THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
Af (, JV LIBRARY
A
19
2* :
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS.
VOL. CII.
OCTOBER, 1915, TO MARCH, 1916
NEW YORK:
THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD
120 WEST 6oxH STREET
1916
CONTENTS.
Abiding Power of Dante, The.
Edmund G. Gardner,
American History, National Pre-
paredness as Illustrated by.
Charles H. McCarthy, Ph.D., .
Andrew J. Shipman. James J.
Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., .
Bookdom. P. W. Browne, .
Catholic Claims, The Episcopal
Church and. Samuel F. Darwin
Fox,
Catholic Summer School, The.
Thomas McMillan, C.S.P., ^
Catholic View in Modern Fiction,
The. May Bateman,
Catholic Womanhood and the Suf-
frage. Helen Raines,
Centenary of the Oblates, The.
R. F. O'Connor,
Chalice Indeed, My. T. Gavan
Duffy, . .
Christ, The Mystical Body of.
L. E. Bellanti, S.J., .
Church's Moving Picture Show,
The. T. J. Brennan, S.T.L., .
Congress, The Latin American.
Joseph V. McKee, A.M., .
Dante, The Abiding Power of.
Edmu.nd G. Gardner,
Episcopal Church and Catholic
Claims, The. Samuel F. Darwin
Fox, . . .
Faculty of Moral Indignation, The
William J. Kerby, Ph.D.,
Feminine Education, Some Chap-
ters in the History of. James J.
Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., . .194,
Foreign Periodicals,
France, Some Young Men of.
Comtesse de Courson,
Gary System, The. Joseph V. Mc-
Kee, A.M., ....
Genesis of Kant's Criticism, The.
Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D., 333
George Bernard Shaw. Daniel A.
Lord, S.J
Hedley, John Cuthbert, O.S.B.
S. A. Parker, ....
Immanence and Religion. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Impressions of Some Recent Poetry
and Drama : Straws And Can-
non-Balis. Katherine Bregy,
Irish, Louvain and the. Michael
EaHs, S.J., ....
John Cuthbert Hedley, O.S.B.
S. A. Parker, ....
Kant's Criticism, The Genesis of.
Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D., 333
Kikuyu: The New Situation.
A. H. Nankivell,
Latin American Congress, The.
Joseph V. McKee, A.M., .
Lionel Johnson. Joyce Kilmer,
Literature and Religion in War
Time. W. H. Kent, O.S.C.,
Louvain and the Irish. Michael
Earls, S.J., .
Manners and Religion. T. J. Bren-
nan, S.T.L., ....
Master of Prose, The. Aloysius J.
Hogan. S.J., ....
Modern Fiction, The Catholic View
in. May Bateman, . . .
Moral Indignation, The Faculty of.
William J. Kerby, Ph.D.,
A Budding Diplomat. Thomas B.
Reilly,
A Canadian Pastoral. Mary Cath-
erine Crowley, ....
A Masquerade. Dora Greemvell
McChesney, ....
Mostly Moujik A Glimpse of the
i Russian Artel and Kustarnui.
Richardson Wright, . . .216
Moving Picture Show, The
787 Church's. T. J. Brennan, S.T.L., '70
Mystical Body of Christ, The.
501 L. E. Bellanti, S.J., . . .721
224 My Chalice Indeed. T. Gavan
Duffy, 485
National Preparedness as Illus-
289 trated by American History.
Charles H. McCarthy, Ph.D., . 787
597 Natural History of a Reform Law,
The. William J. Kerby, Ph.D., 145
577 Oblates, The Centenary of the.
R. F. O'Connor, . . -657
55 Ontario's Pioneer Priest. John J.
O'Gorman, S.C.D., . . .751
657 Our Lady in Art. P. W. Browne, 347
Pathway of the Angels, The.
485 Caritas,. ..... 460
Poets of 1915, The.' Thomas
721 Walsh, . . . . . 781
Priest, Ontario's Pioneer. John J .
70 O'Gorman, S.C.D., . . .751
Prose, The Master of. Aloysius J.
811 Hogan, S.J., . . . 184
Putting an End to Skepticism.
i Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D., . 619
Recent Events,
125, 271, -410, 559, 704, 845
289 Reform Law, The Natural History
of a. -William J. Kerby, Ph.D., 145
307 Religion and Immanence. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D., . . 736
Religion and Literature in War
, 364 ' Time. W. H. Kent, O.S.C., . 492
407 Religion and Manners. T. J. Bren-
nan, S.T.L., .... 529
820 Saloniki : Where Paul Preached.
Elbridge Colby, . . . 590
508 Shall Women Vote? Joseph V.
McKee, A.M., .... 45
, 443 Shaw, George Bernard. Daniel A.
Lord, S.J., . . . .768
768 Shipman, Andrew J. James J.
Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., . .501
433 Skepticism, Putting an End to.
Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D., . 619
736 Some Chapters in the History of
Feminine Education. James J.
Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., . .194, 364
469 Some Young Men of France.
Comtesse de Courson, . . 820
14 Straws and Cannon-Bails : Impres-
sions of Some Recent Poetry and
433 Drama. Katherine Bregy, . 469
Suffrage, Catholic Womanhood and
, 443 the.^ Helen Haines, . . -55
Summer School, The Catholic.
32 Thomas McMillan, C.S.P., . .597
System, The Gary. Joseph V. Mc-
811 Kee, A.M., . . ' ,. . 508
635 The Pathway of the Angels.
Caritas, . . . . .460
492 The New Situation : Kikuyu.
A. H. Nankivell, . . .32
14 Ut Quid Perditio Haec? Sir Ber-
tram C. A. Windle, LL.D., . 174
529 Vote, Shall Women? Joseph V.
McKee, A.M., .... 45
184 Where Paul Preached: Saloniki.
Elbridge Colby, . . .590
577 With Our Readers,
137, 281, 421, 569, 713, 855
307
STORIES.
How Christmas Came to Roger
757 Byrne. Martina Johnston. . 358
The Adventure at the Black Dog.
22 Katharine Tynan, . . . 643
The Children. Grace Keon, . 320
207 The Narrow Road. Rose Martin, 48.3
CONTENTS
in
Three Men of the Bois. Will
Scarlet,
To the Third Generation. Leigh
Gordon Giltner,
A War Litany. Sarah M. Brown-
son, ......
Dominus Tecum. Blanche M.
Kelly, . . ' .
Etiam Moriendo Coruscat. Honor
Walsh,
Glenmalure. Rosa Mulholland Gil-
bert,
In Memoriam Robert Hugh Ben-
son. /. Corson Miller,
I Will Work Thy Will. Gladys
Hazell,
Lionel Johnson. Joyce Kilmer, .
" Mane, Nobiscum, Domine ! " An
Ursuline Nun, . . f
NEW :
A Book of English Martyrs, .
Abused Russia, ....
A Florentine Cycle,
A Grammar of the Greek New Tes-
tament in the Light of Historical
Research, . ...
Allocutions pour les Jeunes Gens,
Alsace, Lorraine et France Ree-
nane,
American Thought,
An Apostle of Ireland,
An Introduction to English Me-
diaeval Literature,
An Outline of Russian Literature,
Are Italy's Claims Justified?
A Rogue by Compulsion,
A Rosary of Mystery Plays, .
Arthur of Britain,
Artist and Public,
A Short History of Belgium,
A Short History of Germany from
the Earliest Times to the Year
1913*
A Student's History of Education,
A Treasury of Catholic Song,
Beginnings of the American People,
Belgium's Agony,
Beside the Black Water,
British and American Drama of
To-Day; Outlines for Their
Study, . . .
Catholic Echoes of America,
Chaff and Wheat : A Few Gentle
Flailings, .....
Chiffons de Papier,
Civilization and Culture,
Clemencia's Crisis,
Collected Poems, ....
Compendium Sacrae Liturgiae Juxta
Ritum Romanum,
Contemporary Belgian Literature,
Continuous Bloom in America,
Criticisms of Life,
Dead Souls, ....
Debating for Boys,
De la Connaissance de 1'Ame,
Dogmatic Series, ....
Early English Hero Tales, .
Echoes of the War,
Economic Aspects of the War,
Essays on Milton,
Ethics in Service,
Eve Dorre, .....
Expansion and Conflict, . .
Fairyland, .....
Famous Days and Deeds in Hol-
land and Belgium,
Father Tim's Talks, .
Felix O'Day,
Fits and Starts, ...
Footings for Faith,
For Greater Things,
Fountains of Papal Rome,
Transmigration. Esther W. Neill,
609 517, 664, 798
White Eagle. L. P. Decondun,
160 76, 235, 377
POEMS.
Marge. Mary Felix de Moville, . 306
68 Peace on Earth. Anne Stuart
Bailey, ..... 363
598 The Countersign. Michael Earls,
S.J., 478
819 The Holy Souls. T. J. S., . . 215
The Radiant Visitor. William
796 Rose Benet, . . . .182
The Stirring of the Nest. M. E.
31 Buhler, 656
The Sword of Peace. Armel
664 O'Connor, . . . .491
750 The Way of the Cross. Caroline
Giltinan, . . . . . 206
'UBLICATIONS.
250
552
117
830
123
558
700
269
118
118
558
398
685
404
101
843
837
701
1 20
545
121
6 9 I
402
270
8 4 I
270
553
547
842
832
400
255
547
266
558
694
268
557
543
105
538
401
545
IO2
IO9
695
396
122
267
692
542
Fourteen Eucharistica Tridua,
France in Danger,
French Novelists of To-Day,
Friends and Apostles of- the Sacred
Heart of Jesus,
German Culture, ....
Goethe's Life-Poem,
High Lights of the French Revo-
lution,
554
542
832
112
26l
403
678
Homilies on All the Sunday Gospels, 694
How Belgium Saved Europe, . 554
How I Became a Catholic, . . 270
Ibsen in the Class Room, . . 269
Indian Why Stories, . . 406
In Father Gabriel's Garden. . . 555
In God's Army, . . . . 393
Is Death the End? . . . 267
Italy in Arms and Other Poems, . 692
Jean Baptiste, . . '.. . 259
Jerusalem, . v .691
Jesus and Politics, . . .113
John Bannister Tabb, the Priest-
Poet, 539
Latin Pronounced for Altar Boys, 122
Latin Pronounced for Singing, . 122
Letters on an E.lk Hunt, . . 547
Life of Blessed Margaret Mary, . 694
Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for
Boys and Girls, . '. . ' . 261
Like Unto a Merchant, . . 259
Little Comrade, .... 258
Little Sir Galahad, . . .123
Love's Gradatory, . . .108
Luther, ..... 252
Makers of Modern Medicine, . 538
Mary's Meadow Papers, . . 686
Mary Moreland, . . * . 257
Marriage and Divorce, .- . . - . 549
Matilde di Canpssa, . . . . 557
Matrimonial Primer, . . . 558
Meditations for Layfolk, . . 548
Memorials of Robert Hugh Benson, 107
Methods of Teaching in High
Schools, 699
Millionaire Tom, . . . .123
Minnie's Bishop, and Other Stories, 400
Missions and Missionaries of Cali-
fornia, ..... 829
Modern Germany, . . . 254
Modern Industry, . > -.... '- . 839
Moondyne Joe, . . , ; 844
Nathan Hale, . . . .268
On the Breezy Moor, . . .116
Our Palace Wonderful, or Man's
Place in Visible Creation, . 393
Paris Waits: 1914, . . . 263
Parsival, ..... 680
Path Flower and Other Verses, . 684
Plashers Mead 689
Pioneer Laymen of North America, 250
Poems by Brian Hooker, .,., . 102
Points in Catholic Polity, . . 270
Political Thought in England, . 264
IV
CONTENTS
Popular Sermons on the Catechism,
552, 693
Practical English Pronunciation, . 553
Pragmatism and the Problem of
the Idea, 537
Principles of Secondary Education, 699
Prophets, Priests and Kings, . 397
Rabindranath Tagore, . . .107
Rambles About the Riviera, . . 121
Recollections of an Irish Judge, . 546
Reflections of a Non-Combatant, . 549
Robert Fulton 266
Robin the Bobbin, . . .258
Rotuli Roberti Grosseteste, . . 395
Russia, Poland and the Ukraine, . 558
Ruysbroeck, .... 265
Science and Religion, . . . 700
Sermons, Doctrinal and Moral, . 693
Shall I Be a Daily Communicant? 556
Sir Christopher Leighton, . . 399
Sketches in Poland, . . . 539
Some Love Songs of Petrarch, . 102
Some New Sources for the Life of
Blessed Agnes of Bohemia, . 545
Songs of the Country-Side, . . 268
Street-Land, . . . . 553
St. Juliana Falconieri, a Saint of
the Holy Eucharist, . . .121
Storied Italy, . . . 405
Stray Leaves, or Traces of Travel, 115
Strength of Will, . . . 840
Studies in Church History, . .251
Sweet Doreen, ..-'. . .117
Syndicalism, Industrial Unionism,
and Socialism, . . . 838
Talks About Poets and Poetry, . 544
Teacher and Teaching, . . 119
Temperance Against Prohibition, . 269
The A-B-C of National Defence, . 684
The Alhambra, . . .683
The Appetite of Tyranny, . . 253
The Belgian Cook-Book, . . 555
The Bent Twig 541
The Book of Musical Knowledge, 698
The Book of the Serpent, . .106
The Burden of Honour, . . 556
The Catholic Faith, . '. . 693
The Catholic's Ready Answer, . 551
The California Padres and Their
Missions, . . . . .100
The Campaign of 1914 in France
and Belgium, . . ,. . 405
The Cancer Problem, . . ' . 254
The Changing Drama, . . . . 550
The Choir Manual, . . .120
The Church and the Immigrant
Problem, 269
The Church's Opportunity in the
Present CrisTs 270
The Civilization of Babylonia and
Assyria, ..... 679
The Contemporary Drama, . . 269
The Daily Life of a Religious, . 123
The Devil in a Nunnery and Other
Mediaeval Tales, . . 844
The Dread of Responsibility, . 112
The Early Church, . . .256
The Elder Miss Ainsborough, . 122
The English Catholic Revival in
the Nineteenth Century, . . 695
The English Essay and Essayists, 260
The Environment of Early Chris-
tianity, . . . . .119
The Famous Cities of Ireland, . 691
The Flower of Peace, . . .103
The Freelands 68 1
The Future of Us Boys, . .551
The German Mind and the War, . 703
The German War and Catholicism, 403
The Giant Tells, . . . . . in
The Glad Hand, and Other Grips
on Life, ..... 257
The Great Tradition and Other
Stories, ..... 399
The Hands of Esau, . . .117
The Harbor, . . . - .
The Heart of a Man, .
The High Prieste-
The History of England,
The Holy Viaticum in Life as in
Death
The Home of the Blizzard, .
The Ideal Catholic Readers, .
The Inquisition, ....
The Irish Abroad,
The Irish Nuns at Ypres,
The Japanese Problem in the
United States, ....
The Knight of the Fleur de Luce,
The Life and Visions of St. Hilde-
garde, .....
The Life of Father de Smet, S.J.,
The Life of Lord Strathcona and
Mount Royal, ....
The Life of St. Monica,
The Little Man and Other Satires,
The Little Manual of St. Rita, .
The Lives of the Popes in the
Middle Ages, ....
The Lord My Light, .
The Lore of the Wanderer, .
The Magic of Jewels and Charms,
The Mass, 264,
The Meaning of Christian Unity,
The Message of Moses and Modern
Higher Criticism,
The Miracle Missions,
The Modernist, ....
The Mortal Gods and Other Plays,
The Movement Towards Catholic
Reform in tne Early Sixteenth
Century, .....
The Mystery of Faith, .
The New Barnes Spelling Book,
The New Nation,
The Nurse's Story,
The One I Knew the Best of All,
The Parish Hymnal,
The Passionate Crime, .
The Pentecost of Calamity, .
The People's Government,
The Popes and Science,
The Practical Conduct of Play,
The Private Papers of Henry Rye-
croft,
The Protomartyr of Scotland,
Father Francis of Aberdeen,
The Quiet Hour, .
The Real Man, . . .
The Red Circle, .
The Road Toward Peace,
The Romanticism of St. Francis, .
The Sacraments, . .
The Secret Bequest,
The Sequel to Catholic Emancipa-
tion, .....
The Shepherd of My Soul, . .
The Silence of Sebastian,
The Song of the Lark, . .
The Spell of Southern Shores,
The Sprightly Mr. Shaw,
The Story of Julia Page,
The Temples of the Eternal,
The Venerable John Ogilvie, S.J.,
The War Lords
The Widow Woman, .
The Wondrous Childhood of the
Mother of God, . .
The Wooing of a Recluse,
The Works of Bishop Grafton,
The World Storm and Beyond,
The Violet Book of Romance,
Through a Dartmoor Window,
Travels in Alaska, . V .
Union and Democracy, f
Waiting, . . . .
When I Was a Boy in Belgium, .
White Eagle, . . . .
Why Catholics Honor Mary, ^ .
With Poor Immigrants to America,
550
54<>
401
535
122
556'
III
692
550
835
123
253
841
683
695
104
269
265
54
397
54i
269
267
263
122
258
684
114
123
702
545
116
555
120
690
543
842
538
403
397
108
259
398
257
405
833
693
690
697
544
555
396
256
269
687
US
108
397
397
263
540
no
394
406
554
688
545
116
404
688
269
109
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. CII. OCTOBER, 1915. No. 607.
THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE.
BY EDMUND G. GARDNER.
I.
HERE is a noble poem by Carducci, written in
1896, in which the soul of Dante after death is ap-
pointed by God to watch over the destinies of Italy
throughout the centuries as her guardian spirit:
"Ed or s'e fermo, e par ctiaspetti, a Trento
And now he is standing, and seems to wait, at Trent." 1 It was
reported in our papers that the monument, for the inauguration of
which these lines were written, was destroyed by the Austrian
soldiers when Italy declared war last Whitsunday. It is at least
unquestionably true that, in the thoughts of all Italians, the spirit
of the Divine Poet is presiding over the last phase in the making of
his nation, which coincides, in so striking a fashion, with the six
hundred and fiftieth centenary of his birth.
But Dante is immeasurably more than the poet of a single
nation even though that nation is for so many of us, wherever we
were born, our second spiritual fatherland. Tennyson wrote well
of his abiding and increasing power :
King, that hast reign'd six hundred years, and grown
In power, and ever growest.
It is, however, to Longfellow that we must still turn for the most
admirable expression in modern poetry of this unique power, in
those six sonnets (surely among the greatest in the English lan-
*Per il monumento di Dante a Trento (in Rime e Ritmi).
Copyright. 1915. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. en. I
2 THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE [Oct.,
guage) which are prefixed to his rendering of the Divina Commedia.
There is the testimony to the more obvious and external aspect of
the poet's influence :
Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights,
Through all the nations, and a sound is heard,
As of a mighty wind, and men devout,
Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes,
In their own language hear thy wondrous word.
And, with a more poignant actuality for us to-day, when we are
confronted with a cataclysm almost unparalleled in history, we
have the message of consolation that the Sacred Poem bears for
the individual soul :
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.
II.
Had Dante never lived to write the Divina Commedia, to fulfill
the promise made at the end of the Vita Nuova, to say of Beatrice
" what hath never been said of any woman," he would neverthe-
less have been the predominant figure in mediaeval literature. Even
without the supreme poem, his lyrics the early pieces included in
the Vita Nuova, and, more particularly, his maturer series of
Canzoni or Odes make him rank as the greatest poet of his age.
He would likewise have been known as the first writer on philosophy
in the vernacular, and as one of the creators of Italian prose, in
virtue of his Convivio. Moreover, his two chief Latin works the
De Monarchia and the De Vulgari Eloquentia reveal him to us as
a profound and original thinker on mediaeval problems of Church
and State, and as a pioneer in literary criticism. This is surely
achievement enough for a single man in the annals of letters ; but it
sinks into comparative insignificance in comparison with the Divina
Commedia.
Francesco Torraca has wittily protested against the writers of
mediaeval visions of the other world being dignified with the title of
Precursors of Dante. Reminding us how Benvenuto Cellini, when
the bronze did not fuse rapidly enough for the casting of his Perseus,
threw all his tin plates and bowls into the furnace as alloy, he per-
1915-] THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE 3
tinently asks whether the men who made these humble utensils
should be called the precursors of Cellini. The journey through the
world beyond the grave was no new thing in literature, either in
classical poetry or in mediaeval legend, from the eleventh book of
the Odyssey to the sixth of the ZEneid, from the Apocalypse of St.
Paul and the tales told by Venerable Bede to the visions of Alberic
of Montecassino, Tundal of Cashel, and Edmund of Eynsham. But
no one before Dante had transformed the traditional vision of hell,
purgatory, and heaven into a supreme work of art, basing upon it
an allegory of the whole life of man, making it the mystical ladder
by which the soul, while still in the body, passes up from the knowl-
edge of sensible things to tbe contemplation of the suprasensible,
enshrining within it all that was noblest in the thoughts and aspira-
tions of an entire epoch.
" The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown
over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient
world." This golden sentence of Shelley aptly defines the position
of the Divina Commedia in the literature, not of Italy or the Middle
Ages alone, but of all Christendom. Nearly a thousand years had
passed since Constantine transferred the capital of the Empire from
Rome to Byzantium. The brilliant intellectual light, the keen ques-
tioning, the spiritual vitality of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
had dissolved the gloom of the dark ages. A new vernacular poetry
had come into being in France and in Provence, and then in Italy
herself. The spirit of liberty, though destined to be again quenched
for centuries, had inflamed the Italian communes. The religious
revival wrought by St. Francis of Assisi had not indeed trans-
formed the world, but it had at least shown that Christianity was
essentially a life to be lived, a path to be followed, after the pattern
and in the footsteps of its Founder. The great Schoolmen, Blessed
Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, had brought Aristotle
into the service of the Church, and had given utterance to the
highest philosophical thought of the Middle Ages in the language
of the wisdom of the Greeks. Thus, by the end of the thirteenth
century, a standpoint had been reached from which to review the
records, and measure the loss and gain, of the past. And this is
what Dante does in the Divina Commedia. The bridge that he thus
" throws over the stream of time " is, as it were, a summary of the
centuries from the close of the classical age down to his own; a
summary, fragmentary and partial as to the earlier centuries, fuller
and more detailed in those that followed; a summary, the very
reverse of those epitomes which, as Shelley says, " have been called
4 THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE [Oct.,
the moths of just history " because " they eat out the poetry of it;"
a summary which is illumined by imagination and kindled with
passion; a summary which gives voice to what is otherwise poeti-
cally silent; which grasps what is permanently significant; a sum-
mary which aims at presenting man and nature in the mirror of
eternity. This, then, is the first secret of Dante's abiding power.
He is the supreme interpreter to the modern world of an epoch of
unfading significance in the history of humanity.
All the essential currents of thought and speculation from the
preceding ages that made up the intellectual, political, and religious
heritage of the thirteenth century, are represented, and rendered
intelligible as i)ital nutriment o, " vital nourishment," in the Divina
Commedia. In Dante's hands these varied threads are woven into
a rich and harmonious texture. Nowhere else does the debt of the
mediaeval and modern world to the literature, the law, the civiliza-
tion of ancient Rome find nobler expression. The whole story of
the Roman Empire is revealed in its significance for the Christian
historian with an intuition that at times startlingly anticipates the
conclusions of modern scholarship. In his cantos we can trace the
Augustinian reading of secular history in the light of revelation,
the philosophical ardor and devotion of Boethius, the Christianized
Neo-Platonism of Dionysius. More explicitly, we are made to
realize what the Crusades meant for the mediaeval Catholic, to what
mystic heights the chivalrous love of the troubadours could lead the
soul, the value of the evangelic fervor of St. Dominic, the supreme
meaning of the espousals of St. Francis with Lady Poverty. The
subtleties of the Schoolmen, or what to-day seem to us as such,
wedded to the highest poetry, are revealed in their true spiritual
import. Never was there such testimony borne to what St. Bona-
ventura calls " the broadness of the illuminative way " as in that
gathering of the doctors and their associates in the Fourth Heaven.
The Christianizing of Aristotle, the great philosophical achievement
of the thirteenth century, finds its most sublime expression in certain
passages of the Paradiso, where " the master of those that know,"
though still relegated to the abode of the Virtuous Heathen in
Limbo, speaks for all time from the throne upon which those two
sons of St. Dominic, Blessed Albert and St. Thomas, had placed
him. 2
Dante's figuration of the classical world is no mere mediaeval
anachronism ; it is intuitive spiritual interpretation. We know how
the Middle Ages represented Vergil as a magician. Comparetti, in
*Inf. iv., 130-133; Par. xxiv., 130-132; Par. xxvi., 37-39; Par. xxviii., 41, 42.
1915-] THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE 5
his monumental work, has urged strongly that Dante entirely
ignored these mediaeval legends, and that the Vergil of the Divina
Commedia is a character deduced solely and entirely from a profound
and sympathetic study of his poetry. This view (though contested
by several scholars) is, I am convinced, the true one. Dante's con-
ception of Vergil is founded on the Fourth Eclogue and the ^Eneid.
He accepts later tradition only in so far as it represented his Guide
as not only I'altissimo poeta, but " that noble sage who knew all,"
" the sea of all wisdom;" as an unconscious prophet of Christ; and
as having given an allegory of human life in the first six books of
the 2Eneid. This last notion, however, is subordinated to that of
Vergil as the poet of Rome and of her Empire, as it was revealed
through the journey of ^Eneas to the realm of shades. 3 Ulysses,
eager for wisdom and conceiving nobly of man's destiny, discerning
dimly the goal of the human spirit, but not, as anything personal
to himself, the preliminary need for repentance, is for the poet the
type of the ancient pagan world like the Platonists, in the Con-
fessions of St. Augustine, who saw only the goal of vision without
knowing " the way that leadeth, not to behold only, but to dwell
in the beatific country." 4 Cato, transferred from the pages of
Lucan to guard the shores of the Mountain of Purgation,
becomes a type of those who died to kindle the love of liberty in the
world. 5 The story of the conversion of Statius to Christianity
may or may not have a historical basis ; with psychological truth it
represents the yearnings of the Hellenistic Roman society for a
religion of the spirit such as Statius himself had expressed in his
description of the Altar of Mercy in the twelfth book of the
Thebaid*
A striking instance of Dante's reconstruction of a character of
antiquity in the light of both Vergil and the Scriptures, is found in
the redemption of Rhipeus through his love for justice : " Tutto
suo amor laggiu pose a drittura All his love on earth he set
upon righteousness." 7 In the second book of the &neid, in the
great story of the night of the fall of Troy, Dante found the unob-
trusive figure of this Trojan warrior among those that gathered
round the destined father of Rome in the moonlight, and read how,
overwhelmed by the numbers of the Greeks, he fell by the altar of
the goddess of wisdom, to live forever in two nobles lines of
Vergilian praise :
3 Inf. iv., 80, vii., 3, viii., 7; Purg. xxii., 67-72; Conv. iv., 26; Inf. ii., 13-27.
*Inf. xxvi., 112-135; Conf. vii., 26. B Purg. i., 71-75; Mon. ii., 5.
8 Purg. xxii., 64-91. ''Par. xx., 118-129.
6 THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE [Oct.,
Cadit et Rhipeus, iustissimus unus
Qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus <zqui*
Dante must have perceived that this brief characterization was in
harmony with the ideals of the Old and New Testaments alike;
that here was one who, like David himself, had " walked before the
Lord in truth and justice and an upright heart;" 9 a veritable citizen
of Sion, like him described by the Psalmist ; 10 one of those of whom
St. Peter spoke : " In very deed I perceive that God is not a respecter
of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth Him, and worketh
justice, is acceptable to Him." 11 Inevitably, it would have flashed
into his mind that this love of righteousness had a source that was
hidden from Vergil : that here was one of those many Gentiles to
whom, according to Aquinas, " a revelation was made concerning
Christ." And, at the end, by dying for his country, he had fulfilled
(as the pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier recently reminded the
world) the words of the Gospel : " Greater love than this no man
hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 12
The men and women of mediaeval times from St. Benedict,
the first man of the new age and the incarnation of the monastic
ideal, to Guido da Montefeltro, mighty soldier and tortuous poli-
tician of the latter years of the thirteenth century, who had passed
into the world of spirits but a few months before the date of the
vision stand out from the poet's cantos with an actuality, a power
of delineation that Shakespeare himself does not surpass. So sure is
Dante's touch upon the everlasting and unchanging sources of human
character and drama that Francesca da Rimini and Piccarda Donati,
Fazio degli Uberti and Pier della Vigna, Count Ugolino, Buon-
conte da Montefeltro and King Manfred, and many another, are
brought as near to us as though they had lived yesterday. This is
perhaps more generally felt in the great episodes of the Inferno
and in the tender humanity of the Purgatorio; but even amidst the
celestial music of the Paradiso, where the blessed have become
" sempiternal flames," their glory does not for long separate them
from us : " In your wondrous aspects there glows I know not what
of the divine which transforms you from our old conceptions
But now what thou tellest me aids me, so that to recognize is
easier to me." 13 No man or woman who finds a place in the
Dlvina Commedia can ever become a mere name to us, whether we
8 Rhipeus also falls, the one most just man among the Trojans and the strictest
observer of right" (&neid ii., 426, 427). 9 3 Kings iii. 6.
"Psalm xiv. (Vulgate). "Acts x. 34, 35. "John xv. 13. "Par. iii., 58, 63.
1915-] THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE 7
meet them again in the annals of history or find no record of them
save in the poem. If they still live in their volumes upon the
shelves of our libraries, Dante has invested their books with the
glow and glamour of personality. He, for instance, who has been
in spirit with the poet in the Heaven of the Sun will turn to the
works of Aquinas as to the writings of an intimate friend of his
own.
III.
The poetic splendor of D,ante's art, the pregnant concision of
his style, the perfect correspondence of thought with utterance, the
mighty music at once lyrical and epical with its vast range of mod-
ulation, was a new thing in mediaeval literature no less than his
characterization. And, though the mind of man was " his haunt
and the main region of his song," the Divina Commedia is likewise
a treasury of transcripts from external nature objects and
phenomena closely observed and recorded with a personal note.
"La notte che le cose ci nasconde The night that hides things
from us." 14 Mr. Arthur Symons has finely said of similes like
this that they have " a homely naturalness which sets us wondering
afterwards how so simple a statement of fact can have turned into
such great poetry." The same keen critic remarks of Dante's
fidelity to nature that he almost invariably " gets the inevitable
magic of a statement which is at once completely truthful and com-
pletely beautiful." The fireflies gleaming on an Italian hillside
at nightfall after the long summer day, the shimmering of the
sea at dawn, the startled doves leaving their pasture, the storm
covering the scene of the lost battle at nightfall, the goats resting
in the shade from the heat of the sun, the appearance of the stars
at the first rise of evening, the song of the skylark, the flight of
daws at the beginning of day : 15 the Sacred Poem is full of pas-
sages of this kind, and this, too, is a part of Dante's abiding power.
Even when such natural images are not free from literary
reminiscence, he has made them peculiarly his own. A remarkable
instance is the last cited : the comparison of the motion of the con-
templative saints on the Celestial Ladder to the flight of daws:
" And as, according to their natural habit, the daws together at the
break of day bestir themselves to warm their chilled pinions; then
some depart without returning, some turn again to whence they
started, and others wheeling round abide: such fashion seemed to
"Par. xxiii., 3.
"Inf. xxvi. 25-30; Purg. \., 115-117, ii., 124-129, v., 115-123, xxvii., 76-81;
Par. xiv., 70-72, xx., 73-75, *xi., 34~39-
8 THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE [Oct.,
me was here, in that glittering band that came together, as soon as it
smote upon a certain stair." 16
Richard of St. Victor teaches that contemplation works in
many ways in the soul, all of which we can see represented daily in
the flight of birds. He enlarges, at considerable length, on these
various modes in which birds move on the wing, and shows how
each has its parallel in the motion of the understanding of the
contemplative. 17 Dante modifies the image by his own observation
of the natural habit of one particular species of bird, and perhaps
following St. Thomas who discusses and criticizes Richard's
theory 18 simplifies it by reducing all these different kinds of motion
to three alone, according to the Neo-Platonic doctrine, elaborated
by Dionysius, that the soul has three movements when it strives to
unite itself with God. It is a miracle of Dante's art that this is
suggested and condensed into a few lines which, until we know
the source of the conception, read like a simple transcript from
nature as indeed, at the same time, they obviously are.
" I am one who, when love inspires me, note, and go giving
utterance in the way that he dictates within." 19 Here lies another
of the permanent elements of Dante's power and influence. Love is
the noblest and strongest passion of our souls, and men will ever
turn to the poet of the Divina Commedia as the most inspired
revealer of what Francis Thompson calls love's " possible divinities
and celestial prophecies." As long as chivalry holds any sway in
the relations between men and women, the image of Beatrice will
rule over hearts from " the throne which her merits have assigned
to her," 20 and Dante's lyrical farewell to his transfigured Guide in
the Empyrean Heaven will ever thrill the souls of all " who have
understanding of love." Thus, an eternally significant human
gloss is put upon the profound truth enunciated by the Schoolmen:
" Love, by reason of its very nature, hath no limit to its increase,
for it is a certain participation in the infinite love, which is the Holy
Spirit." 21 And when the poet attains that spiritual harmony which
is the perfect assimilation of the powers of the soul with the Divine
Will, the Divine Will Itself is revealed as universal, all pervading,
and all moving love : " L'amor che move il sole e I'altre stelle" 22
To Catholics, Dante has a special significance as the sovereign
singer of their faith. The poet's son, Pietro Alighieri, styles him
"Far. xxi., 34-42. "De Contemplatione, i., 5.
**Sumnta Theologica, II., ii., q. 180, a. 6 ad 3.
19 Purg. xxiv., 52-54. 20 Par. xxxi., 69.
n Siimma Theologica, II., ii., q. 24, a. 7. ^Par. xxxiii., 145.
1915-] THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE 9
il nice sir o della jede, and declares that if the Faith were extin-
guished, Dante would build it up again : " Se fussi spenta, rifariala
Dante/' Cardinal Manning wrote : " The poem unites the book of
Dogma and the book of Devotion, and is itself both Dogma and
Devotion clothed in conceptions of intensity and beauty which have
never been surpassed or equalled." Let one example suffice. The
santa orazione, the lyrical prayer to the Blessed Virgin on the lips
of St. Bernard that opens the last canto of the Paradiso, gives
supreme poetic utterance to the rapt meditations of generations of
mystics, from St. John of Damascus to St. Bernard himself, Richard
of St. Victor, and the poet's own contemporaries, the two Mech-
thilds in their Saxon cloister rapt meditations contemplating in
one form of human perfection the revelation of divine mercy and
tenderness. The dogmatic teaching of the theologians, from Cyril
of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus to Aquinas and Bonaven-
tura, here blend harmoniously with the fervor of popular unlearned
devotion rising as spiritual incense from countless shrines. Dante
is the representative of all upon whose behalf the Beloved Disciple
" was chosen from upon the Cross for the great office;" 23 but the
prayer is no less that of the poet's own soul, in which he is setting
forth in flawless verse what love dictates within.
Further, Dante is appealing with a new power, and is perhaps
destined to exercise a wider influence, through that revival of the
study of mysticism, which is so remarkable a tendency in religious
thought at the present day more particularly among religiously
minded persons who are not Catholics. For the Divina Commedia
is confessedly the record in poetry of the contact of the soul with
the ultimate Reality, that anticipation of Eternity here and now,
which is the essence of mystical experience. We know how, in the
Letter to Can Grande, Dante unmistakably claims that he has been
the recipient of some such ineffable experience, of which he feels
himself unworthy, and which he professes himself unable adequately
to relate. " Invested with the variety of sacred veilings " (to adopt
a phrase from Dionysius), he is translating this experience into the
figurative language and with the symbolical imagery that would
render it intelligible to his contemporaries. Under the allegorical
representation of the pilgrimage through the three realms of the
immortale secolo^ it is easy to trace the stages recognized by the
adepts of mystical theology : the awakening of the spiritual con-
sciousness, or conversion; the threefold way of purgation, illumina-
tion, and union, whereby the soul attains its goal. Students of this
23 Par. xxv., 113, 114. "Inf., ii., 14, IS-
io THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE [Oct.,
aspect of the vision are still divided as to whether the subtly indi-
cated mystical stages of Dante's ascent in the Paradiso are more
closely analogous with the grades of contemplation indicated by
Richard of St. Victor, or the stages of illumination distinguished by
St. Bonaventura in his Itinerarium, by which " the soul, as it were
by steps or journeys, is disposed to pass to peace through excesses of
Christian wisdom." In either case, the poet is, at the most, adapt-
ing the mystical psychology of his predecessors to interpret his own
experience :
Io, che al divino dall'umano,
All'eterno dal tempo era venuto.
" I, who to the divine from the human, to the eternal from time was
come." 25
Allegory ceases at the consummation of the vision. Once
granted the Catholic conception of God, the Catholic doctrine of the
fruition of the Divine Essence in the Beatific Vision, human lan-
guage has never attained so nearly to its adequate utterance as in
the closing canto of the Paradiso. But, since the means employed
are primarily those of poetry, fantasia " imagination " must
needs serve her mistress, the pure understanding, to the end.
" All' alt a fantasia qui manco possa To my high phantasy here
power failed." 26 This is that higher mystical imagination of which
the Angelical Doctor speaks, when " phantasms are formed in the
imagination of man by divine aid, which express divine things
better than do those which we receive naturally from the senses,
as appears in prophetical visions." 27 It does not imply that the
Sacred Poem is what we should now call a " work of imagination,"
a poetical fiction.
IV.
The greatest poets are not merely supreme artists. They are
those of whom Plato speaks as " fathers and guides to us in matters
of wisdom." To such, in the bitterest of times, we should be able
to turn, not for the simple aesthetic consolation of being transported
from the consciousness of the present, but to be kept in touch with
abiding realities and to receive hope for the future.
There are burning lines in which Dante denounces "the evil
25 Par. xxxi., 37, 38. The scansion of the first line is significant ; io is two
syllables and there is no elision of the che; thus emphasizing the personal char-
acter of the experience, the poet's wonder that it should be granted to him, and
producing the slow movement, the solemn intonation of the verse.
28 Par. xxxiii., 142. 27 Summa Theologica, I., q. 12, a. 13.
1915-] THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE n
plant that overshadows all the Christian earth." 28 It is tempting
to apply this to contemporary militarism. Many passages of the
Divina Commedia could be cited as bearing upon what is now
happening before our eyes in Europe ; but we approach Dante from
too low a standpoint when we lay much stress upon such coinci-
dences, striking though they unquestionably are.
From the Stellar Heaven, Dante looks down upon the earth,
I'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci: " With my sight I turned back
through all and each of the seven spheres, and saw this globe such
that I smiled at its humbled semblance. And that counsel I ap-
prove as best that holds it for least ; and he who turns thought else-
where may truly be called righteous The little threshing-
floor, that makes us so fierce, all appeared to me from the hills to
the estuaries, as I turned me with the eternal Twins." 29
Similar representations of the insignificance of the earth in
comparison with the rest of the universe are found in Cicero's
Dream of Scipio and in the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius.
The contrast with Cicero is noteworthy. Scipio does not smile at
the semblance of the earth, but is grieved to think how small a thing
the mighty Roman Empire is : " The globular bodies of the stars
greatly exceeded the magnitude of the earth, and the earth itself
now appeared to me so -small that I grieved for our Empire by
which we touch as it were a mere point of it." 30 Boethius, in a like
strain of moralizing, is still possessed by the idea of Rome. Having
shown the minute circumference of the earth compared with that of
the heavens, of which earth only a very narrow area is inhabitable,
he asks : " What size or magnificence can fame have, which is shut
in by such close and narrow bounds? Can the fame of a Roman
ever reach parts to which the name of Rome cannot come?" 31
Neither the scope of the Roman Empire (though for him a sacred
thing), nor the possible reach of his own fame (which he did not
regard as of no account), was in Dante's mind at that moment; he
was concerned only with the relative value of the temporal and the
eternal.
Nevertheless, the temporal welfare of man is not in his eyes a
matter to be disregarded. The association of the Roman idea with
this terrestrial threshing-floor appears in another form in the De
Monarchia. " This is that mark upon which the guardian of the
world, who is called the Roman Prince, should chiefly fix his mind,
Purg. xx., 43, 44. 29 Par. xxii., 133-138, 151-153.
80 De Re Publica, vi., 16. ^Cons. Phil., ii., pros. vii.
12 THE ABIDING POWER OF DANTE [Oct.,
to wit, that on this threshing-floor of mortality life may be lived
freely and in peace." 32 For the goal of civilization as a whole, the
realization of all the potentialities of the human mind in thought
and in action, can be attained in freedom and in peace alone 33
" Universal peace is the best of those things which are ordained
for our blessedness. Hence it is that to the shepherds there sounded
from on high not riches, not pleasures, not honors, not length of
life, not health, not strength, not beauty, but peace. For the celes-
tial soldiery announce : 'Glory to God in the highest, and, on earth,
peace to men of good will/ Hence, also, He Who was the salvation
of man used the salutation : ' Peace be with you.' For it was meet
that the supreme Saviour should utter the supreme salutation." 34
Liberty and peace! These two words are constantly on
Dante's lips. " He goeth seeking liberty Liberia va cercando "
is the mystical passport of the Purgatorio. 35 "And His will is our
peace E la sua volontate e nostra pace" is the key to the Para-
diso. 3Q " O limitless life of love and of peace vita inter a
d'amore e di pace " is the poet's cry in the celestial " smile of the
universe." 37 "Thou hast drawn me from servitude to liberty
Tu m'hai di servo tratto a libertate " floats upon the music of the
Empyrean in his last address to Beatrice. 38 Liberty and peace are
perfectly attainable only in the hereafter, when the soul has come
from time to the eternal; but, in some degree, they can be antici-
pated here and now; for man's temporal felicity, blessedness of this
life, is the first of the two ends for which he is ordained by Divine
providence.
To lead men to this goal was, in the poet's political theory, the
function of the " Roman Prince." That Holy Roman Empire, in
which he so passionately believed, has passed away ; fuit, et non est;
but the ideal which it represented to his mind may still, in some sort,
under the totally different conditions of the modern world, be ours.
For, to Dante, the Empire that he thus idealized was essentially an
international tribunal of arbitration, armed with power to enforce
its impartial decisions for the temporal welfare, the liberty and
peace, of the human race.
There is a philosophy of which we are probably destined to
hear more in the near future: the Messianism of the Poles. Its
most famous exponent, Adam Mickiewicz, lays down as the first
of its three cardinal points the " necessity of a sacrifice :" " We
**Mon. iii., 16. **Mon. i., 3. **Mon. i., 4. 3S Purg. i., 71.
**Par. iii., 85. "Par. xxvii., 8. Par. xxxi., 85.
1915.] THE ABIDING POWER OP DANTE 13
cannot begin any action, or any fruitful labor of thought, without
a preliminary sacrifice." Dante seems to strike the same note,
when he makes the story of the Eagle, the " sacrosanct sign " of the
Roman Empire, begin with the self-sacrifice of Pallas : " See how
great virtue has made it worthy of reverence, and it began from
the hour that Pallas died to give it sway." 39 And there is surely
profound meaning in the fact that not only Euryalus and Nisus,
who fell fighting for ^Eneas, but also the champions of the adverse
party, Camilla and Turnus (the slayer of Pallas), are elsewhere
enrolled by the poet in the same martyrology. 40 In emphasizing
that suffering, martiro, is the road to peace, he twice uses an almost
identical phrase. Thus, the soul of Boethius " from martyrdom
and from exile came unto this peace da martiro e da esilio venne
a questa pace"** And Cacciaguida says of himself : " E venni dal
martiro a questa pace And I came from martyrdom unto this
peace." 42
Martiro, whether voluntary or involuntary, is the badge of the
nations at this moment. " O supreme God, Who on earth wast
crucified for us, is it preparation, that in the abyss of Thy counsel
Thou art making, for some good utterly severed from our percep-
tion? " 43 It may be that this period of anguish and suffering, the
unparalleled sacrifice that is now being offered upon the battlefields
of Europe, is the ordained prelude to some new era of peace and
freedom in which Dante's ideal will be realized though in what
form it is as yet impossible even dimly to foresee. Should this
prove only an Utopian dream, we shall still have the words of the
Church's collect upon which to fall back: Da servis illam, quam
mundus dare non potest, pacem. And, in the meanwhile, Dante's
own invocation at the sight of the " secure and joyous realm " of
the Blessed will be ours too : " O threefold Light, which glowing in
a single star upon their sight dost so content them, look down upon
our tempest here below :"
trina luce, che in unica Stella
Scintillando a lor vista si gli appaga,
Guarda quaggiu alia nostra procella**
39 Par. vi., 34-36. */w/v i-, 106-108. '"Par. x., 128, 129.
42 Par. xv., 148. "Purg., vi., 118, 119, 121-123. "Par. xxxi., 28-30.
LOUVAIN AND THE IRISH.
BY MICHAEL EARLS, S.J.
F the present gigantic war in Europe is, in the phrase
now grown trite, making history, it is likewise at-
tracting attention to many interesting pages of past
history. Belgian towns and cities, for instance, al-
ready somewhat known to tourists through the notes
in Baedeker, have now become as familiar as street names to news-
paper readers at the ends of the earth, since the history of places
along the war roads from Liege to Louvain has furnished plentiful
" copy " for alert publicists in the Sunday journals. The affirma-
tions and the subsequent denials about the present state of things
leaves the judgment of readers confused; it is not possible to see
through the battle smoke and the manufactured reports. But the
records of former'days happily remain outside of acrimonious dis-
cussion, and retain their power to instruct and their charm to
interest.
One of the places that has afforded ample material for jour-
nalistic " writeups " during the recent months, is the venerable
academic city of Louvain. What are marks of war upon its
features to-day we will not question here; let that await a more
dispassionate time. Neither do we propose to survey the entire
field of Louvain's centuries. A leaf or two out of its great volume
will be sufficient for the present, namely, the relations of some
Irish students with this ancient Belgian town.
The proposed retrospect is not far-fetched. Any tyro in
history knows that countless Irishmen, both in times of peace and
of war, have written their names on Belgium's rolls of honor. To
the schoolboy in the class of declamation, perhaps the glory won
by the Irish Brigade at Ramillies and Fontenoy is preeminent;
yet the fame of Irish valor upon these fields is far less estimable
than the other glories of Irish achievement on Belgian
soil. " Ireland sent the Faith to Belgium ; and the Irish
martyrs, Rombaut, Livin, and a host of others, strengthened that
Faith with their blood. Ages rolled by ; and when the sword was
drawn against the Faith in Ireland, Belgium welcomed to her shores
the persecuted Irish. The nobles were honored in the courts of her
1915.] LOUVAIN AND THE IRISH 15
rulers; the prelates found peace in her sanctuaries, and comfort
in the palaces of her bishops. The Irish merchants made names
for themselves in Flemish cities; and the soldiers were received
into the service of the Archdukes of the Netherlands." 1
The same might truly be said of Ireland in relation to many
other countries of the continent. Not to win a place in the sun,
but in order to bring the light of learning to the rest of Europe, these
men of heroic faith built their schools and monasteries and left an
academic " Irish street " in nearly every city of Europe. To this
lona in the north and Bobbio in the south, and a hundred places
between bear testimony. In later times, when Ireland was driven
from her prominent position, she brought blessings to Spain in
return for the hospitality afforded her ; and when her warriors were
received in France, Ireland was their generous comrade-in-arms.
" During the latter years of Louis XIV., there could not have been
less, at any one time, than from twenty thousand to thirty thousand
Irish in his armies, and during the entire century authentic docu-
ments exist to prove that four hundred and fifty thousand natives
of Ireland died in the service of France." 2
All this is perhaps a wide circle to draw for the purpose
of reiterating a fragment of Irish history in its European relations;
yet although the facts may often have met the reader's eye, many
a reader still expresses incredulity showing a neutral attitude,
the genesis of which is easy to understand when it is remem-
bered that England cut the cables from Ireland long ago. From the
days of Edmund Spenser's official lies to the time of Froude's defa-
mations, the English-speaking world has too often looked askance
at Ireland, asking: "What good can come out of Nazareth?"
Occasionally conviction forces the alien pen to speak a true word,
such as this from Swift : "I cannot but highly esteem those gentle-
men of Ireland who, with all the disadvantages of being exiles and
strangers, have been able to distinguish themselves in so many
parts of Europe, I think, above all other nations."
But from this obvious digression, let us turn back to Belgium.
Glorious as were the relations of Ireland with Europe generally
in former centuries, we are assured that her record in Belgium was
the most brilliant. " There is no country in Europe with which the
Irish have been more intimately connected than with Belgium. In
every page of history, ecclesiastical as well as military, we may
1 J. P. Spelman, in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, vol. vii., 1888.
2 Justin H. McCarthy, quoted in Ireland and Her People, vol. xiv., p. 370.
16 LOUVAIN AND THE IRISH [Oct.,
read of our countrymen as distinguished for piety, bravery and
learning." 3 The space of a volume would be required to tell the
story of all this " piety, bravery and learning." One only of its
pages do we recite here; but before we mention some of the
illustrious Irish names connected with old Louvain, let us re-read,
in as brief a manner as possible, the foundation of this academic
city.
The University of Louvain had its origin in the age when the
voice of the Church was listened to by all the nations of Europe.
Religion and piety were strong, and learning was highly honored.
To augment the splendor of Louvain, which was the capital of
the Duchy of Brabant, Duke John petitioned the Holy Father for
a university, or studium generate; the Papal Bulls were granted on
the ninth of December, 1425. By virtue of them, the dean and
chapter of the Church of St. Peter, and the magistrates and Com-
monality of Louvain, were authorized to open stiidia generalia
in all the faculties, that of theology excepted. At the earnest peti-
tion of Philip the Good, in 1431, Pope Eugenius IV. established
the faculty of theology. The University was entirely unfettered;
for its Rector Magnificus (who, more than once, was an Irishman,
as we shall see), was chief magistrate in Louvain, having civil and
criminal jurisdiction over students and citizens. 4 In 1609, in the
reorganization of the University, the power of criminal jurisdic-
tion was taken away from the Rector Magnificus and other privi-
leges substituted.
The fame of the University spread over Europe. Princes and
nobles were inscribed on its registers; thousands of students from
neighboring countries flocked thither, and took home with their
learning the proud praise of their Alma Mater as florentissima
academia Lovaniensis. Justus Lipsius, before whose famous ros-
trum many illustrious students were counted, sang of Louvain as the
Belgian Athens.
Salvete Athena nostrce, Athena Belgicce
O Fida Fides Artium, O Fructu bona,
Lateque spargens lumen, et nomen tuum.
In the official list of the old colleges which was published on
the occasion of the Golden Jubilee in 1884, the names of forty-
* Samuel Bindon, in his introduction to the historical works of Rt. Rev. Dr.
French.
4 Valerius Andreas, in Fasti Academici, cap. v., sec. i : " Ut jurisdictio omni-
modo, qua civilis qua criminalis, pertineret ad universitatem et rector em ejusdem."
1915.] LOUVAIN AND THE IRISH 17
four colleges are given. Three of these colleges were Irish : that of
the Irish Franciscans, founded in 1609; the college of Irish Domin-
icans, in 1659; and the "Collegium Pastorale Hibernorum" founded
in 1626 by Eugene Matthews, Archbishop of Dublin. But many
famous Irish names are to be found on the lists of other colleges as
well, not only as students, but as professors and presidents. From
the Bax Manuscripts at Brussels and from the Fasti Academici, we
may read a partial list of the distinguished places that Irishmen
held in the old University. But the foregoing documents deal only
with graduates; they do not record the hundreds of alumni who
frequented Louvain before the nineteenth century. Thus, for in-
stance, Daniel O'Connell, before he went to Douai, was a student at
the College of the Holy Trinity; and, let us add, he probably began
his oratorical studies there under an Irish professor of rhetoric,
Thomas Flinn, of whom the Bax Manuscripts speak as follows :
"Thomas Flinn, of Lismore, an Irishman. In the year 1783 he
obtained the first place in rhetoric jn the College of the Holy Trinity
at Louvain. After taking his degree of Master of Arts he entered
theology. On the sixteenth of May in 1791, he was elected pro-
fessor of syntax in the aforesaid college, and put upon the council
of the faculty. Afterwards on the resignation of Professor
O'Hearn, he was appointed professor of rhetoric."
In these lists of distinguished graduates, we find over thirty
Irish bishops and over two hundred graduates from nearly every
diocese in Ireland, who won high honors at Louvain. 5 They also
furnish us with the names of nearly three hundred priests whom
Belgium sent over to Ireland during the penal times.
It would be impossible in the limits of a short paper to mention
even the names of these illustrious Irishmen at Louvain; a few
of the honor men out of hundreds will suffice to confirm the claim
that Irish exiles, when deprived of educational facilities in their
native land, maintained the scholarly reputation of their race at
Louvain. As early as the second half of the sixteenth century,
the illustrious catalogue of Irish graduates begins. The first in
point of time to receive the sanction of the Doctor's cap and ring
was Dermod O'Hurley, afterwards the martyred Archbishop of
Armagh, who took his degree in arts in 1551. In the same year,
Richard Creagh of Limerick graduated, and he, too, became Arch-
bishop of Armagh. Yet another Archbishop of this famous see
came from Louvain in the person of Peter Lombard of Waterford.
5 Joseph P. Spelman, in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, vol. vii., 1888.
VOL. CH, 2
i8 LOU VAIN AND THE IRISH [Oct.,
After his early studies in Ireland, Lombard went to Oxford,
and later became professor of theology at Louvain, and attracted
great attention by his extensive learning. In 1601, while he was in
Rome, Clement VIII. appointed him Archbishop of Armagh. At
Rome he wrote De Regno Hibernorum Sanctorum Insula Commen-
tarius, which was first published at Louvain in 1632. The edition
of this work, to which Cardinal Moran added a preface, was pub-
lished in Dublin in 1868, and therein we may learn of what heroic
mould these Waterford ecclesiastics were. A fellow-student of
Lombard in Louvain was Nicholas Quemerford, and of him and
others the Lord President of Munster, Sir William Drury, com-
plains that " the Catholic cause was mainly supported by the students
of Waterford educated at Louvain, by whom, and by some others
aforesaid, the proud and undutiful inhabitants of the town are
cankered in Popery and are slandering the Gospel publicly." The
zeal of these Irishmen from Louvain is, in the judgment of this
pious Protestant officer, " shameful in a reformed city."
Peter Lombard was one of the distinguished Irish students to
win the high honor of Primus in schola Artium, an honor indeed
when we consider the method of conferring it, and the merit
required to win it. 6 To select the student, a general concur sus
of the faculty of arts was held each year. Nine students were
chosen from each of the four following colleges, Castri, Porci,
Falconis, and Lilii. Two professors from these colleges examined
the candidates; and on the third Sunday of October made known
their judgments. The announcement of the Primus was regarded
as a great honor to the recipient, as well as to his college, his native
country, and his friends. Receptions and fetes were held at Lou-
vain, and likewise, as the chroniclers of the time tell us, in the
native place of the honor man. Ireland was not in a way to cele-
brate the glorious record of her successful children; for, as the
commentator adds, " Our country in those penal days had to remit
one-half the rejoicing, as their native land was bowed down with
sorrow and resting in blood."
Among the other names that stand accredited with this great
academic honor of Primus was John Shinnick of Cork, who took his
degree at Louvain in 1625. In his class of competitors were two
hundred and thirty-six Masters of Arts. A note from the Bax
Manuscripts about John Shinnick will serve to describe a state of
From 1428 to 1797 this preeminent mark of excellence was accorded only to
three hundred and thirty-nine alumni.
1915.] LOUVAIN AND THE IRISH 19
society which existed in Ireland in the seventeenth century, when
even amid the hardships of persecution, zeal for learning was still
vigorous. 7 " John Shinnick began his classical studies in his native
city of Cork. In a short time he made such progress therein that
not only his masters and fellow-students, but also the magnates
of the whole Province of Munster turned their eyes towards him
on account of his great talents, and, according to the custom of
the country, wished to take possession of the boy, that he might
live in their sight; so that three of the most ancient and illustrious
families of Munster fought with the sword for his residence among
them; which aforesaid quarrel caused his parents to send him to
Louvain, although otherwise they could conveniently educate him
at home. Thus, in his early youth, for the sake of the Catholic
Faith, he was exiled from his country and his kindred, and inflamed
with a love for knowledge and virtue he came, as it were from the
Ultima Thule, to the University of Louvain."
The early promise given by young Shinnick in intellectual
achievements was richly fulfilled in later years. He pursued his
studies at Louvain with marked success. Step by step he went on
gaining academic successes as a teacher and regent. But his greatest
honor came in February, 1643, when he was elected Rector Mag-
nificus of the University. He was reflected in August, 1660.
Theological controversy was vigorous in Louvain during Dr. Shin-
nick's rectorship. The great question De Auxillis exercised the
master minds of the University. Cornelius Jansenius was one who
tried his hand at the controversy, and in 1640 appeared from the
press his work: Cornelii Jansenii E pise o pi Iprensis Augustinus.
As Rector Magnificiis, Dr. Shinnick took a leading part in the great
debate. Eleven publications bear his name; and while the reader
may doubt his orthodoxy, knowing that the Congregation of the
Index condemned some of his writings, yet Shinnick never wavered
in his devotion and obedience to the Holy See. He died in May,
1666, at the College of the Holy Ghost, of which he had been
president for twenty-five years. Though his scholarly life had
been passed for the most part at Louvain, he did not forget his
" dear old Ireland." One indication of his affection for his native
land may be observed in the terms of his will, which treat of
the recipients of the bourses which he founded. These were to be
first, the students of his family; then, in lieu of kinsmen, the
7 Bax Manuscripts 22181, Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels, cited by Spelman, ibid.,
P. 733-
20 LOUVAIN AND THE IRISH [Oct.,
bourses were to go to the natives of the County of Cork, then of the
Province of Munster, then to the distinguished Irish students with-
out reference to the locality of their birth and finally to other
distinguished students, preferably those of Louvain, Bruges, and
Turnhout. An elaborate epitaph marks his grave before the altar
in St. Peter's, recording among other illustrious praises of him that
he was " gentis suce grande decus"
Another Irishman who attained the supreme honor of being
Rector Magnificus of Louvain was Thomas Stapleton of Cashel.
He took his degree in 1659, and proceeded to win other honors,
especially in his connection with the College of Luxemburg, until
the highest honor of all in the gift of the University was accorded
to him. "And to-day the traveler may see the portraits of Stapleton
and Lombard amidst the portraits of the illustrious sons of their
Alma Mater in the University halls."
If nothing else could be said of Ireland's achievements at
Louvain, surely the fact of having two of her exile sons during
the harassing times of the seventeenth century appointed to the
highest position in Louvain would be glory enough. Yet Ireland
gave hundreds of others to the work at Louvain, men who won
distinction there, and were lavishly honored by their Alma Mater.
As presidents of the various colleges, as lecturers in the arts and
sciences, as zealous missionaries who went to the perilous parts of
the British Isles, these Irishmen of Louvain won the halo of honor
for their names. They were cognizant of the scholarly traditions
of their ancestors, of the monastic schools and the great abodes of
learning that once adorned their native land, of Bangor, Clonenach,
Glendalough, Mungret and Iniscaltra, Tuam and Clonmacnoise,
schools that numbered their students by the thousand, hundreds
drawing from the continent, schools where the learning and sanctity
flourished, that won for Ireland the great name of " Island of Saints
and Scholars." And we of these later centuries are entitled to
remember, when we are invited to pity the devastation that war has
made in Belgium, that Ireland once had schools and monasteries
older than Louvain, more valiant than Liege, and more brilliant
than Brussels, and that little commiseration has been sought for
them in the pages of English history. Countries upon the continent
have borne witness to the scholarly zeal of these great Irish apostles.
Spain and France and Italy might write of them a passage similar
to this from the learned Kessel in his summary of the achievements
of the Irish in the German provinces. " Every province in Ger-
1915.] LOU VAIN AND THE IRISH 21
many proclaims this race as benefactor. Austria celebrates St.
Colman, St. Vigilius, St. Modestus, and others. To whom but to
the ancient Irish was due the famous 'Schottenkloster' of Vienna?
Salsburg, Ratisbon, and all Bavaria honor St. Vigilius as their
apostle Burgundy, Alsace, Helvetia, Suevia with one voice
proclaim the glory of Columbanus, Gall, Fridolin, Arbogast, Flor-
entius, Trudpert. Who were the founders of the monasteries of
St. Thomas at Strasburg, and of St. Nicholas at Memmingen, but
these same Irish? The Saxons and the tribes of northern
Germany are indebted to them to an extent which may be judged
by the fact that the first ten bishops who occupied the See of Ver-
dun belonged to that race."
Likewise, as we have recorded in a brief manner, Louvain has
always held in affectionate memory the names of the illustrious
Irishmen who honored her schools, especially in the seventeenth
century. The Fasti Academici and the Bax Manuscripts have their
names in great numbers; yet even on the admission of these
sources, only a partial list of the Irish students is given. "Would
that it were allowed," writes David Rothe in his Analecta, " to
collect all of them into one, so that, as if from shipwreck, some, at
least, of these lists might be preserved for posterity. But many of
them have perished; many are hidden away in old libraries, and
if they could be brought to light, they would show how wonderful
was Ireland."
A grateful memory is one of the precious characteristics of
an Irishman. And the little army of exiles who received hospi-
tality in Louvain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
gave of their generosity to the support of their Alma Mater; whether
they remained there to fill places of distinction, or went back to
labor in their own perilous Ireland, they kept a devoted affection
for Louvain. Let the words of Richard Creagh speak for them.
He took his degree at Louvain in 1551, and was appointed later
Archbishop of Armagh. Being sent to the tower of London as
a prisoner, he was asked " what he would have done if he had been
received Archbishop of Armagh, he said he would have lived there
quietly. Being asked what he would have done if he had been
refused, he answered that he would have gone back to Louvain to
his track again, as being discharged of his obedience."
A CANADIAN PASTORAL.
BY MARY CATHERINE CROWLEY.
N summer an excursion boat, leaving the city of
Detroit, crosses the pearly Lake of Ste. Claire and,
entering a shallow river of Ontario, bears slowly up
the stream, as though loath to hasten through the
charming pastoral scenes that arise before it in
tranquil succession. Once a day the little steamer goes up and
down the river, taking several hours to make the trip between the
rapidly-growing metropolis of our Middle West and the elm-shaded
Canadian town of Chatham, drowsy now but seething with pent-up
energy fifty years ago, when it served as a station of the under-
ground railroad for refugee slaves from Virginia and Kentucky.
During the voyage, the steamer encounters no other craft, save
an occasional punt or canoe, upon the bright waters that meander
through the meadows, like a procession of fairies sportively thread-
ing a maze. The excursionist, being out for a holiday, resigns
himself to the long trip, and improves the abundant leisure by
lapsing either into slumber or day-dreams. For the first time, per-
haps, he realizes that a flat country may be beautiful. Willows bend
over the current as if to catch the reflection of their own supple
grace; whitewashed farmhouses and unpainted barns, silver-hued
from age, come into view at intervals; cattle feast in the green
pastures. Rarely is a laborer to be seen in the fields, yet they have
been well cultivated and give promise of a generous harvest. .
About half-way up the river two especial, adjoining farms
extend from the water's edge into the heart of the prairie. Two
summers ago the upper farm, like the majority of the holdings in
the vicinity, was not well kept, yet like them, too, the dilapidated
appearance of the buildings was more indicative of content with the
old order of things than that the owner lacked the means to improve
them. Here lived Monique Bernoit, a French-Canadian demoiselle,
no longer young but still good-looking and vivacious. At the death
of her father, old Jacques Bernoit, who had been long a widower,
Monique, his only surviving child, had entered into possession of
the estate, and here she had remained, alone, save for the elderly
couple, Jean and Frangoise, her faithful servants for many years.
1915.] A CANADIAN PASTORAL 23
Jean still managed to work the land, with hired help, in midsummer,
and Franchise attended to the menage, with considerable assistance
from her mistress.
John Hackett, the owner of the adjacent farm, was a stalwart
Irishman in the prime of life, who had recently bought the place
with the avowed intention of improving it. The inhabitants
laughed at his folly.
" The soil ees well enough," they said, " and as long as the
old sheds hold together where ees the good of spending on them the
money that ees so hard to get? Bettair put eet by for the clay of
want; even to a man who has no one to care for but heemself,
such a day may come."
Nevertheless, Hackett persisted in his plan.
"If only a fool would patch up these things, then I'm that
fool," he declared. "Although I'm not married, I want my home
comfortable; or rather, since I'm not married I have a fair chance
to have my home comfortable, for are not peace and quietness
better than a scolding wife? "
Early in the spring, before plowing time, he busied himself in
repairing his fences, all save the one that divided his orchard from
the property of Mademoiselle Bernoit. Old Jean had happened to
remark to him that when Mam'selle Monique was a jeune fille
she loved to romp in the orchard with the young people of the
Ladue family. It was from Michel Ladue that Hackett had bought
the farm.
The Irishman did not fancy Mademoiselle Monique.
" Her smart, quick way is a sign she has a temper," he solilo-
quized one day, as he watched her from the door of his barn, while
she fed the ducks and chickens in her poultry yard. " I've never
taken to these little dark women and," he laughed good-humoredly,
" as she has shown no neighborliness toward me, we are like to
remain civil and strange. Still, it would be ill-mannered of me
to mend the gap in the boundary fence, even though her hens do
bother me a deal. Maybe at times she would like to sit under the
shade of the orchard trees now. My old mother, God rest her soul,
set great store by what she was used to when she was a slip of a
girl, and, no doubt, women are much the same in their notions."
Had John Hackett taken a more practical view of the matter,
there might never have been the trouble about the little pig. Ah,
the little pig is the true hero of this story. To whom did he belong?
That is the whole question.
24 A CANADIAN PASTORAL [Oct.,
On a certain afternoon, as Mademoiselle Monique was passing
down her boundary field, she saw him scamper across the sward,
through the gap in the fence, and into the Irishman's orchard,
and begin a search for windfalls in the long grass.
" Venez id, petit cochon! Venez id! " called Monique, giving
chase to the runaway without a thought that she, herself, was
wandering beyond her own preserves. " Shoo, shoo, stupide leetler
beast."
Extending her skirts with both hands, to form a barrier against
his further escape, she danced lightly to and fro, repeating, as
though the cry possessed the same charm to drive him homeward
as it had for her pullets and the big rooster, " Shoo ! Shoo ! "
The greater her exertions, however, the more determined
seemed his pigship to make for the barnyard of her neighbor. He
fought valiantly for and won his liberty.
Mademoiselle had pursued him almost to the end of the
orchard, when she suddenly became aware that someone was coming
to her aid. A tall figure stood in the path of the errant animal,
a strong hand swooped down and made him prisoner. The next
moment, Monique stopped, flushed with the unwonted exercise,
short of breath, and speechless from mortification. She had almost
rushed into the arms of the neighbor toward whom she had, until
now, thought proper to assume an air of hauteur, as if to say, " I
hold my lands by inheritance; you are a stranger who owe your
position here to the power of the vulgar dollar." Never had she
entered the orchard since his occupancy of the farm, and now both
she and the little pig were caught trespassing. A quick glance
showed her that the Irishman was not only sturdy of frame, but
that he had what his own country-people would call, "a good open
countenance." His reddish-brown hair and beard were lightly
touched with gray but an almost boyish color glowed in his cheeks,
and his blue eyes unmistakably twinkled with mirth.
"Ma -foi, he is not ill-looking. I like that bright hair and
those fresh complexions," she thought. " Mais, vraiment, the man
dares to laugh at me ! "
" Though she's sallow, she has a fine pair of eyes in her head
and her hair has a pretty wave to it," said Hackett to himself.
Then he added aloud, as he held toward her the struggling and
squealing truant, " He is a spry fellow, ma'am, and complimented
I am by your interest in my little pig."
Mademoiselle Monique had extended her arms to receive the
1915.] A CANADIAN PASTORAL 25
fugitive with much the same eagerness that a lady of fashion would
have accepted an Airedale terrier of irreproachable pedigree. At
the remark of her neighbor she hesitated a second; then she
seized and held fast the wriggling animal, as she exclaimed with
spirit :
" My intairest in your leetler peeg ! Pardon, m'sieur, eet ees
my leetler peeg. I know nottings consairning peegs of yours."
The Irishman laughed good-naturedly.
" Mademeeselle," he said, doffing his wide-brimmed straw hat,
" shure it is your little pig, if you will accept it."
" Chut, m'sieur, I care not to receive as a present that which is
already mine," returned Monique with a graceful, if satirical, polite-
ness.
The blue eyes could flash too.
" Oh, very well, ma'am," said their owner, a trifle stiffly, " if
you won't take hinr, I won't give him to you."
" But I will take heem, because he ees mine," she declared with
a fine assumption of dignity.
" I would fain not argue with a woman, but the little pig
belongs to me," answered John Hackett firmly. " Only yesterday
I bought him from Jacques Cicotte, a habitant up the river. You
know his farm, I suppose ? "
" Yes, I know," admitted Monique. " Since you say so, of
course, m'sieur, I believe you bought a leetler peeg. What has
become of eet ees not my affair. But this is my leetler peeg. Eet
run away. I find eet here ; can there be anything more plain ? "
For answer he threw back his head and laughed again.
" Was evair a man si bete" repeated Mademoiselle Monique
under her breath.
Instead of continuing the argument that day, however, she
wheeled around and ran home, with the little pig clasped close in
her embrace. Her heart was filled with trepidation lest the Irish-
man would stride after her and take, perforce, the squirming object
of their dispute. As a matter of fact, he made no attempt to
assert his claim further, but plucking a spear of timothy, drew it
through his hand, as he looked thoughtfully after her.
" She is like a bird with its feathers ruffled, and her scolding is
like the chatter of a bird too," he mused, " but if she won't take
the little pig as a gift, I'll not yield it up to her at all."
Triumphant and happy, Monique reached her own barnyard.
At the beginning of the season there had been four little pigs
26 A CANADIAN PASTORAL [Oct.,
in the Bernoit pen. Two had been sold; the third had been
" adopted " by a family of ne'er-do-wells, and mademoiselle,
because of their poverty, while rebuking their excess of philan-
thropic zeal, had formally renounced, in their favor, all right and
title to this estrayed property; the fourth little pig had openly run
away. Congratulating herself upon her recovery of the truant,
mademoiselle now jubilantly restored him to the care of his natural
guardian, and the old sow received him with demonstrations of
delight. Was there ever more conclusive proof of ownership?
During the summer evenings, Jean and Franchise kept each
other company on the back porch of the Bernoit house, while Made-
moiselle Monique sat alone on the gallery of her solitary home and
thought of other summers, when the place reechoed with the voices
of youthful merry-makers; of the soft twilights; and of a certain
trysting tree in the neighboring orchard. But, ah, these memories
had to do with a period long past. On the evening following her
capture of her recreant property, she was engrossed by other reflec-
tions.
" The leetler peeg is mine, certainement" she ejaculated. " I
must to this M'sieur Hackett speak more about eet, to-morrow."
The next day, when she saw her neighbor going through the
orchard, she hastened out from her kitchen and, leaning over the
broken fence, called to him. He came at once to where she stood,
and listened attentively while, with naive persistence, she strove to
make him view the matter in what she considered its proper light.
The discussion was prolonged for more than half an hour but
" Bah ! What a stubborn man," Monique mentally exclaimed.
For ce monsieur was of the same opinion still.
" Mademeeselle," said he with a conciliatory bow, " you are
welcome to the loan of anything I possess, but I do not care to have
my little pig 'adopted.' '
Ignoring the gleam of mischief in his blue eyes, Monique
tossed her head and flushed with indignation.
" Monsieur," she cried hotly, " this very day shall Jean begin
to build up the gap in the fence."
Old Jean spent at the task every hour he could spare from the
farm work, and in few days the repairs- were completed.
But the little pig could have undermined a stone wall. Made-
moiselle lamented that his loyalty to ancestral acres was not proof
against the temptation of the luscious windfalls of the adjoining
1915-] A CANADIAN PASTORAL 27
orchard. Her neighbor maintained that every living creature, if
left free, will return to its home.
All during the summer, the little pig continued to run away
from mademoiselle, and mademoiselle continued to send Jean or
Franchise for him, and to protest to ce Monsieur Hackett that she
only claimed her property. At last, one beautiful September morn-
ing, the Irishman said to her. " It is time, ma'am, this quarrel was
settled. What do you say to driving with me up to the Cicotte
farm, or, better still, suppose we go down to the River Church
to see Father Bonaventure ? Shall we let him decide who owns the
little pig?"
" The lower road will be bettair for the wheels of your wagon-
ette than the rough route up the cote" replied Mademoiselle Moni-
que amiably, " and I shall be satisfied if Father Bon says the leetler
peeg belongs to me."
Hackett tacitly commended her thoughtfulness with regard to
the wagonette, although the suspicion lurked in his mind that she
did not wish to face the Cicotte testimony with regard to a certain
bill of sale.
They set off in good spirits, even with a degree of gayety, and
the little pig, now fast out-growing the diminutive, went with them,
securely tied in the box at the back of the vehicle.
John Hackett's turnout was the handsomest in the vicinity, and
John Hackett was a personable man, as Monique was forced to
acknowledge to herself.
" There's a trimness about the mademeeselle that is most pleas-
ing to the eye and her company is mighty enlivening," thought the
Irishman. " She is a conscientious woman, too, except in the
matter of the little pig, and good to the poor. Moreover, old Jean
says she is the best cook and housekeeper in these parts. What a
pity she has such an obstinate disposition."
The spire of the River Church seems, from a distance, to rise
out of the river itself, like the mystic arm that held aloft from the
deep waters of the mere the jeweled hilt of Excalibar. The small
gray-brick, ivy-grown edifice is, in fact, built at a point where the
meadows jut out into the current. Beside it stands a very humble
rectory that is scarce more than a shelter from the weather, like
the old gray coat of the incumbent. All around these two isolated
structures extends the low plain, with only a clump of trees, here
and there, and not a house in sight. A stranger marvels that a
church was built in such a spot. Nevertheless, the location is re-
28 A CANADIAN PASTORAL [Oct.,
garded as central, since the farmers, from miles around, come
hither with their families, either by way of the river in punts, or by
the road, driving in their old-time habitant charettes.
Father Bonaventure or, as he is affectionately called, " Father
Bon," is a white-haired, thickset, ruddy, and genial French-Cana-
dian from Montreal, who for twenty years has been pastor of the
River Church. With devotedness and piety he possesses a keen
sense of humor.
" The top of the morning to your Reverence," cried Hackett
as, accompanied by Mademoiselle Bernoit, he entered the small
parlor of the rectory.
"Bon jour, M'sienr le Cure," murmured Monique, an unac-
customed diffidence stealing over her.
"Bon jour, my frien's, I beg you to be seated," courteously
responded the Cure, who had been acquainted with Monique from
her childhood.
" Your Reverence, the lady and I are after having a bit of a
dispute, and we have agreed to let you decide it," began Hackett.
" Is it not so, mademeeselle ? "
" Yes. That ees, if Father Bon says the leetler peeg ees
mine," repeated Monique with recovered equanimity.
" Mademeeselle, will you state the case," continued the Irish-
man chivalrously.
Father Bon drew down his features to a sympathetic gravity
and prepared to listen.
Monique eagerly gathered her forces.
" Monsieur le Cure, I had four leetler peegs," she explained
volubly. " Two I have sold ; the third he have been sto
'adopted' by a family that Jean calls the ne'er-do-wells, in the
lane; the fourth I have find in the orchard of my neighbor, here,
and I bring heem home, for he ees mine."
At this point Hackett interposed, glancing respectfully at the
lady, but speaking with firmness :
" Your Reverence, the little pig belongs to me. I bought him
at the Cicotte farm. Mademeeselle's fourth little pig has simply
disappeared. No doubt it met its destiny long ago."
" Oh ! Oh ! Oh ! " protested Monique in tones of mingled
grief and scorn.
" With all apologies to the lady for standing out against her,
I will show your Reverence that the subject of our contention
belongs to me," persisted Hackett.
1915.] A CANADIAN PASTORAL 29
Thereupon, he brought in the little pig and set it on the floor.
He called the lively animal by name and it ran to him. For a
quarter of an hour he amused Father Bon, and even Monique, with
its antics and the tricks in which he had cleverly trained it.
" Nevair did I behold a peeg with tant d' esprit" exclaimed
Monique. Nevertheless, she would not relinquish her claim.
" Mademoiselle monsieur," said the Cure, " listen to my
decision. The pig shall be killed, roasted, and equally divided be-
tween you."
But this decree did not meet the approval of either party.
" The leetler peeg he ees not yet quite fat enough to eat,"
faltered Monique beginning to weep.
" I see no other way to settle the quarrel," cried Father Bon in
desperation.
" There may still be a means of arranging it," suggested
Hackett.
" Mais comment? How pray ? " asked mademoiselle.
" I am thinking that mademoiselle and I might own it to-
gether," spoke up Hackett boldly. " Now if we were to get
married "
" What foolishness," interrupted Monique.
Father Bon glanced at her sharply. " Why was she still Made-
moiselle Bernoit ? Ah, yes," he said to himself, " I recall a youth-
ful love affair wherein a worthless son of old Ladue played the part
of hero. For the sake of a faithless lover she has rejected other
offers. Now here is a fine fellow who would make her a good
husband. She is a capable, cheery, little woman, with a flash of
spirit that would keep his life from being monotonous. Such an
arrangement would be excellent for both of them. But does the
Irishman really mean what he has just said? "
" Monsieur, you should not jest on the topic of marriage.
Those who have tried it say it is by no means a joke," hazarded
Father Bon, tentatively.
" I have no thought of jest at all, your Reverence," Hackett
acknowledged, in no way abashed. " Shure, I may as well
admit it, mademeeselle ran away with my heart when she ran
away with the little pig. In short, I may say she sto er,
ahem adopted it."
Monique lowered her gaze, and the wave of rosy color that
overspread her face made her look years younger.
" Dry your pretty eyes, mademeeselle, and say you will marry
30 A CANADIAN PASTORAL [Oct.,
me," he went on. " Grant me this, alanna, and I'll not gainsay you
in anything else."
Monique looked up at him through her tears but made no reply.
" Say you will marry me, mademeeselle, darlin'," he whispered.
A smile, arch as a girl's, played about her lips.
" Yes," she stammered very low, " I will marry you to save
the life of the leetler peeg."
" Then marry us now, your Reverence," pleaded the impatient
suitor.
" But the banns and the license? " objected their kindly referee.
" No no, I could not be married so suddain," protested
mademoiselle. " Eet must be with the usual ceremonies, also
with the music, the flowers, the long-trained gown and the
veil. Yes."
Monique had not outlived her youth after all. She never
doubted the suitableness in her case of these latter accessories.
" Oh, well, since the matter is settled, I am as happy as as the
little pig," said Hackett resignedly.
A few weeks later, the marriage took place at the River
Church, and was followed by a fete at the Bernoit farm.
" What about the little pig? " inquired Father Bon when, after
the festivities, he again congratulated the bride and bridegroom.
" Ah, the leetler peeg," sighed Monique contentedly. " He
did not at our wedding feast appear, because, Pere, we have decided
to give heem to you."
" Mais non" answered the disinterested Cure, " madame, as
a thanks offering for the fortunate culmination of the romance
with which he had so much to do, I think he ought to be given to
the poor."
" All right, your Reverence," cried Hackett gaily, " then the
ne'er-do-wells of the lane will do well this time, for they are like
to get this little pig, too, in the end, and joy be after him, which
is but another way of saying 'may he nevermore be a subject of
dispute between Monique and myself.' '
IN MEMORIAM ROBERT HUGH BENSON,
(Died October 19,
BY J. CORSON MILLER.
O'ER Hare Street House the autumn sky
Cups beauty to the brim ;
Night weaves a tender witchery
Of dreams for him.
The South Wind weeps from sea to sea,
And the violets mourn on the mere,
For a noble Knight of Chivalry
Once tarried here.
The young moon views with saddened eye
These paths that knew his feet,
Where lips were wont to bid good-bye
And hands to meet.
Ay, many a spring shall bloom again,
And many a summer's rose,
No more shall this true knight greet men,
Or friends or foes.
Faithful, his chapel-tapers flame,
Christ still smiles from above,
The very hush cries out his name,
For such is love!
Yet now a picture crowds mine eyes
(How soft yon meadows sleep!
Only the stars bright mysteries
Old vigils keep.)
Ah, see! Christ stretches forth His hand
A Maiden-Knight to bring
Unto His own His promised land,
For visioning.
* * * *
The world has lost proud Chiefs of State,
Famed Heroes of the Sword
This Hero fought hence doubly great
For Christ, the Lord !
KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION.
BY A. H. NANKIVELL.
HE outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, with all
the appalling evils which have followed in its train,
at least brought to England peace at home and
hushed the storm of party strife. In her political
life a state of extreme tension gave way to that
generous rivalry in the service of country ; and in a somewhat sim-
ilar way her interminable religious dissensions were for very shame
hushed into silence. On the very eve of the outbreak of hostilities,
the Archbishop of Canterbury had announced that he was about to
issue his decision in the controversy which had arisen out of the
Missionary Conference at Kikuyu. He had referred the matter to
a Consultative Body consisting of fourteen bishops, which was
constituted by the last Lambeth Conference for dealing with such
questions as might arise affecting the whole Anglican Communion
in the intervals between these decennial Conferences, and this
Committee had held its sittings on the last five days of July. Its
report was signed by eleven members of the Committee, headed
by the Archbishop of York, for the Archbishop of Canterbury
naturally did not sign a document addressed to himself, and the
Bishops of St. Alban's and Sydney were absent. The High Church
Party were poorly represented, but it may be noted that Dr. Talbot,
Bishop of Winchester, was among the signatories. However,
the report was not made public, and the promised decision never
appeared, and no demand was made that it should. It was felt
that the status quo ought to be preserved for the period of the
war.
Whether under any circumstances the truce could have lasted
so long it is difficult to say. The Archbishop wished it to be under-
stood that the postponement was only due to the " ceaseless and
exacting " demands upon his time that the war entailed. At any
rate it was not till the Bishop of Hereford had appointed a leading
Modernist to a Cathedral Canonry, and the Bishop of Zanzibar
had accepted the challenge by placing on record his emphatic
protest, and declaring that " so long as the ground of our complaint
set forth above remains, there can be no communion in
I9I5-] KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION 33
Sacred Things between ourselves and the Right Reverend John,
Lord Bishop of Hereford," that the Archbishop bethought him
of his peculiar relations to the Bishops of Uganda and Zanzibar,
who are not in any province, and of whom he is " Metropolitan or
quasi-Metropolitan." Then like a flash Jove's arm was bared,
and the thunderbolt was hurled.
The questions raised at Kikuyu were eight in number, and it
may be convenient to state them here. I have used the term
" Nonconformist " to designate the Non-Anglican Protestant. It
is not quite satisfactory, but the alternatives are not any better.
1. May Anglicans preach in Nonconformist chapels?
2. May Nonconformist ministers preach in Anglican places
of worship?
3. May Nonconformists communicate in Anglican churches?
4. May Anglicans communicate in Nonconformist churches ?
5. Was the united communion at Kikuyu contrary to Angli-
can principles?
6. May united communions be held?
7. Does the Anglican Church insist on episcopacy, and, if so,
to what extent?
8. Does the Kikuyu scheme of federation, taken as a whole,
contravene recognized Anglican principles, and, if so, in what
respect ?
Looking back over these questions, it might seem plain that
the fifth is determined by the third, and the sixth by the third and
fourth, but that is really not the case. Most Anglicans have been
prepared to tolerate, if not approve, " occasional conformity " by
individual Nonconformists; and in the past persons of repute
have received the sacrament from non-episcopal Protestant minis-
ters; but what one might describe as formal demonstrations of
sacramental unity, whether at Grindelwald or at Kikuyu, have
always been deeply resented.
The questions before us may be conveniently grouped as two
questions about preaching; four about intercommunion; and two
about church government. Of these it may be noticed that the first,
though asked, is not noticed by the Consultative Body, and only an-
swered incidentally, and as it were accidentally, by the Archbishop.
It is apparently assumed that if a Nonconformist may preach to
Anglicans, a fortiori an Anglican may preach to Nonconformists
without objection being taken on the part of churchmen. And this
shows more than anything how fast and how far the Anglican
VOL. en. 3
34 KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION [Oct.,
Church has been traveling of late years in the undenominational
direction.
The questions as actually put by the Archbishop to the Con-
sultative Body were two, viz., the eighth and the fifth of our
list, though the actual wording is of course our own. The drift
of their answer is that reunion is the aim in view, and the adoption
of practical steps towards reunion is wholly desirable. But fed-
eration is not exactly the same thing; and so big a scheme should
be sanctioned by the Lambeth Conference before being put into
practice. In detail, the mutual recognition of ministers requires
anxious consideration. No doubt the bishop could invite a Non-
conformist minister to preach, but it could not be claimed as a
right. Similarly, Nonconformists might be admitted to communion
without previous confirmation with the approval of the bishop
of the diocese, but not as a matter of course. And it does not
by any means follow that Anglicans may receive communion
from Nonconformists. Without judging the value of the ministry
existing in other communions, " Anglican churchmen must con-
tend for a valid ministry, as they understand it, and regard them-
selves as absolutely bound to stipulate for this for themselves."
To the other question relating to the Kikuyu communion,
the Committee declined to give a direct answer. " We desire to
abstain from any expression of judgment about it But
we are bound to add that any attempt to treat it as a precedent,
or to encourage habitual action of the kind, must be held to be
inconsistent with principles accepted by the Church of England.
It would be a very serious alteration of the terms of communion,
made not by any deliberate and corporate resolution of the Church,
but by the sporadic action of individuals. However well intended,
it would be subversive of church order."
To summarize the Answer of the Consultative Body :
The Archbishop of Canterbury put questions eight and five.
Their answers deal with eight, two, three, four, seven, five,
and six.
Eight is only answered by the answers to the others.
2. If allowed by the bishop.
3. If allowed by the bishop.
4. No.
7. The Anglican Church insists on episcopacy for its own
members, without judging non-episcopal churches.
5. No answer, but see six.
6. No.
1915.] KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION 35
The Archbishop seems to have been dissatisfied with the
tone of this reply, if not with the substance of it, and from his
point of view it is not surprising; for the Answer of the Com-
mittee leaves the future of the Church of England very much
in the hands of the individual bishops. If it is interpreted in
a broad spirit, no doubt it might be the letting out of water. The
only positive restriction is the prohibition of communion with
Nonconformists in their chapels, though no doubt that means much
more in the mission field than it does at home. But, on the other
hand, the whole tone of the report suggests the desire to smother
the unwelcome babe with infinite gentleness. The drift of it is:
let us allow a few exceptions here and there, and take due account
of the difficulties that exist in remote heathen districts; but let
us preserve as far as we can the status quo at home, and avoid
anything that might break up the compromise. In other words,
do not be too strict, but make no change.
Now the whole purpose of the Archbishop's statement is to
accept this ruling as that which will least divide the Anglican
body, and at the same time to give it the character of a decisive
step in the direction of innovation. He insists, at some length,
on the magnitude and gravity of the problem as it presents itself
at the present time in all parts of the mission field. Everywhere
the divided sects of Protestant Christendom are realizing how
meaningless, and out of place to-day, are the watchwords of the
seventeenth century in Africa or India or Australia. Everywhere
they are aiming at the formation of native (national) churches,
which shall be united and free from the denominational divisions
which unfortunately still characterize the parent bodies. In his
own words, the objective in this discussion is " the planting and
growth of a rightly ordered Christian Church in East Africa." He
then draws attention to the very pertinent counsels of successive
Lambeth Conferences in this matter, and shows that the Bishops
of Mombasa and Uganda are right in claiming that the Kikuyu
Conference was, in their own words, " an honest attempt to inter-
pret what we believe to be the spirit and intention of the Lambeth
Conference in regard to closer cooperation in the mission field with
the only churches with which such cooperation is at present pos-
sible." And he insists that "to arrange when possible for occasional
conferences of an interdenominational kind, is not only permissible,
but is positively enjoined by successive Lambeth Conferences."
At this point he turns aside to consider practical difficulties.
An obvious one is the question whether the Church of England
36 KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION [Oct.,
has laid down a rule that marks all non-Episcopalians as extra
Ecclesiam. Quoting some leading High Churchmen against this
view, he says that the onus probandi at least rests with those who
would assert it.
And here we may note that there appears to be a subtle
difference of opinion between the Archbishop and his Consultative
Committee, which appears to have escaped the attention of their
critics hitherto. The Archbishop takes the line ( i ) that the Church
of England has not passed an adverse judgment on non-episcopal
Churches, or declared them extra Ecclesiam; and (2) that in the
absence of any such adverse judgment the burden of proof rests
on those who would treat them as such, in other words, that their
ministries are to be regarded as valid though irregular. In another
place, he expressly refuses to describe their ministries as invalid,
and he only describes them as " irregular," in inverted commas.
Whether he is merely drawing attention to what he considers the
correct description of such orders, or attempting to insinuate a
doubt as to their real " irregularity," we cannot say.
The line taken by the Consultative Body has only the most
superficial resemblance to this position. In their opinion, no ad-
verse judgment has been passed upon non-episcopal orders or
Churches, because " it is no part of our duty, and therefore not
our desire, to pronounce negatively upon the value in God's sight
of the ministry in other communions." Silence, therefore, is,
in their opinion, the strongest form of censure that Anglican
charity allows itself. It is obvious, therefore, on their principles,
that Anglicans have no warrant at all for treating non-episcopal
ordinations as of any value; and indeed so far from being willing
to give the benefit of the doubt to Nonconformists, they say quite
plainly that Anglicans must contend for a valid ministry, and
that action on the contrary assumption is " subversive of church
order."
Returning to the Archbishop's statement, we find that he lays
great stress on one of the chief objections to the scheme of federa-
tion which is favored by the Low Church bishops. For federation
inevitably implies the setting up of some sort of executive called
in the Kikuyu scheme the " Representative Council," with some
measure of authority over the federated bodies, though not neces-
sarily over their internal affairs. And such a step could not be
taken by one section of a great communion without the consent
of the whole. The Archbishop proceeds to discuss the questions
before him in detail under three headings.
1915.] KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION 37
1 i ) The question about preaching, being the first and second
in our list, both of which he answers in the affirmative, subject in
both cases to the consent of the bishop concerned. He says:
"I see no reason to restrict the freedom of a bishop in the
mission field, as to those whom he may invite to address his people,
or as to the sanction which may be given to a priest or deacon of
his diocese to address in their own buildings, on due invitation
given, Christians who belong to other denominations. No funda-
mental principle seems to me to be involved. It is a matter of
local, and primarily of diocesan, administration."
(2) The admission of unconfirmed Nonconformists to com-
munion. " I have no hesitation in saying that in my opinion
a diocesan bishop acts rightly in sanctioning, when circumstances
seem to call for it, the admission to Holy Communion of a devout
Christian man to whom the ministrations of his own Church are
for the time inaccessible, and who, as a baptized person, desires
to avail himself of the opportunity of communicating at one of
our altars." This he describes as " ordered liberty."
(3) The proposed permission to Anglicans to communicate
with Nonconformists, when unable to obtain the ministrations of
their own clergy, does not meet with as much favor at the hands
of the Archbishop as one might have expected. But that seems
to be due much more to the dislike with which it is almost every-
where regarded than to its inherent impropriety. " So far," he
says, " as I can appraise and correlate the testimony given to me
from China and Manchuria, from India, from Melanesia, and
from Canada, the result of giving such advice in general terms
would be not only to create perplexity in administration, but to
hamper and retard such measure of cooperation as is now happily
in progress." And it is fair to add that he lays stress on the
danger of treating " the question of a threefold ministry as trifling
or negligible." On the Kikuyu communion, and the general ques-
tion of united communions, he takes the same line as the Consulta-
tive Body, but the objection which he emphasizes is practical,
rather than theoretical. Reunion must not be rushed by a faction,
because it is going to be the deliberate work of the whole Church.
What, then, is the new situation created by the " Statement,"
as they call it, of the Archbishop of Canterbury? How does it
affect, not the missionary dioceses immediately concerned, but
the great parties and interests really involved in this matter?
What does it mean to the Church of England? Or to that still
38 KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION [Oct.,
more mysterious entity, the Anglican communion? Has the Con-
sultative Body succeeded once more in moving the previous ques-
tion ? Or is the official Church going to be made to say yes or no ?
On the one hand, the Bishop of Zanzibar and those who are
with him are showing a remarkable determination to act quite
seriously on a definite theory, and to take the consequences; the
theory being in this case that the real Catholic Church consists
of separated episcopal branches, and that the Anglican bishops
are really, and not for the sake of argument, Catholic prelates.
A theory so divorced from the truth must, if seriously acted upon
for any length of time, lead to some remarkable results.
The Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda seem equally deter-
mined to act on their theory that the Catholic Church is a congeries
of episcopal and non-episcopal sects. The divisions are con-
sidered " unhappy," mainly as they do practically divide those
who might otherwise freely worship and labor together. For
there is no indication that they regret their separation from Cath-
olic or Orthodox Christians, and no indication that they particularly
value communion with the ultra High Church. And on the other
hand, if strict unity of government with other Protestant Christians
is unattainable, federation seems to them a natural and satisfac-
tory substitute. And they are able to quote, among other official
and semi-official utterances of Anglican authorities, the words of
the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the
United States : " We do not seek to absorb other communions, but
to cooperate with them on the basis of a common faith and order."
And, as they remind us, the Lambeth Conference has spoken not
only in general terms of " other Christian Churches," but also more
definitely of " Presbyterian and other non-episcopal Churches."
But these Low Church bishops further make a serious claim,
that the Anglican Episcopate has already by implication conceded
their main contention at least as far as strict Presbyterian Orders
are concerned. To the High Church contention that Presbyterians,
having no episcopate have consequently no valid Eucharist, they
point out that in the so-called Lambeth Quadrilateral the basis
of reunion between Anglicans and Nonconformists was laid down
under four heads, viz., (i) Holy Scripture, (2) the Creeds, (3) the
Sacraments, and (4) the Historic Episcopate. And then they
quote the words of the Committee of Reunion and Intercommunion,
appointed by the Lambeth Conference of 1908: "Whenever they
have held closely to their traditions and professed standards of
1915.] K1KUYU: THE NEW SITUATION 39
faith and government, as formulated at Westminster, they satisfy
the first three of the four conditions of an approach to reunion
laid down by the Lambeth Conference of 1888." And they add:
" The peculiar strength of this Committee, and the representative
character of the fifty-seven archbishops and bishops who composed
it, gives special weight to its utterances."
Now what, in these circumstances, is the real position of the
great Centre Party, which constitutes the real Church of England, as
it exists effectively for practical purposes and keeps it from falling
asunder? This main body consists of people of moderate views,
whose sympathies or associations lie with more than one of the
three great traditional parties, with a large substratum of purely
Erastian supporters of the Establishment. They have not any
very clearly thought-out principles, but they try to take common-
sense views of practical questions. In the main they are moderately
Low Church without being evangelical. They do not as a body
bother themselves much about conversion or justification by faith.
And they tend to think more of the Commandments of the Second
Table than of the First. Their doctrine of the Church is nearer
that of the Evangelicals than that of the Ritualists. They mostly
believe, to some degree, in sacramental grace; they are not quite
clear whether Romanists, as they describe us, are or are not in
the Catholic Church; and they are not sure which of the non-
episcopal Churches can really be counted as parts of the Church of
Christ. On the whole they are inclined to rank Presbyterians as
properly within the Church and Quakers as without. But at the
same time they are quite alive to the strategical advantages of
the High Church view, and they have a great deal to say about the
validity of Anglican Orders and the sinfulness of repudiating them.
It is not likely that this Centre Party will have any great
quarrel with the statement of the Archbishop. As a whole it
thinks much as he does, though he being an individual, and a very
capable one, moves more swiftly to his conclusions, while it, being
a very conservative party, tarries for the slowest of its members.
It is fully aware that the Anglican communion has no future out-
side the country of its birth, unless it is amalgamated with the
leading Protestant denominations. And it is prepared to make
almost any sacrifice to secure the formation in English-speaking
and heathen countries of National Protestant Churches on an
" episcopal " basis which shall be strong enough and united
enough to make the triumph of Catholicism impossible. But there
40 KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION [Oct.,
are certain considerations, beside its innate conservatism and its
imperfect unification, which tend to delay its acceptance of the
new policy.
1. It aims at retaining a certain High Church element in
the united Protestant Church which it seeks to establish. The
increase of extreme evangelicalism and rationalism which must
result from any considerable reunion with the larger Noncon-
formist bodies, will make this both desirable and difficult. At
present these tendencies are balanced by encouraging the idea of
reunion with the " Eastern Churches." A surrender to the Ortho-
dox might please some High Church Anglicans, and gratify their
animosity to Rome. But a reunion with the Photian schism and
with English Nonconformity is a combination too unlikely to
occur to be seriously entertained by the most optimistic believer
in the special mission of the English Church.
2. The traditional Church of England dislike of " dissent,"
though clearly diminishing, is by no means extinct. And there
is much in the present and the future that may tend to revive
it. It is plain that whatever may happen in Asia or Africa, the
average Churchman is not hankering after too close association
with his non-episcopal neighbor at home.
3. It is feared that the Pro-Roman Party is able and willing
to break the Church of England in pieces rather than submit to
the triumph of Kikuyu principles. Its leaders are already saying
with the prodigal, " Give me the portion of substance that
falleth to me." The general situation in the National Church
is not unlike that of Europe before the war. It might last for
years if no one strikes a decisive blow. But one disturbing element
might make it impossible to maintain the present precarious peace.
In a delicately balanced situation such as we have described,
it is plain that unusual power is found in the hands of men with
the gift of leadership. At ordinary times, in a democratic country,
a leader can only lead by submitting to the guidance of his group
or party, and saying what its members think or feel. But there
are moments when everything is uncertain, and the multitude wait
for a word of command, and the whole opportunity is in the
hands of the man who wills and knows. If he is clear and con-
fident and resolute, he can generally force a decisive result, though
that result may be wide enough of the mark at which he aims.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has himself given a lead that
may easily be followed by the main body of English Churchmen.
1915.] KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION 41
He has quietly set aside the idea, so widely received in Anglican
circles during the last quarter of a century, that there can only
be one Church in one place, and that in England the English Church
is the Catholic Church in England. It is hard to realize the extent
to which this Tractarian idea has established itself in the modern
Anglican mind. It takes no doubt a variety of different forms.
With one it means the claim to hold the whole Catholic Faith,
the Faith of Gregory and Augustine and Bede and Anselm and
Becket, and to this parade of Catholic ancestry the objections and
difficulties are obvious. To others it stands for a Church of
England that was never completely Catholic, for "Augustine was
the Apostle of Kent, but Aidan was the Apostle of England ;" and
for an acknowledged Reformation at which " the Church of Eng-
land washed her face." Always and in all places it results in
an endeavor to restate history in the Anglican interest, and to rep-
resent the Church of England as having been " Protestant before
the Reformation, and Catholic after it." The practical mind of
Doctor Davidson regards all this with very little sympathy. It
does not square with the facts of the day, as he knows them, at
home and abroad. The Anglican Church is sick of its splendid
isolation; as a National Church it is restive in the presence of
a world-wide empire, and great European alliances. But union
with the Catholic Church is not a practical proposition. Nor is
union with the " Eastern Churches" any nearer to an earthly goal.
There remain the Lutherans abroad, and the Nonconformists at
home. The Englishman over the seas is for the most part Presby-
terian or Methodist. The logic of facts is conclusive.
And therefore it is not a mere courtesy or a matter of form
when the Archbishop speaks of " missionaries belonging to dif-
ferent branches of the Church of Christ," or of "the different
Churches working in the mission field," or approves of "the
admission to Holy Communion of a devout Christian man, to whom
the ministrations of his own Church are for the time inaccessible;"
or again when he repeats, with evident satisfaction, the phrase of
Bishop Willis,." a recognized minister in his own Church;" or
insists that to maintain episcopacy with all steadfastness " is not
the same thing as to place of necessity extra Ecclesiam every
system and every body of men who follow a different use, however
careful, strict and orderly their plan." It is plain that he is moving
along a certain line to a well-defined goal, and the lengthy quotations
he gives from the dossiers of the Lambeth Conferences demonstrate
42 KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION [Oct.,
that he can justly claim the support of the Anglican episcopate,
as a whole, for his policy.
1 Meanwhile distinguished leaders of the opposition will not
be wanting. The weakness of their position is that they must
either take up a purely negative attitude at a moment when negative
attitudes have never been so unpopular, or cast in their lot with
those who go to Petrograd or Constantinople for the Faith against
which the gates of hell shall not prevail. The first step was the
announcement made by the Bishop of London, and echoed by
several diocesans in the province of Canterbury; that the "pam-
phlet " of the Archbishop was a " statement " and nothing more,
and had no bearing on the dioceses of the Province of Canterbury.
It concerned the extra-provincial dioceses which were subject to
the personal jurisdiction of the primate and them alone. Any
attempt to impose it upon the Church at home would meet with
resistance, but such an attempt had not been made. That declara-
tion allayed for a moment the fears of those who thought that a
final decision had been given, against which there could be no
effective appeal. But after reflection it was seen that the matter
could not be lightly set aside. It was pointed out that it was a
statement of what may or may not be done. The Archbishop was
Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury, Primate of all Eng-
land, and a kind of President of the whole Anglican episcopate.
If the Archbishop ruled that certain proceedings would be allowed,
it was impossible to suppose that they could be effectually forbidden.
It would be impossible to reprobate at home a policy which had been
formally sanctioned for East Africa and elsewhere.
But while the Bishops of London, Oxford, Salisbury, and
Chichester are intimating that the whole question will have to be
reconsidered after the war, and that at present the statement
embodies a policy that is not theirs, it is as usual the ordinary
clergy who are going to bear the brunt of the fighting. A meeting of
clergy held at Westminster, decided to withhold subscriptions
from any missions and missionary societies that would not pledge
themselves to abstain from all acts of religious intercommunion
with non-episcopal Protestants. Some of the clergy have already
withdrawn their support from the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel. In the second place, the general Committee of the
Anglican and Eastern Association have sent the Archbishop a
strongly worded protest against the setting-up of new barriers
between the Anglican Church and the Orthodox Churches of the
1915.] KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION 43
East, and other societies have made similar protests. (It must be
remembered that resolutions of this sort mean much more than
usual at a time like the present, when the war dominates all our
thoughts and conversations, and when attention to any other sub-
ject is distasteful.) And in the third place, a definite line of
action has been formally announced by one of the most influential
clergy in London.
At the present moment those who wish to know what is going
to be done about Kikuyu are keeping their eyes on All Saints', Mar-
garet Street, London. There has always been about this church
a certain air of primitive Tractarianism. It has at all times been
patient and loyal and cautious, without the infidelity to principle
which has commonly gone with these qualities. But at the present
moment a stronger man than usual holds the helm, and he is able
to play a part in great affairs that would have been impossible to
his predecessors. It is no secret that he is in close touch with
the Bishop of London and also with the Bishop of Zanzibar,
and at the same time he has the confidence of an important section
of the younger clergy.
Two recent pronouncements by the Rev. H. F. B. Mackay,
Vicar of All Saints', Margaret Street, make it quite clear that the
most interesting Kikuyu developments are still to come. It was
announced beforehand that he would not make any statement to
his flock about the present crisis until he had taken counsel with
the Bishop of London, and the statement which he made was
substantially endorsed by the Bishop himself at the National So-
ciety's House on the following Wednesday. The drift of it was
that the Archbishop must not be understood to mean all that his
words might naturally imply, and particularly that the admission
of separatists to address " the faithful " on matters of general
and common interest was not the exercise of the teaching office of
the Church. (How this can be reconciled with the official state-
ment of the Primate is not explained by Mr. Mackay, and such
unofficial glosses are obviously useless as safeguards. ) He further
insisted that it was necessary to cut themselves clear from the
attitude adopted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his Consulta-
tive Committee. But to do so, it was not necessary to renounce
communion with the Province of Canterbury. The Province
was not committed to it. Their own bishop (London) and three
other bishops of the province had dissociated themselves from it.
Their own bishop had said plainly that the Kikuyu Communion
44 KIKUYU: THE NEW SITUATION [Oct.,
was wrong in principle, and that non-episcopal Christians should
be admitted to our services, but not communicated.
" What steps," he continued, " shall be taken to obtain
the wider acceptance of these principles? For there is a danger
that the line advocated by the Bishops of the Consultative Com-
mittee and the Archbishop may be followed, if strong voices are
not raised and strong action is not taken? We shall begin by
getting an assurance from any mission or missionary society to
which we subscribe that the practice of admitting members of sep-
aratist bodies to Holy Communion or admitting them to preach
in our churches is not permitted within the sphere of the mission
or missionary society in question.
" Secondly, we shall take our share in a big campaign in de-
fence of the doctrine of the Church, which is now to be started
in view of the next Lambeth Conference. If a cleavage in the
Church of England comes after the next Lambeth Conference, it
will be the fault of those who will have broken with the formularies
of the Church and with Catholic tradition. For us who abide by
them there is no greater work to be done than the work of speed-
ing the reunion of Catholic Christendom."
It is a striking commentary on this address that it was fol-
lowed by another on reunion on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul.
The treatment of the subject was naturally more or less unsatis-
factory from the Catholic point of view, and the usual Anglican
assumptions about the three divisions of the Catholic Church per-
vaded the whole, and made much of it very unpractical. Yet im-
portant admissions were frankly made. " It is impossible," said
Mr. Mackay, " to look candidly at Christian church history and
deny that as Patriarch of the West the Pope is the proper Head
of Western Christendom; and, further, that as the successor of
St. Peter he has a primacy over the whole Church, a primacy
which is no empty honor, but is intended to be a gift and a benefit
to all who acknowledge it."
There are many things which have disappointed us in Eng-
land during the last twelve months; there has been no great re-
vival of religion here as there has been in France, either within
or without the Catholic Church ; but it is impossible to pay atten-
tion to the movements and events here recorded without feeling
that we can set no limits to our hopes and prayers for Our Lady's
Dowry.
SHALL WOMEN VOTE?
BY JOSEPH V. MCKEE, A.M.
T the present time the question of Woman Suffrage
has been carried far past the point of the abstract;
it now has become a concrete problem. Within
a month the constituencies of New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts will be
called upon to decide whether or not the full exercise of the ballot
shall be conferred upon women. No longer is it an academic
question. The issue has been placed squarely before the voters
of these four great Eastern States. Shall the right of suffrage be
extended to all citizens, male and female? Shall the whole body
of women of voting age be enfranchised? Shall the millions of
mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters enter the political arena and
take their stand with or against their fathers, brothers, husbands,
and sons, as the case may be ?
Were it not for this fact, that these questions must be an-
swered within a very short time, there would be very little need to
review the grounds pro and contra Woman Suffrage. Since 1848,
when the first convention of suffragists under the leadership of
Lucretia Mott promulgated its " Declaration of Independence,"
and demanded an equal participation in government, there has been
much agitated discussion of the suffrage rights of women. That
discussion has grown more vital since 1910, during which time the
total of States granting full suffrage has risen to twelve and the
number of women voters to four million. Because of this
continued agitation the whole field of suffrage has long since
been thoroughly traversed, and little opportunity left for the
discovery of new ideas. Consequently it is a difficult task to
oppose suffrage on new grounds, because the advocates of equal
suffrage have brought forward no new, additional reasons to sup-
port their contentions. Nevertheless there is need of a clear dis-
cussion and restatement of the underlying principles of the problem.
The same appeals have been made so often, and the reasons sup-
porting them repeated so frequently, that there is danger that in-
sistency might be taken for truth and persistency for fact. If a
statement is repeated often enough it is, in time, accepted as truth,
46 SHALL WOMEN VOTE? [Oct.,
and its enunciators hailed the protagonists of the verities. There
has been so much said of woman's rights that there are many who
are profoundly convinced that the exercise of the ballot is an
inalienable prerogative which man is unjustly withholding from
women. We have heard so much of man's tyranny and injustice
that many believe that women without the ballot are actually de-
graded. So distorted has become the whole agitation that it seems
to have resolved itself not into an effort to unite with man in his
attempt to better conditions, but into a struggle against him for
so-called " independence " and " liberty."
Fundamentally, suffrage is the " participation in political gov-
ernment by the election of representatives and by voting for laws
and measures." In itself it is not an end but a means " to keep up
the continuity of government, and to preserve and perpetuate public
order and the protection of individual rights " (Cooley). It is not
absolute and immutable, for, as in the case of other means, were it
to become unsuited for the accomplishment of the ends for which
it was instituted, or a more efficient means discovered, it might
reasonably be discarded. At no time, even under the most favor-
able conditions, has it ever been universal in application. Nor
could it ever be so used; for at all times there would be some dis-
abilities to stand in the way of its proper and efficient utilization.
Since, therefore, this participation in government may be sub-
jected to enlargements and limitations, we must admit that suffrage
can be given to women. There is no natural or statute law or
sociological conception that connotes the impossibility of women's
exercise of the ballot. This, of course, is obvious. The real prob-
lem lies in the question, Should women vote? or, more urgently,
Shall women vote? If women should vote, then the ballot should
be given them for any or all of the following reasons : First,
because voting is a natural right. Second, because it is a duty.
Third, because it would be expedient.
The suffragists hold the exercise of the ballot to be primarily
a natural right; that it is inherent in the conception of citizenship.
If you grant that women are citizens, which is universally held, you
must, say they, grant them the right to vote; for voting, like the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is necessarily
implied in the connotation of citizenship. If this contention is
true, then man is doing a grave injustice in depriving the other sex
of an inalienable right the right to vote. But it is not true, and
such a contention cannot be justified in reason. The right to vote
1915-] SHALL WOMEN VOTE? 47
is not a natural right; it is not a right in any sense of the term.
Natural rights are rights that are possessed by the individual per se
and precede in order the idea of government. A man has the right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness prior to the establish-
ment of government; for government is established to safeguard
and preserve these rights, not the rights to safeguard government.
By the same token the machinery of government was instituted not
to protect the ballot (in some governments there is no suffrage), but
voting was instituted as a means to aid government to protect the
rights of man.
Suffrage is never a necessary accompaniment of citizenship,
nor do any authorities on constitutional law admit that it is. ( Vide
Cooley, Const., 2d. ed., 752; i MacArthur, 169; Blach., 200.)
" Suffrage," says Cooley, " cannot be the natural right of the
individual, because it does not exist for the benefit of the individual,
but for the benefit of the State itself." It is granted as a privilege
by the State on the grounds of expediency, when the exercise of the
ballot is necessary for the best interests of the State, or when its
extension would work some good which could be acquired less
easily no other way. From this it is clear that women cannot claim
the ballot as a natural right. If they are to receive the suffrage,
they will obtain it because the State feels that their votes will con-
duce to greater efficiency in government. It is upon this ground,
namely, that the State will benefit by women voting, that the cause
of Woman Suffrage must stand or fall.
Equally untenable is the cry, so often heard, that " taxation
without representation is tyranny." Taxation is the means used
to collect the moneys necessary for the maintenance of government.
Taxation makes possible government, and government makes pos-
sible the protection of rights. We do not vote because we pay
taxes. We submit to the various tax levies because they are the con-
siderations in return for which we receive material benefits, such
as roads, schools, and hospitals. If voting were based upon tax-
ation, then every corporation would have the right to suffrage.
Carrying it ad absurdum, were a taxpayer the guardian of six tax-
paying minors/he would have the right to cast seven ballots, one for
himself and for everyone of the children.
If women were not represented in government in any way
"taxation" would be "tyranny." But she is represented; for man's
interests are her interests, and his welfare is so bound up in the
welfare of the other sex that to neglect the one is to neglect the
48 SHALL WOMEN VOTE? [Oct.,
other, to injure the one is to injure the other. There is no logical
reason for making sex a political division with representatives for
each. It would be just as logical to insist upon representatives
being chosen from boys under twenty-one, and from girls who
likewise are under voting age.
If suffrage is not a right, it is hard to see how it can be a duty.
So frequently have we heard the expression, " Woman's place is
in the home," that it has become trite and bromidic. But has it
lost any of its truth? It is hard to bring forward cold reasons
concerning a subject so vitally feminine. We are old, old men and
women in the passing of the centuries, and when we see that nature
has preserved the physical and psychological distinctions between
man and woman, when we see that to one she gives strength, hard-
ness, deliberation, and to the other sweetness, lovableness, impet-
uosity, we can be sure that there is reason for it all that it is
good to keep holy this relation of man and woman. And making
her a political unit subject to the bruit of politics, where she will
become a pawn in the game that hardens even men, will do much to
destroy that relation, and bring about changes that the man of
high ideals does not desire.
The married woman with a family could find time to study
political conditions and vote intelligently. But what are the reasons
to urge her to add to her burdens? What will she gain that she
has not now? What" greater happiness will be hers when she has
the ballot? The apathy of the majority of women toward suffrage
is not due to ignorance, prejudice or selfishness. It is more deeply
rooted. Perhaps its explanation can be seen in the reply of a
mother to a deputation of women who came to urge her to join them
and fight for her rights. " Ladies," she said, " I am so busy and
happy here at home attending to my duties that I have no desire
to go out and fight for my rights."
The only real ground upon which the suffragists can base
their claim to the ballot is that of expediency. Suffrage is not a
right; it is not necessarily a duty. It is a means to better govern-
ment. Consequently, if the State feels that the extension to women
of the ballot would work greater good, then it should grant that
extension. If, when women vote, our government would be more
efficiently conducted, if better laws would be enacted and higher
standards of living established, if individual rights would be better
protected and greater happiness secured, if women's votes would
secure any of these or hurry them along, then women should vote.
1915.] SHALL WOMEN VOTE? 49
This is the vital phase of the Woman Suffrage, and its consider-
ation leads to many questions. Would the extension of the suffrage
to woman secure any material advantages which cannot be obtained
without her vote? Would these changes be effected more quickly
if women vote? Would woman's position be improved socially,
morally, economically by the exercise. of the ballot? Women do
not need the ballot to secure greater freedom or wider privileges
for their sex. At no time in the world's history have women had
the freedom they possess at the present time. Without the vote
they have full entrance into all the professions. Treated as an
equal in business, they yet are free from many of the duties that
devolve on man.
The women of the State of New York do not enjoy the
exercise of the ballot. All the laws are man-made laws. Yet the
discrimination that exists in legal matters is all in favor of women.
Legally, whether married or single, she is an independent unit,
possessing, in fact, more privileges than. men enjoy. Particularly
is this true of married women. The property of a married woman,
whether acquired before or after marriage, is her own separate
property, and she may convey, sell or mortgage it without the
consent of her husband. On the other hand, a married man cannot
make the smallest transaction of his property without the written
consent of his wife. She can sue and be sued, carry on a business
in her own name; she is entitled to all her earnings. She can enter
into contracts with her husband or with others. She is not liable for
the debts of her husband. She may dispose of her property by will,
without reservation or limitation of any kind.
In the matter of dower she is especially favored. Upon the
death of her husband, she is entitled to dower in all the lands owned
by her husband during their marriage, unaffected by any debt or
act of her husband not assented to in writing by her, consisting of
the use during her life of one-third of all such lands. She posses-
ses an inalienable right, which cannot be defeated, to one-third
absolutely of all personal property. If there are no children or
descendants, the widow takes one-half of the estate, and if there are
no parents or children, but the husband leaves brother or sister,
nephew or niece, to the widow is given precedence over them, and
she takes the other half of the whole estate or the whole if the whole
is under two thousand dollars. 1
A married man has no claim on the estate of his deceased wife.
*Vide Foster, The Legal Rights of Women.
VOL. CII. 4
50 SHALL WOMEN VOTE? [Oct.,
While he cannot defeat the right of his wife to one-third of his
estate, he himself does not share in the property of his wife in any
way except by will. Formerly he was privileged to support some
claim by an " action in chose," but this has fallen into disuse and is
rarely invoked.
" Before the law," writes Judge Cullen, " the woman is in
theory the equal of the man, while in practise the common com-
plaint is that a man does not have a fair chance in litigation when
opposed to a woman. There may be still trifling matters of which
women can justly complain, but they would be redressed for
the asking."
Surely it is idle to talk of " freedom " and " independence " in
the light of these conditions that exist in this State, where women do
not vote. For themselves what do they expect to gain by voting,
when already they receive privileges that men do not enjoy?
When has it ever been known in the history of the legislature that
women without the vote have failed to obtain whatever they
wished? Since they can and do obtain without the ballot
the things they deem necessary, there is no need to enter the field
where their efforts will be robbed of their greatest asset
the powerful influence of disinterestedness. There is no need
to lay their actions open to the suspicion of political jobbery,
a result which will follow when they become political
units.
It is evident that in New York woman suffers in no way
because she does not possess the ballot, and if the vote is given to
her she could gain nothing for herself that she cannot now obtain
without the suffrage. The only other reason why the ballot should
be given to her is that her vote is needed to accomplish public good,
to raise the standard of public morals, and to quicken public con-
science. Would these follow as direct or indirect consequences of
voting? Most of the evils of our public and private life are due to
moral reasons. The casting of a ballot will never change men's
hearts, and no amount of prohibitory laws will make men better.
Voting can suppress an evil only after it has arisen, and the damage
it has done become so great as to attract widespread attention.
The solution lies in the prevention of the evil, not in its suppression.
And women's greatest work consists not in policing public morals,
but, by her influence in the home, in lessening the need of prohibi-
tions. Her noblest work is to instill high ideals in the hearts of
her sons, her husbands, and her brothers.. This is her true sphere,
1915-] SHALL WOMEN VOTE? 51
and here nature has given woman her strongest powers to mould
for good or evil.
In The Saturday Evening Post of September nth, former
President William Howard Taft writes : " I question whether in
politics and in resistance to corruption we should find any sturdier
honesty among women than among men. The most common
defect in legislation is not the ideal good aimed at, but in the
lack of practical provision for its attainment. The lack of expe-
rience in affairs and the excess of emotion on the part of women
in reaching political decisions on questions like prohibition and
the social evil, are what would lower the average practical sense and
self-restraint of the electorate if they were admitted to it now."
Woman suffrage has been in operation since 1869, J^- it has
failed to accomplish any marked improvements that can be attrib-
uted to its influence. Wyoming has suffrage, and there the mar-
riage vows can be dissolved for any of twelve reasons. New York
is not a suffrage State, yet its statutes recognize only one cause for
divorce. Utah, a suffrage State, presents the spectacle of polyg-
amous marriages and a condition of affairs which is not very cred-
itable. In matters of legislation the non-suffrage States do not
show any lack of that zeal for public welfare which the suffragists
claim as their exclusive birthright. Prohibition was secured in the
South and in the Southwest without the aid of Woman Suffrage.
New York has labor laws that protect adequately the women and
children who must work. Its legislature has passed the Workmen's
Compensation Law and the Widows' Pension Bill. North Dakota,
which rejected woman suffrage in 1914, passed a mother's pension
bill. Pennsylvania has a child labor law limiting the hours a child
under sixteen may work to fifteen a week. If all these measures can
be obtained without suffrage where, in the name of expediency, is
the need of doubling the present vote, making cumbrous the voting
machinery and adding to public expense ?
Judge Edgar M. Cullen, in a recent letter to Miss Alice Hill
Chittenden, expressing his reasons for opposing Woman Suffrage,
writes on this point : " My own belief is that to grant women
suffrage will not make any substantial change in government and
laws; that the great mass of women will exercise the suffrage
in harmony with their male relatives and friends. In that case
the grant of suffrage will have no practical effect, except to increase
the cost of elections."
A fair and impartial estimate of the operation of Woman Suf-
52 SHALL WOMEN VOTE? [Oct.,
frage is furnished us by Bryce in his revised The American Com-
monwealth. He says : " No evidence has ever come in any way
tending to show that politics are in Wyoming, Idaho or Utah sub-
stantially purer than in the adjoining States, though it is said that
the polls are quieter. The most that seems to be alleged is that they
are no worse; or as the Americans express it, 'Things are very
much what they were before, only more so.' " 2 If politics, with
Woman Suffrage, are " no worse," but " things are very much what
they were before, only more so," the claim that women should have
the vote on grounds of expediency can hardly be sustained.
So far we have considered only the grounds for giving or with-
holding the suffrage. Nothing has been said of the evils that may
follow the extension of the vote. Yet there are many dangers that
will follow on the footsteps of the ballot. But as they are psycho-
logical, and have to do primarily with the private lives of men and
women, it is difficult to note and analyze them. The unit of the
State is the family. Destroy that and you work the downfall of
society. Yet that is the tendency of Woman Suffrage, for, like So-
cialism, it emphasizes the individual to the detriment of the family.
If the man in exercising alone the ballot expresses the will of the
family, there is no need to grant the vote to the wife. If there is
dissension, then the suffrage exercised differently by the husband
and wife becomes a source of discord, and proves the opening
wedge for the breaking up of the family and the dissolution of
the marriage bond.
While these dangers may not be apparent at first sight, they
are no less real because they are insidious. A still greater danger
to things even more precious, comes from the very leaders of
Woman Suffrage to-day. Because of the principles they have enun-
ciated and the alliances they have not repudiated, they cry down the
rebuke of all clean-minded men and women. We judge a man by
the company he keeps. We cannot be censured if we do the same
thing with Woman Suffrage. When the leaders of Woman Suffrage
demand " freedom from man's tyranny," and speak of women
being " debased and degraded " because they do not have the ballot,
the injustice of the cries can be overlooked in the heat of the
campaign. But when they mean by " freedom " immorality ; when
their "liberty" consists in discarding the laws of decency and purity,
then we must cry halt !
At a recent suffrage dinner at the La Salle Hotel in Chicago,
2 The American Commonwealth, vol. ii., p. 609.
1915.] SHALL WOMEN VOTE? 53
Professor W. I. Thomas addressed the women gathered there on
the subject of women's rights to limit offspring and to become
mothers without the formality of marriage. It is hard to conceive
that any pure-hearted woman would remain to listen to such a"
speech. But instead of rebuking Professor Thomas for intro-
ducing such a topic, the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, the acknowl-
edged leader of all the suffragists and president of their national
body, endorsed the speaker and his pernicious doctrines. She is
quoted in a Chicago paper as saying : " You have to shock the people
to make them think. The address has set every woman who heard
it thinking, and they are the thinking women who will consider both
sides of such a proposition. Political emancipation is not the only
emancipation. There is a greater freedom which women must gain,
the freedom of social relations. Women are over-sex-developed,
and men are responsible for that condition I do not believe in
mother's love. I believe in mother's intelligence."
These are principles no decent woman can subscribe to.
Dr. Shaw is an ordained minister of the Gospel. In the ranks of
the suffragists she is hailed their prophet, and wields a tremendous
influence. Her words are therefore dangerous in the highest
degree. Any increase in the power of suffrage is an increase in her
power, and a greater opportunity for her to work evil. Surely
honest men and women cannot be expected to join hands with such
a leader to fight for a " greater freedom." That she cares for little
outside the mad desire to force the vote from men upon women, she
showed when she said recently at Atlantic City : " I believe in
Woman Suffrage, whether all women vote or no women vote;
whether all women vote right or all women vote wrong; whether
women will love their husbands after they vote or forsake them;
whether they will neglect their children or never have any children."
While she is the head and front of Woman Suffrage, we cannot
further the cause that gives her greater power.
In a speech made as chairman at a debate held recently in
Brooklyn, Miss Inez Millholland (now Mrs. Boissevain) declared
that the three greatest achievements of the century were " the
higher criticism of the Bible, Woman Suffrage, and Socialism."
Mrs. Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale has written a book called
What Women Want. It has become the official literature of the
suffragists. In it she shows a state of mind on questions of deepest
importance that would be ridiculous were it not dangerous in the
extreme.
54 SHALL WOMEN VOTE? [Oct.,
The attitude of the leading suffragists is reflected in their
alliance with radical Socialists, and other advocates of principles
destructive of ideals we hold precious. In a recent suffrage parade
the latter half of the marchers were Socialists, who made the parade
a grand propaganda for Socialism under the guise of suffrage. To
the most radical Socialists are given places of honor on the speaker's
platform at suffrage meetings; and to The Masses, the most out-
spoken of the Socialist papers, has been awarded a large advertising
contract by the suffragists. While Miss Stone Blackwell, Char-
lotte Perkins, Mary Ware Dennet, Max Eastman, Inez Millholland-
Boissevain and others equally radical, who are Socialists first and
suffragists after, continue to hold power in the councils of the
suffragists, deep-thinking people will hesitate to advocate the cause
of Woman Suffrage.
Woman suffrage is not a natural right. It is not a duty, but
would become one were the exercise of the ballot extended to
women. It is not expedient that women should vote; for she has
little to gain, and may lose much with the gaining of the vote. It is
not necessary for the welfare of the State, since with women voting
"things are very much what they were before, only more so." This
is a summary of the sociological reasons against granting women
the vote. Other reasons no less important are the pernicious radi-
calism of the suffrage party's accredited leaders and the alliance of
suffrage with Socialism.
CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE.
BY HELEN HAINES.
HE critic who asks a definite Catholic attitude toward
any great national or political question, is apt to
forget that the bond which unites us is purely
ethical. Evidence of failure to grasp this fact is
to be found to-day in the effort of our secular press
to reconcile the diversity of Catholic opinion upon the world
war. And, for a number of years, the same attempt Has also been
made in the discussions concerning another great question the
political enfranchisement of woman.
Such critics confuse the Church's longitude and latitude.
For in the great sphere of her activities, we may consider her
longitude as those lines of thought and action which converge
towards the two poles of faith and morals. And by her latitude,
those which extend the material development of her children,
and define great zones fervid, temperate or austere which have
produced so infinite a variety of fauna and flora. This growth
and flowering, throughout the ages, whether we consider the
thought and work of Catholic manhood o-r womanhood, arise
from our freedom as individuals which the perverse critic affects
not to grasp. Undeniably there are points of intersection where
the operation of material or political measures creates disabilities
for Catholics. And these measures also affect moral issues, in
which all right thinking citizens are as deeply concerned. In
the case of the suffrage movement, as in all other political measures,
its use, not its gift, raises it from a political to an ethical question
for Catholic men and women.
Within the Fold, as without, during the past half century,
we find the same extremes of indifference and enthusiasm when
this political issue is discussed. For each prelate, priest, or lay-
man, each Catholic woman worker or woman of leisure who
has denounced it as a deplorable innovation, other Catholics, sim-
ilarly placed, cordially welcome it. This latitude of Catholic
sentiment towards Woman Suffrage might be unimportant save for
one patent fact, the movement's own wide and rapid growth. For
while the blood-letting abroad has, in most instances, temporarily
56 CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE [Oct.,
submerged the " cause" the various woman suffrage organizations
undertaking relief or industrial work yet in our own country, with
a few notable exceptions, it has gone steadily forward.
" In about four years time we shall see a great advance,"
Secretary Daniels prophesied of this movement to the writer in
the Democratic headquarters on the night of President Wilson's
election. And, to-day, if we look at the suffrage map, we will see
that nearly one-half of our national area has enfranchised women.
In eleven States and one territory (Alaska) full suffrage obtains.
In twenty-two States taxation, bond or school suffrage prevails.
One State (Illinois) has Presidential, partial county, State and
municipal suffrage, while fourteen States are wholly in the black
belt. The importance, to the suffrage movement, of the autumn
of 1915 lies in the fact that the campaign is shifted for the first
time to the East. During September and November, four of
the great commonwealths Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey
and Pennsylvania will give to nearly four million men the oppor-
tunity to cast their votes for or against votes for women.
Since we must admit the coming of enfranchisement, and
are no longer in doubt that its operation in various parts of the
world has been instrumental in bringing about many needed
reforms, may it not be well to question the desirability of our
Catholic latitude towards enacting woman's suffrage as a law,
since the issue has become one which each Catholic male, of voting
age, must meet.
The trend of our times being toward a more complete and
free democracy, it would appear all arguments for or against
the enfranchisement of women are comprised in the claim of
the United States to democracy, although yet withholding from
one-half of her citizens any participation in government, or in the
laws which so deeply affect this section of our population. Even
the knowledge that in the enfranchisement of the negro male
there was foisted upon the nation a wholly unprepared electorate,
is not a logical argument against woman's enfranchisement. Nor
have the important questions of expense, expediency, nor of
woman's efficiency as voter, any bearing upon what Cardinal Moran
termed " the rightful privilege," which democracy long ago gave
to women in Australia.
An attempt to discover where this discrimination lies in the
United States is not a statement to the effect that expense and
expediency or even efficiency are not to be considered. In the
1915- 1 CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE 57
present campaign in the Eastern States, these items are constantly
kept before the eyes of the voter by the opponents of enfranchise-
ment. Woman Suffrage has proven its efficiency in the States
where women vote. The male voter has never considered ex-
pediency in the case of the male emigrant. Or when have our
great commonwealths stopped at expense ? Has not New York her
Barge Canal and Pennsylvania her State Capitol ?
No, the discrimination in the United States is yet as wholly
one of sex, as in the years 1647 an< ^ 1648, when Catholic
Margaret Brent the first woman in this country to ask for a vote
demanded it of the Colonial Assembly. The militant Margaret,
in fact, asked not for one vote, but for two, as she was executrix
for and managed Calvert's estates, and insisted upon managing
those of the absent and indignant Baltimore. The men of
the Colony wrote Baltimore praising her ability, but they denied
her the vote, frankly, because she was a woman. Margaret Brent
was not represented in the Assembly, although the estates she
managed were the largest in the Colony. Nor are women to-day
always able, as anti-suffragists assert, to " provide themselves with
male voting appendages," the reply of a witty suffragist. The
advisability of votes for women, as a political measure, is further
strengthened by Dr. Anna Shaw, who points out that woman,
although an industrial entity, has politically no choice in the laws
affecting her as such.
The New York Evening Post, discussing the question wholly
in its political aspect, further suggests that bare feasibility in a
democracy like ours demands that we do not rear within our
borders a large body of discontented citizens of voting age.
England's sensitiveness in this regard has also been reserved
for her male workers. The Tablet well expressed this, some years
ago, in an article on suffrage: "The only possible justification
for giving the franchise to agricultural laborers was the belief
that in the long run it is better for any class to express its own
aspirations, however blindly and however blunderingly, than to
have to trust to the beneficence of aliens. Apply that principle to
the separate interests of women workers in the industrial world
and the controversy is at an end."
Politically, then, the argument against the gift of suffrage to
woman in a free democracy is no more tenable than the argument
that it is un-Catholic. Those of us who have strayed so far afield
in our zeal forget that we have a number of ancient examples
58 CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE [Oct.,
of certain kinds of franchise for women in many of the old
Catholic States. "La femme ne demande aucun privilege. Elle
reclame I'egalite Woman asks no privilege; she reclaims
equality " was the manifesto of Catholic women suffragists of
Belgium issued not long before the war. " It would be a
return rather than a novelty," Marie Mangeret, the leading Catholic
suffragette of Paris, wrote me, at the same time comparing the
then conditions in France with those overturned by the French
Revolution. But we must not confuse these political rights of
women which were a survival of the Middle Ages, and not so
much a recognition of woman as the place woman happened to
fill with the present day demand for universal woman suffrage.
But if we can divest ourselves of preconceived ideas and study
the question not merely as a political gift, but as an operative
law with a close affiliation to our ethical needs both in antipodean
lands and in our own, it will curb much loose thinking.
When it comes to principles, we Catholics pride ourselves
on being rather fundamental. Our religious attitude toward
marriage enhances in our eyes the importance of the Christian
home to all society. Our acquiescence in the Church's ideal for
woman wifehood, motherhood and home is so entire that thou-
sands of other women have for centuries consecrated their virginity
to upholding the mother's hands. While, according to the light
of each age, Catholic manhood has protected this ideal for all
generations, under conditions as hostile as the materialism and
industrialism of our own time.
It would be idle to claim that these two agencies have not
affected our ideal. Modern education has fitted woman for
other careers than matrimony. She is no longer " the lonesome
survival of the unasked," as Father Carlin of Philadelphia has
amusingly written. Moreover, in one generation modern indus-
trialism has wrought a revolution which has thrust over eight
million women and children out of the home to work. 1
As in every other age, our devout religious women have arisen
loyally to these new needs to protect the modern home. They
have raised convents to colleges, established business courses for
women, working girls' homes, day nurseries and kindergartens for
little children, while the value of the retreats given to young
1 In New York and New Jersey one-third of all women of voting age must work
out of the home to get a home. In Massachusetts, the proportion of these women
is forty out of every one hundred. In Pennsylvania, thirty per cent.
1915-] CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE 59
children, young women workers, teachers and mothers, cannot be
overestimated.
Thus in many beautiful ways, we Catholics are prepared for
the modern onslaught upon the soul and our Catholic ideal. But
can Catholic men do anything more? The Catholic woman suf-
fragist offers votes for women as a modern means of protection
for the home, and asks the Catholic male voter for this political
gift. But if operative at all for Catholics, he will claim it must
be worth while for all classes of homes, for all classes of our women
the nun, the woman of leisure, or the woman worker.
" Now that a very large proportion of our female population
has gone 'out of the home' and into industry," Dr. Ryan has
elsewhere written, " the traditional argument against Woman Suf-
frage has lost most of its value. To vote at elections and to par-
ticipate otherwise in political life, would not add measurably to the
sum of woman's extra household burdens and activities. Through
the ballot women could protect themselves against many of the evils
to which they are exposed by their new industrial tasks and sur-
roundings. They could hasten the enactment of legislation for
decent wages and employment generally. In a much larger pro-
portion than men, women would support legislative measures in
the interest of religion, good morals, and the home."
The value of Dr. Ryan's opinion, as our leading political
economist, need not be impressed upon the readers of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD. He has so often clarified our ideas on modern
problems that in this simple statement of facts, which nobody can
gainsay, we see how simple is the relation between the vote and the
protection of our great Catholic ideal. Nor are we longer in
doubt as to the practicability of the suffrage. For we have ample
evidence that the vote has not made woman's position less secure,
either at home or in antipodean lands.
" After twenty years experience of women voting," the editor
of the New Zealand Tablet answered my queries, " the people here
would laugh at the suggestion that it unsexes women or causes
friction in the home. Our elections have become incomparably
more orderly since women took part in them ; and election day now-
adays is characterized by almost as much quietness and decorum
as the observance of Sunday. I have taken a keen interest in
the subject ever since the bill was passed (1893), and have never
heard of a single case of domestic trouble through women exer-
cising political rights."
60 CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE [Oct.,
In fact if we pursued to its logical end much that Catholic
men and women have written on this subject, we would be obliged
to admit that the mere conferring of the franchise upon our women
would produce a deleterious effect upon Christian character: that
women would deteriorate if they should move from Maine to
California; or that the gift of the franchise in the suffrage States
had already produced such deterioration. Only by such naive
absurdities do we come to realize that superficial criticism of the
extension of the franchise has been more rife than superficial claims
as to its accomplishments.
Certainly our highest Church dignitaries in Australia and
New Zealand have registered enthusiastic approval of the operation
of suffrage, as has Archbishop Delaney of Tasmania the opinions
of these prelates having been printed and used by both English and
American suffragists. Archbishop Redwood, of Wellington,
when visiting in St. Louis some short time ago, expressed himself
as heartily in favor of the movement here. He claimed that
the women of New Zealand " maintained a high standard of purity
and womanhood," and were, if possible, " better wives and home-
conservers " than before they voted. Their greatest service, he
thought, lay in school, hospital, and charitable departments, and in
municipal beautification and improvements.
In addition to temperance measures the laws passed in Austra-
lia and New Zealand, since women voted, greatly favor the woman
and child worker. They comprise equal pay for equal work, equal
naturalization, protection of juvenile immigrants, eight-hour day,
minimum wage scale, appointment of police matrons, establish-
ment of juvenile courts, raising the age of boy and girl workers
to sixteen and eighteen years, etc. And these, and many similar
laws in both countries, are as operative as is temperance for the
Catholic woman or child worker, and strengthen the outposts of
our ideal the Christian home.
The effect of woman's vote in our own suffrage States has
been much the same. And, in all, the woman and child worker
have been benefited. Nor is the claim well-founded that suffrage
has failed because factory legislation is not as complete in certain
of the suffrage States, as in non-suffrage States which employ
thousands of women factory workers. The writer heard such an
argument at a public meeting in a New Jersey town. The suffragist
pointed out the small number less than fifty women employed
industrially in the agricultural State which had offered the point
1915.] CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE 61
for attack. The anti-suffragist replied that if one woman was
so employed the laws should be changed, and was applauded ! Yet
in this State there are sixty-eight men to every fifty women. And
the total State population is less by thousands than the number of
women employed by the factories in New York State.
The only States which have eight-hour laws for women are
suffrage States. It is true that the Supreme Court decision of
1908 in the Oregon case (written by the late Justice Brewer, a
believer in Woman Suffrage) upholding the ten-hour law was
the beginning of some abatement in laws affecting the woman
workers, even in non-suffrage States. In Massachusetts there is
a nine-hour law after forty years. While in Idaho the women
consider nine hours a compromise, but the vote of women got
it in two years. It is remarkable how few people seem to realize
the number of men whose work is restricted to eight hours. Nor
can we believe that the men unions, if men were not voters, would
have been so favored. For the attitude of many employers of
woman labor has not changed. Woman, trained to the needs of the
industrial machine, becomes one. These men are like the pros-
perous farmer in Pennsylvania whose wife became desperately
ill. The physician insisted upon a trained nurse, and the woman
answering the call was one who had often shown herself a tower
of strength in the writer's own household. The farm house was
primitive. There was no other " help." On the third afternoon,
having been continuously on duty night and day, the nurse made
a suggestion. Would -the farmer watch beside his wife and give
her the chance for an hour's sleep? The man's disillusionment
was complete. " Why," he exclaimed, " I thought you was a
trained nurse ! "
In addition to shorter hours for woman workers, the equal
suffrage States have all raised the age of consent. In California
it is now the highest in the Union twenty-one years. When
the writer lived in Georgia and North Carolina, it was ten, and
has not been changed.
It is also noteworthy that women have made many changes
in the suffrage States in laws relating to the child worker, and to
children of school age, in laws regarding weights and measures,
food and milk supplies, juvenile courts, reformatories, etc. While
minimum wage laws are characteristic of equal suffrage States and
of four partial suffrage States.
Any unprejudiced person who will take the trouble to com-
62 CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE [Oct.,
pare the laws of suffrage States with those where no suffrage
obtains, cannot claim the woman worker has not been benefited
by the extension of the franchise. Suffragists do not " expect to
make people good by law." They realize enforcement of law
requires constant vigilance. But they know that where women
do not vote, laws for women and child workers are not only defied,
but are rarely punitive.
Two widely-separated cases in point are the broom-makers
in Illinois and the shirt-waist workers in New York City.
The then Mayor of New York whose public utterance on the
vitalizing influence of public opinion has been quoted by a leading
anti-suffragist, " had not time " to see the large delegation of
women who went to City Hall after the fire in the Triangle factory,
which caused the death of one hundred and forty-five girls. And
the owners of this factory were later fined twenty dollars for con-
tinuing the same conditions which had cost these lives. Public
opinion had been outraged. The city resounded with protest.
But of what punitive use was it?
In Illinois, a broom-making concern, by employing convict
labor, made a living wage impossible for the men in the industry
so improvident as to stay out of prison. Labor drove the firm
to a neighboring State. Once more labor drove them out. The
company returned to Illinois, breathing defiance. It solved the
problem of cheap broom-making by employing Polish and Lith-
uanian girl emigrants. These girls worked for a low wage. They
operated a machine considered unfit for woman's use. But
it was the conditions in the locked factory under a grossly im-
moral superintendent which mattered. He kept them at work by
a clever manipulation of their ignorance, fear and shame. Labor,
suspicious for its male workers, discovered the hideous truth,
and brought the man to justice. Justice? A county indictment
and a fine of twenty-five dollars the law's limit. This case also
outraged public opinion. Of what punitive value was it?
It is through the operative effect of the ballot upon such
needs of the woman worker, that the woman of leisure has come
to realize keenly that her own home is also affected by the economic
and industrial changes of our time. These women do not feel
the pinch of circumstance, but are as keenly alive to their disabil-
ities. If she is a property owner, woman pays taxes, and her home
all homes have an intimate concern with those franchises, con-
trolled by the vote, which furnish us with light and telephone,
1915.] CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE 63
and regulate water rates. Woman now goes out of the house
to buy everything formerly made in it under her supervision. Her
duty toward laws which govern her food and milk supplies cannot
be gainsaid. Her interest is keen in educational laws, in ordi-
nances on health and morals. Juvenile courts, prison reform and
temperance have become ballot issues, though it is worth noting of
the latter that many States looking most coldly upon the suffrage
movement have long since " gone " for prohibition.
In view of the many unsavory political scandals in the opera-
tion of these safeguards and needs of the home and family, can we
as citizens or as Catholics say our women have no concern with
the vote ?
What of that other hideous evil which threatens our national
life, beckons to our children at every turn, and fastens itself to
the heart of our city governments by corrupt political bonds ? Have
women have Catholic home-makers no concern with these things?
" Let us acknowledge with due thanks," says Alice Meynell
in the Catholic Suffragist, writing of London evils, " that some
of these indecent anomalies have been due to the wish of men to
keep women out of touch with these things. Did I say to keep
women out of touch with these things? No to keep a
certain few women. It happened to the present writer to hear
early one dark morning under her windows the outcries of a
woman in the street. At the police station she inquired what had
happened had any woman been brought in hurt or distressed?
'No/ said the policeman, 'but it was probably a female. You
ladies don't know anything about females/ ' And further asks
considering the question of women's cooperation in such problems
whether there can be any woman " so vitally, and mortally and
immortally, interested as Catholic women? "
All apostles of the laissez faire in public matters which affect
us all, have offered as an objection to suffrage the vicious and
ignorant woman. The good and educated not always allied
woman vote would be nullified. We will set aside the fact that
women as a whole are more moral than men, nor need we consider
those foreign countries where suffrage obtains and which refute
by experience this argument. We now have a comparison of the
woman vote in evil precincts with the total woman vote of two
cities in suffrage States. In Seattle, three hundred and forty-five
out of a total of twenty-one thousand eight hundred and seven.
In Denver, one hundred and forty- four out of a total of thirty-
64 CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE [Oct.,
eight thousand. And these figures have not been questioned. In
two cities, San Francisco and Seattle, we know the woman vote was
responsible for the abolishment of that connivance of corruption in
high places and indirect influence which we term commercialized
vice.
Such moral dangers to the Christian home, by prevention
in religious education and by reformation, the nun has endeavored
to meet. A belief in political equality does not in any way change
the axiom that a nation cannot rise above the level of the individ-
uals who compose it. Our convents and institutions have been
homes for thousands in every country, and our religious are only
too well apprised that the institutional laws have a grave bearing
on their work for the Catholic ideal and the nation at large.
In Australia the nuns do not as a rule vote. They have
"in a few instances used the franchise," says the editor of the
Freeman's Journal of Sydney, " because their duty in this respect
has been insisted upon by political organizers of repute." In
Dunedin, New Zealand, the editor of The Tablet writes, that the
nuns, although reluctant, did so once, " at the request of the bishop,"
but adds, " of course, if a grave crisis for the Church arose, such
as legislation threatening religion or the educational rights of
Catholics, the nuns could at any time be registered and voted."
These suggestive items need not be italicized for the Catholic
voter who has sacrificed much to transmit the Faith to his children.
Happily our own country long ago followed the example first set
by the one Catholic colonial colony, Maryland. But it should
occur to us to ask whether we could have met political crises else-
where, if our women our religious could have been " registered
and voted."
" The days are gone by," Virginia Crawford warned in these
pages seven years ago, " when women could be content to
be mere onlookers of contemporary politics, and if Catholics are
not prepared to organize and educate themselves for the defence of
their ideals and beliefs, they will undoubtedly witness the triumph
of doctrines they detest."
A complacent disregard of the march of centuries must also
bring some untoward surprises in our own. Feminism has been
one of these. For its contributing causes were not recognized ; nor
the bearing which events, widely separated and complex, have had
upon bringing it into being. Passivity toward the suffrage move-
ment, as toward any other attempt at widespread political reform
1915-] CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE 65
affecting us all, serves us only so long as we are reinstating our
Bourbons or indulging in academic discussions on the propriety
of permitting women to work.
The confusion among all conservative people has been sufficient
to call forth a leaflet by Mrs. Catt, the President of the National
Woman's Suffrage Association on Feminism and Suffrage in
which she states clearly that Woman Suffrage has no other plank
in its platform than votes for women; while our own Ave Maria,
which has a happy way of dispelling vagaries, has had an admirable
paper called Fallacies on Feminism, which should have wide
circulation.
Space forbids incorporating it here, but " the sixth and most
fatal fallacy is that irreligion is at the bottom of the feminist
agitation. On the contrary," the writer continues, " the entire
tendency of the movement is profoundly religious, and betrays,
apart from certain unavoidable excesses and deviations, an instinc-
tive training after rules enjoined on her children by the Church.
The suffragists are clamoring for moral reforms which in reality
are incompatible with the rejection of dogma. The closer we
examine, the plainer does it appear that what is fallaciously called
feminism, is in reality ,a powerful impulse toward Catholic ideals
and a Catholic code of morals."
Catholic women, believers in political equality, have for many
years grasped this fact: that there was nothing in the principle
of suffrage incompatible with the greater principles of their faith.
In every country Catholic feminists have gone into the movement,
not as Catholics, but as believers in what we now call votes for
women, and have joined the nearest organization. And Catholic
women have for many years worked individually, or as members of
committees of such organizations, to interest other Catholics.
Letters sent the writer from Italy and France expressed regret
that there were no distinctly Catholic organizations. For Marie
Mangeret's well-known society, Avhich met every year at the Cath-
olic Institute of Paris, was not a suffrage organization, although
the meetings had witnessed spirited discussions on the subject.
This ardent Catholic and suffragist prepared a memoir of the
whole movement in France, which she presented to the late Pius
X., who received her with every mark of sympathy. The need
for Catholic organizations has been felt to prove to the ultra con-
servative Catholic that women could be both feminists and good
Catholics; and also because the opponents in the Church were
VOL. CII. 5
66 CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE [Oct.,
making use of the Church as an argument against the suffrage
movement.
Through the foresight of two teachers, Miss Jeffery and
Miss Gadsby, London saw the first of these societies. Miss
Gadsby has since entered a religious order. It was she who sat
up all night to finish the Joan of Arc banner under which the
women, some seventy or eighty strong, marched in the first suffrage
parade which Mrs. Fawcett's book numbers at forty thousand.
The writer is indebted to Elizabeth Christitch for an interesting
account of the early struggles of this little organization known as
The Catholic Women's Suffrage Society, and has kept in touch
with its growth. For it now has branches all through England.
In October, notwithstanding war conditions, it issued a small
monthly magazine, under the editorship of Leonora de Alberti.
Its methods are " educational and non-party," and numbers among
its associates many prominent Catholics both lay and clerical.
The second organization among Catholic women was in Brussels,
where the Roman Catholic Woman Suffrage League of Brussels
was a branch of Feminisme Chretienne de Belgique.
The third society organized about the same time, in New York
City known as The St. Catherine's Welfare Association, grew
out of the work of the Catholic Committee of the New York City
Woman Suffrage Party. Sara McPike was the Chairman of
this committee, and became the President of this society, which,
like the one in London, shows a gratifying increase of membership.
This organization stands for the working woman. Its object is
educational, and its programme, to interest Catholic women in the
duties of true citizenship. It has conducted meetings in parlors,
convents, and parish halls in New York and New Jersey, and at
the Catholic Summer School. Distinguished clerics, as in London,
have cooperated in many ways, beside presiding at the meetings.
This has been the first body to present the subject to our church
organization for men.
Philadelphia also has a large Catholic women's organization,
known as the Philadelphia Suffrage League. Katherine Bregy
and Honor Walsh are officially connected with this society, as
are many other prominent women. Jane Campbell, the Catholic
pioneer in the suffrage movement in this country who organized
and for twenty years was President of the Philadelphia County
Society is Honorary President.
In all States where the issue goes to the voter this fall, there
1915.] CATHOLIC WOMANHOOD AND THE SUFFRAGE 67
are fine committees of Catholic women in every prominent city.
Mrs. Margaret Rorke has had charge of this work for the Empire
State Campaign Committee, and her speakers have been heard
by many of our men's societies under the most distinguished
clerical patronage.
The test of any movement must be in the members who
compose its various organizations, and in its accomplishment.
To both of these the Catholic women suffragists can point with
pride. Our women workers know, as do the English suffragists,
that a voteless competitor in labor or a voteless trade union is
powerless to affect needed reforms. The evils in the body politic
to-day so diffuse and sinister cannot be categorically detailed.
Behind those brief words, materialism and industrialism, are sins
which point to a national decadence. For out of a large section of
our people have gone the love and fear of God, which are the begin-
ning of all humanity's wisdom. The widespread consciousness
that something is wrong expressed in our varied achievements for
human betterment is our most encouraging sign.
Votes for women injects into this situation the most moral
element in our nation. The fear that woman would unduly seek
political preferment or that she would lose her womanliness by
voting has long since been dispelled. If it is a growing conviction
in our country that woman's insight, comparable only to man's
breadth of vision, will be an asset to our great democracy in our
troubled times, will the Catholic voter continue to deny her this
privilege because of her sex?
A WAR LITANY.
BY SARAH M. BROWNSON.
The late Sarah M. Brownson was a frequent contributor to THE CATHOLIC
WORLD in its earlier years. She composed the following litany immediately
after the death of her brother, who was killed in the Civil War. In view of
the present European conflict, it has again a sad timeliness. [Eo. C. W.]
WHEN those who survive, shall take up the dead, may they
be found " facing the foe " as soldiers love to die. May no stain
of cowardice ever sully their name, and when those who love shall
hear of their loss,
Have mercy on them, O Lord!
In that first shock of grief uphold them by Thy grace, let them
be resigned to Thy Will which has bereft them; give them a just
pride in those they loved, and when memory presses hard their loss,
Have mercy on them, Lord!
For the sake of those who have already given their lives for us,
for those whose bones now whiten many a battlefield,
Give us peace, Lord!
For those who now are battling with death and growing weaker
and weaker in the conflict,
Give us peace, Lord!
For those who are suffering in crowded hospitals, who have
lost so much in fighting for peace,
Give us peace, O Lord!
For those who look to-day for the last time on the sweet blue
sky, and hear the music of the gentle spring for the last time,
Give us peace, O Lord!
1915.] A WAR LITANY 69
For the tears, the broken hearts, the crushed spirits, the lost
hopes, the life-long misery that war has caused,
Give us peace, O Lord!
For the eyes that to-day grow dim, for the lips that must know
no smile for many years,
Give us peace, O Lord!
r - ;' '.."" *"*: - ; .
For the innumerable prayers that are daily lifted to Thee in the
North and South,
Give us peace, Lord!
For the sake of Thy Son, Who came upon earth as the Prince
of Peace, do Thou, Who art not " delighted in our being lost," hear
us. Cleanse the Nation from its great sin; teach it to place its
trust in Thee alone; purify it as gold is purified by fire. Lead
our armies to victory; dry the tears of those who weep; bless Thy
soldiers, bring them speedily to us and
Give us peace, O Lord!
THE CHURCH'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW.
BY T. J. BRENNAN, S.T.L.
HERE are three hundred and sixty-five days in the
year; and our years on this earth sometimes pass
beyond the Biblical " three score and ten." If one
day were like the rest, and one year like another,
what a monotonous thing life would be. " To-mor-
row and to-morrow and to-morrow " would approach, bringing
nothing to nourish hope or excite the imagination; yesterday
and yesterday and yesterday would be behind us, a confused mass
without special interest or affection, except as so many days ticked
off from our allotted time, so many wavelets upon which the
bubble we call life danced until it was submerged again. There
is nothing so tiresome as monotony, even a monotony of pleasure
if that is not a contradiction in terms. Sitting down to eat
and drink and rising up to play is not enough. The menu must
vary every day; the games must be changed with the season;
otherwise the epicure will rise up from the table unsatisfied; the
" fan " will go to sleep on the benches. Whenever we hear people
grumbling against the " same old thing," the emphasis is always
on the " same."
Nature knew this from the beginning, and, as her ultimate
aim in the making and moulding of this earth was that it might
be a dwelling place for her darling man she planned accordingly.
The earth was made so various, that the mind
Of desultory man, studious of change,
And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
Long before her favorite child appeared, she had been rehearsing
her programme. There was evening and morning; sea and dry
land; fruit trees bringing forth their fruit in season; light and
darkness; a veritable vaudeville wherein the performers were
the great cosmic forces, and the programme was a ceaseless blend-
ing of taste, color, form, and sound. The " moving picture "
business antedates the human race, and is the oldest lesson in
nature's system of pedagogy.
1915.] THE CHURCH'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW 71
No sooner had man started into business for himself than he
took the hint from his mother. He would add to the entertain-
ment of nature, and he would adopt nature's plan. Variety was
the secret of her success; variety would rule his programme also.
The elements at his disposal were, of course, more limited; but
nature had covered three-fourths of the ground, and he was called
on for only a few supplementary numbers. So he took the year
and he subdivided it into seasons and months and weeks, and
tried his skill at imitation. The result is what we call the Calendar.
It differed in different ages and countries, but was common to all.
The Babylonians, the Romans, the Greeks, and the Jews all
had their Calendars, that is to say " a register or list of days of
the year, according to its division into days and weeks and months,
showing the various civil and ecclesiastical holidays." 1 By this
means man sought to preserve a remembrance of the things he
had experienced, or in which he trusted. Gods and goddesses,
heroes and victories, mysteries and miracles all were set into the
circle of the revolving year, that the young might be introduced
to, and the old reminded of, the nation's inheritance of fact and
fiction. Each generation of children asked : " What is the meaning
of this service;" 2 and the elders by repeated answering deepened
their own knowledge. It was a great system, especially in those
far-off bookless days. It gave a special interest to each month
and week and day. The year, like the scribe learned in the law,
made his round, bringing forth from his treasures new things and
old.
When the Church was established she received this command :
" Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every
creature." Naturally, the first thing she did was to reconnoitre,
to look over the ground, taking note of helps and hindrances.
First of all she noted that it was by no means a virgin field.
There were religions everywhere, local, national, and ultra-national,
with their temples, shrines and ceremonies. There were gods many,
and lords many. She noted especially how each religion had its
calendar, its moving picture show of commemorations; and that
these commemorations, with their festive accompaniments, were a
highly popular and efficacious means of religious instruction. She
was not averse to taking suggestions. Her Divine Founder had
changed water into wine; and had elevated to sacramental dignity
several previously existing ceremonies. Why should she not also
1 Universal Dictionary. 2 Exodus xii. 26.
72 THE CHURCH'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW [Oct.,
consecrate to pious purposes ideas and usages already in vogue
among the children of this world. So she resolved to construct
a calendar of her own; to run a moving picture show lasting the
whole year round, and bringing before the eyes of her children
the mysteries of grace whereof she was the dispenser among men.
The result is what is known as the Church's Calendar, the richest
and most varied of its kind that the world has ever seen. To
this Calendar we shall confine ourselves in this paper, enough
having been said by way of preamble.
In drawing up her Calendar, the Church had only one thing
in view, namely, to preach Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. She
wished to make Him its beginning, middle, and end. She felt as
did St. Paul, and could truly say, " I live, now not I, but Christ
liveth in me." 3 She remembered all the things He had said
and done, and went forward joyously to set them before the eyes
and ears of her spiritual children.
We might expect she would begin the exhibition on New
Year's Day. But she did not. In the first place Jesus was not
born on that day ; besides New Year's Day had been long associated
with festivities the Church did not approve, and against which she
fought. Again, we might expect she would begin with the birth
of her Divine Founder. But neither did she do this; for the
history of Jesus did not begin with His birth. Like all great
events it cast its shadow before, inspiring prophet and priest,
and shaping the minds and hopes of men. She began with the
Advent, and on the first Sunday of Advent, as a mother waking
her little ones for some festive day, she said to the faithful:
"It is now the hour for us to awake from sleep. For now our
salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far
spent, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works
of darkness, and put on the armor of light." 4 Her first picture,
therefore, was the reveille : " Behold, the Bridegroom cometh ; go
ye forth to meet Him." She sounded the note of expectancy, and
warned all to come in the wedding garment of penance and
purity : " Do penance, for the kingdom of God is at hand." She
introduced John the Baptist with his garment of camel's hair, and
his earnest call for preparation. Thus, during Advent her cry
was : " Prepare ye the way of the Lord." By Christmas-eve
she had her children on the tiptoe of expectation; she herself was
possessed of the same spirit. " This day," she said, " you shall
'Galatians ii. 20. 4 Epistle for the Sunday.
1915.] THE CHURCH'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW 73
know that the Lord will come and save us, and in the morning
you shall see His glory." 5 " Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and
be ye lifted up, O eternal gates, and the King of glory shall enter
in." 6 Then the looked- for morning dawned. She drew aside
the veil, and disclosed the crib with Joseph and Mary and the
Infant lying in the manger. The angelic voices were heard; the
shepherds came from the hills; and the general invitation was
issued to all to pay their homage to the King : " Venite, adoremus
Come, let us adore Him." Every valley was filled, every mountain
and hill was laid low, the rough ways were made plain, and all
flesh saw the Salvation of God.
That was the first great act, the climax of the first number.
The feasts that group themselves around Christmas were made
partakers by contagion of the Christmas spirit, and only after
Epiphany, or Twelfth Day, did the festivities disappear. The next
big number in the programme was Easter, or rather we shall
say Holy Week, culminating in Easter. Marking as it does
the termination of the early life of Jesus; commemorating as
it does the greatest tragedy and the greatest triumph of all time,
the Church had little to do except to state the facts; the feelings
took care of themselves. Yet here, too, she stood afar off like the
uncleansed leper; she realized she was about to tread on holy
ground ; and, with ashes on her head and much fasting and prayer,
she asked that the sins of men might not be remembered
on the anniversary of the day that sin had made. The
Great Week came, and one by one she set before her children,
simply and concretely, the things that had come to pass. On Palm
Sunday she rehearsed, with hymns and jubilant procession, the
triumphal entry that was soon to be changed into the Way of the
Cross. On Holy Thursday she recalled the washing of the feet,
the Last Supper, and the Gift of Love. Then on Good Friday,
with all the outward emblems of sorrow, she chanted the story of
the sorrowful Event she commemorated ; she unveiled the Cross on
which the Saviour of the world hung; and with bare feet she
advanced, followed by her children, to do it reverence as the symbol
of her salvation. Easter Sunday, however, she taught her children
to rejoice as did the holy women by the empty tomb. Her alleluia
resounded throughout the Church; the garments of sorrow were
put away ; and she cried out : " This is the day which the Lord
hath made; let us be glad ' and rejoice therein." Thus did she
"Introit of the Mass of the day. "Offertory.
74 THE CHURCH'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW [Oct.,
bring to a close the second great incident of her annual miracle-
play.
The cycle was brought to a conclusion by the feast of Pente-
cost. While celebrated with less pomp, it was to the Church
a commemoration of the graduation day. She recalled the bap-
tism of fire by which the Apostles received their final enlightening
for the work they had to do ; she recalled the " mighty wind "
that signalized the coming of the Holy Spirit. And in some places
she allowed her children to represent these happenings by concrete
methods. In Italy showers of red rose leaves were let fall from
the ceiling to signify the tongues of flame; in France the mighty
wind was reproduced by the blowing of trumpets; and the red
vestment symbolized the love of the Holy Spirit for the Church.
These were the great incidents which the Church selected from
the life of the Saviour, and which she set before the eyes of her
children: His birth, His death and resurrection, and the divine
imprimatur uttered in tongues of fire. Other events and mysteries
of the divine drama she recalled, but these stood out over all,
and gave their name and color to the seasons of the Church year,
as the changes of nature mark off the seasons of the earthly
year. The Son of God was always in the centre of the stage,
sometimes uttering words of love, sometimes doing works of
mercy, sometimes receiving sinners and eating with them. It
was a work conceived in love, executed with genius, and giving
occasion for the manifestation of every human emotion joy and
sorrow, hope and fear, pity and wonder.
As times went on another element began to enter. The
anniversaries of Saints and Martyrs came around, and could not
be forgotten. Perhaps the relics were near by; perhaps the rel-
atives or descendants were in the congregation; or perhaps it
was necessary to remind those still in danger that they would not
be forgotten if they too should fall by the sword of the persecutor.
And so for the edification of the living their departed brethren
who had fought the good fight were allowed to come forward,
received their meed of applause, and were asked to remember
them in the heavenly kingdom. The number grew with the cen-
turies till it resulted almost in confusion; but then in due time the
Church stepped in with her legislation, and took the management
of the matter into her own hands. She defined who were and
who were not to be honored during the ecclesiastical year; she reg-
ulated the days on which they were to appear, and the degree of
1915-] THE CHURCH'S MOVING PICTURE SHOW 75
honor to which they were entitled; and by numerous admonitions
she warned her children not to forget Christ in His saints, but
rather to remember that the Saints were honored simply and solely
because of their resemblance to Jesus. With these precautions
the new arrivals were allowed to follow the Lamb in the mystic
representation of the Life Divine, and were made sharers in
the glory of His triumph. Martyrs and Virgins and Confessors
of the Faith; doctors of the Church, and missionaries unto the
heathen; princes and peasants all circled round the Central
Figure, vaunting not their own glory, but the glory of Him by
Whose grace they were healed, and ever singing as they passed :
" The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity,
and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and benediction." 7
Thus did the Church elaborate, and thus does she present
to us annually, that most wonderful of all moving picture shows.
A synopsis of the life of the Divine Founder, a commemoration
of all those who have attained unto her Roll of Honor, a presenta-
tion of the mysteries of Faith it passes before us a record of
doctrine and a history of achievement, which he who runs can read,
and reading cannot fail to comprehend. This is what is
technically known as the Calendar of the Church, the most artistic
and most instructive moving picture ever staged on earth.
'Apocalypse v. 12.
WHITE EAGLE.
BY L. P. DECONDUN.
X.
PARIS, August, 1913.
INCE we heard about Count Klonowicz, my own Rex,
I need not tell you how anxious we were to try the
experiment suggested by the Prince. Each evening,
while the Count was in his apartment directly behind
the oak room Nancy sang all the Irish airs she could
remember; but we were told, night after night, that
nothing had roused his attention. However, three days ago, as Nancy
sitting at the piano after dinner was dreamily playing, racking her
memory for something forgotten, the telephone rang. Maryna was
sitting close to it, so she lifted the receiver, listened to a sentence or
two, and replacing the instrument she turned toward us.
" Count Stanislaw has been listening to you, Miss O'Dwyer," she
said. " My father is now bringing him here to look at some papers
and documents in this old desk. Of course that is a pretext; the
Count does not remember what he reads. They will be far enough
from us to remain apart, and my father wishes us, after the shortest
possible exchange of words with them, to take as little notice of their
presence as we can. As for you, Miss O'Dwyer, he will be grateful
if you continue to play, following your own fancy. Am I making
myself clear ? "
Nancy answered affirmatively and wheeled round on her stool. I
have an idea that she went on with " Snowy Breasted Pearl," but for
the life of me I could not tell you. Madame Stablewska bent silently
over her work after having exchanged a glance with Maryna. Helena
did the same, and Miss Lowinska took back her book. Mine was
opened on my knees, but I was unable to look at it; my entire self
was concentrated in my hearing, as already several steps were sounding
on the stairs. Then the door opened and the four men came in.
We looked up as naturally as we could; Nancy left the piano
only long enough to allow the simplest and most formal of intro-
ductions to be made; and when the Prince asked us to excuse their
intrusion and their obligation to go on with their work, we did our
best to appear to forget them all. Needless to add, that we never
became more watchful than we were then. But Nancy was splendid.
She set about her task with a marvelous tact and for her special
audience, beginning one song, dropping it, trying another without ever
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 77
seeming discouraged or tired. She had her back to the desk, but she
kept glancing at Helena, and the latter, half hidden by one of the
central columns, was able to study the Count's expression. For some
time nothing occurred; Count Stanislaw was taking papers from a
box which one of his sons had placed near him, and putting them back
into it, while the Prince was unlocking drawer after drawer of the
broad desk. I was beginning to feel restless, when at last the old man
looked up with a flicker of interest; his hands resting upon the box.
My heart jumped in my throat and I noticed the imperceptible sign
made by Helena to Nancy. The latter nodded, played a bar or two,
and began to sing: " Who Fears to Speak of '98." But the attention of
the Count wandered; he again resumed his occupation. Helena
shook her head and Nancy made another attempt. Like the bards
of old, she passed from grave to gay, from laughter to tears, from
lullaby to warlike song, but without success. The " Wearing of the
Green " woke no more response .than did " The Kerry Recruit." Some
of Moore's melodies attracted the Count's notice for a short period,
but in no very marked manner; and I was tempted to despair in
earnest when Nancy struck up one more of the popular airs : " Let
Erin Remember the Days of Old! "
With this, Nancy's energy, which I presume had been flagging,
sprang up again at Helena's encouraging nod. Count Klonowicz had
gripped the box of papers with both hands and, leaning forward, was
now following every word with dumb intensity, never relaxing his hold
until the last note had died away. Then he leaned back in his chair
and closed his eyes. His lips were moving soundlessly. There was a
dead silence as, at my first movement, Madame Stablewska had quickly
lifted her hand in command. A few seconds dragged interminably,
after which the Count opened his eyes; his lips moving still, and
words came out slowly in faultless English.
" Remember the days of old ! Yes, yes this is what we may,
what we must remember! From the Piatts to the Jagellons Lesz-
czynski, Poniatowski, Kosciuszko. From Brian Boru to Emmet
O'Connell, all, all Irish and Poles, Irish and Poles. Za Wiare i
Ojczysne, and there is more! Surely this is (he stopped and drew
a long breath) this is but the dark hour, the the darkest."
We all had been covertly watching him ; even Nancy had turned
her head, but at these last words a light broke on her face : she knew
now ! Her stool revolved noiselessly, and her fingers ran over the ivory
notes. A strong contraction passed across the features of Count
Klonowicz, once again he raised his head; Nancy was singing.
" Bereft of his love and bereav'd of his fame,
A knight to the cell of an old hermit came."
I don't think, Rex, that I can explain to you the tense feeling
78 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
forcing us to hold our breath while this was going on. We hardly
dared look up, and yet we were aware of the smallest movements.
As for me, in a flash I had remembered Nancy singing Lover's
" Ballad " to Helena one evening, and there was little doubt that it was
it which had struck a slumbering chord in the Count's memory.
" Oh, the hour before day !
'Tis always the darkest the hour before day."
And as with the third verse her voice rose gently pathetic, the
box full of papers which the Count held, fell with a crash. He stood
up suddenly, one hand stretched forth and the other clenched on the
Prince's shoulder; but Nancy never stopped, never wavered; her
voice kept clear and firm;
" J Tis always the darkest, the hour before day."
Only, when she came to an end, the Count tried in vain to speak ;
he took one step forward, staring strangely at us; then his head fell
on his chest and he swayed heavily. He might have fallen if both his
sons had not been ready to support him (and this was what I had
feared in my excitement). However, no such thing happened; and
before half the possible tragedies pictured in my imagination had been
dispelled, the Count, his sons and the Prince, had quitted the room.
But when we five women remained alone, we looked at one
another for a few seconds with questioning faces. Maryna was
thoughtful ; Madame Stablewska and her daughter very grave, and
Nancy's eyes particularly eager; she was dying to speak. After a
moment Miss Lowinska saw it; she smiled and sat down, which made
Nancy and me follow her example. (Neither Madame Stablewska nor
Helena had risen from their chairs.)
" Miss O'Dwyer," said Maryna, " you have been magnificent, you
could not have managed things better. Something does seem to have
been done, and it is in God's hands now."
" Oh," interrupted Nancy, " my share in this is a very small
one. The fact of my knowing these songs cannot be put to my credit ;
I did not learn them purposely. But tell me do you honestly believe
that we have been successful ? " There was a short pause.
" It is impossible to be absolutely certain," answered Maryna
with a touch of hesitation, " yet it may be so."
" To-morrow may tell," remarked Madame Stablewska.
"And we must hope for the best," added Helena with her gentle
smile. We all stopped to listen ; some steps could be heard below, but
it might have been the servants who were still about the house.
And then, I cannot describe to you, dear, what a strange atmos-
phere began to close around us. I am sure that we were all anxious
to shake it off, but how was it to be done ? On the one hand, Nancy
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 79
and I felt that we were but sympathetic spectators of some drama
which meant even more to the people among whom we were than
was apparent on the surface. On the other, we had the intuition
that our friends hesitated which course to pursue with us. To mention
nothing of their feelings might make it look as if we could not be
trusted, and to discuss them openly at the risk of imposing them on
us would seem to them the last thing to be thought of. Clearly it
was a delicate point to decide, and I could read the same reflection in
Nancy's eyes, when Maryna put it frankly into words.
" I am afraid, Mrs. Camberwell," she said, " that our preoccupied
and serious attitude is rather depressing, but we are so anxious for the
recovery of Count Stanislaw that we cannot help dreading disappoint-
ment. For one thing, he is one of my father's dearest friends and,
more than that, some of us have paid a great price for the Count's
life, though we saved neither his liberty nor his mind."
Madame Stablewska glanced up quickly, but she did not speak ; she
only knotted her silk thread and went on with her work ; so Nancy
made an effort.
" How wonderfully he speaks English," she remarked. " I
know that most Polish people are capital linguists, but his words came
to me as a complete surprise."
"And to us as well, Miss O'Dwyer," said Helena. (She had stood
up and was folding her piece of embroidery.) " It is what makes me
hopeful, as nobody has heard Count Stanislaw utter a syllable of
English for several years." She turned to put her work away in
a curious oak chest ; then she silently left the room.
Maryna was looking out on the night sky; when she heard the
door close she piled some cushions in the angle of the window, and
sat leaning against them, her face in the shadow.
" The last time Count Stanislaw had any need to speak English,"
she began in a strangely even tone, " was the evening he was arrested.
So many of the Russian police spies have a smattering of French or
German that we have had, when possible, to resort to something else.
However, the fact of his using English to-night must have brought
past events very vividly before Helena, and those events were the
great tragedy of her life, as well as of other people's. So you will
understand why silence fell on us as it did."
I found myself staring at Maryna, and Nancy bent forward,
keenly interested.
" But, Miss Lowinska, she must have been a mere child when
Count Klonowicz was imprisoned."
" She was twelve."
" Well, do you know, to be quite candid, Nemo and I have often
thought that there must have been some reasons for Helena to be so
So WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
different from English or Irish girls of her age. Of course we won-
dered, though I don't think it was out of curiosity."
Madame Stablewska had stopped working. Her steady eyes were
gazing at us and lighting the pale oval of her face.
" If you wish to know the facts to which Maryfia is alluding," she
said calmly, " she is at liberty to tell you. It has been the story of so
many of us that there is hardly anything out of the ordinary in it. It
is a page of history brought home."
But Miss Lowinska shook her head. " No," she said, " I could
not."
" Oh ! but why ? " exclaimed Nancy impulsively. " Now you
have said too much or too little. Would Helena object to our hear-
ing it?"
" Helena!" repeated the girl, " oh, I don't think so; Helena
believes that she has done her duty, no more."
" Helena believes rightly," interposed Madame Stablewska, " just
as you yourself would have done in the same circumstances. Only "
And there appeared the shadow of a smile on Madame Stablewska's
face.
" Only ? " inquired Maryfia with a gleam of surprise in her
questioning eyes.
" Only you would not have been satisfied with her methods ; you
would have preferred to face several bodies of police single-handed."
Maryna laughed, a peculiar little laugh, but she leaned back
without answering.
" In all this," remarked Nancy in a half -aggrieved, half-humorous
manner, " what I see most clearly is that we shall have to curb our
curiosity and remain in the dark."
Madame Stablewska looked at her. " Would you really care to
know, Miss O'Dwyer? "
" Very much indeed, and Mrs. Camberwell also," she added with
a wicked little glance at me ; " only she is the sort of timid mouse
who always lets other people open the doors for her."
The velvety pair of black eyes rested on me.
" I am afraid Nancy is right," I said humbly, " but we have an
excuse. It is only fair that friends should be interested in what
touches their friends. Is it not so? "
Madame Stablewska bowed her head in graceful affirmation.
" It is so," she said in her low, hushed voice, " and if you can hear
me sufficiently I am willing to tell you what happened on the day of
which we spoke."
She bent to choose a skein of silk in her work-basket and fix a
small ebony winder to the table near her.
" I am quite sure," she began simply, " that you have read enough
1915.] WHITE EAGLE Si
books and newspapers the last five or six years to be acquainted with
the great rising in Russia, in 1905 ; I am equally certain that history
and even novels have given you a fair idea of what Poland has suf-
fered since it has been finally crushed and dismembered." And as we
nodded, she pursued : " Then there is no need for me to dwell on this,
but it explains how she dreamed of a possibility of freedom at the
time of the Russian Revolution, even though it could be no more than
a dream.
" Well ! the awakening from it was swift. In the terrible repres-
sions exercised everywhere, Warsaw was not spared. Even girl stu-
dents from the university died under the knout." Nancy made a
movement, but though Madame Stablewska saw it she went on.
" Of all this, however, I have nothing to say ; it belongs now to the
past; I only mention Warsaw because the Stablewski's estates were
in the vicinity of this town, though happily not on the Praga side of
the river. Rivers and bridges are additional difficulties, you see.
The more modern side of the house had been built thirty or thirty-
five years ago, but it had been placed in such a way as to be part
and parcel of the old castle, of which the walls and underground pas-
sages had been carefully preserved. We Poles have never felt so se-
cure that we could overlook any possible hiding-place or means of re-
treat, and many of our friends knew that they would find a refuge near
us in times of danger. One of the prominent men who for years had
worked in the interests of Poland was Count Klonowicz, and it was
not long until suspicion began to be aroused about him. My husband,
who had some friends in the fortress in Warsaw, was one of the first
to hear of it. He immediately communicated with Prince Lowinski,
who also was in the town, but as an acknowledged magistrate. The
first care of the latter was to dispatch the Count's youngest son, Walety
Klonowicz, then a law student to Breslau, on some errand or other.
Basylii was there already studying medicine, and Prince Lowinski
wanted them both out of the way before they could learn that their
father was threatened with arrest. They could not have helped, and
their presence would have complicated matters. Meanwhile we re-
ceived word that a warrant was out against Count Stanislaw, but we
succeeded in communicating with him." Madame Stablewska paused
to adjust the screw of the winder.
" Well ! " she went on a moment later, " to pass over useless ex-
planations, Count Klonowicz did come to us ; but within an hour of his
arrival we learned that the Russian police had formed a cordon around
the estate. He had been seen and followed. This will tell you that
it left us very little time to draw up any plan of action. First the
Count thought of giving himself up so as not to implicate my husband ;
but he did not persist, as he knew, just as we did, that this would
VOL. en.
82 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
save neither us nor him. For all our sakes he should do his utmost
to escape, and as his knowledge and power to help Poland were greater
than that of almost any other man, at that period, his life would have
to be dearly fought for if it became necessary.
"It was all rapidly summed up and settled. Count Klonowicz
was to hide in a cellar, from which he could gain an underground pas-
sage opening at a distance from the house in a deserted patch of land.
From there he could reach a narrow road where a motor-car would be
waiting with one of our most trusted men ; then they were to make a
dash for the frontier at breakneck speed. The man had ostensibly
been sent to Warsaw with a message to the Citadel, and had certainly
left before the arrival of the police. He was to ascertain whether the
description of Count Stanislaw had already been spread. If not, all
might be well ; in the opposite case they must try to pass the frontier
somehow. It seemed an impossible feat for anyone who has seen
that frontier, yet two great cards remained in their hands: the help
of Providence and a reckless daring. But the Count could not start
until the police had sufficiently narrowed their circle around the house
to leave the mouth of the passage free.
" For nearly six hours we were left in a false security, but we
knew its value too well to be deceived, and our depositions had been
taken. A few important documents, happily printed on fine linen,
had been rolled into the binding of Count Klonowicz's fur rug ; some
others in thin parchment would have been more difficult to hide, but
those were already placed in some hollow parts of the broad and thick
straps which held the rug. This was considered safer than his coat
or clothes, as all his person would be searched at once if he was caught,
while he could perhaps get rid of the rug in which was rolled inno-
cently a packet of biscuits and a flask." Madame Stablewska stopped
a moment to take another skein of silk, but she did not look at us.
" Now," she continued, " the next difficulty was to decide on a
guide to take Count Stanislaw safely to the opening of the passage.
Both my husband and I should have to receive the police officers if we
did not want to arouse suspicion from the beginning, and none of
our servants had been fully entrusted with the knowledge of the
hiding-places of the castle. Only Helena's absence could escape notice
for any length of time. She had thought of it herself, and volunteered
to lead our guest through the complicated maze built in the founda-
tions. She knew every step and corner of it, as the delight of Pawel
Lowinski when spending his holidays with us, as a boy, had been to
take Helena through the intricacies of it, and they had many a time
played the miserable game of hunter and hunted. Well ! this time
it had to be played in earnest, and it was sadly natural to see the child
take the lead. She had changed her wjife dress or covered it by a
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 83
seal-skin coat, and her hair was crushed in a toque of the same
dark fur.
" 'There must be no white about me,' she had remarked, 'or a
ray of light might give us away. Pawel always said so.' She also
knew the importance attached to the black rug, for though every
word we had exchanged was in English, she had understood most of
it, and had thought of some details. 'Before leaving the passage
altogether,' she had suggested, 'Count Stanislaw must let me hold
the strap until he has made sure that all is well. If it is not, let him
give a signal and I will run and hide the rug in the cellar.' As her
father objected that in the darkness she could not find the revolving
stone opening in the wall of the well, she laughed, and assured him
that her feet would tell her as the ground, there, begins to rise
sharply. Then, once behind the stone, in the four feet thickness of
the well she could take her time and get down quietly ; she had done
it ten times before. She appeared so sure of it that we trusted them
both to God ; and they hurried down."
Madame Stablewska stopped speaking for a short while to rest;
there is always a certain effort in her making the most of her voice,
outside mere conversation. She looked at us with a silent smile of
apology, and glanced at Maryfia. But the latter's face was still turned
away and she made no sign. After a few minutes Madame Stablew-
ska began again.
" As far as I learned afterwards, everything went on satisfac-
torily until they reached the opening of the underground passage.
They waited there for a single stroke of the tower bell which was to
let them know that the police had finally surrounded the house, and
that Count Klonowicz might venture out. But it was, even then, too
soon. Half a dozen sentinels had been left behind, and one stood
a few steps from them. There was nothing for it, but the Count
would have t deal with the man."
" Do you mean to kill him ? " asked Nancy taken aback.
" Oh, no ; though, of course, this would have been the only safe
way, and though we Poles have the reputation of shedding blood like
water. In spite of this, I must say that deliberate murder is by no
means a common thing, even among the roughest of our people; as
for the Count the possibility of taking a man's life from a safe cover
would not even have entered his mind. What he meant to do was to
master and silence the man, and leave him unable to raise the alarm.
However the problem solved itself. Instinct made the sentinel turn
round, and though Count Stanislaw closed instantly with him, the
latter had had time to call the attention of a fellow watcher who rose
out of the very ground. So there was nothing- for Helena to do but
to hide the rug at all cost. There should not be incriminating
84 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
papers used against our friend if, by any means, she could prevent it,
and she flew back along the obscure passage until the ground began
to rise. But it was not an easy run as she held the rug under one
arm, and had to keep the other stretched out to remain in contact
with one side of the wall and guide herself."
" But," I exclaimed, " her hand must have been hopelessly
skinned."
" Oh, yes, it was ; but she had no thought of it then. Helena
always had marvelous endurance. However, she found the revolving
slab as she expected, slipped through the opening, and lowered the
iron bar which keeps it immovable. She waited for some time, but
as no steps could be heard, and since the ledge on which she stood was
very narrow, she decided to gain the cellar at once and leave the rug
in safety. This well was old and disused; there was nothing at the
bottom of it but two feet of mud, water and stones, and that winter
it was frozen hard. She threw the rug first, then by the help of iron
half hoops clamped in the masonry she proceeded to let herself down.
She had done it several times before; yet, by some inexplicable
decree, one of the iron supports gave way under her weight, and she
fell almost twelve feet, partly on the rug and partly on the stones.
One of her legs was broken."
" Oh ! poor child ! " we both ejaculated. But Madame Stablew-
ska pursued quietly.
" I believe she fainted but she did not remember ; however, after
the first shock, and in spite of the intense pains, she realized that she
could not stay where she was. The opening to the cellar was a
narrow slit on her right, so she struggled to get through it. And
now she knew that she could not leave her prison without help, and
that the coming of this help was an uncertain thing. After a short
rest, therefore, she gathered her strength to unfasten the straps, un-
roll the fur rug and wrap herself in it as completely as she could;
she understood well enough what the cold would do if she lay there
without protection. And when she could do no more she remained
passive, but with the knowledge that the papers, at least, were as
safe as they could be in human hands."
" Oh ! but it was, it was awful ! " I interrupted again. " And
she never called out? "
Madame Stablewska smiled.
" Dear Mrs. Camberwell," she asked with a shade of amusement,
" what would have been the sense of hiding at such a price and then
giving herself away; and not only herself but what had been en-
trusted to her. If you think for a moment, you must see that she
could not do it any more than you would have done it yourself."
" Oh," said I, shaking my head in abject doubt, " I can't tell.
1915-] WHITE EAGLE 85
Between pain and fear I would almost give in to anything, at any
time."
In her dark corner Maryfia laughed softly. " Don't believe a
word of it, Waclawa," she said, " Mrs. Camberwell knows herself
a great deal less than she knows others."
But Nancy became impatient. " Oh, don't interrupt Nemo," she
begged. " What I want to know is whether the Count was captured."
" No," said Madame Stablewska ; " at least not then. He suc-
ceeded in overpowering his two aggressors and in reaching the car ;
only the plan of Providence did not admit of his escape. Twice a
puncture had to be repaired, and the third time the car broke down
altogether. Count Klonowicz was recognized and that was the end.
" Meanwhile the Manor had been invaded and searched as, I be-
lieve, the Russian police alone is trained to search. For a long time
they found no proof of the passage of the Count, and we were be-
ginning to breathe when the latter's two antagonists were discovered.
They were hors de combat, but by no means unable to speak, and they
did this to a purpose. Yet for two things we were still thankful ;
we thought that neither of these men suspected the presence of
Helena whom naturally we believed safe, and that Count Klonowicz
had still his chance of freedom."
Here I observed that Madame Stablewska's pale face was paler
again and strangely set. Even her eyes looked cold. Only it was
the cold of transparent crystal before a leaping flame, and she spoke
more slowly.
" There can be no necessity," she continued, " to enter into details
about what followed. It was a painful scene, but, thank God, it was
short. Kajetan Stablewski acted all through it as he should, and the
great mercy of Providence delivered him. He scorned to offer an
excuse for having received and helped a friend, though he knew that
his words were putting the last seal on the loss of his liberty. He
had neither fear nor regret. He went further, as, recognizing the spy
who had hunted the Count, he accused him daringly before his men.
And then, in an instant, it was over. The infuriated man, a Pole, a
traitor and an apostate, carried away by shame and passion, lifted his
revolver and another martyr went to his reward."
Both Nancy and I started, but we remained dumb.
Madame Stablewska drew a long, full breath ; but her face
remained motionless and inscrutable. What self-command! what a
will of adamant in this slight, fragile, amiable woman! Her eyes
met ours and held them with their unconscious magnetism; then she
resumed her story:
" Oh ! it was a great mercy, as I said. Prison in Russia means
a thousand deaths. As for me, I thanked God then as I had perhaps
86 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
never thanked Him before. (And as Nancy made a movement.) Yes !
it is so; though it seems incomprehensible when one lives in Western
Europe and in the twentieth century. Unfortunately these things are
bare realities to us."
" But, had the police any right to fire like that ? " asked Nancy
hesitatingly.
" Legally, no ; though this made little difference, since the report
of .the wolves was not made by the lambs. Besides 1905 was an
exceptional year."
"And after this," I inquired, " did they go the police I mean ?"
" No, not until late the next morning : and only because Prince
Lowinski's influence was already at work in certain quarters. A
small troop of mounted men were sent with some government officials,
and with them Pawel Lowinski, scarcely over seventeen, but already
the true son of his father. He carried out secret instructions, and
faced emergencies as few could have done. Naturally, to help a rebel
was to be one, and the consequences of such help in Russia meant,
apart from imprisonment, the confiscation of the helper's property. It
was this latter point of the law which served as a pretext to Prince
Lowinski for sending officials with Pawel; and his quick action,
placing the authority in his own hands, saved us and my servants, at
least, from immediate arrest.
"Again it was Pawel who found and rescued Helena, though
for that task he had to rely on his quick wit and resolution. From
the moment of his arrival he had missed the child and his glance had
questioned me, but I could say nothing before these men ; I dared not
even make a sign. At last an inspiration came to me.
" On one of the tables in the room was a small cup belonging
to Helena. It had been given to her by her English nurse, and on it
was a motto with the word 'welcome.' I asked Pawel to give me some
water in it, but before drinking I looked at the boy, hiding under my
fingers every letter on the cup except three: w-e-1. In a flash he
understood, and realized also that the girl could not be hidden there
unless for a grave purpose. His plan was made in a second. Pre-
tending to inspect a heap of valuable objects already gathered as
property of the state, he must have slipped some of them into his
sleeves or pockets, for he suddenly denounced their absence in a voice
of indignant anger, accusing vehemently the first set of police. These
were instantly called into the hall ; they would have to be searched, and
in the meantime Pawel taking three of his own men left the room.
" Needless to say those three were devoted compatriots. How-
ever, as you know, Pawel found the revolving stone immovable,
and had to resort to the rusty chain of the well. It was still
strong enough to support his weight; his men lowered him carefully
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 87
and he found Helena. But I cannot tell you how he succeeded in
bringing her out and putting rug and straps into safety; he alone
could explain. It was through him also that Helena was taken to
some sort of hospital in Warsaw."
" I suppose," said Nancy, " that the broken limb was in a pitiable
state."
" That was one thing," answered Madame Stablewska ; "the worse
was the result of exposure. Either the rug had been insufficient or had
partly fallen off, but the child was barely conscious when Pawel found
her. She must have been able to tell him what to do with the straps
and rug, but when she was brought to me she could no longer speak.
The night had been intensely cold."
" Good heavens ! " I murmured. " How could anyone stand all
this?"
" Yes," admitted Madame Stablewska simply, " we all climb our
Calvary sooner or later ; do we not ? "
"Oh! but not in such a frightful way as this," I interposed with
a miserable inner dread.
" You mean, not in the same manner. Oh, no ! God knows the
measure of strength He has given to each of us."
I did not answer; the whole thing contrasted so vividly with
the comfort and peace around us ; but Nancy began questioning.
"And you, madame, where did you go? "
" To Warsaw also. But I was allowed to take some indispen-
sable clothing with me, and even some money."
" Allowed ! " repeated Nancy indignantly.
" Why ! It was a privilege in my case to remain free."
" A privilege ! A woman and a child who had done nothing."
" Even so."
" And what did you do in Warsaw ? Did Prince Lowinski
" Prince Lowinski had done enough and risked enough for us ;
I took care to cut ourselves off from him."
" But your money could not last forever ; how did you manage
to live?"
" Waclawa Stablewska's voice was well known in the salons of
Warsaw and even of Petersburg; I found it relatively easy to get an
engagement as a singer."
" Oh ! " I exclaimed involuntarily, " you !"
"I was thankful for it, Mrs. Camberwell."
" But how could you sing at such a time ; under such conditions ?
It must have been too cruel."
Madame Stablewska looked up dreamily. "No; I believe not. So
far as I can judge now, the pain was yet too deep to hurt much. Later
on, it was worse."
88 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
" Oh ! but it must have been terrible ! Had you to do that for a
long time ? "
" Unfortunately not ; the season was soon over, as political troubles
do not help to fill the theatres. But as soon as Helena could travel, I
was able to get another engagement in Thorn. Then from Thorn I
went with a company to Schneidemuhl for a fortnight or so, but
without Helena. You see for a long period she was unable to walk,
and I did not wish to go far afield without her. While in Schneide-
muhl I remember going one day to the Klotzow forest. To me it was
a sort of pilgrimage, as God alone can tell how many Poles are waiting
there for the morning of Resurrection. Even a few inches below the
soil, pleasure seekers often come across broken swords and whitening
bones. See," she went on, opening a volume lying on the table and
showing us the engraving of a huge fallen oak tree, " the shell of that
giant is still covering the ground reddened with our blood."
But she interrupted herself and closed the book.
" I am afraid," she said, " this is a digression, though my story is
at an end. When I went back to Thorn I was able to take Helena to
Berlin, from there to Frankfort and at last to Paris. Our first few
months here were very successful ; it almost meant wealth for us ;
then (she smiled a pathetic little smile) Waclawa Stablewska
lost her voice," she said, " God had given it and God had taken it.
Still all was not lost. I found very soon another occupation. I was
accepted in a theatre as ouvreuse."
" What ! " I exclaimed, stung to the quick. " You ! Impossible."
"Why not?"
I remained dumbfounded.
" What is an ouvreuse?" asked Nancy. " Surely you do not mean
one of those women who take ladies' wraps and bring those odious
little footstools."
She was smiling still. " Yes, I do ; but they have other duties
as well. For instance, to help actresses in changing their gowns, to
attend them, to run messages, and to remain generally at every-
body's beck and call. And not only in the evening but at rehearsals
also. However it left my mornings free, which suited me perfectly."
Nancy's face was painfully astonished. " How long did it last ? "
she could not help asking.
"Until Prince Lowinski discovered us again. Then we came to
the end of our trials."
" But they must have left a heart-breaking memory ? "
"Oh, no, Miss O'Dwyer, why should they? None of us can
wish to wipe out pain or sorrows from our past life. They are its
chief value."
" Still there are sorrows," began Nancy, thinking evidently of
Kajetan Stablewska's death. (At least that is what / thought of.)
I 9 i 5 .] WHITE EAGLE 89
But Madame Stablewska shook her head slowly and meaningly.
"If you mean parting from those we love," she said, " surely we are
not as those who have no hope."
Of course we understood. Then Maryfia, whom we had almost
forgotten, stood up.
" It is getting late my friends," she remarked, " what about bed ? "
So we stood up too, and exchanged " good-nights."
XL
PARIS, August, 1913.
I was awakened rather early yesterday morning, my Reginald,
and by no other person than Miss Lowinska. She had pushed open
my bedroom door and was surveying me in silence.
" Well," said I, after a few seconds.
" So you are awake ! " she exclaimed laughing, " I am so glad !
I want you to get up and come out with me after breakfast on one
of my private errands. It is just heavenly outside. Well, will you
come ? "
" I suppose I must," I sighed with affected resignation, " or my
life would not be worth living. But, first tell me, have you heard
anything of the Count ? "
" I have. I saw my father this morning, as he happens to be
(pointedly and wickedly) an early riser, and he told me that Basylii
Klonowicz was satisfied that our experiment had done his father no
harm. Basylii is not only a qualified, but a remarkably clever, medical
man, you know."
" Yes, Helena told me that. But did we do no more than avoid
doing harm? That's rather a negative kind of success. Does he not
think so?"
" Who, Basylii ? Oh ! he is pleased with things as they are. It
will still be a slow work to restore the Count's mental faculties, but
now it seems a possibility."
Three quarters of an hour later we were breakfasting en tete-a-
tete, the Prince had already finished, and the others had not appeared.
Maryfia refused to wait for anyone. Afterwards she rang for one of
her pet cabs, and away we went in the direction of Montparnasse.
" Why did you not inquire where I was taking you ? " she asked
as we turned the first corner.
" Because," I replied with affected severity, " you give such scanty
information. It would be guess work in any case."
Her eyes danced with amusement.
" Oh, how splendid ! " she exclaimed. " Why, Nemo, you are
actually wishing to bite."
" Do you think I could not if I tried? "
90 WHITE EAGLE [Oct,
" So far as I am concerned, you might try for a month of
Sundays."
" You fancy that I don't know you sufficiently to find the weak
point in your armor ? "
In that funny fashion, quite her own, she turned and gazed medi-
tatively at me.
" I do," she said.
" How do you know ? "
She smiled slowly, ever so slowly, but the smile was an enigma.
" Yes," I insisted, " how do you know? "
She was smiling still, but mischief was again creeping into her eyes.
" Because," she said mysteriously, " you have already found 'the
weak spot in my armor' without being aware of it, and you have, un-
knowingly, done as much damage as you will be allowed to do.
Voila."
And with a jerk which shook our little cab, she let go my
hand and sat well back on the cushions.
" But I don't understand," I asked, both startled and puzzled,
" what can you mean ? "
She only shook her head and laughed.
"It is almost over," she said, " so it cannot matter now. Let me
tell you instead where we are going. Do you know Fontenay-aux-
Roses?"
" I have heard of it."
" Good. However, there are no roses worth mentioning so late
in the season ; we are merely going to the market."
"A market of what?"
" Oh ! of odds and ends : cheap boots, bits of lace
"Maryfia! "I protested.
" Why it is quite true. Wait until you see," she concluded, all
alive with fun.
We had now reached the Bouvelard Mbntparnasse ; she leaned
forward.
" Driver," she called out, " please stop opposite Notre-Dame des
Champs, will you ? " And to me she added : " We shall just be in
time for half-past eight Mass."
And so, in the radiant August sunshine, we jumped on to the
pavement, went up a few steps, and from the great heat outside we
passed into the cool church. I do not know, my dear Rex, how I
could picture to you the feelings I was aware of in that short half-
hour. In a way, the physical sensations appeared the strongest, yet
they so intensely harmonized with the spiritual side of things that they
helped rather than impeded the soul in its normal action. The early
morning atmosphere seemed the very medium in which one might
breathe prayer; vivid shafts of light were hemming with gold the
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 91
carpet on the altar steps. The Tabernacle absorbed the sun's rays
rather than reflected them. The priest moved steadily and silently.
The tiny bell with its silvery tones rang as if miles afar, and when we
bowed down in adoration, faith was scarcely needed to know that the
Master was there. Were the people in Judea nearer to God made
Man when, perchance, at the bend of a road they came unexpectedly
on Him? I think not.
Once I glanced at the girl near me. Her eyes were closed, but
as she opened them and met my look, I found myself so unexpectedly
peering into the mysterious depths of a soul that I felt an intruder and
turned away. Yet all this passed so rapidly that it was with reluct-
ance that I followed Maryna when she stood up; and I told her so
when the swinging doors closed behind us.
" Yes," she admitted, " I know it, it is always the same. Here
somehow I cannot find the time to say any prayer."
We both laughed, but she went on half dreamily : " I have
wondered if the feeling is not part and parcel of the place. It must
have been once surrounded with fields from which the church takes its
name."
" Once of course."
"Well, how can you be sure that their peace and joy have not
survived? Does not the fresco show Our Lady, her hands full of
wild flowers?"
" Oh, Maryna! " I sighed, " I wish I were a Southerner like you!
To my Northern, matter-of-fact brain, waste fields in the vicinity
of towns are more likely to produce thistles than roses."
" Please don't ! " protested the girl laughing ; " you mustn't spoil
my picture. And come, quick, our tram is starting."
We reached Fontenay-aux-Roses after a hard journey, and
alighted on the market place after this journey of an hour and a
half, baked and dazed, but as foolishly light-hearted as any pair of
schoolgirls. Maryna was the first to recover. " If I liked," she said,
" I could stroll up and down the market and examine everything at
leisure. I would find her at the third stall on the left."
Evidently her errand was there ; and I could see now why she had
taken me with her. Maryfia's left hand has to ignore what her right
one does, and I, for one, could not furnish the latter with much
information in the present circumstances. This fact made me a
doubly convenient companion. Still when, after ten minutes, I came
back at a snail's pace, I caught the sound of a few foreign words,
undoubtedly Polish; and the brilliant, grateful eyes of the woman
at the stall told me a pretty clear tale. But I made no sign. Maryna
was holding a fat little boy in her arms.
" Come, Nemo," she said brightly, " I want to introduce my god-
son to you. This is Pawel-Michel Fab"
92 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
(A quick glance of the woman stopped the name on her lips,
yet not quick enough to escape me.)
" Paul-Michel," she continued unmoved, and addressing the child,
"this is a strange creature called an 'English lady.' What do you
think of her?"
Paul-Michel must have highly approved of me as he gurgled with
pleasure, and made a violent but useless effort to bring his hands
together.
" Well done, my son ! " cried Maryna gaily, handing back the
child to his mother. " And now, Anicia dear, it must be good-bye."
" Lascawa Panna" answered the woman, almost doggedly, " it
is not good-bye ! "
(The only notice she had taken of my approach was a silent in-
clination of her head; her attention was centred on the radiant girl
before her.)
" It must be so," murmured Maryna gently.
The woman said something' in Polish.
" Oh ! what would be the sense of it ? " replied Maryna gaily ;
every born Lowinski is bound to be a fighter. It is a man of peace
who must come after me. Paul-Michel, we are going to make of you a
bishop, do you hear?"
And as her caressing glance enveloped the child, she extended her
hand to the mother; the latter suddenly stooped and kissed it.
Maryna made a swift movement to withdraw her arm, but it was held
fast. The two pairs of eyes met with burning eloquence, then
the woman dropped the girl's hand, nodded politely to me, and turned
away.
It was in silence that we went back to our tram, and Maryna
remained thoughtful a part of the return journey. However, before
we reached Paris, she was again in high spirits, though her attitude
made me understand that the Fontenay-aux-Roses incident was closed,
and that any allusion to it would be unwelcome.
From the Boulevard Montparnasse we went on foot to a few
shops, where we were greatly delayed; so much so that after having
been too early for breakfast we were late for lunch. Happily nobody
minded. When afterwards we went upstairs, we found Nancy and
Helena waiting to know whether we would accompany them on
some expedition and visiting of their own. But I was too tired and
Maryna not in the mood. She proposed instead that I should rest an
hour or two while she was writing. This reminded Nancy that two
letters had come for me, and she went to fetch them.
One was from Max. I opened it, and was greatly pleased to
find that he had decided to come to Paris for a fortnight ; Willie R
would travel with him, but after a few days would continue his jour-
ney to the Austrian Tyrol. They would arrive to-morrow. We all
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 93
enjoyed the prospect, even Helena, who had heard of our friends;
but Maryfia was falling back into her absent-minded state, which I
attributed, in my heart, to our trip of the morning.
Half an hour later Helena and Nancy had left us to our own de-
vices, giving word downstairs that Miss Lowinska was not at home.
And as Madame Stablewska was out also, when Maryfia joined me in
the oak room she brought with her a sense of liberty and " solitude a
deux " thoroughly enjoyable. She sailed into the room like a regal fig-
ure, in the palest of blue and mauve loose tea-gowns; her dark hair
coiled low on her neck. She was an incarnation of cool comfort and
vivid strength ; it was restful to look at her.
" Maryfia," I could not help saying, " God has made you a joy to
the eyes; you are perfectly beautiful."
"Ami, dear?"
She smiled at me, crossed to the tall mirror breaking the line of
windows, and there stood a moment, slowly studying herself.
"Well," I asked, "what is your verdict?"
She bent nearer with a calm interest.
" Do you know," she said in the most tranquil tone, " I believe
that you are right. I am not of the ordinary type, but I might rank with
the handsome women of to-day."
" My dear girl," I answered, " you would put them in the shade."
" I might, some ; but mon genre rather belongs to the Middle
Ages."
" It belongs to every age ; beauty is beauty."
Rex, dear, why is human nature so contradictory? Here I had
been pointing out to this girl the beauty which she had never seemed
to take into account, and because she had instantly responded to my
lead I was beginning to feel quite provoked with her. Somehow
I did not expect that from her higher self. She had paid no attention
to my silence.
" Nemo," she asked, " what do you like best in me ? "
" Indeed it is hard to tell," I said, half in jest, " unless it is your
sudden attack of vanity. It is about the tallest thing of its kind that
I have come across."
But she frowned good-humoredly.
" Oh, be serious ! " she insisted, " I want to know."
"Why?"
" I will explain, by and by."
"But, my dear, don't you see for yourself? Is not the truth
before you? Still I will admit, if you like, that I particularly
admire the faultless oval of your face and that bewitching mouth
of yours, whether you smile or command, or pout like a spoiled
child."
I saw her amused smile in the mirror.
94 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
"Bravo, Nemo! Not a bad critic at all. I believe you are a
bit of an artist. Now, what about my eyes ? "
She opened them wide and surveyed them closely.
But again I remained silent. I began now to wonder if that ver-
satile, teasing, and yet queenly creature were not diverting herself at
my expense. Again the looking-glass played traitor, and this time
it was she who caught sight in it of my change of expression. She
turned and looked at me inquiringly. Then she came and sat on the
edge of the couch ; there was something puzzling about her.
' Tell me," she proceeded to ask, " have you ever wished to offer
to to someone you loved the most precious thing you had in your
possession? "
" I suppose so," I began, " but I don't see"
" Wait. If it had been, let us say, a jewel, would you not have
wished even the casket to have been the best you could procure ? "
" Ye es," I conceded hesitatingly.
"Well! that's it. Do you understand ?"
" Partly. I was not aware that you were ready to dispose of
both 'jewel' and 'casket.' "
(This was a daring question.)
" Ah, well (she shook her head) you know it now."
And standing up she added : " The rest you will hear when the
time conies. It may be soon, Nemo ; sooner than you expect."
She walked towards the piano.
" Shall I disturb you if I play ? " she asked as if to change the
subject.
" No, dear," I answered, lying back with my brain in a whirl, " you
play only too seldom."
And I ventured to ask in secret fear and trembling : " Do you
remember the first time I heard you ? It was in Willie R 's studio."
She glanced at me, then at her music, but said nothing.
I pursued with affected carelessness. " He had asked me to get
you to come, so I had done my best."
A swift, amused smile parted the girl's lips, and as she bent to
lower her stool, her words were not without a tinge of humor.
"Of course, you always do your best. That is why you gen-
erally come so near succeeding."
Rex, dear, my heart started beating a positive tattoo. A big dot
of interrogation was shaping itself in my mind. Could it really, truly,
possibly be the fact?
Well! I told you before what a pianist Maryna is, but I confess
that for the first ten minutes I heard nothing, not a note of what she
had chosen. I only became conscious of it when I fancied recog-
nizing yes, there it was the " Longing " of Queckenberg, which
sighed and coaxed under her fingers. Why ! she had never played it,
1915-] WHITE EAGLE 95
to my knowledge, since that day in London. Then bits of Beethoven
came and went, and a " Reverie " of Schumann, and, there again,
surely this was Meyerbeer's " Dance of the Shadows." I looked
at her, but her face betrayed nothing, and the " Shadows " danced
and glided away as they had done in the studio. I began to watch,
but I could only catch some echoes of Liszt, of Tchaikowsky's
" Chanson Triste," until Burow's Polish song mourned and cried
out; and after it weird or plaintive or threatening airs which I had
never heard. It was nearly tea-time when she closed the piano
and drew nearer to me. Her mood had changed ; there was a vague
sadness about her, but she made no effort to shake it off.
" Enough surmising, my little friend," she said in her rich full
voice, " it won't help you in the least. Listen, do you feel rested enough
to come out again after tea? I can't stand the house any more, I
must have some air. We will go and change my books in the rue de
Richelieu, and I promise that it won't be complicated."
With what was in my thoughts, I imagined I understood her.
" I will go by all means," said I, " and I will get ready now.
Come, I hear the tea things."
As if fate would have it, it was the third meal we had alone ; but
we were not sorry, as it allowed us to dispatch it quickly. Once out,
Maryna's spirits rose again. We did not find one of the books
she wanted, yet it did not worry her; she merely changed our
programme. She dragged me to the " Louvre," though she had
nothing to buy, and we wandered there for two good hours, both
making purchases of which we had not even thought. I must, how-
ever, say for our justification that none of these purchases were for
ourselves. It was seven o'clock when we passed finally through
the big glass doors, and came face to face with a hurrying gray-haired
woman, very short and stout. She had cut her way through the crowd
of vehicles with marvelous agility, and was coming in our direction at
such a speed that but for Maryfia we should have collided unmerci-
fully.
" Why ! Mademoiselle Zulma," exclaimed the girl, " are you de-
termined to ignore me ? "
The little woman looked up in astonishment.
" Oh, dear me ! dear me ! " she cried, " but this is Mademoiselle
Lowinska! Oh! my dear, how pleased I am to meet you! And
you look so well. Fancy me thinking you were in England ! "
" I was in England," answered Maryfia, " but I have come back."
" And for good I hope," said the little lady earnestly.
The peculiar enigmatic smile which had puzzled me twice to-day,
wandered on the girl's lips.
" Oh ! yes," she said, " for good of course."
" Ah, thank goodness ! I know many of your humble friends,
96 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
counting myself, who will be happy to hear that. But, perhaps I am
detaining you, mademoiselle ? "
" No," said Maryfia, " we are free as air, and time doesn't exist
for us. My friend, Mrs. Camberwell (the little lady bowed to me) is
entirely at my mercy this evening. And what about yourself ? Where
were you running so fast if I am not too inquisitive? "
" Nowhere," said the little woman, raising her shoulders, " going
home, that's all."
" Well then," said Maryna gaily, " we are going to take possession
of you there and then, and we will all three spend our evening together.
How delightful ! we shall play truant, dine where we can and go some-
where afterwards. Now, Nemo, what do you say to that ? "
" I should like it, but shall we not be expected back for dinner? "
" Not at all. I will telephone."
" Then I have not the slightest objection."
" Very good. As for Mademoiselle Zulma, she is my prisoner
and won't be consulted. Besides she knows how positive I am. For
several years she has tried to teach me all sorts of artistic work, and
I never could or would imitate my models."
"Ah! but you do not tell madame (nodding to me) that your
own designs were far superior; and madame does not know, perhaps,
that I am a worker in embroidery."
I did not, but I tried to receive the information as I should ; and
Maryna carefully took the lead in everything. She succeeded in
telling me, between times, that this gray-haired woman had met with
many reverses, and was still in great need of friends.
We dined on the balcony of an unpretentious restaurant, as
Mademoiselle Zulma called it. She herself had guided us there,
and she beamed to see us pleased with everything. Maryna was so
sweet, so gracious to her in her lively, girlish way that it was easy
to follow in such footsteps ; and before long the little lady was
fully at home with both of us. I began to forget how awkward I
had felt at first, when every eye in the place had been focused on
our table, and naturally on Maryna, though she herself had not so
much as noticed it. Later on I became quite hardened. I even tried
to look cool and indifferent when we walked to the door still in
Maryna's wake, but whether I appeared so is another question.
" Now," said Maryna, as soon as we were in the street again,
" we must decide on our next move. What about theatres ? "
Mademoiselle Zulma's face reflected a shadow of uneasiness.
" Theatres are not always suitable, I fear," she hinted timidly.
" Perhaps not," said Maryna ; " have you anything else to sug-
gest?"
"Well," went on the good soul; " there are there are rather
fine moving-pictures if you have no objection to them, mesdames."
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 97
I confess, Reginald, that I felt doubtful, but Maryfia is built
of other stuff than I am.
" Why! it's the very thing! " she exclaimed.
I shall never forget that evening, it was too ridiculous for
words. Maryfia, who had merely thought of the good woman's
pleasure, became so eager and fascinated that the different items
might have been stern realities. A little girl lost in the jungle and
escaping by the most inconceivable series of miracles from a roaring
lion, held her breathless. Two cowboys racing after and killing a
mad bull to save some person or other lost in a wild country, made
her hold my wrist as in a grip of iron. I felt thankful when the
neck of that bull was twisted round like that of a chicken, to get
my hand released. How I enjoyed the whole thing! The sight of
Maryfia, the charm of her childlike face, her eyes, bright as stars,
her quick exchange of remarks with the delighted little French
woman, and her big sigh when it was all over.
How many contrasts live in this same personality no one would
believe; but when we took Mademoiselle Zulma back to her omnibus,
our thoughtful, gracious companion was every inch the daughter of a
prince. As we were but a short distance from the Place de I'Opera,
where we would be sure to find a vehicle, we decided to walk there.
It was late, a quarter to twelve perhaps, but the night was clear and
warm, and Paris brilliant with lights. Yet, it was not the place to stroll
about at that hour for a young, rather remarkable girl, even in the care
of a matron of " my years." Besides I felt but a fraud, as it was Miss
Lowinska not I who would have been the sword and buckler of our
united forces. In any case I soon noticed more than one pair of eyes
following us, and I became sufficiently uncomfortable to beg of
Maryfia to hurry a little. But all she did was to look amused and
unconcerned.
" Oh ! never mind those people ! Why, they cannot eat us.
They can't even be rude with so many of them about."
" I daresay not, but I hate it."
" Oh, Nemo, don't be foolish. What on earth could happen ? "
" For one thing we might be followed."
"Well, and what then?"
" Well, I don't wish to be faced by an apache at the corner of
a street."
" But we shall be in a cab."
" As if I trusted every cab at night in Paris ! "
" Very good, then, shall we walk ? "
" Alone with you, not for an empire ! "
At this moment a tall man passing in the crowd jostled me in-
voluntarily. He touched his hat and went on ; but before doing so he
VOL. en. 7
98 WHITE EAGLE [Oct.,
had caught sight of Maryfia's face, and imperceptibly he had slackened
his pace and remained behind us. I became positively nervous.
" Maryfia," I said with a touch of irritation, " you saw that man."
" Yes," she said coolly, " I am afraid I could not help it."
"Very well, if you won't listen to me, we shall soon have an
escort of pickpockets after the string of pearls on your neck, and
your priceless Hungarian chain."
" Nemo, my dearest friend, my pearls are too big to be thought
real, and imitations of my chain can be bought for ten or twelve
shillings. People of the present day are satisfied with tin and brass
and glass beads, like the old Hottentot tribes."
" That may be, but with your head in the air and that actually
crushing expression, you look like a crowned head traveling incognito,
and we shall have a band of detectives closing the rear."
" Quite safe, those, at any rate," laughed the girl teasingly.
"Of course with your anxious face and your frightened eyes, they
will take you for a terrified lady-in-waiting. Oh, how splendid ! "
I neither laughed nor answered, I felt too worried and provoked.
She slipped her arm in mine.
" Nemo, dear," she said, smiling coaxingly, " don't be grumpy, we
have only to cross now. But you are a wretched little coward."
I suppose I had to smile at this, and we managed to cross without
accident, opposite the Grand Opera. Unhappily there was neither
a cab nor a taxi to be seen there.
" We must wait," said Maryna.'
There was nothing for it ; so we began walking up and down the
well-lighted Place. But a minute later, when wheeling round, I caught
sight of another man with a bird-like face and unwinking eyes staring
at Maryna. I made no remark this time, only I promised myself to
keep my attention on that person. Maryna had not even turned her
head. A few cabs passed by, but they were occupied. Soon again I
glanced behind: the man was looking at my companion from another
angle. As we retraced our steps, I attempted to pass between him and
her, but he had guessed my tactics, and came even closer to us. I
began to feel in a perfect fever, and inquired of Maryna whether a bus
might not take us home. She laughed at me. Several groups of
people, evidently, coming out of the theatres, were gathering at a short
distance, also waiting, and I breathed a little more freely; then I once
more looked back. The unwinking round eyes were not two yards off.
I felt my heart in my mouth, and I am sure that it was with a scared
expression that I met Maryfia's quizzical smile.
" Oh, do come ! " I begged helplessly, " I can't stay here any
longer."
" Very well," she said. " Pray step in, my dear Nemo."
And suddenly I realized that the cab so heartily wished for
1915-] WHITE EAGLE 99
was waiting for us. While I had been watching behind me, Maryfia,
more sensibly, had been watching in front. I said nothing but jumped
into it with a sigh of intense relief. She sat beside me, gave the
address to the driver, and bent towards mine her teasing, merry face.
" Well ! Nemo dear," she inquired heartlessly, " were 'we' so
frightened of the little 'Owl Man/ were 'we'? "
" Do you mean," I asked with hot indignation, " that I saw the
creature? Of course, what prevented me? But you never even looked."
"Why should I?"
" And you knew how nervous I was ? "
"I should think so!"
" Maryfia, you are an imp ! "
" And I think you are a perfect dear ! " she exclaimed with her
bewitching laugh. " Fancy a shadow like you, frightened out of your
senses, and undertaking to stand between my substantial person and
the 'appalling' danger ! "
" You are an ungrateful wretch to ridicule my heroism," I pro-
tested gaily. " Suppose, as I said before, that the creature took you
for some Royal Highness and that he was an anarchist. What
then?"
" This," said Maryfia.
Quick as a flash her firm hand was round my throat, though
ever so gently.
" Why ! " she added letting it drop, " I was head and shoulders
above the poor thing."
I looked at the girl in utter stupefaction.
" You must remember," she concluded, " that I have known dan-
ger, and that I was brought up by a man." And as I was still speech-
less. " Well? " she asked smiling, " what is it? "
" Oh, not much ! " I replied, recovering myself, " I was only
pondering why you kept such an ornament as a chaperon while you
were in England."
She leaned back and laughed.
" Decorum, my dear Nemo."
" Humbug ! You could have commanded a hundred more con-
venient sorts of chaperons to play the part. She was of no social
advantage to you."
" Well then," she said, " the whole affair belongs to the chapter
of 'private reasons.' "
"The whole affair," said I, "belongs to the chapter of 'private
charities.' I suppose it was the chaperon who needed you."
" Nemo ! how dare you? "
But I refused to be cowed.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
fftew Boohs*
THE CALIFORNIA PADRES AND THEIR MISSIONS. By J.
Smeaton Chase and Charles Francis Saunders. Boston:
Hough ton Mifflin Co. $2.50 net.
If personality is capable of impressing itself on environment,
few places can offer a richer demonstration than the half -ruined
adobe Missions of California. That the joint authors of the pres-
ent book have emphasized this fact, and paid generous tribute to
those sturdy apostles of Christian faith and civilization the Cal-
ifornia Padres is only an indication of the tardy, but general,
recognition that, soon or late, public justice inevitably awards to
men of heroic fibre.
The book follows an interesting arrangement. Each chapter
is devoted to a Mission, and this subdivided into sections ; the first
dealing with the history of the Mission, both past and present, and
the second presenting a sketch or story, founded usually on some
traditional incident of the Mission's past, but generously elaborated
to serve the purpose of the narrator. The chief facts of California
Mission-history, especially their personal and picturesque aspect,
are therefore outlined in entertaining form, and rendered vivid
by the reconstruction of the life of the Missions and the dominant
personalities of the Padres.
