final re-absorption into the " One-
ness " of the universe. No wonder that he laments " The time of
my journey takes long, and the way of it long," and cheerless, we
fear, that "innermost shrine" of his, where waits, not personal union
with the Deity, but the surrender of identity shall we not rather
say, .annihilation? To use the poet's own words with regard to a
symbolic landscape, " What emptiness do you gaze upon ! "
Only when he forgets his inheritance, is it possible for a Chris-
tian to be tricked by the false color and drowsy spices of the Garden
of the East. There are gardens where all fair shapes are carrion,
and the gaudy flowers are death to touch. Shall we have to say
with Tagore, " I forgot for what I had traveled, and I surrendered
my mind without struggle to the maze of shadows and songs?"
THE CASE OF BELGIUM IN THE PRESENT WAR. Published
for the Belgian Delegates to the United States. New York:
The Macmillan Co. 25 cents.
On September 16, 1914, President Wilson received M. Henri
Carton de Wiart, as a special envoy from King Albert of Belgium,
to protest against Germany's violation of Belgium's neutrality, and
the laws of international warfare. This little brochure of one
hundred and twenty pages contains the findings and proceedings
of the Belgian Commission of Inquiry, the address of the Belgian
Minister of Justice, and our President's polite but non-committal
answer.
398 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
OUR FAILINGS. By Rev. Sebastian Von Oer, O.S.B. Trans-
lated from the Tenth Edition by the Countess A. Von Bothmer.
St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.10 net.
These simple spiritual talks are intended as " an incentive to
self-criticism," as the author himself tells us. He writes with the
one idea of helping us to correct our many faults, and to judge the
failings of others more leniently. Many a complacent penitent, who
comes to confession conscious of no sin, might read with profit
Father Von Oer's kindly sermonettes on touchiness, loquacity, petti-
ness, false shame, want of tact, curiosity, vanity, self-indulgence,
and worldiness. We recommend his book highly to those who
desire help in their daily examination of conscience.
THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN. By H. G. Wells. New
York: The Macmillan Co. $1.50 net.
Mr. Wells' new novel tells the story of a loveless marriage.
As usual, every character pictured is pagan to the core hard-
hearted, irreligious, sensual, worldly, and selfish. " A woman,"
according to Sir Isaac, " had to be wooed to be won, but when she
was won, she was won. He did not understand wooing after that
was settled. There was the bargain and her surrender. He on his
side had to keep her, dress her, be kind to her, give her the appear-
ance of pride and authority but he was to have undefined
powers of control." Lady Harman, the ignorant, innocent, and
submissive wife, gradually develops into a worldly-wise, rebellious
woman, insisting on her rights, even to the extent of serving a
jail sentence as one of England's absurd militants. Sir Isaac
tries for a time to play Petruchio, but he is finally forced to com-
promise by fostering his wife's pet scheme of hostels for the inter-
national waitresses, and by giving her a certain measure of freedom.
Like most men of his school, Mr. Wells lays his finger on the
evils of our modern social life, but he fails to suggest an effective
remedy. He pictures well the modern unintellectual and irreligious
business men of the day : " They care no more for the growth,
the stamina, the spirit of the people whose lives they dominate than
a rat cares for the stability of the house it gnaws. They want
a broken-spirited people. They were in such relations willfully
and offensively stupid." Of course in the New State all this cal-
lousness will disappear, and all men will be brethren. " The hidden
reality which makes all things plain " will solve all problems, though
how or why does not appear.
I9I4-] NEW BOOKS 399
HEROES AND HEROINES OF FICTION IN MODERN PROSE
AND POETRY. By William S. Walsh. Philadelphia: J. B.
Lippincott Co. $3.00 net.
This volume, containing brief sketches of the famous characters
of fiction, romance, poetry, and the drama, will not only prove a
useful book of reference, but will serve to recall many a delightful
book or favorite, half -forgotten character. We regret to note,
however, that some important omissions have been made. We fail
to find Katherine of Aragon, who figured so prominently in Skakes-
peare's Henry VIII. , and Mary Stuart, the subject of so many
historical romances. Another royal lady, Zenobia, Queen of Pal-
myra, whom many have become acquainted with in W. Ware's
novel of that name, and Cardinal Wiseman's Fabiola are also ex-
cluded from this romantic gathering. Rene Bazin's and Robert
Hugh Benson's characters have likewise been slighted, though
surely they have sufficiently impressed themselves on the modern
mind to gain recognition. But oversights of this nature must
be pardoned in view of the wealth of information comprised in the
present volume.
OUTLINES OF THE WORLD'S LITERATURE. By Harold
Binns. St. Louis: B. Herder. $2.25 net.
Mr. Binns has attempted for the first time in English to provide
students with a single- volume epitome of all the principal literatures
of the world. Most of his book has been allotted to Greek and
Latin authors, and to the five chief literatures of modern Europe :
English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Textbooks of this
type are most unsatisfactory to the general reader, as they are
obliged to omit many important names, and to treat rather super-
ficially the life and works even of the greatest masters of literature.
Still in the hands of a competent teacher, the present volume can be
made very helpful.
THE SPIRIT OF CARDINAL NEWMAN. With a preface by C.
C. Martindale, S.J.
THE SPIRIT OF FATHER FABER. With a preface by Wilfrid
Meynell. New York: Benziger Brothers. 50 cents net.
These companion volumes of The Spiritual Classics of English
Devotional Literature present, in substance, the writings and con-
sequently the spirit of two men of different gifts and temperament,
400 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
both sons of the Church by adoption, and both great warriors in
her cause.
Turning to the first of these volumes, we are struck by the
marvelous versatility of a mind which could write with force and
attractiveness on so many and such varied subjects. The style,
searching, masterful, and pure, is at once an exercise and a relief
to the mind surfeited with the literary extravagances of the day.
But it is not merely to synthesize the thought of the great English
Cardinal that these selections have been made, but to incite the
reader to further investigation of his works, to arouse his interest
in the character and life of their author.
As to the gentler Father Faber, his spirit, too, dignified, poet-
ical, and quiet, reveals itself in the little volume we have in hand.
There is much of Fenelon's saneness and sweetness in his spiritual
counsels ; of his penetration, too, in detecting human frailties under
the mask of spirituality.
Though chosen from various portions of their writings, the
selections are comprehensive and coherent. We can list but one
objection; the omission to indicate the source from which they
have been drawn. We regret to find none of Faber 's poems in-
cluded, for surely they are essential in grasping his spirit. The
editor has been more generous in the case of Newman, giving us
several of his most beautiful religious lyrics, and closing with
The Dream of Gerontius.
INDEX TO THE WORKS OF JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEW-
MAN. By Joseph Rickaby, S.J. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. $1.75 net.
Father Rickaby writes in his preface : " I claim that this Index
be tried by these three questions : 'Did Newman say this ?' 'Did he
ever unsay it, and if so where?' 'Are there any notable sayings
of his not brought into due prominence ?' ' The volume is not a con-
cordance or onomasticon, but a safe guide to Newman's thought,
in its changes and its final development. In his last days the Car-
dinal republished some of his Anglican works, with notes not infre-
quently opposed to the text. The chief retractations have been in-
dicated in the Index by a phrase familiar to readers of St. Thomas,
sed contra. We noticed some omissions, but such a book could
only be perfected by use. It has been for the compiler a labor of
love.
1914-] NEW BOOKS 401
THE WOLF OF GUBBIO. By Josephine Preston Peabody (Mrs.
Lionel Marks). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.10 net.
In the mass of literature that has been inspired of late years
by the " Little Poor Man of Assisi," there is little that has retained
the true Franciscan spirit, or the flavor of medievalism. This com-
plaint cannot be urged against The Wolf of Gubbio. Its author has
given us the real Francis, filled with the divine intoxication of
charity, the simplicity and the lyric gladness of the child. The
remaining characters of the play are quite as genuine not modern
men and women tricked up in the garments of yesterday, but the
real quarrelsome, whole-hearted, faith-led people of the Middle
Ages, set in the proper atmosphere of belief and wonder.
The greater part of the action takes place in the little Umbrian
town of Gubbio. Here St. Francis comes to celebrate Christmas
Eve with its inhabitants, and here like his blessed Master, Who
would not quench the smoking flax nor bend the broken reed, he
cures and binds, with the infinite tact of charity, the ugly wounds
of human avarice and pride, and leads his brothers one and all to
the vision of the manger.
Two stories, inter-related, and very simple in theme, form the
plot the conversion by St. Francis of "Brother Wolf," who in
times past preyed on the inhabitants of Gubbio, and the finding of
a lost babe who is to be Christ-Child of the blessed scene about to
be enacted.
The Saint's welcome to the townsfolk, the baker, the potter, the
furrier, the dyer, with their wives and daughters, to " Brother
Thieves," and " Brother Louis, from sweet France," as they gather
to the holy place seems to come straight across the years to us from
the lips of "II Santo."
Welcome, beloved! Welcome ye
All met in one glad company;
Each one a singing and a light
To praise the holy night !
Like little sorry stars we are,
And dim and small and late and far,
That follow the one Star.
Mrs. Marks has given us a play that shows intimate knowledge
of, and thorough sympathy with, her subject, a play that has caught
the warmth of the Christmas spirit and the evangelical simplicity of
God's Little Poor Man.
VOL. C. 26
402 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
THE LOST BOY. By Henry Van Dyke. New York: Harper
& Brothers. 50 cents net.
Henry Van Dyke has written another of his Christmas stories,
taking as his theme this time the losing of the Child Jesus in Jeru-
salem. It is beautifully written, but the fact of our Lord's Divinity
seems to be utterly lost sight of.
r PHE Mount Carmel Guild, Buffalo, New York, has issued, as in
* former years, a Catholic Calendar for 1915. Quotations drawn
chiefly from Catholic sources, and expressing as far as possible the
spirit of the season or of the special feast, have been fitted to each
day of the year. Each month is prefaced or brought to its conclu-
sion by a poem. The attractive appearance of the Calendar will
recommend it as a suitable gift for the Christmas season. The price
of the Calendar is fifty cents, ten cents additional for mailing, the
proceeds to be used for charity.
A SPLENDID reproduction of a painting by Kaufman of our
** Holy Father Pope Benedict XV. has been issued by Benziger
Brothers. The price is fifty cents.
'THE America Press has published a timely pamphlet entitled
1 Justice to Mexico. It includes the review of the attitude of
the United States towards Mexico, which appeared in the Columbiad
for October, and two editorials from America, entitled An Appeal
for the Persecuted and Shameless Brutality. The pamphlet sells
for five cents a copy, and three dollars per hundred.
WE have read with great pleasure the Centenary Number of the
Downside Review, edited by the Abbot of Downside.
The volume contains a brief account of the history of Downside for
the past one hundred years, a sketch of the controversy with Bishop
Baines, a record of the Australian mission, and short notices of
the buildings at Downside, its library, its martyrs, and its distin-
guished alumni. A number of excellent portraits complete the
volume.
periobfcate.
Samuel Butler of "Erewhon." By Canon William Barry.
Now that Natural Selection is admitted to be no sufficient ex-
planation of the diversity of animal species, and the most widely-
read of English journals announces the discourse by Professor Wil-
liam Bateson at the recent Australian meeting of the British Asso-
ciation under the ominous, title Darwin Dropped, it may not be out
of place to recall a man who opposed " Charles Darwinism " when
it was held to be the last word of science, and who " dared to think
himself," in his own presumptuous words, " a match for the most
powerful literary and scientific coterie that England has ever
known."
Samuel Butler was born in 1835 and died in 1902. Born and
bred in a rectory, he described such life with pitiless realism in his
novel, The Way of all Flesh. Refusing to become a clergyman,
he made money for four years and a half as a sheep farmer in
New Zealand, and here, in 1862, was published his first work, a
dialogue on Darwin's book. A skit in 1863, Darwin Among the
Machines, gives the germ of " Erewhon," published in 1872. The
argument of this volume is, roughly, to the effect that " if mechan-
ism without a directing principle to make or guide it, could produce
the almost innumerable species which we now see spread over the
face of the earth, as in sky and ocean, no reason could be suggested
why machines should not, by and by, govern mankind." The people
of Erewhon (read Nowhere), as a logical consequence, put their
machines to death.
Butler took his stand with Paley on the argument from the
design manifest in the structure and function of living beings, " and
he maintained, as a matter of history, that the credit attaching to
a theory of evolution should be given to Buffon, Erasmus, Darwin,
and Lamarck." "He tracked, through the various editions of the
Origin of Species, changes in text, concessions to his arguments in
favor of Lamarck, and silent (that is to say, unnotified) admissions,
from which he drew a heavy indictment against the author's
candor." Butler's own explanation, that modifications are due to
long, inherited habit, that is, to unconscious memory, if not the true
explanation, was, at least, then, original, and transferred the problem
" from the outside of life where Darwin had given it up, to the very
core of substance and the springs of action."
Butler's other achievements (he himself enumerates seventeen)
include notable appearances as a painter, musician, writer of ro-
404 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec.,
mance, Homeric scholar, and essayist. In the field of religion, he
was openly anti-Christian, " a Voltairian born out of due time;" he
maintained that the Odyssey was written by a woman, probably
the Princess Nausicaa; in music he endeavored to copy Handel.
He " anticipated, ironically, the Elmira system of treating criminals
for disease, and the Galton doctrine of eugenics," and as a satirist
he bitterly rebuked our false conventions. In spite of patent per-
versities, he is " a great English writer, known to few while he
lived, but now, like the melancholy Burton, 'to fewer still un-
known/ ' The Dublin Review, October.
" Religio Medici " and Mr. G. K. Chesterton. By Lewis Watt.
Mr. Chesterton " is as much a child of his times as Sir Thomas
Browne." But " the party-system and the Reform Acts have made
him a democrat, as the excesses of the Puritans made Sir Thomas
an aristocrat." Unlike the Medicus, Mr. Chesterton " has all the
passionate attachment to clear-cut dogma, all the dislike of misty
margins in thought, all the insistence that " what is true is true," of
a Grand Inquisitor. He would have made an excellent understudy
for Torquemada. He might not have " looked the part," but he
would have played it to perfection." Both Chesterton and Sir
Thomas Browne look with cheerful optimism on the cosmos. Both
are Anglicans, but both " conscious of the attractions of a greater
church set on a hill." Both are mystics in that " they know there
is something more in the cosmos than meets the eye." Mr. Chester-
ton wisely fears the abuse of reason, but Sir Thomas was ready to
believe anything, even in defiance of reason. Both, though with
different methods, have tried to give us their answer to the Riddle
of the Universe. Both write in a crisp and sparkling style, but the
earlier is the more dignified ; " he is, in a word, Chestertonian but
not Gilbertian." The Month, November.
The Dublin Review (October) : W. H. Mallock summarizes
Catholic Democracy, Individualism, and Socialism, by Father Day,
S.J., and praises the author's qualifications for his task and his
fairness towards opposing views. Hilaire Belloc describes The
Modern French Temper as excessively " objective." It insists
" upon the mathematical in abstract, upon the physical in concrete,
learning. It accounts for the peculiar method, certain, logical,
somewhat arid, running throughout the modern intense apologetic
for religion in France; the somewhat older- fashioned, but equally
intense defence of pure skepticism. It accounts for the excesses of
realism in literature," for the deliberately calculated policy of colon-
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 405
ial expansion and European restraint, "for the absence of speculative
commercial adventure, and for the presence of more regular invest-
ment particularly in foreign loans." " Enthusiasm is held in
check," and the marvelous so suspected that it is more than un-
welcome even when proved to be true. This temper has, in military
affairs, discountenanced and excluded fine uniforms, the artificial
attitudes of parade, exact alignments, the regimental feeling; it
accepts initial defeat with indifference, and thinks retirement as
much a part of the general plan as the subsequent advance. In
public life it leads to printing about public men those criticisms
which in other countries men only dare to speak. All nations are
badly ruled, but only the French know it.
The Church Quarterly Review (October) : In Nature Miracles
and the Virgin Birth, the Rev. Arthur C. Headlam replies to Dr.
Sanday's letter in the Kikuyu affair. Sir Frederic Kenyon
expresses disappointment over Von Soden's Edition of the New
Testament, and over Professor A. C. Clark's attempts to determine
the number of letters in a unit line of the original Biblical manu-
scripts. Rev. C. R. Norcock reviews the life and work of St.
Gaudentius of Brescia, prominent in ecclesiastical affairs between
A. D. 404 and 410, a respected scholar, a famous preacher, a revered
prelate, and a loyal friend of St. Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, and St.
Augustine. F. B. Jevons devotes a long article to Sir James
Frazer's Golden Bough, showing how the latter uses as facts mere
hypotheses, and, what is worse, hypotheses which in other parts of
this voluminous work he himself declares worthless.
The Tablet (October 31) : Tributes to Cardinal Gasparri and
to the late Monsignor Benson and Reverend Mother Janet Stuart
form the longer articles. Apropos of Dr. J. G. Vance's critical
study of Roger Bacon's work in the October Dublin Review, W. H.
K. is " disposed to regard the learned Dublin reviewer as an uncon-
scious advocatus diaboli." One of the " damning counts " against
Bacon is his Speculum Astronomic, but Bacon's authorship of this
work is extremely doubtful, as even Pere Mandonnet, O.P., admits,
and Mr. A. J. Rahilly, among others, is inclined to attribute it
rather to Albertus Magnus. Further, to say that Bacon's Com-
pendium Studii Philosophic? contains " a violent and indiscriminate
attack on everybody and everything," is to forget that its pages
contain a handsome tribute to Grosseteste and other scholars ; while
the denunciations of the Roman Curia which it also contains, are
406 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec.,
explained by the fact that Bacon attributes them, " not to any evil
activity on the part of the Popes, but to the unhappily prolonged
vacancies in the Holy See, and the undue interference of imperial
politicians." Finally, Bacon severely blamed the insufficient Scrip-
tural studies of his day, while Dr. Vance points in answer to a long
list of commentaries from that period on nearly all the books of the
Old and New Testaments. But, W. H. K. asks, what about the
relative importance attached to the study of the Bible and that of
scholastic divinity and philosophy? Of the twenty-one volumes of
Albertus Magnus and the eighteen of St. Thomas, only four volumes
by each author are Scriptural commentaries; and neither of these
masters, nor any one of their contemporaries, was as competent in
the latter field as in philosophy and theology. Much has been done
since Trent, but would that Bacon's warning had been heard in his
own day, that the reforms which he cried aloud for had been intro-
duced, and thus unfortunate schisms and heresies been prevented.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (November) : John Howley
presents a first paper on Mystical Experience and Quietism. He
does not discuss those authors who look askance on less discursive
types of prayer, and who hold that mystical experience is something
utterly extraordinary, a Divine favor to which it would be most
rash and presumptuous to pretend, which it would be dangerous to
desire. But he criticizes the Quietist view, wherein the enjoyment
of mystical experience depends merely on a suitable ascetic regime,
and is the automatic result of the removal of psychic obstacles.
According to this view, there would be no essential difference be-
tween Plotinus and St. John of the Cross. It is true that all mystics
agree upon the necessity of a moral preparation, the subduing of
the passions, the solidifying of the will; upon an intellectual prepar-
ation, the ceasing of discursive thought, the subduing of images,
sensations, emotions, the sense of self. But the Quietists wrongly
assume that the Divine is a latent factor of consciousness, potentially
visible, and really only the indeterminate concept of Being reached
by abstraction; they rashly produce psychic inactivity, and thus
leave the way open for accidents, often scandalous, sometimes
abominable ; they make contemplation too easy, they .would teach
what St. Teresa found difficult, to all; they fail in humility, think-
ing that they of themselves have reached the Divine. And thus
Buddhist and Sufi, Illuminati and Quietist, are seen to be distinct
in attitude and method from the orthodox Catholic mystic.
The Rev. E. Boyd Barrett, S.J., presents some practical methods of
1914.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 407
training the will; and he notes that for this end the more useless
and trivial the external exercise practised, the better. "The exer-
cise should be solely and wholly undertaken as a will exercise
The moment the utilitarian element enters in, the will element
diminishes at least, so it was found from experience." Rev.
Father Alfred, O.S.F.C., writes of Richlieu and His Times, review-
ing the Cardinal's activities as a statesman, churchman, patron of
arts and letters, and his relations with the Capuchin, Pere Joseph,
popularly known as "the grey Cardinal."
Le Correspondent (October 25) : Monsignor Batiffol sum-
marizes the laws which should govern war, as laid down by St.
Augustine and St. Thomas, and their commentators, Victoria and
Suarez. All agree that war may be both just and necessary; and
for a just war they require that it shall be declared by a competent
public authority, for a just cause, and with a right intention. Wars
for the mere purpose of glory, or of vengeance, of economic
advantages, or extension of territory, are utterly unjust. Only
such acts are allowed as are necessary to achieve the end, therefore
the murder of non-combatants, the destruction of objects of art,
and the like are immoral. Clerics may not, ordinarily, fight, but
they may preach a just war, and may accompany the troops to
render spiritual aid. Many other principles are laid down by these
writers, so that M. Fillet, of the University of Paris, is forced to
admit that these theologians, and not Grotius, were the real founders
of international law. An anonymous writer presents evidence
to show that public spirit in Switzerland is favoring France, for
fear of losing national independence in the event of German victory.
He also gives extensive information as to the business situation
in England and in Germany.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (October) : E. Vacandard relates
some of the miracles wrought by St. Genevieve, her prayers for the
protection of Paris on the advent of Attila, her intercession for
mercy with Childeric, and the story of her death, January 3d, about
the year 500. L. Venard reviews two works on St. Luke's
writings : the one treating of St. Paul's sermon on the Areopagus,
the composition and historic value of the Acts of the Apostles, by
E. Norden ; and another by Theodore Zahn, treating of the tradition
concerning St. Luke and his writings, the sources and date of the
third Gospel.
IRecent Events.
Our readers will find on a subsequent page
The War. a communication from a champion of the
German cause, in which he administers to
the writer of the Notes in the October number of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD what he looks upon as a well-deserved castigation. Most
of the statements to which he refers, he characterizes as either false
or nonsensical, as misrepresentations or irrelevant. One of the
paragraphs is declared to be a tissue of falsehood, nonsense, and
misrepresentation.
From the tone of his communication, the writer of the Notes
concludes that our correspondent does not expect a reply, and that
he looks for absolute submission. So far as he himself is concerned,
the writer of the Notes would be content to leave the case as it
stands to the judgment of every well-informed reader, since he has
neither the intention nor the desire to enter into controversy.
The communication, however, affords a welcome opportunity
to go somewhat more into detail in defence of the position taken by
the writer, and he will make some, at least, of the assertions of
our correspondent his starting point. From the nature of the
case, the Notes have never made any claim to give an exhaustive
treatment of the subjects upon which they touch, the field which
they cover being too wide for such an effort. Although there are
many points worthy of note in the progress of the war, its origin
is the all-important point, especially the question at whose
door the guilt is to be laid. In comparison with this, even success
is a minor point; for, unfortunately, in this world success is no
criterion of right, otherwise so much evil would not exist. The
events, therefore, of the fortnight immediately preceding the war
are of all-important moment, and a correct knowledge of them is
absolutely necessary for the formation of a sound judgment.
These events, indeed, cannot themselves be fully understood
without a knowledge of all that intervened between the
Franco-German War of 1870-71 and the present. It would be
well, indeed, to go further back and trace the history of Prussia and
of the Hohenzollern House from the time of Frederick the Great.
From such a study it would be seen that the present situation is
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 409
but the logical outcome of principles and causes which have been
at work during the whole period. But an extensive review of that
kind is altogether beyond the scope of these Notes. The publica-
tion of the White Books of Germany and Great Britain, the Orange
Book of Russia, and the Gray Book of Belgium gives a more than
usually good opportunity to learn the diplomatic proceedings which
have had such a fateful issue, and it is upon these that the writer
is content to rest his case.
The first statement in the October Notes which our corre-
spondent pronounces to be false is that " no reader of [the ultimatum
sent by Austria-Hungary to Servia] can fail to see that the author
of this note must have had in view the waging of war at least
with Servia, for no state wishing to retain its independent existence
could have yielded to its demands." That our readers may judge
for themselves how fully justified was the writer's statement, noth-
ing more is needed than the perusal of this document, and although
it takes up a great deal of space, we print it in full, particularly
since by the admission of .all it is to the presentation of this note that
the subsequent events are due. The note was addressed on the
twenty- third of July by the Austro-Hungarian Government to the
Servian Government, through the medium of the Austro-Hungarian
Minister in Belgrade. The following are its terms :
On the 3ist of March, 1909, the Servian Minister in Vienna, on the in-
structions of the Servian Government made the following declaration to the
Imperial and Royal Government:
" Servia recognizes that the fait accompli regarding Bosnia has not affected
her rights, and consequently she will conform to the decisions that the
Powers may take in conformity with Article 25 of the Treaty of Berlin.
In deference to the advice of the Great Powers, Servia undertakes to renounce
from now onwards the attitude of protest and opposition which she has
adopted with regard to the annexation last autumn. He undertakes, more-
over, to modify the direction of her policy with regard to Austria-Hungary,
and to live in future on good neighborly terms with the latter."
The history of recent years, and in particular the painful events of the
28th June last, have shown the existence of a subversive movement with the ob-
ject of detaching a part of the territories of Austria-Hungary from the mon-
archy. The movement, which had its birth under the eye of the Servian
Government, has gone so far as to make itself manifest on both sides of the
Servian frontier in the shape of acts of terrorism and a series of outrages
and murders.
Far from carrying out the formal undertakings contained in the declaration
of the 3ist March, 1909, the Royal Servian Government has done nothing
to repress these movements. It has permitted the criminal machinations of va-
rious societies and associations directed against the monarchy, and has tolerated
unrestrained language on the part of the press, the glorification of the perpe-
trators of outrages, and the participation of officers and functionaries in sub-
410 : * RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
versive agitation. It has permitted an unwholesome propaganda in public in-
struction. In short, it has permitted all manifestations of a nature to incite the
Servian population to hatred of the monarchy and contempt of its institutions.
This culpable tolerance of the Royal Servian Government had not ceased at
the moment when the events of the 28th June last proved its fatal consequences
to the whole world.
It results from the depositions and confessions of the criminal perpetrators
of the outrage of the 28th June that the Sarajevo assassinations were planned
in Belgrade, that the arms and explosives with which the murderers were
provided had been given to them by Servian officers and functionaries be-
longing to the Narodna Odbrana, and finally, that the passage into Bosnia
of the criminals and their arms was organized and effected by the chiefs
of the Servian frontier service.
The above-mentioned results of the magisterial investigation do not permit
the Austro-Hungarian Government to pursue any longer the attitude of ex-
pectant forbearance which it has maintained for years in face of the machina-
tions hatched in Belgrade, and thence propagated in the territories of the
monarchy. The results, on the contrary, impose on it the duty of putting an end
to the intrigues which form a perpetual menace to the tranquillity of the mon-
archy.
To achieve this end the Imperial and Royal Government sees itself compelled
to demand from the Royal Servian Government a formal assurance that it
condemns this dangerous propaganda against the monarchy ; in other words,
the whole series of tendencies, the ultimate aim of which is to detach from
the monarchy territories belonging to it, and that it undertakes to suppress
by every means this criminal and terrorist propaganda.
In order to give a formal character to this undertaking the Royal Servian
Government shall publish on the front page of its Official Journal of the 26th
June (i3th July) the following declaration:
" The Royal Government of Servia condemns the propaganda directed
against Austria-Hungary . e., the general tendency of which the final aim is to
detach from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy territories belonging to it, and it
sincerely deplores the fatal consequences of these criminal proceedings.
" The Royal Government regrets that Servian officers and functionaries par-
ticipated in the above-mentioned propaganda, and thus compromised the good
neighborly relations to which the Royal Government was solemnly pledged by its
declaration of the 3ist March, 1909.
"The Royal Government, which disapproves and repudiates all idea of in-
terfering or attempting to interfere with the destinies of the inhabitants of any
part whatsoever of Austria-Hungary, considers it its duty formally to warn
officers and functionaries, and the whole population of the kingdom, that hence-
forward it will proceed with the utmost vigor against persons who may be
guilty of such machinations, which it will use all its efforts to anticipate and
suppress."
This declaration shall simultaneously be communicated to the royal army as
an order of the day by his Majesty the King, and shall be published in the
Official Bulletin of the army.
The Royal Servian Government further undertakes:
1. To suppress any publication which incites to hatred and contempt of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the general tendency of which is directed
against its territorial integrity;
2. To dissolve immediately the society styled Narodna Odbrana, to confiscate
all its means of propaganda, and to proceed in the same manner against other
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 411
societies and their branches in Servia which engage in propaganda against
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The Royal Government shall take the neces-
sary measures to prevent the societies dissolved from continuing their activity
under another name and form ;
3. To eliminate without delay from public instruction in Servia, both as re-
gards the teaching body and also as regards the methods of instruction, every-
thing that serves, or might serve, to foment the propaganda against Austria-
Hungary ;
4. To remove from the military service, and from the administration in
general, all officers and functionaries guilty of propaganda against the Austro-
Hungarian Monarchy, whose names and deeds the Austro-Hungarian Govern-
ment reserves to itself the right of communicating to the Royal Government;
5. To accept the collaboration in Servia of representatives of the Austro-
Hungarian Government in the suppression of the subversive movement directed
against the territorial integrity of the monarchy;
6. To take judicial proceedings against accessories to the plot of the 28th
June who are on Servian territory. Delegates of the Austro-Hungarian Gov-
ernment will take part in the investigation relating thereto;
7. To proceed without delay to the arrest of Major Voija Tankositch and
of the individual named Milan Ciganovitch, a Servian State employe, who
have been compromised by the results of the magisterial inquiry at Sarajevo;
8. To prevent by effective measures the cooperation of the Servian authori-
ties in the illicit traffic in arms and explosives across the frontier, to dismiss
and punish severely the officials of the frontier service at Schabatz and Loznica
guilty of having assisted the perpetrators of the Sarajevo crime by facilitating
their passage across the frontier;
9. To furnish the Imperial and Royal Government with explanations re-
garding the unjustifiable utterances of high Servian officials, both in Servia and
abroad, who, notwithstanding their official position, did not hesitate after the
crime of the 28th June to express themselves in interviews in terms of hostility
to the Austro-Hungarian Government; and finally,
10. To notify the Imperial and Royal Government without delay of the
execution of the measures comprised under the preceding heads.
The Austro-Hungarian Government expects the reply of the Royal Gov-
ernment at the latest by 6 o'clock on Saturday evening, the 25th July.
To this note there was appended the following:
ANNEX.
The criminal inquiry opened by the Court of Sarajevo against Gavrilo
Princip and his accessories in and before the act of assassination committed
by them on the 28th June last, has up to the present led to the following con-
clusions :
1. The plot, having as its object the assassination of the Archduke Francis
Ferdinand at the time of his visit to Sarajevo, was formed at Belgrade by
Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Cabrinovic, one Milan Ciganovic, and Trifko Grabez,
with the assistance of Commander Voija Tankosic.
2. The six bombs and the four Browning pistols and ammunition with
which the guilty parties committed the act were delivered to Princip, Cabrinovic,
and Grabez, by the man Milan Ciganovic and Commander Voija Tankosic at
Belgrade.
3. The bombs are hand-grenades, coming from the arms depot of the
Servian army at Kragujevac.
412 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
4. In order to insure the success of the act, Ciganovic taught Princip,
Cabrinovic, and Grabez how to use the bombs, and gave lessons in firing
Browning pistols to Princip and Grabez in a forest near the shooting ground
at Topschider.
5. To enable Princip, Cabrinovic, and Grabez to cross the frontier of
Bosnia-Herzegovina and smuggle in their contraband of arms secretly, a secret
system of transport was organized by Ciganovic.
By this arrangement the introduction into Bosnia-Herzegovina of criminals
and their arms was affected by the officials controlling the frontiers at Chabac
(Rade Popovic) and Loznica, as well as by the customs officer Rudivoj Grbic
of Loznica, with the assistance of various individuals.
The indictment of Servia prefixed to the demands seems indeed
formidable, and believers in the Austro-Hungarian Government will
think they find a justification for its demands upon Servia. But
those who are more familiar with the methods of that government,
especially those who have followed the proceedings in the Agram
and Fried jung trials, will hesitate before they accept the Austro-
Hungarian version of the facts. The Serbs, whether in the
dominions of Austria-Hungary or of Servia itself, had indeed no
love for Austria-Hungary, nor is it hard to see why such was the
case. Within the last few years, Austria-Hungary has left nothing
undone to thwart and harass Servia and the Serbs. By the an-
nexation of Bosnia, the natural desire for union between the Serbs
in Servia and in the province of Bosnia was frustrated, and the
desired outlet of Servia to a seaport on the Adriatic was rendered
impossible. When, during the first Balkan War, Servia had won
from the Turks the long desired outlet in Albania, Austria-Hun-
gary intervened and forced her to relinquish the territory which she
had conquered, and insisted on the formation of that state as a
barrier between Servia and her legitimate aspirations, for the loss
of which the concession of a right of way to the sea through Albania
was no adequate compensation. It has now been proved that it
was Austria-Hungary that incited Bulgaria to make the attempt to
strip Servia of her gains in the first Balkan War. Hence, it is
easy to recognize that Serbs and Servians smarted under the sense of
manifold injuries, and may have shown their feelings in ways not
very agreeable to the Austro-Hungarian Government.
But, even if the Austro-Hungarian version of the facts were
accepted, no one who considers the nature of these demands,
can look upon them as otherwise than impudent and insolent, and of
such a character that no state with a proper regard for its inde-
pendent existence could construe into anything less than a casus
belli.
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 413
The particular demand referred to by our correspondent, that
Austro-Hungarian representatives should take part in the investi-
gations, involved a violation of the Servian Constitution and of
the law of criminal procedure. In fact, even the German press,
including the mouthpieces of the Chauvinists, upon the appearance
of the note, expressed surprise at the lengths to which Austria-
Hungary had gone, and (not being itself fully informed as to what
was going on behind the scenes) was indignant that Berlin had
not been asked advice, and had not received full details of the
Austrian demands.
And although our correspondent seems to think it self-evident
and unquestionable that the Austro-Hungarian note made reason-
able demands, this view is not that of the German Foreign Secre-
tary, who admitted to the Councillor of the English Embassy at
Berlin, before the Servian reply was given, that " Servia could not
swallow certain of the Austro-Hungarian demands;" and that
" the note left very much to be desired as a diplomatic document "
(see British White Book, No. 18). Italy, moreover, the third
partner in the Triple Alliance, refused to take part with her Allies,
because the war was so clearly a war of aggression; and neither
Germany nor Austria-Hungary has ventured to deny the justice of
Italy's contention. How any fair-minded man can think, after
reading for himself the demands of Austria, that they were made
with any other object than to provoke Servia to war, makes the
writer wonder at the dullness of the human mind. And the wonder
increases when the circumstances under which the note was pre-
sented are borne in mind. It was to be answered within forty-eight
hours, and, although both Russia and England requested an ex-
tension of the time, the request was peremptorily refused. The
abject and almost complete acceptance of the terms was declared
by Austria to be unsatisfactory, and at once military action was
taken by the bombardment of Belgrade. Enough has been said
to vindicate the writer's first statement.
The second statement with which fault is found, is that it was
after consultation with Russia that Servia yielded. This our cor-
respondent pronounces to be nonsense. (The reason for the denial
which our correspondent offers of this assertion has been read over
several times by the writer, and he has to confess that he can make
no sense out of it.) He stated in the October Notes " Servia yielded
an almost complete compliance, and this is the important point to be
noticed it was after consultation with Russia that she thus
4H RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
yielded." Now this is far from nonsense; it is a fact upon which
the whole argument with regard to Russia being the aggressor must
turn. If Russia had wished for war, the presentation of the Austro-
Hungarian note would have given her the very best of justifications.
The Austro-Hungarian Government knew that any attack upon
Servian independence by Austria-Hungary would be an attack on
Russia. This express declaration was made to her by the Russian
Foreign Secretary during the Balkan War. If, then, Russia had
been eager for war the ultimatum to Servia would have given her
the desired opportunity. That Russia did actually advise Servia
to give the reply she did, proves that Russia did not wish to
accept Austria's challenge to a conflict, and that Austria was trying
either to force war upon Russia, or to make her endure a humiliation
which would have deprived her of all prestige with the Balkan
States, and in fact with all the Slav races. In fact, as subsequent
negotiations proved Russia did not wholly approve of the Servian
agitation against Austria-Hungary, and was willing that the Dual
Monarchy should inflict a suitable punishment upon Servia, pro-
vided only the independence of the latter should be guaranteed
a guarantee, however, which Austria-Hungary refused to give.
As to the statement about the dates of Russian mobilization,
of which our correspondent complains, it may be well to specify the
sequence of events up to the German declaration of war on Rus-
sia. The Austro-Hungarian note was presented at Belgrade' on the
twenty-third of July; the Servian answer was given on the twenty-
fifth, and was declared at once unsatisfactory, and relations were
broken off on that day. A partial mobilization of the Austror
Hungarian army was ordered on the twenty-sixth, and on the
twenty-eighth Austria-Hungary declared war on Servia and began
operations immediately. It was on the next day, the twenty-ninth,
that the order was given for the partial mobilization of Russian
troops after Austria-Hungary had taken military action against
Servia, but this mobilization was confined to the borders of Austria-
Hungary.
It was not until late in the evening of the thirty-first of July
that the order for the general mobilization of the Russian army
was given. This general mobilization Russia declared was forced
upon her because of the German preparations, and these, as the
event has proved, were very thorough. It must, however, be
admitted that no mobilization of Germany's forces had yet taken
place. It was on that day, however, that Germany declared the
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 415
existence of a state of war throughout the empire, while on the
first of August she demanded of Russia that her troops should be
demobilized; a demand to which Russia by her silence refused
compliance. What foundation there is for the statement of the
German White Book, to which our correspondent refers, that
Russia had begun to mass troops on the border of East Prussia on
the twenty-ninth of July, the writer is in ignorance.
Enough has been said upon our correspondent's criticisms to
show that the paragraph in question is by no means a " tissue of
falsehood, nonsense, and misrepresentation." Time and space are
not sufficient to rebut his other accusations. Mention, however,
must be made of his preposterous assertion that Germany was not
bound by Prussia's treaty to guarantee the neutrality of Belgium.
The writer will conclude by calling attention to the following
statement: " In the next paragraph he describes how Sir E. Grey
made a proposal for an impossible conference, and then blames
Germany for his failure to achieve the impossible." The proposal
thus airily declared to be impossible was one made by a statesman
of world-wide reputation, and accepted not merely by France but
by Italy, one of the members of the Triple Alliance. Russia also
acquiesced in the proposal. The only reason why it proved im-
possible was the refusal of Germany.
The writer of these notes has sought from the very beginning
to be entirely objective, arid to base his survey and his conclusions
on a very detailed and far-reaching study of the evidences. Upon
the official documents of all the Governments concerned, and au-
thoritative reports, he is willing to rest his case.
The communication, referred to by the writer of Recent Events,
is as follows :
October 31, 1914.
EDITOR CATHOLIC WORLD:
Being greatly disappointed and sorely grieved by the article on the European
war, contained in the October issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, I submit the fol-
lowing criticism of that article:
The first paragraph is perhaps the only one that does not disclose an un-
warranted prejudice. After reading the second paragraph, we already know
what to expect from the writer of Recent Events. In speaking of the methods
that have been adopted, he makes a list of some of the pet accusations which
the unscrupulous portion of the English press has made against Germany, and
which time and again have been shown to be either unfounded or else justifiable
under the circumstances. Although this paragraph breathes the essence of the
writer's prejudice, and, as regards those who have confidence in the conscientious
scholarship of the contributors to THE CATHOLIC WORLD, is well calculated to
416 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
arouse a hostile attitude towards Germany, and to incline the reader to accept
as true the misstatements of the author and to follow him trustfully to his
illogical conclusions, yet, as it is merely introductory to his main thesis, we
pass on to the third paragraph.
This paragraph is made up substantially of the following statements:
1. Servia could not yield to Austria's demands without sacrificing her
independent existence.
2. The fact that consultation with Russia resulted in a partial compliance
on the part of Servia, " disposes of the contention " that Russia was the
aggressor.
3. The German official account admits that the note to Servia was aimed
at Russia.
4. Russia did not mobilize until Austria had rejected the Servian note.
5. Russia mobilized her troops only on the borders of Austria-Hungary.
Upon these premises the author bases his conclusion that " there is no
evidence that Russia took the aggressive." Now, it is submitted that the only
way of coming logically to the conclusion that " there is no evidence," would be
to consider everything that had been brought forward and claimed as evidence;
for it is clear that if only a portion of the testimony is considered, there is
always the possibility that there might be some evidence in the unconsidered
portion. But even a partially informed person knows that these five state-
ments do not contain the whole case against Russia. Evidence of the most
vital importance is contained in the diplomatic interchanges between Russia
and Germany during the last days of August. If the author had no time or
space for the consideration of these events, he should have refrained from the
drawing the conclusion that "there is no evidence."
The statements themselves are misleading. Statement No. i is false.
Before committing himself to such a sweeping statement, the author should
have indicated what basis he had for it. If he had in mind the demand that
Austro-Hungarian representatives be permitted 'to take part in the investiga-
tions, I do not see how he can be fair-minded and at the same time construe
this into a demand that Austria be allowed to interfere in the Servian legal
proceedings.
Statement No. 2 is nonsense. The fact that Servia consulted Russia, so far
from disposing of the contention that Russia was the aggressor, does not in
any way explain the facts or doings of Russia upon which that contention is
based. It is certainly difficult to see how the fact that Russia gave Servia
some advice, should clear her from blame for her subsequent conduct.
Statement No. 3 is irrelevant ; but it is misleading because it seems to imply
that there was something wrong with the Austrian note, a proposition which
should be proven, and not be misleadingly assumed.
Statement No. 4 is a misrepresentation, in so far as it implies that if
Russia waited until Austria rejected the Servian reply, she was justified in
mobilizing, whereas the complaint is not that Russia mobilized too soon, but
that she mobilized without sufficient reason. If the author means that this
sufficient reason may be found in the Austrian answer to Servia's note, he is
inconclusive, because it must still be proven that this answer was unjustifiable.
Statement No. 5 is false because, according to the White Paper, Russian
troops were assembling on the East Prussian border on July 2Qth, and in the
morning of July 3ist the entire Russian fighting force was being mobilized
against both Austria-Hungary and Germany.
In paragraph three, therefore, we see how the author has put together a
1914-] RECENT EVENTS 417
tissue of falsehood, nonsense, and misrepresentation, and drawn there from
the conclusion that there is no evidence of Russian aggressiveness.
In the next paragraph he describes how Sir E. Grey made a proposal for
an impossible conference, and then blames Germany for his failure to achieve
the impossible.
The fifth paragraph opens with the statement that Sir E. Grey was not
willing to be " baffled," thereby giving the false impression that Germany was
trying to baffle him in his efforts for peace. The author then goes on to create
the further false impression that the conversations looking toward peace
which took place at Vienna and St. Petersburg after mobilization of the
two Powers, were due entirely to the efforts of Sir E. Grey, whereas the White
Paper shows that the Kaiser contributed to this result at least as much as,
if not more than, Sir E. Grey.
In the sixth paragraph the author attempts to make out a case for Great
Britain. It is said that Germany was a guarantor of the neutrality of Belgium.
This is not true. Germany had no obligation under the treaty of 1839. She
was not a party to the treaty. She never signed it. She was not in existence
at that time. Twenty-four of the independent states, belonging to the German
Confederation, whose soldiers marched through Belgium, had nothing whatever
to do with that treaty. And yet the author apparently rests England's entire
case on the violation of this treaty, which does not carry the signature of
Germany.
In the seventh paragraph the author'-s unfairness appears in his statement
that Sir Edward was willing to support any " reasonable proposal " at Paris and
St. Petersburg, without mentioning the fact that he flatly refused to support
such a proposal at London, the place where one would expect him to be more
influential. I refer to Letter No. 123, which is Sir Edward's own handiwork.
From that letter we learn that Germany proposed that Sir Edward himself
formulate the conditions upon which England would remain neutral. It is
difficult to conceive how a proposal could be more reasonable, but Sir Edward
turned it down.
In the eighth paragraph, the author considers whether France was the
aggressor. Germany asked France what her attitude would be in case of a
Russo-German war. The author does not give the answer which was sent back
to Berlin. That would have been fair towards Germany. Instead of that he
gives the report that was made to London by Sir F. Bertie, as is quite evident
from a comparison of the last part of paragraph eight with Letter 126. It is
difficult to understand how anything but prejudice could incline the author to
give the London report instead of the real answer received by the German
Chancellor, as shown by Annex 27. There was more argument in the London
report, but it did not contain the French answer, which was that France " would
do that which would be required of her by her interests."
In paragraph nine, the author speaks of the heroic stand which Belgium
made "in defence of her liberties." This, of course, is tantamount to an ac-
cusation that Germany threatened or endeavored to take away their liberties,
an accusation which the author must have known to be false; because it is
known that Germany offered to respect both the integrity and independence
of Belgium and indemnify her for all damage. When German soldiers crossed
Luxembourg, and when Canadian soldiers crossed the State of Maine,
neither Luxembourg nor the United States considered it necessary to grasp
the sword and rush to the front and do heroic deeds in defence of their
liberties; and yet neither country lost a particle of its freedom.
In paragraph ten the author considers whether Seriva was the aggressor.
VOL. C. 27
418 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
After saying several things which have no bearing on this question, but which are
well fitted to bias the unquestioning reader against Austria-Hungary, the
author makes the only remark which is even slightly relevant. He says that
of the complicity of the Servian government in the crime of Sarajevo, there has
been "no proof." If he had said there was "insufficient proof" it might per-
haps be possible for him to claim that he was fair-minded; but when it is
conclusively demonstrated that the assassination plot was formed at Belgrade
with the special assistance of a Servian army officer named Voija Tankosic,
that he procured the bombs for the assassins, and that the bombs came from
the arms depot of the Servian army at Kragujevac, all of which is shown by
the annex to Letter 4 of the British White Paper, it must be admitted that
there is at least sufficient proof to excite a very strong suspicion. Moreover,
it is not a question of proving the complicity of the Servian government in the
murder of Ferdinand, but the question is: was Servia justified in refusing
compliance with the Austrian demands to make investigations in the manner
requested, to mete out commensurate punishment to the persons found guilty,
and to adopt adequate measures for the protection of the Dual Monarchy
against similar outbreaks in the future. This is the question at issue, yet the
author excuses Servia without considering it.
In paragraph eleven, although the author in paragraph three had already
decided in favor of Russia, he again considers the question. And this time
he offers " evidence that seems conclusive." This evidence is the opinion of
the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador at Berlin, that " Russia neither wanted nor
was in a position to make war." In paragraph ten the findings of fact made
by the Court of Sarajevo furnished "no proof," and in paragraph eleven the
opinion of an Ambassador is " evidence that seems conclusive." If this is not
prejudice, then there is no such thing.
In paragraph twelve, the author describes the difference between the
British White Paper and the German White Paper. In so far as he refers
to their contents, it appears that the chief difference is that the former con-
tains facts and the latter contains allegations. This requires no comment.
In paragraph thirteen the author says that Austria-Hungary refused to
guarantee the complete independence of Servia. This is false, as shown by
Annex 3, in which we read : " Count Berchtold has officially declared to
Russia that there is no intention of acquiring Servian territory, nor of threaten-
ing the continued existence of the Servian Kingdom, but that all that is desired
is to obtain permanent relief from Servian machinations that threaten Austria's
existence."
In the next four paragraphs the author seeks the causes of the war in
what has happened since 1871. He briefly sketches the nature, origin, and
growth of Treitschkeism, and pretends that it is a brief historical sketch of
Germany! That Treitschke represents Germany or the German people is
not true. The Socialists, Poles, Catholics, and Jews certainly constitute more
than half the population of Germany, and no one acquainted with Treitschke's
career in the Reichstag would say that he had a right to speak for these
classes. Germany's real historian, Ranke, said that Treitschke was no historian
at all, but a polemical writer. And a polemical writer can not represent a
people.
In paragraph nineteen it is said that "Deutschland iiber alles" is not only
a song, but an ethical principle. In the light of the four immediately preceding
paragraphs, one gets the impression that this "ethical principle" is the desire
of the 'German people for world dominion, and hence that this song is the
3c&re&si<an of t&ajt jle$ifv,. Several reasons incline me to brand this statement
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 419
as false. First, it is of a libellous nature, and advanced without proof. Any
person, not under the sway of a terrible prejudice, indicting a whole people
so gravely, would not fail to accompany the indictment with some convincing
evidence. Secondly, I have heard this song sung hundreds of times by Germans
of all classes, and not once was it ever given the interpretation put upon it
by the writer of Recent Events. Thirdly, the text of the song itself contradicts
the idea of world dominion. It definitely prescribes the boundaries of that
Germany which the poet calls upon his countrymen to love above everything
else : " Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etch bis an den Belt."
Fourth, instead of being an ambitious plea for world dominion, the text of
the song shows that it is a patriotic plea for unity with justice and freedom:
Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit
Fiir das deutsche Vaterland,
Danach lasst uns alle streben,
Bruderlich mit Herz und Hand.
Fifth, we find nothing in the other writings of Hoffman von Fallersleben,
the author of this song, or in his biography, that would warrant us in conclud-
ing that he cherished any dreams of world empire. Sixth, this song was com-
posed in 1841, whereas the vagaries of those writers having Treitschke as their
coryphaeus did not come into prominence until 1870. Seventh, in order to
present the vision of universal empire, it should be more in the manner in
which the English poet, Thomas Tickell, early in the eighteenth century, ad-
dressed Queen Anne. He said:
Great Queen! whose name strikes haughty monarchs pale,
On whose just sceptre hangs Europa's scale;
Whose arm like mercy wounds, decides like fate,
On whose decree the nations anxious wait;
From Albion's cliffs thy wide extended hand
Shall o'er the main to far Peru command,
So vast a tract whose wide domain shall run,
Its circling skies shall see no setting sun.
Paragraph twenty is perhaps harmless, in so much as its inconsistent state-
ments neutralize each other. For instance, the statement that the Kaiser "was
on the list of candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize," is inconsistent with the
assertion that "at all times and by every means he encouraged the war spirit."
Again, the remark that "he never listened to any advice except such as was
agreeable to him," is out of harmony with an allusion to "that opinion to
which he has had to yield."
But if paragraph twenty is harmless, the author makes up for it in para-
graph twenty-one. Here he does not hesitate to charge that for the brutal way
in which the war has been waged, the responsibility is wholly the Kaiser's.
This charge is, of course, based on the gratuitous assumption that there has
been brutality other than that which is generally incident to war, and that this
brutality is all on the German side. And the proof that he offers amounts
to this: The Kaiser once made a speech encouraging cruel methods in war;
therefore he is wholly responsible for the cruelties of a war waged fourteen
years later. Or this: The Kaiser encouraged cruelty in Peking; therefore he
is wholly responsible for the cruelties in Belgium. As regards German brutality,
420 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
we may refer to the report of five American newspaper men, Roger Lewis,
Irvin S. Cobb, Harry Hansen, James O'Donnell Bennett, and John T. Mc-
Cutcheon. In addition to this we have, in regard to Louvain in particular, the
testimony of Dr. Coenrad, a Catholic priest, a Belgian citizen, and the Vice-
Regent of the Louvain University. These witnesses are unimpeachable, and
their evidence is by far the best that has thus far been produced. They
exonerate the German soldiery from blame for any brutality or the loss of
Louvain.
Paragraph twenty-two is but an implied repetition of the already mentioned
falsehood about world-dominion.
The last paragraph is worthy of its predecessors, and one understands very
well whom the author means when he closes with the words " reactionary gov-
ernments or peoples." When applied to a people whose progress during the
past forty years has admittedly been wonderful, the epithet " reactionary " is
one of doubtful propriety.
In the foregoing criticism, I have not, of course, attempted to make a
constructive argument either for or against any nation now at war. My pur-
pose was merely to show that in his treatment of the situation, the writer
of Recent Events was outrageously unfair from start to finish.
WILLIAM STERNBERG,
Omaha, Nebraska.
EDITOR CATHOLIC WORLD:
My Dear Editor: I have the pleasure of reading your publication every
month, and of course now am naturally interested in the opinion of a leading
Catholic editor on the causes of the war. I find, as many do besides me, a
completely one-sided narrow view permeating the English press (for we have
no American press, as I find that ninety per cent of the foreign correspondents
to American papers, and an overbalancing part of the financing devotedly
British). So I am not surprised at what is being doled out both from Catholic
and non-Catholic pens alike, nor am I provoked, for many know not what
they do.
It never perhaps came to your mind that if the Kaiser and his staff were
Masons, they would at least not be 'condemned as barbarians, as our own rulers
were not treated by the press after the recent unspeakable Mexican barbari-
ties. There is absolutely no comparison in criminality, so much does the
Mexican atrocity exceed the reported and much lamented Belgian. Also re-
member how short since England and her "dependency" (for so she deems
U. S.) ceased to howl and cry down Congo atrocities. And why are the Masonic
powers of France, England, and Belgium trying all they can to deny the Sacra-
ments to the dying in the field? Why is this continual howl against Austria
the barbarous and Germany the Hun? Why again? Is it for a good cause?
Oh, perish the thought ! for the English press is the most lying adulterous form
of diabolical perversion that ever issued from the sewer of satan. I confidently
say that no other language has been the vehicle of so much corruption since
the constitution of the world. Again, why is it that a few churches that the
people did not own in some cases, and which were used as military stations in the
war, are continually pictured again and again as being raided and demolished
with such loss to civilization, whereas in 1900 when all the property of Christ
was sold in France for a few paltry francs there was not a murmur? Did that
ever occur to your mind as strange? That is not the finger of God, it is that
of satan.
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 421
The neutrality of Belgium ! You may not be aware of the fact but it is so
that at the end of last year after the Morocco trouble, Lord Kitchener
stealthily went down to France, and there met the Belgian and French staff,
and therewith agreed that in case of war with Germany, France and England
would march on Belgium, who was to not alone permit but assist. How care-
fully that is hidden. Belgium is the victim of the English greed for gold. Why
does she not feed them now even though she is the richest country on earth?
How many soldiers did England send to help Belgium? a miserable five
thousand, who in time of trouble ran for their lives into Holland.
You say that " By those who have lived in Germany it is said that it is im-
possible for anyone who has not had the experience to realize how great is
the arrogance of the military caste." Now it has been proved openly before the
world that Germany loves her sons on the field with every fibre of her heart,
and that of all the loved men in the world to-day the Kaiser is the most
adored. I assure you there is no extent to the love of Germany, man, woman
and child, for her brave sons. You may call that barbarity if you wish.
Then you state that Servia did almost everything for Austria. She did
everything but the very vital thing, that is, to allow Austrian officials to un-
earth the plot for the murder of the Crown Prince and his wife. And again
why did not Servia do this one thing which the Masonic and Catholic press
alike say she should not be asked to do? Because the unearthing of that plot
would discover the Russian paw which Servia herself could not do, and which
Austria knew well would not be done by anyone outside herself. You might
not be also aware that the Masons have sworn by all means to extirpate the
house of Hapsburg, and that Ferdinand and his wife were devoted lovers of the
Sacred Heart in fact they were exemplary in their lives. I know that you
must be aware that Austria and Germany have Catholic subjects to the amount
of seventy or more millions against England's miserable two out of forty.
And as for France, well the less said the better.
In all truth Germany has outgeniused the world. No one can make guns
as she, nor ammunition, nor trenches, nor aircraft, nor can they equal her
magnificent cruisers and submarines, nor can they even stop the wounds of their
soldiers without German stopping. And what about the German wounded?
Do you hear anything of them? It is all British Red Cross. If you knew all
the graft and robbery in that connection you would be a sadder and a wiser
man for letting loose any misguided sympathy. Every army, if it is an army,
ought to have a complete corps for the taking care of the wounded. England
says she is the richest country in the world, yet she has to apply to her;
" cousin " to help her wounded. On the contrary, in the German army is
enlisted the greatest surgical and medical talent and the best equipped ambulance
corps in the known world. Hence she has made no imposition on neutral
nations for the care of her wounded. It is strictly her own work, and she is
doing it and doing it nobly.
As a Catholic I believe that if the Allies triumph, it will be the greatest
victory that Masonry could achieve, but I believe while the whole world
may be false, there is One Who is true, Who is also omnipotent, Whose mighty
power will ultimately slay the slimy hand of satan, that that same Omnipotent
one will lead the German army to victory, scoff who may at the idea that
" God is with them;" and, therefore, I confidently, fervently, and constantly pray
that the lying, the calumny, the deception, in fine the systematic campaign of
abuse on the part of the Allies, will naught avail against a people the bravest,
the truest to their country, the admittedly most civilized, the most highly dis-
ciplined, aye and the most magnanimous even to their enemies, the most de-
422 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
voted to their homes, and their God that ever took up arms for the protection
of their national existence.
Yours in Dno,
P. J. KILLEEN,
Church of St. Thomas, International Falls, Minnesota.
November 9, 1914.
EDITOR CATHOLIC WORLD:
Will you permit me to congratulate you upon your admirable paper upon
the war in the last three months of THE WORLD. I have hardly read
anything so illuminating and so just as these papers under " Recent Events."
I only wish some others would state their case in such a broad-minded,
temperate manner as you have shown in reviewing the causes of war, and in
apportioning the blame.
Sincerely yours,
E. O. OTIS,
Boston, Massachusetts.
October i, 1914.
EDITOR CATHOLIC WORLD:
I have just read your article on the war; and I want to say that it is
by all means the best I have seen on the subject. The method so much in
vogue, both in the pulpit and press, of diving in anywhere and taking short
cuts to conclusions, is an insult to the intelligence of the reading public, and
does very much harm even among Catholics. Explanations that do not explain
are worse than useless. Of course, there are many who can and do go to the
bottom of such questions, but when they are through, most people do not know
whether they are at the bottom or the top. You have not only gone to the
root, but you have taken no short cut to the surface; and, best of all, the man
in the street knows what you are talking about
You will pardon me for writing, but I think it does not hurt us to learn
once in a while that we have done well.
Sincerely yours,
HUGH J. CANNING,
Our Lady of Lourdes, Toronto, Canada.
November 19, 1914.
EDITOR CATHOLIC WORLD:
While reading the two last issues of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, I have been quite
surprised to note the biassed tone and argument of your editorial pages, where
articles relating to the causes, etc., of the present European war were presented.
With a Catholic public, as a rule, reading your publication, your attitude has
been almost contradictory to the sentiment and belief of a great number, if not
the major portion, of those of our faith who have not been deceived by the false
and distorted accounts of the European war and its causes. I cannot for one,
of a very great many who think likewise, agree with your version of the war's
causes, and would much prefer that you either eliminated all such articles
or printed only the sensible statements of both sides, letting the reader judge as
to the guilt or innocence of the combatants, as may be deduced by them, your
readers.
1914.] RECENT EVENTS 423
In your last editorial article, with the usual English style of reasoning,
wrong or right always in our favor, you give or make it appear that the sole
cause of the titanic conflict was German militarism. Let us reply. How about
English navyism, " Britannia rules the waves, now and always ? " French militar-
ism fanned into heat with hopes for revenge? Russian militarism? etc. We are
supposedly fair-minded people, who have enough to seek honestly the true reason
of this war. Yet it would seem that satan himself could scarcely perpetuate
more falsehoods through English and Russian newspaper methods, than are
being spread broadcast to-day, with imitators a-plenty among even the religious
folk. There is, however, the relieving comedy, that almost every day's issue
gives the lie directly or indirectly to previous publications.
To take up the question as to the cause of the war, I would refer to an
article in the New York Times of October 7th, written by Dr. L'Escaille, a
Belgian official, or if you will look over Dr. Crane's humerous editorial of last
evening's Globe. Or better still take this week's issue of The Evening Post
(Saturday), wherein you may read a fair and honest treatment of the subject
by Bernhard Dernburg, entitled Germany and England The Real Issue. Also
it may serve to remember that not all, only a very few, of the Irish or their
American progeny are duped by England's plausible, yet nevertheless, lying
attempts to put the blame where it does not belong as she always did and
probably ever will continue to do, until she has taken the way of God instead
of land and gold. All her assurances, adopted by her obsequious American
brotherhood and her positive declarations, that we must believe that the writ-
ings of the warlike Bernhardi, the ravings of Trietsche, and the pseudo philos-
ophy of Nietzsche, are veriest rot and nonsense. For you and I well know
that not one person in ten thousand or even fifty thousand or more ever heard
of or bothered about them until English writers found the real last and first
cause why she was compelled to cowardly enter upon the scene believing it a
very good time to check or crush her peerless rival while four or five other
powers were trying to beat her.
I think I realize how difficult must be the various situations to the editors
who feel compelled from time to time to voice their opinions. And I believe that
justice must some day prevail. And from us, at least, it demands a fair hearing
for all sides. Any unfair prejudice works untold harm, especially with a
Catholic paper or magazine, which I hope will not be the way with THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, because you will have corrected any offence, in time.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
JOHN H. DOOLEY,
Corpus Christi Church, New York City.
Space does not permit the publication of other letters received.
We have, however, printed all the letters that took exception to the
views expressed by the writer of Recent Events. Those omitted
express agreement with him and extend the thanks of the writers.
[ED. C. W.]
With Our Readers.
A VALUABLE article on Catholic life in Ireland appeared in the
i~^ British Review for November. It is written by A. R., a priest,
who has labored for thirty-eight years among the Irish people. The
article is of timely importance just now because of the appearance
of a notoriously unfair book, entitled Father Ralph, which deals with
the priests and people of Ireland. The title of A. R.'s article is
Through Practical Spectacles. As one who has seen and who knows,
he shows how the Irish parish priest has held and holds his place in
the hearts of his fellow-countrymen, and his power in the counsels of
the nation.
" It is not difficult," says the writer, " to understand the close union
of priests and people in Ireland." Springing almost exclusively from
the respectable middle class the farmers in the country and the
merchants in the towns the Irish parish priest is a child of the people."
* * * *
ALL things make smooth the young priest's path from the beginning.
" He has not so much to win a position for himself in the esteem
of the people as to maintain a position already won." How this goodly
inheritance of affection and respect was won is shown in part in a
recent work, Irish Priests in Penal Times, by the Reverend William
Burke. It was founded in self-sacrifice, and the mortar that knits
together its stones was, as in the old Irish castles, mingled with blood.
In those terrible days, the atrocities and devastation, the memory of
which have been brought back to Irish minds by recent events in Europe,
the priest suffered with his people and for them. " I myself," says the
writer, " have known and conversed with an Irish landlord whose father
was invited to join with other landlords of my native country in a 'priest
hunt/ the 'meet' being outside his own demesne walls, where Mass was
to have been said, and where the quarry was sure to be found." If
the covert was drawn blank, it was not the fault of the red-coated
squires.
* * * *
NOT the past alone, but the present also, gives an explanation of
the affection and union between priests and people. Daily does
the priest administer to a people the most responsive and grateful in
the world. The charm and courtesy of the Irish homes shine forth
most clearly when a priest is to be welcomed. The mother of the
household welcomes him with an ease that shows that although she
1914-] WITH OUR READERS 425
may be poor, she is the mistress of her house and the dispenser of its
hospitalities. No duchess could outdo her in dignity and grace. And
in truth in many cases these peasants are really the Irish aristocracy.
A natural refinement of manner characterizes the people, and differen-
tiates these plain folk from the boorish peasantry of other lands, and
renders a parish priest's relations with them so happy, and his visitations
such an education in good manners and stately self-respect.
The writer then gives a most interesting and touching account of
the " Stations " in Ireland.
The custom of holding " Stations," or Mass with confession and Com-
munion, in the private houses still exists in many country parts. When at the
Westminster Eucharistic Congress I described such a station and the joy with
which it filled my heart, I fear the eminent ecclesiastics who were listening
were chiefly impressed by the breach of the rubrics which such " Stations " to
their minds involved. Their wonder must have been great when they saw the
Irish in my audience quietly weeping as I revived their memory of the station
mornings in Holy Ireland. I venture to print here the passage from my Con-
gress paper:
" St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans uses a phrase which seems specially
applicable to the ' Station-house ' in Ireland. ' Domestica Ecclesia,' the Church
in the home, was the Church round which the heart-strings of the Irish people
were twined for many generations, and to which in some parts of the country
they still fondly cling. It is true that for the most part the ' Stations ' are now
held not in the homes but in the churches. Still, in remoter parts of extended
country parishes it has been found unwise for the sake of religion to break
with the ancient custom, and speaking for myself, and, I am sure, for very
many of my fellow-priests, I must say that there is no part of a parish priest's
ministration more full of consolation, more reverent to the Sacred Mysteries,
or more evidently fruitful for simple faithful souls. Twice a year, at Christ-
mas-time and at Easter-time, the country home is prepared for the coming of
the Divine Visitor. Within and without the Domestica Ecclesia is cleansed
and reverently set in order for this greatest of honors and of blessings. The
families in the immediate neighborhood have gathered with their households,
and are waiting when the priest arrives. The best room has been prepared for
the hearing of confessions, and there the old and young, master and mistress,
and servant, enter in turn and receive the Sacrament of Penance. The priest
is always the father of his flock, but it would be hard to imagine circumstances
more calculated than these to bring home to him and to his spiritual children
the sweet realities of his sacerdotal fatherhood. Confessions ended, or, at
least, the Mass hour come for in older days before the drain of emigration
the confessions had to be resumed, and were often continued far into the day
the priest enters the roomy 'kitchen/ as the larger chamber is generally called,
and there all has been prepared for Holy Mass. The walls and even the
roof-beams are snowy white; gleaming metal, sparkling glass and china tell
what loving hands have done to show their simple reverence. The homely table
is the * Mensa ' of this domestic chapel, and altar-stone, and altar-clothes,
crucifix, and lighted wax candles, and all other rubrical essentials for the
Holy Sacrifice are duly arrayed. The priest has vested, and begins his Introibo
ad altare Dei. Reverently grouped around, kneeling on the rude floor, as often
as not a floor of clay, the worshippers join with him in the great Act. The
time for the Communion conies and the Bread of Life is distributed. Little
426 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
children whose happy day has not yet come look on with longing eyes. The
priest passes them by now, but it will not be always so. In the same places
their fathers and grandfathers had knelt as children, knelt and waited. It is
Hope looking on at Faith and Love. The Mass over, priest and people make
thanksgiving together, and in another hour the simple house resumes its usual
appearance. But the place has been sanctified, and the blessing seems to cling
to these homes ' unspotted from the world.' When at night the household again
gathers there for the rosary, the memory of the morning's blessing hangs like
incense around the place, and that nightly rosary goes on until the Blessing
comes again. What wonder that such homes were loved with a holy love, and
that even their ruins, too sadly numerous in the land, should be regarded with
veneration, and their demolition resented as a kind of sacrilege?"
P PEAKING of the changed conditions effected by recent legislation,
O the writer states that doubts have been expressed of the continua-
tion of the old religious fervor and the old respect for the priests.
His answer is : "I see no reason for such doubts. We shall be loved
and respected in Ireland so long as we love and respect our people,
and work for their spiritual and temporal interests as those before
us loved and worked. When we fail them, they will fail us; but not
till then. They are still, as they have ever been, 'our Joy and our
Crown/ and so long as that lasts the Soggarth Aroon will continue
to wear his halo of affection in the eyes of his Irish flock."
THE figure with which we introduce this paragraph may be un-
seasonable, but time has nothing to do with the truth of the simile.
Some months ago we walked in a rose garden, and our first impression
was of admiring wonder at its varied and striking harmony. Not only
were the roses beautiful, but all the roses together expressed a beauty
greater and grander than any one rose alone could possibly have done.
They were of every color that a rose can show; some were of vivid
red; some of pure white.
And the thought came to us of how necessary it is for the soul
to keep, and at times to express, the color of all its worthy emotions,
if it is ever to reach its full flowering. Every power that can add
to its beauty or its strength must be cultivated. We will differ in glory
as we have achieved one virtue more than another; or achieved the
same virtue with greater or less heroic fullness. But into our glory
must be woven the color of every virtue, in order that the answer to
God's creative act may be complete and harmonious.
* * * *
AT different stages of the world's history, different virtues have
stood forth as necessary to be cultivated or expressed because of
the world's particular needs. Whatever is good in the world's tendency
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 427
at the moment that will the Christian take, and through it strive to
lead the world to God. He will influence the world, and the world's
needs and desires will influence him. Yet the wise man will know
that the excess of virtue is a defect; and that only the guidance of
the Church has kept the balance of the scales for an insecure humanity.
A T the present time there is much talk of peace, and no follower
1\ of the Prince of Peace but will promote with all his power such
a holy cause. But when of peace there is born the spirit of unprincipled
or principleless compromise, the true Catholic will draw a hard and
severe line. Peace has its price no less than war. Through sanctity
and justice alone are we to be led to the way of peace.
To the things of sanctity and justice the peaceful man is heroically
faithful: and anything that violates them makes his soul blush with
that color of red which we call indignation, and without which no fol-
lower of Christ is worthy of the name. We fear that in many quarters
indignation has gone out of fashion. It has become bad form. No
matter what is said or done, it is unbecoming to show indignation.
One must stand by and hear the things of time and eternity that
are most dear to him ; -that he knows to be as true as God Himself ;
with which his whole life is bound up one must stand by and hear
these denied, or brought into question, or termed immaterial, and never
show indigination.
DIGNITY is an essential quality of a gentleman, and a Christian is
a gentleman. When fiis dignity is offended, a man may show
resentment of the indignity : he may justly and properly show indigna-
tion. He will show it, not for any petty self-satisfaction, but in order
to keep alive among men reverence and respect for the things that
alone make life itself dignified.
IT is a question as to how much of the spirit of so-called peace, tolera-
tion, and compromise is born of a real love of peace or of a loss of
reverence for, and belief hr, the things that once were held sacred and
that really count. How far has modern literature and the modern
theatre, through its cleverness, succeeded in winning us over and
making us blind to the mission of doubt, of irreverence, of indifference
that it has carried on. The book or the play taste pleasantly to our
intellectual palate, and we have swallowed the dangerous capsule before
we knew what was inside. When one has gone so far as to look with
complacency upon a clever and humorous denial of the things most
428 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
sacred to a Catholic and a Christian, he has abdicated one of the strong-
est outworks of the soul's defence. When it is incapable of showing
red, the soul is in a weak condition. And the worst evil of much
modern writing in book and in play is not that it is immoral, in the
sexual sense; not that it denies religious truth; no, the evil is more
subtle than that: it is because such books rob us of the power of
indignation.
THE following words of our Holy Father Benedict XV. should
stimulate all of us to a more faithful and devout reading of the
Holy Gospels. The Society of St. Jerome has for its special object
the promotion of the reading of the Gospels. Recently the Holy Father
wrote to His Eminence Cardinal Cassetta, President of the Society, as
follows :
" The Pius Society of St. Jerome is dear to Us, principally for its
end, which is doubtless useful at all times, but most evidently so in the
present day above all others. Indeed, experience shows so clearly that
it hardly needs pointing out that the errors of society to-day arise
from the fact that the life, works, and teaching of our Lord Jesus
Christ have fallen into the profoundest oblivion, and that men no longer
think of gaining inspiration from them for their daily actions. There
cannot be the slightest doubt, then, that a work in the highest degree
advantageous for the leading of souls towards Christian perfection is
being done by those who strive, as you are striving, for the spreading
of the Divine Gospels, and We have every reason to congratulate
all the members of the Society, and especially you, Venerable Brother,
not only for the undertaking, excellent in itself and most pleasing to
Us, but also for the zeal with which, as We Ourself have seen, you
have striven to spread, during these years, the holy books in greater
numbers and more accurate form It is Our ardent desire and Our
earnest exhortation that from your admirable effort you not only
reap the fruit of the largely extended diffusion of the books of the
Gospels, but that you also gain another advantage which would be one
of Our ideals that the sacred books may enter into the bosom of
Christian families and be there as the Gospel drama which all seek
with care and guard jealously, so that the faithful may accustom
themselves to read the Holy Gospels and commentaries every day,
learning thus to lead holy lives in every way in conformity with the
Divine Will."
A book that will enable the faithful to follow the instruction of
the Holy Father is The Saviour's Life, published by The Paulist Press
at the price of fifty cents, which gives the Life of our Saviour in one
continuous narrative in the exact words of the Four Gospels.
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 429
THE question of population is a most important one to-day with
every serious thinker. The continued decrease of population
through a lessening of the birth-rate, has caused more than one govern-
ment to be alarmed and to take steps for remedying the evil. The
Catholic Church has ever maintained that fidelity to the law of God
is the only way to healthy national life. Sociologists and sectarians
may, in forgetfulness of the greater truths, expound false principles
of economics and unchristian views of marriage and the family, but
the law of God which is above all such theories will surely vindicate
itself.
Where the Catholic Church is strong, there is national life strong.
Religious belief has a direct relation to the growth of population.
AN important article by Meyrick Booth, himself a Protestant, in the
Hibbert Journal for October, deals with the movement of popula-
tion, with a special reference to the manner in which this movement
is affecting the position and prospects of present-day Protestantism.
He brings forward very valuable statistics.
With regard to England, he shows that there is a marked decrease
of births among the whole of the non-Catholic middle, upper, and cul-
tured classes, and among what he calls " the cream "of the non-
Catholic working-class families.
This decline is not due to the fact that many dwell in towns, since
the decrease in many country districts of England has been much
greater than in some of the largest cities. It is not owing to the growth
of luxury, for it is quite as marked in poor districts as in well-to-do
centres. The English middle-class birth-rate has fallen to the extent
of over fifty per cent during the last forty years, and the well-to-do
artisan birth-rate has declined in the last thirty years by fifty-two
per cent. These are the classes among which the Protestant Churches
are strongest.
* * * *
WHILE the decline in England was rapid, the birth-rate in Ireland
rose by three per cent, and the Dublin rate by no less than nine
per cent, from 1881 to 1891. The towns in England that show the
smallest decrease are those where Catholics are numerous. All the
cotton towns of Lancashire show a decrease in the birth-rate ; but the
town of Preston where Catholics are more numerous than in any of
the other towns, shows the smallest decrease. Of two towns in another
section, where living and laboring conditions are identical, the birth-
rate of the one where Catholics are more numerous is twenty per cent
higher than that of the other. The difference between the fertility of
Catholic families and Protestant in England and Wales is so great that
430 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
this Protestant writer says that if " the Roman Church is able to hold
its own, the maintenance of its present birth-rate will ensure its ascent
to a predominant position in Great Britain."
rapid decrease of the birth-rate in France has long been a
A scandal to the civilized world. It is well, however, as the writer
shows, to bear in mind that the figures for France vary to an extra-
ordinary extent in different sections of that country. There are certain
districts that show a higher birth-rate than that found in the usual
country English district. The five departments of France where the
decline is most marked, are just those departments that more than any
others lost their allegiance to the Catholic Church. M. Leroy Beaulieu
has shown that the most prolific parts of France are those where the
people have remained faithful to the Church. The families of those,
who under the revival of religion during the past decade in France have
returned to the Church, show a marked increase of births. " Roman
Catholicism even in France is very considerably more prolific than
English Protestantism."
In Germany " there has been for some years a steady increase in
the Catholic element, and we may safely assume that this increase is
due to the difference of birth-rate which is in favor of the Roman
Catholic population." The birth-rate of Catholic and Protestant sec-
tions of the country, or of cities, shows a marked difference and always
to the credit of the former.
IT 7ITH regard to the United States the article shows the very marked
W decrease in the birth-rate among Protestants. The writer first
takes five States Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, California, and Kentucky,
In these States the proportion of Catholics is comparatively small. In
all these States the birth-rate is excessively low lower even than in
France and in three of them there is an actual excess of deaths over
births.
The writer then takes four States in which the Catholic element
is well represented, and all show a great increase in the birth-rate:
" Looking at the situation as a whole, there is good reason to
think that the Protestant Anglo-Saxons are not only losing ground
relatively, but must, at any rate in the East and middle East, be suf-
fering an actual decrease on a large scale. For it has been shown by
more than one sociologist that no stock can maintain itself with an
average of less than about four children per marriage, and from all
available data we must conclude that the average fertility of each
marriage in this section of the American people falls far short of the
requisite four children. Judging by all the figures at hand, the modern
1914.] WITH OUR READERS 431
Anglo-Saxon American, with his high standard of comfort, his in-
tensely individualistic outlook on life, and his intellectual and emanci-
pated but child-refusing wife, is being gradually thrust aside by the
upgrowth of new masses of people of simpler tastes and hardier and
more natural habits. And, what is of peculiar interest to us, this new
population will carry into ascendancy those religious and moral be-
liefs which has moulded its type of life.
" The victory will be, not to those religious beliefs which most
closely correspond to certain requirements of the abstract intellect,
but to those which give rise, in practise, to a mode of life that is
simple, natural, unselfish, and adequately prolific in other words, to a
mode of life that works, that is Lebensfahig."
HTHE article shows also how utterly ruinous are those theories of
J- morality born of economical views that forget God. But into a
review of these, space does not permit us to enter.
ATOTHING injures so grievously the cause of religion and the
1M revealed truth of Christ, than deliberate hatred and mis-
representation. Bishop Burt of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
deplored recently in a speech to fellow Methodists at Worcester, Mass.,
the lackadaisical attitude of the average Protestant churchman. He
sought to stimulate the Protestant by a bitter and insulting attack
upon Catholics, charging them with being enemies of the nation, etc.,
etc. The charges in themselves are not worth noticing, because Bishop
Burt, and every intelligent American, know they are not true. But the
very statement of them by Bishop Burt proves that he is not only not
sincere in his attack upon the Church, but that he is not sincere as a
professed minister of the Gospel. Long ago our Lord said : " He
that is not with Me is against Me." Above all else Christ is the Lord
of Truth. He who deliberately preaches untruth preaches against
Christ. Bishop Burt is one of those men who are willing to enlist in
the service of untruth, in order to destroy what they despise. Thou-
sands upon thousands have been lost to the Protestant churches because
they allow such men as Bishop Burt to speak in their name. He him-
self gives the reason, at least in part, for the lackadaisical attitude of
the average Protestant.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York:
Popular f Sermons on the Catechism. From the German by Rev. H. Thurston S I
Hie Summa Theologica " of St. Thomas Aquinas. Part III. Third num-
ber (Qq. lx. Ixxxin.). By the Fathers of the English Dominican Province
I 2 ' n ^' Five Birds in a Nest - E y H - E - Delamare. 60 cents. Shipmates.
By M. T. Waggaman. 60 cents. Catholic Home Annual. 25 cents. Rambles
in Catholic Lands. By M. Barrett, O.S.B. $2.00 net
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York:
Sons of the Sea Kings. By Alice and W. H. Milligan. $2.00 net.
DODD, MEAD & Co., New York:
The Charm of Ireland. By Burton E. Stevenson. $2.50 net.
E. P. BUTTON & Co., New York:
One American's Opinion of the European War. By F. W. Whitridge. 50
cents net.
DUFFIELD & Co., New York:
The House. By Henry Bordeaux. $1.35 net.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
Gitanjali. By Rabindranath Tagore. $1.25 net. The Wife of Sir Isaac Harmon.
By H. G. Wells. $1.50 net.
J. FISCHER & BROTHER, New York:
Mass in Honor of St. Benedict. By J. I. Muller. 80 cents. Mass in Honor
of St. Barbara. By R. L. Becker. 80 cents. Tui Sunt Cceli; Lcetentur Cceli.
By R. L. Becker. 12 cents each.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
Oddsfish. By R. H. Benson. $1.35. Mustard Seed. By F. P. Donnelly, SJ.
60 cents. The Hand of Mercy. By Rev. R. W. Alexander. $1.00.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, New York:
A Credit Union Primer. By A. H. Ham and L. G. Robinson. 25 cents.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York:
The Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture. By H. Zimmer. France Herself Again.
By E. Dimnet. $2.50 net.
HARPER & BROTHERS, New York :
The Lost Boy. By H. Van Dyke. 50 cents net. Life in America One Hundred
Years Ago. By G. Hunt, LL.D. $1.50 net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York:
Gideon's Band. By G. W. Cable. $1.35 net. Artist and Public. By K. Cox.
$1.50 net. Notes on Novelists, with Some Other Notes. By H. James.
$2.50 net. Pierre Vinton. By E. C. Venable. $1.00 net. Through the
Brazilian Wilderness. By Theodore Roosevelt. $3.50 net.
D. APPLETON & Co., New York:
The War and America. By H. Munsterberg. $1.00 net. Achievement. By E.
Temple Thurston. $1.35 net.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR Co., New York :
Your Pay Envelope. By John R. Meader. $1.00 net. Keystones of Thought.
By Austin O'Malley, LL.D. $1.00 net.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., Boston :
Pan-Germanism. By R. G. Usher, Ph.D. $1.75 net. A Beacon for the Blind.
By W. Holt. $2.50 net. The Poet. By M. Nicholson. $1.30 net.
LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston :
The Single Hound. By Emily Dickinson.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington, D. C. :
The Kindergarten in Benevolent Institutions. Agricultural Teaching. Bibliog-
raphy of the Relation of Secondary Schools to Higher Education. Com-
piled by R. L. Walkley.
COLUMBIAN PRINTING Co., Washington, D. C. :
The Facts About Belgium. Pamphlet.
GEO. W. JACOBS & Co., Philadelphia:
Daniel Webster. By F. A. Ogg, Ph.D. $1.25 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis:
The Gospel of St. John. By Rev. J. MacRory, D.D. $2.25 net. Down West:
Sketches of Irish Life. By O. Dease. 30 cents net.
THE AVE MARIA PRESS> Notre Dame, Ind. :
The Secret of Pocomoke. By Mary T. Waggaman. 75 cents.
JOHN P. MORTON & Co., Louisville, Ken. :
Musings on the Lounge. By Bert Finck.
THE IRISH MESSENGER, Dublin:
The Rights and Duties of Owners. By Rev. G. C. H. Pollen, SJ. The Nine
Offices of the Sacred Heart; Our Lady of Dolours; Frequent and Daily Com-
munion; Daily Mass. By Rev. J. McDonnell, SJ. Rogers of Seaforth's ;
A True Boy and Other Stories. By Martin Corbett, SJ. The Church and
Anti-Clericalism. By Rev. P. Finlay, SJ. Vocations. By Rev. W. Doyle,
SJ. The Apostleship of Prayer in Schools. By a Teacher. Drink Hand-
book. Pamphlets. One penny.
AUGUST PICARD, Paris :
Luther et le Lutheranisme. Par H. Denifle. 5 /
P. LETHIELLEUX, Paris :
Exposition de la Morale Catholique. III. L'Esperance. Par A. Janvier. 4 frs.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. C.
JANUARY, 1915.
No. 598.
MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE.
BY JOHN A. RYAN, D.D.
IVE years ago the printed matter dealing with the mini-
mum wage could easily have been read in the course
of a single afternoon. Three years later the New
York Public Library got out a list of books, pamph-
lets, and articles on the subject to the number of about
two hundred. Were the collection brought down to the present
date, it would undoubtedly contain at least once and a half that num-
ber of references. The rapid increase in the literature of the
minimum wage has not, however, exceeded the spread of popular
interest in the subject, or the extension of the device through legis-
lation. In the present article an attempt is made to review the
history and significant features of minimum wage laws abroad and
in the United States. No defence of the principle or theory of the
minimum wage will be set forth in these pages, except that which is
disclosed by specific and recorded experience.
AUSTRALASIA.
As applied to private employment, minimum wage legislation
had its origin in Australasia. Since 1894 New Zealand has had
a compulsory arbitration act, which includes provisions for fixing
minimum rates of wages in those industrial disputes which involve
the question of remuneration. The framers of this law did not, in-
deed, think of its minimum wage features as their main object, nor
Copyright.
VOL. C. 28
1914.
THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
434 MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE [Jan.,
as a distinct and deliberate policy. They desired before all to es-
tablish an effective method of preventing and settling industrial
disagreements and disturbances. When, however, an arbitration
court adjusted a controversy involving wages, the scale of com-
pensation that it fixed necessarily became the minimum that em-
ployers were permitted to pay. For it must be kept in mind that
the decisions of a New Zealand tribunal of arbitration are compul-
sory, have the force of legal enactment instead of being dependent
upon mere mutual good faith. Thus the arbitration act became
virtually a minimum wage act.
Between 1901 and 1904, the Commonwealth of Australia and
the States of New South Wales and Western Australia enacted
compulsory arbitration laws, which, like that of New Zealand, be-
come instruments for the establishment of legal minimum rates of
wages.
None of the compulsory arbitration acts attempted to set up any
precise standard of wages for the guidance of the tribunals. They
either refrained from touching the question at all, or they required
nothing more definite than that the compensation fixed should be
" fair and reasonable." As a consequence, the judges of the arbi-
tration courts were obliged to determine the minimum wage accord-
ing to their own conceptions of reasonableness, and to create their
own standards. In the earlier years of the laws these stand-
ards of remuneration necessarily varied according to the view-
point of the court. For example, Justice Williams, the first presi-
dent of the New Zealand arbitration court, held that the wage
should be such as would permit " the particular trade to be carried
on ; " Justice Cohen, the first president of the arbitration court of
New South Wales, seems to have acted upon the same rule; other
judges made their awards on the basis of the wages prevailing in
other places where conditions were the same. Gradually, however,
all the arbitration courts have come to adopt the principle that the
minimum wage fixed in industrial disputes should be at least suffi-
cient for decent maintenance. This principle received its clearest and
most authoritative expression in- the famous definition given by
Justice Higgins of the commonwealth arbitration court in the case
of H. V. McCay. After pointing out that the statutory requirement
of " fair and reasonable " remuneration obviously meant that the
employees should get more than they could obtain " by the ordinary
system of individual bargaining with employers," Judge Higgins
declared that he could think of no more appropriate standard of
1915-] MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE 435
" fair and reasonable " than " the normal needs of the average em-
ployee, regarded as a human being living in a civilized community."
The rule of a living wage as thus defined is now observed by all the
arbitration courts of Australia. The courts of New Zealand uni-
formly enforced substantially the same standard. Moreover, it
should be noted that a living wage for male adults is interpreted
by the arbitration courts to mean remuneration sufficient to provide
for the decent maintenance of a family. In other words, the courts
recognize that family life is among " the normal needs of the
average employee, regarded as a human being living in a civilized
community."
The first formal and specific minimum wage law governing
private enterprises, was passed in 1896 by the State of Victoria.
It was directed against the evil of sweating, and authorized boards
composed of representatives of employers, employees, and the gov-
ernment to fix minimum rates of wages. At first the law applied
to only six trades, but its scope has subsequently been enlarged at
various times, until now it affects more than one hundred and thirty
trades, comprising the entire field of employment except agriculture
and mining. South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania enacted
legislation between 1900 and 1910 following more or less closely
the model of Victoria. Within recent years New South Wales and
New Zealand have added to their compulsory arbitration acts pro-
visions for the establishment and operation of minimum wage
boards, thus enabling themselves to fix minimum wages by both
methods. As in the case of the arbitration acts, the specific mini-
mum wage laws apply to men as well as to women and minors, and
refrain from setting up any precise standard or principle by which
the remuneration should be determined. Like the arbitration courts,
the minimum wage boards have established the practice of fixing a
minimum sufficient for decent living.
It will have been observed, therefore, that some form of mini-
mum wage legislation, either through compulsory arbitration, or
wage boards, or both, exists throughout the whole region of Aus-
tralasia. The newest of these laws has been in operation four
years, the oldest twenty years. It seems pertinent at this point,
then, to inquire whether these acts have attained the end for which
they were passed.
Apparently the people of Australasia themselves have answered
this question in the affirmative. Professor M. B. Hammond, of the
Ohio State University, who studied the matter on the ground during
436 MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE [Jan.,
the winter of 1911-1912, writes as follows: " Throughout Austral-
asia the principle of the minimum wage has now found
general acceptance. Employers and employees there differ more or
less in their views as to what is the best machinery for bringing
the legal minimum wage into existence and securing its enforcement.
Differences of opinion exist also as to the range of industries to
which it should be applied. These differences of views have some
of them found expression in party platforms, but few persons could
be found to-day, in either Australia or New Zealand, who would
challenge the statement that the principle of a legal minimum wage
has been accepted as a permanent policy in the industrial legislation
of the world." x
Professor Hammond's own view of the effects of the Victorian
legislation may be thus summarized : sweating has been practically
all abolished; no industries have been paralyzed, nor driven from
the State ; the minimum wage has not become the maximum ; strikes
have been all but eliminated ; the number of persons unable to earn
the minimum rates of wages has not been as great as was anticipated,
and practically all the needy ones have obtained employment through
special licenses ; and the law has not caused an increase in the price
of commodities except possibly in a few instances.
Not long after Professor Hammond's investigation, the New
York Factory Investigating Commission sent the following ques-
tions to the Chief Factory Inspector of the city of Melbourne, and
received the accompanying answers : 2
1. " Does the minimum wage become the maximum? "
Answer: " The average wage in a trade is invariably higher
than the minimum."
2. " How far are the unfit displaced by such legislation ? "
Answer: " The dislocation is not serious, and as a rule things
regulate themselves fairly satisfactorily."
3. " Do such laws tend to drive industry from the State ? "
Answer: " There is no evidence to show that our labor
legislation has driven any industry from the State."
4. "Do such laws result in decreasing efficiency?"
Answer: " I think it can be truthfully said that the efficiency
of the workers all round is distinctly higher under the minimum
wage than it was before."
1 The American Economic Review, June, 1913. This article, and another by the
same writer in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science,
July, 1913, will be found a convenient source of reference for the facts set forth
in the preceding pages.
2 Page 6t of the Commission's special report on Minimum Wage Legislation.
1915-] MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE 437
The testimony of Professor Hammond and of the Melbourne
Factory Inspector refer specifically to Victoria, where the minimum
wage has been in operation for eighteen years, through good times
and bad times. The favorable opinion of the people themselves
takes in the whole of Australasia. In view of these facts it seems
reasonable to declare that the experience of those countries which
have given the minimum wage the longest and most thorough test,
amounts to all but conclusive evidence of its soundness and effective-
ness.
GREAT BRITAIN.
The British Trade Boards Act went into operation the first of
January, 1910. Like the Victorian law, it provides for the estab-
lishment of representative boards to fix minimum rates and wages.
At first it applied to only four trades, but, owing to its success in
these, it was in 1913 made applicable to four others. The total
number of workers in these eight trades is about 400,000. In the
spring of 1912, Parliament enacted a law empowering representa-
tive district boards to establish minimum wages throughout the
entire coal mining industry of the United Kingdom. As in the
case of the Australasian enactments, none of the statutes just men-
tioned sets up or requires any definite standard of remuneration.
Apparently it is assumed that the boards will establish a minimum
that is fair and reasonable.
Concerning the effects of the minimum wage law in the coal
mines, very little important information has come to the United
States. There is, however, good reason to assume that it has
worked satisfactorily, especially since the employees in that industry
are well organized, and capable of defending their own interests.
Indeed, this particular British minimum wage act follows the pre-
cedent of New Zealand, rather than that of Victoria. It was
enacted to put an end to a strike, rather than to raise exceptionally
low wages. On the other hand, the law that went into effect in 1910
aimed specifically at increasing the remuneration of some of the
worst paid and most helpless laborers in Great Britain, the majority
of them being home workers and women. The minimum wage was
invoked in their behalf as a sort of last resort, or counsel of despair,
after all other remedies had been found wanting. The experiment
has been more than justified by its results. In the four trades to
which it was originally applied, wages have been raised from fifty
to one hundred and fifty per cent. Toward the end of the third
year of the law's operation, Mr. J. J. Mallon, Secretary of the
438 MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE [Jan.,
National Anti-Sweating League, and the foremost authority in
Great Britain on the subject, wrote: " The Trade Boards Act is on
the verge of completing a success that should affect the position of
working women all over the civilized world ; for it has shown that
wages can be raised, as pedants and faint hearts told us was im-
possible. The trade is not hurt, the community is rid of a sore, and
the women previously sweated feel the better wages as the parched
fields ' the gentle rain from heaven.' " 3 Something more than a year
later (February, 21, 1914) Mr. Mallon was able to record the suc-
cess of the law in positive and unqualified language. "In a word, the
Trade Board at Cradley Heath has more than justified its friends
and confounded its enemies. Its success is definite, considerable,
and complete. It has made a deep and abiding mark upon the his-
tory of the Black Country. No other industrial event of the present
generation has so impressed and affected the workers of the dis-
trict." 4
The New York State Commission, already referred to, sent
to the Board of Trade of London the same four questions that it
had asked of the Factory Inspector in Melbourne. The reply of the
London authority as to the operation of the minimum wage act in
the four British trades may be thus summarized : there is no general
tendency among employers to reduce the wages of the higher paid
employees to the legal minimum ; there has been no general dismissal
of the workers; there is no general tendency among employers to
transfer their business to foreign countries; the efficiency of many
employees has been increased, and the machinery and equipment
of many factories has been improved. 5
The results of the minimum wage in Great Britain have been
emphasized in these pages, because the success of the measure there
is in some respects more significant and encouraging than that dis-
closed by the longer experience of Australasia. In the four trades
affected the conditions, both from the side of employers and em-
ployees, were unusually unfavorable. The employers were carrying
on enterprises that were less than ordinarily stable and prosperous,
while the workers were peculiarly inefficient, timid, and helpless.
And yet, all the stock arguments against the minimum wage have
been refuted. In the words of Mr. Mallon, " its success is definite,
considerable, complete."
* The Catholic Social Year Book for 1913, p. 81. London.
4 Quoted in New York Factory Investigating Commission's publication, Minimum
Wage Legislation, p. 77.
*Op. cit., pp. 77, 78.
1915-] MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE 439
THE UNITED STATES.
The first American minimum wage bill applying to private em-
ployments was introduced in the Legislature of Nebraska in 1909.
It aroused practically no interest. At the annual meetings of the
National Consumers' League and the National Conference of Chari-
ties and Corrections in 1910, considerable attention was given to the
subject of minimum wage legislation. As a more or less direct re-
sult of these discussions, the Massachusetts Legislature of 1911 ap-
pointed a commission to investigate the project, and make a report to
the Legislature of 1912. The latter body enacted the first minimum
wage law in the United States. In 1913 similar acts were passed
in eight other States, namely, Oregon, Washington, California,
Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Bills for the
same legislation have been introduced in several other State legis-
latures, but none of them has passed more than one of the two legis-
lative chambers.
The American laws differ considerably among themselves.
Their most important variations refer to the method of fixing the
wage, and the penalty for failing to pay it. In Utah the law itself
specifies the rates of wages. In all the other States the law merely
sets up a general standard to which the wage must conform, and then
delegates to an administrative commission the power and the duty
to determine and put into effect the appropriate rates of remuner-
ation. Six of the eight laws employing this method require the ad-
ministrative commission to establish and call to its assistance subordi-
nate boards, composed of persons representing employers, employees,
and the general public, and four of these six forbid the commission to
establish any rates of wages that have not been previously recom-
mended by these advisory boards. The Colorado minimum wage
commission has neither obligation nor authority to set up such
boards, while the Minnesota commission has the power to do so at
its discretion, but is not obliged to adopt any wage recommenda-
tions. It remains free to set up its own rates of wages.
The general standard required in all the States except Utah is
a living wage. This conception is variously defined in the laws,
but the language of the first Wisconsin bill is substantially repre-
sentative of all : " a wage sufficient to maintain the worker in health,
and supply her with the necessary comforts of life." Practically all
the definitions require at least implicitly that the minimum wage
shall provide not only the purely material content of healthful
440 MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE [Jan.,
existence, but the conditions of elementary moral and mental
well-being.
In all the States except Massachusetts and Nebraska, employers
are obliged to pay the minimum wage under penalty of fine and
imprisonment. The two States just mentioned merely require that
the names of recalcitrant employers shall be published in certain
newspapers.
Unlike the Australasian and British laws, those of our Ameri-
can States apply only to women and minors. They do not affect the
remuneration of adult males. Among the chief reasons for this
restriction are : the danger that a law applying to adult males would
be declared unconstitutional; the probability that women need the
legislation more urgently than men; the fact that protective labor
legislation for women makes a peculiarly strong appeal to public
sentiment, and consequently is more easy of enactment; and the like-
lihood that a restricted application of the minimum wage principle
would cause only a slight disturbance of industrial relations and
conditions.
While all these laws have been on the statute books for more
than a year and a half, only three of them have been put into
general operation. In Nebraska nothing has been done, and in
Colorado very little. It is hoped that the approaching legislatures
will amend and strengthen the laws in both these States. The
California and Wisconsin minimum- wage commissions have been
quite active in making the investigations which are a prerequisite to
the determination and establishment of wage rates. In Massachu-
setts the commission has investigated several industries, and estab-
lished minimum wages in one, namely brush making. The rate fixed
for adult females is eight dollars and thirty-seven cents per week,
with the understanding that it will be increased considerably at the
end of a year. The wages specified in the Utah statute went into ef-
fect May 13, 1913, and are as follows: for experienced women, one
dollar and twenty-five cents a day ; for inexperienced women, ninety-
cents per day ; and for females under eighteen years of age, seventy-
five cents a day. During the autumn of 1913 the Industrial Wel-
fare Commission of Oregon put the law into effect throughout the
whole State, establishing rates for experienced women which vary
from nine dollars and twenty-five cents to eight dollars and twenty-
five cents per week, and a flat rate of six dollars per week for minors
and inexperienced workers. The Washington commission estab-
lished a full schedule of wage rates during the summer of 1914,
1915-] MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE 441
which vary from ten to nine dollars per week for adult experienced
female workers. In Minnesota the minimum wage com-
mission exercised its discretionary power of constituting ad-
visory boards, setting up two in the twin cities to repre-
sent respectively mercantile and manufacturing establishments,
and one in Duluth to represent both these industries. The boards
met bi-weekly for about six months, gathering statistics, and en-
deavoring to ascertain the minimum cost of decent living for work-
ing women. The estimates of a living wage made by a majority
vote in the three boards varied from eight dollars and fifty cents to
eight dollars and seventy-five cents per week for adult females. The
rates of wages ordered into effect by the commission, October 23,
1914, and applying only to experienced women and minors, ranged
from nine dollars to eight dollars a week, according to the nature of
the industry and the density of population. Both these factors af-
fect the cost of living.
None of the American minimum wage statutes has yet stood
the final test of constitutionality. The Supreme Court of Oregon has
sustained the law of that State, on the ground that it is a valid
exercise of the police power, and is not a delegation of legislative
power. Appeal has been taken to the Supreme Court of the United
States, where, it is expected, the case will soon be argued. In Min-
nesota the minimum wage commission has been restrained by one of
the judges of Ramsey County from putting its wage orders into
effect, on the alleged ground that the law is not a valid exercise of
the police power, and is a delegation of legislative power. The case
has been appealed to the State Supreme Court, and will be heard in
the near future.
While the three American laws have been in operation too short
a time to furnish anything like decisive evidence under the head of
experience, their results thus far have been decidedly favorable and
encouraging. According to Mr. Haines, the Labor Commissioner
of Utah, no employer of that State has been forced out of business,
and most of them find that the efficiency of their employees has been
increased; the number of women and minors dismissed from em-
ployment has been very small, and most of these have found jobs
for which they were better fitted ; and not one higher paid woman is
known to have had her wages reduced to the legal minimum. Writ-
ing under date of November 7, 1914, Miss Gleason, the Secretary of
the Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission, declares that the mini-
mum wage law of that State has not thrown any considerable num-
442 MINIMUM WAGE LAWS TO DATE [Jan.,
ber of girls out of work; that no business enterprise has ceased
operations in consequence of the law; that the enforcement of it has
not proved more difficult than the enforcement of other labor legis-
lation; and that a majority of the employers seem to be satisfied with
the statute, and willing to cooperate in its enforcement. Mr. E. W. Ol-
sen,the Washington Commissioner of Labor, wrote on November 13,
1914, that in his State the minimum wage law had not increased un-
employment to any notable extent; that most of the displaced em-
ployees have been replaced by more efficient women; that no case
of business failure due to the operation of the law has yet come to
the notice of the Industrial Welfare Commission ; that there has been
no peculiar difficulty in enforcing the wage orders; and that a ma-
jority of employers seem to be satisfied with the operation of the
statute.
Although the foregoing evidence is far from conclusive as to
the value of minimum wage legislation in America, it is more im-
portant than the relatively short time and small space covered by
it would lead us to assume. For in all three States the law was put
into operation in the midst of a marked industrial depression, which
has not yet come to an end. Indeed, it is not unlikely that the
minimum wage will rarely be subjected to as unfavorable conditions
as those which have surrounded its operation in Utah, Oregon, and
Washington. The degree of success that it has attained in this ad-
verse environment creates a very strong presumption in favor of its
essential efficacy. When we combine the presumptive evidence of
these three States with the substantially conclusive experience of
Australasia and Great Britain, we are justified in maintaining that
the burden of proof in the minimum wage controversy has been
wholly shifted to the shoulders of those who uphold the negative.
WAGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN.
BY EDWIN v. O'HARA,
Chairman Oregon Industrial Welfare Commission.
T is the purpose of the present article to discuss the
protective standards for women workers set up in
Oregon by the act of the Legislature in 1913 creating
the Industrial Welfare Commission. The leading fea-
ture of that act is its provision for the fixing of a
minimum wage for women workers. Heretofore this problem could
be discussed in America only from a theoretical standpoint, but with
the enforcement of the rulings of the Oregon Industrial Welfare
Commission, the subject has passed into the realm of experience,
and it is from that standpoint that we are chiefly concerned with it
here.
The Oregon law is contained substantially in the first section
of the act, which declares that it shall be unlawful to employ
women or minors within the State of Oregon for unreasonably long
hours or under conditions sanitary or otherwise detrimental to
their health or morals, and it shall be unlawful to employ women in
any occupation within the State of Oregon for wages which are
inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain
them in health, and it shall be unlawful to employ minors for un-
reasonably low wages. The Commission known as the Industrial
Welfare Commission is created for the purpose of determining in
particular occupations and localities, what hours, conditions, and
wages are actually prohibited by this law ; and, it is further provided,
that there shall be no appeal to the courts from the decisions of the
Commission in matters of fact.
It may be well to outline the mode of procedure prescribed for
the Commission in arriving at its determinations. In any occupa-
tion in which the Commission considers that the wages, hours or
conditions of women or minor employees are at variance with the
provisions of the law, the Commission is authorized to call a con-
ference of employers and employees and representatives of the
public to investigate and report on the matter. Thus the Commis-
sion called a mercantile conference in Portland, composed of three
representative employers in the large stores, three saleswomen, and
444 WAGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN [Jan.,
three persons well known in the community, but neither employers
of women nor employees. To this conference, composed of these
nine persons, the Commission submitted the following questions :
First. What are the maximum number of hours of employ-
ment a day and a week consistent with the health and welfare of
women employees in the stores of Portland?
Second. What is the minimum amount per week required to
maintain a self-supporting woman employee in the mercantile busi-
ness in Portland in decent but frugal comfort? and, finally,
Third. Is the employment of women in the stores of Portland
after six p. M. reasonable and consistent with their health and
welfare?
The conference to which these questions were submitted, or-
ganized and investigated, and after repeated meetings returned a
unanimous report to the Commission, stating that fifty hours a
week should be the maximum hours of work, and that nine dollars
and twenty-five cents a week was the minimum amount required for
decent subsistence, and that night work was unreasonable and
prejudicial to the health and welfare of the women workers. On
receipt of this unanimous report, the Commission reviewed the find-
ings of the conference and accepted them, and called a public hear-
ing, at which all persons interested were invited to appear before the
Commission to present their views on the subject under considera-
tion. At the public hearing, which was duly advertised, a large
number of interested persons appeared, the tendency of whose testi-
mony was to substantiate the recommendations already made by the
conference. The Commission then issued an order making these
recommendations mandatory. By the terms of the act this order
became legally binding after sixty days.
Meanwhile, a similiar conference had been called to discuss
wages and hours in the manufacturing industries of Portland, and
after a similar procedure an order based on the unanimous report
of this factory conference was issued by the Commission, fixing
fifty-four hours a week as the maximum hours, and eight dollars
and sixty- four cents a week (that is sixteen cents an hour) as the
minimum wage rate in manufacturing establishments in Portland.
A paper box manufacturer in Portland sought to restrain the
Commission from enforcing this order, on the ground that it inter-
fered with his constitutionally guaranteed rights of contract, and
took his property without due process of law. The injunction re-
quested was denied by Judge Cleeton of the Circuit Court, and the
1915-] WAGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN 445
case was carried on appeal to the Supreme Court of the State, where
the case for and against the constitutionality of the act was well-
briefed and ably presented. On March 17, 1914, the Supreme
Court of Oregon unanimously concurred in a comprehensive de-
cision written by Justice Eakin, sustaining the constitutionality of
the act. Another suit was subsequently brought against the Com-
mission in the name of an employee of the paper box manufac-
turer who figured in the first case, alleging an interference with the
employees' right of free contract. The Oregon Supreme Court
considered the case a second time, and on April 28th handed down
a second decision, written this time by Chief Justice McBride, em-
phatically reaffirming the previous opinion of the court. The case
has been appealed to the court of last resort. Armed with the
double-barrelled decision of the Oregon Supreme Court, we are now
hopefully engaged in marshalling the plea for judicial recognition
of the human element in human labor before the Supreme Court of
the United States.
Four important legal questions were raised : First, and most
fundamental Whether it lay within the competence of the State
to interfere with the right of private contract, to the extent of fixing
minimum wage rates for women workers?
Second. Whether the legislature in creating the Industrial
Welfare Commission had attempted to delegate its own legislative
powers ?
Third. Whether the establishment of different minima for
different occupations did not amount to class legislation? And,
finally, whether in denying the right of appeal to the courts from
the decisions of the Commission in matters of fact, the Legislature
had not infringed upon the constitutional right of citizens to a due
process of law in defence of their property?
The first question involved a discussion of the nature and
extent of the police power of the State. The court adopted the
following definition of police power : " Police power is the name
given to the inherent sovereignty which it is the right and duty of
the government or its agents to exercise whenever public policy in
a broad sense demands, for the benefit of society at large, regula-
tions to guard its morals, safety, health, order, or to insure in any
respect such economic conditions as an advancing civilization of a
highly complex character requires." The court further observed
that it could not declare the act in question unconstitutional as an
exercise of the police power, unless it were palpably obvious that
446 W AGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN [Jan.,
the act in question had no real or substantial relation to public
health and welfare. The court took judicial cognizance of the
" common belief " and " common knowledge " that inadequate
wages have a detrimental effect on the public welfare. There was
ample judicial precedent for holding the constitutionality of State
regulation of the hours of women's employment, and the court
concluded : " Every argument put forward to sustain the maximum
hours law, or upon which it was established, applies equally in
favor of the constitutionality of the minimum law as also within
the police power of the State, and as a regulation tending to guard
the public morals and the public health."
The second question raised was concerning the delegation of
legislative authority. Of the nine States which have passed mini-
mum wages acts one, Utah, has avoided this issue by writing into
the law itself the flat minimum wage to be paid. Owing, how-
ever, to the fluctuation in the cost of living at different times in
different occupations and in different localities, it has been seen
that such legislative enactment can hardly be satisfactory. It is,
moreover, in conflict with all foreign experience. The creation
of a commission to determine the wages suitable under varying
conditions has been judged the most practicable method, and, con-
sequently, the question of the constitutionality of such a commis-
sion is of high importance for wage regulation. The courts have
recognized that while a legislature cannot delegate its legislative
power, it can appoint a commission to determine the conditions
under which a law may become operative. Such are the railroad
commissions in various States.
The Oregon minimum wage act was drawn with the direct
view to meeting this question, and the bill was shaped parallel
to the acts creating railroad commissions. The first section of the
law declares that certain things shall be unlawful in the State
of Oregon, and fixes the general standards which must be ob-
served by all employers of female labor. There is then created
an administrative board with authority to investigate the facts,
and make rulings upon which the enforcement of this law will
depend. It is extremely improbable that the courts would have
upheld the constitutionality of the statute if the act had failed
to declare the law, and had simply created a commission to fix a
discretionary minimum wage. This is an extremely important
matter, as negligence in regard to it will be fraught with disastrous
consequences.
1915-] WAGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN 447
The Supreme Court disposed of the plea of class legislation,
by pointing out that the law equally required all employers of
women in the State to pay their workers a living wage. That a
living wage might vary in different localities and occupations was
no defect on the part of the law.
The constitutionality of the law was attacked finally on the
ground that it makes the findings of the Commission on all ques-
tions of fact conclusive, and, therefore, takes the property of the
employer without due process of law. This clause was inserted in
the act to prevent needless litigation, which would keep the orders
of the Commission tied up in the courts, and practically nullify the
purpose of the law. The Supreme Court held that " due process of
law merely requires such tribunals as are proper to deal with the
subject in hand. Reasonable notice, and a fair opportunity to be
heard before some tribunal before it decides the issues, are the
essentials of due process of law." Attention is called to this im-
portant provision of the Oregon act, especially in view of a section
in the minimum wage act of another State, which specifically pro-
vides that the district court of the State shall have power to con-
sider the thousand and one details of evidence which formed
the basis of the Commission's decision, notwithstanding the
obvious, utter impossibility of courts of law with their rules of
evidence entering into a consideration of such economic minituse.
The rulings issued by the Commission may be briefly sum-
marized. The minimum wage for experienced adult women in any
occupation throughout the State has been fixed at eight dollars and
twenty-five cents a week. In the city of Portland women employed
in mercantile establishments and offices, may not receive less than
nine dollars and twenty-five cents a week, and in manufacturing
establishments in Portland the minimum is eight dollars and sixty-
four cents a week. For inexperienced adult women, the minimum
for all occupations throughout the State is six dollars a week. The
maximum hours of woman's labor in Oregon has hitherto been
sixty hours a week. The Commission has reduced it to fifty-four,
and Portland stores are permitted to employ their female help only
fifty hours a week. The minimum time for lunch period in manu-
facturing industries in Portland is forty-five minutes. Night work
after eight-thirty p. M. is prohibited in all mercantile, manufac-
turing, and laundry establishments throughout the State, and in
Portland it is prohibited in mercantile establishments after six p. M.
Special investigations are now going forward concerning the laun-
448 WAGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN [Jan.,
dries of Portland and the fruit canning business of the State, and
further rulings covering these industries may be made during
the coming year.
While it is too early to draw final conclusions concerning the
operation of these orders, there are certain obvious consequences
which may be noted. The prohibition of night work for women in
the stores of Portland has been an unmixed good. Three thousand
girls, who had hitherto been employed Saturday nights to a late
hour, are now dismissed at six o'clock, and the few stores which
were strongly opposed before the change, now realize that their
trade has not fallen off, but has simply been equalized throughout
the week. These hundreds of girls, whose late Saturday night
employment deprived them of the opportunity of preparing for
Sunday holiday, now have one real day of rest in the week. The
rise in wages of experienced workers has been very marked. Hun-
dreds of office girls who had been receiving thirty- five dollars a
month were advanced to forty dollars, which is the minimum re-
quirement. Likewise in the stores a notable improvement is ob-
served. In manufacturing establishments, where payment is by
piece rate, we have not yet been able to find out definitely how far
the readjustment has been effected.
One important consequence of the rulings is the elimination of
unregulated wage scales, such as that of a certain fruit-packing
plant, which was responsible for labor disturbances in Portland last
fall, which cost the city a hundred times more in actual cash and in
the growth of class antagonism than the entire plant could be worth
to the community in a score of years. The establishment of wage
standards is largely doing away with the secrecy of women's wage
schedules, which has been so large an element in bringing about the
existing demoralized conditions in women's wage rates. The rul-
ings of the Commission in regard to maximum hours, has resulted
in lowering the hours of work from sixty to fifty-four a week, and
of bringing under the law certain occupations such as cashiers in
moving picture shows, whose hours had not been regulated before.
It has been the policy of the Commission to act conservatively and
with great moderation in the issuing of orders, and it has accepted
no recommendations from conferences that were not unanimously
agreed to by all elements in the conference.
The result of the minimum wage legislation which is making
itself felt, is a rising interest in the training and education of ap-
prentices. The Commission has ruled that a year of experience in
1915.] WAGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN 449
any occupation entitled an adult woman to be considered experienced
in the sense of the law, and therefore entitled to the minimum wage.
In some occupations this maximum will doubtless be lessened as
time goes on; but in others, such as retail stores, a year's training
may certainly be required before enforcing the minimum for ex-
perienced workers. During this period it is evidently of great im-
portance, both to employer and to employee, that the training of the
apprentice should be directed towards a high degree of efficiency,
and thus we have the movement for continuation schools in the
department stores, which will doubtless spread to other industries.
A word may be said here concerning the policy and principles
which are found most effective in urging minimum wage legisla-
tion. There have been many States in which the connection be-
tween inadequate wages and immorality of women has been strongly
played up, but it is interesting to note that in no State where this
agitation has been carried on, has the campaign for securing wage
legislation been successful, and this for two reasons : First, because
it is a question whether inadequate wages are to any large degree a
cause of women going into a life of immorality; and, second, because
such an agitation is a gratuitous insult to the thousands of underpaid
women workers whose cooperation and support is absolutely neces-
sary, if we are to succeed in arousing public opinion for this legis-
lation. The more substantial argument for this legislation, is that
underpaid women workers are denying themselves the necessities
of life in order to lead lives of virtue. That they are living on one
or two meals a day, are denying themselves clothing necessary to
maintain their health, and are huddled together in rooms devoid of
light, of ventilation and of heat. These are the facts which inves-
tigation reveals, and they are facts which arouse public opinion of a
permanent sort in favor of minimum wage legislation.
The most startling illustration of this aroused public opinion,
comes from Chicago within the past few months. Two years ago
a girl working in Marshall Field's store for six or seven dollars a
week, took fifty dollars from the firm to pay her necessary living
expenses. She disappeared, and only a few months ago was dis-
covered by the detectives and led before the bar of justice. She
was brought before a jury, and admitted that she had taken the
fifty dollars from her employer. Her lawyer addressed the jury
to the following effect : The question for you to decide is whether
this girl stole from Marshall Field, or whether Marshall Field stole
from this girl. We want no compromise verdict. She has ad-
VOL. c. 29
450 WAGE LEGISLATION FOR WOMEN [Jan.,
mitted the theft, and she should either be given the full penalty or
be acquitted as innocent. The jury returned with a verdict of not
guilty. Such a verdict registers the attitude of public opinion
against parasitic industries in no uncertain terms.
Just as the whole body of workers must be supported by the
entire body of industries, so it is right that in each industry the
wages be sufficient to maintain the workers in health and frugal
comfort. An industry which does not pay its employees enough to
purchase the necessities of life is a parasite. It makes its profit not
from legitimate commercial enterprise, but is subsidized by the
workers. If any business is so necessary to the community that it
must be maintained by a subsidy, then in the name of decency and
humanity let the subsidy come from the public treasury, and not
from the earnings of working women and the homes of the poor.
The consequence of such a judicial decision as that given by
the Oregon Supreme Court, cannot be easily overestimated. It is
writing into the fundamental law of the land a new view of labor,
namely, that human labor is not a mere commodity like corn or
cotton. I have listened to an eloquent lawyer pleading in one of
our courts, that just as the price of hogs at the slaughter house is
regulated by the law of supply and demand, so likewise the same
law should control the wages of our women workers upon whose
physical strength and moral character depend the perpetuity of the
race and the future of humanity.
The right to a living wage vindicated by this judicial decision
is the right of a human being to develop his personality, to work out
his spiritual destiny, to be what the word human implies. If a
business cannot pay its rent and interest on borrowed capital, the
burden is passed on to those who can. No sympathy is extended to
a firm which fails because it could not meet the demands of the
landowner and the money leaner ; but because it is proposed to make
a living wage a first cost on industry, great consternation is ex-
pressed for the business failures which are threatened as the result.
It may reasonably be suggested that such a calamity may be averted
by lowering the rent. For it is not written in the decrees of
Eternal Justice, nor can it be successfully maintained in human laws,
that the owner of land or other capital is to be recompensed while
the laborer, by whose efforts both the one and the other have been
rendered fruitful, shall be denied food and clothing for his body
and a roof -tree to shelter his domestic hearth.
THE CRUCIFIX.
BY PERCY JAMES BREBNER.
|T was the time of the vintage in Tuscany, and the early
morning was full of sunlight and sweet warm odors.
Along the road which climbed over a shoulder of the
hill, came a group of laughing men and women to
work in the valley below, where in many a rich
farm the purple clusters hung in luxuriant abundance. They had
not come far, only from their homes tucked away on the hillside.
This was the road to the village, known and loved ever since their
little legs were strong enough to toddle along it. If you went the
other way, many miles the other way, you could join a long and
weary road which would lead you to Rome, if you walked far
enough. But who would want to journey to Rome?
At the very shoulder of the hill, from which you could look
down upon the village with its irregular red-tiled roofs, its little
church with its square campanile always the first point to catch the
light of morning, and the rough stone, one-arched bridge which
spanned the stream that could roar like a torrent after rain, stood
a cross. It was of rough hard wood, leaning a little out of the
perpendicular with age, yet still strong to brave the summer heat
and the winter storm. At its foot the wild flowers grew as if they
loved the place. Who first planted a cross there no one knew, and
the hands that set up the present one in place of its predecessor had
long since been at rest in the village cemetery yonder. Only a dim
legend told why it had been placed here. Some saintly pilgrim,
weary of the way and burdened with the thought of the world's
sin, had suddenly seen the beautiful valley at his feet, bathed in
the glow of sunset, had heard the bell in the campanile ring out on
the still air, had caught the music of the water under the bridge, and
for a moment had thought he beheld a vision of paradise. The saint
had bowed his head, knowing that God had reproved him. The sin
of the world was grievous, but it was God's world, beautiful as
only God could make it, and in it was not only sin. So the cross
had been placed there, and from childhood men and women had
been taught to reverence it as they passed.
The laughter ceased for a moment at the shoulder of the hill.
They were all too used to the beauty of the village to give it a
452 THE CRUCIFIX [Jan,
passing thought, but women curtsied and men bared their bowed
heads before the cross. One girl laughed joyously as she put her
hand into that of the man beside her.
" Corpo di Bacco, but it's over-ready for love making," cried
Nino.
"Is it ever too early for that ? " a woman laughed at him
over her shoulder.
" It's something more than that, Nino," said another woman
nodding towards the two who went hand in hand down the road.
" It's love, but something more. Giovanni is young and he was
discontented for a while. He would show off, so once he said
yon was naught but a wooden cross and ill-made too; and he
used to pass it almost without bowing to it. It was a churlish
reverence, and Nella yonder has made him repent of it. Even
you, Nino, do not bow as Giovanni does now."
" His is the younger back, maybe that is the reason."
The woman looked at him. Nino was ever ready with a jest,
a jest that was sometimes not too seemly. It was known that
the good Padre had spoken to him about it on more than one
occasion.
They were all laughing again as they came down from the
hillside into the village. A blue sky, full of the morning sun,
domed this little world from one mountain ridge to the other, this
little world which lay in an oblong fold of the Apennines with
Falter ino for its centre ; a peaceful village to which strangers seldom
came, and from which the inhabitants rarely wandered into the
larger world of men and cities, of harsh commerce and disillusion.
Strangers yonder, over the last ridge of the hills, were told there
was nothing to see in Falterino. No master builder had fashioned
its little church, no picture from the brush of far-famed artist was
to be found there, no frescoes forming a link in the chain of
Italian art; history held nothing to hallow the spot, even the name
of the saint whose vision had caused the setting up of the cross on
the hill was forgotten; so the traveler pursued his way along the
road that led to Siena or to glorious Florence, and thought no more
about Falterino.
And why should anyone leave the village, this little world
within a world, this fair spot which held in it all that men and
women need, all they may reasonably expect of life sufficient labor
and friendship and love? The great world with all the roar of
its commerce and seductive whispers of luxury can give no more,
1915.] THE CRUCIFIX 453
though it may seem to, calling these primal things by many names.
Mostly it gives much less, demanding a price for its deceptive favors,
which men would never pay did not folly make them blind. Thus
the good Padre talked, and he had been far afield, even to Milan
years ago, and to Rome not twelve months since. True, Guido had
laughed at him and talked of riches, Guido who had been born
with discontent in his blood, and had set off up the winding road
one morning. He had made a reverence before the cross on the
shoulder of the hill, from habit rather than faith, for he was full
of strange and unnatural ideas; he had stood there a moment
waving a farewell to those who stood on the bridge watching him,
then he had gone and had not returned. But for the rest, the
Padre spoke to willing ears. Sheltered by the Apennines, as children
in the arms of a fond mother, they were a happy and simple folk in
Falterino, content with to-day, trustful concerning to-morrow, care-
ful in times of scantiness, full of laughter and festival when
plenty was with them. Faith was theirs as it is a little child's.
As a child goes to its mother, so they went into the little
church, never doubting that their simple requests would be answered.
Was not the Madonna with the Child in her arms, whose picture
hung over the altar in the tiny chapel of Our Lady, their Mother
too? Why, there were many in the village who could tell of things
the Madonna had done for them, and had priest or layman ventured
to argue against these facts, the women would have laughed him
to scorn, and as likely as not the men would have given him rough
handling. They were strong men who quarrelled sometimes, bring-
ing a reprimand from the Padre, but as a rule they laughed together
and sang over their work, whether they steered the plow drawn by
milk-white oxen or were busy with the grapes at vintage time;
and pilgrims might have made pilgrimage to Falterino had they
known how beautiful the women were.
There was Gaia. In all Tuscany you would not find her equal.
The men said it confidently as if they had traveled all Tuscany to
see, and even the women were not jealous of her. Gaia was one
apart. It was praise enough if a lover told a girl that she had
something of Gaia's beauty. She had been one apart even when
they had all been children together playing in the village, and the
Padre had had a special lesson for little Gaia.
" It is good to be beautiful, my child," he had said, " for
it is a gift from God, and all God's gifts are good. But there
is danger in it, too, little one, for there is nothing the devil under-
454 THE CRUCIFIX [Jan.,
stands more about than the power of a beautiful woman, no weapon
he uses more often or more effectually. Your heart and soul must
be beautiful too, then all shall go well with you."
The child did not appreciate the warning, though the words
remained with her, but she came to understand as she grew to
womanhood, and it was her constant petition to the Madonna to
make her as beautiful within as she was without.
To love Gaia was natural, but it became a kind of unwritten
law that the men must not quarrel about her. For other girls
the friendly relations between rivals might be strained at times,
that was human nature, but Gaia, in one sense, belonged to them
all. They were a brotherhood to protect her, to shield her from
harm. Some day she would choose amongst them, and that day
should be a festival. Gaia's husband would be a personage in Fal-
terino for her sake. The Padre nodded his approval, and watched
the girl with some apprehension. Well he might, for if ever a
woman was tempted to vanity, Gaia was.
Strangely, all this homage and adulation seemed to have no
effect upon her, none that even the Padre could see. She accepted
it humbly, as a tribute to God's gift, not as though she had a
right to it; and this attitude brought to her simple soul a subtle
conception of duty. It was not a conviction, it was only a thought
which dwelt with her. The Madonna would show her how to act
when the time came. She was not troubled, she made no mention
of it when she confessed to the Padre; it was just a question
God had given her to think over, and presently she would know
how to answer it.
She was gentle to all, but for two her sweetest smiles had
been reserved, for Andrea who could plow better than any man in
the village, and in the winter evenings carved beautifully in wood,
and for Guido, who was always discontented, and had left the
village in search of riches. For a little while the women of Fal-
terino had wondered whether Guido had carried Gaia's heart with
him, for so often she stood on the bridge and gazed up at the
cross on the hillside. The Padre had wondered too, but he said
nothing. Time was the best physician in such a matter. As a son
whom he deemed had erred, Guido was dear to the Padre, but
when he looked at Gaia he was glad that Guido had gone. He
was not the man to make Gaia happy.
And time had done its work. Twelve months after Guide's
departure, Gaia had become betrothed to Andrea, the carver as they
1915.] THE CRUCIFIX 455
called him, and there had soon come a day of rejoicing in the
village. Gaia's wedding would always be remembered in Falterino.
It had happened more than a year ago, and this morning as
the laughing men and women came down the road, Gaia was on the
bridge with her baby.
" Ah, the bambino !" cried the women, and paused a moment
to admire the child.
" Good morning, Gaia," said the men with eyes full of admira-
tion for the mother, and little wonder, for had a Raphael come
that way he would surely have paused and painted a new Madonna
and child.
" You are late," Gaia laughed. " Andrea was amongst the
vines a quarter of an hour ago."
" Is it possible ! " Nino exclaimed, pretending great as-
tonishment. " You should be angry at his being in so great a hurry.
Were I Andrea, I should stay with you until the last moment.
I shouldn't want to go at all."
" I should give you the bambino to look after."
"Is that why Andrea ran away so early to the farm?"
laughed Nino, and they all laughed, even the baby in Gaia's arms.
As they went, the Padre came from the church and walked
slowly towards the bridge. The thought of the Madonna was in
his mind, as he saw the woman on the bridge, and behind it was
another thought which troubled him, which was with him night and
day. For a long time it had been the subject of his special prayers.
Something of a blessing was in his greeting, and then his eyes rested
on the woman for a few moments.
" It is a favorite place of yours, this bridge? "
:( Yes, Father. I think there can be no more beautiful spot
in all the world."
" It is good, Gaia, to be contented and and quite happy."
" Very good, Father," and she looked up to the shoulder of
the hill, where the cross stood against a background of blue sky.
For a few moments the Padre was silent, and then, because
of the thought which troubled him, he said:
" I have noted how often you lean upon the parapet and look
towards the hill yonder. Gaia, does the road that runs by the cross
ever seem to beckon you ? "
" Never. Why do you ask, Father? "
He was not quite prepared to answer that question, so was
silent, while the baby clutched his finger in a chubby little hand.
456 THE CRUCIFIX [Jan.,
" Father, you, too, often stand here looking up at the cross
yonder," said Gaia.
" Yes."
"Why?"
" In thought. Mostly it is in the evening I stand here. It is
a pleasant place in the cool of the evening."
" Perhaps our thoughts are much alike, Father. "
" Perhaps."
" Is it of Guido you think? " she asked.
" Why, yes, but you"
" I think of him, too, Father."
For a minute or so there was silence.
"My daughter, what kind of thoughts are they? You have
never brought your trouble to me."
" No, Father."
" Why not? " And there was just a touch of severity in his
tone.
She looked at the child in her arms and then into the priest's
eyes.
" Father, I took it to the Madonna more than two years ago.
She is a woman, and I thought she would understand even better
than you. Was I wrong?"
" No, child.
" At first I only asked her a question. I just showed her
my heart and asked her guidance. She answered me very plainly;
and then, because I felt she was pleased with me and loved me,
I made a petition to her. Whether she has answered it I do not
know, perhaps I never shall know until until afterwards."
The Padre leaned against the parapet of the bridge in silence.
" You saw Guido when you were in Rome, Father ? " said the
woman after another pause.
" Yes."
" And you said he was doing well."
" He told me that he had plenty of work, and was making
money."
" I think the Madonna has answered my petition," said Gaia
reflectively, " even as she answered my question. That question
grew out of your teaching, Father something you said about beauty
when I was a child. You said it was the gift of God and must be
used in His service."
" I remember."
1915-] THE CRUCIFIX 457
" I did not understand all you meant then, but later under-
standing came to me," she went on. " There was Andrea and
Guido. They were both dear to me in different ways. With
Andrea I could look forward to happiness, but perhaps it was meant
that I should belong to Guido, that if he married me he would
become a better man. That was the question I took to the Madonna,
Father. Then Guido asked me to marry him, and in the same
breath he talked of riches, of going away from Falterino to win
them for me he said; but I could hear that he thought of himself, -
too. And it came to me how I should answer him. I cared nothing
for the world beyond the hills ; I thought he would find disappoint-
ment in it if I was meant to marry him. He should ask me again
within a year and a day, I told him. It was the way to find out
my duty, and I knew the Madonna would give me my answer.
Guido did not come, so I married Andrea."
" You were glad Guido did not come? " asked the Padre.
" Very glad, because I loved Andrea," she said simply. " Still,
Father, I do not forget Guido, and I have petitioned the Madonna
to help him and give him happiness. He has plenty of work
in Rome you say, and in Rome perhaps there is a woman who will
help him. It seems that the Madonna answers my petition."
" She has or will, my child. I have no doubt of it. You
deserve to be very happy, little Gaia."
" I am," she said, and she held up her child towards the Padre.
" I am the happiest woman in Falterino, and I think that means
in all the world."'
The Padre crossed the bridge, and went slowly up the village
street. Old Bartolomeo was sick and he went to visit him. He
heard men and women singing amongst the vines as he passed,
scraps of song that had sounded in Tuscany for generations. Yet
he was not really listening to the song nor thinking of sick Bartol-
omeo. He was remembering his visit to Rome and his meeting
with Guido. Guido had changed greatly in a short time; his
tongue had grown more boastful; he loved money and pleasure;
he laughed at Falterino ; he was even a little condescending to the
village priest who seemed so insignificant a figure in Rome, where
there were so many great prelates and cardinals. All the world
came to Rome, nobody ever went to Falterino. Guido had asked
about Gaia, and when the Padre told him she was married to Andrea,
he had burst out with an oath, and the whole fury of his nature
was let loose. Andrea was a villain who had robbed him in his
458 THE CRUCIFIX [Jan.,
absence. He meant to go back to the village and bring Gaia away,
bring her into the world where her beauty should be seen. Oh,
be very sure he would go back to Falterino, and Andrea should pay
for his treachery. A knife thrust should end it. The Padre might
be very certain of that.
The Padre had felt certain of it. The prayer he prayed almost
as often as he said his Pater Noster, was that Gaia might be spared,
and that tragedy might not come to Falterino, but he had taken
worldly precaution too. He had told Andrea what Guido had
threatened in Rome, and the carver, whether he worked amongst
the vines or walked the village street, was always prepared to meet
an enemy. He had no doubt that Guido would come some day.
He could understand the hot blood in Guido, better perhaps than
the Padre could.
The Padre as he went slowly to see sick Bartolomeo, under-
stood Guido a little better since his talk with Gaia on the bridge.
What was mostly pity, Guido had taken for love, and love waits
longer than a year and a day unless it is tampered with. There
was some excuse for Guido thinking that Andrea had been treach-
erous. The good Padre wondered if he ought not to make the
long journey to Rome to explain everything to Guido.
" Ah, but I have not the simple faith of Gaia," he murmured.
And on his way back from sick Bartolomeo, he passed into
the cool of the little church, and for a long time knelt in the chapel
of Our Lady.
All day long they were busy amongst the vines, even the
noontide siesta was shortened, and the coming of evening found
them still working. Who minded working long hours at the vintage
time? Nino with his muscles, hard as new cord, could laugh at
the idea of fatigue, and Andrea, who in Gaia and the bambino had
the best that the world could give, found life a joy whether he
worked or rested. Once towards evening he glanced up to the hill-
side. When Guido came he was ready for him. If he drew his
knife, why, so much the worse for Guido.
Towards evening, too, the Padre walked on to the bridge,
and his eyes traveled along the ribbon-like road, up to the cross
standing sharply against the opalescent sky. Below him the stream
sang in its stony bed, and like sentinels upon its banks, dark cypress
trees stood at intervals, not a movement in them. The ripple of a
woman's laughter came to him at intervals, and yonder, just above
the ridge of hill, palely glimmered the evening star. It was a good
1915-] THE CRUCIFIX 459
land this, a land of the olive and the vine, such a land as God
had promised to His people in the ages long ago. Over them the
same star had glimmered in an evening sky. Time and the affairs
of men, what were they? It was a good world and in the Lord's
keeping. There was His cross on the hillside, a sure sign for them
that would understand. Slowly the Padre went home, happy in
his faith.
Along the dusty road which stretched its many leagues to
Rome, a man climbed towards the cross on the hillside. He knew
it was vintage time, knew that men and women would be working
late amongst the vines ; he was not expecting to meet anyone upon
the road. He came to the cross and flung himself down at the foot
of it. He looked at it for a moment, but it was nothing to him,
just two rough pieces of wood fastened together. A tree would
have been more use there, for at noonday it would have given shade
for a man to rest in.
He laughed contemptuously as he flung himself down, and
looked at Falter ino below him. He thought of Rome and the
world; it was a mean little place this village, where men were
content just to live from year's end to year's end, ignorant of what
lay beyond them, without ambition. And yet Gaia was here and
Andrea the traitor Andrea. His fingers touched the handle of his
knife. It was a mean little place, yet he had come back to it.
Why ? To kill Andrea. The answer came easily, but was it worth
while coming all these weary miles for that? Was it worth while
to leave the great city, with its noise of work and pleasure, just to
kill a man? Somewhere in the village was Gaia, and in all Rome
he had found no Gaia.
A little more than two years ago she had made her promise,
she would wait for a year and a day. It was too short a time in
which to find riches, and he had meant to bring riches to Gaia.
If he had come empty-handed, as he had gone away, it would
have been different, very different; even empty-handed he could
have laughed at Andrea, even as he had done when they were
boys, when Andrea would rather be carving a bit of wood than
getting into mischief with the rest of them. How his companions
in Rome would laugh at Andrea, and yet yet he had Gaia.
Guido half-rose yet fell back upon his elbow again. The An-
gelus rang from the campanile; it was unlike any other bell he
had ever heard, and the familiar note sent his thoughts racing
back along the years that had gone. How full they were. It was
460 THE CRUCIFIX [Jan.,
astonishing how full life could be in such a place as Falterino,
where nothing ever happened. From this hillside to the cypress
grove, two miles or more beyond the village yonder, there was
not a spot that did not hold some memory; here some childish
frolic, there some event which had to do with his later years. That
corner of red roof showing to the right of the campanile marked
his home. He had been born there. A thousand times on just
such an evening as this he had seen his mother sitting in the
doorway, as likely as not patching some torn garment of his. By
the bridge, just where the little cascade was now, he had been
nearly drowned once in torrent time. Old Bartolomeo had pulled
him out he remembered, and he wondered if the old man had died
during the last two years. If he had, he would be behind the
church there lying close to where Guido's father and mother were.
On the path towards the cypress grove he had first played with
Gaia, Andrea was with them; and it was on that same path one
evening that Gaia had said she would wait for a year and a day.
There by the church was the Padre's house. What an insignificant
figure he had seemed in Rome, but how important he had always
been in Falterino. Surely that was the Padre now, going towards
the church. Of course, it was the sounding of the bell which
had started him remembering so many things. It was the end of
the day. Soon, some of those who had been working amongst the
vines would be climbing the hill on their way home. In Rome
they were beginning to think of the evening's amusements; in
Falterino
He rose to his feet, touched the handle of his knife again,
and remembered why he had journeyed so far. Once Andrea
was dead, he would travel back to Rome, to the pleasures there
and the chance of riches. Perhaps he would ask Gaia to come
with him. There were women who would do so, but not in Fal-
terino, least of all Gaia probably. She had always been under the
influence of the Padre, and was fond of long prayers. Prayers
He looked at the cross and laughed. Could prayers prevent
his going down the road into the village and killing Andrea?
What good had prayers ever done him? Had he not prayed for
riches? He was still poor. Had he not long ago prayed that
the beautiful Gaia might be his? She belonged to Andrea. Gaia
had promised to pray for him, so had the Padre he remembered.
What good had their prayers done ? Somewhere down in the valley
they were singing an old Tuscan song. Guido knew it well. His
1915.] THE CRUCIFIX 461
mother had sung it often, so had Gaia. It reminded him of his
childhood. How often he had heard it. Even in Falterino he
had been happy.
He looked at the cross again, but he did not laugh. He
noted that it leaned out of the perpendicular, that the wood was
old and rough, that it lacked beauty; yet how often he had seen
his mother bow to it, and he had bowed, too, as he clung to her
skirts. How often laughing men and women ceased their laughter
for a moment, and bowed and passed on. Why, there was hardly a
man or woman in Falterino who would pass without taking notice
of it. It was mere foolishness, sentiment. It was only a cross
of wood, and ill-made, too. It meant nothing to him. He had
been into the world, and had heard men talk; this was a sign that
belonged to a children's story. Why he had laughed at the people
who went into St. Peter's to pray, St. Peter's with its dome that
was the wonder of the world, and this rude cross But he did
not laugh; he could not. Standing clear against the evening sky
there was something in this old wooden cross that held him. His
fingers clasped and unclasped, and then his hand came slowly to his
head and his hat was off, and he bowed. He was a child again,
yet a man, a man suddenly remembering the past, suddenly seeing
The hat fell from Guido's nervous fingers. There was a strange
glow in the evening sky, against which the cross stood out with
intense clearness. There was a great silence over all the hills, over
all the world it seemed. Guido was alone, alone with the cross,
alone
Against the strange glow of the evening the cross stood clear,
and nailed to it was the figure of a Man. The outstretched arms
were bent with pain, the body twisted with a long agony, the head
drooped on the breast; and on the head was a crown of thorns.
It was no rude cross, but the Crucifix. Guido saw it, as men must
have seen it centuries ago, clear against the sky on Calvary.
" Jesu. Pardon. Mercy."
And he fell upon his knees amongst the wild flowers that
grew there.
Men and women came over the bridge and climbed the road.
They chattered as they came.
" Thank God for the vintage time," said Nella, drawing Gio-
vanni, her young husband closer to her, for in her heart she was
thanking God too for love.
462 ANOTHER YEAR [Jan.,
" It will be a wonderful vintage, this year," said Nino. "Never
were the grapes so full and large. Did you see Gaia with her
bambino on the bridge this morning, Giovanni ? "
" Aye."
" The sight didn't make you discontented with Nella there
seemingly."
" No. There's little enough to choose between Nella and Gaia,
if you're thinking of beauty."
Nino laughed his great laugh, and Nella drew closer to her
husband.
So they came to the cross and made their reverence, and
passed on homewards. It was only a rude cross on the roadside,
but it meant much to these men and women of Falterino.
The evening sun was growing dark and the stars were out.
They did not see the little cloud of dust on the road before them
where a man tramped on his way back to Rome.
ANOTHER YEAR.
BY S. M. D.
SOME years lie rose-crowned in their joy;
Some rue-entwined with shame;
Some cypress-bound in sadness,
Some laurel-wreathed with fame.
How shall it stand, loved Saviour,
The year begun to-day?
Shall blooms of trust, or thorns of doubt,
Strew the untrodden way?
What will it matter, Father,
Throughout eternity,
If happiness or sadness
But draw our hearts to Thee!
SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY.
BY THOMAS WALSH.
ALF-devastated, yet it is a hill of wonders that greets
the visitor of to-day; after the sweet serenity and
tempered loveliness of Avila across the plain, Sala-
manca lifts her domes and spires over the windings
of the Tormes with an air more defiant than inviting,
awesome rather than inspiring. The dusty omnibuses at the rail-
road station, the straggling common quarter leading through the
Gate of Zamora, almost crush the expectations of the newcomer.
He is confronted with the unkempt conditions of a small manu-
facturing town until suddenly the splendid vistas of the sky line
break upon him, the carvings of stone cornices in escutcheons, gar-
lands, torcheres, and latticed belvederes, all of the golden-brown
for which Salamanca is famous; the most unpromising streets
dip up and down around the stately Plaza Mayor, and sooner or
later end at some splendid college, convent, or shrine. The palace
of the ancient Montereys seems a coronation in stone beside the
great empty church of the Agustinas, where the grandest of all re-
ligious paintings, " The Conception " of Ribera, hangs above the
altar. Another byway leads off to the Gothic ruins of the primitive
Convent de la Vega ; down another dusty suburb lies the bare shrine
of Santo Cristo, a tragic crucifix with long tresses of natural hair
and skirt of embroidered velvet, ceaselessly petitioned amid a con-
flagration of candles and a prostrated throng. On a knoll over
the river the new cathedral, dating from the sixteenth century, half
smothers its archaic and marvelous predecessor with its Tower del
Gallo, from which Boston appropriated (without improving) the
spire on Copley Square. On another knoll stand the stupendous
church and college of the Compania, built for the Jesuits between
1617 and 1750, covering an area of twenty- four thousand square
yards, and almost dwarfing the entire city. Near at hand is the
lovely Casa de las Conchas, its iron grilles, smiling patio, and
facades emblazoned with cockle shells; and across a modern little
park, the Tower del Clavero, an old donjon-keep of the Sotomayors,
a pure touch of beauty amid much self-conscious splendor.
It is not quite correct to think that inspiration has ever en-
464 SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY [Jan.,
tirely abandoned the old " Queen of the Tormes " " the Mother of
the Virtues, Sciences, and Arts." There clings around her still
something of the dignity as well as the worldliness of courts; her
disputations can still show some of the old-time fire; the rivalries
and jealousies that seem particularly to affect small cities and uni-
versities are not unknown. As in the palmy days, the university,
the colleges, and religious houses discuss questions of faith, science
and art in the grand manner. Their funds may have been confis-
cated, their colleges destroyed or secularized, but the voices of the
priests have not been silenced; in Spain there is a large audience
intent to hear their views, which are sometimes far from appreciative
of their secular successors. Prominent among the protagonists is
the Rector of the University, Don Miguel de Unamuno, who may
be called a cosmopolitan of letters, inculcating an appreciation of
Spain and Spanish nature from an attitude so rare among his com-
patriots as almost to appear foreign. There have been some sharp
encounters over his Vida de Don Quixote y Sancho (Madrid,
1905) ; the Portuguese have not been enthusiastic over his volume,
For Tierras de Portugal y de Espana (Madrid, 1911) ; but in his
brochure Paisajes (Salamanca, 1902), there is certainly charm and
delicacy of feeling.
Standing in the Plaza of the Schools the very holy of holies
of Salamanca is the* bronze monument of the greatest son of the
university, the mystical poet Fray Luis de Leon, 1528-1591.
Erected by national subscription in 1869, ft rather dwarfs the little
square, suffering itself in consequence, and reflecting in a way not
intended by its inaugurators the fate of the real Fray Luis, and the
suffering that came upon him through his superiority to his time.
All Spain quotes his poems, and in the biographical study Fr. Luis
de Leon (Madrid, 1904), the Augustinian Padre Blanco Garcia
shows an excellent sense of his importance to the theology of the
sixteenth century, without losing sight of the fact that it is as poet
mainly that he interests the world to-day.
Declaring that Padre Blanco himself has been, at times,
more a poet than historian, Fray Alonso Getino in his Vida y
Procesos del Maestro Fr. Luis de Leon (Salamanca, 1907)
disputes the consecrated legend of a serene and persecuted
Fray Luis, and ably defends the traditions of the Dominican
school of dogma, with which, says Ticknor among others,
Fray Luis warred almost his own destruction. This contro-
versial explosion has not been without its counterblast, so that the
1915.] SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 465
newspapers of Madrid have been regaled with a brilliant duel
of wits between the Dominican champion and the Augustinian Fray
Conrado Muinos Saenz of the Royal College of The Escorial, whose
special grievance is the doubt expressed by Padre Getino as to the
validity of the legend that Fray Luis, after his return from five
years of imprisonment by the Inquisition, reopened his lectures
with the simple words, " We were saying yesterday Dicebamus
hesterna die." Invoking every resource of history and dialectics
in his El " Dedamos Ayer " (Madrid, 1908), the Augustinian sums
up in the words of the founder of his Order : " Credo propter pul-
chritudinem. Concepts of such sovereign beauty can never be the
products of a cold reason that invents, nor even of a warm imagina-
tion, for such would not have been capable of creating anything so
simple, ingenuous, natural, and spontaneous ; they can only be con-
ceived as genuine facts as phenomena of that genuine poetry, much
more fruitful, intense, and luminous than any poetical art, being the
direct and spontaneous expression of the unconscious genius hidden
in a great and generous soul."
To-day in Salamanca one can search in vain for the slightest
trace of the old home of the poet, his Convento de San Agustin; of
the college and church not a stone remains upon a stone. The
history of this splendid edifice, associated with the lives of numer-
ous saints and scholars, is not without its lesson for the student
of modern Spain; in 1589 the building was swept by fire, and again
in 1744. Then the French invaders of 1812 showed the high
grade cf their civilization by placing barrels of powder under the
principal arches, and completing its devastation. In 1827 the Au-
gustinians undertook a restoration, but their work was halted by
the decree suppressing the religious corporations of Spain. There-
upon the very laborers that were employed to rebuild the structure
turned about, and at the orders of its new possessors levelled it to
the ground.
More fortunate if to lead a life maimed and deserted can be
said to be better than an eclipse at the topmost of glory has been
the fate of the church and convent of Sancti-Spiritus, the home of
the Comendadora Isabel Osorio, the kinswoman for whom Fray
Luis made the Castilian version of The Song of Songs, that pre-
cipitated his trials and imprisonment. Having heard various mysti-
cal interpretations of the Biblical epithalamium, this cloistered noble-
woman had requested a translation from the Hebrew that would make
clear to her the utmost purport of the original, the order of the con-
VOL. C.30
466 SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY [Jan.,
text, and the most obvious and literal sense of its allegories. Fray
Luis acceded to her request and prepared in terza rima an exquisite
pastoral dialogue, which Dona Isabel retained for a few days, and
then returned to the author. What must have been his surprise, and
even terror, knowing as he did the hostility of his rivals, and how
serious an offence in the eyes of the Inquisition was the disseminat-
ing of the Scriptures in Spanish, without proper authority, when he
discovered that the friar who had charge of his cell had found the
version in his desk, and had made copies of it without his consent
or knowledge. It was only some months later, when a Dominican
scholar of Portugal wrote to congratulate him on his work, that he
learned of the numerous copies already circulating in manuscript.
Something may be learned also of the tireless industry of the In-
quisitors in the account given of two copies which were traced
as far as the missions of Cuzco in Peru.
Sancti-Spiritus is a vast structure as it stands to-day, divided
into schools, and prisons, and a parish church. In its arches and
delicate buttresses of golden-brown stone, it shows the Gothic
forms prevailing in 1436, the year of its foundation. The en-
trance to the church, however, is richly ornamented in the plaster-
esque style, and an elaborate inscription over the main door relates
its extraordinary legend. According to this monument, which is
dated A. D. 1030, King Ferdinand I., on the eve of a battle near
Compostela, was promised victory in a dream, on condition that the
properties of the first knight of Santiago who should be slain, be
given to the nuns of Sancti-Spiritus, and that the prioress should be
given the rank of comendadora or knight-commander, and come
out into battle or not, according to her pleasure. The king having
made solemn agreement to this effect with the Grand Master of
Santiago, it happened that the first to be slain by the arrows was
Alvar Ganchez, who held the commandery of Castiell de la Atalaya
y Palomera, and upon gaining the victory the king conferred these
territories upon the convent. The story is highly picturesque, but
no such battle is known to history, and the inscription is a mass of
errors in dates, titles, and phraseology. The actual foundation of
the parish took place in 1222 under the auspices of some pious
women, who were known as the Beat as de Santa Ana. Every year
in memory of their first meeting place near the Ermita de Santo
Cnsto, that ancient crucifix is still carried for a novena to the
convent church. Becoming a refuge for ladies, particularly for
widows, and those whose lords were absent on the battlefield, Sancti-
1915-] SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 467
Spiritus grew wealthy, honored with the favor of popes and kings.
In 1812 Alfonso X. created the nuns comendadoras of the Military
Order of Santiago, and later they obtained from the Pope exemption
from the authority of the Bishops of Salamanca. The choir of their
chapel is still intact, with its beautiful, if somewhat funereal, ceiling
of inlaid and painted wood, and its fifty-four stalls. We can pic-
ture Dona Isabel Osorio coming hither to her daily office, habited
as are the ancient portraits preserved in the sacristy, in a white
hood and veil, a black tunic, and the white cloak with the red
dagger of the Order of Santiago. She was a great lady, for none
other was received among these comendadoras who counted their
prioresses, in the manner of reigning kings, for six hundred years.
Their graves as yet are sacred, but to the broken-hearted woman
whose name was dragged into the trial of Fray Luis de Leon,
nobody seems to have given a thought. Saintly and learned she
must have been to a high degree to win the interest of a man so
remote from common concerns as the poet of The Ascension, The
Night Serene, The Vales of Heaven, and the ode To Retirement.
San Esteban has escaped the desecrators; on its commanding
eminence we can still find its splendid church that was designed
by Juan de Alava, and erected between 1524 and 1610. The rich-
ness of its ornamentation rivals that of the fagade of the new cathe-
dral, and it rests on the city like a carved casket of dull golden stone.
Garlands, escutcheons, scrolls, and statues riot on every hand ; over
the entrance is Ceroni's " Stoning of St. Stephen/' and at the side
there is a florid cenotaph and a bust of Fray Diego Deza, later Arch-
bishop and Grand Inquisitor, of whom Columbus declared to Fer-
dinand and Isabella, " It is due to him that Your Highnesses possess
The Indies." Within the monastery is also preserved the Salon
de Profundis, where in 1486, or early in 1487, a commission was
convened to decide upon the feasibility of the claims of Columbus.
Contrary to general notions, the university was in no way connected
officially with the inquest. Columbus was for a long time the guest
of the Dominicans, and through the influence of Deza with the
Cardinal Gonzalez de Mendoza the tertius rex of Spain a royal
investigation was ordered under the direction of the Hieronymite
Prior of the Prado. It is now believed that Columbus fearing that
his theories might be put to test by others than himself, withheld
information from the commissioners, and that their decision against
his claims was based on objections drawn not from Augustine's
De Civitate Dei, but from the teachings of Seneca and Ptolemy.
468 SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY [Jan.,
With such local traditions behind them, as well as their pre-
eminence in the philosophy of their own Aquinas, their several
revisions of the Vulgate Bible, and the prerogatives of the Inquisi-
tion, one hardly wonders that the Dominicans of Salamanca should
become haughty and intolerant as their rivals alleged. They pos-
sessed a practical monopoly of the chairs of theology, from the es-
tablishment of that faculty in 1416 down to the middle of the six-
teenth century, and continued to hold their own during the stormy
period when the Augustinians, Mercedarians, and Jesuits were most
active in the lists.
Of the other colleges that escaped the French devastation of
1811 and 1812, the Militar of Calatrava, founded by Carlos V. in
1552, is still preserved as a tenement for poor families, whose
dripping garments are hung to dry from its proud courtyard;
the College de Santiago Apostol, with its superb patio by Herrera,
has been more fortunate as the residence of the College de Nobles
Irlandeses, whose original buildings, the gift of Philip II. in 1592,
were destroyed by the French ; the Colegio Vie jo of San Bartolome,
founded in 1401 and rebuilt since 1760, is also cared for as a
municipal building.
Ave Salmantina k
Civitas gloriosa
Gloria litterarum
Semper speciosa
thus, according to Menendez y Pelayo, her generations of students
approaching over the plains of Castile and Leon, hailed her golden-
brown walls, her thirty-two colleges, and churches and monasteries
without number. From her proud eminence she smiled sternly out
of her rugged narrow streets and fortress-like houses, as every
year, about the opening of her schools on October i8th, the Feast
of St. Mark, they came by the Roman military road or the intri-
cate web of mule paths the seven thousand students of her golden
age. Muffled to their eyes in spite of the heat, these scholars,
students, and dependents form as motley a throng as any that ever
journeyed to Canterbury or Compostela. Following some youthful
Mendoza, or de Lara, or Guzman, strutted the swashbuckler and
mercenary home from the wars of Germany, Italy, or the Nether-
lands ; ragged scamps such as figure in the scenes of " Lazarillo
del Tormes " and " El Gran Tascano " bitter satirists of the kidney
of Quevedo; scholars and mystics like Peter Martyr, Thomas of
Villanova, the Blessed Orozco, and the Mother Teresa de Jesus;
1915-] SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 469
tonsured playwrights and troubadours like Herrera and Lope de
Vega; sedate grandees, and prelates, and rectors Portocarreros,
Bracamontes, Sarmientos, and Manriques, and all the sangre azul
of the Spains. Youngsters on their way to study the rudiments
in the Colegios menores jogged by under the escort of solemn old
servants, and muleteers half smothered under their pack of bedding
and fodder ; bachelors of the university returning from their native
villages as they rehearsed the story of their disputations with the
rural pastors upon whom they were entitled to quarter; most of
them tonsured, yet without any intention of proceeding to higher
orders, telling of their scholarly serenades and love-making at the
iron gratings; licendados went by, striding their mules, already
with the sedentary assurance of prelates, catedrdticos and doctors;
there were bookworms and disputants jealous of their intri-
cate systems of Scotus, Durandus, and Aquinas, lamenting the
abuses of Spain, refuting the Reformers of the north, outspoken
with the supernatural, and daunted only by the ominous shadow
of some passing Inquisitor, or the sight of the symbols of the
Holy Office in the villages through which they journeyed. Among
them trudged the poor student the sopista and the manteista
on foot, or sometimes two astride the same mule all equals in
the sacred name of learning the future monks and friars; chap-
lains of gold-fleets and armadas; missionaries and explorers of
the Perus, the Calif ornias, Philippines, and the Indies; the future
bishops, governors, and cardinals of state; the royal confessors,
and Inquisitors, the chroniclers, courtiers, martyrs, monastic re-
formers, and saints.
From every corner of the horizon, and every country of the
globe, came students in these early days; Spain sent her proudest
hidalgos, young Don Juans, Don Alvaros, Don Cherubinos, sprigs
of isolated castles or palatial solar es of Segovia, Avila, Orviedo, and
Toledo; alert lads from Catalonia; indolent little dreamers from
Valencia and the Greek colonies of the northeast ; stolid Aragonese,
more at home with the broadsword than the rapier; Asturians,
Basques, Navarreses, with soulful eyes and martial bearing; square-
browed Galicians, viejos cristianos from the Montana and the
shadow of Santiago de Compostela; swarthy Portuguese; and
witty, poetic, roistering Andalusians, of whom the duller students
dared only to whisper, " Cut out their tongues and there's nothing
left," as they strutted by with long black cloaks and plumes, the
forbidden dagger rattling at their side.
470 SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY [Jan.,
When, twice a year, these throngs had passed, the plains settled
down again to their endless monotony, except when the great dusty
flocks of pigs and goats came with their herdsmen for the annual
killing at the Feast of All Saints, or by night the string of mules
came running down from Coruna with fresh fish for the Dominicans
of San Esteban. More leisurely fared the post and special couriers
of Pope, nuncio, and king; Queen Isabella asks for a ruling
how to treat the Jews of Granada; the Emperor Carlos sends a
commission in the new, heavily-swung coaches to open the Military
College of Calatrava; Philip II. dispatches rapid messengers to
beg a Domingo Soto to resolve his scruples of conscience ; an Eng-
lish Henry VII. in 1527 submits the question of his first divorce to
the University Council. Or again, on the even of great festivals, the
roaring of bulls is heard across the plains, and crashing across the
Roman Bridge and up the steep narrow streets, rush the bulls de-
coyed into the barricades, so that the morrow may have its share of
blood.
Days of glory and cruelty ! The bravery, enterprise, and vir-
tues of heroic Spain begin to bear a harvest of power and gold,
pride and luxury. The Kings arrive at Salamanca; Ferdinand
and Isabella deck out the simple quarters of the university with their
gorgeous romantic fagades, and the schools, not to be daunted,
answer with the haughty Greek inscription, " The Kings to the
University. This, to the Kings." The Emperor Carlos mingles
freely with the students at their lectures; Philip II. comes obse-
quiously to hear his great Padre Soto expound his lesson in theology,
until his courtiers, having indulged in some scornful remarks re-
garding the soiled gowns of the students, are saved from a riot
only through his personal appeal.
Proud and unruly as student bodies generally have been, the
right of electing their professors and, through them, of choosing
annually the rector, gave the men of Salamanca unusual self-es-
teem. Even the poorest scholar found himself courted for his vote
with promises of privileges, and sometimes of food, as is said to
be the case in some municipal and national elections of to-day.
In these old days they had for athletics and amusement the
fast and furious game of pelota, from which our handball is de-
rived; bowling was popular, as well as fencing both with rapier
and staff. The wealthier students also indulged in falconry and
boar-hunting; bull-fights and tournaments were the usual climax
of these festivals. Cards and dice are said to have taken up a
1915-] SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 471
good deal of the leisure even of the professors, and we may imag-
ine their fondness for music from the number of instruments they
used the psalterion or zither, the chirmia or oboe, the mandora or
lute, the bagpipe of Zamora, and the ubiquitous guitar. There
were also numerous dances, and theatrical representations, the uni-
versity defraying part of the expense of any dramatic production
approved by the council. The further cooperation of the univer-
sity in the amusements of the people may be inferred from the
accounts given of the celebrations of the feast of San Marcos,
the patron of the city. On the eve of this day it was customary
for one of the professors to go with a procession outside the
walls, to mount to a safe place in the middle of a bull-pasture and
call out, "Marcos! Marcos!" The bull that first responded was
thereupon led into the city to attend the festal Mass at the cathe-
dral; then it was led forth and escorted from door to door to beg
for some student fund or other; after this fusees were tied to its
horns, and the terrified beast was loosed to run amuck and be
baited by the entire population.
As may be imagined the police had no little trouble in living
peaceably with the students; but once the latter could gain sanc-
tuary behind the iron posts and chains that outlined the jurisdiction
of their rector and chancellor they were comparatively safe.
The algnacils, or wardens of the university, seem to have
been of milder disposition, for not infrequently we hear
of grave disorders in the classrooms, where only the presence
of the rector himself was able to restore tranquillity. From
the diary of an old professor of the sixteenth century we
glean an interesting entry referring to the athletic and dis-
ciplinary conditions at Salamanca. Having put himself, he tells
us, in his best physical condition, the pragmatical doctor pro-
ceeded to the lecture hall, and opened his courses first with an
humble prayer, followed by a threat to break the head of any stu-
dent that set himself against him. The honesty of his character,
and the excellence of his training were brilliantly vindicated on
a certain day when one of his pupils hurled a malodorous object
in his face. Salamanca in 1560 was using a textbook of the Coper-
nican system, even when the Church, and most of the other univer-
sities, regarded it with suspicion, but the old diarist relates with
gusto how he seized hold of the great brass planetarium, a weight
of several hundred pounds, representing the entire then-known
universe, and dashed it at the reprobate's head. He expresses some
472 SALAMANCA TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY [Jan.,
complacence that none of the inoffensive members of the class were
injured, and bears cheerful witness to the excellence of the discipline
for the rest of the year.
Quevedo (1580-1645), a student of the university, relates
another tale that illustrates the poverty in which many of the stu-
dents lived at Salamanca. With a touch of humorous exaggera-
tion, he describes the excitement of a famished band when several
black beans are discovered at the bottom of their watery soup bowl.
A furious struggle ensues as to who shall enjoy these cabalistic
" black beans of Ethiopia," and not until a lifelong old student has
cracked his last remaining tooth on one of the morsels, is it found
that the rosary chaplet of one of the students has been broken, and
the beads have somehow slipped into the bowl.
Will the tides of glory ever sweep back again to Salamanca?
There are some who think they will. It is impossible, considering
the superb relics of architecture, the matchless prestige of so many
centuries of primacy in the arts and sciences, that Spain can for-
ever continue to ignore the fact that at Salamanca she possesses
one of the most venerable institutions of the world. Had England,
France, or Germany such a citadel of proud traditions we should
behold, instead of a crumbling waste of splendors, another Oxford
or Heidelberg at Salamanca. That the scholars of Spain should be
forced to congregate in the large cities, unpropitious, if not hostile,
to the proper pursuit of their studies, is only another example of a
mistaken spirit of progress. The government which did practically
nothing toward the foundation of these colleges, has fatally crippled
Salamanca, without offering any remedy or substitute, and even
without effecting any settlement of the monastic questions in which
its secularization was involved. If it were true that the old
" mother of the virtues, the sciences, and the arts " had fallen into
decline in the troublous days of Spain, why should she not now
join in the rising spirit of the nation, throw off her shackles, and
recall to her schools the young generations that are at present sacri-
ficing the memories and traditions of their race in the foreign
schools of the world? There are some thinkers who see into the
future, and behold visions of these old professors reopening their
dusty class books with the words of Fray Luis de Leon, " We were
saying yesterday."
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D., SC.D.
LITTLE more than fifty years ago Harpers published
a book of very serious character, which now has but
an academic interest, yet which in that generation
attracted so much attention that it went through five
editions in a few. years, and was generally considered
as one of the very significant American contributions to scholarship.
Its title is The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe,
and it was written by John William Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor
of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York, and
author of a series of books on physiology and on history. The
subject had been first treated by him in a paper read at the annual
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
held at Oxford in 1860. His thesis was, therefore, very properly
introduced to the world of science, and was manifestly accepted as
quite authoritative. The publication of the full text of the argu-
ment was somewhat delayed by the Civil War, but it appeared in
1863, an d m s pi te f tne then unfavorable conditions of the book
trade, three large editions were exhausted in a little more than a year,
and a fourth revised edition was issued in 1865. It ' 1S a book that
shaped much of the thinking of educated Americans at that time,
and its serious character makes it very clear that only those of con-
siderable education would be interested in it. The work may,
therefore, fairly be taken as a criterion of the intellectual taste
and judgment of academic circles of that day.
Draper himself said in his preface that " no one had hitherto
undertaken the labor of arranging the evidence offered by the intel-
lectual history of Europe in accordance with physiological princi-
ples (!) so as to illustrate the orderly progress of civilization, or col-
lected the facts furnished by other branches of science with a view
of enabling us to recognize clearly the conditions under which
that progress takes place. This philosophical deficiency I have en-
deavored in the following pages to supply." Here then was the
scientific philosophy of the history of Europe. It is interesting
now after fifty years to consider the man and a few of his judg-
ments on historical characters and movements, though I fear such
474 HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO [Jan,
consideration is not likely to make the reader of the present time
feel that science is, as it has sometimes been claimed, a fine educa-
tional discipline.
Writers of history, recognized as great philosophic historians
in our own time as in Draper's and in every other time, have
proclaimed that the most important factor in the intellectual develop-
ment of Europe was Christianity as represented by the Catholic
Church, and they have not hesitated to declare that the debt to her
is so great as to be almost incalculable. They have reached their
conclusion quite apart from religious belief or non-belief. John
Fiske declared in The Beginnings of Nezv England , perhaps the last
place in the world one might expect to find such an expression, that
" It is hard to find words to express the debt of gratitude which
modern civilization owes to the Roman Catholic Church." I need
scarcely say that Mr. Fiske had no particular partiality for Cathol-
icism; that his was a scientific mind, and that he was exceptionally
well informed. Draper advanced exactly the opposite theory, and
sought to find substantiation for the thesis that Christianity had
hampered the progress of mankind in every possible way, and that
whatever advance had occurred for many centuries was to be noted
only among non-Christians, or among Christians only after the ages
of faith were over, and religion began to lose its hold on mankind.
His thesis was to be proved by showing that the Greeks had
been supremely great in science as in every mode of the intellectual
life; that decadence had set in shortly after Christianity, and had
manifested itself everywhere, except among the Arabs; that the Re-
naissance with its return to Greek influences, and incidentally to
paganism, had saved mankind from the sterilizing force of Christi-
anity. Professor Draper was almost the last of serious writers who
saw no good in the Middle Ages. John Fiske had said:
When we think of all the work, big with promise of the
future, that went on in those centuries which modern writers
in their ignorance used once to set apart and stigmatize as the
Dark Ages ; when we consider how the seeds of what is noblest
in modern life were then painfully sown on the soil which im-
perial Rome had prepared, when we think of the various works
of a Gregory, a Benedict, a Boniface, an Alfred, a Charlemagne,
we feel that there is a sense in which the most brilliant achieve-
ments of pagan antiquity are dwarfed in comparison with these.
For all these Draper had no sympathy, and for some of them
1915.] HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO 475
intense deprecation. His thesis was that Christianity, or at least
the Catholic Church, had been always an incubus on mankind.
Naturally such a paradox attracted attention. It was sensa-
tional. It was backed up by a man recognized as a distinguished
scientist. He brought to his argumentation a fund of information.
Under the circumstances readers did not subject that information to
any severe critical tests, for it was accepted on general principles
that a scientific mind like Draper's might be trusted to make almost
absolute tests of truth.
It is positively amazing to read in our time, with the added
knowledge of the mediaeval period that has come to us, some of
Draper's summaries of men and movements. Only for the popu-
larity of Draper's book among the academic classes, one would be
tempted to dismiss his expressions as the idle vaporings of a man
who knew nothing at all about these men and the events with which
they were associated. For his characterizations of the men of the
Middle Ages are almost literal caricatures. Men whom all serious
historians have treated as among the greatest, particularly in the
enduring quality of their influence, are set down by Draper, because
they had no interest in science, as little better than knaves or fools.
Of broad understanding and sympathy with the movements of
other periods, than his own very narrow one, there is not a trace.
By his characterization of the great men of any period, a
philosophic historian may best be judged. Now Draper's apprecia-
tion of the men of the mediaeval period is almost invariably an
indictment of his own prejudice, and of an intolerance that abso-
lutely refused to see anything good in anybody associated even
remotely with the Church. A typical example is his treatment of
King Louis of France. If there is anyone who represents the
Middle Ages at its best it is the saintly Louis. Draper's utter lack
of the philosophic temper and the small narrow scholarship of those
who read his book, and thought it a contribution to serious history,
are best illustrated by his paragraph on St. Louis. Draper can
find absolutely nothing to praise, and ever so much to condemn.
How could it be otherwise? The Church has seen fit to canonize
King Louis. He is perhaps better known as St. Louis than as
Louis, King of France. Any king that was fool enough to live a
life that merited canonization from the hands of the Church, could
have been only a simpleton. This is what Draper * frankly calls
St. Louis.
^age 379.
476 HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO [Jan.,
St. Louis the representative of the hierarchical party, gathers
influence only from the circumstance of his relations with the
Church, of whose interests he was a fanatical supporter. So
far as the affairs of his people were concerned, he can hardly
be looked upon as anything better than a simpleton. His recipe
for checking the threatened spread of heresy was a resort to
violence the fagot and his sword. In his opinion "a man ought
never to dispute with a misbeliever except with his sword, which
he ought to drive into the heretic's entrails as far as he could."
It was the signal glory of his reign that he secured for France
that inestimable relic, the crown of thorns.
Set besides this paragraph of Professor Draper a paragraph or
two from Guizot, the French statesman and historian, whose life-
long, unbending Calvinism makes him no partisan witness for things
Catholic :
It is reported that in the seventeenth century during the
brilliant reign of Louis XIV., Montecuculi, on learning of the
death of his illustrious rival, Turenne, said to his officers, " A
man has died to-day who did honor to mankind." St. Louis did
honor to France, to royalty, to humanity, and to Christianity.
This was the feeling of his contemporaries, and after six cen-
turies it is still confirmed by the judgment of the historian.
Guizot went even further, and with the calmness of a philoso-
phic historian has shown us how a man may appreciate thoroughly
one with whom he cannot agree. The difference between Professor
Draper's utter inability to understand anything of Louis' greatness
and Guizot' s almost ungrudging panegyric, shows how utterly our
American professor of physiology, turned historian of culture, was
blinded by the attitude of mind with which he started out to write
his history of human development. Here is Guizot on St. Louis :
The world has seen more profound politicians on the throne,
greater generals, men of more mighty and brilliant intellect,
princes who have exercised a more powerful influence over later
generations and events subsequent to their own times ; but it has
never seen such a king as this St. Louis, never seen a man possess-
ing sovereign power, and yet not contracting the vices and pas-
sions which attend it, displaying upon the throne in such a high
degree every human virtue purified and ennobled by Christian
faith. St. Louis did not give any new or personal impulse to his
age ; he did not strongly influence the nature or the development
of civilization in France; whilst he endeavored to reform the
gravest abuses of the feudal system by the introduction of jus-
1915-] HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO 477
tice and public order, he did not endeavor to abolish it either by
the substitution of a pure monarchy, or by setting class against
class in order to raise the royal authority high above all. He
was neither an egotist nor a scheming diplomatist ; he was, in all
sincerity, in harmony with his age and sympathetic alike with
the faith, the institutions, the customs, and the tastes of France
in the thirteenth century. And yet both in the thirteenth century
and in later times St. Louis stands apart as a man of pro-
foundly original character, an isolated figure without any peer
among his contemporaries or his successors. As far as it was
possible in the Middle Ages, he was an ideal man, king, and
Christian.
Even Voltaire, to whom Louis' character as a believer in re-
vealed religion must have been so unappealing, and who combated
all that medisevalism of which Louis was the historical symbol, gave
his measure of praise to St. Louis. Voltaire might well be expected
to be the scoffer, and not Draper. But Voltaire knew too much;
Draper too little. Like Guizot, Voltaire could not fail to understand
that, explain him as one might, Louis was a supremely great char-
acter, and, differ with him in his attitude toward religion as one
would, his greatness could not be minimized. Voltaire said :
Louis IX. appeared to be a prince destined to reform Europe,
if she could have been reformed, to render France triumphant
and civilized, and to be in all things a pattern for men. His
piety which was that of an anchorite, did not deprive him of any
kingly virtue. A wise economy took nothing from his liberality.
A profound policy was combined with strict justice, and he is
perhaps the only sovereign who is entitled to this praise ; prudent
and firm in counsel, intrepid without rashness in his wars, he was
as compassionate as if he had always been unhappy. No man
could have carried virtue further.
After reading his misunderstanding of St. Louis, it is not sur-
prising to find that Professor Draper can find nothing sympathetic
in Pope Innocent III., and that every achievement of that great
Pope must be attributed to the basest motives. Professor Draper
evidently worked himself up to a state of mind where he absolutely
could not see anything good in one who had been so important a
leader in the Church as was Pope Innocent. Only the firmest kind
of determination to exclude knowledge can explain such a state of
mind. The study of Pope Innocent's times has made almost more
converts than that of any other period in Church history. At least
one of the Pope's great biographers began his life of the Pope with
478 HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO [Jan.,
the intention of demonstrating what an evil the Papacy was, but he
finished an enthusiastic " papist " in the best sense of the word.
Draper summarized Innocent's character and accomplishments as
follows :
Great historial events often find illustrations in representative
men. Such is the case in the epoch we are now considering.
On one side stands Innocent, true to the instincts of his party,
interfering with all the European nations; launching forth his
interdicts and excommunications ; steeped in the blood of French
heretics ; hesitating at no atrocity, even the outrage and murder
of women and children, the ruin of flourishing cities, to com-
pass his plans; in all directions, under a thousand pretenses,
draining Europe of its money ; calling to his aid hosts of begging
friars ; putting forth imposture miracles ; organizing the Inquisi-
tion, and invading the privacy of life by the contrivance of
auricular confession.
Such a paragraph is all the more surprising, because Innocent
III. had conferred a supreme boon on Europe that ought to have
particularly interested Professor Draper as a physician and a pro-
fessor of medicine. To Pope Innocent III. the foundation of a
great many hospitals, literally hundreds of them, in Europe is due.
At the beginning of his pontificate, recognizing the need for a
properly organized hospital in Rome, the Pope made inquiries as to
who was best fitted to establish and thoroughly organize hospital and
nursing work. He was told that Guy or Guido of Montpelier, a
member of the Order of the Holy Ghost in the south of France,
had shown a great ability in hospital organization. Accordingly
Pope Innocent sent for Guy, committed to him the organization of
the Santo Spirito Hospital in the Borgo of Rome, and supplied him
with ample funds. But Innocent did not stop there. Having se-
cured the organization of a model hospital, he then called the at-
tention of Christian bishops from all over Europe, when they came
on their official visits to him in Rome, to this hospital, and suggested
that in every town in Europe of five thousand inhabitants or more,
there ought to be a hospital similar as far as possible.
Virchow in his monograph on Hospitals and Hospital Organ-
isation, 2 gives a list numbering over one hundred and fifty Hos-
pitals of the Holy Ghost in Germany. This shows how far-
reaching was this movement of Pope Innocent. It became quite the
fashion for members of the nobility to found hospitals and first-aid
2 Virchow, Krankenhauser und Hospitalwesen in Ges. Abhandlungen. a. d.
Gebiete d. offentlichen Medicin u. d. Seuchenlehre. Berlin, 1879, vol. ii., pp. 1-130.
1915-] HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO 479
stations of all kinds for the poor, the weak, and the ailing. Certain
families, as for instance that to which Queen Elizabeth of Hungary
belonged, considered it a sort of family obligation to spend much
money and no little time on these institutions. Virchow has also
given something of the story of this family, and it is very interesting
because of its anticipation of social developments supposed to be
distinctly modern. Queen Elizabeth of Hungary has been hailed
as the first settlement worker, and undoubtedly her method of dealing
with the poor anticipated very definitely most of what the modern
settlement worker attempts. As Germany at this time was by no
means the country highest in culture and social order, other coun-
tries like France and Spain had undoubtedly at least as many hospi-
tals as the Teutonic countries, though so far no Virchow has traced
the details of their history.
Virchow was far from being an ardent lover of the Popes.
His article, to be found in the second volume of his collection of
essays on public medicine and the history of epidemics, is the
classical source for our knowledge with regard to the history of
early German hospitals. 3 Virchow does not hesitate to give credit
where he knows that credit belongs. He attributes the initiative
in this great movement for hospital organization and the benefit
of the sick poor to Pope Innocent III.
It is only necessary to place Virchow's tribute to Pope Innocent
III. besides the paragraph in which Professor Draper has pretended
to summarize Innocent's career and activity, in order to see what
a farce Draper made of history. The German pathologist said :
The beginning of the history of all of these German hospitals
is connected with the name of that Pope who made the boldest
and farthest-reaching attempt to gather the sum of human in-
terests into the organization of the Catholic Church. The Hos-
pitals of the Holy Ghost were one of the many means by which
Innocent III. thought to hold humanity to the Holy See. And
surely it was one of the most effective. Was it not calculated
to create the most profound impression to see how the mighty
Pope, who humbled emperors and deposed kings, who was the
unrelenting adversary of the Albigenses, turned his eyes sym-
pathetically upon the poor and the sick, sought the helpless and
the neglected upon the streets, and saved the illegitimate children
from death in the waters ! There is something at once conciliat-
ing and fascinating in the fact, that at the very time when the
*Gesam. Abhandlungen a. d. Gebiete d. dffentlichen Medicin u. d. Seuchenlehre
von Rudolph Virchow. Berlin, 1879, August Hirschswald.
480 HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO [Jan.,
Fourth Crusade was inaugurated through his influence, the
thought of founding a great organization of an essentially hu-
mane character which was eventually to extend throughout all
Christendom, was also taking form in his soul ; and that in the
same year (1204) m which the new Latin Empire was founded
in Constantinople, the newly-erected hospital of the Holy Spirit,
by the old bridge on the other side of the Tiber, was blessed and
dedicated as the future centre of this organization.
A little farther on in the same essay, Virchow was even more
outspoken and less reserved in his praise.
It must be acknowledged that to the Catholic Church, and
above all to Pope Innocent III., should be accorded the glory of
having not only opened wide the treasury of Christian charity
and mercy in all its fullness, but also of having diffused the
fruitful stream over all the domains of social life in an ordered
way. And indeed on this ground the interest in this man and in
this time will never die. (Italics ours.)
Professor Draper attributes the invention and organization of
the practice of auricular confession to Pope Innocent III., and de-
clares that this institution was just one of this wily Pope's
many means of securing power over mankind. No edu-
cated person harbors such a thought to-day. But in 1865,
just fifty years ago, a university professor, a distinguished
physiologist, a writer of history who was supposed by many
educated readers to have gone faithfully to the sources, who
enjoyed public respect, was writing this nonsense. Not only that,
but it was being published in New York City by presumably the
most respectable of the publishers of the day, and the book in which
it appeared went through as many editions in a few years after pub-
lication as did a " best seller " at that time. It is encouraging at
least to see what a change has come over the American mind since
then. Publications similar to Dr. Draper's now come from the
distant South or West, and the writer is usually quite unknown.
We can look forward with confidence, I hope, to the fact that in
another fifty years of education for the American people, even the
ignorant and intolerant will not venture on such absolutely foolish
expressions, or if they so venture will be read but by few.
If Draper insisted on finding nothing but a simpleton in one
of the greatest monarchs of history, St. Louis, and if Pope Innocent
III., the founder of the hospitals and the organizer of the charities of
Europe, was only a bloodthirsty imposter, it would be quite easy to
1915.] HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO 481
know beforehand just what treatment the great saintly founders of
the Mendicant Friars would receive from his hands. I doubt, how-
ever, whether anyone who has not actually read his book could
quite conceive how completely he has misrepresented them. His
treatment of their characters, their careers, and their foundations
of religious orders is utterly contemptuous. Americans, in Pro-
fessor Draper's time, did not know much about Dominicans and
Franciscans, nor realize at all that thousands of educated men and
women of the highest aspirations have in every century, since the
thirteenth, looked back to St. Dominic and St. Francis as to men
who helped them to make more perfect their own lives. It only
requires a little sympathy and knowledge to recognize St. Dominic
and St. Francis as among the great men of history, because of their
enduring influence for all that is good. Draper could find only
foolishness, though he gives more than a hint at imposture.
Draper of course never anticipated the cult of St. Francis, " the
little poor man of God," that was to develop so shortly after his
time. Over a score of lives of St. Francis have been published
in English during the last twenty years. A few years after
Draper's death the " young enthusiast," whom Draper dismisses as
little better than a fool, was to become even in English-speaking
countries a very centre of attraction not only to those interested in
religion, but to all who were interested in literature, in art, in cul-
ture of any form. There is scarcely a distinguished literary man
of any country in Europe who, during the past generation, has not
paid his tribute of praise to St. Francis. The gentle saintly As-
sisian has united men of the most different characters and views in
a community of admiration and interest.
Professor Draper seems to have understood nothing of what
made the sublime simplicity, nor constituted the marvelous greatness,
of the preacher to the birds and the fishes, the memory of whom
men will never willingly let die.
Professor Draper deliberately ignores the work of the great
medisevalist scholars even in science. If he does mention it, it
is only to minimize it. He has a good word for Roger Bacon,
but that would seem drawn from him mainly because Bacon's
lack of tact got him into trouble with his superiors, never with the
Church itself be it said, nor with the Popes one of whom at
least was a dear personal friend and Bacon's vicissitudes give
Professor Draper a chance to have a fling at Church opposition
to science. For Albertus Magnus, the only man in all history into
VOL. C. ; 31
482 HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO [Jan.,
whose name the epithet great has become so thoroughly incor-
porated, that most people do not realize that Magnus, the latter
part of it, was not his family name, but the tribute of admiration of
his generation to a great scholar, Professor Draper has but a few
words of commendation, weak enough to be damnatory. First,
Albert was a Dominican, proud to belong to that order, and there-
fore he must, in some way, have been deficient; second, he
was in high favor with the Church, was made a bishop, resigned
his bishopric to return to his order, so as to have more time for
his scholarly work, and surely that must indicate some lack of in-
telligence or at least of proper ambition. The same must be true
of Bacon, since he remained well over fifty years among the Fran-
ciscans, though he might easily have withdrawn if he wished, and
seems at the end to have looked back with supreme satisfaction
on his long career as a religious. It is quite impossible for
Draper to understand Roger Bacon, though he does confess, per-
haps a little grudgingly, that " Bacon's native country has never yet
done him justice, though his contemporaries truly spoke of him as
the admirable Doctor. The great friar of the thirteenth century
has been eclipsed by an unworthy namesake."
What a difference in the credit given to these mediaeval scholars
by Draper and by those distinguished authorities who have studied
their works very carefully! Humboldt, for instance, than whom
there could be no better authority on physical geography in the
modern time, declares that " Albert was equally active and in-
fluential in promoting the study of natural science and of the
Aristotelian philosophy." He compliments him particularly on
what he has written with regard to physical geography, and says
that the information which Albert has collected has excited his sur-
prise. Humboldt was the world authority on physical geography.
Meyer, the German historian of botany, declares that no botanist
who lived before Albert can be compared to him, unless it be
Theophrastus, and none after him until the Renaissance, full three
centuries later. Pagel, the modern German historian of medicine,
has carefully analyzed Albert's writings on the biological sciences,
and paid high compliments to them. Similar quotations might be
made as to Roger Bacon; and Oxford in the year of grace 1914
unveiled a statue to him, celebrating the seven hundredth anniver-
sary of his birthday; the ceremonies were under the auspices
of the Royal Society, the chief scientific society of Great Britain,
and the address was made by an ex-President of that society.
1915.] HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO 483
Professor Draper on transubstantiation is a like mixture of
assumption and misunderstanding. He seems to have believed that
transmutation was associated in the mediaeval mind with transubstan-
tiation, or at least that the belief in the one led to belief in the other.
This is the only instance that I know of the confrontation of these
words and the ideas connected with them. Transubstantiation is
of course early Christian, while transmutation was in the early
Middle Ages a favorite Arabic doctrine obtained from the Greeks.
Apparently Draper's unmitigated contempt for transmutation sug-
gested the chance of a fling at transubstantiation, and so he declares
the two doctrines twin sisters.
The most noteworthy feature of Professor Draper's Intel-
lectual Life of Europe, is the large place given in it to the Arabs
in modern times. They were the only ones during the Middle
Ages according to Draper who possessed any science, and as
science is to his mind the only thing that is of any real significance
for mankind, and as the development of it, that is of physical
science, is the only true index of the cultivation of intelligence, the
Arabs were the only people worth while considering in the story
of intellectual development. For metaphysics, of course, Draper
had no use. That the greatest intellects mankind has ever had,
should have occupied themselves with metaphysical problems, was
for Draper only an indication of the curious hallucinations that
sometimes occupy men, and of the shadows that they are prone to
chase whenever they do not occupy themselves with the problems
of the material world. Because the Arabs occupied themselves
with physical science, Draper cannot say too much in their favor;
and on the other hand, he cannot say too much against the Chris-
tians of the Middle Ages who were not occupied with material
science.
Draper's panegyric of the Arabs, when read in the light of
his almost intense hatred of Christianity, or at least his manifest
deliberate purpose to belittle Christianity, scarcely rises above the
dignity of a joke. It is true that he has told the story of what
the Arabs knew and had done, and how well they carried on in a
certain limited way the torch of Greek knowledge that had been
handed to them. The generation for which he wrote knew al-
most nothing of this. As a consequence it impressed them very
deeply, and Draper's exaggerations were swallowed, and it seemed
as though the whole course of history had up to Draper's time
been written wrong.
484 HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO [Jan.,
But the story of Arabian culture is simple enough, if traced
to its origin. The followers of Mahomet captured the cities of
Asia Minor, and were thus brought in contact directly with the
Greek culture which had permeated these cities. Their own les-
sons from Greek science, Greek philosophy, and Greek literature,
though on principle they refused to have much to do with this,
were, as I have pointed out in my Old Time Makers of Medicine,
obtained from Christian teachers. Touch with Greek thought is
however the most important intellectual factor in the world at all
times. The Romans woke up out of their militarism into culture
after they came in contact with Greece. " Captive Greece led its
captor captive." Captive Greek Asia Minor led even the Arabians
captive. Sir Henry Maine once declared, " Whatever lives and
moves in the intellectual life is Greek in origin." When the bar-
barians overran Italy the Greek influence was suppressed. The
Arabs then had the advantage of direct connection with the foun-
tain head of great thought.
There is, however, another great source of human influence
in the world which, in imitation of Sir Henry Maine's expression,
may be stated thus, " whatever lives and moves in the spiritual
order among men is Hebrew in origin." Western Europe was
influenced by Hebraic traditions, since the coming of Christ be-
come Christian. This gave the people their great churches, a su-
preme art, literature, architecture, and philosophy and theology in
the service of religion. For all of these Draper has no understand-
ing, therefore the West was doing nothing; while the Arabs dabbling
in physical science were doing everything that was worth while
talking about.
I have said " dabbling in science " of the Arabs deliberately.
Undoubtedly they occupied themselves much with physical science,
but what they did was largely borrowed from the Greeks, and much
of it they spoiled by Oriental refinements and imaginative additions
of many kinds. To take that one department of which I know
most, and with which Professor Draper from his position of pro-
fessor of physiology in the medical school ought to be the most
familiar the history of medicine and surgery. While the Arabs
carried on the work of the Greeks in these departments, how little
of any real development came from them can be best judged from
a comparison of the works of the great Arabian physicians and
surgeons, Rhazes, AH Abbas, and the Moorish physicians and
surgeons, Albucasis, Avenzoar, and Averroes with their Greek
1915-] HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO 485
predecessors. As I have shown in Old Time Makers of Medicine,
these Arabs and Moors quote the great Christian physicians of the
earlier times, especially yEtios, Alexander of Thralles, and ^Egine-
lus or Paul of ^Egina of the sixth and seventh centuries. They
quote these almost as frequently as they do the older Greeks.
There is very little, indeed, that they added to them. They had
the advantage of touch with Greek writers which the West of
Europe generally did not have.
In medicine certain Oriental tendencies among the Arabs were
fatal to true progress. They theorized over much, observed too
little, discouraged dissection, did not encourage surgery, and above
all they gradually developed a system of medication in which a
great many drugs were used at the same time. The Arabian
polypharmacy has passed into a byword, and the long prescriptions
written by them came to be known in after time as calendar
prescriptions, because they sometimes contained as many items as
the days of the month. The custom of giving so many drugs was
abrogated by the teaching of the first Christian medical school,
which came into existence under the influence of the Benedictines
at Salerno in Italy in the tenth century. At this medical school
the department of women's diseases was placed in charge of
women, a development which could not possibly be thought of
under any Arabian influence. It is sometimes said that there were
Arab teachers at Salerno, and that this accounts for the success of
the school, but this is said only by those who have not studied the
details of the story of Salerno as they have been worked out for
us in recent years. ' Arabian influence of Salerno is insisted on
only by such as have as a thesis that the Arabs are responsible for
all the scientific advance that came during the Middle Ages.
Gurlt, the German historian of surgery, has pointed out that Greek,
and not Arabic, influences are to be noted in the writings of the
great surgeons of Salerno, who have left magnificent textbooks
describing nearly all our modern operations with anaesthesia, anti-
sepsis, and insistence on the necessity of the knowledge of
anatomy. He emphasizes the fact that Grecisms, not Arabisms,
are to be found in this writing.
Just as soon as Europe got in touch with Greek thought, even
half as intimately as the Arabs had enjoyed it for centuries, the
European scholars began to excel the Arabs. The Arabians had
had the precious treasure of Greek influence, but did not make any
great increment on it. The development out of the Greeks came at
486 HISTORY FIFTY YEARS AGO [Jan.,
first with the earlier Renaissance in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, when at Salerno, Bologna, Paris, and Mont-
pelier there was a magnificent progress in medicine and surgery;
and then a little later when the full tide of Greek influence set in
and biological sciences developed so magnificently, the research
work for them being done more at Rome, or at least under more
distinguished investigation there than anywhere else in Europe.
It is perfectly fair to say of Draper's book that these examples
are a true index to the character of the entire volume. Draper made
a caricature ; he did not write a history. The question that interests
us now, fifty years after, is how a man of Draper's standing come to
be guilty of such lack of knowledge, and how so many readers come
to accept him without protest? The explanation is that Draper
was possessed with the idea that science was in his day revolutioniz-
ing all the previous thinking of man. The history of science itself
is proving how seriously he was mistaken. The materialism then
almost universal among scientists has given way to vitalism. The
exaggerated Darwinism of Draper's day has, to quote the greatest
of living German biologists, " failed all along the line." Draper
was a specialist, and some specialists are prone to think, according
to Dean West of Princeton, that " because they know more about
one subject than they know about any other, they know more about
that subject than anyone else does," to which someone has added,
" and they are inclined to think that if they should give any serious
thought to any subject whatever, they would know more about that
than anyone else."
Specialists would be the first to resent bitterly the intrusion of
an outsider on their domain. They despise the amateur who, know-
ing little concerning their subject, attempts to generalize about it.
Some of them very readily generalize about philosophy, theology,
history, and other subjects in which they are far from being
specialists, and a mastery of which requires long years of special
preparation. To generalize on subjects with which he was unac-
quainted was Draper's flagrant fault. That so many readers ac-
cept his statements so easily, was due to the lack of scholarship in
America a generation ago.
And strange as it may appear, considering the growth of
scholarship among us, there are still some readers who take Draper
seriously. However they are happily few. Science continues to be
the main interest of human kind; but there is an ever-growing in-
terest in the higher things of art, architecture, sculpture, and poetry.
1915.] A FRANCISCAN'S PRAYER 487
Such increasing educational interest leads men, whose views would
otherwise be very narrow, to learn that the arts and crafts were much
more developed in times before our own. It leads them to look
deeper into history, and therefore the number of those who regret
we have not more mediaeval interests in aesthetic subjects is in-
creasing every day.
A FRANCISCAN'S PRAYER.
BY ENID DINNIS.
WHEN I am old and tutored by
The grim experience of days,
When I have proved men in their ways,
Oh, do not let the dreamer die !
When I have learned aside to toss
The foolish things that wise men hate,
Lest littleness should find me great,
Be mine the folly of the Cross.
When comes detachment's strength to me,
Be mine the weakness still that wept
O'er Lazarus' grave, and kept
Three comrades in Gethsemane.
When heart to head yields up her will
When Reason's voice would Love deceive
Let my poor foolish heart achieve
A few life-giving blunders still.
When wealth, which masquerades as worth,
Has set the sober mask of care
On those who might high revels share,
Be mine the little Poor man's mirth.
When I have grown too sane and sad
To join the angels' faerie ring
And serve the playtime of the King,
Then, sweet St. Francis, make me mad.
MARTHA.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
ACBRAYNE of the papyrus even the man in the
street knows MacBrayne of the papyrus with Mrs.
MacBrayne had encamped for the night in the desert,
a day's journey from Damascus. They had been in
search of other papyri ; and MacBrayne had found in
a Syrian monastery on Mount Selah a palimpsest which contained a
new message for humanity, written by the hand of a disciple at the
dictation of the Beloved of Christ. This discovery was to be the
crown of MacBrayne's life and labor, something which should set
the seal of immortality upon him even for this world.
Incredible that so wonderful a thing should now be in Mac-
Brayne's possession, being carried on MacBrayne's person on the
back of a camel across the sandy desert. So many had looked for
the wonderful message, and here was MacBrayne, a dried up little
Scotsman, with a fringe of white beard round a face burned to
mahogany by Eastern suns, not a scholar at all in the ordinary
sense, but with a passion for ferreting out strange and wonderful
things, and an incredible luck in finding them. The papyrus had
brought him much honor. MacBrayne was not unduly elated. He
was a very simple person in ways. The joy of discovery was quite
enough for him, and a compensation for the wandering life and the
absence from the house in leafy Warwickshire, which he loved and
Mrs. MacBrayne loved with a passion.
If MacBrayne, F.R.S., presented an unexpected appearance
what was to be said of Mrs. MacBrayne. Mr. MacBrayne
was little. Mrs. MacBrayne as tall as a grenadier, was an angular
woman, with shrewd eyes and a soft heart, unexpectedly femi-
nine under her gaunt exterior. She accompanied her hus-
band everywhere, and was very proud of MacBrayne. She
was a silent woman as he was a silent man; and she
found solace for bookless and uncompanioned hours in knit-
ting MacBrayne's gray worsted stockings. She always carried
about her knitting in her pocket, and would pull it out at
the most unexpected moments. Once when she and MacBrayne
had been captured by brigands, she knitted steadily through the
hours before they were rescued, while their fate in the event of
I9 i 5 .] MARTHA 489
ransom being refused was debated luridly close by. It was said
that her monumental calm fascinated the brigands so that the sur-
prise was affected easily while it was debated between the brigands
Corsican this time, if she possessed the evil eye.
They had come to water cool wells in the desert, a grove of
trees, sparse sandy grass. Mustapha, the Arab, who had accom-
panied them on many expeditions, had set up the tents before going
to forage in the native village close by for the much-needed meal.
There was plenty of fruit in the grove dates, tamarinds, figs.
Mr. and Mrs. MacBrayne never drank anything but water. The
well yielded water, which tasted like the milk of paradise after the
water carried in the water-skins.
Mrs. MacBrayne sat in the door of her tent knitting, and
gazing with placid contentment towards the trees of the oasis. The
village beyond the grove was as noisy as such places usually are.
It was out of sight where the ground dipped, but not out of hearing.
Not that Mrs. MacBrayne minded the noise. She had no nerves,
and her senses were under perfect control. She used to say that it
was no good to complain of ugly sounds or sights or smells when
one traveled into outlandish places with MacBrayne.
Mrs. MacBrayne was quite tranquil as she sat in the door of
the tent. MacBrayne was behind her, attending to his toilet. He
always traveled with a bathtub, which went into a tiny space when
packed, and there was a good deal of splashing going on behind
Mrs. MacBrayne in the interior of the tent. She was thinking to
herself that the village was noisier even than such places usually are.
She wondered what the commotion could be about. Lifting her
hand to shade her eyes from the rose-pink of the desert sky, she
perceived that a number of people were running towards her. At
first she had an idea that they were chasing Mustapha, who in his
devotion to his employers did not disdain to loot what he could not
buy. Mustapha was certainly in front, and a number of naked or
half-naked villagers were behind him.
Suddenly she discovered that they were chasing a hen a hen
so lanky and small that it was at first easily overlooked. It fluttered
and shrieked and darted hither and thither, always escaping by a
hair's breadth the grasp of one or other of the pursuers.
" Peter/' said Mrs. MacBrayne, " our dinner has escaped."
" They're making a great fuss about it," said Mr. MacBrayne,
wrapping the bath towel about him with an Arab grace, and coming
to his wife's side.
490 MARTHA [Jan.,
" I wonder where the dignity of the Orient has departed to? "
he said, discontentedly, as one of the pursuers fell in his effort to
grab the hen, and was immediately fallen over by the next man
up, who w r as fallen over in turn, and so on till there was a heap of
men down, or getting up again, all apparently reviling each other.
Only Mustapha, a trained man, kept up the pursuit.
" Such a bother about a starved sparrow ! " said Mr. Mac-
Brayne.
With a final shriek the hen eluded Mustapha's outstretched
hands, and flew straight on to Mrs. MacBrayne's lap. Mustapha
came up to take the runaway, muttering anathemas upon her within
his handsome beard. The hen turned an imploring eye upon Mrs.
MacBrayne.
" I can't give her up, Peter, I really can't," said Mrs. Mac-
Brayne, turning an imploring eye upon her husband. " She has
come to me for sanctuary; I simply can't let her be killed."
" Very well, my dear," Mr. MacBrayne returned with a sigh of
resignation. " We'll be able to get food at Damascus, I dare say.
It's only a postponement. Wonderful what a savory thing Mus-
tapha can make out of these skinny birds ! "
The MacBraynes feasted on fruit with some little sweetened
cakes, and well water to wash the meal down, and prepared to go to
bed. The sky was darkening down with a suddenness. Out on the
sands they could see the shadowy figure of Mustapha, his face
bowed to the ground in prayer. Presently, having bowed to the
East he would rise up, unroll his rug in the door of the kitchen tent,
and sleep until the sunrise once more called him to prayer. While
they stood and watched there was a little flutter up and down. It
was the hen, who apparently was looking for a place to roost. She
had been standing on one leg in the corner of the tent while they
supped, apparently enjoying a profound and peaceful slumber.
" We had better let her out," said Mrs. MacBrayne. " She will
find her way back to her home. Poor little thing ! I hope they will
not kill her after all."
" If it were not for Mustapha, she would be presented to you as
a new hen to-morrow, and you would have to pay twice over for
her," remarked MacBrayne sleepily. " As it is we can't trust
Mustapha to save our pockets."
The little hen stalked out of the tent door herself, else Mrs.
MacBrayne would not have had the heart to send her back to pos-
sible butchery. She stood a second in the faint pink glow, which
1915-] MARTHA 491
was all that remained of the sunset, her head drooped, one foot
uplifted. She was oddly like Mustapha turning to the East as he
prayed.
" Dear thing! " sighed Mrs. MacBrayne as they let down the
tent flap.
The MacBraynes slept the sleep of the weary. They had had
a long trek across the desert sands on the ship of the desert, which
is not as smooth running as a first class motor-car. For a while
their ears were sealed in sleep, or seemed to be, but presently Mrs.
MacBrayne became slowly awake, and was aware of a sound, the
repetition of which had gone on through her sleep.
"What is it?" asked MacBrayne sleepily. Being a devoted
husband he always woke up when his wife did. " What the deuce
is that?"
Mrs. MacBrayne was aware from intuition that her husband's
hand went out to the precious parchment under his pillow. She
would really be glad when they got back to London this time be-
cause of the papyrus. It was unlikely that anyone would know
what MacBrayne carried on his person by day, under his pillow
by night. Yet someone might know. Perhaps MacBrayne had
been a little well one did not use those adjectives when it was a
question of something which belonged to the soul of the Christian
world as well as its body, and had lain nearly two thousand years in
a Syrian monastery. If it had been a worldly transaction now, one
might have said that the F.R.S had been a bit slim in his dealings
with the monks. It might be someone's mission to recover the
papyrus. Mrs. MacBrayne sighed again in the darkness. She had
been sorry that the slimness was necessary.
" I believe it was that dear creature, the hen," she said. " Such
a queer noise ! There it is again ! "
Swish ! Something came sliding down the roof of the tent
catching as it went at the canvas, but failing to arrest its downward
slide. There followed the sound of a satisfied cluck. The hen had
flown up again and settled. Then apparently she nodded to sleep
and forgot her caution. Swish ! She was down again. The per-
formance had been going on all night.
" Is it the water-chute or is it the flip-flap ? " MacBrayne asked
discontentedly. " Am I in the desert, or is this Earl's Court,
Eliza?"
" She has no proper perch," Mrs. MacBrayne lamented. " I
wish we'd thought of asking Mustapha."
492 MARTHA [Jan.,
They settled themselves on their rugs, and slept as well as
might be for the toboganning that went on over their heads.
As soon as they lifted the tent flap in the morning, the hen
hopped in and took possession as she had done the night before.
She followed Mrs. MacBrayne about like a pet dog. Apparently
she distrusted Mustapha, for she left the tent in which he kept his
kitchen severely alone. When breakfast was produced she ate bits
from Mrs. MacBrayne's fingers. Afterwards she stood in front of
the tent and dozed, her head under her wing. To be sure she had
had a very disturbed night.
That day Mrs. MacBrayne had to keep a watchful eye on the
hen and Mustapha, whom she had heard sharpening his knife. The
spectacle of the hen sleeping so trustfully, moved her in a manner
she would not like to have revealed to Mustapha. She was quite
determined it should not be eaten. They had to bide where they
were for that day. A camel was sick. To-morrow it would be
better and they could proceed. Mr. and Mrs. MacBrayne acquiesced
with the resignation which the European traveler in Eastern coun-
tries sometimes acquires from the natives. It was not so bad, said
Mrs. MacBrayne, sitting under the shadow of a palm tree and try-
ing to imagine that she was in Wiltshire, while the heather mixture
stocking grew and grew in her hands. MacBrayne was writing up
his journal and reports to various scientific journals. That and
some letters to be posted at Damascus supplied him with occupation
for the day.
" It is not the will of Allah that we should proceed further,"
said Mustapha. And Mrs. MacBrayne said something in a low
voice about the guard that certainly heavenly powers might be keep-
ing over the papyrus. MacBrayne being a staunch Presbyterian,
preferred to ignore his wife's remark, nevertheless he thought in his
own mind that if the accident of a sick camel prevented their reach-
ing Damascus for another day, it must surely be in the providence of
God, who had guided him, MacBrayne, to the discovery of a
precious thing so long lost.
About noon Mustapha, who had been absent for a time, came
back, triumphantly carrying a dead chicken between his fingers.
He indicated it triumphantly as he passed within his tent door.
There were to be no more accidents with live chickens, no more
adoptions by Mrs. MacBrayne. * That one," said Mustapha, point-
ing at the hen, "has the guile of a Greek."
It was sometime during that day that MacBrayne, uplifted by
1915-] MARTHA 493
the generous repast Mustapha had made out of the skinny chicken,
dubbed the hen Martha. As the day went on she seemed to have
slept off her fatigue, and, coming wide awake, she busied herself
about many things hence her name. After a time she even in-
vaded Mustapha's kitchen, and hopped about among his cooking
utensils, watching all that he did, so slily, her head on one side, that
before the day was over Mustapha had declared that she was no
hen, but a woman in feathers. She made herself very busy when
some pariah dogs came from the village in search of food, setting
herself to drive them away by launching herself with a scream in
their faces till Mustapha declared that it was magic nothing less
than magic, for how could a hen with the opportunities be so wise.
That night Mustapha rigged up a perch for the hen with cross-wise
sticks on the top of the tent. Martha watched him doing it, and
when it was done flew up and settled herself with a chuckle of
satisfaction.
The little encampment slept quietly that night, till somewhere
towards morning there began an amazing uproar. Mr. MacBrayne
hurled himself through the tent door upon a nearly naked Arab,
who was apparently fighting the air with his fists. The darkness
was so intense that Mr. MacBrayne was rather aware of his ad-
versary by touch than by vision. He clutched at the half -naked
man, and they rolled on the ground in hand grips. He was dimly
aware at the same time that another couple panting hard, but other-
wise silent, were in grips close by him, and kicking up the sand with
their feet.
Mr. MacBrayne had an interest in the science of fighting, which
made him cool and curious where another person might have been
flustered. He held on to his Arab by the loin cloth, having dis-
covered for himself what a slippery thing naked flesh can be. Pres-
ently he was tripped up and fell, still holding on to his man. All
the time he was conscious of some queer intervention in the fight.
If it had not been too improbable he would have thought of Martha.
While he speculated coolly the Arab got him down and knelt on
him. He had kicked Mr. MacBrayne's bare foot, almost stripping
the great toe of its nail. The agony was intolerable. For the first
and last time in his life, the F.R.S. almost fainted, so giving his
enemy the vantage.
He had prayed for light to see his foe by, and suddenly the
light came. The Arab had uttered a queer cry. He had called
something in a fierce jerking way to the other Arab, who must have
494 MARTHA [Jan.,
been too busy with Mustapha to hear him. Mr. MacBrayne knew
something of Arabic. He said afterwards that the Arab had called
to his comrade to look for the parchment. The light came. Mrs.
MacBrayne stood holding a lamp in the doorway of the tent. The
excellent woman was paralyzed at what she saw. The Arab had
taken a small but deadly knife from between his teeth. He lifted
it in his brown sinewy hand. It gleamed as it caught the light.
Before it could descend, before Mrs. MacBrayne could shriek, the
intervention which had been puzzling Mr. MacBrayne all the time
took definite form. It was Martha. Martha swooped down from
somewhere overhead, a tree branch or the perch on top of the tent.
She had hurled herself full in the eyes of the Arab.
Mrs. MacBrayne dropped the lantern and it went out. Before
it could be relit the two marauders had disappeared. Mustapha
was wiping a knife similar to that which had hovered above Mr.
MacBrayne's striped pyjamas for one terrible second. He was
saying that the vultures and the unclean birds would feast this
morning.
" He said it was a devil," Mr. MacBrayne said, on being helped
to his feet, " but it was only Martha."
Mr. MacBrayne was in great pain the next morning from the
broken toe nail, but he was quite determined to push on to some
place of greater safety for the papyrus. It was all very fine for
Mustapha to be so sure that their visitors of the night were but com-
mon thieves. He knew better than that, and he sweated with fear
at the thought of sleeping in tents, and such haphazard places ex-
posed to such risks for the precious papyrus. He could not rest,
he said, till it was in the safe keeping of the " British " Museum.
For the present the next best thing was the consulate at Damascus.
At the consulate Mr. MacBrayne was laid up for some days
with the injury to the nail. There was an English doctor, and
the members of the little English colony at Damascus were greatly
pleased to have so distinguished a man among them as Peter Mac-
Brayne, F.R.S. Mustapha, in spotless white robes, slept in the court-
yard of the consulate. Martha roosted close at hand, on the edge
of a green tub in which grew an oleander. She hopped after Mus-
tapha when Mr. and Mrs. MacBrayne were not in evidence. At the
first sight of either she would utter a queer shriek, and flapping her
wings would fly to them, manifesting apparently great pleasure in
regaining them.
The question was, what was to be done with Martha when it
1915-] MARTHA 495
was time for the MacBraynes to return to England? The English
colony was greatly excited over the queer case of Martha. They
were unanimously of opinion that it would be monstrously wicked
to separate Martha from the MacBraynes. Mrs. MacBrayne she
loved especially, but MacBrayne hardly less: she had apparently
quite forgotten or forgiven Mustapha for his first intention of
killing and cooking her. She was happy with Mustapha in the
absence of the MacBraynes. On all the rest of the world she turned
a lack-lustre eye of an indifference which was not aware that they
lived.
The MacBraynes were going home by sea from Beirut. Im-
possible to take Martha by steamer all the way to England. How
on earth would they look after her? Mr. MacBrayne conceded
handsomely that Martha had saved his life. Still it complicated
matters that she was a hen. If she had been a dog, even! And
such a specimen of a hen ! Mr. MacBrayne was watching Martha
dust-bathing in the courtyard. She was hardly more dusty than
usual. Her prevailing color indeed was a dusty black. She was
very small a scrawny thing. Indeed she rather suggested a dead
hen when she was in repose a dead hen that had been flung out
in the roadway.
" Oh, but, Peter," said Mrs. MacBrayne, " look at her bright
intelligent eyes, and remember what she did for us ! "
" I do remember," said Mr. MacBrayne, " that is why, though
she is so infernally ugly, that I'm not going to desert the little
woman. But what will you do with her if we should get her safely
to England?"
" Send her down to Oakshot, of course."
"Your proud pedigreed fowl at Oakshot wall peck her to
death," said Mr. MacBrayne.
" Not with her character. See how she got around us. She
has even made Mustapha her slave. He says that she minds the
baby here while the nurse is dressing the elder children. Mustapha
says she has a soul. A fierce dog came into the courtyard the other
day where the baby was lying asleep in the shade of the fig tree.
Martha drove him out all beak and claws and returned to watching
the baby."
" I know. He told me. It will be Mustapha, too, I foresee.
What are we to do with Mustapha at Oakshot? "
" He is greatly attached to us. He says if he leaves us he will
surely die."
496 MARTHA [Jan.,
" Mustapha and Martha. Complications grow. Imagine
Mustapha and Martha at Wiltshire."
" He is very clever. He can do all sorts of things. And you
can trust him. He is honest and simple/'
The end of it was that Mustapha and Martha were sent over-
land to England, while the MacBraynes took steamer at Port Said.
Mustapha had been as far as Paris once, and was not afraid of the
journey. He was supplied with money sufficient for the journey,
and with the addresses of some people en-route to whom he could
go if the necessity arose.
They confidently hoped to have news of Mustapha and Martha
by the time they reached home, but there was none. They had put
up at their town house in Portman Square, while arrangements
were being made for the disposal of the papyrus. That accom-
plished they were going down to Oakshot, which both loved dearly.
They had been away from England rather an unusual length this
time. Oakshot would be in all its early summer beauty. Mrs.
MacBrayne thought of her garden, of her dairy, of the shining
peace of Oakshot. And something wonderful was going to happen
a little later. A child a boy of five was coming home to them
from India, where his father, Roger 1' Estrange, dear to them as a
child of their own could be, was stationed with his regiment. It
was a joy beyond words to Mrs. MacBrayne. She felt that the
child would give an interest to her Peter. She wanted her husband
to settle down at home, now that he had found and safely convoyed
the papyrus. The Eastern travel was too risky for a man of his
age. He had done enough for immortality.
They delayed a while in town, where MacBrayne, F.R.S., was
in everybody's mouth. The season was in full swing, and the smart
people as well as the learned people were very ready to lionize Peter
MacBrayne. He was dined, feasted, decorated, acclaimed. He was
even called to an interview with a personage whom he described
afterwards as being like a simple country gentleman it was in the
first decade of the century. All the time Mrs. MacBrayne was
hungering for Oakshot and the joys to be. She was also troubled
because there was no news of Mustapha and the hen. She saw the
queer pair lost in the world Mustapha in his white suit, and turban
with the magnificent bronze coloring, and the inscrutable eyes above
the dark beard Mustapha and the little dusty hen.
As the days went by Mrs. MacBrayne ceased to smile at the
thought of the odd companionship. There was no news of them.
1915-] MARTHA 497
Mr. MacBrayne, for all the pressure of life, had found time to
write to a consul here and there on the road which Mustapha must
traverse on his journey to London. But apparently no one had seen
Mustapha. He must have had no use for consuls. And those
gentlemen were sure that Mustapha had not passed their way. An
Arab with a few words of English and a hen ! Someone must have
seen so strange a couple; but apparently no one had seen them.
Then, suddenly, into the night of their mystification and suspense
for they were beginning to reproach themselves for the helpless pair,
flotsam and jetsam, flung hither and thither out in the waste of the
world after all it was folly, almost criminal folly to have sent
Mustapha with only a few words of English to find his way across
Europe flashed a message from Mustapha. It came on a dirty
scrap of paper in a dirty envelope wonderful that it had ever
reached.
" We arrive ici. Poulet bien heureux. Send monnaie. Mus-
tapha."
Someone had written it for Mustapha, who was incapable of so
much scholarship, and had addressed it to Milord MacBrayne at
Portman Square, and the post office had delivered it. But there
was no address : nothing but the Paris postmark to show where the
letter had come from. Mr. MacBrayne wrote to the ambassador at
Paris, who was a personal friend. The aid of the Paris police was
invoked. To no purpose. Three months passed, and the sea had
apparently closed over Mustapha and Martha. The end of the
three months found Mrs. MacBrayne, one lovely day of September,
seated on the velvety lawn at Oakshot amid a brilliance of flower
beds, which, as George Herbert has it,
Bids the rash gazer wipe the eye,
with her eternal knitting in her hands.
She was knitting mechanically, but her eyes were watching the
golden-haired child in his little white suit, who was amusing himself
by talking a queer tongue, half -English, half -Hindustani to the
golden pheasant who was strutting up and down in its run across
the lawn. She was feeling that her cup of happiness was full with
the coming of the child. The little creature bobbed about like a
daisy, curtseying to the peacock and peahen. He was coming across
the lawn now from the golden pheasant, and had encountered these
other splendors. She was watching the pretty boy so intently that
VOL. c. 32
498 MARTHA [Jan.,
she had no eyes for another arrival, till plop! something flew to
her arms Martha! Was it possible?
Yes there was Mustapha grinning and showing all his white
teeth, a little lean, a little worn, his white suit and turban less
dazzling than they were wont to be when Mustapha returned to the
civilized world! And there was Martha cackling, actually cack-
ling as though she had laid an egg a little bundle of burnt-up, dusty
feathers, but with the eloquent eye of old to tell that it was really
Martha.
" She play up fine with me," said Mustapha. " Play up " was
a word he had acquired from the English nurse of the consul of
Damascus, who used it to express a tantrum on the part of her
charges. " She play up fine with me. She guard les bagages at the
stations."
He indicated a roll, which contained a change of clothing and
his prayer rug, a very small and shabby bundle.
" She sit on les bagages " Mustapha had been acquiring
French during his time in Paris. " She fly up in the face of any
who approach. Martha se ne fache du tout. We haf been robbed
but for Martha. We haf been lost. I will tell you and your honor-
able husband; I haf been murdered by an Ool-i-can but for this
Martha. She sleep on my chest and fly in the face of the Ool-i-can,
who would have cut my throat. She is a she-devil in
feathers, and a blessed hen."
From Mustapha's confused narrative, interlarded with phrases
in many languages, the MacBraynes after a time extracted a most
thrilling narrative, in which Martha played a truly heroic part.
It had been intended originally that Mustapha should return to his
own country. However, Mustapha had no intention of leaving the
MacBraynes, and so he took up his position as personal attendant
on Mr. MacBrayne, in which capacity the dignity of his bearing and
the picturesqueness of his looks excited considerable interest and
admiration.
Martha was quite prepared to attach herself as an inseparable
companion to Mrs. MacBrayne, and, failing her ; to Mustapha.
However neither of these arrangements was possible, since the
MacBraynes were returning to Portman Square for the winter
months. With a view to weaning Martha from her attachment,
Mrs. MacBrayne ordered that the freedom of the house and of the
run adjoining that of the golden pheasant be given to her.
" It is no use to put her in the poultry yard," she said. " She
1915-] MARTHA 499
would be lost among common stupid fowl. They would peck her
to death I am sure."
" She will be 'appier with the others," said Mustapha. " She
'as what Pieguot said the curiosity. She hop her world to see."
" Mind, I shall never forgive you, Mustapha, if she comes to
harm," said Mrs. MacBrayne, consenting because Martha was so
obviously bored in the society of the golden pheasant.
She made herself quite at home in the fowl yard, and Mustapha
was justified.
" It is the mind," said he, broadly grinning. " The soul of a
warrior has gone into the hen. The rest are pour le pot!'
Up to this time Martha had not laid an egg. It was because
of her youth Mrs. MacBrayne was confident. Mr. MacBrayne
held that she was too freakish to act after the manner of hens.
Mustapha said nothing, only grinned, watched Martha digging away
in a dust-bath like any common hen.
It was March before the MacBraynes came back to Oakshot.
One thing or another had prevented their returning earlier. Frank
and his ayah, and the new English governess who was soon to be
in entire charge of the child, had spent most of the winter at Oak-
shot, but no one had thought of conveying any news concerning
Martha to those interested in her up in London.
It was a beautiful April day strayed into March that brought
the MacBraynes back to Oakshot. On the way indeed for some
time before Mrs. MacBrayne's mind had had two lively anticipa-
tions. One was of seeing Frank. The other was of seeing Martha.
Frank came down the steps as the carriage arrived, golden as a little
flame, to be hugged rapturously to Mrs. MacBrayne's breast. For
the moment Martha was forgotten, till there was a sudden shriek
from Mustapha.
" She haf play up," he said. " She haf laid des oeufs, like a
common poulet. She haf the schickings."
There was Martha marshalling a flock of dusty small birds
exactly like herself and driving them across the grass, obviously de-
lighted to present them to her human friends.
AN IRISH CHAMPION OF WOMEN.
BY PADRAIC COLUM.
T. ADAMNAN has a place in our ecclesiastical, our
literary, and our political history: he was one of
Colum-Cille's successors in lona; he was a friend
of the Venerable Bede, and a leader in the clerical
party that broke down the local usages that had
grown up since St. Patrick's time, and that endeavored with ulti-
mate success to bring the Irish Church into more direct contact
with Western Christianity. He wrote a life of Colum-Cille in
Latin, that is spoken of as one of the most complete of mediaeval
biographies ; and one of those Visions that afterwards gave material
for Dante's epic, written in Irish, is also attributed to him. His
political activity was remarkable, and it seems to have been in a
right direction. Students of Irish history are constantly telling
us that one of the things that stood in the way of Irish union, was
the position of Leinster amongst the Irish kingdoms. The kings
that held what may be called the imperial power, constantly tried to
draw a tribute that Leinster ever regarded as unjust. Leinster
was made a sort of Alsace-Lorraine, and she entered into alliances
with outsiders. Adamnan tried to secure the repeal of the tribute.
He requested the High King not to take it until " Luan." Now
" Luan " means Monday, but it also means the Judgment Day.
Adamnan's device was not so futile as it now sounds. A great
deal depended on a king's word in those days, and after giving it
to such an important person as Adamnan, the High King would
find it difficult to go on as if nothing had happened. Adamnan's
intervention did not save Leinster; it lets us see, however, that he
had something of the stateman's vision.
A very honorable measure associated with his name is the "Cain
Adamnain," or law of Adamnan, which later generations regarded
as the charter of woman's freedom in Ireland. The " Cain Adam-
nain " is written as if applying to Britain also; among the ninety
notables who endorsed it is Bishop Egbert and Bruide, " King of
the Pict-folk." Adamnan's Law was promulgated in the year
694-5.
The treatise on Adamnan's Law has been translated into very
1915.] AN IRISH CHAMPION OF WOMEN 501
eloquent English by Doctor Kuno Meyer. It begins with a most
gloomy account of the position of women in Ireland before Adam-
nan was roused to better it. The name for women generally was
" Cumhalacht," a word derived from " Cumhal " a bond woman.
According to the writer of this tenth-century treatise, women had
only a very servile position in the household, and they were
actually forced into military service. The writer, wishing to give
Adamnan greater glory, probably exaggerates the distress, for the
Irish laws and romances do not bear out his picture. But grave
hardships must have been inflicted upon women at the time, and it
seems certain that in parts of the country they had to engage in war.
The writer of the treatise describes a woman going into battle:
" On one side of her she would carry her bag of provisions, and
on the other her babe. Her wooden pole upon her back. Thirty
feet long it was, and had at one end an iron hook, which she would
thrust into the tress of some woman in the opposite battalion."
" Five ages before the birth of Christ/' says the writer of the
treatise, " to wit, from Adam to the Flood, from the Flood to
Abraham, from Abraham to David, from David to the Captivity
in Babylon, from the Captivity to the Birth of Christ during that
time women were in bondage and slavery, until Adamnan, son of
Ronan, son of Finne, son of Aed, son of Colum, son of Lugaid, son
of Setne, son of Fergus, son of Conall, son of Niall, came."
The movement for the relief of women began in this way:
Adamnan, traveling with his mother, offered to carry her on his
back. She refused his help, saying that she would take no favor
from an undutiful son. Wherein had he failed-m his duty? Adam-
nan asked. He had failed, his mother told him, because he had
not liberated the women of Ireland, " from encounter, from camp-
ing, from fighting, from hosting, from wounds, from the bondage
of the cauldron." They traveled farther, and came to a battlefield
that was strewn with the bodies of women. Adamnan by his
sanctity was able to raise up one of them. Mother and son listened
to her history, and when Adamnan showed himself much affected,
his mother impressed upon him the task of gaining freedom and
security for the women of Ireland.
According to an Irish custom, a person who had a grievance,
and who could not obtain a favorable hearing, fasted, and so made
the situation intolerable for the one who would not listen or
acquiesce. The " hunger-strike," which is so new in modern
politics, was a recognized procedure in Irish law. Adamnan, it is
502 AN IRISH CHAMPION OF WOMEN [Jan.,
said, fasted for eight years. When his mother came to him, she
found him in a terrible and pitiable state. " Change my torture,"
said Adamnan. His mother brought him to another place. It
appears it was the heavenly and not the earthly powers whose
favor he was mortifying himself for; it was an angel who came to
him at last. The angel asked him to rise out of his place of torture.
" I will not," said the Saint, " until the women of the Western world
are freed by me." Then the messenger said, " Omnia qua in
Domino rogabis, propter laborem tuum habebis."
But the earthly powers were not so easily moved. " It shall
not be in my time, if it is done," cried the King Loingsech Bregban,
speaking for the conservatives of all time. " An evil time when
a man's sleep shall be murdered for women, that women should live,
men should be slain. Put the deaf and dumb one to the sword
(Adamnan had become deaf and dumb through the rigor of his
fasting), who asserts anything but that women should be in ever-
lasting bondage to the brink of Doom." Seven kings supported
Loingsech, but by the power of God, Adamnan overcame them.
Thereafter his Law was accepted, and the securities for its ful-
fillment were the sun and the moon and all the other elements of
God, Peter, Paul, Andrew, and all the other Apostles, together with
the Irish saints. Those who violated the law drew on themselves
the maledictions of these great powers; Adamnan also inserted
in the daily service a condemnation of those who violated the spirit
of the Law.
Whatever their position might have been before, after Adam-
nan's time the women of Ireland had an unquestioned status. Sir
Henry Maine notes that in several points the ancient law of Ireland
the Brehon Law comes close to the most advanced legal im-
provements of our day. One of these points was the position of
women. " The law," he says, " regulated the natural rights of
the parties, showing an especial care for the interests of the woman ;
even to the extent of recompensing her to the value of her domestic
services, in case of divorce, during her residence in the common
dwelling." In ancient Ireland a woman might hold property apart
from her husband, and might make contracts in regard to it. The
Brehon Law admitted that, under certain circumstances, a married
woman might be in a position of legal equality with her husband;
while under other circumstances she might be in a position legally
superior to him. This was related to the matter of property.
Broadly speaking, if a woman brought property equal in amount to
1915-] AN IRISH CHAMPION OF WOMEN 503
that possessed by her husband, she was his equal; if she brought
more she was his superior. A woman who had property was not
deprived of her rights over it by her marriage. If her husband
was supported by the income from his wife's property, she was
legally the person in authority. The law permitted a married wo-
man to take proceedings in defence of her separate property.
Furthermore if a husband gave evidence against his wife, she was
entitled to give evidence against him.
In these points the Brehon Law was distinctly on a higher
level than the English Law of Victorian times. But whether it
was raised to that level through St. Adamnan's influence, Irish
historical records have left us no means of knowing. The writer
of the tenth-century treatise was convinced that he had lifted women
out of their servile state. According to Cain Adamnain, those who
drew women into battle were severely punished. If a man slew
a woman he was condemned to a twofold punishment : " His right
hand and his left foot shall be cut off before his death, then he shall
die, and his kindred shall pay seven full 'cumals.' ' If a woman
was slain by part of an army, every fifth man up to the three
hundredth was condemned to the same penalty, and if the band
was less than three hundred, it was divided into three parts, " the
first part of them shall be put to death by lot, hand and foot having
first been taken off, the second part shall pay fourteen full 'cumals,'
and the third part shall be cast into exile." Even for insult the
penalty was heavy. "If it be by making a gentlewoman blush by
imputing unchastity to her, or by throwing doubt on the legitimacy
of her offspring, a fine of seven 'cumals' shall be exacted." The
position of women in the tenth century is shown by the apostrophe
of the writer of the treatise : " Adamnan suffered much hardship
for your sake, O women, so that ever since Adamnan's time one-
half of your house is yours; and there is a place for your chair
in the other half, so that your contract and your safeguard are free.
And the first law made in heaven and on earth for women is
Adamnan's Law."
O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND.
XV.
N a gray October evening, an hour before twilight, Hugh
paused on the devious bog path, a little at fault. Dusky
clouds were blurring the edges of distant mountains
on one side, and white mist-wreaths were winding
themselves among the low-lying woods on another. In
the west a small lake of lurid gold seemed ready to
spill its waters over the brown and purple far-stretching plain of the
lonely bog. An air of deep desolation hung over the land, beauty
eerie and enchanted was there, wrapped in mourning garments that
swept the solitude and trailed across the faint gleam of the water, and
dipped into darkness. Here and there a red-gold glare betrayed the
cruel bog-hole. Now and again the whimper of a plover broke the
stillness. Ingoldesby stood and took a long look around him, feeling
intensely the magic of the scene and the hour. Bringing his gaze
slowly from one point to another he became aware of a figure ap-
proaching from a distance, and waited as it drew nearer, coming
straight to meet him. With a little painful shock he perceived that it
was Father Aengus, the friar, the man who was hunted like a wolf,
with a price on his head.
" Will he scent danger and run ? " asked Ingoldesby of himself.
" He says he has many hiding places. Does he wholly trust me? "
Father Aengus was praying as he walked. His dark eyes were
fixed on the golden well in the sombre sky. He started when he saw
Ingoldesby, but held out his hand and smiled. Hugh thought he looked
like a spirit such as might haunt these wilds, with his pallid face, his
eyes holding their strange dream, his spare frame shrouded in the
brown garb, and bound with the rough cord of the sons of St.
Francis.
" You are a brave man," said Hugh, after he had clasped the long
lean hand.
" Brave ? I have nothing to fear from you, even if I were dis-
posed to fear anyone."
" You ought to be under cover at this hour."
" Not if a soul's need keeps me in the open," said Father Aenges,
smiling. " And to say truth I never feel so safe as when under God's
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 505
roof of the sky. Here danger is to myself alone. Under any other
roof I am a danger to some of my flock."
Hugh looked at him with a sudden sense of exasperation. Here
was the type of creature who was an ideal to certain minds. Here
was an embodiment of the fascination that held Brona enslaved. He
felt a swift desire to shock this dreamer out of his dreams, if only for
a moment.
" What a madness it all is ! " he said, striking the stone under
his feet with his oaken stick.
" Ah ! " said the priest, " not madness, but the sanity of God."
" Is it not madness to reject the good of life, to court death? "
" Not if God requires it. He makes His appointed uses of our
lives. There is no such thing as death for those who do His will.
When life appears to cease there is only a happy change, simply the
casting of the flesh by the glorified spirit, the vacating of a hovel for
entrance into the kingdom of the Father."
" I have heard all this before," said Ingoldesby, " but I do not
believe in it. Other creeds than yours make the same claim, and
still the world goes on, and men die and no one comes back to verify
the statements of prophets, to make good the promises of priests."
" God came on earth and died and came back," said Father
Aengus. "Is that not sufficient verification?"
" So they said seventeen hundred years ago," said Hugh, " and
they also said He came to bring peace and love, and yet men have
never ceased since then to torture and persecute each other in His
name."
" He brought the cross. He bore it, and we carry it after Him,"
said the friar. A glow shone on his face, as if the ruddy splendor
now spreading along the western horizon had kindled fire in the eyes
so deeply sunken under his ivory brows.
" I know your theory, the same that the early Christians held
to their torment! But, granted your faith for a moment. Seven-
teen hundred years have passed. You say He died and came back. If
He did come back, for a few days, He went again, and returns no
more."
" Nay," said the priest. " He never went except visibly."
Ingoldesby checked a slight laugh and said, " I am aware that
believers hold that the presence of God is everywhere. The universe
is filled with it, exists by it."
" True."
" But men believed that before He came, as you say, visibly,
and came again, and went again and returned no more. Why did He
go, and leave nothing behind for men to hold by, more than the pagan
had held by?"
506 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Jan.,
" He never went," said the priest. " He has stayed with us ever
since, not merely as that ever-enduring eternal presence of the Creator
which has always been the breath of men, but as an actual human
Presence under veils."
Ingoldesby made an impatient movement.
" Wait a moment," said the friar. " He does not walk visibly,
as He did for thirty-three years with a few who timidly acknowledged
Him, and in a world that counted Him no more than one of its own,
gone mad with vain egotism; a world that would not believe in Him
even when He quitted the tomb into which they had sealed Him."
" You are wandering from the point," said Hugh. " If as you
say, He came and went and is here no more except as the pagan knew
Him, where is His love? If He did come the world has had time to
forget Him, and again raises its temples to the unknown God."
" He never went," repeated Father Aengus. " He is here."
"In the vague All-Presence?"
" In His humanity. In His flesh and blood. As the Bread we
break from morn to morn. As the unfailing Food of living man.
As the Companion Who leads him through the narrow pass called
death. As the Medicine that cures the soul of the disease of sin, and
strengthens it throughout mortal life to endure mortal suffering."
" This is raving! " cried Hugh.
" He Who accepted the help of the humble Cyrenean to carry His
cross to Calvary, gives His own strong Arm to carry ours."
"As how?"
" In the Sacrament of His love. In the Mass. In the Com-
munion."
" Madness ! madness ! " reiterated Hugh. " This is how you
terrorize men and poison women's minds. With your dreams and
mysteries you scare delicate imaginations, and lure tender hearts into
bondage. Why do you not go back to where your dreams are not
penalized, and leave people like those who harbor you in their homes
to find their way to rational conviction, and to the safety in life which
it would ensure them?"
"Why?" said Father Aengus, " because their souls are as precious
to me as my own, and my God and their God forbids me to desert
them."
Ingoldesby was startled even in his anger by the transfigured ap-
pearance of the creature before him, the rapt expression of the face,
the form almost visionary in its spareness caught into the light of the
western after-glow. But surprise quickly changed to horror of the
man and his aspect of supernatural power, and Ingoldesby suddenly
felt that as he would not injure him he must remove himself out of
the danger of further provocation.
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 507
" Unnatural, uncanny, wicked ! " he said as he turned away with
an abrupt "good evening," and began to pick his way back by the
paths that had led him to this very unsatisfactory encounter with a
dangerous fanatic.
XVI.
After this Ingoldesby's most bitter hatred of Roman superstition
was revived, and he was more tolerant of Turlough, looking on him
as one in cruel subjection, as a man robbed of his masculine liberty,
controlled by the leading strings of a false conscience. His love for
Brona was becoming a torture, his sympathy for Morogh changing to
contempt. He felt it impossible to go to Castle O'Loghlin, and asked
himself would it not be wise to leave this miserable country and try
to forget that he had ever seen it. In a passion of rebellion against
fate, he strove to hate the woman who preferred this dark bondage
to his love, choosing to remain in sorrow and danger rather than live
with him in the sunshine of the life he could give her. In this mood
he remained aloof from Burren, and after a spell of intolerable lone-
liness, he left Ardcurragh and went to pay visits to Protestant friends
in another part of the country.
His absence was keenly felt in different ways by all the members
of the family at Castle O'Loghlin. On Turlough it had a specially
irritating and depressing effect. His frequent sojourns at Ardcurragh
and the society of Judkin, had worked up his discontent to a pitch un-
endurable to his envious nature. Now that the occasional restraining
influence of a stronger masculine mind was removed, also the sympathy
of Judkin who had departed with his master, young O'Loghlin gave
himself up to thoughts which he did not share with anyone concerning
the folly of acting on what is called principle, or on the dictates of a
narrow conscience. When in Hugh's presence he had been well aware
that the man he envied acted on principle and conscience, and then, why
did these prompters urge different men to different courses of
action? Why should not his own father learn to live by the principle
good enough to secure Ardcurragh for the forefathers of its present
possessor? Why should not Hugh Ingoldesby's conscience be strict
enough to rule the conduct of Turlough O'Loghlin?
As Hugh's absence was prolonged, he grew more and more em-
bittered, learning through letters from Judkin of the society enjoyed
by his master, of the honor paid to him as a man of worth and
weight taking up his position in the county. There were hints of
favor shown him by ladies of birth and beauty, even of a probable
marriage, highly desirable from every point of view. It was evident
to Turlough that Hugh had grown tired of stupid people like the
508 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Jan.,
O'Loghlins, fools who were content to live the life of the proscribed,
when by a slight effort they could shuffle off disgrace and accept what
was offered to them, equality with the best, as well as the distinction
awaiting those who had understanding and courage to renounce the
evils of law-breaking, and rank themselves with the enlightened and
emancipated. He felt particularly assured that Hugh had ceased to
care for Brona, seeing that he had removed himself from her neighbor-
hood, to the society of charming women who were in sympathy with
him.
Brooding over all these circumstances Turlough made up his mind
to remonstrate with Morogh on his apathy as to the downward
drifting of the family fortunes, and one morning he rose with a big
resolve, which grew smaller and weaker as the day went on, and died
before night, leaving him in a state of cowardly irresolution. Then
set in another miserable spell of chafing at the stagnation of the life
he had to endure, and at his own impotence to play any part that he
held worthy of a man, till at last he flung himself into his father's
presence, uttering rebellion against all the powers, spiritual and tem-
poral, railing at the state of things that kept him in his youth a
prisoner, debarred from entering a profession, from mixing in society
fitting his rank, and calling on Morogh to do the only thing that could
save his children from this living death, by rising up like a man and
conforming to the religion prescribed by the law of the realm.
Morogh was reading in his library when this storm burst upon
him. He did not close his book, but sat in his chair staring at his
son, as if he had been some uncanny apparition. The young man's
face was flushed, his hair and dress were disordered.
"Turlough, you have been drinking," said his father. "Go to your
bed and sleep off this excitement. To-morrow morning you and I
will both forget all the wild nonsense you have been talking."
" I shall not forget it," said Turlough. " I have thought about it
all too long ever to forget it. If you are satisfied to finish your life
in slavery, I am determined that I will not sacrifice the whole of mine
to an idea."
He spoke surlily with his eyes on the floor, unable to look Morogh
in the face.
" You cannot mean what you say, you unhappy boy."
" Unhappy I am, but I am not a boy. I am twenty-one, with
power to take matters into my own hands, and to act for the good of
the family."
He looked up now, his handsome features distorted with passion,
and glared once at Morogh, whose white set face seemed to provoke
him to greater fury. It is true that he had relied on wine to give
him the daring necessary for uttering what was in his mind. Now
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 509
that he had spoken, he stood up and shook himself like one rising out
of a bitter dream, surprised to see things real and familiar around him.
Morogh waited a few moments before he answered. An indescribable
change passed over his face and his mouth trembled. At last he spoke.
" You cannot mean what your words would seem to hint," he said.
" Too many things are involved. I can forgive a great deal of im-
patience to your youth and your peculiar temperament. But you are
not without conscience and intelligence. I shall expect you to retract
what you have said as soon as you have returned to your proper
senses."
Turlough quailed under his father's look of contempt, and left
the room with bowed head, but without an idea of retracting his words
or intention. He slunk into his aunt's pretty French apartment, where
she sat working at a rare piece of church embroidery in colored silks
and gold, a banner for the Lady chapel of her dear friends of the
Convent of the Annunciades. She was the only person Turlough was
not afraid to bully. He was in her eyes what an only and willful
son often is in the eyes of a weak mother. She adored and screened
him from blame, even while threatening chastisements which were
never given him. The only punishment in her power was the tighten-
ing of her purse-strings, but only when it was empty had she ever
been able to keep his hand out of that small, too-liberal treasury.
As she saw his face at the door now, her first thought was " too
much wine," and she prepared to soothe his excitement, to excuse his
condition out of the depths of the pity of her heart for his youth and
misfortunes. He threw himself on a seat with an air of bravado,
and when half an hour later he left the room, Aideen had put away
her embroidery out of harm's way from falling tears.
Brona was in the garden, a green acre that sloped away behind
the castle in the direction of the sea. The gray mountains had lost
their fairy-like opalescent tints, and looked like the bastions reared for
defence in some great warfare. She was working in short daylight for
the spring to come, never so content as when so working. The sea,
the mountains, and the mysteriously fruitful earth were all, to her,
visible expressions of God. Real misfortune seemed impossible.
The knowledge that Hugh Ingoldesby wanted to make her happy
had realized his desire by making her happy. His love was like an
unexpected inheritance dropped down on her, even though it could
bring her nothing, as things and nothings are reckoned by the world.
It gave her a spiritual vested right in her soul. The external barrier
between them did not exist in the eyes of God Who had sent him across
her path, Who was urging her to care and pray for him. The con-
sciousness, the joy of it enveloped her like an atmosphere un-
perceived by others. Her secret gladness was like the fragrance of
510 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Jan,
hidden violets to one walking solitary, or the faint incense lingering
in a sanctuary deserted by all but one watcher.
She had never told anyone that Hugh had asked her to be his
wife. It must remain her secret till the end of her life. The idea
that she was never to marry had always been present to her. The
happiest natural things of life were not for her. Her duty was to
her faith and her father, her joy in the promises of God. Having
struggled with the disturbing sweetness of his presence, she could be
happy in his absence. She could send her winged thoughts and
prayers to him by the angels always traveling between soul and soul,
ascending and descending by Jacob's ladder to their beneficent God with
reports and messages. Her young face, with its glowing tints,
heightened and sweetened by her labors, shone in the open air like
a beautiful jewel against the gray sky. She looked up, saw Aideen
coming, and stood leaning on her hoe.
" O Aideen, you are weeping ! "
"Turlough!"
" Turlough again. You take his complaints too much to heart.
Let him grumble ! "
Aideen stood shedding bitter tears.
" This is worse than grumbling. He threatens to take the property
out of Morogh's hands, and rob his father by conforming."
" Silly ! " said Brona, but the rose on her face faded a little.
" A silly threat. Turlough wouldn't couldn't."
" He is of age. We are in his power."
Brona did not speak. Aideen's manner urged on her that she
had been impressed in an extraordinary degree by the new attitude of
her nephew.
" There is only one way of warding off this blow to get him
back to Paris," said Aideen, " and there is only one way of getting
money for that to sell my jewels. I can get it done by taking them
to Paris. MacDonogh will take us there Turlough and myself."
" Monstrous ! " said Brona. " Sell your jewels for such a pur-
pose? If Turlough were capable of acting as you suppose, your
sacrifice would not prevent him. It would only stave off the worst
for a time. But I will not believe '
" I thought you would have helped," said Aideen. " You have
jewels."
" My mother's ! Sell to prove Turlough a criminal ? " cried
Brona indignantly.
" To save him from crime. To save your father from indigence."
Brona's eyes had flashed and her cheeks had burned. She was
silent a few moments, and stirred the earth with her hoe. Then she
said quietly:
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 511
" You are suffering from scare, Aideen. I believe in my brother.
He will never take the step you are fearing."
" If Mr. Inglodesby were at home we might ask him to advise
Turlough. He respects Ingoldesby, though he envies him. But he
tells me that Ingoldesby has tired of this dull part of the country, and
that we shall see no more of him. The latest news is that he is
engaged to be married to an Englishwoman, who is a visitor at the
house where he is staying."
Brona was again silent. Aideen watched her narrowly. Was
she really as indifferent to Hugh as she had shown herself to all other
men.
" Is it true?" asked Brona carelessly.
" Why not true ? Mr. Ingoldesby is an admirer of beauty, and I
think he is the kind of man who would fall in love in haste. He must
feel lonely at Ardcurragh, and would probably think he must marry
if he means to stay in this dreary country."
" But why should his movements have anything to do with Tur-
lough? I simply put my faith in my brother's honesty. He is sorely
tried, being what he is but he is honest."
" Then go and talk to him yourself, Brona. I can say no more."
Brona went and talked to him. She found him sitting in his
room, leaning his elbows on the back of a tilted chair, his face be-
tween his hands, scowling through the window at the fading sky,
looking like a sullen schoolboy who had been thrashed. She walked
up to him and said simply:
" Turlough, you couldn't do it."
"Couldn't I? "he growled.
" I mean you wouldn't. Look at me, Turlough. Why have you
vexed father and frightened Aideen ? "
" You to talk to me ! You who wouldn't do anything to save the
situation! You've left it to me."
She had placed herself before him, and he was obliged to look
at her, but against his will, for something in the clear eyes of his
young sister was ever a reminder to him of the inferiority of his own
nature. If he loved any creature in the world besides himself it was
Brona. But the spark of affection was so buried under a mass of
selfishness that it only smouldered to no purpose.
" Give me your word, my brother, that you spoke in a moment
of irritation. We are all tried."
The tender tone only gave Turlough more courage to be brutal.
"If you had married Ingoldesby things might have righted them-
selves. You have sent him off to marry another woman, and that
chance is lost."
" You don't think of what you are saying," said Brona. " If you
512 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Jan.,
look things in the face, you must see that for Mr. Ingoldesby, even
if he wished it (which you have no right to believe), marriage with a
Catholic would mean his ruin, while it would not benefit you or
father."