In the early portion of the book, a vivid but accurate de-
scription of a Mission-centre is given, with its population of seven-
teen hundred souls, " as happy as mankind usually is, engaged in
varied useful industries of civilized life, and earning a liberal living
from the soil ," which " they held, not for themselves, but in
trust for their Indian charges, seeking to fit them to be good citizens
both of this world and the next."
Beside it stands another account; that of the descendants of
these Indians, when secularization has suppressed the Missions. It
is a picture of slavish labor and sordid drunkenness not good to
dwell upon.
Space forbids us to quote further; but the reader who doubts
that heroic sanctity has outlived the Ages of Faith, has only to
peruse for himself these accounts of burning zeal and incredible
heroism.
The defects of the book are matters of misapprehension rather
1915.] NEW BOOKS 101
than prejudice, and will not seriously hamper the reader's enjoy-
ment nor arouse his resentment.
ARTIST AND PUBLIC. By Kenyon Cox. New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net
Seldom is a book written with an appeal both to the artist and
to the public. This is a special merit in Mr. Cox's book; it
is equally addressed to both with the hope of effecting a closer union
between the creative worker and the public to whom his work is
directed.
We cannot altogether agree that " the people (of the past) had
little to do with the major arts of painting and sculpture," for at
least they supplied the encouragement of a lively interest, yet it is
indisputable that their art was created at the instigation of wealthy
patrons, and in this sense was an art of the aristocracy. The Rev-
olution, says Mr. Cox, was responsible for a revolution in the artist's
public. The bourgeoisie came into power, and to them the artist
must make appeal. As a consequence he either pandered to his
public, or assumed an attitude of hauteur which generated a fixed
antagonism between the two.
As a result of these relations, we have the Cubist and the Fu-
turist. Mr. Cox gives us a lucid definition of Cubism as an ex-
pression in bulk; of Futurism as depicting a state of flux both in
time and space. He does not credit the sincerity of the later
adherents of this style of painting.
Do not be deceived. This is not vital art, it is decadent and
corrupt. True art has always been the expression by the artist
of the ideals of the world in which he lived A living and
healthy art never has existed and never can exist except through
the mutual understanding and cooperation of the artist and his
public. Art is made for man and has a social function to
perform. We have a right to demand that it shall be both
human and humane; that it shall show some sympathy with
our thoughts and our feelings
In The Illusion of Progress he contradicts the thesis that art
in its evolution necessarily ascends the upward spiral.
Mr. Cox believes in the existence of an American school in
art, and he half -prophesies for it the highest places in the future.
Such a book should do much to eliminate the crying evils of
present-day art, and to bring back into sympathetic co-partnership
the artist and his public.
102 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
SOME LOVE SONGS OF PETRARCH. Translated by William
Dudley Foulke, LL.D. New York : Oxford University Press.
$1.15.
A short introduction and an interesting biography of Petrarch
preface this collection of over eighty songs. The translator tells us
that, although almost all of the three hundred and sixty-six poems
in the Canzoniere are upon the subject of Madonna Laura and the
poet's love for her, he found it expedient to omit all except those
which seemed fairly illustrative of Petrarch's best work, " so far
as that work was at all capable of reproduction in another tongue."
The result is some pages of beautiful, melodious verse which carries
the conviction of a faithful interpretation of the full sense of the
original. The limitations of English indicate the Shakespearean
sonnet as the most advisable form in translating, and this has been
adhered to with but few exceptions, notably the Hymn to the
Virgin, in which the original metre has been exactly imitated. In-
terest is augmented by the annotations ; each poem is headed by a
note, explaining the conditions of place and circumstance in which
the lines were written, as well as their metrical construction.
Three appendices comprise a discussion of the identity and
birthplace of Laura, Petrarch's Epistle to Posterity, and a catalogue
of his works. The general content, the first lines, and the foot-
notes are all indexed.
The work is important, and will be highly appreciated by every
discriminating reader, whether student or amateur.
POEMS. By Brian Hooker.
FAIRYLAND. An Opera in Three Acts. By Brian Hooker.
New Haven: Yale University Press. $1.00 each net.
Hopes for the advent of a new force in the poetic field receive
scant support from this first volume of poems by Mr. Hooker.
His verse is not of the sort that lodges in the memory and influences
the mind. Freshness of thought and expression are lacking, nor
does the rhythm beguile. With few exceptions, the versification is
rough and unmusical. His abilities appear best in the commem-
oration of Samuel Johnson, written in the manner and metrical
form characteristic of the period. This dextrous bit of imitation
shows more originality than all the rest of the volume: here, too,
are clean-cut, quotable lines, such as the allusion to books that we
" Delight to honor, and decline to read; " and speaking of Johnson :
1915.] NEW BOOKS 103
The man lives on a legend and a face
Stamped on the coinage of our English race.
Fairyland is of more literary merit; the dramatic effects are
good, the dialogue is concise and adequate, the lyrics are pretty
and have an attractive swing. The theme of the fantasy, we are
told, is " symbolic in the last degree." Certainly the influence of
the modern symbolists is evident; it manifests itself objectionably
in making picturesque capital out of Catholic symbols and tradi-
tions. Conventual life is represented as sorely needing en-
lightenment from the wisdom outside its walls, and objects of ven-
eration are introduced with presumptuous familiarity. A shrine
to Our Lady serves as an ocular demonstration of the underlying
intention of the opera, expressed by a critic whom the publishers
quote : " The rose of passion is a holier thing than the lily of vir-
ginity." It is to be hoped that the author's error springs less from
deliberate irreverance than ignorance. In any case, the work is
an affront to the many who hold sacred what he has wantonly
misused.
THE FLOWER OF PEACE. A Collection of the Devotional
Poetry of Katharine Tynan. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. $1.50 net.
One of the richest and most musical voices of the Celtic ren-
aissance of the last few decades is that of Katharine Tynan Hinkson.
The generous warmth and delicate passion of her verse have over-
flowed in an abundance that broadens rather than narrows with
the years. The usual strictures of over- fecundity cannot be
charged against her, and the exceptionally high and uniform stand-
ard of her verse may well be a source of amazement to both critic
and public.
The Flower of Peace is a gleaning of trie devotional poetry of
Mrs. Hinkson. In The Abbot's Bees, we have a picture of the
mystic serenity and love at the heart of monasticism as translucent
and pure as a Fra Angelico, and The Garden breathes a tender
beauty none the less divine because familiar.
Be sure the little grass blades kept
Vigil with Him and the grey olives
Shivered and sighed like one that grieves:
And the flowers hid their eyes for fear!
His garden was His comforter.
104 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
There to the quiet heart He made
He came, and it upheld His head
Before the Angel did. Therefore,
Blessed be gardens evermore!
Only in one or two instances does the human element prepon-
derate and cloud the keen spiritual flame within. As a rule, the
blending of human and divine, the recognition of the indissoluble
union between God and man, and the immersion of all nature in
the supernatural, forms not merely the grace, but the sinew and
marrow of Katharine Tynan's art. She sees in nature the re-
flection of God, and stoops that she may look up, as when she cries :
Let others praise Thee in the height,
With Holy, Holy, Holy!
I praise Thee as the cricket might,
A chirping voice and lowly.
But The Epitaph may truly be said to sum up the essence of
her poetry and of her philosophy :
not alone for body's meat
Which takes the lowest place
I gave Him grace when I did eat
And with a shining face.
But for the spirit filled and fed
That else must waste and die,
With sun and stars replenished
And dew and evening sky.
The beauty of the hills and seas
Brimmed that immortal cup ;
And when I went by fields and trees
My heart was lifted up.
The picturesque archaism of her style, and its whimsical music,
are nurtured by genuinely profound emotion and Celtic delicacy of
thought.
THE LITTLE MAN AND OTHER SATIRES. By John Gals-
worthy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.30 net.
In the form of short plays, sketches and stories, Mr. Galsworthy
has, in the present book, freely exercised his talent for wit and satire.
Like the rapier glancing here and there, the- author occasionally
touches the opponent's rib, but seldom a more vital spot. If Mr.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 105
Galsworthy preaches anything at all, it is the rigid dogmatism of
the undogmatic, and the gospel of humanity. But even this he
would seem to advance with much vagueness and little enthusiasm.
Among other types he selects for one of his " studies in ex-
travagance," an impenetrably stupid and hypocritical individual,
and parades him before our vision as a type of Christianity.
The Christian, according to this genial interpretation, looks to
future reward as the sole sanction of good conduct. The very fact
that the Christian believes something is sufficient to convict him, in
the opinion of the author, as too narrow to have sighted truth, and
too convinced to be honest. He does not, decides Mr. Galsworthy,
strive for the sake of goodness in itself, but with a wary and cal-
culating eye to the reward.
There are other minor points of criticism, such as the sup-
posedly colloquial speech of the American in the introductory play,
and his unreverent remarks. The play itself is, however, amusing,
and not without its meaning, and there are several other selections
in which the writer shows us the earlier quality of his work, which
has now started on the descending scale; for, as a contemporary
English writer has pointed out, the unintelligent wanderlust, which
Mr. Galsworthy has summarized as " the going on out of
sheer love of going on " no matter where will eventually lead,
both in art and life, to the mockery and mortification of a blind alley.
ESSAYS ON MILTON. By Elbert N. S. Thompson, Ph.D. New
Haven: Yale University Press. $1.35 net.
Very modest is Mr. Thompson's estimate of his work on
Milton; but the appreciative will be captivated by his sympathetic
yet discerning treatment of his theme. These essays will prove
good company in the study of the great poet and his poetry; the
student who avails himself of them for a serious reading of Milton
has enlisted a sane, capable, and understanding guide.
In the first three chapters the author treats of Milton as the
" Last of the Elizabethans," " Early Poems, and Prose Works,"
and then devotes the greater part of the volume's two hundred and
sixteen pages to the study of the great epic, Paradise Lost. We
learn of Milton's youthful hesitation in the choice of a subject.
The whole bent of his mind is mirrored in the fact that of one
hundred possible themes for the great work, sixty were taken from
the Bible.
Of Milton the man very little is said, and no estimate at-
106 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
tempted. His stern fortitude and strength of character had the
defects of these, but our ease-loving age must perforce admire
the man who could say: " It is not so wretched to be blind, as it
is not to be capable of enduring blindness." From Milton's " None
can love freedom heartily, but good men," one writer deduces a
good definition of liberty: "Liberty, therefore, is the willingness
and ability to do what should be done."
Mr. Thompson most emphatically disagrees with those who
make Satan the hero of Paradise Lost: in the sixth chapter he gives
very clearly Milton's conception of Satan's part in the epic.
He denies that Milton was Unitarian, and we agree; but he
was at least semi-Arian in his conception of the Divinity of Christ.
He, however, seemed to accept fully the Biblical account of the
Fall of Man, which Mr. Thompson does not. He speaks of this
opinion as a " philosophy of life." But the origin of evil is not
simply a problem of philosophy or ethics; it cannot be separated
from religion and dogma so long as God exists.
Save in these matters, Mr. Thompson's book is both admirable
and interesting, and will well repay perusal, even for one already
familiar with Paradise Lost.
THE BOOK OF THE SERPENT. By Katharine Howard. (New
Edition.) Boston: Sherman, French & Co. $1.00 net.
The author of the present book has given us her interpretation
of Genesis, in what the introduction styles " a dramatic fantasy."
We agree with the foreword that it is unique fortunately so;
but as to its powers of stimulation, we find that quality absent.
It is a modern tendency among the elect, as they are here termed,
to mistake the freakish and the bizarre for the significant. The
author has, indeed, strained after suggestiveness and subtlety, but
has merely produced a piece of the most shapeless sentimentalism,
and, to the believer in a personal God, of the crudest blasphemy.
The " god " whom the writer depicts is a third-rate artist, creating
without purpose, and, by his own admission, neither omniscient,
nor omnipotent, nor superior to his creature, man. The book may
find appreciation among pantheists and subscribers to non-theistic
evolution, nevertheless it seems strangely indelicate for the writer
to caricature in her Bergsonian myth the account of creation sacred
to Christian men and women throughout the world. It is merely
an instance of the insensibility of those who sacrifice the finer
emotions to the obsession of an idea.
1915-] NEW BOOKS 107
RABINDRANATH TAG ORE. A Biographical Study. By Ernest
Rhys. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.00.
This concise but remarkably comprehensive work affords us
a rounded and intimate view of the celebrated Hindu. Mr. Rhys
states in brief such biographical facts as are necessary for con-
tinuity the award of the Nobel Prize receives only casual mention
but he dwells at more length upon the religious teachings, parent-
age and surroundings of Tagore's youth, showing what influences
of tradition and environment went to the shaping of the poet and
philosopher who has done so much to lift from Buddhism the re-
proach of inherent sadness and inertia. In considering his works,
literary and other, Mr. Rhys takes the attitude not of a critic, but an
interpreter, of the mind and spirit of his illustrious subject. He
sounds, throughout, a note of deep admiration, gaining warmth, no
doubt, from personal acquaintance. He is nevertheless penetrating.
The beauties to which he calls our attention we recognize as such;
and when later he speaks of Tagore as the healer, discerner, and
lyric poet of his time, he has already given us a clear picture of the
man of poetic genius and meditative cast who, at his country's need,
became the man of action, an educational force and a powerful
influence in public life.
The book is very satisfying to those familiar with the subject.
To readers who are not, it will be extremely interesting; and in
the extracts from Tagore's writings they will find spirituality of a
kind that tends to inspire Christians with renewed faith in the
possibility, and fresh zeal to labor for the coming, of the day when
there shall be but one Fold.
MEMORIALS OF ROBERT HUGH BENSON. By Blanche Warre
Cornish, Shane Leslie, and other of his friends. New York:
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 75 cents.
It is natural that a personality at once so widely felt and so
unique as Monsignor Benson's should evoke many biographical
sketches and personal reminiscences, but it is, however, unavoidable
that such rapid surveys should suffer from ephemeralness, repeti-
tion, and an impressionism that, from their informal and personal
character, is apt to be one-sided and incomplete.
The present " Memorials " lack neither merits nor demerits
of their class. The first sketch, contributed by Blanche Warre
Cornish, touches on incidents of Monsignor Benson's career, and
deals at some length with his writings, more especially with None
loS NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
Other Gods, which the writer considers to be " the mature ex-
pression of Monsignor Benson's beliefs." In a very pregnant
sentence, she has given us the key to his brilliant and energetic
nature: " He was a mystic: he taught that mysticism was
in the reach of the humblest."
Shane Leslie treats of Monsignor Benson's Cambridge Aposto-
late. Mr. Howden supplies several anecdotes, and the book closes
with a number of fragmentary notes. A number of interesting
photographs illustrate the book.
LOVE'S GRADATORY. By Blessed John Ruysbroeck. Trans-
lated with Preface by Mother St. Jerome. The Angelus
Series. New York: Benziger Brothers. 50 cents.
In conjunction with the pseudo-mysticism ' of the day, much
interest has of late been shown by those without the Church in
the writings of the great Catholic mediaeval mystics. It is more
prudent, however, not to accept at second hand such interpretation,
but to familiarize oneself directly with its source.
Mother St. Jerome, in a small volume of the Angelus Series,
has given us the translation of a treatise by the Flemish mystic,
Blessed John Ruysbroeck, written, as indications would seem to
suggest, for Margaret of Meerbeke, Precentor in the Convent of
Poor Clares at Brussels. The method adopted is that intimated by
the title : union with God effected through the ascent of the ladder
of sanctity, in its successive degrees of approach. In treating of the
"Seventh Degree of Love," which Ruysbroeck names "the Un-
knowable and the Repose of Eternity," " the terms employed by him
must be weighed with great care in order not to be confounded with
Quietism or Pantheism," and to apprehend the true character of his
mystical teaching.
The sublimity, the ardor, and the high tenor of many of the
passages will interest and enkindle the reader, and lead him to
penetrate further into the writings of the Brabant mystic.
THE PROTOMARTYR OF SCOTLAND, FATHER FRANCIS OF
ABERDEEN. By Rev. M. Power, S.J. 45 cents net.
THE VENERABLE JOHN OGILVIE, S.J. By Rev. Daniel Con-
way, S.J. St. Louis : B. Herder. 30 cents net.
Of late years there has been a steadily growing interest in
Scottish Church history, as the numerous publications bearing upon
this subject manifest. The two books under consideration are the
1915-] NEW BOOKS 109
fruit of diligent research on the very scenes of the martyrs'
labors and sufferings. Of the first, Father Francis (whose family
name is not known), very few traces can be found; of the second,
Father Ogilvie, S.J., a fuller account can be given.
The story of the Reformation in Scotland makes dismal read-
ing; treachery and bigotry combined to all but sweep away every
trace of the Faith. In a fine passage, on page sixty, Father Power
describes the destruction wrought by the dogged persistence and in-
quisitorial persecution of the Kirk, so terrifying, so far-reaching
that, to quote a reliable historian, even " in the north, where Cath-
olics were in the majority, it is certain that there were not more
than eight " who were not, at least, conforming externally to the
laws of Parliament. But these must have been the darkest days,
for from 1617, the year succeeding Father Ogilvie's death, matters
began to improve; another proof that the blood of the martyrs is
ever the seed of a new and flourishing faith.
FAMOUS DAYS AND DEEDS IN HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.
By Charles Morris. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co.
$1.25 net.
Although this publication is timed to meet popular interest,
only a small space is occupied by matter concerning the war now in
operation. The author's preface states that the purpose is to give,
not the history, but the more notable historical tales of the two
countries. He makes no claim that his work is the product of
original research, but he only vaguely indicates his indebtedness
to John Lothrop Motley. In point of fact, the greater part of the
book is little else than a condensed version of extracts from the
writings of that biassed historian of the religious wars which led
to the formation of the Dutch Republic. The material is, there-
fore, a succession of events the narration of which is colored by
strong anti-Catholic sentiment, considerably modified in the re-
telling.
The history of the two nations is adequately outlined from
their earliest days to the immediate present. The book contains
sixteen illustrations, and is of very convenient size.
WITH POOR IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA. By Stephen Gra-
ham. New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.00 net.
Mr. Graham came to America two years ago, traveling in the
steerage of a big Cunarder the better to study the Russians. After
no NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
a brief stay in New York he tramped to Chicago for the sole
purpose, it would appear, of writing a book on his experiences.
Mr. Graham may know something about Russia and the Russians,
although we think him over-enthusiastic, but he certainly knows
nothing of the people and the institutions of the United States.
Like many another self -sufficient and conceited traveler, he feels
entirely competent to give a perfect picture of America after a few
weeks spent in cheap hotels, freight cars, barns and open fields.
He is annoyed at our " national pride and thin-skinnedness,
our national bluster and cocksureness." Unlike any other people
in the world, " the Americans believe in money ; they despise the
weak and the afflicted, and delight only at the sight of the strong,
the victorious and the healthful." The one thing the American
strives for is " a big house, and abundant person, a few gold rings,
and an adorned wife, and a high-power touring car." Mr. Gra-
ham's native land, England, knows America best by " its police
scandals, ugly dances, sentimental novels, and boastful, purse-con-
scious travelers." We are told " that America is no place for
individuals as such; that originality is a sin; that our Christianity
is the Christianity of 'making good;' that we are a nation of
boosters ; that we have killed Christian charity by our commercial-
ism ; that we have brutalized the negro ; and that we have forgotten
all idea of hospitality."
While patriotism does not require us to be blind to .our many
faults, we resent keenly their exaggeration by a superficial ob-
server, and the ignoring of virtues by this censorious knight of the
road.
THE WORKS OF BISHOP GRAFTON. The Cathedral Edition.
Eight Volumes. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
$12.00 net.
Longmans, Green & Co. have published a new edition of the
works of the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Fond du Lac. They
comprise the author's controversial treatises in defence of the
pseudo-catholicity of the Protestant Episcopal Church; his sermons
and addresses; and his writings on the religious life. He was in
no sense an original thinker, but followed the usual lines of Protes-
tant polemics in his plea for continuity, and the validity of Anglican
Orders. Like most Protestants, his creed was a negative one. As
he himself puts it in one of his addresses to the clergy, urging them
to vote against the title " Protestant Episcopal Church :" We do not
1915.] NEW BOOKS in
believe in the Papal Supremacy, the Papal Infallibility, the Immac-
ulate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, the doctrine of indulgences,
the enforced celibacy of the clergy, enforced confession, the with-
holding of the chalice, the worship in an unknown tongue." We
smile when he tells us that " we hold the belief in priesthood,
altar, and sacrifice and the Real Presence of Our Lord as the
Catholic Church has ever held, and our reformers preserved in the
Prayer Book."
THE GIANT TELLS. By Jehanne de la Villesbrunne. New
York : Benziger Brothers. 90 cents net.
These legends, told under the shadow of Mont St. Michel,
breathe an atmosphere all their own, the atmosphere of the rugged
coasts and wild seas of Brittany. Even St. Christopher, no longer
the servant of the devil, finds a new role in tricking his old master,
and cajoling St. Peter. Mademoiselle Jehanne and her brother are
a trifle wearisome sometimes, in their little disagreements con-
cerning the interruptions of their good-natured giant. The price
seems large for so small a volume.
THE IDEAL CATHOLIC READERS. By a Sister of St. Joseph.
New York: The Macmillan Co. Primer, 30 cents; First
Reader, 30 cents; Second Reader, 35 cents.
A new set of readers has begun to appear, three of which
are now ready. They are well and carefully graded, but there is
no indication of the period of time allotted to each book, which,
of course, greatly influences our estimate of the course. If each
book covers a year's work, the approximate age of a child finishing
the Second Reader would be nine years; rather too old for the
range of work it contains. The class work in other branches
would be farther advanced than the reading, and that after all is the
most important subject in the earlier school years. If the child
cannot read easily and readily, progress becomes difficult in Cate-
chism, Geography and History, subjects in which some steps should
then have been taken.
The selections for the Second Reader are suitable and well
made, but the other two books are not so satisfactory in this
regard. The rhymes and jingles, with but few exceptions, might be
omitted with advantage, e. g., the one on page eighty of the Primer.
There are too many pages in it; a few could well be spared. On
the whole the illustrations are suitable and well produced, but the
H2 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
fact that an artist labels his picture of a mother and child,
" Madonna," does not necessarily recommend it as a pictorial
representation of the Blessed Mother for the eyes of impressionable
childhood.
For the publishers we have nothing but praise. The books
are well and firmly bound, and likely to stand the year's wear and
tear of the classroom which cannot be said for the majority
of school books.
THE DREAD OF RESPONSIBILITY. By Emile Faguet, Mem-
ber of the French Academy. Translated, with Introduction,
by Emily J. Putnam. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
$1.25 net.
M. Faguet has written a severe critique of the French people
from the viewpoint of what he calls their dread of responsibility.
In a foreword he says : " They want to be irresponsible. They
form their ideas of law in accordance with this design; they organ-
ize and practise their professions to this end; they have a family
life governed by this thought; they have a social life controlled by
this principle."
The book is full of questionable statements and theories, but
will well repay perusal. It is amusing to learn that the American
Republic is in no sense a democracy, but an out-and-out constitu-
tional monarchy ; that France is a pure democracy ; that the French
mind is the greatest in the world as a creator of ideas, and a creator
of beauty. But M. Faguet is a maker of books, and loves to be
considered an original thinker.
FRIENDS AND APOSTLES OF THE SACRED HEART OF
JESUS. By the Rev. P. F. Chandlery, SJ. New York:
Benziger Brothers. 75 cents.
From the hour when St. John reposed on the bosom of Our
Lord, devoted lovers of His Sacred Heart have made It their
dwelling place. To these chosen few the refuge was known and
appreciated long before the revelation to Blessed Margaret Mary.
To trace the succession of these servants of the Sacred Heart,
Father Chandlery has written this little book.
We are grateful to the author for a very edifying work, and
it will rejoice those devoted to the Heart of Jesus to praise Him
in the words that have fallen from the lips of Saints. There are
a few misprints which we hope to see corrected in a future edition.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 113
JESUS AND POLITICS. By Harold B. Shepheard, M.A. Intro-
duction by Vida D. Scudder. New York : E. P. Button & Co.
$1.00 net.
The title of Mr. Shepheard's vague, though delightfully writ-
ten, essay produces a distinctly unpleasing impression, not alto-
gether dispelled by its perusal. The author expresses, as a basis
of his views, the conventional Protestant repugnance for dogma.
" Our forefathers," he observes, speaking of Christ and His Gospel,
" were more concerned with what they believed about Him than
with belief in Him, with orthodoxy than with His- message." Are
these, then, mutually exclusive, or even incompatible? We see
rather a necessary connection.
Mr. Shepheard's plea is for a new and more equitable social
order. Charity or private initiative is not, he believes, adequate
to cope with the situation. Hence, he urges on all Christians
political and legislative activity, the merging of party differences,
and the adoption of a common and disinterested policy for a more
equal distribution of opportunities among all classes of mankind.
As the goal of such action, he looks to a commonwealth where men
shall live in conformity with his conception of Christ's ideal of
poverty, and yet suffer none of its real intellectual or physical pri-
vations ; where they shall find " the right life possible without per-
sonal possessions ; poverty without disability." He sees social sal-
vation in suppression of competition and consolidation of industry,
and in an eventual " combining of all combinations under one
ultimate direction the extension of the principle upon which
every business is worked to trade as a whole " a " commercial
communism." This ideal, he proceeds, cannot be put into effect
by individually and totally dispossessing ourselves of our wealth,
but by an elimination of superfluous luxury, the fostering of public
opinion in the direction of the ideal, a readiness to conform to it
when the time is ripe for its realization, and a practical demonstra-
tion of these convictions in the arena of politics.
He condemns the various political parties as over-materialistic
in their aims, but casts a wistful and undiscriminating eye towards
Socialism, with the hope that it may be " captured by the spiritual
impulse ," that " it might yet be, it may be, a political expres-
sion of Christianity." It is needless to comment on the latter view.
With many of Mr. Shepheard's conclusions, and with his ulti-
mate ideal, few Christian economists will be found to quarrel.
VOL. en. 8
H4 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
It is the old ideal of the early Christians, and of religious com-
munities even to the present day.
The crux of the writer's error lies in the fact that he places an
exaggerated stress on environment, that he does not realize Christ's
message as addressed to the individual, and that he does not con-
sider life and men as they really are.
Environment is a powerful factor in the formation of a man's
character, but the man is, after all, faber fortune sua. It does not,
as Mr. Shepheard insists, take a perfect Christian society to make
a perfect Christian, nor can any conditions, economic or otherwise,
prevent the individual from living the Christian life in its fullness.
Christ's Gospel was to the individual, and only through the in-
dividual to society.
We give full credit to our author for his noble enthusiasm, and
admission of spiritual claims; but his proposed programme of re-
form is more passionate than pondered.
THE MOVEMENT TOWARDS CATHOLIC REFORM IN THE
EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY. By Rev. George V. Jour-
dan. New York: E. P. Button & Co. $2.50 net.
This volume deals chiefly with the lives and writings of some
of the chief humanists of the sixteenth century, Colet, Lefevre,
Reuchlin and Erasmus, special stress being laid upon their labors
in translating and lecturing upon the Scriptures. The tone of the
book is ultra Protestant, for the writer sympathizes with Luther's
" deep and unfeigned abhorrence of the modern Papal system,"
and enjoys Erasmus' strictures upon " the veneration of relics, the
excessive number of holy days, the monastic orders," etc.
Like many a dyed-in-the-wool-Protestant, he honestly deplores
the present disunion of Christendom, but seems to think that this
evil may be condoned in view of the purification of Christianity
brought about by " the blessed reformation." He asserts, but does
not prove, that Protestantism has been on the whole the home of
intellectual freedom, while obscurantist Rome has always proved
the enemy of reunion by " imposing conditions which have proved
her abhorrence of all liberty of thought."
THE TEMPLES OF THE ETERNAL. By James L. Meagher,
D.D. New York: Christian Press Association. $1.00 net.
This exhaustive study of " the mystic meanings of the houses
of God," treats of the symbolism of the Old and the New Law
1915.] NEW BOOKS 115
as expressed in the tabernacle and temple of the one and the church
buildings of the other. The purpose of the book is to enrich the
spiritual life of Catholics through an understanding of the sublime
lessons of the Church's symbolism. While the author has evidently
aimed at great symplicity of language and illustration, the book is
too overcrowded with information to put in the hands of children.
It will be useful only to the older reader, and most helpful to the
teacher who will cull from it not only the meanings of symbols, but
helpful suggestions in making them interesting. A bibliography of
authorities, or more copious reference notes would, however, have
greatly enhanced the value of the book.
COMPENDIUM SACRJE LITURGI^) JUXTA RITUM RO-
MANUM. By P. Innocentius Wapelhorst, O.F.M. New
York: Benziger Brothers. $2.50 net.
Twenty-eight years of practical use have won for Father
Waplehorst such approval that the ninth edition, revised to suit
recent changes especially as regards the recitation of the Breviary,
bids fair to win for it an even wider popularity. The former ap-
pendix on American Canon Law has now been wisely omitted,
and a new appendix on the history of sacred vestments substituted.
Reference might well have been made to the excellent articles on
this subject, and on the history of the liturgy in the Catholic
Encyclopedia. The exact references to other authors and to the
decrees of the Sacred Congregation are commendable.
STRAY LEAVES, OR TRACES OF TRAVEL. By the Right Rev.
Alexander MacDonald, D.D., Bishop of Victoria, B. C. New
York: Christian Press Association. $1.00.
This pretty little book gives the impressions of the writer as
student, priest and pilgrim, and finally as bishop-elect going to Rome
to receive his episcopal consecration. It is full of interest and
charm, the impressions and observations, keen and artistic, of one
who was on familiar ground in his wide range of journeys, which
embraced not only the great Catholic shrines of Paray-le-monial,
Lourdes and Loreto, but also the Holy Land, Spain and Scotland.
Having the new-world eyes to see with and the new-world
standards to judge by, these recorded impressions are brought home
to us with a force and direct application that would be lacking in one
not a Catholic, and who did not have our new-world viewpoint.
n6 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
Blending faith, poetry, and appreciation of what is beautiful in
nature and art, this little collection of Traces of Travel is instruc-
tive, edifying and pleasing.
THE NURSE'S STORY. By Adele Bleneau. Indianapolis: The
Bobbs Merrill Co. $1.25.
This is one of the fast increasing war books. This Red Cross
nurse bears witness to the impartial care of the French surgeons
for friend and foe. But the American heroine of French descent
is frankly on the side of the Allies. She tells her story with
commendable fairness, but seems to think it necessary to give her
heroine a taste of every experience, with the consequence that the
canvas is far too crowded, wearying one, like a succession of
moving pictures. Where morals are needed she is unmoral, and
some of the details might have been suppressed with advantage.
There are a few misprints, and " tampis " may be phonic, but it
is not French.
ON THE BREEZY MOOR. By Mrs. Macdonald. St. Louis:
B. Herder. $1.50 net.
There are two stories in this volume, slightly linked together
by a common setting on the breezy moor of an island of the outer
Hebrides, where the weird superstition of the Celt and the dour
spirit of the Kirk ruled. The Catholic heroine is a rather timid
young lady, but the book gives interesting studies of many types.
The traces of the ancient Scottish monks and their monasteries have
a distinct influence on one of the chief characters, leading him to
peace in the bosom of the Church.
WAITING. By Gerald O'Donovan. New York: Mitchell Ken-
nerley. $1.40 net.
It is not remarkable that an apostate could not write sanely
about Ireland and the Catholic Faith. This " mixed marriage "
novel, therefore, gives a very unfair picture of Irish life, and the
personal bias of the author mars every chapter. The novelist
speaks of " some new rot beginning Ne Temere" terms God " an
electioneering agent," likens religion to " a brand of tooth powder
or a style in summer hats," and declares, " some Roman lawyer
made up the law of God here a couple of years ago." We give the
book this notice so that our readers may know, if they ever hear of
Gerald O'Donovan, what kind of a man he is.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 117
SWEET DOREEN. By Clara Mulholland. St. Louis : B. Herder.
$1.10.
This healthy, happy story of Irish life makes one think better
of our common humanity, and opens our eyes to see the good in
those with whom we come in contact. It is quite up-to-date, for
the sounding of some of the wedding bells must await a lover's
return from the battlefields of South Africa. The whole story is
a sure and safe prescription for low spirits.
THE HANDS OF ESAU. By Margaret Deland. New York:
Harper & Brothers. $1.00 net.
The Hands of Esau is a brief problem story of heredity. The
hero, Tom Vail, has been brought up in total ignorance of his
father's dishonesty. He is on the verge of marrying the daughter
of his employer, when he learns through a conversation with a
stranger in a hotel, that his father had been sent to the penitentiary
for stealing a quarter of a million. His sweetheart learns this fact
about the same time, but is willing to marry him despite the opposi-
tion of her relatives. She expects him to make a clean breast of
the fact that he is a convict's son, but, when he fails to do so, she
feels that she cannot trust her life with him. The story is well told
and admirably written, but we cannot say that it is convincing.
A FLORENTINE CYCLE. By Gertrude Huntington McGiffert.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.25.
Artistic quality is usually intensive. Only genius can afford
fecundity, and risk its unequal achievements. Our author has dis-
regarded this axiom, and surfeited her readers with an undiscrim-
inating quantity of verse.
Her creed, though she defines it as "a Father in Heaven, a
work to do, and a mighty love for a noble heart," ranges from trans-
migration and a haunting heredity, to an immortality in which
As each soul craves, so is it given,
Annihilation, knowledge, heaven
Most distasteful is the note of irreverence, so clearly struck in
The Aged Christ, a poem in dramatic form. The author prefaces
the poem with a foreword, to the effect that the Christ depicted
therein is " not the real Christ of my faith, and yours, but a dream
Christ cast upon the curtain of my mind by the human figure
men talk about to-day." Such an apologia seems insufficient. If
"8 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
the writer merely meant to indulge in whimsical dreaming, she might
have chosen a less hideous dream. If she desired to draw atten-
tion to the obsession of sentimentality and humanitarianism that
afflicts the world to-day, she has indeed most convincingly achieved
her object; but her zeal might have spared that hallowed Figure,
and the blasphemies which she has placed on the lips of Eternal
Truth.
The writer's verse is not, however, in the shorter poems, devoid
of graceful touches and pleasing passages, as in Compensation,
Hope, and A Nation's Poverty, or when she speaks of the city on
the Arno :
Her last word said, whereto is naught to add,
An eddy circling in God's memory,
A splendid jewel on the breast of Time,
Accomplished prophecy.
AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH MEDIEVAL LITERA-
TURE. By Charles Sears Baldwin, Ph.D. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. $1.25 net.
Professor Baldwin of Columbia University has written a brief
manual of English mediaeval literature for students not specially
trained. He tells us that his aim is " to persuade his readers that
Middle English is not altogether beyond them, and that it is too
interesting and too significant to be slurred." It is the best treatise
of the kind that we possess. The several chapters discuss Epic,
Romance, Romance in French, Latin and English, Lyric and Alle-
gory, Chaucer, and Popular Composition.
AN OUTLINE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE. By Hon. Maurice
Baring. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 50 cents net.
Maurice Baring has written a brief but illuminating sketch of
the history of Russian literature. Unlike most of the literatures
of the world, its beginning dates only with the outset of the nine-
teenth century. If everything produced from the twelfth to the
beginning of the nineteenth century had perished, the loss would
hardly be felt.
The first writer of note is Russia's national poet, Pushkin.
"He is the poet of everyday life : a realistic poet, and above all a
lyrical poet He revealed to the Russians the beauty of their
landscape and the poetry of their people He set free the
Russian language from the bondage of the conventional He
1915.] NEW BOOKS 119
was a great artist; his style is perspicuous, plastic and pure; there
is never a blurred outline, never a smear, never a halting phrase
or a hesitating note."
Turgenev is compared to Tennyson. " They are both idyllic,
both of them landscape lovers and lords of language. Neither of
them had any very striking message to preach; both of them seem
to halt, except on rare occasions, on the threshold of passion; both
of them have a rare stamp of nobility; and in both of them there
is an element of banality."
Tolstoy is rightly called " one of the world's greatest writers,
and the world's artist in narrative fiction." The contrast drawn be-
tween Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is one of the finest passages in the
volume.
Literary criticism in Russia is practically nil, because it has
always been partisan. You are either for the revolution or against
it, and your literary standing is judged accordingly. There never
has been any objective or impartial standard.
THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. By S.
Angus, Ph.D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 75
cents net.
This compact little volume treats of the social, moral and re-
ligious conditions of the Greco-Roman world in the first days of
Christianity. The writer gives us a good insight into the genius
and achievements of the Greeks, the Romans and the Jews, and
shows clearly the conditions that favored or retarded the spread
of the Gospel.
TEACHER AND TEACHING. By Richard H. Tierney, SJ.
New York: Longmans, Green and Co. $1.00 net.
Although the writer modestly assures us that this little book
is neither an erudite nor an exhaustive discussion of the great
problem of education, we are certain that its pages discuss more
fully the principles of true pedagogy than many a more pretentious
treatise. We find many things to quote in this most readable and
suggestive volume. For instance : " The primary aim of all true
education is the formation of character The aim of a college
is not to train specialists, but to give the pupils a love of learning,
a desire to be learned, and a knowledge how to become so
The ungodly man is entirely out of place in a classroom The
120 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
schoolroom is too frequently the grave of mental power and hope
and ambition Everything must speak to the pupil of God,
for both reason and experience negative an irreligious education."
METHODS OF TEACHING IN HIGH SCHOOLS. By Samuel
Chester Parker. Boston: Ginn & Co. $1.50.
Professor Parker of the University of Chicago defines the
ultimate purpose of education to be social efficiency (economic,
domestic and civic), good will and harmless enjoyment; the proxi-
mate purposes to be health, information, habits, ideals and inter-
ests. Like most of our modern educationalists, he feels called upon
to eliminate religion, and to substitute for the theistic or Christian
standard of morality " the desire and endeavor to contribute to the
common good." When will men learn that you cannot make
men love their neighbor if they have no love of God?
THE PARISH HYMNAL. Compiled and arranged by Joseph Ot-
ten. St. Louis : B. Herder. 25 cents net.
A TREASURY OF CATHOLIC SONG. Compiled by Rev. Sidney
S. Hurlbut. $1.25.
THE CHOIR MANUAL. Compiled by G. Burton. New York:
J. Fischer & Brother.
The purpose of The Parish Manual is to provide in a handy
volume everything that choir boys, school children and congrega-
tions might be called upon to sing at Mass and Benediction through-
out the ecclesiastical year. The hymns are well chosen, the book
neatly gotten up, and the price within the reach of all.
Father Hurlbut tells us that he collected two hundred hymns
of his Treasury of Catholic Song primarily for use in his own
parish. It will certainly be welcomed by many another pastor on
the lookout for a suitable hymnal. All the well-known hymnals
have been carefully consulted, and the best hymns selected accord-
ing to the standards set forth by the compiler in a rather flam-
boyant preface. An index of authors and composers adds much
to the interest of the book.
Mr. Burton's Choir Manual is compiled with a view to meet
the needs of the average church choir with regard to Mass, Vespers
and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 121
THE CATHOLIC WORLD has already given to its readers
an estimate of Emile Verhaeren's poetic gifts. (Volume CL,
page 678.) We have no intention of estimating from a purely
literary standpoint the three poems from his pen included in his
latest volume, Belgium's Agony. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
$1.25 net.) Besides the poems, there are a number of chapters
dealing with the invasion of Belgium by Germany. Belgium has
surely suffered enough; why this brave nation should be burdened
with such an intemperate and unbalanced advocate as Verhaeren,
adds one more to the many mysteries that surround human events.
The unreasoning hate of the author against the Catholic
Church excludes his volume from the consideration of all fair-
minded men. Falsehood damns the fairest literary gifts, and a
pen given to its service only writes its own condemnation. Hate
poisons the source of exact judgment, and makes of the infidel
a credulous dupe. Verhaeren does not hesitate to insult insolently
and gratuitously the Faith of his king and his countrymen who
are now sacrificing all that their nation may live. It is easy
to understand from this volume why Verhaeren has been called
" the poet of paroxysm." Why add to the agony of Belgium by
advertising Verhaeren as the prophet of her people?
MRS. FRANCES M. GOSTLING in Rambles About the Riviera
(New York: James Pott & Co. $2.50 net), has jotted down
in an interesting travelogue a few of her impressions gathered
from two autumnal rambles in the Riviera. As she herself admits,
the book has no sequence. It consists of detached fragments
from a traveler's itinerary.
Her evident Protestantism prevents her from understanding
perfectly the history of the Middle Ages and the Catholic people
of the present. She spoils her book in great part for Catholic
readers by her reference to Protestant martyrs, the so-called
idolatry of the Virgin, the impossibility of modern miracles, and
the oft-refuted legend of the walled-up nun.
DENZIGER BROTHERS of New York has recently published
*-* a volume, entitled St. Juliana Falconieri } a Saint of the Holy
Eucharist, by Mary Conrayville. Very little is known of the life
of St. Juliana, save that she was the foundress of the Servite nuns,
and a most devout lover of the Blessed Eucharist. She will
always be remembered by her miraculous deathbed communion.
122 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
Just before her death she asked a priest to place a Corporal with
the Blessed Sacrament upon her breast, and " Lo, as soon as the
Eucharistic Victim touched the altar of flesh, It disappeared, and
St. Juliana, in a low voice filled with unutterable tenderness and
joy, exclaimed, 'Oh! my Sweet Jesus/"
TINDER the title of The Miracle Missions (Los Angeles:
Graf ton Publishing Corporation. 50 cents), Mr. Vernon
J. Selfridge has given us, in booklet form, brief sketches of the
California Missions, accompanied by a number of excellent photo-
graphs from the Ford etchings. The English leaves something to
be desired, and the descriptions are too slight to furnish much
solid information.
The booklet will, however, reach many to whom a ponderous
work on the subject would not appeal, and we cannot but join in
the late Bishop Conaty's commendation of the author's purpose in
writing the glorious story of these Missions.
IT S. KILNER & CO., of Philadelphia, have published a new
f edition the fourth of Father Murphy's two books on
Latin pronunciation Latin Pronounced for Singing, Latin Pro-
nounced for Altar Boys (25 cents each net). The author believes
that the modern Roman pronunciation of Latin is the best for prac-
tical use among Catholics, and certainly the best for singing. He
says that to-day everyone seems to pronounce Latin as he pleases,
and that a uniform method should be made obligatory.
MARION AMES TAGGART has written an entertaining story
in The Elder Miss Ainsborough (New York : Benziger Broth-
ers. $1.25). The heroine is the quaint and sturdy Aunt Huldah.
The elder Miss Ainsborough is handicapped by a heritage of anti-
Catholic prejudice : her younger half-sister is not. But the deceit
and intrigue of the latter profit her nothing. Through Aunt Hul-
dah's clever management, all ends as it should.
The Holy Viaticum in Life as in Death, by Rev. D. A. Dever,
from the same publishing house (20 cents), is a new edition bound
in paper of this instructive volume reviewed three years ago in our
own pages. We are pleased to recommend it again to our readers.
M. H. Gill, of Dublin, Ireland, sends us a volume of sketches
that bear the impress of personal experiences. It is entitled Fits
and Starts ($1.00), and the author is Rev. T. A. Fitzgerald. The
1915.] NEW BOOKS 123
sketches cover missionary journeys in Ireland and Australia. The
author is no novice at writing. He can be grave and gay; tragic
and humorous. But as the blue sky breaks through after the storm,
so after tragedy and sorrow shines more clearly the loving care of
the good God.
B. Herder, of St. Louis, publishes Sophie Maude's The Knight
of the Fleur de Luce (75 cents), a story of the days of Edward III.
and the Black Prince. It is graphically told, particularly the tale of
the Black Death, though the archaic English may lessen its attrac-
tion for the young folks.
From the same firm comes a little book on the Holy Eucharist,
entitled The Mystery of Faith (75 cents), by Father Digby Best.
It consists of prayers, meditations and hymns used and composed
by Father Best during the last days of his life.
W. Briggs, of Toronto, Canada, publishes a volume of pleasant
verse by Rev. D. A. Casey (Columba). The verses are for the
most part religious or patriotic.
Little Sir Galahad, by Phoebe Gray (Boston: Small, Maynard
& Co.) would be an inviting story if it were not also a temperance
tract. We are judging it from the literary standpoint. The Sir
Galahad portion is the story of a boy heavily handicapped, but
whose joyful spirit is greater than any of his misfortunes.
We have had stories treating of the Steel King, the Copper
King, and the Coal King; here is one that treats of the Zinc
King, Millionaire Tom, by David Dwight Bigger (Dayton, Ohio:
The Otterbein Press). The King is in the beginning an Irish lad,
who comes to this country, sees service in the Civil War, and much
adventure in the West. The style is often stilted and the brogue
impossible.
Mother Francis Raphael Drane needs no introduction to our
readers. Frequently have we spoken of her in praise to our readers.
Hence to them her latest work, The Daily Life of a Religious ( New
York: Benziger Brothers. 45 cents), needs no recommendation.
It is a valuable addition to ascetic literature, particularly for those
who must instruct others how to walk safely on the hard path of
self-denial.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Allocutions pour les Jeunes Gens, by Paul Lallemand. (Paris: Pierre
Tequi. 3/r.y.) The Oratorian, Father Lallemand, has just published the third
edition of his addresses to the boys of the cole Massilen of Paris. The best
124 NEW BOOKS [Oct.,
sermons in the book are those dealing with the Immaculate Conception, St.
Joseph, the Blessed Eucharist, and the Knowledge of Jesus.
Les Vattlantes du Devoir tndes Feminines, by Leon-Rimbault. (Paris:
Pierre Tequi. sfrs. 50.) The Abbe Leon-Rimbault has just published a new
edition of the conferences which he delivered some years ago in Cahors, France.
The various chapters are entitled : Women Who Think, Women Who Love,
Women Who Weep, Women Who Pray, Women Who Work, etc. The volume
concludes with four panegyrics on St. Genevieve, St. Clotilda, Blanche of
Castile and Joan of Arc.
Les Sacrements, by Monsignor Besson. (Paris: Pierre Tequi. Two vol-
umes. 6frs.} This is the tenth edition of Monsignor Besson's well-known
conferences on the Sacraments delivered some thirty years ago in the cathedral
of Besanc.on, France.
L'Ame de la France a Rheims, by Monsignor Baudrillart. (Paris: Gabriel
Beauchesne.) Monsignor Baudrillart, rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris,
delivered this discourse at the basilica of St. Clotilda in Paris, soon after the
burning of the cathedral at Rheims. He sketches briefly the history of this
beautiful cathedral, and, as a patriotic Frenchman, naturally, deplores its de-
struction.
Le Guide Spirituel (Paris: Pierre Tequi) is de Lamennais' classical transla-
tion of Blois' persuasive and ardent " Spiritual Guide." As an appendix it
includes some of the spiritual maxims of St. John of the Cross.
La Femme au Foyer, by Bishop Tissier of Chalons (Paris: Pierre Tequi.
3frs. 50), treats of the duties and responsibilities of the Christian wife and
mother. It may be recommended as profitable reading for the woman of
to-day.
NOTE. On account of the non-arrival of the foreign period-
icals, we have been compelled to omit that department this month.
[ED. 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.
The French and German lines have scarcely
France. changed, although daily and nightly war-
fare in one shape or another is continuous.
The British have extended by seventeen miles the line under their
charge, thereby increasing the help which they are giving to their
ally. The French, according to Lord Kitchener, have rendered
their lines impregnable by the construction of trenches, a mode of
defence which has superseded the system of fortresses. French
artillery has proved itself superior to that of the Germans. The
big guns, like those which proved so effective against the Russian
forts, have been trying for a year to get within range of Verdun,
but have been kept at bay by the French 75 's, and by the skill of
their gunners. A distinctive feature of recent warfare is the
ever-increasing number of air-raids, by which distant places in
Germany have been harassed, while so effective a defence of Paris
against like assaults has been organized that even the attempt
seems to have been abandoned. While new methods of warfare
continue to be adopted, equally remarkable is the resort to the
old. The use of hand grenades is again quite common, while
arrows (not bows) are from time to time dropped from aeroplanes.
For the purpose of defence the French have adopted armor to
protect the head and breast. Nothing seems to be known about
a general offensive movement either upon the part of the Germans
or the Allies. That of the Germans can hardly take place until
the Russians are decisively defeated a thing which is unlikely.
While the army has remained in statu quo, the Government
has been passing through a somewhat dangerous crisis. Enemies of
religion are still active in France, and their representatives in the
Assembly have been making an attack upon M. Millerand, the Min-
ister of War. The Director of the Medical Department of the army
was accused not only of neglect of duty, but also of favoring some-
thing like a religious campaign in the hospitals. This campaign was
126 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
carried on, it was alleged, by the many priests and religious who are
devoting themselves to the service of France. The latter accusation
at the present time would have had no effect, so great has been the
change of the general attitude of France towards religion, if there
had been no truth in the former. As in this department mistakes
had to be admitted, M. Millerand felt bound to sacrifice the
Director, and to issue a circular reminding those in control of the
hospitals that the Republic insists upon complete religious freedom,
and will defend the right of a man to be a Catholic with the same
vigor as it defends the right of a man to be, if he wishes, a libre
penseur.
The opponents of M. Millerand, that is to say the Radical-
Socialist groups in the Assembly, were not satisfied with these
concessions. The attack was only an outcome of the desire to
increase the control of the army by Parliament itself, thereby de-
priving the Government of the power which it and the General
in command have been in possession since the war began. They
insisted upon fuller explanations being made to the Assembly of
the conduct of military affairs, bringing against M. Millerand
various other charges, and in the end demanding a secret session
for the purpose of a full exposition of the conduct of the war.
Such a session has not been held during the existence of the
present Constitution. The Government yielded to the demand, but
refused to lay before such a secret session, if held, any more in-
formation than it had already given. In a speech, which is de-
scribed as having been the finest in France, or perhaps in the world,
since the war began, and delivered with superb power and eloquence,
M. Viviani, after admitting that there had been defects which had
since been remedied, declared it to be vitally necessary for the proper
conduct of the war and diplomacy that the Government should
enjoy the complete and cordial cooperation of all groups in the
Parliament. It must have serenity if it was to govern. Its
authority was derived from Parliament, and it was the duty of
Parliament to give it its strength and support. The speech killed
the demand for a secret session, the House immediately after ad-
journing for a recess.
In the course of this speech, M. Viviani re-afiirmed the deter-
mination of the French nation, with absolute unanimity, not even to
think of a premature peace. " The only Frenchmen I know are
agreed upon the aim and are prepared to renew the vow that we will
only cease the struggle when we have ensured the triumph of right,
1915-] RECENT EVENTS 127
prevented the return of the crimes of the enemy, restored wholly
heroic Belgium, and have recaptured our Alsace and our Lorraine."
This determination is shared by the whole of the clergy of France
from the highest to the lowest, as is shown by M. Julien de Narfon
in an article in the Figaro. He quotes the words of Cardinal
Amette to the soldier-priests of the diocese of Paris : " Having
before us a trial, the end of which no man can foresee, what can
we do, dear sirs, but practise what we preach? We must hold
on, we must endure to the end that is to say, till victory is won."
Monsignor Fuzet, the Archbishop of Rouen, also has issued a strong
Pastoral Letter. His Grace reminded his diocese of the warning
given by Fenelon soon after the battle of Malplaquet : " Why do
you sigh after peace? What would you do with it? " He closes
his allocution with the words : " From the earthward side and from
the heavenly side everything promises victory." In a work called
Echos de Guerre, by the Abbe Gorse, the author affirms emphatically
that there are no pacifists to be found in the ranks of the clergy.
" The only possible peace, the only peace which will be honorable to
France and her Allies, is the peace that will inflict on a criminal
people the punishment it deserves."
To say that anything like coolness has arisen even for a
short time between France and Great Britain, would be a great
exaggeration. It must, however, be confessed that something like
a doubt has manifested itself in France whether her ally has fully
risen to the occasion, and has realized the magnitude of the
emergency. Although the line held by the British troops is only
a seventh of that held by the French, the population of Great Britain
is by six millions larger than that of France. The hesitation to
adopt conscription is taken by some to mean an unwillingness to
make the sacrifices which are looked upon by the French as neces-
sary for victory. The result, however, of various visits and inter-
communications, to say nothing of publications that have been widely
distributed, has been to restore the confidence so far as it had been
shaken. It is recognized, in the words of M. Pichon, that the efforts
so far made by Great Britain have been gigantic, and no doubt is
felt of the determination to maintain and even to increase those
efforts.
How unconquerable is the spirit of the Bel-
Belgium, gians, overborne though they are by the
vast hordes of the invaders of their soil, is
shown by the way in which July 2ist, the national Independence
128 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
Day, was celebrated. In every church throughout the country
Masses were said. At Brussels, in the Church of St. Gudule, the
Nuncio was the celebrant. After the Mass was ended even the
sacredness of the edifice could not restrain the people from the mani-
festation of their feelings of patriotism. Long and prolonged
shouts went up of " Vive le Roi ! Vive Belgique ! " The same
thing happened in all the churches of the city and the country dis-
tricts around Brussels. All day long the city was in a state of
excitement and feverish animation. Flowers were carried to the
Place des Martyrs; all the business establishments, from the cafes
down to the smallest shops in the working-class districts, were
closed without exception. In the superior residential parts of the
city, all the shutters were up as a sign of mourning. In short, the
people of Belgium are showing themselves staunch in the defence
of their liberties in the midst of the present distress, waiting pa-
tiently for its end. They are worthy indeed of the help which is
being extended to them by all the liberty loving countries of the
world of which our own is the chief. Their resolution is as firm
as that of the King and the army that is still holding the enemy
at bay. The letter written by the Cardinal Secretary of State to
the Belgian Minister at the Vatican, in which he explains that it was
the intention of the Pope in his Allocution of January 22d to con-
demn the invasion of Belgium as one among many injustices, has
removed every feeling of coldness towards the Holy See.
Among all Germans, whether in high or in
Germany. low positions, the determination to conquer
and full confidence in the ability to conquer
are unshaken. The Minister of Finance, in his speech before the
Reichstag, assured his hearers that it would not be the Germans
who would have to bear the burden of the loans that were being
raised; the Powers who, he said, had been the cause of the war
would have that privilege. The fact that it is due to Germany that
there has been so much talk about peace may appear to conflict
with this perfect confidence, but it must be remembered that any
peace acceptable to Germany at the present time would be a peace
dictated by her. Fairly liberal terms have, indeed, been offered
to Russia, with the view of separating her from France and Great
Britain. Doubtless to France in like manner offers of a similar
character might be made, were there the least probability of their
i9i 5-] RECENT EVENTS 129
acceptance. The real aims of Germany as a result of the war
have, however, been clearly manifested in various quarters.
The Imperial Chancellor, in his recent speech before the Reich-
stag, declared that the issue of the war must be to bring the old
bygone situation to an end. " A new one must arise. If Europe
shall come to peace it can only be possible by the inviolable and
strong position of Germany. The English policy of the balance
of power must disappear." This is, of course, taking direct issue
with Great Britain, and a justification, irrespective of Belgium, of
her continuance of the war, the balance of power in Europe being
now, as it has been for centuries, the cardinal point of British
foreign policy. The Radical Party in the Reichstag, without com-
mitting itself to a definite programme or to unlimited schemes of
annexations, declares in a manifesto which it has issued that " the
party considers it absolutely necessary to secure the Empire for
the future by means of military and economic measures, as well as
by the necessary extensions of territory, and to create for the peace-
ful competitions of the people's conditions which in Germany, as
well as on the free seas, guarantee the development of the full
strength of the German people." The National Liberals, once the
strongest party in Germany, and still possessed of a degree of
influence, has passed a resolution demanding the extension of the
German frontiers in East and West and over the seas. The atti-
tude of the Socialists is more moderate. Herr Liebnecht and a small
section demand a pledge that no annexation at all shall be made.
The Executive Committee of the Parliamentary Party is not so
insistent: it has passed a resolution affirming that the guarantee
of the political independence and integrity of the German Empire
demands the refusal of all the enemies' war aims directed against
German territory. This refusal applies to the demand for the
incorporation of Alsace-Lorraine into France. It further demands
equal rights for economic activity in all colonies, and the adoption
of the peace treaties with each enemy of the " most favored nation "
clause. The freedom of the seas, the resolution adds, must be
secured by international agreements, a demand which seems to be
specially directed against Great Britain. It is by the King of
Bavaria that the clearest expression of the aims of the ruling
classes has been made. After the outburst of the war, his heart was
filled with joy. Not that he had sought or desired it, but because
the result must be to give to Germany the ports on the Channel
which were necessary for the development of German commerce.
VOL, en. 9
130 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
The list of reverses which Russia has under-
Russia. gone is a long one, although it is well to
remember in the present days of depression
that she penetrated farther into Austrian territory and remained
in possession a longer time than has yet fallen to the lot of Germany,
and that East Prussia was for a time under her foot; even yet she
has not been driven from Galicia. Anyone who looks at the map
of the Russian Empire will see that it is only its merest fringe
that has been trodden upon by the enemy's foot. A country half
the size of Europe and the whole of northern Asia are left un-
touched. If fortresses have fallen, it is because on account of the
size of modern artillery fortresses no longer form a protection.
This is now afforded by the armies. So long as these remain intact
the capture of fortresses is not decisive. As there has been neither
on the East nor on the West any such catastrophe for Germany's
enemies as the French met with at Sedan, the " fabulous " vic-
tories over the Russians, as the Germans love to call them, have not
secured the desired result.
The record of Russia's losses does not, however, form pleasant
reading. In the month of August five fortresses of the greatest
importance fell like houses of cards before Germany's big guns
on the fifth, Warsaw and Ivangorod; on the seventeenth, Kovno;
on the nineteenth, Novo Georgiewsk, and on the twenty-fifth, Brest-
Litovsk. Nor have they since rested upon their laurels, but have
pushed on farther and farther East, with the object of isolating
part or parts of the Russian armies an object which, however,
they have so far failed to accomplish. The advance has, however,
of late been much slower, as the country into which they are being
drawn has become more and more difficult. There are those who
recall 1812 and the fate of Napoleon, anticipating for Germany's
legions a similar catastrophe. It must, however, be remembered
that in those days there were no railways, and that Napoleon's
base was Paris. In the present invasion Germany has it in her
power to link her system with that of Russia as she proceeds on her
career of conquest, it being impossible so completely to destroy
a railway as to render it incapable of being re-built by such capable
foes as are the Germans. Giving, however, full weight to changes
which have taken place since 1812, it still remains true that the
farther Germany proceeds into Russia the greater will the diffi-
culties become. The time is approaching when the Russian roads
will break up. The country through which the Germans will have
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 131
to pass is described by a writer intimately acquainted with Russia,
as " at first a marshy plain, and later on a plateau broken with
innumerable cross-gullies, in which the Grand Army of Napoleon,
in spite of efforts of men and horses, left practically all of its light
field artillery. Motor-transit, one of the glories of the advancing
German army, will here be useless. It is not only the heavy guns
that will have to be left behind." " There is no spot on the map
where Germany could force Russia to a decision," the same author-
ity says, and adds : " the hopelessness of the military task is
known to every German soldier."
The success which has attended German efforts is not due to
the greater bravery of her soldiers, or even to the skill of her
generals, but to overwhelming superiority in guns and munitions,
as well as to her ability, by means of railways made for the purpose,
to concentrate the whole of her strength on certain points. This
has enabled her to bring into any determined place thousands of
guns ranged tier upon tier, and thereby to render human life im-
possible within their range. By this means gaps were made in the
line of the Russians, and then a curtain of fire was dropped beyond,
under cover of which the infantry filled these gaps. This rendered
it necessary for the Russians to readjust their lines by retiring.
The want of munitions made it impossible for them to offer any
adequate resistance to these tactics. Russia possesses no such
system of railways as rendered a concentration of this kind possible;
and so similar tactics cannot be adopted by the Germans as they
proceed. Hence their advance of late has not been so rapid, nor
is this due merely to the character of the country in which opera-
tions are being carried on. It is rather due to the more energetic
resistance of the Russians, since the Tsar has himself taken com-
mand of his forces. In fact, in Galicia against the Austrians they
have resumed a successful offensive, while in the north they are
battling with von Hindenburg for the possession of Riga, against
which a drive is being made with a view, it is thought, of opening
up the way to Petrograd.
That the Grand Duke Nicholas was able to extricate his armies
from the traps laid for them by the Germans, ought to be looked
upon as an indication of supreme ability. Although, of course, in
the world nothing succeeds like success, sometimes greater ability
is shown by a retreat well conducted than by a victory. Wellington
used to say that he had plenty of generals who could get fifty
thousand men into Hyde Park, but very few who could get them
132 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
out again. That the Grand Duke Nicholas was able in the face of
more than a million of attacking Germans to effect the retirement
of the many armies under his supreme command, shows that it was
not due to any defect on his part that the Tsar has superseded him,
but that, as he declared in his manifesto on taking command, he
wished to be the leader of his people on the day of distress. In a
tribute to the ability of the Grand Duke the Germans ought to join,
for it is a maxim laid down by the greatest of their strategists that
the main object of war is not to capture positions, but to put hostile
armies out of action. The Grand Duke succeeded in preventing
the attainment of this main object, thus defeating at least the
supreme endeavor of his foe.
One of the surprises of the war has been the unlooked-for
success of a Russian sea force. In an attempt on the Gulf of Riga
the Germans, who had penetrated into the Gulf, were defeated with
the loss of ten vessels, two cruisers and eight torpedo boats, as well
as of some sloops. A German battle-cruiser of the Moltke class is
said to have been torpedoed while holding guard at the mouth of
the gulf against the Russian fleet during the same operations,
although it is not certain that she was sunk. This victory has been
for the Russians the one occasion for rejoicing that they have had
for a long time.
The effect of the reverses upon the Russian army and people
has been to reanimate them to renewed efforts, and to make them
even firmer and more determined than when the war opened. It is
recognized as being a nation's war, not that of a dynasty. A well-
informed writer admits that there has been a time of hesitation,
but that now the crisis has passed. The object of the concentrated
effort of Germany was to bring Russia to a separate peace by
inflicting defeat upon her; by persuading her that Great Britain
and France could do nothing for her ; by winning Poland, and then
offering liberal terms, offers which were repeatedly made after
each victory. To the acceptance of these terms internal treachery
of the very gravest kind might have contributed. In the face of
these extraordinary difficulties, both internal and external, govern-
ment and people are standing firm and united to carry on the war to
a victorious end. Difficulties which had arisen in Finland have,
it is said, been removed. The task of providing munitions is the
greatest of all. If the Dardanelles could be opened that question
would be settled, but there have been so many disappointments, and
the obstacles have proved so stupendous, that Russia's position
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 133
would be almost hopeless unless some other way were found. It
may be mentioned here that there is good reason to think that the
effort to penetrate to Constantinople was undertaken by France and
Great Britain at the request of Russia, in order to effect a diversion
of the attack which the Turks were making upon Russian forces in
the Caucasus.
The Russian attitude towards alleged dissensions between the
Allies is clearly expressed in a message of M. Sazonoff, the Foreign
Minister. Never at any time, he says, has there been the slightest
difference of opinion between the high commands of the allied
armies. Absolute confidence exists, and implicit faith is felt, in
the ultimate issue of the campaign which is pending in the West.
There has never been any intention whatsoever to conclude an inde-
pendent peace with Germany so long as one hostile soldier remains
in Russia. The new Minister has increased the output of munitions
by two hundred per cent within a few weeks. In his opinion
the fate of the campaign will not be decided before some time next
year. Everything is ready for a winter campaign. Out of the
eight million men available, a force of two millions is being put in
training behind the fighting lines. This will be ready to take the
field next spring. No apprehension exists as to the ability to pro-
tect the capital in the meantime, its safety being fully assured by
several armies under the command of General Ruszky.
The desire to act in closer alliance with the Duma, and with
the people in general, is one of the results of the Russian reverses.
Shortly before the fall of Warsaw a special session was sum-
moned, in order that solidarity of action might be established. This
indicates a change in the spirit of governmental action which had
been relapsing into the old ways of bureaucracy. Its advances
were responded to with an outburst of enthusiasm unparalleled in the
history of Russia, although in the course of the session the failure
of munitions called forth severe criticism. Past events, however,
were put aside for future investigation, as was also the desired
increase of the powers of the Duma. All parties concurred in the
practical measures proposed by the Government for carrying the
war on with greater efficiency. With the same object in view a
change seemed more than probable in the ministry itself. The age
of the Premier, as well as his somewhat bureaucratic tendencies,
militates against its success. As in the person of the Tsar the
army has found a leader who is inspiring new courage, the coun-
try at large thinks it may find in M. Krivoshein, the present
134 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
Minister of Agriculture, a director of its administrative activities
able to unite the whole country as one man in pursuit of its one
object a decisive victory. The sudden adjournment of the Duma
has, however, disappointed these hopes.
Although the whole of Poland is now in the military possession
of Germany, the Poles as represented in the Duma declared their
unabated attachment to Russia as the representative of the Slavs.
Those among them who have not been able to overcome their dis-
trust, look rather to Austria than to Germany as the protector of
their national ideals. At the meeting of the Duma the Premier, in
the name of the Tsar, solemnly ratified the manifesto of the Grand
Duke at the commencement of the war. He had been charged by
the Tsar to inform the Duma that bills were being prepared grant-
ing Poland after the war the right freely to organize her national,
social, and economic life on a basis of autonomy under the sceptre
of the Emperors of Russia. The home policy in the future was to
be permeated with the principles of impartiality and benevolence;
without distinction of nationality, creed or tongue.
The declarations of war with Turkey was
Italy. the eleventh formal declaration made within
one year by European States. At the time
these lines are being written, it seems probable that others may
be added to the list. While Italy is at war with Austria-Hungary,
she is still technically at peace with Germany, although diplomatic
relations have been severed. Italy's precise reason for declaring
war with Turkey at the time chosen does not clearly appear. The
causes alleged in the declaration Turkey's violation of the Treaty
of Lausanne and the treatment of Italian reservists seem rather
to be pretexts than real causes. So far nothing seems to have re-
sulted in the way of military operations.
The campaign against Austria is proceeding in regions many
thousands of feet above sea level. The treaty of 1866 left Italy
with an impossible frontier. The Trentino was thrust forward like
a wedge into Italian territory. The passes and the mountain tops
were left in Austrian hands. In fact Austria possessed all the
doors into Italy. By prompt action at the beginning of the war
Italy has been able to seize the first of the lines of which Austria
might have made use in an offensive movement, and has thereby
been able to deprive her enemy of the natural strategical advantage
1915-] RECENT EVENTS 135
which the 1866 treaty afforded. In fact, Italy has pushed her
back upon the second line. It would not, however, be true to say
that all danger of an offensive movement on the part of Austria
has been averted: but enormous obstacles have been placed in the
way of such an attempt. The advance of the Italian forces to the
East and West of the Trentino salient threatens the flanks of any
Austrian attempt to reach Italian soil. On the other hand, the
Italians are now faced with an exceedingly difficult line of defence,
although they are no longer dominated from above. They are
engaged in gradually gripping the Austrian position. Everything
is being prepared for a winter campaign on a plateau seven thousand
feet high, surrounded by vast mountain ranges. The spirit of the
Italian troops is beyond praise, and although Austria is to the
Italian nation an execrated name, the troops in conflict have come
to have a mutual esteem and regard for each other.
Japan still remains on the side of the Allies,
Japan. although the part she is taking is limited to
furnishing munitions to Russia to the extent
of her ability. Last May some danger existed of war with China,
due to the somewhat extreme demands made by Japan. Better in-
fluences prevailed, and an arrangement was made apparently satis-
factory to both nations. A political scandal led, at the end of July,
to the resignation of Count Okuma's Cabinet. The Elder States-
men were called in, and the crisis ended by a reconstruction of the
Cabinet with Count Okuma in his old position. By the death of
the Marquis Inouye the link with the older Japan has been broken.
He was one of the original band of Elder Statesmen to whom the
Empire owes its emergence into world activity. The Coronation
of the Emperor, so long deferred, will take place in November.
It seems probable that the attempt to turn
China. China into a Republic may soon come to an
end. It has, in fact since 1913, been a
Republic merely in name. In August of that year Yuan-Shih-kai
was recognized as the virtual ruler of China by the financial repre-
sentatives of several European Powers, when in spite of the protest
of the President of the Senate they concluded a loan, the validity
of which depended upon his sole authority. Three months later
136 RECENT EVENTS [Oct.,
Yuan promulgated a decree expelling three hundred and seventy of
the Deputies and one hundred and thirty-two of the Senate; that
is, every member of the Republican Party. Every Republican organ-
ization in the land was dissolved. In January of last year Yuan
suppressed not only the Chinese Parliament, but also the Provincial
Assemblies and Municipal Councils, and thus became a dictator,
limiting his term, however, to ten years. More recently a propa-
ganda, considered to be inspired, for openly restoring the monarchi-
cal system has been started. Yuan Shih-kai, it is true, ostensibly
displays repugnance to the idea, remembers the many oaths which
he has taken, asserts that none of his sons is fit even for a non-
commissioned rank in the army, and even talks of taking refuge in
a foreign land. Strange to say, there are many who think that it
may not be impossible to overcome his scruples. The way has been
prepared by securing the support of the army. If the Republic
perishes, it will not be missed. The administration has been as
corrupt as it was during the Empire. Reform has been conspicuous
by its absence while corruption is on the increase. The financial
position is precarious. Any strength which the Government has is
due to foreign support.
With Our Readers.
'FHE account given in this issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD of the
1 present situation in the Anglican Church, resulting immediately
from the Kikuyu controversy, might with change of names well
describe a condition that is manifesting itself more and more clearly
in the Episcopal Church of our own country. Independent of all
local problems, the fate and history of the Episcopal Church of the
United States depend necessarily and essentially upon the fate and
history of the Anglican Church. If the mother is not Catholic, her
offspring is not Catholic ; if Anglican orders are not valid, Episcopalian
orders born of them are equally invalid ; if the Anglican Church is no
part of the true Catholic Church, with doctrines intact from the
beginning, with a definite authority recognizable by all and infallible
in its pronouncements then the Episcopalian Church is no part of the
Catholic Church, and assumes a title wholly unwarranted when she
calls herself Catholic.
THE stern justice of time, which strips every error of its mask
and exposes every pretense, is demanding an unequivocal stand
on the question upon which depends for all practical purposes a
real belief in a personal God the question of a divine and definite
revelation through Jesus Christ our Lord. A Church either teaches
that there is such a revelation and that, as Christ delivered it, He is
with it all days even to the consummation, and the end, that the Church
through Christ is the guardian of it; or else that the revelation being
once given, it is entirely within the right of every individual to ap-
preciate its content and its obligation.
The former is Catholicism; the latter is Protestantism. The
former leads necessarily to Rome; the latter is of its very nature
disintegrating and disastrous.
# * * *
IT is vain for High Churchmen, for their organs and their sympa-
thizers, to speak of Romans or Roman Catholics and Catholics as
if the titles were in opposition or described attributes which the one
contained and the other did not. In so far as they approach or accept
the Catholic position, High Churchmen accept the only logical and
historical obedience of that position, which is Roman. As they step
towards Catholicism or think Catholic they inevitably step towards
Rome. And just as surely as they go away from Rome they depart
from the Catholic Faith of the ages, from the definite revelation of
138 WITH OUR READERS [Oct.,
Christ, and advance towards Protestantism. The name of the city
towards which the champions of Protestantism tend cannot be known.
It is not Canterbury because Canterbury is one phase; nor Berlin,
another phase, nor St. Petersburg, still another phase. Error is re-
vealed by diversity : truth alone possesses unity. A traveler's destina-
tion is the one place : he knows not in how many ways and places he
may be lost.
* * * *
THE Catholic Faith is not determined by nationalism. St. Paul
killed that thoroughly worldly error long ago. The Living Church,
the Episcopalian organ, not long since in trying to defend a position
that would be both Catholic and Protestant, said : " The Anglo-Roman
controversy hinges upon the right of a national church to withdraw
from allegiance to the Papal see and yet remain an integral part
of the Catholic Church." The unwarranted assumption of the party
of the first part in the Protestant-Catholic controversy is, according
to The Living Church, " the right of individuals to withdraw from
the Catholic Church, and then in voluntary association with other like-
minded individuals to form other Churches." The Holy Spirit of
truth, then, must give His guidance and protection in tablets of
national size and quality. Such a statement comes very near making
religion and politics synonymous.
* * * *
ATATIONALISM, if it can for a short time be the life of a
iM Church, can more surely be its death. The wider a man's knowl-
edge grows of the problems that religion must answer and solve, the
weaker becomes his faith in a purely national church. The present
Archbishop of Canterbury clearly sees the inadequacy of nationalism.
" He has quietly set aside the idea," writes Mr. Nankivell, " so widely
received in Anglican circles during the last quarter of a century,
that there can be only one Church in one place, and that in England
the English Church is the Catholic Church in England." Moreover,
the problems facing a nation that goes over seas or over land, will
sound the passing of nationalism in religion. Let it send abroad a
single missionary and nationalism's death-warrant is signed. " The
Anglican Church" because of the work that English missionaries
see before them " is sick of its splendid isolation ; as a National
Church it is restive in the presence of world- wide empire and great
European alliances."
What is the result? Faith in a true Ecclesia Anglicana becomes
dead. It must drop its isolation; it must abandon any unique claim
to divine truth; it must take its part in doing away with all those
differences and dissensions that block successful missionary work;
it must acknowledge other Churches and other creeds, or at least it
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 139
must not declare that other creeds and other Churches are false; in
a word it must become Protestant.
" The Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda seem determined to act on
their theory that the Catholic Church is a congeries of episcopal and
non-episcopal sects. The divisions are considered 'unhappy/ mainly
as they do practically divide those who might otherwise freely worship
and labor together. For there is no indication that they regret their
separation from Catholic or Orthodox Christians, and no indication
that they particularly value communion with the ultra High Church.
And on the other hand, if strict unity of government with other
Protestant Christians is unattainable, federation seems to them a
natural and satisfactory substitute. And they are able to quote, among
other official and semi-official utterances of Anglican authorities, the
words of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church
in the United States: 'We do not seek to absorb other communions,
but to cooperate with them on the basis of a common faith and order/
And, as they remind us, the Lambeth Conference has spoken not
only in general terms of 'other Christian Churches/ but also more
definitely of 'Presbyterian and other non-episcopal Churches/ "
To become Catholic would mean a distinct and definite separation
from all other sects ; it would mean to take up the " Roman " position.
Therefore " union with the Catholic Church is not a practical propo-
sition."
* * * *
BY substituting Panama for Kikuyu we will see the similar condi-
tion that exists in the Protestant Episcopal Church of this coun-
try. Different Protestant bodies have planned to hold a Congress dur-
ing the coming year at Panama, to consider how their mission work
in South America may be carried on more successfully. The Con-
gress is wholly under Protestant auspices. A combination, federation,
a union of all the Protestant bodies working in South America is con-
templated. The same was contemplated and actually carried out in
Africa by the Bishops of Mombasa and Uganda. It was against this
federation that the Bishop of Zanzibar protested, jealous in defence of
what he termed the Catholic faith of the Anglican Church.
In like manner The Living Church, which is the organ of the
" Catholic party " in the Protestant Episcopal Church, protests most
vehemently against the participation of that Church in the Panama
Congress. " It would be invidious and culpable," it says, " for our
Board officially to confer with those whom we cannot officially
recognize as corporate branches of the historic Church." The Board
of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church has, however, ac-
cepted the invitation to join the Congress, and has decided to elect dele-
gates thereto. The Churchman, another organ of the same Church,
140 WITH OUR READERS [Oct.,
favors participation in the Congress. " The Panama Conference is,"
it claims, " a call for help. It is a call in which Christians of all
names can and should cooperate." Pan-Protestantism is the aim of
the one; Catholic faith of the other. And just as in the Kikuyu
controversy the High Church party made a strong but unavailable
protest, so also in this country the minority, the High Church and
Catholic party, will protest, but will protest in vain.
* * * *
THE LIVING CHURCH has shown conclusively the thoroughly
Protestant complexion and purpose of the coming Panama Con-
gress. The Congress is quite prepared to contemplate South America
as an uncivilized and godless continent. For example, Bulletin No. I,
issued to make known the purposes of the Congress and promote its
success, quotes the words of the Methodist Bishop Stuntz : " There
can be no large gains in civic righteousness, in educational achieve-
ment, in social progress until the democracy which is taught
wherever the open Bible goes, and which is born at the altars
of Protestantism becomes the common possession of all the millions
of South America." Bulletin No. 2 quotes Bishop Every, the Angli-
can Bishop in the Argentine: " The world's empty continent
It is without true religion and does not realize its danger. Yet a
faith they must have. What hope is there for the Argentine without
true religion ? "
* * * *
WHEN a committee of the Congress visited Mr. John Barrett,
Director-General of the Pan-American Union, and extended
him an invitation to attend the Congress, Mr. Barrett told them that
" it would be the greatest misfortune for the conference to occupy a
belligerent attitude, and to go to Panama to criticize the civilization of
Latin America," and that in Bulletin No. 2 : " You have done just
exactly what I was talking about, just the very thing that will fire
these people and close their hearts against you." The Committee did
not publish Mr. Barrett's words, but continued to distribute Bulletin
No. 2. In Bulletin No. 3 it printed an account of the visit of the
Committee on Cooperation to Mr. Barrett, and simply said : " They
were cordially received by Director Barrett (and others), all of whom
gave helpful counsel, and assured the Committee of their hope that the
conference would do much towards emphasizing the spiritual rela-
tionships of the two Americas, which is fundamental in the develop-
ment of Pan-Americanism."
" An attractive and suggestive study," comments The Living
Church, "on the ethics of exegesis and interpretation."
"This present movement (the Panama Congress), well meaning
though it is," the same organ states, " is only one more of the per-
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 141
fectly absurd mistakes made by Anglo-Saxons in relation to Latin
Americans."
* * * *
CORDIAL relations with our Southern neighbors are of vital interest
to our country. Every true citizen of the United States should
be interested in maintaining them, if for no other reason than the
welfare of our own land. But bigotry's spear knows no brother.
Many of the representatives to this Congress are only too eager to
carry down there the firebrands of bitterness, dislike and contempt.
They care nothing what the results to our country may be, in a time of
crisis, for example, when we might stand in sore need of the help
of those Southern nations. Again, we quote from a non-Catholic
authority : " Now Americans have failed in showing their friendship
for the people of Latin America. The United States is not popular
in the continent that it has sought to protect by the Monroe Doctrine.
Our citizens and institutions are frankly unpopular. And every stu-
dent of this deplorable situation tells us frankly that it is our own
fault. The culture of South America is in some respects superior to
our own ; American bad manners disgust its people. They are keenly
sensitive people, and their sensitiveness is continually wounded by the
tactlessness, the lack of diplomacy, the atrocious manners, the stupid
unwillingness to enter into their point of view, which American diplo-
matic and commercial and religious representatives in South America
have so often shown."
* * * *
THE efforts of the Church party represented by The Living Church,
aim to uphold the definite character of divine revelation. They
presuppose that the Church has an equally definite message ; the sure
and certain protection and guidance as a Church of the Holy Spirit,
and therefore that the Church is exclusive not only in the sense that
truth is exclusive of error, which everyone will admit, but in the sense
that the Church has particular truths which positively exclude every
error opposed to them. To barter with or to deny even implicitly
any one of them, is to betray a most sacred and God-given trust.
Those of the Protestant Episcopal Church who take this stand believe,
for example, in the priesthood ; in sacrifice ; in Holy Communion and
in the Real Presence; in the sacrament of marriage; and some go
so far as to profess belief in the sacrament of penance and auricular
confession. They approach Catholic doctrine, and their sincere efforts
are worthy of praise and encouragement. They introduce Catholic
teaching to many non-Catholics. They themselves are often led by
further sincere inquiry and the grace of God to a knowledge and
acceptance of the one true Mother of all the faithful the Catholic
Church.
142 WITH OUR READERS [Oct.,
IN like manner we may see a hopeful and constructive note in the
movement that has been referred to as Pan-Protestantism. That
movement seeks to unite all Protestant sects into one combine or
federation. Unity, combination, team-work is the slogan. Protes-
tant Christianity, with its innumerable divisions, presents an unin-
viting picture to a country which it seeks to convert. The noise of
the divisions drowns the message. The source of such scandal, there-
fore, must go. Differences must be set aside. Conferences to con-
sider ways and means are held. In the name of the common brother-
hood of man every religious body must be willing to yield something :
no one must selfishly stand out for that against which all the others
protest. " Let us not fly at one another's throats : rather let us get
down to a working basis before we begin to work."
And thus they also approach by devious ways the Catholic doc-
trine of unity. They begin to preach that it is essential and they
create it. It is not an organic unity and cannot be: it is born of
opportunism, and is as frail as opportunism itself. But they do
believe that unity one Church of some kind or other is a necessity.
That term is not used. They call it a Federation or a Federated
Union of Christian Churches, but it foreshadows the Catholic note
of unity, just as the restless searchings of the human heart disclose
man's need of spiritual truth. The soul was made for God, and it
cannot long sincerely seek Him without hearing some echo, or seeing
some reflection of Catholic teaching.
* * * *
THE recognition of the need of unity throws the Protestant bodies
back upon themselves, and forces them to ask what have we really
got that is purely our own and that as such is of substance? Our
name gives us no information. It simply tells us we were conceived
by difference and born of protest. We have, therefore, nothing to
stand for except difference and protest. Both are much depreciated
at this late day as religious capital. Combination; joint-action make a
better appeal.
But the price of unity is very high. The representative members
to a Conference on Christian unity of a particular Church will, for
example, see that they must yield on this teaching and on that:
doctrines once held divinely revealed will have to be sacrificed to
human expediency the true divinity of Jesus Christ; His sacrifice
for our salvation; the inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures. Can a
member of any Church that has taught these as eternal truths see
them go without asking himself is there any foundation to Chris-
tianity, and if so how far down must one go in order to find it?
Unity will do away with differences until there is nothing to differ
about. At the same time the cultivation of it must help many towards
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 143
a better knowledge of the truth, towards that real unity of the Catho-
lic Church, the same yesterday and to-day; the same in Rome as it
is in the Argentine and in Uganda.
THE work of The United States Catholic Historical Society does
not receive the attention and support which it merits. Every
year, for the past eight years, the Society has published a volume of
Records and Studies presenting the result of important research work
in the Catholic history of the United States. The success and value of
the labors are due for the most part to the zealous, untiring devotion
of the President, Dr. Charles George Herberman. The latest volume,
which has just appeared, includes the second instalment of Dr. Herber-
man's account of The Sulpicians in the United States; a biographical
sketch by Rev. Thomas Campbell, S.J., of Dr. John McLoughlin, the
Founder of Oregon; The Evils of Trusteeism, by Rev. Gerald C.
Treacy, S.J., translated letters from the Neue Welt-Bott, the " Rela-
tions " of German missionaries ; the eventful life and work of Father
Cloriviere, and other histories and records, all of which not only in-
crease our knowledge, but stimulate and urge us to follow in the
footsteps of the heroes who have gone before.
THE Catholic Faith gives to the soul that loves it in all simplicity
a vision and an inspiration beyond human knowledge and human
power. To such a soul it becomes the Power of Heaven, the Song of
Songs. It transcends not the things of earth; it lifts them up and
immortalizes them with a halo of eternal glory. The rationalist
descends the steps of mystery, of suffering, of injustice, of death to
defeat and despair. The believer mounts on the very same steps to
a fuller life and an everlasting victory; he conquers in joyful triumph'.
A Catholic peasant soldier of the present war, who has since been
killed in action, wrote home to his wife and children, in answer to a
letter from them which told of their tears because of his absence and
his danger : " You tell me that you offer your tears to God. Oh, I
am sure they are well pleasing to Him ; but I think He would be more
pleased to see you bear the cross of separation for love of Him than
to see you dragging it in tears. You know that we must bear the
cross if we are to come to paradise."
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. CII. NOVEMBER, 1915. No. 608.
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.
T requires much ingenuity to live nowadays and escape
all relation to social reform. There are few in the
world who are neither reforming others nor being re-
formed, nor in need of reform, nor talking earnestly
about it. The tendency is marked to classify humanity
according to attitudes which men take toward social betterment.
This occurs because problems of social welfare are supreme in the
modern mind, and they engage the greatest genius and the most
serious attention of society. We hear, for instance, of a first great
social class whose members know practically nothing accurate about
the social problems which harass our collective conscience. Its mem-
bers are regarded as selfish individualists who lack social vision and
sympathy and, as well, the impulse to that larger impersonal serv-
ice of society which is of the finest flower of human culture. The
attitude of this class toward social reform is negative. That is to
say, it occasions much of the inertia and some of the opposition
which seriously hampers reform effort even where it is admittedly
necessary.
We hear of a second class, made up of those who know the facts
in our social problems accurately enough, but persist in taking a
view of them which holds either that they are not problems at all
or at least not social problems altogether, and in as far as social
problems, incapable of being solved. This view persists in placing
the blame for our social problems upon general human conditions,
which we cannot control, on the one hand, and upon the deliberate
Copyright. 1915. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. CII. IO
146 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW [Nov.,
conduct of men and women on the other, rather than upon the
social institutions by which life is regulated and social order is
maintained. The first class is negative and uninformed. It offers
obstacles to progress, which are the more serious because among its
members much social prestige is coupled with far-reaching ignor-
ance of social processes and social life. The second class is
uninformed and powerful. It is guided by particular interpreta-
tions of social conditions which lead them to see little justice in re-
form activities, and much safety for progress in letting things alone.
We hear of a third class, composed of those who are well in-
formed, who place a distinctive interpretation on the facts and
processes of modern life, which arouses their sympathy, stirs them
to action, and drives them into reform effort. The members of this
last class are marked by an acute social sympathy, and a driving
impulse to serve the common good, and a peculiar susceptibility
to idealism which rouses energy into vehement action. Here we
find our typical reformer. The first of the three classes mentioned
is, in fact, if not in intention, conservative. The second class is
conservative in both fact and in intention. The third class fur-
nishes to us our radicals.
The terms " conservative " and " radical " are relative.
Speaking in a broad way, the conservative is the apologist of what
is, of institutions and relations as they stand. By temperament,
conviction and interest he dislikes change. He accepts it re-
luctantly and delays it as long as possible. The radical is the advo-
cate of change through temperament and ideals. Frequently by force
of self-interest, he seeks to change relations and institutions because
either he himself or those to whose welfare he is devoted, suffer
grievously in conditions as they are. One may reduce the differences
between the two to a simple psychological attitude toward change.
Taken in their sociological sense, the two terms are colorless.
They indicate broad tendencies which are universal, inevitable and
necessary in human society. When religion is fundamental in
social organization, conservative and radical tendencies will relate
primarily to the religious interests of society. This was the case,
for instance, throughout the thirteenth century when, under the
dominant Church, economic reform movements actually took on
color from heresy. Church authority was all-pervading. Any de-
mand for change involved in some way an attitude of rebellion
against doctrinal and social authority. In later centuries we used
the terms "whig" and "tory" to represent the conservative and radi-
1915.] THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW 147
cal tendencies as they related to political questions. In our day
problems of industrial justice are uppermost. The conservatives
and the radicals of whom we talk and think are they who favor or
resist change in industrial relations and institutions. In practice,
however, the terms conservative and radical take on much color and
feeling. The radical sees little good in the conservative, and vice
versa. Conservatism is good form and radicalism is bad form.
There are, of course, conservative radicals and radical conserva-
tives, because there are many degrees of intensity in the attitudes
which we may take toward social change.
The two tendencies differ in social philosophy, because their
ultimate understanding of human relations is not the same. They
differ in social policy, because their interpretations of social condi-
tions and processes are fundamentally unlike. They differ in
social ethics, because two mutually exclusive codes of ethics inspire
their standards and control their judgment. They differ in prac-
tical politics, because all of their emotional attitudes are at variance
concerning the limitations of human nature and of social institutions,
the role of idealism and the element of personal blame in the social
fortunes of the individual. In no other field of social action do
the differences between the two tendencies stand forth so clearly
as in the struggle for and against reform legislation. Here con-
crete issues draw out every feature of latent difference between
them. Conservatism is on the defensive, aiming to resist changes
in industrial and social relations, laws and institutions. When it
cannot hinder them, it delays them, and when delay is impossible
it fights to minimize their importance. On the other hand, radi-
calism is aggressive, positive and eager for change. It is dogged,
idealistic and self-sacrificing. A study of the contrasted attitudes
of the two is not without interest.
I.
Society is emerging out of an era of individualism which ex-
pected men and women to take care of themselves with little as-
sistance by law. Freedom of enterprise and of property, freedom
from all kinds of legal restraint, had been accepted as most con-
ducive to social welfare and individual happiness. But our problems
of social justice and of the social, industrial and cultural weakness
of vast numbers forced us to surrender that belief, and to enter
upon an era of extensive intervention by law in the interests of
148 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW [Nov.,
society at large and of the weaker classes in particular. We
measure progress now not by the amount of liberty that we enjoy,
but by the number of reform laws which we enact, all of which
in one way or another reduce the liberties that the stronger classes
enjoyed, and provide against the weakness to which the helpless
classes have been subjected.
Now, the individualistic philosophy that trusted liberty is excel-
lent for the shrewd, resourceful, talented and fortunate. These
thrive under it. It is discouraging for the awkward, timid, dull
and weak. The competitive struggle into which we resolved life
gave all of the advantages to the former, and heaped all dis-
advantages upon the latter. The struggle was unequal. It could not
but lead to colossal social injustice. Two kinds of problems de-
veloped. There was, on the one hand, too much strength and, on
the other, too much weakness. Strength of mind and culture, of
property, industrial authority and leadership, of political influence
and recognition and of social prestige was gradually concentrated
until all forms of social strength, except that of numbers, were as-
sembled among a relatively small social class. On the other hand,
the weakness of ignorance, inferior talent, low vitality, adverse
environment; the weakness of poverty and need, the weakness of
industrial dependence and political neglect, were compounded upon
the shoulders of vast numbers. Among these grave problems of
social injustice, serious obstacles to the spread of culture and
shameful defeat of the elementary claim of human life, appeared.
Society is attempting now so to curb social strength and so to re-
enforce social weakness as to find the pathway to happiness and
peace between those two extremes. Here lies the spirit no less than
the direction of effort of the entire modern reform movement.
The endeavor to curb the trusts, the railroads, the corporations and
individual employers and the owners of great property; the thou-
sand types of legislation in the interests of the weaker classes, are
merely efforts on the part of an awakened public to restore the
equilibrium of power in life which justice imperatively demands.
Conservatism is in substantial possession. It is strong because of
the inertia and indifference from which society must be aroused. It
has tremendous advantage in the fact of establishment. Conserva-
tism is the gainer from present conditions, traditions, institutions,
laws and relations. It has but to defend them as they are. It has the
advantage of enlisting in its service highest types of ability and
endless treasure. Radicalism in all of its stages, and in every
1915.] THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW 149
variety of its spirit, fights to change now one condition, now another
in seeking to reestablish the lost equilibrium. The two tendencies
are at odds in temperament, in attitudes, in mental processes and
in interpretations. The differences between them may be set forth
readily by tracing the natural history of a reform law.
II.
Laws are remedial. They do not anticipate abuses. Rather
they remedy them. Political instinct tells us that institutions
operate usually by force of elements outside of themselves. In
other words, the social order is maintained by many social forces,
among which political and legal institutions are numbered. A
property system, for instance, serves social justice not by and of
itself, but by virtue of the honesty and integrity of men who respect
property rights, by virtue of culture, public opinion and character,
all of which, taken in conjunction with property institutions, serve
the interests of justice. A ballot system insures purity of the ballot,
not by and of itself, but through the conscience, the public spirit and
the intelligent citizenship of voters. A state as such prospers not
by force of its institutions alone, but through the help of agencies
which it takes for granted, but which it cannot control. Religion,
moral training, public opinion, custom, social sympathy, high
standards of honor, and a keen sense of duty. are not written into
constitutions nor enacted into legal statutes. Yet it is by virtue of
these and related social forces that a state serves justice and ministers
unto progress. Consistently then, we must hold that the failure
of institutions, such as private property, the ballot and even the
state itself, will be due not alone to defects in these institutions,
but to the failure of the other social forces which are necessary to
the success of political institutions. Differences concerning this
elementary truth of political science separate the conservative and
the radical at the outset.
The conservative places supreme emphasis upon these related
social forces, blaming them and not our political and legal insti-
tutions for social problems. He minimizes the role of the insti-
tution, and emphasizes the role of these non-institutional forces in
the maintenance of the social order. Hence in the face of abuses
which he cannot deny, he merely discriminates in locating blame.
On the other hand, the radical mind underrates the power of these
non-institutional forces, or, surrendering hope in them, lays in-
150 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW [Nov.,
continent emphasis upon political and legal institutions. When it
becomes powerful enough to create issues, it locates the battle line
against conservatism at the doorstep of our leaders and institutions.
Conservatism is compelled to accept battle here. Let us set aside,
then, this fundamental difference in political instinct between the
two, and study the fortunes of war as they appear in the struggle
for and against reform legislation.
In the nature of the case, no serious demand for reform legis-
lation will be heard until an abuse is fairly widespread and recog-
nized as in conflict with approved social ideals. There will be no
campaign for the protection of children in industry until large num-
bers of them are found to be suffering through the exactions of
employers, and it becomes known that their condition is in tragic
conflict with the ideals for child life to which our civilization holds.
There will be no endeavor to define the rights of women in in-
dustry, and to protect them against its peculiar menaces, until the
normal human rights of many women and many homes are violated
in industry, and this violation is made known to the public in a way
that seizes imagination. There will be no impressive movement
to improve the conditions of the laboring men until the public is
forced to understand that the conditions in which they work,
violate in one or in many ways, the standards of humanity, cul-
ture and justice to which our civilization is pledged. At times the
complaints of these suffering classes will come from their own
ranks. Often, however, it will come not from the victims, but
from others who have leisure and power, and who are drawn by
social sympathy to bestir themselves and awaken the public to
evident abuses. The early steps in movements of this kind will
relate primarily to a propaganda of facts. Efforts will be made
to force upon the public exact knowledge of conditions. News-
papers, magazines, lectures and other kinds of scholarly activity
will be utilized in this early attempt to educate the public. Organi-
zations spring up, means are gathered, leaders appear, definite
methods of campaign are adopted, and the slow work of gaining
the imagination of the public is undertaken. After a sufficiently
long and arduous campaign, results appear. Great quantities of
literature are distributed. Teachers in colleges and universities
commence to take notice of the situation, churchmen gradually turn
their minds toward the problems in question, in so far at least, as
they have a moral bearing. Organizations of various kinds express
sympathy and offer support. Political parties gradually absorb
1915-] THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW 151
the awakened sentiment. Declarations appear in their platforms,
and candidates for office pledge themselves to the enactment of
remedial legislation. In this interesting and highly complex man-
ner the spirit of reform is enabled to knock at the door of our
legislatures and demand admission.
Meantime, conservatism does not remain idle. In the person
of the particular type of employer, or any other type of leader
whose interests are most directly affected, it inaugurates a counter
propaganda of information whose purpose it is to hinder the radical
from winning the sympathy of the public. Conservatism utilizes
the newspaper and the magazine, the lecture bureau, and the plan
of campaign with no less ingenuity and earnestness than does the
radical. After sifting the confusing discussions at this stage of
the process of conflict between conservatism and radicalism, we find
that usually the differences between the two run as follows. As-
sertion and denial of facts appear first. Where facts are admitted
the conservative will charge exaggeration as to the extent of them.
He will differ with the radical concerning the interpretation of
them, the standards by which they are to be judged, the nature of
the remedy which is desired, and the moral and social philosophy
out of which the standards of justice and equity are derived.
Battles occur at everyone of these points, and every trick of war-
fare will be found in the methods of the two contending forces.
The first victory of conservatism comes in the long delay that it
can force upon the radical propaganda. The work of winning an
indifferent public is tedious and costly. All that the conserva-
tive must do is hold what he has, while the radical has a world
to overcome and conquer. In the long run, conservative opposi-
tion so reduces the reforms that are affected, and radical energy
so stimulates the appetite for reform, that its real accomplishments
in legislation never bring the contentment that is expected, and
never impart any sense of finality to what is accomplished. How-
ever, conservatism is always losing and radicalism is always
winning. While this, that or another measure proposed by radi-
calism may be effectively disposed of at an early date, there is no
time when radicalism is not a vital issue before our modern legis-
latures, and when one measure or another is not approaching its
final victory. As life is organized with us, some political party
will take up sympathetically the reform measure when it reaches
the halls of a legislature. Here we may follow it to new vicissi-
tudes and grave doubts.
152 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW [Nov.,
Naturally the constitution of a legislature will give direction
to the fate of reform laws which are proposed. If radicalism is in
control, their progress is simple and direct. If, however, as is
usually the case, conservatism of one kind or another is in control,
the struggle is renewed. When a bill is introduced into a legis-
lature, it is referred usually to its proper committee. This com-
mittee studies its provisions, arranges for hearings at which all
parties in interest may appear. Witnesses pro and con may be
summoned, or they may appear on their own initiative. After a
reasonable time, hearings are concluded. The committee takes up
the detailed study of the proposed bill, and finally makes its report
to the lawmaking body as a whole. The committees may be so con-
stituted by intention as to preserve a conservative majority, which
will report adversely upon proposed reforms. One favorite method
is to kill the bill by never making any report on it. If, however,
its advocates are insistent and powerful, a committee may make
an adverse report, which practically removes it from consideration
altogether. Or it may make a favorable report, but the bill may be
so modified in committee as to disappoint, if not altogether to
defeat, the hopes of those who champion it. Assuming, however,
that the bill survives the committee and is reported favorably, there
remain the vicissitudes of debate in both houses of the legislature,
and the thousand far sighted tricks of procedure by which a clever
antagonist can block progress most effectively.
However, if the best of good faith were to mark all of these
committee proceedings, and a reform bill were reported favorably
with serious intention, difficulty might still remain because of the
hopelessness of arriving at a final judgment of the facts. Modern
industrial relations are so complicated that the slightest change in
the industrial process may have most far-reaching consequences.
The making of one change may entail a dozen others. Even when
we give credit to our legislators for the best faith in the world,
they will be seriously disturbed in conscience no less than in judg-
ment because of the difficulty of reaching a final decision in the
face of the complications of industrial life. One of the peculiar
elements that will enter at this point, is the fact that very fre-
quently the victims whom it is desired to serve by passing the law
will be brought in as witnesses against it. When, for instance,
after many years of fighting, the legislature of Illinois proposed
to pass a law limiting the work of women, it was nothing short of
disconcerting to find that the conservatives brought up as wit-
1915.] TH E NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW 153
nesses many working women who declared that the enactment of
the law would result in serious harm to them, and they protested
against it.
At this point, the interests of our political party system ap-
pear. We have government through parties. Our political think-
ing and policies are formulated by two or at most three parties.
They and their policies limit imagination for most of us, and
predetermine our loyalties in spite of us. Now, every political
party aims to protect its own continuity and power. A dominant
party will favor and promote only such reform legislation as
promise power and victory to the party. Heretofore, when we
spoke of a party we meant a machine, and when we spoke of a
machine we had in mind a boss. Political bosses have been able
in the past so to impose their wills upon legislatures and parties,
so to control the formation of legislative committees and direct
the current of debate, that only what they willed became law.
Hence the power of the bosses conditioned the prospects of reform
legislation. Since the boss was usually highly conservative and
reform legislation was highly radical, the antipathy between the
two was manifest. If we notice with grateful hearts in these days
definite prospects of the elimination of the boss and his machine
from our party system, we have to thank neither for it. The
recklessness with which the power of the two was abused when
seen in the light of the rising social idealism which has marked
our recent years, could not fail to bring on what has happened;
a determined and settled intention to overthrow that kind of
tyranny, and give us a democracy in fact that would include greater
and more delicate control of party and of the whole lawmaking
process. The demand for initiative, referendum and recall that
has survived every form of attack, is a definite tribute to the serv-
ice that radicalism has performed in our national development.
After all, progressivism is simply radicalism well dressed. It is
now a spirit rather than a platform, and it is found scattered
throughout all parties, being no longer the possession of any-
one. The spirit of radicalism has freed the American mind, to an
extent, from the tyranny of party, and awakened it to a realization
of its powers and duties to the nation rather than to the party.
Democracy has instinctive fear of power, because power is
selfish and expansive. Hood once said in a letter to a friend
that his ideal of government was " an angel and a despotism.' 5
Democracy is unwilling to believe that there are any angels in
154 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW [Nov.,
public life, although the democracy that we call Socialism may
believe that angels are easily produced. Believing in no angels in
public life, democracy is unwilling to bear with despotism. It
fears concentrated and irresponsible power. This fear led democ-
racy to the wonderful device of divided powers. The division of
government into executive, legislative and judicial departments is
one of the great achievements of all political history. Power when
divided is quite as jealous and expansive as power undivided.
When power is divided, however, its very faults become the safe-
guard of our liberties. Each of the three departments watches the
other two with jealousy, and resents every invasion of jurisdiction.
Now, when the three departments of government watch one another
carefully and resent abuses of power, the welfare of the public is
fairly safeguarded.
They who represent the three departments of government are
selected by different processes, and very of ten' in our political vicis-
situdes they represent widely different attitudes toward conserva-
tism and radicalism. This fact has important bearing on the pro-
cess of reform legislation. A conservative senate can defeat the
action of a radical house and a radical executive. A radical exec-
utive can nullify much of the work of a conservative legislature.
Conservative courts can undo much that is accomplished by progres-
sive or radical legislatures and executives. This complication works
usually to the advantage of conservatism, and to the disadvantage of
radicalism, in the history of reform legislation. Just as the ca-
pacity of a railroad to handle traffic is measured by the slowest
mile in the system, likewise the capacity of a government to enact
reform legislation is limited by the most conservative of the three
branches of government whose action is essential in the enactment
of laws. Now, the courts are the most conservative of the three
branches of our government. We live in a transitional period,
when new problems and new intricacies of social relationship
present unforeseen difficulties to our lawmaking bodies. They
make necessary new applications of old principles of law. They
make inevitable divergent interpretations of existing law. They
raise up contending social interests, whose conflicts intensify atti-
tudes for and against laws at every step. Hence it is that every
new reform law runs the risk of being challenged as to consti-
tutionality. This throws the ultimate determination of the fate
of such laws into the hands of the courts. Thus it has happened
that we have been able to write into our statutes, as of permanent
I9I5-] THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW 155
value only that quantity of reform legislation which approved it-
self to our courts. Radicalism has been forced, therefore, to fight
against all but hopeless odds. It has repeatedly spent years in
working in the interests of reform legislation. It has engaged the
serious sympathy of vast numbers of men and women, and has
invited unselfish effort and sacrifice which did not fall short of the
heroic, and after its first triumph in securing the enactment of
law, it has seen the courts destroy its work of years by the stroke
of a pen.
It would be unfair to insinuate that the conservatism of the
courts has been an unmixed evil. It might be better to say that
it has been a mixed good. Radicalism, on the whole, is lacking
in political sagacity and in those subtle forms of self-control which
respect the slow and tedious processes of natural laws, and dis-
cipline the vehemence of enthusiastic feeling. There has been and
there is recklessness with some dishonesty and noble idealism
among radicals. They have resorted to the tricks of political cam-
paigning perhaps as often as their conservative enemies. Many of
the laws that radicalism would have enacted pay no attention to the
processes of social growth, to the inherent limitations of social
life, to the intricacies of industrial organization and the delicate
equilibrium of a thousand industrial forces, or to the extreme diffi-
culty of controlling the factors upon which institutions and laws
depend. To the extent, therefore, to which the courts have thrown
out ill-considered reform legislation, they have performed a service
to progress which it would be difficult to overrate. But after
straining off in this manner the froth on the surface of reform,
we find that conservatism has often led the courts to declare
unconstitutional laws that satisfied every objective standard of jus-
tive and every reasonable demand of political prudence. Some-
times this has occurred because of the mental bias of the courts,
of the bias of class prejudice or interest. Sometimes it has oc-
curred because the courts have been compelled, by virtue of their
oath, to interpret traditional constitutions in one way when their
hearts and their instincts of justice pointed elsewhere. However,
a vast quantity of reform legislation has survived all of these
vicissitudes as some soldiers survive the dangers of all battles. Let
us assume that a reform law has been enacted, and that either its
constitutionality is not challenged or, if challenged, it is sustained
by the courts. There arises now the problem of interpretation.
Industrial and social facts are highly complex. It is impossible
156 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW [Nov.,
to foresee in detail the course of them, and hence it is impossible to
foresee with reasonable accuracy the consequences of the applica-
tion of a new law which disturbs the industrial or social balance.
The enactment of any important law is nothing less than a leap
in the dark. Honest terror of the unknown and unforeseen does
much to encourage conservatism in its reserve and caution. Fre-
quently, difficulty of interpretation is due to looseness of language,
for many of our lawmakers are not noted as masters of English. 1
But even where the meaning of a law is evident and its applica-
tion is reasonably easy, its efficiency in accomplishing the reform
intended suffers further discounting. Many of those affected by
the law will deny that it has any power over conscience. They
will violate it without compunction. Violation may be either of
the spirit or of the letter of the law. Many of those who are
affected by it are governed by the mental habit of defeating the
law, preferably by legal methods. Strong corporations and so-
called captains of industry and kings of finance will not scruple to
pay high salaries to the very highest types of legal talent, whose
business it is to find a way of evading the law without incurring
risk. The methods resorted to are so ingenious and often so suc-
cessful that much delay is occasioned for the reform at which a
law is aimed. Again, there are certain forms of violation of
J The difficulty referred to is described as follows in a brief of the Solicitor-
General of the United States submitted to the Supreme Court at its October
term in 1912:
" Nothing is better known than that many, very many, statutes are drawn
and passed with the most obvious evidences of haste, casual consideration, lack
of knowledge of constitutional principles, ignorance of many of the facts to
which the statute will apply, or of the consequences which will flow from its
operation in quarters its makers never knew existed.
" If, therefore, the language used in a statute were always given its plain,
simple, obvious meaning, and so applied to all the facts to which it was applicable,
one or more of three results would frequently follow, to wit : Either it would
be unconstitutional or it would amount to nothing and accomplish nothing, or it
would achieve results so absurd or burdensome as to demonstrate that no such
intention could have prompted its passage. And so long as our laws are passed
in the hasty and unconsidered way that they are, just so long will one of the most
difficult tasks of our courts be to construe them, and thereby to give some effect
to them without transgressing constitutional restrictions, and yet accomplish as
near as may be that which its authors intended.
" It is no easy task. It is never easy to know what another intended save by
the language used ; and yet if that language implies the exercise of a power not
possessed, or leads to results so absurd or unreasonable as to create the belief that
no such effect was intended, it becomes the duty of the court not to adhere to
the letter and destroy the spirit, nor, on the other hand, to reject it all as mean-
ingless or violative of constitutional restrictions, but to strive as best it may to
give such a meaning as can fairly and reasonably be done without substituting its
own will for that of the authors, and yet give effect to the instrument."
1915.] THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW 157
the law, of its spirit at least, which can be seen but not proven.
For instance, the law may require that a company pay wages every
two weeks, if the men wish it. This law deprives the employer of
the use of his capital, and causes much extra administration ex-
pense. He will pay every two weeks, all of those who ask it.
If, then, when times are slack he lays off those who demand their
wages every two weeks, and favors those who ask them but once
a month, he violates the spirit but not the letter of law. Further-
more, where the law is violated frankly, legal procedure is so
cumbersome, delays are so provoking, and extravagant attention
to highly technical points is so disconcerting, that the outcome of
prosecution of offenders against reform legislation is made ex-
tremely doubtful. The federal government has had rich experience
in this field in its attempt to convict under its own reform leg-
islation.
Lax enforcement of the law by officials, failure of legislatures
to give sufficient appropriations for the equipment of inspection de-
partments, above all, the indifference of the victims whom the law
aims to serve, and their very connivance to defeat the purposes of
the law, are factors which discount still further the social effi-
ciency of an average piece of reform legislation. These last-
named factors are powerful, because public opinion is intermittent
and fitful. It forgets the moral enthusiasm of yesterday in the
distractions and diversions of to-day. It lulls its conscience into
slumber just as soon as radicalism diminishes its enthusiasm, and
demanding new objects of attention constantly, it lacks the sense
of continuing care for the common welfare without which so much
effort is vain. Thus it happens that the maximum amount of
reform legislation which will be enacted, will rarely be more than
the absolute minimum that an awakened social conscience demands.
And the minimum of reform legislation actually enacted and in-
terpreted according to intention is so much discounted in the man-
ner hinted at, that its net social efficiency is but a fraction of what
had been hoped for by its idealistic champions.
III.
While the net accomplishments of reform legislation are much
less than appearances would indicate, nevertheless agitation for
social reform of all kinds is one of the most powerful agencies
of general education now at work. The impossible ends, and the
158 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW [Nov.,
impossible means which are so often urged by reform, and are
so intensely believed in, accustom us to the charm and the danger
of the impossible, and train us in the safest methods of dealing
with it. This is undoubtedly a distinct service. The insistence
on idealism so characteristic of vigorous reform movements, as-
sures precisely the medicine that conservatism needs to save it
against its particular tendency toward selfishness and narrow
vision. The splendid insistence on ethical standards found through-
out these movements, counterbalances, as nothing else could, the
domination of morality by material interests to which conservatism
is prone. The superb insistence on the common welfare as a
legitimate interest of each person which is characteristic of re-
form, is the only possible corrective of the individualism that
exalts personal interest into supremacy, and teaches no loyalty to
the common weal. We owe much to radicalism and reform. If
the modern social conscience has been sharpened, we may not deny
to radicalism its share in that achievement.
Ordinarily when conservatism and radicalism deal with each
other, each is inclined to underrate the virtues of the other, the
natural sources of its action, and to overrate its mistakes and limita-
tions. Each of the two tendencies endures only by reason of the
honesty that is in it. Both of them have their place in the
mechanism of nature, and we know of no substitute for either.
This habit which leads each to see iniquity and danger in the other,
gives to both false attitudes toward life, and out of these false at-
titudes results much of the stupidity and blindness for which both
may be fairly charged. It is worth while to note the following
words uttered at the recent New York Constitutional Convention
by one of the most conservative leaders in public life: "There
never was a reform in administration in this world which did not
have to make its way against the strong feeling of good honest men
concerned in existing methods of administration, and who saw
nothing wrong. Never. It is no impeachment to a man's honesty
or his integrity that he thinks the methods that he is familiar with
and in which he is engaged are all right. But you cannot make
any improvement in this world without overriding the satisfaction
that men have in things as they are, and of which they are a con-
tented and successful part."
Both conservatism and radicalism are subjected to certain
natural processes which hamper them. Conservatism is the vic-
tim of divided counsel, as radicalism is. There is no time when
1915.] THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A REFORM LAW 159
all of the wisdom of conservatism is agreed on any measure of
social policy, just as there is no time when all of the danger of
radicalism is concentrated at any one point. Leaders clash with
leaders. Factions dispute with factions. Judgment contends with
judgment at every step. Yet out of the turmoil and worry of the
conflict of these two fundamental tendencies in life, humanity is
enabled to take certain though slow steps toward the ideals of
social justice which it holds in reverent attachment. The \vorld is
moving. It is moving in the direction in which radicalism points.
Radicalism triumphant becomes conservatism, and the new conser-
vatism resists the new radicalism as it appears. Fear of conserva-
tism led the founders of the Republic to give us divided powers of
government, and to make the constitution capable of amendment.
Fear of radicalism led them to make amendment difficult. The
late Senator Dolliver remarked on one occasion : " The chief utility
of the constitution of the United States is to prevent what most of
the people want done." This feeling has been so widely shared
throughout the United States, that radicalism has succeeded in
awakening in the minds of the American public the solemn and
serious purpose of securing greater control of the lawmaking pro-
cess, and of making even our constitutions more responsive to
popular feeling. So long as the law of action and reaction holds
true in social life, we are safe in blaming conservatism for per-
mitting conditions to arise which lend telling plausibility to the
far-reaching charges that radicalism makes against it. Americans
are now witnessing in the short ballot movement, steps back to-
ward deliberate concentration of power, which they have hereto-
fore feared. Conservatism seems to favor it more than radicalism.
Both will watch it as the harbinger of a new order, whose spirit
cannot be foretold.
TO THE THIRD GENERATION.
BY LEIGH GORDON GILTNER.
I.
EAN will be ready in ten minutes, Frank five with
my help. If you'll excuse me? "
" Sure, Avis. Run along." He glanced up at
the tall clock on the stairs. " Jove ! I'd no idea
it was so late. Tell Jean to speed up 'fraid we'll
miss the first act."
"Don't worry! I'll have Jean ready in a jiffy. Just make
yourself comfortable; we shan't be long."
Not unwillingly D^n forth sank into the big, roomy, leather
chair before the glowing gas logs in the reception hall. He was
tired more tired than he had realized. He had been out in his
car all day, displaying desirable real estate to captious purchasers;
had gotten in late, snatched a hasty dinner, and chanced arrest for
speeding in an effort to be on time for a theatre engagement with
his fiancee. He must have drifted into a doze as he waited, for
his next conscious impression was of hearing his own voice say
vaguely : " Eh ? What ? Oh, I beg pardon ! " to Avis Clayton
whom he found beside him.
" Quick work, Frank ! " she smiled as he rose a bit dazedly.
" Just seven minutes since I went upstairs. And, behold ! "
Jean, a vision of mist and moonlight in her filmy gown, was
coming down the stairs. On the instant he was wide awake, his
senses exquisitely alive to the girl's delicate blonde beauty. For a
moment he stood gazing at the pretty picture she made; then
glanced deprecatingly down at his own street costume.
"Jupiter!" he said, "I'd no idea you'd doll up like this,
Jean. 'Fraid I shan't 'be in the picture.' Didn't get in till seven-
forty no time to change. It's a twenty-minutes drive across town
with the best of luck."
" Don't give it a thought, Frank. It doesn't matter."
" Which means, being interpreted," Avis interpolated, " that
in Jean's sight you're 'beautiful in any guise.' But you musn't
linger you'll be late as it is. Hope you'll like the play and have
a wonderful evening. Good-night ! "
1915.] TO THE THIRD GENERATION 161
The curtain was going down on the second act when Dan forth,
putting up a casual hand to his tie, made a disquieting discovery.
" Why," he gasped, " my stickpin's gone must have lost it."
"Oh, I'm sorry, Frank! Not?" He nodded.
"That one, of course. Sure fire! Always the thing one
prizes most. It's of no great value only a half carat but it
was Dad's last gift, you know."
" I know," the girl said sympathetically, " but you're sure to
find it."
Immediate search, however, failed to reveal it.
" Don't bother," Danforth said, " I'll speak to the head usher,
and if it's in the house I'll have it to-morrow. It's probably in the
car, or possibly I may have lost it at the Claytons."
Jean's brow contracted faintly.
" I half hope not, Frank," she said hesitantly, " I don't like to
speak of it, because I'm not sure, but I'm afraid Mrs. Clayton's
maid is not quite er reliable. I've lost a lot of things since I've
been in the house little things mostly, just gloves and handkerchiefs
and trinkets. But yesterday some money ten dollars was taken
from my purse while I was seeing callers."
" Have you mentioned this to Mrs. Clayton or Avis ? "
" No. Ellen has been so obliging I hate to accuse her; and
it seems ungracious for a guest to complain almost a reflection
on their hospitality. I'm going home in a few days anyhow, and
I'll just be more careful."
Danforth looked thoughtful for a moment.
"If your pin " Jean was beginning.
"Forget it," he said; then, "it musn't spoil our evening,"
and both, accordingly, strove to dismiss the matter from their
thoughts. But
"About your scarfpin " Jean again suggested as Danforth later
made his adieu in the friendly shadows of the Clayton piazza.
" It's sure to turn up to-morrow," he insisted.
" I'll speak to Mrs. Clayton, and we'll look for it everywhere.
You were only in the hall, weren't you? I do hope we'll
find it."
Jean made it a rule always to conform to the habits of the
household in which she chanced to be visiting, so, at rather a
heroically early hour, she joined Avis and her parents in the break-
fast room next morning.
.Somehow Jean had never been able to bring herself to care
VOL. C1L IJ
162 TO THE THIRD GENERATION [Nov.,
at all for her host. There was something specious about him she
vaguely felt; he was too jovial; too florid; even something too
cordial at times. And one could not visit in Wilmington without
hearing hints as to the sharp practices which had laid the foundation
for the fortune which a passion for speculation had gradually dis-
sipated. Jean could not help seeing that the Claytons were in
straitened circumstances, and Avis' palpable poverty and patent
makeshifts stabbed the generous heart of her guest, who did for her
all that the girl's pride would permit. Of Avis herself Jean was
genuinely fond, and she frankly deified Avis' mother, a beautiful
woman with the face of a Madonna.
" Well, bonnie Jean," Breck Clayton greeted as she entered
the room, "how was the show last night? Have a great little
time?"
" Really," Jean answered, " I hardly know what the play was
about."
" Natural," smiled her host, " in the circumstances."
" Because," she went on unheeding, " at the end of the second
act Mr. Danforth discovered the loss of his scarfpin his father's
last gift to him. The officials at the theatre promised to make
thorough search of the house ; but meantime, Mrs. Clayton, do you
mind Ellen's taking a look for it in the hall? "
The girl's glance turned upon her hostess' face as she spoke.
It struck her that Mrs. Clayton had paled suddenly; there was a
strained expression in her eyes as she answered :
" We'll make a careful search at once. I'll speak to Ellen."
" Hope he finds it," Mr. Clayton was speaking. " It couldn't
perhaps have been lifted in the crowd passing in? Lots of 'dips '
always round, you know."
Jean shook her head.
" I hardly think so. We were so late that the foyer was quite
deserted not a soul in sight. And besides the pin had a safety
attachment. I don't quite see how he could have lost it."
Though Mrs. Clayton and both girls joined the maid in an
exhaustive search, the missing pin was not forthcoming. The in-
sistent ringing of the telephone presently interrupted the quest.
" Any luck, Avis ? " Danf orth's voice inquired. " I've been
through my car, and the manager at the Lyric telephones there's
nothing doing."
" I'm sorry, Frank. We haven't found it."
" Well, don't worry. It can't be helped. I regret it of course,
1915-] TO THE THIRD GENERATION 163
but we musn't let it spoil the last days of Jean's stay. See you this
evening, Avis. Good-bye."
Throughout the morning Mrs. Clayton kept up the fruitless
search. At luncheon she was so pale and distrait that Jean was
moved to remonstrance.
" Please don't trouble further, Mrs. Clayton. Frank probably
lost the pin somewhere yesterday and failed to miss it. Anyhow
you've done everything possible. Let's just forget about it. I'm
sure Frank wouldn't want you to worry so."
Mrs. Clayton smiled faintly, and, for the moment, gave over
the search. But that afternoon when she had seen the two girls
off to a card party, Marcia Clayton went up to her daughter's room
and closed and locked the door.
The next morning as the maid swept the piazza steps, she
suddenly paused, stooped, picked up a glittering object lying in plain
view just beside the asphalt pavement leading from the house to the
street, and ran breathlessly indoors.
" Mrs. Clayton, ma'am," she panted, " is this mebbe the pin
we've been lookin' for? "
Mrs. Clayton's hand was not quite steady as sfre took the
trinket.
" Why, thank you, Ellen, yes," she said after a moment, " I'm
sure this is Mr. Danforth's. I'm so glad ! Thank you very much,
and Ellen " as the girl turned to leave the room " Mr. Danforth
is offering a reward for the return of the pin. But I'd rather you
didn't take it. I'll make it up to you myself, if you'll refuse."
" Sure, ma'am, its no reward I'm wanting. I'd not be taking
pay for a thing like that! It's glad I am, ma'am, to find the pin
for the gentleman, but I'll not take his money."
As, that afternoon, Frank Danforth swung his shining sixty
through one of the city's parks with Jean at his side, he said
thoughtfully :
" Jean, dear, I'm glad that pin turned up for more reasons
than one. I didn't say anything about it at the time perhaps
I shouldn't speak of it now, but funny thing! I had an odd im-
pression when I woke there in the hall the other night of some-
one bending over me as I slept. I think that's what woke me you
know how the sense of a human presence near one sometimes will.
I didn't think much of it at the time, but later it occurred to me."
Jean laughed.
" Why, of course. It was only Avis. She went down a little
1 64 TO THE THIRD GENERATION [Nov.,
ahead of me. Ellen wouldn't have dared. And anyhow the pin
was lost, not stolen. So you see ? "
Danforth did not feel it necessary to mention that he had not
considered the maid in connection with his loss.
II.
" I'm relieved to hear that Avis has broken her engagement,"
Mrs. John Clayton was saying to her sister-in-kw. " Indeed I
stopped off here to-day to talk to her about it. I assure you,
Marcia, I'd no idea of Geoff's real character or I'd never have sanc-
tioned it."
" You mean," Marcia Clayton asked slowly, " that Lieutenant
Stuart was not a suitable parti? "
The sudden breaking off of her daughter's engagement to the
young army officer, whom she had met in Bolton where he was
visiting his parents en route to the Philippines, had been a grievous
disappointment to the mother.
" I mean that he is a thief ! " the other said bluntly. " Just
that, Marcia. I believe in calling a spade a spade."
"A thief, Emily? It can't be! Avis thought him so
thoroughly fine."
" So did we," said Emily Clayton grimly. " I give you my
word, Marcia, I was never more surprised in my life. Why, I've
known his people for years, and Geoff seemed such a straightfor-
ward sort I simply couldn't believe it when the theft was traced to
him."
Marcia Clayton shot a swift glance at her daughter. The girl
was sitting at the window, her face turned away. She made no
sign of having heard.
" Perhaps that was why Avis broke the engagement," the
mother said, " she didn't give her reason. Just what was the na-
ture of the theft Emily?"
" Didn't Avis tell you ? Well, I don't wonder. I suppose one
isn't very proud of a lover like that. And it wasn't at all in
character. We'd known the boy all his life ; John loved him like
a son, and the thing was a blow to us. One of Clarice's rings a
valuable solitaire disappeared. Our servants were thoroughly
reliable had been with us for years so we were inclined to think,
at first, that it was merely mislaid. But when it wasn't found,
John put a private detective on the case, with the result that he
1915.] TO THE THIRD GENERATION 165
learned that Geoff Stuart had pawned the ring in Chicago on his
way to join his command."
" It doesn't seem possible ! "
" We had proof positive, Marcia. It was a great shock;
Geoff had been like a member of our household, and we were de-
voted to him. We decided to hush the thing up for the sake of
his family. But of course Avis couldn't marry him. Think of
it, Marcia. A thief! "
That night when their guest had gone, Marcia Clayton sought
her daughter's room.
" Avis," she said quietly. The girl faced her, half-sullen, half-
defiant.
" I I didn't take it, mother," she said. " Why should you
suspect me? I tell you I didn't do it! "
Marcia Clayton eyed her daughter sternly, compellingly.
" Don't lie to me, Avis," she said quietly. " It's no use. I
know"
She did indeed know to her lasting humiliation. Avis' weak-
ness was the sorrow of her life. It may have been a throwback.
The peculiar warp in the girl's moral fibre was perhaps atavistic,
an unhallowed heritage from some buccaneering ancestor of a
century gone, though a more direct relation of cause and effect
might have been traced in the predatory methods of her father.
The mother, herself the soul of honor, had not even remotely
suspected the child's weakness, until, some eight years earlier, when
revelation of the most concrete kind came with the disappearance
of a little hoard of gift coins Mrs. Clayton was saving toward the
purchase of a coveted silver tea-service.
" You'd better be askin' yer daughter," the Irish maid, feeling
and resenting an unworded suspicion, had flared, " sure it's no tale-
bearer I am, mam, but me charickter's me all, and I'll sthand for
no refactions on ut! Ask Miss Avis, mam, how she kirn by the
money for threats and throlley rides and pitchur shows and prismts
for her schoolmates; ask her where she got the foine gold locket
for her tachur and the silk umbrilla for the principal at Christmas ;
ask"
The defensive mother instinct, instantly on the alert, saved the
situation.
" That will do, Nora. Miss Avis probably borrowed the
money and forgot to mention it. It's quite all right."
In a flash, full realization of the truth had pierced like a
166 TO THE THIRD GENERATION [Nov.,
sword thrust a percipience dulled by maternal fondness. She
marveled at her own blindness. Memories of innumerable petty
peculations, of frequent " gifts " and " finds " which she had as-
cribed to Avis' popularity or luck rose to confirm it. Her only
daughter, through some trick of heredity or some unaccountable
moral quirk, was a thief !
From that moment life became a horror to scrupulously hon-
orable Marcia Clayton. The subject was never again mentioned
between her and Avis after that first dreadful day of discovery.
Sheer shame made her keep the secret even from her husband, whose
personal integrity she had never questioned. She reproached her-
self with criminal carelessness in not soorrer having discovered Avis'
weakness; and it became her life-mission to rid the girl of her
fault, while concealing its manifestation from the world.
Articles which mysteriously disappeared were as mysteriously
restored; or where this was impossible, restitution in some form
was invariably made. Marcia Clayton developed the keenness of
the sleuth and the cunning of a Machiavelli in saving the girl from
the consequences*of her fault. And though no word was spoken
between them, Avis knew that her mother watched her unceasingly.
Now, under her accusing gaze, the girl suddenly broke down.
" I I did take it, mother," she sobbed. " Clarice tempted
me she was always leaving her jewels about she had so many I
thought she'd never miss it at least for a long time. So I
took it."
" And Geoffrey Stuart"
" I gave it to him, mother, the night he left, and asked him
to pawn it for me. I told him I'd tired of it, and wanted the
money for my bridge debts. He urged a loan, but I wouldn't take
it. So he finally consented and later sent me the money."
"Why did you do this, Avis? If you needed money why
didn't you write me ? "
" I I don't quite know why I did it, mother," the girl fal-
tered. " Clarice's set spent so much ; there was bridge every night,
and I always lost. I hated to ask for more money, knowing how
how things were here at home. So
" So you stole and allowed Geoffrey to suffer for your sin? "
" Don't be too hard on me, mother," the girl sobbed, " I've
written to Uncle John telling him the truth and exonerating Geoff.
But, mother, I can't send it I can't! "
" I'm afraid you must," the mother answered grimly, " it's not
1915.] TO THE THIRD GENERATION 167
a question of your feelings, but of clearing Geoffrey Stuart's name.
Was that why you broke with him, Avis ? "
" Yes, I couldn't marry him, mother, after this. Besides
there's someone else."
"Young Wickliffe?"
" Yes, mother, I didn't realize it, but I care for him oh, in-
finitely more than I cared for Geoff. And I couldn't marry Geoff,
no matter how I loved him, with this between us. It's Robert,
mother."
" Avis " sternly " do you think you've the right to marry
a man like Robert Wickliffe you, a thief? " The girl shrank as
from a blow. " Bob is the finest, most upright man I know
scrupulous even in the smallest things. And do you think he'd
care to marry you if he knew you are what you are, Avis a coward
and a thief?"
The girl attempted no defence. The mother who had
hitherto shielded her, now called her a common criminal!
" You must send this letter to your uncle at once," Mrs. Clay-
ton pronounced sentence, " and you must write to Geoffrey Stuart
the whole truth. And if Robert Wickliffe asks you to marry him
he must know of your failing."
" Mother," the girl cried, " mother do you want to wreck my
life? Think, mother. Geoff is far away in the Philippines; he'll
never know ; the matter has been hushed up and will be kept quiet
for his family's sake. Oh, mother I can't confess. If Robert even
guessed I'll promise, I'll try harder than ever before this won't
happen again. I'm sure Robert cares for me and I can't give him
up! Mother, let me have my chance! "
Even the Spartan mother is weak where her maternal affections
are involved. Marcia Clayton had always scorned falsehood and
deception to a degree unusual in her sex, the best of whom are
prone to justify occasional equivocation. She had believed her-
self an honorable woman, but she loved her daughter, and she
shrank from letting her brand herself a thief. She fought her
temptation long and hard, but in the end she yielded.
" Avis," she said at last, " I'll agree to this deception ; I'll
hide it even from your father so long as you keep your promise.
But at the first lapse I shall send this letter to Robert Wickliffe and
explain the circumstances. It is a bargain? "
And Avis, grasping desperately at straws, was only too glad
to make terms. -- -
i68 TO THE THIRD GENERATION [Nov.,
It is a question whether the potence of love or the power of
fear (for Avis knew her mother eminently capable of carrying out
her threat) wrought regeneration in the girl's character. Through-
out the year of her betrothal there was no slightest lapse. And
after her marriage the exaltation of supreme happiness seemed to
lift her above the sordid temptations of her youth.
When, less than a year after she married Robert Wickliffe,
news came to her of young Stuart's death in the distant tropic
islands, though she suffered agonies of remorse, she found that,
after the first shock of shame and contrition, she breathed more
freely. Stuart's death seemed somehow to obviate the necessity
for confession; she meant to make her life an expiation. In a
sense she did this. She developed, in time, into a woman of
wonderful balance and poise, efficient, generous, charitable, the best
of wives and tenderest of mothers. Her son and daughter re-
garded her as the ultimate of perfection, and her husband (now
Judge Wickliffe) deified her. She had emerged from the crucible
of suffering and remorse refined and purified, the pure metal alone
remaining.
Ill
" I've something to tell you, Mumsey."
Avis Wickliffe glanced at her daughter's fair, flushed face and
smiled.
" I think I can guess, dear," she said gently, " and I'm glad
for you, Evelyn. It's Stacy of course? "
The girl's flush deepened.
" Yes, I couldn't quite be sure for a while but I think I
know now. There was Jim, you know, and I couldn't quite de-
cide."
" My dear," said Mrs. Wickliffe, bending to smooth the girl's
shining hair, " I can't tell you quite how glad I am that it isn't Jim
Danforth."
The girl's eyes widened.
" Why, mother, I thought you favored him, because he was
the son of your friend."
" I let you think so, dear," the mother smiled, " because I knew
that the surest way to hurry you into marriage with Jim was to let
you see we opposed him. But I don't mind telling you now, Evelyn,
that your father and I have been very anxious."
-1 T0 THE THIRD GENERATION 169
" But why, Mumsey? Jim's so wonderfully attractive."
" Dangerously so. He's handsome and dashing and charming,
I'll admit. He's also spoiled, self-willed and we've learned lately
rather wild. He isn't the man that Stacy is. I'm sure he'll
make you happy; while Jim "
" I'm glad so glad, Mumsey that you're pleased."
" I am pleased, dear. Stacy's a fine fellow, and I'm very
happy in your happiness."
Indeed, at the moment, Avis Wickliffe's once shadowed life
seemed crowned. Her home, though modest, for Judge Wickliffe
boasted no great wealth, was of the happiest; her husband adored
her; Paul, her son, a fine up-standing youth, and his mother's
pride, was making good in his father's office; and Evelyn, whose
future had given her parents much concern since dashing Jim Dan-
forth had come into her life, had found heart haven. But the
iridescent bubble of joy bursts, often, at its brightest. One night
as Avis sat at the piano accompanying Paul and Evelyn as they
sang, there burst in upon them not the habitually poised and serene
Judge Wickliffe his associates knew, but a stricken man, with a
white, frightened face.
" Robert," the wife instinctively moved toward him, " what's
happened ? Are you ill ? "
" The safe in my library has been rifled," the answer came
hoarsely ; " it held five hundred dollars belonging to a client. The
money's gone."
He stood dazedly looking from one white, startled face to
another. He did not need to remind them that only the four of
them knew the safe's combination. Avis' heart had given a great
throb, and then seemed to cease beating. She realized, even in that
tense moment, that she had always subconsciously expected some
such blow. " Unto the third and fourth generation " it was
written.
She had thought the sin of her youth forever dead and done
with; yet here after more than twenty years it's ugly spectre
had risen to confront her. Her own weakness had manifested it-
self in one of her cherished children. Which? Her eyes swept
the two faces before her, Paul's white and set, Evelyn's blanched
with fear. On the instant the mother felt that she knew; as in-
stantly she made her resolve.
" Your mother's of course eliminated," she heard her husband
say. " It lies between you, Paul and Evelyn. Which is the thief ?
1 70 TO THE THIRD GENERATION [Nov.,
I want a straightforward confession, though I warn you that con-
fession won't save you."
There was an instant of tense, terrible silence.
" Paul, if you're guilty," Wickliffe went on harshly, " you
leave my house to-night. I won't have a thief in my employ
though he's my own flesh and blood. Evelyn " (his inability to
consider the possibility was evident) " if, for any reason, you took
this money, be sure I shan't allow you to marry Stacy Adams. You
shan't disgrace an honorable man and his family as well as your
own."
Paul's handsome head had gone higher as his father spoke;
Evelyn, crouching in a corner of the sofa, seemed on the verge of
collapse. Avis saw that she must act quickly, and was bracing her-
self for the ordeal, when Paul spoke :
" Father," he said quietly, " I'm the thief . I took Payne's
money. I'll leave the house to-night at once. I'll repay it if
you'll give me time."
The knowledge that one or the other of her offspring had in-
herited her fatal weakness had pierced the mother's soul like a
sword; but that Paul, her pride, her idol, had, perhaps for the
same reason that had inspired her, assumed the burden of a crime
of which she believed him guiltless, occasioned her the ultimate of
human suffering. Blindly she got to her feet and faced her hus-
band.
" Robert," she said unsteadily, " don't listen ; don't believe
him. He's innocent I swear it. He's only trying to shield me."
Wickliffe turned sharply upon her.
" What nonsense is this, Avis ? " he queried roughly. " Think
what you're saying."
" Robert, Robert," she cried a little wildly, " it's true, quite
true. Oh, I'm not lying to shield Paul. I took the money."
" I don't think you quite realize what you're saying, Avis," the
man reasoned patiently. " You must know that I can't for a mo-
ment consider the possibilty. It's the mother-instinct to shield."
" Can't I make you understand? " she despaired. " Won't you
realize that I'm telling you the truth ? "
Wickliffe's drawn face went a shade paler. He turned on
Paul who stood like a protector beside his shrinking sister.
" Leave the room, both of you ! " he ordered.
In silence they obeyed.
" Now," he faced his wife, with a vague terror in his eyes,
1915.] TO THE THIRD GENERATION 171
" for God's sake, Avis, tell me the truth ! Don't try to shield that
thieving son of ours."
" Before God," she persisted, " Paul's as innocent of this as
you are. He's the soul of honor. He lied to you just now for
the first time in his life lied to save me."
"I tell you I won't believe you, Avis," the man broke in. "You
are sacrificing yourself for your son. I won't listen."
" You must you shall listen, Robert. There was need of
money for Evelyn's trousseau more than you'd said you could
spare and so I borrowed I meant to replace it when my
dividends fell due it was only a matter of a few days I hadn't
meant to steal. Robert, can't you understand and forgive me,
Robert?"
He gazed at her now with despairing conviction. Within the
hour he had become an old man, haggard, dull-eyed, hopeless.
" It's not just a question of forgiveness, Avis," he said slowly,
" it goes deeper than that. I can forgive in time perhaps but
I can't forget that my wife my children's mother is a thief!
Perhaps the taint forgive me, Avis, but a thief! I might respect
a murderess under some conditions; I've only contempt for the
thief."
She stood silently before him like a prisoner receiving sentence.
" You will continue to share my home for the children's
sake," he went on coldly, " but you understand that hereafter you
are and can be nothing to me. I shudder at the sight of you. For
God's sake let me see you as little as possible ! "
Hard and merciless he may have been, but Avis did not ques-
tion his verdict. In her soul she knew that she was paying an
ancient score, and that, pitied by her son, despised by the husband
who had worshipped her and loved only by the daughter she had
sacrificed herself to save, she must continue to pay.
IV.
The days dragged drearily for Avis Wickliffe. Mechanically
she forced herself to gather up the broken threads of her life, and
keep its fair fabric, to outward seeming, unmarred. As the months
passed a wild hope that her husband might, in time, learn to forget
as well as forgive formed in her heart, only to be crushed by his
chill formality. They went through the daily forms of life to-
i;2 TO THE THIRD GENERATION [Nov.,
gether with admirable precision and decorum. Wickliffe's courtesy
was unfailing, but it was exactly the formal courtesy he would
have shown to any chance stranger within his gates.
The winter crept by ; but the coming of spring brought no re-
vivifying sense of hope or promise. Avis went mechanically about
the business of life, with nothing to anticipate. She felt as the
very old must feel as if life lay behind her. She had ceased to
hope or to plan, so it was with no faintest stir of anticipation or
prescience that she answered the telephone one April evening.
" Robert," she called breathlessly an instant later, " Jim Dan-
forth has been hurt fatally they fear in a motor accident on
Cort's hill." Instantly Wickliffe was beside her.
" They've taken him to the road house just beyond the bridge.
He's asking for you, Robert. You'll go? "
Already he had thrown off his smoking jacket and was
struggling into his coat.
" At once ; I'll take Paul's runabout. I ought to make it in
twenty minutes."
Within a few seconds she heard the speedy little car spin down
the driveway.
Left alone, Avis reproached herself keenly for the fact that
she had, perhaps, been rather hard upon Jim Dan forth. The son
of dear friends of her youth, she had secured him a place in her
husband's office a year earlier, and he had been a constant fre-
quenter of their home. But for some reason, she could not quite
define, Mrs. Wickliffe had never quite liked the handsome boy, and
Evelyn's palpable fancy for him had occasioned her many anxious
moments. Now, thinking of him lying bruised, bleeding, dying
perhaps, with his mother so far away, her heart went out to him,
and she regretted that she had not found courage to ask to be
allowed to go to him. But she had hesitated to seem to thrust
herself upon her husband; his attitude held her always effectually
remote. And so the treadmill of her thoughts reverted to her own
utter desolation.
She sat brooding, now lost in bitter memories, now praying
desperately that the injured boy might be spared to the mother who
loved him, when Wickliffe, an hour later, entered the room. Start-
ing up, with a question on her lips, she saw in her husband's eyes
that which she had never hoped to see again.
" Avis," he said. He went straight to her and caught her
hands in his. " Avis, can you ever forgive me? I've been a Phari-
1915.] TO THE THIRD GENERATION 173
see anc i worse! It was Jim who robbed my safe last fall he
confessed just before he died."
She had drawn her hands away, and stood pressing them hard
against her heart.
" He had somehow stumbled on the combination strange I
never suspected ! It seems the boy had been gambling heavily, and
his affairs were in desperate shape. He was here the evening I
brought Payne's money home; temptation overcame him. Taking
advantage of Evelyn's absence at the telephone, he opened the safe
and stole the money. And I never once suspected ! "
A great wave of gladness had swept over Avis; her sin had
not been visited upon her child.
" Avis, why did you do it ? But I realize it was to shield
Paul strange how ready I was to believe ill of my own ! It makes
me feel like a cur to think how I've treated you, how I've made
you suffer. Dear, can you ever forgive me? "
The brief radiance that had touched Avis' face had died.
" There's no question of forgiveness between us, Robert," she
said dully. " As it happens I was innocent of this particular crime.
But there's something in my past something as unforgivable you
must know. What I've suffered and you can't know what I've
endured these past months has been only retribution. My father
used to say that we pay dearly for our misdeeds; however we try
to dodge the score, sooner or later we've got to pay. And I'm pay-
ingpaying."
" You've paid ! " Wickliffe's voice the voice that had swayed
many a vacillating jury rang with conviction. " Don't you un-
derstand, dear, that you've paid ? "
" You don't realize. I've got to tell you."
" Don't. I don't wan't to hear now or ever. Avis, listen."
He came nearer and again took her cold hands in his. " We do
indeed pay, Avis, pay dearly, in remorse and shame and suffering,
for our sins. But usury isn't exacted of us. Not justice but mercy
is granted to us.
She was listening as the prisoner hears the promise of pardon.
" Whatever shadows your past and remember, dear, all our
pasts have their dark pages don't you see that by bearing the
burden of another's sin you've expiated your own? It's a clean
slate, Avis. Your score's settled. Shall we leave it at that? "
She did not speak, but the dawn of a new hope was in
her eyes.
UT QUID PERDITIO H.EC?
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, M.D., SC.D., LL.D., F.R.S.,
President of University College, Cork.
NOTE. Every Catholic appreciates the timidity with which a fellow-Catho-
lic approaches a public discussion on the subject of prayer, particularly of that
highest form of prayer known as contemplation. Dr. Windle sent this paper
in answer to repeated requests from the Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD that
he treat the subject from the point of view of science. The happy result is a
most effective refutation to the oft-repeated charge that the scientific spirit
hinders or excludes a thorough appreciation of great religious truths. [D.
C W.]
UCH was the question, coming, it is true, from no
untainted source, when Mary poured the contents of
her alabaster box of ointment on the sacred feet of
Our Lord. Why waste this precious commodity?
Why not convert it into coin of the realm? It is the
cry of the materialist and the money-grubber in all ages and in all
countries! What is the good of things which cannot be turned
into money? Which is the greatest picture, the best novel, even
the greatest deed ? And in each case comes the same reply : that
\vhich will bring in the most money. But as a matter of fact, can
any less reliable criterion be imagined ?
The world it must be very clear to everybody is not only
capable of making false estimates as to the real value of things,
but is constantly making such false estimates. Of late it has
tended, at least in what are commonly supposed to be the most
highly civilized countries, to estimate everything at its cash value
or its supposed cash value. Whether, as some suppose and as all
must hope, the present terrible war, and all its myriad lessons of
self-sacrifice and heroism, qualities unpurcha sable by money, will
sink into men's minds and produce a general purification of society
and a cultus of simpler and more Christian ideals, time alone can
show. Meantime the lesson is there for all to read, even if they
refuse to pay attention to it.
Now amongst the undertakings apparently indeed one may
fairly say, actually devoid of any financial, industrial or tech-
nical value whatsoever are the proceedings of those Orders in the
Church, known as the Contemplative Orders, which, in accordance
IQT5.] UT QUID PERDITIO HsEC? 175
with the rules and practices followed, devote their entire time
to prayer and mortification. Curiously enough it is not merely
amongst those who are outside the Church that one finds doubts
as to the usefulness of these Orders. Outside the Church, and of
course especially amongst those who are devoid of religion and
look upon anything of the sort as an utter superfluity, it is not
surprising that there should be a contempt, polite and veiled pos-
sibly, but at times expressed even with virulence, for those who
deliberately retire from the world to spend their entire time in
prayer and the practice of austerities. Why, they ask, are not
these able-bodied persons, for many of them are such, engaged in
some useful occupation, something which will bring in money,
something which can be represented in terms of financial success,
the only success which we regard as worth consideration ? Ut quid
perditio hcccf What other attitude could be expected from those
whose philosophy excludes every idea of a God, or at least of a
God cognizant of and interested in the doings of His creatures on
earth? What other estimate could we look for from those
who recognize no other existence but this, whose creed is
"Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die?" But it must
regretfully be admitted that Catholics, who, living in the world,
can hardly keep themselves wholly unspotted from it, have, at
least in some cases, a tendency not of course to belie these Orders,
but to ask themselves whether, though once of use and value, they
may not nowadays be somewhat of an anachronism. Seeing
around them, as they must do, so much suffering, poverty and
ignorance they are perhaps a little disposed to ask whether those
who have a vocation to the religious state would not do better to
turn aside from the Contemplative Orders and devote their
services to one of the so-called Active Orders, those which
come directly in contact with the poor and the suffering, and
endeavor to alleviate their miseries, or again to associate them-
selves with those bodies of men and women whose object it is to
provide a Christian education for the rising generation of Catholics.
Why waste your energies as a Carthusian or a Poor Clare, when
you might be doing something really useful? Ut quid perditio
hcecf It need hardly be said that such an attitude as that just
sketched is very far from being in accordance with the mind of the
Church. Under certain conditions a member of a religious order
is permitted to leave it, but only for one of a severer character,
never, I believe, for one with a more lenient rule.
176 UT QUID PERDITIO HJEC? [Nov.,
He may " optate " as the Church calls it " better himself "
to use the common phrase but optation implies taking a further
step in austerity, a kind of bettering oneself very unlikely to ap-
peal to the materialistic thought of the day. Now in the course
of his progress in optation beyond the Contemplative Orders he
cannot go; he has now reached the higher rungs of the ladder to
heaven, and the highest of them all is the Carthusian, the summit
of religious aspirations in this world. Yet, when he has arrived
there, he has arrived at the Order whose apparent value cash-
value of course is, in the eyes of the world at least, less than
that of any other Order. So widely do the ideals of the Church
and of the world differ from each other. Let us briefly examine
this apparent paradox, and let us especially consider it in con-
nection with another method of employing one's time which begets
necessarily pecuniary advantage, and which is held in high esteem
in the eyes of the world I mean the prosecution of scien-
tific research. For whilst it is undoubtedly true that some
scientific studies do bring in their train a very considerable
pecuniary reward, it is none the less true that a vast number of
them carry with them, and can carry with them, no possible
stimulus of this character. To this point we shall return shortly,
but before considering it we may dispose of another matter. It
is sometimes urged that members of Contemplative Orders lead
easy, slothful lives ; that, in the language of some of those who profit
most by the fall of the religious houses, they are " lazy drones."
Such statements could never be made by any person really ac-
quainted with the kind of lives led in such houses, but such state-
ments are made, even to-day, though only, it must be admitted, by
the ignorant or by those who ply the base trade of defaming any-
thing connected with the Catholic Church.
Let us leave, aside the mortifications practised by these Orders,
for they are unintelligible to those who have never grasped the
Catholic theory of vicarious suffering, and turn our attention to
the Opus Del, the life of constant prayer. If there is any truth
in the allegation as to an easy life, then obviously, since that life
is mainly spent in prayer, prayer must be an easy thing. Well,
is it? No ordinarily devout Catholic, who says his prayers night
and morning, will feel any disposition to urge that argument.
" You seem to think that honesty is an easy thing ! " says one of
the characters in Stevenson's Wreckers. In like manner we may
say to the " lazy drone " arguers, " You seem to think that pray-
I9I5-] VT QU ID PERDITIO H2EC? 177
ing is an easy thing." Most people who have tried it will
admit that it is by no means an easy thing; they will in fact con-
fess, with deep regret, that so far from being an easy thing, it
is perhaps but seldom accomplished by persons in the world with
any real satisfaction to themselves. God will not quench the
smoking flax and will accept our poor efforts, but no truthful per-
son can fail to admit that his prayers fall lamentably short of
what he would wish them to be. In point of fact prayer is not
an easy thing, and the life of real prayer must be anything but
a life of sloth. Need we glance in passing at the base allegation
that the persons we are treating of do not really pray, but pre-
tend to do so whilst spending their lives in sloth? The complete
answer to this is that no one who was not a fit inmate for a
lunatic asylum, and who could earn his bread by say stone-
breaking, would enter or remain in a Contemplative Order unless
he were impelled and supported by supernatural assistance of a
character unexperienced and unimagined by those capable of using
arguments such as that which we have just touched upon. No
rational men will admit that those who enter and remain in Con-
templative Orders do so for the purpose of prayer, and without ever
having tried that life we may feel quite certain that such a life
of prayer is no easy one. Hence to such as urge the hard life and
the " incessant care " of those who pursue scientific labors and in-
vestigations, we can at least present the example of the holy ones
who ply " the homely, slighted " life of constant prayer, and in its
pursuit undergo labors not less arduous, nor less trying.
So much for that point, but what are we to say as to the next
allegation? Science at any rate is a useful thing, so the argument
runs, and it tends to the progress of the world and the benefit
of mankind, whilst prayer is a useless thing, of no avail to any-
one, and therefore a mere waste of time. Here we come in con-
tact with the great question of the usefulness of prayer, a question
which cannot now be considered. Nor is there any necessity to
consider it here, for, whilst we are putting the arguments from the
extreme position of the materialist, it is really the occasional Catho-
lic caviler at the Contemplative Orders who is the object of these
remarks. Since, therefore, no person can remain a Catholic whilst
denying the usefulness of prayer, we may, for our present pur-
pose, assume that prayer is a useful thing, beneficial to him who
prays and to those for whom he prays. Those readers who dis-
pute that position must seek elsewhere the discussion, since these
VOL. CII. 12
UT QUID PERDITIO H2EC? [Nov.,
words are written for those inside and outside the Church who
believe in prayer. But just this one word may be said : Suppose that
prayer is addressed to deaf ears or to none. Though in such case it
may be a useless thing to those for whom it is offered, yet it seems to
be coming home to some in quarters where it would least be expected,
that prayer may be of transcendent importance for the person who
prays. Mr. Wells, that remarkable writer, does not give much
evidence of religious belief in his numerous works, yet in Marriage
he takes his hero and heroine " on retreat " into Labrador, where
the former discovers that the best thing he can do is to " pray out
into the darkness/' not knowing to whom he is praying, or indeed
if he is praying to anyone at all. Subjectively, then, it would
seem that prayer may be a useful and a beneficial thing, whatever
its objective value. But let that pass. The Catholic who lives in
the brightness of faith, does not require to " pray out into the dark-
ness." He at least knows to Whom he is addressing his prayers,
and knows also that whether they are answered in the way he
desires or not, they will not go altogether unheeded.
But again, if we examine the claims of science, we shall find
it quite generally admitted that pecuniary or material result is
the last thing that the real man of science is expected to look for
as the result of his labors. Huxley calls upon scientists to dis-
regard all material profit, and bids them purify their motive to an
almost spiritual refinement. " The practical advantages attainable
through its (science's) agency never have been and never will be
sufficiently attractive to men, inspired by the unborn genius of the
interpreter of nature, to give them courage to undergo the toils and
make the sacrifices which that calling requires from its votaries.
That which stirs their pulse is the love of knowledge, and the joy
of the discovery of the cause of things sung by the old poet the
supreme delight of extending the realm of law and order ever
further towards the unattainable goals of the infinitely great and
the infinitely small, between which our little race of life is run."
What he is to look to is the making of an addition of some kind,
perhaps even a trivial one, to the sum of human knowledge. There
is an old story, probably mythical, that the leading toast at dinners
in connection with the British Association for the Promotion of
Science is, " Here's to the last scientific discovery, and may it never
be of any use to anyone! " The jest enshrines a truth, for it is
certain that the unselfish pursuit of science is a pursuit unaccom-
panied by any aspirations towards those pecuniary advantages which
may incidentally attend upon discoveries such as those of Pasteur,
1915.] UT QUID PERDITIO HMC? 179
Kelvin or Marconi. Applied science has its triumphs, but the
laurel crown is more often than not awarded by the scientific world
to some humble worker whose scientific discoveries will never be
worth in actual cash the paper on which they were recorded.
What about Oliver Wendell Holmes' " Scarabee; " type of all
those who devote their lives to the investigation of some minute
scientific point, the Scarabee who was engaged upon " as difficult
and important a matter to be investigated as often comes before
a student of natural history," which was " to settle the point once
for all whether the Pediculus Melittce is or is not the larva of
Meloef " This Pediculus being " a little unmentionable parasite
that infests the bristly surface of a bee. What about Browning's
grammarian who
Settled H oti's business let it be!
Properly based Oun
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De?
What about many another investigation of no mortal use to
any mortal man, living or yet to live? If, therefore, it is urged
that science is useful and prayer is not, we may at least retort that
from the materialistic, money-grubbing point of view at any rate,
at least seventy-five per cent of scientific discoveries are of no
pecuniary value whatever, nor indeed of any value, save in so far
as they extend the field of knowledge. Such is certainly the case
in connection with morphology, palaeontology, and a host of other
branches of scientific investigation.
Further, in reply to this form of argument, it may at least
be said that prayer does no harm to anybody. Can the same be
said of science? Hardly, in face of the present war which has
witnessed the prostitution of that noble thing science to the basest
of purposes, namely the wholesale destruction of the human race.
Scientia cum caritate cedificat: no doubt; but science in a world
untempered by Christianity seems in a fair way to become a terror
worthy of stern repression, in fact a veritable Frankenstein monster.
Well, many will admit that prayer is a good thing, whilst
urging that we may still have too much of it. Let us use it in
moderation. Ne quid nimis! Say your prayers, of course, but
don't spend all your time over them. It is what ordinary dwellers
in the world must do, but is it an ideal for all? Scarcely can
this be urged by the champion of science in this day of specialization.
The day was when great geniuses could make the whole of
science their domain, but that day has long since gone by. As the
i8o U QUID PERDITIO HMC? [Nov.,
Scarabee said, when asked whether he was an entomologist:
" A society may call itself an Entomological Society, but the man
who arrogates such a broad title as that to himself, in the present
state of science, is a pretender, sir, a dilettante, an impostor ! No
man can be truly called an entomologist, sir; the subject is too vast
for any human intelligence to grasp."
In this age of minute perhaps over-minute specialization
in science, and in its applied branches such as medicine and surgery,
can it really be argued that, admitting prayer to be a useful thing,
there should be no specialists in that subject? Yet it may fairly
be said that this is exactly what the members of Contemplative
Orders set out to be. No; if prayer be of any use, the scientific
specialist cannot logically cavil at the Prayer specialist the Con-
templative.
Nor from the same scientific standpoint are the self-abnegation
and mortification practised by the Contemplatives open to any sort
of criticism. No workers in science gain greater estimation
amongst their fellows than those who have unselfishly devoted
themselves to the prosecution of studies which could bring them no
pecuniary return and, to do so, have resolutely turned their backs
on pursuits which, with the intellects which they possessed, must
certainly have led to that wealth which is the goal of so many
to-day. Nor is this estimation denied to those whose scientific
work has lain in fields where none but the humblest and dullest
of flowers flourish, fields underlain by no auriferous veins.
Further, it will hardly be necessary to remind those in any
way familiar with the lives of men of science that many of them
have suffered great hardships, and not a few have faced death
in its most terrifying forms, some of them succumbing as " martyrs
of science," and all in the pursuit of knowledge.
Once more we may say that if it be granted, as by Catholics
it must be, that prayer is a good thing, it is impossible to applaud
the man of science and decry the man of prayer, -nor even to com-
pare the Contemplative unfavorably with his Active brother.
What you say may be all very well, it may be retorted, but
surely the life of the Contemplative must be of a very narrowing
kind. Surely it is a selfish life, and one wholly destructive of all
intellectuality! Selfish it can hardly be called, since the one great
object towards which it is directed, over and above the saving of
the individual soul, a task which we are all endeavoring to ac-
complish, is the calling down of blessings upon mankind, and the
salvation of those who show but little interest in their own
1915.] UT QUID PERDITIO H2EC? 181
spiritual welfare. Intellectually destructive and narrowing? One
can hardly think this, if one believes in a God at all; for if there
be a God, what greater subject of study can there be, or where
shall we look for one more likely to enlarge our intellectual
boundaries ?
Suppose that such absorption in prayer does actually tend to-
wards, does even necessitate, a lessening of interest in matters which
seem of great value and importance to those of us who live in the
world. Is this result one which calls for condemnation of the sys-
tem which leads to it? Certainly the scientific man cannot throw
this stone, for everyone admits that great success in profound in-
vestigations can usually be hoped for only by those who subordinate
everything to the pursuit which they have in hand, and who are
content to submit to the atrophy of other intellectual interests.
Darwin is the classical example of what must have been the ex-
perience of many another less well-known man. He tells us in his
autobiography how, in his earlier days, he had taken an intense
pleasure in poetry, whilst " now for many years I cannot endure
to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare,
and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me." Gone also
was his former love for pictures and music ; lost the " exquisite
delight " which fine scenery once gave him. " My mind," he con-
tinues, " seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding
general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should
have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which
the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive." Was the price paid
by Darwin too high when the result attained is taken into con-
sideration? Few would be found to contend that it was. Apart
from his more speculative works which, however their value may
have declined to-day, at least acted as a great stimulus to research,
there are his positive contributions to science, given to the world in
his books on earthworms, orchids, climbing plants and a number
of. other subjects. Few will be found to argue that the value of
these to the scientific world does not outweigh the undoubted loss
which their author suffered in the surrender of intellectual en-
joyments once his.
Suppose then that the Contemplative does cease to take any
interest in certain intellectual objects, or to have any further de-
sire for them, is this loss too great a price to be paid for the work
which he accomplishes? Here again we are confronted with
the question as to the value of prayer. Those who do not believe
in it will say and from their first principles rightly say that the
182 THE RADIANT VISITOR [Nov.,
Contemplative is paying an absurd price for any subjective benefits
which he may receive. But no Catholic can say that, for no Catho-
lic can possibly doubt the supreme value of prayer.
The man of science gives up a great deal in order to attain
to a more perfect knowledge of the branch of investigation with
which he is concerned; he submits to poverty perhaps; to a self-
denial in harmless pleasures which interfere with his work; turns
his eyes away from interesting by-paths of study; presses on to
his goal, and is to be praised and imitated.
If there be a God, and if He listens to prayer, how can there
be any single word of praise which can be uttered of the scientific
investigator which ought not to be given to those whom we have
been comparing with him? The Contemplative's work is no doubt
hidden from man, but the day may come when many of us will
find, to our astonishment, how much we have individually bene-
fited by it.
THE RADIANT VISITOR.
BY WILLIAM ROSE BENET.
THROUGH all my ways Thou art
As the elusive passing of a face
Unrecognized till gone,
Then known and yearned upon
With crying hope and palpitating heart
And swift-turned eyes unto the recent place
That showed Thee to the blind
Who, late in love, may find
Scarcely the smallest evanescent trace
Of Thy bright passing, or its counterpart,
Through all my wandering and uncertain ways.
Along the corridors
Of Life, between the tapestries of days,
Sombre or colored bright,
Beneath blue-ceilinged Night,
1915-] THE RADIANT VISITOR 183
Quick-echoing footsteps sound on echoing floors ;
Thought's lagging steps, and steps that stride apace ;
But whether blithe or slow
My errant feet may go,
My heart hath felt its sluggish pulses race
To far reverberance, near past walls and doors,
That throbbed Thy passing feet of golden grace.
I have stood still held breath-
Gazed long at naught, that I catch sight of Thee;
Bended an anxious ear,
And so I stood, to hear
Thy foot-beats pass beyond the wall of Death.
Scarce caught within the retina, glimmeringly,
Where curtains stirred in air
Or sunlight hazed some stair,
Or, past some alcove's corner, beckoning me
Vanished Thy robe that never tarrieth,
Tremored Thy fugitive alacrity.
So, in Thy house of Time,
I have sought Thee on high turrets April-bright,
When rainbows arched the view
And green Thy pennons blew.
The mirthful halls of Summer seemed to rhyme
Thy joy, so richly pure their skies were dight.
And now the gorgeous blaze
Of brief November days
Waning toward Winter, as the birds take flight,
Shakes my heart's hopes as Mass-bells shake in chime ;
While Earth responds Heaven's litanies of light.
Like to both host and guest
Thou glidest swiftly through this home of Thine ;
And, with a love so rare
Thou touchest here and there
Cloud, field, and hill; so sweetly dost invest
Darkness with light, gray lives with dreams that shine ;
At every turn we meet
Subtly intrusive sweet,
Faint balm on hearts that travail for a sign;
A fragrance from the fair Unmanifest;
And, by Thy mute withdrawals, know Thee for divine !
THE MASTER OF PROSE.
BY ALOYSIUS J. HOGAN, S.J.
T might almost be erected into a rule that a great
poet is, if he pleases, also a master of prose."
Writing of Shakespeare, Francis Thompson, in
almost prophetic language, thus voiced the truth that
was to have its perfect realization in his own case.
" Indeed there is manifest reason why a poet should have command
over 'that other harmony of prose/ The higher includes the lower,
the more the less. He who has subdued to his hand all the resources
of language under the exaltedly difficult and specialized conditions
of metre, should be easy lord of them in the unhindered forms of
prose." At last Thompson has taken his well-deserved place among
the gods of poetry, and as " one who has subdued to his hand all
the resources of language," a cautious literary world must needs
accord him the honors of a " master of prose."
While -Francis Thompson's prose, with the exception of his
exquisite essay on Shelley, falls short of the artistic elevation of his
poetry though Coventry Patmore was wont to say that the young
poet's prose was even finer than his poetry nevertheless it is just
as true that his legacy to the literary world in " that other harmony
of prose " contains sparkling gems whose lustre shall not fade.
Who dips into the essays of Thompson will feel himself borne along
on that pleasurable tide of charm, strong charm, and it is precisely
because of this quality that his writings have been styled persuasive
they are persuasive, gently so, leading us on from thought to
thought.
Someone has well said that " prose is a universal gift of
Nature;" 'tis true, but no such prose as flowed from the magic
pen of this favored child of the Muses, for his was an artistic
touch. Words in his hands flew from the poetic anvil with a
brightness and a scintillating beauty that else they had never known.
In the choice of language he was an artist of the rarest kind, patient,
untiring, for to him it was a labor of love, his was an " ascetic
austerity of carefulness."
Could it have been otherwise? Thompson was a born prose
writer, even as is the way with poets. From early youth he lived
1915.] THE MASTER OF PROSE 185
a literary life with an ardent devotion, for even when at Ushaw,
and later when under paternal direction he was sent to study
medicine at Manchester and Glasgow, his heart was not on these
studies : " I hated my scientific and medical studies, and learned
them badly." But with literature he was ever in love : " I read
certain poetry Shakespeare, Scott, the two chief poems of Cole-
ridge, the ballads of Macaulay when very young." His youthful
mind was ever alert; the beautiful had always an incessant, inde-
scribable attraction for him. His sister remembers " that when at
five years of age he first beheld the ocean, the phosphorescence on
the crest of the waves at dusk particularly attracted Francis;" a
sunset once seen by him was never forgotten. And if it is borne
in mind that Thompson was ever such a child, we shall not be
amazed at the images which his lively imagination pinned on or-
dinary objects.
Here then is the secret of his spontaneity he was ever a child.
Indeed he said of himself " that in the next world he should be
sought for in the nurseries of heaven." " Know you what it is
to be a child ? It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters
of baptism." And always he remained a child a prominent Eng-
lish priest meeting him towards the end of the poet's life, remarked :
" There was in him the sancta simplicitas of the true poet and the
real child." Concerning himself in later years, he wrote in a little
notebook : " There is a sense in which I have always been and even
now remain a child. Toys I could surrender, with chagrin, so I had
my great toy of imagination, whereby the world became to me a
box of toys." Thompson never ceased playing with this great
toy, and it was such amusement which made him " dabble his finger
in the day-fall, made him gold-dusty with tumbling amid the stars."
Throughout the entire essay on Shelley, brilliant as it is, this child-
like spontaneity manifests itself. It is indeed to this essay that
Thompson principally owes his place in the literary world of prose,
for, without doubt, it is the most exquisite prose production of his
genius. George Wyndham styled it " the most important contribu-
tion to pure letters written in English during the last twenty years."
The Shelley was written at the suggestion of Cardinal Herbert
Vaughan for The Dublin Review in 1889. Thompson chose this
theme because " I remember more of him than any other poet
(though that is saying little). Until I was twenty-two Shelley
was more studied by me than anyone else." In a letter written at
this time is preserved the author's own opinion of his essay : " It
i86 THE MASTER OF PROSE [Nov.,
seemed to me dreadful trash when I read it over before sending it.
Shut my eyes and ran to the post or some demon might have set me
to work on picking it again." And again: "I have just finished
Shelley with quite agonizing pain and elaborateness. It is written
at an almost incessant level of poetic prose, and seethes with imagery
like my poetry itself." He calls it the " picked fruit of three
painful months." Strange to say the article was refused by The
Dublin Review, probably, as Thompson himself says, " because the
editor could not make up his mind whether it was heavenly rhetoric
or infernal nonsense."
The Shelley essay surpasses all of Thompson's other prose pro-
ductions. Indeed it could with the greatest merit be attributed to
the pen of the immortal Shelley himself, for from every line gleams
forth the brilliancy and ardent spirit of that " Enchanted Child."
The masterful language, the " seething imagery," the heaping of
thought upon thought, figure upon figure, gives a richness that is
scarcely imitable. His imagery is grand, rich and beautifully pro-
fuse, while its almost " incessant level of poetic prose " shows only
too well the marvelous power of the master hand.
His imaginative powers were such that he seemed always to
dwell in a world of his own making, peopled by the creations of
his own mind. Still it was not for the mere intellectual pleasure
that it gave him that he toyed with this great toy. Thus, in his
own opinion, " to sport with the tangles of Nesera's hair may be
trivial idleness or caressing tenderness So you may toy
with imagery in mere intellectual ingenuity or you may toy
with it in raptures." This was the power which brought him into
such close contact with the unseen world that he " felt its breath
on his cheek." The essay is prefaced, as he himself tells us, " by a
fiery attack on Christian Philistinism driven home with all the
rhetoric I could muster."
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.
Then follows a superb outburst of language pleading for the
recall of the straying child :
This beautiful, wild, feline poetry, wild because left to range
1915.] THE MASTER OF PROSE 187
the wilds, restore to the hearth of your charity, shelter
under the rafter of your Faith; discipline her to the sweet
restraints of your household, feed her with the meat from your
table, soften her with the amity of your children; tame her,
fondle her, cherish her you will no longer then need to flee
her. Suffer her to wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round
the foot of the Cross !
Such a literary treasure as this is like a literary pearl of great
price which satisfies him who finds it is an all-embracing plea, an
unref usable, unforgettable plea for the return of poetry. Someone
once remarked to Thompson that he was "to be the Poet of the
return to Nature," but he replied : " I would be the Poet of the
return to God." There is an excellent example of Thompson's own
childlike spirit in the following passage, which also brings out in a
startling degree his vivid imaginative powers. He is describing
Shelley's poetry :
He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood
stops to watch, and his playthings are those which the gods give
their children. The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles
his fingers in the day-fall. He is gold-dusty with tumbling
amidst the stars. He makes bright mischief with the moon.
The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand. He teases into
growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of
its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven:
its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over
the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets
between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the
lap of patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after
a hundred willful fashions, to see how she will look nicest in
his song.
In this inimitable imagery, mirroring his own powers, he
has portrayed perfectly the pastimes of the children of the gods,
but only such an imagination as Thompson's could conceive these
pastimes for this " darling of nature." Throughout the whole essay,
which is wonderful in its constructive insight, there is a vividness,
a captivating vividness, a heaping of balance upon balance, beauty
upon richness and richness upon beauty, until amidst all this pro-
fusion of exquisite language it really reaches its climax " round the
foot of the Cross."
The Fourth Order of Humanity, another of his productions,
displays clearly that Thompson was ever a child ; as he aptly quotes,
i88 THE MASTER OF PROSE [Nov.,
" Men are but children of a larger growth." In the opening sen-
tences of the essay he notes the gradations in Creation :
" In the beginning of things came man, sequent to him woman ;
on woman followed the child, and on the child the doll. It is a
climax of development; and the crown of these is the doll." The
doll then he elevates to the order of humanity. With naive sim-
plicity, and yet with childish conviction ever the child " so small
that the elves can whisper in his ear " he, childlike, takes us into
his confidence, telling us how when small he " wrung by fine
eloquence a beautiful doll from his sisters which he christened the
Empress of France because of its beauty," and years afterwards
he writes : " At this hour, though she has long since vanished to
some realm where all sawdust is wiped forever from dolls' wounds,
I cannot hear that name, but the Past touches me with a rigid
agglomeration of small china fingers."
Nowhere in the essay are we allowed to lose sight of his child-
like spontaneity the heart of the child is everywhere apparent,
the heart that never grew old though his shoulders bent and his
steps lagged. Such a child was he when he fell in love with the
bust of the Vatican Melpomene, "which,", he says, "thralled my
youth in a passion such as feminine mortality was skill-less to
instigate." And " each evening, as twilight fell, I stole to meditate
and worship."
As Eugenie de Guerin once remarked : " To make children well
we must borrow their eyes and their hearts, see and feel as they do,
and judge them from their own point of view." This then is the
source of Francis Thompson's deep appreciation of the joys and
sorrows of child-life : he was at heart a child, and so could fathom
the depths of childish joy.
Different both in style and matter from either of these compo-
sitions is Thompson's Paganism Old and New, which falls below
the elevated richness and beauty of the Shelley essay, not because
of any defect in itself, but because of the superb composition of the
Shelley. Concerning this essay, which is an excellent example of
Thompson's critical ability, Everard Meynell writes : " Paganism
Old and New, in which it was sought to expose the fallacy of
searching for love of beauty and sweetness in the pagan mythology,
and to reveal the essential modernity, and even Christianity, of
Keats' and Shelley's pagan beauties, was a triumph of journalistic
obedience and appropriateness."
That Francis Thompson was keenly alive to the literary ten-
1915.] THE MASTER OF PROSE 189
dencies and aspirations of the age, is made manifest by the critical
analysis to which he subjects this new paganism. The essay begins
with a glowing description of the old paganism, to which is con-
trasted the " condition of to-day," which he styles " the cold formal-
ities of an outgrown worship." And in a powerful climax he
concludes : " In our capitols the very heavens have lost their inno-
cence. Aurora may rise over our cities but she has forgotten how
to blush." It was Thompson's firm belief that the old paganism
possessed only a soulless beauty, a beauty merely of the externals,
a beauty which never penetrated beneath "the outward life;" that
it was only the advent of Christianity which gave to the world that
true beauty which is exemplified in the " Madonna, and a greater
than the Madonna."
In truth there was around the Olympian heaven no such
halo and native air of poetry, as, for Christian singers, clothed
the Christian heaven. To the heathen mind its divinities were
graceful, handsome, noble gods, powerful, and therefore to be
propitiated with worship ; cold in their sublime selfishness, and
therefore unlovable. No pagan ever loved his god. Love he
might, perhaps, some humble rustic or domestic deity but no
Olympian. Whereas, in the Christian religion, the Madonna,
and a greater than the Madonna, were at once high enough
for worship and low enough for love.
This whole criticism was a cry against the endeavors of the
moderns to bring back the old paganism :
Bring back, then, even the best age of Paganism, and you
smite Beauty on the cheek. But you cannot bring back
the best age of Paganism, the age when Paganism was a faith.
None will again behold Apollo in the forefront of the morning,
or see Aphrodite in the upper air loose the long lustre of her
golden locks. But you may bring back dii avertant omen
the Paganism of the days of Pliny, and Statius, and Juvenal.
This is the Paganism that is formidable, and not the
antique lamp whose feeding oil is spent
Masterful writing is this, and all the more to be marveled at
considering that it was written on the darksome streets of London,
" where the East sweeps the soot in eddies round his ankles "
with no books at his disposal no help whatever only the un-
equaled powers of the man. Thus in the letter enclosing the
manuscript to the editor of Merry England: " I must ask your
pardon for the soiled state of the manuscript. It is due not to
190 THE MASTER OF PROSE [Nov.,
slovenliness, but to the strange places and circumstances under
which it has been written." It is indeed a precious product of
London's darkest streets.
Again did the hands of the master clothe even ordinary criti-
cism with the charm of deeply imaginative thought, for in his
review of General Booth's In Darkest England are passages which
take their place with the choicest in our literature. At the very
commencement of the essay he vividly portrays the brighter section
of London with this he contrasts
another region is it not rather another universe? A region
whose hedgerows have set to brick, whose soil is chilled to
stone; where flowers are sold and women; where men wither
and the stars; whose streets to me on the most glittering day
are black Misery cries out to me from the kerb-stone,
despair passes me by in the ways; I discern limbs laden with
fetters impalpable, but not imponderable ; I hear the shaking of
invisible lashes. I see men dabbled with their own oozing life.
Thompson was indeed a capable critic of such an extraordinary
volume as General Booth's. It was only such a pen as Thompson's
that could portray in their true light the contrasting scenes of
London's streets. The beauty, the pleasure and the joy that reigned
supreme in that " land of lanes," contrasting with the misery, the
poverty and sin of London's darkened streets, where these have
taken firm root in the " chilled soil." He had known by sorrowful
experience the awfulness of those scenes, " of that life which is
not a life." In after years the thoughts of these appalled him,
the " cries from the kerb-stone " were constantly ringing in his
ears, and the bettering of these outcasts of Creation was an object
dearest to his heart. The essay sounds a bugle blast that must ring
through the Catholic ranks, reverberating throughout England, a
call for the Catholic army, the Franciscan Tertiaries, to advance.
Our army is in the midst of us, enrolled under the banner
of the Stigmata, quartered throughout the kingdom, an army
over thirteen thousand strong, following the barrack routine of
religious peace, diligently pipe-claying its spiritual accoutre-
ments, practising what that other Army calls "knee-drill,"
turning out for periodical inspection and dreaming of no conflict
at hand. Sound to it the trumpet. Sound to the militia of
Assisi that the enemy is about them, that they must take the
field.
It is his clarion call to arms : " The scarf and scarlet jersey is crying
1915.] THE MASTER OF PROSE 191
in the street such God's truth as is in it to cry ; where is the
brown frock and the cord ? "
Thompson's keen insight into the prevailing conditions in
England unfolded to him the only efficacious remedy to stem the
onrush of darkest England to destruction :
But the children! There is the chance; there, alas, also
is the fear. Think of it ! If Christ stood amidst your London
slums, He could not say : " Except ye become as one of these
little children ! " Far better your children were cast from
the bridges of London than they should become as one of these
little ones. Could they be gathered together and educated in
the truest sense of the word ; could the children of the nation at
large be so educated as to cut off future recruits to the ranks of
Darkest England; then it would need no astrology to cast the
horoscope of to-morrow Who grasps the child, grasps the
future When man would build to a lasting finish, he must
found his building over a child In the school-satchel lies
the keys of to-morrow.
This superb criticism was published in Merry England, in 1891,
and was most favorably received both in England and America.
The Review of Reviews was especially loud in its praise. In fact
the then editor 1 of the Review was a warm admirer of Thompson,
and it is to be lamented that one who, because of his position and
merits, could have done so much to bestow on its author his deserved
place in literature, should have perished in the Titanic disaster.
Besides these longer essays there are a number of shorter ones :
Form and Formalism, Nature's Immortality, one on Sanctity and
Song, which treats of the three canticles attributed to St. Francis.
Then there is a long series of short essays, seventeen in number, on
Poets as Prose Writers, published first of all in The Academy, a
London literary magazine. An essay on "his own De Quincey,"
whom he so much resembled in his life and sufferings, displays his
liking for one towards whom " his feelings soon came to be that of
a younger for an older brother who has braved a hazardous road,
shown the way, conquered, and left it strewn with consolations and
palliations." Indeed there are many striking similarities between
these two Goliaths of prose.
In a fanciful piece, Moestiticz Encomium, written after he had
read Blake and De Quincey, Thompson remarks : "A world without
joy were more tolerable than a world without sorrow. Without
*W. T. Stead.
192 THE MASTER OF PROSE [Nov.,
sadness where were brotherliness ? For in joy there is no brother-
liness, but only a boon companionship."
And how closely he reechoes Shelley's thought:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,
when he says of sadness that " our sweetest songs are from her,"
and again " the sweetest smiles I know, her rod draws forth from
the rock of an abiding melancholy," or " of the most beautiful
among the sons of men it is recorded that, though many had seen
Him weep, no man had seen Him smile." " Power is the reward
of sadness. It was after the Christ had wept over Jerusalem that
He uttered some of His most august words."
Finis Coronat Opus is a fantasia, which Everard Meynell thinks
" for all its artificiality and hardly hidden irony, has hints of that
slaying of domesticities which went to his own making of 'a poet
out of a man/ ' The piece only serves to show that whatever
form of literary venture Thompson put his hand to, he crowned
with success.
To neglect the mention of his very long essay on Health and
Holiness, which he subentitles A Study of the Relations Between
Brother Ass, the Body, and His Rider, The Soul, would be to do
him a grave injustice. It is really a treatise on asceticism, a mode
of living intended to subjugate the carnal element, to subject the
lower to the higher, body to soul.
These then are some of the pearls from the rich treasury of
artistic prose which the master has left to a world which is gradually
according him the just laurels. The essays of this " Enchanted
Child " are brimming over with surpassing beauties, and he who
dips into this shining fountain of sparkling literature, will find his
thirst sated with the noble thoughts it contains.
It were conceivable that because of all these brilliant produc-
tions, Thompson should be accused of being primarily " an artificer
of words," for magician that he is, he so spins them upon his loom
that we scarce recognize the web wherewith the fabric is made.
On this very point Thompson says : " The habit of excessive care
in word-selection frequently results in loss of spontaneity, and, still
worse, the habit of always taking the best word too easily becomes
the habit of taking the most ornate word, the word most removed
from ordinary speech." Thus he himself was aware of this grave
danger and avoided it, for in him there is no loss of spontaneity-
he is nothing if not spontaneous. His words are the most natural
1915-] THE MASTER OF PROSE 193
outpouring of his thoughts, and he made excellent use of the words
with which his vivid imagination flooded his mind. He had strayed
into the " ancient forge and workshop of Nature," and there he
found the " words cast off from her anvil in bewildering succession,"
words that expressed perfectly the burning images in his imagina-
tion.
Again speaking of fine writing merely for its own sake, he says :
We have spoken somewhat contemptuously of " fine lan-
guage." Let no one suppose from that that we have any antip-
athy to literary splendor in itself, apart from the subject on
which it is exercised. Quite the contrary. To write plainly on
a fine subject is to set a jewel in wood. The true abuse of
"fine language" is rich diction applied to a plain subject, or
lofty words to weak ideas; like most devices in writing, this
one also is excellent when employed as a means, evil when
sought as an end.
Most certainly may it be said that between the matter and
form of Thompson's prose there is perfect harmony. He does
not suffer from the defect of " predominance of art over inspiration,
of body over soul." His thought always predominates, his language
is not such that his meaning is lost in the " foam and roar of his
phraseology."
Thompson, in all truth, was " a lover of words, of words for
their soul's sake." He sought out an exact correspondence between
the word and the thing, yet never so as to destroy his spontaneity.
The words of Coventry Patmore characterize perfectly the nature
of Francis Thompson's prose: "Fanciful prose, flowery, pictures-
que, emulous of poetry, intricate mosaic work in words," and
beneath these words always the thought. May not the words written
of Lionel Johnson he applied to our master : " He belonged to an
English literary group of meteoric brilliancy, over many of whom
hung a singularly tragic fate," for no one studying the life of
Thompson will gainsay this last.
Francis Thompson had his literary defects. His use of imagery
and his florid style may sometimes have been carried to extremes,
and his enthusiastic manner of writing often betrayed him into
faults, but such discrepancies as these fade into insignificance
beneath the brilliant light of his other gifts. And surely no one
will ever condemn the enthusiastic soul, guided if it be by prudence,
for " a little enthusiasm in this world could work wonders."
VOL. en. 13
SOME CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF FEMININE
EDUCATION.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.
LITTLE less than five centuries ago a great German
scholar wrote a book, called De Docta Ignorantia,
" On Learned Ignorance." Nicholas of Cusa, to
whom we owe the book, later became Cardinal
through that open channel of advancement for even
sons of the very poor, which President Wilson declared, in his book
on The New Freedom, the mediaeval Church ever maintained. Cu-
sanus, as he is called from his birthplace, was himself a man of
very broad interests, learned in the languages and philosophy
and theology, but famous particularly for his knowledge of
mathematics and his speculations in astronomy, as well as his
ingenious suggestions with regard to the application of scientific
principles to the testing of knowledge. His intellectual watch-
word, strange as it may seem to some of those who are ignorant
of the history of the fifteenth century, was exactness and definite-
ness of knowledge.
In our own generation an American humorist changed the
form of the phrase, but said the same thing as Cardinal Nicholas
of Cusa some five hundred years before in an expression that is
often quoted, " It is not so much the ignorance of mankind," Josh
Billings said, " that makes them ridiculous, as the knowing so many
things that ain't so." How much of learned ignorance I
suppose the Latin words would be better translated how much
of taught ignorance there is in the world, and how many things
there are that people know " that ain't so," was brought home dur-
ing the past summer months to many who visited the exhibit re-
lating to feminine education on the main floor of the New York
Public Library. For this exhibition brings out the fact very clearly
that there has been interest in feminine education at practically all
times, so that it has been possible for an American collector to
gather without much difficulty a whole series of important materials
illustrating the history of feminine education from the year 300
A. D. down to our own time.
1915-] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 195
The fact that the exhibit was held in commemoration of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of Barnard College, the
women's department of Columbia University, New York City, is
of itself an index of the larger and broader interest in the history
of education that has developed in recent years; and, above all, of
the frank recognition that our own day is not the first that has
given to women opportunities for higher education and the full
development of all their mental faculties. Indeed, it has been com-
ing home with a good deal of force to those now interested in
feminine education, that the older notions with regard to the de-
liberate suppression of feminine intellectuality before our time is
a typical example of the utter lack of scholarship that has char-
acterized so much of the loose writing of the last few generations.
Such lack of scholarship is, of course, only on a par with a cor-
responding failure to recognize the widely-extended interest in edu-
cation in all its phases, in science, especially in medicine and surgery,
in the times long before our own, and especially in that much mis-
understood period the Middle Ages.
Generations that were themselves but little versed in certain
periods of history, supposed that the periods were of little im-
portance because their knowledge was so slight. Following fast
upon this assumption, a readiness to make assertions derogatory
to such periods showed itself. Recent historical writing shows
a tendency to set things right, and remove that old delusion
that progress is the peculiar possession of the last four hundred
years.
One of the falsehoods that has often been made to do service
in support of such a thesis is that some council or synod of
the Church, held in the first centuries of Christianity, declared that
woman did not have a soul, or at least seriously discussed the ques-
tion whether she had a soul or not, or held a debate that at least
proved that the fathers of the synod did not believe that woman had
a mind worth talking about. This utterly impossible story has been
made a favorite subject of discussion by many eager to exhibit their
taught ignorance. Young men and maidens still air their knowl-
edge of the early history of education by recondite references to it.
Advocates of women's rights still turn to it as an example of how
poorly women were esteemed in the old days. 1 It probably will be
1 The discussion is said to have taken place at the Council of Macon in the
year 585. The foundation for the report consists only in the fact that one of the
bishops present, whose Latin had perhaps grown rusty as he grew older, made the
mistake of suggesting that the generic term homo could not be applied to mulier
196 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Nov.,
quite impossible for generations yet to obliterate references to this
mythical Church decree, for the ignorant, like the poor, we have
always with us.
Perhaps such exhibitions as that at the New York Public
Library may help to obliterate some of the foolish notions, and
show the utter absurdity of a great many widely-accepted ideas.
Yet even this exhibit represents only distant and widely-separated
landmarks in one of the most important phases of human interest.
Mr. George Plimpton, who is the Treasurer of Barnard College
and member of the original Board of Trustees, has for many years
collected works along two lines, old arithmetics and illustrations of
the history of feminine education. His collection of old arith-
metics, probably the best in the world, has been thoroughly described
in Rara Arithmetica, by Professor Smith of the Teachers' Col-
lege, Columbia University. This is of itself an earnest of the fact
that Mr. Plimpton's collection with regard to feminine education
is also quite representative and eminently helpful, although the very
extent of the subject would prevent it from being even reasonably
complete.
Those who have been inclined to think that interest in feminine
education is in any sense of the word a new thing in the world's his-
tory, or that women have had to wait until now to receive oppor-
tunities for the higher or even the highest education, will find
abundant contradiction of such ideas at the exhibition in question.
For many it will constitute a new horizon in the knowledge of the
history of feminine education, and the place and influence of women
in the world. Above all it will serve to illustrate phases of educa-
tion and of life that have been rather ridiculously misunderstood.
The relation of the Church to education, and particularly to feminine
education, the place of the religious orders of women in the history
of that education, and, above all, the position of women in the older
time who without a vocation for domesticity felt the call to use
their abilities for the benefit of the community, all these find ample
illustration here.
woman, as well as to vir man. The assembly of bishops at once silenced an
opinion so unusual and referred to the Scriptures, in which the term homo man
was applied to both man and woman, as well as to the fact that the Lord is called
the Son of Man though born of a Virgin Mother. From this trifling incident a
story has been concocted that the main discussion of the Council of Macon for
days was whether a woman had a soul or was really a human being. (See Boards
of Education and Historical Truth, Educational Briefs, No. 13, January, 1906,
issued by the Superintendent of Parish Schools, Philadelphia, Pa.)
I9IS-] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 197
FEMININE EDUCATION IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
The interest of the early Church in the intellectual development
of women is very well illustrated as an opening chapter by a quota-
tion from one of St. Jerome's Letters to Laeta, in which he says:
" Put letters into Paula's hands and teach her the meaning of them.
Take care that she does not conceive a dislike for study that may fol-
low her into a more advanced age." St. Jerome's own experience
with Paula and Eustochium had shown him how much intellectual
development and feminine education might mean for Christianity,
hence his benevolent interest, and his insistence that it be not made
unpleasant. His letter is only one of many documents that remind
us how much Christianity was doing for women, giving them the
opportunity to express themselves, and exert their influence in many
ways in philanthropy and the social life of the time.
Somehow the impression lingers with some people that this
chapter represents a heritage from the earlier Roman and Greek
civilizations : that the Church's hand was forced in the matter, since
Roman customs, as Nepos told us all at the beginning of our Latin
education, had thoroughly emancipated woman. Even when they
judge the Church by what occurred when the Roman influence died,
and she had the opportunity to exert her influence untrammeled by
the society around her, they still maintain that her interest in
feminine education was minimal, and that the Middle Ages were
one long, dark night of ignorance, for women at least. Recent de-
velopments in history have made it very clear how erroneous such
a judgment is. The Church may well afford to be judged by what
she did for women in the Middle Ages. They represent one of the
most important chapters in the history of feminine education.
FEMININE EDUCATION IN GERMANY AND ENGLAND.
What a magnificent chapter in the history of feminine educa-
tion is opened up by the next exhibit, the letter of St. Boniface the
great apostle of Germany, who after his experience in England with
the magnificent work of religious women, realized that if he wished
to bring about the conversion of the German people, and create an
enduring Christianity among them, he must deeply influence the
women of the country. Tacitus had pointed out long before what
an important place the German women occupied in the life of their
nation. St. Boniface's letter was answered by the sending to him
of Thecla, who herself bears the name of Saint because of the work
198 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Nov.,
that she accomplished in Germany. Other letters of St. Boniface
show how much he appreciated the value of the labors of these
women who came to Germany to share his apostolic labors. How
curiously modern the whole incident is for those who know mis-
sionary conditions! How often missionaries have felt that their
labors would be ultimately unavailing if religious women did offer
themselves to care for the children, and bring them up under con-
ditions that would insure the continuance of Christianity for suc-
ceeding generations.
Probably more interesting still is the suggestion that lies so
near to Boniface's letter with regard to the religious women of
England. The Venerable Bede has told the story of St. Hilda,
under whose rule the monastery that we now know as Whitby be-
came so famous, though in her time the place was called by its
Saxon name, Streanshalch. The fame of St. Hilda's wisdom was
so great that nobility, high ecclesiastics and superiors of religious
orders came to consult her. Under her rule Whitby became a
centre of education and of learning, and also a centre of piety and
of moral training, whence radiated influences that reached unto
generations then unborn.
When Caedmon had his marvelous vision and was told to go
write it out, it was to St. Hilda that he went to tell his story and re-
cite his verses. It was St. Hilda who, when Caedmon him-
self hesitated about his gift of song and wondered whether
a man so unlearned could be a poet, persuaded him to take
the monastic habit, and provided him with the opportunity for
study and writing. The story makes it clear, for Caedmon had
been only a laborer attached to the monastery, that even at the end
of the seventh century any man who had the talent might easily
secure the opportunity for education, and that such women as St.
Hilda 2 were in the best sense of the word patronesses of the educa-
tion of the poor.
'How highly St. Hilda was appreciated by her countrymen and contemporaries,
will be best realized from the number of places in England that were named in
her honor. By that curious tendency to modification which is so marked in Eng-
lish speech, the names of some of the places have become so transformed as to be
quite disguised. One of them is now known as South Shields, though its original
name of St. Hilda's was never deliberately changed. The transformation may
not seem so surprising if it is recalled that St. Albans became similarly metamor-
phosed, first into Stubbins and then to Stubbs, as I believe Bishop Stubbs himself
demonstrated, or that Rotten Row came originally from Route de Roi, and Charing
Cross from chkre reine croix, because here the body of the dear Queen Eleanor
had rested in its funeral procession, and a cross was erected to commemorate
that event.
1915-] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 199
BENEDICTINE NUNNERIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Undoubtedly the most important chapter in the history of
feminine education for all time, is the foundation of the Benedic-
tine nunneries in the sixth century. They date from before St.
Boniface's time, and it seems to be clear now that the religious in
England, both men and women, were either actually Benedictines or
belonged to religious orders under the Benedictine rule, for St.
Gregory, the Pope who sent St. Augustine, as well as Augustine
himself, were religious allied to it. Mr. Plimpton's illustrations of
the intellectual life in the Benedictine convents come from later
centuries, but they bring out very well the educational development
these institutions represent. Roswitha, the nun dramatist, the Ab-
bess Hildegarde, writer on science, the Abbess Herrad, author of
The Garden of Delights, represent leaders in thought among
women during the centuries from the tenth to the thirteenth.
All we know of the beginnings of this great movement in
feminine education is that St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedic-
tines, had a sister, St. Scholastica, and that her name is associated
with the foundation of institutions for women corresponding to the
Benedictine monasteries for men. To appreciate the significance
of these institutions, it is important to realize the background of the
times when they were founded. The Romans had gradually af-
fected the practical obliteration of themselves by the limitation of
families, divorce, luxury and disease. The Teutonic people held
first as slaves after defeat in battle, and subsequently, as representa-
tives of the working classes in the Italian cities, because the Roman
citizens would have nothing to do with manual labor, gradually
came to replace them, and the great movement known as " the mi-
gration of nations " was in full swing. The barbarians from the
North introduced suddenly to civilization, took its vices easily and
acquired its virtues with difficulty, and above all showed little of
interest in the cultured life of those who had been their masters.
In this transition period the Church accomplished the Chris-
tianization and the civilization of the newcomers, but only with diffi-
culty and considerable delay. Human nature does not change in
a generation or two its modes and customs. It was an age of
social upheaval. Benedict retired from the strenuous, fitful, over-
busy life of the city to a refuge for quiet thought, contemplation
and study. Others soon followed him. The promise of quiet and
peace and a mental and spiritual rather than a material and sordid
200 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Nov.,
life tempted many. That in a few words is the foundation of the
Benedictine monks.
It was not long before similar opportunities were desired for
women, and St. Scholastica organized them. It would be very easy
to think that such institutions would be only temporary, meant to
fit that particular transitional time, and would gradually disappear
with the changes of civilization. The Benedictine monasteries and
convents, however, have proved enduring institutions, and a thou-
sand years after their foundation Vittoria Colonna in Italy found her
greatest consolation in turning to one of them for months each year.
Now nearly five hundred years later they are still in existence
practically everywhere throughout the world, where women who
desire to consecrate themselves to God, for love of Him and of
their fellows, may do so.
In practically every century of the Middle Ages there were
great Benedictine nuns 3 whose names will never be forgotten. The
monks sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great were Benedic-
tines, and the houses of religious women famous in England must
be considered as belonging to the Benedictines. St. Hilda at
Whitby, in the seventh century, is a typical example, and
SS. Lioba and Thecla, who by invitation went to Germany
to help Boniface in the eighth century, were followers of the
same rule. Then there was Roswitha the nun dramatist of the
tenth century, and the Abbess Hildegarde in the twelfth and many
others. The Order proved to be the foster-mother of distinguished
intellectual women, who found the opportunity to express them-
selves in forms that still live after all these centuries. Traditions tell
us that these women usually planned their own convents, and when
not actually the architects were very frequently the designers of the
structures. There are even traditions that some of the great min-
sters or churches in connection with the larger Benedictine con-
vents were planned by women members of the Order. Certainly
these convents opened up a magnificent opportunity for a career for
women who had aspirations after higher things, and felt that they
8 The term nun is probably derived from an old word for mother. It meant
particularly a dear old mother, and has in some of the modern languages a
representation of the same root in words for grandmother. The derivation is
from the same root as nana, which represents the first syllables used by a child
often even before mama, and which has, therefore, been taken for the word for
nurse or mother in certain languages. There are still religious orders in which
a great many of the members are known as mothers, and originally all the members
of religious orders of women were called by this reverential title. Nun is now
properly reserved for the cloistered orders.
1915.] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 201
had no vocation for domesticity. The nunneries gave them, be-
sides, ample assurance that as the years went on they would be
cared for in the familiar convent surroundings by sister religious
who would have all of a relative's sense of duty toward them.
MODERN APPRECIATION OF MEDIEVAL CONVENTS.
In recent years serious writers on the history of feminine edu-
cation, and above all women who have been occupied with the story
of feminine influence at other periods than ours, have come to
realize the true significance of the Benedictine nunneries and their
place in the intellectual life of their times.
At last we have come to know something about the intellectual
life in the convents of the Middle Ages; how significant it was,
how highly developed, how intimately associated with the spiritual
life, and how thoroughly these two supreme interests filled up the
lives of the women of many generations, and gave them the best
possible chance for the fullest development of character.
Mrs. Emily James Putnam in a well-known book, in which she
discusses the place of woman in the intellectual life of Europe at
various periods from the early Greek days down to our own time,
has been especially emphatic in her declaration of the great signifi-
cance of the intellectual life of women of the mediaeval convents.
As she was for years the dean of Barnard College, the commemora-
tion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of which was the occasion for
this exhibit that we are discussing, it will be readily understood that
Mrs. Putnam is in a position to compare our time with the older
times. Her contrast of the intellectual life of the mediaeval con-
vents with that of the modern college for women shows the former
in no disadvantageous light. In her book The Lady, 4 Mrs. Put-
nam said: "No institution of Europe has ever won for the lady
the freedom and development that she enjoyed in the convent in
early days. The modern college for women only feebly reproduces
it, since the college for women has arisen at a time when colleges
in general are under a cloud. The lady abbess, on the other hand,
was part of the two great social forces of her time, feudalism and
the Church. Great spiritual rewards and great worldly prizes were
alike within her grasp. She was treated as an equal by the men of
her class, as is witnessed by letters we still have from Popes and
emperors to abbesses. She had the stimulus of competition with
men in executive capacity, in scholarship and in artistic production."
4 Page 71.
202 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Nov.,
Other testimony to this same effect is not hard to find in
writers who have made special study of the subject. Lena Eck-
stein, in her work on Woman Under Monasticism, 5 declared
that " the career opened to the inmates of convents in Eng-
land and on the Continent was greater than any other ever thrown
open to women in the course of modern European history." She
said further : " The contributions of nuns to literature, as well as
incidental remarks, show that the curriculum of study in the
nunnery was as liberal as that accepted by the monks, and embraced
all available writing whether by Christian or profane authors
Throughout the literary world, as represented by convents, the use
of Latin was general, and made possible the even spread of culture
in districts that were widely remote from each other and practically
without intercourse."
AN EARLIER CHAPTER IN FEMININE EDUCATION.
An even more important chapter in the history of feminine
education was not hinted at in the exhibit, because of the lack of
any material that would serve to illustrate it. This is the chapter
at the head of which stands the name of St. Brigid of Ireland. It
is well recognized now that she must be called the first important
organizer of feminine education under Christianity, and that what
she accomplished meant ever so much more than has ever been
dreamed of until the recent interest in early Irish history brought
out the significant details of it. The names of Brigid and Patrick
have been intimately associated in the story of the conversion of the
Irish to Christianity, and the development of a great Christian con-
sciousness among the people. Brigid has been so highly honored
that she is so often spoken of as the Mary of the Gaels. The record
of her influence on her times is of supreme importance in the history
of feminine education.
When for the first time a whole nation was converted to
Christianity, and the Church had the opportunity to influence freely
the intellectual life of the people, education at once became the
watchword of Christianity. In Rome where the schools were pa-
gan in their influence, and where paganism in intellectual matters
was rife, the Church had to take up apparently a position of oppo-
sition to education, because the ecclesiastical authorities wished
above all to protect young Christians from the sapping influence of
pagan philosophy. Christian youth were forbidden to attend pagan
Pages 478, 479.
1915- ] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION ^ 203
schools, and the Christians provided schools of their own, which,
owing to their inadequate means and the persecutions to which the
Church was subjected, quite naturally compared very unfavorably at
first with the public schools of various kinds. How history does
repeat itself !
When in Ireland, however, the whole people were converted to
Christianity, these dangers no longer existed, and the Church at
once set about the problem of giving the best possible education to
the rising generation of Christians. The result is well known.
Ireland became the Island of Saints and of Scholars, the university
region of Europe, the preserver of the old culture, and the apostle
of Christianity and civilization to the continent of Europe after the
migration of nations had almost obliterated the old intellectual life.
In the midst of this great movement for education, the women also
had their part, and St. Brigid's school at Kildare became a centre of
influence for women, providing opportunities for higher education.
According to well authenticated traditions, women came not only
from all over Ireland, but also from England, and even from Gaul
and Spain, and then returned to their own countries to be the
founders of institutions similar to Kildare,
We have convincing evidence that much was accomplished at
Kildare. The women students at Kildare, and who it seems at
one time numbered several thousands, studied there Latin, Greek
and Hebrew, and were above all deeply interested in the Scriptures.
While the opportunities for book learning were thus provided,
Kildare became famous for the feminine arts, for lace-making, for
the illumination of books, and for the encouragement and pa-
tronage of beautiful things for the service of religion. For cen-
turies the bishops of Kildare were appointed only with the consent
of the abbess of the convent, who had the right of veto, though
apparently no active voice in the selection of the candidate. A com-
munity of monks in a monastery, not far from the nunnery, was
also under the rule of the abbess.
The extent to which the devotion at Kildare to artistic book-
making, for instance, was carried is very well illustrated by a
passage from Gerald the Welshman's book, Giraldus Cambrensis,
on his travels in Ireland. He saw a very beautiful volume of the
Scriptures at Kildare, and is enthusiastic in his praise of it. Gerald,
be it said, was never inclined to praise anything very much, unless
it were Welsh, but he quite exhausts the lexicon of praise with re-
gard to this volume: " Of all the wonders of Kildare I have found
204 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Nov.,
nothing more wonderful than the marvelous book written in the
time of St. Brigid, and, as they say, at the dictation of an angel.
The book contains the concordance of the Gospels according to St.
Jerome, and every page is filled with divers figures, most accurately
marked out with various colors. Here you behold a majestic face,
divinely drawn, there the mystical forms of the evangelists, each
having sometimes six, sometimes four and sometimes two wings;
here an eagle, there a calf, there a human face and lion, and other
figures in infinite variety, so cleverly wrought together that if you
looked carelessly at them, they would seem like a uniform blot
without skill or study, rather than an exquisite interweaving of
figures where all is skill and perfection of art. But, if you look
closely with all the acuteness of sight that you can command, and
examine the inmost secrets of that wondrous art, you will discover
such delicate, such subtle, such fine and closely-wrought lines,
twisted and interwoven in such intricate knots, and adorned with
such fresh and brilliant colors, that you will readily acknowledge
the whole to have been the result of angelic rather than human skill.
The more frequently I behold it, the more diligently I examine it,
the more numerous are the beauties I discover, and the more I am
lost in renewed admiration of it:"
And Giraldus Cambrensis was a traveled man, a connoisseur
in things beautiful. He had visited Rome at least twice; had
studied at the University of Paris and had lived there while the
great Cathedral of Notre Dame and La-Sainte-Chapelle were being
built. Nothing worth while escaped the experienced and critical
eye of the Welshman.
Long before Giraldus' visit there had been preserved in Ire-
land an example of marvelous book-making, which proves how
much was accomplished in the arts in the early Middle Ages in
Ireland. The Book of Kells is exactly such a book as Gerald de-
scribes. After careful study in the modern time even the most
expert of connoisseurs in illuminative work have declared, as Gerald
did more than seven centuries ago, that the more it is examined
the more numerous are the beauties discovered. If The Book of
Kells had not been preserved for us, we might perhaps have doubted
Gerald's description. But its preservation is a strong argument to
prove that there must have been other such volumes as The Book
of Kells. Such things never exist as absolutely solitary phenomena
in an artistic period.
With The Book of Kells and Gerald's words in mind it is
1915.] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 205
easy to understand the traditions of beautiful needlework, wonder-
ful lace, and charming art and craft work of all kinds having been
done at Kildare When taken in connection with the Irish jewelry,
the Cross of Cong, the Brooch of Tara, and other remains of this
earlier period, we come to recognize the feminine influence that
existed in Irish history.
LATE MEDIEVAL FEMININE EDUCATION.
Of the history of feminine education toward the end of the
Middle Ages much more is generally known. Few who pretend to
any knowledge of the history of feminine education are unfamiliar
with the work of Roswitha, the nun dramatist, whose dramas were
published some five hundred years after her death in a printed
edition through the Rhenish Celtic Society. This volume is some-
times mentioned as the first for which a special privilege was ob-
tained from government officials. It would in such case represent
the first example of copyright. Many more editions have been
issued during the past two generations. Not to know some of the
other great Benedictine nuns such as the Abbess Hildegarde, the
Abbess Herrad, or such works as the Ancren Rvwle, is to argue one-
self quite unknowing in what concerns education and literature.
Moreover, toward the end of the Middle Ages come such dis-
tinguished women as St. Clare, the little sister of St. Francis of
Assisi; St. Elizabeth of Hungary, whose organization of charity
well merited the dedication to her of the beautiful Church at Mar-
burg, and St. Catherine of Siena, who did so much for the poor of
their time.
The organization of charity work under their guidance is par-
ticularly interesting, for it was said in the twelfth and the
thirteenth century monasteries that " the poor were received, the
feeble were not refused, nor women of evil life, nor sinners,
neither lepers nor the helpless/' Much of our education at the
present time is concerned with the idea of training women to be
social workers, so that they may find a place in the coming solutions
of social problems which must be solved if our civilization is to
endure. How few there are who realize that the great orders of
nuns founded at the end of the Middle Ages, took up particularly
this social work that offers such magnificent opportunity to the
intellectual woman for the most satisfying occupation.
In a word what our generation needs to realize is, that there
206 THE WAY OF THE CROSS [Nov.,
was a magnificent development of education and of opportunity for
the proper exercise of her influence accorded to women in the Middle
Ages. What changed and hindered all this educational and social
work and obliterated much of what had been accomplished by the
Middle Ages was the movement which used to be called the Refor-
mation, but is now coming to be known as The Religious Revolt of
the Early Sixteenth Century, the true significance of which is only
beginning to be understood.
THE WAY OF THE CROSS.
(The Thirteenth Station.)
BY CAROLINE GILTINAN.
ONCE you journeyed with Him, Mary
With your Son Who died for me
Sharing all He had to suffer
On the way to Calvary.
With the expiation over,
When they laid Him on your breast,
Did a little gladness tremble
That, at last, your Son could rest?
Mother Mary, had you comfort
Though He lay there dead and torn,
Taking from the Head of Jesus
That embedded crown of thorn?
A MASQUERADE.
BY DORA GREENWELL MCCHESNEY.
HE coach jolted heavily along the road from Col-
chester. Salt airs from the sea came breathing up
across the harvest and pasture lands which had so
lately been laid waste by the harsh scythe of war.
Inside the coach sat a woman's figure, very still, bent
forward a little as if tense with listening. And behind, on the long
level road which the Romans had built, came the sound of hoof-
beats, hurrying and uneven. It was but a single rider that ap-
proached, urging a lame and jaded horse to panic speed, and draw-
ing rein at last beside the lumbering vehicle with a sharp cry of
" Halt ! " At that summons the leathern curtain at the window was
pushed aside, and the inmate looked forth with steady eyes along a
leveled pistol barrel. If the rider were a gentleman of the road,
he played his part, but strangely, for at the sight he flung up an
open right hand.
" Madam ! " he cried in an urgent whisper, " I am no enemy,
no robber a suppliant rather, craving aid of you. My horse can
go no further; I pray of you help me on my journey: I am in
sore need to haste. Madam, in the name of "
" In whose name? " asked the lady of the coach, very softly.
Brown eyes held gray for a moment, as some mute understand-
ing flashed between them.
" In the King's name ! " answered the horseman and doffed
his wide, plumeless hat.
For all reply, the lady leaned from the window, calling her man
to stop, and then swung back the coach door.
" If we be challenged, I cannot help you," she said, and for
the first time something like fear showed in her dark eyes. " I am
myself a fugitive. Yet we may come safely through."
With a broken murmur of thanks, the horseman climbed stiffly
from his saddle and made a step towards the proffered shelter.
The lady checked him with a quick gesture of her gauntleted hand.
" You are pursued ? "
" I may be," he confessed.
" Then your horse will betray you, sir. Look you, hide saddle
2oS A MASQUERADE [Nov.,
and bridle in the ditch and turn -the poor beast loose in yonder
meadow."
The young cavalier colored deeply at being thus schooled by
a woman.
" I am new at these straits and adventurings," he owned with
a rueful shrug and smile and turned to his work. He made but
poor speed, for all his eagerness, moving like one spent with
weariness, but at length it was done, and he had bidden farewell to
his steed with a friendly little stroke of the mane, at which the
brown eyes watching him brightened with a gleam of approval.
Safe in the coach, the two strangely-encountered fellow
travelers eyed each other intently. Then with a smile which flashed
very winningly across the face which had been so strained and
white, the newcomer doffed his hat with a sweeping movement, as
he had doffed it at the name of the King.
" Suffer me to present myself," he said, " John Mildmay, ever,
madam, your most humble debtor and servant."
An answering smile touched the lady's graver countenance.
She appeared the elder of the two, perhaps by reason of her stately
bearing and the imperious lines of her face. Though she wore
plain camlet of tawny brown, she wore it as though rich-hued silk
and velvet had better befitted her.
" Sir," she replied with due ceremony, " as at this present I
cannot curtsey my greetings, but I pray you to know me as Joan
Campion. And now that we be duly acquainted, suffer me to ask
of your plans. For myself, I think to cross the causeway pray
heaven the tide has not flooded it! to Mersea Island, where
friends await me."
' Thither will I also, so you permit," cried Mildmay quickly,
leaning his fair head back with a little sigh of relief and restful
weariness.
He looked very boyish and innocent, with his bright hair dis-
heveled about the blue veined temples and the color stealing back
into his cheeks. Yet there was a shadow in the eyes that scanned
him, and Mistress Joan Campion sat erect in her corner, one hand
at her breast.
. After a time the silence seemed to irk Master Mildmay; he
roused himself to meet the other's gaze.
" Fair lady," he said in his gentle, almost hesitant voice, " I
bethink me that I have not once thanked you, in mere words, at the
least, for your great trust and succor. Yet saving for you, I had
1915.] A MASQUERADE 209
most like fallen back into the hands of my kinsfolk, which are not
my friends. For truly I was well-nigh spent and wholly un-
armed."
" Ah !" she nodded quick comprehension. " To be weaponless
doth must needs take heart from a man."
Yet she did not offer her pistol to his keeping.
" You do love weapons," laughed Mildmay. " I marked it in
your look. Odds my life, madam, you are a very Dian, and one
which would not obey Ben Jonson his bidding," and he began to
sing the lines in his clear boyish voice :
Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
And thy crystal-shining quiver ;
Give unto the flying hart
Space to breathe, how short so-ever :
Thou that mak'st a day of night
Goddess excellently bright!
" Go not the words like music's very self? " he asked, breaking
off.
Mistress Campion answered seemingly wide of the mark.
" I have to crave pardon of you, Master Mildmay," she said,
" 'tis a gallant spirit that sings in peril, and yet when first we met
I did think you mightily afraid."
" I doubt I was afraid," returned the other thoughtfully, " but
sure, being afraid is no reason for to play the coward."
" That passes my philosophy," laughed the lady, " yet, tne-
thinks, I do see your meaning, though 'twould suit ill with most
soldiers, meseems."
" We have not all been honored to fight for His Majesty,"
answered he, dreamily and little sadly, " yet some which fought not
for him may die for him, and those which die not may still suffer."
Mistress Campion looked wonderingly at the delicate, wistful
face, and her own proud eyes softened a little, then lighted with a
whimsical gleam.
"Have you never a sister that is like to you, young sir?"
she asked. " She should be a passing fair lady and I would love
her well to be my friend."
Sudden heat of anger sprang to Mildmay's cheek, sudden tears
of anger to his eyes.
"Ah, madam ! " he stammered, " you have saved, it may be,
VOL. en 14
A MASQUERADE [Nov.,
my poor life. Is it gentle of you to use your power thus to make
a mock of me? "
The quizzical light deepened in Mistress Campion's eyes, and
a little line of amusement showed about her lips.
" I cry pardon if I have offended your manhood, Master Mild-
may. My jest was never aimed as a jibe. But your life, say
you? Are your kinsfolk then so evil disposed towards you that
they seek to slay you for your inheritance, mayhap, like to the
wicked uncle of the ballad? "
For a moment the youth seemed inclined to hold to his injured
dignity; then the spirit of mirth conquered and he laughed gaily.
" You would make of me but a child astray, Mistress Campion,
since you talk of Babes i' the Wood. Nay, mine uncle for in good
sooth it is mine uncle is not of so murderous make. Yet that which
he desires of me I do hold dearer than my life, and he will not
scruple to enforce his will. Wherefore I have fled from him, and I
will beg, yea, I will starve on the roads before I will return and
yield."
There was no laughter now in Joan Campion's gaze; it dwelt
on Mildmay with a deep, considerate pity.
" Poor lad," she said, " beggary is easy to speak of but hard
to endure. What know you of the hardships of the road you would
tread? But I have seen, for I have been overseas in the train of
Her Majesty the Queen, and have known much of those which have
followed Prince Charles into exile. Shall I tell you of their
straits?"
Without waiting for an answer, she began to talk of the ban-
ished Cavaliers who were fighting, hoping, hungering and laughing
at foreign courts and in foreign camps. The picture she drew was
sombre enough, and she did not try to brighten it. Mildmay broke
suddenly in on a story of the shifts which a certain penniless
Royalist had been put to for a meal of bread and cheese.
" But they are serving the King," he cried, " and they have won
honor, though they have lost all else."
Mistress Campion gave an exclamation beneath her breath.
" They are starving for the King, whether or no they serve
him," she observed dryly, " a man may grow hungry enough and he
have naught but honor to feed on."
Before the lad could answer save by a reproachful look, the
coach lurched heavily to one side and there came an ominous
gurgle of water; then, after a pause and a sound of shouting and
1915.] A MASQUERADE 211
stamping, the cumbrous vehicle lumbered on its way. Mistress
Campion lifted the heavy curtain and signed to her companion to
look out.
They had come to the causeway which divided Mersea Island
from the mainland. The tide was high, and waves were rolling
sluggishly across the banked-up wall, threatening every moment
to cut off their further progress. On either hand the waters of sea
and river, meeting, spread out in a sheet of gray, touched here and
there with sinister green light, under a sky dark with thunder.
" See you," said Joan Campion, in her deep, vibrant voice,
" 'tis as though you had come to the boundary 'twixt two lives, and
before you lie peril and privation unknown. You are too young
to face the world unfriended. Get you back, lad, get you back ! "
John Mildmay's face was very pale, but his gray eyes shone
steadfastly.
" I will not go back," he said.
Mistress Campion dropped the curtain .and spoke no further
word.
Perhaps half an hour passed before either spoke again ; they sat
lost in their own thoughts. Then the lady turned to put a question
to her companion.
" Can you tell me aught of your danger and the purpose for
which you set forth? I might give you counsel, being your elder
and something acquainted with life. More counsel I can scarce
give you, being bound on an errand which brooks no delay."
"Is it for the King's service? "
Mistress Campion hesitated an instant, then answered simply:
" I can trust you : it is for the King."
" Ah! " Mildmay drew a deep breath of excitement, " if even
a woman serve him, surely " he checked himself, flushing scarlet.
"I am discourteous ; pray you pardon me." Then, as if eager to make
amends for a careless word, he hurried on. " Madam, you have
done me the great honor to trust me. I will tell you all that I may of
myself. You did jest concerning mine inheritance, yet 'tis true
that in a year's time I shall come to lands and moneys, and that
mine uncle, who is of a most fanatical temper, is wholly determined
that they shall be devoted unto the Parliament. But my sweet
mother who is now a saint in heaven did train me to hold loyalty
to the King above all things. I will perish ere my life and estate
shall serve his enemies."
" It is right gallantly spoken," but Mistress Campion, sitting
212 A MASQUERADE [Nov.,
chin on hand, was scanning her companion with a questioning ex-
pression. " But how then did your uncle propose to use your life
and lands ? "
" He would have made me wed " began Mildmay, and went
red and white in a breath.
Comprehension, merriment, and sympathy chased one another
across Mistress Campion's face like cloud shadows over a lake.
She put a hand on the other's shoulder.
" Poor child," she said, and then more softly still, " poor little
maid ! " at which " Master Mildmay " lowered her head and broke
into a passion of tears.
" Ah, madam," she sobbed when she had quieted herself a little,
" beseech you, counsel me, you are wiser and braver far than I.
Alack, how ill I have played the man."
" Much as sweet Imogen in the play-book," smiled Mistress
Joan. " Now tell me, child, what is thy true name ? "
" My name is Millicent Millicent Lucas," returned the girl
shamefaced, and did not see the sudden lift of her listener's eye-
brows.
" And is thy resolve pure loyalty ? " Mistress Campion pressed
her questions relentlessly, " or art flying, like Imogen herself, to
thy true love?"
Millicent's eyes flashed through her tears.
" I have no true love, and if I had I would not seek him thus.
But I will not be wed against my will and to an enemy of the King."
" How now," the elder woman mocked her very gently, " hast
never exchanged vows of love with any sweetheart? "
Millicent shook her head with a wistful smile.
" Never since I was a little wench of nine summers, and I
trow my playfellow that called himself my knight and servant hath
clean forgot my face and name. He is a man grow r n now, is Robin,
and is fighting for the King. Your eyes mind me of his," she ended
abruptly.
" Tell me of him," suggested Mistress Campion, " 'twill beguile
our journey."
Nothing loth, Millicent began to tell of her childish days and
of the comely and gallant boy who had been her playmate, and who
had vowed to woo and win her when he should have come to man-
hood. It was a pretty fantastic little romance she wove of little
lad and maid together in the paneled rooms of an old manor house,
together among the clipped yews and box hedges of its stately
1915.] A MASQUERADE 213
garden, playing at rescuing knight and rescued princess, and dream-
ing brave dreams of the days to be.
" And now," she ended with a sigh, " all is other : the King
is captive, Robin is fighting afar mayhap at sea with Prince
Rupert and I " she glanced down at her own slender figure and
broke with girlish suddenness into laughter, " Oh, me, what shall
I do with my doublet and hose ? "
" Child," Mistress Campion made inconsequent answer,
" what shall I do with thee ? Best it were I brought thee back to
thine uncle's care, thou foolish mummer; his harshness is like to
be kind beside the harshness of life unsheltered. But I may not
turn from my work not even for thee, little Millicent."
Perhaps the touch of tenderness in the last words gave the girl
courage; she caught at Mistress Campion's gloved hand.