" Not if you were a proper wife, and followed your husband.
You would have a year to think about it. But it is too late now. He
is engaged to be married to Lady Kitty Carteret."
" And therefore is safe," said Brona.
" You are a piece of cold marble," said Turlough. " I know you
care for him. Well, then, if you are obstinate why shouldn't I be the
same? Slaughterhouse means to come back and drop down on us at
some moment when we are unprepared, with no friend to interfere
for us. You were haughty to him, too, and you will be again."
" Turlough, you are mad on this point. If I were to turn co-
quette, how would it mend matters? Why do you not join the Brigade
under Lord Clare ? "
" I am no soldier," growled Turlough.
" No indeed," sighed Brona in the depths of her heart.
" I want to inherit the property of my ancestors, to hold up my
head in the county, to take rank among my fellows."
"At what cost?"
" D the cost ! " cried Turlough savagely. " Are we always
to be slaves ? "
" There was a painful silence. Brona turned to go, but turned
back and placed her hand gently on his shoulder.
" Turlough," she said, " I thought you loved me a little."
At the soft touch and tone that buried spark stirred under the
mass of selfishness and made itself faintly felt.
" Promise me, my brother, that you will not do this thing."
" I am not going to do anything at present," said Turlough surlily.
" Tell Aideen to stop whining. I can't bear it."
XVII.
About this time Mrs. Delany in Delville received a letter from
Miss Jacquetta Ingoldesby.
DEAR FRIEND:
You will see by the above address that I am staying here with
friends. I shall remain with them for another week or so, and then
I shall go to Ardcurragh, where I hope I may see you soon. The
truth is I have been anxious about my nephew, your friend Hugh, on
account of certain reports from his trusty man Judkin, and this has
been my chief reason for leaving England in acceptance of a long-
standing invitation from the Stodarts.
We have here at present a pleasant company, including Hugh, who
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 513
seems to have forgotten his penchant for that interesting and dangerous
Miss O'Loghlin, and who is now attentive in his own way to Lady
Kitty Carteret, a charming young widow whom the Stodarts met last
year at Bath. She is a pretty and attractive creature, extremely rich,
with no encumbrance, and my meeting with her here seems to me quite
providential.
You will easily perceive what I mean. I have been a mother
to Hugh since he was quite a little boy, and I will not desert him now,
just when he requires guidance.
My plan is to carry off Lady Kitty to Ardcurragh, make up a
house party, which I hope will include my dearest Mary Delany, (and
the Dean, if we can induce him to come), give some pleasant enter-
tainments, and make my nephew feel that his lonely house which he
inhabits like an owl in a tree-hole, can be turned into a genial and hospi-
table home. When I see him happily married I shall feel that my re-
sponsibilities with regard to him are over.
You, my dear friend, can help me to accomplish my desires. No
one admires and esteems you more than Hugh, and your approval of the
charming Lady Kitty would influence him more than even mine.
Mothers and aunts may be suspected of too great a wish to interfere,
but a friend like you (where is there another like you?) is above
suspicion.
Mrs. Delany at breakfast in her delightful bower-room, from
which she could see the ships riding in the harbor, smiled over this
letter, and handed it across the table to the Dean.
" Jacquetta is very amusing," she said, " she is never happy unless
she can plot and plan for somebody. Hugh Ingoldesby is not the
sort of man to be plotted and planned for, and at the best it is risky
work making up marriages."
" I agree that the best marriages make themselves," said the Dean,
" but if Ingoldesby is really taken with this charming Lady Kitty "
Mrs. Delany shook her head. " Hugh is no lady's man to flit
from one to another as Jacquetta would suggest. If he is really
caught by the charming Lady Kitty, he will not require his aunt's as-
sistance in arranging his affairs. And if the situation exists only in
her imagination, she will be very likely to do mischief."
"Well, my love, I think you might do some good by just going
to see," said the Dean.
" Let us go then ! " said his wife.
" Put me out of the question," said the Dean. " I don't think I
could bear to look on at life as it is in the County of Clare at present.
Your feminine sympathies with the affairs of your friends will dis-
tract your mind from things outside your circle, but as a man I could
have no such resource, and to be a passive witness of barbarous in-
justice would be too much for my nerves."
" I shall certainly not enter into the plot against Hugh," said Mrs.
Pelany still pondering her friend's letter. " I have seen him pass un-
yoL. c.- 33
514 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Jan.,
affected by the charms of many attractive Lady Kittys. I have too
much respect for his sense and judgment to try to influence him in
such a matter; and I don't wish to lose his good opinion by seeming
to interfere in any way in his affairs."
" Spoken like your wise self," said the Dean, smiling appro-
val, while his wife gathered up her letters with a little laugh of enjoy-
ment of the approval, and went to accept the invitation of her friend
Jacquetta; for reasons of her own which had nothing to do with
Lady Kitty.
A fortnight later Miss Jacquetta and her guest, Lady Kitty Car-
teret, set out on a cold day in January, in the Ingoldesby family coach,
to meet Mrs. Delany at the last coaching stage of her journey into
Clare. Lady Kitty was elated at the prospect of meeting the delight-
ful Mrs. Delany, of whom she had heard so much in London, one
who had been married in extreme youth to an uncongenial husband,
and who as a widow had refused many brilliant offers of marriage
to find happiness in circumstances scarcely satisfactory to her relatives
and admirers, though perfect to herself.
In the early marriage and the unlovable husband Lady Kitty felt
that there was a parallel in her own case with that of Mrs. Delany,
also in her early widowhood and the subsequent rejection of many
suitors. But here she thought the similarity of fortunes must end.
In a second marriage she should require something more romantic
to her own imagination, and more showy in the eyes of the world than
Mary Pendarves had been content with, when she settled down in a
little demesne in a suburb of Dublin as the wife of an Irish Dean.
Meanwhile Mrs. Delany had arrived at the inn of her destination,
and was handed out of the coach by a handsome young gentleman,
who in courtly manner introduced himself as the son of an old friend
of hers, Morogh O'Loghlin by name. A good fire in the inn's best
apartment and tea had been ordered and prepared by his thoughtful-
ness for her comfort. Pleasantly surprised and charmed by the young
man's appearance, manners, and attentions, Mrs. Delany asked her-
self, while she warmed her feet and sipped her tea, whether this could
be Turlough, the youth of whose objectionable qualities she had
gathered some indistinct impressions.
" I thought there was only one son," she reflected, " but I must
have been mistaken. A young man like this will be a comfort to the
family." She was in the midst of her genial inquiries for her old
friend Morogh and her young friend Brona, when interrupted by the
entrance of Miss Ingoldesby and Lady Kitty; on which Turlough im-
mediately withdrew.
" Who is the handsome Spaniard ? " asked Lady Kitty, with a
degree of interest that rather detracted from her pleasurable excite-
ment at meeting the expected Mrs. Delany.
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 515
" It is that graceless young man Turlough O'Loghlin," said Miss
Jacquetta sharply, not at all pleased at the meeting.
" I am agreeably surprised," said Mrs. Delany. " He has been
most kind and attentive."
" Rather presumptuous, I think," said Miss Jacquetta.
" His father is an old friend of mine," protested Mrs. Delany.
" My dear Mary, your friends are legion, and your charity is for
the multitude," said Miss Jacquetta. " My nephew has been very
kind to these people."
A shade came over Mrs. Delany's face, not unnoticed by Lady
Kitty, who turned her sparkling eyes with an air of charming defiance
on Miss Ingoldesby, and said with lively emphasis :
" It is one of the most romantic figures and handsomest faces
I have ever met with ! "
Meanwhile Turlough was glad to escape from the inn before
the ladies could observe his sorry mount on one of Morogh's horses,
an animal hardly of a breed or style to gratify the rider's vanity.
From Judkin he had heard of Mrs. Delany's expected arrival, and he
had contrived an opportunity to make acquaintance with the friend
of his father and sister in a manner likely to find favor for himself.
His ride to meet the coach had proved more successful than he had
reckoned on in the unlooked-for encounter with the ladies from
Ardcurragh; Miss Ingoldesby's frowns were of little account. Mrs.
Delany had accepted his attentions, and Lady Kitty's glances of ap-
proval made his nerves still tingle with pleasure as he jumped on his
despised " garron."
While he rode home many cunning schemes jostled each other
in his brain, for the improvement of his condition by pleasant, and
perhaps even by honest, means. In all of them Mrs. Delany was an.
agreeable factor ; Hugh Ingoldesby an accommodating tool ; Miss Jac-
quetta was not allowed to count, a sour old spinster who would not
be placated by any amount of flattery, or tricked into opening her
door to any Papist wolf, even in the whitest of sheep's clothing!
This brilliant Lady Kitty Carteret, the reputed fiance of Hugh
Ingoldesby, was not so devoted to a prig but that she could perceive
excellence in a man of different temper and complexion. How must
he, Turlough, now contrive to meet her again? Judkin had informed
him of Miss Jacquetta's plans for entertaining her visitor. There was
always of course the hunt, and Lady Kitty was known to be a plucky
follower of the hounds. There were rumors of a fancy ball to which
the county was to be invited. For Mrs. Delany's sake, his sister and
even he himself might be bidden, but Brona would never be induced to
go, and Turlough was not at all assured that Miss Ingoldesby would
give him a separate invitation. But for the hunt, Judkin would cer-
tainly get him a proper mount from the Ardcurragh stables.
516 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Jan,
XVIII.
The approaching fancy ball at Ardcurragh was the talk of the
county, and bidden guests were choosing their characters and prepar-
ing their costumes. Mrs. Delany had failed to persuade Brona to be
of the company, and was satisfied of the girl's wisdom in avoiding
the society of the Ingoldesbys. Hugh had provokingly gone to pay
another visit after leaving the Stodarts, instead of hastening to Ard-
curragh to become engaged to Lady Kitty, but he had promised to
return home in proper time for the ball. Mrs. Delany had secured
an invitation for Turlough, and Aideen was busy with the details
of his dress in the character of the Cid Campeador.
The Marquise was happy when she saw her petted boy arrayed
in the picturesque costume which was bound to embarrass her finan-
cially for at least a year to come. That the gentry of the Ascendancy
should behold his physical superiority the splendor, as she put it, of
his health, strength and masculine beauty was extremely gratifying to
her, and at one moment she even coveted an invitation for herself
that she might witness his triumph.
" I could go as a fortune-telling gipsy," she said, " or as any
other"
A volley of rude words hurled from cruel depths to the surface
of Turlough's unwonted good humor silenced her, and the sentence so
interrupted was never completed.
At no time of its history had the mansion of Ardcurragh been
the scene of so brilliant an entertainment. All the best rooms were
thrown open, and the lights of its windows shone in the landscape like
the mountainous heap of diamonds in an eastern fable. The very
novelty of such a pageant in the wilds of Clare stirred the imagination
of the countryside, and as the rooms filled with picturesque figures,
it was evident that the affair was to be a success beyond the dreams
of the hostess. Hugh Ingoldesby did not disappoint his aunt, but
received her guests in the character of the Earl of Essex, while Miss
Jacquetta herself made a very fair attempt at an impersonation of
Queen Elizabeth. Mrs. Delany, unprepared for such doings at Ard-
curragh, appeared in the " simple pink damask " and white kerchief
edged with gold, mentioned by her in a letter to her sister as having
been worn by her at Dublin Castle on an unexpected occasion; very
becoming to her " lovely face of great sweetness, fair curly hair, dove's
eyes, and brilliant complexion " as described by her husband, the Dean
of St. Werbergh's.
Many eyes were turned on the Cid when he made his appearance,
and when he and Lady Kitty, in the character of Anne Boleyn, " took
the floor " in a stately measure, other dancers were overlooked for
the moment, while Turlough achieved the triumph that his ambitions
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 517
had so cunningly planned and so fiercely desired. His triumph was
the more evident as Lady Kitty, the centre of interest of the hour,
distinguished him by her marked attentions, partly from a capricious
desire to surprise the crowd, partly from genuine admiration of the
handsome Spaniard as she called him, and a good deal from pique at
the polite indifference of Ingoldesby, who behaved with equal courtesy
to all the ladies of the company.
People were asking who he was, and on hearing that he was
the son of Morogh O'Loghlin, they concluded that he had broken away
from the trammels of Popery and become one of themselves; and in
spite of a little jealousy there was a general disposition to welcome him
from under his cloud of misfortune into the light of their own pros-
perity. If the beautiful and wealthy Kitty Carteret were to bestow
her coveted hand on him, then indeed such a partnership would be
an acquisition to the country. It was evident, thought some of the
onlookers, that such a denouement was probable, judging by the
disturbed countenance of Miss Jacquetta, and also by the sullen looks
of young Stodart, the hero of the horse^stealing adventure, who was
obliged to stand aside while the charming stranger gave yet another
dance to the despised and insulted owner of the stolen Arab.
A few fair ladies, disposed to accord favor to Ingoldesby or to
Stodart, were not displeased to see Lady Kitty with all her excelling
charms swept out of the running of rivalry, and were more willing
to smile on the audacity and good fortune of the Papist O'Loghlin.
Glances from bright eyes and whispers caught amid a buzz of voices
and the clang of dance music, made Turlough aware of his triumph.
Not only had he won favor of Lady Kitty, but that even in the eyes
of a social crowd, which did not, however, include his irritated hostess.
In truth Miss Jacquetta's sole comfort in the situation was her
knowledge of Lady Kitty as a finished coquette, and her belief that
she was probably now at play with an unimportant admirer, merely
to arouse ardor and jealousy in one more prized.
Turlough's triumph lasted for a few weeks. He went a hunting,
mounted from the Ardcurragh stables, and had long rides with Lady
Kitty on days when there was nothing but pleasure to hunt. Very
gratifying were the invitations to dinner from Miss Jacquetta, obliged
by the caprice of her guest and the generosity of her impracticable
nephew, and a climax was reached when Lady Kitty began to ac-
company Mrs. Delany in her frequent visits to the O'Loghlin family.
When coming to Clare, Mrs. Delany had in view the rescuing of
Brona from the dreariness of her present existence, and though the
girl had refused to return with her to Delville, she still hoped that
the little nun, as she called her, would allow herself to be lured back
to the world, where good things were certain to be in wait for her.
And now the genial lady had a fresh interest in her sympathy and
5i8 O'LOGHLTN OF CLARE [Jan.,
compassion for Turlough. She never doubted that Lady Kitty hon-
estly intended to bestow on him the charms and possessions coveted
by many more eligible admirers, and in her kindly judgment the pair
were peculiarly well matched, in age, in mutual tastes, and in their
worldly fortunes, which by contrast might be considered each as the
complement of the other. It did not occur to her that his family
were not all of one mind with her on the subject, yet of the persons
most concerned, Morogh perceived nothing in the situation, except that
Turlough was for the moment giving no trouble, and that he seemed
to be amusing himself. Brona instinctively distrusted the sincerity of
Lady Kitty, and Aideen was the only one of the three who could see
with the eyes of her brother's early friend, and even far beyond the
reach of them into a fortunate future. There came a day, however,
when such dreams and fancies, circling around Lady Kitty like the
butterflies coming with the white rose of June, vanished suddenly, a
day when Turlough poured out his hopes in impassioned raptures, and
was listened to by the lady he thought he had won with a cold sur-
prise, and an assurance that he had completely misunderstood her.
She had meant to be a sister to him. She would always be his friend,
but she had no intention of marrying a second time. She had had
enough of marriage, and was passionately in love with her liberty.
A few days later she bade a smiling farewell to Ardcurragh, followed
by Miss Ingoldesby in a hasty departure, and by Mrs. Delany, the
term of whose visit had expired, and who left her friends feeling
disappointed in all her pleasant hopes of seeing some improvement in
their isolated and unhappy position.
When the short play of his imagined good fortune was over,
the curtain down and the lights out, Turlough's rage broke in a storm
over the household at Castle O'Loghlin. Everyone was to blame for
his disappointment, Brona for her cold reserve, his father for his
pride of aloofness from the world, Aideen for everything that could
not be laid to anyone else's account. All had conspired to disgust
Lady Kitty with a miserable family, and to scare away the prosperity
that had been stretching out both hands to the most unhappy and
deserving member of it.
A day came when Aideen was weeping in her room, and Brona
with pale lips sitting silent at her father's knee, holding his cold hand
and trying to look in his face with loving eyes of comfort. Turlough
had then retired to his own quarters to brood over his incomprehen-
sible failure, to endeavor to read the riddle of it; and to think out
some new plan for retrieving his injured fortunes.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE. 1
BY HELEN HAINES.
N every age the least champion of truth must have
a working knowledge of the weapons suited to that
age. And to-day, in our own land, where a material-
istic mist is fast obliterating our national, God-fear-
ing convictions, this in an especial manner is the
privilege of the Catholic woman. It is not for nothing that the
sacrifice and devotion of twenty centuries have proclaimed truth,
" eternal, God-made," and have protected it for her in her faith.
And if to-day she is to combat Socialism's conception of truth,
" material, man-made " if she is to see active service in Catholi-
cism's valiant defence against which the Socialistic attack must in the
end recoil she must be able to parry question with question, answer
with answer, thrust with thrust.
At the outset, it would appear that the followers of two such
different standards need not clash. The world being wide, we
might go our several ways. However, not one, but many causes
have contributed to press us close. Since Marx and Engel first
issued their manifesto, far greater changes have been wrought in
the economic world than the worker then faced. To-day, woman
cannot be left out of the reckoning. Modern industrialism sees us
all the believer in the eternal verities, and the believer that the
1 CATHOLIC DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM.
" We call Socialism a system of political economy, not as if it did not also
lead to many social and political changes, but because the gist of Socialism con-
sists in the nationalization of property and in the public administration of all
goods " (Cathrein).
" The principle of Socialism is that the means of production are morally the
property not of individuals but of the State ; that in the hands of individuals,
however widely diffused, such property exploits the labor of others, and that such
exploitation is wrong " (Belloc).
SOCIALIST DEFINITIONS OF SOCIALISM.
" Socialism advocates the transfer of ownership in the social tools of produc-
tion the land, factories, machinery, railroads, mines, etc. from the individual
capitalist, to be operated for the benefit of all " (Hillquit).
" Socialism may be completely understood only when viewed in its broader
sense, as first, an economic belief; second, a plan or prophecy for a future common-
wealth, and third, a working method for the allottment of this commonwealth
(in the United States). It is itself not a science, but is a basis for an ultimate
programme, a series of immediate demands, and a summons of the working class to
either constructive or revolutionary action " (Hughan).
520 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Jan.,
material world is the only truth wound in its coils. And it is in the
struggle to free ourselves of a common bondage that our crossing of
swords has come. To-day, then, the American woman whether
she works or plays thus finds herself confronted by two concep-
tions of modern society, the direct result of these two conceptions
of truth.
Are we to apply the principles of Eternal Truth to the moral
and economic abuses of our state to realize a great social reform
through the cooperation of conscience-aroused individuals? Or, is
the new Socialist State to be formed in which the workers shall con-
trol government and the means of production after modern capi-
talistic society has been swept away by a great social revolution, 2
or by some principle of buying-out the capitalist? 3 Either of these
two proposals has a direct bearing upon the needs of all American
women. Social reform 4 being a development along the lines of our
country's institutions, is simpler for us to grasp than Socialism.
Yet frequently, we find their terms used interchangeably, so it seems
doubtful whether any large number of American women can dif-
ferentiate them.
In any event, reforms so far-reaching as Socialism proposes
reforms so far removed from our national ideas of government,
demand a definite attitude from those most affected, which would not
after all be our working class, but our women. Yet a definite atti-
tude toward any great public question is not characteristic of
American women. And perhaps it is too much to expect, since we
have so many inherited racial, political, and religious antipathies or
prepossessions.
Yet this cannot be the case with the Catholic women of our
country. Whatever our other prejudices may be, we have one com-
mon bond. We possess Eternal Truth. We believe in its dogmatic
teaching. We have, in consequence, a definite attitude toward life
and its concerns. For it is truth's beautiful characteristic that it
'Marx's Kladderadatsch still the hope of one wing of American Socialists.
" More likely, the process of transformation will be complicated and diversified,
and will be marked by a series of economic and social reforms, and legislative
measures tending to divest the ruling classes of their monopolies, privileges, and
advantages step by step, until they are practically shorn of their power to exploit
their fellows; i. e., until all the important means of production have passed into
collective ownership, and all the principal industries are reorganized on the basis
of Socialist cooperation" (Hillquit, Socialism in Theory and Practice).
It is impossible by any jugglery, to 'buy-out' the universality of the means
of production without confiscation" (Belloc, The Servile State).
4 J. A. Ryan, D.D., A Programme of Social Reform by Legislation and Social
Reform on Catholic Lines. New York : The Paulist Press.
1915.] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 521
does not have to change to meet economic changes. Each Catholic
woman knows each life is great for its eternal aim and end, and that
it is because of this eternal aim and end she was created to serve
God. She knows that every human being has certain inalienable
and inherent rights : 5 the right to live, the right to marry, the right
to liberty, the right to serve God. She knows, too, it is out of these
natural moral rights that our duties spring, and flow to and from
society : our duties as employer and employed our attitude toward
our difficulties and adjustments which must follow where the teach-
ing of Jesus Christ is rejected by a large number of either class.
For while Socialism would not have gone so far among American
women, had not our material necessities gone farther, yet it is
a noteworthy fact that the larger acceptance of the doctrines of this
purely material theory, and our own materialistic growth, are
synchronous with the loss of the American woman's faith in the
Divinity of our Lord.
There are many signs that she is exchanging " old lamps for
new/' and is being cheated by the magician. Gone is our old stern
attitude toward church attendance, toward the pursuit of amuse-
ment, toward the Bible, toward divorce. For given a vagueness of
religious belief and a consequent inability to define it, we are bound
to have a vague moral bearing toward duties and responsibilities.
And the meaning of life itself becomes blurred. We exaggerate the
importance of all its material side. Many sincere women, formerly
calling themselves Christians, are looking to Marx's material con-
ception of history to replace their lost faith. And are hoping by
bettering the material condition of their neighbor to nourish their
souls.
" The Christian Socialists," says Miss Hughan in her 'Amer-
ican Socialism of the Present Day, " are naturally drawn to a larger
extent from the congregations of the more liberal Protestant
Churches, representing the educated native middle class, rather than
from the working classes to whom religion and radicalism comes, as a
rule, in forms opposed to one another."
It is scarcely necessary to remind Catholic women that our Lord
did not repeal the Ten Commandments. He added to them the
love of our neighbor as ourselves. Yet that humanitarianism which
Christianity first taught the world, and for which Socialism stands,
(providing the neighbor be a worker) has been made the whole of
8 Alexander P. Mooney, M.D., Catholic Principles of Social Reform. London :
Catholic Truth Society.
522 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Jan.,
Christ's message. The cry of " justice " Socialism's chief catch-
word in this country has served to coalesce the border Socialist
and the border Christian into a sort of interlocking directorate.
Christian ministers ordained to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ
now preach the gospel of material needs, while the Socialist " in-
tellectual," admiring our Lord as a " Reformer," couples His Name
with that of Karl Marx, and claims for Marx's theories 6 a spiritual
significance. 7 For the Catholic woman, however, there can be
neither catchword nor vagueness. The need for clarity is too
great. We know that every day the natural rights of women
workers are disregarded. We know that there are some six million
women and children working in our land of plenty many of them
over hours for the merest pittance, and miserably housed. And
the times are ripe for the Socialist appeal.
Undeniably, the word justice calls all American women. We
have an inherited passion for justice, coupled with a perfectly nor-
mal desire " to get on," as we say; while it is for these two reasons
the foreign-born woman comes to cast her lot with us. Just now,
too, American women are asking for many measures for their
betterment both economically and politically. The industrial
changes of the past half century have made woman's demands almost
identical with man's. We are now told that woman's whole future
depends upon her economic and political independence. Socialism
aligns itself with every measure to assure them. And it would
further appear that woman having won her economic battle single-
handed, first against man's opposition and then against his reluctant
permission, should be even more ready than man to intrust her in-
terests to a beneficent state whose concern would be equal for every
individual. Socialism, therefore, invites the cooperative and under-
standing sympathy of all women towards securing justice for all
women a result to be perfectly achieved in the Socialist State.
What, then, is to be the Catholic woman's attitude toward the
justice of Socialism? Why should not we, of all American women
since we number so many Catholic workers who most need jus-
tice accept these promises of the Socialist State. It cannot be that
we have any less lively interest than the Socialist in a decent means of
""The Socialism that inspires hopes and fears to-day is of the school of Marx.
No one is seriously apprehensive of any other so-called Socialistic movement, and
no one is seriously concerned to criticize or refute the doctrines set forth by
any other school of Socialists" (Professor Veblen, Quarterly Journal Economics,
vol. xxi., pp. 295-300).
T Spargo, Spiritual Significance of Modern Socialism.
1915-] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 523
livelihood for the worker, her living wage or educational opportuni-
ties. It cannot be that we approve the oppressive conditions of
American industrialism. It cannot be that we are ignorant of our
civic duties, or that we are not bound in conscience to eradicate
human misery in so far as we are able. Yet it is in this very one-
ness of our material needs and aspirations, that the Catholic woman
finds herself cautioned against this apparently practical programme.
It is here she is called to the defence of those principles of Eternal
Truth which underlie her inherent rights : the right to live, the right
to marry, the right to liberty, the right to fulfill her destiny by
serving God. For unless the justice of Socialism, which underlies
its economic principle of truth, consorts with the justice of Chris-
tianity, unless the Socialist State can protect these moral rights
which are from God, we must reject its promises. " To the Catho-
lic, the State is the preserver and defender of rights, to the Socialist,
the State is the giver of rights." 8
This difference in the idea of the powers of the State is so
vital and so far-reaching, that we at once understand how it is a
religion opposes a system of economics a question which the
Catholic is often asked. For while the justice of Socialism and the
promises of the Socialist State are apparently concerned with that
material benefit of the working woman's means of livelihood, living
wage and educational opportunities which cannot be dissociated from
one of her inherent rights the right to live yet Socialism denies
the fundamental principle of the right to live the right to hold
private property and the Socialist State would work injustice to
every other class of woman.
Socialism by presupposing that we are ethically all alike, or
that we all want the same things, builds its arguments upon eco-
nomics. Truth is to be found only in the world about us in the
material world. Since all humanity is but a product of its material
and economic environment, all history is susceptible of material and
economic interpretation. 9 No one person is greater than any other.
The needs of all being only economic may, therefore, be supplied by
an economic commonwealth, in which the collective will is law.
But the only gauge for the justice or injustice of that law would
"Rev. J. B. McLoughlin, O.S.B., The Catholic Doctrine of Property. London:
Catholic Truth Society.
""When you get the 'materialistic conception of history,' many things are
made plain. The halos 'round the heads of the 'great men' will disappear, and you
have reached a point where the mouthings of bourgeois historians can no longer
fool you" (Appeal to Reason, March 16, 1907).
524 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Jan.,
not be whether it was moral or immoral right or wrong, as we
say but whether or not it was economic.
Catholic women do not have to be students of political economy
the dullest and most untutored woman in the United States can
be made to understand that a purely economic justice can neither
give nor guard our moral rights. For even economic justice needs
to walk hand in hand with the other cardinal virtues with pru-
dence, with temperance, with fortitude. It must also be tempered
with charity. We have but to watch the grasp of all this as it
operates to-day in the lives of our Catholic poor, who have not lost
their faith. Has not the oppressed Catholic woman worker the
same temptations to self-pity and retaliation as her Socialist co-
worker ?
Yet what has her attitude toward the capitalist in common with
that " aroused class consciousness," which considers any measures
of relief forced from capitalization " are but a preparation of the
workers to seize the whole powers of government, in order that they
may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry, and thus
come into their rightful inheritance." 10 Or which tells the laborer
that " the wage workers cannot be freed from exploitation without
conquering the political power, and substituting collective for private
ownership of the land and means of production used for ex-
ploitation." 11
And in spite of the fact that Mr. Spargo tells us that So-
cialism "is universally recognized as a mighty force making for uni-
versal peace," 12 Miss Hughan says that without exception Socialist
leaders wish in all propaganda to emphasize the class struggle. 13
" In connection with the economic interpretation of history, the
doctrine of class struggle thus forms the foundation of the American
Socialist movement. The acceptance of it is universal among party
members, and the leaders of the organization while suggesting tact
in the presentation of the doctrine, yet unite in advising emphasis
upon it in all propaganda." Justice set to this music sounds un-
familiar to Catholic ears. We must bear in mind that human
justice must always be doled out to suffering humanity by means
of human agents. And "there is no ground for assuming," as
Skelton dryly observes, " that a regeneration of human nature will
follow the mere substitution of the State as owner." 14
"Socialist Party Platform, 1904. u lbid., 1908.
"Spargo, Socialism and Motherhood.
"Hughan, American Socialism of the Present Day.
14 O. D. Skelton, Socialism, a Critical Analysis.
1915.] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 525
The easy-going Catholic woman who to-day neglects to watch
the trend of our own country of the greatest popular movement in
modern history, who wonders why the Church, the great guardian of
Incarnate Truth who has herself governed, and who has managed to
live under every form of government, should look with particular
disfavor upon the promises of the Socialist State, has not yet under-
stood what the diffusion of Socialist ideas has meant for the cause
of truth in other lands. If out of terrible material needs, the
proscription of religious teaching, and an increasing material out-
look, defections from Christianity have become an open hostility
through the spread of Socialist propaganda, why should we expect
anything more hopeful from the growth of materialism here?
Obviously there is much coquetting between Socialism and some
of the Christian sects. We have but to watch the many quasi-
religious movements which Socialists conduct in our large cities like
New York to be assured of their ultimate cooperation as to politics.
The Christian Socialist commented upon this fact as long ago as
1907. " A large section of American Socialists comprising chiefly
the educated among the native elements, are coming into more and
more friendly terms with the more liberal Churches, while the Chris-
tian Socialists, until recently unconnected with the political move-
ment are now committed to the Socialist Party without reserve."
Yet the Catholic is not the only one to mark the incongruity. " The
fundamental philosophy underlying all forms of Socialism," says
Price Collier in his England and the English, " is the worship of
man. The pandering to this new doctrine in the name of Christian
Socialism is simply loose-minded. The pith of Christianity and the
pith of Socialism are as the poles apart." It is plain to see that
while in other lands the Socialist has also been crying " justice," he
has strayed again and again past our pickets. And the thoughtful
Catholic women of our country will, therefore, see the need of
sentry duty here.
Our Socialist " intellectuals " disclaim any responsibility for
religious defections among the working classes. The Socialists are
not opposed to Christianity, according to Mr. Spargo, but are only
against the Church as a political organization. In his Applied So-
cialism, this popular American Socialist says, " There is no apparent
reason why the belief in the collective ownership of the principle
means of production should be incompatible with an equally strong
belief in Christianity, or for that matter Buddhism or Confu-
cianism." But this statement by the very breadth of its inclusion,
526 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Jan.,
rather increases than diminishes our fears, since we realize that the
justice of Socialism being non-Christian, the promises of the So-
cialist State would not protect the great Christian principle of our
right to live, because it rejects our right to hold private property in
other words the right of each one of us to do what we will with what
we earn and own.
Now we have another inherent right the right to marry a
right which strengthens our right to hold private property, and
which is the very core of human society. For woman may or may
not be politically or economically independent, but always she is
race-bearer. Her function of motherhood sequesters her under any
form of government from autocracy to democracy. And to the
Socialist State, the continuation of society through reproduction
would be of equal import. But it would be of particular moment
to woman, because this hitherto intimate prerogative whether or
not she considers it sacred must also be made to conform to the
collective will. It is impossible for us to approach the attitude of
Socialism toward marriage and the relation of the sexes, without
seeing to what an impasse all women would be brought. And this
would be true especially of the Catholic woman, because logically
Christian marriage must disappear in the Socialist State.
The family while probably monogamous would not be com-
pelled to assume this form [Miss Hughan 15 gleans from La
Monte] As we have it at present, according to the Social-
ists, the family rests upon a foundation of property rights, 16
veiled under some of the outworn forms of the patriarchate.
With the minimizing of inherited estates, and the economic
independence of women, with full civil and political rights ac-
corded to the latter, and the eventual responsibility of society
for the maintenance of children, both the theory of the pa-
triarchal and the actuality of the property family would dis-
appear. Woman would be compelled neither to marry for a
home, nor to remain in subjection to distasteful marriage ; and
though few Americans look for the revolution foretold in
Rebel's 17 Woman Under Socialism, yet a decided change in the
position of the sex would under these circumstances be inevit-
able.
Just what this change will be Catholic writers have been quick
"American Socialism of the Present Day.
"The right to marry according to Catholic doctrine merely strengthens property
rights.
1T " Catholic women should read Bebel's Libel on Women " (Rev. W. McMahon,
SJ. London: Catholic Truth Society).
1915-] WOMAN AND TPIE SOCIALISTIC STATE 527
to see. And the doctrine of free love has been taught ad nauseam
by Socialists from Bebel to Carpenter. Mr. Carpenter urges as his
dictum that only after trial marriage can the proper affinity be found.
Ellen Key, with her keen psychologic insight, has taught a larger
understanding of motherhood, but chiefly that motherhood inter-
feres with woman's career. It speaks much for the advance of
American women toward a materialistic paganism, that all these
books are on the shelves of our free libraries for the edification of
American youth of both sexes. Yet Socialists to-day are denying
any such outcome from the application of their principles. Either
they are unable to see or unwilling to admit the danger of a monster
commonwealth's collective will. They take it for granted that what
is purely economic will be pure morality, that the will of the majority
is always economic or always right. Many Socialists resent the
charge of free love, because it is not their personal point of view,
and on the ground, also, that the party as a whole has never been
committed to free love. " There is no Socialist theory of mar-
riage," says Mr. Spargo, in his latest book, Socialism and Mother-
hood. 18 " But inevitably," a non-Catholic writer reminds us, " the
family would be crushed between individual selfishness and State
interference ; the care of children would more and more be made a
State affair, family life would be emptied of its responsibilities as
well as its privileges, of its burdens as well as of its joys, and mar-
riage with this source of permanence removed, would become a tem-
porary and arbitrary relation."
In Socialism and Motherhood a sentimental appeal is made
to the American mother, who, from such false ideas of the teaching
of Socialism, has been deterred from becoming a " comrade." Mr.
Spargo propounds query after query intended to bring the attacks
of opponents to naught. He even makes a few careless references
to angels ( !), and claims Socialism has been first to stand for every
reform concerning the child, notably the milk question, although it
is bacteriology, not Socialism, which has taught us all to safeguard
our milk supply " run for profit." " Suppose," he questions, " we
applied the principle of collective ownership to telephones and tele-
graphs, to the supply of electric light and power, to the express
service, to the water supply and the ice supply, is there any good
reason for believing that the result would be free love and the
destruction of private family life? Has that been the result where
these things have been tried ? "
18 O. D. Skelton, Socialism, a Critical Analysis.
528 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Jan.,
In these disclaimers, Mr. Spargo's arrow shoots outside the
mark. As a matter of fact we know collective ownership has not
been tried out on a large scale anywhere in the world. It is munic-
ipal or government ownership to which Mr. Spargo rather disin-
genuously refers, so he will be no more convincing to our Catholic
women than when he claims Socialism is not " incompatible " with
Christianity. But when he comes to the actual discussion of Bebel's
prophecies for woman's freedom in the Socialist State, Mr. Spargo
says it is " impossible to read his work Woman and Socialism
without reaching the conclusion that the ideal it preaches is free love.
This is not the same as sexual promiscuity," Mr. Spargo further re-
assures timid American mothers, " nor is it incompatible with strict
monogamy. What is meant is, that the force of love alone ought to
bind man and wife together without any external compulsion either
of government, economic dependence, or social customs; that every
marriage which depends upon any or all of these external com-
pulsions which love alone is not strong enough to perpetuate, ought
to be dissolved in the interests of morality and happiness." What
Mr. Spargo and all other Socialists forget is this: that it was not
" the external compunction of government, or economic dependence,
or social customs," which has forced the monogamic marriage as we
know it to-day upon our civilization. It was Catholicism. By ap-
plying the principles of truth taught by Jesus, her Divine
Founder, she compelled a pagan world to submit to its holy yoke.
There is no 'mention of marriage in the early Fathers, or in Papal
decrees, which does not clearly testify to its sacramental character
as does the Ne Temere of only the other day.
Now there is no logical reason why the Socialist, or any other
disbeliever in Christianity, should regard marriage as the sacred
bond to which Jesus Christ raised it. By why, in heaven's name,
prate of morality? We are considering a doctrine of political
economy which leaves out morals. There is but one reason why the
Socialist State would aspire to monogamy. And it is the same
which forces the poorer Turk to be monogamic. Any other form
of marriage would be uneconomic!
In Socialism and the Great State, G. R. Stirling-Taylor, in
discussing the question of payment for mothers, contributes this :
It is not good that an intelligent woman should give up
her whole time to the care of a single house, or of two or three
children, who would be far better in the more varied society of
1915-] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 529
a larger group, which could be more economically and efficiently
tended by a professional nurse who chose ( !) that work by
preference. All these developments eventually may lead to the
disappearance of the family as a social unit. There will prob-
ably be no place in the larger thinking Great State for the
narrow autocracy of the father, controlling the individual rights
of either the mother or the child. Such a unit will only ham-
per the individual, without assisting in the wider work of the
State.
Such appeals to the " class consciousness " of wife and mother,
can have but one aim and end not alone woman's economic and
political independence of which women stand in need as well as
men, but as with the worker discontent and revolt. They are
" useful in propaganda." They accustom women to the idea that
Christian marriage is not an essential to the well-being of society
and State. And our all too ready divorce mills in this country have
prepared a fertile soil for their growth.
Still another method is in belittling the ordinary household
tasks and, primarily, the intelligence of the mothers of the past.
It is not I think [says Cicely Hamilton, in another chapter
of the same book] generally recognized how largely- one may
hope entirely the undoubtedly low level of intelligence in
woman as compared with man, is the direct result and product
of dire economic necessity, the need for bread or the need for
success in life. It has paid woman in the past in some walks
of life, notably marriage, it still pays them to be stupid; in-
telligence in woman has been an obstacle to, not a qualification
for, motherhood. The consciousness of superiority is a pleas-
ant thing; and it is a sober fact that for countless generations
the human male has taken a real and active pleasure in despising
the mental attainments of the human female, has insisted with
emphasis that the wife of his bosom, the mother of his children,
should be a creature he could look down upon as well as love.
Standing in the position of capitalist of employer in a com-
pulsory trade the average husband was able to dictate terms,
to bargain for and obtain in his helpmeet the low level of
intellectuality which he considered necessary to his comfort
and self-esteem. With the bitter result for the human race
that the mothers thereof have been, to a great extent, selected
for their lack of wisdom, and encouraged to be greater fools
than nature intended to make them.
VOL. c. 34
530 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Jan.,
All this would be profitless reprinting were it not for its evident
appeal to the unthinking and creedless American woman, in partic-
ular, the woman with a grievance real or fancied. Such women
know nothing and care less for the deep industrial problems for
which sincere men and women of every shade of opinion are to-day
seeking a solution. 19 Our Catholic women should realize also which
way many unmoored Christians are heading. These selections are
of our own time, and " except in the manner of stating it," 20 quite
as Bebelian as Bebel. For the ideal which Socialist books place be-
fore all women, is that of the freedom and independence of the
pagan women of the Greek States. Yet both Athens and Sparta
were small independent States. And the high degree of their civili-
zation was made possible by a very large class of State serfs, an item
of some economic importance singularly overlooked by the major-
ity of Socialist writers. In Athens only daughters of citizens
could be wives and mothers of citizens. But these women, while
citizens, stayed at home. They took no part in the conduct of
the State. It " paid " the women of the hetcerce to be brilliant and
beautiful, just as it pays other courtesans to-day. It paid Aspasia.
It paid Phyrne. But to their charms alone these women owed their
political influence. And if it is to the hetcera the Socialists wish our
women to aspire, we must recollect that the Athenians never per-
mitted these women, who were mostly foreign-born, to have political
rights.
"American Catholic women should read Socialism; Promise or Menace f by
Hillquit-Ryan.
20 Mr. Spargo, in the Substance of Socialism, thus takes exception in his preface
to a criticism of a writer in the Boston Transcript : " I desire only to make plain the
fact that except in the manner of stating it, there is not the slightest difference
between my general position and that taken by Marx, Engels, Leibnecht, Kautsky,
and others whose orthodoxy is unquestioned."
[TO BE CONCLUDED.]
THE AIM OF GERMANY IN THE WAR.
BY ANDREW J. SHIPMAN.
E Americans are too apt to judge the motives and
aims of the European countries engaged in the pres-
ent conflict purely from the standpoint of American
political ideas, and have come to conclusions which
are not justified. If we should place ourselves upon
the bases of political action by which European nations have shaped
their conduct, the acts of many of the contending parties would be
judged more reasonably. Particularly is this true of Germany, and
still more is it true of the final aim which she seeks as the outcome
of the present war, if successful.
There are two principles upon which all the nations of Europe
act, and which have become particularly abhorrent and detested by
us. Indeed, we have long since discarded them (except one, per-
haps very recently) as being obstacles to civilization. These two
principles are secret diplomacy and the right to subject communities
to a centralized rule against their will. None of our treaties can
be secret or concealed. Perhaps their terms may be veiled from
the public in the making; but the moment they are adopted and
ratified, they become public property for every citizen of our land.
We know what our bonds and obligations are; they become part
of our public statutes. Again we have in this country some forty-
eight separate communities, each one practically self-governing, and
except as to the outside world almost independent. We grant, and
have always granted to each of them, home rule as soon as they were
constituted, and they manage their own affairs.
No European nation has ever done this. Take even the most
understandable of all of them, Great Britain. Her overseas colonies,
where English blood and languages vastly predominate, have been
allowed self-rule, so as to prevent rebellion, for the spectre of the
American revolution was ever before her if she pulled the rein too
tight. But she never granted it to Ireland, through the centuries,
and it is doubtful whether it has come with recent legislation
upon the eve of the war. France has never known the faintest
idea of community rule. It has been the centralized rule of the
republican majority, just as it was the centralized rule of the kings
532 THE AIM OF GERMANY IN THE WAR [Jan.,
of France. When Alsace and Lorraine belonged to France for
they were German provinces originally their government was as
centralized, if not more so, as it is to-day under Prussian rule.
Germany has been happily placed ; for it is almost wholly inhabited
by people of German blood, and is made up of a number of self-
governing states, but yet it holds in the leash the Poles of East
Prussia, the half -Danes of Sleswig, and the Slavs of Silesia.
Austria and Russia have always subjected smaller and alien com-
munities to the centralized rule of their monarchies. Austria at
least has respected their nationalities, and has given them a slight
measure of self-government, while Hungary, with theoretic liberal-
ity of treatment, has never done so, except in the case of Croatia-
Slavonia. Russia has been ruthless in her government, no matter
how well intentioned her purposes from the standpoint of theory.
The Poles of Poland, the Rumanians in Bessarabia, and the Finns
of Finland, with their vanishing liberties, can testify to this. None
of them has ever considered that the small community had the
right to govern itself, and added to this they have arrogated the
principle that the people had no right to know what their rulers
had provided in the way of diplomacy. Only so much of the latter
as they thought was good for them was ever revealed.
It is from this standpoint that the present conflict must be
judged. Each country stood in a measure afraid of the other;
while all feared the strongest. Added to this was the idea that the
government knew what was best for the small community, whether
that community belonged to it or not. If it did not, the strong
government would probably take it, provided it lay in the path to
expansion.
Germany is probably the greatest nation of modern times. Not
huge like Russia, not all-absorbing like England, not theoretical
like France, nor embracing irreconcilable nationalities like Austria-
Hungary, it was for the most part homogeneous, devoted and pro-
gressive. When the German Empire was formed in 1870, it sprang
out of a series of small German states, no one of them (except
perhaps Prussia) large enough to secure its industrial or political
welfare alone. With no industries organized in the modern sense,
with no great commerce and no navy, industrial or commercial, it
took its place among the great powers of the world. Mark the
result: from a population of 38,000,000 in 1870 there is to-day,
when the war came, a population of 70,000,000; from no commerce
or industry it has the most highly developed industry in the world,
1915.] THE AIM OF GERMANY IN THE WAR 533
and its commerce had spread in its own ships over almost the entire
world. Its people are the most literate and best-informed people
in the civilized world; there is less than one per cent of illiteracy,
and every man is trained to a specific avocation. In chemistry and
science the Germans lead every other nation; and many of their
products and late scientific productions cannot be reproduced in any
other country. The mills of Birmingham and Sheffield have largely
curtailed their output of steel and cutlery; because Sheffield steel
is made in Germany, although fashioned in England. Germany
has provided magnificently for her people; there were less unem-
ployed there than anywhere else in the world. She has made the
furthest strides for human betterment. In prevention of acci-
dents, old age pensions, land banks, life insurance, and health insur-
ance, in providing for the widow and the orphan in the many
vicissitudes of life, and in a host of things to ameliorate the lot
of the worker and of the unfortunate, she is far in advance of any
of her fellow nations. In fact they are copying her progress as
fast as they observe and assimilate it. As for her centres of learn-
ing and her thoroughness of teaching, in university, professional
and civic life, she stands to-day without a peer; and her eminent
thinkers are in the van of contemporary thought and discovery.
With it all, her people have not forgotten the God Who made them ;
nor have they cast Him out of the school and university some
of those who follow the methods of other countries among her sons
may have begun to do so but they reverence the true and the
righteous, and as a nation they cling to the verities of the family,
the fireside, and the faith. They have grown from within; they
have increased their population, because they have not sought to
contravene nature ; they have made their land threefold productive ;
and they have sought diligently for more equal means of distribution
of product, opportunity, and happiness. They have not sought to
add huge territories by conquest; only recently have they imitated
England, France, and Russia nay even Belgium in adding even
colonial possessions to their realm. Their hearts have been devoted
to building up their compact and close-knit Fatherland.
Would a nation which has toiled up the steep ascent to great-
ness in this manner become a military barbarian, ready to break
out and plunder his neighbor? Both history and logical deduction
give denial to such a theory. It has been said that the curse of
Germany is " militarism;" I shall speak of that a little later. But
Germany does not spend as much for her army and navy as England
534 THE AIM OF GERMANY IN THE WAR [Jan.,
does for hers. England has adopted the principle that her navy
must be twice as large as the largest navy of any other country;
Germany has never adopted that principle for her army. Germany
has to fight for her national life upon land, while England has to
fight for her national life upon sea; yet Germany has never adopted
the cold-blooded principles and ever-growing expense that Great
Britain has. Her men do not serve in her armies as many years as
they do in Russia or in France ; and every man returns again to a
useful trade or occupation.
Nor in actual practice has Germany been warlike since the
Empire was established. We look upon Great Britain as a pacific
power. Here are their respective records since 1870:
GREAT BRITAIN. GERMANY.
1870 Abyssinian War. French War.
1878 Afghan War.
1879 Transvaal (Zulu) War.
1881 First Boer War.
1885 Egyptian and Soudan War.
1899 Second Boer War.
1914 Present War. Present War.
France has had one war in the interval between the Franco-
Prussian war of 1870 and the present war; you can see the monu-
ments to the French leaders in Algiers to-day. Russia has had
three wars in the interval : the Turkish, the Balkan-Turkistan, and
the Japanese. Japan has had two wars within the same period.
Every great Power arrayed against Germany has fought more wars
in the past forty- four years than she has. Germany has kept the
peace longer than any of her opponents; she has attended strictly
to the peaceful, civic duties of building up the Fatherland, and in
training its citizens in every peaceful art and craft which science
or learning could devise; yet she is called " warlike," and possessed
with the devil of " militarism." Viewed by actual results, Germany
is the only power which was given to peace. Her antagonists are
the ones which have done all the fighting.
But as a proof of " militarism," which must be crushed, it is
said that Germany is a breaker of treaties, and that she invaded
Belgium and crushed the life out of the country, instead of re-
specting the neutrality embodied in the " scrap of paper " of 1831.
War makes men and governments do harsh and unjustifiable things.
IQIS-] THE AIM OF GERMANY IN THE WAR 535
General Sherman said, " war is hell," and any observer of the
present conflict will readily admit that he was right. Still the
military commander of Paris blew up and burned down hundreds
of houses around Paris, so that the fire of his heavy guns might
be unimpaired if the Germans besieged Paris. He doesn't contend
that he had any right to take them down. Germany as an empire
was not a signer of the treaty of neutrality of Belgium; only two
of her constituent states were, and even if she had been, a pressing
military necessity for the preservation of the Fatherland knew
no law. Nations have done it again and again. England did not
keep the treaty of Majuba Hill, but made war on the Boers a second
time, and destroyed their independence. We flouted our treaty with
China, when the Pacific Coast States demanded it. On August i,
1914, England was pressed by Germany to declare herself, whether
she would, in the event that Germany did not go through Belgium,
refrain from taking sides with France. England refused to make
any statement whatever.
He (the German Ambassador) asked me whether if Germany
gave a promise not to violate Belgian neutrality, we would
engage to remain neutral. I replied that I could not say that;
our hands were still free ...... I said that I felt obliged to
refuse definitely any promise to remain neutral, and I could only
say that we must keep our hands free. 1
Germany felt that if after sacrificing an obvious advantage she
was to be in any event attacked by England, the advantage should
be seized at once. On the second of August, 1914, Sir Edward
Grey declared that England would not allow the German fleet
to attack the coast of France :
If the German fleet comes- into the Channel or through the
North Sea to undertake hostile operations against French coasts
or shipping, the British fleet will give all the protection in its
power. 2
So England would not agree to keep her hands off, if Germany
refrained from entering Belgium, and besides, would attack Ger-
many if she undertook to send her fleet against France, irrespective
of -invading Belgium. It was for Germany a case of " being at-
Edward Grey White Book, Letter 123.
2 Ibid., Telegram 148.
536 THE AIM OF GERMANY IN THE WAR [Jan.,
tacked if she did and being attacked if she did not. Germany's hands
were tied behind her back. So, on August 4, 1914, the Germans en-
tered Belgian territory, and on the same night Great Britain declared
war against Germany. It was done under the high-sounding reason
that Germany had violated Belgian neutrality. Yet England herself
in 1901 marched her South African army across the Portuguese
colonial territory in order to invade the Boer Republic. Notwith-
standing England's record in crossing neutral territory, when it
pleased her, she forbade Germany to take a step upon land or sea
against the adversary who had clamored in fiction and verse, in
statue and speech, for the return of the Alsatian provinces, and
who declared her desire to retake them at the earliest opportunity.
It was certainly not " militarism " for Germany to take the only
way that lay open, after such rebuffs.
Assuming Germany should be victorious, either by a drawn con-
test in which all the combatants depart wearily, or by a superiority
in the winning of battles against the Allies, what would she require ?
This is not so easy to answer, and it is dangerous to forecast possible
history. But the record of the past is the guarantee of the future.
Germans have not wasted their spare moments in recasting and
remodelling the map of Europe. They want the concrete results
to be the building up of the manhood and womanhood of the Empire.
If it should be that the German Empire can look out upon an
untroubled world again, and model her destiny once more as she
has done in the past two score years, the first thing of all she will
desire, and the very first that she will require, will be an age-long
peace. She has been a peaceful nation; for her greatness, her
surpassing victories in art and science and commerce have been
won in times of peace. Her manufactures, her industries, her trade,
and her ships were produced by peace. With an enduring peace,
the next half century will look upon a greater and more highly
developed Germany than the past forty years have seen.
Again, she will be among the first to consent to a reduction of
armed men and machines upon land and sea but only on condition
that her neighbors on either side will do likewise. Let Russia reduce
her enormous armament; let France refuse to imitate servilely
Russia in her growing army; so that the " ring of iron " which sur-
rounds Germany and threatens to crush her shall disappear, and the
" militarism "of Germany will begin to diminish. Let England
dispense with one-half her warships; let her abandon her sort of
Monroe doctrine, that England must maintain a fleet greater than
1915.] THE AIM OF GERMANY IN THE WAR 537
the combined fleets of any two other countries, and Germany's naval
expansion upon the sea will wane. But not until then. The crusade
against " militarism," which expects Germany to reduce her forces
to a minimum, whilst her neighbors keep theirs at full strength,
is not a just one, and Germany will never agree to it.
Germany desires to live out her own life in industry, com-
merce, and development through the arts of peace. Her mental,
spiritual, and intellectual development will go along with that pace
by pace. Her thinkers, scholars, sages, and theologians will reach
greater heights than ever before. Her record for the past forty
years has given earnest of her high-minded desires, an earnest that
her way to glory lies along every avenue the world provides, save
that of war, and she has distanced her neighbors in the cultivation
of the ways of peace. If lasting peace can be assured, she will
divide the commerce of the world with Great Britain, will cause
the words " made in Germany " to be known in every part of the
civilized world as the synonym of what scientific labor and honest
workmanship have combined to produce, and will show that there
are other Saxons than the " Anglo-Saxons " who are worthy of the
confidence and respect of the whole round world. She desires
simply her " place in the sun," without fear or favor.
Boohs.
THE UNITED STATES AND PEACE. By William H. Taft.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.00 net.
The time is most opportune to insure interest in just such a
book as Mr. Taft has given us in his last publication, The United
States and Peace. The four chapters of which the book consists
were delivered last winter as lectures before the New York Peace
Society. The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the fact
that Mr. Taft has held so eminent a position in national and inter-
national politics, and is thereby exceedingly well fitted by experience
to give an appreciative and intelligent treatment of the subjects
under discussion.
The first chapter deals with the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign
policy of vital importance to the United States, and which, though
much discussed, is little understood and appreciated by her citizens.
The Monroe Doctrine is shown to make for the preservation of
peace, and that as such it is a national asset of inestimable value.
The second chapter discusses the necessity of protection by federal
legislation of aliens in their treaty rights. The neglect of this
duty on the part of the United States is shown as one of the chief
dangers to the country's peace, and a remedy is proposed. The
third chapter insists on the necessity of a policy of arbitration
treaties that mean something. " The long list of treaties that mean
but little can hardly be made longer, for they include substantially
all the countries of the world. The next step is to include some-
thing that really binds somebody in a treaty for future arbitration."
The fourth and last chapter deals with experiments in federation
for the settlement of international disputes. Experience has shown
the possibility and practicability of such courts on a small scale,
and there seems no reason why on a large scale " they should not
solve the problem of how to escape from war, and how to induce
nations to give up the burden of armaments."
The entire book is written in a simple but forceful and
scholarly style, that renders it pleasant as well as profitable reading.
The note of unity that binds the chapters together is the idea of the
preservation of peace. Peace is now estimated by all men at its
true value by reason of the fatal loss of it in the present European
1915-] NEW BOOKS 539
\
war. This book then by Mr. Taft is doubly welcome just at this
time, because of the means it proposes for the continuation and
future conservation of peace by the United States.
ODDSFISH! By Robert Hugh Benson. New York : Dodd, Mead
& Co. $1.35-
No one has grasped as has Monsignor Benson the secret of the
true historical novel the fact that the past should not be considered
as external, objective merely, a matter of reconstruction, nor inter-
preted by modern standard and motive; that, in a word, it should
not be brought down to us, but that we should be carried back and
made to think and feel in the spirit of the day. Odds fish! the
novel published just after his death, has accomplished this so
effectively that in turning the last page we are obliged to readjust
ourselves to the twentieth century. From a different angle, then,
from within and not from without, as a contemporary and not as
a curiosity-seeker, we are introduced to the life of the day in the
Court of Charles II.
The narrator of the tale is one Roger Mallock, a youth purely
fictitious, but so full of enthusiastic loyalty and charm that we al-
most regret the fact. A Benedictine novice, he believes his capaci-
ties better suited to the field of active duty and, reentering the world,
places himself at the service of the Pontiff. The latter entrusts
him with a mission, secret but significant, at the Court of Charles
II.; to observe and report on the already marked Catholic ten-
dencies of that sovereign, and to further in every way possible his
reconciliation to the Church. He repairs to England, places him-
self at the disposal of Charles, to whom his mission is known, and
is cordially received by him as the emissary of Rome. The book,
from this point, deals with the troublous political situation of the
day, centred about the calm and pleasure-loving king. The " Popish
Plot " fabricated by Oates, the heroic death of its Jesuit victims and
of Lord Stafford, the intrigues and plottings of those opposed to
Charles and the Catholic Succession, which after its attempted
exclusion of James as heir to the crown had its second culmination
in the Rye-house Plot, all of these are dealt with, and the char-
acters involved in them Essex and Monmouth, Shaftsbury with his
tireless energy and self-reliance, and the Duke of York with his
blunt, tactless honesty.
The romance of Roger Mallock with his pretty cousin Dolly
also lends personal interest to the tale. But never for a moment
540 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
do we lose sight of Charles as the centre and chief protagonist of
the narrative Charles as man and as king, as what his courtiers saw,
" a pleasant brown-faced gentleman playing with his spaniels, or
drawing caricatures of his ministers, or flinging cakes to the water-
fowl in the park," and as what his ministers and opponents knew
him to be, a subtle, if not penetrating, statesman, with a determined
policy which, when occasion demanded, he betrayed and then re-
sumed again. But even more clearly do we see him as Roger Mai-
lock saw him, and as many of his Catholic subjects must have seen
him a soul, magnetic, generous, almost pathetic in its traits of
nobleness, bound down by the chains of pleasure and lust, and at the
last redeemed by the overwhelming mercy of God. Mallock, sick
at heart with the world and its ways, remains in England just long
enough to see his mission realized, to witness Charles' secret recep-
tion into the Church, and hear the last penitent words of the dying
monarch. And Monsignor Benson, who can write as none other
of such an event, who can make us feel the supernatural informing
and animating every least word and triviality in the chamber of
death, has brought home to us with full impressiveness the reality
and solemnity of the scene.
In laying aside this book, we felt again very keenly what a
master-hand was lost to Catholic literature when death called Mon-
signor Benson to his reward.
RAMBLES IN CATHOLIC LANDS. By Michael Barrett, O.S.B.
New York : Benziger Brothers. $2.00 net.
Father Barrett's rambles led him chiefly through southern
Germany, the Austrian Tyrol, and northern Italy, although at one
point he touched Switzerland, to visit the quaint pilgrimage-town
of Einsiedeln, with its famous monastery and shrine.
The author has not attempted to exhaust his subject, nor has
he approached it critically; his record is personal, and his attitude
is rather that of the alert traveler than of the student. A specially
interesting feature of the book is its description of the various
Benedictine monasteries whose hospitality Father Barrett and his
fellow-traveler enjoyed in almost all of the halts in their itinerary.
That several of these monasteries lie removed from the usual route
of the tourist, will be found to add zest and freshness to the narra-
tive.
The book is attractive in appearance, and illustrated with a
number of good photographs.
1915-] NEW BOOKS 541
THE WAR AND AMERICA. By Hugo Munsterberg. New York :
D. Appleton & Co. $1.00.
PAN-GERMANISM. By Roland G. Usher, Ph.D. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.75 net.
GERMANY AND ENGLAND. By J. A. Cramb, M.A. New York:
E. P. Button & Co. $1.00 net.
It was to be expected that the present European war would
precipitate a vast amount of literature. A conflict of so vast a
magnitude, and affecting directly or indirectly the whole civilized
world, was sure to be discussed and argued about the moment it
became a reality. The more surprising is that this moment was not
waited for, and that many of the books we are now reading first
saw the light long before Austria sent her ultimatum to Servia.
Since that fateful day we have had White Papers, Gray Papers, and
Papers of other hues, professing to give the " official " history as
gleaned from the personal letters of the various sovereigns, the
reports of commissions and diplomatic correspondence. And the
press has teemed with reviews of books similiar to the three we are
considering, some of which were written before the war began, and
all of which claim, antecedently or consequently, a peculiar com-
petence to enlighten their fellowmen on the question " Who's to
blame ? " The fighting in the trenches has its rival in the fighting in
the printing-houses.
Naturally (and professedly) they all take sides. The present
reviewer, however, in the interests of neutrality, will only set forth
the writers' views without expressing an opinion on their logical
or historical value.
Professor Munsterberg's book is dedicated " To All Lovers of
Fair Play," and throughout he maintains the attitude of Audi al~
teram partem. For, he thinks, the altera pars has not been fairly
presented, because nearly all the news sent to America has come
from or through the Allies. The professor now stands before the
American people as the advocate of Germany, just as during the
Spanish war he performed for us a parallel service with the Ger-
mans. In Chapter I. he tells us who were the aggressors.
The war of 1870, recklessly stirred up by the intolerance of
imperial France, created the German empire, but at the same
time it left in republican France that blind striving for the lost
provinces which has controlled all its policies since that time
There was no other talk among us students at Heidel-
542 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
berg but the war which the French restlessness would force
upon us. This feeling was aggravated when Russia's political
ill will toward Germany became more violent Now the
explosion has come. The Czar has decreed the war. France
uses the long-hoped-for hour of Germany's danger (pp. 13, 14).
His analysis of the anti-German sentiment in America attrib-
utes it to untrustworthy reports of " atrocities," a mistaken notion
of the relations between the Kaiser and the people of Germany,
and an exaggerated fear of militarism. He does not retort on
Germany's enemies, but simply defends the Fatherland.
There may be no moral wrong on any side. Every one of
the great nations did that which was morally right and neces-
sary in its historic development. This war might have been
delayed a month, perhaps a year, but it had to come : the
European tension had become too strong. Germany and Russia
had come to a point where no possible arbitration but only
strength could determine whether east Europe or central Europe
would control the Balkans. It was the ethical duty of the Rus-
sians to strain every effort for this expansion of their influence,
and it was the ethical duty of the Germans and Austrians to
strain every effort to prevent it. In the same way it was the
moral right of France to make use of any hour of German
embarrassment for recapturing its military glory by a victory
of revenge. And it was the moral right of England to exert
its energies for keeping the control of the seas and for de-
stroying the commercial rivalry of the Germans. No one is to
be blamed (pp. 42-43).
The war came not from a "wrong," but from a "mistake" on the
part of the Allies in " helping Russia to an irresistible power which
ultimately must subjugate the whole of Western civilization " (p.
45). " The people of Russia are the only real makers of the war "
(p. 8!).
Alsace and Lorraine are really German, so their restitution to
Germany was only the righting of the wrong done by France when
she took them away. He feels sorry for the English because he
likes English culture and English people except Mr. Wells, who is
a delightful novelist but a fanatic (p. 87). M. Bergson, the
Frenchman, he says " is nothing but Schopenhauer served with a
piquant French sauce " (p. 82).
After chapters on the Kaiser, the Russians, and the Americans
comes one on " The Morals of War," which is thoughtful but pes-
simistic.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 543
We workers for peace and arbitration must not deceive our-
selves : whatever the outcome of the present war may be, there
will be little faith in arbitration in the near future. We have
read so often that great wars will no longer be possible because
the power of the world has gone into the hands of two classes
which are mightier than governments and armies, the labor
class with the socialist vote and the banker class with the
financial influence.
Both these ideas are proven by the present war to have been
utterly astray; also, " the faith in the binding power of treaties must
be thoroughly discredited," for " the world now knows that a treaty
will be binding exactly as long as it serves the realistic interests
of the nation." This results " not because a German army passed
through Belgium, but above all because Italy refused to fight " (pp.
187-189).
Pan-Germanism, by Roland G. Usher, professes to give an
expose of the German scheme for the conquest of the world for
this, and nothing short of this, the writer conceives to be the mean-
ing of " Pan-Germanism." After a chapter on " The Causes of the
German Aggression " (mainly the cramped position both geographi-
cally and morally in which Teutonic energies are at present con-
fined), the writer gives the German view of her enemies. " To the
German, the grandeur and splendor of Imperial England which has
so long been impressed upon the world, is nothing but bluster and
show, making congenital weakness of the most serious description "
(p- 37)- France and Russia she respects but does not love, as their
aggrandizement is inconsistent with her own. Her position between
them is only apparently a disadvantage, for her armies can attack
either frontier without severing their unity, while her two rivals
suffer from internal weaknesses.
By contrast Germany possesses a good central position, the
strategic points of Alsace and Lorraine, the Kiel Canal, great eco-
nomic strength and vitality, a centralized and efficient government,
and the hearty " Pan-Germanism "of her people. But there are
weaknesses too, viz., the lack of harmony in the Triple Alliance and
in the separate States that compose it, and the political aims of
the Balkan States and of Turkey.
There are chapters on recent events bearing on the subject,
and an appendix with the speech of Mr. Borden of Canada on a
naval policy for the Dominion, and the Official Memorandum of the
British Admiralty on England's naval position.
544 HEW BOOKS [Jan.,
Germany and England differs considerably from the other
two, and indeed from most of the " war literature." It consists
of four lectures delivered in London in the early part of 1913 by
the late Professor of Modern History at Queen's College, London
(he died last autumn). He is at once an admirer of Germany and
an English patriot. After dwelling on English neglect and conse-
quent ignorance of things Teutonic, he tells us that " the ethico-
political or moral origins of the sentiment of antagonism between
England and Germany are obvious enough the confrontation of
two states, each dowered with the genius for empire; the one, the
elder, already sated with the experience and the glories of empire;
the other, the younger, balked in mid-career by 'fate and meta-
physical aid/ and now indignant" (p. 18). The Germans accuse
England of moral crimes in the formation of her Empire and of
inefficiency in its government, and maintain that England's offers
of disarmament spring from the consciousness that, having all she
wants, she has nothing to gain from war, and everything to lose.
Lecture II., on " Peace and War," attempts to show that war
has always been with us and always will be, though the enthusiasm
for it is not fully capable of rational analysis. Lecture III. is a
study of Treitschke and his influence on the younger generation of
Germans. Treitschke is compared with Macaulay and Carlyle
(mainly to his advantage), and we are told that his governing idea
was " the greatness of Prussia, the glory of an army which is a
nation, and of a nation which is an army " (p. 100). Lecture IV.
is an appeal to England to meet the coming peril. He deprecates
" the dangerous habit of mind of trusting to alliances rather than to
our own strength " (p. 148), and sees for England only one alterna-
tive to war, viz., " a policy of concession to an enemy whom she
dreads, and, one diplomatic defeat leading to another, [a gradual
sinking] to a secondary place in the councils of Europe and of the
world " (p. 149). As this policy is not likely to be adopted war is
almost inevitable. "And if the dire event of a war with Germany
if it is a dire event should ever occur, there shall be seen upon
this earth of ours a conflict which, beyond all others, will recall
that description of the great Greek wars :
Heroes in battle with heroes,
And above them the wrathful gods.
And one can imagine the ancient, mighty deity of all the Teu-
tonic kindred, throned above the clouds, looking serenely down
1915.] NEW BOOKS 545
upon that conflict, upon his favorite children, the English and the
Germans, locked in a death-struggle, smiling upon the heroism of
that struggle, the heroism of the children of Odin the War-god."
These words, with which the book ends, sum up or imply a good
deal of the philosophy underlying it.
The lectures contain eloquent passages that must have been
effective if well delivered. But there are in the book some pre-
conceptions to which a Catholic simply cannot give assent.
ONTOLOGY, OR THE THEORY OF BEING. By P. CofTey,
Ph.D. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $3.00 net.
In a work of this kind, it is extremely difficult to keep the
abstract and concrete standpoints of thought so well balanced that
neither will seem a stranger to the other. This the author has ad-
mirably succeeded in doing a fine instance of which is afforded by
the chapter dealing with reality as one and manifold, where the static
and dynamic points of view have equal justice done them. We feel
that we are making an invidious distinction in singling out any por-
tion of the book for special praise, so well poised and thoroughgoing
is every chapter in the volume. Then, too, the quality of readable-
ness is everywhere in evidence. The thought is loosened from the
stereotyped forms of expression, to give it life, and then tightened
up in these again, lest it be left too vague.
This is no mere republication of traditional views. Hard and
sound thinking on his own account has the author done in this well
balanced volume. He has made the unity of the presentation more
striking still, by casting into fine print the more detailed, more de-
veloped considerations of his theme. He has not so much a thesis
to prove or a school of thought to defend, as truth to seek where doc-
tors differ and fine points divide. Philosophy with him is no one-
man's affair, but the work of humanity, and it is good to lay hands
on a volume in which there is no separation of the reflex reason of
the individual from the spontaneous reason of the race, but, on the
contrary, so complete a communication between the two, kept up,
that the reader is made to see the continuity of the knowledge pro-
cess from its vague beginnings to its highest points of precision and
refinement. The modern world cuts this process in two, and sets
the higher portions of it over against the lower. But Dr. Coffey
knows the modern world of thought as well as he knows the ancient,
and he writes to it, not at it which is a redeeming difference.
Of analysts and of those who merely report the views of others,
VOL. c. 35
-546 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
with a few sapient, cursory comments thrown in for seasoning, there
is no dearth. But here we have a constructive piece of work a
real, fine, genuine attempt, and a successful one, also, to think the
old metaphysics back to its deserving place in human attention. The
assumption that the mind is independent of reality has played havoc
with modern philosophy. It was this assumption which changed
metaphysics from a science of reality to a science of knowledge only,
and Dr. Coffey has made in this volume a powerful contribution to
the superior value of old ways of thinking over new. We congratu-
late him. Being, becoming, existence, essence; substance and acci-
dent, nature and person, absolute and relative, cause and condition,
run through them all as treated in this book, and you will find the
thought of the day well taken to task for its incompleteness, its
one-sided learnings, its preference for a half or quarter truth over
the whole one which a complete analysis reveals. Above all, you
will find in this volume a most effective method employed that of
going through objections and difficulties, as so many barriers lying in
the direct path of the thesis, rather than that of turning back to
consider them, after the thesis has been esablished.
We deem it only fair to state that professors and students, pro-
fessional men, generally, in fact, will discover in Dr. Coffey's work
as fine a presentation of the theory of being as exists anywhere in
the English tongue. We say this, taking matter and manner into ac-
count. It is not often that a reader receives the impression that
somebody is doing his thinking, not for, but with him, and yet this is
the agreeable impression which this volume reviewed creates. Tolle,
lege! Past masters in philosophy as well as novices in *the same
art will derive profit from these well thought-out and timely pages.
The author has increased the reputation of which his earlier works
gave promise.
ESSAYS, POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL. By Charlemagne
Tower, LL.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.50 net.
This new publication by Mr. Tower treats of the relations
of the United States as a world power with the other nations of the
world. Such subjects treated by an experienced international
statesman, a man who has been Minister to Austria-Hungary and
later to Russia and to Germany, cannot but have great weight, and
will undoubtedly provoke keen interest on the part of many intel-
ligent Americans.
The essays are on the whole rich in information and attractive
1915.] NEW BOOKS 547
in style. The book will be found a welcome addition to the politi-
cal or historical section of any library. Regarded from the point
of interest, it is safe to say that the essays of a political character
are superior to those purely historical. An exception might be
made in the case of the essay dealing with " Diplomacy as a Pro-
fession." We were a bit disappointed to find it rigidly formal,
since Mr. Tower's experience had given him an opportunity to
treat the subject in a charmingly personal manner. Again the essay
discussing " Arbitration as a Means for Settling International Dis-
putes " seemed an inadequate treatment of this subject at a time
when it is such a burning question in the minds of all peace-loving
men. The abrupt conclusion gives one the rather unpleasant sen-
sation of being left suspended in mid air.
The essay on the " Development of International Law " is a
rapid historical sketch of the growth of international law from the
publication in 1625 of Grotius' De Jure Belli ac Pads to the time
of the Hague Conference in 1907. The right of expatriation is
well explained, but perhaps the paragraph most pregnant with in-
terest is the last, which contains in substance the following quota-
tion from M. Nelidoff: "Let us not despair if our ideals of per-
fect peace have not been realized by the Conference of the Hague,
for nations are living beings as truly as are the individuals who
compose them, and have the same passions, the same aspirations,
and the same defects."
The essays devoted to the Monroe Doctrine and to the treaty
obligations of the United States relating to the Panama Canal, are
brief but appreciative treatments of particular phases of these
subjects. The last and longest of the essays draws a telling con-
trast between the inefficiency of General Howe as a leader and the
military genius of Washington. The others are of the same char-
acter and of equal merit, and the book as a whole is solid and
carefully written.
FRANCE HERSELF AGAIN. By Ernest Dimnet. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.50 net.
To a book on France written in English by a Frenchman, with
special attention to the English point of view, we cannot but bring
an added amount of the interest which is always evoked by what
is French. The universality of this interest, carried, as it often is,
to such an extent that our press will be glutted with accounts
of French events which are purely domestic TAffaire Dreyfus, 1'Af-
548 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
faire Caillaux, for example is significant of the fact that European
civilization has been and yet is Gallocentric. Since this is true we
do not exaggerate when we say, with Mr. Belloc, that " the temper
of the French people is a matter of supreme importance to all those
throughout the world who desire to understand the present and to
forecast the future." Any authoritative study of this temper must
needs share this supreme importance, and the book before us is
such a study. M. Dimnet offers a comprehensive exposition of all
those symptoms of a return to national dignity and traditional spirit
which most of us have noticed in France during the last several
years.
That France has not been herself for some time, that the his-
tory of the Second Empire and of the Third Republic has been a
break in continuity, but that she is " herself again," or soon to be,
is the burden of the Abbe's chapters. The first part of the book is
concerned with the deterioration of the country under the Second
Empire, and, more especially, under the Third Republic. During
the reign of Louis Napoleon were sowed the seeds of disaster which
grew into such an abundant harvest. The spread of dangerous
philosophies and literature which found an inevitable translation into
irreligion, decadent morals, antipatriotism and other evils intellect-
ual and political, with the blindness of the public powers, paved the
way for the denouement of 1870. However, this did not sound the
awakening of the nation. On the contrary the decline of France
under the Third Republic was so accelerated that many are inclined
to see more than a chronological coincidence.
To this question of the connection between French Republican-
ism and decadence, M. Dimnet next turns his attention. He sees,
and rightly, the greatest source of political evil in the Constitution
of 1875. " Where authority is not, disorder is sure to appear, and
the constitutional laws are sneakingly antagonistic to authority."
The Chamber of Deputies not only legislates but governs. The
President is a powerless figure under the domination of the politi-
cians ; the Cabinets, short-lived for the most part, are as efficient or
as weak as Parliament wishes them to be. Such an " absurdity dis-
guised as a Constitution," which places the power in a shoal of
anonymous deputies where there is no responsibility, could fail to
do harm only if Parliament, the Ministers, and the President were
men of an ability, honesty, and highmindedness alien to most pro-
fessional politicians. France has not had such rulers. Selfish in-
competents and demagogues in the Chamber, " incarnations of me-
I9IS-] NEW BOOKS 549
diocrity " as Premiers, non-entities as Presidents, have given the
Abbe reason to assert that " the spirit of disorder was represented,
expanded, and with a few transient lulls made worse by the
authorities themselves, which more than once seem to have been
actually possessed by a destructive genius." This statement is made
against a background of facts among which the abandonment of the
robust and virile idea of regaining the lost Eastern Provinces, the
neglect of the navy, and the consequent frustration of the Colonial
policy, and the attitude of the government towards the Church, edu-
cation, the army, and patriotism are conspicuous. These chapters
are sad and bitter reading, especially the narration of that incon-
ceivable crime, the systematic degradation of the nation's army.
France, then, in 1905 had reached a state of enervation and of
blindness from which it could be roused only by some arrestive
event which would bring the country to its senses. Such an event
was the Tangiers incident, from which the author dates "the return
of the light." France awoke, and the book, in the second part, can
set forth the hopeful signs of reinvigoration seen in national temper,
in the revival of military spirit, of critical alertness in the attitude
of the people towards the government, and of patriotism. And
what is true in politics is true also in philosophy, in literature, and
in moral standards. The blatant doctrines of the cynic and the
materialist now can charm but a few suburban audiences, mild toler-
ance is replacing anticlericalism, and French literature, weary of
playing acolyte at the shrine of realism and naturalism, is returning
to the traditional ethos of earlier days. The Abbe's chapters on the
rising generation as signs of this recovery from intellectual and
moral disease, are the interesting account of personal contact with
Young France.
So rapid and so effective was the transformation that whereas
the Tangiers episode found a chaotic government, a dead national
spirit, a half -demoralized army with empty arsenals, the Agidir
incident in 1911 found a revived patriotism, a prepared army, and
a nation of men eager to consecrate themselves to the vindication
of French honor and prestige. With so much accomplished there
yet was wanting something to give these various aspirations and
this new spirit solidarity and a unified activity. A great national
danger, a war, would bring about this result and obviate the danger
of relapse. History is now writing the sequel to M. Dimnet's book.
The vital qualities of France are being tested daily, nor are they
found wanting. Whether France win or lose in the present struggle
550 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
is, perhaps, of less ultimate importance to the nation than the cer-
tainty that this crisis is giving an impulse to the moral solution
which France's difficulties demand. The signs " point to the dis-
appearance of the legal anarchy known as the Constitution of 1875,"
and to a renovation of the face of the nation. " But the difficulty
is to keep up such a disposition after the excitement of a crisis has
abated." For such a work the Abbe finds nothing effective but
faith. In a fine concluding passage he dwells on this point, and
ends by saying that politics will always be subservient to morals,
morals to faith. And " the lesson of this book is the recommenda-
tion of a plain and virile Christianity."
The work was to have ended thus, but the author was able to
add an epilogue on the war, which shows the accuracy of many of
the judgments expressed in the preceding chapters.
The book is eminently sane throughout, full of data which will
serve as a corrective to many of our ideas on France. As a piece
of writing it is of no mean excellence. With regret we forbear to
quote some of the author's pithy remarks on politicians and writers,
on sportsmen and Boy Scouts, and many another topic. His lucidity
of exposition seldom fails, nor do his opinions often call forth the
slightest demur. We say not often, because a few times the Abbe
expresses a view which will not find universal acceptance. Such
a one is his statement that " the ideal of England is to feel kindly
and to govern justly." Might not the rose-colored glasses of the
Entente account for some of the overflowing benevolence and super-
eminent justice which the Abbe thinks is peculiar to Albion? How-
ever it were unjust to the writer and to ourselves to dwell on such
trifles. France Herself Again is a book to be approached with
interest, to be read with pleasure and profit, to be put down only
with words of the highest praise. We would add a sentence of
appreciation for the table of contents, which furnishes an exhaustive
synopsis of the whole matter of the work.
THE SEEN AND UNSEEN AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON. By
W. D. Ho wells. New York: Harper & Brothers. $1.00 net.
In this latest book of W. D. Ho wells, we are taken to the home
and birthplace of the Bard of Avon, and there treated to a leisurely
survey of its interesting features, both in their present and past
character. The latter is gracefully accomplished by the introduction
of the spirits of Shakespeare and Bacon as companions of the writer
in his Stratford rambles. The Shakespearean spirit which undoubt-
1915.] NEW BOOKS 551
edly permeates the place, is thus effectively brought home to us.
The festivals of the poet, and a series of warm, bright August days,
have been chosen as setting; the little town arrayed in pageant
and morris-dance, and the country "of the same bright openness as
the town."
The author takes occasion to express through the poet's lips
many sentiments which we feel to be accordant with his own. First,
the Baconian authorship of the plays is repudiated as heartily by
Bacon as by his more illustrious friend. As to the scarcity of fact
that has reached our age concerning Shakespeare, Bacon cites such
records as Virgil's and Ben Jonson's as no richer in essential de-
tail than Shakespeare's. He is, moreover, represented as constantly
upbraiding the latter for pandering to the public taste in his com-
edies, and even in certain of his tragedies. Bacon, poor soul,
fashioned more heavily, and stung by the guilt of his misdemeanors,
can nowise appreciate the whimsical or jocular humor of his friend.
This mixture of fact and fancy is a trifle inconclusive and uncon-
vincing as a matter of strict testimony, and so much does our faith
cling to " Sweetest Shakespeare, fancy's child," that we would feign
quote it as circumstantial evidence.
Other subjects are proposed for our criticism, some that touch
English custom, and others that come nearer home. Of the latter,
the attitude of the American sightseer, " suffering a mental and
moral dyspepsia from bolting the beautiful scenery untasted," is
particularly and deservedly condemned.
Perhaps we may venture to criticize Shakespeare's fancied
account of the Great Beyond. His sightseeing in those regions
appears to have been little more effective than that of our pere-
grinating fellow-countrymen. The shadow-world from which the
Bard and his friend emerge, has little or nothing of the spiritual
gleam. Leaving aside the conception of a Christian heaven or place
of expiation as beside the question, we would prefer to this cold
unspiritual background even Captain Stormfield's very prosaic para-
dise, or our New England doctor's recent revelations from beyond
the grave regarding his " pretty studio " and his " rose-scented easy
chair." The mortal is so much less than human under the altered
condition of death, but it is at least an improvement on the barren-
ness of a Bhuddistic heaven " like a long, impersonal dream, painless
because selfless." This misty theology seems a trifle at variance
with Shakespeare's very human and substantial view of life. But
our present volume is sub-titled a " fantasy," so one must not take
552 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
it too seriously ; moreover, it would be difficult to account for such
gallivanting as our disembodied friends are addicted to with the
conventional heaven as background.
Since we are in the critical vein, perhaps we may also suggest
that a smoothing down of shall we call them " certain original-
ities of diction, " might not be amiss. Certainly, they would not be
condoned in one of less merited distinction than our author. These
faults, do not, however, gravely interfere with the enjoyment of our
book, and though we may prefer Winter's more sedate account, we
cannot but carry away from these pages a charming picture of
Stratford and its master spirit.
HISTORY OF ROMAN PRIVATE LAW. Part I. Sources. By
E. C. Clarke, LL.D. Cambridge : University Press.
The chief merits of Dr. Clark's manual of Roman private law
are its perfect grasp of the original authorities, its careful distinction
between private and public law, and its careful observance of the
order of time in its citation of authors. Volume I. discusses the
primary and secondary sources of the pre-literary and the literary
period, and gives a brief chronological sketch of the chief historical
facts in the development of private law, and a table of juristic
writers from 150 B. c. to 243 A. D.
THE PRIEST AND SOCIAL ACTION. By Charles Plater, SJ.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.20 net.
" The object of this book," as the Bishop of Northampton says
in his introduction, " is to convince English priests that, under our
actual circumstances, social action is no longer merely a matter of
taste an interest which can be taken up or laid aside at choice.
Social action has become an indispensable phase of our apostolate.
For proof it is enough to refer to the remarkable series of official
pronouncements emanating in recent years from the Holy See and
the Episcopate throughout the world."
Father Plater says well that active participation in social and
charitable work is a real, though a secondary and, as it were, condi-
tional duty of the Church. Priests and laymen, besides the duty
of saving their own souls and aiding others to do the same, have
a subsidiary duty of relieving poverty and remedying social injustice.
A priest to-day must concern himself with social and economic
questions, because modern circumstances demand it as a condition of
exercising his spiritual functions efficiently. The Holy See, while
1915-] NEW BOOKS 553
condemning certain exaggerated and false social theories which
have from time to time been advanced by some Catholics, has given
the warmest encouragement to priests who have undertaken social
work on sound Catholic lines. For example, Pope Leo XIII. writes,
" By an effectual propaganda of writings, by stirring oral exhorta-
tions, and direct aid, let the priest strive to ameliorate, within the
limits of justice and charity, the economic condition of the people,
favoring and furthering those institutions which tend in that direc-
tion." " The social question deserves to have all the Catholic
forces applied to it with the greatest energy and constancy."
The most interesting chapters in this volume are those which
deal with the expert charitable and social action of the Catho-
lic clergy in Germany, France, and Belgium. The extent to which
the German clergy identify themselves with all that concerns the
temporal welfare of the people, is probably without parallel in other
lands. Father Plater gives an interesting account of the work ac-
complished by Kolping, Kettler, Franz Hitze, and Dasbach.
Father Plater advocates most emphatically a course of social
study in our seminaries as part of the ordinary course, in the shape
of formal lectures, study clubs, and practical work under expert
supervision.
CONCISE DICTIONARY OF PROPER NAMES AND NOTABLE
MATTERS IN THE WORKS OF DANTE. By Paget Toyn-
bee, M. A. New York : Oxford University Press. $2.00 net.
This excellent Dante dictionary is an abridgment of a much
larger work of the author's, published in 1908, but now out of
print. The articles have been carefully revised and brought up to
date, while a number of new articles have been added, comprising
the names of persons and places mentioned in the poetical corre-
spondence between Dante and Forese Donati, and in the Latin poems
addressed to Dante by Giovanni del Virgilio. No student of Dante
can afford to be without this invaluable handbook.
THE HOLY EUCHARIST IN ART. By P. D. Corbinian Wirz,
O.S.B. Translated by T. J. Kennedy. New York: P. J.
Kenedy & Sons. $1.00.
Father Wirz has written a brief sketch of the iconography of
the Holy Eucharist, from the days of the catacombs to our own time.
He has selected for comment ninety-seven paintings of the chief
artists of Europe, grouping them under the headings of The Last
554 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
Supper, The Holy Sacrifice, Holy Communion, The Disciples of
Emmaus, The Blessed Eucharist, and The Saints.
CHOICE. By M. S. Daniel. St. Louis : B. Herder. 75 cents net.
Miss Daniel has written a simple and winning story of conver-
sion. Joan, a girl of cultivated intellect and kindly heart, comes
face to face with Catholicism, after having abandoned entirely the
Protestantism of her fathers. After a long and earnest struggle
she at last surrenders, and makes a final choice in the presence of the
Eucharistic Christ. Every character in the book is drawn to the
life the improvident dreamer, Mr. Penn, the fussy and exacting
Mrs. Penn, the practical optimistic Maggie, her sterling Catholic
sweetheart, the motherly Aunt Leebie, and honest, truth-seeking
Joan herself.
SAINT AUGUSTINE. By Louis Bertrand. Translated by Vin-
cent O' Sullivan. New York: D. Appleton & Co. $3.00 net.
The author of this work catalogues the chief events in St.
Augustine's life, but shows no grasp whatever of St. Augustine's
teachings. He seems to know at every turn what were the inner
unexpressed thoughts of St. Augustine, St. Monica or St. Ambrose.
Occasionally the writer's estimates are unwarranted by the
facts. He says, for instance, that St. Augustine " too much paraded
his knowledge, his dialectic and oratorical talents ;" he declares that
after his conversion there remained in him some old sediment of
intellectual and literary vanity; he questions the sincerity of St.
Augustine's praise of Licentius, remarking in a most unjustifiable
way, " The former rhetorician knew the world, and the way to talk
to the father of a wealthy pupil, especially if he is your benefactor."
Again, he hints that the conversion of the Saint was furthered by
the fact of " Catholicism being treated with such importance in the
person of Ambrose."
The English is rather poor at times, for the translator speaks
of "a traditional good feed," " these musics, b," " popular souses of
eating and drinking," etc.
NOTE. On account of the non-arrival of the foreign period-
icals, we have been compelled to omit that department this month.
[Ea C. W.]
IRecent Events.
The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD wishes to state that none
of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of
the magazine, with the exception of " With Our Readers" voices
the editorial opinion of the magazine. And no article or department
voices officially the opinion of the Paulist Community.
Turkey's entrance into the war has given
The War. Germany and Austria-Hungary an ally that
may, it is thought, prove a serious embarrass-
ment to Russia, France, and Great Britain. While the Turkish Em-
pire comprises over one million six hundred and twenty-two thou-
sand English square miles, and is thus almost three times as large
as the territory held by Germany and Austria-Hungary, the people
dwelling in this vast extent are, however, only a little more than
one-third of the population of Turkey's allies, so blighting has been
the effect of Turkish misrule. The result of the new combination
is to range the five hundred and ninety-one millions of Great Brit-
ain, Russia, France, Belgium, Servia, Montenegro, and Japan
against the one hundred and fifty-five millions'of Germany, Austria-
Hungary, and Turkey, so that more than half the human race is
involved in the present war.
According to the Allies, the Turks were wanton aggressors.
At the beginning of the war Great Britain, Russia, and France
guaranteed to Turkey, on the condition of her maintenance of neu-
trality, the integrity of the Ottoman Empire in every respect.
This condition so far from being fulfilled was in several instances
violated by Turkey. The Goeben and Breslau, two German ships
which had escaped the British navy, took refuge at Constantinople,
and, under pretense of purchase, were retained with their German
crews; the Capitulations were abrogated without the consent of
the other parties to the contract; various other hostile acts were
committed, and demands were made which it was impossible to
grant. The bombarding without notice of Russian ports brought
Turkish provocations to a climax, and led to a declaration of war
by Great Britain after a few days delay, in order to give Turkey
the opportunity of denying responsibility for the outrage. This
556 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
delay was given because there was good reason to think that the
moderate elements in the Turkish Government, of whom the Grand
Vizier was the representative, might retain control of the situation.
The extremists, however, of whom Enver Pasha, the Minister of
War, is the leader, gained the upper hand. This is the same
Enver Bey to whom the revolution of 1908, which led to the
deposition of Abdul Hamid, was in large measure due a revolution
which inspired SQ many hopes of a brighter future for the peoples
under Turkish domination, hopes, however, which were quickly
dashed to the ground by the subsequent proceedings of the Com-
mittee of Union and Progress. The constitutional government
which it pretended to set up in the place of the absolutism which
existed before, has been constitutional only in name. The real
power has been wielded more or less completely by an irresponsible
committee, which has usurped the powers, both of the Sovereign
and of the Parliament. It is to the action of this Committee that
Turkey's entrance into the war is due.
It is fair to say, however, although there is no proof of the
statement, that Turkey justifies the bombardment of Odessa and
the other Russian ports in the Black Sea by an attack made upon
the Turkish vessels by the Russian fleet before any declaration of
war. The German account of the reasons for the action of Turkey
is that the Ottoman Government believed that if the Triple Entente
should emerge victorious the long-cherished ambitions of Petrograd,
London, and Paris would be satisfied, and Russia would take Con-
stantinople, Armenia, and Kurdistan, Great Britain would secure
Arabia, and France would annex Syria. On the other hand, its
belief was that if the Entente Powers were defeated, the Ottoman
Empire would be strengthened and increased territorially by the re-
occupation of the Caucasus and of Egypt, and possibly of other
territories. Others consider it more likely that in either event
Turkey's Empire is doomed. If Germany wins, it will become
a dependency of that Empire; if the Allies win, they are pledged
to drive Turkey out of Europe, and to free the various nationalities
which have so long groaned under the Ottoman yoke.
The first result of the declaration of war on Turkey was the
annexation of Cyprus to the British Empire. This island has been
administered by the British Government since 1878, Turkish suze-
rainty being recognized by the payment of an annual tribute. This
of course now ceases. Some surprise was expressed that Egypt
was not at once annexed, for that country, although it has been in the
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 557
military occupation of Great Britain since 1882, is a part of the
Ottoman Empire, and had therefore become part of the territory of
an enemy. Such annexation, however, seemed likely to raise a num-
ber of complicated questions, which Great Britain wished to avoid.
The fact, however, that the Khedive took the side of Germany
brought the matter to a crisis, and Egypt, although it has not been
annexed, has been made a British Protectorate, and formally severed
from the Ottoman Empire with a Sultan of its own.
Anxiety was felt, first, as to the attitude that would be adopted
by the Mohammedans in the British Empire, these being more num-
erous than those in the Turkish dominions, numbering in fact be-
tween eighty and ninety millions in India alone. This anxiety, how-
ever, did not last long. The Aga Khan, the spiritual head of the
Khoja community of Mohammedans in India, hastened to declare
that no Islamic interest was threatened by the war, and that their
religion was in no peril. Although subsequently the Sheikh el
Islam declared a holy war, and called upon all Mohammedans to
take part in it in support of Turkey, the appeal fell flat, and no re-
sponse was met with from any quarter. Even the noted leader El
Senussi has failed to respond. Even those among the Mohamme-
dans who recognize the claim of the Sultan to be the Khali f, distin-
guish between the Sultan acting on his own impulse and the Sultan
led astray by the Young Turks under German influence.
About the non-Mohammedan majority of India, there has
arisen no question : it is heart and soul with Great Britain. This
has been made clearly manifest, even among. the political agitators
who have recently been thought to have been on the point of
rebellion. Whatever fault was found with the administration
of India under the settlement of 1858, it is fully recognized that
Great Britain has on the whole been faithful in principle to that
great act. The reforms recently made by the Earl of Minto and
Viscount Morley, have resulted in bringing even more closely to-
gether the British and Indian Empires, and if there are still in
existence evils under which the country suffers, the willingness
shown in the past to reform abuses inspires complete confidence that
in the future full satisfaction to all legitimate wants will be given.
So eager in fact were the Princes and the peoples of India to stand
by Great Britain in the hour of danger, that their representatives
in the Council voted out of the revenues of India the whole cost of
the Expeditionary Force.
The publication of the French Yellow Book by the New York
558 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
Times, places at the disposal of students of the events preceding the
war a further series of Official Documents in addition to the German
and British White Papers, the Orange Paper of Russia, and the
Gray Paper of Belgium already published. The Yellow Book con-
tains by far the largest number of documents, there being no fewer
than one hundred and fifty-nine, some of them with a large number
of annexes. The documents, which disclose the diplomatic proceed-
ings of the memorable fortnight in which the decision was made, are
preceded by a chapter which contains dispatches of the French Am-
bassador in Berlin, the first of which is dated March 17, 1913, in
which he gives warnings to the French Government of what has since
happened. This introductory chapter, together with the concluding
chapter which contains extracts from the British, Russian, and
Belgian Papers, in addition to the documents which make up the
substance of the Book, render it the most complete of all the official
publications, and make the study of it indispensable for everyone
wishing to form an unbiassed judgment, or even a biassed one.
While Germany and Austria-Hungary have
Italy. been able to bring over Turkey to their side,
they have not been successful in their efforts
to secure the assistance of their partner in the Triple Alliance, and
this for several reasons. The so-called Triple Alliance is more
strictly a Dual Alliance between Austria-Hungary and Germany:
to this Italy subsequently acceded upon conditions not fully known,
not including, however, an aggressive war. An Austro-Hungarian
attack on Servia, Signor Giolitti has recently stated, the Italian
Government looked upon as a War of an aggressive character, to the
taking part in which Italy would not consider herself bound. Of
this he had informed the Austro-Hungarian Government last year
when an attack on Servia was contemplated. Of this determination
the government of the Dual Monarchy was well aware, and doubtless
it was for this reason that Italy was not consulted before the
ultimatum was sent to Servia a thing in itself sufficient to justify
the non-participation of Italy in the action of her partners.
This, however, was far from being the only reason. An Aus-
tro-Hungarian victory over Servia would have been in the highest
degree detrimental to Italian interests in the Balkan Peninsula. In
many ways Italian and Austro-Hungarian interests are in conflict;
and in these respects any strengthening of the Dual Monarchy
would have been a blow to Italy. Several districts which now form
\ "
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 559
part of Austria-Hungary are longed for by Italians, either because
the inhabitants are largely of the same race or because in days of old
they have been held by Italian States. A specially vital interest
is the secure possession of free and uncontrolled access to the
Adriatic: this would have been endangered if Servia had been
brought under the power of Austria-Hungary, for this would have
been followed by the subjection of Albania. It was not to be
expected, therefore, that Italy would lend herself to the furtherance
of measures which would prove so detrimental to herself. The
thing, however, which rendered it altogether impossible for the
Italian Government to take the side of the two Central European
Powers, was the determination of the people to have no share in
such a war. The people of Italy have had too long and too bitter
an experience of the Austrian methods of government to be willing
to help in assisting in an attempt to bring a like evil upon other
peoples. This feeling of Italians was so strong that if the
government itself had been willing to enter upon the war the
attempt would have produced a revolution. Socialists, Republi-
cans, Democrats of every kind were eager to enter into the army
for a war against Austria. The government had all it could do
to hold the people in check, and turned a deaf ear to the most
alluring promises made by its former partner in the now defunct
Triple Alliance.
Although Italy has refrained from complying with the ardent
desires of Germany and Austria-Hungary, her action cannot be
said to have been altogether pleasing to the Powers which make up
the Triple Entente. Her policy is considered too selfish and in fact
shortsightedly selfish, actuated merely by the hope of her own ad-
vantage, and of securing it without due sacrifice. This was shown
by the fact that when Germany in the first month seemed likely to be
victorious, there was a marked wavering of public opinion in her
favor. On the other hand, when the tide turned this wavering
disappeared. Voices of warning are not, however, wanting that
when the war ends Italy may find herself in a position of isolation
and may, on account of her unwillingness to make any sacrifice,
fail to attain any of the results so ardently desired. In fact, a
reminder has come from a Russian writer that the possession of the
east coast of the Adriatic is a thing much wished for by the Slav
races which look to Russia, and that their aspirations would have a
strong claim on Russian support in the event of a victorious war
from taking part in which Italy had abstained.
56o RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
The death of the Foreign Minister, who was a strong supporter
of the Triple Alliance, and a subsequent Cabinet crisis, made no
change in the determination to maintain the policy of neutrality.
Although one of the strongest parties has been clamoring for Italy's
entrance into the conflict, Signer Salandra, the head of the re-
constituted Cabinet, has declared it to be the firm intention of the
government to maintain a neutrality that is to be not inert and
listless, but active and vigilant and fully armed. By this means he
hopes to maintain not merely the present position of Italy, but also
to secure that that position shall not be diminished proportionately
by the possible aggrandizements of other States at the conclusion
of the war. As this declaration of the Premier was unanimously
approved by the group which had hitherto been eager for war against
Germany and Austria-Hungary, the policy of neutrality must be
considered as having been definitely adopted by Italy.
Italy is sharing with the rest of the world the sufferings which
the war has brought about, and this suffering is aggravated by
the expense of the mobilization of the army which took place at the
beginning of the war. The paralysis of commerce has thrown large
numbers out of work. The government proposes to take excep-
tional measures to provide a remedy, and to spend large sums on
public works. All this will of course add to the burdens of the
nation.
Of the Balkan States, up to the present, neu-
The Balkan States, trality has been maintained by Bulgaria,
Rumania, and Greece. Albania can no
longer be looked upon as a State, for its German Prince has departed
after a troublous reign of a few months, and now what was Albanian
territory is ruled over by no fewer than five diverse governments.
Among these States, Rumania holds a more or less dominant posi-
tion. Not that she deserves it, for in the war against Turkey
she refused to help the other States, thereby husbanding her own
strength, and it is to this that her present influence is due. When
the war broke out the popular voice was loud in favor of taking
the side of the Allies against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
More than three million Rumanes dwell within the domains of
the Dual Monarchy, and are by no means content to bear the yoke
imposed upon them. The people of Rumania were eager to take the
long-sought opportunity of freeing their compatriots. They were
however, held in check by King Charles, who was a Hohenzollern,
1915-] RECENT EVENTS 561
belonging to the elder non-regnant branch. He is said to have
given his word to the German Emperor that he would never take
up arms against his native country. When in March, 1866, he
accepted the crown, the condition of the Danubian principalities,
Moldavia and Wallachia, was little better than that of a mis-
governed Turkish province. They were still under Ottoman suze-
rainty, their army was non-existent, their financial resources were
precarious, the condition of the people was wretched, their means of
communication were primitive, and their public affairs were in a con-
dition bordering on anarchy. By his efforts all this was changed.
He created an army, won independence for the principalities and
extended their borders, evolved order out of chaos, and placed the
national finances on a sound basis. He was, in fact, recognized
as the founder of the kingdom. His influence in consequence
was so great as to make him able to withstand the desire of the
people. On his death on the tenth of October, he was succeeded
by his son Ferdinand, and he at once announced his intention of
maintaining the policy of neutrality adopted by his father, although
he is a first cousin of both the King of England and the Tsar. His
family is a remarkable example of religious differences. He is
himself a Catholic, his wife is a Lutheran, while his children are
members of the Orthodox Greek Church. His father left instruc-
tions that his own funeral should be celebrated with the rites both
of the Catholic and the Orthodox Church.
At first the nation acquiesced in the decision of the new King.
His authority, however, cannot be compared with that of his father,
and an agitation has begun in the press, and is supported by promi-
nent politicians, in favor of intervention. The situation is much
complicated by what is called the settlement affected by the Treaty
of Bukarest. This treaty inflicted grievous wrongs upon Bulgaria,
although her action in attacking Servia and Greece at the instiga-
tion of Austria-Hungary made her worthy of a fitting punishment.
But the punishment inflicted was too severe and too unjust for
Bulgaria to be willing to accept, and she at once indicated her
intention of seeking a revision of the treaty upon the first opportun-
ity. This led to the apprehension that Bulgaria might take advantage
of Rumania's becoming involved in the war, and this acts as a
restraint upon Rumania. Hence she is still remaining neutral.
The same course is being maintained by Bulgaria. In fact
she has not even mobilized, and is perhaps too much exhausted by
efforts in the two Balkan wars to be willing to bear the cost.
^ c. 6
562 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
A little uneasiness exists, however, as to the course she may adopt
in the future. It has even been rumored that she has entered into
a Convention with Turkey, the worst of her enemies; but this has
been semi-officially denied. The fact, however, that she has re-
frained from mobilizing has been a help to Turkey, for it has freed
for service elsewhere something like three hundred thousand sol-
diers whom it would have been necessary for that State to have
retained in Europe. If the Allied Powers would be willing to sanc-
tion the immediate restitution to Bulgaria of all the region in
Macedonia accorded to her by the Servo-Bulgarian Treaty of 1912,
Bulgarian help might be secured. But Servia is one of these allied
Powers, and it is doubtful whether she would make the sacrifice.
So, meanwhile Bulgaria is maintaining a neutrality which is some-
what precarious.
When Turkey entered into the war, it was expected that Greece
would no longer hesitate. For a long time Turkey has been doing
everything in its power to provoke Greece by the cruel treatment
of the Greeks dwelling in the Ottoman domains. On the other
hand, Greece has been preparing for war by the purchase of war-
ships for a renewal of the conflict, although she has only partially
mobilized her army. No further steps, however, have yet been
taken, with the exception of the occupation by Greek troops of
that part of Epirus which was given by the Powers to the new
State of Albania, and which had been evacuated at the advent of its
recent ruler. This, however, Greece declares to be merely for the
sake of maintaining of order, and not with any view to definite
annexation. The neutrality of Greece is, however, conditional upon
the alliance which exists between herself and Servia. Only in
the event of the obligations to Servia which this alliance involves,
calling for her taking action, is it likely that Greece will cease
to maintain her neutrality.
As has been said, the territory which the Powers assigned for
the new State of Albania, has been seized upon by five different
sets of rulers, and divided among them, therefore Albania must be
considered as for the time being non-existent. As to Servia she
has made a heroic struggle against her mighty assailant, and with
a success which is marvelous. At the present moment it is said that
there is not a single enemy on her soil. The little State of Monte-
negro is the most fortunate of all the Allies, for not a single foe
has yet set foot on her territories.
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 563
The political interests of Spain are so little
Spain. involved in the war that her neutrality was
a matter of course. Not that she was not
affected, for the disturbance of trade caused widespread suffering.
Tens of thousands were thrown out of work, and many refugees
arrived from the devastated region. The sympathies of the country
were divided. The Carlists leaned strongly to the side of Germany,
but met with the extreme mortification of finding that their head,
Don Jaime, was on the side of the Allies, was in fact working him-
self to death in the French hospitals. This has led to his being
deposed. In consequence the Carlists have no longer a leader.
It has also led to a reconciliation between the late head of the Carlists
and the King of Spain, the latter being with the Liberals on the side
of the Allies. The political interests also of Spain are bound up
closely with France on account of the agreements about Morocco
and the western Mediterranean. There is not the least likelihood
that she will be called upon to take a share in the conflict.
Portugal has not as yet taken any part in the
Portugal. war, but from its beginning has unequivo-
cally declared its sympathy with Great Brit-
ain. At a session of the Chamber of Deputies held early in August,
the then Premier declared that the government recognized that it
was bound to that Power by ancient ties and alliances, and that
these alliances freely contracted would be respected. The adhesion
of ex-King Manoel to the side of the Allies was the more a matter
of surprise, as he has lately been married to a daughter of the head
of the elder branch of the Hohenzollerns. He has, however, sent
a letter to his Lieutenant Senhor loao de Azevedo Coutinho, calling
upon all his supporters in Portugal to unite with the rest of the
nation either in home defence or in fighting in the ranks of the
Allied armies. To this every political consideration is to be sub-
ordinated. He states that he has offered himself unreservedly to
the King of England for any work which may be of service.
Lieutenant Coutinho himself places his own military services at
the disposal of the Republic. Although he was, as he stated, still a
Monarchist by conviction, he felt it a duty that in the present crisis
Monarchists and Republicans should stand together. Up to the
present, however, the neutrality of Portugal has not been broken.
With Our Readers.
IT is a sad new year, this year of 1915, that dawns upon the world.
There is no thoughtful soul that is not troubled " at the sight of
Europe, and, indeed, of the whole world the most terrible and most
painful spectacle perhaps that has ever been presented in the course
of history."
The new year rings in not joy and peace, but suffering and
slaughter. As far as the immediate present is concerned, the longing
for a wider and more effective Christian civilization, for peace and
justice among men, seems quite hopeless.
Great and flourishing nations are on the battlefield, supplied with
every manner of horrible machine for the destruction of human life.
" The ruin and slaughter know no limit : every day the earth is
drenched with fresh blood and covered with the wounded and the
dead." And the sons of all these nations that are fighting one another
with deadly hate are " possessed of the same human nature ; all belong
to the same society: all should be brothers, for they are sons of the
one Father Who is in heaven."
* * * *
THE agonizing difference between what actually is, and what should
be, is the sword that pierces with pain the soul of every earnest
Catholic. Humanly speaking we stand helpless to lessen even in a
small way the evils of the deadly conflict. We know that thousands
upon thousands of every nation at war are giving their lives in defence
of their country, and what they conscientiously believe to be right. It
surely has its measure of inspiration that men should thus go forth
unselfishly; leaving home and loved ones; enduring hardships, and
risking what is most precious to themselves for the cause of country.
This in itself is a comforting relief from the materialism and sen-
sualism that have gained such a foothold in human society. But that
human quarrels should for the time cause hate to wipe out all thought
of brotherly love; that for their solution men should go forth with
deadly weapons to slay one another ; that homes should be devastated,
wives widowed, children orphaned surely the human heart must pro-
test that there is a better and a more just way.
* * * *
IF the new year opens with sorrow, there is reason to believe that
it will bring some of us to greater thoughtfulness and more faithful
service of Him Who is the Man of Sorrows as well as the Prince of
Peace. Our human helplessness must drive us to Him Who is our
only help. Therefore should it be for all Catholics a year of prayer;
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 565
of deep, earnest, daily prayer in the fullest sense of the word, that the
mercy of God may be showered upon the souls of men; that His
Church may be permitted full liberty in the pursuit of her mission;
that those who govern the nations " may be led to see that Christian
principles are the only foundation of social well-being and national
p eace " that the reign of charity and of fraternal love may increase
among men, for " Jesus Christ restored among men the reign of peace
on the foundation of love." Our prayer will ascend to God, therefore,
for all who are righting on the battlefield, exposed to instant death;
for those who suffer at home ; for the souls of all the dead who have
been and are being called daily to their account, that God's great
mercy may be very merciful to them.
* * * *
IT is in this way that we can personally and at once carry out effec-
tively the appeal of our Holy Father made in his recent Encyclical
by which he would stretch forth his healing hand, as the Vicar of Christ,
to restore to the people the precious blessings of peace.
* * * *
OUR readers will note that the Holy Father after making an earnest
appeal for an increase of Christian charity in our hearts, speaks
of that other furious war which planted the seeds of this present
furious struggle, and which is eating at the very entrails of modern
society. This greater war is due, in the mind of the Supreme Pontiff,
to four causes the lack of mutual love among men; the widespread
contempt for authority; injustice in the relations of different classes
of society ; and the inordinate pursuit of material welfare.
* * * *
'"THE Holy Father makes his appeal to all men, and we pray that his
1 words may not be without their effect on those who are outside
the fold, and whom he lovingly invites to enter. The entire Encyclical
is filled with an inspiring and thoroughly apostolic charity.
ENCYCLICAL OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XV.
VENERABLE BRETHREN, HEALTH AND THE APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION:
When by the inscrutable design of Divine Providence, without any merit
on Our part, We were raised to the Chair of the Blessed Prince of the
Apostles, considering as addressed to Ourselves in the same voice in which
Our Lord spoke to St. Peter the words, " Feed My Lambs, Feed My Sheep "
(John xxi. 15-17), We immediately turned Our eyes, with deepest feeling of
charity, to the flock entrusted to Our care an immense flock, in truth, because
under one aspect or another it embraces all men. For all for whom Jesus
Christ offered His Blood as a price were freed by Him from the slavery of
sin; no one is excluded from the benefits of this Redemption. Wherefore
the Divine Pastor states that whilst a part of the human race is already within
566 WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
the fold of His Church, He will lovingly compel the others to come in: "And
other sheep I have that are not of this P'old ; them also I must bring, and
they shall hear My voice" (John x. 16). We shall not conceal from you,
venerable brethren, that the first sentiment we experienced in Our soul, and
which was assuredly excited there by the Divine goodness, was a certain incredi-
ble impulse of zeal and love for the salvation of all men ; and in accepting the
Pontificate We formed the same desire that Jesus Christ expressed when He
was about to be crucified : " Holy Father, keep them in Thy name whom Thou
hast given Me" (John xvii. n).
A SAD SPECTACLE.
Now when from the height of this Apostolic dignity We can, as if at one
glance, contemplate the course of human events, and when We see before Us
the miserable condition of civil society We are affected with acute sorrow.
And how could We, as the common Father of all men, not be sorely troubled
at the sight of Europe, and, indeed, of the whole world the most terrible and
most painful spectacle perhaps that has ever been presented in the course
of history? Those days which Christ predicted seem in fact to have come:
" You shall hear of wars and rumors of wars For nation shall rise
against nation and kingdom against kingdom" (Matt. xxiv. 6, 7). The fearful
apparition of war is prominent everywhere and nothing else engages men's
attention. Great and flourishing nations are on the battlefields. Can we
wonder that as they are well supplied with those horrible means of destruction
which the military art has invented, they fight against one another with awful
butchery? There is no limit to the ruin and slaughter; every day the earth
is drenched with fresh blood and is covered with the wounded and the dead.
And who would say that such men, armed one against the other, come from
the same progenitor, that they are all possessed of the same nature and that
all belong to the same human society? Who would take them to be brothers,
the sons of one Father Who is in Heaven? Whilst on every side furious
battles are being fought with vast forces, nations, families, and individuals are
oppressed by sorrow; day by day the number of widows and orphans increases
immensely. Commerce languishes owing to the interruption of communica-
tions; the fields are empty; the arts are neglected; the rich are in poverty;
the poor in squalor, and all are in grief.
APPEAL TO RULERS AND GOVERNMENTS.
Moved by such grave evils, at the very first step as it were of the
Sovereign Pontificate, We considered it our duty to recall the last words of
Our predecessor, a Pontiff of illustrious and holy memory, and to commence
Our Apostolic ministry by repeating them; and so We warmly beseech rulers
and Governments to consider the tears and the blood already shed, and to hasten
to restore to the people the precious blessings of peace. May the merciful
God grant that, as on the appearance of the Divine Redeemer upon the earth,
so at the beginning of Our duty as His Vicar, the angels' voices may pro-
claim "Peace on earth to men of good will" (Luke ii. 14), and W T e pray that
they may listen who have in their hands the destinies of States. Assuredly
there are other ways and other methods by which justice can be done to in-
jured rights. Let the belligerents, laying down their arms, have recourse to
these, animated by good faith and intention. It is through love of them and of
all nations and not from any motive of Our own that we speak. Let them
not, then, permit Our friendly and paternal voice to be raised in vain.
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 567
A WAR AGAINST SOCIETY.
But it is not merely the sanguinary war which darkens passions and
troubles and embitters Our spirit. There is another furious war which eats at
the entrails of modern society a war which terrifies every person of good
sense, because whilst it has accumulated, and will accumulate ruin amongst the
nations, it contains in itself the seeds of the present disastrous struggle.
From the moment when the rules and practices of Christian wisdom ceased
to be observed in States rules and practices which alone guarantee the sta-
bility and peace of institutions these States necessarily began to tremble at
their foundations, and there followed such a change in ideas and customs
that, if God does not soon intervene, it appears as if the dissolution of hu-
man society is at hand. The disorders that have arisen are the want of mu-
tual love amongst men, contempt for authority, injustice in the relations be-
tween the different classes of society, and material welfare made the only ob-
ject of man's activity (as if there were not other and much more desirable
blessings to be gained). These, in Our opinion, are the four causes why
human society is so greatly disturbed. It is necessary then that energy be
exercised generally for the purpose of removing such disorders and restoring
Christian principles, if the object is to put an end to discord and compose 1
differences.
CHRISTIAN CHARITY.
Jesus Christ came down from Heaven in order to restore amongst men the
reign of peace which had been troubled by the envy of Satan, and He desired
to establish it on no other foundation than that of love. Hence the frequent
use of these words : " A new commandment I give unto you : that you love
one another " (John xiii. 34) ; " This is My commandment that you love one
another " (John xv. 12) ; " These things I command you that you love one
another " (John xv. 17) ; as if all His mission and His work were restricted
to making men love one another. And what powerful arguments did He not
adopt for this purpose? He bids us all look up to Heaven, "For One is your
Father Who is in Heaven" (Matt, xxiii. 9). He teaches all without distinction
of nation or tongue the same formula of prayer, " Our Father Who art in
Heaven" (Matt. vi. 9). Nay, He assures us that this Heavenly Father in
conferring benefits of nature does not even make distinction of merits : " Who
maketh His sun to rise upon the good and the bad, and raineth upon the just
and the unjust" (Matt. v. 45). He declares, moreover, that we are all
brothers, "And all you are brethren" (Matt, xxiii. 8) ; and His own brethren,
"That He might be the first-born amongst many brethren" (Rom. viii. 29).
Then a consideration which ought to stimulate us to fraternal love towards
even those whom our native pride despises He wishes that the dignity of
His person should be recognized in the humblest, " As long as you did it to one
of these, My least brethren, you did it to Me" (Matt. xxv. 40). And when
about to leave this life He earnestly prayed the Father that all those who be-
lieved in Him should be one by the bond of charity. "As Thou Father in
Me and I in Thee" (John xvii. 21). Finally, He hung on the Cross and shed
His blood for us all, so that fashioned and formed in the one body we should
love one another with that love which one member in the same body bears
towards another.
THE SPIRIT OF FRATERNITY ABSENT.
But far otherwise do men act to-day. Never perhaps was human brother-
hood more spoken of than at present; it is even pretended, though the words
of the Gospel and the work of Christ and His Church are forgotten, that this
568 WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
fraternal zeal is one of the most precious features of modern civilization. But
the truth is that never was human fraternity so little practised as it is to-day.
Race hatred is most bitter. Nations are divided more by rancor than by
natural boundaries. In one and the same country and within the walls of the
same city different classes of the citizens hate one another; and amongst
individuals everything is governed by selfishness as by a supreme law.
THE HOLY FATHER'S CHIEF AIM.
You see, venerable brethren, how necessary it is to make every effort so
that the charity of Christ may prevail amongst men. This will certainly be
Our aim always as the special object of Our Pontificate. Let this also, We
exhort you, be your work. We shall not grow weary of urging upon men to
give effect to the teaching of the Apostle St. John, "Love one another" (i
John iii. 23). The pious institutions which abound in our time are certainly
excellent and commendable, but they are only really advantageous when they
tend in some way to foment in hearts the love of God and of the neighbor;
otherwise they have no value, because " He that loveth not abideth in death "
(i John iii. 14).
WANT OF RESPECT FOR AUTHORITY.
We have stated that another cause of the general perturbation consists
in this, that the authority of those who are in power is no longer respected.
From the time when all human power sought to emancipate itself from God,
the Creator and Father of the Universe, and to attribute its origin to man's
free will, the bonds between superiors and inferiors have become so weak that
they seem almost to have disappeared. An immoderate spirit of independence,
combined with pride, has spread everywhere, invading even the family, whose
authority so clearly arises from nature; and, what is more deplorable, it does
not even stop at the steps of the sanctuary. Hence the contempt for laws,
the insubordination of the masses, the impertinent criticism of the commands of
authority, the numerous ways discovered for eluding discipline and the fright-
ful crimes of those who profess anarchy and do not hesitate to destroy the
lives and properties of others.
GOD THE AUTHOR OF ALL POWER.
In face of this criminal mode of thinking and acting by which the consti-
tution of human society is perverted We, raised up by God to guard truth,
cannot but lift Our voice and remind the people of that doctrine which no
human decree can change, " There is no power but from God and those that
are, are ordained of God" (Rom. xiii. i). God therefore is the Author of all
Power exercised on earth, whether it be sovereign power or subordinate au-
thority. From this St. Paul derives the duty of obeying not indeed in any
way whatsoever, but at the dictate of conscience the commands of those who
are invested with power, except in the case in which opposition is offered
to the Divine laws, "Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath
but also for conscience' sake" (Rom. xiii. 5). And in conformity with this
precept of St. Paul, the Prince of the Apostles also teaches, "Be ye sub-
ject therefore to every human creature for God's sake, whether it be to the
King as excelling or to Governors as sent by him" (i Peter ii. 13, 14). From
this premiss the same Apostle of the Gentiles infers that he who rebels against
legitimate human power rebels against God and earns eternal punishment:
" Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. And
they that resist purchase to themselves damnation" (Rom. xiii. 2).
1915-] WITH OUR READERS 569
RELIGION AND PUBLIC LIFE.
Let princes and rulers of the people remember this and consider whether
it is a wise and salutary design for public powers and states to divorce them
from the holy religion of Christ which is such a sterling support of authority.
Let them reflect well whether it is a wise policy to separate the doctrine of
the Gospel and of the Church from public instruction. Sad experience shows
that where religion has been banished there human authority is despised. In
fact there happens to society what occurred to our first father when he
failed in his duty. As in his case scarcely had the will rebelled against God
when his passions broke loose and disdained the authority of the will; so
when those who rule over the people despise Divine authority the people, in
their turn, mock at human authority. There remains no doubt the single
expedient of having recourse to violence to put down rebellion; but, of what
use is it? The body, but not the mind, is repressed by violence.
EMPLOYERS AND WORKERS.
The dual element of cohesion of every social body, namely, the union of
the members amongst themselves by mutual charity and the union of the
members themselves with the head by subjection to authority, being removed
or weakened, what wonder, venerable brethren, that modern society presents
itself to us as divided into two great armed forces that contend against one
another fiercely and strenuously? Face to face with those to whom either
fortune or their own activity has brought an abundance of wealth stand the
proletaires and the workers, inflamed with hatred and jealousy because, al-
though they share the same nature, they are not in the same condition. In-
fatuated as they are by the fallacies of agitators, to whose guidance they are
ordinarily most docile, who could persuade them that it does not follow be-
cause men are equal by nature that all ought to occupy the same grade in
society, but that everyone holds that position which his qualifications, if cir-
cumstances permit, have procured for him? Wherefore when the needy
struggle against those who are well to do, as if the latter had taken possession
of property that belonged to others, they not only offend against justice and
charity, but even against reason, because they also, if they desired, could, by
means of honorable labor, succeed in improving their condition. What conse-
quences, not less inconvenient for individuals than for the community, this class-
hatred begets it is needless to say. We all see and deplore the frequency of
strikes, by which the course of civic and public life is wont to be arrested even
in the most necessary functions; also the threatening crowds and tumults in
which, not unfrequently, recourse is had to arms and human blood is shed.
We do not desire to repeat here the arguments which prove to demon-
stration the errors of the Socialists and others of that type. Our predecessor
Leo XIII. treated of them most learnedly in memorable Encyclicals ; and do
you, venerable brethren, see, with your habitual care, that these authoritative
teachings are not forgotten, and that in Catholic associations, in congresses, in
sermons, and in the Catholic Press, efforts are always made to illustrate them
wisely and inculcate them according to need. But, in a particular manner
We do not hesitate to repeat this with all the force of the arguments which
the Gospel and human nature and public and private interests supply let us
be zealous in exhorting all men to love one another in a brotherly spirit, in
virtue of the divine law of charity. Human fraternity, indeed, will not re-
move the diversities of conditions and therefore of classes. This is not pos-
sible, just as it is not possible that in an organic body all the members should
S7o WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
have one and the same function and the same dignity. But it will cause those
in the highest places to incline towards the humblest and to treat them, not
only according to justice, as is necessary, but kindly, with affability and toler-
ance; and will cause the humblest to regard the highest with sympathy for their
prosperity and with confidence in their support, in the same way as in one
family the younger brothers rely on the help and defence of the elder ones.
THE ROOT OF ALL EVILS.
But, venerable brethren, the evils We have been deploring have a deeper
root, and, unless all the strength of the well-disposed is used to extirpate it,
it is vain to hope for the attainment of the object of our desires, that is to
say, stable and enduring peace in human relations. What this root is the
Apostle teaches: "For the desire of money is the root of all evils" (i
Timothy vi. 10). And, in fact, if we duly consider the matter, we find
that from this root spring all the evils from which society suffers at present.
When, by means of perverse schools, in which the heart of the young is
fashioned like wax, and also by means of writings which daily or at intervals
mould the minds of the inexperienced masses, and by other means by which
public opinion is directed when, We say, the destructive error is thus made to
penetrate into people's minds that man should not hope for a state of eternal
happiness ; that here and here alone one can be happy in the possession of the
riches, of the honors, and of the pleasures of this life, it is not surprising that
human beings, naturally made for happiness, cast aside with the same violence
with which they are attracted to the acquisition of these enjoyments every
obstacle which restrains or hinders them. Since, however, these enjoyments
are not equally divided amongst all, and it is the duty of social authority to
prevent individual liberty from exceeding bounds and extending to what be-
longs to others, there arises hatred against the public powers and jealousy on
the part of the unfortunate against those whom fortune favors ; hence, in fine,
the struggle between the various classes of citizens, some seeking to obtain at
any cost and snatch to themselves what they are in need of, and others striving
to preserve and increase what they have.
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.
Christ Our Lord, foreseeing this state of things, carefully explained in His
most divine Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes of man on earth and, so to
speak, laid the foundations of a Christian philosophy. These maxims have ap-
peared even to adversaries of the Faith as conveying singular wisdom and the
most perfect doctrine on religion and morals ; and all certainly agree that be-
fore Christ, Who is Truth itself, no one ever taught anything similar in this
matter, or anything of such weight and importance or so permeated by senti-
ments of charity.
THE SO-CALLED GOOD THINGS OF THE PRESENT LIFE.
Now the whole secret of this philosophy consists in this, that the so-called
good things of mortal life, though they have the appearance of being such, are
not really so, and therefore it is not through their enjoyment that man can live
happily. For on God's authority we know, so far are wealth, glory, pleasure
from bringing happiness to man that if he wishes to be truly happy he must
avoid them all for the love of God: " Blessed are ye poor Blessed are ye
that weep now Blessed shall you be when men shall hate you, when they
shall separate you, and shall reproach you and cast out your name as evil"
(Luke vi. 20-22). That is to say, through the sorrows, cares, and miseries
1915-] WITH OUR READERS 571
of this life, if we support them patiently, as we ought to do, we obtain access
for ourselves to those perfect and everlasting good things "which God hath
prepared for them that love Him" (i Cor. ii. 9). But this important doctrine
of the Faith is neglected by a great number, and is altogether forgotten by
many. It is necessary, venerable brethren, to revive it amongst all men;
in no other way will men and human society have peace. We therefore exhort
those who are afflicted by cares of any kind not to fix their gaze on the earth,
on which they are pilgrims, but to lift it up to Heaven, whither we are
going : " For we have not here a lasting city ; but we seek one that is to come "
(Heb. xiii. 14). And amidst the adversities by which God tries their con-
stancy in His service let them often reflect what a reward is reserved for
them if they come victorious out of conflict : " For that which is at present
momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure ex-
ceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. iv. 17). Finally, to endeavor
with all possible activity and energy to make faith in the supernatural revive
amongst men, and at the same time the appreciation, desire, and hope of things
eternal this, venerable brethren, should be your first object, and also that of
the other clergy and of all our spiritual children who, bound together in
various associates, strive to promote the glory of God and the real welfare of
society. For, in proportion as this faith increases amongst men their im-
moderate desire of pursuing vain earthly enjoyments will decrease, charity will
revive, and tumults and social conflicts will gradually subside.
FRUITS OF THE PONTIFICATE OF Pius X.
And now, if we turn our thoughts from civil society to the Church's own
affairs, there is certainly some ground why Our mind, troubled by the great
calamities of the day, should be, at least to some extent, comforted. For be-
sides the manifest proofs which present themselves of the divine power and
indefectibility of the Church, no little consolation is given to Us by the
splendid fruit of his active zeal left by Our predecessor Pius X. after having
added to the lustre of the Apostolic See by the example of a holy life. For,
thanks to his work, We see the religious spirit stirred up everywhere amongst
ecclesiastics; piety excited amongst the Christian people; Catholic action and
discipline promoted in Catholic societies; here episcopal Sees established, and
here their number increased ; arrangements made for the education of young
clerics in accordance with the strict requirements of Canon Law and as needed
owing to the nature of the times ; all danger of rash innovations removed from
the teaching of the sacred sciences; musical art made to serve worthily the
majesty of sacred functions: the decorum of worshippers increased; and
Christianity widely propagated by the new missions of heralds of the Gospel.
To AVERT EVIL AND PROMOTE GOOD.
These are indeed great merits of Our predecessor in regard to the Church,
and posterity will gratefully bear them in mind. Since, however, the field of
the good man of the house is always, God permitting, exposed to the wicked
arts of the enemy, the fear lest an abundance of cockle may injure the good
fruits should never prevent work being done there. Therefore, taking as ad-
dressed to Ourselves what God said to the prophet, " Lo, I have set thee this
day over the nations and over kingdoms, to root up and to pull down and
to build and to plant" (Jer. i. 10), so far as lies in Our power, We shall take
the greatest care, until it please the Pastor of Pastors to demand from Us an
account of the exercise of the ministry entrusted to Us, to avert whatever is
evil and to promote what is good.
572 WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
SUBJECTS OF CHIEF IMPORTANCE.
In addressing to you, venerable brethren, this first Encyclical Letter, We
think it well to touch on certain of the chief subjects to which We have de-
cided to devote Our special attention, and through your efforts to help Our
work by your zeal the desired fruit will be secured earlier.
DISCORD TO BE AVOIDED.
First of all, since in every human society, for whatever purpose formed,
it is of the utmost importance that the members should work strenuously to-
gether to attain the same object, we must exert ourselves by all means at our
disposal to put an end to dissension and discord, of whatever kind, amongst
Catholics; to guard against the growth of fresh differences between them;
and to induce them to think and act unitedly. The enemies of God and the
Church clearly understand that any dissension between Catholics in defending
the Faith means victory for them. Hence it is a frequent practice of theirs
when they see Catholics closely united to throw the seeds of discord between
them astutely and try to destroy this unity. Would that their design had not
so often succeeded to the great detriment of religion. Accordingly, when
there is no doubt that legitimate authority has given an order, let no one con-
sider he is at liberty to disregard it on the ground that he does not approve
of it; but let everyone submit his opinion to the authority of him to whom he
is subject and obey him through consciousness of duty. Again, let no private
person either by the publication of books or journals or by delivering discourses
publicly assume the position of a master in the Church. All know to whom
God has given the teaching office in the Church; let him have the unrestricted
right to speak as he thinks fitting when he wishes; it is the duty of others
to tender him devout homage when he speaks and to obey his words. Con-
cerning matters in which, since the Holy See has not pronounced judgment,
saving faith and discipline, discussion may take place pro and contra, it is
certainly lawful for everybody to say what he thinks and to uphold his opinion.
But in such discussions let all intemperate language which may be seriously
hurtful to charity be eschewed; let everyone indeed maintain his own view
freely, but let him do so modestly, and let him not imagine he is justified in
casting suspicion on the faith or discipline of those who hold a contrary
opinion simply because they differ from him. We desire also that our people
should refrain from the use of those appellatives which have recently been
introduced to distinguish Catholics from Catholics, and that they avoid them not
only as profane novelties of words which are in conformity neither with truth
nor justice, but also because they give rise to serious agitation and great con-
fusion amongst Catholics. The nature and bearing of the Catholic Faith are
such that nothing can be added to it, and nothing taken away; it must be either
held in its entirety or entirely rejected. "This is the Catholic faith which unless
one firmly and faithfully believes he cannot be saved" (Athanasian Creed).
There is no need, therefore, to add epithets to the profession of Catholicism; it
is enough for everyone to say, " Christian is my name and Catholic my surname."
Only let him strive to be really what he calls himself.
MODERNISM AGAIN CONDEMNED.
Moreover, from those of Our people who devote themselves to the
general promotion of the Catholic cause the Church now requires something
far different from persistence in dealing with questions from the discussion
of which no advantage is derived; she demands that they should most earnestly
1915-] WITH OUR READERS 573
endeavor to preserve the Faith whole and free from every breath of error,
following especially the guidance of him whom Christ has constituted the
guardian and interpreter of the truth. Even at the present day there are
those and they are not a few who, as the Apostle says, " do not endure
sound doctrine, but, according to their own desires, heap to themselves teachers,
having itching ears, and turn away their hearing from the truth, but are turned
unto fables." For, inflated and carried away by the great opinion they have
formed of the human mind, which, thank God, has made astonishing progress
in the study of nature, some, trusting in their own judgment, have spurned
the authority of the Church and in their temerity have gone so far as not to
hesitate to measure with their intelligence and to adapt to the mode of thinking
of these times the very mysteries of God and God's whole revelation to men.
Therefore there have arisen the monstrous errors of Modernism which Our
predecessor rightly termed " the synthesis of all heresies " and solemnly con-
demned. This condemnation, venerable brethren, We here renew in its full ex-
tent; and since the contagion, which is so pestiferous, has not been entirely
removed, and even yet creeps about here and there secretly, We exhort all to
guard with great care against the danger of being infected by it. To it may
fittingly be applied the words of Job used of another matter : " It is a fire
that devoureth even to destruction and rooteth up all things that spring" (Job
xxxi. 12). And We desire that Catholics should not only keep clear of the
errors but also of the tendency and what is called the spirit of the Modernists.
Whoever is affected by this spirit rejects disdainfully whatever savors of
antiquity, but eagerly searches for novelties everywhere in the manner of
speaking of divine things, in the celebration of divine worship, in the Catholic
institutions and in the private exercise of piety. Therefore we desire that that
law of our ancestors should be held sacred: " Nihil innovetur nisi quod tradi-
tum est" ("Let there be no innovation but in the sense of tradition"), which
law, whilst, on the one hand, it is to be observed inviolably in matters of faith,
should, on the other hand, serve as a standard in all things that are subject
to change, although in these this rule also generally holds: " Non nova sed
noviter" ("No novelties, but in a new manner").
CATHOLIC ASSOCIATIONS.
But since, venerable brethren, men are greatly stimulated to an open pro-
fession of the Catholic Faith and to lead a life in harmony with it by fraternal
exhortations and mutual good example, We rejoice exceedingly that new
Catholic associations are continually being formed. We wish not only that the
number should increase, but that they should continue to flourish under Our
protection and favor; they will unquestionably flourish if they constantly and
faithfully obey the directions which have been or will be given to them by the
Apostolic See. Let all the members of these societies who work for God and
the Church never forget the saying of Wisdom: "An obedient man shall
speak of victory" (Prov. xxi. 28); for if they do not obey God by being
obedient to the head of the Church, they will not obtain the divine assistance
and will labor in vain.
THE LIVES OF THE CLERGY.
But that all these things may have the desired result you know, venerable
brethren, that the prudent and assiduous work of those whom Christ Our
Lord sent as workmen into His harvest, that is, of the clergy, is necessary.
You, therefore, understand that your principal care ought to be to promote
amongst the clergy you already have, sanctity befitting their sacred vocation,
574 WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
and to train your ecclesiastical students worthily for so holy an office by the
best education and discipline. We exhort and beseech you although We know
your diligence does not need a stimulus to do this most zealously. Nothing
could be of greater importance to the welfare of the Church than this matter,
but Our predecessors, Leo XIII. and Pius X. of happy memory, having dealt
with the subject, We need not dwell upon it here. We only ask that the
documents in question of those wise Pontiffs, especially the Exhortatio ad
Clerum of Pius X., should never, thanks to your advice and influence, be for-
gotten, but should be scrupulously followed.
OBEDIENCE TO THE BISHOPS.
There is one thing, however, which We must not pass over in silence; We
wish to remind all Catholic priests, as sons who are most dear to Us, how
absolutely necessary it is both for their own personal benefit and for the
efficacy of their ministry that they should be closely united to their respective
Bishops and obedient to them. Assuredly, as We have said above with regret,
not all the ministers of the altar are free from the pride and spirit of in-
subordination which are characteristic of these times; and it happens not
unfrequently that Pastors of the Church meet with trouble and rebellion where
they had a right to expect consolation and help. Now, let those who so
wretchedly fail in their duty bear in mind and reflect that the authority of the
Bishops whom " the Holy Ghost hath placed to rule the Church of God "
(Acts xx. 28) is divine; and if, as we have seen, they who resist any legiti-
mate power resist God, much more impiously do they act who refuse to obey
the Bishops whom God has consecrated by the seal of His power. "As
charity," says Ignatius Martyr, " does not permit me to be silent concerning
you, I have resolved to exhort you to be unanimously in the thought of God.
For if Jesus Christ, with Whom our life is inseparably bound, is the Thought
of the Father, so the Bishops in the regions where they are established are in
the thought of the Father. Hence it is right that you should concur in the
thought of the Bishops" (In Epist. ad Ephes., iii.). And all the Fathers and
Doctors of the Church have spoken in the same way as the illustrious Martyr.
Add to this that whilst the burden of the Bishops is already too grave, owing
to the difficulties of the times, their anxiety regarding the salvation of the
flock entrusted to them is graver still : " For they watch as being to render
an account of your souls" (Heb. xiii. 17). Must they not be called cruel
who by refusing the obedience that is due increase their burden and anxiety?
"For this is not expedient for you" (Ibid., 17), the Apostle would say to
them; and that because "the Church is a people united to a priest and a flock
bound to their pastor" (St. Cypr. Florentio cui et Puppiano, ep. 68, al. 69).
Hence it follows that he who is not with his Bishop is not with the Church.
THE HOLY SEE'S INDEPENDENCE.
And now, venerable brethren, in concluding this letter Our mind turns of
itself to the point from which We started; and We again with all Our fervor
pray for the end of this calamitous war, in the interests of human society and
of the Church in the interests of society in order that, peace being secured,
real progress may be made in every branch of culture; and in the interests
of the Church of Jesus Christ, in order that being restrained by no obstacles,
she may be able to bear help and salvation to men in every part of the earth.
For a long time now, it is true, the Church has not enjoyed the complete
liberty of which she has need; that is, since her head, the Sovereign Pontiff,
has been deprived of the protection which by the will of Divine Providence he
1915.] BOOKS RECEIVED 575
obtained in the course of ages to safeguard that liberty. The result of depriv-
ing him of that protection was, as was inevitable, serious anxiety amongst
Catholics, for all who profess to be sons of the Roman Pontiff those who
are at a distance as well as those who are near have a perfect and undeniable
right to demand that their common father should be really and entirely free
in the exercise of his Apostolic Ministry. Therefore whilst most desirous that
peace should be restored amongst the nations as soon as posible, We also
desire that the abnormal condition in which the head of the Church finds
himself and which in many respects is highly injurious to the peace of peoples,
should cease. We accordingly renew on the same grounds the protests on
this subject which Our predecessors made on several occasions, moved, not
by human considerations, but by the sacred sense of duty the duty, namely,
of defending the rights and dignity of the Apostolic See.
PRAYER FOR PEACE.
Finally, venerable brethren, as the decisions of princes and all those who
can put an end to the atrocities and troubles to which We have referred
are in the hands of God, We raise Our voice in supplication to the Lord
and cry out in the name of the whole human race, " Grant peace, O Lord, in
our days." May He who said of Himself, "I, the Lord make peace"
(Is. xlv. 6, 7), inclined to mercy by our prayers, quickly still the tempestuous
waves by which society, civil and religious, is agitated. May the Blessed
Virgin, of whom was born the Prince of Peace Himself, kindly come to Our
aid and receive under her maternal care and protection Our humble person,
Our Pontifical Ministry, the Church, and also the souls of all men redeemed by
the divine blood of her Son.
As a pledge of Heavenly favors and in testimony of Our good will We
lovingly impart the Apostolic Benediction to you, venerable brethren, and to
your clergy and people.
Given at St. Peter's, Rome, on the ist November, 1914, the feast of All
Saints, in the first year of Our Pontificate.
BENEDICT XV., POPE.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
The Living Torch. By D. Kerin. $1.00 net. Panama: The Canal, the Coun-
try, and the People. By A. Bullard. $2.00 net. Philip the King, and Other
Poems. By J. Masefield. $1.25 net. Representative English Comedies.
Edited by C. M. Gayley, LL.D. 3 Vols. $2.00 set.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR Co., New York:
A Far Away Princess. By C. Reid. $1.35 net. The Secrets of the Elves.
By H. K. McElhone. Capers: His Haps and Mishaps. By W. J. Steinigans
and O. Herford. $1.50 net.
GEORGE H. DORAN Co., New York :
From Dublin to Chicago. By G. A. Birmingham. $1.50 net. Europe Revised.
By I. S. Cobb. $1.50 net.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
Norah of Water} or d. By Rosa Mulholland. $1.10 net. Prodigals and Sons.
By J. Ayscough. $1.25 net.
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York:
The Parables of the Gospel. By Leopold Fonck, SJ. $5.50.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
The Ivy Ledge. By M. F. Egan. $1.35 net. An Introduction to the Mystical
Life. By Abbe P. Lejeune. $1.25 net.
576 BOOKS RECEIVED [Jan., 1915.]
THE AMERICAN PRESS, New York:
Venerable Philippine Duchesne. By G. E. M. The Cathoilc Mind: Mexican
Liberalism. 5 cents.
DODD, MEAD & Co., New York :
The Tourist's California. By Ruth K. Wood. $1.25 net.
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & Co., New York:
The Art of the Low Countries. By W. R. Valentiner. $2.50 net.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York:
The Truth of Christianity. By Lt.-Col. W. H. Turton, D.S.O.
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
The East I Know. Translated into English by T. Frances and W. R. Benet.
$1.25 net.
AMERICAN BOOK Co., New York :
Practical Talks with the Christian Child. By L. E. Cadieux, M. A.
G. E. STECHERT & Co., New York:
Stammering and Cognate Defects of Speech. By C. S. Bluemel. 2 Vols.
LETTERS AND ARTS PUBLISHING Co., New York:
The Vatican Its History Its Treasures. $10.00.
SMALL, MAYNARD & Co., Boston :
Little Sir Galahad. By Phoebe Gray.
JOHN MURPHY Co., Baltimore :
Half Hours with God's Heroes. By Rev. T. D. Williams. $1.00 net.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington, D. C. :
Music in the Public Schools. By W. Earhart. Rural Schoolhouses and
Grounds. By F. B. Desslar. Danish Elementary Rural Schools. By H. W.
Focht. Library Instruction in Universities, Colleges, and Normal Schools.
Compiled by H. R. Evans.
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE, Washington, D. C. :
Intellectual and Cultural Relations Between the United States and the Other
Republics of America. By H. E. Bard. Year Book for 1918-1914. Limita-
tion of Armaments on the Great Lakes.
INDIAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION, Philadelphia, Pa. :
The Indians of the Yukon and Tanana Valleys, Alaska. Thirty-second Annual
Report of the Indian Rights Association. Pamphlets.
THE DOLPHIN PRESS, Philadelphia, Pa.:
Within My Parish. Edited by J. A. Loomis, M.D. 60 cents. Life and Writings
of Saint Columban. By G. Metlake. $2.00.
JOHN JOSEPH McVEY, Philadelphia, Pa:
The New Laity and the Old Standards. By H. J. Desmond. 50 cents net.
HENRY FORD, Detroit, Mich. :
The Case Against the Little White Slaves. By H. Ford. Pamphlet.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
Spiritual Instructions for Religious. By C. Coppens, S.J. $1.25 net.
THE AVE MARIA, Notre Dame, Ind. :
Round About Home. By Rev. P. J. Carroll, C.S.C. $1.00.
JOHN P. MORTON & Co., Louisville, Ky. :
The Poet Nature and the Morning Road. By M. Cawein. $1.00 net.
NEGRO YEAR BOOK Co., Tuskegee Institute, Ala. :
Negro Year Book. 25 cents.
H. SOTHERAN & Co., London :
Documents Respecting the Negotiations Preceding the War Published by the
Russian Government. 3 d. Diplomatic Correspondence Respecting the War
Published by the Belgian Government. 4^ d. Great Britain and the Euro-
pean Crisis, i penny.
B. H. BLACKWELL, Oxford, England :
Spain Under the Roman Empire. By E. S. Bouchier, M.A. 5 s. net.
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne:
National Education. By P. S. Cleary. i penny. The Labour Party and
Secular Education. Pamphlets.
PIERRE TEQUI, Paris :
Catechisme de la Vie Religieuse. Par Monsignor Lelong. i fr. Allocutions
pour les Jeunes Gens. Par P. Lallemand. 3 frs. Figures de Peres et
Meres Chretiens. Par Abbe H. Bels. 2 frs.
PLON-NCURRIT ET CIE, Paris:
Venise la Ville des Doges. Par R. E. Urmeneta. 2 vols. L'nigme Allemande.
Par G. Bourdon. France et Belgique. Par E. Gilbert.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. C. FEBRUARY, 1915. No. 599.
MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW.
BY DANIEL A. LORD, S.J.
HE most unique contribution to hagiography that ever
issued from the pen of man has burst upon the
literary world. And the hand that wielded the pen
is that of the ever-original, ever-elusive, ever-non-
Christian, Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is quite the
popular fashion, you will note, for a writer to choose for his theme
something in which he does not believe. What the centuries were
spent in constructing, the present age is bent on destroying. Mr.
Galsworthy is attacking that venerable but obsolete domestic con-
tract known as wedlock. Mr. Wells has doomed for aye that
atrophied social institution, the state. And Mr. Shaw, who is noth-
ing if not ultra- fashionable, has blasted forever the supernatural
character of Christian martyrs.
The first feeling of the reader of Androdes and the Lion is
one of wrath. The next is one of astonishment and wonder. Can it
be that this is the twentieth century of the Christian era? Some-
where in a remote past there is record of Roman comedians who
delighted the hearts of pagan emperors with their mimicry of
Christian rites. But that was when Christianity hid itself away in
catacombs and came forth only to torture and death. I, for one, as
I read Androdes and the Lion, could fancy the enthusiasm with
which those old comedians would have hailed Mr. Shaw's play.
Copyright. 1915. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. C. 37
578 MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW [Feb.,
Excruciatingly funny ! Ridiculously humorous ! Just the sort of
stuff to tickle the tastes of audiences whose chosen diversion was
to make game of Christianity.
But Mr. Shaw, please observe, did not write Androcles and the
Lion for them, but for Christians of this twentieth century. Could
it be that he expected his audience to enjoy the same spectacle that
would have delighted pagans centuries back? However that may
be, the vogue enjoyed by Mr. Shaw's writings and the extent of the
audience which will view Androcles and the Lion, make imperative
the consideration of this unique contribution to literature and unbe-
lief from the viewpoint of the Catholic.
Mr. Shaw is undeniably clever. The triteness of the remark
calls for an apology; but it is one of the few compliments that can
safely be paid him, and like most compliments it is just a bit hack-
neyed. As a thorough-going, conscientious humorist, he has
grasped the principle that humor is based on the incongruous. The
greater the incongruity, the more titillating the humor; the more
serious the subject, the greater its possibilities for burlesque. So,
though you may picture Napoleon as the greatest genius of all
military dramas, you cannot but appreciate the ridiculous humor of
The Man of Destiny. Caesar may be in your eyes the most potent
figure of ancient history, the incarnation of Roman dominance,
shrewdness, courage and physical energy; you will none the less
find Mr. Shaw's picture of the Roman delightfully amusing. You
may be moved to swear; you will surely be moved to laugh. And
your laugh will have something of a sly chuckle about it, for Mr.
Shaw has shown the daring to trifle with such titantic characters.
The very potentness of the subjects, the innate grandeur and
conscious magnificence of proportion by contrast make possible,
when the subjects are treated humorously, an incongruity in-
describably funny.
But when Mr. Shaw talked of Napoleon and Caesar, be it noted,
he was speaking to persons but vaguely interested in these men.
We admire them, yes; we take them seriously, of course; but not
half so seriously as we Americans take doughty General Stark or
our British brothers take Colin Campbell. Mr. Shaw is not speaking
in French to Frenchmen, nor in Latin to Romans; but in English
to men who waged victorious war with the emperor, and who are
descended from the men brave Julius tried to conquer. Let him
touch with the pen of the humorist the character of Nelson or of
Washington, and unless Englishmen and Americans have lost ut-
1915.] MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW 579
terly their love for the men who saved their nations, the raciest
absurdity in Nelson or the " killingest " bulls on the lips of Wash-
ington would fall flatter than the stalest jests. Reverence has
swallowed up the possibility of humor.
And now the thing that rouses anger in every thoughtful
Christian, is just the fact that in Androcles and the Lion Mr. Shaw
has chosen for purposes of mirth persons not only worthy of
serious consideration that may be a humorist's privilege but
persons worthy of the highest reverence and that is sacrilege.
One may jest, if he cares to be so convention-bound, at mothers-in-
law; they are merely serious. But the blood of a thousand sons
rises to boiling point if he dares to jest at mothers.
So when Mr. Shaw chooses to make merry with the Christian
martyrs, the men and women in whose blood was written ineffaceably
a record of the faith and the hope that was in them, he offends
mortally the sons and daughters of those martyrs, the Christians of
to-day. He makes mock of heroes and heroines who merit not only
serious consideration but the deepest reverence, of men and women
whose very garments wet with their blood a mighty Church has
preserved as too sacred for profane touch. And clever though he
be, Mr. Shaw is no more capable of appreciating and understanding
the martyrs who died rather than sacrifice to a false god than the
veriest pagan.
If Mr. Shaw means us to take his characters seriously, he
has intentionally or not, that matters little betrayed the most
lamentable want of historic insight, the most amazing incapacity to
interpret noble motives and lofty aspirations. If and this view
I prefer to assume he means Androcles and the Lion to be a piece
of ridiculous humor, a piece of burlesque not unlike the animal
extravaganzas of our childhood days, then he has made the mistake
of choosing a subject quite incapable of humorous treatment. He
has sacrificed the inbred ideals of millions of his fellowmen for the
sake of a rather mediocre farce. In either case, Mr. Shaw is wrong,
utterly, hopelessly wrong.
As a subject for humor, martyrs quite fail of their purpose.
They fail of their own nature; they fail because of the audience to
whom the humor is addressed. Regarding the latter, a careful
distinction is necessary. It is quite true that people have gone home
with aching sides from Androcles and the Lion. The London critics
soundly rated though not from any ethical motive the metropoli-
tan audiences that roared when Androcles and Megaera fell in a
580 MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW [Feb.,
heap on their bundle, that rocked in their seats when Spintho, cheap
craven, rushed from the stage into the jaws of the beast, and that
howled at the absurdity of imperial Caesar chased by a property lion.
If Mr. Shaw is writing for the present thoughtless theatre-going
public, this humor has been eminently successful. But, if Mr.
Shaw is aiming at taking a place among the literary giants of all
time and I rather fancy he is he has quite misjudged the fair-
ness and unprejudice of true critics. Humor that gives pain is no
true humor at all. If it does pass down into history, it is only to
be ranked with the sneers of Swift and the glittering invective of
Junius. Laughter lies close to tears; but the jest that in aiming
at the first brings also the second, fails in that primal requisite of all
true humor it brings no light, no joy into human souls. The
just critic of literature, who is also a just critic of history, will read
in the humor of Androcles and the Lion the pain that it has caused
Christian hearts, and recognizing its true basis will condemn its
author.
Conceive, then, the persons about whom Mr. Shaw plays his
lightning and flourishes his bladder and slapstick : men and women
on the brink of eternity ; men and women who are sacrificing home,
friends, love, fortune, all that the human heart clings to, for the
sake of a principle that embraces the basic facts of time and
eternity, of earth and the unfathomable beyond; men and women
who are brave in the face of torture, strong in their sense of truth,
heroes, martyrs, saints. Perhaps the sight of an actor garbed as
St. Francis of Assisi dancing the highland fling, his tattered brown
habit whirling like the cloak of a dervish, would impress the ob-
server, unacquainted with the great saint, as ludicrously funny.
But to one who has come to know the man of the poor, and knowing,
to love him, the sight would be repellant, nauseating.
And to see Christian martyrs, in very truth our blood brothers
in the Faith, serving as comedians in a farce, strikes no reechoing
chord of humor in a soul tinctured ever so slightly with the creed of
Christ. It is impossible to conceive of a comedy based on the execu-
tion of Mary Stuart or of Marie Antoinette. Schiller wrote a mas-
terly tragedy about the former ; but not even the most daring dram-
atist would dare to pivot a comedy about the death of either. It is
impossible to conceive of a door-slamming, mistaken identity farce
with Nathan Hale as leading " comedy; " nor with the victims of the
Black Hole as the vehicles for puns and topical witticisms. Mr.
Shaw was never more original than when he chose to make Christian
1915.] MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW 581
martyrs his comedians. And Mr. Shaw will find when the hollow
laughter of a thoughtless public has died down as die it surely
will that his originality has failed.
Mr. Shaw's art, and the statement needs no apology, has much
of the art of a literary caricaturist about it. All ultra-realists are
such in fact if not in theory. The glass they hold up to nature is
concave or convex or just a bit off in its true image. Now in his
highest type, the caricaturist holds a lofty place in literature. Cer-
vantes was a caricaturist. Shakespeare, when he gave us Falstaff,
was a literary caricaturist. Dickens in his Mr. Pickwick was a
caricaturist, and greater for that very fact.
But a caricature, at least as I understand it, has this one dis-
tinguishing trait. It selects from the group of qualities that com-
pose the person or class of persons to be caricatured, the one salient
quality that makes them conspicuous. This quality it accentuates,
it exaggerates; upon this it throws the play of light and shadow,
bringing it into strong relief.
The purpose of a caricaturist is by no means essentially hu-
morous; for the caricature by its very accentuation brings vividly
before the imagination the one quality that makes that person what
he is. But suppose the caricaturist takes some unimportant point,
some quality that the person possesses in common with a score, a
hundred, a host of his fellowmen. Suppose he accentuates and ex-
aggerates and fills it out with high light and deep shadow. He
would be like an artist who in caricaturing William II. would
present him with gigantic eyebrows instead of gigantic mustaches.
He would give us a caricature of a score, a hundred, or a host of
possible persons, but not one distinctive of the person he aims at
portraying.
Precisely in this do I conceive the art of Mr. Shaw to be at
fault. The one thing that makes Napoleon great is not his pedantry,
his prudishness, his inflated vanity. I know a host of college pro-
fessors more pedantic, of masculine spinsters more prudish, or cross-
ing policemen more vain and conceited. These qualities he shares
with the smallest and meanest of us. The thing that marks Na-
poleon off from every other human being is his genius for com-
mand, based on a sublime self-confidence and a masterful sway over
the hearts and affections of men. Caesar, possibly, was vain, dread-
fully absent minded, no doubt for example he found no difficulty in
dictating to four stenographers at once. So were Caius Balbus
and Rufus Fulvidus; yet they did not bring the Roman Republic
582 MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW [Feb.,
to their feet. When Mr. Shaw handles Napoleon and Caesar, he
insists on treating them regardless of their great personal, pre-
eminent gifts, just as mere ordinary human beings. Such they
emphatically were not. His caricature accentuated the pedantry
of Napoleon. Change the name, and the character will do for a
bookish professor of engineering. He throws into vivid light the
vanity of Caesar. Mutato nomine, the part will do for our corner
barber; he, too, is getting dreadfully bald.
Of course, it is ludicrous to see Napoleon and Caesar acting just
like the rest of men, forgetting names, flirting clumsily and so on ;
but acting just like the rest of men would never have made them
Napoleon or Caesar. Some day a Shaw of the future will attempt
a play with Mr. Shaw of the present for his hero. He will represent
him as taking coffee and a roll for breakfast, just as Jones of Anyold
Place does; quarrelling with his tailor, just as every second man in
London does; but he will pass over without a word the brilliant
audacity that manifests itself in plays, poses and impertinences.
For that is the only thing that makes Mr. Shaw, Mr. Shaw. So
when he comes to caricature a band of Christian martyrs, he pic-
tures them as laughing as hysterically and as boisterously as gallery-
gods ; as flirting in a mild, rather insipid fashion ; as singing hymns
like a crowd at a street corner prayer meeting ; as bandying epigrams
that savor of a dinner party or a lawn fete. But he passes over
with scarcely a touch the great quality that makes a martyr a
martyr the known determination to die rather than to betray the
known truth.
Eliminate the flirting, and I am quite ready to grant the pos-
sibility of the rest. Martyrs, we know, went joyously to martyr-
dom; that was part of their code of honor. Indeed, nothing in all
Androcles and the Lion even remotely approaches the grim humor
of St. Lawrence's request to his executioners to turn him over on
the gridiron, as his right side was quite done. But to accentuate
this quality to the detriment of their great characteristic, is to miss
the point that makes the caricature true. And this is what Mr.
Shaw has done. In this, as in so many of his other plays, he has
stuck up before us a set of pretty, decorated figures, who when they
speak give forth the voice of Mr. Shaw ; who when they pose strike
the attitudes of Mr. Shaw; who when they attempt to think, think
the thoughts and sentiments of Mr. Shaw.
Many of the editors and critics have seen fit to take Mr. Shaw's
play quite seriously. Perhaps he did mean it to be taken so.
1915-] MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW 583
Perhaps Androcles and the Lion is a fable play with a serious pur-
port. If so, then on this count Mr. Shaw is even more at fault than
on the other. If Androcles and the Lion be an attempt to give forth
Mr. Shaw's views on the subject of martyrs, then I shudder for Mr.
Shaw's views.
It would seem that the principle for which Christian martyrs
died was quite too clear and obvious to need explanation nowadays.
But when I read this remarkable play, I found that Mr. Shaw had
succeeded in so thoroughly obscuring it as to render it almost un-
recognizable. That is the very thing that makes the plays of Mr.
Shaw so baffling to the average playgoer. There is a gleam of
truth here and there, but so faint as to be quickly lost in the
shadows. What does he mean ? Whom is he attacking ? What is
he really preaching? What principles is he substituting for those
he derides or ignores? The agile Mr. Shaw gives little clue to his
purpose, and only the most careful sifting brings it to light. So,
after an evening at Androcles and the Lion, one might well ask in
amazement, "Then why did Christian martyrs die?" Mr. Shaw
fails adequately to state. The true principle of martyrdom which
flits vaguely through the play, is thoroughly obscured by false prin-
ciples satirically treated. May I repeat this true principle, which
my reader undoubtedly already knows?
The Christian martyrs, most of them converted pagans, had
given up family and their rights as citizens of the empire, to profess
faith in a proscribed religion. That religion taught them with
absolute conviction the Divinity of Christ, the sole dominion of one
omnipotent God, the immortality of their souls, and the truth of
the Church. In their eyes the religion of the pagans was devil
worship, and at least one of them was slain for preaching in the
face of his judges that the gods of the Gentiles were devils. They
could no more recognize the coexistent truth of a second and diver-
gent religion, than a modern astronomer could believe in the co-
existent truth of the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. They were
absolutely intolerant with the intolerance of all persons who are
thoroughly convinced of the truth of their position.
According to the Roman law which deified in its emperor the
power and omnipotence of the state, adherence to another than the
established religion was treason. Though as one of Mr. Shaw's
characters categorically states, neither the emperor nor any educated
man in Rome might have believed in the state religion as more than
a political expedient, the blame laid by the pagans on Christianity
584 MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW [Feb.,
for the downfall of the empire, which they attributed to the wrath
of the deserted gods shows that, with the people at least, the old
religion was very much of a reality. But for state purposes, it was
enough that outward conformity should be given; the conscience
could be of any religious cast or no religious cast as it chose.
But even this outward conformity, the Christians uncondi-
tionally and with the highest possible justification refused. They
refused to live externally a lie that their whole souls repudiated.
To them the throwing of a grain of incense on the altar of Jupiter
the test of orthodoxy was the acknowledgment, publicly and
formally, that Christ was false and Jupiter true. That grain of
incense was a tribute paid to devils ; it was an acknowledgment that
everything they professed as highest truth and loved as highest
beauty, was false and a sham. What mattered it if in their heart of
hearts they had built up a sanctuary to the true God? In the eyes of
all men they had denied Him. Their faith in their God was not
strong enough to stand the test of death. And because they were
true to their principles, they chose a brutal martyrdom.
And for my single self, I can think of nothing nobler. The
ages ring with the praises of Socrates, martyr of truth. Yet
Socrates, throughout all his life, lived a lie. He worshipped at the
shrines of gods whose existence he denied. Cicero lived a lie; for
the God he describes so eloquently in his essays was not the sleepy,
lustful gourmand whom the Romans deified. Yet Cicero laid incense
on the altar of Jupiter. The real ethical truth that one cannot think
one thing and live another, that a lie is a lie no less when one lives
it than when one utters it, found expression only with the advent
of Christianity. The very ideal that we prize so highly to-day,
absolute and unswerving loyalty to principle, was never more glori-
ously maintained than by the Christian martyrs.
Truth is absolute, dependent on no one. That I maintain the
more vigorously, as it is more and more made a thing purely sub-
jective. Yet if you stop to consider for a moment the possible
consequences of casting that tiny grain of incense, you can see for
yourself how false in practice, if not in theory, is the statement of
Mr. Shaw; "the truth, if there be truth, needs no martyrs." Let
us suppose that the Christian martyrs had flung on the altar that
tribute of incense. In the face of the world, which they were long-
ing to convert, they proclaimed: Our love for Christ is less than
our love of life; our conviction of the reality of a world of infinite
delights of which we prate so much, is really far less strong than
1915-] MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW 585
our conviction of the reality of the world about us; our fear of
God is not half so compelling as our fear of the lions. All that
the Christian martyrs died to prove would have fallen into dust
even as the grain of incense fell before the consuming fire. The
mighty Church that was to regenerate the world would never have
come forth from the catacombs, but would have found in them its
eternal tomb. Christianity would be instead of a living, acting
force, a bit of ancient history, unmourned and unsung.
Throughout Androcles and the Lion, Mr. Shaw shows faint
signs that he vaguely realizes this fundamental basis of Christian
martyrdom. But, as was intimated, he is quite incapable of ap-
preciating or understanding it, even though he were willing to dis-
play it fairly. Mr. Shaw is not himself a Christian, and quite
obviously he considers that the Christian religion is a tissue of senti-
ments, a pious subjective feeling without any radical basis in ob-
jective truth.
There Mr. Shaw is historically wrong. Whatever be the effect
of the principle that deeds not dogmas count in modern religions,
the early Church and the present martyr-bearing Church is es-
sentially dogmatic. That is only another way of saying that it be-
lieves and preaches an absolute, objective truth. Sentiments there
were and are, sentiments of love, hope, zeal and sacrifice. But it
is a love that is founded on the dogma of the Fatherhood and
generous providence of God; hope that has for its basis the dogma
that God is omnipotent, and that Christ, His divine Son, died to
save sinners; zeal that was born of the dogma that the Christian
creed is necessary for the world's salvation; self-sacrifice that would
be unintelligible without the dogmas of a future world, personal
immortality, the pricelessness of virtue, and the heinousness of sin.
This view of the Christian religion the whole attitude of Mr.
Shaw's martyrs contradicts. Lavinia's statement to the pagan cap-
tain is particularly illuminating. "Do you think," she says, "that I, a
woman, would quarrel with you for sacrificing to a woman god like
Diana if Diana meant to you what Christ meant to me? No, we
should kneel side by side before her altar like two children." Such
a sentiment no Christian martyr could possibly have uttered. It was
not a question of feeling, but ultimately of belief. To a martyr,
Christ was God; Diana the name for a devil. There was not the
slightest possibility of a parallel. No fellow feeling with the devout
of the pagan religion could even be imagined.
In one instance, in the apostasy of Spintho, Mr. Shaw comes
586 MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW [Feb.,
very near the truth. Incidently, it is instructive to note the ex-
planation given by Lavinia of her feelings toward martyrdom, in the
light of this apostasy. She says : "When men who believe neither in
their god nor mine drag me to the foot of a statue that has be-
come the symbol for the terror and darkness through which they
walk when they ask me to pledge my soul before the people
that this hideous idol is God, it is physically impossible If I
took a pinch of incense in my hand and stretched it out over the
altar fire, my hand would come back. My body would be true to
my faith, even if you could corrupt my mind."
Now note carefully. The essence of her repugnance to apostasy
is physical rather than supernatural. Faith might go, but the physical
repugnance would remain. Like the mouse that she was physically
incapable of handling, the incense brings with it a physical repulsion
that conquers even where her mind fails. And later on when her
" faith has been oozing ay/dy minute by minute with stories
and dreams fading away into nothing," her physical repulsion to
apostasy remains. When the physical repulsion fails, as in the case
of Spintho, apostasy follows. With protestations of faith on his
lips, with a conviction of the reality of the great truths, he flies
to seek the altar of incense. His physical instinct was too weak to
withstand the great reality of martyrdom.
Every Christian reading of the apostasy of this vile creature
instinctively breathes a sigh of relief. He recognizes as even Mr.
Shaw must have done in creating him, that there was lacking the one
thing necessary to make Spintho a martyr. That thing Mr. Shaw
calls physical repulsion, physical courage, if you will. That thing
the Christian calls cooperation with the supernatural help of God.
And just at this point it is that Mr. Shaw is incapable of understand-
ing the Christian martyrs.
The physical repulsion of Lavinia, unaided by the grace of
God, could no more have carried her through the pangs of martyr-
dom than the mental repulsion of Spintho. Physical feeling is
overcome by physical feeling. The martyrs whose flaming bodies
lighted the gardens of Nero, had far more than a physical repulsion
to keep them loyal to their God. How could you physically or
psychologically explain in a twelve-year old Agnes the courage of
martyrdom? By a physical repulsion or a purely abstract convic-
tion? The smile on the lips of the child Pancratius, the heroic
cheerfulness of women and children who through fire and the rack,
tearing with iron claws, scourging and mutilation went triumphantly
1915.] MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW 587
to their reward, cannot be explained by either of these theories.
Deep down in their hearts the supernatural help of God, which Mr.
Shaw ignores or knows nothing of, was sustaining their souls,
though their flesh shrank from the tortures. More than a mere
belief in the truths of Christianity was sustaining them. A man
may believe all that Christ teaches without having the courage to
face a contemptuous sneer. The supernatural strength of God
poured out upon His martyrs, and freely accepted by them, made
children stronger than the fire that burned them, filled tortured
maidens with the courage of a Joan of Arc, and sent physically
broken patriarchs, like the aged Polycarp, rejoicing to their death.
And because Mr. Shaw recognizes nothing of this, he has given us
the travesty called Androcles and the Lion.
The customary method of reproducing in their proper setting
and with just proportions the persons who have made history, is by
studying carefully the pictures tradition has handed down to us,
comparing their dominant characteristics, weighing their motives,
measuring their proportions in due perspective, collating and com-
bining. That is the customary method; but Mr. Shaw has thrown
all custom to the winds. Where in the name of all that is history
did he secure the originals of his martyrs? The answer is clearly
more flattering to the imagination than to the historical insight of
this clever playwright. For Androcles, Spintho, Lavinia, and Fer-
rovius sprang full grown from the brain of Mr. Shaw. Their like
was quite unknown heretofore.
For one thing, however, we owe their creator the deepest grati-
tude. Had he allowed his creatures in the end to be numbered
among the martyrs of history, we could never have forgiven him.
But and here we pause to thank him sincerely not one of his
characters attains that honor. For once Mr. Shaw has been true
to nature, and has done the obvious. Not even his ingeniousness
could have gained for these pseudo-Christians the martyr's crown.
To whom shall we compare Androcles? I have turned the
pages of the Roman Marty rology, that terse epitome of heroic
faith, without finding anyone even remotely resembling this man
of tabby cats. Perhaps somewhere in the ancient records of the
Corinthian S. P. C. A., a personality like his may have slipped in.
But I am sure that the officers of that postulated society must have
expelled him on discovery. The menagerie keeper was quite right
in saying : " He is not a Christian." His reason for refusing
to sacrifice to Diana is surely very cogent. " She is a huntress and
588 MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW [Feb.,
kills things." He really doesn't think he could consent to go to
heaven if he thought there were no animals there. The pain of
martyrdom after all will not be so bad, for think how the lion will
enjoy eating him. It is only the public denial of the faith that he
dreads, and that not so intensely, as his advice to Ferrovius clearly
shows. "If you could arrange for me to sacrifice when nobody was
looking, I shouldn't mind : But I must go into the arena with the
rest. My Honor, you know ! " The character of Androcles is
ridiculous, I admit ; and his horse-play with the lion and the emperor
may impress the frivolous playgoer as very funny; but as a type of
Christian ugh !
When the armies of Mohammed marched over Asia and Africa,
they numbered in their ranks a host of licentious youths whose one
ambition was to fall in battle, so that they might pass straight from
this life of rottenness to the lustful paradise beyond. And when the
wars of the Protestant Revolution were making Europe a battle-
field, the vilest men of the times took sides in the conflict, fighting
under the cloak of religion for the gratification of their basest
passions.
There is little need to dwell long on the character of the wretched
Spintho. He was not even Christian in name. No man of his
brutish nature could possibly have been attracted by the purely
spiritual happiness promised the faithful Christian. The words of
Androcles to him are surely significant : " Heaven will be a very
dull place for a man of your temperament." If Mr. Shaw had de-
sired to bring the truths of Christianity into contempt, he could not
have adopted a more successful plan than that of placing them on
the lips of Spintho. And yet his statements are only half truths.
He is quite correct in saying that all martyrs go to heaven ; but he
has forgotten that only he is worthy of martyrdom whose soul has
been cleansed from sin in the great love of Christ, and whose heart
has effectively turned from the goods of earth to the goods of
eternity. And I trust that in the midst of his disgust for the miser-
able cant of this wretched man, the reader too will not forget these
basic facts.
Mr. Shaw has time and time declared that he does
not believe in miracles. And because he does not he created
Ferrovius. The wonderful conversions of the early Church
must somehow be explained away, and satire is always an
effective instrument where argument is lacking. The martyrs
prior to the entrance of Ferrovius, tell in awestruck tones of
1915.] MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW 589
the conversions wrought by this newly-baptized Christian, just
as the early Christians might have told among themselves of the
wonderful conversions of Paul, so lately Saul. Then comes Ferro-
vius himself, and the whole idea of miraculous conversions is crushed
amid a roar of laughter. Not a miracle, but the fear inspired by
this bull of a man has brought pagans to the faith. We see him
towering above a trembling pagan, who is ready at his bidding to
do anything, yes, even embrace Christianity; we hear him tell of
the youth whose hair was turned white in a single night, but whose
conversion he finally wrested from him. And the inference? As
unfair and one-sided as an inference could possibly be ; such ridic-
ulous things have the Christians called miracles. Since he could
not possibly refute them, Mr. Shaw has forced his audience to laugh
at miracles.
Just which one of the Christian martyrs Mr. Shaw had in
mind when he conceived Lavinia, it is difficult to imagine. Mentally
I placed her beside St. Cecilia, who like herself was a patrician. And
on the one hand I saw a Christian maiden wedded to a pagan noble-
man, impressing on his mind by her innate purity of soul the highest
ideal of chastity and virtue. On the other I saw a Christian maiden
on the brink of martyrdom, flirting with a Roman captain. I
marked on the one hand, how this brave woman sent before her to
death her husband and her brother-in-law whom she had converted ;
while on the other I marked how this woman encouraged the
apostasy of her fellow-captives. On the one hand, I saw an heroic
maiden bathed in her own blood, lying with a triple sword stroke in
her delicate neck ; on the other, I saw another Christian maiden, for-
getful of the glory of martyrdom she had been so near to gaining,
return to her home filled with the thought of her handsome captain.
And as I noted throughout the supreme confidence of the one and
the hesitancy and doubt of the other, I fancied that the Church
that honors a St. Cecilia would have been slow to place in its
calendar a St. Lavinia.
Mr. Shaw's play, Androcles and the Lion, has more of the
satire about it than we are at first inclined to suspect. You remem-
ber the instances so frequently recurring in the history of the early
persecutions where lions who had purposely been starved for days
licked the feet of the defenceless martyrs, and could not be goaded
on to do them the slightest hurt? The miracles, for miracles they
were, which led many of the spectators to embrace Christianity, have
been cleverly burlesqued by Mr. Shaw in Androcles and the Lion.
590 MARTYRS ACCORDING TO BERNARD SHAW [Feb.,
If when next you read of the miraculous docility of the ravening
beasts fawning upon the Christian, you recall the romping horse-play
of Androcles and his pet lion and smile, the satire has accomplished
its purpose.
More than that. The grain of truth that lurks here and there
has so been placed as to make it sound more repellant than error.
The truths of Christianity, even the most sublime, on the lips of a
Spintho sound false and hollow. The prayer of Androcles and the
cant humility of Ferrovius disgust us. And throughout there is
just enough fun poked at Christian principles to make a weak-kneed
Christian wish he were on the other side.
When Cervantes drew his Don Quixote, he had a definite end in
view. He was aiming the death blow at a decadent chivalry.
When Aristophanes staged his comedies, he had in mind the cor-
rection of what he considered abuses. That is the proper object of
satire. Mr. Shaw is the Aristophanes of to-day, but minus the
motive. I was surely not aware that the abuse of being martyred
was becoming over common nowadays. I was not even aware
that Christianity for the last time had served with its stimulating
hope, its sublime ideals, its soul-satisfying dogmas, the higher nature
of man. When it becomes an abuse to die for the truth that is in
one, when Christianity no longer brings light and hope to human
souls, then Androcles and the Lion will find its place. In the long
interim, I beg the reader to remember that Mr. Shaw was correct
in every sense of the word when he called his drama a fable play.
THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM.
BY JOYCE KILMER.
T a recent meeting of the English Poetry Society, Mile.
Coppin, 1 a distinguished Belgian poetess, who now,
like so many of her compatriots, is a refugee in
London, said : " I believe we have been too pros-
perous, too fond of pleasure. We are being purged
and in our adversity we have found our nationality. If ever Eng-
land, France, and Russia make a new Belgium, we shall be more
simple and hard-working."
Those of us who believe that the character of a nation is, to
a great extent, revealed in its literature cannot doubt that Mile.
Coppin's words are true. Surely the sick fancies of Maurice
Maeterlinck (to mention the most conspicuous of Belgian men of
letters) could come into being only in a land suffering from over-
much civilization, in a land whose citizens are too sophisticated
for common and wholesome delights. Even more than the elaborate
obscenities of Iwan Gilkin and Albert Giraud, Maeterlinck's morbid
studies of mental, spiritual, and physical degradation belong to
that sort of literature which is called "decadent." And decadent
literature usually is produced for and by people who need to be,
in Mile. Coppin's words, " more simple and hard-working."
That the great tragedy which has overtaken Belgium will have
a beneficial effect upon its literature is not to be doubted. Of
course, the first result is an almost total cessation of creative activ-
ity; one cannot handle a rifle and a pen at the same time. But
with the return of peace must come the development of a new
Belgian literature, a literature which is not an echo of the salon-
philosophies of Paris and Berlin, but a beautiful expression of the
soul of a strong and brave race.
It is possible that when the poets of a re-created Belgium are
singing their clear songs, the world, comparing them with Gilkin,
Giraud, Maeterlinck, and the Verhaeren of Les Debacles and Les
Flambeaux Noirs will say : " Now, for the first time, Belgian
poetry deserves the attention of those who are interested in other
than the pathological aspects of literature! Not until the land had
*The Poetry Review, November, 1914, p. 202.
592 THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM [Feb.,
been purified by blood and flame did the Spirit of Beauty come to
dwell in Flanders ! "
But this criticism will be unjust. Great literary movements
do not spontaneously come into being; they develop slowly and
surely through the centuries. If all the poetry of Belgium were
the work of charlatans and vicious men, then, not even this tre-
mendous war could stimulate it into healthy life. The fame of
Maeterlinck's dismal dramas, and of the least worthy poems of Emile
Verhaeren, should not make us oblivious of the fact that Belgium
has, and has always had, its small, but brilliant, company of sincere
and gifted writers, men who have not debased their art, but have
held in honor the sacred traditions of their high calling. He who,
neglecting the productions of the symbolists, decadents, and similar
phantasists, turns his attention to the authentic literature of the
Belgian people, finds a strain of poetry white and beautiful, and as
fervently Catholic as the immortal songs of Crashaw and Francis
Thompson. It is not the disciples of Baudelaire and Mallarme
who have planted the seeds of poetry that soon shall burst into
splendid bloom, but men like Thomas Braun and Georges Ramaek-
ers, men who, serving faithfully their Muse, have never wavered
in their allegiance to the Mistress of all the Arts, the Catholic
Church.
It must not be thought that these poets write only religious
poems. They have, indeed, produced such masterpieces of devo-
tional verse as Braun's Livre des Benedictions and Ramaekers'
Le Chant des Trois Regnes. But when their poetry is not religious
it is not, at any rate, irreligious ; they " utter nothing base." And
surely even the lightest of secular poems may do its author's
Catholicism no discredit. As Francis Thompson said of poetry 2
in the eloquent appeal to the " fathers of the Church, pastors of the
Church, pious laics of the Church " with which his most famous
essay begins, " Eye her not askance if she seldom sing directly of
religion: the bird gives glory to God though it sings only of its
own innocent loves Suffer her to wanton, suffer her to play,
so she play round the foot of the Cross ! "
Indeed, what is true of much modern English verse is true also
of that of Belgium, there are Catholic poets who seldom in their
work refer directly to their faith, and there are infidel poets who
have laid impious hands on the Church's treasures, and decorate
' Shelley, in The Works of Francis Thompson (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons), p. 3.
1915-] THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM 593
their rhymes with rich ecclesiastical imagery and the fragrant names
of the Saints. So we find, for example, Emile Verhaeren using
the first chapters of Genesis as the theme of a poem 3 that is any-
thing but edifying, while that pious Catholic, Thomas Braun, writes
a volume of verses about postage stamps. 4
There are certain optimistic persons who believe that the
general use in literature of sacred names and traditions augurs
well for the spread of faith. A member of an Anglican religious
order, who two years ago delivered a series of lectures in New
York City, prophesied a mighty recrudescence of religion among
the poets of England, and based his prophecy, apparently, on the
fact that Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie and other brilliant young
writers have made ballads out of some of the most picturesque
of the legends about the Saints. He did not see that Mr. Aber-
crombie selected his themes solely because of their literary value.
There are many poets who eagerly avail themselves of the stores
which are the Church's heritage, who introduce the name of the
Blessed Virgin into their verses exactly as they would introduce
that of Diana, or Venus or any creature of fable. Personally, I
have never been able to enjoy the recital, however skillful, of a
sacred story by a poet \vho did not believe in it, and therefore I
cannot grow enthusiastic over the knowledge that many Belgian
poets, whose philosophies are hostile to the Church, like to write
about monstrances and chalices and altars, and to tell ostentatiously
" human " stories about sacred people in general and St. Mary
Magdalen in particular. I find Thomas Braun's poems about post-
age stamps more edifying.
The modern Catholic poets of Belgium may be roughly divided
into two groups, the mystics and the primitives. These terms are
here used merely for the purposes of this classification, and cannot
perhaps be justified by scientific criticism. Among the mystics
I would include such writers as Georges Ramaekers, the brilliant
editor of Le Catholique, and perhaps Max Elskamp, who use elab-
orate and complicated symbols, and, in general, may be said to do
in verse what the late Joris Karl Huysmans, after his conversion to
Catholicism, did in prose. Among the primitives I would place
such poets as Victor Kinon and Thomas Braun, who look for their
inspirations to the ancient religious life of Flanders, in all its
picturesque simplicity, and are more concerned with celebrating the
z Le Rythme souverain in Les Rythmes souverains (Mercure de France).
* Philatelic (Bibliotheque de 1'Occident).
VOL. C. 38
594 THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM [Feb.,
piety of simple Flemish peasants than with endeavoring to penetrate
high mysteries.
It is to that valued friend of Belgian letters, Mr. Jethro Bithell,
of Birbeck College, London, whose translation of Stefan Zweig's
book 5 on Verhaeren has recently earned him the gratitude of the
English-speaking public, that we owe this excellent version of
Thomas Braun's The Benediction of the Nuptial Ring, taken from
this poet's The Book of the Benedictions* The directness and sin-
cerity of this poem suggest the work of George Herbert.
THE BENEDICTION OF THE NUPTIAL RING. 7
" That she who shall wear it, keep faith unchanged with her husband and ever
live in mutual love"
Almighty God, bless now the ring of gold
Which bride and bridegroom shall together hold!
They whom fresh water gave to You are now
United in You by the marriage vow.
The ring is of a heavy, beaten ore,
And yet it shall not make the finger sore,
But easefully be carried day and night,
Because its secret spirit makes it light.
Its perfect circle sinks into the skin,
Nor hurts it, and the phalanx growing thin
Under its pressure molds itself ere long,
Yet keeps its agile grace and still is strong.
So love, which in this symbol lies, with no
Beginning more nor ending here below,
Shall, if You bless it, Lord, like gold resist,
And never show decay, nor flaw, nor twist,
And be so light, though solid, that the soul,
A composite yet indivisible whole,
Shall keep its tender impress to the last,
And never know the bonds that bind it fast.
In many of Thomas Braun's poems is to be found a quality
suggestive of the folk-song. Like the Verhaeren of Les Flamandes,
Braun writes of those huge, boisterous farmers and merchants who
live for us on the canvasses of Brauwer and Jan Steen. But he
writes of them, it need scarcely be said, in a very different spirit.
Verhaeren saw only their gluttony, drunkenness, and coarseness;
*Emile Verhaeren (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.).
*Le Livre de Benedictions.
1 Contemporary Belgian Poetry, selected and translated by Jethro Bithell, M.A.
(New York: Parker P. Simmons. 40 cents), p. 2.
1915-] THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM 595
Braun sees their courage, industry, good-nature, piety. In fact,
Verhaeren saw their bodies, Braun sees their souls.
In an essay 8 on Verhaeren recently printed, I called attention
to the fact that while Verhaeren wrote of the Flemings with enthu-
siasm, and with repulsively careful attention to detail, he did not
write of them with sympathy. He does not join in the revels about
which he writes ; he is interested in his loud purple- faced peasants,
but with his interest is mingled a certain scorn. Thomas Braun,
on the other hand, is thoroughly in sympathy with the life of which
he writes ; the reader feels that such a poem as The Benediction of
Wine, for example, was written by a man who is artist enough
to share actually in the strong simple piety of the keeper of the
vineyard. The quaintness of Thomas Braun's poems, which is
emphasized by the woodcuts made to accompany them by his brother
who is a Benedictine monk, is not an affectation, it is a quality
proper to the work of a man who, like Wordsworth, sees beauty
chiefly in simplicity. Like Coventry Patmore, he has " divine
frivolity," he is acquainted with the mirth of the Saints. In his
own beautiful words, he knows how to play in the straw with the
Child of Bethlehem.
Georges Ramaekers is a poet whose verse is for the most part
too obscure to lend itself readily to translation. He will write a
poem, for example, on mushrooms, 9 and the reader will think after
several minutes that he is being told merely about the common
fungi. Then it comes to him that it is the Tree of Life that these
maleficent growths are attacking; then they cover the columns of
the Church and actually reach the Host Itself. The poem is, it
seems, a denunciation <5f certain heresies, or of sloth, indifference,
and other spiritual evils, but its meaning cannot adequately be given
in an English translation.
Here is a similar poem, which, in Mr. Bithell's translation,
shows Georges Ramaeker's symbolic method at its best and clearest.
THE THISTLE. 10
Rooted on herbless peaks, where its erect
And prickly leaves, austerely cold and dumb,
Hold the slow, scaly serpent in respect,
The Gothic thistle, while the insects' hum
'The New York Times Sunday Magazine, December 27, 1914, p. 7.
* Contemporary Belgian Poetry, selected and translated by Jethro Bithell, M.A.
(New York: Parker P. Simmons. 40 cents), pp. 124, 125, 126.
"Ibid., p. 124.
596 THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM [Feb.,
Sounds far off, rears above the rock it scorns
Its rigid virtue for the Heavens to see.
The towering boulders guard it. And the bee
Makes honey from the blossoms on its thorns.
Victor Kinon, like that very different poet, Albert Giraud, the
chief Belgian disciple of Baudelaire, is of Walloon descent. Mr.
Bithell calls this poet a " fervent Roman Catholic," 11 but the poems
which he has selected for translation are entirely secular in theme
and treatment. They show, however, that their author is free from
the vices of extreme realism and hysteria, which afflict many of his
contemporaries. Sometimes it is fair to judge a poet's whole atti-
tude toward life from his love poems. When decadence and feverish
eroticism are in fashion, it is refreshing to come upon a poet sane
enough to write so honest and delicate as this of Victor Kinon.
HIDING FROM THE WORLD. 12
Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet,
And open in the dewy, dustless air
Its dainty chalice with blue petals, where
The shade of bushes makes a shy retreat?
And we will frame our daily happiness
By joining hearts, lips, brows in rapt caress
Far from the world, its noises and conceit.
Shall we not hide our modest love between
Trees wafting cool on flowers and grasses green?
In Victor Kinon's poetry is shown a knowledge of nature like
that possessed by that American poet whose death the world of
letters has not ceased to mourn, Madison (iawein. He sketches a
landscape in a few vigorous lines, and the picture is vivid and true.
This little poem might be a lyrical rendition of a Monet painting.
THE SETTING SUN. 13
The stainless snow and the blue,
Lit by a pure gold star,
Nearly meet, but a bar
Of fire separates the two.
A rime-frosted, black pinewood,
Raising, as waves roll foam,
Its lances toothed like a comb,
Dams the horizon's blood.
u lbid., Introduction, p. xxviii. "Ibid., p. 63. 13 Ibid., p. 65.
1915-] THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM 597
In a tomb of blue and white
Nothing stirs save a crow,
Unfolding solemnly now
Its silky wing black as night.
It is difficult to resist the temptation to read into the Catholic
fold many Belgian poets who do not, perhaps, belong there. There
is scarcely a man of letters in Belgium who does not owe his intro-
duction to literature to the Catholic Church. The Catholic schools
and universities of Belgium have given a knowledge of art and
poetry to many a poet who now pays for the gift his little stanzas
of abuse. But some of them, and among them must be counted
Emile Verhaeren, seem to be thinking of their old faith, now that
the need of faith has become terribly apparent to them. Verhaeren,
especially, seems to be about to stop in his weary flight from the
Hound of Heaven. For many years he was a writer of poems
that seemed to betray a mind absolutely diseased. There were real-
istic studies of human vice that seemed like pages of Zola done into
verse, and there were extraordinary attempts (of which Stefan
Zweig speaks approvingly) to " chisel a new face of God." But
since his retirement to his little cottage at Caillou-qui-Bique, he has
written poems that are for the most part exaltations of pure love,
as lofty in thought as they are finished in composition. Mr.
Bithell's translation of this little song of wedded love shows that
Verhaeren has left far behind him the grossness of Les Flamandes
and the morbidness of Les Flambeaux Noirs.
THIS IS THE GOOD HOUR WHEN THE LAMP IS LIT. 14
This is the good hour when the lamp is lit.
All is calm, and consoling, and dear,
And the silence is such that you could hear
A feather falling in it.
This is the good hour when to my chair my love will flit
As breezes blow,
As smoke will rise,
Gentle, slow,
She says nothing at first and I am listening ;
I hear all her soul, I surprise
Its gushing and glistening,
And I kiss her eyes.
14 Ibid., pp. 194, 195.
598 THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM [Feb.,
This is the good hour when the lamp is lit.
When hearts will say
How they have loved each other through the day.
And one says such simple things:
The fruit one from the garden brings;
The flower that one has seen
Opening in mosses green ;
And the heart will of a sudden thrill and glow,
Remembering some faded word of love
Found in a drawer beneath a cast-off glove
In a letter of a year ago.
But the poem which indicates most clearly the tremendous
change that his nation's tragedy has brought to Verhaeren, is that
inspired by the demolition of the Cathedral of Rheims. A year ago,
it may be, Verhaeren would have thought of this cathedral merely
as a beautiful piece of architecture, as an ancient and lovely land-
mark. Now that it has suffered from the cannon of an invading
army, he remembers suddenly the high use for which it was intended,
the destruction of the sacred images and vessels reminds him, in
spite of all his sophistry, that these things were not mere works of
art. Once more, as in those far-away years when, with Georges
Rodenbach, Charles Van Lerberghe, and Maurice Maeterlinck, he
learned of literature and life at the Jesuit College of Sainte-Barbe,
he is able to understand that most necessary of all acts, worship.
The poem is so significant, so important to all who desire an insight
into the psychology of Verhaeren and of literary Belgium, that I
venture to quote here my own translation of it. It by no means
does justice to the beauty of the original.
THE CATHEDRAL OF RHEIMS. 15
He who walks through the meadows of Champagne
At noon in Fall, when leaves like gold appear,
Sees it draw near
Like some great mountain set upon the plain.
From radiant dawn until the close of day,
Nearer it grows
To him who goes
"The New York Times Sunday Magazine, December 27, 1914, p. 7.
1915-] THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM 599
Across the country. When tall towers lay
Their shadowy pall
Upon his way,
He enters, where
The solid stone is hollowed deep by all
Its centuries of beauty and of prayer.
Ancient French temple! thou whose hundred kings
Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls,
Tell me; within thy memory-hallowed halls
What chant of triumph or what war-song rings ?
Thou hast known Clovis and his Prankish train,
Whose mighty hand Saint Remy's hand did keep,
And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep
An echo of the voice of Charlemagne.
For God thou hast known fear, when from His side
Men wandered, seeking alien shrines and new,
But still the sky was bountiful and blue
And thou wast crowned with France's love and pride.
Sacred thou art, from pinnacle to base ;
And in thy panes of gold and scarlet glass
The setting sun sees thousandfold his face ;
Sorrow and joy in stately silence pass
Across thy walls, the shadow and the light;
Around thy lofty pillars, tapers white
Illuminate, with delicate sharp flames,
The brows of saints with venerable names,
And in the night erect a fiery wall,
A great but silent fervor burns in all
Those simple folk who kneel, pathetic, dumb,
And know that down below, beside the Rhine
Cannon, horses, soldiers, flags in line
With blare of trumpets, mighty armies come.
Suddenly, each knows fear;
Swift rumors pass, that every one must hear,
The hostile banners blaze against the sky
And by the embassies mobs rage and cry.
Now war has come and peace is at an end.
On Paris town the German troops descend.
They are turned back, and driven to Champagne.
And now as to so many weary men,
The glorious temple gives them welcome, when
It meets them at the bottom of the plain.
6oo THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM [Feb.,
At once, they set their cannon in its way.
There is no gable now, nor wall
That does not suffer, night and day,
As shot and shell in crushing torrents fall.
The stricken tocsin quivers through the tower;
The triple nave, the apse, the lonely choir
Are circled, hour by hour,
With thundering bands of fire
And Death is scattered broadcast among men.
And then
That which was splendid with baptismal grace ;
The stately arches soaring into space,
The transepts, columns, windows gray and gold,
The organ, in whose tones the ocean rolled,
The crypts, of mighty shades the dwelling places,
The Virgin's gentle hands, the Saints' pure faces,
All, even the pardoning hands of Christ the Lord
Were struck and broken by the wanton sword
Of sacrilegious lust.
O beauty slain, O glory in the dust !
Strong walls of faith, most basely overthrown!
The crawling flames, like adders glistening
Ate the white fabric of this lovely thing.
Now from its soul rose a piteous moan,
The soul that always loved the just and fair.
Granite and marble loud their woe confessed,
The silver monstrances that Popes had blessed,
The chalices and lamps and crosiers rare
Were seared and twisted by a flaming breath;
The horror everywhere did range and swell,
The guardian Saints into this furnace fell,
Their bitter tears and screams were stilled in death.
Around the flames armed hosts are skirmishing.
The burning sun reflects the lurid scene ;
The German army, fighting for its life,
Rallies its torn and terrified left wing;
And, as they near this place
The imperial eagles see
Before them in their flight,
Here, in the solemn night,
The old Cathedral to the years to be
Showing, with wounded arms, their own disgrace.
1915-] THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM 601
Of Verhaeren's school-fellows at Sainte-Barbe, one, Maurice
Maeterlinck, is already enjoying a fame which exceeds his deserts,
and is not likely to endure. Georges Rodenbach, who died in 1898,
wrote, like Verhaeren, of Flemish peasants, but he gave them a
romantic glamour which has alienated critics who admire natural-
istic poetry. Stefan Zweig has little use for him, and Jethro
Bithell 16 speaks of his " weary Alexandrians," and says that his
reputation has waned considerably since his death. But Charles
C. Clarke, of the Sheffield Scientific School, in the course of an
illuminating article 17 on Belgian literature, says that Rodenbach's
poems have considerable vogue in France. From his discussion of
Rodenbach I quote this felicitously phrased paragraph.
Morbid and mystic like his prose, Rodenbach's poetry has a
delicacy and a silvery tone that are inimitable. Out of almost
nothing it weaves thoughts and calls up memories of wonder-
fully melancholy beauty. In it water is always stagnant, giv-
ing chill reflections of the sky through trees; lights are dim,
footsteps noiseless ; rooms are repositories of reminders of the
past, where silence speaks to the heart through sad aspects.
The extent to which Rodenbach uses such notes constitutes his
originality. His skill in avoiding every common formula and
his delicate choice of metaphors seem really inspiration. No
one has imitated his poems of gray tints and muffled sounds,
his mourning designs of dull filigree, without falling into
monotony and trifling. It is not enough praise for a poet to
say of him that he was unapproachable in picturing the acces-
sories of melancholy ; but Rodenbach deserves no more, unless
it be our gratitude for preserving in literature something of
ancient Flanders which battle and flame have destroyed beyond
material restoration.
Another school-fellow, of Verhaeren, Charles Van Lerberghe,
can scarcely, I believe, be called a Catholic poet, although like Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, whose disciple he was, his verse is filled with
Catholic symbolism. In a country like Belgium, in which nearly
all the education is Catholic, and in which nearly every poet "is,
at any rate nominally, a Catholic, it is sometimes difficult to distin-
guish between writers who have a genuinely devotional spirit, and
those who merely like to play with mysticism. There .are, for
18 Contemporary Belgian Poetry, selected and translated by Jethro Bithell, M.A.
(New York: Parker P. Simmons. 40 cents), Introduction, p. xxv.
17 The Literature of the Belgians, in The Yale Review, January, 1915, p. 295.
602 THE CATHOLIC POETS OF BELGIUM [Feb.,
example, the amazing poems of Max Elskamp. He writes simple
and charming poems about the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child,
and seems, indeed, to have the hardy faith of his Flemish ancestors.
But the simplicity of his poems is not always convincing; the reader
remembers that the late William Sharpe wrote, as " Fiona Mac-
Leod/' poems that seemed to flame with all the piety of the Gael.
And William Sharpe was, as he took care to let the world know,
a " pagan." The feeling that Elskamp's interest in religion is
chiefly literary is strengthened when we learn from Mr. Bithell 18
that most of the sacred names in his poems have a symbolic meaning,
that the Blessed Virgin means merely " the pure woman," and the
Christ Child simply " the delicious infancy." Intellectual caprices
like this seldom accompany genuine devotional feeling.
But at any rate there is nothing to disgust or pain the reader
in Elskamp's verse ; whether or not be believes in the sacred person-
ages of whom he writes, he does not treat them irreverently. His
Catholicism, however, is not so convincing as is that of Thomas
Braun and Georges Ramaekers.
It is good to find that in Belgium, a country the literature of
which must inevitably reflect from time to time the strange fashions
of Germany and France, there has been preserved through the years
the poetry of Catholic tradition. Belgian poetry must become more
and more spiritual; the poets have seen and felt things mighty
and terrible, and they can no longer concern themselves with erotic
fancies and the nuances of their own emotions. In days to come,
historians of literature will perhaps see that on the thought of
Belgium as on the thought of all Europe, this war has had a clarify-
ing and strengthening effect. Good still comes from evil, sweetness
from force, and honeycomb out of the lion's carcass. Belgium may
say, in the words 19 of one of the truest poets of our time :
Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part,
Break me the marble of my heart
And of its fragments pave a street
Where, to my bliss, myself may meet
One hastening with pierced feet.
18 Contemporary Belgian Poetry, selected and translated by Jethro Bithell, M.A.
(New York: Parker P. Simmons. 40 cents), Notes, p. 205.
19 Sorrow, in Bread and Circuses, by Helen Parry Eden (New York: John Lane
Co.), p. 9.
"A TOUCH OF THE FEVER."
BY THOMAS B. REILLY.
HOUGH he might have shared, in excellent company,
the offerings of either a Parisian or a London cuisine,
Adrian Hawley had, for almost a fortnight, heroic-
ally dined alone at the table under the mulberry trees
in the little garden of the Villa Penza. Nevertheless,
on the eleventh day, something happened. The world moved, and his
godmother, Mrs. Terrence OToole, arrived to shed the light of her
countenance upon him. It was not until coffee had been served,
however, that she opened her attack upon the fortress of his inmost
thought.
" You have my permission for a cigarette," said she, " 'twill
induce a strain of logic."
Adrian, with a smile of acknowledgment, took advantage of the
indult.
Whereupon his godmother remarked : " I told you that I met
Therese Langf ord in London ? "
" Y e s," murmured Adrian defensively.
" She's beset and besieged," sighed the old lady, " the cavaliers
are ubiquitous."
Adrian smiled his thought, a crystal-clear thought, which said
plainly and convincingly, " She deserves the best."
"But," announced Mrs. OToole," she's adamant. If she
won't, she won't. Horses couldn't drag her the other way."
Adrian, for the briefest of seconds, glanced quizzically across
the table.
" Don't ask me why," said Mrs. O'Toole. " You men are the
blind creatures."
Adrian dared no comment.
His godmother regarded him musingly a moment, then de-
manded : " What we you thinking of ? "
" Nothing like that," said Adrian quietly.
" Nonsense ! " threw out the other briskly. Then, leaning
forward, she inquired confidentially : " Why don't you ask
her?"
" Do you think I've lost my reason? " returned Adrian.
6o 4 "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" [Feb.,
" You will, if you don't," retorted Mrs. O'Toole.
Adrian laughed dissentingly.
" Tis no laughing matter," asserted the old lady warmly.
" And why ? " he sought, with a slightly inquiring glance.
" Would you deliberately break a woman's heart? " asked his
godmother feelingly.
" But," demurred Adrian, " that's just what I'm trying to
avoid."
The old lady drew back in an attitude of scoffing amazement.
Whereupon Adrian reminded her : " She's disastrously rich."
" Tut ! " derided the other. " Is she any the less a woman
because of that accident? "
"You don't suppose I'd permit her to support me?" he ad-
vanced, frowning.
" Nonsense ! " scoffed the other vigorously.
" What else would it amount to ? " sought Adrian. " She's
accustomed to a standard of living I couldn't possibly afford."
:t You're proud," murmured his godmother.
' You wouldn't have me hold out my hand every time I wanted
carfare, a tube of gamboge, or a pair of gloves? "
" Stop quibbling ! " commanded the old lady.
" The principle's the same," said Adrian doggedly.
" Principle ! " exclaimed the old lady. " There's only one
principle to govern a man in such cases."
He sought enlightenment.
" You're to play fair," she announced. " You're not the only
one concerned. Remember that ! "
Adrian shook his head thoughtfully.
" In the meantime," threw out the other, " you might keep in
touch with your friends."
" Friends," remarked Adrian, " are what you make them.
There's a verse pat to the thought "
"Forbear! " interposed the old lady, one hand upraised com-
mandingly.
" As you will," said he indulgently, " but I haven't quoted
a poet in six weeks."
" Hm m," commented the other, with a look, " that's how
far advanced "
" But," interposed Adrian hastily, " not in that direction."
" Nor in any other," retorted his godmother, " you're traveling
a vicious circle."
1915-] "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" 605
" Which reminds me " began Adrian.
" That you couldn't possibly run up to London for a day or so,"
suggested Mrs. O'Toole with a challenging look.
" No o," he murmured, " discretion's my guiding star."
" You're as stubborn as she is," muttered the old lady, getting
ready to take her leave.
Ten minutes later, at the gateway of the little garden, she
shook a reproving forefinger at him, and bade him adieu with a
frowning " You deserve to lose her."
With that cruel sentiment for company, Adrian strolled back
to the table under the trees, where he found Dolorita Concetta di
Maio leisurely gathering up the dinner things.
"Who is that little old lady?" asked the girl.
" That? " returned Adrian, " that's my nemesis."
'' Your what ? " inquired Dolorita, frowning.
" My godmother," said Adrian. " Why? "
" I thought it might be her mother," murmured Dolorita.
" Whose mother ? " sought Adrian.
" The beautiful lady's, whose picture stands on the table in your
room," replied the girl
" Oh," said Adrian, looking off across the garden.
" She is very beautiful," sighed Dolorita.
" She is an old dear, isn't she ? " conceded Adrian.
" I don't mean your godmother," said Dolorita.
" Oh," murmured Adrian.
"Is she an American the beautiful lady?" asked the girl.
" Yes," replied Adrian.
" What's her name ? " sought the girl.
" Therese Dolores," sighed the other.
The girl regarded him shrewdly a moment, then inquired:
" And what are you doing in my country ? "
" Oh er why, I'm just traveling for pleasure, you know,"
said Adrian.
' You don't look happy," mused Dolorita.
" No ? " returned Adrian, disconcerted.
Dolorita shook her head and, catching sight of a delicate,
jewelled band circling his little finger, asked : " Is that your ring? "
' Yes," replied Adrian, stretching out his finger.
" It doesn't look like a man's ring," commented the critic.
" It isn't," acknowledged Adrian, with a laugh, a memory.
" Did it belong to her ? " inquired Dolorita.
6o6 "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" [Feb.,
" No o," said Adrian reminiscently, " but it came near it
one day."
' Ah," murmured Dolorita with sisterly comprehension.
Adrian sat turning the ring around his finger.
' You aren't quite happy, are you? " conjectured the girl.
" How do you know? " countered Adrian, amused.
" I know only what I see," replied the girl.
" Well," counselled Adrian, smiling, " you should always be-
lieve more than you see." And, after a brief suspension, " Are you
so furiously happy ? "
But the girl, toying with the sugar tongs, looked across the
garden silent.
:t You too," sighed Adrian in English.
Four days later, the world again moved, and Adrian received a
letter. That evening, after a scarcely tasted meal, he got his cap
and stick and set off down the valley. It was very late when -
chilled to the bone, his clothes wet with heavy mist he returned
to his lodgings. Mari' Agnese met him at the doorway, frowning
disapproval.
" Signorino was very unwise," she murmured. " The night
air is bad.
Adrian shivered.
Mari' Agnese, going into the kitchen, reappeared a moment
later with a glass of steaming liquid.
" Drink it," she commanded.
Adrian, in the midst of another chill, obeyed.
" Signorino must go to bed at once," said Mari' Agnese.
Whereupon, Adrian went to his room, doffed his wet clothes,
got into his lounging robe and slippers and, again, for the fifth or
sixth time, scanned the letter that had upset him. It was the briefest
and clearest of communications, but Adrian persisted in reading
between the lines. A careful re-perusal failing to disclose any sub-
intention, he sat staring at the few lines, which announced :
Therese and I are leaving to-night for the south. We
shall be at Turin this day two weeks. And I may as well tell
you that we intend to look you up. Therese is on her way to
Rome to meet the Culvertons Katherine and Dick. You may
put two and two together for yourself. I'm disappointed in you.
Adrian, for a long time, sat lost in thought. Finally, with
a sigh of renouncement, he murmured : " Dick Culverton."
1915.] "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" 607
And, after a moment's consideration, agreed : " She couldn't
possibly do better."
A further consideration resulted in the announcement : " With
the kindest intentions in the world, your godmother's determined
to bring about a situation a crisis a disaster." And he finally
rounded off his whole thought in the matter with the perfectly
luminous promise : " I'll get my luggage packed the first thing in the
morning."
But he didn't nor for many morrows thereafter.
Three days later he was a very sick man.
" A touch of the fever," announced the doctor, " but he's
young."
This was Thursday. Early the following Monday afternoon
a touring car came leisurely along from the direction of Turin.
In it were Therese Dolores and Mrs. O'Toole.
" What in the world are you so diligently pondering? " sud-
denly asked the younger.
" Whether 'tis good luck to be ten days in advance of one's
promise," replied the old lady, with an inquiring frown.
" I suppose we should have sent him word," rejoined the other.
" No," said Mrs. O'Toole, " 'twould have been fatal."
Therese Dolores frowned incomprehension.
" He'd have disappeared like that," explained the other,
snapping her finger. " I know him ! "
The next minute the car came to a halt at the gateway of the
Villa Penza.
The two women strolled down the path toward the table under
the trees. There, wearied from long vigils at Adrian's bedside,
Dolorita Concetta di Maio slept the sleep of exhaustion.
"Ha," muttered Mrs. O'Toole, "wake her; I dare say we'll
find her equal to the occasion."
But the girl nervously starting from sleep, gave one incredulous
glance at the apparitions before her, jumped to her feet, and stam-
mered : " Oh I'm so glad you came."
" You may fetch us some coffee," began Mrs. O'Toole.
"Perhaps you'd like to see him first?" suggested Dolorita
anxiously. " He is very sick."
" Adrian," gasped the younger women.
" Take us to him at once," commanded the old lady. " Make
haste!"
Ten minutes later, up at Adrian's bedside, Therese Dolores
6o8 "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" [Feb.,
turned to Mrs. OToole and said : " I'll send the car back for some
luggage."
" Nonsense," broke in the other. " You can't do any good
here. You can come down each day to take the news."
" I will do nothing of the kind," returned the other, hurrying
from the room.
Adrian's eyes, fever-bright, opened and stared unrecognizingly
at his godmother.
Mrs. O'Toole shook her head apprehensively.
" Your godmother," began Adrian, then lapsed into silence.
The old lady leaned forward, frowning.
" Is determined," concluded the sick man, " to bring about a
crisis a disaster."
The old lady gave a start, got to her feet, and ordered coffee
forthwith.
Shortly thereafter, clown in the garden, Therese Dolores look-
ing up at Dolorita, cautioned her : " He must not suspect the pres-
ence even of strangers."
" I understand," said Dolorita.
In the dusk of the following evening, the beautiful lady was
seated beside her restless patient. After a deal of tossing, Adrian
lay very quiet. Suddenly, in a barely audible voice, he whispered :
" Therese."
You must settle for yourself whether her heart jumped. A
glance at the sick man evidently reassured her, since she gave a sigh
of relief.
" Are you so furiously happy ? " murmured Adrian.
Therese Dolores leaned forward and patted his hand.
Suddenly a troubled expression settled on Adrian's counte-
nance, and he muttered : " Dick Culverton she couldn't possibly
do better."
The watcher, with a little intake of breath, an expression of
startled wonderment in her eyes, leaned back in her chair, thought-
ful to a degree. She was brought back to the realities by Mrs.
O'Toole bidding her go get a bite to eat.
" Well ? " innocently sought the old lady, as they met in mid-
room.
But the other merely shook her head and frowned. Two
weeks later, up at Turin, whither they had fled as Adrian's convales-
cence drew near, the old lady repeated her question. But Therese
Dolores merely shook her head, and smiled. That same day,
1915-] "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" 609
almost at the very hour, Adrian was having luncheon down in the
garden.
" You're feeling much better to-day," surmised Dolorita.
" Not if you'll believe that tyrannical, skeptical, domineering
old doctor," said Adrian.
Sh sh," said Dolorita, " you shouldn't talk like that. He
saved your life."
"Did he? " returned Adrian.
" Yes," returned the girl.
" Don't you believe anything of the kind," said Adrian. " Did
he sit up with me night after night? Did he feed me broth and
milk and and did he ever pat my hand? Did he ever look at me
with tears in his eyes? Did he ever do anything except fill me
full of bitters and pills and things like those? "
" They helped save your life," argued Dolorita, shaking her
head.
" Not much ! " retorted Adrian. " I've been making in-
quiries. I've been putting two and two together the past few days.
Don't try to hoodwink me! Don't attempt to pin any decorations
on that heartless old butcher. I know who saved my life ! "
" You ! " cried Dolorita, laughing at him.
" Yes," said Adrian slowly, " and my great grief is that I've
got to say 'good-bye' in a few days."
" You're going to leave us! " exclaimed the girl, drawing back
in an attitude of astonishment.
" For a little while," replied Adrian.
" But why? " sought the girl, frowning.
" I don't know," said Adrian. " I simply feel I've got to go,
or some terrible thing will happen to me here."
" That is foolish," commented Dolorita.
" May be so," admitted Adrian, " but I'll be back again. I'll
be back in time for your wedding."
" You may be married yourself before then," retorted Dolorita,
laughing.
" Not much ! " exclaimed Adrian.
" You never can tell," mused the girl.
" Indeed ? " returned Adrian, with a smile. " When is it com-
ing off?"
" How did you know? " demanded Dolorita, frowning at him.
" I know only what I see," replied Adrian, glancing at the ring
on her finger. "When?"
VOL. c. 39
6io "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" [Feb.,
" In three months," answered the girl quietly.
" Congratulations," said Adrian, then sat staring up at the
leaves overhead, silent, pensive. He was roused from his thoughts
by Dolorita saying : " I've got to go now. Do you wish anything
from the village ? "
"Why do you always go to the village these afternoons?"
sought Adrian.
" There are many things to attend to sometimes," replied
the girl.
" Good-bye."
Shortly thereafter, a little south from the Villa Penza, Dolorita,
as she had done each day for a fortnight, made her report to the
beautiful lady.
" Going away !" exclaimed the latter, incredulous.
' Yes, signorina, he may go to-morrow, or the next day."
"Are you quite sure?" demanded the other leaning forward,
plainly surprised, clearly anxious.
" Positively, signorina," replied Dolorita.
Therese Dolores Langford sat for some minutes lost in thought.
Suddenly her lips tightened. Her eyes flashed, then softened, then
flashed again. For a few moments there was a rapid interchange
of words and gestures, and Dolorita sped homeward.
Up at the Villa Penza, Dolorita, hurrying into the house,
whispered to her mother, then went out into the garden in search
of Adrian.
Adrian, whether for amusement or solace, matters not, was
engaged in an old pastime quoting the poets. Just at the moment
he stood gazing in the direction of Turin, murmuring:
" There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will
At the sound of footsteps, he turned. Dolorita's rather serious
countenance met his glance.
"What," said Adrian, "back again so soon?"
' Yes," she informed him, " you must come take your beef
tea. It is past the hour. Come ! "
Adrian regarded her pensively a moment, then sighed and com-
plained :
' You're getting to be as tyrannical as though you had bitters
and pills to give away. Still
1915-] "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" 611
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire ? "
And he obediently followed her up the garden walk. Mari'
Agnese went to fetch him his beef tea. Dolorita withdrew. The
tea proved to be scalding hot, wherefore Adrian bided his time.
He had just made an end of the last spoonful, when Dolorita
hurriedly entered the room, with an apologetic "If you will excuse
me" "
" You are absolved forthwith," said Adrian smiling. " What
is it you'd like to know, fairy queen? "
" A lady wishes to see you. She is down in the garden."
" To see me ! " gasped Adrian. " A lady ? In the gar-
den!"
" She is waiting at the table under the trees," said Dolorita,
" I'll tell her you're coming."
And the conspirator fled.
There was no apparent escape, wherefore Adrian looked up
reflectively at Mari' Agnese and announced in English : " I knew
it! That's my godmother. I should have gotten away from
here yesterday."
But in Italian : " Will you do me a favor ? "
" But naturally," replied the old woman, wiping one hand
over the other in her apron.
" No," said Adrian, " supernaturally."
Mari' Agnese, with a persuasive gesture, reminded him : " A
lady is waiting."
" Precisely," admitted Adrian. "So am I. I'll go in a minute.
That's when you're to do me the favor. When I go, you're to
get down on your knees and beg Heaven "
" M ache I " threw out the old woman, with a look.
" That I may," continued Adrian seriously, " be equal to the
occasion."
Mari' Agnese, hands on hips, regarded him quizzically.
" Because," concluded Adrian, moving toward the doorway,
" that woman, down in your garden, has designs on my life. I'm
positively afraid of her."
Wherewith he crossed his rubicon and went slowly, almost
stealthily, down toward the table under the mulberry trees. And
there, sure enough, her back toward him, stood a lady. As Adrian
drew near she turned.
612 "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" [Feb.,
Adrian went pale, then red, then gasped, " Oh why er
why, how do you do ? "
" Very well, Adrian, thank you," replied Therese Dolores, hold-
ing out her hand.
Adrian, at the touch of her fingers, looked off across the
garden. She took him in a second, then half -asserted, half -sought :
" But you've gotten thinner, haven't you? "
" I'm still a a convalescent," explained Adrian.
" You've been ill? " she inquired solicitously.
" A slight touch of the fever," replied Adrian, with a flourish,
" but I'm all right now. I fell into the hands of Samaritans
fortunately."
" Oh ! " she murmured, and in the far-away spaces of her eyes
flickered imminent laughter. " I'm sorry to hear that you've been
ill. I came expressly to scold you for your inexcusable negligence."
" Negligence ! " exclaimed Adrian, drawing back, as one un-
justly accused.
" Turin," she explained, " is less than ten miles distant. It
was the merest chance that I heard of your presence here."
She swept the garden with a glance that was more or less
smiling, more or less reminiscent.
" Well, you see," offered Adrian, " I I w r asn't sure just how
long I might remain, when I wrote to a but won't you be seated?
Won't you join me at er coffee, or "
" If you could manage it," she returned, " I'm dying for a cup
of tea hot and very strong."
" It will give me the greatest pleasure," said Adrian. And,
with an inclination of his head, "If you will pardon me?"
She nodded and, as Adrian hastened to the house, removed her
veil, cloak and one glove. Then, leaning back in the chair, looked
up at the tree tops, in her glance a nervousness, a smiling wonder.
Adrian was back in a few moments, with : " If you can wait
till a certain young lady overcomes an attack of the nerves? "
His guest glanced across the table inquiringly.
" She thinks I'm going to tell you all about it," said Adrian,
seating himself.
You may guess whether his visitor gave the slightest of starts.
' You see," went on Adrian, " she has just gotten herself en-
gaged, and is mortally afraid I'll tell you all about it. It's a threat
I hold over her whenever I wish her to do something forthwith,
faithfully and well."
I9IS-] "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER" 613
" Oh! " murmured the beautiful lady. And, again, you may
imagine whether she was relieved.
"But I thought you were fond of England?" remarked
Adrian, as who should say, "Why are you traveling southward?"'
" NO o," she replied slowly, " I stayed less than a month.
I'm on my way to Rome."
" Oh ! " said Adrian. And, as he sat stealing little glimpses
of her, he assured his soul, " No, she couldn't possibly do better."
His visitor, her forearms resting against the edge of the table,
sat gazing meditatively at the tips of her joined fingers.
Suddenly she looked across the table and remarked : " I'm
going to meet the Culvertons Katherine and and Dick. You
remember them ? "
" Ah ! " he murmured, " yes, very well, indeed."
There ensued a brief and, for Adrian, a painful silence. It was
broken by the arrival of Dolor ita bringing the tea things.
" Permit me," murmured the beautiful lady.
Whereupon Dolorita withdrew.
"Two if I remember?" said Therese Dolores.
" Please," said Adrian quietly, without meeting her glance.
She smilingly dropped the sugar squares into his cup.
"And Mrs. O'Toole?" sought Adrian.
" Very well," replied the other, " except that this morning she
was stricken with one of her famous headaches."
" Ah ! " he murmured in a tone of condolence.
His visitor fortified herself with a draught of the brew, glanced
quizzically at Adrian, then sought : " I wonder if you would do me
a favor? "
" Nothing could possibly give me greater pleasure," promptly
asserted Adrian, meeting her glance, but with a difference.
" Will you make me a promise in the dark ? " she asked, toying
with the handle of her cup.
Adrian looked at her: at her half-serious, half-smiling eyes,
at her exquisite loveliness, so disturbingly near, so hopelessly re-
moved. Then he answered rather quietly : " I will."
" Thank you, Adrian," she said softly. " To-day is Thursday.
One week from to-day you will leave here and go direct to Rome."
" Rome ! " exclaimed Adrian, alarmed, unwilling.
' You've promised," she warned him.
He shook his head, considered a troubled moment, then de-
manded : " But why to Rome ? "
614 "A TOUCH OF THE FEVER' 9 [Feb.,
There was a rather long interlude, wherein she gazed
thoughtfully at the neighboring hedge, before informing him : " I
I expect to be married there ! "
" Oh ! " said Adrian, crushed, dumbfounded.
She regarded him musingly a moment, then, a little quaver in
her voice, remarked : " You, at least, might congratulate me."
" But you know I do," stammered Adrian, " with all my
heart. And I I wish you all the luck in the world. I'm sure
you'll be very happy and and "
He stared at the neighboring hedge silent.
" I suppose you think it very sudden? " she murmured.
" No o," replied Adrian slowly and, as though seeking a new
course, remarked : " You will travel awhile perhaps ? "
" No," she replied firmly, " I've decided to take him straight
home to New York."
Adrian shrugged his shoulders.
" Of course, we haven't settled that point yet," she said
musingly. " I dare say he will insist on another month or two.
He he's rather stubborn in his way."
Adrian smiled forlornly.
She hesitated a second, looked at his thoughtful profile, then
informed him : " But I like him."
Adrian blinked.
" I think the world of him," she announced.
Adrian winced.
" I I love him," she murmured.
It was almost cruel. Still, she didn't mean to be unkind.
Adrian knew that. With one hand he toyed idly with the sugar
tongs; the other, its little finger mockingly circled with a delicate,
jewelled band, lay motionless, outstretched, upon the table.
She looked at Adrian, debated a second, then touched the ring.
Adrian, startled, dazed, looked up.
"If if you think you can part with it this time?" she
murmured.
" What ! " exclaimed Adrian, jumping to his feet.
" I couldn't possibly do better, Adrian," said she, rising, blush-
ing ever so little, appearing never more lovely.
Adrian, still dumb, still half-incredulous, stepped to the corner
of the table, hesitated for the thiiest of seconds, and then called
softly: "Therese!"
And she But that would be superfluous.
OFF TO THE WAR.
BY MICHAEL EARLS, SJ.
IN a little ship and down the bay,
Out to the calling sea,
A young brave lad sailed off to-day,
To the one great war went he :
The one long war all men must know
Greater than land or gold,
Soul is the prince and flesh the foe
Of a kingdom Christ will hold.
With arms of faith and hope well-wrought
The brave lad went away,
And the voice of Christ fills all his thought
Under two hands that pray :
The tender love of a mother's hands
That guarded all his years,
Fitted the armor, plate and bands,
And blessed them with her tears.
Older than Rhodes and Ascalon
And the farthest forts of sea,
Is the Master voice that calls him on
From a hill in Galilee :
From hills where Christ in gentle guise
Called, as He calls again,
With His heart of love and His love-lit eyes
Unto His warrior men.
Christ with the brave young lad to-day
Who goes to the sweet command,
Strengthen his heart wherever the way,
Whether he march or stand :
And whether he die on a far-off field,
Or alone in the lonely night,
The Cross of Christ shall keep him well,
And be his death's delight.
CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE.
BY HELEN HAINES.
II.
E must not interpret any glimpses of harmonious
Socialist family life of to-day as true work-
ing formulae for harmonious family life in the So-
cialist State. Since, according to Socialist doctrine,
all Christian marriage has an economic basis " a
foundation of property rights;" since in the Socialist State the rela-
tion of the sexes would rest upon another economic basis the funda-
mental need for sound citizens how would woman acquire sex
freedom by exchanging one economic relation where she is consulted,
for another where she would not be ? For even woman's place in the
councils of the Socialist State would not leave her the unfettered
things of to-day's roseate forecast. Neither her political nor her
economic independence would safeguard her sexual independence.
The Socialist State would determine the position of its citizens ac-
cording to its economic needs. Woman's position would be decided
by her qualifications for motherhood. Collective economics would
brook no revolt against scientific eugenic selection. Human wastage
must disappear. A super race is essential. The regulation of the
birth-rate would be as stern a solicitude as a sound physical inheri-
tance. The courtesan would not disappear. If it is to pagan
Greece we must go, let us hark back to Plato's Republic and the
State control of motherhood. It is from what we know of past
history, from what we know of human nature, that we can draw our
deductions, our prophecies. To the creedless Intellectual to-day, it
may seem a simple matter to cut out Catholicism, with its safeguards
for woman, the home, the child, the derelict, the sick and infirm and
aged. If the social sickness of our time is caused, as Leo XIII.
was the first to point out, by too little religion in our political
economy, what is to become of woman in a society where there is
none?
To the Catholic woman, it is obvious, then, that neither the
justice of Socialism nor the promises of the Socialist State, would
protect woman's inherent right to marry, any more than it would
secure her right to live. Both of these inherent rights are sanctified
1915-] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 617
by the blessing of the Church, because we are created for a definite
purpose. But what of those other rights the right to liberty and
the right to serve God which of their very terms bespeak that
purpose as high and all important? Rights for which Catholics
have surrendered their other inherent rights when a State refused
protection. Even if we consider only the American woman's right
to liberty as the Socialist would applicable wholly to her material,
not her spiritual needs we find difficulty to guarantee our liberty
under Marxian rule.
Unquestionably, the power of choice is woman's dearest pos-
session. And notwithstanding certain disabilities which are in
many of our States, where not amended, in line to be amended, the
American woman is probably more advantageously placed to ex-
ercise her power of choice, than any other woman in the world.
Hard as the economic lot of the American woman worker often is,
she is not prevented by any State law from exercising it from
choosing her work, or from going from one place to another where
State laws better favor her particular case. And in all intellectual
work, while theoretically there is much complaint of injustice to
women, yet practically to-day American women occupy a respected
place in the professions, arts, and sciences, and are gradually com-
ing into political preferment.
The question of choice of vocation for women has become a
thrifty commonplace amongst us. We know there is not sufficient
work in the home for all the women of the household who want or
who need to work. And we know all women do not want to
marry even if there were a sufficient number of men. Under our
laws, then, the American woman chooses her vocation, often ap-
parently without due thought to her limitations, and if her career
is not interrupted by marriage and family cares, the surprise she
has given our times is her large degree of economic success.
Just how far the Socialist State would permit woman to
exercise her choice of vocation is extremely problematic. Sur-
prises in success would not be economic. And while vocational
training and the parcelling out of work according to the State's
need for such work would unquestionably help out those ever-
present problems of to-day the overcrowding of our cities, and
the overcrowding of professions in those cities yet there is no
apparent reason for the assumption that woman would secure the
work she would like, nor the place in which she would like to live.
Those problems of incentive, assignment, and remuneration which
6i8 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Feb.,
perplex Socialist writers to-day are perhaps less satisfactorily solved
for woman than for man.
Bebel held out a fatuous programme in Die Frau, which has
since been faithfully absorbed and exuded by the unthinking as true.
"Socialism," he declared, " is science applied with full consciousness
and clear knowledge to every function of human activity," and
proceeded to offer unscientific and uneconomic prospects to allure
talented women. 1 An age of arts and sciences such as the world
has never seen before; and the artistic and scientific productions
will be in proportion to the general progress. There will be
" scholars and artists without numbers." Yet the practical mind
fails to see how scholars and artists would have time to pursue
their several arts time to acquire the technique which must underlie
its expression, in a state of society where it was the collective will
that all take part in the social production.
The later Socialist writers recognize the folly of such unbridled
appeals. They attract only the gullible, and provoke the derision of
the thoughtful instead of winning their allegiance. And while that
equal opportunity for every child which Mr. Spargo stresses, might
find an occasional overlooked genius, that versatile talent which to a
remarkable degree our women possess, because it has been wrung
from their own initiative to grasp opportunities, would be necessarily
levelled by Socialist educational processes.
On what premise the Socialist builds that oft-asserted fact that
the Socialist State would be a patron of art or letters, has never
been made quite clear. The logical development of art in an
economic state w r ould be rather on the line of the utilitarian. Mere
beauty being neither economic nor utilitarian would be last fostered.
Art, as we conceive it, would be no more necessary than religion.
For every people which has had a highly developed art, has had a
highly developed religion, and an idealism wholly wanting in a state
of pure economics. Yet we must not think of the Socialist State as
ideal in our sense of the word, Miss Hughan reminds us, but as an
evolutionary product of economic forces which the capitalist state is
even now making. It would appear, then, from any deduction we
can make from Socialist doctrine past or present, that the Socialist
State would cut out woman's work for her, as much as is any piece
work in a capitalist factory to-day.
But State control by collective w r ill assumes far sterner propor-
tions for the Catholic woman than for any other American woman.
Not alone in the severing of the marriage tie would an anti-religious
1 Cathrein, Socialism.
1915-] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 619
collective will work havoc for us, but in the choice of religious vo-
cation which calls so many Catholic girls to consecrate their talents
and their natural rights to the service of God. And this would be
particularly true of our contemplative orders.
It is not easy to forecast any outlook for the nun in the Socialist
State. Since all private property is to be done away, and all chil-
dren are to be State wards, " playfully introduced " as Bebel has
it to a compulsory economic education, there would be an immedi-
ate annulment of the nun's prominent work religious education.
Such institutions as were necessary would also be owned and operated
by the Socialist State, although State assignment might give to her
all those unlovely tasks which so complicate the perfect building of
the new social structure. But the lesson of liberty in France is too
fresh in the minds of our American Catholic women for us to fancy
any possibility in an economic commonwealth, which would not
mean an immediate dispersal of all religious communities. So the
liberty of the Catholic woman her power of choice whether it be
for her material necessities, her right to marry, or her spiritual needs
or vocation, would neither be guaranteed nor secured by the Socialist
State.
We have but to dip a little further into Marx's theory of the
materialistic conception of history, to understand why it interferes
with our power of choice, which, after all, is but a part of God's
greatest yet most perilous gift to us free will. 2 Catholic women
will be quick to appreciate that the great Socialist dogma ignores
free will ; ignores the great heroes or heroines of history or religion;
neglects every spiritual force; and suppresses any fact which goes
to prove that each of us has an integral value independent of our
collective value. To the Catholic this is complete annihilation of
Christian faith and teaching. That great Eternal Truth that God
speaks to each human soul, according to the needs of
that soul, and often through it to the needs of the
hour, has never been more inspiring than when woman has been
selected for some great economic or political crisis. Does the
economic interpretation of history wholly explain for us that coming
of a Domremy peasant girl to crown a king at Rheims, or a Sienese
wool-dyer's daughter to reinstate the Popes in Rome?
" Religion is a private matter," was once an authoritative pro-
nouncement of Karl Marx when pressed for an answer. And to this
modern Socialism refers all inquirers. The more intellectual studies
of modern economic problems, while frankly anticipating many
"Cathrein, Socialism,
620 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Feb.,
changes, pass by, with a few encouraging platitudes, the vital ques-
tions of religion and family life, presumably as not in line with the
discussion. But Marx's words, savoring similarly of Bebel's on the
sex relation, cannot be satisfying to Catholicism. For us, religion
can never be wholly a private matter. It has its interior demands,
but it has, also, its exterior ones. It requires the priest, the altar
stone, the sacrifice. The Catholic differs in this respect from other
Christians who still acknowledge our Lord's Divinity. A belief like
the doctrine of justification by faith, which requires an interior con-
formity, does not of necessity require an external expression. A
staunch Presbyterian need not enter his church for months if the
sermons be not to his liking, and yet there would no suspicion attach
itself to his loyalty to this doctrine.
But " believe, and thou shalt be saved," was not our Lord's
sole command. He was quite as explicit when He said He would
found a Church which is to last to the world's end. He made it
no less certain that He was giving supernatural powers to a partic-
ular set of men who could transmit these powers. He even showed
these men what they were to do : " This is My Body," " This is
My Blood," " Do this in commemoration of Me." Our exterior
worship then, yesterday, to-day and forever,. centres about the Mass,
whether it be performed in the small upper room, in the catacombs,
in the jails of Elizabeth's England, in the caves of priest-hunting
Ireland, in a chapel car out west, or at the High Altar of St. Peter's
at Rome. Nor must we fancy that Socialism minimizes the strength
of our external organization, and the great fact, which attracts all
other disbelievers that the Catholic Church is on the side of law
and order in whatever government she is found. Her solidarity in
this regard is the despair of the revolutionary element in the So-
cialist ranks.
" The Church is one of the pillars of Capitalism," complained
an editor of London Justice, Harry Quelch, " and the true function
of the clergy is to chloroform the workers, to make docile wage
slaves of them, patient and contented with their lot in this world,
while expecting glorious reward in the next." " As long as the
Church holds the minds of workers in its grip, there will be little
hope of freeing their bodies from capital supremacy."
In this country, Victor Berger, former U. S. Congressman from
Wisconsin, echoes this : " Now the church is with the capitalist
class without doubt, especially the Church per se, the Roman Catho-
lic Church. That Church has always sided with the class in
1915-] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 621
power The Church was on the side of feudalism while feudal-
ism was on top, and the Church now sides with capitalism while
capitalism is on top."
Miss Hughan is moderate always, but leaves us in no doubt
that in its external form " religion is allowed no exemption from
criticism. The State Churches of Europe in fact, being openly allied
to the bourgeois governments, are to be counted among the enemies
of the proletariat."
Over against these citations we must place one from a Catholic
author. " A society in which the Church shall conquer," says Mr.
Belloc, " will be a society in which a proletariat shall be as unthink-
able as it was unthinkable in the Middle Ages."
Past history supports this apparently large claim. The one
society in our civilization in which the working class and the master
class have lived in entire harmony and in which they formed as-
sociations for their common benefit was at a time when Catholicism
had won practically the whole of Europe to the everyday use of
those principles of Eternal Truth which Jesus Christ left in her keep-
ing : "You may be great, but you must be humble. You may be rich,
but you must prefer poverty. You may love those who love you,
but you must love those who hate you. You may forgive those who
forgive you, but you must forgive those who injure you."
Divinity alone could have inspired such a code. Divinity alone
has inspired men and women is inspiring them to-day to the prac-
tice of that code. Even Socialism realizes that the only men and
women of the capitalist class who surrender their all for God and
their neighbor, are our Catholic Religious. But what outlook is
there for the infusion of such principles into Socialism or
the promises of the Socialist State? Where Catholicism directs
attention to the history of the Middle Ages to prove the efficacy of
injecting religious principles into economics, Socialism by ignoring
all such influences, interprets the more harmonious relationship be-
tween widely different classes as due to better economic conditions !
Nor is the vague hope that the Christian Socialists of our coun-
try by their auspicious alliance of nomenclature are to bring the
Divine teachings of Christ into Socialism, destined to fruition. Logi-
cally, our Christian Socialists can communicate with either Catholic
or Socialist only in the sign language of tolerance. For they deny
the Divinity of Christ, which is anti-Christian, yet cling to Him as a
great Man, which is anti-Socialist.
Obviously, the responsibility is wholly ours. In other words,
622 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Feb.,
we believe too much. We assert too much. And it is to this call
the great Encyclicals of the last two Pontiffs are directed. Deep
studies of economic problems as they are, the primary force of their
message has been to bring clearly before an increasingly materialistic
society Catholic and non-Catholic the perennial efficacy of the
teachings of Jesus Christ, and to show all of us how far we have
drifted from them. For the Church is chiefly interested not in the
capitalist class, not in the middle class, not in the working class, but
in each one of us who turns to her for spiritual guidance and nour-
ishment. Each safeguard she sets about her little ones, each great
soul tried and tempted in a difficult age to whom she points for our
edification, is to show us of to-day that His teaching is neither im-
possible nor impractical. As the Guardian of Eternal Truth, her
interest in the economic theories of Socialism is in the immorality of
its inherent principles, and their bearing upon the individual souls
of her children.
Simply put, we have seen that a collective economic will cannot
protect our moral rights, since it is anti-Christian. Yet we must not
fancy we have grasped the entire economic argument of Socialism.
It is a socialistic age, and for the majority of our Catholic women
life is a busy thing. Unquestionably a large number of us are de-
terred from any study of Socialism, because the whole emphasis of
the argument is on its economic side a side to which many women
are wholly indifferent. But so long as the brilliant leaders of the
Socialist party in this country can polish each facet of our economic
problems, so long as the revolutionary element can keep our glaring
social inequalities before the eyes of the workers, just so long will
Socialism appeal to the discontent of a large class whose dry spiritual
life is antagonistic to faith, or whose miserable lot is primarily
responsible for their loss of it.
Miss Hughan thinks that a certain measure of responsibility as
to the future of Socialism rests with " the cultural institutions of
Church, press, and university. 3 Hostility on the part of these
forces tends in general to weaken the influence of the " 'Intellectuals'
and the Christian Socialists, to harden the party organization on the
lines of the class struggle, and to render the revolutionist the dom-
inant Socialist type. If the movement is ignored by the higher
intellectual forces, on the other hand, there is danger that Socialism,
encountering in controversy only the ignorant and unscientific, may
'"The Intercollegiate Socialist Society is a society for the promotion of an
intelligent study of Socialism. .. .At the end of 1911 the Society had study chapters
in thirty-eight American Colleges" (Elements of Socialism, by Spargo and Arner).
1915-] WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE 623
rest satisfied with the unrevised economics of the last century, and
win the support of the people by superficial propaganda and specious
promises of a millennium."
The importance, then, of a clear estimate of the moral issue
involved in Socialism cannot be gainsaid. It is the farsighted lens
through which our Catholic women will come to see the economic
argument in its true perspective. For while accentuating the para-
mount importance of guarding the individual's moral rights which
Socialism utterly ignores we must not obscure the importance of
that individual's environment. It is almost an axiom among Catho-
lic sociologists that preventable human misery means the loss of a
soul. With the highest intention, neither the individual nor religion
can accomplish every necessary reform in our country, because to-
day legislation must do so much. 4
We must be able to distinguish, however, between a govern-
ment like ours in which the individual's inherent rights or efforts
toward reforms so long as he is law-abiding are protected and un-
hampered, and would be even if government ownership prevailed,
and a collective government like that promised in the Socialist State,
where, as we have seen, the individual's rights or his actions would
of necessity be hampered and made subservient.
In each of our States, also, we have the machinery for righting
local abuses, if it be set in motion by our awakened consciences.
There are, for example, no Iaw 7 s prohibiting associations of workers
and employers for the common good of both. Such reforms await
the individual action of employers and workers. While in a number
of our States, each Catholic woman being politically independent,
can voice her sentiments toward all reform measures for the
benefit of the woman worker. Our Catholic women need to watch
our current events. For dangers no longer shadowy lurk behind
many of our political, social, and economic questions. No mere
pietistic complacence will serve us to-day, if we aspire to the practi-
cal defence of Eternal Truth.
But if our Catholic women would strike sparks from the blades
of their Socialist friends or co workers, they must go to school
again to their faith. No Catholic pen has been too learned to adapt
the general laws laid down in the Encyclicals to the particulars of
locality. Our doctrinal and economic pamphlets, logically and
clearly stated in simple language and built upon the writings of the
4 Dr. Ryan makes this very clear in his Social Reform on Catholic Lines.
New York: The Paulist Press.
624 WOMAN AND THE SOCIALISTIC STATE [Feb.,
Fathers, refute the misleading attacks of our opponents who are
unused, as are our Catholic scholars, to culling information at first
hand. Our Catholic Truth Societies are, in this way, both meeting
the effective Socialist propaganda, 5 and are following Catholic So-
cial Action in other lands.
American Catholics are wont to complain that the size of our
country and our diffusion throughout the body politic, is inimical to
the growth of combined Catholic Social Action. 6 But our very
diffusion should rather bring home to each one of us our personal
responsibility toward our riches. Possession means peace. De-
fence, safety. But there is something higher than the ability to
select our weapons for conflict. It is to apply the principles of
Eternal Truth to our everyday lives. Through us its light must dis-
perse the miasma of materialism, which threatens so much that is
finest in us as a nation. And the ultimate spiritual disarmament of
friends or foes will come only through this supreme power.
How else do our valiant women of the Middle Ages speak to
us? Why is it that the great Encyclicals sound to us so strangely
familiar, loving, admonishing and firm, as we read or study them
to-day? Echoes they are, enlarged to our larger necessities, of that
long ago letter of Peter's beseeching his "dearly beloved " to submit
the force of Christlike example to the Gentiles, " that by doing well
you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men."
Unconscious allies we have outside the fold, questioning,
watching, waiting. It is a happy augury of our time that many
of them are returning to learn their alphabet at the Mother's knee.
They come largely through the power of Catholic example. But
they do not come collectively. They come one by one. Is it
not well for each Catholic woman to ask herself why out of millions
of her countrywomen her possession of Eternal Truth should give
her this opportunity ? Our country sets no limit upon what we may
do for our neighbor. Our faith enjoins it. And we are not to be
judged collectively, but one by one.
""The party (Socialist) carries on an almost incredible amount of educational
work by means of traveling lectures, and the distribution of millions of pamphlets
and books each year. Study courses are furnished to the local organizations, and
in this way thousands of members are induced to make a systematic study of
Socialist theory" (Elements of Socialism, by Spargo and Arner).
'American Catholic women would find inspiration in the Social Study Courses
arranged for this country and England, in the Catholic Social Year Book, published
for the Catholic Social Guild of England, and in the publications of the Catholic
Truth Society on Catholic Social Action in France, in Germany, etc.
[THE END.]
SOME CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS IN TWO
GENERATIONS. 1
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D., SC.D.
AMUEL F. B. MORSE has been dead over thirty
years, and an extensive biography of him, including
many of his letters, was written long ago, not long
after his death, by Rev. S. Irenaeus Prime. A new
biography of him, might, therefore, at first sight
seem superfluous. There is no doubt, however, that this distin-
guished American artist-inventor deserves, much better than many
to whom the Muse of history has been more lavish, this further
contribution to his biography in the shape of two large volumes
of his letters and journals. The rising generation can learn
much, especially in these days of war, from the ' life and
work of one whose ways were those of peace and art and invention.
Even the intimate details of his career are of surpassing interest,
because of the many points at which they touched the life of his
time.
As Professor Morse's biography contains also the story of
the founding of the National Academy of Design, of which he was
the first President, of his years of travel in Europe as a student of
art, and later as an inventor of the telegraph, 2 trying to secure the
1 Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals. Edited and supplemented by
his son Edward Lind Morse. Illustrated with reproductions of his paintings and
with notes and diagrams bearing on the invention of the telegraph. In two volumes.
New York : Houghton Mifflin Co. $7.50 net.
a Professor Morse was, of course, an inventor not a discoverer. The distinction
is extremely important for the right understanding of what real progress in science
means. A discoverer reveals a truth* or scientific principle not hitherto known;
an inventor applies such a truth for some practical purpose, adding to the comfort
or convenience of man. The discoverer is a genius ; the inventor is usually only a
clever man, capable of exercising great ingenuity. The discoverer may be quite
unable to apply his discovery and make money by its application, indeed he usually
fails to do so. The inventor is practical and often makes a great deal of money.
When Franklin discovered and demonstrated that lightning and electricity were
the same thing, they asked him, " What was the use of knowing that ? " Perhaps at
the moment there was little evident use, though we know how eminently useful
the consequent development of electricity has become. Franklin's reply is worth
while considering. He answered, "What's the use of a baby?" None at all, of
course, except that in its development it sometimes produces wonderful results.
Morse was an inventor not a discoverer. The discoverer in the physical sciences
here in America in his time was Professor Henry of Princeton, and Morse knew
and recognized the latter's eminent superiority, and consulted him on many occasions
3.nd followed his advice.
FPL. c. 40
626 CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS [Feb.,
patronage for his invention of foreign governments, besides the
history of his relations to such men as Ezra Cornell, after whom
Cornell University was named; Professor Henry of Princeton, our
greatest of American physicists; Alfred Vail, whose family has
been identified with the development of the telegraph ever since;
James Fenimore Cooper ; Washington Allston, and Daniel Hunting-
ton, the artists; Professor Horsford; and many famous Europeans,
such as Lafayette, Arago, Humboldt, the Earl of Elgin, Baron de
Meydendorff, and Lord Campbell, its significance as a storehouse of
historical material can be readily understood.
What will be of particular interest for the readers of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD is the religious life of Professor Morse, as it is
here so clearly traced, and the evidence which that life affords of
the great change that has taken place among American non-Catholics
in their religious views. Both Morse's own letters and those of his
father and mother, and many of his friends, are full of deep, sincere
expressions of religious feeling on all the important occasions of his
career.
When not quite fourteen, Morse wrote from home to his three
brothers at school, telling them of the death of a baby sister : " Now
you have three brothers and three sisters in heaven, and I hope you
and I will meet there at our death. It is uncertain when we shall
die, but we ought to be prepared for it, and I hope you and I shall."
He then suggests a very striking thought with regard to the dura-
tion of eternity, and concludes, " I enclose you a little book called
the Christian Pilgrim. It is for all of you."
It would be easy, perhaps, to think that this was the letter of
a little prig, who took himself entirely too seriously, and whose
religious ideas would either vanish or be very much diluted as soon
as he got away from his mother's apron strings. This was not true
of Morse. All during his life he had the deepest of religious feel-
ing, and in the midst of the heavy trials which he had to encounter
in connection with the carrying through of the electric telegraph,
his mind constantly reverted to the thought that Providence had
given him a mission in life, and that he must be ready to stand
suffering and disappointment; and to bear the ingratitude of those
he had thought friends, and the malignity of friends become enemies.
In the midst of his darkest hours, when the success of the telegraph
seemed, after the work of twelve years, still very far off, he wrote
to a brother, January 9, 1844:
1915.] CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 627
I thank you for your kind and sympathizing letter, which, I
assure you, helped to mitigate the acuteness of my mental suf-
ferings from the then disastrous aspect of my whole enterprise.
God works by instrumentalities, and he has wonderfully thus
far interposed in keeping evils that I feared in abeyance. All,
I trust, will yet be well, but I have great difficulties to encounter
and overcome, with the details of which I need not now trouble
you. I think I see light ahead, and the great result of these
difficulties, I am persuaded, will be a great economy in laying
the telegraphic conductors I am well in health, but have
sleepless nights from the great anxieties and cares which weigh
me down.