" May I not follow you ? " she pleaded. " I will be no
hindrance: I have a store of gold. Only bid me not go forth
alone!"
" Sweetheart, I go overseas," returned Joan. " A boat waits
me hard by, to bring me to Holland, mayhap, or to a ship of his
Highness Prince Rupert, as chance shall serve. I may not take
thee to such hazards."
" But you go," protested Millicent.
The coach slipped with a jar, and a low whistle sounded close
at hand.
" Tis a signal," said Mistress Campion. " No time now to
parley. Out with thee, child."
Millicent obeyed and her new-found friend followed, pausing
only to snatch something from beneath the seat and hide it in her
cloak. The girl felt her wrist grasped, and was drawn from the
road into a thicket which skirted it, and so on to a narrow path
which wound through seemingly impassable tangled woodland.
The coach meanwhile went bolting on its way. The two wayfarers
pressed on in silence, making towards the sea. At length the wood-
land fell away somewhat, and they emerged on a bit of pasture
land, dotted with bushes, and stretching out to the salt marshes
which fringed the shore. Beyond, across a steel-bright stretch of
water, a boat might be discerned, making slowly landward. The
fugitives stood a moment to gather breath; then across the hush
broke the sound of clanking arms and a voice raised in sharp com-
mand. Mistress Campion lifted her head, intently listening; noth-
ing could be seen across the barrier of oak and thorn.
214 A MASQUERADE [Nov.,
" Millicent," she whispered, " these are soldiers, and they fol-
low me, not thee. I know thee brave; now is thy time to serve
the King. Take this packet," she pressed some folded papers into
the girl's hand, " hide thee yonder, by that bush, and when I am
gone hence hasten thou to the shore and wave this scarf thrice."
She drew from her breast a scarf of scarlet silk, slashed and stained.
" They will challenge thee 'In whose name ? ' answer : 'King and
Palsgrave/ Quick child. God speed thee ! "
Millicent felt a burning kiss on her cheek and, the next instant,
found herself crouching behind a knotted furzebush. Mistress
Campion had vanished and the meadow lay in seeming solitude.
Never through all her life did Millicent forget the scene she looked
on then. The sun had shot a flood of light from beneath the brood-
ing thunder clouds, and every outline and color showed with un-
natural vividness. Close at the water's edge grew a wild rose tree,
every faintly tinted blossom distinct against the bronze and purple
marsh and steel-gray water. Into the light and the shadow and the
loneliness came two figures, soldiers of the Parliament by their
orange scarfs, and halted for a reconnaissance.
" Is naught here? " said one of them heavily.
" Nay," returned the other, a younger, shrewder looking man,
" but mark the boat yonder, 'tis suspicious. Best report to the
Captain."
As though summoned by the words, Mistress Campion stepped
out from covert ; Mistress Campion, but how changed ! Her cloak
was gone and her broad hat, and her hair hung in rings on her
shoulders. The skirt of her camlet gown, too, was slashed from
girdle to hem, so that it hung loose, not fettering her movements.
"Here is what ye seek," 'she said coolly, "will ye take me
prisoner? "
' l Yes, verily," one of the Puritans stepped forward. A pistol
cracked, he dropped on his face and lay still. His fellow sprang to
avenge him, sword in hand.
Through the brief, fierce fight that followed, Millicent knelt
sobbing and shuddering, unable to look away. On the one hand,
an armed man, wearing buff coat, breastplate and morion ; on the
other a woman's form, in stained and rent camlet. The odds
seemed foolishly, fatally heavy, yet when a choked cry rang out
it was the soldier of the Parliament who uttered it. The Royalist's
sword had struck home above his enemy's corselet and the mimic
melee was over.
1915-] THE HOLY SOULS 215
" Millicent," called the victor softly, and the girl, in her boy's
trappings, stole -out from her hiding place. " Give the signal, as
I bade thee," and she waved the scarlet scarf, the colors of the
King.
Then " Mistress Campion " wiped and sheathed his sword, and
took his companion's hand in his, raising it to his lips.
" Millicent," he said softly, " I went a-masquerading for the
King's sake, as didst thou. Shall we exchange disguise, and hence-
forth be thou my love and lady and I thy servant? Come, yonder
lieth a perilous safety : wilt share it with me? "
The oar-strokes sounded nearer. Millicent looked from the
boat on the wide water to the dead men close at hand, to their slayer
in his tattered woman garments.
" Why am I not afraid ? " she whispered.
" Because thou didst plight me troth long years ago," he
answered, smiling. " My little lady, dost not know Robin in his
mummery ? "
She raised her eyes to his and read the old comradeship and the
new love there.
" Come, my heart," he whispered, " shall we go a-masking
together?"
THE HOLY SOULS.
BY T. J. S.
FROM that dark night of purifying pain,
They beg of us the benison of prayers.
Since prayer for them may God's full advent gain,
Haste ye the day when heaven shall be theirs.
MOSTLY MOUJIK A GLIMPSE OF THE RUSSIAN ARTEL
AND KUSTARNUI.
BY RICHARDSON WRIGHT.
N the heights above Fersoova we fell among artel-
chiks. The hare track that skirts the Shilka Ridge
was too narrow at that point, and too slippery for
our ponies and them to pass abreast. Besides, pas-
sers-by on the Shilka Trakt are few that is, de-
sirable passers-by. Trans-Baikalia bears an unenviable reputation
for brodjagi, the murderous vagrants and escaped convicts of Si-
beria. But these strangers appeared harmless enough, despite their
fearsome beards.
They were fully a dozen stalwart, middle-aged men led by
an ancient of days bearing a kit of carpenter's tools. Some had
bulging sacks slung over their shoulders ; some tea kettles dangling
at their belts. All were poorly clothed rude sheepskin tuhips or
great coats, gaudy red and blue work shirts, with tails flaunting
above trouser tops, knee-high boots, and black sugarloaf sheep-
skin hats. They were journeying up the river to Blagowestchensk
to build a house, they said. Yes, we were right, they formed an
artel, one of those communistic bands of workmen that comprise
the nucleus of the Russian peasant industrial system. True to Rus-
sian hospitality, they begged us to ride back to a clearing in the
wood where a fire could be built and tea made. And there it was
that we talked of artels and kustarnui, and all those unaccountable
socialistic things .that exist in the heart of oligarchic Muscovy.
" So you are Americanski," began the ancient after the manner
of the peasant. " Americanski A great country yours. I
have a brother in Erie, Pennsylvania. I have a picture of him at
home. He is getting very rich. Everyone gets rich in America."
" No, only a few are rich," I hastened to assure him. " The
working people are mostly poor and most everyone works."
" And do they have artels? "
"They have unions "
" No, artels, like we are. I have read of your unions. We
can't have them here. They're not allowed." He seemed to catch
the look of confusion on my face and went on to explain. "We work
1915-] MOSTLY MOUJIKTHE RUSSIAN ARTEL 217
together, we men. We are a carpenters' artel. When you want
to build a house, you hire us. When you pay, you pay us. I take
the money and pay the expenses and then we share up. I am the
starosta"
He went on further to explain how the artel works, how it
may be devoted to one trade or a part of one trade or to several
trades, but the rule holds throughout that the members earn share
and share alike. A leader known as the starosta is chosen, and
upon him devolves the management of the band's affairs. He
arranges for passports, finds work, provides tools, materials and
supplies, collects wages and distributes the profits equally.
When he had finished and was sipping noisily the hot tea, we
sat wondering where else on the globe was there such confidence
in the honesty of a leader. Had we discovered Utopia here in the
heart of Siberia? We let the question rest for a time, and satis-
fied ourselves with asking if all the artels wandered about from
place to place.
" Not all," he said thoughtfully, " but you meet us everywhere."
And he swept the horizon with an inclusive gesture. " On every
road, on every farm, in every town and city from Vilna to Vladivos-
tok you will find us. Even in the baron's houses the servants form
an artel; even the convicts and the exiles do the same. Some stay
in one place, others just wander about from place to place, taking the
work where they find it. Some get very rich. We are very poor."
The last he had said not in any spirit of discontent, but just
as a statement of the fact. Riches and poverty alike come from
God, the faithful Russian believes.
; ' Your men must trust you," we interposed. " Workmen in
America do not often trust their foremen as your men do."
He began to laugh and stroke his beard, for the compliment
pleased him.
" They aren't like us, that's why. We have learned to trust
each other. Whom else can we trust ? "
He seemed as though he would have liked to pursue the sub-
ject further, but well he knew the proverb that in Russia even the
trees have ears, and being a wise man did not express to strangers
his recalcitrant ideas. This much we were able to extract from
him and his men a fact the student of Russia and her history well
knows that the saving power of the Russian peasant, who com-
prises eighty per cent of the population, lies in his ability to co-
operate with his fellows, and his singular economic position.
218 MOSTLY MOUJIKTHE RUSSIAN ARTEL [Nov.,
''' We have always been peasants," the starosta went on naively.
" And for four hundred years we were serfs, bound to the soil.
We learned in those long years to help one another and to work to-
gether. We could not trust our masters, because they did us wrong,
so we clung together. A peasant is always a peasant."
"Even to-day?"
;< Yes, even to-day. Have you seen the names of the Duma
members printed? There you will see them listed, each man ac-
cording to his rank. Some are captains, some are merchants, and
some peasants. We didn't cease being peasants because we were
freed. We ceased being slaves. We have been free now fifty
years, but we still work together, because we still have enemies.
That is why we have artels. You have unions yes, I have read
of them. Instead we have artels. Unions are national all over
the country, and those the government forbids here. But the artel
is just a few like we are."
He fell to his tea again, and we chatted with the other men,
who with equal naivete described the simple workings of their
societies. To them it seemed that forming an artel was as natural
as their breathing, and this seemed true of the entire orthodox
peasant body. Over the vodka glasses, for example, a project is
discussed, and forthwith an artel formed and a starosta elected.
Next to no funds are required, some artels starting with as little
capital as fifteen dollars. The work may be sweeping the streets,
building houses, or, as in many sections, the development of the
kustarnui, the cottage industries for which Russia has become
famous of late years.
As we went on our way down the trakt, the words of the
starosta began to arrange themselves in their proper category.
What he had said was the peasant view of the matter. Their power
of cooperation was due to the fact that they had been obliged for
four centuries to cooperate that they might defend their all too-few
rights. And not yet had they ceased being peasants, although they
had been free men for half a century.
Later in the journey we called upon the president of the local
bank at Blagowestchensk, the New York of Siberia, a thriving town
on the Amur that is truly American in many aspects. Having
been in America, Gaspadrine Gordhon knew our institutions and
spoke our tongue. To him we applied for the other side of the
peasant's story. Yes, our friends of the Shilka Trakt had been
right, cooperation had been born of class suffering.
1915.] MOSTLY MOUJIKTHE RUSSIAN ARTEL 219
" But you must make this distinction," he said with emphasis.
" Whereas the peasant did suffer many things and is suffering them
to-day, their masters were not altogether cruel. In no country is
so much being done for the furtherance of the peasant's in-
terests. Have you seen the handicrafts of the peasants? "
We mentioned places where we have seen them for sale, and
the villages where they were being made.
" Well then you know. They are born artists. And so long
as they remain craftsmen, their work will be artistic. These cot-
tage industries are only being heard of in the big world outside.
London flocks to an exhibition of the wares. Paris goes wild over
them. They bring large sums in New York. And yet the cottage
industries of Russia have been going on for generations. You
used to have them in America."
" A few exist to-day," we assured him. " In Deerfield, an old
town of the Connecticut Valley, and at Hingham, in Massachusetts,
and in other places."
He smiled, though he tried to hide the scorn.
" What would you say if I told you that there are eight to ten
million people in Russia employed in cottage industries alone?"
He let the figure settle in our minds, lit another cigarette, and
went on in that thoughtful manner bankers the world over seem to
have when they discuss economic matters.
" During the past twenty-five years Russia has seen an un-
precedented growth of her urban industries. The factory hand had
become an element to conjure with. Foreign capital and our
national desire to foster home industries, furthered by a high tariff,
have turned many cities into thriving manufacturing centres. Com-
pare Moscow of twenty- five years ago with Moscow to-day. I re-
member it. The growth has been wonderful ! Peasants who used
to live on their crops are flocking to the cities in winter. In sum-
mer many are back on the farm again. The number of factory
hands totals one and a half million, this not including Finland
and Poland."
" You mean then that the cottage industries are falling off? "
" Quite the reverse, quite. Compare the figures eight to ten
million workers in the kustarnui to one and a half workers in the
factories! No, the development of the kustarnui during the past
three decades has been spontaneous and widespread through the
Empire. Whole villages that used to depend on farming for their
livelihood have now formed themselves into artels, and are work-
220 MOSTLY MOUJIKTHE RUSSIAN ARTEL [Nov.,
ing the full twelve months at these industries. Some farm half
the year and work indoors the rest of the time. It is most as-
tonishing."
" But how do you account for such a contradictory state of
affairs?" we asked. '' There is no denying that the peasant
makes only a meagre living out of his crops, and when his crops
fail he starves. If he goes to the city, there is work in the factory.
He no longer has to bother his head about agrarian troubles. It
is human nature to expect the factory element to overcome the
native industrial element."
" It may be human nature, but it is not the Slav nature," Mr.
Gordhon replied slowly. " When you sound the depths of the
Slav you will find that he exercises to a remarkable degree what
might be called spiritual frugality. He is self-contained, just as
Russia is self-contained. We were speaking of the cottage indus-
tries. They are worked by artels. It is true that this power for
cooperation as shown in the artel, is due to the peasant's having
cooperated for their own benefit through four centuries, but it is also
true that the peasant has within himself many talents. He is
primarily a farmer, a tiller of the soil, a man with the hoe. But
he has learned many other arts. Though he is slow to learn them,
years of training and years of necessity have taught him to develop
his own natural talents."
" Then the knack for making things is not native with the
peasant? "
" Partly yes, partly no. You must remember that while much
has been written on the sufferings of the Russian peasant during
his days of serfdom, little mention is made of the great good ren-
dered him by his master. There are two sides to every story, and
there are two sides to this. An honest and persistent effort was
made by the nobility all over the empire to furnish employment
for their serfs during those long winter nights and days when in-
clement and frigid weather prevented their tilling the soil. Where
else than Russia could you find such generosity ? "
" It was done by slave owners in the Southern States of
America," I proffered the information.
" I beg pardon, I did not know that. Well then you have an
analogy. What some of your slave owners did, the serf owners
here in Russia were doing. The negro and the peasant alike owe
their knowledge of handicraft to their masters. Of course, there
was their own innate gift for making things with the hands that
1915-] MOSTLY MOUJIKTHE RUSSIAN ARTEL 221
all people of the soil possess, and there was their mutual endeavor
which has found expression in the artel. And there you have both
sides of the story of the artel."
" The government is encouraging these cottage industries, of
course."
" Yes, I was going to mention that." He reached for a book
behind his desk and ran his finger down a column of figures.
" The report of the Department of Rural Economy shows that
there are twelve technical schools teaching handicraft, that large
sums were loaned the artels on long credit, and that the kitstarnui
stores and workshops were subsidized, the budget for this work
amounting to over half a million roubles annually." He glanced
up from the book. " There is, in addition, the assistance ren-
dered by the Zemstovs or local governments. They often act as
middle men, supplying the raw materials and handling the finished
product. Here you can see on the map just where the kustarmti
are located." He unfolded the colored map and read us rapidly
figures and facts.
" The Governments of Moscow, Vladimir, Tver, Kostroma,
Nijni Novgorod and Jaroslav is where they thrive especially.
Though the products and the labor are widely diversified, the output
falls into five groups : wood, metal and other minerals, leather and
woven goods. Of these the largest and most important is the wood
industry. One district supplies two thousand sleighs annually in
addition to carts and other vehicles. Seven thousand tarantasses
come from Vladimir alone each year. Kaluga with its two
thousand and two hundred workmen and nine hundred shops turn
out barrels. Eighty-seven villages of the Moscow Government
make rude peasant painted furniture. One hundred and twenty
shops in the same district are devoted to toys, employing two
thousand peasants, and turning out each year a supply worth a
quarter million dollars. In the Tver Government six thousand
peasants make nothing but pump handles, whilst another two
thousand are employed in extracting tar from the trees. It is
reckoned that fully one hundred thousand men are engaged
in making cart wheels in the various Great Russia villages. In the
point of output, the wooden spoon is the largest. These painted
and lacquered spoons are used all over the empire, and find a
ready market in the Far East, China being the chief customer,
with Persia as a close second. Fully a hundred million are made
each year, most of them coming from the Vladimir and Kursk
222 MOSTLY MO UJIKTHE RUSSIAN ARTEL [Nov.,
Governments. To make a spoon often requires the labors of fifteen
different artels think of it fifteen artels, although for the poorer
quality one man is sufficient. A good handicrafter can turn out one
hundred and fifty of these a day. The bulk, however, goes through
at least three separate processes, employing three artels. The profits
for a worker rarely amount to more than twenty dollars a year.
" Bast and lime wood sandals worn by the peasantry generally
come from the village of Simeonofka and the city of Nijni
Novgorod, where, during a season of five months a rapid worker can
finish four hundred pairs. Baskets are made principally in the dis-
trict of Zwenigorod, and mats in Kostroma. Linen is woven at
Jaroslav, and in most villages spinning wheels and distaffs are
made. Tver is the main book country; in one town fifty-five per
cent of the population being employed. At Tver three hundred
and fifty workmen prepare annually forty thousand dollars worth
of finished leather.
" There, you see what staple articles are made. Those are
only a few." He swept the room with a gesture. " Look at the
finer arts. Peasant jewelry is made in fifty villages on the Volga
in the Kostroma Government. Some of it is valuable indeed, much
is cheap and tawdry. A secret process of gilding is employed, a
process learned from the Tartars, it is said. The natives guard it
jealously. In the same manner do the makers of icons guard their
secret in the Government of Vladimir, which furnishes practically
all the icons in Russia. A special process of mixing and grinding
the paints to produce a glossy finish has been discovered. The na-
tives draw and paint the religious figures after patterns handed
down through generations. Few of them know the first elements
of drawing, though their work lacks nothing in artistic effect. As
in the making of spoons, the manufacturing of icons employs
several artels.
" Everywhere in the bazaars you see native pottery. To be
sure, it is crude, but it has many redeeming elements, mainly its
beauty of line and durability. Poltava and Viatka are the centres
for the industry, some thirty thousand being employed, making an
output valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The
workers* wages range from twenty-five roubles ($12.50) to one
hundred a year. The making of locks is practically a monoply of
the kustarnui. Pavlovo is the centre. The wages rarely go above
two dollars a week."
" But do these kustarnui artels employ only men? "
1915-] MOSTLY MOUJIKTHE RUSSIAN ARTEL 223
" Oh, by no means. The women play a great part. Russian
women of all classes are good housewives. They are constantly
employed in sewing, embroidering and in some instances, weaving.
This is no less true of the peasant housewife. In their hands the
weaving industry has become a business of first importance. When
they do not work in the home, they meet in the community work-
shop or svietelka. The best linen comes from Jaroslav, Kostroma,
Moscow and Vladimir, where fully sixty thousand families find
employment. The wages are fifty copecks twenty-five cents a
day. The peasant women of Vladimir make a specialty of em-
broidering aprons, towels and table linen. At one time lace mak-
ing was a thriving industry, but of late it has fallen into decay.
The making of shawls and scarfs, limited to the Government of
Orenburg, has shown a decided increase. The output is valued at
seventy-five thousand dollars annually.
" But you can see by these figures what I meant in saying that
the kustarnui thrive. Many of these peasants live miles from the
railroad and centres of civilization, most of them are underpaid
and exploited by wily middlemen, and still the work is increasing
yearly. And it will increase so long as the peasant in Russia main-
tains his singular position in the social scale. Once he has learned
the ways of what we term urban civilization, much of his artistic
and handicraft ability will be lost.'*
We rose to go. We had long overstayed our time, even for
a Russian banker, and hurried to the offices of an American Har-
vester Company, whose representative had invited us to luncheon.
We found him in the yard talking busily to a group of men. They
were all respectably dressed. Some had fur coats and hats, though
all wore high boots. One or two wore white collars and cravats.
They were examining a harvester of the latest type with the name
of an Illinois firm painted on its side, while the agent was showing
them how it worked and answering their questions.
When they had gone he came in. " Not a bad morning's
work," he said, throwing off his coat. " They bought two, and
I'll get 'em to take another if they don't look out. They've plenty
of money."
" Looked prosperous enough," we rejoined.
"Why I guess that artel even has money in the bank," he said.
" Was that an artel? "
" Surely, that's the way they get it." He smiled at me
and said : " .Cooperation, my boy, cooperation "
BOOKDOM.
BY P. W. BROWNE.
OD be thanked for books ! They are the voices of
the distant and the dead, and they make us heirs
of the spiritual life of the past." So wrote an
eminent divine many years ago. We are so accus-
tomed to books that we do not appreciate their
worth, and we have possibly never reflected upon their value. The
subject of books has two aspects the material and the spiritual
and in this article we shall discuss both, first the material phase,
and then we shall make a brief excursion into the higher realms and
consider the spiritual aspect.
I.
A book may be defined as a printed literary composition in
many sheets. This is the book as we know it to-day; but in
ancient times a book meant written compositions of every kind.
The word book is from an old Teutonic term boks, meaning " the
beeches," or tablets of beech-bark on which runes (old Norse
characters) were cut or painted. The Latin word, Liber, whence
comes the French livre, and our word " library " meant the inner
bark of a tree; this name was later given to papyrus tissue (whence
comes our word " paper ") on account of its bark-like appearance.
The word codex (our "code"), still used in its Latin form for
old texts, meant the trunk of a tree, then, wooden tablets, and sub-
sequently, square volumes, used in lieu of scrolls. The Greek word
bybles (from which "Bible" is derived) was synonymous with
papyrus; and modern usage clings to the same connection of ideas,
for we speak of a " paper " being read before an audience. On
the other hand, the words " write," " inscribe " and " scripture " are
reminiscent of a time when all writing was done by scoring lines
upon some hard substance. Thus, ancient writings can hardly be
considered as books in the true sense of the term, though Macaulay
somewhere facetiously writes of a young Assyrian architect who
" published a bridge and four walls in honor of the reigning eni-
peror." Assyrian and Babylonian " books " were inscribed on clay
tablets with an iron stylus, producing a wedge-shaped or cuneiform
1915-] BOOKDOM 225
(arrow-shape) character. Some of these characters were so small
that they could be read only with a magnifying glass possibly a
ball of crystal. The clay on which the inscription was made was
baked to give it tenacity. Some of these tablets are to be seen
in the British Museum; they contain the history of the old civi-
lization. Excavations by archaeological societies are constantly
bringing to light new discoveries ; and it is believed that ultimately
we shall have a perfect history of the cradle-land of civilization.
Quite recently a discovery was made under the auspices of the
American Archaeological Society of a " library " which, so it is
claimed, contains confirmatory, evidence of the Mosaic record. It
is somewhat of a paradox, however, that though our civilization is
a direct heir of Babylonian culture, our books are the progeny of
Egyptian civilization ; and an unbroken sequence can be maintained
from the books we use to-day to the " papyrus-prisse " (more than
two thousand years old). This contains the still older composition,
Maxims of Ptah-Hotep, regarded as the oldest book in the world,
dating probably from 2500 B. c.
Papyrus, owing to its fineness, decayed very quickly; hence,
for the transcription of laws and other public uses, it was set aside
for a more durable material-parchment. Parchment is prepared
goat, sheep or calf skin, and is one of the most valuable writing
materials in existence. It gets its name probably from Eumenes
of Pergamus, the founder of the celebrated library of a city in
Mysia, Asia Minor. To prepare parchment for use, the skin of
the young animal goat, calf or sheep is first shorn of its wool;
it is then steeped in lime and stretched on a wooden frame, and its
face scraped with a half-round knife. It is then powdered with
chalk, scraped again, and then smoothed with pumice stone. Parch-
ment was costly, but durable; it could be used for many writings.
When a writing had outlived its usefulness, it was rubbed off, or in,
and new writing was made upon it. As the old writing left the out-
line of its characters, the new was written crosswise to the old, so
that any imperfectly erased words should not show through it. A
parchment on which a second or third writing was made is known
as a " palimsest " (derived from the Greek word palimsestos, mean-
ing "scraped again").
In addition to papyrus, skins and clay, some of the ancients
used metals of various kinds, wood, wax, ivory and leaves; it is
hard to mention any common smooth-faced material which they did
not use. Wooden books were common amongst the Romans and
VOL. CIL 15
226 BOOKDOM [Nov.,
Greeks; part of one containing the laws of Solon was preserved
at Athens till the first century. For the more important pur-
poses, such as the inscription of laws and edicts, the Greeks em-
ployed (before the use of parchment became general) ivory, bronze
and similiar substances. For ordinary purposes the Romans used
tabula or pugillaria (sheets covered with wax), to be written on with
a stylus. Those who have read Cardinal Wiseman's Fabiola will
remember these accessories of the Roman household. Two of these
pugillaria, of date 169 A. D., were discovered in Transylvania in the
mid-nineteenth century, and one of them is preserved in the Museum
of Florence. In the library of the University of Gottingen is pre-
served a Bible of palm-leaves to the number of five thousand three
hundred and seventy-six. Some years ago there was found among
the Kalmuck Tartars a collection of books made of long, narrow
leaves of varnished bark, written in black ink on a white ground.
The shape of wooden and metal books, waxen and ivory, was
square; but the thin, flexible papyrus was too liable to " dog's-ear "
and tear from handling, so that a method was adopted for their
preservation, which has left traces on our modern book terminology
rolling sheets on wooden cylinders, similarly to a mounted map.
They were written on one side only, fastened together at the edges,
and glued or otherwise attached to the roller, which was called
kulindros (cylinder) in Greek, and volumen (in Latin). Hence
our word " volume." We still speak of a piece of writing as a
"scroll." Some of the scrolls of early days were of huge size;
and there are specimens of Egyptian scrolls still in existence which
measure forty yards. The inconvenience of consulting such
enormous sheets, and the consequent injury to them, caused the
breaking up of lengthy scrolls into sections or " tomes " (from the
Greek tomein, to cut), one of these making a roll or volume. The
volume was read by unrolling the scroll to expose successively the
sheets " pagince" (things fastened together). From this is de-
rived our word page. The title of the volume was generally written
in red on fine parchment and pasted on the outside. Great atten-
tion was given to ornamentation of the title page; and sometimes
the entire volume was perfumed. The poet Martial alludes to this
when he says : " When the page smells of cedar and royal purple."
The custom of perfuming books existed even in quite modern
times; it was common in the sixteenth century. On a certain oc-
casion the University of Cambridge presented some volumes to
Queen Elizabeth, but previous to the event Lord Burleigh in-
1915.] BOOKDOM 227
structed the vice-chancellor of the university " to regard that the
books had no savor of spike " (spikenard to which her majesty
had an aversion). Great care was taken by the ancients to pre-
serve their volumes from decay or deterioration. The Egyptians
kept their rolls in jars holding nine or ten each, while the Romans
preserved theirs in canisters which were often of costly workman-
ship. The transition from scrolls to codices, or square books, seems
to have taken place when the ancients adopted vellum instead of
tablets of ivory or bronze; but the name codex is still retained for
the more important ancient manuscripts, such, for example, as the
Biblical codices, the Codex Alexandrinus, the Codex Vaticanus,
etc. Books are of various sizes and shapes; the size depending on
the paper from which it is made. In early times copyists there were
no printers in those days made up their books by folding four,
five or six sheets, placing one within the other, making quires or
" gatherings "of eight, ten or twelve leaves, known respectively as
quaternions, quinterns and sexterns. Only one side of the sheet was
written on. These terms were later abbreviated to 4to, 8vo and
I2mo; and when machinery made it possible to print a larger num-
ber of pages at one time, there were added the terms i6mo, 241110
and 32mo. These terms still survive. When a sheet of paper for
printing is folded once, we get a folio ; folded twice, a quarto ; folded
four times, an octavo; folded six times, a duodecimo, and so on.
Among books there are giants and dwarfs just as among ourselves.
The British Museum has both the largest and the smallest book in
the world. The former is an atlas, of the fifteenth century,
measuring seven feet high, capable of concealing a tall man within
its covers. It has a binding and clasp which make it look as solid
as the walls of the room in which it is preserved. The other is
a " bijou " almanac less than an inch square, bound in red morocco,
easily carried in the finger of a lady's glove. There are some books
in the Escurial (called by Spaniards " the eighth wonder of the
world") which measure six by four feet. The Escurial is a
veritable treasure-house of books, amongst its treasures being a
copy of the Gospels of St. John, on vellum, which dates from the
fifth century. In the Louvre, Paris, the " Antiquity " volumes of
the Napoleonic Description de I'Egypte are thirty-seven and one-
half inches high. Hoepli's Divina Commedia of Dante is less than
two and one-half by two and one-half inches; and Pickering's
edition of Tasso measures three and one-half inches high by one
and three- fourths wide.
228 BOOKDOM [Nov.,
Were books numerous before the invention of printing? If
so, says an American author, the labors of the writers must have
been very painstaking, and they are deserving of the eternal grati-
tude of book-lovers. We are possibly not in possession of one-
tenth part of the standard works which were once classical in Greece
and Rome. Out of the one hundred and forty books which Livy, the
Roman historian, wrote, only thirty-five are now extant. Varro, the
most learned of the Romans, is known to have written several hun-
dred volumes, of which only two have come down to us; while of
the number composed by Diodorus Siculus, only fifteen are extant.
The Goths, Vandals, Iconoclasts and Saracens all conspired for the
destruction of ancient libraries. The Caliph Omar, in 632, or-
dered the destruction of the famous library of Alexandria, said to
have contained seven hundred thousand volumes. Later, in France,
the Huguenots burned the famous library of St. Benedict-sur-Loire,
with its five thousand manuscript volumes. In Germany during the
" Peasants' War " tens of thousands of manuscript volumes were
destroyed; and the great library of Munster, one of the most
famous in all Germany, was destroyed by the Anabaptists.
Hence, the works now extant are but imperfect witnesses to the
gigantic labors spent in making and preserving knowledge, art,
science and culture from oblivion by the protecting hand of books.
For centuries following the dismemberment of the Roman
Empire, the making of books was confined to the monastic institu-
tions, where learned scribes laboriously transcribed the works of the
old authors. Each monastery had its scriptorium, or writing place,
for those who were thus employed ; and transcription was the chief
occupation of the monks during the hours allotted to manual labor.
Some of the larger monasteries employed as many as twelve copy-
ists. The monks were not only copyists, they were illuminators
and binders as well. Some of the old monastic productions are
marvels of artistic skill; and the illumination and binding of these
columns are the cynosure of artistic eyes. We have nothing in
modern times so artistically wrought as the volumes which have
come down to us from the period which certain historians mis-call
" The Dark Ages." The Irish monks excelled in the art of illumina-
tion; and several specimens of their marvelous productions are still
extant. The most remarkable work is The Book of Kells, preserved
in Trinity College, Dublin. This is a copy of the Four Gospels
in Latin; and for beauty of execution no other book in existence
can compare with it. It is written on vellum, and dates, probably,
1915.] BOOKDOM 229
from the seventh century. The Book of Armagh, containing,
among other things, a life of St. Patrick, and a complete copy of
the New Testament, is almost as beautifully written as The Book
of Kelts. It was finished in 807 by the scribe Ferdonach of
Armagh; it is also to be found in Trinity College. The Book of
MacDurnan, The Book of Durrow, and the Stowe Missal of the
same period are also of remarkable workmanship. When one re-
flects that all these were written by hand in the most perfect style
(every letter is perfectly shaped), it is easy to realize how much
time and effort these works must have cost. But the works of the
monks was not of a mercenary nature ; it was a labor of love. Even
bishops did not disdain to make books; and we are told that Os-
mund, Bishop of Salisbury (eleventh century), copied and bound
books with his own hand. Still later, one of the most remarkable
of mediaeval writers Thomas a Kempis (author of The Imitation
of Christ) did similar work; he was an indefatigable copyist of
books. In one of his discourses (Concio 20) he says: "Verily,
it is a good work to transcribe the books which Our Lord loves,
by which knowledge of Him is diffused, His precepts taught, and
their practice inculcated."
Books were highly valued in early times; and it was difficult
to obtain them. A story told of St. Columba (Columbkille) proves
how highly they were prized. Columba when on a visit to his former
teacher, Finnian abbot of Moville had surreptitiously made
a copy of Finnian's Psaltery (Catach). When Finnian had learned
of Columba's action, he claimed the copy as his property, and in
order to gain possession of it appealed the case to Diarmid, the
High-King of Ireland. Diarmid decided against Columba; and
the decision led to a very disastrous sequel. A bloody battle was
fought, and Diarmid was forced to flee. In consequence of this
the Synod of Teilte excommunicated Columba. The excommuni-
cation was subsequently removed, but a penance was laid upon
Columba, that he should convert as many heathens as there were
Christians slain in the encounter with Diarmid. He therefore left
his native shore and became the Apostle of the Scots, founding the
monastery of lona, famous in Scottish song and story. The Catach
has ever been held in the highest veneration by the Irish people.
It was wont to be carried by the O'Donnells in battle. What remains
of the copy, together with the casket that contains it, is now in the
National Museum, Dublin.
Books were so valuable in former times that every possible
230 BOOKDOM [Nov.,
precaution was taken to preserve them from injury and loss ; they
were protected by special statutes; were subject of grave nego-
tiations, and not infrequently solemnly bequeathed by testament.
They were sometimes chained to reading desks and shelves, lest
they should be stolen. This custom was almost universal, and
even as late as 1750 a "chained" library might be seen at All
Saints' Church, Hereford, England. And to-day the chained
volume is to be seen even in the cities of America. But these
chained volumes have no literary value; they are the directories
found in drug stores. Books were lent only to the high orders,
and ample pledges were demanded for their return. Even as late
as 1471, Louis XL, King of France, was obliged by the Faculty
of Paris to deposit valuable security in order to obtain the loan of
the works of Rhasis, an Arabian physician. Books were very
costly; and it is recorded that Alfred the Great (founder of the
University of Oxford) gave eight hides of land (about five thou-
sand acres) for a single book. The Countess of Anjou gave two
hundred sheep for a book of homilies. Even to-day, some books
are " worth their weight in gold." A recent writer (Lang, author
of The Library) tells of one hundred books which are valued at
two hundred thousand dollars, or two thousand dollars a volume.
He mentions a sale where thirty thousand dollars was paid for two
books. Many such books of course are manuscripts. Shea, in his
History of the Catholic Church in the United States, has an inter-
esting paragraph on this subject. He writes : " A remarkable
monument of patience and industry exists in the compilation of
two missals in manuscript by a Father Schneider, an early mis-
sionary in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so as to have a
missal at different stations, and thus lighten the load which he
was obliged to carry on his missionary tours. Poverty made it
impossible for him to obtain the requisite supply; but his patience
supplied the want. One of these is in a perfect state of preserva-
tion a volume six inches wide, seven and one-half inches long,
and an inch thick, the handwriting clear and beautiful." 1
II.
Above and beyond the material value of books, there is a
higher aspect which we term the spiritual, to which the former is
subordinate, just as in the human microcosm the body is the agency
of the mind; and books, after the grace of God which flows to
^ol. ii., pp. 65, 67.
1915.] BOOKDOM 231
us through the channels of prayer and the sacraments, are the
vehicles by which truth, the pabulum of the mind, is acquired
ordinarily. To emphasize this assertion we need but recall the
names of St. Augustine and St. Ignatius Loyola. The conversion
of the former came through the random reading of passages in the
New Testament, whilst St. Ignatius was diverted from a military
career by the reading of the Lives of the Saints. Error too, alas !
finds its way to the mind through the medium of books ; and reading,
which made saints of Augustine and Ignatius, made fiends of Trop-
ham and Rachvol, and outcasts of Renan and Loisy. Hence it is
nearly an axiom that " people will not be any better than the books
they read." A well-known author (Proal) says: "Books are the
greatest blessing, and also the greatest curse of mankind." Paul
Bourget in the preface to his Essays on Psychology says : " There
is not one of us who, looking into his conscience, will not recognize
that his entire action was the result of reading this or that book."
In one of Georges Sands' books the heroine speaking of a volume
says : "You have changed my life; you must now change my taste."
The old adage : " Tell me your company and I shall tell you what
you are," is nowhere so applicable as in the domain of books.
Books are the embodiment of the literature of the ages; and
the greatest fact in history is the influence of literature on civili-
zation; it has ever been the moulder and modeler of national and
social life. The people which had the most prominent part in this
work was the nation of the Greeks, to whom, we are told, the edu-
cation of the intellect of man was intrusted by Divine Providence,
so that, when the time should come for the spiritual training of his
soul, the less noble work of intellectual advancement would not
interfere with Divine teaching. 2 '' The world," says Newman,
" was to have certain intellectual teachers, and no others ; Homer,
and Aristotle, with the poets and philosophers who circle round
them, were to be the schoolmasters of all generations, and Homer
was invested with the office of forming the young minds of Greece
to noble thoughts and bold deeds. But his work did not cease with
those young minds; his words lived when the Grecian heroes lay
stretched silent on the battle plain, or when their ashes were mingled
with those of the funeral pyre on which they were burned." 3 " The
Greek language," says Mrs. Browning, 4 " was a stronger intel-
lectual life than any similar one which has lived in breath of
articulate speaking man and survived it Wonderful it is to look
"Gladstone, Primer of Homer, p. 140. z ldea of a University.
* Essays on the Greek Poets, p. 11..
232 BOOKDOM [Nov.,
back fathoms down the great past thousands of years away
where whole generations lie unmade to dust where the sounding
of their trumpets and the rushing of their scythed chariots
are more silent than the dog breathing at our feet, or the fly's paces
on our window pane; and yet from the silence we feel words that
rise up like smoke- words uttered 'in excellent low voices' but
audible and distinct even to our own times It is wonderful to
look back and listen ! "
" To-day the voice of Homer in his great epic, the Iliad, is
still heard. His tones, with that enduring vitality of his nation,
rise, clear and strong, above the hush of the past. As we go down
the hill of ages, the ^Eneid of Vergil seems but the woodland that
sends back the echo of the Iliad reversed Thus Greek thought
moulded the Latin mind; but the onward march of Homer's intel-
lect is not yet brought to a halt. The inspiration of the great
Catholic Dante was drawn from Vergil, whom, in person, Dante
took as his guide through the wild glooms of the Inferno. From
all three Milton gathered the materials for his Paradise Lost, and
thus we see how one of the great stones in the pyramid of English
literature comes indirectly from a Greek source. The influence of
Greek literature on modern thought is everywhere felt, and is grow-
ing more visible. But as in Greek thought there were the higher
and the lower elements, so we have in our day some writers who
cull from it what is noble, and others who gather what is base.
These latter, taking what their depraved tendencies urged them to
seek and coloring it with a degraded pencil, pass it upon the world
as the ideal Greek thought and Greek art. The ideals of the
Greeks, even in their ignorance of things supernal, were lofty;
we have but to think of Homer, Sophocles and Plato to be con-
vinced of this. But in our days we find that the pure stream has
been polluted by the stream of sensualism, directed by Swinburne,
Rossetti, and their nameless school." 5
Thus we realize the influence of literature on the ages. Then
if we wish to know the special characteristics of any particular
epoch, we find it embodied in its literature. As with national life,
so it is with the individual. We are a reflection of what we read :
Dreams, books, are each a world ; and books, we know
Are a substantial world both pure and good;
Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastimes and our happiness will grow.
"O'Connor, Reading and the Mind, pp. 17, 18.
1915-] BOOKDOM 233
" Books," says Channing, " give to all who will faithfully use
them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and the greatest
of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the
prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if
the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof ;
if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and
Shakespeare to open to me worlds of imagination and the workings
of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical
wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship."
As social animals we are in need of companionship ; and we may al-
ways have the companionship of books. But these must be of the
best. As the body is nourished by the food we eat, so is the mind
nourished by the books we read. As we would not eat decayed
fruit or spoiled beef, neither should we read anything except the
best. " In books," says Ruskin, " it is possible for us to choose
our friends, and from the very best of the earth, and afford society
continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long as we
like, whatever our rank or occupation, talk to us in the best words
they can choose, and with thanks if we listen to them. And this
society, because it is so numerous and gentle and can be kept wait-
ing around us all day long, not to grant audience, but to gain it
kings and statesmen lingering patiently in those plainly-furnished
ante-rooms (our bookshelves), we make no account of that com-
pany perhaps never listen to a word they would say all day long."
Just think of it! That company is just as willing to talk to us
as to the most distinguished man or woman on earth. We can be
with them to-day, to-morrow and all days. They are never im-
patient with us, they never refuse to repeat over and over again the
things we want them to say, they will say it to us to-day and to-
morrow just as patiently.
There is another phase of the influence of books, especially on
youthful minds, which is paramount. Books shape our lives and.
character. If the book teach us what is evil, corruption ensues;
if it teach us what is spiritually wholesome, our lives are ennobled.
The youthful mind is a veritable picture gallery a gallery which is
indestructible. Every impression received is fixed upon the mind
by a psychological process analogically similar to the fixing of an
image on a photographic plate, with this difference, that the photo-
graphic plate is destructible, whereas mental impressions are fixed
indelibly; they last unto eternity. This mental picture is ever
influencing our thoughts, which find concrete form in actions. This
234 BOOKDOM [Nov.,
fact is attested by Holy Writ, for we read in the Book of Proverbs :
" As a man thinketh, so is he." It is unhappily too true that evil
impressions are the most assertive, for " man is prone to evil."
We can furnish proofs innumerable of men and women who, in after
life, bitterly bewailed their youthful indiscretions in reading. No
age has witnessed such a flood of unwholesome reading as the
present. The press, which at its inception was hailed by Pontiffs
as " the greatest blessing of Providence in the natural order,"
has become the Moloch of modern life. It is pouring forth a
stream of literature from polluted sources. It may not be so gross
as that of other days, but it is more deadly, and more subtle.
What then shall we read? This is a question to which a
definite answer cannot be given. The choice rests with the in-
dividual. " What is one man's meat, may be another's poison."
" Before selecting," says Brother Azarias, a man whose name is
dear to everyone who browses in literary fields, " draw the line be-
tween the literature of the hour, that is so much foam upon the
current of time, flecking its surface for a moment and passing away
into oblivion, and the literature which is a possession for all time,
whose foundations are deeply laid in human nature, and whose
structure withstands the storms of adversity and the eddies of
events The reading of strong and terse writing fires the soul
and strengthens the intellect; the reading of emasculated books
will make emasculated intellects The best reading is that
which tends to growth of character as well as intellectual develop-
ment. Every good book dealing with human life in its broader
phases has that effect We Catholics should read books that
are prepared for the culture of our spiritual sense. They remind
us of our last end ; they probe our consciences and lay open before
us our failings, frailties and shortcomings; they reveal to us the
goodness and mercy of God, the life, passion and merits of our
Redeemer, the beauty and holiness of the Church; they teach us
how to prepare for the profitable reception of the sacraments ; they
place before us for our model and imitation the ideal Christian
life. They rebuke our sins, they soothe our anxieties; they
strengthen our resolves. With such friends we should become very
intimate."
WHITE EAGLE.
BY L. P. DECONDUN.
XII.
PARIS, August, 1913.
HAT could I say and what could I think, Reginald dear,
after reading over and over the long epistle I re-
ceived from you on Thursday morning? The con-
fused scribble I sent off then cannot be called a letter,
and now I am gathering what sense I can to write
intelligently. You see, I had begun so gradually to be-
lieve in your early return that to hear of its having been put back
over the proposed year, was a great shock to me. But I understand
your motives, and I acknowledge that your decision is the only possi-
ble one; only this does not remove the pain; and the first minutes
after a sharp blow leave most of us very sore and very small. So
you must make allowances.
Besides it fell on me as a " bolt from the blue." At breakfast
everyone was merry, and had teased us about our expedition of the
previous evening Maryna having treacherously revealed my fits of
terror. Her choice of the soiree's programme for Mademoiselle
Zulma's benefit had even brought a humorous twinkle to the Prince's
eyes, though no amount of chaff could disconcert her. She received
it all with the utmost composure, and only when she stood up from
the table did she condescend to express her feelings by one famous
line : " Je le ferais encore si f avals a le faire" Upon which she was
clapped " from the stage " by everyone of us.
Then the Prince was summoned to the telephone, and came back
to say that Max and Willie R had arrived by an early train;
adding pleasantly that he had persuaded them to give us most of their
spare time. They were both coming to dinner, and Max would call
in the afternoon to see me. Why me particularly, I had wondered.
But the wonder soon vanished as the letters were brought up and
yours was among them. Well ! you know what followed, since I went
straight to my room and wrote to you there and then ; but afterwards
I had not the courage to join the others. I took a book for ap-
pearance's sake and sat on my balcony. There, so high up as to be
nearly level with the roofs across the comparatively silent avenue, I
listened vaguely, but with a heavy heart to the distant traffic. My dis-
appointment was so keen that I was not trying to master or measure
it; I remained passive while my mind kept registering unimportant
236 WHITE EAGLE [Nov.,
facts. I noticed that the cupola of the Invalides was retaining fewer
patches of gold than I had thought; that most of the fashionable
houses opposite were empty and silent, their iron shutters tightly
closed. Two concierges were chatting at one of the portes-cochcres
over some news in the papers, one leaning on a broom, the other
reading and gesticulating. A cat was crossing the street cautiously
twenty yards from them, and keeping a wary eye on the pair.
I could not say how long I sat in my retreat; I did not even
hear a knock at my door, and I started guiltily when a hand was laid
on my shoulder.
"Oh, Helena!" I said, " you startled me, child."
" Yes, I know ; one never hears anything on a balcony. But
(her gentle clear eyes shone with a glad light) I bring you good
tidings."
What could have been good tidings to me then? Yet I man-
aged to smile.
" What is it? " I asked. " Has Maryna? "
" It is nothing about Maryna. Count Klonowicz is much better
to-day. Basylii says that, with God's help, all will be well with him.
Come, Prince Lowinski is in the library; he has just brought us the
news."
I pushed back my chair and followed the girl; grateful for the
event, but more grateful still for the fact that in spite of my selfish-
ness and sorrow, I felt able to " rejoice with those who rejoiced."
We found everybody in the library. The Prince was sitting by
the side of his desk; Maryna who had only come in with Madame
Stablewska, was, with her hat still on, leaning against the mantel-
piece. Nancy and Madame Stablewska had drawn their chairs nearer,
the latter was taking off her gloves absently.
" Now," the Prince was saying, " there is no doubt left ; Stanislaw
Klonowicz's memory is improving in an irregular but sure manner.
He is beginning to connect what he hears with facts and people. Not
definitely, perhaps, but the connection exists. This morning after go-
ing through several articles of the newspapers which so far he has
read daily without comprehension he stopped to ask whether we did
not mention to him that East and West Galicia had decided to join
forces. As a matter of fact, since February last, we have spoken in his
presence of the settlement between the Poles and the Ruthenians;
but we had given up hope of seeing him grasp the point."
" Father, dear," interrupted Maryna, " do you forget that these
political events must be Greek to Mrs. Camberwell and Miss
O'Dwyer?"
The Prince quickly raised his eyes. " Why ! Yes, I suppose so,"
he remarked hesitatingly. " I "
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 237
" One moment," said Helena, " I have some newspaper cuttings
here, and they will tell more than long explanations. I keep most of
them."
And as the Prince waited, smiling, she took several slips from
a thick leather-bound albnm and handed them to Nancy and to me.
I am not sure that we understood the importance of several of them ;
but the following one is in English and the circumstances alluded to
are quite clear. 1
THE POLES AND THE RUTHENIANS.
" Prince Paul S. R., Polish agent, Liverpool : The question of
Polo-Ruthenian relations having attracted public attention through
articles in the Times, the Catholic Times and other papers, and the
matter having been brought into prominence by Count B 's journey
to Hungary, it is my duty as an officially recognized Polish agent, and
as the President of the National and International League of the
Friends of Poland, to bring to the knowledge of the English public the
following information: Peace was declared between the Polish nation
and the Ruthenians on the fourteenth of last month to the great regret
of Prussia and Russia ! These two countries have encouraged and arti-
ficially kept up enmity between the Poles and Ruthenians, since union
must prove unfavorable to Prussia's and Russia's ambitions. On the
fourteenth of February the long period of artificially-nourished enmity,
fortunately, came to an end, and the Poles and Ruthenians have joined
hands. They have carried unanimously the new electoral law for the
provincial Galician Diet. Although this law does not establish
universal suffrage, yet power has been transferred to the small land-
holders, and the act is the most democratic of all such measures in
the Austrian dominions. After the division the Poles and the
Ruthenians fraternized, a fact which is of the greatest importance for
the future of Poland as well as of the whole of Europe, for a new
and very strong power will be the outcome of the understanding that
has been reached."
The last lines at all events struck Nancy and me forcibly: "A
fact which is of the greatest importance for the future of Poland;"
and again: "for a very strong power will be the outcome of this
understanding"
" Why! " observed Nancy when she had read it twice (she is too
thoroughly Irish not to throw herself heart and soul into other people's
interests), " this is capital. It looks like the thin end of the wedge,
does it not?"
" It may be so," answered Prince Lowinski, " particularly as we
intend to make use of every opportunity."
1 The date on which this paragraph was published by the Catholic Times was
March 13, 1914. (P. R.)
238 WHITE EAGLE [Nov.,
" But you see, Miss O'Dwyer," he went on, " there is more to
handicap us than Russia, Prussia or Hungary, there is a new spirit
of atheistic Socialism which is trying to raise its head even in Poland.
Now, no one among the Poles is more willing than the old scattered
aristocracy to adopt and push forward all beneficial social laws in our
fight for freedom; but we want them based on the Christian policy
of Leo XIII. This means that, besides our other difficulties, we have
to measure ourselves against the destroying, hissing dragon which is
invading Europe. Happily," concluded the Prince, with a humorous
glance, " there seems to be a fair number of ardent young 'Michels'
among our new generation."
" Which implies," I ventured, " that you are confident of success
in the long run ? "
But at this Prince Lowinski shook his head thoughtfully.
" My dear Mrs. Camberwell," he said, " this depends altogether on
what you call 'success.' If you mean raising once more a free king-
dom of Poland, God alone could answer on that point; though every
born Pole, worthy of the name, treasures this almost senseless hope
in the depths of his heart even / do so. But our chief aim, at
present, is to win for every man of our race the right to exist; not
as a crushed, starving serf, but as a human being, free to think, and
choose, and follow his conscience and his religion in liberty. We
know that it may seem a difficult task in the Tsar's dominions, but
I must say this: In our case, whether or no we openly regain our
prerogatives, our struggle for them is in itself a victory. It keeps
our hearts beating, and the first necessity to secure a future is to pre-
serve life.
" As to this life of our land which every effort of ours tends to
perpetuate," he added slowly, " it is not for us to say what place it is
to hold in the eternal plans. It belongs to the Giver to do what He
will with His Own. Perhaps (the Prince looked dreamily at a long
streak of sunshine on the wall oposite), perhaps it is still meant for
'the leaven which a woman takes and mixes in three measures of
flour.' "
He paused unconsciously, but none of us broke the silence. After
a moment he went on.
" It is striking, is it not, how history shows us the mysterious
way these things happen. Here we have a handful of Christians, poor,
helpless and hunted ; they are plunged into the corruption of the huge
Roman Empire, and three hundred years later rise up strong and
sustaining. Or take Ireland, 'Insula sanctorum et doctorum' crushed
under masses of errors, of injustice and blood, obliged to spread afar
in poverty and sorrow, yet the dough is rising: England is reawaken-
ing to the old Faith, and America is on the way to lift up the standard
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 239
of Catholicism to wonderful heights. No, I don't think it is pride
which makes me look on faithful Catholic Poland also as on a particle
of that 'leaven' of the Kingdom of God. We have been pressed and
hidden into the depth of schism and heresy, therefore it is but our
duty to throb and heat, and, by every wish, every deed, every drop of
our blood, if need be, to force the tremendous mass to rise.
" Oh ! it may take many more generations to suffer, and bleed, and
weep, before Eastern Europe kneels again at the feet of Peter; and
Poland may never quite emerge in an earthly triumph. That is God's
secret; but (and here the Prince stood up in all his virile strength)
but it may happen, because the nations are earthly things whose fidelity
must be rewarded in this world, since in the other are we not told
so ? there will be neither Jews nor Gentiles, Romans nor Persians ! "
He stopped, smiled a little and walked to the window; then he
turned round.
" I must really apologize," he said with his simple yet dignified
manner, " for keeping you here, ladies, listening to the dreams of an
old idealist." And as both Nancy and I protested : " Yes, yes, it
is so; sometimes, dreams carry one away beyond the limits of con-
sideration. Besides, some of us Pole's are shocking medievalists ; we
would scarcely object to seeing two-thirds of our men enter the battle-
field with sword or pen, and the rest storming heaven in convents and
monasteries."
"What! a whole third of the men?" exclaimed Helena laughing.
The Prince smiled silently. He looked at Maryfia, who was
gazing with sightless eyes through the window. As she felt his glance
she turned to him.
" We are willing to give the same choice to women," he was
saying.
She too, smiled ; an amused gleam shooting from under her lower-
ing lids. " Let us hope they may be grateful," she answered play-
fully. Then she picked up her gloves to go and to get ready for
luncheon.
It was about three o'clock when Max arrived, and I need not
tell you how glad we were to see him. But, oh ! Rex, after these few
weeks, his voice brought such an echo of yours that it gave me quite
a sharp pang. However, after the first few minutes, I perceived that
this great strong fellow did not look well. I missed the boyish look
on his face, and suspected preoccupation and moodiness under his
apparently cheerful interest. His news was given to us in a rambling
manner most unlike his hearty habit, and when we questioned him on
Joan and your mother he had only commonplaces to answer.
Nancy was not long in noticing this and, with her usual tact, she
had no difficulty in finding some pretext for disappearing.
240 WHITE EAGLE [Nov.,
When she was gone there was a short silence; Max seemed un-
comfortable ; but he finally shook off his hesitation. He stood up and
planted himself before me.
" Nemo," he asked straight out, " have you heard from Joan
lately?"
" Yes," I said, " a week ago."
" May I inquire what she wrote about ? "
" About herself and your mother."
"She said nothing about me?"
" Nothing."
" She did not tell you that I have hardly seen her since they
went to C ."
" I understood as much. Prince Lowinski remarked that you had
not been free to leave London until now."
" But you did not hear that from Joan? "
" No."
"And she did not tell you that I wanted to take her to the
Schwarzwald for a trip and that she refused."
" She never mentioned it."
Max took a few steps up and down the room, then he stopped
again. " Nemo," he said gloomily, " I think things are about as bad as
I care to have them. I can't make out what is wrong with Joan."
My heart gave a little jump. " What can it be? " I asked.
" That is more than I am able to guess. She has shut herself up
in a castle of her own, and it is almost an effort for her to be
ordinarily civil to me before people. Whenever I went to C - she
made a point of leaving me with my mother, and of disappearing as
completely as she could without making it remarkable. When we
were alone she was mostly dumb or treating me to some of those
short, pointed sentences, sheathed in velvet, which I expect you know
by experience."
I nodded.
" Well ! that's not the kind of behavior which makes life pleasant
between husband and wife; is it? So, I cleared out. I am going
south with Willie; that ought to give her a comfortable holiday."
" But, Max dear, this is this is awful."
" Oh ! it's not exactly jolly, I know." And he walked as far as
the window, fidgeting with a bunch of keys in his pocket.
"Max," I inquired after a minute or two, "how did it begin?"
" Begin ? Oh ! I could not tell you. I almost wonder some-
times whether she has not taken it into her head that if I had been
free when I met Miss Lowinska, I might have married her."
"Married Miss Lowinska? It would be crazy of Joan to
imagine such a thing."
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 241
" I know, considering, well ! never mind. Then she was provoked
that I left her so much with mother, and, later on, that I met the
Lowinskis so often. She wanted me to give her every free hour I
had; but that was impossible. Besides you had advised me yourself
to throw her and the mater together as much as I could, and let them
learn to understand each other thoroughly. I was to avoid being a
bone of contention between them, you remember."
" I do," I acknowledged, but my heart sank.
" Oh ! I believed you were right, and I acted accordingly ; still
I must have blundered somewhere, because it didn't work. Mind you,
I don't say with the mater who behaved quite nicely, but with Joan."
" My poor Max," I confessed, " it is all my fault ; I should not
have interfered."
" I am not so sure of that," he protested generously. " Your ad-
vice was sound enough in a sense, and there would have been no
need to carry it to extremes if Joan did not push me to it. Of course,
this is between us, but I am no archangel, Nemo, and sometimes her
dainty little speeches have a queer trick of rubbing me the wrong way."
I sighed, and I could not help remembering the evening Joan had
called for the books. She had refused to stay with me and wait for
Max, or even to attach any importance to the message he had tele-
phoned. He was in no way exaggerating. This was an unfortunate
business which her obstinacy and his wounded feelings would make
worse; and it was my conceited meddling that had brought it about.
But I took a sudden resolution.
" Max," I said, " it is all a misunderstanding, and it must come to
an end. You must explain to Joan that it was I who counseled you
to act as you did, and tell her for what reason."
Max shook his head. " It is no use, Nemo. Though I did not
mention your name, I did explain already."
"And?"
"Oh! she smiled of course. You know the smile?"
I knew indeed and said nothing.
" You see," he went on, " Joan is always so cool and clear-
headed. She only says what she wants to, but I don't. I let out things
sometimes oh! things I am sorry for afterwards and, then, there is
no excusing or palliating them. She has a memory like a gramo-
phone; if I so much as try to put a gloss over anything, she trots
out my very own words. So there I am, more inclined to kick myself
for a fool than to apologize."
Poor fellow! he said that so simply, so honestly that my heart
went out to him.
" Listen, my dear boy," I observed, " it is fully time for Nancy
and for me to return home. I will see Joan immediately and give
VOL. en. 1 6
242 WHITE EAGLE [Nov.,
her a piece of my mind. I am not afraid of her 'gramophone,' and
I will bring her to reason."
" Indeed I don't believe this would be practical at all," he began,
rather startled. " Joan is so frightfully sensitive and so easily hurt !
You see, Nemo, I won't have her worried or miserable whatever comes
or goes."
" You silly fellow," I could not help saying, " I am the last per-
son to want her miserable. It is 'happy' I want both of you to be.
Don't be anxious, Max; having made a mistake already I am bound
to be more careful. Besides I should do what I can to repair the
mischief I have caused ; shouldn't I ? "
I cannot blame him if he left me with some forebodings.
The day had not been propitious so far, and I was getting so
low-spirited that, as soon as possible before dinner, I took refuge in
my bedroom. Then I was a long time dressing. So much so that
Helena's maid began to look askance at me. Did madame feel un-
comfortable in that dress? or did madame wish to change her jewels?
She was not sure that this large opal on madame's finger suited the
" scheme." Fancy " my opal " which I wear night and day. There
was nothing for me but to go.
When I entered the oak room everybody was there except the
Prince. Nancy and Helena were chatting at the far end with Basylii
Klonowicz ; Madame Stablewska and Max formed another little group,
while Maryna and Willie R were standing in the opposite angle,
near the last of the windows.
I think Willie was honestly glad to see me; we only spoke for a
moment, but I had time to remark how well and how bright he looked.
And as it would have been cruelty to keep him from Maryna, I went to
take the chair Max had placed for me near Madame Stablewska.
The latter seemed interested in what Max had been relating to her, but
with all my good will I found it impossible 'to enter properly into the
subject. Even the few words I contributed to the conversation were
of the vaguest, because my attention was irresistibly drawn to the pair
near the window.
I could not see much of Willie whose back was turned, but I had a
fair view of Maryna. She stood there so tall, straight, toying absently
with the long chain circling once round her neck. She had been smiling,
evidently amused by some remarks of Willie, but now her face was get-
ting strangely grave. Her eyes, luminous and deep in the duller light,
were unwavering; yet in contrast with their expression of full grown
womanhood, her lips had remained parted and as daintily curved as
those of a child. I saw her answering something in a brief sentence ;
then Willie spoke again, and this time her mouth closed firm and
steady, and she shook her head. But he continued speaking until she
evidently put to him a question to which he nodded affirmatively. After
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 243
that she added a few words very slowly, but they must have given
Willie a shock as he actually stepped back; I believe he caught his
breath. Several seconds passed before either of them uttered a sylla-
ble. At last I saw him beginning to fumble with his pince-nez and
make another remark, but with visible hesitation, and I fancy that she,
too, hesitated before answering. She glanced outside on the pale
mauve and pink of the true Parisian sky, and I could barely see her
profile, until she turned her head again and spoke. Only, this time,
there was something in her expression which made my heart begin
to hammer, and, abruptly, unexpectedly she stopped, caught her full
red underlip with her teeth and again faced the window. When she
looked back at last, Prince Lowinski's steps could be heard on the
sjairs ; she smiled very, very sweetly and held her hand to Willie. I
saw him take it in both his own, and then let it drop to turn towards
the Prince who was coming in. And my heart was still hammering,
because I knew without a doubt that, in an unknown direction, one of
the tiny wheels of life had revolved.
Of what directly followed, how we went down to dinner and talked,
laughed and discussed, I could tell you nothing ; it left no impression
on me. Only when we gathered in the bronze drawing-room did I
begin to shake off my abstraction, and hear Nancy telling Basylii
Klonowicz, in her witty Irish way, that she and his brother had once
met in this room. And it struck me anew what a delightful little
" salon " this was, with its odd tinges of dull pink and brownish gold.
The indigo tones of the night came in through the French window,
as if to challenge the glow of the shaded electric balls ; while the latter,
cunningly laid above some of the old masters on the walls, left the rest
of the room in a cosy half-light.
It was all perfectly soothing, and I was yielding to its influence
when Willie's voice, close to me, woke me up from it. " Look," he
was saying, " did you ever see her more beautiful ? "
It was easy to know to whom he referred. And he was right,
a more fascinating woman I have never seen. She was sitting in a
broad chair and leaning on the arm of it. She wore a long and narrow
white tunic, over which was slipped a shorter one of heavy silver lace.
Instead of coiling her hair that evening, she had left it in two huge
plaits now lying across her knees ; and the only ornament on her head
was a Greek band of silver.
" Willie," I said impulsively, " have you never thought of paint-
ing her?"
" Thought ! Why, I have longed to do it. But she refused to
pose."
" And you could not do her from memory ? "
11 And do her justice? No. It would be the portrait of a beauti-
ful woman, not hers. Don't you see, it is her personality which is so
244 WHITE EAGLE [Nov.,
wonderful. It is not her features. To me she is a mixture of a
Western saint, ready for a halo and of an unfathomable Eastern
queen.
I had to smile. " Oh! Willie! " I said, " You are bitten! "
But he did not laugh ; a cloud passed over his face. " What's the
good of that ? " he muttered bitterly.
His voice had such a ring in it that I looked at him. His eyes
had a vivid brilliancy (in no way due to his pince-nez), and he was
rather pale.
"What is the matter?" I asked very low.
He did not answer at once ; instead he put a question. " You
saw me speaking with Miss Lowinska before dinner?"
"I did; yes."
" I know that you will believe me if I say that I had not the
remotest intention of approaching a certain subject with her to-night;
but something drove me on the rocks and I had to speak. You under-
stand what I am alluding to ? "
" To be frank, Willie, I think I do."
" W T ell ! then, I have only one word to add ; it is all over, I have
presumed too much."
" Oh ! impossible. You can't have understood her, or or you
brought things to a climax too soon."
" No ; time has nothing to do with it."
" Are you sure?"
" Absolutely."
" It is inconceivable to me. Do you know that I was sure that
she cared for you ? "
He smiled sadly ; his face had become patient and gentle. " Yes,"
he admitted, " a little perhaps. She she almost confessed as much ;
only in her case it makes no difference."
" Surely her father would not interfere with her wishes ; it can't
be that."
" No, her father's wishes and hers are quite in agreement."
" Why do you speak in such a mysterious way ? "
" Because I am not at liberty to say more, though it all seems
utterly incredible to me. Now, for instance, when I look at her so
undisturbed, so natural, I am tempted to believe that I am mad or
dreaming. Indeed, I should not have opened my lips to you about
this, but I knew how pleased you would have been if "
" My poor Willie, of course I would ! "
And I looked away for an instant; I could not stand his sad
set face.
" You see," he continued, " though you told me once or pre-
tended to tell me that I did not stand much chance, I remained under
the impression that you only wished I was a better man, a a more
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 245
religious man, to win her. Well ! I tried, I honestly did try ; so much
so that her refusal will make no difference; I intend to go on trying.
Of course, there is not a shadow of hope or chance left; but I had
hoped when I felt you on my side. I was too easily convinced that
women can read one another so well that I was safe in following your
lead."
"My lead! Oh! Willie!"
"Well! you tried to help me on, didn't you?"
"Yes, yes, I did!" I almost cried out. "I came to be slowly
persuaded that your two natures, unlike as they are, would complete
each other. That is one more of my wretched mistakes; I seem to
be in this world to become a special cross for my friends."
" Oh ! nonsense, nonsense," he said kindly.
" What will you do now? "
" Leave Paris as soon as possible, of course. I shall arrange that
with Max" (He cleared his throat with an effort.) " Ah, Miss
O'Dwyer is going to sing. What a fine fellow that young Pole is.
Look at him opening the piano."
But this sudden pretense of interest was useless with me, and as
I looked at him he dropped it.
" By the way, Mrs. Camberwell, will you do me a favor? "
" I wonder you can trust me to do anything right."
" Oh, yes ! " he said smiling a little. " Could you not any time
this evening induce Miss Lowinska to play what she played in my
studio the first day she was there. Do you remember ? "
"You mean that 'Sehnsucht' of Queckenberg? "
"I do ; and Burow's Polish song ; somehow it is like her ; and
" the 'Dance of the Shadows/ A good many hopes have turned into
shadows for me since then."
" I will try," I answered, smothering a sigh.
The thought went through my mind that she had played these
of her own accord the day before; but I did not say it. It was a
good deal later when I persuaded Maryfia to yield to my request. At
first she had looked questioningly at me and had seemed to hesitate;
still my insistence carried the point.
Once she sat at the piano, however, she made us forget most
things, except the flooding melody and the soul which gave it intensity.
I do not know how long she kept us under the spell ; I only woke up
to the present, so to speak, when, ending with a few soft chords, she
signed to Helena to come to her. After a word or two the latter
drew a song out of a pile of music, and opened it before them both.
It was a simple duet which Helena had been teaching to the girls of
a " Patronage." I recognized it at once, and yet I could not tell you
what a strange feeling paralyzed me 'when Maryfia began. What on
earth had made her choose it?
246 WHITE EAGLE [Nov.,
One of the Cherubim thus spake to me :
"If thou the glory of my heaven could see!
If but that warmth of Love Divine
Which fires my heart might also quicken thine ! "
My soul to such high wisdom could but say :
" More glorious far than e'en most glorious day
Thou seest God. Does heaven also give
The hidden Love of God by which we live? "*
I could not say whether anyone else was conscious of something
unusual, but I was certainly aware of it. I barely noticed Helena's
sweet voice now and again, Maryfia's alone seemed to reach me.
The Cherubim his challenge then renewed :
"But hast thou tasted of my Heavenly Food?
My feast is to adore the Mighty One,
To live a ray in His Most Glorious Sun."
And I could venture but the answer meek :
"Thou of thy life in God-like terms may speak.
In me, one Gift doth all my longing slake,
The Humble Bread I worship and partake." 2
Well, my dearest, all I can tell you is that when Miss Lowinska
stood up after this, the atmosphere had changed. A veil had fallen
between the few past hours and the present. She herself was different
in an undefinable way. Until then she had, I thought, slightly avoided
Willie, now she went deliberately to talk with him, and I could see that
it was for the poor fellow both an intense happiness and a real tor-
ture. Still, the evening over, they parted in the simplest and friend-
liest manner. And though I was fairly well convinced that both
their hearts were full, neither of them betrayed it if such was the case.
But, Rex dear, it left me almost as sad as themselves. And I
must have shown it too, for, when after saying good-night I turned
towards my room, an arm was slipped under mine, and a soft, rich voice
said close to my ear. " What's up, little lady ? Not this way, please."
I was whirled round in the opposite direction, and before I could
protest I found myself in Maryna's own apartment. She brought me
2 In the original French the verses run thus:
" Un Cherubin dit un jour a mon ame,
Si tu savais les gloires de mon ciel,
Si tu voyais les purs rayons de flamme
Que de son front projette 1'Eternal !
Je repondis a 1'Archange celeste ;
Toi qui vois Dieu plus brillant que le jour
D'un Dieu cache sur un autel modeste
Sais-tu 1'amour ? "
" Le Cherubin voulut parler encore ;
Sais-tu dit-il mon aliment divin?
Aimer, servir le grand Dieu que j'adore
M'unir a lui, voila mon seul festin
Je repondis au lumineux Archange ;
Tu te nourris de la Divinite
Mais rhumble Pain que j'adore et je mange
L'as-tu goute ? "
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 247
straight to her balcony, threw a cushion or two on the basket chair,
and willy-nilly forced me into it.
" Now," she exclaimed with a touch of the old mischief I have
come to know so well, " you are at my mercy, and to-morrow Miss
O'Dwyer may storm if she likes about your beauty sleep ; I am going
to keep you ever so late. Don't trouble to argue, it is quite settled."
" Oh, I don't mind in the least," I said miserably, " the whole day
has been wretched."
" I thought so. Never mind, get it out quick and you will feel
better."
She leaned against the iron balustrade, her great plaits hanging
like two tamed snakes on her silvery gown; her figure clearly cut
on the dark blue of the sky.
I told her everything; the contents of your letter, my foolish
advice to Max and even my unfortunate encouragements to Willie
R . (This was touching her closely; but, with Maryna, entire
frankness is always safe.) I ended with the dispirited remark that I
had put my foot in it all round.
" Show the foot," was her only answer.
And as I looked at her without moving, " Show that foot" she
commanded, " show it at once."
With a very poor attempt at a smile, I displayed my innocent satin
slipper.
" Goodness me ! " she observed as if to herself and with mock
gravity, " the size of 'the thing.' "
" Oh ! Maryna don't be silly, it is all very true."
Her white teeth gleamed in a teasing smile. " True ! " she re-
peated, " I should think it is true. And more than that ; hasn't that
wretched little foot pressed with all its might on my own neck ? "
" Please don't be absurd."
She surveyed me critically, then her expression softened, and she
said in a very quiet voice:
"It is a fact though. Shall I tell you about it?"
" I wish you would," I begged.
She brought a chair opposite to mine and sat meditatively, her
elbows on her knees, her chin slightly raised on her hands, her long
plaits sweeping the ground. Her teasing mood had vanished. " Did
I not tell you before that, without wishing it, you had managed to
make some things much harder for me ? "
" Yes, you told me twice."
" I expect you understood why this evening; I saw you in
deep conversation with Mr. R ."
" No, I understand nothing, nor do I now. All I know is that
I am deeply grieved that you could not care for him."
There was a scarcely perceptible pause. " Nemo," she asked
248 WHITE EAGLE [Nov.,
gently, "are you verily so blind? Who told you that I could not
care for him ? "
I positively gasped. " Why ! you can't be suggesting that "
She nodded firmly. " Oh ! yes ! I can."
" Then, in what possible way did I complicate matters for you ? "
" Quite simply. I have used every opportunity to show Mr.
R that there could be no more than friendship between us; while
you seldom lost a chance to encourage him, raise his hopes and further
his ends. Now, didn't you?"
" But, good heavens ! I " There I stopped ; my eyes were filling
with tears. What a maze it all was !
She bent swiftly and took my hand. " Don't, my little friend,"
she said tenderly, " there is no real harm done, I assure you."
" But why should you refuse him ? "
" Ah! " she replied, nodding thoughtfully, " because I am not free
to act otherwise."
" Yet you are not you cannot be engaged ? "
" I am more than 'engaged' dear. I wanted to tell you before,
only well ! in a week or two, on the eighth of September, I am leaving
you all. My new home will not be far from here, rue d'Ulwi. Do
you know it ? "
I was dumbfounded.
" Don't look so horrified, Nemo, there is nothing very terrible in
that. For years I have been called to that life, and you see, even
your helping to draw a wire across my path did not make me stumble.
Just as well, isn't it?"
And I felt unable to articulate a syllable.
" Oh ! come," she said cheerfully, " I am only chaffing. Besides
I am truly grateful that things are as they are. I cannot forget his
soul now, and there will be somebody to pray for it as long as I live.
Don't you know, as I do, that nothing God allows to happen is use-
less ? And I am not ashamed to tell you that he is dear enough to me
to have cost me deeper regrets than you would credit; only God is
infinitely dearer; that is all."
I was still unable to answer; the tears which had filled my eyes
suddenly overflowed.
" Oh ! you baby ! " she murmured.
" I don't care, I can't help it," I exclaimed in despair, " it is
perfectly awful to think of you in a convent."
" What a sad little pagan you are ! "
" And oh ! Maryna, you are far too beautiful ! Look at yourself ! "
'" That is precisely what I did yesterday, don't you recollect !
And, between us, my lady fair, you did not altogether approve of it.
Now, be frank."
" But how could I guess? "
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 249
" That does not alter the fact."
" Maryfia, do you remember this evening when you were talking
with Max? You made such a picture then that I am beginning to
understand how much bewildered, as well as heartbroken, poor Willie
must have been. How could he realize that the Vision' before him
was to be suddenly hidden in a a Carmelite's habit ? "
" Oh ! Nemo, don't be silly."
" Silly! Why! I can't realize it myself."
" Well ! the sooner you do the better. You must get used to the
idea."
" Never ! You are made to wear this sort of dress and look like
a queen. See the glorious hair God has given you."
" Rather a load in summer. Still, if you are so partial to it,
you may have it and welcome. It would not make a bad rope for a
bell, would it?"
I had felt sad and sore the whole day, now I felt disgusted as
well. Besides my tears would not be kept back. I abruptly stood
up. But she was too quick and too strong for me. She jumped up
and pinned me on my cushions with one hand, while with the other she
snatched her small lace handkerchief to dry my eyes.
" Don't you attempt to escape me ! " she threatened ; and she
lifted my face to hers until her cool lips met mine, and I became aware
of the faint fragrance of lilac which is so peculiarly her own.
What shall I add, my Rex, except that instead of my going, we
never began to talk until then ; and that the hand of the clock pointed
to " two " when she noiselessly opened her door to let me out. Even
then I stopped with a question.
" How had Millicent Marchmont discovered that she, Maryfia,
did not intend to marry ? "
Maryfia looked surprised. " She could not haye discovered it,"
she affirmed.
" But she told me 'that you were proof against far better men
than Max/ "
" Did she? " Then a light broke on the girl's face; she laughed
softly.
" Perhaps I can guess," she said. " She asked me once whether
I had any settled plans for my future, and whether my father approved
of them. I answered that my plans would realize his dearest hopes.
She must have concluded that I was destined to an alliance with some
king or potentate at least."
Her white teeth flashed once more in a naughty little smile; I
nodded and her door closed without a sound.
I wonder who fell asleep first; she or I?
[TO BE CONCLUDED.]
flew Boohs.
PIONEER LAYMEN OF NORTH AMERICA. By Rev. T. J.
Campbell, S.J. Volume I. New York : The America Press.
$1.75-
In these entertaining pages, Father Campbell has given us a
series of clear portraits of those adventurous laymen, the makers
history in the days of the pioneer priests who brought the faith
to our shores in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
volume deals with Cartier, Menendez, Champlain, de la Tour,
Maisonneuve, Le Moyne and Radisson. Father Campbell defends
Carrier's treatment of the Indians, as comparing favorably with the
conduct of Hawkins, Morgan and Drake, who ruthlessly murdered
the natives, or carried them off into slavery. Menendez's crimes,
he says, "Existed mainly in the minds of his enemies. As they could
not conquer him they cursed him. Had his race and religion been
different, he would have been regarded as a hero." Champlain,
who made the Dominion possible by the founding of Quebec, sug-
gested to France as early as 1599 the feasibility of building a canal
from the Chagres River to the ocean. De la Tour's life affords
us a brief sketch of the expatriation of the Acadians, Maisonneuve's
discusses the beginnings of Montreal, and Radisson's the founding
of the Hudson Bay Company. Of Radisson our author writes :
" French historians never miss a chance to assail him, and they add
to the charge of treason to his country, apostasy from his religion.
There is at least a probability that he was neither an apostate nor a
traitor Until positive proof is adduced to the contrary, Radis-
son has a right to be considered a Frenchman and a Catholic. He
was the innocent and unconscious tool of underhand and un-
scrupulous statecraft."
A BOOK OF ENGLISH MARTYRS. By E. M. Wilmot-Buxton,
F.R.H.S. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.10 net.
The content of this book is composed of the stories of thirty-
two martyrs of the sixteenth century. In the charming preface
written by Dom Bede Camm it is intimated that the appearance of a
second volume, dealing with martyrs of the seventeenth century, is
contingent upon the reception accorded to the present work. If its
reception is in proportion to its merit, its successor will follow
1915.] NEW BOOKS 251
speedily, and will be welcomed eagerly by readers who wish to
experience again a consecrated joy.
The tales are told, as far as possible, in the words of the original
records, but naturally the larger portion is of the author's own
writing, in which she employs the dignity, simplicity, conciseness
and reserved strength of fine literary art. Although written espe-
cially for the young, the book appeals to readers of every class and
age, and should be in every Catholic household for its value from
every standpoint, historical, literary and apologetic. Non-Catholics,
induced by its attractive form to look into it, will find cause to
change their views founded upon the vilification and coarse ridicule
with which Kingsley's Westward Ho! assails the blessed memory of
Father Campion and Cuthbert Mayne.
The illustrations are in the main so satisfying, in spirit and
execution, that we deplore the discrepancies with the text found in
the picture of Father Campion being brought into London, and in
that which represents Sir Thomas More as beardless a week before
his death, notwithstanding that the page next to the illustration
contains the historic jest of the martyr as he laid his head upon the
block. These are minor points, but it is regrettable there should
be any blemish of carelessness in a publication otherwise so ex-
cellent.
The author, in her brief and graceful note, has done her
readers yet another service in giving a list of readily accessible
sources of " fuller information and further illustration of this most
interesting period of Catholic history."
STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY. By Bertrand L. Conway,
C.S.P. St. Louis: B. Herder. 75 cents net.
Father Conway's new volume possesses a particular significance
as an object lesson in the science of apologetics. That the winning
of souls to the Catholic faith is an art, few of us are unaware, for
we see how largely success in it depends on tact, dexterity, ex-
perience, and that inborn skill which sometimes approaches genius.
But many of us do not appreciate the fact that the making of con-
verts is a science, too, involving the patient deep study of numerous
intricate questions. Of ready answers and superficial explanations
there is no dearth we can make them, or find them, easily, upon
demand. But to provide, or to discover, a thoroughly scientific dis-
cussion of the common vexed issues of religious controversy is
relatively so difficult, that the absence of scholarship in a professed
252 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
apologist has come to be regarded with easy tolerance. It is in-
structive, as well as helpful, then, to find that the priest whose name
is identified with the most popular existing manual of ready answers
to common Protestant questions is as thoroughly learned and as
active in research as the new book shows its author to be. That
Father Con way can study so indefatigably, in the intervals of his
exceptionally strenuous missionary life, is really amazing; but the
pages before us provide the proof that he keeps up the scientific side
of his work by making himself familiar with current books and
magazines in several languages and in half a dozen countries. It is
a valuable example for our young priests, who will be strongly im-
pressed with this evidence that the most successful missionary
activity in our time and country must be built upon the enduring
basis of solid study.
The new book is a reprint of papers already published in THE
CATHOLIC WORLD. They deal with such points as church govern-
ment, ascetical practice, and sacramental forms in the early Christian
centuries, the Pope Joan legend, the Galileo case, the inner history
of Trent, and the status of the doctrine of the Assumption of Our
Blessed Lady. In the main the text is a summary of the work re-
cently done by specialists in the field of church history; but the
organization and presentation of material by Father Conway's
hand is an important aid to the reader.
As intimated above, the volume before us is a serious one,
inviting study. It does credit to its writer. Further, it will pro-
vide the reader with an immense amount of information valuable
for purposes of proof and explanation. We congratulate Father
Conway on his book ; and we shall welcome its successor.
LUTHER. By Hartmann Grisar, SJ. Authorized Translation
from the German by E. M. Lamond. Edited by Luigi Cappa-
delta. Volume IV. St. Louis: B. Herder. $3.25 net
The fourth volume of Father Grisar' s Life of Luther brings
out most clearly his true character and his new teaching. Its eight
chapters deal with the moral degradation that everywhere followed
the Reformation; Luther's controversies with Erasmus and Duke
George; his proposal of bigamy to Henry VIII. and Philip of
Hesse ; his continual mendacity ; his coarse and abusive language in
controversy; his character and gifts as professor, preacher and
pastor, and his new dogmas in the light of history and psychology.
Father Grisar is superior to Father Denifle, inasmuch as he
1915-] NEW BOOKS 253
writes objectively and not polemically. How any honest man can
read this scholarly and thoroughly fair estimate of Martin Luther
and still remain unconvinced, is quite beyond us.
THE LIFE AND VISIONS OF ST. HILDEGARDE. By Fran-
cesca Maria Steele (Barley Dale). With a Preface by the
Very Rev. Vincent McNabb, O.P. St. Louis: B. Herder.
$1.35 net.
In what Father McNabb, in his interesting preface, justly calls
the " teeming pages " of this remarkable book, lies matter of deepest
interest both religious and secular. Lovers of history will delight
in the admirably drawn pictures of the twelfth century, and the
disclosures of life on and around the Rhine will give peculiar satis-
faction to those whose attention is given to studying the progress of
civilization; while the biography of the Saint is fascination for
all. In view of the present outcry as to waste of womanhood
immured in cloisters and the age-long seclusion and subjugation of
all women, with the consequent deprivation of opportunity, one
would especially recommend a wide reading of the life of this
traveled Abbess who ranged the country prophesying, preaching
and rebuking; a stern monitor of Pope and emperor, a guide and
authority in matters temporal and spiritual, a strong, kindly ruler,
and a proficient in the arts and sciences of her times.
Regarding the greatest of all her activities, the mysticism which
enveloped all the rest, it is not alone Catholics who will seize upon
her revelations. This paradoxical age exhibits no more singular
anomaly than the wistful groping for assurances of spiritual life,
marching side by side with frank materialism. Where so much that
is obviously false receives credence by virtue of the intensity of
desire for truth, it is beneficence to thus place within easy reach
portions of the wonderful mystic writings of St. Hildegarde. The
book is one to be owned, that it may be read and pondered again
and again.
THE APPETITE OF TYRANNY. By G. K. Chesterton. New
York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.00 net.
Mr. Chesterton writes in his usual manner in this book, short
though it is, and that alone will serve to recommend it to a wide
circle. But, as ever, the paradox and the epigram are used to
convey important truths, and their power in the present instance
is not lessened by the fact that those for whom he writes are not
254 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
likely, as some of them might be in reading most of his other books,
to oppose very strongly the ideas he seeks to convey. For he has
a hearty almost bitter dislike for Prussia and all its works and
pomps, and a firm trust that they shall not prevail. The " Letters
to an Old Garibaldian " that are appended, are perhaps not quite so
felicitious as the rest of the book, but still every page is " worth
while."
MODERN GERMANY. By J. Ellis Barker. Fifth and very
greatly enlarged edition. New York: E. P. Button & Co.
$3.00 net.
The first edition of this work came out ten years ago, and was
so favorably received that a new and enlarged edition was published
in the autumn of 1907. It was finally accepted as a standard work
wherever there were students of contemporary European history,
and has had many translations, even a Japanese version being in use
in the East. Perhaps the best recommendation is the fact that it
was respectfully read, and praised, in Germany. The present edition
contains so much new matter that it is almost a new book. Be-
sides the task of revision the writer has provided fourteen new
chapters, mostly on matters relating to Anglo-German affairs, and
the chapter on Germany and France in Morocco includes in the
present edition an account of the Morocco crisis of 1911. But the
present reviewer regrets that Mr. Barker has seen fit to enter the
domain of prophecy : to leave the field of scholarship for the
field of conjecture. Modern Germany, however, is not a mere " war
book," but the work of a keen observer and sound thinker, long and
favorably known among students.
THE CANCER PROBLEM. By William Seaman Bainbridge.
New York: The Macmillan Co. $4.00 net.
That a famous specialist should prepare a book on cancer
for the general public as well as for his professional colleagues,
is good evidence of the widespread intelligent interest now attaching
to this darkest mystery of modern medicine, the disease which is
reckoned to number its yearly victims by the half million. Exclud-
ing all discussion of surgical technique, but thoroughly discussing
every other important phase of his subject, the author has produced
a volume remarkable no less for lucidity than for scientific weight.
He presents with scholarly calm conflicting theories, and states his
own tentative conclusions modestly, and in connection with the
1915.] NEW BOOKS 255
facts upon which they are based. He seems to have quite perfectly
attained his purpose of providing both the professional and the lay
reader with a convenient resume of all the really valuable existing
knowledge of his subject, and to have aided in the wise diffusion of
the sort of knowledge that helps to prevent or alleviate human
suffering.
CRITICISMS OF LIFE. By Horace J. Bridges. Boston : Hough-
ton Mifflin Co. $1.50 net.
This book from beginning to end reveals the shallow pre-
tentiousness of the modern ethical culturists, who talk glibly about
ethics while denying the true basis of morality, and denounce
orthodox Christianity for its stupidity and narrowness without giv-
ing the slightest evidence of their superior culture.
With a dexterity worthy of a Hermann, Mr. Bridges com-
pares the conversion of St. Augustine with what he calls the
conversion of Shelley and John Stuart Mill, and by a little word-
jugglery proves to his own satisfaction " the humanness of the
source of salvation." Mr. Bridges is especially indignant at Mr.
Chesterton's indictment of modern agnosticism. He tries to the
utmost to prove that Mr. Chesterton is a weak logician, a poor
reasoner,-a dishonest controversionalist and an unsound theologian.
This is rather amusing coming from a man who thinks orthodoxy
" unverifiable either by history or by present-day experience, and
who considers Christianity a materialistic fairy tale, with its pre-
tended heaven and hell, its absurd and fantastic resurrection of
the body, and its Sultan-like God enjoying throughout eternity the
flatteries of his prostrate worshippers."
The chief reason why Mr. Bridges fails to understand the
reasoning of Mr. Chesterton lies in the former's bitter hatred of all
supernaturalism and his lack of any sense of humor.
The essay on Churchill's book, The Inside of the Cup, con-
tains a glowing panegyric of Modernism, and dogmatically assures
us that these modern unbelievers are w r orthy successors to St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Francis de Sales. We also meet with the
unethical statement " that it is possible and consistent for a man to
remain in a Church whose creed he desires to change, just as it is
possible for a man to remain a loyal citizen of the state whose laws
and constitutions he sees to need revision."
We were very much surprised to find Mr. Bridges upholding
the old-fashioned doctrine of marriage and denouncing divorce,
256 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
but he takes special pains to remind us that he holds this view not
upon the authority of any church or creed, but upon grounds of
widespread human experience. Of course his prejudice makes him
assert that Roman Catholic countries practice divorce as much as
Protestant ones, although they hypocritically call it by some other
name. This is on a par with his other statement " that Blessed Sir
Thomas More believed in the possibility of religious union with-
out creedal uniformity."
THE EARLY CHURCH. From Ignatius to Augustine. By
George Hodges. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.75 net.
We would recommend to Mr. Hodges Father Moran's Govern-
ment of the Church in the First Century to correct his false view
" that the beginning of a definite and settled organization of the
Church dates from the third century." He seems to share the be-
lief of many moderns that " the idea of a permanent ordering of the
administration and of the worship of the Christians was excluded
from the minds of the early disciples by their expectation of the
speedy return of Christ." St. Ignatius' insistence on obedience to
the bishop, according to his false interpretation, is merely " a loy-
alty to the local minister in the face of divisive individualism," and
Irenseus' concept of the episcopate is chiefly as " a body of men to
whom inquirers may be referred for information as to the faith."
In discussing monasticism, he fails to grasp the ascetic teach-
ing of the New Testament, and erroneously declares that the idea
of asceticism was first formulated from the heresy that matter was
essentially evil. He does not seem to know that the early Church
Fathers always carefully distinguished between the pseudo-asceti-
cism of the Gnostics and the true asceticism of the Christian Gospel.
THE SPELL OF SOUTHERN SHORES. By Caroline Atwater
Mason. Boston : The Page Co. $2.50 net.
These entertaining travelogues carry the reader through the
most interesting cities of Italy and Sicily, and form an excellent
companion volume to the author's former book, The Spell of Italy.
They deal with Genoa, Viterbo, Taormina, Trinacria, Syracuse,
Palermo, Capri, Venice, etc. The historical knowledge of the
writer is not always accurate, and occasionally her narrow Prot-
estant viewpoint prevents her from understanding the Italian
Catholic. The fifty odd illustrations in the volume are excellent.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 257
THE RED CIRCLE. By Gerard A. Reynolds. New York : P. J.
Kenedy & Sons. 75 cents.
This story of the adventures of a small European colony in an
up-river Chinese town in the dramatic year of 1900, derives its
name from the insignia of the Boxers the Circle of the Brother-
hood.
The reader is introduced to this attractive group of English,
Scotch, French and Belgians on the eve of the uprising, and fol-
lows their varied fortunes breathlessly through the significant mut-
terings and the wild outburst of the bloody storm of insensate
hate, and finally into the peaceful haven of reconstruction.
Although the author carefully states that both incidents and
characters are fictitious, the story impresses one as essentially true,
and by its fairness and directness invites confidence in the pictures
presented of Chinese character and custom.
The story is well told and the characters nicely balanced. There
are some interesting psychological studies, as when Pere Gratien
determines to face the mob, and De Visser, the Belgian crack-shot,
picks off his first human " game " from the lookout of a Chinese
junk.
The power and influence of the book lie in the fact that it
preaches no propaganda, and forces no issue; that it lets deeds
speak for themselves, and tell with simple eloquence the old heroic
story of how the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
MARY MORELAND. By Marie Van Vorst. Boston: Little,
Brown & Co. $1.35.
No advance over the author's earlier works is perceptible in
this her latest novel, which has for its protagonist a favorite among
novelists and dramatists; the woman stenographer. As usual with
this writer, occasional flashes of observation and realistic insight
rouse expectations, which are soon submerged in the obvious and
the sensational. The book has possibilities; but, lacking the judg-
ment and discipline requisite for distinction, the result fails to rise
above the mediocrity which supplies to unexacting readers matter
that is forgotten with the closing of the covers.
THE GLAD HAND, AND OTHER GRIPS ON LIFE. By Hum-
phrey J. Desmond. Chicago : A. C. McClurg & Co. 50 cents.
Mr. Desmond's gift of writing in timely and stimulating para-
graphs is so widely and favorably known, that each new booklet
VOL. en. 17
258 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
calls for little more than announcement. The present little volume,
quite small enough to be carried in one's pocket and read com-
fortably in a railroad train, is big in wisdom and brilliant with
inspiration. Timely criticism and the sage advice that is born of
the reflective man's experience, adorn these pages. They make
amusing and profitable reading, and they are well adapted both to
awaken energy and to forestall blundering. Not the least of Mr.
Desmond's many excellences is his limitless optimism.
THE MODERNIST. By Francis Deming Hoyt. Lakewood, N.
J. : The Lakewood Press. $1.25 net.
Intention exceeds performance in this novel. The author has
sought to draw an instructive contrast between the ideals and rules
of life governing a Catholic and a non-Catholic household, both of
the upper classes. Certain crudities of style and method make the
social atmosphere somew r hat unconvincing; but the book's vital
defects are those of construction. It is not well knit together.
The central catastrophe has its actual origin not in the influence
of Modernism, nor the want of Catholic principles, but in an incred-
ible lack of mere worldly wisdom on the part of parents who are
represented as moving in circles where this quality superabounds.
Undoubtedly, there is place and opportunity for the Catholic
novelist who will announce to society here the same challenge that
has been issued in England, notably by Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. The
fact remains that an argument presented to a public so sophisticated,
can achieve effectiveness only through the medium of a subtler and
more authoritative art than is displayed in The Modernist.
ROBIN THE BOBBIN. By Vale Downie. New York: Harper
& Brothers. 50 cents net.
Robbin the Bobbin is a simple little story that will charm the
children. Its attractiveness is heightened by a happily solved
mystery, in which a gorgeous Christmas tree and a very hungry
boy play their part. The boy for the first time in his life gets
enough to eat and, so far as the reader can see, lives happily ever
after.
LITTLE COMRADE. By Burton E. Stevenson. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. $1.20 net.
Little Comrade is a stirring tale of the Great War. An
American surgeon, on his way home from Vienna towards the end
1915.] NEW BOOKS 259
of July, 1914, falls in love with the heroine, a beautiful and
courageous French spy. To save her from death he represents her
as his wife, and allows her to forge her name to his passport.
The novel describes their experiences during the first days of
mobilization in Germany, and the invasion of Belgium. The in-
terest of the story does not lag for a moment, although many inci-
dents are outside the region of the probable, and some border on the
sensual. There are many good descriptions of the horrors of
modern warfare enough we think to convert the most ardent
militarist to the ways of peace.
JEAN BAPTISTE. By J. E. Le Rossignol. New York: E. P.
Button & Co. $1.50 net.
Although he tells a stirring story of modern Canada, the author
is utterly at a loss when he tries to picture the typical French-
Canadian, or to give his readers an idea of conventual life. Pos-
sessed of the old Protestant notion that convents are the refuge of
broken-hearted maidens who have been jilted by their sweethearts,
he portrays a Mother Superior who never lived save in a writer's
brain.
LIKE UNTO A MERCHANT. By Mary Agatha Gray. New
York: Benziger Brothers. $1.35 net.
This novel gives a good picture of the trials and struggles of
a number of earnest souls seeking for the truth in modern England.
Anglican Vicars High Church and Low a good-hearted Catholic
priest, two ex-convicts, prejudiced Mrs. Wall of Zion Chapel and
her practical husband, Mrs. Parker with her mysterious past, the
two girls, Louise and Helena these characters are all well drawn
and clear cut. The hero requires a long time to fall in love with
the right girl, but all ends happily with the marriage bells in
prospect.
THE QUIET HOUR. Selected and arranged by FitzRoy Carring-
ton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 75 cents net.
Mr. FitzRoy Carrington, in this latest selection of English
poetry, again gives evidence of his extensive reading and his ex-
cellent taste. The Quiet Hour is one of those books that is quite
beyond criticism. All who love poetry will delight in it. Every
lover of poetry is, of course, a jealous lover of his own favorites,
260 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
and he may protest they are not included. But in all justice he
can take no exception to this selection, which happily claims nothing
like finality nor comprehensiveness as its aim. It will make pleasant
and profitable any quiet hour that we take from our supposedly
busy life.
Readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will be pleased to learn
that it includes two selections from Katharine Tynan. The volume
has excellent illustrations of the best known poets. It will be most
appreciated by those who have not lost the blessing of childhood.
THE ENGLISH ESSAY AND ESSAYISTS. By Hugh Walker,
LL.D. New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.50 net.
Professor Walker in his introduction quotes with approval
Alexander Smith's definition of the essay : " The essay as a literary
form resembles the lyric, in so far as it is moulded by some central
mood whimsical, serious or satirical. Give the mood, and the
essay, from the first sentence to the last, grows around it as the
cocoon grows around the silk worm."
After a brief sketch of the first anticipations of the essay in
early Elizabethean prose, Mr. Walker takes up Bacon, the first and
greatest of the English essayists. He says : " He did more than
introduce a new literary form; he took one of the longest steps
ever taken in the evolution of English prose style His essays
must be read slowly and thoughtfully, not because the style is
obscure, but because they are extremely condensed and the thought
is profound. "
Two chapters on " The Character- Writers and the Miscel-
laneous Essays of the Seventeenth Century " treat of Decker, Hall,
Overbury, Earle, Herbert, Sir Thomas Browne, Cowley, Dry-
den, etc.
Special attention is paid to the Queen Anne essayists, Steele,
Addison and Swift, their imitators, and the transitional writers,
Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Cobbett and others who usher in the nine-
teenth century. Five chapters are devoted to the nineteenth
century, discussing in detail the early reviewers and their victims,
the early magazines, the historian-essayists, the latter half of the
nineteenth century, and the essayists of yesterday (Andrew Lang,
Gissing, Francis Thompson, etc.).
We have no better book on the essay in English. It is care-
fully written, apt and generous in quotation, sanely critical, and
uniformly fair in its appreciation and criticism. We meet occa-
1915.] NEW BOOKS 261
sionally a bit of Protestant bigotry as, for example, that Halifax's
" deep dislike and distrust of Romanism had its root in statesman-
ship, not in sectarianism." His prejudice, however, does not pre-
vent him from recognizing in Francis Thompson " an artist in prose
as well as in verse."
LIFE OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON FOR BOYS AND
GIRLS. By Jacqueline Overton. New York : Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. $1.00 net.
The life of Robert Louis Stevenson, even apart from his
literary work, has enough of adventure and heroism in it to win
the attention and admiration of every boy and girl. Mr. Over-
ton, in the present volume, has given in faithful outline the prin-
cipal events of Stevenson's life and literary work. It will be a
pleasant introduction for the young to one whose personality, with
its abiding cheerfulness and sustained courage under life-long suf-
fering, has won the world's admiration.
The greatest influence in the formation of Stevenson's
character was religion. At the age of twenty-eight, Stevenson
wrote to his father, after their serious differences on religious be-
lief : " Strange as it may seem to you everything has been in one
way or the other, bringing me a little nearer to what I think you
would like me to be. 'Tis a strange world, indeed, but there is a
manifest God for those who care to look for Him." Nor could
any man who was not, at least in some measure, seriously religious
have written the following:
Our lepers were sent on the first boat, about a dozen, one
poor child very horrid, one white man leaving a large grown
family behind him in Honolulu, and then into the second stepped
the Sisters and myself. I do not know how it would have been
with me had the. Sisters not been there. My horror of the
horrible is about my weakest point: but the moral loveliness
at my elbow blotted all else out : and when I found that one of
them was crying, poor soul, quietly under her veil, I cried a
little myself: then I felt as right as a trivet, only a little
crushed to be there so uselessly. I thought it was a sin and a
shame she should feel unhappy. I turned round to her, and
said something like this : " Ladies, God Himself is here to give
you welcome. I'm sure it is good for me to be beside you :
I hope it will be blessed to me : I thank you for myself and the
good you do me !"
262 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
We are not discussing how much Stevenson retained or re-
covered of true Christian faith, but it is manifest that no estimate
of Stevenson's life and character can be made without an accounting
of how greatly his belief in God influenced both. And in charity
it must be remembered that Stevenson was often ashamed to speak
of his own religious beliefs; of his own true motives. His ten-
dency was to make them less worthy, less high than reality justi-
fied. " Usually," he wrote to his father, " I hate to speak of what
I really feel to that extent that, when I find myself cornered, I
have a tendency to say the reverse."
The life of any man is not adequately presented unless it tell of
the forces that made the man held up for imitation. To Stevenson
and the children who read this volume is done a real injustice.
Stevenson was not a mere humanitarian; and it is lamentable,
indeed, to place before the young no greater ideal than sterile
humanitarianism. Less worship of ourselves and a deeper realiza-
tion of our need of God would benefit the world immensely.
GERMAN CULTURE. Edited by Professor W. P. Paterson of
Edinburgh University. New York: E. P. Button & Co.
75 cents net.
Within a compass of less than four hundred pages the con-
tributors to this volume, professors in various universities of Great
Britain, discuss Germany's contribution to the world's civilization
in the fields of philosophy, science, music, etc. As each paper is
from a different pen, there is naturally a diversity in the method
of treatment, but throughout there is to be noticed a lofty detach-
ment from national prejudice that cannot be too highly commended.
The writers are evidently admirers of German " Culture " in the
best sense, and this begets a confidence which secures them a more
ready hearing when they point out what they regard as defects.
The last chapter, on religion, written by the editor, and the one on
philosophy, will of course not commend themselves throughout to
the Catholic reader, since the point of view causes their authors
to present as achievements many things which we should regard
as telling rather against Germany. But the book as a whole is
excellently done, with a dignified sincerity that is none too common
in contemporary war literature. A special word of commenda-
tion is due Professor Lodge's introductory paper on Prussia and
Germany, which contrives to give in small space an excellent idea
of the growth of the German Empire.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 263
PARIS WAITS: 1914. By M. E. Clarke. New York: G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. $1.25.
In these personal experiences in Paris during the first few
months of the war, an Englishwoman describes most graphically
the first days of mobilization, the false prophecies everywhere cur-
rent, the status of the hospitals, the friendliness manifested to-
wards the English troops, etc. The author, a Protestant, testi-
fies to a great religious awakening as the result of the war. She
writes : " France is irrevocably and innately Catholic, and the
war has proved her to be so. She will probably be narrowly
so for a time, because the reaction after the struggle between
Church and State is sure to be strong, and the priests have, generally
speaking, behaved so splendidly throughout the whole war that
their influence over the people is likely to be great. Whether as
soldiers or clerics, they have done their duty magnificently
Never have the churches been fuller than they are in these days, and
never have the men and women who fill them gone with such single
purpose to pray."
THE MESSAGE OF MOSES AND MODERN HIGHER CRITI-
CISM. By Rev. Francis E. Gigot, D.D. New York : Ben-
ziger Brothers. 15 cents net.
Last March, Father Gigot lectured at the University of Penn-
sylvania on " The Message of Moses and the Theories of Modern
Higher Criticism." We are glad that he has consented to publish
this lecture for the benefit of the general public. In brief and
simple language, avoiding as far as possible all technical details
and linguistic discussions, he vindicates in excellent fashion the
correctness of the Christian tradition concerning Moses' literary
work and his monotheistic message. He promises later to deal
more fully with the points summarily dismissed in this brief
volume.
THE WONDROUS CHILDHOOD OF THE MOTHER OF GOD.
By Blessed John Eudes. Peekskill : Convent of the Good
Shepherd. $1.50.
The ardent, devotional character of the works of Blessed John
Eudes is well known to our readers. In this translation of one of
his works, entitled The Wondrous Childhood of the Mother of God,
the author has given free rein to his warm and tender devotion to
264 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
Our Blessed Lady. He has called upon the Fathers and the Saints
of the Church to join with him in repeating her merits, and he pours
forth a canticle of affective praise to her glory. The book is pre-
sented in attractive form, and contains a preface by Father John
O'Reilly, CJ.M.
THE MASS. A Study of the Roman Liturgy. By Adrian Fortes-
cue. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.80.
All students of the Mass will welcome this second edition of
Father Fortescue's scholarly treatise. He has corrected a number
of mistakes, and modified some statements which recent contro-
versies proved ambiguous or obscure. He is perfectly justified in
ruling out of court those well-meaning but stupid critics who
seemed to think that true piety utterly precludes all scholarly dis-
cussion of the " dislocation " of the Canon. He writes : " Un-
doubtedly our Canon, as we have it, is a most beautiful and
venerable form. As it stands it may be said, it is said by thousands
of priests in the plain meaning of the words, with entire devotion.
The supposed signs of what I call 'dislocation' affect no one but
the student, who may find in them interesting evidences of an early
reconstruction. The question is merely one of archaeology. It
would be absurd for anyone to be troubled in saying Mass by such
a matter as this."
POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND. By Ernest Barker.
New York : Henry Holt & Co. 50 cents net.
Professor Barker, of New College, Oxford, has written an ex-
cellent but partisan treatise on political thought in England from
Herbert Spencer to the present day. He groups the leading English
thinkers as follows: The Idealist School (Green, Bradley and Bos-
anquet) ; the Scientific School (Spencer, Darwin, Huxley and Wal-
lace) ; the lawyers (Maine, Stephens and Dicey) ; literary men
(Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, etc.); modern writers (Morris, Webb,
McDonald, Belloc, etc.).
In English political thought there has been a great change
effected within the past fifty years. " While in 1864 orthodoxy
meant distrust of the State, and heresy took the form of a belief in
paternal government, in 1914 orthodoxy means belief in the State,
and heresy takes the form of mild excursions into anarchism."
Among the new sources of political thought, Mr. Barker mentions
social psychology, the new economics, and the new aspect of legal
1915.] NEW BOOKS 265
theory emphasized by Maitland. Social psychology tends to issue
in criticism of the machinery and methods of representative govern-
ment. The new economics is intuitional and anti-intellectual.
Syndicalism is prone to expect that non-intellectual forces will suf-
fice to make the state what it should be.
THE LIVES OF THE POPES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. By Rev.
Horace K. Mann, D.D. Volumes XL, XII. St. Louis: B.
Herder. $6.00 net.
These two volumes cover the pontificate of one of the greatest
of Popes, Innocent III. In the first volume Dr. Mann describes, in
his usual felicitous fashion, Innocent's family, his life at the Uni-
versity of Paris, his government of Rome, his care of the Two
Sicilies, his relations with the Empire, his protest against the Fourth
Crusade; and in the second, his dealings with the East, West and
North of Europe, and his crusade against the Albigenses. Many
of the false statements of Milman, Luchaire, Matthew Paris and
others are refuted in these scholarly pages. It is beyond question
the best life we possess of Innocent III., superseding Hurter's
well-known volumes, and correcting the work of the prejudiced
Luchaire.
RUYSBROECK. By Evelyn Underbill. New York: The Mac-
millan Co. $1.00.
Miss Underbill has written an excellent account of the life and
writings of that prince of mystics in the fourteenth century, Jan
van Ruysbroeck. Unlike many non-Catholic writers who attempt
to de-Catholicize our Catholic saints, Miss Underbill declares that
Ruysbroeck was " bound by close links to the religious life of his
day. He was no spiritual individualist; but the humble, obedient
child of an institution, the loyal member of a society. He tells us
again and again that his spiritual powers were nourished by the
sacramental life of the Catholic Church. From the theologians of
that Church came the intellectual framework in which his sublime
intuitions were expressed. All that he does is to carry out into
action completely actualize in his own experience the high vision
of the soul's relation to Divine Reality by which that Church is
possessed."
The chapters deal with Ruysbroeck the Man, His Works, His
Doctrine of God, of Man, of the Active, Interior and Superessential
Life.
266 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
DEBATING FOR BOYS. By William Horton Foster. New
York : Sturgis & Walton Co. $1.00 net.
This little volume, written " to help boys to debate efficiently,"
amply justifies its existence. Mr. Foster defines debate; illustrates
subjects fit and unfit; gives clearly, expounds the nature of evi-
dence, and the manner of presenting and refuting arguments. He
urges that the ambition be not to win by mere fluency or trickery,
but only by superior force of sound reasoning from solid grounds
of fact; and he discloses all this with such animation that his in-
struction entertains.
The appendices are equally profitable. They comprise a short
working " Table of Parliamentary Rules," an example of a club's
constitution, and a list of some two hundred questions suggested
for debate, of which qualification for the discussion would connote
the acquisition of a respectable education. In this connection, the
concluding appendix, " Sources of Material," gives detailed in-
formation as to how the necessary facts may be obtained for all
occasions.
The author is of the opinion that rightful debate leads to
better citizenship and more efficient democracy. It may at all
events be confidently asserted that extensive practice, under such
competent guidance as this book affords, would go far to offset
that unfortunate corollary of present-day educational methods, the
general collapse of consecutive thought.
ROBERT FULTON. By Alice Crary Sutcliffe. New York: The
Macmillan Co. 50 cents.
As the great-granddaughter of the illustrious subject of this
biography, the author has naturally had at her command material of
a kind not generally accessible. A personal, intimate tone is thereby
imparted which, while always in good taste, deepens and increases
the interest. Moreover, she has been very skillful in selecting and
compressing into small compass a great deal of matter, giving a
vivacious account of her famous ancestor's crowded, adventurous
life, his varied talents, his experiences and achievements, and the
predominant traits of his fine character. It is a graphic portrayal
of an extremely interesting personality.
The young readers for whom are designed the " True Stories
of Great Americans," will derive pleasure and benefit from this
addition to the series.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 267
THE MEANING OF CHRISTIAN UNITY. By W. H. Cobb.
New York: Thomas W. Crowell Co. $1.25 net.
In a chapter entitled " The True Point of View," Mr. Cobb
tells us " that the thing to emphasize in talking Christian Unity is
an invisible thing, not union but unity Christian neighbors are
to form a more perfect union, not by their Church constitutions, but
by the love of Christ constraining them to love one another as each
loves himself." The method to secure this union is very vague
indeed. Mr. Cobb has no notion whatever of a unity based on a
divine government, law and worship instituted by Jesus Christ.
He would gladly set aside all dogmas, and unite in an impossible
society Unitarian, Quaker, Methodist and Catholic. We under-
stand the writer's viewpoint the moment we find him praising
Churchill's book, The Inside of the Cup. He tells us : " That it
rings true, and sounds a note in harmony with the Gospel, while
yet it stands apart from organized Christianity, if indeed it does not
openly oppose it." Mr. Cobb's Church will consist of men and
women who accept the Lord's Prayer, believe in the parables, and
practise the eight Beatitudes. We are certain that this book will
not further the cause of Christian Unity.
IS DEATH THE END? By Rev. John Haynes Holmes. -New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50 net.
Mr. Holmes has written a lengthy volume on the arguments
for the immortality of the soul. He is especially good in his
indictment of the materialistic interpretation of life, but his logic is
totally at fault when he states that " the old interpretation of the
cosmic process leads inevitably to universalism as the only possible
condition of its fulfillment." He stupidly classes the new Jerusalem
of the Apocalypse with the Elysian Fields of the Greeks and the
Paradise of the Mohammedans, and then proceeds to tell us " what
immortality will be like " in the vaguest terms. We marvel to see
the martyrs of early Christianity ranged side by side with Crom-
well's " Ironsides " and the " Red Shirts " of Garibaldi, and we
wonder what Savonarola would have said had he found himself
bracketed with Luther, John Wesley and Theodore Parker.
FOOTINGS FOR FAITH. By W. P. Merrill. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.00 net.
These essays on Faith, God, Prayer, the Divinity of Christ,
the Atonement and the Bible are addressed, the author tells us,
268 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
" to those in our colleges and elsewhere who are finding it hard
to reconcile their knowledge and their faith, who have been drawn
away by modern science and philosophy from the thoroughgoing
sturdy belief of their fathers."
Mr. Merrill proceeds to help these doubters back to the sturdy
faith of their fathers by setting at naught the " unintelligible "
statements that Jesus Christ was of one substance with the Father
or that in Christ there are two natures in one person, by denying the
inerrancy of the Bible and accepting the viewpoint of the modern
destructive critics, by asserting that " religion is to prove itself to
you not by dogma but by deeds, not by logic but by life." We fear
that thinking men will not be at all attracted by this emasculated
Christianity served up to them under the guise of a modern up-to-
date Gospel.
SONGS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE. By Daniel J. Donahoe.
Middletown, Conn.: The Donahoe Publishing Co. $1.00 net.
In this volume Mr. Donahoe has published a number of grace-
ful lyrics and pleasing sonnets. Although of uneven merit, many
of them are remarkable for their simplicity and beauty of expres-
sion.
NATHAN HALE. By Jean Christie Root. New York : The Mac-
millan Co. 50 cents.
Every American boy ought to read this story of Nathan Hale.
The author describes in brief but entertaining fashion Hale's early
years, his life at Yale, his teaching in the schools of East Haddam
and New London, his bravery as a Lieutenant and Captain in the
Continental Army, and above all his voluntary service as a spy,
which resulted in his capture and execution. Special chapters are
devoted to tributes to his memory, a list of his friends, and of
family ancestors.
IN the stirring tales, entitled Early English Hero Tales (New
York: Harper & Brothers. 50 cents net), Jeannette Marks
wishes to initiate the children of to-day into the mysteries and
marvels of the palace of English Literature. She has succeeded
admirably. She tells them about Beowulf and the monster Grendel,
the fortunes of Taliesin, the combat between Feridad and Cuchu-
lain, the cowherd, Caedmon, St. Cuthbert, the young Prince Alfred,
of England, and Prince Havelok of Denmark.
1915-] NEW BOOKS 269
IT/ 7 E have received from the St. Bonaventure's Monastery, Pater-
' ' son, New Jersey, St. Anthony's Almanac for 1916. The Alma-
nac is tastefully presented. It gives the ecclesiastical calendar for
the new year, reprints the Epistle and Gospel for all the Sundays,
and has many interesting literary articles from noted authors, most
valuable of which is perhaps that entitled Some Old Documents,
by Father Paschal Robinson, O.F.M. The price is 25 cents.
'THE Catholic Truth Society of Ireland publishes An Apostle of
-* Our Days, an interesting account by R. F. O'Connor of the
life and work of the famous missionary, Father Lacombe, O.M.I.
THE AMERICA PRESS has issued The Contemporary Drama,
* a pamphlet that includes a paper from which the title is taken,
also The Sprightly Mr. Shaw, and Ibsen in the Class Room, all by
James J. Daly, S.J., and papers on Rabindranath Tagore and Laf-
cadio Hearn by Joyce Kilmer. Also The Church and the Immi-
grant and Temperance Against Prohibition.
THE LITTLE MANUAL OF ST. RITA (New York: Benziger
^ Brothers. 50 cents) includes an extended life of the Saint by
the Rev. James S. McGrath; prayers and devotions proper to St.
Rita, and an extended collection of general prayers useful at private
and public exercises of devotion.
WHY CATHOLICS HONOR MARY (New York: Benziger
' ' Brothers. 15 cents) is a small cloth-bound book giving in
condensed form the reason why Catholics honor so highly our
Blessed Lady. The author is well known because of his larger
work, The Greater Eve, which we have recommended to our
readers.
THE Home Press of New York has published a prayer book,
* entitled The Mass, which we heartily recommend. The book
is compiled by Father Wynne, S.J., and is of special value, because
it gives not only the Ordinary of the Mass, but also the Proper
for all the Sundays and principal Feasts of the year. It will lead
to a much-to-be-desired acquaintance with the liturgy of the Church,
than which nothing could be more beneficial to the spiritual life
of our people. It is published in handy form, in readable print,
and may be purchased for twenty-five cents a copy.
270 NEW BOOKS [Nov.,
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
The World Peace Foundation is publishing all the official documents that
relate directly to recent controversy concerning neutral and belligerent rights
between the United States, Germany and Great Britain. We received one
on Neutrality Proclaimed and Explained and another on War Zones.
The Australian Catholic Truth Society publishes Points in Catholic Polity,
which treat of the cooperation of Catholic societies, the spread of Catholic
literature, and the Church and Education. Father W. J. Lockington, S.J., has
written a tract against national prohibition, and sets forth the reasons for
total abstinence.
The Ave Maria Press sends us How I Became a Catholic, by Olga Maria
Davin. It is a simple story of conversion of a woman born in St. Petersburg,
of German-Lutheran parents.
The Catholic Truth Society of Pittsburgh has just issued Catholic Echoes
of America, by Agnes Schmidt. It is a brief sketch of some of the achieve-
ments of American Catholics " in peace and war, in discovery and explora-
tion, in education and charity, in freedom and religious toleration, and in
civilization and progress."
The Fellowship of Reconciliation publishes The Church's Opportunity in
the Present Crisis, by Henry T. Hodgkin. This Anglican writer says rightly
that the Church is set in a nation to witness to the supernatural as against the
material forces, to emphasize the superriational as against the exclusively
national spirit, and to proclaim the coming of a new day of peace. We were
sorry to see the author quote Henry Richards' unchristian statement "that war
was essentially and eternally unchristian."
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
La Guerre, qui I' a Vouluef by Paul Dudon (Paris: P. Lethielleux. 50
centimes), first appeared in Etudes, based on the data of the French Yellow Book.
In reprinting it now in pamphlet form, the author has added to and confirmed
his conclusions by reference to the more recent diplomatic documents.
Les Legons du Livre Jaune, by Henri Welschinger (Paris: Bloud et Gay),
is a detailed study of the French Yellow Book.
Chiffons de Papier. Ce qu'il faut Savoir des Origines de la Guerre de 1914,
by Daniel Bellet (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie. 50 centimes), seeks to fix the
responsibility for the War by an examination of the remote and proximate causes.
L'Allemagne et la Guerre Europeenne, by Albert Sauveur, Professor at
Harvard University (Paris: Bloud et Gay), is a translation of Professor
Sauveur*s article refuting the German propaganda in the United States as to
the causes of the War.
Who Wanted War? by E. Durkheim and E. Denis (Paris: Librairie Armand
Colin. 50 centimes), is a translation by A. M. Wilson-Garinei of an article
based upon diplomatic documents, which appeared simultaneously with that of
Paul Dudon.
Solution du Grand Probleme, by A. Delloue (Paris: A. Tralin. 2frs.), is
a brief summary of the arguments for the existence of God, the immortality
of the soul, and the fact of a future life.
NOTE. On account of the non-arrival of the foreign period-
icals, we have been compelled to omit that department this month.
[ED. 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.
So far from having to meet the long-ex-
France, pected attack of the Germans in a new at-
tempt to reach Calais, it has fallen to the lot
of the French and British to assume the offensive. The increased
supply of munitions gave them hopes of success hopes which
have been if not entirely yet largely justified. Artillery activity of
an intense character upon the whole length of the enemy's front pre-
ceded for nearly a month the attacks on a large scale of the infantry,
while the British fleet heavily bombarded the Belgian coast. The
success achieved far surpassed anything that has happened since
the battle of the Marne. The assault was made in four places,
two by the British, and two by the French. Of these only two were
pressed home. The main attack of the British was on the line be-
tween La Bassee and Lens. It was completely successful. German
trenches were taken on a front of five miles, and to a depth of two
and a half miles, giving to the British positions very near to La
Bassee and Lens, which dominate the great railway junction at
Lens, on which the enemy depends for the transport of troops and
stores. On the right, the French completed the capture of the net-
work of intrenchments known as the Labyrinth and occupied
Souchez. The main attack of the French was on the line midway
between Rheims and Verdun in Champagne. Trenches along a front
of sixteen miles were carried, the Germans being pushed back for
two or three miles. A position was captured commanding the
great lateral railway which forms the main line of communication.
Here the offensive movement stopped, but the positions taken have
on the whole been held, although the Germans have made the most
violent efforts to regain the ground lost.
These victories give satisfaction to the Allies as a proof that
the boasted impregnability of the enemy's line is not absolutely war-
272 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
ranted. According to one of the best military authorities, the posi-
tions which fell into the hands of the Allies had been prepared for
defence by every art and artifice of the engineer for months. The
Germans called them a barrier of steel. They represented the ex-
treme degree of resistance that can be obtained by semi-permanent
field defences of the modern type. But the Allies recognize that
their capture has not carried them very far on their way. The Ger-
mans still have successive lines of trenches for many miles of the
same character, and these must be taken in the same way. The attack
at the end of September was but the prologue to future attacks
which are to be made, for each of which there must be equally
careful preparation. Hence nothing like a rapid advance is antici-
pated. Germany's new adventure in the Balkans may, of course,
contribute to its success, for it will make Germany less able either to
take the offensive in France or to resist a new offensive of the
Allies.
Failure of health is alleged as the reason for the resignation of
M. Delcasse. This may, in fact, have contributed, but it seems
probable that it was really due to a divergence of opinion as to the
wisdom of sending French troops to help Serbia. Owing to the
German attack a most difficult situation had arisen. If Serbia is
defeated and a road to Constantinople made for the Germans, the
results to the Allies will be not, indeed, a decisive defeat, but a great
disaster. But this would affect Great Britain more than France.
It may, therefore, have been the view of M. Delcasse that on that
account the duty of relieving Serbia fell upon her ally, especially
as France wants for her own defence every available man. M.
Delcasse's resignation has not affected the unity of the French
Cabinet, nor its determination to carry on the war to a successful
conclusion.
A great contrast exists between the workingmen of France and
some at least of those in Great Britain. While in the latter there
have been several strikes on a large scale and the apprehension of
many more, in France there is not a workman who does not realize
that his country is engaged in a life-and-death struggle, and that he,
as well as the soldier, must bear every hardship and make every
sacrifice for the sake of France and victory. The hours of work are
long, ten and twelve hours a day, including Saturdays, and half a
day on Sunday. From August, 1914, to April, 1915, in many * in-
stances not a man got a day's holiday. Wages have been raised
slightly, but the cost of living has increased even more. In not an
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 273
instance has there been a strike or the threat of a strike throughout
the industries of France since the outbreak of the war. All restric-
tions on hours and conditions of labor have been suspended to enable
work to be done in the shortest time. It has not been necessary in
any one case for the Government to take over a factory on account of
difficulties raised by the men. The French workingmen and women
know by intimate experience what a German advance means ; some
of them almost wish that the British workingman might have an
opportunity of learning in an equally intimate way; after that
experience the idea of striking would never again enter into his
mind.
The change in the attitude of the French workingman and of
the people generally towards religion is equally noteworthy. A
writer who has spent the better part of six months among the
wounded who came from every quarter and every class, testified to
the fact that the acceptance and practice of religion was universal.
" Most men had their rosaries, and nearly all wore religious medals
round their necks. When well enough they crowded to Mass, and
they welcome the visits of the cure. When dying they asked
for the last sacraments, and when dead they were buried with full
Catholic ceremonial. Nor was this practice of religion confined
to the soldiers: the services of the church were well attended, and
men and women, rich and poor, were constantly in the churches."
The indifferent attitude of the British soldiers towards religious
practices is a matter of unfavorable comment. The discussion
of the apparition of angels at Mons, which is being carried on even
among Protestants, is an evidence that the possibility, at least, of
supernatural intervention is being recognized in circles in which
before the war it would have been scouted.
The armies of General von Hindenburg,
Germany. after their successful drive through thou-
sands of miles of Russian territory, are, as
we have said, advancing more slowly, if they have not actually been
checked. In Galicia the Austro-German forces have been turned
back, and the recapture of Czernowitz, the capital of the province
of Bukowina, by the Russians has been reported. This may mate-
rially affect the attitude of Rumania, upon whose action may depend,
as we have said, the final result in the Balkans. In the West the
German forces have made violent attempts to recover the ground
recently lost, but their efforts have met with little success. Driven
yoL. en. 18
274 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
from the sea, held on the Western front and halted on the Eastern,
the Central Powers, with the aid of Bulgaria, have begun a drive
through the Balkans, attacked Serbia, and captured Belgrade. The
great object of this new campaign is to open through the
Balkans a corridor for Germany to Egypt and the Persian Gulf,
and enable her to come to the assistance of her much-distressed
ally, Turkey. This vigorous campaign adds immeasurably to the
difficulties of the Allies; but it is viewed by many, even in Germany,
as a desperate venture.
The German press sees the ultimate victory of Germany in
this Balkan coup, but if the testimony of impartial neutrals may
be depended upon, there are many of the well-informed in Ger-
many who view the situation with great alarm. This, they say, is
the real reason for the making of peace proposals, and all such
proposals, whatever shape they have taken, have up to the present
come from German sources. The third German loan was very
successful, but it must be remembered that it was in a measure a
forced loan, twenty- five per cent of all banking deposits having
been exacted by the Government. Expedients were resorted to in
raising this, as in the two former loans, that must result in national
bankruptcy in the event of Germany losing in the war.
The German fleet continues inactive. Since the submarine
" blockade " has proved so great a failure, it may perhaps risk an
engagement. Whether the failure of the submarine blockade was
due to the insistence of this country that it should be carried on in a
civilized manner, or whether the acceptance by Germany of the de-
mands of this country led to its abandonment, or whether the success
of British attacks against submarines rendered such activity profit-
less, any and all of these questions must be left to future historians
to settle.
The trials of Russia are not confined exclu-
Russia. sively to its military failures. A grave con-
stitutional crisis has arisen, the outcome of
which is not yet clear. It is, however, within the range of the pos-
sible that the completion of the change initiated by the grant of a
Constitution may be the result of the present crisis. The defeats
which the armies have sustained are due exclusively to the failure
of arms and munition: this failure, in its turn, is said to be due,
not to the fact that Russia was cut off from supplies by the failure
of the attempt to open the -Dardanelles, and the winter season which
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 275
closed the port of Archangel, but more to the incompetence and, to
some extent, the treachery of the bureaucrats who administer the
government. Some of the traitors have been executed, others have
been imprisoned, while the more incompetent officials have been
dismissed the service. The Duma as a body, however, has set
its heart upon a more thoroughgoing reform, amounting in its
results to the establishing in Russia of a responsible government.
A bloc of all the parties, except the two extreme wings, drew up
demands for reform both civil and military. These demands in-
clude the constitution of a government enjoying the entire con-
fidence of the country, an amnesty to secure internal peace, and blot
out old political quarrels, the dismissal of unworthy and incompe-
tent administrators, and the adoption of a wise and tolerant policy
in internal affairs, so as to remove racial, class and religious dif-
ferences.
The Government was willing to carry out all the reforms which
were necessary for rendering the army efficient, but wished to put
off to a more convenient time the more drastic changes which were
demanded. This reply did not satisfy the bloc, which looks upon
the latter reforms as equally necessary with the former. The Coun-
cil of Ministers thereupon laid the demands of the Duma before
the Tsar. The result was disappointing, and had it not been for
the moderating influence of the leading members of the Duma,
internal disturbances might have taken place. As it was, some of
the workingmen at Petrograd went on a short strike as a demonstra-
tion of their dissatisfaction. So far from granting the request of
the Duma, the Tsar prorogued its session until the middle of
November. This decision of the Tsar is attributed to the influence
of the Premier, M. Goremykin, who is looked upon as the chief
obstacle in the way of reforms; in fact the only obstacle, for all
the other members of the Council were opposed to the prorogation.
However, things might have been worse, as the dissolution of the
Duma was desired by the thoroughgoing reactionaries. Had this
been granted it might have led to revolutionary attempts, for the
Duma is acting in perfect harmony with the sentiments of the vast
majority of the nation. Even the milder course adopted caused
great perturbation, the Socialists and Progressists going so far
as to leave the house as a demonstration of their disappointment
before the President was able to read the rescript. The members
then met as private individuals, and deputed its President as a
delegate to the Tsar in order to lay before him the facts of the case.
276 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
This direct appeal was made because they believed that the Premier
had misinformed his Majesty, and had misled him as to the gravity
of the situation. M. Goremykin in fact is looked upon as some-
thing of a usurper, being accused of having acted without even
consulting his colleagues. Meanwhile the members of the Duma
have maintained a quiet attitude, and those of them who are mem-
bers of the committees for supervising the supply of munitions
have still continued in the exercise of their functions.
How great has been the effect of the recent disasters upon
the political situation may be seen from an account given by a dis-
tinguished Frenchman who has recently paid a visit to Russia.
" When the peasant, the workingman, the industrial, intelligent
Liberal, and the aristocrat learned that the army lacked rifles and
shells, the whole nation rose as one man against the bureaucratic
regime, which, by its mistakes, permitted Germany to advance
on Russian soil. From that moment the regime was con-
demned, and there is not a single Russian who does not imperiously
desire a thorough reform and organization of the country. This
unanimous wish has brought about ministerial changes, which have
removed certain men from power and handed authority to pure
hands and to honest folk. The Tsar's further pact, unwritten it
is true, but just as solemn as the October manifesto, which gave a
Liberal orientation to policy, established a new relationship of con-
fidence, and daily cooperation between the public authority and the
Duma representing the country." Although the prorogation of
the Duma seems to contradict the Tsar's promise, and hence to have
frustrated the hopes raised, confidence is by no means lost that the
wiser and saner elements in Russian political life will get possession
of power, and that the incompetent and dishonest to say nothing
of the treacherous will be supplanted. All the Zemstvos as-
sembled in Congress have sent to the Tsar a resolution expressing
their conviction that, among the conditions necessary for victory,
the reassembling of the Duma and the reconstruction of the Cabinet
with a Premier possessing the confidence of the country are the
most vital.
The list of the internal weaknesses of Russia would not be
complete if the influence of the Germans who live in the Empire
were passed over. In various parts they have been settled for a
long time in large colonies, while in such places as Mitau and Riga,
and even in Petrograd, their numbers are considerable. The Ger-
man policy of the peaceful penetration of other countries, with a
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 277
view to ultimate domination, while world-wide in its sphere, has been
hardly anywhere more successful than in Russia. The business
interests of the country have been largely controlled by Germans,
who have played into the hands of the Fatherland. In fact, Russia
has for some time past been exploited both by the Germans who
have remained at home, and by those who have taken up their
abode in Russia. Deliverance from this servitude is one of the
reasons for the stern determination to carry on the war. But even
among Russians there are to be found a few who sympathize with
German ways, especially German methods of government. These
are mostly reactionaries, opponents of all liberal tendencies, and
of a popular regime. Two of them were until recently members
of the Council of Ministers, and advocates of the conclusion of a
separate peace with Germany, in violation of the pledged. word of
Russia to France and Great Britain.
To these internal difficulties must be added, partly as an
effect, partly as a cause, the long series of defeats which the
armies have sustained. Town after town, fortress after fortress,
railway junction after railway junction, have passed into Ger-
man hands. Prisoners have been taken not in thousands, but in
tens of thousands. Great masses of her people are refugees. Wide
areas have been laid waste in city and countryside alike. The sacri-
fices endured have been unprecedented. The greater, however,
the danger, the greater has become the determination to carry on the
war to what is looked upon as its only possible conclusion a deci-
sive victory over the foe. Firm faith is still maintained in the
inexhaustible strength of the Empire. Germany's victories are re-
garded as transitory, due to the want of munitions, a want which is
now being supplied from three quarters, through the port of Arch-
angel, from Japan by means of the railway through Siberia, and
internally by new factories in Russia itself. The results are being
seen in the fact that von Hindenburg's hosts are now advancing
very slowly, if at all; while in Galicia the tide has now turned in
favor of Russia. Behind the army and the navy a united nation
stands from the Tsar on his throne to the most simple of the
peasants. Russia looks forward to sacrifices indeed, but to sacri-
fices fruitful of results. Every day the Tsar is receiving addresses
from the peasants, " Go forward and be firm." They invariably
say : " We are always behind thee." At the beginning of the war
women used to lie down in front of trains to stop the departure of
their loved ones ; now they bid their wounded return, and send with
278 RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
them their young ones not yet called to serve their country. The
wounded themselves forget their wounds in their anxious desire
to return to the front. The character and object of the foe has
been learned it is a question of freedom or slavery. Even the
Poles, at least a large majority of them, deprived though they have
been of their dwellings, ruined and reduced to beggary, remain true
to Russia, which although it had badly treated them in the past,
is yet of their own kith and kin. With redoubled energy they are
helping the troops of their Slav brethren in every way in their
power.
Reference may be made, even in the midst of the more exciting
events which mark the progress of the war, to the advance which
has been made in the temperance reforms initiated by the Tsar.
On January, 1914, there were twenty- five thousand three hundred
State wineshops. As a result of the rescript of February 12, 1914,
all these wine shops have been closed. In consequence the people
have become sober; the country has become unrecognizable ; shirk-
ing has diminished in the mills, and the working capacity of the
employees has increased ; from families where not infrequently the
reek of intoxication used to manifest itself in the most horrible
forms, the curse is lifted; crime has diminished; an entire
revolution has taken place in the popular habits. These general
statements made by the Minister of Finance find their confirmation
in the report of an elaborate investigation made by a committee at
Moscow. From this it appears the decrease in slacking amounts to
thirty-six and eight-tenths per cent, due largely, although not ex-
clusively, to the prohibition of the sale of vodka. The productivity
of each laborer increased by seven and one-tenth per cent, and for
male employees by eight and two-tenths per cent. This increase
in the wealth of the Empire goes far to offset the loss of revenue
which was involved in the suppression of the sale of vodka. This
loss amounted to about three hundred millions of dollars: a ten
per cent increase in productivity would amount to two hundred and
sixty-three millions.
When Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and
The Balkans. Greece formed the union from which re-
sulted the first of the Balkan wars, well-
wishers of the Balkan States hoped that this temporary union would
lead to a permanent confederation. This hope was frustrated by
the second of those wars. This war was due to the treachery of
1915.] RECENT EVENTS 279
Bulgaria to the best interests of the States as a whole. It is true,
of course, that Bulgaria had considerable provocation when she
listened to the counsels of Austria-Hungary, the great enemy of
all the Balkan States, and took up arms against her former allies,
Greece and Serbia. While Bulgaria was waging her successful
war with Turkey, the oppressor of them all, Greece and Serbia
were engaged in taking possession of the district called Macedonia,
of which Bulgarians formed the principal part of the inhabitants,
and the possession of which was the chief aim of Bulgaria in enter-
ing upon the war. In fact, a treaty had been made before the war
broke out between the three States, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria,
assigning to Bulgaria the district in question. This treaty Greece
and Serbia tore up and took possession of the territory, dividing
it among themselves ; they ignored also the reference to arbitration
to the Tsar which they had agreed to make in case of a dispute.
Bulgaria was so enraged at this injustice that she attacked Serbia
without warning, and in the war which ensued was decisively
beaten. The Treaty of Bukarest was the result a treaty which
definitely assigned to Serbia and Greece districts which were dis-
tinctly Bulgarian. Force of circumstances alone made Bulgaria
submit to this treaty. At the moment of signing it she gave an
almost open notice to the world that as soon as her strength was
equal to the task the treaty would be repudiated.
Since the present war broke out the object of the Entente
Powers has been to harmonize these differences, especially to pre-
vail upon Serbia and Greece to yield to Bulgaria a part at least of
their acquisitions. It was generally believed that success had at-
tended their efforts. King Ferdinand, however, seems to have
formed the opinion that Germany is going to win, and has, there-
fore, thrown himself into the anus of the Central Powers. He
has declared war on Serbia, making the twelfth of these declara-
tions. The Hungarian Premier is credited with being the main
agent in the negotiation of this new -alliance. It is indeed a strange
alliance -the Head of the Evangelical Church of Prussia as the
prime-mover, the Calvinist Premier of Hungary as his most in-
fluential co-ad jutor, both allied with the Sultan of Turkey, the
wholesale slaughterer of the Armenians, and King Ferdinand the
betrayer of his Catholic offspring. Bulgaria, by the step she has
taken, has seriously endangered the independent existence of the
Balkan States. Doubts may, however, be felt as to whether or not
the King carries with him the whole of his subjects. It is to Rus-
2So RECENT EVENTS [Nov.,
sia that Bulgaria owes her existence, and even in these days when
morality seems to have perished, there are not wanting many in
Bulgaria who will bear in remembrance the hitherto cherished mem-
ories of the gratitude due to Russia.
The action of Bulgaria adds undoubtedly to the difficulties of
the Allies. Germany's object, as we have stated, is to open a
way through the Balkan States to Constantinople, and ultimately
to Egypt and the Persian Gulf. For this purpose she will
put forth all her available strength. Serbia will make all possible
resistance, but with Bulgaria as an enemy, hope of success is small.
She must depend upon France and Great Britain, and these seem
to be too far away to send a force large enough. If, however, Rus-
sia should be able to bring forces into the Balkans the prospect for
the Allies is much better. Here the question arises of Rumania's
action and of this little has been heard. But upon it may depend
the result, for it does not seem possible for effectual help to come
in any other way. The fate of the world may, therefore, be in the
hands of this small state. Greece is hesitating for the time being,
and has failed to keep the treaty made with Serbia by which she
was bound, in case the latter was attacked by Bulgaria, to go to
her assistance. The Government, however, does not represent the
majority of the people, and is dominated by foreign influences. It
remains to be seen whether the feelings of the nation can be stifled.
After some hesitation Italy has promised to cooperate with Russia,
France and Great Britain. The gallant Serbians, after having passed
triumphantly through severe conflicts, are again being submitted
to a terrible ordeal. The fact that Serbia has repeatedly rejected
offers of peace made by the Central Powers adds to the estimation in
which she should be held. In fact, with the exception of Monte-
negro, Serbia is the only one of the Balkan States who has proved
true to herself, and worthy of the long-desired independence.
With Our Readers.
THE recognition by President Wilson of Venustiano Carranza as
President of Mexico presents an excellent opportunity for a study
of idealism in action. President Wilson in his public utterances has
repeatedly pointed out the lofty and unique mission of America not
only as the exemplar, but as the protector of all political virtue to the
modern world. There is no ideal of national conduct which she should
not cultivate, and from her just and generous hands the seeds of
liberty, justice and brotherhood are to be scattered throughout all the
world. We are set among the nations as the brilliant north star,
which all may safely follow through the night of their own distress
and their own suffering towards the peaceful harbor of civilization
and progress.
* * * *
IN his address on April 20, 1915, in the city of New York, President
Wilson said : " We are the mediating nation of the world. I do not
mean that we undertake not to mind our own business and to mediate
where other people are quarrelsome. I mean the word in a broader
sense. We are compounded of the nations of the world We
are, therefore, able to understand all nations."
" Did you ever reflect upon how almost all other nations, almost
every other nation, has through long centuries been headed in one
direction ? That is not true of the United States."
" We are trustees for what I venture to say is the greatest heritage
that any nation ever had, the love of justice and righteousness and
human liberty. For fundamentally those are the things to which
America is addicted and to which she is devoted."
ON May loth, at Philadelphia, President Wilson, in speaking of the
renewal of our national life by the absorption of the newly-made
citizens, declared : " It is as if humanity had determined to see to it
that this great nation, founded for the benefit of humanity, should not
lack for the allegiance of the people of the world."
" America was created to unite mankind by those passions which
lift and not by the passions which separate and debase."
" Americans must have a consciousness different from the con-
sciousness of every other nation in the world. I am not saying this
with even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations."
" The example of America must be a special example."
" Its great ideals which made America the hope of the
world."
282 WITH OUR READERS [Nov.,
IN the President's address of May 17, 1915, delivered at New York,
was this paragraph :
" Standing for these things, it is not pretension on our part
to say that we are privileged to stand for what every nation would
wish to stand for, and speak for those things which all humanity must
desire."
* * * *
IN his Indianapolis address, on January 8, 1915, President Wilson
stated our attitude towards Mexico :
" Now there is one thing I have got a great enthusiasm about, I
might almost say a reckless enthusiasm, and that is human liberty. I
want to say a word about Mexico, not so much about Mexico as about
our attitude toward Mexico. I hold it as a fundamental principle, and
so do you, that every people has the right to determine its own form of
government, and until this recent revolution in Mexico, until the end
of the Diaz regime, eighty per cent of the people of Mexico never
had a 'look in' in determining who should be their governors or what
their government should be. Now I am for the eighty per cent. It
is none of my business and it is none of your business how long they
take in determining it. It is none of my business and it is none of
your business how they go about the business. The country is theirs.
The government is theirs. The liberty, if they can get it, is theirs,
and so far as my influence goes while I am President, nobody shall
interfere with them."
" This country (Mexico) shall have just as much freedom in her
own affairs as we have."
* * * *
''PHESE appeals move and inspire the heart of every American.
1 Nothing is too great nor too elevated for the country which is
dearer to us than life itself. The forces of selfishness, individual and
national, are so strong, so powerful, so ceaselessly active, such an ever-
present menace to our true national life, that they must be combated
by a patriotic enthusiasm and pride in our duty and destiny as a
people; an idealism strong enough to be proof against widespread
sordidness and self-interest. Every patriot knows that exaggeration
must accompany the expression of these, and .that shortcoming must
be a partner in their practical fulfillment.
* * * *
BUT whatever practical necessity may compel an idealist to do, we
have the right to express our disappointment if in action he
abandons what he has declared to be his fundamental principles.
President Wilson has declared that " to justice and righteousness and
human liberty America is addicted and devoted," and that " this coun-
try (Mexico) shall have as much freedom in her own affairs as we
have."
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 283
In 1913, President Wilson refused to recognize Huerta as Presi-
dent of Mexico, because Huerta had been placed in the chair by
revolution and had never been elected by the people. Huerta, as
a result, was forced to leave Mexico.
Carranza is at least as much of a revolutionist as Huerta. He
does not at the present time hold as much of the territory of Mexico
under his authority as Huerta did. Carranza has never been elected
by vote of the people. He has given no proof that he is able to rule
Mexico. His record during his years as a revolutionary leader is one
of murder; of robbery; of rapine. He has persecuted all who pro-
fessed the Catholic Faith, and the crimes of his followers have been
unspeakable. These crimes are admitted by a defender of Carranza
Luis Cabrera, Minister of Finance in Carranza's cabinet in The Forum
of August, 1915. He says they would not have happened "if the
Catholic clergy had maintained themselves within their religious attri-
butes." But for a detailed account of Carranza's record we will
refer our readers to the articles by Edward I. Bell, now running in
The Outlook, of New York, under the title The Mexican Problem.
* * * *
r PHIS is the man whom President Wilson has recognized as Presi-
1 dent of Mexico. Our country gives him honor and will support
him. But our country stands for justice and righteousness and human
liberty. We should see to it that " this country (Mexico) shall have
as much freedom as we have." In the recognition of Carranza, it
seems to us, therefore, that idealism when translated into action has
lamentably failed. The promise of religious liberty made to Presi-
dent Wilson by Carranza's representative, as far as we can see, means
nothing. Carranza's record belies it. " Public order," which is the
limitation put by Carranza on the religious liberty he will grant,
may readily be made, in the future as in the past, the cloak of religious
persecution. And we may further ask ourselves, will the United
States, now that it has placed Carranza in power, see to it that he
respect life and property and the rights of conscience in Mexico and
her people? The Mexican question is not settled by the recognition
of Carranza. It is likely to be a matter of gravest concern to our
Government for many years to come.
The protest of American Catholics against the recognition of
Carranza was founded on their love of true American principles, that
we should see to it, since we took action at all, that other people enjoy
the same liberty as we ourselves possess.
IN the October CATHOLIC WORLD, in speaking of the proposed
Protestant Congress to be held at Panama early next year, we
said that it would inevitably endanger our cordial relations with
284 WITH OUR READERS [Nov.,
the Latin-American countries. Proof of this is found in the Pastoral
Letter of Rt. Rev. William Rojas, Bishop of Panama, in which he
protests against holding such a Congress in Panama, forbids Catholics
to attend it and voices the dissatisfaction of all Latin-America.
Some days ago [the Bishop writes] our attention was called to a project
which is planned in our episcopal see and capital of our Catholic Republic,
the beginning of next year, by a certain Protestant element in the United
States. We refer to a Congress for the evangelization of Latin-America to
be held in Panama. This mere announcement is an insult to us Latin-
Americans that no one can approve, for it is known that the delight of
Protestant oratory consists in attacking the Catholic religion and the Roman
Pontiff, depreciating and calumniating the clergy, ridiculing our religious prac-
tices, and criticising our Christian customs.
Of what will the Congress treat? Why, of "Christian work," that is to say,
of our evangelization, for, according to them, we are ignorant; of our morals,
for, in their conception, we are outcasts ; and to place us in the road of civiliza-
tion, for, to them, we wander in the darkness of heathenism. Such is the con-
ception, as it would appear, that these deluded ones have formed of us; and
not only of us Panamanians, but of all Latin- America ; for their programme
embraces all the peoples of Latin- America, as the Christian Observer, a Presby-
terian publication of Louisville, Kentucky, clearly says, and the title which
they have given to the proposed congresses is : Congress on Christian Work in
Latin-America, Congress to Christianize Latin-America. Can there be for us
a greater insult or greater humiliation?
The language which the speakers will employ on such an occasion is left
to imagine. It will be their habitual defamatory speech towards the Catholic
Church, towards all the people, that which they always use when they set about
" Christian work." There will be repeated that which they have spread on all
sides in the United States, namely, that all Latin-American countries, from
Mexico down, are to be civilized, for they are woefully backward and ignorant,
for they are Catholics, and the Catholic Church is responsible for their condi-
tion, for they keep them under and in subjection, and they wish to suggest that
railroads, enormous bridges, the telegraph, the colossal buildings, the world of
machinery, and the thousand and one other things of progress in the United
States are due to Protestantism. Think of such logic! As if the civilization
and morality of a people consist of these elements of material welfare! In the
matter of morality and civilization, the defamers of the Catholic Church would
do well to lower their tone and to moderate their speech, for it is not certain
that the United States is the place to learn these lessons.
OUR review last month dealt with the protest against participation
in the congress by those members of the Episcopal Church who
claim to be Catholic. Of course if they are Catholic they will obey
the Catholic Bishop of Panama. The Board of Missions of the
Episcopal Church will, late in October, definitely settle the attitude
of that Church. Meanwhile the discussion of the question of par-
ticipation or non-participation brings forth some pronouncements that
must be quite disconcerting to the " Catholic " party. For example,
Dr. Randolph H. McKim, who was President for nine years of the
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 285
House of Clerical and Lay Deputies of the Episcopal Church writes
as follows :
If we look beneath the surface it is easy to see that the opposition to this
conference arises from antagonism to the Protestant principles upon which this
Church took its stand at the Reformation. The great divines of the Elizabethan
period avowed themselves Protestants. So did the Caroline bishops, that great
body of scholars known as the Anglo-Catholic divines, with scarce an excep-
tion. Such was the position also of the fathers of our American branch of the
Church. Not until the period of the Oxford tracts was it even whispered that
this Church is not Protestant. The spirit and genius of our Prayer Book, and
of our representative bishops and theologians, has been a spirit of fraternal
affection and sympathy with the great Protestant Churches. Only in these latter
days has a different spirit developed among us. It is this spirit which strikes
at the Panama Conference. It will be an evil day for the Protestant Episcopal
Church if the Board of Missions should weakly yield to this anti-Protestant
clamor.
IT is unnecessary to emphasize what we have so often emphasized
the necessity of the Catholic layman of to-day to be well versed
in Catholic teaching, and by careful reading to be able to express that
teaching in conversation with his fellow non-Catholics. Incalculable
harm is often done either by silence or by unintelligent explanation,
or by inability to explain on the part of a Catholic who is questioned,
or that finds himself a listener to some religious or historical discus-
sion. On the other hand, the intelligent defence or comment or inter-
pretation it may be only a word may lead another to inquire about
Catholic teaching and eventually to accept it.
A BOOK that will fully repay the thoughful reading of the Catholic
layman is a recent publication of The Catholic Library, entitled
Thoughts on Apologetics, by E. I. Watkin. In this volume Mr. Wat-
kin, who evidently has been a close student of Newman, shows the
pressing need of interpreting the Catholic Faith to the modern world.
" All educated Catholics to-day must be in their degree apolo-
gists, and this not alone by the example of good and religious lives,
but by ability and readiness, when occasion calls, to give an account
of the faith that is in them, at least as adequate to their general state
of intelligence and learning as would be their treatment of another
matter that concerned or interested them."
The author takes the argument from analogy and illustrates its
efficacy with regard to many of the difficulties experienced by non-
Catholics. He takes up the distinctive tendencies of modern
thought and of Catholic teaching in chapters, that not only put us on
our guard against many of the attractions of the former, but also
show us what we have never, perhaps, brought home to ourselves
286 WITH OUR READERS [Nov.,
in a sufficiently thoughtful way, the beauty and comprehensiveness
of the latter.
To the author the most dangerous competitor of Catholic Faith
in the near future is Pantheism, for Pantheism requires no special
organization or worship, but is compatible with membership in any
non-exclusive religious body, and while admitting the use of any sort
of ritual, can also dispense altogether with ritual and external wor-
ship. " If a distinct supernatural order be rejected and religion be
regarded as simply a natural experience of humanity, it is but a short
step to the deification of man, and Pantheism is at the door."
AS for the growth and increase of the Catholic Church, Mr. Watkin,
at the beginning when he considers the educated classes, ex-
presses quite an optimistic view:
" Part willfully, part blindly, the fathers of modern Europe left
the Catholic Church. Their sons, as all these signs abundantly mani-
fest, already feel the want of all she has to give. Scarcely able to
understand or express their real need, countless numbers to-day are
wandering here and there seeking satisfaction for their souls. There
is a widespread feeling (I found it the other day strongly expressed
in a magazine article by some non-Christian, to take one instance as
a straw pointing to the direction of the wind) that the much-abused
monks and saints of old possessed a secret which we, for all our
worldly wisdom, have lost, had found peace, had attained reality,
while we are left unsatisfied with an empty shadow. Have we not
cause then to hope that countless numbers of such will hasten to
return to the Faith through which alone they can find 'rest for their
souls/ if only they can but once see it, as it truly is. This return is
already beginning, especially here in England and in America, and the
tide of conversions swells daily. We may surely expect a vast in-
flux of converts if the true nature of the Church and of her Faith is
apprehended by the modern world."
At the end of his volume, looking upon the poorer and uneducated
classes, he is far less optimistic. He had his eyes fixed upon the poor
of England, than whom it would be harder to find in all the world
a class that has been spiritually more neglected, and who are woefully
neglected to this day. America, we are sure, would present a more
hopeful outlook.
THE readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD who have so often enjoyed
the authoritative articles by Dr. John A. Ryan on economic ques-
tions, will be pleased to know that Dr. Ryan has taken charge of the
work in Political Science and Industrial Ethics at the Catholic Uni-
versity of America.
1915.] BOOKS RECEIVED 287
A NDREW JACKSON SHIPMAN, who died October 17, 1915,
/JL W as a man of manifold talents and activities. As a lawyer he
was an authority on the laws of religious corporations and labor
organizations; as a linguist he was familiar with nearly all the
modern European languages; an unquestionable authority on the
language, customs and religious beliefs of the Slavic nations. His
papers on these and kindred subjects are well known to our readers.
The full extent of his religious labors will never be known, but
his loss will be felt very keenly by the Slav and Greek Catholics
of New York. To the whole body Catholic in this country his pass-
ing means a distinct loss.
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. CIL DECEMBER, 1915. No. 609.
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS.
BY SAMUEL F. DARWIN FOX.
N the present conflict of opinion and policy which
recently came to a head in the meeting of the Board
of Missions of the Episcopal Church, the lines were
clearly drawn between the " Catholic " and Prot-
estant parties of that Church. It is, therefore, of
timely importance to ask on what solid ground can those members
of the Episcopal Church stand who claim to be " Catholic," that is
who claim to be members of the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic
Church of Jesus Christ ? It is entirely beside the question to discuss
the origin of the American Episcopal Church, or, as it officially calls
itself, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, because
this Church owes its existence to the Anglican or Episcopal Church
of England. It is true that it has an independent organization and
episcopate, but whatever orders it claims, it may claim only by virtue
of its descent from the Anglican Church, and it has formally adopted
as its creed the Thirty-Nine Articles of the mother Church of Eng-
land. Its birth and history are, therefore, one with the birth and
history of the Anglican Church.
Now the recent judgment of the House of Lords in the case
of Bannister vs. Thompson is a very timely and unanswerable re-
minder of a sure and certain historical fact, namely, that the An-
glican Church is not the one, universal Church of Christ, nor any
true part of it, but an adjunct of the State and dependent on the
State for its existence. Any exercise of authority whether relating
to faith or to morals on the part of the Anglican Church may be
Copyright. 1915. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. CII. IQ
2QO THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
rendered absolutely nugatory by the action of the State. At the
final establishment of the Anglican system under the Tudors, as
he who runs may read, the Church of England was forced to play
the part of an ecclesiastical Esau and sell her Birthright for a mess
of pottage. As a necessary consequence from that time onwards
the inevitable failure of any attempt, however spirited, to re-assert
her pristine spiritual independence or discipline has been v foreseen
by all thoughtful persons. Betrayed (in the first instance) by
Cranmer, the Church of England was duped into repudiating, in the
most practical manner possible, her relations with the Universal
Christian Kingdom the world-wide Corporation set up at Pente-
cost, guided by Canon Law, administered by a lawful ecclesiastical
judicature, and independent of all secular rulers and thus was
transmuted into an institution inherently and essentially national
and local. And so the civil power recognizes to the full that, from
its own point of view, the New Official Anglican Establishment,
being a compromise between the conflicting principles of authority
and private judgment, is nothing more than a mere eclectic Re-
ligious Club run on government lines, and officered by persons who
are as much the nominees of the State as are His Majesty's judges,
or, in Bishop Creighton's words, " an arrangement for expressing
the religious consciousness of the English people."
It is manifest, then, that the ultimate religious criterion of the
Anglican Church will tend to be the right of private judgment
in other words, vox populi pure and simple. Accordingly the civil
power to-day claims, quite logically, the right to decide, in the last
resort, not merely " the temporal accidents of spiritual things," but
the all-important question as to who shall, or who shall not, be
admitted to partake of the Supper of the Lord.
That Sir Thomas More fully recognized the fact that the fig-
ment of the Royal Supremacy is part and parcel of this theory of
" National Churches " which is in direct and irrevocable antagonism
to the revealed word of God, is clear from the following account
of the speech of which he delivered himself before the sentence of
death was passed upon him:
This indictment is grounded upon an Act of Parliament
directly repugnant to the laws of God and His Holy Church.
And in order to the proof of his assertion, he declared, among
other things, that this Kingdom alone being but one member,
and a small part of the Church, was not to make a particular law
disagreeing with the general law of Christ's Universal Catholic
1915-] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 291
Church, no more than the city of London, being but one mem-
ber in respect to the whole Kingdom, might enact a law against
an Act of Parliament to be binding upon the whole realm.
" And, therefore, my Lord, I do not think myself bound to con-
form my conscience to the counsel of one Kingdom, against the
general consent of all Christendom." 1
And it is idle to quote in answer the conciliatory and in-
nocuous Article XXX VII. , for the simple reason that all the
Church formularies of this period need to be read in the
light of the fact that anything like an open promulgation of hereti-
cal doctrine was realized to be a truly perilous proceeding. It was
easier and safer to dupe the Church of England into apostasy, when
its Archbishop was only too ready to betray the flock intrusted
to him, and even stalwart Catholics like Bonner and Gardiner
were so readily entrapped into signing documents which put them
in a false position. For, to the outward eye, nothing was
changed ; Mass was still offered day by day according to the ancient
national rite, while at Vesper-tide the air was charged with the
tender and loving poetry of the Salve Regina. Consequently, the
evil work which was being done was never realized by the people
until it was too late.
Furthermore, the first Supreme Pontiffs of the Establishment,
Henry Tudor and Elizabeth (Edward VI. was, of course,
a mere tool in the hands of others), were quite astute
enough to contrive that the odium should fall on other heads
than their own, if by mischance the new system should prove a
failure. All formularies, then, were constructed to serve a two- fold
object: first to throw dust into Catholic eyes, and, second, to pro-
vide a means of (fairly) dignified escape in case of necessity. Dr.
James Gairdner has described how Henry VIII. contrived to act as
" Spiritual Ruler behind a screen."
The King was now Supreme Head of the Church of England.
He had excluded all reference to Rome on matters of faith
and doctrine, as well as the Church's discipline. He had taken
the Pope's place, and with it he had taken upon himself re-
sponsibilities which no King of England had ever undertaken
before If ever bishops disagreed, and there was to be
no reference to Rome, who was to decide disputes in the last
instance except the " Supreme Head " himself? It is true that,
1 State Trials, vol. i., p. 62. Ed: 1776. (Quoted by R. I. Wilberforce : An In-
quiry into the Principles of Church Authority, p. 234. Second edition, 1854.)
292 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
just as in acts of state he guarded himself against personal
responsibility by that high constitutional doctrine that the King
can do no wrong, and only ministers can be made accountable,
so also he intended to exercise his new Supremacy in Church
matters. He would throw the responsibility of everything, as
much as possible, on the official guardians of religion, the
bishops. If they disagreed, his vicegerent in spiritual things
was Thomas Cromwell, and he could lay the responsibility on
his shoulders. 2
This was also the policy adopted by Elizabeth. So much for
the evidential value of Article XXXVII.
Article XXL, which states that " General Councils may not
be gathered together without the commandment and will of Prin-
ces," is worthy of notice. The words quoted certainly cannot be
explained away as being a mere statement of past historical fact
that Princes gave permission for attendance at General Councils or
for the holding of the same in their provinces, seeing that the
" Declaration " prefixed to the Articles by Charles I. forbids any
man " to put his own sense or comment to the meaning of the
Article," but enjoins that he " shall take it in the literal and gram-
matical sense." There is no reason for doubting that this Article
is one of a group of enactments designed to exclude all reference in
spiritual matters to any but native sources, and thus effectively to
sever " the Anglican Branch " from the rest of the Heavenly Vine.
By 25 Henry VIIL, 21 S. 20, it was forbidden "that any person,
religious or other, resiant in any of the King's dominions, shall from
henceforth depart out of the King's dominions to or for any visi-
tation, congregation or assembly for religion." 3 And the Oath of
Supremacy (imposed upon the clergy by Canon XXXVI.) denies
all authority, spiritual or temporal, to any bishop not subject to
the Crown. The local Church of England, when effectually isolated
from the rest of Christendom, was, with consummate cunning, re-
constituted as a daring travesty of the Church Universal. Professor
*Lollardy and the Reformation in England, vol. ii., p. 306.
8 In the year 1551 great attempts were made by Charles V. to induce the Ger-
man Protestants to attend the Council of Trent, for which end a safe conduct was
granted them by the Council. Bullinger wrote to Cranmer to dissuade the English
from attending it. Cranmer replied : as to the point " that I would advise the
King's Majesty not to send any delegate to the Council of Trent, there was no
need of any advice of mine to dissuade him from a measure which never came
into his mind." And he proceeds to express his desire for a rival assembly,
to be composed of the principal Protestant ministers. R. I. Wilberforce, Principles
of Church Authority, p. 236.
1915.] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 293
Brewer summed up the whole transaction in a single sentence :
"King Henry VIII. was transubstantiated into the Pope." 4
Two learned and authoritative Anglican divines may here be
quoted as showing the feeling prevalent among " sober, peaceable
and truly conscientious sons of the Church of England " with
regard to the reality of the Royal Supremacy in things spiritual.
The " judicious " Hooker writes thus : " There is required an
universal power, which reacheth over all, importing supreme au-
thority of all courts, all judges, all causes This power being
sometime in the Bishop of Rome, who by sinister practices had
drawn it into his hands, 5 was for just considerations by public
consent annexed unto the King's royal seat and crown." 6
And Archbishop Bramhall still more strongly : " Whatever
power our laws did divest the Pope of, they invested the King
with it." 7
Unfortunately for those many Anglican special-pleaders who
would have us believe that the Church of England, at the Reforma-
tion, merely " washed her face," the true nature of the Tudor
changes has been finally laid bare by historians such as Professor
Brewer, Mr. J. A. Froude, and Dr. James Gairdner, who have had
no particular axe to grind, and have accordingly studied their sub-
ject first-hand. Professor Brewer's words are particularly clear:
" Whose genius was it that upset the traditions of fifteen centuries
4 " If the Pope was the Bishop of Bishops, so was he; if the Pope could of him-
self determine controversies of faith, so did he. Whether the doctrine of purga-
tory, of the sacrament of penance or the worship of saints were or were not to
constitute part of the creed and teachings of the Church of England, depended
on the King alone. It is true that he did not administer the sacraments and ordain
priests and bishops, but if any man had questioned his power to do so, he would
have incurred the penalty of high treason." Professor J. S. Brewer, English
Studies, p. 329.
5 A common Anglican accusation against the Pope. Dr. John Lingard makes
short work of it in the following passage : " What made the yoke of Roman do-
minion more intolerable during the reign of Henry than it had been in former
reigns? We know of no cause but the refusal of Clement to divorce the King
from his wife. Where are we to find evidence of the important but hitherto un-
known fact, that the exercise of the Papal supremacy in England was in virtue of
powers delegated by the English to the Roman Church? We cannot say; unless
perhaps the original documents are preserved in the archives of the submarine
church of Perranzabuloe, to which we have not access." Essay on Did the Anglican
Church Reform Herself? in the Dublin Review, May, 1840.
Ecclesiastical Polity, VIII., 8.4.
' Treatise on the Church, i., 355. Letter of Withers and Barthelot to Bullinger
and Guatter (August, 1567): "When the supremacy was transferred to King
Henry of pious memory, and all things which by the Canon Law belonged to the
Roman Pontiff as head of the Church were made over to him, he then being both
King and Pope." Zurich Letters, ii., p. 149.
294 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
and devised an organization without parallel 8 in ancient or modern
times? Who first conceived the bold idea not of a parity of
power between the spiritual and temporal jurisdictions, not War-
burton's figment of an imperium in imperio, not modern Anglicanism
watching to steal a feather out of the tail of the Imperial Eagle,
but a transfer of the whole authority of the Church from a
spiritual to a temporal ruler?" 9
And again : " Precisely as the power of the Pope was supposed
to over-ride that of the ordinary, so were the clergy taught to be-
lieve that obedience to their diocesan was superseded by the act of
Supremacy. Thus Adam Becanshaw, one of Cromwell's visitors,
writes to him that it was considered that 'no man is obedient to
any ordinary immediately, but only unto the King's Highness as
unto the Supreme Head, which is one of our chief articles of visi-
tation/"
Mr. Herbert Paul, the biographer of Froude, writes as fol-
lows concerning the latter's notable achievement in the cause of
truth : " He had proved that the Church of England, though in a
sense it dates from St. Austin of Canterbury, became under Henry
VIII. a self-contained institution independent of Rome and subject
to the supremacy of the Crown." 11
And the same writer accurately observes the consequent servi-
tude of the New Establishment a servitude which has continued
unto the present day : " There has never been in the Church of
England, since the divorce of Katherine, any power to make a
bishop without the authority of the Crown or to change a doctrine
without the authority of Parliament, 12 nor has any layman been
legally subject to temporal punishment by the ecclesiastical courts.
Convocation cannot touch an article or a formulary. King, Lords,
and Commons can make new formularies or abolish the old. The
laity owe no allegiance to the Canons, and in every theological
suit the final appeal is to the King in Council, now the Judicial
Committee." 18
8 "T'he revolution effected by Henry VIII. was a thing without parallel in
history, and it is hard to realize it at the present day." Gairdner, History of the
English Church from Henry VIII. to Mary, p. 240.
'English Studies, p. 301. Cf. Beza to Bulliriger (Geneva, September 3, 1566) :
" The Papacy was never abolished in that country (England) but rather trans-
ferred to the Sovereign."
10 Ibid., p. 330. u Life of Froude, p. 136.
12 Cf. Brewer, op. cit., p. 299 : " The whole nation has been torn with contro-
versies of faith amost without intermission from the Reformation to the present
hour ; but the Church has never ventured to interpose an authoritative voice in
these matters." 13 Ibid., p. 137.
1915.] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 295
The elegant and favorite description of the English Reforma-
tion as a " face-washing " is the more unfortunate, seeing that the
spiritual revolution was forced upon the Ecclesia Anglicana in de-
fiance of Magna Charta, by dint of cruelty and fraud. Rejection
of the Act of Supremacy of 1534 involved not only the loss of
property and liberty, but even of life itself. The process whereby
the Supremacy was affected was very gradual. First Wolsey was
declared to have incurred the penalties of pramunire by his ac-
ceptance of a legatine commission from Rome, and the whole body
of the clergy were involved as his accessories (A. D. 1530). They
thus found themselves at Henry's mercy, and, in order to save
their lives and property, they were forced to submit to a fine of one
hundred thousand pounds, and were further required to acknowledge
the King as Head of the Church. This last they consented to do
after expressing the greatest reluctance. The Convocation of Can-
terbury submitted in January, 1530, and the Convocation of York
in May, 1531. But they insisted on inserting the saving clause
quantum per Christi legem licet (in so far as the law of Christ
permits), which, in effect, rendered their acknowledgment nugatory.
To render them powerless to retract, the King, in 1552,
required them to surrender their power of independent legislation,
and to engage to make no laws without his consent. The
next year, 1553, an Act of Parliament was passed wherein
it was expressly stated that the King is " the Supreme
Head of the Church of England, and so is recognized by the
Clergy of this Realm in their Convocations/' They were thus
affirmed to have made the admission unconditionally, whereas they
had rendered it virtually nil by the addition of a definite stipula-
tion. The same cowardly duplicity appears in the matter of the
denial of the Pope's supremacy. In the Convocation of Canter-
bury on March 31, 1534, the question was proposed for discussion
(by order of the King) : "Has the Roman Pontiff any greater juris-
diction than any other foreign bishop conferred upon him by God
in Holy Scripture? " This question is most artfully constructed ;
for Holy Scripture makes no mention in express terms of the
Bishop of Rome, or, in fact, of any other bishop. It might, there-
fore, be possible to deny this without denying the Pope to be the suc-
cessor of St. Peter, and therefore the Head of Christendom. Even
so, it may be noted, the reply of Convocation was most reluctant.
It was only in this exceedingly equivocal manner that the authority
of the Pope was " denied " either by Convocation or by the Uni-
296 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
versities. Nevertheless all persons were subsequently required to
deny the Papal authority in terms which were absolute and unequiv-
ocal, the decision of these learned bodies being referred to as though
it had been explicit and absolute. The claim of supremacy was aban-
doned by i and 2 Philip and Mary, and renewed again in the first
year of the reign of Elizabeth. On this later occasion, when the
question came up in Parliament, the bishops with one consent op-
posed it, and were all, with but a single exception, subsequently
deprived by the civil power for refusing the revived Oath of Su-
premacy. The Lower House of Convocation and the Universities
likewise opposed it by a solemn protest couched in the most un-
mistakable terms.
So much for the figment that the Church of England was party
to the formation of this blasphemous mimicry of the Church
Universal.
The passing of the Six Articles and the punishment of all who
transgressed them, the persecution of Tyndal, the execution of
Frith and Barnes, and the martyrdom of Fisher, More and the
monks of the Charterhouse need only be quoted in evidence of the
fact that the Supremacy invested His Most Sacred Majesty with the
right of punishing such offences, " not as contrary to the laws of the
state, but as contrary to what he was pleased to determine was the
law of God offences as much against his spiritual as against his
temporal power" (Brewer).
On the death of Henry, the Catholic system of worship (which
had hitherto been continued in order to blind simple folk to the
issues at stake) was discarded. The system represented by the
Royal Supremacy appeared in its true nature. The boy who
now became Supreme Head was merely the tool of an ultra-
Protestant clique, headed by his disreputable uncle and by Cranmer,
who made full use of their unlovely gospel as a means of filling
their pockets with the treasures of the Church. Cranmer 's first
action as Metropolitan was significant indeed. On the ground
that his own commission had expired with the monarch who gave
it, he humbly solicited a new one within a week of the proclama-
tion of the youthful sovereign. This was of course granted him.
The terms of the Edwardine commission are worthy of no-
tice. It begins with the significant statement that " all jurisdiction
of any kind, whether ecclesiastical or secular, flows from the Royal
Power as from its Supreme Head." It then authorizes the recip-
ient " to confer orders, to institute to livings, to exercise all
1915-] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 297
manners of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and to do all that appertains
to the episcopal or pastoral office in place of Us, in Our
Name and by Our Royal Authority." And it concludes, " We
license you by this present instrument, which is to be of force only
during Our pleasure." This is tantamount to a promise to resign
when called upon by the Crown, and shows clearly that the bishops
were appointed like civil officers by patent. And we may remark
that Mary was fully justified, by the terms of this commission, in
later depriving the Protestant bishops, and, by so doing, properly
exercised a power given her by law.
In the same year that the commissions were issued (A. D, 1547)
an Act of Parliament was passed stating that elections to bishoprics
" be in very deed no elections, but only by a writ of conge d'elire,
have colors, shadows, or pretenses of elections, serving, neverthe-
less, to no purpose, and seeming also derogatory and prejudicial to
the King's Prerogative Royal." The foregoing facts certainly give
point to some trenchant remarks of J. A. Froude :
The position of bishops in the Church of England has been
from the first anomalous. The episcopate was violently sepa-
rated from the Papacy, to which it would have preferred to
remain attached, and, to secure its obedience, it was made
dependent on the Crown. The method of episcopal appoint-
ments, instituted by Henry VIII. as a temporary expedient and
abolished by Edward VI. as an unreality, was reestablished
by Elizabeth, not certainly because she believed that the invo-
cation of the Holy Ghost was required for the completeness of
an election which her own choice had already determined, not
because the bishops obtained any gifts or grace in their con-
secration which she herself respected, but because the shadowy
form of an election, with a religious ceremony following it,
gave them the semblance of spiritual independence, the sem-
blance without the substance, which qualified them to be the
instruments of the system which she desired to enforce. 14 They
"Compare the following acute observation of Lacordaire (quoted by T. W.
Allies in his treatise on The See of St. Peter) : " Sovereigns who covet spiritual
authority have never dared to seize it upon the altar with their own hands : they
know well that in this there is an absurdity even greater than the sacrilege.
Incapable as they are of being directly recognized as the source and regulators
of religion, they seek to make themselves its masters by the intermediacy of some
sacerdotal body enslaved to their wishes : and there, pontiffs without mission,
usurpers of the truth itself, they dole out to their people the measure of which
they think sufficient to check revolt; they make of the Blood of Jesus Christ an
instrument of moral servitude and of political schemes, until the day when they
are taught by terrible catastrophies that the greatest crime which sovereignty can
commit against itself and against society is the meddling touch which profanes
religion."
298 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
were tempted to presume on their phantom dignity till the
sword of a second Cromwell taught them the true value of their
apostolic descent; and we have a right to regret that the
original theory of Cranmer was departed from that being
officers of the Crown, as much appointed by the sovereign as
the Lord Chancellor, the bishops should not have worn openly
their real character and received their appointments immedi-
ately by letters patent without further ceremony. 15
When Queen Mary, the lawful daughter of Henry VIII., set
herself to effect the Corporate Reunion of the Church of England
with the rest of Western Christendom, she found herself invested
by English law with " full power and authority from time to time
to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, correct, restrain and amend
all such errors, heresies, abuses, offences, contempts and enormities,
whatsoever they be, which by any manner, spiritual authority, or
jurisdiction, ought or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, ordered,
redressed, corrected, restrained, or amended." 16 And we have ob-
served that the terms of the commissions or licenses granted to the
episcopate by Edward fully empowered her to deprive, at her
pleasure, the individual prelates who had accepted them. But, in
point of fact, she fully appreciated the justice of the demand made
by Convocation in 1547, "that all such statutes and ordinances, as
shall be made concerning all matters of religion, and causes ecclesi-
astical, may not pass without the sight and assent of the said
clergy." Accordingly on August 4, 1553, Convocation was sum-
moned by a writ addressed to Cranmer, and immediately proceeded
to business with a discussion upon the question of the Real
Presence. Cranmer, it may be remarked, was not sent to the Tower
till September I4th, so that he had plenty of time to prevent any
unfairness in the elections. It is, therefore, obvious that the par-
ties elected did truly represent the whole body of the clergy. The
Upper House forthwith expressed its desire to restore " this noble
Church of England to her pristine state and unity of Christ's
Church," and the Lower petitioned " that the ancient liberty, au-
thority and jurisdiction be restored to the Church of England ac-
cording to the article of the great Charte, called Magna Charta,
at the least in such sort as it was in the first year of Henry
VIII Item: that the statute of the submission of the clergy
made anno 25 Henry VIII., and all other statutes made during the
" History of England, vol. vi., pp. 55*, 553- "26 Henry VIII., i.
1915.] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 299
time of schism, in derogation of the liberties and jurisdictions of
the Church, from the first year of King Henry VIIL, may be re-
pealed and the Church restored in integrum."
Since the separation from Rome had been brought about by
Acts of Parliament, it devolved upon the State to carry out the
desire so forcibly expressed by the clergy. Accordingly the Acts
in question were rescinded by i and 2 Philip and Mary in 1554.
In 1556 the clergy of both provinces accepted the Legatine Consti-
tutions, the second of which . provided that " the decrees of all
Councils, general or provincial, which were received by the See of
Rome, the constitutions of the Roman Pontiffs and the laws of
the Church which were formerly promulgated in this Kingdom
should be restored to their former state." Previously, on Novem-
ber 30, 1554, at the High Altar of Westminster Abbey, the Cardinal-
Archbishop of Canterbury had solemnly absolved the nation from its
sin of schism.
Under the Pontificate of Elizabeth the irreligious division be-
tween England and the rest of Christendom was finally sealed, the
repeal under Mary of the " reforming " statutes of Henry VIIL
and Edward VI. was directly abrogated, and modern comprehen-
sive Anglicanism with its intentionally vague formularies came into
being. Within ten days of her coronation, the Houses of Par-
liament set to work to declare Her Majesty, by statute, the legiti-
mate daughter of Henry Tudor, and to re-invest the Crown with
all spiritual and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The substitution of the
term " Supreme Governor " for " Supreme Head " of the Church of
England was a mere distinction without a difference, 17 made simply
out of respect for the susceptibilities of certain of the innovators.
Calvin, for instance, had written as follows in his commentary on
the Book of Amos : " Erant enim Blasphemi qui vocarent eum
(Henricum VIIL) Summum Caput Ecclesice sub Christ o." And
John Konx, the Scotchman, had (during Edward's reign or possibly
later) written a forcible treatise, indirectly aimed at Mary Tudor,
directly at Mary Stuart, entitled A First Blaste of the Trumpet
"This was fully recognized by Parkhurst, who wrote thus (in a letter to
Bullinger, dated London, May 21, 1559): "The Queen is not willing to be called
the head of the Church of England, although this title has been offered to her ;
but she willingly accepts the title of governor which amounts to the same thing."
Zurich Letters, i., p. 29.
" The Act of Supremacy was the same essentially though with its edge slightly
blunted which had originally severed England from the jurisdiction of Rome.
The Crown became once more 'in all causes ecclesiastical as well as civil supreme.' "
J. A. Froude, History of England in the Reign of Elisabeth, ch. i.
300 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which maintained that
the temporal rule of a woman was " a contumely to God." Ob-
viously (by implication) the spiritual rule of a female was still
more intolerable. It is true that Knox, when brought into com-
munication with Elizabeth, maintained, in writing, that his indict-
ment of " the Monstrous Regiment of Women " in nowise referred
to her, seeing that she was a remarkable and obvious exception to
the general rule which he had propounded. But this disingenuous
shuffling was so obvious to everyone, that, for very shame's sake,
the terminology of the Act of Supremacy was softened down.
Cardinal William Allen (the founder of the college for English
Catholics at Douay) alludes to Calvin's and Knox's opinion on the
Royal Supremacy in the course of his plain-spoken " admonition to
the nobility and people of England and Ireland : " " As to her
(Elizabeth's) opinion, she has professed herself a heretic. She
usurpeth by Luciferian pride the title of Supreme Ecclesiastical
Government, a thing in a woman unheard of; not tolerable to the
masters of her own sect; and to all Catholics in the world most
ridiculous, absurd, monstrous, detestable, and a very fable to the
posterity."
And so it was found expedient (and necessary) to drop the
obnoxious title " Supreme Head," and to pretend that the aim of
the Queen was simply to restore the ancient constitutional right of
the Crown. So I. Elizabeth C. I. is entitled " An Act for restoring
to the Crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State, ecclesiastical
and spiritual, and abolishing the foreign power repugnant to the
same." 18
At once all ministers and officers whatsoever, whether temporal
or spiritual, were bound to take an oath acknowledging the Queen
to be " the only supreme governor of the realm, as well in spiritual
or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal," and renouncing " all
foreign jurisdictions, powers, superiorities, or authorities," under
pain of forfeiture of present office and disability to hold any other.
Moreover, it was enacted that the authority needful for the visi-
tation of all spiritual persons, and the correction of errors, here-
sies, and abuses, should be annexed to the Crown; the power of
exercising this authority by delegates appointed by Letters Patent
18 "A radical change in doctrine, worship and discipline had been made by
Queen and Parliament against the will of prelates and ecclesiastical Councils. The
legislative power of Convocation is once more subjected to royal control, obstinate
heresy is still a capital crime, but practically the bishops have little power of forcing
heretics to stand a trial." Cambridge Modern History, p. 570.
1915.] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 301
being declared to remain with the Queen and her successors for-
ever. It may be observed, in passing, that although the judges
determined, in Cawdry's case, that the supremacy in things spiritual
is inherent in the Crown, yet the tenor of the Act would seem to
show that it was regarded rather as a special grant made by the
power and authority of Parliament. But that does not affect the
question of the reality of the Supremacy which is attested by the
declaration of the Twelve Judges (shortly after Elizabeth's death)
that " the King, without Parliament, might make orders and con-
stitutions for the government of the clergy, and might deprive them
if they obeyed not So that independently of the powers ac-
knowledged in the statute, there was yet in reserve within the ca-
pacious bosom of the common law an undefined authority, which,
being similar in its character, might also be equal in its amount, to
the omnipotence of Rome."
This Act was passed in the teeth of the opposition of the
Church. The entire episcopate had voted against the third reading,
and powerful and efficient protests were made by Heath, Arch-
bishop of York; Scott, Bishop of Chester, and Feckenham,
Abbot of Westminster. The Archbishop's speech was particularly
apposite. In the course of his argument he pointed out that, as the
Queen's sovereignty descended by hereditary right, the grant of
special supremacy in spiritnalibus was beyond the power of Parlia-
ment to bestow. Furthermore, all women were entirely unqualified
for spiritual functions. They could neither preach, nor administer
the sacraments, nor exercise spiritual censures, for these acts be-
longed solely and exclusively to the clergy and the hierarchy. The
bishops of the Church of England, with the single exception of
Anthony Kitchin, Bishop of LlandafT (who had been consecrated, it
may be noted, by Cranmer on May 3, 1545, without the approval
of Rome), utterly and finally repudiated this new legislation and
were, accordingly, deposed from their sees.
An important minority 19 of the parochial clergy likewise fol-
lowed the lead of their Fathers-in-God. " The whole of the clergy
deprived at this time stands thus : fourteen bishops, already men-
tioned ; three bishops-elect, one abbot, four priors, and one abbess ;
19 Some twenty-five thousand of the clergy fell victims to the Black Death in
England in the middle of the fourteenth century. This compelled the bishops to
ordain young and inexperienced clerics, many of whom were also illiterate, and
thus unable to instruct the people in their religion. This led to a weakening of the
Faith, and was one of the causes of the defection of the sixteenth century." Cardinal
Gasquet (quoted by Rev. G. E. Howe, Sermon Outlines').
302 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
twelve deans, fourteen archdeacons, sixty canons or prebendaries,
one hundred priests, well preferred; fifteen heads of colleges, in
Oxford and Cambridge, to which may be added about twenty doc-
tors in several faculties." 20
The prelates forthwith uncanonically intruded into the sees of
the Catholic bishops were, naturally, obedient believers in the doc-
trine of the Royal Supremacy. On February 23, 1560, Dr.
Matthew Parker, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury,
took the following oath of homage on his knees before the Queen :
I, Matthew Parker, Doctor of Divinity, now elect Archbishop
of Canterbury, do utterly testify and declare in my conscience,
that Your Majesty is the only Supreme Governor of this
realm as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or
causes as temporal And further, I acknowledge and con-
fess to have and to hold the said Archbishopric of Canterbury,
and the possessions of the same entirely, as well the spiritual-
ities as temporalities thereof, only of Your Majesty and the
Crown Royal of this Your Realms. And as for the said pos-
sessions, I do my homage presently to Your Highness, and to
the same, and Your heirs and lawful successors, shall be faith-
ful and true. So help me God, and the contents of this book.
The oath was subscribed to by the other new bishops : " We
also, whose names be underwritten, being bishops of the several
bishoprics within Your Majesty's Realm, do testify, declare, and
acknowledge all and every part of the premises in like manner as
the right reverend father in God, the Archbishop of Canterbury
has done."
These were no idle words. The next year, 1561, Parker and
Grindal humbly approached the Queen for letters " to authorize the
now Bishop of Hereford to visit the same church from time to
time as occasion shall serve." Again, during the acrimonious dis-
putes (subsequently engendered by the Puritan faction) concerning
the value of episcopacy, we find Parker, as Metropolitan of the
Anglican Establishment, writing to Lord Burghley as follows : "Sir :
Because you be a principal Councillor, I refer the whole matter to
Her Majesty and to your order. For myself, I can as well be
content to be a parish clerk as a parish priest. I refer the standing
or falling altogether to your own considerations, whether Her
"Jeremy Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, vol. vi., p. 242.
1915-] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 303
Majesty and you will have any archbishops or bishops or how you
will have them ordered." 21
Grindal, in 1583, makes use of the following terms in formally
resigning his archbishopric : " Pure, sponte, simplicite, et absolute,
in manus excellentissima ac illustrissimce in Christo principis et
Domince, Elizabeth, Dei gratia Anglic? Francis et Hibernice Re-
gincc, etc., cujus singulari favor e et benignitate dictum archie pis-
copatum consecutus sum, resigno!'
The following gracious letter from the Queen to Bishop Cocks
of Ely with reference to his refusal to transfer, by legal deed, to the
Vice-Chamberlain, a portion of his episcopal property in Holborn,
is eminently characteristic : " Proud Prelate : You know well what
you were afore I made you what you now are. If you do not
immediately comply wi'ith My request, I will unfrock you, by
God. ELIZABETH R."
There is on record a glowing description from the pen of
Parker himself, of how Her Majesty, when she visited Canterbury,
was received pontifically as Head of the Church of England. On
this occasion, the Archbishop, supported by the Bishops of
Rochester and Lincoln, met her at the west door. After a lengthy
panegyric by a " grammarian," she entered the cathedral in solemn
procession, the choir singing anthems the while, in which recurred
the words Ave Eliza! And so, under a canopy borne by four
of her temporal knights, she proceeded to a throne placed by the
" Communion board " where she heard Evensong. After this, one
is not surprised to learn that, in March, 1564, the Queen actually
issued a dispensation on the humble petition of the Warden
abolishing Wednesday as a fast day in Winchester College.
The Royal Supremacy was detested and ridiculed not only by
the Catholic-minded, but by the Puritan leaders, many of whom
were laborious scholars and men of real ability, who knew them-
selves to be supported by apostolic teaching and by universal prec-
edent throughout Christendom, when they maintained that the
Church ought to be independent of the State, and that women
"Quoted from the Lansdowne MSS. by Rev. F. G. Lee, The Church Under
Queen Elizabeth, p. 149. The following from the pen of James Pilkington, the
Protestant Bishop of Durham and Prince Palatine, is an indication of the current
Episcopal belief in the Queen's spiritual preeminence : " As I noted before, so it is
not to be lightly considered, that, when so often the prophet rehearseth the names of
Zerubbabel and Joshua, the two chiefest rulers ; yet he evermore setteth in order
the Civil Magistrate and Power before the Chief Priest, to signify the preeminence
and preferment that he hath in the commonwealth and other matters, more than
the Chief Priest (by what means soever he be called), whether it be Pope, arch-
bishop, or metropolitan." Aggeus and Abdias, 1562.
304 THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [Dec.,
should have no part in church government except to listen, learn
and obey. Professor Brewer has noted that: " It (the Supremacy)
has fallen like a thing of evil on Romanists and Puritans alike.
If it brought More and Fisher to the scaffold in the reign of Henry,
it wrung the hearts and wasted the life blood of Cartwright and the
Puritans in the reign of Elizabeth." 22
Thus the new bishops were compelled not only to face the
controversial fire of Cardinal Allen and other defenders of the
ancient Catholic Faith, but also to answer the racy and reasonable
arguments of Cartwright and his allies. So confusion became
worse confounded, till Nemesis finally arrived in the shape of
regicide and revolution.
The absolute control of the sovereign over the Church which
predominated under the Tudors, was somewhat modified under the
Stuarts. James I. (and, to a still greater degree, his son) certainly
recognized the Church as a Divine Body, although holding that it
was incomplete without the sovereign, whose concurrence consoli-
dated it into a substantive whole. At this period, therefore, the
Anglican theory of Church authority was developed so as to be
defensible against gainsayers, whether Catholic or Puritan. We
have seen that the system of Anglicanism or territorial religion,
which ultimately claims for the bishops of a single province the
right to legislate independently in matters of faith, hangs upon the
notion that the clergy of each nation are enabled to speak with
authority since they have retained the gift of inerrancy promised by
God to the Universal Church.
Accordingly, under the Stuarts, the doctrine of the Divine
Right of Kings was developed to exaggerated proportions, and even
preached from the pulpit as de fide. Canon Macleane, in his bro-
chure on Bishop Andrews, has shown how the adoption of this doc-
trine was necessary for the very existence of the Church at that time.
So we find that Archbishop Laud, with his love of ancient piety, be-
lieved that the Episcopal Order was " of Divine Apostolical Right."
But, as Bishop Creighton has noted : " He took no other view of his
right to exercise his office either of power or jurisdiction than as
derived from the Crown, and exercisable according to law." 23
The bitter opposition to the High Commission Court, and its
destruction by the Long Parliament, were the necessary results of
that division from the residue of Christendom which made any
attempts on the part of Anglicans to enforce religious conformity
^English Studies, p. 303. ^Historical Lectures and Addresses, p. 182.
1915.] AND CATHOLIC CLAIMS 305
illogical and ridiculous as well as oppressive. However, the Angli-
can system did not finally fall until the league between the clergy
and the King was dissolved by James II. The two last Stuart
princes were fully conscious that a claim was made in their names
which they had no right to advance. Their exile on the Continent
must needs have shown them the untenableness of a local and terri-
torial religion, and James refused to live in a system wherein his
brother had feared to die. The dynasty which succeeded was pos-
sessed of a Parliamentary, not of an hereditary title, and henceforth
the supremacy of the Crown meant the supremacy of a Par-
liamentary sovereign. And Parliament consisted, in great measure,
of Protestant Dissenters, to whom Dutch William and his suc-
cessors looked as their most trusted supporters. Furthermore the
statement, in the Elizabethan Oath of Supremacy, that the Pope
neither did, nor ought to possess, any spiritual authority in England,
and that the final authority in spiritual causes belonged exclusively
to the Crown, was expunged from the oath by i William and
Mary 8, because it interfered with the freedom of judgment claimed
by Dissenters for themselves. The Crown, then, gave up the right
of judging in spiritual matters which Henry VIII. had extorted
from the Church, and made it over to its subjects. In other words,
the " Royal Supremacy " became the " Supremacy of Public
Opinion " a supremacy which prevails unto the present day. The
great Rebellion, the invasion of William the Dutchman and the
passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, are steps which mark out the
downward path, whereby the will of the public represented by the
Commons was substituted for the Royal Supremacy.
The Anglican Establishment to-day is a local and peculiar
national communion within national limits, which naturally and
logically implies a national supremacy (exercised either by sover-
eign, sovereign's court, or sovereign's delegate), guided and illu-
minated by public opinion and kept subservient to popular senti-
ment by the public press. 24
"Italian intervention had been for centuries a source of perpetual irritation
to the national sentiment, while the Church that was founded at the Reformation
was of all institutions the most intensely and most distinctively English Its
love of compromise, its dislike to pushing principles to extreme consequences, its
decorum, its social aspects, its instinctive aversion to abstract speculation, to fanatical
action, to vehement, spontaneous, mystical, or ascetic forms of devotion, its admirable
skill in strengthening the orderly and philanthropic elements of society, in moderat-
ing and regulating character, and blending with the various phases of national life,
all reflected with singular fidelity, English modes of thought and feeling, the
strength and the weakness of the English character." W. E. H. Lecky, History of
England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i., pp. 74, 75.
VOL. CII. 20
306 MARGE [Dec.,
The " comprehensiveness " of the Establishment may be
gauged accurately enough by considering that the manifold his-
torical forms and phases of Anglicanism Lutheranism, Calvinism,
Arminianism, the eclectic ceremonialism of Laud and Cosin, Lati-
tudinarianism, Evangelical Pietism, and Guelphic Hanoverianism
co-exist together, in constant controversy, within its borders.
The Royal Supremacy which presided at the birth of the Es-
tablished Church of England is so changed that its identity is lost;
although its bishops, on their knees before the King, kiss his royal
hand and profess to maintain " that the spiritualities are held only
by His Majesty." That the parent Church of England or its off-
spring, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States is
no part of the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ is
a sure and evident verdict of history if we believe in history at all.
MARGE.
BY MARY FELIX DE MOVILLE.
A TWILIGHT purple in the sunset sky
Marge 'tween the finite and Infinitude;
The year's omega with its wistful why:
And lo, the Dawn is come and Christ is here !
THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.
HORTLY after the death of Charles Francis Adams
last March, a metropolitan newspaper published an
editorial which gave him high praise. This compli-
ment was among those paid to him : " He could
feel an honest indignation and express it in language
that made appeal to the general public interest" The tribute re-
minds one that Mr. Adams had lived in a time when the faculty of
moral indignation is undergoing processes that shift its basis,
modify its forms of expression, and change its far-reaching role
in the maintenance of the social order. Few of us realize that our
moral indignations are among the chief supports of the moralities
of life and of the social ideals that give them force and meaning.
Few of us understand of what consequence it is to the highest
interests of associated life to feel moral indignation on occasion,
and to express it in a way that will help it to fulfill its mission.
The indignations of one or another of us appear to be unimportant
except as questions of personal morality and good taste. Yet the
collective indignations of society when honestly felt and seriously
expressed, contribute more directly to the maintenance of the social
and moral order than .laws and institutions and penitentiaries.
Deep insight into the heart of an age may be had by studying
the things that are praised and those that are condemned. When
we speak of the power of public opinion, we mean practically the
power that approval or disapproval by the public exercises over
individual conduct and institutional ideals. Society could purify
the theatre and put an end to the curse of divorce; give us clean
politics and noble politicians and put an end to vice, without much
aid from law or courts or prisons, if it but exercised properly its
faculty of moral indignation. The instinct to seek praise and to
avoid censure is fundamental in the normal man or woman. Noth-
ing that is generally and honestly denounced, nothing that is indig-
nantly condemned in any community, can survive. Evils do survive
because our denunciations are half-hearted and our methods are
those of the amateur. Sin that is readily condoned and evil that
is laughed at or connived at, will endure in spite of laws and insti-
tutions, but the stern indignations of society measure its negative
morality at least more accurately than any other known agency.
308 THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION [Dec.,
We are responsible for our moral indignation and for our lack
of it. We have a duty, therefore, to cultivate that faculty and the
habit of its expression. We must feel indignant when occasion
calls for it. We must feel neither too much nor too little. We
must discriminate as to the time and place and manner of our in-
dignations. This is a social duty, and its discriminating fulfillment
is a contribution to the higher moralities of life. Few of us perhaps
understand that duty or perform it with intelligent discretion.
Our indignations are allied to our attachments. We are con-
scious of neither indignation nor joy where we feel no interest.
Where we are concerned, however, our feelings move as our inter-
ests are affected. The keenest realizations of life come through
feeling, for feeling is the sunlight of imagination. We can control
to an extent the processes by which we develop interest in things
or persons, just as we can hinder ourselves from all concern with
things and persons which in the order of nature have a particular
claim upon us. One may be fond of one's distant cousin or of
one's chance friend, and at the same time be entirely indifferent to
one's own brother. Feelings take different pathways in each case
because of attachment on the one hand and the lack of it on the
other. The wrongs of a friend will arouse the sense of moral
indignation, while the wrongs of a brother indifferently loved will
fail to receive even passing attention. If we would understand
the law of our indignations, we must study the course of our
attachments.
If our attachments are selfish and our views of life narrow,
our indignations will be narrow and self-centred. If our attach-
ments are noble and directed toward the exalted interests of life,
our indignations will take on a noble spirit from these, and they
will proclaim the idealism that becomes to us law and inspiration.
Where there is no interest in social ideals, no impersonal respect
and thoughtful zeal for the larger interests of associated life, no
concern for the moralities and decencies that refine and consecrate
life, there will be no noble indignations. When the moralities and
decencies of life are matters of immediate personal concern to each
of us, noble indignations will declare our loyalty to them and lead
us to serve them with valiant love. The real spring of our nobler
indignations is in our attachments rather than our convictions, if
the distinction is permitted. We may have abstract convictions
concerning higher social welfare which are remote, theoretical and
even inert. We must have the genuine feeling that these higher
interests are of immediate personal concern before any impulse to
1915.] THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION 309
wholesome indignation will be released. The abstract conviction
that we should love justice and hate iniquity may leave us unmoved
in the presence of either. But if injustice and iniquity strike our
friend and lay him low, we are aroused into eloquent indignation,
and we give it forceful expression.
All high-minded men feel that they owe loyalty to the moralities
of life. We are called by primary intention to love justice and
hate iniquity, to protect innocence and hamper cunning, to encour-
age honesty and scourge disloyalty, to punish deceit, and to com-
pensate all sacrifice made in the interests of our common ideals.
The unity and stability of life are thereby conditioned for the
happiness and welfare of each of us, and human progress as a whole
depends upon the approvals and the censures by which the moral-
ities of life are safeguarded. Everyone of us is to an extent a
trustee of the moral capital of society. Everyone of us is called to
be numbered among the uplifting forces of life which suppress all
that degrades and would defile us. Each of us carries a commis-
sion, with the seal of God upon it, to be the insistent enemy of
injustice, oppression, inhumanity, indecency, dishonesty, not alone
as these affect us, but as they affect the law of God, the supremacy
of His kingdom, the happiness, refinement and spiritual growth of
His children. To be false to this mission is treason to the common
welfare, not to speak of the law of personal sin that may be in-
volved. David, little knowing the prophet's hidden meaning, rose
to a splendid height of moral indignation, when, in response to
Nathan's question about the punishment of the rich man who stole
the lamb from his poor neighbor, he answered, " As God liveth,
the man who did this is a son of death."
The penitentiary is the symbol of the fixed moral indignations
of society, but it is not an acceptable symbol of the social order.
The penitentiary may care for those who defy our fundamental
indignations, and resist successfully the influence of these as they
operate upon normally constituted men and women. Our moral
indignations ought to take a wide range and act with greatest
freedom. If we put judgment and sincerity into them, they will
accomplish infinite good in suppressing all forms of evil. Not only
that, the habit of a discriminating moral indignation against all
forms of wrong strengthens us in our own consecration to what
is pure, high-minded and helpful. It gives us instantaneous pro-
tection against our own temptations. This is one of the happy
spiritual rewards given to those who love justice and hate iniquity
with wholesome intensity.
310 THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION [Dec.,
One can feel too much as well as too little. One can have too
many attachments as well as too few. If we take everything
seriously, we shall soon die. The tragedy that strikes the heart
of a noble reformer is due to the fact that he opens a sensitive
soul to the overwhelming vision of misery, oppression, shame and
crime, and attempts to feel and to express a moral indignation and
a hope equal in intensity and power to the evil that overwhelms
him. Only God could undertake to carry the burden of all sin and
evil on His patient shoulders. Christ has given us the single,
supreme example of indignation measured to iniquity, expressed
with appealing wisdom and healing force. The moral indignations
expressed in the life and words of Christ have remained pattern
and law for all time. We are compelled to shield our feelings
against over-stimulation. There is so much injustice, oppression,
indecency and inhumanity in the world, that we would die of
exhaustion were we to yield to moral indignation every time we
felt the impulse. Nature mercifully develops a habit of inadver-
tence toward remote evil, and of mental callousness toward much
that is near to us. In this way we survive. We must feel moral
indignation, but we may not feel it too often or too deeply or
without discrimination. We must be solicitous for the common
moralities and decencies of life, and yet at a certain point we must
shield ourselves against our own moral enthusiasms. The dilemma
is not without its interest, and the problem is the more fascinating
because we cannot lay down any fixed and definite rule for its solu-
tion. The solution lies in a spirit and not in a maxim. Nothing
further is now attempted than the indication of certain focal points
around which our indignations should assemble in the interests of
common welfare.
Truth is a supreme human interest. Error endangers society.
Safe guidance for life is found only in true principles of human
relations and in true idealism. Error misleads us, throws us out
of harmony in the universe, and disturbs the whole perspective of
life. It is the supreme business of the human mind to seek and to
discover the truth and to adapt all human relations to it. We must,
therefore, seek the truth concerning the nature of man and his
destiny; concerning social authority, its origin, limits and sanc-
tions; concerning aim and motive in individual and associated
life; concerning the standards of value by which we guide human
desire. He who teaches any error concerning these fundamental
truths of existence, endangers the harmony of the universe, mis-
directs society, and sets up false standards of action and judgment
1915-] THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION 311
in everyday life. Hence, theoretically, we should feel moral indig-
nation against all forms of error howsoever tenderly we deal with
those who mistake it for truth. Practically the world releases us
from all duty of moral indignation against error, because it has
abandoned all pretense to any approved standards of fundamental
philosophy or truth. The modern spirit insists upon freedom in
truth-seeking, but not on success in finding truth. It pretends to
have no answer whatever to the question " What is truth ? " Every
truthseeker is permitted to proclaim as truth what he finds. The
world demands sincerity rather than results, an attitude, not an out-
come, since anything short of treason may be advocated as truth if
advocated sincerely. Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, free-
dom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of philosophy, free-
dom of science of all kinds, has become an end in modern imagina-
tion, and it thereby enjoys the immunity of ends, escaping the dis-
cipline to which it would be subjected as means. We appear to have
lost the sense of finality in thought. With the surrender of all
belief in truth that is relatively final and demonstrably so, we are
released from the duty of indignation against error.
The Catholic Church has never abandoned her belief in definite
religious truth, nor has she at any time surrendered the standards
by which she determines it. She believes in a divine revelation
which conveys fundamental truth. She accepts that definite re-
ligious truth as final, compelling, certain. Believing in definite
religious truth, she believes in definite religious error. She has
felt and fostered the sense of moral indignation against specific
religious error, whenever it has touched the field of revelation.
This impulse determined her historical attitude toward heresy, and
it explains the psychology of that attitude to-day. Changed condi-
tions of life have modified the emotional side of the Church's attitude
and the transitory forms of its expression, but she has never abated
the intensity of her devotion to her doctrinal positions. These
are final and unalterable. If one who knows Protestantism only
as an observer may speak with point, one is warranted in feeling
that it has on the whole abandoned belief in definite revealed truth.
Having lost its sense for such definite truth, it has lost its sense
of religious error. It has, therefore, lost its faculty of moral
indignation against religious error, and this has brought upon it
the instability and weakness that rob it of so much of its power
over thought and life and morals.
Just as we are united by our sincerities but separated by our
convictions concerning theoretical truths, we are united in respect
312 THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION [Dec.,
for morality as such, but confused by the various standards of
morals that are accepted. The world has surrendered its belief in
one definite moral code, hence it has lost its capacity for indignation
against teaching that undermines morals. We meet so many defini-
tions of goodness and badness, so many conflicting ethical codes,
that we have all but lost belief in a definite standard of morality
that will unite us in our thinking, discipline us in our impulses, and
define with some exactness the content of the moralities upon which
social life depends. As a result of this confusion, we have weak-
ened the impulse to moral indignation in even the field of morality
itself.
A homogeneous people with fixed standards of goodness and
baseness, will compel respect in conduct for these and insist on
sincerity in defending them. A community with one moral code
which everyone respects, will foster a sense of moral indignation
at all violations of it, and that feeling will come to emphatic ex-
pression. With what power did not Hawthorne tell us this in
The Scarlet Letter. A heterogenous people which includes many
types of morals, many forms of culture, and many codes of ethics,
will be conscious of a kind of moral disintegration, since it will be
unable to base any moral unity upon a commonly accepted code. If
men and women will not agree as to what wrongdoing is, they will
not agree in their moral indignations against it. The outcome will
be loss of all impulse to feel and express moral indignation in the
presence of evil.
American life is marked by confusion of this kind. There is,
it is true, a certain moral unity among us which is happily described
by a Justice of the Supreme Court as " the prevailing morality."
That is to say, there is a traditional moral sense or judgment
concerning conduct which is accepted as a matter of fact in the
nation's life, independently of logic, doctrine or administration.
It is perhaps the result of humanity's instinct for moral unity in
spite of differences that take their origin in various forms of
social conflict. This prevailing morality is incorporated into our
political institutions, and in definitions accepted by codes and en-
forced by law. In spite of this general moral sense, we have con-
flicting codes concerning the relations of the sexes in and outside
of marriage, concerning justice, religion, political ethics, social
obligations and human rights. The employer has one ethical code,
while the laboring class has another. The Catholic has one code
for marriage and the family, while his separated brother has a
different one. The prohibitionist has one ethical code which his
1915-] THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION 313
adversaries scorn. The radical has an ethical philosophy that the
conservative abhors. This moral confusion paralyzes the impulse
to moral indignation concerning the common moralities of life as
distinct from the particular moralities of any group. Our moral
indignations become group indignations rather than personal indig-
nations. The Catholic tends to feel only group indignations. The
employer, the laborer, the prohibitionist, the socialist do likewise.
Group indignations are a source of group unity and group loyalty,
and they foster the moralities that the group represents. Thus it
happens that the spirit and form of moral indignation are seriously
modified, and our moral sympathies shrink as they become intense.
The faculty of moral indignation ceases to operate against
error because we have no standard of truth. It operates in only a
restricted way against erroneous teaching in morals, because of the
presence of so many conflicting moral codes among us. This con-
fusion in both doctrine and morals is reflected in our literature
and in our schools no less than in our public opinion itself. Com-
ment was occasioned some years ago by the action of the president
of an American university at its commencement. He exposed to
his hearers four mutually exclusive philosophies of life without
indicating his own conviction or that of the school that he repre-
sented, and without imputing to any one of the four the stamp of
finality. He had information about the supreme questions of human
existence, but not conviction to give to his hearers as the message
of his school.
The exercise of the faculty of moral indignation, that is the
development of the habit of feeling indignant in the presence of
wrongdoing, is interfered with by our institutions of privacy, and
by our slavish respect for the maxim that a man should mind his
own business. The increasing complexities of social organization
draw us into closer ethical and industrial relations with one another
daily. The more intimately our lives touch one another through
social organization, the more we strive to create a conventional
form of privacy which will protect us in our business, our personal
affairs, our movements and our methods against the curiosity of
others. Privacy becomes conventional. We are taught to respect
privacy, not to be curious, to endeavor not to learn, not to know,
not to see, and not to comment on those features of our neighbors'
lives which are reserved against us. To accomplish this is one of
the duties of culture, a duty which the cultured heart gladly per-
forms. Thus we are taught to mind our own business, and not to
interfere without warrant in the lives or business of others. When
3M THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION [Dec.,
this mental habit is well established, it shrinks the circle of our
interests, clouds our social vision, and weakens to some extent
our social sympathies. It thereby reduces our impersonal interest
in the common moralities of life. One of the most opprobrious
epithets hurled vindictively at reformers who are lovers of justice
and haters of iniquity, is that they are meddlers. They do not
mind their own business.
This process of respecting privacy develops in us the habit of
looking upon evil committed by others without feeling the impulse
of moral indignation against it. If we see an employer violating
the principles of justice in dealing with laboring men, we say that
it is his business and not ours. If we see an ignorant mother
mistreating her little child, we take no steps to protect the child
because conventional privacy forbids it, and advises us to mind our
own business. We see children starting on the road to ruin with-
out uttering a word to hold them back, because we do not wish to
interfere with the business of others. An enterprising priest in
New England who had noticed the evil of this process, proposed
the creation of a social committee in each parish which would
become, in a measure, the organ of parish indignation, and enable
the members of the parish to take an interest in the common
moralities of life without seeming to become meddlers.
All of this raises an extremely delicate question. We are
drawn hither and thither by conflicting standards, and we are con-
fused by the appeal of clashing duties. Undoubtedly one of the
curses of modern life is the indifference of very large numbers of
otherwise high-minded men and women to the common moralities.
This neglect is commended in the name of privacy and of the self-
respect that leads one to mind one's business. Now under certain
reservations, the protection of innocence and justice, honesty and
decency, loyalty and honor, is the business of everybody. It is
nothing short of tragedy to notice how boldly evil will rear its head,
and how arrogantly and shamelessly it will defy the elementary
decencies, while we look on and remain silent for the sake of a
maxim. There is, of course, danger of overdoing as well as under-
doing in this. Our theologians have taught us that we have the
duty of fraternal correction, but they tell us that we are excused
from performing it when we have no prospect of success in attempt-
ing it, or when we would cause greater evil by the attempt. Those
teachers were shrewd in understanding the extremes to which a
mistaken notion of privacy leads us.
The tendency to govern our emotions in the light of our busi-
1915-] THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION 315
ness and professional interests hurts the faculty of moral indigna-
tion by giving it an entirely wrong direction. The business view
of life is narrow, particular and selfish. As business interests
become supreme in our lives, we grow increasingly indifferent to the
collective moralities of life. The faculty of moral indignation,
then, degenerates into a mere business asset instead of being the
support of honesty, decency, honor, loyalty and ideals for their
own sake. Those who govern their indignations from the cash
drawer, feel and utter indignation when it pays. They neither
feel it nor utter it when it does not pay.
We sell goods to saints and sinners. We buy goods from
saints and sinners. We form partnerships with saints and sinners
indifferently, if they are good business men and if their respect-
ability is not publicly questioned. We consider a man's business
qualities as quite distinct from his character, much to the harm of
social morality. Unfortunately, we forgive bad morals in an actor
if his acting is good, in an artist if his work is perfect, in a baseball
player if he shows great skill. One does not meet many in these
days who will boycott the theatre or the artist or the baseball club
which employs men of rare talent but bad morals. This is probably
one of the most discouraging aspects of modern life. When they
who are high-minded and noble feel that they are not the custodians
of the moralities and proprieties of life, these fare badly. Thus it
is that the business man is not alone in his habit of separating char-
acter from talent. The business man who loves and hates, who
speaks and is silent, who protests and approves not as the moralities
require and as social ideals suggest, but merely as his business
interests dictate, surrenders his idealism and makes of business his
religion. A man who silences his moral indignations when he
should speak, lest he lose a customer, has none of the fine moral fibre
by which humanity is made strong. Here, again, we have a
problem that is extremely delicate, one which will yield to no super-
ficial answer. We help to solve it by recognizing it.
The necessities of social life create an analogous situation.
The drift of things throws us constantly into more or less frequent
association with others whom we dislike and whose character we
scorn. We are compelled to meet saints and sinners, to sit with
them at table, to serve on committees with them, and to exchange
visits of courtesy if not of intimacy. Forced in this manner into
indiscriminate association with many kinds of character, we culti-
vate in self-defence a mental habit of indifference to moral qualities,
and we accept situations with a diminishing sense of moral rebellion.
316 THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION [Dec,
If we did otherwise, we would make ourselves socially impossible.
Of course, one may not act the Pharisee and make arrogant as-
sumptions of moral superiority. Again, one may not believe all
rumors concerning the character of others. But after allowance
is made for all this, the experience of indiscriminate association
helps to still the impulse to moral indignation against doers of evil
with whom we are compelled to associate.
The reticences of culture act in much the same way. Certain
standards of good taste and of good form are set up, and we are
compelled to obey them, regardless of personal choice. The func-
tion of these standards is to make social intercourse possible, and to
enable us to deal with one another without too much friction, with-
out misunderstanding or disagreeable experience. The forms of
culture are the sentinels of morality. It is true that culture takes
charge of the secondary rather than of the fundamental moralities,
of the externals rather than of its spirit. Yet the forms of culture
have a definite place in social intercourse and in the moralities.
Good taste dictates many lines of conduct that are wholesome and
helpful. We aim to avoid everything that is in bad taste, and we
are thereby helped to do good and to avoid evil. To a certain
extent, culture puts a muffler on the human heart to control all
explosions of outraged feeling, just as the muffler reduces to silence
the exhaust of an engine. Hence, the reticences of culture tend to
repress the faculty of moral indignation, and to tone down its
expression into a kind of mildness that is without force.
The reticences of charity are very much like those of culture.
They differ in this, that charity controls the spirit of indignation,
while culture controls its expression. Charity forbids us to think
evil of others without good cause, or to express it without com-
pelling reason. Our theologians have laid down very exact rules to
guide us in making known evil that we see in others. Now the
work of sifting out false accusations from true, the task of deter-
mining the conditions in which evil may be made known, the
balancing of the many factors which enter into a correct judgment
of the conduct of others, operate in two contrary directions. On
the one hand, they lead us to suppress altogether our moral indigna-
tions as the easier and apparently more noble line of conduct.
On the other hand, many are led to pay no attention whatever to
the restraints of charity, remaining in touch with the streams of
gossip which flow by, and thinking of no restraint except such as is
created by the law of criminal libel and the fear of law-suit. Thus
one loses the attitude of indignation against evil, and treats it as
1915.] THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION 317
material for dramatic narrative or interesting scandal. The prob-
lem that is here referred to is fundamental. Charity must have its
stern indignations no less than reticences. Only thoughtful atten-
tion to the problem can promise us even elementary wisdom in
meeting it.
The baneful extremes to which the sense of humor has gone
in American life, helps to paralyze the sense of moral indignation
against evil. All forms of it which take on the appearance of
humor and offer occasions for a smile, seem to escape condemnation
for the sake of laughter. Our sense of humor respects neither the
elementary decencies of life nor the finer loyalty to high ideals
that reconciles us to life. A cursory examination of much conver-
sation and of the literature of humor will show us how far we have
gone on the way of laughing at evil instead of weeping for it.
Nothing enjoys the right of sanctuary against the spirit of our
humor. It inundates our souls, breeds indifference to ideals, dis-
integrates convictions, destroys moral sensibilities and makes us
flippant to a degree. Even in the presence of moral tragedies when
our eyes should be dim with tears, we are glad to laugh at the
bidding of a clever cartoonist who finds material to display his skill.
We have not been wise enough to understand the wholesome role
of humor in a nation's life. Our eagerness to laugh and our desire
to satisfy the craving for laughter make us indiscriminate in select-
ing the materials on which- our spirit of humor plays. Had we
been relentless in castigating every form of indecency and immoral-
ity, we should have saved our sense of humor against its degrada-
tion. There is a reverent as well as an irreverent sense of humor.
Those who wish to do so, can find ample play for their sense of
humor within the confines of what is decent and pure, high-minded
and right. Furthermore, they can answer every legitimate demand
for humor. Were we to recognize the power of this spirit in cheer-
ing life and even fostering health, we would see readily that every-
one of its nobler functions may be well performed without the
cheapening or defiling to which the modern spirit has subjected this
saving gift of man.
Of course the faculty of moral indignation is in no danger of
perishing. It will survive its adversities. The prevailing selfish-
ness with which all of us are more or less tainted, makes us watchful
of our own interests, and it stimulates our moral indignations as
far as these relate to them. Our indignations follow our attach-
ments. We shall never be without attachments. It is the part of
wisdom, education and culture to give us the right attachments, and
318 THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION [Dec.,
then to associate our indignations discreetly with them. Once we
understand that the custody of the moralities and decencies of life
is intrusted to us, we become attached to these. They become
objects of immediate personal concern, and then our indignations
operate to protect them almost without our own advertence.
In these days we count less and less as individuals, more and
more as members of social classes or groups. Life is so nearly
identical for all of the members of a class or group that class
feeling, class wrongs, class rights, class condemnations, possess us.
Hence the moral indignations that we are prone to feel are class
rather than individual indignations. We think and feel " in bat-
talions." The wrongs of one become the wrongs of all, the rights
of one are the rights of all. Thus, class indignations become a part
of national consciousness. The woman suffrage movement is an
expression of the moral indignations of a class no less than of its
aspirations. The labor movement is an expression of the moral
indignation of another class. Socialism is an organized expression
of indignation as well as hope. The indignations of conservatism
and of radicalism are collective not individual indignations.
Another form of collective moral indignation is fostered in
our political parties which include within themselves members of
all other social groups. Each party finds a Pharisaical moral in-
dignation against the iniquity of other parties, its best campaign
material. The solemn and reverent enumeration of the iniquities
of one party which is usually incorporated into the platform of
another party, would all but deceive the elect. So long as parties
remain as they are, we may depend upon them to foster the vocabu-
lary and the psychology of indignation even at the sacrifice of truth,
common sense and political wisdom.
The drift of political life directs our collective indignations
against measures as much as against persons. The tariff, the refer-
endum, the initiative, the recall of judges, prohibition, the party
machine, woman suffrage become one after another symbols of
current iniquity and of menace to institutions, if we are to believe
their critics. Radicalism is, of course, the customary organ of
social indignation. The Bull Moose Party gave us the most dra-
matic organized expression of it in our recent history.
Perhaps a word should be said concerning the spirit of tolera-
tion and compromise which is of such far-reaching consequence
in modern life. The presence of many conflicting forms of doc-
trine compels us to tolerate all kinds of doctrine if we would live
together. Conflicts of interest in our national life, make necessary
1915-] THE FACULTY OF MORAL INDIGNATION 319
the practice of compromise in our institutions, by which insistence
on principle is set aside and practical solutions of problems are
arrived at without reference to principle. The mental habit of
toleration and of compromise acts adversely on the faculty of moral
indignation, and tends to weaken the role that it plays in the main-
tenance of the social order.
There is another aspect of the faculty of moral indignation
which we should not overlook. We often direct it against the
dearest interests of individual and social life by being indignant
with virtue itself. Selfish and impulsive men and women, when
misled by anger and thoughtless ignorance, often turn furious
indignation against innocent behavior which is misconstrued, and
treat with scorn, those whose merit and dignity invite only reverent
appreciation. At best, the way of the righteous is hard. It is
made doubly so when righteousness is met by indignation and brave
devotion to duty is reviled. Many have gone the way of sin simply
because they feared the condemnation that might await them in
virtue's paths. Only the finest self-control can prevent us from
misunderstanding others at times. Only a supreme sense of loyalty
to virtue and honor in themselves, will enable us to confine our
indignations to the scourging of evil. At any rate, it will honor
us but little to be counted among those who make virtue more dif-
ficult and duty less attractive by turning their indignations against
them. Shelley says as much :
Alas for virtue ; when
Torments or contumely, or the sneers
Of erring judging men
Can break the heart where it abides.
They who lack the faculty of moral indignation, and there are
many such, fall short of one form of noble service to the common
welfare. The normally developed man, citizen, Christian, has the
faculty of moral indignation and cultivates it. They who have vision
of the collective moralities of life, and who understand how these
are periled on our habits of praise and blame, will feel a deep
responsibility to God and to society for the exercise of this faculty.
The power to discriminate in our indignations and to hold them
always at the service of the higher interests of life, is a work that
calls for reflection, sacrifice and courage. He is a strong man who
can hold his indignations subject to their law in spite of the con-
fusion through which the fates direct his path.
THE CHILDREN.
(A CHRISTMAS STORY.)
BY GRACE KEON.
ORE snow, I'm afraid, mother ! " Mr. Matthison
stamped his feet lustily on the porch, and smiled into
the gentle old face that greeted him from the partly-
opened door.
" Oh, my ! More snow ! " She looked out past
him with anxiety in her glance. " Come in, father, come in !
You've been to the post-office ? "
"Urn m m! No letters."
" Oh, my ! " said the little white-haired woman again this time
in dismay. " No letters? "
" None. Just a package. Don't recognize the handwriting.
I met," he was hanging his hat on the antlered hall-rack, "I met
Father Robertson. He'll say last Mass to-morrow, so I reminded
him he's due here for dinner."
" I should think so. We'll have confessions in the morning, as
usual, I suppose ? "
" Yes."