But to return to his youth. When he was just past his four-
teenth year, his mother wrote to him at college :
We are very desirous, my son, that you should excel in every
thing that will make you truly happy and useful to your fellow-
man. In particular by no means neglect your duty to your
Heavenly Father. Remember what has been said with great
truth, that he can never be faithful to others who is not so to his
God and his conscience. I wish you constantly to keep in mind
the first question and answer in that excellent form of sound
words, the Assembly Catechism, viz., " What is the chief end
of man? " The answer you will readily recollect is " To glorify
God and enjoy Him forever."
Perhaps his mother's letters would be considered in our day
entirely too serious, but such a commentary is all the more valuable
if we wish to realize the great difference that has come over
American religious thought during the intervening period. The
first part, for instance, of the following letter might well come
from the modern mother, for we retain all our solicitude with regard
to the body; the second part assuredly would not, unless in very
exceptional cases. Americans have lost most of that anxious solici-
tude with regard to the soul that was so characteristic of parents
two generations ago :
MY DEAR SONS:
Have you heard of the death of young Willard at Cambridge,
the late President Willard's son? He died of a violent fever
occasioned by going into water when he was very hot in the
middle of the day. He also pumped a great deal of cold water
on his head. Let this be a warning to you all not to be guilty of
628 CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS [Feb.,
the like indiscretion which may cost you your life. Dreadful,
indeed, would this be to all of us. I wish you would not go
into the water oftener than once a week, and then either early
in the morning or late in the afternoon, and not go in when hot
nor stay long in the water. Remember these cautions of your
mamma and obey them strictly.
A young lady twenty years old died in Boston yesterday very
suddenly. She eat her dinner perfectly well, and was dead in
five minutes after. Her name was Ann Hinkley. You see,
my boys, the great uncertainty of life and, of course, the im-
portance of being always prepared for death, even a sudden
death, as we know not what an hour may bring forth. This we
are sensible of, we cannot be too soon or too well prepared for
that all important moment, as this is what we are sent into this
world for. The main business of life is to prepare for death.
Let us not, then, put off these most important concerns to an
uncertain to-morrow, but let us in earnest attend to the concerns
of our precious, never-dying souls while we feel ourselves alive.
Young Morse was graduated at Yale. During his leisure
hours at college he had practised painting, and now asked to be
allowed to study under Washington Allston, the distinguished
painter. Morse's parents, however, were more practical, and
wished him to become independent as soon as possible, so their
plan was to apprentice him to a bookseller. He dutifully con-
formed, but still kept at painting, and after a time his talent and
persistence won the family consent to go to England with Allston.
He was in England during the War of 1812, and his comments on
the English statesmen of the time are interesting. He was attracted
by Cobbett, but describes him as " a man of no principle and a great
rascal, yet a man of sense who says many good things." It is easy
to understand how much Cobbett, the radical, already declaring
that he found it impossible to find words strong enough to condemn
fitly those who brought about the English reformation, would be out
of sympathy with the stern young Puritan's attitude of uncompro-
mising Protestantism. The man who said, " The Reformation as
it is called, was (in England) engendered in beastly lust, brought
forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder,
devastation and rivers of innocent English and Irish blood," could
find little response in the heart of this dyed-in-the-wool New Eng-
lander, and yet even he could not fail to see the sincerity and the
straightforwardness of some at least of Cobbett's work.
1915-] CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 629
It was, however, on the continent that Morse's religious feel-
ings were particularly disturbed. In one of his visits to France
this was his comment on the Catholic religious services at which he
happened to be present :
I looked around the church to ascertain what was the effect
upon the multitude assembled. The females, kneeling in their
chairs, many with their prayer-books reading during the whole
ceremony, seemed part of the time engaged in devotional exer-
cises. Far be it from me to say there were not some who were
actually devout, hard as it is to conceive of such a thing; but
this I will say, that everything around them, instead of aiding
devotion, was calculated entirely to destroy it. The imagina-
tion was addressed by every avenue; music and painting
pressed into the service of not religion but the contrary led
the mind away from the contemplation of all that is practical
in religion to the charms of mere sense. No instruction was
imparted; none seems ever to be intended. What but ignor-
ance can be expected when such a system prevails ?
How readily this inexperienced young Puritan condemns anything
to which he is not accustomed.
One might have expected a better understanding of the Church
ceremonial from an artist. The music, however, at least appealed
to him and we have a confession with regard to that.
Last evening we were delighted with some exquisite sacred
music, sung apparently by men's voices only, and slowly passing
under our windows. The whole effect was enchanting; the
various parts were so harmoniously adapted and the taste with
which these unknown minstrels strengthened and softened their
tones gave us, with the recollection of the music at the church,
which we had heard in the morning, a high idea of the musical
talent of this part of the world.
Quite needless to say the Continental Sabbath disturbed him
very much, but it must be surprising to Americans of the present
day to hear him complain of music on Sunday evenings. For him
man was made for the Sabbath, not the Sabbath for man, and so
his comment represents the feelings of the men of his race and creed
and time very well.
Some of Professor Morse's reflections on social life in Italy
are extremely interesting, though he can seldom find anything good
630 CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS [Feb.,
to say without adding some comment that either denies a worthy
motive for the good, or calls attention to some compensating vice.
He could not bring himself to believe that these people were in any
way comparable to his own English-speaking people.
After Morse's return to America he practised as a portrait
painter with excellent success from an artistic standpoint, as his
extant portraits, some of them to be seen in the Metropolitan
Museum, amply attest, but with only quite moderate material re-
wards. He married young, and after less than five years of marital
happiness lost his wife suddenly through heart disease. His feel-
ings towards her are expressed in a letter to a friend written more
than a month after her death, in which the essence of the Puritan
conscience is surely revealed in a few words, and yet was
there ever a more beautiful expression of marital affection and
grief ?
I found in dear Lucretia everything I could wish. Such
ardor of affection, so uniform, so unaffected, I never saw or
read of but in her. My fear with regard to the measure of
my affection toward her was not that I might fail of " loving her
as my own flesh," but that I should put her in the place of Him
Who has said, " Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." I
felt this to be my greatest danger, and to be saved from this
idolatry was often the subject of my earnest prayers.
In all the trials of life he constantly turned, as his letters show,
to an overruling Providence for consolation and renewed strength,
feeling that his successes were to be attributed to some high purpose
that his Creator had destined for him, and that his trials were but
so many means of making him a better instrument for the accom-
plishment of that purpose.
Here then was a deeply religious man whose early training
bore fruit in a life full of the thought of the place of Providence in
the world. In all sincerity Morse continued all his life to be under
the influence of the old time Protestant tradition, and as consequence
refused to think that there could be any possible good in Catholi-
cism, or that it was anything except a source of positive evil to
the world. He had been taught in his younger years that the
Church of Rome was the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse, and he
refused to change that opinion. With Morse priests and the higher
ecclesiastics of the Catholic Church were quite literally impostors.
They had knowledge, and they were leading their people astray.
1915-] CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 631
As for the people, " poor deluded people," they were ignorant and
knew no better, but they were simply idolaters. This was the
deliberate conclusion of a Yale graduate, the son of a Congrega-
tionalist minister, an artist who had traveled in Europe for years,
and he refused to change it materially during his lifetime. The
Oxford Movement did not serve to swerve him in the slightest
from these preconceived notions. Not only no good could come
out of the Nazareth of the Catholic Church, but it was a plain duty
to oppose her in every way.
Morse actually took a prominent part in many movements
against the Catholic Church, always with this attitude of mind. At
least Catholics may rejoice that in the course of the two generations
since his time, a great change has come over the minds of educated
Protestants. Those not of the fold now are at least ready as a rule
to give us credit for as much good will as they have themselves, and
they are even coming round to acknowledge that a great many
Catholics are quite as intelligent, and at least as well informed, as
their brethren outside of the Church. They have come to recognize
how much of good the Church is doing in a very great many ways,
above all among the poor, for after all she is the only Church that
makes any real appeal to the poor. The conviction is becoming
more widespread that the Church has more influence for the proper
neutralization of the discontent among the masses by a diffusion of
the real principles of Christianity and true Christian democracy,
than any other force in our modern life.
His present biographer has only this comment to make on
Morse's intolerant attitude toward Catholicism:
Although more tolerant as he grew older, he was still bitterly
opposed to the methods of the Roman Catholic Church, and
to the Jesuits in particular. He, in common with many other
prominent men of his day, was fearful lest the Church of Rome,
through her emissaries the Jesuits, 3 should gain political as-
cendancy in this country and overthrow the liberty of the
people. He took part in a long and heated newspaper contro-
versy with Bishop Spaulding [Spalding] of Kentucky concern-
3 It seems scarcely necessary to say that Morse's biographer seems to share
the prejudices of the preceding generation. Any such use of the word Jesuit is now
an anachronism. Jesuits are now known to be good, simple folk without any of
the insidious ways about them that it became traditional to attribute to them in
England after the Reformation. Anyone may know them who wants to. The Jesuit
of Protestant tradition is as extinct as the dodo or the bug-a-boo with which children
used to be scared in the long ago.
632 CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS [Feb.,
ing the authenticity of a saying attributed to Lafayette : " If
ever the liberty of the United States is destroyed it will be by
Romish priests."
During the " Know-Nothing " movement in 1855 this supposed
motto of Lafayette was constantly used by the opponents of the
Church as an important document. As a writer of the time said,
" It stared one in the face, dressed out in all the impudence of large
type from the headings of newspapers innumerable, and from the
title-pages of countless no-Popery pamphlets. At political gather-
ings and in torchlight processions, like a thing of evil it was seen
following the American flag which, as if conscious of the impending
danger of Popish priests, refused to float on the breeze." We are
rather inclined to believe that the flag drooped for very shame.
Attenti9n has been recalled to it in recent years in the midst
of the campaign of slander that once more for political purposes is
being carried on against the Catholic Church among ignorant people.
As a consequence of its revival there are a good many even well-
meaning Protestants, though never any who have paid any serious
attention to the subject, who seem to think that there must be some-
thing in it or the story of Lafayette having used it would not have
lasted so long. It seems well then to place beside what Morse's
biographer repeats in 191/1, a quotation from the life of Archbishop
Spalding, written by the present Archbishop Spalding, in which the
whole matter is summed up. Archbishop Spalding, the younger,
the author of the life, still happily with us, is very well known for
a series of addresses on many public occasions, and a number of
volumes especially on educational subjects that have been widely
read even beyond Catholic circles. His widely-known character is
the best assurance that the summing up of the matter, as given by
him, can be absolutely depended upon as presenting the other side
of the matter in controversy with fairness and completeness.
Professor Morse adduced in evidence the testimony of an
anonymous writer, whose name he was not at liberty to give.
He then referred to his own interviews with Lafayette in 1831-
32 : "I cannot," he said, " at this distance of time, of course,
remember the identical words, but never did he (Lafayette)
manifest a doubt of the essential antagonism of the maxims
and principles of the Papacy and those of republicanism, nor
any doubt, if the Papacy were triumphant, that republicanism
was at an end."
1915-] CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 633
At the urgent request of Bishop Spalding, he proceeded to
confirm his statement by the testimony of those other Americans
who had heard Lafayette speak the words in question. He first
tried to find a military officer in New York who, it was reported,
had heard Lafayette use the words, but this gentleman either
could not be found or would not testify.
He succeeded better, however, with the Rev. Dr. Vanpelt of
New York. This gentleman had a " vivid and distinct " remem-
brance of an interview with Lafayette shortly after his return
from Boston during his last visit to this country in 1824. These
were Lafayette's words:
" My dear friend, I must tell you something that occurred
when I was in Boston. I received a polite invitation from the
chief Catholic priest, or bishop of the Roman Catholic Church
in Boston, to attend his church on the Sabbath. I wrote him
an apology, saying, as I never expect to be in Boston again,
and as during the Revolution, when in Boston, I worshipped
sitting by the side of his Excellency, General Washington, and
as I see that the church and the pews are the same, except as
they are decorated with paint, I wish to occupy the same seat
in that church on the Sabbath " And again : " It is my
opinion that if ever the liberties of this country (the United
States of America) are destroyed, it will be by the subtlety
of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests, for they are the most
crafty, dangerous enemies to civil and religious liberty." Such
was the testimony of the Rev. Dr. Vanpelt.
Professor Morse brought forward another witness a cer-
tain Mr. Palmer, of Richmond, Virginia, and then proceeded to
make good his position by extracts from speeches of Lafayette,
in which he proclaimed his opposition to a union of Church
and State and professed himself an ardent champion of civil
and religious liberty.
This is a brief statement of the arguments advanced by
Professor Morse to establish the authenticity of the motto. He
seemed reluctant to give his proofs, and it was only by the
most searching cross-questioning that they were drawn from
him.
Bishop Spalding replied by taking up his heads of argument,
one by one, and showing the testimony which he had given
to be valueless, and his reasoning inconclusive.
The anonymous writer, whose name Mr. Morse was not at
liberty to give, could not, of course, be admitted as a witness.
Besides, since he was put forward as an apostate priest, his
testimony was no more above suspicion than would have been
634 CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS [Feb.,
that of Benedict Arnold against the patriots of the Revolution,
or that of Judas against Christ and the Apostles.
The testimony of Mr. Morse himself was unreliable, for
various reasons.
By his own confession, he was unable to remember the
identical words spoken by Lafayette ; and the general statement
of Lafayette's opinions, even if accurately made by Mr. Morse,
did not affect the question under discussion. But Mr. Morse
had spoken of a letter which he had received from Lafayette,
in which he was urged to make known to the American people
the serious alarm of the French patriot, lest the country should
be in danger from the machinations of Romish priests. This
letter Bishop Spalding repeatedly called for, challenging Pro-
fessor Morse either to publish it or to produce the original
copy. He did neither, but vainly sought to screen himself by
declaring that he had never pretended that the motto was in
the letter, whereas he had before affirmed that in it Lafayette
had urged him to make known to Americans his alarm lest
the liberities of the Republic should be destroyed by Catholic
priests.
Professor Morse averred afterwards that this letter had been
seen by several persons, but he persistently refused to publish it
or to produce it before witnesses in connection with this con-
troversy.
There was still another circumstance relative to Mr. Morse's
testimony which had an ugly look. Lafayette died in 1834.
Professor Morse first published the motto in 1836, whereas
Lafayette had in 1832 earnestly enjoined upon him the duty
of warning his countrymen of their imminent danger from-
" Romish priests ! " Why had he waited to perform this office
for four years after the solemn injunction had been laid upon
him, and until Lafayette had been in his grave two years and
five months?
In reply to a motion to expel from France certain refugees,
including the English or Irish monks, who were living with the
Trappists of Melleray, Lafayette had said :
" Mistake not rigor for strength, or despotism for power ;
then you will not have need of all these precautions, and the
Trappists of Melleray will not be more dangerous to you than
are the Jesuits of Georgetown to the United States."
At the very time that he tells Mr. Morse of the danger to the
United States from the machinations of Catholic priests, Lafay-
ette publicly declares in the French Assembly that the United
States has nothing to fear even from the Jesuits, whom the
1915-] CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 635
Rev. Dr. Vanpelt assures us he considered the "most crafty
and dangerous enemies of civil and religious liberty."
Either Lafayette was the basest of hypocrites, or Professor
Morse and the Rev. Dr. Vanpelt were lying under a mistake.
In a note Archbishop Spalding the biographer says:
Shortly after Archbishop Spalding's death, Professor Morse
wrote a letter to the New York Herald, in which he claimed to
have won the victory in this controversy. " Retracted nothing,"
he says, " for I had nothing to retract." And again : " I also
asserted and proved that Lafayette had used nearly the very
words of the motto to two Americans, whose names are given,
and in his conversations with me had expressed the same
sentiments." Professor Morse has since died, and as, by his
last words on this subject, he has sought to produce the impres-
sion that he had established the authenticity of the motto
attributed to Lafayette, I deem it proper to refer briefly to
the leading points in the controversy between himself and
Bishop Spalding. This controversy was not sought by Bishop
Spalding; he never sought controversy with anyone; it was
thrust upon him.
As regards Dr. Vanpelt's vivid and distinct recollection that
Lafayette, when in Boston during the Revolution, had worshipped
sitting by the side of General Washington, Bishop Spalding shows
that Washington and Lafayette had never been in Boston together,
and that consequently they could never have worshipped sitting side
by side in any church in that city, and that therefore the Rev. Dr.
Vanpelt had a vivid and distinct recollection of hearing Lafayette
say that he had done what it was simply impossible that he ever
could have done. As Archbishop Spalding, the biographer, con-
cludes : " One of Professor Morse's witnesses could not be found,
the name of another he was not at liberty to give, a third was proven
to have borne false testimony, and finally his own statement con-
cerning the letter that contained the important message from Lafay-
ette he could not verify, leaving the strong impression that the
electric telegraph was not the only thing which he had invented."
I have searched the index of these volumes in vain for any
mention of Professor Morse's connection, with Maria Monk and her
supposed revelations. In spite of thct fact that for some years
he was better known because of that than for probably any other
reason, his son omits all mention of it. H would seem that now,
636 CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS FEELINGS [Feb.,
after nearly a century, it might have been better to have acknowl-
edged how easily Professor Morse allowed himself to be fooled by
a designing young woman, because his prejudices were already so
engaged against the Catholic Church. And perhaps it will seem
more fitting to some that we should leave the unsavory Maria Monk
out of the question here in a review of this recent life of Professor
Morse. Such a course would undoubtedly be better save for the
fact that Professor Morse's name as an authority is still being quoted
by purveyors of literature against the Catholic Church, who are thus
trying to deceive a number of ignorant people.
But I have already exceeded the space that can properly be
allowed to the review of Professor Morse's life in this issue, so
it seems better to leave the Maria Monk incident for another occa-
sion. It must not be forgotten, however, that the bitter feelings
of bigotry and intolerance inflamed by the publication of those sup-
posed revelations led, in 1836, to the burning of the Ursuline Con-
vent at Charlestown (Mass.), Morse's birthplace, whereby the lives
of the nuns were greatly endangered. Later in 1855 during the
" Know Nothing " movement, similar bitter feelings, aroused by
the anti-Catholic campaign for political purposes led to the burning
of convents and churches and loss of life.
It behooves us at the present time not to let the same forces,
for they are at work to-day in certain parts of the country, lead
to any similar result. For political purposes men are making appeals
to the ignorant and the bigoted, that may easily lead to a catas-
trophe that would afterwards be deeply regretted.
The bigotry aroused in " Know Nothing " times fortunately
created a reaction against itself, and there was a much broader spirit
of tolerance toward Catholics created by this reactionary attitude
of mind. The remnants of bigotry in that generation were blotted
out during the Civil War, when the shedding of so much of the
blood of Catholics for the preservation of the Union furnished
the absolute demonstration of the depth of the patriotism of Catholic
citizens. There should never have been any doubt of this, for even
during the Revolution Washington insisted on suppressing the cele-
bration of the anti-Papal demonstrations on the fifth of November,
and called attention to the injustice of them, since Catholic soldiers
and citizens were doing so much for the Colonial cause.
TOWARDS EVENING.
WISH I were a younger man! I am glad I am an
old man! Which is the wiser wish? How seldom
a man of stalwart years wishes he were an old man.
How universally old men bemoan their decaying
strength and wistfully look at the setting sun ; some-
times envying the buoyancy of youth, sometimes calling death a
laggard for leaving them to enter in and to go out of their days
with halting pace, and as if through a door half unhinged. And
then in dullness of mind they constrain the Lord to be more sensibly
present with them, using, perhaps, the words the two disciples
addressed to our risen Saviour on the road to Emmaus, a prayer
which every aged man may choose for his motto : " Stay with us,
because it is towards evening, and the day is now far spent."
" Perseverance," says St. Francis de Sales, and he paints the
twilight mind of one's later days, " has for its enemy a certain
weariness of mind, which creeps over us after we have suffered
a long time, and this weariness is as powerful an enemy as one can
encounter. Now the grace of perseverance enables a man so to
confront this enemy that he gains the victory over it by continual
calmness, and by acts of submission to the divine will" (Confer-
ences, xix. ) . How rightly inspired was an aged Christian we lately
read of, who, when near death, hindered a friend who would turn
him so that he might get relief by resting on his side. " No," he
said calmly, " no, do not turn me : let me look up to the sky,
so that my soul may see the road by which it shall go to unite itself
to Jesus Christ." Too often this placid acceptance of death is
absent, and the pathway to heaven is clouded by sadness of mind.
How well does Newman express the right spirit in his beautiful
hymn on death :
The lights my path surrounding,
The helps to which I cling,
The hopes within me bounding,
The joys that round me wing ;
All, all, like stars at even,
Just gleam to shoot away;
Pass on before to heaven,
And chide at my delay.
638 TOWARDS EVENING [Feb.,
The friends gone there before me
Are calling from on high:
And joyous angels o'er me
Are beckoning from the sky.
" Why wait," they sing, " and wither
'Mid scenes of death and sin?
Tis better to come hither,
And find true life begin."
I hear the invitation,
And fain would rise and come,
A sinner to salvation,
An exile to his home.
But while I here must linger,
Thus, thus let all I see
Point out with faithful finger
To heaven, O Lord, and Thee.
Sadness : the near approach of death oppresses an old man with
sadness almost unceasing, for mortal man shrinks from the eternal
years whose gate is death, and sinful man mournfully gazes back-
ward into the shameful past. The terrible fascination of death is
not known except to the aged not even to a moribund invalid in
earlier life. As the years drag heavily along he is increasingly
devoted to the dead whom he has known and loved. He is a living
man ruled wholly by the dead, a condition not unmixed with sweet-
ness; but yet it is a life whose course is measured by anniversaries
of sorrow: heavy with years, broken with labors, saddened with
disappointments, tired of life and yet afraid to die. His gloom
he knows it too well is a hardship to his friends. But with Job
he would plead : " Suffer me, therefore, that I may lament my sor-
row a little ; before I go and return no more, to a land that is dark
and covered with the mist of death " (Job x. 20, 21).
It is one of our heroisms to bear up valiantly against this sad-
ness, an enemy whose clutch may be loosened but never shaken off.
Brave is the soul, who, if made thus to battle and to wait for many
years, never grows weary of the battling and waiting. The demons
of despondency pry at an old man's grip on hope and would loosen
it; and the rays of the setting sun clothe all things with a drapery
of doubt, even the pity of God. Days and days are passed when
every effort at prayer seems translated perforce into the prophet's
quavering plea to God: " Cast me not off in the time of old age;
when my strength shall fail, do not Thou forsake me. For my
19*5-
TOWARDS EVENING 639
enemies [the demons] have spoken against me, and they that
watched my soul have consulted together, saying: God hath for-
saken him ; pursue and take him, for there is none to deliver him "
(Ps. Ixx. 9-11).
Refuge from this tendency to despondency there is none except
penance, and penance, hard at best, is doubly so when force of
body and cheerfulness of mind have been drained dry by time's
relentless tribute. But now is seen the Christian's advantage,
for he has his faith to restore his wavering hope. His Catholic
faith actually forces him to trust in the grace of pardon, tells him
of place and time to seek and find it, namely, in the sacraments, and
signalizes the marks of right interior dispositions of penance. Not
in vain does he cry out with the Psalmist : " The sins of my youth
and my ignorances, remember not, O Lord " (Ps. xxiv. 7). The
memory of earlier sins insults his soul even more fiercely than later
ones; but nevertheless he knows that old age gives an added value
to penance that of the patient waiting of a darkened mind, the
trembling steadfastness of one who clings to God through feeling as
if he were under a curse. His offering, too, seems to go more swiftly
into the heart of God, for consolations are sometimes quickly
granted when the harbor of life's voyage is in sight. Yet his
prevailing feeling is sadness. To say to him that he is putting the
finishing touch to his virtue sounds to him like mockery. He is not
glad to hear such words, but rather is he painfully glad that he
must drink the cup tff penance to the last bitter drop. The piety
of his youth if he has had such a youth seems farcical to him.
Old age 'interprets the prophet's words: "They that sow in tears
shall reap in joy. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds;
but coming they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves "
(Ps. cxxv. 6, 7) : that beautiful text of hope an old man interprets
of the home-coming to heaven after an immense purgatory incal-
culably prolonged. The courage of waiting on the Lord unto the
last hour of a gradually deepening twilight is it not noble? Is
it not the courage of death, the valor of the forlorn hope?
Many is the man who never begins to live till his life is well-
nigh done, and his wasted forces admonish hiifi that he is soon to die.
In this case old age is a tearful blessing of immortal worth. The
greater part of life has been passed with little thought of salvation;
how precious the boon of a few years at the end, during every day
of which the concentrated bitterness of repentance is fearfully en-
joyed. The patriarch Job tells us, that " the vices of his youth are
640 TOWARDS EVENING [Feb.,
in the old man's bones, and they shall sleep with him in the dust "
(Job xx. n). Say this of a lost soul, impenitent to the end, and
you have the face value of the holy writer's words. Say it of
a tardy penitent of his aching bones of self-loathing, and of the
uneasy slumber of vices stirring the dust of his ancient memories,
and you have the secondary and more secret meaning applied to a
penitent old man achieving part of his purgatory before its time.
Nor is this all, though it be the hardest of his trials. For a
disgusted memory of past sins is often matched by an old man's
shameful temptations. Add to this the consciousness of present
faults; even though none of them be gravely sinful, they yet
vex and tease and weary him perpetually. He is pestered with petty
sins and weaknesses. His loneliness is as irascible as it is incurable :
he must have company, he must be petted, his stale pleasantries must
be endured; his garrulous tongue, and again his staring, stupid,
sullen reticence. Ashamed of all this, he grows shy and is peevish.
He knows that he is unfair in his affections and addicted to favorit-
ism; and if he regrets it he yet returns to it none the less. He is
slovenly and untidy in his habits; forgetful and inattentive even
in serious matters. He is under the delusion that he is still neces-
sary, and clings to office long after he has survived his usefulness,
cajoled by self-interested friends. Now and again he awakes to
the miserable reality, but is seldom able to extricate himself. He is
the dog in the manger, procrastinating and bungling beyond all
limits whilst hindering younger men from taking his place. Con-
servatism, a valued quality in early life, is the dry rot of later days,
when one is a bullying " laudator temporis acti" Golden oppor-
tunities are let slip merely because they are tainted with novelty:
his eyes are in the back of his head. And when the hurt is done,
he lays the blame on others, meanwhile keeping in the saddle of
authority even though he must have himself lashed to it. Again,
all old persons are parsimonious except with their favorities,
whom they spoil with their shameless prodigality. The typical
miser is an old man; the typical spendthrift is not always a young
man. Feebly struggling against all these insurgent tendencies, old
men at intervals spencfr hours eating out their own hearts. They are
relieved only by the very strongest graces of God ; not seldom only
by death.
But consider the reverse order of these miseries of the aged,
that of most distressful effort. For not seldom old men and women
must continue to work, even continue to keep painfully responsible
1915.] TOWARDS EVENING 641
positions, because the illness or idleness or drunkenness of their
dear ones compel them to do so. It is sad, is it not, always to
labor and always to be tired out? If the broken old parent stops
work his worthless son is flung upon the street. As the aged frame
grows stiff- jointed, eyes dim, teeth gone, nerves shattered, digestion
impaired, the unhappy old man is whipped on to do a strong man's
work with the decaying strength of old age. The supreme sadness
of all human existence is that of aged parents whose toil and love is
recompensed by the contempt of their idle children.
Old age is that part of man's pilgrimage which our blessed
Saviour did not illustrate by His example : but its merits and graces
are shown by the heroism of some of His prime favorites. The
saints, when admonished by fading vitality that death was not far
off, redoubled their austerities and their labors in preparation for
their departure. They made little account of the weakness of
old age, whilst positively welcoming and enjoying its plaintive
invitations to the long rest beyond. Were they not right? If
age calls for dispensations, impending dissolution, on the other
hand, calls for more stringent observance. Every day in the sixties
and seventies of saintly Christians is wreathed with sacred joy
and sacred sadness, the piety of faith, the yearnings of hope, the
might of love: life's evening sacrifice.
Two parts of a Christian's career should be distinguished by
fervor, the beginning of his vocation and the ending of his long,
protracted pilgrimage. Thus St. Martin, eighty years of age and
taken down with his last illness, could proclaim to God and man :
" I refuse no labor ! " As if to say : The frost of age has not
chilled my zeal sound the signal for new conflicts; I am ready.
Of him Holy Church sings in the divine office : " He feared not to
die nor yet refused to live."
St. Boniface had reached his seventy-fifth year, when the long-
ings for missions and for martyrdom which had sent him forth
among the heathen in his early life again flooded his soul. He was
Archbishop of Mainz and primate of all Germany, legate of the
Pope, and the accepted counsellor and even crowner of kings.
But he set aside all his honors and offices, took staff in hand,
gathered a little band of missionaries, and journeyed among the
pagan tribes to the north, no doubt forecasting his death. Hardly
had he begun the glorious but monotonous labor of converting and
instructing and baptizing these savages, than this aged missionary,
whose veins ran with the hot blood of youthful zeal, was suddenly
VOL. c. 41
642 TOWARDS EVENING [Feb.,
set upon and slain with all his associates, his gray head crowned,
as he ardently desired, with the martyr's blood.
Of St. Germanus of Paris, Alban Butler says (Lives of the
Saints, May 28th) : " In his old age he lost nothing of that zeal and
activity with which he had fulfilled the great duties of his station in
the vigor of his life; nor did the weakness to which his corporal
austerities had reduced him, make him abate anything of the mor-
tifications of his penitential customs, in which he redoubled his
fervor as he approached nearer to tfre end of his course. The
last part of a holy man's life so he feels is prolonged only to
enable him to renew the fires of his youthful fervor amid the
snows of extreme old age. Nor is it different with holy old men
who in their days of 'youth were abominable sinners, penitents
like St. Augustine, for example; his last weeks and months marked
a steady increase of fervent love, gleaming brightly with the rays
of trustful hope. The Sage, indeed, warns youthful sinners : " The
things that thou hast not gathered in thy youth, how shalt thou
find them in thy old age?" (Ecclus. xxv. 5.) And yet even a
tardy conversion, postponed for a lifetime, is not seldom redeemed
by a late but heroic penance. St. Cyprian was on the borders
of old age when he was converted from filthy idolatry, winning a
crown of highest perfection, though entering the battle gray-haired
and decrepit. Thus if youth is the era of heroic impulse, age is
the era of steadfast, deliberate perseverance. Which quality is of
greater worth ? St. Teresa says : " The soul that gives itself up
to the service of God, is subject to great instabilities until forty
years of age; but at that age it should be permanently established
in grace."
It is only the old man who adequately learns the value of time :
a graduate school of time is old age. Patience and the lapse of time :
great things are seldom done except by these two means. In the de-
cline of life the lapse of time is God's drawing towards paradise ; the
heart's patient waiting is its unending act of hope, hope so vivid, so
persistent, so sweet that no limits can be set to its elevating force.
By a devout old age one may become a saint after a long life of tepid-
ity. It not seldom happens that one feels almost as if he had but now
begun to live ; or, again, as if he had already passed into the other
world. Sights, and especially sounds, as those of birds and the
winds and the waters, are strangely unreal, sadly reminiscent of
distant childhood, or fearfully and yet sweetly visionary of the
world of the future. The prophet voices this twilight mind, stand-
1915.] TOWARDS EVENING 643
ing midway, intensely looking backward and yearningly looking
forward: " I thought upon the days of old; I had in my mind the
eternal years" (Ps. Ixxvi. 6). All the favorite days of an old
man are "days of old," whether for penance or for innocence;
all of his future is the cycle of " the eternal years." Salvation, yea,
even perfection, is not far from one who is thus compelled to com-
pare time with eternity.
St. Paul says that " we are saved by hope " (Rom. viii. 24) ;
for hope is the expectancy of love and the longing to possess the
Beloved; and towards the evening of life there can be no expecting
or longing except for the one remaining living reality, God and
His heaven : the earth is all too quickly passing away. " Of the
past," wrote the venerable Mother Seton to her daughter, " nothing
should remain but sorrow for sin; of the future, nothing anticipated
but heaven; of the present, one only aim to fulfill in the fleeting
moments God's adorable and eternal will." Is not this compendium
of perfection easiest had in our later days? Vocal prayers are
now sweet as never before, and come unbidden to the memory.
Mental prayer is compulsory, if that be mental prayer which com-
mandeers and confiscates all thoughts in contrasting the days of old
with the eternal years. This enables the aged Christian to preserve
calm amid feebleness and pain, and peace amid worries and cares,
traits characteristic of a devout old man; for he is quick to begin
to pray and slow to leave off.
He that lives perilously from day to day can say to God with
simplest sincerity : " Give us this day our daily bread." Begin
again to-day, O Lord, Thy daily dole of strength for my body and
of grace for my soul. Feed me with good thoughts of faith,
and of hope, and of love, and of sorrow for sin; this day, for I
am not sure but that this day shall have no morrow. My early days
seem but as yesterday, days of sin fierce and frequent, of repentance
seldom and transient. Sweet amazement seizes me as I realize
Thy patience with me, and deep thanksgiving for the boon of old
age to make ready for meeting Thee face to face. May it come
true of me, O my God, that promise made to Thy servant Job:
" Brightness like that of the noonday, shall arise to thee at evening;
and when thou shalt think thyself consumed, thou shalt rise as
the day-star. And thou shalt have confidence, hope being set before
thee; and being buried thou shalt sleep secure. Thou shalt rest,
and there shall be none to make thee afraid " (Job xi. 17-19).
O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND.
XIX.
HAT little episode of Miss Jacquetta's hospitality was
gone like the summer flowers. The night lights in the
windows at Ardcurragh had dwindled to a few in the
rooms used by the master, who found himself solitary
where late had been a crowd. But if there was little
blaze from chandeliers within, flame from eastern
skies lit the window panes from without as the nights began to close
their eyes earlier, and the winter days stretched out cold hands to
implore the spring.
That little episode of Miss Jacquetta's hospitality was gone like
the summer flowers. The night lights in the windows at Ardcurragh
had dwindled to a few in the rooms used by the master, who found
himself solitary where late had been a crowd. But if there was
little blaze from chandeliers within, flame from eastern skies lit the
window panes from without as the nights began to close their eyes
earlier, and the winter days stretched out cold hands to implore
the spring.
Hugh Ingoldesby felt the place intolerably lonely, and yet did
not want any change. He had been out of sympathy alike with the
people he had visited, and with the people who had visited him, and he
was pleased to be alone. But though glad of the freedom of alone-
ness, an unreasonable sense of loneliness hindered his enjoyment of
solitude. His one desire was to see Brona, and know how things were
going on at Castle O'Loghlin, a desire restrained, because he knew that
nothing but pain could come of a renewal of the struggle between two
spirits each strong in its own conception of faith and duty, and each
bound to war against the convictions of the other. But though keeping
aloof he did not want to go far away, especially while Turlough was
still in the country. He had seen the young man's soaring hopes and
their sudden fall, regretting that the disturber of the peace had not
been removed from his family by marriage with a wealthy lady, who
would have taken him away and provided for him. He had also
caught a glimpse of Turlough's fury, and heard a good deal about it
from Judkin, who continued to sympathize with the manly young
Papist, bound to suffer for the Papistry of a foolish old father.
Hugh surrounded himself with books in his library, and took
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 645
long rides in an opposite direction from Castle O'Loghlin, was out
by dawn in the woods, where small hardy flowers were already break-
ing from their green sheaths, rose-veined wind flowers and their blue-
frocked sisters, and the white violets that in their pale chastened
faces. and their mysterious fragrance reminded him inexplicably of the
personality of Brona. Never before had he noticed the movements
of nature in the resurrection of life after the long winter's death-like
sleep. There had been for him the changes of the seasons, with
their corresponding changes of pleasure and occupation. Each had
its practical use for the earth, on and by which men lived, and it was a
matter of course that summer did her duty in embroidering man's
path with flowers, and autumn in filling his granaries and providing
him with the luxury of her fruits. For the rest there were the
beauty and awfulness of landscapes, and the discomforts and pleasures
alike of heat and cold. But the sweetnesses and tendernesses of
spring in her close companionship with humanity were a revelation,
threatening to soften his heart into the weakening of a hardy purpose.
The first pipings of song birds were a new kind of music to him.
He had usually spent this time of the year abroad or in London, and
the nest building, and courting, and exultant jubilation of married
thrush and blackbird had been less known to him than the ways and
voices and triumphant world-wide fame of the human singer in con-
cert or oratorio. Now he listened in amazement as to minstrels
bearing messages from another world. What did the blackbird talk
about when he whispered to his mate just before the first cloud-lift of
the dawn? What was that long sweet clarion cry that echoed, rever-
berating down all the bud-leafed choirs of the yet half-bare sycamores
and chestnut trees? How could a bird, a small creature with a small
heart and a mouth that was nothing but a tiny gold beak, utter such
a shout of joy, merely because another feathered creature was close
beside him, and there were eggs in the nest? How different these
from the turbulent birds of the cliffs, who shrieked forth defiance of
all tender influences, and whose discordant notes voiced the inevitable
cruelties of conscience! The woods became haunted for him by
ghosts of all the foregone joys of life, whose existence he had never
realized till now when he saw them vanishing out of his reach. And
one night when the wind sobbed at his windows, and soughed among
the distant trees, he heard again the tolling of the mysterious bell
from its unknown belfry (the trunk of some mighty oak or elm that
had weathered the storms of centuries), and the eerie notes sounded
like a stroke of doom, signalling the futility of all human hopes, and
the folly of the jubilant existence of perishable wild flower and song
bird.
Then he began to realize that he was not leading the life of a
646 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
healthy and sane man, and that he must make some effort to change
the course of his thoughts, and to give himself some kind of com-
panionship, were it to prove ever so uncongenial and even irksome.
He delighted Judkin, who was feeling time heavy on his hands, by
directing him to see to the state of the cellar, and to provide several
new packs of cards, as he intended to invite a dinner party of mascu-
line friends, such as love good wine and the excitement of a little
gambling.
XX.
On the evening of his dinner party Hugh felt like himself again.
The men bidden were all his peers in religion and politics, professed
haters of Popery and lovers of common sense. On his arrival in
the country he had been welcomed among them as one more golden
pillar of the Ascendancy. His round of visits had made him popular,
more perhaps with the men than the women, who found him a little
cold, the latter impression a good deal modified by his house-warm-
ing hospitality under Miss Jacquetta's management. In the hunting
field he was popular, and now that he was inaugurating bachelor
dinner parties, his reputation as a giver of good wine was no way in
his disfavor. Already some of the guests were in the drawing-room,
when Judkin signalled that he wanted to speak a word to him
privately.
" Well ? " said Hugh, having followed the man out of the room,
"has anything awkward happened? "
" It's young Mr. O'Loghlin, sir, come to ask for the loan of one
of your best horses to ride to Dublin."
Hugh gave a little laugh. " Cool," he said, "upon my word !
What does he mean by it? "
" Well, sir, from words he has dropped, I think he is off to dis-
cover on his father and take the property."
" The scoundrel ! " said Hugh.
" I don't quite agree with you there, sir," said Judkin. " I con-
fess I'm glad he has got the pluck."
" Stay ! " said Hugh. " Wliere is he ? I must ask him to stop
and join us at dinner, and remain the night. Set another place at the
table, and have a room prepared. And, Judkin, let my best horse
be got ready by daybreak and breakfast on the table at the same
moment."
He found Turlough in the library carefully dressed under his
riding coat, and assuming airs of assurance and self-satisfaction.
Having formed his plan and thought his means of working it, Tur-
lough relied on Ingoldesby for sympathy, if not for admiration like
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 64?
to Judkin's, seeing that he was naturally taking a step in the right
direction.
" You are riding to Dublin ? " said Hugh.
" Yes, I am going to arrange the affair of my family at last,
to put things on a solid basis. It ought to have been done long ago,
but I am only just of age, and so "
" You mean to discover on your father and take the property ? "
" I intend to do it."
" Ah, I see. Well, meantime, stop and dine. I happen to have
a few bachelor friends to dinner. It's weary work traveling the roads
by night. Stay and have a pleasant evening, and in the morning
you can have the pick of my horses for your journey."
Turlough hesitated. He felt restless till the deed was done. And
these men who had seen him thrown over by Lady Kitty. He was
not inclined to face them till he could do so as a respectable
Protestant, and the legal owner of a property in the county.
" You are a judge of wine," said Hugh. " I have some that
I would like you to test. And you have no dislike to a game of
cards."
Turlough was conquered.
" Come to my dressing-room," said Hugh. "I will give my
orders to Judkin for the morning.
As dinner proceeded Turlough forgot his objection to antedating
his success and popularity with the gentlemen of the county, and
dropped many hints apologetic for father's old-fashioned obstinacy,
and suggestive of his own more wise intention of taking up a proper
position at the earliest opportunity. By some of the men present he
was approved and applauded, by others distrusted and disliked. Wine
flowed, and Turlough's self-conceit grew and burst into flower. He
already saw himself entertaining such a party as this, with Lady
Kitty (who would certainly listen to his next proposal) at the head of
his table. Cards were discussed, and he won some money. Wine
flowed again, and when all was done Turlough was intoxicated and
had to be put to bed. Ingoldesby sat down to write letters, after
which he went to breakfast at the hour of dawn as ordered.
' The horse is ready, sir," said Judkin, " but the young man is
asleep, and the last trump wouldn't awaken him."
" Let him be," said Hugh. " When he conies to his senses give
him what he wants, and the mount he came for. I am going myself
to Dublin to prepare the way for him. You can tell him so if he
asks for me."
As he rode out in the fair dawn, Hugh's thoughts were with
Brona. Indignation at the ruffianism he was outwitting, gave place
to pleasure at the opportunity for serving her and hers even in a
648 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
manner so remote from his own more intimate desires, as the saving
of her father's property from the covetous grip of her father's son.
Before rounding a certain curve of the road, obliterating the more
familiar landscape, he turned in his saddle to take a long look across
the bog he was leaving behind him. At that very moment Brona
might be hying by intricate and hardly discoverable paths out to the
Mass rock, where she might be tracked on any morning by Slaughter-
house or his men when they happened to make a raid on the country.
Nothing, he told himself, but the urgency of his present mission,
ought to take him out of reach in case of her distress ; but after a few
minutes of bitter uneasiness he remembered that Slaughterhouse was
in his own way a gentleman, and that he had given a sort of promise
not to harm the family at Castle O'Loghlin even to forbear to hunt
the priest so long as he kept within the walls.
It was near noon when Turlough, still stupid and red-eyed, ar-
rived in the breakfast-room. The other night-guests, victims of the
bottle, had breakfasted and gone their ways, and the table was arrayed
for service of one only. Turlough rang for Judkin, and asked to see
his host.
" Gone to Dublin, sir, since daybreak. Left a message for you
jn case you wanted him."
"He said nothing last night about going," growled Turlough.
*" He promised me a horse. I was a confounded ass to wait here for
his dinner party."
"Well, sir, I heard him promise you the horse, and my master
never goes back of his word. He gave me his orders that you were
to have everything you want. And if you were curious about his
going off so sudden, I was to say that he had just gone on to Dublin
to prepare the way for you. You will find him at Daly's."
Turlough stared. He was still stupefied by his experience of the
quality and variety of Hugh's wines from an old and well-stocked
cellar.
" I think, sir," said Judkin whose manner had become more
deferential to O'Loghlin since he was about to become a legalized
gentleman, " I believe my master thought he could make matters easier
for you."
A cup of strong coffee cleared Turlough's brains a little, and he
proceeded to make ready for his journey. The fact that Hugh had
given orders about the horse, and that it was ready for him, restored
his satisfaction with the present state of affairs, and Judkin having
mounted him in superior style, saw him ride off in super-excellent
spirits. As he pricked along, his brains restored to their normal
condition by the invigorating airs of spring, Turlough congratulated
himself on his pluck in this adventure, and especially on having
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 649
gained the countenance of Ingoldesby, who had of late so shown dis-
favor by avoiding the rest of the family. He saw his future as
O'Loghlin of Castle O'Loghlin opening before him in shining light
and in glowing colors. His father and Brona were to be provided
for somewhere, and Aideen was to be sent back to her friends in
Paris. Lady Kitty's money was to rebuild the Castle and to improve
and extend the lands. He would bring the fellows who had despised
him to their knees, take a high hand over them, and probably obtain
a title in recognition of his services to the king in conforming to
the established religion, and planting one more loyal family in the
county. It was perhaps with intention of representing all this to the
Lord Lieutenant who was a friend of his, that Ingoldesby had pre-
ceded him to Dublin at this crisis. If he had not been an idiot to
allow himself to be overpowered with wine, he might have enjoyed the
companionship of the master of Ardcurragh in his ride, but In-
goldesby was a man of the world, and no doubt had arranged the
affair with a view to the most satisfactory results.
In high good humor Turlough halted at the first stage of his
journey, and entered the inn, calling for refreshment of the -best that
could be afforded him. The money won at cards the night before
enabled him to swagger, and to dazzle the innkeeper's eyes with a
sight of gold, and continuing the same course all along the way, his
journey was prolonged beyond his first intention. Finding the
journey so pleasant, he slept at hostelries two nights on the way, and
only on the third day arrived in Dublin. After refreshing himself
and arranging his dress at a hotel he proceeded at once to the Castle,
and after some delay he obtained an audience with the authorities and
made his errand known.
The reply to his application stunned him.
"We are sorry to say you are late, Mr. O'Loghlin. Mr. In-
goldesby of Ardcurragh has been before you in this matter, and is
already registered as the legal owner of the O'Loghlin property."
XXI.
A few days later Hugh went to breakfast at Delville.
"Well? " said Mrs. Delany. "What has become of him? "
" I have shipped him off to France," said Hugh. " He made a
shocking scene, cursed me for having robbed and ruined him, said
he had written to his father to denounce me as a treacherous friend,
more hateful than an open enemy, warned his sister and aunt that
they were to be left without a roof over their heads, and that he
himself was obliged to take refuge in Paris."
"They will soon learn the truth," said Mrs. Delany.
650 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
" In time they will understand that I have made myself nominally
owner of the property in order to hold it safely for Morogh
O'Loghlin, the suspected and proscribed. But the lie will get a start
of the truth. I cannot write to denounce the scapegrace son of his
worthy father. The young rascal has misrepresented the real state
of things, describing himself as having rushed to Dublin to try to
hinder my unneighborly act in taking advantage of the law."
" He can certainly pose as an admirable person," said Mrs. De-
lany. " Of that I have had some experience. But at home they must
know him."
" I am not sure whether they would believe him capable of
such thoroughly rascally and dastardly conduct," said Hugh, think-
ing of Brona's shame and grief for her brother's vices. " But at all
events I must allow things to take their course for the moment.
Truth will out, but it has a way of choosing its own hour."
" Was the young man willing to go ? " asked Mrs. Delany.
" Pretending to be unwilling, but unable to hide his impatient
eagerness to be off. Lamented his inability to move for want of
means."
" You gave him money."
" Enough to start him in some kind of new life in Paris. I fear
it will be spent on his pleasures, but further I cannot follow him."
"What are you going to do with yourself, Hugh? You hinted
sometime ago in a letter that you thought of a return to your old
life of wandering."
" The truth is I am like a fish out of water in Ardcurragh. I am
out of touch with the sympathies of those who interest me, and I have
no inclination for the society of those who claim me as one of them-
selves. It is mere perverse humor that makes me wish to sit at the
fire with Morogh O'Loghlin, and smoke and talk books with him,
and that takes me to potter about the bog where the mysterious Mass
is said, rather than attend wine and card parties with my neighbors
approved by the law."
Mrs. Delany looked a little troubled. She thought he avoided
her eye while he spoke.
" I suppose," he went on, " I may be coming to a time of life '
when a man's tastes change, or when experience gives his precon-
ceived or educated views a shake, and he feels an interest in seeing
further into things he has despised, and putting things he has sworn
by on their trial."
" It may be so. It is a phase I can imagine. Even the woman
of thirty-five is often a more large-minded creature, though she may
feel her wings clipped, than the girl who thinks she sees inimitably
and feels her wings growing. I have always believed in liberality of
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 651
judgment myself, and I am not sorry you should feel that change
you describe, as an opening up of wider sympathies. But I hope you
will cultivate the growth of new views anywhere rather than in the
loneliness of Ardcurragh. You are too warm-blooded a man to live
like a fish, in water or out of water as you put it. As for haunting
the Mass-bog and sitting at the fire with Morogh O'Loghlin, I have
already warned you against both."
" I think I have proved myself sufficiently prudent to require
no warnings. I avoid Castle O'Loghlin and smoke in solitude. As
for the bog I confess the religion of these people fascinates me
I mean the idea of it. I no longer want to hunt and hang. I would
let them pray their own way, and even hope that God may hear them.
They have taught me to believe that there is really a God, seeing their
ardent devotion and unshakeable fidelity. The religion of common
sense as I have known it, as I find it still among legalized religionists,
dwindles before it like a candle before the sun. It is the shadow of
the substance."
"I have heard men who have lived in the East speak in the
same way of Buddhism, of Mohammedanism."
" No, no. Contrast their women with "
" Brona O'Loghlin? " said Mrs. Delany. "Ah, Hugh, your pru-
dence has not yet saved you. Don't turn Papist even for such a
woman. You could only injure yourself as well as her. Forgive
my bluntness. A minute ago I could not have believed that I should
give you such a blow in the face."
" I am not hurt. I love Brona. It harms no one that you
should know it. But having said so much I have said everything,
except that she has utterly rejected my appeal to be allowed to take
her out of so sad a home and make her happy."
" It has come to that ? "
" Some time ago. Latterly I have not seen her. As to turning
Papist, I am not a man to pretend to worship my Creator while
conscious of nothing in my heart but worship of a woman."
" No."
" It is simply that I am unfortunate in this, being a man who
loves only one woman in his lifetime. Only for the barrier of
proscription she would be my wife. Seeing her living faith I have
ceased to wish to force her to abjure it. The change has come to
me in absence from her, in days and nights of thought. It seems
there is nothing for us but the sadness of separation. God made
us man and woman for each other, but the dissension of creeds has
parted us."
" I wish I had never asked her to come here ! " said Mrs. Delany
impetuously.
652 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
" Don't regret it, dear lady," said Hugh, smiling. " We should
have met on the bog. My fate was drawing me to Ardcurragh, and
that movement you had nothing to do with. My good aunt is the
only person to blame besides myself for bringing me to Ireland.
How scared she would be if she could hear me say it! But do not
be uneasy about me. I am happier in loving Brona, even in sepa-
ration than I could have even been without knowing her."
" You are a very strange man, Hugh," said Mrs. Delany.
"Odd ? " said Hugh. " The world is full of odds and evens, and
I suppose some of us are bound to take the odds."
" Well, go to the East and study Buddhism, and don't frighten
me with your admiration of Papistry. Liberality can go a little too
far. You know I am a friend of Catholics, and always take their
part. But the Dean"
" Is also liberal, but draws a line, and his line is yours."
" A safe and reasonable line. I have always wished that you
could hear him often at St. Werbergh's."
" Before or after going to the East ? "
" Now you are ceasing to be serious and beginning to tease. I
am afraid you are bent on going back to Ardcurragh."
" I shall probably feel in a few days that I must go back and
explain my conduct to Morogh O'Loghlin."
"Will not writing do?"
" A cold means where so much may depend on warmth of assur-
ance. Next to crimes, misunderstandings are, to my mind, the very
worst evils of life."
XXII.
There was some talk in the servant's hall about Turlough's
sudden departure and prolonged absence, no notice given to his
family, only a casual remark to Thady Quin that he was riding to
Ardcurragh to spend the evening.
. " That he may stay away ! " said Thady Quin. " He has the two
eyes cried out of the Marquise's head (and more's the pity, for there's
no finer eyes in the world for their time of life), and Miss Brona
wore as thin as a sally rod, and the masther starin' at the wall over
the edge of his book, right at the misthress' picture (the light o'
heaven to her!) as if he was sayin' to her, ' Why did you let the devil
get a hoult of him, an' you at hand so convenient to put in a good
word for him in the ear of God ?' "
" I've heard there's a black sheep turnin' up in every old family
some time or other," said Mrs. MacCurtin apologetically.
" Not in mine," said Thady, " as old as any of them, the Quins
of Quin Abbey that was called for them and for Quinchy, the arbutus
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 653
tree. Father Aengus explained it to me. His own order lived in it
before it was wrecked an' ruinated. What's older than the trees,
barrin' the mountains? "
" Bother you and your family ! " said Mrs. MacCurtin. " What
do I ever say about the MacCurtins? I'm as old as yourself any
day, Thady Quin."
" Faith then, ma'am, you haven't the appearance of it," said Thady
gallantly.
" Don't try to be more of a fool than you look, my good man !
There's the Marquise ringin' for me! Bother the bells in this house
that's all broke!"
" If they weren't Catholic bells they'd be ringing," said Thady.
" But if all the Marquises in Christianity, bells or no bells, were on the
stairs, I will say Honor MacCurtin that anybody seein' the pair of us
this minute would give y' ten years younger by your looks than Thady
Quin."
" I don't think Mr. Turlough will be at home for dinner," said
the Marquise as she gave her housekeeping orders for the day. " Mr.
Ingoldesby usually keeps him for a week or two when he goes to
Ardcurragh."
" True for you, my lady," said Mrs. MacCurtin, " and we needn't
be unneighborly in refusin' to lend a loand of him. The best in the
world can be done without, whiles "
"He needs a change sometimes. 'Tis a dull life here for one
accustomed to Paris," said the Marquise with a lift of her chin. " See
that his bed is kept aired."
" Oh, and that he may not be sleepin' in the same bed for long
enough to come ! " muttered Honor MacCurtin to herself, as the lady
turned away, holding her handsome white head unusually high for
one who was ever genial and " homely " with the humblest of the
retainers of the family.
" My lady, Mr. MacDonogh's in the library with the master,"
said Thady meeting her in the hall.
Aideen breathed a sigh of relief that was almost contentment.
Turlough returning to his usual ways, and MacDonogh coming on the
scene, were two good happenings after weeks of misery. The bluff,
good-natured MacDonogh was always welcome for his leal fidelity
to the unfortunate, and for his optimistic cheerfulness which was like
an invigorating breeze blowing the miasma out of stagnant places.
A daring lawbreaker, and of a nature somewhat coarse in the grain,
neither smuggling nor a plain spoken word was a crime in his eyes,
and those who had proved his worth were fain to take him at his
own estimate, warming themselves at the glow of his very human
virtues.
654 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
Aideen finished her household business, and arranged her dress
for lunch with the accustomed care of a French woman, and took
her way to the morning-room. She paused in the doorway with a
sudden sense of shock. The pleasant looks of welcome always ac-
corded to MacDonogh were not to be seen. Her brother sat with his
head drooped, his hands grasping the arms of his chair. Brona
stood behind him, gazing at MacDonogh with an expression in her
eyes of fixed denial of belief in what he was saying. MacDonogh
stood erect on the hearth, one arm extended denouncing something or
someone", an angry frown oh his good-natured countenance.
" Turlough again ! " she thought with a rush of impulse to de-
fend him at any cost.
Morogh and Brona took no notice of her entrance. MacDonogh
bowed low over the hand she extended to him.
" This is a sad business, my lady. Ill luck to me to be the bearer
of bad tidings."
" Is Turlough dead ? " gasped Aideen.
MacDonogh almost smiled at the question. It would not have
pained him much to announce such a catastrophe as the removal of
the graceless young man from the possibility of further tormenting
his family.
" As far as I know your nephew's health is excellent," he said.
" Tell me what is wrong," said Aideen. " What are your evil
tidings ? "
" Evil enough, madam. It grieves me to tell of the treachery
of one who has passed as the friend of this family. Ingoldesby of
Ardcurragh has formally " discovered on " Morogh O'Loghlin as a
proscribed and obstinate Catholic, persisting in Popish practices, en-
couraging Romish superstitions, and known to harbor a priest. And
as a reward for his zeal he is now registered as the legal owner of
the O'Loghlin property of Burren, as well as the Ingoldesby property
of Ardcurragh."
" Impossible," said Aideen. " He is a gentleman and has shown
much sympathy."
" More scoundrel he ! " cried MacDonogh. " It is the talk of
Dublin. The bribes offered by the government are too big to be
resisted. With two such properties he will be a magnate in the county.
A title will probably be his reward."
" It has always been possible," said Aideen, "but not even Sto-
dart and Ingoldesby of all men."
" Nothing so likely as the unexpected," said MacDonogh grimly.
" It has not happened. It is not true," said Brona, firmly, the
denial in her face growing more intense as she flatly contradicted the
ill-omened messenger.
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 655
"If it were not true I should not be here with an alarming lie,
my dear young lady. My anxiety has been to know what my friends
intend to do, and to offer them any help in my power. Rumor says
the robber intends throwing the two properties into one, rebuilding
the Castle, and that he is promised an earldom for his services to the
king."
" Falsehood every word of it ! " said Brona, leaning her elbows
on the back of her father's chair, her chin in her hand, and her eyes
flashing indignation at MacDonogh.
" That's how he did it," was MacDonogh's thought, startled by
the steeled expression of those tender eyes. " Wormed himself into
the family confidence and the girl's affection, that he might learn all
about their affairs, and be able to sell the whole of them, root and
branch the ruffian ! "
Morogh had not spoken. " Where is Turlough ? " he said now,
raising his bent head with an effort.
" Oh, he's in Dublin, or was when I saw him. Said he followed
Ingoldesby to try to stop him. He may be in Paris now for all I
know. Ingoldesby was shipping him off with money in his pocket,
to get rid of a likely row from his interference."
Here the door opened, and Thady announced himself with a little
modest cough.
" It's a word I have for the Marquise," he said. " If it's a thing
that she's expecting Mr. Turlough, she needn't. Myself met Judkin
on the road, and he says his master went off to Dublin a week ago for
the extinguishment of Papishes, and Mr. Turlough hot foot after
him, and neither of them has come back. I didn't wait to hear more,
for fear I would throttle the rascal for the grin he had."
"Thank you, Thady. That will do," said Morogh, and Thady
retreated, standing outside in the hall, and shaking his fist at the solid
door, that had no chinks to enable him to learn something more of
the misfortune that had fallen on the family.
" If this is true it must be borne," said Morogh. " W r e have
lived in expectation of it. At the present moment all we have to do
is to await more positive information. Some kind of official notice
will be given to us. So far as we know," he added with a faint smile,
" I am still, for to-day at least, O'Loghlin of Burren. Let us live
accordingly, as if nothing had happened. Have you other business
on hands, MacDonogh? You did not come down to Clare merely
to bring us this news."
" Only the usual business of the brigade," said MacDonogh rue-
fully. " I am sorry, O'Loghlin, to be the first to rush this on you."
" No, my friend. You have prepared us for what may be to
come. You will return to sup this evening. On your next visit we
656 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
may not be able to offer you hospitality. You know the saying
'seize life's glad moments when you can' they are ever on the wing."
"To-night or to-morrow," said MacDonogh, and took his de-
parture, downcast.
" Now, no tears, no repining ! " said Morogh looking at his
sister and daughter with calm eyes, " and leave me alone for a while
to arrange this affair with God. Such an event does not arrive with-
out His knowledge. If we are Christians and Catholics, we must
be prepared to receive with welcome all that He sends."
" You are not natural, Morogh ! " burst forth Aideen.
Brona knelt and buried her face in her father's shoulder for a
moment.
" It's impossible, father. Don't believe it," she whispered. " In-
goldesby is our friend."
She kissed his hand and stood up.
" Come, Aideen ! " she said and the Marquise, half-suffocated
with suppressed wrath and grief, followed her from the room.
They put their heads together over the wood fire in Aideen's
chamber.
" Is this revenge for your rejection of Ingoldesby as a lover ? "
asked Aideen. " If you had conformed, and married him it would
have been a pleasanter way for him to attain his object, though not
so direct or so rapid."
" Hush, Aideen," said Brona. " Whoever has done this thing
it is not Hugh Ingoldesby. As well tell me that the hills of Burren
have taken a walk to Killarney, and that this moment our sky is
void of them."
"Ah, you care for him! You love the traitor. Be loyal to
your father, Brona ! "
" Am I not loyal to him ? Shall I not travel the world with
him ? " said Brona. " As for lovers I have often told you that such
are not for me. But I would be just. Can you not be loyal to any-
one but Turlough?"
" What has Turlough to do with it ? " asked Aideen angrily.
" Why must he always be the scapegoat ? "
Then they were both silent, remembering Turlough's threat of
some months ago. Brona believed that her father had been remem-
bering it when he sat so silent.
" It were better that any stranger should do this thing than that
a Catholic should forswear his religion to do it," whispered Brona,
" even if he were not the son of the man he wronged."
Aideen groaned. In her heart she feared that it was Turlough
who had done it. So did Brona.
The two women could talk no more for their tears.
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 657
XXIII.
Some time later came the official announcement to Morogh
O'Loghlin of the confiscation of his property in the County of Clare,
which had been transfered to Hugh Ingoldesby of Ardcurragh in that
county. Almost at the same moment came Turlough's letter written
on the eve of his sailing for France, denouncing Ingoldesby, and mis-
representing the circumstances of his own departure from home.
The letter was to Aideen. With all his callousness and audacity
and his recklessness of truth, he had not the temerity to address a
tissue of falsehood to his wronged father, whose strength of character
inspired him with awe while he despised his resignation and fortitude.
He had gone (he said) to dine with Ingoldesby, and found him on
the eve of starting for Dublin to discover on his Catholic neighbor,
Morogh O'Loghlin. He had tried to dissuade him, but without avail.
Ingoldesby had set out at daybreak on his journey, and Turlough on
finding him gone, had borrowed a horse from Judkin to ride after him,
to make another attempt to save the property. Before he could make
any such attempt the deed was done.
" I had gained some money by cards," he wrote, " and I am
getting away to Paris, where I must try to live by my wits as best I
can. I don't know what is to become of you and father and Brona.
Perhaps the new master may allow you to remain as tenants at will,
unless he wants to pull down the old house and build, when perhaps
he would grant you a hovel somewhere. When I think of his pros-
perity and style, and his cool superiority, and my own miserable exist-
ence, I could poison him! Perhaps you will all forgive him, and
dutifully accept him as your master since the law has given you to
him; even Brona who didn't think enough of him to save us
through his favor ! This is his revenge."
Turlough's raving continued to much greater length. The truth
of the gist of his communication might have been doubted but for the
cold official document which accompanied and corresponded with it.
There followed at Castle O'Loghlin a spell of the silent endurance
of undeserved affliction, known to many souls who suffer this life
in large degree as purgatory. To Morogh this deprivation of all his
earthly possessions was as a call to the inner courts of spirituality, and
invitation to closer union with his God. I will draw thee with the
cords of love. These cords were cords of chastisement. With a
severe countenance he set himself to consider what steps to take for
the future of himself and his daughter, undaunted by the knowledge
that indigence and penury awaited them.
" Don't be uneasy about me, father," said Brona. " If we must
go to France, I can teach English in a convent school, and you and
VOL. c.~ 42
658 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
I can live happily together on a pittance. Aideen has her own little
income. It will only be the pain of leaving the dear old place, the
home, the hills and the sea."
She did not venture to breathe her suspicion of the truth, that
Turlough's treachery somehow lay at the base of their misfortune.
Though her faith in Ingoldesby's honor and rectitude were akin to
her trust in Providence, she was keenly aware that it was easier for
Morogh to suffer from the avowed ill-will of a stranger than from
a stab in the dark from his unworthy son. She spoke no more in de-
fence of Hugh, even to Aideen whose occasional angry denunciations of
the enemy sometimes seemed to her to cover the same unacknowledged
suspicion as her own. And so the days went on, the cloud of sus-
pense and uncertainty intensifying as no further intimation reached
them of the intentions of the man who appeared to have so basely
injured them.
" He will not come back to the country at present," said Aideen,
" not till we are gone. He will be ashamed to look on the ruin he has
made. Nor will he write. How could he find words to give a
plausible reason for his conduct? Probably the next thing we shall
hear will be an official warning to get out of our premises before a
certain date."
To all this Brona said nothing. She was praying for Turlough.
Asking forgiveness and amendment for her brother, she offered
thanksgiving for Hugh, the friend whom she felt sure he had cal-
umniated. But of this no word could be said, neither to her father
to increase his sorrow perhaps beyond his endurance, nor to Aideen,
whose scared eyes betrayed her fear of worse news to come, and her
desperate determination to fight for one wrongdoer, no matter to what
depths of degradation he might have sunk. The suspicion in the
women's minds was turned to certainty in a moment by a sudden out-
burst of the feelings of Thady Quin. The Marquise found him stamp-
ing his feet with passion in the garden.
" Sure flesh an* blood can't bear it, my lady ! Mrs. MacCurtin
says I'm to hold my tongue, an' I can't. Bad as he was I couldn't
ha* believed it of Turlough no more will I mister or master him.
Hadn't we him here like a bird in a nest, and all of us makin' much of
him?"
Aideen stood pale and speechless.
" I'm not lookin' at you, my lady, for I couldn't bear your eyes.
I've spoke now and on speakin' I'll go. It was Judkin that I met on
the road ridin' one of his master's horses an' he stops and says he:
''Hello! when yez goin' to clear out o' yonder and let decent
law-abidin' people get their own? My master's your master now/
says he; an' can sell the whole of y' root an' branch, and a good
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 659
riddance of Papishes out of the country! And your own young
rascal/ says he, 'that wanted it for himself done out of it for all his
tricks. And well it is, for one that would rob his own father and
make a beggar of him is no good for honest Protestants to have to do
with/
" 'What do you mean, you ruffian?' says I. 'Mr. Turlough tried
to stop your master's robberly grabbin'.'
" With that Judkin let a laugh and an oath that I couldn't repeat
to your ladyship, and then he let another not so heavy second-course-
like, and says he:
" 'By King George that's a good one ! Didn't he come beggin'
the best horse to take him to Dublin Castle to discover on his father
for a Papish, an' take the property for himself as an honest Prot-
estant ? And not the first time he said it to me, but the first my master
heard of it. An' didn't Ingoldesby fill him with wine an' put him to
bed, and go off at break of day an' take all for himself? And better
it is for yez all to be at the heel of Ingoldesby than the mercy of
yon Turlough!'
" O good Lord, my lady, my blabbin' tongue has killed you ! "
cried Thady, breaking his narrative short, and rushing to support the
stricken lady, who after a fit of trembling recovered her presence of
mind, and gave him her hand with a piteous movement, allowing him
to lead her to the house.
" I told her the truth, bad manners to me ! " he cried to Brona,
" and sure it had to be known, though it needn't have come out so
suddint!"
Aideen had a headache that evening, and remained in her room.
The truth, though hardly a surprise, had fallen on her, as things
silently known to the mind will strike at the heart when put into
words, and hurled unexpectedly from the unsparing tongue of an-
other. It was agreed between her and Brona that nothing should be
said to Morogh of this fresh sting added to the bitterness of the
moment. He remained devoted to the effort of winding up his af-
fairs, with a view to relinquishing the ownership of his house and
lands as required by the mandate of the law. Only a week had
elapsed since the blow had fallen, and to the family at Castle O'Loghlin
it seemed to have been months in passing.
XXIV.
Hugh was still detained in Dublin by formalities of the law, un-
willing to write to Morogh O'Loghlin, seeing the difficulty of ex-
plaining his own action without informing him of the evil behavior of
his son. To Mrs. Delany's entreaties that he would write a plain
statement of his own act and intentions, and avoid the society of the
660 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Feb.,
O'Loghlins for some years to come, he persisted in replying that he
felt urged and obliged to see Morogh and talk to him on the matter.
The thought that they must meanwhile see him in the light of a
treacherous friend was intolerable to him. When he said, " they," Mrs.
Delany knew that he was thinking of Brona.
" If you really want to benefit them, go away," said the sensible
woman. "If you turn Papist or Brona marries you, remaining ob-
stinate, you and they are all brought to ruin together."
" Your woman's imagination is at work now," said Hugh. " I am
not likely to turn Papist, nor, I grieve to say, is Brona likely to marry
me. We are both as firm as the Burren Mountains."
" I hope you will remain so, and with a view to that, I again ad-
vise you to make your visit short, and go to Burmah or Egypt to learn
more about Eastern religions. They will be a safer study for you
at present than the follies of Popery."
" That is a less liberal speech than I ever heard from you before,"
said Hugh smiling.
" I want to save you, and I want to save Brona," said Mrs.
Delany warmly. " You are not the only person to find her a lovable
creature. I can love without harming her."
" So can I," said Hugh boldly. But Mary Delany shook her head.
" As soon as you are out of the British Isles," she said, " I will
have her here again, and try to give her a little peace and pleasure."
" She will not leave her father. Less likely now than ever," said
Hugh.
" Then Morogh must come with her. The aunt will be bent on
following Turlough to Paris."
" You speak as if I were going to turn them out," said Hugh.
" Perhaps you may have to do so. Who can tell how all this is
going to end ? "
" No, no," said Hugh. " I am seeing this matter solidly arranged.
If I am owner of the O'Loghlin property I can do what I please with
it. And I please to leave Morogh O'Loghlin as undisturbed in it as
though I had no existence."
" Then write and tell him so and depart to Egypt," said Mrs.
Delany.
" I intend to go and tell him so, and afterwards to live where I
may find it convenient to live," said Hugh.
" You had better give it up," said Dr. Delany when his wife
complained to him. " As well try to turn the mill stream by shaking
a switch at it, as persuade Hugh Ingoldesby against his judgment."
" I want to save them both," said Mary Delany.
' You can't, my love, unless they want to save themselves. Every
man has to dree his own weird, as the Scotch say, and every woman
1915-] TO ALICE MEYNELL 661
too. You have given good counsel, and have no further responsi-
bility."
Meanwhile Hugh had received an audacious letter from Turlough
in Paris, demanding more money.
" You have robbed my father of everything," he wrote, " and you
are bound to make a provision for me, his heir. Please to let me
have a remittance as soon as convenient to you."
Hugh threw the letter in the fire, and felt more than ever sure of
the necessity for his visiting Clare, and of having a thorough under-
standing with Morogh O'Loghlin, let come what might.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
TO ALICE MEYNELL.
BY ARMEL O'CONNOR.
THE winds came Jiome to your singing ;
They whispered me this, on the way ;
But would not stop, who were bringing
Fair gifts for your choice of a lay.
They carried twilight and shimmer,
And dreams for the bloom of a thought,
And stars too distant for glimmer,
Strong things out of gossamer wrought;
White moonbeams, caught for your pleasure ;
White bird with a nest in a shrine ;
White speech, turned silver for treasure ;
White music to rhythm each line;
And gold for silence that ponders
O'er thoughts still unshaped to a word ;
Faint gold for luminous wonders,
Felicities never yet heard.
The winds came home to your singing;
One song was too small for their heed.
But take, what they scorned in their bringing,
The wish that is almost a deed.
JEAN HENRI FABRE.
A GREAT CATHOLIC SCIENTIST.
BY JOHN DALY MCCARTHY, PH.D.
HE opening years of the twentieth century disclosed
two giants in the field of natural science both
Catholics Mendel, the Augustinian Prior, whose
experiments on peas laid the foundations for the
formulation of the laws of inheritance that now go
by the name of Mendelism ; and Fabre, the great entomologist and
natural philosopher. Unfortunately for natural science, the full
value of their work -was not appreciated until long after much of it
was accomplished ; Mendel lay in his almost unmarked grave, near
his beloved cloister gardens, twenty years before the report of his
work was discovered in the Abhandlungen of the Natural History
Society of Briin ; and the plaudits of the whole scientific world find
Fabre a nonogenarian, his energy spent, living in a humble peasant's
cottage in his beloved France.
A thorough understanding of the work fifty years ago of
either of these men would possibly have led Darwin to modify his
theory of the mechanism of descent, and it would most certainly
have had a disciplinary value for those followers of Darwin, who
have made Natural Selection a word with which to conjure. But if
Mendel's and Fabre's great work was unknown for so long a time,
it is the fault of those materialistic philosophers of the latter part
of the nineteenth century who formulated theories of origins and
descent from a study of dead animals in a laboratory. We should
be proud of our Catholic biologists who have been so conspicuous
in the study of nature by means of living plants and animals in
their natural habitat of the English priest, Father John Gerard;
of Mendel; of Fabre, and of Father Eric Wassmann, the famous
student of the animal brain.
The Church has been graced by many other patient and all too
humble scientific workers, but none greater than Jean Henri Fabre.
This little old man, who has been called the " Homer of the Insect
World," was born in Saint Leon's in 1823, and is consequently
now in his ninety-second year. His family had as a neighbor 1 the
Catholic poet, Mistral. When Fabre was twelve years old his
1 Fabre, Poet of Science. By C. V. Legros.
1915-] JEAN HENRI FABRE 663
parents moved to Rodez where his father opened a cafe. It was
here that Fabre came into intimate touch with the parish priest,
assisting him in many ways and 2 serving as an altar boy. Con-
cerning his duties at Mass, Fabre tells us in a chapter of autobiog-
raphy, that he was in a constant state of trepidation during the
Holy Sacrifice, never certain when to ring the bell or move the
Missal. At the intonation of the ff Domine, salvum fac regem,"
he was so distrustful of his own powers that he usually mumbled to
himself, leaving the intonation to his associates.
Once, when wandering about in the woods on a mountain
nearby, he came upon a finch's nest containing six eggs, and boy like
took one away in his hand, carefully guarded by pads of moss.
At the bottom of the slope he met the parish priest's curate reading
his breviary as he was taking a walk. Here it was that Fabre
received his first lesson in Latin, and learned of the value of the
finches as destroyers of insects, for the curate was no mean naturalist
himself, telling the boy of the feeding habits of the bird whose
egg he had stolen, and giving him its scientific name. 3 Fabre
relates that it was only long afterwards that he learned the value
of his first lesson in the classics received at the hands of the kindly
curate.
In these days of universal education, so called, when universi-
ties and private schools are receiving incomes amounting to billions
of dollars, and when boys and girls are tortured by a graded system
of education extending in some cases over a period of fifteen
or twenty years of forty weeks to the year, it is profitable and
astonishing to see how really great scholars have acquired an educa-
tion with the most meagre facilities. Fabre says 4 that he received
just three formal lessons in science during his lifetime one in
economic zoology given him by the village Cure with a finch's egg
as illustrative material ; one in chemistry when he saw a laboratory
assistant make oxygen, and nearly blind the whole class in the
process ; and one in anatomy, which was given by Moquin Tandon,
who showed him the structure of a snail in a plate filled with
water. He never received a lesson in mathematics above the prob-
lems of simple arithmetic, got a smattering of Latin from a copy
of ^Esop's Fables, learned Greek by procuring a copy of the Imita-
tion with parallel columns in Latin and Greek, and translating the
latter by means of the former. 5 Yet Fabre later became a successful
J. H. Fabre, Life of the Fly, p. 150. J. H. Fabre, Life of the Fly, p. 390.
4 J. H. Fabre, Life of the Fly, pp. 427, 428. 'Ibid., p. 433.
664 JEAN HENRI FABRE [Feb.,
teacher of geometry and chemistry, read Latin and Greek as a
mental tonic, earned a livelihood for a time from applied chemistry,
became a botanist of considerable reputation, and is to-day the
truest and most poetical student of insect life the world has ever
known. Fifty years 6 ago Darwin referred to Fabre as the " incom-
parable observer," and yet he was little known outside of France
until the last ten years.
Fabre is above all a student of animal life, not a dissector
of the dead animal body.
To know thoroughly the history of the destroyer of our vines
might perhaps be more important than to know how this or that
nerve fibre of a cirriped ends; to establish by experiment the
line of demarcation between intellect and instinct ; to prove by
comparing facts in the zoological progression, whether human
reason be an irreducible faculty or not; all these ought surely
to take precedence of the number of joints in a Crustacean's
antenna.
It has been repeatedly pointed out that the really great workers
in science have been neither agnostics nor atheists, but instead
very reverent men. And Fabre is no exception. In speaking of
what many persons would consider a very simple matter the
germination of a seed which most of our soap-box orators would
feel quite capable of explaining with a sentence and a few gestures,
the " incomparable observer " says : 7
What does the root know of the earth's f ruitf ulness ? Noth-
ing. Theories are put forward, most learned theories, intro-
ducing capillary action, osmosis and cellular inhibition, to explain
why the caulicle ascends and the radicle descends. Shall
physical or chemical forces explain why an organism digs into
the hard clay? I bow profoundly, without understanding or
even trying to understand. The question is far above our inane
means.
It is interesting to know that Fabre takes 8 issue with many
of the modern expounders of Mendelism who maintain that "genius"
is inherited, and that it can be " bred " as swine with twisted tails
or cattle with long horns are bred. After pointing out that the
love for insect life that permeates his own being, and the genius
for observation attributed to him by Darwin, are to be found in none
of his ancestors, he says:
After the details which I have already given about my an-
*lbid., pp. 1 60, 161. 'Ibid., p. 108. *Ibid., p. 160.
1915.] JEAN HENRI FABRE 665
cestors, it would be ridiculous to look to heredity for an
explanation of the fact. Nor would anyone venture to suggest
the words or example of my masters. Of scientific education,
the fruit of college training, I have none whatsoever. I never
set foot in a lecture hall except to undergo the ordeal of examina-
tions. Without masters, without guides, often without books,
in spite of poverty, that terrible extinguisher, I went ahead,
persisted, facing my difficulties, until the indomitable bump
ended by shedding its scanty contents. I was a born animalist.
Why and how? No reply.
We thus have, all of us, In different directions and in a
greater or less degree, characteristics that brand us with a special
mark, characteristics of an unfathomable origin. They exist
because they exist; and that is all one can say. The gift is
not handed down ; the man of talent has a fool for a son. Nor
is it acquired; but it is improved by practice. He who has not
the germ of it in his veins will never possess it, in spite of all
the pains of a hothouse education.
It has been repeatedly observed that the profoundest thoughts
are usually clothed in the simplest words, and all that Fabre has
written bears this out. He tells us that if he writes for scientists
and philosophers, he writes above all for children. A child could
read his chapters in The Life of a Fly and delight in them. They
are so simply and so beautifully written. And older folks will find
Fabre no less delightful than children.
In the volume just referred to, Fabre contributes some prob-
lems in instinct that will be rather difficult for the followers of the
doctrine of " chance " to explain. For instance, on one occasion 9
he observed that the female fly lays her eggs on the eyes or in the
corners of the mouth of a dead animal, and that when the head is
covered by a paper bag, and there are no wounds in the body, no
eggs are deposited on the carcass. What is the reason? Fabre
can answer. The maggots worm their way through the flesh by
digesting the protein tissue ahead of them by means of an enzyme,
probably much like the pepsin in our stomachs. The skin is made
up very largely of a horny material keratin which cannot be
digested by the maggot's secretion. With her maternal foresight,
the bluebottle knows to perfection the choice surfaces, the only ones
liable to soften and run under the influence of the reagent dribbled
by the new born grubs. The chemistry of the future is familiar to
her, though she does not use it for her own feeding. Can chance
9 Ibid., p. 347.
666 JEAN HENRI FABRE [Feb.,
solve this? Is it by chance that a fly knows the chemical action
of ferments in grubs, that she never sees and never will see? The
advocates of the doctrine of chance are in the minority these days.
Scientists are coming to realize that there is purpose over and above
the chemical and physical laws of the universe.
It is interesting in this connection to note that the possibility
of explaining biological phenomena by means of physical and chem-
ical forces had occurred to Fabre, and had been thoroughly ex-
amined. In fact it was none other than Darwin who suggested
to Fabre 10 that the homing instincts of insects might be explained
by the action of terrestrial magnetic currents. It seems that Fabre's
work had come to Darwin's attention, and he had written Fabre
a flattering appreciation of it. And Fabre states that " though
facts, as I see them, disincline me to accept his theories, I have
none the less the deepest veneration for his character as a man and
his candor as a scientist," and Fabre decided to follow Darwin's
suggestions for further experimentation on mason bees. It seems
that Darwin felt that the insects' homing-sense depended very much
on their perception of gravity and air currents while they were
being carried away from their nest, and that if instead of being
taken in a direct line from their nest a circuitous course was fol-
lowed, and the bag containing them was rotated several times, it
would so confuse them that they would be unable to find their
way home. Fabre determined to give this suggestion a thorough
test since it came from so great a scientist, and also because, accord-
ing to the peasants of Provence, cats if put in a bag and thoroughly
rotated would not return to their old homes. And so one morning
Fabre started off with several mason bees in a bag. He went
around hills and through woods until he was two miles from home,
and had come to a wayside cross. This would be an excellent place
to liberate his bees. But they must be rotated first! Taking the
bag in one hand he swung it around his head in a horizontal plane,
and then in front of him in a vertical plane, and then between his
legs, and finally wound up the performance by a series of fantastic
gyrations calculated to destroy any memory of distance or air cur-
rents that the bees ever possessed. Then taking his insects out one
by one he put a drop of colored glue on the back of each and liberated
them. Darwin's directions were followed out to the letter.
But so attentive had he been with his experiment that he had
not noticed an old woman standing a short distance up the road.
"My Relations With Darwin, i.
1915-] JEAN HENRI FABRE 667
She had seen all of his antics before the cross! Straightway she
made for the village to tell the gossips that Fabre had gone crazy,
and that she had found him going through the most diabolical
actions at the foot of the cross. Of course, her audience was glad
to believe all she said, for only a short time before had he not been
detected digging bones out of some old graves in the cemetery!
Embarrassed as he was by the old woman's presence, he did not
let this interfere with his experiment, and immediately set out for
home. When he arrived there he found some of his bees before
him and others later returned. He immediately wrote to Darwin
of his observations, and the latter replied that he was surprised and
not a little disappointed. There was still another line of attack left
open, however. Darwin suggested that the insect's homing-sense
might be partly due to terrestrial magnetic currents, and advised
Fabre to make a very thin needle into a magnet, " and to attach this
needle to the insect's thorax." "I believe," Darwin said, "-that
such a little magnet, from its close proximity to the nervous system
of the insect, would affect it more than would the terrestrial cur-
rents," and that the insect would lose its sense of orientation.
Concerning this suggestion, Fabre observes, " I have but little
confidence in our physics when they pretend to explain life; never-
theless, my respect for the illustrious philosopher would have made
me resort to induction coils, had I commanded the necessary ap-
paratus." And Fabre followed out the second suggestion as con-
scientiously as the first, but with no better results, and he was in the
midst of a letter to Darwin acquainting him with his experiment
when the news came of the death of the Sage of Down. " The
excellent man was no more ; after fathoming the majestic question
of origins, he was grappling with the last murky problem of the
hereafter." 11
Although Fabre has the greatest admiration for Darwin the
scientist, he has little patience with the latter's philosophical views.
He ridicules the theories of Natural Selection, of the evolution of
species, and the survival of the fittest. And Fabre not only is
a " grand 12 old scientist, but also a fine old Christian gentleman,
who ascribes the various manifestations of insect life and instinct
to the direct act of Providence. I have noticed that he is never
happier than when he lights upon a fresh argument against the
Theorists.' "
"My Relations With Darwin. The Forum, October, 1913.
12 Marmaduke Langdale, London Daily Mail. Quoted by The Literary Digest,
August 24, 1912.
668 JEAN HENRI FABRE [Feb.,
That Fabre's views have a great deal of weight, is attested by
many thinkers and scientific workers whose own views may incline
them to materialistic interpretation. Maeterlinck says of Fabre,
" He is one of the most profound and inventive scholars, and also
one of the purest writers, and, I was going to add, one of the finest
poets of the century that has just passed." It has been said of Fabre
that " he loves man and he loves animals ; and above all he loves
the wasp, the bee, the beetle, with a love that approaches that of
St. Francis of Assisi for 'his little brothers the birds/ '
One wonders how all the marvels of the insect world that
Fabre describes have been so long unrecorded. He tells of the
firefly who administers an anaesthetic before devouring a snail, and
says : 18
Human science did not in reality invent this art [of anaes-
thetics] which is one of the wonders of modern surgery. The
firefly's knowledge had a long start on ours ; the method alone
has changed. Our operators proceed by making us inhale the
fumes of ether or of chloroform ; the insect proceeds by inject-
ing a special virus that comes from the mandibular fangs in
infinitestimal doses. Might we not one day be able to benefit
by this hint? What glorious discoveries the future would have
in store for us, if we could better understand the " insect's
secrets."
He writes of the marvelous anatomical knowledge of the sand
wasp, which, according as it wishes to paralyze or kill its prey,
knows precisely which nerve centre to sting; again he tells of
Leucospis, a parasite of the mason bee, which " puts on a horn
helmet and a barbed breastplate," when preparing to slay his
brothers and sisters, and which he takes off immediately ater the
murder; and of the leaf cutter which cuts out elipses and circles
with mathematical precision from the leaves of trees. How does
she do this?
What ideal pattern guides her scissors? What measure
dictates the dimensions? One would like to think of the insect
as a living compass, capable of tracing an elliptic curve by a
certain natural bending of the body, even as our arm traces a
circle by swinging from the shoulders. A blind mechanism, the
mere result of her organization, would in that case be respon-
sible for her geometry. This explanation would tempt me, if
the oval pieces of large dimensions were not accompanied by
much smaller, but also oval pieces, to fill the empty spaces.
"The Glow Worm. By J. H. Fabre. The Century, November, 1913.
1915.] JEAN HENRI FABRE 669
A compass which changes its radius of itself and alters the
degree of curvature according to the exigencies of a plan, ap-
pears to me an instrument somewhat difficult to believe in.
There must be something better than that. The round pieces
of the lid [of the honey pouch] suggest it to us.
If, by the mere flexion inherent in her structure, the leaf
cutter succeeds in cutting out ovals, how does she manage to cut
out rounds ? Can we admit the presence of other wheels in the
machinery for the new tracing, so different in shape and size?
However, the real point of the difficulty does not lie there.
These rounds, for the most part, fit the mouths of the bottle with
almost exact precision. When the cell is finished the bee flies
hundreds of yards farther, and goes to make the lid. She
arrives at the leaf from whjch the rundle must be cut. What
picture, what recollection, has she of the pot to be covered?
Why, none at all. She has never seen it ; she works under-
ground in profound darkness ! At the utmost, she can have the
indications of touch; not actual indications, of course, for the
pot is not there ; but part indications, insufficient for a work of
precision. And yet the rundle to be cut out must be of a fixed
diameter ; if it were too large it would not fit in ; if too narrow
it would close badly ; it would smother the egg by sliding down
upon the honey. How shall it be given its correct dimensions
without a pattern? The bee does not hesitate for a moment.
She cuts out her disc with the same swiftness that she would
display in detaching any shapeless lobe just useful for closing;
and that disc, without further care, is of the size to fit the pot.
Let who will explain the geometry, which in my opinion is
inexplicable, even when we allow for recollection supplied by
touch and sight.
Fabre has estimated that one thousand and sixty- four of these
figures are cut out by the insect in a life of a few weeks.
When Fabre was told that 14 " now you have reaped a plentiful
harvest of details, you ought to follow up your analysis with a
synthesis and to generalize the genesis of the insects in an all-em-
bracing view," he answered :
Because I have stirred a few grains of sand on the shore,
am I in a position to know the depth of the ocean?
Life has unfathomable secrets. Human knowledge will be
struck from the archives of the world before we possess the last
word of the gnat.
Success is for loud talkers, the imperturbable dogmatists;
everything is admitted on condition that one makes a little noise.
"Quoted by Maeterlinck. The Forum, September, 1910.
670 JEAN HENRI FABRE [Feb.,
Let us cast off this fancy and recognize that in reality we know
nothing about anything, if things are to be searched to the
bottom. Scientifically, nature is a riddle without a definite solu-
tion to satisfy the curiosity of men. Hypothesis is succeeded
by hypothesis, the theoretical rubbish heaps up and the truth
ever escapes us. To know how not to know, might well be the
last word of wisdom.
As Fabre is an out-of-door biologist rather than a laboratory
one, he perceives in all life a portion of what he calls "the universal
harmony of things." Neither is he blind to the One Who estab-
lishes the harmony. Reverence and humility are the usual accom-
paniments of real naturalists, and are the qualities that are fre-
quently absent from the recent crop of laboratory products from
Huxley or Haeckel. Fabre speaks of God as 15 " Le Pilote Souver-
ain," and if there is one lesson above others to be learned from his
studies of the mental life of insects, it is " be humble! "
It is related of Fabre that one day being asked by the Cure
of Seignan, who had possibly been spurred on by those who are
never able to perceive the perfect unity of God and nature as to
whether he believed in God, he answered, 16 " No, I see Him every-
where." For him the very lives of his " pretty insects," the blos-
soming of the flowers, the cadence of the sweet-throated feathered
creatures in the trees above, and the delicate coloring of the fungi
below are the handiwork of One greater than any creature, the
Painter of the flowers, the Tuner of many cords, the " Eternal
Harmonizer of all things."
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
J. H. Fabre. Chapters of My Life. New York: The Bookman, 1913.
J. H. Fabre. Souvenirs Entomologiques, 1912.
J. H. Fabre. Life of the Fly, 1913.
J. H. Fabre. Social Life in the Insect World, 1912.
G. V. Legros. La-Vie-de J. H. Fabre, 1912.
G. V. Legros. Fabre, Poet of Science. New York: The Century Go., 1913.
Poucel, Victor La Cigale. Etudes par des Peres de la Compagnie de Jesus,
pp. 289-323.
Teixerade Mattos. Henri Fabre, His Life and Work. New York: The Book-
man, 1913.
Coulon Marcel. /. H. Fabre, le savant et le philosophe. Paris: Mercure de
France, 1911.
M. de Benoit. /. H. Fabre. Paris: Revue de Lille, 1910.
M. Maeterlinck. The Insect's Homer. The Forum, September, 1910.
J. H. Fabre. Glow Worm. New York: The Century, November, 1913.
J. H. Fabre. My Relations With Darwin. The Fortnightly Review, October,
"Revue de Lille, 1910. Article on Fabre by M. de Benoit. u lbid.
ON THE STROKE OF THE HOUR.
BY FLORENCE GILMORE.
NE summer morning, at so early an hour that few
save the poor were abroad, a man, whom the most
casual observer would have dubbed both rich and
distinguished, walked distractedly through the streets
of Chicago, drifting at length into one of the most
squalid of its many squalid quarters. On every side of him were
evidences of extreme poverty: hubbub, dirt, rags, misery. Ill-
dressed, half -intoxicated men brushed against him; ill-kempt
women scurried past him, some scolding; others, tired and meek,
hurrying silently to a long day's work; sickly babies whimpered
in the arms of girls all too little older than themselves; boys quar-
relled, swearing, in the gutters.
Unfamiliar as such surroundings were, the man was hardly
conscious of the dirt and the sad humanity until, at last, sheer
fatigue forced him to pause in his mad walk. Then, only, did he
look about him. Sympathetic but aloof, he stared at the people and
at the wretched buildings. The world in which he found himself
was not his world, and he had begun to feel strangely out of place,
when a glance to his right revealed the fact that he was standing
at the door of a small Catholic church. He seemed startled, and his
white face became, if possible, whiter than before; but after a
moment of indecision, he entered it, genuflected awkwardly, as
those do who are not " to the manner born," and sank into the
nearest seat. At that instant the clock in the tower of a nearby
school building was striking seven.
Mass was about to be said. Scattered here and there in the
semi-darkness were men and women, shabby and toil-worn, but
reverent, and children whose grimy faces were sweet and innocent,
as well as reverent. Intense stillness reigned there; deep peace.
It was hard to believe that a few yards away fumed the turmoil
of rebellious poverty. The silence and the calm rested the man's
tired body and soothed his weary soul. As the Mass proceeded,
solemn, awesome, for him the things of earth faded into insignifi-
cance and heaven showed her face; and there, in that old church,
672 ON THE STROKE OF THE HOUR [Feb.,
among the poorest of God's poor, he reached his goal after years
of reluctant journeying toward it.
The last prayers had been said, the lights extinguished, the
last worshipper had limped away long before he stirred from his
place to go in search of a priest. He found the parochial house
with little difficulty, a tiny place, only less dilapidated than its
neighbors, and after he had waited for a few minutes in a barn-like
parlor, the pastor came to him.
Father O'Malley had for many years lived among the
wretchedly poor, close to their hearts, working for them, pro-
tecting them, loving them as his children, and had, all uncon-
sciously, grown to think the rich frivolous, proud, selfish ; so, though
the kindest man in the world, his manner was gruff and intolerant
towards men of the upper classes on the rare occasions that any
such crossed his path.
When he appeared his visitor rose, saying courteously, " I ven-
tured to call, Father, though I have no right to infringe on your
time. I am "
Father O'Malley interrupted him with a gesture which signified
that his name mattered not at all, and seating himself, he motioned
his guest to the best of the chairs, asking in a business-like way,
"What can I do for you?"
The man was taken aback and a little humiliated. Under any
circumstances he would have found it difficult to state his case;
it was doubly so now ; nevertheless, he replied, haltingly :
" Well, Father, I to begin at the beginning I was raised
with no religious faith except a shadowy belief in a far-away God.
After I was grown I lived much in Vienna, and there fell into the
way of going frequently to your churches ; not that I believed, only
because their grandeur and the beauty and solemnity of your cere-
monial attracted me. I heard sermons; often they were learned,
sometimes eloquent as well. I was interested and and entertained.
I admired the evident faith and sincerity of the preachers, but
marvelled that they could believe it all ! "
He paused, not knowing how to explain what must come next.
All this time Father O'Malley had been gazing out the window,
feeling little interest and showing less. His visitor, glancing at him,
found no encouragement. Had he not been so deeply in earnest
he would have cut short the interview and gone his way with his
story untold ; as it was, before the silence had grown long, he found
courage to continue :
1915-] ON THE STROKE OF THE HOUR 673
" So much is simple enough. I hardly know how to make clear
the rest. I want to be a Catholic, Father. I have fought against
the light month after month, but it's no use. I made up my mind at
Mass this morning. You see that is, Father, during the past
three years I have been pursued hounded by thoughts about
the Catholic Church. Proofs of its truths have forced themselves
upon my mind, and into my heart have come longings, intense long-
ings, for its Sacraments, especially for the Greatest of them all."
He stopped again, caught his breath sharply, and stammered :
" Father, I know you will think I have been imagining it. I have
often tried to think so myself, though all the time I have known,
in my heart, that it was not so; but but it has been happening
now for nearly three years that these inspirations come to me exactly
on the stroke of the hour. Often literally, in hundreds of in-
stances when I have heard no clock chime, and have not known
the time, a holy thought has crowded itself into my mind, and look-
ing at my watch I have found, invariably, that it was exactly two
o'clock, or six, or ten. Day and night it has been the same. I I
can't explain it. I can't imagine an explanation. I know that it
sounds like an hallucination, but it is the simple truth ! "
Again he found courage to glance at Father O'Malley, expect-
ing to meet an amused smile. Instead he saw that the priest's
rugged face, still turned toward the window, had softened into
wonderful sweetness. After a moment he looked directly at his
visitor.
" You say that it has been on the stroke of the hour that God's
grace has come so forcibly, so tangibly ? "
" Yes."
Father O'Malley beamed on him now, as warmly as if he had
been the dirtiest and most disreputable of his parishioners. " Then
then you are Jacques de Rouxl " he exclaimed. Jacques de Roux
was world-famous, acknowledged to be the greatest singer of the
age.
"Yes, Father, I tried to introduce myself in the beginning.
You gave me no chance. But how "
The priest cut short his query to ask him a few questions on
points of Catholic dogma and practise, all of which M. de Roux
answered easily. He was silent, then, for a long minute, during
which he once more stared at the dreary panorama outspread before
his window. The smile still hovered about his lips, and his eyes
shining, but suddenly, with hardening face, he turned sharply.
yoL. c, 43
674 ON THE STROKE OF THE HOUR [Feb.,
" No doubt," he said, " no doubt, you think this great grace has
come to you because you have led a life rather better than that of
many who, like you, are surrounded by temptation."
M. de Roux blushed. He was always frank, and so he an-
swered, " Some such thought has occurred to me. I have kept
straight, Father."
Father O'Malley sneered slightly. " 'Keeping straight' is all
well enough. You have merited no miracle of grace ! " Then he
did what seemed to M. de Roux entirely unaccountable. He rose,
and moving toward the door, said, "Come !" I am going now to see
a poor child who will soon be in heaven. I want you to come with
me."
Meekly M. de Roux followed him into the street, through an
alley-way, up numberless rickety tenement-steps that creaked under
them. Afterward, he was astonished that he had obeyed; at the
time he did not hesitate for a second, although he considered the
priest a little erratic.
On the fifth floor of the building Father O'Malley knocked
noisily at one of the doors, and when a sweet little voice called,
" Come in ! " he entered the room, motioning M. de Roux to follow
him, and well inside, with another gesture, bade him sit on a chair
in the corner. He himself then went to the side of a girl who lay
in a narrow bed near the only window. She was fifteen years of
age, but looked younger, being very small, and her white face
very childlike. To the most inexperienced eye it would have been
evident that she was slowly dying.
" I knew your knock, Father," she said, faintly but brightly.
" That's a sign, Mary, that I come often to see you, so don't
scold me because I didn't get here yesterday ! " he rejoined laugh-
ingly, and added, " I brought a friend with me to-day."
Mary seemed not to understand that there was a stranger
present.
" I'm very glad you came ! Grandma has gone to the grocery,
but she'll be back soon," was all she said.
Father O'Malley talked to her for a minute or two, gently and
kindly, and she lay among her pillows and smiled up at him, quite
content. At last, speaking more seriously, he asked, " And what
did the doctor say yesterday?"
The girl's face grew radiant.
" O Father, such good news ! He said that I can last only
two or three days more!"
1915.] ON THE STROKE OF THE HOUR 675
It seemed to M. de Roux a full minute before Father O'Malley
broke the silence that fell between him and the child.
" And Mary, that is not all. I, too, have a joy for you!"
She laughed softly.
"O Father, what is it? Do tell me! Your joys are such a
nice kind ! "
" Mary, Jacques de Roux Jacques de Roux is about to become
a Catholic!"
As soon as his name was mentioned M. de Roux leaned forward
to watch the girl, but almost instantly looked away, feeling that he
was seeing what was too sacred for his eyes. But Mary's voice
was as ecstatic as her face.
."O Father!" she cried; and after a moment: "Isn't God
good!"
" You told me long ago about your interest in him, Mary, and
all your prayers for him; but tell me again, unless it will tire you
too much. I like to hear the story."
" It isn't much of a story, Father. It began three years ago
soon after I got sick. I was in the Children's Hospital, then, and he
came one day to sing for us. I was so bad that they had put me in
a room by myself and it was in the wards he sang and I couldn't
hear a sound. I felt very sad about it; I I cried a little; but
as he was going away he passed my room. The door was open and
he saw me, and he came in and sang three songs for me, just for
me! O it was all so beautiful! Almost like heaven! I thanked
him as much as I could, but afterward I kept wishing I could do
something for him, because he had done something so very nice
for me. One day I heard a nurse say that he had no religion, so
I began to pray that he would become a Catholic. I've prayed every
day since then ; and after a little I got into the way of reminding the
dear God of him, and of offering the pain in my back for him
whenever I'd hear the school clock strike, and and I've been awake
so much that I've heard it nearly every hour day and night."
She paused for a while before she concluded faintly, "O Father,
it's too much! This great joy and only a few days more until
I shall see Him!"
For the first time since they entered the room Father O'Malley
looked at M. de Roux. He was no longer sitting. He had fallen
on his knees and his face was hidden in his hands.
IRew Boohs.
THE CHURCH AND USURY. By Rev. Patrick Cleary. Dublin :
M. H. Gill & Son.
One hundred and seventy-seven of the two hundred and seven
pages of text in this volume are historical in subject matter. They
sketch the doctrine and opinions on usury from the ancient Hebrew
times, through the Grseco-Roman era, the Gospels, the early Chris-
tian Church, the Middle Ages, the Reformation period, and the later
developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This part
of the book is well done, and is not improbably the best thing that we
have on the subject in England. The remaining thirty pages, the
critical and expository section, are not nearly so satisfactory. In
the first place, the treatment is far too brief. This defect is, indeed,
admitted by the author in his introduction. Apparently, it is due
to the fact that the work was written as a thesis for the doctorate
in theology at Maynooth, and had to be ready for presentation at
a date too early to permit adequate discussion of the many complex
and important questions touched upon in the concluding section.
In the second place, the author's views on several contentious sub-
jects, such as just price, the justification of interest to-day, and the
harmonizing of present with past theological opinion in this field,
are more original than convincing. Nevertheless, they are well
presented and defended within the too-brief limits which the author
has allowed himself. On the whole, the book is a distinctively
creditable performance.
THE CENTURY OF COLUMBUS. By James J. Walsh, LL.D.
New York: Catholic Summer School Press. $3.50.
Most of the subject matter in the present volume has been
delivered in lecture form to the Knights of Columbus in different
cities of the United States. It deals in popular fashion with
the Renaissance-Reformation period, 1450-1550, or, as Dr. Walsh,
writing primarily for Americans, calls it, The Century of Columbus.
After Ruskin, he divides the century into three parts, namely, The
Book of the Arts, The Book of the Deeds, and The Book of the
Words.
Book I. gives a brief sketch of the Century's painters, sculptors,
architects, musicians, and engravers ; Book II. has some interesting
chapters upon the work of social reform, hospitals, the Jesuits,
1915.] NEW BOOKS 677
the Reformers, the explorers and empire-builders, the education of
women, and the progress of medicine and surgery. Book III.
treats of the Latin, Italian, English, French, Spanish, and Portu-
guese literatures of the period.
Dr. Walsh does ample justice to the artistic, intellectual, and
humanitarian achievements of the Catholics of that time. He says
truly : " In the midst of such a century, the discovery of America,
instead of being a surprise, is the most natural thing in the world.
Everywhere men were doing things that for centuries men had been
unable to do, and they were achieving triumphs in every form of
human effort. Given the fact that there was a large undiscovered
portion of the world, it was more likely to be discovered at this time
than at any other time in the world's history."
THE UPPER ROOM. A Drama of Christ's Passion. By Robert
Hugh Benson. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 80
cents net.
Some time ago Monsignor Benson, in his mystery play of
Bethlehem, depicted for us the first scenes that grouped themselves
about the manger of the Word Made Flesh, and now that the writer
himself has closed his eyes on life, he has left us this portrayal in
dramatic form, of those last hours of love and anguish in the earthly
life of the Redeemer.
" There is no reasou," says Monsignor Benson in the stage
directions, "to shrink from anachronisms," for in this, as in the older
mystery plays, precisions disappear before eyes that look with
limpid freshness on the body rather than the raiment, the symbol
hid beneath the form. And it is to this attitude toward the mysteries
of faith that Monsignor Benson leads us.
The Person of the Redeemer does not appear, but His voice
is once heard, -and His Presence felt throughout. The Upper Room
where Love emptied Itself, is the scene preserved through the entire
play, and a fitting simplicity is observed in every feature of its
presentation costumes, setting and accompanying music. Effec-
tive and beautiful as must be its actual dramatization, the scenes
group themselves in the mere reading as figures beneath the artist's
brush. We lay by for an hour the complexities of the world, to find
the " simplicity of the Gospel." We, too, became one among those
dignified, sorrowing figures that we know so well, and who enact
a tragedy, not of yesterday merely, but of all time.
The introduction supplied by Cardinal Bourne is a glowing and
678 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
beautiful tribute to the zeal and genius of tbe writer. We cannot
refrain from quoting its closing lines :
Those who read, and those who see, will alike think of him
who in so short a time accomplished so much ; who was taken
from us so suddenly, and, from the human point of view, so
prematurely; who has left so many to mourn his loss and feel
his absence; and together they will pray that, if any veil still
hide from him the Light on earth invisible, it may be speedily
removed, and that his eyes may gaze with full contentment upon
the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Whom by so many methods it
was his joy, during his sojourn in this world, to make known
to all who were privileged to listen to his words. May he rest
in peace.
THE SPIRITUAL MESSAGE OF DANTE. By Rev. W. Boyd
Carpenter, D.D. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
As the author himself admits, these lectures, delivered at
Harvard University a few years ago, are not intended as a con-
tribution to the critical study of the Divina Commedia. " They are
simple thoughts on religious experience as exemplified in Dante's
poem."
We are told a great many things that are not so in this rather
commonplace book. For example that canon law reflected the
view that " woman was the door of hell, and the mother of all
human ills;" that Dante disagrees with St. Thomas' teaching on
confession, "taking the earlier and more ethical view;" that theol-
ogy in the Middle Ages had become " rationalistic, satisfying the
logic of the mind, and forgetting the syllogisms of the heart;" and
that Dante's great poem is " the Pilgrim's Progress of the four-
teenth century."
The real student of Dante will not profit much by Bishop
Carpenter's work. The author's viewpoint is so alien to the Catho-
lic spirit of the Middle Ages that he is incompetent to interpret
either the spiritual or the intellectual message of one of the greatest
of mediaeval teachers.
MUSTARD SEED. Some Pungent Paragraphs. By Francis P.
Donnelly, SJ. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 60 cents.
Father Donnelly's book will be read gratefully by people who
like to listen to a witty, kindly, entertaining man, gifted with keen
insight, a delicate touch, and a big human heart. Paragraphs, or
1915.] NEW BOOKS 679
sketches, or essays, or sermons call them what you will^the chap-
ters of this book will instruct and please and aid and edify. We
shall look eagerly for another book from the same pen.
THE BEAUTIFUL. By Vernon Lee.
MYSTICISM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By C. F. E. Spurgeon.
The Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 40 cents each.
In his manual, The Beautiful, Mr. Lee has tried to explain
aesthetic preference, particularly as regards visible shapes, by the
facts of riiental science. He tells us that he has based his explana-
tion of the problems of aesthetics as much as possible upon mental
facts familiar, or at all events easily intelligible, to the lay reader.
We doubt whether the lay reader will find this book easy to read.
The following sentence will give a good idea of both the
author's method and style. It comes at the end of the volume :
Meanwhile all we can venture to say (of the genesis of
aesthetic preference) is that as satisfaction derived from shapes
we call beautiful, undoubtedly involves intense, complex, and
reiterative mental activities, as it has an undeniable power for
happiness and hence for spiritual refreshment, and as it more-
over tends to inhibit most of the interests whose super-abund-
ance can jeopardize individual and social existence, the capacity
for such aesthetic satisfaction, once arisen, would be fostered
in virtue of a mass of evolutional advantages which are as
complex and difficult to analyze, but also as deep-seated and
undeniable, as itself.
After telling us in her introduction that " mysticism is a term
irresponsibly applied in English," Miss Spurgeon, in Mysticism in
English Literature, proceeds to add to the confusion by defining
mysticism as " an attitude of mind founded upon an intuitive or
experienced conviction of unity, of oneness, of alikeness in all
things." Again she tells us that " the mystic bases his belief, not on
revelation, logic, reason, or demonstrated facts, but on feeling, on
intuitive, inner knowledge." It is easy to prove " that the English
race has a marked tendency towards mysticism," when you include
under the mystics Shelley and Browning (love and beauty mystics),
Vaughan and Wordsworth (nature mystics), Emily Bronte, Burke
and Coleridge (philosophical mystics), and Crashaw and Blake
(devotional and religious mystics). The only two mystics that we
discovered in this volume were Richard Rolle of Hampole and
680 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
Lady Julian of Norwich, although we are confident that neither
of them ever dreamed of writing " symphonies of feeling against
the exaltation of reason and logic in scholasticism."
We were pleased to find our author calling Crashaw's hymn to
St. Teresa " one of the great English poems," and giving due honor
to Coventry Patmore and Francis Thompson. We do not, however,
think that Patmore would have relished the title of " erotic mystic."
KEYSTONES OF THOUGHT. By Austin O'Malley, LL.D. New
York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.00 net.
" These aphorisms," says Dr. O'Malley in his preface, " are
disconnected thoughts, hoarded at intervals, wherein exactness of
truth is not seldom whittled away for the sake of point. That
point should be a prick to attention, a stimulant to reflection and
memory, a glint of wit for the amusement of the reader and the
maker."
This excellent collection of aphorisms gives many of the
favorite theses of Dr. O'Malley; it shows his likes and dislikes, his
wit and humor, his cynicism, and his out-and-out Catholic spirit.
One cannot review a book of aphorisms; one must needs quote
them.
Northern European people in America become American in
mind, not in body : families that survive, do so in spite of the
impossibility of acclimatization under a southern sun.
Physicians do twice as much work for nothing as any other
class of men, including the clergy, and much of it is for nothing
in every sense of the word.
Boards of public charity were invented by the devil to
prevent, real, individual charity.
If you are without an enemy in the world, you may be a lamb
or an ass, but you are not a man.
The man who never makes a mistake never makes anything.
It is convenient religious ecstasy that prevents you from
seeing the passing collection box.
Most virtues and flowers bloom best on poor soil.
THE POET AND NATURE AND THE MORNING ROAD. By
Madison Cawein. Louisville, Ky. : John P. Morton & Co.
$1.00 net.
Quite fittingly these pages are dedicated to John Burroughs,
whose successful activity in directing attention to nature's wonders
and beauties, Mr. Cawein emulates in a fashion all his own.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 681
The first division of the book is selected from previously pub-
lished verse; but most of the poems appear in book form for the
first time, and they sharpen just now our sense of loss at Mr.
Cawein's recent death.
Quick to see simple beauty, and wonderfully well able to depict
it in words reflecting the same simplicity, he has been of those poets
who leave a pregnant memory at their passing. He has helped many
to learn wisdom.
WHAT THINK YOU OF CHRIST? By Francis H. E. Cahusac,
M.A. New York : Benziger Brothers. 35 cents.
In this clear-cut volume the author proves that there is no
opposition between the Christ of the Catholic Church and the Christ
of the Gospels. Catholics, he tells us, are most earnest in their
devotion to the Person of Christ, and believe firmly that their
Church's teachings and practices set forth plainly the spirit of the
Gospel. In a few brief chapters Mr. Cahusac proves that the
priesthood is a divine institution, that the New Testament is full
of ritual, in its ordinary sense of rites and ceremonies, that the
Communion of Saints is perfectly understood only in Catholicism,
and that the Personality of Christ is perfectly represented in the
life of the Catholic Church. It is an excellent book to put in the
hands of an earnest seeker after the truth.
LATER POEMS. By Emily Hickey. London : Grant Richards,
Ltd.
It is rare, and it is scarcely less than enchanting, to find in a
book of confessedly later poems a book with more than a quarter-
century of scholarship and artistic creation back of it the freshness
of this work from Miss Emily Hickey. It is not only fresh, it is
varied. It gives us legends of Ireland's heroic pagan days, sacred
ballads with a na'ive mediaeval flavor, and modern poems of nature,
of faith, and of problems which, like the truths of God, are ever
ancient and ever new.
One wonders if it be part of the " Celtic paradox " that the
longer poems, notably the one long Celtic poem, should be of a
fragmentary beauty; while the short poems should be, without
exception, of a notably complete and finished beauty. The tempta-
tion is strong to quote from these slight yet weighty pages. Perhaps
no one poem will more suitably illustrate Miss Hickey 's note of
pure spiritual passion, and the old, rich color-fullness which she
682 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
seems to have handed down to us from the Pre-Raphaelites, than
Ye Have Not Known Me. It sings of so ubiquitous a tragedy
this of the vehement soul who walks the long road of darkness,
crying all the while for " Light, more light ! "
For beauty his soul is athirst ;
And he will not look and see
Thy beauty, O Last, O First,
Old, new, for eternity:
For music his being is fain ;
And he will not hearken and hear
The notes of Thy deathless strain
That are sounding great and clear :
And love he seeks with a heart
All sore for its passionate need ;
And knoweth Thee not, Who art,
Thou only, Love indeed :
On Thy blood-purpled Rood,
On Thy white Throne above,
We hail Thee, O Light, O Food,
O Beauty, O Music, O Love.
It is a commentary upon Emily Hickey's persistent consecration
to Catholic literature that most of the present collection has already
been published in religious (not secular!) magazines both in the
States and overseas. Two of the best, the noble Act of Faith and
the haunting Ballad of the Judas Tree, received their baptism of
print in our own CATHOLIC WORLD. Quondam readers will wel-
come them and their companions in this more permanent form.
GIDEON'S BAND. By George W. Cable. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.35 net.
Gideon's Band is a tale of boat life on the Mississippi River in
the early fifties. It describes the first trip of the steamer Votaress
from New Orleans, and the love of its owner's son for the fair
daughter of his rival. No living American writer knows more
about the South in the days before the war, or is more accurate
and exact in his portrayal of types and his descriptions of scenery.
The interest of the story centres around the gallant captain
and his son, who are determined to make the trip up the Mississippi
despite the fact that cholera is raging in every part of their vessel.
We do not think that private theatricals at such a time would prove
1915.] NEW BOOKS 683
sufficient to allay panic, but the hero and heroine think otherwise
and hence the story. The negro question crops up again and again,
and is solved in the orthodox Southern way. The religion of the
Methodist bishop and the vulgar, noisy exhorter is not of a very
high type, but, sad to say, it is still existent in the Southland of our
own day.
CATHOLICITY. Condones ad Clerum. By T. A. Lacey, M.A.
London: A. R. Mowbray & Co. $1.00 net.
Like most Anglican treatises, Mr. Lacey's lectures to the clergy
of Birmingham on Catholicity are illogical, vague, and unsatis-
factory. If you are so unexacting as to ask him for a clear-cut
definition of Catholicity, he answers you : " I shall not set before
you a cut-and-dried definition by means of which you may determine
whether this or that Church, this or that person, this or that doctrine,
is rightly to be called Catholic. There is no such thing. The
Church is Catholic precisely because it is too large for that sort of
particularity. If you attempt this kind of definition, you will find
you have merely defined a sect" If again you dare ask Mr. Lacey
what the Christian revelation definitely is, he will again answer
vaguely : " It is not contained in a scheme of words, clear-cut
and precise. It is not a code of morals or a metaphysic. It is in
Jesus Christ Himself, in His life among men, in His words and
actions."
As he calls Catholicity " a temper, and a practical temper,
which seizes and holds the way to unity," he makes the Church com-
prehensive enough to embrace men of contradictory views. They
are Catholic, he insists, if they have " the temper which seizes and
holds the ordered way of unity, whatever that way may be."
The entire volume shows the utter impossibility of the attempt
of earnest and devout men to be Catholic, and at the same time
to deny the supremacy of the Roman See, the only guarantee
of a true and perfect Catholicity.
SPAIN UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. By E. S. Bouchier,
M.A. Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. $1.50 net.
Mr. Bouchier divides his book into three parts, History, Antiq-
uities, and Literature. Part I. treats of the history of Spain from
prehistoric times down to the seventh century. Part II. deals with
the native races of Spain, her natural products, her mines and
commerce, her arts, architecture, coinage, and religion. Part III.
684 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
discusses the Spanish writers of the early Empire, the influence of
Christianity on Spanish literature, and the characteristics of the
Latin language.
The writer seems very fond of a thesis much in vogue among
French unbelievers, namely, that the reverence given to saints and
their images in the Catholic Church is but a revival, in another form,
of pagan idolatry. His bibliography on Spanish antiquities is ex-
cellent, but it is utterly deficient when he comes to discuss Chris-
tianity of old-time Spain.
THE CHARM OF IRELAND. By Burton E. Stevenson. New
York : Dodd, Mead & Co. $2.50 net.
Mr. Stevenson has written a chatty and sympathetic account
of a trip he took with his wife through Ireland last year. Most
of his route is well known to the regular tourists, although he also
visited such out-of-the-way places as the Irish Stonehenge over-
looking Lough Gill, Ossian's Grave on one of the Antrim hills, the
Holy Wells of Struell, and St. Molua's Oratory on an island near
the left bank of the Shannon near Killaloe. The author is familiar
with Irish history, poetry, and legends. He writes excellent de-
scriptions of Ireland's green fields, its fuchsia hedge rows, its island-
dotted lakes, its rugged mountains, and its rock-bound 'coasts. He
speaks in kindly vein of the Irish people, and knows how to tell a
good story.
Mr. Stevenson is fully convinced that the Orange opposition
to Home Rule was simply the playing "of the game of politics, and
that Ulster's threats of civil war a year ago were mere bunkum.
England, he tells us, has never been able to govern Ireland well
because she has never really understood the Irish people. Of course
our author is utterly at fault when he speaks of a Celtic Church
independent of Rome before the Norman conquest, but he really
seems to think that St. Patrick was a good Catholic. One of his
best stories refers to the proof given by an Irish jarvey that the
Round Towers were built by the English Government. " The proof
is easy enough, your honor. Seein' they're no manner of use, and
cost a lot of money, who else could have built them? "
FROM DUBLIN TO CHICAGO. By George A. Birmingham.
New York : George H. Doran Co. $1.50 net.
The Irish novelist and playwright, Canon Hannay, has written
a bright, humorous account of his American visit a year ago. In
igi5.] NEW BOOKS 685
this interesting travelogue, he praises everybody and everything in
the United States so enthusiastically, that we feel confident he must
have kissed the Blarney Stone just before he left Ireland. He
found our women singularly charming and attractive, our men alert,
hopeful, and " marvelously hospitable," our reporters, well-educated
and intelligent, our merchants friendly, our political bosses kind-
hearted, our hotels superb, and our bookstores perfect. He speaks
highly of the cleanliness of New York City, and is deeply impressed
with " the sublime self-confidence " of Chicago.
He is certainly utterly mistaken when he dares tell us that
the Irish in the United States have never been thoroughly Amer-
icanized. In making such a statement, however, he is giving not
his own estimate, but merely repeating some after-dinner gossip
heard at the table of some of his non-Catholic friends in New York.
THE IVY HEDGE. By Maurice Francis Egan. New York : Ben-
ziger Brothers. $1.35 net.
This novel gets its title from the fact that the exclusive Mr.
Morton, the Can-King of Orvisville, has fenced in his home
from the gaze of impertinent villagers by a solid hedge of poison-
ivy. The hard conditions of the workers in Morton's factory give
rise to a strong feeling of discontent, which culminates in the
election of George Trevanion, the people's Socialistic candidate, as
mayor. The characters in the novel are well drawn, but a half
dozen of them might easily be omitted for the better development
of the main story.
No one will fall in love with the despicable Trevanion, who
on marrying wealth forgets quickly his former strenuous advocacy
of the claims of the poor. To our mind he is converted too quickly
towards the end of the novel by his wife Molly, the Can-King's
daughter.
ACHIEVEMENT. By E. Temple Thurston. New York: D.
Appleton & Co. $1.35 net.
Mr. Thurston has written three novels Achievement is the
third of the series to prove his pet thesis that an artist's best
work is due to the influence of the women he knows and loves.
His masterpiece, Romance, may be traced to his love for the intel-
ligent, beautiful, rich, and immoral Lady Diana, who is married to
the good-for-nothing Lord Charter is. The hero tells his good old-
fashioned father "that religion is for the minds and souls of people
686 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
who do not work with their minds or souls." We are not sur-
prised then to find our agnostic artist falling in love with another
man's wife, killing her husband in a fit of rage, and calmly com-
mitting suicide when about to face arrest.
This novel which appeared in the pages of the Fortnightly
Review, is well written, but pagan and immoral to the core.
THE PROPHET'S WIFE. By Anna C. Browne. New York:
Benziger Brothers. $1.25.