Mrs. Matthison preceded her husband into the low-ceilinged,
comfortable sitting-room. It was not richly furnished, as fur-
nishings go nowadays, but it had a reposeful, contented look. The
chairs were big and soft and wide of seat and arm. It was a room
to dream in. Many were the dreams it had held, many were the
dreams it had seen come true!
Mr. Matthison took the package from his pocket, and cut the
string that bound it. Inside were a dozen handsome linen handker-
chiefs. A dainty silver purse held a card : " A Merry Christmas
to mother ! " On the handkerchiefs another card was pinned : " A
Merry Christmas to father ! "
Mother looked at the gifts rather oddly.
" Who sent them? " she asked in a cold tone. Father gave her
a suspicious glance.
" Why," he stammered, " I I don't know."
" It isn't in the handwriting of any of the children."
" No," said father.
Mother put the gifts on the table, and taking his arm led him
over to the piano. All the ornaments had been removed from its
1915.] THE CHILDREN 321
low top. Packages wrapped in the white tissue paper and holly
ribbon sacred to Christmas covered it.
" Those are for the children, and they're all marked," she said
pointedly.
Father looked uneasy.
" Come here," went on mother's cold voice. She brought him
out to the pantry. It was filled with the good things she and her
neighbors had been preparing for over a week, because " the chil-
dren would surely come home this Christmas ! " Even the turkey,
the goose and the ham lay on the cold marble table, the huge fowl
stuffed and trussed and ready for the morning's fire.
" Those are for the children," said mother. She turned to-
ward the sitting-room. She did not feel grieved. She was too
hurt. She waved her hand about her.
"Where are they?" she asked. "We've lived for them,
planned for them, loved them. We've educated them, sacrificed
for them. We have done our duty. Where are they ? "
Father did not answer.
" Christmas Eve ! And not one of our four children has
thought of us, has sent us a single postcard."
" These," began father, faintly, pointing to the table.
" Those ! " exclaimed mother, scornfully. " Why, whoever
sent them was too busy to put a name on them ! "
Father drew a long breath.
" Well," he said doggedly, " I'm not going to give them up
yet it's only Christmas Eve."
" Yes," said mother, and now there was a faint note of weari-
ness in her voice. " Yes, it's Christmas Eve."
The word brought home other Christmas Eves. She sat down
in her chair, father crossed to his, and picked up his pipe from
the window-sill. For a space the two were silent. The coal
crackled in the stove, the lamp shed a soft pink glow over the room,
the big white cat stretched herself lazily, turned round and lay
down again upon the rug. It was a pleasant, homelike, happy scene.
" I I thought Edward would come, surely," said the mother,
at last. " He promised and there was his marriage this year."
" A son is a son till he gets him a wife," said father.
" You weren't," flashed mother. " If every son "
" I know," said father. " But we only did our duty, and you
helped me."
Again silence.
VOL. en. 21
322 THE CHILDREN [Dec.,
" Edward has been good. He was always a good boy."
" It cost him nothing."
" I suppose she has her people," continued mother. " It's
natural. A bride, too ! She would want to spend Christmas with
her mother."
" After Jessie married, her particular point was that she had to
spend it with his mother."
" But they are such queer folk ! " excused mother, growing
calmer as father's wrath seemed to be stirring. " Jessie could not
help herself."
" Maybe not," he agreed, absently. " How many Christmases
since then, mother?"
" Three," she answered, this time without excusing comment.
"There's John, too!"
" Poor foolish John," whispered mother.
" And Esther."
" With her four babies ! There's an excuse for Esther," said
mother.
"Of course," said father, dryly; " there's an excuse for them
all. They're busy too busy to think of us. I sold the Spring
Valley property to put Edward through college. You gave all the
money Aunt Mary left you to send Jess and Esther to the conserva-
tory. While John"
Mother suddenly covered her eyes with her hand.
" Those were only money sacrifices. Who cares for money ?
We gave them a religious training. We brought them up they
were good Catholics. The girls loving, affectionate; Edward
honest and upright. It may be our own fault about John. We
should have kept him home. He was a born farmer. The city
has ruined him."
" Not not that, Edward."
" Why not that? It's the truth," bitterly.
" We couldn't keep him. The others went."
" Yes. They went. Our clever, clean, ambitious children.
It took them from us and now it blots us from their very memory.
Our lawyer son, whose name is constantly before the public, does
not even acknowledge our existence. Our flyaway young daughter
(mother winced at the word), 'her voice ever at the service of
charity, in spite of her husband's great wealth,' to quote that last
bit of balderdash we read, has not sent us one tender wish. Yet my
sacrifice made his greatness possible, and yours, hers ! John "
1915.] THE CHILDREN 323
His voice broke. Mother was afraid of the feeling that lay
behind that broken sentence.
" We are sure of Esther, at least," she said, hurriedly.
" Oh, I don't think anything could change little Esther. But
her children absorb her as completely as ours once absorbed us.
We cannot blame her. We cannot blame ourselves. They were
brought up right! " He struck the arm of his chair, emphatically.
" They were brought up to work and respect workers. To put God
before all and their country after God. We have nothing to
regret."
" Nothing," she breathed.
" And yet they belong to the world. They are the world's
not ours. And we are we theirs ? " He rose and began to pace
the room. " Mother, I wonder "
" Yes, Edward."
" We have none of them to wish us the joys of the Christmas
season. It is lonesome without the children. Let us go to them."
"Go to them?" Mrs. Matthison stared. "How?
Where?"
" To the city."
Mrs. Matthison sat bolt upright, regarding him with sudden
anxiety.
" Are you crazy, Edward Matthison ? "
" No."
" The city? What would we do in the city? "
" We would wish our children one after the other a Merry
Christmas."
"Edward!"
" It was our habit in the days of old to gather about the little
home altar, and say our prayers in honor of the Christ Child. It
was our custom, every Christmas morning, to kneel in our mission
chapel, go to confession before Mass and receive Our Lord. The
world has taken our children away from us. I want to see if it
has taken them from God."
" Edward ! It's so far ! I'm afraid ! "
"Of what? I'll be with you, mother."
She smiled tremulously.
"It's such a long journey! And there's Father Robertson!
And, oh, we can't miss Communion."
" Four hours is that long ? We'll reach the city at nine
o'clock, if we hurry a bit, and catch the 5 :io. We'll hire one of
324 THE CHILDREN [Dec.,
those taxicabs we read so much about. We'll visit the four of
them, and get back to the station in time for the twelve o'clock ex-
press. Sleep in the train, home at four."
" Edward, please, there's Mass ! And Holy Communion !
And dinner ! And Father Robertson ! "
" We'll have Mrs. Story over to help with the dinner while we
get rested up after our journey."
" Good gracious, father ! Good gracious ! It's terrible ! I
don't know what to say."
" Don't say anything, mother. We're going."
The little lady's hands fluttered.
" I'm sure, Edward but we can't."
" We can, mother. And we will ! "
"It doesn't seem exactly right how can we go to Com-
munion ? "
" I guess He will understand," said Mr. Matthison grimly.
" He knows what I'm after."
" Oh, Edward ! If we could ! Perhaps there's that new fur
coat you got me last month. I know we can't. If anything hap-
pened! If there was a train wreck, or anything! My black silk
is all ready. I'm sure this is only a crazy notion."
"Hold hard, mother, hold hard! Don't get excited! I've
something else to say ! "
" Yes, Edward ! " But her voice trembled.
" No matter how they beg, no matter how they plead, no matter
what the circumstances in which you find them, you are not to stay."
" Why, of course, Edward ! Why, we couldn't stay ! There's
Father Robertson."
" Go on then and get ready. Wear the black silk and all the
fixings. We're not quite backwoods folk yet, I'm thinking. And be
ready to tie that bow for me I never could manage a bow tie
myself."
Mother, flushed of cheek and with a new brightness in her
eyes, rose and went out of the room. She had been old when she
sat down, but now she felt as if twenty years had been lifted from her
shoulders. The spice of novelty, the daring of the thing, appealed
to her as much as the joy of seeing those who were so dear in spite
of their neglect. Father waited until he heard her moving about in
the room upstairs ; then he put his hand in his pocket and drew a let-
ter from it a letter which he had not dared show mother. He looked
down at the written sheet and the words seemed to glare at him.
1915.] THE CHILDREN 325
" Of course they'll all be home no place for me
I'm a failure it's my own fault but I'll see what strange
lands and new faces can do the little chapel the early
morning Mass I can't forget if I could go back "
He caught the note of unhappiness through the words. It
stung him.
" John is not the sort of chap to write a letter like this to his
folks," he thought, folding up the sheet, and putting it away.
" Unless it has a ring I don't like. I'm an old fool, perhaps but
then, he's my boy! "
Edward Matthison lawyer Edward Matthison (who would
one day, his friends asserted, be Governor Matthison) stood up to
answer Dr. Wilson's toast.
He had been annoyed when informed that this dinner had
been planned by a score of his colleagues of the Ten Eyck. In the
first place it was Christmas Eve, and if the majority of these men
had not been bachelors and club folk, they would have known better
than to drag a man out of his home on this one particular evening
of the year. So his young wife told him, rather vexedly, but when
he agreed with her, and even suggested declining the honor, she be-
came alarmed. It would not do to interfere with anything that
meant the furtherance of her husband's ambitions.
Mr. Matthison's was to be the speech of the evening. It was
expected of him. He had a certain dry wit that could send a
serious subject home in a way that no other man had succeeded
even in imitating. They called him, affectionately, the Mark Twain
of the Ten Eyck. But just as he cleared his throat a servant ap-
proached, looked at him, hesitated, and turned away. Matthison
caught the look. There was something puzzled in it. Something
peculiar.
"What is it, Jerry?"
" Why, sir," stammered Jerry in a low tone, " there's a lady
and gentleman who insist on seeing you."
" Seeing"
" They're not the sort one would like to refuse, sir; you know,
sir."
" But, Jerry, their names."
" They will not give their names."
Matthison looked about him, smiling.
" Might I have a minute? " he asked. " Callers."
326 THE CHILDREN [Dec.,
A murmur arose. They were friends and privileged.
" Oh, I say, Ned/' began one.
" Tell them he's gone fishing," put in another.
But just then a figure stood framed in the doorway of the private
dining-room the figure of a handsome, gray-haired man, his ir-
reproachably neat costume a little old-fashioned in cut, perhaps,
but worn with an air of distinction. Back of him was a slighter
form, robed in fur, and the young man caught a glimpse of a
woman's face, old and sweet and tender, whose eyes sought his al-
most pleadingly.
" My father! My mother! " he exclaimed. Edward Matthi-
son sprang from his place at the table, his hands outstretched, his
face alight with joy. :< What a surprise! Gentlemen, this is my
father ! " He turned to them with pride in his gesture and tones.
" And my mother."
He did not finish. The old man cut him short, nodding.
" We're going on," he said. " We were told we'd find you
here, and now that we've seen you we'll be going on."
"Going on? Where?"
" We are paying visits this evening," said father, grimly, and
the curt, cold voice struck oddly on Edward Matthison's ears.
" We've already been to your home. Your wife," he looked at him
meaningly, " has gone to church."
" Yes, father, but"
" We leave on the twelve o'clock train."
" Leave ! For home ! Why, father, it's Christmas Eve ! "
" So it is ! " drawled father. " Somehow, mother and I
couldn't forget it. What memories the old folk have! I hope,"
with a glance at the richly spread table, " you've remembered it's
a fast day?"
" Yes, I did ! " burst out his son. " I thought of that much,
anyhow ! "
"Urn m m!' said father. "Good!" he laughed.
" Think of the rest there's more of it. Good-by, Edward.
Merry Christmas ! "
"But, mother you "
" Good-by, my dear boy ! I'm going with father." She kissed
him tenderly. " A Merry Christmas."
So father gave his arm to the little old lady and they vanished
as they had come.
In the warm darkness of the taxicab, mother was putting her
1915.] THE CHILDREN 327
handkerchief to her eyes, when father surprised her by bursting out
into a hearty laugh so long a laugh and so genuine a one that she
was forced to smile at him, albeit a little tremulously.
" Oh, father dear, that was hard ! "
" My ! My ! " said father, " didn't he look like the little shaver
of twenty years ago caught in the very act! Hard! Don't you
believe it, mother! We're teaching lesson -and it must be
taught to-night. Leave the world to enjoy its banquets and its
feasts if you like, but the place for every Catholic man or woman
who has a home is to be in it, making ready for another and holier
feast ! " He spoke emphatically. " Edward won't forget his re-
minder in a hurry ! " He chuckled again and again. " But you,"
he went on, anxiously, " you are not cold or excited or nervous
or"
" I like it," confessed mother, with a laugh. " I'm perfectly
satisfied to discover we're not old folks at home, but young folks
abroad. How do you feel, father?"
" Somewhere in the twenty-fives, I believe."
" And I'm not a day past twenty-one ! "
" Twenty-one, mother ! Sixteen ! It would be treason to
think you an hour past your sixteenth birthday ! "
" At any rate, I'm enjoying myself," said mother. " And
but the man is slacking up, Edward."
:< Yes, we must be at Jessie's."
They were. A very gorgeous personage opened the door, and
shook his head when they asked for Mrs. Bradford.
" Mrs. Bradford is not at home this evening," he said,
pompously.
"Where is she?" demanded father.
" Not at home, sir, I said, not at home."
Father drew himself up, haughtily.
:< Young man, you tell Mrs. Bradford "
" But sir, I can't, sir. She gave orders "
" Confound you ! " roared father. " You tell her that Mr.
Matthison wants to see her. And hurry up about it."
The man obeyed. Very few disobeyed father when he
prompted them in such a manner. Half-way up the stairs he
halted. A lady was coming down a veritable vision, clad in shim-
mering draperies.
" Henry ! What is the matter ? Oh"
She stopped, stared, hesitated. Then with a cry she ran down
328 THE CHILDREN [Dec,,
the rest of the stairs, and caught the little old lady, fur cloak and
all, in a pair of strong, young arms.
" Mother, father ! Oh, dearest, dearest, dearest ! " she cried,
ecstatically. " Oh, what a surprise, what happiness ! How
" Wait a minute, Jess, wait a minute, girl," interrupted her
father, while Henry discreetly withdrew. " Where are you
going?"
" Nowhere, now," laughed the beautiful girl, rapturously.
" Do you think"
" Hold on," warned father. " Where were you going? "
" There is a musical. I was to sing."
" Ah ! Been to church yet ? "
" Why, no, I I meant to go but but I was surely going
Saturday ! "
" Um m m ! " remarked father. " You go get your gew-
gaws off and go to-night. You've been brought up different to this,
Jessie."
" But it was only one song, father, and I promised, and "
" God gave you your voice, girl, and your mother the means
of educating it. Go to church and thank Him for it."
" Oh, father, you make me feel so ashamed! "
" Good ! I'm glad ! Supposing God had come knocking at
the door this night, instead of your old father. Just look at it like
that." There were tears in the spoiled blue eyes, but he would
not see them. " Come, mother."
"Going?" the girl faltered, the tears brimming over now.
"Going? Would you leave me? On Christmas Eve? Would
you, mother? "
"Christmas Eve?" drawled father. "Why, so it is! So
it is ! What memories the old folk have nowadays ! "
Jessie Bradford watched them go, her hands outstretched ap-
pealingly, her head bent, her eyes fastened on them until the door
of the cab slammed behind them, and the vehicle rolled silently
away. She forgot her social triumphs, her ambitions, her acquired
worldliness. She was little loving Jessie Matthison again and
they
"Oh, he's right, he's right!" she breathed. "And I'm a
wicked, ungrateful, miserable girl ! "
She drew a deep breath, and turned slowly toward the stairs.
Henry appeared from the rear of the hall.
" The car is waiting, Mrs. Bradford."
1915.] THE CHILDREN 329
" I'm going out, but I won't use the car to-night, Henry. Tell
him to take it back."
" Oh, Edward ! " said the little old lady, squeezing her hus-
band's hand. " Wasn't she lovely ? Wasn't she? I never thought
our pretty Jessie could look so astonishingly beautiful ! Why, she
seemed a real princess ! Did you notice the diamond necklace ? "
" No, I didn't," said the old man, a little bitterly. " I didn't
notice the necklace, maybe for thinking there's another necklace
would be more becoming ! A baby's chubby arm, mother, a baby's
chubby arm ! "
Mother was silent. Jessie had been her father's favorite, the
pride of his heart. Their encounter had been a sore disappointment
to him, she knew.
The taxicab plunged into the darkness of a side street, lonely
and deserted, and stopped before a low, two-storied house a pretty
little house, with steps leading upward, and an iron rail enclosing
a patch of snowy lawn. A dim light shone in the upper rooms.
The blinds of the lower were carefully drawn. In answer to their
ring a young man came. He was in his shirt sleeves, and smoking
a pipe.
"Hello, Rob! Where's Esther?" greeted Mr. Matthison.
" Good heavens, it's father ! And at this hour ! And
mother ! " cried Robert Newell, the pipe almost dropping from
his mouth in astonishment.
" Where's Esther ? " repeated father again, shaking hands
heartily.
" Here," said Esther's husband. He opened the door of a cosy
little sitting-room. Esther Newell sat before a fire which burned
in the open grate, a baby of' about six months old lying across her
lap. Above the fireplace were four small stockings, and in the
corner of the room stood a half-dressed Christmas tree, on which
the young man had been working, evidently. His wife looked up
as he spoke, and when she saw the two her tired face was trans-
figured.
" Oh, father ! Father ! " she cried. " And mother ! "
Love, longing, wonder, were in her voice. Above the baby
she stretched out her arms, and this time father did not restrain the
little old lady, who ran to her, pressing her back in the chair when
she would have risen, and kissing the gentle, pale face with loving
mother kisses.
330 THE CHILDREN [Dec.,
" Oh, what beautiful thought brings you here to me now? "
she breathed. " How I have been longing for you all day long
my heart has ached so for home and father and mother, for home,
and my own people! Dear as our new ties may be, there is so
much sweetness about the old. I couldn't resign myself, but when
Robert got back from church he kept baby while I went and
since then it hasn't hurt so ! " There were tears in the young and
anxious eyes. " Rob sent off our little gifts you won't mind
their littleness, I know and I scribbled you a few lines yesterday."
The young man moved nearer, his tender glance on his wife's
head.
" The baby has been very sick. The doctor told us to resign
ourselves to the worst a few days ago," he explained in a low tone.
" But she's a hundred per cent better now. And Esther is all un-
strung with watching and worrying."
" I knew there was some reason, Esther ! I knew you would
not forget us, darling!" cried Mrs. Matthison, through her tears.
" Forget you ? Didn't you get my letter ? Oh, don't say
you didn't get my letter? I was so ashamed of it I wrote it with
Frances lying on my lap."
" The gifts came, dear," said her mother, " but the letter must
have been delayed."
" There's another visit, mother," said father, warningly.
"Going away!" cried Esther. "Going away! Oh, impos-
sible! You will not leave us to-night! Whom are you with
Jessie or Edward? Rob will telephone "
Piteously, imploringly, the old lady looked at her husband. He
seemed blind to her entreaty.
" Esther, we are going back on the twelve o'clock train, and
we have still another visit," he said, doggedly. " We came to wish
you a Merry Christmas! Be a good child, and don't make it
harder than it is for mother and me to leave you."
" You have been to Jessie and Edward, then ? "
" Yes. Now we're going to John."
" John ! " murmured Esther. " He and I are strangers. He
does not come near us, and we have our hands too full to visit him.
But," she added, in a cheerful voice, " it won't last. The children
will soon be bigger." She looked at her mother almost happily.
" Good-by, Esther, dear. Let us know how the little one gets
along. Come, mother."
" Yes, yes," said mother. She had promised and she would
1915.] THE CHILDREN 33*
keep her word, but her heart ached for the tired young mother
sitting there with the sick baby on her lap.
"What a contrast!" she said. "Think of the difference in
her life and Jessie's."
Her husband's voice was very gentle.
" Which would you rather be, mother? "
" Esther, of course, with all her worries. Doesn't it seem as
if Esther's life is repeating ours? It brought me back to the time
when they were little."
" We were drawn closer by our trials as Rob and Esther will
be drawn by theirs," said father. " I would have preferred to stay.
I did not want to leave her, either Robert is a fine character
a man. . . .But " He lapsed into silence. A more powerful in-
centive drove him on, she felt, one that she had not yet fathomed.
A bachelor's apartment on Christmas Eve is not apt to be an
enticing place for two people like father and mother. The elevator
man let them off at the fifth floor.
" No. 62 that's Mr. Matthison," he said.
" No. 62 ! " breathed mother in an undertone. " My boy caged
in a great beehive, in which he is No. 62."
" Worker or drone ? " asked father.
They knocked at the door of No. 62, but received no answer.
They could not discover the bell, and so turned the knob. It
yielded to the touch. The little hall was in darkness, but a stream
of light came through a door, partly ajar, a few feet beyond.
Father went first. Snatches of those written words danced before
him. " No place for me I can't go back it's my own
fault " He stood, filling up the open space with his tall,
heavy-coated figure, and mother could not see beyond him.
" Where are you going, John ? "
The young man gasped, started, and straightened up from the
valise that lay open on the table.
" Father ! " he breathed. " You here ? "
" I'm here," he said. " So is mother." He moved aside.
The little lady followed him in. John Matthison, haggard, pale,
ill-looking, grasped the back of a near-by chair.
" You? " he muttered thickly. " I I must be dreaming! "
" No," said father, " you're not. We've come for you." His
tone was very gentle, and mother, with her keen instinct, knew at
once why this journey had been planned and undertaken. It was
for John, poor, foolish, prodigal John, who stood stricken before
332 THE CHILDREN [Dec.,
them. " We've come for you. To wish you a Merry Christmas
and to bring you home."
" Home ! " The young man laughed under his breath.
" What do you want with a failure like me ? "
" Get your hat and coat," said father. Mother fidgeted.
Father looked as if he were ready to roar again.
" Why, you"
" You're coming home, now," said the old man, firmly, " and
you're going to stay home. The city isn't for you, John. Your
soul isn't of the sort that can thrive or grow here. We'll close
the door on this foolish life of yours. God meant you to be a
good farmer, my boy, to handle a plow instead of a pen, so come
back to your own place and your own work. It's been waiting for
you ever since you went away."
He obeyed, as he had in earlier and happier years, unquestion-
ingly, and without protest. He had been on the brink of that evil
of despair whither souls tend who have forgotten God, and whom
the evil one delights in torturing. But his father's love, inspired
by heaven, had saved him from unknown depths.
He left his careless years behind him forever. He slept once
more in his old room under the eaves, " close to the angels," as
mother used to say. He went to early Mass with them, and kept
Father Robertson a long, long time in the confessional. But when
he came out no one would have known John Matthison for the
same man. They sat down to the bounteous Christmas feast, father
and mother and prodigal and gray-haired servant of God, and the
thanksgiving that rose from every heart must have reached, surely,
the throne of the Infant Saviour.
Later, when Father Robertson had gone, the young man, hold-
ing an arm of each, stood between them.
" I come to you empty-handed," he said. " And I have noth-
ing to give you but myself. It isn't much of a Christmas gift, but
I'll make it worth while if you'll take it."
" Gladly," said father, with a ring of joy in his tones. " You
have no gift that would mean more. You are never going back? "
" I am never going back," said the young man. " Never."
" He is a good boy, our John," said the mother, gently, when
he had left them. " They're all good children. Only so young,
so young, and so thoughtless ! They'll learn better."
" They've learned," said father, in an odd voice. " I don't
think the lesson will ever have to be repeated." And it never had.
THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM. 1
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
I.
IME out of mind, the intelligence of man has been
likened to his physical power of sight. " The light
of reason " is a phrase as old as the hills, and " the
mind's eye " cannot be one much younger. Early
Christian writers were fond of portraying human
reason as a reflected ray of the light divine, shining in a darkness
that seldom comprehended and then but ill. Poetic, some will
say, and very charming, but a conception not attuned in temper to
these tougher-minded times when we look to the " slimy ooze " for
the secrets of our origin. Tastes are proverbially no subject for
discussion, and we are not going to enter here upon a defence of the
idea mentioned a more immediate point concerning us, which we
would fain see more impartially studied and less summarily dis-
missed : How far, namely, is this mental light capable of pene-
trating, this mind's eye of seeing? What is the actual area covered
by " the luminous spot " in consciousness ?
Do the relations of things essential ones only, of course
fall within this lighted area and there become visible, or is it only
the bare essences of things, their purely individual nature and
specific inner structure, that here disclose themselves to sight ? The
ability to see things in themselves, apart from all beings other, and
the ability to see them in relation, are vastly different powers of
vision. Has Thought the first of these abilities only, or the latter
also? Must we say that it can see directly, but not obliquely?
Or, should we not rather admit, and frankly, that Thought has the
power to detect those essentially connective relations which are
really as much a part of every subject as the essence itself, there
being nothing in the world of mind or in the world of matter that
can by any stretch of fancy be considered wholly individual or
completely unrelated. Thought would have a life of its own in
such a case. It could move along the relations it saw to the inex-
1 Beginning a critical review of the principles of modern thought and the
conclusions to which they have led and are still leading. All the articles, except the
first two, will appear under different titles and may be read independently.
334 THE GENESIS OF RANTS CRITICISM [Dec.,
haustible vistas which these open up. It would bring the eyes
of an architect to its work and not be content with mere analysis,
were this the way it functioned. And did Kant see Thought in this
its larger, truer light, or was it on the narrower aspect only that
his critical vision dwelt?
On the answer to the question thus abruptly put, the whole
worth of Kant's criticism depends, as also much, if indeed not most,
of what has since been written in disparagement of the human
intellect. The attempts of recent theorists, for instance, to find
a footing elsewhere than in Thought for a progressive philosophy
of life refer back to this question for the explanation of their origin.
The movement to derationalize history, to rid the mind of what
is called " its inherited sophistication " whether it bid us cultivate
that non-analytical power of appreciation which Bergson calls
intuition, or dwell in the moving world of sense experience, and
there, with James, enjoy the restless search for rest; whether it
aim at blowing out all the lights in religion, or at making the world
appear as waywardness on the march behold, in a movement
deriving its origin from a negative answer to the question put,
whitherward philosophers shall be blown in the years that are yet
to be. No further introduction to the subject is necessary; conse-
quences are the best spokesman it could have.
A paragraph, ere we begin, on matters more or less of a
personal character. In a series of articles undertaken more than a
full twelvemonth since, and subsequently published in the pages of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 2 an attempt was made by the present writer
to trace the influence of Pietism on the mental formation of Im-
manuel Kant, the father and founder of modern philosophical
Criticism. During the course of the theme's unfolding, in that
part, especially, 3 which had to do with the disputed origin and
worth of the idea of causality, the problem of computing the drift
of religious influence on Kant's singular mentality suddenly found
itself displaced in interest, if not in importance, by the discovery
of what seemed to be the cardinal point on which his whole philos-
ophy was turning. This cardinal point proved to be none other
than his purely analytic conception of the nature and activity of
Thought. 4 He had set it down for a mere analyst, and was criti-
cizing it from this inadequate point of view.
*THE CATHOLIC WORLD, July-December, 1914, Completing the Reformation.
1 Ibid., October, 1914, pp. 2-12.
*Ibid. t October, 1914, pp. 9-12.
1915-] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 335
The ease with which this discovery explained away 5 the new
series of judgments which Kant invented " synthetic a priori "
he called them seemed a fair earnest of what might be expected
of its explanatory force in other portions of the Critical Philosophy.
The press of other matters urging, the suggestion was pursued no
further at the time, but left to kindle such reflections as it might
in the mind of the thoughtful reader. In the meanwhile there had
appeared, though a full year passed before the writer saw them, a
profound series of articles 6 dealing with the problem suggested.
To these as well as to a searching volume published by Clodius Piat 7
years before, in which the fundamental point at issue between Kant
and traditional philosophy had been carefully threshed out, frank
acknowledgments are due for the clearing-up of thought that fol-
lowed upon their reading. And with these relations of indebted-
ness acknowledged, we now turn to the more immediate pursuit of
the subject in hand.
The problem is to determine if Kant's criticism of Thought
actually proceeded upon an adequate conception of the nature of
that power. Certainly, if his discussion of the principle of causality
were to be taken as a test case, the answer would have to be in the
negative. The governing consideration with him in this portion
of his writings is too plain to be mistaken : Concepts are unrelated,
and Thought mere insight into them as such. Read him over and
over again, and you will realize that he is making the most he can
of this dubious pair of assumptions. He seems to have made up his
mind, that the intellect cannot furnish itself with an objective
content, unless experience come to its aid. And so far forth, none
will say him nay. The fact of a man's going blind, or a dog's
being short a paw, or a squirrel's not having the dull gray coat usual
with his kind, are beyond the power of unaided Thought to discover.
Actual experience alone can acquaint us with such contingencies
as these. No scrutinizing of the principle of identity would ever
bring us to their cognizance, any more than it could inform us that
Caesar fell at the foot of Pompey's statue, or that " a wandering
summer of the sea " exists, called the Gulf Stream. One hardly
requires to be told twice that Thought is not competent, of itself,
to make such particular discoveries.
But is that all there really is to the matter? Surely, the rela-
"THE CATHOLIC WORLD, October, 1914, p. 10.
9 La metaphysique du, Kantisme, by Pierre Charles, Revue de Philosophic,
February, March, April, 1913 ; April, June, 1914. T L'ldee, Paris, 1895.
336 THE GENESIS OF RANTS CRITICISM [Dec.,
tions of cause, origin, dependence, solidarity, self -insufficiency,
createdness, and the like, stand on an entirely different footing
from these. Thought does not have to fear the possibility of the
contrary when it is question of relations rooted in the nature of
things. It stands not upon the order of its seeing in such cases, but
sees at once, experience making the vision numerically larger, if
you will, though not adding to its surety a single whit. There are
relations and relations. Some of them are as casual as the chair in
which the reader of these lines has chosen to sit for their perusal.
Others he carries about with him in his own being, whatever posture
he assume as a part inalienable of his very self. Relation is an
appanage of the Divine inwardly as it is of the human outwardly.
Each of us is as much towards Another as centrally within himself.
The sea has its whisperings of the great Beyond, and so have we,
nor is Thought impotent to hear and heed.
It was for having approached the study of relations with an
intellect theoretically shut off from their detection, that Kant saw
in the idea of a thing's having had a beginning, nothing more than
the brute fact that it had once begun to be. A faculty that could
only peer and pry into an unrelated concept or essence, had no power
to see that concept or essence in the framework of constitutional
relations in which it stood. So that it should occasion no wonder,
this inability of Kant's to discover the idea of " cause " in the idea
of " beginning." If C is C, and B is B, we should justly be sur-
prised to find either in the other. And should we further discern
that B is always connected in our experience with C; in other
words, that no sooner do we have the idea of " beginning " than the
idea of " cause " at once emerges as its inseparable mate there
would be nothing anywhere discoverable in the luminous spot in
consciousness, to throw the least light on the joining of the two.
How could there be, on the supposition that concepts are all non-
communing, and Thought able only to analyze the unrelated?
But take away this supposition, and what is left of Kant's
criticism of causality? Nothing but his severance theory of ob-
jects, and his analytical theory of Thought and its concepts, neither
of which can maintain itself a moment in the light of what science
has to say on the interdependence of all things in Nature, and of
what psychology proclaims concerning the solidarity of all things
in Mind. The causal idea is not impaired at all by the criticism.
Two theories are invoked to dispossess the idea of all objective
worth and bearing; neither of the two theories thus invoked having
1915-] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 337
been critically established beforehand; nay, both of them being
incapable of critical establishment, 8 and one of them, at least,
falling clearly foul of the ascertained facts of science.
Were these two theories general with him? Was the genesis
of his whole Criticism to be laid at their door ? Could it be possible,
dared one even think, much less say, that on this doubly deficient
base the whole superstructure of his philosophy had been reared?
Had the fates been really so unkind to the founder of philosophical
criticism, as to let him cast his eagle eye on all things else save the
two on which everything he was to say depended? Did he so far
forget the solidarity of human concepts and the fraternity, so to
speak, of physical things, as to de-socialize and over-individualize
the native, natural character of both? Had the austere champion
of the Will and severe critic of the Intellect no more smashing
thunderbolt than a misconception with which to rive the mind of
man asunder and reappoint all his ways ? It did not seem credible.
Homer may have nodded, but fallen fast asleep never ! The very
supposition had an explanatory ease about it that bred distrust and
bade one be wary of playing fast and loose with great names.
The most natural thing to do when an explanatory hypothesis
like this timorously suggests itself and begs a trial, is to test it out,
with a view to seeing whether it breaks down under the task of ac-
counting for so strange a genius as Kant, or holds up steadily under
the strain of explanation, refusing to give way. The most effective
kind of criticism, after all, is the sympathetic: putting oneself in
another's place, peering out at the world through his mind's eye,
and then, if need be, opening ours a little wider to gather in and
garner the vision that he missed. The critic's vocation is not unlike
the actor's: he should sympathetically become, for the time and
occasion being, the character he would interpret and portray,
whether he believe in him or no; and to bring about this psycho-
logical exchange of personality, the prime requisite is to discover
the secret founts and central fires of that other's inspiration. Only
by discovering these, and moving forwards from them with him
whom we would impersonate, can we intelligently occupy his stand-
point, feel the cross-currents of his mental life, experience the force
of his logical temptations, and lay hold of the idea that presided
over the destinies of his spirit and foreordained its ways. Criticism
loses none of its force, nay it gains immeasurably by allying itself
with this explorative sort of sympathy, which teaches us, as nothing
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, October, 1914, p. n.
VOL. cil. 22
338 THE GENESIS OF RANTS CRITICISM [Dec.,
else so well could, that the paths of error are sometimes easy and
the ways of truth not always plain. And so we turn here from
dogmatic to sympathetic criticism, putting ourselves in Kant's place,
for the sake of the more enlightening insight this change of method
is bound to bring; and asking ourselves the hypothetical question,
whether such a theory of Thought as we have described, being
considered central and dominant with him a consistent light of
explanation is thereby shed on the genesis of his Criticism and the
vicissitudes of mind through which he passed. And we shall be
sure of having the right key, should things so fall out in our own
mind as they did in Kant's and bid us press forwards in his mental
tracks.
Imagine yourself, therefore from a reading of Leibnitz, an
acquaintance with Wolff, and a growing dislike for rationalism
generally, though you had begun your literary career by espousing
its cause imagine yourself comfortably settled in the notion that
concepts are all so strictly individual in character, that it is impos-
sible for the intellect to cross from any one of them to any other,
its work being at an end, its operative power exhausted when it has
once succeeded in framing these pale replicas of things. A syn-
thetic activity on the part of the intellect is manifestly impossible to
one holding such a view of concepts, and you would not be slow in
seeing that it was. Occupy the standpoint for a moment and let
yourself go whitherward it beckons: Concepts are solitary;
Thought analytic; things individual and determinate highly com-
plex, most of them, in their variety of detail. How would you go
about effecting the reconcilement and synthesis of these three ?
The first difficulty to loom up large upon your vision would be
the enormous difference between Thought and Sensation. Pre-
sumably ordained to lay things bare to the core and acquaint us
intimately with their many-sided nature what does Thought do?
Assuredly not what it should. Take any object you please: that
cart rattling down the stony street; that dog beside your desk,
pleading with you to leave it for a romping; that flower in the
cranny, which if you knew, you would " know what God and man
is," as the poet says. What has your respective concept of any of
these three objects to tell you in their regard? Merely that a cart
is a cart, a dog a dog, a flower a flower! It will never give you
what the images of all these three contain: the life, the dash, the
glow, the rush of individuality. Thought seems so thin and pale
when measured alongside sensation. You turn to your concept,
1915-] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 339
and it offers you the vague and indeterminate; to your sense
intuition, and it is all aglow with what Professor James used to call
" the thickness and detail of real life." Your attempt at a syn-
thesis has received its first check. The utter inadequacy of Thought
to represent sensation has established itself beyond all doubt.
What a wide chasm, you say to yourself, gapes and yawns between
the intelligible and the sensible, the noumenon and the phenomenon,
reality and appearance.
What is the relation between the two? you would next natur-
ally ask. Can there be any real continuity between such apparent
opposites as these? Has Thought any intuitive power of its own,
or are all intellectual intuitions objectless mere mental frames for
the moving pictures of experience, mere outlines which sense paints
in and over with the colors of reality? The latter obviously.
Thought has no power of intuition, save of the most negative sort.
Asked for bread, it will but furnish the flour with which to make it ;
asked for the living, it gives us a skeleton of the dead ! Sensibility
alone enjoys intuitive power. Thought is unable to procure an
objective content for itself. Behold sensation waking it up re-
peatedly, and offering it untold richness of material in this deter-
minate object or that, which it sets before it and what does
Thought do? Simply murmurs its constant refrain that A is A,
and goes to sleep again.
Leibnitz, and the philosophers who went before, regarded
Thought as a clarifier of sensation ; it analyzed the confused, indis-
tinct masses presented by sense, singling out the many it thus dis-
covered in the one. Would you, in Kant's place and working out
from his preaccepted principles, be inclined to look upon this tra-
ditional view with favor? Would you not, rather, say, as he did,
that the work of Thought is not to clarify sensation, but to outline it
in advance by a series of preparatory sketches? Thought, you
would argue, is an anticipation of experience, not a resultant. Its
function is to trace possibilities, not to clear up actualities. The
theory of closed concepts with which you started your speculative
career has brought you in its course thus far to more than one
impasse too difficult for overcoming. But it is proving suggestive
of new thoughts on old themes, new ways of looking at threadbare
topics, and you are correspondingly rejoiced at the fresh area for
reflection which it floods.
Space and time, for instance those two elusive categories that
hold us all so tightly in their toils are they the extrinsic measures
340 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Dec.,
of distance and duration antiquity considered them to be ? Hardly.
You would no longer look upon them as relations discoverable by
Thought, or as entities apprai sable by sense how could you, when
Thought is not a clarifier of sensation, and concepts stand as much
out of intercourse as lone and barren islands in the deep. Space
and time, you would say to yourself, are simply the previous condi-
tions of sensation, the grounds of its possibility, the anticipation
of its deliverances, the foreordaining of its range. Pure subjectiv-
ities both ! Having long since separated Thought from sensation,
you see in both these faculties now not one continuous report of
reality, but two independent accounts. The thing-in-itself becomes
the relationless reality corresponding to your unrelated concepts.
You are as far as ever from the synthesis you contemplated making,
in which subject, object, and idea would somehow, you hoped, be
brought together. But as a solace for this failure, you have " new
discoveries " to your credit startling, revolutionary, reforming;
your name is on the lips of them that sit in the gates, and pilgrim-
ages are made to your unpretentious home in East Prussia, as to a
shrine which genius chose for the latest seat of its manifestations.
Would not the above set of conclusions, I ask you, reader, ap-
pear a most natural course for your reflections to take, were you
to preaccept Kant's foundation for them, and let yourself build as
that foundation bade? You will not be surprised, therefore, to
learn that during the precritical period of his career, 9 the philos-
opher of Konigsberg actually took the several positions indicated,
publishing the results to a world then as now most avid of the new.
The supposition that Thought is purely analytic, and its concepts
all separate accounts of " things-in-themselves," bore its fruits thus
early, and was destined later to have a still more generous yield.
For, once the idea took hold of him, that Thought is an unwrapping
process, incapable of seeing how the things it unwraps are tied,
there was nothing left for him to do but to criticize it for dis-
charging its appointed task so poorly. How familiar now has
this charge of impotency against Thought become, especially since
the literary brilliancy of James and the vived imagery of Bergson
have dressed it up in the fineries of speech for the delectation of
the commons. Reality is so rich and Thought so poor. The in-
tellect is such a disappointing performer. Out upon it for an idler !
But stay your condemnation a moment. It may be that you
have none too well understood the nature of the thing on which
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, September, 1914, pp. 768-770.
1915-] THE GENESIS OF KANTS CRITICISM 341
you are about to pass sentence. Suppose, for instance, that the
object of Thought is not the individual, but the common; not the
determinate and particular, but the indeterminate and general
would not the criticism you were about to launch against the intel-
lect for not being adequate to sensation and its lumpish mass of
particulars, be wholly misdirected in that case? If the object of
Thought is being in general, not being in particular, we should
recognize the fact, and not reverse it as if matters really stood the
other way about. Fairness requires that we apply no foreign test
to any instrument, or judge of its efficiency by a line of action not
consonant with its scope. And who has ever found support in
experience or footing in reason for the narrow claim that Thought
is essentially and exclusively taken up with the analysis of un-
related particulars? A study of psychology reveals no limitation
of the sort. The first notion of the babe, according to James, is
a vague that, not a what at all which being interpreted into
terms less technical means simply that the child has grasped reality
in general through the ball or bauble first engaging its attention.
James says also that in touching his first object the babe has
actually come in contact with all the later categories of the philos-
opher. This fact, were we to draw an unsophisticated conclusion
from it, as James unfortunately did not, would go far towards
showing that from the first dawn of consciousness to its eclipse, the
time of Thought is spent in traveling along the illimitable track of
this one notion, of which all others are but differences in degree.
And not only the testimony of babes and sucklings, our own
more accessible experience goes indubitably to show that Thought
is not the mechanical analyst Kant imagined. It does not tear
given wholes apart into their components; it sees the common at
a glance, and for that reason does not stop to analyze anything
fully, but sails off with the vision gained. If there was ever any-
thing that protests against being regarded as a dull, mechanical
analyst, that thing is Thought ; and we are inclined to the suspicion
that Kant must have mistaken his own acquired habits of the plodder
for the nature of Thought in general, and seen a student where he
should have seen a seer. No one can search the action of Thought
in his own experience without rising from the search persuaded
that not all the activity of the intellect is analytical by any manner
of means. Try to do so yourself, if you think otherwise. The first
thing you will notice is that the two operations which Kant sepa-
rated namely, analysis and synthesis are really not separate or
342 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Dec.,
separable at all. They run into each other, they overlap, compene-
trate, telescope, and intersect. Scarcely have we begun analyzing
any individual subject, when syntheses begin spontaneously to sug-
gest themselves larger unities, wider visions than the particular
one on which our attention happens to be fixed.
The notions of substance, accident, relation, quantity, quality,
space, time, cause, effect, essence, force, action, and a host of others
similarly general in nature and in sweep, come trooping into the
mind to put order, precision, and clearness into the jostling mass
of material presented. When we sit down to write an article, an
essay, or a speech, we find some general notion or other disciplining
the chaotic flow of impressions and rearranging our ideas. We
are highly conscious, on such occasions, that the mind is an active
assimilator, not a passive recipient, of knowledge. The seething
way we go about our task brings the fact home to us in no uncertain
measure. We are well aware, too, that analysis and synthesis are
companion activities in the elaboration of our theme. There is no
doubt in such moments that the mind has something to do with
the engendering of knowledge; the latter is no ready-made affair
by any manner of means. And thus, in the simple matter of literary
composition, we have experienced, perhaps without realizing it, the
fundamental problem of all the philosophies: the problem of the
origin of these general notions with which our minds are filled.
Whence come they? Whitherward do they tend? And to what
reality do they correspond?
If we do not divide ourselves off from the objects that surround
us, but on the contrary regard ourselves and them as forming
integrant parts of a single unitary world, these general notions will
appear as objective laws not only of the universe, but of our own
minds as well. Law will be seen establishing order in the cosmos
as reason establishes it in the workings of the mind. 10 Thought
will pulse with a positive dialectic movement in keeping with that
of Nature, nay, the reflex of it and from the very beginning of
the knowledge-process to its very end, there will be connection and
continuity with the realities of the outer world. The fallacy of
thinking that Reality is an abstract unity will reveal itself for the
myth it is, none the less so, because philosophers have so long
nurtured it in their bosom. Reality will appear, instead, as having
degrees and grades, movements and regressions ; with the plenitude
10 La Triade de la Realite, by F. Warrain. Revue de Philosophic, April, 1906,
P. 373-
1915-] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 343
of existence nowhere established; with still further spurs of per-
fection to be won. No individual reality will be completely self-
regarding; within it will be found distinctions, relations, elements
call them what you will which break down its isolation and
point beyond the thing itself to a larger system in which it lies
included. Likewise there will not be a single isolated concept in
the whole domain of mind. Refunding into the central, all-pervad-
ing notion of being, and from that proceeding up and out to the
myriad others that dot the mental heavens with their lights, differing
as star differeth from star in magnitude and glory concepts will
form an open field of connections, through which Thought may
move at lightning speed, unhindered. So far from being unable
to pass from one concept to another, as Leibnitz, Hume and Kant
imagined Thought will be detected in the act of leaping from the
most complex to the most simple, from the most determinate to the
most general in joyous despite of the philosophical interdicts of all
three. Its way of advancing will not be from the same to the
same, but from the same to the different. Its logic will no longer
appear as the dull logic of identity pest take this poke! but as
the live logic of implication and newness. Our concrete concepts
of reality will be linked with our abstract concept of the same.
The categories will not need to be "schematized." Thought will
be synthetic naturally, without any attempt being necessary on our
part to make it so by artifice. Reason will not hide its light under
a bushel, but let it shine before all men, whether they approve or no.
Turn from this picture to one of more sombre hue. Suppose
that by some sore mischance or other, instead of keeping matter and
mind together in the solidarity that unites them both, you should,
through forgetfulness, say, or design, first methodically, and after-
wards really, divide the two what would happen? The world
would fall off into the opposing halves of mind and matter; rivalry
would take the place of solidarity; our general notions would
appear as laws of the mind only; Thought would become a shut-in
world of the general, with another shut-in world of the particular,
lying over against it in implacable opposition and severance.
Identity would rule Thought as with a rod of iron; diversity take
charge of Things with a much freer hand. And Reason what
a spectacle it would make of itself stiff and rigid amid all these
topsy-turvy antics of the world ! Abstractions ? Nonentities all !
The sawdust of the great machine useless by-products, meaning-
less superfluities!
344 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Dec.,
This is precisely what happened in Kant's case, and what will
happen in yours and mine, should we allow a method, a method of
isolating, to become a fact and doctrine with us. His provisional
method, at best an artifice, at most a logical device, was suffered
to become a metaphysics, and to cut Thought off, not only from the
outer world of reality, but from the inner world of experience as
well. It discredited all the general notions of the mind, creating
between these and our particular impressions a gap of severance
that does not really exist. It set Kant to thinking that these notions
might be improved upon to our advantage; might be brought, in
other words, into real connection with those particular experiences
of ours, from which his method had declared them severed. And so
he undertook to '"schematize" them, one and all ; to make them over
into generic images which would add a dash of color to their former
pallor, and thicken their thinness out into something more tangible
to grasp. Accordingly they were brought down from the intellect
and lodged in the upper rooms of the imagination where they have
been forced to dwell, much against their will, for a century and
more, with no signs as yet of their being allowed to return to their
ancient place of lodgment. The methodic mishandling of the mind
was responsible for this unpardonable displacement of our general
notions, though Kant hoped, by so displacing them, to make the
work of synthesis possible. You see, he did not admit the spon-
taneousness of the syntheses which the mind is forever framing.
And so he had to prove the possibility of the fact by a long and
labored process of reasoning; deducing his famous synthetic judg-
ments a priori, when, with another method to guide him the one
we mentioned first he might have recognized without further ado
the existence of just such judgments in the bosom of an undivided
mind functioning in an undivided world.
The curious thing about this whole procedure is the fact that
a man like Kant, who certainly knew better, should have allowed
himself to confound Thought with representation. Reason is es-
sentially the power of conceiving the unrepresentable, as a glance
at the general notions mentioned a few paragraphs back will readily
disclose. Thinking has a distinctive nature that marks it off from
imagining, and we really know more than we can visualize, repre-
sent, or reproduce. It is true we do not .deny it that the repre-
sentable always accompanies the conceivable, and that when we try
to define the latter, we find ourselves in the presence of the former;
but the fact that the two are solidary does not mean that they are
1915-] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 345
the same ; and it is an error of the most grievous sort, this attempt
to lower Thought to the levels of sensation this idea that no light
is white, because it may be broken up into its seven component
colors. The directions, orientations, ideals, tendencies, types, sug-
gestions, and lights that Thought reveals are as real as any imagina-
tive reproductions of them ; as much connected and concerned with
life; as much and truly a report of reality as any and all of the
vivid imagery of sense. If Thought means anything, it means a
power of conceiving superior to all possible representation, beyond
the limitations of the latter, and not tied to it as to a restricting
tether. To make Thought merely synonymous and coextensive with
representation is to confine it within bounds set for it by a certain
adopted method, like the Cartesian and the Kantian; certainly not
set for it by anything observable in experience. What proof is there
that Thought does not exist for life for the larger life of order as
against the lower life of chaos and destruction? When Thought
lifts us out of the whole field of the representable does it do so to
take us away from life, or to bring us back to it with a larger vision
gained and a fresher zest the vision and zest of freemen, with eyes
no longer open only to the visible and representable, but to what
lies behind, within, and beyond. Having its feet astride the two
continents of mind and matter why should it be denied of this
Colossus, that it has its forehead among the stars ?
But the thinness, the pallor of Thought, we hear a critic urging,
are -serious defects; signs of a light that has failed rather than of
one that has pierced the darkness and peopled it with another
world. Critics forget they are always forgetting something that
this thinness, this pallor of Thought is the necessary condition of
its acting as an unmasking, synthetic power. Vividness would
never do; the lure of the lurid is misleading ever. What would
the critics? That Thought should face around towards the repre-
sentations of sense, suppress none of the garish details there found,
but leave us forever floundering in their swirl? Must the great
liberator be chained, and for what malfeasance, pray, in office?
Because, forsooth, the lights which he kindles are of the kind " ne'er
seen on sea or land ? " But is this a defect ? Is it not rather a
virtue, in view of the redemptive, reinvigorating insights which it
brings? Are lights less lights because they are pallid, and should
glare be made the essence of them all? Of course, there is this
much to be said, that if Thought really aimed at analyzing things
completely, its meagre general concepts would show how all too ill
346 THE GENESIS OF KANTS CRITICISM [Dec.,
it had succeeded in its task. Impeachment proceedings would be in
order against a power so conspicuously inefficient. And only on
the false supposition that completeness is the end it aims at, can the
efficiency experts, from Kant to Bergson, plead a plausible excuse
for their tinkering with its nature and deliverances. In fact, the
whole criticism levelled against Thought for its inadequacy to sensa-
tion dissolves at once on the reflection that Thought analyzes, not
to draw up a full bill of particulars concerning any individual, but
to secure preliminary footing for its syntheses. Would Kant,
think you, ever have written of Thought as disparagingly as he did,
if the sociability of concepts and the interdependence of all the
items of human knowledge had been the recognized metaphysics
and psychology of his time? Stay your condemnation of the intel-
lect, therefore, and review the evidence carefully before pronounc-
ing sentence. A man working with the two categories of separa-
tion and exclusion as his chief stock in trade has survived his useful-
ness ; his hour has passed.
Dear me ! My mind must have a synthetic activity of its own,
too, for look what it has done caught sight of a larger vision when
engaged in analyzing a smaller, and gone off in quest of the invit-
ing contrast, pursuing it so far it is now too late to turn back.
Space that category Kant regarded as subjective makes us for
once regret that editors of magazines are none of them practical
Kantians, least of all the editor of this. The consoling reflection
remains, however, that deviation, like adversity, may have its uses
and prove more instructive in the end than the paths that lead
straight on. Perhaps, too, we have unwittingly exemplified in our
own literary conduct the truth of the thesis for which we are here
throughout contending.
OUR LADY IN ART.
BY P. W. BROWNE.
I.
HE Church has ever exercised a potent influence in
the domain of art; she has utilized the noblest artis-
tic productions in the service of Faith; and enlisted
music, sculpture, architecture and painting as means
towards the advancement of her divine mission.
The earliest achievements of Christian artistic genius are found
within hallowed sanctuaries and monastic cells. Ancient art was
consecrated to paganism ; and it reached its zenith in giving realism
to heathen divinities; temples were erected in their honor; statues
represented their beauty and grace, and pictures portrayed the
charms of unsanctified humanity. Hence pre-Christian art did little
to arrest human degeneracy; facilitated rather than retarded the
ruin of states and empires, as it did not stimulate the virtues on
which the strength of man is based; nor did it check those de-
praved tastes and habits which are developed from egotism.
From the beginning of her existence, the Church was fully
conscious of the aesthetic influence of paintings; but, on account of
their pagan character, she hesitated in earliest times to adopt them
in the service of Christianity. There was an added reason for her
hesitancy in the strong Semitic composition of the first Christian
assemblies. The earliest specimens of Christian pictorial art are
found on the sarcophagi of the early centuries, or as mural decora-
tions in the catacombs; but we find traces of paganism in these
representations, as Orpheus and Apollo furnished the early sym-
bols of the Redeemer and the Good Shepherd. About the second
century we discover an attempt at the portraiture of Our Lord and
the Blessed Virgin in the catacombs of St. Calistus, St. Ponziano
and St. Priscilla in Rome.
When the Church emerged from the catacombs after the Edict
of Milan, artists began to flock to Rome from Byzantium, Antioch
and Alexandria; and mosaic which had hitherto been employed in
decorative pavement work was now used to portray subjects on the
348 OUR LADY IN ART [Dec,
walls of churches. In 403, the Imperial Court was transferred from
Rome to Ravenna, which then became the capital of the West; and
during the pastorates of Bishops Ursus, Agnellus and Ecclesius were
built the basilica and baptistery, the churches of St. Agatha, St.
Celsus, St. Nazarius and St. John the Baptist, in the decoration of
which mosaic was extensively employed. Ravenna has been styled
by a writer on art " the treasure-house of mosaic."
The schism of the Iconoclasts, which began under Leo, the
Isaurian, and distracted the Church for more than a century,
wrought havoc in the domain of religious art. The persecution of
Leo, who was a merciless, ignorant barbarian, produced a general
destruction of the most curious and precious remains of antique art
in the East; but the temperate and eloquent apology of Pope
Gregory II., addressed to the Emperor Leo, had the effect of miti-
gating the persecution in the West, where the work of destruction
could not be carried out to the same extent as in the Byzantine
provinces. Hence it is in Italy only that any important remains of
religious art anterior to the Iconoclastic dynasty have been pre-
served. In his protest to the Isaurian, Pope Gregory says that
" if Leo were to enter a school in Italy, and say he prohibited pic-
tures, the children would infallibly throw their horn-books at his
head."
The crusades and pilgrimages to the Holy Land in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries had a most marked effect on religious art,
though this effect was not fully evolved till a century later. Thus
a great variety of Byzantine effigies became naturalized in Western
Europe. The paintings of this period were comparatively rude;
and it was not till the thirteenth century that the rigid formalism of
the degenerate Byzantine school began to yield to the dawning of a
sympathetic sentiment, which found expression in the paintings of
Cimabue and Duccio di Siena. Previous to this, painting had been
but a lifeless imitation of models furnished by Greek workers in
mosaic. The succeeding century " the wonderful fourteenth "
witnessed the greatest movement in the series of human develop-
ment; and it became the age of artistic wonders and great creations
in the domain of art. With Giotto, drawing became more correct
and coloring more subdued. The greatest factor in this develop-
ment was the great Florentine Dante Alighieri. He infused into
it that mingled poetry, mysticism and theology which governed
religious art for more than a century.
1915.] OUR LADY IN ART 349
II.
" Through all the most beautiful and precious productions of
human genius which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have be-
queathed to us, there is one prevailing idea; it is that of an im-
personation of beneficence, purity and power standing between
an- offended Deity and poor, suffering, sinning humanity, and
clothed in the visible form of Mary, the Mother of Our Lord." 1
This theme wrought itself into the life and soul of man; and it
has been worked out in the manifestation of his genius. It was a
theme which never tired the votaries of pictorial art ; and hence we
find that some of the most beautiful adornments of these majestic
edifices reared during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period
have reference to the person and character of Our Lady. This
title came into general use in the day " when knighthood was in
flower," for the Blessed Virgin was " The Lady " of all hearts,
whose colors all were proud to wear. She was Notre Dame to the
French ; La Madonna to the Latin races ; and Unser Hebe Frau to
the Germanic people. The religious communities placed themselves
under her special patronage. The Cistercians wore white, in honor
of her purity; the Servites, black, in respect to her sorrows; the
Franciscans enrolled themselves as champions of the Immaculate
Conception, and the Dominicans introduced the Rosary.
History has not fixed the period when Our Lady first became
a subject of veneration publicly; but it is safe to assert that from
the beginning of the second century she occupied a large place in
private devotion. This seems to be corroborated by the state-
ment that " the earliest picture of Our Lady, found in the ceme-
tery of St. Priscilla, belongs to the second century." The earliest
representations of Our Lady are those found on the Christian
sarcophagi, and in the mural frescoes of the catacombs ; but in none
of these do we find her standing alone. She usually forms part of
a group of the Nativity or the Adoration of the Magi ; and there is
no attempt at individual portraiture. From the beginning of the
fourth century the popular reverence for her had been gaining
ground, and images and pictures were introduced into the homes
of the faithful. The earliest of these are traceable to Alexandria
and to Egyptian influences.
It was doubtless the Nestorian schism (fifth century)
^Legends of the Madonna, Introduction, v.
350 OUR LADY IN ART [Dec.,
which first gave importance and significance to the group of the
Mother bearing her Divine Son. Nestorius, Patriarch of Con-
stantinople, had begun by persecuting the Arians, but he insisted
that in Christ were combined two persons and two natures,
contended that the Blessed Virgin was the Mother of Christ con-
sidered as man, but not the Mother of Christ considered as God;
and that, consequently, all those who gave her the title Theo tokos
(Mother of God) were in error. Cyril of Alexandria opposed
Nestorius and his followers, and defended the claims of the
orthodox that the Blessed Virgin was, in fact, the Mother of God ;
and that all who took away from her this dignity should be con-
demned as heretics. He anathematized the doctrines of Nestorius
in a synod held at Alexandria, in 430, to which Pope Celestine II.
gave the sanction of his authority. The Emperor Theodosius II.
then called a General Council at Ephesus, before which Nestorius
refused to appear. Nestorius was deposed from his pontificate;
but this did not end the controversy; the streets of Ephesus at the
time were disturbed by brawls, and the pavement of the cathedral
was stained by the blood of the factionists.
It is just after the Council of Ephesus that history makes
mention of a supposed authentic portrait of the Blessed Virgin. It
was sent to Constantinople by the Empress Eudoxia whilst she was
traveling in the Holy Land. This picture was regarded as of very
high antiquity, and supposed to have been painted from life. Ac-
cording to a Venetian legend, the painting was taken by the blind
Dandolo when he besieged and took Constantinople, in 1204, and
brought in triumph to Venice, where it has ever since been preserved
in the Church of St. Mark. The tradition which ascribes this por-
trait to St. Luke the Evangelist, seems to have no historic founda-
tion ; it was unknown in Western Europe before the First Crusade.
The story of its origin is probably confounded with the work of
a Greek painter named Lucca, who painted Madonnas in the
ateliers of Mount Athos.
But it is to St. Luke that we are indebted for the verbal por-
traiture of the most perfect type of womanhood exemplified in re-
ligious art; and his Gospel describes the ideal which artists have
striven to transfer to canvas, without avail. Every attribute of the
Blessed Virgin is delineated by St. Luke: 2 (i) Her humility:
Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to
thy word." (2) Her decision and prudence of character: "And
'Luke i. and xxiii.
1915.] OUR LADY IN ART 351
Mary rising up went into the hill-country with haste into the
house of Zachary, and saluted Elizabeth. (3) Her intellectual
power, as displayed in that glorious hymn, The Magnificat. (4)
Her maternal devotion to her Divine Son and her sublime fortitude,
as she stands at the foot of the Cross.
" Such was the character of Mary ; such the portrait really
painted by St. Luke, and, these scattered, artless, unintentional
notices of conduct and character converge into the most perfect
moral type of the intellectual, tender, simple and heroic woman
that ever was placed before us for our edification and example." 3
During the three centuries following the condemnation of
Nestorianism, images of the Madonna, in every form and material,
were multiplied. Painting in tempera, on linen fabric, and wooden
panels, was extensively employed, as it was preferable to mosaic
in giving tone and expression to the subject. The fanatical out-
break of Iconoclasm brought ruin to representations of the Madonna
in the East, but in the West, from the time of Charlemagne to the
First Crusade, religious art was very crude; and Marian subjects
were principally the Madonna and Child, represented according to
the conventional Byzantine form. The Crusades tended to modify
the representations of the Madonna, and the full effect of Oriental
influence became manifest in the thirteenth century, when the seed
scattered hither and thither began to bear fruit. When Innocent
III. came to the throne of Peter, he was instrumental in raising the
Papacy to a degree of splendor unknown to his predecessors, and he
thus gave religious art a new impetus. The erection of stately
edifices called for a more realistic art, and gave birth to new and
more exalted ideals, the realization of which became the dream of
every artist.
The stir of a new artistic life first appeared in the northern
Italian cities ; and Guido di Sienna and Andrea Tafi laid the foun-
dations of an artistic school, of which Duccio and Cimabue became
the exponents. These were the first Italian artists to depart from
the spectral rigidity and the severe monotony of the Byzantine
type. The story narrated by Vasari (though some doubt its au-
thenticity) regarding Cimabue's Madonna, which is still preserved
in the Ruccellai Chapel in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, in
Florence, will illustrate this departure from the conventionalism
which had till then existed : " It happened that this work was an
object of so much veneration to the people of that day, they having
3 Legends of the Madonna, Introduction, p. xl.
352 OUR LADY IN ART [Dec.,
never seen anything better, that it was carried in solemn procession,
with the sound of trumpets and other festal demonstrations, from
the house of Cimabue to the church, he himself being highly re-
warded for it The inhabitants of the neighborhood, rejoicing
in the occurrence, ever afterwards called the place Borgo Allegri."
Under the versatile genius of Giotto religious art made still
further progress ; he produced on canvas the ideas of Dante. The
latter rendered the doctrines of the Church into poetry; Giotto
and his followers gave them concrete form. Dante's sublime hymn,
towards the close of the Paradiso, 4 suggested some of the most
beautiful of Madonna subjects.
III.
The revival of classical learning, though it originally infused
elegance of form and attitude into pictorial delineations, cul-
minated in the debasement of religious art; and the introduction
of the portrait Madonna marks the transition from the reign
of Faith to the reign of taste. This began when artists had lost
the spirit of their metier and lent themselves to the service
of the nobility. This was especially remarkable in Florence where,
under the influence of the Medici, the churches were filled with
paintings which were not only devoid of a religious motif, but were
even suggestively meretricious. Art had become so debased that
Savonarola thundered forth denunciations against the artists who
prostituted their talents to worldly service, and declared that " if the
painters knew as well as he did the influence of such pictures in per-
verting simple minds, they would hold their own works in horror
and detestation." Out of this craving for novelty arose later the
school of art known as Naturalist^ " who imitated nature without
selection and produced some charming pictures ; but their religious
paintings are almost all intolerable, and their Madonnas are all
portraits. Rubens and Albano painted their wives; Allori and
Vandyke, their mistresses; Domenichino, his daughter."
The sixteenth century, however, produced some of the most
illustrious painters of Madonna subjects, among whom Raphael
stands preeminent. Not one of his Madonnas is a portrait. In
Raphael's paintings we find the holiest and highest impersonation of
Our Lady; and no artist, with possibly the exception of Fra An-
gelico, has ever delineated so sublimely her purity, power, intel-
lectuality and humility. The most celebrated of his productions
4 Canto xxxiii.
1915.] OUR LADY IN ART 353
is without doubt the Sistine Madonna, which now hangs in the
Dresden Gallery. It is said to be the most valuable painting in
existence, .and is also one of the most extensively copied works in
the world.
I have never but once seen my ideal attained [writes Mrs.
Jameson], there where Raphael inspired if ever painter was
inspired projected on the space before him that wonderful
creation which we style the Madonna di San Sisto; for there
she stands the transfigured woman, at once completely human
and completely divine, an abstraction of power, purity and
l ove poised on the empurpled air, and requiring no support;
looking out, with her melancholy, loving mouth, her slightly,
sibylline eyes, quite through the universe, to the end and con-
summation of all things sad, as if she beheld afar off the
visionary sword that was to reach her heart through Him,
now resting as enthroned on that heart; yet already exalted
through the homage of the redeemed generations who were to
salute her as Blessed. Six times have I visited the city made
famous by the possession of this treasure, and as often, when
again at a distance, with recollections disturbed by feeble copies
and prints, I have begun to think " Is it so indeed ? Is she so
divine? or does not rather the imagination encircle her with a
halo of religion and poetry, and lend grace which is not really
there?" and as often, when I returned, I have stood before it and
confessed that there is more in that form and face than I ever
yet conceived.
The seventeenth century was remarkable for the number of its
Madonnas, the finest being those produced by the Spanish school,
of which Morales, Ribera and Murillo were the representatives.
Their productions are intensely human and sympathetic in char-
acter. " There is a freshness and a depth of feeling in the
best Madonnas of the late Spanish school which puts to shame the
mannerisms of the Italians, and the naturalism of the Flemish
painters of the same period; and this because the Spaniards were
intense and enthusiastic believers, not mere thinkers, in art as in
religion."
IV.
No two schools of religious art have produced the same type of
Madonna. The old mosaics found at Ravenna, Capua and Rome
are characterized by their stern, awful quietude; Byzantine pictures,
by rigidity and lifelessness ; Italian paintings and frescoes, by pen-
VOL. en. 23
354 OUR LADY IN ART [Dec.,
sive sentiment, stately elegance, intellectuality and loveliness; the
German, by quaint simplicity; the Spanish, by life-like feeling;
and the Flemish school, by prosaic portraiture. Still
There is a vision in the heart of each,
Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness
To wrong and pain, the knowledge of their cure;
And these embodied in a woman's form
That best transmits them pure as first received
From God above her to mankind below!
There is a description of the person of Our Lady, said to have
been given by St. Epiphanius (fourth century), and by him de-
rived from a more ancient source: "She was of middle stature;
her face oval; her eyes brilliant, and of olive tint; her eyebrows
arched and black ; her hair was of pale brown ; her complexion fair
as wheat. She spoke little, but she spoke freely and affably; she
was not troubled in her speech, but grave, courteous, tranquil.
Her dress was without ornament, and in her deportment was nothing
lax or feeble." All the old traditions assume that the resemblance
between Christ and His Mother must have been perfect.
Thus in early impersonations of Our Lady, the head of Christ
was to be taken as a model in its mild, intellectual majesty, as far
as difference of age and sex would allow. With the progress of
time, evidently, other types were developed ; and the impersonation
of the Madonna fluctuated, not only with the fluctuating tendencies
of successive ages, but even with the caprices of individual artists.
In all the old representations, Our Lady appears as a woman
of mature age; such representations are found in the catacombs.
Her head is veiled; the dress is a tunic with long sleeves. The
unveiled Madonna was an innovation introduced about the end of
the fifteenth century. In the historical subjects her dress is very
simple; but in the devotional subjects which represent her as
" Queen of Heaven " she wears a splendid crown. This is often the
sovereign crown of the country in which the picture is placed;
thus, in the Papal States, she often wears the triple tiara ; in Austria,
the imperial diadem. The Child in her arms is always, in the
Byzantine and early pictures, clothed in a little tunic, usually white.
In the fifteenth century He first appears partly, then, wholly un-
draped. To this period are also referable certain accessories which
have a sacred and mystic significance when applied to the Madonna :
1915.] OUR LADY IN ART 355
The Globe is an emblem of sovereignty. When placed under
the feet of the Madonna and encircled by a serpent, it figures our
Redemption. The Serpent is the general symbol of Satan and sin ;
and may be referred to Genesis iii. 15 : " She shall crush thy head."
The Apple (the most common of all the accessories) signifies the
Fall which made Redemption necessary. The Pomegranate was
the ancient emblem of Hope. It is often placed in the hands of
the Child who presents it to His Mother. Ears of Wheat and
Grapes, placed in the hands of the Child, are symbols of the Blessed
Eucharist. The Olive-Bough is the symbol of peace on earth :
it may be referred to Dante's lines which describe the Annunciation
by the angel Gabriel:
That he bore the palm
Down unto Mary when the Son of God
Vouchsafed to clothe Him in terrestrial weeds.
Doves are expressive of Our Lady's gentleness and tenderness ;
and the seven sometimes found encircling the head of the Madonna
signify the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost, thus characterizing
her as the " Seat of Wisdom."
When art began to decline, we find animals introduced into
Madonna pictures. Thus we have Bassano's dog; Baroccio's cat;
and in a celebrated picture by Titian " La Vierge aux Lapin "
(in the Louvre) we have the rabbit.
V.
Some of the titles under which Our Lady is represented have
historic significance, whilst others are distinguished by some par-
ticular object in the composition:
Santa Maria delta Lettera derives its title from a Sicilian tradi-
tion that Our Lady (the Protectress of Messina) honored the peo-
ple of the city of Messina by writing them a letter, from Jerusalem,
" in the year of her Son, 42." In the picture she holds this letter
in her hand.
Santa Maria del Rosario is commemorative of the institution
of the Festival of the Rosary, after the Battle of Lepanto (1571),
in which the combined fleets of Christendom, led by Don Juan of
Austria, gained a signal victory over the Turks. This victory
which saved Europe from the blighting effects of Moslemism was
attributed to the special intercession of Our Lady. Pope Pius V.
356 OUR LADY IN ART [Dec.,
instituted the Festival of the Rosary to commemorate the event.
There is a splendid Madonna del Rosario (Murillo) in the Dulwich
Gallery, England.
Among other Madonnas whose titles are historic, we may men-
tion Our Lady of the Snow, Our Lady of Loreto, Our Lady of the
Pillar, Our Lady of the Girdle and Our Lady of Carmel. In addi-
tion to these there are many that derive their titles from community
or individual associations.
In the Louvre for example, is a famous Madonna della Vittorla
(Our Lady of Victory), which was dedicated in commemoration of
the victory gained by the Mantuans over the French, near Fornone,
in 1495. This is by Mantegna, and is regarded as his most im-
portant work.
Another, Madonna della Vittorla (styled also " Madonna del
Voto"), is preserved at Siena. The Sienese being at war with
Florence, placed their city under the protection of Our Lady, and
made a vow that, if victorious, they would make over their whole
territory to her as a perpetual possession, and hold it from her as
loyal vassals. After the victory of Arbia, this picture was dedicated
in her honor. The Blessed Virgin is enthroned and crowned, and
the Infant Christ, standing on her knee, holds in His hand the deed
of gift.
There are several examples of Madonnas which were executed
in thanksgiving for deliverance from plague and pestilence. One
of the most celebrated of these is the Madonna di San Sebastiano,
by Correggio (Dresden Gallery). It was painted for the city of
Modena, which was scourged by pestilence in 1512. Another ex-
ample of this class is // Pallione del Voto, painted by Guido Reni
at the command of the Senate of Bologna after the cessation of
the plague which desolated that city in 1630.
Votive Madonnas dedicated by the piety of families are
frequently met with. Of this type is the Madonna della Famiglia
Bentivoglio, painted by Costa for Giovanni II., tyrant of Bologna
from 1462 to 1506. It may still be seen in the Church of San
Giacomo, at Bologna.
A most precious votive picture is the Madonna of the Meyer
Family, painted by Holbein for Jacob Meyer, burgomaster of Basle.
This painting (now in the Dresden Gallery) is regarded as one of
the most wonderful specimens of Madonna art; and "in purity,
dignity and intellectual grace, this exquisite Madonna has never
been surpassed, not even by Raphael; the face, once seen, forever
1915-] OUR LADY IN ART 357
lives in memory." One of Raphael's most artistic productions is
a votive Madonna The Madonna di Foligno which has an inter-
esting history. It was executed for Sigismund Conti of Foligno,
private secretary to Pope Julius II. , in thanksgiving for having
been preserved from destruction by a meteor. Raphael painted it
in his twenty-eighth year, and it was placed over the high altar
of the Ara Cceli (Rome), in 1511. Conti died in 1512, and a
relative (a religious of Foligno) obtained permission to remove it
to her convent, whence it was carried off by the French, in 1712.
Returned to Italy in 1815, it is now among the treasures of the
Vatican.
Some celebrated Madonna pictures are distinguished by titles
derived from some particular object in the composition, e. g.,
Raphael's Madonna del Impawned a (Pitti Palace, Florence) is
so called from the window in the background being partly shaded
with a piece of linen; the Madonna dell Pesce (Madrid Gallery)
derives its title from the " fish " which the young Tobias presents
to Our Lady; the Madonna del Cardellino (Florence Gallery) is
named from the " goldfinch " held in the hands of the Child Christ;
and the Vierge a la Diadenie (Louvre) is so called from the
" diadem " with which Our Lady is crowned.
There is a painting by Caracci (Bridge water Collection) styled
La Vierge aux Censes (Our Lady of the Cherries). The allusion
is to a quaint old legend which relates that before the birth of Our
Lord, the Blessed Virgin wished to taste of certain cherries which
hung upon a tree above her head ; she requested St. Joseph to pro-
cure them for her ; and when he reached to pluck them, the branch
bowed down to his hand.
Correggio's Vierge au Panier (Our Lady of the Basket),
National Gallery, London, is so called from the work-basket which
stands besides Our Lady; Da Vinci's La Vierge aux Balances (Our
Lady of the Scales), from the scales held in the hands of the Child;
and Murillo's Virgen de la Serviletta (The Virgin of the Napkin)
derives its name from the dinner-napkin on which it was painted.
Murillo, so it is narrated, was once visiting a Franciscan monastery
near Madrid, and after dinner a lay brother asked him for a
souvenir. The souvenir was " The Madonna of the Napkin."
Lady ! thy goodness, thy magnificence,
Thy virtue, and thy great humility,
Surpass all science and all utterance.
HOW CHRISTMAS CAME TO ROGER BYRNE.
BY MARTINA JOHNSTON.
HE lighthouse at Point Selkirk was without a keeper.
Larson, the last incumbent, a blonde, taciturn Swede,
who had performed his duties for three years with
the regularity of an automaton, had suddenly disap-
peared one wild October night. His disappearance
was enveloped in mystery, but as the stanch government rowboat
was also missing at the same time, the dwellers in the small lumber
and fishing village settled down to the conviction that he had gone
out fishing alone, as he often did, and had been swept out to sea in
the fierce gale that rose when the sun went down, lashing the waves
into flying foam and rocking the giant trees in the forest. Dead ?
Drowned ? Sure ! What open boat could ride out such a storm as
that?
Of how they were mistaken in their conclusions, of how the
wily Swede, under cover of the darkness and the storm, had de-
camped with the boat, and had succeeded in making his way to the
recently discovered gold-diggings in Alaska, they were to learn at
a subsequent day.
As the lighthouse was one of the most important on a dan-
gerous coast, shedding its guiding beams upon the watery pathway
of the huge liners from the Orient as well as that of the coastwise
fleet from Alaska and San Francisco, the most urgent concern was
to find a successor to him who had vanished so mysteriously.
Williams, the harbor-master, a puffy little man with scanty
breath, was compelled to serve as temporary makeshift till the
right man could be found. He had not long to wait. Into the
dingy little office on the water front a few days later stepped a man
who said in a quiet voice, " I hear you're wanting a man for the
lighthouse, sir."
The harbor-master looked up from the schedule of incoming
and outgoing vessels on which he was at work, and saw, standing
just within the door, a tall man with iron-gray hair and spare frame,
but with erect and vigorous carriage. A pair of mild blue eyes
looked forth from a weather-beaten face, on which Time had graven
his impress in many a deep furrow. Williams was pleased with
him at first sight.
1915-] HOW CHRISTMAS CAME TO ROGER BYRNE 359
" Who are you ? " he inquired.
" My name is Roger Byrne, sir."
" Where are you from ? "
" I'm an Irishman, sir."
" An Irishman ! Humph ! You don't look it, and you don't
speak like one."
" I'm a long time in this country, and I've traveled a deal, sir,"
replied Byrne.
" What have you been doing up to this time ? "
" A little of everything; I'm handy at most things, sir."
" O, I see, a sort of Jack-of -all-trades. Can you handle a
boat?"
" I can, sir."
" Have you good lungs and plenty of breath? Can you climb
a hundred steps without a fit of apoplexy ? " asked Williams with
a vivid recollection of his own recent experiences. -
" I've no difficulty at all in that line, sir," replied Byrne.
" Good! Just one question more; do you drink? "
" Not a drop, sir."
" That settles it. You are lighthouse keeper at Point Selkirk.
Can you go over at once ? "
" I can."
" Very well, I'll send a man over with you to show you about
the place and instruct you in your duties. There's little to do, but
that little must be done well. You've said nothing about wages.
You will get fifty dollars a month and your keep."
Byrne nodded as if the matter of wages was one of slight
importance to him.
" One word more," said Williams. " For any neglect of duty
you will be discharged at once, do you understand ? "
" Yes, yes," answered Byrne, " I understand, sir."
That night, after lighting the great lantern, Byrne seated him-
self on the balcony of his turret and gazed out to seaward. It was
a calm, moonless, almost starless night, and as he listened to the
rhythmical wash of the breakers upon the rocks far below him, he
thought with keen satisfaction of his good fortune in finding this
snug place, which seemed to him a haven of rest from his wan-
derings.
His naive remark to Williams : " I've traveled a deal, sir,"
conveyed but a faint idea of the nomadic life he had lived for
upwards of forty years, driven onward like a wind-blown leaf by
the unrest in his bosom, which had never once been stilled in all that
360 HOW CHRISTMAS CAME TO ROGER BYRNE [Dec.,
time. The varied scenes of his wanderings passed in a long pro-
cession before his mind's eye, as he contrasted them with the shel-
tered and peaceful life upon which he was now entering.
Again he saw himself in his remote young manhood, fleeing
with his girl wife and their delicate babe from the gaunt spectre of
famine in their own land. There had been a sharp wrenching
asunder of tender home ties and associations ; then the fetid air and
wretched accommodations of the over-crowded emigrant ship;
while yet many a league from shore, the dreaded ship fever had
made its appearance. Among its earliest victims were the wife and
child of Roger Byrne. A shotted canvas sack formed shroud and
burial casket for both, and with scant ceremony they were consigned
to their last resting place beneath the waves of the stormy Atlantic.
A splash, a momentary ripple on the surface as the gruesome object
cleaved the blue waters; then they closed over it, sparkling and
dancing as if in mockery of the broken-hearted man on the deck,
who was watching in wordless grief the fast receding spot which
had swallowed up all he held dearest on earth.
" Brace up, my poor fellow, bear it like a man," said the Cap-
tain, laying a kindly hand upon his shoulder.
" I'll try, sir; I'll do my best," he answered in a broken voice.
The welcome shores of the new world that soon after broke
upon the longing eyes of the exiles, brought no joy to him. After
landing in New York he separated from his fellow-travelers, and
then began the drifting existence which for four decades was the
only one he had known. There were few parts of the Western
Hemisphere which he had not traversed at some period of his wan-
derings. Of late, however, the weight of years had begun to press
upon him more and more heavily, and he longed for rest. He had
hardly dared to indulge the hope for it, when, by what he devoutly
regarded as a special providence, he had been led to this out-of-
the-way spot to find a niche all ready for him to fill.
While he was thus absorbed in retrospection, the wind had
risen and was now dashing the spray high up against the lighthouse,
and driving the incoming tide over the rocks with a hoarse, sullen
roar. With a sense of comfort altogether new to him, Roger Byrne
drew his warm coat more closely about him as he descended to his
cheerful room, where a driftwood fire was smouldering in the wide
fireplace, and was soon wrapped in peaceful slumber, lulled by the
dull murmur of the storm that reached him through the thick walls.
When the long winter nights came on, he wovld sit before the
open hearth and smoke pipe after pipe of strong tobacco, arid 2
1915-] HOW CHRISTMAS CAME TO ROGER BYRNE 361
the flickering flames leaped upward and made weird shadows on the
wall, his spirit rose on the fragrant smoke wreaths and drifted far,
far away over mountains, seas and plains to the sunny vales of
his native land, and friendly faces looked tenderly out at him from
the crumbling embers of the huge black log in the chimney.
The tranquil days succeeded one another like the beads on a
rosary. After polishing the great lens and making everything tidy,
Byrne loved to sit on the balcony overlooking the ocean and watch
the grand water panorama which was constantly shifting before his
eyes; the white-winged steamers with their wavering banners of
smoke, the flocks of sea gulls cleaving the air on level pinion or
sitting gracefully on the rolling billows. Through his glass he
could see shoals of porpoises at play like frolicsome schoolboys,
and, farther off, a feathery column of spray followed by a gleam of
the huge brown back of a whale.
Day after day he watched the creeping tide cover the sands and
then retire, marking each step of its retreat with a windrow of pale
green seaweed and stranded shell fishes. The mysterious heart-
throbs of the ocean, now pealing like thunder, now rippling softly
as summer wavelets on an inland lake, thrilled him as no human
speech could do.
Behind the lighthouse were gigantic evergreen forests, solemn,
immense, while overtopping these, their snowy peaks clearly defined
against the blue sky, rose the magnificent range of the Olympic
Mountains. Across the bay, in a sheltered nook, was the strag-
gling village with its two saw-mills and a salmon cannery, with
foreign ships occasionally lying at its wharf loading lumber and
fish for distant ports.
Among the blackened stumps which formed a conspicuous fea-
ture of the village landscape, on a gentle eminence, rose the white
walls of a modest chapel where Mass was celebrated once a month
by a priest from the big city thirty miles away. Byrne was a
regular attendant at church on those occasions, but he stood alool
from his fellow-worshippers, never seeking the acquaintance of the
plain but kindly people who made up the small congregation, and
who, in their turn, regarded him as, to say the least, " queer."
In his solitude between the vastness of the sea and the sky, his
lonely communings with nature had put him out of touch with his
kind.
Thus, for two years he had kept his lamp trimmed and burning,
when, on a sudden, a deadly languor seemed to steal upon his once
stalwart frame. When he trimmed his lamp his hands shook like
362 HOW CHRISTMAS CAME TO ROGER BYRNE [Dec.,
aspens, and he found himself obliged to rest a dozen times while
climbing the stairs. He was compelled to give up going to Mass on
the accustomed Sundays of the month, because the labor of rowing
the boat was too much for his enfeebled strength ; and his reticence,
which his co-religionists had mistaken for churlishness, effectually
prevented any inquiries concerning him from that quarter. On
Christmas Eve he had lighted his lamp as usual, and then seated
himself, gazing off to seaward as was his custom.
In this favored spot, Christmas is not ushered in by drifting
snows and polar cold. A light, moist breeze just stirred the bosom
of the water and lifted the thin white locks from the old man's
temples as he bared his head to its refreshing breath. The full
moon shone from a soft, starlit sky.
Perhaps it was the spell of the hallowed day and hour, com-
bined with the moonlight and the mysterious voices of the sea, that
stirred tender memories in the old man's heart and wrought strange
hallucinations in his brain. His emotions overpowered him. He
stretched out his arms yearningly toward the infinite space with the
cry, " Oh, Mollie, Jamie, come back to me ! "
Suddenly, as if in answer to his heart- wrung prayer, and
before the echo of his cry had died away, something rose up out of
the black abyss of waters and moved toward him down the shimmer-
ing pathway of rosy light reflected from his lantern. It came on
swiftly, seeming to float, rather than to tread upon the waters,
until now he could plainly distinguish the graceful outlines of a
woman's form holding a babe in her arms. She paused upon the
illuminated spot close to the tower, and lifted her shining eyes,
filled with love, to those of the lonely watcher on the balcony.
He was thrilled through and through; not with fear, but with
delight and wonder.
A great sob broke from his heart and he extended his arms
murmuring, " I knew you'd come to me, Mollie ; I've waited for
you so long, so long ! "
He wiped away the tears that were raining down his cheeks,
and when he looked again where the beautiful vision had stood,
he saw only the frothing waves running in over the yellow sands.
With a lighter heart in his bosom than he had known for many a
year, he descended to his room and retired to rest, a happy light
in his eyes, and a happy smile on his withered lips.
In the early morning of the day after Christmas, the harbor-
master strode into the silent room with a heavy tread, and going
up to the bedside, said in a gruff voice, " Hello, old man, wake
1915.] PEACE ON EARTH 363
up ! Aren't you through celebrating yet ? Are you sick or drunk ?
The Albatross went on the rocks last night, and two men were
drowned, I'm sorry for you, but I'm afraid you've lost your job.
Come, get up," and he shook the still form rudely. An instant
later he fell back, awe-stricken, and beat a hasty retreat to his boat,
muttering, " Poor old fellow ; and all alone ! Too bad, too bad !
We'll have hard work to find another like him."
Roger Byrne's wanderings were over. Christmas morn had
dawned for him on a celestial shore, where Mollie and Jamie were
waiting for him, and where partings are no more forever.
PEACE ON EARTH.
BY ANNE STUART BAILEY.
IN shameless sin the world lay steeped,
While Roman pride and Roman arms
Held captive heart and brain. God
Seemed forgot on His sad earth
Where cruelty and hate and wrong
And outcry of th' oppressed long
Made discord 'mongst the sons of men.
But on the calm Judean hills
While fell the tender pitying snow
Upon the* bare and scarred earth,
The Babe Divine, in wondrous birth,
Descended from His throne on high
And hid from Justice* sterner eye
With mantle of His tender love
The sinful deeds of warring men,
And hushed the sounds of woe.
And shall we now, O Prince of Peace,
Our heritage of love forget?
No! We will open wide our hearts
To take Thee in, and show Thee forth
To Thy redeemed this holy time.
Send down, we pray, Thy gift sublime
That Peace on earth may reign once more.
SOME CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF FEMININE
EDUCATION.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.
N recent years it has been more widely and generously
recognized that the mediaeval convents provided
refuges of peace and tranquillity for women,
who, feeling themselves without a domestic vocation,
found in these institutions the fullest opportunity for
the satisfaction of the intellectual life as well as suitable surround-
ings for the cultivation of the spiritual. Even with this newer,
truer attitude of mind toward the religious orders of women of the
Middle Ages, there remains, however, in the minds of some the
feeling that the convents had, like every human institution, their
period of efflorescence and then of decay; and that at the end of
the thousand years of the Middle Ages they had become by an
almost inevitable law of human history outworn relics of a previous
state of evolution which had now to be abandoned if further
progress was to be made.
According to this assumption the convents of the fifteenth cen-
tury were to a great extent merely homes of idleness in which
women who feared to face the problems of life, or who having
faced them had failed, took refuge for the rest of their days within
monastic walls. For those who hold such opinions the exhibit of
the Plimpton collection of books and other objects relating to fem-
inine education from 300 A. D. to our own time, and already dis-
cussed in the November issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, furnishes
ample corrective. But before and after the Reformation, so-
called, the convents continued to be the centres of influence among
the best and most progressive women of every land; queens and
noble women of high culture were deeply interested in them, often
spent days and weeks within their walls, affiliated themselves with
the sisterhoods, and showed a thorough appreciation of their work.
This is very well illustrated by Vittoria Colonna's relations to
the convents of Rome and those of other parts of Italy. She has
well been called the Saint of the Renaissance. She is one of the
most charming women of history, " a woman to be proud of, un-
touched by scandal, unspoiled by praise, incapable of any ungen-
1915-] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 365
erous action, unconvicted of one uncharitable word." It is well
known what an influence for good she exerted upon her time. To
have influenced Michelangelo as deeply as she did, would of itself
have been the proof of her high intelligence and lofty character.
In her widowhood she spent much time in convents. Indeed, the
Pope realizing how great her influence for good was, and fearing
lest through grief for her husband she might enter a convent, forbade
her reception without special permission. At her death she was
buried in the habit of the Benedictines in the little convent grave-
yard. There could be no greater tribute to the convents at that
time than this, and at the same time no more complete demonstration
of their high place and influence in the life of the time.
Probably the most effective refutation of the opinion that in
the Northern and Teutonic countries convent life had lost its pris-
tine vigor, or failed to attract intellectual women, is the story
of Charity Pirkheimer and her Convent of Poor Clares at Nurem-
berg. They had been closely in touch with the development in the
arts and the renewal of interest in literature which came during
the century of the Renaissance in this little German town. Through
Willibald Pirkheimer, her brother, Charity the Abbess was the per-
sonal friend of Albrecht Diirer and many others who made Nurem-
berg famous. I have told in my book on The Century of Columbus
that when Conrad Celtes published his collection of the works of
Roswitha, the nun dramatist of the tenth century, he presented one
of the first copies of the book to Charity Pirkheimer, and in a
eulogy written on that occasion lauds her as one of the glorious
ornaments of the German fatherland. And yet she did not hesitate
to suggest to him that some of his poems, of which he inclosed
copies to her at the same time, were calculated to do more harm
than good, and that he should lift his mind and poetry above the
sensual to higher things.
It was the convent thus happily ruled that fell under the dis-
favor of the Reformation. The reformers who came to Nurem-
berg forced the nuns to leave their convents, and drove them
homeless upon the world. Some of Charity Pirkheimer's letters
describing her efforts to preserve their community life, and assure
the happiness of the women that were with her, are sad indeed.
Her efforts were of very little avail, or at least brought only a truce
for a time. The property was valuable, and this represented another
reason for the attempts to break up the convent. Her sister Clara
and her niece Catrina, the daughter of Willibald, were with her,
366 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Dec.,
and eventually succeeded her in turn as abbess, but the temper of
the Reformation was entirely opposed to the happy retirement that
these educated women found so suitable. If one wishes to see
in brief the reason why interest in feminine education declined, and
all opportunities for it gradually disappeared in the Protestant
countries, it is only necessary to read aright the story of what
happened at Nuremberg, and above all the letters and memoirs of
Charity Pirkheimer.
Further evidence of our present thesis, that feminine education
flourished in the North as well as in the South through the con-
ventual life, may be found in the history of the famous Monastery
of Syon, the well-known cope from which (one of the greatest pieces
of needlework in the world) is among the precious treasures of
South Kensington Museum, London. Miss Mary Bateson, an As-
sociate and Lecturer of Newnham, the college for women at Cam-
bridge, edited some years ago the catalogue of the Library of Syon. 1
This gives a number of suggestive hints as to the intellectual inter-
ests of English convents and of religious communities controlled by
women at this time. Syon was what is known as a Brigittine
Convent, belonging to an Order founded by St. Bridget of Sweden
about the middle of the fourteenth century. The feature most
interesting to the modern mind of these convents was that
though there were monks and nuns living in separate houses
in each of these institutions, the order was founded principally for
women, the monks were added to give the nuns the spiritual help
they needed, and the supreme government was vested in the abbess.
According to the rule, these convents were obliged to give all
their surplus income every year to the poor, and the abbess was
strictly enjoined from building larger .buildings than were neces-
sary for the community. There was, however, one exception to
these restraints. The abbey might have as many books for their
library as were necessary for study, though there must be no ex-
penditure on books merely for recreation purposes.
As a consequence of this provision in the rules, at least two
of these monasteries possessed libraries that are famous in the
history of bibliography. One of these is Syon, of which we shall
have more to say, and the other was the Motherhouse at Wadstena,
or Vadstena, in Sweden, which had at the time of its suppression by
the Reformers in 1540 " one of the finest libraries of the North, its
1 Catalogue of the Library of Syon Monastery, Isleworth. Cambridge: At the
University Press, 1898.
1915-] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 367
books being now scattered in the collections of Upsala, Stockholm,
Skokloster and Linkoping, where they may be recognized by their
writing, binding and monastic class work " (Bateson).
Syon was founded in the early part of the fifteenth century
when English interest in the Brigittine Order awoke, after King
Henry IV.'s daughter Philippa went to Sweden to become the wife
of Eric, King of Sweden, Norway and Denmark. A few years
later Philippa visited for a second time Wadstena, one of the most
important monasteries in Sweden, and promised to live there if
she should become a widow. It was after this that in 1416 the
foundation of the Church of Syon of the Monastery of St. Saviour
and St. Bridget of Syon of the Order of St. Augustine was laid.
At first it was near Twickenham, but the manor of Islesworth
was given to the nuns in 1422, and the convent was transferred
there. Some idea of the importance of Syon before its suppression
may be gathered from the fact that Professor Thorold Rogers, in
his History of Prices, drew many of the statistics for his study from
the agricultural accounts of the monastery of Syon's home farm.
The catalogue of the Library of Syon, which was edited by
Miss Bateson a few years ago, is one of the manuscripts of Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge. It shows very clearly how broad
were the interests of the community, and furnishes many interest-
ing details of the care and arrangement of libraries. The books
were arranged in subject groups by the cataloguer, the groups
being designated after the mediaeval custom by capital letters A to
V. Miss Bateson in her introduction to the edition of her cata-
logue says (p. vii.) :
Generally speaking A includes Grammar and Classics (77
volumes) ; B, Medicine, Astrology, a few Classics (55) ; C,
Philosophy (46) ; D, Commentaries on the Sentences (128) ; E,
Bibles and Concordances (75) ; F-I, Commentaries on the Old
and New Testaments (232) ; K, History (65) ; L, Dictionaries
(58); M, Lives of the Saints (121); N, Fathers (88); O,
Devotional Tracts (98) ; P to S, chiefly Sermons, over 70 books
in each class; T, Canon Law (104) ; V, Civil Law (21). The
size of the volume does not determine its shelf ; folios, quartos,
and octavos are sometimes placed side by side. Space has been
left for 1,465 volumes, and the titles of 1,421 have been entered.
This, of course, by no means, represents the number of distinct
works in the library, for some volumes contain many treatises
which have been bound together to economize building space.
368 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Dec.,
The library was evidently a working library, for a large propor-
tion of the books are those prescribed in the various mediaeval uni-
versity courses. There are indications that in all likelihood the Li-
brary of Syon was used, like many other monastic libraries, as a
lending library. If the value of the book were deposited anyone
might draw out a volume from these libraries, or certain pledges
might be left for them.
Records are in existence of the gifts made to the library, and
the names of donors are usually recorded in the catalogue. Two of
the donors are Swedes, which shows that the sense of relationship
between the Swedish and the English foundation was not lost.
There are six women donors, among whom the Duchess of Clar-
ence gave six volumes. One of the largest donors of printed books
was Dr. Richard Reynolds, who had been a fellow of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge, and who was hanged for denying the Royal
Supremacy in 1535. His name occurs as a donor no less than
ninety-four times.
The question of what became of all these books at the time of
the dissolution of the monastery, must ever remain a mystery.
Only six of the books have as yet been identified as in English
libraries. Bishop John Bale has told in general the story of what
became of these books in his preface to Leland's New Year's Gift
to Henry VIII. in 1549. Bishop Bale was an enthusiastic advocate
of the Reformation, and helped in the suppression of the mon-
asteries, but he cannot repress his regret and indignation over
what became of the monastic books.
Never had we been offended for the loss of our libraries,
being so many in number and in so desolate places for the more
part, if the chief monuments and most notable works of our
excellent writers had been reserved. If there had been in every
shire of England but one solemn library to the preservation of
those noble works and preferment of good learnings in our
posterity, it had been yet somewhat. But, to destroy all with-
out consideration, a great number of them which purchased
those superstitious mansions reserved of those library books
some to scour their candlesticks, and some to rub their
boots. Some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and
some over sea to the bookbinders, not in small number, but
at times whole ships full, to the wondering of the foreign
nations. Yea, the universities of this realm are not all clear
in this detestable fact. But cursed is (he) which seeketh to be
1915.] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 369
fed with such ungodly gains and so deeply shameth his natural
country. I know a merchant man, which shall at this time be
nameless, that bought the contents of two noble libraries for
forty shillings' price, a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff
hath he occupied in the stead of gray paper by the space of
more than these ten years, and yet he hath store enough for as
many years to come. I judge this to be true, and utter it with
heaviness, that neither the Britains under the Romans and
Saxons, nor yet the English people under the Danes and Nor-
mans, had ever such damage of their learned monuments as we
have seen in our time.
Such was the Reformation's gift to education.
And so the Library of the Monastery of Syon disappeared as
did many others. A few were saved, but they are almost as
nothing compared to the immense number that were lost. It is
because of this enormous destruction of the records of the culture
of the later Middle Ages that there grew the impression of the
absence of interests that would have been vouched for so clearly
had these libraries been preserved. As it is, the records that are
now being unearthed, scanty as they are, furnish abundant proof
of the old-time monastic, intellectual interests. The catalogue
of the Library at Syon is probably that of the monks rather than
of the nuns, though we know from some of the rules that the
Sisters also had a library, and we know from the tradition estab-
lished at Wadstena, the motherhouse of the order, that the nuns'
library was likely to have been even more valuable than that of
the monks. We know that there was a second library at Syon,
for it is reported that the librarian of the nuns' library was held
responsible for the prayers for donors of books in her keeping.
It seems that it was the custom for donors to ask that certain prayers
should be said for them in return for their gifts of books, and the
librarian had charge of securing these prayers regularly or else
saying them herself.
It was from Syon that, as Wynkyn de Worde tells us, he
obtained the manuscript from which he printed The Dialogues and
Revelations of the New Seraphical Spouse of Christ, St. Catherine
of Siena. The expenses of publishing this book which, in that
early day of printing, were very great, were borne by " a right
worshipful and devout gentleman, Master Richard Sutton, Esq.,
Steward of the Holy Monastery of Syon." Master Sutton seems
to have been one of the special benefactors of education in his time,
VOL. en. 24
370 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Dec.,
for, as noted by Miss Bateson, he was one of the founders of
Brasenose College, Oxford, and made a series of donations to Syon
in his will.
The story of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond
and Derby, who died just at the beginning of the sixteenth century,
also proves beyond question the interest of the women of that time
in scholarship and of their wise patronage of education. One of
the great women of history, Lady Margaret, was instrumental in
bringing to an end the disastrous Wars of the Roses. Her son, the
head of the Lancastrian party, became King Henry VII. At his
mother's advice he married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward
IV., the head of the Yorkists, and this put an end to the civil wars
that had been ruining England's efforts for good in every line.
Lady Margaret was famous for her private charities and her
benevolence to religious houses. Few women had as much oppor-
tunity as she to know exactly what the monasteries and convents
of England were doing during the generation just before their
dissolution. A munificent patron of learning, she established
" readerships " or, as they are now called, " The Lady Margaret
Professorships " in Divinity at Oxford and Cambridge ; refounded
Christ's College for a master, twelve fellows and forty-seven schol-
ars, and established St. John's College, Cambridge, in place of the
ancient foundation of St. John's Hospital. By provision in her
will, she made a foundation for the endowment of a college for a
master and fifty scholars. It was she who invited Erasmus to
England, guaranteeing his expenses. What is of special interest
for us here is that she was particularly beneficent toward the con-
vents, having had herself enrolled as a sister in a number of
houses, so as to be able to help them in any way that she could.
Besides, in her own establishment, she provided for the education
of numbers of young men and young women. She made a series
of translations, was a patron of Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde, and
one of the most important factors in the Renaissance in England.
After Lady Margaret Beaufort, the three most significant
influences in feminine education in England at the time of the Ren-
aissance, are represented in Mr. Plimpton's collection by portraits
of three great women in the direct line in one family whose names
are not always associated with educational institutions and their
encouragement, though they eminently deserve such an honor.
Quite contrary to the opinion usually held in English-speaking
countries as regards education, and above all feminine education in
1915-] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 371
Spain at this time, these influences were all Spanish in origin.
They are Isabella the Catholic of Spain, Queen Catherine of Aragon,
her daughter, the Consort of Henry VIIL, and Mary Tudor, Queen
of England, Isabella's granddaughter. Isabella herself has re-
ceived her proper meed of recognition as a distinct influence in
feminine education only in recent years. At least, in English-
speaking countries, it is only since Prescott's magnificent
panegyric of her that her surpassing worth in this regard
has been recognized. Recent historical research has emphasized
how much she accomplished for feminine education in Spain, and
how much her influence meant for her daughter, Queen Catherine
of Aragon, and the corresponding influence that she came to exert
in England.
Isabella herself not having had the opportunities for the higher
education when she was younger, sat on the benches with her own
children in order to study the classics, and by so doing set an
example that was widely followed in the Spain of her time, and the
force of which was felt before long in other countries. Prescott
declares that " female education in Isabella's day embraced a wider
compass of erudition in reference to the ancient languages than is
common at present." That rather solemn statement looks almost
humorous when one realizes how few and maimed were the oppor-
tunities for higher feminine education in Prescott's day.
It has been too much the custom to think of the women of the
Renaissance and their fine opportunities for intellectual develop-
ment as limited to Italy or to the Latin countries. The English
ladies of the century from 1450 to 1550 (as I have brought out in
my Century of Columbus), not only shared fully in educational op-
portunities, but knew how to take advantage of them to the best
possible benefit of themselves and their time. Lady Jane Grey,
Margaret More, Mary, Queen of Scots, though of course her edu-
cation was French and not English, and Queen Elizabeth herself
are striking examples of this. Erasmus thought that the girls of
the More family were as finely educated as any students that he met
anywhere in Europe.
But a change came over Europe everywhere with regard to
feminine education immediately after the so-called Reformation.
As Mrs. Putnam has emphasized, " Luther had a thoroughly Mo-
hammedan notion of woman's status only as a wife and mother
had she a right to exist. Her education became a matter of no
importance and virtually ceased." I need only mention the names
372 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Dec.,
, *
of such other reformers as Knox or Calvin, or that greatest reformer
of them all, King Henry VIIL, to make it clear that a movement
in which they were prominent factors could scarcely do much for
the uplift of women and, above all, for feminine education. As a
consequence decadence in this department at once becomes marked.
Even Fuller, the English Divine of the seventeenth century, cannot
help but bewail, though he dislikes convents and cannot conceal that
dislike even in the midst of his praise, the fact that these schools
of religious women no longer existed. He wrote : " Yea, give me
leave to say if such feminine foundations had still continued,
happily the weaker sex besides the avoiding modern inconveniences
might be heightened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been
obtained."
The eighteenth century marked the lowest ebb in feminine
education. This is not surprising, once we realize that the latter
half of the eighteenth century represents a great descent in nearly
every form of intellectual organization and humanitarian purpose.
Newman thought there was less teaching done at Oxford about the
middle of that century than at any time in its history. Winckel-
mann, at the end of the eighteenth century, had to have his pupils
write out their texts of Plato when he wanted them to study that
author, because no edition had been printed for two centuries in
Germany. This is also the time when the sick were unattended ; the
insane were abused, and the poor neglected. The reason for this
was that the government had taken over education and charity.
It had taken from the management of women hospitals and asylums,
and schools for the education of women. Decadence set in very
swiftly, and soon reached a point where a reaction had to come.
Doubtless one of the surprises of the Plimpton exhibit for some
will be the picture of the Ursuline Convent in Quebec, so long
antedating organized efforts for feminine education in this country,
and emphasizing the fact that the Indians were cared for in this
regard as well as the whites. Simple though it is, it is a striking
symbol that should be a landmark in history. It is not generally
realized that the French and Spanish" took ever so much better care
than did the English of the native Indians. As a consequence there
are more Indians alive in South America to-day than there were
when Columbus landed. This has greatly added to the complexity
of the problem of governing these countries, but we have simplified
ours by obliterating the Indian and putting an enduring stigma
on our history.
1915-] CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION 373
The fact that this Ursuline Convent was burned down twice
within the first couple of decades after its erection, and yet was so
faithfully rebuilt each time larger and better than before in spite
of the difficulties and the hardships of the colonists, shows how
determined were the French settlers to provide education for their
girls. These pictures open up the vista of the story of the Ursu-
lines in education, a most important chapter in the history of
feminine education. Just as the Renaissance was closing, a little
woman in Desenzano in Italy was tempted by the reawakening of
the intellectual life around her to provide education for young girls.
She began very simply by opening a school. She succeeded so
admirably that she was invited to Brescia, and further developed
her good work there. A little later, while on a visit to Rome in
the interest of her work, she was pressed to stay there by the
Pope, but hesitated about seeking this larger field until her efforts
had been more thoroughly consolidated. She asked to be allowed
to go back to Brescia and continue her work there. This was
Angela de Merici, who afterwards came to be known as St. Angela,
the founder of the Ursulines.
The Ursulines at Quebec, early in the seventeenth century,
were just one example of the great Catholic tradition. When they
came to Canada they were doing only what their sisters had done
in the preceding century in going even as far as China, and when
the little band of Ursulines came to New Orleans about 1725 and
opened the first hospital in what is now the United States, they were
following the same age-old tradition. In our time the Ursulines
have been with the Indian in the Rocky Mountains in the early
days before the American cities grew up there, and they are now
in Alaska, everywhere doing educational and social work of the
highest importance, and bringing to bear that most precious of in-
fluences, woman's gentle purity and the reverence it so meritably
evokes among men. The Ursulines have spread all over the United
States; besides their academies, they have also their colleges, and
are succeeding admirably in even the very latest phases of feminine
education.
Their first experience in the Eastern part of the United States
was not very encouraging. They founded a house at Charlestown,
Massachusetts, not far from Boston, indeed within sight of the
battlefield of Bunker Hill. In spite of this contiguity to a scene
that should bring the security of liberty, the convent- was burned by
a bigoted mob determined to wipe out " the home of superstition
374 CHAPTERS IN FEMININE EDUCATION [Dec.,
and ignorance." Institutions for the education of girls in New
England were only too few, but the prejudices aroused would not
allow Catholics to take up any such good work. That was in 1835.
Within the next twenty years another convent of the Ursulines was
burned in Philadelphia, and threats were made that still further
burnings would take place if the nuns would not give up their work.
It might be well for Protestants, who have lost this bigotry
and who lament the stigma cast by it upon the American people,
to realize that at the present time in certain parts of the South and
West, where some know no more about nuns and convents than did
the fanatics in New England in the thirties or those in Philadel-
phia in the fifties, the same false appeal to prejudice against the
nuns is being used. There should surely be wide interest at the
present time that no further incidents of this kind are allowed to
blacken the course of American history.
In their preface to The Cambridge Modern History the editors
make use of an expression which I frequently quote, but which I
think cannot be too often brought to the attention of those interested
in history as it is now being written. They said : " Great additions
have of late been made to our knowledge of the past; the long
conspiracy against the revelation of truth has gradually given way,
and competing historians all over the civilized world have been
zealous to take advantage of the change." Nowhere in history that
I know is the truth of that expression more manifest than with
regard to the story of woman's place and influence in the intellectual,
social and humanitarian life of the past. The Plimpton exhibit, by
calling attention to some of the chapters in the history of old-time
feminine education, should be enlightening. It may be said that
the real history of woman under Christianity is only just beginning
to be written. It is indeed time, as the editors of The Cambridge
Modern History suggest, " to discard conventional history," and
though " ultimate history cannot be obtained in this generation "
yet at least a much nearer approximation to it than has been familiar
in even the recent past can be secured without difficulty.
"MANE, NOBISCUM, DOMINE!"
BY AN URSULINE NUN.
(On the Occasion of a Fellow Ursuline's Diamond Jubilee.)
STAY with me, Lord, my soul hath need of Thee
At close of day,
The evening shades now gently fall on me,
Ah! how Thy wondrous love hath followed me
Upon life's way!
My heart is full when I look back, and trace
The path I've trod;
The days of bliss, the years of saving grace,
A life spent in Thine Own abiding place,
This " House of God."
Let me confide unto Thy Heart to-day
What fills mine own.
How can I tell Thee all that I would say?
My debt that I can never hope to pay
With years has grown.
In early youth, ere life had left its stain,
I heard Thy call,
And, gazing upwards, caught Thy voice again,
Bidding me follow closer in Thy train,
And give Thee all.
For Thou hadst blessed work to me assigned,
Within Thy Fold:
Wayward souls in bondage sweet to bind;
Erring ones to seek out and to find;
A harvest gold!
Hearts to adorn for Thy " First- Visit " blest,
In Gift Divine;
Souls to lead onward in their ardent quest,
Who sought to give Thee of their lives the best
By vow sublime.
376 "MANE, NOBISCUM, DOMINE!" [Dec.,
But now, the evening shadows soft and gray
Fall round my feet
With tender mercy Thou hast judged my day,
Oh! while Thy grace upheld me in the way
Thy yoke was sweet!
" Thy portion of the harvest field is sown ; "
I hear Thee say:
" Others must bear the burden thou hast borne ;
Come thou aside and rest with Me alone;
Thou hast toil'd all day.
For I would spend the eventide with thee
And whisper low
Secrets divine; conic closer unto Me,
That on thy heart My love in torrents free
May overflow."
Ah! blessed eventide of life so fair,
When toil is o'er,
And far removed from turmoil and from care
With fearless trust, into Thy list'ning ear
My hopes I pour!
Yes, stay, sweet Lord, and shed Thy evening dew
Upon my soul,
As, day by day, the veil now wearing thro'
My straining eyes behold with clearer view
The longed-for goal.
Not in my works do I my sure hope place,
But in Thy love,
Which yearns to fold me in Its sweet embrace
And to reveal the beauty of Thy Face
In Heaven above.
And so, with love, I fix my gaze on Thee,
Who lov'dst me first
And in Thy tender love didst deign to be
Even my Spouse. O! Lord my God, for Thee
My soul doth thirst!
WHITE EAGLE.
BY L. P. DECONDUN.
XIII.
IN FRANCE STILL. August 29, 1913.
UR train has just left Amiens, my Reginald, and hardly
now can I bring myself to take my pencil. As not
only the parting with our friends has been a real pain,
but the thought of my returning to England without you
is still very bitter. However, I do not wish to dwell
on this; there is nothing for it but resignation, and I
had better retrace for you our last days in Paris. A hurried line will
have told you before this, how, yesterday, a telegram from Joan, stat-
ing that your mother had a sharp attack of the heart, forced us
to hurriedly pack our boxes. A second wire this morning told us that
immediate danger seemed averted, but neither Nancy nor I cared to
leave Joan alone in these circumstances. We only forwarded the re-
assuring news to Max, telling him he was not needed immediately,
and we left Paris by the twelve o'clock train.
I cannot tell you how sorry I felt when parting from Madame
Stablewska. There is so much thoughtful kindness and charm in her
silent ways. Helena, Maryfia and the Prince came to the station and
saw to all our comforts, staying to the last minute. Dear little Helena !
She and Nancy had got on so admirably together. As for Maryfia,
she was the last to shake hands with us ; but though her cheerful smile
did not desert her lips, I saw them tremble just a little, once or
twice, and her parting glance was undeniably misty.
When we had steamed out of the gloomy North Station, after
waving our handkerchiefs to those dear people, and when Nancy and
I had regained our respective corners, we looked up simultaneously
and smiled. But, Rex, it was a very shameful smile, as both our
cheeks were wet with tears.
" Well ! I could not help it," stated Nancy resolutely. " I have
grown quite fond of them."
Cf You don't suppose I am blaming you," I asked ; " because, you
know, I am as bad as you are."
Which made her laugh outright.
" Erin, the tear and the smile! " she quoted half in fun.
But " facts are facts " as Joan likes to say, and it was true that
this long visit to Paris, in the intimacy of people walking so entirely
378 WHITE EAGLE [Dec.,
out of the beaten track, and who were at the same time so unaffectedly
modern and so vividly mediaeval proved a novel experience. Daily
intercourse with men who can as easily wade, shoulder deep, in the
intricacies of the law, as soar to the higher altitude of prayer; with
women who would again with the same equanimity handle a fortune
and earn the poorest of livings, toy with a cigarette and exchange the
weight of jewels for the black veil of a nun, had lifted our whole be-
ing into a more rarified atmosphere. But it was not our fate to move
any longer in it. As for me, I felt of a smaller race, aiming at
minor deeds, fighing not with giants but with petty misunderstandings
and suspicions, carrying a cross indeed, but a well-lined and padded
one! My own Rex, face to face with our friends and my conscience
I felt as would a common sparrow before caged eagles.
Oh ! dear, what bumping. It is becoming more and more impossi-
ble to write; we are swaying so abominably at every curve! There
again! Well! I must stop. Oh! if it was only towards you I was
going at such a pace!
IN MY BEDROOM. September 3, 1913.
Yes, my Rex, this is where I am now, taking up again the
penciled sheet I had begun, and I have many things to say. I need
not inform you that we arrived safe and sound, since I am here writ-
ing, but if you knew how empty and lonely (in spite of the welcome
of kind little Dubois) I found our dear Chelsea home without its master!
It was lit up, full of flowers, and looking cosy enough. Nancy stayed
with me because she also intended coming to C - the next day;
yet nothing could make up for your absence. Even padded crosses
weigh heavily sometimes, sweetheart.
Nancy and I dined alone ; then she rang up her father on the tele-
phone and after him Doctor Pemberton, as we wanted to know his
exact opinion of your mother's illness. So far as I can judge by what
he said, it may not be at all anything fatal. He finds that her heart
has been greatly weakened by nervous strain, and some sort of worry
which she will not acknowledge. There has been tension for a long
period ; and at her age it may mean mischief if she does not shake it
off. He advises a change of scene and climate, and considers Lon-
don bad for her, both because of its gloom and of its routine. This
made me think that since you will not be coming for many months,
and since Joan and Max must be brought back to their senses and a life
a deux, the best plan would be to persuade your mother to come
abroad for the winter. Doctor Pemberton said it was the very thing
he would recommend ; and I could see that, though Nancy will regret
my absence, she looked grimly satisfied at the idea of a separation be-
tween your mother and Joan. (You know as I do what is still at the
back of her mind, even against the evidence.) But Doctor Pemberton
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 379
advised us not to rush to Devonshire as we had intended; merely to
write, and go in a day or two. He also told us that your mother was
up and that we were not to treat her as an invalid, but to be careful
not to fatigue or worry her. The result of this is that we only
arrived at C the day before yesterday, but I am not sure that, so
far, we have much improved matters. However, here is the whole
story.
You will easily understand that after her first fright Joan had be-
come gradually reassured; and as she had continued to expect us,
her mind had been revolving on her private affairs. She knew that
we had seen Max; she had received a rather pointed letter from me
and also one from Nancy, and when she met us at the station with
the car, there was, at the back of those brown eyes of hers, a tiny
shadow with which I am thoroughly well acquainted. Of course it was
eclipsed for a certain period by the pleasure of our meeting. Our
drive to the cottage was an avalanche of questions with a limited
number of answers, and our reception by your mother a true " home
coming." But already on that first evening I was able to discern a little
mist in the atmosphere, and a hazy outline of chevaux-dejrise in Joan's
words and attitude. She was on the defensive, though neither Nancy
nor I had yet made a sign. Her words were clipped, her smile slow,
her eyelids often lowered, and I realized what a small chance a
man like Max had against such weapons. Even I who broke through
them so often disliked beginning the attack. Nevertheless I had made
up my mind to leave her to Nancy for that day, and see how things
would look the next morning. At dinner and after it I devoted my at-
tention to your mother.
Indeed I did not think she looked very badly. She was paler and
a little thinner, but she seemed in good spirits. She spoke at dinner
with her usual humor, and when afterwards she lay on the sofa near
the drawing-room fire the evenings are getting cool she seemed to
me just as charming as ever. I drew my chair as close to her as
possible.
" Well," she said, " tell me. I have heard your news in a general
way, but I should like some details. Max wrote to me that he had
had a very pleasant evening with you all a few days ago. Is the
handsome Miss Lowinski still very bewitching?"
Placed as I was, I had a good view of Joan. I noticed that while
listening to her sister a part of her attention wandered towards us.
At Mrs. Camberwell's question an ironical curve played around her
mouth, and I felt it so unfair that it made me positively vicious.
" Why ! " I answered purposely, " I never saw her more beautiful
than she was that evening." And I proceeded to describe her ap-
pearance and gown to the very last tassel.
380 WHITE EAGLE [Dec,
My next glance in Joan's direction, showed me her face set as a
mask and as hard as iron. Was Max right, or was it only that she
had not forgiven Maryfia for having stood in her way a few weeks?
Yet, why? since at the time she was informed of Millicent's plan of
campaign. Well! if she was not to hear enough home truths from
Nancy, she would from me and before long. What sort of a life
would she and Max have to face if she started with such bitterness
and jealousy?
Whether these swift thoughts showed in my expression I could
not say ; only when I met your mother's eyes, I saw that she had been
studying me. But she went on leisurely.
" I should have liked to see more of that girl ; she was most at-
tractive. What will she eventually do with herself I wonder."
" Miss Lowinska will not stay long among us," I replied in a dry
voice (instinctively speaking at Joan). And I added: " She is joining
the 'Adoration Reparatrice' in Paris."
Your mother looked surprised.
"Soon?" she asked.
"Next week."
" Dear me ! What a pity ! "
" Yes," I said laughing; " I was heathen enough to make the same
remark. I know we should be glad to see our best blossoms picked
for God's Altar ; but I am one of the mean people who cling to things
selfishly. It takes such an effort to give away what we prize." Of
course I had no sooner said this than I realized the allusion, but
if your mother noticed it she showed nothing; she merely changed the
subject.
It was the next morning that the first encounter took place be-
tween Joan and me. As the invalid did not come down for breakfast
we had it early; and directly afterwards I strolled out, as you may
surmise, to have a quiet look at my roses.
The day was perfect; the sea peaceful under a sheen of silvery
blue; great gulls were sweeping the cloudless sky, uttering now and
then a shrill cry of joy or warning; and in spite of troubles and
worries, my spirits were rising under those unreasoned hopes created by
a sunny morning. True, this broad sea was still stretched between us,
but even months would pass and wear away ; every tick of my watch,
every wave breaking on the shore were bringing you nearer and nearer
to me. I was startled by a gull swooping so low over my head that
the sun's rays tipped it with gold, and when it rose higher and higher
my thoughts flew to Maryfia. She too was opening her wings to
rise nearer to God, and I felt suddenly very small and commonplace.
But I received a lesson. A robin was hurrying across the path. Its
sharp round eyes had seen some object of interest, and in a second it
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 381
had picked up from the edge of the grass a stiff, yellow wire-
worm.
" Good little bird," I murmured ; " saving my carnations ! " And
it struck me then that, since evidently we are not all meant to breast
the clouds, some of us must be satisfied to save the carnations.
It was rather dreamily that I pulled the garden gate behind
me; but as I passed the sundial a wave of friendliness swept over
my heart. My little basket, secateur and gloves had been laid there
ready. Brown " knew " that my roses would be my first care. Dear,
kind old man ! Oh ! Rex, how sweet it is to live in love and sympathy
with our fellowmen!
Now all this will tell you in what mood I was when I began
thinning some of my rose bushes. My bed of Madame Chatenays,
amongst others, had been exhausting itself with a crowd of buds, and
my secateur was snapping busily when Joan's voice made me turn.
" Early at work," she called out. " I thought I should have
caught you spellbound with admiration."
" Oh, that is not enough for me," I answered gaily ; " though
I must say this is a goodly show."
And my eyes ran delightedly from a mass of late but velvety
crimson " Fisher Holmes " to a long narrow border where others inter-
mingled their tones of gold, orange and vermilion. Tall arches hung
with pure white blossoms, the soft primrose of " Evergreen Gem," and
the rich coral of " May Queen " blossoming a second time fitfully.
" I suppose one can't help admiring," I conceded.
" Unless one has exhausted one's admiration on another object."
(Hark! to the far-off echo of the trumpet of war.) But I looked
at Joan carelessly. " What is there to prevent me from delighting in
my roses," I inquired.
" Something more beautiful or more valuable of course."
" I am not sure I understand."
"No?" (With a big mark of interrogation.) "I should have
thought it an easy riddle."
" Is there any need to speak in riddles?"
" Not if you don't choose."
I stepped off the border and closed my secateur; then I looked
Joan full in the face. (Between us, Rex dear, she was perfectly
sweet in her white canvas dress and dainty little shoes. Her slight
figure was as erect as a sword, her complexion slightly flushed, and her
eyes brilliant with subdued opposition. She meant to pay me for
the letter in which I had backed up Max and praised Maryfia.)
" Very well ! " I said calmly, " you are alluding to Miss Lowinska.
May I ask you why ? "
She bit her lip viciously. " Because," she replied with her chin
382 WHITE EAGLE [Dec.,
raised, " it is not a reason, if you choose to suffer from an attack of
'Maryna-itis/ for spreading it to Max. There was no necessity for
any of you to press him to join the Lowinskis in Paris."
" And pray when did we do that ? "
" He he said you had advised him to leave London as soon as
he could."
This was true, in a sense; but not worth discussing.
" And do you think," I inquired, " that three days passed in
Paris in the Lowinski's vicinity was particularly bad for him."
" Three days ! Did no one tell you that from the time we came
here to C until Prince Lowinski and his daughter left London, we
were scarcely able to get a glimpse of Max."
" Yes, I heard that. But may I ask you if you saw much more
of him after the Prince had gone to Paris ? "
She colored slightly.
" Very good," I went on. " Don't you think in that case that
there might have been other motives for Max's behavior. For my
part I could point out two of them to you, if you wish."
She raised her eyebrows in an impertinent little way. " Could
you really?" (Her tone was as sarcastic as she could make it.) I
knew that I had now a free field to explain to her my mistake and
my foolish policy; but I was also convinced that she needed a lesson
before I consented to put the chief blame on myself.
" My dear child," I said coolly, lifting my basket at the turning
of the path, and putting back my gloves and secateur into it, " the
first explanation of Max's dread of coming near you
" Dread !" she repeated with a tiny sneer. " What a lion I
must be ! "
" An immaculate Persian kitten might be nearer the mark," I
interposed quietly. She flushed with angry pride, but she kept suffi-
cient control to remark tranquilly:
"Dread of a kitten's claws! Poor thing!"
I went on unmoved. "What Max dreads when coming near you
is your present attitude, your cutting little words, your neat sugges-
tions ; and allow me to say, your perpetual suspicions of his motives."
" Did he kindly tell you all this? "
" My dear Joan, there can be no necessity, since I have known
you from your childhood. I am acquainted with every one of your
peculiarities, and I also happen to know how much they hurt."
"When did I hurt you?"
" Every time you tried to ; only I never found pleasure in pub-
lishing it."
I saw that she felt that thrust, but she can hold on like a little
bull-terrier. So, when she had swallowed something in her throat,
1915.] WHITE EAGLE
and when I had resisted the temptation of slipping my arm through
hers and forcing her to "make friends," as the children say, she asked
in the same quiet way:
"If you don't mind, I should like to hear the second excuse for
Max's repeated absence."
By this time we had reached the house; she drew one of the
garden chairs and sat down; I remained facing her, leaning against
the porch.
"Certainly, but did Max ever give you a reason for it? "
She looked away for a minute.
" Yes ; he told me once that he had thought it better to leave his
mother and me as much as possible to ourselves, so that we should
become closer friends."
" And you did not believe it."
Her smile spoke volumes.
"Would you have believed it yourself?" she asked.
" Decidedly ; I never have had any reason of doubting Max's
word."
" Perhaps not ; but suppose that excuse had been given to you by
Reginald."
"By Reginald!" (I looked at her with all my wifely pride, my
darling.) " Why! I would risk my life on a single one of his affirma-
tions. I have never doubted Reginald in any thing."
" How idyllic !" she sneered softly. But she was going rather
far; and I think the glance I gave her, warned her of it.
"Well!" she said, "I did not believe Max." The not cut out
like a whip.
" You were wrong then," I said, "as not only what he said was true,
but the whole affair was a blunder and the blunderer was 'myself.' ' ;
"You! How?"
" It was I who fancied, rightly or not, that if you could be
sufficiently thrown with Mrs. Camberwell to win her affections, all
would be well. Once she would have become really fond of you,
I thought there could have been no reason for jealousy among you
three. But I had counted without my host, and I need not tell you
how much I regret my interference and the havoc it has caused. Poor
Max, it is for him I am most sorry ! "
For the moment Joan was dumb, but she was not conquered yet.
Her eyes hardened like flint, though her lips trembled.
" Do you think," she asked very slowly (and I could see her
hand shaking), " do you think this 'story' or should I say (correcting
herself affectedly) this 'explanation' is sufficient to mend matters."
This time there was no possibility of doubting it, Joan was trying
to be offensive. I am aware that I should have shrugged my shoulders
384 WHITE EAGLE [Dec.,
and left her ; but alas ! my temper was rising also. So I looked down
on her very sweetly, and said in the most exasperating of tones :
" Don't be rude, 'little girl/ it is not nice you know."
At this the floodgates of her wrath burst open, she cleared her
throat and spoke. With subdued, ladylike words and manner, she said
many things she had thought, and more that she had not. She gave in
very clear language her latest opinion of me and of my actions.
She explained without disguise with what sentiment she credited Miss
Lowinska ; she made similarly candid remarks on the original attitude
of your mother towards her and towards Max. In fact this little
speech was a masterpiece of oration. When she had done, she was
white as paper, her brown eyes were black, and when she stood up
her chair fell behind her. But she did not stay to pick it up, she
went towards the door, crossed the hall and disappeared.
As for me I stood where I was, practically dumbfounded. Since
Joan was a girl of thirteen she had not come out in such effective
colors. And while I was trying to gather my shattered ideas, some-
thing brought my heart to my mouth. I had happened to look up, and
there, at her open window, was your mother very pale and silent.
Our eyes met, and I thought for an instant that the world must have
gone topsy-turvy, she but said in her usual steady voice :
" Do you mind coming to my room, Nemo ? "
I could only nod and obey.
I found her in her armchair, near the window, and she not only
looked paler, but much more fragile in the loose folds of her dressing
gown. I wondered whether it was the grayish heliotrope of it or the
creamy lace which made her look so ill. I sat on a low chair by her
side, and took one of her hands.
" Mother, dear ! " I murmured, and could add nothing more be-
cause the tears were choking me. I hid my face on her lap.
She did not open her lips, but her other hand stroked my hair
gently.
" Nemo," she asked after a little while, " would you object very
much to leaving London for the winter ? "
" Oh ! " I cried, lifting up a tearrstained face, " why ! I am longing
to get away. Oh ! mother do let us go, you and I ! "
" Are you sure you will not regret it ? "
" More than sure. I came here on purpose to propose to you that
very thing."
" Very well ! " she said thoughtfully, " we can tell Joan that a
change would be good for my health, and we can go as soon as Max
comes home."
" Max will be home in a week or ten days," I answered ; " I took
the liberty to let him know that he would be wanted here."
WHITE EAGLE 385
She did not speak at once, then she shook her head approvingly.
" You are right. It is time for them to come definitely together
and I must be out of their way."
" Mother, dearest," I pleaded, " you must not trouble about any-
thing Joan said. I made her so angry; it is my fault from start to
finish."
" Your fault ! But at least your intention was honest. No, the
fault has been mine, and mine alone, from the beginning." Her thin
hands were holding mine. " Do you remember," she continued, " a
long talk we had in the spring, before Max's marriage, in this very
house."
" Ye es."
" That evening, I hid nothing from you, and I firmly intended to
act in all fairness afterwards."
"Which you did," I said decisively.
" Yes, for some time. You had proved such a comforting little
confessor ; then "
But this was a subject which I had decided to taboo for the
future. I told her so quite frankly; and though she hesitated a few
moments, she ended by smiling and giving in to me.
" Nemo," she said, after a pause, " Joan must not know that I
overheard her ; she has the best of hearts, and she would have more
regrets than all this is worth."
" She will never know," I answered quietly.
There was another pause; she was gently twisting my opal ring
round and round my finger.
" Nemo," she said again, " what is there between you and me ? "
" Reginald," I suggested without a moment's hesitation.
She looked amused. Whatever absurdity she found in my reply
brought some brightness to her face.
"That's foolish. What has Reginald to do with it? It would
have been the same if he had never existed, and if we two had met in
the wilderness of the Pampas."
I did not discuss the point ; I was far too glad to see her cheering
up a little. When later on I went downstairs, she was distinctly bet-
ter, though she had decided to have luncheon in her room. She would
join us before tea, she said.
The lunch bell rang when I reached the hall where Nancy and
Joan were waiting for me, sorting the letters just taken out of the
post bag. Nancy, however, threw her correspondence on the table,
and began to inquire where I had been hiding the whole morning ; but
she immediately noticed that something was wrong.
" What's the matter ? " she asked in a low voice.
Joan, without a glance at us, had gone into the dining-room.
VOL. en. 25
386 WHITE EAGLE [Dec.,
I shrugged my shoulders. " Nothing much."
" Broken a lance with the 'Empress?' " (You know her old nick-
name for your mother.)
" No, indeed," I assured her (and I could not repress a smile at
the idea). " If I broke a lance to-day, it was not in that quarter."
" Oh! I say! You don't mean ? " And her eyes turned towards
the dining-room door.
" Yes ; early this morning."
" You look as if you came out of it second best."
"Yes; limp."
"You?"
" My dear, I was reduced to atoms. It gave me the impression of
having run full tilt against a torpedo."
We both laughed without a sound.
Joan was calling out lazily: " Do you intend to come to luncheon
or not?"
So we went in; but the meal was a very tame affair. We three
spoke of the remotest possible subjects; we were unusually amiable,
and most polite to one another. Joan asked us if we had any message
to the village; she was sending a maid with the pony, which put
into Nancy's head that she would love a ride if only she had brought
a habit. Joan's mare badly wanted some exercise; but how could
Nancy fit in Joan's clothes ? Happily I remembered that an old riding-
habit of mine had been left in a box in the lumber room, and with a
few safety pins it might do. So " Gypsy " was ordered for a quarter
to three, and by then Nancy was fairly comfortable in her borrowed
plumes. Gypsy, however, showed herself so anxious to spend her
surplus energy when she was brought round, that she looked far too
lively for comfort ; even the coachman volunteered some advice. But
Nancy only laughed.
" Nonsense, an Irishwoman is not afraid of a horse. There is no
vice in Gypsy."
" O ! dear no, Miss, only she's fresh, you see, very fresh."
"Well! Here goes," said Nancy.
And with scarcely any help she was in the saddle. She took her
time and settled herself comfortably; then Austin stepped aside, and
she was gone. We lost sight of her at the curve of the avenue;
further on, mare and rider reappeared between the clumps of rhodo-
dendrons; they were flying.
" Well ! ma'am," remarked Austin, unable to contain his feelings,
" what I do say is this : there's not many ladies as can sit a horse the
way Miss O'Dwyer can do it, and no mistake."
After this satisfactory conclusion he retired, and left Joan and
me standing side by side, apparently looking before us, but in reality
1915-] WHITE EAGLE 387
aware of each other's minutest movement. I did not feel any bitter-
ness against her; still I had not sufficiently got over my experience
of the morning to begin a conversation. She must have felt very
much the same, as, precisely when I turned to the right towards the
library, she gave a little dry cough and turned to the left towards the
drawing-room. The absurdity of the thing could have made me smile
or sigh. There we were, two full grown women, rehearsing a school-
girl's quarrel. How strangely one is led by habits and circumstances !
From the library where I found the volume I wanted, I set out
in search of a nice corner, secure from invasion. The summer-house
seemed an ideal place. There I settled cosily, pushing my folding chair
half in the shade, and I opened my book. My eyes went down the
first page, then they went over it a second time, and then I gave it up.
My mind would neither grasp nor follow any idea but its own. I felt
weary and discontented. Under my dignified attitude, I began to fear
that I was a humbug; and I was not blind to the fact that side by
side with my just reproof of Joan's conduct, was the mean advantage
I had taken of my knowledge of her. Would she have given way to
that white heat of passion, if I had not let fall an inflammable drop of
mockery on the most sensitive part of her pride? It was unlikely.
Well! my prolonged meditations may have been wholesome, but they
were not pleasant, and yet, when after some time I heard steps com-
ing on the gravel walk, I sighed with impatience. I objected to being
disturbed, though I realized that the afternoon was slipping away.
For a minute the sound ceased whoever was coming was walking on
the grass ; then a shadow passed swiftly between the sunlight and my
chair, two soft arms slipped round my neck from behind, and a warm
cheek was pressed against my own.
" Nemo ! I was horrid ! Say you forgive me ! "
But I could not speak. My own little Joan ! How dear she could
be ! How much more honest and generous than I was !
" Please, Nemo, do ! I feel so wretched."
I caught one of the small hands, disengaged myself and drew
the culprit forward. She slipped on her knees, one of her arms still
around my neck, her face near mine. I held her there, for a few
instants, my eyes plunging right through hers.
" My darling," I said at last, " we have both to forgive. I was
cruel to you."
But she repeated doggedly : " I was horrid, horrid ! You must
say that you forgive me."
So I bent forward and lovingly pressed the warm sweet lips, and
peace was restored; but she would not stand up.
" No, you must leave me here. I have more to tell you. Do
you do you know why I wanted to send somebody to the village ? "
WHITE EAGLE [Dec.,
"How could I?"
" It was to take a telegram."
I waited. Her color deepened.
" Nemo, I I wired to Max. I did it, because because I knew
you were right."
It is unnecessary to tell you, Rex dear, how glad the news made
me, and I told her so. And we went on talking in the old, confidential,
friendly way until every shadow was removed and every wound quite
healed. When the tea bell rang and called us to the house, we came
face to face with Nancy who had left the mare in the stable yard.
I do not know what remark she intended to make, but when she caught
sight of Joan's beaming smile (and of mine, I suppose), she raised her
eyebrows in a rather eloquent manner.
" Oh ! I say," she exclaimed, " fine weather at last ! I am thank-
ful! If you knew what a pair of wet blankets the two of you can
be! But never mind, my speech will keep and Mrs. Camberwell is
waiting for us. Nemo, I will make restitution of what remains of
your habit after tea, if you will allow me to keep it until then."
When we three filed into the drawing-room, I caught your
mother's eyes rapidly questioning our faces, but she made no com-
ment; and I can assure you that no one would have guessed from
her manner what she had heard, felt and decided that morning.
" Now," said Nancy, as Joan approached the tea table, " don't tell
me that I brought nothing from my excursion; here are both letters
and parcels. One for you, Nemo."
" And one for you," I replied, pushing a small box towards her.
She opened it at once; it contained a bangle of dull gold, and a
note which curiosity made her unfold first.
MY DEAR NANCY: If Nemo has not yet confided to you some-
thing of my immediate projects, tell her that she has full permission
to do so. In any case I hope that you will keep the enclosed as a re-
membrance of this summer, of your friendly help in our difficulties and
of my sincere affection. MARYNA.
P. S. As I do not suppose you have learned Polish since we parted,
I must add that, roughly translated, the motto on the bangle means:
" May you sail under the guidance of Jesus Christ ! Niech bedzie
pochwalony Jesus Chrystus and the only value of the trinket is in
'the wish' which goes with it."
I fancy that Nancy was very pleased, but also intensely surprised ;
she examined the bracelet in silence then handed it to Joan, who praised
it loudly.
I was still hold''*^ my parcel.
" Why don't yo~ open yours? " they asked.
Of course I did, and it contained, oh, Rex! such a beauty!
WHITE EAGLE
An antique jewel of rare workmanship, curiously set with precious
stones. A "silver eagle with spread wings armed and crowned with
gold." With it was also a letter.
MY OWN DEAR NEMO: Twice I was tempted to fasten on your
evening gown the " White Eagle " of Poland ; but, as I have told you,
my father objects, on principle, to the rousing of either antagonism or
uncontrolled partisanship, even among our servants. We still need be
prudent, even in Paris perhaps specially in Paris. Where you are now,
it is different; the white glory of my country can shine from your
breast without gathering storms and hatred; so let it be there very,
very often for my sake.
I would not send it to you if it had not been so dear to me. It is
truly ancient. Old family traditions report it as having belonged to
Casimir the Great who died in 1370. For some time it was in the
possession of Kosciuszko, but it was handed back to my mother's
family. If you do not happen to know who Kosciuszko was, you must
take the trouble to read Polish history. Shall I tell Helena to send
you a short one in twenty-two volumes?
My dear little friend, how I have enjoyed puzzling, frightening, teas-
ing and loving you ! Now, you will have a truce ; but mind you, I shall
begin all over again when we meet in heaven!
Ever yours, MARYNA.
I think my voice was shaky when I ended, but I affected to cough
in a detached manner, while practical Joan in her sweetest mood
had already pulled down a volume of references.
" Here we are," she called out gaily : " Kosciuszko ! "
" Kosciuszko, one of the greatest of Polish patriots who attempted
to save the independence of Poland in 1794, was severely wounded and
taken prisoner after a glorious struggle. Buried with the kings of Po-
land in the famous Cathedral of Cracow."
In the meantime, the Eagle had passed from Nancy to your
mother, and from your mother to me again.
"It is a magnificent piece of work," she had remarked, placing
it in my hand. " Altogether, I should say that it is worth a small
fortune."
I gazed at the wonderful thing with a kind of awe; then by a
trick of memory the pure sky of the morning was mirrored in my
mind. I saw the seagulls describing their wide circles ; and, with the
noise of powerful, flapping wings, a great snowy bird shooting above
them and losing itself into immensity.
" Yes, a White Eagle," I unconsciously murmured.
Nancy, who was holding a cup towards me, glanced up quizzi-
cally. " Of course," she said, " what else? "
But I was not thinking of the jewel, only of another "White
Eagle " who in the silence of the cloister was already rising towards
mysterious heights to gaze in faith and love on the " Sun of Justice."
390 WHITE EAGLE [Dec.,
XIV.
CHELSEA, September, 1913.
Am I dreaming, my own Rex, and shall I wake presently from a tor-
turing nightmare? Are you really summoning me to you, because an
" entire " year, a " second " year at least, must lapse before your return
to England, and not a few months as your previous letter had sug-
gested. Yes, this stiff white paper, these odd capitals I know so
well, these burning lines searing my brain are real enough :
Prepare yourself for good news. I am not going to stay with-
out you a day longer than can be helped, and since I cannot go to you,
I have made arrangements for you to come to me. I have bought a
perfect little gem of a house with a garden, which you may turn into
a paradise of roses. I have now some experienced men with me, and
I shall not have to leave Sydney, except for short periods. There are
some nice people here who will thoroughly appreciate you, but the whole
point is this : I think it quite safe now for you to come, and I need you
ten times as much as you want me. If you think this cannot be true, and
that it is an insult to your loving heart, well, come and see I feel
absurdly like a boy again, writing all this nonsense; but I am so wildly
happy, I could tread on air Things are quite simple if you come
by the long sea route. You can start by the Medic, reaching the Cape
on the tenth of October, Albany the twenty-fifth, and Sydney the tenth of
November. There, you need not trouble any more. / will do all the
"troubling" that's necessary; and, oh! think, my own love!
Think ! Have I done anything else since I read your letter ?
Oh, Rex! what answer can I make under the circumstances? How
can I bring myself to set aside such a prospect, yet, how can I possibly
leave your mother? If you yourself were ill, it would be different;
nothing or no one should keep me from you; but such is not the
case. And your mother is my mother, and your duty to her is my
own. There is not a loophole anywhere; as now she would never
allow Joan to take my place and to be once more parted from Max.
Two days before I left C she had another slight attack; she
is not much weaker, but the doctor said we could scarcely expect
serious improvement in less than a year, and in a strange way she
who was so strong, so independent, clings to me. Doctor Pemberton
insists on her starting at once; our boxes are packed, and she is to
arrive in London this evening.
My Reginald, could I ever have dreamed that I should have to
crush voluntarily the dearest wish of both our hearts ! I can see you
opening my letter, a loving light in your eyes, your hopes high as you
know well what you are to me and then, reading, reading
Same day, six o'clock.
My dear Rex, I threw my pen away this afternoon, as courage
1915.] WHITE EAGLE 391
utterly failed me, and I broke down. I don't know how long it lasted,
but when I began to think clearly again I felt that I could find only
one place of peace and refuge. I looked for a hat and coat, and
started at a good pace along the embankment towards Beaufort Street.
I did not reason, I did not argue, I walked straight there in a dull,
dumb way as a wounded animal running for shelter. But when I
turned in at the door of the little chapel a lay Sister was coming out
who happened to know me.
" Oh ! Mrs. Camberwell," she exclaimed pleasantly, " we were be-
ginning to fear you had gone without having a minute to call on
Sister Michel. She was speaking of you this very morning. I hope
your dear patient is not worse."
I said that she was not, and that I would see Sister Michel after
Benediction.
" Well ! " remarked the lay Sister dubiously, " I fancy it would
be better if you saw her now, as she may be engaged the rest of the
evening. Just come in for a minute, I will get her for you. Dear me !
she was so anxious to show you what was in the parcel you brought
us from Miss Lowinska. It will make the most beautiful set of vest-
ments I have ever seen."
I went in and waited in the little parlor for Maryna's cousin.
I soon heard the clinking of her beads along the passage, and when she
opened the door, I stood up to greet her, but I could say nothing.
Without any special reason, something caught in my throat, my eyes
swam with tears, and I bit my lip fiercely to stop them. She saw it at
a glance. However, she quietly came to me, made me sit down
again, took my hand in hers and said quite simply : " Don't speak ;
take your time; neither of us need be in a hurry."
And as I stammered somehow that I was sorry for making such
an exhibition of myself she shook her head.
" My dear child," she said gently, " if we have to carry our
crosses, we are not asked not to feel them. Our Lord fell three times
under His Own."
I had not for one minute contemplated telling her anything, and
yet, before I knew it, she had a full version of my disappointment and
regrets and hesitation.
" You see," I told you, " I am almost sure that my duty is to stay
in Europe, but I have blundered so often ! How do I know that I am
not choosing the wrong path again ? "
" And even if you are," she said calmly, " we are not asked
to be 'sages' or 'prophets,' but to follow honestly the path our con-
science points out."
I looked at her with uncertainty.
"Yes, but I don't want to do more harm than good." And what
392 WHITE EAGLE [Dec.,
I feel most is my husband's disappointment. His heart is so set on my
coming."
" I can understand it ; but does it not strike you that you are
crediting your husband with less generosity than you are showing
yourself?"
This took my breath away.
Could it possibly be true? Had I indeed doubted you, my
husband? If so, I would do it no more.
I left Sister Michel in time to be at Benediction, and when
I came out of the little white chapel, I had found the strength to cease
looking behind.
Thank God! neither of us has been taught the decalogue merely
as " a fine bit of Eastern civilization." Since your mother needs one
of us, let it be so; only she must never know what it has cost us.
I can add nothing; you know too well every single word I would
write. This is my last letter before leaving London; I shall post
it on my way to Kensington, as I want to know how your mother has
stood the journey from C . To-morrow we will reach Ostend in
the evening, and I will send you a line from there.
After that, I do not know; it will depend on circumstances, but
you are well aware that my pen will seize on most of my free time to
bring you my very heart.
God bless and help you, my own beloved husband. The day of
our reunion will be nearer every instant in spite of the weary months
ahead ; and after all do not let us forget : " God Who permits the
wound will also heal it."
[THE END.]
Iftew Boohs*
IN GOD'S ARMY. No. i. Commanders-in-Chief. By Rev. C.
C. Martindale, SJ. New York: Benziger Brothers. 35 cents
net.
This little volume consists of what may be called essays on
St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier. Leaders in God's armies,
beneath the banner of our Captain, Christ, they certainly were, and
truly inspiring is their example of utter devotedness. A previous
knowledge of the facts of their lives is requisite, however, to the
comprehension and enjoyment of these sketches. Given that, and
the reader is borne on, fascinated by the enthusiasm of the writer
and his single-minded attention to his point of view In God's
Army. Study, penance, suffering, self -conquest, prayer all and
every energy is bent to one aim : conquest for God. As we be-
come accustomed to the author's style peculiar to himself speed-
ing onward, mostly in the present tense as if describing a scene
vividly enacted before him, we are captivated and absorbed. As
a son of St. Ignatius, Father Martindale is proud of his father, but
the love of his heart would seem to be St. Francis Xavier.
The volume deserves a better make-up. Both paper and bind-
ing are poor.
OUR PALACE WONDERFUL, OR MAN'S PLACE IN VISIBLE
CREATION. By Rev. Frederick A. Houck. Chicago : D. B.
Hansen & Sons.
The object of this little work on the glories of the visible
universe is, as the author has pointed out in the introduction, to
impress the reader with the necessity of a First Cause and Intelli-
gent Centre of the universe. To this end he lays particular em-
phasis on the argument from design, an argument which has by no
means, as is sometimes intimated, lost its footing in the world of
science. The marvelous mechanism and beauty, the perfect inter-
relation and concurrence of all created forms, with particular
reference to the astronomical and vegetable kingdoms, is illustrated
and developed with a view to stimulating in the mind of the reader
a profound wonder and awe in the creative and controlling power
of God.
The modest foreword of the author, which acknowledges his
work as unpretentious, urges us to overlook certain faults of style
394 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
and diction, occasional ineffective repetitions and the inferior quality
of the verse selected for illustration.
The book is admirably adapted to the general reader: the
language untechnical, the matter interesting and, with few excep-
tions, accurate and well presented. It cannot fail to arouse a
thoughtful and intelligent interest in natural phenomena, and to
give to this interest a proper impetus and direction.
THE WORLD STORM AND BEYOND. By Edwin Davies Schoon-
maker. New York: The Century Co. $2.00 net.
According to this attempt to set forth the causes and the effects
of the present war, Caesarism in Germany was forced to sustain
itself by militarism, thus preparing the popular mind for war, which
followed when growing population brought the need for territorial
expansion. For Russia the war is the inevitable aftermath of the
three great struggles in the past by which her foes halted her march
toward the open sea and snatched from her the domination of the
Balkans. And lastly the general cause, accounting for the utter
failure of our civilization, is the fact that we have made " efficiency,"
not character, the end of education.
As the result of the war, the author holds that Russia will
hold the key of the future. The Slavic peoples, by nature truly
democratic, will, he hopes, teach true democracy to the world. But
Russia must be allowed access to the open sea; then only will she
progress and escape militarism. In any event the European states
must choose between peaceful federation and forced submission to
Russian power. Socialism, now obscured for the moment, has not
failed, but has rather been put in the way of greater advances. The
same is true of " feminism." The Church, not Socialism, has
collapsed. Marriage laws must follow slavery and orthodoxy into
oblivion ; after the war will come " poelogamy," which means
respect for the rights of others to do as they please in the matter of
sex relations, and a replacing of law by education.
Accurate enough in political history, in questions of religion,
the Church or social problems, the book breathes an antagonism to
orthodox Christianity, and partiality for Socialism (which it seems
to identify with democracy). The calm assurance with which the
author expounds his views on Christianity, the Church and mar-
riage would be amusing were the views themselves less offensive.
He tries to be fair to the belligerents, but unfortunately makes little
effort to be fair to the Catholic Church.
1915.] NEW BOOKS 395
ROTULI ROBERTI GROSSETESTE EPISCOPI LINCOLNIEN-
SIS A. D. MCCXXXV.-MCCLIIL, NECNON ROTULUS HEN-
RICI DE LEXINGTON EPISCOPI LINCOLNIENSIS A. D.
MCCLIV.-MCCLIX. Edited by F. N. Davis, B.A.,B.Litt,
Horncastle. Lincoln, England : The Lincoln Record Society.
$375-
A never-ending interest attaches to the life and career of Robert
Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln who lived in the troublous times
of Henry III. He was at once a bishop and a reformer, a states-
man and an ecclesiastic, the first mathematician and physicist of his
age, and a precursor of the revival of classical learning; a warm
defender of the Pope's rights, and a firm resister of the abuses which
grew up under their shadow. Very soon after his death he was
regarded almost universally throughout England as a saint. The
chroniclers tell of miracles at his tomb, and pilgrims visited it.
The Rolls Series of publications have made it easy for the stu-
dent to acquaint himself with the various sources of the history of
the Middle Ages. Grosseteste's letters have been edited by R. H.
Luard for that series, and in the Monumenta Franciscana, Vol. I.,
edited by J. S. Brewer for the same series, much light is thrown
upon Grosseteste's work. These more recent publications enable
the reader to correct the bias shown by Matthew Paris in his
Chronicles. Several Lives have been written, of which the most
impartial is that by Stevenson published in 1899.
This new publication issued under the auspices of The Lincoln
Record Society, contains the Rolls of the Diocese of Lincoln while
it was under the rule of Grosseteste, from 1235 to I2 53> an d of
Henry of Lexington, from 1254 to 1259. There is a short intro-
duction by the editor, the Rev. F. N. Davis, which indicates some of
the chief points of interest.
Specially worthy of mention is his reference to the subject of
patronage. He points out that the rights of lay patrons which
existed at that time arose entirely from the ownership of the land.
Even a bishop's right of patronage was due to his being the lord of
a manor. Disputes were settled in the civil courts. For seven cen-
turies the presentation to one of the benefices in what was then the
diocese of Lincoln has been in the hands of Westminster Abbey.
The bulk of the work is a record of the routine work of the diocese,
being the institutions which took place to benefices. To the student
of ecclesiastical history it is of value, as it enables him to gain
an idea of the ecclesiastical government of the period, and to con-
396 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
trast it with that of the present time. A most complete index makes
it possible to trace the presentations to the churches of the various
cities and villages. It is not, however, a work for the general
reader, but for those who wish to go back to original sources, and
to form their own opinions from a first-hand survey of the state
of things in the Middle Ages. While this work does not from the
nature of the case give much information about Grosseteste per-
sonally, still it indicates one of the activities of the man who, ac-
cording to one of his opponents, was wont to cast thunderbolts
which struck terror into the hearts of the monks and of the nuns
of his diocese.
FELIX O'D AY. By F. Hopkinson Smith. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.35 net.
This novel of New York is wholly characteristic of the popular
author who died before its publication. Its scenes are laid in and
around a part of the city now changed forever, but well remembered
by those who knew New York twenty years ago. Mr. Smith's love
of the picturesque avails to create an interest that the rather hack-
neyed story might not inspire of itself. The characters are such
as he was wont to draw, clearly defined and readily understood.
His readers will welcome those whom he now introduces, Kling,
Kitty Cleary and especially Father Cruse. A word of appreciation
is due from Catholics for the genial, respectful manner in which the
last named is represented.
Mr. Smith's was that large public whose frank preference is
for the romantic. If his work displayed none of the delicate shad-
ings of the modern analysts, it was also free from their melancholy.
His fiction abounded in cheerfulness, and that quality is not lacking
in this, alas ! his last novel.
THE SONG OF THE LARK. By Willa Sibert Gather. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.40 net.
Although Miss Gather's latest novel is also her best, it is not
so by virtue of its central theme. This story of the realization of
a girl's ambition to be a great singer shows her as too self-centred
to arouse any warmth of feeling for her; and the author's methods
are not sufficiently meticulous to gain a place for Thea Kronborg
in the gallery of chefs-d'oeuvre by the masters of analysis. Our
interest is less with her than with the people about her, especially in
her years of childhood and youth in Moonstone, the little Colorado
1915.] NEW BOOKS 397
town. Miss Gather is a close and sympathetic observer. The book
has many characters, each of whom is a distinct personality, and
Mrs. Kronborg, the hapless young lover, Ray Kennedy, and the odd,
romantic, unattractive Tillie, become to us real people whom we
like. The various scenes and incidents are graphically depicted.
Exceptionally good is the epilogue, in which we are brought back to
Moonstone to see Tillie living a glad, proud life on the triumphant
career of her famous niece, who has finally severed all bonds of
union with the place of her birth.
Miss Gather's manner is remarkably virile and effective.
When her people speak it is because they have something to say;
and she has a faculty for giving, without apparent effort, an un-
expected turn to the commonplace that deprives it of that character.
Her powers require the wider scope of some subject of broad human
significance : with such an inspiration she could accomplish things
not easily forgotten.
THE WIDOW WOMAN. By Charles Lee.
THE LORE OF THE WANDERER. By George Goodchild.
PROPHETS, PRIESTS AND KINGS. By A. G. Gardiner.
THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF HENRY RYECROFT. By George
Gissing.
THE WAR LORDS. By A. G. Gardiner. New York: E. P.
Button & Co. 40 cents each net.
These volumes of " The Wayfarers Library " promise well.
Their appearance is tasteful and inviting: they are light to hold
and pleasant to read. In form they far excel the " Everyman "
series, although costing but little more.
If one would learn of the land where women propose and how
such love-affairs are conducted, one need only make the acquaintance
of this delightful tale of The Widow Woman,
By the Ire, Pol, and Peu
You shall know the true Cornishmen,
for these Cornish fisher folk hold themselves superior to such mere
foreigners as Jones, Smith, etc.
The Lore of the Wanderer is an open-air anthology for the
nature lover, providing as delightful company for a ramble through
the woods or a rest beside a bubbling spring as Stevenson, Symons,
Ruskin or Thoreau.
398 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
Only five foreigners are admitted into the select company of
Prophets, Priests and Kings. The majority are British statesmen,
members of Parliament, socialists, preachers all moderns. Some
of the sketches are written, con amore, but others are unfortunately
labored.
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft carry us to delightful
Devon, where after a hard, penurious life, Ryecroft is enabled
by an annuity to spend his closing days in peace resigned, but
pessimistic and without future hope.
The War Lords contains short, well-sketched pen pictures of
the Rulers of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy and Bulgaria;
General Joffre, Grand Duke Nicholas, Lord Fisher, General Botha,
Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, General von Bernhardi, Sir John
French, Sir John Jellicoe and M. Venezelos.
This new series purposes to provide as companions by way-
side and fireside the best in recent light literature. The publishers
are so far to be congratulated upon their aim and its accom-
plishment.
A ROGUE BY COMPULSION. By Victor Bridges. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.35 net.
THE REAL MAN. By Francis Lynde. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.35 net.
The scene of A Rogue By Compulsion is laid in England im-
mediately before the present war. It records the adventures of
Neil Lyndon, Oxford graduate and inventor of explosives, who
escapes from Dartmoor prison, where he is serving an unjust
sentence of imprisonment for life; is sheltered by German spies
who seek to use his talents for their own purposes ; thwarts them,
performs immensely valuable services for England, and is finally
rehabilitated, and marries his former sweetheart.
The Real Man is also a story of a fugitive from the law. The
hero, wrongly believing himself to have committed murder, beats his
way to the Far West. From being a somewhat colorless person
he develops, under the stress of Western life, in its most strenuous
form, into a bold, resourceful leader of men, with success and rein-
statement as his reward. A due amount of romantic interest is, of
course, provided.
1915-] NEW BOOKS 399
Of the two novels, the former is the better written. Both books
are of the class that finds an audience among readers who are not
compelled by lack of leisure to exercise careful selection.
SIR CHRISTOPHER LEIGHTON. By Maria Longworth Storer.
St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
This novel tells of an English baronet obsessed by anti-Catho-
lic prejudices to the point of attempting the murder of his Catholic
nephew and heir, which act he justifies by modern ethics as he has
heard them expounded by an apostle of the " Forward Movement."
Sensational as this sounds, the story is told plausibly and the book
is readable, although peculiar, of uneven merit, and written with
complete indifference to any rules of form. The author's purpose
is avowedly controversial, and considerable space is given to exposi-
tion of the non-supernatural New Religion, Eugenics and Humani-
tarianism. These subjects are presented by their followers, and the
non-Catholic reader cannot deny that the arguments are representa-
tive: they are precisely the sort of thing that one hears daily; in-
deed, the author in her preface intimates plainly that she but repeats
what she has actually heard from the lips of eminent people.
Mrs. Storer has done her work as it pleased her fancy. She
introduces tales and incidents not connected with the story, and in-
serts anecdotes humorous, but totally irrelevant. These cheerful di-
gressions, however, do not delay or obscure the action, which in its
progress develops dramatic force and suspense. Despite the num-
ber of topics, the book is rather under than over the usual size.
THE GREAT TRADITION AND OTHER STORIES. By Kath-
arine Fullerton Gerould. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons. $1.35 net.
Mrs. Gerould brings to her task no mean equipment : sureness
of touch, analytic keenness, communicative power of impression.
Yet the quintessential spark, the informing spirit is lacking; the
clay has not been touched to life. The writer takes for her theme
the attitude of the modern woman toward marriage, which is termed
the " Great Tradition." To mere hereditary instinct, blind, cumu-
lative, over-ruling force, she attributes the power of the marriage-
bond. Stripped of sacred dignity, it is considered as a naked human
contract, hallowed only by the prestige of tradition.
Her characters, though cleverly manipulated, are mere mechan-
isms, plausible Frankensteins, moving in an atmosphere purged of
400 NEW BOOKS [Dec,
normal human emotions, and charged with the white light of the
scientific laboratory. Their problems, too, partake of the complex
and the ultra-modern, and conscience and the emancipated will are
superseded by a mysterious deterministic power of precedent and
convention. The soul is ignored, and human nature summoned to
the operating-table. Yet the sacrilege is altogether useless; no
conclusion is reached, no solution offered. Mrs. Gerould offers us
a truly characteristic product of a highly artificial and self-conscious
age.
CONTINUOUS BLOOM IN AMERICA. By Louise Shelton.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.00 net.
Louise Shelton, already widely known as a counselor of un-
trained gardeners, has now brought out a good-sized, well-illus-
trated, and handsomely-printed volume giving the results of her own
successful attempts to achieve continuous bloom from May-time to
the frost. It is really the publication of her working plans, with
all necessary detail of supplementary information, and with al-
lowance made for failures due to possible local variations of climate
or personal variations of skill. She ventures to claim and both the
book and her established reputation support the claim that strict
adherence to the plans here suggested will leave little to be desired
in the way of fullest bloom and perfect harmony. The plan fol-
lowed in her own garden is supplemented by the presentation of
eleven other planting charts, offering wide variety.
Altogether the book is a very satisfactory guide for garden
makers in and about New York City. The one possible enlarge-
ment of its usefulness which we perceive, is an appendix on variations
in the date of planting in other latitudes, say as far as the northern
and southern boundaries of the United States. Such an addition
would greatly widen the appeal of an already attractive book.
MINNIE'S BISHOP, AND OTHER STORIES. By G. A. Bir-
mingham. New York: George H. Doran Co. $1.20 net.
The account of a pert young lady's tactics in entangling
an unwary Irish bishop in the matrimonial snare, ranks as the title-
tale, but is not the cleverest chapter, in this new group of stories from
the fluent and witty pen of our genial Irish clergyman. One
never turns many pages in the Birmingham books without being
provoked into a sudden laugh, and to get this result without en-
dangering the proprieties or even offending the probabilities, is a
1915-] NEW BOOKS 401
rare enough piece of luck. Then, too, it is such a relief to have a
real background and a real brogue instead of tortured caricatures
in one's Irish stories. So though some of the present tales are so
light as to be almost below the market weight, we are glad to have
the book, and we hope the good Canon will long continue to flourish
and to write.
EVE DORRE. By Emily Viele Strother. New York : E. P. But-
ton & Co. $1.35 net.
Literary quality and freshness of material give this book
distinction. It is the heroine herself who tells " the story of her
precarious youth," as the sub-title expresses it, and one cannot but
think that part of it must be autobiography in fact as well as form,
for some of the realistic occurrences related are of the kind that are
not generally supplied by an unaided imagination. There is no
plot, but many situations and incidents, from the heroine's removal
in childhood from America to France to the early days of her
marriage there, and her motherhood : for the story ends here,
though the author has added an epilogue telling of the present war
and of her son who is fighting for France. It is delightfully writ-
ten, with the direct simplicity of literary mastery. The spirit of
youth pervades it, a youth of gayety and tears and whiteness of
soul as remote as possible from the youth of contemporary fiction,
precocious and inquisitive. The characterization is vividly clear,
and the book abounds in little indelible pictures of life in the city
and the country. The love-story is pretty and touching. The pre-
vailing tone is so buoyantly and spontaneously humorous that it
gives the effect of a frothy consistency ; but it is ,a froth that lightly
covers a substance of strength and pathos, as shown in the descrip-
tion of the mother's death. It is true that at times the author's
exuberant humor passes the bounds of fastidiousness, but these mo-
ments are few: the general impression is of refreshing charm.
Regretful recollection of a gifted hand whose labors were
arrested early will come to many who read the inscription : " In
joyous memory of my brother, Herman Knickerbocker Viele."
THE HIGH PRIESTESS. By Robert Grant. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.35 net.
Some of the author's best work is in this novel, which is of
the sort we are accustomed to expect from him a story of present-
day American life. He shows us a happy marriage brought to
VOL. en. 26
402 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
disaster primarily through the wife's pursuit of a separate career in
a profession that entailed frequent absences from home; the
treachery of a woman friend; the separation of the husband and
wife, and their reunion after seven years.
It is a phase of feminism that Judge Grant sets forth in his
heroine, Mary Randall, and he discloses it with entire fairness and
freedom from exaggeration. The crux of her position is in her
insistence upon the " single standard " of morals, as the right and
duty of her sex. It is a clever and tactful bit of writing, in which
her eyes are opened to the unsuspected, unwelcome truth that the
greatest obstacle to this reform is the failure of woman in general
to support it.
The book deals with numerous characters and incidents. The
scene is the same as that of " Unleavened Bread," Benham, that
" Eastern city with a Western exposure ; " and the author's shrewd
humor plays over it as amusingly as before. Judge Grant is a
competent, keen-eyed social critic whose judgment is under the
sanctions of good breeding and taste. His point of view is along
secular planes only, but his healthy conservatism attests that the
conclusions of the best human wisdom are in accordance with re-
vealed truth.
BRITISH AND AMERICAN DRAMA OF TO-DAY: OUTLINES
FOR THEIR STUDY. By Barrett H. Clark. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. $i .60 net.
This is a little book intended for those who sometimes think
of the stage when away from the theatre. It aims at telling some-
thing in a biographical way about each of a number of English
and American playwrights. Following the brief history of the
author, there is set down in each instance an analysis of his more
important plays. We scrutinize such old friends as " The Second
Mrs. Tanqueray," "The Importance of Being Earnest," "What
Every Woman Knows," " The Witching Hour," and many others,
and if we seem to find them older than they were when we first
knew them, they are not less clever now that their art is revealed
to us. The analyses are short, but that is better: if they were
more searching they might miss their purpose, which is to suggest
to the reader lines of study rather than to present him with these
studies ready-made.
Not the least valuable part of the book is the bibliography,
which is broad and authoritative.
1915-] NEW BOOKS 403
THE PRACTICAL CONDUCT OF PLAY. By Henry S. Curtis.
New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.00.
To provide " a practical manual for all who have to do with
the organization of play," is the author's statement of his purpose
in preparing this very comprehensive volume. The physical and
moral necessity of play and hence of playgrounds, the construction
of the grounds and their equipment, what apparatuses are most de-
sirable, what are the dangers to be guarded against, the qualifica-
tions essential for a successful director, the sort of discipline re-
quisite and how to obtain it these are only a few of the topics
considered carefully and in detail. Dr. Curtis speaks with the
authority conferred by sixteen years of experience; he is a warm
advocate of playgrounds, but recognizes the attendant disadvan-
tages, and gives valuable suggestions as to how these should be met.
The book is profusely illustrated; it is also indexed, and contains
a bibliography.
GOETHE'S LIFE-POEM. As set forth in his life and work. By
Denton J. Snider. St. Louis: Sigma Publishing Co.
This work contains no new contribution of either biography
or commentary. The author's principal intention seems to be the
casting of a poetic glamor over Goethe's love experiences, which
Mr. Snider describes as " titanic, barrier-bursting, soul-dizzying."
He gives the name of " Phileros " to Goethe, and maintains that
each transgression of the poet was atoned for by the anguish with
which he embodied it in his writings. He frequently alludes
to the life of Goethe by " the Jesuit, Pater Alexander Baumgarten,"
whom he calls " anti-Phileros," saying that he " voiced the vast
population of Goethe deniers." A high-pitched, extravagant tone
obtains throughout, and the style is labored and involved.
THE GERMAN WAR AND CATHOLICISM. Paris: Bloud et
Gay. English edition. 75 cents net.
This volume, issued under the patronage of " The Catholic
Committee of French Propaganda," is addressed to the Catholics of
neutral countries with the avowed object of enlisting their sym-
pathies for France and the Allies. Opening with a commendatory
letter from Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris, the book con-
tains a number of papers of unequal merit. Canon Gandeau dis-
cusses " The Christian Laws of Warfare," maintaining that these
have been transgressed by the Germans ; M. Georges Goyau's " Ger-
404 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
man Culture " is in tone and in conclusions somewhat exaggerated ;
a tribute to French missionary enterprise and a defence of the
religious character of the French people is from " A Missionary ;"
Canon Couget's paper on the canonical status of priests serving
in various capacities in the French army gives interesting and valu-
able information ; and there are other essays that repay the reading.
There are, moreover, what may be called " official documents,"
such as the reply of the Catholic Faculty of Paris to the Manifesto
of the representatives of German science and art, an Allocution
of Pope Benedict on the war, and a list of French and Belgian
priests killed in the war.
ARTHUR OF BRITAIN. By Reginald R. Buckley. London:
Williams & Norgate. 75 cents net.
The present volume is composed of four poetical dramas
written around Arthurian legendary lore. As poetry they are
splendid. We have not read since Stephen Phillips' Paolo and
Francesca anything that approaches them. But it is doubtful whether
they will succeed in presentation, even amid the surroundings for
which they were intended. They will probably remain closet plays,
but as such they give a succession of delights. There is true poetry
ringing through them, scaling noble heights in such passages as the
scene between Arthur and Igraine (where a delicate theme is most
gracefully and delicately handled) and the Prophecy of Merlin.
We hope for more from Mr. Buckley, though one is inclined to
feel that he has poured out his soul here.
WHEN I WAS A BOY IN BELGIUM. By Robert Jonckheere.
Boston : Lothrop, Lee & Shephard. 75 cents net.
A year ago Mr. Jonckheere was a prosperous manufacturer
in Belgium to-day he is starting life anew in America. Still he
loves to go back in memory to the happy days that are gone and
will probably never return, and has thereby produced a little book
that is not only interesting, but in its way really important. Its
title hardly does it justice : it is far more than a sad reminiscence.
Besides the account of home and school life in Belgium, and of the
events that drove him out of his native land, there are keen ob-
servations of American child life which will afford profitable read-
ing to many American parents, as for instance:
In the short time we have been here, we have seen so many
children utterly disregarding the words of their parents that
1915.] NEW BOOKS 405
we are obliged to infer that it is not unusual to let children
behave that way. We have not been here long enough to
appreciate the good points which there may be in such an
education. Nevertheless, although we are full of admiration
for the many fine traits we have observed in the citizens of the
United States, we feel that your ideal of liberty is abused when
children are allowed to do whatever they like. True liberty is
founded upon obedience to all the principles of truth and love ;
and for children liberty starts with prompt obedience to the
wishes of their parents, in which they should find these. prin-
ciples of truth and love fulfilled.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1914 IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM. By
G. H. Ferris. New York: Henry Holt & Co. $1.50 net.
Though an English war correspondent writing on the war, Mr.
Ferris is neither " journalistic " nor partial. He gives us here
a plain but interesting narrative of events from the attack on
Liege to the end of the first battles in Flanders. Naturally there
is much description of ruins, burnings, etc., but the book is not
a mere collection of picturesque or tragic incidents, of the kind so
common from the pens of journalists. It is the straightforward
account of an eyewitness, and is a real contribution to contemporary
history. There is a serviceable index.
!
THE ROAD TOWARD PEACE. By Charles W. Elliott. Boston :
Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.00 net.
This volume would be negligible were it not for the one fact
that it has Dr. Elliott for its author. We have a right to expect
from such a source something more than a commonplace production,
with a touch of scholarship here and there as a redeeming feature.
A collection of lectures delivered on various occasions, letters
written to the New York Times, the correspondence with Mr. Schiff
that grew out of these letters such is the material of which the
book is made. Naturally it contains good things, but most of them
have been said elsewhere, and the whole is vitiated by an anti-
German bias which the author does not in the least try to conceal.
We put the book down with a feeling of hope deferred.
STORIED ITALY. By Mrs. Hugh Fraser. New York: Dodd,
Mead & Co. $3.50 net.
The title Stoned Italy is a fine one, but a misnomer. Another,
less dignified and less suggestive of richness, would have been fitter.
406 NEW BOOKS [Dec.,
For Mrs. Fraser gives us several hundred pages of fairly enter-
taining, often brilliant, yet someitimes careless writing, that is
mainly gossip; not what would naturally be expected in a book
with the name and splendid appearance of the present volume.
The stories are no more closely related to each other than to the title.
Isolated, most of them might lay fair claim to place in a monthly
magazine; and the series of chapters on the life of St. Frances
of Rome would make a charming little book.
THE VIOLET BOOK OF ROMANCE. A Tapestry of Old Tales
for Reading to the Little Ones. Rewoven by Alethea Chaplin,
with illustrations. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.00
net.
Children who have been fascinated by the Rose Book stories
will gladly welcome The Violet Book, with its goodly store of time-
honored tales. Simply and entertainingly told, they recall the
immortal adventures of Ali Baba, Goldilocks and Jack the Giant
Killer, of Snow- White and Robin Hood, and many more dear to
the child's heart. Large print and odd, fantastic pictures make the
book an attractive and suitable holiday gift.
INDIAN WHY STORIES. Sparks from War Eagle's Lodge-Fire.
By Frank B. Linderman. Illustrated. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $2.00 net.
Novelty is a most desirable feature in folk-tales, and this
collection of Blackfeet Indian stories is wholly new. They are
brief little bedtime narratives of how the chipmunk's back became
striped, and the Kingfisher's head ruffled, and the curlew's bill bent,
and all sorts of other wonderful lore told by the old chief as he
sat surrounded by his grandchildren in a Montana Indian camp.
The book is beautifully made, with fine paper and press work, and
with black and white drawings and a half dozen splendid illustra-
tions in color.
A CATHOLIC Calendar for 1916, published by the Mt. Carmel
**- Guild of 50 Franklin Street, Buffalo, New York, is a handy
and well-arranged daily Calendar for the coming year, which gives
for the Sundays the Introit of the Mass, and for every day a poetical
selection. The selections show both extensive reading in Catholic
literature and good taste in selection. It sells for the sum of
fifty cents; 10 cents extra for postage.
jforeton iperiobfcate,
The Month (November) : A. A. Pitman describes the ceme-
teries of Paris, with recollections of their illustrious dead.
The Rev. Sydney F. Smith shows that the first clause of Magna
Charta did not refer, as the late Earl of Selborne said, to freedom
from the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, but to freedom from the
temporal dominion of the Crown. James Britten commends the
new Armagh hymnal. Rev. Herbert Thurston traces the origin
of the word " Huns," as applied to the Germans. Father Thurston
also shows how Sir James Frazer, the folk-lorist, in discussing the
origins of All Souls' Day celebration, wrongly states that the cakes
begged on that day were offered to the souls of the departed ; as a
matter of fact, they were merely doles given to the poor. Lega-
cies for Masses were declared good bequests in law by an Irish Chief
Justice some years ago and, more recently, bequests to religious
orders were declared valid in England. Both rulings presumably
^hold good throughout the Empire. In the fifty years between
1850 and 1900 France gained 3,701,000 inhabitants; Great Britain,
14,000,000; Germany, 20,000,000; Austria, 14,000,000; Russia,
62,000,000, and Italy, 8,833,000. In view of the war the signif-
icance of these figures is obvious.
The Church Quarterly Review (October) : Tendencies in
Christology, by the Rev. J. K. Mozley, is a summary of the recent
non-Catholic opinions as to the nature of Christ, from such men as
Sanday, Forsyth, Bishop Weston, Mackintosh, Thompson, Loofs,
and the authors of Foundations. No evidence as to Dean Mozley 's
own opinion is given. Recent Developments in Biology, by F. A.
Dixey, discusses the addresses by Bateson and Dendy at the 1914
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
and two works by Driesch and Haldane, with brief reference to
Professor Mark Baldwin. Rev. W. J. Sparrow Simpson quotes
the opinions of modern Liberal Judaism on the doctrines of media-
tion, especially by Christ, and of the Messianic hope. Herbert
A. Strong describes, as illustrating " Slavonic culture," the works
of Golgol the humorist and of Poushkin the poet. He believes
that Russian literature will be " a dominating factor in the literature
of Europe in the near future." Very Rev. J. Armitage Robin-
408 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Dec.,
son contributes a long article on the early history of the Convoca-
tion of Canterbury from 1175 to 1533. The Editor attacks three
recent addresses by the Rev. Leighton Pullan, an extreme High
Churchman, who criticized the statement by the Archbishop of
Canterbury on the Kikuyu scandal.
The Dublin Review (October) : The Editor writes on
Prussianism, Pacificism and Chivalry. In another article he
points out how far English newspapers have fallen short of
that loyal and united tone so necessary in the present
crisis. Dom Cabrol quotes prose and poetical prayers for
France, composed by Lavedan, Masson, Jammes, Deroulede, Cop-
pee, Bazin, Pailleron, Louis Veuillot and Mistral. The Early
Romance of English Trade with Russia is based on a little-known
essay by John Milton, which describes the reception given to various
merchant ambassadors to " the Kingdom of Moscovia" from 1553
to 1604. The Editor reviews the history of the University of
Notre Dame, Indiana. Monsignor A. S. Barnes reviews the
history of the Teutonic knights and the Kingdom of Prussia.
W. R. Castle considers the situation in the United States a very
grave one. The meaning of democracy has changed. It tends in
modern America " to the levelling of all distinction, whether natural
or artificial. It distrusts both wealth and intellectual power. It
would foist into position of responsibility those who lack real quali-
fications, and that not only by endowing them with imaginary re-
sources, but, also, lest the contrast be too obvious, by minimizing
or condemning as dangerous the real qualifications of others. It is
enough if a man has risen from the ranks." There is no national
public opinion. Laws which benefit one state injure another. The
rich are attacked and business interfered with. There is a strong
tendency toward the government ownership of public utilities.
General voting on such questions as the income tax or any technical
problem is not and cannot be intelligent; the impulse of the unedu-
cated voter is to secure for himself representation without taxation.
There are too many laws; judicial procedure is too technical and
complicated; class privilege, now in favor of the laborer, is the
order of the day. Meanwhile, expert decisions are more and more
distrusted, and the opinions and will of the uneducated classes taken
as the guides of the nation. In a discussion of The Guarantees
of International Honor, Cardinal Gasquet says : " The Pope, by
his office, affords to the nations precisely that international prin-
1915-] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 409
ciple of morality which the world seeks to-day No combina-
tion of nations, directed by treaties and conventions," will be able,
as might the Papacy, to protect the weak against the strong.
The Irish Theological Quarterly (October) : The Rev. John
Blowick gives an historical review of the Sacrament of Penance.
Rev. Hugh Pope, O.P., considers What Was St. Paul's In-
firmity? and concludes that it was some bodily weakness: "The
earliest tradition vouched for by Tertullian and repeatedly men-
tioned by later writers, is that he suffered from headache. That it
was a complaint of the eyes seems to be based on an exaggerated
view of what was hardly more than a figure of speech in Gal. iv. 15.
That it was epilepsy is unthinkable."
Etudes (October) : Leonce de Grandmaison praises Paul Bour-
get's latest novel Le Sens de la Mort. Adhemar d'Ales con-
cludes his discussion of indulgences, considering their application
to the departed, complaints against indulgences, and the treatise on
this subject by Father Hilgers.
Revue du Clerge Frangais (October) : F. Girerd describes the
separation of Church and State in Brazil. Eugene Evrard re-
views a French translation of the late Monsignor Benson's Dawn
of All.
(November) : J. Bricout traces the history of Catholicism in
Bulgaria. L. Henin discusses the claim of experimental psychol-
ogists, that the only legitimate method of educating children is
that of attracting and pleasing them.
The Irish Ecclesiastial Record (November) : In Spirit and
in Truth, by Dom B. Stewart, O.S.B., is a defence of external
religion, as sanctioned by God and as needed by man. The Rev.
T. E. Garde, O.P., describes The Dominican Biblical School in
Jerusalem, which for five and twenty years was a centre of intel-
lectual activity, and is now a military headquarters for the Turks.
The Revue B'ibliqiie, and the work of Fathers Lagrange,
Dhorme, Jaussen, Savignac, Abel and Vincent made for this school,
even outside of its students, a world- wide reputation. The Rev.
James P. Rushe, O.D.C., relates The Trials of Some Irish Mis-
sionaries, Discalced Carmelites, from 1638 to 1645. Chris-
topher Reddin points out that " previous wars have not made Social-
ism necessary; and neither does the present."
IRecent Events*
The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD wishes to state that none
of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of
thv 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.
If anything can add to the interest of the
Great Britain. present war it is the fact that it is being car-
ried on by Great Britain, after a series of
political changes that has placed the country more than ever before
under the control of the working classes. The Reform Act of
1867, carried to its complete development in 1884, by giving house-
hold suffrage, handed over political power to the common people,
swamping not only the aristocracy and the middle class, but any
combination of the two. At first the new wielders of the destinies
of Great Britain did not realize the situation, and were content to
follow the old lines, and to allow themselves to be guided by tradi-
tional methods. In fact, there was at first a reaction; for many
years the Conservatives supplanted the Liberals ; but the new forces
have been more and more asserting themselves, and taking into
their own hands the control of affairs. The veto power of the
House of Lords has been abolished, and every vestige of its control
of finance has disappeared. Heavy taxation has been placed upon
the holders of land, and measures were threatened which seemed
likely to abolish this long-existing monopoly. The war, indeed, has
brought about a suspension of movement in this direction, but has
revealed even more clearly the power now possessed by the work-
ing classes. The war could not go on for a week if they failed to
give it active and self-sacrificing cooperation. The miners, or the
railway men, or the ship-builders, could bring about a cessation of
hostilities by merely abstaining from work, to say nothing of the
refusal to enlist. This is not merely a fact, but a fact known and
recognized by all. A victorious outcome will, therefore, be an
indication that the mass of the people is as worthy of trust and as
efficient as the better-placed and more highly-instructed classes.
It will be the greatest vindication of democracy that has ever been
given.
1915]. RECENT EVENTS 411
The strike of the Welsh miners made many fear that the work-
ing people would prove unworthy of the confidence which the nation
has reposed in them. When everything depended upon prompt
supplies of coal to the navy, work was stopped merely for the sake
of an increase in pay. This step was taken by the miners in oppo-
sition to the advice of the officials of their own trade union, and in
defiance of an act of Parliament. They yielded only when their
demands were fully conceded. It may be looked upon as an ex-
tenuating feature that their demands were not unjust that the coal
owners were in fact making undue profits, of which the miners had
rightful claims to a share. The whole series of events shows,
however, the difficulties encountered in governing under the present
conditions, and it is only one of many instances. The railway men,
soon after the settlement of the difficulty in Wales, made a claim
to an increase of wages, to be enforced by a strike in the event of a
refusal. This was only averted by the concession of their demands.
The lack of munitions was due not so much to strikes or threats of
strikes, as to the enforcement by trade unions of rules by which
work is restricted. It has become an established practice among
them that no workman should do his best, but that he should limit
his output according to certain definite rules laid down by his trade
union. A certain piece of work may be done say in ten hours.
The trade unions say that fourteen hours must be given to it. Other
rules require that a workman's control must be limited to one or
two machines, whereas he could easily control three or four. Un-
skilled workers must be introduced only in a certain proportion to
the skilled workers. These and similar rules had become estab-
lished by the trade unions, and enforced under the penalty of a
strike. To their enforcement the lack of munitions was due. The
Government was not strong enough to enforce the abandonment
of these rules. It had to proceed by negotiation. The terms insisted
upon by the trades in question were granted. These terms included
the recognition of the right of the unions to make rules of this kind,
and to resume their application at the end of the war. Moreover,
the profits of the employers were to be limited to a certain amount;
the balance to be paid into the coffers of the state. This is another
proof of the great difficulties placed in the way of government under
the present democratic regime. That to a certain extent they have
been overcome, shows how united at heart is the country in the
carrying on of the war.
There is, however, one point, and that perhaps the most im-
412 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
portant of all, in which the opposition of the workingmen has not
as yet been overcome that is the adoption of conscription. In the
Trade Union Congress a resolution was passed condemning in
strong terms the efforts to foist conscription on the country, and
expressing full confidence in the capability of carrying the war to a
successful conclusion by voluntary enlistment. Since that time even
mere outspoken utterances have been made by men representatives
of the working classes. One of them declared that the attempt to
introduce conscription would produce an industrial revolution.
Never, perhaps, in the history of the British press has there been a
more virulent quarrel. Vituperation has been carried to an extreme
rarely reached before. Advocates of conscription are called
British Prussians and Junkers; its supporters are declared to be
conspirators and the whole movement a plot, and this notwith-
standing the fact that Mr. Lloyd George, the leader of the recent
democratic measures, is believed to be one of the members of the
Cabinet who is in its favor, if certain conditions are not fulfilled.
The anti-class feeling which had reached such a height just before
the outbreak of the war, has reappeared in the suggestion that the
movement in favor of conscription is really for the purpose of put-
ting a powerful reactionary weapon in the hands of the opponents
of the recent democratic development of the country.
However strong the opposition may be, it must not be thought
that it indicates the least wavering on the part of practically all
the working class to the continuance of the war not merely to a
successful issue, but to the issue had in view from the first. Their
determination is as unshaken as that of the rest of the nation, and
perhaps even more unshaken, for they recognize in the enemy's
national ideal the opponent of all that they understand by democ-
racy. With it they can make no terms, and for this reason they
are unwilling to adopt conscription as a means. Their belief in
voluntary as opposed to constrained effort is strong enough to con-
vince them that success is sure; that an army large enough to win
can be raised and maintained by voluntary enlistment alone. This
is what is now being put to the proof. To Lord Derby has been
intrusted the task of securing the required numbers. This change
means the transfer of recruiting from the military to the civilian
authorities with, of course, the cooperation of the military. With
Lord Derby is working hand-in-hand the Parliamentary Committee
of the Trade Union Congress. The Register made a few weeks
before of all persons from sixteen to sixty-five, enables the canvas
1915]. RECENT EVENTS 413
to be made with greater facility. By means of it, workmen and
others who can be of greater service to their country in the factories
and workshops have been ascertained, and no attempt will be made
to enroll them in the army. The call is for thirty thousand recruits
a week. There are tens of thousands of men of military age and
fitness available for service, and it is generally believed that it is not
want of courage but lack of a full realization of the vital interests
involved that has so far kept them from offering themselves in their
country's need. The opportunity now being given is the last re-
source. In case of the failure of Lord Derby's efforts, there will be
no alternative to the adoption of some form of conscription. Opin-
ions differ as to the results so far obtained. There is some reason,
however, to believe that, notwithstanding reports to the contrary, it
will not be necessary to adopt compulsory methods. The date fixed
for the end of the experiment is the thirtieth of November.
The Coalition Ministry still survives, although, if rumors may
be trusted, there is within its ranks a wide divergence of opinion
about the necessity of conscription. It is generally agreed that the
ministry is too large, and that the delay which has been the cause of
failure in several instances is due to the number of its members.
This has led to the gradual evolution of a smaller Cabinet, to which
has been intrusted the day-by-day direction of the war. The depart-
ure of Lord Kitchener on a mission to the Near East, and the resig-
nation of Mr. Churchill, have for the time being made a slight
reduction.
A source of disquiet has been the rise in prices, which has
amounted to thirty-eight per cent. This, however, compares favor-
ably with the rise in Berlin and Vienna, where prices have gone
up seventy-two and eighty-six per cent respectively. Wages, how-
ever, have gone up even more than prices. Skilled workmen have
most of all benefited by the war, their services being so all-important.
Never, it is said, have workingmen ever lived so well. Never have
there been so few in receipt of poor relief, while employment com-
mittees have closed their doors, as their help is no longer required.
Sad to say the King's appeal to abstain from strong drink an
appeal to which he added force by his own example has fallen
upon deaf ears. The drink bill went up last year by forty million
dollars. Severe restrictions have been placed under the powers
recently conferred by Parliament in several specified areas, while
in London treating is now a crime.
The most stupendous Budget in the world's history passed
4H RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
without a murmur, not because the burden it will impose was not
recognized, but because it was seen to be inevitable. It is worthy
of mention, however, that in the end the whole of the sums that
have been voted will not have to be paid by Great Britain, for she is,
during this as during the Napoleonic wars, financing several other
States by amounts which go beyond the hundred million. It is to
be feared that vast sums are being wasted, for carte blanche is
given to the army and navy. Hence earnest calls are being made
for the practice of economy both by the Government and by private
individuals. The balance of trade is now by a very large sum
against Great Britain ; what she once paid for by exports has now
to be paid in cash, as her factories are employed so largely in the
service of the war, and so many workmen have become soldiers.
The limitation of imports is, therefore, of supreme importance.
High authorities, however, declare that the war can be financed
indefinitely without diminishing the wealth of the nation. The
expenditure at the outside does not amount to half the national
income, while the accumulated wealth is left untouched. The bur-
den imposed on the people does not compare with that borne during
the Napoleonic wars, if the increase of the national resources is
borne in mind. The annual income in 1915 is eight times as great
as it was in 1815. The ordinary taxation, direct and indirect, at
the present time is only about seven per cent of that income, while
a hundred years ago it was twenty-five per cent. And as taxation
to-day covers education, old-age pensions and national insurance,
it gives back to the working classes two-thirds of what they con-
tribute. Hence confidence is felt that however great the sacrifices
may be, there will be no lack of ability to carry on the war to a
successful issue, however far off that may be. In this connection
it may be mentioned that although the casualities have been so
numerous and of so terrible a character, the diminution of emigra-
tion which has taken place since the war began has more than
compensated for the loss of life.
It cannot, however, be denied that no little dissatisfaction is
felt on account of military failures and diplomatic reverses.
The Government is coming to be looked upon as too
timid and hesitating. Mr. Asquith's oft-repeated " Wait and
see " is becoming tiresome. Fuller light and more authoritative
leading is being called for. The ways of the censor
have, as is usual with censors, become mischievously stupid. A
more decided leadership is, however, the greatest need. To a leader,
1915]. RECENT EVENTS 415
who is resolved, who with insistent steps moves straight onward
along the right path, a correspondent of the Times says, " Both
people and Parliament will yield an obedience that never swerves;
they will give him back trust for trust; they will strengthen him
with all their strength; they will uphold his hands when they are
heavy, there will then be an end of our present disquietudes, and
we shall confront whatever dangers lie before us with an uncon-
querable because enlightened confidence, both in ourselves and in
our leader."
There are, however, some who are beginning to ask whether
Mr. Asquith is such a leader. It was foreseen for a long time past
that an attack would be made on Serbia by the Central Powers.
Germany having failed both in the East and West to break through
the ring thrown round her, having failed to take Riga and Dvinsk
to say nothing of Petrograd, to reach Calais to say nothing of
Paris and London, would, as every student of the situation saw,
follow the line of least resistance in the hope of finding an exit, and
of drawing from the really decisive scene of conflict enough troops
to give her a chance of a victory. The British Government, many
feel, ought to have been prepared to have given effectual aid to
Serbia. As a matter of fact it had done nothing, and when the
German attack was made, it was too late to fit out and dispatch
an expedition equal to the emergency. It would seem as if the
British Cabinet had been willing to leave Serbia to her fate: at
least this was the impression received by Sir Edward Carson. It
must be admitted that the question to be decided was excruciatingly
difficult; whether on the one hand to abandon Serbia to her fate
for the sake of concentrating the strength of the Allies on the
spot where the decision must be made; or on the other to give to
Serbia the help of which she stood ,so much in need, and which by
her heroic conduct she so fully merited, at the risk of failure in
France and Flanders. The decision reached at last is to make
every effort to bar the way to Germany's advance on Constanti-
nople, and Lord Kitchener has been sent to take charge of the
operations of the Allies. Although on account of the delay Serbia
stands to lose at the outset, Great Britain is pledged to secure the
complete restitution of her rights. But the undue postponement of
the decision, causes many in Great Britain to doubt whether Mr.
Asquith is the leader capable of coping with the present diffi-
culties.
416 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
Behind the scenes there has existed in
France. France, covered more or less by the action
of the censor, a considerable degree of polit-
ical discontent with the conduct of the war. It was felt by many
of the Senators and Deputies that the Government was not acting
in due subservience to Parliament. As a consequence of this agita-
tion committees were appointed with limited powers to supervise
military operations. An attack which proved unsuccessful was
soon afterwards made on M. Millerand, the Minister of War. The
decision of the Cabinet to send aid to the Near East led to the
resignation of M. Delcasse. After a short interval this has led to
the reconstruction of the Cabinet under France's one politician who
may be considered to rank as a statesman M. Aristide Briand.
The new Cabinet (if the Under-Secretaries are included) is even
more numerous than that of Great Britain, the size of which is so
severely criticized. It is thought, however, that as in Great Britain,
the day-by-day conduct of the war will devolve upon a small com-
mittee. Japan's system of Elder Statesmen may well have been in
the mind of the framers of France's new government, for it includes
no fewer than eight ex-Premiers. Among them is M. de Freycinet,
who has been Premier on four occasions, the first being as long ago
as 1879 m tne Presidency of M. Grevy. The new Ministry em-
braces every party : M. Emile Combes sits by the side of M. Denys
Cochin, the latter being the one representative of the Right. There
are three Collective Socialists, three Independent Socialists, six
Radicals and Socialist-Radicals, two Moderate Republicans, one
Progressist, and one member of the Right. The late Minister of
War disappears, his place being taken by General Gallieni, who is
not classed as belonging to any party. The appointment of a soldier
is not relished by the Radicals, nor is the presence of M. Emile
Combes, the bitter anti-Catholic, agreeable to the Right. The aim
in its formation was, however, the desire to make the Ministry an
epitome of the nation, a type of its unity, and by bringing a soldier
into the governing body to emphasize the desire for more decisive
action against the enemy. The former government was dominated
more by the spirit of resistance. The initiative now having passed
to the Allies, the Government ought to be more bent on the enemy's
expulsion. This is what the country is looking for from its new
Ministers.
With reference to the prosecution of the war, M. Briand took
the first opportunity of making a public declaration of the policy
1915]- RECENT EVENTS 417
of the new Government : " I desire to declare emphatically that
the change of Ministers is in no way a sign of any change of policy.
The policy of France is summed up in the word Victory.' Victory
means in the words of my predecessor, M. Viviani: The having
assured the triumph of right, the having banished the possibility of
the renewal of such crimes ; the having restored heroic Belgium to
her political and economical independence; the having recaptured
our Alsace and our Lorraine' La paix par la victoire. Such is and
must be the motto of any French Ministry. I mean the restoration
of the right of every country to lead its own life, and to cultivate
its own civilization without infringement of its neighbor's rights.
By Victory' I mean the crushing of German militarism." The exe-
cution of Miss Cavell has again shown to all the world the character
of this militarism, and given a new battle-cry both to the British
and the French.
The place held by General Joffre, the Commander-in- Chief,
in the hearts of the French people and of his soldiers is indicated
by the name of Father which is universally given him Pere Joffre.
This is due not so much to the ability he has displayed as general,
but to the fact that although a soldier, and therefore under the
necessity of maintaining discipline, he has been able to do this, and
yet to do everything in the spirit of fraternity. He treats the
soldiers as intelligent human beings, capable of thinking for them-
selves. Every day men are brought out of the ranks to hold com-
mands. The officers are taught to look upon their soldiers as their
children, to watch over their comforts and necessities, to share
with them their privations and to undergo the same hardships.
Everything is done to eliminate the spirit of fear, to make the
soldiers live together as a great family. In this, as in other respects,
the French spirit is the antithesis of the German. The German
soldier is made into a machine. He is discouraged from initiative,
and entirely subject to the will of his officer. Hence he always
attacks in that close formation which has led to such awful
losses. The officer belongs to a superior order; he does not even
transmit his order directly to the soldier, but through the agency
of an intermediary class sergeants to corporals.
The successful attacks made at the end of September showed
the penetrability of the German ring of steel. They also
at the same time relieved the German pressure upon Russia
by the necessity which they brought about of transferring troops
from the East to the West. The Allies, too, learned their own
VOL. cu. 27
418 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
superiority on ground chosen by the Germans, for every measure
in the way of defence which was possible even to German military
science had been prepared during the last ten months. The Allies
learned that they could organize victory by preparations which out-
rivalled even those of the Germans in their scientific precision and
thoroughness. In short, these successes have not only recovered the
initiative for the Allies, but have revealed the secret of victory. This
secret consists in thorough preparation. The bringing up of heavy
guns within range of the new trenches of the driven-back enemy and
the replenishment of ammunition require time. In three days
before the recent attack three million shells were poured upon the
enemy's trenches. Preparations of such a character are not made
in one day. And so no further step forward has yet been taken;
and no one knows exactly when it will be, while everyone knows
that it will be taken when the Allies are again ready. Nearly
every effort, and several have been made by the Germans, to recover
the ground recently lost has been defeated.
The necessity of closer cooperation between Great Britain and
France has been made clear by the failure to deal satisfactorily with
the Balkan situation, and even in military affairs more unity of
action has been proved to be desirable. Conferences have taken
place between the King during his recent visit to France and
President Poincare, as well as between the Foreign and War Min-
isters of each country. As a result of these conferences, the Inter-
Allies War Council has been formed. This makes the British and
French armies virtually a single unit. Common financial arrange-
ments were made sometime ago, which included Italy and Russia.
The Russian Foreign Minister is seeking to negotiate a series of
commercial treaties between the Allied Powers, by which Germany
shall at the end of the war be excluded from the benefits of trade
which she has hitherto enjoyed, looking upon this as Germany's
most vulnerable point.
The difficulty of learning the real state of
Germany. affairs in Germany does not grow less as
time passes. Its ruling class controls sys-
tematically not merely the army and na,vy and the civil administra-
tion, and to a large extent the industries of the country, but also
public opinion. The Government controls the circulation of news.
" Copy " is furnished not only to local papers throughout the Em-
pire, but to the press in every part of the world. In every country
1915]. RECENT EVENTS 419
it has paid agents, and either owned or subsidized newspapers.
The censorship deals with any paper or individual that may prove
refractory. It is difficult, therefore, to obtain accurate insight into
the realities of the situation.
The question of most interest is, of course, whether there is
any weakening in the will and determination to carry on the war
or in the power and capacity to do so. About the public utterances
of those who are in charge of affairs, whether civil or military,
and of professors, military experts, and the writers in the Govern-
ment newspapers, there can be no doubt. Letters, however, that
have been found on soldiers who have been either taken prisoners
or killed, shed a different light upon the subject; they, in several
instances, reveal a strong desire for peace. How widespread this
desire is, is of course only a matter of conjecture. The ability to
carry on the war depends upon the supply of men, and munitions,
and to a certain extent the willingness of the men to serve. As to
the latter, no doubt need be felt.
It is one of the strange phenomena of this war, how Jew has
been forced to fight against Jew, Slav against Slav, Pole against
Pole, without regard to their own personal interests and wishes. The
weakening of the offensive in the East, where the attack upon
Russia has made no progress, is due not merely to the strengthen-
ing of the Russian armies, but also to the inability on the part of
the Germans to make up their enormous losses by sending reinforce-
ments. The same is true, in a less degree, of the Western field of
battle. Lack of organization, however, is the defect most clearly
manifested in this field of operations. In order to resist the recent
Allied offensive the Germans were compelled to send up odd bat-
talions wherever they could lay hands on them, as they were unable
to send properly organized corps. Whether the advance into the
Balkans is a proof of strength, as the Germans would have us think
or of weakness, may well be doubted. Events on the Eastern and
Western fronts seem to show that the Balkan effort has seriously
crippled the German offensive, and that the real aim of the new
adventure is to draw off portions of the Allied forces from what
will be the decisive scene of conflict. It is not without significance
that the only sphere of the war in which Germany is now making
headway is in her contest with the small state of Serbia, in which
she is being helped by Bulgaria. On every other scene she is either
at a standstill or receding. And she can no longer carry on her
commerce in the Baltic.
420 RECENT EVENTS [Dec.,
Rising food prices form another element to be taken into ac-
count in the endeavor to estimate Germany's capacity for carrying on
the war, and this not so much on account of its being an indication
of the deficiency of supply (for this may be doubted), but because
it is due to a conflict of classes. The Agrarians are said to be
exploiting the mass of the people for their own advantage, and
thereby creating disaffection. About the rise of prices there is no
doubt. A letter in a recent number of the Vorwarts gives a graphic
picture of its effect upon the family budget of a representative
German household. " Less and worse meat ; bread with nothing
in it; half the usual quantity of butter and eggs; the smallest and
commonest kinds of dry and fresh vegetables; sugar very limited;
cocoa, tea and jam practically given up; potatoes and war bread the
principal means of nourishment. The result is general under-nutri-
tion, and permanent hunger." The evil has become so widespread
and manifest that the Government has been obliged to take the mat-
ter in hand. As, however, the regulations which it has made seem
rather to limit than to increase the supply, the remedy may only ag-
gravate the evil. Severe restrictions are imposed on the consumption
of meat apparently by forbidding the display in stores, or the sale
of meat of any kind on two days in the week, and by forbidding the
sale of particular kinds of meat and also of butter, and all fats on
other fixed days. There is a compulsory regulation of prices of
meat, milk and other foods, a regulation which is likely to be
more helpful. The proposal has been made that the distribution of
food should be made a government monopoly. Whether it will be
carried out, or whether if carried out it would prove an adequate
remedy, cannot be said.
With Our Readers.
IT has often been said that after the priesthood, the medical profes-
sion is the most sacred and honorable of all the avocations of .man.
The energies and the self-sacrifices of its members are devoted en-
tirely to the saving and the prolongation of human life. Honor and
dignity and the reverence of humankind are, have been, and will be
theirs, for the sole reason that they are the protectors and the saviours
of that human life so precious to everyone. In their hands we
place the very existence of those most dear to us ; we intrust to them
our confidence; we relate them the secrets of our souls our failures,
our sins, our hopes simply because the life which we would give all
to retain is in their hands.
* * * . *
T)HYSICIANS are the custodians of individual life, and consequently
f of the life of human society. As a corporate body they stand for
the sacred and holy character of life in itself. They have been
knighted by mankind because they have devoted themselves to its
service. They are privileged to impose suffering and self-sacrifice and
discipline upon us that life may be preserved and prolonged, which
fact is only added proof that as physicians their sole title to respect
and confidence is as champions and defenders of human life. Once
forfeit that, and the medical profession will forfeit everything worth
having. They will not only be unblessed; they will be cursed for
their treachery to humankind.
* * * *
THE medical profession to-day includes thousands and thousands
of men of the highest character who are giving the world an
example of self-sacrifice and devotion to the preservation of human
life nothing short of heroic. With these the standard is in safe hands.
But others, perhaps unwittingly, are forcing the profession to shift
from this secure base to another, of its very nature insecure and un-
certain. From being the protectors and preservers of life they would
be its arbiters. From the simple security of " everything to preserve
life," they are changing to the complexity and indefiniteness of " when
should life be preserved and when should it be destroyed." They
would surrender a safe, worthy and reverent mission, and involve
themselves in a discussion that can know no settlement, except through
humble acceptance of the revealed word of God. Heretofore, men
have always gone to the physician, believing that he has an eye single
422 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
in the defence of life. Some are now trying to insist that the phy-
sician's eye must no longer be single ; that to him must be submitted
the greater question, whether or not life is worth preserving.
* * * *
ONCE there was a ferry-man who piloted passengers across a stream,
the current of which was at times very strong and very dangerous.
It was the ferry-man's boast that he never lost a passenger. To his
work he devoted every bit of strength he had ; he would rather have
met death himself than suffer the loss of a single passenger. One
only thought dominated his head and heart ; to carry his passenger to
safety. That singleness of purpose was an essential element in his
unbroken record.
It has. always been believed that a physician had but one thought
to carry his patient safely across the stream of sickness to the shore of
health. Some might tell him the passenger was not worth carrying;
others that it was wiser to let him drown in the swift current, since
unhappiness awaited him on the shore of health. Others thought it
was hot worth while to carry the passenger all the way; wiser, they
said, to drop him in mid-stream and let him sink or swim for himself ;
many more were waiting on the shore far worthier than he.
To all these, as to the voice of a tempter who would ask him to
betray his trust, the physician turned a deaf ear. Yet some members
of the medical profession now maintain that the physician's office is
not so simple. They claim that these voices deserve attention; that
it is within the province of the ferry-man or the physician to say
whether the passenger or the patient should or should not be saved.
* * * *
BRAZEN, rather than prominent, they do as a matter of fact attract
much attention and affect many readers. These unscrupulous and
unprincipled members of the medical profession tend to throw a certain
amount of public discredit upon the profession itself. The publicity
given to their pronouncements, and to certain organizations that have
seconded them, has reached a stage where it has become necessary for
the worthy members of the profession to make their voices heard.
Medical magazines of a more or less official character are lending their
pages to the publication of articles that speak of both death and life
as equally interesting and equally subject to the will of the physician.
They have publicly fathered so-called dramatic performances that
seek to inculcate the belief that the physician is in some way false to
his profession until he weighs life and death in the balance, matches
his expert against his sociological knowledge, and takes upon himself
the God-like burden of the destiny of humankind.
Only a few days ago bold type announced in the newspapers that
a Chicago doctor had decided not to save the life of a four-day-old
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 423
child because it might be an invalid for a year and a defective for
the remainder of its life. The next day the infant died in convul-
sions. The physician admitted that an operation would have saved
the child's life.
But he asserted that the question of saving a child's life or not was
" one which every physician must decide for himself." He re-
fused to operate and claimed that such refusal was " a favor to the
race." His action has been approved by two Chicago Societies, the
Anti-Cruelty League and the Illinois Humane Society; by the heads
of the sociological and of the philanthropical departments of Columbia
University ; by the president of the Long Island College Hospital ; by
the head of the Mentally Defective department of the Post Graduate
Hospital of New York. These are a very small minority of the
medical profession. The majority, who publicly expressed an opinion,
upheld the single and definite purpose of the physician's calling the
preservation of life at all cost.
* * * *
''PHE Coroner's jury, composed of six physicians Ludwig Hektoen,
1 University of Chicago; D. A. K. Steele, University of Illinois;
Arthur Rankin, Loyola University ; John F. Golden, Mercy Hospital ;
D. Howard Chislett, Hahnemann College; Henry F. Lewis, Cook
County Hospital rendered the following verdict : " We believe that a
prompt operation would have prolonged and perhaps saved the life of
the child. We find no evidence from the physical defects that the
child would have become mentally or morally defective. Several of
the physical defects might have been improved by plastic operations.
We believe that morally and ethically a surgeon is fully within his
rights in refusing to perform any operation which his conscience will
not sanction. We recommend strongly that in all doubtful cases of
this character a consultation of two or more surgeons of known repu-
tation for skill, ethical standing and broad experience should be held to
decide upon the advisability or inadvisability of operative measures.
We believe that the physician's highest duty is to relieve suffering and
to save or prolong life."
* * * *
IN this matter of the physician's calling, it will be seen that one thing
is agreed upon by all, that is, the importance of life. The man
who believes in God and in spiritual values, maintains that all life
and every life is of supreme importance; that God gave it, and that
however man has marred it in the giving, God alone has power to take
it away. The materialist maintains that life is so important that the
unfit must be sacrificed in order not to endanger it for the fit. Every
individual as an individual is, as a rule, unwilling to give it up. At
any rate, the truth which no one denies is this, that life is
424 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
supremely desirable. Upon that truth has rested the raison d'etre of
the medical profession, and the respect and reverence which it has
won among men. If its members abandon it, they, as professional men,
commit suicide.
So merely human wisdom demands that its members meet to-
gether, and in no unmistakable way reassure the public that they wish
to live and let live.
AS we foretold in our issue of two month's ago, the " Catholic "
party of the Episcopal Church was not successful in its endeavor
to keep their Church from taking part in the coming Panama Con-
gress. At a meeting of the Board of Missions of the Episcopal
Church held in New York on October 26th, it was decided by a vote
of twenty-six to thirteen to send delegates to the Congress. Im-
mediately after the vote was announced three Bishops and two clergy-
men of the Board handed in their resignations; Dr. Manning, one of
these, had spoken earnestly against participation in the Congress. He
maintained that in purpose and in spirit the Congress was deliberately
unfriendly to the Roman Catholic Church. " Such participation," he
added, " would compromise the principles of the Episcopal Church.
United Protestantism is not united Christendom." Bishop Weller of
Fond du Lac also stated that such participation would be " a betrayal
of the basic principles of the Church."
The resolution finally adopted stated : " That our delegates go
with no purpose, authority or power of committing this Board to co-
operation." A rather meaningless definition of power because the con-
ference is purely deliberative and in no way legislative.
The Living Church stated that " this represented its conception
of the sublimest sort of statement of how not to do it."
* * * *
TO those who in this dispute, far-reaching as affecting the Episcopal
Church, are standing for the beginnings at least of Catholic prin-
ciples, the good wishes of every Catholic must go out, and the hope
that what they are seeking to find in a Church which has it not, they
will speedily find in the Church that has possessed it from the be-
ginning of the Christian era even to this day. The dispute has given
rise to much interesting correspondence and statement, and the leaders
are being forced to align themselves on one side of the question or
the other.
* * * *
WE have spoken of how little patriotic concern the promoters of this
Panama Congress have for the welfare of our country. That
welfare demands cordial relations with all our South American neigh-
bors. It is manifest that such a congress would of itself be an open
1915.] WITH OUR READERS 425
declaration of our unfriendly and hostile attitude to the Southern Re-
publics. Over eighty years ago President John Quincy Adams declared
in a message to the House of Representatives and curiously enough
the message concerned the appointment of delegates to a Panama Con-
ference that : " The first and paramount principle upon which it was
deemed wise and just to lay the corner-stone of all our future relations
with them [the South American Republics] was disinterestedness ; the
next was cordial good will to them ; the third was a claim of fair and
equal reciprocity."
* * * *
TN the recent publication For Better Relations With Our Latin-
1 American Neighbors, Robert Bacon states : "It is a fact now generally
recognized that the people of this country [the United States] have
been and still are ignorant of the actual conditions of these great Latin
American- nations, which are advancing in the path of progress as
rapidly as we have advanced at any period of our history." And that
" attitude of superiority, too often assumed by unthinking persons of
other nations, can beget only their suspicion, distrust and contempt."
A Catholic, who through long experience knows South America well,
writes as follows in The Living Church:
The writer, a Roman Catholic, but educated in purely non-sectarian and
even agnostic atmospheres in the United States, has had several years' personal
contact with Latin-Americans, and has lived in Latin America under condi-
tions peculiarly favorable for the study of the Latin character and mind, and of
the questions, both political and religious, confronting the Latin- American states
with which he is familiar.
Stay-at-home North Americans may not be aware that the constant as-
sumption of superiority on our part superiority along every line is very
galling to the "inferior brethren." Perhaps at this time we may be beginning
to realize this because of the Teutonic claims. But the Anglo-Saxon is a
peculiar creature; he is not very logical when it comes to self-analysis and to
seeing his own defects. Alas, how well the lines about the mote and the beam,
and the Pharisee's prayer, apply to us, without our being aware of it 1
The Latin, however, who is of a critical mind (like the French) cannot believe
-we are sincere in our desire for bettering our neighbors and setting everybody
else's house in order. He considers us hypocrites. He suspects ulterior
motives.
Protestantism and fair-minded Protestants will admit this is largely
national or racial, in nearly all of its forms, and among peoples of other faiths
(even other Protestants) any one form of Protestant belief is invariably linked
with the race or nation where that form orginated or where it has its strongest
hold. To the Latin-American, therefore, be he a practising Catholic or an
avowed atheist, the concerted action of North American Protestant sects would
be looked upon not merely as a religious but as a political attack. It would be
looked upon as another assumption of " yanqui " superiority, and as such would
arouse intense animosity among all Latin-Americans, regardless of creed.
And to the politicians there who are preaching anti-Yankee imperialism, it would
serve as fresh proof of the subterfuge and duplicity employed by us for the
426 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
political domination of Latin America. (As a matter of fact, we must all
recognize that foreign religious missionary work almost invariably brings po-
litical questions in its train.)
A move such as the one proposed, then, would have a political effect in-
jurious to United States interests, would arouse the opposition of our Latin
neighbors, and would even tend to draw priest and pagan together in the face
of a common danger. The United States administrations, and the people, have
made many unfortunate blunders in Latin-American policy. This concerted
missionary move would add another to the already long list.
The only result of a vigorous Protestant campaign in Latin America-
looked at solely from the religious point of view would be to drive many not
well balanced people into agnosticism or atheism people whom the Catholic
Church has been and is nursing along, and to whom she is giving all that their
natures will absorb. Is it a Christian act, then, to take away from such per-
sons as these those means of grace which they have at their disposal, and give
them in return something unsuited to them, which they will soon discard for
nothing at all? Is it not really on hatred for "Rome," and (speak it softly!)
on that Anglo-Saxon "holier than thou" attitude, that this campaign is being
planned ?
To those who know the Latin- Americans, a Protestant propaganda will have
a bad effect politically for the United States, and no practical religious results
for the Protestants. What it will do, in all probability, is to unite all educated
Latin-Americans against us as a people and a civilization, and greatly to
strengthen the Roman Catholic Church. From that viewpoint we Catholics
might ask for nothing better for this last result would hardly be the consum-
mation hoped for by our Protestant friends !
One last word. We Catholics appreciate the solicitude shown for us by our
religious rivals, but we feel that our Church has had a longer and broader
international experience than any American Protestant sect, and we believe
(pardon the conceit!) that we can settle our problems in Latin America and
elsewhere quite as well as outsiders could. You see, we are "of the people"
there. The Protestants would be rank outsiders.
* * * *
r PHE Congregationalist and Christian World views the " High
1 Church " party of the Episcopal Church as " perhaps the least
Catholic group of religionists on earth, repudiated by or repudiating
the vast majority of Christians of every name." On the other hand,
the Christian Intelligencer, which the New York Evening Post saw fit
to quote, obsessed by the fear of " Romanism," stated that the " growth
of the High Church party in the Protestant Episcopal Church and its
approach to ritual Roman Catholicism " was not " a reassuring fact."
r PHE letters of the late Monsignor Benson are always interesting.
1 We have just received the original draft of one which he wrote
a few days before his death. It was sent to us with the accompanying
letter, also printed below, by an Episcopal clergyman, who naturally
does not wish his own name to appear. Both letters are of peculiar
appropriateness in this issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD containing the
article on the origins of the Anglican or Episcopal Church.
1915-] WITH OUR READERS 427
To THE EDITOR OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD:
An American parish priest of the Anglican or " Episcopal " Church in the
United States, I have never seen nor heard the late Monsignor Benson, although
he once lectured in the same city where I was stationed. I first got interested
in him through his charming Alphabet of Saints, of which I gave away
several copies to Anglican children, the children of my friends. The Rule of
Life, pictures and all, was a great help at Lenten week-day devotions for the
children, and the Old Testament Rhymes were also useful, although not so clever
as the former series.
I dipped into the novels and essays at the suggestion of a fellow-cleric
who reads everything, a gifted priest who is especially bitter toward ultramon-
tanism. I found in Monsignor Benson's writing no arguments or controversy
that in themselves pulled me any more stronger toward Rome, although they
might have affected me if I had not waded through so much of this material
after the fashion of most Anglo-Catholic clergymen. Monsignor Benson was
clever enough frankly to acknowledge his distaste for paper flowers, cheap
vestments, gabblings, etc., but much of his plea for Rome is (minus the Papal-
ism) just about the same plea that we Anglo-Catholics make for English
Catholicism, nor would a well-trained Anglo-Catholic layman be much in-
fluenced by satire directed against Anglican fiction people of the " high-Morn-
ing-Prayer" variety, although I suppose that they are in the majority. I do
not recollect that I found in half a dozen of Monsignor Benson's novels and
essays any well-balanced English Catholics of the sort that one associates with
St. Albans, Holburn, St. Peter's, London Docks, St. Clement's, Philadelphia, St.
John Evangelist's, Boston, of the monasteries of Mirfield, Cowley and Holy
Cross.
What interested me in Monsignor Benson were (first) his humor, delicacy,
imagination, mysticism and spirituality as a writer. And (second) how was it
possible for this brilliant and sincere man, the son of an Archbishop of Canter-
bury, and for several years an Anglican monk, how was it possible that in
this day, so far removed from the Tractarian squabbles, this particular man
should enter the Roman priesthood? Certainly it required an extraordinary
courage and conviction for him to go over. Certainly he was beloved by many
Anglican friends even after he had left Canterbury.
Knowing that famous and busy folk are glad to have a letter of appre-
ciation and honest inquiry, I wrote to Monsignor Benson, who had never
heard of me. I need not repeat here my letter.
Shortly after I had received Monsignor Benson's reply, written entirely in
his own hand, I read the brief newspaper account of his death. Taking the
letter from my coat pocket, I saw that the date of composition was only nine
days before the author left this world. Here, then, must have been one of his
last letters. I must acknowledge that I had a most real and strange sense that
I had lost a dear friend. Following is an exact copy of the letter:
HARE STREET HOUSE, BUNTINGFORD, ENGLAND,
October 9, [1914].
MY DEAR SIR:
1. You have given me a big job so big that it cannot really be done by
letter. So may I ask you to read a book of mine : The Religion of a Plain Man.
I gather that you have already read my Confessions of a Convert.
2. May I answer some of your detached questions first.
(a) Yes: I am absolutely certain that Anglican Orders are invalid not
only because, after careful inquiry, an authoritative and irreformable decision
428 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
was given by Rome: but also because I have been both a clergyman and a
priest: and know the astounding difference by experience.
(b) We fully acknowledge the validity of Greek and Russian orders.
(c) It does not follow that Anglican ceremonies are sacrilegious. They
are the sincere acts of sincere men.
If it seems hard to believe that such good men can believe themselves priests
when they are not is it not far harder to have to believe that tens of thousands
of Evangelical clergymen were Catholic priests and offered Mass and handled
the Body of Christ, without ever suspecting it? Yet, if Anglican Orders were
valid, this would be the case.
(d) If a (R.) C. priest apostatizes, and ministers in another church,
if he uses a valid form and has a right intention, he still consecrates validly
the Body of Christ He does not lose his priesthood, though he loses his
jurisdiction.
(e) I don't think one gains much by comparing the ebb and flow from
Canterbury to Rome, or Rome to Canterbury. The vast weight of numbers,
etc., is certainly on the side of Rome. I am unaware of one single name of
real importance of a seceder from Rome to Canterbury. But the matter is
larger than that.
(3) May I put down one or two questions which I think deal with the rest
of your points, from another angle? And will you consider them, with prayer?
(1) Can that be a Teaching Church, which, on matters vital to salvation
(e. g., Baptism, Penance, Real Presence), permits her ministers to teach mutually
exclusive doctrines?
(2) Can those Orders be valid which no part of Christendom, other than
those which themselves possess those Orders, acknowledge as valid?
(3) Can a small section of a Church (whose origin is, at any rate, dis-
putable) be a "faithful remnant" which (i) has all the rest of its own Com-
munion against it, (2) is denied, as possessing even valid Orders by the rest of
Catholic Christendom. What better example of heresy can you find? Has
th'ere ever been a heretic who did not think himself one of a faithful remnant?
(4) Either the Anglican Church (on the Anglican hypothesis) is the whole
Church (quod est absurdum) ; or it is a branch of a Church, of which the
other branches repudiate and deny not only the Anglican Church, but the Branch
Theory itself. Is that possible?
To sum up.