The Prophet's Wife is a story of two orphan boys, one of
whom succeeds in marrying the heroine, while the other is utterly
spoiled by his adopted parents. He finally is brought to his senses
by a severe blow to his pride. The story is entertaining. A severe
critic might point to some slight faults, but altogether the author
has done a good piece of work that promises well for the future.
THE ABSOLUTION OF RECIDIVI AND OF OCCASIONARII.
By Rev. David Barry, S.T.L. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son.
35 cents net.
Father Barry has written this little treatise of moral theology
to assist young confessors in their dealings with penitents who
are in the habit of relapsing into sin, or who trifle persistently with
the occasions of sin. The writer states fairly the strict and lax
views of various theologians. Such a book will prove a great
help to the newly-ordained priest.
THE HOUSE OF DECEIT. Anonymous. New York: Henry
Holt & Co. $1.35 net.
The House of Deceit is a picture of the England of to-day
looked upon as the fighting ground of capital and labor, and of
the forces of radicalism and conservatism in Church and State.
The author recites . in detail the adventures of a modern liberal
demagogue, the son of a country store-keeper, who, by his alliance
with anti-Roman nonconformity and his advocacy of " down with
the Lords," attains a seat in the English cabinet. He marries
a daughter of a solicitor from his native town, who at the outset
is far beyond him in social status, although later on she hampers
him in his political ambitions by her stupidity and lack of culture.
The only Catholics in the story are two modernists, who deny
the Divinity of Christ, the Virgin birth, the Resurrection, and a
miraculous Christianity. One of them is an Anglican clergyman
1915.] NEW BOOKS 687
who becomes a priest, and forthwith advises prospective converts
to remain outside the Catholic Church ; the other, Ruth Kingsford,
of old Catholic stock, is an utter unbeliever who influences the hero
to be untrue to his faithful wife.
As a political pamphlet this novel is a bitter satire upon the
hypocrisy and nothingness of modern English liberalism. Its pic-
ture of Catholicism is an unfair and stupid caricature.
WHERE NO FEAR WAS. By Arthur Christopher Benson. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50 net.
In these genial essays, Mr. Benson discusses the motives,
shapes, and uses of fear in childhood, boyhood, youth, middle age,
and old age. We find him entertaining, save when he ventures out
of his depth by daring to discuss such problems as sin and hell.
We smile at his absurdity, when he dogmatically asserts that " hell
is a monstrous and insupportable fiction, and simply inconsistent
with any belief in the goodness of God."
The best essays of the volume are the character sketches of
Dr. Johnson, Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, Charlotte Bronte, and
John Sterling.
THE SHIELD OF SILENCE. By Mrs. M. E. Ruffin. New York:
Benziger Brothers. $1.35 net.
Mrs. Ruffin has written a thrilling tale of murder, which a
stupid detective tries in vain to account for, and a faithful priest
covers with a shield of silence. It contains an excellent picture
of the anarchist riots in Barcelona a few years ago, and of the
devout, simple life among the Basques of Spain. The story brings
out the Scriptural idea of the sins of the parents being visited upon
their children. The author sustains the interest throughout, but
why did she not relieve the gloom by a little glimpse of joy at
the end?
THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC. By Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Co. $1.50 net.
This is a new and popular edition of Sir Ernest Shackleton's
larger work, the price of which $10.00 was far beyond the reach
of the ordinary reader. It is a stirring tale of courage, energy,
and perseverance. The writer and his companions spent the winter
of 1908 in McMurdo Sound, twenty miles north of the Discovery
Winter Quarters. In the autumn the party ascended Mount Ere-
688 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
bus and surveyed its various craters. In the spring and summer
of 1908-1909, three sledging parties left Winter Quarters.
The southern party planted the English flag in latitude
eighty-eight degrees and twenty-three minutes, the most southerly
latitude ever reached by man ; the northern party reached the South
Magnetic Pole for the first time; the western party surveyed the
mountain ranges west of McMurdo Sound.
THE DEMOCRATIC RHINE-MAID. By Franklin Kent Gifford.
New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.25.
The Democratic Rhine-Maid is a bright, frolicsome romance,
centring about an impossible German baroness and a sentimental
American war correspondent. Alfred, the hero, wooes, with great
spirit, the poor Etelka, not for a moment dreaming that she was the
wealthy baroness in disguise. The reader, of course, knows it
from the very beginning. Indignant at his love's deception, Alfred
departs in dudgeon, only to be brought back to her feet by a duel
with the terrible Graf von Rohr.
PIERRE VINTON. By Edward C. Venable. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.35 net.
Pierre Vinton is an improbable story of a " superfluous hus-
band " in love with his ex-wife, whom he wooes a second time
and wins by an unsucessful attempt at suicide. His rather worth-
less wife married him in the first place for his money, and divorced
him " because he was a bore." She is on the verge of being
married again to an immoral man when the news of her ex-
husband's " accident " in Switzerland awakens her to a sense of
his goodness and worth. We ourselves fail to see his good qual-
ities, for he deems divorce an excellent institution, race suicide a
matter of option, and religion mere externalism and emotion. He
tells us himself : " I am a Protestant, and Protestantism is greatly
a matter of behavior, which has nothing to do with the love of
God." Mr. Venable is continually striving to say smart and flippant
things, and like most of his school fails at times miserably.
ONE AMERICAN'S OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN WAR. By
F. W. Whitridge. New York: E. P. Button & Co. 50
cents net.
Mr. Whitridge has written a pro-English tract on the responsi-
bility of Germany for the present European War, her treatment
1915.] NEW BOOKS 689
of Belgium, and the alleged atrocities of German officers and men.
The English agnostic Cramb's book, Germany and England, which
our author finds " admirable," is a repudiation of the Christian
ideal on a par with Bernhardi's, and deifies force as the inevitable
sine qua non of progress. The fewer of such books in America
at present, the better.
THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS. By Theodore
Roosevelt. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50.
Mr. Roosevelt's adventurous trip through the Brazilian wilder-
ness was first undertaken in the interests of the American Museum
of Natural History of New York City. But on his arrival at Rio,
the Brazilian government, through its Secretary of Foreign Affairs,
Dr. Muller, requested Mr. Roosevelt to combine his expedition
with one it was about to send out for purposes of exploration under
Colonel Rondon. This Brazilian officer had been a most intrepid
and successful explorer of Western Brazil for over twenty-five
years.
Mr. Roosevelt has written a book more entertaining than the
most exciting novel. Our many-sided ex-President reveals him-
self in these pages as explorer, hunter, naturalist, and litterateur.
He collected over twenty-five hundred birds, about five hundred
mammals, and a number of reptiles and fishes new to science. He
put on the map a river nearly one thousand miles long, the River
of Doubt, since named in his honor the Rio Teodoro by the Brazil-
ian Government.
His forty-eight-day journey down this river is a story of
hardships sufficient to daunt the most daring of explorers. The
party suffered extremely from the terrific heat and the pelting, tor-
rential rains. They lost seven of their canoes in the rapids, and
were forced after a time to abandon most of their baggage. They
traveled for days on half rations, weakened by jungle fever, and
almost dead with the fatigue of the difficult portages. One of the
natives was drowned in the rapids, and another native was murdered
after a quarrel with one of his companions.
Mr. Roosevelt initiates us thoroughly into the life of the
Brazilian wilderness. He describes the customs of the Brazilian
Indians, the whole-hearted hospitality of the ranch owners, the
ferocity of the insect pests, and the man-eating fish, the piranha,
and introduces us to a number of strange birds, like the guan, veery,
hoatzin, and nunlet.
VOL. c. 44
690 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
The indefatigable energy which Mr. Roosevelt displayed in
both his African and South American trips ought to serve as a
good example to the young men of the nation. Very few men
at his age could spend a whole day hunting, from early morn until
dusk, and then sit down in a tent, combating innumerable insect
pests, to write so complete and so entertaining a volume.
THE CHILDREN OF THE KINGDOM. By Mary Adelaide Gar-
nett. New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.00 net.
Of course there are many books that bring to young Catholics
the stirring appeal of these earlier little ones who now fill " the
nurseries of heaven." But no matter how great their number, Miss
Fernekees' volume, The Children of the Kingdom, has a worth and a
charm all its own. It has often been said in these pages that we
neglect the great treasury of the Lives of the Saints in the instruction
of our children. Their Lives have a fund of incident, of high
ideals, of heroism, and of devotion that are of the best pedagogical
value in the education of the young, and the moulding of their
Christian characters.
The author's particular gift is her power of visualizing the
scene, so that one sees the little martyr, the cross, the body hanging
upon it and hears the last words. Such pictures must impress
themselves upon the mind of any child who reads; become fixed in
his memory, and play their part in the formation of those ideals
which will save him for a loyal, Catholic life.
We, therefore, strongly recommend the book; and close with
a quotation that gives some evidence of its appeal :
Strange rumors began to be spread about against the Chris-
tians, and the boyish prayers grew more earnest. For the last
time Louis rang the altar bell, and for the last time, though
they knew it not, they received our dear Lord in Holy Com-
munion.
Scarcely had Mass ended when a band of Japanese soldiers
tore down the frail bamboo wall, and bound the priest and his
comrades, to bring them before the Mikado.
As the gray light deepened at the close of that long day
of trial, they were condemned to be crucified on the little bare
hill they had seen from their schoolroom door. Quickly the
crosses were prepared, and with more of gladness than of sor-
row, the lads held the rough wood to their breasts. "Jesus
listened Jesus heard," they cried joyously.
1915-] NEW BOOKS 691
With a last blessing for the lads he loved so dearly, the
priest gave his life for God. Then through the sharp hours of
pain, Louis, Thomas, and Anthony encouraged each other, by
repeating aloud the prayers the priest had taught them. One
by one, the soldiers left the hill, and at last in the still, cool
twilight God called His little martyrs to Himself.
A HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN PAGEANTRY. By Ralph Davol.
Taunton, Mass. : Davol Publishing Co.
" Modern pageantry," our author tells us, " aims to increase
the world's store of happiness by interpreting the meaning of
human life and by bringing art and beauty into the minds of all
the people." There are two types of standard pageantry now
in vogue, the academic pageant, given in schools and colleges as a
means of visualizing history, and the community or anniversary
pageant, which presents dramatically in the open fields some event
of importance in the history of a city or State. The various
chapters of Part I. discuss pageantry as one of the fine arts, as an
educational factor, as a nursery of patriotism, and as a moral agent.
Part II. treats of the technique of pageantry, namely, the choice of
a subject, the selection of a site, the formation of committees, the
method of advertising, the costumes, music, and dancing. Mr.
Davol is right in calling the pageant the cleanest form of the drama.
VEXILLA REGIS. A Book of Devotions and Intercessions on
behalf of all our Authorities, our Soldiers and Sailors, our
Allies, the Mourners and Destitute, and all affected by the
War. Arranged, Translated, and Compiled by the Very Rev.
Monsignor R. H. Benson. New York: Longmans, Green &
Co. 50 cents net.
In this slim little volume, Monsignor Benson has gathered to-
gether, for the use of those who follow the war with anxious eyes,
a number of beautiful and appropriate prayers in which, as he ob-
serves in his preface, he has " followed more or less the lines
indicated by the Offices of the Church, believing that so venerable
and orderly a system must surely guide the soul more skillfully
and effectively than can any spasmodic or emotional method." At
times we feel, however, the tender, personal touch of the writer
himself :
I know that Thou dost love my beloved with a far greater
tenderness than I myself can feel ; that Thou art strong when I
am weak and patient when I am fretful ; that Thou canst do all
692 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
things and that I can do nothing without Thee; that the
shadow of Thy wings is over all the earth, and Thine Everlast-
ing Arms beneath it
O Shepherd of the sheep, hold him safely on Thy shoulder
and against Thy Heart.
O Shepherd of the sheep, have pity upon this little darkened
soul of mine.
O Light of the World, shine upon him.
O Light of the World, shine upon me.
Dear Jesus ! be to him and to me, not a judge but a Saviour.
The prayers are arranged for each day in the week, with an
accompanying intention: For a Happy and Just Issue; For the
Dead; For the Dying and Wounded and those who Tend them;
For Prisoners, Widows, Orphans, Hungry and Homeless, Sinners
and Enemies. There are additional prayers for particular inten-
tions, " suggestions for intentions on the Rosary," the Stations of
the Cross, and Mass Prayers " In time of War."
Convinced of the justice of England's cause, he has prayed
outspokenly for the success of her arms. But beneath political
and national division, there is, in the writer's own words, " A great
unnational Church," and all of her children can adapt these prayers
to their own use, providing help to others and peace to their
own souls.
MEN AROUND THE KAISER. By Fred W. Wile. Indianapolis,
Ind. : Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.25 net.
Mr. Wile, European correspondent of the New York Times
and the Chicago Tribune, has written a series of brief and clear-cut
sketches of the chief statesmen, army and navy officers, scholars,
dramatists, artists, musicians, and business men of modern Ger-
many. The tone of the book, which was written long before the
Great War, is fair and impartial, although the introduction, dated
August 28, 1914, takes severely to task Germany's military over-
lords for the present conflict.
THE CONTINENTAL DRAMA OF TO-DAY. Outlines for its
Study. By Barrett H. Clark. New York : Henry Holt & Co.
$1.35 net.
In this volume Mr. Clark discusses some fifty plays of over
twenty modern continental dramatists. Among others he sum-
marizes Brand and Peer Gynt of Ibsen; the Sea Gull of Tchekoff;
1915.] NEW BOOKS 693
the Father of Stringberg; the Weavers of Hauptmann; Magda of
Sudermann; the Crows of Becque; the Pardon of Jules Le Maitre;
the Labyrinth of Hervieu; Cyrano de Bergerac of Rostand; the
Blue Bird of Maeterlinck ; Giaconda of d'Annunzio, etc. He shows
how these dramatists constructed their plays, planned their various
dramatic effects, and dealt with the various dramatic problems.
The book must be used in connection with the reading of the plays
themselves, or most of it will be utterly unintelligible. Each chapter
contains a complete bibliography of the various editions of the plays
mentioned, with side references to works of dramatic criticism and
magazine articles. The author promises shortly a companion
volume on the British and American drama of to-day.
MODERN THEOLOGY AND THE PREACHING OF THE GOS-
PEL. By W. A. Brown, D.D. New York : Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. $1.25 net.
Dr. Brown complains bitterly of the decline of personal re-
ligion and of doctrinal preaching in the Protestant Churches, the
general ignorance of the Bible, and the alienation of the multitudes
from the Church. He endeavors in these six lectures to show the
modern clergyman how to obviate these evils, and to preach the
Gospel effectively. Of course we are treated to the usual common-
places of Protestant fiction. The Bible is the book of freedom,
which led men out from the yoke of a Church which had grown cor-
rupt and tyrannous into the liberty of the sons of God ; Luther was
facing a Church that taught salvation by works; Protestantism
stands in a peculiar sense for religious freedom.
He tells us that in the past the Protestant idea of the Bible
" instead of uniting, divided men into different sects," but to-day
he declares, in the delightfully vague manner of modern theology,
a standard has been provided. Christ is the key to the Bible. To
Him we are to come as the final test, when any question arises of
interpretation. This is one instance out of many of his " new "
discoveries in theological science.
CELTIC MEMORIES AND OTHER POEMS. By N. J. O'Conor.
New York: John Lane Co. $1.00 net.
Mr. O'Conor has given us a charming volume of simple,
musical verses. The Celtic memories are to our mind the best, for
the love of Erin breathes in every line. Every father with Irish
blood in his veins will gladly have his children learn such verses
694 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
as The Emigrant, From Kerry, Saint Patrick, and King Muirdach.
A member of the Gaelic League might change his mind, however,
when he finds Mr. O' Conor enthusing similarly later on over the
green grass and the fresh-cheeked girls of England. One of the
best of "the other poems " is the beautifully expressed sonnet, My
Prayer.
LOURDES. By the Very Rev. Monsignor R. H. Benson. St.
Louis: B. Herder. 30 cents net.
It was a happy thought of the Editors of the Catholic Library
that led them to preserve papers on Lourdes. Monsignor Benson
approached Lourdes a " reverent agnostic," but left it a firm be-
liever, convinced and enthusiastic. We like the comparison of
Lourdes to the marriage feast of Cana it is the Blessed Mother
who sees that the water is provided, but it is Jesus of Nazareth who
passes by, and lo! the sick are cured, the lame walk, and the
blind see. The writer does not see, nor do we, what more could
be done to sift the real from the unreal miracle by the Bureau des
Constatations. The book is bright, interesting, and bears on every
page the impress of a devout love of Mary.
THE TOURIST'S CALIFORNIA. By Ruth Kedzie Wood. New
York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25 net.
Every tourist who intends to visit the San Francisco Exposition
this year will find Mrs. Wood's volume an excellent and compre-
hensive guide to California. She tells us of the history of the
State, its hotels, its native dishes, its theatres, its festivals and sports,
its automobile routes, railway trips, and mountain climbs. She
describes in the most entertaining fashion many historic and pic-
turesque scenes whose trail leads from the Sierra to the desert,
from Shasta to Coronado, from the Yosemite to Monterey. An
appendix contains a list of the tourist cities and resorts of California,
and the chief hotels of the State.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CHURCH. By Ernest F. Scott,
D.D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net.
This volume consists of ten lectures delivered in January and
February, 1914, at the Union Theological Seminary in New York
City. The lecturer tells us that his object has been to investigate
" the aims and beliefs of the Christian community at the time preced-
ing the advent of Paul." Dr. Scott is so very broad in his teaching,
1915-] NEW BOOKS 695
that we hardly see how he can claim a right to the name of Christian.
We are told that Jesus had no thought of founding a society that
would perpetuate His work ; that Acts i.-xii. is in great part legend-
ary; that in the first days of Christianity the missionary motive
was entirely absent; that the rite of baptism was not instituted
by Jesus; that the immediate interest of the primitive Church was
not in the person of Jesus ; that there was no thought in the begin-
ning of identifying Jesus with the ineffable God; that the Apostles
had no formal authority.
What can we expect of the future teachers of Christianity
in this country, when such rationalistic denials of the fundamental
dogmas of the Gospel are allowed without question?
THE PASSING OF THE FOURTEEN. By Ransom Sutton.
New York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.25 net.
This stirring novel tells the story of the 'overthrow of Maxi-
milian in Mexico. Juarez's victory is ascribed to the help given
by the Brethren of the Road, a famous bandit society. These out-
laws in reality a most contemptible set of scoundrels pose as
patriots, although, like all thieves, their patriotism consists chiefly
in getting their share of the loot. As an historical novel, it is
a rather poor attempt at picturing the Mexico of the sixties, and
Catholics will object to having " the Church close at hand to con-
done the cussedness committed in the (bandit's council) chamber."
HINTS ON PREACHING. By Rev. J. V. O'Connor. Philadelphia :
John Joseph McVey. Paper, 25 cents; cloth, 50 cents.
This is a reprint of Father O'Connor's well-known little treatise
on sermon delivery. Every young priest should read this book.
How true is the writer's saying that actors often put priests to the
blush by the care they take in making their every word effective.
NOTES ON NOVELISTS. With Some Other Notes. By Henry
James. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50 net.
The present volume is among the most interesting of the works
of Henry James, expressing, as it does, his views on certain big
figures that loom up in modern literature. " James is James," of
course, but whether one agrees or disagrees, his opinions are always
worth weighing. Stevenson, Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, Sand, d'An-
nunzio, Serao, Dumas fits, are the subjects of his study. Perhaps
none of the criticisms is better than the brief one on Stevenson.
696 NEW BOOKS
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
We have received from the office of the Irish Messenger in Dublin the
following one penny pamphlets :
A Drink Handbook which contains over one hundred quotations from
bishops, statesmen and doctors on the evils of drink; Father Martin Corbett's
boy stories, namely, A True Boy and Rogers of Seaforths; Father Peter Finley's
The Church and Anti-Clericalism; Father William Doyle's Vocations; A
Teacher's Apostleship of Prayer in Schools; Rev. J. MacDonald's devotional
tracts on Daily Mass, Daily Communion, The Nine Offices of the Sacred Heart,
and Our Lady of Dolors.
The Australian Catholic Truth Society of Melbourne has just published
the following one penny tracts:
National Education, by P. S. Cleary, President of the Catholic Federation
of New South Wales; Pius X., by the Bishop of Salford; Benedict XV., by
Father Benedict; The Blessed Sacrament and Catholic Unity, by Bishop Hedley
of Newport.
The United States Bureau of Education has sent us the following pamphlets :
Music in the Public Schools, by William Earhart; Rural Schoolhouses in
the United States, by F. B. Dresslar; Danish Elementary Rural Schools, by H.
W. Foght ; and a Bibliography of the Relation of Secondary Schools to Higher
Education, compiled by R. L. Walkley.
The Russell Sage Foundation has just published a Credit Union Primer,
by Arthur R. Ham. It is an excellent elementary treatise on cooperative banking.
The Indian Rights Association of Philadelphia has published a forty-page
pamphlet on the Indians of the Yukon and Tanana Valleys, Alaska, by M. K.
Sniffen and Dr. T. S. Carrington. The authors give a brief account of the work
of Father Si f ton among the Indians and Eskimos of Holy Cross. The same
Society sends us the Thirty-Second Annual Report of their Executive Committee.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has just issued its 1914
Year Book, which contains the reports of the Executive Committee, the
Secretary, the Auditor, and the Directors of the Division of Intercourse and
Education, of Economics, and History and International Law. It has also sent
us two brochures on the Limitation of Armament on the Great Lakes, and The
Intellectual and Cultural Relations between the United States and the Other
Republics of America, by H. E. Bard.
The Negro Year Book, an Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro, 1914-1915,
by Monroe N. Work. (Tuskegee Institute, Alabama: Published by the Negro
Year Book Publishing Co. 25 cents.) This year book provides in a cheap form
a succinct, comprehensive, and impartial review of the events of the year which
affect the interest and indicate the progress of the negro race. It is a permanent
record of current events, an encyclopedia of historical and sociological facts, a
directory of persons, and a bibliographical guide to the literature of the subject
discussed. About one-half a page in a volume of four hundred and fifty pages is
devoted to Catholic work among the negro.
The Case Against the Little White Slaver, published by Henry Ford, Detroit,
Michigan.- This little booklet of forty pages discusses the evils of cigarette
smoking. Like most tracts of the kind its denunciation is so vehement that it
fails of its effect. Take for instance Maxim's statement : " The yellow finger
stain is an emblem of deeper degradation and enslavement than the ball and
chain ;" or " Connie Mack's " view that " No boy or man can expect to succeed
in this world to a high position and continue the use of cigarettes."
jforefgn perfobfcate.
Count Albert de Mun. By Leonce de Grandmaison. Albert
de Mun, grandson of the " philosopher " Helvetius, would have
furnished an excellent example of how one may escape a material-
istic and voluptuous heredity even if his mother had not been the
sister of Albert de la Ferronnays, described in Mrs. Craven's A
Sister's Story. Born in 1841 he was a cavalry lieutenant in the
war of 1870, taken prisoner at Metz and made, after his release in
1871, an ordnance officer during the second siege of Paris. During
these experiences he became intimate with Captain Count (now
Marquis) de la Tour du Pin, and together they meditated upon the
causes of France's sad experiences, together they began to study the
definitions of the Church upon the errors of that distracted time.
Maurice Meignen came then into his life, asking aid for a " Catholic
Association of Young Workmen," recruited and maintained in the
Montparnasse district, and de Mun responded to the appeal by giving
not only money but himself. He became an ardent propagator of
this social work. In response to objections, a real course of studies
was organized, which elaborated gradually a system of Christian
sociology, with a monthly review called I' Association Catholique.
De Mun's entrance into politics forced him gradually to lessen
his labors in this direction, and many causes led the Association
to stagnate and lose ground. In 1885-1886 he tried to " feed " its
growth by an association of young men on a model seen in Catholic
Switzerland; the new society, the Catholic Association of French
Youths, grew and prospered, but never affiliated with the older and
less effective group. In Parliament he spoke, amid almost universal
applause, on social questions, such as the Sunday rest, the organiza-
tion of trusts, and labor among women and children. In politics
a royalist, supporter of the Count de Chambord, he even attempted
in 1885 to found a Catholic party on German and Belgian lines;
the effort was opposed, and the matter being carried to Rome, was
judged by the nuncio, Monsignor di Rende, to be, at the least,
inopportune, so that the Catholic Union died still-born. The
Boulanger affair and the fact that de Mun had never made politics
his primary concern, led the latter to receive with genuine joy the
directions given by Leo XIII. to accept the republican form of
698 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Feb.,
government, and to defend religious interests along constitutional
lines. The Dreyfus affair caused him to break his ordinary silence
in defence of the army and of France herself.
Elected member of the French Academy in 1897 m place of
Jules Simon, he began to reveal himself as a brilliant journalist after
1900, when a severe cardiac weakness prevented, except on rare
occasions, extended oratorical displays. Tall, distinguished looking,
with a sonorous voice, he resembled Lacordaire as an orator; as a
leader he lacked the supple persistency, the far-sightedness, the
geniality of a Windthorst or an O'Connell. A loyal and outspoken
Catholic, he charged his eldest son in his will to express to the Holy
Father his absolute obedience to the Apostolic and Roman See.
Devoted to the people and to the welfare of France, he spent him-
self deliberately, writing to the end his daily articles in the Echo
de Paris, and was mourned, upon his death, October 6, 1914, with
genuine and personal grief in a time of universal sorrow. Etudes,
October 5 and 20.
Count de Muris Last Work. By Geoffroy de Grandmaison.
The decree of May 5, 1913, had agreed to four chaplains for each
army corps, but it had been a dead letter. When war broke out,
a hundred were appointed, but the number was insufficient. Various
priests volunteered. M. de Mun took up the matter with the civil
authorities, promised that the priests would ask no salary, and
obtained from the Minister of War permission for two hundred and
fifty of them. The lists, both for enrollment and for subscriptions,
filled rapidly. In two weeks a hundred thousand francs were put
at his disposal. So many priests offered themselves that choice
had to be made, with special reference to health; the first thirty
set out on August 27th. When the Government removed to Bor-
deaux, M. de Mun also went thither, to preserve his freedom as a
writer, and to be near the Ministers of War and of Foreign Affairs.
He had, himself, obtained the " Ministry of Public Confidence."
Pope Benedict XV., an hour after his election, spontaneously sent
the great Catholic patriot his blessing. M. de Mun's last telegram,
which reached M. de Grandmaison only when the writer was dead,
announced the nomination of eighteen chaplains. Numerous letters
from chaplains in the field are given, showing how rightly M. de
Mun called his efforts in their regard the finest work of his life.
Le Correspondant, December 10.
1915-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 699
The Centenary of Servian Poetry. By Felicien Pascal. The
literature of a people is really formed into a living whole only when
printed, and this took place for Servian poetry in 1814 when Vouk
Stephanovitch Karadjitch published a Collection of Slavic-Servian
Popular Songs. In the same year he issued a Grammar and in
1818 a Dictionary. In 1770 Abbe Fortis, an Italian naturalist,
had included in his Voyage to Dalmatia two poems; of these, The
Sad Ballad has given rise to a whole library of translations and
commentaries. It is a tragic picture of the oppression of Servian
wives and mothers. Justine Wynne, Mme. de Stael, Charles Modier,
Jacob Grimm, and Goethe drew attention to Servian literature.
The most famous of the four cycles of heroic poems is that of Marko
Kralievitch, a rather legendary hero like the great Roland. Le
Correspondant, December 10.
The Month (January) : W. Randolph describes the former
glories of churches and public buildings in Belgium and northern
France before their sad fate in the present war. Rev. Herbert
Thurston writes on Germany's Original Plan of Campaign, as re-
vealed in a document found by a French officer in a railway carriage,
December 15, 1913, where it had been left behind by a German
officer. John Ayscough contributes a sketch from the battlefields,
called A Parenthesis of War.-, Rev. Sydney Smith analyzes The
Pope's First Encyclical. The Editor makes further comments on
the war, hoping that it will lead the world " into the way of peace."
The Irish Theological Quarterly. Rev. Hugh Pope, O.P.,
replies to an attack by Dr. Skinner of Westminster College, Cam-
bridge, on Father Pope's article in this review (October, 1914), on
Pentateuchal criticism, renewing his assertion that the " higher
critics " must pay more attention to the Vulgate, and must prove
that their Massoretic text is worthy of the supreme confidence
which they place in it. Rev. David Barry reviews the opinions
of theologians as to the right in justice of making profit, when
buying or selling, in virtue of some special knowledge. Rev. J.
MacRory writes on the title The Son of Man, applied to Himself
by our Lord over eighty times in the four Gospels, but never applied
to Him by the Evangelists themselves, and met with only once in
the rest of the New Testament, that is, in St. Stephen's discourse
700 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Feb.,
to the Sanhedrin. Dr. MacRory thinks that this title did not have
among the people at large a Messianic significance, and that it was
adopted for this reason by our Lord for the sake of prudence.
Though it emphasized His humanity, and the uniqueness of His
Personality, it veiled His claims until He had educated His disciples
regarding the true role of the Messiah, and the spiritual nature of
His Kingdom. The phrase may, and most probably does, mean
" The Son of Mankind," and, as used by Christ, sets Him forth in
immediate relation, not merely with one family or one nation, but
with all mankind, as the type, the ideal representative of the human
family. Christ did not adopt this title from Daniel (vii. 13), where
the language is somewhat different, though He may have used it in
allusion to the prophet's words to show to the Jews that in this
passage a Messiah had been foreshadowed, and that these fore-
shadow ings were by Him fulfilled.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (January) : Very Rev. James
MacCaffrey records the experiences of the Catholic Church in 1914.
Rev. Peter Byrne, CM., relates the causes which led to the
passing of the act to improve intermediate education in Ireland in
1878. Previous to that time the endowments had been shamefully
mismanaged, a fact exposed by a Royal Commission of 1854-58,
but not brought effectively before Parliament until 1874. Mr.
Richard O'Shaughnessy, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain favored the new act. It instituted a system of public
examinations for which prizes, exhibitions, and certificates were
provided; included Irish language and history as subjects of exam-
ination; and its benefits were soon extended to girls. Rt. Rev.
John S. Vaughan writes on The War and Divine Providence.
Rev. M. Eaton gives a history of the Responsories of the Divine
Office. A Missionary Priest writes on the difficulty of teaching
Catechism, particularly with such a manual as the Maynooth Cate-
chism, which he believes too advanced for the child's mind.
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (December) : Abbe Th. Del-
mont pays tribute to the late Comte Albert de Mun. Th. Main-
age quotes at length Max Nordan's very bitter opinion of Richard
Wagner, to show how foolish those French music lovers are who
idolize this German composure. In a long review of Cardinal
1915-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 701
van Rossum's new treatise on the Sacrament of Holy Orders,
Joseph de Guibert defends the contrary thesis (that of Cardinal
Billot), which holds that the Church has been able to determine
the essential elements in certain Sacramental rites otherwise ^than
by a formal and precise decree.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (December) : J. Bricout endeavors
to discount " the intellectual superiority of Germany " by showing
that France in every field possesses names no less renowned than
those from beyond the Rhine. L. Cl. Fillion discusses many re-
cent works by the radical German Protestant school upon Jesus
Christ, and primitive Christianity. G. Planque reviews the situa-
tion of the Anglican Church in connection with the disestablishment
of the Church in Wales. Conclusion of an address by Abbe Jouin
on the late Abbe Lesetre, showing his love for our Lord, his work
among children, and his thoroughly priestly spirit dominating all
his activity. Three other men, Monsignor d'Hulst, Abbe de Broglie,
and Abbe Huvelin, like Abbe Lesetre, notable in many ways, were,
like him, first and always priests.
Etudes (November 5 and 20) : Lucien Roure begins a study of
St. Catherine of Siena with a description of her native city, based
on a recent work on this subject by Langton Douglas. Yves de
la Briere concludes an exposition of the Catholic doctrine on war.
Louis Laurand shows how far astray some modern scholars
have gone in their views of classical antiquity, through an excessive
suspicion against ancient historians and an equally excessive cre-
dence in plausible, but unfounded hypotheses.
IRecent Events.
The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD wishes to state that none
of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of
the magazine, with the exception of " With Our Readers" voices
the editorial opinion of the magazine. And no article or department
voices officially the opinion of the Paulist Community.
The opening of the year 1915 found the
France. French people facing the enemy with an
unbroken and undaunted spirit. The na-
tional ministry of which M. Viviani is the head, and which includes
representatives of all the Republican parties even of the most ex-
treme of the Socialists and of the Anti-Militarists, remains in power
without any change. General Joffre's position as the Generalissimo
of the army remains unchallenged. In fact so great is the satisfac-
tion felt at his success that a proposal has been made to revive in
his honor the old title of Marshal of France. More than half of
that portion of France which at the beginning of last September
was occupied by the Germans has been recovered, while with the
help of the British and Belgian forces a small part of Belgian terri-
tory has been saved from occupation by the Germans, and in
Alsace the French have for some time secured possession of certain
districts. The return of the Government to Paris indicates the
confidence felt by France that the worst is over, and although a
large extent of territory, and some important cities and towns are in
the hands of the enemy, no doubt is felt that his expulsion is only
a question of time.
According to the Premier, the efforts of the French are not to
be limited simply to the liberation of their own territory. These
efforts, the Premier declared, with the unanimous consent of all
parties and factions of the Chamber, " will not be discontinued until
outraged right has been avenged, the provinces taken from France
in 1871 regained, nor before to heroic Belgium the fullness of her
material prosperity and her political independence have been re-
stored, and Prussian militarism broken." This declaration of M.
Viviani shows that France's aim is almost identical with that of
Great Britain, as set forth by Mr. Asquith, the British Prime
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 703
Minister. Great Britain, he declared, " will never sheathe the sword
until Belgium recovers in full measure all, and more than all, that
she has sacrificed; until France is adequately secured against the
menace of aggression; until the rights of the smaller nationalities
of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation, and until the
military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed."
If Great Britain's proposed aims are somewhat more extensive than
are those of France, Russia's go even farther, for her avowed
objects include " the freeing of the Poles and the Danes, as well as
of Alsace-Lorraine, from the oppressor's yoke." The French
Premier renewed his adhesion to the treaty of September 4th made
with Great Britain and Russia, by which it was agreed that no peace
should be made with Germany except with the mutual agreement
of the Three Powers. Not merely was there hope, the Premier
declared, but an assured certainty of victory, an assurance based
upon the determination of the people and the army. The severity
of the task was fully recognized, nor was it expected that it would
be accomplished in a short time : the country, however, was prepared
for every sacrifice. No less an object was at stake than the fate
of the world, whether it was to be dominated by a military absolut-
ism of the character so recently disclosed, or by nations which have
self-government as their ideals. An interesting feature in the
meeting of the Assembly was the presence in the gallery of two
members of the German Reichstag Herr Weh, Deputy for Metz,
who is now serving in the French army, and the Abbe Wetterle.
Herr Blumenthal, the Mayor of Colmar, was also present.
The Chamber passed unanimously the vote on account for six
months, and, as a sign of the sacred unity which now exists, an
inquiry into two contested elections was abandoned. The vote
included a sum of sixty millions to be applied to the rebuilding of
the ruins made by the Germans, and so great is the recuperative
power of the French that already in the devastated districts many
of the signs of the enemy's march have been obliterated. The
French engineers have rebuilt the bridges within a few miles of the
territory still occupied. The churches, however, are not so easily
restored, and their ruins remain, as well as the graves of the dead.
The reconstitution of the life of the peasants in the ruined villages
is the hardest task of all. This has been undertaken with the help
of our fellow-countrymen, who have formed a committee and have
raised funds for the purpose, and have undertaken to provide imple-
ments of agriculture and food and clothing until the next harvest.
704 RECENT EVENTS [Feb.,
Many changes have already been the result of the war. One
of these is in the character of the French soldier. Of old he has
chiefly been distinguished for dash and elan, but has at times proved
to be lacking in endurance: if not successful at first, he has been
prone to give up in despair. This war has demanded the exercise
of perseverance under defeat, and of patience even when on the
aggressive. From the necessity of the case the French soldier has
developed these very qualities in a high degree, and to his old-
established virtues of initiative, bravery, and fearlessness, he has
added endurance, patience, and stoicism.
Another important change is in the attitude of the French
people, and even of the authorities, towards religion. For many
years past the participation of French officials in religious services
has been abandoned. It has now in several instances been re-
sumed. The hitherto widespread unbelief in every form of religion
is beginning to give way to an opposite tendency. Unprejudiced
observers testify to a growing movement in an opposite direction,
and declare that a strong vein of religious feeling is running through
the nation. Moreover, at the beginning of the war military chap-
lains were appointed for the troops, a thing which has not been
done since the separation of Church and State. These chaplains
are recognized by the State and the army as regular functionaries
liable only for clerical work. They constitute an outward and
visible sign of the partial closing of the breach between Church and
State, and form another indication of the " sacred union " which has
been brought about by the war. In addition to the chaplains a
large number of priests are serving in one capacity or another in the
army, some as simple soldiers. Even these, however, say Mass
from time to time, and minister to the spiritual needs of their fellow-
soldiers. Their devotion, as well as that of the Sisters in nursing the
wounded, has been influential in turning the tide. The Comte de
Mun, on his deathbed, was cheered by these signs of a religious
revival, and died with full confidence in the victory of the " New
France " which has arisen.
Another result of the war, which is more important than it
looks at first sight, is its effect upon the fashions. Paris has for
long been the ruling influence determining the dress of women, and
it cannot be denied that the dress of women is a potent influence
the world over. Of late that influence has been in the highest
degree pernicious. The war has made a great change. Self-denial,
sober raiment, and good manners are the ruling factors in Paris now.
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 705
Elegant sobriety has become the dominating characteristic. Large
numbers of the women of Paris, and indeed of the whole of France,
are unceasingly engaged in making garments for the army, or in
contributing to its comfort. The soldiers at Christmas were liter-
ally overwhelmed with the presents which were sent to the fighting
line.
The news which comes from Germany is so
Germany. exclusively official that it will meet with
the full acceptance of those only who are
strong German sympathizers. Other statements that leak out may
or may not be true, and are, therefore, scarcely worthy of note.
One thing, however, seems certain, and that is that the Chief of
the Staff, General von Moltke, has either resigned or has been
relieved of his office a thing which indicates either his own dis-
satisfaction with the conduct of the war or that of the Em-
peror. The resignation just announced of the Minister of Finance
would point (if true) to an even more serious embarrassment
for the German Government. Another thing that may be noted
as fairly well established is that Great Britain is looked upon as
the chief enemy of the German Empire. Victory over her is the
thing of all others to be desired.
The beginning of the year found Germany in possession of
what on a very rough estimate may be looked upon as a tenth of
French territory. All but a fraction of Belgium also was in the
military occupation of German troops as well as the Grand Duchy
of Luxembourg. On the other hand, France has secured a small
lodgment in Alsace, and Russia has in East Prussia occupied a dis-
trict of uncertain extent. The war between Russia and Germany has
swayed backwards and forwards in Poland, where the sufferings of
Catholics have been so great as to be comparable to those of the
Belgian Catholics, although there has not been the same destruction
of buildings, religious and secular.
The unanimity of opinion in support of the war seems to be
maintained, although Herr Liebknecht voted at the last Sessions of
the Reichstag against the credit asked for by the Government;
he was, however, the only one who thus acted. He is said to
have explained the apparent unity of the Socialists by the fact
that martial law existed throughout the Empire. In Bavaria the
violation of Belgian neutrality has been criticized not on the ground
it was wrong, but because it has alienated neutral nations
vf. c. 45
706 RECENT EVENTS [Feb.,
from Germany's cause, and made them distrustful of its conduct
in the future. The confidence in ultimate success has, however,
by no means abated; even the fact that in the Western Campaign
Germany has for the past six weeks been acting almost entirely
on the defensive, has not shaken this confidence.
Like the German Empire, the Dual-Mon-
Austria-Hungary. archy is almost a sealed book, and but little
reliance can be placed upon the accounts
which have been given of the events which have taken place within
its limits since the war commenced. It is certain, however, that a
large part of Galicia has been lost, and is now in the possession of
the Russians. Bukowina, too, has been invaded, as well as Hun-
gary, but the enemy has not succeeded in establishing a permanent
foothold. Austro-Hungarian attempts on Servia have been dis-
astrously defeated, but the efforts of the latter, assisted by Monte-
negro, to take possession of Bosnia have not proved successful. A
clear indication that things are not going well with Austria-Hungary
is the resignation of Count Berchtold, the author of the ultimatum
to Servia which was the occasion of the war. The author of a
policy which is succeeding is not likely to resign or, at all events,
to have his resignation accepted. The precise grounds for the
resignation are, of course, more or less a matter of speculation;
but as he has been succeeded by a Hungarian, it may be surmised
that the dissatisfaction of Hungary with the conduct of the war,
which has for some time been manifesting itself, has grown strong
enough to find this way of securing a change. Subservience to
Germany is said to have been a marked feature of Count Berch-
told's policy. The new Foreign Minister, Baron Stephan von
Burian, is reputed to be a masterful Magyar, who deeply resents
what he looks upon as the sacrifice of the interests of his country
to those of the German Empire. A "veteran diplomat," writing
in the New York Times, sees in the change the first step in the
secession of Austria-Hungary from Germany, with a view to her
withdrawal from the war. According to the same authority, the
influence of the new Foreign Secretary with Rumania and Bulgaria
may be strong enough to remove the bad feeling caused by the
policy of Count Berchtold. It may even prevent these two nations
from ever taking part in the war.
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 707
Belgium still maintains her heroic resistance
Belgium. to the assault upon her liberty and independ-
ence, and in this she is supported by the
highest ecclesiastical authority in Belgium Cardinal Mercier. In a
Pastoral he has, as follows, defined in the clearest and most unmis-
takable terms the duties of Catholics with regard to the question
of their civil allegiance:
I do not require of you to renounce any of your national desires. On the
contrary, I hold it as part of the obligations of my episcopal office to instruct
you as to your duty in face of the Power that has invaded our soil and now
occupies the greater part of our country. The authority of that Power is no
lawful authority. Therefore in the soul and conscience you owe it neither
respect, nor attachment, nor obedience.
The sole lawful authority in Belgium is that of our King, of our Govern-
ment, of the elected representatives of the nation. This authority alone has a
right to our affection, our submission.
Thus, the invaders' acts of public administration have in themselves no
authority, but legitimate authority has tacitly ratified such of those acts as affect
the general interests, and this ratification, and this only, gives them juridic
value.
Occupied provinces are not conquered provinces. Belgium is no more a
German province than Galicia is a Russian province. Nevertheless, the occupied
portion of our country is in a position it is compelled to endure. The greater
part of our towns, having surrendered to the enemy on conditions, are bound
to observe those conditions. From the outset of military operations the civil
authorities of the country urged upon all private persons the necessity of
abstention from hostile acts against the enemy's army. That instruction remains
in force. It is our army, and our army solely, in league with the valiant troops
of our Allies, that has the honor and the duty of national defence. Let us
entrust the army with our final deliverance.
Towards the persons of those who are holding dominion among us by
military force, and who assuredly cannot but be sensible of the chivalrous energy
with which we have defended, and are still defending, our independence, let us
conduct ourselves with all needful forbearance. Some among them have de-
clared themselves willing to mitigate, as far as possible, the severity of our
situation, and to help us to recover some minimum of regular civic life. Let us
observe the rules they have laid upon us so long as those rules do not violate
our personal liberty, nor our consciences as Christians, nor our duty to our
country.
The sufferings of the Belgians have excited sympathy in every
part of the world ; and not a sympathy which has been merely senti-
mental. In our country especially has this been felt, and it has
manifested itself in a way never equalled before. The enormous
sum of fourteen millions has already been subscribed for the support
of the needy and famishing, and assurances are given that help
will be continued until the Belgians are restored to their own.
" Words fail me/' says Cardinal Mercier in a letter to Mr. Hoover,
708 RECENT EVENTS [Feb.,
the Chairman of the American Committee for Relief, " to express
my deep appreciation of the bountiful generosity of the American
people."
If anyone still doubts the terrible sufferings inflicted upon
the Belgian people, the Cardinal's personal and direct evidence must
be found convincing. In his recent pastoral the Cardinal says :
I have traversed the greater part of the districts most terribly
devastated in my diocese; and the ruins I beheld and the ashes were more
dreadful than I, prepared by the saddest of forebodings, could have imagined.
Other parts of my diocese, which I have not yet had time to visit, have in like
manner been laid waste. Churches, schools, asylums, hospitals, convents in
great numbers, are in ruins. Entire villages have all but disappeared. At
Werchter-Wackerzeel, for instance, out of three hundred and eighty homes, a
hundred and thirty remain; at Tremeloo two-thirds of the village are over-
thrown; at Bueken, out of a hundred houses, twenty are standing; at Schaffen
one hundred and eighty-nine houses out of two hundred are destroyed eleven
still stand. At Louvain the third part of the buildings are down ; one thousand
and seventy- four dwellings have disappeared; on the town land and in the
suburbs, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three houses have been burned.
Many a parish has lost its pastor. There is sounding in my ears the sorrow-
ful voice of an old man of whom I asked whether he had had Mass on Sunday
in his battered church. " It is two months," he said, " since we had a church."
The parish priest and the curate have been interned in a concentration camp.
Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported to the
prisons of Germany, to Munsterlagen, to Celle, to Madgeburg. At Munsterlagen,
alone three thousand one hundred civil prisoners were numbered. History will
tell of the physical and moral torments of their long martyrdom. Hundreds of
innocent men were shot. I possess no complete necrology; but I know that
there were ninety-one shot at Aerschot, and that there, under pain of death,
their fellow citizens were compelled to dig their graves. In the Louvain group
of communes one hundred and seventy-six persons, men and women, old men and
sucklings, rich and poor, in health and sickness, were shot or burned.
In my diocese alone I know that thirteen priests or religious were put to
death. One of these, the parish priest of Gelrode, suffered, I believe, a veritable
martyrdom. I made a pilgrimage to his grave, and, amid the little flock which
so lately he had been feeding with the zeal of an apostle, there did I pray to
him that from the height of Heaven he would guard his parish, his diocese,
his country.
We can neither number our dead nor compute the measure of our ruins.
And what would it be if we turned our sad steps towards Liege, Namur, Audenne,
Dinant, Tamines, Charleroi, and elsewhere?
And there where lives were not taken, and there where the stones of build-
ings were not thrown down, what anguish unrevealed ! Families, hitherto living
at ease, now in bitter want ; all commerce at an end, all careers ruined ; industry
at a standstill ; thousands upon thousands of working men without employment ;
working women, shop girls, humble servant girls without the means of earning
their bread; and poor souls forlorn on the bed of sickness and fever, crying,
" O Lord, how long, how long ? "
There is nothing to reply. The reply remains the secret of God.
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 709
No changes have taken place in the Cabinet
Great Britain. since the war commenced. The example
of Belgium and France in favoring a
Cabinet embracing all the various parties, was not followed.
The Cabinet remains a strictly Party Cabinet. It is, however,
supported whole-heartedly by both the Unionist and Irish
Nationalist leaders. This has not stood in the way of friendly
criticism, the object of which has been chiefly the censorship
and the disasters which have befallen certain ships of the navy.
The censorship of the press is so alien to British habits that the
endeavor to exercise it has led to much heartburning. Even the
principles by which it was to be ruled were undefined. One of the
censors was understood to claim the right to suppress the news of
any disaster. Criticism in Parliament forced a disavowal of such a
practice, and limited the right to the concealment of only such news
as might be of advantage to the enemy. The practical application of
this principle has not, however, been entirely satisfactory. In con-
sequence too great a degree of uncertainty prevails about the actual
situation.
It seems clear that Great Britain is practically master
of the seas, with the possible exception, strange to say, of her own
shores. Mines and submarines endanger the safety of her ships
at her own gates. The hourly expectation of the Great Fleet of
Germany making a supreme effort to destroy that of Great Britain,
keeps her people in a state of anxious waiting. The possibility of
an invasion and of an attack by a fleet of Zeppelins, adds a further
element of disquietude, but so far at least as an invasion is con-
cerned, it is looked upon merely as a possibility a possibility for
which they are fully prepared.
With the results of the war in France and Belgium, a fair
degree of satisfaction is felt, when account is taken of Great
Britain's unpreparedness for warfare on the Continent. The esti-
mated war strength of the regular army of Great Britain at the time
immediately preceding the outbreak of the war was only 275,000
men, while that of Germany was 2,250,000, exclusive of the 810,000
that Austria-Hungary could bring into the field. By voluntary
enlistment a thing unparalelled in modern history Great Britain
now possesses an army of between two and three millions of men,
who are on the point of devoting themselves to the service of
their country.
With the progress of the war in other parts of the world,
;io RECENT EVENTS [Feb.,
greater satisfaction is felt by the inhabitants of Great Britain.
This satisfaction, however, is provisional, for the result depends
upon the issue of the conflict in Europe. Up to the present,
the entrance of Turkey into the war has led to the adding
of Cyprus to the list of British possessions. Another part of the
Ottoman dominion, Egypt, has not been annexed, Great Britain's
action having been limited to the declaration of a Protectorate.
This was done with the avowed purpose of preparing the country
for an increased degree of self-government. This, however, does
not apply to the Sudan, which has not, since its re-conquest by Lord
Kitchener, formed any part of the Turkish dominions. An expedi-
tion from India has taken possession of Basra near the head of
the Persian Gulf, and has advanced far up the Euphrates. It may
be that Baghdad itself may fall. Of the German Colonies, Togo-
land surrendered to the British in the first weeks of the war;
Cameroon is being attacked; places in Southwest Africa have
been seized, and the German effort to raise a rebellion in the Union
of South Africa defeated. In East Africa the Germans have been
successful in resisting a -British attack, while, on the other hand,
British East Africa has succeeded in repelling the Germans. Ger-
man New Guinea has been seized by an Australian expedition, as
well as the Prince Bismarck Archipelago. The Samoan Colony has
fallen into the hands of New Zealand. Japan has taken possession
of Kiao-Chao, with the town and fortress of Tsingtau after a siege
of a few weeks. The Marshall Islands have also been occupied
by the Japanese. What has become of the Caroline Islands and a
few other of the island possessions of Germany has not transpired.
Among the results of the war so far attained may be enumer-
ated not merely the adjournment of the struggles between political
parties which were assuming an extremely bitter, not to say, ven-
omous character, but also the fact that a really heartfelt union has
grown up between the upper and lower classes which were normally
separated by divisions somewhat resembling the castes of India.
The devotion to a common cause, and the sacrifices all have been
making for its sake, have led to a mutual esteem and even affection
never felt before. Another indication of a greater degree of
national unity is the provision made by the Government at the
beginning of the war for the distress which it was expected would
be caused to the poorest of the working classes those whom it was
thought would be thrown out of employment. The Government
in asking of Parliament the necessary funds for the carrying on of
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 711
the war, made provision for special grants to those likely to suffer
in this way. As a matter of fact, in the course of events, it has not
been found necessary to make use of this provision, for unemploy-
ment instead of increasing has steadily diminished since the war
began. No emergency measures have been required.
In other respects the tendency characteristic of our times to
enlarge the bounds of state control has been acccentuated and
developed in ways too numerous to mention. It will be interesting
to see whether, when the war is over, it will lead to reaction or devel-
opment. An unexpected result of the war has been not indeed a
complete resumption of the diplomatic relations between Great
Britain and the Pope, which have been suspended for centuries,
but the sending of an open and fully authorized Envoy to the Holy
See, with the Pope's full approbation and consent. According to
the instructions of the British Foreign Office, the Envoy's mission
was to congratulate His Holiness on his election, and at the same
time to lay before him the motives which compelled his Majesty's
Government, after exhausting every effort in their power to preserve
the peace of Europe, to intervene in the present war, and to inform
His Holiness of their attitude towards the various questions that
arise therefrom. The Envoy was received by the Holy Father
with great cordiality. Whether the mission is of a permanent
character, or only for the duration of the war, is uncertain.
With Our Readers.
THE ever-increasing demand for Catholic reading is an encouraging
sign. The pamphlet racks which have been installed in so many
of our churches have brought the tract and pamphlet and book within
easy reach of our people. They have become acquainted with the
variety, the extent, and the worth of such reading matter, and the
repeated orders for renewal of stock is the best evidence of the good
work which these pamphlet racks accomplish.
MANY of our Catholic societies are taking up the work of the
distribution of pamphlets, particularly in localities where the
Church is attacked and misrepresented. A most effective answer to
the calumnies of the Church's enemies is a plain statement of her
doctrine, dogmatic and moral; of the standards of Christian living
which she demands of her children; of the virtue of her sacraments,
particularly of Penance and Holy Communion ; of the lofty ideals and
unselfishness of the priestly and the conventual life to which many of
her sons and daughters are called.
To make known her unique title as the mother of civilization;
her unequalled record of service to humanity; her consistent and
complete philosophy which saves science from bankruptcy and man-
kind from despair, will win to her many souls. Before, they knew
her only in caricature ; now they know her as she really is.
THE effective means of carrying on such a propaganda is the short
pamphlet. That form of publication is particularly suited to our
day, for it is undeniable that people, as a rule, will not read lengthy
books.
So extensive is j:he work to be done that the wide circulation
of pamphlets is a necessity. Catholics, themselves, need to keep
alive to the teachings of their Faith ; to the problems that the Church
must actively meet ; to the exhortations which the Holy Father sends
out to the faithful. Catholics should be at least fairly well-informed
on the general points of Church history, so as to be able to give a
satisfactory answer to common objections. These pamphlets ought
to be circulated in every part of our country, for in every part is there
misunderstanding of the teachings of the Church ; in every part there
are souls to be enlightened and converted.
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 713
'PHEREFORE, to meet the demand the supply of pamphlets must be
1 large and varied. Moreover, the cost of these pamphlets must be
kept as low as possible. The pastors, the societies that purchase
them, have not large funds at their command; they are doing a mis-
sionary work, and every aid should be given them in the work that
can possibly be given. Indeed, some pastors, very zealous for souls,
some organizations that are alive to the need, and some individuals
who must meet a particular demand, are unable to pay for pamphlets
and reading matter which they see would do much good. It should
be possible for the good of souls, and the welfare of Holy Church,
to meet these demands.
The extent of the body of Catholic truth all the questions to
which it gives rise, all the objections with which it meets means that
the number of pamphlets with regard to subject matter is practically
unlimited. The Catholic Faith covers every question that can come
before the mind of man; its doctrine and its philosophy are con-
stantly unfolding to meet new problems and new conditions; its
history knows no end, it is always a living, active and aggressive force.
Therefore, until the end of time it will need its defence and its ex-
position. Truth is one; error is multiple; and while error is endless
in its objections and its perversions, truth must never rest in showing
itself one and consistent and all-satisfying.
* * * #
EVEN though our pamphlets of defence and exposition number
to-day into the thousands, we have not begun to meet fully, much
less exhaust, the demand. Nor can we ever exhaust it, not only
because of what we have said above, but also because each particular
generation, and each nation, has its particular needs; its racial differ-
ences, its own genius which no other generation or nation adequately
meets. Zeal of the house of the Lord should devour us. His dwell-
ing place is truth which by its beauty would win the souls of all men
and all generations. That zeal should sustain and inspire us so that
we will be prepared to meet any and every demand made upon us.
* * * *
FOR the building up of a thoroughly capable and comprehensive
pamphlet defence, as it may be called, The Paulist Press was
organized many years ago, and carries on its missionary work to this
day. The demands made upon it for every kind of Catholic reading
matter are becoming greater and greater. The clergy and the laity
from districts that are poor, and yet wherein the Catholics need
instruction, or where the Church is subjected to misrepresentation
and calumny, appeal to us frequently to come to their aid. Hospitals,
army and navy chaplains, institutions of every kind send us re-
quests for Catholic books and pamphlets, devotional, historical,
biographical.
714 WITH OUR READERS [Feb.,
WE desire to be in a position whereby we may answer all these
demands. And, therefore, we have organized The Paulist Press
Association. The purpose of this organization is to continue in a
most extensive and efficient way the work of The Paulist Press to
publish at a very low price Catholic literature that is above all else a
capable and popular defence of the Catholic Faith and all questions
touching upon it; to distribute such literature, freely, in cases of
necessity where it will do good ; to increase this treasury of Catholic
defence by the constant publication of new pamphlets; to cultivate
in as far as it is possible an American Catholic literature so as to
bring out in this way the missionary spirit, through the press, of
our own priests and sisters and laity.
THE SPIRIT OF MISSIONS corrects the article, Protestantism in
Cuba, published in THE CATHOLIC WORLD of November, 1914, on
three points. It avers :
First: The religious body which it represents is not spending $100,000
annually in Cuba, but only $63,000.
Second: Protestantism is not a failure in Cuba.
Third : No effort is ever made by this organization to proselytize.
To the first of these contentions the writer of Protestantism in
Cuba answers that he did not write that article from official Church
reports with which he was, of course, entirely conversant; they are
open to all of money appropriated for Cuba. He wrote from actual,
first-hand knowledge of money spent in Cuba. He studied those re-
ports to which The Spirit of Missions refers, and found that they
did not represent one-half the money actually expended.
To the second. His article was careful not to say that Prot-
estantism was a failure in Cuba. It merely said that Protestantism
had done its best in Cuba, under most favorable conditions, with no
appreciable results. A good many people would call this failure, but
the article did not do so.
The third is a question of words. The Spirit of Missions
apparently holds that the attempt to make Protestants out of
careless Catholics is not to be called an attempt to proselytize. The
writer of Protestantism in Cuba thought that this was the exact mean-
in of proselytism.
ONE of the most far-reaching evils of modern life, particularly in
our larger cities, is the " bankruptcy " of the home. Many in-
fluences and tendencies have contributed to this sad condition, the
inhumanly crowded tenement and the family hotel ; the growing pas-
sion for amusements and the increased facilities for gratifying it;
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 715
the increase of creature comforts, and the means that make house-
keeping lighter or practically unnecessary ; the insinuation, to say the
least, of much of the radical talk of the day that a mother in her
home occupies a rather mean and low position; the officiousness of
the reformer and the incipient socialist who, because some homes are
not what they ought to be, plan to rob home altogether of its province,
and supplant it by some state organization or state government that
will do much better the work for which the home is destined.
ONE might as well try to make bricks without straw, or build a
house without a foundation as to try to make a nation of strong
happy men and women without the home.
It is the corner-stone, and the only corner-stone, of human society.
The individual who does not recognize that the influence of his home
is the best and most potent factor in the development of his character
and his spiritual worth, is the rare exception. No institution has ever
succeeded in doing the work of the home. An institution is not a
home, and never can be.
IT should be the foremost concern of Catholics to protect the interests
of the home ; to champion its unique rights ; to preach its responsi-
bilities; and to work above all else for the betterment of the home
or the improvement of conditions that will make a better home pos-
sible. In seeking to better conditions that are the result of ill-
conditioned and ill-directed home-life, it must never be forgotten
that it is better to seek the improvement of those particular homes
than to lift all responsibility from them and seek new agencies
that will accept it.
* * * *
TO those who look deep enough, one of the most unfortunate charac-
teristics of many otherwise admirable reform measures, is this
widespread shifting of responsibility. Much of our legislation tends to
relieve the individual of that high sense of moral responsibility by
which he should be governed, and to replace it by impersonal, legal
enactments. True, democratic government must be the expression and
the result of an accumulated personal consciousness; it can never
impose that consciousness. Justice, temperance, honesty are born of
a just people ; no government can impose them, and if it tries it will
meet only with failure.
The tendency to force the State into assuming the duties of parents
and supplying the deficiencies of home, may seem a short-cut to
the cure of very evident evils ; but it will be seen by experience that
such a course leads only to greater and more far-reaching evils.
716 WITH OUR READERS [Feb.,
IN the work of reform and of social betterment it is always well,
even from a purely humanitarian point of view, to study those insti-
tutions that historically have been the foundation of civilization and
of progress. To preserve them; to raise their efficiency; to make
the individual and the community more and more alive to their
supreme importance, is one of the most effective works to which
measures of social reform can be directed.
T WRITING in The Month for January, 1915, Father Keating dis-
VV cusses those things that lead nations into the way of peace.
Where nationality is so emphasized as to obscure the common, origin and
destiny of all the human race; when patriotism is cultivated without reference
to the just rights of other nations, or even to the laws of God, then such
nations are led away from the paths of peace.
So many of the nations concerned have thrown off the guidance of the
one institution ordained by Providence to curb the excesses of nationality,
and to direct the aspirations of patriotism that sound views on these funda-
mental points are likely to be at a discount. Nowhere are the limits of national
aspirations so clearly and definitely traced as in the teaching of that Church,
which embraces all nations and stands for the maintenance of a bond far
stronger and more permanent than the forces which favor disunion. Con-
sequently the disintegration of Christendom in the sixteenth century, by setting
undue emphasis upon the principle of nationality, added a new disruptive
influence, religious antagonism, to the already existing sources of international
hostility. Then there arose in northwestern Europe those negations of the
Christian ideal, "national" Churches. The civil power invaded the domain of
the spiritual and the Caesarism of pagan times was restored. The higher unity
of all mankind as children of the one great Father was obscured. The State
presumed to guide the consciences and religious practices of its subjects, and
the common law of Christendom no longer availed to check tyranny at home
and aggression abroad. Catholicism in undivided Europe had not, indeed,
prevented war, but it had gradually mitigated its horrors, and, in so far as its
influence went, tended to remove its causes. After the Reformation, these causes
got a fresh accession of vigor. Protestantism, which had no principle of unity
in itself, has done nothing to unite those who profess it. It has destroyed,
not only the common canons of belief, but also the common standard of
morality. With no logical basis or coherent development, non-Catholic Chris-
tianity falls an easy prey to aggressive rationalism, which, as a matter of fact,
has already infected it to an alarming extent.
* * * *
/CHRISTIANITY by subordinating the temporal to the eternal puts
^ in their proper place material well-being and political freedom
the legitimate objects of the secular state. It condemns wars or
demonstrations of forces which are made by the State, not to protect
rights already acquired, but to promote the commercial interests of
any of its subjects. The aim of every government is to secure for all
its citizens those conditions of order and material plenty which will
best enable them to fulfill their destiny here and hereafter, and for
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 717
that reason it should set itself against the inordinate accumulation of
wealth in a few hands.
# * * *
''PHERE can be no compromise between Christianity and this, which
1 Father Keating calls " the Darwinian conception of human life
and purpose." Yet so deeply and terribly has the world outside the
Catholic Church suffered by that conception that it has almost for-
gotten what Christianity really is. The shock of this war upon the
nations is calling them back to a better Christian sense, but with
the end of the war will there come also the end of those theories de-
structive of the Divinity of Jesus Christ ; of the authority of the Bible ;
of so-called naturalistic ethics; of race suicide; of the denial of
personal responsibility, yea, the denial of God Himself as the Creator
and Ruler of the Universe.
Only the humble and devout acceptance of the definite truths of
Christianity can lead men out of the evils to which they have given
themselves. The Christia'n spirit alone can make the right and just
national spirit.
The great basic fact of the common brotherhood of men must control
the adjustment of international interests that will follow the war. The recogni-
tion of a common Fatherland beyond this earth must keep our patriotism sound
and reasonable and sweet, and banish that loathsome swaggering perversion
of the virtue which is largely manifested in contempt and hatred of the foreigner,
and empty boasting.
* * * *
IT 7AR is not a necessity of human nature. War is by no means a
VV Christian tradition. Indeed our very profession of Christians
means that we are pacificists. " The whole aim and object of Chris-
tianity is to get rid of war by destroying the spirit that engenders it."
That the Church has by her power combated, weakened, and
finally destroyed great abuses in the past, should give us hope, that
under her guidance and in obedience to her spirit war also will dis-
appear, because its causes will have disappeared.
IN The Constructive Quarterly for December last, Dr. Edward A.
Pace of the Catholic University writes of " the relations between
philosophy and belief as these relations are held and carried to prac-
tical results by the Catholic Church."
As the problem of the Catholic Church is to-day, in its work with
the world, at bottom a philosophical one, the paper by Dr. Pace is of
more than ordinary importance. For theories of life outside Catholic
philosophy must necessarily press upon that philosophy at many points.
The Catholic Church must preach its gospel to all nations. Its Faith
is not merely emotional unconcerned with reason. It is a " reason-
718 WITH OUR READERS [Feb.,
able service " and must appeal to the intelligence as well as to the feel-
ings. But considering the opposition, the vagaries, the ever-new de-
mands of reason, any system that would successfully challenge and win
it over must have within itself a power of adaptation whereby it can
deal, energetically and prudently at once, with the various and varying
results of human inquiry and human speculation.
It will not surrender its faith at the sound of alarms from without, nor
will it be deaf to the words of a new truth, however strange the voice of the
herald. Rather will it seek to make that truth a part of its own strength
and therefore an added means of influencing the world.
* * * *
r PHE power to achieve reconciliation and absorption will be the test
1 of the vitality of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church is a divine institution. Its commission and
its authority are from Christ Himself. The Church is preserved
from error by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Such guidance is to
continue to the end of time.
It is evident, therefore, that for such a divine institution as the
Church to have some relations with philosophy is out of the question.
For example, the Church cannot submit her teachings " to the judg-
ment of philosophy and abide by the latter's verdict." It is, first,
beyond the competency of philosophy to say whether a doctrine is
revealed or not ; and secondly, philosophy has no means of securing a
universal assent for any proposition bearing on religion.
Some modern philosophies have advised the individual to separate
his belief and his philosophy, and hold them safely away from each
other. They have emptied truth of its objectivity; giving it only a
subjective value, dependent on the mental phase which happened to be
uppermost at a given moment. in the individual.
The Church does not and cannot sanction any and every scheme that is put
forward as an adjustment of philosophy and belief. The proposed conciliations,
however shrewdly devised, may labor under some inherent weakness which
is easily detected even without the test of actual results. But the Church has
the advantage of a long experience in dealing with theories and systems;
and the Catholic position in this matter can be best explained by pointing to
what the Church has done, or by noting at least some of the historical phases
of the question.
* * * *
DR. PACE then speaks at length of the work of the early Christian
writers, who wrested from unjust possessors the gold and silver
of truth, eliminating whatever was spurious and base. As time went
on and the spirit of inquiry grew, a more rigorous method than that
of Plato was demanded. In the Scholastic system the attitude of the
Church towards philosophy is most plainly seen.
The method of the Schoolmen was simply the outward form in which the
vital and directive principles of their system found expression. God, they held,
1915.] BOOKS RECEIVED 719
is the source both of the truths which can be known by the light of reason
and of those which are given through revelation. He has impressed upon the
intellect those first principles which lie back of all reasoning and which are,
or should be, the ultimate test of the processes of thought in the natural order.
When He reveals truth of a higher order, there can be no contradiction between
it and reason, since God cannot be at variance with Himself. The ultimate
ground of unity, then, is not the natural ability of the mind to know, nor its
natural tendency to seek, the truth; it is the divine wisdom in its necessary,
absolute consistency.
* * * *
IN conclusion, Dr. Pace answers the objection of why the Church
maintains towards philosophy an attitude taken long before the
present era of intellectual " freedom." What is called " progress " is
no sure or fixed standard of truth. Departures from the existing order
or the accepted belief are not necessarily really progressive; they may
be grossly erroneous. Every erroneous theory hinders the search
after truth. By rejecting them the Church contributes to the protec-
tion and the furtherance of man's best interests.
From another point of view it can be shown why the Church is so vigilant
in regard to error and so resolute in condemning it when silence would be the
easier method. Mankind can wait patiently while science and philosophy get
rid of the errors by which they are hampered in their respective lines of
progress. But the doctrines of faith are doctrines of the salvation for which
the individual must strive here and now. They are given not merely as truths
to be known but also as directions for the moral life. Obedience to the divine
law presupposes the recognition of the law contained in revelation. Conse-
quently, erroneous views regarding matters of faith have practical results
which sooner or later must rob Christian life of its foundation. And though
the Church cannot compel any one to accept the truth or to live according
to its moral teachings, these must none the less be upheld in their purity and
integrity. Failure to condemn error would be equivalent to failure in duty
on the part of the Church.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York :
The Fellowship of the Mystery. By J. N. Figgis. $1.60 net. The Christian
Eucharist and the Pagan Cult. By William M. Groton, S.T.D. $1.20 net.
The Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures. Ephesians and Colossians,
by Rev. J. Rickaby, SJ. ; Philemon and Philippians, by Rev. Alban Goodier,
SJ. Modern Industry in Relation to the Family, Health, Education, Morality.
By F. Kelley. $1.00 net. An Introduction to English Mediaeval Literature.
By C. S. Baldwin, A.M., Ph.D. $1.25. George the Third and Charles Fox.
By Sir G. O. Trevelyan, Bart, O.M. 2 vols. $4.25 net.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., New York :
A Century's Change in Religion. By G. Harris. $1.25 net. Poems. By C.
Scollard. $1.25 net. Belgium the Land of Art. By William E. Griffis. $1.25
net. Samuel F. B. Morse; His Letters and Journals. By E. L. Morse.
2 vols. $7.50 net.
THE CATHOLIC EDITING Co., New York:
The Catholic Church in the United States of America.
720 BOOKS RECEIVED [Feb., 1915.]
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
The " Summa, Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas. Part II. (ist Part). First
number (QQ. I. XLVIIL). Translated by the Fathers of the English
Dominican Province.
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
Constantine the Great and Christianity. By C. B. Coleman, Ph.D. $2.00.
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York:
Examen conscientia seu Methodus excipiendi confessiones variis in linguis,
scilicet germanice, gallice, brittanice, italice, hispanice et polonice. Auctore
P. F. M. Krebs, Ord. Min. Cap. 20 cents.
JOHN LANE Co., New York:
The Wisdom of Father Brown. By Gilbert K. Chesterton. $1.30 net.
E. P. DUTTON & Co., New York:
The Fear of Living. By H. Bordeaux. $1.35 net. The Awakening. By H.
Bordeaux. $1.35 net. Police Practice and Procedure. By C. F. Cahalne.
$1.50 net.
LAWRENCE J. GOMME, New York:
Dilemmas. By Ernest Dowson. Ernest Dowson. By Victor Plarr.
DUFFIELD & Co., New York :
Westminster Abbey. By Helen M. Pratt. 2 vols. $4.50 a set.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York:
Eighteen Thousand Words Often Mispronounced. By Wm. H. P. Phyfe. $1.50
net.
HARPER & BROTHERS, New York:
The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912. By L. de Hegermann-Linden-
crone. $2.00 net.
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York :
The Man Behind the Bars. By W. L. Taylor. $1.50 net. Half Hours. By
J. M. Barrie. $1.25 net.
SCOTT, FORESMAN & Co., New York:
A Great Soul in Conflict. By Simon A. Blackmore, SJ.
THE AMERICA PRESS, New York:
The Catholic Press. The Menace and the Mails. Pamphlets. 5 cents each.
THE ASSOCIATION OF LIFE INSURANCE PRESIDENTS, New York:
Can Insurance Experience be Applied to Lengthen Life. By A. Hunter.
(Pamphlet).
THE H. H. WILSON Co., White Plains, N. Y. :
The Vision of Anton. By Walter A. Dyer. Pamphlet.
GINN & Co., Boston:
Outlines of European History. Vol. I., by J. H. Breasted and J. H. Robinson.
Vol. II., by J. H. Robinson and C. A. Beard. $1.50 each.
BERNARD H. BURKE, Dorchester, Mass. :
First Book for Italians. By Bernard H. Burke.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Cambridge, Mass. :
The Life of Saint Severinus. Translated by George W. Robinson.
DAVOL PUBLISHING Co., Taunton, Mass. :
A Handbook of American Pageantry. By Ralph Davol.
H. L. KILNER & Co., Philadelphia, Pa.:
The Office of Holy Week, and of the Paschal Triduum. 35 cents net.
J. B. LiPPiNcoTT Co., Philadelphia, Pa.:
Self -Training for Mothers. By Maria B. Chance. $1.25 net.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, Princeton, N. J. :
Biblical Libraries. By E. C. Richardson. $1.25 net.
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, Washington, D. C. :
Annual Report of the Commissioner of Corporations to the Secretary of Com-
merce, for the Year Ended June 30, 1914. The Training of Teachers in
England, Scotland, and Germany. By C. H. Judd. Education for the Home.
By B. R. Andrews. County-Unit Organisation for the Administration of
Rural Schools. By A. C. Monahan. Care of the Health of Boys in Girard
College, Philadelphia, Pa.
THE OTTERBEIN PRESS, Dayton, Ohio. :
Millionaire Tom. By David Dwight Bigger.
THE BOBBS-MERRILL Co., Indianapolis :
Men Around the Kaiser. By F. W. Wile. $1.25 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
The Knight of the Fleur-de-Luce. By- S. Maude. 75 cents net. The Mystery
of Faith. By K. D. Best. 75 cents net. What Faith Really Means. By
Rev. H. G. Graham, M.A. 30 cents net. Grace, Actual and Habitual. By
Rev. J. Pohle, D.D. $2.00 net. The Fruit of the Tree. By M. A. Fanum.
$1.00. Memoirs of Zi Pre. By E. M. Dunne, D.D. 50 cents net.
Christ and the Powers of Darkness. By J. G. Raupert, K.S.G. $1.00 net.
An Eight Days' Retreat for Religious. By H. A. Gabriel, SJ. $1.50 net.
The Holy Week Book. 30 cents net.
ST. MARY'S ACADEMY, Winnipeg, Man., Canada:
The Last of the Vestals. By S. M. A. $1.80.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. C.'
MARCH, 1915.
No. 600.
A RETURNING CAVEMAN.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
N early caveman, should such a prehistoric being again
appear in the flesh, and count this uneasy planet
among his scenes revisited, would be apt to find,
in some of our present ways of thinking and acting,
not a little to remind him of his former visit; though
much would seem to him so new, improved, and truly glorious,
he might rub his eyes for wonderment and find it hard to believe
his ears.
Consider, for instance, the economic theory of history a way
of explaining things that sees no more behind life, nor before
it, for that matter, than the instinct of self-preservation and the
quest of food, raiment, and shelter. Only a few years ago, com-
paratively speaking, this theory was broached in the quiet of the
class-room, and now behold it appealing from pen to sword on the
battlefields of Europe. Would it not have a familiar ring to our
fancied visitor, this economic interpretation of life, and seem like
a page torn from his own early experience, written much larger, if
you will, and enacted on a far more stupendous scale, but in principle
the same?
And how would a cave-dweller's intelligence stand up under
the shock of its crass materialism ? Even he, dim as were his lights
and dark as were his days, had his unclouded moments of perception
Copyright. 1915. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. C. 46
722 A RETURNING CAVEMAN [Mar.,
when the world appeared as more than brilliant dust in motion,
progress as something other than the bludgeoning of one's fellow-
men, and life as a thing potentially higher than a general scramble
for the means of livelihood. A majesty more than human spoke
to him through the surrounding veil, rilling his mind with thoughts
unwonted and his heart with secret stirrings, until he knew himself
born to a better destiny than lay in this world's compass. His first
surprise would be to find how much had matter, and how little had
spirit, counted in the years that had flown between. And this sur-
prise would last until, by some great good stroke of fortune, he
discovered that wisdom is now supposed to consist, not in nursing
sacred lights into a flame, but in snuffing out their gentle radiance,
lest they lead us kindly on, in an age that has said to boldness, Be
thou my brother, and to might, Be thou my brother's keeper.
And if, perchance, our prehistoric visitor happened into an
assembly where the meaning of progress was under discussion by
some of the free-lance philosophers of the day, would he be led
to think that the latest view of it differed so very much from
the one he himself used to entertain in the childhood days of hu-
manity before the race had gone to school? How familiar it would
seem to hear the statements made, that progress is the sloughing-
off of formal restraint; the cult of the bold; the call of the wild;
the doffing of the old and the donning of the new ; a return to the
primitive; a spirit of adventure brooking no interference from
morality or convention; in a word the doing of what no man
dared do before, because custom shook her menacing finger at him
and bade the docile, fearsome dog lie down! Hearing all this
the very latest, freshest outpouring of the mind human would
not our returning caveman think, and rightly, that in some respects,
at least, however greatly it may have changed in others, the world
in its old age is pretty much as he first knew it in its prime?
Imagine him catching the drift of the following excerpts from
recent literature, as they are being read to the spellbound public of
the assembly, into which, for the sake of literary convenience, we
are supposing him to have wandered. His strange appearance has
drawn many an eye in his direction, as one of the attendants bows
him into a seat and with a kindly -smile takes down his name.
I look out upon a futurist world of strife and tempest and
struggling crowds a world of revolt and rebellion, smitten
by the acute angles and crimson bars of rage, a world risen
in violent reaction against weakness and sentimentality, invalid-
1915-] A RETURNING CAVEMAN 723
ism, comfort, softness, luxury, and effeminate excess against
the toy woman, the worship of precedent, of research, of rules,
of uninspired morality. Such a world shudders at the monotony
of regulated habit and established reputation. That a thing has
been done once is for it a sufficient reason why it should never
be done again. And moving about in that world of hard and
dangerous life that is full of rapid contrasts, and calls out the
highest human capacities from hour to hour, I appear to see
magnificent and adventurous men, tempestuous and proud, fight-
ing their way side by side with magnificent and adventurous
women, virile, gigantic, devoid of shame, loathing effeminacy,
giving the breast to superb and violent infants, turbulent as
Titans of the earthquake and volcano.
Our motto: Be bold, be bold, there is not the smallest fear
that anyone will be too bold. 1
Offensive license has seemed to be the only meaning of to-day's
rule of nature. But emphatically, now as five hundred years
ago, there is another side, and all people who are not blinded
by being either hopelessly bad or too drowsily good can see it.
Why forget history? Violence even at its worst, I venture to
say, has always been so much cost of a well-nigh priceless treas-
ure. Often it is true, breach of the law may have been the
law's undoing, but also it has been the only way to the law's
fulfillment in independent life and character. Moreover, Chris-
tendom has not come to her present license precipitately, what-
ever the casual observer may be inclined to suppose. Back of
to-day's Protestantism, radical as it certainly is, there is the
deliberation of centuries. Only gradually as precise dogma has
been tempered by art, St. Augustine, for example, by Fra
Angelico ; and as art, so bound at first to creed and institution,
has been in its turn freed by naturalism and science, and these,
finally, by the still greater breadth and the still greater depth
of recent anti-rationalistic philosophy, and its wandering, but
also penetrating, informality of life and thought only gradually,
I say, has Christendom come to her present state. Her license,
slowly and deliberately developing, is thus, as may be reasonably
supposed, quite as truly the lawlessness of her best life, of her
great spirit at last in the fullness of time set free from formal
restraint, as that of a mere material violence. The material
violence may indeed be, as was said, the cost, but not less also
the opportunity. Throughout history has not cost, or price,
been at once the root of all evil and the medium of all good?
*The Impulse to Futurism. By Henry W. Nevinson. The Atlantic Monthly,
November,
724 A RETURNING CAVEMAN [Mar.,
Could the spirit ever be truly free, if the flesh were bound?
Not more certainly did Jupiter belong to the thunder and the
lightning that the freed spirit of Christendom belongs to the
present license and destruction. 2
The caveman rises to address the assembly. The usual courtesy
of being asked to express his views has been extended to the
stranger. We may suppose our visitor not unacquainted with the
genius of the English tongue, and that this is not his first experience
in public speaking. Having been for some time in America, where
the sons of Boanerges all seem to have settled early and in great
numbers, he has long since had his " first experience/' or been more
nimble than most of us in escaping. A thrill of expectancy
his name has been announced is on the sea of upturned faces
as he rises. Out of the past is to be heard a voice, and the hearers
are all futurists. Could a more dramatic situation be imagined?
" Gentlemen," he begins, " I have felt very much at home to-
night, more so than has fallen to my lot since I came back to the
haunts of men. At the splendors of your material civilization, at
the glorious world of comfort in which you live, at the buzz and
whir of all your avenues of industry and arteries of trade, I stand
aghast. Under the sea, above it, and upon it you ride in ships.
The forces of nature that to me were enemies are your domestic
servants. A single throb of the cable puts you in touch with what
is happening at the other end of the earth, and even the tremulous
air has latterly become the winged messenger of your thoughts. To
all this I have come back a more astonished stranger than Rip Van
Winkle to his native village, after a far less eventful sleep. I
am appalled by it, abashed, overwhelmed.
" Nothing of common interest seemed to exist between the ways
of the prehistoric world and the ways of the modern until, wandering
into this hall to-night, weary-worn with my search for points
of contact, I heard ideas expressed which seemed to me echoes of
that olden time when the woolly rhinoceros and myself divided the
world between us, and the stars in their courses looked down upon
a world less steady than theirs. The policy you advocate is one
I put into effect myself, too many years ago to be counted, and for
this reason I feel all the more encouraged to discuss its feasibility
in the presence of this learned gathering. Nothing could be more
instructive than an exchange of experiences.
3 The Poii'er Behind the Throne. By Alfred H. Lloyd. Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Scientific Methods, December 3, 1914, pp. 674, 675.
1915-] A RETURNING CAVEMAN 725
" As I understand the proposition advise me, please, if I
have not caught your meaning fairly you would make living and
thinking thoroughly informal, pull them both completely out from
under the domination of reason and all vested authority. Of the
three great social laws impulse, suggestion, and imitation you
would let but the first remain, lest future men should continue
to be 'made to order' and human nature suffer from being forced
to conform to type. Your contention is that art, industry, civiliza-
tion; law, order, science; institutional morality and competition;
the open war of the battlefield and the secret war of diplomacy,
have so developed man's character and overcome his instability, that
a deeply spiritual self-control, harmony, power, or whatever else
you may choose to call it, has now become the splendid inner
inheritance of mankind.
" Nature, like love, can now afford to laugh at locksmiths,
you think, and bid the whole pack of external law makers begone
and seek a useful occupation. Loose nature from its leading-strings,
let it w,ander over green fields and pastures new, to seek its own
expression to the fullest, and add untold riches of experience and
achievement to its gathered store. Having fought its way to freedom
and control, by means of the several agencies mentioned, nature
your idea is should now be allowed to disport itself at will, without
asking leave of anything or anybody. Naturalism, you claim, is
a very different thing at the end of a civilization, from what it was
at the beginning. Then it would have been dangerous to live the
life of nature, because man's spirit still needed the chastening
influence of restraint; but now, when character is no longer to be
acquired, coming to us ready-made by way of heredity, and freedom
is an asset, not a liability an unrestrained naturalism will pour a
new elixir into life and send the staid old world giddily forwards
with a quickened pulse.
" Gentlemen, I wish to disagree with you. I am certainly
qualified to speak of the joys of informal living and thinking, hav-
ing tasted them myself to an extent which none of you ever shall,
and found them stale and palling. No doubt, life has become for
you so overrun with artifice and sham, the toy woman and the
wooden man, that a little less assumed emotion, and a little more
of the emotion that is real, would keep you from snapping at concert
pitch, like an over-taut string, or perishing from over-coddling.
But I am sore afraid, gentlemen, that in making relaxation a
general principle, instead of an intermittent policy, you do but fly
726 A RETURNING CAVEMAN [Mar.,
from evils that you know to others which you wot not of. Char-
acter or no character to steady him, a man cannot for long seek
liberty for its own sake freedom being a means, not an end that is
worship-worthy in itself. Seeking new thrills, and getting them,
soon ceases even to be thrilling. Nothing wears off so quickly as
a sharp edge, and all our appetites, save the higher ones of the
spirit, know but short moments to their sating. Your new-sought
freedom will not bring you anywhere but back again to your point
of starting. It is idle to think that by tapping at the rock of the
unknown, you will one day see it pour forth a rush of refreshing
waters for a wandering race that prefers a mental wilderness of
doubt to the promised land of faith and surety.
" In the ancient world before history began, gentlemen, I had
the fullest freedom imaginable to explore experience, and I swung
aimlessly round the whole circuit of its thrills. In the pleasure-
pain process I was, so to speak, brought up. And yet, comparing
the restraints of your existence with the informalities of mine,
I would not for an instant wish the old conditions reestablished.
The principles of restraint under which the race now lives repre-
sent, it seems to me, so much dearly won wisdom and beneficial
experience on tap. For, history is experience, gentlemen the
experience of others recorded and thrown into prepositional form,
positive or negative; just as faith is the knowledge of others
appropriated and made our own, that we may be strong with the
strength of the more knowing and illumined with their lights. So
far from diminishing true liberty, the positive dogmas of religion
and the restraining influences which flow forth from them, serve
rather to define a course of thought and action, marking off at the
same time many wrong directions which we might otherwise, and
to no profit in the end, be inclined to take. You seem to think that
the only way to come by wisdom is to try all the roads of folly first.
It is this general policy of. adventure, based upon a confidence in
untried things, to which you would commit yourselves and the
world with you, in the hope that good may come of it and the
face of the earth wear a fresher look.
" Gentlemen, in endeavoring to rid life of all its directing
and restraining principles, take heed lest you 'empty the baby out
with the bath/ as they say in German. Of course, I am well aware
that an individual does not necessarily stop being good the moment
institutional authority loses its hold upon him. Acquired momen-
tum is not lost so readily as that at least, not in all cases. Force
A RETURNING CAVEMAN 72;
of habit, force of custom keep men in appointed grooves, especially
in a civilization like the present, where public opinion is Christian-
ized, and the dead faith of the nations still haunts the memory of
the wayward and dogs their steps. Through the medium of public
opinion, visible authority still lays its restraining hand upon the
unbeliever in effect, if not in principle. So that, for all their
boasted freedom and independence, these disciples of indifference
still feed upon the letter of a law, of which they have lost the spirit.
Parasites! Is this the right analogy? I dislike calling anybody
out of name.
" But how long is it going to take public opinion to lose its
Christian character and the restraining influence which it now has,
in consequence? Only so long as it will take the private policy
advocated here to-night, to become general no longer. You do
not suppose, do you, that the momentum acquired from previous
disciplining is going to last forever, like perpetual motion, and be
transmitted to posterity as an indeclinable heirloom ? When public
opinion now the only medium in which visible authority still sur-
vives for many has lost its power to lash and sting the venturesome,
think you that private opinion will still continue to discharge the
functions of public; and that, if the latter beat the wayward with
whips, the former will scourge them with scorpions ? How can you
even imagine such a contingency when you regard conscience as
merely another name for custom a weathercock for every wind
to blow upon, instead of a magnetic needle trembling ever to the
pole?
" Gentlemen, you confidently expect that man will maintain his
present levels, and from these move steadily star wards, as the
years roll on. I might pause for a moment here to show that science
lends no countenance to your dreamy flights of fancy, but I prefer
to remark, instead, that, even should your dream of man's stability
prove real, and pass over into the thing that men call history, it
will have been through no assistance from philosophical plungers
like you, living and thinking at the top of society, but from the
saner, less adventurous underbody of mankind at the middle and
the bottom. The 'foolish' will again save us from the 'wise,' and
it will not have been the first time in history. And while I am
on this point, let me tell you what I think is a fallacy that cannot
be too soon corrected and discounted. You labor under the false
impression that discipline and development are two opposite ten-
dencies, the one headed towards stagnation, the other towards
728 A RETURNING CAVEMAN [Mar.,
development between which we have to choose as between stand-
ing still and moving. Gentlemen, would you believe me if I ventured
to say in this august presence that restraint and development, so far
from being two distinct and separate tendencies, as you imagine,
are really constituent parts and contributory factors in one and
the same forward movement related to it as soul to body, as means
to end, as rudder unto ship.
"In all the walks of life man chooses, you will find restraint
an accompanying factor of his progress, not an outside, alien
influence running counter. Self -development, when you examine
the matter closely, is the foregoing of some things to get others
it is no vain reaching-out for the moon. The getting and the
foregoing are both there simultaneously it all depends on what
you want to get, how much you shall have to lose for its obtaining.
And that man is most capable of attaining the highest development,
in principle, if not in practice, according to my way of thinking,
at any rate who does not lose sight of the ultimate good in his
seeking of the proximate. Let us suppose, for example, that a
divine heritage is held out to him in addition to the human, and
that he sees the necessity of exercising a certain amount of restraint
and selection, if he is to win the two developments offered, and not
content himself with one. Would you not say that his restraint,
on such a supposition, was vital and not formal inside his will
as an inspiration, and not wholly outside it as an external rule or
law? And were he to bind himself with inward joy and freedom
to the law's fulfilling, rejecting lower things for higher, lesser life
for more would you think him in stagnation's pit, because he
treaded not the paths that lead nowhere, but chose those, rather,
that offered him the best possibilities in sight ?
" You would have to condemn all life on this principle of yours,
gentlemen, if you put it into general practice. Has not the physician
to renounce the chance of becoming a great soldier, and the man
of wars, in turn, must he not give up thinking that he will grow
into a second Blackstone? The same companionship of culture
and restraint presents itself wherever you may look from a scien-
tist in his laboratory to a philosopher in his den. A jack of all
trades is master of none. Sacrifice is the soul of development,
its appointed means, its vitally informing principle, its condition of
obtainment. He who would make progress must do so with restraint
constantly for his companion, and continuous sacrifice for his
attendant spirit. Too much restraint may indeed dwarf nature
1915-] A RETURNING CAVEMAN 729
and stifle its growth, but what assurance have you that no restraint
at all save that which comes entirely from within will expand
it? There is a golden mean, above which and below which should
we venture, we shall return with hands either soiled or empty,
perhaps both.
" So that, in the last analysis, whether in religion or in life,
the end and aim of restraint, when reasonable and it is always
reasonable to seek an absolute in preference to a relative good
is not to restrain, but to develop the exact reverse, gentlemen,
of your conception of its nature and effects. No man practices
repression for repression's sake, and you are on a false trail if
you think Christianity stands sponsor for any such false motive.
Unrestricted opportunity a good thing before we make our choice
of some particular line of work, view of life, or way of living
would make a bedlam of the world, did not the spirit of free,
restraining choice keep ever urging us, like the proverbial shoemaker,
to stick unremittingly to our last. The indefinite is charming until
we try to grasp it, or eke out a subsistence by its means ; and so is
the rainbow until W 7 e make a mad journey to the point where the
foot of its arch of splendor is supposed to touch the earth.
" There has been a thought in the back of my mind all evening,
gentlemen, wondering, I suppose, if its turn for utterance would
ever come, and I may as well out with it here, to stop its importun-
ings. Early in the course of my present visit we are still ex-
changing earthly experiences, gentlemen I learned that many years
before your time and centuries, if not ages, after mine, there
appeared among men a Gentle One Who taught a larger view of
life than any I have heard from the lips of moderns. He said, if
I remember rightly, that the meaning of life is to be sought, not in
any relation to the present environment, but in a fuller life to
come. And He laid down the principle, did this Gentle One that
the only way to see things in their proper light, true perspective,
and full bearing, is to keep the thought of the kingdom of God and
His justice uppermost and central. Am I not right in quoting the
great Teacher to the effect that He came, not to destroy, but to
fulfill?
" Imagine, my surprise, therefore, when I heard one of the
speakers of the evening declare that as sure as Jupiter belonged to
the thunder and the lightning, just so sure did the present license and
destruction belong to the freed spirit of Christendom. I noticed at
the time that he said Christendom, not Christianity. He wisely
730 A RETURNING CAVEMAN [Mar.,
chose the more hospitable term one that leaves ample room for
herding the sheep and the goats within the same enclosure, as if
each were equally representative and imbued with the same spirit
and nature. The thing that struck me forcibly, as I heard the
speaker unbosoming himself of this strange utterance, was that the
amount of Christianity now surviving in certain parts of Christen-
dom must be infinites imally small, and of a brand not easily
recognized for genuine. Stress was laid by this same speaker,
on the fact that the breaking of a law leads in the end to its fulfill-
ment quite as often as it does to its overthrow or complete rejection.
By which he meant, I take it, that experience itself contains all the
restraints needed for a law's observance, without our bothering
about reason, conscience, or external authority of any kind.
" A burnt child's dread of fire, I know, is worth more than a
thousand admonitions. More disciplining the blistered finger of a
babe than the monitory finger of nurse or parent. What is external
authority, or rational rules, as compared to a sore and bandaged
digit, with its accompanying tribute of tears to nature's rough
mishandling? How much better to entrust a child to the tender
bosom of mother ocean, than to bid the young adventurer hang his
clothes on a hickory limb and not go near the water? Who could
declaim on the merits of temperance, like an old toper, whose
alimentary canal had known its blissful moments of irrigation,
before the long drought came, and a guard had been set upon his
lips? truly a case of 'inspired' morality, not only in the futurist
sense, but also in another. And who might discourse of sin, like
the sinner, with ways long since full mended ? Or who of murder,
like the man who had actually brought about another soul's
dispatching? All experts these who know whereof they speak;
and none better expert testimony than theirs this side of kingdom
come; also none worse, or more superfluous. 'This is certainly
going to be a lesson to me, 5 said a poor unfortunate, as he stepped
upon the gallows-trap and under the dangling noose for execution.
Poor wight! He could have anticipated by knowledge what he
so bitterly learned from experience."
At this point the old caveman, thoroughly aroused, went
straight to the 'heart of his theme, not faltering once. " This
experience-business is being carried too far," he declared. u The
man' who does not fall knows more about the nature of temptation,
feels more keenly its allurement and sees more vividly its advantages,
than the man who does. The yielding victim gives way before
1915.] A RETURNING CAVEMAN 731
he recognizes the whole of the attractiveness, and the result is
that his actual experimenting with evil leaves him with less real
knowledge of it than is gathered by the man who experienced the
full force of the temptation without succumbing. The victim thus
comes up from experience with really less advantageous knowledge
than the man who refused to go down. Other sides of the tempta-
tion, not considered by its victim at the time of the first experiment,
will intrude themselves on a later vision, and he will make a second
investigation, just to see if things really are as imagination paints
them; and he will make it with the same results. From which
I would infer, gentlemen, that your contemplated self-riddance of
all 'formal restraint' by which you mean thinking as distinct from
experiencing will really result in less knowledge than in more.
And that is the curious cross-purpose, to my mind, involved in
your prospective return to nature. You seek the more, but it is
the less that comes.
" Experience is a costly school, gentlemen, and some will learn
in no other, but I do not see why these some should pose as the
type, and sit for the composite photograph, of all their kind. I
will go further and say that experience is too costly a school in
which to seek an education. That is why nature has provided what
might aptly be called the less expensive, more economical method
of looking before we leap of thinking before we speak or act.
'Natural selection' is at work, you say, and there is no need to care
what reason thinks, so long as law, sleepless, untiring law, is in
charge of human destiny. Your confidence is my doubt, gentlemen,
and what appears to you the strength of the natural selection theory
seems to me its weakness. Why, gentlemen, if that theory were
at work in the primeval world out of which I have come to revisit
this whirring planet; if the bee, for instance, in his first efforts
at honey-gathering, had to try a thousand wrong ways of tapping
a flower's petal before discovering the way that was right, he
would have perished before he got his education, and so would
all the gilded members of his tribe. There would have been no
survival of the fittest, because there would have been no fitness to
survive. Would you condemn all men, similarly, and at this late
date, always to be experimenters, never knowers, on the authority
of a theory that breaks down even in its own field of biology, and,
according to latest reports, has nothing to do with the phenomena of
heredity? 3 No, gentlemen. Knowledge not necessarily experi-
*See extract from London Nature in Current Opinion, January, 1915, p. 32.
732 A RETURNING CAVEMAN [Mar.,
mental knowledge is the prime requisite of life, freedom, and
progress. To appreciate values, it is necessary to understand them,
it is not necessary, in addition, to experience their opposites. That
would but make assurance doubly sure, which is a poor economic
policy for race or individual to adopt. One does not have to ex-
plore a vice to appreciate the opposite virtue; go to war before
realizing the blessedness of peace; or rush madly out to a deed of
violence, in order to become acquainted, by contrast, with the purr
of domestic felicity. Knowledge keeps down the price of needful
information; experience raises it, to no purpose, in things already
known and sufficiently discounted beforehand.
" No wonder you talk about the 'cost' of progress, though I
think you should be more exact and say: the cost of doing away
with ' formal restraints ;' in other words, the cost of useless expe-
rience to the contrary. License is no necessary step in the develop-
ment of liberty, nor price to be paid for its securing, however much
you may cry from the housetops that it is. You are writing history
in accord with your own theory, gentlemen, when you say so, and
this is not a method which the muse herself approves. There are
two tendencies in history the one downward, the other up and
the two are as irreducible as day and night. Man deviates, he does
not always go straight forwards, and you cleverly cover up the
deviations under the metaphor of 'costs.' It is quite true that man
pays for wrong directions taken nature punishes us equally for
our mistakes as for our crimes but the mistakes and crimes are
not constituent parts of the movement we call progress; rather
are they, and at most, but indirect, oblique factors, and not always
even that. Good may come of evil, and often does not, as you
imagine, because evil is a direct means unto good, but because
it is so violent and distinct a departure from it in another direction,
that the evil-doers and the world with them are finally shocked
back into the straighter paths, from ways that had been better left
untried. Unless we proceed upon the optimistic assumption that
whatever is happens for the best an assumption, by the way,
which underlies all that has been contended here to-night, and to
my mind begs the whole question in debate we must employ the
word 'evolution' for the course of wrong and error, reserving the
word 'progress' for the paths of truth and right.
" When, therefore, one of the speakers claimed, in the course
of his remarks, that the present license of Christendom was a part
of the 'lawlessness of her best life,' the freeing of her great spirit
1915-] A RETURNING CAVEMAN 733
from the formalities of restraint, I think he confounded evolution
with progress the evolution of the disintegrating principles of the
Reformation with the original genius of the Christian religion itself.
I cannot, for the life of me, understand, gentlemen, why any man
should divorce the restraints of the Christian religion from the
positive truths and inspirations in which these restraints are rooted
and have their being. They are a part of that liberty to go to the
Infinite, of that freedom to seek the Absolute which is another
thing altogether from the 'license inherent in the search and worship
of the indefinite. You cry out against the light yoke and burden
sweet of the former, simply because you will brook no master,
and want a world all to yourselves in which to live without direction.
You would inherit the past without inheriting the faith and spirit
that created it, you would make the things you depend upon the
guarantees of your independence. And so you declare the days of
disciplining man's spirit ended and bid him kick from under his feet
the ladder of his elevation.
" Let me say, too, gentlemen, how surprised I am at the over-
stress you lay on the dynamic aspect of religion, life, and history
on effortful action as distinct from intellectual thought. One would
imagine, from your impassioned utterances, that the rational aspect,
equally belonging to all three, had no right to be there at all, and
that civilization suffered untold loss in allowing it to develop. Did
you ever reflect on the seriousness and responsibility of this state-
ment, especially since the present war burst out of the blue to stun
thinking humanity back to its senses? Are we complex human
beings made so wholly for acting, and not at all for knowing, as you
suppose, and would you, in the light of present happenings, resolve
all men into independent centres of activity without a rational prin-
ciple of any kind to bring them together and coordinate their aims?
Is Western civilization, think you, to be built up anew in that
misguided fashion? Must we rid ourselves of reason the great
commoner and accept the leadership of his two blind companions
action and emotion instead? Is great Pan dead, and who slew
him, for die a natural death he never did.
We figure to ourselves
The thing we like, and then we build it up,
As chance will have it, on the rock or sand;
For thought is tired of wandering o'er the world,
And home-bound fancy runs her bark ashore.
734 'A RETURNING CAVEMAN [Mar.,
" What kind of salvation is this you would bring us? salvation
by works without either faith or knowledge for their informing
principle; nothing but experiencing, and all too much of that, I fear,
in some directions. Activism you call the new view, piping to it
with your reeds as if time's noblest offspring were its last. Is not
knowing a kind of action? And if from action our cue must ever-
more be taken, why not from this the more redeeming as from
other sorts. Plainly it is a member of the same family, unless
you should confound agile intuitive reason with discursive reasoning
its slower-paced, more meditative cousin, one degree removed.
Why may we not have light and heat and motion all three together
from the mental dynamo, as from the electric one that bears us
onward in the night? Why the hindlights of action in preference
to the headlights of reason? Because, forsooth, all codes are cold
and formal! But so is starlight till the mariner warms it in his
heart and conscience to get direction. Poor Tom's a-cold, and has
so many fellow shiverers, you would light an independent fire for
each, and let it fiercely burn taking out insurance policies before-
hand, however, in the Darwin Heredity and Variation Company,
Limited.
" I sore misdoubt, gentlemen, if the 'beautiful children of the
future' will all be heirs apparent, as you suppose, to the present
heights and levels. You fly to prophecy just when I am led to
expect the prose of science. Would not a little of that restraint
which you call 'formal' help to tighten up your thought ? Character,
it seems to me, is earned, not wholly inherited like a lump of gold
or a family portrait. Then there is such a thing as squandering
one's inheritance, after the fashion of the prodigal son ; and not all
prodigal sons return to the father's house to continue the family
traditions, as I have had occasion to observe. In fact, I think you
do not half -believe this 'natural inheritance theory' yourselves. You
have recently established a new science, called 'eugenics,' for the
bodily improvement of posterity. This shows that you recognize
the necessity of human selection, and that natural selection is not
considered sufficient even by you, its doughty champions and de-
fenders ! Perhaps, as the French say, this will prove to be the 'point
of insertion* for still further admissions, and we may yet hear of a
movement having for its object sound souls as well bodies.
" Gentlemen, your general philosophy of adventure, based upon
over-confidence in things untried, is not itself a result of experience
have you noticed that? There is no proof that a progressive evo-
i9i S-] A RETURNING CAVEMAN 735
lution is occurring at this moment, though no moment in the history
of the world was ever so crowded with the varieties of change and
adventure as is this. And lest you think me far too bold in thus
challenging your main asumption one of the speakers recom-
mended boldness earlier in the evening, if you remember, and I am
acting on his suggestion let me quote Doctor William Bateson,
more qualified than any man living to speak on the subject of
heredity. Says the Doctor : Those who would proclaim that what-
ever is, is right, will be wise henceforth to base this faith frankly on
the impregnable rock of superstition, and to abstain from direct
appeals to natural fact/ 4 I have done, gentlemen, and I thank you
for the interest with which you have heard me through."
When the caveman finished, a patter of excited comment re-
sounded through the hall. Some thought the uninvited guest a
rude barbarian still, with no response in his sodden soul to the
freshness and beauty of futurism. Others, less disposed to judge
him harshly, took the milder view that in an assembly of philo-
sophical adventurers an ancient member of the profession was en-
titled to a hearing. One old gentleman, dignified in garb and mien,
with a smile that sought to unite its spreading ripples with the crow's
tracks under his eyes, was observed to chuckle audibly, and more
than once, at the thought that a modern audience should be bearded
in its den by one of the ancients and accused of superstition. This
appeared to him a joyous morsel, and he rolled it under his tongue
with undisguised relish. Those nearest him in the press of the re-
ceding throng dismissed his unsolicited comments as an old man's
maunderings. Yet somehow when the "children of a larger growth"
were all out again under the bejewelled heavens, and on their way
homeward through the night, the thought kept coming back, un-
bidden, that the old caveman had remained unspoilt by contact with
the more knowing and less wise. For wisdom sees things in all
their relations ; science only in some.
ibid., p. 32.
CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM.
BY WILLIAM P. H. KITCHIN, PH.D.
FTER the rulers of the belligerent nations and the
military chiefs now engaged in a titanic struggle for
the mastery, there is no man more in the eye of the
public or more talked about to-day than Desire
Joseph Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of Malines and
Primate of Belgium. With his glorious cathedral a ruin, his palace
violated and injured by the soldiery, his magnificent diocese reduced
almost to a desert, he stands before Europe to-day as Belgium's
most outraged, and at the same time most valiant, citizen. The
world at large, who knows him only by his public utterances, may
be interested to obtain a nearer and more intimate view of him
through the spectacles of a former pupil of his, who lived under his
roof, tried to imbibe his spirit and methods, and has never ceased
to remain in close correspondence with him.
Desire Mercier was born sixty-four years ago in the little vil-
lage of Braine I'Alleud, almost touching the historic field of Water-
loo and in sight of its monuments. For the village of Waterloo
is a good three miles from the battlefield, but Braine I'Alleud only
a few minutes walk. Young Mercier completed his preliminary
studies at the college of Saint- Rambaud of Malines, and although
a good student he evinced no exceptional brilliancy ; in the graduat-
ing class he obtained seventh place. He was sent to Louvain to
make his theological course, and profited by his intercourse with
foreign students to acquire English and German, both of which
languages he can speak and write fluently. Ordained priest in
1874, he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Petit Semi-
naire of Malines. There he remained eight years, gaining a perfect
knowledge of Flemish, the mother tongue of northern Belgium; a
good working knowledge of Italian and Spanish, and laying broad
and deep the foundations of that immense philosophical erudition
which was afterwards to make him the boldest and most successful
leader of the Neo-Scholastic or Thomistic movement.
Jn the Belgium of forty years ago Thomistic philosophy was
not in honor. Cartesianism in one form or another was the domi-
nant theory; while at Louvain the ontologistic theories of Ubaghs,
1915.] CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM 737
Laforet, and their school still held sway. In 1879 Leo XIII.
called on all Catholics to rally round the philosophy of St. Thomas ;
the following year he asked the bishops of Belgium to found a spe-
cial chair of Thomistic philosophy at Louvain University. In defer-
ence to the Pope's wishes the new chair was established and confided
to Abbe Mercier, who began his lectures in October, 1882. Young
then and unknown, there seemed small likelihood of the new profes-
sor ever making the world ring with his name or becoming known
outside the narrow circle of a quiet university town. But his
influence over his pupils, his power of exciting effort and arousing
ideal, his extraordinary knowledge of thinkers from Aristotle to
William James, the amazing clarity and charm of his exposition soon
gave him a unique reputation in the city on the Dyle; while his
first lectures published simply in Cours Autographie 1 excited quite
a furore by the new critical theories advocated and their searching
examination of Kantism. Success inspired him with higher ambi-
tions, and urged him to seek a wider field of action. Why not in
place of one professor establish a Faculty of Thomistic Philosophy
at Louvain? Why not be thoroughly abreast with the science of
our day as St. Thomas was with his, and conciliate the unchanging
dogmas of Christian metaphysics with the evolution of modern
ideas? Why not have a Catholic philosophical review perfectly
well able to hold its own with The Metaphysical Review, Mind,
Kantstudien, or any other? Why not establish a seminary for the
young clerics attending these courses which might be a nursery of
Catholic philosophers, and from which they might go forth as from
a hive to carry Neo-Thomism to the ends of the earth? Abbe
Mercier was summoned to Rome, received in private audience by
Leo XIII., and asked to sketch then and there a programme of his
proposed institute. In a few moments he outlined to His Holiness
his glorious dream. The Pontiff was delighted, authorized him to
begin at once, and made him a domestic prelate.
In 1892 the new faculty began its work, and the following year
the Revue Neo-Scolastique was launched. Science went hand in
hand with philosophy, the observation of the laboratory with the
erudition of the lecture hall; the aim of the new institute was " to
complete by association the insufficiency of the isolated worker,"
1 Cours Autographic meant lectures hand-written by a good penman, then mul-
tiplied by some mechanical process, and distributed in fascicules amongst the
students. The Cours Autographic cost very little, and it gave the professor the
opportunity of testing and correcting his work by actual teaching. At Louvain it
was usually the first step towards definite publication.
VOL. C. 47
738 CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM [Mar,
and its desire "to create an establishment suitable for the harmonious
development of both science and philosophy." The beginnings were
small and humble for a time only eight pupils attended the semi-
nary administrative difficulties too hindered the work, but Mon-
signor Mercier persevered, and little by little his institute grew
and prospered. From all parts of the world pupils came, foreign
bishops emulated the example of the Belgian hierarchy in their
respective dioceses, and even the religious orders sent members to
be trained at the Ecole Saint Thomas. The upward and onward
march of the institute was admirably sketched by Abbe Deploige
in the toast he offered Monsignor Mercier the day of his consecration
to the see of Malines.
Professor Mercier conceived the idea of an institute of higher
philosophy from the very first years of his teaching. The daily
study of St. Thomas had revealed to him the splendor, unknown
or despised, of a marvelous period and the glory of the me-
diaeval Church, which then led the vanguard of intellectual prog-
ress. To reconquer for the Church this lost place by creating
a new centre of higher studies, a new focus of scientific activity,
such was the ambition of Monsignor Mercier and the inspiring
idea of his institute. Utopia, they said, some twelve years ago,
when the project having been encouraged by Leo XIII. was just
being put into execution. A Utopia? gentlemen. At this very
moment an ardent and gifted youth from all our provinces and
dioceses throng the halls of the institute. And they fraternize
there with the youth come from beyond our frontiers ; for the
institute has become an international centre; the works of
Monsignor Mercier have been translated into all the languages
of Europe; his review, the Neo-Scolastique, has readers in all
the countries of the world. French, Germans, Spaniards, Sicil-
ians, Austrians, -Italians live side by side at the Seminaire Leon
XIII. united in the same desire of scientific apostleship. Ireland
and Holland send to be trained at the institute the professors
of their future Catholic universities. Poland confides to
it the elite of her young clergy. Washington, Fribourg, Paris,
Rome copy the plan of studies pursued at the Mercier institute.
The young and brilliant Bishop of Bergamo, Monsignor Radini-
Tedeschi, informed us but yesterday of a similar intention.
From the laity and the clergy the movement is passing to the
religious orders, who in their turn borrow from the institute
its teaching methods. The movement is general. It is a verit-
able philosophical renaissance which astonishes and fills with
admiration the Picavets at Paris, the Morsellis at Genoa, and the
I9I5-1 CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM 739
Doerings at Berlin Twenty years ago, Monsignor, Provi-
dence brought us into your path Curiosity, sometimes a
well-inspired friend, brought us to your lectures. Your teach-
ing, clear, living, modern, given with conviction, won us. Your
kindness charmed us. We gave ourselves up to you. Thanks,
Monsignor, for all the good you have since done to our souls
Thanks above all for having given to our lives an object
in associating us to your work We shall continue to serve
your institute with the same docility, the same joy, the same
eager energy, happy to be able under the leadership of an
apostle of Christ, to contribute to realizing the desire of Pius X.,
the chief of the apostles, instaurare omnia in Christo.
In the early summer of 1899, I first met Monsignor Mercier,
the following September I entered Seminaire Leon XIII. as his
pupil. He was then in his fiftieth year, an extraordinarily tall man
with iron-gray hair, and as thin as a lath. His features were
irregular but kindly ; the forehead extremely wide, and domeshaped
with arching brows; the teeth large, white, and prominent; the
eyes of light brown, glorious, inspiring, with a strange glowing
brilliancy that I remarked also in the eyes of Leo XIII. ; the pre-
vailing expression of his face was a pensive melancholy. His voice
was pitched rather high, and did not possess a note of music ; when
preaching or lecturing in a large apartment, he was inclined to
maintain a uniform key which sounded somewhat monotonous. His
character was kindness personified, and about as perfect as it is given
to mortal man to become here below. In three years I never heard
a harsh word from him; I never saw him angry or impatient. I
was privileged to be his guest at Malines for a few days in 1909.
I looked forward to the meeting with some trepidation, remembering
that power tries men and eminence changes them. But his glad smile
of greeting at once reassured me; the Cardinal was the same fatherly
friend I had known in my student days. Truly indeed,
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man's the gow'd for a' that.
Cardinal Mercier is pure gold through and through, twenty-
four carat every ounce of him without any alloy. Nor has he lost
his courage or resignation in his present crushing trials. Writing
to me October 5, 1914, while the investment of Antwerp was pro-
gressing, his Eminence said : " At the very moment I am tracing
740 CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM [Mar.,
these lines, Antwerp, our last refuge, is threatened with bombard-
ment May God protect us! Above all, however, my
predominant feeling is a constant admiration for the valor, faith,
and endurance of our country." But not one word of blame for
the enemy who brought his country to such an awful pass. And I
am perfectly sure that when on January 2d and 6th German officers
violated his domicile, forced him .to submit to an interrogatory,
and tried to compel him to withdraw his famous Pastoral, not one
angry or even impolite word did he utter ; all he said was one firm
non possumus, and then was ready to lay down his life rather than
budge from that position.
Although Monsignor Mercier usually dined and supped at the
seminary, and assisted at the religious exercises of each day, he did
not live under its roof. He lived in a curious old Flemish structure
at the entrance of the grounds. His working powers were enor-
mous; he rose punctually at five A. M., said Mass for us at six, and
all day long, and up to a late hour at night, he wrote his books, or
studied old and new philosophers in view of coming lectures and
review articles. Over the mantelpiece in his study, was inscribed
in artistic Gothic characters, " labora sicut bonus miles Christi Jesu"
and he certainly fulfilled the admonition to the letter. His study
was on the second story of his house, a large bare-floored room
lined with books from top to bottom. His writing table was of
ordinary varnished pine, exactly the same as those supplied to the
seminarians; a small crucifix always lay before him on this table,
and when hearing confessions, or giving us a spiritual conference,
he invariably carried this crucifix in his hand. Another table, large
and square, and laden with books, also stood in the room; two or
three common wooden chairs, a small armchair, an oil-painting
of his mother, a plaster bust of St. Thomas, a priedieu and nothing
more. There were none of those pretty knick-knacks, none of the
comfortable lounges or elegant desks with which we of the New
World are accustomed to cheer and beguile our loneliness. It was
the workshop of a hard student, and the cell of an ascetic as well.
Monsignor was a man of one subject all his studies and aims
centred around philosophy. He had the utmost contempt for dilet-
tantism; and he was certain a multiplicity of interests and studies
barely touched on could end only there. Of course the works of St.
Thomas were the mainspring of his creed; and these with their
chief commentators, Capreoli, Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, Syl-
vester Ferraris, he knew perfectly. Aristotle's works too he knew
1915. ] CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM 741
extremely well, and quoted the Stagirite frequently. Nor was his
knowledge of Kant and the numerous commentators of the thorny
sage of Konigsberg less complete. Indeed it would be difficult to
find anywhere a more searching criticism of Kant's various theories
than in the works of Monsignor Mercier passim. The most crabbed,
impossible sciolists, who ever befogged Kant's speculations by a
misnamed Einleitung, Monsignor could reduce to order and method,
and express what they meant, but failed to say, in two or three
simple propositions. Indeed I fancy that like Coleridge fathering
his poetic flights and philosophic musings on " Bell and Ball, Ball
and Bell," so too Monsignor Mercier sometimes in his charity
credited these Kantian gentry with his own ideas, and read into their
tortured and involved circumlocutions what he might have said
himself had he been speaking from their viewpoint. The most
difficult subjects he could render easy and attractive, the most
barren, charming, so admirable was his exposition, so rigid and
painstaking his method, so apt his powers of illustration.
He might have been a notable man of letters had he not pre-
ferred to devote his life to philosophy. But he did not seek literary
graces, nor did he ever read authors whose main recommendation
was style. I do not believe he ever read a line of Shakespeare;
I never heard him speak of Goethe or Schiller; Newman he knew
only through his Grammar of Assent. Monsignor's copy of this
work was blue-pencilled in a hundred places.- The American poets
Longfellow, Poe, Whittier were utterly unknown to him; but he
had studied all William James' works and quoted them frequently.
One day at table a discussion arose among the students on the merits
of the Roman historians and orators; Monsignor said he rather
liked Tacitus, the rest he dammed with faint praise. The only two
great writers, great in other ways as well, read assiduously by him
were St. Bernard and Dante. An enormous edition of St. Bernard
in huge folio volumes, considerably the worse for wear, stood in
the hall just outside his study door. Dante he knew very well, and
used to quote him with much apropos. The whole secret of his
literary craft was to express his ideas as clearly and simply as
possible; he possessed no other.
The long vacation at Louvain lasted more than three months.
Monsignor would have considered it criminal to devote so much
time to recreation. Was not recreation-time meant to enable pro-
fessors to amass new materials, and elaborate new academic
schemes? His usual amount of holidays was three weeks; some-
742 CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM- [Mar.,
times as a deplorable yielding to human infirmity he granted himself
a month. He divided this time between the old homestead at
Braine I'Alleud, where a maiden sister resided, and the houses of his
brother, Dr. Leon Mercier, a medical practitioner of Brussels.
Both this brother and sister have been dead some years, and there
remain to the Cardinal of his immediate family only one other
sister, in religion Soeur Salisia Mercier, and three nephews, sons
of the late Dr. Mercier. One of these nephews, Master Paul
Mercier, always spent a part of the vacation with his uncle at
Louvain. When I knew him he was a little boy of ten or twelve ;
a little lamb was always brought to act as a playmate for him, and
Paul and the lamb romped about the lawn of the institute all day
long enjoying themselves immensely. As death removed the mem-
bers of the Cardinal's family, he buried himself more and more in
study and professional duties, but he still attended occasionally the
Catholic congresses held in the various cities of Europe. He had
been in England several times, and while staying at Oxford had
received attentions from Dr. Jowett, the famous Master of Balliol
College; Ireland he had visited once and participated, I think, in
the celebration of some Maynooth anniversary ; America he always
intended to see, but unforeseen events postponed the journey; he
has not yet seen the New World, he will scarcely see it now.
Though Monsignor Mercier eschewed and disliked controversy,
he had the talent of launching crushing replies, barbed with a polite
irony entirely French, and some journalists who attempted to poke
fun at him and his religion found the laugh turned against them-
selves. One of his neatest answers in this connection was to the
editor of the Belgian socialist sheet, Le Peuple. This paper printed
(without authorization of course) a letter of Cardinal Mercier's,
and added to each paragraph spicy comments of its own. His
Eminence replied :
You have had the kindness to publish my letter, and I thank
you for it. Certainly I could not expect it to be published
without comment. You should justify yourself in the eyes of
your readers, and make them think you were in perfect good
faith. And I do not blame you for this bit of special pleading.
A public confession without the least excuse is beyond human
weakness; nor does the Church require so much from her
children. She would like them certainly to have perfect con-
trition, but she is satisfied with imperfect contrition, and a secret
promise to relapse no more. The request for absolution that
1915.] CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM 743
you are good enough to make to me contains implicitly these two
essential conditions. I absolve you then with all my heart, but
I urge on you in conclusion this advice of my divine Master,
" Go and sin no more ! "
On February 8, 1906, Monsignor Mercier was appointed Arch-
bishop of Malines. The news of his appointment became known at
Louvain early in the morning, and produced a veritable explosion
of enthusiasm amongst the students. On that and the two suc-
ceding days more than a thousand telegrams of congratulation
reached the Archbishop-elect. His past and present pupils wished
to have the pleasure of giving him a pectoral cross ; a subscription
opened for that purpose soon exceeded eight thousand francs. The
prelate refused to devote this large sum to the purpose mentioned;
he said he wanted only an ordinary pectoral cross; with the re-
mainder he would found a prize for the best philosophical essay
presented at the institute. His consecration, performed by Mon-
signor Vico, Papal Nuncio to Belgium, took place at Malines,
March 25, 1906.
During the eight years of his episcopate, the energy formerly
devoted to scientific apostleship has been given just as unstintingly
to pastoral work. His retreat to his seminarians was honored by
a special brief of Pius X., in which His Holiness says :
I accept with the greatest pleasure the dedication of the con-
ferences, which Your Eminence has given to the pupils of
Malines' Seminary. In accepting it I wish above all to give,
if possible, more authority to the teachings and exhortations
which they contain, and which good seminarians will consider
henceforward as being specially addressed to them by the very
Vicar of Jesus Christ.