I think that what is your trouble, as of so many in the same state, is that
you have your eyes focussed too close. You do not see the wood for the
trees. Take a map of the world, and the statistics of the Anglican and the
Catholic Church. Consider the great Facts of History, and Geography
and of the Promises of Christ
Reflect upon this fact: that, in the single diocese of Cologne, there are
more communions made each year than in the whole of the Anglican body in
the British Isles!
Consider little facts like that.
If you feel inclined to take cover again under the faithful remnant theory,
remember that a " faithful remnant" must surely exhibit remarkable characteris-
tics of continuity, sanctity, fidelity, steadiness. Can you say that the " Catholic
Party" exhibits these?
Lastly: pray without ceasing. When the Light conies you will be amazed
at its transparent purity and simplicity.
God bless you. Pray for me. Yours sincerely,
R. HUGH BENSON.
1915-] WITH OUR READERS 429
THE article on the value of contemplative prayer which appeared in
last month's CATHOLIC WORLD has met with many expressions of
high appreciation from those whose opinion on the subject is of high
value. An appealing instance of the practical and immediate value of
such prayer came to us but a few days ago. On the outskirts of a large
city is situated a convent of contemplative nuns, who rise at night to
recite the divine office. The police who are on guard in that dis-
trict through the night have a solitary and a lonely round. Among the
police are many Catholics. They make it a habit to watch for the com-
ing of the lights in that monastery chapel. When the lights appear,
knowing that the nuns are at prayer, they themselves stand with un-
covered head and pray also.
So they who have left this world continue to shed upon it their
benediction.
OUR readers will be pleased to know that the latest annual review
of contemporaneous verse, made by the well-known authority,
William Stanley Braithwaite includes " as distinguished poems " four
contributions to THE CATHOLIC WORLD during the past year. The
poems that have received this honor are: The Great Mercy, by
Katharine Tynan; Sunbrowned With Toil, by Edward F. Garesche,
S.J. ; To a Bird at Sunset, by Thomas Walsh, and The Sea Winds, by
Caroline D. Swan.
"ALL the Victorian poets," says a writer in The Commonwealth,
* represent man as groping in a religious twilight, searching for
a hidden and elusive mystery, bewailing a dead or dying creed, or at-
taining with difficulty to a partial faith. Matthew Arnold, leader in
doubt, could, of that sea of Faith which once encircled the world,
only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Tennyson's In Memorian is the story of a soul struggling towards
the light:
That which we dare invoke to bless;
Our dearest faith : our ghastliest doubt :
He, They, One, All: within, without:
The Power is darkness whom we guess.
Even Browning's view whose faith the writer terms "most as-
sured and buoyant," is always that of the doubter.
430 WITH OUR READERS [Dec.,
The very God! Thirst, abid; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying " O heart I made, a heart beats here !
Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself!
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of Mine;
But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,
And thou must love Me Who have died for thee!
The madman saith He said so: it is strange."
* * * *
BUT the Catholic poet, Francis Thompson, through his Hound of
Heaven, leads us into a different world : a world of certainty un-
known to those other poets. He " sees clearly where they only guess."
Thompson tells us that God is not only not a guess or an uncertainty,
but an insistent Pursuer, a Presence from which it is impossible for
man to escape. The lines of Tennyson,
Speak to Him then for He hears, and spirit with spirit can meet
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet
express an inferior truth, suggesting that the initiative of Divine com-
munion comes from the human soul, and that the soul doubts whether
its prayer will be heard.
In the Hound of Heaven, man knows from the very beginning
that he is fleeing from God, insistently pursuing. He can find no rest
or peace in created things. All these are in league with Him Who
comes with
unperturbed pace
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy.
Surrender to God's will, the will of the Divine Lover, is the one
way to life.
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou mightest seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home;
Rise, clasp My hand and come.
* * * *
BOTH the pessimism of Arnold and the transcendental optimism
of Browning failed to represent the true nature of man. The one
gave neither guide nor hope to man; the other denied the reality of
evil. Such denial means that there is no free will and no true spiritual
life. "Directly sin ceases to be a reality; character in its noblest
sense becomes an impossibility. Sin is an insult offered to God. The
whole tendency of nineteenth-century poetic thought was to regard sin
merely from the manward point of view as a failure in individual per-
1915.] BOOKS RECEIVED 431
f ection." They lost sight of what a terrible catastrophe sin really is : a
breaking asunder of the eternal bond of life between the soul and God.
Francis Thompson shows that the sole value of the soul springs from
its personal relation to God.
Strange, piteous futile thing,
Wherefore should any let thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught.
And because he saw aright this elementary and all-embracing truth
of the soul's worth, and the soul's need, Francis Thompson did what
Wordsworth with all his love of nature never could do, interpret
nature aright and tell with truth her value and her office for man.
Wordsworth would tell us that nature is a delightful place of rest for
men from the toil and passion of life. Tennyson that nature is merci-
less and unfeeling. Thompson tells us truly that nature is in league
with God. She alone has neither office nor message. Her works
inspire not. "Their sound is but their stir; they speak by silences."
When the soul gives itself to God then it may find in nature all that
God has put therein.
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest !
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.
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432 BOOKS RECEIVED [Dec., 1915.]
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Jerusalem. Translated from the Swedish of Selma Lagerlof. By V. S. Howard.
$1.35 net.
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York :
Ethics in Service. By William H. Taft, LL.D. $1.00 net.
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. OIL JANUARY, 1916. No. 610.
JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, O.S.B.
BY S. A. PARKER.
ECENT years have enriched, us with a valuable series
of interesting biographies illustrative of the his-
torical development of the Church in the English-
speaking world. Archbishop Ullathorne, for example,
left as a legacy his autobiography; to Monsignor
Ward, Dr. Burton, Mr. Wilfrid Ward and Mr. Snead-Cox
we are indebted for portraits of other great ecclesiastics of
the nineteenth century. Now another of these great personali-
ties, in the person of John Cuthbert Hedley, O.S.B., Bishop of
Newport, and doyen of the English hierarchy, passed away on
November n, 1915. Bishop Hedley was himself an accurate and
able chronicler of history, the chosen spokesman at nearly every
memorable gathering of the Catholics of his country for twenty-five
years, but he was more than that ; he was a maker of history, and
when his biography comes to be written, as written it will be despite
the silent protest of his humility, it will provide not only the picture
of a great and good man, but another valuable chapter in the
history of the Church.
The future historian, however, will find few definite facts to
record about Bishop Hedley. Fifty- three years a priest and forty-
two a bishop, he died in the seventy-ninth year of his age, the pastor
of perhaps the smallest and poorest of the English dioceses. He is
known to have declined an important archbishopric, and but for
his own reluctance might have been the successor of both Manning
Copyright. 1915. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cii. 28
434 JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY ', OS.B. [Jan.,
and Vaughan as Metropolitan of England, but he preferred, in
quiet, unseen and effective work, in the cloister, in the orphanage,
in the confessional, in the parish, at the editorial desk to fill out a
daily routine of blessed activity and length of days. His influence,
nevertheless, was immense. It was not confined to his monastery,
nor to his order, nor to his diocese nor to the penitents who came
to him as pilgrims from afar, nor to the retreatants his brethren,
secular priests, nuns, even children whom he frequently journeyed
to address in different parts of the country. Cardinal Bourne did
not hesitate to call him, in 1912, " the leader of the bench of
bishops," and his pen, the potent auxiliary of his shepherd's crook,
spread his power for good beyond England throughout the entire
English-speaking world.
Linked with the ancient days, when England was a purely
missionary territory under the jurisdiction of Vicars Apostolic,
through his fellow-Benedictines, Bishops Ullathorne of Birmingham
and Brown of Newport and Menevia, who assisted Archbishop
Manning at his consecration on September 29, 1873, Bishop Hed-
ley's own life time synchronized rather with the epoch of steady
development and quiet expansion which followed upon the restora-
tion of the hierarchy in 1850. This development was no doubt
most gradual and due to many influences. Only by the sustained
effort of many could Catholicism throw off the fetters of perse-
cution and become an important power in the land. But when
we seek the leaders in this forward movement, those who leavened
the thoughts and raised the ideals of Catholics and enlightened
the sheep beyond the Fold, making the position of the Church better
understood by the ignorant, less hated by the bigoted, more valued
by the indifferent, Bishop Hedley stands out amongst that con-
spicuous few.
John Cuthbert Hedley was born in Northumberland in 1837.
He was the son of a medical doctor. As a child of eleven he was
sent to the Benedictine College of St. Lawrence at Ampleforth.
There in the bracing air of the Yorkshire Moorland he developed
the strong and healthy body fitted for a long life of strenuous
activity. There as a quiet industrious boy he showed promise of
the talents which afterwards marked his career. There, as he often
told younger generations of school lads, he learned dogged and
tenacious determination, simplicity of aim and practice, appreciation
of study and loyal devotion tp plain duty. There, most of all, he
imbibed fruitful principles of life and high ideals of sanctity. His
I9i6.] JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY ', OS.B. 435
school curriculum finished, the call from on High received its
response in his youthful heart. " May I save my soul," was his
petition to the Prior, " among you under the teaching and rule
of holy Father Benedict." Then his horizon was small, and he
little foresaw how great would be the harvest which he as a
laborer in the vineyard would garner himself or prepare for the
reapers of future generations. Brother Cuthbert was professed for
the English Congregation of St. Benedict in 1855. Whilst still
forming his own mind he taught in the school, and thereby acquired
that dual discipline derived from the teaching of boys : the control
of temper and the secret of holding attention. As prefect of
discipline for a short time, he gained also, in exercising a more
direct influence over the characters of his charges, the first insight
into the secrets of the human soul. As a child his good voice
made him the leading treble in the choir, and from that time he de-
veloped a musical gift worthy of more than passing notice. For
ten years he was organist and choirmaster at Ampleforth, and for
another ten years held the same post at Belmont. He composed a
number of motets for the college choir and wrote several cantatas,
in which the verse and melody vie with each other in beauty. His
masterpiece, however, is the Ode to Alma Mater, probably the most
beautiful school song ever produced. He was, unfortunately, self-
taught, and lacked a thorough knowledge of harmony, but his
original, virile melody and the rhythmical balance of his phrases
won for him the attention and admiration of professional musicians.
After his consecration he deliberately renounced the exercise of
this musical talent, and could never again be induced to touch an
instrument.
He learned as a monk at Ampleforth generosity and self-
sacrifice; obedience as the sound basis for the future exercise of
authority, and the spirit of poverty, simplicity and love of re-
tirement which he retained consistently amid the publicity of high
office and work with others.
Bishop Hedley remained ever a monk, and though absent from
the abbey for long periods, it never ceased to be the centre of his
affections. " The monk goes forth," he once wrote, " to labor for
souls, but the monastery always remains his own home, and he can
come back to it, use it, rest in it, and if God wills die under its
roof." It was to him "that highest type of human brotherhood
which is founded on the vows of the cenobitical life;" and he
was a true member of it. He was a product of that mixed voca-
436 JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, OS.B. [Jan.,
tion of the English Benedictine Congregation which unites the
contemplation of the cloister with active service for souls. Clad
significantly as a son of St. Benedict in black episcopal robes,
instead of the purple of the secular bishop, Bishop Hedley was the
embodiment of an ethos which marks a definite though indefinable
difference between the monk-missioner and the secular pastor.
As a Benedictine he felt definitely associated in an especial
way with a great and glorious past. The direct line of continuity
of his own familia of St. Lawrence's as well as that of his Con-
gregation and his Order, led him as he grew up to look upon him-
self as a unit in a great body carrying on the work first started in
England by St. Augustine, the emissary of St. Gregory, the disciple
of St. Benedict. From this he gained a strong sense of the value
of cooperation and organization, and of the disadvantage of isola-
tion in work which led him to foster a strong spirit of fraternity
between regulars and seculars, and at the close of his life to em-
phasize particularly that, in the conduct of his diocese, he had
always tried to keep a united flock.
Scarcely a year after Dom Cuthbert's ordination, his mon-
astery was called upon to make a sacrifice for the greater good of
the English Benedictine Congregation. In 1861, Belmont Priory,
near Hereford, was opened as the common novitiate and house of
studies. Further unity amongst the houses of the Congregation
and a greater efficiency in ecclesiastic studies were the objective,
and he was called from Ampleforth in the following year to join
the staff of professors there. For a quiet decade he exercised
considerable influence at St. Michael's, possessing the art of mak-
ing his pupils think; and no doubt acquiring himself that power
of orderly and effective exposition derived from Scholastic phil-
osophy, so prominent in all his sermons and writings. He became
in turn a member of the monastic chapter, and canon theologian of
the diocese. During this time he wrote a great deal, among other
things his brilliant articles in The Dublin Reviezv on the Church at
Alexandria. These, his first literary attempts, met with an en-
thusiastic reception from the Catholic public.
During his stay at Belmont, Roger Bede Vaughan was Prior and
Thomas Brown Ordinary of the diocese. In 1873, Father Hedley
was chosen by Bishop Brown as the Bishop Auxiliary of the diocese
of Newport and Menevia. He was consecrated on September 29th
as Bishop of Caesaropolis in partibus infidelium. In his address to
the newly consecrated in the presence of the aged Benedictine Bish-
1916.] JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, O.S.B. 437
ops, Ullathorne and Brown, Cardinal Manning prayed that "his life
might be spared so long, that the affection and respect of his people
and his brethren might be as great and the fruitfulness of his works
might be as abundant, as theirs had been ; " words which savored of
prophecy. He now left the quiet of the cloister and entered
formally upon missionary duties. Still he lived for ten years in
the neighborhood of St. Michael's Priory, and never renounced the
very intimate ties by which he had been associated with it. To
this period belong three courses of lectures afterwards published
The Light of the Holy Spirit in the World, Who is Jesus Christ f
and The Spirit of Faith.
In 1840 the Western District of England had been divided.
The Northern portion, comprising the twelve counties of Wales
with Monmouthshire and Herefordshire, known as the Vicariate
of Wales, was given to Bishop Brown's care'. In 1850 when Pius
IX. restored hierarchical government to England, the six countries
of South Wales, with the two above-mentioned in England, became
the diocese of Newport and Menevia, Menevia being the Latin
name for the ancient British See of St. David's. Bishop Brown
died in 1880, and after a delay of ten months the auxiliary was
appointed as his successor. But, as the diocese was divided by
Leo XIII. in 1895, Dr. Hedley is better known to the present gener-
ation as the Bishop of Newport, his diocese covering the counties
of Monmouthshire, Herefordshire and Glamorganshire. This new
territorial division met with his full approval. Wales still needed
an apostle rather than a bishop, since there were about six thousand
Catholics in the twelve counties of Wales. The progress of the
Welsh people to conversion has been incredibly difficult, due 'partly
to their speaking a language totally different from English;
hence while they were still under his jurisdiction, Bishop Hedley
strongly supported the St. Teilo's Society, founded at Cardiff in
1889, for the printing of Welsh Catholic literature.
Dr. Hedley proved an ideal bishop, and the diocese of Newport
was fortunate in being under his long unbroken rule, first as
auxiliary for eleven years, then as ordinary for thirty-one years.
In 1 88 1 when " set by the Holy Ghost to rule the Church of God,"
he laments that in some respects the diocese was worse in spiritual
matters than twenty years previous when forty thousand Irish, with
faith yet strong and manners uncorrupt, worked in the docks and
mines and in the gigantic ironworks developing in Monmouthshire
and Glamorganshire. The new generation were not so good and so
438 JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, OS.B. [Jan.,
true. They had to face, moreover, strong Protestantism and in-
difference; at least half the missions were not self-supporting; in
several of them new churches were an absolute necessity; and the
increasing competition of the Board Schools had to be met. His
work, he writes, is " in the midst of the poor, among scenes of
wretchedness, both moral and physical, which are hardly paralleled
in any other Christian land." Himself a model Chief Pastor,
forma factus gregis ex ammo, he looked for his subjects' coopera-
tion, and often emphasized the truth that success depends upon per-
sonal holiness. " God expects every pastor to pay the price of his
success, as the Prince of Pastors paid a great price." " Let our
anxiety be the altar, the church, the school, the deathbed. No im-
portunity must weary us, no ingratitude check us, no stupidity put
us out. The soul of the poor man, of the poor woman, of the
little child must be to us simply what it is to our Master more
precious than all else in the world besides." Such was his charge
to the clergy on his appointment. He recognized and would have
others recognize in the office of the apostolate an office of labor
and endurance. Personally he rejoiced in labor and never grew
despondent. He threw the weight of his great personality and
prodigious energy into the work, and at the end of his life he could
say honestly : " I have always tried to render service to the utmost
of my power." Not only did he ever pray for his clergy and
adhere to his custom of making a daily memento at his Mass for
the Benedictine novices, but, further, realizing himself St. Gregory's
experiences ars artium est regimen animarum, he developed in his
Lex Levitarum a commentary on the saint's Regula Pastoralis
valuable advice for youthful aspirants to the priesthood on the high
standard required in the pastor of souls. His booklet, The Priest's
Guide f is of real service to others as well as to his own clergy, to
whom, he was, as one of them has said, a " pius pater." His great
powers he put at the disposal of others, and was found to be a
prudent, interested and encouraging counsellor. To the sincere
he was approachable. But himself single of purpose, unworldly,
and completely free from affectation, he could not endure the unreal
in others. His sympathetic attention to the smallest difficulties
and troubles of each individual case was characteristic of the man.
One instance, amidst his " daily solicitude for all the churches," was
his regular custom to preside at all the theological conferences of
the different deaneries of his diocese.
For twenty years more he had to strain every nerve to keep
1916.] JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, OS.B. 439
open the Catholic elementary schools of the diocese, and to urge
the faithful to use all their influence in the land to thwart any
design of the civil powers to crush the Catholic education of the
poor by setting up a monopoly of the godless Board School. He
was, however, quite willing to accept control in proportion to public
assistance, provided it did not interfere with the Catholic atmos-
phere of his schools. He devoted much attention to the place and
work of the Catholic layman, urging them that the time had come
to take a true, loyal and integral share in the national life and
policy. He repeated what Pope Leo XIII. had written, " Time,
zeal, substance are wanted from each one." They must find out
the Catholic view in all that touches the Church's interests, and
put all their strength into working for it.
To non-Catholics he was open-minded and kind. He had a
distaste for direct controversy, but a zeal for expounding in sea-
son and out of season the beauty, solidity and fruit fulness of
Catholic dogma. He recognized that many Protestants were in
good faith, because they had never analyzed logically their religious
position, but whilst he had great respect for individuals, he had
none for the Established Church. He declared it to be " a schis-
matical and heretical association, held together mainly by civil law,
and mocking the country by the name and outward form of a
Church." Yet at the same time he had no sympathy with the mo-
tives of those who strove to destroy the English Church; and he
was ready to recognize with Newman that " doubtless the National
Church has hitherto been a serviceable breakwater against doctrinal
errors more fundamental than its own." His diocese was and is
still poor. He left at his death ninety priests; about half of them
Benedictines and Fathers of the Institute of Charity (Rosminians).
He had no seminary and only one religious house of men. The
Catholics number some seventy thousand out of a general popu-
lation of one and three-quarter millions. But the increase and
growth in stability have been considerable, as may be seen from
the statistics of Glamorganshire. In Bishop Brown's day, in 1840,
there was not a single church ; in 1895 there were more than twenty
public places of worship; now there are twenty-six parishes with
resident clergy, in addition to fourteen mission churches with Mass
on most Sundays, and eight convents. A typical year shows a
yield of nearly two hundred converts.
But Bishop Hedley's field of influence far exceeded the limits
of his diocese; as bishop he was a member of the English hierarchy,
440 JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, OS.B. [Jan.,
and ably filled an important role in the thought and life of the king-
dom for nearly half a century. For many years he was secretary
of the episcopal bench. As decade succeeded decade many
weighty affairs occupied the attention of the episcopacy in their
Low Week and extraordinary meetings. Bishop Hedley was a
strong man amongst them even in his younger days. It is no
secret that he differed from Cardinal Manning in certain matters
of policy. He was a thoroughly trained theologian, and ardently
devoted to the Holy See, but, on account of the physical obstacle
of his lameness, was not a frequent visitor to Rome. He had
preeminently a broad mind, and understood the deep currents of
thought and the ideals of outsiders. He saw the need to forsake
methods that were antiquated and the contentment that plods on
in old ways, and to arm with new weapons for new foes. A liberal
always in political questions, he was in the most wholesome and
loyal sense a liberal in theological thought. No one who knew him
has ever entertained a suspicion of his Catholic orthodoxy, yet the
modern mind never found in him one who blindly condemned.
His judgments were deliberate and weighty. Before writing one
article of importance he is known to have read and studied for
many months in preparation. " There are shores," he once wrote,
" where you may walk out a long distance before the waters rise
over your head, and other shores where but a step or two will
carry you beyond your depth." He had himself sounded the shal-
lows and depths. In every modern emergency his was the appro-
priate word, and in matters of practical policy he had a grasp of
the implications and consequences, and threw himself into all the
majores causes of his time. Insistent on the necessity for the
young mind and heart to be formed on the sound principles of a
good Catholic training in a Catholic atmosphere, and valuing highly
the ancient traditions of our old collegiate establishments, he was
nevertheless alive to the possibility of narrowness. He grasped
the spirit of the age and saw the opening out of new avenues, and
encouraged worthy ambitions. 1 Even as a young canon he ad-
vocated freedom of access for Catholic layman, of the right stamp
of character, to the ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
and it is said that he converted Bishop Brown, a man of the old
school, to his view. But in those days of intolerance and irreligion
there was much to be said against the movement. In 1865 Prior
Vaughan had written a pamphlet : What Doth It Profit a Man
*See Catholicism and Culture, The Dublin Review, 1879.
1916.] JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, O.S.B. 441
University Education and the Memorialists, and later published at
Dublin a more pretentious attempt to prove that " Oxford is poison
to Catholic life," and its result sure to be loss of faith. In later
days Bishop Hedley had much to do with the change in Cardinal
Vaughan's attitude, and he stood by Lord Braye in his petition
to the Holy See on the question ; , it is no secret that his authority
was mostly instrumental in carrying the day. The prohibition was
withdrawn in 1895, though the admission of Catholics to the
national universities was then only tolerated by ecclesiastical author-
ity. Catholic chaplains to the undergraduates were appointed, and
weekly conferences made a condition of their residence. Bishop
Hedley became President of the " Universities Catholic Education
Board," a position he held till the present year, when he resigned
on account of failing health, and Bishop Casartelli of Salford was
chosen. It is generally recognized that the universities have
changed much in the course of two decades in their attitude towards
religious thought and the principles of morality, and the success
of the venture has been amply justified. At the great representa-
tive gathering in 1912 of the Newman Society at Oxford, Bishop
Hedley was an honored guest, to whom all felt deeply indebted
for the leading part he had taken in the enlargement of the sphere
of liberal education for both laity and clergy. The veteran in
this noble cause felt this to be his final visit, and urged the Catholic
laity of the country to make their early training of home and school
a foundation for higher studies; to be eager to learn from the
academic and social advantages of the universities, and in turn to
leaven with Catholic faith these centres of influence, and later the
larger realms of national life and thought. Bishop Hedley is known
best in our own country by his writings. He published only seven
books: the Lex Levitarum, the Holy Eucharist, his Retreat, A
Bishop and His Flock, and three other volumes of sermons preached
on different occasions, remarkable for unity of aim and progression
of thought. A very large number of scattered magazine articles,
sermons and lectures, however, bear witness to his literary activity
from early priesthood till old age. It is to be regretted that they
have not been collected and published in book form, as they are
by no means of ephemeral interest, and pamphlets, like butterflies,
have no secure existence beyond the cabinet of the collector. He
sometimes spoke of editing further collections; that may now be
done by another hand. Many of his articles, unsigned as well as
signed, grace the pages of The Dublin Review, of which he was
442 JOHN CUTHBERT HEDLEY, OS.B. [Jan,
editor from 1879 to 1884, succeeding W. G. Ward. Another im-
portant collection, covering various subjects, belongs to the Ample-
forth Journal, to which he contributed regularly from its inception
in 1897.
But it is not within the scope of this memoir to treat of Bishop
Hedley as a man of letters. We refer to his writings here because
books declare the man; because a man's religious works especially
must always be in great measure autobiographical. Bishop Hed-
ley's show forth the intellectual beauty and solid completeness of
Catholic dogma which had permeated the woof and warp of his
mind, the texture of his soul. They remain not only as a monu-
ment to recall his presence, but also as a source of enlightenment
and inspiration. We have lost the personal contact of his presence ;
but in them we still enjoy that secret power which made his ser-
mons always draw the secret of the true preacher, who looks upon
his audience not as simple listeners, but as Christian hearts.
The bishop was ever the humble servant of Jesus Christ; he
was ever full of compunction. He had gifts of a high order. He
recognized them with simplicity and thankfulness : '' These are
from the hand of God." He used them for his own sanctification
and for our edification. And yet, with the consistency of the
truly humble, he depreciated his own powers and his own work.
" No man," he said at his jubilee, " can live to my age and have
many illusions about merits and achievements." As on the day of
his consecration his inaugural address was a simple expression of
devotedness and a demand for prayer, so too in the midst of the
congratulation of all when he saw himself especially honored by
Pope Pius X., as formerly by Leo XIII. , when he heard his praises
celebrated by his brethren, his flock, his clergy, his fellow bishops
in the midst of all he remained humble of heart. He was ever a
steward, responsible for the use made of his opportunities. In
recognition for service rendered he asked only that all would re-
member him in their supplications, " on that day, unto the end, and
after the end."
THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM.
.BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
II.
HE idea that Thought is simply and solely an analyz-
ing power, dominated the mind of Kant in the pre-
critical period of his career. Down to the year 1 768,
this idea was the generating principle of his philo-
sophical conclusions, the fertile source of views new
and strange a fact which Kant was not going to forget later,
when his exclusive conception collapsed and had to be rebuilt on
broader lines. The sage of Konigsberg never rid himself wholly
of the analytic theory of Thought. It was too intimately bound up
with his earliest successes, too faithful a minister to the separatist
philosophy which he started out to write, too much a part of the
mathematicizing tendency of the times, ever to become the painful
object of dismissal. He manoeuvred for its retention desperately,
under the sledge-hammer blows of Hume; he pleaded for it even
with himself. It was his Achilles, and he never quite got over the
shock of discovering that it had a vulnerable heel. The genesis
of his famous criticism of reason, other things apart, was due to
his having entertained this theory and to his unwillingness, come
what would, ever to give it up. And that is precisely the point
we are here undertaking to establish.
The first effects of Kant's analytical theory of Thought ap-
peared in his startling analysis of sensation. Working with the
idea that Thought looks down into sensation as into a well where
the universe is mirrored, Kant did not find in the well how
could he? all that his method had led him to expect. Such no-
tions as space and time, substance and cause, nay reality itself,
were clearly not to be found there. Whence could they have come,
he asked, and what is their function ? Evidently, they had not come
into the mind through the channels of sense. There was nothing
about them to indicate that such had been their way of arrival;
they seemed intruders that would have to account for their presence.
Not finding the five aforesaid notions looking up wistfully into
his eyes from the well of sensation when he sat peering into its
444 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Jan.,
depths, Kant came to the conclusion his inadequate theory of
Thought compelled it that these general notions and many others
of like kind must be prior to actual experience, must be contri-
butions which the mind itself makes to the inpouring data of sen-
sation. But what were they ? Frames, outlines, advance sketches ;
empty forms of Thought or Sense, to be filled in and rounded out
with the rich and varied details of actual experience. They repre-
sented possibility as distinct from actuality, and their function was
to put order and arrangement into the chaotic mass of detail which
sensibility furnished. But a difficulty occurred, a serious one: If
sensibility is the only means by which an object can be given to
the mind what are we to think of that gaunt and grim spectral
something, that " thing in itself," that bare reality which forever
haunts Thought, yet never makes its presence known to sense?
What is the nature and what the function of this constant appar-
ition? no creature, surely, of the world of space and time, but of
the timeless, unchanging years.
Is it real ? Assuredly. Can we know it ? Not at all. How
could we, on the supposition, created by the analytic theory of
Thought that all our knowledge is indissolubly wedded to sense?
Reality is too evidently distinct from the sensible appearances ac-
companying its manifestation, too clearly without its wedding gar-
ment, to be an object of sense experience. Does it exist by itself
in a sort of shadowy hinterland of the panoramic world that fills
the eye? No. Kant was the last man to believe in anything so
eerie. The celebrated " thing in itself " meant for him the universal
aspect which every object of sensation assumes for Thought; and
the problem that crucially concerned him was what to do with this
" substance of the things that appear not." Reject it outright and
fly to idealism for cover? That would be equivalent to undermin-
ing the foundations of science, and Kant was averse to any such
drastic recourse. Rather than take this step against science, thus
depriving it and religion of a permanent object of search and de-
votion, he would admit the existence of a reality not ourselves,
while declaring at the same time that all knowledge of it lay be-
yond our reach. And that was how he so strangely began his
philosophy with an unknowable, instead of the knowable and known.
It will be seen from this brief account that Kant's purely
analytical conception of the nature and activity of Thought had
a great creative influence, so long as one did not inquire any too
closely into the adequacy of the conception. It engendered his
1916.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 445
revolutionary views of space and time, substance and cause, appear-
ance and reality. It suggested the idea that the categories are sub-
jective functions of the mind, not objective transcripts of reality
an unproven thesis that has become at this writing practically
the sole one entertained. It created the principle, afterwards so
destructively employed in the Critiques, that no idea is valid which
cannot be presented in sense. It made reason appear as engaged
exclusively with the general, since the general, as such, could not
be found in the particular; and the result was that Kant took all
power of intuition away from the intellect, lodging it in the sensi-
bility instead. It opened up a gap between the necessities of thought
and the realities of being, for which there is no warrant in the
evidence. It suggested the possibility of introducing divisions
into a mind that, of itself, can have none, because of its living,
non-spatial character. It was responsible for the distinction which
he drew between regulative and constitutive ideas. It lent itself
admirably to the double purpose Kant had in view, which was to
rescue science from the maws of skepticism and at the same time to.
head Thought off and turn it back in the direction of sensation, where
his theory led him to think its vocation lay. His analytic conception
of Thought thus proved extremely fertile, and Kant had been draw-
ing wonder after wonder from this yielding source, when suddenly
in 1768 something happened his friends knew not what which
arrested his course in mid-career and silenced his pen almost wholly
for a decade.
He had been reading Hume ; and what he read was a refutation
of his own doctrine of thing-in-itself or reality a refutation pub-
lished some thirty years before, yet written, it really seemed, as
if Hume had had him personally in mind the while, and was
actually sharpening his wits on no other whetstone. Here was
a man entertaining exactly the same analytical theory of thought
and exactly the same discontinuity theory of concepts as himself,
and yet managing to prove, with apparent show of reason, that there
is nothing real, substantial, necessary, or universal under the sun;
either in the human mind or out of it; in the world of experience
or the world of reflection. Causality ? Who could bring himself to
accept a notion so unfounded, especially when the objects of ex-
perience themselves gave not the slightest evidence of being tied
together in the manner alleged? Are not concepts all individual,
and what is Thought but a mere matter of prying into them as such ?
And if so, how does the mind have the effrontery to pair such in-
446 THE GENESIS OF RANTS CRITICISM [Jan.,
congruous notions as substance and flux, cause and sequence, pro-
gress and permanence, appearance and reality thus creating be-
tween them a bond of relationship that did not and could not exist.
If Thought be analytic and concepts disconnected Kant's own
view! all such syntheses are spurious; the result of associa-
tion and habit, not the discoveries of reflection. Misalliances all
of them, to be frowned upon and dissolved. We can think away
the necessity of every item of experience, said Hume. There is no
contradiction in supposing the non-existence of the object repre-
sented in any idea. The idea of existence is detachable from every
object of which it is affirmed. The connections of things in na-
ture and of ideas in mind are all arbitrary. Not one of them is
objective. How dare such notions as permanence and necessity raise
their impish heads above the surface of a consciousness in which
the sole reality visible and demonstrable is the fugitive and fleeting !
Kant felt himself undone. The tables had been turned upon
him, and what was worse, his own working principles had figured in
the turning. The thought of twenty years had been sapped and un-
dermined: what he had built upon was proven sand. The key-
stone of his whole system fell out of the arch; and for nothing more
sorely did his spirit grieve him than for the loss of that reality behind
appearances, that noumenon included within every phenomenon,
which he was wont to call " the thing in itself." His whole con-
ception of Reality as an immutable core of being inside the sensible
outer coat of appearances, was put in jeopardy, and would have to be
given up, he saw, unless some way were found to answer Hume's an-
nihilating criticism. For whatever else Kant was, and dear knows
he was four kinds of philosopher rolled together into one: real-
ist, idealist, psychologist, and empiricist; 1 he was a firm believer
always in reality, thinking deep thoughts and spending laborious
days on the problem of establishing some point of contact, some
bond of connection between the inner and outer world. He did in-
deed, against all reason, right, and sense, separate the rational
from the real, but he never went the length of asserting that the
mind as a whole has no commerce with a reality not itself. In fact
largely for this tenacious clinging to the notion of reality, he
has been sometimes called, by friend and foe alike, "the last of
the Schoolmen."
Kant was in a veritable quandary. Having divided sense from
*La metaphysique du Kantisme. By Pierre Charles. Revue de Philosophic,
February, 1913, p. 114.
1916.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 447
reason, general concepts from particular percepts what would
he do now? Weld them together again? Not too closely. That
would be to abandon his main purpose, which was to keep the sen-
sible and the supersensible divided. How to answer Hume, without
admitting that Thought is spontaneously connected with sensation
that was the problem as he intended to solve it. Kant never for
a moment lost sight of himself or the projects he had at heart.
The Kant of the critical period merely found a formula that would
retain the Kant of the precritical days unscathed; there was never
a more continuous personality than his from beginning to end,
though he reinvested his " change of mind " with all the " grand
manner " affected by the times, as when he said that Hume had
" roused him from his dogmatic slumber." This was all too true.
The prince of modern empiricists who first saw the light of day in the
beautiful ancient capital of the Scots, had not only roused him from
his dogmatic assumption that Thought is purely analytic, he had left
him without a clue in all the reaches of his spirit as to how pre-
cisely he was ever again to set his new-found wakefulness to rest.
One thing was certain: So long as he continued to look upon the
intellect, as Hume did, in the light of an analytic mill grinding out
the meaning of unrelated particulars, he would never be in a posi-
tion to return the blow. The supposition on which he and Hume
had been proceeding must be enlarged, but not to such an extent
that Kant would pull down the pillars of his own philosophical
temple, Samson-like, in his effort to destroy the Scotsman. What-
ever admission had to be made would be subjoined to the old an-
alytic theory of Thought, on which all his contributions to phil-
osophy had thus far depended. It would not, it could not be made
subversive of the theory that had created these. That must be pre-
served at any cost, at whatever shift. In this spirit, as subse-
quent events will prove, Kant decided to enlarge his previous con-
ception of Thought and to acknowledge he had been wrong in con-
ceiving the intellect so narrowly. It was more than an analytic
power, it was a veritable synthetic agency, tying things together
which really stood apart. This admission would thoroughly
refute Hume who had argued in favor of skepticism from the same
deficient conception of Thought as Kant had entertained in arguing
against it. Hume would be made to contribute to his own. un-
doing and to Kant's great glory as the philosopher who had dis-
covered the synthetic activity of the human intellect.
In coming to this balancing admission, this much needed over-
448 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Jan,
hauling of a working-supposition all too one-sided in its leanings,
Kant had a clear road out of skepticism and out of all the peculiar
difficulties which had hitherto beset his path, if he but made the dis-
covery a corrective of his own previous philosophy as well as of
that of the Scottish critic. But he did not do so; he grew into
a " Prussian Hume " instead the phrase is Hamann's. His phil-
osophy, instead of reforming itself root and branch, as it should
have done, became confirmed in the previous direction it had taken.
Kant's desire to save his own twenty years of work from ruin,
and his unwillingness to give up the dismembering policy that ani-
mated it, led him to conceive the newly discovered synthetic ability
of the mind as belonging, not to pure reason it would never do
to consider that synthetic but to some other power. Space was
thus reserved for the analytic theory of Thought, by means of
which all his previous philosophical spurs had been won. A blow
was dealt at Hume, that Kant should have received full in the
face himself. But no! He would ring in the new without ring-
ing out the old, seeing to it well that whoso should go down, he,
at any rate, would not be of the number. Close students of Kant
have long been aware of an action on his part directly proving
the fact for which we are here contending. He brought over with-
out modification into his supposedly new Critique the theories of
space and time written years before; and his " critical " theory of the
categories is but a lengthy elaboration, published in 1781, of a dis-
tinction, drawn years before, between abstract concepts and pure
ideas. 2
Evidently Kant did not intend to hew towards the new light
any more closely than the instinct of literary self-preservation would
permit. For instance, Kant frankly acknowledged that there was
no need of proving the legitimacy of our analytic judgments. 3 He
recognized that legitimacy as immediately known, and as not calling
for proof. Why did he not pursue the same course when it was
question of synthetic judgments? Are these any less a matter of
recognition than the former? Why had they alone to be deduced?
The reason for Kant's proving in one case and not in the other
lets in a flood of light on his whole procedure. He is not going
to admit that "pure Thought" is synthetic; he is not going to
admit this after 1781 any more than he did before. He intends
*Kant. By Theodore Ruyssen, 1905, p. 59-
*Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Von dem obersten Grundsatze aller analytischen
Urtheile. Hartenstein's edition, III., pp. 148-150, especially paragraph 5.
I 9 i6.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 449
to conserve his old position that pure reason and analytic thought
are one and the same thing; 4 and with this old position he will
dexterously combine, as best he may, the additional admission that
Thought is synthetic. And that is why he proves the legitimacy
of synthetic judgments, by a long and labored process of deduction.
The analytic theory of Thought had made him what he was, and he
would not undo either himself or his work, by striking it out from
his pages. Still insisting, as formerly, that the predicate must be
contained in the subject; and not seeing that it may be contained
in the essential relations of the subject, as w r ell as in that subject's
essence, Kant will declare that he has discovered a new set of judg-
ments in which the mind adds to. the subject a universal and neces-
sary predicate for which he cannot account. Of course he cannot,
on the supposition that Thought can see " essences," but not " rela-
tions." Again is his inadequate conception of Thought adding
new lustre to his name and fame as the great discoverer!
The first sign of Kant's change of front, under the influence
of his new discovery, appeared in his admission of " the synthetic
unity of apperception " on which a critic of no mean ability makes
the following incisive comment :
I shall merely add that Kant in his criticism of knowledge
should surely have introduced " the synthetic unity of apper-
ception " at a much earlier stage than he did. It is not the
cope-stone but the corner-stone of a theory of knowledge, being
essential to the very existence and conceivability of knowledge ;
and the theory of knowledge, as of everything else, should
begin with what is primary and fundamental. If Kant had
paid due regard to the fact that cognition is in no form or stage
conceivable otherwise than as a synthetic act of a self-active
subject, he would not have started on an inquiry into the pos-
sibility and conditions of knowledge by positing unknowables
with which a theory of knowledge can have nothing to do and
appearances of what does not appear nor would he have
separated in the abstract and mechanical way which he did
noumena and phenomena, matter and form, sense and under-
standing, experience and reason, knowledge and reality, the
sensuous and suprasensuous. 5
*Ibid., p. 150, where Kant (two last lines of page) expressly declares that pure
reason is confined to the two principles of contradiction and identity a supposition
that saps all the energy and life out of Thought. For which point, see THE
CATHOLIC WORLD, October, 1914, Completing the Reformation, p. 6.
6 Agnosticism. By Robert Flint, 1903, p. 198. Italics his.
VOL. CII. 2p
450 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Jan.,
One may readily see from this comment that Kant is still ad-
hering to the high-handed, ruinous policy of keeping sensible and
conceptual knowledge divided. This had been his object from the
start; and his discovery that the mind is a living unity, insuscep-
tible of the divisions he had created within it, was not going to
be allowed to interfere with the chronic purpose of a lifetime.
It was a grudging, patching admission that he made ; one designed
to insulate the intellect, to make an island of it in the middle of
the mental stream. In other words, the analytic theory of Thought
and severance view of concepts were both carried over into the
Critiques, substantially unchanged; the intellect thus being made
to appear as having no spontaneous share in the mind's common
unity and life. Kant never recognized the solidarity of human
knowledge fully. Psychologically speaking, this was his leading
fault. For private reasons, for personal purposes, he made Thought
and its general concepts an exception to the law of solidarity
by which the mind's operations are governed; distinguishing be-
tween pure Thought and synthetic, so as to make room under the
former designation for the analytic theory he had held from the
start. In other words, Kant learned nothing personal, vital, and
reforming from his new discovery. His conception of "pure rea-
son " was never made adequate, not even when he saw its inadequacy
and strove, after a fashion, Kant's fashion, to remedy it. It is
the case of a man building an ell on to a house that should have
been torn down and rebuilt from the very foundations.
The second evidence of Kant's change of front may be seen in
his attempt to "schematize" the categories; to make our general
notions applicable to the particular ones of sense, from which for
no reason or right in the world he had supposed them to be di-
vided. Having begun his philosophy by separating the general
from the particular, he was now going to show how these could
be brought together again and made to furnish sure footing for
intellectual syntheses. How, he asked, may a union be effected
between simple and universal concepts on the one hand and our com-
plex and particular intuitions on the other? There must be some
intermediary. What is it? The imagination. We cannot think of
a circle without tracing it mentally, nor of time without drawing
an imaginary straight line, nor of quantity without figuring it some-
how as a number. This figured synthesis prepares the intellect-
ual synthesis that follows, and so " the pure understanding " and
its concepts come into connection with the particular data of sense
1916.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 451
and find application thereunto. The spontaneous work of the pro-
ductive imagination effects this union, independently of all em-
pirical images. These latter when they come find themselves traced
out in advance and readily fall into the frames prepared for their
receiving.
Kant, it will be observed, is trying to show how the mind can
be synthetic, even if regarded as the divided thing he considered
it to be. He admits the spontaneously synthetic character of the
imagination as everyone must, but his separatist purpose, his cel-
lular psychology, his tessellated way of thinking prevents him from
seeing, or rather forces him into not seeing, that Thought the
kind he called pure has synthetic visions of its own, precisely
because of its solidary relationship and vital connection with the
imagination and the rest of the mind's powers. Kant is laboriously
striving to make darkness do the work of light. He is merely
showing how his old opinion that Thought is essentially analytic
can be maintained alongside his new discovery that Thought is
synthetic in its functioning. He is more interested in proving that
he was never wrong than in finding out if he was ever right from
the beginning. To admit the spontaneous synthetic activity of the
intellect would nullify all his previous additions to the sum of
human knowledge, good, bad, and indifferent. He must learnedly
prove the existence of synthetic judgments, or his whole system
would perish and his purpose suffer defeat.
The critic of Konigsberg had an eye to his own interests.
Rather than recognize the actual continuity of sense and intellect
which would have been fatal to his whole system he determined
to invent an artificial set of connections between the two. In order
to retain his former thesis that conceptual knowledge is actually
divided from perceptual, he endeavored to show that notwith-
standing their division, the two might be welded together again by
means of the productive imagination. And the sole reason why he
attempted this welding process, why he undertook to deduce the cate-
gories and to prove their connections with experience, instead of
recognizing these connections as existent, independently of any his-
trionic effort on his part to forge a series of links the sole
reason of all this was to be in a position to refute Hume's analytical
theory of Thought, without surrendering the same theory himself.
No one can study the perfunctory, mechanical manner in which
this deduction was carried out, without having the truth of Hegel's
homely remark come to mind, that the net result of this whole arti-
452 THE GENESIS OF RANTS CRITICISM [Jan.,
ficial procedure was " such an external and superficial union as when
a piece of wood and a leg are bound together by a cord." How
Hume would have smiled at all this elaborate evasion, had he not
been gathered to his fathers some six years before its appearance!
The objections of the " cold-blooded " Scotsman, as Kant used to
call him, were all based and built on the analytic theory of Thought ;
They could not be answered on that theory. What did Kant do?
He reiterated the theory, appropriated a large part of Hume's
skepticism himself, and for the refutation of the rest proposed
the synthetic character of Thought when linked up with the antici-
pative images which the imagination, he said, is always framing.
Ever adding a qualifier to save the theory which Hume had shat-
tered to atoms before his very eyes. Kant was fighting for his
own philosophical life, and^never were tierce and riposte so weak
and slow in the entire history of philosophy.
A definition Kant 6 took from Leibnitz prevented him from see-
ing that Thought has synthetic insight in essential matters, how-
ever much it may lack the same in matters non-essential. Accord-
ing to this definition, all analytical propositions are rational; all
synthetic propositions empirical, i. e. } derived from experience ; the
converse being true in both cases. This definition identified the
rational with the analytic, the synthetic with the empirical; and
Kant, without waiting to inquire whether the statement was true
to fact or not, took it over and made it the foundation of all that he
ever thought or wrote. It was veritably his dogma of dogmas,
this arbitrary identification of pure reason with analytic Thought; 11
and the tragedy of his Criticism is that he never saw that it was.
It vitiated the whole course of his thinking, and sent him looking in
the wrong place for the origin of such notions as " universality "
and " necessity." According to the Leibnitzian definition, these
notions had to be found in experience, since only out of that source
could a synthetic proposition ever rise. And when Kant consulted
this fount, there was nothing there to be discovered but the contin-
gent, the accidental, and the casual. The shaggy foreshanks of a
fawn, the silver tip of a dog's tail, the tawny waters of the Tiber, the
flash of a woodsman's axe upon the eye and the report reaching
the ear a little later there was nothing essential, necessary, or
universal about any or all of these; they were matters of fact as
8 Revue de Philosophic. La metaphysique du Kantisme. By Pierre Charles,
June, 1914, P- 576.
1 For complete definition of an analytical proposition, see THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
October, 1914, Completing the Reformation, pp. 5-12.
1916.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 453
haphazard, apparently, as the countenance of men. As Leibnitz
himself had observed : One might reflect till doomsday on the " es-
sence " of Socrates without discovering that he was bald of head or
walked barefoot about the market place; and one might ponder on
the " nature " of Spinoza for a century without gaining the least
information as to the place where and the time when this thoughtful
son of a wandering race would doff his muddy vesture of decay. So
there was not much promise of success in the consultation of ex-
perience for one who approached it with the idea in mind of discov-
ering " relations " that were everywhere and always true. Kant's
difficulties were increasing; his quest of the "universal" and the
" necessary " had met with nothing but rebuff.
It seems wholly to have escaped Kant's notice, that in addition
to the accidental relations occurring to any subject from space
and time, there were also certain essential ones belonging to every
subject by nature and clearly within the competence of Thought to
discover. Have we to examine all objects to know that none of them
contain the reason of their existence within themselves, but point
to another? Is it necessary to scrutinize all heat to know that
its nature is to expand bodies? or to appeal to hereditary belief,
instead of immediate insight, for a demonstration of the law that
a cause always precedes the effect ? Are not these " relations "
all in the subject, and seen there as soon as the subject is grasped?
As was said before, the " essences " which Kant saw were all un-
related mere things-in-themselves ; though nowhere in the world
of matter or of mind is there anything that can be truly designated
as " mere." It seems strange indeed, now that psychology has
borne such ample witness to the interdependence prevailing between
all the concepts of the mind as between the things themselves
from which these concepts are taken that Kant should have seen
all " essences " bare, all concepts isolated, all " natures " sundered
and severed. But that was the concept he had of concepts, and
a man must not be expected to work perfectly with deficient tools.
Kant could not at any rate for all his dexterous ingenuity. His
ruling prepossession stood between him and the light. It pre-
vented him from inquiring whether there might not be in every es-
sence a number of relations inhering, of such inseparable nature
and character, that it was practically one and the same thing for
Thought to see an essence relatedly as to see it in itself. Never
having instituted this inquiry how could he, holding the theory
of concepts that he did? Kant missed the real road of escape
454 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Jan.,
from Hume's skepticism, and took to building up a skepticism of
his own instead, far more cumbersome, labored, pretentious, and
unnatural than the Scotsman's.
The problem of accounting for the universal and necessary
syntheses which the mind makes, as, for instance, in the case of
causality, became unsolvable for Hume and Kant, simply because
both were under the false impression that Thought could see the
essences of all subjects but not the essential relations which all sub-
jects contain. What is the reason or motive, Kant kept asking, for
the mind's conceiving of causality as universal and necessary, as
everywhere and always true ? Whence comes the necessity, the uni-
versality, with which the idea of cause is ever accompanied? Kant
spent several years of the hardest kind of thinking on this prob-
lem, the difficulties of which were all due to his defective the-
ory of concepts, and to the fact this, too, a consequence of his
theory that he did not institute the inquiry set forth above.
Nothing but failure came of this long protracted search, and it is
easy to see why. If reason has no continuity with sense, especially
with the productive imagination; if intuition is lodged in the sen-
sibility alone; if the intellect can unwrap essences, but not see re-
lations; if analysis is always -absolute, and never relative; if the
principle of identity expresses the whole nature and fullest possi-
bility of Thought; it is as plain as a pikestaff that a man pro-
ceeding on these five presuppositions is never going to discover
any rational explanation of the mind's syntheses, for the very good
reason that he has taken the five means necessary to make that dis-
covery impossible.
In 1781 Kant came forth from his long silence with the
answer. Unable to discover any conscious, visible, rational motive
for the syntheses which the intellect is accustomed to frame, he
declared the unconscious mind responsible for their framing. The
mind is by nature a universalizing agency, he said. It goes about
its synthetic joinings, regardless of the particular data which ex-
perience furnishes, and by an inner compulsion of its own. Sub-
jective laws of its very being, constitution, and nature force it to
think its objects under universal and necessary forms. There is
no other way to account for its peculiar course, save by supposing
that nature made it so. Kant was still dominated by the idea that
Thought is a mere unwrapping process. He was still a naive be-
liever in the separate functioning of reason and sense. The an-
tinomies which he conjured up between these two Wundt calls
I 9 i6.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 455
them a Schelngejecht, a sham battle clearly reveal that he had
undergone no real change of mind, but was still proceeding on
the supposition of his earlier days. The romantic hypothesis of a
blind weaver at his loom fitted in well with his original intention
to rewrite philosophy from a separatist's point of view. It made
the intellect look and act as his analytic theory of thought, his
divisive conception of mind, demanded that it should. He did not
see that the whole hypothesis of a blind weaver crashes and
crumbles on the simple reflection that the intellect is essentially,
and not accidentally, by nature and not by Kantian ruse, a synthetic
power. The Prussian critic mistook his own failure as an inves-
tigator for an inability inherent in all minds else, when he de-
clared that the intellect has no ability to discover the motive of its
syntheses; when for this reason, he transferred its synthetic ac-
tivity to the subliminal self, and denied the accessibility of the
latter's doings to the prying light of intelligence.
Kant proceeded at once to generalize the personal oversight
that led him to regard the mind's synthetic activity as blind. He
made of this oversight of his a new and " scientific " standpoint
whence to judge the uses to which human thought may rightfully
and profitably be put. When he had invested it with the character
of a general principle, its destructive sweep was surely extensive
enough to content any iconoclast not an Alexander. " What-
ever is universal in our experience," it ran, " comes from the mind;
whatever particular, from sense." He worked the applications of
the principle out in his three Critiques, into the details of which
it is not our purpose to follow him the present study having its
chief interest and concern, not in the elaboration of the so-called
critical principle, but in the state of mind that gave it birth.
Suffice it, therefore, to say that in the Critique of Pure Reason
(1781), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), the Critique of
Judgment (1790), not to mention their companion piece, Religion
Within the Bounds of Mere Reason (1794) the very titles be-
traying the separatist purpose of their composition the whole bur-
den of endeavor is to head Thought off and turn it back in the
direction of sensation, this turning-back movement being accom-
plished by as arbitrary a supposition as ever man devised in the
history of philosophy: namely, that every idea is invalid which
cannot be sensibly presented or experienced. The proofs of God's
existence were thus " non-suited ere the trial had begun," and an
agnostic construction put upon the fundamental deliverances of
456 THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Jan.,
human knowledge. In other words, Kant did all his thinking dur-
ing the critical period under the same chronic supposition that
Thought is a mere analyzing power. He never seems to have
realized that Reason acts with sense in acquiring knowledge; and
that to ask it to analyze sensation is to omit all inquiry into the
results of its own cooperating activity. No wonder he could not
find in one factor of knowledge the results. that are accomplished
by two.
This inadequate conception stained his pages to the end. If
Kant had simply pointed out that there are subjective as well as
objective elements in our knowledge, and bade us diligently sift
the intermixture of the two, the Critiques would have had an en-
lightening value. But when he actually separated the work of
sense from the work of reason, and then tried to show how the
two might be made cohesive by means of his patent gluing-pro-
cess, he was not increasing the sum of human knowledge, or im-
proving the science of methodology, he was simply attempting to
overthrow positive dogmatism by a negative dogmatism invented
by himself, that had nothing to commend its acceptance, save that
it admirably served in his hands as an arbitrary means to an ar-
bitrary end. The vast shadow of the phenomenal in its pied and
painted immensity was to him no interposing veil, but the last
reaches of reality. He used it to extinguish all the higher lights
of consciousness, and often argued as if it were a defect in God's
very being that we could not discover Him within the mirror of sen-
sation ! And how arrogant it was and how unfair, too, to criticize
Reason by a principle taken, not from experience or induction,
but out of the dust and clouds of his controversy with Hume!
Not all philosophy, surely past, present, and to come, stood
trembling on the outcome of this single combat between David and
Goliath; nor was there any evidence then, nor is there any evi-
dence since, that the Philistines were put to confusion and rout,
what time the tiny pebble left its sling and found lodgment in
the giant's forehead.
What is the key to Kant? Leibnitz say some, pointing in
proof to the fact that the Konigsberg critic was misled, his entire
life through, by a definition which he took over, without critical
examination, from the pages of this poetic Platonist. This defi-
nition had it that all rational propositions are analytic, all em-
pirical propositions synthetic a definition which led Kant to be-
lieve that Thought is essentially and exclusively an analyzing
1916.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 457
power; this false impression becoming the dogma by which he
destroyed all dogmas else, and remaining to the end of his days
the uncritical, uncriticized foundation of his whole criticism. This
explanation is true, but not complete. It merely states the problem
to be solved. The real point to be decided is whether the Leib-
nitzian definition actually created Kant's purpose, or merely sug-
gested an appropriate means for carrying out a purpose previously
entertained. To settle this point we should have to prove that the
prime interest Kant had in adopting the aforesaid definition was
religious, not purely intellectual. Can this be shown? We think
it can, and for the following reasons.
Right in the heart of the Critique of Pure Reason* is a
curious page which has no place there except on the supposition
that Kant the philosopher had been concealing Kant the pietist all
along. It records an attempt to make room for a form of convic-
tion called doctrinal faith, which is neither ,a full theoretic demon-
stration, nor a purely moral belief, but something midway between.
Why is this intermediary kind of conviction singled out for sav-
ing, and made an exception to the rigorous working of Kant's crit-
ical principles? There is no intellectual reason why it should have
been so excepted. According to Kant all faith is moral and
indemonstrable. He was every whit as skeptical as Hume con-
cerning the existence of a personal God distinct from " this goodly
promontory of things." Immortality was likewise skeptically re-
garded as no more than a postulate of conscience, that could never
become a rational conviction. And yet, here are these two
doctrines made the object of warm and vigorous special pleading,
in utter despite of the fact that neither of them can be demon-
strated or moralized Kant's requisites for true conviction. The
usual agnostic counterstroke accompanying Kant's animadversions
on the truths of religion is here conspicuously lacking, and the
fact has made more than one student of Kant, from the philoso-
phical side, rub his eyes with wonderment to know if he read
aright. What does it mean, this " doctrinal faith " the charac-
teristic of which from the objective point of view is modesty, and
from the subjective, confidence and assurance? At least this
that Kant is mixing religion with philosophy, belief with knowl-
edge, in a way he would not countenance in others. He is saving
Pietism its two fundamental tenets from the devastating ruin
8 Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Von Meinen, Wissen, und Glauben, Harten-
stein's edition (1867), pp. 544-545.
45$ THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM [Jan.,
he would visit on all beliefs and persuasions else. He is violating
the neutral point of view which he constantly held was the only
one the speculative reason could rightfully ever take.
Further still. In 1781, Kant takes knowledge out of the
theoretical domain; in 1788, he brings it back again as belief;
and the curious thing about this process of removal and restora-
tion is that in 1781, Kant has 1788 in view, tempering his con-
clusions with an eye to the future, and reserving a little corner
of the speculative intellect to give Pietism some semblance of sus-
taining ground in reason. Anyone reading the Critiques, and
remembering while doing so, that one of the cardinal tenets of
Pietism was the sterility of all theological discussion, will soon
discern with growing clearness that Kant is merely trying to prove
that tenet theoretically true. Critics have wondered why Kant
should have destroyed the foundations of morality in reason and
then built them up again on the quicksand of sentiment; why he
should have so confounded the religious with the moral; why he
should have retained a real object for science and religion, though
declaring that object unknowable; why he should have made so
much of feeling, and so little of knowledge; why he never stood
his ground against Hume, but abandoned the speculative reason,
bag and baggage, in his precipitate flight to conscience for final
refuge; why nothing social or historical figured to any redeeming
extent in anything he ever thought or wrote ; why he presents such
a blend of the agnostic and the believer, forever taking back with
his left hand what he proffers with the right. The religious hy-
pothesis that he was a Pietist, striving to justify theoretically the
disrespect for Thought which his religion fostered and encouraged
among its adherents, unravels all these mysteries of commenta-
tors and explains his consistent inconsistency to the end. No
purely intellectual explanation will ever account for Immanuel
Kant of Konigsberg, the philosopher who made his fortune and his
fame by confounding pure reason with analytic thought, and by
writing out most learnedly the consequences that followed from
this confusion.
Behind the philosopher was the believer, and the philosophy
was the believer's own. The belief demanded that Thought be
made the scout of experience or the recording clerk of sensation,
and the philosophy fulfilled the demand most faithfully. The
pressing need of religion as he saw religion and its need, was the
creation of a separate province for it, where the wicked would
1916.] THE GENESIS OF KANT'S CRITICISM 459
cease from troubling, and the pious be free to enjoy their " personal
religious experience; " undisturbed. The definition of Leibnitz,
limiting Thought to analysis, furnished the desired intellectual
means of redistricting the human mind into separate and inde-
pendent provinces; and on it, in the precritical days he built up a
series of original views, which he was afterwards to modify,
though never substantially to change. Hume interposed an un-
expected barrier to the project, and much time had to be spent
by Kant in clearing his way of the Scotsman, and in devising new
means to force a thwarted purpose through. " The peasant-revolt
of the mind," led by Luther this striking expression is Nietz-
sche's 9 "concealed" the whole philosophical movement of Kant
and Fichte a statement for which we have the word of Harnack, 10
hardly in such a matter to be accused of bias.
Nay, we have Kant's own avowal nothing could be plainer
of the disruptive religious purpose that animated all his think-
ing. To put an end to the dogmatism of believer and unbeliever
unfortunately the dogmatism of the critic his own escaped in-
clusion " I was obliged," he says, " to suppress knowledge, in
order to make room for belief"^ May we not trust the Prus-
sian critic here when he thus sums himself up for the verdict of
posterity? And if so, who has made out so good a case against
him as himself?
9 Luther. By Hartmann Grisar, III., chap. L, p. 19. M Ibid. t p. 9-
^Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hartenstein's edition (1867), p. 25.
THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS.
BY CARITAS.
Where Dawn is opening the gates
To let the darkness through.
FRESH page in the book of nature lay open before
me, and with it also some fresh glimpses of life.
Mist-veils still clung to the fronded hilltops of the
West Indian island we had reached the preceding
evening. Santangel! an oasis in the watery waste
it seemed, a very fairyland for poetry and song. On the upper
slopes lay green pastures and shadowy groves, with here and there,
suspended like the nest of a huge bird, the half -embowered hut of
some native islander. Lower down, villas and gardens gave bright
touches of color to the scene. Over all and far on the pearly-
tinted surface of the encircling sea, shimmered the dawn-light,
while its twin-sister, the dawn-breeze, sang sweet and low a sacri-
ficial hymn. A pale harmony it was, throbbing with minor chords,
echoing
The still sad music of humanity.
Already many dusky forms were abroad, hastening down
through bosky lanes to the town below, for it was market-day.
From the shelter of a vine-curtained balcony, I watched the strag-
gling procession pass, noting with interest many types of colored
folk, without being able to class them as Nango, Congo, Congar,
Nangobar or " country born." This lack of ethnical knowledge,
however, troubled me little. Homo sum, I found myself quoting,
humani nihil a me dienum puto, my mood being sympathetic in
character rather than scientific.
Among simple folk, acquaintance is quickly and easily made;
moreover, I soon learned " who was who " from the remarks of
the factotum of the household. Bartholomew was hovering near,
ostensibly to water the vines, but in reality intent on dialogue;
or, that failing him, on monologue. To vocalize his thoughts, and
never to prune his words, were with Bartholomew, I found, fun-
damental principles of conduct to which he strictly adhered.
" Dat's Holly, marm, cummin' down along, 'tis foh sure," I
1916.] THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS 461
heard him say, as Miss Holly, of shapely form and bright coquet-
tish face, stepped into view, her orange-laden panniers swaying
gracefully from either end of the rod that rested on her gayly
beribboned head. Bartholomew, I soon learned, had more than
a passing interest in Holly ; but there was another " culled pusson "
who was similarly minded in her regard; and so far it would ap-
pear that her affection for both individuals was, like her panniers,
quite evenly balanced. Bartholomew had his moments of high
hope, followed by moments of deep despair; but just now he was
in heaven. Seeing him at his task among the crotons, Holly had
given him, not her hand it is true, but a most heavenly smile.
Next came a patriarchial , figure, old Grandpa Reeves, quite
respectably attired and leaning on a " bought " cane. The empty
basket on his arm made it clear that he was bent on purchases.
With just a shade of envy in his tone, and a glance at his own
rather shabby garments, Bartholomew explained : " Mr. Reeves,
'e allus wear J e Sunday clo' on ebbery day."
Why not? I asked myself when I had heard the old man's
history. As a half-professional, was he not entitled to the honor
of being always dressed up?
Many years before, because of his judgment and probity, his
colored brethren, in accordance with a custom brought from the
Gold Coast, had chosen him for the very important office of arbiter
in matters that, for one reason or another, they preferred to have
passed upon by one of themselves, one who " understood." The
regular magistrate was thus spared many a tedious hour of court
duty; and local civilization the menace that arises from delays
in dispensing justice.
At that moment there was a patter of feet behind my chair,
playful little fingers closed over my curious eyes, and I was called
upon to " guess who." This I did several times quite deceitfully,
naming a goblin, a fairy and an angel. Finally, I said " Blanche,"
whereupon that individual unclasped her hands and stood before
me, the blue-eyed, pink-cheeked, golden-haired darling of the house-
hold, the personification of childish beauty, gayety and innocence.
I folded her to my heart, and we were fast friends for the rest of
my visit. But as Blanche remembered that she had obligations to
her family of dolls, she soon reentered her nursery, and I re-
sumed my observations.
An old man with bare feet, and in tattered garments, came
hobbling along, followed by a dog as lean and patient-looking as
462 THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS [Jan.,
himself. He was promptly halted by Bartholomew's " How d'ye,
Uncle Joe, how d'ye."
" Waal, jus' so," was the response, " jus' so, kinder draggin'
long, but de Lawd 'e good, an' I ain't starve yit, ha! ha! Fse
sure to git a han'ful o' grits somehow; an' my dawg, 'e smart 'e
is, he gin'ly pick up a bone down 'long somewhar."
In admiration of his master's oracle, Fido the faithful barked
an ipse dixit.
Bending beneath a backload of wood from " de bush " and
guiding himself with a bamboo stick, for he was half blind, Uncle
Joe seemed to be a curious compound of misery and cheerfulness.
A picturesque figure truly, he had just caught the eye of a passing
tourist, who was trying to induce the old man to pose before a
camera.
" No ! no ! " cried Uncle Joe piteously, " 'scuse me, sah ! 'scuse
me. Tain' no use, sah, I jess cawn't, sah," and in polite explanation
he continued :
" Dat black box, you'se got dere has Obi ; ef I jess luk at it,
I'se voodooed sure, an' dey ain't no Obeah man 'roun' ter 'dress me.
I just' swell up an' die, 'scuse me, 'scuse me."
Uncle Joe's philosophy did not consist in. soliloquizing Hamlet
fashion as to the value of life, or in troubling himself to give a
rhetorical answer to the question : " Is life worth living? " He be-
lieved that it was, and acting up to this belief, he refused to expose
it to a death-dealing camera. Superstitious ignorance to be sure!
yet not so pitiful on the whole as the superstitious enlightenment
that runs to the other extreme in casting life recklessly away.
A group of some half dozen children came shortly into view,
in command of a comfortable looking matron, their mother. Aunt
Cinthy presented quite a neat appearance in her gingham gown,
ample white apron and bright bandana. A tray of choice little
garden dainties kept its place so marvelously on her head, that it
seemed to be just part of herself. In her left hand she carried a
basket of eggs, and with her right directed the manoeuvres of the
" infantry."
Theophilus, the eldest, was in responsible charge of the donkey
cart, with the Benjamin of the family seated at his side. His policy
of " watchful waiting " became suddenly one of great aggression,
whenever any of the other children attempted to climb in, or even
to add their burdens to Bumpo's already heavy load.
Cora, as aide, was being dispatched hither and thither 33
1916.] THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS 463
circumstances seemed to require, whether Poinsettia in advance was
seen to dart into some carefully kept garden for the purpose of
appropriating her name flower; or the boys, George and Oliver,
busy as bees in clover on a stick of sugar cane, lingered too long
in the rear, thus incurring the suspicion of desertion from the
ranks. A word from their mother, however, even through a su-
bordinate, acted upon them like a bugle call. They were quickly
at her side and " at attention " there.
" Trufe is, ef dat fambly keep on," declared Bartholomew, in
comment on their discipline, as well as on their heavy load of
garden truck, " trufe is, de'yl all be millinaires, an' dat 'fore long."
They were certainly a trust if not a monopoly. From Bar-
tholomew's scattered remarks I gleaned that after the death of
her husband, Cynthia had solved her problem in " economics."
She and the children carried to market the results of cooperative
effort in their inherited estate, a little garden patch, and after
market hours they took up various other industries.
By this time dawn had taken its flight ; and the sun was riding
up from the rim of the ocean, scattering its radiance in delicate
hues of saffron, of rose, of lilac, or of silver. " Man lives not by
bread alone," I thought, there are other goals than the market
place. A bell was sounding in the distance. It was the Angelus.
Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,
That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee.
The festival of the Annunciation had dawned, a day that was
to mark a rare event for the few Catholic families on the Island of
Santangel. A missionary Father had come, and O joy ! they were
to have the privilege of assisting at the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass. I hastened to join them. My Anglican host and hostess
found a way of relieving themselves of some slight embarrassment
in the matter of hospitality, perhaps, by granting the request of
Blanche who begged to accompany the Catholic lady to church.
Church! alas there was no Catholic church in Santangel.
Beneath the scarlet canopy of a royal poinclana, on a sort
of natural esplanade near the shore, I found the little band of the
faithful gathered round a temporary altar. There they knelt, a
dusky group, with bowed heads and clasped hands, while flickering
lights gemmed the crucifix that rose above a mass of passion flowers
and Eucharistic lilies. Sea and sky formed a background of
mysterious beauty for this ara call; blue waves riding with snowy
464 THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS [Jan.,
crests, and breaking on the shore with a sound like that of far
away church bells; in the sky long lines of dazzling cloud-angels
with their trailing garments blown backward, their faces veiled
with their folded wings, all bending earthward, as it were, "breath-
less with adoration."
" How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of them that
bring good tidings." In the person of the missionary, St. Francis
Xavier seemed to live again. His face shone in the light of holi-
ness as he turned to the humble worshippers and told them the
touching story of Infinite Love. Truly, the poor had the Gospel
preached to them. As the Mass proceeded, my little companion
grew more and more recollected, until at the sound of the sacring
bell, of her own accord she prostrated to the very earth. At the
moment of Communion, I was obliged to use a gentle restraint to
prevent her from following me to the Holy Table. With a sorrow-
ful gesture, she stretched out her arms towards the altar and I
saw that she was weeping, half in sorrow, half in joy. My heart
gave a great bound of gladness. I knew that the Faith had come
to her, as to so many, from the Eucharistic God. The little spark
had been lighted in her soul. Would it, fed by fresh graces,
burst one day into a heavenly flame; or, neglected, would it die
out all too soon in the rising surges of worldly ambition? That
was known only to God and to His angels.
Many years later I happened to be sojourning for the winter
in a Southern town. One day, at the house of a friend, I met a
young girl whose charming personality interested me strangely.
I seemed to be looking at her face, with its pure brow and azure
eyes, through a mist of years and tears. And so it was. Blanche
Bancroft, now a Catholic, proved to be my little companion at the
well-remembered Mass on the Island of Santangel in the long ago.
Beautiful in soul, as in form and feature, frank as a child, she told
me the story of the intervening years.
That single Mass had been to her ever a memory of hope and
love; and the miraculous medal I had given her at parting, she
had treasured up as a most precious possession. With a view of
providing her with educational advantages, her father had sent her
at an early age to reside with an aunt in Florida. While there she
attended a convent school, and in time begged for permission to
be instructed and baptized, but all in vain.
At last, her aunt thinking that the child's desire was a mere
1916.] THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS 465
fancy, gave consent to what she termed a foolish novelty.
Blanche's parents, however, on hearing the news of her baptism,
were much displeased, and would have recalled her at once to
Santangel had not Providence ordained it otherwise. One delay
succeeded another in the execution of their plans, until finally
Blanche was educated, and Mrs. Ormsby wrote that she had a
very desirable non-Catholic parti in view for her niece, a young
man of good family who was fabulously wealthy, whereupon they
determined to let matters take their course.
And now as we sat together at noonday in the cool of a
loggia into which peeped the blossoms of a jasmine vine, and from
w^hich we were in full sight of the sea, Blanche told me of her
engagement; of the new joy that had come into her heart and life;
of her plans for the future; of the perfections of her lover;
above all, of her hopes and prayers that he might soon share with
her the precious gift of the Faith.
" He is so well disposed," she continued, " he has made the
promises required by the Church, he is reading The Faith of Our
Fathers. In short," she said, as she rose and laid her hand
carressingly on a pale moon flower among the jasmine buds, " I
am so full of joy that everything around me seems to be saying
'Jubilate' all day long. I sing with the birds; dance with the
waves ; and I often run into the garden just to kiss the flowers."
As she stood there in a loosely cinctured robe of flowing white,
with her golden hair massed like a crown above her radiant brow,
her slender figure outlined against the sky, slowly a cloud-shadow
stole over the landscape, and with it came to me, I know not by what
curious mental process, the memory of twin sculptures I had once
seen in a famous gallery, Ariadne the betrothed, and Ariadne the
forsaken.
I was leaving shortly for the North, and Blanche too was
going to Santangel for a farewell visit to her parents, since her
future home was to be in Florida. It was agreed that I should
hear from her from time to time, above all, when she could tell
me the glad tidings of Paul's conversion to the Faith.
Too often, idyllic experiences pass from us like a dream, for-
ever; yet occasionally life gives promise of their renewal. Some
such thought was mine as I stood on the deck of the little govern-
ment boat that was bearing me, after the lapse of years, back to
Santangel.
VOL. en. 30
466 THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS [Jan.,
As we drew near the harbor, a dolphin was sporting in the
waves; the foam was curling lazily on the sands; the white wings
of sea birds were flashing in the sunlight; far off stood the purple
hills, stately and serene, a reflection of eternal repose. Endless
rest, and endless motion, there they were, just as when no feet but
those of the Indian trod these shores; or as when the eagle eye
of the buccaneer scanned the island from his passing ship, seeking
out its possibilities.
Soon, however, I was recalled to " the living present," my
friends, black and white, were awaiting me at the pier, and most
touching was the welcome I received. Bartholomew was on hand
to transport my luggage, and later in the day his wife Holly sent
me her greetings exquisitely expressed in a bunch of roses. What
delicacy of thought, what refinement of feeling are often found in
the simple and the humble!
In the Bancroft home, I found that there had been changes.
New mounds in the little cemetery marked the last resting-place of
several members of the household, including the husband and
father. Mrs. Bancroft had grown old, yet so gracefully and so
graciously that the years seemed but to have crowned and sceptred
her. And Blanche, yes, her dear Blanche fleur, was with her, but
oh! how sadly changed. I shall tell the tale as I heard it a day
or two after my arrival.
Late in the afternoon, I had gone down to the little pergola
on the garden terrace, which served as a classroom for Blanche,
her young assistant, and the colored pupils who came there for
Catechism Class after regular school hours. A formal presenta-
tion took place, in the course of which, if names are to be relied
on, I shook hands with the scions of various noble, even royal
houses. When the children had given proofs of some proficiency
in Christian Doctrine, class was concluded; but not until all had
made the sign of the cross correctly and reverently, and in a sort
of half-chant (an aid to memory) recited some simple prayers.
Lastly had come sundry injunctions from the teacher, to shun
delays along the roadside; to avoid picking up even a single
street pebble, lest they should be led into the temptation of hurling
it; and to remember the difference between mine and thine when
they found themselves in the vicinity of orchards. Acting on a
psychological principle, however, the wise teacher suppressed all
mention of such varieties of orchard as orange, mango, soursop,
grapefruit or sapodilla, especially the last, for an honesty that
1916.] THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS 467
passes muster on other tests is found lacking often when it comes
to " dillies."
After the dismissal, which had been as " rapid " as any that
a New York Fire Commissioner could have desired, Blanche and
I seated ourselves on a garden bench, and talked for a while about
trifles, things that were far from the hearts of either. At last
I laid my hand on her dear head caressingly. She understood, and
choking back a little sob she began the promised recital.
" After our parting in Florida, I came home, as I thought,
for a few weeks stay with father and mother. We were all so
happy, in our own, and still more in each other's happiness. It
seemed as if a bit of heaven had, all unawares, strayed down to
earth; but 'alas.! for love, if earth were all.' ' After a pause she
continued : " One morning here in the garden, to amuse my little
brothers and sisters, I joined in a game of romps. In my efforts
to evade the agile pursuit of dear little Roger, now with God, I
stumbled, and falling violently against a tree trunk received a
severe blow just above the right temple. It jarred the nerves
of the eye hopelessly.
" I shall spare you the details of the sufferings that followed,
my own anxiety; the agony of my parents; the realization of our
worst fears; the loss of sight, first in the injured eye, then in
the other, and now 'the ever-during dark.' ' As if to herself she
quoted softly:
Not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.
Then she continued : " All this, however, was but the prelude
to greater griefs. Before the news of my misfortune could be com-
municated to Paul, and with it the offer of a release from our
engagement, a letter came from him, a cruelly cold letter, in which
he stated that on reflection he had seen his mistake in making
the promises required by my Church; that a difference of views
on a point so vital as was that of religion, would, in all likelihood,
be a bar to our future happiness; that, in short, he must ask me
either to renounce my Catholic Faith, or to consider our engage-
ment at an end. My dream of happiness was over. I awoke
disconsolate.
" The struggle that ensued seemed to cast me into the very
468 THE PATHWAY OF THE ANGELS [Jan.,
throes of a death agony. Grace finally triumphed, but at what a
cost! For a time, every sound in nature, every human voice,
seemed to be a bell tolling the word forlorn ! Sorrow came to crown
sorrow in those days. The next blow was the death of my dear
father, who was baptized in his last hour by the trembling hand
of his daughter. My mother's conversion followed. My mother!
her tender devotion then, as now, was like a big, broad, generous
ray of God's own love, reaching down into my darkness. Prayer
and labor became my refuge. I resolved to consecrate my life to the
care of the souls of these poor colored children, these sheep with-
out a shepherd, during the greater part of the year. Our daily
prayer together is, that in the near future, we shall see on yonder
hill those twin towers of school and church that crown the citadel
of God.
" Realizing my escape from the danger to which my Faith
had been exposed, my act of thanksgiving took the form of a
perpetual petition for this gift, the perfection of the virtue of
faith. Whether that prayer will ever be fully answered here
below, I know not; but, like the man in the Gospel. 'This I
know, that whereas before I was blind, now I see.' ' She paused.
Words of mine would have seemed a desecration. I waited
reverently. Evening was drawing on apace; the sunset sea be-
fore incarnadined, was changing its tone color at every instant,
with the very refinement of beauty; the rose of the horizon
fainted to lilac, and the lilac paled to gray. Twilight deepened.
Then the full moon rose, and in the silvery light it shed across the
waters almost to our very feet, I saw what children call the
Pathway of the Angels. As if Blanche too had caught a glimpse
of it with the inward eye, and recognized its symbolism, she said :
" I see I see that in a primrose path, I should have strayed
from the Fold, and lost my soul. As it is, the Angels of Suf-
fering, of Dependence, of Obscurity have been sent, to lead me
straight to God."
STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS: IMPRESSIONS OF SOME
RECENT POETRY AND DRAMA.
BY KATHERINE BREGY.
ERE all is calm one hears the thunder of cannon only
vaguely at a distance of ninety kilometers. And if
we had not our hospital with its ill and wounded, if
mourning were not multiplied amongst the families
about us, we should be scarcely conscious of the war !"
From the old provincial town of Montford 1'Amaury these words
came recently to the present writer : from a French physician who,
having given his three sons to the army one in the Arras region,
one in Serbia, one in the aviation corps guarding Paris had him-
self assumed charge of the local hospital of the Croix Rouge, with
wife and daughter working at his side. The quiet heroism, the
poise, the adjustment of it all are characteristic not only of that
deeper French nature which has been one of the revelations of the
present war, but of the best in human nature everywhere. " One
hears the thunder of cannon only vaguely at a distance of ninety
kilometers " one is far more vividly conscious of the straw-wisp
blown by the winds. Why? Because the cannon-ball, sure and
swift though it speed, obeys the whim of momentary human pas-
sion ; while season after season and century after century, the straw
points out humbly the course of God's everlasting winds. Because,
in a word, man was made for peace rather than for war for life
rather than for death!
It is highly illuminating to glance over our recent literature
and inquire just how potently it has been affected by this world
war, which is filling and killing the minds of at least half of
Christendom. The fact that one is tempted to inquire at all, would
seem to indicate that this effect has not been, among English-
speaking nations, quite as omnipresent as might have been sup-
posed. To be sure, a special " war literature " has grown up about
us : the journals of a few non-combatants and still fewer soldiers ;
the impressions of the war correspondents; fugitive poems oc-
casionally from men who, like Rupert Brooke or Mr. Shane Leslie,
have looked upon death and spoken living words but oftener from
leisurely people who tell in little exotic magazines how foolish
470 STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS [Jan,
and superannuated all war should be considered. Then too, there
are more or less hysterical plays like " Moloch " or " War Brides ; "
but it is not the women of England or Belgium or France or
Germany who write them! History has, of course, demonstrated
that the supremely great literature of any war comes when the
final " battle's lost and won " when the seed, cast into the earth
and dead and watered by blood, bears its slow, swift blossom in
another spring. Not yet, then, shall the wise seek for the ultimate
war message at the lip of the priest or poet. But not a little
wisdom may one gain by watching those frail, mysterious fingers,
the straws blown by the wind.
Already it has become a proverb that this most modern of all
wars has brought about a renaissance of matrimony! The "sum-
mer flirtation " or " Platonic attachment " of a year ago has become
the wedding of to-day and this not alone in the warring coun-
tries. It is, to borrow President Wilson's phrase, a psychological
situation! Some new sense of wonder, some old sense of truth,
are conspicuous in English letters on both sides of the Atlantic
some deep conviction that nothing less than the very real will do.
Mr. Wilfrid Meynell's little anonymous volume, Aunt Sarah and
the War, is fragrant with the tonic of this new spirit. In fact,
its pages, at once so high-hearted and so tear-compelling, must be
reckoned amongst the things which have helped to create the new
spirit and the flesh to match. " Lord ! " cries Mr. Meynell's cap-
tain, writing from the battle-line to his sweetheart at home : " Lord !
if they could listen to the unceasing shells that drive some men
deaf, and some men blind, and some men dumb, and some men
crazy and these all of them MEN with a newly-earned meaning
of the word! For there's a new meaning now in many an old
word who's to diagnose that difference to the satisfaction
of the layman? It will need a new sort of observation to do it
and a new kind of politician made by a new kind of journalist, and
a new kind of citizen with a new kind of wife and a new kind of
son and daughter. Man was made out of the slime, and will be
remade out of it here. There's a Truth from the Trenches ! "
But just what did the poets give us during 1915 the British
poets first, and in particular the poets who are wont to speak of
public problems ? One can but gather an impression here and there
one can but pick a volume from many, without even consider-
ing, in so short a survey, the significance of separate poems. And
since all choice must needs be arbitrary, may the impressionist be
igi6.] STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS 471
forgiven for choosing in the present paper to lay stress upon the
straws rather than the cannon-balls upon the volumes of universal
appeal, colored by war or peace as the case may be, rather than
upon the special pleading of such works as Stephen Phillips'
Armageddon, or Noyes' new version of his Rada, or Mr. Colcord's
Vision of War? What, then, of Masefield and his Philip the
King? There are war notes here, to be sure the brooding, grop-
ing music of August, 1914. But surer and stronger is the music
of the title poem, a dramatic study of Philip II. of Spain the
first believable Philip, be it noted in passing, in English literature!
It is in many ways a great work, this interpretation of the proud,
tired king: the king who has known war, and has sacrificed men
as pawns to his scheming, who has loved and prayed and believed
and lived to see his life go without fruit.
O God, beloved God, in pity send
That blessed rose among the thorns an end!
Such are the words of Philip when the fate of his great Armada
rises ghost-like before him. It is, indeed, a certain kind of war
cry : the cry of a very old man, or a very old world.
Perhaps it was to be expected that Gilbert Chesterton's
new poems the Poems of 1915 should be less martial, less epic
even than the earlier Ballad of the White Horse. The Wife of
Flanders is indeed here, with her scorn that hisses like the passing
of a bullet. But not one of the confessed war poems of the volume
will compare in might to the religious poems to the Hymn for
the Church Militant } or The Truce of Christmas or that very Ches-
tertonian bit of love-philosophy, The Wise Men. Here is the old,
sweet paradox : here again the straw is more potent than the
cannon-ball, even the straw of the Christmas Manger:
The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.
* * * *
The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange, house that is our own,
Where tricks of words are never said,
And mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honor is as hard as stone.
472 STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS [Jan,
Go humbly ; humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star ;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.
Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain,
And the whole Heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.
Little children St. John's words : and with them, as of some
mysterious kinship, one links the words of the valiant French
father If we had not our hospital if mourning were not
multiplied amongst the families about us, we should be scarcely
conscious of the war! What if Gilbert Chesterton should have
laid hold upon the final and divine paradox? What if, when the
smoke of machine-guns lifts and the blood-soaked fields are dry,
we should all see suddenly, with a gasp of never- to-be- forgotton
joy, how
death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love!
On this hither side of the Atlantic, for all the war talk, there
has been very little war singing. The terrible fire touched for a
moment the heart and lips of Florence Earle Coates, it troubled
the mind of Amy Lowell, and wrung from Joyce Kilmer a
memorably beautiful chant upon the crimson-stained Lusitania.
But American poets, for the most part, have not as yet felt the
cataclysm. They have preserved the neutrality of art reinforced,
one can but suspect, by the neutrality of distance. It is well : it
is human; and after all, one hears the thunder of cannon only
vaguely at a distance of some few thousand miles of earth and
water ! So it is refreshing to dip into so enticing a volume as that
of our own Thomas Walsh, the new volume entitled Pilgrim
Kings. Those who recall the same poet's Prison Ships will find
here each old charm deepened, and a new sureness and largeness of
touch. There is, beside, a new and most vital sense of dramatic
values : a sense which gives to Mr. Walsh's dramatic soliloquies
and he is almost as fond of the dramatic soliloquy as Aubrey de
Vere, or for that matter, Browning! a quite particular felicity.
Very charming, too, is the lyric note of such verses as The Birth
1916.] STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS 473
of Pierrot; and the Spanish studies, in particular that delicious
legend of the Madonna's little goatherd, Mariquita. But there is
perhaps nothing in the new volume more strangely ancient, yet
strangely fresh, than the Colloquy of Bride. With all " who strike
the strings and blow the reeds through heaven" the Celtic Saint
rejoices on her hill of prayer: and the lonely Curragh herdsman
listens as she cries out in rapture to the dawn :
" Again thou com'st, thou silver tide of God !
Be glad," she called, " ye spear-ranged woods and heights !
Over the ancient tombs let knees be bent
Over the chalices be trembling hands!
Now turns the serf his furrows ; o'er his scroll
The brehon ponders; youths are at their feats
Of arms; the chieftain enters down his hall
And bids the henchmen portion forth his alms.
Were I the lark, or e'en the poorest flower,
To hail thee, Light of Blessings Then out-spoke
Her novice Dara : " Mother, stay thy joy ;
The herdsmen's eyes are blind; and see, they weep "
And sudden at the word a surge swept up
The heart of Bride ; her wild imploring hands
Were clutched to heaven. Then crying out, he saw!
Apropos of Catholic poets and the dramatic instinct, one is
reminded that our literary gossip of the year just past held few
more interesting items than the passing of Charles Phillips into the
playwright's field. It is full of significance when a poet and editor
of established reputation, and still on the right side of forty,
cuts his journalistic cables and turns in all seriousness to the drama.
It is the sort of straw which, at first flight, might almost be mis-
taken for a cannon-ball. None the less it is a straw and blown
by those mighty winds which are gradually breathing life into the
forge of American drama. More and more clearly are modern
Catholics perceiving that the stage with the press and the pulpit
has become one of the great moulders of public opinion; and of
the drama might well be repeated the splendid words with which
Francis Thompson plead for the welcome of poetry " Beware how
you misprise this potent ally Her value, if you know it not,
God knows, and know the enemies of God." So then, if everyone
with a new theory now writes a play, why not those who hold the
old theories with new faith and freshness?
When Mr. Phillips' first play, The Divine Friend, was produced
474 STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS [Jan.,
last October in San Francisco, it was fortunate enough to be inter-
preted by one of the greatest of living actresses, another Catholic,
Margaret Anglin. She it was who undertook the role of Mary
Magdalen. Now the drama is not in any sense a "saint's life:"
neither is it a modern, sensational " interpretation." Its story,
built about the brief Scriptural narratives of the Magdalen and the
resurrection of the widow's son, and colored, too, with many a hue
of gorgeous, decadent paganism, shows us Mary at one particular
crisis the spiritual crisis of her life. It is at once very frank
and very Catholic. Mr. Phillips' canons on the subject of purity
are as fixed as the stars or the catechism! and the problem of
his play is not one of theory but of fact: not, what should this
woman do? but what will this woman do? This is one of the
striking differences between The Divine Friend and the multitude
of so-called Magdalen plays with which the modern stage has been
inundated. Lionel Johnson remarked once that the recent novel
was concerned " not with the storm and stress of great, clear pas-
sions and emotions, but with the complication of them There
is a sense of entanglement: right and wrong, courage and
cowardice, duty and desire are presented to us in confused con-
flict." No such sublety clouds the quite elemental clearness of Mr.
Phillips' theme. His Mary is not a heroine because of her frailty,
nor because of her fairness, nor even because of her suffering : she
becomes a saint because of her conversion! The first act shows
her to us the widow of a mercenary Tyrian marriage, reigning
Thais-like as a sort of desperate queen in Magdala, the " Woman's
Town." To her home shipwreck brings back the one pure love of
her girlhood, David of Nairn, the friend and disciple of Jesus.
This is the crisis. And Mary's great lines are not the usual de-
fence of her life, but rather her defence of the lie by which at
first she strives to hide this life from David. It cannot be hidden;
it is red as blood and white as leprosy; and the woman realizes
this as she sees the fever-smitten David madly defending her from
accusations of the truth. In this night of supreme shame, supreme
sorrow, supreme illumination, the Saint is born. With infinite
sympathy is managed the difficult scene of her confession :
Mary: Your questioning eyes cry fearful of my meaning,
But I, a thousand-fold more fearful, cry
Trembling and faint to you for strength and courage
To hold me in your spirit firm and strong,
For that my hour has come upon me now.
1916.] STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS 475
David: What strange wild words are these?
Mary: I swore an oath!
And facing God and Heaven have I sworn
I love you : Pray for me !
That I be given strength to prove my love ;
For after many days, as God Himself
Reading my inmost heart now sees, true love
I have achieved at last.
David: You speak in riddles.
Mary: A woman's soul
In pain and travail bringing forth the truth
Cries in its laboring.
David: The truth? The truth?
Mary: Ay, ay, the truth! They did not lie to you!
I am an evil creature, low, debased,
Possessed, degraded, trafficked
I have been Herod's woman,
And Claudian's, and whose who would
My body sold a thousand times ; my soul
A thousand thousand times laid low in death.
# * * #
David: My God, my God, hast Thou forsaken me?
And lifted me upon Thy pinnacles
To break me at Thy heel?. .....
This is the crucial ordeal for Mary of Magdala although
the drama shows us one more battle royal between flesh and spirit,
in that final poetic scene outside the walls of Nairn. It is here
that Mr. Phillips lifts the scheme of action to a supernatural level:
and when his Mary staggers out from among the tombs to the
sunlit road where Jesus, the Divine Friend, awaits, it is perfectly
clear although it is nowhere stated that the meaning of it all is
consecration, total, lifelong, from disorder to Beauty, from sin to
the Primal Love past David to Christ !
It is quite true that the great solidarity of modern English
poetry, fiction and drama has been on the non-Catholic side. Yet
the number of really eminent Catholic authors is sufficient to make
rather conspicuous the rarity of any great priestly character in our
recent literature. One of the few really towering priest-heroes of
English poetry is Browning's Canon Caponsacchi! One of the
most natural monks is Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence. To be sure,
Aubrey de Vere gave us a noble dramatic portrait of Thomas a
Becket. Over and above these we have had a few saints, a few
476 STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS [Jan,
churchmen statesmen, and such very incredible Jesuits as Thack-
eray's " Father Holt." But where do we find the modern, every-
day priest whom we all know the priest who is neither spectacu-
larly good nor spectacularly bad, but just the brave human friend,
the firm, faulty, wise, witty, sometimes blunt but ofttimes subtle
leader of his people? Glimpses of him one catches in the pages of
some very recent priest-novelists, alike Irish and English : or he
smiles at us from behind a laughing verse of Mr. " Tom " Daly's.
But to put him on the stage is a thing which, either from reverence
or timidity, Catholic dramatists have been slow to accomplish. Non-
Catholics have put him there usually to their own and his confu-
sion: or else, like Henry Arthur Jones at one extreme and Hall
Caine at the other, they have begged the question by making their
priest a " High Episcopalian." But with a more and more vital
Catholic drama the priest is bound to come. Indeed, there are
rumors that he may be here very shortly. And (sans indiscretion,
as the French put it!) would it seem in any wise strange if Mr.
Brandon Tynan should be the man to give him to us ?
Meanwhile, it was quite a notable " straw " when the Gals-
worthy play for 1915 proved to be not a war discussion but the
quiet, tragic romance of the inevitable Anglican clergyman.
Rather should one call it the story of a man's heart-break, told with
the patient, pitiless realism which is its author's own. Michael
Strangway, the hero of A Bit o' Love, is curate of a little village
in the west of England. He is described by his housekeeper as
having " a saint in 'im for zure; but only 'alf-baked, in a
manner of spakin'." Nothing could be neater than the opening
scene, wherein Michael, the idealist, attempts to describe the Little
Poor Man of Tuscany to his provincial confirmation class :
Strangway: Did I ever tell you about St. Francis of Assisi?
He was the best Christian, I think, that ever lived
simply full of love and joy.
Ivy: I expect he's dead?
Strangway: About seven hundred years, Ivy Everything
to him was brother or sister the sun and the moon, and all
that was poor and weak and sad, and animals and birds, so that
they even used to follow him about.
Mercy: I know! He had crumbs in his pocket.
Strangway: No; he had love in his eyes!
To this gentle dreamer comes the knowledge that his wife
1916.] STRAWS AND CANNON-BALLS 477
loves and has given herself to another man. It is the subject of
village gossip the cheap gossip of the kitchen, the coarse gossip
of the public-house. Then the middle-aged vicar's wife, incar-
nation of all British " respectability "-and all "middle class moral-
ity," urges Michael to divorce her; "as the Church, as all Chris-
tian society would wish," she adds, with exquisitely unconscious
irony. But what does Michael care for her conventional society
or his own conventional church ? To him divorce has no meaning
save the disgrace of the woman he still adores. For months he has
lived in hell; "burned and longed; hoped against hope; killed a
man in thought day by day ! " Every lower instinct of his soul
cries out for man's justice and his own revenge. Yet he will not
take it. Is it because he is too weak, or too strong ? The dramatist
leaves us uncertain : just as life often leaves us uncertain about
other people's motives and even our own! Anyway, the bit o'
love triumphs. At the last we see Strangway victor in his own
bitter battle the battle against self-murder and passing, like
Mary of Magdala, into the light. Symbolically enough, it is not
Mary's clear noontime refulgence, but just the quiet, starlit night
which promises dawn ahead.
God of the moon and sun; of joy and beauty, of loneliness
and sorrow give me strength to go on, till I love every living
thing !
That is the final word of Michael Strangway: the final word
of John Galsworthy from out a year of bloodshed; just as cen-
turies before, it had been the burden of St. Francis. In all truth,
One hears the thunder of cannon only vaguely at a distance of
ninety kilometers!
THE COUNTERSIGN.
BY MICHAEL EARLS., S.J.
ALONG Virginia's wondering roads
While armies hastened on,
To Beauregard's great Southern host,
Manassas fields upon,
Came Colonel Smith's good regiment,
Eager for Washington.
But Colonel Smith must halt his men
In a dangerous delay,
Though well he knows the countryside
To the distant host of grey:
He cannot join with Beauregard
For Bull Run's bloody fray.
And does he halt for storm or ford,
Or does he stay to dine?
Say, No! but death will meet his men,
Onward if moves the line:
He dares not hurry to Beauregard,
Not knowing the countersign.
Flashed in the sun his waving sword;
"Who rides for me? " he cried,
" And ask of the Chief the countersign,
Upon a daring ride;
Though never the lad come back again
With the good that will betide.
" I will send a letter to Beauregard,"
The Colonel slowly said;
" The bearer will die at the pickets' line,
But the letter shall be read
When the pickets find it for the Chief,
In the brave hand of the dead."
1916.] THE COUNTERSIGN 479
" Ready I ride to the Chief for the sign,"
Said little Dan O'Shea,
" Though never I come from the pickets' line,
But a faded suit of grey,
Yet over my death will the road be safe,
And the regiment march away.
" For your mother's sake, I bless thee, lad,"
The Colonel drew him near:
" But first in the name of God," said Dan,
" And then is my mother's dear
Her own good lips that taught me well,
With the Cross of Christ no fear."
Quickly he rode by valley and hill,
On to the outpost line,
Till the pickets arise by wall and mound,
And the levelled muskets shine:
" Halt ! " they cried, " count three to death,
Or give us the countersign."
Lightly the lad leaped from his steed,
No fear was in his sigh,
But a mother's face and a home he loved
Under an Irish sky:
He made the Sign of the Cross and stood,
Bravely he stood to die.
Lips in a prayer at the blessed Sign,
And calmly he looked around,
And wonder seized his waiting soul
To hear no musket sound,
But only the pickets that called to him,
Heartily up the mound.
For this was the order of Beauregard
Around his camp that day
The Sign of the Cross was countersign,
(And a blessing to Dan O'Shea)
And the word came quick to Colonel Smith
For the muster of the grey.
THE NARROW ROAD.
BY ROSE MARTIN.
LL hope of recovery was over the man lay very
still, while the irrevocableness of the fact slowly sank
into his consciousness. Swiftly and unexpectedly
had this strange thing come upon him : one moment of
perfect physical health, and the joy of life that goes
with it; in the next the terrible choice, the wild leap, and oblivion.
Many days later he had wakened here at the hospital, to learn that
science had saved his life. Skillfully the broken bones had been
knit, his bruises healed, and the wandering mind called back from
pleasant fields of delirium. Had science done well? Henceforth
his life must be a feeble thing, without purpose, or ambition which
had been its mainspring: he who had dreamed of unlimited fame
and fortune, must exist on a brother's bounty ; for this had science
saved him: that he might be a beggar. Well clothed, and well
provided for, but still a beggar. Was it just? Was it reasonable?
Was it right? He paused on the little forceful word, which seemed
to hold to-day a new high meaning; and vaguely understood and
acknowledged that somehow it was right. A life must be saved at
all costs, whether or not there is room or desire for that life. A
higher Ruler than science has issued that decree which science her-
self obeys, but comprehends not. Something of sternness came into
the man's face ; what would the future hold for him, in this strange
new life of his? Pain would be its daily portion; and therefore
he must learn patience; and it must be a lonely life and silent;
lest he cry out and be pitied by men.
A light step sounded near, and the nurse stood at his bedside.
" There are visitors for you," she said gently, " your brother and
a young lady ; do you feel equal to seeing them ? "
The man caught his breath sharply; sooner or later he must
forgive ; it was what the bright-faced young priest had said when
he had tried to inspire him with resignation, but could he seem to
do so now ?
" Wait," he said hoarsely, " give me just a few minutes, and
then I will see them."
He closed his eyes, desiring to shut out a last, haunting mem-
ory; but the scene came back to him the more vividly; a quiet
1916.] THE NARROW ROAD 481
country road along which he was proceeding in his machine, when
rather suddenly the way narrowed. He remembered looking up at
the tall cliffs on one side, and down at the deep gorge on the other ;
then with only a slightly anxious feeling he perceived a machine
coming down the hill in front of him. He sounded his warning
at once; the occupant would of course slow up, and allow him to
reach a wide part of the road before attempting to pass him, though
by careful manoeuvring they might manage it where he was; but
the thing came on swiftly, lurching dangerously, but keeping to
the centre of the road. Only when it was close upon him did he
see that the girl, who was its only occupant, had no control over the
machine. His own was in her way, so he plunged it into the
gorge, making a leap for his life as he did so. When picked up
later he was a bruised and broken piece of humanity; and now he
must forgive his brother's betrothed. Though, in response to her
questions, John had given Aline a few instructions in regard to
running a machine, even allowing her to handle the steering wheel,
he had sternly forbidden her attempting to run the machine by her-
self. But, upon this particular day, the machine had been handy
and John was not; so she had persuaded an eager schoolboy to
crank the machine, and had gone on her willful way. The speed of
the machine increased as it went down hill ; and panic seized Aline,
while in selfish terror she was heedless of anyone who might be
in her way.
He had not seen her since the accident, and she hesitated
now on the threshold before following the brother into the room.
The quick eyes of the man noted the change in her at once: her
frivolity had dropped from her as a pretty, useless ornament. She
laid the white roses she was carrying on his bed, and seating herself
beside him, stroked his bandaged hand in silence.
" Well," he said at last with a smile, and his voice was very
gentle, " one must not expect strength with the fragrance of white
roses." He had forgotten how sweet she was to look at, and how
frail. His brother had nodded to him, and stood at the foot of the
bed, with anxious eyes on the girl.
" I made John bring me," she said at last, her childish hands
clasping and unclasping nervously, " I know you must hate the
sight of me, but I thought perhaps you would try to get used to it
gradually; and maybe at some time O I do not dream of asking
it yet, but some time, away off in the future you may manage to
forgive me."
VOL. cii. 31
482 THE NARROW ROAD [Jan.,
" What do you think? " John interrupted. " Our wedding has
been put off."
The eyes of the man on the bed turned swiftly to the girl.
" Why ? " he asked sharply.
" Could I think of a wedding with you like this? " she replied
with repressed passion.
The man's face grew thoughtful : only that morning he had
overheard the doctor say that he would be an invalid for life;
waiting for his recovery meant the engagement was broken.
" It seems I am of more importance to your wedding than you
are," he said to his brother lightly; and then there was a brief
silence, while the man questioned within himself ; was it any affair
of his, if this girl who had wrecked his life, should choose also to
wreck her own? If she who had caused his sufferings should also
suffer? He turned his head impatiently: was it so always with
temptations? Did they come to others with such swiftness such
unexpectedness even as had come to him that choice on the narrow
road? Well, he had not failed there, and he must not fail here.
" John," he said briskly, " if you want to see Doctor Grey
before he leaves the hospital, you had better hurry downstairs to
his office now. I'll entertain Aline in the meantime," and some-
what bewildered, but comprehending what was required, John obe-
diently left the room. Then the eyes of the man, keen, clear, ex-
pressing some of the old life's fire, as well as the new life's courage,
sought the gray eyes of the girl, sorrowful, downcast, tearful.
" Do you mean you have broken your engagement because of
this accident?" he questioned.
She nodded.
" Well, listen a moment and I think I can convince you how
foolish, how absolutely foolish, you are, Aline."
A faint flush of anger mounted to the girl's cheek, but she
did not answer.
" You see," he went on more gently, " it was simply an acci-
dent."
The anger leaped now to her eyes. " 'An accident,' " she re-
peated scornfully, " how can you call it so? I, a responsible human
being, forgot all save my own selfish terror there on that narrow
road. Is it just that you only should suffer the consequences of my
willful carelessness?"
" Call it what you will," he replied irritably, " what I mean is
this : you cannot claim that you had any intention of running into
1916.] THE NARROW ROAD 483
me, when you took that automobile ride, it was not your fault that
the road happened to go down hill suddenly; it was not your fault
either that it narrowed at a certain point ; and certainly it was not
your fault that you became terrified when you saw me in your way.
If there was carelessness it was also mine, for I had my senses
about me, yet I entered that narrow way with no look beyond.
Courage, in my opinion, is largely a thing of physical strength; in a
sudden test like that it takes a steady nerve, a steady hand, and you
are very frail, Aline."
" Do you think it makes it easier for me to bear," she answered
coldly, " knowing you hold me too weak to have done better? One
thing you have forgotten : moral courage can exist in the frailest
creature, and can lead to higher things than the mere brute strength
you speak of. This fact remains : I failed in a test of courage,
there on the narrow road, and wrecked your life."
There was silence; he was very tired, and had he not said all
that could be said was there any other plea he could offer ? When
he spoke at last, his voice, for all its gentleness, had a note of
sternness in it.
" Grant it if you will," he said, " but does it follow, because
you failed once, that you should go on failing forever? Your
refusal to marry my brother is simply a failure of courage. Believe,
if you will, that you have wrecked my life (though I claim you
have not, shall not), at the worst you did so indeliberately, while
this thing which you intend will deliberately wreck more lives than
one; there is your own life consider, will it be a happy one,
knowing that you have broken your engagement, just because you
dislike to be reminded of an occurrence which has wounded your
self-love?"
He glanced at her face, but his taunt had kindled no spark of
anger there. He drew a long breath ; he must forget his pride now,
and he must not shrink from his portion of a beggar.
" Consider also," he went on pleadingly, " my life. Can it be
anything but bitter, if it serves to separate two human beings who
love each other? How could I bear the unspoken reproach of my
brother's face? O I know that it would remain unspoken, but it
would be there none the less and for me to read. Better for him
at least, Aline, that I had let you go to destruction there on the
narrow road, than that you should fail him now in this test of
love and courage. I gave my best for you I grudge it not indeed
but I plead that my best be accepted.
484 THE NARROW ROAD [Jan.,
Again he paused to glance at her thoughtful, downcast face,
and when he continued his voice held a note of triumph.
" Consider also John's life, which means in truth John's love.
Five years he has waited for you, while you had your fill of the
world's pleasures the world's homage; forgiving, in that blind
love of his, all your frivolity and nonsense. Heaven only knows,
Aline, whether more of sweetness or nonsense goes into the making
of a modern girl; and heaven only knows (his voice grew reverent)
the hopes, the fears, eh, even perhaps the prayers, that went into
John's wooing of you. At last he won your promise; to lose you
now would be utter desolation for him. I do not mean that he would
do any of the foolish things it is customary for a young man to do
when a young woman fails him my brother is too strong to allow
one woman to mar the goodness of his whole life but understand
this, it will be a life destitute of so much as one earthly joy or hope,
for always he will remember you, and always he will love you."
From somewhere in the hospital a bell sounded, and footsteps
came echoing down the corridor; it was time for visitors to leave.
The girl rose. " Thank you," she said with grave simplicity, " for
the words you have spoken to-day. Some of them were hard,
but I believe you meant them kindly. You have persuaded me to
renew my engagement, but you who do not know what cowardice
means, can never understand how difficult it is for me to do it.
My respect, my admiration and my sympathy for you in your
sufferings are all yours ; but I give you no pity because you did not
fail in the test of courage on the narrow road. My own frailty
there has taught me compassion for the frailties of others, and I
pray that God may pity, and may comfort those who fail," and then
she placed the roses close to his face and left him.
When she had gone he lay very still, the flowers brushing
against his face, fragrant, refreshing, as the touch of a hand that
caressed. Always he had loved white roses, the high, frail, beau-
tiful things of life; but henceforth they were not for him. He
closed his eyes, and before him seemed to stretch a hard, straight,
beaten way, a narrow road the road of those who fail not. His
way, unless indeed he learned to scale the high, white cliffs on one
side, above and beyond whose summits lay sunlight and freedom.
The girl's last words recurred to him, and out from the great weari-
ness that comes to all who struggle, whether the result be success
or failure, there came to his lips a prayer: "May God comfort,
and God strengthen, those who fail not ! "
MY CHALICE INDEED.
BY T. GAVAN DUFFY.
[Father Gavan Duffy, lately arrived in this country from India, having
interrupted his missionary work to help for a time in our national Foreign
Mission Seminary, is the youngest son of the late Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, the
" Young Ireland " leader, who became successively Speaker and Premier in
Australia. ED. C W.]
HE mere fact of being a phenomenon of prowess may
possibly produce such a sense of exhilaration as is,
I admit, totally absent in the case of a phenomenon
of doubtful common sense; yet even the latter, if it
be the child of a great principle followed and de-
fended steadily against forces with which success has, in temporary
treason, elected to side, may the while be hiding unobserved very
little below the stars. Chantecler has settled that.
Some of the principles of Our Lord's teaching have guided
lives into what seemed scarcely navigable channels; yet the tides
of " running laughter " and the sandbanks of indifference have
been of small consequence to craft driven by the power of the
Word, and pursuing their journey exultingly for its own sake
rather than with the definite object of reaching a destination. These
have seemed foolish and have been delightful lives. The " apos-
tolic " vocation is a case in point. I mean the work of our mis-
sionaries in foreign lands.
There are two schools of thought (or impression rather) with
regard to missionary activity: the plenty-of-work-at-home school
and the lionizing school. Both are extreme, both are loyal and
zealous; and both need to adjust their reasoning or impressions
in the light of a little more truth. The former must grapple with
" 8 ve an d teach all nations," while the latter are deciding whether
" My chalice indeed ye shall drink, but to sit on My right hand or
on My left is not Mine to give," does not mean that even the
Apostles had to earn their crown and were not saved by the splendor
of their vocation.
~ The fact that in Asia there are three millions of Catholics,
and over one million in Africa, takes on a more striking aspect when
once we realize that in no case are these countries capable as yet of
furnishing their own priesthood to anything like a sufficient extent
486 MY CHALICE INDEED [Jan.,
as regards either numbers or administrative aptitude. Nor does the
theoretical consideration, that the older at least of these missions
should be able after so long a tutelage to provide for their own
life, lessen the duty incumbent on the home churches to sustain
them in their weakness, since in fact they are not fully viable and
must needs, if left untended, bleed to death or disrupt into schism.
And since the preventive is in our hands, we cannot be otherwise
than strictly bound to dispense it. So much indeed one finds many
willing to admit, even among the plenty-of-work-at-homers ; it is
only when one gets down to the concrete case : your parish should
support a mission, your organization should pay for the education
of a native priest, your boy wants to become a foreign missionary,
that conviction ebbs.
The mere question of money does not, perhaps, bring out the
deepest feeling. People will either consider that they owe a duty
to their parish, and not beyond (and act accordingly without further
question) ; or they will give a small alms with the same feeling of
being good that accompanies their contribution to any other col-
lection; or, in rare cases, they will rise to the Catholic standpoint
and see the matter as Our Lord saw it, say, from Mount Olivet,
and go over at once to the lionizing camp with arms and, if any, bag-
gage. But when it comes to deciding the destiny of a human life,
of one especially in which they have a share, then truly is the
rock-bed of faith or the sand-bed of selfishness reached and, as
a rule, nemo propheta, almost any young man will be told
by his own people that he is too young to decide the question just
yet, or too valuable to be " thrown away."
People will realize the heroism of a forlorn hope on the battle-
field; they will applaud self-wasting for the sake of a fallen com-
rade; they will reverence the altruism of the saints; but not a
whole continent of aliens crying for spiritual guidance and eternal
life will convince them of the glory they can earn themselves by
giving up a son or a friend to the foreign mission cause. Though
never has greater merit attached to any land than to those few
that have shone by missionary zeal, yet will individuals look round
for an escape from the heavy sacrifice involved in winning this
crown for their nation. At once the great work of construction
throbbing all round them at home will press on their imagination;
they will see scope for all available resources in men and money
within the Church on American soil, with its multitudes to teach
and guide, its fallen ones to gather, its " other flock " to recall, its
1916.] MY CHALICE INDEED 487
buildings to erect ; and they will not see that the tree which throws
its branches furthest out is the strongest at the root, the bonum
which is diffusivum sui the truest good. Neither the appeal of the
millions who are weaker, nor the total loss of the hundreds of mil-
lions who have not believed, avails in their biased judgment to
compensate for the " sacrifice " of a life. They are quite willing
for " the other man " to go and sit amid the ruins of humanity,
with faith still in the Cross of Christ, nor will they grudge him his
better part, but they are busy about many things. To such fervent
but limited hearts it will come with something of a shock to find
that the American hierarchy has pronounced upon the suitability of
a national awakening to missionary activity, which will react on the
home Church, proving it (if not positively making it) really
strong and really Catholic.
It was in 1911 that the Archbishops, in Council assembled, con-
sidered the newly-created " Foreign Mission Society of America,"
and they saw that it was good. Under these same high auspices
the two founders made their travels of consultation to Europe,
and in particular to Rome, and also their choice of the metro-
politan diocese of New York as the home of their national Sem-
inary. And so we find The Field Afar talking and fostering the
spirit, while " Maryknoll " works and trains the men. It is no
longer possible to doubt that America is on the point of becoming
a missionary country. Not that this work has, in these early days,
attracted many priests from the midst of the pressing and obvious
ministry in America to the ideal labors of the missions ; but already
two score of young men, and boys (and some women too), alive
to the poetry of America's own missionary history, have put them-
selves in training for the apostolic life, determined to carry still
further afield the message of the blackrobes.
This is a vocation so ideal that, as I hinted on a previous page,
it is misconstrued by many in their apotheosis. I have no quarrel
with idealizing the vocation : certainly it goes to the root of
things, solves all problems, breeds all heroism, conquers all flesh,
wings all spirit, and unravels all life for one who looks on it in
the abstract and in its potentialities ideally. But from this to
conclude that all missionaries are above worries; heroes, all spirit
and no flesh ; that they live not only in a far-off country but posi-
tively out of reach in a higher sphere, is very common and very
faulty; and far worse if the further conclusion is reached that
" I am not a hero; my flesh, my spirit and my life are very human
MY CHALICE INDEED [Jan.,
indeed, and consequently I am a useless subject for the foreign
missions."
I have met so many people who ask about the missions such
questions as I should be afraid to ask about the anchorites of the
desert, that I feel impelled to make some effort to bring the apos-
tolic vocation more within the range of the practical consideration
of contemporaries, especially in America. Many who do not feel
called upon to step of their own accord into the arena and con-
front the beasts, might be quite willing to live on a loaf and a
fish, so it be from His Hand.
The privations of the missionary life enlist the sympathy of
sentimental friends, quite wrongly. It is not because you are ac-
customed to press a button and let the good things of life, and,
indeed, its troubles too, come hurrying in response, that / am to be
pitied for not having a button to press ; maybe the buttons frighten
me. Because you get ice-cream twice a week and / curry and rice
twice a day, it does not follow that I am living in a higher sphere,
that I am a hero; I like curry and rice, and so would you, if it
was a curry and rice shop that stood in the place of the delicatessen
store round the corner. It is absurd to believe that men in any land
(I was almost saying any man) can live normally on food that
is not nice ; it may be other food, but it is good food, or man ceases
to be human. Climate may be greater difficulty; but, there again,
man tempers his clothes to the warm sun, and, anyway, as
against the alternating processes, freezing and overwarming, of a
New York winter, give me a good solid spell of settled heat that
I know how to withstand.
Yes, but home! True; yet I find in mission countries many
thousands who are not priests. They are travelers, some of them,
impelled by the very same bohemianism that makes me enjoy my
missionary journeys only they are merely fighting their own
boredom, whereas I am combining to please God and amuse myself
to boot and, thank heaven, don't have to live in a hotel. Others
are merchants or politicians, two species that have no homes, un-
less it be a home like my own on the public street in the midst
of the nations. In what am I worse off than they?
Oh! but it must be so lonely! Do you mean that we must
sit brooding on the severed ties and sighing for reunion with our
own? Don't believe it. In the sane man (by your leave, O
moderns!) affection and emotion are so regulated by nature as
to be called up and disposed of almost at will, especially when the
1916.] MY CHALICE INDEED 489
object is far away. If you sit down and set yourself deliberately
to mope about your home, undoubtedly you can raise a tear, and
enjoy it as much as any other form of recreation to which you feel
the need of giving half an hour. But no man with thousands of
souls dependent on him, and a mass of work that he cannot pos-
sibly get through, will find time for artificial worries, unless it be
at a season of special stress at home, when he would be worried
(perhaps, let us be frank, much more keenly) if he were near.
Loneliness, however, may come in another form, as it comes, I
imagine, to all in authorky. The missionary at the head of a district
is responsible for so much which is vastly important, yet hardly,
if at all, understood of those beneath him, that there is apt, un-
doubtedly, to come a " solitariness upon the very essence of his
soul," as there must upon that of any man in Church or State who
is ultimately responsible for great things, as there must indeed
upon each and all at the last hour when the great responsibility of
one's individual conscience dawns. This is a loneliness not proper
to the missions, but common to all who rise to leadership, whether
at home or abroad, in the domain whether of the flesh or of the
spirit.
What I am denying is not that there have been great heroes
on the missions, great sufferers, great saints, just as there have
been in New York or London or Paris or wherever the jungle has
its antipodes. My contention is that we do not deserve credit,
neither I, nor the next man, nor any individual missionary as such,
simply on the strength of having once engaged on a work which is
wrongly supposed to be necessarily heroic; we must earn it, like
other men, by special merit of work or pain; otherwise our daim
to a place in the sun rests ignominiously on nothing but the tran-
scendent merits of the cause which, personally, we perhaps all but
dishonor. Most of us are not martyrs. Some of us, I fear, posi-
tively enjoy every minute of our missionary life; and consequently
I cannot see why we should be pitied and petted at all, nor lionized,
unless possibly by such as are infected with the enthusiasm of the
cause of Christ among the heathen, and who are attracted to us
because we are attracted to it; for in this case it is much less we
who get the glory than Christ in us.
But in point of fact, most missionaries do on personal grounds
deserve what little appreciation they can get from the home public,
because they are keeping up the fight against odds. The mis-
sionary is a man of desires : set him in a desert, and he will instantly
49 MY CHALICE INDEED [Jan.,
start dreaming plans to make it fertile unto paradise. I know hun-
dreds of missionaries, but I have still to meet the man who has
no ambition for the growth and betterment of his flock; but over
and over again I have met those who, after calling to earth and
heaven for help in their ambitions, have at last fallen back, with
knees relaxed and idly hanging hands, because there was no sup-
port. Work, after all, takes money, even the work of teaching;
it will not subsist on prayer alone. Give a man three hundred
families to look after, in twenty villages, the poorest of the poor;
applaud him as he sets out and pray for his success, but
don't help him with your purse, and then watch him build schools
and chapels, pay teachers and catechists, feed his orphans and him-
self, buy remedies for his sick, attract the heathen and the sin-
ner. I have been asked a dozen times in this country : " Have
you a machine (automobile) in India?" and I have consistently
replied : " Why, of course : a steam one, run by the heat of the
sun, and cooled by the clothes of the response, to my letters to
rich friends." Some people are surprised at my not having a car;
others are scandalized at my using a horse: that must be very
expensive. " Why don't you walk? " " Because," I answer, " it's
against the law," and, leaving them to fathom that deep saying,
I slip away and hold out my hand at more sensible doors.
And thus we are brought back by a devious path to another
aspect of the arguments of this whole article, viz., that the mis-
sionary is not bound by vow or vocation to seek out suffering as an
end in itself; he gets it always, and generally enjoys it " all in the
day's work," but his end is the saving of souls; and if he can
save more souls by getting to them quicker, for heaven's sake
let him ride, even if it does save his feet and his time. And if an
appreciative friend were to present him (which he won't) with a
" machine," surely, provided his zeal kept pace with his conveyance,
there would be no derogation from the ideal in using it.
The missionary is a great man (if at all), not because he has
taken up a life that involves multifarious changes of habit; but
because he has a great love of Christ, because he is an earnest digger
for the gems of souls. He may not have any claim whatever to
greatness on the score of his privations and his martyrdom; what
illuminates him (when he does shine) is the light reflected from
the cause which he will not give up. He may not see, called into
being by his crowing, the final daylight that gives not place to night.
But he crows for his own glen, faithfully and loud, hoping that
1916.] THE SWORD OF PEACE 491
each glen is being crowed for by such another, and confident that
at last, long after him maybe, the eternal day will dawn. 1 For
this he deserves his credit among men; and for this, after drink-
ing from the chalice of Christ and, oh! how deeply of it he
will find his place in peace at the Right Hand.
THE SWORD OF PEACE.
BY ARMEL O' CONNOR.
THE Prince of Peace
Has shown His sword;
And wars shall cease
But at His word.
Let Everyman
Rise, make his fate
To God's fair plan
For man's estate.
Christ's sword can preach
With temper'd steel;
The way, can teach
To pierce, but heal.
Peace is for those
Who mean to win
What Christ bestows
The Peace within.
O man, restored
To will from whim!
Take up your sword
And follow Him.
1 The allusion is to Rostand's Chantecler, mentioned at the beginning of the
article, and to the following passage :
Moi, je ne verrai pas luire sur les clochers
Le ciel definitif fait d'astres rapproches ;
Mais, si je chant, exact, sonore, et si, sonore,
Exact, bien apres moi, pendant longtemps encore,
Chaque ferme a son coq qui chante dans sa cour,
Je crois qu'il n'y aura plus de nuit. Quand? Un jour!
RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME.
BY W. H. KENT, O.S.C.,
St. Mary's, Bayswater, London, England.
N the eve of the outbreak of war between England
and Germany, a little group of English university
professors put forth a public protest against the
threatened war, because they could not bear to see
their country fighting against a land which had done
so much for literature and learning. And many others, apparently,
are scandalized or bewildered when they find so many millions of
Catholics warring with one another. Yet, it is scarcely surprising
that both the fellowship of learning and even the unity of faith
should be powerless to hinder the great struggle between rival
races. For the issues of peace and war can hardly be decided on
such grounds as these. Men, who feel compelled to draw the
sword in self-defence, cannot be expected to stay their hands be-
cause the invading army happens to come from a land of learning.
And the history of the wars that laid Europe waste in the Middle
Ages should suffice to show that unity of faith and religious
obedience to the same central authority in matters of religion can-
not keep one Catholic nation from warring against another. There
is still a very common tendency to idealize the Middle Ages, and to
trace all our troubles to the Renaissance or to the Reformation.
But even when they are allowed all their proverbial license, our
boldest poets and artists would scarcely dare to paint what are
fondly called the " ages of faith " as a period of peace. And
after the long, fierce, internecine wars that have been waged in
other days between nations professing the same faith and enjoying
the benefits of a common culture in art and letters, it is a little
late to expect religion and literature to keep the peace of Europe.
But when we come to look into the matter more closely, we
may find, after all, there is some reason for this apparent failure
of these great intellectual and spiritual forces. For it is not
merely the case that the passions of angry or covetous men have
commonly proved to be too strong for these restraints. On the con-
trary, a careful study of the ethics of peace and war should suffice
to show us that the great issue ought not to be decided by these
1916.] RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME 493
irrelevant reasons. War is ever, even at its best, a necessary evil.
And an unrighteous war is a grave national crime. It may often
be a difficult matter to judge whether a given war is just or not,
or to say with certainty which side in a dispute has the better
cause. But, in any case, the answer to this crucial question can-
not possibly depend on the religious belief or on the intellectual
and artistic culture of the contending parties. It is surely far
better to fight for a good cause against fellow-Catholics, than to
fight for a bad cause against heretics or unbelievers. And, with
all respect for our well-meaning university professors, we had far
rather wage a just war in self-defence, or for some other legitimate
cause, against one of the most highly cultured and enlightened
nations, than have any part or lot in an unjust and aggressive war
with the meanest tribe of savages.
No one who fairly considers the question, and understands
the paramount importance of justice in war, could well choose
otherwise between these two alternatives. But some, perchance,
while cordially condemning unjust wars in any circumstances what-
ever, may yet urge that it is reasonable to feel a special reluctance
to fight, even in a just cause, against fellow-Christians and fellow-
Catholics, or even against those who share with us in the bene-
fits of the same civilization. And in one way, no doubt, there is
some reason for this reluctance. Yet, on the other hand, there
ought surely to be some advantage in having much in common with
our adversaries. The old duelists, as we all know, required some-
thing like equality in the combatants. A gentleman would not go
to the field of honor with one who had no claim to rank as a gentle-
man. And though nations cannot very well be so punctilious in
their choice of adversaries, it might be a source of satisfaction to
both sides to know that they were meeting foemen worthy of their
steel. Looking at the matter from this point of view, we should
be disposed to think it better to be at war, if war we must, with civil-
ized Christian nations rather than with pagans or barbarians. For
though the unity of faith, or the fellowship in literature and learning
and intellectual culture can hardly avail to keep rival nations at peace
when they have, or think they have, a just cause for waging war
with each other, it might surely do much to mitigate the evils
of war. This is obviously the case when both sides carefully ob-
serve the recognized laws of civilized warfare and when, as often
happens, the same priests give the consolations of religion to the
wounded and dying soldiers of both armies.
494 RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME [Jan.,
But it is not only on the battlefield, or in the military hospital,
that we may find these beneficial effects. For, after all, it is not
only the men engaged in actual fighting that have need to be
restrained from excesses, and to be reminded that they have much
in common with those with whom they are at war. In the course
of a great struggle the whole mass of a nation is often stirred by
feelings of hostility against the enemy; popular passions are ex-
cited. A resentment which may well be righteous when directed
against wrongdoers who have violated the laws of war, is almost
inevitably extended to those who had no part in the crimes, and the
strong feelings aroused by such incidents color and exaggerate
the evils to which they owe their rise. In this way, as the war goes
on, the breach between the rival nations is widened and deepened,
and what at first was a dispute between governments or beings
on some questions of political rights, may grow into a deep-seated
and lasting hatred between their peoples. Now, if Christian
moralists allow that in certain cases war may be just and
necessary, they will scarcely say the same of national or racial
hatred. When war breaks out the people of one belligerent nation
are naturally, and rightly, forbidden to help the enemy, and com-
mercial intercourse between them is necessarily suspended during
the period of the war. Yet there are some bonds that cannot be
broken by any necessities of warfare or by any decrees of state.
As children of one Father in Heaven, the people of two nations
at war with each other are still brethren, bound to each other
by enduring ties, owing to each other duties of justice and of
charity. Poets and journalists may preach a gospel of inter-
national hate, but they cannot reconcile it with the plain teaching
of Christian morality.
It is easy to see this when we consider the question in the
abstract. But it is by no means so easy to put this teaching into
practise in the heat of a great international struggle. In the measure
in which we know, or believe, that we are in the right, we know,
or believe, that our enemy is doing us a grievous wrong. It is,
then, right to resist him and to condemn that wrongdoing, and to
resent the injury we are suffering. But how, in the heat of the
strife, can we keep that condemnation and righteous resentment
within due bounds? How can we guard against a spirit of hatred
and vengeance, by which those who at the outset are waging a
just war, may end in doing a grave wrong? It is no light task
in any case. And here we may find help in dwelling on those
1916.] RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME 495
things that we still have in common with our separated brethren,
the enemy. In a quarrel with a former friend who has now done
us a real wrong, we may guard against hatred by recalling the
memory of good deeds and acts of kindness done in the past. And,
in much the same way, when an enemy nation is doing us wrong in
time of war, it may be helpful to turn aside to consider the serv-
ices that same nation has done us in happier days, or may even
now be doing in the peaceful fields of literature and religion.
If ever there was a case in which we might have confidently
looked for this help from religion and literature in time of war,
we should have expected to find it in the present struggle between
Germany on one side and England and France on the other. For
however much their political interests may clash, whatever wrongs
one party may have done to the other in this field, in religion and in
letters they all have much in common, and there is not one of these
nations that does not owe a deep debt to the others. The English
university professors who protested against a war with Germany,
saw only one aspect of the case and, as we have seen, pressed their
argument too far. For the learning and science which so many
admire in modern Germany is not a purely native product, but a
common heritage in the making of which the other nations have
had no mean share. Even in those branches of learning which
the Germans in recent years have made in a manner their own,
much is based on the earlier labors of French or English scholars.
Thus Orientalists who do not confine their reading to the latest
text books, may remember how speedily Kleuker availed himself of
the Avesta studies of Anquetil du Perron, and how Benfey
adopted and carried further the discoveries of Rawlinson in Per-
sian cuneiform in both cases with just and generous praise of the
earlier workmen into whose labors they had entered.
It is as needless as it is invidious to ask which of these na-
tions owes the deepest debt to the others. For it is clear that
no simple affirmation could possibly satisfy the requirements of
historical truth. The great Italian poet justly condemns the folly
of him who affirms or denies " without distinction." And here
there would be need of a whole series of distinctions between dif-
ferent branches of learning and literature, and again between dif-
ferent periods of time. A student who confined his reading to one
field alone, or to the writers of a particular epoch, might honestly
think it obvious that France or Italy held the foremost place, while
another, with a different set of facts before him, might see as
496 RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME [Jan.,
good reason to award the palm to England or to Germany. But
when once we take a wider range, we can readily see that all have
had a goodly share in the making of European literature and
civilization, and that there is not one that is not deeply indebted
to the cooperation of the others. Happily, this mutual indebtedness
has been frankly acknowledged in happier and more peaceful days.
The homely saying that imitation is the sincerest flattery,
points to a very simple and practical proof that the scholars and
authors of England and France and Germany have all shown a
just appreciation of the good work achieved by their neighbors.
And it is pleasant to note the fact that the praise and appre-
ciation are by no means confined to this silent form. When we
praise the great writers or scholars of our own land, it may be
thought that there is some danger of exaggeration due to the par-
donable pride of patriotism. And, for this reason, a curious in-
quirer might turn aside to see the more impartial estimate formed
by foreign critics and historians. It can hardly be said that any
of the really great masters would lose much when they are judged
by this standard. For few native writers have done more justice
to the genius of Shakespeare than his German critics. And, on the
other hand, it may well be doubted if any German criticism has
shown a truer appreciation of the German masters than that of our
own Coleridge and Carlyle.
If this fellowship in letters and learning gave us some good
ground for hope, that hope was further strengthened when we
turned to consider all that we still had in common in more sacred
matters. It is true that in both camps in this great war there
are great differences in regard to religious belief. Catholic and
Eastern Orthodox and Protestant and Moslem and men of no
religion are here found fighting side by side. But, for the Catholics
on our side, it might well be a help to dwell more especially on
the large Catholic element in the multitudinous ranks of our
enemies. Can we forget that Austria is the greatest Catholic
nation now left in the world? Can we lose sight of the many
millions of faithful Catholics among the Germans of the Empire?
And here, too, for those who know anything of Catholic literature
and scholarship in the last hundred years, the two influences of
religion and literature gain greater strength for their union. For
how can we forget the part that Germany played in the great
Catholic Revival? How can we forget all that we owe to the
fruitful labors of our German brethren in the rich fields of Catholic
I 9 i6.] RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME 497
theology and Church history, and philosophy and Biblical criti-
cism? None of these considerations, as we have seen, can rightly
affect the part we take in the great struggle itself. That must
be decided on quite other grounds, by the justice of the cause at
issue, and by the duty that each one of us owes to his own country.
A Catholic Englishman, who has a just sense of all that he has in
common with his fellow-Catholics on the other side, and of all that
he owes to German literature in general and more especially to the
writings of German Catholics, may still be heart and soul with his
own country in the great war that is now being waged. Yet, here
as in the case of a quarrel with an old friend, the memory of these
good deeds might surely serve as a safeguard against hatred and
bitterness of heart. It might do somewhat to mitigate the evils of
the war, and even to prepare the way for a real peace and renewed
friendship when at length the struggle is over.
Such, as I have said, were the natural reflections and antici-
pations of one who was familiar with German history and literature,
and the story of the great movements in religion and philosophy in
the past century. But if any of us really hoped to see our scholars
and leaders of religion giving due weight to the facts, and helping,
in some measure, to mitigate the bitterness of the struggle, those
hopes have been doomed to disappointment. For instead of re-
ligion and literature being left as a neutral ground, a sanctuary
where we could seek peace and refreshment in the heat and stress
of war time, the passions of war have been suffered to disturb these
peaceful fields. With a perverted ingenuity worthy of a better
cause, some Catholic writers have busied themselves in giving the
world new and original versions of German history, and of the
tangled tale of movements in philosophy and religion in the last
four hundred years. By the simple process of neglecting awkward
facts and confining their attention to a few which, with a little
manipulation, may be made to serve their purpose, these writers
have apparently satisfied themselves that the Germans are acting
under the evil inspiration of a godless philosophy which comes, in
the last resort, from Martin Luther, through the later and more
developed writings of Kant and Nietzsche.
It is amusing to note that no one of the writers who have
put forward these curious theories has so much as mentioned the
name of the mystical thinker who has been styled the father of
German speculation. This says much for the superficial and con-
ventional character of their studies in this field of history. But
VOL. cii. 32
498 RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME [Jan,
what is even more startling, is their sublime disregard of the facts
that tell against their theories. If we could manage to forget that
there had ever been any heresy before Luther, or any rationalism
and skepticism before Kant; if we could imagine for the moment
that atheism was wholly unknown in France and England, and
that Catholic and religious literature was equally unknown in
Austria and Germany, we should be ready to allow that there was,
to say the least, some plausibility in these theories. But, then,
we cannot all reconcile ourselves to this ruthless rejection of his-
torical evidence. And when we remember that the " Morning
Star of the Reformation " arose not in Germany but in England,
that unbelief and false philosophy were rife in the Italy of the
Renaissance, that open enemies of Revealed Religion were con-
spicuous in France and England long before the rise of the new
German philosophy, and that English and Scotch Protestantism
owes more to Calvin than to Luther, we feel the absurdity of
seeking the fons et origo mail in one land alone. If it be true,
as we have seen, that neither Germany nor any other nation can
fairly lay claim to a monopoly, or even to a supremacy, in science
and literature, or that civilization which is at once the work and the
common heritage of all; it is no less true that no one nation of
them all can be justly charged with a monopoly of folly or of
evil. Semel insanivimus omnes.
Repentance for the past has always been regarded as a whole-
some and profitable exercise in time of war, or on the occasion
of any other public calamity. And, though the work of reparation
and constructive reform must generally be deferred to a more
peaceful season, it would be well for all of us to consider well the
sins of commission or omission which may have merited this heavy
visitation. In the end, as we all hope, good may come out of
evil, and nations, like individual men, may be purified by suffering
and calamities. But we can hardly look for this result where men
or nations prepare themselves by that most unprofitable of spiritual
exercises, meditating on their own virtues and on the sins of their
enemies. It is needful, no doubt, to reckon up the wrongs done
by our enemies in the war itself, if only for the purpose of pre-
venting their repetition or exacting redress when occasion serves.
But it is a very different matter when ready writers, with more
patriotic zeal than historical knowledge, set themselves to tell the
tale of wrongs done by the enemy nation more than a hundred
years ago. Even if this course were open to no other objection,
1916.] RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME 499
it cannot be counted among those acts that are warranted by the
ethics of war. For the men with whom we are now waging war are
not answerable for the wrongs done by their ancestors, and the
resentment roused by the memory of those wrongs can only minister
to hatred in no wise justified by the cause now at issue. This
would be true even in the case of a war with some one homo-
geneous nation, whose history for several centuries had been one
and continuous. But the injustice of using these historical weapons
in the present war is yet more glaring. Catholics on our side
would surely regard it as the height of unreason for Austrian or
Bavarian journalists to move the feelings of their readers by
dwelling on the persecution of the faith by Henry VIII. or Eliza-
beth, or the cruelties of Cromwell in Ireland. For in this war
our foemen are face to face with Irishmen as well as Englishmen,
and with Catholics as well as Protestants. And how can the
cruelty of persecutors in the past serve as a motive in a war
with the heirs of the Martyrs? But the same objection holds
good when those who are engaged in deadly strife with Austrians
and Hanoverians, as well as with Prussians, point to the rapacity
of Frederick the Great and of his successors in the last century.
In like manner, Catholics in this country who are taking a
conspicuous and patriotic part in the great struggle would be justly
indignant if their fellow- Catholics in the other camp traced all the
trouble to English heretics or infidel philosophers of an earlier
generation, and spoke as if those who go forth, with the true
faith in their hearts, to fight and die for their fatherland were
somehow inspired by the preaching of Wycliffe, or by the blank
agnosticism of Herbert Spencer or Bradlaugh. We would not,
indeed, deny that these writers were Englishmen, or that some
Englishmen still share in their errors. But we know that they
are in no wise the prophets or spokesmen of the nation as a
whole. And much the same may be said when the Austro-Ger-
mans, with their four Catholic kings and millions of Catholic
soldiers, are described as if they went into battle under the banners
of Luther and Kant and Nietzsche. Readers of some recent writ-
ings on the war may well be tempted to echo the cry of the West-
minster electors, when John Stuart Mill stood as a candidate:
" We don't want no philosophy here! "
It may be right and necessary, at some more suitable season,
to study the darker pages in the history and literature of nations
that are now our enemies. But, assuredly, this will serve no good
500 RELIGION AND LITERATURE IN WAR TIME [Jan.,
purpose now. And on the other hand, we may find a real help in re-
calling all that is best and brightest in German literature, and Ger-
man story, and German religion. For why should we fear to do
it? The cause of our own country is not so weak that it needs to
be defended by unworthy means, by suppression of the truth, or
by shrinking from a frank recognition of the merits of our enemies.
Our soldiers and sailors have ever been ready to honor the bravery
of those they met in fight. And why should scholars stoop to the
mean and petty patriotism which shows itself in blackening Ger-
man history and disparaging the great literature to which they all
owe so much, whether they acknowledge it or not? There are
few things more contemptible than the spirit in which some, on
both sides, extend their hostility to the very language and literature
of the nations with whom they are at war. We all protest against
the violation of neutral territory, and against wrongs done to
civilians and women and children. But what can be said of those
who violate the neutral territory of science and literature, and not
content with attacking living non-combatants, dishonor the memory
of the mighty dead?
Happily there are some of us who even in the heat of battle
still hold these things as sacred. There are some who having once
learned to know and love the treasures of German literature can-
not so lightly forego them. The dust of battle cannot dim the
light of science, and the music of the poets can still be heard amid
the tumult and confusion. And, yet more, in the deep wisdom of
the religious literature of Germany there is much that makes us hope
for brighter days, when justice shall be done, and the broken
friendship shall be renewed, and the great nations now wasting
their strength in ruthless war shall again work together in the
peaceful fields of religion and literature.
ANDREW J. SHIPMAN.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.
HE death of Andrew J. Shipman on October 17, 1915,
took out of New York life a gentle, scholarly man
of wide intellectual attainments, but still broader sym-
pathy of heart. Those with whom he was brought
in intimate contact had learned to know and ap-
preciate him, but he seemed to care little for many friendships. I
know no one who had less of the publicity-seeking spirit. He spent
himself in work for others modestly, quietly, with a thorough
efficiency which only those who were closest to him could properly
appreciate. As we look back on it now we hope that his untimely
death did not come as a consequence of overwork for the great
cause that he had at heart. Certainly the last months of his life
were spent nobly and unselfishly at tasks that were simply duties
that had to be performed for the good of the community, but that
promised little either in remuneration or in reputation
My intimate acquaintance with Mr. Shipman began nearly ten
years ago, on the occasion of a lecture which I delivered for the
Maronite Catholics of the lower part of Manhattan Island. The
Maronites are Oriental Catholics in communion with Rome, who
use in their liturgy the very language, Syro-Chaldee, which Our Lord
spoke with His Mother in the everyday intercourse of family life at
Nazareth. Everyone who in recent years wished to learn of Orien-
tal rites, or peoples or languages or conditions that obtained among
these various churches in New York, went quite naturally to Mr.
Shipman. How few there are who know that Mass is said in
seven different languages in New York City, and nine or more
languages, I believe, throughout the country.
Most of the rites involving the use of at least nine dead
languages, for the Mass is not said in any living language, have
been brought to these shores by the various Slav peoples, though
there are various other nationalities from the Near East each with
its own tongue. Mr. Shipman became interested in seeing that
these foreigners enjoyed their rights, were not imposed upon, and
above all not proselytized by any of the Protestant missionary or-
ganizations. This self-imposed task necessitated learning more than
502 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN [Jan.,
half a dozen languages of what, for the English-speaking person,
are among the most difficult languages in the world. Mr. Shipman
found delight in the immense labor which such study involved,
and rapidly attained great fluency. How thoroughly his
work in these foreign tongues and liturgies was done, will
be readily appreciated from the series of articles on The Languages
of The Mass which appeared in the little magazine The Helper
(New York), which has unfortunately ceased publication. In these
Mr. Shipman discusses: i. The Syriac; 2. The Armenian; 3. The
Greek; 4. The Slavonic; 5. The Arabic; 6. The Rumanian;
7. The Coptic; 8. The Glagolitic; 9. The Latin. It was a favorite
wish of his that sometime these articles would be gathered into a
little book for the information of those interested in the catholicity
or universality of the Church from a standpoint of language alone,
and many of his friends feel no better memorial of him could
be issued than this modest volume, which would illustrate so well
his practical scholarship and his missionary zeal.
An American of the Americans, born and educated in America,
Mr. Shipman had made himself so much of a brotherly fellow-
citizen to these strangers with a strange tongue, that they looked
upon him as one of their own, to whom they might turn with ab-
solute confidence.
Mr. Shipman was the child of a family that in his very early
years went through all the hardships of the Civil War in Virginia
and, like most other Virginian families, found itself at the end of
the war practically compelled to begin life over again. He was
born at Springvale, Fairfax County, Virginia, October 15, 1857,
the son of John James Shipman, a prominent engineer and con-
tractor. His mother, Priscilla Carroll Shipman, the daughter of
Bennet Carroll of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, who was a
lineal descendant of Thomas Carroll, one of the Carroll's who
came to this country with Charles Carroll in 1725, and was probably
a near relative of the signer's family. After the war young An-
drew Jackson Shipman received his primary education in the Vir-
ginia public schools under conditions which, owing to the disturbed
state of society, were not at all propitious. The little town of
Springvale, which finds no place even on the map of The Century
Dictionary Atlas, probably had only the most meagre provision for
primary education.
Fortunately Georgetown College was not far away, and as
young Shipman showed talent and ambition, an opportunity was af-
1916.] ANDREW J, SHIPMAN 503
forded him for securing the higher education. Young Shipman
spent some seven years in the academic and collegiate departments
of Georgetown, and in 1878, at the age of twenty-one, received his
degree of A.B. Immediately after being graduated, he became
editor of a newspaper in a little town called Vienna, larger than
Springvale, and situated something less than five miles from Alex-
andria.
This field was, of course, too narrow for his ambition, and
in 1882 he became the Assistant Manager of the coal mines of
W. P. Rend & Co., in the Hocking Valley, Ohio. Mr. Shipman
succeeded so well in his new task that in the following year he was
made Superintendent of the mines.
While engaged in his newspaper work in Virginia, young
Shipman had spent some of his leisure time with a German work-
man in his employ in making himself master of German, and as
the man had come from Bohemia and knew some Cjeckish, Mr.
Shipman received his first introduction to a Slav language. He
was surprised to find that he had a facility in learning languages.
In his mining work also he was brought in contact with some of
the Slavs from central Europe, and found that his ability in this
direction could be made of great use to them. As a result of in-
creased knowledge, for example, he settled a strike in a neighbor-
ing mine where the managing officials were unable to understand
the workmen, and where intermediate officials acting as interpre-
ters were taking advantage of both the men and the managers.
The work at the mines, however, was not sympathetic to a man
of Shipman's breadth of interest, and he felt the call to a life
where his influence would be wider. This drew him to New York
City, where having passed one of the best Civil Service Exam-
inations, with a record unequaled up to that date, and seldom sur-
passed since, he obtained in 1884 a post in the New York Customs
Service. In the following year he was one of the investigators
of the sugar frauds of that port, and attracted attention for his
acumen, mastery of detail and unquestionable integrity.
While fulfilling his duties in the customs service he studied
law at the University of the City of New York. He received his
degree of LL.B. in 1886, and was admitted to the New York Bar.
It was. not long before his talents secured recognition. In 1891
he formed a partnership with Edmund L. Mooney, whose sister
Adair he married two years later, in June, 1893. In the mean-
time Mr. Shipman had been employed in the St Stephen's Church
504 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN [Jan.,
cases (1890-1900), and soon came to attract attention by his special
knowledge of laws involving religious corporations. In 1895 the
original partnership was dissolved, and Charles Blandy, a former
Corporation Counsel of New York City, entered the firm, and it
was reorganized under the title of Blandy, Mooney & Shipman,
by which it was known until Mr. Shipman's death. In 1898 came
his opportunity to display his knowledge of law in the labor cases
involving the right to strike. In these his experience as a former
mine manager and superintendent stood him in good stead. He
came to be looked upon as one of the successful lawyers in New
York City whose opinion in certain special cases was of great value.
It was in the midst of this busy professional career that Mr.
Shipman became interested in religious and racial topics in con-
nection with the large immigration to New York. He made it a
point during his vacations which, in company with his wife, who
was deeply sympathetic with his studies, were practically always
spent abroad, to make a special study of religious and racial
conditions in various countries of Europe. In fifteen such vaca-
tions he visited Italy, France, England, Spain, Egypt, Palestine,
Russia, Austria and Hungary. He knew Galicia well, and es-
pecially the neighborhood of Lemberg, where his favorite Ru-
thenians could be studied to such advantage. He took occasion
whenever he could to visit here in this country parts of the United
States where the central European people, particularly various Slav
races and above all the Ruthenians, had gathered in large numbers.
Mr. Shipman was an authority on the various branches of the
Greek Church, the Orthodox acknowledging allegiance to the Holy
Synod in Russia or the Patriarch of Constantinople; the Uniate
recognizing the supremacy of the Pope. When The Catholic En-
cyclopedia was organized, Mr. Shipman was very naturally chosen
one of its board of directors.
Some idea of the importance of Mr. Shipman's work among
the Greek Catholics can be obtained from his pamphlet on The
Ruthenian Greek Catholics published by the United Catholic Works
(New York, 1913). In this Mr. Shipman calls attention to the
fact that there ,are in this country over half a million of Ru-
thenians, and in Canada some two hundred and twenty thousand.
They are now firmly established here, hard working, eager to ad-
vance themselves, and becoming steadily Americanized. They
came first as mine laborers and steelworkers into Pennsylvania
about 1880. The first Ruthenian Greek Catholic priest came from
I 9 i6.] ANDREW J. SHIPMAN 505
Galicia to Shenandoah, where he built the first Uniate Greek
Catholic church the following year. In the thirty years that have
followed churches have been built at the rate of more than five
a year, until now (1913) there are about one hundred and sixty
Ruthenian Greek Catholic churches in the United States, and forty
in Canada, as well as numerous mission stations in both countries.
The Greek Catholic clergy number one hundred and fifty priests
and one bishop; and in Canada forty-five priests and one bishop.
They were late in establishing a church in New York City, owing
to the extreme poverty of the Ruthenian people. Ten years ago,
however, the Ruthenian Catholic Church of St. George, originally
on Twentieth Street, but now on Seventh Street near Cooper
Union, was organized, and made such progress that the congrega-
tion was able to purchase a much larger building.
Besides St. George's, the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church
of St. Mary's was organized in 1912 in New York. Yonkers has
two Ruthenian Greek Catholic churches; Peekskill a missionary
chapel of that rite; Brooklyn, two churches; Jersey City and
Bayonne each one. Mr. Shipman has written a very full account
of the Ruthenian Greek Catholics for The Catholic Encyclopedia
under Ruthenians, giving the background of the Greek rite in this
country under the title Greek Catholics in America.
In this country these immigrants being of the Greek rite, have
been misunderstood and neglected even by the American Catholics
of the Latin rite, and thus have been left in a great many cases a
prey to the proselytizer. The Greek Orthodox Church of Russia
endeavored to win them away from their adhesion to the Roman
authority, and thus not a few of them were lost to the Church.
Though Mr. Shipman does not tell it in this little pamphlet
written by himself, some of us know that he saved a large number
of these Greek Catholics from proselytizer s of the most contempt-
ible character. The funds of various Protestant missionary so-
cieties were being employed to deprive these people of their faith,
and lead them to profess Protestantism, under the pretense of
preaching to them Catholic doctrine. Protestant clergymen repre-
sented themselves as priests; officiated in vestments usually worn
by Ruthenian Catholic clergymen, and used an altar and a Ru-
thenian missal. It seems almost incredible that such a trick as
this should be played in the name of religion. Mr. Shipman broke
up two or three of these counterfeit missions, and called the at-
tention of important heads of missionary organizations to the abuse
5o6 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN [Jan.,
that had been allowed to creep in, and so prevented further trifling
with the religion of these faithful people.
Mr. Shipman's activity as a writer naturally led him to the
discussion of various questions relating to the Uniate and Orthodox
Greek Churches here in America. In July, 1904, Mr. Shipman
wrote in The Messenger the Answer of a Russian Theologian to
Bishop Grafton of Fond du Lac. He showed himself thoroughly
familiar with all the details of the positions of Churches orthodox
and schismatic and of the sects. In other articles in September,
October, November and December of the same year, Mr. Shipman
pointed out how important and even critical was the coming of these
central European Slavs for the Catholic Church in America. In
The Messenger also for February, 1906, Mr. Shipman published:
On Our Italian Greek Catholics, showing that the Slavs were not
the only people of the Greek rite coming to us.
Beginning with 1910 came a series of articles in THE CATHOLIC
WORLD. Certain misunderstandings with regard to present-day
religious and educational conditions in Spain had resulted from
the exploitation of the case of the Spanish anarchist, Francisco
Ferrer. When his trial and execution were under discussion in
this country, Mr. Shipman was able to do much to set public
opinion right with regard to the man and his career.
Mr. Shipman had recently visited Barcelona and witnessed
the ruthless destruction wrought there by the mob roused by the
unprincipled teachings of Ferrer. He was, therefore, entitled to
speak with authority. In THE CATHOLIC WORLD (April and Sep-
tember, 1910) he published his Recent Impressions of Spain, and
later in the same magazine (December, 1910, and January, 1911)
wrote his answer on the Ferrer discussion to Mr. Archer, the Eng-
lish critic, and entitled it, McClure's, Archer and Ferrer. A year
later in THE CATHOLIC WORLD he reviewed Mr. Archer's book.
This review made it clear that to Ferrer had been given the full
benefit of a fair trial, and that he was condemned only because
his teachings and activities had led to a series of murders for which
he was justly held responsible.
Mr. Shipman was one of those to whom is due the success of
The Catholic Encyclopedia. He was one of its directors from the
beginning, and the many articles he contributed to its pages, well
illustrate his versatile scholarship.
In 1913, Mr. Shipman was elected a member of the Board of
Regents of the University of the State of New York. Mr. Shipman
1916.] ANDREW J. SHIPMAN 507
felt that his election to this position was the crowning event of his
life, and the one who was nearest to him in life feels sure that " he
would have regarded other appointments or honors as mere addi-
tions, for from the time that he measured up that task his aspira-
tions for other work or appointments slackened he seemed to feel
that this position would usefully absorb his talents and crown the
best aims of his career."
In the midst of all this busy work Mr. Shipman remained
one of the most lovable of men. His steadfast and warm nature
was shown by his attachment and loyalty to his Alma Mater,
Georgetown College. In the year 1899, while he was a struggling
lawyer, he provided by his will that a percentage of his entire
estate beyond ten thousand dollars should go to the college. After
the execution of his will, and while its contents were unknown to
anyone but himself, he was elected and served as the President of
the New York Chapter of the Alumni of the college during the
years 1903 and 1904, and later still in the year 1911 the degree
of Doctor of Laws was conferred on him by the college. By a
codicil to his will executed in 1912, he made other bequests of a
public nature, but he never changed his original legacy to his Alma
Mater, showing that neither time nor circumstance altered the feel-
ing of his younger years toward his college.
One might always go to Mr. Shipman with the absolute con-
fidence that he would be ready and willing to give time to any good
cause. A close friend of his has written to me : " I have often
said of him that he must surely have used his time with enormous
diligence, for he turned out an immense product from his study and
research, and yet always had time to further a good work. In this
respect he was one of the most extraordinary men I have known.
Equally admirable was his unfailing good nature and modesty
two qualities that are not always associated with gifts like his."
Mr. Shipman's articles in The Catholic Encyclopedia, The Mes-
senger and THE CATHOLIC WORLD are almost his only literary
remains. His busy legal career and the long years necessary for
the study of Oriental rites and peoples, necessarily delayed the day
when Mr. Shipman could use his talents to full advantage. At the
age of fifty-eight, when naturally at least a dozen or more active
years should have been his, he was taken from us. He had just
reached his maturity : his greater work was, one feels, yet to be
done. Others must do it now; but they can never know a more
zealous pioneer than Andrew J. Shipman.
THE GARY SYSTEM.
BY JOSEPH V. MCKEE, M.A.
AN is a creature of vogue and fashions. To-day he
bedecks himself in garments at which he shudders
on the morrow. To him the style of a century ago
is ludicrous and absurd. Yet while he condemns and
pities his forefathers, he forgets that his to-day is
the past of his son's to-morrow. Free born and loudly proud of his
independence, he willingly submits to the dictates of the tyrant
Fashion, and meekly obeys the whimsical decrees of that unreason-
ing despot. And, as he falls in and marks time with his fellow-ser-
vitors, he deceives himself into believing that he finds justification
in the w r orn-out plea that, " They are all doing it now."
Nor is this servility limited to the domain of dress. In Art
some conventionless spirit, rich in convention but poor in adapta-
bility, puts forth a " new " creation. The flotsam and jetsam, re-
sponding to the slightest impulsion, turn with a touch. The earnest
student takes the will-less motion for a new " movement" in art, and
turns his prow toward the dancing lights.
Not even in Education have we been free from the dominant
dictates of Fashion. The custom of learning spelling and figuring
and reading passed out years ago with the homespun coat and the
tallow candle. The vogue (how old-fashioned it now seems) which
was based on the idea that the child's character grew by overcoming
obstacles, faded out with the monkey jacket and tight breeches.
These are ghosts of a yester year, serving now merely to
haunt and to horrify. A new garment has been thrown on the
educational bargain counter, and the rush has already begun. To-
day no schoolmaster is easy unless he has his shears in his hand,
and is cutting away at his cloth with his eye on the Gary System.
Gary is the latest fetish of Fashion, and the power of its influence
is immediate and universal.
But while it is his child who is thus being fitted, and his boy
or girl who is thus being re-fashioned, the average parent seems to
feel a deep ignorance of the lines and curves of the latest vogue.
And for this reason because the child is his child he feels, old-
fashioned creature that he is, that he should know something of
1916.] THE GARY SYSTEM 509
the innovations which are being advocated with such loud acclaim.
Not a day goes by but what he hears or reads something about the
Gary System. His newspaper prints editorials on it, and daily
carries reports of heated discussions concerning the merits and de-
merits of the new idea. But so far as the actual workings of the
plan is concerned he is still in the dark. But the conscientious
layman should feel no culpability in not knowing the essential work-
ings of the Gary System. Even many of the strongest advocates
of the plan have only a misty idea of its operations. To them it is
something new, and that in itself is its justification.
Some ten or twelve years ago, shortly after its consolidation,
the United States Steel Corporation decided upon a site in Indiana
for an enormous new manufacturing plant. Upon this spot, which
till then was a level stretch of plain and woodland, the Steel Cor-
poration's engineers labored according to plan and specification and,
like Thebes, a great town grew up over night under their magic
sowing. It consisted of great factories and the homes of the
workmen. In honor of Judge Elbert H. Gary, the then head of the
steel company, the name of Gary was given to this plan-made town.
To supervise the education of the children of the town, whose
population consisted solely of the workers in the mills, the authori-
ties drafted Dr. William A. Wirt, and made him superintendent of
schools. Dr. Wirt had had a wide experience in educational science.
He did academic work at De Pauw University and at the University
of Chicago, later going to England, France and Germany for a
more complete mastery of modern educational methods. At the
time of his selection as head of the Gary schools, he was acting as
Superintendent of Schools in Bluffton, Indiana.
This brief outline of the birth of the town of Gary and of the
work done by its school head is interesting. It became important
only within the last two years, when the word " Gary " passed from
its geographical import to an educational term of wide significance.
This evolution, which has been very sudden and yet unjustified, was
brought about when many educators, after watching the work done
in the Gary schools, pleaded for its extension to other towns and
cities. In short, it soon became a vogue, a fashion. But the Gary
System would still have remained provincial were it not for the no-
tice given it in the spring of 1914. At this time Mayor Mitchell
and a group of New York City officials visited Gary for the purpose
of inspecting the plan evolved there under Superintendent Wirt.
Both Mayor Mitchell and Comptroller Prendergast had been elected
510 THE GARY SYSTEM [Jan.,
on a platform that pledged the strictest economy in the expenditure
of the city's moneys. The annual budget totals over two hundred
and twenty-two million dollars. Of this enormous sum, forty- two
million dollars are spent annually for education. Weighing this
sum with the apparent results of New York's present educational
system, these officials came to the judgment that the balance listed
badly, the plan holding the results showing an unwarranted light-
ness. Despite the annual expenditure of forty-two million dollars,
the authorities found that they could not provide facilities for tak-
ing care of all the children of school age. On September 15, 1915,
there were one hundred and forty-one thousand three hundred and
sixty children on part time. Nor did the future offer any relief.
The finances of the city were in such a deplorable state as to preclude
the advisability of buying new school sites, or erecting buildings on
the property already held. Conditions were bad and steadily grow-
ing worse.
It was because of this state of affairs (which since then has
become alarming) that Mayor Mitchell and his party inspected the
Gary schools in May, 1914. So convinced were they of the su-
periority of the Wirt system that they planned for its immediate
adoption in the schools of New York City. In order to secure the
success of the new experiment, Dr. Wirt was retained as adviser
to the Board of Education. He was to give one week out of every
four to the work of inaugurating his system. For his thirteen
weeks work extending over a period of a year, the city of New York
agreed to pay to him a fee of ten thousand dollars. His assistant
in Gary, Dr. Schneider, was also retained on the same terms.
The new plan was inaugurated last spring in two schools of
widely divergent character, Public School No. 89 in Brooklyn and
Public School No. 45 in the Bronx. It was thought to try out the
Gary System in these schools and, if it proved successful there, to
extend its operation to all the schools in New York City. These
in number total over six hundred. After watching the work done
during the past few months in these two schools, Comptroller
Prendergast, with characteristic vigor, has come out very strongly
for the universal adoption of the Gary System. He holds that the
new system has justified itself fully, and is the only apparent remedy
for the present evils in New York's educational work.
Mr. Prendergast's point of view is primarily a financial one.
And in this light conditions loom up sinisterly. At the present
time, because of financial stringency, twelve hundred positions in
1916.] THE GARY SYSTEM 511
the teaching force are being filled by substitutes. Over seven thou-
sand teachers are working at reduced salaries. Only by the
juggling of accounts and other extraordinary methods was it found
possible to keep the night schools open. The recreation centres have
been curtailed and the lecture bureau greatly reduced.
It is primarily to reduce this cost of education that the city
officials advocate the extension of the Gary System. Yet the
slightest return under this plan can be obtained only at the initial
expenditure of vast sums. Even Comptroller Prendergast does
not know what proportions these sums might reach. The cost to
equip Public School No. 45 adequately will be one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars (the city has already appropriated this
money), and this school is typical of the others in the matter of
equipment. As there are over six hundred schools in New York,
it is easy to see that the total expenditure would be enormous.
One naturally would hesitate to advocate a plan that called
for the spending of so much money. The results would have to be
very great and widespread to insure its justification. It is a step
that many business men would fear to sanction, except only after
positive proof of the benefits that would ensue. But money con-
siderations, after all, are not the best reasons for advocating or op-
posing an educational movement. If the child is to be materially
benefited, if it can be shown that the boy or girl will thereby be
enriched in training and experience, we should allow no financial
question to obstruct the adoption of any plan so qualified. Any
money, regardless of amount, that is used efficiently to give the child
a better start in life is an investment that is beyond argument.
For some time I had acquainted myself with the more impor-
tant principles of the Gary System, and I knew well the financial
position of the city. But these were of little interest to me. I wanted
to see the Gary idea, not from the standpoint of financial cost, but
from the position of the child the only consideration that should
determine any educational policy. So, a short time ago, I visited
Public School No. 45 to see the Gary System in operation there.
I had in view primarily the welfare of the child rather than the
saving of money; the status of the child rather than the position
of the city. What does the Gary System do for the child? Is
the Gary System a workable scheme from the viewpoint of the
child's welfare? Does it develop the intellectual forces of the child?
Does it give the child new experiences that the child can assimilate
and digest? These were the questions I wished answered.
512 THE GARY SYSTEM [Jan.,
The cardinal principle of the Gary System is work, study and
play. Accordingly, the child's day is divided into ten periods, ex-
tending from half past eight to half past three. Five of these
periods are given to recitation work in the classroom. One period
is given to play, two periods to work in the various shops, one
period to lunch and one to auditorium or to " church or home."
This " church or home " period is school time which the pupil
may use in attending religious instruction outside the building or
assisting at home. It is by means of this arrangement of periods
that two schools, designated X and Y, are housed in one building.
While the children of one division are using the recitation rooms,
the pupils of the other are engaged in the auditorium, in the shops
or at play. The shuffling of classes is easily accomplished, the di-
vision being apparent only at lunch time, when the X school leaves
at ii no and the Y school at 12 :oo. It is this arrangement of two
schools in one that makes the Gary System so attractive to those
desiring to reduce expenses. In reality it is merely a part time plan
in disguise neither better nor worse than most of the schemes
tried out previously in the city schools.
The idea of study in school time is not new, nor is the idea
of allowing a recess for recreation. The new, emphatic point in
the Gary plan of work, study and play, is the manual labor done
in the shops. This system provides for a number of shops where the
child may obtain some practise in the correlation of mind and hand.
A boy may take up printing, pottery, sculpturing, drawing, carpentry
or farming. A girl has two periods daily at cooking, millinery,
pottery, sculpturing or printing. The selection of the particular
work to be done is left to the discretion of the pupil, but the sys-
tem requires that a child remain only four months in any shop.
A progression must be made through all the branches of manual
work. The department idea, that is, that the child have a different
teacher for each subject, is carried down through the lowest grades.
Thus, instead of having one teacher for all subjects, the child has
a number of " special " instructors. Conversely instead of having
a small class of children all day, the teacher instructs a floating mass
of five or six classes totaling over three hundred pupils. At the
end of the periods the classes move from room to room.
Another new feature of the Gary System is the auditorium
period. Here under the supervision of special teachers, groups of
about two hundred to four hundred pupils assemble each period.
The time is occupied in listening to lectures, hearing short recitations
1916.] THE GARY SYSTEM 513
and in singing. These are the essential principles of the Gary
System. An academic discussion of the abstract principles would
be interesting but fruitless. It is in its application that a principle
should be judged. Therefore, it is not unfair to judge the Gary
System as it is applied in the schools of New York.
Public School No. 45 is a modern city school, housing -thirty-
four hundred pupils, most of whom are Italians or of Italian
descent. The Gary System has been in operation there for about one
year, under the direct supervision of Dr. Wirt, its originator. The
work done there, in the opinion of the city officials, has been of
such a nature as to warrant the extension of the plan to the other
schools. But while this judgment may be justified, close examina-
tion of the operation of the Gary System raises many serious doubts
and well-founded objections to the whole plan.
The basic ideal of the Gary System is to give the utmost free-
dom to the child in every possible way. But is not too much freedom
a dangerous thing for immature, inexperienced minds? In the
workshops, which is the specialty of the Gary idea, I found children,
boys and girls, doing exactly what they wished. A problem had
been assigned, but the pupils were not compelled to work at this
task. Some did, others did not it rested with the child whether
the work was done or not. But what was infinitely worse, there
was no checking up of results, no correction of work, and conse-
quently no incentive to accuracy, no real development of intellect,
no real training either of hand or mind. If freedom means the
license to follow one's inclinations, then the Gary System gives the
child the widest freedom, but if training means the development
of the will to overcome obstacles, then the Gary System does not
give the child any real training. Rather it invites sloth, produces
inefficiency, and weakens the moral powers of the child.
Even were the shops developed on some higher principle than
the child's " freedom," it is a question whether any real results
would follow. According to this plan a child may remain only
three months in any shop. We can imagine what knowledge a
child can gain of pottery, sculpturing or farming after spending
sixty days of eighty minutes each at a particular branch. Instead
of a thorough knowledge of any work, the pupil is rushed through
a series of bewildering sense impressions which he cannot assimi-
late if he would, and which he would not if he could, because he
knows that the next week or so will find him at some entirely new
occupation.
VOL. en. 33
SH THE GARY SYSTEM [Jan.,
Although the Gary System requires the child to spend eighty
minutes a day in some shop, I found that he has only fifty minutes
a week for spelling. It is hard to see the educational value of al-
lowing your son, who must fight his way in life, to spend six hours
a week on sculpturing or pottery or printing, and only fifty minutes
a week on spelling. Art may be beautiful and its study interesting,
but when I saw the pitiful objects of " art " made by Dominic and
Louisa and Maria and the awful specimens of spelling and letter-
writing produced by these same children, I felt that at last the child
had obtained " freedom," and had lost all chance for the most ele-
mentary training in the essential things of life.
Order and obedience to authority are the basis of government.
But where or when are we to teach these essential lessons when,
as under the Gary System, the child of eight is allowed to choose the
subjects he will study, and is made to feel that the primary and only
impulsion to work is based on the pleasantness of the task? It was
a fashion at one time to set a task before a child, and to insist
upon it being accurately and expeditiously done. But the Gary
System leads away from this ideal. School is now a sunny place of
golden hours, spent in doing agreeable tasks of one's choosing.
Home tasks are abolished and studies subordinated to the whim-
sicality of the child.
The second great feature of the Gary System is the auditorium
period. Here groups of children, from two to four hundred in
number, assemble once a day, and spend the period in listening to
lectures or in singing. In this particular school these pupils are
patrolled by five teachers, whose sole task is to keep order among
the children. For this work they receive salaries that total ten
thousand dollars annually. And the child? During one period,
out of four hundred children, ten gave short recitations from Ste-
venson. This meant that for the vast majority the assembly or
auditorium session was a period of mental inertia a time for in-
tellectual slumber. No effort is made to have these periods enrich
the training of the child. He may hear a lecture on the Panama
Canal, as I witnessed, but he is not called upon in any way to re-
produce, and thereby strengthen, the impressions given. There is
no correlation of classroom studies with the work done in the
auditorium. Candidly, it is merely a storage room for surplus
children.
In the departmental system which, under the Gary System, ex-
tends down through to the lowest grades, the close union of teacher
1916.] THE GARY SYSTEM 515
and pupil and the better understanding that resulted are lost. It
is impossible for any teacher to know three hundred pupils who
visit her for six months or about one hundred and twenty days of
forty minutes each. It is a lucky thing if the teacher learns to
know the names of her pupils. The teacher sees only one side of
the pupil, and is unable to aid in the full development of the child's
powers. The classroom becomes a grinding mill, with a swirling
mass of children being tumbled into the hopper and the teacher
keeping the machinery going.
Under the Gary System a gong is rung to denote the end of the
recitation period. At this signal the whole school moves. The
idea of children marching in orderly ranks was considered in-
compatible with the child's freedom. As a result the halls of the
schools at these frequent intervals are scenes of utter disorder and
confusion. I stood in the corridors at three different times, and
saw a mass of struggling, pushing, squirming children, some mere
infants, trying to make their way along the corridors. It was a
source of wonder that some were not seriously injured. I timed
the different passings, and found that they required from eight to
nine minutes. As the pupils must pass from room to room at least
eight times a day, this meant that fully an hour every day is wasted
in this senseless driving of the children.
The child's work is rated in units that total one thousand points.
Of these, one hundred and sixty are given for shop- work, ninety
for sitting in the auditorium and eighty for playing in the yard ! In
other words, three hundred and thirty points, or more than one-
quarter of all the academic counts, are given for work which has
very questionable or no educational value. A child may fail abso-
lutely in mathematics, and English, or in mathematics, history and
geography, and yet be advanced in grade by receiving full credits
in " courses " which are mental soporifics and intellectual anaes-
thetics.
An innovation of the Gary System that has aroused bitter dis-
cussion is the church or home period. During the forty minutes
of this period, the child may report home for the purpose of helping
his parents, or he may spend the time in religious instruction outside
the building. Although this opportunity for instructing the chil-
dren in religious doctrine was and is extended to all religious
denominations, the work has been taken up by the Catholic Church
only. As a result a tempest has been raised and is still raging.
The Church is charged with attempting to gain control of the
516 THE GARY SYSTEM [Jan,
school system for its own nefarious schemes. One minister has
been so moved as to forget the first principles of truth in his reckless
attacks on the Church, and a teacher in Public School No. 45,
who has been most unjustly accused of attempting to proselytize
among the Italian children, has received marked copies of the
Menace and abusive anonymous letters.
It is a question whether this arrangement is worth its price.
Under it only the child who volunteers is permitted to attend these
classes. The child who really needs the training, the delinquent, is
not compelled to attend and the work defeats itself. Rather than
be concerned with an arrangement of such doubtful value, the
Catholic should strive all the harder to build his own schools, where
instruction in religion can be given adequately and where sanity
of mind still prevails.
The Gary System is wildly extravagant in every way. The cost
of equipping the schools will be very great. The cost to the child
will be greater. We have entered an era of wild speculation and
experiment in education. Our modern educators have lost sight
of the idea that character is formed by conquering obstacles. Any
system that is " hard " or difficult, which does not appeal to the
child, has been relegated to the scrap heap as narrow, inhibiting
and repressive. As a result, we are bringing up a generation of
untrained, characterless children, who are kept from realizing the
greatest secret of life the meaning and value of work.
The Gary System is the strongest plea yet made for the
return to the simplicity of the old red schoolhouse, when the boy
knew nothing of pottery or sculpturing but a great deal of 'rithmetic
and spelling and reading. It is the most telling argument yet made
for the tracing of our steps back to the time when the child was
made to know that tasks had to be done thoroughly and well
even though disagreeable to the doer. Never in the history of
education was there more urgent need for us to harken back to
wholesome and simple principles. Unless we do make that return,
we will sow a whirlwind which our children must reap.
As I left Public School No. 45, with its great Gary System, I
put my hand to my mouth to hide a smile. But then I thought of
poor little Dominic and Louisa and Maria who must face the bitter
struggle of life and the smile faded away. And the other children
But what is the welfare of the child compared with the success of a
great, new, wonderful System?
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
HE gray flagged pavement was slippery with dead leaves
and the old woman, who shuffled along under the les-
sening shadows, just saved herself from falling by
clutching at a tree box with such violence that some of
the splintered wood forced itself into the hard flesh
of her palm. But she gave no heed to the slight pain.
Her whole journey into this unaccustomed neighborhood was an ad-
venture ; the possibility of breaking her brittle bones was but one peril,
a slight one, compared to the purpose that had brought her here.
She wondered vaguely why all the houses around her seemed so
vacant. No children played upon the doorsteps, no eager faces peered
from behind the muffling curtains. Did rich people take no interest in
the gratuitous entertainments of the street? In her world, not many
squares away, doorsteps were gay gathering grounds where organ
grinders elicited a ready sympathy for their intoxicating melodies,
where the hoky-poky man, in his spattered white uniform, was received
with shouts of joy a prince of unparalleled munificence if he should,
by any chance, dab a bit of his frozen confection into a square of
paper and give it to a penniless child who hovered around her solvent
friends in hopes of a proffered bite.
Then there was the Italian vendor of fruit, whose embryo English
the children mocked with such glee; there was the patrol wagon and
the exciting uncertainty as to which neighbor was " beatin' the life
outer of his wife;" there were peddlers with their mysterious packs
carefully covered with oil cloth to attract the curious ; there were fire
engines nearly every day ; weddings and funerals where joys and griefs
were undeterred by the rigidities of convention. These unencumbered
streets might be considered desirable, but no one could deny their
dullness. And they had other disadvantages, for the gilt numbers on
every door confused the woman's dim mathematical sense, and she had
to stop to ponder over each one before she was quite sure that she
had reached the stupendous sum of 4306.
The house was the most conspicuous one on the block, a low
carefully trimmed privet hedge divided it from the street, and a high
5i8 TRANSMIGRATION [Jan.,
brick wall, on either side of the garden, separated it from its neighbors.
The woman passed up the short concrete walk, hesitated for a moment
as she surveyed the basement entrance, and then with a strange deter-
mined light in her tired eyes she walked boldly up the stone steps
and rang the bell. A fair-haired boy of seventeen half opened the
door and surveyed the figure on the steps doubtfully.
" I want to see Mr. Thompson," the woman said.
" He is not at home."
" Do you mean he's out drivin' that red devil automobile of his
or is he upstairs afraid to come down ? "
An impatient frown puckered the boy's smooth forehead.
" I told you he was not at home," he answered again.
" Then I want to see the house," said the woman puffing into
the vestibule, " I want to see the furniture that Jim Thompson bought
with other people's money. I've got the right. I helped to buy it.
I want to come in."
The boy at the door seemed inclined to refuse her admittance,
when a child's voice from somewhere in the shadowy hallway called
out half laughing :
" Let her come in, Ted. Open the door and let her come in."
The boy moved aside to allow the woman to enter, and then shut
the heavy glass door with a bang.
" Don't look for a job as a butler, Ted, for you would be dis-
charged the first day," said the same voice, and a slender girl of twelve
came forward. She wore a long gingham apron over her short skirt,
and a little smudge of flour on her tilted nose seemed to prove that she
had just emerged from the kitchen. " How-do-you-do," she said with
old-fashioned politeness. "Did you want to buy some furniture?
Everything is for sale. Curtains and rugs and pictures and everything.
It's so awfully sad I I would like to sit down and cry."
" Please don't," entreated Ted crossly, " I hate girls that cry."
" Cryin' ain't goin' to mend matters," said the strange woman who
stood blinking her eyes to accustom them to the semi-darkness after
the glare of the sun outside. "Are are you a Thompson?"
" I'm nobody," answered the child, and with a little jump she
perched on the carved hall table a'nd swung her thin legs in the air;
" that's what mother said last night. She took me in her arms and
said: 'Oh, if we were only somebody with money to help but we are
nobodies, nobodies.' "
" Hm," grunted the woman. The climax of her adventure had
robbed her of speech; she had come in vindictive mood to vent her
wrath on somebody, and she found only an appealing child who
wanted to " cry."
" Then then you can't be one of the creditors ? " she said at last.
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 519
" No," answered the child, half apologetically, and she pushed
back her long straight hair from her forehead, " but maybe Ted is."
" Then, p'raps, you can understand why I'm here," and the woman
turned hopefully to Ted. " I'm one of the creditors, too. I've washed
and scrubbed, and the Lord only knows what I ain't done in skimpin'
and savin', and now I ain't got one cent for my old age, and I did
calculate on gettin' some fixin's for the house this month, for my son's
wife is comin' and she ain't used to sleepin' on shucks."
The boy, Ted, lighted a cigarette with careless unconcern, and
remarked dryly:
" You have the worthy example of Margery Daw."
" Don't know her," said the woman curtly.
" Oh, don't mind, Ted," said the child beseechingly. " Boys are
always hateful. Margery Daw is a Mother Goose rhyme. Don't you
remember :
'See saw, Margery Daw,
Sold her bed and lay on straw?'
Ted is just trying to be funny. He feels dreadfully, dreadfully."
" He don't act it. Boy's ain't got no feelings any way. Who is
he?"
" He's Ted Hargrove, Mr. Thompson's nephew. He lives here."
The woman laughed unpleasantly. " He does, does he ? Then I
reckon he's feathered his nest pretty soft along of his uncle."
The boy's face flamed with sudden anger. " Shut up," he cried,
" you doddering old idiot, you don't know what you are talking about.
My uncle is going to sell everything, everything. The estate will pay
dollar for dollar if you'll only have a little patience."
" It will be eat up by the lawyers and the court," said the woman
as if she were repeating a reiterated phrase of her neighborhood.
" I ain't the only one that's suffered, there's hundreds of them Nan
Wiggins has gone to the poorhouse ; John Alden has had to go to live
with his daughter-in-law, and he said he'd a heap rather go to h ;
Rosa Boniface has gone to the bad outright; Jake Crimmin's babies
and wife ain't had anything to eat for two mortal days. Lord save us !
I don't see how he could live with all this silk hanging to his inside
doors when Jane South's baby, just come, ain't got anything- on earth
to wear naked as the day it was born."
" Oh ! oh ! " said the girl, and there were tears in her voice. " He
didn't mean to do so much harm. Indeed, indeed he didn't."
" I ain't studyin' what he meant to do. I'm tellin' you what he
done. When folks put money in his hands, why didn't he keep it there,
or leastways why didn't he put it in a drawer or safe or something,
seein' it was unhandy to tote it around ? "
520 TRANSMIGRATION [Jan.,
" But how could he pay interest if he didn't invest the money ?
My arithmetic says you have to lend money if you want interest."
" It wasn't his/' said the woman, and this fact seemed to preclude
all argument. " There's others that needed the money more than he
did."
" There was a run on him."
" Of course there was, and the folks that ran might as well have
saved their breath for there wasn't nothing there."
" But he will sell everything he has, and then he will have lots of
money."
" He won't have enough," said the woman dismally. " There ain't
no use in arguin' or stayin' here I reckon if Jim Thompson ain't home.
Folks said some of the chairs in the parlor was made of solid gold, and
I just wanted to prove it."
" Then walk in and chip them," said Ted, maliciously, and he
swept the portiere aside. " The more they are chipped the less
money they'll bring. Perhaps the neighbors would be interested to
know that everything in here is to be sold at auction as soon as the
appraisers have permitted us to move. Tell the neighbors that Miss
Polly Maxen is doing the cooking, and that I am taking care of the
horses."
The woman walked uneasily on the heavy Oriental rugs, and
approached a gilt chair that stood in front of the fireplace. Stooping
she put her teeth in the high carved back.
" It's only gilded wood after all," she said spitting the bit of gilt
on her hands. " I'll tell Eliza Watts she's wrong as often as she's
right."
" I wish you would tell her immediately," said Ted. " If it would
accelerate your deliberate actions, I might even give you a car-ticket."
" Oh, I'm going fast enough. I don't want any of your money or
any of your sass either. I know I ain't wanted, but I reckon I've
got as much right to chip into those chairs as you have."
" More," agreed Ted good humoredly. " I don't want to give
my dentist a job digging into chair paint."
" Oh, don't laugh, Ted," cried Polly, " don't laugh, it's all too piti-
ful."
The woman was moving now with a sort of quiet dignity to the
door.
" Good-bye," she said turning to Polly, " you ain't a loser and you
ain't a gainer. I reckon it's hard to be friends with both sides."
As she retraced her steps down the garden walk a pony phaeton
drew up before the curb, and a young girl jumped lightly to the
ground and fairly flew up the steps before Ted had time to shut the
door upon the old, retreating figure.
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 521
" How do, Ted. Hello, Pollikins. I just want to come in a
moment if your cousin Jim isn't anywhere around."
Ted's expression changed to a broad grin of admiration and
understanding. " Miss Anne Marbury ! I haven't seen you for a
week seems a year. Nobody here but Polly and me. Uncle Jim
is out. Don't exactly see why you want to find him out"
The girl smiled upon the boy in a radiant way; her teeth were
white and even, her whole presence seemed to possess an illuminating
quality ; her skin, eyes, hair were of that brilliant beauty that cosmetics
struggle to imitate.
" Well, this is one of the few times," her voice fell to a confiding
tone. " Aunt didn't want me to come ; she said it wasn't quite 'con-
ventional,' but aunt is such a prig. I'm sure you and Polly are
chaperons for anybody. Where are all the servants ? "
" Gone."
"Gone where?"
" The Lord only knows," answered Ted. " We didn't have any
money to pay them. They've gone to hunt jobs, I guess."
The girl looked dismayed. " Servants are so ungrateful. I
should think a few of them would have stayed."
" But we couldn't feed them," said Polly practically. " There
were ten of them, and it costs a lot of money to feed that many people.
Cousin Jim told them to go."
" So Polly came over this morning to do the cooking."
" You, Polly ! " exclaimed Miss Anne, " and what do you know
about cooking ? "
" Lots," said the child. " I've been to cooking school, and mother
has taught me to make all kinds of dishes out of left-overs. Mother
was afraid Cousin Jim and Ted wouldn't think about dinner for them-
selves, so she sent me over to see about it. You see the servants didn't
leave until this morning. I was glad to see that old red-headed cook
go. I never dared go in the kitchen when she was around, and it's
a beautiful kitchen all white tiles. Come on down and see."
" Oh, no, I haven't time, besides I hate kitchens, all kinds of raw
things, muddy potatoes and cabbages and chickens with their heads and
claws and and insides."
Polly looked amazed. " Hearts and gizzards and livers are good
to eat," she said solemnly. " They called them great delicacies at the
cooking school."
" Well, you see I never went to cooking school ; chickens' hearts
don't interest me, they ought not to have them, no one ought to
have them. They they are a troublesome addition to one's
anatomy."
" Well, I don't know about that," said Ted slowly. " You and
522 TRANSMIGRATION [Jan.,
Uncle Jim ought to be some authority. Is this bust up in business
going to stop the wedding ? "
" Don't, don't talk about the wedding, Ted. I tell you my heart
is broken. There's been so much publicity about the engagement;
Jim was so prominent in a business way, and his family have lived
here so long. Oh, it's terrible ; I can't be dragged into it. I want you
to help me out, Ted; that's the reason I came this afternoon. You
go upstairs to your uncle's bedroom and get my picture, all the
pictures that he has of me, and I'll get the big photograph in the
library. I'm afraid of the newspaper men; they will publish it as
The Bankrupt's Future Bride,' or some such melodramatic story.
I'm sure I had nothing to do with Jim's losing his money, but I may
be blamed in some way. Women always are. I don't want a single
photograph of mine left in this house."
" Cousin Jim will feel so sad when he finds them gone," said
Polly. " Why don't you ask him to hide them away ? "
" He won't remember. Besides I want them back."
The child looked at her steadily. " Then you are not going to
marry him ? " she said.
The brilliant eyes blazed angrily. " You're an impudent little
girl, Polly. I'm sure your mother never taught you to ask questions.
Run away to the kitchen and finish your cooking. I'm going to the
library for a moment, and then I'm going home."
The little figure on the hall table quivered from the unexpected
rebuke. Heretofore the older girl had seemed to be the fairy princess
of her dreams, but princesses in books were always kind and now
Polly showed no signs of obeying orders. She leaned her head against
the tapestried wall, and closed her eyes to shut out the sudden misti-
ness that seemed to have gathered in the hall. Her child world seemed
to have tumbled into as many pieces as a picture puzzle, and she
wondered if she could ever put it together again.
CHAPTER II.
Mrs. Maxen was a widow, and the large fortune of her girlhood
had dwindled, until there was nothing left but her old home and a
diminutive annuity. The small garden, carefully fenced with pointed
white palings, was but a remnant of the once wide spreading plantation
which had stretched across the fertile valley to the stunted hills beyond.
Some of the oldest inhabitants argued that the original royal grant
given to General Augustus Canfield heeded no undulations of ground,
but passed boldly into the next county. But these misty impressions
did not count in the busy city across the hills, and when the last of the
igi6.] TRANSMIGRATION 523
Canfields, at the sensible age of thirty-five, saw fit to marry a Maxen,
all boundary lines seemed to lose their vague distinction. For Hiram
Maxen was a weak, colorless little man with no claim to .blue blood
or its more important visible possessions. Marie Canfield's world
wondered why she had ever married him. Those close to her realized
dimly that, like many another strong woman, the maternal instinct
dominated every other passionate impulse, and that he was lovable
in his clinging incapacity. But when he died a few years after their
first child was born, condolences were offered in suppressed congratu-
latory tones, and as soon as the funeral was safely over her friends
seemed to hover around her with warmer affection and added force,
as if they were determined to lift her to the social niche which she had
temporarily vacated, for Marie Canfield, alone, had always been a
personage. Her great wealth had made most of her desires, actualities,
and had also fostered her independence of spirit, but her impulses
were always kind ; her beauty had brought her that rare charm of self-
confidence that is free from both vanity and conceit. Like a child who
has experienced nothing but loving care, she accepted admiration as
she accepted the other harmonies in her life, but later on the fulsome
flattery of her lovers worried her. Young as she was she was so far
from being an egotist that she was more interested in others than she
was in herself ; this unexpressed attitude of mind was felt, even when
it was not exactly understood, by the many men who proposed marriage
to her. In the bitterness of their disappointment they accused her of
coquetry and deceit; they did not realize, even then, that her casual
acquaintances could elicit almost the same interest, and that the interest
would be genuine. As she grew older she became the repository for
the secrets and sorrows of her neighborhood. Her own griefs and
losses had left her sympathetic, tolerant, unafraid.
This afternoon Mrs. Maxen was alone in what she still termed her
" morning room." In the old days it had been used only for break-
fasting, but the great dining hall, built in a time of uncalculating
hospitality, was dismally big now that dinner parties were unattainable
luxuries; the vacant chairs, grouped around the dulled mahogany
table, seemed waiting for ghostly guests. One day Mrs. Maxen had
quietly closed the door and said to Polly :
" We won't use this room any more, Polly dear, until, perhaps,
your wedding day."
And indeed the morning room was far more cheerful, for the
shabby furniture was covered in gay chintz, a crackling wood fire
burned upon the brass andirons, lighting up the portrait of some pros-
perous ancestress who had chosen no lesser hand than Romney's own
to immortalize her beauty and her grace. The picture was a remarkable
one, so full of life that the high bred lady looked as if caught in the
524 TRANSMIGRATION [Jan.,
agile and dangerous act of stepping off the mantelpiece, while she
held back her voluminous skirt made of the finest quality of satin.
Such an amount of material required for this ancient mantuamaking
seemed a positive affront to her threadbare posterity.
Some such thought was filling Mrs. Maxen's mind when the door
bell suddenly jangled along its sagging wire, and she roused herself
to call out : " Jezabel, Jezabel, there is someone at the front door."
Jezabel, a small black pickaninny with her wool wrapped until
it stood upright, came reluctantly from the kitchen where she had been
busily engaged with the rag-bag making clothes for the maltese kitten.
There were dishes to wash and knives to scour, but Jezabel had for-
gotten these superfluous duties in her eagerness to create patterns
superior to Miss Polly's. Now judgment would descend upon her for in
spite of her frantic efforts to restrain it, the kitten bounded by her, ar-
rayed in a pink percale jacket and one red flannel pants' leg. But Mrs.
Maxen only smiled as the kitten snuggled down upon the hearth rug.
" Go to the door, Jezabel ; I have told you so often that it is not
polite to keep people standing on the door step."
And Jezabel, breathing a sigh of relief, sidled out of the door,
casting a last look of admiration at her handiwork. She was back
again in a moment, followed by a big man in a long automobile coat,
and while she was announcing " Mr. Jim Thompson," with some show
of formal training, the visitor had picked Mrs. Maxen up in his arms
and kissed her several times.
" Glad to see me? " he asked wistfully. " Now tell the truth are
you glad to see me ? "
" Oh, indeed, indeed I am," she said returning his embrace. " I've
been longing to see you all these days."
" It's good to get such a welcome," he said gratefully. " When
a man's down and out, the world does not welcome him with open arms,
except, perhaps, the sheriff. What's that ridiculous thing on the cat?"
" Clothes."
" Heavens ! I thought that was one of the advantages of being a
cat."
"What?"
" That clothes could be eliminated. You see elimination is my
business at present, if I am not eliminated myself in the process."
" Now, Jim, don't make it worse than it is."
" I couldn't," he said sinking down in o'ne of the deep-cushioned
chairs. " It's so bad I can't make it worse."
" Nothing is so bad it couldn't be worse. That's a platitude, but
there are no new truths in tragedy."
He stretched out his long legs toward the fire. "Are you sur-
prised to see me ? " he asked.
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 525
" A little."
" I thought it was a good sign my coming."
" How do you mean? "
" Well, you know if I had done anything to be ashamed of, any-
thing positively dishonest I mean, I wouldn't have come. The Lord
knows I am ashamed of myself for getting in such a cursed hole, but
I'm not a fit subject for jail, though I've been threatened with bars
and stripes half a dozen times to-day. I came to see you to talk
things over like I used to do when I was a boy. I just want to talk,
to hear my own point of view, to feel how it effects an audience."
There was a certain desperation about his manner that almost
frightened her, something that made her feel her remoteness, as if
she had intruded into the place of his mother, she who had only a
distant claim to his kinship.
" I wish your own dear mother were here to help," she said long-
ingly. " She was so gentle, so high in her ideals, so holy, while your
father might have been her complement had she lived but "
" Oh, I know, you needn't hesitate to finish the family history.
The old gentleman was broken-hearted, and sought solace in whiskey,
and then he fell to gambling and dissipating every way. Some say he
even paid court to some women he wouldn't have acknowledged half
good enough to tie my mother's boot laces. He was a plunger. He
might have had some good in him once, but my recollection of him was
not of that kind."
" Oh, Jim, don't speak so disrespectfully of the dead. He truly
loved you. He left you a fortune."
" A mere chance. If he had lived a day longer he meant to invest
in certain stocks I've forgotten just what they were but they had the
bottom knocked out of them the same week."
" Oh, Jim."
" Oh, I know it sounds a bit hard to say it all," he went on, and
his fingers played nervously with the fringe of an old-fashioned tidy
that covered the arm of his chair, " I'm bitter. He left me no reputa-
tion, and because I had none, the building up of one has been the
greatest ambition of my life. I wanted respect and confidence, and I
wanted it from the poor people, the people that are the backbone of
the country. I had political aspirations. I wanted popularity and
affection and praise and confidence. After all it's confidence that
counts, and I got it. You know I got it. Why the poor people of
this town have banked with me. They've come to me with the pennies
they have worked day and night to gather together. Widows and
orphans and old maids have given me their all, so sure of me and my
methods that half the time they didn't ask for security. God knows I
tried to give it to them, but I suppose I lost my business judgment,
526 TRANSMIGRATION [Jan.,
or at least that's what the most charitable are saying about me. I held
on hoping for some sort of a windfall to save me. I was a fool ! "
"And now?"
" Now I am a bankrupt, a robber, a knave, a fit subject for
breaking stones on the highway."
"Don't, Jim!"
" I'm merely quoting the papers. Such appellations don't make a
man any better, or worse."
" They sometimes make him better."
He came close to her and rested his head on the back of her chair.
" Preach to me, Cousin Marie, I believe that's what I need, for
it's only the best side of me that ever calls upon you. The worst side
is as hard as nails, it cares only for itself, it's indifferent to the poor
people who have trusted me, it's selfish, grasping, dishonest and as
wildly improvident as the old gentleman."
She lifted her blue-veined hand and smoothed his heavy hair. " I
don't think you want preaching to-day. You said you only wanted to
talk."
"And I've made you the victim. Did you ever stop to consider
how few people in the world one can really talk to? "
" I have Polly."
" Polly is such a child."
" But I often confide in her. I hate to think that she will soon be
a woman."
" Well it's hard for me to realize, for it seems just the other day
that she was a baby. I'm sure she could scream louder than any other
baby in this town. I remember being conscious of my courage the
day I wheeled her to the depot to meet you the day the nurse went
off on a spree. I believe I was always weak-kneed ! I was afraid
the boys would make fun of me. Now I am afraid of the world."
He got up and began to pace up and down. The mirror that
hung between the two front windows caught his image now and then.
The room shook slightly. He seemed so out of proportion to its
size. He bit at his yellow moustache as if it worried him. Mrs.
Maxen felt that all the conversation that had gone before was but
a ruse to gain time. What was the real object of his visit? In late
years she had grown suspicious of him, he had drifted so far away
from the flickering idealism of his boyhood ; he seemed lost to her in
selfish money getting and material pleasure. Even his ambition ap-
peared solely selfish. At times she had blamed herself for her lack
of faith in him, for she had loved his mother. Did this son inherit
none of his mother's gentle traits? Now, as she watched him in his
restlessness, she began to dread that rightful inheritance which was
part timidity, and an inconsistent hope was born in her heart that the
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 527
old gentleman's bravado and disregard of public opinion would coun-
teract the mother's gentle tendencies in the son.
After a long silence he began again : " I told you that I came to-
day to talk, not because I wanted advice or anything. I don't care if
you don't speak to me. I just want to talk it out to myself, somehow
to get my bearings. I don't care so much for the loss of my money.
Sometimes I've been tempted to give it up, and go live in a dog
house and eat dog biscuit, I was so tired of everything. I've owned
a yacht owned a little bit of everything. I've traveled from one end
of the world to the other ; I've seen midnight suns and tigery jungles
and all sorts of half-way civilizations. I've danced and gambled
and hunted and fished; I've climbed mountains and explored caves
and catacombs ; I've even been shipwrecked. I don't believe I should
mind poverty ; it would be a new sensation, but the disgrace ! I tell
you I can't stand the disgrace. I'm tired of life anyhow ; too tired to
stand up against the invectives that are being hurled at me daily.
A little dose, a small white pill let us say, and all is over. Poison
and heart failure are close akin."
There was a finality about his light tone that chilled her, and
there was a drawn haggardness about his face that marked the hold
of his conclusion. Her bright eyes widened with terror in her un-
certainty how to appeal to him. She knew that he had drifted away
from the faith of his boyhood; his religious ideas had grown vague
and problematic. She must find some other way. With a calm that
she had commanded in great emergencies through a lifetime, she
slipped her arm through his and led him to the mirror.
" Look there, Jim," she said gently, " what do you see ? "
It was a woman's trick. He wondered at her meaning.
"A beautiful lady," he answered, "and a great hulking beast; a
man for whom I have a great dislike at present."
" Well you are not good looking," she went on striving to gain
time, " your nose and mouth are too big and your hair and moustache
too sandy and your eyes are green, there is no denying that ; but look
at your hands, Jim, so big, so strong, so capable. Think what hands
like those mean to a man, just the brawn of them, the strength of
them. How they would have counted with our forefathers in their
primitive needs when they were building a world for our inheritance.
Are you going to lie down and acknowledge yourself a failure with
hands like those ? I'm not appealing to your conscience, Jim, or your
intelligence. God only knows how far you have fallen from all the
best that was once yours. But when you were a boy, Jim, it was
always the story of the giant that attracted you. You longed for
physical power, length of limb, knotted muscles, and now that you
have them, are you willing to acknowledge your own powerlessness to
528 TRANSMIGRATION [Jan.,
support your own body? Your first thought is a deadly selfish one.
No one exists as a unit in the world. Your failure, as you call it,
has heaped responsibilities on you. If people are suffering through
your lack of judgment, you've got to live for them. You're got to
make good. It sickens me to hear you talk of suicide. You said it
half laughing, but I know you have been actually considering it as
the easiest way out. I'm not a saint, and the first thought that comes
to my mind is not the fact of your going before the judgment seat of
God with the taint of your own blood on your soul, but it's shame
for you that you are willing to give up. Just go back to the primal
fact of your body, Jim. Look at it, Jim. Are you going to render
a big machine like that powerless because your spirit, the immortal
part of you, is so puny that it can't hold the body up? You talk of
the 'old gentleman' scornfully, but he wasn't a coward. If I had a
son I would rather see him go to the penitentiary than prove him-
self a weakling, a shirker, afraid of a world that is full of God's
abundance. Look at your shoulders, Jim, they were built for bearing
burdens. Now that there is a hundred times more reason for your
living, you sink down God have mercy "
He put his arm about her. " What fire ! What eloquence ! " he
said smiling, but there were boyish tears in his eyes. " Perhaps,
perhaps you could suggest a graceful way of picking up my pack."
" I knew you would," she said and the mirror reflected her look
of relief. " I don't know anything about business, dear, so I don't
know how to suggest, but it's the poor I'm thinking of. They should
be helped first. I leave the way to you."
" The poor," he repeated, like a numbed man slowly coming back
to familiar things.
" To live for them, to live all over again. It is so easy for one
so young to begin to live again."
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
MANNERS AND RELIGION.
BY T. J. BRENNAN, S.T.L.
HAVE looked up the word " manners " in dictionaries
and encyclopaedias, and was very much surprised at
the scanty treatment it received. The dictionaries
dismiss it with a little etymology and a few defini-
tions. The encyclopaedias scarcely discuss it at all.
Perhaps the subject is too generic, too elusive for systematic treat-
ment; or perhaps the compilers of such works considered it could
not be treated without sermonizing, and sermonizing is not in their
line. Anyhow the word represents an untouched field, and he who
will enter therein must be a guide unto himself. There are no
dates, no names, no divisions or sub-divisions; darkness is over
the face of the deep.
And yet manners are very important. They make or mar us in
society ; they help or hurt us in business ; they are set for the fall
and for the resurrection of many in Israel. They may have come to
us as an inheritance, or may have been acquired by long training
and self-discipline. It does not matter. No one asks how we came
by them; but everyone recognizes their presence, and does honor
to the possessor. It is the same as to their absence; be it due to
lack of opportunity, self-debasement or brutalizing environment;
in this case also no questions are asked; the unfortunate victim is
relegated to the class of brute or boor, from whom no favors are
asked, and to whom few are given.
Manners being, generally speaking, a human acquisition, de-
veloped by natural efforts, and cultivated for natural ends, we
should expect that they would have nothing to do with the super-
natural; that their absence or presence would be a matter of in-
difference to religion. Manners can certainly exist without re-
ligion; for they are a valuable human asset, a coin of the social
realm, stamped with the image and inscription of Caesar; and rank
with education, influence and money as social factors of the first
importance. Hence they may be and are cultivated for exclusively
human motives. But can religion exist without manners? Are
they included in any of the Commandments? Are they prescribed
or supposed as a part of our fulfillment of the Divine Law ? To this
we shall address ourselves in the remainder of the present paper.
Just here comes the necessity of a definition; that we may
VOL. en. 34
530 MANNERS AND RELIGION [Jan.,
know whereof we speak. But as we said before, manners are
hard to define, or if we do define, the definition simply taxes the
memory without helping the imagination. They are like many
other important factors, such as health, beauty, learning, talent,
of which you can tell indeed when they are absent, or when they are
present; but to put the ideas involved in words that is the ques-
tion. We all know many well-mannered and many ill-mannered
people; but an analysis of the difference would overtax our literary
skill. Hence, I conclude it is better to go ahead as we are, without
trying to express the inexpressible; feeling that pur concepts
agree in the main and that an analysis would result in nothing more
than a few obvious generalities. The question is about the relation
between manners and religion. I have just said that manners can
exist without religion. But can religion pure and undefiled
exist without manners?
Here again comes in the need for another definition. What
do you mean by religion ? And here also I shall dodge the issue by
refusing to define. But in this case with more show of reason.
For religion has come to us, not in the form of definitions, but
rather in the form of a Man, the Man-God. All questions about
religion may be answered by considering Him; all persons are re-
ligious only in proportion to their nearness to Him. All the ele-
ments and essentials of religion are there, " in loveliness of perfect
deeds, more grand than all poetic thought." The relation, therefore,
of manners to religion may be answered by looking at Jesus Christ
in His acts and in His words.
We do not like to ask bluntly, " Was Jesus well-mannered? "
for it seems to border on blasphemy. We cannot imagine Him
otherwise; we may be sure He never was otherwise. Of course
there is no direct reference to His manner; simply because being
so great in word and work, His manners seemed too small a thing
to notice. It would be like asking about the grammar in Hamlet,
or about the number of stitches in the Bayeux tapestry. But just
as these masterpieces may be studied with profit by those interested
simply in material details ; so with all reverence may we scrutinize
the Word made Flesh* from such a seemingly worldly standpoint as
that of " manners." And the scrutiny, far from being unprofitable,
will broaden our admiration and deepen our love, for it will show us
how the Divine Master attended even to the little details. The only
difficulty is to summarize these details : to note even a small pro-
portion of the gracious acts and ways that made up His Code of
Conduct towards His fellowmen.
1916.] MANNERS AND RELIGION 531
I think that a primary shall I say the primary element
in manners is modesty, that virtue by which the great are great
without being arrogant; by which the good are good without
sounding their deeds on a trumpet. Who was ever so great or
did so many good deeds as Jesus? But His greatness sat on
Him as the sunshine rests on a hillside : His good deeds went out
from Him as the odor comes from the rose. His office hours ran
from sunrise to sunrise, and His reception-room was the high-
ways of the city and the country. He had no publicity agent or
campaign manager, or official biographer; when recognition was
proffered, He hid Himself in the mountains; when He had done
one of His greatest miracles He said, " See that thou tell no man."
He did not obtrude either His prayer or fasting on the public, but
went abroad, leaving no studied indications of the self-denial He
bore for our sakes.
Another element of good manners is the power of making
yourself at home among all classes, and making all classes feel
at home with you but without loss of dignity on the one side
or the other. This is based on the fundamental equality of men.
The pompous man is consumed with the idea of his own superiority;
the fastidious man exaggerates the value of rules and formulas.
The true gentleman sits down among publicans and sinners, for-
getting accidental differences under the influence of the common
bond of humanity. So it was with Jesus. He belies the old adage,
" A man is known by his company." For, the truth is, a man is
not known by his company, but his manner of acting with his
company. Jesus was a consorter with wine-bibbers and sinners,
but He was never convicted either of drunkenness or sin. He
talks theology with the Master in Israel; He quotes the law and
the prophets among the Scribes; He speaks simple and homely
parables to the peasantry. Hence the results: the little children
crowd around His knees; the common people hear Him gladly;
the Samaritan woman speaks of Him in glowing words to her
fellow townspeople ; the woman who was a sinner anoints His feet
with ointment and kisses them; the Beloved Disciple leans on His
bosom at table; even the "son of perdition" knows he will not
be rudely repulsed when he approaches with the traitorous kiss.
Thus to everybody and with everybody, He was always at home;
always drawing nigh unto His fellowmen, and willing that all should
draw nigh unto Him. How many, like the two on the way to
Emmaus, must have said at the close of an interview with Him :
" Did not our hearts burn within us as He spoke to us."
532 MANNERS AND RELIGION [Jan.,
A third element of manners is thought fulness for the ease
and comfort and happiness of others. This, in fact, is the prin-
cipal source, the determining factor in manners. Whether I like
it or not, I am my brother's keeper. I have received freely, and
I must give freely. My life is as the road from Jerusalem to
Jericho; I must not have my eyes so fixed on my journey's end
as to pass by unnoticing the wounded stranger by the way. I
may not be able to do much, but I can do a little by word or
act to show that I have that touch of nature that makes the whole
world akin. How thoughtful Jesus was! Does it not seem
strange that at the beginning of His ministry He should have
accepted an invitation to a wedding feast? Some relative of His
Mother, perhaps, that wished to honor himself as much as Jesus by
having such a distinguished guest. Was it not equally thought-
ful to be so instant in kindness when the wine failed? How
considerate it was of Him in the desert, when, looking over the
tired multitude, He asked, " Whence shall we buy bread that these
may eat ? " And that other little touch, when He whispered to the
Apostles, " Make the men sit down." How kindly those mothers
must have felt towards Him, when, having sought in vain from
the Apostles' admission for themselves and their little ones, they
heard His voice clear and emphatic : " Suffer the little children
to come unto Me and forbid them not, for of such is the King-
dom of Heaven." How severely He reprimanded the Pharisee
because, even though only in thought, He criticized His kindness
to a repentant sinner. How emphatically He censured the
hypocrites when they roughly pushed into His presence the woman
taken in adultery. Quick to utter the comforting word, He was
equally quick to reprimand rudeness. Ever ready Himself to
lighten the burden of others, He received with grateful heart and
with words of thanks whatever was offered in the spirit of love.
Surely the penitent thief on the Cross must have been struck with
the promptness of the answer to his request; " Amen, I say to thee,
this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."
One more element of manners we shall note, namely, that man-
ners consist in the observance, not of the letter, but of the spirit.
In this, as in other matters, the letter often killeth. Manners were
made for man, not man for manners. Rules and formulas are
good in the abstract; but in the concrete they are often more
honored in the breach than in the observance. This was not the
idea of the Pharisees; to them the letter covered everything. They
were its slaves, when they should be its masters. There was a
igi6.] MANNERS AND RELIGION 533
vulgar emulation in its literal observance; an equally vulgar emu-
lation in faultfinding. They scrutinized every word and action in
the light of their innumerable regulations, as the grammarian parses
or scans every word in the ^Eneid, missing the beauty of the whole
in their search for agreements and disagreements. Jesus, while
He came not to destroy, but to fulfill, was too big for that. When
they " quizzed " Him about the propriety of His disciples' pluck-
ing and eating corn on the Sabbath day, He reminded them that
this procedure was sanctioned by the example of David, and ut-
tered the great principle : " The Sabbath was made for man, and
not man for the Sabbath." Another day they found fault because
some of the disciples ate with unwashed hands then He re-
minded them how their own fault was worse, because leaving the
greater things of the law, they had slavishly exaggerated the im-
portance of minor observances. And yet Jesus did not fail to note
and to condemn, when, at the banquet, Simon the Pharisee failed
to give him the honors equally accorded to a visitor. Whatever
was omitted through the stress of circumstances, He would ex-
cuse; whatever was denied through meanness, He condemned be-
cause of the meanness. He had no objection to making clean the
outside of the cup, nor to eating with washed hands ; but what He
did object to was that this clean exterior should cover nothing
but rapine and filthiness.
Such was Jesus in His life modest and retiring; at
ease among all classes, and making all feel at home in
His company; thoughtful for the comfort of His fellowmen;
broad and liberal in His interpretation of the code of social and
religious observance. And all this was not merely for the sake of
policy; it was but the outer manifestation of the truth and beauty
that was in Him; it was the putting into action of some of the
great principles He announced during His life. One of these
was : " As you would that men do unto you, do you also to them
in like manner." In the field of etiquette this is the law and the
prophets; every sin against good manners is a sin against the
Golden Rule ; and every manual on " How to Behave " is but its
application to social intercourse.
Another principle is : "If you love them that love you what
reward shall you have? Do not even the publicans this? And
if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? Do not
also the heathens this ? " Manners are not merely for our own
family, or our own set; they are for all our fellowmen even if
arrayed in battle "against us. Still another principle is this it
534 MANNERS AND RELIGION [Jan,
was occasioned by a vulgar scramble for the first seats " When
thou art invited to a wedding, sit not down in the first place, lest
perhaps one more honorable than thou be invited by him; and he
that invited thee and him, come and say to thee: 'Give this man
place;' and then thou begin with shame to take the lowest place.
But when thou art invited, go sit down in the lowest place, that
when he who invited thee cometh, he may say to thee, 'Friend
go up higher.' ' Modesty in assuming our places or asserting our
rights is not over-abundant in these our days; " first come, first
served " seems to be the rule ; and very often the aged or the
deserving have to be content with the position of " strap-hangers."
Thus, Jesus was the Perfect Gentleman, and the New Testa-
ment is the greatest Manual of Manners ever written. And thus
have we . answered the question : " Can religion exist without
manners ? " Manners are to morals what style is to thought.
Great ideas are vitiated by a poor style, and good morals lose half
their force by being associated with bad manners. And just as
the poor style is not necessarily ungrammatical, so bad manners
are not necessarily sins. But they turn away our attention from
the substantial virtues that may lie hidden within. We may be good
Christians even with bad manners; but as a social and religious
force we lose half our efficiency. Manners are one of the great-
est weapons in the hands of men; but there is no reason why the
Children of Light should not be experts in their use, as well as
the children of this world.
Hence, in the family, in the school, and in the church, the
importance of good manners should receive emphasis. The
Church has developed a wonderful system of rubrics to regulate
the administration of the sacraments. Now, manners are the
rubrics of social intercourse, and if we regard social intercourse
as a gift of God, then good manners are a divine obligation. A
man may be, technically speaking, a practical Catholic; but, if
he is boorish or unsocial, who is going to profit by the Faith that is
in him? Tertullian says that a Christian is another Christ. But
whatever our claims to such a title, we can never aspire to be
considered such if we are boorish, or cranky, or uncivil, in our
social dealings; if we are unthoughtful of the comforts and hap-
piness of others; if our religion does not show itself in courtesy
and refinement and joy, making our friends glad to see us, as the
disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
Iflew Books.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By John Lingard, D.D., and
Hilaire Belloc, B.A. Eleven Volumes. New York: The
Catholic Publication Society of America. $2.50 per volume.
This new edition has been welcomed with widespread interest.
It links the names of John Lingard, father of modern English
history, with that of Hilaire Belloc, one of the most brilliant his-
torical writers of the present day. Lovers of Lingard and admirers
of Belloc cannot help coming to this work with a keen anticipation
of the delights in store for them. At the outset, however, the
reader and the buyer must in justice be put on their guard. We
have here eleven volumes, having on their title-pages the names of
Lingard and Belloc. In the first ten of these volumes, Mr. Belloc
has written nothing. They are simply a reprint of the fifth and best
edition of 1850. There is no warning to the reader, who finds the
old familiar title of the work changed, that here is no scholarly re-
edition of one of the great English classics. A short introduction
of a hundred-odd words by Cardinal Gibbons is unfortunately made
polemical by the use of large type in three places. Mr. Belloc
has given no preface, no explanation, no introduction of his own.
Even the preliminary notice of the 1850 edition is printed just as it
stood over a half-century ago. And what is all the more striking
in a work that claims to be a new edition, the old index of the 1850
edition is printed at the end of volume ten. Granting that this edi-
tion was out of print, and that a younger generation of scholars
had to look for the work mostly in the larger libraries, there seems
no justification for Mr. Belloc or his publishers to mislead the
reader.
Mr. Belloc's contribution to the new edition is the eleventh
volume, in which he takes up the story of the English nation where
Lingard laid it down the accession of William and Mary, and con-
tinues it down to the death of Edward VII., in 1910. This volume
cannot be called a continuation of Lingard's work. Everything in
it is different. It is a different voice speaking to us, and speaking
almost a different language from the painstaking scholar of Hornby
parish in Lancashire. The volume is, indeed, a clever presentation
of English history during these years (1688-1910), and is written
536 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
in Belloc's best style. But there is no similarity between it and
Lingard's work. Lingard had not the same sweeping vision this
young giant of English journalism possesses. He lacks the Belloc
versatility, his wide-embracing gesture, and his fascinating military
marshaling of fact upon fact like an army set in battle array. Per-
haps the real value of this volume is the double introduction to Part
One ( 1 689- 1815) and to Part Two (1815-1910). In describing the
eighteenth century, Mr. Belloc gives us an admirable description
of the growth of national development under the oligarchy, which
saddled itself upon England from William of Orange's day down
to within recent times. His history, therefore, is rather the story
of the Prime Ministers than of the Kings of England.
There are many elements in the two centuries he has treated
in his volume which have an unusual attraction for a writer with
Belloc's training. The Marlborough and Wellington campaigns;
the growth of the democratic spirit in England ; the solution of the
Irish Question; and the gradual extinction of the laws which dis-
franchised Catholics in the realm all these subjects he treats with
a comprehensive sympathy which prove him a student of wide read-
ing, and a scholar of no weak grasp upon the influences which have
fashioned the politics of England the past century or more. Of
these questions, the Irish Question, which he has described with all
the rich force of his Celtic mind, runs paramount all through the
period, fashioning the politics of the day, and carrying in its arms
defeat for one party and success for another.
It is a horrible picture he gives us of England's brutality to-
wards Ireland. Scarcely anything more inhuman in those dark
days of the famine could be imagined than the avowed attitude
of a large section of English opinion. " There were to be found
English politicians and English newspapers openly rejoicing in the
famine as a means of getting rid of the wretched Irish Papists who
had given so much trouble in the past. Cromwell's project of
granting Ireland to the English Protestants was openly revived.
The most influential of English newspapers spoke enthusiastically
of the good time coming when a Catholic Celt would be as rare on
the banks of the Liffey as a red man on the banks of the Manhattan.
These foolish dreams were soon dissipated, but the language in
which they were expressed was remembered in Ireland and is re-
membered still." No English writer of our times has a more
thorough appreciation of the trend of international politics than
Belloc, and it is this clear insight which makes his pages alive
1916.] NEW BOOKS 537
with interest. With a power of description few of his contem-
poraries enjoy, he takes the reader from one difficult problem to
another in English history with all the lucidity which has made his
other historical works, and especially his lectures, so popular.
This new edition will no doubt arouse a renewed interest in the
life and work of John Lingard. At this date it is unnecessary to
review his magnum opus. It called forth a storm of criticism at its
first appearance in 1819, strangely enough from Catholics as well
as Protestants. Bishop Milner strongly disapproved it, going so
far as to call it a bad book, but in a short while it gathered around
itself a host of admirers, who have ever increased down to our own
day, and who not only regard it as the standard work on English
history, but who see in it a providential force which helped to bring
justice to the Catholics of Great Britain and Ireland in 1829.
PRAGMATISM AND THE PROBLEM OF THE IDEA. By Rev.
John T. Driscoll, S.T.L. New York: Longmans, Green &
Co. $1.50 net.
Not least among the merits of Father Driscoll's contributions
to philosophy is timeliness. The questions in philosophy which
he prefers to discuss are of to-day, the men whose opinions he
challenges are living. When he sets his lance in rest he does not
charge at tombstones. Accordingly, he is one of those who have
made the Neo-Scholastic movement really move; move, that is,
not in a closed circle, but in an increasing spiral.
The present volume is an admirable case in point. Pragma-
tism, Humanism, Voluntarism, Creation, Evolution are the topics;
James, Dewey, Royce, Schiller, Bergson the thinkers philosophers
and systems of the present century.
The first three chapters are introductory and expository. Here
the author's scholastic training shows itself in that clearness of
analysis and exposition which makes of all his words a source of
joy and relief to the harrassed student who is battling with the
unsteady terminology and easy-going reasoning of much of our
modern thought. Further help to clear understanding and general
grasp is furnished in a succinct analysis of the whole work, in the
manner with which students of his earlier works are already ac-
quainted.
In what may be called the controversial part of the work,
Father Driscoll is a courteous and generous foe. He gives the
larger space to his adversary, is anxious that the system he is
538 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
criticizing shall be thoroughly stated, and, so far as possible, in the
words of its defender. When it comes time for attack, he does not
dally over trifles. He strikes few blows, but always aims at a vital
spot.
Most of the reasoning, as might be expected in a work of this
character, is based on facts and principles which belong to psy-
chology and metaphysics. But the author knows how to land the
speculations of philosophers with the practical consequences in
everyday life, as may be seen in the paragraphs on pages 13, 14
and 15 which he epitomizes as follows: "Empirical Pragmatism
harmful : it presents a philosophic basis for the modern Gospel of
Success; is subversive of morality; and leads to disastrous conse-
quences."
MAKERS OF MODERN MEDICINE. By James J. Walsh, Ph.D.
THE POPES AND SCIENCE. By James J. Walsh, Ph.D. New
York : Fordham University Press. Each $2.00 net.
It is a pleasure for us to announce the publication of the third
edition of Dr. James J. Walsh's well-known work, Makers of
Modern Medicine. The present edition is entitled, " The Catholic
University Edition," and includes a new life of Rudolph Virchow,
to whom Dr. Walsh acknowledges a special and enduring indebted-
ness.
The Fordham University Press has also issued the Notre
Dame edition of the same Dr. Walsh's The Popes and Science.
The edition is well printed and tastefully presented. It contains a
number of new appendices which makes readily accessible apolo-
getic information.
ETHICS IN SERVICE. By William Howard Taft, LL.D. New
Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press. $1.00 net.
These five lectures of Mr. Taft delivered a year ago before
the Senior class of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale, treat
of the history of law, legal ethics, the power of the President, and
the new democracy of the initiative, referendum and recall. Like
all of Mr. Taft's utterances, they are valuable for their suggestive-
ness and conservatism. In his opinion the present movement for
a purer and more direct democracy is clearly an ineffective method
of securing wise legislation, good official agents, or even a real
expression of the people's will.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 539
Mr. Taft is most outspoken in his denunciation of factionalism
in politics, of the eugenic reformers who would arrange marriages
as they would breed horses, of those moderns who decry all reti-
cence in matters of sex hygiene, and the reformers who would
look upon a prison " as a rest cure or a summer hotel."
JOHN BANNISTER TABB, THE PRIEST-POET. By M. S. Pine.
Baltimore: Mundes-Thomsen Press. $1.00.
.. Just six years after his death, this first memorial in book form
to the Rev. John Bannister Tabb, the noted lyric poet, has been
brought out by the Georgetown Visitation Academy. Most of
Father Tabb's admirers, both at home and abroad, have too long
been constrained to draw the picture of their philosopher and friend
from sparsely scattered hints in his own writings; they will be
glad to find in this little volume sufficient biographical data to
enable them to see him somewhat in propria persona, although the
anecdotal interest is lacking, which his former pupils might desire
and expect.
A considerable portion of the book is devoted to copious ex-
cerpts from the various collections of lyrics, and to a detailed
critical appreciation of their literary form and content, which is
at once the fruit of the author's own love of God and nature as
seen through the eyes of the priest and poet, and the result of long
effort to encourage, through these crystal gems, youth's awakening
perception of the beautiful.
The author has been particularly happy in tracing through all
the quotations that delicate spirituality which informs all of Father
Tabb's serious work a point of view, essential though it be, which
the unguided lay reader would be apt to miss.
Reprints of the eulogy delivered at the funeral by the Rev.
D. J. Connor, and of a sermon on the Assumption by Father Tabb,
lend the book added value. The proceeds derived from its
sale will be devoted to the creation of a memorial scholarship at
St. Charles' College, where for thirty-five years Father Tabb con-
secrated his rare gifts to the preparation of young men for the
priesthood.
SKETCHES IN POLAND. By Frances Delanoy Little. New
York : Frederick A. Stokes Co. $2.50 net.
Miss Little, an English artist, has written a most charming
volume of impressions on Poland before the Great War. She
540 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
journeyed through its principal cities Cracow, Lwow, Warsaw
and Danzig sketching by the way some of its most characteristic
scenes. She mingled freely with every class, and made many
friends by her hearty sympathy with sorrowful Poland, oppressed
so unjustly by the robber countries who deprived her of the right
even to exist. The author hopes that the end of the present war
will see Poland again an independent nation.
THE WOOING OF A RECLUSE. By Gregory Marword. New
York: The Devin-Adair Co. $1.35 net.
This volume is made up of a series of letters from a trans-
planted Easterner in the wilds of Arizona to a certain " Pandora "
of New York, in whom he has more than a brotherly interest
though exceedingly shy in showing it.
The letters contain for the most part long descriptions of the
author's detailed, everyday life among the cowpunchers. Many
of the scenic effects are full of beautiful color and of vivid word
pictures of the outlook from a Far West ranch. Underneath the
apparent contentment of a free life in the open, the homesick magnet
of the civilized East is always felt.
What encouragement this restrained wooing receives, one is
only able to judge from the references to Pandora's letters, and
these references are most noncommittal. The corduroyed and
flannel-shirted recluse occasionally " drops into poetry," and shows
the trend of his poetic taste in both his own compositions and selec-
tions from the classics : altogether he seems a serious-minded young
man, who is watching the clock until someone shall call him home.
He feels himself drawn alternately toward California and New
York, but the reader is glad to find that at the very last minute he
decides against California, and goes to say in person what his letters
have hidden for so many months.
THE HEART OF A MAN. By Richard A. Maher. New York:
Benziger Brothers. $1.35 net
Father Maher 's excellent novel first appeared in the pages of
The Ecclesiastical Review, under the title of Socialism or Faith.
The story deals with the labor troubles of a small mill town, due to
the absolute slavery of the workers to a heartless, unscrupulous mill
owner who treats them as machines ^ind not men. The hero is at
first attracted towards Socialism as the one remedy of modern in-
dustrial evils, but in the long run his faith conquers, especially as
1916.] NEW BOOKS 541
its lessons are driven home by the genial and strong personality of
Dean Driscoll.
The characters of John Sargent the mill owner, Jim Lloyd the
hero, Fathers Lynch, Huetter and Driscoll are all well drawn, and
the description of the strike is most vivid and realistic. There is,
however, a little too much speech-making, which mars the artistic
effect of the story.
THE BENT TWIG. By Dorothy Canfield. New York: Henry
Holt & Co. $1.35 net.
We have here the story of the influence upon a young woman
of her bringing-up, which was of the plain-living and high-thinking
order. Its hold upon her is so enduring that although she swings
away from it, during a period of vicissitudes and experiences, she
makes a final choice of a life that accords with its precepts. The
book has a claim to attention in the fact that although its tone
is by no means unsophisticated and its philosophy is entirely secular,
yet it consistently maintains a note that is wholesome and earnest.
The style is fluent and clear; but the interest fluctuates and is not
sufficient for the length; it is often lost in the discursive talk
about many subjects : there is too much discussion and didacticism.
From the literary standpoint, these defects preclude a more dis-
tinguished position for the novel than otherwise might be accorded
to it.
THE MAGIC OF JEWELS AND CHARMS. By George Freder-
ick Kunz, Ph.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $5.00
net.
A mass of material gathered from the histories, traditions and
customs of many laads and peoples is compiled and entertainingly
set forth in this book. The pages are crowded with a variety of
information, descriptions and anecdotes regarding special stones
and the legends and superstitions connected with them. Various
forms of belief and practice are also touched on: a chapter is
devoted to the consideration of " Angels and Ministers of Grace/'
and another to the " Religious Use of Various Stones." The pro-
duct connotes enormous research. Dr. Kunz has gone far afield
to collect the substance of this volume unnecessarily so, in one
instance, where greater accuracy could have been obtained by con-
sulting any one of a numerous class of his fellow-citizens; for his
version of the virtues, form and usage of the Catholic rosary
542 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
concludes with the remarkable statement that " the ten smaller
beads serve to numerate the paternosters, while the large bead is
passed through the fingers when a credo has been recited."
The book is carefully and beautifully made, and has many
illustrations, some in color. The general content is indexed, and
the references to authors are given in the numerous foot-notes.
FOUNTAINS OF PAPAL ROME. By Mrs. Charles MacVeagh.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50 net.
This special study of a salient feature of Rome is very well
done. Mrs. MacVeagh, in her introduction, says : " The fountains
of Rome are in themselves title-pages to Roman history," and
so they appear, as she describes each, giving an account of it
and of whatever Pope commanded its erection. She is well versed
in the popular, anecdotal history of the Popes, and quotes it con-
fidently ; but her attitude is never hostile or flippant, and she speaks
with deep appreciation of the wise philanthropy of the pontiffs
whose sympathy for the people led again and again to additions
to the waters of the city. She has a keen sense of artistic values,
her veneration for her subject is evident, and her literary faculty
is such that in her early words on the charm of the Eternal City
over the spirits of men, she contrives to say something that sounds
fresh and new.
The book's make-up is excellent, and it is well and liberally
illustrated.
FRANCE IN DANGER. By Paul Vergnet. New York: E. P.
Button & Co. $1.00 net.
This fervid warning was published in France in the autumn of
1913, at a time when Frenchmen were beginning to realize the
meaning of that succession of startling incidents connected with
Morocco which filled the years immediately preceding. On reading
it now when the War has actually come upon France, one is com-
pelled to admire the clear-sighted judgment of a writer whose
prophecies, did we not know them to be genuinely such, might be
suspected of having been made after the fact. For, with the excep-
tion of taking too seriously the loyalty of Italy to the Triple
Alliance, M. Vergnet's forecast has been in every essential point
borne out by the event. It is well worth reading, though its prac-
tical value is, from the nature of the case, considerably less than
on its first appearance.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 543
THE PENTECOST OF CALAMITY. By Owen Wister. New
York: The Macmillan Co. 50 cents.
It is a stimulating bit of literature that Mr. Wister has given
us in this brief record of his personal impressions of the present
war. He shows us how the tongues of fire from the mighty wind
of calamity have purified and ennobled those whom they have
scorched, " the white-hot gleams of the Spirit " finding demonstra-
tion in countless glorious deeds and words. What he relates is
from his own experience and observation, and is added weight of
testimony to the great spiritual awakening that has already brought
awe and thanksgiving to the hearts that remained faithful to God
during the dark years of indifference and animosity to His Church.
He tells us that he has heard Belgians bless the martyrdom of
their nation, saying : " Do not talk of our sufferings ; talk of our
glory. We have found ourselves."
The author's conclusions are all in favor of the Allies, though
his tone is calm, and his presentation of the case against Germany
is not inspired by prejudice. He has seen and heard much, so
much that admiration is due to the discrimination that results in
such small compass. The little volume is absorbingly interesting.
The effect is of an eyewitness with fine, trained powers of expres-
sion, telling just the sort of thing that the thinking, feeling listener
wishes most to hear.
ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE WAR. By Edwin J. Clapp.
New Haven: Yale University Press. $1.50 net.
Mr. Clapp, formerly expert adviser of the Port of Boston,
and now Professor of Economics in New York University, gives
a detailed, unprejudiced account of the economic effects of the war
in the United States. He calls attention to Great Britain's modi-
fications of the Declaration of London in the form of Orders in
Council, and to the unjust and autocratic proceedings of her prize
courts, with the inevitable harmful result upon our neutral rights
with regard to imports and exports. It is, in fact, a volume which
helps the man in the street to understand the protests our Govern-
ment has already sent to Great Britain. We have been prevented,
he says, from shipping non-contraband to Germany and from receiv-
ing any goods from Germany at all, in defiance of our right to enjoy
such trade via neutral countries, even if Great Britain were to estab-
lish that her blockade of German ports is effective.
In discussing the manufacture of arms for the Allies, our
544 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
author states : " That it is to our present commercial and military
interest so to continue, and that it is our duty as a neutral to do so."
But he suggests that if Great Britain refuse us the right to trade
unhindered with Germany and the neutral states of Europe, that
we lay an embargo upon the exportation of arms.
TALKS ABOUT POETS AND POETRY. By Rev. J. J. Malone.
Melbourne : William P. Linehan. 75 cents.
This is a small volume of appreciative and discriminating
criticism, very agreeable to read. It comprises two lectures, on
Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall respectively, an essay
on Oliver Goldsmith and one on " Anthologies of Irish Verse."
The author tells us that the lectures were delivered twenty-three
years ago, and are now reprinted, in their original form, at the
request of some friends, a very fortunate suggestion. It is a
pleasure to follow what Father Malone has to say about these two
" pioneer poets " of Australia, and the selections that he quotes will
create a desire for closer acquaintance in those readers to whom
the authors are only names. The two remaining essays are equally
illuminating and enjoyable, that on " Anthologies " having a special
interest in these days of the Celtic revival, for it is largely a beau-
tiful and fervent exposition of Irish mysticism and the poetry of
Irish faith.
THE SHEPHERD OF MY SOUL. By Rev. Charles J. Callan,
O.P. Baltimore: John Murphy Co. $1.00.
With poetic instinct springing from sound Scriptural insight,
Father Callan beautifully traces the analogy between the Oriental
shepherd life and Christ's dealings with the soul, and in this por-
trayal gives us a well-balanced view of the relation of the soul
to God, a thorough knowledge of human nature, with a generous
compassion for its many inherent weaknesses, and a most gentle
yet persuasive insistence on the basic truths of the spiritual life,
the source of all deep, sensible and tender piety.
The subject is handled in a manner most complete and en-
lightening, the main theme being the strong, constant, personal
love that our Blessed Lord has for each individual soul, and the
outpouring of this love and tender solicitude in the providential care
which an Omniscient and Omnipotent God alone can exercise.
The book touches with gentle firmness the main springs of
our spiritual and religious life, rousing faith and arousing to a.
loving, confiding trust in the Shepherd of our souls.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 545
SOME NEW SOURCES FOR THE LIFE OF BLESSED AGNES
OF BOHEMIA. By Walter W. Seton, M.A. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. $2.00 net.
As Mr. Seton says in his introduction : " Blessed Agnes of
Bohemia is a figure but slightly known in Franciscan story. Buried
in the folios of the Ada Sanctorum of the Bollandists under the
date March 6th, her life story has been scarcely remembered."
Born in 1205 and dying in 1282, after thirty years spent in the
world and forty-six in the Order of St. Clare, Blessed Agnes was
a contemporary of both St. Francis and St. Clare. She was
descended from King Wenceslas the Holy who died in 935, and
was first cousin of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. The Emperor
Frederick II. first sought her in marriage for his son, and then
later for himself. Her father was Premsyl Ottacar I., King of
Bohemia, and her mother Constantia, the sister of Andreas II.,
King of Hungary.
Her life breathes the atmosphere of the early days of the
Order in all its freshness, naivete and austerity. The prime im-
portance of her life lies in the contribution it makes to our knowl-
edge of the intricate negotiations with the Holy See, which led
up to the final confirmation of the Rule of St. Clare by Innocent
IV. on August 9, 1253.
Mr. Seton has published two ancient texts of the legend of
Blessed Agnes : a fourteenth-century Latin version, written by
Sister Katherin Hofmenin of Niirnberg, and a fifteenth-century
German version, derived from the original Latin through some
unknown intermediary.
In a most scholarly introduction, he discusses all the manu-
script sources of the legend, the question of authorship, the chron-
ology of Blessed Agnes, the letters and blessing of St. Clare.
BEGINNINGS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. By C. L. Becker.
UNION AND DEMOCRACY. By A. Johnson.
EXPANSION AND CONFLICT. By William E. Dodd.
THE NEW NATION. By F. L. Paxson. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co. $6.00 net.
These four volumes of American history cover the entire period
from the earliest days of the country up to the present European
War. They show a noticeable uniformity of style and point of
view, which gives the impression that they were written by a single
VOL. en 35
546 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
author. The special worth of these volumes is that they are thor-
ough, yet concise, and all of them give evidence of a power of
critical estimate too often absent in American histories.
The clear analysis by Professor Becker of the causes of the
Revolutionary War in his chapter on " The Winning of Independ-
ence," shows conclusively the necessity of American freedom and
national independence. With equal skill is told the story of Amer-
ica's struggle for a stable and centralized government from 1800
until the beginning of the Civil War, in the volumes entitled Union
and Democracy and Expansion and Conflict.
Professor Paxson has very carefully and thoroughly chronicled
contemporaneous events, but he could not go very far in the domain
of history, for the merits of what he treats are still obscured by per-
sonal prejudice and proximity. The passage of time is absolutely
necessary for right historical perspective. This does not of course
detract from the worth of Professor Paxson's volume to present-
day students.
The series is altogether admirable, and if introduced into our
schools would give pupils a thoroughly comprehensive view of the
birth and growth of our country.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN IRISH JUDGE. By M. M'D. Bodkin,
K.C. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $2.50.
One of the most entertaining books we have read for a long
time is Judge Bodkin's Recollections. It is full of anecdotes of the
men that made history in England and Ireland in the nineteenth
century, and contains an almost inexhaustible fund of good stories.
We follow the Judge through his school life with the Christian
Brothers, his college days with the Jesuits at Tullabeg, his work on
The Freeman's Journal in Dublin, his experiences at the bar, on the
bench and in Parliament, meeting with Parnell, Davitt, Gladstone,
Dillon, O'Brien, Chamberlain, Justin McCarthy, Labouchere, Rus-
sell, Fathers Burke and Healy and many others. Among the good
stories is a delightful one of Father Healy :
Judge Keogh stopped Father Healy one day and said to him :
" Father, I have a crow to pluck with you."
" Let it be a turkey, and I will be with you at six p. M.," said
Father Healy.
" All right," said the Judge, " but I must have the crow too."
" Then," said Father Healy, " I hope it will be a crow without
1916.] NEW BOOKS 547
DEAD SOULS. By Nikolai Gogol. New York: Frederick A.
Stokes Co. $1.25 net.
Stephen Graham has published an excellent translation of that
masterpiece of Russian literature, Gogol's Dead Souls. The hero
of the book, Tchichikof, conceives a brilliant plan of getting rich
quickly. Every Russian possesses a number of serfs or souls.
Every ten years a revision of the census lists takes place, and the
owner has to pay a toll tax on every soul who had died in the in-
terval. These lists are not looked at during the time of revision.
Tchichikof's scheme was to purchase thousands of these dead souls,
draw up deeds of sale, and then mortgage these souls at a bank in
Petrograd or Moscow. In this way he hoped to make enough
money to purchase living serfs or souls of his own.
Like Don Quixote, Gil Blass or Mr. Pickwick, our hero travels
all over Russia, and introduces us to every type of man or woman,
noble or serf. A most consummate rascal like Falstaff or Tartuffe,
he never despairs when his villainy is unmasked, but starts anew to
make another fortune in a new field.
Most of his types are Little Russian, for Gogol came from the
South. He knew well the vices of the small landowners, the cor-
ruption of official life, and the sad conditions of the serfs of his day.
He is rightly styled the creator of Russian realism.
CLEMENCIA'S CRISIS. By Edith Ogden Harrison. Chicago:
A. C. McClurg Co. $1.25.
A " prejudiced and creed-ridden " grandmother persuades
Clemencia to take a vow to become a nun, and a certain Lieutenant
Barrington determines to free this beautiful Spanish heroine from
this " spiritual slavery." Poor Clemencia has really a very strenu-
ous time of it, for she has to conquer a most domineering and obsti-
nate old lady, defeat the villainy of a most consummate libertine
of a cousin, and fight against the wiles of a most ardent lover, armed
with psychic and physical gifts too numerous to mention. It is al-
together a story of much ado about nothing.
LETTERS ON AN ELK HUNT. By Elinore Pruitt Stewart.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.00 net.
These fourteen letters describe in most entertaining fashion life
in the wilds of Wyoming. The book is full of good character
drawing, descriptions of scenery, and tales of the trials and thrills
of the pioneer cattle stampedes, elk hunting and the like.
548 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
MEDITATIONS FOR LAYFOLK. By Very Rev. Bede Jarrett,
O.P. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.10 net.
" It is felt," says Father Jarrett, " that a book of meditation for
layfolk is a necessity of our times. The older volumes that remain
to us of the faith and piety of our fathers seem to have become for-
gotten, and it is suggested that the reason for this lies rather in the
manner than in the matter of their composition. For it is obvious
that the more practical books of this kind are, just the more quickly
do they become out of date. The very appeal that they make is
due to the freshness of their ideas and the common understanding
they display of contemporary life. Hence it was that the meditations
of Challoner and of Wiseman had such an astonishing success, pre-
cisely because they adapted to the changing times unchanging
principles. Now, because what is the novelty of one age is the
platitude of the next, they have lost their effect."
These one hundred and fifty meditations are written for the
men and women of the twentieth century, and are certainly adapted
to present-day conditions. The variety of the subject matter
doctrinal, moral, devotional and social in turn is most attractive,
and the simplicity and directness of Father Jarrett's style will win
him many readers.
Among titles chosen at random, we have : War, The Loneliness
of Sin, Freedom in Religion, Originality, Private Property, Po-
litical Violence, Criticism, The Holy Ghost, Christ in Heaven, Pride
in Faith, Decision, Mistakes.
Father Jarrett claims that the actual form of the meditation
must be left to the particular fashion of each individual. Still on
page one a method is suggested which has been found of service
by a layman of much experience.
THE LORD MY LIGHT. By Joseph Rickaby, SJ. St. Louis:
B. Herder. $2.00 net.
Father Rickaby's Oxford and Cambridge Conferences (1897-
1901) have just been republished in one large volume. The
author has reshaped them a little, adding here and retrenching
there to suit the needs of a much wider audience. As he says in
his preface: "They are not difficult reading; still they are ad-
dressed rather to the better than to the less well educated. They
aim at removing current prejudices and misconceptions concerning
the Catholic Church, and at instructing the layman on points of
theology that he ought to know."
1916.] NEW BOOKS 549
REFLECTIONS OF A NON-COMBATANT. By M. D. Petre.
New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 75 cents net.
Although the title in itself does not justify the expectation of
anything comforting or sobering in these Reflections, still it is only
natural in these sad days to look for that element in such a book.
A tone of calm philosophic detachment may well be reserved for
the future when the stern realities of war will have been mellowed
by time. Just now such an attitude grates we might almost say
irritates. And when, in addition, a subordinate place is given to
the few supernatural conditions grudgingly admitted, we are
tempted to wonder why the book was written and what purpose
it is intended to serve. It is not a volume likely to cheer the suf-
fering heart nor to strengthen the weary hand. Rather its tendency
seems to be toward begetting a cynical acquiescence in the sad moral
decadence which has been so startingly evidenced in the present con-
flict. Take, for example, such passages as the following :
A great mistake is made when we fail to recognize that a
philosophy may be sound as applied to its own object, though its
principles be immoral and detestable when moved into another
sphere. Machiavellism is sound as regards the ends to which
it was directed ; and it is an error to term it immoral, as exer-
cised in its own domain, because that domain admits of neither
moral nor immoral principles of action.
War is, in its true essence, a trial of brute force, with none
of the varnish and gilding which is added to it by a gentle-
manly code of sport and honor. Diplomacy is, in its true
essence, a war of wits, which should be untouched by moral
considerations.
If there be an underlying element of truth in these statements,
it is certainly not the element that needs insistence now, when moral
considerations appear to be in no peril of over-emphasis.
MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. By Felix Adler. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. 75 cents net.
Mr. Adler agrees ^vith the Catholic Church in denouncing
divorce, but he wishes men to reject it on rational and not on
dogmatic grounds. Catholics are wont to quote the words of
our Saviour in the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel:
" What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." " But
this use of dogmatic authority," says Mr. Adler, " is resented by
the modern spirit of liberty."
550 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
Mr. Adler may talk very grandiloquently of the honor and
high breeding of the ethical culturist who will not permit himself
to have recourse to what the laws permit in matters of divorce, but
we doubt whether the reasons he adduces will hold good in time
of stress and temptation.
THE CHANGING DRAMA. By Archibald Henderson. New
York: Henry Holt & Co. $1.50 net.
This discussion of the tendencies and changes of the drama for
the past sixty years, the author claims to be unique, inasmuch as it
deals with the drama " as a great movement, exhibiting the evolu-
tional growth of the human spirit and the enlargement of the do-
main of aesthetics." The book is spoiled by an excessive use of
meaningless scientific formulas, and by the writer's pagan views.
As " a modern pragmatic man " he is ever talking of the new evolu-
tionary morality which repudiates all the old standards, and knows
no definite dogmatic teaching.
THE IRISH. ABROAD. By Elliot O'Donnell. New York: E. P.
Button & Co. $2.50 net.
The writer tells us his volume " deals with the Irishman out of
Ireland in the broadest sense that is to say, it deals with him in
England, Scotland, Wales, France, Spain and the British Colonies,
anywhere, indeed, saving in his own country." Most of the book
reads like a directory or telephone book, and among the lists of
prominent Irish scholars, soldiers or clerics, names are included of
most mediocre abilities, and men omitted immeasurably their supe-
riors. It is news to us that St. Cuthbert and St. Boniface were
Irishmen, and we take issue also with the author in his strictures
upon the gallant Irishmen who fought for Pius IX. in 1860.
THE HARBOR. By Ernest Poole. New York : The Macmillan
Co. $1.40.
The Harbor is a thesis novel, preaching the gospel of revolt
to the discontented worker of to-day, and promising him a great
future of happiness under the social regime of a new order which
is to be built on the ruins of our present stupendous failure. The
book is occasionally very coarse, and its tone throughout utterly
irreligious. The hero's conversion from the creed of efficiency to
the creed of world brotherhood is far too sudden and too im-
probable.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 551
THE FUTURE OF US BOYS. Edited in the Words of Grown
Ups by a Friend. Boston : Babson's Statistical Organization.
This brochure, of which we may safely assume Mr. Babson to
be the author, or compiler, is partly an expression of sound sense,
and in part a curiosity of " efficiency " literature. The author, as
spokesman for " us boys," presents a reasonable plea for concurrent
school and industrial education, that boys may thus be enabled to
find the occupation for which they are best suited. He blames
fathers severely for insisting upon a " gentleman's " education
for the sons of workmen. Manual labor should be elevated in the
social scale by proper recognition of its importance; and character
should be the supreme consideration, taking precedence of pro-
ficiency in earning promotion and rewards. These are some of the
points in his argument for an idealized democracy which, he admits,
requires that a " tremendous readjustment " take place before it can
be realized. It is in the suggestion of means of readjustment that
he is most astray. A shadowy approximation of the value of self-
knowledge, in the formation of character, leads him to advocate
" personal bookkeeping," not, however, by the boy himself. "Of
course none of us boys will want to bother about any such system
of personal bookkeeping. On the other hand, we see no reason
why father cannot have one of his clerks do this as well as some
of the other things." Apparently, there is to be no auditor except
the unerring discretion of the public. The Carnegie hero medals
are mentioned as conducive to " making manliness popular." The
author quotes : " Is there any reason why righteousness cannot be
subsidized as well as shipping?" He has some perception of the
difficulties of the plan; of its dangers he is strangely oblivious.
One is inclined to wonder from what angle he has viewed life, since
neither experience nor observation has taught him that the righteous-
ness which exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees finds none of
its standards and few of its opportunities in the market-place; and
for its rewards looks beyond even a Carnegie medal to a mystical
crown received from the Father Who seeth in secret.
THE CATHOLIC'S READY ANSWER. By Rev. M. P. Hill, SJ.
New York : Benziger Brothers. $2.00.
Father Hill at first intended to publish a translation of the
well-known controversial treatise of the German Jesuit, Rev. F. X.
Brors, entitled Modern A. B.C. But he soon perceived that he
would have to adapt this work to meet the requirements of
552 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
polemics in English-speaking countries. He therefore practically
rewrote the volume, adding a number of topics Christian Science,
Theosophy, Pragmatism, etc. which had been passed over in the
original work. While the book is chiefly polemical in its scope, the
writer does not strictly confine himself to controversy, but " en-
deavors to inculcate right notions of individual duty," especially as
bearing on situations in which conscientious persons often find them-
selves in the very complex life of the present day. This is particu-
larly the case in his articles on mixed marriages, divorce, education
and the labor question.
Father Hill answers in a clear and popular manner about a
hundred of the average difficulties met every day by the earnest
seeker after the truth. It is an excellent book for the prospective
convert. Our one regret is that its price precludes its distribution
in large quantities.
ABUSED RUSSIA. By C. C. Young. New York: The Devin-
Adair Co. $1.35.
Any book that will serve to dissipate, in ever so slight a degree,
the ignorance concerning Russia which prevailed here and in Eng-
land until very recently, ought to be greeted with a hearty welcome ;
hence we are glad to recommend Dr. Young's contribution. Not
that it is especially noteworthy among the great works on Russia.
It is in reality only a hearty tribute to a great and much misunder-
stood people from one who is Russian in training and in sympathy,
if not in race. There are numerous good and interesting illustra-
tions. But what authority has the Doctor for the spelling
" danceuse," which occurs at least twice ?
POPULAR SERMONS ON THE CATECHISM. From the Ger-
man of A. Hubert Bamberg. Edited by Rev. Herbert Thurs-
ton, S J. Volume II. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.50
net.
We highly commend this second volume of Father Bamberg's
Popular Sermons on the Catechism. These sixty sermons on the
commandments of God, the precepts of the Church, the seven capital
sins, and the theological virtues are especially valuable to teachers
in our Sunday-schools, who are anxious to give the children more
than the dry bones of mere catechetical question and answer. It
makes a good companion volume to the author's first volume on the
Apostles' Creed.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 553
CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE. By Ernest R. Hull, SJ. New
York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 35 cents.
In these days of loose thinking, when everyone is speaking of
progress, civilization and culture, it is good for Catholics to have
an accurate idea of the meaning of these much-abused terms.
Father Hull defines civilization as " the reign of law in the three de-
partments of government, police and personal conduct of manners."
He gives the minimum of culture without which civilization is
practically impossible as : " Enough mental culture to make the
framing of wise laws possible in the three departments of govern-
ment, police and manners; enough ethical culture to insure the
carrying out of those laws when framed; enough technical culture
to enable men to earn their own living, and to produce the neces-
saries and conveniences of life."
The many interesting chapters of this volume discuss the power
of the press, the abuse of the arts, the ethics of war, the necessity of
religion and the supremacy of conscience.
STREET-LAND. By Philip Davis. Assisted by Grace Knoll.
Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. $1.35 net.
This interesting volume is the result of five years of daily
supervision over three thousand street workers of school age, and
of many thousand juvenile street idlers of all ages. The author,
Mr. Davis, was formerly Supervisor of Licensed Minors of the
Boston School Board, and is now Director of the Civic Service
House, Boston.
He discusses the influence of the street upon the children of
to-day, its allurements, its vices, its hazards, its various employ-
ments, and its night life. The book will prove helpful to priest,
social worker and teacher.
PRACTICAL ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. By Lyle Spencer,
Ph.D. Menesha, Wis. : Banta Publishing Co.
This handy little volume imparts much more information than
its title would lead one to expect.
The work is very practical, evidently that of a teacher as well
as a theorist, but we must take exception to the very puerile parody
given as an example on page forty-five : " To eat is human ; to
sleep, divine." There are such other defects as accents omitted on
French words ; examples printed under the caption " Wrong," and
repeated as " Right," for the sake of a comma which would never
554 NEW BOOKS [Jan,
be missed ; and a loss in their historic significance by depriving the
words Roman and Arabic of capitals when used to denote numerals,
but these are minor, and do not rob the work of its general useful-
ness.
HOW BELGIUM SAVED EUROPE. By Dr. Charles Sarolea.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.00 net.
As the. title suggests, Dr. Sarolea (whom Catholic readers
may remember for his study of Newman) here puts forth a plea for
the sympathy and support of the civilized world in behalf of brave
and heroic little Belgium. Speaking with the authority of an eye-
witness, he writes with an eloquent sincerity that will go far to carry
conviction. The style is so graceful that the book reads more like
a novel than a simple record of fact. After discounting for its
being a presentation of only one side, it is a valuable contribution
to the cause of the nation that saved its life by losing it. The whole
story diplomatic and military is told, and told well; besides
there is an excellent character sketch of King Albert. Altogether,
this is a book far and above the rank and file of war books. It is
really worth while.
FOURTEEN EUCHARISTIC TRIDUA. By Rev. Lambert Nolle,
O.S.B. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
Father Nolle has written a series of fifty sermons on the Holy
Eucharist. They are addressed chiefly to children preparing for
their First Communion, and centre about incidents of Old and New
Testament history. This book will prove helpful both to priests
and lay catechists.
THROUGH A DARTMOOR WINDOW. By Beatrice Chase. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.50 net.
These sketches of life on Dartmoor convey a most agreeable
atmosphere. They are not connected by any plot, but the same
characters move back and forth through these Devon people
among whom Miss Chase lives, evidently on the happiest and most
friendly terms. She would share her friendships with us, and as
she discloses them her cordial appreciation of her neighbors' kind-
ness and honesty, her sympathetic understanding of their ways and
views, and the gentle humor with which she depicts their peculiari-
ties, make very pleasant reading. The interest is almost entirely
human: there is little description of her scenic environment.
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 555
Some illustrations from photographs, however, make us feel that
the author has exercised a self-restraint that is quite unnecessary,
for what she does tell us gives us a wish for more.
The book has not exactly the qualities that spell permanence;
but it deserves, and will probably achieve, a popularity less transient
than the usual.
THE SILENCE OF SEBASTIAN. By Anna T. Sadlier. Notre
Dame, Ind. : The Ave Maria Press. $1.25 net.
This sane, interesting Catholic novel, whose mystery is en-
grossing and well-sustained, goes to prove that a good story can
be woven without the objectionable strands of intrigue and divorce
that so commonly mar the best sellers of to-day.
The well-knit and carefully developed plot, indicates that the
author worked with a creative purpose, instead of letting her story
grow like Topsy. The hero, although heroic in fortitude, is very
human in his big mistakes.
IN FATHER GABRIEL'S GARDEN. By Elsa Schmidt. New
York: Benziger Brothers. 75 cents.
Not only the exquisite blooms of nature, but beautiful blossoms
of virtue found place in the good Father's garden. There for
Annette and Lucie and their happy companions, he unfolded the
charming legends of flowerland in order to cultivate in his First-
Communion class flowers of the soul to adorn them for their
heavenly Guest.
\
THE ONE I KNEW THE BEST OF ALL. By Frances Hodgson
Burnett. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25 net.
An old favorite is here presented for new consideration in a
reprint, to which is added a foreword written especially for it by
the author. The lapse of twenty-two years since the book's first
appearance has not in the least diminished its attractiveness. Its
re-publication at this season, in a form cheaper than the original,
should prove well advised.
THE BELGIAN COOK-BOOK. Edited by Mrs. Brian Luck.
New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.00 net.
This book presents a group of recipes collected from Belgian
refugees in the United Kingdom. Its claim to consideration, how-
ever, does not rest upon this fact, nor is it a device to raise money
556 NEW BOOKS [Jan,
for any relief fund. Its appeal is in the renown of the Belgian
housewives, before the war, for their good tables and thrifty man-
agement. The editor recommends these recipes for the use of the
enterprising housewife whose means necessitate economy.
THE BURDEN OF HONOUR. By Christine Faber. New York :
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 75 cents.
The " burden " is a duty undertaken by a noble girl, for the
sake of others, in the fulfillment of which her honor is involved
and her happiness for many years sacrificed. The tragedy is deep,
the strokes of fate unrelieved : indeed, the gray stone mansion of
the tale might be twin to that " House of Seven Gables," were it
not that sorrow to a good Catholic can never be quite without hope.
However, the clouds lift and permit the sun of happiness to shine
forth.
SHALL I BE A DAILY COMMUNICANT? By Rev. F. Cassily,
S.J. Chicago: The Loyola University Press. 10 cents.
In a score of chapters, Father Cassily makes an excellent com-
mentary on the two Papal decrees of December 20, 1905, and Au-
gust 8, 1910, on Frequent and Daily Communion. We are pleased
to note that this little book has already reached its twenty- fourth
thousand.
THE HOME OF THE BLIZZARD. By Sir Douglas Mawson.
Two volumes. Philadelphia : J. P. Lippincott Co. $9.00.
Sir Douglas Mawson gives a most interesting account of his
Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-14. He describes in
popular fashion the exploration of that unknown portion of the
Antarctic continent which extends for some two thousand miles be-
yond the territory already gone over by Ross, Shackleton, Scott
and Drygalski.
The expedition was notable in its successful mapping out of
new country, the indefatigable labors of its scientists under the
most trying conditions, and the many new facts it has gained for
science. No one can read these two volumes and again question
the spirit which has prompted so many daring men to explore the
region about both Poles. The author promises further volumes
addressed solely to specialists, but in these pages he makes his appeal
to the man in the street. The average man is interested in reading
of how one spends the nights of a bitter Arctic winter, how one
1916.] NEW BOOKS 557
travels about in blizzards that cut one to the bone, and what are the
habits of penguins and sea elephants. The illustrations are numer-
ous and excellent.
MATILDE DI CANOSSA, by Leone Tondell (Rome: Ferrari.
1.25 lire). In these days of suffrage agitation and the political
activity of women, there is hardly a more interesting historical
figure than the Countess Matilda. She lived in strenuous times,
and the events in which she took a prominent part have influenced
history even to our own days. Henry IV. and the great Gregory
were working out the relations of Church and State, and Matilda
did her share in bringing about the rather striking triumph of the
Church. All these stirring and romantic events are told graphically
and sympathetically by the author. The word pictures he paints
will long remain in the reader's memory.
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
The latest numbers of The Catholic Mind published by the America Press
are as follows :
The Church and the Sex Problem, by Rev. R. H. Tierney, S J. ; The War's
Lesson, by Bishop O'Dwyer of Limerick; Catholic Schools for Catholic Youth,
by Archbishop Ireland; Temperance Against Prohibition, by Henry Maurice;
The Papacy, a Pastoral of Cardinal Mercier; The Church and the Immigrant,
by Monsignor F. C. Kelley ; The Contemporary Drama, by Rev. J. J. Daly, S J. ;
The Catholic School, by Wm. D. Guthrie; The Educative Influence of the
Catholic Press, by R. H. Tierney, S.J. ; The Church and Peace, by Arch-
bishop E. J. Hanna.
The Irish Messenger of Dublin have sent us:
The Women of France and the War, by Comtesse De Courson; The De-
votion of the First Fridays, by Rev. Joseph MacDonald, SJ. ; Our Lady of
Lourdes and How Eileen Learned to Keep House, by E. Leahy; Help for the
Holy Souls, Raccolta of Indulgenced Prayers, by Rev. Thomas MacDonald, C.C. ;
Life of St. Columbanus, by Rev. M. V. Ronan, C.C. ; A Boy's Choice, or a
Dialogue on Vocations, by Rev. Henry Davis; Shall I Be a Priest? by Rev.
Wm. Doyle, S J. ; The Church and Secular Education, and Is One Religion
as Good as Another, by Rev. Peter Finlay, SJ.
The Australian Catholic Truth Society of Melbourne have just issued
Catholicism and Peace, by Rev. J. Keating, SJ. ; The Ethics of War, by
Rev. E. Masterson, S J. ; Life of Pope Pius X., by M. A. S. ; Children's Early
and Frequent Communion, by Rev. J. Husslein, SJ. ; The Flaming Cross, by
Monsignor F. C. Kelley of Chicago.
The World Peace Foundation have published the documents that refer to
the sinking of the Wm. P. Frye and the Lusitania; the cargo of the W\l-
helmina in the British Prize Court ; the attitude of the Central European Alliance
toward American trade in munitions of war, and the arbitration engagements
made by various nations from 1828 to 1914.
The Society for the Propagation of the Faith have published a pamphlet
entitled Echoes of the War, which describes vividly the great need of the
558 NEW BOOKS [Jan.,
foreign missions. Owing to the great war in Europe, many schools, orphanages
and hospitals have been closed, and many of the missions are on the verge of
destitution. The Missionary Bishops of the world earnestly urge American
Catholics to help them continue their work.
In his Are Italy's Claims Justified? the Rev. M. D. Krmpotic has written
a strong indictment of Italy's claim to Istria, Dalmatia and the adjacent
islands. He claims that historically and ethnographically they are purely Croatian
countries, and have been so since the middle of the seventh century. The
Italians in Dalmatia and its islands constitute only three per cent of the total
population, and in Istria less than one-third.
Dr. Gustaf F. Steffen, of the University of Gothenberg, in his Russia,
Poland and the Ukraine, has written a strong plea for the independence of
the Ukrainians, who form thirty-two million of the one hundred and seventy-
two million of the Russian Empire. He hopes that at the end of the war the
Ukraine may become a free and self-governing state, as it was for many
centuries.
x Two interesting pamphlets on the Apostolate of the Laity have just been
published: Christian Manhood, by Bishop Canevan of Pittsburgh (Catholic
Truth Society), and The Lay Apostolate, by Dr. Mary A. Molloy, issued by
the College of St. Teresa Winona, Minn.
Frederick Pustet & Co. have just issued a Matrimonial Primer by Rev.
Andrew Klarmann (ten cents), which sets forth in clear and simple language
the Catholic doctrine of the marriage state, its obligations, laws and privileges.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Lettres du R. P. Lacordaire a des Jeunes Gens, compiled by Abbe Henri
Perreyve (Paris: Pierre Tequi. i/f.). We recommend to our readers this new
edition the eighteenth of Father Lacordaire's well-known letters to young men.
It breathes forth in every page the saintly Dominican's ardent love for the
Church, and his marvelous power over the young men of his day.
Les Cruautes Allemandes, by Leon Maccas (Paris: Nouvelle Libraire
Nationale. 3frs. 50). Leon Maccas, of the University of Athens, has pub-
lished a very bitter attack upon the German method of conducting war.
Alsace, Lorraine et France Reenane, by the Abbe Stephen Coube (Paris: P.
Lethielleux. 2frs.). In this compact little volume of two hundred pages the
Abbe Coube describes in detail the historical basis of the French claim to
Alsace-Lorraine.
L'Apostolat de la Jeunesse, by Abbe L. J. Brettonneau (Paris: Pierre
Tequi. 2frs.). The well-known editor of the Croix de Touraine has pub-
lished in this volume thirty addresses to young men given in French schools
and colleges during the past year. They deal entirely with stories of the
war, and inculcate bravery, patriotism, patience, and love of God in times
of trial.
La Sainte Eucharistic, by Abbe E. D. Hugon, O.P. (Paris: Pierre Tequi.
3frs. 50). The Abbe Hugon is well known for his excellent dogmatic treatises on
the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation and the Redemption, which have already
been noticed in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. The present volume treats
in detail of the Blessed Eucharist both as a sacrament and as a sacrifice. This
scholarly work certainly merits an English translation.
Pierre Tequi of Paris has just published the seventh edition of the well-
known treatise of the famous Oratorian, the Abbe Gratry, entitled De la Con-
naissance de I'Ame, in two volumes.
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.
There has been little change in the battle-
France, line since the advance made at the end of
September by the French and British.
Preparations are doubtless being made on both sides for another
active offensive. Recent rumors are afloat that the Germans are
on the point of forestalling the Allies, and that they have brought
to the front an enormous number of great guns with which they
hope to overwhelm their Western opponents as they did their
Eastern. It is now recognized by military authorities that it is on
this Western front that the decisive battles must be fought. All
the other campaigns are merely subsidiary, and so far as Great
Britain is concerned should, in their opinion, be merely defensive.
Success in France will bring in its train a successful issue of the
war, while defeat elsewhere will, although unfortunate, not affect the
ultimate result. Greater unity in the conduct of the campaign has
been secured by the formation of a common War Council, and
several visits have been paid to France by the Prime Minister of
Great Britain and other" members of his Cabinet. A change has
recently been made in the British command, the effect of which, of
course, is not yet seen. The new Minister of War has proved
himself an opponent of the favoritism which has had hitherto a
certain influence in the appointments of French officers. The won-
derful success of the " Loan of Victory " has made manifest not
merely the unanimity of the French people in support of the war,
but the vast resources they have at their disposal. The first day's
subscriptions is said to have amounted to five billions, and subscrip-
tions for several weeks kept pouring in in such abundance as to em-
barrass the officials. The subscribers were largely people of small
means, who had saved in the usual French way a way which has
made France for many years the source of supply for the financial
560 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
needs of the Continent. The appeal recently made to the French
people to place the gold in their possession at the service of the
State, has resulted in raising the stock of gold in the Bank of
France to the immense sum of a billion, which is, it is said, a
worlds record.
Italy still holds towards Germany a some-
Italy, what anomalous position. While at war
with Austria-Hungary, Germany's partner,
she is nominally at peace with Austria-Hungary's ally, although
diplomatic relations have been broken off. The veil is very thin,
however, for it is known that Bavarians and Wurtemburgers have
been opposed to the Italian forces in the Tyrol, and there is little
reason to doubt that the submarines in the Mediterranean, although
flying the Austrian flag, are in reality war vessels of the German
navy. In yet another respect Italy is differentiated from her Allies,
Great Britain, France and Russia. In the latter all parties are
practically unanimous in support of the war, whereas in Italy
there is a powerful section which was in favor of maintaining
neutrality, of which Signor Giolitti is the influential representative.
Moreover, the aspirations of Italy for certain districts on the east
coast of the Adriatic do not in every respect coincide with the ambi-
tions of the Slavs, of whom Serbia is the representative. For these
reasons complete confidence was not entertained by some in the per-
severance of Italy, especially as she had not signed the agreement
made by Great Britain, France and Russia, not to conclude peace ex-
cept by mutual consent. By her recent adherence, however, to this
agreement these doubts have been removed, and Italy is now pledged
not to make a separate peace, and has cast in her lot unreservedly
with that of her Allies. As Japan has also just given in her
adherence there are now five Great Powers pledged to the con-
tinuance of the conflict until a peace can be made which is agreeable
to all.
The neutrality which Italy was unanimous in maintaining from
the outbreak of the war unquestionably rendered a capital service
to France, for had Italy joined in with Germany she could seriously
have crippled the French operations by a concentration of troops
on the French frontier. And if the progress made by the Italian
army in its offensive movement against Austria has not been great,
it has at all events met with no serious setback and has kept em-
ployed some three hundred thousand men who might have been
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 561
acting against Russia. The difficulty of the ground in the neighbor-
hood of Goritzia is said to be as great as that on which British
and French have been engaged in the peninsula of Gallipoli, while
in the Trentino the scene of conflict has been on heights of between
eight thousand and twelve thousand feet, while siege guns have
been transported above the snow line.
The prospects of the Allies in the Balkans
The Balkans. are far from bright. The Serbians have been
driven into Albania. Their would-be suc-
corers, France and Great Britain, have been forced to abandon the
country which they set out, all too late, to defend. The only
hopes which they now entertain are that they may be able to hold
and fortify Salonika, which is in Greek territory, making it a base
for a future advance when reinforcements in sufficient strength
have arrived. The Allies have come to the decision to continue
the campaign; France, it is understood, being more in favor of
this course than Great Britain. Italy, it is reported, has sent, or is
on the point of sending, sixty thousand soldiers across the Adriatic
to bring help to the Serbs by way of Albania, but this force cannot
do much in the way of taking the offensive against the Powers
now in possession of Serbian territory. No generous action in
support of her neighbor can be expected from Rumania, the state
which in the late Balkan Wars made her own selfish interests the sole
guide of her conduct. Russia is pledged to the support of Serbia,
and has had a large army in readiness for some weeks. How this
army is to reach the scene of action, unless Rumania is won over,
it is difficult to see. To force her way through Rumania would
only result in giving another ally to the Central Powers. To trans-
port it by sea seems to be beyond the capacity of the ships at Russia's
disposal. The Allied Powers are pledged to the restoration to
Serbia of her territory and independence. The redemption of this
pledge, however, it would seem, depends upon a decisive victory in
other fields of war, the most probable of which is France.
The unsatisfactory military situation is due to the want of
foresight and of co-ordination in the diplomatic actions of the
Powers. Upon the British Foreign Office the chief blame is to be
cast, as is recognized even by political friends of Sir Edward Grey.
As long ago as April it was known that Germany was preparing
for the invasion of Serbia, and if military help was to be given
VOL. CII. 30
562 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
steps should have been taken at that time. The fact is that Sir
Edward Grey could not bring himself to look upon it as possible
that the King of Bulgaria would betray the cause of which he was
by his position bound to be one of the chief defenders. To that
cause he had sacrificed the religion of his children. To Russia
was due the liberation of Bulgaria from the thraldom to Turkey,
under which she had groaned for centuries. It seemed impossible
that an act of perfidy almost without a precedent in the world's
history was to be taken into account as one of the likely conting-
encies. Hence when Serbia, knowing better the type of man with
whom she had to deal, proposed to attack Bulgaria a short time
before she herself was attacked, Sir Edward Grey discouraged the
proposal, the more so as special bonds existed between Great Britain
and Bulgaria. Forty years ago the deeds committed by Ferdi-
nand's present ally, Turkey, in Bulgaria were for that time
the most heinous crimes that had stained the : annals even of
Turkey, although within the last few months they have been sur-
passed by the wholesale massacres of Armenians by the same ally.
Mr. Gladstone roused to indignation by the atrocities of forty
years ago stirred the country to its depths. Being at the time
out of office he could not take practical steps; these, however,
were taken by Russia with the full sympathy of all that was
noblest and best in England. From that day to this Bulgaria has
always acknowledged a debt of gratitude to Great Britain, recog-
nizing that moral support, although not sufficient, is of high value.
Sir Edward Grey failed to realize the change that had come over not
so much the people of Bulgaria as its ruler, and therefore hesitated
to give his approval to the strong measure proposed by Serbia.
In this way the whole of the Balkan diplomacy has been conducted,
hope being cherished of good results until the time for action had
passed.
The fact is that well-wishers of the Balkan States must
be classed as impracticable idealists. Nations which for any reason
soever have allowed themselves to live for centuries in subjection
to a conquering foe, have lost the tradition of freedom, and in a
time of crisis are unwilling to take the necessary risk. A favorable
opportunity was given in the first half of this year by the visit of
General Pau to the sovereigns of the Balkan States, in order to in-
duce them to form a confederation for common action in union
with the Allies. This opportunity was the best that is likely to
present itself, and no vision of what is to their own advantage
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 563
is now to be looked for. That the States in question have rulers
of foreign birth or extraction, who have misled them and thwarted
their best interests, may be a mitigating circumstance in the judg-
ment which has to be passed upon these peoples, but so small a
circumstance as this would not have stood in the way of a nation
really deserving to be free. The fact, however, that Serbia and
Montenegro have rulers of their own race rendered it easier for
these States to rise to the opportunity, and there is scarcely any
record of a more heroic stand against unparalleled odds than that
which these two nations have made against the Teuton and the
Bulgar.
The failure of Greece to prove herself worthy of a place
among the noble nations deserving to rank with Belgium and Serbia,
while disappointing is not surprising to those who remember her
conduct in the war with Turkey in 1897. Then her army made
her the laughing-stock of the world, and she had to be rescued
from the consequences of her folly by the intervention of the
Powers. Although bound by a treaty with Serbia to come
to the latter's aid in the event of an attack by Bulgaria, not
only has she broken this treaty, but has added to her offence by
giving the cynical excuse that she was only bound to help Serbia
in case she was attacked by Bulgaria; as, however, Germany and
Austria-Hungary have joined with Bulgaria, on that account Greece
is not bound. That is to say, in plain words, the greater the danger
and the need, the less does she hold herself bound to give the help
promised. The truth is that it is the fear of Germany that has
taken control of King Constantine and of those who are now
holding on to power in defiance of the Constitution. They have
before their eyes the fate of Belgium, and are in dread lest the
Germans would mete out to her a like measure of frightfulness,
knowing well that in the event of hostilities with the Allies no such
treatment would befall Greece at their hands.
It may be well to make as clear as is possible, with the knowl-
edge of facts now available, the series of events which has led
up to the complicated situation now existing, in which the British
and French are on the point of fighting on Greek soil, with the
enforced consent of its Sovereign, an army the Sovereign of which is
believed to have a secret treaty with that very Sovereign in whose
country the war is being waged. On September 2ist, M. Vene-
zelos, the Prime Minister of Greece, sent a request to France and
Great Britain for the support of one hundred and fifty thousand
564 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
men. It must be remembered that Greece both theoretically and in
practise up to the present time has been a really constitutional
country, in which the King does not govern in person but through
Ministers who represent the majority of the Parliament. The
request thus made was that of a Prime Minister possessed of such
a majority. On September 24th, this request was accepted. It
was made by M. Venezelos on the occasion of the Bulgarian mobil-
ization, in order that Greece might be able to give that help to Serbia
which the treaty between the two countries required in the event
of Serbia's being attacked by Bulgaria. The request of M. Vene-
zelos was complied with, and Great Britain and France began at
once to make preparations for their entry upon the new field of
operations, which made for Great Britain the seventh of such
fields; the rest being France, the Dardanelles, Egypt, Mesopo-
tamia, East Africa and Cameroon.
Greece mobilized on the twenty-fourth in response to the Bul-
garian mobilization. On the twenty-seventh, Sir Edward Grey threw
cold water on Serbia's proposal to attack Bulgaria before the latter's
mobilization was completed, declaring that all the political and diplo-
matic arguments were against such action. On the next day, speak-
ing in Parliament, he promised to " our friends in the Balkans " all
the support in our power, " without reserve and without qualifica-
tion." This was interpreted to be a promise of direct military help
to Serbia, but it was really meant, according to Sir Edward Grey, as
a promise to Greece to support her in fulfilling her duties under
the treaty with Serbia. On October 2d, twelve days after
having made the request for help, M. Venezelos, for reasons of
which various accounts have been given, made a formal protest
against the landing of the Allies. On the fifth, King Constantine
repudiated his Prime Minister, and the latter at once resigned.
On the sixth, the Austro-Hungarians began their attack from the
north. On the seventh, the first of the Allied troops began to
land at Salonika. On the fourteenth, the new Ministry formed by
M. Zaimis publicly refused to keep the treaty which had been made
with Serbia in the case of her being attacked by Bulgaria, an
event which had taken place on October nth. What were
the Allies to do? The State that asked them for assistance now
refused to do the very thing for which it had sought help. They
decided to prosecute the plan on which they had entered, and to
give help to Serbia, although Greece had failed in her duty,
nay even with the possibility that Greece might prove hostile,
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 565
and that the army which they had come to help might even join
their enemies. These apprehensions were exaggerated, but there
seems to have been serious talk of the internment of the Allied
forces. It was, in fact, found necessary to bring home to the King
that in the game he was playing for his own safety, the Teutons
were not the only enemy he had to dread.
The sea power of the Allies has proved so far a sufficient
deterrent, although it has not yet been brought into play. What
is called the " blockade," by which Greece was brought to terms,
was merely the suspending of the economic and commercial facilities
which Greece had enjoyed at the hands of the Allies. The attempt
made by Great Britain and France to succor Serbia in view of
Greece's defection, and the late period at which preparations were
begun, has proved totally inadequate, and Serbia now lies prostrate
under the feet of the Teuton and Bulgar to rise again in the event
of a decisive victory of the Allies, who have pledged their faith
to this heroic nation for the restoration to full independence. The
Allies have made themselves secure at Salonika with the acquies-
cence of the Greeks, who have removed their force. Whether an
attack will be made upon them by either the Teutons or the Bulgars
is uncertain at the time these lines are being written.
The successful resistance which the Turks
Turkey. have offered shows that Turkey is not such a
sick old man as has generally been believed.
Of course the assistance rendered by German officers and engineers,
together with the supply of munitions, has contributed very largely
to this success. No one, however, denies the stubborn bravery of
Turkish troops, especially behind fortifications, and they are praised
by their enemies as being clean fighters. The failure of the British
at the Dardanelles is due to the skillful work of German engineers
in the construction of trenches and of fortifications on ground
which commands every position of the Allies, and to the superiority
in numbers of the Turks. The failure seems to be admitted. Sir
Charles Munro, who has recently been sent to relieve Sir Ian Hamil-
ton, is said to have recommended the evacuation of the peninsula.
This, however, has not so far been carried into effect. A discus-
sion is going on in England about the responsibility for making
an attempt which has proved so costly both in lives and in treasure,
and so impossible of accomplishment. It would be a mistake,
566 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
however, to think that it has had no good results. Undertaken as
it was at the request of Russia, in order to divert troops from
the Caucasus, it has had that effect, and has cemented the bonds
between Great Britain and that Empire. It is possible that it has
prevented, or at least deferred, a renewal of the attack on Egypt.
A new attack, however, on the Suez Canal is anticipated. Rumors
are abroad of the preparations that have been made for some time.
A railway is said to have been built to carry water supplies.
When within a few miles of Bagdad the British have been
driven back, and have had to withdraw to a place some eighty
miles distant. The campaign in this region had been uniformly
successful, although the Turks had at several places offered a
keen resistance. One of the battles was fought at the place where
tradition locates the Garden of Eden. Jerusalem itself is said to
be one of the chief Turkish centres. As the war goes on the fight-
ing draws nearer to Armageddon, spoken of in the Apocalypse,
and situated on the southwest of the Plain of Esdraelon.
Persia has not escaped the efforts which
Persia. have been made by Germany to bring other
nations to her side. In fact, in some degree,
it has become the scene of warfare. With their Allies, the Turks,
the Germans have been operating against the British and the Rus-
sians within Persian territory. A series of attacks has been made
on Consular officers. At Ispahan and Shiraz they have been shot
at and wounded. Three hours were given to the British and
Russian Consuls to leave Kermanshah by a German official who
had two hundred men at his command. An effort was made to
get the Shah to leave the capital in the company of the German
and Turkish Ministers. In fact, had not Russia and Great Britain
acted with decision, Persia might have have been led to act some-
what in the same way as Bulgaria. A warning given by the two
Powers seems, however, to have had a salutary effect ; a threatened
advance of Russian troops being perhaps the more potent
influence in inducing the Shah to renounce his purpose of
abandoning the capital. Attention has been so much engrossed
in the war that very little has been given to the purely
internal affairs of the State. It still retains at least nominally a
constitutional form of government. Meetings of the Mejliss con-
tinue to be held. A Cabinet and Ministers still wield the executive
power. The country, however, has fallen into a state of chaos.
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 567
The gendarmerie which was the only force which had the least
influence in maintaining order, recently revolted because its pay
is in arrears.
The Republic has come to an end in China
China. by a vote, more or less free and uninfluenced,
of the large majority of the Provinces.
The Empire, with Yuan Shih-kai as the first Emperor of a new
dynasty, has not yet been formally proclaimed; that event, how-
ever, contrary though it is to the advice tendered by Great Britain,
France and Japan, will not long be deferred. It will be remem-
bered that Yuan was never a believer in the fitness of China
for the republican form of government, and before his election
as President openly expressed his convictions. He accepted the
office of President because it was pressed upon him and, truth to
say, he has acted more as an absolute ruler than even as a constitu-
tional monarch. The advice given by the Powers arose from their
fear of the disturbances which they apprehended might arise on
account of opposition to the change. They have been overruled,
as Yuan feels sure that the desire for the change is practically
unanimous.
Even China is not outside of the sphere of the German propa-
ganda. It has even been made into a centre of efforts to influence
public opinion in India against its British rulers. It is even as-
serted on fairly good authority that the German concessions at
Shanghai and other places have been made into centres for the
supply of arms and explosives to revolutionaries in India. Exports
owned by German firms, it is said, are sent through Chinese firms
to this country on which they are bought, the price finding a way
to Germany. In various other ways Germany is deriving very
large financial support from its agents in China a thing which is
very annoying to the Allied Powers, as they do not know how to
find a remedy. The proposed seizure of the German concessions in
China would be a too high-handed proceeding. A report that
German Reserve officers have been engaged by the Chinese govern-
ment has called forth a strong protest in Russia.
Three years and a half after his accession
Japan. to the throne, Yoshihito, the new Emperor
of Japan, has been crowned with elaborate
and ancient ceremonies. With a single exception, the Emperors
5 68 RECENT EVENTS [Jan.,
of Japan for over one thousa-nd one hundred years have been
crowned on the same spot. The present Emperor is the one hun-
dred and twenty-third of the same dynasty. His ancestors have
borne rule for more than two thousand years, forming an unbroken
line, unique in the annals of the world. Hundreds of thousands
witnessed the ceremonies, and the utmost enthusiasm was displayed.
His majesty made a speech to his people, exhorting them to unity
and patriotism and in praise of his predecessor. Among the honors
conferred was the bestowal of the junior grade of fourth Court
rank upon the shade of one of our fellow-countrymen Lafcadio
Hearn.
On October iQth, Japan gave her adhesion to the Declaration
of September 5, 1914, between the United Kingdom, France and
Russia, engaging not to conclude peace separately during the present
war. By the terms of this declaration the Governments agree
that when terms of peace come to be discussed, no one of the
Allies will demand conditions of peace without the previous agree-
ment of each of the other Allies. Japan's adhesion has since been
followed by that of Italy. To Russia, Japan has furnished, and
will continue to furnish, an ample supply of arms and munitions.
She is capable of arming two-thirds of the Russian army. If it
appeared desirable, Japan, according to the statement of the Foreign
Minister, would send an army so strong that it would not incur
any risk of defeat.
With Our Readers.
'THE CATHOLIC WORLD has more than once called the attention
1 of its readers to the worth and beauty of the poems of that
Catholic singer, Lionel Johnson. They will be pleased to learn that
The Macmillan Company has now republished his poems, which were
out of print. Johnson is a poet that expressed most consistently and
fully that spirit of joy, a reecho of the prison song of St. Paul,
" Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice," which is uniquely
Catholic in this world of sadness and despair. Lionel Johnson saw God
in the world, and God victorious through His Divine Son, Jesus Christ,
our Saviour. He is the singer of the victory of Christ reigning now
and forever. And for him the real abiding union of the soul with
the Living Christ, gave life and death and nature a new meaning of
eternal joy. The struggle of the Christian soul here was, with John-
son, to use some words of Father Daly, on another subject, in a recent
issue of America: "A blessed struggle and a sweet trial, and the
sadness of it has no kinship with sorrow. For we know the heart
can be expanded to receive larger and larger draughts of beauty by
reason of that Divine principle of life within us, which we call the
supernatural life of grace, growing in capacity and power with every
good act, to be lost only by sin, to be changed at the last into the very
light of God's glory in which we shall see and enjoy the Divine Lover
of our soul face to face forever."
* * * *
THE republication of Lionel Johnson's poems will again draw attention
to the importance of Irish literature, and particularly of Irish poetry.
The day of Yeats is passing, has passed. Neither Yeats nor the fol-
lowers of Yeats ever understood thoroughly the genius of the Irish
people; hence they never could justly interpret it and for the same
reason they can never be considered true representative Irish poets. Mr.
J. M. Flood, writing in The Irish Rosary, gives the statement of Stop-
ford Brooke, that there are three distinctive elements in modern Irish
poetry : "nationality, religion and rebellion. Rebellion, the protest of the
weak against the strong, independence against tutelage, the love of one's
own land in her hour of sorrow and danger. In Ireland, religion
has always been closely allied with nationality, and has undergone the
same sufferings. The note of this poetry is nearly always Catholic,
and Catholic with the pathos, the patience and the passion of perse-
cution added to its religious fervor. Persecution has deepened its
music into a cry." This critic finds that of the poets who have treated
religious themes, Aubrey de Vere is first in "genius and achieve-
570 WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
ment." Those whose appreciation is best worth having will, he thinks,
always rate highly the work of Aubrey de Vere. De Vere is most
successful in his sonnets, and Mr. Flood thinks that his " Sorrow "
is one of the best sonnets ever written. For very honorable mention
this critic selects Sir Samuel Ferguson, Denis Florence McCarthy
(whose best work it must be remembered was that of translating) ;
Katherine Tynan whose poetry " shows a deep and sincere feeling,
and an intimate appreciation and love of the beauty of external nature,
both perhaps derived from the influence which the most lovable
amongst the Saints of the Church, the Poor Man of Assisi, has ex-
ercised upon her mind;" and Lionel Johnson, to whom is given an
all too brief consideration, but of whom it is said that he " has
written poems that recall the best work of de Vere." The new
edition of Johnson's poems will be treated at length in a future issue
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
THE New York Nation in its review of the Life of the late Bishop
Potter, speaking of the three parties in the Protestant Episcopal
Church, " Low," " Broad " and " High," says " it was with the middle
group that the Bishop naturally took his place. Officially he would
identify himself with none of them, but rejoiced that his ecclesiastical
fold could shelter alike the High Churchman suspected of the Rome-
ward list, the good Evangelical, and the Latitudinarian poised upon the
ragged edge of heresy. This impartiality, from which the Bishop
would not willingly swerve in matters small or great, was simply il-
lustrated in the response to an appeal from a young man who himself
now wears the robes, but at the time in question was on the point of
study for the ministry. He was hesitating between two divinity schools
of different stripes, and earnestly sought the Bishop's advice to solve
his problem. 'To which school should I go?' was the question, and
the Bishop's characteristic reply, 'To whichever you please, my son,
and God bless you.' "
* * * *
IT is notorious that Bishop Potter in this instance exemplified the
Protestant Episcopal Church itself. The Protestant Episcopal
Church is a congeries of widely different beliefs on the most important
questions of Christian truth. A member of that Church may believe
what he wishes. One member may accept apostolic succession and
the validity of priestly orders, and another may deny both. Thus Dr.
Barry, Rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin, speaks
of Dr. Reiland, Rector of the Episcopal Church of St. George : " Dr.
Reiland would deny even the priesthood. He would denature the
word. He would call the holy communion merely a memorial, and
would deny everything that makes it worth while."
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 571
One member may believe matrimony to be a sacrament; another
that it is simply a civil contract; one may believe in One, True
Church ; another in many churches that like his own are in a measure
the true Church; one may believe in the Sacrament of Penance and
another may emphatically deny it; one may believe in the Real
Presence and the reservation of the sacrament and another may think it
idolatry to worship the Host; one may accept the definite inspira-
tion of Scripture; another may believe the Scriptures contain many
errors ; one may offer prayers for the dead, and another may deny the
existence of a purgatory; one may believe in the Resurrection of Christ
from the dead, and another, like Canon Streeter, may deny it with
impunity.
* * * *
AS a Church the Protestant Episcopal Church is not sure what doc-
trines its members should hold. It has within it no authority that
can define its doctrine and be able to enforce its decisions. If its
bishops were to meet to-day, there would be no more possibility of
harmony on fundamental questions than there has been in similar meet-
ings in the past. If, perchance, there should be harmony on a par-
ticular question, the source of the harmony and the reason of accept-
ing the decision would be the individual judgment of all participating.
The belief in a Church, founded by Jesus Christ with definite authority
to teach the whole world His definite Gospel, passed from the Epis-
copal Church when it renounced its allegiance to the Vicar of Christ
and accepted the bondage of the State; the passing is further shown
by the official acceptance of the title, " Protestant " Episcopal. Fur-
thermore the Anglican Bishop of Oxford lately testified to the same
loss of Catholic power and rightful Catholic claim. In the following
quotation we pass over the interpretation put by Dr. Gore
on the words he quotes from Scripture: his declaration that the
Anglican Church has lost the power of a divinely-instituted Church is
strong and clear enough : " I believe that if the Church of England
is not to go to pieces, it must recover speedily, and not merely in some
remote future, the power which it ought never to have suffered itself
to lose, the power of binding or loosing with which Christ endowed
His Church. These words 'binding' or 'loosing' and the sister words,
'remitting' or 'retaining sins/ describe nothing else than this the power
of the spiritual society as a whole, first in legislation and then in
disciplinary action, through its divinely-appointed ministry, to assert
itself over all its members and to claim their allegiance."
* * * *
ALL these facts are notorious. They must have their solemn import
for those members of the Episcopal Church who call themselves
members of the Catholic Party, and endeavor to console themselves with
572 WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
the notion that they are in some way members of the Catholic Church.
An appeal to their own Church would scarcely result in an official decla-
ration of Catholic principles. For example, Dr. McKim, of Washing-
ton, states in The Living Church, December 18, 1915, "that the defeat of
Dr. Manning's attempt in the last General Convention of the Protestant
Episcopal Church to have the word 'Protestant' taken out, was generally
recognized as a defeat of the party to which Dr. Manning belongs.
And Dr. McKim seems quite certain of the mind of the Protestant
Episcopal body. He is even defiant. " If the editor of The Living
Church has any doubt about the present feeling of the Church let
him introduce a resolution for the change of name at St. Louis and see
what the result will be." Or, if we suppose that a meeting were
held to-day of all the bishops of what they are pleased to include under
the title Catholic Church, it is beyond question that their appeal would
be denied ; they would first be called upon to recognize and to submit
to that See, obedience to which has been the test of Catholicism since
the world knew Christianity.
* * * *
IN all truth as soon as a member of the Episcopal Church reflects
on his assumption that he is a member of the Catholic Church,
and asks himself the justification of it, he is unable to give anything
like a satisfactory answer. Times without number have theories
been formulated to support the contention of the Catholic Party in
the Anglican and Episcopal Churches, but as soon as they are brought
into the presence of facts they wither away. Why is the position
of a member of the Episcopal Church more Catholic than that of a
Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian? The protest of those prom-
inent officials and members of the Episcopal Church against the action
of the Board of Missions that approved the sending of delegates to
the Panama Congress is based on the supposition that they are more
Catholic: that is, they are members of the true Church of Christ,
and logically cannot affiliate with the religious work of Protestant
Churches.' How do they justify such a position? Just as often as
they have attempted a justification, just so often have they failed.
* * * *
THE London Tablet recently spoke of two of the latest theories
put forth in defence of such a " Catholic " claim on the
part of Anglicans and Episcopalians. " The Catholic Faith," says
the Rev. N. P. Williams, one of these defenders, " is what is taught by
the majority of bishops." Would it be sufficient, then, for the major-
ity of bishops to meet to-day and by vote determine the Catholic
Faith? By no means: for it is difficult to-day to know what is the
majority of bishops. It was easy, according to Mr. Williams, to learn
this up to the year 1054, but in that year darkness came upon the
I 9 i6.] WITH OUR READERS 573
Church, the word of its Divine Founder failed, and we no longer have
the sure test of old. " But, yes," continues this ingenious apologist,
" we have the same test as of old. Whatever Church holds to-day what
was held as Catholic truth before 1054 is a branch of the true Church.
There are five such branches, the Roman, Eastern, Old Catholic, Angli-
can and Bulgarian. It follows from this theory that the Anglican or
Episcopal Church is orthodox now because it was born after 1054.
Born before that year it would have come " out of due time " and
been heretical and schismatical.
OUCH a theory " is, of course, nothing but an ingenious figment,
O made on purpose to cover, not the facts, but the Anglican inter-
pretation of the facts. Somehow Anglicans, Romans, Easterns must
be got in. It is impossible to make the consent of the majority of
bishops now the test. That majority rejects the whole branch theory.
The majority of bishops now teach the Papal theory. So you start
by harking to the majority before 1054. This is utterly arbitrary,
implying an essential change in the Church of Christ in that year;
and it will not, in a dozen ways, cover Mr. Williams' own supposed
facts. If till 1054 there was one great central block that was the
Church, so that all who were not in communion with it were schis-
matics, all who taught otherwise than it taught were heretics; and
if in 1054 there was no longer such a central block, then in that year
the Church ceased to exist. Mr. Williams sees that the Church can-
not cease to exist. So he thinks that we must admit that the central
block goes on in both halves. This is the usual Anglican incapacity
to argue without pre-supposing what they have to prove. We, too,
say that the Church cannot cease to exist; but we conclude, since in
this theory it would do so, that " the theory is wrong. Mr. Williams
is also much too generous in giving us all the Church taught down
to 1054. Some Anglicans admit the first three centuries, some the
first six. The first eleven are impossible for them. The year 1054
brings us well past Thedore Studita, the formula of Hormisdas,
Nicholas I., and so on. It would be impossible for anyone, with any
knowledge at all of the documents, to deny that by the eleventh cen-
tury the overwhelming majority of bishops taught the visible union
of the Church under the supremacy of the Pope, taught that a body of
Christians not in communion with the others is in a state of schism,
denied from top to bottom the whole branch theory Mr. Williams is
out to defend."
* # # #
MR. LACEY has still another theory in defence of the Catholic Party
of Episcopalians, and that is, that no theory is needed. His theory,
as The Tablet quotes from The Church Times of November 12, 1915,
574 WITH OUR READERS [Jan.,
is that it is a mistake to look for any " reasoned and coherent theory
of the Church " at all. The Tablet continues its criticism : " No need
to justify your position if you are an Anglican: no need to discuss
anything. All you have to do is to call your own presuppositions facts
and to rest on them. Only could not the Mormon, the Hindu, the
Unitarian, the Polytheist say just the same and with the same right? "
Mr. Lacey's position is " disingenuous to say the least. When he
says he has no theory he does not speak the truth. He has one; he
acts on it all the time : it is one that demands proof very insistently,
because it is a theory that is denied by the overwhelming majority
of Christians throughout the world. Mr. Lacey believes that he is
a member of the Catholic Church, that the sect to which he belongs
is part of the Church founded by Christ. That is theory. It is
theory denied by most people. It is theory that needs proof in view
of the fact that the Anglican sect is in schism with all other Churches,
and yet does not claim to be the whole Church." " All this play-
ing with the pretense of having no theory, of despising consistency,
is only a pose and a silly one. If a man really stuck to having no
theory, refused all cogency in every argument, were consistently
inconsistent, then at least we could have a certain respect for him.
But no one ever is, because no one is a complete agnostic on every
possible subject. All men use argument, and expect their opponent
to be convinced by it, even those who argue against arguing."
is no Church in existence, under the name Protestant Epis-
1 copal, such as Dr. Manning describes in his article in The Con-
structive Quarterly for December, 1915. Some individuals of that
Church profess the definite doctrines outlined in his picture; but the
many others who differ with them will say that they represent the
teachings of the Protestant Episcopal Church; and there is no voice
that can authoritatively declare who is right and who is wrong.
It would be just as true to group together the innumerable sects
of Protestantism with their divergent and contradictory doctrines, call
them " The Evangelical Church," and speak of it as a definite organic
unity, as it is to give this definite, authoritative, and dogmatic character
to the Protestant Episcopal Church.
HTHE same issue of The Constructive Quarterly contains another
A article, entitled Evangelicanism in the Church of England. The con-
ditions which it describes prevail also in the Protestant Episcopal
Church of the United States. It may help to show those who are
looking for the true Catholic faith in the Episcopal Church, that they
are asking water of a well which has long since run dry.
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 575
r PO listen too absorbingly and constantly to the cry of humanitarian-
1 ism in favor of convicts may make one deaf to the primal need of
prison discipline. To fill one's ears with the alluring appeal of Chris-
tian unity may lead one to be less conscious of that primal duty of the
individual, to which unity and all else is subordinate his direct, in-
dividual, and eternal responsibility to God, Who made us, and Jesus
Christ Who redeemed us. The unity supremely incumbent on every
soul is its own unity with God through the truth of His Divine Son,
Jesus Christ. He cannot ask others to follow unless he has first led
the way. He cannot save others unless he has saved himself.
THE Catholic Church has always looked at truth first and unity after-
wards, because unity is born of truth, just as peace is born of
holiness. There are no corporate conversions to the Catholic Church.
Were we to suppose that to-day a thousand expressed a desire to
accept the Catholic faith, their reception would be a matter of indi-
vidual understanding and individual belief. It is the individual im-
mortal soul that is of supreme importance to the Catholic Church. Her
sole work is to lead that soul to God and eternal life. And so she
pleads for every individual to make not man, nor men, but his own
soul and God the one supreme consideration of his thought and action,
the one demand to which all else must, if necessary, be sacrificed.
* * * *
MANY will recall the famous passage in the Apologia wherein New-
man tells how he realized this truth after he became a Catholic.
" Only this I know full well now, and did not know then, that the
Catholic Church allows no image of any sort, material or immaterial,
no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the
Blessed Virgin, to come between the soul and its Creator. It is face
to face, solus cum solo, in all matters between man and his God. He
alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go
in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude."
And, after studying the Exercises of St. Ignatius, he wrote : " For
here again, in a matter consisting in the purest and most direct acts
of religion in the intercourse between God and the soul, during a
season of recollection, of repentance, of good resolution, of inquiry
into vocation the soul was sola cum solo; there was no cloud inter-
posed between the creature and the Object of his faith and love. The
command practically enforced was, 'My son, give Me thy heart/ "
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. CIL FEBRUARY, 1916. No. 611.
THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION.
BY MAY BATEMAN.
I.
NEW literature is coming into being, a literature born
of the war, though there may be no mention of war
in it. But the great upheaval of our natures which
the last eighteen months has wrought, has made
havoc of their inessential parts, and with them the
mannerisms, the insincerities, the trivial little poses of art too have
shredded away. Just as in daily life we are come up against primi-
tive fundamental needs, so that the world in general contains for
us very much what it contained for the Crusaders of old (at once
immeasurably less and immeasurably more than we have looked for
of late years), so too in art the individual man's efforts to create
we find a new simplicity and strength because simplicity and
strength are in the air to-day. And simplicity and strength may be
reckoned amongst the most effectual enemies of unfaith and ma-
terialism.
Men's thoughts have lifted to eternal truths all through the
ages in the lean years of suffering and loss. With impermanent
and transitory things dissolving before their eyes, they have hurled
headlong through mists of doubt in the attempt to find firm foot-
holds and clear views. If not here, elsewhere there must be some-
thing to satisfy the heart's craving. " In a desert land where
there is no way and no water " we thirst for healing springs. Break
through the conventional crust under which we conceal our better
instincts, and which of us is really materialistic? The absurd ac-
cessories of artificial civilization which we heap about us; the
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. CIL 37
578 THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION [Feb.,
symbols of wealth which we value not for their beauty but for what
they represent these are not the things we take to our hearts, in
view, say, of Flying Death approaching us out of the drifting clouds.
To-day, with the winds of eternity blowing fast in upon our
naked little souls, with our neighbors' souls, too, singularly bare
to us in the new vision; conscious that with the passing of vast
legions of heroic dead, there are passing too but these into a lasting
death the wraiths of much we once thought precious, we find
ourselves thrown back upon ourselves and out into the infinite.
Heart-searching springs from this, and widening of channels of
the soul formerly blocked. With the conditions of life so altered
that now the writer of to-day scarcely knows if he regards it as a
whole from the natural or the supernatural standpoint, he finds
himself more in accord with the more mystical view which the
Catholic novelist, by very nature of his training, has always held.
II.
That Catholic view unworldly, we might say, in the wider
significance of a term limited through misuse crops out unmistak-
ably in Catholic work, in the eyes of another Catholic at least.
Here we are up against a paradox. For there is at once a subtlety
and a directness in Catholic writing, which another of the same
mind, if he has any pretensions to intelligence, cannot escape. The
book in question may not allude even obscurely to any controversial
matter, but the observant Catholic, like the Giant in Jack and the
Beanstalk, will none the less " smell blood." For almost any psy-
chological fiction grapples with the problem of what for want of
a better name the world calls right and wrong. Upon points like
these the Catholic view is practical and emphatic. In the Catholic
novel, you find sin considered in its relation to a real God and not
only an abstract Good, which is another matter. Even venial sins
left persistently unchecked count under these conditions. In
the non-Catholic novel, unless it is a character study of some par-
ticular sect or denomination, like Eden Philpott's Old Delabole, or
Miss E. S. Stephens' Sarah Eden, you will find " God " does not
come into the question except as an Abstract Being. In the non-
Catholic novel the issues described are immediately emotional is-
sues; or possibly the effect which given circumstances produce on
persons indirectly concerned. The deepest significance of any sin
is usually left unregarded.
1916.] THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION 579
That habit of mind which is part of the childhood's heritage
of a born Catholic, and which penetrates him quickly or slowly as
the case may be if he is a convert, helps him to grasp this deeper
significance. Churches open from dawn till dusk, where the
passer-by may drop in as naturally as he would to the house of his
intimate friend; the practise of visiting the Blessed Sacrament;
Exposition: the doctrine of Transubstantiation above all these
tend to bring to the mind of the Catholic a sense of the reality of
Jesus Christ with His two Natures, Divine and Human, almost
impossible to be realized by those of another faith. Consequently,
if a writer, his psychology takes in the spiritual and mystical side
as well as the material side of a problem or it would not be Catholic
psychology at all. For he cannot describe anything which brings
him up against the Catholic ideal without being instantly aware of
it as an eternal factor, however far short its followers may fall
from it.
It follows logically that given certain situations, the reader too
must come upon it, willy-nilly. It is quite different to the non-
Catholic ideal, as you will see directly you seriously compare similar
situations as treated respectively by the Catholic and non-Catholic
writer. Take the subject of love between a girl and a married man
for instance. It is the motif of H. G. Wells' Ann Veronica. Now
Mr. Wells is an acknowledged master of his art. He probes the
human heart as deeply as he can. His characters do not stand still,
they live and grow. Ann Veronica, in her own way, is as true to
type as Kipps. She is essentially modern. She is " out for the best
in life" (her life); she feels that its human fulfillment is of su-
preme importance. She " wants things " desperately ; she is dis-
satisfied and restless, adventurous and gallant. When love comes
upon her, it is real love, not its travesty; she is willing to brave
any danger for it. It does not wholly blind her. She endured
conflict of a sort. She sees the barriers between her and her natural
completion; she feels real pain at the thought of hurting her
father and aunt by allying her lot with Capes; she conceives that
their " conventionality " will be outraged No more. Spirit-
ually, she is like a bedridden child who, having all her life been
accustomed to live in a basement, cannot by force of circum-
stances see any other view than whitewashed walls and cellars.
When at last Capes and she can " dare to have children " and her
relations come to visit her at her home and take pleasant interest
in her salted almonds and iced marrons, she feels " the fight is
580 THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION [Feb.,
fought and won." Her only regret then is that " these common
and secondary things " which now are theirs may make them forget
" the time when they cared for nothing but the joy of one another."
Capes epitomizes the gospel of this (withal) lovable little pagan
in a phrase : " Find the thing you want to do most intensely, make
sure that's it, and do it with all your might." (Yesterday, that was
the rule of many who mistook this world's paper walls for prison
bars. )
The Catholic novelist facing the same situation would have
dealt with it differently. He might even conceivably have made
Capes and Ann Veronica run to the same lengths. But he would
not have glossed over the actual sin. And the mental conflict,
relatively, would have been on a terrific scale. For civil war is
the worst war of all. In the fight between human passion and
the world's justification or condemnation, you have mental torment
reaching a high pitch of intensity, but not the highest. But when
you come face to face with the mystical and the natural parts of a
man or woman at opposition in a life and death struggle, when
every physical fibre is trying to grip and retain what the spiritual
fibres will not loose, you have the whole tissue of being lacerated
in agony to which no purely physical torment is comparable.
In Mrs. Wilfrid Ward's One Poor Scruple something like the
same crisis arises. Lord Bellasis is an innocent divorce and he
loves Madge; Madge loves him. The divorce however innocent
is separated as finally from the Catholic woman who is free to
marry as if he were still living with his wife. Mrs. Ward shows
how every worldly consideration is in favor of the marriage. The
law of the land would recognize it; between the lovers there is
" only " the fact that no practising Catholic could enter into such
a contract ; that the " marriage " could not be solemnized in a
Catholic church nor recognized by Catholics. Bellasis has been
badly treated : in a way, happiness seems due to him. Madge yields
and promises to marry him. Then comes the real pull between the
natural and the supernatural view; try as she will she cannot lose
her faith. You have this passionate cry over and over again in
Catholic novels, a cry which must seem almost blasphemous to those
accustomed to more plastic views. " I haven't lost the faith I
wish I could ! " The fight is lifted upon higher realms.
The psychology of the Catholic novelist however ill he may
present it impinges on a wider track than that which his friend,
the non-Catholic novelist, treads.
I 9 i6.] THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION 581
III.
Take, for instance, that subject of religious vocation, with all its
potentialities, which must be understood to be in the least adequately
presented. As a proof of what can be done with it, you have only
to take up Valentina Hawtrey's In a Desert Land, one of the
strongest novels of the year. It traces the fortunes of a family of
Hydes of Cobham from the reign of Edward II. to the present day.
Vocation as a burning force tugging at the heart-strings, appears
again and again in the annals of the race, only to be resisted and
defied first by one member then another. Here you have a study
new to the reading public, treated with deadly sincerity and a happy
insight which relieves what would otherwise be almost too strenuous
a theme, by a dozen caustic and characteristic touches. Miss Haw-
trey's art is never obvious; you light almost by chance upon the
real significance of the book, and after that you realize that it
stands (a shadow of gloom? a ray of light? accordingly as you
look at it), in the background of the central pictures. It is there,
to change the analogy, as the leading motif is in Tristan and Isolde
the same yet not the same in both the Love and the Death scenes.
The acute ear hears it, the door of the heart in almost each case
opens to it, but does not always remain open. In the fourteenth
century Tom Hyde flings it back; a hundred and sixty years later,
Jane Hyde resists it too; it re-appears in the story of Tony in 1718
and is again rejected, and ultimately, in the last generation, you
find Eleanor Hyde of to-day answering it. Modern Eleanor says
of herself, on the eve of entering an enclosed order of nuns, " The
story of me ends almost at the beginning ! " But her father an-
swers, " On the contrary, your story will begin when you go."
They are a strange race these Hydes of Cobham, over whom
some would say doom hovered, and some love. They are cursed
by a taint of genius which made them know themselves too well.
They have flashes of revelation and flashes of despair; they doubt
themselves, and craving to be rid of self they still the finest of
them just fall short of sacrificing self. Throughout the book the
sharp tang of self -mockery in each successive instance cuts the
soul clean adrift from that to which a mystical bond linked it;
tragedy which in the case of Tom, the would-be friar turned jester
in a fool's cap and bells, recalls in its bitterness another faithful
portrait, The Gadfly in Mrs. Voynich's poignant study. But
whereas in The Gadfly there was presented the tragedy of youth's
disillusion because of another's sin, there is in Miss Hawtrey's
582 THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION [Feb.,
book an even subtler piece of artistry the tragedy of a heart
" knowing its own bitterness " turning upon itself its own sharpest
sword because it realized where its failure led.
" There is absolutely nothing in heaven or earth that one
cannot laugh at in some way or another, but to laugh at the wrong
thing is a sin of commission and not to laugh at all is a sin of
omission," said the first Eleanor Hyde, mother of Tom. But " I
became a jester for fear of being laughed at," says Tom, the piteous
fool with his broken heart, brought by chance to his own door
and forced by his master to make quips and cranks before those
who till now had hoped against hope for his return, " in honor,"
and who will not now recognize him. Jane too stands smiling with
" the blast of laughter " shattering " the ideal which for one moment
had been within her reach, of which for one moment she had
believed herself capable." She, too, had resisted vocation, and
to her too there came at the last the great simplicity of revelation.
With her little feet sinking in the slushy wet of the marshes which
drew her to her death, she knew that it " was not so much what
she had done that was wrong, but what she was." Tony Hyde
on the scaffold of Tyburn felt that too. " All his life ambition
had stirred in him like an unborn child." He had lived his emo-
tional life spectacularly; the really great moment which he had
always coveted surely was here and now. And yet, when it came
to the point, words were lacking. The surging crowd, caught up
into that tremendous silence, and steadfastly regarding him of
what real account was it? What mattered in that final moment
except just how his soul stood to God? The trappings were
stripped ; here was supreme simplicity. " As he looked round at
the faces turned towards him he knew that he was going to say
nothing." " He had come there not to speak but to die, and the
difference was the difference between the written poem and the poem
uttered in terms of life itself."
" Religion is as tragic as first love and drags us out into the
void away from our dear homes," says Hilaire Belloc. That same
sense of solution felt by Tony, the composure into which the heart's
most poignant human passion ultimately resolves, shines too but
here transcendent in the story of Mudo, the Boy Emperor, in
John Ayscough's tender story of Dromina. (But when is John
Ayscough not tender?) On the verge of ultimate tragedy leading
to martyrdom, Mudo, with a choice before him and power in his
grasp, sees why " ambition, by the perfect, should be counted a sin.
No one, he surmised, had ever reached a goal of merely personal
I 9 i6.] THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION 583
ambition without loss to himself : no one, he had come to believe,
can ever grasp a coveted distinction or 'greatness' without be-
coming smaller, meaner, less noble One could not sell the
least part of oneself and not know that one was poorer Honor
could only be attained by one who was indifferent to it "
Monsignor Benson's Conventionalists and A Winnowing both
have, as their central theme, the subject of vocation. And here,
again, you come upon rebellion. When the call broke upon Algy
in its overwhelming flood, so much stronger than he was that he
felt his impotent strength give out before it, " he sat up, rebellious
and despairing, telling himself that God had no mercy, that such a
sacrifice was intolerable, complaining furiously that he who was
so ready to give so much ought not to be asked to give all, demand-
ing a little breathing-space. The conflict was upon him on a higher
circle now of that mountain of God on which all men stand accord-
ing to their stature His eyes were bright with pain and fear
Ah, why could God not leave him alone ? "
In the much disputed Winnowing, it is presented dramatically
enough. A young husband is pronounced dead by two doctors;
he lies with his crucifix in his hand; his widow is left alone with
him. He and she are practising Catholics " of a respectably dead
type." In other words, they always fulfill the strict letter of their
religious obligations and no more. And face to face with her dead,
Mary knows that Jack's " chance " to help himself is over.
But that wasn't the only thing: I wanted him alive again
I said to God, absolutely knowing and meaning what
I said, that if Jack could only be alive again I'd offer myself
entirely to Him forever, that I wouldn't shrink from anything
I knew nothing about the Religious Life, about the
rules for husband and wife and so on. But I included it
in my mind though / loathed the thought of it 1 1 ex-
pressed it inside as deliberately as I possibly could.
The crucifix falls from Jack's fingers; he opens his eyes, and
sits up. During that time of shall we say suspended animation?
he too had had experiences. There came to him, amongst other
items of knowledge on this new plane, that " religion was true, not
just in a pious sort of way, but solid, solid as a rock as real as
tables and chairs, only very much more so." He himself proposes
that he and his wife should enter the Religious Life; the fulfillment
of Mary's own vow, though that he does not then know. And she
i The italics are mine.
584 THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION [Feb.,
refuses; refuses absolutely, once and for all. He accepts her de-
cision quietly enough; but he busies himself in such ways as are
open to him ; he builds a convent on the estate as refuge for a com-
munity of enclosed nuns, and so forth. Mary goes through a
period of torment. And when finally she comes to him, and con-
fesses her broken vow, and tells him how from the first she had
known that what he wanted was right for both of them, and now
is ready to do as he asked, she finds that in that period he has
gone back interiorly to the very point from which her own prayer
wrested him ; that he means to " take up " all his old way of living,
to live again, let us say, a precisely similar kind of life to that in
which Mary once saw him visibly die. There is nothing for
her to do but acquiesce: it was she who threw him back upon it.
He leaves her after a time to go to South Africa; there he dies,
and is buried. His widow enters an enclosed order of nuns, and
the book ends with a deliberately and almost brutally crude account
of the ceremony of reception which to Mary's friends seems grim
and even terrible.
So much for the bald story, which the writer himself thought
did not wholly make its point. But surely to anyone able to
" sense " the Catholic view it is clear enough. The Catholic recog-
nizes the value of vicarious sacrifice. " Absence," John Ayscough
says in Marotz, " is a bridge along which love passes to and fro."
The most intolerable sting of death, to the average man or woman,
is the thought that now he or she can do nothing further for the
beloved. But the Catholic knows that he can make each trivial
action of his day, even each slight or severe pang of suffering, every
lived or spoken prayer a separate link of the immortal chain which
binds him to his dead. Again to quote John Ayscough : " The
unseen presses even closer than the seen 'upon him/ so that the
'real' is less real than the unreal, and mystery is never doubt nor the
unknown necessarily the impossible." This is the explanation of a
hundred sacrifices which in the world's eyes are obscure; things
which in reality are not sacrifices at all, but just the reaching out of
love's hand over an abyss, or the laying down of a small gift before
the Feet of Him Who gave us all.
A foreign contemporary writer said that all psychological
fiction resolved itself into studies of the great factors, love and
pain. The Catholic's view of love and pain is paradoxical enough ;
there are times when he is not sure which is which.
Pain is one of those vast fundamental facts that must be
scrutinized by the whole of man his heart and his will and
1916.] THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION 585
his experience as well as by his head or not at all Pain
is not an unhappy accident of life, not a piece of heartless
carelessness, not a laboring struggle upwards on the part of
an embryo God ; but a part of life so august and far-reaching
that since the Creator Himself can submit to it, it must fall
under that Divine standard of Justice into which our own
ideas of justice must some day be expanded. This makes the
steps of the working out of the problem even perhaps more
bewildering than before ; yet for Christians it demonstrates the
total sum worked out and " placarded " before our eyes.
A view like this surely makes for sanity. It is finer, for
instance, than the " bloodied yet unbowed " picture of Henley's
" master of his fate." You cannot have unmitigated gloom in a
book, however sad, with this behind it. Miss May Sinclair,
amongst contemporary writers, has a peculiarly delicate sense of
tragedy and fineness; the keynote of her work is high sacrifice.
But the note of the sacrifice is often lost in a vague melody in such
work as she has so far published : you long for the simplicity, the
satisfaction of a resolved chord. (I do not think this criticism
will apply to her future work.) Winnie, in The Combined Maze;
Gwenda in The Three Sisters there are two noble characters if
ever characters were noble, and yet the reader puts both books
down with a sense of emptiness and desolation. You feel that the
writer herself is reaching out for something which she has not
got. And Miss Sinclair's work is far above an ordinary level.
She ignores the terrible convention of most publishers who demand
with theatrical managers that the story must end " happily ;" she is
true to life which does not always give earthly laurels to its real
heroes.
No novel defied the aforesaid convention more absolutely than
Monsignor Benson's None Other Gods. Guiseley, the central point
of interest, died in his attempt to save a squalid little soul which
even the reader at times scarcely feels was worth saving. From
time to time during the process there fell upon him successive
blows: poverty, shame, injustice, disillusion, the desertion of Jenny
(the girl he loved), physical pain, imprisonment, a cruel death
ending, it seemed, " a climax of uselessness exactly where ordinary
usefulness was about to begin." Yet those who saw the battered
man die, and knew him to be less surrounded by peace, than become
part of peace, divined a mystical completion in that broken dis-
jointed life which at first sight looked so awry. " Was it not
possible after all that another golden and perfect deed had been
586 THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION [Feb.,
done?" That Frank Guiseley, human failure, had attained in his
short life the supreme goal to which all human life converges, but
which so many of us fail to reach? We who have stood by our
broken dead in the present war and seen splendid promise appar-
ently thrown away, have learned from these unforgettable hours
something both of human doubt and its immortal answer.
Frank Guiseley summed up the question of love and pain very
simply, in a few words, in a diary he was asked to keep.
When the series of things began that simply smashed me up
I was getting to feel smaller and smaller But there
was a little hard lump in the middle that would not break
There were two things I held on to all this time my religion
and Jenny. I gave them turns so to speak Then came
her letter Simply everything was altered. It was as if
there wasn't any sun or moon or sky. Religion seemed no
good at all It's either the background and foreground all
in one or its a kind of game. It's either true or a pretense.
Well, all this in a way taught me it was true. Things wouldn't
have held together at all unless it was. It seemed to me for
awhile that it was horrible that it was true and then
it was like this : I saw suddenly that what had been
wrong in me was that I had made myself the centre of things
and God a kind of circumference. When He did or allowed
things, I said "Why does He? " from my point of view. I
set up my ideas of justice and love and so forth and then
compared His with mine, not mine with His. And I suddenly
saw that this was simply stupid When one once
really sees that, there's no longer any puzzle about anything.
One can simply never say " Why ? " again.
IV.
Catholic writers, it will be seen, treat souls very much as
surgeons treat bodies; practically and without sentimentality.
"That flesh is mortifying: cut it out," is the point of view. All
the clean dressings in the world will not change the fact that the
flesh below is black and spreading danger. Whip off the dressings
then, and slash straight at the corrupt part, no matter how deep
you must put in the knife.
Looking at things as they are, and not necessarily as you would
wish to have them, makes both for true perspective and a wide
range of view. In Browning's Ring and the Book you have a
1916.] THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION 587
story told from Guido's standpoint, Pompilia's, Caponsacchi's,
Half Rome, the Other Half Rome, etc., and the Pope's. In
Mrs. Wilfrid Ward's remarkable study of Horace Blake you feel
in turn with Kate, with Trix, with Stephen and again with a trans-
formed Kate, when you are summing up what the real Horace Blake
was. You have here a man of genius, once a Catholic (a far
finer study of a man who has fallen away from the faith than her
Comte d'Etranges in Out of Due Time) who has for years blas-
phemed and insulted what he once adored (the more aptly, the
more vehemently, because he once adored it), brought to a death-
bed repentance almost impossible to believe sincere. Short of a
miracle, how could that crust of hardness break? And the world
does not believe in miracles. For such a man, at the eleventh
hour, to " fling himself on God " could only have been the result of
a spiritual cataclysm. You tread each step of the way to gradual
comprehension that such things may be with Kate, the strong and
tragic agnostic wife, who through love and humility does actually
grasp the truth when certain professing Christians miss it. Catho-
lics presumably recognize changes of heart, Kate knows ; upheavals
of nature wrought supernaturally through " conversion," but how
is it that Stephen, not a Catholic, but a " good " man, surely if ever
there was one, and most certainly a " professing Christian," doesn't ?
I was taught [says Kate] that there was no such thing as
sin, but that there were noble characters and base characters.
I never dreamt of the base elements being, transmuted into the
noblest. But why did you not understand? Why, when you
read the horrible things I sent you as material for his Life, did
not you, who had seen him near the end, say to me, " Both are
true, the vileness and the nobility that came out of that awful
cleansing?" I recognize as absolute truth from the
evidence before me that there was a mysterious strength-
ening of the will much peace, if at times a dark peace. But
as you are a Christian, why did you not understand?
He began to realize now that he had never had a large enough
scale for his work. Finally he said in despair : " It can only be
understood however dimly, by opening windows into the
Infinite."
Over and over again in Catholic fiction you have these views
of phases and vital changes which cannot " be understood except
by opening windows into the Infinite," as Stephen said. The spirit
588 THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION [Feb.,
lies, as it were, bruised between the stony reality of earth and the
resistless force of the spirit. It shows clearly so in The Waters
of Twilight by that brilliant writer, Father Martindale, and in all
John Ayscough's novels, with their sympathy and charm. The
Waters of Twilight cannot really be understood unless you
grasp its mystical significance. It works out phase by phase the
answer to the question each one of us, in his hour, asks himself:
"What am I? What am I put here for?" The Catholic says,
" There are two selves in you ; two great potentialities. Man can
dwindle down into the beast or be drawn up and out into God."
Then comes the mystery. All Existence can be linked into one : a
supreme Unification between highest and lowest, God and creature,
but only through stages, not immediately. Here on earth it can
only be darkly initiated although it is initiated vitally and substan-
tially; later on there will be explicit consciousness. The Waters
of Twilight tells of spiritual growth. The " I " who relates such
story as it contains, is the soul which, owing to super-sensitiveness,
is acutely conscious of itself and its human side, but still has
" vision." Angela, the sister, has very human limitations, and
is inclined rather continually to rehearse her plan of what life ought
to be rather than to take part in it as it is. Landisfarne, " Dolly,"
is the soul in which long-established grace has triumphed so serenely
that he is not conscious of it normally any more than the healthy
body really is conscious of itself. When he lay dead
Dolly was the centre and focus of the place Dolly,
pervasive yet enthroned: the real Dolly, himself at last,
expanded and splendid and gloriously set free; understanding
the world at last and understanding me ; not asking for words
any more ; not having to rely .on mysterious instincts and
sympathies; but united with the centre and source of reality
and thus of spirit and of knowledge, and involving me in his
immense new sweep of power and presence
Odo and Angela both have to be " broken " before they can
be re-created or spiritualized ; Charles has to go through a lengthier
process, the slow dissolving of " self," before room can be made
" for the living Christ to force His brilliant way in." For
the act of faith to which you assent isn't only a delib-
erate assent of your mere intellect to a proposition on all fours
with everyday propositions. Grace must come in to help you
to want to assent, and to assent to a proposition made to you
1916.] THE CATHOLIC VIEW IN MODERN FICTION 589
not on human evidence merely. Unless grace comes in, beliefs
impossible: even with it, it may be terribly difficult. Lots of
people don't realize that for certain temperaments or casts of
mind, it may be life-long torture to believe. The soul may
conquer, but to the end the wounds may hurt and even bleed.
The work of all these novelists (with the exception of Miss
Hawtrey) whom I have cited is known distinctively as Catholic
work, just as Hilaire Belloc's work is, and Katharine Tynan's, and
Alice Dease's to take three different classes of writers. But the tex-
ture of the Catholic mind shows very clearly in the supremely un-
controversial work of Philip Gibbs, to give another example out of
a hundred instances which leap to the mind. In his Master of Life,
to quote one instance only, you have Pearl Lavington, a woman
"pure with Celtic purity" (the strictest of all purity), dragged
through the divorce court by a dissolute husband in a trumped-up
case, which goes against her. Very simply she refuses to marry the
man equally guiltless with whom her name has been disgracefully
coupled. " I am still a married woman." More than this, though
she loves him it went against her that she admitted as much to a
court which could only read guilt into that word she sends him
away to marry somebody else. "Because I must stay lonely I do
not ask you to bankrupt your hopes of all that Nature meaws to
men" A piece of folly, this from the world's standpoint, only to be
accounted for in followers of the initial " foolishness of the Cross !"
It has been said of foreign schools of literature, that " hide-
bound conventions " do not bind their exponents ; that the French,
the Italian, the Spanish writer sifts motive more than we do as a
rule, and in any case is out rather to show life as it is than to give
the public what it wants. The description applies, aptly enough,
to the work of Catholic authors, also, of British nationality. The
Catholic view is neither nebulous nor evasive, and it cannot be
satisfied. It has something in common with patriotism. Challenge
it in the open and you come upon it full. Strong and insistent, you
meet it in contemporary literature. But for that matter, where is it
not in its eternal youth and its deep age? unalterable, inviolate,
springing from the soil a man treads, one with the breath of the
countryside; at once cold and austere and warm and infinitely hu-
man; the eternal paradox still glowing with that same white light
with which it shone in the first centuries and will shine forever.
SALONIKI: WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED.
BY ELBRIDGE COLBY.
N the city of Saloniki, they will pretend to show you
where St. Paul preached. For we all know that this
town, so old that no one can really tell its age, this
town called by the French Sdonique, by the Greeks
TJ and by us Saloniki that this was
the first important stopping place for St. Paul the Apostle when he
crossed to the head of the ^Egean Sea and began to spread the true
faith in ancient Greece. And afterwards he was able to say in his
First Epistle to the Thessalonians ii. i : " For yourselves know,
brethren, our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain."
At the northern end of the yEgean Sea, situated at the head of
a huge bay, sprawling along the waterfront, lies the city of St. Paul.
The European section of the town reaches by the edge of the sea in
a southeasterly direction from the place where the notorious White
Tower stands. The older part of the city extends along the curving
shore in the opposite direction towards the tanks of the Standard
Oil Company. The European section is but a narrow strip of
houses; the older part mounts the high hill which rises inland,
mounts and mounts as the houses grow smaller, the streets narrower
and steeper, the alleys more tortuous and more dirty, until we reach
the wall of the ancient citadel. This was the original site, and the
town, as a matter of fact, instead of mounting has descended slowly
until it touched the blue of the beautiful ^Egean. Standing on this
high ground, we see nearby an antique church, and observe far in
the distance across the broad harbor the mountains of Greece.
Here, face to face with Olympus on the far horizon, fearless of the
old gods who had ruled so long, the loquacious guide said the most
important words of the afternoon : " Here St. Paul preached."
Paul and Silas, having passed by Amphipolis and Apollonia,
came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of Jews.
And Paul according to his custom went in unto them; and
for three sabbath-days he reasoned with them out of the
scriptures :
Declaring and insinuating that the Christ was to suffer, and
1916.] SALONIKI: WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED 591
to rise again from the dead; and that this is Jesus Christ,
Whom I preach to you.
And some of them believed, and were associated to Paul
and Silas, and of those that served God and of the Gentiles
a great multitude, and of noble women not a few.
But the Jews moved with envy, and taking unto them some
wicked men of the vulgar sort, and making a tumult, set the
city in an uproar : and besetting Jason's house, sought to bring
them out unto the people.
And not finding them, they drew Jason and certain brethren
to the rulers of the city, crying: They that set the city in an
uproar are come hither also.
Whom Jason hath received, and these all do contrary to the
decrees of Cesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.
And they stirred up the people, and the rulers of the city
hearing these things.
And having taken satisfaction of Jason, and of the rest, they
let them go. 1
I have stood on the Areopagus and seen the afternoon sun
light the glorious relics of the Athenian Acropolis, the hill on which
so many broken marble pediments and fallen columns mark the
place where pagan antiquity raised its numerous monuments and
saw them shattered. I have seen where, at the foot of the Sacred
Way, St. Paul took his stand and told the crowds who were
accustomed to ascend : " Men of Athens, I perceive that in all
things you are too superstitious ! " There where the ruins of
Hellenic worship overlook the simple spot which St. Paul trod,
I thought of the intellectual curiosity which leads thousands up
the high hill, and of the depth of religious feeling which has stirred
in the hearts of similar thousands when they have recognized the
little mound on which the Apostle proclaimed the personality of
the Unknown God. One is a matter of the head, culture; the
other of the heart, religion. But never, not even by the side of the
Acropolis, have I been so much impressed with the fact of Chris-
tianity transforming the world as when on that sunny day I looked
over the blue ^Egean to Olympus, the mountain home of the gods
of Greece, looked down upon the Moslem minarets and Eastern
churches of the cosmopolitan city of Saloniki, and heard those
words : " Here St. Paul preached."
Saloniki has had a strange history. Under its first name,
Therma, it was unimportant. Cassander made it a large and
1 Acts xvii. 1-9.
592 SALONIKI: WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED [Feb.,
flourishing city, and renamed it Thessalonica in honor of his wife,
the daughter of Philip and sister of Alexander the Great. In 1423
the town, always a commercial prize, was sold to the Venetians ; but
it fell into the hands of the Turks under Murad II. in 1430. It was
only in 1912, when the conquering Greeks entered, that many of the
finest mosques were reconverted into Christian churches. The cen-
tral portion of the Turkish stronghold still remains by the water
front, and still bears the name of The White Tower. The lower
ramparts have been destroyed and a park surrounds the single round
tower, from the top of whose castellated walls hundreds of Christian
bodies hung in times past. This pile of masonry has seen many
amazing sights. It was not far away that King George of Greece
was assassinated; a small shrine, a stone by the roadside, and an
armed guard mark the spot. It was in this town that the Hebrew
" Moslems " gave the principal impetus to the Young Turk Move-
ment. It was here that the dethroned Sultan was imprisoned in a
large chateau, with the small allowance of wives was it fifty? It
was up the avenue leading from this Tower that the Greeks and
Bulgarians fought along the streets, from barrack to barrack, from
hospital to hospital, in 1913. And well might they be desirous
of possession, for Saloniki is the most important port of the Balkan
peninsula; it has been coveted by Austria, by Bulgaria, by Greece,
by Serbia, and now by Germany. It is the easy and natural outlet
for Macedonia, Thessaly, and through the valley of the Vardar
for Serbia. The Serbo-Greek alliance provides for a Serbian gov-
ernment dock and transportation of materials in bond, and makes
this a Serbian military inlet. I went down around the quays and
found a portion specially fenced in " Serbian government ware-
houses," I was told. And there I saw countless cases of goods
destined for Serbia, military shipments as well as Red Cross
material.
Saloniki is really a rather interesting and very cosmopolitan
seaport, there are in the roadstead French, Italian, English, Dutch
and Greek liners, from the huge Messageries to the interesting little
fishing craft and island trading boats. True, there are now also
transports and hospital ships, and the eyes of all the world are
turned in this direction. But it is not only in the hour of political,
diplomatic or military crises that Saloniki presents strange details.
I had my shoes mended the other day at a " shop " which was
merely a hole in the wall three feet one way and four the other
and there are many such. I saw a horse in a small store early
1916.] SALONIKI: WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED 593
one morning treading his blindfold way about a central post, grind-
ing meal between two primitive stones. I saw a man cleaning light
cotton, and arranging it for bed quilts and comforters with a bent
bit of wood and a steel wire in the shape of a large bow, which he
manipulated by light blows so cleverly as to make the fluffy material
settle or fly at will. I saw a donkey loaded with charcoal, with
his master riding on top and carrying a great umbrella against
the sun. I met a herd of sheep being driven through the street
and some were black like the people. I climbed the hot hill, past
the dirty and unalluring homes of the poorer Turks, to the old
citadel and the modern prison ; and found some guns on the tower
which had been taken from the Turks and the Bulgarians in 1912
and 1913. There was a boy in one shop cleaning pans by swirling
them in wet sand with his bare feet, while his body twisted and
turned in remarkable gymnastics. In another place the smell of
dye-kettles attracted me, and there, beyond, were many, many
weaving machines in a big room, all run by Turkish girls, by old
men and by boys. The machines required one hand for the shuttle,
one to move the vertical frame, and both feet to shift the alternating
threads, keeping a person as we should say completely occupied.
If each did not work with his whole soul, he at least worked with
his whole body. I rambled under police escort through the hideous
" red light district," quaint and awful at night, hideous and dirty
by day. I visited many cafes, and saw the mixed low life, the
Turkish dancers; all in what was once one of the very best cities
of the Mediterranean.
There were many curious costumes mingling in the passing
multitude; sleek young Jews in European clothes wearing the
red fez of Turkey; old Greek women with the headdress of their
nation, green and yellow silk and a few beads, so that the whole
resembled a parakeet; Turkish females in black, heavily veiled; a
few turbans and occasionally a green one indicating the pilgrim-
age to Mecca; a Moslem priest with the curious fez of white
and red; Greek patriarchs in black robes bearing strange tall,
black hats ; peasant regalia from the country surrounding, and even
from, Serbia; British Red Cross units from Belgrade; Greek sol-
diers in khaki; Serbian officers laden with decorations; men from
Epirus with white skull caps, white skirts, and huge pointed white
shoes that had black tassels; Germans with their perpetual spec-
tacles; and here and there a French Sister of St. Vincent de Paul.
So, when I wanted diversion in this, the largest Jewish city of the
VOL. en. 38
594 SALONIKI: WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED [Feb.,
East, I simply left the central thoroughfares and strolled casually
up the narrow back streets, between the queer houses with latticed
windows, beneath the overhanging upper stones, and wandered
about, looking into every yard and peering into every shop. Among
the bazaars, under the arcades, everywhere, I found things a-plenty
of human interest.
Of course, the proper thing to do was to go into a real mosque.
This we did with much trepidation. We removed our shoes but
not our hats ; we passed by the place where the faithful wash their
feet and marched over a flea-laden mat toward the entrance of the
holy of holies. All outside of that was plain, severely plain. No
furniture save the matting and a few prayer stools and two racks
for the shoes ; no color on the walls save a severe whitewash. At
a small door, things changed. The corners of the arched ceiling
began to be decorated with pale yellows, greens, blues and reds.
Within was a flare of the same sunrise tints, the furniture about the
walls was heavily draped and colored; the steep wooden stairs
leading to the minaret were also elaborated.
The Greek churches are veritable wonders of gaudy over-
decoration, from the impossible glass chandeliers to the crude tin
halos, bands and sword hilts on more crudely painted portraits.
It also seemed always necessary to spatter blue and white about
for patriotism's sake, once to paint the date of the recapture of
Saloniki quite conspicuously over the altar. The altars themselves
were invariably hidden behind high screens, and there were only
the pictures of the Madonna and little racks for devotional candles
to give any taste of Christian familiarity. St. George, St. Deme-
trius, the innumerable smaller churches, and even St. Sophia each
told the same story. St. George, known for its curious circular
form, had been a mosque ; and so had St. Sophia. The exquisitely
colored marbles and mosaics, the beautiful marble screen of St.
Sophia, faded into insignificance when we found it was mostly
painted plaster. But frequently there were architectural details
that many a professional would be glad to have in his sketch
book. Those which had been mosques still had the slender
minaret mounting toward the sky, though that of St. Sophia,
mirabile dictu! yet bears the star and crescent. However, every-
where the cross and the colors white and blue predominated.
Beside some of the churches we found beautiful marbles with
wonderful sculptured designs, discarded because they were not
Christian. But, on the other hand, in spite of the obliteration
1916.] SALON IKI: WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED 595
of many a saint's figure, the Moslems had left unmolested two
noteworthy things : the tomb of St. Demetrius himself, which was
allowed to remain in a secluded corner for many years, while the
building itself was used as a mosque; and in St. Sophia erected,
so rumor says, by Justinian there endured one of the most splen-
did pieces of mosaic work imaginable, the huge dome ornamented
with enormous figures of the Blessed Virgin, two angels, and the
twelve Apostles, with a glorious Christ and the inscription : " Men
of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven ? This Jesus, Who
is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen
Him going into heaven."
When one had gazed on the old Eastern churches, had mused
over the battered arch of Alexander, and had contemplated the
crumbling old walls of the town, a walk down hill to the water front
and towards the little open square, disclosed a different world
entirely. Everyone was talking of the Bulgarian military, of the
Austro-German offensive, of the strength and weakness of little
Serbia. When one wearied of talking he might stroll to the edge
of the quay and look at the French men-of-war, at the British
torpedo boats, at the Allies' transports; or chat with British
Tommies or A. S. C. officers ; or watch mobilized Greek troops dis-
embarking and marching toward their station. He might discuss
the policy of Venezelos and the attitude of the King; he could listen
to tales of Constantinople from men just arrived; try to figure
out future events with the countless impatient journalists, or hear
from them weird stories of cancelled passports and official taci-
turnity.
But the artificial excitement of the cafe terraces soon paled in
its turn. And, then, after wandering among heretic mosques and
schismatic Greek churches, after rubbing elbows with Spaniards
and Moslems, Jews and Greeks, Italians and Bulgarians in the
crowded streets, after all this I wandered back into the narrow
alleys. I wandered aimlessly on and on, until I finally walked
into the French church, and immediately felt transported into a
completely different world, a world of peace and quiet. I was once
more in communion with the Holy See at Rome. Behind the altar,
in a place so arranged that the sunlight streamed in from an inde-
pendent window above, there was an image of the Blessed Virgin,
most tastefully placed. The sun shone full upon the figure, and
the painted clouds behind appeared actually real. About this
building centre the activities of a band of Fathers and a group of
596 DOMINUS TECUM [Feb.,
Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, who bear a marvelous reputation
in Saloniki for disinterested service to Bulgarian and Greek, to
men and women and children of all nations who, in time of peace
or in time of war, resident or refugee, have stood in need of as-
sistance. When their work was recounted to me, I thought I heard
the speech of St. Paul echoing in my ears : " For yourselves know,
brethren, our entrance in unto you, that it was not in vain." And
the church was still, and the permeating spirit of Christian sacri-
fice seemed placed in Saloniki to do a mighty work. The church
was still, and the white purity of it brought me home once more.
DOMINUS TECUM.
BY BLANCHE M. KELLY.
"Daughter, I was in thine heart." Revelations of St. Catherine of Siena.
WHERE were You, Lord, when 'mid my sore alarms,
Benighted in bleak ways, I groped and cried,
Before I found the shelter of Your arms?
/ journeyed at Your side.
Where were You, Lord, when Sorrow climbed my stair
And many a wan-eyed vigil with me kept,
When I could find no solace anywhere?
/ watched with You and wept.
Where were You, Lord, when Sin and I drew near
And smiled upon each other, set apart,
Before I turned with loathing and with fear?
/ smiled within Your heart.
THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL.
(SILVER JUBILEE, 1892-1916.)
BY THOMAS MCMILLAN, C.S.P.
EADING Circles among Catholics have had a potent
influence in the diffusion of literature representing
their own much neglected authors. A mature appre-
ciation was developed, after school days, to follow
prescribed courses of reading, especially in Church
history, and kindred subjects so necessary to intelligent Catholics
when required to give a reason for their belief. At all times
there has been much home study among serious people, and indi-
vidual effort for self -improvement. But the Reading Circle repre-
sented an organization of forces along Catholic lines to counteract
the desultory and aimless search for knowledge. Many were found
in need of advice and competent direction in regard to elective
post-graduate studies. Volunteer leaders entered the field to pro-
vide this supervision, such as Margaret Sullivan of Chicago, and
Katherine E. Conway of Boston, not to mention many others who
gave valuable time and energy to this work. In some cases alumnae
societies had a representative of Alma Mater, like Sister M. Camper
of Ottawa, to encourage and guide their explorations in the field
of literature. At the present time inquiring minds may find a
treasure house in The Catholic Encyclopedia with its detailed courses
of reading.
One very definite result of these societies for intellectual ad-
vancement was that they had a local habitation, and a name gener-
ally selected from among the Catholic authors. They could be
relied on to assist in the circulation of a good book, while opposing
at all times the pernicious influence of evil and worthless publica-
tions. At their meetings local speakers were invited to discuss
current topics, thus aiding the formation of public opinion on right
lines. For the first time, in many places, Catholics realized that they
were welcome to assist in suggesting books for the Public Library,
and cheerful recognition awaited them as leaders in the move-
ments for social betterment. It was a new experience to find
that the local papers gave ample space for reports of their meetings.
598 THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL [Feb.,
While holding the office of Chancellor under Archbishop Ryan,
the Right Rev. Monsignor James F. Loughlin, D.D., became the
chief organizer of Reading Circles in Philadelphia. Mounted on
his bicycle he would journey from place to place, often attending
three meetings in one afternoon. His cheerful presence awakened
enthusiasm. Church history was the favorite subject for his own
lectures, though his wide range of learning well fitted him to answer
all kinds of questions. In a very practical way he brought his
stores of knowledge to the people. About the same time Warren
E. Mosher, then residing at Youngstown, Ohio, was prominently
engaged in the work of Reading Circles. His own varied expe-
rience convinced him of the value of systematic reading and he
was eager to organize a nation-wide movement under the title of
the Catholic Educational Union. From him came the proposal
for a summer meeting, where learned teachers could meet with apt
scholars under the blue sky, shaded by academic groves far removed
from the busy marts of trade. He found opportunity to talk over
the matter at a convention of the Catholic Young Men's National
Union, of which Monsignor Loughlin was then president. The
latter decided to invite discussion of the project by publishing a letter
in The Catholic Review. As a result a meeting was held in New
York City at the Catholic Club in the early spring of 1892, and it
was decided to establish a Summer School under the direction of
Catholic teachers whose ability would invite confidence, and whose
piety would guarantee the safeguards of a well-regulated family.
While learning and piety were well represented at that first
meeting of the founders of what is now legally called " The Catholic
Summer School of America," no funds were on hand to meet the
expenses. It was proposed to make an appeal for a contingent
fund to defray the necessary outlay of the first session at New
London, Connecticut, during a period of three weeks. Educators
with large experience were found willing to offer their personal
service, yet no one felt able to assume the payment of a possible
deficit until Bishop McMahon, of Hartford, came to the rescue.
Without his generous offer that first session could not have taken
place, though as a matter of fact there was no deficit for anyone
to pay. The expectations of the most sanguine were more than
realized. From different parts of the country students came to
welcome such a school, and to make willing sacrifices for its welfare.
No millionaire appeared at that time, nor since, to donate the means
that would provide the new enterprise an assured lease of life. The
1916.] THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL 599
session at New London was an experiment, but it proved that the
Summer School deserved a place in the Catholic Educational
System. Graduates from State Normal Schools never before had
such an opportunity to learn the value of their Catholic heritage
in literature and other subjects that could not be taught by the
non-sectarian plan. They had also the opportunity to compare
notes with their comrades in the faith who had received all their
training in Catholic institutions. To meet the numerous inquiries
on subjects not included in the lectures " The Question Box " was
established. It was for the first time in active operation to serve
as a referendum at the Summer School. It has been since then
chiefly identified with missions to non-Catholics, because the Rev.
Walter Elliott, C.S.P., went to New London to preach a ser-
mon, and there saw the new device which he decided to use in
his missionary trip through Michigan some time later.
Dr. John A. Mooney, 1 Professor George E. Hardy, and Super-
intendent John H. Haaren were zealous pioneers in the new move-
ment. Warren E. Mosher, however, deserves the chief honor
for his arduous service as Secretary at the first session, and after-
wards as long as he lived.
George Parsons Lathrop, at one time editor of The Atlantic
Monthly, and his devoted wife Rose, daughter of Nathaniel Haw-
thorne, were new converts when the Summer School came into
existence. They worked most ardently for the session of 1892 at
New London in conjunction with the resident pastor, Father Joynt,
and the members of the local committee of arrangements. They
attended the reception given to authors, and both read selections
from their writings. At that reception the following statement
was presented :
" The Catholic reading public has many obligations to fulfill
towards our Catholic authors. Inasmuch as they belong to the
household of the faith, they have a claim on our attention which
should be cheerfully recognized. They are the exponents of the
highest culture of mind and heart. Consequently we should study
their writings and manifest our appreciation of their efforts. The
Reading Circles can perform this duty in a public manner by the
diffusion of their books, and by securing for them suitable recogni-
tion in public libraries. Many of the choice volumes of Catholic
*A notable article on the new Summer School by Dr. John A. Mooney was
published July, 1892, in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. For many years the chief events
of every session were recorded in the Reading Union Department of this maga-
zine. ED. C. W.
6oo THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL [Feb.,
literature have been published in mutilated editions for circulation
among non-Catholics. The authors who have fought the good
fight and gone to their reward cannot protest against this vandalism
of modern editors. Catholics of the present day, however, can
and ought to make a vigorous appeal for common honesty, and
endeavor to supply the great works of our Catholic authors just
as they were written.
" During the four hundred years from the landing of Colum-
bus to the present day, a work of great magnitude for the spiritual
and temporal welfare of this Western Continent has been accom-
plished by Catholics. This epoch is to be regarded as the heroic
age of American literature. The events which mark the develop-
ment of the providential design in directing the nation-builders to
establish a new home for Christian civilization, furnish abundant
materials for the historian, the poet and the novelist. It remains
for the Catholics of America to study reverently the heroic lives of
their ancestors ; to preserve the golden words they committed to
writing. There is reason to hope that a new generation of writers
will be encouraged to embellish with modern literary skill the chron-
icles of the valiant pioneers of the Catholic Church in the United
States.
" Briefly stated, the object of the Catholic Summer School
is to increase the facilities for busy people as well as for those of
leisure to pursue lines of study in various departments of knowl-
edge under the guidance of specialists. It is not intended to have
the scope of the work limited to any class, but rather to establish
an intellectual centre where anyone with serious purpose may come
and find new incentives for self -improvement. All branches of
human learning are to be considered in the light of Christian truth,
according to Cardinal Newman's declaration : " Truth is the object
of knowledge of whatever kind; and truth means facts and their
relations. Religious truth is not only a portion, but a condition
of knowledge. To blot it out is nothing short of unraveling the
web of university teaching."
Brother Azarias described the educational scope of the Summer
School as follows :
" To give from the most authoritative sources among our
Catholic writers and thinkers the Catholic point of view on all the
issues of the day in history, in literature, in philosophy, in political
science, upon the economic problems that are agitating the world,
upon the relations between science and religion; to state in the
1916.] THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL 6ol
clearest possible terms the principle underlying truth in each and all
these subjects; to remove false assumptions and correct false state-
ments; to pursue the calumnies and slanders uttered against our
creed and our Church to their last lurking place. Our reading
Catholics, in the busy round of their daily occupations, heedlessly
snatch out of the secular journals and magazines undigested
opinions upon important subjects, opinions hastily written and not
infrequently erroneously expressed; men and events, theories and
schemes and projects are discussed upon unsound principles and
assumptions which the readers have but scant time to unravel and
rectify; the poison of these false premises enter into their thinking,
corrodes their reasoning, and unconsciously they accept as truth
conclusions that are only distortions of truth. It is among the chief
objects of the Summer School to supply antidotes for this poison.
And therefore the ablest and best equipped among our Catholic
leaders of thought, whether lay or clerical, are brought face to face
with a cultured Catholic audience, and give their listeners the fruits
of life-long studies in those departments of science or letters in
which they have become eminent. They state in single lectures, or
in courses of lectures, such principles and facts and methods as may
afterwards be used and applied in one's reading for the detection
of error and the discovery of truth. To achieve such work is the
mission of the Catholic Summer School, and, therefore, does it in
all propriety, and in all justice, take a place in our Catholic system
of education."
During the sessions of 1892 and 1893 Brother Azarias ren-
dered most valuable help to teachers. He was the pioneer in
behalf of the Catholic claims in the history of education, perhaps
the only one at that time able to disprove the one-sided narrative
put forth in French and English by Compayre, who had the temerity
to state that he feared no critic in America. It so happened that
Brother Azarias had made extended researches in Paris, and had
examined the original documents which were falsified by Compayre
as the advocate of the secular school. His aim was to rob the
Catholic Church of the glory which is her due for service in behalf
of popular education. Professor Herbert B. Adams, of the Johns
Hopkins University, in a report to the Commissioner of Education
at Washington 1898-99, rendered a deserved tribute when he af-
firmed that Brother Azarias in his printed essays had " proved con-
clusively to American readers that the mediaeval Church did not
neglect either primary or popular education. All was given that
602 THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL [Feb.,
the times really needed or demanded. The rise of colleges and
universities cannot be explained without reference to the cathedral
and cloister schools of the Middle Ages. The gymnasia of modern
Germany were based upon mediaeval foundations, upon confiscation
of the ancient religious endowments."
The second session (1893) of the Summer School was held
at Plattsburg with the cordial cooperation of the Right Rev.
Henry Gabriels, D.D., his Vicar-General, the Very Rev.
Thomas E. Walsh, D.D., Judge John B. Riley, and many leading
citizens of different denominations. By their assistance, under
the direction of the Hon. Smith M. Weed, the option on the
Armstrong farm the present site of Cliff Haven was secured by
a contract with the Delaware and Hudson Railroad. It was found
to be a most desirable location, containing four hundred and fifty
acres, with a half mile front on Lake Champlain. Dr. Valentine
Browne, President of the Board of Health at Yonkers, New York,
prepared a report based on the vital statistics of that region, in which
he stated that " Plattsburg ranks among the first in the Empire
State in the very important matters of health and longevity."
The Regents of the University of the State of New York
granted an absolute charter February 9, 1893, by virtue of which
the Catholic Summer School received a legal existence as a cor-
poration, under the laws of the State of New York, and was classi-
fied within the system of public instruction devoted to University
Extension. By this charter from the Board of Regents many ad-
vantages were secured for students preparing for examinations,
besides legal privileges which could be obtained in no other way.
The names of the incorporators are here given:
Rev. James F. Loughlin, D.D., Rev. Patrick A. Halpin, George
Parsons Lathrop, LL.D., Rev. Thomas J. Conaty, D.D., Warren
E. Mosher, A.M., Rev. Morgan M. Sheedy, John H. Haaren, A.M.,
Rev. Thomas McMillan, C.S.P., Rev. Joseph H. McMahon, Ph.D.,
George E. Hardy, Ph.D., John P. Brophy, LL.D., Brother Azarias,
Rev. Francis P. Siegfried, William R. Claxton, Rev. Walter P.
Gough, Rev. Thomas P. Joynt, Rev. John F. Mullany, LL.D.,
Jacques M. Mertens, John Byrne, Thomas B. Fitzpatrick, John
D. Crimmins, John B. Riley, William J. Moran.
At a later date the following were elected Trustees : The inde-
fatigable Brother Justin, the magnanimous Chancellor of Brooklyn,
Rev. James H. Mitchell, Joseph W. Carroll, James McNamee,
William H. Moffit of Brooklyn, Michael P. Harrity of Philadel-
1916.] THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL 603
phia, James K. McGuire of Syracuse, Judge J. J. Curran of Mon-
treal, Rev. William O'Brien Pardow, S.J., Rev. Daniel J. Quinn,
S.J., Rev. John D. Roach, John A. Sullivan, James Clarke, John
Vinton Dahlgren, General Edward C. O'Brien, John A. Mooney,
LL.D., of New York City, Thomas J. Gargan and the Right Rev.
Monsignor W. P. McQuaid of Boston.
There was much discussion in the early days as to whether
the Summer School represented a real need of the Catholic people,
such as would insure stability. The approval given by Pope Leo
XIII. had much to do with the settlement of the question in favor
of permanency. It was most welcome to those who had under-
taken the new movement amid many difficulties. His letter is
here given :
To Our Venerable Brother Francis, Archbishop of Lepanto, Apostolic
Delegate in the United States of North America, Washington, D. C.
VENERABLE BROTHER, HEALTH AND APOSTOLIC BENE-
DICTION : It has recently been brought to Our knowledge that among
the many movements so opportunely set on foot in the United States for
the increase of religion, a Catholic Summer School, through the coopera-
tion of clergy and laity, has been established on Lake Champlain, at
Plattsburg, in the diocese of Ogdensburg. We have also learned that
the school has been affiliated by the Board of Regents of the University
of New York, and empowered to confer degrees upon those who follow
its course of study. There were many reasons for the founding of a
school of this kind ; one affecting the good of religion, so that Catholics
by their union of thought and pursuits may more effectively defend the
Catholic Church, and induce Our brethren, who are separated from Us
with regard to the Christian faith, to make their peace with her ; another
that, by means of lectures from learned teachers, the pursuit of the
highest studies may be encouraged and promoted; finally, that through
the principles laid down by Us in Our Encyclical on the condition of
labor, and by their practical illustration and application, the peace and
prosperity of the citizens may be secured. We are aware that bishops
have been promoters of this school, because they saw in many ways
notable benefits would result therefrom. Moved, nevertheless, by Our
great desire that the best interests of the people of the United States
may be furthered by the constant addition of new helps, We are pleased
to give Our commendation to the Trustees of this Summer School, to
exhort them not to depart from the task, which they have already begun,
but to go forward in it with braver confidence. Since We have been
informed, also, that in a short time the third annual session of the
School will be held, and that bishops, priests and members of the laity
will be present, We send to those who will attend Our heartiest greeting,
praying God to bless their undertaking and purposes. We trust, Vener-
able Brother, that in this your aid will not be wanting, and that, by
constant assistance, you will encourage these assemblies of Catholics,
and see that the largest benefits accrue therefrom to religion and good
citizenship. May the Apostolic Benediction, which We impart most
604 THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL [Feb.,
lovingly, be an earnest of the many heavenly blessings with which We
pray the Almighty to reward your zeal, and that of the other bishops,
priests and people.
LEO XIII.
Dated at Rome, June 15, 1894.
President McKinley, in the year 1897, gave the Summer
School recognition as a national body on the assurance that its
register showed names from about thirty States in the Union,
and a considerable delegation from Canada. Cliff Haven was the
scene of the only public reception he permitted during his first visit
to Lake Champlain. Two years after he came again and delivered
an impressive speech on the constitution and the flag. Among
other distinguished visitors were President Taft, Vice-President
Hobart, Vice-President Fairbanks, Admiral Schley, Judge
Brewer, Speaker Cannon, and many prominent officials of New
York and other States, including Theodore Roosevelt when he was
Governor. An elaborate celebration was arranged in September,
1914, for the centennial of Commodore MacDonough's great victory
on Lake Champlain. Through the efforts of its energetic Secre-
tary, Charles Murray, to the Summer School was assigned a promi-
nent part in this movement. It was fitting that the distin-
guished Chaplain of the Maine, the Very Rev. John P. Chidwick,
D.D., acting as President of the Summer School, should welcome
to Cliff Haven the Secretary of the Navy, Hon. Josephus
Daniels. An original poem descriptive of the memorable naval
battle, written by Judge J. Jerome Rooney, was rendered by K.
Collins.
Archbishop Bonzano, the Apostolic Delegate at the present
time, was recently a welcome visitor at the Summer School. His
three predecessors in that exalted office likewise aided the good
work there represented by their presence and words of advice before
their elevation to the Sacred College. Cardinals Gibbons and Far-
ley have given many proofs of abiding interest in every session,
while Cardinals O'Connell and Gasquet hold a distinguished place
for lecture courses. It is surely a notable record that no less than
seven Cardinals, and many other prelates of high rank, have
honored the Summer School by their attendance. Archbishop Cor-
rigan became one of the first life members, and generously permitted
the rector of his Cathedral, Right Rev. Monsignor M. J. Lavelle,
V.G., to accept the office of president during a critical stage of the
development at Cliff Haven, when the need of new cottages was
1916.] THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL 605
most urgent, and the lecture courses were extended over a period
of ten weeks, involving a much larger expenditure than the early
sessions lasting only three weeks. As a ready speaker and a most
competent manager of the finances, the Right Rev. Monsignor D. J.
McMahon, D.D., rendered invaluable service. The Buffalo Cot-
tage, with its fifty spacious rooms, stands as the enduring monu-
ment of Bishop Colton's work. He was ably assisted by the Rev.
J. McGrath. As President and Treasurer the Rev. D. J. Hickey,
of Brooklyn, is fondly remembered for efficient administration.
The first President, the Rev. Morgan M. Sheedy, of Altoona, Penn-
sylvania, by his lectures and writings has urged the necessity of
fostering the reading habit, especially among the rising generation.
It is not easy to designate adequately the continuous work per-
formed by the Rev. John Talbot Smith, LL.D. He has earned dis-
tinction as dramatic critic, the benevolent director of the military
camp for college boys, the most available substitute for absentee
speakers, capable of giving thirty lectures without any seeming
loss of vigor, and was quite reluctant to leave the sylvan solitude
of his tent when presidential honors were thrust upon him.
While President of the Summer School, Bishop Conaty, of
Los Angeles, was most devoted to its progress. He presided over
a convention of Reading Circles representing New England, held
April 8, 1894, in the hall of the Catholic Union at Boston. The
committee in charge was as follows : Thomas B. Fitzpatrick, Mary
Elizabeth Blake, Katherine E. Conway and Ellen A. McMahon.
The delegates represented about six hundred enrolled members.
Bishop Conaty expressed his gratification at the large attendance,
and described the beginnings of the new intellectual activities among
American Catholics. He urged the Catholics of New England to
be sharers in the long-desired movement which must be rightly
directed and utilized for faith and country. They should take a
place in the vanguard and not lag behind other workers in the
same field. In order to lead in the intellectual life they needed
preparation, and the Reading Circles, combined with the Summer
School, were means to this end. With great earnestness a promi-
nent figure at all the meetings in the early days, the Rev. Joseph
H. McMahon, then declared that many Catholics seemed content
to live on the past intellectual glories of the Church, shutting
their eyes to the palpable defects of the present day. He quoted
Father Fulton's words on the gradual Catholic progress in Bos-
ton, and the way to promote it still further. He had no patience
6o6 THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL [Feb.,
with those who had money for everything but for good books.
The Reading Circles could assist in making a paying public for
Catholic authors.
In conjunction with Superintendent John Dwyer and others,
the Rev. John D. Roach was most successful in organizing special
lectures for the professional advancement of teachers. Want of
space will not permit the mention of many other similar meet-
ings, and the individual activities of the Summer School trustees
in various places, by which the attendance at Cliff Haven was
enlarged to about five hundred each day in July and one thousand
in August.
The Winter School at New Orleans was largely promoted
by the Rev. John F. Mullany, LL.D., of Syracuse, ever ready to
give helpful service in favor of bringing university lectures to
the people. He introduced the public celebration of the Feast of
the Assumption at Cliff Haven, which, it is hoped, will long be
perpetuated for its value as an object lesson in faith and piety.
As the first Moderator of the Alumnae Auxiliary Association, the
Rev. James P. Kiernan, V.G., of Rochester, N. Y., displayed the
varied gifts of his kindly nature. This organization was founded
in 1897 by Helena T. Goesmann, of Amherst, to create a fund
for lectures in history and literature, and to secure the active
cooperation of Catholic women representing various educational
institutions. The Champlain Club has been the chief social .aux-
iliary to the Summer School. Members and their families find
great benefits by combining for the advancement of Catholic social
interests. The silver jubilee year will witness the growth of a
new organization of men known as the Champlain Assembly As-
sociation, with Dr. John J. Cronin as President. The young folks,
whose first impressions were obtained while children at Cliff Haven,
have also formed a society called the Junior Auxiliary, and elected
Mary Mosher, President
To promote the home feeling in the Summer School, the
officials urged every visitor to be friendly, and exchange saluta-
tions without waiting for a formal introduction. Healthful recre-
ation was provided by boating, bathing, golf, tennis, and an ex-
tensive programme of sports arranged by the late James E. Sul-
livan, the most active promoter of the Amateur Athletic Union.
This department, especially the golf course, is now very fully de-
veloped under the competent supervision of George J. Gillespie. To
make Cliff Haven more beautiful by the aid of flowers, plants
I 9 i6.] THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL 607
and well-kept lawns, has been a labor of love for Charles A.
Webber.
Archbishop Ryan's genial personality was a powerful factor in
the plans for sociability. In urging the unitive power of social
and intellectual intercourse he said:
" In proportion to the excellence of the things in which men
commune is the value of their friendship. You come here to com-
municate truth to each other. It is, as it were, the property of the
firm, of which you are all members. You may read at home and
come here to converse on the subject of your reading. Dr. John-
son has said that reading makes a full man, writing a correct man,
and conversation a ready man, and we need readiness in this
hurried age. Each of you comes with a store of acquired knowl-
edge, and by conversing on the subjects you not only gain new
ideas, but what is not less important, the old truths are more
deeply impressed on one's memory. We need, too, in this age,
such intellectual intercourse as will prepare us to meet the ob-
jections which are daily urged against religion, and to show the
world practically that the Church is not opposed to truth in any
sphere.
" I have always regarded it as a great misfortune to re-
ligion that some have so associated it with gloom that it becomes
unamiable in the eyes of men, and especially of youth. Religion
is bright and beautiful, and sanctifies our legitimate recreation, as
well as the performance of our most serious acts. I have no
sympathy with those who make it a moral strait- jacket, and try
to crush out the joy of the young heart. No; enjoy life while
you remain within the domain, and it is a very extensive and
lovely one, on the confines of which the angels of conscience and
religion stand and say thus far and no farther. Thus united, re-
ligiously, intellectually and socially, you will faithfully discharge
your great mission, and may God bless with success your efforts."
During the twenty- five years from 1892 to 1916 the Summer
School has been the centre of interest for a considerable number
of people. All that attended in former years have retained a
pleasant memory of the cordial social intercourse without any class
distinctions, a real Christian democracy, such as Pope Leo XIII.
described, together with the religious and intellectual advantages,
and the cool invigorating air from the Adirondack Mountains, the
highest of which, Mount Marcy, reaches an altitude above the
clouds. In nearly every case the realization of what the Summer
608 THE CATHOLIC SUMMER SCHOOL [Feb.,
School stands for is much more fully impressed by a visit to its
home environment at Cliff Haven, than by a description given
in print. The anticipation is far surpassed by the reality. What
is needed now to make this year of silver jubilee memorable is a
long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together. In the past the
chief strength has been in the cooperation of forces, especially
the revenue derived from life members and from the annual re-
unions in New York City. The administration must appeal for
funds needed to continue the work of the past, as well as to pro-
vide for the future. The chief benefactors thus far have been
the men and the women who contributed to the movement from
their varied experience, especially in educational work, without any
hope of professional compensation. Each one is expected to be
a volunteer, eager and willing to do loyal service in the cause of
Christian truth. For every lecture the allowance of money is
intended merely to cover necessary expenses. An endowment fund
would make possible many lines of endeavor not yet attempted, and
provide for the pressing need of revitalizing and reorganizing
Catholic Reading Circles, which were the strongest promoters of
the Summer School at the first session in New London.
THREE MEN OF THE BOIS.
BY WILL SCARLET.
JAVET was tall and thin. M. Valette was short
and thin. M. Sellier was middle-sized and fat.
All three were past the prime of life; and all three
were old friends.
Not even Jacques, the gargon at the Cafe Poul-
ette, who was supposed to know everything, could tell you how long
ago it was since the three men began to spend their Sunday after-
noons in the Bois. Of course, it was before the war; oh, very
long before. They had discussed the Dreyfus affair together, and
the assassination of President Carnot, and after that the Laws of
Associations. Yes, they had discussed ever so many topics. Jacques
knew that, for was he not their very special gargon and possessed
of a very special ear for spirited conversation? And their con-
versation was always spirited. At the thought of their conversa-
tion, Jacques was wont to lick his very red lips with the tip of his
very red tongue.
" Wonderful it is," he would tell you, " when the Sunday
afternoon is fine and the three of them sit at the little iron table
and sip something and talk. Ah, monsieur, how they talk! It is
beautiful, always; for they never agree. M. Javet, you see, is
a free-thinker and a Mason, and he has very strong ideas like
this. M. Valette is a clerical and he has very strong ideas like
that. And the dear M. Sellier is a retired wine merchant, and
has but one idea the idea he expresses when he says, as he
always says, 'Well, it is difficult to see clearly; I do not know/ '
You would enjoy Jacques' marvelous facial play and his il-
luminating hand play, and the droll fashion in which he would
throw his white apron over his head and waltz roguishly away
from you after this frequently repeated speech. But the pleasure
of meeting the incomparable Jacques will never be yours, unless in-
deed you should run across him in the next world, and find that
though discarding his apron he has retained his infectious joy of
living. For Jacques, poor chap, was done to death by a German
shell at Traubach more than a year ago, and his place at the Cafe
Poulette is inadequately filled by a putty-faced fellow, whose wife
VOL. cii. 39
6io THREE MEN OF THE BOIS [Feb.,
would not let him enlist, and who has consumption and would not
be taken away, and whose soul knows not the meaning of
mirth.
Yes, Jacques is gone, and many of the little iron tables are
gone, and more than one of the patrons are gone, and much of
the shrubbery of the Bois has gone; but the three men remain,
like the perennial plants across the driveway, a little dustier and
a bit nearer unkempt than usual, and conveying in their manner
an impression of earnestness, of sadness. Their faces have grown
singularly aged during the year and more of war, but every Sun-
day afternoon they meet in the Bois, stroll for awhile, M. Sellier
in the midst and the other two trying to gesticulate around his
very material frame, and then have their quiet nip and smoke, and
their usually far from quiet chat before the door of the Cafe
Poulette. And of course they talk about the war. We all do
in Paris, except the military men. For Sunday after Sunday
through several months the gist of the three men's conversation
was about like this :
M. Valette : " The Germans are pigs and barbarians."
M. Javet : " The Germans have a wrong philosophy of life."
M. Sellier: " The Germans? Well, it is difficult to see clearly;
I do not know."
But one Sunday afternoon, cool but pleasant in October, M.
Valette introduced a diversion. He came a little late, and planked
a fat envelope down upon the little table.
" Some good is being done by this war," he announced.
"I beg to differ," said M. Javet promptly. " But what do you
mean?"
M. Valette seated himself quickly, and his brown eyes danced
with suppressed excitement. A glow of color came into his smooth-
shaven, deep-graven face.
" This letter is from a friend of mine, a priest, at the
front."
" Pah ! " was all M. Javet said. And M. Sellier groaned
sympathetically to show his friendship for M. Javet, apologetically
to show his friendship for M. Valette. Then he lit another cigar-
ette and listened.
" My friend, the priest, sends me some good news. He tells
me that in his regiment most of the men, whenever possible, say
their morning and evening prayers in common. He tells me that he
is busy in all his spare time hearing confessions often the con-
I9i6.] THREE MEN OF THE BO IS 611
fessions of men who have not approached the sacraments in years.
He tells me that even the obdurate no longer scoff at religion; it
is not fashionable, it seems."
" Well, well? " snapped M. Javet. " And when are you com-
ing to the good that is being done by the war? "
"That is it, my friend, do you not see? The men are re-
turning to the Church."
" So it would seem," put in the fat M. Sellier, timidly.
" Hold your tongue, Sellier, for you know nothing," said M.
Javet, pulling desperately at his gray imperial. " Your news, Va-
lette, would be very far from good if it were true."
" You imply? "
" Most assuredly, I do. Was a priest never convicted of
bearing false witness? Your clerical friend in the trenches I
suppose he is in the trenches has allowed his preconceived notions
to run away with his sense of observation. I know what war is
and its effects. In war some men foolish men may pray a little
more than usual; but all men swear a great deal more than usual.
Pah!"
Jacques' unworthy successor now appeared with a tray and
tinkling glasses.
" You are prejudiced, my dear Javet," began M. Valette, after
a while. " Your unreasonable hatred of the Church keeps you
from seeing things as they are."
M. Javet smiled his disdain and patted his thin gray head.
M. Sellier smiled affably and remarked:
" There may be something in that. Now I "
"Be silent, will you? You know nothing about it." This
from M. Valette as he put the fat envelope in his pocket.
" Do not excite yourself," entreated M. Sellier, the perspira-
tion breaking out on his round, bald head. " I was only going to
say that I am hardly in a position to judge."
" It is foolishness to say that," declared M. Javet. " Every
man is in a position to judge. And I as a man, and as a French-
man, must tell you, my friends, that these stories, of men going
back to the Church I say stories, for I have heard something
of it before are exaggerated. Men and Frenchmen, don't do
such things."
" Pah, my dear Javet, but you are a Freemason ! "
" Pah, my dear Valette, but you are a Catholic ! "
Both glared at each other and puffed away in silence. M.
612 THREE MEN OF THE BOIS [Feb.,
Sellier pursed up his flabby mouth and leaned heavily on the
table, his balled handkerchief to his cheek.
" For my part, gentlemen, I see the difficulties of your re-
spective positions. Now, in the face of that, I think
" Hold your tongue, will you ? " growled both the gentlemen
in chorus.
And then M. Valette added : " Who cares what you think ? "
So it was, with variations, every Sunday afternoon. M.
Valette got letters from his friends at the front, and M. Javet
got letters from his friends at the front; and many of the letters
were read aloud, and all of the letters were vigorously discussed
at the Cafe Poulette. One bleak January afternoon, when the
three old men had the interior of the cafe all to themselves, M.
Sellier pulled out a letter from a neighbor at the front; but his
two friends gruffly told him that his correspondent knew nothing
whatever, and forced him to put it back in his breast pocket un-
opened. M. Sellier did so; and then paid for the drinks.
" Well," said M. Javet, " there can be no doubt that some of
our soldiers, half-crazed, of course, by the horrors of war, are
calling themselves Catholics again. But they are very, very few/'
" Pardon me if I contradict you," M. Valette hastened to
say, making his favorite argumentative gesture, which consisted
of closing the fingers of his right hand very tight and holding the
thumb stiffly aloft, and moving his right arm rapidly up and down
from the elbow. " Even a Freemason must occasionally admit
facts. Conversions? What else do we hear? What else do you
hear? What else is the burden of every letter you receive from
your own son in Flanders? What else was the news Maxim
sent you a week ago from the prison camp at Altengrabou? Ah,
yes! Many, many Frenchmen are returning to the one true Fold.
But I fear their conversion in many cases will not be permanent."
M. Sellier nodded his approval.
" Yes, that sounds very likely. I once knew a man who
" Sellier ! " snapped M. Javet, rapping with his palm like a
chairman calling a meeting to order. " Why do you go on so
foolishly? Always you try to say something flippant."
" Have a cigarette, if you please," pleaded Sellier, holding out
his case to both his friends. " And here are the matches, Va-
lette." : I- Infill
M. Javet puffed vigorously for a moment. His small eyes
narrowed more than ever.
1916.] THREE MEN OF THE BOIS 613
" I don't like what you said just now, Valette. You fear
the conversions will not be permanent? Pah! What makes you
think that?"
"I am surprised, my dear Javet, that you do not find my
reasons perfectly obvious. You claim to know what war is, do
you not? Well, then. Under the stress of excitement and danger
and privation, men make good resolutions. But when the war is
over and some time or other it must be over and the troops
return and many of them disband and the Bois is full of life
and splendor as in the old days ah, then ! "
" What nonsense ! Do you suppose our soldiers are children ?
Do you suppose they have the heads of chickens on their shoulders,
Valette? When they make up their minds why, they make up
their minds."
" Many of them, I maintain, will not make up their minds
permanently. And more than that: Though I am a practical
Catholic and very proud of my faith, and while I realize the
power and the sweetness of the religious spirit, yet I fear, some-
times, very much; yes, I fear."
"You fear what?" queried Javet.
" Not the Germans ? " queried Sellier, who straightway re-
ceived such a withering fire of sharp looks from his two friends
that he pretended not to have said anything at all, and stared
absorbingly at the naughty cupids airing themselves on the frescoed
ceiling.
" What I fear, gentlemen, is this," M. Valette resumed.
" Many fine Catholics have gone to the front. Will they be fine
Catholics when they return ? "
" Why should they be otherwise ? " M. Javet laughed.
" Fools once, fools always, you know."
"You are partly right, for once," M. Valette admitted, bit-
terly. " They may return fools, and fools they will be if they
lose their faith ; and they may stay fools. I greatly fear it."
" Your fear is absolutely groundless. Do you think men
change like the wind ? "
" But conditions make men change, fortunately or unfortu-
nately, as the case may be. You, Javet, who profess to know so
much about army life, must admit that war presents a totally new
set of conditions, creates for Catholic and free-thinker alike a com-
pletely new environment."
" Be sensible, my friend, I implore you. Indeed, I admit
614 THREE MEN OF THE BOIS [Feb.,
nothing of the kind. War creates no environment, neither does
peace. Every man makes his own environment."
"Absurd!" said M. Valette.
"Not at all!" said M. Javet.
" Let me think," said M. Sellier, his eyes on the ceiling.
" Now, of course, a good deal could be said on both sides. But,
really, it seems to me "
" But, really, it seems to me," interjected M. Javet, icily,
" that you have forgotten to give the waiter his little tip."
And so it kept on, with variations, for many more Sunday after-
noons. The three old men arrived together, nobody knew whence.
If the day was pleasant, they walked for a while, and then took the
same old seats outside the Cafe Poulette. If the day was unpleasant
they eliminated the promenade along the Bois, and spent an addi-
tional hour and several additional francs inside the Cafe Poulette.
Every Sunday, inside the cafe or outside, the Catholic and the
Freemason crossed swords and locked horns, and did all the other
exciting things that verbal fighters are supposed to do; from
time to time both of them turned on the retired wine merchant
and metaphorically beat him flat to the ground, and did their best
to keep him from even saying that he was in doubt about things.
Every Sunday they smoked many cigarettes and drank a few
small glasses, and finally rose up three of the best friends that
ever lived, and strolled down the Bois homeward arm in arm.
Momentous things had been happening, meanwhile, in France
and elsewhere in the world, and the three men of the Bois were
aware of them. Many of those things they somehow did not
care to discuss; but they could not refrain from thinking of
them. Often a deep silence would fall on the trio at the out-
of-doors table when a party of those everlasting American tourists
passed by tourists, even during war time, the men with pre-
posterous checked caps and no walking sticks, and the women with
purposeless questions and thick-soled shoes and the old men, each
quite to himself, would wonder why on earth such people wanted
to be in Europe at such a time, and what on earth would happen
if the United States should join the Allies. Sometimes a wounded
soldier would go limping by, like as not humming merrily a tune
that suggested other joys than those of war, and the old men
would fall into another silent meditation. They would think of
what nobody in Paris speaks about, but everybody knows the
long, low dark trains that steam slowly in every few nights with
1916.] THREE MEN OF THE BOIS 615
their burden of wounded soldiers; and, with all other Parisians,
the three old men thought it was a good thing that the trains
did come in at night, otherwise the rest of the people might find
out how very many brave lads were impaling themselves on Ger-
man bullets and bruising themselves against fragments of bursted
German shells. And, besides, there were always a few corpses
on those ghost hospital trains.
Only once did the three old men vary their weekly programme.
That was the day when by tacit consent they turned their steps to-
ward the Hotel des Invalides, where they joined the throng of
spectators around the seventy-sevens, the captured German guns.
It was not a silent throng, but the three friends were silent. And
silent they remained as they gazed on the grim German aeroplanes,
a taube and an Aviatik, marked with mighty black crosses cata-
falques with wings.
The next Sunday the garc.cn at the Cafe Poulette had almost
given up hope, when M. Sellier arrived, alone. M. Sellier looked
carefully about at the little iron tables, but everyone of them was
deserted; the day was chilly and cloudy, and the few patrons of
the Cafe Poulette were within. M. Sellier entered, looked about
anxiously, then sat down perplexed.
" They have not arrived ? Oh, well. Later, perhaps. So, so."
And later, considerably later, they did come, though not to-
gether. Soon the trio gathered about a cosy table, and Jacques'
successor brought them tiny glasses with a great display. It was
not a cheerful party. And there was very little talk, and that
little perfunctory, and mostly due to M. Sellier's raptures over
not having missed his friends. Finally, M. Javet cleared his throat.
"My dear Sellier, you are a confirmed chatterer. Be silent,
will you? I have something to say."
He paused long, fumbling for words.
:< Yesterday I received a letter, a long letter, from my son in
Flanders. He is well and has been twice decorated for bravery.
But that is not the portion of the contents I desire to call to your at-
tention. What will interest you mainly is this : My son announces
to me, after mature consideration, he realizes that, while I
meant well in inspiring him during his youth with anti-religious
sentiment, I nevertheless made a vital mistake, and that it is his
intention to rectify that mistake. He says further that he is under
instruction, and is to be received into the Church next month."
Nobody said anything for a long time. At length, after
616 THREE MEN OF THE BOIS [Feb.,
scrutinizing the countenances of the others, M. Sellier rolled his
round eyes, smiled nervously and remarked :
" That is most extraordinary, to be sure ! "
M. Javet turned on him with a growl of relief.
" What an idiot you are, my dear Sellier ! It is not extra-
ordinary at all. Have I not said here, over and over again, that
a Frenchman never changes his mind ? "
" But your son " began M. Sellier, feebly ; then swallowed
audibly and nervously clapped his hands.
" My son is a hero and I am proud of him. He is of the
sinews of beautiful France. He did not change his mind."
"No?" queried M. Sellier, thoroughly perplexed.
" No, no, no, no ! A thousand times no ! 7 tried to change
his mind. 7 tried to form his mind. But, you see, his ancestors
were Catholics, religion is in his blood, and he has come nobly
to recognize the fact. That proves," the excited father continued,
swerving his attention directly to M. Valette, whom all the while
he had been covertly studying, " that what I said once about en-
vironment is right."
' You are absurd, my friend," protested M. Valette, warmly,
his fingers closing and his thumb rising as of yore. " It proves
that what I said is right. I maintained that environment effects
men most vitally, did I not? "
" I neither affirm nor deny," announced the logical Freemason.
" But go on."
" Well, then, your excellent son has become a Catholic be-
cause he was subjected to a change of environment he has seen
things as they are at the front. Had he remained here in Paris,
the notion of conversion would never have entered into his mind."
" You are altogether wrong, Valette ! To begin with, there
has been no conversion, no change; my son has been a religious
person, at heart, all the time, though for a time unconsciously.
And had he remained in Paris, the same thing would have oc-
curred."
M. Valette drained his glass and curled his thin lips in an
ironic smile.
" Extremely probable, my dear Javet. It would be the most
likely thing in the world, to be sure, that under your wise guidance
and with your conservative counsel and inspired by your heroic
example, your son would turn to the Catholic Church as the only
source of happiness and truth."
I9i6.] THREE MEN OF THE BOIS 617
The tones were so freighted with meaning, that the sense of
the speaker was fully grasped, even by M. Sellier, who forgot
himself completely, and sat back in his chair and clapped his fat
hands on his capacious waistcoat and roared aloud. It was some
time before he brought himself to the stage where he could wipe his
eyes and, between chuckles, say repeatedly :
" Ha, ha ! But that covers the ground thoroughly. Oh, dear
me!"
" Well," asked M. Javet of M. Valette, " why don't you laugh
out loud too? It will be your opportunity. You think that my
guidance, my advice and my example would be obstacles in the way
of my son's entrance into the Church, don't you? Of course. How
do you know but that I might be more of an aid than anything
else?"
" Why, Javet, are you not a Mason and a free-thinker and
an anti-clerical and a believer in "
" Oh, tush, tush, my friend. Why must you bandy words ?
Giving a man the name of a thing does not make him that thing.
I am open to conviction."
"You mean"
" Just this : That I am thinking seriously of returning to the
Church for various reasons, but among them a great desire of
showing two old idiots the truth of certain propositions that I have
in their presence, and in the face of their opposition repeatedly
maintained."
" For instance ?" suggested M. Valette, completely unnerved.
" For instance, that man makes his own environment. By
your arguments during many years, Valette, you have tried to
keep alive in me the spirit of irreligion."
"The good God forbid!"
" It is so, none the less, for you should know that to fight me
makes me all the more tenacious. You have always fought me about
religion. That should have confirmed me in my liberal beliefs.
But what I am thanks to my ancestors has made me triumph over
the environment you have made for me. You see? Very well."
The two old friends slowly leaned toward each other and
solemnly touched glasses empty, but no matter for that. The
retired wine merchant waved frantically for the gargon, secured
that person's attention, then turned to his friends with tears in
his eyes.
" I feel awed and humble, very humble indeed, in this hour
6i8 THREE MEN OF THE BOIS [Feb.,
of triumph. Please do not attempt to offer me, gentlemen, either
your congratulations or your thanks."
His auditors looked wonderingly at him and at each other.
" For years and years," M. Sellier went on, "I have had two
great desires in life: One was to see my good friend, M. Javet,
a practising Christian; the other was to see you both in perfect
harmony about something. Both my wishes have come true this
day, and both though I say it who perhaps should remain silent
through my patience in listening to your arguments and my tact
in guiding the conversation."
M. Sellier nodded the gargon to come on with the clinking
tray, and smiled benevolently on all the world. But his old friends
did not smile. They even ignored the peace offerings which the
unworthy successor of Jacques put under their dilated nostrils.
M. Javet, his fists clenched, his imperial bristling, his eyebrows
almost tied into double-bow knots, was the first to speak :
" Stupid that you are ! You take upon yourself the credit
for bringing me into the Catholic Church ? Take care : I am not
in it yet; and if I ever do get in it, it will be none of your doing! "
" And stupid that you are, again ! " exclaimed M. Valette.
" What an affront to my intelligence even to imagine that my dear
Javet and I could be in perfect harmony about anything ! "
M. Sellier slowly rubbed his moist hand across his heated
brow. Suddenly he lowered it and pointed a weakly accusing
finger.
" But you are in harmony. Do you not both believe in the
necessity of the Catholic religion eh ? " he asked triumphantly,
springing noisily to his feet. " Eh ? But I have you both there,
have I not eh?"
The other two exchanged commiserating glances.
" Sit down, my good Sellier, and be quiet," said M. Javet.
" We are very far from being in harmony. We have merely
secured a common ground on which to carry on further disputes."
" I don't put it just that way," M. Valette supplemented,
" but"
And he shrugged his shoulders in grudging assent.
The light of triumph faded from M. Sellier's eyes. His lower
jaw dropped. Gripping the table, like a very old man, he sank
into his chair.
" Well," he said, partly to himself, " I suppose you are both
right. It is difficult to see clearly. I cannot tell "
PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
III.
T was the proud boast of Kant in the introduction to
the Critique of Pure Reason* that he had put
an end to skepticism for all time to come. Having
compelled reason to analyze its own limitations and
determine the uses to which it may rightfully be
put, he had forced the skeptic to admit that knowledge is really
possible of attainment within certain well-defined and controlling
bounds.
Kant's millennial view of the Critical Philosophy and its fu-
ture effects was not shared by his contemporaries. It seemed to
them that the matter of preventing the recurrence of skepticism
could not be so easily arranged, as Kant evidently thought it could,
by the simple expedient of enlarging the sphere of belief and con-
tracting the sphere of knowledge. To take the chronic differences
of opinion, nay, flat contradictions, appearing in the history of
philosophy, and transfer them from the column of the knowable
to that of the believed, solved nothing, settled nothing, even though
the transfer had a whole new philosophy, and a critical one at
that, to support it. The nature of human opinion could not be
changed, nor its contradictory character cured once for all, merely
by classifying its differences in a new and unheard-of way. A
critical philosophy calculated to bring about the consummation Kant
so devoutly wished should have no loose joints or loopholes in its
armor. Did Kant's new Criticism answer this requirement?
Hardly. It began with one unknowable reality and ended with an-
other; it was like all skepticism: "negation arrested in mid-
career." The more probable effect of the unknowable which con-
stituted its alpha and omega would be an invitation to the skeptic
to ply his trade anew. To say that an absolute reality exists, and
then to deny that we can ever know anything about its nature
what else is this, they queried, but to sow the seed of a new
kind of skepticism, instead of laying the axe to the root of the
whole matter and clearing its fungous growth completely away ?
l Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hartenstein's edition (1867), p. 25.
620 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
So that Kant's contemporaries, without inquiring whether he
was right or wrong in conceiving external reality as a huge in-
scrutable blank, seriously doubted the expediency of retaining such
an unknowable as the preface and conclusion of a philosophy pro-
fessing to be anti-skeptical in temper. It was not the way, they
thought, to put a seal upon the lips of doubters, or a foil upon
their swords; quite the contrary. And the settling of this ques-
tion of expediency in the negative had more to do with the dis-
appearance of external reality from the categories of modern
philosophy than any other cause. Such a notion seemed a barrier
to the full and final overthrow of skepticism and was sacrificed on
the altar of this ambitious hope and dream. In fact, from Kant's
day to our own, if we except the professedly agnostic systems of
Sir William Hamilton, Dean Mansel, and Herbert Spencer, the
skepticism of modern thought has resulted in no small measure
from a desire to avoid skepticism, the purpose defeating its attain-
ment by the methods employed and presumptions entertained, as
the reader may see for himself from the brief historical survey
that follows.
Kant lived to see his favorite unknowable swept away by a
stormy, impetuous youth named Fichte, and took part himself in
the bitter controversies to which the latter's views gave rise.
Fichte claimed that the notion of external reality was useless and
proved the point to his own satisfaction, at least. How could you
ever deduce thought from being? he queried. How would you
account for ethics and aesthetics the good, the true, and the beau-
tiful; and where would you find an explanation of conscience, if
Being is the ultimate reality? Whence would spiritual activity be
derived, on such a supposition? And how could religion ever have
drawn from so dry a fount as Being's the peace and comfort, piety
and love, with which it comes to us sweetly laden, a spicy breath
of Araby the blest to a world of strife and struggle? Avast and
avaunt! The notion is a hollow shell. You see, Fichte had the
empty idea of reality in contradistinction to the full; it was the
indefinite, not the Infinite; and so, like Kant before, and Hegel
after him, his wrong notion led him on. Being comes from thought,
he argued, not thought from being. The world can be constructed
out of self-consciousness, without any aid from experience, with-
out any material furnished from without. A creative faculty exists
within us, producing the world of matter and the world of spirit
by one and the same synthetic act. This creative faculty is the
1916.] PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM 621
universal Ego or self-consciousness, from which ours is derived;
though just how this all-embracing self ever became splintered off
into human individuals passes understanding, said Fichte, unless
the reason of it was to make morality possible by furnishing " the
material of duty in the forms of sense."
Why should we appeal to reality or any outside determinant,
he urged, if reality itself is but a creature of consciousness, an
offspring of thought, a child of mind? If the spirit produces our
abstract knowledge and Kant said it could and did what is to
hinder it from producing our concrete knowledge as well? Why
continue regarding objects as alien and foreign things lying out
there over against us and determining our powers of knowing this
way and that? Why not extend Kant's theory of the creativeness
of Thought to the visible world about us, and make that, too, a
brilliant instance of the mind's productive power? The doctrine
of Immanence, the theory that reality is within consciousness and
nothing at all without, thus became the first article in the creed
of those who would be forever quit of skepticism; and this im-
manence doctrine, as we shall show later in a special article devoted
to the subject, produced more real skepticism in turn than any
other cause, principle, or assumption in recent or ancient times.
The subjective idealism proposed by Fichte as a means of
bringing the skeptic to terms won but few adherents, and the names
of these are " writ in water." Schelling and Hegel, two students
who worked together privately before being appointed to professorial
posts at Jena, came to the joint conclusion that it would be much
more feasible to admit the identity of the subjective and objective
worlds than to say that the latter was constructed by the former.
It seemed too much like making the universe out of the stuff of
dreams. Thought implied something to think about, they said, and
for this reason the existence of a non-personal world must be
admitted, to furnish the basis or vehicle through which spiritual
forces reveal themselves to conscious mind, their simultaneous coun-
terpart. Otherwise it would be impossible for Thought ever to
start moving. Objective idealism thus displaced subjective, and
the movement to overthrow skepticism took a new and more in-
genious turn. Hegel, in fact, had not been long exchanging re-
flections with Schelling, when he felt the ways dividing. The latter
did not think it necessary to prove the thesis that the world of mind
and the world of matter are one. He thought that the identity of
the two might be postulated to use Hegel's phrase " like a shot
622 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
from a pistol." Proof was what the thesis stood most in need
of, as Hegel saw the situation; proof so vigorously logical in
form, it would be past disputing and instantly compel assent.
Manifestly the logic of identity would never do for Hegel's
coercive purpose. The view of Kant, Fichte and Schelling, that
you can advance logically through the field of concepts only by
going from the same to the same, is a law of conceptual thought
too sterile to be seriously entertained. " The so-called maxim of
identity/' Hegel wrote, " is supposed to be accepted by the con-
sciousness of everyone. But the language which such a law de-
mands, 'a planet is a planet, magnetism is magnetism, mind is
mind/ deserves to be called silliness. No mind either speaks or
thinks or forms conceptions in accordance with this law, and no
existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. We must never
view identity as abstract identity, to the exclusion of all difference.
That is the touchstone for distinguishing all bad philosophy from
what alone deserves the name of philosophy. If thinking were no
more than registering abstract identities, it would be a most super-
fluous performance. Things and concepts are identical with them-
selves only in so far as at the same time they involve distinction." 2
The logic Hegel wanted was one which would not only allow,
but compel Thought to advance from the different to the different.
The reason of the choice is all too plain. Hegel was out to catch
the skeptic in a logical net, and would not be content until he
found a law of Thought that applied with iron-clad necessity and
clock-like regularity to all circumstances, past, present, and to come.
There would be no escaping this time. The perennial appeal of
the skeptic was to history. As soon as you drew his attention to
this system of philosophy or that, he drew yours away immediately,
pointing with scorn to the plentiful crop of contradictions which
the history of philosophy had yielded. To history, therefore,
Hegel wished to go. He would meet the skeptic on his chosen
ground, beard the lion in his den, and drive him out of his favorite
lair, not with a private theory Kant, Fichte and Schelling tried
that method to no avail but with a necessary law of thought
behind him to force the assent of doubters and stop their cavilling.
By the masterly stroke of admitting and proving that Contra-
diction is the essential law of thought, life, reality, nature, art,
science, religion, statecraft and history, Hegel imagined he could
cut the very ground from under the skeptic's feet and leave him,
'Hegel's Smaller Logic, Wallace's translation, pp. 184, 185.
1916.] PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM 623
like Archimedes, not knowing where to stand with his lever to tilt
the world. He would prove to him that wherever you look in
history, there is first a position laid down, then its denial, and after
that the reconciliation of the two opposites in a higher idea em-
bracing both; and after that again, the breaking-up of the recon-
ciling idea into its warring component elements. Thesis, antithe-
sis, synthesis, he would say to him, behold the triads which for-
ever keep the giddy world a-moving. Contradiction a sign that
reason is defective? Nay, a proof that it is highly efficient, never
at a standstill, but forever marching on. " Dialectic is the uni-
versal and irresistible power before which nothing can stay
Summum jus, summa injuria to drive an abstract right to excess
is to commit injustice Extreme anarchy and extreme despotism
lead to one another Pride comes before a fall. Too much wit
outwits itself. Joy brings tears, melancholy a sardonic smile." 3
" Once catch well the knack of this scheme of thought," writes
Professor James, " and you are lucky if you ever get away from it.
It is all you can see. Let anyone pronounce anything, and your
feeling of a contradiction being implied becomes a habit, almost a
motor habit in some persons who symbolize by a stereotyped ges-
ture the position, sublation, and final reinstatement involved. If
you say 'two' or 'many/ your speech bewrayeth you, for the very
name collects them into one. If you express doubt, your expres-
sion contradicts its content, for the doubt itself is not doubted
but affirmed. If you say 'disorder/ what is that but a certain
bad kind of order? If you say 'indetermination/ you are deter-
mining just that. If you say 'Nothing but the unexpected happens/
the unexpected becomes what you expect. If you say 'All things
are relative/ to what is the all of them itself relative? If you
say 'no more/ there is already more, namely, the region in which
more is sought, but no more is found to know a limit as such is
consequently already to have got beyond it and so forth, through-
out as many examples as one cares to cite." 4
Hegel had indeed made good his escape from the paralyzing
principle of identity, with its " things in themselves," its " empty
forms of thought and sense," its " pure reason," its " schematized
categories," and its worse than hollow " unknowables." " Concepts
'Hegel's Smaller Logic, Wallace's translation, p. 128. Quoted by Professor
James, Hibbert Journal, Hegel and His Method, October, 1908, p. 68.
* Hegel and Hi$ Method, By William James, Hibbert Journal, October, 1908,
p. 69,
624 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
were not in his eyes the static self-contained things that previous
logicians had supposed, but were germinative and passed beyond
themselves into each other by what he called their immanent dialec-
tic. In ignoring each other as they do, they virtually exclude each
other, he thought, and thus in a manner introduce each other." 5
And because of this passing into each other, they were related by a
relation of self-completion. It was by this admission of their re-
latedness that he hoped to break down Kant's deadening logic of
identity, and in its stead, nay on its ruins, to build up a dialectic
logic which would force the whole muttering brood of skeptics to
keep the peace. The law of the succession of opposites that was
the knotted cord with which he would whip the doubters till they
cried for mercy.
By making the contradictions of history move, by mating
every concept with its opposite, by starting philosophy at zero and
raising it subsequently to what temperature he pleased, Hegel be-
lieved he was inaugurating an era in which the skeptics would
wait patiently for the next great contradiction to come, know-
ing that a still greater synthesis would surely follow in its wake.
Once the idea gained credence, that the whole history of the world,
with all its error, crime, debauchery, innocence and virtue, could
be written out under the single category of Development ; could be
shown to conform to the single law that opposite succeeds op-
posite unfailingly everywhere, progress would take on the ap-
pearance of a thing inevitable bound to occur in our own despite;
the future would be observed brewing in the past; contradic-
tions would be diagnosed as the growing pains of the cosmos;
one opinion would come to be regarded as good as another; error
would appear as the advance agent of truth; wrong as the signal
that right was coming and crime as the introductory bow of in-
nocence and virtue. What could the skeptic rejoin when he saw
the contradictory history of philosophy thus cleverly turned into a
contradictory philosophy of history? Would not his discomfiture
be complete? Alas! poor Yorick, I knew him well, and 'twas I
that felled him foully at a stroke. He should have known, daft
wight, that
The obligation of our blood forbids
A gory emulation 'twixt us twain.
Hegel's philosophy was moulded by a special purpose the
Ibid., p. 66.
19*6.] PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM 625
refutation of skepticism and that threw his entire system out of
gear. The well-known law of association that the objects of
thought often suggest their opposites was extended from psy-
chology to metaphysics, and made to mean that things are always
generating their negatives, and irresistibly moving on. Clearly
this is a fact not proven. Regress and stagnation mark the course
of human history fully as much as does advance, which is never
steady, but in curves of billowy cadence, and with troughs and
crests. There is nothing in the way of fact to suggest the Hegelian
theory of indefinite, continuous, inevitable, necessary progress, 6
that theory resting on the groundless supposition that a fatal law
of conceptual thought compels the admission of a forward move-
ment without cease. The succession of opposites is neither a true
nor adequate description of the world's development. Universal
transformism is a myth. Things grow by perfecting their identity,
not by losing it, as is plainly to be seen. By his method of de-
ducing everything out of a supposedly necessary relation of op-
position prevailing between concepts, Hegel lost that balancing con-
tact with experience which an inductive method brings, and took
for his guidance the counter principle that truth is a " reeling Bac-
chante, drunk in every limb." The fallacy of trying to make
Thought creative was never seen to worse advantage. A hard-
headed individual, named Krug, got into the history of philosophy
by challenging Hegel to deduce the moon, a horse, a rose, or
at least the pen with which said Krug was writing. And Hegel's
sarcastic rejoinder that science had more important business on
hand than the deduction of Mr. Krug's pen, shows that the query
touched the sore spot in the whole system.
Living and writing before the experimental sciences had
poured their accuracies into the lap of scholarship, personally hav-
ing but scant reverence for the same, and much preferring ro-
mantic imagination to the inconvenience of research, Hegel did
not see the fallacy and futility of building philosophy from the
top down instead of from the bottom up. His speculative ardor
would undergo considerable cooling, could he now revisit the
scenes of his former labors and behold what the despised scientists
had accomplished since he left, by means of the slower but surer
principle of induction. Croce would tell him how much of his
system was dead, how little living. 7 And could he have met the
"See Evolution and Progress, THE CATHOLIC WORLD, May, June, July, 1915.
1 Cid che e vivo e do che k morto nella filosofia di Hegel. Benedetto Croce.
VOL. CII. 40
626 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
late Professor James, the latter surely would not lose the occa-
sion to remind him of " his abominable vocabulary, calling what
completes a thing its 'negation/ for example; his systematic re-
fusal to let you know whether he is talking logic or physics or
psychology; his deliberately adopted ambiguity and vagueness,
in short; things that make his present-day readers wish to tear
their hair or his out in desperation. Like Byron's corsair, he
leaves 'a name to other times, linked with one virtue and a thou-
sand crimes/ " 8
Hegel was no more successful in proving the succession of op-
posites a necessary conceptual law, than in establishing it as a
fatal law of history. His grandiose attempt to show that the
intellect is exclusively engaged in synthesizing contradictions re-
veals an extreme confusion at the bottom of his thought, that dis-
counts more than ninety per cent of his thinking. His lordly am-
bition to crush the skeptic prevented him from seeing that con-
cepts do not always pass over into their " others " far from it !
but up and on to their larger and connected " likes." An example
will help to illustrate the fallacious course into which his plan
betrayed him. Take the relation of the two concepts art and
philosophy. The relation is simple enough, and even if one hap-
pened to be an idealist, it could be explained without the least ref-
erence to contradiction. Art implies philosophy as a wider em-
bracing unity, and philosophy includes art as the greater enwraps
the less. The logic is the logic of inclusion and implication rather
than that of exclusion, rivalry and opposition. Examine any of
our concrete concepts, and you will find that they point beyond
themselves, not to their negating opposites, but to the larger likes
which include them within their encircling fold. The individual
points beyond itself to the family, and the family to civil society
and the State ; art points beyond itself to philosophy, and the latter
to the still greater reaches of religion. In fact, all our concrete
concepts have degrees and grades; they are not accompanied by
a row of ciphers; self -transcending by nature, they mate, not
with their opposites, but with larger, more inclusive unities. It
is only when we take these graded concrete concepts, and throw
them up into the abstract, that they become contradictory in ap-
pearance, as State and individual, religion and art, knowledge and
action. This was the trap into which Hegel fell. He considered
the oppositional abstract concepts, and forgot the scales of re-
8 Hegel and His Method, Hibbert Journal, October, 1908, p. 64.
1916.] PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM 627
lated being which concrete concepts all reveal; and so he was
enabled speciously to prove that the synthesis of contradictions is
the sole labor congenial to the human spirit; a position which
we have just shown can be refuted even on idealistic grounds, on
the theory, namely, that truth is a self -cohering whole, in con-
formity with no reality but itself.
There is a more drastic refutation still, and that is to con-
sider the whole Kantian, Hegelian mode of overthrowing skepti-
cism wrong and inefficient; a sham battle, and not a real en-
counter; with a good deal of religious prepossession at its back,
and no genuine desire to see the problem solved, but rather that
its solution should be postponed indefinitely. The pivotal assump-
tion in Hegel's system is that the historically disputed propositions
of philosophy are partly true and partly false; and that to over-
come their oppositions, to reconcile their partial truth and false-
hood, recourse must be had to a wider synthesis embracing the
contradictory propositions themselves and making peace between
them, somewhat after the fashion agreeably inane of the present
promoters of Church unity, who would have us admit, unresolved,
the whole seething mass of sectarian differences nestling within
the bosom of a divided Christendom, and go hide our heads, and
hold our speech, in charity f orevermore, at the wonderful " unity
in difference " that had been effected. Suppose we deny this
pivotal assumption of all idealism, and assert instead, that every
contradicted proposition in the history of philosophy is decomposa-
ble or resolvable into two, one of which is false, the other true
what would be left for Hegel's triads to accomplish? Nothing.
They would enter at once into their eternal rest, and truth would
have a past as well as a future, it would not be ever coming,
but already come. The true, the effective way to refute skepti-
cism is not by imagining a big clearing-house in the shape of some
vague, empty, and general formula, into which the whole mass of
discordant contradictions can be poured; the only honest, worthy
way is to do the reconciliation work ourselves, by breaking up
every contradicted proposition, into the true and false elements
which it contains. The right method is analysis not synthesis;
to sift, resolve, winnow, discriminate, instead of promiscuously
confusing, as Hegel did, as idealists still most vainly persist in
doing.
We were speaking, a few paragraphs back, of the motherly,
productive relation existing between religion, philosophy, and art.
628 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
Notice now what becomes of this living, connected relationship
when Hegel sophisticates it with his galloping triads of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis, letting loose these three favorite philo-
sophical dogs of war to tear it limb from limb. Art becomes the
thesis; religion the antithesis; philosophy the synthesis. This
makes religion the negation of art, and converts religion and art
into two exclusive and contradictory abstractions, clamoring for
just such a philosophy as Hegel's to effect their complete rejoining.
How good of the world at large to work itself up in the direc-
tion of one particular brand of philosophy and to advertise
Hegel's impressionistic wares ! Yet who in his sober senses would
take the positive continuity and productive relationship existing
between religion on the one hand and art and philosophy on the
other, and read into it an illustration of the synthesis of contradic-
tions? Hegel overdrove his triadic hobby-horse until it ran piti-
ably lame. He invented contradictions to prove that contradic-
tion is the law of life, the sole and single way appointed for the
world's developing. In his undisciplined desire to strike the skeptic
dumb, he overlooked the most effective portion of the truth in de-
livering the stroke.
He did not see that " the passing of concepts beyond them-
selves " is due to the idea of Being the primordial element in-
hering in them all, and enabling each to burst its bounds of self-
hood and go join its many mates. Working with the category of
oppositional Development as his sole philosophical stock in trade,
he recorded the passing and left the permanent unnoticed; mistook
inclusions for oppositions, solidarity for strife, falsehood for par-
tial truth. There is more than alteration going on in the worlds
of mind and matter. Only by supposing that such a law of al-
teration was fatally everywhere at work could Hegel whitewash
the sordid crimes of history, rationalize the irrational, make the
ugly beautiful in prospect, deify contradiction, and throw truth
into the never-ending stream of variation. His dialectical method,
when applied to the history of Christianity, was responsible for
such antitheses as would divide the Pauline, Petrine, and Johannine
elements into three movements pressing in directions counter.
Some good folk still living and writing and imagining are evidently
not aware that we have a concrete concept of Christianity large
enough to include the saintly labors of Peter, Paul, and John; and
that if we make our analyses complete at the start, the oppositions
are seen to be nothing else than the gross mistaking of our own logi-
1916.] PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM 629
cal methods, divisions, and devices, for real distinctions in things
and disruptive movements in history.
The best proof that Hegel was wrong is the fact that the more
wary idealists of the day do not follow him, preferring the logic
of implication to that of contradiction, and declaring that Hegel
in his maturer days really abandoned the latter for the former.
The fact of the matter is that neither suffices for the gigantic task
assigned. The old Hegelian logic of opposition and the new He-
gelian logic of implication owe their invention to the defective
analysis of analysis, inherited from Kant. A frank recognition
of the all too patent fact that Thought can analyze the essential rela-
tions of every subject as well as its formal inclusions would sweep
them both away as unnecessary recourses. It would put an end also
to the sleight-of-hand, legerdemain sort of logic which draws the
ocean from a drop of dew, a mountain from a molehill, and so in-
terprets the fact of " unity in difference " as to make the " unity "
everything and the " differences " next to nothing. It is true that
reality has degrees and grades, in the sense that the universe is a
system of interrelated, interacting things, differing as star from
star in magnitude and quality; but the phrase is false when made
to mean that the grades and degrees of reality all exist within
the bosom of a single organism the universe out of which
they spring as so many differing appearances of the one and only
whole. When will philosophers make their analysis of analysis
complete, recognize the spontaneously synthetic activity of the in-
tellect, and cease pursuing the idle policy of first refunding all
difference into some general unity, and then drawing them forth
therefrom by deductive logic, as if the process represented his-
tory and describe the actual course of the world's development?
Professor Santyana, of Harvard University, writing of a
" well-known philosophy of philosophy " that takes itself alto-
gether too seriously, and seeks to impose its views by a coercive
logic that does not coerce, has the following comment to make
upon its structure and value : " It would maintain that human
thought is an absolute thing, that it existed and developed on its
own internal principles and resources, without any environment.
What this philosophy starts from and calls knowledge is, accord-
ing to its description, not knowledge at all, but only absolute
imagination, a self -generated experience expressing no prior ex-
istence and regarding no external object, either material or ideal.
Such absolute imagination, since its development could not be af-
630 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
fected by anything outside (there being nothing outside), would
evidently require all those variations and ingredients which I have
called heresies; they would all express its initial pregnancy more
or less completely, and would be taken up and carried on in the
next phase of its life. All the parts of orthodoxy might thus, in
isolation, be called heretical, while the sum total and infinite life
of heresy would be orthodoxy, or rather would be reality itself.
We are in a world of romantic soliloquy, peopled by subjective
lights and subjective assurances; and it is easy to see how well
such a discovery might serve Protestant theologians to justify
their past and idealize their future." 9
Leaving the days of absolutism for our own immediate times,
we find that the pulse of another dialectic has already begun to
beat. Hegel's triads no longer grind out the cosmos in their mill-
ing rounds. His attempt to rationalize history has been superseded
by an attempt to derationalize it hind and fore. Romanticism is
in open revolt against the rationalism to which Hegel sought to
wed it. The doctrine of fatalistic alteration is no longer re-
garded as a law of Thought, but of life, environment, and ex-
perience. The new dialectic beats from percept to percept, not
from concept to concept, as the old dialectic did; and the reason
for the change is the same as heretofore a refutation of skepti-
cism. Environment being the new mobilization centre around
which the thoughts of men are gathering, everything has under-
gone reexpression in its terms. Knowledge is a means of con-
trolling our surroundings, of manipulating our experience, not an
end in itself. The particular, not the general, the finite, not the
infinite, is its end and aim. The test of an idea is the fact that
"it works;" of truth, that it brings emotional satisfaction and
consequences of a practical sort. Intellectual values as such are
in the main discarded. The new principles of utility, adaptation
to environment, control of experience have crowded out all recog-
nition of knowledge for its own sake. To know is to adapt
oneself to one's environment; and truth depends on the successful
performance of this sole appointed task.
Man, they tell us, was always an artisan, from the day he
fashioned a coat of skins for himself out of the hides of beasts
and drew from flint the friendly spark that warmed him, to the
present busy hour when the invasion of the air has meant the sub-
9 Philosophical Heresy. By George Santyana. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology
and Scientific Methods, vol. xii., no. 21, p. 566.
1916.] PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM 631
duing of the last of the hostile elements that defied his sovereignty.
Concepts have been fashioned by him, like all things else, as prac-
tical instruments of action, as tools with which to work on stub-
born nature. Concepts exist for acting, not for knowing. They
are convenient symbols of the things we need not know but simply
touch and use. In a word, they are symbols of the practical, not
stars of knowledge, or little lamps of light to things unseen. And
do you desire a refutation of skepticism, an explanation of the
myriad contradictions with which the path of human thought
through history is beset? The pragmatist will tell you that his
instrumental theory of thought, his functional theory of knowledge
explains the fact most readily and affords the best preventive.
Just as your ways are not like your grandfather's, times, condi-
tions, and purposes having changed, so has it been with human
thought its course is one of constant variation. Go to Darwin
if you want real light thrown on the contradictions of history.
Hegel muddled the solution, by leaving out the great explanatory
factor of adaptation, and by taking Thought only into account.
His coherence theory of truth is a madman's dream. The world
is the result of accident, not the slow unfolding of a plan. There
are no two things or persons alike in its whole expansive breadth
of bosom. Life is the thing; and it is moving on in dialectic
strides Hegel never witnessed in his dreaming, he who imagined
that men were made for knowing, when the fact of the matter is
that the life-process which upheaved their environment, upheaved
them also along with it or a little after, for the sole sake of
shaping them to its blind and variant coursings. We are mak-
ers of reality; it is pliant to the touch of human purpose, respon-
sive to our needs, plastic to the satisfaction of our aims; a great
field of opportunity to be exploited in our own behalf; a mine
of practical possibilities unending. Out upon all metaphysics!
Let us make the Reformation complete!
The elements of fact must be sifted from the elements of
speculation in this garish world-view. Is the variation of per-
cepts a necessary law of life any more than Hegel's doctrine of
the variation of concepts is a necessary law of Thought? Is the
fatalism of our concrete knowledge any more apparent or demon-
strable than the fatalism of our abstract notions? Who can
prove, who has ever proved, that our knowledge grows by trans-
formation? that the old in it is forever passing over into the new
so thoroughly, it leaves not a wrack of its former self behind?
632 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
Does not our knowledge of facts grow by accretion and addition,
by the assimilation of old elements to new, and not by the complete
transformation of the former into the latter, as evolutionists al-
lege? And if so, why not read the facts as they stand, instead
of putting them under the distorting glass of an unproven theory?
Suppose we were to grant that the test of an idea is its successful
working; and of truth, that it floods the consciousness with emo-
tional satisfaction, a sense of harmonious adaptation to the world
about. Suppose, furthermore, that the functional or instrumental
theory of knowledge, as it is called, should be conceded; and
the fact acknowledged that man had been an artisan from first
to last. How would you prove that any of these statements is
exclusively true, which is the point evolutionists must establish, or
their theory is in the air.
Are any of these views commensurate with history? Are
they not, rather, undue simplifications of the complex nature of
man, undue reductions of his stature, half-truths and quarter-
truths loudly laying pretensions to be the whole ? Does not history
reveal man as a curious being, with scientific interests, intellectual
desires, and love of the search of wisdom for its own sake, with-
out thought of the material returns to be got from the searching?
Why is this chapter of light stricken out from the pages of history,
and a chapter of blind endeavor interpolated in its stead? Has
man had no theoretical interests from the beginning, has he none
now? Would the nineteenth century gentlemen read themselves
back into the race that went before, and forwards into the race
that is to come after? Is the skeptic to receive his final quietus,
by being told that throughout the course of history, man has not
only lacked the ability to acquire knowledge, he never even had the
desire to seek it? The answer shows that the pragmatists of
the present consider skepticism a native-born disposition of the
human spirit. Professional skeptics have never put forth any such
untoward claim in the entire history of philosophy, their conten-
tion all along having been that man has the desire, but not the
ability, to know himself and the world about him with certainty.
It is the unenviable distinction of the pragmatist and " modernist "
view, that for downright radicalism and agnosticism it is without
competitor or peer, surpassing even skepticism itself in skepticism,
and affording the sole indubitable instance of "transformation."
A reaction from all this evolutionistic speculation began some
years ago in a movement still in its incipiency called the " New
I 9 i6.] PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM 633
Realism." 10 It has not as yet lived up to its name and title fully,
insisting so much on the reality of the world of objects, as prac-
tically to deny the distinct existence and produced character of
human ideas, not to mention the problem of accounting for the ex-
istence of error, which this denial has created. But it is vigor-
ously asserting the thesis that knowledge grows by accretion, not
by transformation; and it is attempting the refutation of skepti-
cism, not by inventing some vague and hospitable synthesis to
house and harbor truth and error as if these two were Siamese
twins that knew no parting but by the more practical, sincere,
and efficient method of winnowing the chaff of philosophy from
its wheat. The advice they hold out to their contemporaries is to
drop the metaphysical subterfuges in vogue and return to the
logical method of analyzing all propositions, however old they
be, or however much disputed. You will then find, they tell them,
that old propositions are neither transformed nor transformable
into new; but are either to be rejected outright as false, or
analyzed into two or more propositions, one of which is to be ac-
cepted as true, the other or others repudiated as false. The growth
of truth will then appear distinct and separable from the growth
of error, and we shall be done with the idle shibboleth that all
propositions are partly false and partly true; nay, we shall dis-
own as unworthy the attempt of a century to weave the erroneous
into the very fabric and texture of verity itself. Truth will be
seen to have a past as well as a present and future. Its youth
is no crime, neither is its age. To refute skepticism, we are not
obliged to rationalize all error, as did Hegel, or to derationalize
all truth and make it practical, as is the fashion of the pragmatists
two desperate recourses which leave confusion worse confounded,
and overthrow the skeptic by the dire and disastrous course of
having philosophers in a body go over to his camp and there make
common cause ingloriously with the enemy. There is a middle
course ; and so far as skepticism is based on intellectual grounds,
and not built up out of attitudes of will or temperamental judg-
ments that throw reason to the winds, it is the only one that
meets the situation squarely or holds out any promise of redeem-
ing it to truth.
10 The Program and First Platform of Six Realists. Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. vii., no. 15, pp. 393 ff. Realism as a Polemic
and Program of Reform. By Ralph Barton Perry. Op. cit., vol. vii., no. 13, pp.
337 ff.; no. 14, pp. 365 ff.
634 PUTTING AN END TO SKEPTICISM [Feb.,
This proposal of the New Realists is like a returning breath
of scholasticism and its " academic circles," though it would be
vain to imagine that the reaction portends a second Spring. But
at any rate, the defiant challenge flung down to the old Hegelism
and the new Darwinism will have its effect, in clearing the at-
mosphere and bringing matters to a head. The ringing conten-
tion of the New Realists, that the way to combat skepticism is to
resolve the historic contradictions of philosophy, and not to refer
their origin to some colorless Absolute, neither mental nor physi-
cal by nature, but betwixt and between this contention is a wel-
come voice in the wilderness of sophistication, and a decided relief
from the evolutionistic cry that Thought and things are moving
irresistibly on, " from the different to the different," in unhalting
strides. The analytic method, a Catholic need hardly be told,
is the one which the Church has followed in her clearing pathway
through the years. And the children of liberty, light, and love
may well be glad they are not in the toils of that philosophy which,
Chesterton charges, " has substituted an idea of fatalistic alter-
ation for the freedom of the mediaeval soul seeking truth."
LIONEL JOHNSON.
BY JOYCE KILMER.
HE year 1915 has been, in the United States, a time
of great glory for the poet. The number of books
of verse published has been phenomenally large, and
several volumes, notably Mr. Robert Frost's North
of Boston and the American edition of Rupert
Brooke's Collected Poems, have passed through several editions.
But the year's most important book of poetry is not the work of a
living author. It is the work of a young man who prematurely
went to his tragic death in October, 1902. Through the intelligent
enterprise of The Macmillan Company it is now possible to obtain
in one volume the Collected Poems of Lionel Johnson.
To those who are so fortunate as already to know Lionel
Johnson's poetry, this is good news indeed. During the poet's life-
time, two volumes were published Poems in 1895 and Ireland and
Other Poems in 1897. These books, in all their dignity of hand-
made paper and rubricated title-pages, soon became expensive
rarities sought eagerly by the bibliophile. They were not reprinted,
and Lionel Johnson was known to most lovers of poetry only by
occasional quotations made by such discerning anthologists as Mr.
Burton E. Stevenson, and by the sympathetic appreciations contrib-
uted to English and American magazines by Miss Louise Imogen
Guiney and Miss Katherine Bregy.
A few years ago a number of Lionel Johnson's essays and
book reviews were published by Mr. Mitchell Kennerley, under the
title Post Liminium. The book is full of sound scholarship, keen
aesthetic understanding, and rich and wholesome humor. And
there is never any possibility of mistaking Lionel Johnson's point
of view; in all matters of religion, art, economics and politics, as
well as in all matters of faith and morals, his point of view was
obviously and unhesitatingly Catholic. But prose was not Lionel
Johnson's favorite medium; he might, indeed, had he lived longer,
have come to rank as a critic with Matthew Arnold or Sainte Beuve,
but his most important contribution to literature was his poetry,
and it is as a poet, as a Catholic poet, that he must be judged.
I have mentioned the fact that some of his poems have been in-
636 LIONEL JOHNSON [Feb.,
eluded in the anthologies. In one instance, the editor of an anthology
unintentionally did Lionel Johnson a grave injustice. He entrusted
the task of writing an introduction to Lionel Johnson's poem to Mr.
William Butler Yeats. And Mr. Yeats wrote : " He has made a
world full of all delights and golden vestures, and murmured Latin,
and incense clouds, and autumn winds, and dead leaves, where one
wanders remembering martyrdoms and courtesies that the world
has forgotten."
This is very beautiful indeed. It is also the rankest nonsense
that even Mr. Yeats ever wrote. Lionel Johnson was, it is true,
a convert to Catholicism. But in spite of Mr. William Butler
Yeats' expert opinion, a convert to Catholicism is not a person
who wanders about weeping over autumn winds and dead leaves,
murmuring Latin and snuffing incense. It happened that Lionel
Johnson was a scholar and a gentleman, a thoroughly wholesome,
vivacious and humorous person, and although he was born in
London, he was full of genuine Celtic mirth and courage. He
hoped and wrote and worked for the day when Ireland, the land
of his ancestors, should again be a free and independent nation.
He was, in fact, a Catholic and an Irishman. And neither one of
these titles belongs by rights to Mr. Yeats. No one can deny that
Mr. Yeats has in his time done splendid service to the cause of
poetry ; he has written some of the most nobly beautiful lyrics and
poetic dramas in our language. But his truest admirers must regret
that he made this widely circulated and grossly untrue estimate of
one of the most thoroughly masculine personalities in modern Eng-
lish letters.
In considering that brief and tumultuous period in English
literature which is sometimes called the ^Esthetic Renaissance of the
Nineties, it is inevitable that three figures should stand out with
particular vividness. They are Lionel Johnson, Aubrey Beardsley
and Ernest Dowson a great poet, a brilliant but unbalanced illus-
trator, and another poet, who wrote a great deal of rubbish, and
about four poems which are genuine and important contributions
to English literature. What is the bond between these three men?
Why should they be grouped together?
They might be grouped together because they all three were
creative artists whose careers, so far as the world knows, ended
with the nineteenth century. They might be grouped together be-
cause they were animated by the same feeling, a violent reaction
against the hideous scientific dogmatism, the deadly materialism, of
1916.] LIONEL JOHNSON 637
the much-vaunted Victorian era. And they might be grouped to-
gether because all three were artists, seekers after that real but
elusive thing called beauty, a thing which they found at last only
when they had made their submission to her who is the mother of
all learning, all culture and all the arts, the Catholic Church. And
yet, although the fact of their conversion establishes a real and
noble connection between these three men of genius, their characters
and talents differ greatly. Only one of them was directly inspired
through a considerable period of years by his Catholic Faith. The
other two became Catholics towards the end of their artistic career,
too late for the Faith to give to their work that purity and strength
which are the guarantees of immortality. But one of them found
his Faith almost as soon as he found his genius, celebrated it in
poems of enduring beauty, and left the world a precious heritage of
song. That man was Lionel Johnson.
In his The Eighteen Nineties, Mr. Holbrook Jackson has
pointed out the significance of the revival of sestheticism which took
place in the closing years of the nineteenth century, and has shown
that it was symptomatic of a sort of idealistic revolt. Now, ideal-
ism surely is desirable, and it is perhaps unjust for us to judge a
literary and artistic movement by its most bizarre and artificial
features. The eccentricities of The Savoy and The Yellow Book
do not, it may be, indicate clearly the essential motives of the young
writers who were endeavoring to bring about a renaissance of ideal-
ism in dull, materialistic, " scientific " Victorian London. But it is
inevitable that the most sensational aspects of a literary movement
should be most generally observed and longest remembered. And it
is unquestionably true that one real value of the cult of peacocks
and green carnations, of artificial paganism, and sophisticated love-
liness, is that it furnishes a splendidly contrasting background for
the white genius of Lionel Johnson.
This aristocratic and wealthy young Oxford graduate might
so easily have become an aesthetic and nothing more ! His environ-
ment, many of his friendships, even his discipleship, as it may be
called, to Walter Pater might naturally be expected to cause him
to develop into a mere dilettant, interested only in delicate and
superficial beauty, having, by way of moral code, an earnest desire
to live up to his blue china. Instead, what was this friend of
Theodore Peters (of Renaissance cloak fame) and Hubert Cracken-
thorpe? He was a sound and accomplished scholar, writing Latin
hymns that for their grace and authentic ecclesiastical style might
638 LIONEL JOHNSON [Feb.,
stand beside those of Adam of St. Victor or of St. Bernard himself.
Nor was he less deft in his manipulation of the style of the classical
authors see, for example, those graceful lines beginning : "Valete,
fas est, flores! vale, ver!" And this, remember, was at a time
when Latin was most absolutely a dead language to most young
English poets, whose attention was given entirely to the picturesque
attractions of the Parisian argot beloved of the Decadents. In
fact the atmosphere of the literary world in which he lived seems
to have had no effect upon Lionel Johnson's mind and soul. He
was " of the centre," not " of the movement." He gladly accepted
the gracious traditions of English poetry. He followed the time-
hallowed conventions of his craft as faithfully as did Tennyson.
He had no desire to toss Milton's wreath either to Whitman or to
Baudelaire. But these virtues are perhaps chiefly negative.
Almost the same things might be said of many poets, of the late
Stephen Phillips, for example, who certainly was an honest tradi-
tionalist, uninfluenced by decadence or sestheticism. But Lionel
Johnson had also (what Stephen Phillips lacked) a great and beauti-
ful philosophy. And his philosophy was true. He was so for-
tunate as to hold the Catholic Faith. This Faith inspired his best
poems, shines through them and makes them, as the word is used,
immortal.
Of course Lionel Johnson was not exclusively a devotional
and religious poet. The theme which he sang with the most splen-
did passion and the most consummate art was the Catholic Church.
This was the great influence of his life; it is to this that his poetry
owes most of its enduring beauty. But there were other influences,
there were other things which claimed, to a less degree, his devo-
tion. One of these was Ireland, and another was England. Lionel
Johnson's chivalrous loyalty to Ireland was not without its quaint
humor. He was descended from the soldier who savagely put
down the insurrection of 1798. But he by no means shared his
ancestor's views in Irish matters; he was an enthusiastic advocate
of Irish freedom and a devoted lover of everything Irish.
Although he hailed with delight the revival of ancient Celtic
customs and the ancient Celtic language, Lionel Johnson was far
from being what we have come to call a neo-Celt. He did not
spend his time in writing elaborately annotated chants in praise of
Cuchullain and Deidre and ^Engus, and other creatures of legend;
the attempt to reestablish Ireland's ancient paganism seemed to
him singularly unintelligent. He saw that the greatest glory of
1916.] LIONEL JOHNSON 639
Ireland is her fidelity to the Catholic Faith, a fidelity which count-
less cruel persecutions have only strengthened. And so when he
wrote of Ireland's Dead he did not see them entering into some
Ossianic land of dead warriors. Instead, he wrote:
For their loyal love, nought less,
Than the stress of death, sufficed :
Now with Christ, in blessedness,
Triumph they, imparadised.
Similarly, in what is generally considered to be his greatest
poem, the majestic and passionate Ireland, his most joyous vision
is that of the " Bright souls of Saints, glad choirs of intercession
from the Gael," and he concludes with this splendid prayer :
O Rose ! O Lily ! O Lady full of grace !
O Mary Mother ! O Mary Maid ! hear thou.
Glory of Angels! Pity, and turn thy face,
Praying thy Son, even as we pray thee now,
For thy dear sake to set thine Ireland free:
Pray thou thy little Child!
Ah! who can help her, but in mercy He?
Pray then, pray thou for Ireland, Mother mild !
O Heart of Mary ! pray the Sacred Heart :
His, at Whose word depart
Sorrows and hates, home to Hell's waste and wild.
When Lionel Johnson wrote of England, it was chiefly Corn-
wall that attracted him; Cornwall, that most Celtic land, where
visitors from other parts of England are called " foreigners." This
affection shows in the three beautiful stanzas called Cornwall, in
the sonnet to that great, and as yet, unappreciated poet, Hawker of
Morwenstow, and in those lines of severe loveliness to which he
gave the title Dead. Nor can A Cornish Night be forgotten. But
he was sensitive to all the appeal of the English countryside; how
wholesome and heartening is the wind that blows through In Eng-
land! In reading it we understand what Miss Louise Imogen
Guiney meant when she wrote of him : " He was a tower of whole-
someness in the Decadence which his short life spanned." Here
are six stanzas, with an exquisite picture in everyone :
Heaped with a sweet hayload,
Curved, yellow wagons pass
Slow down the high-hedged road ;
I watch them from the grass ;
640 LIONEL JOHNSON [Feb.,
A pleasant village noise
Breaks the still air : and all
The summer spirit joys,
Before the first leaves fall.
Red wreckage of the rose,
Over a gusty lawn :
While in the orchard close,
Fruits redden to their dawn.
September's wintering air,
When fruits and flowers have fled
From mountain valleys bare,
Save rowan berries red.
These joys, and such as these,
Are England's and are mine:
Within the English seas,
My days have been divine.
Oh ! Hellas lies far hence,
Far the blue Sical sea :
But England's excellence
Is more than they to me.
Nor was Lionel Johnson blind to the subtle appeals of London,
that most prosaic and poetic of all cities. He loved London, and
knew London almost as intimately as did his favorite Charles
Lamb. Of course most of his contemporaries also wrote about
London, but they, like John Davidson, were attracted chiefly by the
city's most cruel and sordid phase. Lionel Johnson, however, with
his generous sympathies and his true historical perspective, seemed
to comprehend London, to see through its superficial and ephemeral
characteristics into its very soul, and it is the soul of London, I
think, that he expressed in his poem In London Town. And while
his writings about London are under consideration, it will not do
to fail to mention a poem inspired by one of London's monuments
the statue of King Charles at Charing Cross. These noble stanzas
are as august a memorial of that " fair and fatal King " as is Van
Dyke's portrait.
But Lionel Johnson's purely secular poems are best
when his Catholic Faith, seemingly without his willing it, unex-
pectedly shines out in a splendor of radiant phrases. And of all
his poems, those which constitute his most important contribution
to literature, are those which are directly the fruits of his religious
1916.] LIONEL JOHNSON 641
experiences. The lovely memory of Cardinal Newman has never
been honored more appropriately than in the second part of In
Falmouth Harbor. A Burden of Easter Vigil, The Precept of
Silence, Mystic and Cavalier, Enthusiasts, the third part of Visions,
Our Lady of the May, the Carols, and the series of four poems
called Christmas if Lionel Johnson had written only these, he
would still deserve a place among those whom all lovers of poetry
must delight to honor. He was not so great a poet as Francis
Thompson. He never wrote a poem which will stand comparison
with The Hound of Heaven or the Orient Ode. But the sum of
the beauty in all his work is great, and his poetry is, on the whole,
more companionable than that of Francis Thompson; it is more
human, more personal, more intimate.
And to at least two of Lionel Johnson's poems, the adjective
" great " may, by every sound critical standard, safely be applied.
One of these is The Dark Angel, a masterly study of the psychology
of temptation, written in stanzas that glow with feeling, that are
the direct and passionate utterance of the poet's soul, and yet are
as polished and accurate as if their author's only purpose had been
to make a thing of beauty. The other is The Marty rum Candi-
datus, a poem which may without question be given its place in any
anthology which contains Burning Babe, The Kings, and Cra-
shaw's Hymn to Saint Teresa. It has seemed to me that these
brave and beautiful lines, which have for their inspiration the love
of God, and echo with their chiming syllables the hoof-beats of
horses bearing knights to God's battles, might serve as a fitting
epitaph for the accomplished scholar, the true poet, the noble and
kindly Catholic gentleman who wrote them.
Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ !
White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God !
They, for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed
All, save the sweetness of treading, where He first trod !
These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night,
Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide :
They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the sight,
They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified.
Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go:
White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, oh fair to see!
They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow,
White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain: forever He!
VOL. en.. 41
THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG.
BY KATHARINE TYNAN.
ORD FRANCIS and Lord Henry were twin brothers.
In babyhood they had been so alike that their nurse
had pretended to distinguish them by putting on them
bows of different-colored ribbon as their mother, Lady
Eskdale, had pretended to discover a crease in Henry's
ear which differentiated Francis from Henry. But the ribbons
got changed about so much and the crease in the ear dis-
appeared during an illness of Lady Eskdale's, which had taken her
away from the nursery for some time. Lady Eskdale never would
acknowledge that she did not know her boys one from the other,
but it was the general belief that she did not, founded perhaps on
Lord Eskdale's remark that it was providential there was Lord
Wharfe, the eldest son, else there might have been a grave mis-
carriage of justice in the succession.
Lord Francis and Lord Henry had the same nurse, the
same governess, the same tutor, the same preparatory school.
They went to Eton, where inevitably they were known as the Heav-
enly Twins, and to Christ Church. Both elected to enter the
army, and saw service in the same regiment. They were both
fair-skinned, golden-haired young men, and ought to have been
chubby with their skin and hair, but they were both rather thin
and somewhat anxious looking, with honest gray eyes that had a
mist of dreams in them. They had very fine eyes, and someone
said of them that they had the eyes of Don Quixote. Lord Eskdale,
who had a manner of secret enjoyment of his two serious sons, for
they were very serious, had answered the speaker that Francis and
Henry seemed to him as like as possible to their own brace of
Irish terriers, Tim and Terry, who accompanied their masters
everywhere it was possible. Lord Eskdale added that the cause
of the anxiety in the expression of the twins was the fact that they
had been mixed up at birth and their uncertainty as to which was
which. In the war Henry received at last a distinguishing
mark from Francis in the tiny fragment of a shell, which had
struck him in the right cheek, narrowly escaping his eye. It had
left a scar after its removal which, without being seriously dis-
1916.] THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG 643
figuring, was yet likely to differentiate the two brothers for the
time to come. Lady Eskdale had talked of electrolysis to remove
the scar, and the twins had looked at each other, while Lord
Henry answered that he liked his scar, and Lord Eskdale who was
present chuckled quietly to himself.
In due time the twins, having done their share of soldiering
with credit to themselves, decided on a career of politics. They
were returned for two divisions of the same county in the con-
servative interest at least they called themselves Conservatives
but they were something in the nature of free lances. Party whips
and party leaders complained that they could not be quite certain
of Lord Francis and Lord Henry. There was always the Don
Quixote that looked out of their eyes to be counted with. Op-
portunism was a word not to be found in their vocabulary. They
had a narrow vision for the thing they called straight and honest.
When they saw it they went at it head down like a pair of golden
young bulls. As they were both orators of a fiery kind, both
strangely attractive personalities, both transparently honest, and,
moreover, were called the Heavenly Twins by the man in the
street, they were somewhat dangerous and unreliable as cogs in
the party machine. After a time they came to make a little
party of their own in the House, an embarrassing party, and yet
one on which the harassed party leaders and officials must smile.
For that was the luck of Lord Henry and Lord Francis. They
had been smiled at from their solemn babyhood, and the smile was
a tolerant, even a tender smile.
The twins were still inseparable, and had rooms in the same
house in Jermyn Street. They had the same tastes and pursuits.
Both were great fishermen. They had a common taste for and
knowledge of Chinese porcelain. It could not be said that these com-
mon tastes explained their liking for each other's society, for they
talked little. When the House was not sitting they went off on
walking tours together. People told humorous stories of encoun-
tering Lord Francis and Lord Henry in out-of-the-world places
walking along, two gaunt figures, swinging their arms as they
went, their sole luggage an infinitesimal knapsack strapped over
the shoulders of each. One humorist meeting them by moonlight
on a wild fell where a gibbet had stood, swore that he heard the
clanking of the chains before he discovered in the apparitions Lord
Francis and Lord Henry.
They were marked out for eccentric bachelorhood, according
644 THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG [Feb.,
to their friends. Only once had either been known to express
appreciation for feminine beauty, and that was when Lord Henry,
his attention being called to Millicent Erskine, one of the beauties
of the season, had turned to his brother and said : " A good
face for stained glass, Francis, don't you think? if there were a
little more soul in it." And Francis had answered without en-
thusiasm that she might do if she looked more serious.
It was another thing about the twins, that they had a pro-
found interest in religions. They had passed through many
stages, and looked in at many creeds, before arriving at the extreme
High Church opinions which were theirs when they met Miss
Erskine.
Their mother had begun to be a little anxious about them.
She was afraid that they might enter the Church they had strong
opinions on the celibacy of the clergy while she was very glad
that they had arrived at being good churchmen. Their unortho-
doxy had often troubled her.
" I wish one or the other of them would marry," she said
tearfully to Lord Eskdale, " I believe if one married the other
would."
" They might want to marry the same woman," Lord Esk-
dale replied. Adding, " Not that I see any sign of it. They
are cut out for celibacy. The Church or an Oxford donship should
have been their career, only oddly enough they seem to be mak-
ing their way in politics. Mr. Moncton complimented me the other
day on my younger sons. Their transparent honesty counts/ he
said: 'upon my word, the Ministry may stand by your two just
men, although we never can be quite sure of the point of view."
It was the Long Vacation, and the two brothers were on a
walking tour in the North of England. They had been visiting
the French cathedrals, doing some walking where it was possible,
and had come back with their thirst for exercise unslaked.
They had got as far north as Cumberland, and had entered a very
wild and lonely region of fells and moorland, with gray mountains
in the distance. They then had a lunch of bread and cheese at a
farmhouse, and secured some hard-boiled eggs to take with
them in case of accident. As both were seasoned travelers, their
plan was to walk on till they found a meal or a bed. Four or five
hours walking should bring them to Smale, where was a comfort-
able and honest inn, its name the Cosy Travelers, kept by one
Simon Bunyan.
1916.] THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG 645
" Simon will do ye well," the farmer had assured them at a
farm not far back. " Tell him John Roope o' the Pithead Farm
sent ye."
" Gin a wide berth to the Black Dog," said Mrs. Roope, who
had been rather fascinated by the politeness of her queer visitors,
whom in her own mind she had put down as young Methodist
ministers. " The Black Dog'll be no place for you, even if you
was to come to it dead tired. Slapin' out would be better."
" They'll have no business with the Black Dog unless they were
to get a mile or two out of their way," said her husband, adding,
to himself, " there be rum stories told of the Black Dog for sure."
It was some hours later and the brothers were sitting by the
roadside, eating the last of the hard-boiled eggs and looking away
to where the mists had enveloped Scawfell in a clinging white
blanket, that Lord Henry broke silence with : " I wonder what
was the matter with the Black Dog."
" If the wind were to change," said Lord Francis, " that mist
would come down on us in no time."
" The moon rises late to-night," said the other brother getting
to his feet, " and it will be dark in an hour's time. We'd better
be looking for the Cosy Travelers and Simon Bunyan."
Before they could turn about a puff of wind blew in their
faces. Neither spoke, though each said in his own mind that the
wind had changed. It blew again as they turned about, leaving
Scawfell behind them, and this time it was in their backs.
Presently there was rain in the wind. Glancing behind them they
saw the wind and the rain bearing down on them in a thick mist.
A few minutes more and they were enveloped in it. The rain
was very penetrating. They were soon wet through, the rain drip-
ping from their ragged moustaches and the straight colorless fair
hair, which fell in wisps on the foreheads of the brothers, who wore
no hats on their walking tours. They kept on doggedly, while the
mist pressed on them ghostly and cold, only changing in density
as the dusk came on and was followed by the night.
The country they were walking through was much the same as
that which they had left behind at the Pithead Farm. They
seemed in the midst of moors, over which sheep grazed with some
wild-looking cattle. All the afternoon they had seen no sign of
human life beyond a shepherd, with his dog, driving the sheep.
There must be farmsteads, they had thought, tucked away in those
creases and folds of the fells. The larks had sprung up by them
646 THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG [Feb.,
and around them as they walked : and sometimes they had come
to a pool : or the singing of a little stream had been sweet as the
song of the larks. Once they had looked over the edge of a pit
and seen the water, inky black below. Apparently those disused
pits were not uncommon. As the night thickened about those
soaked travelers, each thought of the water giving a black reflec-
tion of the sky half way down the shaft, and their feet felt for
the road, while the water squished in their boots.
Never was such a clinging wet mist. Lord Henry and Lord
Francis never complained or grumbled. That would have been
something quite beyond their code of manners. But when they
had run up against a stone like the side of a small house, and dis-
covered by feeling it that it was only a stone, they halted for a
discussion of what had best be done.
" We're off the road," Lord Francis said.
" I know."
"How long?"
" An hour or more. I felt the grass under my feet. No
use lighting a match. The rain would put it out."
" I don't mind but for the pits. It would be a nasty ending.
Why didn't you say when you knew we had left the road? "
" What was the use. I knew you knew it."
" The mist may rise and the moon is due at twelve o'clock.
Shall we stay where we are till then? "
" There is a bit of shelter here. And something is rubbing
against my legs, a dog or a lamb or a kid."
" It has been rubbing against mine. It is a dog."
They sat down in the shelter of the great stone that was like
the wall of a shepherd's hut, and the wet animal sidled in between
them and settled itself with a shake and a sigh. The rain seemed
to drift by them without reaching them, although that comfort was
hardly felt, so soaked were they with rain. Both brothers sat
with their knees up to their chins, their arms clasping their knees,
and rested their chins on their knees. In that uncomfortable
position they must have dozed. They awoke to a dark sky with
minute points of silver in its sable blackness stars. They were
very stiff and cold, except where the dog lay between them, a little
furnace of living heat.
The dog barked with a subdued cheerfulness, sprang up and
fawned upon the brothers as they got to their feet. He ran a
little way and came back, rubbing himself against their legs as
I9i6.] THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG 647
before. They were very stiff. Progression was hardly possible;
and the weight of the soaked clothes hung about them. Their
hands were numb with cold. Neither said anything to the other.
They had a way of knowing what was in each other's minds. It
was necessary to go forward, to move briskly if they were not to
suffer a bad chill. Each had a small flask of brandy in his knap-
sack. They were too numbed to unclasp the straps.
They moved forward, stumbling heavily. The rain was over,
and the stars shone out of a clear sky. The air was full of the
music of streams, increased by the heavy rain and running noisily.
There was still intense darkness, for the moon had not yet risen.
The minute points of silver helped them not at all, although it
was cheerful to see them. And the dog kept running backwards
and forwards, evidently guiding them somewhere.
" I wonder," said Lord Francis breaking silence at last, " I
wonder if it will be the Cosy Travelers or the Black Dog."
" Can't afford to choose," said Lord Henry, and sprawled ;
he had fallen over a sheep, which ran away bleating into the dark-
ness, awaking a hundred answering bleats.
" Stupid brute ! " said Lord Henry getting to his feet. " Didn't
know they slept like that ! "
" Not hurt? " asked Lord Francis.
" No, fell soft. Worse for the sheep. What's that? "
" Yes ; what's that ? Hammerin' ? " The twins always
dropped the final " g."
There was a hammering and a blur of light in front of them
a lit pane. They went towards it. The dog which had been so
eager stayed with them now, cowering, it seemed, against their
legs. They came up against a half -glass door wet with rain.
Sweeping away the drops with their hands, they looked through
a smeared pane into a sort of shed or outhouse. In the shed a
man was employed doing some carpentry an odd hour of the
night to do it. They could see the long white boards. One or
two stood by the wall. The man was bending over the thing he
was making, between them and it. He had stopped hammering and
was doing something else.
Lord Francis swept the rain from the pane and looked closer.
" Makin' a coffin," he said.
" Thought so," returned Lord Henry. "Horrid shape; isn't
it? Why be so particular. It might look like a box and be no
worse."
648 THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG [Feb.,
They tapped at the pane. The man never moved from his
stooping position.
They knocked again, louder this time.
" Deaf," said Lord Henry.
" As a stone," said Lord Francis.
The dog which had been whining and scratching uttered a
sharp, impatient yelp. The man seemed to hear. He straightened
himself and turned round. Yes; it was a coffin he was making.
It was complete, all but the lid the hideous shape that hangs be-
tween man and the sun in the skies. He turned about and saw.
A queer expression came into his face. He was a squat, misshapen
creature a Caliban. His arms were too long for his body. His
head was set low between his shoulders. He came towards the
door and opened it to admit the brothers. With an air of stealthy
eagerness he drew them in. The dog had bounded in as soon as
the door was opened, and was fawning on the uncouth figure.
" Can we have a lodgin' for the night? " Lord Francis asked.
" It looks honest, brother," said Lord Henry, " but it is a
dummy. It can't answer questions."
" It " did look honest. There was a curious gentleness about
the indeterminate features. A queer smile lit up the face like an
illumination.
" It is glad to see us," said Lord Francis.
The door was closed behind them and locked. The dumb
man had put his finger on the lip for silence. He disappeared for
a moment and brought back something a slate and pencil which
he handed to Lord Francis.
" We want food, a fire to dry our clothes, and beds for the
night," he wrote and handed it back to the dumb man, who
nodded his head and smiled, the smile transforming the ugly face
wonderfully.
He wrote rapidly on the slate and handed it back.
" Be very quiet. The Black Dog don't want to put up folk.
I won't turn ye out."
When they had read it he rubbed out the message and put
away the slate. Then he stooped and began to untie Lord Henry's
shoe-strings.
" He means we are to walk in our stockin's," said Lord
Francis.
" So it is the Black Dog! " said Lord Henry, stooping to take
off his own boots.
1916.] THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG 649
The dumb man opened a door and seemed to listen, but of
course he could not hear. The action was purely mechanical.
Through the partly open door they caught sight of the red glow of
a fire a most welcome sight. The dumb man took down the
ship's lantern from its hook, and led them with the same stealthy
air into the room beyond, which they found was a kitchen. Their
wet clothes began to steam in the heat. The dumb man put on
a log very quietly, then signified that they should take off their
outer garments and hang them on the big screen by the fire.
Creeping about always with the air of listening, although
his ears must have been sealed he brought them food cold beef
and cheese and bread and butter and a bottle of wine covered with
cobwebs, which must have lain a long time in the cellar. It was
good old port, and it restored the vitality of the chilly travelers as
nothing else could have done. They drank their bottle of wine
and they ate tremendously, and the warmth came back to the
numbed bodies, and the clogged thoughts of the two travelers began
to move again. They drew their chairs closer to the fire, or rather
they lifted them. The odd steal thiness of the dumb man had
somehow imparted itself to them.
"Did you notice what he had stickin' out of his pocket?"
said Lord Francis.
" A knife," returned Lord Henry. " Not meant for us."
" Glad to have us here," said Lord Francis, and proceeded
to fill one of the churchwarden pipes the dumb man had laid on the
table with a jar of tobacco.
The benevolent eyes watched them while they talked, and there
was intelligence in them. When Lord Francis said that, the dumb
man nodded his head and a queer pleased smile beamed on his face.
" I believe the poor beggar hears some," Lord Henry said,
and proceeded to fill his pipe.
When they had smoked their pipes through and were pleasantly
warm and lazy, the dumb man signified that it was time they
should go to bed. He shook his head violently when Lord Henry
proceeded to take the lamp. They were to go to bed in the dark.
There was moonlight in the house as they went up the stairs,
creeping single file enough to guide them. They seemed to hold
their breath as they went up the stairs and through a door which
closed softly behind them, along a corridor, down a cross-corridor.
An arched wooden door gave entrance to their bedroom, which
was a yawning pit of blackness. The dumb man pushed them
650 THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG [Feb.,
through the doorway. Somewhere in the house a door slammed.
Evidently he heard it, for he scurried off along the corridor,
leaving them in the dark room.
" Craves wary walking," said Lord Francis standing in the
darkness.
" No bolt to the door," muttered Lord Henry, as though the
walls had ears.
" Must be windows somewhere," whispered Lord Francis.
" Bed in the middle of the room, anyhow."
" Dashed door opens out," said Lord Henry. " Can't barri-
cade it."
"Not afraid?" asked Lord Francis.
" Sinister hole ; but the dummy's straight. Let us get to
bed," Lord Henry said, disdaining to answer the question which
indeed was a purely rhetorical one. They had been together in
too many queer places and tight corners not to be aware of each
other's spirit.
They went to bed behind the closed doors, and going to bed
one of their odd adventures befell them, for jumping into bed at
the same moment they gripped each other, thinking that the bed
was already occupied by someone who had attacked them. They
rolled round and round the room in grips before each got his
breath sufficiently to call out.
" There's a fellow in my bed already, and he's gone for me."
Then they recognized each other and stood apart to laugh
quietly.
"Lucky you spoke!" they said in a breath; and again:
" This would be a nice story for the clubs and the newspapers."
There was a little light in the room now. In the tussle Lord
Francis' foot had caught in a heavy curtain and pulled it apart.
A line of light came between closed shutters, over which the cur-
tains had been drawn.
Lord Francis was nursing his foot. The curtain had caught
his toenail and wrenched it painfully. He was sitting on the bed.
Lord Henry very stealthily unbarred and turned a shutter.
The white moonlight streamed into the room, and fell on the drawn
curtains of an alcove at one side of the room. Lord Francis was
looking that way. Lord Henry came and sat down beside him.
" Hate pitch-blackness," he said. " Like a dungeon."
" Or a grave," said Lord Francis.
They turned into bed and slept like tired travelers.
1916.] THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG 651
They awoke to the crowing of a cock and a stealthy knock.
The gray dawn was in the room. It was very cold. The wind
was blowing in through a broken pane of the window. As they
opened their sleepy eyes they saw the dumb man in the room. He
had laid their dry clothes on the bed. He was suggesting to them
that they should be up and going, laying an eager hand on the bed-
clothes to drag them from them, pointing towards the door.
" Seems in a deuce of a hurry," said Lord Francis, putting
a foot out of bed.
" Only four o'clock," grumbled Lord Henry, " and I could
have slept round the clock."
" However they got up, made a hasty toilet, and were putting
on their coats when the dumb man again appeared in the doorway.
By this time the dawn was reddening in the east. He made signs
to them they were to come quickly. They were stocking-footed as
they had been last night. He led them downstairs, now and again
going before to reconnoitre. In one of these pauses Lord Francis
said to Lord Henry:
"You saw what was in the bed, brother."
"Yes; I wondered if you did."
They went on downstairs, holding their breath as they passed
by the long ranges of closed doors down the straight intersecting
corridors. The place was unexpectedly spacious. It was very
old, with beams in the roof and the doors, latched, of strong oak,
each one arched to a point. The little windows of the one corridor
looked on a courtyard. Apparently at one time the Black Dog
had been a place of consideration; but now grass had grown be-
tween the stones of the courtyard, and a miscellaneous collection
of lumber lay about. At last they reached the foot of the stairs
and were in the kitchen. It was yet but half light, but in the
kitchen there was a rosy glow from the great fireplace; the table
was spread generously. But neither brother noticed the table.
Oddly enough each was aware, in all the strange circumstances, of
his stocking feet. For there was a lady standing by the table a
young lady and beautiful, not less beautiful, because she was very
pale and evidently oppressed by grief. Her large eyes were most
piteous. They were very large and very gentle, beautiful dark
eyes in a small delicate face. Something was wound round the
masses of her dark head that had the color of a rose in it. It was
really a scarf of black and rose color, and the long ends floated
behind her or would have floated if she walked.
652 THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG [Feb.,
Lord Francis and Lord Henry had the same thought at the
same moment of a face eclipsed now but capable of an ardent
passion; of a rose by the little ear. They were not sure about the
rose. Lord Francis thought it something more burning a scarlet
camelia, perhaps, an azalea, a magnolia flower. There was no
flower there. Perhaps the color in the scarf deceived them; per-
haps it was the red of her lips or the cheeks that glowed as they
looked at her, or the brooding passion of her eyes drowned in tears.
" I have lost my father," she said as piteous as a child. " He
was taken ill as we crossed the moor, and two days ago he died in
this dreadful place. The poor dumb man here has watched over
me. My father's and mother's prayers have sent you to my as-
sistance, for indeed I do not think I am safe here. Will you
let me travel with you to a place of safety."
It was the most fortunate thing in the world that the two
brothers were linguists. They assured her solemnly in her own
tongue that they were her servants.
" I have been frightened since my father left me," she said.
" Only for this poor Gregory, who slept like a dog at my door, I
believe they would have murdered me. Our Lady of the Pillar
sent him to my aid, and lest he should fail through physical weari-
ness, for he has not slept for many nights, she has sent me you."
Suddenly she looked at them with an entrancing confidence
in her gaze, and she said:
" Let us be going now. You are two strange gentlemen,
senores, but Our Lady of the Pillar has sent you, and I feel that
you are, as my brothers, kind and good."
" Yes, let us be going," said Lord Francis and Lord Henry
in a dazed way. And then each turned to the other and said the
same thing.
" Do you, brother, see the lady to a place of safety. I will
remain to bury the dead and see that no harm befalls the dumb
man."
Before they could wrangle over it the door opening outward
to the kitchen was pushed back, and a woman appeared in the
doorway. She was a terrible woman. Hers was such a face as
may come to one between sleeping and waking. It was a large
white face, and so small were the eyes and so insignificant the fea-
tures that it suggested a wall of dull, greenish flesh without eyes.
She looked at them, and there was a baleful spark which corrected
that first impression.
1916.] THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG 653
For an instant she looked at them, and the brothers confessed
to each other afterwards that for the moment they feared her.
She was so unlike a woman, so villainous with the hideous face
above the flat bosom, that she excited a strange horror in their
breasts. She looked for a second, then drew the bolts towards
her, and they heard the bolts go. The girl between them they had
drawn intuitively to each side of her sobbed with sheer terror.
The dumb man had disappeared.
" We had better go," said Lord Francis, " else the tigress will
fetch her mate."
" No time for boots or breakfast," said Lord Henry, going
out stocking- footed. The Spanish lady went between them, one
brother going before and one behind to shield her.
The mist had lifted and the morning was bright. They struck
out over the moor on the dumb side of the house, that is to say,
the side which showed only a dirty white wall without a window.
For a time they went warily, watching over their shoulders as
they went. The brothers hardly knew what they feared, but the
face of the woman had given them a grue as they said to each
other later.
They had not gone very far when they heard footsteps run-
ning, and turning round in alarm they saw that it was Gregory,
the dumb man, who came, uttering queer calls to them as he ran.
When they recognized him they waited and saw that he carried
their boots, together with something which he handed to the lady,
whom by this time they knew to be Dona Teresa de Salvador.
The something was a belt which was to be carried round a man's
body, and contained a good store of notes and gold, for Don Domin-
guez del Salvador had been traveling with his daughter when the
strange fate had befallen him of dying at the Black Dog, and how
that came about would make this story too long to tell. They begged
him by gestures to go with them, and Dona Teresa talked on
her fingers to him, translating their urgent pleadings, but he only
shook his head.
" He says that Beanish of the Black Dog gave him a shelter
when no one else would. He will go back, though he hates Mrs.
Beanish. You saw her. You can believe she is wicked. It is
only since my father died that I have noticed the woman to fear
her. She nursed my father as though she did not mean to rob
and murder us. Gregory will go. He has saved me. Now he
is going back to face the Beanishes. He will go let us hurry
654 THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG [Feb.,
till we find the police or somebody to return with us to the inn.
The Black Dog has hidden its wickedness long enough. And there
is my father unburied."
It was some hours before they found anything but a lonely
farmhouse, for the girl was exhausted with grief and fear, and
neither brother would leave her. But at last as it was coming on
again to evening they reached a little town, with a justice of the
peace and a couple of policemen among its inhabitants. Leaving
Pona Teresa in safe keeping they returned the way they had
come, but this time in a carriage with a pair of swift horses, and the
police coming behind with a reinforcement of game-keepers and the
like, who were in Sir Robert Cope's employment. He, a ruddy-
faced, cheerful man, was all eagerness about the Black Dog and the
dead man in the bed, his stiff hand stretched out as though in appeal,
the dummy, the bad character of the place, the lonely situation and
the facility for putting away dead men or women in the many
abandoned pits of the moor.
Lord Henry and Lord Francis said very little; Sir Robert
ever afterwards called them the stock-fishes. They didn't speak
even when the flames shot up against the sky as they crossed a
rise of the moor, and came in sight of the Black Dog just sinking
into ashes. There had been a red light in the sky visible for some
time, so perhaps they were prepared for the sight that so startled
the others. Nothing was found in the ruins the fire had been
very complete except a few bones among the ashes. Who had
lit the funeral pyre, who had persisted in it, the secrets of the
house were forever mysteries. So the Black Dog and its evil repu-
tation passed into a country tale.
And Dona Teresa was cast upon the hospitality of the Esk-
dales, and since she belonged to a noble Spanish family, and had
a considerable fortune, it was not displeasing to her hosts and
kind friends when Lord Wharfe, who had been flirting so long
that people began to think of him as a confirmed bachelor, began
to pay attentions to the beautiful Spaniard, who was only the
more beautiful for the pensive sadness which lay on her beauty
since her sad and terrible experiences.
Wharfe was a slim dandy with a small neat face and a golden
moustache, utterly unlike Lord Francis and Lord Henry, who were
at home at Uske for the Long Vacation, and went about together
once more, united to Tim and Terry, dogs and masters looking
about as disconsolate a quartet as could be imagined.
I 9 i6.] THE ADVENTURE AT THE BLACK DOG 655
Wharfe's suit seemed to progress well enough. If Dona
Teresa was absent-minded, that was no more than was to be ex-
pected. If her eyes had something in them as they rested on the
twins, which was not there for Lord Warfe, that was nothing
wonderful, seeing her memories of their chivalry towards her when
they rescued her from the Black Dog. No one could say the twins
did not give their brother a fair field, for they kept away and
stood apart, only looking so lean and wistful that somehow their
mother's heart was hurt for them. Wharfe had his fair field and
came to his brothers with a rueful laugh.
" She won't have me," he said. " Go in and win, one of
you dunderheads. You are both to your necks in love for her.
Toss up to see which will go in first."
The story went that Lord Francis and Lord Henry proposed to
Dona Teresa in the same breath: that she looked from one to
the other, laughed, blushed like a rose, wept a little, and finally
held out her hand to Lord Henry. Wharfe said it was the scar
on Lord Henry's cheek decided it. She had something positive
to know him by.
In any case the partnership of the Heavenly Twins was dis-
solved.
THE STIRRING OF THE NEST.
BY M. E. BUHLER.
(Deut. xxxii. 15.)
HIGH in the fir tree's swinging top
Upon the utmost mountain crest,
Full in the strength of wind and sun,
God builds for us His Eagle's nest.
He tends us through the helpless days
Of infancy all creatures know;
He feeds and keeps us warm and dry,
And careth for us while we grow.
But when the eaglet wings have reached
The appointed time for sunward quest,
With stern and loving providence
The Eagle stirreth up the nest.
There is no comfort left for us
In the old home where we were born,
And all disconsolate we cling
To upturned nest and twig and thorn.
O Bird of Heaven, fluttering o'er
Our feeble wings to show the way,
Give courage to our hearts to soar
To thine empyrean void and gray!
Lo, we have flown! A sudden mist
Comes o'er our reeling brains; we call
On Thy Great Name, and under us
Thy pinions sweep lest we should fall.
Thou bearest us upon Thy wings;
Thou takest us and teachest might;
Till in our eagle hearts hath grown
The courage for the sunward flight.
THE CENTENARY OF THE OBLATES.
LTHOUGH not generally known, Sir Rowland Blen-
nerhassett 1 vouched for the fact that when Victor
Hugo in Les Miser Mes drew a pen portrait of an
ideal Christian bishop in the character of Monsignor
Myriel, he had before his mind's eye Monsignor
Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod, Bishop of Marseilles. The
prelate who touched the hand of the convict Valjean was not, there-
fore, a purely fictional creation of the French poet. But it is not
as an ideal bishop that Monsignor de Mazenod claims our special
attention here, but rather as the founder of a religious order. His
purview, as well as the sphere of his wide influence and fruitful
labors, far exceeded the limits of a diocese. But first he thought
only to effect a religious renovation in Languedoc after the spiritual
desolation consequent upon the French Revolution. That volcanic
upheaval had not only overthrown the monarchy of a thousand
years, involving Church and state in the common ruin; but the
doctrines of Voltaire and Paine, permeating downwards from high-
est to lowest, had sapped the foundation of belief among the
people and destroyed the influence of the clergy. Napoleon I.,
it is true, had sought to evolve order out of this chaos, and had
1 The late Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, Inspector of Reformatory and Industrial
Schools in Ireland, in his official report in 1891 of the schools for boys at Philips-
town, King's County, and Gleneree, County Wicklow, says : " They are managed by
the Oblate Fathers, a religious Congregation which ought to be particularly well
fitted to deal with 'criminals, if it remains true to the spirit of its founder, Monsignor
de Mazenod, sometime Bishop of Marseilles, who died in 1861. Had this remark-
able man lived before the Divina Commedia was adumbrated, he would surely have
had his place in the Paradiso perhaps in the company of those two of whom we
read in the eleventh canto :
' one, seraphic all
In fervency ; for wisdom upon earth
The other, splendour of cherubic light.'
The figure of Charles de Mazenod was present to the mind of Victor Hugo
when, in the opening chapters of Les Miserable*, he drew his famous picture of
the ideal Christian bishop, and told how Monsignor Myriel dealt with the crime
and ingratitude, and touched the heart of the convict Valjean." Sir Rowland Blen-
nerhassett, a well-known Catholic scholar, was intimately acquainted with distin-
guished men, at home and abroad, and doubtless had his information direct from
the author.
VOL. CII. 42
658 THE CENTENARY OF THE ELATES [Feb.,
proclaimed the restoration of public worship, but only with the
sinister design of establishing Caesarism or the subjection of the
Church to the state. Such was the state of things when de Ma-
zenod entered St. Sulpice in October, 1808, animated by a desire
to devote himself in the most absolute manner to the service of
the Church and the salvation of souls.
I saw the Church threatened with a most cruel persecution.
It was thought that the Emperor was bent on establishing a
schismatical Church. I felt in myself the courage to surmount
every obstacle, and to face every danger. The idea that per-
haps a great many would apostatize if the Emperor set up a
patriarch independent of the Holy See afflicted me beyond
measure, and made me long to devote myself in their stead,
braving the tyrannical persecutor. I felt my own courage rising
higher and higher as I thought of the weakness which I feared
some would show.
That devotion to the Holy See and inflexible adherence to
ecclesiastical discipline which was so marked a feature of his whole
life, early displayed itself. In order to avoid receiving ordination
at the hands of Cardinal Maury, Napoleon's nominee, who ruled
the see of Paris as a kind of vicar capitular, he went to Amiens,
where he was raised to the priesthood by Monsignor de Mandolx
on December 21, 1811. After a year at St. Sulpice, as one of a
staff of directors striving to continue the work of the Sulpicians,
arbitrarily suppressed by Napoleon, he went to Aix. There he
and a few other priests began, humbly but hopefully, to do what
they could to repair the ravages wrought by the Revolution. The
initial idea, which then took shape, was the formation of a small
community of home missioners, for the evangelization of the
peasantry of Provence, using the local dialect as the most direct
and effective way of reaching their understanding and touching
their hearts. A dilapidated house became their base of operations.
One lamp, placed at the threshold, afforded light to the three oc-
cupants when they rose or retired, and a wooden plank, laid upon
two casks, served as their dining table. They were first known
as the "missioners of Provence." On January 25, 1816, the Abbe
de Mazenod and his first co-worker, the Abbe Tempier, took up
their abode in an old convent of Carmelite nuns, recovered from
its lay possessors. The Oblates date their foundation from that
event. The date, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, was
1916.] THE CENTENARY OF THE DELATES 659
auspicious and appropriate for de Mazenod, who, like the Apostle
of the Gentiles, was a " chosen vessel," a " preacher of truth."
At that time Father de Mazenod and his little band of mis-
sioners did not yet bear the name by which they are now so widely
known. They had, however, begun to call themselves Oblates of
St. Charles, but this title already belonging to a Milanese Congre-
gation since the sixteenth century, was discarded, with the approval
of Pope Leo XIL, for that of Oblates of Our Lady Immaculate.
The title was an inspiration. Writing a few days later, de Ma-
zenod said:
Oblates of Mary ! Why, the name is a passport for heaven !
How is it that we did not think of it sooner? What a glory
and what a consolation to be consecrated to Mary in such a
special manner! Oblates of Mary! How sweet a name!
When he went to Rome to solicit approbation for his In-
stitute, the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries warned him not to ex-
pect success, plainly intimating that their own vote and influence
would be adverse. Nothing daunted, he turned to the Blessed
Virgin, invoking her " in the name of her Immaculate Concep-
tion " to obtain this favor; and when, contrary to human expecta-
tion, it was granted, he made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to the
Casa Santa in Loreto. He always attributed to her intercession
the development of his work, and in gratitude the new congrega-
tion devoted itself to the restoration of the ruined sanctuaries of
Our Lady of France, including the celebrated shrine of Notre Dame
de la Garde, whose beautiful statue overlooking the city and harbor
of Marseilles was planned, begun and almost finished by Father
de Mazenod.
Devotion to Our Lady was with him a life-long attraction.
It began in childhood, increased in depth and intensity as time
went on, and when he closed his eyes in death the last words
of the Salve Regina " dulcis Virgo Maria! "sounded in his
ears and soothed his departing spirit. As a child he recited daily
the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, and on Saturdays slept on
the floor as an act of mortification for her sake. On entering
the seminary of St. Sulpice he consecrated his life to Our Lady,
whom he made the guardian of his vocation, and of the purity
of his heart. It was on a Feast of the Assumption that he re-
ceived the vivid conviction that God meant to do great things in him
and through him. To this event he always alluded in language
66o THE CENTENARY OF THE DELATES [Feb.,
purposely obscure, but it is conjectured that Our Lady appeared
to him. The humble mission house at Aix was placed under her
protection, and he instilled into his young companions so tender
a love of the Queen of Heaven that the young missioners follow-
ing the theological course at the Grand Seminary at Aix went to
and fro in the streets with their rosaries in' their hands. All the
public exercises, whether in his chapel at Aix or on missions, were
closed by the ejaculation : " Praised be Jesus Christ and Mary
ever Immaculate ! " repeated three times by all present. His mis-
sioners greeted one another with the ejaculation, Laudetur Jesus
Christus, with the response, Et Maria Immaculata. In General
Chapter it was decreed that all the Oblates should wear as a
special emblem of their consecration to Mary Immaculate a large
white scapular, to be received on the day of his perpetual oblation
by each professed member. To this investiture the Church granted
the indulgences of the Mount Carmel scapular. In the crypt of
the sanctuary of Notre Dame des Lumieres, where the miraculous
statue of the Blessed Virgin is preserved, the founder blessed and
invested his brethren with the first scapulars of the Immaculate
Conception : his own he received at the hands of Father Tempier.
" It was in a celebrated sanctuary of Our Lady that we first put
on her white habit " he loved to say.
On the day he was enthroned as Bishop of Marseilles, he laid
his pontifical vestments at the feet of Our Lady in the great hall
of the episcopal palace, and there robed himself in token of his
desire to remain always the servant of Mary Immaculate. Every
day, despite his numerous occupations, he recited the fifteen dec-
ades of the Rosary and made a visit to the Lady Chapel; fast-
ing on the eves of her festivals, which he observed with special
devotion, and requiring even the poorest churches to have an altar
in her honor. When Pius IX. especially invited him to Rome to
take part in the deliberations preparatory to the definition of the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he obeyed the summons
with a joyful heart. " We were going/' wrote his traveling com-
panion, to assist at the triumph of our Blessed Mother : it seemed
to us we were going to a family feast." To his great consola-
tion, among the notes to the Bull of definition, were found the
Apostolic Letters which approved the Oblate Congregation as one
proof of the constant belief of the Roman Church regarding the
Immaculate Conception. Then as later when Papal Infallibility
was defined, there were " inopportunists " who hoped to delay the
1916.] THE CENTENARY OF THE OBLATES 661
definition. This opposition de Mazenod combated with his usual
weapons, fasting and prayer. When the dogma was promulgated
in St. Peter's, he was enraptured. " I forgot for the moment,"
he said, " that this world is a place of exile." " The founder of
the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate," writes
Father Baffie, " will take a place in the history of the Church
amongst the most illustrious servants of Mary." 2
To Monsignor de Mazenod's mind the missionary life must
actually reproduce the life of the first Apostles. He belonged to
the school of the saints. From the moment he began, with Father
Tempier, to lead the community life, and practise the evangelical
counsels, he aimed at sanctity; filled with the desire of attaining
to perfection and of drawing others into the narrow way. After
the ordination of the Oblate Father Guibert (afterwards Cardinal
Archbishop of Paris) he wrote:
May God bless our religious family ! It seems to me that in
asking God to send us men like him who has just been ordained,
we are asking all that is needed by us. Holy priests! these
are our riches.
Of another Oblate he wrote:
I am just come from assisting our angelical Father Courtes
while he offered up the most holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the
first time. Oh, my friend, how I wish that you had been
present! You would have shared the kind of ecstasy of all
those whose devotion had drawn them to our sanctuary. Your
soul would have been raised up to God in the love of Him Who
is infinitely lovable. Tears fell, or, to speak more correctly,
streamed from all eyes.
The sacred fire which burned upon the altar, and which was
so efficaciously fed by the angel who offered the Sacrifice,
kindled us and set us on fire with divine love.
He warned those who appeared to be growing lax : " We have
taken the resolution to rid ourselves of all who do not aim at
perfection." " Let us be saints " was his constant cry. He led
the way; he practised what he preached; he lived and died as
one. And the cause of the beatification -of one of his subjects,
Father Albini, called " the apostle of Corsica," is now before the
Congregation of Rites.
'Bishop de Mazenod: His Inner Life and Virtues. By the Very Rev. Eugene
de Baffie, O.M.I.
662 THE CENTENARY OF THE OBLATES [Feb.,
In the preface to his constitution he wrote referring to the
state of the Church in France at the close of the eighteenth and
the beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
The spectacle of these sorrowful calamities has much affected
the hearts of many priests who, longing for the glory of God,
and burning with love for the Church, have resolved to devote
their lives to the conquest of souls. They are firmly convinced
that if priests could be formed fired with zeal for the salvation
of souls, disdaining their own personal interests, and solidly pious
in a word, truly apostolic men, firmly convinced of the neces-
sity of sanctifying themselves, and of laboring, as far as they
are able, for the sanctification of their brethren a well-founded
hope might be conceived of soon bringing back those who have
strayed away from the practice of religion, which they had too
long forgotten. I remain convinced after the reading of our
rules, that we of all men are the most unworthy of the favors
of heaven if we are not penetrated with a gratitude capable of
inspiring heroism in response to the graces which God has be-
stowed upon us Our direct, principal, and I may say, only
end, is the very same which our Lord Jesus Christ proposed
to Himself in coming into this world; the same end which He
gave to His Apostles, to whom, without doubt, He taught the
most perfect way. Therefore our congregation recognizes no
other founder than Jesus Christ, and no other fathers than the
Apostles.
On the festival of All Saints, 1818, after the rules had been
drawn up and the first General Chapter held, half a dozen priests
and three younger clerics publicly pronounced their vows and on
February 17, 1826, Leo XII. signed the document which gave
canonical existence to the new Congregation styled therein, Mis-
sionarii Oblati Sanctissima et Immaculate? Virginis Maries.
Cardinal Barnabo called Monsignor de Mazenod " the most
Roman of all the French bishops and the most French of all
the Roman bishops." Attachment to the Holy See was one of his
most distinguishing characteristics. Anything that savored of
schism or revolt or opposition to the Roman Curia was abhorrent
to him.
He had anticipated the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate
Conception, he was also a staunch infallibilist long before Papal
Infallibility was declared de fide, and the general belief crystallized
I9i6.] THE CENTENARY OF THE DELATES 663
into the Vatican decree. From the commencement of his ministry
at Aix he openly professed his faith in the Infallibility of the
Pope when, as supreme teacher, he defines any essential doctrine
inherent in the corpus of revealed truth. To do this in the face
of still dominant Gallicanism was risking much. He later made
it obligatory on all Oblates to declare on all occasions their be-
lief in Papal Infallibility. In 1848 he made public profession
before the people of his diocese of his firm belief in this doctrine.
" Your Holiness might have decided everything without even con-
sulting the Episcopate," he wrote to Pius IX., a few days before
the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It is
not surprising that the Pope should have wished to keep a prel-
ate so thoroughly Roman within his immediate entourage; that
Leo XII., who was much impressed by him, wished to retain him
in Rome and raise him to the Cardinalate; and that Pius IX.
had determined to call him within the Sacred College. From their
predecessors, Pius VIII. and Gregory XVI., he also received proof
of good will on several occasions.
After the Papal approval of the congregation its progress
was rapid. Inside of four years its founder was projecting its
establishment in Savoy, Nice, Sardinia, Corsica and Africa. Con-
sumed with the thirst for souls, his zeal knew no bounds. No
obstacles deterred him. He wrote to a Jesuit friend:
Desiring to labor only for the glory of God and the salva-
tion of souls purchased by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ,
I have such confidence that I am afraid of nothing not even
oi the danger which threatens those who consecrate their lives
to the reform of morality and discipline in the country for
which you plead.
The African mission specially attracted him. " To preserve
the colony you ought to found a bishopric in Algeria," he said to
Louis Philippe. " But let the bishop be a really apostolic man
one who will identify himself with that country, and make it
his home, and never dream of so-called promotion." Algeria has
since known such an apostle in Cardinal Lavigerie.
De Mazenod's view of the apostolate was broad; to laity
as well as clergy he appealed that each might be an apostle in
their own sphere.
When you find an opportunity of speaking on behalf of
664 / WILL WORK THY WILL [Feb.,
truth and right [he said] let no such opportunity go by you
unused. You must sometimes speak boldly and forcibly, at
other times with great gentleness and caution; but at all times
with true charity, and with an evident affectionate interest in
those whom you address.
His own desire to be " spent " in the service of souls was in-
satiable; like St. Paul, he would willingly become anathema for
the brethren. This was the spirit that he infused into his order
to be preserved and transmitted. The pusillus grex in Languedoc
has now grown into a numerous familia. To-day it may literally
be said of the Oblates : " Their sound has gone forth unto the
ends of the earth." The sphere of their missionary apostolate ex-
tends from Scotland to the Antipodes, from the banks of the St.
Lawrence to the Pacific Ocean, and from Lake Superior to the
Arctic regions: an Oblate bishop having an episcopal jurisdic-
tion which geographically reaches to the North Pole.
I WILL WORK THY WILL.
BY GLADYS HAZELL.
CHRIST-CHILD, deep at my heart,
Lie still.
I will work Thy will:
Utterly,
Faithfully,
Bear my part.
Christ-Child, deep at my heart,
Lie still.
Soon, soon, Thou shalt come to birth!
Lie still:
I will work Thy will.
Though agony
Shattering me
Beat me to earth,
Thou, Christ, from the deep of my heart
Shalt have birth !
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER III.
OLLY wondered a little as she heard her Cousin Jim
whistling up the steps and into the vestibule.
" Do you think you could get me a little lunch ? "
he said by the way of greeting ; " I can't remember, but I
don't believe I've had anything to eat to-day."
"No breakfast!" she exclaimed jumping down
from the table and forgetting her own grievance ; " I'll get you some
coffee right away. When people don't eat breakfast do they have
breakfast or lunch or dinner at five o'clock ? "
" Well that's too much for me ; it sounds like a conundrum,"
he said, playfully pulling one of the long straight plaits. " What a
conventional housekeeper you will make Pollikins. You must have
been reading the menus in ladies' magazines. Coffee is always a safe
proposition, breakfast or lunch or dinner. It's bad for the nerves but
good for the spirits coffee, Pollikins, and bread and butter."
" I'll bring it in the library; Miss Anne Marbury is there."
"Miss Anne!"
" Yes," said the child nodding solemnly, " but she only came to
get her pictures."
"What pictures?"
" Photographs. Maybe she will let you keep them if you ask her."
He had turned towards the library with a lover's feverish eager-
ness. Polly looked after him bewildered by his haste. With a child's
mercurial temperament she experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling
for Miss Anne, sharper because of the unadulterated devotion that
had gone before.
Miss Anne was seated at a desk in one end of the long room busily
writing. Behind her was a wide window-sill full of growing plants,
broad-leaved palms, rare exotics; a background that seemed to have
been studied with great care to offset her brilliant beauty. Half way
across the long room Jim Thompson paused uncertain, for the first
time in his life, how to interrupt her. Somehow his present virile
plans seemed to lose their practicability in this girl's presence. Her
pen hesitated, she looked up, and then rose from her chair with a
little startled exclamation:
" Why how long have you been there, Jim ? "
" Just a moment, and you ? "
666 TRANSMIGRATION [Feb.,
"About half an hour," she instinctively glanced at the jeweled
watch on her wrist, " I was writing you a little note to explain."
" What ? Is there anything left to explain ? " his voice sounded
tired and far away.
" Well you see I wanted all my photographs. I didn't want the
newspapers to get them."
" The newspapers ? "
" To publish them you know. Since our engagement was an-
nounced I was afraid they might drag me into this."
"This? Go on, what would you call it?"
His cold questioning manner confused her. She had to acknowl-
edge that the note she had mailed him yesterday would necessarily
alter his attitude, but it hurt her vanity to believe that he could accept
the situation with such apparent calmness. In thinking it all over
yesterday and planning a first interview because there must, of course,
be a first she had hoped for and half feared a fiery scene full of
regrets and invectives. To hope and fear simultaneously seemed quite
consistent under the circumstances, and now the hour for the interview
had arrived, the stage setting was all that the most fastidious could
desire, her love loomed tall and strong and miserable beside her and
she she had taken the cruel precaution to put on the colored gown
that he admired most and a hat fresh from a French milliner. With
a woman's strange clearness of vision she seemed quite capable of
viewing the whole affair objectively. Then she looked up and saw
the white haggardness of the face above her and she said : " Call it
oh, I don't know I wouldn't call it anything, but they might, you
know, drag me in."
" Couldn't you have trusted me that far?"
" Perhaps, I don't know. Men never consider trifles."
" I don't consider your pictures trifles."
" But I want them all back anyhow. Please give me the big one
on the mantel I can't reach it give it to me and then I'll go." She
wanted to end the disappointing interview, though the objective view-
point was rapidly being blurred.
Without a remonstrance he lifted the picture from the high carved
mantel. " I'm afraid that I'll have to take it out of the frame," he said.
" No, leave it as it is," she interrupted him impatiently, " the frame
is very pretty, and I'd like to keep it. I haven't one that fits."
" But but I don't believe I can," he began reluctantly as he busied
himself with the small clamps that held the back of the frame in
place. " I hope you won't think me too much of a cad for men-
tioning it, but you see the frame is very valuable. When you gave
me the picture it seemed to me that I couldn't find an appropriate
frame, so I had this one made to order by an Italian goldsmith. The
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 667
work is very unique and intricate, and the stones around the rim are
real. I don't believe I have the right to give it away. It seems to
me that, since my affairs have passed into the hands of a receiver, I
am in honor bound to leave the valuables in the house untouched."
She stared at him a moment bewildered. Never before had a ques-
tion of conscience intruded itself between them. It was a new phase
more intimate than any confidence they had yet shared.
" Then don't touch it," she forced a little laugh. " Men's scruples
are always amusing. Of course the stupid appraiser will never guess
at its real value. Give me the picture and let me go."
He put his hand flat down upon the unframed photograph. " Give
me the note you were writing."
" I have torn it up."
" Was it anything like the one I got this morning? "
" Perhaps. You see I really hadn't written more than a line."
" But, Anne dear, surely you don't mean that this is the end ? "
His tone was wistful now.
" Why yes, of course," she seemed almost indifferent to the effect
of her words, " I can't can't go on with an engagement when things
are so changed."
His face showed pitifully white against the dark shelves of books.
" I didn't think that the main object had changed," he said with a
feeble attempt at a smile. " Weren't you going to marry me, or was
it the house and the horses ? "
"Don't, don't talk that way, Jim. It's all dreadful. Why the
papers say your liabilities are several million. We can't get married
on nothing at all."
" Wouldn't you be willing to begin with me ? "
" Begin ? " she repeated vaguely.
" I had a plan," he said with the courage of a man who goes on
even when he is afraid. " I believe if the estate is wisely managed
it may possibly pay all my creditors ; I may pull out honestly with
nothing. Forced sales may wipe out my own fortune, and the disgrace
and publicity will have to be borne that's my punishment. The ques-
tion is will you share it? I've been wondering if it would be fair to
ask you this and well to tell you the truth, I couldn't decide, so I
asked Mrs. Maxen, and she told me to come to you and, of course,
I came, because it was the advice I was longing for her to give me
all the time. We can go out West where nobody knows us, and we can
begin life all over again."
"But where?"
" Oh, anywhere ; the world is so big we can lose ourselves. Per-
haps we can go to some little mining town. I've muscle enough left
to shovel coal."
668 TRANSMIGRATION [Feb.,
" Coal! Why, Jim, you really don't mean to shovel. Mrs. Maxen
has filled you with all sorts of quixotic ideas. I think she is a very
strange woman and too old-fashioned to understand. I I couldn't
marry a coal-heaver in overalls."
He laughed mirthlessly at her dismay. All the way home Mrs.
Maxen's word had repeated themselves insistently, filling him with
fresh enthusiasm. To live again; to begin again when he had madly
dreamed that all was ended. Heretofore he had never felt the im-
pelling good of necessity. He had always had money. His keenness,
his power to inspire confidence, his business judgment had added to
his fortune, he had never worked with his body like his fellows for
food, for shelter, for rough clothing. He felt the quickening of
the healthful instinct, dormant in most men of his class, to return
to a more primitive existence and grapple physically with material
things, to triumph over the impediments that wise mother nature sets
as snares to strengthen her sons.
" Overalls might be more appropriate than a Tuxedo," he said.
" But shovelling is such dirty work," she went on. And for the
first time since he had known her he blamed her for her literal com-
prehension.
" Well, if digging is so distasteful, carpentering might be cleaner ;
some sort of a job so I could take care of you."
" But without your money, Jim ? "
" I can make more."
"How?"
" Somehow. Other men make money."
" I know, but they start free. They don't have the papers preju-
dicing public opinion against them. No one will trust you. They
will never trust you."
" I think they will," he said with a confidence she could not share.
" I'll make them."
" I I don't believe it, and if you do, it will be after years of
struggle. Oh, I can't stand it."
(The interview was ignited, but the objective viewpoint had failed
her.)
"We will have to stand it. Heavens! Mrs. Maxen was right,
we are all weaklings. We can't stand the blast. We've been shut
up in hothouses too long."
From the drawing-room on the other side of the house came a
sudden crash of tempestuous music; Ted was playing a love song
from one of the grand operas, a veritable wail of despairing devotion.
It was a boyish trick done with the cruel thoughtlessness of youth,
but the power in the accompaniment showed the trained skill of an
artist.
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 669
" Ted ! " exclaimed Anne, glad of any kind of diversion to re-
lieve the situation. What makes him play a dirge like that? Has
has his money gone too ? "
"Gone! I don't know. He will get no income until the estate
is settled."
"What will he do?"
" Work," he replied almost fiercely.
"But what can he do?"
" He will have to learn like the rest of us. I can't regret Ted's
losses. I don't want him to grow up like I did, good-for-nothing.
I've shielded him too long."
" He might play at concerts," she said without much interest,
but striving for the first time in their acquaintance to distract his mind
from herself.
"He will first have to learn to stand on his own legs."
" What do you mean ? "
" I mean that he has been coddled, and coddling kills the best that
is in men and women. Mistaken charity is one of the greatest vices
in the world."
" You are so strange to-day, I cannot understand you."
" I never understood myself. I feel to-day that I am getting ac-
quainted with an enemy."
" I'm sure I tried to understand you," she interrupted him, " but
the papers have been calling you such dreadful names I hardly know
what to believe."
He had moved from her side without reasoning. It was his
soul that craved disenchantment.
" You don't know what to believe," he repeated. " Do do you
doubt my honesty ? "
" Oh, I don't know," she cried burying her face in her hands.
" The papers say such horrid things."
" And you believe the papers ? "
" Oh, I don't know. No one will believe you meant well. The
temptation "
" Temptation ! "
" Yes, to go on spending other people's money. Of course you
meant to give it back, but "
" Good heavens, Anne, do you take me for a common thief ? "
" No, no," she said wildly, " I suppose men do that sort of thing
in business all the time. You meant to pay it back; I am sure you
must have meant to pay it back."
There was a fierceness about his quiet as he went to her and
took both hands in his. There was no affection in his attitude; it
was but a demand for a closer hearing.
670 TRANSMIGRATION [Feb.,
" Listen to me, Anne, I'll try to put myself right in your eyes,
though God pity the man who has to ask faith from those who love
him. My affairs, I acknowledge, are so tangled that I doubt if I shall
ever see a penny of the estate after the creditors and the lawyers are
through with it. My investments for others turned out poorly, my
own money will have to make up the deficit. But at present my affairs
have passed out of my own hands, a trustee was appointed a week ago.
I am a poor man with my living to make. I will go away to some
other city and start again. Are you going to refuse to go with me?"
" How can we live ? How can we live on nothing at all ? "
" Oh, it may mean cooking and dishwashing and digging for a
little while. One can't expect to step from bankruptcy to all the
luxuries of a hotel."
" I can't be poor," she cried hysterically, " I can't, and I won't."
He bit his under lip until the blood came. " Do you mean that
if I had been a poor man you never -would have promised to marry
me?"
The scorn in his tone roused her to sudden anger. " No I
wouldn't," she said.
" You mean you never loved me ? "
" I don't know," she said again helplessly. " I wouldn't have loved
any poor man. I certainly would never work for one. Patching
his clothes, cooking his meals I couldn't I wouldn't."
" Then this is the end the end of the beginning," he said enig-
matically, and turning quickly, as if he feared the appeal of her beauty,
he left her standing among the flowers while he passed out into the
mocking glory of the sunset.
CHAPTER IV.
For hours Jim Thompson walked aimlessly up and down the
streets of the small town. As his anger cooled certain vapory facts
congealed into form. Why should he have been angered by Anne's
attitude when his mind had been fully prepared for it? He had acted
upon Mrs. Maxen's suggestion because he was so sure of Anne's
refusal. Perhaps if he had felt that she had the sacrificial spirit he
would have hesitated to ask her to share his present plans. The
question was but a test, but the scene that had followed had been
more cruel than he had counted on. After all it was too much to
expect of any woman, voluntary poverty, banishment, a name dis-
graced. Mrs. Maxen might have accepted such a position willingly.
Perhaps she had in her young days, when her husband's invalidism
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 671
made so many demands upon her strength, and she had taken him
out West to live in some inaccessible mountain bungalow so that
be could breathe more freely. Yes, he remembered the whole story
now. All her friends had declared that journey " mere madness."
Why should Marie Canfield martyr herself to soothe a hypochondriac's
nerves? Let him breathe out his useless asthmatic little life in his
own bedchamber, said the commiserating neighbors. His wife should
not be called upon to endure all sorts of hardships to humor imaginary
whims. But Mrs. Maxen had continued her packing, undismayed by
her friends' counsel or advice. But. then, Mrs. Maxen was different
from the girls of to-day, certainly different from Anne. Perhaps it
was her religion ; she was a Catholic, and Catholicism preached sacri-
fice, pain, suffering. Yes, Catholicism preached a meaning into all
sorts of unpleasant things. And he had once been a Catholic him-
self. Perhaps that was what Mrs. Maxen meant when she said:
" God only knows how far you have fallen from the best that was
once yours." Memory was playing strange tricks with him to-night
he began to think of his mother in a vivid way he had not thought
for years.
She had been a Catholic, too, as indifferent to the things of this
world as Mrs. Maxen. The first time he had penetrated this pe-
culiarity was the day be broke the big vase in the library, and his
nurse had assured him he would be spanked for " bustin' such a valu-
able," but when he had tremblingly confessed the enormity to his
mother it had not occurred to him to lie she had put her arms about
him and said : " Never mind, Jimsy, I have long suspected that there
were too many ornaments in this house to gather dust." And on
another occasion, when he carelessly upset an ink bottle over her fresh
white gown, she had gone smiling to her room to change it, say-
ing : " I can't punish for accidents. Clothes are a nuisance, any-
how. Nuns in habits are happier than they know." No wonder, then,
that he found her companionship so delightful, a little tiresome some-
times when she prayed too long in churches. Churches were so con-
venient in Rome, and they spent part of each year in Italy. The
first time they had gone abroad he was very small, so small that when
he sat in a pew his knees did not crook at the right place, either his
legs were too short or the seat was too wide, perhaps it was a little
of both, and in the churches where there were no pews, chairs were
not much better. To be perched gives one such a sense of helpless-
ness, and babyhood and the contemplation of one's shoes, as an amuse-
ment, has its limitations. But the next time he went to Rome he
was older and churches were not so uninteresting; there were pic-
tures on the walls and ceilings, sometimes on the floor, and he began
to make a study of angels because they seemed to be his con-
672 TRANSMIGRATION [Feb.,
temporaries smiling a cheerful welcome ; he wondered a little at their
gayety under adverse circumstances, for some of them had neither
arms nor legs, and a wing stuck on either side of one's neck could
hardly be a comfortable appendage, but perhaps the rest of them
were behind clouds. Clouds must be more comfortable than clothes,
especially when one's mother insisted upon buying kilts instead of
pants and jackets. The next time he was in Rome pants and jackets
had become accustomed realities, and the city was more interesting
than the angel's anatomical deficiencies. His mother had told him all
about Romulus and Remus and the Christian martyrs and the lions
and Nero's fiddle and the catacombs. She had a certain genius for
creating stories for children, for she did not hamper herself by atten-
tion to historical sequence, but when mere facts seemed unillumi-
nating she introduced fancies of her own. She had one habit, how-
ever, that her son found very objectionable for he was just old
enough now to cling to the conventions with the uncompromising
tenacity of extreme youth she had a passion for paupers. She used
to sit down on the church steps beside them, and ask them all sorts
of odd questions about their babies, their husbands, their homes, and
when she was quite sure of their addresses she would say cheerfully:
" Now, Jimsy, we'll investigate."
Of course, " investigating " was preferable to having one's mother
sitting on the church steps where someone might possibly mistake her
for a beggar, even if she did have on a silk dress. Some charitable
near-sighted lady might come along the experiment had always
seemed to him dangerous. Investigating was safer, much more sensi-
ble, for while his mother went into the house to look at the sick
people and the babies, he stayed outside and played with the other
children. He could chatter Italian as well as he could English, and
these dirty worshipful children were so willing to follow his lead in
every game he introduced. Certainly humility had never been one
of his virtues ; he had always enjoyed a sense of superiority.
One day coming home from one of these expeditions his mother
had told him that it was time for him to make his First Communion.
He did not know at all what this meant, but he was not encouraged
when she said she would send him to a young student at the American
College to be " instructed."
" We helped him in his school days and he is very grateful and
has promised to give you some of his leisure time," she said.
He was sure he did not want " leisure time," he had plenty of
his own to spare, but he had always respected his mother's wishes, so
he made no protest against the gratuity, and four different days he
had gone to the American College to learn his Catechism. He found
it very difficult, the only fact that mitigated the misery of the first
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 673
four lessons was the promise of the rosy-cheeked student to teach
him to pitch a curved ball. So he struggled with the long-worded
answers to the mysterious questions, his mind somewhat distracted
by his eagerness for the reward to begin.
But the lessons had ended abruptly. One day his mother could
not come for him, so the rosy-cheeked student had good-humoredly
walked home with him. The next day his mother was still sick, and
the fat old doctor had blown his nose very noisily and nodded his
head, and written out one telegram and one cable message before
leaving the house. And so his big sister had come from the convent
in Paris where she was being educated, and his father had come
all the way from America, but not in time, for when he arrived there
was no word of welcome or reproof on the still white lips for the young
husband who had not always been kind.
Then came the misty memory of the funeral. Priests in black
vestments, candles, incense, a Mass in Latin, prayers in Italian and
then the despairing realization that his mother was his no more.
Somebody told him that she had gone to heaven, but heaven seemed
so remote. It seemed disloyal of her to leave him, she had never
left him before. He did not want to go away from Rome the place
seemed to hold her presence. He could not explain this to his father,
for the impression was so intangible he did not know how to put
it into words and, with a child's quick perception, he felt that his
father would have little patience with such phantasies, and so his
childhood ended and a new epoch had begun.
America again boarding school, unsympathetic masters, a battle
for place among the other boys in the classroom, on the athletic
field, handicapped at first by his mother's gentle training and his
former remoteness from his fellows, but winning out at last by sheer
force of mind and muscle. College life; prodigious victories and
leadership in athletic sports, a troop of adoring followers who won-
dered that he could combine mentality with such physical force, for
he had ended as honor man of his class. Then followed a few mad
dissipations, nothing very serious or sensual, but foolishly inane and
financially expensive. Then the business world, success, honor, con-
fidence and then! Why should he think of all these things to-night?
Had his visit to Mrs. Maxen roused all these old, old memories, or
was his brain so tired that it sought relief in retrospection? His
present was so full of problems, but if his past had been divided into
epochs, definite epochs, each one so different from the one that had gone
before, why could he not begin again? His boyhood had been so
different from his childhood; his young manhood so different from
his college life that it seemed difficult to trace the same identity. Sup-
pose he could begin again with the benefit of his experience and
VOL. en. 43
674 TRANSMIGRATION [Feb.,
without the deep shadow of his background. How could he lose him-
self in a world? What way lay open to him that would not appear
cowardly? If he fled secretly he would brand himself as a fugitive
from justice, and he had done nothing absolutely dishonest. If some
of his legitimate speculations had proved unfortunate he was not
willing to convict himself of fraudulence by flight.
On and on he walked in the quivering half lights of the town.
At last his mind seemed incapable of rational plans or vain imagi-
nation. Instinctively he turned his face homewards. He must sleep
sleep somewhere, and in the morning he would be calmer, better
prepared to map out a fresh future.
As he went on his way the familiar objects of the street seemed
to possess an inexplicable interest; a broken lamp post claimed his
attention, he stopped to listen to some ragged urchins cursing on the
corner, and he patted the head of a muddy mongrel who rubbed it-
self against him as if for protection. He was dimly aware that the
streets were less crowded now, some of the poorer homes were al-
ready shuttered and darkened for the night, the theatre-goers had
reached their places of amusement, the business neighborhood seemed
deserted until the clash of fire-bells sounded a welcome distraction.
He remembered, with a certain grim sense of satisfaction, that he had
been one of a " respected body of citizens " to object to the still
alarm, for until the last year the town had boasted only a voluntary
fire company, and the majority of the committee had reasoned that
such reservists might be useful in times of disaster.
The group of urchins on the corner began to whoop joyfully,
then stopped to listen long enough to determine the direction of the
fire. " Gineral alarm ! Gineral alarm," they shouted. " must be a
great one ! " A crowd gathered quickly. It was a dull part of the
evening, and men and women hurried from their homes to welcome
any distraction from domestic drudgery.
Jim Thompson followed the crowd not purposely, but because
it was streaming his way. A friendly stranger apoplectic in his
haste exchanged some breathless remarks with him.
" Magnificent animals," he said as the fire horses passed them,
their strong necks straining in their speed. " Afraid the fire will be
out before I get there legs don't carry me as fast as when I was
a small shaver. We're getting up in the swell part of town now. I'm
glad to say that fire and death ain't any respecters of persons. Looks
like a lot of smoke ; fire must have been burnin' some time before they
turned on the alarm. Some folks ain't got the sense they was born
with I'm getting winded. You don't seem anxious to get there."
" I was walking this way."
" I never miss a fire when I can get there," he said as if he
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 675
were seeking commendation. " Good Lord ! that is a fire," he ex-
claimed as they turned a corner that brought the house into view.
" Glad I didn't have my run for nothing. I wonder I wonder if
there is anybody upstairs."
Jim Thompson pushed him aside. "Why why it's my house,"
he said, with the startling calm with which most men face a crisis.
" Don't you see it's my house ? "
But even as he spoke the scene seemed as unreal to him as some
forced melodrama in a cinematograph, the flames seemed flattened
against the black sky. Why, he had been standing in his own library
but a moment ago a moment no, it must have been hours, and
Anne was with him no, Anne had gone she had been too angry to
stay and Ted? Was that crackling, sizzling sound but another
phase of Ted's mad music? Where was Polly? Did she play no
part in this nightmare of destruction? He had expected harrowing
dreams after such a day. But he was roused to reality by shrill
voices in the crowd screaming:
"It's Jim Thompson's house."
" It's a judgment come upon him."
" They say his nephew is inside."
" He'll be burned to ashes."
" Good Lord, look at them flames licking the roof."
With a strength and a fierceness that heeded no resistance, Jim
Thompson broke through the crowd. A policeman raised his club
threateningly. " Stand back stand back if ye value yer head."
" It's my house" The words opened the way for him.
" Lord, Mr. Thompson, I didn't know yer. House is so old it's
goin' like tinder must have been built a hundred years ago."
" Yes yes of course," his voice seemed to fall calm and even.
" Where where are the children ? "
" Safe long ago."
" No no we're not," cried Polly hysterically, rushing towards him
and falling weakly into his arms. " Ted went back, I saw him go
he went back to get his violin."
" He can't, miss," said a big fireman. " I tell you he can't, miss,
I searched every room."
" Oh, he went back, Cousin Jim I'm sure he went back. No
one will believe me. I can't find him anywhere. The house was
burning some time before they thought there was any real danger,
and they ran in and out bringing out the things, and Ted followed
them. I'm sure he did not come back."
" I'll go and see."
The policeman laid a detaining hand upon his arm. " You can't,
Mr. Thompson, that fire's fairly eatin' up the house."
676 TRANSMIGRATION [Feb.,
Jim Thompson pushed him impatiently aside.
" I must go and find him I must go if Ted is inside."
He left Polly, trembling, in the arms of some woman in the
crowd, while he hurried towards the directing voice that was urging
on the men, and for the moment he himself took command. Ladders
were brought to the back of the house; firemen scrambled over the
ivy hung wall with its guard of broken glass; policemen shouted to
keep back the crowd; Jim Thompson was working with all his
strength, lifting ladders to the busy men in the garden, and strangely
enough through it all he was vaguely conscious of a primitive ex-
hilaration in the danger. It was he who first mounted the newly-
placed ladder and ordered the men to stand back. " I know the
house it's my place."
The window that he entered was free from fire, but it was in a
wing of the house, and the glass reflected the glare. It was like going
into " torment " someone said. A young fireman made haste to fol-
low him, but just at that moment fire broke from the window directly
below the one against which the ladder rested, and the young fellow
fell back blinded by the smoke and the sudden heavy stream of the
hose. There was a wild shout from the crowd.
" Tell him to come out. The boy's here. Tell him to come out."
" Good God, the walls are shaking."
" Come back come back ! "
" Tell him to come back."
Through the shattered window Jim Thompson heard the cries.
He had passed through the hall and into Ted's room. He tried to
return, to retrace his steps, but the window was barred with
flame. Choking, gasping in the smoke he groped his way down a
narrow passage-way that led to the servant's quarters. Here the
wall had been built in a small angle to admit more light to the hall
and the bathroom. This part of the house seemed free from fire,
but the smoke was everywhere the smothering, deadening odor of
smoke. Desperately he pushed open a window, a rush of air revived
him, but he saw with dismay that the flames were creeping from
the lower windows, curling upwards with serpentine malevolence.
No one saw him. The small force of firemen and the eyes of the
crowd were focused upon the other side of the house, watching with
terrified expectancy the place he had entered. Still unobserved he
crept out of the bathroom window and took hold of the ledge to let
himself down, trying to find some support for his feet on the window
shutter below him, but the flames crept about him, and with a cry
he let himself go falling falling and then consciousness of the
world was gone. He lay quite still, hidden by the tall bushes of
his own garden hedge while the crowd waited for him, men hushed
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 677
with awe, while frantic women prayed aloud. Burned, beaten back
at every turn the firemen hunted for him, until at the command of
their chief they fell back with the other spectators to watch the roof
cave in; a shower of meteoric light was hurled at the pale stars,
and the firemen turned their powerful streams of water on the ruins
that seemed to be breaking into fresh blaze.
In the first dim light of the dawn Jim Thompson was roused
by the sound of voices. A man was saying:
"That place is still as hot as . What's the use of look-
ing for a dead man there? There ain't much difference- between a
body and a sofa when they're both burned to a cinder. I tell you
he's cremated all right."
" There's some folks say it was time for Jim Thompson to die."
" Maybe they won't talk so much now that he's dead and the
same as buried."
"Dead and the same as buried.' 1
The warm blood filled his body, he moved with a new desire,
a new impulse. He was stiffened by the cold, and his face was
tingling with a burning pain, but his body was unharmed, and the
world declared him dead. Why should he return? To whom should
he return ? Anne had refused to share his poverty his future. Why
should he return? He rose cautiously, and stared at the smouldering
debris of his home. There were some weary watchers guarding the
streets, some stragglers left from the crowd that had witnessed the
fire, and who were waiting for the first grewsome sight of his body.
He knew he could pass through the garden unnoticed, for a foot
path had been made all around the house, and part of the ivied wall
was down ; in the dim light no one would recognize him. He stooped
and picked up his hat and pressed out the dents in the stiff felt,
then instinctively he pulled out his watch. The crystal was broken,
and as he opened the case bits of the glass fell out. It was almost too
dark to see the hands. He held it to his ear for a moment. It had
stopped time had stopped for him. He could begin his life again with
no record of a past. He was freed from his background. Over
there in the gloom they were hunting for his body. He was dead
dead but the faint eastern light of the morning promised a resur-
rection.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
Bew Boohs.
HIGH LIGHTS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. By Hilaire
Belloc. New York: The Century Co. $3.00.
This volume does not relate all the great episodes and turning
points of the early days of the French Revolution. It presents the
story of a few of the most dramatic and important. The meeting
of the States General, or the National Assembly, in which that body
defeated the King and compelled him to bow to its authority; the
flight of the royal family to Varennes, their capture and return to
Paris, the storming of the Tuileries; the battle of Valmy; the
execution of Louis XVI.; and the fall of the French monarchy.
Between each of the chapters is a brief synopsis of the trend of
affairs from the preceding to the subsequent event. This plan has
permitted the author to dilate with picturesque detail on his chosen
topics ; and at the same time to provide the reader with not insuf-
ficient information, or reminders, of the general course of those
momentous days. Repeating an oft-told tale, the author cannot be
expected to furnish any fresh information on the matter in hand;
and the volume is one of pleasant reading rather than a grave his-
torical study; its quality will be brought out fully by comparing
it with the corresponding chapters of Carlyle.
On one topic, indeed, which has proved a source of acute con-
troversy and contradictory theories, M. Belloc offers a novel view
of his own, that is, the retreat of the Prussian infantry which
decided the battle of Valmy, and saved the young republic. He
rejects the explanation that Brunswick, being in sympathy with the
Revolutionary forces, did not press the charge. " To talk like that
is to misunderstand the whole psychology of soldiery; more, in such
an action it is to misunderstand the whole psychology of men.
Brunswick could not have recalled the charge without good cause
on such a day and with such men about him as the King of Prussia,
the emigrant princes and commanders." Nor, he continues, was it
that officers lost their heads, or suddenly doubted the morale of their
men who had advanced in steady ranks for six hundred yards in
face of the French artillery fire, and, when they did retreat, returned
in good order. Having visited the battlefield in autumn, after the
rains, and walked over the same ground over which the invaders
advanced, M. Belloc found at the beginning of the slope up which
igi6.] NEW BOOKS 679
the advance led a well-concealed marsh virtually impassable to
men under fire. Nothing more mysterious than mud " lost the
Kings and the aristocracies of Europe their throw against the
French democracy."
The chapter on the fall of the French monarchy offers the
author an opportunity to analyze the character of Lafayette ; which
he holds to be different from both of the traditional ones : " one
is that of a hero; the other that of a pale figure bringing treason;
and certainly a prig." Lafayette was of the Stoic mould, thinks
M. Belloc, and one of those characters whose great glory lies in
this, " that though their intellects may not have had the strength to
grasp transcendental things or to perceive the complexity of the
material with which a politician must deal, yet an unswerving deter-
mination to do what their rule tells them is discoverable throughout
their lives." The book is handsomely bound and profusely illus-
trated from old paintings and plates.
THE CIVILIZATION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. Its re-
mains, language, history, religion, commerce, law, art and
literature. By Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D., LL.D., Professor
in the University of Pennsylvania, with map and one hundred
and sixty- four illustrations. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
Co. $6.00 net.
In this excellent work Professor Jastrow sums up for English
readers the most important results of Assyriology. He has sifted
carefully and grouped together the immense amount of information
which the monuments of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley have yielded
to science, and has covered within the compass of eight chapters
the whole range of Babylonian Assyrian civilization.
The first chapter, " Excavations of Babylonian and Assyrian
Sites," is a fascinating story of the labors of a long series of
explorers from the heroic days of Rich, Botta and Layard, to the
present time. Chapter II. contains an extensive account of the de-
ciphering of cuneiform script, and tells us what famous scholars
in Europe and America have contributed to this arduous task.
Chapter III. is a comprehensive summary of the political history
of Babylonia and Assyria, covering a period of over three thousand
years. It carries us back to the fourth millenium before Christ,
describes the unification of the city states in the Euphrates Valley
under the rule of the city state of Babylon, the rise of the kingdom
of Assyria and its various fortunes, and the final overthrow of
680 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
Babylonian power and influence by Cyrus in 539 B. c. The next
two chapters treat of the religion of the Babylonians and the As-
syrians under the headings of " Gods, Cults and Temples,'* a sub-
ject in which Professor Jastrow is a world- wide authority. Herein
we get a thorough insight into the religious ideas and practises of
those ancient peoples, and we learn how the temple was for them
the centre of national life, culture and progress. Chapter VI. is
devoted to a study of " Law and Commerce." If one may be
allowed a choice among so many excellent things, this chapter, we
believe, is the gem of the book. Of course, the matter is not new,
but the presentation of it is the most instructive we have read. The
author gives a detailed, logical and accurate analysis of the Code
of Hammurabi, the oldest law book in the world, and shows that it
remained a standard for succeeding ages and shaped all subsequent
legislation. Then he passes to the question of commerce, and ex-
plains very minutely the different kinds of contracts, and the general
way in which they were drawn up, duly attested, and sealed, so as
to conform to the requirements of the law. Chapters VII. and
VIII. treat respectively of art and literature, and are of special
interest to students of architecture and of Semitic languages. The
many specimens, translated from the original sources, are a con-
clusive proof of the manifold literary activity of the Babylonians
and the Assyrians.
A most valuable feature of the book is the large number of
beautiful illustrations, one hundred and sixty-four in all. They
have been selected with great care and judgment, and throw con-
siderable light on the topics with which they are connected. In
fact they are an education in themselves, and will prove especially
interesting to those who have not had an opportunity to visit a
museum of Babylonian antiquities.
The book has been written primarily for the general public;
but the student, who intends to specialize in Oriental literature,
will derive much help from its perusal, for it is the first attempt to
condense such a vast subject within the limits of an ordinary size
volume, and to summarize, with clearness and precision, the definite
results which scholars have achieved in the field of Assyriology.
PARSIVAL. By Gerhard Hauptman. Authorized Translation by
Oakley Williams. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.00.
This is not a retelling of the Wagner music-drama, but an
excellent recasting simple yet full of mystical suggestion of the
1916.] NEW BOOKS 681
Parsival legend in general. It is the sort of volume which should
open up new vistas of wonder and delight to the modern child,
while conjuring old vistas of even greater significance to the adult
who may, perhaps, have the good fortune to read it aloud.
The author wisely avoids the more intricate mediaeval com-
plexities of the Parsival-Galahad legend, and rejects entirely the
elaborate recent symbolism of the Kundry episode. He pictures
Parsival as the forest-bred son of Heartache and the King of
Amfortas the knight-errant who vainly and none-too-patiently
seeks the Holy Grail the lover who weds and deserts the fair
Blanche-fleur and finally, the humble Bearer of Burdens, who
parts from his late-found son, Lohengrin, to rule over the mystic
kingdom of Salvator, bearing upon his head " the crown of joy and
sorrow of the Grail."
Gerhard Hauptman has long been known as a master of poetic
and suggestive prose, and the " Englishing "of the present volume
is excellently done. It is not possible to be lucid, it is only possible
to be luminous in dealing with so profound and mysterious a subject
as the Holy Grail legend. But it would be difficult to place in the
hands of young readers a more satisfactory introduction to one
of the greatest themes of Christian romance than this little book
affords.
THE FREELANDS. By John Galsworthy. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $1.35 net.
It has sometimes been possible, of late, to treat work by Mr.
Galsworthy as negligible, but this attitude is not appropriate to
The Freelands. The book is to be reckoned with were it ojily on
account of the surpassing excellence of its workmanship; and
though the material upon which this is exercised is gloomy, baffling
and ironic the soil most congenial to the author's peculiar men-
tality yet the groundwork is of truth that cannot be dismissed.
Robert Tryst, a farm laborer on the estate of Sir Gerald Mal-
loring, is a widower with young children. He wishes to marry
his deceased wife's sister. This Lady Malloring's scruples will
not allow her to countenance, nor will she permit the woman to live
in Tryst's cottage, unmarried. Tryst is warned that if he per-
sists he will be evicted. Lady Malloring's attitude is hotly resented
by her neighbor Kirsteen, wife of Tod Freeland, whose children,
Derek and Sheila, become active in inciting the laborers to revolt.
Tryst is evicted : an epileptic, he misunderstands Derek's advice,
682 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
revenges himself by arson, is sentenced to three years in jail, and
commits suicide as he is being taken to prison. Around this theme,
with another similar, though secondary instance of conscientious
despotism, Mr. Galsworthy has written a novel which is at once a
plea for liberty, an arraignment of existing land conditions in Eng-
land, an interesting study of character, an idyllic love story, and
from every point of view a work of art. Its construction is admir-
ably cohesive : every character that steps upon the stage, every scene
and situation depicted there, lies within the radius of the light that
centres on the obscure tragedy of Tryst, the laborer. It is natural
to use the terms of the stage, for Mr. Galsworthy has even more
markedly than usual employed the methods of the dramatist. Never
does he speak in his own person, and if we feel that certain senti-
ments are his, it is only because they are uttered by characters whom
he makes attractive to us. We quickly feel the charm of Felix
Freeland, the litterateur, who for the benefit of his brother Stanley,
the prosperous manufacturer and neighbor of the Mallorings, draws
a contrasting picture of the daily life of the landowner and that
of the tenant, over whom he assumes a natural superiority extend-
ing even to ruling his conduct in matters not bearing upon the rela-
tions of landlord and tenant. That this superiority is inherent, that
it is not altogether arbitrary and artificial, Felix scouts in words
that have a lasting bite, all the deeper for their temperate calm; and
he adds : " I, who do not believe in revolution from the bottom,
the more believe that it is up to us in honor to revolutionize things
from the top."
It is the firebrand Kirsteen who dominates the book. In few
words, but ineffaceably, Mr. Galsworthy has drawn the dark-haired,
blue-clad woman, her calm exterior veiling a flaming furnace of
rebellion, watching her son and daughter as they recklessly put into
practise the doctrines they have absorbed from her, while the placid
Tod, steadfastly devoted to her, declines to attempt interference.
And when after the final catastrophe she is confronted with failure
and disaster, Derek half -mad with self-reproach, haunted by the
dead man and repudiated by the laborers he has organized into
revolt, she retracts nothing, but reiterates her inborn hatred of
oppression and fever of rebellion and her conviction that it is not
all in vain. Hers are the la^t words of the book : " The world
is changing, Felix changing."
The novel is continuously interesting, with many touches of
beauty and subtlety, as well as of piercing pathos ; the characteriza-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 683
tion is vital. The four Freeland brothers are four distinct types,
each representing a point of view. The love of Derek and Nedda,
Felix's daughter, supplies a sweetness that relieves the otherwise
intolerable sadness, the hopeless sadness of wrong done by those
who desire to do right. Penetrating and comprehensive as Mr.
Galsworthy's mind is, it is strange that at no time in this work
does he seem to have grasped one plain fact : that the merging of
responsibility into tyranny is not a growth rooted in inherited lands
and traditions, but the by-product of authority in whatever form.
Even the Kirsteens of the earth can hardly conceive a society
without some form of organized administration. One wonders if
their vision of change pictures a world freed from what is perhaps
of all human temptations the most insidious and the most nearly
universal. It is needless to say of a heroine so plainly beloved
by Mr. Galsworthy that she is emancipated from religion. A full
understanding and a more reasonable hope might result from closer
acquaintance with the Faith that has never proclaimed equality
nor ceased to prescribe humility.
THE ALHAMBRA. By Washington Irving. Edited by Edward
K. Robinson. New York : Ginn & Co. 45 cents.
This reprint of Irving's revised edition of 1851 has been
further abridged by the present editor, on grounds of general suit-
ability and in order to attain smaller compass. The work has
been done with discretion, and results in an attractive volume, well
printed on good paper, with many charming illustrations and decor-
ative drawings, yet of an easy and convenient size.
THE LIFE OF LORD STRATHCONA AND MOUNT ROYAL.
By Beckles Wilson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Two
Volumes. $6.50 net.
The biography which fills these two handsome volumes is a
painstaking and devoted piece of work. The author has gathered
material from many sources, much of it in the form of letters,
to give to the world as complete and clear a view as possible of
the celebrated High Commissioner of Canada, to whom, more
than any other one person, that country owes " her material pros-
perity and much of her political temper." Mr. Wilson expresses
the hope that his narrative will dispel some of the mystery sur-
rounding Lord Strathcona's antecedents and some of his most
notable actions, but he tells us also that it was the eminent man's
684 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
fixed habit to keep everything personal from the light of publicity.
It is for this reason, no doubt, that the record of his life's activities
and achievements impresses one as being primarily a book of refer-
ence, notwithstanding the promise of romance in the career of
Donald A. Smith to the winning of a picturesque title. Many
speeches are quoted, and many letters given in full whose contents
could have been condensed to advantage; but there are lacking the
intimate touches of characterization that constitute the charm of
biography and create an interest for the casual reader.
THE A-B-C OF NATIONAL DEFENCE. By J. W. Mullen New
York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.00 net.
The title of this book is apt and significant. It is a concise,
clear statement of the essentials in a plan for the defence of our
country, written for the use and comprehension of the laity. In
accomplishing this the author has been very successful: he makes
mention of our weaknesses, explaining them and how they should be
remedied, bringing to our attention the fact that the War Depart-
ment has long known the needs of both Army and Navy and has
sought to have them supplied. , He attacks the present system of
army posts, and likens the result, in the event of sudden mobiliza-
tion, to the dumping in a mass of " all the parts of a mammoth
and immensely complicated engine to be assembled in deadly haste
by men who never in their lives have tried to assemble such an
engine, and who never have seen such an engine completely as-
sembled and working."
The book covers many points in a surprisingly small compass.
Everything is made plain, no obscure technicalities are employed,
and the subject is presented so tersely and forcibly that it is inter-
esting apart from the instruction conveyed.
THE MORTAL GODS AND OTHER PLAYS. By Olive Tilford
Dargan. $1.50.
PATH FLOWER AND OTHER VERSES. By Olive Tilford Dar-
gan. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25.
It spells glory for the swift hand of the poet, rather than the
tardy hand of the reviewer, when two substantial volumes from the
same contemporary pen beckon reproachfully from the editorial
book-shelf. And these two of Mrs. Dargan's making are sufficiently
ambitious as well as sufficiently dissimilar. In The Mortal Gods we
find three poetic dramas: the strange medley of Modernism and
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 685
antiquity which gives title to the book ; a five-act comedy in classic
vein called A Son of Hermes; and a rather vague drama of the
early Crusades entitled Kidmir. The plays are evidently not de-
signed for stage use, belonging rather to the literate school of
" closet drama." All three contain dramatic situations and highly
felicitous passages, yet none of them shows sustained strength in
structure or execution.
The lyrics of the second volume are another story. Here one
finds Mrs. Dargan's own indubitable metier preeminently in such
exquisitely singing matter as the opening poem, Path Flower, with
its vivid conjuring of the sentient spring woodland: the wide-
awake, curious woodland
At foot each tiny blade grew big
And taller grew to hear,
And every leaf on every twig
Was like a little ear
into which the dream-led city child strayed like a starling. There
are poets of clear vision and clear singing and poets, again, of the
stormy avalanche or fiery torrent; and betimes there are poets
who wish to be both. Mrs. Dargan is so radiantly charming in
such poems as the one quoted that one half regrets the pseudo-
Thompsonian intricacies of Magdalen to Her Poet or the somewhat
strained contrasts of Little Daughters.
A ROSARY OF MYSTERY PLAYS. Translated from the Middle
English of the originals into our Mother Tongue by Margaret
S. Mooney. Albany, N. Y. : Frank H. Evory & Co. Cloth,
75 cents ; paper, 40 cents.
In this interesting volume, Mrs. Mooney has translated fifteen
plays from the celebrated York Cycle of Mysteries, as performed
by the various Crafts Guilds during the fourteenth, fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. The scenes selected illustrate with naive
mediaeval realism the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of
the Holy Rosary. Over and above this they illustrate for the stu-
dent of literature the development of modern drama out of the
liturgical offices of the Church, while providing the student of
human nature with a very valuable insight into the mediaeval temper
toward both divine and secular things. It was a work well worth
the doing, and Mrs. Mooney deserves all support for her worthy
accomplishment of it.
The present volume is dedicated by its translator to the "Teach-
686 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
ing Orders of Men and Women throughout the English-speaking
World," and its introduction gives an admirably succinct history of
religious drama in England. Yet it should not be considered
merely as a textbook or a literary curiosity. We have had revivals
of Greek tragedy and experiments in the " modern " miracle play,
and Catholic amateurs would do a really contributive work in bring-
ing what Mrs. Mooney calls the " buried treasure of mediaeval
drama " back to the appreciation of modern audiences. A few of
the subjects embodied in this " Rosary "of Mystery Plays may be
considered too sacred for performances outside the cloister; but
there seems absolutely no reason why, under the auspices of Catho-
lic college or convent, many of them should not be most success-
fully impersonated possibly in celebration of the various feasts
which they commemorate. Didactic as it is, and " edifying as it
is," this old religious drama carries an inalienably human appeal
an appeal never fully realized until it is acted. But even the
reader of these York plays will be richly repaid.
MARY'S MEADOW PAPERS. By Mrs. Armel O'Connor. Lon-
don: Alston Rivers, Ltd. $1.25.
Mary's Meadow has been rightly styled " the sanctuary for
the cultivation in domestic life of Franciscan virtues the
little home where the ideals of an unworldly life are to be realized,
and where Betty, the adopted daughter, is to be trained to be a
saint."
Most mothers would be interested in the development of
Betty. From her earliest days her mother teaches her to thank
God for everything especially for the things she did not like. It
is rather interesting to hear this precocious child whispering the
Latin words Deo Gratias, when a cloud of dust blows in her eyes
or a loose tooth begins to ache. She plays " the obedience game
by asking her mother permission to pick up the bits on the floor,
to fold up her nightie, to hang up her dressing gown, to dust the
chairs, to play with her doll and to draw on her slate." The " art-
less finance " of Mary's Meadow consists in trying to give in-
stead of trying to get. Even Betty laughs when her mother
says, " Thank you for lending me your hat last summer," as
her mother hands the needed headdress to a stranger at the door.
When mother scolds a beggar at the gate Betty cries out quite
shocked, " O Mummy, how can you say that about Our Lord ? "
Betty's motto, like her mother's, is " that one cannot be too kind."
1916.] NEW BOOKS 687
THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE. By Kathleen Norris. New
York: Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.35 net.
In some respects this latest novel by Mrs. Norris is an advance
over all her previous work: its theme is more important and the
handling more assured and direct. It is a study of a woman's life
retrieved from grave error by force of character and personality,
instead of the expedient to which novels on similar subjects have
accustomed us the use of complaisant circumstance to smooth
away difficulties that have grown past the author's powers. Julia
Page is introduced to us from the beginning of her life, in tawdry,
slatternly environments; we see her grow to girlhood, under-bred,
untaught, but blessed with an appreciation of better things, a keen
brain, and will power. Chance brings her into contact with more
refined conditions, and reveals to her what is her standing in
the eyes of the people whom she would fain resemble. She de-
termines to rise, and discovers, as she expresses it, that " there's
some queer rule that makes you rise if you want to rise, if only
you don't compromise." At the end of the book we take leave of
her, a woman of poise and charm, admired by the same people
whose severe criticism, accidentally overheard, had first roused her
native energy to disprove their strictures. The transformation is
achieved naturally and reasonably, and we are shown the workings
of Julia's mind as she progresses consistently and without com-
promise, always realizing it is she that must change, not her out-
ward conditions.
The first false note is struck when Dr. Studdiford offers him-
self in marriage, and she confesses to him the real character of
her relations with her earlier lover, Mark. This should not be, as
it is, a revelation to the reader ,also: it gives an air of unreality
to the scenes in which Mark has figured. Again, Studdiford is not
convincingly drawn, and his cowardly desertion of Julia after
months of marriage does not ring true; it is as though it were
interpolated in order to provide Julia with another trial and char-
acter test. These errors of construction detract from the strength
of the book. A still more vital weakness, however, is that Julia's
problem is treated almost wholly from the standpoint of taste and
intelligence; the religious and Catholic element is carefully su-
bordinated though perfectly distinct. This is not compatible with
Julia's earnestness and thoughtfulness, which would make the
spiritual factor supreme, if considered at all. Had Mrs. Norris
dwelt upon this more frankly and fully she would possibly have
688 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
narrowed the appeal of the novel, but she would have unquestion-
ably added immensely to its artistic value.
There is much that is exceptionally good. Many of the scenes
and characters, especially those connected with Julia's youth, are
portrayed with photographic clearness and veracity; there are
touches of poignant realism, and we see most of what occurs
as it reacts upon Julia, whose mind is generally open to us; in-
deed, at the last when reunited to her husband, her thoughts are
disclosed so intimately as to give an odd sense of intrusion. It
is much to have a solution provided that is entirely from within,
and to have this subject treated with rational hopefulness, a tone
that is neither artificial nor morbid. It is not in disparagement
of the present work that these criticisms are made. The unique
merits and power of the book make one regret the greater book
that might have been.
WHITE EAGLE. By Mary T. Waggaman. Notre Dame, Ind. :
The Ave Maria Press. 75 cents.
Every American boy with good red blood in his veins will
admire Don Carruther, or White Eagle, the hero of Mrs. Wagga-
man's delightful story. Don, the child of a wayward New Yorker
and a Western Indian maid, has at their death been left in charge
of a rough, ignorant but kindly-hearted old mountaineer, Big Seth.
The boy grows up strong, sturdy, manly able to ride a bucking
bronco, to face unflinchingly a mountain lion, and to climb for
hours over steep mountain passes.
His grandfather, an Eastern millionaire, learns of his existence
through a letter sent him by one of Big Seth's pals, a fugitive from
justice known as Lone Jack. He goes West incognito, learns to
love White Eagle, especially when he compares him with his molly-
coddle, heartless and self-seeking cousins.
After some stirring adventures, in which old Stephen Car-
ruther, the Napoleon of Wall Street, figures as an escaped bandit,
all ends happily, and White Eagle comes to his own.
TRAVELS IN ALASKA. By John Muir. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co. $2.50 net.
This graphic record of John Muir's explorations in South-
eastern Alaska has been edited from the author's manuscript notes
by his friend, Mrs. Marion Randall Parsons. It tells in vivid and
picturesque language the story of the famous naturalist's careful
1916.] NEW BOOKS 689
exploration of the glaciers of Alaska, in his three voyages of 1879,
1880 and 1890.
One marvels at the enthusiasm which enabled John Muir to
endure the most extraordinary hardships without a murmur. He
thought nothing of canoeing through the Alexander Archipelago
for nearly a thousand miles, traveling whole days and nights
on the treacherous ice, oblivious of rain and storm, fording icy
streams, or crossing shaky ice bridges, or sleeping in the open on
a bed of rocks or ice after a meal of only crackers and tea.
This interesting volume tells of the character and habits of
the Alaskan Indian tribes, such as the Stickeens, Takus, Hoonas,
Chilcats and Auks. It describes with scientific accuracy the fauna
and flora of the country, and abounds in the most beautiful descrip-
tions of the natural beauties of our Northwestern wonderland.
FLASHERS MEAD. By Compton Mackenzie. New York:
Harper & Brothers. $1.50.
Flashers Mead is an unusual sort of title; but then it belongs
to a novel quite out of the ordinary. There is something both
striking and delightful in the way this love story is told, although the
incidents are trivial enough, and the persons more like ordinary
living folk than the principals of most modern fiction. But with
a sure hand and delicate touch, a remarkable sense of color, and a
gift of imagination all his own, the author weaves page after page
of lyrical prose into a tapestry that leaves the critic without oppor-
tunity for disparagement.
A little more, however, and we shall begin to think of Mr. Mac-
kenzie as prone to see the sad features of life. Behind the recurrent
scenes in which he depicts the delights of love, the graceful things of
nature, the music of the woods and the charm of bud and blossom,
there is always a clouded background. The romance is scarcely
under way when we realize that it can have no happy ending, and
begin to prepare for the disaster which duly comes. And we close
the book reflecting on certain serious things that have to do with
life and love and selfishness and passion and two dispositions which
ill accord. The author does not lecture, nor even explain. He
draws outlines, combines colors, sounds chords, and then leaves
us to draw such conclusions as we please one of them necessarily
being that he is a highly gifted artist, with a keen vision and a sense
of proportion not spoiled by his rare ability to spiritualize the com-
monplace and suggest the ethereal. Among the truths his readers
VOL. cn. -44
690 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
are led to reflect upon is this, that a perfectly honorable love may
yet be so self-centred as to demoralize a stainless soul not a bad
lesson to be conveyed to the people who will be thrilled with the
romantic charm of this idyll.
THE SECRET BEQUEST. By Christian Reid. Notre Dame,
Ind : The Ave Maria Press.
This story for girls tells of a fortune bequeathed to Honora
Trezevant by her cousin, Mr. Chisholm, who has disinherited his
grandnephew, Bernard Chisholm, for the reason that the young
man has become a Catholic. The " secret bequest " is the dead
man's wish, expressed in a letter to Honora, that she will if pos-
sible reclaim Bernard from the error of his ways, and that the two
may marry. How the meeting of the young people leads to love,
and how the outcome is Honora's conversion to Bernard's faith,
and her voluntary surrender of the fortune into the hands of Mr.
Chisholm's executor, to be disposed of according to what he knows
of the testator's wishes, all this is told in the pleasant and fluent
manner characteristic of this popular author, who gives us a fore-
shadowing of the denouement in the opening chapter, which pre-
sents the heroine sitting, at dusk, in " the large basilica-like church
of the Paulists in New York," attracted by some influence not yet
understood by her.
THE PASSSIONATE CRIME. By E. Temple Thurston. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. $1.30 net.
This somewhat lurid title suggests an unpleasant quality from
which the book is conspicuously free. It is, as the sub-title calls it,
" a tale of faerie," the story of a poet, Anthony Sorel, who found
himself in the hills of Ireland a shelter, where he would live as a
solitary in high communion with his ideals; of a woman who
invaded his solitude and won his love, to meet her death at his hands
because she had shattered his cherished ideal of love; of an old
man, Malachi, himself a solitary, to whom the region of faerie is
the only real world, who alone knows the story and tells it to the
author. It is a singular book, written with power, of modern
times but enacted in a realm of pure fantasy, commingling worldly
shrewdness and Irish mysticism. The characters of Father Nolan,
the wise, witty priest, the woman Anna, and of Malachi are excep-
tionally well done; and the wild, free play of fancy and brilliant,
vivid bits of description give the work a unique character and
interest.
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 691
JERUSALEM. By Selma Lagerlof. Translated from the Swed-
ish by Velma Swanston Howard. With an introduction by
H. G. Leach. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
$1.35 net.
Selma Lagerlof, the well-known Swedish writer, is the only
woman winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. She is to-day the
most popular writer in Scandinavia, and is everywhere ac-
knowledged as a classic.
Jerusalem deals with the history of a peasant family of the
province of Dalecarlia, the Ingmarsons of Ingmar Farm. It
portrays every type of the simple Swedish peasant- farmer, school-
master, shopkeeper, innkeeper and minister. The story is full of
dramatic incidents for example, the elder Ingmar's meeting at the
prison door the girl for whose infanticide he was responsible, and
his bringing her home in defiance of all the conventions. Another
dramatic incident is the auction scene, wherein the younger Ingmar
meanly renounces his beloved, and marries the daughter of a wealthy
farmer in order to pay off a mortgage on his estate and keep
it in the family. The novel ends with the description of a re-
ligious pilgrimage to Jerusalem led by a crazy fanatic from Chicago,
who induces many of the peasants to sell their homes and emigrate
in a body to the Holy Land. The last words of the story represent
the children at the railway station whimpering and crying, " We
don't want to go to Jerusalem. We want to go home."
BESIDE THE BLACK WATER. By Norreys Jephson O'Conor.
New York: John Lane Co. $1.00 net.
" Ireland herself, with her stretches of wonderful landscape,
her storied past, and potential future " is the chief motif of these
expressive verses. Most worthy of mention is the sonnet " Ireland
Revisited," " The Fairy Bride," and " Summer Morning."
THE FAMOUS CITIES OF IRELAND. By Stephen Gwynn.
New York : The Macmillan Co. $2.00.
In 1906 Mr. Gwynn published The Fair Hills of Ireland,
promising at some future date to describe in detail the character-
istics of some of the chief cities of Ireland. In the present volume
he has fulfilled his promise, and in most entertaining fashion writes
about the history, spirit and development of merry Cork, gallant
Limerick, reposeful Wexford, money-making Belfast, domineering
Dublin, and six other Irish cities.
692 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
He writes with a great love for Ireland, though he does not
always succeed in writing from the pure Irish viewpoint. He
is most honest, however, in showing forth in good classic English
style the injustice, cruelty and dishonesty of English rule in Ire-
land since the days of Henry II.
ITALY IN ARMS, AND OTHER POEMS. By Clinton Scollard.
New York: Gomme & Marshall. 75 cents.
This slender volume of Mr. Scollard's musical verse is remi-
niscent of Rome, Venice, Padua and the Italian Lakes. In rich
beautiful imagery, Mr. Scollard paints " the ruby fire " of a Vene-
tian sunset, the pool of Garda " inwrought with burnished gold,"
Varenna's snowy white cascade on Lake Como, Malcesine
Where the mountains seem to listen, looming height on looming
height;
the Ponale Road,
To where Lake Ledro like a jewel lies,
Its liquid sapphire girt with emerald.
THE INQUISITION. A Critical and Historical Study of the Co-
ercive Power of the Church. By E. Vacandard. Translated
from the second edition by Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P. New
Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Paper, 50
cents net.
It is good to know that the circulation of Father Conway's
translation of l f Inquisition has been extensive enough to justify a
second edition. The scholarly treatment accorded this most vexed
point of controversy and the careful, attractive rendering given by
the English translator, make it so easy for the world to get at the
exact facts of the case, that there will no longer be any excuse
for the Protestant who repeats old calumnies, nor for the Catholic
who is ignorant of just what should be said in reply. For though
this little volume does not attempt an exhaustive history of the
Inquisition, it does present a viewpoint and expose principles which
will be sufficient for the instruction of the intelligent reader.
FOR GREATER THINGS. By Rev. W. T. Kane, S. J. St. Louis :
B. Herder. 50 cents net.
Father Kane has written a graphic account of the life of St.
Stanislaus Kostka. It is a life of a most human and lovable boy,
a true " citizen of heaven, who lived here amongst us, kindly and
companionable indeed, during eighteen years of exile."
1916.] NEW BOOKS 693
THE SACRAMENTS. By Rev. J. Pohle, D.D. Translated from
the fifth German edition by Arthur Preuss. St. Louis: B.
Herder. $1.50 net.
B. Herder of St. Louis has just published another volume of
the Pohle-Preuss series of dogmatic textbooks. It treats of the
Sacraments in general, and of the Sacraments of Baptism and Con-
firmation in particular. We commend this book highly to the
Catholic laity whose ignorance of Latin prevents them from con-
sulting the Latin manuals used in our seminaries.
SERMONS, DOCTRINAL AND MORAL. By Rt. Rev. Thaddeus
Hogan. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.50.
These sermons are doubtless a collection out of many instruc-
tions and discourses given by this zealous pastor during the long
and fruitful years of his ministry.
Varied in character and purpose, some devotional, others ex-
planatory and even controversial, they are forceful and timely, the
consistent utterance of one who has in a marked degree the ever-
present sense of a teacher with authority, of one whose main intent
is to bring home to his hearers the reasonableness and the living
power of Catholic truth. One almost infers that the preacher was
conscious of the presence of non-Catholics in his audience, so many
of the sermons are specially adapted to their needs and state of
mind, such as those on Indifferentism, Freedom to Choose One's
Religion, Catholic Education, Marriage, and kindred topics.
The book is excellently set up and does credit to the publishers.
POPULAR SERMONS ON THE CATECHISM. From the Ger-
man of Rev. A. H. Bamberg. Edited by Herbert Thurston,
SJ. Volume III. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.50 net.
The third and last volume of Father Bamberg's sermons treats
of Prayer, Grace and the Sacraments. It is of equal merit with
the other volumes, which we have highly praised in the pages of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Simple, clear-cut, logical and abounding
in illustration, they will be welcomed by both priest and Sunday-
school teacher.
THE CATHOLIC FAITH. By Rev. Ferreol Girardey, C.SS.R.
St. Louis: B. Herder. 15 cents.
This little pamphlet of one hundred pages contains a number
of the author's articles on faith and the Church, which appeared
694 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
some time ago in The Ligourian, a periodical published by the
Redemptorist Fathers of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. They aim at
making the Catholic realize the value of the gift of faith, and sug-
gest to non-Catholics reasons for embracing it.
HOMILIES ON ALL THE SUNDAY GOSPELS. By Rev. G.
Finco. Translated from the second Italian edition by Rt. Rev.
E. M. Dunne, D.D. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
In his preface to this series of sermons on the Sunday Gospels,
Bishop Dunne of Peoria rightly praises Father Finco for his sim-
plicity and brevity " two qualities which every clergyman having
the pastoral care of souls might do well to cultivate." The transla-
tion is excellent.
LIFE OF BLESSED MARGARET MARY. Translated from the
French of Monsignor Bougaud. By a Visitandine of Balti-
more. New York : Benziger Brothers. 75 cents net.
It is over forty years since Monsignor Bougaud, Bishop of
Laval, wrote this simple and touching account of the life of
Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He intended it as a sequel
to the history of St. Chantal, for, as he well says, " a biography
of the one illumines and perfects that of the other." This volume
gives an excellent account of the revelations of the Sacred Heart,
and the origin and development of this preeminently Catholic de-
votion. An appendix of some forty pages gives us the genealogy
of Blessed Margaret Mary, notes regarding her family, the names
of the religious in the convent of Paray from 1671 to 1690, and
the three decrees on the virtues, on the miracles, and of beati-
fication.
DOGMATIC SERIES. By Roderick MacEachen. Wheeling, West
Virginia: Catholic Book Co. 5 vols. $2.00 net.
This Dogmatic Series form the promising beginning of a
Catholic Library of fifty volumes. The chief doctrines of Catholic
Faith are herein set forth with clearness, simplicity and an at-
tractiveness of style which should win for these volumes a place
in Catholic homes. Catholic dogma as the sure basis of Catholic
life is a thesis so dear to the Catholic heart, that one does not
wonder at the warm welcome accorded by Cardinal Gibbons in his
preface to these little books, whose mission is to " bring home to
the people in a most pleasing style the treasures of faith."
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 695
FATHER TIM'S TALKS. By Rev. C. D. McEnmry, C.SS.R. St.
Louis: B. Herder. 75 cents net.
In a series of simple, homely talks with Catholics, good and
bad, young and old, Father Tim Casey manages to drive home
many a useful lesson, and give many an excellent instruction
on points of Catholic doctrine and practice. He tells his hearers
about devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin; he
discusses the ethics of war and the folly of teaching sex hygiene
in the schools; he brings out the reasons for the pre-nuptial
promises in mixed marriages, the blessings of a nuptial Mass,
and insists on the necessity of religious education.
Every priest who read these talks as they appeared in The
Liguorian the past two years will welcome them now in book form.
THE LIFE OF ST. MONICA. By F. A. Forbes. St. Louis: B.
Herder. 30 cents net.
We are glad to recommend to our readers this excellent series
entitled Standard Bearers of the Faith. Mr. Forbes has already
written the lives of St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Colomba, and St.
Catherine of Siena. His fourth volume, The Life of St. Monica,
is a simple, clear-cut and attractive portrait of the mother of St.
Augustine. Her perfect life won both her worldly husband and
his jealous mother to the Faith, and her constancy in prayer gave
the Church the saint that moulded in great part the mind of Western
Christendom. The volume is simply but beautifully written.
THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC REVIVAL IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY. By Paul Thureau-Dangan, Secretaire Perpetuel
de 1' Academic Frangaise. Revised and re-edited from a
Translation by the late Wilfred Wilber force. Two volumes.
New York: E. P. Button & Co. $11.00 net.
This work when published in French in 1889, at once took a
high rank in the large body of literature which has grown up
around the Oxford Movement, its conspicuous figures and its re-
sults, without and within the Catholic Church. The scope of it is
not to relate the story of the " Second Spring," but chiefly to trace
the revival and expansion of Catholic ideas, doctrines and ceremony
in the Established Church of England, from its beginnings down to
the period of dissension and struggle which the Parliamentary Com-
mission, closed in 1906, was vainly appointed to settle.
After a brief historical review of the Established Church
696 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
from the times of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, followed by an intro-
ductory picture of the position of English Catholics in the first
quarter of the nineteenth century, the author starts from Keble's
sermon on " National Apostasy," and traces the spread of the Move-
ment as Newman became its leader. He follows the workings of
Newman's mind, his difficulties, internal and external, till his con-
version in 1845. A brief chapter, covering the years 1845-1847,
describes the attitude taken by the Catholic world and its leaders
towards Newman and his fellow-converts; another, relat-
ing the concurrent course of events in the Church which they had
left, the chief interest centres around Pusey and Manning.
The march of events marked by the conversions of Wilberforce,
Allies and, finally, of Manning, following upon the " Papal Ag-
gression " storm, occupies the last chapter of the first volume.
The second volume deals with domestic Catholic affairs as
they converge chiefly around Newman and Manning, till the death
of the two Cardinals closed the epoch that opened with Trac-
tarianism. The author, however, does not lay down his pen here.
As he had followed carefully the affairs of Anglicanism in its home,
after Manning's departure, so he continues in four ample chapters
to chronicle its fortunes, and the fortunes of Ritualism down to
1906.
In his introduction the distinguished Academician modestly
observes that, as a foreigner, he has been handicapped in the ac-
complishment of his task. If so, he has, we think, brilliantly over-
come this drawback. It has, in fact, enabled him to impart to his
study the quality of objectiveness in a higher degree than is to be
found in many of the biographies and other sources upon which he
has drawn. These, in many instances, have been written by per-
sons who stood a little too near to the events and personages whom
they portray; so that, inevitably, their viewpoints and prejudices
have frequently twisted their judgments.
The materials have been selected with an admirable sense of
proportion and put together in just perspective. The temper to-
wards Anglicanism is uniformly kindly, though the gravity of its
errors is nowise condoned. The author deprecates the severity of
Catholics who consider it a danger more serious than outright
Protestantism; regarding it as an underhand counterfeit, suspecting
it as a diabolical snare : " Unfortunate and unjust words that have
been too often repeated, and have contributed in no small degree
to alienate from the true Church souls that have been rapidly
1916.] NEW BOOKS 697
approaching it." He believes : " The daily growing imitations of
Catholicism may in some cases put a momentary check on con-
version; but their ultimate effect will be to familiarize souls with
Roman practices, devotions and dogmas, and thus to create habits,
arouse desires and awaken spiritual appetites that the Catholic
Church alone can satisfy." As for the Movement itself, far from
showing a return to the principle of authority, it is rather a mani-
festation of the principle of private judgment. For : " Each
clergyman who has modified, and sometimes completely changed,
the dogmatic teaching or the ceremonial of his Church, has done
so by his own will I had almost written by his own fancy acting
according to his individual views, without authority, and often
against the wishes of his bishop."
In a closing discussion of the future of Ritualism, the author
asks whether the pressure of its Protestant antagonists will lead
to a general or a considerable return of the present-day Ritualists
to Rome. He hesitates to prognosticate, and confines himself to
repeating the answer of Cardinal Newman to Father Walworth:
Spero fore.
THE SEQUEL TO CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. The Story
of the English Catholics continued down to the re-establish-
ment of their Hierarchy in 1850. By the Right Rev. Mon-
signor Bernard Ward, F.R.Hist.S. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co. Two volumes. $6.00 net.
These volumes form a worthy sequel to The Dawn of the
Catholic Revival in England and The Eve of Catholic Emancipa-
tion; and bring to a successful close the arduous task undertaken
by the author, of writing the history of English Catholicism from
1780 till the re-establishement of the Hierarchy. For most readers
this last contribution will possess more interest than the earlier
works; for, of course, the activity of English Catholicism in these
later years became immeasurably larger, and more varied, the lead-
ing personalities more numerous, the interests wider, and the course
of affairs more closely connected with the present day. The gener-
ous scale of the work allows the author to trace the history of
events, and the doings of individuals, with satisfying detail. The
reader who looks for brilliant pages or purple patches will be dis-
appointed ; but he will find, in compensation, evidence, on the part
of the author, of a conscientious, careful purpose to present a full
and exact record of men and events; and a good deal of matter
698 NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
hitherto unpublished; notably, for example, a chapter dealing with
the movement to establish diplomatic relations between England
and the Holy See in 1835. Throughout the work the central figure
is Cardinal Wiseman, whose important role and far-reaching in-
fluence Monsignor Ward adequately presents, although, to borrow
his own words, Wiseman " necessarily appears in a somewhat dif-
ferent light in cold history from that which he assumes at the hands
of a biographer with whom he is the central figure." The " old
Catholics," as a body, are defended against the charges of Gallican-
ism that have been so plentifully laid against them. Among the
minor actors on the scene who receive considerable yet not exces-
sive notice, are Pugin, Lucas, the missionary Fathers, Dominic,
Gentili and Ignatius Spencer. There is a brief account of the Ox-
ford Movement; the author excuses himself from dwelling to a
greater length on a subject upon which so much has been published
already. He explains why the alleged coldness of the born Catho-
lic towards the Oxford converts was not without some reasonable
grounds. One potent influence in the Catholic revival which has
been accorded but a passing reference by some other writers who
have treated the matter, is here emphasized: that is, the Irish
famine, and the consequent immigration of Irish Catholics into
England. To this subject a chapter is devoted which closes as
follows : " They remained and still remain amongst us to give
numbers and importance to our Catholic congregations, and their
presence has contributed more than any other cause to the progress
of Catholicism in this country." The last volume closes with an
account of Wiseman's Pastoral from the Flaminian Gate, " this
pastoral which records the realization of Wiseman's life-long hopes
(and) is, nevertheless, admitted to have been the greatest practical
mistake he ever made."
The work has numerous interesting illustrations; and each
volume contains an excellent index.
THE BOOK OF MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE. By Arthur Elson.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $3.50 net.
As the author tells us, this book has been planned with a
view of placing before the general reader the main facts that will
enable him to appreciate music intelligently. After a brief intro-
duction on the history of music in general, the author discusses
the lives and compositions of the great composers from the days
of Bach, the various musical forms, the use and history of the
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 699
different instruments, and special topics such as orchestration, con-
ducting, acoustics, how to read music, etc. The book is well
printed, beautifully illustrated, and provided with appendices con-
taining a list of important musical terms, an excellent bibliography,
and suggestions for students.
METHODS OF TEACHING IN HIGH SCHOOLS. By Samuel
Chester Parker. New York: Ginn & Co. $1.50.
Professor Parker of the University of Chicago tells us in
his opening chapter that the purpose of this textbook is to in-
troduce students to a study of the principles which underlie instruc-
tion in high school subjects. Hence the work is concerned pri-
marily with the work of classroom teachers, and only incidentally
with the curriculum and organization of high schools.
While there are many books on methods of teaching viewed
from the standpoint of elementary schools, very little has been
written on high school methods in general. For the most part
educators in the past have been writing books on the teaching of
English, history, mathematics, and the sciences in high schools, but
have paid little attention to the subject of general methods.
The main topics discussed in this well-ordered and scientific
treatise are the purposes of high school instruction, economy in
classroom management, the selection and arrangement of subject
matter, reflective thinking, training in expression, supervised study,
the use of books, the art of questioning, the testing of teaching,
and the like. We recommend this book to the students of our
colleges and normal schools who are looking forward to positions
as teachers in high schools.
PRINCIPLES OF SECONDARY EDUCATION. Edited by Paul
Monroe. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.90.
The purpose of this volume is to furnish the student a body of
fact and opinion that through study and discussion he may acquire
some knowledge of the entire field of secondary education, its
purposes and its problems. The editor himself contributes the two
opening chapters on the meaning and history of secondary educa-
tion. Professor Farrington of Columbia discusses European sys-
tems of secondary schools; Professor Cubberly of Stamford Uni-
versity treats of the state systems of high schools; Professor Baker
and Knapp of Columbia write on English literature. Other topics
discussed are: the high school systems of the United States, the
7 oo NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
organization of the high school, English literature, the classical
languages, modern languages, the natural sciences, mathematics, the
social sciences, the fine arts and music, vocational education and
athletics. These subjects are all treated by specialists, so that the
prospective teacher will have before him the conclusions that repre-
sent in the editor's mind the best thought and practice in the entire
field of secondary education.
We cannot agree with Professor Whipple of Cornell who,
speaking of the psychology and hygiene of adolescence, strongly
advocates the teaching of sex hygiene in our schools. Nor can
we commend Dr. Sisson's chapter on moral and religious education,
which advocates a religion independent of a creed, and a vague,
indefinite morality devoid of both basis and sanction.
AMERICAN THOUGHT. By Woodbridge Riley, Ph.D. New
York : Henry Holt & Co. $1.50 net.
Professor Riley of Vassar College has written a brief historical
sketch of the various schools of philosophy which have flourished in
America from the seventeenth century. In his foreword he writes :
" We, as a country, have been told that we have no philosophy, that
we do but reflect the speculations of other lands. This is not
wholly true. We have had philosophers, original thinkers who,
though their influence may not have reached abroad, were makers
of history at home."
We hardly think the learned professor has proved his point,
for the various systems he discusses Puritanism, Early Idealism,
Deism, Materialism, Realism and Evolutionism can all be traced
to German, French, English or Scotch sources. New England
Transcendentalism and Pragmatism may perhaps be properly termed
American products.
We were rather surprised to note the author's utter miscon-
ception of the scholastic idea of substance in his discussion of
Samuel Johnson's Idealism, his failure to grasp the return to scho-
lasticism in the teachings of the New Realism, and his utter ig-
noring of so eminent a philosopher and original thinker as Orestes
Brownson.
SCIENCE AND RELIGION. By C. J. Keyser, LL.D. New
Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press. 75 cents net.
Dr. Keyser, Professor of Mathematics in Columbia University,
has just published in book form an address which he delivered a
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 701
year ago before the Phi Beta Alumni in New York City. He
tells us himself " that the major emphasis of his address falls upon
the great function of idealization regarded in the light of what
mathematicians call the method or the process of limits. His
thesis is that this process in the domain of reason indicates the
reality and the nature of a domain beyond reason which is the
ultimate permanent grounds of religious emotions." The professor
unfortunately shows himself incompetent to discuss in any adequate
manner the relations of religion and science, when he defines re-
ligion as "primarily, essentially, and ultimately an emotion, or, if
you prefer, a complex of emotions In its essential nature re-
ligion does not belong to the rational domain, it does not pertain
to the field of logic."
A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF EDUCATION. By Frank P.
Graves. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.25.
Professor Graves of the University of Pennsylvania has just
published a brief compendium of the history of education. He
tells us himself that the present work is not a mere condensation
of his well-known three-volume History of Education, but that
it has been largely re-written from another viewpoint. For ex-
ample, he lays special stress upon educational institutions and prac-
tices, rather than theories that did not find embodiment in the
times. More than one-half of his material deals with the last
two centuries because, as he rightly says, " present problems in
education can best be analyzed through a knowledge 'of the prac-
tices developed in modern times." Considerable space has been
given to the discussion of American education, particular emphasis
being given to the rise and development of the American public
school.
Chapter IV. of Part I., on the education of the early Chris-
tians, is a most unfair and inadequate treatment of this important
subject. With dogmatic assurance the professor tells us " that
Christianity's appeal was to the instinctive promptings and
emotions, rather than to the intellect." We are also informed that
the early apologists "mingled stoicism with the teachings of
Jesus," that Origen was probably excommunicated for heresy; that
Biblical inspiration and church ceremonies were borrowed from the
Greek mysteries; that the Bishop of Rome was recognized as
Pope in the year 445.
In discussing the Middle Ages, the professor loves to talk of
702
NEW BOOKS [Feb.,
the " uncritical and superstitious works produced in the monasteries,
and the hostility to true science and the development of individualism
due to the rigid orthodoxy of the monastic schools." The ac-
ceptance of a divine revelation on the authority of a divine teach-
ing Church, he styles the bondage of the human spirit to eccle-
siasticism.
THE NEW BARNES SPELLING BOOK. By Edward Mandel,
Principal Public School No. i88B, Manhattan. New York:
The A. S. Barnes Co.
Mr. Mandel makes a new departure in the spelling book which
he has just presented to the public. He acts boldly upon the prin-
ciple that the way to teach a child how to spell correctly is to teach
him how to spell the names of things familiar. And so we have
here lists of words that correspond to things within the child's
ordinary environment, and not lists of words chosen for some
intrinsic fitness of their own. If the aim of the teacher of spelling
is the correct use of the tools of written expression of thought, then
Mr. Mandel is acting upon a sound principle : and that such should
be the aim of the scientific teacher, there can be little doubt. The
phonic work contained in the lessons and the language text make
the book useful for classes of the " C " grade.
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS
The United States Bureau of Education has just issued the School System
of Ontario, by Harold W. Foght ; The Extension of Public Education, by C. A.
Perry; and a study of the Public Schools of the Southern Appalachian Moun-
tains, by Norman Frost.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has sent us its Year
Book for 1915, which contains the reports of the executive committee, the
ecretary, and the directors of the three divisions of intercourse and ' education,
economics and history, and international law. The division of Intercourse
and Education have published Robert Bacon's account of his trip to South
America in the summer and autumn of 1913, for the purpose of developing
friendship with the South American countries.
The Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution have
just issued an introduction to the study of the Maya Hieroglyphs, by S. G.
Morley.
The America Press' latest pamphlets are: Mexico's Social Problem, by a
Mexican lawyer; Woman's Suffrage, by Martha Moore Avery; Reading and
Character, by James J. Daly, SJ.
Rev. Anthony Lucchetti, SJ., has published in Genoa a brief English life
of Blessed Maria Victoria de Fornari Strata.
Professor E. R. Shepherd of Columbia University has gathered together
all the documents published during the present war regarding the protection
of neutral rights at sea. In a brief introduction he 'points out that both Great
1916.] NEW BOOKS 703
Britain and Germany have committed violations of international law, and that
the United States has protested against these violations directly on its own
behalf and indirectly on behalf of other neutrals.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
La Charite, by the Abbe M. A. Janvier, O.P. Two volumes. (Paris: P.
Lethielleux. 4frs. each.) These tv.o volumes contain the Lenten Discourses
which the Abbe Janvier delivered at Notre Dame, in Paris, during 1914 and
1915. Volume I. treats of the Nature and Object of Charity, while Volume II.
treats of its effects. The subjects of the various conferences are: The Love
of God, the Love of Self, the Love of Neighbor, the Love of One's Country,
the Love of the Church, Joy, Interior Peace, Social Peace, International Peace,
Mercy, and Almsgiving.
The Abbe Janvier, who has preached the Lenten Sermons at Notre Dame
the past thirteen years, is the worthy successor of Lacordaire, Monsabre and
D'Hulst. He is without question the best pulpit orator in contemporary France.
L'lnteret de la France et I'lntegrite de I'Autriche-Hongrie, by Georges
Vielmont (Paris: G. Beauchesne. 2frs. 50). This volume gives a fairly
accurate account of the ancient rivalry between France and Austria. The
author is quite sure of the utter destruction of the Dual Empire, and of the
building up of a new kingdom of Bohemia as a buffer State.
Sur Quoi le Kaiser ne Comptait pas, by Antonio B. de la Rica. Trans-
lated and adapted from the Spanish by Christian de L'Isle. (Paris: P.
Lethielleux. i fr.) This interesting volume attempts to answer the accusation
of the enemies of France that she is a country eaten up with corruption
immoral, skeptical, selfish and therefore unable to meet an enemy of the
calibre of Germany on equal terms. It is the gossipy, chatty book of a literary
man, who gathers his impressions from his own experiences with people at
home, and with the soldiers on the firing line.
Le Sens de la Mori, by Paul Bourget (Paris: Plon-Nourrit et Cie. 3frs.
50). This thesis novel of Paul Bourget answers the question: What is the
meaning of death? A consummate artist, Bourget paints in most vivid con-
trast the unbelieving doctor Ortegue, dying by his own hand, and the devout
Christian soldier Lieutenant Le Gallic, dying of his wounds for France, and
offering up his death for the conversion of his cousin, the doctor's agnostic
wife. All throughout the volume we see how science and faith view in dif-
ferent light the problems of sickness and death, the love of country and the
love of wife and husband. As the author well says: "Death has no meaning
if it is merely an end; it has a meaning if it is a sacrifice."
Le Miracle de la Marne et Sainte Genevieve, by Abbe Stephen Coube
(Paris: P. Lethielleux. 0.60). The Abbe Coube has published three sermons
on St. Genevieve, which he delivered in the church of St. Stephen, Paris, last
September. In a brief preface he discusses the authenticity of the " Miracle
de la Marne."
We have received from Bloud & Gay, Paris, the following four pamphlets:
Zeppelins, by Georges Besangon; Submarines, by G. Blanchon; Notre "75," by
Francis Marre; Trench Warfare, by Francis Marre. Price, 0.60 each.
Armand Colin, of Paris, has just published The German Mind and the War,
by E. Durkheim, and From the Congress of Vienna to the War of 1914, by
C. Seignobos.
Le Belgique et la France, by Abbe Stephen Coube (Paris: P. Lethielleux.
0.60). In this brochure, the Abbe Coube describes the close bond of friendship
which for centuries has united France and Belgium.
IRecent Events.
The success which has attended the efforts
Progress of tke War. of the so-called Austrian submarines in the
Mediterranean, has served to throw into re-
lief the complete failure of the German effort to starve Great
Britain by submarine attacks upon British commerce in the " danger
zone." So complete has been this failure, that it may with con-
fidence be anticipated that only time is required to bring about
equally satisfactory results in the new scene of conflict. Nor would
the complete domination of the enemy in the Mediterranean, even
if attainable, be a serious inconvenience to Great Britain, although
something of an annoyance.
In view of recent British reverses in the Balkans and on the
Tigris, it is well not to forget her successes and the strength of her
position. So great, indeed, is this strength that even if her Allies,
France, Russia and Italy, were to make a separate peace with
Germany an event of which there is not the most remote proba-
bility not only would she not be weakened either in power or in
resolution, but would be made even stronger. The most serious
of the burdens which Great Britain has at the present time to bear
is the financing not only of her own colonies as they were
formerly called but that of her Allies. Of the vast loans which
have been raised, nearly one-third has been devoted to this purpose.
No less a sum than nearly two thousand millions of dollars have
been spent in this way, and further sums will under existing con-
ditions be required. Then again, in the event of such a peace being
made, the men now serving in France would be recalled for
military service in Great Britain, if that were necessary, or, a
thing more likely, to devote themselves to industrial occu-
pations. This would enable Great Britain, by resuming manufac-
turing and exports, to restore the balance of trade which has since
the war been against her, involving a loss which has been the
most serious drain on her resources. This course could easily be
taken, for the services of the returning soldiers would not be re-
quired for Great Britain's own defence, as that has already been
fully provided for, even in the event of an attempted invasion.
ioi6.] RECENT EVENTS 705
Although such an attempt would be an act of madness, and
one which need not seriously be contemplated, these are days in
which even acts of madness have to be guarded against. In the
early days of the struggle such an attempt might have had some
prospect of success, but those days are now past. The fleet is far
stronger than it was at the beginning. In fact, the building pro-
gramme is now so complete that ship builders who hitherto have
been exclusively engaged on work for the navy, have now begun to
build ships for merchandise and commerce. The German fleet is
indeed still in being, but, so far as can be ascertained, quite unwilling
to enter into the conflict so ardently desired by the British navy.
Assertions have indeed been made that it has looked in vain for its
enemy in the North Sea. Possibly this is the case. As that sea con-
tains some eight hundred square miles, the two fleets might have
been roaming about without meeting. But as a matter of fact, since
the battle on the Dogger Bank in which the Blucher was sunk, no
opportunity has been met with for a more decisive contest. Over
the Baltic, too, the German fleet has been deprived by British
submarines of the degree of control it once possessed. British sea
power has so completely established its supremacy that nothing that
Germany has been able to do on the continents of either Europe
or Asia has endangered that supremacy. If continued it is only
a question of time when Germany will have to surrender to
British terms; terms which have been repeatedly and clearly
announced as including the restoration of Belgium and Serbia
and the destruction of Prussian militarism. The commerce of
Germany which has from the beginning of the war been com-
letely paralyzed, will so remain unless the German fleet hazards
a conflict with the British, by which it is outnumbered by more
than two to one. The unsuccessful effort made by Germany to
seize Calais as a base of operation on England, when she was
relatively much stronger, is so unlikely to succeed that few hopes
are still entertained in this direction.
As for the Zeppelins, they have had no military result of the
least importance, and so many accidents have befallen them that
they have became almost as fatal to their crews as to the enemy.
No air raid over London has taken place since October I3th.
Subsequent attempts have indeed been made. During December
last London repulsed twelve Zeppelin raids, chiefly by means of a
large fleet of aeroplanes. The elaborate precautions that have
been taken have, in the judgment of military men, made London
VOL. en. 45
7 o6 RECENT EVENTS [Feb.,
practically as safe from this pest as the efforts of the navy have
rendered Great Britain's shores secure from attacks by the sub-
marines. While Germany is in possession of French, Russian and
Serbian territory no German has set foot on British, except as a
prisoner. On the contrary, Germany has been stripped of posses-
sions far more extensive, if measured by square miles, than the
whole of the German Empire in Europe.
This bare enumeration of facts is made not in a spirit of boast-
fulness, but as a reason for justifying the firm determination which
now exists in England notwithstanding recent untoward events
to persevere to the end. Recent visitors declare that that determina-
tion is not only not shaken, but is more fixed and resolute than it was
at the beginning. The easy-going attitude of Great Britain dur-
ing the first year of the war injured her reputation among neutrals.
Even the Temps and other French papers felt called upon to give
utterance to criticism which was meant to be friendly. Foot-ball,
horse-racing, and other amusements made them ask the question
whether England would ever wake up. Now all is seen to be changed.
To-day London streets are full of soldiers, who have become part and
parcel of the national life. From being a purely naval power, Great
Britain has now an army able to cope with those of the continent.
The measure of compulsion which is now being carried through
Parliament, is no indication of hesitation on the part of the people
about carrying on the war to a successful conclusion. So far as
there is division, it is only as to the means. In the eyes of a
minority, the success of the voluntary system has been so great that
anything like conscription is looked upon as indefensible. Even
the majority would have hesitated to support the qualified conscrip-
tion which has been introduced, had it not been that Mr. Asquith
had given a pledge that if any noteworthy number of unmarried
men did not enroll themselves under the Derby scheme, measures
would have to be taken to enforce the claim of the nation on their
service, before that which it had upon married men and fathers of
families. It was in reliance upon this pledge that the married men
as a body enrolled, while it was found that some six hundred thou-
sand of unmarried had held back. It thus became Mr. Asquith's
duty to keep faith with the married men.
The mobilization of British industries for war purposes is
almost complete. Factory after factory is working day and night,
seven days a week, employing men and women in the making of
shells. The Government has under its control more than two thou-
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 707
sand munition factories. In fact, it may be said that almost the
entire industrial output of the country is now under Government
control. The whole North country is one vast arsenal. Persons
competent to judge, declare that no more striking example of na-
tional energy directed, consolidated and centralized under direct
Government control has ever existed. Employer and employee
have alike become the servants of the State. There can no longer
be any doubt that England has at last as a whole bent her back to
her task. There are, of course, individuals here and there who
hold back. It would be strange if none were found among a
population of forty-five millions. Strange to say, fault is found
with the Government itself. The delay in making cotton contra-
band, weakness in the enforcement of the blockade, permission
to export to neutral countries certain articles useful to the enemy,
have made more or less widespread the feeling that the Govern-
ment is not strong enough in its general conduct of the war.
The recent reorganization of the General Staff, or rather its
re-creation, is in response to this demand. It would, however,
be unjust to attribute the resignation of the British Commander-
in-Chief to the same reason. Nothing but complete satisfaction is
expressed at the way in which he has conducted the campaign, and
there is no room for doubt that the reason alleged was the real
reason.
No important change has taken place in the battle line in
France and Flanders. The Allies have made no attempt to break
through since September. They have, however, rendered their posi-
tions practically impregnable, as is proved by the recent failure of
the Germans to break through on a narrow front where they massed
a force of fifty thousand men, including the Prussian Guard, under
the command, it was reported, of Field Marshal von Mackensen.
The strength of the Allied position is largely due to an elaborately
constructed system of trenches. At a section recently visited by a
newspaper correspondent, on a front of just over ten miles, slightly
over two hundred and thirty- four miles of trenches had been con-
structed. To make certainty still more secure, another forty-six
miles of other trenches are being dug, so that there will be in that
neighborhood two hundred and eighty miles of trenches on ten
miles front. Elsewhere a certain division has two hundred and
fifty miles of trenches, and a certain army corps has four hundred
and fifty miles. These facts form the basis for an estimate that
there are twenty miles of trenches to every mile of front, so that
7 o8 RECENT EVENTS [Feb.,
between Switzerland and the North Sea the French, British and
Belgian armies have at least ten thousand miles of trenches.
As to the defenders of these trenches, neutrals who visit France
testify to the undaunted spirit and determination which is every-
where manifested. The utmost confidence is felt that the enemy
would be driven out, although how and when no one could say.
There is no sign of wearying; France is as resolute as in the
eighteenth century.
The change in the command of the British forces had been
preceded by an enlargement of the powers of General Joffre. He
has been made Generalissimo of all the French forces acting in
Europe, so that he is now supreme director of the armies not only
in France but at Saloniki. General Castelnau has been appointed
Chief of the Staff, while still retaining the command of a group
of armies. This has not prevented his paying a visit to the French
army of the East. All these changes are with the view to greater
unity of action, and to prevent the frittering away of the strength
of the Allies. The same object was had in view in the formation
of a common Allied Staff.
It is generally recognized that the decisive conflict will be in
France, and that reverses which take place elsewhere, however
mortifying they may be, will not affect the ultimate issue to any
serious extent, although they will undoubtedly modify in some
degree the terms of peace. The unwonted spectacle of British
Ministers of State paying visits to Paris to take part in councils
of war, testifies to their determination to unify their plans both
in the way of carrying on the war and in the taking of diplomatic
action. Its first result was the determination to retain Saloniki
and in the concession made by Greece of a free hand in the surround-
ing district.
The Loan of Victory was not only a great success in itself,
but was a manifestation of the determination of all classes to prose-
cute the war to a successful issue, and of their confidence in the
attainment of that result. All classes, from the highest to the low-
est, contributed. The number of small subscribers shows that the
financial mobilization of the whole country has been accomplished.
No fewer than two million people are estimated to have participated,
thereby more than realizing the expectations of the Government.
Perhaps an even more gratifying feature is the fact that subscrip-
tions were received from many foreign countries, Switzerland, Hol-
land, Norway and Sweden, as well as our own. In London no
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 709
less a sum than one hundred and twenty millions was subscribed.
This is a demonstration of the most practical kind of the confidence
in French success, which is felt throughout the world. Another
testimony is the fact that the gold reserve of the Bank of France
is now the largest ever before attained by any bank of the world.
This is due to the response made last May to the appeal of the
Government for the exchange for notes of the gold in the people's
possession.
While on the Western front things remain still in statu quo,
the threatened German offensive having so far failed, on the East-
ern front Russia has already given signs of that wonderful recup-
erative power for which she is distinguished. The Germans have
failed to make any progress in the neighborhood of Riga or Dvinsk,
while farther South the Austrians have been pushed back a con-
siderable distance. Nothing, however, has taken place of decisive
importance, not enough even to influence Rumania. The deter-
mination of the Tsar is still unshaken. " Rest assured/' he said
recently in an address to one of the Russian armies, " I will not
make peace before we have forced the last of the enemy out of the
limits of the mother country, and not otherwise than with the con-
sent of our Allies, to whom we are bound not by paper, but by
sincere friendship and ties of blood." This declaration sets at rest
some rumors of a separate peace which had been put into circula-
tion. Like other countries, perhaps even more than in other coun-
tries, Germany has her agents and sympathizers, and in Russia
these belong, to a large extent, to the higher circles. Since the
time of Peter the Great, Russia has been dependent upon her
nearest neighbor in various ways, and until the present Kaiser took
upon himself the personal control of German affairs, it had been
a cardinal point of Germany's foreign policy to stand well with
Russia. There are, too, a large number of German settlers in
Russian territory. Hence a powerful German influence exists in
Russia, and this is being used to secure for Germany an early and
separate peace. The Tsar's words show that they have failed again,
as they have failed once before.
This is the more worthy of note as there is good reason to
believe that Russia is the scene of serious political agitation. For
about a month a very strict censorship suppressed all information
about internal affairs. The two thousand cabled messages which
had been held up when released indicated the existence of very
great internal difficulties. The meeting of the Duma, so much de-
7 io RECENT EVENTS [Feb.,
sired by the people, had been indefinitely postponed. So-called
Monarchist conferences in various cities had demanded the with-
drawal of constitutional guarantees. Reactionaries were making
themselves heard in denunciation of virtually everybody and every-
thing in Russia outside their own ranks as revolutionaries, includ-
ing public men, students, the educated classes generally and the
larger cities. To these difficulties has been added the necessity of
taking military action in yet another place. In Persia, Turks and
Germans have for sometime been cooperating with deserters from
the Persian gendarmerie in the perpetration of divers outrages, and
in the collection of arms and munitions of war. So threatening
had these efforts become that Russia had to send an army into
Persia. It has had some degree of success, although not by any
means complete, if the news just received of the capture of Kerman-
shah by the Turks is true. As it was by Turkish regular troops
that Kermanshah has been taken, the consequence will be that still
another country, Persia, will be involved in the war, unless, and
this is quite possible, on account of its utter weakness a merely
passive attitude is adopted.
The British forces, after the defeat of the attempt to take
Bagdad, are now on the defensive at Kut-el-Amara, and according
to recent rumors are in danger of being surrounded. A relieving
army from the south which, it is said, includes the Indian troops
recently removed from France, may have arrived, as has so often
been the case with the Allies in the present war, too late to be of
service. The most recent report, however, is that Russia is ad-
vancing along a hundred mile front in the Caucasus. This, it is
hoped, will cause a diversion of the Turkish forces towards the
north, and be in this way of service to the British. The attempt
on Egypt which has been so well advertised shows as yet no sign
of development, nor does it excite any great degree of apprehension
among the British. Experts admit that it is now possible, after
the opening of the way for Germany through Bulgaria, to send as
many as four army corps to take part in this effort with some
three hundred and fifty thousand Turks. But the British have had
ample time for preparation, and in this case they have the support
of the navy.
The united forces of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and
Bulgaria have succeeded in overcoming all resistance in Serbia.
There is now in no part of the country any opposition for the
time being. The Franco-British forces arrived too late to effect
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 711
a junction with the Serbians, and were forced to retire into Greece,
where at Saloniki they have decided upon a definite stand, to make
of it, to use the words of Count Reventlow, a fortified gate of
invasion into the Balkan Peninsula. Greece has more or less un-
willingly consented to give to the Allies a zone for free military
action. Saloniki is easily defended, and is said to have been ren-
dered impregnable. No attack so far has been made, but it is
thought that one is impending. One question to be settled is who
is to make it. The Germans are not sufficiently numerous, having
had to withdraw troops as a safeguard against the possible entry of
Rumania into the war. Moreover, in the recent attempted offensive
against France there were, it is said, troops that had been serving
in Serbia. If Bulgarians were to cross the Greek frontier, so
strong is the feeling of hatred borne towards them by the Greeks,
that it would no longer be in the power of King Constantine to
hold back his people from war with Bulgaria, which they look upon
as their hereditary enemy. Hence it is possible that the task will
be intrusted to the Turks.
Although the Serbians were unable to defend their territory
from the attacks of an overwhelming number of assailants, yet
even over this small but heroic nation the victory is far from
complete. Although many changes have taken place in the conduct
of war the old principles of warfare are unchanged, of which one
is that it is not the possession of fortresses or territory that is
essential, so long as the army remains in being. Germany is
already beginning to find out that her campaign against Russia has
failed, because the Russian armies were not dispersed. Even little
Serbia has preserved her army, and will be ready to offer one
hundred thousand men within two months time for a new offensive
against the enemy. That Italy did not offer a more effectual
resistance to the Austrian attack on Montenegro has caused sur-
prise, especially because the possession of the port of Cattaro was
for her a matter of importance. Not of supreme importance,
indeed, for Avlona is the door of the Adriatic, and this is now in
the possession of Italy. Montenegro, after a resistance which has
lasted for a year and a half, yielded to the Central Powers and
agreed to sign a treaty of peace. Reports that reach us just as we
write this state, however, that Montenegro found the terms too
severe; that she has rejected them, and is to continue fighting.
British arms have met with many reverses; some consolation,
however, is to be found in the fact that in one case, at all events,
RECENT EVENTS [Feb..
the failure has been brilliant. The landing at Gallipoli is said to
have been the accomplishment of a deed hitherto looked upon as
impossible, so exposed were the beaches and so numerous the oppo-
nents. The campaign was carried on under the greatest of diffi-
culties. Every yard held by the Allies was commanded by the
enemy's guns, while the assailants were far outnumbered by the
defenders. Up to December nth the casualties had been 25,279
dead, 74,881 wounded and 12,501 missing, making a total number
of 112,661, in addition to an unusually formidable sick list. Var-
ious battleships also had been lost, and an incredible amount of
money spent, with nothing to show for it, except the record of the
heroism of the soldiers and sailors, notably of the Australians and
New Zealanders. In fact, the Dardanelles expedition for faulty
inception and blundering execution must be reckoned as the most
monumental failure British arms have ever met with. When evac-
uation was at last decided upon, it was carried out so skillfully as
practically to have entailed no loss. The departure was, of course,
quite naturally proclaimed by the Turks to have been a great vic-
tory. In the presence of his Parliament the Sultan prostrated
himself in humble gratitude to God for the careful watch which
He had taken over his people.
Italy, although the only one of the foes of the Central Powers
whose forces are carrying the war entirely in the enemy's country,
has not for many months made any appreciable progress. By land-
ing an army in Albania, she has entered upon a new campaign in
support of the Serbians and Montenegrins. East Africa is the
only colony left in German hands, and has so far resisted every
attack which the British have been able to make. A new expedition
is now being undertaken, consisting largely of volunteers from
South Africa, many of them Boers who fought against the British
With Our Readers.
IF one were to declare that the gardener need not concern himself
about the life of the seed which he plants in the ground; nor its
care and nourishment, he would be regarded as a lunatic by the rest
of men. Yet self-appointed leaders of thought to-day may declare,
amid the approving applause of their audience, that it makes no dif-
ference whether the soul of the young child is alive or not with truth
and principle and doctrine. No care need be taken of its intellectual
and spiritual life, no care of its growth it will, like Topsy, just grow;
and the more it is left to itself the more beautiful will be its flowering.
We all know this is nonsense with regard to the vegetable and animal
kingdoms; we all know it is nonsense with the whole kingdom of
man when there is question of a natural science, like arithmetic or
geography or literature or music; yet many will not admit it in a
matter that is a far more exact and definite and important science than
any of these the science of conduct. Conduct springs from belief,
and of belief also is character born. Conduct is only belief or the
denial of belief in action. A Christian country will have Christian
standards; a Christian country that is losing its dogmatic faith will
more and more approach pagan standards. Divorce; decline of the
birth-rate; love of pleasure; disrespect for law and the rights of
others are the result not of economic conditions, but of the loss of
Christian faith, of the loss of belief in Christ's teachings and Christ's
commandments.
* * * *
THE comparative statistics of Catholic and Protestant countries
prove the fact most conclusively. The grave evil of the day is
that the questioning and denial of principles is the accepted thing.
Self-expression is the god to be worshipped. Restraint, forbearance,
resignation, asceticism, are out of date.
The European War is teaching the serious ones of the world a
different lesson, but in our own country the same sophomoric irre-
sponsibility; the same unconcern about the personal and eternal re-
lations of the soul to God, of the creature to the Creator, are show-
ing themselves in book, magazine, newspaper. The past is flouted;
the validity of reason is denied ; the present is a plaything which mood
and fancy are to direct as they may, so long as novelty and experiment
control the helm.
It is well to be progressive; it is better to be wise. From yes-
terday we will learn the wisdom that will guide us to-day. The man
who will not learn from his fathers writes himself down as a fool.
And it is surely time for the children of earth to know that those
7 i 4 WITH OUR READERS [Feb.,
printed organs that promise an entirely new and changed earth because
of their novel preachings, are but mocking the hopes of humankind.
DR. FOERSTER, professor at the University of Munich, who is
not a Catholic and whose works have been reviewed in THE
CATHOLIC WORLD, wrote :
" As the result of long experience, theoretical and practical in the
difficult work of character training, I have been led to realize the
deep meaning and the profound pedagogical wisdom of the Christian
method of caring for souls, and to appreciate, through my own ex-
perience, the value of the old truths."
Another non-Catholic, Sir Thomas Clouston, of the University
of Edinburgh, writes in his recent talk on Mental Diseases: "It is
strange that the physiological inductions of the old Catholic Church
as to the dietetic management of the nisus generativus and its volitional
control have been so neglected by modern physicians, founded as they
were on the experiences of the terrific conflict with nature that was
implied in the early Christian theory, that sexual desire was more or
less of the devil, and should be eradicated by all men who wished to
attain a high religious ideal, and on the experiences of the later rule
of priestly celibacy. My own belief is that the Catholic view of re-
pression and eradication being, for the sake of argument, granted, al-
most every rule of the Church as to food and fasting and every prac-
tice of the monastic orders, and every conventual regulation, is a cor-
rect physiological principle."
THE purpose of the Conference on Unity held by fifteen of the
Protestant denominations at Garden City, Long Island, New
York, from January 4th to January 6th, 1916, was to prepare a pro-
gramme for a future World Congress on " Faith and Order." While
unity is the ultimate aim of those who promote the Congress, it is
confessedly far-off: and indeed there is at present no common under-
standing of what the unity aimed at really means or involves. The
immediate and only tangible purpose at present is for the different
Protestant denominations to meet and hold discussion, " with a view to
ascertain whether the doctrines of faith and order, which they severally
embody, stand in the way of an organic union of Christendom, and
if they do, in what manner and to what extent they are susceptible
of explanation and adjustment whereby such obstacles may be re-
moved from the way of unity." The Garden City Conference was
participated in by representatives of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the Baptist, the Lu-
theran, the Congregational, the Moravian, the Disciples of Christ
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 715
and the Church of England in Canada. All that the Conference
accomplished, beyond the promotion of good will among its
members, was the passing of a resolution that they would meet again to
state publicly wherein they differ on matters of Christian faith
and discipline. In so far as good will and a sympathetic under-
standing of other's views and the reasons thereof are promoted by
these conferences, they will have the good wishes of every Catholic.
The discussions must bring home to the souls of many participating
therein how utterly different from the divine, definite and integral
Truth of Jesus Christ is the changeable, compromising and mutually
contradictory teachings of the Protestant Churches of to-day.
Earnest consideration of how the division, protest and denial of
Protestant Churches for the past three hundred years have made
Christian truth a laughing stock of thoughtful men, ought surely to be
an efficacious means of leading to an acceptance of that Unity which,
from the beginning to this day, has been the only Unity known of
Christendom unity through the See of Peter.
To those who, at Garden City, came together to consider the
differences with regard to doctrine and discipline that distinguish the
Protestant sects, the Holy Father presented kindly yet clearly the one
foundation upon which Christian unity must be built: belief in and
acceptance of the authority of the representative of Christ on earth,
of the one to whom all men have been given over to be fed, who is the
source and cause of the unity of the Church.
T
HE following letter from Cardinal Gasparri was read at the open-
ing of the Conference:
Your project of an international convention of all who believe in Jesus
Christ as God and Saviour, to accomplish the speedy fulfillment of the final
prayer of the Lord, that all may be one, I have, in obedience to your request,
submitted to the Most Holy Father. I need not here describe the affection
with which I saw the august Pontiff kindled for you. For you well know
that the plans of the Roman Pontiffs, their cares and their labors, have always
been specially directed to the end that the sole and unique Church, which
Jesus Christ ordained and sanctified with His divine Blood, should be most
zealously guarded and maintained, whole, pure, and ever abounding in love,
and that it should both let its light shine and open wide its door for all who
rejoice in the name of man and who desire to gain holiness upon earth and
eternal happiness in heaven.
The august Pontiff, therefore, was pleased with your project of examining
in a sincere spirit, and without prejudice, the essential form of the Church,
"or the inner essence of the Church," and he earnestly hopes that, under the
spell of its native beauty, you may settle all disputes and work with prosper-
ous issue, to the end that the mystical Body of Christ be no longer suffered to
be rent and torn, but that by harmony and cooperation of men's minds, and
likewise by the concern of their wills, unity of faith and communion may at
last prevail throughout the world of men.
7 i6 WITH OUR READERS [Feb.,
Thanking you, then, that you have thought well to request the aid and
support of the Roman Pontiff in expediting your worthy project, His Holiness
expresses his earnest desire that the end may answer your expectations, and he
asks the same of Christ Jesus with fervent prayers, all the more because with
the voice of Christ Himself sounding before and bidding him, he knows that
he himself, as the one to whom all men have been given over to be fed, is the
source and cause of the unity of the Giurch.
To a request for permission to give this letter publicity, His
Eminence replied in part:
The august Pontiff, therefore, kindly permits that copies of my letter
which, though a faithful, are yet but a faint, portrait of the pontifical love,
shall be sent to all to whose welfare and peace you believe they will contribute.
It is a pleasure to repeat the encouragement that the aid and earnest
prayers of the Roman Pontiff will never be lacking to anyone who, having freed
himself from prejudiced opinions, with a true and sincere will strives with all
his strength that the unity of faith and fellowship instituted by Christ and built
upon Peter may be restored, and that all who are enrolled in the name of
Christian may betake themselves to the bosom of the one most loving Church,
and may be joined and associated as members with Christ the Head.
* * * *
''THE Conference decided that the chief practical questions to be
1 considered with regard to Church unity might be summarized as
follows :
1. A clergy so authenticated that without violations of the prin-
ciples of any, their standing may be regarded as regular by them all.
2. Complete intercommunion of believers upon some agreed prin-
ciple and orderly method.
3. Sufficient administrative coordination to enable Churches with-
out loss of desirable home rule, to act as a whole.
If one were to assume simply the attitude of a student of in-
stitutions, he would find no promise of organic unity or the possi-
bility of it in these considerations. An organic body is a body in
which there is the one principle of life, and that principle of life
directs all its members. In the Church, Christ is the Head and we
are the members. And that Mystical Body of Christ must have its
true and exact representation before men. Christ must live sensibly
before men as He lived once in His human body, and walked among
them and preached and did the works which no other man ever did.
For He must be seen and known of men, if He is to be the Principle
of His Own organic life to them and in them. So He said Him-
self that His Church would be as a city set upon a mountain top;
as a candle in its candle stick; as a rock immovable a Church which
all men could see and hear; so visible and so audible that they who
refused to hear it should be held by all others as anathema.
He has made His Church visible; He has appointed His repre-
sentative who, reigning since His Ascension into heaven, reigns still
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 717
and will reign until the end, the source of organic unity, of organic
life to the visible Church of Christ. " For behold I am with you
all days even to the consummation and the end."
This is essentially the Christian and the Catholic view of the
Church of Christ. Unity visible because of unity invisible; the life
of truth for the salvation of all, common to all; kept the same and
undefiled because of the possession of Christ's divine protection
through His representative on earth.
Christian faith means, therefore, the acceptance of the revealed
truth which Christ gave to His Church, on the authority of the
Church. The authority is humanly real to us: it is visible; it is
active; it is independent of us else it would have no meaning for
us: else it would be our servant rather than our master; we would
be the judge, and there would be no question of bringing ourselves
under its captivity.
It will be seen at once that true Christian faith lifts the soul
beyond the ocean of human differences, of human debates, of human
discussions. Such faith depends not on human learning; nor Biblical
lore; nor erudite philosophy; nor human necessities or expediency;
nor civil power, nor love of country; no Christian faith is above
and beyond all things human as God is above them. It places the
same obligation upon the rich and the poor; the learned and the
simple. It is the acceptance of the full revelation of Jesus Christ
through the authority that Christ has commissioned to keep it
intact before the world. They who heard Christ speak, heard
Him speak simply as a man. Many walked away and heard
Him no more. They who remained, submitted their understanding
to Him ; accepted His word ; believed the mystery on His authority.
There was no one else to whom they might go; He alone had the
words of eternal life. And in the history of our Christian era the
same attitude characterizes the true Christian of to-day. The Church
is seen by him as a human institution; at its head reigns a man,
the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, who speaks
with the authority of Christ, and the Christian accepts and believes,
for there is no other authority in the world to whom he may go ;
this Voice alone has the words of eternal truth. And, accepting it,
the Christian renews the life of faith in Christ and is made a member
of that Body of which Christ Himself is the Head.
* * * *
THIS the Catholic idea, as it may be called, whether one accept
it or not, does make for unity. Its process is evident, sensible, un-
deniable. The Protestant idea, whatever else it may lead to, does
not and cannot of itself lead to unity at all. Of its very nature it
leads to division. For if it has any characteristic it is the character-
istic of individualism. Authority it never preaches, but always
;i8 WITH OUR READERS [Feb.,
denies. If asked for its vital principle of organic life it will answer:
Christ. But Christ is one; and when asked how He can honestly
reveal Himself not only in different but in mutually contradictory
ways, Protestantism cannot answer. It must deny itself or deny the
integrity of Christ; or ask human reason to stultify itself. It does
not seek to do away with differences, for it knows not how they can
be done away with; but it does seek now to have its divisions live
together in harmony. It seeks harmony first and unity afterwards.
This attitude is directly opposed to Christ and to the words of
Christ, for Christ said explicitly that fidelity to His teaching meant
not peace but the sword. When He warned men that He, in the
presence of the Eternal Father, would confess all those who confessed
Him before men, and deny those who denied Him before men, He
added : " Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth. I came
not to send peace but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance
against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's enemies
shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother
more than Me, is not worthy of Me, and he that loveth son or daughter
more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he that taketh not up his
cross, and followeth Me is not worthy of Me."
He that makes peace his foremost desire and aim is, therefore,
false to Christ. To measure all things by the standard of peace at
any price is to abandon all principle. If peace were the mission of
the Church of Christ the world would never have known its greatest
heroes ; and life would be emptied of all the blessings that spell hope
for humankind. And the severe words of Christ read us a lesson
which is very much needed to-day truth alone, with the sacrifices
and the sufferings loyalty to it entails, gives birth to peace ; and that
warfare in the cause of truth will never cease so long as this world
exists. But evidently the peace of the world is of more value to
Protestantism than the cause of eternal life through truth with Christ.
It is not to be wondered at, then, that one of the Protestant bishops
at the Garden City Conference said : " I am convinced that this move-
ment will be not only for the union of the Church, but for the peace
of the world."
* * * *
AND among all the considerations that are subsequently to come
up for argument, there is to be no mention of the question:
Did Christ reveal a definite faith that all men are bound to accept?
And it is understood that no Protestant sect is to be asked to give up
its particular tenets. The clergy of each is to be so authenticated
as to be regarded as regular by all ; complete agreement is to be asked
only on one agreed principle ; administrative efficiency is to be promoted,
but individual hegemony is to be retained. In other words, all are
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 719
not to be incorporated into a common, vital life; but each is to re-
tain its own life, and all the others are to give it recognition. It is
important with the importance of eternity to remember that, in big
things as well as little, compromise is not unity.
THE following passage taken from Dr. Shanahan's article, The
Genesis of Kant's Criticism, in the December, 1915, issue of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD goes far to prove the author's fitness for his task,
and this is the reason we quote reads us a well expressed and wise
lesson of what criticism should mean to us not only in literature but
also in life:
" The most effective kind of criticism, after all, is the sympa-
thetic: putting oneself in another's place, peering out at the world
through his mind's eye, and then, if need be, opening ours a little
wider to gather in and garner the vision that he missed. The critic's
vocation is not unlike the actor's: he should sympathetically become,
for the time and occasion being, the character he would interpret and
portray, whether he believe in him or no; and to bring about this
psychological exchange of personality, the prime requisite is to dis-
cover the secret founts and central fires of that other's inspiration.
Only by discovering these, and moving forwards from them with him
whom we would impersonate, can we intelligently occupy his stand-
point, feel the cross-currents of his mental life, experience the force
of his logical temptations, and lay hold of the idea that presided
over the destinies of his spirit and foreordained its ways. Criticism
loses none of its force, nay it gains immeasurably by allying itself
with this explorative sort of sympathy, which teaches us, as nothing
else so well could, that the paths of error are sometimes easy and the
ways of truth not always plain."
A S a result of the re-organization of the St. Vincent de Paul Society,
t*- a new National Council was created, which will hereafter have
its headquarters in Washington, D. C. This Council will supervise
the work of thirteen Metropolitan Councils throughout the United
States. A new monthly magazine, entitled The National Catholic
Monthly Magazine, is to succeed The St. Vincent de Paul Quarterly
as the organ of the Society. It is announced that the first number will
appear in January, 1917. The officers of the Society are: President,
Thomas M. Mulry, New York: Vice-Presidents, Thomas G. Rapier,
New Orleans ; J. L. Hornsby, St. Louis ; Richard C. Gannon, Chicago ;
John Rea, Philadelphia; Thomas W. Hynes, Brooklyn; James A.
McMurry, Boston ; Secretary, Edmond J. Butler, New York ;
Treasurer, Robert Biggs, Baltimore.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
P. J. KENEDY & SONS, New York:
Chaff and Wheat. By F. P. Donnelly, SJ. 60 cents. Moondyne Joe. By
J. B. O'Reilly. 75 cents. Strength of Will. By E. B. Barrett, SJ. $1.25.
The Life of Father De Smet, SJ. By E. Laveille, S.J. $2.75.
E. P. DUTTON & Co., New York:
The Invasion of America. By Julius Miller. $1.25 net.
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York:
The Romanticism of St. Francis. By Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C. $2.00 net.
BRENTANO'S, New York :
One Way of Love. By Cuthbert Wright. $1.00.
DUFFIELD & Co., New York:
Songs of the Fields. By Francis Ledwidge. $1.25 net.
SILVER, BURDETT & Co., New York :
The Progressive Music Series. Book I. By H. Parker, O. McConathy, E. B.
Birge and W. O. Messner.
THE AMERICA PRESS, New York*:
Reading and Character. John Huss the Martyr. Pamphlets. 5 cents. Pioneer
Layman of North America. By Rev. T. J. Campbell, S.J. $1.75.
MRS. M. F. GAVIN, 546 Broadway, New York :
Michael Freebern Gavin. Edited by his son.
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY PRESS, New York:
The Dream of the Soldier Saint. By Leo H. Mullany, S.J. 10 cents.
THE FRANCISCAN MONASTERY OF ST. CLARE, Boston :
One Year with God. By Rev. Michael V. McDonough. $2.00.
WORLD PEACE FOUNDATION, Boston:
Preparedness For Whatf By C. H. Levermore. Pamphlet.
B. HERDER, St. Louis :
Handbook of Ceremonies for Priests and Seminarians. By J. B. Muller, S.J.
$1.00 net. Organ Accompaniment to the Parish Hymnal. Compiled by J.
Otten. $2.00 net.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, Chicago :
A Short History of Belgium. By Leon van der Essen, LL.D. $1.00 net.
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne :
Will They Never Comef By C. Clyde. "A Little Child Shall Lead Them."
By J. Moy. Pamphlets. 5 cents.
DUCKWORTH & Co., London:
Form and Color. By Lisle March Phillips. 7 s. 6 d.
BLOUD ET GAY, Paris:
L'Allemagne et Les Allies devant la Conscience chretienne. 3 frs. 60. La
Guerre Allemande et le Catholicisme. Album No. 2. i fr. 20. Le Soldat
de 1914. Par R. Doumic. Le General Gallieni. Par G. Blanchon. Le Roi
Albert. Par P. Nothomb. Le General Maunoury. Par Miles. L'Heroique
Serbie. Par H. Lorin. Le General Pau. Par G. Blanchon. Le General
Joffre. Par G. Blanchon. 0.60.
LIBRAIRIE ARMAND COLIN, Paris:
How Austria-Hungary Waged War in Serbia. By R. A. Reiss. 0.50. German
Theory and Practice of War. By E. Lavisse and C. Andler. 0.50. Le
Groupe Socialiste du Reichstag et la Declaration de Guerre. Par P. G. la
Ghesnais. i fr. 50. The Violation by Germany of the Neutrality of Belgium
and Luxemburg. By A. Weiss. 0.50. German Atrocities from German Evi-
dence. By J. Bedier. How Germany Seeks to Justify Her Atrocities. By
J. Bedlier. 0.50 each.
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Catholique. Par M. A. Janvier. 4 frs. La Guerre qui I'a voulue. Par P.
Dudon. 0.50. Le Pape et la Guerre. Par P. Dudon. 0.50. Nos deux
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i fr. 10. Notre Patriotisme. Par Comte de Chabrol. 0.75. Prisonnier
des Allemands. i fr. 50. Un Catechisme Pangermaniste a I' Usage du Soldat
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. GIL
MARCH, 1916.
No. 612.
THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST.
BY L. E. BELLANTI, S.J.
E have all heard of the pilgrim who walked over the
Vosges to Rome. One day this man's thoughts kept
running on the Church, and as he was a clever talker
and fond of talking aloud to himself, in default of
a larger audience, he broke forth in this strain:
" The Church will have no philosophies she will permit no com-
forts the cry of the Martyrs is in her far voice her eyes that
see beyond the world present us heaven and hell to the confusion
of our human reconciliations, our happy blending of good and evil
things. By the Lord! I begin to think this intimate religion as
tragic as a great love."
It is in an attempt to show that the living Church is worth
such a love that these lines have been penned. For, first, the
Church comes to us in the garb of Jesus Christ Himself, the Lover
of the Ages; and again in a sense yet to be unfolded each one
of us is absorbed into the Church, flesh of her body, living with
her life; equally, truly, we are all one in Christ, yet wildly free to
choose either heaven or hell; and so, for better or for worse, the
glory and the tragedy of His Love go hand in hand.
This doctrine of our life in Christ, through our incorporation
with Him in His Mystical Body, has lost some of its hold on the
faithful in these latter days. A practical age, it is said, cannot be
expected to attach a saving value to ideas that hover vaguely over
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cil. 46
722 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST [Mar.,
the border-line of the speculative and the fantastic. The good sense
of simple Catholics does not stand in need of a shadowy exposi-
tion of half-truths still less does it hanker after a dubious initiation
into the realms of mystical theology. Yet the doctrine of our Life
in Christ is a fundamental truth of our faith; it rests on the firm
basis of revelation; it is intimately connected with our service of
God and with our outlook on the spiritual life, and though it may
be open to anyone to refuse to consider the meaning of Incor-
poration with Christ, or to follow out this truth in its various
implications, such an attitude would at least betoken some timidity
and want of faith in God, seeing that, what He has revealed,
and what the living voice of the Church commands, and what has
been preached by the greatest Saints to simple and learned alike,
cannot be a snare or a pitfall to us.
It will not be amiss to preface this discussion by a recapitula-
tion of the main facts on which our life is built, both in the order
of nature and in that of grace. Man is made up of body and soul.
He is conscious of the gravitating tendency of the flesh and of
the buoyant impulse of the spirit. He is aware of contradictory
elements in his composition, of discordant principles at war within
him. Yet all along there is a dominant conviction that he is a
single unit, an individual, a person alone and apart; and that
it is for him to rule his higher and lower natures, the beast and the
bird of paradise that have been so astonishingly caged together
in his clay. As St. Augustine once told his congregation at Hippo :
it was free to them to be beasts or angels; beasts, if they followed
the instincts of their blood; angels, if they guided their lives by
the dictates of conscience. Moreover, from the very outset of his
attempts at self analysis, man is faced by the inexplicable mystery
of life. More actually than his reflection stares back at him through
the mirror, he stares at the spiritual, indwelling substance of his
soul, and finds himself compelled to bow down before the mystery
which his own frame enshrines. " Now," he says quite simply
and humbly, " if the energy I feel within me, if the light in my
eyes and the thrill in my veins pass my understanding, if my natural
life must be a mystery to me, how can I hope to measure or com-
prehend that life of grace of which Christ speaks, that divine Life
which is His Life and which His Church imparts? " Heaven may
" stand about us in our infancy," but certainly " shades of the
prison-house " are not calculated to dispel the mysteries that gloom
thicker with our growth; and the clearer our mental vision be-
1916.] THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST 723
comes, the more we see how true it is that " abyss calleth unto
abyss." Yet, as Bishop Hedley has well said : ' Though belief
in a spiritual soul does not solve the problem of the supernatural,
or take us out of the land of mystery, it enables us in some
measure to understand how the God on Whom life and movement,
intelligence and free-will all depend, has designed to use the mystery
of life and spirit in the natural order as a starting-point for a scale
of marvelous life whose lower end may be on earth, but the top
of which is hidden in the heavens, far out of the sight of men
or angels." 1
Working up then to the first half of a great truth, we are led
to admit a dualism in our nature. Not only are we, as men, made
up of body and soul, but as Christians we live by a double life
of nature and of grace. We have in fact two elements and live
two lives. This is one side of our proposed equation or identity.
Formulating the other side, which is its counterpart, we say that
to every Christian the Church presents herself with a similar
dualism in her nature. She bases the whole strength of her appeal
for his allegiance and his love on the grounds of a common
identity. She as much as says to him : " You have perhaps been
used to think of me as a divinely ordered system, with a seven-
fold hierarchy, and seven sacraments, and devotions, and a calendar
of feasts and fasts, the guardian of God's revelation and the pledge
of His continued presence among His children and you are right
I am all this; but I am more. I am like yourself both body
and spirit; like you I am an external organism, yet nourished by
an inward and supernatural life; like you I am both human and
divine."
It will be our primary purpose to justify the literary truth
of these bold assertions, and then briefly to suggest something of
their import. And though we are not going to concern ourselves
with the subtleties of theologians or the fancies of poetry or the
exuberances of devotion, we admit that the proofs of this doctrine
would expand more genially in the pulpit than in the pages of a
theological essay, and draw the mind on more easily to prayer
than to literary exposition. St. Augustine, St. Cyril of Jerusalem
and St. Anselm continually insisted upon these proofs of the
Church's outward and inward life in their familiar homilies; while
St. John Chrysostom ranges over every implication of this doc-
trine with a sublimity of thought and a simplicity of speech and
*The Light of Life. By the Right Rev. John Hedley, Bishop of Newport, p. 216,
724 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST [Mar.,
occasional outbursts of spontaneous eloquence that leave our hearts
burning within us. But why recall the Doctors of the Church
when this truth is at the root of all spirituality and so dominates
the mind and heart of St. Paul, that, without it, his inspired
writings become furious exaggerations, wildly incoherent in the
very intensity of their appeal. Our Lord Himself gathers up into
this message of identity the moral teaching of His whole life
and His last calm and collected prayer on earth is that this sweet
mystery of union with Him may be verified in ourselves : " that
we may all be one, as Thou Father in Me, and I in Thee." 2
The significance of the statements in the Fourth Gospel and
in the Pauline Epistles will not be grasped unless the two senses
in which Our Lord speaks of Himself, and is spoken of by the
Apostle, are carefully taken into account. Jesus Christ, Who was
born of the Virgin Mary and lived and died for us, was true man
and true God. As man He is in heaven and in the Blessed Sacra-
ment of the Altar. As man He is the " physical " Christ the
" natural " Christ (these labels are ugly but they conduce to clear-
ness). He is still the same "physical" Christ when He comes
to us under the image of the Vine, of which we are the branches,
of the bridegroom forming one body with His elect bride the
Church, of the Head of that body to which we belong as members,
but with this difference: that here we form part of Himself, liv-
ing with His Life, submerged in His Personality, identified with
Him. Hence the importance of distinguishing between the " phy-
sical " and the " mystical " Christ. 3 The " physical " Christ took
flesh from Mary's womb ; the " mystical " Christ extended the
benefits of His Incarnation and Humanity to our living bodies,
summoning us all into one body of which He is the Head; the
"physical" Christ died for us; the "mystical" Christ lives in
us ; the " physical " Christ reconciled us to His Eternal Father ;
the " mystical " Christ makes us one with Him. In a word, the
" mystical " Christ is the absorption of the Church into Christ
in such a way that the Church completes her Chief and is com-
pleted by Him. Further, the term " mystical " is not introduced
here to cover a far-fetched metaphor or to detract from the living
and vital functions of that body. It simply serves to stress the
differences between the living body which is Christ and His
Church and the physical body which was born of Mary, and is
*John xvii. 21.
'Father Prat, S.J., carefully works out this distinction, La ThSologie de S. Paul,
vol. i., p. 419.
1916.] THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST 725
born again on our altars at every Mass. The word " mystical "
also denotes functions in the " mystical " Body which do not come
under the category of sense, and so saves us from attempting to
press the concrete aspect of the image. It equally forbids the other
extreme view which would regard the bond that unites us to Christ
as a mere moral tie. The familiar use of the terms body and
members to denote any group of men bound together by some
common purpose or interest or accidental circumstance such as
a club or parliament or confraternity is very misleading in this
connection. Between such a moral unit and the " mystical " Christ
the difference is not merely one of degree, it is actually a difference
of kind. The " mystical " Body of Christ is essentially different
from all other so-called " bodies," in that it is a living body. Other
" moral " bodies draw their " metaphorical " life from without.
This real and living body Christ's mystical Body, the living
Church draws its life from within. It lives with the life of
Christ.
From the first throb of Our Lord's human life in Mary's
womb, He has always been with the children of men. In due time
He was born and grew in wisdom and age and grace, and in His
growth we see the growth of that Vine with which we are later
to be identified. We see the first outstretching of those frail
tendrils which shall continue to spread further and yet further to
the end of time. In this respect to quote a favorite saying of
Father Joseph Rickaby "the Church is simply the extension of
the Incarnation." Gradually Our Lord gathered together His
Apostles and disciples potential channels through which His in-
exhaustible Life would flow for the vivification of mankind. On
the night before He died, we see these elect members present at
the first Mass, in which Our Lord as Priest and Victim offers up
the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and unites His members to Himself in
the Communion of His Body and Blood. Now that He and His
Church are one, He reveals that which He has effected. The
deep calm of that solemn, post-communion hour is chosen by
Himself to explain the change that elevates and transforms and
identifies these faithful few with Himself. In describing this life
we shall limit ourselves to Our Lord's words applying to them,
as commentary, the inspired writings of St. Paul. To Paul, in-
deed, our identity with Christ was the supreme revelation, even
as it was the first lesson that came to him from the lips of Christ.
For the Apostle first learned that Christ and His Church were
726 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST [Mar.,
one when amid a blinding flash Our Saviour said to him, " I am
Jesus Whom thou persecutes!:." 4
"I am the Vine; you the branches;" that is, "I" no
longer the " physical " but the " mystical " Christ am the Church;
" You " are the members of the Church. I am the living whole, and
you are parts living with the life of the whole vine-branches liv-
ing with the Vine's life. This deep truth will be best expressed in
Monsignor Benson's words: 5 " The branches are not an imitation
of the Vine, or representatives of the Vine; they are not merely
attached to it, as candles .to a Christmas tree ; they are its ex-
pression, its result, the sharers of its life. The two are in the
most direct sense identical. The Vine gives unity to the branches,
the branches give expression and effectiveness to the energy of the
Vine; they are nothing without it; it remains merely a Divine
idea without them." " He that abideth in Me and I in him, the
same beareth much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing
If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch and
shall wither." The branches and the Vine grow together one
principle of life diffuses its vitalizing properties through root, stem,
branch, leaf and tendril. Cut off the flow of sap and they wither
even as the fig-tree withered under the curse of God. Briefly, the
substance of Christ's teaching here is that organic union with
Christ means life, severance death. St. Paul reaffirms this teaching
under the image of Christ's mystical body nor yet under a mere
image, for in face of the inadequacies and limitations of human
speech, it is the truest possible account of a supernatural fact. " We
being many are one body in Christ, and all members one of
another." 6 "As the body is one and hath many members and all
the members of the body, many as they are, form one body,
so also is it with Christ " (that is, with the Church which is
Christ). To the Galatians he says, "You are all one" one
man one person "in Christ Jesus." 7 This then is the meaning
of our Incorporation with Christ. Jesus Christ and we are one body.
"He again is the Head of the Body, the Church," 8 while we
"are together, the Body of Christ and severally His members." 9
4 Acts ix. 5.
8 Christ in the Church, By R. H. Benson, p. 12. The almost intuitive grasp
of this vital doctrine of identity invests Monsignor Benson's work with a singular
charm. It was indeed an essential element of his spiritual genius, seen at its
best, perhaps, in such books as Richard Raynal, Christ in the Church, and The
Friendship of Christ.
Rom. xii. 5. T Gal. iii. 28. 8 Col. i. 18. *i Cor. xii. 27.
1916.] THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST 727
To Paul, (in Father Rickaby's words), 10 "the Incarnation is an
alliance contracted, not with that soul and that body only which
was united in the unity of one Person with the Word made flesh,
but likewise with all mankind by their entrance into the Church,
in which that Word has dwelt amongst us. 11 Hence " we are
members of His Body, of His flesh, and of His bones," 12 and He
and we together form the Church. So, too, the Church is a living
body, a warm, throbbing organism, pulsating with an intense vi-
tality, composed of a variety of members with a diversity of struc-
ture and different functions, yet coordinated in their action by
one common principle of movement and of life. In the Apostle's
eyes it is the head that gives unity to the body, and adjusts and
correlates the action of the parts. He insists on these relations
between the members and the head, through which the body grows
into "the full stature of Christ;" 13 in other words, from Christ
our Head, " the whole body, nourished and knit together by means
of the joints and ligaments, doth grow with a growth that is of
God." 14 Consequently our dependence as members on Christ, our
Head is absolute, for from the Head we derive our unity,
our growth and development and the whole inflow of
Divine vitality. Severed from the head the members are but
mutilated fragments. The converse of this proposition is equally
true in the sense that the Head as such cannot exist without
its bodily complement, nor can the Incarnation of the Son
of God attain its full significance without the " mystical "
Body. Each, apart, is incomplete. How can the head which
focuses and defines all sensation and directs all movement possibly
exercise these vital acts unless it is subtantially united to an organ-
ism? Rather is it the principle that constitutes the organism's
being, the centre and source of personality, the furnace radiating
throughout the members the steady flow of conscious life. Even
these bare outlines of Paul's doctrine of incorporation may enable
us to see how closely the Apostle treads in his Master's footsteps.
The sum of their teachings is one and the same. Organic union
with Christ is life, its severance is death.
And "Jesus lifting up His eyes to heaven said: Holy Father
"Notes on St. Paul. By Joseph Rickaby, S.J., i Cor. vi. 15. The bold and
striking reading in Eph. v. 30 derived from Gen. ii. 23 confirms and clinches
our point. Though it is by no means impossible that St. Paul himself adapted
the words of Genesis in this forcible way, the balance of evidence inclines one to
regard them as an early gloss.
"John i. 14. "Eph. v. 30. "Eph. iv. 13. "Col. ii. 19.
728 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST [Mar,
keep them in Thy name whom Thou hast given Me that they may
be one as We also are that they all may be one as Thou Father
in Me and I in Thee ; that they also may be one in Us that
they may be one as We also are one. I in them and Thou in Me,
that they may be made perfect in one that the love wherewith
Thou hast loved Me may be in them and I in them." Our Lord's
human body and soul are about to undergo the extremes of physical
and mental anguish. No limb will be without its pain, no sense
without its torture. Yet His prayer is not that His natural body
may be saved the agony of ropes and scourges and thorns and
shameful defilement, but that His Mystical Body may be spared;
that His seamless garment may not be divided, that His members
may not be torn from Him to be the prey of the devourer. He
prays that His love, nay that He Himself, may be in them. His
divine vision sees them in their untold variety of age and sex and
character and condition, yet, transcending the differences of cen-
turies and continents, He prays that they may all be one, " as Thou
Father in Me and I in Thee." God the Father and God the Son
are one God by virtue of the one nature of God. Even so must all
Christians become, in some mysterious sense, sharers of that Divine
nature, being " made perfect in one " by their elevation and absorp-
tion into the Divine Being. The secret of Christian perfection lies
in this indescribable transformation. Its efficient cause is the sanc-
tity of Christ operating towards the sanctification of His members.
In His holiness they are made holy. " For them do I sanctify
Myself that they also may be sanctified in truth and not for
them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall
believe in Me." Far from being limited to His own immediate fol-
lowing, Our Lord's prayer embraces the believers and the converts
of all ages. Moreover, the Apostles and their successors are to
preach Christ to the nations, that so the Church may grow and
develop to its full term and completion. The sum then of Christ's
desires is that in spite of our diversity, union with Him should
make us all one, that it should make us perfect in one, and that
it should embrace all who may come to believe in Him; or
more briefly Christ's prayer is that union with Him may lead
to the assimilation of all human differences, the sanctification of
human lives, and the salvation of mankind and as " Cor Christi Cor
Pauli est" so, too, these effects follow, in the Apostle's teaching,
as a natural consequence of our incorporation with Christ. To-
wards His members Our Lord feels an exquisite sympathy and
I 9 i6.] THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST 729
tenderness such also in its measure should be the bond of fellow-
feeling uniting the members among themselves in their union with
Christ their Head. In the physical body how deftly the eyelid
shields the eye, how firmly does the hand guard the head, and the
foot save the body lest it stumble. " And the eye cannot say to
the hand : I have no need of thee, or again the head to the feet,
I have no need of you and if one member suffereth, all the
members suffer therewith; if a member be honored all the members
rejoice therewith." 15 Now, St. Paul goes on, "You are together
the body of Christ and severally His members " "I exhort
you, therefore, I, the prisoner in the Lord, to walk worthily of
the calling wherewith you were called careful to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; one body and one Spirit
as also ye were called in one hope one Lord, one faith, one
baptism ; one God and Father of all, Who is above all and through-
out all and all in all." 16 So that " there is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female.
For you are all one in Christ Jesus." 17
It is noteworthy that while driving home the lesson of our
incorporation in Christ, the Apostle lays stress on the diversity of
the members, the human differences of nation, sex and condition.
Corresponding to this diversity of members is a diversity of func-
tions, a different measure of gifts and graces, a variety of qualities
and endowments whose harmonious combination goes to make
up the beauty and glory of the Mystical Body, even as a similar
variety of gifts and graces in the physical and moral order lends
a distinct attractiveness to each personality. Almost invariably the
Apostle is leading up to the familiar lesson of concord, with an
obvious reference to the quarrelsome and litigious section of his
audience. Let us have no sedition, no jealousies or divisions
amongst us. If we are to work in harmony we must be content
with our place in the divine organism. Incorporation into the
harmonious commonwealth of the Mystical Body leads not only
to the assimilation of human differences, but also to the sanctifica-
tion of human lives. The Christ-life finds its natural outlet in the
whole-hearted practice of the moral virtues. Once we are pos-
sessed of this life, " we shall be no longer children, nor tossed
on the waves and carried around by every wind of doctrine
Rather we shall hold the truth in charity and grow in all things into
Him, Who is the Head, Christ. From Him the whole Body welded
15 1 Cor. xii. 21. "Eph. iv. i ff. "Gal. iii. 26-28.
730 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST [Mar.,
and compacted together throughout every joint of the system part
working in harmony with part from Him the Body draweth its
increase into the building of itself in charity." 18 The first and
negative consequence of this participation in the life of Christ
is the avoidance of sin. By sin the loved member is torn asunder
from the living body amid a horrible wrench of nerve and fibre
and flesh and bone ; by sin we not only inflict a grievous wound on
the mystical Christ, we even " crucify again to ourselves the Son
of God, making Him a mockery." 19 " Know you not that your
bodies are members of Christ? Am I then to take the members of
Christ and make them members of a harlot? God forbid." 20
The avoidance of sin and the subjugation of our debased
nature involves a continuous struggle, but our help is from within
us. " I see another law in my members fighting against the
law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my
members. Unhappy man that I am who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? The grace of God by Jesus Christ Our
Lord." 21 Though the Vulgate rendering is here inaccurate for
what the Apostle actually said was : " Thanks be to God through
Our Lord Jesus Christ" 22 yet it certainly conveys the general
sense, as is clear from the words in the next verse but one, where
St. Paul says : " The law of the spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath
delivered thee from the law of sin and death." 23 Here then we
have mention of the second and positive consequence of our incor-
poration with Christ, that is, the maintenance and increase of
Divine Grace within us by the practice of Christian virtues. With
what energy and frequency does the Apostle enforce this lesson!
To the Corinthians he says : " You are not your own, for you
have been bought at a price. Glorify God then in your body," 24
that is, " glorify Him by showing forth your virtues as fruits
of the Christ life within you." " I beseech you, therefore, breth-
ren," he writes to the Romans, " by the mercy of God that you
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God
and be not conformed to this world;" 25 rather, mould your lives
into the likeness of Christ in Whom you live. He exhorts the
Colossians : " Strip off the old man with his practices and put on
the new put on then as God's elect, holy and well beloved, hearts
of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering
But over all these put on charity, the bond that is of perfection.
"Eph. iv. 14-16 "Heb. vi. 6. * i Cor. vi. 15. "Rom. vii. 23-25.
"Rom. vii. 25. M Rom. viii. 2. "i Cor. vi. 20. "Rom. xii 1-2.
1916.] THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST 731
And in your hearts let the peace of God stand supreme, whereunto
also ye are called as members of one body." 26
From all this it is abundantly clear that to Paul, incorporation
with Christ assimilates human differences, and leads to the sanc-
tification of human lives. The growth of the Church, by which we
mean not only the aggregation of new peoples into the fold, but
also the development of organization and the more explicit unfold-
ing of dogmatic and moral teachings, is a further consequence of
this doctrine. Growth is essential to a living organism, in which
every cell, while unfolding its own minute processes, contributes
to the extension and development of the life of the whole. The
individual Christian is a living cell in the Mystical Body of Christ.
" In Him it hath pleased the Father that all the fullness should
dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself." 27
This then is the explanation of the Church's missionary zeal. It
is of her very nature to develop by the generation and absorption
of new and living cells into her organism; their multiplication
is her growth. Even in his own day, reflecting on the abundant
fruits of the brief and checkered ministry, Paul could say to the
Romans : " Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of
Christ. But I say: Have they not heard? Yes, verily, their
sound hath gone forth into all the earth and their words unto the
end of the whole world." 28
Later on in the same epistle Paul speaks of this extension of
the Church as a mystery or secret design of God's providence, and
this secret design is further explained in the epistle sent from his
Roman prison to the Ephesians : " Unto me," he says, " the least
of all saints hath been given this same grace, to preach to the
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to make clear what
is the dispensation touching the mystery which from ages hath
been hidden in God the Creator of all, in order that now through
the Church be made known to the principalities and powers in
heavenly places, the manifold wisdom of God." 29 These words
come to the same thing. Briefly they denote the plan con-
ceived by God from eternity, but revealed only in the Gospel,
by which all men were to be saved without distinction of race
by being identified with His well-beloved Son in the unity of the
Mystical Body. This note of comprehensiveness in the Divine
scheme of salvation is so fundamental to the Catholic mind that we
find some difficulty in conceiving it as a mystery revealed only in
M Col. iii. 4-15. "Col. i. 19, 20. M Rora. x. 17, 18. "Eph. iii. 8-10.
732 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST [Mar.,
these latter days to the Apostles. Yet when we consider what a
death-blow was dealt to Jewish hopes and aspirations by this fling-
ing wide of the portals and recall the furies of passion, the tireless
persecutions, the various attempts made on the life of the Apostle
of the Gentiles, this revolutionary aspect of the Gospel message
stands out more clearly. The extension of salvation to all mankind
is the keynote of Paul's ministry. It may be parabolically summed
up in the Temple incident. Paul's arrest at Jerusalem and his sub-
sequent captivity at Caesarea and in Rome was in Jewish eyes justi-
fied on the count that he had violated the sanctity of the Temple by
the introduction of a Gentile into its sacred precincts. He had not
done that, but he had done something immeasurably more awful.
He had opened the Church to the world.
In conclusion, it may be profitable to consider this doctrine
of our incorporation with Christ from a more intimate and personal
point of view. Christ's life on earth in the beauty of His visible
manhood is over. Since that Easter morning when His living and
glorious form rose from the tomb, further change or growth or
external perfection are impossible to Him. " In a sense," as Mon-
signor Benson points out, 30 " we may close up with our Gospels
the individual life of Christ and find in His words, 'It is consum-
mated/ a proof that His human relations with men are over, His
work of Redemption completed ; but there is a sense in which that
ending was but a beginning an inauguration rather than a climax."
For the Mystical Body which the Son of God fashioned in the womb
of the Church, and of which He is the Head, is alive and growing
with the growth of the ages, nor can it attain its full development
till the end of time. He is indeed gone to His Father, but just as
His physical body by its hypostatic union with the Word is in
heaven and in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, so also is it
united by a unique and organic bond to the members of His
Mystical Body in heaven and on earth. Still we are one with
Him in His human nature, and can recapitulate in Him the wonder
and the tragedy of that human life, in all its rosary of mysteries
joyful, sorrowful and glorious. And just as these mysteries are
contained in the written Gospel as in the record of a past life, so
also do they recur in the Church which is His living embodiment,
as in the living Gospel and record of a present life. 31 Here " he
looks through the lattice visible to all who have eyes here he
reproduces the events and crises of the life in Judea and in Galilee.
80 Christ in the Church. By R. H. Benson, p. 9. n lbid., p. n.
1916.] THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST 733
Here he works out and fills upon the canvas of the world's history
that outline laid down two thousand years ago," flashing its every
detail as through the myriad fragments of a shattered mirror in the
life of each one of us. In us He is born, lives, suffers, dies and
eternally rises again. " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day
and forever."
Does this last point seem somewhat forced a presentation
imaginative and devotional it is true but hopelessly idealistic
of a belief which cannot be taken too literally or indeed too seri-
ously? Yet it is precisely on this point that St. Paul's testimony
is most convincing. We were dead in sin; with Christ we were
buried in the fount of baptism. With Him we rose again, living
now with a glorified life; with Him or more truly in Him we are
seated at the right hand of God the Father. For " God, Who is
rich in mercy by reason of the great love wherewith He hath loved
us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to
life with Christ by grace ye are saved and raised us up and
seated us in Christ Jesus in the heavenly places." 32 On the other
hand, though we are raised from the dead and living in Christ,
we are not yet wholly glorified, and Christ makes up by our suffer-
ings what is wanting in His own Passion; for," to take Father
Rickaby's explanation, 83 " there is a cross and a Passion in His
Mystical Body which He must endure till the day of judgment, and
this He portions out age by age among His friends." Receiving
his portion with gladness St. Paul wrote : " Now I rejoice in my
sufferings ; and make up in my flesh what is lacking to the
sufferings of Christ, on behalf of His Body which is the Church." 34
And in so far as we are identified with Him, we must always be
" bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the
life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh." 35
Through each one of us Christ is daily and hourly coming into His
own, and so entering more fully into the possession of His final
heritage. Our sorrows are His sorrows; our joys His joys; the
kindness done to us He takes as done to Himself; against our
persecutors His voice rings out : " I am Jesus Whom thou perse-
cutest." And after we have lived with His life and expressed
in ourselves its joys and sorrows, we are also to be united with
Him in His glory. To the Eternal Father He says : " The glory
which Thou hast given Me, I have given to them;" to each one
82 Eph. ii. 4-6. "Waters That Go Softly. By Joseph Rickaby, S.J., p. 136.
"Col. i. 24. 35 2 Cor> iy> IQ>
734 THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST [Mar.,
of us : " Have a good heart, it is I ! " In hinting at this intimate
recapitulation of the Christ-life in the life of every Christian, it
has been impossible to do justice to the emphatic utterances of
St. Paul. 36 Baldly summed up they state that with Christ we are
born and live and suffer* 1 with Him we rehearse the mysteries of
the Crucifixion** Death, 59 Burial, 40 Resurrection* 1 and Ascension. 42
We are to be coheirs with Him, to be glorified with Him, 43 to reign
with Him, and with Him to judge the world. 44 These are sublime
promises, but taken in their context they seem no more than the
logical consequences of our Incorporation with Christ. Further, the
mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, our own justification
and sanctification, the full purpose of our life on earth, the opera-
tion of the Sacraments in the unity of the Mystical Body, and our
communion with the souls in purgatory and the Saints in heaven, are
in the light of this doctrine invested with a fuller meaning and take
a clearer place in the Divine scheme.
In conclusion, it may well be asked how does all this correspond
to the familiar teaching on actual and sanctifying grace as set down
in our scholastic treatises ? A full answer to such a question would
involve large issues. This, however, may be at once admitted.
Sanctifying grace holds the foremost place in the New Testament
writings, and is, indeed, in the Apostle's eyes, that life which is
communicated to the members by the Head and constitutes the
Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. Comparatively speaking,
actual grace occupies a less prominent position in Pauline theology.
This proportion is not maintained in our scholastic treatises where
perhaps inevitably the conflicting theories of rival schools on
actual grace, the controversies on predestination, and the refutation
of the heretical views of the reformers loom very large in the
metaphysical landscape. While the Apostle's presentation of the
doctrine is more concrete and suggestive, the theologians have
chiefly devoted themselves to minute analysis and exact definition.
Yet substantially the teaching on grace contained in the doctrine
of our Incorporation with Christ is and always has been affirmed
in every detail by scholastic theology. A summary comparison will
make this clear. Briefly, we are taught that man is born in the
state of sin. He becomes truly just by Baptism, or in the case of
18 See for this Father Rickaby's Notes on St. Paul, passim; and especially on
i Cor. vi. 2.
"Rom. vi. 3; Gal. ii. 20, etc. 88 Rom. vi. 6; Gal. ii. 19.
"2 Tim. ii. n. "Rom. vi. 4. "Eph. ii. 5; Col. ii. 13 and iii. i.
tt Eph. ii. 6. ^Rom. viii. 17. **2 Tim. ii. 12; i Cor. vi. 2.
1916.] THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST 735
actual sin by having recourse to the Sacrament of Penance. The
formal cause of this justification is the justness of God communi-
cated to man and permanently dwelling in his soul. (" Non qua
Ipse Justus est sed qua nos justos facit") Though this birth or
renewal or internal change is an instantaneous event, its effects
remain, just as resuscitation to life is the miracle of an instant
and yet the restored life is permanent. This permanent quality
is known as sanctifying grace, which by its very nature is so
opposed to sin that sanctifying grace and sin cannot by any pos-
sibility coexist. Sanctifying grace is best described in its effects.
It establishes a unique bond of sympathy between the soul and
God; it induces a likeness in the spiritual order, beautifying the
human soul with the beauty of Christ; as it imparts a supernatural
birth, so it involves a sonship by which we are admitted into the
family of God; it makes us, in the language consecrated by an
immemorial liturgy partakers of the Divine nature of Him Who
deigned to become a partaker of our humanity. Is not all this a
recapitulation in detail of the teaching of St. Paul? Sin is death
sanctifying grace is the life of Christ within us. Life and death
cannot by any possibility coexist. The life of Christ establishes a
unique bond of sympathy between us and Christ; it makes us one
with Him, beautiful with His beauty, transformed into His Own
likeness, adopted into His mystical body by the extension of the
Incarnation to our humanity. In this divine scheme the Sacra-
ments stand forth as the main channels of a visible dispensation
through which life is poured into the different members, while the
Holy Eucharist sustains, augments and in Itself constitutes that
Divine Life. We are apt perhaps from our very familiarity with
the definite scope of separate theological treatises to regard these
doctrines as more or less disjointed, or at any rate to miss their
close connection. St. Paul saw in them aspects, implications, con-
clusions drawn from the one fundamental doctrine of our identifi-
cation with Christ. To him, both in faith and in practice, the
Christ-life sums up Christianity.
IMMANENCE AND RELIGION.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
HERE was once a German philosopher by the name
of Fichte. He is dead a hundred years. His views
do not occupy the prominence of Kant's or Hegel's
and his system may with truth be said to have
perished with its author; but there was one idea in
it destined to survive, under one form or another, in all the
philosophies that came after a goodly number, too, were these;
and because this philosopher was the first to make modern use of
the idea in question, the first to become entangled personally in
its toils, he affords the best example in which to study the circum-
stances of its origin and the reasons that led to its proposal and
adoption. When ideas have floated down stream for a century
or more, gathering fresh impetus on the way, they are more apt to
be accepted without question than diligently traced back to their
original point of starting.
The idea to which we are referring is the idea of immanence
the doctrine that all reality is within consciousness and that noth-
ing independent of consciousness exists. It has outlasted Fichte
and his crumbled system of subjective idealism; it has become
one of the permanent governing principles in nearly all post-Kantian
thinking; the unlearning world of the learned accept it without
question, without demur; no one has ever made the slightest at-
tempt to prove that it was or could be exclusively true; and tyros
play with it to their own destruction. Let us study the idea in its
primary modern source and follow it down stream there may be
disillusionment for some, there surely will be spiritual profit for
most of us, in the process.
How Fichte came to make this notion central and controlling
is a story that will well repay the telling, it shows so clearly the
arrogant spirit in which the thing was done. We must go back
a bit to get perspective. The philosophers who succeeded Kant
succeeded also to his problems ; they regarded it as a duty devolved
upon them to complete the synthesis of subject, idea, and object,
which the founder of philosophical criticism had been unable to
effect. Somehow, try as Kant would, these three refused to be
1916.] IMMANENCE AND RELIGION 737
brought together; their antithesis could not successfully be broken
down. Subject and object, spirit and matter, seemed by nature
mutually exclusive and opposed, so much so that their recon-
cilement in some larger idea embracing both was a task to addle the
wits of the most resourceful. Their externality each to each de-
fied reduction, and Kant entered into his dotage no nearer a solu-
tion of the puzzle than he was when in his prime.
It must be confessed by all neutral observers that the problem
had been rendered doubly difficult by the manner Kant went about
its solving and by the notion of reality he happened to entertain.
As a matter of fact, no such absolute opposition exists between
subject and object as Kant imagined. These two, if we examine
the concrete facts of perception, are actually in relation, and not
cut off from intercourse, as Kant supposed ; they come to us united
in a spontaneous original synthesis which precedes reflection; we
have but to look into the data which sensibility presents, to find
subject and object in close relationship and communion; a condi-
tion confronts us, not a theory; and the real problem is first to
recognize a synthesis already existing and then to sift sub-
jective elements from objective by painstaking reflection and ex-
periment.
Kant turned this concrete fact of synthesis into a problem of
abstract possibility, and then all his troubles began. The con-
version of the problem is not warranted by the facts of experience ;
it is a fiction created by the ambitious Cartesian method which
seeks to make explanation the only kind of knowledge worth ad-
mitting. Kant followed this method of Descartes it was then as
now the badge and tessera of scholarship. Taking the abstract
concepts of subject and object, mind and matter, thought and
reality; setting these over against each other in non-communi-
cating opposition; and suppressing all the relations that ply be-
tween them actually in the concrete, Kant asked himself how their
contradiction could be overcome, their synthesis established, by
reflection. He could discover no answer to the artificial problem
which his method had thus created. The synthesis in question not
having been originally established by reflection, quite naturally
could not be rediscovered by this means; and Kant mistook the
impotency of the Cartesian method for a constitutional disability
of the mind itself, dogmatically assuming that if reflex thought
could not reinvent the synthesis, it was idle to accept the spon-
taneous testimony of experience to its existence. The method he
VOL. cii. 47
73 8 IMMANENCE AND RELIGION [Mar.,
employed put all direct, spontaneous knowledge out of court; it
made knowing synonymous with proving; and any man who fol-
lows the method is bound to become a victim of its disabling
limitations. Kant's was a conspicuous example of what happens
when experience is made secondary to some theoretical way of
studying or testing its deliverances.
Kant's difficulty was Fichte's opportunity, and he piled Pelion
upon Ossa, so far as suppositions went, to bring mind and reality
together in a vast and sweeping synthesis which would break down
their apparent opposition and fuse them into one. Convinced that
Kant had tried to draw the greater out of the less, and that this
was the reason of his failure, Fichte decided to reverse the pro-
cess and draw the less from the bosom of the greater. If thought
could not be shown to come from being, why not turn the problem
of synthesis round about, and prove that being came from thought ?
This change of procedure would yield the desired synthetic formula,
overcome the opposition between the external world of objects
and the inner world of mind, bring both under a single head and
make one the offshoot of the other. Fichte worked at this re-
duction with so much speed of accomplishment, one may be sure
that an image had more to do with his thinking than a thought.
He imagined a universal consciousness, a vast, illimitable, all-
embosoming Self, in which the worlds are and the deep, and those
broken lights called the minds of men. To such a consciousness,
not individual like yours and mine, but universal and all-including,
nothing would be external, everything would forever lie within.
To imagine a consciousness of this impressive size takes us out of
ourselves, he thought, and bids us hearken with bated breath to
the throbbing dialectic of the world. Transmuted from human
specks on the outer edges of reality into creatures grandiose who
owe allegiance to no divinity but the moral law, we have a world
of our own to live in and fashion as we will. The universal Sub-
ject posits the object, the universal Ego sets up the non-Ego of
physical Nature to have something to work upon, something to
keep its boundless activity perpetually astir. It starts counter-
currents flowing, this immense and unfathomable Self; and in buffet-
ing against their tides, in taking up arms against its own tumultuous
sea of troubles, finds life, activity, employment, progress, for its
timeless years. Identity has diversity in its bosom contradictions
to resolve, oppositions to overcome, problems to disentangle, storms
to rouse and storms to quell unendingly. Self- Activity ! Behold
1916.] IMMANENCE AND RELIGION 739
the nature of the All-Enveloping, in which continents swim and
humanity lives, moves, and has its being.
Kant's vexing synthesis is solved; his " thing-in-itself " has
lost its isolated selfhood the all-harboring consciousness has of-
fered the hospice of the spirit to a being that stood so long with-
out its portals. Immanence has laid the ghost of transcendence
low. Externality no longed haunts or hinders. Philosophy has
been effectively rid of the great spectre of Reality. It is now free
to go forward without fear, there being nothing outside to which
Thought need seek to conform its processes. Its sole correspond-
ence is with itself. To all of which the reply is simple: Fichte,
in his hurry to get his world-view off the presses, forgot to prove
that the imagination is man's ultimate and final faculty, the sole
pillar and ground of truth; a point that has to be established be-
fore philosophy can be identified with poetry or an impressionist's
mental images set themselves up for absolute verity itself.
A more destructive principle, really, was never proposed, under
the guise and for the purpose of a general constructive synthesis,
than this imaginative and imaginary doctrine of Fichte's, that all
reality is immanent in consciousness. One might almost write out
the philosophies that followed iri their summary negations, at
least simply by consulting the principle and drawing up a list of
the notions, over against which it stood in implacable opposition.
Hardly a fine recommendation for a view professing reconcilement,
that it should fulfill by destroying and by fulfilling destroy! The
religious concepts foredoomed to extinction, once the view gained
currency, will show the destructive nature of its spirit. The logic
of the principle demanded the sacrifice of these, and the profes-
sional reconcilers were all logical, whatever else they may have
been. It will take but a moment and may prove instructive to
consider how many time-honored beliefs were to be condemned
without a hearing, simply and solely because Fichte's " all-em-
bracing " synthesis was too narrowly conceived to include them
within its imaginative scheme of conciliation. Strange how men
will cut truth down and refit it to their theories !
Logic there is no difference between the true kind and the
false, when it comes to exactions, error having its own laws of
consistency no less than truth logic certainly and clearly de-
manded, once the principle of immanence was adopted, that the
world at large be shorn of its external relations, and all things
in it of theirs. Could one wish for better proof of the kind of
740 IMMANENCE AND RELIGION [Mar.,
"reconstruction" the principle was to furnish? Applied in the
field of religion it meant that " God the Father, Creator of heaven
and earth, and Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord " were credal
phrases not to be mentioned in scientific company save under one's
breath. The very thought was to become offensive to pious ears
of the new variety. It recalled pristine days when the race was
simple, and the Absolute of Fichte's philosophy or of Hegel's had
not yet come to correct such puerile Christian fancies. A Creator?
How could there be one, when the world is an organic whole, hav-
ing within itself " the promise and potency of all future life," as
Tyndall, I think it was, delighted to affirm, and as modernists some-
what stalely have of late repeated. The theory of immanence de-
manding that the world be without relation to a Being beyond it-
self, how dare we longer speak of it as "created?" "Posited"
is the word, gesetzt! You are not read in the books, and the
great modern currents of thought are said to have left you un-
affected, unless you exchange old styles of phrase for new, and
temper the wind of doctrine to the shorn lambs of immanentism.
No longer, either, may Christ be designated as Lord, Son of
God, and Saviour ; such thoughts simply cannot live in the changed
psychological climate of the times. The doctrine of immanence
requires that Christ be merely Jesus, reduced to a man among men,
and made wholly subject to the laws of space and time, His nature,
person, mission, and deliverances all conditioned and determined
by this pair of inescapable categories. There will be no such idea
entertainable as the coming from another world to this; and the
Incarnation, so far from appearing as a humiliation of the Divine
or an " exalting of them that are of low degree," will appear
rather we have actually seen the statement printed as the en-
tering of God into the highest conceivable glory! This is our
world, mind you, and there is none other beside; a supposition, by
the way, which greatly increases our capacity for self -inflation, and
hands us over, body and soul, to those " oppositions of false knowl-
edge " whereof " the citizen of no mean city " once spoke was
it to us? in solemn warning. We have begun to think pretty well
of ourselves when it is a glory for God to have become one of
us, and when the sinless One Himself, He who " bruised not the
broken reed nor quenched the smoking flax " is represented as
having a divinity slightly differing in degree from ours. In try-
ing to know Him of Nazareth, would it not be an enlightening
process to know ourselves first, stripped of all the guises and
1916.] IMMANENCE AND RELIGION 741
disguises of imaginative philosophy, and with minds not method-
bound, but free to see history as it is and things as they are?
The doctrine of immanence also demanded that the spirit of
" other- worldliness " be rebuked ; and sciolist and socialist not all
of these latter, but very many would soon be plying busy pens
against this most annoyingly persistent of distractions. Our rela-
tions are all in the present environment, they would tell us, and
we might as well cease being distraught with the thoughts of a
world to come. Revelation, too, was another notion that had to
undergo considerable " reconstructing " before an orthodox im-
manentist could bestow upon it the dubious benefits of his favor.
As a communication, an intercourse between a Supreme Being and
the denizens of this only world that is, it would be declared to
have no future standing in acceptance. How could there be a mes-
sage from without to this closed system of a universe, this living
ball rotating, this universal organism afloat, this ceaselessly un-
folding germ? Revelation wore a strange appearance when it
emerged from the hands of the new potters of truth, as " the in-
terpretation of religious sentiment by men above the ordinary, like
Socrates of Athens and Augustine of Tagaste." Somehow we
could not recognize the original in the travesty, but that is all there
is left of it in the imaginative philosophy of immanence. Grace,
of course, was to be a thing of the past ; one did not have to be a
prophet to peer that distance into the future. The new Pelagians
would set it down for a discouragement to self-reliance; and be-
sides why proffer " outside aid " to one who has such perfecti-
bility within his very being, he stood in no need of having the
fund increased? Self -saving, self-redeeming, with no further
course to run after his tired spark of consciousness went back to
sleep again in the embers of the great central fire talk not to such
a one, divine as he is by nature, of the things that " eye hath not
seen, ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to
conceive."
Looking over the situation in advance, and with the eyes of
logic, as we have just tried to do, history when it comes will hardly
be able to tell us more. Immanentism was to reinterpret religion,
reality, knowledge, history, and life, doing away with all notions
not amenable to the theory, and making the world and all things in
it appear as they did to Johann Gottlieb Fichte when he wrote A
Critique of all Revelation the modest undertaking consumed only
thirty-six days in the midsummer in 1782. He drew upon his
74 2 IMMANENCE AND RELIGION [Mar.,
" vision " for its composition, and ran up to Konigsberg with the
manuscript to get Kant's judgment upon it. Like all those who
dream dreams, see visions, and report intuitional flashes, he thought
philosophy was soliloquy and that his own private introspection had
a public value; romantic imagination counting for more in his
eyes than the steady sober reason of the world. His contention
in the thirty-six days production above mentioned was in line with
the idea of immanence, nay created by it. Miracles and revelations,
so it ran, were only the sensible form which the moral order of
the universe took, to get itself observed among those lowly prim-
itive peoples, a benighted folk that had not the love of morality
for its own pure sake, which Kant had championed. He won
Kant's respect and good will, coming away delighted, it is said,
and highly encouraged, at the thought that his first effort to apply
the principle of immanence had met with the approval of no less
distinguished a personage than the father and founder of philo-
sophical criticism.
Enough has been said to acquaint the reader with the de-
structive spirit of this imagined and imaginary principle. No
analysis of the facts of the religious consciousness, no inductive
study of the history of religion guaranteed its truth or justified
its application; it was a pure invention. Kant conceived ultimate
realty as a featureless, static Absolute, out of which nothing could
be got; Fichte conceived it as self-conscious and active, thereby
making it, so he thought, the fecund source of all that is. By
making an erroneous conception more erroneous still; by con-
verting the abstract idea of being in general into the concrete
image of a general consciousness, Fichte started the principle of
immanence on its levelling, devastating career.
The whole history of the origin and application of this princi-
ple casts discredit upon its author and abettors. The fact that we
can imagine a general consciousness including all objects is no
proof that such a general consciousness exists. All the evidence of
our actual experience reveals clearly that objects are both out-
side us and within; and this evidence cannot be circumvented or
overthrown by imagining a situation in which nothing external to
consciousness would exist. Mankind believes instinctively in the
existence of a real world distinct from the ideas which the mind
frames of it, and not dependent on these for its being and sup-
port. It is only after a long process of indoctrination that idealists
themselves come to believe in the external world as a mere out-
1916.] IMMANENCE AND RELIGION 743
post and dependency of mind; and then only by having recourse
to the sophism that objects of consciousness and consciousness of
objects mean one and the same thing an illegitimate conversion
of propositions for which no warrant can be found.
The great fallacy of idealists, says a recent critic, 1 results
from a failure to punctuate their leading tenet properly. This
tenet has it that " Reality cannot be thought as existing inde-
pendently of thought." If you introduce punctuation into this un-
broken sentence, he continues, it will resolve itself into two, one
of which is a harmless truism, the other a proposition which no
man can ever prove, for the simple reason that proof of it is im-
possible wherever he may look. Punctuate the sentence as fol-
lows : " Reality cannot be thought as existing, independently of
thought," and you will then have the banal utterance that you can-
not know the existence of objects without thinking about them.
It would indeed be a portentous miracle if we could. Who will
deny a proposition so plainly not to be gainsaid? Not even
Arcesilaus himself! Punctuate the same sentence at a point still
further on, and it will then read : " Reality cannot be thought as
existing, independently of thought." Can anyone, he asks, es-
tablish this proposition, has anyone ever established it? No;
and for the simple reason that we can and do, nay must think
of reality, " as existing independently of thought." The critic
quoted goes on to say that all idealists prove the first proposition,
imagining that by doing so they have actually demonstrated the
truth of the second. And since they cannot find the least support
for their idealistic theory in the actual consciousness of mankind,
they attempt to flank the evidence by appealing to an imaginary
general consciousness which, being the consciousness of nobody
in particular, can be made to mean and imply whatever this ro-
manticist or that wants to say of it or draw forth from it.
Fichte himself lost all belief in a personal God soon after
he had invented the Frankenstein of immanence. " The living
and operative moral order," he says, "is itself God; we need no
other God, we can comprehend no other. There is no reason for
going outside that moral order, and assuming, as the result of an
inference from the caused to its cause, that a particular being,
the cause of that order, exists." 2 Because of this open profession
*The Great Fallacy of Idealism. By D. H. Macgregor. Hibbert Journal,
July, 1906, p. 788.
3 History of Philosophy. Ueberweg. Vol. ii., p. 210, English translation,
Scribner's 1887.
744 IMMANENCE AND RELIGION [Mar.,
of atheism, he came into conflict with his colleagues at Jena and
was dismissed from the teaching staff, after much mutual re-
crimination in the public prints. Atheism had not yet become the
academic privilege it is now. Kant filled his measure of disap-
pointment to the full when he who had praised the ribbon-weaver's
son so lavishly but seven short years before, now berated him
roundly for his views, declaring that " the construction of the
world out of self -consciousness, without empirically given material,
produced on him a ghostly impression; and that Fichte's Science
of Knowledge was only an ephemeral production." 3 In the work
mentioned specifically by Kant, Fichte had tried to show that all
religion is reducible to mere belief in the moral order of the
world. In condemning this contention, Kant had withdrawn his
previous approval. Knowing thoroughly what was toward, he re-
fused his sanction.
The after history of the idea of immanence needs but a brief
recounting; it is the same old story of ringing the changes on
Kant's colorless, ineffable Absolute. Schelling, one of Fichte's
colleagues on the professorial staff at Jena, what time the guns
of Bonaparte awoke unaccustomed echoes in its shades, was not
to be denied his romantic vision. As Fichte had chosen the Ego,
Schelling took the non-Ego for his favorite intuition. Nature is
Spirit asleep asleep in the mountains, dreaming in the flowers,
wide awake at last in man. Prior both to Nature and to Spirit,
he said, is the Absolute, a sort of common ground or substrate out
of which these two apparent opposites rise, and in whose stilling
depths they make their peace again, eternally ; an idea which crossed
the ocean and became the " Oversoul "of Emerson's pages. The
sage of Concord wrote reams on " the resolution of all into the
Ever-blessed One," hiding his disbelief in a personal God by
capitalizing a long and sonorous list of impersonal abstractions.
The famous " Brook Farm Movement " rang with the jdea.
Theodore Parker, in the " old White Meeting House of West Rox-
bury," a stone's throw from the " Farm," preached and wrote on
the unity of all religions in the " great unknowable " which con-
stituted their common object ; a doctrine that " rocked the steeples,"
in the parlance of the day, not all of them, but such only as were
built to rock. Romantic transcendentalism had invaded New Eng-
land and affected the social, philosophical, and religious under-
currents of the times.
*Ibid. t p. 207.
1916.] IMMANENCE AND RELIGION 745
The third attempt at romanticizing philosophy was made by
Hegel, and it outdid all others before or since in imaginative
audacity. Taking Kant's immense blank, he endowed it with per-
petual motion, made it move through error unto truth, through
evil unto good, through cruelty to innocence, through crime to
virtue and " the perfect day." All the wrong thinking and wrong
doing of the world were thus caught up under the single idea of
Development and lodged in the very nature of the Absolute itself.
The dreadful thing about the conception was that it tried to prove
itself a necessary law, the actual and only way by which progress
could ever come. Karl Marx adopted the idea, and the economic
theories of history began to grind out the whole course of things
from man's single instinct of self-preservation. That was the
fourth phase of the doctrine, and it is with us still. Who has
read anything on the " social character of religion " as portrayed
in recent literature, and not seen the grandiose idle effort to dress
up a few abstractions with life and motion, so as to make every-
thing come out of them on paper? We are in the imaginative
period of philosophy and should bear the fact in mind.
The fifth and latest attempt to romanticize the universe is the
conjoint one of James and Bergson. Ultimate reality for them is
of a practical nature; something never to be known, in the in-
tellectual sense of this term, but forever to be used, shaped, changed,
refashioned and adapted by the all-conquering intelligence of man,
which is the tool that Nature has furnished for its own perpetual
improvement. Romanticism has become more business-like in these
practical times, but it is the same romanticism still, with the same
fundamental conception of Reality as an unknowable blank, about
which anything can be predicated, since one man's guess in its
regard is as good as another's. It was in this atmosphere that
" modernism " took its rise, seeking to introduce into Catholic
and Christian thought the erroneous Kantian notion of ultimate
reality, coupled with all the additionally false associations it had
come to acquire in the course of a century. " Modernism " failed
to secure a foothold among Catholic theologians. The years that
saw its life saw also its death. And the reason was the following:
The traditional conception of God is not the empty notion of
being in general. This notion, says St. Thomas, expresses the
nature of nothing, neither the nature of God, nor the nature of
things; it is just a common concept, with nothing specific cor-
responding. And that sage reflection disposes of all the im-
; 4 6 IMMANENCE AND RELIGION [Mar.,
manentist philosophies as colossal misconstructions. The Chris-
tian doctrine of the Divine Immanence is of a higher, nobler,
broader, more inspiring nature than the jumbling absolutist doc-
trine of the same; and because of these five superior qualities
of its worth, it deserved a better fate than to be driven out of the
minds of men by " independent " philosophers, who took neither
the history of philosophy nor the history of theology into account,
but tried to find everything God included within the hollow
folds of their own unhistorical consciousness.
The Christian idea of God portrays the Creator as both im-
manent and transcendent. He is in the world, not of it; omni-
present without being identical, distinct without being distant or
aloof. Infinitely divergent from the world by nature, He is in-
timately present in it none the less on this account as its primal
source, upholding power, and final goal ; acting in all His creatures
without cease; giving them not only power and being, but the
substance of their actions as well; trusting them with the execution
of His Providence; working it out through their cooperation and
allowing its fulfillment to remain largely in their hands ; submitting
His purpose to individual intelligences, passing His power through
created wills, that His world might be a world of real persons,
not of conscious automata that went through their puppet paces
in the years ; giving them dominion over their choices and leaving
them free to seek their own good apart, or His along with it;
and, in case the latter were their election, offering them a divine
destiny over and above the human, which would make them likest
God and fill in the poverty of their own deficient nature with the
infinite riches of His, in a perfect life unending.
This noble conception of God, which gives to human life a
meaning far more sacred than any other ever will or can, was forced
out of the minds of philosophers when Fichte and Hegel falla-
ciously identified the consciousness of development with the de-
velopment of consciousness; this unpardonable confusion engen-
dering the false idea that if you describe the world's growth, you
have thereby accounted fully for its origin. Immanence thus stood
divorced from transcendence ; omnipresence from personality ; and
the external relation of knowledge to its objects was changed
over into an internal relation of objects to the knowledge-process
itself. God's distinct existence and nature became confounded with
a universal self -consciousness; and the world began to be regarded
as a closed system of reality, having the whole reason of its
I 9 i6.] IMMANENCE AND RELIGION 747
existence and activity within itself. Philosophers followed the lead
of the new idea, instead of consulting experience and history.
They did not stop to reflect that a notion so exclusive is impossible
to reason. It was enough for them that it pleased the fancy a
faculty to which romanticism has pandered for a hundred years.
" The construction of the world out of self -consciousness, without
empirically given material," produced on Kant " a ghostly impres-
sion ; " nor would he have felt otherwise, could he have lived
to hear the objective idealists claiming that " the world does not
consist of two things mind and matter but of one thing re-
garded in two ways; mind and matter being no more capable of
existing apart than the concave and convex of a line, or the
positive and negative poles of a magnet." Who can prove the
indissolubility of this tie between mind and matter ? " That an
object apart from a subject is impossible, is obvious, just as it is
impossible there can be a husband without a wife. They are cor-
relative terms. But, as David Hume very acutely argued, though
husbands without wives are nonsense, that is not to say that every
man is married. An object is absurd without a subject, but who
allowed that everything was an object? That is precisely the issue
to be decided." 4
It kindles the imagination to be told that the world is an
" evolving consciousness." The idea of a " germ " is very vivid,
so much so that we exegete the imagery which it contains and be-
come the victims of verbal suggestion. " Say, for example, that
the jelly-fish has 'unrolled' into the Sermon on the Mount, and
you will be condemned out of your own mouth. But say instead
that the jelly-fish has evolved into Shakespeare, the savage code
evolved into the Sermon on the Mount, that my consciousness of
this or that has evolved into a consciousness of that or this, and
instantly a light seems to fall on the origin of Shakespeare and
the wonderful ways of the mind. But the light should not be
trusted too far. There is no trouble with my seeing of the germ;
but by no manner of means can I see a germ of consciousness.
I can no more see consciousness as a germ than I can see it as
an egg or a baby or as Dr. Ritchie's 'roll.' True, having seen
a germ of some sort, I can mentally label it 'mind :' I can see the
various stages of growth with my label hanging to each; I can
see the growth as a whole with the label still there; but when all
4 The Great Fallacy of Idealism. By D. H. Macgregor. Hibbert Journal,
July, 1906, p. 789.
74 8 IMMANENCE AND RELIGION [Mar.,
is done, it is not 'mind' that I have seen but only a label, with
'mind' written upon it, attached to a germ which is neither mind
nor thought nor consciousness. It is the label alone which saves
this language, when put under pressure, from turning into rank
materialism. A slender safeguard Now here I venture to
submit, the psychologist's fallacy is easily detected. It consists,
of course, in treating a consciousness of what is dim to the per-
son being studied, as though it were a dim consciousness of what
is clear to the person who is studying him; a consciousness of
what is confused as though it were a confused consciousness of
what is orderly; a consciousness of an evolving world as though
it were the evolving consciousness of a world; a consciousness of
low gods (or goods) as though it were a low consciousness of
high gods. In short, 'consciousness of degrees' is converted into
'degrees of consciousness,' and the idea of development becomes the
development of the idea." 5
Picture thinking of the kind described has perverted the Chris-
tian conception of God in the minds of those who yield to the
lure of imagery. Exegeting the metaphor of a " germ," they
mistake this exegesis for an objective analysis and imagine that
they have sounded the depths, and discovered the very essence,
of ultimate Reality itself. Starting with the erroneous supposi-
tion that the universal idea of being is the only idea we have or
can frame of God; and finding that this universal idea does not
lend itself to discourse, they proceed to concretize it by the phrase
" unity-in-difference," and to make it viable by introducing the
principle of evolution or development. The " unity " is thus made
to appear as developing into the " differences," and so we have a
self-running and self-explaining world. The verbality of this
" explanation " appears when reflection sets its eagle eye upon
it; the real problem is not the development, but the origin of the
world, and this problem is not distinctly approached, even, in the
jumbling solution which the immanentist offers. The vague no-
tion of being which he imaginatively transforms into the Ground,
of the universe is not the historical religious conception of God at
all, but a philosophical abstraction reified. The Necessary Being,
reason tells us, has all its possibilities realized, none of them to at-
tain. It is incapable of changing, progressing, or developing, hav-
ing within itself the whole reason of its existence in the simul-
'Does Consciousness "Evolve?" By L. P. Jacks. Hibbert Journal, April,
PP- 521, 522; 540.
1916.] IMMANENCE AND RELIGION 749
taneous and complete possession of its unbeginning and unending
perfect life. It is a maximum actual, not a maximum potential
the infinite opposite in every respect of " being in general." Suc-
cession is not its law nor can be; it enters not into composition
with the things that grow, nor may it be a constituent part of
the appearing and disappearing selves that strut for a while on
the stage of the ever-changing. And by the very fact that suc-
cession i-s the law of all selves other, God is distinct from the
universe by the whole diameter of His being, though this must
not be taken to mean that He is spatially removed from us in
inaccessible majesty. " He is not far from each of us " and
operates in all more truly than do individuals themselves with their
bounded existence and powers. Transcendence and immanence;
not transcendence or immanence such is the fact we have to face
when reflection rules, when imagery ceases its rainbow pictures of
allure, and the analysis of the scientific and religious consciousness
is made complete.
Let force and activity and development be as immanent in the
universe as you will; grant even that they are embedded in its
very nature and constitution, interwoven into the very fabric of the
original fire-mist and all that has since come forth from that prim-
itive nebula, of which the scientist is so fond how would you
prove that the immanence of law, order, and development is so
congenital to the universe as never to have been borrowed, so ab-
solutely ingrained as never to have come from without? Would
you appeal to the metaphor of the germ and ask us to imagine
when we are called upon to think? Would you enter a plea in
avoidance instead of facing the evidence as it stands? Is not
the immanence of law, order, and development relative, without
anything even remotely suggestive of its being absolute? By what
right do you regard the uniformity of Nature as a proof of its
eternal necessity? Is not the fact of uniformity as equally com-
patible with a free and spiritual, as with a necessary and me-
chanical, cause? And on what principle previously established do
you manage to convert the positive statement the Cause of the
world is within it into the negative and exclusive statement the
Cause of the world is entirely within it and can have no distinct
life or existence of Its own apart?
Not only does reason demand a Person and the reality of that
Person as the object of religion, the affective side of man's na-
ture his aspirations, ideals, feelings, and hungering quests, re-
750 LIONEL JOHNSON [Mar.,
fuse to be put off or sated with an impersonal abstraction. In the
words of Carlyle, " it is impossible to suppose that conscious in-
telligence and religious emotion were put into us by a being that
counted neither among its original possessions." A world of per-
sons cannot have the impersonal for its source and goal. That would
be to admit that the greater came out of the less and was hurry-
ing back to it again with bounding strides. And such is the sole
meaning of immanence. When modern philosophy at the time
of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel dropped the concept of real per-
sonality and set up the inferior notion of self -consciousness in its
stead, it actually exchanged the Infinite for the indefinite, aban-
doned Western thought for Eastern, and sank to prechristian levels
in its conception of the Divine; not realizing the more's the
pity that " God may be immanent in man, and man be man all
the more for His indwelling; and that God is not less God be-
cause we kindle our flame at His sun, nor is our light the less our
own, because it is received and borrowed."
LIONEL JOHNSON.
BY JOYCE KILMER.
THERE was a murkier tinge in London's air
As if the honest fog blushed black for shame.
Fools sang of sin for other fools' acclaim,
And Milton's wreathe was tossed to Baudelaire.
The flowers of evil blossomed everywhere,
But in their midst a radiant lily came
Candescent, pure, a cup of living flame,
Bloomed for a day, and left the earth more fair.
And was it Charles, thy " fair and fatal King "
Who bade thee welcome to the lovely land?
Or did Lord David cease to harp and sing
To take in his thine emulative hand?
Or did Our Lady's smile shine forth, to bring
Her lyric Knights within her choir to stand?
ONTARIO'S PIONEER PRIEST.
(A TERCENTENARY.)
BY JOHN j. O'GORMAN, S.C.D.
HE Catholic Church in Ontario celebrates this year
its tercentenary. It was in July, 1615, that the
Recollect Franciscan Friar, Joseph Le Caron,
paddled up the Ottawa River and arrived in the land
of the Hurons, there to begin the preaching of the
Gospel in Ontario. The story of the coming of this pioneer priest
can be reconstructed with accuracy from the contemporary writings
of Champlain and Sagard, and from other early authorities.
What is known of the early life of Joseph Le Caron is quickly
told. Born in the year 1586 near Paris, he embraced the eccle-
siastical state, and became chaplain to the Duke of Orleans, and
then to his son, the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII. He aband-
oned his promising ecclesiastical career to join the strictest branch
of the Franciscan Order the Recollects. 1 He was professed in
1611, a year after the succession of Louis to the throne. Three
years later, Champlain, who had founded Quebec in 1608, appealed
to the Recollects to undertake missionary work in Canada. Father
Le Caron was one of the volunteers accepted.
The story of how the first missionaries were obtained for the
infant colony of Canada is well worth giving in detail. Parkman's
account lacks completeness and in some points accuracy. Cham-
plain tells us in his Voyages, published at Paris in 1619, that he
felt that he would be much to blame if he did not provide for the
savages, especially the sedentary ones, some means of bringing
them to a knowledge of God. Hence he was on the lookout for
some zealous Religious who would undertake the work. Six years
had now (1614) elapsed since the foundation of the Habitation
of Quebec, and thus far lack of the necessary funds and other
difficulties had caused him to neglect the matter for the time being.
In 1614 he was more successful. Sieur Houel, Secretary of the
King, and Comptroller-General of the Salt Works of Champlain's
native town of Brouage, became interested and recommended the
Recollect Friars of that town. As Houel was a man zealous for
1 Memoire des Recollets, 1637.
752 ONTARIO'S PIONEER PRIEST [Mar.,
the glory of God and spread of religion, he generously promised
to contribute part of the expenses himself, and considered that it
would not be difficult to get the friars. Pere du Verger, their
Provincial, was at once communicated with, and received the propo-
sition with joy. Of the friars who, burning with zeal, offered
themselves for the work, two were chosen and sent from Brouage
to Paris to get the necessary faculties from the Papal Nuncio.
Monsignor Robert Ubaldini, the Nuncio of Pope Paul V. to France,
told them that to give the necessary faculties exceeded his powers,
hence it was necessary to write to Rome to the procurator of the
order to obtain them of His Holiness. There being no time to do
this before the ships sailed that year for Canada, the monks decided
to wait till the following year. They returned to Brouage.
Champlain and Hoiiel were, however, impatient. A few
months later, Hoiiel applied to Pere du Chapouin, the Provincial
of the Recollects of the Province of St. Denis, that is, of the Paris
Province. He at once took up the matter, and spoke to the Prince
of Conde (who was then Viceroy of New France) and to the
cardinals and bishops then at Paris for the assembly of the States-
General. This historic assembly was held in Paris, in October,
1614. Five cardinals, seven archbishops and forty-seven bishops
were among the one hundred and forty ecclesiastical delegates.
Champlain also appealed to the cardinals and bishops, pointing out
the need and utility of the work. His appeal for church extension
did not fall upon deaf ears. They all approved of the idea of send-
ing four Religious to Canada, and gave Champlain fifteen hundred
livres to supply them with what was necessary. The Nuncio ob-
tained the necessary faculties from the Pope, and the King gave
his letters patent. When Champlain explained to the recently-
organized Company of Associates, which held the commercial mo-
nopoly of Canada, that the Prince of Conde, the Viceroy, wished
Religious in Canada, they were at once willing. Though some of
them were Huguenots, they agreed to transport without cost and
maintain the Recollects. The sending of the first Heralds of the
Cross to Canada 2 had certainly a dramatic beginning. Champlain
standing before the ecclesiastical members of the States-General
of 1614 asking for missionaries for Canada, would make a magnifi-
cent subject for a painter. Whether they realized it or not, that
day a new page of the history of the Church was begun.
'A few secular priests and Jesuits had already done some missionary work in
Acadia, though the fortunes of war had brought their mission the previous year
(1613) to a sudden end.
1916.] ONTARIO'S PIONEER PRIEST 753
The four Recollects chosen for the Canadian mission were
Father Denis Jamet, who was appointed Superior, Father Joseph
Le Caron, Father Jean D'Olbeau, and Brother Pacifique du Plessis.
They proceeded in true Franciscan manner on foot and without
money to Honfleur. There they met Champlain, and all having
gone to confession they embarked on the St. Etienne, a ship of
three hundred and fifty tons, commanded by Sieur de Pont Grave.
They set sail on April 24, 1615, and after a pleasant voyage landed
at Tadousac on May 25th.
There were now three priests in Canada. Father Le Caron
chose as his field the Hurons. Father Jamet as Superior took
charge of Quebec, while to Father D'Olbeau's lot fell the wandering
Montagnais Indians of the Saguenay and the neighborhood. With-
out stopping at Quebec, Father Le Caron proceeded at once to the
Grand Sault where the Hurons were trading. He decided to return
with them to Huronia and pass the winter there. He could thus
spy out the land, learn their language, and see what could be done
to convert them. He returned to Quebec to get a portable altar
and whatever other things were absolutely needed for the winter.
On his way to Quebec, Champlain met him and tried to dissuade him
from going to Huronia. He advised him to spend the winter in
the Habitation at Quebec, pointed out the hardship it would be to
spend the winter alone among the savages, and promised to go with
him the following summer. " Nevertheless," writes Champlain
in his Voyages* " no matter what you would say to him he would
not change his view, being urged on by a divine zeal and a love
of these people, having resolved to make known to them their sal-
vation. What made him undertake this enterprise was, he told us,
the absolute necessity of going there not only to study the
nature of these people, but also to learn their language more readily.
As regards the difficulties which, as pointed out, he must expect
from their manner of living, he assured us that he was ready to
meet them and to bear them, and, with the help of the grace of
God, of which he was certain, to adapt himself joyfully to the
food and discomforts. Since he was going there in the service
of God, since it was for the glory of His Name and the preaching
of His Holy Gospel, that he voluntarily undertook this voyage,
he was sure that He would never abandon him in such resolutions.
As regards temporal discomforts, little was necessary to content a
man who had made profession of perpetual poverty, who looked
^Voyages, Paris, 1619. Pages 13 and 14, author's translation.
VOL. en. 48
754 ONTARIO'S PIONEER PRIEST [Mar.,
for nothing else than heaven, whether for himself or for his
brothers. As it was not in keeping with his Rule to have other
ambitions than the glory of God, he purposed to suffer and support
for the glory of God, all the wants, pains and toils that would be
in store for him. Seeing him urged on by such a holy zeal and
ardent charity," concludes Champlain, " I no longer wished to
deter him. He left with the determination of being the first, with
the help of God's grace, to proclaim there the name of God, and
was filled with joy that an occasion presented itself to suffer some-
thing for the name and glory of Our Lord Jesus Christ."
Father Le Caron continued to Quebec, got his missionary
outfit, and on his way back to the Sault, where the Hurons were,
met Champlain and Father Jamet at Riviere des Prairies. Here
Father Jamet and Father Le Caron said Mass the first ever said
in Canada 4 (apart, of course, from Acadia). This Mass was said
most probably on June 24th, the Feast of St. John the Baptist, who
in recent years has become the patron of French Canadians. The
following day Father D'Olbeau said the first Mass in Quebec.
About July i, 1615, Father Joseph Le Caron and twelve
Frenchmen, who went along to protect the Hurons from the Iro-
quois, left Sault St. Louis for the seven-hundred mile journey with
the Hurons to their own country. The route followed was the
Ottawa River as far as the Mattawa, the Mattawa as far as Lake
Nipissing, and then the French River to Georgian Bay, in other
words the route of the proposed Georgian Bay Canal. The first
part of the journey that is, as far as Allumette Island had been
described by Champlain in the account he had already published of
his trip of the year 1613. The whole journey is described by
Brother Sagard, 5 who made it in 1622, and also by later mission-
aries. Father Le Caron contents himself with this general descrip-
tion : " It would be hard to tell you how tired I was with paddling
all day, with all my strength, among the Indians; wading the
rivers a hundred times and more, through the mud and over the
sharp rocks that cut my feet (he wore only sandals) ; carrying the
canoe and luggage through the woods to avoid the rapids and
frightful cataracts; and half-starved all the while, for we had
nothing to eat but a little sagamite, a sort of porridge of water and
pounded maize. Yet I must avow that amid my pains I felt much
consolation. For alas ! when we see such a number of infidels,
4 Cartier speaks of Mass having been said, but as no priest accompanied him
in his voyages, he refers merely to the custom of a layman reading the prayers
from a missal. *Le Grand Voyage au Pays des Hurons, Paris, 1632.
1916.] ONTARIO'S PIONEER PRIEST 755
and nothing but a drop of water is needed to make them children
of God, one feels an ardor, which I cannot express, to labor for
their conversion and to sacrifice for it one's repose and life."
By the end of July, Father Le Caron arrived at the Huron
country, being the first white man to see Lake Huron. He landed
near the village of Toanche. Toanche Landing, called by Cham-
plain Otoucha, was on the northern shore of Penetanguishene Bay.
It was here, according to Brother Sagard, that the first Mass was
said. 6
Meanwhile Champlain, having taken council with Pont Grave,
had decided also to go to the Huron country, and lead an expe-
dition against the Iroquois. He left a few days after Father Le
Caron and the main body of the Hurons with two Frenchmen and
ten Indians. Champlain's little party in two canoes arrived without
mishap in the Huron country on August ist. A few days later
Champlain found Father Le Caron in Carhagouha. This was on
the northern shore of Nottawasaga Bay, an indentation of the
Georgian Bay. It was seven or eight miles southwest of Toanche.
It is within the present limits of the parish of Lafontaine, diocese of
Toronto. Carhagouha was an important fortified Huron town,
surrounded by a palisade thirty-six feet high. Great was the sur-
prise of the missionary to see Champlain. An arrow-shot from
the village a cabin was built with poles and bark to serve as a
chapel and cell for the priest. Everything being arranged, Mass
was said by Father Le Caron on" August I2th in the presence of
Champlain and the fourteen Frenchmen. After Mass a cross was
planted amid the noise of their muskets and the solemn chant of a
Te Deum. With the saying of this Mass and the planting of this
cross, the Catholic history of Ontario may be said to begin.
Ten days later Champlain left Carhagouha, and Father Le
Caron did not see him again till January, when he and the Huron
braves returned from their unsuccessful expedition against the
Iroquois. Meanwhile the heroic missionary endeavored to learn
the Huron language and instruct the poor savages. The villagers
were quite friendly to him. Indeed when he first came they had
offered to lodge him in one of their own huts, which the priest
had very wisely declined. Several families lived together in these
huts, in filth and immorality. Though some of the savages came
daily to the priest's cell or cabin, to learn about God and how to
pray to Him, the work of conversion was slow. The moral law of
the Christians was an insuperable obstacle to savages, by whom
6 Sagard, Histoire du> Canada, p. 224, Paris, 1635.
; 5 6 ONTARIO'S PIONEER PRIEST [Mar.,
fornication and adultery were considered lawful and universally
practised, and by whom revenge on one's enemies was lauded as the
greatest virtue. Nevertheless the priest continued to pray and work.
He said Mass daily alone, as he and the later missionaries never
allowed pagans to assist at Mass. After his morning prayers and
meditation, Mass having been said and breviary recited, he would
begin his daily task of learning Huron, and teaching Christian
Doctrine in that language.
Champlain returned from his Iroquois campaign in January,
and as the Hurons were unwilling to bring him back to Quebec he
had to spend the rest of the winter with them. He and Father Le
Caron visited the Petuns or Tobacco nation. The Petuns belonged
to the same Indian family as the Hurons, and linguistically differed
but little from them. The Hurons proper occupied the territory
between Nottawasaga Bay and Lake Simcoe. The Petun's territory
extended from Nottawasaga Bay to Lake Huron. Algonquin tribes
frequently camped in the Petun territory. The visit of Champlain
and Father Le Caron to this territory lasted a month. At the in-
stigation of the Petun Oki or sorcerers the priest was cruelly
treated. Nevertheless he succeeded in baptizing some children and
some old men who were dying.
On their return to the Huron country, Father Le Caron con-
tinued his study of the language and teaching of Christian Doctrine.
He went from village to village to lay the foundations of the mis-
sions he proposed to establish. He composed the first Huron dic-
tionary, which Leclercq, who saw it, pronounced to be fairly cor-
rect. More could not be expected. For as Charlevoix, speaking
of Le Caron, said, the Huron language cannot be learned in one
or two years, give it what application you will. Another difficulty
he had to contend with was the scandalously immoral lives of the
dozen French trappers who had accompanied the pious Champlain.
Immoral Christian traders have always been a bane to the Catholic
missionary. The pioneer priest had now spied out the land. It
was necessary to report to headquarters the plan for its definite
conquest to Christianity. So when in May, Champlain succeeded
in getting a few Hurons to bring him to Quebec, Father Le Caron
went along with him. They left May 20, 1616, and arrived at
Three Rivers, July ist. The importance of the year that Father
Le Caron had spent with the Hurons can scarcely be over-estimated.
He had found the way to what was destined to be, a generation
later, the greatest missionary field north of Mexico.
A BUDDING DIPLOMAT.
BY THOMAS B. REILLY.
ENDING the arrival of his dinner, Bobby Carter sat
reading a letter. It had been dated at Paris and was
from his Aunt Susan. Midway the first page, he
leaned back and laughed, then re-read the provoca-
tive passage:
So you're at San Cataldo, an old haunt of yours? Making
a three days' retreat, are you ? Well, if your conscience is sting-
ing you, 'tis no more than you deserve. A nice muddle you've
made of things just when your friends were preparing a
royal send-off for both of you! Was America so hostile a
place that you had to find sanctuary on this side of the water?
I met Nanette the day I sailed, and tried to get her side of
the story. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled. She's just
as exasperating as you are. I dare say you quarreled over
the silliest of trifles. You never did have tact or judgment.
If ever you prove the contrary, I'll gladly send you a check
for a thousand. That's how strong my conviction is ! Don't
be foolish. Nanette's a girl worth fighting for. Go home. It
isn't too late yet.
" Home ! " exclaimed Bobby, " not for a million ! That's
how strong my conviction is ! As for that thousand "
But just then Marianna Lombardo brought him his dinner.
" Signorino will have coffee ? " inquired the old woman.
"If you please," agreed Bobby.
Marianna nodded, but lingered hesitant, apologetic.
" My daughter," she began with a troubled shake of her head.
: ' Yes," encouraged Bobby gently.
" She wishes to go to your country," said the other, brushing
one eye with a corner of her apron.
" Not Adrianna ! " said Bobby, frowning.
' Yes," declared the old woman with a shrug, " but she
won't be contented there. She'll never be satisfied any place any
; 5 8 A BUDDING DIPLOMAT [Mar.,
Bobby looked up inquiringly at the brown, old, troubled coun-
tenance.
" She'll be asking to come home again in less than a month,"
said Marianna.
"But why?" he insisted.
"Eh!" replied the old woman fretfully, " Gigi has taken
up with another in the village down there."
She threw out a gesture toward San Cataldo.
" Gigi ? " sought Bobby, frowning incomprehension.
" The young man that boards here," explained Marianna with
a flourish. " He is clerk to the syndic. He will be coming for his
dinner presently."
" Oh o," said Bobby. He considered a moment then sug-
gested :
" Suppose you send Adrianna down with the coffee things."
" Perhaps you could dissuade her," advanced the old woman
solicitously.
" It's possible," admitted Bobby.
Shortly thereafter, Adrianna Nanetta Lombardo, with a tray
of coffee things, came slowly down the garden path. She was not
very tall. Her hair, black as midnight yet softly luminous, crowned
a lovely face. Her eyes, deep- fringed, were very brown, very
limpid. An afterglow of melancholy made them specially arres-
tive. For the moment, they claimed their honest due an honest
admiration. She listessly uncovered a dish of sugar squares, raised
her eyes and asked:
"One or two?"
" None please," said Bobby. And, smiling up at her, he
asked quietly: "Won't you be seated?"
She pondered the invitation a second, then seated herself.
Bobby, lazily fingering the handle of his cup, suddenly looked
across the table and remarked:
" I hear you're going to America? "
" How did you know? " demanded the girl.
" Your mother tells me that you're determined to go," he
replied.
The girl shrugged her shoulders, but made no rejoinder.
"Why?" urged Bobby.
" Eh because," murmured the girl, looking off across the
garden.
" Oh," said he, " that's the reason, is it? "
I 9 i6.] A BUDDING DIPLOMAT 759
'" Y e s," said Adrianna slowly, refusing to look at him.
Bobby, pushing aside his coffee things, leaned forward and in-
quired :
" And does he know that you are going? "
" But certainly," she replied with a look.
"If you go," said Bobby warningly, " he'll laugh at you and
tell the joke to all his friends."
"Joke! " exclaimed the girl, her dark eyes flashing.
" Certainly," asserted Bobby. " And he'd tell everybody that
you'd be home again in no time. And when you came back, he'd
just look at you and smile, as much as to say, 'Why, I thought you'd
gone to America ! What brings you back here, I wonder ?' '
The girl looked at him in amazement. Before she could frame
a response, however, a third party entered on the scene. Adrianna
glanced at the newcomer, got to her feet, gathered up a few of
the coffee things, set her lips tightly together, and went stiffly up
the garden walk. The intruder, seating himself at a nearby table,
took in Bobby Carter with a slow, appraising regard. It was
a suspicious scrutiny. There was almost a warning in Gigi's glit-
tering black eyes.
" Hm m," mused Bobby, " a heart betwixt and between. No
wonder he doesn't look happy."
Whereupon Bobby sought his room for a siesta. An hour
later he emerged from his nap with an access of industry. He
laid hold of his writing case to find himself rich in envelopes, but
with no sign of note paper. He debated a second, examined his
matchsafe, then announced : " We also need matches. Moreover
a walk will do us good."
An hour later, he was seated in the garden of the public inn
at San Cataldo. On a chair beside him were his gloves, walking
stick, a package of wax tapers and a ream of writing paper. He
was indolently gazing out at the splashing waters of the fountain
in the square, when he heard a step behind him and a voice hum-
ming, " Del mio cuore 1'impero non cedo."
" Indeed," murmured Bobby. The next moment, he found
himself looking up into two brilliant dark eyes. He took the crea-
ture in with a somewhat quizzical glance. She was handsome no
doubt of that. Still there was something lacking. He tried to fix
the missing element, but it escaped him. She returned his stare
with interest and an attitude that demanded, " Well what do you
think of me? " And, in a flash, he had the missing element fixed,
7 6o A BUDDING DIPLOMAT [Mar.,
posted, labeled. And he passed sentence on the poser before him
" heartless coquette, trifler." But aloud :
" You may fetch me some sweet cakes and coffee."
" Is that all? " doubted the beauty with an uplift of her eye-
brows.
" For the present," he replied with a dignity that admitted of
no rejoinder.
Wherewith the trifler went up the garden walk warbling light-
heartedly, " La donna e mobile, qual piuma al vento."
" Man," observed Bobby Carter, " man is a brute. He isn't
expected to have a heart. But a woman "
He considered a moment, then wondered :
" And yet, that's just the sort of creature to wind us about her
thumb. Why?"
He caught a glimpse of the elusive reason a few moments
later, when the poser, having arranged his frugal refreshment,
stood regarding him out of her really magnificent eyes. Bobby
broke a sweet cake.
The beauty sighed. Then both looked up at a third party.
" Oh ho," said Bobby to himself, as two glittering black eyes
swept him with a glance of censure, of veiled warning.
" The gentleman will excuse you," said Gigi dryly.
" Can't you see that I'm engaged ? " pouted the beauty, turning
her back upon the discomfited representative of the municipality.
Bobby Carter with commendable discretion munched a sweet
cake. Gigi hesitated, favored Bobby with a glance of defiant in-
quiry, withdrew, seated himself at a neighboring table, impatiently
lighted a cigarette, and scowled.
" He's such a a boy," threw out the coquette, " I can do noth-
ing at all with him."
Bobby acknowledged this advance with a slight uplift of his
eyebrows.
" He is a clerk to the syndic," she remarked, as one who would
say, " A big fish in the waters hereabout."
" Indeed," he murmured.
" Signore is an American?" sought the flirt with a tone of
invitation in her voice.
Bobby bowed politely but distantly.
" It is a very wonderful country, I suppose," sighed the vi-
sionary.
" Yes," conceded Bobby.
1916.] A BUDDING DIPLOMAT 761
" Such great cities," offered the other, a look of annoyance
stirring in her dark eyes.
" Yes," he agreed, sipping a drop of alleged coffee from
the end of his spoon.
The poser smiled. It was not an altogether indifferent
smile. She pouted an altogether fetching pout. She leaned for-
ward, and her black eyes, as they met those of her intended vic-
tim, were certainly glorious; and her voice was so tender that
even her intended victim marveled, and she said :
" Signore is not well perhaps ? "
" Why yes, thank you," returned Bobby, rising and gathering
up his possessions. He placed a coin on the table, gravely lifted his
cap and murmured:
" Good day, signorina."
ff Good day, signorino," laughed the baffled one.
Down at the gateway, Bobby paused, looked back, and smiled.
A passionate discussion was taking place under the trees in the
garden.
" Young man," said Bobby, " if I were to present you with
a gift, it would be the thought that all that glitters is not gold."
In the middle of the village square, he paused once again, and ad-
mitted : "She certainly is magnificent."
This may or may not explain why, exactly at the noon hour,
the following day, Bobby Carter again entered the garden of the
public inn at San Cataldo. He chose the same table he had oc-
cupied the day previous. And, as on the previous day, the trifler,
a song on her red lips, a smile in her black eyes, came tripping down
the garden walk. Bobby ordered with magnificence and lavishness.
The poser received his commands with a running stream of com-
ments little nothings that taken together' made less. Twenty
minutes later she was desperately engaged in breaking down the
man's stubborn resistance. Midway his repast, he relaxed, gradually
thawed, and achieved two consecutive sentences. By the time
coffee was served he had melted to the measure of a challenging
smile. And, finally, as an earnest of his capitulation, he begged the
triumphant creature to be seated. Whereupon she promptly laughed
at him. Bobby with a fine assumption of alarmed disappointment,
was just on the point of protesting, when something happened.
Gigi, eyes flashing, was striding toward the two interested
players.
The beauty immediately transferred her attentions to Gigi.
762 A BUDDING DIPLOMAT [Mar.,
Bobby sighed audibly; whereupon the flirt paused, glanced over
her shoulder, and winked at him. Bobby promptly returned the
promise, then frowned pleadingly. Gigi escorted the irresistible
one to a neighboring table, whence he managed to keep one defiant
eye on his rival. Bobby, with puckered lips, looked up at the tree
tops a moment, lighted a cigarette, frowned a second, then de-
liberately left his matchsafe on the table. A half-hour later he was
back. at the tavern, where he ordered a pot of coffee. Adrianna
brought it to him down in the garden. She stood regarding him
pensively from under her long lashes. She lingered near the
table, as one reluctant in the face of a difficult but obvious duty.
Bobby having tasted his coffee, gave vent to a little congratulatory
" Ah h." Then he looked up. His smiling glance was met by one
that was rather stern, somewhat sad, vaguely reproachful. He
wondered.
" Why did you go there to-day ? " suddenly asked Adrianna,
frowning.
" Go where? " he countered.
" To that inn," answered Adrianna, shaking her hand dis-
approvingly.
He fortified himself with some coffee, before asking:
" But how did you know? "
" I was at the post office," she informed him. " And I was
there yesterday too," she added.
" Oh o," said Bobby, enlightened.
" She doesn't care for you," announced Adrianna. " She cares
for no one except herself."
" Do you know," returned Bobby seriously, " that's just what
I think myself." And, breaking into a smile, he asked: " When
are you going to America? "
Adrianna shook her head from side to side.
" Nothing definitely settled yet? " he suggested.
" Nothing," repeated Adrianna wearily.
Bobby, looking up at her troubled countenance, mused :
" For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear my tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth."
And, as the girl looked at him frowningly, he translated the
thought into her language. Whereupon she studied him rather
I9i6.] A BUDDING DIPLOMAT 763
sympathetically a moment, then asked : " Have you been disap-
pointed in love? "
" No one is ever disappointed in love," returned Bobby, re-
pressing a smile.
" Yes they are," murmured the girl, absently fingering the
edge of her apron.
" Not much ! " he declared stressfully. " One may be disap-
pointed in the person, but in the emotion never! " And, after a
pause, " Did you ever read the poets ? "
" Sometimes," admitted the girl. " They always know how
to say the things you often feel but can't express. Some of them
are very wise."
" Well," said Bobby, amused, " it was one of the wise ones
that expressed the opinion that
Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
Adrianna frowned incomprehension. Whereupon he achieved
a translation of the sentiment.
" That is really true," said the girl musingly, her brown eyes
filled with a wistful light. " It is very hard to explain, isn't it? "
" The conviction ? " sought Bobby.
" No," murmured Adrianna, " I mean what love really is."
" Oh ! " said he, again forcing back a smile.
" Sometimes," confessed Adrianna pensively, " sometimes, it
seems to be the cruelest thing in the world. And sometimes some-
times She stood at a loss, silent.
" Never mind," sympathized Bobby, " I know just what you
mean. You'll find it one thing to-day and another to-morrow. It's
honey and gall, song and silence, sunrise and darkness. It can
blossom in the soul of an outcast, and bloom in the heart of a king.
It's the simplest thing in the world and a mystery. It's the great
solace of life and an agony. And yet
The pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are."
" Love isn't anything like that," murmured the girl.
" What is it then," he demanded.
" I don't know," mused Adrianna. " It just is."
764 A BUDDING DIPLOMAT [Mar.,
" But," argued Bobby with a flourish, " that's no explanation
at all."
" Well," announced Adrianna firmly, " its something that
makes you better than you really are. It gives you strength to do
things that otherwise you couldn't do. It makes you see many
beautiful things that you never noticed before. It makes you happy
even when you feel most like crying. It makes you hope. It makes
you feel alive."
" I couldn't have put it better myself," admitted Bobby.
" Still you've never really lived until you've suffered the pang of
a hope possessed and lost."
" Suffering is good for us, I suppose," sighed the girl.
" We couldn't be happy without it," observed Bobby. " And
have you ever noticed that it's always the one we love best that
makes us suffer most ? I w r onder why that should be ? "
" They don't understand," said the girl simply, making ready
to go. Tray in hand, she started slowly up the garden walk, turned
and came back. Bobby looked up inquiringly.
" Have you ever suffered like that? " she asked quietly.
" What do you think? " he submitted, smiling up at her.
" I don't know what to think of you sometimes," replied
Adrianna.
" Think of me," said Bobby, his eyes a-twinkle, " think of me
as a budding diplomat."
" I never know when you are serious," complained the girl,
moving on up the walk.
" Well," he called out after her, " that proves my title,
doesn't it?"
The following day, after luncheon, Bobby sat gazing worriedly
up at the blue skies. Adrianna watched him solicitously for awhile,
then asked :
" Are you in trouble? "
" No," replied Bobby, " merely in a quandary. I left my
matchsafe down there."
" Not at that inn ! " exclaimed Adrianna.
' Yes ; and I wouldn't care to lose it," he replied.
Adrianna frowned.
" I've got to go get it," he announced in a tone of apprehen-
sion. For a few moments, the girl staring absently at her hands,
made no rejoinder. Suddenly she looked at Bobby rather shyly
and asked:
1916.] A BUDDING DIPLOMAT 765
" Do you object to walking down to the village with me? "
" Object ! " exclaimed Bobby, drawing back, as one thoroughly
misunderstood. " Why, I was going to ask you to come with me."
" Oh ! " murmured Adrianna, blushing. She hesitated a mo-
ment before informing him, " Because I don't care to have you go
there again alone. Will you wait till I change my dress ? "
" Certainly/' replied Bobby.
An hour later, with design aforethought, he led the blushing
Adrianna Lombardo across the public square directly in front of
and past the syndic's office. At the window thereof, a startled ob-
server, stood Gigi. Five minutes later, in the garden of the public
inn, Bobby was giving his order for sweet cakes and milk. The
beauty politely but thoroughly ignored his companion. Neverthe-
less, when she returned with the refreshments, she smiled down at
Adrianna Lombardo, who should say, " You little innocent thing! "
Then she turned her superior talent toward Bobby, mixing her
small talk with melting glances. At first, Bobby held aloof.
Finally, he yielded and became an open party to an interchange of
empty nothings. Adrianna, surprised, grew restless, then appre-
hensive. At last, she touched Bobby's arm and reminded him of
his mission.
" Oh, yes," he remarked with a smile, " I left my matchsafe
here yesterday. Did you find it? "
" You didn't get it yet ! " exclaimed the poser, drawing back
in an attitude of astonishment. " Why I told Gigi to be sure to
give it to you last evening." She smiled patronizingly down at
Adrianna Lombardo.
After a brief pause Bobby said that no doubt it escaped his
memory. " But," he added, " I thank you very much for your
thoughtfulness, your extreme kindness."
He bowed graciously and ventured a glance toward the square.
He saw what he saw. When he again looked up at the poser, there
was an altogether different expression on his countenance. And,
with a steady look at the flirtatious eyes, he said:
" It was a gift. I wouldn't have lost it for worlds."
Adrianna flashed him a glance of understanding. The beauty
frowned; in her black eyes there crept a light, and on her vividly
red lips there hung a question. And though it hung there de-
pendent, unexpressed, the estimable Bobby answered it.
" It was a gift," said he, " from the truest, the most honest
woman I ever knew; true to her heart, honest in her least motive.
;66 A BUDDING DIPLOMAT [Mar.,
She was the kind of woman to whom faith, loyalty, sincerity, were
everything; the sort of woman that made men better than they
thought they could be. She gave me that matchsaf e. I have always
treasured it as a reminder of precious things, among them the quali-
ties of true womanhood. I shall be many times your debtor for
its restoration."
The trifler stood silent, an expression on her countenance as
one uncertain whether she had just been thanked or rebuked or
both.
" There's a story connected with that matchsafe," began Bobby.
But just then something happened.
Gigi, plainly anxious, almost humble of mien, was coming
slowly down the pathway. As he drew near, .he looked at Bobby
and, holding out the matchsafe, murmured:
" If signore will pardon me? I forgot all about it last night."
"Why certainly," said Bobby, rising to receive his keepsake.
And as Gigi's hand met his, it lingered overlong. Bobby, divining
the intent, held it and asked : " If you will join us at some re-
freshments ? "
" No," demurred Gigi with a sidelong glance at Adrianna,
" I was on my way home. I saw you from the gateway and re-
membered the matchsafe."
" Ah," remarked the designing Bobby, " in that case I'll walk
with you both as far as the square."
There was a momentary pause, in the midst of which the
beauty, with a scornful shrug of her shoulders, turned and left her
customers to their own insipid affairs. Bobby ignored the dis-
courtesy. Gigi frowned. Adrianna, eyes downcast, stirred un-
easily.
Out on the public square, Bobby bridged an embarrassing mo-
ment by announcing : " I've got to leave you, now. I must send
off a very important telegram and mail a letter."
" But," began Adrianna nervously.
" No no," he quickly interposed, " don't wait for me. I shall
be sometime. Good-bye for awhile and good luck ! "
A few minutes later, he stood regarding the two figures mov-
ing hand in hand along the highway in the direction of the inn.
" Yes," mused Bobby with a nod of his head. " It's some-
thing that makes you better than you really are."
Then he went to send his telegram and mail his letter. The
first was addressed to Miss Nanette Waringford, care of the purser
1916.] A BUDDING DIPLOMAT 767
of the steamship Aller of the North German Lloyd, at Naples, and
it read : " Will meet you on arrival of ship at Genoa. Everything
arranged according to plan."
The letter, which was very brief, was addressed to Mrs.
Sushanna Barton, Hotel Mercedes, Paris. Bobby read it through
with a smile. It announced :
I've never known you to fail so thoroughly. Where was
that boasted intuition of yours? There was no quarrel. As
for my sudden departure well, the deciding factor was that
" royal send-off," which our friends (?) insisted on arranging.
Nanette, her mother and myself, concluded that such pagan
parade and publicity might well be dispensed with. Nanette
and her mother arrive at Genoa on the seventeenth. The
wedding takes place at the Madeleine, nuptial Mass, morn-
ing of the twenty-first, nine o'clock sharp! After congratula-
tions, you are to come to share a wedding breakfast at the Grand
Hotel, where you may hand over that check for a thousand.
I'll have a very present use for it.
Bobby frowned a moment, then added a P. S., which read : " It
has been earned twice. I'll tell you how when I see you."
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW.
BY DANIEL A. LORD, S.J.
I.
HEN George Bernard Shaw speaks," said a recent
critic, " the world listens." Ten years or more ago,
those who listened laughed. To-day those who listen
are in large part serious. It has been the remarkable
destiny of George Bernard Shaw to pass within a
brief span from the position of jester extraordinary to the English-
speaking people to that of a philosopher, with a message so serious
that he scarcely dares couch it in serious form. When Arms and the
Man appeared, England flattered itself that a new light had broken
over the field of comedy. The seriousness of Widowers' Houses
and even of Mrs. Warren's Profession was forgotten. Of the old
intense days of the Shavian " trumpet and cart " Socialism, cul-
tured England knew next to nothing. Shavian paradoxes became
the banter of the hour. Men laughed at Bernard Shaw's exag-
gerated posing and his delicious drollery. The crack of his bladder
on English morality and ideals and religion amused them as only
men can be amused who are quite sure that even their heel is in-
vulnerable. Mr. Shaw gained the public ear as a harmless monte-
bank, far too fond of a jest to care for truth, and quite too con-
ceited to be serious.
Yet there were all the while men who looked behind the painted
grin to find tense lips and unsmiling eyes. Beneath the pose and
the paradox, the gay flippancy and the careless exaggeration, they
detected a grim seriousness even more intense than that which had
marked the old days of villainous slouch hats, of Socialist carts
in Hyde Park, of Fabian societies, and even of Anarchism. Some
detected to approve ; others, to condemn. But though they differed
as widely as G. K. Chesterton, Joseph McCabe, Archibald Hender-
son, Clement Scott, and William Archer in their estimates of his
philosophic worth, they were unanimous in pronouncing Bernard
Shaw the most serious humorist since Moliere. And they were
taking him at his own rating.
Waggery [he said] as a medium is invaluable When
1916.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 769
first I began to promulgate my opinions, I found that they ap-
peared extravagant and even insane. In order to gain a hear-
ing, it was necessary for me to attain the footing of a
privileged lunatic, with the license of a jester. Fortunately, the
matter was very simple. I found that I had only to say with
simplicity what I seriously meant just as it struck me to make
everybody laugh My method is to take the utmost
trouble to find the right thing to say and then to say it with
the utmost levity. And all the time the real joke is that I
am in earnest.
I am not really a conceited man. It is only a pose to pre-
vent the English people from seeing that I am serious. If
they did, they would make me drink the hemlock. 1
To-day, only the man who knows nothing of the real Bernard
Shaw forgets the philosopher in the humorist. For the others, he
is a serious man using to its full the jester's privilege of preaching
a serious philosophy without meeting the fate of an historical
philosopher. And taking him at his own rating and at the rating of
his best critics, I, too, choose to consider Mr. Shaw as an intensely
serious man.
In proportion to the growing seriousness of his purpose has
been the increasing lightness of his literary vehicle. Had Mr.
Shaw been born half a century back, the drama as a means of
propaganda would have been quite out of fashion. Then he would
have written novels like Charles Reade's diatribes. But the drama
built like a thesis which one of the characters proposes, another
lives, and the rest discuss in lengthy dialogues, was rising into
popular favor. Ibsen, Hauptmann, Maeterlinck and their ilk found
a collaborator in the person of the brilliant Mr. Shaw. His genius
for epigram, his undoubted originality and wit, his power of sus-
tained dialogue, made him a facile master of the new dramatic form.
And his artistic gifts drew him an extensive audience from those
who do not care if your theories are false, so long as your literary
manners are faultless. From Widowers' Houses to Androcles and
Pygmalion, Mr. Shaw has run the gamut from unrelieved serious-
ness to fantastic farcery. For Mr. Shaw has adopted the gentle
policy of laughing his adversaries to death.
And Bernard Shaw's adversaries are legion. Few negative
philosophers have been so at odds with all accepted truth. The
1 George Bernard Shaw, a critical biography by Archibald Henderson; published
with the authorization and revision of Mr. Shaw. Page 199 and passim.
VOL. cil. 49
770 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [Mar.,
standards of religion, morality, economics and art which the pre-
ceding ages have reared are in his eyes wrong, quite wrong; and
fate or the Life Force has benignly sent Bernard Shaw to bowl
them over. Nothing loath, Bernard Shaw rolled up his sleeves and
has been hard at it ever since. At first he failed. The grim
seriousness of Widowers? Houses and Mrs. Warren's Profession
left the public unscathed. The bitter indictment of middle-class
tenement owners found each member of rather slim audiences with
a perfect alibi in his hand. Economists who were wise laughed
incontinently at the Socialistic morality of Mrs. Warren's Profes-
sion; economists who believed that the theatre is not the proper
place for moral clinics pronounced it simply unfit for presentation.
The public declined to take Bernard Shaw seriously as a preacher of
morality.
But when one cannot prove his own views, it is always possible
to laugh at the views of others. As a substitute for argument,
ridicule and satire are simply invaluable. So Voltaire had found,
and Tom Paine, and Ingersoll; and so in his turn did Bernard
Shaw. The conventions and standard of past ages must be made
too absurd for serious consideration. Laugh and the world laughs
with you; for if it will not laugh from enjoyment, it will laugh for
fear you may fancy it is slow at catching a point. It is as a satirist
that Mr. Shaw has gained the public ear.
Yet satire is a desperately dangerous weapon. It breeds in its
wielder a queer twist of mind that makes him see everything out
of focus. To your thorough-going satirist, nothing is sacred. He
will lay anything, no matter how precious, between the stones of
his mill. Even Moliere, for all his Catholic instinct, went beyond
the bounds and satirized what was worthy of serious respect.
Satire can only be trusted to one who can prove his claim to a heart
full of human kindness. Such a man will pick out for the target
of his satire, men's foibles and follies which degrade the divinity
within them. He will smite with his lightning the pride and vanity
and petty meannesses that weigh men down in their flight toward
God. He will strike not so much because he hates the vice as
because he loves the victim. His love of virtue will make him
unsparing in his war on vice. Like Thackeray, he will wing his
bitterest arrows at Major Pendennis; but he will stand with un-
covered head as Laura Bell passes by. More than that. The
satirist must be put under bonds that in killing what he considers
wrong, he does not slay the guiltless. He must prove that his
1916.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 771
vision is clear and strong. A perfect satirist would have the heart
of a mother and the vision of an archangel. A man who satirizes
with but imperfect knowledge is a blind man shooting at a target.
He may hit his mark; more likely death and destruction will
attend his gunplay.
In almost every point the satire of Bernard Shaw fails. It is a
cruel and deadly thing. Wonderfully brilliant, scintillating at times,
it cuts to the quick even while its brilliancy blinds the eye. Like
Swift's, it never flashes but to kill. Bernard Shaw, I honestly
believe, is a man with friends whose affection he has gained and
with dependents whose loyalty he has merited. But judged from
his plays and his public utterances, Bernard Shaw is a hopeless mis-
anthrope. He has committed the unconceivable crime of never
falling in love with any of his own characters; even they are the
objects of his fine derision, sinking, at the moment when they
threaten to approach something like heroism, into abysmal depths
of cowardice and selfishness and petty vanity.
The fancied foibles and vices of men offend his taste; but he
loses sight of the victim in his hatred of the vice. With eyes firmly
riveted on the weakness and faults inherent in human nature, he
has come to mistake these for human nature itself. The satirist in
him has distorted the judge of human nature. His characters are
human only in so far as they are faulty. Forgetful of the heroic
qualities that give to a race its martyrs, its mothers, its nuns, he
does not reflect that the faults and foibles of men are not the things
that make our human nature, but the things that spoil it. He for-
gets that the highest Type of man, Who was also God, shows us
the human nature completely perfect, because it was completely
without fault.
And when we come to consider the institutions against which
Mr. Shaw flings his satire, we realize how desperately mistaken
satire can become. Mr. Shaw has a fine scorn of the painters of
the middle and late Renaissance. Good; if he cares to condemn
Raphael and Correggio with all their paintings to the lowest depths
of Tartarus, he may if it lies in his power. Men lived for centuries
without these masterpieces, and they can live for centuries more
without them. But when he condemns to the same place Chris-
tianity and the natural law, a halt must be called. The coming of
Christ forced men to insert new words into their vocabularies,
words that stood for virtues of which their lives had not felt even
a trace. Christianity and the natural law are the only things that
772 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [Mar.,
stand between man and the lowest dephs of savagery. And whether
that savagery be the lust and butchery of Kaffir tribes, or the
lust of the temples of Venus and the butchery of the Colosseum,
is a matter of indifference. It is enough that Christianity
brings to Kaffir and Roman the saving virtues of purity and
brotherly love. That alone would make a thoughtful man bow be-
fore it.
Mr. Shaw has not realized that there are things too sacred for
the satire of any man. One cannot be a humorist on all subjects, and
Christianity and the natural law are two of these. Many centuries
ago certain satirists went forth from Jerusalem and stood beneath
the dying Victim of their blindness. " If Thou be the Son of God,"
they cried, with a sense of their own vast humorousness, " come
down from the cross and we will believe in Thee." But though
many struck their breasts, it is not recorded that any man laughed.
And no man laughs at that satire to-day.
For Christianity Mr. Shaw professes a contempt that is almost
nausea.
I loathe the mass of mean superstitions and misunderstood
prophecies which is still rammed down the throats of the
children of this country under the name of Christianity as
contemptuously as ever. 2
The Christian God he describes in his reply to Nordau as a
" frightfully jealous and vindictive old gentleman sitting on a
throne above the clouds; " while " heaven is a sort of bliss which
would drive any active person to a second death." Of the pivotal
doctrine of Christianity, he has just this to say:
Popular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its
chief sensation a sanguinary execution after torture, and for
its central mystery an insane vengeance bought off by a
trumpery expiation. 3
Personal immortality, he utterly refuses to take seriously.
The idea of personal salvation is intensely repugnant to me
when it is not absurd I think the trouble has come about
through imagining that there are only two attributes eternal
life and utter extinction in death. I believe neither of these
theories to be correct. Life continually tends to organize itself
* Freethinker, November, 1908. Quoted by Joseph McCabe.
'Preface to Major Barbara.
1916.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 773
into higher and better forms. There is no such thing as per-
sonal immortality; and death, as Weissman says, is only the
means of economizing life
I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead
and done for scrapped to make room for somebody better,
cleverer, more perfect than myself. 4
For the Saints he has only pity.
And I regard St. Athanasius as an irreligious fool that is,
in the only serious sense of the word, a damned fool.
Put in less blank and honest fashion, the same contempt finds
expression in his plays. Man and Superman, the dramatized
philosophy of Mr. Shaw, is ornamented with a scene in hell, which
for blasphemies it would be rather difficult to duplicate. Hell is a
delightfully cheery place, filled with the joys of art and music and
beauty and life. Heaven is a sort of refrigerator decorated in
neutral tints where bored companies sit about and, between yawns,
contemplate. Contemplation Mr. Shaw seems to imagine as a
form of amusement like looking at picture postcards twenty-four
hours a day in the midst of a company of anaemics and mental
defectives. The devil, who is a joyous combination of Harry
Bailey, Petronius and Hammerstein, has the highest respect and
affection of his guests, as he has the highest respect of Bernard
Shaw. God is an enlarged Puritan minister who, with genuine
Puritan zeal, has banned from his domains all the joys of life,
and whose guests live on the verge of physical collapse from tedium.
Clergymen are frequent figures in Mr. Shaw's plays, only two
to my knowledge being Catholic priests. Without exception, they
are futile or absolutely disgusting. Morell, 5 in the face of a real
spiritual problem, is a helpless, conceited, self-satisfied dolt, without
enough red blood in his veins to thrash the degenerate Marchbanks. 5
The bishop in Getting Married sits calmly by, muttering inanities
through a matrimonial controversy that would go straight to the
heart of Helen Key. No clergyman I have encountered since the
unspeakable Lutheran of " Thelma " more disgusted me than the
Rev. Samuel Gardner. 6 While of the two priests in John Bull's
Other Island, one is a brow-beating, ignorant tyrant, and the other
is mad.
Martyrs he has caricatured to the full in Androcles and the
4 G. B. S., 447. On Going to Church. 8 Candida.
8 Mrs. Warren's Profession.
774 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [Mar.,
Lion. No Christian would care to acknowledge as a co-religionist
of the first or tenth or nineteenth century any of that crowd of
insincere, cowardly, frivolous men and women who are not worthy
even in Mr. Shaw's play of the glories of martyrdom.
For all this attack on Christianity and scarce a beginning has
been made there is only one possible palliation: Bernard Shaw
raves without knowledge. There is only one being who really un-
derstands Christianity and still loathes it; and though Mr. Shaw
would probably regard it as flattery, I do not care to class him
with the one who, before he fell like lightning, was called the
Bearer of the Light. The truth is that Mr. Shaw is pitiably
ignorant of the religion he satirizes; and that is fatal to a satirist.
He has caught up some of the phrases in which Christianity has
been crystallized, just as a child or a savage might do. Of the
height and breadth and depth of their significance, he has surmised
nothing.
Mr. Shaw may sneer at the Heavenly Contemplation which
Christians call the Beatific Vision, but he understands not even
remotely that with contemplation comes the fullness of knowledge
for which his mind is blindly groping, and the fullness of love
which even his heart must crave. Of all the attributes of our Father
Who is in heaven, he has seized upon His avenging justice alone,
perverting it, with true Calvinistic instinct, into a merciless tor-
turing of infants and predestined sinners. Such is not the God of
the Christians, Who is infinite Holiness, infinite Justice, infinite
Love.
For him, as for the unbelievers of long ago, the gibbet of the
Cross is still a stumbling-block. St. Paul's prophecy holds in the
twentieth as it held in the first century. The wonderful love of
Christ for man which that Cross symbolizes, a love that has made
sweet the tears of sufferers like St. Teresa, kindled the heart of
penitents like Magdalen, and stimulated to heroic emulation martyrs
like the aged Prince of the Apostles, is utterly beyond his ken.
Mr. Shaw's characters are seldom typical of anything except
Mr. Shaw's preconceived views of life; and this is especially true
of his ministers of religion. If the priests of Christ's Church were
really typified by the ministers of Mr. Shaw's plays, Christianity
would be to-day a smouldering heap of ruins. More typical by far
of the priests of God are the men for whom a leper colony, or a sick
bed, or a life devoid of all the joys of domestic relationship is all
in a life's work. The realities of another world are not indefinite,
1916.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 775
dubitable things to them; but facts that can withstand the indif-
ference of heathen nations, or the sneers of the cultured infidel.
Sitting upon the chair of judgment and passing sentence upon
Christianity, Mr. Shaw gives the impression of one who holds him-
self well versed in the doctrines and practices of Christianity. His
own account of his early religious training, however, tells how
starved his soul has always been of the things that could make re-
ligion acceptable to so intensely intellectual and aesthetic a nature.
The faith into which Bernard Shaw was born had but one
solid sustaining dogma hatred of the Catholic Church. Prot-
estantism in Ireland was a counterpart of the Puritanism which
Mr. Shaw depicts in The Devil's Disciple; a cold, hard, bitter
religion, dogmatic without dogma, strongly tinged with the con-
queror's hatred for the religion of the conquered. Such a faith
soon cramped and revolted the temperamental youth.
When I was a little boy, I was compelled to go to church on
Sunday, and though I escaped from that before I was ten,
it prejudiced me so violently against church-going, that twenty
years elapsed before, in foreign lands, and in pursuit of works
of art, I became once more a church-goer. To this day my
flesh creeps when I recall that genteel suburban Irish Protestant
Church Yes, all the vulgarity, savagery, and bad blood
that has marred my literary works was certainly laid upon me
in that house of Satan. 7
Imagine being taught that there is one God a Protestant
and a perfect gentleman keeping heaven select for the gen-
try; and an idolatrous impostor called the Pope, smoothing
the hell-ward way for the mass of the people, only admissible
into the kitchens of most of the aforesaid gentry as general
servants at eight pounds a year. 8
I believe Ireland, as far as the Protestant gentry are con-
cerned, to be the most irreligious country in the world
Protestantism in Ireland is not a religion; it is a side in
political faction, a class prejudice, a conviction that Roman
Catholics are socially inferior persons who will go to hell when
they die and leave heaven the exclusive possession of ladies
and gentlemen.
Speaking of Shelley's atheism, Leigh Hunt complains that
familiarity with the Established Church drove him into unbelief.
The same excuse is urged in his defence by Bernard Shaw. Irish
7 G. B. S., 12. G. B. S., 15.
776 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [Mar.,
Protestantism brought him an intense disgust for Protestant
Christianity that has never died; but it did far worse. From one
small sect which he had known, he came to scout all revealed re-
ligion, classing all in one category.
But Irish Protestantism is not the Christianity whch Christ
taught and St. Paul preached and St. Cyprian testified to with his
blood. Nor is the Salvation Army which Mr. Shaw takes as the
Christianity to be pilloried in Major Barbara. Close to his doors
lay a religion that would have satisfied all his cravings for in-
tellectual, aesthetic and spiritual light. The bigotry of his home
and Church held him relentlessly aloof. The Church that had
claimed the loyalty of the Irish nation to the point of death, that
had made Irish women stainless in their purity and Irish men heroic
in suffering, that is filled with the beauty of art and ritual, and
living with the very truth of heaven, meant no more to Bernard
Shaw than if the nearest Catholic Church had been in Patagonia.
If Mr. Shaw ever comes to grasp the infinite justice and purity
of the Father Whom sin has offended, the infinite love of the Son
Who hath borne our iniquities and been bruised for our offences,
he will be happy like that " damned fool " Athanasius to bear for a
lifetime the hatred and scorn of those who reject the God-made Man.
It is sometimes said that no honest man can be a real atheist.
Once he has thrown over the Christian God Whom he does not
even try to understand, Mr. Shaw creates a deity for himself and
sets him up as chief Lar of his domestic atrium.
There are two mutually contradictory ideas which cut across
each other in regard to the relative powers of God and man.
According to the popular concept, God always creates beings
inferior to Himself; the creator must be greater than the
creature
As a matter of fact, we know that in all art, literature,
politics, sociology in every phase of genuine life and vitality,
man's highest aspiration is to create something higher than
himself. So God, the Life Force, has been struggling for
countless ages to become conscious of Himself, to express Him-
self in forms higher and higher in the scale of evolution.
God does not take pride in making a grub because it is lower
than Himself. On the contrary, the grub is a mere symbol of
His desire for self-expression. 10
God, then, is a cosmic force, working up and up, blindly
G. B. S., 474-
1916.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 777
but unerringly, without reason or cause, toward a perfect realiza-
tion of Himself in the Superman, or perhaps, as Mr. Shaw says,
in the Supersnake. Here is Pantheism, old as the hills, reduced to
the last absurdity.
Whatever one may think of such nonsense, this much is cer-
tain. If Bernard Shaw could find such unsubstantiated absurdi-
ties in the pages of any scientist or theologian, his laughter would
shake the spheres of heaven and the linotypes of England. He
would ask the creator of the unfortunate deity whence comes this
unheard-of Life Force. Who gave it power to act? Did it spring
from nothing or is it eternal? Then the music of jest and epigram
would slowly deepen into the rumble of uncontrolled wrath. How
dare any man fling such rotten metaphysics into the eyes of in-
telligent beings? How dare he foist such rotten science off as
truth?
Mr. Shaw would then point out that had the unfortunate
maker of gods read his, Bernard Shaw's, plays, he would have
seen in Julius Casar that progress is an exploded myth ; that men of
one generation are exactly the same as those who preceded and those
who follow them; that Julius C&sar differs not one whit from the
modern Londoner who is a dreamer by moonlight and a mighty
doer of deeds by day; that the Briton of Caesar's Britain and the
Briton of to-day show precisely the same insularity, the same love
of tradition and pride of birth. In fact, he would probably declare
with Nietzsche, his master, that far from the world showing signs
of development, Vespasian the Proud approached nearer the Su-
perman than Czar Nicholas or George of England. He would
then point out that in Mrs. Warren's Profession and Major Bar-
bara he, Shaw, had proved that the Life Force, far from being a
deity, is controlled by environment and capital, and must bow in
submission before them. And his laughter would echo round the
world. Instead, he wrote Man and Superman to popularize his
deity; he allowed his divinity to thrust his weird presence into his
plots and dialogue; and he based his moral system upon this un-
known god. Would not Puck himself have laughed and repeated
his venerable dictum?
It is beside the purpose to waste time here on a Pantheism
familiar in its general phases to every student of Catholic
philosophy, or to discuss in any detail the peculiar twist by which
Mr. Shaw has added individuality to his little fetish. But place
his god beside the God of the Christians, and then marvel at the
778 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [Mar.,
courage of the man who prefers the Life Force to the Almighty.
His god is an impersonal, unknown power, without feeling, without
actual entity, not only unconscious of the existence of us dependent
mortals, but actually struggling to gain a consciousness of himself,
yet blindly forcing us to live and act and breed other beings as
futile as ourselves. His god boasts as his first characteristic a
violation of the primary law of nature, that a thing cannot confer
upon another a perfection which it does not itself possess. His
god is incapable of holding out to us a future reward as a stimulus
or a future vengeance as a preventative; he can neither love us
nor command our love.
Our God is a personal God, living and acting throughout the
universe, loving us with a love so intense that He was willing by
a miracle to steep His Divinity in human woes; a God Who
created the seas with their bounds and rewards a cup of cold
water given in His Name; a God Who, with an act of His will,
gave form to the stars of heaven, and yet comes in the Sacrament
of the Altar into the hearts of the smallest child ; a God Whose lov-
ing providence, obscured at times through the blind folly of man,
will right all wrongs for an eternity; a God Who is infinite love,
infinite goodness, infinite majesty, the last object of our desires
and our reward exceeding great. His god is a fantastic dream,
unproven and unprovable. Our God is a scientific and theological
necessity, Whose necessity pagans like Plato and Aristotle might
perceive with little less clearness than Pasteur and Faraday. Be-
tween two such deities, the thought of choice would be an insult.
A false philosopher is generally one that draws logical conclusions
from false premises. And of all false premises, the most fatal in
its consequences is an untrue conception of God and of man's
destiny. For every other truth in life will take its significance
from that.
The immoral philosophies of the day, with their justification
of euthanasia and race suicide and adultery, are intelligible only
because those who propose them have thrown to the winds all be-
lief in an Eternal Judge of infinite holiness. The heroism of children
who offered their tender limbs to the flames and the rack, can only
be explained by their firm belief that all things were dross if
they might gain Christ. In ages of faith men fell through pas-
sion and, in sackcloth and ashes, wrote Stabat Maters in expiation.
In ages of unbelief men fall through malice and, in purple and fine
linen, write new philosophies to justify their fall.
I 9 i6.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 779
Mr. Shaw is no coward; he is brave enough to draw the in-
evitable conclusion from his rejection of God and eternity. With-
out a God Who has a right to command, there is no such thing as
a distinction between right and wrong. Without personal immor-
tality, morality is as shifting as the table etiquette of civilized
races. That is a conclusion which every Catholic philosopher
would demand as the correct one from such premises. And that
is a conclusion which many an atheistic philosopher is cowardly
enough to shirk. Mr. Shaw has embraced it in its entirety.
Morality, says Mr. Shaw, and his characters echo his dictum,
is as shifting as table manners or the rules of the drill grounds.
We do not eat peas with our knife, he intimates, for the reason
that the present-day usage says none of the best people does so.
We do not play fast and loose with our friend's wife and property,
because under present conditions such conduct is regarded as mis-
taken by the people who count. No doubt he would add that, in
years to come, eating peas with a knife may be done wherever peas
are eaten, and playing fast and loose with a friend's wife and
property may be done wherever the wife is fast and the property
loose.
With equal insistence, Mr. Shaw would deny that the laws
of the Decalogue are written on tables of stone or on the tablets
of the heart. There is no power outside of ourselves, he asserts,
that dares say: "Thou shalt!" or "Thou shalt not!" With
Ibsen, he declares that human conscience is the only lawgiver, the
supreme arbiter of right and wrong. No law, call it human or
natural or divine, can bind the will in its pursuit of self-realiza-
tion. Nothing can stand in the way of the action of the Life
Force within us; everything must go that the Life Force may
prosper.
Thus precisely do his characters act. They know no law.
With them, the end, cooperation with the Life Force, justifies any
means, be it good or clearly evil. Ann Whitefield, 11 Shaw's Every-
woman, lies shamelessly, tricks and deceives her mother, plays every
situation to her own advantage, frankly hunts the man who spurns
her advances, and tramples under foot the tatters of feminine
modesty to gain her end marriage which means the propagation of
the Life Force. Candida 12 honestly affirms that once her love
for her husband is gone, no law can bind her; that she would give
her goodness and her purity to the insufferable Marchbanks as
11 Man and Superman. "Candida.
780 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [Mar.,
willingly as she would give her shawl to a beggar dying of the cold.
In the face of temptation, she weighs her loyalty to her husband
not by any consideration of the intrinsic right and wrong of adul-
tery, but by the question: Is adultery under these circumstances
the sensible and humane thing to embrace? When Sergius, 13 fold-
ing his arms, declares : " Nothing binds me ! " Bluntschll, pleased,
as Mr. Shaw remarks, with this bit of common sense, replies:
" Saranoff, your hand; my congratulations! "
Had Candida fled with Eugene, Mr. Shaw would have blamed
her no more than Ibsen blames Nora flying from her Doll's House.
Both were right in acting in accord with their desire for life, though
all the laws under heaven forbade adultery. In Mr. Shaw's moral
code there is to be " no more or no less respect for chastity than
for incontinence, for legality than for illegality, for subordination
than for rebellion, for piety than for blasphemy, and, in short, for
the standard vices than for the standard virtues," except in as far
as the individual conscience approves or condemns.
Once you take into consideration Mr. Shaw's premises, there is
no denying his logic. Without a personal God Who made us for
Himself and for our own eternal happiness, moral law has none
but a utilitarian justification. Only a supreme God Who made me
from nothing, and can with His word send me down to eternal ruin,
can bind my will with a strict obligation. No man in this world nor
any group of men can legislate right and wrong for me. Mere
men like myself, they cannot make me their slave. They have no
rights over me; they cannot make their experience a law unto my
conscience. But the God Who made my nature can make laws for
that nature, and them I must obey. Mr. Shaw may feel justified
in accepting his fluctuating standard of right and wrong; but until
we accept Mr. Shaw's blind, vague and irrational deity, we know
that incontinence, and unlawful rebellion, and blasphemy will al-
ways be hideous crimes.
**Arms and the Man.
[TO BE CONCLUDED.]
THE POETS OF 1915.
BY THOMAS WALSH.
F there is one thing more than another in Mr. William
Stanley Braithwaite's Anthology of Magazine Verse
for /p/5 1 that earns the sincere admiration of the
reader, it is the manner in which he has refused to
lend himself to any of the cliques or schools, and
his insistence in presenting American poetry of to-day with a wel-
come for all who honestly aspire and decently achieve. We have
seen in his Anthologies for 1913 and 1914 the growth and ex-
pansion of this literary Catholicism, and before discussing the con-
tents of his volume for 1915, we wish to express our general ap-
preciation of this attitude.
" The April mood," writes Mr. Braithwaite in his introduction,
" sanctifies the poet's dreams. He has come through them to
realize the eternal grace that beats in the pulse of life. April typi-
fies not so much resurrection as recurrence. This touch of mystery
that comes creeping out of the shadow into the sunlight, trans-
figuring all with a motionless alchemy of breath and color and
odor, evokes from poetry a similiar touch of mystery that comes
out of the shadows of human sorrow and pain into the joyousness
of aspiration, a transfiguring power of faith, hope and love, quicken-
ing the nature of man." It is this touch of mystery that flickers
over all of Mr. Braithwaite's work, giving it truly poetic character
apart from the material in which he deals in the one hundred and
eighty-four pages, beginning with Invocation by Wendell Phillips
Stafford and ending with To My Country, by Charles Hanson
Towne. Let us begin first with the ladies: The Cradle Song of
Josephine Preston Peabody contrasts quaintly with The Bacchante
to Her Babe, by Eunice Tietjens, and in The Musicmaker's Child,
by Miriam Allen de Ford, we come upon a lovely poem of the
sea, with the haunting lines :
" I am choked with sand,"
Says Jan the fisher.
" A pearl in each hand,"
Says Jan the fisher.
x New York: Gomme & Marshall. $1.50.
782 THE POETS OF 1015 [Mar.,
There is also Heritage, by Theresa Virginia Beard, to make
a lovely foil for Amelia Josephine Barr's A Spring Symphony and
Ulysses in Ithaca, with their positive, almost masculine, qualities
as in:
The measure of the martial dance, the rhythmic shield and sword.
Ithaca, Ithaca, the wind among the trees,
The peasants singing at his toil, the murmuring of bees,
The measure of the martial dance, the rhythmic shield and sword.
Also there are Margaret Widdemer and Olive Tilford Dargan
with striking poems each; and Agnes Lee with her A Statue in a
Garden where she sings:
I was a goddess ere the marble found me,
Wind, wind delay not!
Waft my spirit where the laurel crowned me !
Will the wind stay not?
Then tarry, tarry, listen, little swallow!
An old glory feeds me
I lay upon the bosom of Apollo!
Not a bird heeds me.
And Caroline Giltinan, and Edith Wharton, and Sara Teas-
dale, in whose Testament are the fine lines:
But out of the night I heard
Like the inland sound of the sea,
The hushed and terrible sob
Of all humanity.
Then I said, " Oh, who am I
To scorn the God to His face?
I will bow my head and stay
And suffer with my race."
Mary Rachel Norris has written a beautiful poem, Pax Beata;
so too has Corinne Roosevelt Robinson in her sonnet, We Who
Have Loved; while Amy Lowell is represented with three long
pieces of prose and rhythm, Patterns, The Bombardment and The
Fruit Shop, which reveal her achievement and limitation in the
difficult line she has essayed.
1916.] THE POETS OF 1915 783
With the men one comes upon a broader field : Peter Quince
At The Clavier, by Wallace Stevens, is a sketch-book notation that
in a higher state of development give us Vachel Lindsay's excellent
picture of The Chinese Nightingale. Edgar Lee Masters, whose
Spoon River Anthology is in so many hands, contributes in his
Silence these striking lines :
There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed ;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne D'Arc
Saying amid the flames, " Blessed Jesus "
Revealing in two words all sorrow, all hope,
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.
And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death ?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.
The work of Robert Frost is well illustrated in Birches, The
Road Not Taken and The Death of the Hired Man; while Edwin
Arlington Robinson, perhaps the father and pioneer of all these
poets of the half-music, is represented by a splendid poem, Flam-
monde:
He never told us what he was,
Of what mischance or other cause,
Had banished him from better days
To play the Prince of Castaways.
Meanwhile he played surpassing well
A part, for most unplayable ;
In fine, one pauses, half afraid
To say for certain that he played.
784 THE POETS OF 1915 [Mar.,
Percy Mackaye's vigorous war poem, The Return of August,
contrasts interestingly with The White Ships and the Red of Joyce
Kilmer, where
" Nay," said the scarlet visitor,
" Though I sink through the sea
A ruined thing that was a ship
I sink not as did ye.
For ye met with your destiny
By rock or storm or fight,
So through the lagging centuries
Ye wear your robes of white.
But never crashing iceberg
Nor honest shot of foe,
Nor hidden reef has sent me
The way that I must go.
My wound that stains the waters,
My blood that is a flame,
Bear witness to a loathly deed,
A deed without a name."
In Gay heart ', the author, Dana Bur net, shows much of the
quality that has brought about the success of his recent volume of
Poems; and in a series of sonnets George Edward Woodberry
chants of war and peace, culminating thus:
Whence not unmoved I see the nations form
From Dover to the fountains of the Rhine,
A hundred leagues, the scarlet battle line,
And by the Vistula great armies swarm,
A vaster flood; rather my breast grows warm,
Seeing all peoples of the earth combine
Under one standard, with one countersign,
Grown brothers in the universal storm.
And never through the wide world yet there rang
A mightier summons ! O thou who from the side
Of Athens and the loins of Caesar sprang,
Strike, Europe, with half the coming world allied,
For those ideals for which, since Homer sang,
The hosts of thirty centuries have died.
Richard Butler Glaenzer, Hermann Hagerdorn and James Op-
penheim are also here with vigorous singing of the war and its
1916.] THE POETS OF 1915 785
horrors ; while John Gould Fletcher and Walter Conrad Arensberg
weave exquisite fantasies in the older manner. Witter Bynner
is represented with an interesting poetical study entitled Passages
from the New World, and Richard Burton with a striking sonnet
on Fate. Ridgeley Torrence is credited with The Bird and the
Tree, whose gloomy quality contrasts strongly with the lines of his
The Vision of Spring:
Dove-low waters among the kindled willows
Then would lift to anoint a dust unsaddened,
Piercing cries of the spirit from the marshes
Melt with chorusings sweet upon the hillsides,
Harplike mysteries called through glowing orchards,
Shy, invisible laughters from the thickets.
All that uttered the dream while earth turned heedless
Then with freshets of song would cool its fever.
Hills, by Arthur Guiterman, and a triangle of songs by William
Griffith, make excellent foils for the Franciscan Sunbrowned with
Toil of Edward F. Garesche, SJ. Benjamin R. C. Low's lines,
For the Dedication of a Toy Theatre, have an old-world beauty
that seems to reproach the boastfulness of the new :
You, also, looking backward with regret,
Who catch a glimmer of late childhood yet;
And you who never wandered, skimped indeed,
Beyond the borders of this hard world's need ;
But most, you children, holding in your hearts
The ways of highest heaven, best of arts
Be seated here. Yon curtain is the mind :
Let logic slip, and laughter is behind.
Ay laughter, and brave deeds, and hopes come true
The old sweet world of fancy, made for you.
But mark you, disenchantment's nigh at hand;
Who ever questions will not understand.
Look to't: and, as you love us, we entreat,
Put off your cares; a smile will buy your seat.
Ho! actors! come, make ready there within:
Have up the curtain; let the play begin!
It remains only to mention Don Marquis' fine ode, The
Paradox, and to point out the brilliant charm of Louis Untermeyer's
Swimmers, with the lines:
VOL. en.- 50
786 THE POETS OF 19/5 [Mar.,
Then the swift plunge into the cool, green dark
The windy waters rushing past me, through me,
Filled with the sense of some heroic lark,
Exulting in a vigor, clean and roomy.
Swiftly I rose to meet the feline sea
That sprang upon me with a hundred claws,
And grappled, pulled me down, and played with me.
Then, tense and breathless in the tightening pause,
When one wave grows into a toppling acre,
I dived headlong into the foremost breaker.
Beside the Anthology, Mr. Braithwaite gives us, pp. 183-293,
his Year Book of American Poetry, containing an index of poets
and poems in American magazines; a department of reviews of
" the Best Poetry of 1915 :" a list of important publications deal-
ing with poets and poetry and articles and reviews published dur-
ing 1915. In appreciating the care and labor that have gone to
the preparation of these valuable departments, we mark with a
regretful sigh the absence of the names of Louise Imogen Guiney,
Marguerite Merington, Maurice Francis Egan, Ina Coolbrith,
Charles Phillips, Katherine Bregy and Thomas Augustine Daly,
as well as any reference to the splendid literary series by Father
James J. Daly, Joyce Kilmer and others, in the pages of America.
Still there is small room for carping criticism in this handsome
volume of Mr. Braithwaite's, which has now become the steady
product of the New Year's season, one which the student and critic
of the years as they pass cannot afford to overlook. To all such
and to the libraries they are likely to affect in the pursuit of studies,
we may recommend Mr. Braithwaite's Anthology of Magazine
Verse for
NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS AS ILLUSTRATED BY
AMERICAN HISTORY.
BY CHARLES H. MCCARTHY, PH.D.
NE hundred years have passed since the tumult and up-
roar of the French Revolution have ceased. But their
distant echoes we yet may faintly hear. The energy
of the First Republic passed the frontiers of France,
and in all the leading nations of Europe woke the
sword of war. From Corufia to Mount Tabor, and from Alex-
andria to Moscow, Napoleon's devoted legions followed his daunt-
less marshals. But as if Europe and Africa furnished for their
fame a theatre too confined, they crossed the Atlantic to Espanola,
where thousands found hospitable graves.
Under Toussaint the black Americans won their liberty, only to
learn that freedom alone cannot prevent a race from sinking into the
fenlands of despair. A century has shown that not even the friend-
ship of the world is sufficient to restore their intelligence or to sup-
port their prosperity. Now, though guided and befriended by a
powerful state, the Haytians know that freedom is not a cure for
every ill. That they have enjoyed without restraint. Those were
unrewarded who brought to the negroes a civilization from the fore-
most files of time. They were suspected and their gift was spurned.
In fighting the French the Haytians cut themselves off from a
boundless source of knowledge, the storehouse of the past. To them
the generosity or, if one choose so to call it, the weakness of
France proved a doubtful blessing. It left them free to turn their
faces from the past, the fountain of their spiritual life, and to
sound for themselves the shoals in the ocean of time upon which
they were about to embark. As yet their experience has yielded
little light. In their despotic Republic the expiring flame of liberty
rises and falls, and at any moment may go out forever. Whatever
may be the fate of freedom in that nation, to many Americans
Hayti resembles a slumbering volcano.
For a season the French had loosened other chains, and in
many lands woke pulses of hope, but once more those fetters were
riveted, and those hopes sank to rest. The tempest of war that for
788 NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS [Mar.,
years had swept the face of Europe at last was hushed. Looked at
carefully its people, dreaming of the rights of man, and believing
that the sun of his redemption had risen, do not seem to have known
that from the fields of victory they were drifting toward despair.
Textbooks tell us that the breath of war purifies the patriot's
flames; that even for peaceful pursuits it marshals all the forces
of the soul. Brave sentiments, we are told, are roused by captive
cannon and by waving flags, the trophies of ghastly fields. But to
conquering nations these ensigns of power bring no happiness, for
this is not the way of heaven. In the whirlwind path of war are
devastated fields, once gay with nature's jewelry; blackened homes,
cherished memorials of peace and love; ruined temples, sanctified
by the breath of prayer. Of all the activities that fill men's lives
on earth war is the most hideous.
After Waterloo came the reconstruction of Europe. In a
little while the veteran grew a stranger to the use of arms, the
husbandman resumed his plow, the artisan took up his half-for-
gotten trade. In time the process of the seasons brought plenty.
Again were heard the alarms of war, but a power unseen restrained
the gathering hosts and once more, like a spectral army, they
vanished into air. For a sunny hour men were happy. But again
the lowering clouds foretold a tempest, which broke, and beat and
raved. The havoc over, peace renewed her reign. Thus have
alternate war and alarms filled up a century. Except for some
British interludes, history holds the first Napoleon responsible for
much of the earlier fighting.
In the middle period the purpose of Europe was to protect
the Turk, and associated with him against Russia were Great
Britain, France and Sardinia. They had done a gallant deed.
They kept the Turk in Europe. But even nations cannot with im-
punity sin against civilization, and, sixty years after, all of them
know his gratitude.
In the later cycle, 1864, 1866, 1870, the wars were charged to
Prussia. She was prepared and she was victorious. But the con-
quests of those years failed to silence international strife, and
merely served further to inflame ambition.
In our day the world had attained to the summit of human
glory. We had surpassed all the ages in grandeur. Since the
last great war a generation had scarcely passed when Europe's
skies were overcast. The rising gale drove on the mustering clouds
and hid the lights of heaven. The tempest broke pitiless and
1916.] NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS 789
terrible. The dread war had come with its calamities and its
horrors.
The prehistoric methods of the savage still adjudicate our
differences. It is true that we no longer feast on the vanquished,
for the world has bidden farewell to human flesh. But men still
hold carnival at the cost of those that beg and those that starve.
Filled with ignorance and superstition, as we are often told, and as
so many believe, the Middle Ages had learned humanity. In the
harsh world that we know a little of, their chivalry would seem a
thing of loveliness. But from our troubled planet that foolish weak-
ness has been banished by the valiant sons of Mars.
The desolation of provinces, the wreck of kingdoms, and the
slaughter of armies are the dread tidings reported by eighteen months
of war, calamities still heightened by the march of pestilence and
famine. As tame spectators of these direful woes, what have
Americans done and what have they resolved to do to keep from
their own land similar scenes of slaughter? Are they, too, destined
to tread the fields of grief?
If we attempt to pierce the future, we see nothing clearly, but
dimly revealed are signs of things that are appalling. The events
to come are wrapped in puzzling shadows. Then it is vain to ques-
tion, for from our vision divine wisdom has concealed the book
of fate. In a word, it is idle to interrogate the future; its
mysteries are its own. The past alone is ours. Science, which
has charted the ocean and the skies, has likewise for us unrolled
the scroll of history. Little wisdom is needed to read therein and
to learn its lessons. Our land has not been free from strife. In
fact, great and small, we have felt the sorrows and known the
tragedies of many wars.
The first and greatest of our Presidents, wise though he was
and just, found himself compelled to enforce the law at the point
of the bayonet. The Whisky Rebellion, most formidable in Penn-
sylvania, called for settlement. The founder of the political party
which at this moment guides our destinies, recommended in deal-
ing with lawless men the employment of gentle methods. In other
words, Jefferson advised his chief to send into Pennsylvania a
small force. Hamilton, who knew that a few battalions would be
resisted, and that bloodshed would follow, urged the sending of
an army so strong that folly itself would refrain from opposition.
The wisdom of the counsel was perceived and adopted. Fifteen
thousand troops entered the troubled region. Their very presence
790 NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS [Mar.,
overawed the " Whisky Boys ; " in a few months order was restored
and no blood was shed. There was felt but little bitterness toward
the new Government, which had shown at once its strength and its
clemency.
The lesson to be learned from the conduct of Washington is
that the possession of power need not close the door on mercy;
that a policy of economy, for the purpose of turning a minority
into a majority party, or for any transient object whatever, would
have given a local habitation to anarchy, an example that would
have been dangerous if not fatal to the feeble Government.
But, knowing the general poverty, Washington had twice at-
tempted, and with disastrous results, to deal gently with the In-
dians in the old Northwest. We know the fate of Harmar and of
St. Clair. Necessity forced the President to call upon General
Wayne, a real soldier, and for the emergency to assemble a real
army. But Wayne was too wise to lead recruits against crafty
Indians. Month after month he drilled them in the elements of
tactics and in forest fighting. In fact, the settlers thought him
mad. After that perfect preparation, which should have preceded
the trouble, he met the red men at Fallen Timbers. Those tribes
troubled the frontiersmen no more. Are these small-scale ex-
periences known to the American people? Not to many of the
voters harangued by those who advocate defencelessness, nor, per-
haps, to all the guileless orators themselves.
It may be contended that without preparation all America's
great wars were crowned with success. This acquaintance with the
history of the United States is gained from anniversary orations,
whose primary object is entertainment, or from schoolbooks, which
generally aim at inculcating patriotism, and omit much that is non-
heroic. Let us examine in outline America's four great wars,
namely, the War for Independence, the War of 1812, the Mexican
War, and the Civil War.
The thirteen colonies which England conquered or settled
united in 1765 to secure a redress of grievances. Nine years later
necessity recommended their closer union. Seeing that protests
were unavailing, it was deemed prudent to begin the formation of
an army, and in some colonies there came into existence companies
of minutemen; also committees of correspondence and committees
of safety. When finally, by the policy and the act of England, war
began, the Government was without an army, a navy, or a revenue.
Thus equipped the patriots of that era challenged the mistress of
1916.] NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS 79*
the seas and the arbitress of Europe. But into their ultimate
success there entered, as we shall see, many elements unforeseen.
The lack of a stable army, especially at the outset, was a
source of the greatest embarrassment to General Washington; the
lack of even a small American navy made it possible for England
safely to transport to her colonies troops by thousands and by
tens of thousands. During the autumn of 1775 and the following
winter, Washington, who had ammunition only for defence, was
compelled helplessly to watch the movements of the British in
Boston. When, however, a little more had been collected, he drove
them forever from that city.
A powerful fleet gave to General Howe his undoubted suc-
cesses on Long Island and on Manhattan Island. With it troops
could easily be landed from the Hudson or the East River in the
rear of the American army; hence Washington's retirement north-
ward. The retreat across New Jersey need not be rehearsed. The
genius of Washington turned that disastrous campaign into vic-
tory at Trenton. The battle of Princeton, in the early days of
1 777, was followed by the march to Morristown. Later there came
from the North tidings of the victory at Saratoga. To what extent
the successes gained were due to the supplies sent by Beaumarchais
we shall probably never know. But if on this point there is room
for doubt, there can be none concerning the extent of the assistance
of France after February, 1778, for that is a matter of record.
Let it be assumed that Colonel George Rogers Clark would
have completed his winning of the West without the assistance of
Father Gibault, the loan of Francois Vigo, the aid of the French
volunteers, or the encouragement of the Spanish Governor beyond
the Mississippi. Let us set it all down to the credit of Vir-
ginian enterprise and Virginian gallantry, and they cannot easily be
overpraised, yet the followers of Clark were from boyhood inured to
exposure and trained to marksmanship. That is, they could march
and shoot. Connected with this brilliant exploit were forces not
Anglo-American.
When in the early summer of 1778 the British abandoned
Philadelphia, perhaps the step was recommended quite as much
by a rumor of the departure from Europe of a French fleet as by
the activity of General Washington, whose army during the pre-
ceding winter had shivered at Valley Forge. Again, when the
British in New York were meditating a descent on Rhode Island,
the actual arrival of a French fleet put them on the defensive.
792 NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS [Mar.,
Perhaps no one will deny that the victory at Yorktown, Octo-
ber, 1781, ended England's hope of a successful conclusion of the
war. But Cornwallis would have escaped almost unscathed if his
return to New York had not been prevented by the presence of a
powerful French fleet under Count de Grasse and a part of the
French army under the Marquis de St. Simon. In this trying
situation what neutralized the activity of the British fleet? One
squadron had long been given employment by the Spaniards in the
Mexican Gulf, for in 1779 Spain declared war on England. By
General Bernardo Galvez, British troops also were occupied in the
West Indies and in the Floridas. Under Count de Grasse and
Count Guichen thirty-four or thirty-five of the best battleships afloat
had assembled to renew the fight with the British fleet, which after
being beaten by Grasse had prudently sailed for New York. The
surrender of Cornwallis was inevitable.
From an early stage of the war Washington was convinced
that a strong fleet would soon bring victory. In the very hour
that France sent a victorious one, the end of the long struggle was
in sight. The lack of a navy had greatly lengthened the duration
of the war.
In addition to the assistance of France, up to that time the
greatest ever rendered by one nation to another, the advantage that
resulted from Spain's war with England, as well as England's war
with Holland, made success certain. Moreover, the King of France
had loaned to the new Republic generous sums. Spain too had
furnished a little, and, when the military phase of the war had
ended, Holland assisted with money, as during the war she had
made it easy for American ships to get supplies at St. Eustatius,
one of her West Indian possessions. Prussia, which had been ac-
customed to act with England, not only rendered her no assistance,
but by diplomatic pressure urged Holland, as earlier she had urged
France, to enter the war on the side of America. In brief, the
rebellious colonies won their independence by the gallantry of their
soldiers, the military genius of their Commander-in-Chief, and the
assistance of Spain, France and Holland. There had been almost
no preparation, and but for unexpected assistance American inde-
pendence might not have been won in 1781. That might have re-
warded the efforts of a later generation. In the Revolutionary
War, therefore, Great Britain did not fight the United States alone,
but the United States in concert with three strong European powers.
The statesman who recommended the sending of an inex-
I 9 i6.] NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS 793
pensive force against the " Whisky Boys " was elected President
in 1800, and soon after inauguration commenced his memorable
experiments on the navy, of which for eight years he was Com-
mander-in-Chief. His gunboat policy is valuable as one to be
avoided rather than to be imitated. By Albert Gallatin, his able
Secretary, Jefferson was informed that war was inevitable, and was
told that a perseverance in his paternal embargo system would result
in an empty treasury. That prediction was ' fulfilled to the letter,
though it happened toward the close of President Madison's first
term. By submitting to a succession of indignities Jefferson had
avoided war, but the American character had not altogether escaped
contempt.
No injury, no affront could provoke the Government into con-
sidering measures of defence. It seems not to have been executive
spirit that finally led Madison to recommend a declaration of war
against England. Perhaps, though the suspicion is not susceptible
of mathematical proof, it was the desire for a second term. While
war had long been feared, there was no preparation for such a
contingency. Though Great Britain was engaged in a mighty
struggle with Napoleon, the greatest military leader of all time,
she found an opportunity with a handful of Canadians and a
fringe of her navy to humiliate the United States. Captains like
MacDonough did not receive their warrants from President Jef-
ferson or his successor. In their eyes commissions in the navy were
new items of expense. Once more was Great Britain forced silently
to submit to the demands of the United States, but again she was
embarrassed by another war.
After all, it was, perhaps, fortunate that Wellington with
eighty thousand men was at Waterloo and not at Plattsburg. But
even the presence of the Iron Duke could not have saved the fleet
of the gallant Downie. However, it will be admitted that Welling-
ton would not have been courtmartialed for cowardice and incom-
petency as was Prevost. Doubtless the British army would have
completed the journey down the Hudson to New York. Was there
no element of luck in the final victory? Not every nation has had
a Napoleon for a partner, if not an ally.
Certain microscopic eyes afterward discovered a wastage at
West Point. Why support at considerable expense an academy for
the training of army officers, when every township in the United
States had its school where one might " cipher " to cube root and
mensuration? It was seriously proposed, in the long interval of
794 NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS [Mar.,
peace after 1815, to abolish the United States Military Academy.
What saved the institution is by no means clear, but in the course
of a few years the war with Mexico showed its inestimable value.
The " peculiar institution " of the South had forced a war with the
sister Republic. In the victories that followed West Point graduates
had no slight share. If officers equally efficient had commanded
the hosts of Mexico, the result might have been postponed and
the cost of success far greater.
The war for Southern independence, 1861-1865, was no ex-
ception to those of former times, for both its duration and magni-
tude were chiefly due to lack of preparation. By a singular policy
the Government was poor in an era of increasing wealth, and by
reason of the employment in high office of disloyal men the vessels
of the navy had been sent to distant seas, the nearest warship
being at Vera Cruz. By a knowledge of the probable time when
trouble would begin, certain States arranged for the purchase of
weapons from the Federal arsenals. The presence in every bureau
of officials whose affections were otherwhere gave to conspirators
early intelligence of all the plans of Government. Not only was
the navy dispersed, but it was hoped by the resignation of its
officers the army would be demoralized, and demoralized it was.
Like the army and navy the civil service was turned awry. Officials
subverted their posts to a hostile power.
Is our present revenue policy more nearly adequate to national
emergencies than was that of 1860? In our time would it be im-
possible to destroy the efficiency of the navy? Are all employees
of Government more loyal now than were those of 1860? Is every
plan of battleship, gun, and fort as great a mystery as the identity
of the man in the iron mask? But the problem of our time is not
whether the army is equal to any possible emergency, whether the
navy is to be increased in size and efficiency, or whether officials
generally are loyal to the Government of the United States. The
question of the moment seems to be concerned not with the security
of this country, but, it is feared, with the welfare of some faction.
Modest, compared with the military establishments of the great
European powers, as would be our proposed new army and navy,
the additional cost would doubtless be felt by many citizens as no
slight addition to the present burden of taxation. Should our
Government adopt a policy similar to that in contemplation; will
the people derive from those new charges benefits at all commen-
surate with the cost? Is it reasonably to be feared that our
1916.] NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS 795
Government will inaugurate a system of taxation which will con-
tinue through endless years and bring no blessings to those who
bear it? All our experience has shown that when the danger will
have passed, the burden will be removed. If the citizen does not
abdicate, by a failure to exercise his political rights, he can easily
alter or entirely change a policy deemed prudent when the world
was mad. In America there is little difference of opinion concern-
ing war. All wise men would avoid its costs as well as its
calamities. Many there are, indeed, who would thrive in that grim
trade, and those would welcome it, but they would not be found
in marching regiments. So desirable is peace that some would de-
fend it with a fortress of gold.
No statistician has accurately estimated the cost of the Civil
War, and for years to come none can do so. Half a century after
its commencement our Government was still paying in pensions
more than one hundred and fifty million dollars a year. Though
the ranks of the veterans are growing thinner, many of them have
an expectancy of years, and to those fortunate survivors payments
will continue cheerfully to be made.
If we generously estimate the number of slaves in 1860 at
four million, and assume that the Federal Government had offered
for them one thousand dollars per head, an exceedingly high price,
the cost of buying them from their owners would have amounted to
only four billion dollars. That would have been thought by the
physicians of the state, economists and statesmen, ^ a staggering
burden, yet it is only a small part of what the war actually cost.
Expensive is the tribunal in which Mars presides.
The battles of the Civil War, compared with those that mark
a modern one, were but as skirmishes between outposts. Yet even
their lists of casualties were long and sorrowful. So stupendous
would be the cost of a war with any great nation, that from our
favored land prosperity would be banished for generations. His-
tory, which oftentimes sustains hope, gives no guarantee that the
most upright official conduct will insure a continuance of peace.
It does, indeed, inform us that America's preference for neutrality
has seldom been in harmony with the interested policies of European
powers, and it clearly teaches us that the knowledge that we are
prepared to exclude from this hemisphere such ruin as reigns in
Europe, would cause even the mightiest to hesitate before at-
tempting to disturb our repose.
GLENMALURE.
BY ROSA MULHOLLAND GILBERT.
A WORLD-SONG in the running water:
" Red am I with the red of slaughter,
When storm and torrent sweep the Glen
I mourn the fate of gallant men.
" I wash their graves and keep them green
Prankt with the flowers of golden sheen,
I chant their praise when summer is kind,
I keen for them on the winter wind.
" I run, I rush to the cleansing sea
And wash me clean in the wave of the free,
Yet still am I red with the red of blood
In valley shadow, in mountain flood.
" Michael Dwyer still sits in his chair,
On the red rock up the mountain there,
And the roofless barrack with eyes of hale
Stares at him from the heart of the vale.
" It threats me as I hurry along
For the mindfulness of my ceaseless song,
But I will sing when stone on stone
The baleful walls to dust are gone.
" Will sing of the patriot hearts that bled,
Slaughtered to dye my waters red,
Will sing and sing to the souls of men
My world-song from an Irish glen.
I 9 i6.] GLENMALURE 797
" Men of to-day ye are cold and tame,
Care not for praise, care not for blame,
Go count your sheep in the mountain cave
And feed your kine on the heroes' grave.
" No more to your crags the eagle clings,
On Lug-na-cullia he spreads his wings,
The rabbit thrives, and the wily fox
Lives at ease in his hole in the rocks.
" Some of your old men brood as I,
Talk of the brave awhile, and die!
The young are fleeing to happier lands
Where's room for souls and where's work for hands."
Only the river, only the river
That knows no death and will sing forever,
Only the ever-running water,
Running red with the red of slaughter,
*
Hears the battlecry of the brave
Ringing from the patriot's grave,
And winds it into a water-song,
The song of all days that will live world-long.
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
PART II.
Fifteen Years Afterwards.
CHAPTER V.
HE " new member," known familiarly as " the Ugliest
man on the floor," leaned back in his chair and looked
around the House of Representatives with small interest.
His eyes had circumnavigated the room so often while
the gentleman from some unpronounceable Indian town
had been talking. The " new member " wondered at the
Speaker's patience. Why did he not stop the little man with his
provincial platitudes ; or why could not the loquacious one talk to the
stenographer alone, and then his speech could pass in the Congressional
Record without discomfort to an unwilling audience? It occurred to
him that he could at least reduce the audience, and rising, he
walked quickly up the green carpeted aisle.
At the door a page met him holding out a woman's card. The
" new member " looked at it indifferently, then his expression changed
to one of half fear, and he put his hand up to a long scar on his cheek
as if he placed dependence on his disfigurement, and for a moment he
stopped to consult a small mirror that hung behind a screen. The
image reassured him. He was a man of forty-two, but he looked
older than his years; his hair and pointed beard were almost white,
and his face, bronzed by much out-door living, made their whiteness
more apparent; the scar on his left cheek had drawn one of his eyes
downward. For a long time he had thought that he would lose the
sight of that eye, and the relief he had experienced in its preserva-
tion destroyed all dismay at the distortion.
As he entered the ante-room a slim girlish figure rose to greet
him. The " new member " knew nothing of women's clothes, but he
received the vague impression that his present visitor's hat and coat
were entirely out of style ; the coat was short and tight fitting. Though
he realized his own helplessness to analyze anything so amazing as
feminine fashion, it troubled him to feel that this girl was shabby,
for he was keen enough to observe that her black gloves had worn
white at the finger tips.
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 799
"I am Miss Polly Maxen," she began nervously, " and I believe I
have come to the wrong place. I should have gone to your office
rooms in the new building across the street. You are Mr.
Walcott?"
He hesitated a moment, " Yes, I am Mr. Walcott," his voice
sounded strange and far away.
" And I've come to the wrong place ? " she asked again.
"Well, I wouldn't say that," he smiled faintly, "if you really
wanted to see me. If you had gone across the street you might have
had to wait a long time."
The smile reassured her. " I thought perhaps my coming here was
unusual."
" Well, I don't know," he smiled broadly now ; " I don't know
anything more about this place than a Fiji Islander, and I'm trying
to keep people from catching on to the fact. You see I've only been in
Washington two weeks, and I believe I believe I'm sorry I came."
She was disconcerted now, for in some way his regret seemed to
be connected with her.
" Why you mean you have received so many applications for
positions ? "
He saw how he had blundered, " No, not that, but I believe there's
more room to breathe out West. I lived in the East once long
ago too long to remember, for I've spent fifteen years trying to
forget."
She looked at him in some bewilderment, the interview had de-
parted so far from a business basis. No doubt he had met with some
fearful railroad accident traveling in the East the long scar seemed
to prove it. Her sympathetic imagination pictured him in a hospital,
far away from friends and kindred, undergoing great physical suf-
fering. No wonder he had tried to forget an experience that had left
him disfigured for life.
" I should think you would like it here," she said struggling to
relieve the silence.
" Would you ? " his eyes were very kind, " then perhaps I shall.
Washington is a beautiful city, so uncommercial, so perhaps I shall
like it if you say so."
There was another awkward pause; Polly wondered what she
should say next.
"Mrs Bolivar sent me to you," she began again abruptly. He
seemed strangely amazed at the announcement.
"Why, do you know Mrs. Bolivar? "
" Well, I've met her only once. She gave me a little note of in-
troduction, and I lost it on the way, but really I don't think it can
make much difference, for Mrs. Bolivar hardly knows me; anything
8oo TRANSMIGRATION [Mar.,
she could say about me was mere politeness. I think I remember the
words perfectly. This is to introduce you to Miss Maxen who is
badly in need of work. Can you find a corner for her in any of your
slummy undertakings?' That was all, and to tell the truth it worried
me a little. What could she mean by 'slummy undertakings ?' "
He laughed aloud. " That's only a picturesque phrase for charity
work."
"But I don't want charity," she interrupted. "It was only work
some sort of work," she repeated with a little touch of despair. Her
face had flushed, and her brown eyes, always her chief beauty, looked
luminous and full of pain.
The ugliest member was studying her with intent interest. Her
nervousness worried him.
" Haven't you anything ? " he asked.
" Nothing now," she answered, " mother had a small annuity, but
the company failed. I must get work somewhere."
" Is your mother in town? "
" No, mother is at home. We live in a small town in Virginia.
I came to Washington last week in the hope that I could get a govern-
ment clerkship, but that seems impossible, there have been so many
appointments from my State. Mrs. Bolivar said you had many in-
terests, associations and things," she ended weakly.
" I'll hunt one up for you," he said hopefully. " Some kind of
a 'thing/ "
" Oh, thank you. Would you like some sort of a recommenda-
tion?"
" Recommendation ! " he repeated as if the suggestion was ab-
surd.
Polly was a trifle dazed by his startling manner. " I thought it
was usual to ask for them," she ventured.
" Well, perhaps, yes of course. Leave the recommendation if you
choose, but I thought Mrs. Bolivar's was lost." He prided himself that
this explanation canceled his former mistake. " Who else has recom-
mended you? " Certainly the last question sounded dispassionate
enough.
" Judge Frankfort."
"What! that old man still sitting in judgment?"
" Why do you know him ? "
" Well I should " he paused. He was again on dangerous
ground. He had no right to recollections. " He was a friend of
my father's, years ago; his name is very familiar," he added awk-
wardly.
" Yes, of course, he is very well known here in Washington. I
thought a letter from him might help, and I'll leave my own card with
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 801
my address. I'm staying with some cousins. I often wonder what
Southern people would do without cousins."
" They are a convenience," he admitted. " I don't believe I
was ever good enough to mine."
" Mine have been very kind and have asked me to stay indefinitely,
but of course I can't. My grandfather used to say that hospitality in
the South was such a disproportioned virtue that it had grown to be a
vice."
He was glad to see her at her ease once more. " I believe I'd
agree to that. I've seen them arrive by the carriage load, babies and
nurses and go-carts and trunks."
" Oh, I think it was delightful when we could afford it," she said,
" but we've had to grow so skimpy, we have nothing left but traditions,
and you Western men know how hard it is to live up to traditions."
" But as long as you don't have to live on them."
" But that's the trouble. We try to make cake by our grand-
mother's receipts with most of the good things left out."
" Well that's a stunt worth knowing," he said gravely. " So many
of us are trying to live that way."
"Live?"
" Like, like cakes, with the good things left out. A little monoto-
nous, don't you think? "
" Very."
" We'll see what we can do to remedy it."
" You are very good."
" Oh, no, I'm not. Don't be grateful. If I can do anything, don't
thank me. Now that's understood, I owe you more than I can ever
pay. Just tell yourself that until you believe it."
She regarded him again with wonder. Mrs. Bolivar had fore-
warned her that Mr. Walcott was " unusual," but Polly was not pre-
pared for the rapid changes in his manner; one moment he seemed
so gruff and unapproachable, the next so full of sympathy and gentle-
ness, and one or two of his remarks seemed to show that he had
some bewildering knowledge of her past.
" I'm sure it would be very strange not to thank you."
" Then let's be strange. Why not? "
She smiled wanly. "Well, I don't exactly know why not,
except that one ought to be grateful."
" But we needn't be like everybody else."
" No."
" Besides I think you're different."
This was too personal for Polly's Southern upbringing. What
did he mean ? Even Polly, in her narrow experience, had known many
flirtations to begin with those very words, like the familiar opening of
VOL. en. 51
802 TRANSMIGRATION [Mar.,
a well-read book. The next obvious question was, " How am I dif-
ferent " and the answer might be hair or eyes or heart or soul the
details made no difference when personalities had once begun.
But the " new member " seemed oblivious to his indiscretion,
though he still stared at her in that confusing way of his. She felt
that she must bring the interview to some sort of a conclusion.
"I'm afraid I have imposed upon you too long," she began a trifle
stiffly, " you have been very kind. Here is the judge's letter. Now
I'll go."
He did not try to detain her, but after she had gone he won-
dered why he had not. There were so many questions he wanted to
ask her, and he had practically dismissed her, fearing his own power
to keep up the deception, for it was the first time in all the fifteen
years of his voluntary banishment that Jim Thompson had ever en-
countered anyone closely connected with his past. He ought not to
have come to Washington. It was too near to his own old home.
Of course Polly did not recognize him, she was but a child when he
had gone away, and she would not notice even a resemblance. The
night of the fire seemed very close to him, and the strange feeling of re-
lief that was almost exultation, when he turned his back upon the
blackened ruins of his home to start anew. He remembered that
he had only forty dollars in his pocket when he passed through the
deserted depot to buy his ticket to New York. The new sensation
he experienced when he began to count his pennies, to regulate his
meals, so that he might have enough to pay his way in the steerage
to Liverpool. And he was not altogether unhappy on that voyage in
spite of the stuffy sleeping quarters, the sickening odors, the meagre
food, the squalor of his fellow-passengers. The steamer seemed such
a big safe shelter in which to make a new beginning. All day he
watched the receding waters, conscious of that restfulness which is
born of the restlessness of the sea. Sinking suns, panoramic mix-
tures of color, stretches of quivering sea and sky, white moonlight
and widths of stars. How easy in a vast world to lose oneself. How
impotent he seemed. How useless his past striving. The ship's doc-
tor was very kind, and showed much concern for the burn upon his
face.
" It will be long in healing and it will leave a disfiguring scar.
I doubt if your best friends will know you."
He had tried to conceal a smile. Truly fate was propitious to a
man trying to lose his identity. But what did the past matter?
What did anything matter with the encircling water around him, the
sweeping oblivious sea. Silent as to its tragic secrets of hoarded
treasure, passive to its buried dead, boundless, unfathomed, unchange-
able with the years. Only the rising and falling of the tides in the
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 803
end as in the beginning. Facing a formless power gigantic in its
strength, a deep sense of humility haunted him. How puny seemed
all individual accomplishment or failure!
A week of perfect calm and then his mind, quickened by the rest,
awoke at first to a sense of pain. He had forgotten to use the lotion
that the doctor had given him, and his face was worse, much worse;
one of his eyes was endangered. Suffering and bandaged he excited
the sympathy of his fellow-passengers. Heretofore he had seemed to
have no place among them, his clothes were better than theirs, his
speech was not the same, his forced friendliness showed a lack of
interest, but now they clustered around him, urged by the great
leveller of pain, a thing that their own experience had made them
heed to sympathize. Blinded and bandaged he felt the need of hu-
man companionship, and they, hoping to cheer him, poured out their
hearts' histories. Most of them were returning to acknowledge their
failure in this land of promise. They talked with primitive sim-
plicity and the invalid listened on, conscious of an unexpected pleasure
in their confidences. In his business relations with the poor, he had
known that their world was so remote from his, and his manner,
while it charmed them, was apart from real feeling. His clients were
but stepping stones to the pedestal of his own supremacy. But now
as he heard these pitiful stories of hope, privation, despair, the ques-
tion of power with which the sea had confronted him seemed answered
in this cry of man's need for man. Unconsciously, slowly, a resolu-
tion began to form itself in his mind, not with the force of a com-
pelling vocation, but strengthening with the days.
When he landed at Liverpool he was penniless, but with a new-
born sense of liberty he applied for a place as a dockhand. The
prospective employer took account of the great physical strength
which the new immigrant seemed to embody, and he engaged him
at once, refusing a crowd of wizen-faced, ragged men who whined
for work.
Down in the heart of the great city which battens itself on
thoughts of its own prosperity, Jim Thompson saw woe unspeakable.
Crowds of children with heaven's innocence dead in their wide hungry
eyes, upright sober men idle, hollow-cheeked and sluggish, grown in-
different to starvation ; pestilential places called homes ; mothers, too
wan to heed their babies' cries, confronted by white signs nailed to
the rotting walls by the Board of Health, warning them that certain
infantile diseases are caused by dirt and lack of care, and these in
narrow reeking streets where space is begrudged to the sunlight.
Beer shops, pawn shops everywhere invited the desperate.
It was here that Jim Thompson's resolution was fully formed.
He was animated by no saint-like spirit of sacrifice. It was his old
804 TRANSMIGRATION [Mar.,
strong business instinct reasserting itself, not for selfish mercenary
motives, but in his desire to right flagrant business wrongs practised
upon the poor. His active intelligence had claimed this outlet, and
this was but the beginning. Every day he realized, with a sort of
grateful enthusiasm, that this part of the world needed him, this
squalid, unquestioning part that accepts all life's drudgery and asks
no man's antecedents.
From a dock hand he had been advanced to a clerkship. He left
his own lodgings and penetrated further down into the slums. Up
Lime Kiln Lane off Scotland Yard to join forces with an old priest
who had established a modest clubhouse, where the poor could find
warmth and light and shelter and innocent recreation ; the priest was
too old, too wise to be surprised by the requests or motives of strange
humanity. He welcomed Jim Thompson as a valuable recruit de-
manding no explanations. As the months went on, Jim Thompson
began to realize his own power not the old power that money had
give him but the force of his will, his judgment, his capacity for
leadership in this world of ignorant poverty, and he began to ask
himself: were not conditions in his own country as pitiable as the
ones he had found here? Why should he work among aliens when
America, in optimistic heedlessness, was building a bulwark of misery
as great as England's own.
CHAPTER VI.
Mrs. Bolivar had arrived in Washington in a chaotic whirl of
boxes, trunks, furniture and babies. Mrs. Bolivar's traveling was
always cyclonic ; the fact that her husband, Alexander C. Bolivar, had
been elected to the Senate was not of such monumental importance
as the packing of the six small Bolivars, who reduced the world to
such a state of clamorous confusion that all political problems seemed
to be mere abstractions hardly worth consideration.
Fifteen years before Mrs. Bolivar, then Miss Fanny Mattingly,
had graduated with the highest honors that her college could confer
upon her, but that period seemed very remote. So many babies had
filled the interim that it was difficult to believe that there ever was a
time when they had no existence. She had a keen appreciation of her
husband's ability, but she had little time to express her sympathy or
understanding, for the six small Bolivars submerged her.
Bred on a broad Western plain, a Washington house, wedged
in between two others, was too small a place for their stamping
ground. They amused themselves falling down the soft, carpeted
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 805
stairs, ducking one another in the bathtub, clambering over the neigh-
bor's fences and fighting in the big nursery. All day Mrs. Bolivar
seemed to be kept busy bandaging bumped heads, holding cold com-
presses to bleeding noses, drying the ducked ones, and applying hot
water bottles to little stomachs that rebelled at the number of green
apples stowed surreptitiously away in them. Every week two or
three of the servants gave notice and left with astonishing prompt-
ness, apparently indifferent to the high wages the Senator persuasively
offered. Once the butler forgot his studied pose of aloofness, and
turning the Bolivar twins upside down he spanked them soundly
when he found that they had adroitly slipped a piece of ice down
the back of his new livery. The Senator arrived in time to witness
the chastisement, and after a short mental struggle between his
parental affection and his judicial sense, justice conquered, and he
retired as quietly as he had come.
Into this household the " ugliest member " came with a proposi-
tion. Mrs. Bolivar was in the library pouring tea for the Senator.
It was five o'clock, the only quiet hour of the day, the only time in
which the babies were barred out.
"Walcott," said the Senator cordially coming forward as his
friend unannounced entered the doorway, " we haven't seen you for
a week. I thought you had begun to number us among the useless
plutocrats and cut our acquaintance."
" All men are frauds," said Mrs. Bolivar, holding out her plump
hand to him. " You told us that we were the only friends you had
in Washington."
" My absence doesn't prove the contrary," he said smiling, as
he took the cup she gave him. " This chair is always such a sur-
prising luxury," and he sank down into a deep sleepy hollow. " It's
a curse to be so long-legged, so few chairs seem to fit."
" Oh, you poor bachelors," mocked Mrs. Bolivar. " Why is it
that in these enlightened days of decorators and bachelor apartments a
man seems so incapable of taking care of himself?"
" They're not," said the Senator teasingly. " We married men
know better. Walcott is too strenuous to be comfortable. He has
all the asceticism of the anchorite in the desert. How many paupers
are you supporting at present ? "
"Don't let him get statistical," begged Mrs. Bolivar. "Let's
gossip."
" I'm willing," replied Walcott. " How are the babies? "
" Now really," protested his hostess, " the babies are adorable
and they were all whole when I left them ten minutes ago, but 1]
didn't mean to carry the conversation to the nursery. I know and you
know that there are millions of babies in the world besides mine. I
8o6 TRANSMIGRATION [Mar.,
may be narrow, but I don't take any special interest in knowing how
many teeth my neighbor's baby has or whether the painful process
gave the child chills or convulsions, so I don't expect other people
to take that minute interest in mine. Everybody knows that babies
have been teething since the beginning of time. When I said gossip
I meant nice little bits of scandal. My interest is psychological not
malicious."
" A wise man never explains," said her husband parenthetically.
" But I'm speaking of the wise woman. Did you ever reflect
how much of a woman's conversation is made up of explanations ? "
" She has so many things to excuse," said the Senator, his
eyes twinkling.
" Come, come," said Walcott, " I always feel rather left out when
you two begin to try to be clever at each other's expense. It would be
traitorous to adopt a feminine point of view, and ungallant to as-
sume a masculine. Don't leave me sitting on the fence."
" Then why don't you talk," suggested Mrs. Bolivar. " Give an
account of yourself for the last seven days."
" Oh, you can guess," said the Senator, stretching himself on the
long davenport, " I suspect he's buying a coal yard."
"A coal yard?"
" It's a pet hobby of his help the poor to coal at wholesale
rates. Then he's secretly trying to start an insurance and sick benefit
society on a philanthropic business basis."
"Philanthropic business basis," repeated Mrs. Bolivar. "It sounds
alliterative, but can a business be philanthropic ? "
" That remains to be seen," answered Walcott good-naturedly.
"Remains is a good word," said the Senator. "That's all that
will be left of you."
Mrs. Bolivar frowned upon him. " Alexander is never serious,"
she said, " except when he's sitting in the Senate, and then he's so
very serious that he refuses to laugh at the stray jokes that occasionally
come halting from a colleague's brain."
Walcott handed back his cup for more tea. " I wish there was
more laughter in the world," he said.
" Dear me is that intended for cynicism or despair ? "
" Neither, I was thinking of someone. I was wondering how I
was going to broach the real object of my visit."
" You see," said the Senator, lazily lighting a cigar and handing
the box to Walcott, " you see, Fanny, that we are not the objects. I
was lying here flattering myself we were."
" You are the main ones. I want you to help me out of a diffi-
culty."
"Is it a deep difficulty?" asked Mrs. Bolivar. "Behold two scaling
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 807
ladders. I'm ready to do anything that doesn't require a large amount
of time. Time is at a premium ever since my two nurses left on the
same day. I don't blame them much, the twins dropped a cake of
soap in the coffee pot and buttered their toast with vaseline. You
know I should dote on slumming. People are so much more inter-
esting without the sham and the shame of the convention, but I've
started my career in Washington as a social outlaw. I haven't re-
turned half my visits, and Alec talks about 'social obligations' which
is a polite way of telling me to placate his constituents. I wish the
days were forty-eight hours long. Now tell us what the object is."
Walcott narrowed his eyes as if he were choosing his words with
the greatest of care. " First, where did you meet Miss Maxen?"
" Miss Maxen ! I never saw her in my life until two days ago.
She called on Alec looking for work ; he was busy, so I, with my usual
impetuosity, sent her to you. I thought she was very pretty and would
suit you matrimonially."
" There's Western frankness for you," laughed her husband.
" Don't you know that all women are born matchmakers ? They make
their own, and then they try their hands on other people. You can't
trust them."
" Matchmaking is a very laudable avocation," said Mrs. Bolivar,
sugaring her tea. " Why not ? I'm tired of hearing about the economic
independence of women, they don't want it."
"Don't want what?"
" Independence."
" They talk an awful lot about it then," mused her husband mak-
ing circles of smoke in the air.
" Of course we talk an 'awful lot/ " repeated his wife. " It's the
fashion to go in for careers, but we all mean to drop them as soon
as the right man appears."
" But suppose he doesn't come ? "
" Then we frequently take the wrong one half the time just
to escape from our choosen careers."
" I don't believe it," said Walcott.
" Then how do you account for the unhappy marriages ? "
" I don't try to account for them," he smiled. " What makes you
so disloyal to your sex to-day ? "
" To tell the truth I'm tired of them. The modern girl seems
so restless, so dissatisfied, so feverish. Years ago they stayed at home
and were a comfort and help. Think of the samplers they left be-
hind them."
" Samplers what is a sampler?" he asked helplessly.
" Fancy work on an atrocious scale, willow trees and epitaphs in
cross stitch."
8o8 TRANSMIGRATION [Mar,
" And you consider them a desirable antidote for restlessness ? "
asked Walcott dryly.
" Very desirable."
Her husband laughed aloud. " My mind is bewildered by the
lady's logic. Do you suppose Penelope did samplers ? "
" Penelope is not to be despised/' replied his wife. " What could
she do with Ulysses so far away? She looked towards him as she
spoke, and there was a touch of sentiment in the light laughing tone
that Walcott did not fail to notice.
" We have wandered far from the point," said Walcott after a
moment's pause.
" Was there any point ? " asked the Senator yawning.
" The point was matrimony," said Mrs. Bolivar.
" Please spare me," entreated Walcott, " I assure you I'm not in
the market."
" Of course he isn't," said the Senator. " When we first met
him let me see, that was thirteen years ago on our way home from
England didn't I tell you that he was a woman hater ? "
" But Mrs. Bolivar disproved that," interrupted Walcott with old-
fashioned gallantry.
" Don't let's try to be complimentary," she said. " We've known
each other since my honeymoon that's a long time; we've stood the
wear and tear of political battles; you've been godfather to half
my children ; that ought to establish a relationship. Now tell us what
kind of a slummy friend you have on hand and let us help you."
"Well, I wouldn't call her 'slummy,' and my thought at present
half concerns my godchildren. Don't you think," he added humor-
ously, " that it might be a wise precaution to treat them to some
sort of discipline? "
"That is not tenderly maternal," said the Senator, glancing merrily
at his wife.
" Paternally dispassionate," she suggested mockingly.
" We will say unbiased," continued Walcott. " Someone who
could gain some sort of control and give you a little more peace
and freedom. Someone who could stand proxy when the real mother
was out. It occurred to me this morning, just after Miss Maxen's
call, that you might like to engage her as your private secretary or
governess."
Mrs. Bolivar turned to her husband. "Alexander what do you
think of it? Do you believe that our babes' intellects need training?
I turn to you for advice because well, I have a preconceived notion
that a woman is better off without masculine advice, but the thought
that our children have emerged from barbarism to the necessity of a
governess is too great a shock for me to stand alone."
I9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 809
" Bobby is eight," said the Senator meditatively, " and is very
backward. Of course they will have to be taught by somebody.
Walcott's advice is always sound. We don't want a crowd of infant
prodigies, but we don't want a half a dozen numbskulls to disgrace
us. I knew we would have to look for a school as soon as we were
settled. A governess seems to solve the problem."
" And she might help out with my invitations and notes."
" Of course," said Walcott, and then he added with some con-
fusion, " I think she would expect to be treated as one of us."
Mrs. Bolivar laughed again, " Oh, Mr. Walcott, Mr. Walcott," she
exclaimed, " I feel insulted at the suggestion. We Western people are
not snobs, the Lord be thanked for that. We've all had some sensible
tavern keeper or cowboy in our pedigree to preserve us. Get Miss
Maxen to call on me at once. The prospect of a governess grows
upon me. They somehow seem so delightfully old-fashioned in these
days of elective boarding schools. I feel that I am a girl again,
huddled in my mother's attic, reading one of those dear three-volume
novels where a governess is always the heroine and captures the hero
by conversing with him in Greek Homeric verse."
" Is Miss Maxen that kind ? " asked the Senator dubiously.
" You ought to know," said Mrs. Bolivar. " Isn't she your
cousin? "
" Yes, her mother is, some way far back but I never saw her
until a few days ago, and I'm pleased to say she asked my help
before she discovered our kinship. The name on her card, Martha
Canfield Maxen, made an impression. I once had a great grandmother
or an aunt-in-law or some sort of distant ancestor by the name of
Canfield. I asked her a few questions and found that she was a
distant cousin. I once had a fancy for genealogy before I went into
politics, then I found that the least said about grandfathers the bet-
ter, so I dropped it."
" Dear me," sighed Mrs. Bolivar, " this is all very irrelevant. I
take the romantic view, Alexander the aristocratic, Mr. Walcott has
sanely told us that our children need generalship. If he thinks Miss
Maxen can control them let us engage her at once."
" You are very kind to try the experiment," said Walcott putting
down his cup preparatory to taking his departure, " for of course most
things in life are experiments."
" I suppose they are," said Mrs. Bolivar meditatively. " I'm
going to give an experimental dinner on the twenty-seventh, and you
will have to come to it."
" Why do you call it experimental ? "
She laughed. "Well the butler is new, and my best china may
all have been broken in the packing, and I know so few of my
810 TRANSMIGRATION [Mar.,
guests intimately that they may all have feuds with each other for
all I know or care."
" Well, leave me out," pleaded Walcott, " I hate dinners."
" Your presence seems essential," said the Senator. " Since you
know no one, you can at least act as barrier for the feudists."
" You can't escape," said Mrs. Bolivar decidedly. " Miss Maxen
will be here and you will have to balance the table."
" On you," said the Senator grinning broadly. " Glad you've
got the physical strength; there's no use protesting, you will have
to come."
" I've no evening clothes."
" Then buy 'em. My dear man, this is the East the Capital of
the United States. You don't expect to go round all winter in a suit
of rusty tweeds."
" I'm sorry I came," said Walcott with a rueful smile.
"Well, maybe you are, but that doesn't alter the situation.
You're here. I'll take you to my tailor in the morning. I'm not
going to be the only victim at Mrs. Bolivar's first dinner."
Walcott looked resigned, " You're a pleasant pair of plotters," he
said as he rose to say good-bye, " but you've taken a mean advantage
of me, you will have to acknowledge that."
[TO BE CONTINUED,]
THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS.
BY JOSEPH V. MCKEE, A.M.
URING the present month the attention of all re-
ligious bodies of this country will be focused on the
meeting of the Congress on Christian Work in Latin
America, which convenes, February loth, in the city
of Panama. The plan and scope of the work con-
templated by this Conference are of such magnitude, and the con-
sequences of such a serious nature, as to give the Congress an
importance which no meeting of Protestant denominations in late
years has deserved. Since the formulation and publication of the
purpose to hold such a Congress, the various Protestant bodies
have shown in the subject an intense interest. With the exception
of the Episcopal Church, where the question of participation in the
Congress aroused animated feeling, which at times developed into
discord and sectional antagonism, all the Protestant Churches are
enthused by the possibilities that may arise from the Conference,
and are solid in their support of the Congress. But while it is, and
could not be otherwise than, a purely Protestant enterprise, in its
purpose and effects it will have a direct bearing on the Catholic
Church. The influences which it will set in operation will reach
far beyond the confines of Protestantism and in extent and im-
portance be marked and serious.
The Congress, which will extend from February loth to 2Oth,
and comprise more than five hundred delegates from the United
States, Canada and Latin America, has been well planned. In
March, 1913, a Conference of Protestant missionaries was held in
New York City. At this meeting the subject of Latin America, and
the possibilities of extended missionary work in that field, came up
and received serious attention. As a result a committee was ap-
pointed to confer with the other mission boards, with the idea of
obtaining cooperation in this work. A canvas showed a unanimity
among the various mission heads. It was, thereupon, decided to
hold a great representative Congress to meet at the seat of opera-
tions, and there to discuss ways and means to inaugurate a con-
certed, continent-wide missionary propaganda among the peoples
of Central and South America.
8i2 THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS [Mar.,
In accordance with this determination, an invitation to par-
ticipate in the Congress was extended to all Christian bodies. " All
communions or organizations which accept Jesus Christ as Divine
Saviour and Lord, and the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament as the Revealed Word of God, and whose purpose is to
make the will of Christ prevail in Latin America, are cordially in-
vited to participate in the Panama Congress, and will be heartily
welcomed" (Official Bulletin). The purpose of the Congress, as
officially promulgated, is " to obtain a more accurate mutual knowl-
edge of the history, resources, achievements of the peoples so
closely associated in their business and social life; to unite in a
common purpose to strengthen the moral, social and religious forces
that are now working for the betterment of these countries; to
discover the underlying principles of true national prosperity, and
to consider ways and means by which these principles may be put
in action and made effective to recognize all the elements of
truth and goodness in any form of religious faith neither
critical nor antagonistic, but inspired by the teachings and examples
of Christ."
To take the Congress out of the realm of the purely academic
light, commissions were appointed to begin at once the task of in-
vestigating the various fields covered by the subjects assigned them.
After extensive research, they were to prepare papers which would
be taken up for discussion at the Conference in Panama. The
following topics were assigned to the respective commissions :
i. Survey and Occupation; 2. Message and Method; 3. Educa-
tion; 4. Literature; 5. Women's Work; 6. The Church in the
Field; 7. The Home Base; 8. Cooperation and Union. These
commissions have been at work since 1914, and their reports are
now printed and will be distributed among the delegates at the
Congress.
When the subject of a Conference for concerted missionary
propaganda in Latin America was broached to the members of the
various Protestant missionary organizations, it was received with
decided favor, and steps were immediately taken to cooperate with
the central board which set the movement afoot. All the sects were
prompt in ratifying the action of the delegates to the primary con-
ference. It was a matter of no surprise, therefore, when, on May
1 2th, the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church
adopted the following resolution :
Resolved, That the Board of Missions, having learned of
1916.] THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS 813
the plan to hold a Conference in Panama in 1916 on missionary
work in Latin America, on the same general lines as the World
Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910, will arrange to
send delegates to the Conference and authorizes any of its
officers who may be asked to do so, to serve upon committees
in connection with the Conference, and to take such other steps
in the preparatory work as they may think desirable, provided
that whatever notice or invitation is sent to any Christian body
shall be presented to every communion having work in Latin
America.
This resolution, after some debate, was carried. Up to this time
there seemed to have been a firm spirit of cooperation among all
the Protestant bodies. The greatest harmony existed; plans were
laid out and approved by the various boards, the work was
progressing favorably, and the energy resulting from close union
was pushing the preliminary tasks to fruitful conclusions. But,
at this point, when the Episcopal Board of Missions took up the
matter officially, a note of discord was heard within that Church.
In a brief space the protest against Episcopal cooperation with other
Protestant communions aroused animated discussion. The con-
troversy that followed was carried on throughout the summer. It
culminated in public dissension and overt opposition in the follow-
ing October (1915). As a result the cleavage between the High
Churchmen and the Low Churchmen, the two wings of the Epis-
copal Church, is more pronounced than ever.
While the Episcopal Church is a Protestant sect, and cannot
rightly claim continuity of Orders or Apostolic Tradition of Faith,
there have been members who claim that these are the marks of
that Church and hold that it is truly Catholic. The tendency on
the part of the members of this division has led them to hold aloof
from the Evangelical denominations, and to move Romeward in
ritual and dogma. For some time they have been working for a
unity of Churches, and place great hope in the outcome of the
Conference on Faith and Order, the preparatory Conference of
which was held recently at Garden City, New York. Consequently,
when the Episcopal Board of Missions pledged that Church to
cooperation with the other Protestant sects, these members pro-
tested vigorously. They felt that the Panama Conference was
nothing more or less than a deliberate attack on the Roman Catholic
Church an attack which they could not justify, especially at a
time when they were endeavoring to effect a reconciliation with
814 THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS [Mar.,
the Roman Catholic Church. They feared " that conferences like
Panama may lead to a Pan- Protestantism, in which faith and
order will be thrown to the winds for the sake of a false union
which can never be unity. They feel, with the late Bishop Cod-
man, that all efforts at unity with the Protestant denominations
have proved abortive and a waste of time." They opposed co-
operation on two grounds: first, because they felt the Conference
to be an affront to the Roman Catholic Church, and, secondly, be-
cause they appreciated the absurdity of a body attempting to ob-
tain unity with the Catholic Church, and at the same time joining
in a work that could not be otherwise than a flagrant attack on
that same Church.
This controversy remained distinctly " intra-mural " until the
autumn meeting of the Board of Missions, which took place on
October 26th in New York City. There the dissension came to a
head. The High Churchmen, in support of their protest against
cooperation in the Panama Conference, carried the fight to the floor
of the meeting, and submitted a motion to rescind the action of
the Board to send Episcopal delegates to Panama. This motion
was defeated by a vote of twenty-six to thirteen. Thereupon Dr.
William T. Manning, Rector of Trinity Church in New York City,
the Bishops of Fond du Lac, Washington and Marquette, and the
Dean of All Saint's Cathedral in Milwaukee, resigned from the
Board. Nevertheless the Board resolved to follow out its original
determination, and seven bishops were chosen delegates to attend
the Congress on " the provision that they go for conference only,
and with no purpose, authority, or power of committing the Board
of Missions to cooperate."
It is difficult to foretell the effect of this dissension on the
future integrity of the Episcopal Church. Undoubtedly it will be
far-reaching and serious. For a long time the Church has sheltered
communications holding every shade of belief. Totally lacking the
authority to determine matters of faith or dogma, it has lent its
name to the widest divergences in creed and profession, and is far
away from the essence or even semblance of Catholicism which, at
times, it claims. This anomaly of claim and fact has not passed
unperceived by the thinking members of the Church. They have
been seeking, some consciously, others unconsciously, an authority
on which to base securely the validity of faith and orders. As a
result they are moving farther apart from the Calvinist members
of the same Church. The differences between these two wings
1916.] THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS 815
have long since been serious, and seem to have become permanent.
The question of cooperation with the other Protestant bodies in
the Panama Conference has added to this spirit of incompatibility.
Other like matters of administration will come up in the near
future which will call forth even more decided opposition. It is
difficult to see how these conflicting bodies can long remain united
in one communion. The union can be sustained only by ties of
strong common interests. The absence of any such binding factors
in the Episcopal Church has exerted a disintegrating influence
which imperils the future existence of that body.
In commenting on the action of Dr. Manning and the mid-
West High Churchmen in resigning from the Episcopal Board of
Missions, The Outlook said editorially : " The invitation to the
Panama Conference and the statement of its purpose were guarded
with utmost care from any phrase or word which could give
offence to Roman Catholic Christians in Central and South
America, and only by an arbitrary interpretation can animosity or
anti-Roman Catholic propagandism be read into those statements."
If, as The Outlook says, censuring the High Churchmen,
" only by an arbitrary interpretation can animosity or anti-Roman
Catholic propagandism be read " into the purpose of the Panama
Conference, it is extremely difficult to justify the position taken
by t)r. Manning and his co-workers. If there was no reason for
conceiving that the Conference was directly antagonistic to the
Roman Catholic Church, the High Churchmen acted in too hasty
a manner in their zeal to guard the feelings of the Catholic Church
from affront. What reason should impel them to see hostility to
a Church not their own where no such hostility existed? Why
should they be supersensitive about the feelings of a Church of
which they were not members ? If their action was not based on a
keen sense of justice and fair play, but arose from a mere " arbi-
trary interpretation," it is impossible to explain their conduct, the
serious consequences of which they realized fully.
But is The Outlook justified in its statement that only an
arbitrary interpretation can read anti-Roman Catholic propa-
gandism into the work of the Panama Conference? Can the claim
be sustained that the Conference is not essentially antagonistic to
the Roman Catholic Church? Is there reason to believe that the
work of those interested in the Congress is not primarily against
Catholicism in Central and South America?
It is true that the statement of the purpose of the Panama
8i6 THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS [Mar,
Conference shows a desire that " all communions that accept Jesus
Christ as Divine Saviour " cooperate in the work to be done in
Latin America. But back of the published declaration of the Con-
gress, there is a deep-seated feeling of antipathy to things Catholic,
a spirit of bigotry and a willingness to misrepresent that change
the purpose of the Conference, and make it a concerted, serious
attack on the Catholic Church in Latin America. When it is
realized that the Congress will be made up of men who openly de-
clare that the Catholic Church is wanton in its fostering of
ignorance, vice and moral corruption, who publicly state that the
Catholic Church exerts an influence subversive of Christianity, and
that everything morally, economically and socially corrupt can be
laid at her door, we cannot accept at its face value the declara-
tion of the Congress that it is not antagonistic to any form of
religious faith.
Nor has this bitterness toward Catholicism been disguised in
any way. When the invitation to cooperate was published it was
fiercely attacked by many Protestant bodies. They were eager for
the Conference, but they objected to the wording of the invitation.
They desired the words " Congress on Christian Work " changed
to read " Missionary Conference," lest, perhaps, the Catholic
Church might participate in the Congress. They feared, in the
words of a Protestant writer, that " there will be too little criticism
of the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America. Some look upon
the Pope as Anti-Christ, and hold that no denunciation and op-
position can be too decided and forcible."
The ten Republics that constitute Latin America are and have
been essentially Catholic. Long before Protestantism reached the
shores of America, Catholic missionaries had brought the light of
Christianity to the wilds of South America. At an inestimable cost
they won a great continent to Christ. Through their efforts the
sacring bell sounded on the heights of Mexico, in the fever-laden
lowlands of Panama, on the pampas of Brazil, on the mountains of
the Andes and the rocky shore of Chile. The Faith that they
preached became the inheritance of the peoples there, guiding their
lives, shaping their destinies, always strong, never diminished.
Yet it is to the inhabitants of these countries that the Panama
Congress would bring " the light of Christ." In order to justify
the Panama Conference, the representatives of the Protestant mis-
sions have grossly maligned the peoples they would "save " from
moral degradation. They have misrepresented Latin America as a
1916.] THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS 817
land of unspeakable iniquity, where Christianity has never reached.
To make plausible their arguments for the need of missionary
work in South America, they have pictured the Latin American as a
creature of abject immorality, aided and protected in his sordid life
of corruption by the evil powers of the established Catholic Church.
" Morally," recently wrote William Souter, a prominent
Protestant missionary, in showing the need of the Panama Congress,
"things [in Latin America] are about as bad as can be. No one
expects a young man to be moral, and conditions are such in many
homes, purposely arranged by parents with the well-being of their
sons at heart, that would shock you, dared I mention details
So-called heathen China is far away ahead of the South American
republics where morals are concerned."
Another missionary, in urging support of the Congress, writes
in The Missionary Review of only a month or so ago : " From
the beginning of Rome's domination of South America every effort
has been made by the priests to prevent the spread of evangelical
truth. The Bible is pronounced an immoral book which will cor-
rupt the minds of those who read it, consequently the priests seize
every effort to destroy it."
Another writes on behalf of the Congress : " In South America
failure is not due to unbelief in the deity of Christ or the necessity
for His atonement, but the difficulty is that these truths have been
obscured by other teachings."
Within the past year no appeal to support the Panama Con-
gress has been made that did not misrepresent conditions in Latin
America and calumniate the Catholic Church. The following ex-
cerpts, taken from the writings of men prominent in the work of
the Panama Conference, are typical of their attitude :
There has been four hundred years of misrule and religious
intolerance and superstition in South America. They have the
political and religious characteristics of the Dark Ages.
Widespread ignorance, immorality and irreligion constitute
a call for a healing and life-giving Gospel.
It is time that Christian forces united to win Latin America
to Christ.
Besides, we must not forget that there are millions of souls
in that continent who have never yet heard of the Christian
faith and other millions who have a very wrong idea of it.
Surely these benighted souls constitute a legitimate field for
missionary labor.
Thousands of thoughtful students and professors are waiting
VOL. CII. 52
8i8 THE LATIN AMERICAN CONGRESS [Mar.,
for friends who will show them that belief in God and im-
mortality is rational, that religion is to be incorporated in
daily life, and to manifest its powers in transforming- lives and
communities.
South America is still groping in moral and spiritual darkness.
South America does not know the saving power of the Lord
Jesus Christ. "This is the Macedonian cry of South America.
These statements show the real attitude of those participating
in the Panama Congress. These are the sentiments of the men who
wield power in their Church and who will fashion the policy of the
Conference. They have portrayed the Catholic Church in South
America as an agency of corruption, a breeder of immorality and a
force working for ignorance, vice and moral degradation. Conse-
quently when we read these unproved and false declarations which
are given to bolster up the cause of the Panama Conference, we can-
not, in reason, see the justification of saying that " only by arbitrary
interpretation can animosity or anti-Roman Catholic propagandism
be read " into the purpose of the Congress. Much less are we in-
clined to accept this claim when we know that Protestant mis-
sionaries are being instructed in the special art of " deorganizing "
the South American Catholic, and that the Fourth Report of the
Board of Missionary Preparation of the Episcopal Church, just
recently published, contains thirty pages of explicit directions for
winning the South American from the Catholic Faith instructions
written especially for the foreign work to be inaugurated at
Panama, and later at the special conferences which will be held in
Lima, Santiago, Buenos Ayres, Rio de Janeiro and Havana.
A quotation from the recent writings of the Rev. C. L. Thomp-
son, Chairman of the Committee on Unity and Cooperation at
the Panama Congress, is interesting. He says of Latin America:
" Its people in large measure have failed of the impulse for
noble living, which comes by a noble inheritance. If we
have inherited high moral ideas, it is not to our praise, but it con-
stitutes a reason why we should share them with others less fortu-
nate [The Congress is] an endeavor to lift to higher levels
and purer forms of Christian faith people who have been made
cold or indifferent by the formalities of religion without its spirit."
It would be instructive to know what the South American
people, who have always been idealistic, think of statements such as
these and the men who make them.
It is impossible, in any way, to justify the calling of the Panama
I 9 i6.] ETIAM MORIENDO CORUSCAT 819
Conference. From the point of view of the Latin American it is
totally unnecessary and will work not good but evil. The Con-
ference can offer no adequate religious or moral substitute for what
the South American now has. In striving to disturb his religious
belief it will work not for Protestantism, but for irreligion and
immorality. In a social or economic way the Conference can do
nothing, nor has it the right to offer even suggestions. The changes
that must be effected, and they are many, must be done by the Latin
American himself. It is his affair, and by nature he will resent any
foreign interference ; and justly so. Can we imagine a Conference
of South American delegates coming to Washington and sitting in
judgment on the people of the United States? Mr. Barrett, head
of the Pan-American Union and every unprejudiced authority who
has the interests of his country at heart, have realized the dangers
attending the holding of the Congress, and have publicly advised
against it.
ETIAM MORIENDO CORUSCAT.
BY HONOR WALSH.
SAD wailing March ! thy loved green mantle spread
Above wan February's corpse-cold ground,
Above the sufferer who surcease hath found,
Above our gentle-valiant saintly dead!
Mute is his voice who left no good unsaid
Wit, wisdom, admonition, grace profound
Are memories now of him, whose pillowed head
In majesty of life, kind Death re-crowned.
Keep woe for weaklings by fond lures enchained,
And grieve for sinners, expiating crime
For him, the stainless who redeemed the stained,
For him who lived to bless, whose death in prime
Clasp the full record of the heaven-ordained,
Vain tears might blur the path he bade us climb !
SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE.
BY COMTESSE DE COURSON.
NLY a few months ago, in a thoughtful and accurate
paper, 1 THE CATHOLIC WORLD made its readers ac-
quainted with " the Catholic Renaissance in France,"
an evolution that those whose lot is cast among
French people have watched for years past with
passionate interest and heartfelt gratitude. The world at large
was slower to recognize the movement and, as M. Charles Baussan
judiciously observes, not unnaturally, judged French morality by
the indecent plays and novels that are shed broadcast on the markets
abroad, but that, in reality, only appeal to a small minority among
the people of France. It also was inclined to identify the nation
with its anti-religious Government, and to conclude, without suffi-
cient knowledge of the thousand complex causes that dominate the
interior life of a people, that the French Catholics were in some
measure to blame for the Government's arrogant irreligion. That
they may have favored its action unwittingly by their political
quarrels is probably true, but it is a fact that whatever may have
been their errors of judgment in the past, they have, especially
within the last twenty years, proved themselves truly alive to the
perils ahead, and ready to give their time and their money to the
social and religious works that played a considerable part in the
" Catholic Renaissance." The war, from which we in France are
all suffering more or less at the present moment, has fanned into
flame the religious reaction that had been steadily at work for the
last quarter of a century. One of its characteristic features is full
of hope for the future : this revival is perceptible chiefly among the
young, and has manifested itself for some years past in the action
of the guilds, leagues and Associations founded by young French-
men on the principles of religion. They realize that an elder gen-
eration failed, through its lack of union, in stemming the tide of
atheism and sectarian tyranny, and they steadily built their work
upon a wider basis, that of religion, irrespective of politics.
Another characteristic of the present generation of young
l The Catholic Renaissance in France. By Charles Baussan. THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, September, 1915, p. 734.
1916.] SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE 821
French Catholics is their wish to know; they are more reasonable
than sentimental in their attitude towards the Church, and they
make no secret that their object is to understand their religion, to
realize it in their conduct, and to extend to the Church a tribute of
enlightened and heartfelt obedience. This obedience controls their
activities on all the burning questions that before the war absorbed
their attention: the social problem, for instance, was studied in
the Catholic Associations of young men in a spirit of justice and
charity, happily and wisely influenced by the teaching of Rome.
We may safely say that when in August, 1914, the war, a
surprise to the majority of Frenchmen, called the nation to arms,
there were scattered throughout the land thousands of intelligent,
studious, devout and active young men, whose previous life was an
excellent preparation for the stern duty ahead. Many of them be-
longed to an important Association founded twenty-five years ago,
under the direct inspiration of Count Albert de Mun. It is called
the "Association Catholique de la Jeunesse Frangaise," or, more
familiarly, the A. C. J. F., and it numbered, when the war broke
out, twenty-five thousand members, belonging chiefly to the in-
telligent student world and to the laborious middle classes. They
were active and devoted, eager to extend the reign of God among
men, indeed an apostolic spirit is a leading characteristic of the
A. C. J. F.
This Association is by no means the only one that helped to
advance the religious renaissance in France; there are "patron-
ages " and gymnastic societies by the hundred, governed in a
Catholic spirit, that did the same work and did it excellently. But
as in a necessarily limited space, it is difficult to touch on all
these manifestations of religious life, we take the " Jeunesse
Catholique " as being qualified to represent the general attitude
of our young Catholics under present circumstances. It was, be-
fore the war, influential and popular, hence we may believe that it
represented the average spirit of our young men; its members be-
long to every class of society : among them are landed proprietors,
engineers, doctors, lawyers, workmen, accountants, clerks, etc. It
presents, therefore, a fair sample of the young French laymen, who
profess to be practical Catholics, in the years 1914, 1915 and 1916.
The moral and social training received by the members of the
A. C. J. F. in times of peace was severely tested by the war. f< The
present circumstances bring serious lessons that will last a lifetime,"
writes one associate, " but never did we realize so keenly the
822 SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE [Mar.,
value of the Christian and Apostolic teaching that was impressed
upon us by our dear Association."
A military chaplain, writing to the Director of the A. C. J. F.,
strikes the same note; he recognizes the excellent moral training
that makes real "apostles" of these young soldiers; they have
been taught that to live up to their belief is not sufficient, that they
are bound, having received more than others, to give more, and to
extend the reign of God to the best of their ability.
In their military life opportunities of self-sacrifice are not
wanting, and the " Bulletin "of the A. C. J. F. is, in this respect,
instructive reading for those especially who know of the Catholic
youth of France. It proves the latter to be equal to their task.
One member writes to the centre of the A. C. J. F. in Paris:
" Imagine my joy : one of my non-commissioned officers, whom I
had for a long time endeavored to convert to a better way of think-
ing, was wounded by my side, the same shell struck us both. He
writes to me from the hospital, where he is nursed, that he goes
to the chapel every day. This shell has done him more good than
harm."
A military chaplain tells the following story : He had organized
a daily Benediction in a miserable church, situated in a country
desolated by the war, and where an artillery regiment was stationed
that enjoyed the unenviable reputation of being notoriously irre-
ligious. The chaplain had been told beforehand that his attempt
to attract the men to the church was doomed to failure, but nothing
daunted he started a daily service, and the first two evenings the
scanty congregation fully justified these gloomy forebodings.
Somewhat disheartened he was alone in the sacristy, wondering
how he could reach the reluctant artillerymen, when, he says, " a
big giant, about twenty- four years of age, entered the sacristy. He
informed me that he was, before the war, accountant in a mining
undertaking, and that he now was a non-commissioned officer in
the artillery regiment quartered in my village. He offered to lead
the singing, promised to bring his men to Benediction; he sug-
gested that big notices written by him should be posted up through-
out the village, inviting the soldiers to be present at a Solemn Mass
on August 1 5th. We set to work, and we prepared several hymns
for the coming festival. These repetitions took place at my young
friend's dinner hour : 'How about your dinner ?' I said. 'Oh, never
mind/ was the reply, 'I have done nothing for the Church since the
war began. I really must do something now/ And when I praised
1916.] SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE 823
his zeal : 'Do not praise me/ he said, 'it is the 'Jeunesse Catholique*
that teaches us to serve the Church. A young friend of mine, who
is quartered near Hebuterue, considers himself privileged because
by getting up every morning before four o'clock, he can serve
several Masses. We who belong to the J. F. are not in suffi-
cient numbers to do all we would wish !' ' The chaplain continues
to relate how this young soldier's assistance braced up his own
courage, and created an atmosphere of vitality around the hitherto
deserted church, where, under his guidance, the artillerymen, for-
getting their prejudices, soon heartily joined in the prayers and
singing. Another young member of the Association was quartered
in a hamlet where there was no church. He sent for a portable
altar, and transformed his room into a chapel, where his adjutant,
a soldier-priest, said Mass every day at dawn. " It was a very
humble sanctuary," he writes, " ornamented with a few flowers,
but it made me happy to feel that after many years God had
returned to the poor hamlet where He was forgotten. By degrees
some of my comrades came to Mass ; I discovered among my ser-
geants two young men who had assisted at the meetings of the
A. C. J. F., and by supporting one another we were able to spread
and to defend true and healthy doctrines." The letter of this
young apostle describes with what " intense emotion " he continues
to receive the " Bulletin " of the " heroic " Association, hundreds
of whose members have shed their blood for France ; their example
is ever before their surviving comrades.
" The A. C. J. F. has taught me the real value of life," writes
a wounded member; "I offer my life for the 'Jeunesse Catho-
lique,' " whispered another to the priest who was assisting him. In
the plain of the Woevre, that since the beginning of the war has
been swept by the German shells, a young soldier lay dying; he
received the last Sacraments with deep devotion, then he drew from
his bloody tunic a tiny Maltese cross, the badge of the Association :
" I belong to the 'J eunesse Catholique,' " he whispered to his con-
fessor, who then understood the enlightened and heroic detachment
of this young soldier.
The spirit of detachment that is revealed in every page of the
"Bulletin," has nothing morbid or melancholy about it; the tone
of the letters that it quotes is invariably manly and bright : " When
I make my rounds at night," writes one, " I feel truly in the hands
of God; I am full of joy at the thought that, for my country's
sake, I have a duty to perform and a danger to face."
824 SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE [Mar.,
Another, who is a lieutenant, assembles his men in church
every evening. There is no cure in the village : the lieutenant says
night prayers aloud, and sings the In manus, as being the prayer
most suitable for men who live under the shadow of death. They
can then, he says, face the risks ahead with trust, calmness and
joyful confidence in God's mercy and love.
In the weary prisoner's camps in Germany, the members of
the A. C. J. F. continue their work as apostles; truly the lessons
taught to them in times of peace have not been in vain. One of
them, writing from Alten-Grabow, relates how Mass is said in the
camp by a soldier-priest; the young members of the " Jeunesse
Catholique " helping to organize the ceremony and prepare the altar.
All the French prisoners came, and when the familiar " Cantiques,"
that remind them of home, were sung, many among these rough
soldiers burst into tears. On a great feast, over eight hundred
among them went to Holy Communion. The writer of the letter,
who, before the war, was president of an important group of the
A. C. J. F., insists upon the conversions that take place among the
prisoners : " You may often see one of them learning his Catechism,
under the guidance of a seminarist, who prepares him for baptism.
Others first come to night prayers from curiosity, the pray-
ers and 'Cantiques' of their childhood move their hearts; they
return to the chapel, ask to see the priest, and finally take up their
long- forgotten religious practices."
At Ingolstadt, a young soldier on arriving pinned a paper
Maltese cross on his tunic, and almost immediately five members
of the A. C. J. F. lost in the crowd of prisoners rallied round him;
a few days later their number had increased to over thirty, and
they had organized among themselves a branch of the Association,
with the object of spreading a Catholic spirit and Catholic practices
among their fellow-captives.
The good work that is being carried on among our French
soldiers in the prison camps of Germany is confirmed by the chap-
lains of these camps.
" The cannon is an excellent preacher," said a military chap-
lain, but in the dreary leisure of a prison camp there is more time
for study, and the new learned lessons sink deeper, and develop in
more favorable conditions, than in the atmosphere of the battlefield.
A soldier-priest, since killed at the front, whose influence over his
comrades was irresistible, spoke to me of the religious revival
brought about by the war. He recognized its existence and was
I 9 i6.] SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE 825
far from minimizing its effects, but, in his opinion, the conver-
sions wrought in the atmosphere of the prison camps have more
depth, because they are founded on reflection and study, as well as
on prayer. From these camps will issue, he believed, not a nation
of practical Catholics, but an elite of converts, who, having leisurely
re-learned their religion, will practise it with more enlightened zeal,
and in whose ranks the rising generation will find its leaders. The
task of gathering in the moral harvest, that will spring from seed
sown during the war, will, in the future, be the portion of the sur-
vivors of the great conflict. As a young member of the A. C. J. F.
once wrote : " Those who, by the mercy of God, are spared, are
bound to be apostles, and to consecrate their lives to creating a
new and better France."
Most of the young soldiers of the Association of which we
have just spoken, belong to Christian families ; the influence of the
A. C. J. F. only developed and matured the principles they had
received from their parents as a sacred heritage, and the work
wrought in their souls by the Association was prepared by their
Catholic home training. Among their contemporaries was
another class of young men, in whom the religious revival of the
last quarter of a century acted in a more striking manner, because
these recruits were drawn to the Catholic Church from homes
where Catholicism was ignored. We may add that the Catholic
Renaissance would have lost much of its depth and value had it
consisted merely in making good men better. It went further, and
it drew to the Church a distinguished group of students, most of
whom belonged to the Government schools. They were attracted
to the Catholic Church because of her discipline, her authority and
her reasonableness. There was no sentimentality about these twen-
tieth-century converts, but a keen sense of the necessity of an
unerring law; what might have repelled weaker minds drew these
sincere souls to the one authority that proclaims itself infallible.
The extent of the Catholic revival in these hitherto-closed
circles is little known outside France ; it is none the less a solid fact
as those who see France from within can certify. It is important
that any religious movement to be lasting should appeal to the intel-
lectual element of a nation, and the Catholic Renaissance in France
can boast of the loyal allegiance of a considerable number of French
professors and students, who fought their way to faith through the
waters of unbelief. Some of these recent converts, highly gifted
men, who seemed destined to exercise a happy influence over their
826 SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE [Mar.,
generation, have fallen in battle Charles Peguy, among others, a
man of humble birth, but a born poet, an ardent devotee of Jeanne
d'Arc, and something of a mystic. Another loss to literature, as
well as to the Church, was that of Kenan's grandson, Ernest Psich-
ari, who was killed during the summer of 1914, and towards whom
the men of his age turned with pride and confidence as to a born
leader. He is, says one who knew him intimately, an excellent
specimen of the men of his generation, who, educated outside the
Catholic Church, find their way back to her Fold by sheer force of
conviction, illuminated by the grace of God. " His life was one
long spiritual battle, a struggle of the soul; the same struggle
that is, just at present, going on in the soul of his race."
Ernest Psichari, whose mother was the daughter of Renan,
the author of the blasphemous Life of Jesus, was born in 1883.
His father was a Greek and he was baptized in the Greek Church,
but beyond this seems to have grown up without any religion. He
was educated at a Paris lycee, and was destined by his intellectual
gifts, the bent of his mind and his family traditions, to the career
of a professor at the Paris University. Until the age of twenty-
one, this appeared to be his natural vocation, but, after he had
accomplished the compulsory military service, to which all French
citizens are bound, he determined to remain in the army, and his
resolution created a tremendous sensation among the intellectual
circles in which his family moved. He soon rose from the ranks
in the army, and distinguished himself in the course of several
distant expeditions in Congo and Mauritania. This brilliant lieu-
tenant was a thoughtful and original writer. He had inherited
something of his grandfather's charm as an author, but there was
nothing of Kenan's vagueness about his vigorous manhood. Dur-
ing his second African campaign he thought long and deeply of
the religious and social problems that haunt many men of his
generation, and to which the school in which he had been reared
can give only unsatisfactory answers. Slowly and surely he
worked his way towards the Catholic Church ; he prayed incessantly,
and the solitude in which he lived served as a kind of retreat.
" The desert is a blessed land," he wrote. The different stages of
his upward progress are noted in his posthumous work, lately pub-
lished, The Centurion's Voyage. Psichari thus defined this curi-
ous and deeply interesting work : " If these studies have no doc-
trinal authority, they, at any rate, have the sincerity of a confession.
They are merely the thoughts of one who, during long years, pas-
1916.] SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE 827
sionately sought the truth and who, eventually, had the happiness
to find it."
In 1911, he had got to the point of praying fervently for light
to see and for strength to do, and his intimate friends received
letters that have been published, in part, since Psichari's death. They
reveal his strong attraction towards Catholicism, his growing con-
viction that here lay the only answer to his eager questionings : " I
am," he wrote, " if I dare say, an absurdity, a Catholic who has not
the faith," but this overwhelming attraction had not yet brought
absolute certainty. " I loudly call upon God, and He does not
come to me," he adds. Later on, speaking of these wrestlings of
his soul, he said : " I believed in nothing, I lived like a pagan, but
I felt the irresistible invasion of grace; I did not yet possess the
faith, but I knew that, one day, I would possess it."
In December, 1912, he returned to France, and for the next
two months he stood, hesitating and anxious, on the threshold of
the Church, but humble prayer carried him forward, and to this
earnest soul God's answer came in due time. On February 4, 1912,
in a private oratory at Versailles, Ernest Psichari made his solemn
profession of faith in the presence of a Dominican Father and of
two friends who had been closely associated with the different stages
of his conversion. He made his general confession the same day
and, four days later, was confirmed; on the ninth, he made his
First Communion. " I feel," he said to the Dominican Father
who was his first confessor, " that I now will give to God all that
He requires of me."
The new convert's joy, simplicity and filial attitude towards the
Church, deeply impressed his friends; he seemed from the first
familiar with her ritual and her prayers. He had an extraordinary
gift of prayer, and those who were nearest to him in the first days
of his conversion, will never forget the wrapt expression of his
countenance when he knelt before the altar. Almost from the first
he thought of becoming a priest ; he felt it a sacred duty to fill the
place that his grandfather's apostasy had left vacant, and he humbly
hoped that if, in spite of his apparent impenitence, Renan made
a final, though unseen, act of contrition, his own self-sacrifice
might help to abridge the apostate's time of expiation. He clung
to this hope with filial pity. For the time being, however, he kept
his intentions as to his future secret, and took up his military duties
with a new view of things, temporal and spiritual.
He was among the few who expected the war, and who looked
828 SOME YOUNG MEN OF FRANCE [Mar.,
upon it as a necessity, to be faced, not merely with courage, but
with joy. He had offered his life to God, and the gift was about
to be accepted under a different form from that to which he looked
forward when he decided to become a priest. He left Cherbourg
with his regiment, and at the end of August he and his artillerymen
were at Virton, in Belgium. The battle of the Marne had not,
at that date, turned the tide of invasion, and the allied armies had
to face the overwhelming German forces. For twelve mortal hours,
on August 22d, Psichari and his men stood steady under the
enemy's fire; the soldiers were as admirable as their officers.
Towards evening a bullet struck the young lieutenant in the head;
his death was instantaneous, and the serene expression of his dead
countenance was long remembered by those who rescued his body.
The evolution that for the last few years is bringing many
young men, trained to distrust and despise the Church, within her
influence, was brilliantly sampled in Kenan's grandson. For this
reason we may say that many hopes centred on him, and that
his loss was more keenly felt by his friends. Trained in the Uni-
versity, belonging to a circle of unbelievers, he seemed destined to
bridge over the abyss that separates the Catholic Church from
those who ignore her existence. The movement that is slowly
bringing Catholic doctrines into notice among the French intel-
lectuals does not, however, depend on the life and influence of one
man. Ernest Psichari was not alone in his search for Truth, and
a steady evolution on the same lines was perceptible before the
war in the Government schools for higher education. The tragic
events of the last eighteen months will not stifle a movement that
has its source in the innermost recesses of the soul. On the con-
trary, unusual trials bring unusual graces in their train, and a
patriotic duty that entails absolute self-sacrifice is an excellent prep-
aration for the reception of spiritual light and certainty. Upon
a soil ploughed by suffering and watered with blood the flowers of
grace develop and flourish as in their natural atmosphere ; the rough
blasts of adversity are more favorable to their well being than the
enervating influences of peace and plenty.
Those who live in France at the present moment are able to
judge of the bracing and elevating action of the Great War upon the
young men of France ; not a day passes without the fact being brought
under their notice, and if anything can diminish the horror of the
tragedy that is making so many homes desolate, it is surely the
knowledge of the spiritual forces that are at work behind the scenes.
Iftew Boohs*
MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES OF CALIFORNIA. By Rev.
Zephyrin Engelhardt, O.F.M. Four volumes. San Fran-
cisco: James Barry Co. Volumes L, II., III., $2.75 each net;
Volume IV., $3.00 net. Complete set, $11.00.
Father Engelhardt, the indefatigable and scholarly Franciscan
of Santa Barbara, California, has just completed, after twenty-five
years of continuous labor, his general history of the California mis-
sions. Three more volumes are promised us on the detailed history
of the missions of Upper California.
Volume I. treats of the missions of Lower California. An
introductory chapter tells of the labors of the Franciscans during
the early days of American exploration in the West Indies, Cen-
tral and South America, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.
It also describes the discovery of California and the voyages of
Cabrillo, Cermenon, Vizcaino, Drake and Cavendish along the
Pacific coast. The rest of the volume describes in detail the Lower
California missions under the three regimes of the Jesuits, the
Franciscans and the Dominicans.
Volumes II., III. and IV. discuss the twenty-one missions of
Upper California. Most of the writings hitherto published on
this subject are valueless to the student, because their authors did
not consult the original documents, and as a consequence gave us
not objective history, but second-hand impressions, often unfair
and unjust to the missionaries and their work. With a view to
answering effectively the many calumnies and misrepresentations
that have disfigured the pages of ignorant or bigoted writers, Father
Engelhardt has with infinite pains consulted the original Spanish
documents.
In simple but eloquent language these entertaining volumes
plead the cause of the missions against their many calumniators.
No honest man henceforth will have the daring to assert that these
missions were a failure, if he reads this noble record of seventy-six
years (1769-1846). They tell of the baptism of ninety-three thou-
sand immoral, superstitious and brutish Indians, who were made
devout Christians, and taught to be competent workmen of every
description carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, shoemakers, spinners,
shepherds, cowboys, and fruit-growers.
The chief sources utilized by Father Engelhardt are the three
830 NEW BOOKS [Mar,
thousand Spanish manuscripts of the Santa Barbara archives, the
archives of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and the Bishop of
Los Angeles, the two hundred and eighty-nine volumes of the
California archives put together by Stanton in 1853, the Bancroft
collection at the University of California, and the archives in the
government palace of Mexico City.
It may be news to many that the historian Bancroft did not
really write all of the twenty-eight volumes that bear his name.
As a matter of fact he himself wrote only four of them, the others
being written by Oak, Nemos, Savage, Bates, Peatfield, and Mrs.
Victor. Strangely enough the myth of Bancroft's authorship was
repeated on the title-page of every volume, without any credit
being given to those who had written the major part of the work.
We can readily understand that such a man well deserves the stric-
tures passed upon him by our author for his many false and bigoted
statements.
A GRAMMAR OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT IN THE
LIGHT OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH. By A. T. Robert-
son, D.D. New York: George H. Doran Co. $5.00 net
There is no field of philology that has been so fruitfully worked
during the past ten or fifteen years as the study of New Testament
Greek. The unearthing of innumerable papyri in Egypt has given
us what we had hitherto lacked, extensive specimens of the common
everyday Greek of apostolic times. These discoveries have placed
the Greek of the New Testament in its proper setting, and neces-
sitated the re- writing of its lexicon and its grammar. The com-
pletion of a new lexicon is still, we fear, a long way off; but we
are fortunate in having now a complete and comprehensive gram-
mar written in the light of the new knowledge. The author is
Professor of New Testament Exegesis in the Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary of Louisville, Kentucky, already well known
for his smaller grammar, which is used in some of our own theolog-
ical seminaries, and has been translated into several languages of
Europe.
A student of this new work of Doctor Robertson is at once
struck by its vast erudition. Every aspect of New Testament
Greek, both in accidence and in syntax, is studied in this grammar
of more than thirteen hundred pages; and the author treats every
phase of his subject comprehensively, and is well acquainted with
its voluminous literature. The task is one that could be accom-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 831
plished only by a man of prodigious memory, of untiring energy,
and most intelligent methods of work. America has produced
works of greater insight and originality, but none of greater learn-
ing. Perhaps we are on the eve of a new era. When Kentucky
gives birth to a Robertson, it is time for Germany to look to her
laurels; a few more Robertsons, and she suffers an eclipse.
The enormous erudition of this work gives one at first the
impression that it has overwhelmed its author; but this is a mis-
take. It is true that he is more successful in collecting and sorting
his facts than in setting forth his conclusions in a clear light. His
page is frequently overcrowded with the opinions of grammarians
about the facts, when he would have done better, after sifting the
facts himself, to draw his own conclusion. Our author loves to
quote, even to prove the obvious and the commonplace, somewhat
after the manner of the old cure who was fond of citing St. Pros-
per of Aquitaine in witness of the truth that nothing is so inevitable
as death. His style, consequently, lacks conciseness, and does not
lend a high enough relief to important ideas and conclusions.
In spite of these defects, he does sort and assay his material.
He takes his facts wherever he can find them, and though he has
a deep respect for great scholars like Delbriick, Brugmann, Gilder-
sleeve, Moulton, Burton and Deissman, he is no blind follower of
anyone, but shows a real, though modest, independence of judgment.
And like a good scribe, he is always drawing new things out of his
treasury as well as old.
We cordially recommend Dr. Robertson's great work to our
colleges and theological seminaries. It is really indispensable to
the seminarians, because in no other single volume are the linguistic
facts concerning the Greek New Testament collected together at all,
while here they are exhibited in the light of a full knowledge of
Greek classical, Biblical (if we may speak of Biblical Greek) and
koine. Most college professors, too (we venture to say), have
much to learn from this work, for it is a most valuable repertory
of facts concerning classical usage, which, moreover, cannot always
be viewed correctly except in the light of the koine. Moreover, it
will disabuse them, if need be, of the idea that New Testament
Greek is a language entirely apart from the main current of Greek
life; they will see it as the language of the civilized world in the
first century, the people's language indeed, but refined and charged
with a deeper meaning to fit it to become the vehicle of a divine
revelation given to all nations.
832 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
CONTEMPORARY BELGIAN LITERATURE. By Jethro Bithell.
New York : Frederick A. Stokes Co. $2.50 net.
How can a Catholic follow with complacency the views of
one who declares that his Church " hates originality? " This note,
struck on page twenty-six of the present volume, unhappily fore-
tells that this expositor of the contemporary literature of a domi-
nantly Catholic country will enunciate appreciations which even
the unlearned critic knows to be false. For example, the author
states that " the good Catholic finds nothing offensive in the playful
spirit (of Max Elskamp) that makes symbols of the Virgin and
Jesus, and expresses an artist's disgust with ugly things by dream-
ing that the Mother of God looks down upon drunken soldiers
reeling through the streets of Antwerp." And he shows a sense
of gratification in announcing that this or that author has abandoned
the faith of his earlier years, and scoffs as a skeptic when reviewing
the conversion of Lerberghe. It is true that the author does men-
tion Catholic authors, and that he gives them his measure of
praise, but his measure is not a true one. We cannot countenance
the movement that empties art of all moral and religious ideals;
we cannot tolerate the symbolism that sets forth " religion that
still seems to be present among us, but is dead;" we cannot range
ourselves on the side of the realist, no matter how subtle an artist
he may be, whom the civil courts fined because of his immoral
writings. Being so minded we find contemporary Belgian litera-
ture a tract we care not to enter; or if we do, we would not take
Mr. Bithell as a safe guide.
FRENCH NOVELISTS OF TO-DAY. By Winifred Stephens.
Second Series. New York: John Lane Co. $1.50.
Considered as an anthology, this is a book of real merit.
For one who is directed to modern French fiction for the purpose
of comparison or research, and who is unable from lack of time or
of linguistic ability to gather his impressions first hand, this volume
answers a real need. It presents an introductory chapter on the
French novel at the beginning of the war and some half dozen
studies of particular novelists. Second series as it is, the names
discussed are less familiar than one might expect. Bourget and
Bazin, with Barres, de Coulevain, Anatole France and Loti have
evidently been treated in the preceding series. Remain Rolland,
whose Jean Christophe has a special chapter, is the only name the
average reader will immediately recognize; the Tharauds, Mar-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 833
celle Tinayre, Boylesve, Mille and Aicard sound strange. An ana-
lytical method is followed throughout. Each study is prefaced by
a chronological list of the author's novels. The novels are grouped
according to spirit or tendency or treatment; each has a word,
while the most representative of each group is given detailed exam-
ination, with copious extracts usually translated. Abundant handy
information is here for those who seek it.
But those who seek anything finer or deeper than handy in-
formation, will search in vain. Surely Miss Stephens has read her
authors wrong to find in them " that elevating and broadening of
the mind and heart " which Barres himself has said to be the aim
of the novel; and her own statements are misleading and conflict-
ing. Boylesve's novels, it seems, " are touched with the spirit of
the Catholic and classic revival, which is one of the most striking
phenomena of present-day France " as we are convinced from
other sources it is indeed but Boylesve, by the author's own por-
trait, was an agnostic who deigned to treat the Church and her con-
secrated children with a contemptuous tenderness and a patronizing
disdain. Marcelle Tinayre's " delicate art reflects as a clear mirror
the dawn of the new French spirit ;" she has the " idealist's poetic
soul." Yet " the theme of all her novels is the eternal duel between
the sexes ;" she always considers " love apart from marriage."
To one whose heart yearns for the old France, the real France,
the true France, these are depressing pages. Bold, frank material-
ism, grim facts of human existence, vivid scenes of powerful pas-
sion, religious sentiment growing into fanaticism verging on mad-
ness the evil is there, and sympathy with that evil seems to be
there likewise. The author announces specifically that these novel-
ists have been chosen because in their works are reflected more
clearly the various tendencies of present-day life and thought in
France. Lightness and grace, harmony and sense of proportion,
consummate artistry, so typically French, we recognize and admire ;
but from the present tendencies of French life and thought as herein
depicted, O Lord deliver us !
THE ROMANTICISM OF ST. FRANCIS. By Father Cuthbert,
O.S.F.C. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $2.00 net.
" For all time," writes Father Cuthbert, " the Franciscans
have consecrated the romantic temperament and vision. They
were not led on by philosophy and statesmanship, or by what is
called practical common sense. Theirs was the enthusiasm and
VOL. en. 53
834 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
vision which belong to the springtime of life, when a man's spirit
soars upon the wings of adventure, and he reasons by intuition and
speaks in figure. Their unique achievement was that they laid hold
of this springtime spirit, and by God's grace dedicated it as a
permanent possession in the tradition of Catholic life, for the com-
fort and joy of ages to come."
Poverty is the distinguishing mark of the Franciscan life.
According to the definition of Fra Jacopone da Todi, " poverty is
in having nothing and in desiring nothing, yet in possessing all
things in the spirit of liberty." The Friars were to have no kind
of proprietorship over material goods; they were to labor and
serve others; and in case of necessity they were to beg for alms.
Franciscan poverty has proved itself in history an effective protest
against the world's avarice and absorption in material gains.
The fundamental conception in the organization of the Fran-
ciscan fraternity was the personal life of the individual. This is
clearly seen if we take note of the moral qualities upon which the
Franciscan legend most emphatically insists as exhibiting the true
Franciscan character. The foundation of Franciscan discipline is
trustful obedience to an ideal of faith, which has for the individual
the authority of conscience and the sanctity of religion.
The Fioretti placed before the brethren the ideal of " the
Poor Christ " as the Sunlight of their existence and the Measure
of their perfection. Jealousy for personal truthfulness was a sec-
ond characteristic of the early Friars. " They were so jealous of
the truth," says Thomas of Eccleston, " that they would hardly dare
speak in hyperbole." A third charming virtue was their " holy
pure simplicity." To the mind of St. Francis simplicity was the
soul of poverty, or that diviner poverty which nature shares with
the Creator.
Modern rationalists have at times questioned St. Francis' loy-
alty to the Catholic Church, but his loyalty was absolutely unques-
tionable. " To him she was really the great Mother of Christian
souls, and he loved her institutions and her very name with the
love of a son and of a patriot. No sooner did he think of founding
a fraternity than of his own accord he went to the Pope to obtain
his sanction and blessing, and to the end he was constantly referring
to the Holy See for guidance. Moreover, whatever stood for the
life and authority of the Church was peculiarly sacred in his
sight: his intense reverence for priests and theologians is an
outstanding fact in his story; so, too, is his abhorrence of
1916.] NEW BOOKS 835
heresy, and again his tender love for the Blessed Sacrament of the
altar."
The paper on St. Clare in the present volume first appeared in
1912 in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. It was written on the
occasion of the septcentennial commemoration of the " conversion "
of St. Clare. It describes her great devotion to St. Francis, her
perfect following of Franciscan poverty, which culminated in Pope
Innocent Ill's grant of the " Privilege of Poverty/' and the inspira-
tion her perfect purity and transcendent grace gave to the whole
Franciscan movement.
The third essay, "The Story of the Friars," describes the
influence of the Franciscans on the world at large. Father Cuth-
bert portrays the Friars as the great peacemakers amidst the polit-
ical turmoils and wars of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
From the earliest days we find the Friars tending the sick poor in
the hospitals of Florence, and two hundred years later we find
them founding the Monti di pieta to rescue the Italian poor from the
clutches of usurers. The Friars, moreover, brought the spirit of
true piety out of the cloisters and cathedrals into the home of the
people, and so were in a particular sense the creators of popular
devotional services. These were not intended to displace the litur-
gical service of the Church, but grew naturally out of the popular
preaching of the Friars.
By popular religious literature they spread among the people
the story of the Gospels, or taught them the higher ways of spirit-
ual perfection. In poetry we may quote the Umbrian Laudi and
the canzones of Fra Giacomino. In prose we note the Meditationes
Vita Christi and the Stimulus Divini Amoris, both written in Latin,
but soon popularized in the vernacular by many preachers and
writers.
The last essay, " A Modern Friar," gives a brief sketch of
the Capuchin Father Alphonsus. This brief biography gives
Father Cuthbert an excellent opportunity of showing how the Fran-
ciscan ideal was realized in the Europe of the nineteenth century.
THE IRISH NUNS AT YPRES. An Episode of the War. By
D. C. M. (O.S.B.) Edited by Barry O'Brien, LL.D. With
an Introduction by John Redmond, M.P. With illustrations.
New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.25 net.
This intensely interesting little book relates with unaffected
simplicity the experiences of the Irish Benedictine Nuns of Ypres,
836 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
when in the early days of the war their ancient abbey was de-
stroyed, and they were compelled to take flight. The abbey had
been the home of a community of Irish Sisters from the year 1682.
The story begins with the appearance of a German aeroplane over
the city about six weeks after the opening of the war, and the
arrival of the enemy a few days afterwards. The intimate details
of the consternation in the convent, the terror and confusion in the
town, the arrival of the English troops, another subsequent bom-
bardment which destroyed the abbey, are set before the reader not
in general description, but by a relation of the happenings that
befell the eyewitness. So many thrilling events pass in succession
that one is tempted to indulge in excessive quotation. One or two
characteristic passages, however, may be permitted. As the Sis-
ters started on their flight, laden with their packages, two of the
soldiers came forward to help them :
We chatted as we hurried along, stopping every one or two
minutes, to avoid a shower of bricks, as we heard a shell hiss
over our heads and fall on one of the houses by us. One of us
remarked to the soldiers : " It is very kind of you to help us."
To our delight they answered : " It's our same religion, and
our same country." They were both Irish Catholics, one from
Kerry, the other from Belfast.
The soldiers escorted them out of Ypres, amid the bursting
shells. Two vain attempts were made to return to the convent, and
then the Sisters were obliged to abandon hope of entering it again.
Trudging along on foot, assisted occasionally by a wagon or a
motor, encountering all sorts of the evidences of the war, destitute
refugees, soldiers, hospitality from all who had anything to offer,
through the efficient courtesy of British and French officers the
Sisters finally reached Boulogne, where they embarked for England.
We need not observe that the other- worldliness of the nun is every-
where in evidence, and all the more strongly from the strange sur-
roundings of this journey. Yet, " still in our ashes live our wonted
fires " as the following incident testifies :
We came up with a British cavalry regiment. They were
coming from the trenches. They looked at us and shouted:
" Who are you, Sisters, and where do you come from ? " Dame
Columban answered : " We are English nuns from the Benedic-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 837
tine Convent of the Rue St. Jacques." This was too much for
Dame Patrick, who called out : " We are no such thing. We
are Irish Benedictines." "Irish!" shouted half a dozen of
them, "and so are we," and they all began singing, "It's a
long way to Tipperary." Needless to say, it was an Irish
regiment every man wore the harp and shamrock on his
collar and cap.
A SHORT HISTORY OF GERMANY FROM THE EARLIEST
TIMES TO THE YEAR 1913. By Francis M. Schirp, Ph.D.
St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
As far as the limits of his space permitted, the author has
admirably accomplished the task of presenting a concise survey of
German history, up to the date specified in the title. We trust that
the book will realize his aspirations by making " friends through-
out the length and breadth of our country, and help towards creating
a better understanding and appreciation of a people which has al-
ways proved a true friend of the United States."
Notwithstanding its accorded purpose, the work has none of the
earmarks which distinguish the body of contemporary literature
which has come to be popularly known as the German propaganda.
It presents facts in a plain, objective fashion, without entering into
philosophical disquisition regarding movements, tendencies, des-
tinies; or any undue hero-worship. It is Catholic in spirit; the
story of the Reformation, and that of the Kulturkampf , for example,
are presented from the Catholic side, in the true perspective. As
an instance of the impartial temper that pervades the work, one
might observe that Bismark is accused, very rightly, of having,
in order to make Prussia supreme in Germany, deliberately, planned
the war against Denmark by Prussia and Austria, with the ex-
pectation that, after the war, the two allies would quarrel between
themselves over their victim's spoils, and thereby provide Prussia
with the desired opportunity of attacking her recent ally. One
wonders, too, if the author is not passing a severe stricture upon
some of the proceedings of the present war, when writing of the
great Tilly, a devout Catholic, a conqueror in thirty-six battles, he
remarks : " In his campaigns in Protestant countries he used to
protect the churches with his own guard against any violation."
The history closes with 1913, on the occasion of the twenty-
fifth anniversary of the accession to the throne of Emperor
William II,
838 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
THE JAPANESE PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES. An
investigation for the Commission on Relations with Japan ap-
pointed by the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in
America. By H. A. Mills, Professor of Economics, University
of Kansas. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.50.
This study is an important contribution regarding a question
which was very acute five or six years ago, and though in com-
parative abeyance just now, may become acute again in the future;
that is, the question of Japanese immigration on the Pacific Coast,
and of the relations existing between those who have come and
their white neighbors. The author has made a close and extensive
personal inquiry into the conditions and activities of the Japanese
population in the West. He has investigated the cities and the
farms, and the ranches; and as far as the data afforded him op-
portunity the psychology of the Japanese. The results of his work
are set forth with the system and lucidity appropriate to a good
textbook. Besides the valuable collection of well-selected facts, the
book offers the writer's conclusions as to what legislative measures
ought to be passed for the regulation of Asiatic immigration, and of
the immigrant's political status when he has become a resident.
The Alien Land Law enacted in California he believes to be
unjust, impolitic and unnecessary. It is unjust chiefly " because
it takes advantages of discrimination under the naturalization law
to further discriminate between aliens of different races lawfully
in this country." It is impolitic because " it is opposed to the spirit
and fundamental principles of unity and good understanding upon
which the conventional relations of the two nations depend." It is
unnecessary, he contends, under the present restricted immigration,
though with immigration unrestricted it might be required. What
about assimilation? The writer is of the opinion that the Japanese
have many personal qualities that make for assimilation, but whether
they could be assimilated completely he hesitates to affirm, though
he thinks the evil of race mixture is pretty much of a "bogie."
SYNDICALISM, INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM, AND SOCIALISM.
By John Spargo. Second Printing. New York: B. W.
Huebsch. $1.25 net.
Although the Industrial Workers of the World were organized
by Socialists, they have probably caused more trouble to the Amer-
ican Socialist movement than to the forces of capitalism. For
they soon discarded the accepted Socialist policies, and adopted the
igi6.] NEW BOOKS 839
methods of Syndicalism, thus making a serious split in the ranks
of the Socialists of the United States. When their power was
at its greatest height, John Spargo delivered five lectures in Brook-
lyn, which were later published in the present volume. He de-
scribes the nature, philosophy, and implications of Syndicalism,
its doctrine and practice of sabotage, and its relation to Socialism.
While he demonstrates that the methods and theory of Syndicalism
have been repudiated by the official voice of Socialism, he does
not hesitate to admit that this rejection has been dictated entirely
by motives of expediency. The Socialist party condemns the " di-
rect action " of the Syndicalists, not because such conduct involves
destruction of property and other violations of legal and moral
rights, but because it is in the long run harmful to the workers.
Indeed, Mr. Spargo himself confesses that, uncompromising op-
ponent as he is of the practices of sabotage, he would gladly aid
in a programme of seizing the property of the rich, setting the
torch to buildings, and summarily executing a few members of the
possessing class (p. 172) if he believed that these devices would
prove effective. His conviction that the theories and policies of
Syndicalism and the activity of the I. W. W. would prove hurtful
to the Socialist movement in the United States, has been fully
justified by the results. The Socialist vote fell off greatly in the
elections of 1914, the leaders of the movement seem to be less
united than ever, and the movement as a whole seems to exhibit
less vitality and enthusiasm than at any time within the last fifteen
years. For this condition the Syndicalist faction is largely respon-
sible. This is only one of the many reasons why the present volume
is valuable to all who are interested in either Syndicalism or So-
cialism.
MODERN INDUSTRY. In Relation to the Family, Health, Edu-
cation, Morality. By Florence Kelley. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. $1.00 net.
This volume presents the substance of four lectures before
the Teachers' College, Columbia University, in 1913. Like every-
thing else that Mrs. Kelley has written, it is above all concrete and
suggestive. She shows just how modern industry tends to dis-
integrate the family through rendering marriage impossible to
large groups of male workers, compelling married women to be-
come wage earners, withdrawing children from the home, crowding
families into tenements instead of homes, making many homes
8 4 o NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
into workshops, and reducing the proportion of home owners.
The manifold bad effects of many occupations on health, and the
obstacles to education created by many forms of labor, specially
those carried on by children, are likewise set forth in striking
though brief fashion. The chapter on " Modern Industry and
Morality " consists mainly of a review of the evils of the anony-
mous ownership of industrial enterprises as regards the relation
between employer and employee, the crime of adulteration in the
preparation and manufacture of many kinds of goods, the moral
hazards encountered by the young girls employed in department
stores, and some suggestions for remedying these bad sitwations.
The author's proposals for the improvement of industrial morality
may be reduced to two : an increasing control of industry by co-
operative associations and by city, state and nation; and the ac-
ceptance of the ideal of " service instead of profit." Both sug-
gestions contain a considerable element of Utopianism. However,
Mrs. Kelley is too well acquainted with the actual forces, psycho-
logical and economic, that dominate modern industry to expect
that her proposals will be realized fully or suddenly. On the
whole, the book is an excellent description in summary form of the
most vital relations of modern industry.
STRENGTH OF WILL. By E. Boyd Barrett, S. J. New York :
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.25.
Father Barrett, who holds degrees from the National Univer-
sity of Ireland and from the University of Louvain, is rather a
specialist in the field of psychology; and yet he has so far con-
sidered the needs of the ordinary reader that the present volume
offers no difficulties to the untrained mind. Let us say at once
that the book is one for which we have been long waiting. It gives
us a Catholic theologian's summary of those conclusions of modern
experimental psychology which bear upon the moral and spiritual
life; and there is not the slightest doubt about the right of the
present volume to be included in the reading of every priest, except-
ing only those who are themselves trained experts in the science
of psychology.
Technicalities and metaphysical discussions are avoided in
these chapters. The author is concerned only with imparting a
strictly scientific and perfectly practical instruction upon what can
be done to cultivate the power of willing and how to set about this
important task. " Causes of Will-Maladies " and " Methods of
1916.] NEW BOOKS 841
Will-Training" are among the most interesting chapters of the
book ; and " A Tentative Scheme of Exercises " provides us with
all the data necessary for the construction of a course of will-
treatment for ourselves, according to our need.
It is as a practical help to the improvement of character and
conduct that the book interests us most, and makes the widest appeal
to the general reader. At the same time it will be of very con-
siderable value to persons who have been more or less upset by
what they suppose to be a conflict between the findings of modern
psychology and the traditional doctrines of Catholic philosophy.
THE LIFE OF FATHER DE SMET, SJ. By E. Laveille, SJ.
Translated by Marian Lindsay. New York: P. J. Kenedy
& Sons. $2.75.
Every American-Catholic or non-Catholic ought to read this
entertaining life of Father De Smet, explorer, geographer, ethnolo-
gist, linguist, writer and missionary. His forty-three years of
missionary activity among the Flatheads, the Blackfeet, the Sioux
and other Indian tribes prove him indeed a man of heroic mould.
He pleaded their cause with the United States Government, and
did his utmost to have justice meted out to them; he brought
about treaties of peace, when all others had failed to conciliate
the outraged tribes ; he traveled to Europe nineteen times to collect
moneys for his missions, and traveled by land eighty-seven thou-
sand leagues in his missionary journeys; he made many converts,
and won the love and veneration of Christian and pagan Indian
alike. Father Laveille's well-documental life reads like a romance.
It has been well translated*
CHAFF AND WHEAT: A FEW GENTLE FLAILINGS. By
Francis P. Donnelly, S J. New York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons.
60 cents.
The book before us is a companion volume to Mustard Seed.
We are quite sure that no other recommendation will be necessary.
These miniature essays, originally printed in the columns of Amer-
ica, run through more than two hundred and fifty pages, giving us
Father Donnelly's bright comments on the things, the people, the
customs, the fancies, the oddities, the failings that make up the
world around us. We have again the brief anecdote with a con-
vincing moral hung upon it; and the disguised sermon that falls
upon our conscience with such gentle humor as to make us glad to
842 NEW BOOKS [Mar.,
be persuaded. It is a gentle flail, indeed, that the author wields;
but there are few strokes which do not count.
COLLECTED POEMS. By Conde Benoist Fallen. New York:
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.25.
It was not yesterday nor the day before yesterday that the name
of Dr. Conde Fallen became one to conjure with in American letters.
As critic, poet, lecturer and editor of the monumental Catholic
Encyclopedia, he has won distinguished laurels. Hence it may be
supposed that these Collected Poems have, very largely, their own
full-grown audience awaiting them. Such readers will be glad to
welcome in a single volume The New Rubaiyat, the various odes
which Dr. Fallen has delivered at scholastic or patriotic celebra-
tions, long dramatic poems such as Aglde or The Feast of Thalar-
chus, and that particularly beautiful narrative poem, The Death of
Sir Launcelot.
New readers will be impressed not only with the dignity and
high seriousness of Dr. Fallen's muse, but equally with his variety
of achievement. There is no doubt at all that he has, like Aubrey
de Vere, set his face to " keep alive poetry with a little conscience
in it." Yet there is scarcely a finer thing in the present volume than
that pure lyric, A Song of Sixpence; and his sonnets particularly
Mors Victa and the second To a Sonnet have both power and
charm. Truly,
in this slender compass closely pent
A master's voice may shake the firmament.
A word should be added in praise of such felicitous and satis-
fying quatrains as Life and Treasure Trove, of which one would
be glad to find more over Dr. Fallen's signature.
THE PEOPLE'S GOVERNMENT. By David Jayne Hill. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. $1.50 net.
The substance of this volume was presented in the form of
lectures before the Law School of the Boston University during
the winter of 1915. The author defends constitutional democracy
against either absolutism or authoritative democracy. He has no
patience with those superficial minds who assert that the doctrine
which declares law to be merely the expression of the " will of the
people " is a doctrine of the American Revolution; and, therefore,
necessarily forms part of the American conception of the State.
He holds, on the contrary, that " the American Revolution on its
1916.] NEW BOOKS 843
negative side was a revolt against absolutism in every form; and,
on its positive side, a defence of the inalienable rights of the indi-
vidual. It was an appeal to general principles of justice to be
universally applied, and as much opposed to the arbitrary will of
a parliamentary body as to the arbitrary will of a royal person."
He shows on the other hand that the French Revolution spelled
the absolutism of the people, and merely substituted it for the
absolutism of the monarch. He writes : " The French Revolu-
tion was a transfer of despotism from one depository to another,
but not a revolt against despotism as such ; and it was not, in any
true sense, a defence of the rights of the individual, but an asser-
tion of the authority of the mass. All the power formerly pos-
sessed by the king was in that revolt taken over by the people,
undiminished in amount, and untempered in quality. The despot-
ism of the Paris mob was more fierce, more arbitrary, and more
sanguinary than that of any French monarch had ever been."
In a chapter on Government by Official Oligarchy, Mr. Hill
protests against the idea embodied in President Wilson's address
to Congress, December 2, 1913, in which he suggested the adoption
of a federal law, depriving the people of the privilege of meeting
in party conventions for the nomination of candidates for public
office, and of the right to choose their own delegates to such con-
ventions for the purpose of framing a platform of party principles.
In strong words he defends the Supreme Court against its
modern detractors, and pleads for loyalty to the Constitution
against the modern demagogue who would set aside " its guarantees
which have hitherto secured the inherent rights of individuals and
the stability of the State under equal laws."
A SHORT HISTORY OF BELGIUM. By Leon van der Essen,
Ph.D. Chicago, 111.: The University of Chicago Press.
$1.00 net.
Dr. van der Essen, Professor of History in the University of
Louvain, has written within the brief compass of one hundred and
sixty pages a scholarly history of Belgium. He divides Belgian
history into nine periods: the formative period to the reign of
Charlemagne and his heirs (B. c. 57 to A. D. 843) ; the period of
feudalism; the rise of the communes (eleventh to fourteenth cen-
tury) ; the political centralization of the Dukes of Burgundy (fif-
teenth century) ; the Spanish rule (sixteenth to seventeenth cen-
tury) ; the Austrian rule (eighteenth century) ; the French regime
844 tfSH 7 BOOKS [Mar.,
(1792-1815); the Dutch rule and the revolution of 1830; and
the period of national independence.
It is the stirring story of a brave and independent people,
doomed perpetually to fight against Romans, Burgundians, Span-
iards, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, and in our day, Germans.
The writer says nothing about the role played by Belgium in
the present European War, although in a brief epilogue he calls
attention to the liberty-loving spirit of the Belgian people, and
mentions Disraeli's words in 1870: " It is a fundamental principle
of the policy of this country that the country situated along the
coasts of Dunkirk to the North Sea islands should be possessed by
free and prosperous states in order that these countries should
not belong to a great military power."
IVTOONDYNE JOE, by John Boyle O'Reilly. (New York: P.
^ J. Kenedy & Sons. 75 cents.) It is forty years ago since
the critics welcomed and the children thrilled and wept over this
story of prison life and of dashing adventure. It is happily again
resurrected for the delight of the younger generation.
DERHAPS the proper treatment for this book, The Devil in a
-* Nunnery and Other Medi&val Tales, by Francis Oscar Mann
(New York : E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.50 net), would be not to no-
tice it, even unfavorably. It is a collection of tales of mediaeval Eng-
land, composed and told with exceptional skill. The author knows
the language, manners and spirit of the Middle Ages intimately, and
writes with just enough old-fashioned phrasing and antiquarian
allusion to give his style piquancy and quaintness. But in copying
the many sly pokes at ecclesiastics found in the writings of those
days, he overlooks the real reverence nearly always present. He
doubtless aims at being roguish and mischievous, but he succeeds
only in being cynical and unfair. Nothing that he says is very
gross or very bitter; it is insolent and impious.
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 adoption of Conscription is, of course,
Great Britain. the most noteworthy of the events which
have taken place in Great Britain since the
opening of the war, as it is so great a departure from the methods
that have hitherto been adopted, and indeed from the characteristic
spirit of the British people. The very suggestion months ago
caused a controversy which was carried on in the most
acrimonious way. The working classes, or at least large sections
of them, threatened, by a general strike, to suspend the whole of
the country's business, being willing to risk even the loss of the
war. Compulsory service was contrary to their traditions, their
prejudices and their habits of mind. A more potent influence was
that they considered it to be a victimizing by the capitalist of the
laboring man. Yet the bill enforcing National Service passed the
House of Commons by a majority of more than ten to one, even
strong opponents voting for it, and this because they knew that
their constituents were so strongly in its favor that an appeal to the
country would deprive them of their seats.
The truth is that the bill introduced by Mr. Asquith was of so
mild a character that to call the system enforced by it Conscription
would be a misnomer. By voluntary enlistment an army of some
three million men had been raised, when in the autumn of last year
the number of recruits began to fall off so seriously that the armies
on service in the various fields of warfare could not be kept up to
their full strength. Conscription was then the natural remedy, but
the opposition was so strong, not merely in the country at large,
but even in the Cabinet itself, that a last effort to secure the mainte-
nance of the forces at full strength by the voluntary system was
undertaken by Lord Derby, who, for this purpose, was appointed
head of the recruiting department. The system adopted by him
846 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
was based on the personal canvass of every man between the ages
of eighteen and forty-one. Those who, in response to this appeal,
came forward voluntarily were placed in forty-six groups, accord-
ing to age, state (single or married), and occupation (reserved or
non- reserved). In the early stages of this canvass the question
arose about the order in which single and married men should be
called out, and Mr. Asquith gave a pledge that married men should
not be called out to service before the single men, and that if more
than an insignificant number of single men failed to respond to
Lord Derby's appeal to come forward voluntarily, either measures
would be taken to enforce service upon these, or the married
men who had come forward would be released from the obliga-
tions which they had undertaken.
Lord Derby's canvass resulted in nearly three million more
men being enlisted on the voluntary system, forming, as Mr. Bal-
four said, an achievement unparalleled in the world's history. But
some six hundred and fifty thousand single men were found not
to have responded, and the question arose whether Mr. Asquith
was called upon to fulfill his pledge. As it was evident that they
formed more than an insignificant minority, it became necessary
either to enforce the service of these six hundred and fifty thou-
sand, or to release four hundred thousand married men who had
enrolled themselves on the strength of the pledge. The latter alter-
native could not be entertained for a moment, and so the National
Service Bill was introduced and has become law. As will be seen,
it applies to a very small section of the nation, and even in regard
to them it makes every possible allowance and exemption. All
ministers of religion are exempted, as well as men employed in
necessary national work; men who are the sole support of depend-
ents, such as parents, brothers or sisters or other relatives; men
physically unfit; and those who conscientiously object to combatant
service; in the last case the exemption will be from combatant
military duty only, not, however, from such services as stretcher-
bearers. An opportunity for making the law a dead letter was
given by the re-opening of the Derby group system of attestation,
so that all who were willing might come forward of their own
accord. The bill is limited in its operation to the end of the war,
and so it forms no part of the permanent law, although ardent
supporters of Conscription may try to make it serve as the thin
end of the wedge. It was the fear of this which, perhaps, led to
the resignation of Sir John Simon. He, however, was the only
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 847
member of the Government who took this course. The three
Ministers representing labor who resigned on the introduction of
the bill were in its favor; their resignations were due to the fact
that the organizations behind them passed a resolution against the
measure. This is the first time in the history of the British Par-
liament in which dictation of this kind has been heeded, and it is
not considered of good omen. A member of Parliament is account-
able to his constituents, not to an organization, political or other.
Labor's attitude to the bill has remained hostile, a hostility, how-
ever, which has been kept within moderation and prudence. The
feeling of the country is so strong that unreasonable opposition
would not be tolerated.
British statesmen have to keep in view four main requisites
for the continuance of the war. Men have to be found to keep the
armies up to their strength, workers have to be supplied for the
making of munitions, both in private works and in those controlled
by the Government (of which there are now about two thousand
six hundred) ; money has to be raised with which to pay the
soldiers and for armaments, and as a means to the latter the export
trade has to be kept going so far as this is compatible with the
other claims. These various demands have to be balanced and
weighed, and hence all the volunteers who have come forward
cannot, even if they were all physically fit, be made into soldiers.
The population has been divided into starred and unstarred men,
according as they are fitted or not fitted for employment in works
necessary for the war. Trades have been distinguished into re-
served and unreserved, according as they are more or less bene-
ficial to the nation's commerce and the prosecution of this war.
Rents and the rates of interest have been placed under restriction.
Tribunals have been appointed to settle questions arising out of
these measures. In fact interference with personal liberty has
been carried to an extent which the most advanced of Socialists
would not have dreamed of a few years ago. All that the citizen
has, his goods and fortune, are claimed by the State as its right.
Strange to say the classes among which Socialism finds its strongest
supporter, have proved the most recalcitrant. Mr. Lloyd George,
the former idol of the working class, has fallen into some degree
of disfavor for the efforts which he has made to enforce regulations
of this kind. Strong resistance has been offered, especially by the
workers on the Clyde, to the dilution of labor, which the Minister
of Munitions looks upon as necessary for the new Government
848 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
factories. These factories have everything ready for making the
large guns which are needed, except the men, and skilled men in
sufficient number cannot be found. The necessity, therefore, arises
of placing unskilled men under the guidance of the skilled in order
to carry on the works. This, however, i against union rules, and
although appeal after appeal has been made, the men have remained
not altogether, but to too large a degree, obdurate. In fact it
must be said that the working classes, so far as they are repre-
sented by certain trade unions, have not done their duty to the
country in any conspicuous degree. They have not wholly failed,
but they might have done a great deal better than they have done.
The chief cause of this failure is the class hatred which has been
so rampant for several years past. It is in no way due to any
hesitation about the war, or to any lack in determination to carry
it on to a decisive end. There are, of course, as there must always
be in any community, men who differ from the majority, perhaps
in some cases for the sake of differing. In South Wales, for
instance, there are some few who are called pro-Germans, whether
as a term of opprobrium or because they sympathize with Germany
cannot be said. There is that fraction of the Socialists called the
Independent Labor Party, of which Mr. Ramsay Macdonald is a
prominent representative, which is, to say the least, lukewarm.
The Democratic Union, of which Mr. Morel is a supporter, has
come forward in criticism of British diplomacy. These, with a
few of the philosophically minded like Lord Courtney, is a fairly
comprehensive list of those who are not full hearted supporters of
the war. To the vast majority the talk of an inconclusive peace
such as Germany would accept at the present time is as the twit-
tering of sparrows. This feeling pervades all classes, chapel as
well as church-goers, the frequenters of the music-hall and the
theatre, as well as the man in the street. The nation is even more
determined than the Government. The latter has been severely
criticized for what seems to be indecision and irresolution in the
conduct of the war. A call is being made for a much stricter
enforcement of the blockade. Too much regard is being paid
to the interests of neutrals, out of consideration for whom the full
power of the navy has been held in check. The system of pro-
motion in the army by which commands are given according to
seniority, is being openly blamed for failures in France and the
Dardanelles. On these and several other points criticism is heard,
but none upon the determination of the Government to continue
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 849
the war to a decisive conclusion, even if Great Britain were left to
" carry it on " alone. Nor is this only Great Britain's voice, it is
that of the Empire as a whole. The spring of this determination
is that this war is not merely for more or less territory, but for an
ideal which makes the Empire to be what it is : for, that is to say,
liberty and self-government as opposed to despotism and absolutism.
As Napoleon said : " Sooner or later the sword is conquered by the
idea."
The contrast between the conduct of the
France. workingmen of France and some of those
of Great Britain is greatly in favor of those
of France. Loss of time there is practically negligible; no trade
union restrictions exist at the moment; everything is done to
increase production; no limitation of profits exists, and no ques-
tion in this respect has been raised by the work people. Thousands
of women are employed in the French munition works, and they
work with a good will that is most impressive. The same may be
said of the large number of women that have undertaken similar
tasks in Great Britain. They work, in most cases, in France for
the same hours as the men, and there is no restriction imposed on
what they may do. The introduction of unskilled male and female
labor has presented no difficulties. The reason for the greater de-
votion of the French workman is that the war has been brought
near home to him. The French nation has settled down with
determination and a feeling of set purpose to the fulfillment of
the task allotted to it. There is no question but that the nation
is at war, and the dominant sentiment, not only of the men but
of the women, is to carry the war to a successful conclusion. Every
thing else is subordinated to that determination. This it is that has
prevented difficulties arising in the manufacture of war material.
A mission sent to France from Great Britain, which included lead-
ing trade union officials, gives the foregoing testimony to the fact
that France is at war as a nation, and to the results that have fol-
lowed the recognition of that fact.
Those among the British Socialists who are opposed to com-
pulsion receive no sympathy from the Socialists of France. Their
leader in the Chamber frankly tells the English Socialists that they
can no longer avoid calling the whole nation to arms, and that
it is only by responding to the call that they can render the greatest
service to the peace of the world. By doing so they will not
VOL. en. 54
850 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
serve militarism, but will contribute to the victory which is to
extinguish the monstrous embodiment of militarism with which
they are fighting. France herself has mobilized over seven million
men. Her national army includes all the manhood of France
men of middle age, fathers of families, old and young. In the
first week of January the eighteen-year-old class of men was called
up for training, and in May it will go to the front. The French
know that there will be no " after the war " for labor, for capital
or for any other form of national life unless victory is achieved by
the Allies. Hence they are puzzled at the attitude of those of the
British workingmen who opposed the National Service Bill, and can
only attribute it to the ignorance still existing about what is at
stake. A better explanation will be found in the over-confidence
in the result which still exists, owing to the immunity of Great
Britain from the sufferings which France is undergoing. But while
criticizing the attitude of labor, the action of the British Govern-
ment, in bringing in the National Service Bill, has given the most
complete satisfaction, as it has thereby afforded the most con-
vincing proof that could have been given of its resolution to shrink
from no sacrifice in order to obtain the victory towards which all
are striving.
By the soldiers in the trenches confidence in that victory is
felt in an ever-increasing degree. M. Clemenceau, the great critic
of French Governments, has been making a long tour of the front.
What struck him most is the transformation that has taken place
in the character of the soldier. He is, M. Clemenceau says, a
new man, calmer and more self-restrained than the soldier of the
past. The relations between officers and men are those of affec-
tion, confidence and esteem. The soldier in the trenches is welded
with the rest of the nation in a true brotherhood, with a quiet
determination to do and to suffer everything to vindicate the na-
tion's aspiration in a conflict which they are determined shall be
the last effort of scientifically organized barbarism.
No changes have taken place in M. Briand's Cabinet. There
are, indeed, indications that some degree of friction exists between
the Government and the Chamber. A large section of Deputies
has sought through parliamentary control to take a more immediate
hold on the military and diplomatic policy of the Government
than the Government is willing to give. Institutions created for
peace and liberty do not necessarily work with perfect smoothness
in war time. Taking into all the difficulties of the situation, it
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 851
is wonderful how well the Third Republic has borne the strain
of this terrible war, and how close is the union of the French
people.
Cardinal Mercier and the Belgian Bishops
Belgium. have addressed to the Episcopate of Ger-
many and Austria a Letter which the New
York Evening Post calls unparalleled in history. It proposes the
establishment of a tribunal of inquiry into the atrocities committed
during the German invasion of Belgium. The Letter refers to the
German Emperor's telegram to President Wilson accusing Belgian
priests and women of committing " abominable, odious, and crim-
inal acts against German soldiers," and declaring that his heart
bled to see that measures of repression had been rendered inevit-
able. The Belgian Bishops absolutely deny these accusations, as
also those formulated in the name of German Catholics by the
German Professor Rosenberg of Paderborn, and by many German
Catholic newspaper writers and associations. They propose the
establishment of a joint Belgo-German Episcopal tribunal of in-
quiry under the presidency of a neutral Bishop. Before this tri-
bunal the German Bishops may summon whosoever they wish,
while they, on their part, will summon whomsoever the German
Bishops wish. They will ask to appear before it all the pastors
of parishes where civilians, priests, monks, nuns or laymen were
massacred or threatened with death on the plea that " someone had
fired." They will ask all these priests to sign their depositions
on oath, and then unless it is pretended that the whole Belgian
clergy is perjured, the German bishops will be obliged to accept,
and the civilized world will not be able to reject the conclusions of
this solemn and decisive inquiry. They add that so long as German
justice holds aloof [from this inquiry] they retain the right and
the duty to denounce what, in all conscience, they regard as a grave
outrage on justice and upon their honor. The Letter was issued
on November 24, 1915. So far no reply has been received. It is
reported, however, that the German Bishops did not receive the
Letter.
It is impossible to say what foundation there is for the rumors
which have been circulated in many quarters, and under varying
forms, that Germany has offered a separate peace to Belgium. It
is more than evident that Germany is anxious to secure peace on
terms acceptable to herself. Her fortunes must, indeed, be at a low
852 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
ebb if she is willing to give up Antwerp and the Belgian seacoast,
and to relinquish the hope of a port which would threaten England,
and afford the much-desired outlet for her commerce, besides
paying, as one report asserts, an indemnity to Belgium. The sole
compensation which she would find would be in the freeing of a
large number of German soldiers for service elsewhere; and the
rendering the opening into Germany for the Allies much narrower
and, therefore, more easily defensible. Tempting though the pro-
posal was, it has been definitely rejected by the Belgian Govern-
ment, the Allies having renewed their assurance that Belgium will
be restored to its full rights and that its integrity will be main-
tained.
Possibly the German offer to Belgium may have been due to
the action of the Holy See, for the Holy Father is said on good
authority that of a distinguished Belgian Jesuit to have told a
Dutch Chaplain in the Belgian army, with the wish that it should be
made as widely known as possible, that he considers that Belgium
has a right to complete reparation from Germany; and that he
will never consent to offer his good offices for the reestablishment
of peace unless Belgium has all her territories in Europe and
Africa restored to her with the plenitude of her liberties and her
international rights as they existed before; and this without preju-
dice to her claim for adequate indemnity and the restitution of
all private property.
Although no offensive movements on a large
Progress of the War. scale have been made by either the Allies
or the Germans, the latter have made local
attacks on narrow fronts of the French lines attacks which have
resulted in gains measured by yards, for which they have paid by
enormous losses. It is not easy to see the purpose of those attacks,
for any serious advance on Paris must be made on a scale similar
to that with which the war opened. It may be that conditions in
Germany are such that the General Staff cannot afford to sit down
and wait for the great offensive which has so long been threatened.
From many sources it is becoming evident that large numbers of
the German people at home are growing more and more weary
of the war, and are getting tired of living on rations rations which
have been recently diminished in quantity. The German Govern-
ment may be truthful in its statement that the supply of food within
the Empire is sufficient, if used economically, to supply all the needs
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 853
of the population ; but to distribute that food in daily doles cannot
be done to the satisfaction of everybody. Hence it is not to be
wondered at that wide discontent is felt with life under such con-
ditions, and that the Government might deem it advisable to divert
public attention by victorious activities on a small scale. This is,
however, merely a conjecture, for these attacks may be feelers for
another attempt to reach Paris.
The general opinion, however, seems to be that in France
and Flanders a stalemate has been reached that neither of the
opposing forces can break through. There are those who urge that
it is the part of wisdom for the Allies to seek the weakest spot of
the German line of two thousand miles, and to concentrate all their
strength upon it. The Balkans they look upon as the suitable place,
while Russia advances through Bukowina. The Allies from Sa-
loniki should work their way up through Serbia to join forces, and
endeavor to penetrate into the plains of Hungary. The objections
to this course are so many that it is not likely to be adopted. The
difficulty of transporting a large enough army, with all its equip-
ment, is sufficient reason for rejecting such a proposal. The very
opposite view seems to be the one more likely to be adopted. This
is that the strongest place in the enemy's lines should be chosen for
the attack. That is without doubt the line in France.
For the first time for many months Zeppelins have succeeded
in reaching Paris, while one of the many attempts upon London
has met with a small measure of success. That the larger number
of Zeppelins which reached England went to other places where
they did no little damage, may be taken as an indication that the
confidence is justified which has been expressed in the measures
that have been adopted for the protection of London.
The destruction of several British ships by a raider which has
escaped from Kiel, is the first instance of a failure of the British
navy in keeping fast bound in port the German navy which it is
anxious to meet in open conflict. The raider has not yet been
captured.
No change of any importance has taken place along the Russian
line in the north ; more to the south there has been a fairly suc-
cessful advance of Russia, where she is now in close proximity
to Czernowitz. That Russia should so soon have undertaken a
new offensive is yet another evidence of her wonderful powers of
recuperation. Strange to say, she has benefited by the loss of
Galicia, for some three millions of its inhabitants followed her
854 RECENT EVENTS [Mar.,
armies into Russia, and are now adding to its industrial, agricultural
and military strength, while Austria has lost something like one-
twelfth of its population. The last report is that the advance of
Russia from the Caucasus into Armenia has been crowned by the
capture of Erzeroum, the great military centre of the Turks, and
the key to Turkish Armenia. It is said to have been a part of the
plan of campaign, as arranged at the beginning of the war, that
Russia should try to reach Constantinople by this route, and that
it was only when she found herself unable to do so that Great
Britain endeavored to reach the capital through the Dardanelles.
The advance of Russia into Armenia will relieve the British who
are still being besieged at Kut-el-Amara. It may also have an
effect upon the projected invasion of Egypt, of which so much
has been heard. The British have evacuated Gallipoli, and have
been completely defeated in an attempt upon which so much de-
pended. Some little consolation is found in the skillful way in
which the evacuation was effected, but when the number of lives
that were sacrificed and the vast amount of money that was spent
is considered, there is little of which to be proud.
The Allies have made themselves secure at Saloniki. They
have there a great army fully equipped with artillery and stores.
Intrenchments have been made, which are said to be stronger than
those on the Western front, and every day adds to their strength.
Why neither the Central Powers nor their Allies, the Bulgar and
the Turk, have made no attempt to drive out the Entente Powers is
hard to say, for they cannot fail to realize its importance. The posi-
tion of Saloniki, on the flank of the communications with Constanti-
nople, renders those communications insecure, while Bulgaria, a
very poor country, is forced to keep her army mobilized as a
defensive measure.
In the conflict with Austria upon her own borders, Italy seems,
within the last two months, neither to have lost ground nor gained ;
but she has suffered a loss of no little importance by Austria's success
in overrunning Montenegro, and especially by the capture of Lovt-
chen, ,a position of importance for the control of the Adriatic.
There seems to have been an inaction and a failure to render as-
sistance to the Montenegrins, which have not yet been fully ex-
plained. It is satisfactory to be able to note the fact that the spas-
modic and disconnected activity of the Allies has given place to a
deliberate and well-planned coordination, and that gratifying results
have already begun to make themselves felt.
With Our Readers.
THE new College of St. Paul, the home of the Paulist Novitiate at
the Catholic University of America, at Brookland, D. G, in which
many of our readers are interested, was dedicated with special cere-
mony on the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, January 29th. On the
eve of the Feast, Solemn Vespers was celebrated in the presence of
His Excellency, the Most Rev. John Bonzano, Apostolic Delegate
to the United States; and on the morning of the Feast itself the
building was solemnly dedicated by His Eminence James Cardinal
Gibbons, and immediately afterwards Solemn Mass was offered in
the presence of the Cardinal. Readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will
be especially interested in the two sermons delivered on the twenty-
eighth and twenty-ninth respectively; the first by the Very Rev.
Charles F. Aiken, S.T.D., treating of the Congregation of St. Paul
and its relations with the Catholic University of America ; the second
by the Rev. William J. Kerby, Ph.D., reviewing the spiritual char-
acter and aspirations of Father Hecker, the founder of the Paulist
Congregation.
SERMON PREACHED BY THE REV. CHARLES F. AIKEN, S.T.D., AT
ST. PAUL'S COLLEGE, BROOKLAND, D. C, JANUARY 28, 1916.
IN the life of every religious community the dedication of its house of
studies must be an event of importance and an occasion of rejoicing. In
the present instance this is particularly true, for this ample and stately structure,
consecrated to the great work of training novices for the Paulist Congregation,
is the first building of its kind that its members could call their own. Here-
tofore they have lived as tenants on property belonging to others. Now they
have the satisfaction of standing on their own soil, and of working and praying
under their own roof. Here they have a structure especially adapted to their
needs. This noble house of studies offers ample facilities for training and
maintaining their young novices, whose numbers will increase from year to year.
A house of such proportions bespeaks a healthy state of present conditions
and a looking forward to still greater growth in time to come.
Among the numerous friends and well-wishers who rejoice with the Paulist
Fathers on this happy occasion are to be counted the officials and professors
of the Catholic University of America. Strange were it otherwise, for the
University from the beginning has enjoyed the friendship and loyal support
of the Congregation of St. Paul. When the project of setting up the Catholic
University was broached in the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, one of
its most enthusiastic advocates was Father Hecker, whom the Paulists love
and revere as the founder of their society. And when, in 1889, the doors of
the University were opened to students of Sacred Theology, Father Hewit,
who succeeded Father Hecker as Superior of the Congregation, and who con-
856 WITH OUR READERS [Mar,
tinued his broad-minded policy, moved the house of studies to Washington and
installed it on the very grounds of the University. The College of St. Thomas,
as it was then called, was the first institution to be affiliated to the University,
and from the very beginning Paulist students sat as attentive hearers under
the University professors. From that time on the relations between the Uni-
versity and the Paulist Community have always been most cordial and friendly.
Each was an encouragement to the other. Among the men of note who gave
public lectures at the University were Paulist Fathers, and one of them
occupied for several years the honored position of professor of mathematics
and astronomy. And in recent years, another, after winning distinguished
honors abroad, has been called to serve as instructor in Experimental Psychology.
During the dark days of the University, when the clouds of financial disaster
hung threateningly over it, when the student body was painfully dwindling, and
when not a few of its friends feared the end was not far off, the Paulist
Fathers did not lose hope. At that very time they proceeded to gather funds
for the erection near the University of a permanent house of studies; so that
it may be truly said that this noble building is an act of faith, on the part of
the Paulists, in the future of the University.
This intimate connection between the Catholic University and the Con-
gregation of St. Paul is more than a sentimental union springing from the
friendship that existed between the leading men of both institutions. The
Paulist Community was instinctively drawn to the University because it knew
the value of University training, and because it recognized in the University aims
and aspirations in harmony with its own. The chief aim which Father Hecker
and his high-minded associates had in view in founding the Congregation of
St. Paul was to set before the American people a type of Catholicism that, while
in perfect accord with the authoritative teaching of the Church, would at the
same time square with American institutions and American ideals. They saw
therein an effective means of refuting the charge that the Catholic Church
was a foreign importation hostile to liberty, hostile to popular education, hostile
to the Constitution of the United States. They rightly felt that the claim
of the Church to be divine would be more readily heard once she had won
recognition as a helpful factor in furthering what is best in social, political,
and intellectual life in this country.
It will readily be seen how the Catholic University, through its religious
and scientific instruction, alike varied and profound, ever tends to make the
Church in this country better known, better respected and better loved. It
smoothes the way to a higher intellectual life suited to conditions peculiar to
our beloved country. In common with other Catholic Universities throughout
the world, it vindicates the truth of the Catholic religion; it sets forth, in the
light of Catholic faith, the various branches of knowledge that lend dignity
and usefulness to human life. But more than this, as the Catholic University
of America, it presents its teaching in harmony with American ideals. Every
nation has its own peculiar genius, which ever tends to work out in its own
practical way the fitting exercise of the inalienable right of the individual to
life, liberty and the pursuit of true perfection and happiness. Ours is a gov-
ernment of the people, by the people and for the people. To assert that a
republican form of rule is the best possible polity for every nation, that it is
suited to every temper and class of minds, that it should everywhere prevail,
would be a faulty judgment of overzealous souls. But for the citizens of these
United States there is no question but the needs of our great nation are best
served by the form of democracy so wisely laid down in the Federal Consti-
tution. In some nations the cause of religion and of civilization may be best
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 857
promoted by a union of Church and State. But in these United States the
happy results have been attained by the separation of Church and State for
any other political arrangement would be impossible. In this way, progress in
social, economic and political life has moved harmoniously with progress in
things religious. Nowhere in recent times has the Church advanced with such
rapid strides as in our own country, where its sole material support has been
found in the voluntary assistance of the faithful, and where its tendency to exert
its benign influence in a multitude of new channels has not been hampered and
thwarted by petty government restrictions. Like a noble tree, the Catholic
Church has struck its roots deep in American soil, which has proved most favor-
able to its healthy and vigorous growth.
A democratic form of government, to be a success, must be a mind rule,
not a mob rule. To this end it must rest on two solid pillars, neither of
which may be set aside. The one is education, the other is religion. Only
popular education can give rise to an enlightened people, whose voice, being
decisive in public affairs, should be the expression of a judicious public mind.
Only religion can keep active in the conscience the sense of duty that should
prompt every citizen, in the measure that responsibility has been laid upon
him, to secure legislation that shall be wise and just, to promote fidelity in
the execution of laws, and to demand honesty in the administration of public
affairs. In a democracy like ours, it is but right that the Church should
inculcate with especial emphasis the civic and social duties an honest ballot,
the support only of worthy aspirants to public office, honesty in the administration
of municipal, state and federal affairs, the readiness to give of one's wealth,
aye, to make sacrifice of limb and even life, when called for by the public
weal, active cooperation in wise economic and social reforms that will help
to lift the people to a higher level of dignity, health, comfort, intelligence,
sobriety and clean living.
The value of the Catholic University for clarifying and disseminating
these teachings, in which love of God and love of country are so happily
blended, in which Catholic faith lifts American patriotism to its highest pos-
sible plane, cannot be overestimated. What wonder, then, that the Congrega-
tion of St. Paul, whose ambition is to set before the American people the
Church of Christ as the friend of American democracy, as the guardian of
liberty, as the promoter of progress in every field of upright human en-
deavor, as the strong right arm of civilization as well as the giver of divine
truth, what wonder, I say, that from the beginning it should have placed its
novices under the shadow of the University, where they might find inspiration
and strength, and wisdom and courage to face the prejudices and difficulties
of keen minds not yet Catholic, and to seek to win them to the fold of
Christ? The University spirit has never been absent from the Paulist Con-
gregation. It is shown in the efforts of its members to further the cause of
Catholic religion in new ways. Witness the Apostolic Mission House, con-
gregational singing, the question box, the usefulness of which has been widely
recognized by the clergy both secular and religious. It is shown also in the
apostolate of the press, whose power for good was never more keenly ap-
preciated than by Father Hecker and his associates. THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
The Leader, and in more recent times The Missionary have helped greatly
to make the Church better known and better loved. And so, too, the books
of Catholic piety and wisdom that have come from Paulist pens. It is safe
to state that, in proportion to its numbers, no other religious society in this
country has made so generous a contribution to Catholic literature as the
Congregation of St. Paul.
858 WITH OUR READERS [Mar,
The Catholic University of America and the Congregation of St. Paul
are, then, institutions of which we have reason to be proud, and in which we,
as Americans, are led to take a lively interest. For both are American in
origin, and both are racy of the soil in which they have taken root. Botfi
are still young, as years are counted in the lives of great Catholic move-
ments. But each has the promise, under God's blessing, of a vigorous growth
in time to come. May the Congregation of St. Paul, bound to the University
in the future as in the past by ties of genuine sympathy and good will, flourish
like the tree planted by the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit
in due season, and whose leaf shall not fall.
SERMON PREACHED BY THE REV. WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.,
AT ST. PAUL'S COLLEGE, BROOKLAND, D. C,
JANUARY 29, 1916.
rpHE Rector of the University asks me to give expression to his regret
1 that engagements elsewhere prevent him from taking part in this morn-
ing's ceremony. He sends his most cordial good wishes. When he asked me
to bear this message for him, he reminded me of the uninterrupted attachment
that has marked the relations of the University and the Paulist Community
for twenty-five years. As both friend of the Paulist Community and Rector
of the University, he asks the abundant blessing of God upon this College,
and he prays that the fondest hopes of your zeal in the service of souls may
find plenary fulfillment.
I.
In the ceremony that we have just witnessed, this building was dedi-
cated to the honor and glory of God. It is to serve as a home for the
novices of the Paulist Community. It will be known as St. Paul's College.
As such it is affiliated to the Catholic University. When the home of the
Community was on the University grounds, it was known as St. Thomas' Col-
lege. The Paulist Community was the first to take up residence at the Uni-
versity and to enter into close academic relations with it. The relations be-
tween the University and the Community have been without interruption, cordial
and wholesome. A feeling of spiritual gratitude and renewed assurance is
stirred in the heart of the University because another sanctuary lamp has been
lit before another tabernacle in the growing circle of tabernacles that surround
the University and proclaim its service to the American Church. May God
bless St. Paul's College for all time.
II.
The Paulist Community may be studied most readily and may perhaps be
best understood from a fourfold standpoint. At least an observer who views
the Community from outside, will be assisted in his study if he approaches it
in the manner to be indicated.
The Community represents a new attitude toward the ideal of Catholic
truth, a new spirit in serving it, a new method in that service and a new
type of Community to perform it.
Revealed truth has never lacked the missionary impulse nor the pioneer
who charts for it, new paths to the hearts of men. No truth is devoid of
it. The sensitive soul of Father Hecker, however, caught a new vision and
that new vision stirred this impulse in a singularly new way.
Some of us place our ideals far away from everyday life. Vague visions
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 859
of them are permitted to float about in fancy. Sometimes we clothe those
ideals in indefinite terms, and our practical wisdom screens off their effulgence
and tones it down to our diminished capacity to receive it. We thereby
escape the discipline and service of the ideal. Again, we feel conviction as
to its truth, but we postpone to later days and for other times our surrender
to it.
When Father Hecker caught his vision of the ideal, he went with signifi-
cant courage and unreserved abandon straight to it. It seized his soul. It
captured his imagination. It reorganized his life, set his ambitions, constructed
his standards. It became unto him law and order and life. That ideal was
to preach the truth which had been made known to him to his non-Catholic fel-
low-countrymen. His vision reached out until it saw America Catholic. When
the divine light came to the sensitive soul of Father Hecker, he saw how it
might be carried to those outside the fold, and that new vision shaped and
mastered the missionary impulse of his great heart. No practical shrewdness
diminished the zeal of his consecration. No adverse advice availed to hurt
the definite certainty of his purpose or the sweep of his impulse to carry
it out. His ideal was not primarily to provide an atmosphere in which his
followers might find their peace. It was to provide a community in which
his vision could be tabernacled and handed down. This concrete ideal was to
be the corporate ideal of the Paulist Community. Everything in its spirit and
constitution springs from that as a source and goes back to it as an end.
The missionary impulse is Apostolic. The command of Christ accounts
for it. The traditional imagination of Christianity represented it often as a
call to foreign lands, to pagan or heathen. Father Hecker's experience of
the missionary impulse kept him at home. It gave us a new vista of spiritual
duty, a new conception of the claims of Christian brotherhood, a new field
for searching zeal. As far as I know, Father Hecker is the first American
in whose soul this ideal of a Catholic America took on the splendid pro-
portions of an inspiration and the rigid compulsion of a law. His ideal
was concrete, magnificent, apostolic. He contributed a new longing to the heart
of American Catholicism. He put into the religious traditions of the na-
tion a new challenge to the fertility of our Faith. He placed before us, who
are of the household of the Faith, a new and compelling claim for good
example and spiritual excellence as supports in undertaking this magnificent
work for God.
A fundamental feature of this ideal of Father Hecker is found in the
spirit that was born of it. That spirit is one of frank readiness to seek out
and to bless God for those portions of revealed truth and natural virtue that
the American people possessed in hopeful vitality. Father Hecker saw because
of his own experience how Protestantism, transplanted to a new world, had in
part forgotten its prejudices, and how Protestants had lost much of dogmatic
Christian faith. But he also knew that many of them were, as he himself had
been, struggling towards the light : that Protestantism had left them a residuum
of natural goodness, and that this might serve as a fertile soil for the sowing
of Catholic seed. They who cannot, or will not, take the trouble to see as
deeply as this man of Apostolic spirit, may not understand. I know, of course,
that it is easy to be misunderstood. All new thought is misunderstood. Hasty
inferences, inaccurate understanding, partial statements are a source of torture
to everyone who ventures to restate traditionally accepted truths or to bring
a new type of consecration to the service of God. Witness St. Thomas, St.
86o WITH OUR READERS [Mar.,
Ignatius, St. Francis de Sales, St. Vincent de Paul. The utter simplicity
and evident truth in Father Hecker's mind were the source of both assurance
and power. Father Hecker caught, admired and proclaimed the types of
natural goodness and Christian sentiment that his keen discernment showed
him in the American spirit. He felt a quick and restless impulse to make that
natural goodness first the handmaiden and then the ally of the supernatural
in preparing for the triumphal journey of Jesus Christ through this new
world. His vision had shown him the American people, radiant in the pos-
session of the fullness of revelation, docile in hearing the voice of Christ's
representative, noble in fulfilling the divine prophecy of one fold and one
Shepherd.
We have to recall that the background of our civilization is a Catholic
civilization, in which the natural was largely known and dealt with from the
standpoint of the supernatural. Logic in the Middle Ages could distinguish
between them, but imagination could not. Was it not customary to say in
the thirteenth century that the natural seemed supernatural and the super-
natural seemed natural, so closely associated in memory, imagination and
experience were the two? The break-up of Catholic civilization destroyed the
unity of life; the loss of the sense of supernatural outside the Church, and
political and religious disintegration that ensued through the centuries, led to
the first stage in the new relations of the natural and supernatural which was
one of antagonism. With the attenuation of Protestantism the process con-
tinued until a stage occurred in which natural goodness was seen largely in
itself, and not directly as a phase of rebellion, against the supernatural. Father
Hecker's vision caught natural goodness, the natural virtues and the natural
longing of the human heart for Christianity as features of this new American
people to whose care God seemed to commit the custody of the world's future.
It would not be surprising then if his spiritual instinct suggested that now
that the instincts of hatred and antagonism against the supernatural seemed
to have perished, natural goodness might be expected in a coming epoch to be
reunited to the supernatural, and subjected to it in sweet and sanctified harmony
to declare the power and majesty of the God of both.
Generation had succeeded generation. It had become evident that many
might be and indeed were in good faith, that their hearts hungered for the
complete revelation of God, and that they would accept the Catholic Faith
could it be presented to them freed from the misconceptions with which their
teachers had clouded it. It was this natural goodness, this good faith that
Father Hecker recognized as the opportunity for a new apostolate. It was
common in America because Protestantism was led to abandon supernatural
claims and it left man with what may be called purely natural help. Upon
this natural virtue Hecker based his hope of effective appeal. He saw
America willing to listen; he saw it unsatisfied unless it embraced the Catholic
Faith. He was profoundly impressed by this element of natural goodness
that he discerned in the American people. This was the prologue to his vision
of a Catholic America.
This element in the mind of Father Hecker, this reckoning with the normal,
wholesome impulses of natural goodness and Christian instinct, never misled
him. It never occurred to him that the natural was sufficient unto itself. How
could it have occurred to him when every fibre of his being quivered with
zeal to bring his loved people the fullness of revelation. It never occurred to
him that partial truth was other than partial truth or that Christian sentiment
was other than Christian sentiment. At any rate, his vision was complete
and his instincts had under the providence of God sure guidance from it.
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 861
IV.
The logic of the process that I am attempting to describe leads us to
the third element in Paulist work, a new method of apostolate, the non-
Catholic mission and the press. It is not important here to determine whether
or not in the South or elsewhere, instruction work among non-Catholics was
undertaken before his day. I am informed that sporadic attempts of that
kind had been made by Bishop England. Father Hecker reached these
two methods, however, by the way of his vision of the ideal and the spirit
of it. He assumed a natural hunger for truth. He assumed a readiness for
supernatural truth when it was brought to the average fair-minded American.
He assumed that the American was uninformed, but neither enemy, or critic.
Hence, the controversial method that had had its place historically and that
has its place still, seemed not quite adapted to his assumptions in the inter-
pretation of American life and of its spiritual longings. Thus he was led to
the spirit and method of exposition brought in all friendliness and peace to
the American non-Catholic mind. The strong, capable exposition and defence
of Catholic truth was his principal method of appeal. Controversy and debate
were always secondary. The outcome of this process of feeling and thinking
in him was the non-Catholic mission, the apostolate of the press, the ques-
tion box. The place that these have taken in American religious history is due
absolutely to the insight and instinct of Father Hecker.
V.
The logic of this Apostolic man's vision was irresistible. It led him to
think out a new type of Community which would serve as the home of the
great missionary impulse that drove him onward. He felt that he would
have to create a community, because a community is the supreme form of
human power. It should be a community made up of men committed to the
highest forms of supernatural consecration. In this, of course, it would be
like and not unlike other religious communities. All communities aim to
produce the highest form of supernatural consecration. Father Hecker always
said that the backbone of every religious community is the desire of per-
fection. The Paulist Community should be trained in delicate sensitiveness
to the spiritual values of personal liberty. Personal initiative and personal
ability of the members were to be cultivated as far as cultivation was com-
patible with obedience to the head under which all the members served. The
compulsions of which the members were to be conscious should be from within
rather than from without. Father Hecker felt that experience in spiritual
liberty would give to his followers an insight and tone, a subtle way of
presenting the supernatural truth that would appeal profoundly to the freedom-
loving American mind.
His vision was of a Catholic America. This brought forward in his
perspective the American hierarchy as the trustees of revelation under the
direction of the Papacy. He felt profoundly the import of those words,
Posuit Spiritus Sanctus episcopos regere ecclesiam Dei. Hence the Paulists
were to be auxiliaries to bishops. The members were to be as close as
possible to the hierarchy and their clergy. They were to find in the wisdom
of the bishops and in their sympathies the practical direction of their apostolic
work. Thus the missionary priests of St. Paul the Apostle offered themselves
to the American episcopacy to help to make known to Americans the fullness
of revelation and to bring the people into full and faithful union with the
Apostolic See,
862 WITH OUR READERS [Mar.,
VI.
I have spoken of the Paulist attitude toward the ideal, of the spirit in
which that practical ideal was approached, of the distinctive methods by which
its work was undertaken and of the particular type of Community that under-
took it. I believe that in these four respects the Paulist Community has made
definite contribution to the history of the propagation of the Gospel of Our
Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, the Community becomes in its own way as other com-
munities are in their own way, the tabernacle of a vision, a grace and an impulse
that are in their own way providential. I pray God that this new College
may have an honorable part in the Community's history, and that every
Paulist Father whose formation is perfected in it may hear and may obey
the over-mastering call to the spiritual ideals of the great and good man from
whose consecrated heart this Community takes its rise.
HOW little of unity on essential matters is found in the Episcopal
Church is again plainly shown in a letter written by the Rev.
James W. Morris, a clergyman of the Episcopal Church at Richmond,
Virginia. The letter appeared in the Southern Churchman of Janu-
ary 29, 1916. Its aim is to show that the position of the High
Church Party, of which Dr. Manning of New York is a conspicuous
leader, does not represent the teaching and belief of the Episcopal
Church. Concerning the theory of Holy Orders Dr. Morris writes :
He (Dr. Manning) assumes, with all finality, as if stating an indubitable
and acknowledged fact, that this special conception of the exclusive validity of
Episcopal orders is the sole and only one that is in agreement with the author-
ized standards of the Episcopal Church. Apparently he takes it for proven
that his Low Church brethren have no legitimate place in the Church. They are,
it seems, a sort of hyphenated Episcopalians, who must be suffered, but who,
through ignorance or otherwise, do not understand the Episcopal Church. He
takes for granted, as undeniable and certain, that this distinctive dogma of the
High Church school is fundamental, is a test of orthodoxy as necessary as an
article of the Creed. He says of this dogma: "It is a matter of the Church's
own most distinct and essential teaching." And he adds: "If any member of
the Episcopal Church, clergyman or layman, does not believe in the office of the
priesthood, and that Episcopal ordination is necessary for the exercise of the
functions of the priesthood, he in so far fails to accept the teaching and to
represent the position of his own communion."
It is well to be fully persuaded in one's own mind, but that anyone should
lay down as a fundamental doctrine of the Church a matter of order which
was not taught by any divine of the English Church for almost a century
after the Reformation, is truly wonderful. The Reformers themselves, and
a multitude of other theologians in the English Church, have expressly repu-
diated any narrow view of Episcopacy. Hooker, Cosin, Usher, Burnet, Whitely
and many other leading men in the Church have held Episcopacy to be for
the best thing and not for the sole being of the Church. Even such men as Ban-
croft and Laud held no such extreme view of orders as Dr. Manning insists
upon as a sine qua non of Churchmanship.
Dr. Manning must know well that a long line of able and devoted Church-
I 9 i6.j WITH OUR READERS 863
men, whose loyalty to the Church has never been and cannot be questioned,
have repudiated and abhorred the views that he presumes to proclaim as " essen-
tial;" he must be aware that the Anglican communion has never had more
distinguished, more learned, or more faithful sons, than those who have main-
tained the bene esse in opposition to the esse of Episcopal orders.
Dr. Manning's notion of the visible Church is likewise interesting. One
wonders whether he forgot what the Church of which he claims to be entirely
" representative," defines to be the visible Church. It may be well to write
it down, for what the Church authoritatively teaches is too often obscured
by individualistic notions. " The visible Church of Christ is a congregation
of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments
be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that
of necessity are requisite to the same."
If Dr. Manning has framed this article, would he have left so large an
opening for the Protestant ministry of other Churches? Would he not have
said very firmly and very indubitably, "The sacraments duly ministered solely
by priests who have been ordained by Bishops in direct succession from the
Apostles ? " Would he have left room for doubt on this fundamental point ?
I suspect that he will think that this article fails to give the teaching and
to represent the position of the Church.
But which has the greater authority, a carefully drawn doctrinal statement
of the Church in her Articles of Religion, or the ipse dixit of Dr. Manning
and his party?
The letter ought to help in enlightening the minds of those who
maintain the right of the Episcopal Church to the name " Catholic."
WE gladly comply with the request of the Very Rev. E. G.
Fitzgerald, O.P., of St. Vincent Ferrer's, New York City, to
publish the following appeal, and the prayer which it includes :
FOR GOD AND AMERICA!
WANTED! One million members to join the League of Prayer for the
Conversion of America and the Salvation of Souls.
The requirements are very simple : To have one's name enrolled and to
recite on the First Thursday of the month the indulgenced prayer of the League.
PRAYER.
O my Redeemer, through the sorrowful Heart of Mary I offer Thee my
thoughts, words, and actions of this first Thursday for the salvation of souls,
and the conversion of America, in union with Thy prayer to the Eternal Father :
" That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee." Amen.
The League for the Conversion of America was organized in 1910 on the
First Thursday in February.
The late Holy Father, Pius X., gave the League his blessing. His Eminence
Cardinal Farley has accorded it his hearty approbation.
Send in your name for enrollment to Corpus Christi Monastery, Hunt's
Point, New York. Get your friends to do likewise, and above all don't forget
to interest the children Christ's "little ones" in the League.
Help the great work: For God and America!
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What an Irishman Means by "Machree." (Song.) By F. P. Donnelly, SJ.
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A Divine Friend. By Henry C. Schuyler, S.T.L.
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Studies in the Psalms. By S. R. Driver, D.D.
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5 cents.
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