After such commendation any further praise would be a mere
impertinence. The foregoing work was published in 1907; the
following year Cardinal Mercier published a retreat for his priests,
of which it is sufficient to say that it has already been translated into
three languages. In addition to these books his various pastorals
and other discourses up to 1913 have been published in three large
volumes, both at Brussels and Paris. 2 The Cardinal has made the
most uncompromising pronouncements on the temperance question.
While recognizing that Belgium is not yet ripe for teetotalism, he
*(Euvres Pastorales. 3 vols. in 8vo. Dewit a Bruxelles ; Gabalda a Paris.
744 CARDINAL MERCIER, PRIMATE OF BELGIUM [Mar.,
urges by many means and methods war on drink, and is particularly
anxious to have gin, absinthe, and similar poisons utterly banned.
His very long and learned conference on this burning topic, pro-
nounced at Liege in December, 1908, is a model of its kind, fairly
bristles with facts and references, and diluted with the usual
commonplaces, would furnish the ordinary temperance lecturer
with a dozen discourses.
In a very beautiful conference on art the Cardinal speaks with
patriotic pride of the masterpieces of Belgium.
Do not the ravishing homes of our old Flemish cities, of
Bruges, for instance, embellish and perfume family life? The
town halls of Audenarde, of Louvain, of Brussels; the halls
of Ypres; the belfrys of Bruges, of Ghent, of Tournai, of
Courtrai, are they not living witnesses of the civic pride begotten
in our ancestors by their municipal liberties?
Further on he says :
Travel through Italy Milan, Florence, Rome, Naples, Assisi,
Siena, Perugia; visit the great museums of Europe; besides
the museums of Italy, those of Amsterdam and The Hague, of
Antwerp, of Dresden, the National Gallery of London, the
Prado and Seville, and suppose that, in a moment of madness
irreligious vandalism should destroy, both in sculpture and paint-
ing, everything inspired by religious, Christian and Catholic
ideas, tell me how much of really true and great art would
remain.
Seeing his people's sufferings, and powerless to help them,
Cardinal Mercier is to-day crowned with a sorrow's crown of
sorrow. Cruel and crushing as his trial is he does not despair;
he is essentially a man of prayer; and in his desolate palace of
Malines, under the shadow of his ruined cathedral, he spends long
hours in devotion. The Epistles of St. Paul were always his
favorite subject of meditation, and no doubt every day he realizes
more deeply the truth and beauty of the Apostle's words : " God is
faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above your strength;
but will make also with temptation an issue, that you may be able
to bear it" (i Cor. x. 13).
THE UNDYING FLAME.
BEING A LETTER FROM LUCIUS 2EMILIUS C2ECINA, AT ROME, TO
HIS SISTER, CORNELIA, AT LONDINIUM IN BRITAIN,
ANNO DOMINI 163.
BY HAMILTON BOGART DOX.
AM writing so soon again, my dear sister, because my
friend Quintus Gracchus, who sets out for Britain
to-morrow, offered to be the bearer of a message
home, and because I have had a strange experience,
in which I feel you will be interested. Our cousin,
Publius, has been indefatigable in showing me the wonders of this
mighty city, the home of our ancestors for centuries (till it pleased
the gods to make our grandsire a British merchant), but to-day came
the climax of all. It was nothing less than but I will begin at the
beginning, and try to tell you everything in its proper order, a feat
of which you say I am incapable.
Upon the last day of the moon, then, as Publius and I were
returning from the baths where everyone spends half his time,
and where on this particular occasion a vilely awkward slave so
scraped me with his strigil that I was raw from shoulders to waist
I say, as we were coming from the baths, Publius stopped short in
his walk, and struck his fist into his palm.
" By Bacchus, I have an idea ! " he cried.
" If that is the case, O my Publius," I replied, " let us have a
cup of wine in honor of the event."
" Poor wit! " said he. " Cease your barbarous British clown-
ing while I instruct you."
" Willingly," I answered, " So rare an opportunity should
not be lost."
" Briefly, it is this. I will take you to a Christian service in
one of the underground cemeteries a curious sight."
" I should greatly like to see it," I made answer. " I know
some few Christians, but I have never seen their incantations and
sorceries at close view. Is there not some danger? I thought
the Emperor wished to destroy them."
" You are somewhat mistaken, cousin mine. Our good, kind,
746 THE UNDYING FLAME [Mar.,
pious ruler " Publius openly sneered " will not hunt them down,
and therefore cannot wish to destroy them, but if any are brought
to trial, woe be unto them. There lies the danger, and it has grown
greater of late, since Justin has denounced the city administration
for its treatment of the Church."
" Who is Justin ?" I asked.
" A Christian of great repute, who at present carries his life in
his hands because of his fiery speech and writings."
" One would think these places of worship would be broken
up," I remarked.
" No," he told me, " according to our Roman law the places of
burial are inviolable."
An obstacle to our expedition occurred to me.
" You are no Christian, nor I. Will they admit us to their
mysteries ? "
" I am no Christian, Lucius," said he, " but I am known to
them as a friend, having rendered some of their number a slight
service. Moreover, there is ah a certain maiden " and here my
good cousin swaggered in a very lofty manner.
" Oho, my Publius ! A Christian virgin has trapped you !
The mighty are come down ! " I hoped to irritate him, but he only
laughed.
" A daughter of patricians is my Livia," he explained. " Her
mother is what we call a New Woman, who reads the classics, cul-
tivates politicians and literary men, and allows her children liberty
to do as they please. Hence, Livia becomes a Christian. But we
must make haste, or be late at home," and he hurried me along,
telling me of his Livia, her charms and her graces, till my head
spun.
I fear you will be growing impatient at my wordiness, so I will
pass quickly over the time that brought us to the day of the sun,
when the Christians hold their love feasts, as they are called. I
will not tire you with accounts of the banquets and games we at-
tended, because they were exactly like those I have described in other
letters. At the banquets were the same endless courses do these
people ever think of anything but food and drink ? the same young
dandies changing their gorgeous robes a dozen times during the
feast, the same vulgar actors to amuse us with the same dreary
recitations and coarse jests I am sick of it all ! The games grow
equally monotonous ; these gladiators ! how one wearies of hearing
of them, their prowess, their skill, their age, the sums won and
1915.] THE UNDYING FLAME 747
lost upon them ! My greatest pleasure at the banquets is to listen to
the tales of old Gaius Manlius, father of Publius' mother, who can
remember the terrible proscriptions of Domitian seventy years ago,
and whose own father had often told him of the awful times of
Nero, when the Christians wrapped in pitch served as torches for
the Emperor's garden, and hundreds of men and women were cruci-
fied in the arena to give entertainment to the rabble. I wish you
could hear him.
The day after our conversation, Publius took me to see Li via.
I know you will want a description of her, and am sorry I cannot
paint her for you. She is a small, slender girl, not quite seventeen,
dark hair and eyes, pale skin, sensitive mouth, but firm chin and
jaw, height something over seven palms, not so pretty as a certain
sister I know ; sweet, gentle, and tremendously in love with Publius.
There you have her not a bad portrait for a mere man is it?
She was all enthusiasm when Publius told her he intended taking
me to their ceremonies, and only smiled when I informed her I was
a skeptic who had lost faith in all the gods. I make no doubt that
Publius will unite himself with her Church; yesterday he refused to
dice with an officer of the guards, and when the soldier laughingly
accused him of being a Christian, Publius warned him, with an evil
look, not to meddle in his affairs.
If you will pardon a last digression I saw a very great man
close at hand two days since. As we stood at the entrance of the
Forum, a group of men on horseback dashed by us at a canter. Their
leader rode well in front of them, silent, pale, full-bearded, thought-
ful of face, his rich purple cloak flung back from his shoulders
there he was, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of the Romans !
Publius scowled after the cavalcade.
"The curse of the gods be on him!" he muttered. "The
snivelling hypocrite ! The Good ! The Just ! The writer of pious
books! The purest of mankind! Faugh! Look you, Lucius,
because of him, at any moment my Livia may be dragged before
the prefect, and scourged scourged, man, like the foulest criminal
at the will of Marcus Aurelius ! May he rot in the place of the
damned ! "
I drew him away, fearful lest the Emperor's spies should
hear us.
You. will be wondering what all this has to do with the
mysterious rites of the Christians. Patience, little sister, we have
come to that at last.
748 THE UNDYING FLAME [Mar.,
The morning sun, climbing above the Esquiline, was gilding the
highest domes of the city, as Livia, Publius, and I wound our way
through the narrow streets toward the north. Our walk led us
among the dwellings of the poor, and at length brought us to the
edge of the city to a low hill, the top of which had been levelled
for a sand pit. In the side wall of the excavation, a black opening
yawned grimly at us. I looked at Publius; he nodded.
" There is the port of entry," said he.
Ankle deep in sand, we floundered down to this strange gate-
way. We entered, Publius leading, with Livia next. The passage
was barely wide enough to allow two men to pass each other ; I could
touch the roof with my fingers. We walked forward some six
paces in the dark, turned sharply to the right, then almost im-
mediately to the left, and halted before a man with a flaming torch
in his hand.
"Who comes?" he challenged. The flare of the torch cast
shadows on his thin face till he looked like a death's head. Publius
stepped into the circle of light.
" A greeting, Cleon," he made answer.
" A greeting, Publius, I knew you not," responded the sentinel.
" A greeting to you, my sister, and to your friend."
He lit another torch by means of his own, and gave it into
Publius' hand; we went on down the gallery. Presently we be-
gan to descend a flight of steps, carved out of the rock; down we
went I counted seventy steps, which must have brought us more
than a score of cubits below the surface of the earth. Then we
doubled back and forth in a veritable labyrinth; I lost all sense of
direction, but Publius led the way with perfect confidence. Once
only did he hesitate, before three diverging galleries, till Livia
touched his arm and pointed down the left passage. We descended
more steps, the roof above them so low I knocked my head against
it thrice. At last the passage took a final turn, and widened into a
broad chamber sufficiently large to contain perhaps a hundred per-
sons. At the end opposite us, as we stood in the doorway, rose a low
platform, upon it a flat altar of stone, in appearance like a great
white chest, as long as a man's height. Publius whispered that it
contained the bones of martyrs who had perished under Nero.
Along the walls slabs were set in, where those who had died in the
faith were interred, for this chamber was a great burial vault.
Above some of the sarcophagi semi-circular recesses had been hol-
lowed out, denoting the grave of some particularly holy or wealthy
1915.] THE UNDYING FLAME 749
Christian. Between us and the altar were rows of benches, oc-
cupied by a score or more of people of both sexes and every age,
most of them praying devoutly. The soft glow of many candles
along the walls and on the altar showed every detail of the solemn
scene. I marked among the worshippers a superb old man with a
majestic head and face, and long, flowing white beard. Publius
followed my gaze, and whispered:
" It is the great Justin whom you see."
I looked with added interest at the man who had defied the
government, and hurled his indignant scorn at the prefect of the
Imperial City. While we watched, other Christians entered, till the
chamber was more than half full. Livia went forward to pray;
Publius and I seated ourselves in the farthest corner, in order to
give no annoyance. Presently the priest, or president, as he is
sometimes called, came and stood behind the altar, facing the people.
You must try to imagine the spectacle, little sister the white-robed
priest, the kneeling worshippers, white clad also, save for a few
flashes of red or blue or green among them, the carved, grave-
lined walls, behind which lie the silent dead, listening, it may be, to
the murmur of the prayers, and the yellow light of the candles
over all.
The priest first read from an ancient book stories, legends of
this Jesus Whom they call the Christ, strange tales of how He
walked upon the sea, and healed the sick, and even raised the dead.
You will smile at these myths, yet could a myth, a fable, spread
as these tales have spread and convince thousands of its truth within
less than a hundred and fifty years after its birth? We boast of our
scientific learning can it explain the mystery of life or death?
Soon the priest laid aside the book and began to preach. He
was no orator, he spoke in the simplest terms, with no attempt at
rhetoric or eloquence, yet his words held my attention. He told how
their Lord had died upon the cross, as a malefactor; how He had
done this as a sacrifice for every human soul, for those who had
sinned, even for those who had condemned Him; how He had lain
dead in a sepulchre till the third day, and then had shattered the
prison of death in triumph, and shown Himself as God indeed.
The priest spoke of the Lord's promise to return and refresh them
with His holy Body and Blood under the form of bread and wine
a marvelous thing if it be true. He spoke at length upon this
mystery, its wonderful power, its surpassing sweetness ; he told them
they should approach God's table with pure hearts, bearing in mind
750 THE UNDYING FLAME [Mar.,
the commandments of the Almighty, and humbly adoring the Christ
for the miraculous Feast.
When he ended, all knelt once more and prayed, the priest lead-
ing them, offering petitions to God the Father, God the Son, and
God the Holy Spirit. They prayed likewise to the Mother of Jesus,
called Mary, whom they believe to have remained a virgin despite
her motherhood. Then came the " kiss of peace," each saluting his
neighbor in grave and solemn fashion. Two men called deacons, as
Publius informed me, brought in loaves of bread and a broad cup
of wine. The priest again prayed, offering up the food to God as a
sacrifice; there followed a general thanksgiving. Then the priest
bent over the altar and spoke certain phrases I could not hear, while
the congregation bowed down in adoration. It is at this instant that
they believe the Christ enters into the bread and wine. There was
a moment of utter stillness I thought I heard, far off, a muffled
clang, as of iron on stone then the priest prayed and the people
answered "Amen." After this final prayer, the worshippers went
forward ; the priest broke the bread, ate a portion, sipped the wine,
then gave both to the deacons who presented the holy food to the
people. When all had partaken, the congregation began to disperse ;
the ceremonies were over.
That ominous clang sounded again, much nearer. I heard the
harsh jingle of armor, a sharp military command, and high over
every other sound a woman's piercing scream. Above the heads of
the Christians at the doorway gleamed the burnished helmets of the
praetorian guard. The people shrank back before them in dreadful
terror ; we were trapped. Publius sprang to Livia's side ; I followed
him. I thought we were to be butchered like beasts, but the officer
in command, beside whom cowered the frightened Cleon, held up his
hand and spoke in a loud voice.
" We shed no blood here if it can be prevented," he said. " I
am come to arrest certain among you. I am informed they are
present. I will read the list, and those named must be given up to
justice. If they come not of themselves, I have means of finding
them out. A little torture will wring their identity from your sen-
tinel here." He gave a savage scowl at Cleon, who shook under his
gaze. The officer began to read : " Justin " the old man stepped
out from the crowd as calmly as if going to a feast; " Liberianus,
Paeon, Evelpestos, Hierax " the four men, one decrepit with age,
two in the prime of life, one a mere strippling, answered with per-
fect readiness ; " Chariton," a tall young Greek came forward, and
I 9 T5-] THE UNDYING FLAME 751
a smothered sob was heard ; " Charito," a groan from the people,
and a woman with a boy clinging to her dress appeared before the
officer. She gently released herself from the clutch of the child,
and gave him into the arms of another woman, who was weeping
silently. Charito took her place beside the tall Greek, her face as
cold and still as stone.
"May I ask what our fate is to be?" asked Justin of the
officer.
" You have been denounced as Christians. You will be taken
before the prefect. If you admit the charge, you will be compelled
to choose between sacrificing to the gods and death by the scourge
and the headsman."
The old hero drew himself up.
" There is no choice there," he answered. " We do not fear
to die."
At this instant Publius flung off my detaining grasp, leaped
with a single bound into the centre of the room, and confronted the
guardsman.
" Who dares commit this outrage ? " he cried. " Our law has
held the places of the dead sacred for centuries. By what authority
do you violate it ? "
The officer laid his hand on the hilt of his sword.
" Here is my authority," was the stern answer.
Publius was not awed.
" By all the gods, I will accuse you to the Emperor him-
self!" said he.
" Perhaps the Emperor already knows of this affair, young
sir!" There was no mistaking the officer's meaning Marcus
Aurelius the Good had commenced the persecution. Publius, pale
with impotent rage, fell back beside Livia.
One by one the seven prisoners were led away. The woman's
turn came last. As the soldier seized her wrist the boy who had
clung to her cried shrilly. The woman wrenched herself free and
rushed back to her son. She raised him in her arms and kissed him,
holding him to her breast for a long moment. She set him down
and turned again to the soldier with a smile, her head proudly
erect. Then she too passed through the doorway, and the foot-
steps and the clank of weapons grew fainter and fainter, till at last
they died away in the distance, leaving only the piteous sobbing of
a child to break the stillness.
After a space the priest again led the weeping people in prayer,
752 THE UNDYING FLAME [Mar.,
and when that had been done, Publius drew Livia away. We went
out into the dark passage, but most of the Christians remained
kneeling before the stone altar, sending upward supplications to their
God.
We three walked through the long galleries, up the stairs, out
into the sunshine, without a word. Not until we stood on the crest
of the hill, overlooking the city, was there speech amongst us.
Publius burst out with :
" Forsake it, dear one ! Forsake your faith ! It can only
bring death and suffering to you to me. Abjure it ! Let us have
our life together. The Church is doomed. The Emperor himself
has set his heel upon it. Forsake it, before it is too late ! "
For answer, she raised her hands and took his face between
them.
" Beloved," she whispered, " no death can ever part us. The
life we shall have together will last for all eternity. Can you not
understand? If I must die for the Church, that is a small matter.
I will die gladly, and, dying, wait for you, but the Church will live
forever, for our Lord Himself has promised that the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it ! "
He put his arm around her; it trembled as she nestled against
him. Then we three, in silence, went down into the city.
As I sit here in the dusk, writing to you, my sister, I am ask-
ing myself which of those two is the true prophet. It needs no over-
keen vision to see that we are on the eve of another dreadful con-
flict between the faith of the Christians and the power of the
Emperor. What resistance can the Church make against that
power, against the finest armies the world has ever seen,
against the might of an Empire extending from the shores
of Caledonia to the banks of the Euphrates, wielded by a
hand determined to blot out the religion to which she
clings? Another generation, and the name Christian may be
but a memory of the past, and yet I cannot but feel there is
something in the Faith though I know not what it is that will
not succumb to the Emperor and all his legions, that may outlast
the Empire itself in spite of all, that may live on, unconquered, when
Rome, the mistress of the world, shall have crumbled into ruins. I
know not what it is, yet I have seen it in the face of the priest, as
he told the message of the Christ; in the faces of the worshippers,
thanking their God for His presence among them; in the face of
Livia, as she raised her eyes to her lover; in the faces of Justin and
1915.] THE UNDYING FLAME 753
his companions, going unafraid to a shameful end; most of all, in
the face of the woman who kissed her child farewell, then walked to
her death with no faltering in her footstep, and on her lips a smile
of victory.
Enough of the Christians! I have come to the last of my
parchment and have no room to tell you my adventures in search
of the Egyptian carpet our mother desired, or of my meeting with
your old playmate, Marcia, who is become fairer than ever. She
asked me to send you a thousand kisses when I wrote, but I told her
that kisses should be sent only by bearer, whereupon she blushed very
prettily and then her father must needs appear with a long tale of
politics and trade which wearied me unspeakably. The gods forgive
him I shall not!
Quintus is shouting that I might have written six letters in
this time, and that he is certain I am addressing someone else's
sister. No one writes such long letters to one's own, he says.
Embrace our mother for me, and greet our friends in my name.
Farewell, dear little sister.
Thy brother,
Lucius.
VOL. C.48
IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY?
BY VINCENT MCNABB, O.P.
T is a fair though a far-reaching question. We will
deal fairly by it with a plain answer, " Yes." But
to agree or even disagree with the answer it becomes
necessary to reach a definite point of view, open only
to those who will supplement history with psychology
and look on both in an atmosphere of art. What follows in these
pages should not be taken as mere argument appealing, mainly, to
a sense of logic, for logic is not usually at home in art; but as
directions for reaching a supreme, artistic, and historic point of
view, where the writer of Hamlet is seen to have been at least once
his own peerless biographer.
The difference between Milton and Shakespeare might, of
course, be summed up in the two centuries wherein the greater part
of the life of each was passed the sixteenth and seventeenth. But,
on the whole, the two poets are wider apart than two neighboring
centuries. The elder dramatist is objective; the younger, sub-
jective. '
Milton belongs to the poets and philosophers who are fearless
onlookers of their own soul. Yet it may be questioned how far
the poet of Paradise Lost is a soul speaking to itself in the native
language of the soul; and how far in an acquired tongue. Some
of his readers would have worshipped him still more had he spoken
more of his own heart's tongue, and had spared us the school
psychology translated sometimes sublimely and sometimes turgidly
into a metric grammar of theological concepts.
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are not an epic on the
historic heaven and hell ; but on the historic John Milton of Cheap-
side, and of the hell and heaven that lurked within his epic soul.
Although his later home at Holborn was too near the heart of
London of the Revolutions, that he should forget the men and move-
ments of his time, the all-important man to John Milton was John
Milton ; and the most absorbing movement of his age was what was
befalling himself. If he describes things and men, they are things
and men not in themselves, but in John Milton. His art is not a
1915.] IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? 755
mirror of nature, but a picture of nature. No historian or artist
would go to Milton to see things, but to see a poet's impression of
things. In his works you will find a great part of the seventeenth
century drawn and colored, perhaps over-drawn and over-colored,
by that singularly interesting product of the seventeenth century,
the mind of Milton.
If he reflects or paints the motley world to which he sang his
sombre music or thundered his fierce war cries, it is because, with
no pretense to consistency, he himself had played almost every part.
The man who began life as a High Churchman and ended as a
deist, the writer who gave English verse its Dante and English
prose its Demosthenes, could not fail to epitomize for all time
every phase and thought of his own age. Thus you will find here
and there in his works portraits of friendship drawn by a High
Churchman; of solitude and seriousness by a Cambridge mystic;
of Royalty by a Roundhead ; of marriage by an embittered husband
and father; of High Churchmen by a Puritan; of hell and heaven
by an Arian Calvinist. But everywhere John Milton is not only the
artist who is giving portraits of the parts played, but is himself the
player whose restless mind had in turn played every part.
Shakespeare, the player, is in this matter of art a world away.
England of Elizabeth was worthy of a great objective dramatist,
and begot the writer of Macbeth. The age of Shakespeare was an
age of acting. Perhaps the most accurate synthesis of it is the
deathless line:
All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players.
This age was so drilled in acting that it hardly knew when it was
living the reality. Seeming had taken the place of being. Whole
careers were acted. Kings became not philosophers, but actors.
Diplomacy which had begun as the art of arriving at justice through
self -explanation, had ended as a fine art of self -concealment. The
Field of the Cloth of Gold was but a gorgeous stage-play a gaudy
interlude in the shifty drama of European politics.
There was a cry of political freedom for the people; but it was
not sincere. There were a hundred war cries against " foreign
invasion;" but the kingdom's worst enemies were those of its own
household. There was a profession of intellectual liberty, which
handed the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge to the rag sorter.
There was an outburst of religious zeal, which a wily aristocracy
756 is HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? [Mar.,
converted into broad acres. There was a cry for moral reformation
which prepared the way for the orgies of the Restoration. And
thus life was but a pastime, during which men in the theatre
t art found distraction from the pomp and circumstance and
the untruth wearying them in the theatre of life.
Beneath all this mask there was a reality, wh : jh gave the lie
to what was on the lips and cheeks of this play-a ting century; a
reality of vice which made outward seeming a hypocrisy; a reality
of virtue which almost redeemed the mask of vice; a reality of
art which has contrived to pass on portraits of -ice and virtue in
a language that can never die.
Of that tumultuous -fc^pJay world, Shakespeare is, what
There is, of course, an outstanding flatness. Yet
there is form, color, life. No one would seek from the writer of
Comus or Paradise Lost for a true portrait of a High Churchman,
or a Catholic, or a king or a Pope of his day. But Shakespeare's
plays are our earliest and most authentic national portrait gallery.
All his sketches are portraits. All the deathless figures his art has
bestowed on posterity, sat to the artist. He might have hated the
sitter ; but he loved his art too well to tell an untruth. He gives the
flesh and blood, the height and form, the mien and gait of the king
and his courtier, the knight and his groom, the tyrant who aims at
a crown and the cut-purse in search of a meal. We know almost
everything about his contemporaries, from the clothes they wore to
the prayers they prayed, and the sins they wrought.
So masterfully has he played his poet part of mirror that like
a true mirror he shows everything but himself. He makes every-
thing live, by himself becoming invisible. Thus he has hidden him-
self so utterly behind his portraits, that we seem to know none of
his opinions. The merest novice at criticism could tell at first
sight that the writer of Paradise Lost was a theologian of no un-
certain color. But not even the most accomplished scholar of
Shakespeare could tell from internal criticism alone the religious
opinions of the writer of King Lear, Julius Caesar, Macbeth or
Hamlet.
To every serious student of Shakespeare, therefore, the question
of questions is not "Who is Hamlet, and who Macbeth?" but "Who
and what is Shakespeare? Is he comedy, or melodrama, or trag-
edy? " Behind the rouge of the Globe player, and the pen of the
playwright behind the mask of the dramatist whose mind was once
1915-] IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? 757
in travail with the plutonic glooms of Hamlet and Macbeth there
lurks the man. Which is the greater tragedy the mask or the
man Hamlet or Shakespeare?
A few points of personal history give a key to the man:
1590. Essex marries widow of Sir Philip Sidney. Shakespeare
writes A Midsummer Night's Dream for the wedding.
1593. Venus and Adonis dedicated to Southampton.
1601. February 5th. Southampton sends 40 /- to Globe
Theatre to play Shakespeare's Richard II. on eve of
Essex's rising : Shakespeare was concerned in it. Up-
rising of Essex fails. Essex prisoner; tried and con-
demned.
February 25th.- Essex beheaded Southampton con-
demned, reprieved, kept prisoner.
1602. Hamlet.
1603. March 26th. Elizabeth dies.
April loth. James I. releases Southampton.
May 1 7th. James makes Chamberlain's Company the
King's actors.
1606. Macbeth (only Scottish play).
1613. The Tempest (probably) written for wedding of Eliza-
beth, daughter of James, to Frederic : Elector Palatine. 1
It will be seen that Hamlet was written in the darkest period
of the poet's life. The Essex uprising had been hatched and sent
forth from the house of Southampton, Shakespeare's dearest friend.
On the eve of the rising the stage of Burbage's theatre, the Globe,
saw Shakespeare's play, Richard II. But this incident throws such
a light on the poet's life that we must set down a few details.
1. Lingard says that in 1600 " Hay ward, a civilian, published.
his history of Richard II., and dedicated it to Essex The
Queen ordered him to be imprisoned." She felt, no doubt, that the
precedent of deposing an English sovereign would not be thrown
away on Essex, who was commonly thought to be plotting either to
give the throne to James or to secure it for himself.
2. I. Y. Monroe, writing in The Athenceum, December 26,
1908, says, " A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted
and committed by Robert late Earl of Essex, published in 1601
contains a valuable reference to the playing of Richard II.
at the request of the rebels, the reluctance of the players, and the
extra sum of forty shillings given them as an inducement to act."
*Hist., vol. viii., c. 7, note 15.
758 IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? [Mar,
3. r< The Queen in a conversation with William Lambarde
on August 4, 1 60 1, complained that this tragedie had been played
with seditious intent forty times in open streets and houses." 2 It
is then quite clear that the stage was a way of reaching the
people and teaching sedition.
A former paper of the present writer has elaborated the thesis
that Macbeth is a study on Queen Elizabeth. This first and last
Scottish play written almost immediately after England's first and
last purely Scottish sovereign, has too many points of identity with
Elizabeth, the rival and slayer of Mary Queen of Scots, not to be
transparent to the theatregoers at the Globe. A welcome confirma-
tion of this thesis comes from a critic of no mean worth, Richard
Garnett. 3 The Spectator,* reviewing his work, says, " We should
be inclined to give the first place to the paper on the date of The
Tempest. The theory that this play was written and acted on the
occasion of the marriage of the Prince Palatine to Elizabeth,
daughter of James I., is not Dr. Garnett's own invention; but it is
defended in a most convincing way. Now and then we are startled
the identification of King James himself with Prospero takes away
our breath but on the whole it is a very subtle piece of Shakes-
pearean criticism."
It was easy for the poet to hold the mirror up to the English
Court in 1613, when the Jacobite party to whom he had so long
belonged had come into their own. But in 1602, when Elizabeth
was still smarting with the disloyalty, and still more with the loss,
of Essex, any attempt to criticize the Queen, or justify her victim,
was like risking a lion's den.
Yet the poet was brave-hearted enough to put upon the Globe
stage a worthy fellow-play to Richard II. Hamlet is the. poet's
" Defensio " of Essex, the soldier-friend whose unsuccessful rising
had but delayed the day when James should come like Fontenbras
from another land to replace the fratricide sovereign. The hour
when Hamlet came into the poet's mind, was perhaps the darkest
he had yet known. Essex, his patron, was dead. Southampton,
his friend, was a prisoner, under sentence of death. The poet's
power was not with the sword : they who had taken up the sword
had died, or were to die, by it. But he who twelve years before
had begun his marvelous career of poet by writing A Midsummer
Night's Dream for the wedding of Essex, could still wield a mightier
3 Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth, III., 552.
3 Essays of an Ex-Librarian. * October 26, 1901.
1915.] 75" HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY '? 759
weapon than the sword of Essex. The pen of Shakespeare, even
in those midsummer days, was almost the most powerful weapon in
Europe. It had grown older, more tempered, more assured since
then. Twelve years of service in the England of Elizabeth had
given it rank with the sword of Arthur, or the pen of him who first
conquered // Paradiso for the ears of men. That faithful pen
poured out its deeps of sorrow and loyalty in a tragedy which held
not the mask, but the mirror, of art to the troubled soul of Shakes-
peare and of England.
There are so many confirmations of this point of view that we
can give only a few :
i. Hamlet's madness is but acted, in order to mask his intent
of revenge. It is agreed that the person of Hamlet is the most
masterful creation of Shakespeare. It will further be agreed that no
little part of the subtle psychology of the masterpiece is the show
of madness. As a piece of dramatic invention, the acted madness
is consummate. It lends itself naturally to swift paradoxical situa-
tions, which easily strike an audience and are the soul of drama.
It may be asked if this daring dramatic invention was not bor-
rowed from that quarry of great things, the Hebrew books. There
we read how " David was exceedingly afraid of the face of
Achis, the king of Geth. And he changed his countenance before
them And Achis said You saw the man was mad/' 5
It may even be allowed to recall how another court saw madness
in the silence of a greater than David.
2. There are no evidences of a mind unhinged. At most, the
mind at times creaks painfully as it shuts or opens. How often does
Hamlet dwell on " discourse of reason " as, for example,
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason would have
mourn'd longer. 6
On this account Hamlet is not mad. Never for a moment does
he lose his reason. Every emergency finds him prepared. He is
the most finished practitioner of his own advice. " In the very
torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion
you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smooth-
ness." 7
It is psychologically impossible that a mind deranged could
reason as Hamlet reasons with his mother; or could add to the
world's classics such sovereign literature as the soliloquy, " To be
B i Kings xxi. 12-14. "Act I., Scene 2. T Act ill., Scene 2.
;6o 75- HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? [Mar.,
or not to be : that is the question." His own plea of sanity almost
settles the matter.
Ecstasy !
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music; it is not madness
That I have utter'd. Bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. 8
As if to prove his point the dramatist gives us a most careful
study of true madness in Ophelia. The daughter of Polonius never
recovers from the shock of her father's death. Never once does
she show even a glimmer of " discourse of reason." Her mind is
changed. She is found singing fragments of songs. Death comes
without further shock:
Her clothes spread wide,
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes
As one incapable of her own distress. 9
There could hardly be a more dramatic situation than this
contrast between the mental state of these two children, Hamlet
and Ophelia, whose fathers had met a violent death.
3. If Hamlet's madness is not madness, it is design; if it is
not borne, it is acted. The following lines are to the purpose:
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly : these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. 10
His words to Horatio, after the apparition of his dead father,
are conclusive :
Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on. 11
"Act III., Scene 3. 'Act IV., Scene 7. "Act I., Scene 2. "Act I., Scene 5.
1915-] IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? 761
This is at the very outset of the play. There is a like avowal to
his mother towards the close of the play :
Queen. What shall I do?
Hamlet. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do :
Let the bloat king
for a pair of reechy kisses,
Make you to ravel all this matter out,
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft. 12
4. From this there is but a step to the unique feature of the
drama; the play within the play. This is a creation of Shakespeare's
own genius. It was the player's instinct to bring his play-acting
into the drama.
The dramatist has almost rent his plot asunder to bring in the
play. It does not spring out of anything. It practically leads to
nothing. That it helps Hamlet to believe the words of the ghost
is but " great cry and little wool."
But it gives occasion to the man whose Richard II. incited the
conspirators on the eve of the uprising, to say the same dagger
truths under cover of a play within a play. We are here getting
close to the heart of Shakespeare, the player and play writer, the
friend of the dead Essex and imprisoned Southampton.
In Act II., Scene 2, there is an allusion to Elizabeth's order
that Blackfriar's Theatre should be handed over to a troop of child
players :
There is, sir, an ayrie of children, little eyases, that cry
out on the top of the question and are most tyrannically clapped
for 't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle the common
stages so they call them that many wearing rapiers are afraid
of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither.
We must be careful to throw ourselves into the circumstance of
the play. We must imagine ourselves one of the rapier-men, Jacob-
ites mostly, who dare come to the Globe the leader dead, their
second leader under sentence of death, and she whom they looked
on as an illegitimate usurper nearing death, yet still able to kill. Only
when mingled with the Jacobites in the pit of the Globe can we feel
the force of
The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King. 13
"Act III., Scene 4. "Act II., Scene 2.
762 IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? [Mar.,
Or again :
Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed ?
Do you hear, let them be well used, for they are the abstract
and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were
better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. 14
No dramatist has ever canonized his Muse in worthier words
than
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action ;
with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty
of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of
playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to
hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show virtue her own
feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the
time, its form and pressure. 15
Amongst the most daring efforts to show the age of Elizabeth
" its form and pressure " must be set Hamlet.
5. Lastly, we see the soul of the dramatist nowhere so clearly
glassed as in this offspring of his hour of deepest sorrow. Students
of Shakespeare have not overlooked the remarkable outburst of
tragedy in the poet's Muse :
The brilliant circle of young nobles whose friendship he had
shared was broken up by the political storms which burst in the
mad struggle of the Earl of Essex for power; his friend and
Shakespeare's idol, Southampton, passed a prisoner into the
Tower ; Herbert, Lord Pembroke, a younger patron of the poet,
was banished from the Court. While friends were thus falling
and hopes fading without, Shakespeare's own soul seems to have
gone through a phase of bitter suffering and unrest. The change
in the character of his dramas gives a surer indication of his
change of mood. 16
Students have been particularly struck by Macbeth and Hamlet.
Brandes compares Hamlet and Macbeth. Speaking of the super-
natural in both he says, " One feels that the two tragedies must
have been written close upon each other." 17
Acute and well-informed writers have detected a likeness be-
tween Hamlet and the historic Richard II.
Hamlet is fond of quibbles and sword-play and of
conceit and turns of thoughts such as are common in the poets
14 Act II., Scene 2. "Act III., Scene 2.
w Short History of the English People, by J. R. Green, vol. ii., ch. vii.
17 William Shakespeare, by George Brandes, p. 422.
1915-] 'IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? 763
whom Johnson called metaphysical Though Romeo shows
this tendency, the only tragic hero who approaches Hamlet here
is Richard II. ; who, indeed, in several ways recalls the emas-
culated Hamlet of some critics, and many like the real Hamlet
have owed his existence in part to Shakespeare's personal famil-
iarity with the weakness and dangers of the imaginative tempera-
ment. 18
This same writer is near the heart of the Hamlet mystery in
these and the following words:
Otherwise what we justly call Hamlet's characteristic hu-
mor is not his exclusive property; but appears in passages
spoken by persons as different as Mercutio, Falstaff, and Rosa-
lind. The truth probably is that it was a kind of humor most
natural to Shakespeare himself, so that, here as in some other
traits of the poet's greatest creation, we come into close contact
with Shakespeare the man.
Passages scattered here and there in the play have a point and
poignancy which could hardly be less than the dramatist's self-ex-
pression. Even the tragedian's mask that hides the face does not
quench the heart or quiet the lips. From time to time, the patriot, the
friend, the mourner, the man must speak from behind the mask.
There was a day when, like Essex and Southampton and the young
Jacobite bloods, the writer of Richard II. trusted to the sword.
Now even the pen has to be wielded with restraint in the withering
days when few men can call their life their own.
A new light is thrown upon such a masterpiece as the following
" form and pressure " of that gloomy time :
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world !
Fie on 't ! ah fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this ! 20
The same subtle soliloquy on the state of things and its accom-
18 Shakespearean Tragedy, by A. C. Bradley. Second Edition, p. 150.
19 Ibid., p. 153. IO Act I., Scene 2.
764 - IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? [Mar.,
panying state of soul breaks out in words worthy of the Divine
Dialogues :
To be, or not to be : that is the question :
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. 21
His soul was still stunned with the loss of the leader who had by
opposing his ill fortunes ended them.
No doubt Shakespeare, the play writer, often envied the men
of the sword who had followed Essex to insurrection and, some,
to death. Many an hour of bitter self-reproach may have lain
behind such phrases as :
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. 22
His own inner soul stands almost unmasked before us in the
verses :
Remember thee !
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there. 28
Or in the no less poignant prose :
I have of late but wherefore I know not lost all my
mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so
heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the .earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majes-
tical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other
thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and
admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how
like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ? 24
Since the sword of Essex had been broken, the dramatist had
to cover his own thoughts with the mask of art or silence.
"Act III., Scene i. M Act III., Scene i. ""Act I., Scene 5. "Act II., Scene 2.
1915-] IS HAMLET AUTOBIOGRAPHY? 765
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue ! 25
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue. 26
Hence the poet whose part it is to
take upon 's the mystery of things,
As it were God's spies, 27
becomes himself a mystery, whom light-headed worldlings like
Guildenstern cannot fathom.
Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me !
You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ;
you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would
sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass : and
there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ; yet
cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier
to be played on than a pipe ? Call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me. 28
We have not sought to identify any one character of the im-
mortal play with the writer of the play. A hundred arguments
make it easy to see in Hamlet the person of Shakespeare. Yet if
any historical identification of this master-character is needed, it
should fall upon the young Earl whose fate was the turning point
of Shakespeare's Muse.
Yet, though no one character in Hamlet is Shakespeare, the
tragedy itself is less the poet's work than the poet's life. It is the
most authentic and surviving child of the poet's soul. It is a child
of sorrow, born at the midnight of his almost broken heart.
Great poets as Dante and Milton have ever felt upon their
brow the pressure and enmity of a world that could not offer them
understanding. Dante has allowed his anger at this opposition to
deepen the hate of hell, and even to discolor the glory of paradise.
Milton has given us in Samson Agonistes a superbly proud master-
piece of a strong man bearing alone the hatred of mankind.
But the soul of Shakespeare had too often heard and reechoed
the laughter of the world not to have received a little of its essential
humility. Even such a word as humility is in its place when
describing the complex simplicity of the soul that meditated Hamlet.
He does not represent himself in the night of his sorrow as a
20 Act I., Scene 2. 2 'Act I., Scene 2.
"King Lear, Act V., Scene 3. M Act III., Scene 2.
766 LYRE-NA-GEEHA [Mar.,
Samson Agonistes facing uncowed the hatred of his people. If we
take Hamlet as the one play in which this peerless mirror of man
reveals the man within him, it is a revelation of humility. He could
not represent himself, like Milton, as a strong man struggling with
adversity, but as a weak man struggling with himself.
In saying these things we have not dared to give the lie cour-
teous to the poet's denial, that anyone had hitherto been able " to
pluck out the heart of his mystery." We have but sought to
recognize, with a soul quietly thankful, that he himself in the
night of sorrow has taken posterity into his confidence, and has
shown us how with the key of Hamlet,
Shakespeare unlocked his heart.
LYRE-NA-GEEHA. 1
BY ALICE M. CASHEL.
LYRE-NA-GEEHA, Lyre-na-geeha, little hollow in the heather,
Little shelter from the world in the West,
May God smile down upon you, be it wild or sunny weather,
For it's you that holds the heart of things Life's best.
Lyre-na-geeha, Lyre-na-geeha, sure the hills that hold you, borrow
All the loveliness that our dear land can show,
And the lark that flutters heavenwards, can sing away all sorrow,
And the winds that sigh within your arms, are soft as winds that blow.
Lyre-na-geeha, Lyre-na-geeha, little combe within the mountains,
The very fairies whisper as they steal within your fold,
For its magic that you shed there, from the waters of your fountains,
And the air is heavy-laden with the scent of whin's pure gold.
Lyre-na-geeha, Lyre-na-geeha, little hollow in the heather,
Little shelter from the world in the West,
May God smile down upon you, be it wild or sunny weather,
Little corner of the world my heart loves best.
1 Lyre-na-geeha means in the Gaelic a "palm of the hand full of winds." It is
the name given to a little hollow lying at the foot of the barrier-ridge of mountains
separating Counties Cork and Kerry.
PARIS AND THE WAR.
BY CHARLES BAUSSAN.
OW perhaps more than ever before, Paris deserves
our attention. The Germans did not take it, nor
will they take it. They did not need to enter; at
their mere approach, on the very day war was de-
clared, or rather on the day the government moved
to Bordeaux, a new Paris was born which bore no resemblance to
the Paris that was. The Paris that was, the Paris of before the
war, the noisy, commercial, active, and excited Paris, very many
of whose citizens lived for pleasure only, is no more. The Paris
born of the war, brought suddenly into existence at the beat of a
drum, is almost mute, and its activity is, for the most part, stilled.
Automobiles have been mobilized like common soldiers : they
are doing military service, they are at the front bearing supplies
to the combatants. In Paris one hears no longer the throbbing
of the motors or the blowing of horns; the noise of their passing
no longer echoes through the house. Few owners of autos have
returned to Paris, for almost all private cars have been requisitioned.
Those seen passing are in the employ of some department of the
intrenched forces : the commissary, aviation, or telegraphic service,
etc. and the chauffeur is a soldier. On the great boulevards one
sees conveyances resembling the old-time horse-busses that plodded
between the Madeleine and the Bastille. But these are not omni-
buses; they are excursion wagons; the small placards attached to
them read : " Twenty centimes. Will stop on request." From
time to time a tram-car or a taxi passes, or a cab, its old nag
shambling along at an uneven gait.
Formerly the streets belonged at certain hours to the news
venders. Swarming out of the rue du Croissant or the boulevards
they took possession of Paris running, crying their papers, often
with the added zest of a "special edition; third edition." This
crying of newspapers in the streets has been prohibited by General
Gallieni. The news venders have gone to the front; women and
children replace them and fill the rue du Croissant in the afternoon.
Your newspaper is sold you by some little urchin or a woman with
a baby in her arms, who addresses you in quite a conversational
768 PARIS AND THE WAR [Mar.,
tone: " La Liberte! La Presse! La Intransigeant! " The news
is brief, seldom exceeding two sheets, for there is a shortage of
paper. The cries of the street-venders are now heard again. Be-
fore the war they were swallowed up in the hubbub of traffic, the
wail of sirens and all the varied noises of the great city. In the
all but deserted streets where silence is broken by the hoofs of a
solitary cab-horse, rises the cry of the fish merchant and the carrot
vender.
Paris has grown provincial, silent, calm ! The silence and
calm increase as night comes on. Only a very few of the street
lamps are lit. The streets, the boulevards, the quays are shrouded
in semi-darkness. There are few pedestrians and no vehicles.
Across the sky great searchlights flash, patrolling the night in
search of the German taubes. At times this profound and unac-
customed quiet is broken by the dull distant boom of cannon. Now
it is the target practice; in September it was the battle of Com-
piegne. Nothing is more striking, nothing more impressive than
this silence and tranquillity. It is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of
the hour. Paris is silent! Paris is calm! War has not failed to
inflict suffering ; there is not a family without someone on the firing
line, few without dead to mourn or wounded to grieve over. Busi-
ness is practically at a standstill ; the situation is felt in every grade
of society. The people suffer from the war, but they accept it
courageously, without panic or excitement.
The Germans, who thought they knew France so well, must
find themselves utterly puzzled. The Parisian scarcely knows him-
self for the same man, so radically has he changed. Once engrossed
in the trivialities of life, he has now but one thought: the war!
Moreover those whose only aim was pleasure have fled from Paris,
and nothing has proved so health-giving and fortifying -as the
departure not of useless mouths to feed, but of inactive souls.
Now all are of one mind.
In the streets the war atmosphere prevails. At every step
soldiers and refugees meet; those who wage war and those against
whom it is waged. Military automobiles come and go in all direc-
tions. Along the sidewalks pass soldiers and officers, alone or in
groups. On Sundays the soldier in active service, the reservist, the
territorial, may be seen strolling with his family, his wife beside
him, a child clinging to his hand; soldiers of every rank and every
uniform; the aged frock coat, relic of the old French uniform,
fraternizes with the youthful short jacket of bright blue. Paris is
1915-] PARIS AND THE WAR 769
a camp, the camp of the Allies; the flat cap of the English soldier, the
polo cap of the Belgian, are seen side by side with the French kepi.
Other little groups, followed by pitying glances, wander sadly here
and there. These are the refugees from Belgium and northern
France; old workmen, thin and haggard and bareheaded women
with four or five youngsters clinging to their skirts. Their villages
were in flames yonder when they fled; they had no time to save
anything.
The very houses speak of war. The tricolor on closed shops
and there are many explains the absence of the proprietor and
his employees. Sometimes a small printed or written placard bears
some such announcement : " The proprietor and his assistants are
at the front.' 3 " Closed on account of the war." " Two sons are
with the colors." "The proprietor is now quartermaster of artillery
at Verdun." On the Boulevard Raspail a small shopkeeper has
posted the following sign : " This humble shop is left to the protec-
tion of honest people, the citizen to whom it belongs having gone
to do his duty as a Frenchman." Many shops display in their
notices the confidence shared by all : " Business will be resumed
after the victory"
From many shop fronts, from the windows of every story,
float French flags of every variety, some of them tiny enough for
children's playthings and others patched together by awkward
hands. There are flags also of the Allied Powers, of England,
Belgium, and Russia; flags, too, of friendly nations, among which
the Stars and Stripes predominate. France has lost nothing of
her traditional sympathy for the United States. Lately, she was
glad to confide to them the interests of her citizens in Turkey, and
she is grateful for all they do for herself, her wounded and those
affected by the war. The Parisian greets with affectionate glances
the stars on their blue background rippling from the front of an
auto-ambulance ; it bears to the American hospital a comrade fallen
yonder on the banks of the Aisne or the Yser.
Even the gossip of Paris for Parisians have not utterly
changed overnight even Parisian chatter finds war the only topic
of interest. Theatres and concert halls are closed. Paris has
ceased to amuse herself: how could she have the heart for it?
But she looks and listens. There is time enough and to spare for
hands that have no work to do. Street singers draw little groups
about them in the courtyards who listen devoutly to the " Mar-
seillaise," " La Brabangonne," " God Save the King," and the " Rus-
ypL. c. 49
770 PARIS AND THE WAR [Mar.,
sian National Hymn." The new patriotic songs find place among
the others : " The Child With the Wooden Gun," " The Letter from
the Trench," etc. Some linger along the streets and boulevards
looking at the post cards. They are on sale everywhere. The
picture trade, lithography, engravings, enlargements, outrival the
post card. Artists of talent, such as Rabida, Ibels Jean Veber,
who is at the front, and Radiguet, do not think it beneath them
to join in the campaign against the Germans pencil in hand.
An engraving from an illustrated periodical, demonstrates
the sentiment of the whole of France; of the France which did
not wish war, but which now is resolved upon it to a man, because
she feels its necessity, and because she desires for the future
peace. A white-haired laborer, his gun on his shoulder, carries
a child in his arms, and the little one asks him : " Grandpapa, why
do you go to war?" And he replies: "So that you, little lad,
need never go." In front of the stationers, beside the post card
stalls, in the open streets, one may buy maps of the war zone, with
sets of tiny flags to follow day by day the march of the armies.
For those who wish to purchase a new and inexpensive bauble,
there is the " four-leaf-clover of the Allies," with the colors of
France, Belgium, Russia, and England on each leaf. Ranged along
the pavement to attract little purchasers are entire armies of toy
soldiers, sets of horses, aeroplanes, and red-cross nurses. There
is the Alsatian doll with her coif or broad, black ribbon brightened
by a tricolored cockade, the same Alsatian whom one sees on post
cards trying on a pointed cap, and who flings it aside, saying:
" Decidedly, this cap is not becoming." There are other toys,
too, most popular, perhaps, cannon in all sizes.
The crowds gaze but buy little. It is no time to squander
money. They pause before shops which exhibit Prussian, Bavarian,
and Wurtemburgan caps, German shells in their basket sheaths,
bullets, bits of shrapnel, etc They pass on to the chapel
of the Invalides to view the flags taken from the enemy, and three
o'clock in the afternoon finds them thronged about the newspaper
offices which post daily the official bulletin, the three o'clock bulletin.
There they await patiently the appearance of the placard or black-
board with its bold chalked letters, visible at quite a distance.
When on the street, the Parisian has now acquired the habit
of frequently scanning the clouds. It suffices for one head to
be raised for a hundred to follow it. A taube is a matter of
interest rather than of dread. If the Germans hoped to create a
1915.] PARIS AND THE WAR 77 1
panic in Paris by killing a few women and children, they succeeded
poorly. Besides the French aviators have for some time past
policed the sky excellently well. At the outbreak of the war,
the most extravagant reports were circulated. Now a German
army corps and its general-in-chief were captured ; again, a French
army corps was utterly destroyed. Paris no longer pays heed
to these flights of imagination. Fever and perturbation have died
out. It is no small sacrifice to have news thus doled out, and to be
deprived of all details, but Paris recognizes the need for silence
and has adjusted herself.
Although the public does not enjoy the confidence of the
military staff, private news from the front feeds conversation. On
every side one hears incidents of the battlefield, of the trenches.
Too often, alas ! there is news of the death of a relative or friend,
or of the wounding of someone dear. So go where you will, by
the fireside, in the street, the one thought of Paris is the war. It
has effaced all other thoughts. It has suppressed miraculously
prejudices and political parties.
The Germans, and not without reason, must have counted on
the political disunion of France; against every expectation, even
of the French themselves, she found herself confronting a united
France solidly massed to meet her. There exists, at the present,
a fellowship so real and unaffected that strangers accost one another
in the streets; workmen and bourgeois exchange news and per-
sonal impressions of the war like old friends. All are engrossed by
one problem: to expel the invader. Not only does Paris follow
the course of events from a distance, but, by cheerfully accepting
the military discipline imposed, she joins in the actual defence.
In time of war civilians have a part to play, a post to fill. Nervous
excitement at the heart of the nation could easily demoralize the
army. The first law to observe is calm. Paris is calm. The
excitement of those first days of August when people rushed to
the stations to take train for the provinces has died out, and to-day,
and for some time past, these panics have been a subject of amuse-
ment to the Parisians. They are completely reassured, and fear
the advance of the Germans as little as they do a famine.
The population of Paris has considerably decreased. The
army has drawn a goodly number of men, and although many
families returned at the end of October, most of the wealthier
class have not reopened their homes in the Faubourg Saint Germain,
the Champs Elysees, I'Etoile, and the plaine Monceau. These
772 PARIS AND THE WAR [Mar,
absentees are not all blameworthy. To be sure some have deserted
Paris because of its dullness, its lack of theatres, its dearth of
social amusements, but by far the greater number, even of those
not at the front, have been obliged to remain in the country by
war conditions, the care of the wounded, the mobilization of their
servants or the shrinkage of their incomes.
The diminution in the population of Paris can be estimated
at one million about one-quarter of the total population. This
decrease, although unfavorable to business, especially of dealers in
luxuries, has lowered the cost of living in Paris. Provisioning
progresses under normal conditions, and if the buyers be less, the
supply of commodities is almost as great as in previous years.
As a result, food supplies, with the exception of sugar, are sold at
the usual prices; vegetables and fruit are extremely cheap, even
cheaper than last year. There was anxiety for a time with regard
to coal, but there is now no shortage, and the price has not risen.
Articles of luxury have, it is true, dropped considerably in price,
and shopkeepers announce " war prices " to tempt customers.
If, under present conditions, with several provinces still in-
vaded, with such a number of men in the ranks, with so many
channels of communication reserved for military service, it is still
impossible to interfere with commercial activity, it is safe to assume
that the normal life of the great city will continue unimpaired.
This is guaranteed, not by the presence of government officials
whom the public regard with a certain degree of skepticism, and
of whom it is inclined to say " interned," but by the general goodwill.
Each one seeks to fill some place left vacant by men at the
front. Old men, women, and children do the work of men. Pen-
sioners on the retired list have resumed active service, apprentices
have been promoted to the place of workmen. The conductors
in the subways and tram-cars are women. Above the racket of the
subway one hears them chatting of their husbands, or discussing
the price of butter as they punch the tickets of the passengers.
The work is done, and well done.
But it is not enough that life should go on as usual. Paris
is eager to work in the cause of the war; to repair as far as possible
the evils consequent upon it, to take an active part in the nation's
struggle for existence. Those who are fighting need have no anxiety
for the material welfare of their families. A daily allowance of
one franc, twenty-five centimes, is made to the wives of poor
soldiers, which amount is increased in proportion to the number of
1915.] PARIS AND THE WAR 773
children. In all quarters of the city there are supply depots. On
certain days groups of women and old men congregate about the
doors to receive the food and clothing distributed gratis. There are
soup kitchens everywhere sometimes as many as five or six to a
district and these furnish a meal for twenty centimes. Workshops
for women out of employment have been established to manufacture
warm clothing for the soldiers. In the factories and workrooms a
portion of the salary of the employees is set aside for the mobilized;
for the families of those who have laid aside their tools to take
arms.
Nor are the refugees forgotten. The municipal government
provides them with shelter ; private charity feeds and clothes them.
On Sundays and holidays it is customary to seek them out, to bring
them home and give them place at the family board. Everyone
strives to restore to them, if only for a brief moment, the lost joys
of home. But the heart of Paris goes out especially to the soldier,
the wounded soldier and the soldier in the thick of the fight. Its
prodigious activity centres around him. Ambulances and hospitals
number in the hundreds ; the large shops, the big hotels, the medical
clinics, all have their hospitals, and many private dwellings fly the
red-cross flag.
Thousands have volunteered as nurses. The three societies
of the French Red Cross the " Society of Aid to Wounded Sol-
diers," directed by the Marquis of Vogue of the French Academy,
the "Association of French Women," and the "Union of the Women
of France " were organized to insure better service to the wounded
and rival one another in energy and devotion. Everyone cannot
care for the wounded, but all can and will help the soldier in the
field. Paris stands by him to provide not food nor ammunition,
of these he has a plenty, but warm clothing so necessary to preserve
health in the chill and dampness of the trenches.
All honor and merit to the women for this work! They are
all purchasing wool. The price has gone up. A long waiting line
stands before the door of a wholesale merchant in the rue Saint
Denis. Wool, as well as salt and the Belgian cake or couque, is
peddled on the sidewalks, on the streets, on the boulevards. Knitting
for the combatants is the principal and favorite occupation of the
women. Those experienced in the use of knitting or crochet needles
ply them busily making mufflers, belts, vests, wristlets, socks, and
gloves, and the inexperienced have set themselves to learn. The
best patterns are copied and passed from hand to hand. From the
774 PARIS AND THE WAR [Mar.,
poorest, who earn with difficulty a scanty living and must steal time
from her sleep, to the little child just beginning school, all are eager
to work for the soldiers. And by thousands, under the rain of shot
and shell, the little packages journey to north and east. This is the
ammunition Paris provides against the winter.
Paris has always been patriotic, has loved the cocarde, the
clalron and the flag. The Parisian followed enthusiastically the
passing regiment, but he seldom found the way to a church. The
war has taught him the way. It, and it alone, by the grace of
God, is responsible for many a conversion.
The awakening of religious sentiment is general throughout
France, not only in the cities and the villages, but even in the army.
The newspapers publish daily on this subject items that are most
significant. The presence of priests about the standard helps on the
movement, and anticlericalism flings its rancorous taunts at the
" soldier cures," only to find they have missed the mark.
Not to go beyond Paris, the practice of religion is much more
universal ; confessions and Communions are more numerous. Even
among those who have not as yet returned to these practices, many
are drawing nearer; they are on a new tack. Hostility and indif-
ference have given place to respect and sympathy. Prayer goes up
unceasingly for France and her soldiers, both living and dead.
Devout and recollected throngs file continually in and out of the
Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre, and of the Church of
Our Lady of Victories. In every parish church Masses are cele-
brated at least once a week for France and her combatants, and
daily, afternoon or evening, the rosary and litanies are recited for
the same intention. The supplications never flag. The chapels
dedicated to St. Michael, St. Maurice, and the Blessed Jeanne d'Arc
are especially popular: the people have confided to their care the
French colors which are placed beside their statues.
This union of patriotic and religious sentiment is apparent not
only in the churches ; one meets it even in the street ; the post cards
and popular engravings reflect spontaneously the emotions of the
workman and the Parisian shopkeeper. The picture of Christ, of
Our Lady of Consolation, the prayer for the soldiers,, the prayer in
the trenches, St. Michael, Jeanne d'Arc, and a dozen others of a
character indisputably and avowedly Christian and Catholic, even
litanies for France and for the soldiers, are found side by side with
pictures of the war and the generals. No one thinks of laughing.
No one seems surprised. France is not like its government, nor is
1915.] PARIS AND THE WAR 775
Paris either. An eight days' stay, and a little observation, will be
sufficient to convince anyone of this fact.
Recently, Paris learned of the death of a young and talented
writer, M. Ernest Pischari, killed at the head of the battery of which
he was lieutenant. He was the grandson of Renan. He was a
Dominican Tertiary, and had just resolved to enter a religious order
when the war broke out. In the midst of his occupations, even in
the army, he never neglected the daily recital of his Breviary. The
book his grandfather, Renan, had flung away he picked up and used
faithfully. In the words of his own hero in The Call to Arms,
" he stood with his fathers against his father." We have here, it
would seem, a picture of France herself, the France of to-day re-
turning to her traditions, the Paris that rivets our attention, a calm
Paris, a Paris no longer frivolous, no longer skeptical, a Paris that
believes.
A new Paris? Yes: but the old one too. The sudden out-
break of war has not created a new nation, nor new spirits. It has
only recalled to their duty of defence those ancestral traits of
initiative, of intelligent courage, of endurance and patience, of com-
mon brotherhood, of discipline and confidence in God by which, in
the long ago, little by little, piece by piece, France was made. All
say : " The war will be long ;" many add : " It is going to be hard."
No one doubts ultimate victory. No one desires peace at the price
of defeat. The thought is unthinkable!
The race lives again, rejuvenated. Faith was not dead but
sleeping. It has risen, it has taken its place to lead the nation's
soul. At the call of race and faith the moral forces have mobilized.
Gaiety is of their number : it stands in the first rank and sounds the
clarion for the charge. Such an army is invincible!
LAST GIANTS.
BY JOHN AYSCOUGH.
HEN time shall have adjusted the reputations of our
English writers of the Victorian era, clipping a little
here, and, it may be, giving in some belated tribute
of conscience-money there, it will, when all is done,
remain true that the group was splendid, and numer-
ous enough to be called a crowd. The age of the last Queen Regnant
will bear, at least, comparison with that of Elizabeth or Anne.
The second Mary never reigned alone, or was in anything but name
a queen regnant at all, as indeed there was no reason why she should
have been even a queen consort : the first Mary held too brief a page,
too filled with sombre event, to leave room for literature upon it.
Some unborn champion of the Victorian age may claim for
it a literary eminence even as great as that of the age of Elizabeth :
and, if Shakespeare gives him trouble, he will urge that Shakes-
peare belongs to no age, as the Teutonic critic already refuses to
allow that he belongs to any country. As for the present new-born
era, no one in England seems about to be delivered of any immense
literary reputation; a mountain or two may have announced itself
in labor, but only mice have been, so far, brought forth. And
twelve years of the new century are nearly gone. England is,
indeed, occupied with other things than literature: and they are
noisy things, contentious, and blusterous, whose jostle is not favor-
able to the urbane affair of letters. It may be a relief, perhaps
instead of scanning the horizon for a reputation to come, to cast a
glance or two backward on those that stood over from the late reign
and century that ended so nearly together. There were three great
figures, not really belonging to this age, except by survival, but
leaning over into it, as trees may into a 'garden where they do
not grow. Of these three, two already have gone to join the great
majority: Swinburne and Meredith are here no more; Mr. Hardy
is the last of the giants.
Future generations may wonder why Swinburne was never
Laureate: for to them a great part of what he wrote will be
unknown. And they will, perhaps, conclude that it was because
he was a great poet. They will hear that Shadwell, Nahum Tate,
1915.] LAST GIANTS 777
Nicholas Rowe and Eusden, Colley Gibber and Henry Pye were
Laureates, and see no reason why Swinburne should be their suc-
cessor. Spenser, Ben Jonson, Wordsworth and Tennyson were
Laureates, but their fame almost makes it forgotten : it made no
difference to them. Samuel Daniel wore the laurels of Court Poet,
and he never had any others.
The truth is there was as much reason why Queen Victoria
should not make Swinburne Laureate as there was for Queen Anne's
refusal to make Swift a bishop. He wrote much that he should not
have written, as well as writing a great deal more that he need not
have written and that nobody wants to read. Of the former there
is no need to speak here. Of the latter we may say this, though it
does not follow that better critics will agree but it is our own
opinion that no very long poems are likely to be all poetry, and,
except among the ancients, the fact is that they are not. Shakes-
peare's plays are long, but they are not all verse: the poetry is
never lacking, but it is in a broad setting of unversed drama.
Swinburne's metrical plays are certainly not all poetry, and
they who admire him most may be as incapable of reading them as
those who frankly dislike poetry, and like Martin Tupper.
As Swinburne was largely contemporary with Browning and
Tennyson it must be his fate to be compared with them. Browning
was a thinker first, and a poet afterwards. He cared too much for
his thoughts, more perhaps than other people will continue to care
for them. Anyway, he thrust them on his poetry over-roughly, over-
copiously, so that the tightly-packed chariot of his Muse had not
always room enough for the Muse herself, who got squeezed in
corners, and overlaid by a crowd of ideas that might as well have
walked. It was hard on her, for she was large and fine, and
deserved to show alone.
Tennyson had not the same congestion of ideas, but he was
all for expounding them, even when he had not quite so much to
expound as he fancied: when he had something in particular to
say, he was apt to oversay it. Poets should mind their own business,
which is, not to say, but to sing.
Both great poets have paid their penalty. Some readers accuse
Tennyson of being shallow, because his profundity is not invariably
alarming, and of being verbose because he did sometimes write
poetry when there was no real occasion for him to write anything at
all. If Browning had often too many ideas for his words, Tenny-
son had at times too many pretty words for his pretty ideas.
77$ LAST GIANTS [Mar.,
No one accuses Browning of being shallow : but he is com-
monly accused of being incomprehensible, malignantly involved,
willfully difficult, and repulsively dry. So that many who are not
really stupid are shy of the trouble of reading Browning: whereas
Tennyson's punishment is that the stupid are ready to read him out
of a smug conviction that he is just the poet for them; and they
do not change their mind till they stumble into some of his best
work, nor necessarily then, as they are always capable of mistaking
it for his worst. Thus do these great men pay for Sordello and
The May Queen: one of which, though undeniably " hard,"
is full of great and rare beauty, while the other is only insufferably
pretty.
Swinburne had not much to teach and on purpose. There was
a lady once who declared that her politics were dislike of Mr.
Gladstone; Swinburne's philosophy and theology appear to have
been equally simple : dislike of Christianity and of Christian civiliza-
tion and ethics. But nobody cares sixpence for the poet's philos-
ophy and theology. When he preaches he ceases to sing, when he
sings he teaches in spite of himself by the sheer beauty of his song
which is witness of a beauty higher than that of any song. He
only resembles Balaam in doing what he had not meant to do. In
all that is most specially his own he is a singer and nothing else:
he opens his lips, and music, almost perfect, pours from them. It
is the melody he fills our ears with, and it is for the song he really
cares. The words are enough, and their loveliness is their real
power. They could not be translated into prose any more than the
throstle's song, or the nightingale's could be rendered in score.
Nevertheless the bird's lyric teaches, though he pour it forth " in
profuse strains of unpremeditated art," with no care at all of teach-
ing, and though we ourselves would never analyze his lesson, nor
dissect it into phrases, nor resolve it into themes. God's sublimest
messages may be without lettered speech; and he who wrote of
Wisdom knew that the circle of the stars, the sun and moon and the
great water are also among the prophets. Every teacher is not
conscious of his own teaching, or master of it; it is often deeper
than himself and stronger, with a significance he but half divines.
Yet God has sent him, as He sent Balaam.
The sea and sun, the reverent woods and blandly smiling
meadows, green and gold, storm and summer shower, have more
to tell of God than all the preachers have ever drawn from them:
thus every song that is lovely sings of Him, whatever its willful
1915-] LAST GIANTS 779
theme may be; every instalment of beauty a hint of the splendor
of His raiment; every sweet odor but some reminder of the fra-
grance of His feet.
No great poet can help being a great teacher, though he strike
no pose of instruction, and may mean none. He is a maker, and
must witness of the Maker Whose function he follows afar off.
He gems the neck of time with lovely things, and reminds us,
willy-nilly, that the First Author of Beauty made all those
things.
What Swinburne wrote amiss, and thought amiss, lies between
his own sad conscience and God : the exquisite things his mouth
uttered must teach all who have ears to learn how lovely must be
His Hand Who made it. We do not mean to say that Swinburne
has nothing but his words ; that, beyond their vocal perfection, they
voice nothing. They are never empty. No poet ever had more to
say than Dante : but one needs no knowledge of Italian to be
swayed by his glorious, sublime sonance; and, perhaps, an Italian
with little English might, had he the ear for music, be moved by
the stately rhythm of the Triumph of Time. Language is Swin-
burne's pipe, on which he plays, through the ear, to the heart of
everyone who can listen. Words are his angels, and every syllable
in his song is a feather from their wings. He gives color to sound
itself, and weaves pictures of arras out of harmony. Expression
in him is not merely a faultless knack, but an innate, inevitable
function of life, like breathing. It carries him out, on a swollen
tide, into the irresistible clean ocean of poetry, where his themes
are themselves but islets, jewels in a greater sapphire sea, where
one may land and linger, or, just as well, gaze, leaving their
gemmed beauties uninvaded. Swinburne, like Shelley and Keats,
is a poet because he cannot help himself. Some, in this sort too,
are born great, some have achieved it, and some have had it thrust
upon them. These three were born poets, had it thrust on them
by a fate that would not be gainsaid, and achieved it.
The other two giants, standing over from the last century
into this, Meredith and Hardy, no one would compare: and only
the factious would contrast. One is essentially English, though
great English writers are not always massive as Thomas Hardy is.
He takes us out of doors, where Thackeray would pull us by the
elbow upstairs (the back-stairs often) to sneer at the fine folk
in the drawing-room. Dickens was usually indoors, too, making
vis laugh delightedly, hanging about kitchens, and not always know-
780 LAST GIANTS [Mar.,
ing the difference between the kitchen and the housekeeper's room.
Not that it matters. He prefers parlors behind shops or in mean
lodgings, or debtors' prisons. He made his kingdom there and
rules it, immortally, without ministers or courtiers. Hardy never
wants to go near town-houses at all, his folk would be out of draw-
ing in them, almost as agonizing as perfect Joe Gargery in Pip's
London lodgings ; they need wide spaces, free chill airs, and broad
sombre distances, large foregrounds and deep, woodland-smelling
backgrounds.
Of what people eat and drink, he has not much to say, nor
of what they wear; the life to him is more than the meat, and the
body more than the raiment. He has no keen nose for a snob,
and is no truffle-dog of subterraneous vulgarities, or piteously dis-
guised manoeuvres. His common people are not apt to be vulgar,
nor do vulgarities find in him their censor, or their torturer. His
humor is the back-front of pathos. He is not so comic as Dickens,
nor malignantly witty like Thackeray. He is not profane with
humanity, at all events, nor flippant with it. He does not love to see
the image of God in plush, nor care to watch how it over-eats itself.
He is not a burly Pope, nor a slim Congreve. Thackeray and
Dickens can never die, supreme genius is not immortal else, but
their creatures will become monumental and archaic. Hardy's will
not, for his men and women are neither local nor temporary, but
of the eternal sort, like Shakespeare's. They owe none of their
interest to fashion, nor their oddity to the lack of it. No fool
pretends that Thackeray had not genius to portray human beings,
or that he failed to portray them : but he did not care for the most
human part of them; the adjective was more irresistible to him
than the substantive; he knew very well that the spots on a man's
face were of less significance than the man, but he loved to men-
tion them. The fake accents in a voice were made more of by
him than the voice, especially if it minced or had a brogue in it:
and he dressed mankind in its blemishes with a gusto none the less
cruel because it was inimitably successful and remorselessly in-
structive. Blemishes were not his stock-in-trade, but he dealt
largely in them: while absurdities were Dickens', and he retailed
them ad infinitum. Whether Dickens could draw real portraits
and make them interesting his critics are not agreed : it is certain
that what he liked best was caricature, and we much prefer his
caricatures to his portraits. Of course the absurdities of his folk
are irresistible, and we could never bear to be disinherited of them
1915.] LAST GIANTS 781
now: his oddities are revealed and inimitable, and people have
given over trying to imitate them.
In spite of their unapp reached mastery in their own realm,
both these giants leave us with a protest in our minds : in spite
of Thackeray and Dickens, life is not mean, nor even wholly
ridiculous.
This is no paltry attempt to belittle unequalled greatness, nor
even a silly pretense of measuring it. Hardy is no more a rival
of these two colossi than he is their imitator. Nevertheless, in his
own way, he is larger than they, though far less dazzling than either
of them. He is more humane than Thackeray commonly was, more
human than Dickens. Mankind is not the point of his joke,
nor the butt of his sneer : he is a creator, not a costumier, nor a
devilish-sharp detector of sordid motives. Nor is he a rollicking
mimic of queer tricks and habits. Above all, he is a creator,
without dependence on second thoughts or after-touches. Dickens
seldom created offhand; his people are mostly evolutions, at so
many stages a month. Out of a bibulous, semi-imbecile protoplasm
evolved the amiable, almost venerably paternal, Mr. Pickwick. Mr.
Hardy's people are as big as himself, and would be too big for
the pages of Barry Lyndon. They are not all respectable, but
even the disreputable are not apt to be despicable, or made to
seem so by the pitiless cruelty of their creator. In a sense they
are archaic, but they are less obsolete than most of Thackeray's
snobs, or even Dickens' cads. It is not for a moment pretended
that they are more amusing: though the merciless wit of parts
even of Vanity Fair draws tears from the heart of any decent
reader, and the pathos of Little Nell is enough to make a cat laugh.
Hardy is not much in pursuit either of our sobs or of our grins:
life is not so jocular, according to him, nor so sentimental and
banale as that comes to.
George Meredith is as unlike Thomas Hardy, as either of them
is unlike Dickens or Thackeray. I can never understand his being
popular: he is too amazingly clever. The word dazzling is often
used, but to Meredith it is really appropriate. His genius does
actually make the reader's eyes blink: but it never makes him un-
readable. The author of Pelhani and the author of Alroy, Coning sby
and Contarini Fleming also pushed brilliance to the dazzling point :
but they pushed it almost beyond reading point. It is not impossible
to read Lytton or Disraeli when they are most pyrotechnic, but it
ends in a surfeit. And, throughout, our common-sense is warning us
782 LAST GIANTS [Mar.,
that it is all on purpose. They are simply trying how clever they can
be : and we know it, and they know it, and we long that they should
know that we do know it. Nothing is more tedious to the reader
than a writer who is very clever on purpose, except a writer who is
very stupid without in the least intending it. In reading Meredith
we are dazzled, but never bored : his cleverness is quite amazing, but
it is not flashy nor posed. He is never cleverer than he can help : it
is nature, not malice prepense that forces him to be brilliant. That he
is so much more clever than ourselves we do not resent, for it is not
his fault; the gods made him so. We rejoice in his gift without
envying it, or dreaming of copying it. With Disraeli and Bulwer
the reader is tempted to wonder whether champagne and assiduity
could make himself equally glittering. Still it seems to me that Mere-
dith is too clever for popularity : the English public is not apt to be
widely attracted by extreme brilliance. Of course it buys him, and
of course it talks about him, but whether a very large number read
him is quite another question. Whether any large number will
go on reading him is another question again.
To read him is a delightful occupation, but it is not the easiest
form of recreation. It requires an alert attention, and a ready
admiration for sheer intellectual proficiency. He writes a good
story, but the sort of reader who tears the story out of a book, and
finishes the book in an hour or two, might as well read East Lynne
as read Evan Harrington. Meredith's stories are the least part of
him : and of some of his books a chapter at a time is enough unless
one is willing to miss half there is in it, and indifferently appreciate
the other half. He crams an essay into a sentence, and a complete
character-study into a phrase. But, though strongly concentrated,
he is never dry, as concentration is liable to seem. And he is ex-
tremely amusing, which is not an invariable feature of extreme
intellectualism. His characters are, perhaps, too amusing felix
culpa! They would not have been in real life : it is all because they
have an unmitigated genius to their father. To tell the truth, they
do not belong to real life, but to George Meredith : though they are
intensely vital, animated and active. They have, too, great va-
riety, and their family likeness is not to each other, but to their
highly gifted parent. To him the likeness is strong and invariable:
as a father he is, perhaps, too prepotent. Nor will they do anything
of their own accord, every gesture is dictated by him : they are not
only his creatures but his puppets. To every limb, as to every
tongue, of each of them is a string, and you can never fail to see
1915-] LAST GIANTS 783
Meredith pulling it. Of course, he knows how. Still it is all
exactly Meredith, and not all exactly real life. One cannot have
too much of an author when he is first-rate: if one could, there
would be too much of George Meredith in his works. This is never
felt in the case of Hardy : having created, he leaves the beings he
has created to Fate : and it deals brutally with them. His folk are
by no means a gallery filled with portraits of himself.
Meredith is too powerfully parental. He arranges even the
jokes of his numerous and singularly brilliant family. So far
from suffering fools gladly, he insists that the fools of his house
shall be uncommonly clever : and the slightest disposition to become
a bore, in any of its members, is deftly converted into a capacity
for greatly amusing the public. Even Dickens could not always
go so far : when his Arthur Clennams make up their minds to be
tedious he has no idea how to stop them.
Sir Walter, too, kind man that he was, was over easy in
this: he let Helen MacGregor and Norma of the Fitful Head
indulge their heroic propensity to splendid boring to a faulty extent.
Of course it does not matter; it is more interesting to be bored in
some company than to be made grin in some other.
In a single instance, I, for one, do resent Meredith's inter-
ference with his own characters : and it has nothing to do with their
cleverness. His Diana of the Crossways was made by him to
betray her friend's confidence : she would never have done it of
herself not the Diana he created. The explanation may possibly
be this: that there was, in real life, a Diana who did the thing:
that he was telling her story, and put it in merely because in her case
it had been done. But that does not condone the injury to his own
Diana. He had re-created her: and, having made her a finer
creature than the mere prototype, he had no business to pretend her
capable of a fault that belonged not to her but to the prototype.
The great creations of a great writer are not his absolute property
to do what he chooses with any more than a man's life is his own,
to ruin or mar according to his own whim and freak, any more
than a father has the right to bring into being a son of finer quality,
it may be, than himself, and then, by some sudden flout, twist away
the fair course of his development.
O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND.
XXV.
NGOLDESBY was met at the last stage of his ride home
by Judkin with the news that Colonel Slaughterhouse
had arrived at Ardcurragh.
"He's anxious to congratulate you, sir. He didn't
know the whole story, though he got a sketch of it at
Ennis, till I told him how you got up early and cir-
cumvented Turlough."
" The less talk about it the better," said Hugh, and he felt that
he did not want to be congratulated by Slaughterhouse on the covetous-
ness of which he would think him guilty.
He found the Colonel watching for him on the doorsteps, and was
greeted by him with loud laughter, and an unusually ardent grip of the
hand.
" Well done, Ingoldesby ! Did your trick cleverly when you kept
me out of the business you were doing for yourself ! "
" No," said Ingoldesby.
"What?"
" You know I acted by surprise to prevent the ruin of my friend
by another. I need hardly say I do not intend to take advantage of
the law to disturb the O'Loghlins."
"Hum. You tell me that? Dangerous, isn't it? What are you
going to do with the priest ? "
" Nothing."
" You leave all the nasty part of the affair to me ? Don't you
know that I can oblige you to act up to the spirit as well as the
letter of the law ? "
" If you can I know you won't," said Ingoldesby, smiling.
"You ought to take possession of your new property. Marry
that charming Miss O'Loghlin, and let all keep house together."
" She would not accept me," said Hugh, trying to speak lightly.
" Then I shall try to persuade her, myself."
" She would not listen to you," said Hugh. " She is a nun, and
her father's house is a convent to her. I intend that it shall remain
so as long as it pleases her. For that purpose I have ventured to take
an extreme step. I may be in her eyes a godless man, but I am not
an inhuman monster."
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 785
" I'm afraid you would consider me as a monster if you knew
all my views of this matter. I don't urge you to marry the girl, be-
cause I have a fancy for her myself. The old man can be provided
for in France, where aH these rebelly gentry have plenty of friends.
The rascal Turlough has been got rid of already, and his precious
aunt is getting ready to follow him, lest a hair of his head should
come to further grief. I don't know that I can suggest anything more
to help you to clear off the encumbrances on your property."
Ingoldesby's eyes showed fire.
" Look here, Slaughterhouse ! " he said, " your tone is flippant, but
I believe you are at heart an honest and honorable soldier."
Slaughterhouse gave a short laugh.
" At all events," continued Hugh. " I have placed these people
safely out of your reach. The law is hard, but it is not always
intentionally wicked in the way of working, and I intend to make just
such uses as I please of the property it has unjustly awarded me."
" Take care," said Slaughterhouse, " or you may find yourself
under suspicion, even you, some of these days, and of all things
beware of connecting yourself with the priest."
" Don't trouble about me," said Hugh ; " come in and have some
lunch. Try to believe that you are not half as bad a fellow as you
amuse yourself by pretending to be."
Later in the day Hugh went to Castle O'Loghlin, bent on the in-
terview which he felt to be necessary for reassuring Morogh, and for
the clearing of his own character in the eyes of all the family. Thady
gave him black looks as he led him to his master's library.
" You have come to look on the ruin you have made," said the
old servant's stern eyes as he threw open the door; after closing
which Thady stood outside in the attitude of listening, though he could
hear nothing.
" If it was a thing that there would be a row," he murmured, " I
would not like to be out of hearin' of the first of it. The arms on me
are strong yet, though Hugh Ingoldesby's a sight younger than Thady
Q'uin ; an' if my blood was up I wouldn't swear but I might punish him."
Morogh, writing at a table, turned his head when the visitor en-
tered, and Hugh was struck by the change already made on him by
sorrow and anxiety. But his dignity was equal to the occasion.
" How do you do, Mr. Ingoldesby ? " he said, rising and holding
out his hand.
Hugh took the hand reverently and bent over it.
" You do not look on me as an enemy ? " he said.
" No. Why should I? " said Morogh. " You acted according to
the law. I have persisted in living lawlessly, and have no one to
blame for what has happened but myself."
VOL. C.50
786 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Mar.,
" All honor to the man who bravely lives by his conscience, Mr.
O'Loghlin. I came, sir, not to apologize for my act, for my motive
needs no apology. You will believe I am sure that the claim I have
put on your property is a mere form, which will make no difference
whatever to you or yours. An unjust and irrational law has made it
easy for any non-Catholic to rob one of your religion, and without
knowing it you have lived in immediate danger of dispossession. To
avoid such a catastrophe I have assumed the hateful attitude of a
treacherous friend in order to ensure your safety. You will believe
me." Morogh looked at him piercingly.
" I will not ask you if you are in earnest in making this state-
ment," he said, " I cannot disbelieve you, though I confess I am
amazed. I have always lived on friendly if not intimate terms with
my neighbors of the county. I have not known that anyone among
them harbored a desire to injure me. By a little prudence I have
escaped too much attention even from the emissaries of persecution.
It has surprised me that such a calamity as being ruled out by the
law should have been prepared to drop down on me, and that it should
have so fallen."
Hugh was struck by something in the old man's tone even more
than his words, an under-note of inquiry a suggestion of desire to
know who the enemy might be whose plot had been defeated by the
effort of a man now before him, whom the law had made his master.
He had felt unsure of whether or not Morogh was aware of Tur-
lough's evil behavior in the matter. Now, seeing that evidently the
father knew nothing of the true source of his misfortune, he resolved
that from him he should never hear of it.
" We walk in the dark, all of us, Mr. O'Loghlin," he said. " We
are surrounded with the unknown and unguessed. Even in the full
noonday light what we see is not always what we are looking at.
All we can do is to help each other to the best of our ability my
intention towards you and to be charitably-minded towards others
which I trust is your own intention with regard to me."
" I believe in you and I trust you," said Morogh. " An hour ago
I could not have credited you with so much unselfish devotion to me and
mine, who must appear mere abject outcasts in your eyes and in the
eyes of your world. But I will ask you to believe me also, when I say
that at my age a man must take all blows as not from unkind fate, but
from the hand of God Who knows by what strokes He means to ham-
mer us best into the shape in which He intends us to leave this world.
It matters little to me after all where I may have to spend the last
years of my probation before He calls me into His presence. Nothing
is of consequence except His countenance. St. Francis says, What
a man is in the Eye of God, that he is and no more/ "
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 787
The listener was silent. For a moment Morogh seemed to have
forgotten his presence. When the rapt look passed off his face
(noted with a certain half-shame as if something sacred were in-
truded upon, by Hugh), he said gently,
" You have others to care for. You have children, Mr. O'Logh-
lin."
" They, too, have the hill to climb," said Morogh. " My daughter,
who is my chief care, will always have harbor with her aunt, or fail-
ing that, in a convent. My son "
Hugh held his breath.
" My son had little prospect here. France suits him better. He
has gone there, and I shall not allow him to misunderstand your
benevolence in protecting us."
" Well, sir," said Hugh, cheerfully, " I am glad you are assured
that no changes are to be feared because of a formality which an
unreasonable law has required. It is a law that may not always
stand. In the meantime rest satisfied that Providence does not mean
to deal you the particular blow that was threatening you, and that you
are to remain securely fixed in your home."
" Thank you. I am indeed grateful, though I have not said
enough of that."
The two men stood up and clasped hands; and then Ingoldesby
took his leave. He had hoped to catch a glimpse of Brona, but she
was nowhere to be seen, and he went on, comforting himself with the
reflection that she would soon learn the meaning of his conduct and
believe in his determination to protect her father, even if she had not
put a blind faith in him before. As he rode on he slacked his rein,
and let his thoughts drift back to the old man, Morogh, and his
courage in adversity. Not alone courage, he admitted, but a some-
thing indefinable which defied ill fortune and made capital out of des-
titution.
" Where do these Catholics get their strength to endure and not
alone that, but their absolute callousness to the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune? How and why is it that what appears folly to
me and crime to Slaughterhouse is to them illimitable wisdom? The
gate closed on them by the law opening on the other side to friends
of Asphodel basking in the smile of God ! Had I been the treacherous
friend condemned by the eyes of the old servant, who admitted me as
if I were the ancient dragon, and he a powerless Michael the Archan-
gel, if I were that traitor Brona would simply exchange her mountains
and cliffs for the walls of a convent ; her prayers would go on ascend-
ing, and the name of Hugh Ingoldesby would not be forgotten in
those prayers. She, in her youth, values this world as little as does
her father in his advancing years. With her aunt's friends and con-
788 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Mar.,
nections, and her own beauty, Paris would accept her as one of its
queens, and yet she would rather scrub convent floors, or gather
flowers to crown a statue of her heavenly Mother, than stoop to pick
up the laurels that Parisian society would throw at her feet. Aye,
and teach the little children to hate sin and bless Supreme -Goodness
in their Maker ! Why, I wonder, was I not born with this faith, that
I might have lived with her, were it only in a garret? Why, why, and
why? Life is one endless 'why' to me. But these Catholics will
have nothing of such questioning. To them all life is a path that,
however tortuous, will one day, not very distant, end in God."
He shook off his thoughts with a shake of his rein, and reached
his house feeling for the moment like his usual self, and pleased with
his morning's work for many reasons, one of which was that the
result of it would certainly make for his own future peace of mind.
XXVI.
Hugh now tried to settle down to some kind of practical living
at Ardcurragh. He must find occupation and make his existence of
use to his fellow-creatures, feeling sure that his presence as well as his
name was necessary to continue protection of Morogh, he resolved to
stay in his own place, keeping watch. Slaughterhouse was not by
nature altogether cruel, but bribes were large and temptation was
strong, and the men under his leadership were not always manage-
able. On the morning after his visit to Morogh O'Loghlin, he set
his mind to consider how best he might spend his time. A ride over
his property, with eyes open to facts, showed him that a good deal
could be done to improve the condition of the most wretched of the
poor. Hovels could be made more habitable, land more productive,
industry encouraged, and the materials for it provided or sought for.
Judkin totally disagreed with him on these points.
" What have you got to do with them, sir, but to let the heathens
die there? It's what the law and the King lays down for them.
You're Ingoldesby of Ardcurragh, but you can't be counted better than
the law and the King. Everything done to help them is flyin' in the
face of civilization and the Bible."
Ingoldesby laughed.
" How much of the much-maligned Bible did you ever know,
Judkin?"
" I learned my taxes when I was at school, sir, and I got a prize
for them, and I know a lot of them yet."
"For instance."
" You take me up a little short, sir," Judkin cleared his throat,
coughed, and ransacked his memory.
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 789
" Here it is, sir ! 'That their lands might be given up to deso-
lation, and to perpetual hissing as a burning wind will I scatter them
before the enemy.' "
"Jeremias!" said Ingoldesby."
" Who was he, sir ? I don't remember much about him, only the
name, but I know he was cursed for a heathen idolater."
" I'll buy you a new Bible, Judkin, if you will read a little more
of it."
" Well, sir, I'm not a man for books, and I didn't know you were
a gentleman to hold much by that one."
" I hold by knowing something of what I talk about," said In-
goldesby, wincing at his own words; for were they true?
Ingoldesby proceeded with his investigations and his plans, and
Judkin wondered whether he ought not to give notice to the authori-
ties that his master was either going mad or turning traitor. But
innate fidelity restrained and kept him steady. To Slaughterhouse he
would have sworn that the owner of Ardcurragh was as big a per-
secutor for the King's sake (if he had the opportunity) as any in the
country. And the curious obverse of the situation was that the
people who were getting a chance of benefit, distrusted the hand ex-
tended to them as the hand of the man who had discovered on and
grabbed from the O'Loghlin.
As the spring days lengthened Hugh thus made occupation for
them abroad, and also found it at home. A much-neglected library
engaged his attention. The books that were there and the books that
were not there caused him to wonder. He was aware that his fore-
fathers had not been bookish people, and it was with some pleasure
that he set about supplying wants and filling gaps, making out lists
to be sent to booksellers and publishers. In the midst of this work,
he was interrupted one morning by an intimation that the winter rain
had come through the roof to the ceiling of part of the attic story of
the house, and that probably slates were off, but that he had better
come up and see. He went and he saw. There was a slight drip
in the highest passage, and he gave orders at once for workmen to
be summoned from Ennis to make the necessary repairs. And then
a few words were said by one of the servants, such words as utterly
common-sounding in themselves are destined to become as keynotes
of a new strange music in a soul.
" The worst spot of all is in the Papist's room, sir."
" Where is the Papist's room ? " asked Hugh, surprised.
" Oh, sir, the Papist lady that was shut up there long ago," said
the old housekeeper who had been in the house as caretaker for many
years.
" J never heard of her," said Hugh.
790 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Mar.,
" I suppose not, sir. Miss Ingoldesby wouldn't think of telling
it to you. But she bid me leave the room just as it was, for a
curiosity. Nothing in it was worth making use of in any other part
of the house, sir."
" Who is the lady, and how did she come to be here ? " asked
Hugh.
" She was a friend of your good mother in her young days, sir ;
that was in England, and she went into one of their convents there,
and was a nun. And when the Papists were hunted and the nuns
turned out, the lady was given a hiding place here by your father and
mother, who were then young married people and were sorry for the
unfortunate."
" What became of her afterwards? " asked Hugh.
" She was got away to France, and I believe she lived the rest
of her life in one of their convents. The times were even harder on
Papists then, than they are now."
" Let me see the room," said Ingoldesby.
The housekeeper led the way down a narrow passage, and threw
open a door at the end of it, and Hugh went in. It was a small
room, under the eaves, an attic room, sparely furnished like the cell
of a nun.
" Your good mother had a great pity for her, sir, and she never
disturbed anything she left here, Papist or not, for she said there's
no harm in anybody's prayers, and that poor creature sure enough
was always praying."
Hugh was strangely affected by the story also by the knowledge
that its happening had been in his house, and that he had never heard
of it. Stranger still was the faint stirring of memory, suggesting now
that in his childhood he had caught some whisper of the tale. His
mother evidently had not cherished the absolute hatred of Papistry,
which perhaps was due in himself to the early instruction of Miss
Jacquetta Ingoldesby.
" It is very interesting," he said to the old housekeeper, and dis-
missed her. But he lingered some time longer in the room, examining
everything that was to be found in it. If he had never known Brona
there would have been little charm for him in such a place, but the
aspect of the room and the character of the woman who had lived
in it forced him to think of one he knew who was her sister in faith.
He imagined that in such a room and with such surroundings Brona
was living and praying in Castle O'Loghlin, and he felt a rush of
heart warmth towards his dead mother for her charity in harboring
the hunted soul whose only crime was her " praying," her invincible
fidelity to her own conception of God and of what He required of her.
A small bedstead, a desk table, a chair, and a few shelves were all the
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE fyi
furniture of this cell of the spirit of an anchorite. On the highest
shelf, pushed far back, out of sight, against the wall, he found a
few books in worn leather bindings, two in Latin, the others in French,
and the books being much in his mind at the moment, he gathered
them up and took them with him to the library.
" How did she happen to forget her books ? " he thought as he
wiped the dust off them and opened them. " They may now prove
an interesting addition to my store as samples of old Catholic litera-
ture."
The first he examined was a book in two small volumes, the text
crude and old-fashioned, the pages stiff and yellow. The title was
The Living Flame of Love, and the author was St. John of the Cross.
Neither the author nor his book had ever been heard of by Ingoldesby.
Who was the man? A note deciphered with difficulty told that he
was a Spanish Carmelite priest, a laborious server of God who lived
in the sixteenth century. What had he to say?
The Living Flame of Love was the title of a poem of only four
stanzas, read eagerly now by Hugh, so attractive were the mystical
words to him who knew nothing of any love that was not merely
natural to the human heart of man.
O Living Flame of Love
That woundest tenderly
My soul in its inmost depth !
As thou art no longer grievous
Perfect Thy work, if it be Thy will.
Break the web of this sweet encounter.
Hugh was startled. Was not this the human love of which he
himself had knowledge? What had the old sixteenth century priest
to do with it ? He read and re-read, " thou art no longer grievous!'
That were sweet indeed if one could take it as one's own experience.
After some pondering he passed to the second stanza.
O sweet burn!
O delicious wound!
O tender hand! O gentle touch!
Savoring of everlasting life,
And paying the whole debt.
By slaying Thou hast changed death into life.
" Everlasting life ! Death into life ! " Then it was the love-song
of a Catholic to his God and Redeemer! " Further:
O lamps of fire
In the splendor of which
The deep caverns of sense,
Dim and dark,
With unwonted brightness,
Give light and warmth together to their Beloved.
792 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Mar.,
How gently and how lovingly
Thou wakest in my bosom,
Where alone Thou secretly dwellest;
And in Thy sweet breathing
Full of grace and glory,
How tenderly Thou fillest me with Thy love.
Ingoldesby put his finger in the book to mark the place, and sat
staring at nothing, or rather at something he could not see. This
raving mysticism what did it mean? Did this strange song give the
key to the enigma of the Catholic's indifference to material goods of
this world, his absorption in things to come in the life eternal? Was
this the love that held Brona in bondage, which neither law nor loss
could break, of which human love could not ease the durance, not
effect the ransom. The words
As Thou art no longer grievous
recalled Morogh's saying that the pains and injuries and losses of life
no longer troubled him. He was traveling fast towards the great
Elsewhere, in which abode that mighty all-sufficient Love of the en-
raptured saint and poet.
Reading further into the book he found that it was all written in
explanation of this curious mystical song of the bond between earth
and heaven, time and eternity, the created heart of man and the
Being creating it. For some hours he continued this novel and strange
study, more and more amazed and enthralled by the fervor of the
writer of the little brown book, and his incredible realization of spir-
itual things beyond the ken of thoughtless man.
Examining the other volumes he found the name of St. Thomas
Aquinas and St. Augustine on the title-page. From one to another
he turned, reading a little, and assured that he must read the whole.
So the night passed like one hour, and seeing the spring dawn looking
in at the window he put the books aside, and threw open the sash
to gaze at the waking earth and the opening heavens, with a vague
unacknowledged feeling that some kind of a spiritual light was at the
dawn in his soul. A breeze lifted his hair and stirred the tree tops.
At the same moment a few clear notes of the mysterious bell hid in
the wood came on the wind and swung across his ear. Was it a warn-
ing or a summons? It sounded like an echo of the eon
O living flame of love.
He shook off his fancies and tried to call himself a fool for
dwelling on the dreams of a possible madman. But the words of the
poet, as they came back again and again, were all too wise and sweet
to savor of anything but sanity.
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 793
XXVII.
Morogh's interview with the supposed grabber of the property had
brought relief to troubled souls at Castle O'Loghlin. Morogh was un-
utterably thankful that his son was innocent of the evil threatened
by him in his sullen mood, and that heaven had sent a protector from
enemies unknown and unexpected. The others of the household who
knew exactly all that had happened were glad of Ingoldesby's silence
as to Turlough, which left the father in ignorance of the ingrate's
guilt. There was also for all the return of peace occasioned by the
absence of the restless spirit whose angry discontent had embittered
their days, and for Brona there was over and above a secret joy in the
fact that her undoubting trust in the good faith of Ingoldesby had
been justified, and that the disinterested generosity of his conduct had
been made evident to all. Before many days this peace was broken
for Aideen by her intense desire to know what had become of Tur-
lough, and she resolved to follow him to Paris.
" I know where to look for him," she said, " and I will save him
from destruction."
No one tried to prevent her. Brona knew that if anyone could
save her brother it would be Aideen, who could give him a little money
along with her good advice. And Morogh said,
" God bless your motherly solicitude, my sister. Now that he is
free from a haunting temptation it may be possible for you to in-
fluence him."
" Yes," said Aideen cheerfully ; ignoring her better knowledge,
and she went on her lonely journey with all a mother's forlorn hopes
and cruel fears pent in her adoring heart.
She had not been long gone when MacDonogh came again to
Castle O'Loghlin, returning from his recruiting visitation of the
county. He arrived one morning, blowing wrath from his nostrils,
and strode into the library where Morogh sat reading.
" So we wronged a good neighbor," he said. " Instead of putting
the saddle on the right horse! I always suspected the rascal. We
may thank heaven that Ingoldesby's wine put him under the table,
and that Ingoldesby's horse did not let the grass grow under his feet
till he landed his master in Dublin Castle yard."
Morogh's face had turned white.
" What do you mean, MacDonogh ? " he asked.
"Mean? Do you think that if Turlough had had his will you
or I would be sitting here this morning. You would have had a
Protestant O'Loghlin hunting the Papists out of his house, and handing
over the priest to be shot at the altar. That's what."
794 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Mar.,
" Cease hinting, and tell me the truth of what happened," said
Morogh controlling his trembling voice and limbs.
" I thought you knew all the particulars," said MacDonogh ;
" would be the first to hear them. You expected it long ago. Long
threatening came at last. But do you tell me that Ingoldesby took the
action on himself ? Oh, good Lord, Morogh, have I hurt you? How
could I"
Morogh had risen up, staggered and fell forward.
MacDonogh stretched him on the floor, and ran to the door
shouting for Thady.
"Oh, then the troubles has murdered him at last ! " cried Thady in
tears, and big MacDonogh sobbed like a baby as they hung over the
old man, applying restoratives. The worse was feared, but after
some time Morogh recovered from what proved to have been a dan-
gerous fainting fit, and was carried to bed, where Brona and Father
Aengus watched beside him. The doctor from Ennis, who knew the
story of the " discovery " and the cause of the illness, was sympathetic
with Brona.
" The heart is weak," he said, " and you must try to save him
from anxieties and shocks. He will recover from this attack, but
you will have him in a weaker state of health. Let him not leave this
room till the season is more advanced and the weather milder, and
cheer and amuse him as much as possible."
Brona needed no urging to careful nursing. While her father's
life was in danger, all other fears and sorrows seemed to grow shadowy
and unreal. And of earthly comfort there was none except the
genuineness of the friendship of Ingoldesby. There was a little satis-
faction in the absence of Aideen, and the feeling that if anything could
be done to save furlough from himself, Aideen was on the spot, and
was the person to do it.
As days went on Morogh gained a little return of strength, and
became more like himself. Once he spoke of furlough, and then
mentioned him no more.
" We must forgive him," he said, " and leave him to God and to
Aideen. You and I can do nothing."
Brona felt with a chill dread that the patient was turning his face
more and more away from this world, and directing it towards the
mysterious East where the sun of his hope was rising. Father Aengus
spent many an hour alone with him, while the girl took some rest or
breathed the open air, hours in which no one might hear the conversa-
tion that passed except God and the angels in waiting. Ingoldesby
learned of the illness of O'Loghlin from MacDonogh, who stopped him
on the road to pour out his thanks for the protection given to O'Logh-
lin, to confess his own mistaken judgment, and to denounce his rash-
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 795
ness in rushing a bitter truth on the man who had been saved from
such knowledge by his own household.
" I must go back to France now," he said, " and my only conso-
lation in leaving these afflicted friends is that you have taken them
under your protection."
" May I come to see Mr. O'Loghlin? Is he permitted a visitor? "
asked Hugh.
" I believe he will be glad to see you," said MacDonogh. " He has
absolute trust in you."
Hugh had many reasons for accepting the invitation to visit the
house as a friend. He wanted to see Brona. It seemed a lifetime
since he had looked on her face or heard her voice. Not since the
evening when he fled in disgust from the presence of the friar who had
talked to him like a madman on the moor, had he approached her.
He had after that sought the society of sensible persons, and tried to
forget the follies of Papists and the fatal bewitchment of the woman
he loved. He had persuaded himself that he cared for her no more,
and that he wished her to forget him. Since then he had mixed in the
society of people of common sense, talked with the worldly wise, and
listened to condemnation by good men and women of the extravagances
of Popish idolatry. Yet he had not found entire satisfaction in the
hearing of it. He had set himself to admire charming girls, whose
natural gaiety of heart was not overcast by too much thoughtfulness
or by supernatural dreams, and still his mind had persisted in swing-
ing back to Brona as the one woman to be revered and adored by
him, despite her provokingly conscientious obstinacy. Then, when he
still held long absence as the one plank to save him and her from
disaster, had come the evil movement of Turlough to throw him into
her life again by obliging him to act as her champion. He wanted to
see her now if only to assure her of his unabated friendship, to know
from her that she believed in his worthiness of trust, and to see with
his own eyes how she had borne the heavy blows that must have tor-
tured her heart. There had also been in his mind for some days past
a latent desire to tell her of his discovery of the little brown books in
the Papist's room at Ardcurragh, to know if she was familiar with
such books, and to hear her opinion of them. With a feeling that fate,
or whatever else men may call the inevitable force that drives them into
grooves or leads them by strange paths where it will, was again finger-
ing his bridle rein, he rode to pay yet one more visit to Castle
O'Loghlin.
XXVIII.
Hugh was shown into the library. The place had a deserted
look, Morogh's chair empty, books all in their places, no Utter about,
the writing table pushed aside as if no longer in use.
796 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Mar.,
" The master does be always in his own room now, sir," said
Thady, deferential and communicative to mark the change in his feel-
ings towards Ingoldesby, who on his last appearance had been received
as a traitor, but was now to be accepted as a friend.
"And Miss Brona does be always with him there, and the
Marquise has gone to France. But I will tell Miss O'Loghlin that you
are here, sir."
" What would he say if he knew the priest was with the master
this blessed minute ? " said Thady as he went up the stairs. " Friend
and all as they say he is, sure don't I know the whole of us is ia
Ingoldesby's power? To keep us where we are or to throw us out of
the windows as the humor takes him ! "
Brona met him with a simple and friendly welcome. There was
no embarrassment in her manner to remind him of other meetings
and partings. She had put all that out of mind among the dead things
that have no resurrection. The value of this man's loyalty to her
father was all that she allowed herself to realize concerning him,
when she gave him her hand and frankly thanked him for coming
to a house of sorrow and sickness.
" I wanted to hear from your own lips that you have understood
my action, and to get your promise that you will always trust me,"
said Hugh.
" We trust you. If proof of your friendship were needed, you
gave it by your screening my unhappy brother to save my father the
worst of the blow. He knows all now," said Brona.
" Is he willing to see me? If not I will come again," said Hugh,
almost hoping that he might spend all the hour of his visit alone with
Brona.
" Father Aengus is with him," she said. " I tell you frankly be-
cause I trust you for him, as for ourselves."
" As this is now supposed to be my house he is safe within its
walls, though outside of them I have no more power to protect him,"
said Hugh. " I would wish to warn him of this. I was rude to him a
few months ago when I met him on the moor."
"He will not remember it, nor will it be of any use to warn
him. Father Aengus takes heed of neither insults nor injuries, nor
of warnings. He will go on doing his duty till God has no more work
for him to do."
Hugh drew a book from his pocket.
" This," he said, " I found in a room in my house which I hear
has been known as the Papist's room."
" I have heard of the room and its story," said Brona.
" This book contains a poem which I have been poring over ever
since I found it. I want you to explain its meaning to me."
1915.] O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE 797
" St. John of the Cross ! " cried Brona in surprise.
" Do you know him ? Here are two closely-printed books in one
volume. Their titles have affected me strangely : The Dark Night of the
Soul, and The Living Flame of Love. I want to know more about
them. You can tell me."
" What can I tell you of a Saint and his teaching and his ex-
periences? If you have read his works and they have told you noth-
ing, how can I hope to explain them ? " said Brona.
" You know the poems?"
" yes."
" Do you understand them? "
" They are not difficult to understand for one who believes in a
supremely loving and lovable God. Our approach to Him may be
through a dark and dreadful night when we reach Him He is the
Living Flame of Love."
" I have gathered that in this is the pith of the Catholics'
faith," said Hugh.
A light flashed on him from Brona's eyes.
" Don't mistake me," Hugh hastened to say. " You must not sup-
pose that my interest in what I have read has been more than an intel-
lectual apprehension of the workings of a very beautiful mind. But I am
rid of my suspicion of idolatry for which I ask forgiveness of your
tolerance and patience."
" I knew you were suffering from ignorance," said Brona, " and
for all who suffer we are bound to have compassion."
" I must tell you how these poems affected me," said Hugh.
" First I was caught in the Living Flame a sudden flash of light
dazzled me. But it soon went out; and I turned to the Dark Night
which seemed more symbolic of my rayless state. ' If I have a soul
it is -truly existing in darkness/ I thought.
In a dark night
With anxious love inflamed
O happy lot!
Forth unobserved I went,
My house being now at rest
This, with the exception of the one line f O happy lot!' seemed to be
for me. Going further in the strange poem, I was soon lost in its
mysticism. Yet here and there were words that applied to me forcibly.
I could not resist their fascination. I altered and substituted words
for myself. For 'In that happy night' I read,
In that lonely night
In secret seen of none
Seeing naught myself
Without other light or guide
Save that which in my heart was burning.
798 O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE [Mar.,
" What it means I know not, but something of a strange light
has been burning in my heart ever since. I return to the poem again
and again, uncertain whether to take John of the Cross as a mystic
poet, or as one inspired what you call a saint."
" I have no such uncertainty," said Brona smiling, " but that does
not affect you. I can only advise you to read further and ponder more
deeply."
" I want help. Another mind to show me the way and to point
out meanings that I fail to see."
" You have only to read the poems," said Brona. " The books
were written to explain their meaning. If you need more light upon
them Father Aengus "
Hugh shrank from the thought of seeking aid from the priest he
had scorned. Brona saw it.
" I will not urge you into danger," she said. ' This fancy of
yours may not be more than just a fancy. You may have already
endangered yourself by your sympathy with us. Even these books
in your house, in your hands, may do you harm. Leave them with
me. I will keep them in a safe place with other books of the kind
in the priest's cell."
" No," said Hugh, " I will keep them and study them as you
bid me."
And then the door opened, and Thady announced that the master
was ready to receive Mr. Ingoldesby. Hugh returned the book to his
pocket, and they went together to Morogh's room.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
"MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS."
BY DUDLEY G. WOOTEN.
[The writer of the following article is particularly well qualified for his
task. He practised law in Texas for over twenty years; was judge; repre-
sentative to Congress from Dallas; President of the Texas State Historical
Association, and is author of A Comprehensive History of Texas and The Land
System of Mexico and Texas. He has spent much time and traveled extensively
in Mexico, and is one of the few Americans who have been admitted to practise
in the high courts of that country. We may add that Mr. Wooten is not a
Catholic. ED. C. W.]
S the second year of President Wilson's administration
draws to a close, conditions in Mexico seem to render
more doubtful and difficult the ultimate execution of
the " policy " towards that country foreshadowed in
the early part of his term of office. That policy has
been popularly designated in the President's own words, as one
of " watchful waiting," but that expression was descriptive of his
mental attitude towards the situation at the time he used it, rather
than definitive of the policy itself. Clearly, it was contemplated
that the vigilant patience of this Government would be rewarded
by the happening of a contingency in which it would be possible
and advisable to carry into effect a decisive and influential plan
of action by the United States; else our position would not be
different from that of any other interested nation beholding with
natural solicitude the spectacle of Mexican disorders.
Perhaps the nearest approach to a statement of the President's
purpose is contained in his address in New York, on the occasion
of the bringing home of the bodies of the American marines killed
at Vera Cruz, in these words : "We have gone down to Mexico to
serve mankind, if we can find the way. We do not want to fight
the Mexicans; we want to serve the Mexicans if we can, because
we know how we would like to be freed and served, if there were
friends standing by ready to serve us."
It will be observed that this presupposes that there is sufficient
similarity in the character and conditions of the people and institu-
tions of the two countries to render the task of " freeing and
serving " them practically the same. In what purported to be an
authentic interview with Mr. Wilson by Mr. Blythe, published in the
Saturday Evening Post, there was given an outline of the methods
8oo "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar.,
he had in mind for carrying out his benevolent purpose in the sister
Republic. Summarized, those methods contemplated that our Gov-
ernment should seek to establish in Mexico a constitutional govern-
ment founded upon lawful and orderly authority, and having its
sanctions in the free will of the Mexican people ; the reorganization
of Mexican political, social, and economic institutions so as to secure
equality, justice, liberty, and peaceful prosperity for the masses
of the people; and the rehabilitation and pacification of the country,
so as to afford the opportunity for this regeneration of Mexican
affairs to accomplish the end in view. These objects include prac-
tically all the ends that any civilized government seeks to attain,
and our enterprise, therefore, involved nothing less than the estab-
lishment and maintenance in a foreign land of institutions as nearly
like our own in form and effect as possible; with, however, it was
intimated, some improvements and ameliorations not yet susceptible
of adoption even in the United States, such as the destruction of
land monopoly and a distribution and regulation of land-holdings
after the communal and socialistic system of New Zealand.
It never has been made plain just how our Government is to
perform this extraordinary service for our neighbor, but it is clear
to most men's minds that the successful execution of such a plan
of reformation must perforce depend upon the adequate cooperation
and sympathetic response of the people to be benefited thereby.
The forcible imposition of the plan by extraneous compulsion would
be the height of despotic domination over another nation, a thing
of course incompatible with the philanthropic nature of the service.
It is not now apparent whether this policy has been abandoned as
impracticable in itself, or has been merely suspended to await further
developments in Mexico; but for the present at least it remains
in abeyance.
The argument in favor of this movement usually proceeds upon
one or the other of two premises : either that, in the course of time
and by the operation of adverse influences and unjust methods, the
masses of Mexico have been deprived of their ancient freedom and
equality of citizenship, which we can and ought to aid them to restore
and protect; or that, in the process of national evolution, the
Mexican population has reached a stage of aspiration and capacity
for self-government and popular institutions in which they would
realize their own destiny for liberty and safety, but for the inter-
position of malign agencies which it is incumbent upon us to help
them remove.
1915-] "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" 801
Those who have known Mexico longest and best, and who are
sincerely attached to her welfare and earnestly solicitous for her
advancement, firmly believe that both of the foregoing premises are
historically and fundamentally false, and that any fabric of theor-
etical humanitarianism constructed upon them, or either of them, is
an unsubstantial dream of impossible achievement, destined to dis-
aster and disappointment.
They base this belief upon the history of the Mexican nation
during its existence as such, and upon the known character, capacity,
and inherited traits of its people as demonstrated by their past devel-
opment and present constitution. They find support for it in the
wisest conclusions of political philosophy and practical statesman-
ship. More than ten years ago, in one of his carefully composed
political essays, Woodrow Wilson used the following language,
exactly and peculiarly applicable to the situation in Mexico to-day-:
" Such government as ours is a form of conduct, and its only stable
foundation is character. A particular form of government may no
more be adopted than a particular type of character may be adopted ;
both institutions and character must be developed by conscious effort
and through transmitted aptitudes Monarchies may be made,
but democracies must grow."
It has been ninety-three years since Mexico gained her inde-
pendence from Spain. Throughout this period her experience has
been one of almost incessant civil commotion, political revolution and
internecine warfare. The longest space of peace and apparent
stability of government was that of the rule of Porfirio Diaz, who
was continuously President from 1884 to 1911. During the more
than half a century prior to his election, in 1884, only two men
can be said to have come into the office of President without a violent
struggle, accompanied by the disorders, tumult and often bloody
conflict characteristic of revolutions in the Latin- American coun-
tries. The election of Juarez in 1861 was comparatively a peaceful
one, but it had been preceded by his long struggle against Comon-
fort, Zuloaga, and Miramon, extending from 1856. His succeeding
administration, to 1867, was consumed in the war of the French
invasion and the overthrow of Maximilian, and his reelection in
the last-named year was the signal for repeated revolts and con-
tinuous insurrection. His last election in 1871 was attended with
such indications of waning strength and loss of popularity as to
foreshadow serious uprisings, had not his sudden death the follow-
ing year cut short the impending strife. His successor, Lerdo de
VOL. c. 51
802 "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar.,
Tejada, became President without open opposition, although Diaz
threatened an outbreak, and when he was reflected or claimed to
be in 1876, the warrior of Oajaca did lead the revolt that drove
him from the country and put the latter at the head of the govern-
ment. At the close of Diaz's first term in 1880, his Secretary of
State, Manuel Gonzales, came in quietly, and ruled peaceably during
his four years. With the exception, then, of Gonzales and the
dubious case of Lerdo, all the other Presidents of Mexico, including
Diaz himself, came into office or went out usually both as the
result of intrigue, treachery, turbulence and civil war.
A morbid course of national development so persistent and of
such duration must have its genesis in causes and conditions that
are fundamental and more or less permanent; which is easily
demonstrable by a slight review of the record.
Spain's method of conquest and colonization was borrowed
from Rome, and she had learned the lesson well in the days of her
own bondage. It was the method of subjugation, annexation and
enslavement, not of assimilation, absorption, and emancipation.
To the original features of the Roman method, Spain added
the complications and corruptions of feudalism, with a curious mix-
ture of civil, military, and ecclesiastical authority that afforded
amazing temptations and opportunities for tyranny and cruelty, and
for unlimited graft, venality, and official malfeasance. The impress
of this debasing system rests upon the institutions and official rela-
tions of Spanish America to this day. Mexico's political and
social inheritance is in fact a dual one native and imported, and its
ineradicable taint is stamped on the character of the Mexican people,
constituting those " transmitted aptitudes " which underlie and must
control the capacity of the nation for such governmental reforms as
are sought to be effected from the outside. The influences that have
retarded her prosperity and distorted her nationality are prenatal
and congenital hereditary in the composition of the population and
organic in the constitution of Mexican society.
It must be remembered that before the Spaniard came to
Mexico there existed the rudiments of the fundamental vice of her
institutions, which he perpetuated and aggravated by a more elabor-
ate system of caste and privilege based upon the autocracy of the
Spanish crown and the oppressive oligarchy of the Spanish nobility.
The Aztec empire itself was a despotism, bottomed on conquest,
supported by the military supremacy of the ruling class, strengthened
by a powerful religious hierarchy, and but lately regarded as an
1915.] "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" 803
alien domination by the masses of the native inhabitants. The
aristocracy that surrounded the dynasty which Cortez overthrew,
was just as haughty and every whit as much detested as the Gachu-
pins of the later Spanish viceroyalty.
Under both the old and the new order of things there were
and could be but two classes in the community the small minority
of titled and wealthy over-lords, and the great body of the common
people subject to them. The majority of the latter were a peaceful
peasantry, docile, semi-civilized, skilled in many branches of in-
dustry, and pursuing for the most part the avocations of stable
and orderly residence on the soil wholly unlike the savage hunters
and nomadic nations met with by the colonists in the more northern
portions of the continent. They furnished the productive energies
of the country, both before and after the Spanish invasion, as
agricultural laborers, toilers in the mines, herders on the ranches,
" men of burden " in the transportation of internal traffic, workers
in the various crafts, petty tradesmen, domestic servants, menials
and dependents of the rich; but always practically peons, in a
position of bondage to the ruling nobles, the landowners and privi-
leged holders of governmental concessions. That \vas the situation
at the time of the Conquest ; it had not essentially altered at the time
of the Mexican Revolution of 1821, and for all practical purposes
it remains the same to-day. We measure progress by decades,
forgetting that in a land like Mexico, and among a people like those
who constitute the body of her population, centuries make little or
no change towards substantial advancement, especially under a
system of social and political institutions as old almost as the country
itself. It is the difference between " fifty years of Europe " and
" a cycle of Cathay." True, the grosser forms of the old Spanish
tyranny have disappeared, and there is a measurable approximation
to modern methods of life and thought, but the great inert mass
of the natives is as yet untouched by the spirit of progress or the
" conscious effort " for real freedom and social justice.
Outside the domesticated class above described, there has always
been a smaller one, consisting of the unreduced Indians, semi-savage
tribes living in the mountains and remote regions, hating the invader
by whatever name known, never submissive to Aztec or Spaniard,
royalist or republican, ready for revolution, rapine and revenge
under any formidable uprising by a warlike leader. There is not
and never has been a middle class. Those whom visitors to the
country are apt to consider such are a detached and negligible factor
804 "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar.,
in the vital forces of the national life, not the sturdy, capable,
homogeneous, self-respecting citizenship that makes the foundation
for a self-governing commonwealth.
The agrarian problem, which assumes such large importance
in the view of those who seek to manage and remake Mexico, is
indeed a basic difficulty in all movements for reform, as it always
must be in countries where the distribution and holdings of real
estate have their origin in feudal tenures and monopolistic control.
The Mexican land question, like every other issue presented by the
actual situation in that country, cannot be dealt with out of hand
or upon altruistic principles. It has its roots in fundamental facts
that cannot be ignored with dogmatic dictation or wiped away by
the vagaries of socialism.
The explorers and conquerers of Spanish America made their
expeditions at their own risk and expense, under a compact with
the Spanish crown that they should be permitted to partition the
lands among themselves, and reduce the native inhabitants to a
state of vassalage, the sovereignty of the soil remaining of course
in the king of Spain, to whom they must render due allegiance,
and pay a liberal royalty for their holdings and privileges. Under
this agreement the valuable lands, mines and other sources of wealth
and revenue were divided among the military chiefs and Spanish
nobles who occupied Mexico in the sixteenth century. The native
laborers went with the land by a system of predial slavery that
imposed untold privation and oppression upon the Indian population.
That was the odious method of the repartimientos and encomiendas,
the most injurious influence in the Spanish colonization scheme. It
fitted well into the preexisting Aztec ownership of the soil and of
native labor, but it was infinitely more cruel and exacting, because
enforced by an alien race of arrogant invaders. Although modified
and relaxed under the later viceroys, and theoretically abolished
under republican rule, the essential features and inevitable results
of the system are embedded in the present prevailing organization of
landlordism and land monopoly in the hands of the few. Bad and
indefensible as the condition may be, it is the basis on which rests
the whole fabric of Mexican civilization, and to destroy it by whole-
sale confiscation and compulsory distribution of the land among an
indolent, incapable, and servile race of ignorant Indians such as the
great majority of Mexicans are albeit they were made so by this
very system would be a stupendous mistake, rising almost to the
gravity of a crime against Mexico. It would produce a disorder
1915-] "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" 805
approaching anarchy, it would degrade and deprive of usefulness the
only class in the country that has any qualification for government,
and if accomplished by the external pressure of the United States, it
would engender an implacable hostility that must paralyze all our
efforts and embitter the relations of the two countries for an
indefinite period.
Immediately following the voyages of Columbus, the Papacy,
through Alexander VI. and Julius II., divided the lately-discovered
and afterwards acquired territories of the world by a " line of de-
marcation " running around the globe from north to south, three
hundred and sixty leagues west of the Cape de Verde Islands,
and granted to Spain the right of royal patronage in Church affairs
in all lands lying west of that line, and to Portugal the same power
east of that line. The effects of this arrangement were more far-
reaching than could have been anticipated, for their influence has
shadowed and shaped both the political and the religious develop-
ment of Spanish America throughout every succeeding age. This
plenary power of patronage on the part of the government over the
institutions of the Church placed the entire machinery of the latter's
organization and extension in the hands of the temporal authorities.
The eminent Jesuit scholar, Camillus Crivelli, who is Professor of
History in the " Institute Cientifico," at Mexico City, says : " It is
hardly possible to conceive a more absolute system of control than
that exercised by the kings of Spain, whether in person or through
the Council of the Indies and the viceroys and governors, in all the
ecclesiastical affairs of the Indies."
This was not merely a union of Church and State it was
almost a complete absorption of the Church by the State, so far
as the external agencies and activities of the former were involved.
It was an alliance not altogether compatible with the historic attitude
of the Catholic Church in reference to the relations beween secular
and ecclesiastical powers, and it necessarily contained potentialities
and possibilities for both good and evil consequences. It was im-
possible for the Church to execute her mission of evangelization
and education among the natives of the new country without the
support and protection of Spain's armed forces, and she could not
properly establish and maintain her many institutions of religious,
charitable and educational enterprise without the bounty and benev-
olence of the Spanish government. She received and enjoyed both
of these aids in the fullest and freest liberality, and to them she owed
her marvelous growth and enduring influence in the provinces of
806 "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar.,
the New World; but at the same time she incurred more or less
responsibility, directly or indirectly, for the abuses and corruptions
of the temporal authorities. Being herself a Spanish institution in
the estimation of the conquered races, she fell heir to all the odium
and racial hatreds that finally overthrew Spain's supremacy in her
American colonies and clamored for the destruction of everything
tangible that represented the domination of the alien invader. In
spite of the fact that the Spanish rulers of America in the main
administered their functions in an able, faithful, and benevolent
manner, considering the temper of the times, the prevailing stand-
ards of morality and government and the inherent difficulties of
their task, there was ample room for abuse and corruption,
and the opportunities and temptations of the situation were
not lost among the men who came across the seas, many of
them from none too exalted motives. Catholicism, as a part of
the system of Spanish colonization, inevitably suffered from what-
ever penalties befell the conquerors in their final account with
the conquered, and, once aroused in the bosoms of radical revolu-
tionaries, the spirit of proscription and persecution has pursued the
Church with increasing malevolence, because her dominion is
founded in the hearts and hopes of the people, and cannot be over-
thrown and banished by any mere political transformation.
Nearly all of these people are Catholics ignorant and groping
it may be in their perceptions of the Faith, willful and passionate
in their sins against morality and good order, children in the ways
of self-control and intelligent initiative but fundamentally devo-
tional by natural disposition, and firmly fixed in their loyalty to
the. simple truths of Catholic Christianity. No one who has known
the Mexicans in the intimate relations of their domestic life, in
their daily round of toil and temptation, in the gentle offices of
home and the tender consolations of religious intercourse, but has
been profoundly impressed with the almost miraculous hold that
Catholicism has upon the minds and hearts of the common people of
that country. Scoffers at religion and enemies of the Church have
spared no pains to prove by their superficial writings and sophistical
arguments that the masses of Mexico are Catholics only in name,
and that, in so far as the Faith of the Church is professed and prac-
tised by them, it is merely an idolatrous substitute for the ancient
religion of the Aztecs; but the facts of the actual situation give
emphatic disproof of these prejudiced views of non-Catholic critics.
It is true that among the ruling class, among the educated leaders
1915-] "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS'' 807
of revolutionary sentiment in Mexico, there is a widespread and
desolating spirit of rationalism, infidelity and inconoclastic Modern-
ism the same spirit that has destroyed the religious integrity of
Spain and Italy, and made France a decadent and discredited nation
of intellectual degenerates. But this is not true of that great body of
the Mexican population, whose ultimate welfare and freedom should
be the prime objects of all movements in that Republic. With this
preponderating element the Church is, and for three hundred years
has been, the only stable, uniform and universal source of moral,
educational and racial unity and strength. She furnishes the only
means for solidifying, elevating and guiding the aspirations and
capacities of the great majority of the Mexican people. There is no
other tangible or influential basis of appeal and incentive in the
Mexican bosom. Catholicism is the only religious power in the
country, and thereby the only avenue of reaching and regulating
the immature and often lawless impulses of the population. Prot-
estantism is a negligible factor in the composition of moral forces,
for there are less than one hundred churches of all the sects whose
missionary efforts have been so strenuous and stentorious, while
there are nearly fifteen thousand Catholic congregations. Most
of the adherents of the non-Catholic organizations have been drawn
into the movement by the national habit of mendicancy, and are
held to their conversion by the impelling attraction of " the loaves
and fishes."
The existence of the above-mentioned religious conditions in
Mexico, renders it nothing less than a calamity that the laws of the
land and the temper of the dominant factions during the last sixty
years, have practically outlawed Catholicism and paralyzed the
usefulness and mission of the Church. By the same strange process
of development that has obtained in many of the European countries,
the movement for popular freedom and republican institutions in the
southern Republic latterly has been identified with and controlled
by the radical leaders of rationalism, materialism, and infidelity,
and logically it has set its face with bitter antagonism against the
conservative doctrines and popular influence of the Church. The
result has been that, in the revolutionary tumult and incessant dis-
cord that have attended Mexican progress for many years, and that
are now flagrant in that country, the steadying, salutary, and uni-
versal moral restraint that was to be found alone in the influence of
Catholicism has been lost to the people, and has been actually pro-
hibited from performing its proper functions in securing peace,
8o8 "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar.,
stability, and ordered freedom. Mexico owes all she possesses of
civilized institutions and humane culture to the Church. She even
owes her independence and nationality as a Republic to the spirit
of Catholic freedom, and to the courage and constancy of the sons
of Mother Church.
As the years went by, the burden of Spanish rule bore ever
heavier upon the enslaved races of New Spain, and nobody knew
their sufferings and wrongs so well as the Catholic clergy, who
mingled in their daily tasks and heard their tales of woe in the
confidences of the cloister and the confessional. The noblest rep-
resentatives of the hierarchy had long realized the degrading effects
of the alliance between the government and the Church, and their
fidelity to Catholic principles seconded their sympathy for the
natives. Hence the first leaders of the revolt against Spain came
from the bosom of the Church. They braved many terrors, they
risked the payment of the full penalty of treason, in order to emanci-
pate the masses of Mexico from their age-long bondage. Hidalgo,
the patriot of 1810, who first raised the standard of independence,
was a village priest of Dolores. When he was shot at Chihuahua in
the following year, Morelos and Matamoros, both of them priests,
took up the struggle, and when they too suffered the same fate,
Negrete and Bravo, likewise priests, carried forward the great
movement, until in 1821 the last viceroy was driven from the coun-
try, and in 1824 republican Mexico joined the family of nations.
So it may be truthfully said that the cause of popular freedom and
constitutional government in Mexico had its birth in the Catholic
Church, and was baptized in the blood of Catholic heroes. But
the growth of radicalism in the ensuing years has obscured that
fact, and since 1857 the organic laws of the Republic have ostracized
the Church, confiscated her property, forbidden her rites, degraded
her clergy, desecrated her shrines and destroyed all of her agencies
and influences for promoting the good of the people and the peace
of the country. These things were not done by the Mexican people,
but by the small coterie of self -constituted revolutionary chiefs
who have made their will the law of the land and their personal
ambitions the curse of the nation. Every existing law against the
Church is the arbitrary decree of some president or council for the
time being holding supreme power ; but in the end it may be expected
that the ancient moral forces and religious impress of Catholicism
will be restored, not by a union of Church and State, but by the
proper course of that republican freedom and toleration which is at
once the glory and safety of this Republic.
1915. ] "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" 809
The nameless crimes and incredible cruelties against the priests
and nuns of Mexico by the so-called " Constitutionalists " in the
present revolution, and the needless destruction of Church property
and institutions by the brigands who pose as patriots, are the joint
product of savagery and socialism, encouraged in no small degree
by radical revolutionaries from this country, and countenanced to a
considerable extent by the frenzied bigotry of American " mis-
sionaries," who for years have preached proscription and persecution
against Mexican Catholicism. If this Government feels such a
responsibility for the destiny and welfare of Mexico as to warrant
the assumption of a disciplinary tutelage over her domestic affairs,
it is difficult to understand how it can negative its duty towards the
Church that represents a vast majoriy of the Mexican people, and
practically all of their civilization.
A mistake that colors with error all of the deductions based
thereon is, that the Mexican Revolution of 1821 was prompted by
the same motives and achieved like results as our own Revolution of
1776. The struggle of the Mexicans to secure separation and inde-
pendence from Spain, was not due primarily or mainly to any wide-
spread desire for local self-government, nor to any invincible devo-
tion to inherited standards of liberty and justice. Its efficient causes
were inherent in the methods of the vice-regal government, and in
the changes which were taking place in Old Spain at that time,
none of which touched very nearly or necessarily the masses of the
Mexican people. The most potent and immediate cause was the
loss of loyalty among the Mexican royalists, due to the French
invasion and usurpation, followed in 1820 by the deposition of
Ferdinand from the Spanish throne. Those events weakened the
confidence and affection of the ruling class in Mexico towards the
mother country. Then the Spanish Creoles the pure-blooded de-
scendants of the conquistador es, born in the country had long re-
sented the discrimination by which they were forbidden to hold any
office of power or emolument under the viceroyalty of New Spain.
To them were added the half-caste offspring of intermarriages
between Spaniards and natives, who felt the humiliating bar of their
mixed birth, and were completely disfranchised under the Spanish
dominion. The Church, for the reasons before explained, was
ready for revolt, and her missionaries were rendered disloyal by the
recent secularization of the missions, that is, the withdrawal of
State aid and protection. But the cry of " Mexico for the Mexi-
cans," raised at that time and so often repeated in subsequent revo-
lutions, was a racial watchword and call to arms, not inspired by any
8io "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar,
sense of popular sovereignty or any conscious effort for freedom
and self-government. It was the outcry of a proscribed and en-
slaved race against the foreign invader, the same as any people under
like circumstances would voice and vindicate by desperate resistance.
The spirit of hatred and rebellion against the Spaniards and against
alien domination in general, is the strongest passion in the Mexican
bosom, and it culminated in the outbreak under Hidalgo, although
it required another decade of continual warfare to accomplish its
purpose. If it had depended for success upon the masses of the
population it never would have triumphed. During that struggle
the poorer classes of the natives, when called to the test of battle,
did indeed fight with a desperate fanaticism and courage that were
as pathetic as they were admirable; for, then as ever since, they
simply served the purposes of their hereditary masters and oppres-
sors, who took advantage of the race prejudice and rebellious hatred
of the common people to throw off the yoke of Spain, merely to
substitute for it the turbulent and lawless reign of a pseudo-repub-
licanism in which the same tyranny of caste, class, and privilege
would hold supreme place.
The leader of the final campaign for freedom was himself a
royalist of the most pronounced type, but lately the captain of
an army against the patriots. As soon as he had procured the
recognition of Mexican independence and expelled the last viceroy,
Iturbide proceeded to carry out his political platform as embodied
in the Plan of Iguala. This contemplated a constitutional mon-
archy, the throne to be offered to the royal princes of Spain, or,
in default of their acceptance, to some other European prince.
This proposition demonstrated how little the Revolution had meant
as a step towards free republican government or national sover-
eignty. The very evil for the destruction of which it had been
waged since 1810 was to rid the country of foreign domination, and
this plan to put a Spanish sovereign on the throne of Mexico evinced
the visionary and superficial conception of real independence that
obtained in the minds of the men who were at the head of affairs.
The suggestion of a monarchy, however, was not so unwise, if
limited by constitutional safeguards and guarantees. Thomas
Jefferson, whose radical democracy and hostility to most things
British have never been doubted, advised the revolutionary leaders
in France to adopt for that country a constitutional monarchy after
the English model ; for the reason, as he stated, that such a form
of government was better suited to the character and inherited
temper of the French people.
I 9 i5-] ''MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" 8.11
But no Spanish prince could be induced to accept the perilous
post at the head of the new nation, and in the confusion of con-
flicting factions Iturbide declared himself Emperor of Mexico,
with substantially the Constitution outlined in his " plan." A
republican revolt broke out under the leadership of Santa Anna,
who for the first time appeared in the drama of Mexican revolutions,
to retire only after fifty years of varied and vicious activity. Itur-
bide was forced to abdicate within ten months, was outlawed and
exiled, and returning the next year was summarily shot. A republic
was formed with Guadalupe Victoria as its first President, and the
Federal Constitution of 1824 was framed and adopted, drawn as
to its broad features after that of the United States, but otherwise
containing incongruous and arbitrary provisions wholly at variance
with American principles and methods of government. It professed
to establish a government " the form of republican representative,
popular federal," whatever that mysterious combination of attributes
may imply.
Almost immediately there ensued that state of disorder, violence
and capricious misrule that has continued with more or less con-
stancy ever since. The annals of the Republic for the next sixty
years furnish only a calendar of calamity and strife. During those
years more than fifty different persons exercised or attempted to
assert the supreme executive authority, invariably by revolution and
arbitrary acts. There were two emperors, both of whom were shot.
Curious students have calculated that there occurred more than
three hundred plans, proniinciamentos, and tentative experiments
for reforming and liberalizing the institutions of the country. No
president, during all of this record of political and military tumult,
paid the slightest respect or obedience to the Constitution and laws
of the land. The Constitutions of 1824 and 1857 have both been
suspended many times and for long periods. In 1835 Santa Anna
abrogated the Constitution entirely, and changed the form of the
government from a federal republic to a centralized nation, with
himself as supreme despot. It is entirely accurate to say that the
constitutional government of Mexico is and always has been just
what the ruling class want it to be, through the man or the faction
in power at any given time. An examination of the two instruments
that have been in force since independence will excite the enthusiasm
of the student of political institutions for their exceeding exactitude
and apparent wisdom and justice; but a closer scrutiny will disclose
that the whole fabric may be dissolved by the arbitrary act of the
president, or set aside by autocratic decree embodying changes that
812 "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar.,
become part of the organic law by force of executive proclamation.
This peculiar vice in Mexican political methods is the historical and
logical sequence of the legal and governmental system that has pre-
vailed from the days of the Spanish colonial system.
When the Spaniards destroyed the native civilization of the
Aztecs, they wiped away all the laws and agencies of civil and
political rule in that country, substituting no legislative authority
in their stead. On the contrary, New Spain was governed solely by
the arbitrary, occasional and separate decrees, orders in council,
and royal regulations issued by the Spanish monarch, supplemented
oftentimes by the more unjust and unequal edicts of the local
authorities in Mexico. The government for the colonies was thus
a system of executive rules and irresponsible orders framed to meet
special instances, and to confer individual rights and privileges.
The Recopiladon will no doubt command the admiration of the
legal student for its wonderful minuteness of definition, and its
ostensible justice and equality of rights and remedies. He will
perhaps conclude, as is generally done, that it is a code of Spanish
laws applicable to the New World. As a matter of fact, it is merely
a compilation of the " Laws of the Indies," which were made up of
royal decrees, orders of the Council, special rules for special cases,
and arbitrary regulations for given controversies, ordained from
time to time during the administration of affairs in Spanish Amer-
ica; and it was not published until the latter part of the seventeenth
century, too late to be of service as a general code of laws for the
country. Except for the Roman or Civil Law, which is the basis
of Mexican substantive law, but is a sealed book to all but lawyers
and the learned, there never has been known to the Mexican people
of any class a body of common or statute law, or a system of organic
principles and precepts, such as constitute the heritage and safe-
guards of the English and American commonwealths.
Trained in this school of arbitrary and artificial jurisprudence,
if it may be called such, the result is that the sense of law, as that
term is used and understood among English-speaking peoples,
meaning a uniform, universal, and stable rule of conduct applicable
with equal force and exact justice to all who are subject to the
authority enacting it, never had and has now no adequate or intel-
ligent lodgment in the Mexican mind.
The best test of a nation's character and rank as a self -ruling
constituency is the quality of its public men. Mexico has always
had many men of distinguished ability, accomplished culture and
abundant skill in the art rather than the science of government.
IQIS-] "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" 813
In diplomacy they are peculiarly adept and agile, but their concep-
tions of political principles and constitutional methods are highly
technical and artificial, essentially mediaeval, and fundamentally
undemocratic. There have been in republican Mexico four domin-
ating personalities : Santa Anna, Comonfort, Juarez, and Diaz.
The first of these was a very remarkable character. He was the
evil genius of the independent government in its inception, and his
influence, always bad, did much to defeat the possible success of
the Republic by destroying public confidence in its practical merits.
He was a military adventurer, audacious, resourceful, not without
talent as a strategist and commander, but withal a physical and
moral coward, cruel, crafty, and infinitely ambitious. In spite of
repeated reverses and expulsions from the country, he was able to
retain a strong prestige and a strange hold upon the popular im-
agination, and he Was recalled by his countrymen at every critical
emergency. He led eleven revolutionary movements, was President
three times, dictator by his own usurpation as often, suspended and
abrogated the Constitution on four several occasions, and finally
died in poverty and obscurity just fifty-two years after he overthrew
Iturbide, and established the Republic against which his whole life
was a discreditable warfare.
Ignacio Comonfort and Benito Juarez were of a wholly differ-
ent type. Like Santa Anna, they were both military men, as indeed
all successful rulers in Mexico have been; but they were also
patriots, statesmen, and jurists. They had both been Chief Justices
of the Supreme Court, learned in the laws of their own land and in
the jurisprudence of continental Europe, but despite this conser-
vative training they were radical reformers, and when they came to
the presidency, as contemptuous of constitutional restraints and the
principles of free institutions as ever Santa Anna had been in
his maddest defiance of liberty and law.
They were at first friends and coadjutors. Together they
framed the Constitution of 1857, but later they quarrelled over
the presidency, and Juarez spent six years in a savage war to over-
throw Comonfort and his successors, Zuloaga and Miramon. Both
of them did not hesitate .to suspend the Constitution when it ran
counter to their designs, and to amend it by executive decree when
necessary to carry out their radical reforms.
Porfirio Diaz, as shown by his long administration, was still
another character of man. He too was a trained lawyer, but more
especially a natural soldier, and a fiery revolutionist in his early
career. When elevated to the presidency he became a self-centred,
8i4 "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar.,
inflexible and indefatigable exponent of his own fixed policy of
statesmanship; which was to crush out all opposition with implac-
able severity, and to increase the material wealth and prosperity of
his country. He had no political theories or social reforms to
exploit, no visionary ideals to be enforced, but he conceived that the
way to make Mexico strong and peaceful was to subordinate every
other interest and principle to the one end of developing her internal
resources, by inviting foreign capital and investments and promoting
the construction of railroads, the operation of mines, the building of
factories, the opening of ranches and farms, and the installation of
that vast machinery of incorporated enterprise by which trade and
industry have been controlled in other modern nations. It was a
wise and patriotic policy, provided its purposes and results had
been sure of a stable foundation in the social and political character
and capacity of the people.
But Diaz had no more reverence for popular sovereignty and
no greater respect for the limitations of the organic law than his
predecessors. In fact, his entire thirty years of dictatorial dominion
was a deliberate violation of both the letter and the spirit of the
Constitution. Nor did the peace and apparent prosperity which
he brought to the country change or elevate the comprehension of the
populace for self-government and lawful liberty. The ultimate and
indirect effects of the Diaz regime were calculated rather to produce
an unfavorable aspect of national affairs. The introduction of
capital from abroad and the consequent activity in industries of all
kinds, did indeed raise the scale of wages and the standards of living
among the masses, dispensing a measure of comfort and content-
ment to the poor peasantry and laborers ; but that did not radically
affect the preexisting and traditional status of the people as a whole.
The era from 1884 to 1911, so much extolled as the period of
the " making of a nation," witnessed the importation into Mexico of
new and dangerous forces hitherto comparatively unknown, and
their influence has added enormously to the complexity and difficulty
of the problems already inherent in the national situation. Foreign
capital brought with it corporate organization and monopoly, the
curse of the commercial spirit, syndicated and predatory interests,
the intricate and insidious corruptions and despotisms of legalized
avarice and selfish lust for power and privilege in short, the forces
that are testing the statesmanship and disturbing the peace of the
most enlightened governments in Christendom. Along with these
and incident to the influx of a considerable foreign immigration,
came also a nondescript horde of agitators, fanatics, professional
I9I5-] te MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" 815
uplifters, anarchists, apostles of the economic cult that seeks the
reorganization of civilized life, socialists, and not a few reckless
adventurers and desperate outlaws. The Diaz administration,
already tottering to its fall by sheer limit of age and popularity, was
confronted with a situation it could not control and only vaguely
understood. Like some political Frankenstein, it had created a
condition dominated by spirits mysterious to the Mexican mind, and
all too masterful for the waning strength of the elder statesmen.
The Madero revolution was mainly instigated and sustained
by the joint efforts of foreign monopoly and American socialism.
Madero himself was a visionary, a fanatic, and a weakling, and his
temporary success was due to the failing power of Diaz rather than
to any merit or mastery in the movement itself.
Huerta belonged to the same school as Diaz, the regime of
the chiefs and oligarchs of Spanish Mexico, in which arbitrary
power, executive autocracy and governmental exclusiveness were
the characteristics of established authority. It is the system to
which the country and its people have been subject since the
Conquest and before. It is the only one they know how to obey or
have shown any qualification for maintaining.
The present chaotic condition in Mexico is substantially the
same that has previously existed many times during the past seventy-
five years, and the military and political chiefs who are struggling
for supremacy are in all respects typical of the revolutionary leaders
whose careers of intrigue, treachery, cruelty and crime have con-
stituted the major part of Mexican history since the separation from
Spain. There is nothing in the character and capacity of any of
them to promise a stable settlement of existing disorders. Mean-
time, what is to happen to the country, and what shall be the attitude
of this Government pending the development of a solution? Hum-
boldt spent much time in Latin America and part of it in Mexico.
He was a philosopher as well as a scientist, and he had studied the
Mexican Republic at close range, in contact with its ruling class.
In 1858, shortly before his death, he was asked what he considered
to be the future of that government. His laconic reply was :
" These United States of Mexico will divide and fall to pieces."
Whether or not we accept at its full value this gloomy prediction,
it is very certain that the elemental forces in Mexico are the same
to-day as they were in Humboldt's time.
The other great countries of Spanish America have passed
through very similar experiences, to emerge, most of them, as peace-
ful, prosperous, and permanent nations, possessed of all the essential
816 "MEXICO FOR THE MEXICANS" [Mar,
qualities of self-governing statehood. If it were sought to know
why the progress of the Mexicans towards a like destiny has
been so slow and stormy, a close scrutiny of the facts would lay
some of the blame at our own doors; for it cannot be denied that
ever since the Texan Revolution of 1835-36, there has been a
persistent and pernicious influence exerted from this side the Rio
Grande towards fomenting and forwarding revolutionary strife in
Mexico, especially in the northern states of that Republic. Formerly
this was due mainly to the spirit of adventure and filibustering, but
latterly it has been greatly augmented by the selfish schemes of
commercial and corporate enterprises; and the movement has met
with secret but substantial encouragement from the business interests
of Mexico, which have readily understood that their safety and
development would be vastly promoted by the stable protection of
a government like ours. The details and ramifications of this move-
ment are little known on either side of the border, but they are none
the less real, and their recital would prove an interesting chapter
in international intrigue.
In the same Message to Congress in which he announced the
" Doctrine " that bears his name, although it originated with Jef-
ferson, by whom it was advocated ten years earlier, in defining
our attitude towards the nations of the western hemisphere, Presi-
dent Monroe said : " It is still the true policy of the United States to
leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will
pursue the same course."
Upon whatsoever grounds this Government may consider it
proper or imperative to exert an influence upon the course of
Mexican affairs whether under the " Monroe Doctrine," or upon
the broad ground of humanity and sympathy towards a sadly dis-
ordered and suffering people it is clear to those who possess an
adequate and accurate knowledge of Mexican character and institu-
tions, that any sort of interference, to be beneficial, must be
effective. Outside pressure, however well-meant and however
cloaked under the guise of a friendly purpose to " free and serve "
the Mexican people, will only irritate the situation and prolong the
misery of Mexico. The experience of the past eighteen months
ought to place that proposition beyond controversy. We must either
assume and enforce the right to control and shape the future of
that country, or we must adopt and acquiesce in the historic watch-
word of the men who first raised the standard of Mexican inde-
pendence " Mexico for the Mexicans."
THE MAGYARS AND THE EUROPEAN WAR.
BY JULES R. ARBOCZ.
[The author of this article is the Editor of the Amerikai Tudosito, the
"American Hungarian Correspondent." ED. C W.]
N the present European war the American press flatly
refuses to acknowledge or even recognize an entire
nation, a nation which is putting forth all her power
to preserve her historical position and safeguard her
future. This nation is Hungary.
Let us for the present disregard entirely that this nation played
a great part in the immediate beginning of the war; that she is and
must continue to be an equally important factor in its progress and
termination ; that for the last thousand years she has rendered un-
deniable service not only to civilization in general, but Christian
civilization in particular; that she has produced in the past, and is
producing to-day, men of genius in statesmanship, in philosophy, in
art, and in literature; that she holds a high place in the European
family of nations; and that her geographical position makes her a
factor to be reckoned with in European politics : disregarding all
this, and looking at this great war merely from a journalistic stand-
point, it is indeed a sign of ignorance of the whole question, that, in
spite of the multitudinous arguing and wrangling going on in the
country to-day, there is not a single person who expresses compre-
hensive views on either side of the question, or who does not leave
out of consideration one of the primary and essential factors of the
war.
In saying this, obviously we do not wish to minimize the other
causes, such as the fierce rivalry of England and Germany for the.
commercial supremacy of the world, or the ultimate inevitability of
the conflict between Teuton and Slav ; but we merely wish to prove
that in the forefront of the causes which brought about this world
cataclysm stands the nation of Hungary.
Our argument starts in the last epoch of Europe's history,
the climax of which was the exclusion by Bismarck of the Imperial
Roman Habsburgs from Teuton territory. Directly, this was the
cause of the present German Empire, and indirectly of the present
Austrian Empire. At the same time Bismarck, in his famous speech
to the Habsburgs, advised them to build their sway on the base of
VOL. c. 52
8i8 THE MAGYARS AND THE EUROPEAN WAR [Mar.,
Hungarian rather than Austrian traditions. The clear understand-
ing of this historical fact will be sufficient in itself to reveal to us the
most far-reaching among the preliminary causes of the war ; because
the ancient traditions of Austria were necessarily always directed
towards the west, while those of Hungary were forever tending to-
wards the east. By western tendency we mean a traditional striving
for the supremacy over the Teuton hegemony, a tendency which is
anti-H ohenzollern and anti-Prussian; while eastern tendency im-,
plies supremacy over the Oriental Slav hegemony, and therefore is
anti-Russian. Consequently if at the beginning of the war the
Habsburgs' Empire had stood by its old principles and not
by the new i. e., Hungarian ones, it is clear that the Habsburgs
would not now be fighting for the Germans, but against them and on
the side of the Russians, or at least they would be fighting for the
overthrow of the Prussian hegemony and the H ohenzollern dynasty.
A consideration of these facts must prove beyond a doubt that
the American press, at the same time that it claims to be an authority
upon the war, has been so superficial in its investigations as to pass
over the first and most important factor, namely, the exclusively
traditional standpoint of the Hungarian nation.
We can understand correctly this anti-Slav tendency of Hun-
garian tradition only when we examine carefully Hungary's natural
position. The Hungarians, originating from the Finn-Ugor race
root, have absolutely no connection whatsoever with any of the
peoples who now surround them geographically. Wedged in as it
were between Teuton and Slav, Hungary stands in ethnological
isolation, solitary yet majestic. Ages ago when the destinies of to-
day were in the making, it seems as if an overruling Providence had
stretched forth its almighty hand and, snatching this little nation
from the very heart of Asiatic jungles, had placed her where she now
stands, to protect with her body the peoples of western Europe
against successive devastating hordes first of Tartars, later of
Turks, and now of Slavs. It is to her that Europe owes the mar-
velous achievements of the twentieth century. Read her history;
you will be forced to admit that it was she who in the great struggles
of the past was the bulwark which was incessantly besieged. It was
she who defended all Europe; she was the barrier against which
dashed and were broken the westward-driving floods of Oriental
barbarians.
It is quite clear that her motive in all this was not entirely
altruistic, but was coupled with self-interest. A glance at the map
of Europe will show why. The Carpathian mountains, lifting their
1915-] THE MAGYARS AND THE EUROPEAN WAR 819
rampart-like forms in a huge semicircle along the entire western
frontier, are the great natural boundaries of Hungary. They are an
almost impregnable wall, a veritable fortress put there by the Al-
mighty. This geographical fact is the only explanation of how a
nation so small and utterly unrelated in any way to any of its neigh-
bors, has been able to weather the storms of a thousand years, and
continue to exist during the various crises of Europe's unrest.
Hence we see why Hungarian tradition is
1 . Imperialistic in character ;
2. Easterly in development;
3. Anti-Slav in sympathy ;
4. One of the primary causes of the war.
The Carpathian mountains were the reefs on which the Asiatic
hordes were always wrecked ; so they stand to-day an insurmount-
able barrier to the throngs of eastern Slavs, one branch of whom
Napoleon's ill-fated expedition into Russia aroused, thereby causing
that great race prejudice which we call Moscovite aspirations.
But the value of the Carpathians is not only strategic; it is
also economic, as they save Hungary an untold military outlay for
western fortifications. They were her natural protection against
foreign ambition and race hatred. History clearly shows that all
through the past, up to the very present, the peoples of southern
Europe clung to the protecting shield of the Carpathians; and not
only did they cling to that shield, but to the arm that held it for a
thousand years. This adhesion was but intensified with the progress
of time. And when western civilization triumphed it was the Hun-
garian nation that again held that shield, and mediated with western
and southern Europe and their eastern enemies.
The Moscovite-Slav invaders, rushing on in wave after wave
from the east, were again and again broken and forced back by that
insurmountable reef, the Carpathians; until finally they determined
to go around it and force a passage, in a southerly direction, through
Servia.
At first the Servians, under the ill-fated Obranovitch dynasty,
refused to aid or ally themselves with the Moscovites, preferring to
side with Hungarian imperialism which, like a tutelary spirit, in-
sured them a normal progress toward national independence and the
acquisition of western culture. But when the political corruption
triumphed in the assassination of the king, it overcame the better
elements in Servian politics, violently assailed the unobtrusive but
real religious spirit of the people, and, armed with violent and vile
principles and absurdest slogans, quickly brought the foreign policy
820 THE MAGYARS AND THE EUROPEAN WAR [Mar.,
of Servia into a most precarious position. Having sacrificed their
country to the policy of the Great Russian and Moscovite-Slav aspi-
rations, a policy blind, lawless, and degrading, they went further in
their treachery and betrayed their ancient and true benefactor.
What will happen to such a nation is not necessary for us to
say : history gives ample and undeniable proofs in the matter. For
did not Russian tyranny, after using as her tools for selfish pur-
poses the Poles, Ruthenians, and Little Russians, all of the self-
same Slavic origin, then cruelly put on them the yoke of slavery?
This is what will happen to Servia. Russia without a doubt will
crush the entire Servian nation.
History also proves that it was the same Hungarian imperialism
which protected Servia from the Turks. For was it not the im-
mortal Christian hero Hunyadi who victoriously drove back the
Turks and so saved Servia? This policy of Hungarian imperialism
is best stated by Louis Kossuth, who, in his memoirs of the war of
1848-49, declares that that war was not fought by Hungary merely
for her own liberty, but that if successful it was his intention to make
a union of all the Balkan States by creating a United States of
Europe.
Therefore it is obvious that Hungarian imperialism is only
partially anti- Slavic, i. e., inasmuch as it has always protected and
will protect southern and western Europe from the ceaseless migra-
tion attempted along southern routes. At the present time the
wandering instinct of the Moscovite-Slav tends to imperil these
roads, and it is due to this that these elements are now the antipodes
of Hungarian imperialism, since Hungary can never abandon her
fundamental principles. Taking all this into account, is there anyone
who can doubt that this policy of Hungarian imperialism is identified
with the most vital interests of human progress, since it has pro-
tected and made possible the growth of western culture which has
wrought the spiritual and intellectual metamorphosis of man?
Hence we see that its anti-Slav tendency, sanctioned and approved
by history, is directed merely against the Moscovite-Slav danger.
For if we were to examine this from a strictly Slav viewpoint, which
would take into consideration the defensive value of the Carpathians,
our policy would be seen to be pro-Slav and even pan-Slav as well.
The Carpathians are inhabited everywhere by a great variety of
Slavic peoples. All these, however, are absolutely independent of
one another in religion, language, and traditions. Yet whether they
be nominally on Austrian or Hungarian territory, they are under the
mass-isolating policy of Hungarian imperialism. This mass-isolat-
1915.] THE MAGYARS AND THE EUROPEAN WAR 821
ing policy made it possible for them to live an internal national life,
as it did for the Hungarians themselves.
And when on the eve of this great world-upheaval the rudder of
the state was placed in the hands of Count Stephan Tisza, a states-
man of unusual ability, his eye immediately pierced the surrounding
mist. He saw that the going around the wall of the Carpathians
meant the destruction of Hungary's old, war-scarred fortifications ;
and he also saw that neither Hungary, Austria, nor Germany realized
the dreadful proximity of the danger. It was he, the able helms-
man, who fully comprehended that Hungary on the very eve of this
great accounting was entirely unprepared, and that destiny once
more demanded of her that she live up to the glory of her great past,
and make ready. Concentrating all the powers of his great mind
and iron will on the reorganization of the Hungarian state, he first
put an end to the foolish internal political strife, and, with the far-
sightedness of a genius, brought back the foreign policy of Bismarck.
And when all the preparations were completed and the crisis was at
hand, it was Count Tisza who, before the body of the heir-apparent
was cold, conceived and dictated the ultimatum to Servia, an ultima-
tum aimed exclusively at the Moscovite-Slav aspirations, which were
not only storming against the Carpathians from without, but bom-
barding the country within.
Yet the immediate breaking out of the war was not due to
Count Tisza, but to those great historical factors in whose progress
he, like every great figure in history, was merely the instrument.
Count Tisza did no more than recognize the truth and play a part
that was unavoidable. He did not delay until the enemy could unite
all its strength against his country; he did not wait to see Russian
armies marching up and down the Carpathian passes ; but, realizing
the opportunity and anticipating the issues, he struck the first blow !
Tolstoy once wrote that it was not so much nationalism, as
the wanderlust of nations the direct cause since the dawn of history
of the movements of the human race that begot human strife
and struggle. In this case it was the historical calling of the
Hungarian people which was the innermost actuating cause of this
great world-movement, a fact which cannot be ignored, even though
the American press does not care to occupy itself with a matter,
seemingly to them, so trivial.
The time will come when we will be forced to admit that we,
two thousand years after Christ, could not determine the real causes
of a great world- war merely because we failed to see a geographical
fact marked very distinctly on the map of Europe.
Boohs.
THE GLORIES OF IRELAND. Edited by Joseph Dunn, Ph.D.,
and P. T. Lennox, Litt. D., Professors at the Catholic Univer-
sity of America. $1.25.
The good old Irish schoolmaster may his soul be with the
Saints who was responsible for teaching the three R's to the writer
of this notice, devoted more time to the inculcation of patriotism
than was consistent with the spirit and rules of the Board of National
Education. Usually, and after pay day, invariably, his allocutions
closed with the line, delivered, if not with Virgilian grace, certainly
with Stentor's emphasis : " Quce regio in terns nostri non plena
laboris? " He added his own archaic translation : " What airt
of the world is not full of our works ? "
The dominie's favorite text would furnish an apt motto for
the book before us. It consists of thirty-five chapters, each treating
a separate topic and written by one familiar with the subject, reciting
the distinctions won by the Irish race, at home and abroad, in
many fields of enterprise and over a wide range of human interests.
We have heard a well-informed person who had just made acquaint-
ance with the book, say that it is more instructive than any of the
published histories of Ireland. This was, perhaps, an exaggeration.
However, it embodies, in fascinating form, a great deal of Irish
history, with much information which our histories do not furnish.
It would anticipate the pleasure and surprise in store for the
reader were we to enumerate all the topics treated. Among them
are poetry, music, science, the arts, the theatre, the Irish in the
United States, in Canada, in South America, in Australasia. Some
of the chapters, notably " Irish Leaders," by Shane Leslie, are
admirable pieces of historical analysis and epitome. On the other
hand, it must be said that " Irish Wit and Humor " is meagre and
poorly illustrated.
Probably the essays which will become the greatest favorites
are : " The Island of Saints and Scholars," " Irish Monks in
Europe," " The Romance of Irish History," " The Fighting Race,"
and " Ireland at Play." When all is said, the dominant factors of
Erin's glory and Erin's pride are summed up in the three words,
faith, fight, and fun. Might we not, even, consider the second
term included in the third ?
1915-] NEW BOOKS 823
The comparatively modest character of the arena in which
some men of Irish blood have won renown has not debarred them
from recognition: witness the names of Mr. James J. Corbett
of San Francisco, John L. Sullivan of the United States at large,
and many other worthies only a little less distinguished. But, Mr.
Healy, after recording the paladins of the ring, it was
downright cruelty, as well as a commercial blunder, to dismiss the
heroes of the diamond in two scanty lines containing not a single
name. How highly the book is appreciated may be gathered from
the publisher's announcement that after St. Patrick's Day the price
will be raised to a dollar and a half.
GEORGE THE THIRD AND CHARLES FOX. The Concluding
Part of the American Revolution. By Sir George Otto
Trevelyan. Two volumes. New York: Longmans, Green
& Co. $4.25 net.
This titled and well-known writer has kept up the tradition,
established by many Englishmen, who, distinguished in public life
and by political service, have also merited a name for themselves
as historians. We owe quite as much of our knowledge of the
history of England to men who have had power and place, men who
have, in a sense, been makers of history, as we do to professors or to
specialists in this department.
We remember to have read with particular interest and pleasure
the preceding volumes of the American Revolution, of which these
last two, mentioned above, are the sequel and complement. Sir
George Otto Trevelyan, nephew of Lord Macaulay and his biogra-
pher, had a more than usually active career in Parliament and high
office, where he was known as an advanced liberal and one of Mr.
Gladstone's trusted helpers.
His retirement to private life, as told in the brief preface to
these volumes, was largely due to a desire to complete some further
work upon this subject and epoch, and these volumes have been the
main object of his chosen leisure and the proposed goal of his
original purpose. It is in order, surely, to congratulate him upon
the result of a noble work nobly done, and to express our debt to him
for the presentation of a work which has a perennial interest to us
in America, and which is bound to be one of the classics on one of
the great and momentous events of human progress.
Wider in scope and hence different in treatment from standard
histories, these volumes give us both the American and the British
824 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
side of the Colonial Revolution, with a premeditated fullness of
detail and comment upon the latter. In them we watch the tides
and currents of public opinion on both sides of the ocean, the many
phases of parliamentary and military action, the distress and hard-
ships of the mother country, brought upon her not only by the
obstinacy of King George the Third and the incapacity of his
ministers, but the insurgency, the counter revolution we may truly
call it, in Whitehall against a tyranny scarcely less felt and resented
there than in Boston itself. Hence, there is a double interest aroused
in us, and we are almost as desirous of witnessing the King and his
following defeated, as we are in following the warlike operations by
which his army and navy were finally driven from our shores. The
vindication of constitutional government against personal kingly
usurpation, has in these pages an interest second, but only second,
to the triumph of the American cause.
But the alternatives and varying hopes of that cause are set
forth in a narrative which is both detailed and fascinating; our
interest never flags for a moment. Military operations do not of
themselves appeal to many readers, but in this colonial struggle the
inequality of the combatants in point of resources, the issue
trembling so long in the balance and fraught with death and ruin
to the weaker opponent, provoke a sympathy which is peculiar to
this one event. The author gives us a series of historical portraits,
done with fine discrimination, of George the Third, Chatham, North,
the Earl of Sandwich: and on the other side, Greene and Gates,
Franklin and Vergennes, but the masterpiece of the collection is
Charles James Fox.
But it is Fox at his best and happiest period when in the display
of his unrivalled powers, in the full tide of his eloquence and
activity, he stood forth as the tribune of liberty, the defender of
rights, the generous friend of the oppressed. Fortunately, for
our author, it does not come within his present scope to tell of
that later and less glorious time, when Fox through mere pique
quarrelled with Shelbourne, and for long years in consequence
retarded liberal government, when he made the coalition with Lord
North, opposed Pitt, and broke with Burke. We may be well
content to have the mature judgment, the weighty experience borne
of years of administration and statesmanship, the literary excel-
lence, the proven love of human liberty ranged on the side of a cause,
which we of this country believe and hold to have been the side of
justice, of human right and happiness.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 825
A SET OF SIX. By Joseph Conrad. New York: Doubleday,
Page & Co. $1.35 net.
To the expectations always roused by the announcement of
something new from the pen of Mr. Conrad, these six short stories
will bring no disappointment except, perhaps, that some will find
familiar material in the reprinted story, The Duel, originally pub-
lished under the title, A Point of Honor; it holds preeminence
still, for though all claim attention, none is quite its equal. Caspar
RuiZy next in point of length, does not retain to the end the gripping-
interest of the beginning. All six deal with themes of intensity
of action, deeds of violence and blood, with a touch of the uncanny
in The Brute that does not fail of its effect. All six show the
author's fertile imagination, acute observation of life, his mastery
of analysis and his unique style. No author gets inside his char-
acters so thoroughly as does Conrad. He traces the springs of
action to their innermost source. He brings us in close touch not
so much with human action, as with the soul and the motives from
which such action comes.
A GREAT SOUL IN CONFLICT. A Critical Study of Shakes-
peare's Master- Work. By Simon A. Blackmore, S.J. New
York: Scott, Foresman & Co. $1.25 net.
It is, of course, Macbeth which Father Blackmore designates
by " Shakespeare's Master- Work." His study is the result of a
scholarly discrimination and of acute and detailed observations
which leave nothing unobserved. The book, however, has a dis-
tinctive character that rests on other counts than these, for, as
implied by the title, it is from the spiritual standpoint that Father
Blackmore has made his survey, and the perspective from that
eminence reveals much which on the level plain is unseen.
We will first group together some thoughts which though
stated diffusively, are so emphasized by frequent repetition that
they may be assumed to embody the main intention of the book:
that in Macbeth Shakespeare planned to portray Satan's temptation
and conquest of a soul; that in developing the theme his genius
directed the action among planes of Catholic belief, and what is
less important, but noteworthy, that, from the manner of treatment,
we are warranted in concluding that Shakespeare was loyal to the
old Faith of his birth.
The preternatural agencies, " visibly embodied in the Weird
Sisters, control the tragedy from first to last/' The consideration
826 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
given to these, and related subjects, is so extensive that the book at
this juncture is practically a theological treatise.
The existence, imminence, and activity, ceaseless and malignant,
of evil spirits bent upon man's destruction have constituted part of
Christain belief in the earliest times and of Catholic belief at all
times; disbelief is an outgrowth of modern materialism.
Macbeth's temptation, then, is in strict accord with Christian
belief. The soldier has cherished in the depths of his heart a sinful
ambition for the crown, to obtain which he must commit a murder.
" Through the sympathy which evil has for evil, it attracted the
attention of malevolent spirits." Seizing their opportunity to lure
him to destruction, three of these agents of Satan, disguised in
human form, accost him " in the day of success." The friends do
not allude to the crime involved nor attempt to persuade him to it,
but simply predict his kingship as though it were foreordained and
inevitable. The poison enters and works in his veins. The poet
gives no ground for believing him deluded, or made helpless by
enchantment. As a Christian he was as well aware as Banquo, his
companion, that the Weird Sisters were instruments of darkness,
and that any communication with them was both dangerous and
illicit; even if he had not perceived this, Banquo knew it, and
instantly warned him. Macbeth made no fight nor called for help
from God, and their victory was virtually accomplished before
the murder of Duncan.
The commentary is very elaborate. The author follows the
play closely by act and scene, almost line by line. Every character
is studied and interpreted. Macbeth is shown to us as a man of high
intellectual gifts, capable of love and kindness, brave and resolute
in active life; but inwardly, vacillating and without firm principles
of religion and morality. Lady Macbeth, a less complex nature,
shares his sin of ambition to so great a degree that she summons
evil spirits to aid her in attaining her end by murderous means.
As the gathering shadows grow deeper towards the end of
the tragedy, we find implicit and unobtrusive indications of an
attractive quality which differentiates this from other commentaries ;
it is the touch of human warmth and sympathy which Father
Blackmore brings into what he says of these two tortured souls.
While Father Blackmore untiringly presents proofs, supplied
by the content and action of the play, of Shakespeare's fidelity to
Catholic teaching, he is also at pains to defend his name against
the suggestions of apostasy made by non-Catholic critics who have
1915.] NEW BOOKS 827
read into certain parts of the text, such as the Porter's allusion to
the " equivocator," slurs cast upon the Papacy and the Jesuits.
An Epilogue contains reflections upon the spiritual significance
of the tragedy, the nature of the passions, and the supreme impor-
tance of controlling them ; and fresh tribute is paid to Shakespeare
" as a master artist imbued with the Christian spirit." It all holds
the attention, though one may not agree with everything that
Father Blackmore says. One must deplore, for example, the
absence of reservation in the statement : " Sin is a moral evil, which,
by blighting the mind and blasting the heart to all that is good and
beautiful, destroys every trait of nobility and refinement of char*
acter." Even in the immediate connection Shakespeare allows
Macbeth at his worst to retain his love for his wife, and, therefore,
enables the spectators to follow his sinking fortunes with an interest
never held for long by an unredeemed monster.
To read the book is to give oneself a pleasure, but not, it must
be confessed, without a little exertion. There is much repetition, so
much that at times the sharp edges of impression are overlaid ; but
one is bountifully repaid for a slight effort in making the acquaint-
ance of a book unique in Shakespearean literature. Viewed in its
highest light, as testimony to the eternal truth and power of the
Catholic Faith, it is admirable and of much value.
POEMS. By Clinton Scollard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
$1.25 net.
Thirty years of Mr. Scollard's poetry are here represented,
and there are few familiar with his art who will not greet with
pleasure this latest collection of his lyrics.
Life, nature, and love, the ever-recurring themes of the poet,
are touched upon with many variations. His oriental verses have
the glamour and flavor of the East, and its music. In his attitude
toward life, we find that mystery which might better be named
mistiness of the modern mind. The joy of the present hour, the
uncertainty of the future one beyond the little limits of our life,
and the all-sufficiency of nature as a balm to the questioning heart,
are notes which breathe gloom rather than wistfulness into the
delicate harmony of his verse.
I walk darkly ; peace or stress,
Crest of joy or depth of woe,
I may grope and I may guess,
Fancy, and yet never know.
:828 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
Just the husk of truth I grip
Heaped wisdom of the ages,
Learning's mightiest fellowship,
Saints and sages
In despite of each and all,
What am I but folly's thrall
Who walk darkly?
Still, his Muse is not professedly concerned with the deeper
things of the spirit, and there is little in the volume that will not
please both ear and intellect. He skims, it is true, the surface
of things ; but, like the swallow's, the flight is none the less graceful.
Ever the artist, his feeling for nature, which is at once the
strongest and the most graceful element of his verse, is passionate
in its observation, thoroughly modulated and restrained in its
utterance. Nothing is too minute to be overlooked leaf -rustle,
cricket, daffodil or cowslip, the things that less vibrant natures
tread under foot are his hoarding and joy.
Rising from the murk and mould,
What a wealth of cowslip-gold!
Just as if the noon had sown,
Affluent, its ingots there ;
Just as if the sun had thrown
Blazing jewels from its zone,
Radiantly fair.
* * * *
Croesus counts his coffers; I,
Underneath the open sky,
Count my cowslip-gold !
Scollard is a poet of form, and belongs to the fellowship of
Dobson and Praed, yet is their superior in certain qualities. If
his originality is not startling, it is sane. If he does not lead us
" over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow,"
he at least draws us to a very pleasant spot indeed beneath the
leaves and the open blue,
Down where the rillet runs by like a rover,
And bees quaff deep from the sweet white clover.
THE FUTURE OF WORLD PEACE. By Roger W. Babson.
Boston: Babson's Statistical Organization. $1.00 net.
Since the issue of the present world conflict is essentially com-
mercial, it is most important to give the economic causes of the
1915-] NEW BOOKS $29
war the foremost consideration. Perhaps no American is better
qualified to deal with this matter than Roger W. Babson. " His
remarkable experience in the practical study of the world's industrial
and economic problems," says Edwin D. Mead, Director-in-Chief
of the World Peace Foundation, " and his powerful penetration
behind secondary questions to the actual gist of things, give to his
presentation of the case a most imperative reality and pith." One
of the most striking features of the book is a series of twelve
charts which show graphically the justification! for Germany's
demands, and England's desire to continue her control of the seas.
This book is most timely, in that it offers a practical solution for
permanent peace, and shows what part the United States may play
in bringing it about.
THE ART OF THE LOW COUNTRIES. By W. R. Valentiner.
Translated from the German by Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer.
New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. $2.50 net.
Mr. Valentiner of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
editor of Art in America, is well known here and abroad as an
art critic of undoubted merit. American students will read with
interest Mrs. Van Rensselaer's excellent translation of his Art
of the Low Countries. He treats of the church architecture of the
Netherlands in the Middle Ages, the Haarlem school of painting
in the fifteenth century, Dutch ceramic tiles, and the masterpieces
of Rembrandt, Rubens, and Van Dyke. The appendices contain
a complete bibliography, a complete list of the Dutch and Flemish
primitives abroad, and the paintings of Rubens, Van Dyke, and
Rembrandt in the United States. The many excellent illustrations
eighty- four in all render the volume intelligible both to the
student and to the general reader.
PANAMA. The Canal, the Country, and the People. By Arthur
Bullard. New York : The Macmillan Co. $2.00 net.
Mr. Bullard is interesting and accurate when he describes
the beginnings of the Panama Canal under the French Government,
and its successful completion under Mr. Wallace, Mr. Stevens, and
" the autocrat," Col. Goethals. He says rightly that we have good
reason to boast of our Canal as the greatest engineering feat of
modern times. In grandeur of conception, in intricacy of detail,,
and in efficiency of execution, it is indeed a national achievement
without parallel.
830 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
When Mr. Bullard attempts history, he is not so successful.
He is too prejudiced and too ignorant of Catholic teaching to draw
an impartial picture of the history of the Spanish conquistador es, or
of the South Americans of our day. It is true, indeed, that he
denounces " the opportunism of the English and French, who colon-
ized by chance private activity, and sent the worst elements of their
population, criminals and vagabonds, to people their new colonies,"
while he praises the Spaniards for being more successful than
any other people in assimilating and civilizing the natives. But
on page after page, he speaks of the Spaniards as " black reaction-
aries and adorers of the Virgin, who are imbued with the barbaric
morality of medievalism, full of religious intolerance, bent on
rapine and murder, and mere lovers of gold."
Following Winsor and Harisse, he is most unfair to Columbus,
dubbing him " arrogant, cruel, proud, greedy, and a man of per-
verted belief." Even when he praises Las Casas to the skies, he
makes the judicious grieve by comparing him to Tolstoy. We smile
when he tells us that Drake was not at heart a pirate, and we are
disgusted when he repeats ad nauseam the anti-Popery balderdash
of the apostate Thomas Gage of 1648.
In discussing the Republic of Colombia, he seems to think
that our treaty of 1846 was a disgrace, and that the present difficulty
with that nation regarding the Panama revolution ought to be sub-
mitted to The Hague Tribunal.
In one of his final chapters, he cites our Government ownership
of the Panama railroad and our Government's building of the Canal
as instances of " collective activity," which ought to help in solving
many of our home problems of railroading, municipal ownership,
and the like.
THE EDUCATION OF CHARACTER. By Rev. M. S. Gillet, O.P.
Translated by Benjamin Green. New York: P. J. Kenedy
& Sons. 80 cents.
This book has a message for every Christian who is out of
sympathy with the popular worship of efficiency as the easy sub-
stitute for character. Father Gillet's treatise may be termed an
exposition of a working plan for its development.
Our character is the complex aggregate of ideas, tastes, deeds,
tendencies, and habits to be disciplined into unity and solidarity in
virtue of an ideal to be realized. To all the well-intentioned, the
human ideal is the upright man ; to the believer, the Christian ideal
1915-] NEW BOOKS 831
and the human are identical, for the Christian ideal is the human
transposed and perfected by an infusion of the Divine. Our intel-
ligence shows us the ideal and the way of approach, but it does no
more. It supplies inspiration, but not impetus. The impetus must
be given by the will. Father Gillet then dwells in a very practical
way on the nature of a will and the office of divine grace. He
refutes any sharing on the part of Christian teaching with either
Stoicism or Epicureanism, and vindicates the wisdom of the " folly
of the Cross."
In a brief foreword, Father Bernard Vaughan alludes to the
work as a " precious little book," and we need not to read far in it
before we understand why.
The translation is both fluent and concise, and the translator's
admirable English makes us confident of his fidelity to the French
original.
CHRIST AND THE POWERS OF DARKNESS. By J. Godfrey
Raupert. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
In the volume before us, Mr. Raupert demonstrates conclusively
the existence and activity of evil spirits. While making due allow-
ance for fraud, hypnotic suggestion and delusion, he proves the
fact of demoniacal obsession and possession from the New Testa-
ment, the early Christian Fathers, and testimonies beyond number
of modern times. In an excellent chapter entitled, Some Soul Safe-
Guards, he warns the Christian against the various methods of
diabolic attack upon the human soul.
SONS OF THE SEA KINGS. By Alice and W. H. Milligan.
New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $2.00 net.
This narrative tale of viking days in the tenth and early
eleventh centuries is founded on the records of the Icelandic Sagas.
Its setting is that strange little volcanic island with its lava-streams,
its deserts, glaciers, and brilliant flora, whose shores few are
familiar with to-day, save the Breton fisherman on his perilous
voyages. A part of the story transpires in Norway, whence many
Icelanders originally emigrated, but through it all there is the whiff
of the sea that plays so large a part in the lives and fortunes of
this sea-faring folk.
The tale, extending through a narrative of many pages, deals
with the adventures of Kiartan and Bolli, foster-brothers, un-
equalled in beauty and prowess, of the influence on their lives of
832 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
the unscrupulous and fair Gudruna, and of Kiartan's love for the
the benign and lovely Ingeborg, sister to that distinctly unpleasant
character, the King of Norway.
The coming of Christianity to the northern isle is also intro-
duced, but, with the exception of Ingeborg and Colman, the saintly
Irish priest, and perhaps Kiartan's father, few of the characters
mentioned seem to have been deeply impregnated with its spirit,
unless, indeed, the invisible power that stayed Kiartan's sword over
Bolli was that new power of the Cross. The tale brings home to
us the difficulties that attended the vast leavening process of Chris-
tianity in quelling the relentlessness, the battle-lust, and the unflinch-
ing fatalism of the north.
The dimensions of the book are unquestionably appalling, and,
unless one has a penchant for sagas, patience, and a heroic degree
of it, will be required to bear one through many of its four hundred
and four pages. Condensation would in no way have impaired
the value of the narrative, but would rather have detached in bolder
outline a tale not lacking in interest, beauty of incident, and power
of theme.
i
THE MAN BEHIND THE BARS. By Winifred Louise Taylor.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net.
The keynote of Miss Taylor's work on the present day criminal
is set forth in her preface. She writes : " I have no wish to see
our prisons abolished, but thousands of individuals and millions
of dollars have been sacrificed to wrong methods of punishment;
and if we aim to reform our criminals, we must first reform our
methods of dealing with them, from the police court to the peniten-
tiary."
This entertaining volume is full of anecdotes of prisoners,
and descriptions of the conditions under which they live both inside
and outside of prison. Miss Taylor rightly approves of the dis-
carding of the lock-step and the striped clothing, and believes firmly
in the essential injustice of the contract system, and the utter
absurdity of the so-called Lombroso criminal type. She has words
of praise for Judge Lindsey of Denver, who has helped so much
to save young offenders from the demoralizing influence of miscalled
reformatories, and for the modern scheme of probation in prevent-
ing crime. We cannot, however, agree with her statement that
" Christianity, humanity, sociology, medical science, psychology, and
statistics prove the injustice of capital punishment." Materially
1915.] NEW BOOKS 833
speaking, she has helped the convict greatly, but her vague and
indefinite Christianity, " untrammeled by sectarianism," has pre-
vented her from doing the spiritual good that the convict sorely
needed.
NEW TESTAMENT STORIES. By C. C. Martindale, SJ. St.
Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
Many books have been written on the life of our Lord for
little ones, but few of more practical value than Father Martindale's.
The customs and characteristics of the people among whom the
Saviour lived and accomplished His mission are clearly explained,
thus forming a comprehensive background for the tales themselves.
These are told graphically and simply, and the writer has sought to
follow as far as possible the Scripture text, believing that " precisely
by keeping close to the simple Gospel text, leaving its dogmatic inter-
pretation to the infallible teaching of the Church, the best results
will most easily be obtained."
Not only does he emphasize the characters of those who gath-
ered about the Redeemer as types that constantly recur, but he
shows wherein lay their strength or weakness, and seeks, by practical
reflections, to apply to the child's mind the lessons taught us by
these, as well as by the parables, and the various incidents of the
Gospel narrative. The life of grace infused in baptism, which so
few of us adequately realize, a life " far beyond the ordinary life
of man and woman," which, when responded to, is more than
being " just like Christ," is particularly insisted upon, with obedience
to its inspirations both from within and without. To accomplish
this, he seeks to bring the little ones into direct personal relation
with our Saviour. " For," he says in his preface, " our anxiety
to bring souls closely into touch with our Lord through the medium
of the Gospels is not merely that He should be ever more vividly
realized as a Person, but that this Person should become known to
souls not chiefly as having lived and died a long way off and long
ago. The meeting with Jesus of Nazareth must be a vital one."
This book will surely not fail of its desired effect, and, although
written with reference to the understanding of the child, those of
more mature years will also find profit in its pages. It is attractive
in appearance, with large, readable print, and a number of illustra-
tions in color. These are probably realistic, and certainly Oriental
in character, but they will not be altogether pleasing to those who
have come to love the figure of the conventional Christ.
VOL. c. 53
834 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN. By Gilbert K. Chesterton.
New York: John Lane Co. $1.35 net.
Father Brown, on first appearance, won so many friends that
he needs no introduction. The " shapeless little figure the
very embodiment of all that is homely and helpless," may in in-
genuity find a rival in Sherlock Holmes, but in ingenuousness, in
simple, unconsciousness naivete, he has no competitor. We feel his
touch to be doubly sure because it is guided by something more
vital than mere detective instinct; his utter lack of skepticism and
self-consciousness, his vivid faith in the immanence and omnipres-
ence of the supernatural, his knowledge of human nature in all its
convolutions these have cleared his vision and pointed out a short
cut to many problems.
But if Father Brown is altogether delightful, this latest series
of stories in which he figures cannot be equally recommended.
They seem shallow, fantastic, and at times utterly improbable.
Perhaps, also, such a combination of shrewdness and simplicity if
too much insisted upon grows wearisome. Paradoxes are as deli-
cate as hot-house flowers, and need to be handled accordingly.
We find, however, occasional Chestertonian touches, such as
the following:
" You shall not spell the first letter of what is written on
the altar of the Unknown God," says, with fearful impressive-
ness, the supposed possessor of a mighty secret.
" I know the Unknown God," said the little priest, with an
unconscious grandeur of certitude that stood up like a granite
tower. " I know his name ; it is Satan. The true God was
made Flesh and dwelt among us. And I say to you, wherever
you find man ruled merely by mystery, it is the mystery of
iniquity."
For the sake of such passages, and of Father Brown himself,
we may be disposed to overlook much, and find diversion and
enjoyment in his many adventures.
SELF-TRAINING FOR MOTHERS. By Mrs. Burton Chance.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.25 net.
To say that this book seems only one of many such, is not to
disparage it unduly, but to admit failure to discover any special
quality that would entail loss upon the person who, wishing to read
something on the subject, should choose another book than this.
It gives the impression of an abstract of the best of what has been so
1915.] NEW BOOKS 835
frequently and voluminously spread upon the pages of numerous
publications. Happily there is a distinctly religious and Christian
note throughout, and in the last chapter the author treats of religion,
calling it " The Fourth 'R' in Education." She recommends that
parents should see to it that their children " definitely join a church."
This would be more valuable, if it were more definite. In this
chapter she says: "Sometimes I think that we are grown pagan
once again, inasmuch as the goddess Hygeia receives so great an
offering of time while the altar of the Living God is. cold! " Such
a misgiving is now so seldom voiced that the mere raising of the
question would almost command consideration for the book; but
our hopes are shattered when we recall that in the preceding chapter
the author makes it only too plain that her one accredited agent
of social uplift is " Eugenics."
VENERABLE PHILIPPINE DUCHESNE. By G. E. M. New
York: The America Press. 25 cents.
This is an all too brief sketch of the life and labors of the
Foundress in this country, of the Society of the Sacred Heart.
In the history of the United States, we acknowledge, and rightly so,
the countenance and support which France extended to us in the
early days of our existence as a nation. Not less generous in mis-
sionaries than in soldiers, France planted the Cross in many of
the States. The name of the Venerable Philippine Duchesne is a
household word in Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri. To those
who do not know of her apostolate, her heroism, her sanctity, this
little book will reveal a soul worthy to rank with the great lovers
of Christ and His Cross in all lands and in all ages. We trust it
will spread the knowledge of this great-hearted daughter of Catho-
lic France, who was a pioneer indeed, in our own land.
SATURDAY'S CHILD. By Kathleen Norris. New York: The
Macmillan Co. $1.50.
Was it some amateur prophet or was it the recurrence of the
weekly cleaning day, that assigned a toilsome existence to one who
first entered this world of woe on the seventh day of the week?
Be that as it may, folklore declares that " Saturday's child works
hard for its living," and the old rhyme has given its name to a
novel by Kathleen Norris.
Susan Browne is a normal, healthy-minded girl (an anomaly,
nowadays, among heroines, be it remarked), who fulfills her destiny
836 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
by working as a bookkeeper. Of course, she has dreams, and when
circumstances open the way into the smart set, she, has abundant
means of contrasting them with her earlier associates. It speaks
well for the balance and sanity of her nature, that she is able to
discriminate between the two experiences. Mrs. Norris knows
well where the happiness of life lies; her heroine finds it also, and
we leave her well contented with her lot.
But the book is too long, and would be made stronger and more
effective by condensation. If the Becquerez incident could be
condensed to the vanishing point, the tale would be improved. The
whole episode is so unexpected, has so little connection with the
beginning and end of the story, that it seems an excrescence, a later
importation. We should feel that Susan was more consistent a
character, and we should comprehend the love and happiness which
was hers at the end. As it is, her deliverance seems rather good
luck than adherence to right and principle, while the device which
saves her is distinctly a weak spot in a well conceived and very
natural whole.
SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR RELIGIOUS. By Charles
Coppens, SJ. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.25 net.
These Instructions are the fruit of many years spent in giving
conferences and retreats in various religious houses. The subjects
are such as one would look for in this connection " Prayer,"
" Charity," " Humility," etc. They are well adapted for spiritual
reading indeed, that is their purpose as announced by the author.
The one on " Weekly Confession " is particularly sane, practical,
and helpful.
THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. With Notes Critical and Explana-
tory. By Rev. Joseph MacRory, D.D. St. Louis : B. Herder.
$2.45 net.
This is the fourth edition of Dr. MacRory's excellent com-
mentary on the Gospel of St. John, the first edition of which
appeared in 1897. In his introduction the author has taken special
pains to establish the historical character of the Fourth Gospel,
and to explain the chief difficulties raised against the traditional
view. This work is more condensed than the scholarly commentary
of Dr. MacEvilly, which is the only other Catholic commentary
we possess in English. The present edition seems to be merely
a reprint of the third edition published seven years ago.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 837
ROUND ABOUT HOME. By the Rev. P. J. Carroll, C.S.C.
Notre Dame, Ind. : The Ave Maria Press. $1.20.
Many of these delightful sketches have appeared in the pages
of the Ave Maria, but, gathered together, their appeal and interest
is vastly increased. The book is dedicated especially to those who
can recall springtime in the Old Land, with kindly faces all around,
the wide, white Shannon a few flat fields away, and the sea's
sweet breath coming from Kerry Head.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MYSTICAL LIFE. By Abbe P.
Lejeune. Translated from the French by Basil Levett. New
York: Benziger Brothers. $1.25 net.
The author assures us that he does not presume to describe
the means of attaining to the mystical life, but merely wishes to
point out to souls of good will some of the practices which, according
to spiritual writers, form the best disposition for that life. The
volume treats in turn of perseverance in the practice of mental
prayer, the habit of recollection, humility, and mortification through
the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
GRACE, ACTUAL AND HABITUAL. By Rev. Joseph Pohle,
D.D. Translated from the fifth German edition with some
abridgment and additional references by Arthur Preuss. St.
.Louis: B. Herder. $2.00 net.
Many who have read Dr. Pohle's various articles on Grace
in the Catholic Encyclopedia, will give a hearty welcome to this
seventh volume of his series of dogmatic textbooks. He adopts
the usual division, and follows the traditional method of the Latin
manuals used in our seminaries. Personally we are not in favor
of using English textbooks of theology, but they will prove invalu-
able to the educated Catholic layman, to whom Latin is an unknown
tongue.
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ST. COLUMBAN. By George
Metlake. Philadelphia: The Dolphin Press. $2.00 net.
On November 23, 1915, the Catholic world will commemorate
the thirteenth centenary of the death of St. Columban. In view of
this, Mr. Metlake has written a life of Ireland's great monk and
missionary, which gives us a most scholarly and painstaking account
of the state of Ireland and the continent in the sixth century.
Part I. treats of Columbanus in Ireland. It discusses the
838 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
providential mission of the early Irish Church, the vocation of the
Saint, and his life on Cleenish Island and at Bangor.
Part II. describes the Saint's labors in the kingdom of the
Franks, his monastic rule, the school of Luxeuil, the Easter contro-
versy, the Saint's opposition to Brunhilde, and his exile from the
Merovingian court.
Part III. pictures the Saint as a missionary in the heart of
Switzerland, and his two years sojourn at Bregenz on Lake Con-
stance.
Part IV. comprises his life at the Lombard court, his letters
to the Pope on the affair of the Three Chapters, the foundation of
the famous monastery at Bobbio, and the Saint's death.
A fairly complete bibliography concludes the volume.
ABIDE WITH ME. Compiled by a Christian Mother. Philadel-
phia : F. McManus, Jr., & Co. 40 cents net.
This little manual of prayers contains a devout way of hearing
Mass, prayers for confession and Communion, and prayers for visits
to the Blessed Sacrament.
MEDITATIONS ON THE ROSARY. By a Brother of the Little
Oratory. New York: Benziger Brothers. 35 cents net.
The mysteries of the Rosary are described in this volume
in a number of verses, which the kindliest critic would not dare
dignify by the name of poetry. We would advise the devout writer
to confine himself to prose.
EUROPE REVISED. By Irvin S. Cobb. Illustrated by John T.
McCutcheon. New York: George H. Doran Co. $1.50 net.
Mr. Cobb, the well-known newspaper correspondent and hu-
morist, has written a delightfully funny account of his travels
abroad. There is nothing of the Baedeker guide book in these
rollicking pages. He has not a word about the' Gothic cathedrals
of France, the art museums of Italy, or the literary shrines of
England. On the contrary, he tells us what the Europeans of
to-day really are, and how they live. He describes the agony of
seasickness; the joys and sorrows of hotel life; the dishonesty and
ignorance of guides; the dangerous sport of motoring; the same-
ness of the continental table d'hote; the annoyance of tipping; the
venerable myth of the English bath-tub; the over-rated night life
of Paris, and the spectacular appearance of the German huntsman
1915-1 NEW BOOKS 39
and the like. Some one has styled Cobb the new Mark Twain.
He is as great a humorist, but he differs from his namesake in know-
ing how to keep within the bounds of reverence. He is never a
blasphemer.
POLICE PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE. By Cornelius F.
Cahalane. New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.50 net.
Inspector Cahalane, who is in charge of the Training School of
the New York Police Department, writes as a practical policeman
of many years experience in all the ranks of the force. In the
present volume, he aims to instruct and assist the men on post,
and to simplify their many duties. He writes clearly on discipline,
deportment and patrol, the laws of evidence, court procedure, and
criminal identification. He describes the different classes of crim-
inals, and the duties of an officer before and after an arrest, the right
methods of observation, investigation and reporting, the duty of
cooperation with other departments of the city government.
It is a book useful not only to members of the city police
force, but to all citizens who are anxious to aid in the prevention
of crime.
THE CRUCIFIX. Translated from the French by Frances M.
Grafton. New York : Benziger Brothers. 35 cents net.
These meditations have been derived, so the author tells us,
from a two- fold source, prayer and daily contact with the sufferers
in the Calvary Hospital at Lyons, France. We recommend them
especially to the sick and suffering.
THE EAST I KNOW. By Paul Claudel. Translated into English
by Teresa Frances and William Rose Benet. New Haven:
Yale University Press. $1.25 net.
Paul Claudel is one of the idols of the young intellectuals of
contemporary France. He is a dramatist of rare psychological
insight, and a poet of exquisite lyrical beauty. Many critics put
him without question in the first rank of modern French writers.
Like many of the moderns whom France to-day delights to honor,
Paul Claudel is an enthusiastic Catholic.
The present volume which appeared in 1902 under the title
Connaissance de I'Est, is a series of prose poems on life in the
Far East, written while he was in the French Government service in
Cochin, China.
840 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
The translators have grasped perfectly the author's spirit and
style, although we do not think this particular work shows him
at his best as artist or as thinker. His imagery in these sketches
seems to us to be too vivid, and his thought too vague and obscure.
In an interesting preface, Pierre Chavannes gives us a brief
sketch of Paul Claudel, and his place in contemporary French
thought. For over twenty years he has worked in obscurity, noticed
only by a few independent artists like Barres, Gide, Jammes, and
Mauclair. To-day, although the critics are everywhere discussing
him, he makes his appeal only to the few.
OUTLINES OF ANCIENT HISTORY. From the Earliest Times
to the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, A. D. 476. By
Harold Mattingly, M.A., Assistant in the Department of Coins
and Medals in the British Museum. Cambridge, England:
The University Press.
In this excellent Outline of Ancient History, Mr. Mattingly
follows the ordinary geographical acceptation of that term, including
the history of the nearer East, of Europe, and the north of Africa,
but excluding the outlying civilizations of China and India. While
not an original work, the author has exercised good judgment in
his choice of authorities, and is most honest and independent in his
criticisms. The volume contains an excellent index, and a most
valuable collection of coin plates.
DRACTICAL TALKS WITH THE CHRISTIAN CHILD is
*- thus described in its sub-title A Brief Manual of Manners
and Morals, by Louis Cadieux. (New York: The American
Book Co.) This little book is addressed to children of ten or
twelve years of age. As the author remarks : " It is necessary to
impress upon them the importance of the subject of habit at the
right time. It is a serious mistake to wait until children are well
into the formative period of life to acquaint them with the funda-
mentals of the psychology of habit." Although these talks were
primarily intended for class work, children may, with advantage,
be given the book for their own information. It is simple, readily
understood, and teaches many a lesson best acquired in this im-
personal way. We recommend its use by parents, and all engaged
in the important work of training children. Needless to say, the
pattern held up to the Christian child is the Christ Child.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 841
IN order to refute the unfounded but frequently iterated state-
ment that the Catholic Church is opposed to Woman Suffrage,
Mrs. Margaret Hayden Rorke, Chairman of the Catholic Com-
mittee of the Woman Suffrage Party of the Borough of Brooklyn,
has gathered together, under the title of Letters and Addresses on
Woman Suffrage (New York: The Devin Adair Co. 10 cents),
the opinion of a number of eminent Catholic ecclesiastics of this
country on the subject. The arguments presented all argue for
" the cause :" there are those who believe they could present
stronger arguments " against the cause." But, however, that may
be, Mrs. Rorke has compiled a useful book. It will dispel the
false impression prevalent in certain places that the Church looks
unfavorably upon the movement, and will help to rouse Catholic
women to a sense of their civic responsibility in States where they
have obtained the vote.
THE BROKEN ROSARY AND OTHER TALES, by M. A.
Finn (New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.15), tells of the
link between Ireland and the far southern lands to which so many
of her sons and daughters have been driven to seek their fortunes.
The tales are pathetic telling of heart-breaking separations and
happy reunions, of the sowing in tears and reaping in joy, and, best
of all, of brave progress along the King's Highway in the pursuit
of duty.
A VERY pretty story of how a noble family of Ireland was robbed
** of its faith by a dastardly trick, and how it was brought back
to the fold, is told in Lord Clandonn-ell, by S. M. Christina. (New
York : Benziger Brothers. 60 cent. ) It will well repay perusal.
FIVE BIRDS IN A NEST, by Henriette Delamere. (New
York: Benziger Brothers. 60 cents.) A very cosy, happy
nest it was on the banks of the rushing Rhone, and interesting as
well. Bernard and Viva keep things going to a lively tune, con-
stantly getting into scrapes, in some of which the dangerous river
plays a part. But an ideal home-training curbs as well as cultivates
all that was worthy and lovable in each.
CHIPMATES (New York: Benziger Brothers. 60 cents), is a
^ charming little story by Mary T. Waggaman, mostly of boys.
The most pleasing and touching episode in it is the lifelong friend-
842 NEW BOOKS [Mar,
ship between a millionaire's son and a street waif, formed at
the time of their First Holy Communion, and maintained by the
practical charity that " blesses him that gives, and him that takes."
"THE WORST BOY IN THE SCHOOL, by C. M. Home (New
1 York: Benziger Brothers. 45 cents), shows how a little faith
in human nature brings out the best in a rather unpromising char-
acter. The scene is laid in England and the atmosphere is thor-
oughly Catholic.
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
The United States Bureau of Education has sent us the following pamph-
lets: The Consolidation of Rural Schools, and The County-Unit Organization
for the Administration of Rural Schools, by A. C. Monahan, and Education
for the Home, by Benjamin R. Andrews.
Harrison & Sons of London have published the English, Belgian, and
Russian documents and diplomatic correspondence concerning the war.
The Columbian Printing Company of Washington prints the statement
of the Belgian Legation regarding the case of Belgium in the present war. It
is entitled The Facts About Belgium.
From the Yale Law Journal we have an address on the Water-Power
Problem in the United States, by Rome G. Brown, which was to have been
delivered last fall at the international Water-Power Congress at Lyons, France.
The Association of Life Insurance Presidents of New York City publishes
Arthur Hunter's address: Can Insurance Experience Be Applied to Lengthen
Life? It discusses the effect of alcoholic beverages, over-eating, under-eating,
social diseases and occupation upon length of life, as disclosed by a scientific
investigation of two million insured lives.
EDITOR CATHOLIC WORLD:
DEAR SIR:
It appears to us from correspondence which we have received, that doubts
have arisen in the minds of some of the Reverend Clergy regarding the authen-
ticity of the Tours and other editions of the Breviary. The basis of such doubts
seems to be the announcement in a recent issue of the Ada Apostolicce Sedis
that the Vatican Edition has just gone to press after having been submitted to
Pope Benedict XV. for approval.
In this connection we would greatly appreciate a statement in your pages
to the effect that the belated appearance of the Vatican Edition was in no way
due to its having to wait for the approval of the Holy See, or the inclusion
of any more recent legislation, but merely because of delay in preparing its
mechanical form. The Vatican Edition, as well as all other editions, must con-
form strictly to the Editio Typica, which first appeared during last year, and
which is complete and up to date as far as existing legislation is concerned.
Yours very truly,
BENZIGER BROTHERS.
^foreign iperiobfcate.
The Apostolaie of the North. By Rev. G. Stabbing, C.SS.R.
To the attention, sympathy and missionary zeal of the English
Catholic, there often appeals the religious condition of those exten-
sive northlands called Scandinavia. Though now divided into
three sovereign states, viz., Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, they are
all part of that great Teutonic race which had so large a share in the
colonization and upbuilding of England. For a brief period, in
the reign of Canute the Great they formed with England one
powerful monarchy.
In Denmark the first step in the reorganization of the northern
Church was the appointment of Valerio Naccioni in 1648 as Vicar-
Apostolic, succeeded by the illustrious scientist and anatomist, Niels
Steno, himself a Danish convert. The present arrangement of three
Vicariates was completed by Pope Leo XIII. in 1892; the three
Vicars appointed by him, all Germans, are still living. There are
at least I5,OQO Catholics in Denmark, including many Poles; 2,600
in Sweden and 2,000 in Norway. The Tablet, January 23.
A Catholic Church at Eton. On January 2Oth, a Catholic
Church was opened at Eton, and Holy Mass celebrated after a lapse
of three hundred and fifty-six years. In 1440 Henry VI. founded
and established a college to " endure to the end of time," but
in 1553 the church goods were seized and sold or put to secular uses.
The altar was set up again under Queen Mary, but destroyed under
Elizabeth in 1559. The Tablet, January 23.
The Month (February) : Rev. Sydney F. Smith concludes his
discussion of the cures at Lourdes, showing that they are not caused
by suggestion. J. B. Williams describes life at Wilhelmshaven,
as he saw it while holding a temporary post as teacher of English
to the German naval officers there. Rev. Herbert Thurston
shows that the bond between England and Beglium necessitated
England's action in the war. The Editor rebukes some of his
countrymen for showing the Bernhardi spirit, which exalts war as
a benefit to humanity.
844 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar.,
The Church Quarterly Review (January) : Baron Friedrich
von Hugel presents " a concise enumeration or description of the
leading sayings, temper and practice of Jesus and of the primitive
Christians in face of the State, patriotism, war; and a short ac-
count of the spirit of Roman rule, and of our average West Euro-
pean present-day conception of these same things;" then the effort
" to inter-relate these two sets of experiences " by Friedrich Nau-
mann, formerly a pastor of the Lutheran-Calvinist Union and now
member of the Reichsrath representing the National Social move-
ment; and, finally, some suggestions as to what Christians can do
to make the ideal presented in the Sermon on the Mount a practical
reality. Rev. A. C. Headlam describes a new edition of The
Ezra-Apocalypse, chapters iii.-xiv. of the book commonly known as
4 Ezra (2 Esdras). He concludes that "it is a lament by some
unknown Jewish writer, who, following the fashion of his time,
took the name of Ezra, over the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans in the year 70." Mr. Headlam does not agree with Mr.
Box in holding the work to be a literary composite; and he shows
the parallels and contrasts which it offers to the teaching of St.
Paul. An unsigned article contends that, as a question of law
only, " a clergyman of the Church of England is legally justified
in refusing Communion to a person who is neither confirmed nor
willing to be confirmed."
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (February) : Rev. John
O'Grady, of the Catholic University of America, in a critical analy-
sis of Socialism, shows that this radical philosophy is based on the
false principle that the present social order is bankrupt. True,
glaring evils exist, but the condition of laborers has been improved
greatly during the past fifty years by trade unions and by legislation,
and it can be improved much more by means now at hand without
adopting complete state ownership and operation of industry.
Michael MacDonagh describes the bloodless revolution of 1782,
whereby Ireland won her legislative independence, with its oratorical
contest between Grattan and Flood. " What was there new in
the philosophy of Descartes? " asks Rev. J. Byrne O'Connell, after
relating that philosopher's life history. " It was because he applied
the method of mathematics to philosophy that he created the revolu-
tion in modern thought. The whole of his doctrines are one series
of geometric deductions from the facts of his own consciousness.
In this consists the essential vice of his method. The extension
1915-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 845
of the body and the spirituality of the soul; the immediate intuition
of thought and the mediate perception of matter; the intrinsic
criterion of certainty and the extrinsic foundation of truth; the
mechanicist explanation of the physical world and of physiological
facts all are derived modo mathematico from the one self-evident
axiom, Cogito, ergo sum" John Howley, continuing his Notes
on the Psychology of Religious Experience, discusses the prayer of
simplicity and mystical experience proper.
Le Correspondent (January 10) : Andre Bellessort summarizes
Germany's past debt to France, according to a book on this subject,
published before the war began, by M. Reynaud, professor at the
University of Poitiers. Henri Bremond, apropos of the second
centenary of Fenelon's death, (January 7, 1715), presents the
Archbishop's views on war. Colette Yver shows how the war
has done much to abolish class distinctions, party politics, the wor-
ship of money, the idleness of society women.
(January 25) : Camille Fidel describes with statistics Ger-
many's colonial possessions, especially in Africa. Henri Davig-
non inveighs against the systematic reign of terror introduced by the
Germans in Belgium. A. Morel Fato describes three centres
of German influence in Spain : the Carlist party, a fraction of the
" intellectuals," and a small group of those who dream of " a greater
Spain." Miles gives in this issue a sketch of General Foch, as in
the preceding number he had done of General Gallieni, and in that
of December 10, 1914, of General Joffre.
Etudes (December 5 and 20) : Adhemar d'Ales summarizes
St. Augustine's masterly philosophy of history, the City of God,
trying to draw comfort for present sorrows from the vision of a city
of peace to come. Lucien Roure describes the Dialogue of St.
Catherine of Siena, a work dictated while in ecstasy, and notable
among mystical treatises. Leonce de Grandmaison relates the
development of the two largest new schools of theosophy, that
headed by Mrs. Annie Besant, and its rival led by Rudolf Steiner,
and formally excluded from the main society by Mrs. Besant in
January, 1913. A later article will expose the doctrines of this new
cult. Louis de Monadon reviews Paul Bourget's latest novel,
Le Demon de Midi, a study of the psychology of temptation and sin.
(January 5 and 20) : Paul Geny pays tribute to the clearness,
brevity, orderliness, power of synthesis, concise and fascinating
846 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Mar,
style, which make St. Thomas of Aquin the teacher par excellence.
He shows that the Angelic Doctor really grasped the mind of
Aristotle better than do many modern commentators, though these
have more texts on which to base a judgment, and he shows that
St. Thomas, and not Suarez, has been the leading Doctor of the
Society of Jesus. There have always been differences of opinion
as to which form of Thomism represented St. Thomas' system best;
in the nineteenth century there developed among the Jesuit profes-
sors of the Gregorian University in Rome (Billot, Remer, Maudato,
Maria, Mattiusii) a theology and a philosophy which claims to give
up no metaphysical thesis certainly taught by St. Thomas, and to
present a purer, simpler, less complicated exposition of the Thomis-
tic synthesis than does the Dominican school. Jacques Fabre
gives impressions of a voyage to New Caledonia and Tahiti by way
of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.
Revue Thomiste (September and December) : Jacques Mari-
tain describes The Spirit of Scholastic Philosophy as one of intel-
lectual liberty, and its consequent superiority to all non-Thomistic
thinking. Father Edouard Hugon, O.P., concludes his exposition
of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, refuting objections and in-
admissible explanations. L. Valentin concludes his study of The
Idea of God in Plutarch. Father Urbano, O.P., concludes his
tribute to a modern Thomist, Don Alexander Pidal. Jules Grivet,
S.J., studies the relations between Obedience and Liberty, and shows
their perfect union exemplified in the life and death of Christ.
The Crisis of Trans formism, concluded by Father Melizain, O.P.
Father Mandonnet shows how the known age of St. Thomas
at his entry at Monte Cassino, and at his death, justify the conclusion
that the Saint was born early in the year 1225. He also prints
parts of a history of Dominican theology, which he had had to
omit from this article when printed in the Dictionnaire de Theologie
Catholique. These parts deal with the praise of Thomistic philos-
ophy, the attitude of the Jesuits towards it, and opposition to the
theory of probabilism.
Stimmen aus Maria-Laach (Zehntes Heft) : The European
War has lent its influence in reducing the size and, to some extent,
determining the contents of the last and belated issue of this Jesuit
review. In an article, Anent the Beginning of the European
War, the Rev. P. Lippert, S.J., speaks of the religious sentiment
I9i 5-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS - 847
manifest in the German nation at this critical period of its exist-
ence. This stands out boldly when contrasted with the results of
the policy of religious oppression pursued by the French Govern-
ment against the Catholic Church. The Archduke Francis
Ferdinand, whose assassination precipitated the war with Servia,
receives a beautiful tribute from Father Robert V. Nostitz-Rieneck,
S.J. One of the last deeds of the Archduke was to restore to divine
worship an old church in Hall, near Innsbruck, that had been used
for years as a gun magazine. A struggle of quite another nature
is described by Father E. Wasmann, S.J., in his very interesting
account of the Ant Plague. He tells of the wonderful ways in
which ants have been transplanted from their native soil to remote
places where, as in the case of Louisiana, they have become veritable
pests. An article from the pen of the Rev. A. Stockmann, S.J.,
on the Early Period of Klemens Brentano, which closes this number
of the review, will serve as a good introduction to the study of this
German Romanticist, whose complete works are being edited by
Carl Skiiddekopf, five volumes of which have already appeared
from the press of Miiller at Munich and Leipzig.
The British Review (February) : Vance Palmer enumerates
the problems created by the present war in the British Empire.
Egerton Beck sums up the obligations of civilians under martial law.
J. Gabrys discusses the autonomy of Poland and Lithuania in
the light of the proclamation made by the Grand Duke Nicholas at
the opening of the war. R. A. Scott- James points out the higher
moral qualities which war brings out in a people. Anna Bunston
reviews the more noteworthy German war songs. Among the
contributors to the poetry of the number are Thomas Walsh and
Katherine Tynan. The British Review publishes in its February
issue the first of a series of art reproductions. This will be a feature
of the magazine until further notice.
TRecent Events.
The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD wishes to state that none
of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of
the magazine, with the exception of " With Our Readers" voices
the editorial opinion of the magazine. And no article or department
voices officially the opinion of the Paulist Community.
No change has so far taken place in the
France. general character of the operations in
France, although there Jias been from time
to time a number of fierce and sanguinary conflicts. As announced
by General Joffre the French army is contenting itself with con-
taining the Germans within the lines which they have held since
last September, and is waiting for reinforcements before it makes
a general advance. This object has been accomplished with
a fair degree of success. In fact, in some places, the French have
made advances, especially in Alsace, where the war is being carried
on in the enemy's country. The only noteworthy success which
has fallen to the lot of the Germans has been in the neighborhood
of Soissons, where, owing chiefly to floods, the French were obliged
to withdraw to the south bank of the Aisne. The campaign has
become more like a siege on an enormous scale than has ever been
the case before a war of attrition requiring patience and endurance.
The German offensive, however, has been changed into a defensive,
the offensive having slowly but surely passed over to the Allies,
although there is at least the possibility that, after having been
largely reen forced, the Germans may still make an effort to break
through the lines of the Allies. On the other hand, it is understood,
that behind the scenes, so to speak, large armies are being prepared
by the French, as well as the British, for a vigorous assault upon
the German lines.
Of the French preparations very little, indeed, is known.
About those of Great Britain there is fuller information. The
armies of Lord Kitchener are nearly ready, and on their arrival
Great Britain will have something like a million of men in France.
Behind her present lines Germany is said to have prepared for every
eventuality. An elaborate system of trenches and fortifications
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 849
of various kinds has been constructed, upon which to fall back
in case of defeat. Experts calculate that Germany can put into
the field some four million more men to take the place of the
soldiers so far defeated a large number indeed, but of inferior
quality and training. To hold a line of two hundred miles, however,
so that there may be no weak spot through which the Allies can
break, is an immense task. The very extent of the German lines
will, in all probability, make them more vulnerable when the time
for the advance has come.
Public attention in this country is chiefly directed, on account
of the bonds of language and race, to the efforts of Great Britain,
so that too little appreciation has been expressed for those of France.
Yet so far as the land warfare is concerned, the British army is
defending only about one-twentieth of the line : the defence of all
the rest has fallen upon the French. There are, indeed, those who
believe, and apparently not without reason, that the British army,
small though it was, turned the scale last September, and that if it
had not been on the spot the Germans would have entered Paris.
However this may be, there seems to have arisen a feeling, more or
less widespread in France, that Great Britain is not bearing her
fair share of the burden. The common enemy has spared no effort
to foster this feeling ; for there is no country or place in which it has
not placed its ever active agents. A visit paid to England by the
French War Minister, M. Millerand, during which he inspected
some of the armies now in course of formation, has had the result
not only of removing any doubt that may have existed in his own
mind, but also of counteracting the growth of any coolness between
the two countries. M. Millerand declared that he was simply
astounded at the results obtained. It was not only the military
effort of the Ally of France which he admired ; it was the methods
also with which that effort had been organized an effort which
had surpassed his hopes. The new forces, although they had
been formed and equipped out of nothing, not a gun or a rifle
or a uniform having been in existence six months ago, were now
ready to proceed to France to help the common cause. This visit
of M. Millerand has resulted in drawing even closer the bonds
which now unite France and Great Britain.
Not only must it be recognized that it is on France that by far
the greatest share of the defence has been cast, but that in other
ways she has suffered, and is still suffering to a much greater
degree than has Great Britain. To say nothing of the loss involved
VOL. c. 54
850 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
in the occupation by the enemy of so large an extent of territory,
and by reason of the suffering and destruction and ravages which
have been inflicted, and are still being inflicted, in these districts,
France has suffered a great diminution of her commerce, and many
of her industries have ceased. England, on the other hand, has
never been so prosperous, her ports being filled to overflowing,
and her mills working in many places twenty-four hours, and often
for seven days a week. At Huddersfield, where the cloth for the
khaki uniforms is made, the output is no longer measured by the
yard but by the mile. The rate of unemployment has gone down,
and, strange to say, the number of crimes has greatly diminished.
In view of this contrast the staunchness of the French people
is the more to be admired, as well as their determination to carry on
the war to a successful issue.
A complete change, in fact, has taken place in the spirit of the
French people since 1870. In that year they entered upon the war
light-heartedly, looking upon the march to Berlin as a mere military
promenade. This year they accepted the challenge and took up the
burden with quiet, sober courage and resolution. The war is
now being carried on in the same spirit. When it was declared, a
solemn stillness, according to an eyewitness, reigned over Paris,
and on every face was visible the consciousness of a stern duty
to be fulfilled. The French are now, the same witness declares,
the most serious people in the world. There is reason to think
that a contributory cause to the attainment of this higher level
is due to the political institutions under which France has for
forty- four years been living. A Republic, to be successful, depends
upon the character of the people less than upon that of its officials,
although in the degree in which the people deserve it, they will
find worthy officials, and this, so far as the present war has gone,
has happened in France.
The attitude of leading Frenchmen towards the war and to-
wards peace proposals that have been talked about, may be gathered
from a letter which M. Sabatier, the Honorary President of the
International Society for Franciscan Studies at Assisi, has written
to the President of the same Society. The letter was in reply
to a resolution in favor of peace which had been passed by the
Council of the Society. M. Sabatier declares that he is a more
determined belligerent now, for the very reason that before the war
broke out he was an ardent pacifist. " A Frenchman," he declares,
(t cannot now utter the word 'peace.' To use it would be akin to
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 851
treason. When a quarrel is for money, or for a strip of territory,
one can make peace without moral loss. To make peace when
an ideal is at stake is an abdication; even to think of it is to be
false to the voice which tells us that man is born for higher things
than to enjoy the moral and material heritage of his fathers. It
is the honor of Belgium, France, and their Allies to have seen at
once the spiritual nature of this war. No doubt we are fighting
for ourselves, but we are fighting, too, for all peoples. The idea
of stopping before the goal is reached cannot occur to us." The
defeat of the Allies " would mean the triumph of brute force.
Peace," he reminds his correspondent, " is not an end in itself."
There can be no lasting peace that is not based on justice. How
can the Allies think or speak of peace while Belgium lies mangled
and bleeding under the iron heel of Germany? Would any peace
be more than a patched-up truce which did not make it plain, even
to Germany, that no nation has a right to make war just when and
because it pleases to do so, or to conduct it with a ruthlessness
worthy of the darkest days. " The France of to-day is fighting
religiously . . . . She believes with all her strength in victory, because
she has indomitable faith in the ideal of justice and truth that is
in her heart .... To give up fighting would be to betray her past,
her ideal, her vocation."
This calm determination of the French, the interior causes of
which are disclosed by M. Sabatier, has been made manifest to
observers of their outward demeanor. The steady growth of calm
is said to be the most remarkable thing to be noticed in France
during the course of the war. Besides the justice of their cause,
this spirit is due to their confidence in their officers. Nor is this
confidence limited to the soldiers: it is found in an equal degree
among the civilians. Even the refugees from the places destroyed
and occupied by the Germans bear their losses with a cheerful
resignation which is declared to be absolutely amazing. Their
demeanor is on a level with that of the soldiers.
As regards the financial resources of France, Mr. Lloyd George
has just stated in the House of Commons that they are sufficient,
merely out of the proceeds of investments abroad, for the expenses
of a period of two or three years, at the present rate of expenditure,
which includes the financial support of the Belgian army; Great
Britain being able, from the same resources, to continue at the
present rate for an even longer time. Russia, on account of the
vastness of her Empire, is almost self-sufficient. Of wheat, indeed,
852 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
she has a large surplus which will be placed at the disposal of her
Allies as soon as the breaking of the ice in the northern ports
permits of its export. The war-harvest of France has shown a
small deficiency due chiefly to the enemy's occupation of good
wheat-producing districts. Importations, however, were sufficient
to make up the deficiency; and, therefore, the position of France
in this respect is considered satisfactory.
Cardinal Mercier's masterly defiance of the
Belgium. German Governor-General of Belgium will
be one of the glories of the Catholic Church,
and another of the instances in which the Faith has been the inspirer
of an heroic defence of human freedom. To him belongs the glory
of having had the courage to express what is in the minds of all,
and he has done this without exaggeration or declamation or any
thing which savored of unreality. In fact, as he has himself stated,
in his enumeration of the atrocities committed by the German troops,
considerations of good taste led him to limit the list, and to
leave out the names of the nuns who had suffered at their hands
the supreme disgrace.
Efforts have been made to suppress the truth, and it has
even been denied that the Cardinal was arrested. If by arrest
is meant the throwing of the Cardinal into prison, then such a
denial was justifiable. There is no doubt, however, that he was
confined to his own palace, and a German sentry placed at his
door to prevent his leaving it. The facts of the case are as follows :
the first German Governor-General prohibited all communications
between the Cardinal and the priests of his diocese. His successor
removed this prohibition. On the appearance of the Pastoral,
however, he was so angered that he sent officers to arrest the
Cardinal, and to threaten the sending of him to Germany. Before
this order was carried out, the intervention of a diplomat, who saw
what an effect upon the Catholics of Germany such a proceeding
might produce, caused this order to be revoked. This diplomat
tried himself, without success, to prevail upon the Cardinal to recall
the portions of the Pastoral which were offensive to Germany.
Thereupon the Cardinal was ordered not to leave the precincts of
his palace, and was, in consequence, unable to take part in the
ceremonial dedication of Belgium to the Sacred Heart, at which
he had promised to officiate. He was also forbidden to hold any
communication with his clergy, a prohibition which is still in force.
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 853
A further effort was then made to prevail upon the Cardinal to
withdraw the passages in question. As before, the Cardinal firmly
refused. On the contrary, he justified all that he had said. The
Governor-General than reenforced the veto regarding communica-
tion with the clergy, and even went so far as to assume that right
himself. Efforts were made to suppress the Pastoral altogether,
but without success. Those of the clergy who could find copies
read them in their churches. It has now become one of the world's
historical documents.
A wonderful difference is to be found
Germany. between the expectations to which expression
was given by Germans at the beginning of
the war and those entertained by them at the present time. Then
dates were fixed, and early ones too, for the triumphant entry of
their troops into Paris, and St. Petersburg, and even into London.
Now the expectation is in general restricted to the hope of making
a successful defence, and of securing a peace which will render
impossible the repetition of what is declared to have been an un-
provoked attack. It was also declared, and generally believed,
that Germany had ample resources as regards food supplies, war
materials and men. Now the press dispatches tell of protest from
many quarters against the iniquitous British attempt to starve the
Empire. The reason for this change is to be found in the fact
that, although Germany was prepared, and well prepared for war,
it was for a short and victorious war against foes relatively un-
prepared a war which was to be over in something like six months.
Having been defeated in this effort, German officials are coming
to recognize that complete defeat is more than possible. Hence
the recourse to such desperate measures as the submarine war of
which Germany has given notice to this country, and which has
called forth the protest sent by the President a protest in which he
has been supported, in an informal way, by most of the States not
involved in the war. There are those who think that the officials
whose blunders led to this war, hope, by raising the whole world
against Germany, to find a way of saving their face before their
victimized fellow-countrymen. To a whole world of opponents
submission may be made without the humiliation involved in sub-
mitting to their present foes.
As it is the government which makes the news that comes
from Germany as well as carries on the war, it is hard to learn
the true state of German opinion. Even the professors, of whom
854 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
so much is heard, are dependent on the State, and cannot give
utterance to opinions distasteful to it. There is reason to think,
however, that there are many in Germany who share with the
rest of the world the detestation and resentment which is felt for
the relentless acts done in Belgium, France, and unfortified places
on the east coast of England. A number of Germans have formed
a Humanity League, the Committee of which has issued an appeal
to Europe and America. This appeal declares that Germany has
been driven into the war by the Kaiser and his military entourage,
and that the way in which it has been waged has covered Germany
with "imperishable infamy;" the campaign, the Appeal declares,
has been waged by barbarous methods both on sea and on land.
The democracy has been deceived, and is urged to utter its protest
so that the domination of Prussian militarism may be swept away
a domination which has disgraced and humiliated Germany in the
eyes of the civilized world.
The publication of a translation into English of the German
War Book makes it possible to learn the principles upon which the
German army is trained, and the ideals by which it is governed.
It contains the usages of war on land issued by the Great General
Staff, and gives an explanation of the conduct of that army since
the war began. The space at our disposal forbids the detailed proof
of the following description of the character of the work : for this
the reader must be referred to the work itself. The soldier is
instructed that it is not only against the military combatants that
the war is to be waged ; he must seek to destroy the total intellectual
and material resources of the enemy. Prisoners of war may be
killed, if the necessity of war and the safety of the State seem to
demand it. Third parties may be procured to commit any crime;
incendiarism, robbery, even assassination, are declared to be in no
way opposed to international law, and it becomes even a duty,
according to circumstance, not to let slip the important, it may be
the decisive, advantages to be gained by such means. The inhabit-
ants of an invaded country may be compelled to furnish informa-
tion about their own army, its strategy, its resources, and its military
secrets. Compulsion of this character, it is recognized, is condemned
unanimously by the majority of writers of all nations ; nevertheless,
it cannot be entirely dispensed with, the argument of war will
indeed render it frequently necessary. Peaceable inhabitants may be
used to protect the military movements of the invader because
although such a method of proceeding has been unanimously con-
1915- ] RECENT EVENTS 855
demned by every writer outside Germany, it has, as a matter of
fact, proved completely successful. Officers are instructed to guard
themselves against excessive humanitarian notions the sentimental
and flabby emotion to which he is exposed as a " child of his time."
So well has this instruction been laid to heart, so deeply has he
imbibed its spirit, that the German officer has been guilty of many
practices which even this War Book condemns; for, according to
it, there can exist no right to the appropriation of property, " the
carrying off of money, watches, rings, trinkets or other objects
of value is to be regarded as criminal robbery, and to be punished
accordingly; nor is the conqueror justified in recouping himself for
the cost of the war by inroads into the property of private persons,
even though the war was forced upon him." All that the War
Book teaches is indeed to be found in Treitschke and Bernhardi,
but these could be regarded as having given expression merely
to their own private opinions. It is now made clear that the
German General Staff accept, endorse, and expound to their sub-
ordinates their whole gospel of " frightfulness."
The German Bishops have issued a joint Pastoral to the Catho-
lics of Germany, in which they describe the war as having burst over
the Empire as a hurricane on the cold clouds and the evil vapors
of infidelity and skepticism, and on the unwholesome atmosphere
of an un-Christian over-culture. They rejoice, however, in the fact
that the hard times have brought their people nearer to the Saviour,
and that many have found Him who had wandered far from
Him. Before it broke out, the Bishops declare that they had often
loudly bewailed, in their distress of soul, the decay of the religious
and moral life. It denounces the growth of vice among the German
people, the exclusion of the Christian spirit and Christian principles
from education and from public and social life, and the worthless-
ness of the modern, 'anti-Christian, irreligious mind-culture. " Into
our country, too, had this culture considerably penetrated, an over-
culture, un-Christian, un-German, and unsound in its whole being,
with its external varnish and its internal rottenness, with its coarse
pursuit of wealth and pleasure, with its supermen as arrogant as
ridiculous, with its dishonorable imitation of infected foreign litera-
ture and art, and even of the most shameful extravagances in female
fashions." The Bishops share the opinion of the vast majority of
the German people that the war was forced upon them, and are
thankful for the " glorious successes and victories with which
Heaven has blessed their arms."
856 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
The supersession of Count Berchtold by so
Austria-Hungary, energetic and resolute an Hungarian as is
Baron de Burian, is looked upon as a re-
versal of the relations that have hitherto existed between Austria and
Hungary ; the latter now holds the predominant place. And as the
Austrian army is now commanded by the German General Staff,
Austria has already paid a severe penalty by this humiliation for the
part which she took in bringing on the present war. A fourth in-
vasion of Servia is said to be imminent. This is to be made by an
army consisting chiefly of German troops. This force, however,
seems to have been directed against the Russians in Bukowina. But
events in this distant theatre of warfare are hard to ascertain, the
reports being often contradictory, and the districts little known. It
seems certain, however, that the Russians have abandoned, for the
present, at all events, the attempt to take Cracow, while the fort of
Przemysl is still holding out.
The forward and backward movements of
Russia. the Russian armies are very mystifying. At
one time they are said to be on the borders
of Silesia; not long afterwards they are being pressed back into
their own territory. Now they are across the Carpathians on the
point of ravaging the Hungarian plains; then Lemberg is on the
point of being re-taken by the Austrians. At the present moment,
if credit is to be given to reports from Berlin, the Russians have
been beaten all along the line from the borders of East Prussia
to Bukowina, and Warsaw is to be taken within a week. Some
of the friends of the Allies are disappointed at this apparent want
of success; others profess their belief that more has been done by
Russia than was to have been expected. The numbers of men at
the disposal of the Tsar is practically unlimited, but the means of
transportation are few, whereas Germany as a part of her long prep-
aration for what is now taking place, has provided herself with a
wonderful system of strategical railways, by means of which troops
are readily transported from one field of action to another. In the
opinion of Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who is recognized as one of the
greatest authorities, the war will be decided on the Eastern front,
and by the Russian invasion. This invasion has not yet been
seriously undertaken, the efforts of Russia having been limited
to making a diversion in favor of her Allies in the west, so as to
render it impossible for the Germans to use the whole of their forces
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 857
against France and Great Britain; what has been taking place
so far is only by way of preparation. The fixed purpose of the
Russians, from which nothing will divert them, is to enter Berlin.
The early summer will see the attempt to realize this object with
a fully armed host of ten million men. From the Tsar down to the
humblest peasant, every Russian is said to hold this fixed determina-
tion, from which nothing will divert either him or them. There
may, indeed, be something of exaggeration in these statements, for
there is at Petrograd a group of persons who are amenable to
German influence. There is no doubt, however, that it represents
the determination of the vast majority.
The bearing of the people of Moscow is described as follows
by a correspondent living in that city : " The war has already pro-
duced its distinctive types among the people : the croaker, suspicious
of every success; the would-be expert, criticizing army and navy
alike; the feverish idealist, alternating between delirious joy and
leaden despair. But lastly, and, I believe, in such preponderance as
to make all other types sink into insignificance, there is the man
in the street, forbearing in the hour of victory, undismayed at
defeat, generous and unaffected, the peasant, the workman, the
student, the soldier, the diplomatist, in a word, the real Russian,
whose philosophy is a resigned fatalism that is prepared for all
eventualities, even for the day when he shall lay down his life for
his country." Moscow is still the heart of Russia, and any one who
wishes to know what the Russian people is thinking and doing
goes to the ancient capital.
As has been so often stated, Russia has become a temperance
nation. This is one of the results of the war, and so far it has
carried at least one blessing in its train. Since the days of Count
Witte the manufacture of vodka had been a government monopoly,
and had brought in to the revenue more than a quarter of the
annual income. The net income derived from this source was no
less than three hundred and fifty millions a year. To sacrifice
so large a sum of money might have seemed impossible, but the
Tsar was so impressed with the immensity of the evil wrought
among his subjects by the consumption of vodka, that he gave his
most earnest support to the bills passed by the Duma in favor
of temperance. Through his efforts these bills became law. But
as is too often the case with legislation of this character, the law
was not well observed. The taste for drink was too strong, and
too deeply ingrained. But immediately upon the declaration of
858 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
war, a new motive arose. Automatically, and all at once, Russia,
from being one of the most drunken nations in Europe became
a people almost of total abstinence. During mobilization the State
liquor shops were closed ; this temporary measure has been con-
tinued, and now the Tsar has announced his decision to prohibit
for ever the State sale of vodka. Under certain conditions the
sale of beer and porter is allowed, although it is in the power of
local authorities to prohibit even this. As a consequence, there are
very few towns in which the sale of liquor of any kind is allowed.
The abolition of the vodka monopoly made it necessary to levy new
taxes to supply the deficit, the list of which is too long to be given.
The war did not find Russia unprepared as regards finance.
The free balance of the State Treasury amounted to more than
two hundred and fifty millions, while the gold reserve in the State
Bank was eight hundred and fifty millions. Economies in expendi-
ture for the current year realized a sum of more than one hun-
dred and sixty millions, while the surplus for the first half of 1914
was thirty-eight millions. In fact, so flourishing were the conditions
that more than five hundred millions were at the disposal of the
government for the carrying on of the war, without it being neces-
sary to impose any additional taxation. Military expenditure, how-
ever, has rendered it necessary as the war proceeded to have
recourse to credit operations for some eight hundred millions, in the
issue of which no difficulty has been experienced. Skilled financiers
are convinced that Russia, without special effort, can obtain the
resources indispensable for the conduct of the war for a whole year,
and this without having recourse to the help of the foreign market.
With Our Readers.
WITH this issue THE CATHOLIC WORLD completes its fiftieth
year of continuous publication. THE CATHOLIC WORLD is the
oldest Catholic monthly in the United States; and we believe that
there are only three secular magazines that may claim a longer life.
The successful completion of fifty years of publication is a matter
of congratulations not only to the Paulist Fathers, who have conducted
the magazine since its foundation, but also to the entire Catholic public
who have contributed to its pages, and who have supported it most
loyally and most generously through all the years.
Indeed we feel that the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD is an event in the history of Catholic letters, and
we hope next month to present a Jubilee number which in its articles
and its contributors will fit such an exceptional occasion.
THE conviction that the young need religious education, and that
the neglect of such education constitutes a real natural danger, is
growing more and more widespread. We are not surprised now to
hear those who a few years ago would condemn any such suggestion,
defend in the written and spoken word the necessity of some sort of
religious education in the public schools. It is, of course, all very
indefinite, because there is very little agreement as to how it can be
accomplished; but it is helpful at least to see that the principle is
being more and more publicly proclaimed and defended.
* * * *
IT would be amusing, if the question were not so serious, to review
some of the schemes put forward for the solution of the problem.
The Episcopal Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts, in The Constructive
Quarterly of December, 1914, for example, says that it may be solved
if the home and the Church do their part, and thus furnish teachers
who are sympathetic with religion; their religious sympathy and
character will " impress " the pupils, and so create a religious atmos-
phere in the schools.
One may well ask if this is not equivalent, at least implicitly,
to demanding a religious -test of teachers. And if not, who is to see
to it that the teachers are not un-Christian, or agnostic or atheistic?
Is a teacher who does not create such an atmosphere in his 'or her
class to be discharged? If not, then how would such a policy have
an effect? If he is to be discharged, who is to say why and when?
86o WITH OUR READERS [Mar,
Such discussion seems to us to avail nothing. It is simply another
evidence of how we shirk a problem that all thinkers believe should be
definitely and courageously solved, yet which cowardice leads many
of us to compromise.
THE work of the Catholic Theatre Movement should meet with the
active interest and support of all Catholics. A year has passed since
the work was inaugurated, and the reception given to it by the Catholic
and secular press, the fruitful results already obtained, are a sufficient
justification for its being. Moreover, the intelligent and considerate
spirit that has guided its Bulletin and its selection of plays for the
" White List " have removed the fear entertained by many that it
would be simply an arbitrary censorship, aiming to create a sort of
Catholic prison lock-step. That they who made such charges, or ex-
pressed such fears, were extremely mistaken, is made evident by the
editorials and entire conduct of the Bulletin which is the official voice
of the Movement.
* * * *
F)ECENT developments, or rather happenings, for developments is
IV quite too dignified a word for the situation in the theatrical world,
demand more urgently than ever some means whereby Catholics may
inform themselves about the character, or lack of character, of par-
ticular plays. Many do not have the time to acquaint themselves with
the different plays. They do not read the criticisms furnished by
the daily press. Here we are pleased to say that for the most part
those criticisms are ruled by a healthy standard. Even when the re-
viewer is free and loose in the application of moral principles, the
story of the play itself would be enough to enlighten the average
Catholic.
But the great body of Catholics do not, we repeat, make use of
these criticisms. Our life to-day is marked by no such thoughtful
and deliberate consideration. " What play will we go to see ? " is
asked, and must be decided on the spur of the moment. If there be
a list that may be used as a guide, it will save both time and disap-
pointment and remorse.
* * * *
T ATELY a Catholic, meeting one of the officers of the Catholic
JL> Theatre Bulletin, voiced his own anger and disgust at having,
witnessed a play which he had been led to believe, simply because of
its title, was one that a Christian might witness with pleasure. When
inforrned of the Bulletin and its purpose he expressed first his regret
that he did not know of its existence, and then his gratitude to those
who published it in order to help and guide others.
1915-] WITH OUR READERS 861
If there be need with grown-ups, how much greater is the need
with those who are young, inexperienced and immature?
ONE of the main purposes of the Catholic Theatre Movement is
not only to safeguard the morals of the young, but to safeguard
those morals in the most efficient way that is, to have young folks
acquaint themselves with the character of a play before they witness
it ; to lead them into a habit of intelligent discrimination and selection,
which, guided by their Christian conscience, will make them men and
women of character, and most effective champions of a becoming
public morality.
More and more is such instruction necessary, for, as we have
pointed out in these pages before, the subtle evil of the times is to
make evil appear as good. The most harmful plays to-day protest
their good and upright purpose. They proclaim the uprightness
of depravity and the innocence of sin. With cleverness and specious-
ness, they confound good and evil. The attractiveness that wins the
soul to virtue is prostituted to make it entertain vice.
To make clear the eternal distinction between the one and the
other in these attempts to confound both, is the duty we owe par-
ticularly to the young.
There is, for example, a play on the stage in New York now
which by many has been defended and which is really an attempt to
put a halo about sin. It is absolutely false to life; it is artistically
indefensible because it asks a spectator who would take the play
seriously to stultify himself. Yet its defenders have spoken of its
purity and its innocence, and the wonderful lesson of idealism it seeks
to portray.
* * * *
WITH regard to the work for the instruction of the young which
the Bulletin is doing, we cannot do better than quote from the
letter of His Eminence, Cardinal Farley, in the current issue of the
Bulletin :
" The conservation of the natural resources that serve the physi-
cal welfare of our people is to-day a matter of great concern on the
part of National and State Governments; and of many private or-
ganizations. Such work is very necessary and praiseworthy. And
just as it is important to protect those material resources from waste
and destruction, so I believe it is of essential and immediate im-
portance that all earnest Christian men and women should unite for
the protection and preservation of the moral forces which are the
source of personal character and of national life. Tendencies,
862 WITH OUR READERS [Mar.,
opinions, theories destructive of right morals and subversive of true
principles flaunt themselves in the press and on the stage. They assail
the very foundations of religion : the security of the home : the sanctity
of the family. It behooves all who hold these things dear, to create a
public opinion that will not tolerate anything that will bring them into
disrepute.
" The Catholic Theatre Movement is essentially a work of pres-
ervation. It seeks to maintain publicly the Catholic standpoint with
regard to the theatre. As that standpoint is, in an intelligent manner,
made more widely known, I cannot but believe that the Movement will
secure the cooperation of all right-minded men and women."
r PHE particular play to which we have referred is a gross insult
1 to Catholics ; and to that conventual life which all Catholics hold
most dear.
Conventual life is built upon and finds its justification in the
supernatural truths of Jesus Christ. Unless one believes. in these
truths such a life will be inexplicable. Nevertheless one must blind
himself deliberately if he does not see the good, past all human record,
which those who follow that life have done and are doing for human
kind. Because it is so elevated, so noble, it is destined to be the object
of misrepresentation, of hatred, and of lies. It seems characteristic
of those who condemn it that they must lose all sense of fairness, and
work themselves into a fury bordering on hysteria. This, in itself,
ought to be the warning to them of their outraged reason; it is their
reason telling them they have " lost their heads." But they are unable
to reason; they are as men mad or drunk. Their anger leads them
to believe that no words are too severe ; they find language inadequate,
because language is rational.
* * * *
A TYPICAL instance of this unreasoning bigotry is to be found in a
IJL recent issue of Life, a weekly published in New York City. Mr.
Metcalfe is the theatrical critic for Life and is a man of ability. In
a passion of bigoted fury he recently stated that the nun and what
she represented was one of the vestiges of barbarism that must dis-
appear from the world. But what he said on the matter is of little
importance. What is significant is that the writer becomes an indig-
nant fanatic.
A prudent and wise man will never treat a subject the discus-
sion of which means the loss of his self-possession. After all, the
latter is still a necessary* prerequisite for intelligent and balanced
criticism. As a theatrical critic Mr. Metcalfe has done good and
praiseworthy work; as a mad bigot he only makes himself ridiculous,
1915-] WITH OUR READERS 863
r PHE Catholic University has announced the publication of a scien-
1 tific Catholic historical magazine for the Church in the United
States. The announcement is one of exceptional importance, and we
wish for the new arid bold venture the hearty cooperation of the
Catholics of our country, and a long and successful life.
The Educational Board is as follows: Editor-in-Chief, Right
Rev. Thomas J. Shahan; Editorial Board: Rev. Patrick J.
Healy, Rev. William Turner, Rev. Paschal Robinson, Rev. Nicholas
A. Weber, Rev. Peter Guilday.
The new magazine is evidently to be conducted on the lines of
high scholarship. Its Editors will seek to collect and preserve all the
existing materials of American Church history; keep this collection
up to date and so arrange it that it will be at the disposal of future
historians.
To continue in the words of the official circular:
A quarterly publication, conceived and executed in the highest literary
and scientific spirit, will act as a stimulus to historical study everywhere, it
will serve as a bond among the students of American Catholic history, and it
will prove its right to existence by revealing the needs as well as the achieve-
ments of historical scholarship.
It will be carried on with the aid and cooperation of Catholic historians, of
the editors of already-existing Catholic historical publications and of the histor-
ians and archivists of dioceses and religious orders. In addition, a chronicler
will be appointed in each diocese in the United States. By this means it is
hoped that a more active spirit of cooperation, a more vital sense of unity
may be engendered among all Catholics who are interested in historical studies.
Whenever necessary and wherever possible, correspondents will be engaged in
Europe to search libraries and archives for sources and materials of interest
to American Catholics.
It is needless to say that the expenses of such a magazine, planned on this
liberal scale and with such far-reaching purposes, will be many and varied.
Even though the Board of Editors will give their labors gratuitously, it will not
be possible to promise the appearance of even the first number of this magazine
without the assurance of the support of a large body of subscribers. Prompt
action is necessary. The study of history is being taken up or revived in our
country on a scale and according to methods unknown in the past. In the interest
of truth it is necessary for Catholics to take a large and prominent place in this
movement, to present their claims in due season, and thus forestall the dis-
semination of error and the growth of prejudice and misconception.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
Literature for Children. By O. Lowe. 90 cents net. Japan To-day and To-
morrow. By H. W. Mabie. $2.00 net. Landmarks. By E. V. Lucas. $1.35
net. Essays on Books. By W. L. Phelps. $1.50 net. The Juvenile Court
and the Community. By T. D. Eliot, M.A., Ph.D. $1.25 net. The Mutiny
of the Elsinore. By J. R. London. $1.35 net. With Poor Immigrants to
America. By S. Graham. $2.00 net. Mrs. Martin's Man. By St. John G.
Ervine. $1.35 net. An Introduction to the Study of Government. By L.
H. Holt, Ph.D. $2.00 net.
JAMES POTT & Co., New York:
California and the Far West. By K. E. M. Dumbell. 75 cents net. By the
Waters of Germany. By N. Lorimer. $3.00 net. Rambles About the Riviera.
By F. M. Gostling. $2.50 net.
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & Co., New York :
A Set of Six. By Joseph Conrad. $1.35 net.
JOHN LANE Co., New York :
Etching and Other Graphic Arts. .By G. T. Plowman. $1.50 net. The Revolt
of the Angels. By Anatole France. Translated by Mrs. W. Jackson. Among
the Canadian Alps. By L. Y. Burpee, F.R.G.S. Beside the Blackwater.
By N. J. O'Conor. $1.00 net.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
The Unfolding of the Little Flower. By Very Rev. W. W. Cunningham. $1.25.
HARPER BROTHERS, New York:
The Copy-Cat, and Other Stories. By M. E. W. Freeman. $1.25 net. The Great
Mirage. By J. L. Ford. $1.35 net. The Hands of Esau. By M. Deland.
$1.00 net. The Lone Star Ranger. By Z. Grey. $1.35 net.
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York :
The Holy Viaticum of Life as of Death. By Rev. D. A. Dever, D.D. 25 cents.
Meditations for the Use of Seminarians and Priests. By Rev. L. Branchereau.
SJ. $1.00 net. Popular Life of Saint Teresa of Jesus. Translated from
the French by Anne Porter. 50 cents. . Popular Sermons of the Catechism.
From the German by Rev. H. Thurston, SJ. Vol. 2. $1.50 net. The Elder
Miss Ainsborough. By M. A. Taggart. $1.25.
CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY, New York :
The History of England. By J. Lingard, D.D., and H. Belloc, B.A. n vols.
$2.50 per vol. ; $27.50 per set.
THE AMERICA PRESS, New York:
The Ethics of War. Pamphlet. 5 cents.
DODD, MEAD & Co., New York:
Seven Years on the Pacific Slope. By Mrs. H. Fraser and H. C. Fraser. $3.00 net.
E. P. DUTTON & Co., New York:
St. Clare of Assist: Her Life and Legislation. By E. Gilliat-Smith. $3.50 net.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York:
On the Fighting Line. By C. Smedley. $1.35 net.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York :
Oxford Book of American Essays. By Brander Matthews. $1.25.
LAURENCE J. GOMME, New York :
The Prussian Hath Said in His Heart. By C. Chesterton. $1.00 net.
THOMAS Y. CROWELL Co., New York:
Problems of Community Life. By Seba Eldridge. $1.00 net.
AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN CONSULATE GENERAL, New York :
Austria-Hungary and the War.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Co., Boston :
Kitchener, Organizer of Victory. By H. Begbie; $1.25 net.
LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston :
Peru, a Land of Contrasts. By M. Todd. $2.00 net.
THE DONAHOE PUBLISHING Co., Middletown, Conn.:
Songs of the Countryside. By Daniel J. Donahoe. $1.00 net.
B. HERDER, St. Louis:
The God of Philosophy. By Rev. F. Aveling. 45 cents net. The Principles
of Christianity. By Rev. A. B. Sharpe, M.A. 45 cents net. The Daily Life
of a Religious. By Mother F. Raphael, O.S.D. 45 cents net. By-Paths to
the Presence of God. By S. M. Benvenuta, O.S.D. 45 cents net. New
Testament Stories. By C. C. Martindale, SJ. $1.00 net. A History of the
Commandments of the Church. By Rev. A. Villien. $1.50 net. The Curse
of Adam. By Rev. P. M. Northcote, Ph.D. 75 cents net.
ST. MARY'S ACADEMY, Winnipeg, Man., Canada:
The Last of the Vestals and Other Dramas. By S. M. A. $1.80.
M. H. GILL & SON, Ltd., Dublin:
Catechism of Christian Doctrine. Translated by Rev. J. Hagan, D.D. Fits and
Starts. By T. A. Fitzgerald, O.F.M. $1.00. Patriotism. By Rev. P. F.
Kavanagh, O.F.M. 25 cents. The Great War; Ireland's Part In It. By Rev.
Dr. Keane, O.P. 5 cents. History of the Catholic Church. By Rev. J.
MacCaffrey. Part I.
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne:
The Kultur Kampf and Its Significance. By Dr. G. R. Baldwin. Some
Christmas Letters. By "Miriam Agatha" (N.S.N.). Pamphlets. 5 cents.
AP The Catholic world
2
03
v.100
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY
