f '
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
AP
Z
OF 3
v, IO3
GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS.
VOL. cm.
APRIL, 1916, TO SEPTEMBER, 1916
NEW YORK:
THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD
120 WEST 6oTH STREET
1916
CONTENTS.
Achieve, The Will to. Joseph
Francis Wickham,
A Famous Catholic Historian :
Godefroid Kurth. William P. H.
Kitchin, Ph.D., ....
America (1889-1916), The Catholic
- University of. Thomas J. Sha-
han, D.D.,
Apostle of Organized Charity, The.
Henry Somerville, .
Bardstown Centenary, The. John
M. Cooney, ....
Birth of the Christian Drama, The.
Henry B. Binsse, .
Blood of the Martyrs, The. W. P.
M. Kennedy, M.A.,
California, The Influence of the
Spanish Missions on Present-Day
Life in California. Margaret P.
Hayne, .....
Catholic Church Under Elizabeth,
Meyer's the. Peter Guilday,
Ph.D.,
Catholic Unity and Protestant Dis-
union. F. A. Palmieri, O.S.A.,
Catholic University of America
(1889-1916), The. Thomas J.
Shahan, D.D.. ....
Care of the Dependent Poor, The.
James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., .
Centenary, The Bardstown. John
M. Cooney, ....
Cervantes, Shakespeare and Some
Historical Backgrounds. James
J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.,
Charities Investigation, The. Jos-
eph V. McKec, M.A.,
Charity, The Apostle of Organized.
-Henry Somerville, .
Christian Drama, The Birth of the.
Henry B. Binsse, .
Clergy of France and the War, The.
Charles Banssan,
Cutting Truth in Two. Edmund T.
Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Democracy, The Security of. Tho-
mas F. Woodlock,
Dogma Useless, Making. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Dogma, What is? Edmund T.
Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Dramatist, The Master. Brother
Leo, .....
European War, French Catholic
Missionaries and the. A. M.
Roussel, .....
Evolution of Man, The. James J.
Walsh. M.D., Ph.D., . 207,
Flower and Literature, The Little.
Brother Leo.
Foreign Periodicals,
France and the War, The Clergy
of. Charles Baussan,
French Catholic Missionaries and
the European War. A. M. Rous-
sel,
From a Paris Hospital. Comtesse
de Courson,
George Bernard Shaw. Daniel A.
Lord, S.J., . . . .
God and Its Modern Substitutes,
The Traditional Idea of. Ed-
mund T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Godefroid Kurth : A Famous Catho-
lic Historian. William P. H
Kitchin, Ph.D
Gospel, Resistance in the I ight of
the. H. Schumacher, D.D.
246
617
365
289
588
340
814
642
508
196
365
721
588
38
87
289
340
733
775
i4S
604
300
55
219
3i5
169
4U
733
219
478
: 24
617
Gravitation, The Two Hundred and
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Dis-
covery of. Brother Potamian, . 444
Growth Martindale's Life of Ben-
son. May Bateman, . . .67
Hampole, Richard Rolle of. H. C.
Watts, 79 8
Hawker of Morwenstow. Blanche
M. Kelly 487
His Third Centennial Shakes-
peare. Appleton Morgan, . i
Historical Backgrounds, Cervantes,
Shakespeare and Some. James
J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., . . 38
Influence of the Spanish Missions
on Present-Day Life in Califor-
nia, The. Margaret P. Hayne, . 642
Investigation, The Charities. Jos-
eph V. McKee, M.A., . . 87
Krasinski, Sigmund : The Anony-
mous Poet of Poland. Monica
M. Gardner, .... 495
Life, A Rule of. Sir Bertram C.
A. W indie, LL.D., . . -577
Life, The Originality of the Chris-
tian Doctrine of. Edmund T.
Shanahan, S.T.D., . . . 464
Literature, The Little Flower and.
Brother Leo, . . . .169
Making Dogma Useless. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D., . . 604
Man, The Evolution of. James J.
Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., . . 207
Martyrs, The Blood of the. W. P.
M. Kennedy, M.A., . . . 814
Master Dramatist, The.- Brother
Leo, . . . . -55
Meyer's the Catholic Church Under
Elizabeth. Peter Guilday, Ph.D., 508
Montgomery Carrnichael, The Writ-
ings of. Charles H. A. Wager, 360
Morwenstow, Hawker of. Blanche
M. Kelly 487
Mulry, The Late Thomas Maurice.
William J. Kerby, Ph.D., . 433
Originality of the Christian Doc-
trine of Life, The. Edmund T.
Shanahan. S.T.D., . . . 464
Paris Hospital, From a, Comtesse
de Courson, .... 478
Pain, War and. May Bateman, . 789
Passion and the European War,
The. M. F. Power, D.D., . . 638
Poetry of a Priest, The. John B.
Kelly 228
Poland, The Anonymous Poet of :
Sigmund Krasinski. Monica M.
Gardner, . . . . .495
Poor, The Care of the Dependent.
James J. Walsh. M.D., Ph.D.. 721
Priest, The Poetry of a. John B.
Kelly 228
Problem of Complete Wage Justice,
The. John A. Ryan, S.T.D.. . 623
Protestant Disunion, Catholic Unity
and. F. A. Palmieri, OS. A., . 196
Recent Events,
128, 270, 415, 560, 703, 842
Resistance in the Light of the Gos-
pel. H. Schumacher. D.D.. . 513
Richard Rolle of Hampole.//. C.
Watts 798
R-.ile of Life, A. Sir Bertram C. A.
Windle. LL.D 577
Russian Rule, The United Ruthe-
nian Church of Galicia Under.
F. A. Pdmizri, OS A.. . . 343
Sjcurity of Denoc'-acy, The. Tho-
rn ns F. Woodlock, . . . 145
CONTENTS
in
I
Shakespeare His Third Centen-
nial. Appleton Morgan,
Shakespeare Tercentenary, The.
Katherine Bregy,
Shaw, George Bernard. Daniel A.
Lord. S.J., ....
Tercentenary, The Shakespeare.
Katherine Bregy,
Thomas Maurice Mulry, The Late.
William J. Kerby, Ph.D.,
Traditional Idea of God and Its
Modern Substitutes, The. Ed-
mund T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Truth in Two, Cutting. Edmund
T. Shanahan, S.T.D.,
Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anni-
versary of the Discovery of
Gravitation, The. Brother Po-
tamian, .....
Eileen of Kilmichael. Madeline
Bridges, .....
" Flower of the Orange." Gabriel
Francis Powers,
" Liberty in Mexico." Robert H.
Gross, .....
At Close of Day. Edith M. Tho-
mas, . .
Columbia. M. E. Henry-Ruffin,
L.H.D.,
Her Name. Helen Haines, .
In Desolation. A. E. H. S., .
United Ruthenian Church of Galicia
i Under Russian Rule. F. A. Pal-
mieri, O.S.A., .... 349
78 Wage Justice, The Problem of
Complete. John A. Ryan, S.T.D., 623
24 War and Pain. May Bateman, . 789
War, The Passion and the Euro-
78 pean. M. F. Power, D.D., . 638
What is Dogma ? Edmund T.
433 Shanahan, S.T.D., . . . 300
What Will Happen Poland? T. J.
Brennan, S.T.L., . . .174
155 Will to Achieve, The. Joseph
Francis Wickham, . . . 2*46
775 With Our Readers,
138, 279, 425, 570, 711, 852
Writings of Montgomery Car-
michael, The. Charles H. A.
444 Wager, ..... 360
STORIES.
Little O Kiku San of Old Japan.
7 rj Catherine E. M. Murphy, . . 50
The Mercy of the Moon. Michael
Williams, ... . . -597
The Pulse of the Sea. Mary
Catherine Crowley, . . . 323
Transmigration. Ej^r W. Neill,
98, 234, 384, 523, 658, 805
452
181
POEMS.
In Memoriahi. Rev. Basil W. Ma-
797 turin. Frederick G. Eddy,
Sonnet to a Boy. John Bunker,
The Return. Armel O'Connor,
The Voice on the Mount. Joseph
I. C. Clarke, ....
To Any Mystic. ,4. E. H. S.,
494
751
603
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Abraham Lincoln, the Lawyer
Statesman,
Action Front, ....
A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico,
A History of American Literature
Since 1870, . .
A Mediaeval Anthology,
America and the New World State,
A New Rubaiyat from a Southern
Garden, . .
An Unknown Master, .
A Primer of Peace and War,
A Short History of Europe, .
A Study in Socialism, .
A Synopsis of Devas' Political
Economy, ....
At the Feet of the King of Martyrs,
A Warwickshire Lad,
Belief and Practice,
Between the Lines,
Bible Stories and Poems,
Blackfeet Tales of Glacier National
Park, . . . . .
Burkeses Amy, . . . .
Canada in Flanders,
Cardinal Newman's Dream of Ger-
ontius, .....
China, .....
Christianity and Politics,
Christ's Experience of God, .
Clerical Colloquies,
Clouded Amber,
Collected Poems, ....
Comparative Religion, .
Compendium Theologise Moralis,
Counter-Currents,
Criminality and Economic Condi-
tions,
Cuba Old and New,
Discourses on the Penitential
Psalms, .....
Dramatic Poems, Songs and Sonnets,
Eleftherios Venizelos, .
685 Essays on Catholic Life,
833 Feminism : Its Fallacies and Follies,
824 Fits and Starts, ....
Francesci de Victoria de June Belli
397 Relectio, .....
in Francis Thompson's The Hound of
126 Heaven, ...
Friendship, Love and Marriage,
264 Germany Embattled,
835 Gossamer, . .
261 Historical Records and Studies,
553 History of Christian Missions,
115 History of Dogmas, . . .
Holidays in the Open, .
125 Infant Baptism Historically Con-
832 sidered, .....
400 Idyls and Sketches,
689 India and Its Faiths,
126 Instinct and Health,
120 Introduction to the Science of
Ethics,
541 Isabel of Castile, ....
125 Is Schism Lawful?
402 Italian Confessions,
Journeys with Jerry the Jarvey,
411 Lehrbuch der Experimentellen
836 Psychologic fur Hohere Schulen
119 und zunc Selbstunterricht,
396 Letters from America, .
410 Life of George Washington, .
556 Lincoln and Episodes of the Civil
537 War,
827 Little Donald, ....
115 Luther, . . . .
538 Luther Burbank : His Life and
Work,
540 Lyrics of War and Peace,
697 Manual of Episcopal Ceremonies,
Mary, ......
266 Master, Where Dwellest Thou?
839 Meagher of the Sword,
245
322
37
48
443
403
838
701
125
829
406
116
123
558
835
123
411
401
837
826
690
700
118
405
in
548
120
262
267
839
554
693
544-
267
834
696
125
831
829
IV
CONTENTS
Mediaeval Civilization, . . . 689
Mediaeval Europe, . . .112
Meditations for Every Day in the
Year, . . . . .831
Meditations on the Mysteries of
Our Holy Faith, . . -557
Meditations on the Passion of Our
Lord, ..... 269
Michael Freebern Gavin, . .126
Michelangelo, .... 542
Mother Mary Veronica, Foundress
of the Sisterhood of the Divine
Compassion, .... 694
Mrs. Balfame, .... 254
My Lady of the Moon, . . 554
Mysteries of the Mass in Reasoned
Prayers, 113
Nan of Music Mountain, . . 700
New Wars for Old, . . .687
Nights, 555
Notes on Religion, . . .117
O'Loghlin of Clare, . . . 830
On the Old Camping Ground, . 701
One Year with God, . . .114
Orbis Catholicus, . . .691
Othello, 116
Our Home in Heaven, . . . 556
Paris Reborn, .... 265
Pastoral Letters, .... 407
Personal Recollections of Abraham
Lincoln, ..... 686
Phonetic Method of Hearing Con-
fessions of the Slavic Peoples in
Cases of Emergency, . .125
Pioneer Laymen of North America, 252
Poems of the Irish Revolutionary
Brotherhood, .... 825
Poland, 682
Prayers of the Gaels, . . . 268
Probation, ..... 839
Psychology and Parenthood, . 701
Religious Development Between the
Old and the New Testaments, . 551
Revelation and the Life to Come, 558
Sermon Plans on the Sunday Epis-
tles, . . . . . 266
Seven Fairy Tales, . . .558
Seventeen, ..... 266
Singing Fires of Erin, . . . 537
Six French Poets, . . . 257
Songs of the Son of Isai, . . 557
Stamboul Nights, . . . 700
Studies in Tudor History, . .691
Summa Theologica of St. Thomas
Aquinas, ..... 269
Tact and Talent, . . . .541
That Office Boy, .... 840
The Anvil of Chance, . . . 409
The Beauty and Truth of the
Catholic Church, . . . 557
The Belfry, . . . .399
The Cathedrals of Great Britain, 831
The Chief Catholic Devotions, . 832
The Christian Doctrine of Prayer, 697
The Church of Christ, . . .114
The Dawn of Religion in the Mind
of the Child, .... 405
The Double Road, . . . 409
The Dream of Gerontius, . . 253
The Education of Boys, . . 830
The Ethiopic Liturgy, . . 115
The Expansion of Christianity in
the First Three Centuries, . 407
The Falconer of God and Other
Poems, ..... 838
The First Seven Divisions, . . 694
The Flower of the Field, . . 841
The Fortunes of Garin, . . 543
The Fringes of the Fleet, . . 264
The German Classics, . . . 547
The Gift of Immortality, . . 698
The Happiness of Duty, . . 826
The Hidden Spring, . . . 693
The Holy Gospel According to St.
Luke, ..... 269
The House on Henry Street, . 124
The Ideal Catholic Readers Third
Reader, ..... 405
The Impressions and Experiences
of a French Trooper, . . 693
The Industrial Development and
Commercial Policies of the Three
Scandinavian Countries, . .410
The Insulted and Injured, . . 698
The Invasion of America, . .123
The Irish Orators, . . .833
The Latin Church in the Middle
Ages, 408
The Life and Times of Tennyson, 253
The Life of Cervantes, . . 120
The Life of Queen Elizabeth of
Belgium, . . . . .411
The Little Ambassadors, . . 840
The Master Detective, . . . 409
The Mechanism of Discourses, . 265
The Memory of Our Dead, . . 559
The Mirror of Justice, . . . 697
The Mother of My Lord, or Ex-
planation of the Hail Mary, . 269
The Mystery of the Holy Trinity in
Oldest Judaism, . . . 552
The New American Government
and Its Work 263
The New Psalter, . . .559
The Night Cometh, . . .827
The Oakley ites, . . . .401
The Old Testament in the Light of
To-Day, 258
The Onion Peelers, . . . 695
The Real Adventure, . . .410
The Rudder, 692
The Sacraments, .... 830
The Society of the Sacred Heart, 840
The Second Epistle of St. Paul to
the Corinthians, . . .122
The Shepherd of the North, . 256
The Single Tax Movement in the
United States, . . . .821
The Social Principle, . . .117
The Sodality of Our Lady, . . 841
The Song of Roland, . . . 398
The Spirit of France, . . . 403
The Spirit of Man, . . . 394
The Story of the Catholic Church, 113
The Three Religious Leaders of
Oxford and Their Movements :
John Wycliffe, John Wesley,
John Henry Newman, . . 683
The Twin Sisters, . . . 267
The Way of All Flesh, . . 699
The World Decision, . . . 261
The Writings on the Walls, . .541
Through South America's South-
land, ..... 392
Transactions of the Illinois State
Historical Society, . . . 832
Under the Red Cross Flag, . . 404
Visitations of Religious Houses in
the Diocese of Lincoln, . . 549
Viviette, ..... 692
What is a Christian? . . .124
What May I Hope? . . .408
What Nietzsche Taught, . . 121
When Pan Pipes, . . . 693
What Pictures to See in America, 544
With Americans of Past and Pres-
ent Days, .... 688
With the French in France and Sal-
oniki, ..... 695
Woman's Suffrage, . . .127
Wordsworth, How to Know Him, . 687
Wreckage, ..... 264
Yonder? ..... 835
Your Boy and His Training, . 696
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. CIII. APRIL, 1916. No. 613.
SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL.
BY APPLETON MORGAN,
President of the New York Shakespeare Society.
HAVE in mind," says von Herder, " an immense
figure of a man, sitting high on a rocky summit, at
his feet, storm, tempest and the raging of the sea;
but his head is in the beams of heaven. This is
Shakespeare. Only with this addition: that, far
below, at the foot of his rocky throne, are murmuring crowds that
expound, preserve, condemn, defend, worship, slander, over-rate
and abuse him. And of all this he hears nothing."
I am eager to confess at the threshold of this semester of praise
which is to round out his three centuries, that, after filling per-
haps my allotted space in these murmuring crowds, my highest
satisfaction is that Shakespeare is still that immense figure of a
man ; and that he hears nothing of all this worshipping, slandering,
expounding and foot-noting, and catches no glimpse of the farthing-
candles that we stand tip- toe to hold up to the sun of his mighty
page that, with all our criticaster ing and our pettifogging, we
have not succeeded in reducing Shakespeare to the dimensions of a
mere human being.
Candidly, to begin with, we have no data to guide us in the
thankless labor; to begin with, we do not even know what manner
of man Shakespeare appeared to be in the flesh. Not by photo-
graphing him, at least, can we reduce him to the dimensions of a
mere human being.
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. CIII. I
2 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
I.
How DID SHAKESPEARE LOOK IN THE FLESH?
Candidly, we do not know. Of the hundreds, nay, thousands,
of portraits of Shakespeare so-called there are only three that
challenge technical, or even perhaps serious, consideration as pre-
sumptive likenesses. And of these three, two cannot claim the
possibility of having been made in Shakespeare's lifetime. Nor
does any one of these three bear even the most faineant resemblance
to any other of them. These three are as follows :
First. A monumental, or mortuary, bust above Shakespeare's
loam-dug grave in the chancel of Trinity Church at Stratford-on-
Avon. As Shakespeare was buried in that grave in the early months
of the year 1616, we assume that this bust was executed within
that year, and Sir William Dugdale, writing in 1653, says that the
sculptor was " one Gerard Johnson," who made at the same time a
monument to John a Coombe, a Stratford character. Whether this
Johnson worked with the aid of the memory of the neighbors, or
from a death mask, of course there is no means of discovering.
But whatever fealty as a likeness we might have been tempted to
expect of it vanishes rapidly upon inspection.
In cutting the stone, the sculptor evidently broke off a frag-
ment of the portion out of which he was to carve the nose, and so
was driven to chisel a smaller nose then he intended. The result
is that the nose is small and weak, while the upper lip is abnormally
long. This abnormal length of upper lip, too, had to be disguised,
and the sculptor attempted to disguise it by carving thereon, instead
of a moustache, a rather dandyish (so to speak) pair of " mous-
tachios," such as no Englishman of the days of Elizabethan or Jaco-
bean days or since can be supposed to have ever worn : the re-
sult being to give the whole bust a sort of simpering un-English
face, certainly not the face of a scholar or of a poet, certainly not
the face of " an immense figure," of the superman we expect and
idealize a Shakespeare to have been. A death mask known as the
" Kesselstadt " (or "Becker") death mask was later, indeed, dis-
covered in a rubbish shop in Mayence, which not only approximated
to the measurements of the face of the bust, but contained a trace
of red hairs sticking to the plaster thereof, and (suspiciously) the
letters " W. S." and the date 1616. This death mask had a certain
vogue of worship, and finally achieved lodgment in the British
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 3
Museum. But after a generation or two of reflection the proofs
seemed to be a bit too conclusive, and a bit too readily at hand.
And when the face of the death mask, a serious face, something
like the face of Bismarck with its heavy moustache, came to be
placed alongside of the smirking face of the bust, with its dandi-
fied " moustachios," it was finally concluded that whoever the sub-
ject of that death mask may have been it could not well have
been used as a model for the Stratford bust.
And, moreover, this bust is not even in the condition in which it
was left by its sculptor in 1616. Controversy has raged over the
fact (discovered somewhat recently) that a view of this bust, as
drawn for Sir William Dugdale in his Antiquities of Warwickshire,
a scrupulously careful and conscientious work ( for Sir William him-
self was a native of Warwickshire and proud of its possessions,
moreover he was a man of substance and of leisure, and would not
have thought of tolerating slovenly or scrapped work), bears
mighty little resemblance to any one of scores of later representa-
tions thereof in wood or steel, engraving or facsimiles of drawings
or paintings.
Some rift of explanation of this anomaly was afforded by the
discovery, that, at the date of Garrick's " jubilee," a then-prominent
actor, John Ward, journeyed through the midland counties giving
Shakespeare representations in order to raise funds to " repair and
restore " this monument and bust ; and we all know what crimes
can be committed in the name of " repairs," and what limits, or
no limits, of vandalism can be committed under the pretext of
" restorations." Save, therefore, as a testimony to the pious regard
of the vicinage to the departed Shakespeare, the Stratford bust is
of no iconographic value whatever.
Second. When on the death of Shakespeare's widow in 1623,
either by lapse of a deed of trust in that lady or otherwise, Messrs.
Jaggard and Blount, members of the Stationers company, were able
to obtain control of twenty of the Shakespeare plays not already
printed in quarto (which they also had previously obtained con-
trol of), they put into print one of the most important volumes in
the world, the great first folio collection of the complete plays of
Shakespeare. To this volume they proposed prefixing a portrait
of the dramatist, and they secured Ben Jonson (by all signs the
actual editor of the first folio, for Hemings and Condell, its pseudo-
editors, were not men of letters, and doubtless lived and died in
ignorance of their names having been used to present to the world
4 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
its most priceless literature, these gentlemen apparently ending their
days as a green grocer and a publican respectively, whose talk no
doubt was of oxen over the till and the tap, even while their fame
as editors the first editors of Shakespeare's purple page was
waxing) as editor thereof.
This portrait was engraved for this great first folio by one
Martin Droeshout, and, to extol it as a semblance worth regarding
by those who would know great Shakespeare by sight, Ben Jonson
wrote a dozen lines of verse. But the Droeshout face proved dis-
mally disappointing. It is hardly the face of a man at all. Except
that it undoubtedly possesses eyes, nose (more than Stratford bust
can boast of, anyhow) and mouth, the face is a wooden, idiotic affair,
such as an ancient tobacconist would not have suffered for a sign-
post; a silly vacuity resembling nothing more human than simian,
certainly not within planetary space of one's ideal of a Shakespeare.
The question was, therefore, where could Droeshout have found
his model? What model could he have caricatured in 1623 (for it
must have been an inadvertent caricature, for the art of steel-en-
graving was by no means in inchoate state in 1623. We have ad-
mirable engravings of Queen Elizabeth and of her courtiers).
Cherchez et vous le trouvcra! A Droeshout original was forth-
coming. In an obscure London print shop in the year 1840, a
Mr. H. C. Clements discovered a portrait painted upon two pieces
of elm, bolted together, which the London Shakespeareans (for
once agreed upon everything concerning their subject) immediately
declared to be Shakespeare, and the original painting which poor
Droeshout used as a model for his unhappy engraving. So careful
an investigator as the late R. B. Flower, sometimes Mayor of Strat-
ford-on-Avon, purchased it, and his widow subsequently presented
it to the Stratford Memorial Library, where it now rests, the
property of the British nation.
I confess that for a long time I myself accepted this portrait
malgre the suspicion which attaches to any portrait of anybody
found in a rubbish shop (especially if, on removing apparent ac-
cumulation of years of dust, the desired verification is found in in-
scription or dates). But finally my attention was attracted to the
fact that, whereas the Droeshout-engraving Shakespeare wore a
wonderful coat or tunic, elaborately and grotesquely, not to say
arabesquely, flowered or embroidered (a sartorial criticism upon
that coat was I believe, that it had no right-arm sleeve, only two
left-arm sleeves), this " original " wore a coat without any of the
i 9 i6.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 5
arabesque or the grotesque embroidery, but only indicated such
embroidery by faint lines. And I argued, while a copy of a por-
trait might well confine itself to indicating details, the chances would
be small that the copy would supply details barely indicated in an
original. And yet even this a priori reasoning might be vicious.
Since the Flower-original Droeshout (as it came to be called) might,
prior to 1623, have possessed the very details that the Droeshout
engraving preserves, which in that original have been blurred by
lapse of time.
So, therefore, this so-called Droeshout model may yet be ac-
cepted or yet finally rejected. It is in a position where it can be
examined as often as desired by experts; and much may yet de-
velop. It cannot be denied that the face has a dignified, a sort of
Spanish-grandee, cast, and if, as it is the property of the British
Crown, it can never be desiccated by acids, which would be the
only process which would reveal an old lady or a half -pay officer,
which might (as in a certain well-known case) be lurking beneath
" the only authentic painting of Shakespeare even in existence,"
the chances are that it will come like its predecessors to travel down
to posterity, E ben trovato, anyhow.
Third. In a room of the Garrick Club in London there stands
the bust known variously as " the Devonshire," " the Davenant "
or "the Garrick Shakespeare." Its history is unique. In 1737,
sixty-nine years after the death of Sir William D'Avenant, his
theatre on Portugal street (which he named " the Duke's Theatre ")
ceased to be used as a playhouse, and was altered into the china
warehouse of Spode and Copeland (whence the " Copeland " ware
known to collectors). In 1845, this Spode and Copeland ware-
house was in turn torn down to make room for enlargement of
the museum of the London College of surgeons. In the course
of demolition, which rendered the ground plan of the old theatre
plainly visible, a terra-cotta bust fell from some concealed niche.
Put together, the fragments made a possible bust of Ben Jonson, and
fitted a bracket on the side of a door frame of the old proscenium.
Search for a corresponding bracket on the other side of this door
frame led to one being found; and, standing securely upon it, a
bust which everybody at once exclaimed must be a bust of Shake-
speare. For, they argued, it can hardly be imagined that Sir
William D'Avenant, who claimed to be Shakespeare's son, would
have placed a bust of anybody but Shakespeare on a bracket oppo-
site a bust of Ben Jonson. Nor (as to the value of the discovery) can
6 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
it be imagined that Sir William would have tolerated an inadequate
or worthless likeness. These considerations led to the bust being
purchased by the Duke of Devonshire for three hundred guineas,
and presented to the Garrick Club. And, indeed, if genuine at all,
this bust is easily the most valuable likeness we possess. The face is
that of a man who had passed the maturity of middle age; serious,
rather stern, and inflexible, seamed and careworn (perhaps too
much so, since Shakespeare himself died aged only fifty-two years).
It is perhaps more the face of a capitalist than of a poet; a self-
contained, stern, but not an unkindly man of affairs just such a
man, one might say, as would by hard work relieve the penury and
the res angnsta domi of his childhood, restore his family to affluence,
institute legal proceedings to recover maternal estates surrendered
in duress of poverty, buy his father a grant of arms, and make
solid investments in his native town in metropolitan properties.
Conjectural authorities, therefore, are remanded to their own
opinion or their own judgment; first, as to whether the bust repre-
sents Shakespeare, and, secondly, whether it is a conjectural like-
ness drawn from D'Avenant's memory of his putative father, as-
sisted by the memory of others who knew Shakespeare in life, or
whether it is an actual survival from Shakespeare's own day, for
which he himself sat.
It is incomparably finer and more satisfactory than either the
Stratford bust or the Droeshout engraving, neither of which it
resembles in a single lineament or detail, or even faintly sug-
gests. So far as Shakespeare's inconography goes therefore, it
must yet, I fancy, be pronounced that on the whole nothing exists to
interfere with von Herder's " immense figure of a man."
The remaining portraits, and they are legion, arrange them-
selves into two groups, both groups negligible as portrait likeness,
even though in justice to them we must admit that they do not
claim to be accurate likenesses at all, but only likenesses.
The first group is composed of what are called the authorita-
tive portraits. The Stratford, the Chandos, the Ely Palace, the Fen-
ton, the Jenner, of which Mr. Walter Rogers Furness once made a
clever series of composite portraits, arranging them in superim-
positions of three, and with very interesting results indeed.
The great man great in letters or in art, said Goethe, belongs
to no race or nation he is inter-racial and inter-national. The first
foreigner to portray Shakespeare was Paul Roubillac, a French
sculptor. Doubtless very few of the thousands who pass through the
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 7
vestibule of the British Museum are aware that the statue to the
right of the entrance to the reading-room is intended for Shake-
speare. But it was made for Shakespeare by this Monsieur Roubil-
lac, in 1753, at Garrick's procurement and cost. And possibly for
that reason is garbed as Gar rick dressed, and has none of the conven-
tional features we have come to regard as Shakespeare's. But
the face is strong and fine and mobile, and the pose one of dignified
and rather imperious (for want of a better word) contemplation.
But for all that, this Roubillac Shakespeare is a Frenchman. Since
then hundreds of foreign artists have made effigies of the greatest of
Englishmen.
This second group, therefore, is made up of the modern con-
ceptional ones. Of these every nation gives a sample, and they are
mighty interesting too. The German artist's Shakespeare is of
course a German, the French artist's a Frenchman, the Italian
artist's an Italian, and the Danish artist's (and one must speak en-
thusiastically of Mr. Louis Hesselroth's statue of Shakespeare now
set up in the park of Marienlyst, near Helsingor, the modern El-
sinore, within a stone's throw of Hamlet's castle of Kronborg on
the foamy Cattegat) a Dane. And there was even presented to me
by my late friend, Luther R. Marsh, a portrait of Shakespeare
painted by the " spirits." And poor Mr. Marsh (an eminent lawyer
in his day and one whom it would not have been very safe for a wit-
ness to attempt to bamboozle) was so epris with the value of this
portrait, that I had not the heart to call his attention to the costume
of this Shakespeare, which was such as never was on sea or land,
certainly was not possible under Elizabethan or Jacobean sumptuary
laws. Only this spirit-Shakespeare avoided the rule and was not
a Spirit.
II.
SHAKESPEARE'S ENTOURAGE.
Says Schlegel, in his Lectures on the History of Literature:
We are apt to think of and represent to ourselves the Middle
Ages as a blank in the history of the human mind, an empty
space between the refinement of antiquity and the illumination
of modern times. We are willing to believe that art and science
had entirely perished, that their resurrection after a thousand
years' sleep may appear something more wonderful and sub-
lime. Here, as in many others of our customary opinions, we
are at once false, narrow-sighted, and unjust ; we give up sub-
8 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
stance for gaudiness, and sacrifice truth to effect. The fact
is, that the substantial part of the knowledge and civilization of
antiquity never was forgotten, and that for very many of the
best and noblest productions of modern genius, we are entirely
obliged to the inventive spirit of the Middle Ages. It is upon
the whole extremely doubtful whether those periods which are
the most rich in literature, possess the greatest share either
of moral excellence or of political happiness. We are well
aware that the true and happy age of Roman greatness long
preceded that of Roman refinement and Roman authors; and
I fear there is but too much reason to suppose that, in the
history of the modern nations, we may find many examples of
the same kind. But even if we should not at all take into our
consideration these higher and more universal standards of the
worth and excellence of ages and nations, and although we
should entirely confine our attention to literature and intellectual
cultivation alone, we ought still, I imagine, to be very far
from viewing the period of the Middle Ages with the fashion-
able degree of self-satisfaction and contempt.
Very similarly we are accustomed, in every volume in our
Shakespeare libraries, to read that the date of Shakespeare was the
date of the Renaissance. Perhaps it did synchronize with that
wealth of learning, literature and romance that was to pour into
England from the Continent from the Middle Ages during which
the Church had preserved the treasure of classic culture from more
barbarisms than barbarism itself.
But we will get no adequate or even fair idea of what Shake-
speare towered over if we imagine him as the product of
a Renaissant England. On the contrary, at his advent the state
of popular ignorance and denseness in England was hardly de-
scribable in such terms as we possess to-day. Except that its common
people were great eaters and drinkers, especially drinkers " potent
in potting " as the Dutch visitor expressed it nobody in England
excelled in anything in particular. The English universities might
not challenge comparison with continental universities in any other
field, but certainly no continental university consumed so many gross
tons of beer every quarter. Indeed the feat of drinking and eat-
ing deep for long enjoyed a sort of academic prestige; and the
times are not forgotten in which a barrister was supposed to owe
his jurisprndential outfit to the eating of a certain number of din-
ners in an inn of court. Indeed the spirit of England was better
than anywhere else uttered in the pathetic aspiration
I i6.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 9
Back and side go bare, go bare
Both foot and hand go cold ;
But belly, God send thee store enow
Of jolly good ale and old!
But beyond being allowed to drink all he could get, life was
hardly worth living to anyone without a title. Commoners had no
rights that the privileged classes were bound to respect. They were
permitted to indulge in only the coarsest pastimes, and their only
scope for wit or humor was the sex relationship. They were per-
mitted to wear only the coarsest raiment, and were visited with
capital punishment for the most trivial misdemeanors. Possibly
there may have been titled persons or university men, who did not
believe that it was (for instance) unsafe to stray beyond home for
fear of " dragons," or into " India " or " Bohemia " for fear of
immolation by a monster called a Mantichor, that had the head, with
well-trimmed beard and moustache of a man, double rows of dagger
teeth, the body of a lion, the talons of an eagle, and whose tail was
a living serpent. But all England shared the science of the Queen's
medical adviser, who advised that people should wash their faces
only once a week, and wipe them only on scarlet cloth in order to
keep healthy; when pills made from the ground-up skull of a man
who had been hung on a gibbet, a draught of spring water that had
stood in the skull of a murdered man, the powder of a mummy,
the blood of " dragons," the entrails of wild animals were pre-
scribed for certain disorders; when tumors were ordered stroked
with the hand of a dead man: when, to cure a child of the rickets,
it was passed head downward between the sections of a young
tree split open for the purpose, and then tied together again (the
child's recovery to parallel that of the knitting together and heal-
ing of the tree) ; when love philters were prescribed and sold every-
where, and when the king " touched " for scrofula.
But it was in these days, and such as these, when every quack
had his bagful of charms and philters for mental disorders, that
Macbeth's physician declined to prescribe for a mind diseased.
" Therein the patient must minister to himself," says the good
doctor. " More needs he the divine than the physician; good God
forgive us all ! " And Lear's physician, instead of hanging a witch's
tooth or a toad's wizen around the neck of the poor old king, pre-
scribed only rest and absolute quiet.
Truly, a Shakespeare flashed out of all this ale drinking and
bestiality, all this darkness and lewdness. Not first a 'prentice hand
io SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
either, but all at once a miracle : an immense figure of a man,
without prototype or anti-type from that day to this. And we
supply ourselves from details to see the wonder of how he cleansed
his archaic models (for he never paused except once in his only
English located comedy The Merry Wives and that we are told
he wrote to order more shame to her at the decree of a " virgin "
queen to invent his plots). We watch, for instance, how he made
over into a pure and sweet and wholesome story a tale that could
not be put into print to-day, and that even the carrion of Wycherley
and Aphra Behn would have spewed out of its mouth in the episode
of the three caskets in The Merchant, and we note in re-writing
the old Troublesome Raine of King John he swept away the scur-
rillity that was the very thing to make his new play popular with
the groundlings, was in fact the very scandals that King Henry
VIII. ordered invented in order to justify him in plundering the
Religious Houses. Surely here was a new order of man yea of
superman.
But it was the greatness as it is the perennity of this
great man that he was the artist and the portrayer of the human
heart that is in all below, perhaps dust but still there, and
there did Shakespeare find it. " His comedies will remain, as
long as the English language shall endure, for he handles mores
hominum," said Domine Ward two centuries and a half ago. All
the world knows by heart the tragedies of Shakespeare, the great
agony of Lear, the jealousy and remorse of Othello, the divine in-
trospection of Hamlet, the agony of Ophelia. But the mellow and
lambent and comic humor of Shakespeare seems less realized. For
after all, the Lears and Othellos and the Hamlets were his excep-
tions. It was the Comedie Humaine, " the gathering of men's
humors daily " as old Aubrey declared, as Dickens or Balzac or
Trollope or Thackeray were to do, two and a half centuries later:
" human nature's daily food " that Shakespeare selected for his
comedies. And who cannot trace down through literature the in-
fluence of Shakespeare's humor? For example, we get again in
Offenbach's Two Gendarmes and in Gilbert's policeman in the
Pirates of Penzance the sport of Dogberry and Verges and the
Watch ; and how many more instances might be quoted since Shake-
speare first made Dogberry wail because he had not lived to be
written down an ass?
All mankind remembers Shakespeare's pageants and battle-
fields, and tourneys and Throne-rooms! But who could have
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL Ji
bettered the scene in Coriolanus, where the Roman ladies make that
morning call on Volumnia, and huddle together on low stools and
take out their sewing and chatter about the news from the front?
Or that scene in The Winter's Tale (which gives the name to that
play), where the poor disprized wife, Hermione, seeks a respite
from her husband's anger by amusing herself with her boy; and
this dainty dialogue as genre as anything in Trollope ensues :
Hermione: Pray you sit by us and tell 's a tale.
Mammillus: Merry or sad shall 't be?
Hermione: As merry as you will.
Mammillus: A sad tale 's best for winter. I have one
Of sprites and goblins
Hermione: Let's have that, good sir,
Come on, sit down, come on and do your best
To frighten me with your sprites. You're power-
ful at it.
Mammillus: There was a man
Hermione: Nay come, sit down, then on.
Mammillus: Dwelt by a churchyard. I will tell it softly
Yond crickets shall not hear it:
But here Leontes and Antigonus enter, and the winter's tale is
never told except as Shakespeare tells one in the sombre play itself.
What manner of man was the Shakespeare that created all
this new birth? Henry Chettle, writing in 1592, in what perhaps
is the solitary genre touch we have to answer our question from,
says, " Myself have seen his demeanor no less civil than he is ex-
cellent in the qualities he professes ; besides divers of worship have
reported his uprightness of dealing which argues his honestie."
Who these " divers of worship " were, we have not far to go
to ascertain. The sumptuary laws of England in the reigns of
Elizabeth and James were exceedingly severe. A nobleman could
have associated with a Commoner only as a superior to whom the
commoner owed and expressed obeisance. (There is on record a
case where even a baronet was imprisoned and fined for addressing
a noble lord as " sir.") Shakespeare, however, seems to have been
on terms of some intimacy with two noble lords, the Earl of South-
ampton and the Earl of Pembroke. To the former he dedicated
the two magnificent poems which, to the despair of the Shake-
speareans who propose to show us " Shakespeare's Mind and Art,"
in their genesis and progresses from journey work to masterpieces,
burst out of silence upon the dazzled Elizabethans. (The two dedi-
12 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
cations showing progress in this friendship, or at least, in this
acquaintance, between the commoner and the noble lord; the first
in conventional tone of a poet to his patron, the second beginning
"The Love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end.")
Shakespeare's other noble friend was William Herbert, Earl
of Pembroke. To him Shakespeare dedicates a sheath of one
hundred and fifty- four delicious and dainty sonnets.
It is interesting to wonder why Lord Pembroke asked that
Shakespeare make the dedication not in his titular, but in his family
name : " William Herbert," and only in the initials then, " Mr.
W. H." But that this " Mr. W. H." was really Lord Pembroke,
Ben Jonson (always a bit jealous of Shakespeare whose plays crowd
the theatres while Jonson's would not pay for a sea-coal fire)
revealed. For Ben Jonson, in dedicating his own Epigrams to
" William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Lord Chamberlain, etc.,"
plainly says, " I dare not change your Lordship's title, since there
is nothing in the epigrams in expressing which it is necessary to
employ a cipher/' plainly referring to the dedication of Shake-
speare's " Sonnets " to his Lordship as " Mr. W. H." (Pembroke's
family initials, and surely it is quite needless to remark not South-
ampton's initials at all, except by transposition into H. W. (Henry
Wriothesley, Southampton's family name) where such transposition
would have been senseless !
As to the documents and papers that Shakespeare left behind
him, these tell us very little more than his so-called portraits, and
these stray items of his affiliations. As a true-born Englishman
should, he provided for his family, the family that God had given
him, provided them a roof and a home; and, when poverty drove
him from his childhood precincts, and he earned a competency and,
later, wealth, his first act was to seek his earliest home : where like
Horace's happiest man he could
pro cut negotiis
ut prisca gens mortamtm
paterna rura bobus exercet suis.
He proudly purchased the greatest house in the village whence
he had been compelled by penury to flee the bailiff; he made his
father and mother well-to-do and comfortable, he " could not bear
the enclosing of Welcomb," that is, he would not tolerate the taking
away from the poor the right of common, the ancient right
to graze their kine and sheep upon the public downs. In his Will
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 13
he remembered everybody that had a claim upon him, even to two
actors, and " William Reynolds," and, after leaving his widow all her
legal rights, either (as lawyers conclude from the fact that his un-
printed plays could not be issued until her death in 1623) a deed of
trust or some equivalent rights in his plays, he remembered that she
might care for " the second-best bed and furniture " (i. e. } its bed-
ding). This interlineation in the Will has been held to indicate that
when Shakespeare's lawyer, Francis Collins, took Shakespeare's in-
structions for that Will, he (Shakespeare) "had forgotten that he
had a wife." It would equally prove that Shakespeare was over-
solicitous that his widow should not lack anything to which she had
become attached. The first-best bed, the guest-bed at New Place,
was the one, of course, that Queen Henrietta Maria slept in, when
that royal lady spent the night in Stratford on the visit to her
royal consort at Worcester. The " second-best bed " was therefore
the one which, under the law of the Widow's Quarantine, Mistress
Shakespeare would only have possessed for forty days, had not her
husband remembered to give it to her outright. Small wonder that
Shakespeare's widow " did earnestly desire to be buried in the same
grave with him."
And so, though Shakespeare was doubtless called " the Gentle
Shakespeare," in the then meaning of the word " gentle " (i. e.,
"of gentle birth"), in pleasant raillery among his coetaneans be-
cause he did not forget that he was a gentleman, yet, in everything,
we find that he was, in the other and wider sense, the sense of
recognition of obligation to those that nature and providence had
given him as wards he was indeed " the gentle Shakespeare."
But still beyond our ken, the " immense figure of a man."
Others abide our question, thou art free, as Matthew Arnold puts
it, or as our American poet Stoddard puts it even more beautifully :
There little seen but Light
The only Shakespeare Is!
It has been urged against Shakespeare that he was not in
sympathy with popular rights, that he catered to Kings and Courts,
as witness his delineations of Jack Cade. But this I think Lord
Tennyson has answered, as poets can answer propositions in
single lines:
Not he that breaks the dams, but he
That through the channels of the State
Convoys the People's Will is Great.
14 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
He will not break those dams. He will always have that law
prevail whose throne is in the bosom of God, whose voice the har-
mony of the world. But not commoners nor yet kings shall inter-
rupt it. Kings must go too. " Noble lords and ladies must " (says
the dirge in Cymbeline), " as chimney sweepers, bite the dust."
For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp
Allowing him a breath, a little space
To monarchize, He feared, and kill with looks
and humored thus
Comes at the last, and, with a little pin,
Bores through his castle walls, and farewell king!
He was a brave man who, under the very eaves of a Tudor
court dare utter such defiant Use-majeste as that. When the heads
of Sir Gilly Merrick and Sir Christopher Blount tumbled into the
basket for just hiring an actor or two to pronounce those words
upon a stage, how was it that the Shakespeare that wrote them kept
his head on ? Small use had Tudor sovereigns for their great crown
vassals except to chop off their heads. How did Shakespeare hold
on to his with an Elizabeth on the throne of England ?
Exigent and plentiful has been the criticism even ribald criti-
cism because Shakespeare, when in better days, used a bit of his
new wealth to acquire a grant of arms. But he acquired it not for
himself, but for his old father. And though it entitled himself
to use the device of arms that was granted him, he himself never
seems to have taken the trouble to get it engraved. At any rate he
never used it. On the only occasion he ever had to use a seal on a
legal document, he was without one, and used a seal upon which
were the letters " H. L." (possibly Henry Lawrence, a clerk in the
office of the conveyancer passing the title), and it is curious to note
that, as a matter of fact, the only use of this grant of arms that
we can find is that once Shakespeare's granddaughter, Lady
Barnard, used the falcon and the shaking-spear symbolically
treated. And this once is the only justification in the record for
the mountains of fuss that have been made about Shakespeare's
snobbishness and love of glitter. And who of all these fuss-makers
is not proud of his noble birth (one wonders), if he happens to
have any to be proud of?
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 15
III.
SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS AS HE FRAMED THEM.
From eulogy and panegyric any descent to items and details
make for diminuendo and almost for offence. It would be best from
any point of view to leave our immense figure of a man still sitting
on his rocky throne with his head amid the beams of heaven. And
yet, in this semester of Shakespeare, we must permit his physical
works to be studied by reverent students, and facts to be designated.
The murmuring crowd that expound, condemn, defend, worship
and slander is not to frighten earnest scholars away from such
verities of the physical plays as we see with physical eye, with-
out imputing motives, or reading into them what Shakespeare never
dreamed of putting there.
The dates of the successive appearance of such of these plays
as were presented in Shakespeare's lifetime, afford a sane-enough
order of their composition for practical purposes, without assistance
of silly verse-testers who count " stopped " and " unstopped " end-
ings, and " run-on " lines and the like, though this order does reveal
indeed that, as the plays came on, Shakespeare by experience found
that his actors spoke blank verse, such as Marlowe had devised,
better they spoke rhymed verses, and so discarded rhyme for " Mar-
lowe's mighty line ! " That this order of publication returns cer-
tain apparent anomalies as that some of Shakespeare's master-
pieces, such as The Merchant or The Midsummer Night's Dream
appear in the same year as lesser work such as Titus Andronicus
(though who shall talk of Shakespeare's lesser or greater work)
is readily accounted for; for in those days, just as to-day, the mo-
ment an author corralled the public appetite, publishers tumbled
over each other to put into print everything and anything that he
had written. Now, what first captured London audiences and
packed London theatres was the Falstaff quartette Falstaff, Nym,
Bardolph and Pistol, in the second Henry IV. These " irregular
humorists " (as the contemporary announcements called them)
were, even if we don't care to confess it, the popular " making "
of Shakespeare; gave him his first vogue; resulted in the piratical
printing of the "quartos" ("broadsides," they called them then).
And if there had been no quartos we may be mighty sure there
would have been no first folio, and we to-day would have had no
Shakespeare.
16 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
Of course, receiving our text as we do, first through these
quartos and then through the first folio, the " copy " for the text
of which was in itself largely reen forced from playhouse copies and
actors' " lengths " (sometimes containing not the names of the
characters, but of the actors of those characters, which were care-
lessly allowed to creep into the stage-directions), we have much
that Shakespeare never put there. So, for instance, in The Merry
Wives, the actor who played Slender tells Anne that he has held
" Sackeson " (a particularly large and brutal bear that was being
baited in a near-by friendly theatre) " by the chain," although it
frightened the ladies to see him do it. Elsewhere he remarks that
he bought the shovel-board that Falstaff cozened him out of " from
Yead [Edward] Miller " (which mention might have paid off that
particular actor's score at Mr. Edward Miller's pawnbrokery just
around the corner). These are certainly actors' "gags," although
that entire scene of the play which shows a schoolhouse and a school-
master drilling a small lad named William in Lily's Accidence to
the rather callow commentary of Dame Quickly (imported from the
Henry plays to be little William's mother) is an after-thought,
perhaps of Shakespeare himself, for his only comedy whose scene
is laid in England. So the comedian who played the drunken
porter in Macbeth, may have included among those he was ad-
mitting to Hell Gate " a farmer who hanged himself in expectation
of plenty " (an easily recognized allusion to " Sordido," the spec-
ulator in Ben Jonson's Every Man Out of His Humour, who tried
to " corner " corn in the promise of a wet harvest; but who found
that the harvest promised an abundance and could not anticipate
ruin with equanimity, in order to advertise one of those Jonson
plays that left to its merits would not pay for that hitherto re-
membered sea-coal fire). These we think that we can readily weed
out. For the low comedian who was assigned the part of the
drunken porter would naturally be one whom the management
allowed to " gag " his part. But that Shakespeare himself used local
matter in draughting his plays, making them, what Hamlet said
actors were, " abstracts and brief chronicles of the time," there
is abundant scope for recognizing.
Such items as the following have not been thought too bizarre
for description: On June 20, 1599, the Society of Grays Inn or-
dered that " no officers of this house should keep or enjoy their
office any longer than they should keep themselves sole and un-
married." Later, another order was made that " all women should
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 17
be barred of chapel at sermons, no laundresses or women called
victuallers should come into the rooms of the gentlemen members
nor maid servants upon penalty of said member's expulsion."
Now it is claimed that the text of these various orders
seems to be burlesqued in the text of Love's Labour's Lost. Or,
not the less bizarre, Prince Hamlet is thought to have called Po-
lonius a " fishmonger," because the character of Polonius was in-
tended as a lampoon on Lord Burleigh. The " fishmonger " being
an allusion to the circumstance that Burleigh had in or about
1603, obtained the passage of a curious law from which he ex-
pected to make up for his losses in his shipping monopoly. The
persecution of the Catholics, his Lordship thought, would decrease
the demand for fish, and this remarkable Burleigh Law made the
eating of flesh on Friday, Saturday or Wednesday a misdemeanor,
unless fish dishes were also placed upon the table. When this law
was new and fresh in the popular mind, this topical allusion could
hardly fail to be understood and enjoyed by everyone, except per-
haps the lord treasurer himself. As a matter of fact this name,
" Polonius," was an after-thought of somebody, the doddering old
premier having been previously called Corambis; since up to the
end of Act I. this Corambis or Polonius was a rather dignified
old gentleman, and certainly gave his son Laertes some most ex-
cellent advice. Mr. Boucicault thought that Shakespeare found his
great tragedy too sombre, and after Act I. made Polonius the
court butt and idiot.
Such fantasies as these are of course most properly dismissed
as the crackling of thorns under a pot, since the wise suffer fools
gladly. But they are indications of the care with which the text of
Shakespeare has come to be studied. And who shall say that any
absorbed study of the great text is to be flouted and decried ? But
be this as it may, it has come to be seriously noted that in the
play of Hamlet alone there are five unmistakable references to
matters that were happening in London in or about the years 1601,
1602, 1603 and 1604, thus synchronizing with the dates of publica-
tion. (The first quarto of the play was printed in 1603 and the
second in 1604.)
The best known of these five is the illusion to the competi-
tion of the Children's Companies with the regular player com-
panies. But as this is perfectly familiar to us all I pass it here.
The others are more recondite.
When Horatio begs Bernardo, whom he has visited upon the
VOL, cm. 2
i8 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
ramparts of Kronborg castle at Elsinore, to tell him about this
ghost he has seen, Bernardo begins a lengthy narrative.
Last night of all,
When yond same star that's westward from the pole
Had made his course t' illume at part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one
But here the impatient Ghost itself will not await the leisurely
development of Bernardo's circumstantial narrative, and bursts
upon the scene. Without pausing to remark that this is possibly
the most dramatic situation in all dramatic literature : a visitor
from the grave breaking in upon a chronicle of itself delivered by
a mortal here, we are assured, is the first abstract and brief
chronicle of the time in Shakespeare's mightiest play. To wit: It
seems that in the second week of the year 1601 (old style) there
actually was a " star westward from the pole," this " star " was the
constellation Cassiopaea, the terms " start " and " constellation "
being often (especially in rhyme) used interchangeably. 1 And it
seems that at one o'clock during the second week in any December,
the constellation Cassiopaea is always westward from the pole star,
as anyone can see with the naked eye. " Westwardly " will be to
the left of the north polar star horizontally, that is, the five stars
of this constellation (roughly speaking) make a letter W lying on
its side, with a top, or V, pointing directly to the polar star.
But to further test the accuracy of Bernardo's description,
" When that same star, etc had made his course t' illume
that part of heaven where now it burns," we have only to observe
that in November, Cassiopaea will be lower down, but still to the
" westward," i. e., to the left of the polar star. So that we have
every detail of the date, to wit, the season " when Our Saviour's
birth is celebrated " (that is, December) : to which, with his ten-
dency to prolixity, Bernardo adds that, in November, Cassiopaea
is a bit lower down in the skies ! " the bell then beating one " (that
is, one o'clock A. M.), while as to the year Hamlet (the play
1 Grosart's edition of Greene's Works, vol. iii., p. 79, Morando, the Tritaneron
of Love, in which the passage, " the star Cassipoaea remaineth in one signe but ten
daies, and thou in one mind but ten hours," which further proves that this particular
constellation was sometimes called a " star." And again in The Misfortunes of
Arthur, Act I., Scene I., we have " The whiles O, Cassiopaea, gembright signs.
Most sacred sight and sweet celestrial starre ! "
I 9 i6.] SHAKESPEARE PUS THIRD CENTENNIAL 19
having been in its first quarto form, first printed in the year 1602,
having been entered on the stationer's books (the mode of copy-
righting at that date) in 1602, July 26th, obviously must have been
in course of preparation in the year 1601.
And now Horatio comes to Bernardo's aid (1. i. 116). Hora-
tio says, that at a similar time there were " stars with dews of trains
of fire ; disasters in the sun, and the moist star upon whose influence
Neptune's empire stands was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse."
Of course " the moist star upon whose influence Neptune's empire
stands " is the moon, which regulates the tides of the sea. For the
moon to be " sick," means, of course, to be in eclipse. And to be
" sick almost to doomsday " (sick almost to death) can mean noth-
ing but an almost total eclipse. Now all astronomers always keep
accurate records of all eclipses of the heavenly bodies; and, on
turning to these records, we find that in the early evening of De-
cember 9, 1601 (new style), an almost total eclipse of the moon
was visible in London for three hours.
This seems rather as almost too circumstantial an " abstract
and brief chronicle of the time " to find in a stage play. Neverthe-
less, here it is. But there is still further data. In Monthly Notices
of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xxxiii., page 405, we read :
" December 9th, New Style; Sunday (November 29th, Old Style) :
'The sun set this day in London at 3 149 p. M., the full moon was
just clear of the horizon. Half an hour later she began to enter
the earth's shadow; as she plunged deeper and deeper into it the
eclipse reached its maximum at a few minutes before six o'clock.' "
The entire face of the moon was not eclipsed. Only about
eleven digits (a "digit" is one-twelfth of the moon's diameter)
passed into shadow. This description (which is by a Rev. J.
Johnson and is verified by consulting L'Art de Verifier les Dates,
Paris, 1818, vol. i. of part ii., and Von Oppolzer's Canon der
Finsternisse , Vienna, 1887) of course leaves a thin crescent of
the moon still visible. In other words, the moon was " sick almost
to doomsday with eclipse" during the year 1601. But this does
not exhaust the somewhat startling verification, in statistical-astro-
nomical annals, of Bernardo's and Horatio's speeches in the first act
of Hamlet.
Again, just before the line about the moist star, Horatio said :
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood.
Disasters in the sun. .
20 SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
Now, assuming that Horatio meant by " stars with trains of
fire " to allude to meteors, and by " disasters in the sun " to allude
to an eclipse of the sun, these astronomical records confirm him by
actually enumerating these meteors and eclipses of the sun in this
very year 1601. By again consulting the Monthly Notes of the
Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xl, page 436, one finds that
on December 24th, New Style, 1601, there was an annular eclipse
of the sun, about a fortnight after the lunar eclipse just described,
which " was annular right across England," and was in its midst
at about one hour after midday. The meteoric shower required is
somewhat better known. The well-known showers of " falling
stars " which occur at periods of thirty-two and a quarter years (or
a multiple of that number) in or about the fifteenth of November
and therefore are called " November showers " (also called
" Leonids," because always appearing to diverge from a point in the
constellation Leo), came in the vicinity of London on October 27th,
Old Style, 1601.
Now here is the resume, and we must agree that it is a startling
one:
(1) Hamlet, entered in the Stationer's Register December
29, 1601, and printed in 1602.
(2) A meteoric shower in October, 1601.
(3) An eclipse of the sun December 25, 1601.
(4) A lunar eclipse about December 2, 1601.
Again, in Act IV., Scene VII., we read :
King: Two months since
Here was a gentleman of Normandy.
Laertes: A Norman was 't?
Upon my life, Lamond!
Now this " gentleman of Normandy named Lamond " is found
to have been Charles de Contault, due de Biron, Marshal of France,
born in or about 1563, executed in the Bastille by order of Henry
IV., July 31, 1602. He had been sent by Henry on an embassy
to the English Court in 1601. Here again note the date 1601,
which we saw prevail in our astronomical data. In the passage
from which we quoted above, the King says of this gentleman of
Normandy who was " here, two months since," that he had " witch-
craft in his horsemanship."
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 21
He grew unto his seat
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse
As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured
With the brave beast, so far he topped my thought
That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks
Gane short of what he did!
Now that this Duke of Biron was, indeed, a wonderful horse-
man, we have Chapman's testimony also. George Chapman wrote
two dramas, The Conspiracy of Biron and The Tragedy of Biron.
In the former, Act L, Scene II., we have:
The Duke Byron, on his heavy beast Pastrana
Your Majesty hath missed a royal sight
Who sits him like a full sail'd argosy
Dances with a lofty billow, and as snug
Plies to his bearer, both their motions mix't
And being considered in their site together
They do the best present the state of man
In his first royalty
The Due de Biron was well known to the English. Many Eng-
lishmen sent to Navarre served under him. The prologue to Chap-
man's Conspiracy says, " The all-admired Biron, all France ex-
empted from comparison " (perhaps Biron in Love's Labour's Lost
was drawn from this historical character).
Stow's " Abridgment " gives the date of the arrival of this
Biron in London as " about the fifth of September, 1601." And in
Pierre Matthieu's Histoire de France, Geneva, 1620, page 115, the
date of Biron's return to France was given as " at the beginning
of the month of October, 1601, Old Style."
And, again, in the first scene of Act V. of Hamlet are the
most wonderful of all these abstracts and brief chronicles.
When Prince Hamlet says, " Alas ! poor Yorick," he seems
to have been alluding to John Heywood, who was Jester to Henry
VIII. and Queen Mary. Dr. Doran's History of the Stage (Lon-
don, 1853, p. 132) says: "We now come to a person of some
celebrity, who seems to have been a court-jester without being ex-
actly a court-fool. I allude to John Heywood of North Mimms in
Hertfordshire, whom Sir Thomas More introduced to the King as
Sir William Nevil de Scogan, and whose introduction was followed
by his appointment as jester to the sovereign." Of this Heywood,
22 SHAKESPEARE PUS THIRD CENTENNIAL [April,
Wharton says that " he was beloved and rewarded by Henry VIII.
for his buffooneries, and Henry was satisfied with the quips of his
daughter's favorite." The title, " King's Jester," clung to him
through the reign of Edward VI. and Mary. But as Mary was suc-
ceeded by Elizabeth there would naturally have been no other
" King's " Jester appointed.
Now according to the Dictionary of National Biography, this
"John the King's Jester" (see Doran id., p. 185) was born in
1497; being mentioned in a return of Catholic fugitives in January
29, 1517, when he had become tenant of lands in Kent. In 1599
he is said to be "dead and gone" (Newron's Epilogue or Con-
clusion to John Hey wood's Works). His death, therefore, oc-
curred somewhere between 1577 an< ^ I 5?8- Now the gravedigger
says : " Here's a skull hath lain i' the earth three and twenty years."
Twenty-three years from the year 1578 would again give us this
year, 1601, the date we run against everywhere in the astronomical
and the historical data.
I pass reference to the wonderful graveyard scene where two
gravediggers in discussing whether Ophelia is entitled to Christian
burial, follow exactly the reasoning of the lawyers in the case of
Hales against Petit, where Lady Hales fought an escheat on the
ground that her husband, Sir James Hales, did not commit suicide ;
but, since he only threw himself into the water (since the throwing
oneself into the water was no crime, and since he was not re-
sponsible for the water having drowned him after he had thrown
himself in), because that famous case, reported in blackletter (al-
most as obsolete for a type for law reports in Shakespeare's day
as it is now), was fifty years old when Shakespeare turned it to
his purpose, and so was hardly a localism.
Let us pass to an inquiry whether there was anything that
Shakespeare was not; whether he was not only the father of
English drama, but of English stage-craft as well?
Nothing is perhaps oftener met with in these fields than the
statement that Shakespeare's plays were presented on barren boards
without stage effect or mise-en-scene ; without practicable scenery,
trusting to speech alone. Surely the authorities making this state-
ment cannot have been very cautious students of the stage-direction
in the quartos, or in the first folio. These stage directions the
Bankside Editors of 1885 first maintained to be as truly Shakes-
peare's as the texts of the plays.
Those who argue for barren boards have surely forgotten the
1916.] SHAKESPEARE HIS THIRD CENTENNIAL 23
very first scene of the very first act of the very first play printed, as
modern editions usually run, in our collections. Surely the first act
of The Tempest portraying a sinking ship toiling in the breakers,
could not have been presented without " practical " scenery. Nor
again that witches' chaldron scene in Macbeth, nor the incantation
scene in Gloucester's garden in the second Henry VI. Surely Shake-
speare's plays called for the most opulent stage effects and stage ma-
chinery known to his date. And surely their representation to-day
calls, nay their perspective demands, the most opulent settings we
can give them. And it is possibly speaking one word for. the
manager and one word for Shakespeare, when we are invited to
see a Shakespeare play given to-day without scenery on the plea
that there was no stage scenery in Shakespeare's times. That signs
were hung out on Shakespeare's stage to indicate the place Athens
or Rome or Padua is doubtless the fact. But these signs were
rather for the benefit of the audience which had no bill of the play
on their knees than for the actors (there are no such signs called
for in the stage directions of any Shakespearean play, by the way).
And so even if this superman's head was among the beams of
heaven, he was not oblivious to what his fellowmen were occupy-
ing themselves about, nor of human nature's daily food.
Who were the greatest of the great? Those who, according
to Goethe, are of no race and no nation, but of all races and nations.
Victor Hugo says Moses, Homer and Shakespeare; others say
Shakespeare, Dante and Cervantes; still others say Shakespeare,
Dante and Goethe. Charles the First, whom the Puritans accused
of reading Shakespeare more than he read his Bible, told Falkland
that Shakespeare was the greatest of authors, for he had actually
created a new order of being in Caliban.
Such are a very few of the bewilderments which make me, for
one, sincerely glad that we cannot localize and minimize Shake-
speare down to any last analysis of a human being; why he must
still remain to us " an immense figure of a man seated on a rocky
summit with his head among the beams of heaven," why we nor
time nor space can contain him, because as Dr. Johnson said in his
immortal eulogy, " panting Time toils after him in vain."
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW.
BY DANIEL A. LORD, S.JT.
II.
HE function of comedy, Mr. Shaw declares, is nothing
less than the destruction of old-established morals.
Shakespeare was unprogressive enough to accept
standard morality as the basis of his plays, and hence
in Mr. Shaw's estimation he is quite inferior to Ibsen,
the iconoclast. In consequence, Mr. Shaw makes his plays a frank
and unfair attack on conventional morality, that is, the morality
of the Decalogue and of the natural law. With Ibsen, he maintains
that as far as morals go, there is no law; with Nietzsche, he re-
jects positively all morality based on Christian principles. So he
counts off on his fingers the seven deadly sins of his moral code :
respectability, conventional virtue, filial affection, modesty, senti-
ment, devotion to women, romance. 1 And amidst shouts of
laughter, the onslaught begins.
Respectability. In the literal sense, respectability means
worthy of respect; respectability in the Shavian sense means worthy
of sovereign contempt. He despises it; he showers ridicule upon
it ; he tramps it in the mud, and throws its fragments to the gales
of his own laughter. Dare to disagree with him, and he hurls at you
that most galling of all modern epithets, Philistine! That is a
terrible word ! You may think me too radical, boisterous, foolishly
progressive, even slightly demented, cries the modern intellectual;
but don't, ah, don't think me a Philistine!
Yet if anything would make me cling madly to respectability,
it is Mr. Shaw's attack upon it. To begin with, his attack is obvi-
ously so unfair. To his respectable characters he does not give even
the privilege of military execution. In argument with his uncon-
ventional characters, they appear unmitigated asses or silly hypo-
crites, fully conscious of their cant and ready to call quits at any
sophistical argument that is fitted to a neat epigram. From Col.
Craven 2 and Doctor Paramore 2 to Mr. and Mrs. Knox, 2 his re-
spectable characters are bores, or fools, or furtive sinners. While
for the men and women who use their respectability as a cloak for
1 G. B. S., 77. *The Philanderer.
19 i6.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 25
their crimes, the reader can only conceive an intense contempt.
On the other hand, his characters who defy respectability have
almost won the heart of their creator. Dick Dudgeon, 3 and Cicely, 4
and Candida, he makes as attractive as his vitriol-tipped pen will
permit. Even Darling Dora, 5 woman of the streets, is a bright
light in the darkness of middle-class respectability.
Purposely or not, Mr. Shaw has entirely befogged the dif-
ference between a true and a false respectability, between a noble
convention and one that is worthy only of contempt. Mr. Shaw
is not in the least original in pointing out that there are crimes
unnumbered lurking under the cloak of respectability. Is one's
fur overcoat to be torn to shreds because a dozen moths fly out
when it is exposed to the sun? Mr. Shaw seems capable of seeing
only the false conventions that make a pseudo-respectability
hideous; the sort that enables a reprobate like Crofts 6 to live the
gentleman on the wages of sin, that permits Sartorius 7 to sit
benignly on the vestry board while he reaps his wealth from
rotting tenements, that makes Mrs. Dudgeon 8 a cruel, bitter fanatic
and the Rev. Samuel Gardner a smug, though futile, clergyman.
If that is the respectability Mr. Shaw is attacking, we are
with him heart and soul. George Eliot did as much when she
laid bare the soul of the hypocritical Bulstrode. But George Eliot
knew of another respectability, and that she embodied in Caleb
Garth, a respectability that hated hypocrisy because it is a lie,
that held honor dear and fortune cheap, that loved home and the
ties of family and the purity of daughters as things more dear than
life, that was respectability because it asked for no respect. And
that is the respectability which, touched with divine faith and love,
makes a generation of Saints. Is that the respectability that Mr.
Shaw is attacking? If so, God pity Mr. Shaw. The very men he
decries and ridicules know better than he the value of respectability.
Next to gold, there is nothing they fight harder to preserve.
Yet if Mr. Shaw thinks that he has dealt a deathblow to
respectability, he is woefully mistaken. The unconventional char-
acters of his plays would drive a man in sheer fright into re-
spectability. His " respectable " characters he has made unlovable;
his unconventional characters like those the gods destine for de-
struction, he has made mad. One day in the company of Dolly
'Fanny's First Play. *The Demi's Disciple.
8 Captain Brassbound's Conversion. 'Mrs. Warren's Profession.
''Widowers' Houses. 'The Devil's Disciple.
26 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [April,
and Phil, 9 or Cecily, or Chatteris, 10 or Dick Dudgeon, or Frank
Gardner, 11 would drive a man to simple distraction. They are the
incarnation of the modern spirit of complete unrest and constant
mental fickleness ; and unrest and fickleness have given us a race of
neurotics.
Unconventional? Ah, there is a word to conjure with. It
is the shibboleth of every new freak in art; the watchword of
each new aberration in morals; the sign of each succeeding frac-
ture in common sense. What crimes are committed in that name!
Yet what a perfect pandemonium this earth would be without
its conventions. God made the moral laws to preserve the human
race to a happy future; man made conventions to preserve that
race in a livable present. Without conventions, our toes or our
sensibilities, or our front lawns, or our peace of mind would not
be safe for one moment.
No Christian maintains, as Mr. Shaw seems to fancy, that
conventions bind the conscience. Conventions are merely the normal
way, tested by experience, of regulating the daily intercourse of
civilized people. The unconventional man is simply a social bar-
barian, a human bull in the china shop, a visitor who when in
Rome chooses to live like a Kaffir or an Eskimo. The Kaffir or
the Eskimo may be very amusing for an afternoon at the vaude-
ville, but as a steady companion we prefer a civilized human being,
or a nicely domesticated cat.
The man who prides himself on his contempt for convention
is fit only for solitary confinement. He simply has not learned the
way in which normal, right-minded men find it necessary to live.
The reticences of word and conduct he has never learned. He is
a collegian introducing the tactics of football into lawn tennis; he
only shows that he has no conception of the value of the rules of
the game. Taken in light doses, the characters of Mr. Shaw trans-
planted into real life might act as a bit of caviar or a dash of
tobasco. Alienists should be called in for anyone who makes a
steady diet of either of these relishes.
Conventional Virtue. The attitude of George Bernard Shaw
toward conventional virtue is best summarized in the following
quotations :
If a young woman in a mood of strong reaction against the
preaching of duty and self-sacrifice and the rest of it were to tell
me that she was determined not to murder her own in-
8 You Never Can Tell. u The Philanderer. "Mrs. Warren's Profession.
I9 i6.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 27
stincts and throw away her life in obedience to a mouthful of
empty phrases, I should unhesitatingly say to the young woman :
" By all means do as you propose. Try how wicked you can
be ; it is precisely the same experiment as trying how good you
can be. At worst you will only find out the sort of person you
really are. At best you will find that your passions, if you
really and honestly let them loose impartially, will discipline
you with a severity your conventional friends, abandoning them-
selves to the mechanical routine of fashion, could not stand for
a day." As a matter of fact, I have seen over and over again,
this comedy of the " emancipated " young enthusiast, flinging
duty and religion, convention and parental authority to the
winds, only to find herself becoming for the first time in her life,
plunged into duties, responsibilities and sacrifices from which
she is often glad to retreat after a few years' wearing down of
her enthusiasm, into the comparatively loose life of an ordinarily
respectable woman of fashion.
The " revolted daughter," exasperated at being systematic-
ally lied to by her parents on every subject of vital importance
to an eager and intensely curious young student of life, allies
herself with really vicious people, and with humorists who like
to shock the pious with gay paradoxes in claiming an impossible
license in personal conduct. No great harm is done beyond the
inevitable and temporary excesses produced by all reaction;
for the would-be-vicious ones find when they come to the point
that the indispensable qualification for a wicked life is not
freedom but wickedness. 12
After reading such passages, one can only pray that George
Bernard Shaw may be a master without disciples. In practise, we
find Margaret Knox 13 flinging " duty and religion, convention and
parental authority to the winds/' engaging herself to a strange man,
dancing in a low dive, arrested by the police, carrying away two of
their teeth as trophies, cursing and swearing at her captors, locked
in a cell where she becomes bosom friend of a woman of the streets,
and gloriously unashamed because she " did it from the depths of her
nature. She did it because she was that sort of a person. She did
it in one of her fits of religion."
Filial Devotion. One does not have to advance far in the
reading of Bernard Shaw to understand his attitude toward filial
devotion. His dramatic children have all either contempt, or hatred,
or the most flippant irreverence for their parents. Tanner, 14 Mr.
"G. B. S., 460, 461. ^Fanny's First Play. "Man and Superman.
28 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [April,
Shaw's nearest counterpart, remarks : " I suspect that the tables of
consanguinity have a basis in natural repugnance." Take his
plays in sequence and note the attitude of children toward their
parents. Blanche Sartorius 15 is quite ready to hate her father
on slight provocation; between Julia Craven 16 and her father there
is nothing but the coldest indifference; Vivie Warren 17 defies her
mother and mocks at her pleadings; the disgusting son of the Rev.
Gardner makes sport of his father, twitting him shamelessly with
the sins of his youth ; when given an order by her mother or father,
Raina 18 does just as she pleases; Phil and Dolly chaff their mother
outrageously, while the cold contempt of Gloria 19 for her father
almost makes one shudder; Ann uses her mother to suit her
own sweet will, while Margaret Knox and Bobby Gilbey 20 and
Hypatia Tarleton 21 in open rebellion against parental authority
complete the most disgusting list of offspring in the whole of
literature.
It may be dreadfully funny to see a son making an ass of his
father and a daughter flaunting her ribbons in the face of her
shocked mother, but it is an exhibition destructive of one of the
sweetest instincts of the human heart. I scarcely dare wonder what
the home life of Mr. Shaw must have been when I hear him say:
Until it is frankly recognized that children are nuisances to
adults except at playful moments we shall have the present
pretense of inexhaustible parental tenderness. 22
And again:
I was an able-bodied and able-minded young man in the
strength of my youth, and my family then heavily embarrassed
needed my help urgently. That I should have chosen to be a
burden to them instead was, according to all the conventions of
pleasant fiction, monstrous. Well, without a blush, I embraced
the monstrosity. I did not throw myself into the struggle for
life; I threw my mother into it. I was not the staff of my
father's old age ; I hung on to his coat tails Callous as
Comus to moral babble, I steadily wrote my five pages a day
and made a man of myself (at my mother's expense) instead of
a slave.
It is quite obvious that the waiter, William, with his son, the
Queen's counsel, had a prototype in fact.
15 Widozvers' Houses. "The Philanderer. "Mrs. W. P.
18 Arms and the Man. 19 Yon Never Can Tell. 20 F. F. P.
21 Mesalliance. "Does Modern Education Ennoble? G. B. S.
I 9 i6.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 29
Logically enough, one who denies all authority should deny
as well the authority of parents over their children. But it is hard
to understand how he dares close his eyes to the love that binds
mothers to their children with bonds stronger than steel. Yet
so he does. The plays of Bernard Shaw are in large measure
disgusting theses to prove that " parents and children detest one
another."
Yet even as I write, my mind conjures up a woman who was,
through childhood and youth and manhood, mother and guardian
angel and chum, who in the midst of a thousand vexations, the
dole of her two growing boys, was never impatient, never weary
of their importunings, responding to any sign of love with a
hundredfold of affection; who with ripening years cherished as
her own their secrets, who laid cool hands on their spiritual bruises,
who stood as the inspiration of their growing souls.
My mind reverts to another refutation of Mr. Shaw's blas-
phemy. She is very Victorian, I suppose, this mother whose
sixth child lies in her arms; but I know she is very Catholic.
Through sleepless nights and tireless days, she tends her flock,
for she is mother enough to prefer to nurse her own children.
At table she has eyes for all; at play she has interest for all; at
all times she has love for all. To the Catholic hearts of mothers
like these, children are not tiresome nuisances to be silenced with
a " be quiet, Tommy, or I'll clout your head for you ; " nor are
they, like the children of Mr. Shaw's fancy, " embittered by the
dislike of their mother and the ill-temper of their father." To
such mothers, children are their life's work, their woman's sphere,
their heaven-sent charge, soul of their souls, and flesh of their
flesh.
And when I turn from mothers like these to the fantastic
mothers begotten of the brain of Mr. Shaw, mothers whose inter-
est in their children is that of a cat for her kittens three months old,
and when I look upon the children with their utter contempt for the
mothers who should be their highest ideal, I pity from my heart
George Bernard Shaw.
Modesty; Devotion to Women. Woman has always been in
Christian eyes a little less than the angels. And the virtues with
which Christianity has endowed its ideal of womanhood have been
singularly angelic. Like the seraphs, she was made for love; like
the cherubs, for quiet and contemplation; like the archangels, she
was quick to obey; like the guardian spirits, she was the self-
30 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [April,
devoting protector of the helpless; like the whole angelic host,
she was spotless.
Not one of these virtues has Bernard Shaw left to the women
of his plays. Whisky-drinking, cigar-smoking Vivie Warren, has a
heart harder than that of her prostitute mother, who after all
her wanderings can still feel love for her offspring. Lady Cicely
and Grace Tranfield are about as quiet as a fire cracker after the
application of the spark. Candida scoffs at the very name of
obedience, as do Julia Craven and her ridiculous young sister.
I should as soon fancy Blanche Sartorius in a nursery or a sick
room as I should Bluntschli in the trenches of France. While from
Louka to Ann Whitefield, you may run the gamut for a single
woman who does not hunt down her mate and entrap him with
devices more than feline.
If modesty is the capital feminine sin, Mr. Shaw's heroines are
quite ready for their aureola. If devotion for women is a capital
masculine vice, Mr. Shaw's heroes are on the high road to canoniza-
tion. The cruel warring of Julia and Grace over the philandering
Chatteris is a sight so revolting as to explain in large measure that
contemptible male's utter unfaithfulness toward women. The wiles
of Ann Whitefield, the frank seductions of Hypatia Tarleton and
Blanche Sartorius, the ultimate advances of Gloria Clandon succeed
in landing their unwilling mates; but they are still more effectual
in killing all respect for Bernard Shaw's ideal of womanhood.
The gay and hideous paradox of woman the pursuer, man the
pursued, is one of the most topsy-turvy things in all the Shavian
philosophy, a purposeful contradiction of the actual course of
nature. Yet it is consistent with Mr. Shaw's theory of the ever
active Life Force. Woman is the sanctuary of the world's future
generations, and her one idea is the propagation of this spark
of Life that has been trusted to her care. Man, in the Shavian
idea, is never a companion, a protector, a lover; he is the phy-
sically necessary complement of her nature. Woman's quest for
a mate, like the mating of beast with beast, has no other basis
than the " biological imperative." Woman traps man because she
needs him for her life's work. Man flies from woman because for
him, as for Tanner and Chatteris and Bluntschli, marriage means
slavery to the will of his mate. Even in the world beyond what-
ever in the conception of Mr. Shaw that may be woman cannot
cease from labor. Ann, flying alike from heaven and hell, rushes
forth in quest of a father for the Superman.
1916.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 31
And since this propagation of the Life Force is the one im-
portant work of woman, Mr. Shaw repudiates the idea of bind-
ing any woman .to a single man. She should be free to mate as
her infallible instinct to procreate directs. Marriage he pronounces
the most licentious of institutions, or, as Tanner puts it: "The
maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity."
Mr. Shaw cannot rest until it is abolished, and children so placed
that there " will be some adequate defence of the comparative
quiet and order of adult life against the comparative noise,
racket, untidiness, inquisitiveness, restlessness, fretfulness, shift-
lessness, dirt, destruction, and mischief which are healthy and nor-
mal for children." Farewell, then, to marriage and the home. This
is Socialistic indeed.
Sentiment. I hold no brief for sentiment nor for the tawdry
lovemaking that stultifies the fiction of the present, and makes
possible the vast flux of erotic filth that besmirches youthful and,
for that matter, mature minds. I loathe it, I flatter myself, even
more than does Mr. Shaw. I loathe it not only because it offends
my taste, but because it offends my God. But because "the Duchess"
brand of sentiment disgusts me and the mad infatuations of licen-
tious novelists and poets are hideously untrue, I do not blindly
cry: "There is no such thing as love and devotion and romance."
On the contrary, I know that there are.
I know that between men and women whose minds are clean
and whose souls have learned love in that youthful school of
affection, the home, which Mr. Shaw derides, there springs up a
devotion and love deeper than ever poet's plummet sounded. God,
our God, not the blind, unreasoning Life Force, wills that man
and woman should cooperate with Him in the creation of future
generations. But He has made sweet that labor not by any brutish
" biological imperative," but by filling a father's heart with a mas-
terful devotion for his wife, and by arousing in the mother's heart
a love great enough to cover the frailties of her spouse, and unite
her with all her heart to him as the father of her children. God
never intended marriage to be so blissfully perfect that in the
delights of connubial bliss man and woman should forget their
state of probation. But the love of husband and wife He destined
to last as long as nature's laws, which are His laws left intact.
And to enshrine that love, God made the home. The home
has its defects; that is part of our heritage of sin. Yet it is
as far above the universal asylum advocated by Mr. Shaw as a
32 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [April,
mother's love is above the love of a prison warden for his charges.
When Christ, our God, chose His earthly dwelling, He could find
no better substitute for the heaven He had left behind than the
holy home of Nazareth.
Romance. Since poets first sang, their lays, dedicated first
to the praises of their God, have chanted a triple theme: the love
of man for woman, the love of man for the hero &i battles,
and the love of man for his country. And men have always felt
that the voice of the poet spoke from the common heart of man-
kind. Not so Mr. Shaw. Down with romance! cries he. Rhap-
sodist and troubadour, poet and dramatist, Homer and Petrarch
were all wrong. The triple theme is a phantom of poetic fancy,
bodied forth with an eye rolling in fine frenzy, but blind as a bat
for all that.
This singular and incurable romanticism of poets the world
over, from India to the lands farthest north, in centuries that
wrote on clay cylinders and in centuries that write on Irish linen,
Mr. Shaw has set himself to correct. The love of man for woman,
he simply ignores, whenever his men and women woo and win.
The love of man for the hero of battles he ridicules in Arms and
the Man. The love of man for his country he has practically dis-
proved in John Bull's Other Island, and recently in his utterances
on the war.
The world- wide question of romanticism is not going to be
settled in these few brief paragraphs. I only intend to show from
the writings of Mr. Shaw himself, compared with the reality of
life, that his absolute dogmatism has not come within a thousand
miles or lines of settling the fate of romance. It is left for another
writer in the dim and unlikely future to walk triumphantly over
its prostrate corpse.
Mr. Shaw has been accused by those who slay with para-
doxes of being incurably romantic. In a sense he is. No one but
the most blissful romancer could accept for a moment that most
absurd of all romances, Nietzsche's Superman. His Socialistic
ideal is a dream not unlike in its unreality Sir Thomas More's
Utopia. Mr. Shaw prides himself on being a realist. In a sense
he is. His stage settings are models of verisimilitude. But if
the standpoint of character-drawing or the keen perception of
motive is considered, Mr. Shaw is neither romanticist nor realist.
He is merely an incorrigible unrealist.
When Stevenson, the beloved, read Mr. Shaw's first novel,
I 9 i6.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 33
he was impressed with its literary promise. But his astonished
cry to their mutual friend, Mr. Archer, was : " My God, Archer ;
what women ! " Echoing the cry of Stevenson, the reader of
Mr. Shaw cries : " And what lovers ! " In their veins runs a
mildly diluted carbolic acid; their hearts are the temperature of
freshly-opened oysters. No lovers since Eden ever talked or acted
as they. I frankly grant you that no youth and maiden in the
throes of their first or last love ever talked as Romeo and Juliet
talked. But if youths and maidens had Shakespeare's power of
words they would.
Personally, I am firmly convinced that our modern tendency
is vastly to overestimate the power of man's love for a woman.
Fiction of a sort would have us fancy that there is no other spring
of great deeds. Yet though love for a woman may make a be-
sotted Antony throw away a world, and though great deeds have
been done by men who carried a token on their arms, seldom
indeed have the really tremendous issues of history been swayed by
a man's love for a woman. Does that mean that the romance of
love does not in fact exist? If there were no fiction in the world
to tell us of it, if there were no poets to sing of it, we would still
know that it is a fact as certain as dawn and dusk, harvest and
summer storm. The passionate period of love may be brief; its
effect may be largely personal and felt in but a circumscribed
sphere, but it is certainly real, so real that for a time it befogs
all other issues of life, makes the man see an angel where once
walked a woman, and the woman see a demi-god in the flimsy
disguise of mortal man.
To disprove a fact so palpably self-evident, Mr. Shaw has
imported from the regions of the moon, or some land where the
temperature is always below zero, a race of lovers who bandy
frapped epigrams, who laugh at what is to lovers the most serious
thing in the world, their own love, and who disprove the axiom
that love is blind by picking flaws in the object of their own
affection. Lovers like Valentine and Gloria, Trench and Blanche,
Tanner and Ann are not lovers at all. They are chemical atoms
combining in a strictly impersonal molecule. And they have really
gone the atoms one better; for they show not the slightest signs
of warmth or affinity.
The present terrible war has blasted in large measure the
poetry of battle; but it has not obscured the poetry of personal
heroism. " No more hoary superstition survives," says one of Mr.
VOL. an. 3
34 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [April,
Shaw's admirers, " than that the donning of a uniform changes
the nature of a man." This thesis, Arms and the Mem and The
Man of Destiny strive to prove in truly comic opera style.
If donning a uniform were a simple process like changing a
frock coat for evening dress, the commentator's remark would be
absolutely correct. In the case of most mercenary soldiers, such
as Bluntschli, it frequently means no more than what donning an
apron means to a butcher or putting on overalls to a carpenter. Yet
there are times when donning a uniform means the taking up of
principles for which one is ready to die. It may mean entering
the struggle to preserve home from ruins and loved ones from
rape. It may mean the shedding of one's blood for personal
liberty, or entering upon the road of military conquest. And in
cases like these, while the uniform does not change the wearer's
nature, it very considerably modifies, ennobles or, perhaps, debases
it. This is the element of war which Mr. Shaw's dramatic thesis
leaves untouched; and this is the very element which the real ro-
mancers of literature have found when they sang of the love of
man for the hero of battles.
Tell me that " chocolate soldiers " fought in the trenches
around Richmond for a cause that was already dead; that An-
dreas Hofer's soldiers, men of the same mountains from which
Bluntschli comes, felt no heroic swelling of their hearts at their
leader's call to battle; that Gordon's mad raid into Africa was a
mere matter of business, and you must forgive my indignant de-
nial. And I can recall as well a certain battalion of heroic mer-
cenaries from Bluntschli 's own nation who met death at the hands
of a Paris mob defending a French king in his palace. There is
the truth of romance in Thorwaldsen's Lion of Lucerne.
Mr. Shaw's thesis is also too comprehensive. The calm, cool
planning of staff-room and commissariat is vastly important, but
not so important as to make the real student of humanity overlook
man's willingness to die for his home and his country, and for a
bit of metal shaped like a cross.
Mr. Shaw does not believe in patriotism. That is an accident
of Mr. Shaw's birth. The small class of bitter Protestants from
which Mr. Shaw comes, had, as he affirms, nothing but contempt
and disdain for the Papists who make up the vast body of Irish-
men. Irish Protestantism, he states frankly, is not a religious
belief, but a side in a political faction. And that side is quite out
of touch with all the traditions and aspirations of the largest part of
1916.] GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 35
Ireland. For Catholicism is the glory of Ireland; and devotion
to Catholicism is the cause of Ireland's misery. Mr. Shaw, grow-
ing up in such an atmosphere, learned to contemn the narrowness
of his own sect, without learning to understand or appreciate the
sacred traditions that are the heritage of Catholic Ireland. And
be it said to Mr. Shaw's credit, that he never attempted the im-
possible feat of recasting his Irish nature into the English mold.
Certainly no man with a genuine love for his country makes fun
of its faults for the benefit of those who hate it. Yet, as one
admirer of Mr. Shaw has put it, Bernard Shaw in John Bull's
Other Island slaughtered Ireland to make a British holiday.
One need never have been in Ireland to know with a priori
certainty that Mr. Shaw's characterization of Ireland is untrue and
unjust. There is much, I suppose, that is sordid and cheap in
Ireland. Centuries of oppression in the most crushing of forms
that deprive a man of the right to education and to a voice in
the disposal of his own home and hearth, does not make men
delicate or over-nice in their social habits.
Yet granting all the ignorance and superstition and greedy
craft that Mr. 4 Shaw's picture of Ireland presents as I emphati-
cally do not Mr. Shaw's picture is still false and misleading.
For the very vices of Ireland are, in a sense, wounds of honor.
Had Ireland thrown away loyalty to her Faith, the fine breeding
and delicate manners and breadth of view could all have been hers
in a preeminent degree. For no land so quickly assimilated culture
as early Christian Ireland. But loyalty is part of the old morality
which Mr. Shaw despises, and the Faith of Ireland Mr. Shaw does
not even faintly comprehend. So when he pictures the qualities
he sees in Ireland, base though they may be, he is painting a false
picture if he forgets for a moment the loyalty to principle that is
the chief characteristic of the race, and the grasp on the super-
natural that made Ireland despise the proferred gifts of kings.
And that is precisely what makes Mr. Shaw's picture of Ireland
untrue.
And does Mr. Shaw fancy that he understands the Irish priest ?
George Borrow was under a similar delusion when he drew from
the shadows of his prejudiced imagination the ridiculous Man in
Black. If the visionary and bully of John Bull's Other Island
were typical of the priesthood of Ireland, Ireland would not be
Catholic to-day. Visionary and bully give not the slightest sign of
belonging to that noble race of martyrs who for generations lived
36 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW [April,
in caves with a price on their heads,, that they might save the
Faith of Christ and Patrick to their people.
From definite purpose, all mention of the literary side of
George Bernard Shaw has been neglected in this paper. Of the
humorist, the critic, the dramatist, the phampleteer, nothing has
been said, since I preferred to consider him as he himself would
have chosen, as the moralist and philosopher. For I am not an
" intellectual " who admires brilliancy of wit, and cleverness of
phrasing, and power of dramatic situation, when divorced from
truth. With all Catholic moralists, I maintain that the mind was
made for truth and the heart for a love of the beautiful, and that
the author of works, however attractive, is not worth the reading
if his principles and his views of life are false and unsound. Such
a man is building a house of iridescent bubbles. The bubbles he
throws before the eyes may sparkle, but they are as worthless as
the trinkets for which Indians bartered priceless territory. And
since I find little truth and no beauty in the works of Mr. Shaw,
the- charm of his style and the sparkle of his wit are mere empty
froth.
Worse than that, the philosophy of Mr. Shaw is unsafe as
shifting quicksands. Through life this eager, ungrounded seeker
for truth has been playing the peripatetic, trotting at the side of
some new master, only to end as the Roman youth of long ago,
by slaying his own teacher. Darwin won him for a moment;
then he turned upon the scientist and rent him limb from limb.
The workingman's Bible was once his Bible as well ; but in time he
came to declare Marx's theory of values as obsolete as Adam
Smith's economics. A Socialist heart and soul, he does not hesi-
tate to preach the philosophy of Nietzsche, who detested Socialism
a little less than he detested Christianity. And strangest of all,
a ruthless antagonist of marriage and domestic relations, he does
not hesitate to marry and build up a home with the wealth he
has won by his battles against matrimony.
Brilliant, versatile, he has grown up with a strongly developed
aesthetic nature, devoid of any intellectual or moral principles that
would stand a year's hard use. He learned early in youth to judge
between good music and bad, but he cannot to this day give a
rational reason to distinguish a good act from an evil one. He is
as familiar with the canons of perspective and values as he is
ignorant of the canons that distinguish a mere convention from a
law of God and nature.
1916.] THE RETURN 37
He has tried to find truth in philosophies as ephemeral as they
are fantastic, and has ended by formulating from the broken frag-
ments of each a still stranger philosophy of his own. Like Augus-
tine, a man as brilliant as Shaw will never rest in half truths, and
morbid musing, and scientific pessimism. Truth is the goal that
through all his wanderings still beckons him on; but for the
present he is as far away as the nearest fixed star.
Tolstoy is dead; Ibsen is dying, for the artistry of their works
is founded on untruth. George Bernard Shaw to-day occupies
the place they filled yesterday and the day before ; but even in his
lifetime his doom is fixed. When the glamor of novelty has com-
pletely worn off, his works, standing at the bar at which all
literature is tested and tried, will be found devoid of that first
of all necessary qualities, truth. And in that day, Bernard Shaw
too, will die.
[THE END.]
THE RETURN.
BY ARMEL O'CONNOR.
I SAW them marching past,
Proud battalions of the world ;
Their eyes were upward cast
To the pride of flags unfurled.
Their marching shook the sod
As they ventured forth to win,
Whose courage knew not God,
And whose souls were dead from sin.
* * *
I saw them marching back
But their tattered flags were furled.
They trod the homeward track,
Hurt battalions of the world.
They cried out for their dead;
Yet their gain outweighed their loss.
I saw the Man Who led
He was carrying their cross.
CERVANTES, SHAKESPEARE AND SOME HISTORICAL
BACKGROUNDS.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.
N April 23d of this year of grace, 1916, we
will celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of
the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes. A very
curiously interesting fact, which that celebration will
recall, is that though the two greatest writers of
their time and probably of all modern time died on the same date,
it was not the same day. That is one of the paradoxes of history,
and by it hangs an interesting and significant tale, which means
much for the history of religious opinions, and so deserves to be
retold. Though both died on what was in their respective coun-
tries April 23, 1616, the deaths of Shakespeare and Cervantes was
actually ten days apart. Cervantes died April 23d, New Style, that
is, of our reckoning at the present time, while Shakespeare dying
on his birthday, departed life April 23d, Old Style, which would be
really April I3th of our mode of reckoning.
The reason for this discrepancy was that while Spain had
formally accepted the correction of the Julian calendar which had
been made by the great Jesuit mathematician, Father Clavius, and
commended to the Christian world by Pope Gregory XIII., in
1583, England was at that time so obstinate in her bitter no-popery
that she would not accept anything from the hands of the Pope,
not even a correction of the calendar, known to be sadly needed,
and made on strictly mathematical grounds. England continued
to use the Old Style, as Russia has done until this day, for nearly
a century after the proclamation of the New Style by the Pope,
and so came eventually during the course of the following cen-
tury to be actually eleven days wrong in her dates. 1 When the
correction was finally made in England, a series of unfortunate
1 Until long after Shakespeare's death the custom continued in England of
having the year begin formally not on the first of January as now, but on March
^sth, Annunciation Day. In old books March 2oth and March 3oth of the same
months will usually be designated as in two different years. In referring to these
old dates it has become the custom to bracket two years together for the days
between January ist and March 25th. In 1616, for instance, March 20th would
be 1615-1616; the^i6i5 referring to the date as calculated at that time; the 1616
as calculated subsequently. In Shakespearean matters it is sometimes important
to remember this fact, otherwise a confusion of dates may result.
1916.] CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE 39
incidents and accidents occurred in London during the same twelve
months an epidemic of the plague, a great fire and other catas-
trophes. As a consequence a mob went through the streets of Lon-
don, clamoring loudly that the eleven days that had been taken away
from them be given back, and emphatically proclaiming that the
reason for these visitations of Providence on the English people
was the presumptuous interference with the natural course of
time by the government. They felt that the restoration of the Old
Style would surely appease the wrath of the Almighty, which had
been aroused by petty human tinkering with His concerns.
The refusal at first to accept the correction of the calendar
and the ignorant action of the mob in London did not occur during
the Middle Ages, though many people would apparently be inclined
to think that such things were typically mediaeval, but well on in
the seventeenth century. They are not of the dim and distant past,
but almost of our own time; and they affect not Spain, but Eng-
land. The fact, therefore, that though Shakespeare and Cervantes
died on the same date it was not the same day, is a keynote to th*
history of these times which is sadly needed for English-speaking
people generally, so as to enable them to counteract many of the
false traditions that have crept into English history. For Prot-
estant England's refusal to accept the Papal correction of the
calendar is an index of her lack of interest in, and her aloofness
from, the intellectual life of Europe. England is usually sup-
posed to have been far ahead of Spain at this time in nearly every-
thing that counts in the history of humanity. Such a supposition,
however, could only be fostered in the minds of those who do not
know the real history of English and Spanish achievement during
the hundred years about the middle of which the deaths of Cer-
vantes and Shakespeare occurred. During these two generations,
before and after Shakespeare's death, English literature and history
took on the intolerant Protestant tinge which still continues to taint
it, and of which even English-speaking Catholics must beware.
One of the many like traditions launched at this time was that
education had long been suppressed, and scientific progress con-
demned and made impossible by the Catholic Church. But the fact
is that the grammar schools of England were suppressed by Henry
VIII. precisely because they were attached to church foundations,
and Henry VIII. wanted the money. They were re-founded by
Edward VI., and were called Edward VI. Grammar Schools, but
their endowments were much less than what had been. It was in
40 CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE [April,
Stratford, at one of these schools, that Shakespeare was educated.
As a consequence, some of the uninformed declared that there had
been no education worthy of the name in England before the Prot-
estant Reformation. As a matter of fact the Reformation ruined
education in England ; destroyed libraries ; suppressed magnificent
foundations for education and charity, and to paraphrase Erasmus*
words, "wherever Lutheranism reigns there was an end of good
letters." Rev. Augustus Jessop, himself an Anglican clergyman,
has told that story in the book he has so strikingly entitled Before
the Great Pillage.
It may be thought that Spanish literature at this time could
not at all be compared with the wonderful Elizabethan and Jaco-
bean literature which developed in England. As a matter of fact,
however, Spain was then not only England's most serious rival in
great literature, but in the eyes of most impartial critics who are
neither of Spanish nor English origin, the Spanish writers left a
deeper impress on world literature than even the great Elizabethans.
For besides Cervantes within this century there were Lope de Vega,
Calderon and St. Teresa, who have been the subject of earnest
study on the part of serious students of literature ever since.
With the single exception of Shakespeare, the works of all four
of these are more alive in world literature to-day than of any of
the other writers of Elizabeth's time. While Marlowe, Ben Jon-
son, Shirley and Massinger are well-known to English readers,
they are very little known in foreign tongues. Of the four corre-
sponding Spanish writers at least three, Cervantes, Calderon and
St. Teresa, belong to the world rather than to Spain exclusively,
and the fourth, Lope de Vega, has been consciously or unconsciously
the source of more plots for plays in modern time than any other
dramatic writer. French authors particularly have borrowed from
him and in turn influenced the English and German dramatists.
Cervantes filled with his genius the first half of the century, be-
tween 1550 and 1650, which has well been called "Spain's Century"
in the history of the world. About the beginning of the sixteenth
century the Spanish Emperor, Charles V., ruled most of Europe
and all of Spanish America, by far the greater part of the known
world. During this hundred years the great painters, Velasquez,
Murillo, Ribera, Zurbaran and " El Greco" illustrated Spanish art.
Besides this, at this time, the magnificent structures of the Alcazar
of Toledo and the Palace of Granada were rebuilt in the form in
which we know them at the present time. The great beginnings had
1916.] CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE 41
been made under Charles V., but the architectural epoch was mag-
nificently continued under Philip II. It has been well said that
Avhat Versailles is to France and to the history of French literature
the Escorial is to Spain, and the great Spanish structure is, in the
words of Fergusson (History of Architecture), " as nearly as may
be a century older than its rival, having been commenced in 1563."
Spain's ecclesiastical architecture reached its climax just at the
beginning of this hundred years of which the tercentenaries of the
deaths of Cervantes and Shakespeare are renewing the memory.
SHAKESPEARE AND CATHOLICISM.
In spite of the fact that at the time of Shakespeare's death,
and practically during all his life, England was bitterly opposed
to the Papacy, there are excellent critical authorities who insist that
it was Catholicism and not Protestantism that nurtured Shake-
speare's genius. Two such unsympathetic writers as Carlyle and
Heine, who are usually at opposite poles of opinion on nearly every
literary question, are agreed in declaring that the one thing that
gave us Shakespeare was the fact that the old Catholic Faith had
not yet died out in England.
In his lecture on " The Hero as Poet " in Heroes and Hero
Worship, Carlyle wrote:
In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan
era with its Shakespeare, as the outcome and the flowerage of
all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Cathol-
icism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the
theme of Dante's song, had produced this practical life which
Shakespeare was to sing. For religion then, as it now and
always is, was the soul of practice; the primary vital fact in
men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle
Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament
could abolish it, before Shakespeare, the noblest product of it,
made his appearance. He did make his appearance neverthe-
less. Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else
might be necessary, sent him forth; taking small thought of
Acts of Parliament. King Henrys, Queen Elizabeths go their
way; and nature, too, goes hers.
Heine in his Shakespeare's Maidens and Women said in the
introduction :
It is lucky for us that Shakespeare came just at the right
time, that he was a contemporary of Elizabeth and James, while
42 CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE [April,
Protestantism, it is true, expressed itself in the unbridled free-
dom of thought which prevailed, but which had not yet entered
into life or feeling, and the kingdom, lighted by the last rays
of setting chivalry, still bloomed and gleamed in all the glory
of poetry. True, the popular faith of the Middle Ages, or
Catholicism, was gone as regarded doctrine, but it existed as
yet with all its magic in men's hearts, and held its own in
manners, customs and views. It was not till later that the
Puritans succeeded in plucking away flower by flower, and
utterly rooting up the religion of the past, and spreading over
all the land, as with a gray canopy, that dreary sadness which
since then dispirited and debilitated, has diluted itself to a
lukewarm, whining, drowsy pietism. 2
To my mind there is convincing evidence that Shakespeare
himself was a Catholic and remained so all his life. This is evi-
dent not only because he wrote Romeo and Juliet at the beginning
of his dramatic career, fresh from his Catholic mother's influence
at Stratford and changed it from a Protestant tract, bitterly con-
demning monks and nuns and auricular confession, to a great de-
fence of these institutions but also because in his last play, Henry
Fill., he told very frankly the story of how England was torn from
the Church by a brutal king to satisfy his lust.
We have, also, the definite records of many other well-known
Elizabethan writers who were Catholics. Ben Jonson, for in-
stance, became a convert to the Church after witnessing, when he
himself was imprisoned, how nobly many of the priests there bore
their suffering, and were ready even to die for their faith. To
become a Catholic then was to endanger one's life, but Jonson did
not hesitate. When Jonson, a Catholic, was married, Shakespeare
was his sponsor ; and godfather also to Jonson's first child when it
received Catholic baptism under the name of Mary. Later, when
Jonson became Court poet, he abandoned his Catholic Faith, yet
some of his best work was done when he was a faithful Catholic.
Massinger, also, whose name is intimately associated with that of
Shakespeare, was, according to Gifford, the well-known editor of
*The extent to which the suppression of all natural feelings of joy and
happiness went, may be readily understood from the fact, that in contrast with
the traditions of the hearty, joyous celebration of Christmas in the older time,
the English House of Commons, about the middle of the seventeenth century, sat as
usual on Christmas Day, and the Puritan government forbade any celebration of
Christmas by private citizens, and proclaimed the abolition of all such " superstitious
practices." Almost needless to say in a world in which such a suppression of the
joy of life was possible, it would have been quite inconceivable that great poetry
should rise and above all great dramatic poetry.
1916.] CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE 43
the English Quarterly Revieiv, a Catholic. Thomas Lodge, Father
Southwell and Edmund Campion were other distinguished Catholic
writers of Shakespeare's own time. James Shirley, who was the
greatest of the dramatists after the Elizabethans, was one of that
group of literary men whom the Catholic reaction of the first half
of the seventeenth century brought back to the old Church. Among
them are included Kenelm Digby and William D'Avenant, the dra-
matist.
CERVANTES AND THE CHURCH.
While Shakespeare is thus emphatically pronounced by men
of critical authority to have been deeply influenced by Catholic
traditions, it is almost needless to say that Cervantes was pro-
foundly influenced by the Catholic life around him. The details
of our knowledge of the life of Cervantes were in many ways as
shadowy and vague as those of Shakespeare until comparatively
recent years. All of the biographies familiar a few years ago were
founded on Navarrete, published in 1819, who made the first at-
tempt to find the actual historical documents for the traditions that
had gradually accumulated in Spanish literature and history with
regard to Spain's greatest writer. It is easy to understand that
many of these traditions were quite insubstantial. Less than twenty
years ago Cristobal Perez Pastor published as the result of very
careful researches some fifty-six documents contemporaneous with
Cervantes' time, and furnishing details with regard to him. In
1912 the same writer published one hundred and five additional
documents, and now we are in a position to discuss Cervantes' life
with unquestioned authority.
One fact which these documents most plainly show is that
the author of Don Quixote in the maturity of his powers was
deeply religious. We have the record, for instance, that on April
19, 1609, he joined the then-recently established Confraternity of
Slaves of the Most Blessed Sacrament. This confraternity corre-
sponded in no slight degree to our Holy Name Societies of the
present day. During this same year, 1609, the record tells us that
his wife and his sister Andrea received the habit of the Third
Order of St. Francis.
When he felt that his death was not far off, Cervantes himself
asked to be received into the same Third Order of St. Francis,
and so we have the record of his profession as a Franciscan Tertiary
in his house in the Calle del Leon, which he was too ill to leave.
44 CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE [April,
Subsequent documents show that on April i8th he received the
last sacraments, including Extreme Unction. On April ipth he
wrote the dedication of his last work, the Persiles, to his patron
the Conde de Lemos. His cheerfulness abided till the end. Fitz-
maurice Kelly tells in his Spanish Literature: " In the last grip of
dropsy, Cervantes gaily quotes from a romance remembered from
long ago 'one foot already in the stirrup/ and with these words
he smilingly confronts fate and makes himself ready for the last
post down the Valley of the Shadow." He died on April 23,
1616, and was buried in the Convent of the Barefooted Trinitarians
in the Calle de Contarranas. The esteem in which he was held at
the time of his death will perhaps be best appreciated from the
fact that his grave was not far from that of the poet priest, so
famous in that time, Lope de Vega.
The tradition of Catholicism among Shakespeare's Elizabethan
contemporaries will doubtless be a surprise to a great many people,
but it is as nothing compared to the relations of the great Spanish
literary men of this century to the Church. As I have just said,
Cervantes' greatest contemporary, the well-known dramatist Lope
de Vega, was a priest. So, however, were many others, besides
Lope de Vega, among the distinguished literary men of this period,
priests. Calderon, Tirso de Molino and Antonio Mira de Amescua,
chaplain to Philip IV., less known, but who, highly praised by their
contemporaries, were all priests.
It is extremely interesting to trace Cervantes' relations to the
Catholic clergy of his time, since this serves to show his own at-
titude toward the Church, and how much the Spanish clergy of this
time were able and willing to do for struggling authors. The ex-
tremely vivid and yet thoroughly sympathetic picture of the lively
parish priest in Don Quixote shows that Cervantes had close re-
lations with these parish priests. It has even been suggested that
his father being poor, Cervantes, in spite of the tradition of his
matriculation at the University of Alcala, could have had little,
if any, formal schooling. There is no doubt, however, that he
knew some Latin, and even from his earliest works it is clear that
he was well acquainted with many of the chief contributions to
Spanish literature. It has also been suggested then that he owed this
to the parish priest of his native town, and found perhaps in him
the basis for his parish priest in Don Quixote. Perhaps it was
from this parish priest's library that he read the books of chivalry,
which he must have perused with great care, for his writings show
1916.] CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE 45
an intimate knowledge of them. The books of chivalry corre-
sponded exactly to the fiction of our time.
As a comparatively young man we find Cervantes acting as
Chamberlain to Cardinal Aquaviva at Rome. At the end of his
life he was largely dependent on the bounty of Bernardo de
Sandoval, Archbishop of Toledo. During the intervening years
there are records here and there of his rather close relations with
the Church and its clergy. The parish priest of Don Quixote,
when engaged in burning the library, is represented as sparing the
Galatea of Michael de Cervantes, because " that Cervantes has
been an intimate friend of mine these many years, and I know that
he is more versed in misfortunes than in poetry." It would seem
as though the author were repaying many little kindnesses by the
picture he thus gives of the genial kindly parish priest.
CERVANTES AND DON QUIXOTE.
It has been often suggested that Cervantes, in the words of
Byron, " laughed Spain's chivalry away," and that he was really
quite out of sympathy with the mediaeval Christian knightliness
which he satirized. Because of this impression he has sometimes
been set down by English writers particularly as one who must
be hailed as a product of the Reformation, and as ushering in the
modern spirit with its contempt for so many mediaeval mystical
associations. So far, however, from Cervantes having laughed
Spain's chivalry away, his own life was as chivalrous, as utterly
self -forgetful as that of any knight errant of the olden time. All
his life he was constantly getting into difficulties because of a
knightly spirit that made him forget himself, and all risks and
dangers to his own person for the sake of higher ideals which
possessed him. As a young man he was in attendance at Court,
a position which probably afforded him a much-needed means of
livelihood. Once he was condemned to lose his right hand for
wounding another Court attendant who had spoken lightly of a
lady's reputation. This was the usual punishment for the use of
weapons in the immediate neighborhood of the Court, and to
escape it Cervantes fled to Italy, and seems to have found his
safest refuge with a special legate of the Pope.
It was from this position that he went to join the forces of
Don John of Austria, who was organizing a fleet to sweep the
Turks from the sea. When the Battle of Lepanto broke out he
was suffering from a tertian fever, and on the very morning of
46 CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE [April,
the battle his physician forbade him to go on deck. When the fight
was actually about to begin, Cervantes, though so weak that he
could scarcely stand, insisted on going on deck. He preferred,
he said, to be killed there rather than die below. Since he could
not actually engage in the conflict, he helped to hold a Turkish
galley close to the Christian galley, on which he was, until boarders
could find their way over to it. As a result his left hand was
maimed forever. But he was prouder of his subsequent nickname,
" The Cripple of Lepanto," than of writing Don Quixote. Later
he fought bravely in half a dozen succeeding engagements
Navarino, Tunis, Corfu, the Goletto. No wonder that he received
special letters of commendation for his courage from Don John
of Austria and from the Neapolitan Viceroy.
Cervantes was afterwards taken prisoner by the Moors, and
for five years served as a slave in Algiers. In some way, however,
he secured time for organizing entertainments and arranging
spectacles for the governor there. He thus came to be very well
thought of, but he used all the prestige so .acquired in the interests
of his fellow-prisoners. He strove at one time to organize a
general uprising among the thousands of Christian slaves and
prisoners. Over and over again he was discovered in plans for
flight with other prisoners, and was looked upon as the ringleader
in all the conspiracies that were hatched around Algiers. Once
it is said that money to ransom him came, but that the Turks hav-
ing learned to value Cervantes very highly, demanded a larger ran-
som. Since he himself could not be set free, he insisted that the
money should be used to free another prisoner of less value in
Turkish eyes, so that one more Christian slave might be set at
liberty.
On account of his dangerous activities among the Christian
prisoners, the Governor of Algiers determined to send Cervantes
to Turkey. It is said that he was actually on his way to Con-
stantinople when a large sum of money arrived for the ransom of
a certain nobleman. The Governor did not think it large enough
for the ransom of the nobleman, but remembering Cervantes' former
generosity in sacrificing himself for another, he agreed to accept
it for Cervantes' own release. This was accordingly done. The
name of that nobleman was Jeronimo Palafox, and he owes his
fame to the fact that he was esteemed by the Turks more valuable
than Cervantes. But the whole story of Cervantes' imprisonment
at Algiers shows how truly he was himself Don Quixote.
1916.] CERVANTES AND SHAKESPEARE 47
And many of the qualities of the sad, mad Don he retained
to the very end of his life. Towards the end of his days Cer-
vantes, with his whole household, was imprisoned as the result
of an old Spanish law. A young man had been wounded in a
duel in the street not far from where Cervantes lodged. He
was dying, and Cervantes carried him into his own house, where
in a few minutes he succumbed. The law was that all those who
were in a house in which a man died by violence must be im-
prisoned, unless the actual murderer could be arrested. Accord-
ingly for his act of charity, Cervantes and his household were
thrown into prison. A number of relatives were staying with him
at the time, and so this incident gives us the further opportunity
of knowing that though he himself was in anything but good cir-
cumstances, and indeed at times almost in desperate straits, he
was constantly ready to help others.
At the moment Cervantes' household consisted, according to
the court records, of his wife, his daughter Isabel, his sisters Andrea
and Magdalena, at least one of whom seems to have had several
children with her, and his niece Constanza. They were all dwelling
together in crowded quarters in a narrow street, the Calle del
Rastro, in the heart of one of the poorest quarters of Valladolid.
Within the same fortnight, then, the two greatest of imagina-
tive writers of modern time passed away, leaving to the world an
insight into human nature such as has never been equaled since
their time, and was never excelled before them. Of the two Cer-
vantes was surely a Catholic; and Shakespeare probably one also;
and surely the product of a time deeply Catholic in its influence.
Shakespeare, the successful man, turned, as time went on, to write
tragedies, and though he softened toward the end of his life and
gave us melodramas, he seems to have found life none too happy.
Cervantes, the typically unsuccessful genius, in debt nearly all his
life, imprisoned for others, supporting, and at times being sup-
ported by, a group of his women folk, gave us what is perhaps
the most optimistic book in the world. Of course, it is very sad,
perhaps the saddest of all books if, inasmuch as men are quixotic
and care more for others than themselves, they are not quite right
in their minds. But one finds no hint of that in Cervantes. These
two great poets saw as no others have ever done, the depths of the
goodness and greatness of human life.
THE VOICE ON THE MOUNT.
(FROM THE SPANISH OF RAMON PIMENTEL CORONEL?)
BY JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE.
DEAR sons of God of Him Whom Sinai saw
Mid rolling thunders trace the road of Right
Clear carven on the tables of the Law,
A road, rough cast or smooth, for day and night.
I come not from My Father to enslave,
But with the lamp of knowledge that ye crave,
To hear the pray'rs of those who grace implore,
Drying wet eyes and soothing bosoms sore,
Yea, dying on the Cross the world to save.
Behold the King of Whom the Prophet told!
The Son of God Messiah see in Me,
I quench the flame and quiet down the sea,
I guide the child and help the weak and old.
If to a stiffened corpse My cry " arise
And live again " be spoken,
Look where the cere-cloth fallen lies,
And death's cold seal upon the tomb is broken.
No kingly robe I wear; no golden sceptre bear;
No haughty frontlet can My brows endure;
Love and the lowly heart My treasures rare;
My law, the law of all the good and pure.
Mine is the army of the worn and sad,
Beaten by sun and wind;
No spearsmen have I in brave armor clad,
Yet thus I come to rule mankind.
1 Ramon Pimentel Coronel was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1872. On
reaching manhood he entered political life, and held several offices under the
government. At the time of his death, in his thirty-seventh year, he was Venezuelan
consul at Hamburg, Germany. He succumbed to an attack of smallpox. His
poetry, although uncollected, is well known through his native country. His
writings and opinions gave little proof of any religious tendency, but rather the
reverse. This poem, dictated to his faithful wife in his dying hours, has, therefore,
a mournful significance.
I 9 i6.] THE VOICE ON THE MOUNT 49
The works that smile to God as things of worth
Can lend no glow to the Satanic fires;
Strike down the things of evil at their birth,
And stifle in your robe-folds base desires.
Let little children gather at My knees;
Their snow-white innocence shall be
The garb of those who mount to heav'n with Me.
Verily I say, be ye as one of these!
Drive from your soul the vengeful thought;
Vengeance is His Who rules the realms above,
Give good for evil that your foe has wrought;
I am the Lord of Hope, the Lord of Love.
Do good, do good but free of vaunt or boast,
Without vainglorious show,
So that of which your right hand knows the cost,
Your left hand shall not know.
No golden key of wealth may open the door
Of God's great temple in the heavenly mead;
Yea I Who give ye precepts, go before
To give example of the deed ;
Behold Me humbled and a-hungered, poor;
The fishes have their homes beneath the waves,
The bridling holds his downy nest secure,
The wild things of the forest have their caves,
The insect has its place of lure
Jesus alone
Who comes from sin to bring release,
And free man's life from dread,
Preaching the faith of poverty and peace;
Yea, Jesus, Son of God, has not a stone
Whereon to lay His head!
VOL. CIJL- 4
LITTLE O KIKU SAN OF OLD JAPAN.
BY CATHERINE E. M. MURPHY.
ITTLE O Kiku San, seated on the matting covered
floor of the tiny tea house that was situated in the
middle of her father's beautiful garden, was about
to pour a stream of amber-colored tea into a dainty
miniature cup, intending it for the gorgeously gowned
doll that sat propped up against a pile of gray, moss-covered stones
that formed the base of an elevated basin from which a fountain
sent its rainbow spray, when her attention was arrested by the
sound of someone calling, " Maria ! " She sat up suddenly alert.
" Chie ! Where is he where is the good Father ? "
Close by her sat an elderly Japanese woman, clad in a plain
dull-blue kimona. At the little girl's question, she tossed her work
aside and was all attention.
It was at this instant that O Kiku San caught sight of a tall,
broad-shouldered man of about forty-five, garbed in a costume of a
Japanese (yet somehow his appearance was not as one of those
little people, instead he looked to be a Spaniard), standing in the
arch of a pagoda, overhung by trailing purple fugi at the further
end of the lovely garden. Immediately the little girl ran toward
him and sank at his feet : " Oh, good Father, good Father ! " she
exclaimed, then begged his blessing.
After bestowing it, he took her by the hand and raised her
to a standing posture.
" Ah ! my little Maria has grown to be a big girl since I
last saw her."
" Good Father, I was twelve years old two weeks ago."
" So , and your mother? "
" Ah! good Father," wailed the old woman, who by this time
had reached the priest and O Kiku San, " her mother is no longer
with us she has passed to the country of the Golden Souls ! "
" What ! God rest her soul ! But when, good woman, all in
the space of one short year?"
" It is already eight months since she 'departed from us/ and
the O Tono Sama "
"What of him?"
1916.] LITTLE O KIKU SAN OF OLD JAPAN 51
" Oh ! good Father Carlos, 'tis a sad child you find me ! " cried
O Kiku San, " since my beloved mother's departure, my father "
She paused, her lips quivered, then forcing back the tears, she con-
tinued, " My father no longer believes ! "
Father Carlos of the Annunciation needed no further explana-
tion. It was plain to him that the O Tono Sama, O Kiku San's
father, had turned apostate. But he realized that the girl still held
the holy fire of faith burning in the sanctuary of her pure little heart.
" Good Father, if the O Tono Sama, my father, discovers
your presence here, I fear he will be forced to surrender you to
the Shogun, for the Emperor has issued an edict declaring that all
who harbor a Christian priest will be punished severely and the
Father condemned to death." 1
"So ?" mused the priest, a sudden light illuminating his
countenance as if that last word in O Kiku San's warning had
opened to his view a vision of something holy, something glorious.
" Tis late, the sun will soon die, and you cannot leave the
city without being recognized. Accept my invitation and spend
the night with us. Chie and I will conceal you from my father."
Father Carlos thought for a moment and then accepted.
Soon after, O Kiku San led the way toward the house; this
gave the priest an opportunity to question Chie about the apostasy
of O Kiku San's father. It was as he expected; the King of
Omura, who had at first welcomed the missionaries to his kingdom
and even embraced the faith himself, had, on receiving word from
the Emperor that all missionaries hereafter found in the Empire
were to be put to death, grew afraid, and after a conference with
the bonzes, or heathen priests, finally abandoned his adopted creed.
The O Tono Sama, who was a high Court official and more in-
1 Public notice boards were displayed at the entrance to every village, town
and city throughout the Empire, proclaiming the penalties and pains for those
believing in, or in anyway connected with, Christian teaching. A translation of
an edict runs as follows :
Ordinance. Item : The Christian sect has been prohibited for successive years,
and if a suspicious person be found it should be reported. The following are the
rewards :
The informer of a " Father," five hundred pieces of silver ; the informer of
a " Brother," three hundred pieces of silver ; the informer of one gone back to
the sect, three hundred pieces of silver ; the informer of one concealing a be-
liever, one hundred pieces of silver.
The above will be given even though the informer is of the same sect, ac-
cording to the matter reported, five hundred pieces of silver. When anyone has
concealed suspicious persons, upon information received, the headman, together
with the whole " company of five " ('. e., his nearest neighbors), will be condemned
with them.
5th month, ist year of Shotoku (1710). THE GOVERNOR.
52 LITTLE KIKU SAN OF OLD JAPAN [April,
terested in saving his position than his soul, followed his King's
example.
Little O Kiku San had never ceased praying that he would
once again turn to the faith that she held so dear, and now the
coming of Father Carlos, after a year's absence in Manila from
his missionary field, seemed the answer to her prayers.
The next morning O Kiku San was up early, and through
much manoeuvring had succeeded in obtaining a small flask of wine
to enable Father Carlos to celebrate Mass, as he had entirely ex-
hausted the supply he had gotten at Nagasaki.
O Kiku San, or rather Maria, as she was known to the
Christian Japanese, was walking happily along one of the outer
verandas of her home when she unexpectedly met her father, who,
upon seeing the wine, questioned her as to its intended use. O
Kiku San stammered and became very confused, not knowing what
to say. Finally, impatient at her inability to answer him, he strode
off. Not far, however, for after a few steps had brought him to
a tall sun screen, he quietly stepped behind it and saw his little
daughter stealthily draw back the shoji, or paper door, of a room
seldom used and quickly enter.
Now, with the wine and the manner in which O Kiku San
acted when he questioned her, and her stealthy entrance into a
rarely used room all these things served to arouse his suspicions,
and so very cautiously he passed down the veranda and entered
the apartment. Great was his amazement indeed when he beheld his
daughter kneeling at the feet of a Christian priest, and, likewise,
great was his anger.
O Kiku San rushed to his side, begged him with all the power
of her youth to spare her " good Father Carlos," but angry and
ashamed, the O Tono Sama called his servants, and the priest was
bound tightly and led before the judges, who immediately com-
mitted him to a foul prison.
Two days passed. Little O Kiku San was heartbroken, yet
never once did she give up praying. Finally on the evening of the
second day her father arrived home, accompanied by several gentle-
men; O Kiku San was called to preside at the serving of the tea,
and it was with a heavy heart that she entered the reception hall.
She acknowledged the guests' greetings by sinking to her knees and
touching her head on the matting covered floor, then prepared to
serve the tea.
She took no part in the conversation and only half listened,
I 9 i6.] LITTLE KIKU SAN OF OLD JAPAN 53
for it was about intricate state matters that did not interest her.
After a pause in these discussions, one of the guests remarked that
" the Christian Father was to be brought before the King on the
morrow; " then O Kiku San listened very intently, and finally at the
end of the conversation, she had succeeded in discovering that on
the next morning her dear Father Carlos was to be brought to
trial, and, she knew, eventually condemned. Immediately she
formed a resolution in her mind, and as soon as she was able, with-
out casting suspicion upon herself, departed to ponder over her plan.
The next morning dawned, a truly Japanese morning, all sun
and dew, and the brilliantly colored butterflies fluttered among
the glorious pink of the cherry blossoms that covered the trees, for
spring had come and all nature rejoiced. Little O Kiku San had
arisen early, and impatiently awaited her father's departure for
the royal palace. At length, after she had seen him disappear down
the pathway in his elaborate lacquer and gold kago surrounded by
his attendants, she hurried to her room, and with the assistance
of old Chie arrayed herself in her most beautiful kimona. It
was a pure white silk brocade, with a heavy gold and white obi.
The little girl looked unusually pretty, the purity of the costume
emphasizing the olive of her complexion and the blackness of her
hair and eyes.
State prisoners appeared before the King at eleven o'clock in
the morning, so O Kiku San timed her arrival accordingly. She
found no difficulty in securing entrance to the palace, for she was
well known to all the guards as the O Tono Sanaa's daughter.
After reaching the long reception hall and having yet a few
minutes to wait, she and Chie retired behind a huge crimson and
gold screen so as not to be observed. The remaining ten or twelve
minutes were passed in breathless silence by the little girl, and
only when she heard the sonorous notes of a bell ring, announcing
the coming of the King, did she fully realize the position she
was in.
The first prisoner to be brought before the King was a man
who had been accused of treason. His trial was brief and ended
with his being condemned to the flames. The next was Father
Carlos of the Annunciation.
From her hiding place, O Kiku San could see him walk for-
ward and stand before the King, who was reclining amidst all his
regal splendor. Her father was sitting directly below him, look-
ing sullenly at the floor as if ashamed of his dastardly act. Father
54 LITTLE KIKU SAN OF OLD JAPAN [April,
Carlos offered no defence, admitting that he was a Christian and
a priest, whereupon the King declared sentence that he should be
beheaded on the morrow.
O Kiku San waited no longer, but rushed forward and fell
at the feet of the King, imploring, beseeching him to pardon the
good Father.
"Oh! most excellent Shogun, if you require a sacrifice, let it
be me, not the good Father who has done such noble things for
your people here I willingly, gladly, offer myself in his stead ! "
At this tearful and pathetic appeal, O Kiku San's father sprang
to his feet, and when about to grasp his little daughter, suddenly
recoiled as if he were an unclean thing, and would soil the beautiful
little white creature. Then it was that O Tono Sama turned to-
ward the good priest, his face raised to heaven, his lips moving
in prayer, and the tears streaming down his face.
Again O Kiku San's thrilling appeal arose to the King. He
was deeply moved and about to relent, when one of the bonzes who
stood near quietly but meaningly remarked : " Remember, sire, the
Emperor's edict, all those harboring and !" The King needed
no more, but with one word sealed the doom of both priest and child.
The O Tono Sama, upon hearing the sentence, fell at the
feet of the captive priest, imploring forgiveness for casting his
faith and spiritual life aside for mere temporal gain; then turn-
ing to the King said with great dignity:
" Sire, I have loved and served my country and my Emperor,
but I cannot forsake the Christ therefore, one more have you to
condemn to the sword ! "
With an inarticulate cry the King leaned forward; gazed at
the erect form of the noble before him, then at the little girl
clinging to her father's hand, gazing up into his face in an ecstasy
of joy; the King was about to speak when one of the bonzes who
had been standing directly behind the throne pressed forward.
Sire the edict your Emperor ! "
The King visibly cowered, and with his hand before his face,
shutting from his vision the little group awaiting his judgment,
murmured one word, and the three Christians filed slowly out of
the hall; and there was a curiously bright light shining from their
faces that made many a heathen guard fall back and bow as they
passed, for they went forth not as malefactors with revilings upon
their lips, but as victors with prayers for the King and country:
"Alleluia! Alleluia!"
THE MASTER DRAMATIST.
(WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616.)
BY BROTHER LEO.
HE third centenary of Shakespeare's death finds no
diminution of the universal reverence paid to the
Swan of Avon. Recognized by his contemporaries
as the foremost dramatic craftsman of the spacious
days of " Eliza and our James/' Shakespeare gained
rather than lost prestige under the dictatorship of John Dryden,
and even during the much misunderstood " classical " dominance of
the eighteenth century was held in higher honor than is commonly
supposed. The nineteenth century marked his world- wide ac-
ceptance. In France the enthusiastic appreciation of Hugo and
Chateaubriand more than offset Voltaire's earlier strictures ; and in
Germany the ardent devotion of Goethe, the Schlegel brothers and
Freytag gave him undisputed vogue. And now, with the twentieth
century well on its way, his supreme place with Homer and Dante
seems assured. Tolstoy may rage and Mr. Bernard Shaw devise
vain things and the practitioners of free verse sadly wag their heads,
but naught can now rob Shakespeare of the quality of permanence.
His plays are read in every language, acted in every tongue; from
all parts of the world issue discussions of his art and commentaries
on his text; Polonius, Romeo, Dogberry, Falstaff and lago are as
well known in Japan and in Russia as in Norway and in Wales, .and
shreds of his wisdom, in the form of familiar proverbs, have sifted
into the speech of the masses in all countries and climes. Ample
fulfillment is accorded the prophecy of Cassius :
How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er
In states unborn and accents yet unknown !
And yet this universal recognition of Shakespeare's surpassing
genius tends to obscure the perception of his claims to greatness,
and of the quality and extent of his contribution to the literature
56 THE MASTER DRAMATIST [April,
of the world. The rising generation is taught to read Shakespeare
as a matter of course, and as a matter of course it does so, often
without asking why. The theatre-going public regards an oc-
casional revival of his plays as an eminently proper and dignified
event, without concerning itself with the secret of the abiding charm
and undying youth of Twelfth Night and Richard HI. and Lear.
We are all prone to take Shakespeare for granted, somewhat as we
take sunshine or matrimony or mutton chops for granted. He
is so obvious that we do not see him.
On the other hand, we have, in Europe as in America, the
painstaking efforts of scholars, sages and savants to throw more
and yet more light on everything that Shakespeare was and wrote
and did. Libraries have been written upon his plays, volumes upon
his characters, doctoral dissertations upon his punctuation. His
handwriting or what we think is his handwriting has been ex-
pertly analyzed; his personal appearance has been copiously dis-
cussed; surmises of impressive solemnity and length and still more
impressive vagueness and variety have been indulged in anent his
domestic relations; that unfortunate sea of troubles in Hamlet's
soliloquy has swollen into oceans of ink; that necessary seacoast
of Bohemia in A Winter's Tale has become a barren plain of
pedantry; and Shakespearean criticism has to a great extent come
to mean more or less idle and irrelevant reflections on such topics
as the influence of Montaigne and the influence of scholastic philos-
ophy, the Baconian theory, the Rutland theory, the " Great Un-
known " theory, and the Drayton-Dekker-Heywood-Webster-Mid-
dleton-Porter theory, Shakespeare's employment of legal termin-
ology, and the identity of the dark lady of the Sonnets. We
have specialized in Shakespeare to such a pass that we cannot
see the forest for the trees. The trail of the scholar is over
him all.
In view of these facts the perfunctory and undiscriminating
acceptance of Shakespeare by the ordinary man and the microscopic
study of Shakespeare's poaching escapades and feminine verse end-
ings by the scholar we may be justified, at least on this three
hundredth anniversary of his death, in considering broadly and
briefly some of the reasons of his greatness. We take as necessary
postulates necessary, if not in themselves, at least in so far as
this discussion is concerned that William Shakespeare really
existed, that he wrote substantially all of the plays commonly at-
tributed to him, and that those plays have come down to us in their
1916.] THE MASTER DRAMATIST 57
essential aspects and attributes practically unimpaired. We are now
in a position to seek for the surpassing excellence of Shakespeare
in (i) his artistry, (2) his catholicity and (3) his truth to life.
I.
The prime evidence of the artist's competency is his mastery
of his materials. Shakespeare wrought in words, and one reason
of his greatness lies in the fact that he wrought exceeding well.
His vocabulary was vast in extent, wide in scope; and though, as
the French critics used to point out, he was often heedless in its
use, he could, when occasion needed, draw aptly and accurately
on its resources. Though not endowed with the tender literary con-
science of Flaubert, Shakespeare could none the less always find
the one noun needed, the one adjective to color it, the one verb
to animate it. He was able to practise his own preachment : " Suit
the action to the word, the word to the action."
Shakespeare's use of words is suggestive and interpretative,
that is, he is able to reveal, by means of the words he selects, the
inner nature of the scene he is describing or the character he is
portraying. Some dozen lines in Julius Ccesar serve to give a com-
prehensive and realistic impression of the prodigies that occurred
on the night before Caesar's assassination when
there were drawn
Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women
Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw
Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.
The mentality of Claudius in Hamlet is admirably suggested in
every speech put into his mouth a character sensual, mediocre
and weak, finding a natural outlet in language pompous, conciliatory
and prolix. Shakespeare differentiates Prince Hal from the other
frequenters of Eastcheap, not so much by what the heir apparent
says as by how he says it; his manner of speech is delicate and
refined in comparison with the coarse sallies of Falstaff and the
vapid blusterings of Pistol.
A vicarious quality exists in many passages in Shakespeare;
his words perform the office of music, sculpture and painting. The
fifth act of The Merchant of Venice is a veritable picture we see
58 THE MASTER DRAMATIST [April,
the white columns of Portia's house gleaming in the moonlight,
and the softened shadows of the trees falling athwart the green-
sward. A carven bust of a sorrow-bowed old man is this couplet
from the Comedy of Errors:
Though now this grained face of mine be hid
In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow.
And not only in the matchless songs scattered throughout the plays
do we find in Shakespeare's use of words that concourse of sweet
sounds that makes for harmony; Romeo and Juliet lives less on
account of the story it tells than because that story stands enshrined
in everlasting music.
Shakespeare, furthermore, possesses the art of saying much in
little, of cramming a word or a phrase with meaning, thus manifest-
ing his working knowledge of what writers on esthetics designate
economy of material. Lear presses a life history of error and woe
into his heartbroken wail :
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both.
And a world of significance attaches to Lady Macbeth's remorse-
ful utterance : " All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this
little hand."
An obvious proof of Shakespeare's mastery of words is the
fact that so many of his phrases have imbedded themselves in his
own and in alien tongues. It is possible for a man to refuse to
read Shakespeare; but a man cannot talk without quoting Shake-
speare. "More sinned against than sinning;" "to the manner
born; " " the most unkindest cut; " " to crook the pregnant hinges
of the knee;" "proud man, dressed in some brief authority;"
" the course of true love never did run smooth ; " " past our danc-
ing days " these and scores like them are contributions to universal
human speech.
Artistic superiority reveals itself in other ways than in mastery
of formal material. That mastery is essential to all good work,
but of itself it is no sufficient indication of preeminence. We ap-
plaud the writer's skill in the use of words as we applaud the
painter's command of color, but the appreciation that begins and ends
there is inadequate and superficial ; to eulogize a writer as a stylist
1916.] THE MASTER DRAMATIST 59
or a painter as a colorist is sometimes to damn him with faint
praise, to imply that he is only that and nothing more.
Shakespeare's artistry is yet more strikingly and triumphantly
manifested in his ability to delineate human nature. All the promi-
nent characters in his plays and most of the secondary characters
are drawn with sympathy, skill and insight. Like Balzac and
Dickens, he has given the world a large number of distinct char-
acters; some of them typical of many living men, others sui generis,
but all of them convincingly human. He has the knack or rather
the heaven-given talent of making his language the language of
the human nature he is seeking for the moment to depict, of sinking
his personal penchants and prejudices and giving expression to the
thoughts and feelings and impulses of the men and women whose
fictional destiny he unfolds. No two of his characters unless they
be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are purposely made Siamese
twins say or do quite the same things in quite the same way.
Other dramatists possess this individualizing power, but not to
the same extent. Calderon has it in slightest measure among the
writers of plays really great. Sophocles reveals more of it than
Calderon, but his theme, his motivation, his environment are more
impressive than his character drawing. Moliere has achieved ex-
cellent results with such clearly drawn characters as Monsieur Jour-
dain and Tartufe, but all his successes are within the narrow frame
of social satire. Shakespeare is not alone in his ability to depict
human character, but he is alone in his success in painting it from
so varied an array of models and with such broad, sure, truthful
strokes.
The artistic facility for expression which Shakespeare evinces
in his rare mastery of words and in his peerless skill in delineating
character, he further displays in his intuitive and perhaps sub-
conscious perception of the nature and requirements of the specific
literary form which he adopted as his medium of communication.
The drama, in his native England, still uncouth and uncertain and
undeveloped, Shakespeare found ready to hand, with a few tradi-
tions of its own and with but slight affinity for the so-called classical
unities in vogue in Italy and France. Theories of the drama, dating
from Aristotle to Geraldi Cinthio, Shakespeare brushed aside; he
introduced sub-plots, he reveled in anachronisms, he changed the
locality of his action half a dozen times in the one play; he did
many things that would have wounded the spirit of Boileau and
that palpably grieved the flesh of rare Ben Jonson. But he never
60 THE MASTER DRAMATIST [April,
lost sight of what is the one essential characteristic of the dramatic
contrast.
Shakespeare probably knew as little of the existing dramatic
theories of Aristotle and Castelvetro as he knew of the potential
theories of Freytag and Brunetiere; it is safe to assume, indeed,
that he was not much concerned with any theories at all. But in
his working hypothesis of dramatic craftsmanship he invariably in-
sisted, not on the unities, not on passion leading to action, not on a
conflict of wills, but on the presentation of the contrasts existing in
his plots, his characters and his settings. An analysis of his plays
in the light of the theory of contrast results in the conviction that
a clear, thorough and consistent, if unconscious, perception of its
bearings was Shakespeare's guiding principle in selecting, arrang-
ing and modifying his material. He never invented when he could
avoid doing so; but he never left any bit of borrowed material
unchanged. When he took an old Italian tale or one of Plutarch's
Lives or a chapter from the chronicles of Holinshed or Hall, he
followed one invariable procedure: he pointed and furbished the
contrasts of life and character which his sources had suggested or
implied. It is due to his insistence on contrast that his works live
to-day, not merely as character studies or as literature or as ex-
pressions of universal truth, but distinctively as plays. Shake-
speare is a master writer; he is the master dramatist.
II.
A second reason of Shakespeare's exalted rank among world
writers is the breadth of his vision. Of Homer, Matthew Arnold
has finely said that he saw life steadily and saw it whole. The
eulogium applies, and with a closer approximation to truth, to
Shakespeare. The range of his genius is as wide and as sweep-
ing as life itself; only the portals of the world beyond the grave
mark the limits of his emprise. He is the most Catholic of poets.
Homer, for all his knowledge of the primal springs of conduct, for
all his contagious zest in love and adventure and war, is a voice
from another, an earlier world; he necessarily knows naught of
the complexities of later civilization. Dante's vision is deep and
high as high as heaven and as deep as hell ; but its range is per-
force straitened, its interest focused on but a few closely-knitted
phases of human life. Shakespeare alone roams unfettered through
1916.] THE MASTER DRAMATIST 61
the world, unconfined alike as to time and place, studying all
manner of human relationships, human actions, human conditions.
The world of the Homeric songs Shakespeare explores and
makes it his own; Cressida will live as long as Helen as a type
of unworthy womanhood. Imperial Rome, beneath his magic wand,
springs to a second and undying life from Plutarch's prosy page;
and Marc Antony, he follows along the primrose path that leadeth
to destruction within the sinuous coils of the Serpent of the Nile.
In Italy, the cradle of modern romance, long and lovingly he lingers.
Denmark furnishes him inspiration for the deepest and most com-
plex and withal most fascinating character study that literature
knows. To prehistoric Britain he turns for his superb delineation
of the tragedy of old age, and to neighboring Scotland for the
immortal story of vaulting ambition and unavailing remorse. Three
centuries of English history, from John to Henry VIIL, he studies
and interprets in its tragedy and its comedy, its civil feuds and
foreign wars, its knaves and its heroes, its glories and its shames.
Another Thomas the Rhymer, he is whisked away to fairyland in
A Midsummer Night's Dream; and in As You Like It and The
Tempest, with the winsome lightheartedness of Rosalind and the
deep-browed majesty of Prospero, he guides our feet through an
idealized Forest of Arden and along the coral strand of a magic
island where fact is naught and truth is everything.
Men and women who strutted and fretted their hour upon the
stage of history, live again in the plays of Shakespeare " and all
their passionate hearts are dust." The glory of his genius falls
upon the just and the unjust. Cleopatra and the mother of St.
Louis, Cardinal Beaufort and Marcus Brutus, Edward the Confes-
sor and Jack Cade, Thomas Cromwell and Ajax, Caesar's wife and
Margaret of Anjou all pass in the variegated procession of his
characters, and their passing never fails to impart a deeper under-
standing of the times and peoples whence they come.
Once a student, possessed of that uninspired curiosity that fre-
quently passes for literary appreciation, made a canvass of Shake-
speare's plays, and found that the only human relationship not de-
picted therein is that of mother and daughter. That student merits
our gratitude, for he has unwittingly furnished another evidence
of the comprehensiveness and sympathy of Shakespeare's vision.
Nothing human is foreign to the cosmopolitan Bard of Avon. He
is interested alike in the noble English king soothing his heavy
heart with earnest prayer on the eve of Agincourt and the rustic
62 THE MASTER DRAMATIST [April,
Bottom scratching his elongated ears and sighing for a handful
of hay. He understands the false pride of Coriolanus and the
false humility of Shy lock. He recognizes feminine charm alike in
the ingenuous Miranda and in Portia, the woman of the world.
Corruption in high places he marks in Angelo and Richard III.
Villainy in all its guises and disguises he probes, from Proteus
to Edmund and lago. He paints the tragedy of youth in Romeo
and Juliet, the tragedy of the age of disillusion in Hamlet, the
tragedy of maturity in Othello, the tragedy of the " dangerous age "
in Macbeth, and in Lear the tragedy of declining years. There
is sanity in his madmen, wisdom in his fools. Humor, too, he
understands, whether it be the empty clownishness of Launcelot
or the playful profundity of Rosalind. And the master
passion of love, in all its varied manifestations, he impartially
records.
A remarkable, though by no means solitary, instance of Shake-
speare's marvelous insight into the complexities and convolutions
of human nature is afforded in Othello. In the foreground stand
three types as varied as the heavens above and the earth beneath
and the waters under the earth. On the one hand we have Des-
demona, childlike, ingenuous, beautiful and pure, her heart troubled
by the nearness of a horrible suspicion she is too white to under-
stand, her mind sadly strained to devise some means of appeasing
the manifest agony of her lord. On the other hand we have the
arch-villain lago, diabolical yet human, working upon the feel-
ings of the husband with the subtle and trebly effective weapon of
indirect suggestion and bringing closer and closer, the while he
smiles and smiles, the inevitable catastrophe upon the sinless, stain-
less wife. And between the two stands Othello the Moor, his ac-
tive mind seeking in vain to unfathom the seeming mystery, his
open, guileless nature an easy prey to the sinister hints of the
tempter and the voice of a thousand nameless ancestors pounding
in his blood to avenge their outraged honor. Meanwhile, in the
background stand two commonplace mortals, Cassio and Emilia,
little conscious of the direful tragedy being enacted before their
eyes, least of all suspecting that they have been in some measure
active agents in bringing it about. In each of these five diverse
souls Shakespeare for the moment lives, with each he thinks and
sympathizes, yet preserves due proportion and order and relation
among them all. Rightly has he been called the myriad-minded
Shakespeare.
igi6.] THE MASTER DRAMATIST 63
III.
The literary artist of the first rank, be his form of expression
verse or prose, lyric or play, must have something more than artistry
and something more than catholicity of taste and treatment. Ibsen
has rare technical skill; but even if his range of vision were
larger he would still be debarred from the company of the truly
great. Balzac has a wide outlook on life; but even if his selec-
tive principle were more discriminating and therefore more artis-
tic, he could not be judiciously mentioned in the same breath with
the masters of literature. Ibsen and Balzac, though the one is
conspicuous for artistry and the other is conspicuous for catholicity,
both suffer from the fundamental lack of fidelity to the human na-
ture which they tacitly profess to depict. As a consequence we are
able to recognize in the prestige of Balzac a steady and even fairly
rapid decline, and it is safe to predict that in the year of grace two
thousand and six the world will not make much ado about the cen-
tenary of Ibsen's death.
Not the least reason for the undying permanence of Shake-
speare's plays is their essential and uncompromising truth to life.
The Elizabethan looks upon the world with kindly but unbiased
eyes. Unlike Corneille, he is not concerned with life as it ought
to be; unlike Leopardi, his song is unembittered. Never, by any
stretch of post-impressionistic imagination, could the author of
Othello be forced into the company of Mr. Huneker's iconoclasts.
His plays are not purpose plays. He has no special theory of life
to champion, no distorted view of life to body forth. He is, like
the great Florentine, no timid friend to truth. And verily the truth
has made him free.
Shakespeare's unswerving loyalty to the truth of life has some-
times led to a misconception of him on the part of critics whose
sense of veracity is less rigorous than his. Thus, not so long ago,
a writer in The Lantern condemned as unlifelike the entire gallery
of Shakespeare's heroines. We can go over the complete list, this
writer in substance said, from Rosalind and Julia to Miranda and
Imogen, and nowhere do we meet a woman whom, in all calmness
and reasonableness, we should think of choosing for a wife. Ac-
cepting, for the sake of argument, both the soundness of the view-
point and the validity of the finding, is not this really a striking
proof of the true womanliness of Shakespeare's heroines? Of all
64 THE MASTER DRAMATIST [April,
the women who pass a given point on Fifth Avenue on a Saturday
afternoon, how many would even the most persuadable and well-
intentioned wooer choose for a wife? Indeed, there is a grain of
truth in Strindberg's diseased contention that marriage is the result
of mutual repulsion. Men do not marry perfect women, and they
know it; or, at least, they find it out. We can find flaws and
shortcomings in the Rosalinds, Portias and Violas of Shakespeare,
but so can we find flaws and shortcomings in the Paulas, Isabellas
and Moll Pitchers of history, and in the Susans, Janes and Marias
of everyday life. Not without a realization of her human infirmi-
ties to say nothing of his own does your Benedick wed his
Beatrice; and with all her faults he loves her still. Shakespeare's
devotion to truth was too wholehearted to permit of his painting
women, even very good women, as ideal creatures utterly unspoiled
by the sad consequences of Eve's transgression. He had an intuitive
perception of the luminous if tmromantic truth implied in Balmes'
epigram : " Original sin is a mystery, but it explains the universe "
and woman.
In a mood somewhat similar to that of the writer in The
Lantern, Ruskin pointed out that, so far as mere man goes, Shake-
speare has no real heroes at all. He meant, of course, not that
Shakespeare's protagonists do not at times think heroic thought
and do heroic deeds, but that not one of them is prevailingly and
consistently heroic. Is not this but another tribute to Shakespeare's
heroic fidelity to fact? What man, indeed save the Man Who
was more than man ever was prevailingly and consistently heroic ?
Is it not a familiar truth that no man is a hero to his valet to say
nothing of other members of his household ?
In Shakespeare's attitude to the sweetly impossible perfect
woman and to the preposterously impossible perfect man we have
an instance of the sense of proportion, at once fine and rugged,
that guided him in his perception and expression of the funda-
mental truth of life. He could conceive of a Puck and of a Cali-
ban; but he had no Nietzschean delusion anent a superman. He
recognized in the drama of life a mingled yarn of good and ill
together. And he could have given hearty assent to Browning's
provokingly disguised expression of virile optimism : " There may
be heaven, there must be hell."
As a consequence, it is impossible to tuck away the plays of
Shakespeare in any one of the symmetrical and mutually exclu-
sive pigeonholes devised by fussy schoolmasters who are wont to
1916.] THE MASTER DRAMATIST 65
discuss life and literature in terms of formal logic. Is Shake-
speare a realist or a romanticist or an idealist? He is each of
the three and all of the three and none of the three. He is so
faithful to life that he defies classification. He is consistently hu-
man; and therefore a mass of inconsistencies. He can be quoted
to reen force any opinion ; even the devil can cite him with Scrip-
ture for his purpose. In Shakespeare we find that pessimistic
gloss on the seven ages of man falling from the scorn-curved
lips of the misanthropic Jaques; and in Shakespeare we find that
optimistic trumpet-call to glorious achievement which, speeding
from the undaunted heart of King Henry V., swept an army of
sick and decimated scarecrows to a brilliant and decisive victory.
Antiquarians and scientific historians, worshippers at the shrine
of the literal, and scholars blinded with the dust of pedantry, may
find, it is true, numerous inaccuracies in Shakespeare; that clock
striking three in the times of Julius Caesar and that billiard table
in Cleopatra's palace have been sufficently bewailed. Let it be
once and for all freely granted that Shakespeare committed anach-
ronisms. Perhaps he knew no better; perhaps he cared to know
no better, for he was neither a scientist nor an historian, and from
his point of view there were vastly more important things than
literal accuracy. Let it be granted that he is sometimes false to
fact; but let it be admitted that he is always true to truth.
The truth that is the breath and finer spirit of knowledge he
never fails to recognize and express. He has Hector quoting
Aristotle, and therein mixes his dates; but in his exploitation of
the character and motives of the hero of Troy there is no con-
fusion of data. He sends Hamlet to the University of Witten-
berg centuries before its foundation ; but he gives a convincing
presentation of the effects of academic life and associations on
the mind and temperament of the Prince of Denmark. He mani-
fests ignorance when he pictures the conspirators in Brutus' gar-
den wearing hats; but he shows knowledge when he describes
what is going on inside their heads. He is sometimes false to
the letter; he is always true to the spirit.
Some such conviction lay behind the avowal of that eminent
statesman who declared that he had learned English history from
Shakespeare. The English historical plays are not promising ma-
terial from the viewpoint of the fact-grubbing historian. They
juggle dates and invent episodes, they attribute speeches to char-
acters, who in reality said nothing of the sort, and they suffer
VOL. CUT. 5
66 THE MASTER DRAMATIST [April,
cannon to roar a hundred and fifty years before cannon were cast ;
they betray an uncritical attitude toward legendary lore and a
melancholy ignorance regarding the manipulation of documentary
evidence. But they do interpret the spirit of the times. They do
give an insight into the life of the nation. They do shed light upon
the relations of Church and State. They do make some of the most
astonishing events in English history not merely possible, but in-
evitable. They do lay bare the souls of men and movements and
conditions.
And, finally, Shakespeare is ever clear-sighted enough and
brave enough to tell the truth concerning sin and the wages thereof.
He pictures no holy anger, no innocent adultery, no righteous
homicide. He has no nebulous notions anent right and wrong. If,
as occasionally happens, he utilizes some of the material that Zola,
Dostoevski and Mr. Dreiser have found so much to their liking, he
avoids both their excesses and their inferences : he is reserved in
his presentation of evil, because he is an artist; and he never
disguises it in the garb of goodness, because he is a lover of the
truth. In Shakespeare, as in life, there is no sin but has its cor-
responding punishment. His evildoers come to grief, not as ex-
emplifications of poetic justice, but as vindications of the Divine
justice. His moral teaching, indeed, is prevailing and insistent;
and it is so, not because he has a gospel to preach, a philosophy
to expound or an ethical code to promulgate, but simply because
he sees the truth and tells the truth about the life of man.
GROWTH.
(THE LIFE OF MONSIGNOR ROBERT HUGH BENSON BY C. C.
MARTINDALE, SJ. 1 )
BY MAY BATEMAN.
OT easy was the task that faced the late Monsignor
Benson's biographer. To write the life of him who
has achieved material fame, say a great soldier, is
relatively easy to the task of writing the life of " one
who never did anything externally massive or of-
ficially important and whose influence flowed chiefly from
his vivid but elusive personality and magnetism As mere
annals, a list of things done, or as a mere study of a litterateur's
output " the task, in Father Martindale's view, was " inconceiv-
able." The result is that he has given us a psychological study
for all time; something of value to the " outside " student of char-
acter who never knew Monsignor Benson personally, nor came in
contact with his spoken or written words, as well as for the many
who, but for him, would never voluntarily have crossed the thres-
hold of a Catholic church, whose hostility was changed therefrom
to tolerance if not to admiration; to say nothing of the great body
of his individual converts who owe directly to him the joy of en-
tering in the fullest sense " into their own."
These last, then, felt the need of securing a permanent record
of a man of parts whom one saw from this aspect, and another
from that yet who, all agreed, possessed a quality which would
not die with death. Hugh, Mr. A. C. Benson's tender study, was
accessible, it is true, but it did not even attempt to cover all the
ground of his brother's activities or more significant work. Some-
thing more was wanted if the " whole " Monsignor Benson was to
be given to the world.
To do this successfully, without jarring the sensitive feelings
not only of Monsignor Benson's mother and family, but those of
the vast public, some of whom demanded "the life of a saint;"
others, " anything but an elaborate hymn of unmeasured eulogy ; "
some, a vie de sacristie; others a portrait of " the man so
*New York: Longsmans, Green & Co. Two volumes. $5.00 net.
68 GROWTH [April,
infinitely human " demanded very definite qualities. The task
was all the harder because he of whom they were demanded, shrank,
almost abnormally, from any public invasion of the sanctity of a
human soul. Yet this very unwillingness but helps to show the
biographer's greater fitness, and gives actual fineness as well as
truth and sincerity to Father Martindale's work. " The little more
and how much it is The little less, and what worlds away ! "
It would have been incredibly easy to spoil on the one hand the
sincerity, on the other hand, the artistry, of this work, but it is
not spoiled by one wrong word.
" I have tried hard to say what I saw, including his faults,"
writes Father Martindale, simply, in his dedication to " Hugh's
mother " without whose help and intuition it is scarcely possible to
conceive that this book should have been written ; " though not as
faults (even if so they seemed) but as facts; nor even to endear him
but to offer him to anyone who reads this, just as he was,
in his tremendous effort to realize in himself that which he be-
lieved God wanted him to be."
Temperamentally Monsignor Benson was an individualist. In
the early stages of his career there was actually discernible " a
certain hardness, irascibility, noisiness" in him, later to be drilled
into line until finally the fierce outbursts 2 into which he broke, were
occasioned either by some act of flagrant injustice or the intention
to make forever vivid some point for lack of seeing which a human
soul actually stood in grave peril. For example, having urged a
penitent not to abandon the nobler, difficult course:
I ask you [he wrote] as strongly as I can, not to snatch the sacri-
fice from the Altar just because the fire that God has sent down on
it burns 1
And again:
I notice that you threaten in a veiled way all through your let-
ter to become a Christian Scientist. But you don't quite realize that
to a Catholic that sort of threat is simply contemptible. The Church,
really, will survive. The only question is, whether you will. Please
don't go back to that old bit of rubbish about " Christians." Christians
won't stand everything, any more than Almighty God will. They are
2 When the claims of Catholicism sounding clearer and clearer in his ears
had driven him to the extreme point of tension, he sought a temporary refuge
at Tremans, where he found his two brothers, and then complained that he was
being drawn by them into controversial disputes. " But to be quite honest," Mr. A.
C. Benson wrote, delightfully, " you have of late become so silent on other topics
that it is difficult to know what to talk about and as a family we must talk, or,
like the lady in Tennyson, we shall die ! "
1916.] GROWTH 69
not weak-minded sentimentalists and don't even want to be Your
news as to not going to Mass because you " felt it would not
help you" is exactly the kind of thing which retards progress in-
definitely. Surely you see by now that what is wrong with you all
round is your allowing feeling to dictate to the will! Every single
time you do that, in any shape or form, you are hindering your own
victory The Catholic Church, is, at the lowest estimate, the
greatest Mother and Physician of souls in existence. The very centre
and heart of her Life is the Mass; she says that all her strength and
her Divinity are hidden there. All this you know, explicitly, at least.
And yet because one morning you, Miss X. Y., don't feel that it will
help you, you don't go. Good God ! Don't you see that down in
your heart there's a hard bit of pavement, unbroken?
" It would be a grave injustice," according to Father Martin-
dale, " to paint any conventionalized portrait " of such a man. His
life " was one of ceaseless activity on behalf of others/' but he
was heard to say again and again that he had " no pastoral soul."
If by that we mean the temperament which makes a man happy
when he is tending some designated flock within frontiers, on a
diet not as a rule of his own invention, Father Benson certainly
had not that. Never in his life was he tempted to see in the parish
clergy anything but what was noble and normal but, at the
same time he personally " sought to respect the type which
God sought to realize in him, and he knew that only by whirlwind
and alternating silence could he so fulfill himself."
For Catholics, naturally, the chief interest of the book will
be to trace the " growth " of Monsignor Benson, interiorly and out-
wardly, towards that ultimate fulfillment in expression and achieve-
ment which he would not have attained had he remained an An-
glican. This may sound harsh and at variance with advice actually
given to Monsignor Benson himself on one occasion, " Let pa-
tronizing airs be left to non-Catholics; for Catholics, gentleness
of judgment, sympathy of mental difficulties, tolerance of in-
tolerance." But almost any convert Catholic capable of creating,
however meanly, book, painting, or sculpture or the like, knows
how until it crystallizes into fact his motive in creation changes.
At the outset it matters to him, because of his intensely personal
view, that his artistic horizon should reach so far that from hills
and valleys alike men should throng to look upon it. It is
" his " horizon; and then after awhile illumination comes; " his "
work has value, he sees now, not because it is " his " work at all,
but because, however falteringly, it is an expression working from
within without, of the unseen force which moves him, which, thus
70 GROWTH [April,
diffused, must out. The act of creation is altered and made
holy; there is in it something more than the desire to be heard
or seen.
I need therefore say [writes Father Martindale] in answer to a
singular question I saw somewhere asked, how it was that Hugh was
given such scope for his various talents and tendencies in the Roman
Catholic Church, no more than it was there and there only that his
talents and tendencies would ever have come to all that they did.
That his ecclesiastical superiors might have been expected to interfere
with them is a suggestion that need detain no one; that he himself,
elsewhere, would not have felt sure how to deal with them, and there-
fore would have proceeded with uncertain step and worked with fal-
tering touch, and seen with clouded eye, is perfectly beyond dispute.
With growth, taken as a tangible clue to the construction of
the book, the chapter-headings even take additional meaning.
Initiation, chap, v., vol. ii., is not merely a critique of Monsignor
Benson's novel, but it shows how the author was spiritually initiated
by the deep ways of pain, of fear, of loneliness. " Within the
soul of every individual who strives in his measure to develop his
Master's life within himself, the hours of the Passion precede the
dawn of Easter." " Not indiscriminately will God grant His
privilege of suffering But granted a soul of royal quality,
pain all but infallibly must perfect it." The chapter pre-
cedes None Other Gods, and is followed by In Loco Pascucz.
Stage by stage then from boyhood to manhood the reader
treads with him the fearless way on " the ascending path," " to a
higher state of being in which nothing is lost, nothing merely
replaced, but everything transfigured, perfected and harmonized."
In boyhood, Hugh Benson shows himself extraordinarily sensitive
to impressions and environment; alert, given to moods; with a
keen sense of the dramatic and strong desire himself to be the cen-
tral figure on the stage; dreamy, imaginative; self-willed; independ-
ent; " fiercely " inclined to throw himself now into this interest and
now that; with no bent to study, or natural gift of concentration;
disciplined rather, one would gather, by the veiled humor of his
mother's little comments on his performances than by his father's
heavier strictures on his conduct, inspired though these two were
by " love not only profound, but passionate."
You and your Ambulances! [wrote Mrs. Benson on one occasion].
It will be a great assistance in the holidays to have so experienced
a surgeon at hand in case of accidents. I hope we shall always wound
ourselves or break our bones, in exact correspondence with what you
1916.] GROWTH 71
have learnt and having such strong family feeling, I have no doubt
we shall (I have only one fear connected with it I am always
anxious when I hear of your taking up new things )
This is precisely the way, of course, to appeal to one so quick
to appreciate wit, so responsive as Hugh Benson remained. The
Archbishop's " heavier artillery " of words, however, did their work
also. " The alternate stimulus and check of so remarkable a father
and an incomparable mother made the boy grow up neither re-
pressed nor dissolute; daring, yet not extravagant." Here and
elsewhere Father Martindale's book is actually a better guide to
Monsignor Benson's development than even the latter's own Con-
fessions.
But since the story of these early days has been told elsewhere,
the Catholic reader will eagerly make for the chapters that deal with
Monsignor Benson's life after "Conversion." The convert broadly
divided falls into two types. On the one hand is he who feels him-
self to have been until now in an enchanted forest; held rooted
there under a spell. At intervals light filtered through the trees;
air from outside blew in upon him, warm and clear; when the
spell which held him bound to the one spot finally broke, and he
emerged into the fuller world beyond, it was to him a mere transi-
tion from light he always knew was there, into a richer, mellower
light; baldly, Catholicism but gives him more, he feels, of that
which he always had had. And then again there is the convert
whose very being is torn in a disruptive process as by some mighty
projectile that has struck home. Not only in him, but all about
him are the marks of a great bombardment, which left nothing as
it was. The city that was his home lies waste; it is there in
ruins before him. And he himself must go through agony and
numbness, and agony again, before the wound wrought by God's
shrapnel heals. It is with him as with Elias of old. " Behold the
Lord passeth, and a great and strong wind before the Lord over-
throwing the mountains, and breaking the rocks in pieces; the
Lord is not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake: the
Lord is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire : the
Lord is not in the fire; and after the fire a whistling of a gentle
air," the voice at last of God Himself.
If you take " pivotal points " in the process very easily
worked out by the help of this book to Monsignor Benson's con-
version you will find yourself tracing a route to Rome quite as
definite and clear as that shown by rivers and towns in map-making.
72 GROWTH [April,
Monsignor Benson himself thought that the death of his elder sis-
ter, Nellie, first turned his thoughts towards ordination, or " work
somewhere within the spacious vineyards which the Archbishop
ruled." Such a step showed favorably enough. The father had
always singled " Hugh " out as " the son on whom he was fain to
lavish all that was most tender and intimate in his 'love.' ' On
the other hand, the son greatly desired to please this father of whom
he stood not a little in awe; if he did not "calculate on the help
his father's position would be to him in a clerical career," he was
at least not averse to trying to win the Archbishop's " highly prized
approval to a degree most pleasant to his soul " by taking Orders
in the Church of England.
Before this, when his intention was to go into the Indian Civil
Service, in the unwelcoming atmosphere of a London crammer,
he had come upon John Inglesant. The book for the time at least
affected him deeply.
The revelation of the Personality of Jesus Christ came to him
literally like the tearing of veils and the call of a loud trumpet and
a leaning forth of the Son of God to touch him. The veils swung
back again, and silence was once more to swaddle his soul into inertia ;
but virtue had gone forth and without his realizing it, his life would
appear to have been poised round a new axis; its centre of gravity
was shifted, or if you will, the notion of the dominancy of Jesus, hav-
ing sunk into his sub-consciousness, worked there in silence until in
due time it revealed its adult significance.
He read assiduously The Little Hours (in English), and now
became anxious to controvert the claims of Rome. He studied Dr.
Littledale's Plain Reasons Against Joining the Church of Rome,
which later on at Mirfield was to harass him continually, as he
found with his Anglican penitents that " it struck not only at the
special position of Rome, but at all they themselves were determined
to continue believing and practising, as well as at Dr. Littledale's
own creed and method." Father Maturin, then a Cowley Father,
preaching Christian Doctrine in a new light, evincing some of the
orderliness, the completeness, the " security " for which Benson was
beginning so to long; his father's death and his travel in other
countries where he was to see Anglicanism revealed in a new
a singularly local light; the news of Father Maturin's change of
faith; talks with and lectures from the present Bishop of Oxford
on the subject of " Higher Criticism ; " Mirfield, which for a time
completely satisfied him, " giving him much, revealing him and his
I 9 i6.] GROWTH 73
talents yet further to himself," yet failing to give him all these
all took part in the mental process which led inevitably to one end.
" A living voice in a modern world " was what Benson's very
inmost soul began now to demand. To stay in the Church of Eng-
land, feeling as he felt, would be to compromise.
To veil your language, to utter discourses fully intelligible to a
select few, might amuse a naughty boy, still at the age of plots and
codes and ciphers To preach a few great truths such as the
Fatherhood of God or the all-importance of the Person of Christ, trust-
ing that " these would find their normal outcome in doctrines which
Christ, the Father's Utterance, meant to be taught, but His official
representatives dare not teach," was torture to one whose whole Christian
position, collegiate and personal, implied that Christ spoke through a
Church, and the Church through her priest.
[For] all his life by now was inspired by religion: to lose that soul
of it would mean death. To preserve that most intimate self, he
fled to identify it with the greater Self of Christ in His Church
Benson became a Catholic, not only because he believed Angli-
canism to be false, but because he believed Catholicism to be true; and
this he did, passionately, and would have done, even if there had been
(as there so well might be) no Anglicanism in existence.
There comes a point beyond resistance in physical or mental
conflict. That point Benson ultimately reached. He made his sub-
mission. His mother and Father Frere of Mirfield had known
throughout of his struggle. Quite apart from his absolutely clear
perception of the ultimate skepticism implied in much of the cult
of " moderation," Hugh felt that any creed that was true demanded
tremendous self -surrender. " I believe," one wrote timidly to him,
in later years, " that if only I could find myself in Catholicism, I
could swim." " Then for God's sake," he answered, " jump ! "
:t You are now," wrote Mrs. Benson, with exquisite abnega-
tion, " where your heart feels it can be truly loyal, where it finds
its home, where you deeply feel God has led you. We trust you
to Him in utter love and boundless hope Let us in, always,
wherever you rightly can."
In faery lore we read of magic wands which have but to touch
this man or that woman wholly to transform them. Upon certain
of us, Catholicism acts as with a faery wand. Natures alter;
qualities, dull and drab before, take rainbow light, take color, be-
come ethereal. The same yet not the same, because the grace of
God, made visible at times even to our darkened eyes, destroys and
re-creates simultaneously. So you may see in others alas ! that it
is not in oneself ! " cocksureness " turned, say, to conviction on
74 GROWTH [April,
essential points; arrogance to rightful dignity; self-seeking to self-
lessness ; " slap-dash " methods to scrupulous care in trifles ; im-
patience to control, as the Diviner magic works. With Monsignor
Benson, the childish love of " dressing-up " (" I looked perfectly
charming in a little purple c-cassock and a little purple c-cap! ")
was to fix, later on, into the determination " not even to be black,
but to blaze in purple," because he felt he had " to be in the open
air, recognized, welcomed from the outset," rather courting than
evading notice rightly to fulfill God's purpose for him. 3 His
opinion was that " as a representative of the Catholic Church, he
ought to be everywhere. Explicitly, he said, he courted advertise-
ment and publicity, and plainly rebuked a friend who expressed
his preference for retirement." 4 He " believed in two seemingly
incompatible duties; one, that he must be absolutely accessible to
everyone, and must communicate all that he possessed to as wide a
circle as possible; and yet, that he must preserve utterly inviolate
the inner places and the precious things of his own soul."
The following is part of his self-imposed rule : To guard
against : slackness in rising, slackness in office, slackness in mental
prayer; pride in speaking of self, pride in judging others; dramatic
arrangement in thought; irritation in judging, irritation in speak-
ing. (Look out for symptoms.)
" Virtues he dealt with " showed invariably in a positive light.
A stranger once said of him, " There is nothing knock-kneed or
anaemic in Robert Hugh Benson's Christianity! " " Chastity," for
example, in his view, " had nothing primarily to do with abstinence;
that might be, and must be, of course, when God's law so de-
creed or counseled, a consequence." But emphatically " the
virtue in itself meant not that you loved so little, that you led a
life of bachelorhood or spinster hood celibacy was strictly not
chastity but that you loved God so ardently that the squandering
of self in passions became unthinkable. Purity as he conceived it
was white indeed, but not snow-white so truly as white-hot."
In youth, it was said of him :
What he liked, what he felt, what he decided was the important
thing to him, and so long as he got his way, I do not think that he
troubled his head much about what other people might think or wish
He had "an entire disregard of other people's opinion "
8 He wrote from Rome: "We look pretty startling in huge furry hats and
ferridas and buckles, and we go swelling and bulging about as if we had done it
for years ! "
4 He urged upon the present writer the duty of publicity. " Take (this public
office or that) because you are a Catholic."
19 1 6.] GROWTH 75
Later, this is what he urged, again speaking of controversy :
I believe that the secret of peace is to refuse to attack To ex-
pound one's own principles, when asked, is a very different thing, and
causes no irritation (By controversy, I mean not the exposition
of principles, which I both like and believe in doing, but the kind
of thrust and parry that it is so easy to slip into )
Convinced as he was " beyond all else, that most people did
not even begin to suspect what essential Catholicism meant and
claimed to do/' he spent himself in every possible direction in mak-
ing that fact clear, whatever else was missed. " Seriously did he
envisage the business of self-discipline. Don't mistake 'God is
Love,' for 'God is Good Nature.' Love is terrible and stern."
His modern novels were framed to that end ; he " wanted to reveal
modern men and women to themselves, to show 7 them the meaning of
their soul naturaliter Catholica" " In his literary work, you every-
where see purpose." He does, indeed, reveal himself to an excep-
tional degree in fiction; you cannot rightly " get at " what he was,
even with Father Martindale's help, unless you have read and seen
for yourself how through all his work the shining thread of a pur-
pose very far from that of the ordinary mere " writer of a good
story " lies. Every novel is conceived with the intention of driving
home some salient point : " This is what it is to be a real Catho-
lic " such as Algy who found the way " damnably hard ; " Frank
Guisely, "the Failure; " Mr. Main, another " failure; " Mary, in
a Winnowing, " the prey of temperament," according to her
friends, and so forth.
"Failure? There is no failure!" he himself once flung,
triumphantly, as the epitome of his own gospel. How can one
talk of failure if it leads to God? Look at our maimed, our blind,
our broken in the World War, with " vision," and ask ourselves if
that shining sacrifice is "waste." " Blow out, your bugles, over the
rich dead!' Though men walk on ploughshares in the red way of
blood, towards God, and fall on the way, " there is no failure."
Not at least for those who believe with Hugh Benson, that " there
is a life in essence more real and more alive than that of common
sense or intellect, even of religious virtue; and that though ideally,
within the supernaturalized man there should exist a perfect har-
mony of all his parts, yet even if, in the creation of that harmony
inferior parts are for the time to be immolated, that matters
not one whit." And again : " Better the rack, the gallows, the
disemboweled body, still horribly alive, and with the soul still cog-
76 GROWTH [April,
nizant in limbs and brain, better the fire and the cauldron than the
disregarding of one syllable even of the imperial call of Christ."
Space forbids giving more than a mere outline of the scope
of this fine book which takes you " to far country " from which
at times, like Moses, you " glimpse " the Promised Land. You can
read no such human document without a deepening sense of
mystery and awe. Father Martindale feels to the full the dignity
of his subject; the dissection, the analysis, of a soul can never be
trusted save to reverent hands.
Two more examples will show, I think, how closely, how
penetratingly he has fulfilled his mission. He speaks thus of char-
acteristics which might well be misinterpreted :
There was in Monsignor Benson an instinct which made him " re-
gard even religion somehow as a game, a sport Outrageous as this
may sound, I am sure of it." But "he who has found sweetness
and truth in the formulae he uses about God, and the symbols of the
high sacraments of God, and suddenly catches sight of the splendors
for which they stand, may burst into joyous laugh a laugh, for
he sees how enormously inadequate they are a joyous laugh be-
cause they already are so good, and promise what is so much better.
In moments of this abrupt realization that " God's in His Heaven ! "
Hugh would literally break into a laugh and hug himself, and
cry out to friends : " Oh, my dear ; isn't it all tremendous ? Isn't it
sport? Isn't it all huge fun?"
But again :
All his life Hugh Benson was followed continuously, in his mind,
by the awareness of a Fear Fear, as such, and not fear of this
or that: Fear which is essentially "the denying of the succours of
thought " Now Greek tragedies were described by Aristotle
as a Purge of Fear and Pity. Some at least have held that
the philosopher believed all human creatures to be the better for peri-
odical explosions of the two passions. They are to be conceived al-
most, as swelling within the soul, until they need an outburst, else they
will fester and slay the soul, or break forth harmfully. A harmless
occasion for their externalizing was therefore engineered for them.
I would suggest that Benson, probably quite unconsciously, provided
himself with all sorts of strange opportunities for fear, that his fear-
ing faculty, so to say, might have sufficient exercise, and leave him in
regard to all that mattered more at peace
It will be seen, even from these brief extracts, that Father
Martindale takes the fragments of a vital personality which came
in contact with no life without leaving a distinct trace of its
passage, and connects them into a definite whole. He has revealed
and explained certain phases in Monsignor Benson which before
I9i6.] GROWTH 77
were obscure to those who (through intimacy or intuition) knew
him well. He has reconciled apparently conflicting qualities; he
has made many who always loved Monsignor Benson, like him in-
finitely more than before. (For unswerving truth has in it, strange
to say, a shining particle of Divine tenderness.) Sanely, without
false sentiment, he portrays a man " who gradually learnt to keep
his soul independent yet without pride; without illusions, yet not
morose ; concentrated, yet self-spending The construction
and preservation of so secret a shrine are not achieved save at a
terrible expense " The writer remembers with what deep
meaning in the Carmelite pulpit Monsignor Benson once quoted,
lines well-known, yet destined to take from that moment a new and
deep significance : " He who lives more lives than one, more deaths
than one must die."
Which is the real reality life here or life hereafter? The two
worlds, to some at least, in moments, are very near. " No Chris-
tian," says Father Martindale, " will experience even the temptation
to feel that " Monsignor Benson's " activities is finished or his liv-
ing reality put away and done with. He hurried away with
the paradox, which he loved to say his life was, still startling: a
hundred promises unfulfilled. " Trust death, nor be afraid." We
in our fashion have the right to speak as if a future were yet
all before him ; he, in his spiritual mode of consciousness and action,
is a more present force in the series of our days than even when
he was visible amongst us, playing with life's manifold gifts;
catching hold of hand after hand and passing each on to God, if he
would but go, and himself hastening toward God."
Hugh Benson from the time True " vision " dawned, " flung
himself passionately on God," and God uplifted him.
THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY.
BY KATHERINE BREGY.
T is not often in the history of our self-centred world,
busy with its beeves and its fatlings, its marrying
and giving in marriage, that the clock of civilization
stops suddenly premeditatedly to do honor to a
poet. Yet this year it will so stop ; because, forsooth,
the twenty-third day of the fair month of April is just the three
hundredth anniversary of Master William Shakespeare's " birth-
day into eternity." There had been brave doings in old Stratford
this spring, but for this and that a Shakespeare festival to make
glad the children of men from every clime! There had been some-
thing brave in Germany, too; where a few years back at Frank-
fort-on-the-Main the present writer gazed (with eyes not too sanely
dry!) upon a huge wreath sent in friendship " from the Shake-
speare house to the Goethe house." We have changed all that, to
our very bitter loss. This year the Old World, staggering under
its weight of war, can do little for the praise of art.
For lo, the thunder hushing all the grove,
And did love live, not even Love could sing!
And so with beautiful fitness the New World takes up this duty of
honoring Shakespeare, and from New York to California the
tercentenary plans stretch out like a carpet of gold or a canopy of
sunshine.
It is not as though we turned, in duty bound, to honor a
stranger. It is not even as though we honored Cervantes, that
high-spirited Spaniard who upon the same day and same year went
out to God. Shakespeare is our own, the high-water mark of Eng-
lish drama and English poetry but more still than this. It is
merely a truism that is, a truth which has grown tiresome because
no one any longer cares to challenge it! to say that he is for all
people as "for all time:" one of that small Uranian group of
universal*, the supreme poets who have been both popular and pro-
found, who have loved and belonged to life as passionately as to
literature or rather, who belong to literature because their great
1916.] THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY 79
art had first so passionately loved and belonged to life! This,
surely, is the truth of Pater's much misinterpreted mandate to
crowd " as many pulsations as possible into the given time " those
great passions which give us a " quickened sense of life." It is not
to play at life that he is counseling, to experiment heedlessly with
the good and the evil. But " not to discriminate every moment
some passionate attitude in those about us is, on this short
day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening."
Not so did William Shakespeare sleep. In scarcely more than
half a century of remarkably sane, remarkably industrious and
none too wildly adventurous a life, he seems to have run the
gamut of human experience. As all the world knows he was the
son of a burgess (later high-bailiff) of Stratford a prosperous
farmer and glover by trade. His mother, Mary Arden, was of
gentler birth and of no small inheritance : a daughter of those
Warwickshire Ardens whose gentility was older than the Normans,
and whose Catholic faith proved, in most instances, stronger than
Elizabethan tyranny. The poet had that rural youth which most
of us would love to look back upon youth in the rich, sweet Strat-
ford country. He had the usual grammar school instruction of his
day; the usual amusements of hunting (not to say poaching!) pag-
eant-seeing, even play-acting, when visiting companies of actors
came to the Guild hall. And when tie was something past eighteen
years, he married Mistress Ann Hathaway, a widow eight years his
senior, of the neighboring town of Shottery. Shottery was very
" papistical " in those days ; it had an upper room where Mass was
celebrated from time to time, and where, according to an interesting
tradition, Shakespeare's first religious marriage (not of course, a
legal one) was performed. 1 Their first child was born the follow-
ing May; and twins in the year 1585. Much bootless writing has
been expended to prove that the marriage was happy, or again, un-
happy: bootless first of all because most human relationships are
both happy and unhappy, but doubly bootless in the artist's story!
It is enough that Shakespeare had his care-free youth and his young
romance. When, in 1587, his father's fortunes made hopeless ship-
wreck, he was ready to set out for the new life of London to re-
pair the fortunes alike of the elder people and of the young family
he had founded. Very possibly he had already some relations with
Lord Strange's (later known as the Lord Chamberlain's) Company,
'For the discussion of this point and many kindred ones, see Dr. James J.
Walsh's valuable pamphlet Was Shakespeare a Catholic f in the Catholic Mind Series.
80 THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY [April,
which had played in Stratford during that same year. At any rate
men turn to their own without over-much pushing. A Shakespeare
will find his theatre whether or not fate bids him for awhile hold
horses at its entrance !
The chronology of Shakespeare's dramas is exceedingly diffi-
cult to ascertain. Love's Labour's Lost is usually conceded as his
first play ; but there seems little doubt that during those early years
in London he was kept busy revising or else collaborating upon
those chronicle histories for which the London stage was avid to-
ward the end of the sixteenth century. It is just a little startling
for us, who see modern drama fighting for its life against the in-
roads of the motion picture, to remember that Elizabethan Lon-
don a town of not more than one hundred and twenty-five thou-
sand people supported five theatres, and this when the attendance
of women was only under sufferance ! A score of eager dramatists
were at work Lodge, Green, Kyd, Marlowe later the learned
and dear Ben Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Heywood, Middleton ! In the new, vibrant national sense
which had come to England, drama was in the very breath and life
of the people. Noble and common alike thronged to the play houses,
until the Queen forbade performances on Thursdays, lest the ancient
and honorable amusement of bear-baiting should perish from
neglect !
Romeo and Juliet was the first of Shakespeare's immortal
tragedies; it was printed in 1597, with Richard III. and
Richard II. Then followed more histories, later comedies such as
Much Ado, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. From the very
beginning of the seventeenth century, our " sweetest Shakespeare "
reveals himself as dominated by a high and profound seriousness :
the seriousness of Measure for Measure, of All's Well That Ends
Well, and of that tragic series which began with Julius Ccesar,
and including Hamlet, Othello, Lear and Macbeth ended with
Antony and Cleopatra or Timon of Athens. After 1608 the poet,
or perhaps his London, appears to have craved some lightening of
the burden; and Shakespeare, the ever-variable, before retiring to
Stratford, gave the world those gracious and elusive romances (as
Professor Dowden calls them) of Cymbeline, The Tempest and
The Winter's Tale. His final work was, of course, in 1613, upon
Henry VIII. a particularly noble drama marred by Fletcher's par-
ticularly incoherent last act.
William Shakespeare was a large shareholder in the company
1916.] THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY 81
which produced his plays. He was a somewhat smaller actor, tra-
dition identifying him with the roles of Adam in As You Like It
and the Ghost in Hamlet. With his sublime poetic insight and
superhuman sympathy, he carried the treasure of a prac-
tically balanced mind. It was not by accident that Master William
Shakespeare, gentleman and landowner, was able to return to
Stratford some five years before his death with a liberal compe-
tency, to live gently and leisurely amongst his own family and his
own well-ordered farms !
There is something enormously winsome about this rounded
personality this poet who contrived to be so unconscious a genius
and so conscious a fellow-mortal at the same time. He has en-
deared himself to all sorts of people: to scholars and to children,
to actors and practical politicians, to esthetes and ascetics. There
are particular reasons why he is dear to Catholics. In the first
place, there are excellent credibilities for believing him to have
been one of us. A thousand circumstances of his life the avoidance
of Anglican worship, his consorting with Catholics in London, his
abstention from any tribute at the time of Elizabeth's death, the
phrasing of his Will, and the Stratford tradition, persistent from
the seventeenth century, that he " dyed a Papist " all carry weight.
All are, of course, inconclusive. There is scarcely a time in his-
tory when it is more difficult to ascertain a man's exact religion
unless that man be a martyr or a high noble than this turbulent
reign of Elizabeth. The outward legal " conformity " must have
seemed, at first, to matter so little ! Henry had worked and Mary
had counter- worked, until the " Established " Church seemed very
much a matter of royal whim. Little by little men realized that
an Act of Parliament had stolen their sacraments that a cataclysm
had come in supernatural things. Then sprang up the bitterness of
attack and defence : then, indeed, whoso was not against repudiated
Catholicism was to be counted with her! In this unparalleled bit-
terness Shakespeare had no part; or, rather, he had the part of
allaying it in the artist's potent yet impersonal way. He was writ-
ing histories : there was a way. He was dealing with problems of
Catholic conscience in his plays: there was another way. Many
of the other dramatists delighted in scenes attacking the old Church
and defaming her religious. But Shakespeare gave us Friar
Lawrence; his monks move through the plays as figures of mercy;
and this is how he speaks of the orisons of Isabel's convent:
VOL. cm, 6
82 THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY [April,
true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there
Ere sunrise ; prayers from preserved souls,
From fasting maids whose minds are dedicate
To nothing temporal.
Those who find a few political passages in King John over-bitter,
would do well to read the candid strictures of Everyman or Piers
Plowman, and many another frank b;ut faithful mediaeval protest
against the human side of mighty Mother Church. After that, they
would do well to remember that Richard II. had to be taken off
the London stage because of its supposed aspersions upon Elizabeth.
And, finally, there is the enormous courage of Shakespeare's Henry
VIIL, a play designed to glorify, to justify, almost to apotheosize
the Queen. Yet Shakespeare centres the entire interest in the re-
pudiated Katharine of Aragon; he traces Wolsey's fall and the
King's break with Rome like a lawyer ; while in Henry's " dainty
one," Anne Boleyn, he gives us either his one lay-figure or else
the consummate hypocrite of all his dramatic gallery. Anne smiles
as inscrutably as Monna Lisa; she achieves her purpose, like Shaw's
later Anne, but gives us never one hint of her own heart. Small
wonder that the more complaisant Fletcher was pressed into serv-
ice for the last act !
After all, the real question here is not whether Shakespeare
himself was a Catholic. That is a matter which concerned most
momentously himself and his Maker. What concerns posterity is
the attitude of his art toward the Catholic conscience of life. This
attitude, as has been pointed out, was one of unfailing reverence
toward the old Church, and her sacraments. It was even an atti-
tude of unity and understanding. In his candor and his complexity,
his boldness and his humbleness, his patience with the sins and
foibles of men, his fealty to the high and costly ideals of life,
Shakespeare might almost stand as a symbol of the mysterious
inclus'weness of Catholicism. That is why Carlyle spoke of him
as the " noblest product" of the religion which England was by way
of " abolishing." That is why Heinrich Heine, in his oft-quoted
passage, declared with so curious an insight :
It is lucky for us that Shakespeare came just at the right
time, that he was a contemporary of Elizabeth and James,
while Protestantism, it is true, expressed itself in the unbridled
freedom of thought which prevailed, but which had not yet
I9i6.] THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY 83
entered into life or feeling, and the kingdom lighted by the
last rays of setting chivalry still bloomed and gleamed in all
the glory of poetry. True, the popular faith of the Middle
Ages, or Catholicism, was gone as regarded doctrine, but it
existed as yet with all its magic in men's hearts, and held its
own in manners, customs and views
These are the particular reasons (if such be needed) why
Catholics are most warmly concerned in the right celebration of
Shakespeare's tercentenary. His drama, in the large, is at one
with our ethics and our affections.
Of course, it would be absurd to deny that there are minor
objections, even upon moral grounds, to some few Shakespearean
passages. Every once in awhile some new critic discovers these,
and is as scandalously horrified as good Lamartine. But the fact
is that these are really objections to Elizabethan habits of speech
and manners, and that they apply far more strongly to Shake-
speare's contemporaries than to the poet himself. The language of
his day was plain, speaking of gross things grossly and light things
lightly. Modern ears are offended by all this. Moreover we love
in spite of the newspapers! to believe that to-day is better than
yesterday, and that to-morrow will be better than both! We be-
lieve that we are a little more decent and a little more humane than
our forefathers. Now whether this is a matter of manners or of
morals a deeper stratum of Christianity or merely another layer
of civilization Time and the Wise Men must determine. Mean-
while (and rightly), we cut short the garrulities of Juliet's nurse,
we edit Hamlet's words to Ophelia, and we, who find no fault with
Sardou's Tosca, wince at the plain, bitter words of Measure for
Measure. It is all very good : the clock hands do not turn back-
ward. Still, it remained for our own sophisticated nineteenth cen-
tury to present such a theme as Monna Vanna surely one of the
ugliest in modern dramatic literature in the perfect verbal chastity
of Maeterlinck. Shakespeare would have been far more brutal and
far more true!
There are tw r o sentences from Aristotle which Shakespeare's
plays are always bringing to one's mind. The first is that " a work
of art must be full of beauty, agreeable, desirable, and morally
worthy." What more perfect summing up of Much Ado, or The
Winter's Tale or Julius Ccesar or The Tempest? Then there is that
immortal dictum that tragedy "purifies the mind by terror and pity."
Terror and Pity! What words could more perfectly concentrate
84 THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY [April,
the message of Lear, of Othello, of Hamlet, of Macbeth? Scarcely
in all history have a man's vices and virtues been more pitilessly
catalogued than Cardinal Wolsey's : what with his own words, and
the King's, and Katharine's and Griffith's, we have little left to
learn of him who found worldly honors
a burden
Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven.
Yet who is not purified by the confession of this great one fal-
len low ?
I have ventur'd,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory ;
But far beyond my depth : my high-blown pride
At length broke under me ; and now has left me
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me
Let's dry our eyes : and thus far hear me, Cromwell :
And when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of say, I taught thee ;
Say, Wolsey that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor
Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in ;
A sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd it
Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee :
be just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's and truth's
O Cromwell, Cromwell,
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I serv'd my king, He would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies
Shakespeare does not compromise with the eternal verities. His
enormous moral Tightness is always shining out of the stories ; the
fact that, for all his impassioned love of men, his sympathy was
fundamentally " on the side of the angels." He does not let sin
triumph save in its own deluge of death and disenchantment. He
is ingenious to bring good out of evil. Something of this large and
serene view is lost when modern managers omit the last scene of
Romeo and Juliet, or ring down the curtain before the young king,
I 9 i6.] THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY 85
who is to right old wrongs in Denmark, draws near the dead and
heart-broken Hamlet. But it was not lost in the dramatist's con-
ception. To hate the sin yet love the sinner was his achievement:
how difficult a one we know not merely from the modern novel and
drama, but from our own lives as well !
Only supreme love could have seen men and women as Shake-
speare saw them: as only supreme genius could so have painted
them ! He has no types, no caricatures : even his fools are human
beings, at once pitiable and variable and glad ! Consider the comic
pathos of Malvolio! Consider the humanness of his so different
kings on their march toward death ! And then, the vivid vitality
of his women, tragic or merry or mighty or frail the women who
have filled volumes of criticism, for Shakespeare was the greatest
feminist of them all. What wizard was this Master William of
Stratford to pierce the heart of a Portia and a Juliet, a Cleopatra
and a Miranda? How should he sound the depths and heights,
registering every half-tone of the feminine music? For a lesser
man it would have been so easy to portray Isabel as a mere symbol
or type of chastity! But Shakespeare shows her, when her hour
strikes, rich in that other great virtue which is not always the com-
panion of chastity: forgiving Angelo, and begging his life from
the avenging duke.
A charming interpreter of Shakespeare 2 has recently com-
mented upon the astonishing freshness and modernity of Shake-
peare's women the fact that they are so much nearer to us than the
women of early nineteenth century literature. But are not his men,
in perhaps a lesser sense, also our contemporaries ? What more mod-
ern than the blase and cynical Jaques ? What more modern than the
problems of Hamlet, eternal tragedy of the subjective soul brought
face to face with objective wrong image, as he might be, of many
a harassed ruler of the world to-day? All these complex subtleties
of life were clear to Shakespeare: the provocation as well as the
cruelty of Shylock, the nobility and the madness of Othello, the
infinite, hopeless pity of the stricken Macbeth
*
Tomorrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle
'Miss Viola Allen in the New York Times.
86 THE SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARY [April,
God, God forgive us all! might almost be taken as the keynote
of Shakespeare's drama : not the laxity of Beaumont and Fletcher's
easy tolerance ; not the modern spirit, curious and indefinite, which
withholds judgment because it is frankly uncertain by what canons
to judge, but a very different thing. George Meredith's summing
up of Shakespeare was eternally right:
Thy greatest knew thee, Mother Earth ; unsour'd
He knew thy sons. He prob'd from hell to hell
Of human passions, but of love deflower 'd
His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well.
Love does not tolerate; love is not blind; love understands.
Genius alone can achieve much in this world; it may even
attain to a centenary of greatness. But when men are coerced into
a tercentenary celebration, we may be sure that genius has not
stood alone, but has mated him with love. Only from such parent-
hood are the sons of the morning, the supreme artists born : genius,
which Hugo's fine words have described as " a promontory jutting
out into the infinite;" and love, which so far as human speech
may define her at all, is just a spark thrown out from the living
forge of God !
THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION.
BY JOSEPH V. MCKEE, M.A.
ITHIN the past month serious charges have been
brought against the private charitable institutions of
New York City. The Strong Commission, appointed
for the purpose of investigating the work done by
these institutions, has heard evidence which tended to
show that conditions in the various homes and asylums caring for de-
pendent children are discreditable and reprehensible. It has been
declared that gross carelessness and culpable mismanagement mark
the administration of these places. The asseverations of witnesses
before Commissioner Strong have been of the gravest character,
and because of their sensational nature have received wide pub-
lication by the metropolitan press. These charges have been made
against institutions which, up to this time, enjoyed fair names and
favorable reputations. In particular they have been brought against
establishments under Roman Catholic auspices.
The investigation that has brought out these indictments has
been conducted in such a way as to arouse bitter feeling and re-
crimination. Eminently unfair and seemingly prejudiced, the per-
sons furthering the work of the investigating committee have
brought upon themselves a well-deserved suspicion that their present
activities arise from unworthy motives. But to the citizen inter-
ested in the proper expenditure of his city's funds and to the
Catholic jealous of the good name of the men and women who have
consecrated their lives to the care of the poor, the point at issue
is not the motives actuating those responsible for the charges that
are made. It would be interesting and enlightening to know those
motives. But it would be most futile to impugn their motives and
not be able to refute their statements. The real issue is : Are the
charges brought against the Catholic institutions true? Is it true,
as affirmed, that the characteristics of our Catholic orphanages are
uncleanliness, carelessness and other marks of gross mismanage-
ment? Can we assert with truth that the conditions described by
the Kingsbury investigators as prevailing in Catholic establish-
ments do not exist in fact ? These are the points at issue. Personal
THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION [April,
recrimination cannot prove that the testimony given by the investi-
gators is false, unwarranted and unjust. This can be done only by
presenting facts. What are they?
It is necessary, before considering the specific charges brought
against our institutions, to outline briefly the history of the present
investigation. When Mayor Mitchel entered office he appointed
John A. Kingsbury, Commissioner of Charities. Mr. Kingsbury
had had wide experience in professional charitable work, and had
acted for some time as Secretary to the State Charities Aid Asso-
ciation. This is a private organization which has a membership roll
of over fourteen hundred. It has no official power, but performs
work of general charity. In addition it takes upon itself the task
of seeing that private charitable organizations of quasi-public
character comply with the various State and municipal laws. In
the execution of its purpose it expends over one hundred thousand
dollars annually. The leader of the association which wields tre-
mendous influence is Homer Folks.
All charitable institutions in New York State which receive
public moneys are under the supervision of the State Board of
Charities. This commission inspects and supervises the various
institutions, and determines the standard of efficiency thought neces-
sary for the proper care of dependent children. If this standard
is met by an institution, the State Board issues a certificate stating
that conditions there are satisfactory, and that the State or city may
commit children to that place. Up to the present time the local
Department of Charities acted upon these certificates. When the
city commits a child to one of these approved institutions, it pays
the proper authorities two dollars and fifty cents a week for the
child's maintenance, and seven cents a day for its education, with an
additional seven cents allowance if the child also receives vocational
training.
Not long after Mr. Kingsbury had begun active work as Com-
missioner of Charities, there developed a well-defined struggle
between the New York City Department of Charities and the State
Board. The object of the struggle was, on the part of the State
Board, to retain its power of control and supervision over the
private charitable institutions and, on the part of Mr. Kingsbury,
to wrest this control from the State Board. The members of the
State Board held that this authority was theirs by the right vested
in them by the Constitution. Mr. Kingsbury claimed that as it was
the city's money that was spent and not the State's, this control
I9i6.] THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION 89
should rest with the municipal authorities. The present Strong in-
vestigation is a direct outcome of this struggle, and a means used
by Mr. Kingsbury to attain his purpose. Since 1914 the fight has
taken on a serious aspect.
It was at this time that Mr. Kingsbury declared, in a report
to the Mayor of New York, that the State Board showed laxity
in the performance of its duty. He stated that it inspected private
institutions " with both eyes closed or with one suspicious and one
drooping eye." He affirmed that conditions were such as " to
warrant a special inquiry into this branch of the State government
by the Governor or the Legislature."
This report was submitted to Mr. George McAneny, then
Acting Mayor, who forwarded it to Governor Whitman. While
the Governor was considering Mr. Kingsbury's petition for an
investigation of the State Board, Mr. Folks, head of the State
Charities Aid Association, threw the weight of his influence on the
side of the City Commissioner of Charities, and urged Governor
Whitman to appoint a commissioner to hear charges against the
State Board. This Mr. Whitman did. He appointed Charles A.
Strong to sit as commissioner to hear evidence in support of the
charges made by Mr. Kingsbury.
In order to substantiate the charges which he made in his
report, Mr. Kingsbury began a secret investigation of all private
institutions receiving moneys from New York City. To conduct
this investigation, he appointed a committee consisting of Second
Deputy Commissioner of Charities, William J. Doherty, Dr. Lude-
wig B. Bernstein and Mr. R. R. Reeder. The work of this com-
mittee was not to study conditions prevailing in the various insti-
tutions, with the idea of remedying the defects that might be found.
It was not its purpose to offer any suggestions to the institutions for
their betterment, nor even to consider the question of improvement
at all. Its work was solely to gather evidence to show that the con-
ditions were not as they should be, because of the laxity of the
State Board of Charities in its supervision and control of these
places. Mr. Kingsbury had charged that the State Board inspected
institutions " with both eyes closed or with one suspicious and one
drooping eye." He had to have supporting evidence, and he com-
missioned Mr. Doherty and his associates to get it.
This is the history of the investigation. The whole contro-
versy has been a struggle between the State Board of Charities and
Mr. Kingsbury for control of the charities situation in New York
90 THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION [April,
City. Once freed of the restraint placed upon his activities by the
State Board, Mr. Kingsbury would be absolute master over all in-
stitutions receiving moneys from New York City. His control
would be unlimited. He could dictate conditions to all quasi-public
charitable establishments regarding the management of the institu-
tions and the care of the children, and force them to comply with
whatever regulations he might will to impose upon them.
So long as this struggle between the State Board of Charities
and Mr. Kingsbury and his supporters remained a purely political
one, the whole question deserved only the same degree of atten-
tions demanded by other phases of home rule government for New
York City. But when Mr. Kingsbury, for the purpose of destroy-
ing a political foe, assails the character of respectable men and
women, the matter can no longer remain merely political. When
he stoops to unfairness, misrepresentation and untruth to worst his
opponents, and to further his plans makes the innocent seem guilty,
the question becomes one of justice. When for the purpose of prov-
ing a cause, he mis-states effects and creates false impressions, the
whole thing becomes universal and insistent in its appeal to right
thinking men. No person with a love for justice can stand aside
and see innocent, defenceless men and women, who by the very
sanctity of their lives are incapacitated to fight back, misrepresented
by political Machiavellis.
It is on this ground, the broad ground of truth and justice,
that the issue of the present investigation must be met. And it can
be met in this way squarely and without equivocation. An unbiased
examination of the charges made against our Catholic institutions,
and an unprejudiced inspection of these same establishments,
will show that the charges are unfair in statement and untrue in
fact.
In 1914, Mr. Doherty's committee, whose purpose was then
unknown, visited the private charitable institutions which received
financial assistance from New York City. When the present hear-
ings were in progress, the members of this committee came forward
with evidence based upon their visits in 1914 to support Mr. Kings-
bury's contention that the State Board inspected private institutions
" with both eyes closed or with one suspicious and one drooping
eye." The investigators charged that conditions in the private in-
stitutions they reported on were " shocking," " filthy," " cruel," and
" worse than anything in Oliver Twist." The evidence tended to
show that uncleanliness, carelessness and culpable neglect marked
1916.] THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION 91
the management of these institutions, among which were placed a
number of Roman Catholic establishments.
This evidence, that conditions were " shocking," " filthy,"
" cruel," and " worse than anything in Oliver Twist," is not sup-
ported by facts. Of all the institutions mentioned, the one most
discreditably spoken of was the orphan asylum of the Mission of
the Immaculate Virgin. Since the gravest charges have been made
against this institution, a just consideration of conditions there will
adequately show the falsity of the evidence gven at the investiga-
tion, and will be a useful means of judging the truth and fairness
of the whole proceedings.
The country home of the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin is
situated at Mt. Loretto, Staten Island, and consists of an or-
phanage for boys and girls. The tract of land upon which the
buildings are situated is about one mile square and is ideally located.
It has a splendid view of the lower New York bay, and is one of
the most healthful spots in New York. The buildings for the boys
consists of one large main building and six cottages, housing one
hundred boys each. The girls' division has its own buildings, with
a special home for the smaller children.
Armed with pencil and notebook and giving no warning of my
coming, I visited Mt. Loretto one day and inspected, as far as was
humanly possible, every part and division of that institution. No
effort was made to restrain me; I was helped in every way to see
things as they are in the daily life of the place. And what is
more significant, I saw them exactly as did the Kingsbury investi-
gators.
As the present investigation was unexpected, it could not have
induced the Sisters to make any special improvements before the
present hearings. The time that has elapsed since then has been too
short to allow any change from the " filthy " conditions seen by the
investigators to that of the wholesome cleanliness which I saw, with-
out a revolution that would have left unmistakable traces on the
premises and the inmates. Such evidence was totally absent. From
questions put to the boys I learned that no " cleaning up " had been
made nor any other parade measures taken to vitiate the evidence
given at the investigation. From a number of the lay hired help,
I received the information that conditions on that day were
typical in every respect of the institution as viewed by the investi-
gators.
These investigators stated on the witness stand that conditions
92 THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION [April,
in the dining-rooms and kitchens were unclean. They affirmed that
the boys were badly nourished, unkempt and offensive in their con-
duct at table. I entered the dining-room when the boys were at
dinner, sat down with them, ate and enjoyed the meal that was
served. It consisted of corn beef and cabbage, tea and bread and
butter. The food was wholesome, clean, well-served and abundant.
The boys seemed to relish it. If the boys acted like " pigs," as
stated, I saw no evidence of it, and anyone who knows boys can be
sure that they do not change their habits on short notice. I have
had long experience with boys, and I can unqualifiedly say that the
poor streetlings of Mt. Loretto, who are there because nobody else
wants them, compare favorably in dress, nourishment and conduct
with the majority of boys attending the public schools of New
York City.
After dinner I visited the kitchens at a moment most unfavor-
able for pleasing impressions when the dish washing was going
on and the after meal effects were at their height. The work was in
charge of cleanly dressed women, assisted by boys assigned to these
tasks. The cement floors were clean, the tables were tidy, and the
implements used in sanitary condition. As a whole the kitchens
resembled those of a well-kept hotel. Up-to-date machinery is in
use wherever possible. A Vortex Dish Washer is used for cleaning
the dishes, and all milk, coffee, tea, soup and other foodstuffs are
prepared in copper boilers installed by the Duparquet, Huot and
Moneuse Company. These implements were not new and had been
in use previous to the Strong investigation. I examined everyone
of these utensils and found them to be absolutely clean. The tables
were scrubbed clean, down to the fibre.
From the kitchen I went to the bakery, where over eight hundred
loaves of bread are baked daily. There everything was spotless.
They have eight ovens, the dough being mixed by electricity, the
J. H. Day Bread Mixer being used. The butcher shop was sanitary
and clean in every detail. Besides these places I visited the ice
plant, the power house, the electrical plant and the plumbing and
steam-fitting shops. They were clean, well-kept and modern in
every way. Not a single place showed evidence of new paint, ad-
ditions or any other signs of " house-cleaning."
The Kingsbury investigators offered evidence to show a care-
lessness in the physical care of the boys. The charge was made that
there was only one toothbrush for over one hundred and twenty
boys, and that there was other laxity in the supervision of sanitary
1916.] THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION 93
work. I visited the wash-rooms and found the arrangements ade-
quate for the proper care of the boys. There are basins to accom-
modate ninety-six boys at a time. Each boy has, within a private
numbered compartment, an individual comb, brush, toothbrush and
towel. Each article is numbered. A book containing the names of
the boys and their official number hangs "on the wall close by. I
examined this book and then examined the different compartments,
and in every instance found them to contain the proper articles
correctly marked. This arrangement was in effect when the investi-
gators visited the place; the compartments showed that they had
been in use for a long period of time. A prefect sees to it that no
boy leaves the wash-room until he has washed himself properly.
Every Friday each boy in the institution must go under the shower.
After a sound scrubbing he passes into another room, where he re-
ceives clean, fresh garments. As he goes out he is checked up to
see that he has made the proper changes. If, as the investigators
declared, the boys suffered from vermin, the cases were not typical
ones. Every Friday the Sisters in charge take the boys, class by
class, and use individually numbered fine combs. If conditions are
unsanitary after these honest and efficient efforts, the fault cannot
be laid to those in charge.
The statement that there was only one toothbrush for over
one hundred and twenty boys was a most unfair one. It is the
custom of the Sisters to collect the children's brushes for steriliza-
tion. It so happened at the time of this particular investigation that
all the brushes had been collected, except one. An inquiry would
have disclosed the reason for the absence of the other brushes, but
none was made. This is the truth of the matter. Yet the investi-
gator under oath declared that there was only one toothbrush for
over one hundred and twenty boys. Such a charge was un-
warranted, unjust and cruel to the Sisters who are giving up their
lives for the welfare of the waifs who come to them.
The Kingsbury investigators endeavored to bring out on the
stand that the dental records had been changed and, in some in-
stances, not kept at all. I saw Dr. Bedell, the dentist, who visits
Mt. Loretto once a week to take care of the children's teeth. He
has been attending the institution for years. He is not a Catholic.
He declared that the charges made by the investigators were unfair
and untruthful. He personally had kept a proper record of all
work done. As we stood talking, he lined up the boys who chanced
to be passing and we examined their teeth. In every instance the
94 THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION [April,
boys' teeth were clean and sound a condition that could result only
from constant and painstaking care. It must be remembered, too,
that these boys are the outcasts of society, who up to this time
have received no proper care. When they come to the asylum they
are in the worst possible physical condition. Dr. Bedell told me
of a case in point. He asked a boy if he had ever had a toothbrush
and if he used it. " Yes," the lad replied, " I shined my shoes with
it." When I think back on the conditions at Mt. Loretto and think
of the homes of many of our city boys, I feel thankful that there
are so many under the splendid care of the Sisters.
I visited all the dormitories, and personally took down a num-
ber of beds which were then made up. I found them clean and in-
viting. The conditions enumerated in the Board of Health permit
posted in every room were met in every particular.
With regard to the good physical condition of the boys I found
irrefutable evidence in a visit to the infirmary. There are over
one thousand boys at Mt. Loretto. In the infirmary I found only
three who were ill. One had a stomachache, the other was con-
valescing from pneumonia and the third had a cold. The records
show that the average number of children sick is only five a day!
When we consider that there are one thousand and nine boys to be
taken care of, we can be sure that on this basis there can be no
just complaint regarding the zeal of the Sisters to safeguard their
charges.
The education of the children was criticized by one investigator
as " bookish and inhibitive." Yet the whole course of study pursued
at Mt. Loretto is identical with the work done in the public schools,
and the curriculum is based upon the New York City Syllabus. The
Sisters in charge of the boys' education have taken the two years'
course given for teachers at the College of the City of New York,
in order to equip themselves adequately for their work. The boys in
these institutions are for most part children of the streets, of low
mentality, and, at the time of reception, backward in schooling. Most
of them, eleven, twelve and thirteen years of age, on entering report
they were still in 3 A and 36 in the public school. (A grade for a
normal child of eight. ) Yet with this fearful material the Sisters are
doing marvelous things and getting wonderful results. In the Re-
gents' Examinations the Sisters sent up one hundred and forty-five
candidates, and had only twenty-nine fail. This is an average of
eighty per cent success. The pupils of the public elementary schools
are not required to pass the Regents' tests, and therefore no compari-
1916.] THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATTON 95
son can be made. I think there are about three city High Schools
that average much over eighty per cent in these examinations.
Besides class-room work the boys receive vocational training
in carpentry, shoemaking, tailoring, knitting, printing,, dairying and
farming. The boys have commission government with student
officers. They publish a magazine, participate in clubs, enjoy the
benefits of a well equipped library, gymnasium and recreation-
room.
These are the facts just as I found them. Who, therefore,
in the face of this evidence, can hold that conditions are " shock-
ing," " cruel," " filthy," and " worse than anything in Oliver
Twist? " The more I saw at Loretto the more I marveled at
the testimony given at the Strong investigation.
Yet for all the care and attention which the Sisters give the
poor boys committed to their care, the city pays two dollars and
fifty cents a week for maintenance. When we consider the high
cost of foodstuffs, of clothing and other necessaries, we can see
that little can be saved from the allowance. A mother or father
with growing boys will appreciate how insignificant this allowance
is. For the child's education the city pays seven cents a day, with
an additional allowance of seven cents if the child also receives
vocational training. The child's education in one of these institu-
tions, therefore, costs the city seven dollars a year. In the public
school the cost of educating the same child would be over thirty-
five dollars.
From the foregoing facts we can see the unfairness and in-
justice of the charges made against that institution. And the condi-
tions at Mt. Loretto are the same as are to be found in all our
Catholic institutions. I chose Mt. Loretto because it seemed es-
pecially to be under fire. But I know the state of conditions in the
Protectory, in St. John's Home in Brooklyn, and in the other
asylums in and about New York City, and I can say that they
are managed with the best interest of the children always first
in the hearts and minds of those in charge. Dr. George A. Leitner,
a man of high standing in his profession, is the visiting physician
at Sparkill and Blauvelt. He testifies that the conditions there are
as good as can be found in most homes. He found these institu-
tions clean, sanitary and well-kept. Sparkill uses four hundred
quarts of milk daily, and its monthly meat bill amounts to over one
thousand dollars. Again we have actual facts with which to refute
the false impressions given at the investigation.
96 THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION [April,
At the present moment, New York City has no facilities for
taking care of its dependent children. Consequently no comparison
can be made regarding the comparative cost of maintenance. The
Catholic Church has fifteen institutions supporting about twenty-
five thousand children. Over four hundred Sisters are devoting
their lives without salary to the care of these children. When
we think of the splendid work they are doing, the moral influence
for good they are exerting and the actual value in services they
are gratuitously giving the city, we cannot help but feel the injus-
tice of Dr. Reeder's testimony when he said, " Yes, sir, there is a
scramble to get children because public funds help to build up their
plants. Such funds might also be used to help build up religious
orders."
We Catholics know why our Sisters are anxious to get chil-
dren and willing to accept even those others reject. It is not be-
cause of financial reasons. An examination of the records shows
the falsity of any statement to the contrary. In 1913 the Catholic
Church received $2,717,691.67 from the city and expended $4,544,-
564.00. It is because these holy women have heard the words of
Christ : " Suffer the little children to come unto Me." They know
that when they are helping these poor motherless children, they are
doing the work of Christ. When we consider the holy lives these
Sisters live, when we contemplate the sacrifices they make in order
to perform their tasks of love for which they do not receive or look
for any material reward, we find it hard to believe that they would
allow cruelty, filth, carelessness and laxity to mark the places they
have made sacred by their presence. But even though we were
willing to believe, we could not, in justice, admit the truth of
these charges in the face of facts that are patent and incontro-
vertible.
The cause that led to the Strong investigation was a political
one. In Mr. Kingsbury's eyes the State Board of Charities has
exercised a power which he deems should be concentrated in the
local Department of Charities. He wished that power taken away,
and he has used his own methods to accomplish his end. To show
the inutility of the State Board, he had to show a deplorable state of
affairs in the institutions under the supervision of that body. His
assistants have tried to serve him well, but in that service they
were unfair, unjust and, it would appear, untruthful. As a result
men and women of blameless character and sterling worth are
made to suffer.
I 9 i6.] THE CHARITIES INVESTIGATION 97
But back of this political contest there seems to be a deeper
purpose. There are influences at work, powerful financial in-
fluences, which seem to be striving to accomplish some definite
aim. Is it possible that these agencies are working to take all our
charities from those now administering them and place them in
the hands of "professional" chanty workers? Is it possible that
these agencies would be willing to see our Sisters excluded from
their present fields of labor, so as to provide work for members of
their own organizations? Is it possible that these agencies are
even working toward this under the guise of other interests ? These
are no idle questions ! The answers ? We must watch and watch
vigilantly.
It is difficult to determine the outcome of the Strong investi-
gation. We cannot know what will be the consequences, immediate
or remote. But this we do know: that facts have been mis-
represented, unjust impressions given and unfair reputations foisted
upon institutions accomplishing great good for the poor children
of our city. And against this unjust treatment, against this un-
warranted attack, we must protest and protest most vigorously.
VOL. cm. 7
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER VII.
UT on the evening of the twenty-seventh Walcott found
that he was not so unwilling to accept Mrs. Bolivar's
invitation as he had been when the suggestion was
first made to him. Polly would be there. As a child
she had always held a tender place in his affections,
and now the admission of her into his new life had
been like the turning on of a half light in a darkened room. Memories
leaped from the shadows, familiar faces haunted him, little episodes,
that he had counted mere erasures, claimed an indelible character
in the warmth of Polly's presence. Since the first shock of meeting
her was over he could question her diplomatically; that first day at
the Capitol he had made many blunders. Life seemed full of re-
habilitated interests as he approached the stately old-fashioned house
that the Bolivars had been fortunate enough to find after weeks of
impatient hunting. The Senator, in the first joy of relief and posses-
sion, had given Walcott a latch key to the front door, begging him
to come and go as a member of the family. One room would always
be reserved for him.
To-night he entered without ceremony, but, in his new role of
formal dinner guest, he was a little uncertain as to what was expected
of him, and as he stood in the full glare of the chandelier he heard
an appealing voice calling cautiously over the banisters : " Wally,
Wally, is it you?"
He looked up smiling. Bobby, one of the twins, was seated in
the gloom of the landing; he was dressed for bed in long night-
drawers, his straight hair, trimmed " Dutch cut " after the fashion
of the times, shone like a nimbus about his rosy cherubic face.
" Hello," said Walcott ignoring the new butler who came stiffly
from the pantry to inspect the intruding guest ; " what are you doing
up there?"
" I I'm just lookin'. Come up ; it's a fine place to see."
The invitation was irresistible. With four strides Walcott cleared
the flight of steps and joined his young godson upon the landing.
" You are going to catch your death of cold," he said with forced
severity, and he took the child in his arms and wrapped his long
overcoat around him.
I9i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 99
" No, I won't" declared the small culprit ; " these nighties have
feet; and he held out his toes for inspection. Have you come to
the party? "
" Yes, I believe it is a plot of your mother's, but I seem to have
missed my destination."
Bobby liked high-sounding words, and usually interpreted them
correctly. " Don't you like parties ? " he hesitatingly inquired.
" No, I hate 'em."
" Do you s'pose she likes parties ? "
"Who is she?"
" The new lady Miss Polly. She's come to stay with us, but I
guess she won't like us."
"Why, Bobs?"
"Well, most people don't," he said resignedly with a shake of
his yellow hair.
"Don't I like you?"
" Yes, but you're a man."
" Doesn't your mother like you ? She's not a man."
" But she's a mother. Mothers like everybody."
" Oh, do they ? I'm glad to hear it that let's me in you see."
" Yes," agreed Bobby without much interest, struggling to rid
himself of the engulfing coat. " You've got a hole in your pocket
lining. I thought it was a pocket with chewing gum, but it's a hole.
Why don't your wife sew it up ? "
" I haven't got a wife."
"Then why don't you get one? "
Walcott laughed and snuggled the child closer in his arms. " Any
advice to offer, Bobs? How do you go about it? "
"Why why you just get married."
" Oh, you do, do you ? And what do you know about it ? "
Bobby lay quiet for a moment lost in reflection. " The cook's
going to," he said at last. " She's going to marry the policeman on
the beat the fat one without any neck."
" A policeman without a neck ! I never heard of one. What does
he do with his head? "
Bobby was silent a moment. " Well you see he has a chin, and
that sort of fits in his collar."
" But what does he do in the back? "
Bobby was at loss for a moment, then he added triumphantly:
" I guess his collar sort of hangs to his hair."
Walcott laughed. " Bobs, you're a wonder. I wish I could take
you to the party."
" There isn't any use wishing," responded his small godson. " I've
been wishing too. One of them came true."
ioo TRANSMIGRATION [April,
"Which one?"
"Well, I was wishing you would come upstairs and then then
I was wishing you would bring me your ice cream it's the pink
kind the cook told me so. If you would bring it up, just your
dish full and put in two spoons, I'd give Jack half. He's asleep,
but I'll wake him. If you can't find two spoons, don't mind, I can
eat mine with a stick."
"A stick!"
"Well, I've got one and it's fine to eat with. It looks like the
top of piano keys. It was a part of mother's fan we broke it yes-
terday; Jack broke most. It's white, so it won't have germs."
" Germs! Bobby, what do you know about germs? "
"Well, I hear mother talking about them. I think I think
they're bugs, but I've never seen 'em. I don't see why it matters
eatin' bugs you can't see. I ate a worm once in a chestnut and it
didn't do nothin'. I think that was worse than a germ."
" You'll have brain fever, Bobs, and that's far worse than any
germs or worms. Come on, now, I'm going to put you to bed. I
don't care whether your nighties have feet or claws; it makes no
difference to me. Stop kicking; I'm dressed up for a party, and
you'll split my coat down the back. Stop kicking and I'll bring
you my whole saucer of ice cream and I won't even take a taste
on the way upstairs. Stop kicking, Bobs, or you won't get a stick
full."
Holding tight his remonstrating burden, Walcott passed along
the familiar hallway to the big nursery, where Jack was already fast
asleep. Putting Bobby down in the little white iron bed, he pulled
up the covers and carefully tucked him in. " Now go to sleep and
I'll promise to wake you when the ice cream comes."
" But my stick," said Bobby sitting up and pulling all the care-
fully arranged blankets awry, " I've forgotten my stick, it's under
the bed. Please get it, Wally."
" But suppose I can find the spoons? "
" But I want the stick it's more 'citing to eat with a stick."
Walcott obediently got down upon his knees. " I'm an old fool
and no mistake, Bobs, an old fool."
Bobby was thinking of other things, so this act of humility made
little impression.
" You'll have to crawl," he said relentlessly. " It's close to the
wall on the other side. Lie down and crawl."
So Walcott, knowing from past experience that these requests
demanded unconditional surrender, got down on his hands and crawled.
A moment more and he reappeared triumphant with the ivory stick
in his hand.
I9i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 101
" Now look at me, Bobs, I'm all mussed up, and these clothes not
a day old, and I'm late. Good-night. I'm late; what will your
mother say to me? "
He kissed the child and started a second time to leave, but Bobby
clung to him desperately. " Wally," he whispered, " if if it's a very
little saucer I I won't wake up Jack."
" Yes you will," said Walcott with all the severity he could
muster, a bargain is a bargain, Bobsy. Now let me go or your mother
will surely scold me."
He unloosened the child's arms and hurried away, chuckling to
himself. He had been the twin's willing slave ever since they could
stand alone, and now that their views of life were expanding, the
boldness of their tyranny was limitless. Out in their Western home
he used to plan picnics on the prairie, carrying them off for whole
days at a time, patiently leading their little burros when they pre-
ferred that trying style of locomotion, or putting them in front of
one of the Senator's saddle horses, and galloping away with them
to the more distant woods and mountains. If he had been honestly
introspective, instead of forcing the thought from him as too trifling
and personal for consideration, he would have had to acknowledge
that the twins weighed heavily in the balance when he agreed to ac-
cept the nomination that brought him to Congress.
He was afraid of Washington. He had had many friends here
in the old days. Perhaps he had relied too much upon the long dis-
figuring scar and the other changes the years had made.
But fears after fifteen years were foolish he told himself, and
forced a smile at his own forebodings. Had he not read his own
obituary in one of the Southern papers ? The paper had come to him
by the merest chance, packed in among some American goods that
he had unloaded as a dock hand.
Why, Jim Thompson had been dead fifteen years his world had
forgotten him. If anyone should notice a resemblance it would be
but a fleeting fancy he was safe in his new position. Why he had
even left his own individuality behind. He was not the same; he
could not go back even if he would. After all what did a name amount
to a name imposed in unprotesting infancy? Why thousands of
men change their names yearly by some short process of law; chil-
dren, adopted into homes, change theirs without formality, the neigh-
bors naturally forcing the name of their foster parents upon them.
Why should he fear detection after all these years? Polly had been
only twelve when he went away, and a child's memory is always in-
definite. Surely he had nothing to fear from Polly. Reasoning thus
he had reassured himself by the time he reached the drawing-room.
Mrs. Bolivar stood just inside the doorway. She looked very
102 TRANSMIGRATION [April,
handsome in a gown of black velvet, which reduced the stoutness of
her figure. She greeted Walcott gaily.
"You seem really cheerful for a man who conies to play the
victim," she said in an undertone. " How well you look in your new
clothes. Alexander has a real talent for finding good tailors."
" I'm sure Bolivar did his part," said Walcott smiling, " and I'm
sure the tailor did his best, but Bobby has done his worst. I've
been under the bed and I feel a bit disheveled."
There was a soft peal of laughter from the girl who stood by
Mrs. Bolivar's side.
" Here's our cousin, Miss Polly Maxen," said Mrs. Bolivar.
" Polly, you remember Mr. Walcott? " There was an accent on the
" cousin " that made Walcott suddenly remember and regret the re-
mark that he had made about social distinctions the week before.
" Now tell us why Bobby sent you under the bed, or tell me later ;
I haven't time for domestic disclosures just now. Here are some
more of my belated guests."
Walcott had fixed his eyes upon Polly with a look of unconcealed
amazement, she seemed so transformed from the shabbiness of a
week ago, for Polly applying nervously to a stranger for work was
altogether a different person from Polly Maxen placed in the position
of a new-found relative sharing gracefully the responsibilities of
hostess. Her color was bright, her eyes shining with the pleasure and
excitement of the Southern woman who fortunately inherits the social
instinct with her traditions of hospitality.
" I suppose it can't be bad form to admire clothes since Mrs.
Bolivar admired mine," Walcott began. " How pretty you look in
that silvery sort of silk."
" Oh, do you think so ? " she questioned with pleased simplicity.
" I don't mind telling you it's very old ; it belonged to my grand-
mother or great-grandmother, I don't know which, and Romney was
supposed to have painted her portrait in it. I feel well, rather egg
shelly:'
"How's that?"
"Well, I may crack any minute. Silk this old is rather dan-
gerous, don't you think? You see I didn't have anything new, so
this is just a made-over and the lace well, of course, it's quite the
thing to have antique lace, but I was doubtful about the dress. To
tell the truth I was actually afraid of it when I heard that Mrs. Van
Brune was to be here. There's a spot on the front and I believe she
will see it through the drapery."
" Does the lady wear glasses ? What an advertisement for her
oculist she must be."
" Glasses ! Why she would faint at the suggestion."
I9i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 103
" Why ? " he asked with masculine bewilderment.
" Because they are not becoming."
" Oh, I didn't think of that phase of the situation. You see
I'm naturally stupid about ladies. It always seemed to me there was
something beatific about glasses. I remember the old Italian doc-
tor who was kind to me when my mother died, he wore them; and
the professor I liked best at college wore round ones that made him
look like a good-natured owl ; and there was the old priest I knew in
England, the best man I ever met, he wore steel-rimmed ones that
didn't suit his eyes. I remember I gave him a new pair, and he was so
grateful he kissed me on both cheeks."
" I I thought you didn't like gratitude."
" I don't now you will acknowledge that such effusiveness was
embarrassing. I didn't know what to say, and I didn't know what
to do until my old friend laughed and said, 'God bless me, Walcott,
you look as solemn as a deacon, and I was but giving you the kiss
of peace which I thought you needed sorely."
" And did you ? " the girl's face was full of interest.
" God knows I did ; I was down and out and as lonely as Robin-
son Crusoe."
He was blundering again and he knew it. If he was to keep up
the deception with clear-eyed Polly, he must avoid all allusions to
his past.
" If we could escape before this Mrs. Van Brune gets here,"
he said lightly, " we might be safe from inspection. I notice
that I have four finger prints on my shirt front left by Bobby's
chubby fingers. Do you suppose an ink eraser would rub them
out?"
" I don't know," she laughed. " I don't believe they show, be-
sides Mrs. Van Brune won't see them because you're a man."
" That's too cryptic for me to follow."
" She likes men."
"And that means?"
" That she doesn't care for women."
" I believe you have a grudge against her."
" I have."
" How interesting," the Senator suggested, " that we might gather
a few enemies together in our ignorance."
Polly smiled. " Oh, I'm not an enemy ; we're we're just so dif-
ferent, and I hate myself for minding her unspoken criticisms."
" But as long as they are unspoken ? " he suggested.
" But one can feel them just the same."
" I give it up," he said with humorous resignation. " I suppose
feelings ought to be caged."
104 TRANSMIGRATION [April,
" That wouldn't do any good either," she laughed, " they would
still prowl around restlessly inside."
"Then suppose we cage the critical lady."
" Oh, I'm sorry I said anything about her," said Polly remorse-
fully ; " that* s the trouble with me, I'm too frank. When people ask
me questions I always answer them."
" That's worth remembering ; frankness is a rare virtue now-
adays."
" That depends upon how you look at it. With some people it
would be considered an unforgivable sin."
"What would be Mrs. Van Brune's point of view? "
" Do you know her? "
" I never heard of her until a moment ago."
" Then why should you care ? "
" I don't."
Polly laughed gaily. " Then we are just making conversation,"
she said.
" Are we? I thought we were getting acquainted."
" And now we are going to be interrupted by dinner," she said
regretfully. "We have been waiting for Mrs. Van Brune and she
is coming in the doorway now."
Walcott turned indifferently to see the late arrival and then
the smile faded from his lips; his knees seemed to be seized with a
strange tremulousness ; he reached out to the marble mantel seeking
physical support. Anne stood before him in all her old radiant loveli-
ness, the slight marks of her maturity artfully concealed. She was
dressed in some strange woven net, spangled with gold that seemed
to flash color in the shaded lights of the room, and standing beside
her was a tall man whose pale emaciated face seemed vaguely
familiar.
CHAPTER VIII.
" There's Ted," said Polly starting joyfully forward. " Ted Har-
grove, I didn't know that Mrs. Bolivar knew him."
Walcott laid a detaining hand upon her arm, " Is is he married
to her? "
" Mrs. Van Brune ! " She failed to notice the ashen color of
his face. " Why, no, she's years older than Ted."
" Of course years older and her husband ? "
" Dead years ago. Poor Anne."
He was gaining control of his voice now. After all there was
no escape, and the inevitableness of the situation brought a certain
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 105
steading calm. If he were recognized that was the worst that could
happen he was no fugitive from justice; he would only be the hero
of a melodramatic story. He would lose out no doubt, politically, for
his constituents would not place their confidence in a man living
under an assumed name. All his effort for reform legislation would
crumble before the knowledge of his own duplicity. Even the good-
natured Bolivars would resent the deception. And then the abuse
that had been heaped upon Jim Thompson came sweeping back upon
him. He had not wanted to live under it he had freed himself from
it like a man emerging from the miasmas of a mine. Was he going
to be forced back through his own foolhardiness back to a repellant
past, a name disgraced? Was there no escape? For one distracted
instant he looked towards the window, but such an exit he knew was
impossible, and the door was barred barred by Anne whose presence
had once brought him intoxicating joy. Now he was again her
prisoner in another way ; she guarded the door as effectually as any
warden of a prison gate. There was no escape. He was vaguely
aware that Mrs. Bolivar was introducing them, and for one mad
moment he fancied a look of recognition in Anne's eyes, but he must
have been mistaken, for she turned to him and said with conven-
tional ease:
" A stranger in Washington, Mr. Walcott? "
" Yes," he managed to answer, " the regulation Western Congress-
man stuffed into a dinner coat for the sole purpose of balancing Mrs.
Bolivar's dinner table."
It was an ungracious reply, and he hoped that his hostess did
not hear him ; his mind was too disordered to choose his words. His
desire to tell them that he came from the West outweighed every
other consideration.
" I approve of Western men," said Ted with his old ingratiating
smile. " Things are made too easy for us in the East we are grow-
ing spineless."
" Don't suggest such creepiness," said Anne with a shiver of
her white shoulders.
" He means jelly fishy'' laughed Polly. " There is something
translucent about you, Ted."
" Perhaps," agreed Ted indifferently, " I'm so confoundedly ego-
tistical that if my friends don't see through me I'm sure it is not my
fault."
And here the conversation had ended, for dinner was announced.
Walcott had to stoop to offer his arm to Polly and the pressure of
her thin white hand on his coat sleeve was strangely reassuring; he
felt her undoubting loyalty; it was something real to cling to in a
dissolving world.
106 TRANSMIGRATION [April,
As Anne passed through the luxurious library to the brilliantly
lighted dining-room beyond, she turned to Ted and said in a fret-
ful tone:
" Look at those lights. Nobody but a Western woman would have
overhead lights like those. They accentuate every wrinkle."
Ted touched her gloved hand lightly as they stood for a mo-
ment in the shadow of the heavy portiere. " If you had wrinkles,
Anne, you might so far forget yourself as to criticize your hostess."
" How good and conventional you are to-night. I knew Fanny
Bolivar when I was ten years old; we were at a convent school to-
gether. I'm in a bad humor, Ted, she's only two years older than
I am and and "
" She looks fat, and ten years older. Is that what you want
me to say? "
" I don't want you to say anything."
" Hm this is a nice beginning for a dinner party. You will have
to sit next to me for two hours at least. Here is your place, cheer
up. You look as though you had seen a ghost, cheer up for both
of us. I've been in a blue funk all day. Polly is on the other side
of me. Bolivar has given her some sort of a job in the house. Glad
they didn't relegate her to the nursery with the kids."
The guests were seating themselves, and Ted could talk with
that privileged sense of privacy that a large dinner party gives.
" She's their cousin," said Anne taking up her oyster fork, " and
I'm sure Polly's an aristocrat to her finger tips."
" It does us all precious little good," he answered. " What's the
use of dating back to some swashbuckling crusader who killed a few
old Turks in the Holy Land? "
" Don't you believe in inheritance ? "
"What's the use of inheriting an ability to swing a battle-axe
when we fight with rapid firing guns ? "
" But we do inherit things," persisted Anne vaguely. " The Can-
fields were always Catholics ever since the beginning. I've always
thought Catholicism was picturesque rosaries and shrines and in-
cense and such magnificent vestments. Why the laces they used on
the altars in Rome were priceless. I've never seen anything like
them."
Ted laughed. " I'm afraid Anne your prayers were very dis-
tracted."
" Oh, well, I was only a sight-seer with Badaeker as a prayer
book, and I may be a pagan, for I inherit no religious traditions,
while you, Mrs. Maxen, have always contended that your grandmother
was a saint."
"My grandmother! Well, it seems to me that effectually dis-
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 107
proves everything you have said about inheritance. What do you
think about it, Pollykins? "
" What are you talking about ? " asked Polly turning quickly.
" If my grandmother was a saint and all virtues are inherited,
how do you account for me ? "
Walcott heard the question and resented it. They were talking of
his mother. The light words sounded like a profanation and yet
Ted meant no disrespect he knew he was calling her a saint. Surely
there was no disrespect in that, and yet the words sounded like an
irreverence.
" She was," said Polly loyally, " and I believe if your uncle had
lived, Ted, you would have been different."
There was no lightness in Polly's tone; she had never outlived
her artless attitude towards Ted.
" Miss Polly is my conscience," said Ted good-humoredly, talking
across her to Walcott. " You see we grew up together. She's always
candid."
"And candor isn't always desirable? " asked Walcott, forcing the
words from a throat that seemed parched and hoarse.
"Well, at times it rouses unhappy recollections. She spoke of
my uncle just now. Do you know there is something about you that
reminds me of him. Of course he was a very young man when
he died and I was only a boy. I believe some man has tried to
prove that we all have doubles, and really it's not astonishing when
one considers the multitude of men in the world."
Walcott dropped a spoon, but it made no sound upon the heavily
padded table. " No," he said with an effort.
" And when one considers that we all have eyes and noses," Ted
continued, " it seems very wonderful that they are not made all the
same size and shape cut after the same pattern, like paper soldiers.
I've often thought it would be desirable to be a paper soldier."
Polly laughed tolerantly. "Why not a tin soldier, Ted? They
can at least stand up."
" I don't know that I want to stand up ; I've always found lying
down more desirable."
" I don't like to hear you talk like that it's all too true."
"Don't vilify me before Mr. Walcott," interrupted Ted good-
naturedly. " You will at least acknowledge, Polly, that I am free from
self-conceit. There's something of the Puritan about you Polly.
You're relentless in your judgments. Your religion should make you
more tolerant."
" Does a creed make a person more tolerant? " asked Walcott feel-
ing that he must make some sort of reply. His mind was in a tumult.
Ted's confessions worried him. What was the boy doing with his
io8 TRANSMIGRATION [April,
life? Polly's attitude of gentle severity must have developed from
some cause.
" Why of course/' Polly was saying. " Aren't we taught to for-
give our enemies, to pray for them, minister to them? "
" Stop, stop, Pollykins, or I'll become an enemy at once. You are
too serious for a dinner party." And then he asked her some frivolous
question which claimed her amused consideration. For the moment,
Walcott enjoyed a slight reprieve ; the dowager on his right was busily
gossiping with her neighbor. He had a chance to glance at Anne.
She was listening to the army officer who occupied the place on her
left. Walcott remembered with a new sense of surprise that Anne
had always had a talent for listening. She was not clever enough to
make a success as a conversationalist, but the efficacy of her silences
seemed to disprove the limitations of her intelligence. Her great
beauty and her carefully-trained attention and sympathy made men
lose sight of her lack of vivacity. She had always commanded
admiration. She was not popular with women they fathomed her
methods, partly because she took little pains to please them.
As Polly turned away from him, Walcott gave an involuntary
gasp of relief. The worst was over. He felt that he was safe. The
ghosts of his past had closed about him and passed him by with
no sight of recognition. And though he had not wanted to return to
his old identity it was good to be back, back among his own, even if
they gave him only the welcome of a stranger. Like a strong
swimmer coming at last to the surface, he breathed freely once again,
and he looked around him with that common ageless wonder, common
to most men when they realize that the life of the world is unchanged
by the joys or tragedies of their own souls.
Mrs. Bolivar was smiling at him from across the great width
of damask, silver and flowers, her merry eyes glowing with the light
of successful effort, for the " experimental dinner " seemed to be
all that a hostess could desire. The French Ambassador, who had the
place of honor at her right, had just paid her a pretty compliment
with a courtly graciousness that seemed to preclude flattery; the old
jurist, who had been recently appointed to the Supreme Bench, was
in the midst of one of his best stories, and for the time all other table
talk was silenced for the Justice's voice was deep and sonorous and
he was used to commanding an audience. Then the conversation be-
came general, a famous Socialist, to whom the Senator had taken a
sudden fancy, exploited some of his radical views; the Justice took
exception, and a good-natured argument was begun. The talk drifted
from labor unions and the rights of man to the rights of woman.
The glow deepened in Mrs. Bolivar's eyes, she was enjoying the bril-
liancy of the group around her. She had not lived in Washington
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 109
long enough to realize that in such a cosmopolitan city of achieve-
ment a gathering of this kind is not unusual. She could see that
even Walcott had roused a degree of interest, for there was a slight
lull in the animated talk and she heard him say:
" You have all been arguing the rights of a man and the possibility
of increasing his possessions political and otherwise. What of the
liberty of spirit that is born of self-denial ? " The words were spoken
half-humorously, thrown out at random as a philosophic suggestion
more than a religious idea.
Senator Bolivar, who was used to his friend's blunt manner,
grinned broadly and said, " Walcott talks like a mendicant monk."
" Perhaps," agreed Walcott, " but a monk would do something
more than talk. What I meant to say was that we are all chasing
a hundred things that we consider essential for our happiness. If we
would drop half of our desires, how much leisure we would have to
enjoy ourselves."
" If we had the money perhaps," said the wife of the Socialist
parenthetically.
" If we had no desires we wouldn't need any money," laughed the
Senator.
" It's a complex question," ventured Ted, " trying to decide what
particular desire to drop."
" Well, I'll be honest," announced the Senator, " I don't want to
drop any of mine. I don't want to go live like a cow in a pasture lot."
" You're wrong again," said Walcott. " Cows have very definite
desires."
Mrs. Bolivar turned appealingly to the Justice. " We will leave
the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States."
" And I'll agree with Mr. Walcott," answered the old gentleman
gravely, " but the trouble is most of us don't know what to do with
our leisure when we get it. It takes a humorous man to enjoy his
own society, a cultured man to enjoy books, and an idealist to enjoy
nature, and the combination is rarer than we like to believe."
" The trouble is," said the Socialist, " that we have all been
brought up wrong."
" By our mothers ? " added Mrs. Bolivar gaily. " Poor women,
they have been blamed for everything ever since the beginning."
"Well, we'll say the fathers are responsible," answered the So-
cialist gallantly. " We are not brought up in the old rigorous school
of our ancestors. Few of us deny ourselves anything we can get."
" Well, there are a few who believe in fasting and prayer," said
Polly brightly.
" And I'll prove it," said Walcott. The pink ice cream had been
placed before him, and he lifted it like a magician so that all the
no TRANSMIGRATION [April,
audience might see. " This ice is pink, the most alluring of colors,
it is very tempting, I'm sure you will all agree, but I promised to
bring mine to Bobby, so if you will excuse me, Mrs. Bolivar, I'll
practise self-denial at once."
" Bobby," protested Mrs. Bolivar.
And then Walcott standing up with the small plate in his hands
repeated his conversation with Bobby on the stairs. To be the
centre of attention was the least of his desires, but he saw a chance
of escape, and he welcomed it desperately. With a calm that amazed
himself he told the whole story most appealingly, and it was greeted
with much laughter. The old Justice sputtered over his Maderia, de-
claring that he would send his ice to Jack. But Walcott objected.
" I'm under contract to produce only one."
" Then take my spoon," begged the Justice.
" Bobby prefers the stick, and after all, why not? "
" Spoons are an unnecessary desire," mocked the Senator, " and
so perhaps are sticks. The process of elimination brings us where? "
" I'll ask Bobby," said \Valcott, and balancing the ice carefully
to keep it from slipping off the plate he quickly left the room.
Another hostess might have objected to this unconventional leave-
taking, but Mrs. Bolivar was clever enough to realize that the affair
had added a human touch to the formality of the occasion.
As Walcott passed out of hearing the Senator turned to the
Socialist and said : " You would be interested in Walcott. Sane-
minded social worker; lived in the London slums like a pauper; all
that sort of thing. Gone into Congress to reform all the rest of us ;
elected by a tremendous majority though he never played politics
in his life."
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
Bew Boohs.
A MEDIEVAL ANTHOLOGY. Being Lyrics and other Short
Poems Chiefly Religious. Collected and Modernized by
Mary G. Segar. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.
$1.00 net.
In a small volume, Mary Segar has presented us with a popular
introduction to the literary treasures of p re-Re formation English
literature, contained in such collections as those of the Early Eng-
lish Text Society and the Percy Society. Wherever necessary, for
the sake of the general reader, the poems have been translated or
modernized.
The collector's work has been done in a manner both sensible
and scholarly. These pages give the reader a pleasing picture of
mediaeval England, and reveal, at times in a most touching manner,
the depth and the reality of the popular sentiment of that Catholic
age. Charming, tender, devout, the songs evidently spring straight
from the depths of a people's heart; and they fill us with some-
thing of wonder at their sublime, simple beauty, and then with
something of holy envy of the men and women who were privileged
to breathe such an air as is wafted through these pages. A mother
who united great faith to discreet intelligence, could find much
inspiration for the training of her little ones in the lyrics and the
lullabies which are here brought together.
IS SCHISM LAWFUL? By Rev. Edward Maguire. St. Louis:
B. Herder. $1.80 net.
This study in primitive ecclesiology, with special reference to
the question of schism, was presented to the theological faculty
of Maynooth as a thesis for the doctorate. It pfoves, as the author
states in his general summary at the close, that " Christianity is
de facto and de jure a visible organic unit. And as such is the
Body of Christ. Baptism incorporates us in an Organism which
is at once visible and invisible. As invisible, its animating principle
is grace the life of the Spirit. As visible, it is an external society,
having as unifying principle the central ecclesiastical government
established by Christ. To divide the Church whatever be the
form of its government is to divide the Body of Christ. Schism
is never lawful."
ii2 NEW BOOKS [April,
The volume is a scholarly, well-defined and detailed discussion
of the nature of the Catholic Church as set forth in the teaching
of the New Testament, the Apostolic Fathers, St. Justin, St. Ire-
nseus, St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine. The author ably refutes the
rationalistic theories of Sohm and Harnack, who maintain that
primitive Christianity was either a charismatic anarchy which
gradually developed into a stable hierarchy, or that the historical
Church was organic de facto and not de jure. Against Gore, Dale,
and Lindsay he shows the falsity of the Anglican, Congregation-
alist and Presbyterian principles of church unity. He criticizes
Father Tanquerey for his non-committal attitude on the entire ques-
tion of church membership, finds fault with modern theologians for
their illogical use of the distinction between the body and soul of
the Church, and disagrees with Suarez, who declares that heretics
are subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, although they are not
members of the Church.
MEDIEVAL EUROPE. By H. W. C Davis, M.A., Fellow and
Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. New York : Henry Holt
& Co. 50 cents.
This handbook is No. 13 in the series entitled The Home
University Library of modern knowledge. Of modest size, yet
covering a great span of history, the treatment of events is neces-
sarily brief. It stretches from the fall of the Rz>man empire to the
rise of the free towns of Europe, and stops at the discovery of
America. But few if any matters of importance have failed to
be set down in proper perspective. In two chapters, "The Papacy
before Gregory VII." and " The Hildebrandine Church," there are
many appreciations that would be challenged by Catholic historians.
Yet there is no indication of intentional unfairness or strong preju-
dice. And the following passage compensates for some insuffi-
ciently founded criticisms:
If the Church as a scheme of government was a doubtful
blessing to those who gave her their allegiance, the Church
as a home of spiritual life was invested with a grandeur and a
charm which were and are apparent, even to spectators standing
at the outer verge of her domain. We may compare the
Middle Ages to an Alpine range, on the lower slopes of which
the explorer finds himself entangled in the mire and undergrowth
of pathless thickets oppressed by a still and stifling atmosphere,
shut off from any view of the sky above or the pleasant plains
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 113
beneath. Ascending through this ignoble wilderness, he comes
to free and windswept pastures, to the white solitude of virgin
snowfields, to brooding glens and soaring peaks robed in the
light or darkness which he is as little able to define or resist.
On such heights of moral exaltation the mediaeval mys-
tics built their tabernacle and sang their Benedicite, calling all
nature to bear witness with them that God in His heaven was
very near, and all well with a universe which existed only to
fulfill His word. It was a noble optimism and those who em-
braced it are the truest poets of the Middle Ages, none the
less poets because they expressed their high imaginings in life
instead of language.
Though, as has been already remarked, the history is brief, it
will serve as a valuable compendium to the student; as it traces
clearly the connection between successive phases, epochs and insti-
tutions of the period; and it will prove instructive to the reader
who has neither time nor inclination to study works which present
the field on a larger scale.
THE STORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. By Rev. George
Stebbing, C.SS.R. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.80 net.
Father Stebbing tells us in his preface that this volume " is
an attempt to give within a limited compass the main outlines of
the events which make up the story of the Catholic Church."
While the author does not claim to have written a work of
original research, he has succeeded in the most difficult task of
writing a detailed summary of Church history in less than seven
hundred pages. Most of the manuals of Church history that we
possess in German, French or English have been written for
the ecclesiastical student, and are too diffuse and too technical for
the average layman to read or consult with profit.
The volume before us is the result of much thought and labor.
Though the author disclaims any intention of writing a contro-
versial manual, the objective story he sets forth in excellent per-
spective the history of the Catholic Church is in itself the best
proof of Her divine mission.
MYSTERIES OF THE MASS IN REASONED PRAYERS. By
Father W. Roche, SJ. New York: Longmans, Green &
Co. 50 cents net.
The title of Father Roche's book by no means does justice to
the contents, for the volume is really one of the most practical
VOL. CIII.8
114 NE W BOOKS [April,
aids to devotion which exist in print. The author has brought into
order and brief compass the master thoughts expressed in the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass, and has grouped them in a series of prayers
that lend themselves wonderfully well to a sympathetic following
of the liturgy. The prayers are for the most part only interpre-
tations of the words of the Missal ; and they bring out the richness
of the Church's message in a way that will surely be of help to
the devout soul. Although not written in metre, they are printed
in broken lines, a device which will remind and assist the reader
to go slowly and meditatively. In the large array of volumes which
have been published with a view to assist devotion at the Holy
Sacrifice, this little book takes a unique place. It is the fruit of an
original inspiration, cultivated with great care. Those who learn
to use it will be well repaid.
ONE YEAR WITH GOD. By Rev. Michael V. McDonough. Bos-
ton: The Angel Guardian Press. $2.00.
Father McDonough has written an excellent series of ser-
mons and meditations on the Sunday Gospels and the various feasts
of the liturgical year. They are devout, practical, common-sense
talks to the men and women of to-day. The spirit that prompted
the writer may be seen in his opening words : ' The author aims
at extreme simplicity, not hoping to attain so sublime a mark, yet
trusting that even his vain endeavor may strike nearer than any
lower aim would."
The book is sold for the benefit of the Poor Clares of Boston.
THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. By Rev. Peter Finlay, S.J. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.00 net.
These lectures on the foundation and constitution of the
Catholic Church were delivered in the Dublin College of the
National University of Ireland. They popularize in a clear and
convincing manner the classical argument of the textbooks on
the claims of the Church to be the kingdom of God founded by the
Saviour. The author first proves the authenticity and genuineness
of the New Testament, and then from its pages deduces the Divinity
of Christ, the unity and perpetuity of the Church, its infallible
teaching authority, the authority of the Pope and the bishops.
It is a book to put in the hands not only of the educated Catholic
layman, but of the non-Catholic who is anxious to study Catholic
claims.
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 115
THE ETHIOPIC LITURGY. By Rev. Samuel A. Mercer, Ph.D.
Milwaukee: The Young Churchman Co. $1.50.
The aim of these lectures delivered a year ago at the Western
Theological Seminary in Chicago is to discuss the sources, develop-
ment and present form of the Ethiopic liturgy, and to compare
it from stage to stage with its sister liturgies and with other re-
lated rites. The chief originality of the present work is the author's
translation into a modern language for the first time of the Ethiopic
liturgy used to-day in the churches of Abyssinia. The author has
carefully examined scores of manuscripts in all the museums and
libraries of Europe, with the exception of those in France which
on account of the war were inaccessible.
None of the manuscripts examined gave the present form of
the Ethiopic liturgy, so Dr. Mercer wrote to the British Charge
d' Affaires at Addis Abbeba for a manuscript copy of the form now
in use. This is the basis of the present study.
We recommend this volume highly to all theological students,
who will soon discover that Dr. Mercer has performed his task
in a thorough and scholarly manner, and brought to their attention
a great deal of material not hitherto published. The volume con-
cludes with a facsimile of the text, a good index, and a number of
scholarly notes of great interest to the Orientalist.
COMPENDIUM THEOLOGIZE MORALIS. By Aloysius Sabetti,
S. J. Edited by A. T. Barrett, S J. New York : Fr. Pustet
& Co. $3.50 net.
There is little need for us to recommend the well-known moral
theology of Father Gury, which Father Sabetti of Woodstock
adapted for the use of American seminarians. This twenty-first
edition has been revised and brought up to date by Father Barrett,
who has paid special attention to the legislation of late years on
marriage, the Sacred Congregations, and the recitation of the
Divine Office. The publishers are to be congratulated on the new
make-up of this valuable work, which will be well received by the
clergy of the United States.
A STUDY IN SOCIALISM. By Benedict Elder. St. Louis : B.
Herder. $1.00 net.
Mr. Elder tells us that this volume is the first of a contem-
plated series which will treat of modern social evils and their cor-
rection. He divides his treatise into three parts: the principles
ii6 NEW BOOKS [April,
of Socialism economic, philosophic, religious, moral, political and
social; the history of Socialism the idea, the sentiment and the
movement; and the aims of Socialism as a thought movement,
a political movement, and an economic movement.
While the student will find little in this volume which he has
not read before in the pages of Catholic authors, the man in the
street will find it an excellent book to consult for arguments where-
with to meet the Socialist propagandist of the day.
OTHELLO: AN HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE STUDY.
By Elmer E. Stoll, Ph.D. Minneapolis : Bulletin of the Uni-
versity of Minnesota. 50 cents.
Dr. Stoll, Professor of English at the University of Minnesota,
has just published an historical and comparative study of the
tragedy of Othello. Most of this interesting treatise is written to
prove that whereas Shakespeare has imaginative sympathy, " he
employs it by fits and starts, often neglecting motivation and analy-
sis As a whole, the psychology of Othello is false, or might
be said to be non-existent, just as it is non-existent in the whole
convention of lago's impenetrable hypocrisy and his bamboozling of
all the cleverest people in the play."
All the critics have tried to explain the extraordinary quick-
ness with which Othello's faith in Desdemona yields to lago's
insinuations. Professor Stoll sets aside the theories of Rose, Ral-
eigh, Brooks, Schlegel and others, and declares that it is a mistake
to try to find every perfection in Shakespeare. Why not admit at
once that his psychology was unreal, and that, as Goethe says,
Shakespeare was only concerned with the effect of the moment?
Writing of the Elizabethans generally, our author states : " Dra-
matic art had not yet heard so clear a call as it has since, to approxi-
mate to the modesty of nature." The plot which develops aus-
terely out of the characters, without conspiracy or deliberate con-
triving, whether of the characters or of the presiding poet, would
have seemed, even had Elizabethans known such a plot, a tame,
unexpeditious affair. It would not have permitted them to tell
out the story on the stage, as was their wont and delight, from
beginning to end.
FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND MARRIAGE. By Edward Howard
Griggs. New York: B. W. Huebsch. 50 cents net.
In speaking of the laws of friendship, Mr. Griggs rightly
1916.] NEW BOOKS 117
emphasizes the likeness of personality, community of experience,
loyalty and independence of personality; but when he speaks of
marriage, we find him falsely declaring that the Catholic prohibi-
tion of divorce is an old superstition, inadequate to meet the needs
of life to-day. With many a modern he maintains that society
must not force two people to remain together, " under a galling
and moral bond," once love parts them. Marriage is altogether a
private matter, and " all ecclesiastical propaganda and interference
with marriage and divorce is deplorable." We are not astonished,
therefore, to find this pagan philosopher advocating a legislation,
" which will stop the reproduction of those who, physically and
morally, are hopelessly diseased."
THE SOCIAL PRINCIPLE. By Horace Holley. New York:
Laurence J. Gomme. 75 cents net.
What does our vague and wordy philosopher mean by the
social principle? He answers us himself: "The fact that society
is composed of recurrent types, a man of action, the executive, the
artist, the philosopher, the mystic and the prophet and that each
type has a function which combines individual freedom and happi-
ness with increased social control." With amusing cocksureness,
he tells us " that the Christian era has come to its appointed end.
Protestantism has proved a failure because the Protestant " sows his
seed in a garden so confined as to exclude the sun; Catholicism
is a failure because " the Catholic sows his seed in the unfertile
winter of the world ! " Will anyone dare defend Christianity
against this prophet of the new religion? He answers again : " Ar-
gument is the first thing I have learned to put aside." We be-
lieve him.
NOTES ON RELIGION. By John Jay Chapman. New York:
Laurence J. Gomme. 75 cents net.
A better title for this book would have been : Evidences of my
Ignorance about Religion, especially Catholicism. The author tells
us on one page that he is not defaming the Catholic Church, but
we think he does not know the meaning of the word defame. For
example he tells us that the Catholic Church " is hostile to education,
the individual and science; that it always uses methods which a
little shock the world's conscience; that its piety is nothing but
emotionalism and sensationalism; its Mass a short-cut to an ir-
rational religious experience; its mowasticism a shallow conceit;
ii8 NEW BOOKS [April,
}
its bishops arrogant and insolent; its whole system one social
tyranny." As usual the Jesuits incur the displeasure of this anti-
Catholic bigot. He says of them : " Loyola's invention is un-
doubtedly the most evil thought in history; to kill the individual
soul was his aim; the Jesuits have made the condoning of sin
as an engine of government a regular science; to help the Church
they call good evil, and evil good; they are remarkable chiefly for
the desire of domination and of money and for vulgarity of aim."
We are not astonished, therefore, to find this arrogant
author talking about " a Christ without theology," and urging
a father to teach his child religion by " committing the babe to the
influence of Apollo and asking the moon to reveal God unto him."
INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF ETHICS. By Theo-
dore de Laguna, Professor of Philosophy in Bryn Mawr Col-
lege. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.75.
As the author announces, this work, intended as a textbook
on the subject, treats the science of ethics with as little reference
as possible to metaphysics; though he does recognize that the topic
of the freedom of the will cannot be passed over in silence. It
consists of three parts : Part I. exposes, with some current criticism,
the scope of ethical science; the facts which it has to deal with and
explain; and a survey of various standards of conduct which have
been proposed by moralists, or accepted in practice by men. Part II.
reviews what the author calls the classical schools. The first four
chapters treat of Greek philosophy; after which we are introduced
to " Modern Ethics," beginning with Hobbes, who is followed by
the eighteenth century English moralists, the German schools, and,
finally the later Utilitarians and Hedonists. Part III. is taken
up with the evolutionary theory of moral values. For a writer who
follows the historical path, it is a long stride from the Stoics to
Hobbes. The author's apology to the omitted centuries is that al-
though much may be learned from them, yet " in the modern de-
velopment of the science, and especially in the controversies of the
great English schools, we shall find ample material for our in-
struction."
As we read the author's discussions upon freedom, motive, act
of the will, the relation between the internal act and its internal
action, our responsibility for results which we foresee and will, our
responsibility for effects which we do not foresee, the measure in
which responsibility is to be assigned respectively to character
1916.] NEW BOOKS 119
and to free choice, and several other cognate topics, we cannot help
forming the opinion that if the author had given some attention
to the ethics of St. Thomas, even though he should not have agreed
with the scholastic views in every case, he would have acquired a
good deal of information that would have assisted him in handling
with greater precision and more decision many of his topics. Part
III. is entitled " The Evolution of Moral Standards." In it the
author exposes the system which has his own preference. It may
be as a whole ranked among the types which make morality con-
ditioned on experience. " The virtues owe their whole content to
men's experience of duty and self -sacrifice/' Nevertheless the
writer seems to admit that there is a given functional moral element
in human nature which adjusting itself to the shifting and changing
environment in the conditions of life, gives rise to variations in
codes, and to progress in moral ideals. If this element had received
its full value in his analysis he would have come closer to the
schools of ethics which fix the basis of morality, of the norm of
right and wrong in the rational demands of human nature itself
demands that are satisfied by adjustments which over a large area
of human life vary not because human nature essentially changes,
but because the conditions of life change.
As it contains much solid criticism on many of the theories
examined, the book will be of service to students who have at hand
the correctives for these elements in it with which Catholic philoso-
phy does not agree.
I
CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS. By William Cunningham,
D.D. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $1.50 net.
These lectures were delivered two years ago at Harvard Uni-
versity. They aim to set forth historically the manner in which
different bodies of Christians have brought Christianity to bear
upon political life. Like many English Protestants the author gives
way to bitterness and prejudice, whenever he mentions the
Catholic Church or the Papal claims. He speaks of the Popes
maintaining their power by the massacre of St. Bartholomew's
Day; he loves to dilate upon the false claims of "a secularized
church" (Catholicism) to exercise spiritual power over the civil
authority; and tells us that the Kulturkampf resulted in the
" lowering the respect for civil authority, and diminishing the
sentiment of loyalty." Patronizingly the author further declares
the Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII. " exceedingly interesting and
120 NEW BOOKS [April,
excellent ethically, but their social doctrine is unconvincing and
uninspiring;" and seems to regard the Catholic Church with sus-
picion because he " believes that Catholics have a sense of duty
to look primarily at the possibility of fostering the Roman Church,
and only secondarily at the good of the community as a whole."
BIBLE STORIES AND POEMS. Edited by Wilbur F. Crafts,
Ph.D. Washington, D. C : The Illustrated Bible Selections
Commission. $1.00.
This book is intended as an introduction to the Bible for col-
lege students and high school pupils. The editor in his introduc-
tion speaks of the ludicrous ignorance that is shown to-day wher-
ever college Freshmen are examined on the Bible as a test of their
preparation to study literature, law, art and ethics. When college
men name " ^sop " as the brother of Jacob, inform us that " the
head of John the Baptist was brought to Heroditus on a charger "
and describe " Apollos " as a heathen deity, it is high time to write
textbooks that will bring to their minds the chief passages and
facts of Bible history.
THE LIFE OF CERVANTES. By Robinson Smith. New York:
E. P. Button & Co. $1.25 net.
To Cervantes' admirers and enthusiasts, this Life will prove a
mine of interest and pleasure. The author, who has previously
translated Don Quixote, devotes himself to the most minute and
loving study of what he deems one of the glories of Cervantes,
namely, the marvelous skill and art with which he deftly interwines
his conceits the absurdities of those whom he ridicules with his
own narrative. But the book must be read in order to follow out
this interesting and fascinating parallel.
JOURNEYS WITH JERRY THE JARVEY. By Alexis Roche.
New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.35 net.
Every traveler in Ireland knows the proverbial wit and humor
of the average Irish jarvey. Mr. Roche's " Jerry " is the Irish
jarvey at his best. In this entertaining volume Jerry tells us many
an interesting story of funerals, wakes, weddings, ghosts, horse-
races, society life and modern Irish politics, interspersed with
shrewd bits of wisdom and droll comment. The book is well writ-
ten, though at times the humor is a bit broad. The reader will
not find a dull line from the first page to the last.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 121
WHAT NIETZSCHE TAUGHT. By Willard Huntington Wright.
New York: B. W. Huebsch. $2.00 net.
Since the beginning of the war, in the innumerable discussions,
charges, apologies, explanations, defences, and general polemics
that have appeared around the term Kultur, its origin, ethos and
value, no name has been more frequently invoked by defenders and
assailants than that of Nietzsche, the philosopher of the Superman,
who wrote of himself : " I am writing for a race of men which does
not yet exist;" for " the lords of the earth." In consequence, one
hears frequently the question : " What was Nietzsche's philosophy ?
What did he write?" His works are many; and owing to his
aphoristic style, they are not easy reading. It is frequently diffi-
cult to reach his exact thought, and still more difficult to follow the
sequence of his ideas. To anybody desirous of gaining a knowlr
edge of the philosopher's teachings, the author of this work is a
benefactor. Thoroughly versed in his Nietzsche, he has produced
an excellent survey of the doctrine, as it is exposed in the writings
which he expounds synthetically and sympathetically; through the
medium of abundant verbal quotation, and, where he does not
present the master's own words, concise summary. He is interested
in showing that contrary to the opinion of some critics, Nietzsche
is not merely a destroyer, he is also constructive. The destructive
philosopher sets himself the task of sweeping away all traditional
morality, all prepossessions as to the existence of free-will, of any
distinction between right and wrong, all religion, especially Chris-
tianity, which works against the higher development of the indi-
vidual, and being a religion of weakness, fails to meet the require-
ments of the modern man. The following passage is a brief state-
ment of a view which finds repeated expression everywhere in the
philosophy :
Experience teaches us that, in every case in which a man
has elevated himself above his fellows, every high degree of
power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom
from good and evil as also from " true and false," and cannot
take into account what goodness dictates What is Chris-
tian " virtue " and " love of men " if not precisely this mutual
assistance with a view to survival, this solidarity of the weak,
this thwarting of selection ? He who does not consider
this attitude of mind as immoral, as a crime against life, him-
self belongs to the sickly crowd and also shares their instincts.
The ideal of Nietzsche's constructive philosophy is the Super-
122 NEW BOOKS [April,
man, entirely liberated from all moral bonds, rinding his satisfaction
in the possession and exercise of power; endowed with resolute
faith in himself, the power of affirmation, initiative and pride:
" The revolution, confusion and distress of whole peoples is, in
my opinion, of less importance than the misfortunes which attend
great individuals in their development. We must not allow our-
selves to be deceived; the many misfortunes of these small folk
do not together constitute a sum-total, except in the feelings of
mighty men." Briefly, the philosophy of Nietzsche may be sum-
marized in saying that it is the direct contradiction of the Gospel;
a statement with which the author of this work would surely agree,
since he calls his master " the most effective critic who ever waged
war against Christianity."
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO THE CORINTH-
IANS. By Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons. $3.00.
Catholics will read with interest this critical and exegetical
commentary on the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians
which forms part of the International Critical Commentary, written
by Protestant scholars of Great Britain and the United States.
An introduction of sixty pages treats of the authenticity of the
Epistle, its occasion and problems, its place, date and contents, its
integrity, its characteristics, style and language, its text, and its
commentaries.
The chief interest of this letter, as the author points out, is a
personal one, namely, the vindication of the Apostle's authority and
character. For that reason there is but little discussion of contro-
versial points in Dr. Plummer's commentary.
We do not agree with our author's statement that the sinner
mentioned in 2 Cor. ii. 5-10 and vii. 12 is different from the sinner
mentioned in i Cor. v. i. The author's exegesis is most likely
prompted by his denial of the doctrine of indulgences, for we find
him quoting that bitter non-Catholic, Mr. H. C. Lea, who declares
the ordinary Catholic exegesis on these texts dishonest. Again
we fail to see any contradiction between i Cor. xv. and 2 Cor. v.,
although our author declares that in the first instance St. Paul
thought that the spiritual body was received at the resurrection,
and in the second that it was received at death. Catholics, of
course, cannot admit that St. Paul " does not stop t9 think whether
what he says in one passage is logically coherent with what he
1916.] NEW BOOKS 123
may have said elsewhere." Nor can they admit that he had " no
clearly defined theory respecting the Resurrection, the Parousia,
and the Judgment."
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. By Charles Henry Rob-
inson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50.
Dr. Robinson is the editorial secretary of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The volume forms
part of the International Theological Library, and is written as a
textbook to encourage and facilitate the study of foreign missions.
Its title is misleading, for in reality it is an unfair panegyric of
Protestant missions, which utterly fails to mention the meagre
results attained in view of the great financial outlay. Or as the
Protestant organ, The Living Church, lately expressed it, when
speaking of this Protestant missionary work, " the appalling dis-
crepancy between lavish expenditure and paucity of results in Latin
American missions." No one, therefore, can accept at their face
value the statistics published by unscrupulous and high-priced mis-
sionaries. One's righteous anger is aroused when reading the
groundless accusations made in this book against the missions and
missionaries of California who, in their seventy-five years of unself-
ish labor and untold sacrifice, achieved results which have affected
all subsequent history.
THE INVASION OF AMERICA. By Julius W. Muller. New
York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.25 net.
This story about the invasion of America and the capture of
New England, New York and New Jersey is written to further the
policy of preparedness, which is now being discussed all over the
United States in view of the Great War in Europe. Its imaginary
happenings are based upon what might occur in view of the coun-
try's failure to train its militia, properly equip its army and navy, and
lay up a sufficient supply of arms and ammunition to meet a foreign
foe. The book is valuable from the fact that it calls attention to
the utter folly of the pacifists, who confound preparedness with
jingoism. The book is well written and well illustrated.
GERMANY EMBATTLED. By Oswald Garrison Villard. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.00 net.
While supposedly written from a neutral point of view, this
book is essentially an attack on German militarism and Govern-
124 NEW BOOKS [April,
mental autocracy. For the first few pages one does not perceive
clearly whither the trend of thought is leading, but this uncertainty
fades away before the end of the first chapter. At best it is a
mediocre production, one of the many war books piling up around
us these days. Parts are interesting : for instance, the chapters on
" The Two Germanics " and " The Kaiser and the War." But
there is a strong Socialist ring about the chapter on " Imperialism
and the German Parties/' and a certain amount of anti-Catholic
prejudice. All in all it is not a striking production, which a book
on this subject must be to-day if it is to be singled, out from the
mass of its rivals.
THE HOUSE ON HENRY STREET. By Lillian D. Wald. New
York : Henry Holt & Co. $2.00 net.
This book, largely a reprint of matter already published in
The 'Atlantic Monthly, is well calculated to arouse and sustain
interest in the work of bettering the conditions of young lives. The
author gives easily and gracefully an account of the beginnings
and growth of the movement, by what measures it was established,
and what have been its results. Statistics and dry details are
sparsely used: emphasis is given by descriptions of the people
among whom and for whom the work has been carried on. Miss
Wald maintains the work has advanced so far as to demand new
terms for the full expression of its many-sided activities.
The book is well and sympathetically written. It is of an
attractive appearance, with many illustrations and decorations in
drawing.
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN? By John Walker Powell. New York:
The Macmillan Co. $1.00.
Part of the author's answer to his own question is a state-
ment that " no man is entitled to be called a Christian who
does not offer to Jesus Christ the most heartfelt loyalty ;" and again,
he says : " He is the unfailing fountain of spiritual power." Un-
fortunately he does not clearly insist upon belief in the Divinity of
Christ as essential to the title of Christian, but he declares the neces-
sity of a conscious adherence to the teaching of Our Lord more
close and constant than would be likely to be practised by any except
a believer in Him as our Divine Saviour.
It is a thoughtful book, within the limitations of thought
that is non-Catholic; and it is definitely spiritual-minded. Mr.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 125
Powell expresses himself clearly and well, and in the chapter headed
" The Christian and War," his penetrating good sense refutes the
extravagances uttered by the advocates of peace at any cost.
PHONETIC METHOD OF HEARING CONFESSIONS OF THE
SLAVIC PEOPLES IN CASES OF EMERGENCY. St.
Louis: B. Herder. 20 cents net.
This valuable little volume will by easy method quickly enable
a priest unacquainted with the Slavic tongues, to hear confessions
in Polish, Bohemian, Slovac, Slovenian, Croatian, Russian, Lithu-
anian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian.
A SYNOPSIS OF DEVAS' POLITICAL ECONOMY. Edited by
Rev. C. D. Hugo, O.P. London: R. & T. Washbourne.
20 cents.
Father Hugo of the English Dominican Province has just
published a clear and detailed synopsis of Mr. Devas' well-known
Political Economy, which will be most helpful to students preparing
for an examination in this difficult study.
FITS AND STARTS. By Rev. T. A. Fitzgerald, O.F.M. St.
Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
These stories are rather uneven both in style and interest. Some
ask too much of the imagination and others are full of true Irish
humor and pathos. The author has often a good story to tell;
sometimes he tells it admirably.
MARY. By Louise M. Stacpoole Kenny, St. Louis : B. Herder.
75 cents net.
The tone of this story for girls is most earnest and devout,
but its difficult theme that of a father's unnatural dislike of his
child is treated in a forced and artificial manner. The characters,
therefore, fail in effective appeal, for the reader can hardly imagine
them to be real. In theme and style the book does not reach the
standard of this author's previous work.
BURKESES AMY. By Julia M. Lippmann. New York : Henry
Holt & Co. $1.25 net.
Amy, the spoiled pet of a doting millionaire grandfather,
gives up the prospect of a trip to Europe with him to devote her
life to social work with her father. Selfish, lazy and heartless, she
develops by contact with the poor of an East-side tenement district
126 NEW BOOKS [April,
into a strong, self-reliant and energetic young woman. Of course
her hero of the slums turns out to be a nobleman's son in disguise,
and he and the heroine marry and are happy ever afterwards. It
is a good clean story by the well-known author of the " Martha "
books.
AMERICA AND THE NEW WORLD STATE. By Norman
Angell. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.00.
This book is a plea for an organized society of nations which
will make war impossible, and a call upon the United States to
play the leader in this New World State. Mr. Angell argues that
whereas we, as a nation, have a very real dependence, moral, intel-
lectual and economic, upon the nations of Europe, we are detached
by our position and history from the traditions and quarrels which
have brought about the present European war. He hopes that
when the settlement comes, the old ideal of a nation imposing its
will by force will be done away with forever, and a better state of
things be brought about, in which public right shall replace the rule
of force, and the peaceful development of civilization be exempt
from the burden of armanent, competition and the dislocation caused
by war.
MICHAEL FREEBERN GAVIN. A Biography. Edited by His
Son. Cambridge, Mass. : Privately printed at the Riverside
Press.
This well-written volume tells in simple but eloquent language
the story of Dr. Gavin's life. A rather uneventful life, the casual
reader might remark, and hardly worthy of a special biography.
But the life of a man so thoroughly good cannot fail to be an
inspiration to the Catholic layman of the present generation. It
reveals to us a true, courteous, genial, sincere and deeply religious
man esteemed highly by his confreres, loved by his friends and
kinsfolk, and honored by the public he served so well. His many
friends in Boston will be pleased to read this earnest and loving
tribute to his memory.
BETWEEN THE LINES. By Boyd Cable. New York: E. P.
Button & Co. $1.35 net.
Mr. Cable's volume describes most vividly and graphically the
horrors of trench warfare on the Western front during the present
European War. We can well believe him when he tells us that
these stirring tales were all written " within sound of the German
guns."
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 127
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
The America Press sends us four pamphlets of the Catholic Mind: Catholics
and Frank Statement, a reprint from the Bombay Examiner on the writing
of history by Father Hull, SJ., and a brief sketch of John Huss by Father
Murphy, S.J. ; The Church and Civilisation, by Father Hull, S.J. ; Faith and
Reason, by Father Finlay, S J. ; and the Ethics of Journalism, by Mr. Thomas
F. Woodlock.
The Australian Catholic Truth Society of Melbourne, Australia, has just
published the Drink Evil in Australia, by Very Rev. W. J. Lockington, SJ. ;
Will They Never Come? a plea for conversions by Constance Clyde and three
short stories Noel, by Christian Reid; A Boy's Prayer, by T. Lloyd; and
A Little Child Shall Lead Them, by Josie Moy.
The Catholic Truth Society of Dublin has just issued an excellent life
of Monsignor Eugene de Mazenod, the founder of the Congregation of the
Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
The World Peace Foundation sends us a pamphlet on Preparedness, by
Charles H. Levermore. The writer neither advises disarmament nor favors
a frenzied haste to arms, believing that the former policy is still impracticable,
and the latter unnecessary and irrational.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., has published a booklet styled The Colorado
Industrial Plan. It contains a copy of the plan of employees' representation,
and the agreement between the company and its employees, adopted at the
coal and iron mines of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Co. To bring out the
scope of the plan more fully, the writer includes an article on Labor and
Capital-Partners, a reprint from the Atlantic Monthly, January, 1916.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Bloud et Gay of Paris continue to publish their interesting series of
Pages Actuelles. We have just received Heroic Servia, by Henry Lorin, Pro-
fessor of Literature at Bordeaux; The Soldier of 1914, a glowing tribute to
the bravery of the French army by Rene Doumic; a sketch of King Albert
of Belgium, by Pierre Nothomb; a brief life of General Maunoury, by an
anonymous writer; and three biographies of General Joffre, General Pau and
General Gallieni, by G. Blanchon.
Justina Leavitt Wilson sends us a brochure on Woman's Suffrage. It con-
tains a brief bibliography of the most important books on the subject, a chapter
on the progress of the movement, and suggestions to the suffragist who wishes
to prepare campaign speeches.
P. S. King & Son, of London, has just published a booklet of a hundred
pages by Margaret Fletcher on Christian Feminism. It forms one of the
series of manuals edited by the Catholic Social Guild of England. Its various
chapters discuss the Catholic teaching on celibacy, marriage, liberty, and the
Church's attitude toward women; law and its limitations; laws affecting the
personal and private lives of women; woman in industrial legislation, and
internationalized feminism.
The writer concludes : " Christian feminism seeks to build upon Christian
principles, and to discover for women a wider scope for the development and
exercise of their powers in conformity with these, and thus to procure for
them a greater share of justice and social life. Revolutionary feminism is
seeking to make a new path, and is convinced that whatever seems to obstruct
complete self-realization for the individual is condemned, whether it be re-
vealed religion or traditional morality."
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 offensive in the West for which the
Progress of the War. Allies were preparing, has been anticipated
by the Germans making their attack on Ver-
dun, which has been unsuccessfully carried on for so long a time.
During January and February at several points along the four-
hundred mile line efforts in considerable force had been made to
feel the strength of both British and French. Possibly Verdun may
have been chosen as the place most likely to give way. The French
lines round the fortress formed a great salient, or projection, so
that the Germans could attack on three sides. If they could have
driven in the base of the salient, they would have effected what
they tried so often in the Russian campaign last year. Then
Verdun lies near the frontier, and is only forty miles from
Metz. Its close connection with the German railways and military
depots, make it easy both to bring up forces for attack, and to
withdraw them in case of defeat. Dynastic motives may have had
some influence.
The Allies cannot help being gratified that the Germans have
themselves undertaken offensive operations, as these are much more
costly than defensive. That the enemy should fling themselves upon
lines which the Allies believe to have been made impregnable is a
pleasing development of the method of attrition which General Joffre
has adopted for so long. The truth is Germany cannot wait. She
has reached, if she has not already passed, the limits of her strength,
while the Allies are still far from having developed all their reserves.
Every student of the war whose opinion carries weight, is agreed
that Germany cannot keep her armies in the field up to the present
strength beyond this year. The Allies, on the other hand, have practi-
cally inexhaustible resources. Hence the Germans being at the top of
their strength feel that now is the time for the decisive conflict.
I9I6.J RECENT EVENTS 129
The internal situation in Germany furnishes a new motive. Ac-
counts of privations and growing discontent increase day by day.
To obtain subscriptions for the loan which is on the point of being
issued, is another reason for the effort that is now being made.
It is impossible to narrate in detail the course of the
battle. At the time these lines are being written it seems certain
that the German attempt has failed, so far, that is, as any-
thing in war can be certain. Even Verdun's fall would be but an
episode, although a serious one. Lines upon lines of defence behind
Verdun would remain still to be conquered. Its fall would
be but a preliminary to an attempt to reach Paris probably from
some other point. In view of the enormous losses which the Ger-
mans have met with, such an attempt although possible seems
unlikely.
On the Eastern front the only change to be recorded is a
slight advance of the Russians, by which they have secured a foot-
hold on the Western bank of the Dniester. By the victories in
Armenia and by their advance through Persia, the Russians have
made a great change in the prospects of the war. The Turks are
now upon the defensive, and there is now little likelihood of an at-
tack upon Egypt. The Russians are now said to be within striking
distance of Bagdad, and to be on the point of uniting with the
British at Kut-el-Amara. To the north they are said to be well
on the way to Trebizond. No attack has been made upon the Allied
forces at Saloniki. The German " Army of Egypt " is serving
partly in France and partly on the borders of Rumania, a state
which is said to be wavering, and on the point of joining the Allies.
So far from being attacked at Saloniki there is talk of an advance
in order to cut the German communications with Constantinople and
to win back the territory of Serbia. As Italy has at Avlona two
hundred and fifty thousand men, while on the island of Corfu there
are seventy-five thousand Serbians, these with the forces of France
and Great Britain at Saloniki would have little difficulty in ac-
complishing such a task. In the meantime, however, Serbia and
a large part of Albania, as well as the whole of Montenegro, are
in the hands of Austria and the Bulgar-Germans. In the French
Republic the Governments of Serbia and Montenegro have found a
refuge. No change of importance has taken place in the line held
by the Italians. Out of Cameroon the Germans have at last been
driven, while in East Africa, where the forces are under the
command of a Boer general, that operation is still in progress.
VOL. cm. 9
130 RECENT EVENTS [April,
Portugal's, involvement in the war increases the list to thirteen, and
has an important bearing on the supply of ships.
The difficulty of learning with any approach
Germany. to certainty the real state of things in Ger-
many, does not grow less. This is not felt,
of course, by those who place their faith in the official statements of
the German Government, but so many have been the disappoint-
ments of those who were once thus trustful that their number
must now be very limited. Various and numerous indications show
waning strength and confidence. The terms of peace of which
there have been reports, all of which undoubtedly emanated from
German sources, have been gradually becoming more and more
lenient to the Allies, although even in the latest version the de-
mands made on German behalf are preposterously exorbitant.
Renouncing the occupation of Paris, Petrograd and London, as
well as the huge indemnity to be paid by Great Britain, and her ex-
clusion from the command of the sea, Germany in her latest
mood is said to be willing to restore Belgium and the occupied
districts of France, to divide the Balkans between Austria-Hun-
gary, Greece and Bulgaria, to give to Poland a distinct position,
whether within the German Empire or under the tutelage of
Austria-Hungary is not yet determined, and to leave Russia
intact with the exception of Courland. Great Britain is neither
to gain nor to suffer loss, except that the German Colonies
of which she has taken possession during the course of the war
are to be restored. On the other hand, although the Allies are not
boasting as they did at the beginning of the war about march-
ing into Berlin, the terms upon which they are willing to make peace
have neither increased nor diminished, except that Servia and Monte-
negro are now included with Belgium among the small nations to
whom their rights are to be restored. France demands the restora-
tion of Alsace-Lorraine; Russia will not make peace until the last
German has been driven out of her borders ; Italy's boundaries must
be extended to the districts of which Italians are the inhabitants.
While Great Britain makes no claim to possessions on the continent,
she will not give up to Germany any part of the many colonies which
she has conquered. Still less will she yield in any degree the pos-
session of the sea. On the contrary, if the war ends without the an-
nihilation of the German navy, in such a sea battle as is now being
talked about, demands may be enforced on Germany for the limi-
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 131
tation of the German navy, as this forms a part of that Prussian
militarism which it is the chief and supreme object of the Allies to
bring to so complete an end that it will be no cause of anxiety in
the future.
The fall of the mark is another thing that speaks louder than
words about the unsatisfactory state of things inside the German
Empire. Within the last few days the exchange on Germany in
New York broke through seventy-two and one- fourth cents for
four marks, a discount of some twenty-four per cent from the ninety-
five and two-tenths cents at which German gold coin here exchanges
for ours. In January the same low rate was reached a thing which
made the Berlin authorities in their alarm take extraordinary meas-
ures to control the rate. The fact that notwithstanding these efforts
the mark has again fallen to its previous lowest record, shows the
estimate which the financial world places upon German capabilities to
maintain its credit. Notwithstanding the vast sums which Great
Britain has had to spend upon imports, she has been able to re-
store to an almost normal level her own rate of exchange. The
reason for the fall of the mark is that those best able to judge have
lost confidence in the rehabilitation within a reasonable time of the
German financial position. As the Germans profess a belief in their
ability to carry on a war of exhaustion, this belief must be added
to the long list of the German misconceptions which first led them
into the conflict and has since made them continue it. The un-
favorable judgment of financiers is based upon the fact that Ger-
man currency has for a long time not been redeemable in gold, and
the volume of paper money has been immensely increased. If
German exchange is bought, what is bought is not the right to gold
in Berlin or Hamburg, but only to paper currency which has an
altogether uncertain value. Gold cannot be purchased in Berlin by
any amount of paper currency, a thing which was always possible
during our Civil War at a premium which could always be estimated.
The German Government allows no such estimate to be made.
The last speech of the German Minister of Finance announced
a great change in the arrangements which were to be made for
the rest of the war a change so disappointing that it was doubtless
the cause of the fall in the Bourse which followed immediately
upon its delivery. The loans which, theretofore, had been issued
owed their success in large degree to the promise that there would
be no taxation, and that the main burden of the war would be
thrown upon the foes of Germany. Dr. Helfferich found it neces-
132 RECENT EVENTS [April,
sary to withdraw this promise, and so the present generation of
Germans will be called upon to spend not merely blood, but treasure.
Full details of the new taxation have not yet been announced ; it is
understood, however, that a tax will be levied upon war profits.
From a German source it is learned that the loan debt of the
Empire before the war amounted to five millards of marks ($1,250,-
000,000). Before the end of the year the total war credits
amounted to forty millards ($10,000,000,000) . These credits repre-
sent only the immediate cost of the war, and do not comprise the
gigantic sums that will have to be found for pensions, for de-
pendents of dead soldiers and invalids, and for replacing of army
materials (if the terms of peace allow this to be done) and other
such needs. The mere payment of the interest on the forty millards
at five per cent without the obviously requisite amortization will
entail a yearly expenditure of $500,000,000. The increase of ex-
penditure in individual States and districts must be added to that
of the Empire as a whole. This shows how deceptive was the
statement of the Minister of Finance that the last year had ended
with a surplus, and that he hoped the current year would end with
a balance of revenue and expenditure. This was, indeed, accom-
plished, but by the simple procedure of withdrawing the war ex-
penditure on the army and navy from the Budget, and meeting it
by the war loans. In fact even the interest on the war loans has
been met not out of the ordinary revenue, but from the proceeds
of the loans themselves.
The visits of neutral observers afford yet another means
of discovering the realities behind the scenes means, too, which
while they do not compel belief, still deserve attention.
A Swede who passed a month in Germany and Austria to-
wards the end of last year, found that the war had caused
very little change in the appearance of Berlin, and in fact of any
of the large towns. Only as a result of minute inquiry, and that in
the smaller towns and villages, could the change which has in reality
taken place be ascertained. These inquiries resulted in the convic-
tion that while there was no justification for the extreme views as
to shortages and sufferings which were held in France and England
about the state of things in Germany, there were many inconveniences
which might easily become grave difficulties, and which no other
people than the Germans, accustomed to a submissive life, would
suffer. The following is a specimen of the life of submission under
which sixty millions of Germans are now living. On two days in
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 133
each week no fat substances of any kind, no butter or salad oil can
be sold in shops or served in restaurants. On two other days no
meats can be sold. Wednesdays and Fridays are meatless days;
Tuesdays and Thursdays are fatless days. Each household is pro-
vided by the police with weekly bread tickets. These are a few
of the many instances of the effects of the war which are being
felt by the Germans effects which would produce revolution in
countries in the enjoyment of the freedom to which we are ac-
customed, and which have in fact caused an open agitation in al-
most every German town, although means of suppression have been
found. To these accounts of the privations from which the Germans
are suffering, must be added what another relates about the
dwindling of many industries. The textile industry is almost at
a standstill. Hat-making and the boot and shoe trade have suffered
for various reasons. A new sort of wooden shoe has taken the
place in several localities of those made of leather.
Since the day on which the Kaiser promised his soldiers that
they would keep the Christmas Day of 1914 in their homes, many
dates have been fixed in Germany for the end of the war. During
the visit of the neutral to which reference has been made, " two
or three months more " was almost the invariable reply which he
received to the question when the war would end. This expectation
of a speedy termination doubtless contributes largely to the main-
tenance of a firm front; but as each date has come and gone, it
may be assumed that this confidence is not now so strong, and
that the reports of growing discontent, owing to oft-repeated disap-
pointments which from time to time appear, are not without that
foundation which is denied to them by official statements. The
perception, too, of the fact that no success on land can be decisive,
is becoming more widespread. Even Count Reventlow recognizes
that the British possession of sea-power nullifies, so long as it is
maintained, all the successes which Germany has secured at such
an enormous sacrifice. The efficiency of the British fleet is ren-
dered all the greater by the geographical situation of Germany.
She is surrounded by neutral States on the Baltic and the
North Sea. These States possess great ports, which normally carry
on an extensive trade of their own. The British problem in the effort
to cut off German trade is complicated by the fear lest she should
unduly interfere with the legitimate trade of Germany's neighbors.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks the results achieved have been
remarkable. The export trade with this country has diminished
134 RECENT EVENTS [April,
by ninety-two per cent. Of the import trade into Germany it is im-
possible to give exact statistics, nor does the British Foreign Office
believe that it has been stopped or can be wholly stopped. In fact,
a widespread belief exists in England that the Foreign Office has
been too tender in its treatment of the German import trade. A
strong demand arose for a change of system, the substitution of
the old-fashioned blockade for the Orders in Council, in virtue of
which action is now being taken. Sir Edward Grey refused, in-
deed, to accede to this demand, but promised a tightening up of the
hitherto existing method a promise which has been redeemed.
In fact, a new minister has been appointed to be placed in sole
charge of the effort which Great Britain is now making complete
to isolate Germany from the world of commerce.
Efforts have been made by experts to form a more or less
accurate estimate of Germany's resources in men of military age.
The mobilizable total at the beginning of the war is placed at nine
millions. Probably 3,500,000 have been lost, killed, badly wounded
and sick, being an average loss of nearly 200,000 a month. There
are approximately 3,000,000 on her two fronts, two-thirds of which
are in the West. On her lines of communication, in garrisons, on
the coast, and in the interior, some place 2,500,000, others no more
than one million. Based on these estimates and on the supposition
that the war preserves in the future its past character, at some date
between May and October, Germany will find herself unable to
maintain her effectives at the front with men of military age, and
will, therefore, before that date, force a decision at one front or
another. This estimate seems to have erred, if at all, on the side
favorable to Germany. Germany has already attempted to force
a decision at Verdun, and among the prisoners that have been taken
by the French, the large number of ineffectives was most striking.
This is not the first time that this has been noticed, and seems to
indicate that the supply of men of military age is already being
exhausted, and that the pick of the German population has been
to a large extent destroyed. A neutral who has recently paid a visit
to Miinster noted the enormous change which the corps of officers
has undergone. "Very few of the professional officers are left;
their places have been taken by civilians in uniform." The reliance
placed on mechanical aids strengthens this conclusion that less is
being placed on the human element.
That these notes may not be thought pessimistically exaggerated,
a few extracts from a semi-official paper the Cologne Gazette
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 135
may be given : " Never shall we be able to forget the seriousness of
these times. The effects of the war will not be wiped out with the
conclusion of peace. In all circumstances, as the Secretary of State
for the Imperial Treasury said in the Reichstag, we shall have to
bear a colossal burden of taxes after the war. It is useless to
make guesses about the extent of the coming taxes A far
higher percentage of our income [must be placed] at the disposal
of the State in the shape of taxes and customs [amounting possibly
to thirty per cent] in addition to these great sacrifices, smaller
sacrifices are required, and the future as well as the present de-
mands privations Let us not forget that many German women
are to-day walking a road suffering, and that there is much need
among the families of the lower middle classes which is not yet
allayed in spite of all readiness to help [In spite of all diffi-
culties] the German people as a whole will continue to hold out
in this war for years to come."
The slight opposition offered by Italy to
Italy. t the overrunning by Austria first of Monte-
negro and then of the Albanian Coast
far on the way to Avlona, has caused something more than
disappointment, and the fact that she is nominally still at peace
with Germany, and has declined to declare war on the ally of
Austria-Hungary, has made many doubt the whole-heartedness
of her cooperation with France and Great Britain. Possibly to
remove these doubts the French Premier went upon a mission to
Rome, accompanied by M. Bourgeois and members of the war
staff. This visit was the first paid by any French Minister to
Italy for twelve years, and has resulted in the renewal of the bonds
which naturally exist between the two Latin races. The mission
received an ovation upon its arrival in Rome, and is believed to
have resulted in clearing up any misunderstandings which may have
arisen, and in bringing about closer cooperation in the conduct of
the war. In addition to these more immediate results, the visit
is hailed as a sign of the reunion of peoples whose ideals are
opposed in every respect to those of the Powers that are making a
supreme effort to dominate the rest of Europe. Since the visit
the Italian Government has taken possession of the German and
Austrian ships which were interned at the beginning of the war,
and has forbidden the importation under any guise into Italy or
her colonies of products of German origin. She has, however, re-
136 RECENT EVENTS [April,
frained from declaring war on that country, nor has the latter
treated Italy in the same way as she has treated Portugal, although
the latter did no more than Italy.
Some little degree of unrest exists in political circles in Italy :
the conduct of the war is being criticized, and the refusal of Signor
Salandra to admit into his Cabinet a representative of the Inter-
ventionist groups of the extreme Left is the cause of the discon-
tent of members of these groups. A certain amount of ill-feeling
towards Great Britain has been shown on account of the enormous
rise in coal freights which was laid to her door, and which was
producing a shortage of the coal necessary for Italian industries.
Arrangements have been made to remedy this cause of complaint.
Nothing, however, has weakened the resolve of the Italian people.
On the contrary, Italy is declared to be " more than ever unanimous
in the determination to continue the struggle not only until the
downfall of the secular enemy, but also until the defeat of the
whole bloc of which Austria forms a part, and against which our
Allies are fighting on other fronts. We have signed the Pact of
London and we shall honor our signature."
The acute tension which has existed behind
Russia. the scenes in Russia, has been relieved by
the resignation of M. Goremykin. During
the retreat from Poland and Galicia a widespread movement began
for internal reform. The War Minister was superseded; but M.
Goremykin remained as a barrier to the aims of the progressive bloc.
No little satisfaction, therefore, was felt when he resigned, but this
was speedily dissipated when M. Sturmer, a member of the Council
of the Empire, was appointed as his successor. The new Premier is
not only a friend of his predecessor, whose views he is understood
to share, but was in close collaboration with M. Plehve, whose name
is held in execration by all who aim at the political improvement
of Russia. Happily these fears also have to some extent been dissi-
pated, for M. Sturmer not only at once announced that he was in
sympathy with the Government cooperating with the Duma,
but proceeded at once to summon a meeting of the Russian Par-
liament. He is not, however, in favor of any attempt during the
course of the war to settle the numerous and complicated domestic
problems which existed before the war broke out. The prosecution
of the war to a successful issue should, he holds, be the sole pre-
occupation of the Government. No proposal for a separate peace
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 137
would be entertained. His confidence is indicated by his declara-
tion : " Those who speak of the financial and economic exhaustion
of Russia appear ludicrous to me, for Russia and the Russian people
cannot be exhausted or conquered." At the opening of the Duma
the Tsar for the first time was present in person, and welcomed the
representatives of the people cordially. The promise is bright for a
closer cooperation between the Government and the elected House.
The fact that no period is fixed for the length of the session,
and no definite scope for its labors, is considered a token of the
Government's wish to establish relations of mutual confidence.
The great and important victories of the Russian armies in
Armenia have greatly changed the outlook. This change is due
not merely to the victories themselves, but to the proof which they
afford that the cause of former defeats has been removed. Last
year's defeat, the War Minister declares, was due solely to the
lack of shells. " The position was the more poignant because from
the point of view both of the bravery of the men and the methods
of fighting, everything was in favor of the Russians winning. To-
day I tell you categorically that the munitions crisis no longer exists.
It is a thing of the past, a sinister memory, but only a memory
It has been an absolute revolution: an absolute transforma-
tion of our industrial activity and almost of our customs. We have
now a permanent reserve of a million and a half of young recruits,
which will enable us to feed the various units without sending to
the front men with insufficient military training. Behind the four
Allies there are the natural resources of the whole universe. Be-
hind the armies of the Central Powers are exhaustion and shakiness.
There is only one way to express our final success and that is in
the words the war will continue to the end."
The scale on which things are done in Russia may be illustrated
by the gigantic proportions of the celebration at Petrograd of St.
George's Day last December. Several buildings, including one
palace, were filled with guests for whom tables three miles in length
were loaded with bread and meat and drink. Nine tons of beef,
eight thousand fowl and thirty- two thousand bottles of liquor were
supplied for the occasion. As the liquor was wine and mead, this
was not considered to be a violation of the temperance regime.
With Our Readers.
THE reports of the proceedings of the Protestant Congress on Chris-
tian Work in Latin America are as yet too meagre to permit of
extensive comment. The purpose of the Congress is to antagonize
the Catholic Church in South America. Catholics were forbidden by
the Archbishop of Panama to participate in any way. The Protestant
organs that support the work of the Congress have since claimed that
prominent Catholics were present, and the New York dailies stated
that the President of Panama delivered an address before the Congress.
The President of Panama did not appear at any session of the Congress ;
nor did he even send an address to it. And The Churchman, for exam-
ple, stated that a Catholic Judge, Emilio del Toro, from Porto Rico, ad-
dressed the Congress ; but this same Judge stated expressly in his ad-
dress : " I come from a family Catholic in origin, but for a long
time past I have not personally been a member of any Church." The
only Catholic who attended was the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and
he was not permitted even to welcome the members of the Congress
in the name of the President of Panama. He seems to have been
present through legal necessity, and he expressly told the Congress
that he was a " sincere and devout Catholic."
Though .the more moderate members seem to have prevailed in
the resolutions accepted by the Congress, their moderation was not
of an extraordinary kind, and the purpose of the Congress remains
as positive as it was when the Congress was called. A " Continuation
Committee " was established, and one of the Bishops of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, Bishop Brown, accepted the office of vice-president.
As a consequence, The Living Church, the organ of the High Epis-
copalians who protested so vigorously against their Church taking
any part in the Congress, renews its protests.
THE Protestant motive of the Congress, namely, opposition to the
Catholic Church and a determination to undermine Catholic faith in
Catholic countries, is beyond question. Bishop Oldham's address,
moderate and conciliatory as some Protestant journals term it, spoke
of the Catholic Church as a " persecuting " Church ; of its " ceaseless
itch for political meddling ;" of the " worship " by its members of the
Virgin Mary; of how the Protestant campaign in South America
was to " recover " for Catholics " their loving Lord." Bishop Brown
also stated that one of the primary purposes of the " campaign " in
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 139
South America was to remove those things which in the name of
religion stand between God and the individual worshipper; "to give
its people " the gospel of an open Bible ; further, that the religious
leaders in these Catholic countries had put " institutions, ceremonies
and many mediators between the soul and God, each one serving to
hide the Father and to obscure His love."
'THESE and many other statements that it would take too much space
A to reprint, such as " there are but five messengers in the whole of
Venezuela declaring that Jesus is ready to save all who come to Him,
without money and without price," make it very difficult to give
credit for honesty to the Episcopal Bishop of Porto Rico when he
said : " The Church's presence in Latin America is due solely to her
desire to cooperate with the existing forces in these countries in the
common work of subduing the powers of evil, and of bringing all
men into the faith and obedience of the one, holy, Catholic and
apostolic Church of God," or the New York Churchman, when it
states " the Roman Church was not assailed."
THE main purpose of the Congress was to show (we adopt the
words of The Congregationalist) " that the Evangelical Church is
the real depository of the pure, apostolic faith and the only hope of
civil, religious and intellectual liberty for Latin America."
There is no warrant, therefore, to speak of its spirit as tolerant
towards Catholics.
HTHE Month points out in its March issue that the book of
A United States Military Instructions gives the following direction:
" Men who take up arms against one another in public warfare do not
cease on this account to be moral beings responsible to one another and
to God." Of all " modern codes, war books, law books and what not,"
this is the only instance The Month finds where " reference is made
to God the source and standard of all morality."
IN answer to a note of inquiry concerning a review in our February
issue, we have received the following from the reviewer:
" The attention of the writer responsible for the review that ap-
peared in the February number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD of Pro-
fessor Jastrow's The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, has been
courteously called to some passages in that work which consist of
conjectures upon the origin of the Book of Genesis. Exception was
WITH OUR READERS [April,
taken to the favorable estimate given of a book which contained
passages inconsistent with Catholic faith. This favorable estimate is
compendiously stated in the first paragraph of the notice: 'He has
sifted carefully and grouped together the immense amount of infor-
mation which the monuments of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley have
yielded to science, and has covered within the compass of eight chap-
ters the whole range of Babylonian and Assyrian civilization/ That
is to say, Professor Jastrow, within his- own scientific field, has done
his work and given us a book useful to students.
" But science is one thing, and speculation another. When he, as
so many other scientists do, quits his proper field of facts to indulge
in his own theories and conjectures his views are of no importance.
Catholic scholars and students who, as part of their purgatory, are
doomed to devote themselves to Assyriology, are obliged to seek their
data in works that emanate, for the most part, from men who do not
believe in the supernatural character of the Bible, and give formal,
or informal, expression to their opinion when they are treating their
proper subject. When we detect this note in their texts, we value it
as everybody of good sense values, let us say, the special authority of
Mr. Edison, the wizard of electricity, when delivering his judgment
on the immortality of the soul. It never occurred to the reviewer to
accord Professor Jastrow's opinions regarding the book of Genesis
the importance that would be implied in a contradiction of them.
Likewise, forgetting that the academic atmosphere is not that of the
Agora, he assumed, too rashly, it seems, that for Catholics who are
sufficiently interested in learning to buy a work on this subject, no
warning was required to put them on their guard against Professor
Jastrow's conjectures regarding the origin of Genesis. We listen to
Professor Jastrow when he is compendiously and lucidly presenting
the definite, positive results of archaeological research, but we do not
go to Professor Jastrow for his opinion regarding the inspiration of
the Scriptures for instruction on that subject we go to the Catholic
Church."
THE question of Washington's Catholic ancestors was widely dis-
cussed by our Catholic weekly press last month. We have re-
ceived the following contribution on the subject from Mabel T. R.
Washburn, which we are pleased to give to our readers :
GEORGE WASHINGTON, DESCENDANT OF THE SAINTS.
The kingliest man that ever conquered kings, sincerest of all
scorners of a throne's vainglory, founder of the greatest democracy
the world has known, George Washington was himself literally
I 9 i6.] WITH OUR READERS 141
" an inheritor of the Saints in light," for in his veins flowed the
blood of great Servants of God.
So long as America endures will Americans revere the name of
Washington, and his example will be an inspiration to lovers of
freedom in every land. Philosophers, knowing the forces concerned
in the mysteries of heredity, have marveled that this simple Virginian
gentleman, heir of several generations of unimportant, moderately
lettered, country squires of an English colony, was able to step
instantly into place as a leader of men, a nation's designer, thrilled
with the glory of genius in war and in peace. A study of his an-
cestry, through the centuries before Virginia became the family home,
throws light on the heritage for government that was his by right
of blood, and has deeper significance to the Catholic who traces the
greatness of Washington back to great and holy rulers of men St.
Louis and St. Ferdinand.
George Washington was unaware of his own pedigree prior to
the coming to Virginia of his first American ancestor, John Wash-
ington, but he was sufficiently interested in the subject to correspond
concerning it with Sir Isaac Heard, Garter King-at-Arms, who, in
1791, asked the President for data on his lineage. This official of the
Heralds' College, then as now a department of the British govern-
ment, was convinced that John Washington, the Virginia colonist,
with his brother, Lawrence, were scions of the Northamptonshire
Washingtons; but he erroneously identified them with a John and
Lawrence Washington who were recorded in the Heralds' Visitation
of Northamptonshire made in 1618.
It was not until the year 1863 that this error was challenged,
when Isaac J. Greenwood, Junior, noted in an article in The New
England Historical and Genealogical Register that the brothers men-
tioned in the Heralds' Visitation were over sixty years old in 1657,
the date of the Virginia Washingtons' immigration, the latter being at
that time young men. Colonel Joseph L. Chester, in The Herald and
Genealogist, an English magazine, three years later proved that the
John Washington of the Heralds' Visitation was identical with Sir
John Washington of Thrapston, and that the latter could not have
been the Virginia John Washington.
The first genealogist to offer another theory of ancestry, however,
for our first President was Henry F. Waters, in 1889, when he set
forth a pedigree for Washington in The New England Historical and
Genealogical Register, offering a well-worked-out chain of the strong-
est possible circumstantial evidence to substantiate his theory. The
documentary proof of this pedigree was obtained in 1892 by Worth-
ington Ford, who discovered the will of Mrs. Martha Hayward, which
was probated in 1697. The statements made in this will by Mrs.
142 WITH OUR READERS [April,
Hayward, whose maiden name was Martha Washington, concerning
not only her Virginia relatives, for she was the sister of the immi-
grant brothers, John and Lawrence Washington, but also about the
family in England, conclusively show, when taken together with the
genealogical discoveries made in England by Mr. Waters and the
family tree as given in the Heralds' Visitation of Northamptonshire
of 1618, that George Washington descended from one John Washing-
ton of Tuwhitfield, in Lancashire, England, who lived about the
middle of the fifteenth century.
A complete statement of all the links in the chain was first made
by the present writer in 1912, in The Journal of American History.
Lawrence Washington, great-grandson of John of Tuwhitfield,
removed to Northamptonshire. The Virginia colonists, John and
Lawrence, were the great-great-grandsons of the Lawrence Washing-
ton who settled in Northamptonshire.
The ancestor of the third generation in the latter county, also
Lawrence Washington, this being a family name, married, August 3,
1588, Margaret Butler, and it was through this marriage that the blood
of many of the royal dynasties of mediaeval Europe, of most of the
great baronial families of England, and of St. Louis and St. Ferdi-
nand, flowed down through the centuries to pass into the veins of
George Washington, first President of the United States.
Margaret (Butler) Washington was the daughter of John Butler
and his wife, Margaret Sutton. The latter descended from Edmund
de Sutton who married Joyce Tiptoft, whose mother, Joyce de Charl-
ton, was born in 1403. Her ancestral line goes back to John de
Charlton, who married Joan, the daughter of Ralph, Lord Stafford,
and his wife, Margaret Audley. The latter's mother, Margaret de
Clare, was the daughter of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford and
Gloucester, and the Princess Jane, daughter of King Edward I. of
England.
King Edward's wife was Eleanor of Castile, daughter of St.
Ferdinand, King of Spain, descendant of Sancho III., of Navarre,
" Emperor of Spain " about the year 1000.
Washington, through his descent from King Edward's first wife,
Eleanor, thus might have claimed St. Ferdinand for ancestor; but
through another strain of blood royal, he was also a descendant of
St. Louis, King of France.
Edward I., George Washington's ancestor, as has been shown,
married, second, Margaret, daughter of Philip III. of France, and
thus granddaughter of Louis IX., St. Louis, King and Confessor.
Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, son of Edward I. and
Margaret, was father of Joan, " The Fair Maid of Kent," whose first
husband was Sir Thomas de Holland. Their son, Thomas de Hoi-
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 143
land, married Alice, daughter of Richard, Earl of Arundel, of that
historic house the antiquity of whose nobility gave rise to the ancient
distich :
Since William rose and Harold fell
There have been Earls of Arundel.
Eleanor, daughter of Alice of Arundel and Thomas de Holland,
died in 1405. She married Edward de Charlton, Baron of Powys,
descended from John de Charlton whose wife, Hawys, traced her
ancestry to Cadwan, King of the Britons in 635.
This Edward de Charlton was the son of the John de Charlton
who married Joan de Stafford, the latter being, as noted above, a
descendant of Edward I. and his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, daugh-
ter of St. Ferdinand.
James Bryce has said of Washington that he " stands alone,
unapproachable, like a snow peak rising above its fellows into the
clear air of the morning, with a dignity, constancy and purity which
have made him the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding genera-
tions."
May not Catholics believe it possible that the special character
of Washington's greatness, that which Hawthorne described as " the
faculty of bringing order out of confusion like light gleaming
through an unshaped world," was in some sense derived through his
blood-heritage from St. Louis and St. Ferdinand, two of God's serv-
ants whose royalty of the spirit glowed so splendidly in kingly
service to their people that men saw " their good works and glorified
their Father? "
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. CIIL MAY, 1916. No. 614.
THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY.
BY THOMAS F. WOODLOCK.
OME years ago Mr. H. G. Wells became a convert
or thought he did to Socialism, and wrote New
Worlds for Old as his apologia. It is true that he
never professed the orthodox Marxian faith. He
did not subscribe to the creed of social salvation by the
Hegelian dialectic through economic determinism, the class struggle
and surplus value. Nothing of this is to be found in his book.
He was merely one of the despised " Utopian " Socialists, but he
did believe in the " Cooperative Commonwealth " as something
quite practicable and most desirable.
New Worlds for Old has an importance quite unique for stu-
dents of Socialist literature. It has the double merit of making
the best possible case for Utopia and of demonstrating its utter
impracticability. Mr. Wells is a much misunderstood man among
contemporary writers. He is gravely read and discussed as a man
who thinks, a philosopher, a seer, a prophet, a scientist, and so
forth ; whereas he is really a most accurate reporter of phenomena,
with a genuine gift of artistic expression which is at its best in types
of lower British middle-class life. Kipps, Mr. Polly and Love and
Mr. Lewisham with passages in Ann Veronica, Bealby and The
New Machiavelli are his really important contributions to the liter-
ature of his day. There is absolutely no significance in the rest of his
works from the point of view of art or science, much less philosophy,
except for such parts of them as are of the " reporting " order.
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cm. 10
146 THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY [May,
In his reporting he is strictly honest with himself and his readers,
and he has a gift of exposition. Being, so far as one may judge,
unhampered by any particular Weltanschauung of his own, embraced
as a philosophy of life after long and careful inquiry, there is
nothing to prevent him from stating things if not exactly as they
are, at least as they do really seem to him.
Looking over the world and viewing the shocking inequalities
that exist, Mr. Wells saw the vision of the Cooperative Common-
wealth and decided that it was good. He analyzed it into its
fundamentals and accepted those fundamentals. He tested its prac-
ticability and honestly stated the difficulties. He looked for the
means by which to surmount these difficulties and thought he found
them. He thought he had solved the problem, and went on his
way rejoicing; whereas the truth is that he only stated the problem,
and that analysis carried a little deeper than the skin, quickly shows
the problem, as he states it, to be insoluble. It is precisely in his
statement of the problem that the great value of his book consists.
It is necessary although Socialism is not the main business in hand
so far as this article is concerned to make a short summary of
Wells' argument.
The foundations of the Cooperative Commonwealth, as Wells
sees it, rest upon two principles, which he states as the two " main
generalizations " of Socialism. The first of these contains the
following as its essential paragraph :
The Socialist holds that the community as a whole should be
responsible, and every individual in the community, married or
single, parent or childless, should be responsible for the welfare
and upbringing of every child born into that community. This
responsibility may be intrusted in whole or in part to parent,
teacher or other guardian but it is not simply the right but
the duty of the State that is to say of the organized power and
intelligence of the community to direct, to inquire and to
intervene in any default for the child's welfare. 1
Wells is acute enough to see and honest enough to say what
most Socialist writers have failed to say, or if they have said it at
all have done so with quibble and compromise, namely, that the
home must be socialized before property can be socialized. Social-
ize the child first and the rest will be easy. Remove from the
1 New Worlds for Old, by H. G. Wells, p. 54. New York: The Macmillan Co.
1908. $1.50.
I9i6.] THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY 147
shoulders of the breadwinner the care for those of his flesh and
blood who shall live after him, and where will be his need to accu-
mulate and hold? The second main generalization follows inevit-
ably from the first as follows :
The Socialist holds that the community as a whole should
be inalienably the owner and administrator of the land, of
raw materials, of values and resources accumulated from the
past, and that private property must be of a terminable
nature, reverting to the community and subject to the general
welfare. 2
The heart of Socialism is included in these two principles.
But it must be remembered that an equally fundamental axiom of
Socialism is democracy; the Cooperative Commonwealth must be
absolutely democratic in character. Democracy, indeed, is the very
soul of Socialism, and is implied in all plans of the " holy city "
by whomsoever drawn.
Now in considering the practicability of the Socialist dream,
Wells discusses the various objections commonly urged against it,
and does so with much fairness. Finally he comes to the one
fatal objection :
Socialism is against Human Nature. This objection I have
left until last, because, firstly, it is absolutely true, and,
secondly, it leads naturally to the newer ideas that have already
peeped out once or twice in my earlier chapters, and which will
now ride up to a predominance in what follows, and particularly
the idea that an educational process and a moral discipline are
not only a necessary part, but the most fundamental part of
any complete Socialist scheme. Socialism is against human
nature. That is true, and it is equally true of everything else ;
capitalism is against human nature, cruelty, kindness, religion,
and doubt, monogamy, polygamy, celibacy, decency, indecency,
piety and sin are all against human nature. The present system
in particular is against human nature, or what is the policeman
for, the soldier, the debt collector, the judge, the hangman?
What means the glass upon my neighbor's wall ? Human nature
is against human nature. For human nature is in a perpetual
conflict; it is the Ishmael of the universe, against everything
and with everything against it and within no more and no less
than a perpetual battleground of passion, desire, cowardice,
2 Ibid., p. 88.
148 THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY [May,
insolence and good will. So that our initial proposition as it
stands at the head of this section is as an argument against
Socialism just worth nothing at all. 3
Assuredly, logic never engaged much of Mr. Wells' time or
thought! Starting with the frank admission that Socialism is in-
compatible with Human Nature, and that an " educational process
and a moral discipline " are a " necessary " and a " fundamental
part of any complete Socialist scheme," he calmly proceeds to
weave a web of meaningless rhetoric which involves the argument
in a hopeless absurdity. As usual it is a case of failure to distin-
guish. It was not for nothing that the Scholastic maxim ran:
Concede raro, nega frequenter, distingue semper. One would have
thought that even an Englishman of the Victorian age might have
suspected that there was some confusion somewhere and that careful
consideration and prolonged thought might have disclosed the ter-
minological flaw in the uses of the word " against!" Especially as
in a following passage, to be quoted presently, he throws away the
supposed fruits of his rhetoric and its triumphant conclusion that
the argument is worth " just nothing at all ! "
Logic apart, however, let us note the important admission made
in the opening sentences of the paragraph, namely, that Socialism
is against human nature, and let us further note the even more
important admission made by Mr. Wells in his concept of human
nature itself in the sentence which I reprint in italics : " For human
nature is in a perpetual conflict; it is the Ishmael of the universe,
against everything and with everything against it, and within no
more and no less than a perpetual battleground of passion, desire,
cowardice, indolence and good will."
One might well suppose, looking at those words as they might
stand apart from context and unsigned, that they were the utterance
of some mediaeval preacher! It must be credited to Mr. Wells as
a supreme distinction among Socialist writers, that he alone had the
wit to discern and the honesty to declare the effects upon the world
of original sin. " The Ishmael of the universe " could hardly be
bettered 'as a description of man's nature since the Fall. Lest it
may be thought that I am drawing too wide an inference from his
language, I append the sentences which follow immediately on the
words, " just nothing at all :"
None the less valuable is it as a reminder of the essential
*Ibid. t pp. 288 et seq.
1916.] THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY 149
constructive task of which the two primary generalizations of
Socialism we have so far been developing are but the outward
and visible forms. There is no untutored naturalness in Social-
ism, no uneducated blind force on our side. Socialism is made
out of struggling Good Will, made out of a conflict of wills.
I have tried to let it become apparent that while I do firmly
believe not only in the splendor and nobility of the Socialist
dream, but in its ultimate practicality I do also recognize quite
clearly that with people just as they are now, with their pre-
judices, their ignorances, their misapprehensions, their un-
checked vanities and greeds and jealousies, their crude and mis-
guided instincts, their irrational traditions, no Socialist State
can exist, no better State can exist than the one we have now
with all its squalor and cruelty. Every change in human insti-
tutions must happen concurrently with a change of ideas. Upon
this plastic, uncertain, teachable thing Human Nature, within us
and without, we have, if we really contemplate Socialism as
our achievement, to impose guiding ideas and guiding habits,
to coordinate all the Good Will that is active or latent in our
world in one constructive plan. To-day the spirit of humanity
is lost to itself, divided, dispersed and hidden in narrow distorted
circles of thought. These divided, misshapen circles of thought
are not " human nature," but human nature has fallen into
these forms and has to be released. 4
" Human nature has fallen ! " Whence and how, one may
wonder, according to Mr. Wells' philosophy, has this fall taken
place? Here we can invoke to our aid no blessed word evolution
to help us, for in the bright lexicon of evolution there is no such
word as " fall " in such a sense. Fall, however, there has been as
he sees it, and it is the effects of this fall, reflected in the " preju-
dices," " ignorances," " misapprehensions," " unchecked vanities,"
and so forth of people as they are, which convince him that while
this condition lasts " no Socialist State can exist." What remains
now of that burst of rhetoric which finished in the words " just
worth nothing at all ? " Just " nothing at all ! "
We may note, in passing, that Mr. Wells specifically disowns the
" scientific " Socialism of Marx and the party where he denies the
existence of any " untutored naturalism," any " uneducated blind
force " working to bring about the Socialist State, and plainly ranks
himself with the despised " Utopians." Are there really any true
Marxians left in the world nowadays?
'Ibid., pp. 289, 290.
150 THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY [May,
Now in the argument thus far Mr. Wells is in entire agreement
with the position of the Catholic Church on the whole matter. She
says, as Wells does, that the notion of property rests on the home,
and is indissolubly united therewith. She says that in the present
state of human nature Socialism is impossible and so does Wells.
She says that the present state of human nature is a " fallen " state
and so does Wells. So far so good. Mr. Wells, of course, is bliss-
fully unconscious of this agreement, for he does not understand the
full significance of the facts which he has, up to a point, accurately
observed and honestly recorded. But the agreement does not stop
here. In his solution of the difficulty he apprehends the phenomena
in their relations with a superficial correctness, and the phenomena
recorded by him, properly interpreted, furnish the answer to the
question.
There is no inherent impracticability, no necessary unwork-
ableness, in the notion of Socialism; its impracticability is contin-
gent, and arises from its conflict with the ordinary motives of
human nature. Mr. Wells understands this, and sees clearly that
the success of Socialism depends upon discovery of a motive strong
enough to overcome these ordinary motives. As he has said, " So-
cialism is made out of struggling good will ; made out of a conflict
of wills." Let us see what he has to tell us about this " good will."
He has found such a thing in the world it seems :
And it needs but a cursory view of history to realize though
all knowledge of history confirms the generalization that this
arena is not a confused and aimless conflict of individuals.
Looked at too closely it may seem to be that, a formless web
of individual hates and loves ; but detach one's self a little and
the broader forms appear. One perceives something that goes
on, that is constantly working to make order out of casualty,
beauty out of confusion, justice, kindliness, mercy out of cruelty
and inconsiderate pressure. For our present purposes it will
be sufficient to speak of this force that struggles and tends to
make and do as Good Will. More and more evident it is, as one
reviews the ages, that there is this as well as lust, hunger, avar-
ice, vanity and more or less intelligent fear to be counted among
the motives of mankind. This Good Will of our race, however
arising, however trivial, however subordinated to individual
ends, however comically inadequate a thing it may be in this
individual case or that, is in the aggregate an operating will.
In spite of all the confusions and thwartings of life, the halts and
resiliences and the counter strokes of fate, it is manifest that in
I 9 i6.] THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY 151
the long run human life becomes broader than it was, gentler
than it was, finer and deeper. On the whole and nowadays
almost steadily things get better. There is a secular ameliora-
tion of life, and it is brought about by Good Will working
through the efforts of men. 5
(I hasten to remind the reader that this was written about ten
years ago!)
" Good Will " it seems is the motive ; how convenient upper-
case type is in matters of this kind! Mr. Wells does not tell us
whence and how it came into the world nor of what order is this
motive it is his own word which he has discerned among the
motives of poor human nature wandering an exile in the deserts
without water. "However arising," he says of it; perhaps these
words betray, on his part, a latent suspicion that its origin may not
be the same as that of " lust, hunger, avarice, vanity and more or
less intelligent fear." There it is, however, and he knows it by its
effects in the shape of " a secular amelioration." Ishmael carries
with him, in the wilderness, the means of his redemption.
It would be too much to expect of Mr. Wells that he should
be ready to recognize and to admit the supernatural in the affairs
of men. The heavy inheritance of scientific and naturalistic super-
stition bequeathed from the generation of the seventies to the mod-
ern Anglo-Saxon mind, has been far too much of a burden for that
organ's very moderate powers in the domain of metaphysical con-
siderations. Therefore, it need not be accounted matter of great
shame to Mr. Wells, that seeing Christianity at work in the
hearts of men he called it " Good Will." The important thing is
that he did see something which seemed to him to hold out the hope
he sought. That he misapprehended and miscalled it is of no
consequence for our purposes. He saw or thought he saw in
the world a force which ran counter to the passions and the desires
of human nature, and that in this force lay the hopes of the world
for social justice. Again he is in agreement with the Church. Not
merely does she admit that Socialism is practicable if a sufficient
motive be present; she shows the world Socialism in operation
under the influence of that motive, and has shown it for fully
fifteen hundred years in her religious orders. All that is needed
to make Socialism work the world over is a motive strong enough
to induce a man willingly to surrender his possessions and his will.
There is nothing more complex in it than that. With divine grace
'Ibid., pp. 4. 5.
152 THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY [May,
completely victorious in the hearts of men, social justice would
inevitably follow.
The great value of Mr. Wells' book is consequently apparent,
for it constitutes a most important piece of independent testimony
to the absolute soundness of the Catholic Church's teaching on the
whole subject. Wells has accurately recorded the phenomena, and
has accurately interpreted their relations. All that is necessary
is to give the phenomena their right names, and our case is proven
for us by a witness not of our fold. But it is not Socialism that is
our present business, and it is not because Mr. Wells' book hammers
another nail in the coffin of an already mouldering cadaver, that I
have devoted so much space to its consideration. Socialism of the
orthodox type is dead enough, but there is more concerned in Mr.
Wells' study of the facts than Socialism. There is the question of
democracy. I have already said that democracy is the soul of
Socialism, and so it surely is, for it is as a revolt against and a
remedy for the inequalities in the world that Socialism arose. De-
mocracy in politics came first, and Socialism is only an extension of
democracy into economics. It is noteworthy that in these days
when it has finally become apparent that Socialism is an iridescent
dream, the notion of " industrial democracy " is making so much
headway in radical circles of economic thought.
If we analyze the reason why Mr. Wells found Socialism im-
practicable in the present state of human nature, we find that it lies
in the unwillingness of men to accept the sacrifices and accommoda-
tions necessary to make the Socialist scheme work. Voluntary co-
operation is the essence of Socialism and it is also the essence of
democracy. The sacrifices and accommodations imposed by So-
cialism are more numerous and more varied they are also more
intimate than those imposed by democracy; nevertheless, democ-
racy demands much. In its simplest political form it requires sacri-
fice of the will; if it spreads into industry it will demand sacrifice,
at least partially of possessions. In any form it will exact a high
degree of mutual confidence and mutual forbearance from those
who live under it as a principle of organization. All these things
are indispensable to its success and its continuance as a form of
human society. Can democracy exist continuously upon the earth,
can it extend itself so as to embrace all civilized society, at least
in a political sense; can it, in short, establish itself as the one true
principle of human dealings in the activities of life and justify itself
by its deeds with human nature as Mr. Wells finds human nature
1916.] THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY 153
to be in these days? Or is his " Good Will " is Christianity as a
living force in the hearts of men necessary to make it work?
It is easier to pose the question than it is to answer it, and
I have no intention of doing more than pose it as fairly as I can,
suggesting one or two lines of thought that may lead toward an
answer.
Democracy is an axiom in modern thought. The essential
equality of men under the law is no more firmly held as truth than
is the essential equality of men in the making and unmaking of the
law. And yet what warrant have we for the axiom? In wht
does this equality of man reside? We know that it does not reside
in his powers, either mental or physical; science on this point is
clear, and the Mendelian discoveries have excluded the Marxian
concept of equalization by environment from further serious con-
sideration by intelligent men. Inequality is the fact in human
society however regarded. Nevertheless, there is the doctrine of
the " Rights of Man " staring us in the face. Can these " rights "
be defended on grounds wholly in the natural order ? Can "science''
support them? Can they be deduced from the nature of man as
Wells sees man? I do not see how they can be so defended, so
supported or so deduced. But I do see how they can be securely
founded in the supernatural order, and how they follow irresistibly
upon the Christian teaching. I do see how democracy as a political
theory grows naturally enough out of Christianity, wherein, as Ches-
terton says, men are united in a democracy of eternal danger, or
words like it. In the Christian system the inequalities are in the
things that do not matter; the equalities are in the essentials. A
common humanity as a basis of equality in human activities is
possible only on the ground of the extraordinary destiny of men,
and in view of that as an end. Prescinding from that, it is hard
to see any reason for supposing that any way can be found in the
natural order for democratically composing the differences that
exist in that order.
The admitted " inefficiency "of democratic societies, as con-
trasted with societies oligarchically or monarchically organized, is
due more than anything else to the fact that democratic govern-
ments are shaped in the main on a system of checks and counter-
checks, which are eloquent testimony to the lack of confidence
reposed by men in each other. This system generates inertia instead
of initiative. Of course no one is willing to purchase " efficiency "
at the cost of liberty ; that is not the point. The point is that democ-
154 THE SECURITY OF DEMOCRACY [May,
racy based on mutual distrust functions badly, that whatever func-
tions badly holds its existence upon uncertain tenure, and that de-
mocracy, if it is to establish itself as an inheritor of the earth
must justify itself by its works. It is customary to profess a blind
faith in the future of democracy. This faith is often expressed in
the saying that " the cure for inefficient democracy is more democ-
racy." This may be true, but there is assuredly no reason in the
natural order for assuming it as an axiom. Moreover, all that can
be said on this score applies with force tenfold to " industrial
democracy," for in industry the penalty of " inefficiency " is swift
and inexorable, whereas in politics it may be long delayed. Besides,
even if it be accepted that a " common humanity " in the natural
order is foundation enough for political democracy, the inference
from the political order to the economic order is wholly invalid.
Let it be remembered that I am not questioning the desirability
of democracy as a principle of social organization, but only its
practicability as a continuing principle with human nature as it is.
What I am suggesting is that the obstacle which Mr. Wells found
to lie in the path of the Socialist principle may also block the way
of democracy, unless the redeeming principle discerned by Mr.
Wells, and by him labeled "Good Will," shall grow and extend itself
in men's hearts. Translating this into our language, and stating
it in the fewest possible words, my thought is that if democracy is
to live upon the earth and become the soul of human society, it is
difficult now to see any force working to that end in human affairs
other than Christianity. That seems to be the only force strong
enough to dominate the " lust, hunger, avarice, vanity and more or
less intelligent fear " of men, and subject them to such a discipline
of mutual tolerance, mutual trust, and mutual affection as will make
possible the high degree of cooperation that democracy demands
for the successful performance of its functions amid the intimate
intricacies of modern life.
THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF GOD AND ITS MODERN
SUBSTITUTES.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
HE philosophical atmosphere underwent a decided
change towards the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Descartes introduced a method of philosophiz-
ing which, whatever else may be argued in its favor,
had the fatal defect of divorcing speculation from
history. The question of God's knowableness had up to that time
been studied as an historical problem, with such means as lay to
hand. But this ceased with the advent of the new method. Facile
proofs, short intuitive ways of establishing God's existence and
nature won favor with philosophers, and the result was an excessive
form of intellectualism, an uncontrolled manner of speculating,
which went far beyond the traditional Christian position, occupying
a ground that could not successfully be defended later against at-
tack. Intuitionists, then as since, failed to realize that all our intui-
tions have a history, and that their so-called flashes are the result
of long previous preparation and unconsciously acquired knowledge,
not the unbidden bolts from the blue they are commonly supposed
to be. A Christian thinking is apt to mistake an analysis of his
own special consciousness for an insight into the mind of the race
at large, and this was the fallacy into which Descartes tumbled head-
long, because he was professedly an unhistorical thinker who did
not look before he leaped.
The French mathematician contended that a clear idea of the
Infinite exists in all minds, and that this particular idea is the
historical source of religion, its connatural object and intellectual
base. He identified the cause of religion with the establishment of
this particular overclaim, which was ,a wrong and compromising
thing to do, the idea of the Infinite being so high and hard a notion
to conceive clearly, in the Cartesian sense of the latter much-abused
term, that historically it came late, and psychologically it could
not have come early, into the minds of men. It was a preposterous
thesis in the native meaning of this adjective which Descartes
proposed ; a hysteron proteron, verily. He had made the last first,
and offered a shining mark for reprisal when Kant undertook to
show what the human mind, in its own native right, is capable of
156 THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF GOD AND [May,
accomplishing. Excessive intellectualism was thus among the
causes of religious agnosticism. Religion might well pray at times
to be spared the blandishments of the injudicious.
Descartes was not the sole offender. Leibnitz and Wolff drew
the world and all its laws out of a few analytical principles. The
mathematical ideal entertained of human reason led these over-
driving analysts to extreme length. Catholic theology did not
wholly escape from the spirit of the times it had its immediatists,
too. Pallavicini, Perez, Juvenalis, Esparza, Semery, Sylvester
Maurus theologians who wrote between 1652 and 1670, not to
forget Eusebius Amort, whose writings in the same vein appeared
as late as 1730 all set themselves to the task of proving that we
have an immediate knowledge of God, in the acquisition of which
no reasoning process figures. They analyzed "mystic love," the
notion of " possibility," the nature of " ideas," the drift of the
" affections," and in every way they could sought to prove the Car-
tesian thesis that an intuitive, unreasoned knowledge of God is to
be found among the contents of every consciousness by the simple
method of analysis. Without denying the reasoned character of
theistic knowledge in general, they pressed immediacy so far as
actually to claim that the predicates of the reality known to us
in our ordinary mundane experience are convertible into the predi-
cates of the Divine Existence itself.
It was in this atmosphere of overwrought intellectualism that
Kant lived and wrote. He quite naturally thought that the ques-
tion of knowing God was essentially bound up with the particular
form of intellectualism then rife and rampant what other impres-
sion could he gather ? Catholic and Protestant intellectualists alike
were bending their efforts towards proving that a clear immediate
knowledge of the Infinite in itself is within the reach of all. Kant
was not the man to let any such overstatement go unchallenged and
he rebuked it with his critical reflections until it hung in shreds.
He laid bare the hollo wness of the whole claim, not knowing, it
wpuld seem, that his victory was as hollow as the pretenders over
whom he won it. These were not representative opponents, and
they carried no one down with them but themselves. The tradi-
tional intellectualism was quite other than that which Descartes,
Leibnitz, Wolff, and a certain number of Catholic theologians,
imbued with the new spirit, insisted on defending. It kept well
within the bounds of history and experience, accepting the control
of these, and not speculating at random or at will. It was modest
and moderate in its attitude, so much so that had Kant known it and
1916.] ITS MODERN SUBSTITUTES 157
kept it well within his line of vision while writing, he never would
have said the things he did.
Nothing is ever refuted until it is refuted at its best, and in-
tellectualism was far from being at its best when Kant undertook its
demolition. He forgot to inquire into the representative character
of his contemporaries, taking too seriously a school of thought, a
group of thinkers anything but typical in their utterances. So let
us turn away from the extravagant intellectualists whom Kant so
easily overthrew, to the clearer-minded, more restrained philos-
ophers of times previous, despised scholastics though they be. These
truer representatives of intellectualism Kant never had fully or
fairly in view he was not noted for his knowledge of history.
There was a long and carefully pondered Christian tradition con-
cerning the nature and extent of man's knowledge of the Divine,
with which Kant was but ill acquainted, if at all. Modern philos-
ophy might not have had so large an agnostic insert in its pages,
had the father of philosophical criticism known the past history of
intellectualism and grasped the moderate form of it for which the
Christian tradition stood, instead of having a wide departure from
that tradition as the object of his shafts. The minority group of
thinkers whom he slew with his trenchant pen did not involve the
larger and more sane majority in their ruin. It is the tale of these
latter we wish to tell, their chapter of achievement which we are
here endeavoring to restore. An alternative to agnosticism existed
and the purpose of all that follows is to show what that alternative
was. Let history speak.
The Christian tradition concerning man's ability to know God
built itself up out of recorded facts and accepted these as the
measure of its claims. When men like St. Anselm turned aside
from this tradition to compose new and facile modes of theistic
proof that had no history at their back, they were promptly re-
minded of the unhistorical character of their innovations and they
founded no school. How our knowledge of God was originally
acquired could not be determined, they were told, by a study of the
mature Christian spirit, but rather by a painstaking analysis of the
mentality of paganism. The literature of the heathen nations, the
prechristian evidences of religion were the proper test. Human
thought would here reveal its natural level and lend itself to dis-
passionate appraisal. What heights the spirit of man is capable of
reaching, what knowledge of the Divine it may actually acquire
without the aid of Revelation, would here become apparent, as also
what pits of folly it might dig for its own undoing.
158 THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF GOD AND [May,
The Stoics proved ,a helpful means to the determining of this
average level. They were the first to propose and develop what is
called the argument from universal consent, drawing attention to
the fact that no nation is without its idea of a Superior Being, no
people wholly bereft of an innermost sense of the Divine. Natura
duce, eo vehimur deos esse, says Cicero, in- this as in so many other
respects the cultured voice of antiquity. The Christian writers were
naturally impressed by the universal testimony to the existence of
a Superior Being, adduced by the Stoics. Nor were they without
the means of controlling and confirming it, within the limits of
their own personal range of experience and observation, though
there was then no science of anthropology to acquaint them minutely
with the world-wide existence of religion. Their use of the testi-
mony available was not servile. First-hand reporters were they
of the facts to which they bore such ample witness no idle echoes
of the Academy or the Porch. Distinguished converts from pagan-
ism themselves in many instances, and no strangers to the religious
psychology of the heathen mind, their own souls, when searched,
added their quota of approval to the Stoic claim that the Divine is
everywhere recognized. It was precious to them and very noble,
too, the thought that Christianity, while never for a moment relin-
quishing its claim to be the only true and right religion, had a
heart for the broken lights of heathendom and saw some stars that
were not altogether errant, in the darkness of the pagan night;
some good to recognize, some nobility to discover and commend.
The interpretation which the Stoics put on man's universal
belief in the existence of a Superior Being did not rise much above
the level of instinct and was lost to a large extent in the imagery
of the " pure Fire." St. Paul struck a newer and higher note.
In his solemn indictment of the nations for their immoral and idola-
trous practices, " the least of the Apostles " based his charge on the
fact that pagan and Christian mind alike possessed a common con-
cept of God. He declared the heathen world inexcusable for having
perverted and debased this concept, instead of analyzing it out
distinctly and recognizing its claims on their minds and wills. The
natural knowledge of God existing in all minds was sufficiently
clear, he said, to furnish the beginnings of true religion and moral-
ity, had it been properly reflected upon and diligently studied out.
The law was written in the hearts of men on tablets of flesh. The
Author of that law had made His power and divinity discoverable
through the things and selves that are. He had not left Himself
without a witness in the inner mirror of conscience, in the outer
I9i6.] ITS MODERN SUBSTITUTES 159
glass of Nature, or the moving field of history itself, all of which
disclosed Him to His offspring, far from none of whom He was,
if haply by groping they might find Him and be converted and live.
When the early converts read the challenging texts of St.
Paul, and learned from his pages that their previous concept of
God differed from the Christian in no other wise than that it had
not been sufficiently cleared up, but allowed to become degraded and
demeaned, the truth of the statement and the pertinency of the
charge so appealed to their sense of actuality and fairness that they
made it the inspiration and plan of their catechetical campaigns.
And the more they pondered the thought, the more its glorious
resplendence grew a common streak of dawn that should have
developed into the fullness of day for the pagan world, but through
cloudiness of intellect and perversity of will was not suffered
to attain this maturity of development. Had not the literature of
paganism, they asked themselves, abounded in references to the
" Cause of causes," the " Being of beings/' the "Author of the moral
law," the " Most Excellent Nature," the " Sovereign Good?" Was
it not to this popular belief in the essential goodness of the Divine
that the Son of Man had alluded, when He counseled His young
Pharisee questioner to call no one good but God ? Had it not been
the pagan practice to invoke God daily? Was there not in every
mind an undeveloped concept of the Divine, capable of far more
determination and distinctness than it had ever received? Did not
they of Athens, in erecting an altar to the unknown God, lest per-
chance there might be some Divinity slighted for lack of mention
in their lists, rightfully invite the taunting comment of St. Paul
that if they had cultivated their own poet, Aratus, or kept them-
selves abreast of their own national literature, they would have
khown that He Whom they sought to worship was not a graven
image of gold or silver, but a living Person, whose veritable off-
spring we are, with all the obligations entailed upon us, which that
filial relation establishes and makes clear? And could St. Paul
have made his point with the novelty-seekers of the Grecian capital,
unless a common knowledge, undeveloped but capable of develop-
ment, bridged the chasm between his mind and theirs?
Convinced that such an embryonic knowledge existed their
own experience plainly attesting its presence the idea became a
pedagogical principle with them in the instruction of converts. They
asked the candidate, first of all, if he believed in a " certain ex-
cellent nature of the gods ;" and upon his answering in the affirma-
tive, they prodded his reflective powers with query after query, all
i6o THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF GOD AND [May,
designed to render explicit and detailed that undeveloped knowledge
which his admission showed he had. No wonder the Fathers all
wrote so graphically of the idea of God as " innate," " untaught,"
"ensculptured," "a ray of the Divine Light," "a spark of the Divine
Fire." These expressive figures of speech must, of course, not
be pressed beyond the spirit and bounds of their original utterance,
as they have been by many most unfairly. The spirit governing
their employment was religious, not philosophical. What mattered
supremely with the Fathers was the fact that a spontaneous, dis-
tinctive, implicit idea of God, capable of being made more explicit
and detailed, exists in all minds. How it came there was a school
point they never meant to thresh. Whether it is innate in the strict
sense of the term existing, that is, before all exercise of reason,
or whether it is rationally acquired, did not enter into their calcula-
tions, received no answer in their pages. Their vivid phrases
resulted from their religious theory of knowledge illuminism:
" Our minds are but broken lights of Thee." St. Thomas inter-
prets the drift of the patristic texts as implying that the constitu-
tional power to know God is innate, not the idea itself ; an interpre-
tation in which Illingworth concurs. What a grievous mischance,
therefore, that Descartes should have tried to write history by
analyzing his own seventeenth-century consciousness, and that Kant
should have thought the Christian theologian committed to the
view that a knowledge of the Infinite in itself is directly within our
reach and capable of demonstration!
When the Christian tradition concerning man's knowledge of
his Maker was made the subject of reflective inquiry in the Middle
Ages, the thoughtful ones of those deep-delving days saw almost at
a glance that the idea of God as it appears in history is an externally
descriptive idea. Such names as Author, Cause, Source, End;
and such others as Lord, Creator, Governor, Highest Good, and
Most Excellent Nature, described God's outward relations rather
than His innermost self and essence. They were relative, not abso-
lute terms, and there was more of time about them than eternity.
The schoolmen pondered this fact profoundly. If God had never
created the vast worlds that swim in space, but continued dwelling
in His own inner boundlessness of perfection, He would not be, as
now we designate Him, the relatively best of beings, the actual
cause of the universe, the author of the moral law, the object of
affection, the summit and goal of aspiration and desire. 1 All the
1 Dictiinnaire de Theologie Catholique. By A. Vacant. Art. Dieu (Son Exist-
ence), II., 4. Fasc. 28, 1909.
1916.] ITS MODERN SUBSTITUTES 161
things we affirm of Him so stammeringly from our present lowly
plane of creaturehood would, on the supposition of His not having
created, lack foundation in fact and be palpably untrue. Take them
all away, these time-born titles which His creatures give Him ; blot
out the whole course of history, make the existent worlds a blank,
and God would be in Himself the same absolutely immutable,
eternal, independent, infinite while none of the relations that now
constitute our means of knowing Him would exist.
The conclusions which the schoolmen drew from this searching
reflection saved their speculation from the excesses into which less
self -criticizing philosophers fell. Our manner of knowing God,
they said, our way of acquiring knowledge of Him, is relative.
Directly and explicitly we do not conceive any of the intrinsic con-
stituents of the Divine. It is as a relative Superlative that God
is known to us at first. No absolute Superlative, no Infinite in
itself, no unconditioned, unrelated Being is or ever could be the
immediate object of our knowing or burden of our proving. An
explicit idea of the Infinite is not the one from which religion starts.
The theistic arguments advanced in the course of history do not,
therefore, essay the impossible task of demonstrating the Infinite
directly. God's existence in Himself is not their end or aim far
from it. Conceiving God, as we do, through the dependent relation
of things to their Author, and through the subjective and moral
tendencies that course within our being, we approach Him through
His works without pronouncing any determinate judgment on His
nature considered in itself. "The attributes of God contingently
relative to creatures," says St. Thomas, f( express nothing real in
God, when we consider them formally ; although materially and fun-
damentally considered, they designate the divine substance itself." 2
Cardinal Cajetan in his commentary on the traditional theistic
proofs is even more explicit. Their aim he says, is not to prove
the existence of God considered in itself, but as having the predi-
cates efficiency, necessity, intelligence, perfection which a study
of the nature of things forces us to think of as among the attributes
of the Divine. The conclusion to which they lead is that God, not
as God, but as having the attributes aforesaid, exists. God, as God,
is not the immediate object of the proofs at all, but a consequence
contained in them and drawn forth from them later by reflection.
He declares the proofs " admittedly open to much dispute if we
regard them as concluding directly to the existence of that eternal,
'Sum. TheoL, I., q. xiii., a 2; 7 ad i.
VOL. cm. II
162 THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF GOD AND [May,
immutable, first, and most perfect Being, which God is in Himself ;
but they offer scarcely any difficulty," he says, " when taken as
entitling us to conclude that certain attributes found in Nature are
proper to God in very truth." And he goes on to say that it is the
latter point, not the former, which they aim at establishing. 3 They
represent no ambitious attempt to carry us at a leap into the bosom
of the Infinite. God's existence in Himself as the Unconditioned,
we do not see; only the logical, rational necessity therefor. " God,
not as God, but as having this and that condition" notice the quali-
fication which Cajetan adds is the Being Whose existence man
has sought to prove in the history of philosophy, to whom he has
poured out his soul in prayer, and his heart in longing. We know
God's existence relatively, not absolutely; and through knowing
and proving it relatively, we come to a knowledge of what it really
is in itself. But that is later, it is not the first step, but the last.
The reader who has caught the drift of the preceding para-
graphs and seen the luminous pathway up which they lead, will at
once be made aware, when pondering the subjoined passages from
Kant, that the father of modern criticism was not so fortunately
favored. He did not have this history before him when he wrote,
and his thoughts went far afield in consequence. " How can any
experience, he asks, be adequate with an idea? The very essence
of an idea consists in the fact that no experience can be discovered
congruent or adequate with it. 4 The transcendental idea of a
necessary and all-sufficient Being is so immeasurably great, so high
above all that is empirical, which is always conditioned, that we
hope in vain to find materials in the sphere of experience sufficiently
ample for our conception, and in vain seek the unconditioned among
things that are conditioned, while examples, nay, even guidance is
denied us by the laws of empirical synthesis." 5
Evidently Kant labored under the impression that the tradi-
tional arguments for the existence of God directly sought to dem-
onstrate that existence as it is in itself. Fully ninety per cent
of his criticism is based on this misapprehension of their scope and
represents so much labor lost in consequence. He imagined a vain
thing, a mode of reasoning full of gaps, through which he easily
drove the proverbial coach and four. When he proved that religion
was irrational, because it could not and did not know its object, he
*Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia, IV., p. 32, III. Rome, 1888.
4 For a criticism of this question-begging principle by which Kant non-suits
all the theistic proofs before examining them, see THE CATHOLIC WORLD, January,
1916, The Genesis of Kant's Criticism, especially p. 455.
"Kant's Sammtliche Werke, Hartenstein's Edition (1867), III., p. 422, par. 2.
I9i6.] ITS MODERN SUBSTITUTES 163
only proved that it could not and did not know that object in the
manner he alleged. His poor acquaintance with the previous his-
tory of the subject led him laboriously to disprove a point long since
granted and conceded. His criticism was anticipated and dis-
counted, three centuries previous, by Cardinal Cajetan; nay, as
early as the middle of the thirteenth century by St. Thomas him-
self. Kant accordingly offers the spectacle of a man refuting his
own misconceptions and imagining all the while that he was putting
the whole brood of intellectualists to the blush for their thin and
tangled sophistries. He was flushed with his unreal victory to
him a triumph over adversaries unnumbered. He thought great
good would come of it to morality and religion a prophecy that
fell as wide of the mark as his criticism did of the situation it took
to task. " Nor can it injure the cause of morality " we are quot-
ing his own words " to endeavor to lower the tone of the arrogant
sophist, and to teach him modesty and moderation the distin-
guishing marks of a belief that brings calm and content into the
mind, without enjoining any unworthy subjection. I maintain,
therefore, that the physico-teleological argument is insufficient of
itself to prove the existence of a Supreme Being, that it must intrust
this to the ontological argument to which it serves merely as an
introduction, and that, consequently, this argument contains the
only possible ground of proof (possessed by the speculative reason)
for the existence of this being." 6
A more accusing statement, proving that he missed the point
from beginning to end, and that he had a wrong idea of the nature,
scope, and purpose of the theistic proofs, could not be found than
in these carefully chosen words. He did not realize that he was
actually stating the position he imagined himself to be refuting.
The sophists to whom he would teach "modesty and. moderation,"
" calm and content," free from all " unworthy subjection," were not
creatures of flesh and blood, they were made of pen and ink, unless
Descartes should be regarded as the typical Christian theologian,
and Kant as the first philosopher, in the long line of such, who
managed to do his thinking critically. Nothing proves more clearly
the extent of Kant's misunderstanding than his having believed and
stated that the ontological argument the leap from possibility to
existence was at the bottom of all the theistic proofs, their central
supposition, their necessary prop of reliance. He had got it into his
mind that the object of the theistic proofs was to establish the Divine
existence in itself, and this false clue as to their nature and func-
"O/>. cit., p. 424, par. 2.
164 THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF GOD AND [May,
tibn led him to criticize them for what they never pretended to ac-
complish, save with a few intuitionists, like Descartes, who did their
thinking at their writing-tables, unannoyed by the history of the
subject with which they were dealing, and not at all familiar with
the preciseness of treatment which that subject had received from
previous thinkers, who knew the ways and limitations of the mind
human quite as well as its later methodical reformer and its still
later self-appointed critic.
The mediaeval chapter of history is judicious and enlightening.
Its central position might be summarized in the statement that di-
rectly and explicitly we do not conceive any of the intrinsic at-
tributes of the Divine, not even that of existence. But this is only
half the story. While freely granting the relative character of
our knowledge of God, and the impossibility of its being otherwise,
since it is the condition of all knowing that the knower and the
known be in relation, the mediaeval theologians did not turn back
disappointed, or pass on unenlightened, like the superficial observer
to whom
A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.
They examined this externally descriptive knowledge, analyzed it
out into distinctness, stated the positive amount of intrinsic in-
formation which it hid under its external form. And so must all
men fair-minded, who would not hood their eyes with prejudice
when they may open them and see. For, be our knowledge as
relative as it may, its relativity is no disabling limitation, but an en-
abling means. It is a channel, not a wall ; a clearing, not a barrier.
Sir William Hamilton turned this fact of relativity into a limita-
tion of our powers of knowing grossly converting the proposition,
We can know the related only, into that proposition quite other and
not at all implied, We can only know relations. The mediaeval
theologians converted their propositions more carefully than Sir
William, and for not having been guilty of so unwarranted a con-
version as was he, and those who follow in his steps, they might be
studied with profit by their philosophic brethren of the nineteenth
century and after. The Hamiltons, the Hansels, the Spencers, and
the Huxley s of our own more immediate times had their agnostic
proxies in the thirteenth century and before, who said pretty much
the same things and drew pretty much the same conclusions as
men do now. So that the theologians of Latin Europe, what time
the universities were rising and the arts beginning to flourish, had
1916.] ITS MODERN SUBSTITUTES 165
conditions of thought to battle with, not dissimilar to ours. A
few words to describe the resemblances between the two environ-
ments.
Some centuries before the schoolmen began their systematic
study of man's knowledge of God, the Arab and Jewish philoso-
phers Avicenna and Maimonides had pursued the same line of
inquiry, each in the interest of his respective sacred books or in
criticism of their contents. They had come into full cognizance of
the fact that our knowledge of God, on the face of it, is externally
descriptive, and from this had drawn the conclusion that God's
existence was known to us, but of His nature not a whit exactly
the position of the modern Hamiltonian, Spencerian school. The
scholastic theologians conceded the fact, but demurred sharply to
the conclusion drawn from it. Aquinas combated this agnostic in-
ference of Jew and Arab with his customary calm incisiveness. It
is impossible, he declared, that one should know the existence of
a thing and still remain in complete ignorance of its nature. Nature
and existence are not such disparate things as will suffer complete
disjoining. Existence is always the existence of this or that it is
never existence merely. And since it is a particular existent some-
thing that we always know, a glimmering of what that something is
by nature must accompany all our knowledge and be found wrapped
up in it, as pollen in a pod.
He who knows God as Source, indistinctly and confusedly
knows Him as somehow precontaining the perfections dimly re-
flected in the outer and inner mirror of Nature. His knowledge is
a blank, only on the supposition that he refuses to analyze it out
distinctly, and that is his own fault personally, not a defect inherent
in his powers of knowing, for he can exercise these still further if
he will. He can turn back and reexamine the reasons that led him
to entertain the idea of a Source of All, and when he does so, he
will find his knowledge growing into distinctness with every reason
reexamined. Much concerning the inner constitution and nature of
this Source, which at first sight escaped his observation and re-
mained in a sort of penumbral haze, will now define itself and come
clearly out to view. Power, goodness, personality, intelligence will
reveal themselves as undeniable belongings. The relative Superla-
tive will shed its relative aspect and become distinctly absolute.
The relations which manifested its existence outwardly, will be
found, on reexamination, to disclose some precious knowledge also
of what it really is, within. The relatedly known Divine Existence
will be seen as Self-Existence to which no bounds of being or per-
166 THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OF GOD AND [May,
fection can be set, and lo ! we have the notion of the Infinite, which
is none other than that of the All-Perfect not an intuition, nor
an idea gained by the crude process of adding perfection to per-
fection, as Kant thought it was, but a concept which reflection con-
structs out of the objective evidence furnished, after purifying this
latter of its human and creaturely associations.
A proportional concept ! Say that, and you have said its nature.
What is true of the qualities and perfections revealed in the uni-
verse of selves and things will be seen to be true of Him Who
made them, not specifically true, of course it were folly to imagine
God as man magnified ! but true proportionally, in the sense that
a proportional relation of similiarity exists between the Originating
Source and its effects or manifestations, this relation being sufficient
to make considerable knowledge of the former possible of attain-
ment through a studious contemplation of the latter. The re-
inquirer will thus discover that his relative, externally descriptive
idea enwrapped more positive knowledge than he suspected, until
he broke its seal. We prove the existence of a Necessary Being,
not knowing what it is, the while \ve do so. We peer into all the
evidences supporting this rational conclusion, converging towards
it, focussing themselves upon it, as it were, and behold ! we have
a knowledge of its nature. Not so much, perhaps, as in our pride
we think should have been vouchsafed us, but enough to fill the in-
tellect with the presence of the Father of all light, and the heart
with an incipient love of Love's own spring unending. Not all the
knowledge we are capable of acquiring no, not that! but the
knowledge all are capable of acquiring, and to be supplemented by
faith and hope, the outpourings of the affections, the consecrations
of the will. Nowhere hath He left Himself without this witness.
The world is desolate only when in the words of the prophet there
is no one who reflecteth in his heart. Such anachronisms, of
course, apart was the scholastic answer to Jew and Arab. It is
six hundred years old, yet it might have been of yesterday for its
timeliness.
Unfortunately the idea of God which most moderns have in
mind when thinking or writing upon the subject is of a different
kind altogether from the one whose history we have just finished
tracing. The Reformation kindled many strange fires in philos-
ophy. The distaste for theology, the distrust of reason, and the
love of intuition which it fostered, led to the adoption of an idea
quite other than the traditional conception of God. A word or two
about this modern substitute notion, and we are done.
1916.] ITS MODERN SUBSTITUTES 167
There is a knowledge of a swift immediate kind that rises
from the affections and the will, almost with the first exercise of the
mind's activity. Scarcely has the dawn begun to break on con-
sciousness, when we find ourselves filled with " an obscure and
vague ideal of the good, the true, the beautiful, and the one." It
is a tenuous presence of which we would fain know more, but
never do. Unreasoned, uhinferred, unlabored this knowledge
comes to us, rising like an aura or halo above the field of conscious-
ness and lingering long upon its farthermost horizon, wraith-
fashion, and with pleadings that stir our depths. It is what the
ancients meant when they said that if we listened intently, we could
hear the music of the spheres. The schoolmen were well acquainted
with this vague and undefinable knowledge engendered by the af-
fections and the will. They called it the obscure idea of God, to
distinguish it from that other the distinctive idea which has been
the previous burden of these pages. This obscure idea, they said,
is the beginning of our knowledge of the Divine. It is the common
concept of God as distinct from the proper, and so vague that noth-
ing can be got out of it worthy the name of knowledge for its
nature is to be obscure, and without specific content. It is the
beginning of our knowledge, and not the end, because scarcely has
this vague, unreasoned intuition risen above the surface of con-
sciousness when you find in conjunction with it, supervening, as
it were upon it, another and more fruitful idea the idea of a
Superior Being. This second idea is distinctive, proper, analyzable,
enlightening. The first has none of these four redeeming qualities,
and so may be combined with monism, pluralism, pantheism, poly-
theism or any particular " ism," you will, because it does not, like
the second, clearly distinguish God from every being other and
represent Him as superior, but degrades Him to the level of the
One-in-the-many, instead of portraying Him clearly as the One
distinct from all.
The idea of God which the scholastics designated as obscure,
unhistorical, unfruitful, and neither proper nor distinctive nor
enlightening, is the modern idea of God. It is a pipe for fortune's
finger to sound what stops she please, all the way from monism to
Christian Science, and from Emerson to Rabindranath Tagore.
It is the brackish fount of religious indifference, ever since Theo-
dore Parker " proved " to New England's satisfaction that one re-
ligion is as good as another, since they are all concerned with an
object or ideal which none of them can ever know. Feuerbach and
i68 THE TRADITIONAL IDEA OP GOD [May,
Spencer won their reputation with the unwary by the same mistaken
notion, not to mention the host of the ill-informed who followed
them down the same unwinding road to nescience and night. The
late Professor James was no better in his allegiance. Taking the
idea of a Superior Being which anthropology has shown to be
universal, and failing to note the development of which this idea is
inherently capable and has actually received in history, he could
disembosom himself of the following utterance at variance alike
with the Christian tradition and the noble loftiness of what was
best in paganism. It betrays a reversion to primitive types, a
preference for undeveloped knowledge, a lack of acquaintance with
the higher history of religion, surprising in a modern scholar.
" The practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me
sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and ,in a fashion
continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly
to him and his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power
should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Any-
thing larger will do, if it only be large enough to trust for the next
step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might
conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which
the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the
universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of dif-
ferent degrees of inclusiveness, with no absolute unity recognized
at all." 7
A returning schoolman would be surprised to find, in this as in
other utterances of like tenor, that the obscure idea of God, which
in his day did but represent the beginnings of theistic knowledge,
had now been dogmatically proclaimed its very end and close. He
would behold intuitionists exploiting it, agnostics battering it, abso-
lutists saying of it what they would, and historians of religion
reading it back into his own and far more distant times. And
should he ask how the vision of men had become so foreshortened,
how it was that they took the obscure idea of God and left the clear,
how all this accepting without proving, all this recourse to lower
levels of thought, was deemed possible of reconcilement with the
rational, growing dignity of the human spirit someone probably
would tell him the last few paragraphs of the present story, and
he would discover, with sad surprise, still not without a pardonable
feeling of satisfaction, that in some respects he was six hundred
years ahead of the times to which he had been privileged to return.
1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 525.
THE LITTLE FLOWER AND LITERATURE.
BY BROTHER LEO.
FJAT is it that makes a book literature? To answer
would involve the necessity of framing a definition
of literature, a task difficult always and at best
meagre in adequate results. Several things contrib-
ute to the making of a great book artistry, large-
ness of vision, sureness of touch, the faculty of saying much in
little, the Homeric gift of seeing life steadily and seeing it whole;
but the great essential of genuine literature is that it see life, or
some phase of life, precisely as it is, that it probe beneath the ap-
pearances and concern itself mainly with the underlying realities,
and that it interpret the truth thus clearly visioned with insight,
with sympathy, with impartiality.
It is not easy, as the world goes, to see the truth; and to tell
the truth, to interpret the truth, is difficult in the extreme. Yet
this task, baffling in any case, would seem to present its minimum
difficulty to the objective writer, to the man who concerns himself
with reading aright the lives of men and women around him. He
needs sharp eyes and sympathy and fearlessness, he must dispense
with colored spectacles and prepossessions and a weakness for his
friends; but he can, provided he is big enough and broad enough
and keen enough, paint a portrait of life. So did Schiller in Maria
Stuart, Browning in The Ring and the Book, Manzoni in / Promessi
Sposi.
The difficulty is at its maximum, however, when a man at-
tempts to see the truth and interpret the truth of his own life and
character. Few men owing possibly to a merciful dispensation of
Providence are able to see themselves as they are; most of us
stroll blissfully beneath the shading branches of a fool's paradise
tuneful with the song birds of our reveries and golden with the
mock-oranges of our own conceits, and we prostrate ourselves
before a niche wherein stands a statue of the I-I-think-I-am. Once
in a while we come across a saint not always canonized who
possesses a specific and comprehensive knowledge of himself as
he is.
i;o THE LITTLE FLOWER AND LITERATURE [May,
A glance at the great books of the world will suffice to show
that in all countries and at all times the great writers have been
objective writers. We could not well afford to miss our lyric
poets, our young men of vague emotions who look into their own
hearts and write'; but not one of them, solely on his merits as a
subjective writer, has reached the supreme plane in letters. Nay,
more; a stressing of the lyric note, an intrusion of the ego, would,
we feel safe in maintaining, lessen existing reputations. Make
Theocritus more subjective, and you rob him of his subtlest charm;
insist that Horace sing only of Horace and not of the decay of
pulchritude nor about the Sabine farm, and you give us an attenu-
ated Horace; demand that Keats, even, confine himself to a strictly
lyrical theme and a rigidly subjective treatment, and you force us
to share the sentiments of the rude Blackwood's reviewer who sent
the young man back to his " plasters, pills and ointment boxes."
The reason for this is not hard to find. The subjective writer
so seldom becomes a world writer, not necessarily because his vision
of life is straitened, but essentially because his estimate of himself
is untrue. He may not, probably does not, know himself as he is;
that seems to be the difficulty with even unliterary men Benvenuto
Cellini, for instance, and Sir Hiram Maxim when they try to tell
the story of their lives. But even should he succeed in the rare
achievement of knowing himself, he still faces and ultimately
falls before the more difficult necessity of telling what he knows.
Hence, we have so very few autobiographies that rank as literature,
and even those, few and great, have pages that strike a false note,
passages that savor of affectation, lack of proportion, unconscious
insincerity. How our estimate of the Decline and Fall dwindles
when we read Gibbon's Autobiography! And how the Memoir es
d'outre-tombe disclose Chateaubriand's feet of clay!
It is, perhaps, an unlocked for fact that one of the surpassing
autobiographies of the world was written by a Carmelite nun, by
the greatest woman writer the world has known, St. Teresa. And
it is a delightful coincidence that the most remarkable and most
truly and deeply literary autobiography of our own day should be
written by another Carmelite nun, Sister Therese, fondly known
throughout the Catholic world as " The Little Flower of Jesus."
Quite properly, most of the absorbed and edified readers of
the Little Flower's Histoire d'une A me have paid no heed to its
literary character at all; and quite possibly a few of them, possessed
of a vague idea that literature has something to do with fustian
I9i6.] THE LITTLE FLOWER AND LITERATURE 171
and figures of speech, might even resent having so devotional a book
discussed from the literary point of view. They are wont to see
no common ground in books they label " sacred " and " profane/'
and writers must be either white sheep or black goats. But not
even devout readers can well alter facts; and the fact here is that
when little Sister Therese, in conformity with the will of her
superiors, told the story of her life, she wrote not only a singularly
winsome devotional volume, but likewise made a genuine contribu-
tion to the literature of France and of the world.
The Histoire d'une Ante is set off from most other spiritual
autobiographies by its refreshing absence of self-consciousness.
There is in it no pose, not even the possibly pardonable pose of
reluctance to talk about one's self. Little Sister Therese knows that
she is a sinner, that she is far from corresponding with all the graces
of God and responding to all the kindnesses of men; but so well
does she know it that she accepts it as a matter of course and takes
up very little space to tell us about it. She is. very unlike those
good religious who make a sanctimonious fuss when obedience
sends them to the photographer. She is told to draw her own pic-
ture, and smilingly and unresistingly she complies. She stands off
from herself and marks her significant features ; these she records
simply and directly; then she looks up, for all the world like a
little child at a drawing lesson, and sweetly asks : " Is that what
you wanted me to draw? " Her concern was, not her own feelings
and inclinations, but the will of her superiors; her aim was to
abandon her own point of view and adopt the point of view of
those who rightfully commanded her. This, truly, is the perfection
of religious obedience; and it is likewise the perfection of literary
self -analysis.
But that alone does not suffice to account for the literary value
of the Little Flower's book. In the complete and hearty identifica-
tion of her own will with that of her superior, Sister Therese is
not alone. Many a religious has reached that degree of detachment
and active zeal. But many a religious, charged with a similar task,
would follow a different selective principle. Many a religious
would resolutely repel the recollections of a beautiful and innocent
childhood as condemnable worldly thoughts. Many a religious
would crush the memories of fond relatives and familiar playmates
as human attachments. Many a religious would suppress all men-
tion of the humors of convent life, for are not humors essentially
trivial and conducive to evil ?
172 THE LITTLE FLOWER AND LITERATURE [May,
The advent of divine love did not drive human love from the
heart of little Sister Therese. And so it is that she never tires of
telling us of her dear mother and of her wise and saintly father
truly one of the noblest portraits ever painted. And so it is that she
recounts with obvious relish numerous seemingly trivial incidents
in her family life and in her school career. And how she revels,
as girl like she should, in that pilgrimage to Rome ! Nor does she
omit to mention that, when seeking the bishop's permission to enter
Carmel, she put up her hair for the first time in her life in order
to impress his lordship with a sense of her maturity. She does not
even overlook the narration which surely must have irritated some
members of her community of her trials with the cranky old nun
who couldn't do anything without assistance, and who never failed
to complain of the assistance rendered.
Such things indicate that the Little Flower possessed the rare
literary gift of recognizing the drama now comedy, now tragedy,
now even boisterous farce that is forever being played on the
stage of life. A primrose by the river's brim was more than a
simple primrose to her ; it was, as in truth it is, a microcosm. She
was able to recognize the deep significances of even the seemingly
inconsequential events of workaday life, and she was able, in spite
of or because of her childlike simplicity, to estimate them at
their true value. Progress in spirituality did not dull her percep-
tion of the incongruities of men and things; rather it seemed to
broaden her horizon and sharpen her vision.
Her brief narrations, her passing comments, her vivid and
pointed descriptions serve to give to her autobiography, considered
from the literary point of view, the valuable qualities of symmetry
and proportion. She looks upon what life she sees with eyes unpre-
judiced and unafraid. She has no special pleading to indulge in,
she has no foul and barren spots to hide. Her little book gives the
reader an impression of completeness; and the aesthetic not less
than the spiritual effect is satisfying. Because she was so delight-
fully free from self -consciousness, the Little Flower succeeded in
writing an autobiography at once true, candid and technically
complete.
The Histoire d'une 'Ame has a wide and ever-increasing circle
of readers. Why? We should, naturally enough, expect the fol-
lowers of a devout life to take to the volume for the all-sufficient
reason that it is the life story of a servant of God. The devout, in
many cases at least, are not wont to worry themselves over anything
I 9 i6.] THE LITTLE FLOWER AND LITERATURE 173
in a book except its spiritual pabulum and its incentives to edifica-
tion ; a book may be very bad indeed from an aesthetic viewpoint
and yet be a truly good book to them ; and even those who possess
some degree of literary appreciation have schooled themselves by
long practice may I venture to say, also, through dire necessity ?
to follow the advice of Thomas a Kempis and regard not so much
the manner as the matter of what they read. Since, even did the
Little Flower's autobiography possess but negligible literary merit,
devout readers would give it their attention, it is certainly not sur-
prising that they should turn to it as it stands. Artistry, save
when it grows obtrusive, most of them simply ignore; the number
of devout readers who consider literary merit in a spiritual book as
a scandal, a distraction, an affectation or a crime is happily small.
But devout readers are not the only readers of the Histoire
d'une r Ame. Men and women who sweepingly and illogically con-
demn the lives of the saints as dry, dismal, brain-fagging stuff, have
confessed themselves enchanted with the beautiful soul revelations
of little Sister Therese. There is no need to dwell on the fact;
but there is need to explain it. What is in this book to attract
readers whom its purely devotional flavor would fail to attract?
Plainly, I think, the human personality that stands out so
gloriously from its pages. Sister Therese is a consecrated spirit,
a saintly Carmelite nun; but she is also a conceivable, an actual
human being. Her holiness, as we see it in her story, has not the
unconvincing proportions of a stained-glass saint. We recognize
her as sweetly and winsomely human more than human, if you
will ; yet with human nature not barbarously crushed and strangled,
but, in the light of God's all-pervading, gracious influence, sweetly
elevated, purified, ennobled.
Now that human touch, which makes the whole world kin,
which makes for sympathy and unselfishness and even sacrifice,
is invariably found in literature. It is, indeed, an essential
should we not say the essential? of every book truly great. It is
the soul of art. And this it is which comes to us with little Sister
Therese's story of her life, making her spiritual message all the
clearer and her shining example all the more persuasive.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN POLAND?
BY T. J. BRENNAN, S.T.L.
T is now almost two decades more than a century
since the last partition of Poland, which at one time
reached within eighty miles of Berlin. There is
still a Polish question to be reckoned with. There is
not a meeting of the Reichstag in which the subject
does not arise in some form." 1
These words were written over a year before the outbreak of
the present war; they were written by a student of Polish history
and Polish conditions; and they testify to the belief that one of
the multitudinous questions that will arise for both the victor and
the vanquished after the present conflict will be the solution of the
Polish problem. What and why there is such a problem; as well as
both the expediency and the difficulty of its solution, are questions
that worry European statesmen to-day, even in the midst of their
many other cares; and, while the mastery of Europe is being con-
tended for by the opposing hosts, it may be of interest to turn aside
for a moment and get at least the main outlines of the problem.
The first point to be determined is where is Poland ; or rather
how much do you include under the name? This may seem easy
to answer, but, in reality, it is one of the greatest difficulties to
be overcome in the solution of the Polish question. For in drawing
your lines you are sure to be halted by one or the other of the great
powers among which ancient Poland is now partitioned. We can
best understand this by a brief historical summary. If you go back
about seventy years you will find that a portion of the once power-
ful kingdom of Poland still existed, namely, " the free, independent
and neutral city of Cracow," under the protection of Russia, Austria
and Prussia. It was, however, incorporated with Austria in 1846;
and thus disappeared the last vestige of the very much partitioned
kingdom of Poland. Go back to 1795 and you will find the opera-
tion of partition continuing on a larger scale. In that year Russia
appropriated 45,000 square miles with 1,200,000 inhabitants;
Prussia 21,000 square miles with 1,000,000 inhabitants; and Aus-
tria 18,000 square miles with 1,000,000 inhabitants.
Go back two years earlier, and you will find the carving
1 Poland of To-Day and Yesterday. By Nevin O. Winter. Chap. xiii.
1916.] WHAT WILL HAPPEN POLAND? 175
knife in Poland again. This time Russia helped herself to 96,000
square miles, with 3,000,000 inhabitants; and Prussia took 22,000
square miles with 1,100,000 inhabitants. This time we miss Austria
from the feast. Take a further step backwards, and you come to
what is known as the First Partition of Poland. Russia is there,
represented by Catherine the Great; she takes 42,000 square miles
with 1,800,000 inhabitants. Austria is represented by Maria
Theresa; she grabs 27,000 square miles with 2,700,000 inhabitants;
while Frederick the Great acts in behalf of Prussia, and bites off
13,000 square miles with 415,000 inhabitants. Thus partitioning
Poland became quite a passion while it lasted. The dish tasted so
well that the intervals between the acts were very brief; the mo-
ment the gong sounded, the exponents of benevolent assimilation
sat down to the love feast. The table manners were not always
what might have been expected from royalty. It was " me first ; "
just as at an orphan school picnic. And the company were seldom
the better friends for having broken bread at the same table. Any-
way, the three servings taken together make the very respectable
dish of 284,000 square miles, and over 12,000,000 inhabitants; that
is to say, a territory larger than the State of Texas, and with a
population larger than the States of New York and Massachusetts
combined. Nay, Poland was at one time larger even than that.
From Riga to the Black Sea, and from the confines of Berlin to
the confines of Moscow; all that an expanse of 400,000 square
miles was once Polish territory. Hence the very obvious question :
if Poland is to be reconstituted either as an independent or su-
bordinate power, what are to be its confines? Will they be those
previous to the third, or the second, or the first partition? Or
rather will they be those mentioned above; those of the days of
Sigismund II.? The Poles would say yes. But Russia, Germany
and Austria would have to be consulted; and I am sure that even
the most sanguine Pole could hardly expect such generosity, es-
pecially on the part of Russia, by far the most extensive spoiler
of the three. Hence, the satisfaction of the Polish idea will probably
still leave large Polish element and territory under foreign domina-
tion; in other words, there will still be a Polish question. That is
why we emphasized above the importance of the question, " Where
is Poland and what are its confines? "
Leaving the question of confines, and coming down to the Poles
themselves, we next ask what is it in Polish life and history that
makes the Polish question so persistent and so intense? Why is
it that they have resisted assimilation for over a century, and have
176 WHAT WILL HAPPEN POLAND? [May,
clung with such fierce determination to their national ideals and
aspirations? The question would probably be an insult to a Pole.
He would reply : " Not to know me argues yourself unknown."
We have but to consider Poland and her history for a moment
for the answer to our question.
Polish history divides itself into two well-defined periods: the
period preceding and the period following her dissolution as a
nation. Each of those periods has contributed to the making of the
Polish question. Previous to her disappearance from the map,
Poland was a kingdom. It dates back to the ninth century, and
came into prominence under the Piast dynasty. Situated in the
great central plain of Europe, she has ever been the battleground
of two great worlds. To the west of her was a line of long-
established and well-organized nations which resisted Polish ex-
pansion in that direction, and were always on the wait themselves
to push forward their power and their colonies towards the rising
sun. To the East were the great plains of Russia, the home of the
great Slavic race, and the highway for those semi-barbaric hordes
which moved on at regular intervals from the ever-productive
Orient. Thus, Poland had plenty of exercise in attack and defence;
and both in attack and defence she performed most of those great
deeds that are to-day the inspiration and glory of Polish nationality.
She can point to battlefields where she humbled the pride of the
Prussians, the Slavs, the Mongols and the Turks. She can truth-
fully say that, with her back to the Christian civilization of Europe,
she repelled the onslaughts of the Pagans and Mohammedans. "But
for Polish valor," says Louis E. Van Norman, " Western civiliza-
tion would have been blighted; Christianity itself, perhaps, en-
gulfed. Poland was the sentinel who kept watch on the Eastern
gate of Europe, while Latin civilization, in the person of France,
flowered and taught the world." " While my own dear France was
the missionary of civilization," said Victor Hugo, " Poland was
its knight."
A great history implies great rulers, and great heroes. Po-
land had both. Boleslaw the Bold, Wladislaw the Short, Casimir
the Great, Sigismund the Great and John Sobieski a people that
can look back to rulers like these will always find it hard to bear
a foreign yoke. She had many such. Their tombs are in her
cities and cathedrals and are potent influences in rousing the stones
of Poland to rise and mutiny. It is useless to suppress the language
of a conquered people unless you can also obliterate their history
and their monuments. History speaks to the heart and monu-
1916.] WHAT WILL HAPPEN POLAND? 177
ments speak to the eye; and the hearts and eyes of a nation are
beyond the reach of statutes and coercion acts. The citizens of
Warsaw and Cracow can never get away from the thundering
eloquence of their ancient monuments, and their ancient glories.
Of course, her kings did not save Poland; but then it was
not the fault of the kings. It was the fault of the system; and
systems are usually misfortunes rather than faults. Poland's kings
were usually figureheads among her nobles; each one of whom
imagined he was as good as the king, and did all in his power
to retard the centralization of authority. She had a Parliament
where absolute unanimity was required for legislation ; and where,
therefore, any individual noble be he a fool or a knave or a
Hampden could by his single veto absolutely paralyze legisla-
tion. Nobles with such absolute power in Parliament naturally,
in the course of time, came to have an equally absolute power
out of it. They became rural tyrants and rural burdens, gradually
erecting impossible barriers between themselves and their suffer-
ing serfs; extorting life-destroying taxes to maintain their pomp
and their power, and jealously watching lest there should de-
velop among them a king in reality as well as in name. Indeed,
the history of the kings of Poland shows how little they cared
for their job. Henry of Anjou, whom they brought from France
to rule over them, quietly stole away at night, and never came
back. John Casimir abdicated, and went back to his monastery,
foretelling the dismemberment of the country. And John Sobieski,
even after his great victory over the Turk, contemplated resigning,
so much was he disgusted with the disputes in the Diet, and his
own impotency to heal them. Still Poland had great kings and
royal achievements; and although there were evils and miseries
innumerable, the glory that emanates from royalty, and the fact
that it was ended from without and not from within, make her
idealize those ancient days, and think only of the splendors, for-
getting the hard truths of history. It is ever thus. We are al-
ways willing to part with a king provided he leaves us the king-
dom; but if the kingdom is also taken away, then we make our
misery greater by exaggerating the virtues of both the king and
the kingdom. So was it with the Israelites. Their history tells
of many bad kings, and of many evils during their reigns; but
when Israel passed under a foreign yoke all these things were
forgotten, and the last question asked of the Messiah was : " Lord,
wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel." So
VOL. cm. 12
178 WHAT WILL HAPPEN POLAND? [May,
it is to-day with the Irish. The rule of their native princes was
supplanted by the rule of a foreign king; and neither persecution
nor blandishments have ever been able to reconcile the nation to
the change. And so will it be with the Poles, so long as Petro-
grad or Berlin or Vienna tries to hold the place of Cracow or
Warsaw. What is Berlin to the Pole, or the Pole to Berlin? Ab-
solutely nothing, so long as the memory and the monuments of the
pre-partition days survive, and that will be always.
When we come down to the post-partition days, we have to
deal with more than a century of time. That is a long period for
a problem to continue; yet the Polish problem has continued
during that period, and is as acute to-day as ever. If we ask
have there been any attempts to solve it, we can answer that the
attempts are as old as the problem, and may be summed up under
four headings: Russianization, Prussianization, Austrianization
and Polandization. The first three are the same in principle, dif-
fering only in the place of origin, and have been applied with more
or less sternness, according to moods of rulers and the exigencies
of politics. The last mentioned is but the manifestation of a
national spirit, formed as I have indicated, claiming to be but the
expression of a creed, namely, that Poland must and will be Po-
lish, and believing that it has within itself the promise and po-
tency of ultimate success. The history of Poland for the past
century has been the history of the conflict of this creed against
the triangle of opposing forces composed of Austria, Prussia
(or Germany) and Russia. It is one of the longest maintained,
most memorable, and most inspiring conflicts of history.
When the conflict began after the third partition the odds
were against Poland. Weakened by centuries of misrule and pre-
vious partitions ; portioned out between what were then, and what
have continued to be since, three of the great powers of Europe;
with no free Polish city where she might devise her policy and
carry on her campaign unmolested, it would seem that the only
sensible policy would have been to sing the requiem of her former
self and become Russian, Prussian or Austrian, according to the
lines of the partition. At least one would have said that to keep
up such a conflict for a hundred years would end in nothing but
annihilation, not only of the Polish nation but of the individual
Poles. There were, however, several things in her favor also.
First of all there was the will and determination to survive; then
there were the traditions of the great kings and great achieve-
ments mentioned above. There were also the still greater bonds
igi6.] WHAT WILL HAPPEN POLAND? 179
of unity in language and unity in religion, two of the greatest
safeguards and bulwarks of national life. With such assets and
against such odds Poland entered the arena. She is in the arena
still; the fight still continues; and the other parties in the con-
flict have to admit that she shows no signs either of surrender or
exhaustion.
Nay, even the Poland of the partition is greater than the
Poland of the kings; greater in men of genius, greater in worldly
power, greater in achievement, and greater in her devotion to her
own ideals. " In industry, in agriculture, in the arts and sciences,
in education, in wealth and numbers the Poles are progressive." 2
The Poles in the dominions of Austria, Russia and Prussia num-
ber about twenty millions, with about three millions in this coun-
try. Notwithstanding suppression and hostile legislation, they not
only have held their own in the conquered territory, but are more
than a match for the favored children of these three great powers.
Persecution and discrimination, instead of breaking their power,
have brought them together in a brotherhood of the spirit, and
have made them all the more determined to realize their national
ideals. The occasional fruitless attempts at insurrection have given
the ever potent baptism of blood, and added to their litany of
kings a litany of martyrs and heroes. The cause for which a
Kosciusko lived and suffered cannot easily be forgotten; the coun-
try that produced Sienkiewicz, Chopin, Modjeska and Paderewski
is yet very much alive, and until her ideals are achieved, there
will always be a Polish problem.
When we turn to the three sharers in Polish territory, we
come to three national mistakes, if not to three national crimes;
and the bigger the crime the less satisfactory the results. Austria
has been the least foolish of the three. There are reasons for
this. She is a mosaic of nations, and has by this time learned the
wisdom of tolerance towards diversity of language, religion and
ideals. Hence, she has not interfered with the ways of the Poles;
the result being that "a real -affection has grown up among the
Poles for the aged Franz Joseph." Russia and Germany, however,
began with the principle : " Let us make Poland to our own image
and likeness," and only now are they in a mood to confess their
folly. Poland is yet neither German nor Russian, and both Czar
and Kaiser are outdoing each other in promises of what each
will do for downtrodden Poland when he has properly punished
the other for his crime against civilization. Whichever of the two
3 Poland. By L. E. Van Norman. Page 27.
i8o WHAT WILL HAPPEN POLAND? [May,
wins, he will probably try to convince Poland that " Codlin's your
friend," and that he has rescued a great nation for all time from
the domination of a hated tyrant.
Such is a brief outline of Poland's present condition and
previous history. Without such knowledge we can understand
neither the reason for, nor the nature of, the Polish question. But
when we come to ask ourselves, " What will happen to Poland
after the war? " our prophecies must be negative rather than posi-
tive. Of this we may be sure that a victorious Germany or a
victorious Russia is not going to do anything for Poland unless
as a good investment, redounding to the advantage of the victor.
There have already been so many sacrifices for necessity during the
present war that even the winning side is not going to add to
the number by making a sacrifice for sentiment. Germany would
be very glad to deprive Russia of further slices of Poland; but
she did not enter this war for the liberation of Poland, but for
the expansion of Germany. The same is true of Russia. If the
war is a draw, they may all, either in a moment of magnanimity or of
repentance or of state policy, agree to put Poland in business for
herself again, either to get rid of their Polish problems, or as a
means to avoid further trouble by keeping at a respectful dis-
tance from one another.
Anyhow there will be difficulties innumerable. How much
should be included in a restored Poland? Should it be absolutely
independent or subject to the suzerainty of one or of the three
great neighboring powers? If of one, which one is it to be? If
of the three, how long will the harmony last? In a reconstituted
Poland will there be guarantees for the fair treatment of the Ger-
man, Russian and Austrian subjects now dwelling in Polish terri-
tory? Will the Jews be put on the same legal footing as the Chris-
tians? These, and a host of other preliminary questions will have
to be adjusted before (if ever) Poland can say: "All is mine
beneath the Polish sky."
There is no good in prophesying. Poland has to wait until
the war is over before she can begin to make demands or sugges-
tions. There is this, however, to be said : The Allies declare they
are fighting for the destruction of German militarism, and the
independence of the small nations ; the Germans say they are fight-
ing to stem the ever-advancing Slav menace. Whichever side
wins, it would seem that for their honor as well as for their in-
terest they ought to consider the claims of Poland.
"LIBERTY" IN MEXICO.
(A STORY.)
BY ROBERT H. GROSS.
I.
IGH LOW JACKSON halted his flea-bitten roan with
a scarcely perceptible tightening of the bridle-rein.
" If we was camels," he remarked, " I'd vote
for leavin' San Agueda off of our visitin' list."
" There's quite a bunch of them," observed Tom
Hewston, reining up his big bay beside Jackson. " Wonder whose
men they are? "
" That's what I'm sayin'," High Low answered. " Got them
various passports handy-like ? "
" Devil of it is, High Low, that might be a fresh spawn some
new Don wanting something. Viva ! " he cried, " Viva ! Viva
most anybody ! "
They were gazing down a narrow, yellow valley, flanked by
jagged brown hills. Beyond the hard hills, soft purple mountains
loomed into the steel-blue sky. Straight before them, a mile away,
in a green oasis of cottonwoods, lay the village of San Agueda,
its church and its gray-brown adobe huts shining a brilliant white
in the noon sun. Just entering the village, and spread out in a
shiftless, straggling pattern, was a column of horsemen, whose
discovery had halted the two travelers, and evoked their rather
anxious comment.
" Well," said Jackson, " whoever them gents is, we ain't no
ships of the desert; so I reckon we just takes a blind chance that
we're friends."
" That's all we can do," assented Hewston. " Anyway," he
went on, his pleasant, sun-browned face setting quickly into rugged
lines, " we're not relying entirely on a bunch of letters."
" Well, now, that's right," High Low Jackson seconded cheer-
fully. " Let's amble in there, an j look 'em over."
He yelped at the two pack-burros, who had been nosing hope-
fully along the barren trail, and the little cavalcade fell into line,
moving off slowly toward the shining village.
182 "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO [May,
Tom Hewston, bringing up the rear, studied High Low Jack-
son's faded, blue shoulders, as he had studied them many times
before during the five-day journey from the Esperanza del Norte
mine. High Low's rather slouchy, but deceptive, shoulders had
been a convenient focus for Tom's thought processes, which were
not pleasant exercises. For Tom had believed himself the owner
of an incomparable copper vein, and through the long year since his
discovery had clung grimly to his treasure, despite the shifting chaos
of the times. In the end, his laborers vanished, his titles smashed,
his glittering dreams broken into a thousand gilded particles, he
had listened to the earnest appeal High Low Jackson had brought
down from Dick Garrett. Now, paralleling the railroad, but avoid-
ing it by many miles, they were traveling north through the State
of Sonora toward Garrett's ranch near the border.
It was proving a difficult task for Tom to overcome the pas-
sionate storm of helpless anger and disappointment that had rushed
over him when he realized that Garrett was right, and that he must
leave the Esperanza. Little by little, he was succeeding. What,
after all, were his selfish ambitions set over against this bigger,
nobler thing; this anguished labor that was to bring forth another
fair babe of Liberty? But, invariably, when he thought of Lex-
ington and Bunker Hill and Valley Forge, the answering chords
rang false. Somehow, perhaps because it was so long ago, that
other revolution was different, was cleaner and higher and more
noble ; yet he stubbornly insisted that the principle must be the same,
and he clung to the comforting argument that his loss was only a
tiny part of a nation's gain.
Two hundred yards from the first of the squat adobes, reaching
out from San Agueda, the trail crossed the dry bed of the Rio la
Casa by the simple expedient of dropping down one steep bank and
up the other.
High Low's roan had just extended one gingerly forefoot
to descend into the rock-strewn bed of the absent stream, when a
shrill babble of cheers and a rattling volley of rifle fire burst out of
San Agueda. A quick dig of the spurs sent the gaunt roan in
awkward, stiff -legged haste to the bottom of the ravine. Just
behind, in a smother of dust, came the two astonished burros, with
Tom's bay nipping savagely at their rumps.
" Right pleasant welcome, ain't it? " said High Low, mopping
his face with a huge bandana. " I wonder if that's a fight or a
fiesta? "
1916.] "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO 183
" Details later. Just now, this ravine looks pretty good. I
can't see a soul," Tom continued, stretching up in his stirrups.
" The rumpus must be in on the plaza."
The firing had now become a' continuous crackling of shots
one, three, five at a time, and the cries, coming at longer intervals,
were now not cheers, but single, sinister yelps. Then, suddenly,
the stillness of the valley swooped back. The two in the river bed
strained their ears and stretched their necks ; but sounds had ceased,
and San Agueda lay there before them, peaceful and sleepy in the
sun. A quarter of an hour they waited; then Tom shook an
impatient rein.
" Come on, High Low. The celebration seems to be over.
Let's get in."
The narrow street leading into the valley was strangely quiet,
even for the siesta hour. Doors and shutters were inhospitably
tight. Black-shawled women, tumbling, bead-eyed children, the
usual torrent of fierce-voiced dogs, all were hidden. Tom caught
a glimpse of one brown, anxious face peeping from a house near
the square, and behind the next hut the shaggy, gray head of a dog
discreetly peered. Then, the road led past the church, fronting
on the plaza, and, as High Low turned the corner, he called sharply
to Hewston and slid instantly from his saddle. When Tom gained
his side, Jackson was kneeling by a bruised, bleeding wreck of a
man, huddled horribly in the dust.
"He's alive," muttered High Low; "but that's about all.
Gimme my flask left saddle pocket."
Skillfully and tenderly, the rough-handed Jackson lifted the
torn face and dropped the warm liquor into the distorted mouth.
A weak groan rewarded him. Suddenly, Tom's rapid fingers ceased
their searching over the limp form.
" My God !" he whispered. " This man's a padre, High Low
-a priest ! "
"Huh?"
" See? The collar, the cassock? "
" Well, I'm danged ! " murmured High Low, staring amazedly,
but keeping the bloody head in the crook of his arm.
Another groan from the wreck, and the right hand lifted to
the forehead, then, painfully, completed a ragged Sign of the Cross.
The eyes fluttered open; lips that were bulged and blue tried
vainly to speak; then the body sagged down.
" Is he gone? " whispered Hewston.
184 "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO [May,
" Not yet."
" Dirty, dirty work," breathed Tom, anger flashing in his gray
eyes. " Somebody's going to pay for this."
"The sefiores are interfering with justice," spoke a smooth
voice behind them.
Startled violently, Hewston swung around. But even at that
moment one word had burned its way to his brain.
" Justice ! " he cried. " Justice ! "
Before him stood a slim, undersized man, half soldier, half
cowhead. Stuffed into high-heeled, cruel-spurred boots were blue
denim overalls; above them a brown, military blouse and a huge,
be-silvered sombrero. Tom noted, too, the side arms and collar
ornaments, and he looked into a pair of evil, little eyes.
" You said justice, Captain," Tom repeated, still on his knees.
" But this man is a padre. I "
" A padre, surely ! " and the little captain grimaced and spread
his hands. " He refuses to obey orders ; he is taught a little lesson.
The sefiores are not to interfere with the lesson."
" But " hot words leaped into Hewston's mouth.
Coldly they ran back again; for the form on the ground let
forth a ghastly gurgle, stiffened convulsively, then relaxed gently
in High Low Jackson's arms.
" Interference is ended, Captain," said Jackson, without
turning. " He is dead."
" Pizst ! The soft fool ! " the captain said, snapping his
fingers. He stepped to the body and pushed it with his foot.
With a catlike spring, Tom Hewston leaped at the Mexican.
The palm of his hand struck the captain's brown jaw, and the little
man spun backward against the church wall.
" There's justice in that, too, you devil ! "
" You dare to strike me ! " shrilled the officer, struggling in
a grotesque mixture of pain, astonishment and dignity. " Me? El.
Captain Jose Sandoval y Ribera ? You American dogs ! You have
seen how one lesson is taught; you shall see another. Hola!
Hold! " he squawked. " Gallegos ! Rojas ! Here, quickly ! "
Out of a newly whitewashed house, across the little square,
appeared two men. They glanced in the direction of the gesticu-
lating Captain, then dodged back to reappear quickly, bearing their
rifles, and followed by half a dozen others, the whole party advanc-
ing toward the church at a trot.
" That little gun of yours, Tommy," began High Low Jackson.
1916.] " LIBERTY" IN MEXICO 185
But Tom's automatic was already in use. Against the brown-
coated ribs of the captain it pressed familiarly.
" Stop them, Sandoval," commanded Tom, quietly. " Stop
them, quickly ! "
The little man hesitated a fraction of a second. The pistol dug
sharply into him.
"Halt!" he ordered; then: "You will wait there for my
commands."
The motley squad obeyed, shuffling into a scrawly line.
" Very good," murmured Hewston.
" Very good ? " sneered the other. " We shall see ! We shall
see if Captain Sandoval y Ribera can be defied ! "
" I want the name of that padre, and I want to know why you
killed him," Hewston said, the soft Spanish words taking on the
terseness of English as they snapped from his lips. " Come, his
name?"
" How can I tell you his name ? " squealed Sandoval, in high-
pitched wrath. " How do I know the dog's name ? He is a padre,
that is sufficient ! "
"Why did you kill him?"
" We kill all enemies of the Republic ; we "
"Stop!" thundered Hewston. "That is enough. What
crime had he committed? "
" They are traitors, I tell you all of them enemies of
Liberty!"
Tom snarled his disgust.
" Watch our little friend a minute, will you, High Low? " he
said, turning to Jackson. " I'm going to find somebody who'll
tell me something."
" Make it quick, Tommy," urged his lean friend ; " somethin's
liable to bust."
Tom strode rapidly through the arched door into the church.
An instant's soothing touch came to him in the cool atmosphere.
Then his eyes gauged the subdued light, and he reached out quickly
into the empty air for support against the shocking sight that met
him. Over the flagged floor were scattered remnants of what had
been the painted Stations of the Cross. Littered among them were
broken bits of pottery, and tossed about were the gaily-colored paper
flowers that had decorated the altar. A little unsteadily he advanced
over the wreckage, his pounding anger finding vent in low mutter-
ings. Satan himself had passed this way, it seemed, his fawning
i86 "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO [May,
courtiers strewing his path with the rarest of blossoms for his
cloven feet. At the altar rail he stopped. The floor of the sanc-
tuary was piled up with broken statues and twisted candlesticks.
The sanctuary lamp had been smashed, and the oil still dripped
down, drop by drop, on the green carpet. Then he saw that the
tabernacle door had been shot into bits!
With a gasp, he entered the sanctuary, and, with awe in his
heart, searched keenly for what he prayed he might not find. Sigh-
ing his relief, for nowhere to be seen was ciborium or Sacred Host,
he stepped toward an open door, which led out of the sacristy on
the right to a small patio. As he swung down the single step into
the bright sunshine, he heard a low exclamation, and, turning,
beheld a young woman cowering against the wall. Thrown over
the girl's head was a filmy, black mantilla, and, as she shrank back,
she held the soft, graceful folds across her face. Only her eyes
were uncovered, great, black eyes that just now glittered with terror.
" I mean no harm, senorita," said Hewston, quickly. " I am
sorry I frightened you."
Strangely, at the words, Tom saw a new light in the depths of
the dark eyes. Their hard brilliance faded and a soft radiance
shone forth. The girl released the ends of her mantilla, and thrust
out her arms in an appealing gesture.
" You you are an American, sefior ? " she questioned timidly.
A warm glow of pride surged up in Tom's breast at the eager
hope that trembled on the words.
"Yes, senorita."
" Not of the the army? " with a quick return of fear.
" No, no, senorita. I'm on my way to the States."
The sweet face flushed in swift indignation, and the soft eyes
flashed. To Tom's wonder she dropped the Spanish and spoke in
rapid English.
" You have seen, then ? Oh, you have seen what they have
done? Tell me," she whispered, " the priest, Father Pouget, is he
is he dead?"
Tom bowed his head.
" He is dead, senorita."
Silently sobbing, the girl sank to her knees.
" I came in here to learn something of Father Pouget," Hews-
ton said, leaning over the grief-stricken girl. " But there is little
we can do for him now. Jell me, senorita, is there something we
can do for you? "
1916.] "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO 187
Gently he urged her to rise.
" For me, there is nothing," she answered, amid her tears.
" Oh, but there are others you can help others who need it sorely.
Listen, senor senor "
" Hewston Thomas Hewston."
" Senor Hewston, you can do a noble deed," she went on in a
low voice. " This morning at dawn, Filipo came in with the warn-
ing that the soldiers were coming. My father had sent him from
Magdalena. There were two nuns who had sought refuge here in
Agueda a few days ago. When Filipo brought his news, Father
Pouget refused to leave his church; but he made the Sisters go.
They have set out on foot for the Hacienda de las Manzanas. It
is fifteen miles east of here, the trail branches off the Camino Norte
two miles beyond San Agueda. O Senor Hewston," she whispered
brokenly, " they are in peril, these good women. There is a way
to the border from Las Manzanas. Will you help them? Will
you go North that way, and and take them with you ? "
"But you, senorita?"
" I ? They dare not molest me ! " she declared proudly. "But
the others! They are hunted like wild things. Already the
soldiers have ridden out to seek them you saw? Only a few are
left here."
Tom looked into the beautiful, imploring eyes. He saw the
long lashes wet with tender tears ; saw the slender hands clasped in
supplication.
" Senorita," he said softly, " we will help them all we can."
" God will bless you, Senor Hewston," she exclaimed, and she
grasped his arm impulsively. " Go quickly," she urged. " You
cannot miss the way ; perhaps perhaps the soldiers have gone on.
They may not think of Las Manzanas."
" If I should, if we go through safely, senorita, I should want
you to know it."
A sweet confusion mantled her soft cheeks.
" I I am Ines de Cenriquez," she said. " But go, senor. I
shall know if you succeed. Good-by, Senor Hewston, God will
surely bless you."
Tom stood irresolutely and watched her cross the patio. She
turned once and looked at him. He doffed his wide felt hat and
bowed low.
" Good-bye, senorita," he called, then turning on his heel he
walked back through the church, crushing the bright paper flowers
i88 "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO [May,
and crunching the poor broken vases as he went. At the church
door he perceived High Low Jackson and Captain Sandoval y
Ribera sitting side by side on the steps. Jackson turned his head
slightly at Tom's approach.
" The Captain agrees with me, Senor Hewston," he said, " that
a slight show of temper might be excused if one is plainly ignorant,
and, especially, if he carries a pass from General Villa." High
Low's dignified Spanish hardly squared with the twinkle in his pale,
blue eyes ; but he went on gravely enough : " The Captain will go
with us to the well there, where he will examine our letter, and he
will remain with us while we water and feed. We agree then to
go on without further interference. As a mark of favor, he will
accompany us a mile or two alone. Then he will return to San
Agueda. You agree to this, Senor Hewston ; no? "
One wrinkled eyelid descended slowly, and High Low's re-
maining eye stared solemnly at Tom. Hewston might have chuckled
at the diplomatic Texan; but a glance at the dusty form lying just
beyond jerked him up. So he merely grunted an affirmative.
" And you, Captain ? This plan is agreeable ; no ? "
Sandoval looked at the long-barrelled Colt in High Low's hand.
" It is the duty of an officer to respect his superior's orders,
even at the loss of his own dignity," he said, sullenly. " I am willing
to let you go, if you carry my General's pass, as you say."
An hour later they sat in their saddles, watching the outraged
Captain cantering back to San Agueda. They were at the summit
of a long slope, two miles from the village. Just beyond their
position, a faint trail, scarcely more than a shallow gully, led off
to the right from their own northward road.
" It sure was correct for you to smack his face," High Low
was saying; "but, while you was sashayin' around in the church,
it come to me that if the rest of that outfit showed up before we
could git out, it'd be no more Stars an' Stripes for us."
" It was smart. The only thing to do," Tom assured him.
" But you should have seen that church, High Low. To think that
a gang of dirty murderers like that should be allowed to masquerade
as patriots ! And the women " Tom checked his outburst. "High
Low," he said then, evenly, " there are women in danger from that
outfit; two poor nuns. They are somewhere over there, and I
have promised to help them. It may be a dangerous job, and I
have no right to ask you to mix in. It'll be all right with me, old
boy, if you'd rather head on north. As for me "
1916.] "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO 189
" Mr. Tom Hewston," drawled High Low Jackson, with dig-
nity, " I reckon I ain't no shinin' church member; but I'm a he-man
from Texas. How're we goin' to find them ladies ? "
"Good old High Low," grinned Tom. "Did you think I
didn't know you were coming along ? ",
II.
The shadows of the burros' ears waved over the rocky trail
like yardarms, and the cool evening air was breathing up refresh-
ingly, when the two travelers reached the cactus-dotted hill over-
looking the clustered buildings of the Hacienda de las Manzanas.
There had been no sight of exhausted, frightened women, nor any
sign of their swift-riding hunters. Stretching vastly before them
lay a great plain, glimmering with the iridescent hues of a mountain
sunset. Delicate smoke-plumes lifted up, peacefully, above the
hacienda buildings, signaling warmth and inner comfort for weary
bodies.
" They've made it, all right, High Low," Tom said. " Poor
things, they must be half dead. Looks like the enemy is clear off
the scent, too."
" I ain't predicting" returned Jackson, his gaze searching the
darkening, northern horizon.
" We can give them a good night's rest," Tom went on, dis-
regarding High Low's pessimism, " and get an early start in the
morning."
" I calculate it twenty mile to the border, air-line," said Jack-
son. " An' I ain't in favor of givin' them coyotes no wide-open
invitations. If them ladies kin wiggle a finger, they'd ought to
keep right on a-goin'."
" Maybe you're right," Tom agreed, catching the anxious note
in the other's slow voice.
He turned in his saddle and faced the huge, red sun, which
hung in a haze at the sharp back of a steep hill, two miles behind.
At the moment Hewston turned there crept into the burnished ball
at the hilltop a number of tiny, black objects.
" Look, High Low," he cried. " What do you make of it? "
Jackson squinted carefully into the sun.
" Hell ! " he answered, eloquently.
A grizzled old man, herding a flock of goats into an adobe
corral, at the edge of the hacienda, looked up in mild astonishment
at the hurrying horsemen, lashing at the two pack-burros.
190 "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO [May,
"Where is the master?" called Tom.
" He is away there," pointing with lifted chin to the west.
" Well, who is in charge ? "
As if in answer, around the corner of the corral trotted a
magnificent black horse, his rider swinging gracefully in at the turn.
" There he is, senor Pablo Baca."
The black horse reared, snorting extravagantly at the burros
and the goats.
" Good evening, sefiores," greeted Baca, politely.
' You are in charge here? " asked Tom.
" Yes, senor."
" Then the two Sisters, the nuns, they have come in safely? "
" Sisters? No, senor," came the prompt and astounding reply.
" There are no Sisters here."
Hewston looked at his companion in bewilderment. Then he
turned to Baca.
" Listen, senor, carefully. Behind us, just over the hill, is a
troop of mounted soldiers. They are seeking these nuns. We are
trying to protect them. Surely they have come in ; they started for
this place from San Agueda at dawn; the Sefiorita Ines de Ceftri-
quez told me so."
" The senorita ! " cried Baca, and stopped. Then he con-
tinued, rapidly : " They are here, senor. The soldiers are coming,
you say? Madre de Dios! Come quickly! The burros take
them in," he commanded the old man at the corral-gate. " Come,
sefiores ! "
The fiery, black stallion whirled and dashed off down the
road, Tom and High Low at his heels. Tom caught a rushing
view of clustered, adobe huts and of well-stocked corrals crowded
up about the main building. Through these Baca spurred, dis-
mounting in a small and empty yard immediately behind the big,
thick-walled house. A single door in the blank wall led through a
dark hallway to a spacious patio, lying cool and beautiful in the
gathering shadows. Hastening down the gallery, Baca opened a
wide, glass door. Instantly all sense of the crude life just outside
vanished; for they had entered an exquisite apartment, where the
failing light caressed dark leather and mahogany, and glinted on
silver and glass.
" The Sisters are there," said Pablo, pointing to a deep-set
door. " What is to be done, sefiores, do you think ? "
The man was nervous. He even trembled slightly; but his
1916.] " LIBERTY" IN MEXICO 191
eyes were calmly courageous and his voice was firm. Tom looked
about, a little dazed at the exotic elegance of his surroundings, and
finding it difficult to entertain the insistent sense of savage, impend-
ing danger. Quickly, though, he decided.
" They must leave this place," he said. " They must gain the
United States line. Can you furnish horses? And is there some-
one, senor, who knows the way someone whom you can trust?"
" But you, senores ? "
" We must remain to delay the soldiers ; someone else must go."
Baca hesitated a moment ; then drew himself up with a smoth-
ered sigh.
" The senorita would have it so," he said. " My son, my little
son will go."
" Quick then, senor ! "
Bowing, the Mexican crossed the room and tapped on the little
door. A wizened woman peeped out suspiciously. In one sharp
sentence Baca bade her tell the nuns they must go on. Then he
hastened from the room.
" An hour will do it, High Low," said Tom. " They must
ride fast; maybe half an hour will do. Get your thinking-cap on,
old boy; we'll sure need it."
" Some ranch ! " murmured the Texan, in irrelevant ecstasy.
" I'm sure right pleased with it ! "
He went poking about the big room, awkwardly examining the
walls, the pictures and the ornaments. A French clock on the
high mantel ticked off the seconds softly, and Tom Hewston paced
back and forth before the dark fireplace, his curly, brown head bent
forward in rapid speculations. Behind them, then, on the gallery,
came Pablo's quick step.
" They can go at once," he said as he entered.
Again, at the little door he tapped.
"Ready!" he called sharply.
At the summons the old woman opened the door and stood
aside as the two nuns came forth. Haggard-eyed they were, in
the dim light, their every silent movement shouting their physical
distress; but their brave souls shone out, serene and undismayed.
As Hewston bowed before them, the rushing jumble of half -formed
plans with which he had been wrestling passed curiously from him.
In their place came quickly, and burned steadily, a simple, joyful
ease; the way would show itself; now it sufficed that he was here
to help.
192 "-LIBERTY " IN MEXICO [May,
" There is no time," he said. " You must go at once, and
ride ride fast. Do not fear. You will reach the border safely
to-night."
" May God protect you, senores," a gentle voice replied.
The dark habits rustled in the quiet room, and Pablo led them
into the patio. Fifteen minutes passed. The two Americans ex-
changed no words. Jackson opened the wide door across the room,
and looked into the dark interior. Then he walked to the little
door in the corner and passed into the room beyond. Returning
after a minute he dropped into a soft chair. Tom glanced at him
keenly; then the two sat waiting and alertly listening. The clock
on the mantel struck musically. At its last mellow tap, the wizened
little woman came in with a burning wax taper in her claw-like
hands. The chimneys clinked nervously as she lighted the two
brass lamps. Suddenly she started, stood rigid for an instant, then,
hissing her alarm, scurried with the pitiful haste of the aged from
the room.
A muffled hammering was sounding. They heard pattering
feet passing swiftly. A draft of air stirred the draperies. A loud
voice came to them, speaking fast. The next moment the door
opposite swung open, and three men, dragging with them a woman,
hurriedly entered. Tom felt his nerves, his sinews, his very being,
flex in momentary preparation. Then he stepped forward.
" Hello, Sandoval," he said, quietly, though his heart sank
at sight of the captive.
" The American senores," greeted the officer with mock
ceremony. He jerked the woman roughly forward. " This young
devil is your friend, I believe ? "
Tom stared in cold amazement at the beautiful, pale face of
Ines de Cenriquez.
" Sefiorita ! " he cried, stepping toward her.
" Careful, Senor Hewston," she warned. " The Captain is
brave now as a lion. He has forty men outside."
" You see, gentlemen," said Sandoval to his companions, ignor-
ing the scornful girl, " our information is confirmed. Senores,"
addressing the Americans, " this afternoon you were pardoned.
The offence was, we shall say, personal. But to-night, it is dif-
ferent you have struck at the Republic ! "
Tom was thinking fast. What had happened at San Agueda?
Sandoval evidently had expected to find them at Las Manzanas.
Under what pretext had the little fiend dragged off this defenceless
1916.] " LIBERTY" IN MEXICO 193
girl? Muddying his mind and tangling his thoughts was the un-
believable malice against the Church and her people which so
unmistakably was driving on this pseudo-soldier. Wounded pride
he could understand, and revenge; the physical danger the little
man threatened he could meet calmly. But twisted in and about
it all, uncannily, was a deeper and more evil spirit. Tom shuddered
a little as the swift impression crossed him. Satan was here in
this room ! He was leering there in the eyes of Captain Sandoval
y Ribera!
" If we have struck at Mexico, Captain," he said in a
moment, his words slow and careful, as befitting this newly-dis-
covered enemy of worth, " we have done so only in defence of
those whom in my country we cherish and protect. I had believed
until to-day that Mexico, too, honored God and His people. Now,
it seems, I was mistaken."
" You are a fool," sneered Sandoval. " Find the women,"
he ordered.
The two lieutenants made one step toward the deep-set door
in the corner, and then, in flashing inspiration, Tom Hewston leaped
to the little door and barred the way.
" One moment, gentlemen," he said. "Captain, I appeal to
your manhood. I ask you to consider what you are doing. Let us
discuss this matter before you decide."
" Enough," Sandoval flared. " Stand aside ! "
" You do not know us, Sandoval," said Hewston, and in his
hand gleamed again the ugly little automatic. " They shall not
enter this door until I say so. You have your men outside, you
can kill us, I suppose ; but I demand to know more about this before
you touch these poor women."
Pulsing seconds passed, while the trio at the doorway stood
tensely, and Sandoval's shifting eyes shot here and there, seeking
an opening for his baffled venom. With one slender hand half-
lifted, the other pressing at her breast, Ines stared at Hewston.
Across the table from her, High Low Jackson also stared; but,
slowly, his puzzled look changed to an expression of twinkling ad-
miration.
Then the captain shrugged his narrow shoulders.
" You are making it very hard for me to remember that you are
an American," he said. " Put up your pistol and stand aside."
" Forget I'm an American, Sandoval, when you get ready."
Sandoval's thin lips curled in a cruel snarl.
VOL. cm. 13
194 "LIBERTY" IN MEXICO [May,
"A call from me will bring my men, Hewston. I need not
tell you what that means. This is my last warning. Stand aside ! "
" Thomas," came High Low's slow voice, " it looks to me like
we lose. Better let 'em pass. We done our best."
Hewston looked searchingly at the Texan, who was leaning
forward, a little anxiously.
" You mean that, High Low ? " he demanded.
" Your friend is wise," cut in Sandoval.
' You bet I mean it, Thomas. We done our damndest ; let
'em through."
" All right then," Hewston cried, pulling open the door.
Like hungry hounds, the two lieutenants dashed through. San-
doval called out an urging word, and stepped, himself, toward the
door. Instantly, a long arm wrapped itself around his thin body,
and a rough hand clapped over his mouth.
" Lock it ! " commanded High Low Jackson, holding Sandoval
tightly. " Lock it, Tommy ! Good boy ! I never seen a nicer
little pen! That's the only door! "
As Hewston turned with the key in his hand, he faced Ines.
"What are you doing?" she cried. "Oh, what are you
doing?"
Flushing suddenly, he grasped the girl by the shoulders.
" They're not in there," he said, and a smile flickered on his
lips. " They've gone on ahead."
" Gone ! " she exclaimed. " I oh oh senor ! "
The words reached the struggling Sandoval. With convulsive
desperation, he jerked his head free from Jackson's smothering
hand.
" Gallegos ! " he screamed. " Help ! The men bring "
Springing to Jackson's side, Tom shut off the squealing; but
the cry had carried. They heard the swift thud of running feet, a
stifled cry, quick steps. Then at the door stood Pablo Baca !
" Pablo! " exclaimed Tom.
" There is no alarm," said Pablo, and Tom caught the flash
of steel, quickly hidden. " The sentinel who ran will be quiet now."
Muffled shouts and a dull pounding sounded at the deep-set
little door in the corner. Pablo shot a questioning glance at Hews-
ton.
" The two lieutenants," explained Tom. " Locked in."
The other shrugged calmly.
" No one can hear," he said, " the walls are thick."
I9i6.] " LIBERTY" IN MEXICO 195
" If you gents '11 fetch some twine, I'd like for to tie this up,"
said High Low Jackson, breathing a little fast.
At the words Baca went out, returning in a moment with a
coiled lariat. Working silently, he trussed the helpless captain and
gagged him with a brilliant-hued silk handkerchief.
" You're sure an artist, Pablo," declared High Low, depositing
Sandoval in a chair and gazing at his bonds admiringly.
But the tall Mexican was talking rapidly to the girl.
" Ah, senorita, I feared this would be the end," he said. " The
master knows I warned him he could not help these poor priests
and nuns. Now, they will take this house destroy all, perhaps.
But you you must go now, before it is too late."
" Santa Maria, my home ! " the girl sobbed. " My home, my
father!"
" Senores," said Pablo, " your horses and another are in a place
I shall show you. You can overtake my little Pablo and the
Sisters."
" Senorita Ines," Tom said very gently, " we will carry you
safely. I promise you that."
Ines looked at him with tender, tear-dimmed eyes.
" God has not forsaken me, senor," she said simply.
The fragrance of the patio stole in through the open door.
Indistinct sounds, as of revelry and fitful flares of light came to
them from the huts beyond.
Silently they slipped out into the night the reddened, weasel
eyes of Captain Sandoval y Ribera watched them go.
CATHOLIC UNITY AND PROTESTANT DISUNION.
BY F. A. PALMIERI, O.S.A.
HE most pressing problem of the Church in our day
is that of Christian unity; beside it all others fade
into insignificance. The energies of Christendom
are being frittered away in the competitions, con-
troversies, jealousies and frictions engendered by its
unhappy divisions, and this in the face of such demands upon
the Church and such opportunities for service as have never been
presented before in its history. This era, that might be most
glorious in the career of the Church, may be compelled to record
the story of its degeneration and defeat. The loss of influence
that institutional Christianity is suffering to-day may be ascribed
to many causes, but to none is it due in so large a measure as
to disunion. There is no task confronting it anywhere in the
world which the Church might not accomplish, if it could ap-
proach that task with a united front; and there is none to which
it is fully equal so long as its forces are divided and its energies
dissipated."
Thus writes in a recent book 1 Robert A. Ashworth, a pas-
tor of the First Baptist Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The
book won the prize of one thousand dollars offered by the American
Sunday-school Union, and it may be considered as a representative
exposition of the aims of Protestant denominations for healing
the wounds inflicted upon the mystical Body of Christ by schisms
and heresies, or, to use a milder expression, by the divergencies
of creeds. From a Catholic point of view, the above-quoted words
of pastor Ashworth deserve to be appreciated as a justified com-
plaint of an unhappy state of things which paralyzes the most
powerful energies of Christianity, and greatly endangers its fu-
ture mission in a society dissolved by the corrosive acids of ma-
terialism and skepticism. The Catholic Church is aware of the
repeated failures of Christianity in its attempts to enlarge the
frontiers of the kingdom of Christ upon earth, and over and over
again, as a loving mother, she invites her dispersed sons to reenter
the fold of the divine Shepherd. There has been no Pope in the
1 Union of Christian Forces in America, p. 3.
CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION 197
chair of Peter who did not devote a considerable part of his
apostolic cares and of his unselfish desires to the great and ex-
ceedingly difficult task of restoring the unity of Christianity, of
making up the differences which have introduced a principle of
dissolution into the amorphous bodies separated from the true
Church of Christ. It is, then, with a joyful feeling of Christian
brotherhood that we meet Protestant aspirations towards unity, that
we greet the yearnings of wandering members of the Christian
family to turn back again to the deserted paternal house.
But what are the secret motives of this Christian homesick-
ness which is apparently affecting Protestant denominations?
What kind of unity are they longing for in their passionate pleas
for Christian unity? Is the Catholic Church able to give her
support to those aspirations without drying up the sources of her
supernatural life, without betraying the mission intrusted to her
by her invisible Head? An answer to these questions is the sub-
ject we propose to approach in the present article.
An appeal to unity, in our opinion, and from a Catholic point
of view, ought to be the product of the spirit of love which per-
meates the mystical Body of Christ. As Christians, we are to
be united not for the sake of human advantages, or of social
welfare. Christ alone is, and He must always be, the unitive force
of the Christian family, the bond of union amongst His fol-
lowers. The unity of the Church is the visible manifestation of
the will of Christ, and the will of Christ does not take heed of
human interests or of material benefits. The divine Teacher orders
His disciples to be united, because He preaches to us the supreme
law of love, and the logical and natural inference of love is unity.
Now it seems to us that Protestant yearnings for unity start
from human points of view, rather than from the impulse and
love of the spirit of Christ. They are afraid of the progressive
division of their disjecta membra', they repine at being classified,
as one of them humorously said, into sects and insects. But in
their laments they lay a great stress upon the material losses pro-
duced by the ceaseless scattering of their believers. The divisions
and subdivisions of Protestantism threaten a bankruptcy of its
economical resources. To them they are indebted for the distress of
ministers, whose wages are far below the average paid to me-
chanics. It will be enough to say that the average yearly wages
paid to ministers of the Southern Baptist Convention are three
hundred and thirty-four dollars. " The evils of overchurching, the
198 CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION [May,
loss of spiritual fellowship between the various bodies of Christians
who are forced into competition with one another, together with
the waste of equipment and unnecessary expense of Church main-
tenance, and the handicapping of ministers through the payment
of inadequate salaries, are a part of the price that Protestantism
is paying for the luxury of its divisions. Add to this an incalculable
loss in national and local prestige and leadership/' 2
It cannot be denied that the aims of the Church of England,
and of its daughter, the American Episcopal Church, for the re-
union of Christianity are higher. Divines of both communions
recognize that the unity of the Church is the earnest wish of the
Saviour, and that the spiritual action of the Christian apostleship
is greatly hampered by the unhappy divisions of Protestantism.
" At home, Christianity is faced on the one side with materialism,
and on the other side with apathy and indifference, and the wit-
ness of our religion is seriously weakened. Abroad the active work
of Christianity in casting down strongholds, and in attacking
heathenism is similarly impaired by the various and often rival
manners in which the Christian religion is presented to the heathen
for their acceptance." 8
But what kind of unity is proposed to Catholics by Protestant
denominations? Generally, Protestants boldly deny the institu-
tional character of the Church of Christ. " Jesus dealt in princi-
ples," says pastor Ashworth, "not programmes; in ideals, not
institutions. We shall be disappointed if we approach the teachings
of Jesus with the hope of finding there a specific plan for the
attainment of the unity of the Church. He has nothing to say
of comity or cooperation, or federation, or organic unity. When
Jesus prayed for His disciples that they might be one, He was
thinking, not of organic church union, nor of any formal unity
expressed in organization, but of a vital unity springing from the
possession of a common spirit and of a common purpose. He
was not thinking of the Church, nor of Sacraments, nor of ecclesi-
astical polities, nor of creeds. Jesus never thought out a system
of theology, nor ordained a priesthood, nor even an official minis-
try, nor organized a church. The purpose of Jesus was to propa-
gate a spirit, not to establish an institution." 4
'Ashworth, p. 34.
Rev. H. J. Clayton, Studies in the Roman Controversy, Milwaukee, 1914, pp. i, 2.
The conception of the reunion of Christendom by higher motives than those of
the Protestant denominations is to be found in many pamphlets of the so-called
" World Conference," to which I shall have occasion to refer again in detail.
4 Ash worth, pp. 40, 41. ij
I9i6.] CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION 199
But what are the characteristic features of the ecclesiastical
unity, which is claimed by the preachers of the above-described
religious nihilism, by the forgers of a Christianity divorced from
Christ, and resting upon individual vagaries ? " The unity set
forth by Christ was the unity of the spirit of love. It was a
moral unity cemented by the possession in common of a single
moral ideal; a vital unity, springing from the possession of a
common spiritual experience. The unity of the Apostolic Church
was one of spirit and not of organization. The scattered Christian
communities were held together, not by any scheme of organiza-
tion, or governmental authority exercised from without, nor by
subscription to a single creedal statement, but by possession, in
common, of the ideal of a united Church. There was no central
government, no ecclesiastical hierarchy, no compulsion but the com-
pulsion of love." 5
How can, then, the unity of the Church be preserved, if
the Church is a heaping up of disjecta membra, isolated in their
own spiritual life, in their own intellectual vision of Christian
truth, in their own outward manifestation of their allegiance to
Christ? The unity of the Church, it is answered by Protestant
dreamers of reunion, is to be found not in the field of doctrine,
government or ordinances, but in the field of spiritual experiences,
in a living experience of God, in Christ, in the heart of the be-
liever. 8 Creed must be reduced to the irreducible minimum as a
requirement for membership in the universal Church. 7 Hence it
follows that neither the Roman ideal of formal unity under the
absolute authority of the Pope and the Roman Curia, nor what
may be called the Greek ideal, based upon a rigid orthodoxy, goes
deep enough to serve as the foundation of a unity that shall be
spiritual and vital. 8
Even Anglican theologians look upon Rome as the stone of
stumbling and the rock of offence which the builders of the new
ecclesiastical unity ought to reject. " In our attempts towards
unity," writes Rev. H. J. Clayton, " one religious organization cuts
across the path, the Church of Rome. Rome, indeed, is just as
keen as others for reunion, but, for her, reunion and submission
are synonymous terms. She refuses to regard any other religious
organization as a sister Church, but treats its members as rebels,
whose duty it is to return to the one fold, the Holy Catholic
Ibid., p. 48. 'Ibid., p. 257.
T /6tU, p. 259. 'Ibid., p. 240.
200 CATHOLIC UNITY PROTEST ANT DISUNION [May,
Church, which, she asserts, consists of those alone who are in com-
munion with the Bishop of the See of Rome." 9
Things being so, the future of Christian unity and of the
revival of Christianity depends upon the strategy of Protestantism.
The chief mission of Protestantism is to be found in the practical
superseding of doctrinal theology to the profit of the inner life, for
where theology divides, religion, the life which theology often
vainly seeks to describe, unites. The reunion of Protestant denomi-
nations is the preliminary step to the largest reunion of Chris-
tianity. Protestantism must first unite upon a platform so broad
that all can stand upon it, and then a united Protestantism must
meet a united Catholicism upon the level of equality. 10 The meet-
ing without fusion of the two rival hosts of Christianity will
realize the catholic unity, that unity which historically may be
synthesized in the lapidary motto of a Congregationalist theologian,
Dr. Newman Smyth: Passing Protestantism and Coming Cathol-
icism.
Such is, as we have drawn from authentic sources, the plan
of restoring Church unity traced out by Protestants. Needless to
say that as Catholics, and Catholicism, I say in passing, is the
logic of Christianity, we cannot give our adhesion to that plan,
we cannot make our own such Protestant schemes of unity. The
reason of our refusal lies in the strikingly manifest discrepancy be-
tween the Catholic and the Protestant conceptions of the Church
of Christ. Catholics are in the Christian world as the Church
of Christ, a visible and organized Church; Protestants, on the
contrary, to quote a saying of Alexis Khomiakov, are wandering
in the Christian world as a crowd of scattered soldiers without
a meeting place and without a Church. And we are right to
infer that as long as Protestants will have no Church (the insti-
tutional Church here is alluded to) they will not be able to ad-
vance the cause of the reunion of Christianity, or to boast of
being its warm supporters.
For me it is hard to understand how theologians drilled in
the spirit of the Reformation, which is said to be a spirit of
Biblical criticism, I repeat, how " Reformed " theologians dare
to deny the institutional character of the Church of Christ. We
are not in need of quoting and exploiting the golden lode of
Christian tradition to assert that historically a society called the
Church of Christ was instituted by the Saviour. Moreover, if
Studics in the Roman Controversy, pp. 3, 4. 10 Ash\vorth, p. 255.
1916.] CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION 201
the Bible claims to be considered by Protestantism as the unique
source of the Christian faith, if the Records of the New Testament
are truly inspired by God, if Jesus Christ is really the Son of God,
and all these tenets lie at the very foundations of Protestant
theology, the authority and the testimony of the above-quoted docu-
ments cannot be denied without a flagrant violation of the laws
ruling human thought.
A unity like that patronized by some theologians of modern
Protestantism could never be a real one, could never be the solu-
tion of the problem of Christian brotherhood. The Church, and
following this, the unity of the Church, are to be conceived and
looked upon in the light of evangelical truth, not in the shadows
of our own prejudgments and fancies. The Church of Christ is-'
not a kind of metaphysical being, the wavering image of a visionary
mind, which shapes her with its own spiritual garb and paints her
face with its favorite colors. In the light of the Gospels, the
Church reveals herself as the masterpiece of Christ, His royal
dwelling-house, His eternal Kingdom. Christ Himself drew its
main architectural lines and laid down its unshakable foundations.
His descent upon earth, His cruel sufferings and ignominious death,
His life-giving words, the mission given to His Apostles, and the
spiritual power intrusted to their successors, would have been a
waste of moral energy and a nugatory undertaking, if Jesus Christ
had trodden the scene of the world as the teacher of a boundless
individualism and of a religious confusionism. The Church
sketched by the sacred writers is a society vested with a perfectly
organized authority, a school of doctrines, a tribunal passing judg-
ment upon its subjects, a body struggling for its own existence,
and ceaselessly eliminating from the stream of its purest blood
and from its vigorous tissues the deadly elements of sin, or the
putrid cells.
As an institution, the Church was built up by Christ, Who
vindicates to Himself the glory of being her builder. " I will build
My Church." 11 These words and their meaning are so plain, so
luminous, as to leave no doubt concerning the purposes of Christ.
They show in Him the most decided will to plant in the world a
new kind of society, a society divinely set up, admirably organized,
wonderfully equipped with the necessary means for its growth
and its preservation. As in a great building there are stones of
different size and weight; as the stones supporting its foundations
"Matt. xvi. 1 8.
202 CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION [May,
are of greater compactness and of larger dimensions, in a similar
manner the Church is composed of spiritual stones, that is, of
men invested with various offices, according to the mission they
are called upon to exercise in their society, both human and divine.
Besides having traced out the main lines of His magnificent edi-
fice, the Divine Builder appointed Himself to be the spiritual stone
of its foundations, " and He gave some to be Apostles, and some
prophets; and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,
for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering,
unto the building up of the Body of Christ/' 12
No wonder then that the sacred writers describe the Church
as a household built upon the foundations of the Apostles and
prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone. 18 In-
dividuals in the Church are not as cells separated from a living
body. They are parts of a whole, they participate in the circula-
tion of the life of the one body, they are members of the same
huge organism, they are, in a few words, the " living stones to
build up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." 14 No
wonder then that Jesus Christ is extolled as the Ruler of a King-
dom, which has no end, 15 as a good Shepherd Who brings all
the scattered sheep into one fold, that they become one flock, 10
as a Householder Who plants a vineyard. 17 No wonder then that
in the East as well as in the West, apostolic men, who drank at
the purest wells of Christian teaching, who reflect as a most clear
mirror the thought of Christ and of His co-workers, as Clement
of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, throw full light upon the insti-
tutional character of the Church, set up by Christ as a perfect
society, as an organized body.
" It behooves us," writes St. Clement of Rome, " to do all
things in order, which the Lord has commanded us to perform
at stated times. He has enjoined offerings and services to be per-
formed, and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly, but at the ap-
pointed times and hours. Where and by whom He desires these
things to be done, He himself has fixed by His own supreme will
in order that all things, being piously done according to His good
pleasure, may be acceptable unto Him. For His own peculiar
services are assigned to the high priests, and their own proper place
is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministrations
"Eph. iv. ii, 12. (R. V.) "Eph. ii. 20. "i Peter ii. 5.
"Luke i. 33. "John x. 16. "Matt. xxi. 33.
1916.] CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION 203
devolve on the levites. The layman is bound by the laws that
pertain to laymen." 18
And St. Ignatius of Antioch in all his letters points out the
institutional character of the Church and of her divinely-appointed
hierarchy : "See that ye all follow the bishops, even as Jesus Christ
does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the Apostles : and
reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no
man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop.
Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered
either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has intrusted it.'* 19
The Church therefore of the apostolic age, of the golden age
of Christianity, as Protestant theologians say, is a Church possessed
of a visible unity, which arises from the identity of organization,
of hierarchy, of creeds, of Sacraments, and the earliest witnesses
of Christian literature all agree in declaring that the foundations
of the institutional unity were laid down by Christ Himself.
The unity of the Church is assumed as a moral one. Evan-
gelical and apostolical sources, however, represent the Church as
the body of the disciples of Christ, who cull from His mouth the
words of divine wisdom. The followers of Jesus are free neither
intellectually nor morally. They have received a legacy of doctrine,
a deposit of truths, which are to be preserved faithfully by their
holders and handed down to coming generations till the end of
the world. In whatever sense one may take the saying of St.
Paul, " One Lord, one faith, one calling," 20 it is beyond all doubt
that the Evangelical and Apostolic Church was united by the
bond of a common faith, and of a common belief. They have
no doubt the same love, but they are also of the same mind, and
of one accord. 21 The Gospel of Christ, that is the doctrine it
contains, is one, and if any other, even an angel from heaven,
should preach to the faithful any Gospel except that which has
been preached by the Apostles, the falsifier of the Gospel of Christ
lies under anathema. 22 From its earliest origin, the Church of
Christ has been intolerant as concerns the doctrine bequeathed by
Christ. The Word of God cannot be altered, or perverted by
the sowers of tares. St. Paul adjures his brethren to turn away
from those who are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling
contrary to the doctrine which they have learned, and by their
smooth and fair speech beguiling the hearts of the innocent. 23 He
"First Epistle to the Corinthians, "Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, viii.
*Eph. iv. 5. "Phil. ii. 2; Rom. xii. 16. "Gal. i. 7, 8. "Rom. xvi. 17, 18.
204 CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION [May,
insists upon the avoiding of dissensions in the realm of faith, that
Christians may all speak the same thing, that there be no divisions
among them, and that they be perfected together in the same mind
and in the same judgment. 24 Having attained the unity of faith,
the followers of Christ are no longer children tossed to and fro
and carried about with every wind of doctrine. 25 The wind of
doctrine is the outcome of the licentiousness of individualism, and
Jesus Christ and His Apostles advise the Christian flock to take
care not to be deceived by the lovers of novelties.
Certainly the doctrine of Christ is rather moral and practical
than speculative and theoretical. It aims rather at restoring the
moral perfection of souls, than at enlightening minds with the
pale beams of human knowledge. It must be remembered, how-
ever, that theoretical principles are the foundations of morals, and
if the doctrine of Jesus is the expression of a created mind, the
teaching of a faddist, His moral system, the moral bond which
unites His followers, has not the authority of law, and con-
sequently the yearnings for unity ought to be considered not as
a divine precept, but as a noble human ideal of a handful of
dreamers.
We are willing to recognize the necessity for the Church of
a vital unity, but not in the meaning understood by Protestant
divines. The vitality, so to speak, of the Church's unity does not
consist in the deathlike life of single cells separated from the
tissues of a living body. It is the unity of a complete, vigorous
and vigorously-acting organism which we are striving for. The
principle of life in a healthy organism does not hamper in any way
the individual life of the single cells, which, however, needs to
be subordinated to the nobler life of the whole organic structure.
As in the organism the life of a single cell, so in the Church
of Christ the spiritual life of a single faithful one is but a breath of
a powerful breath, a channel deriving its streamlet of living water
springing up unto eternal life. 26 An agglomeration of individual
religious experiences, which do not refer to each other, cannot im-
personate the unity of the mystical life of the Church. Thus, a
juxtaposition of conflicting opinions, of divergent yearnings, of
contradictory tenets, of antagonistic beliefs, of negations and affir-
mations of the same fundamental dogmas, cannot embody the life-
giving doctrine of the Church of Christ, the treasures of the divine
wisdom revealed to men. As the divine nature is not divided into
"i Cor. i. 10. J5 Eph. iv. 12, 14. 36 John iv. 14.
1916.] CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION 205
various beings opposite to each other, so the divine wisdom does
not utter truths which involve the negation of the principle of
contradiction.
Certainly it would be unjust to strip every good from each
individual experience in the realm of religious life, or to plunge into
darkness and the shadow of death all the communions which outside
the pale of the Catholic Church boast of being the true interpreters
of the divine Word. But it cannot also be denied that quite dis-
cordant experiences of religious life and jarring creeds and be-
liefs have no ground to meet together, to blend harmoniously with
each other, to constitute the unity of the mutually connected mem-
bers of a living body. They lack a vital inner unity, and they
bear a resemblance to an uncouth amalgamation of disparate sub-
stances. The individual experiences of Shakers or of the Non-
Hookers, or of the Holy Rollers, include perhaps some glimpses
of the light of Christ, some atoms of the truth of Christ. But
they are so widely different from each other, and from the ex-
periences of other religious denominations, that the spirit of love
is unable to give them any shape of religious unity.
The unity of the Church is an organic one, and the denial
of that statement, the lowering of that organic unity to a spiritual
and intellectual confusionism, the apotheosis of religious indi-
vidualism as the final outcome of the teaching of Christ, leads to
the subversion of Christianity as a religion born of Christ, re-
flecting the spirit, and perpetuating in the world the life of Christ.
The spirit of man with its errors, its weaknesses, its dark heavens,
its failures, would take the place of the spirit of Christ. The
daily changing waves of human oddities would supersede the un-
changeable truth revealed by God. We would have not only a
Christianity divorced from Christ, but a Christianity that vaporizes
in the mists of an intellectual egotism or of vague and dull mys-
ticism.
Our pessimistic forebodings are not groundless. They are
being realized in the life of American Protestantism. The rapid
growth of the so-called New Thought, Higher Thought, Divine
Science, Unity, New Way, which has gained five millions of fol-
lowers in the Central States and Far West, according to a Prot-
estant writer, " will produce types of purest spirituality, and will
set free the imprisoned powers of countless individuals. Who can
set the limit to the growth of a religious movement without creed ,
which welcomes all who feel at home with the rest 6f the family.
206 CATHOLIC UNITY PROTESTANT DISUNION [May,
On the other hand, it will be totally lacking in unity; it will
split up as indefinitely as the amoeba, and each offshoot will con-
sider itself the true and only creature. It will be individualistic
to the point of social selfishness, and as a body will be totally
lacking in the powers which come from cooperation. In its pro-
test against the over-organization of the Church, as it conceives
it, it has gone to the opposite extreme, and shows what individualism
run wild will lead to." 27
Such being the conception of Protestant religious unity, at
the close of this paper we can maintain that a unity which fosters
the spirit of individualism, which affords new aliments to the
flames of religious dissensions, which culminates in confusion of
thoughts and tongues among Christians, such unity the Catholic
Church is not longing or searching for. She clings firmly to her
own unity, a unity inherited from an unBrofcen line of witnesses
to Christ. Certainly, she does not interrupt her prayers that all
" may be one." She will follow with her warmest wishes and
love the separated flocks of Protestant denominations, which are
painfully toiling to windwards into the wake of Christian unity.
She will wait even for centuries till she presses to her bosom her
prodigal sons with a greater joy than her faithful ones. And in
waiting for the restoration of Christian unity, she will repeat to
her united flock the beautiful words of St. John Chrysostom: " The
Church of Christ is not wall and roof, but faith and life. Talk
not to me of walls and arms : for walls wax old with time, but the
Church has no old age. Walls are shattered by barbarians, but
over the Church even demons do not prevail. How many have
assailed the Church, and yet the assailants have perished, while
the Church herself has soared beyond the sky? Such might hath
the Church. When she is assailed she conquers; when snares are
laid for her she prevails; when she is insulted, her prosperity in-
creases; she is wounded, yet sinks not under her wounds; tossed
by waves, yet not submerged ; vexed by storms, yet suffers no ship-
wreck; she wrestles and is not worsted; fights, but is not van-
quished, that she might make more manifest the splendor of her
triumph." 28
"Edith A. Talbot, The New American Religion, The Biblical World, 1916, II.,
page 10 1. M Homily 2 on Eutropius.
THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.
HE book of the year in science, or let us say the
best seller of the year among scientific books, is Men
of the Old Stone Age, Their Environment, Life and
Art, 1 by Henry Fairfield Osborn, Research Professor
of Zoology at Columbia University, New York City.
It was first published in November, 1915, and has, I believe, al-
ready reached its fourth edition. It has been reviewed very fa-
vorably by ex-President Roosevelt in a long article in The National
Geographic Magazine.
It is quite evident from the book's extended sale that many
who do not ordinarily read scientific books are reading this one.
They feel that it is a contribution to the history of man rather
than a purely scientific book; and, as a matter of fact, it was
confessedly written as a popular exposition of the details of the
story of human development, rather than as an attempt to present
to scientists the results of original research in science. The author
frankly acknowledges that he is giving scarcely more than a popular
account of things seen and heard in an archaeological excursion
which he took through Western France and Northern Spain in
company with the distinguished guides to whom he dedicates the
book, Emile Cartailhac, Henri Breuil, the well-known French priest
archaeologist, and Hugo Obermaier.
The book is, then, a popularization of present-day knowledge
of palaeontology, archaeology, anthropology, and probably also, we
should add, ethnology, as these sciences have been enriched by
material drawn from the caves and the cave men of the Pyrenees,
the Dordogne in France and the Cantabrian Mountains in Spain,
with some other remains from neighboring portions of Europe.
Experience has justified an attitude of suspicion and of ques-
tioning towards scientific books of popular character written to
appeal to a large circle of non-scientific readers. Even the serious
professor of science at a university, just as soon as he is freed
from the conservative trammels of his colleagues' criticism, is
surprisingly and unfortunately very prone to flights of fancy and
*New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $5.00.
THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [May,
hasty journey ings to conclusions, to give the appearance of a
" complete case " when he aims to write a popular book. More-
over, it is easy to yield to sensationalism when we think buyers
will look for it.
Such yielding to less worthy motives, it is expected, will find
no place in a book authenticated by a professor of zoology at
a great American University, a professor who has held many dis-
tinguished scientific posts. A book so fathered and presented to
the public must, it seems, be accepted at its face value, and re-
ceive full credit from the general reader. Our preliminary remarks
are made in order to call attention to the fact that popular books
of science are no more to be trusted on prima facie evidence than
other methods of popular scientific publicity which usually abound
in absurd sensationalism.
The first part of Professor Osborn's book is concerned with
the evolution of man. Advertisements of the book proclaim it
to be " The most important and complete work on human evo-
lution since Darwin's Descent of Man." " This is the first full
and authoritative presentation of what has been actually discovered
up to the present time in regard to human prehistory. All the
known prehuman and human stages of development for the last five
hundred thousand years are described as fully and fairly as the ma-
terial allows." Professor Osborn presents the evidence which,
he declares, makes it very clear to him that man is descended from
the animals, and that the missing links between man and the animal
have been found. It is now nearly forty years since Darwin's
books on the Descent of Man has been published, and a good
deal of water has flowed through the biological mill since then
and has turned many wheels. But many serious scientists declare
that the fuss of the grinding mill has been the main thing, and
that very little meal has been turned out.
Professor Moore, of the Zoological Department of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, beginning a public lecture at that Univer-
sity two years ago, said : " One of the minor landmarks of the
village of Woods Hole, Mass., is a weather vane upon which an
ingeniously fashioned little wooden man waves his arms franti-
cally as the wind blows. A few years ago a distinguished American
zoologist, watching this figure from one of the windows of the
Marine Biological Laboratory, remarked, 'I often think that I am
like that little man; I spend much time waving my arms about
my head, but seem to remain standing in one place.' ' Professor
1916.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 209
Moore did not hesitate to add that some critics would have us be-
lieve that this figure might apply to the case of biology as a
whole. But now a professor of Columbia University has collected
the definite evidence, and presented it to the public so that there
may be no further doubt on the matter, and the absolute position
of science on this all-important question should be perfectly clear.
Let us see how far he has really done so.
The first portion of Professor Osborn's book is occupied en-
tirely with the discussion of remains found at various times, and
supposed, at least by some anthropologists, to be human, which
provide, it is said, evidence for man's evolution from the animal.
Professor Osborn's own conclusion is that the " missing links "
between man and the animal have been found, and that now there is
good scientific reason for proclaiming the descent of man. He says
at the beginning of The Men of the Old Stone Age: " Between 1848
and 1914 successive discoveries have been made of a series of human
fossils belonging to intermediate races : some of these are now
recognized as missing links between the existing human species
Homo sapiens and the anthropoid apes; and others as the earliest
known forms of Homo sapiens" He then gives a list of the finds,
beginning with the Neanderthal skull in 1856, and others of more or
less the same type through the Cro-Magnon skeletons of the Dor-
dogne in France, the Spy man of Belgium, the Pithecanthropus of
Java and the Heidelberg man to the Piltdown type or Eoanthropus,
the " Dawn Man " found at Piltdown in Sussex in England.
The whole question of missing links has been before the pub-
lic now for over half a century. Some hold the opinion that there
are the missing links already at hand between all the other species,
except those between man and the animals. If we accept Pro-
fessor Osborn's declarations these last have been found, and the
whole problem of evolution is solved. As a matter of fact there
are no missing links anywhere between the species, or at least so
very few and inadequate that it is absurd to offer them as
evidence for the theory of descent. It is often supposed in
like fashion that the theory of descent in general is now demon-
strated except that some doubts are still left regarding the descent
of man. Darwinism and the Natural Selection theory and the
other selection theories are supposed to have provided absolutely
overwhelming evidence. As a matter of fact, all theories of evo-
lution rest almost entirely on merely subjective, not objective
evidence. Scientists feel that evolution must be true, because no
VOL. cm. 14
2io THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [May,
other theory will explain the facts. I need scarcely say that in
the history of science any number of things that seemed as though
they must be so, have been subsequently proved not to be so. To
quote Professor Osborn himself, speaking in another book, we are
only on the threshold of any knowledge of evolution.
Professor Vernon Kellogg, of Leland Stanford University,
who I think would describe himself as a Darwinian, in his
book on Darwinism To-day, emphasized the " nearly completely
subjective character of the evidence for both the theory of descent
and Natural Selection," and did not hesitate to add, " speaking by
and large we only tell the general truth when we declare that
no indubitable cases of species forming or transforming, that is
of descent, have been observed; and that no recognized case of
Natural Selection really selecting has been observed." The few
cases that are adduced in books on biology are " ludicrous as objec-
tive proof of that descent and selection under whose domination the
forming of millions of species is supposed to have occurred."
In spite of this fact that the " missing links " between the
other and simpler species are still true to their name missing, we
are now asked to believe that the evidence for the " missing links "
between man and the beast are at hand, and can be actually pre-
sented in pictures which make their value as evidence indisputable.
Some scientific opinions with regard to the evidence are, however,
rather in startling disagreement with such a declaration.
To begin with the most recent discovery in Professor Osborn's
list, the Piltdown skull, which has now been before the public
for the past five years, and scientific opinion after the preliminary
commotion has decided upon its real significance. Professor Os-
born makes much of this specimen, and the restoration, so-called,
of the Piltdown man figures largely in his book. He is con-
sidered to be a representative of " a side branch of the human
family which has left no descendants at all," but which serves the
very useful purpose of showing the relationship between man and
the animals. All the evidence, that is the opinions of all the
scientific authorities who consider that there was found at Pilt-
down a sort of ape man with an ape jaw and human cranium,
are cited. Very little is made of the emphatically contradictory
opinions of distinguished scientists who insist that there is no war-
rant for any such idea.
The story of this now much-disputed specimen is as follows:
About five years ago Charles Dawson picked up among the rain-
1916.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 211
washed spoil heaps of a gravel bed on a farm close to Piltdown
Common in Sussex, England, a piece of bone belonging to the
forehead region of a human skull, and including a portion of the
ridge extending over the left eyebrow. He had previously found
an unusually thick human parietal bone, that is, a side bone of
the skull. A systematic search was made in the spring of the
following year, and the right half of a jaw and an important
piece of the occipital bone, that is the rear portion of the skull,
were found. The next year a single canine tooth and a pair of
nasal bones were found.
With these scattered fragments constituting less than half
of the original, the skull was reconstructed. 2 The specimen was
at once proclaimed to be a new genus, with the newly-invented
and impressive name of Eoanthropus or " Dawn Man," while
the species was named Dawsoni in honor of the discoverer. The
nearer this could be brought to the animal type the better
evidence it would be for the missing link theory; so according
to the calculations of Smith Woodward and Dawson, the brain
capacity of this individual was set down as one thousand and
seventy cubic centimetres. Scientific critics soon pointed out, how-
ever, that even when reconstructed, as Woodward and Dawson
wished, the brain cast of the skull was some one thousand two hun-
dred cubic centimetres. A difference of one-ninth in the estimation
of the brain capacity of a specimen is a mistake impossible to un-
derstand, unless we conclude that anxious over enthusiasm for evi-
dence for a particular view seriously disturbed the judgment and
the powers of calculation.
The English anatomist, Arthur Keith, insisted that if the
two sides of the skull were properly restored and made approxi-
mately symmetrical, as according to anatomical standards they
should be, the brain capacity would be found to be one thousand five
hundred cubic centimetres. This is quite equal to the normal man of
our own time. Under these criticisms the exploiters of the Piltdown
skull found it advisable to change their opinion, and to say that
the skull, while the most primitive w r hich has been discovered, had
a brain content of nearly one thousand three hundred cubic centi-
metres. Had this declaration been made originally, the Piltdown
skull would have attracted but little attention. The discoverers suc-
3 Restoration is the word often used for the completion of such fragments.
According to the expression of a great Pope, there are two ways of destroying art
objects, one by restoration, the other by obliteration, and of the two tha former is
the worse. In science the same thing is true to nearly the same extent.
212 ' THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [May,
ceeded by their first claims in creating a sensation. The skull
capacity of one thousand three hundred cubic centimetres is well
above that of the smaller human, but quite normal, skulls of to-day,
and surpasses the average of that of the Australians, which rarely
exceeds one thousand two hundred and fifty cubic centimetres.
If the content of the Piltdown skull was, as Arthur Keith sug-
gests, one thousand five hundred cubic centimetres, then it too,
like so many other of these prehistoric skulls, actually has a larger
cubic content than that of the average modern man.
It is not surprising then that the latest opinion of the Ger-
man anatomist Schwalbe, as cited by Professor Osborn, is that
the proper restoration of the Piltdown fragments would make
them belong not to any preceding stage of man, but to Homo
sapiens. Not only that, but the skull of the Piltdown man, ac-
cording to Schwalbe, corresponds with that of a well-developed,
good-sized skull of Homo sapiens; the only unusual feature is
the remarkable thickness of the bone. When it is recalled how
very different are the thicknesses of the human skulls, and how
certain pathological conditions add greatly to the density and thick-
ness of the skull bones, and that such pathological specimens, be-
cause of their thickness and density, are more likely to be pre-
served for longer periods than others, it is easy to understand
why Virchow should have insisted that the role of pathology in
anthropology has never been properly appreciated.
Here in America still another reconstruction of the Piltdown
skull has been suggested with a cranial capacity of about one
thousand three hundred cubic centimetres, which would at once
take it out of the class of missing links or the intermediate species,
and place it in a class above that of some existing races. In
America, moreover, the tooth hitherto regarded as a right lower
canine is now placed as the left upper canine. Besides the chin
region is made not a little deeper, thus giving a somewhat less
prognathous (prominent jaw) aspect to the face, the dental arches
being more curved. Thus the appearance of the reconstructed
head is more human and less ape-like than in the Smith Wood-
ward restoration. That canine tooth was very important. It
helped to add to the conviction in the minds of scientists of the
" unique importance of this skull as representing an entirely new
type of man in the making." Now this precious tooth is trans-
ferred from the lower jaw to the upper jaw, and the missing link
is transformed into an early man.
1916.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 213
It is rather easy to make the missing link between man and
the monkey, if one has full license to restore and coordinate
materials in accordance with the theory one is trying to establish.
The English authorities in the biological sciences who took part
in the discussion of the Piltdown specimens on the occasion of
the first report of their discovery to the Geological Society of
London in December, 1912, refused to accept the cranium and jaw
as belonging to the same individual. Sir Ray Lankester, one of
the most distinguished of English biologists, was very decided in
his refusal to accept the discoverers' claims as to the unity of
origin of the materials. On the same evening Professor Waterston
absolutely refused to consider the possibility that the two speci-
mens could have come from the same individual, " since the mandi-
ble or lower jaw resembled that of a chimpanzee, while the skull
was human in all its characters." In a paper on the Piltdown
specimens which appeared in Nature, the English scientific maga-
zine (November, 13, 1913), Professor Waterston did not hesitate
to say that to refer the mandible and cranium to the same in-
dividual would be exactly equivalent to articulating a chimpanzee
foot with the bones of a human thigh and leg.
Well-known anthropologists also in France and Italy refused
absolutely to accept the idea that a new species had been dis-
covered, scouted the finding of a missing link, and unhesitatingly
declared that the name Eoanthropus or " Dawn Man " was entirely
unjustified by anything in the specimens which had been unearthed.
Dr. Gerrit S. Miller, of the United States National Museum,
writing on The Jaw of the Piltdown Man in the Smithsonian
Miscellaneous Collections for November, 1915, reviews the whole
subject, and after comparing the Piltdown jaw with the cor-
responding jaws of chimpanzees mutilated in the same fashion,
finds not only similarity but absolute identity. Dr. W. D. Matthew,
in an article on Recent Progress in Vertebrate Paleontology
(Science, January 21, 1916), declares Dr. Gerrit Miller's argument
to be " convincing and irrefutable." Professor George Grant
MacCurdy, of the Archaeological Department of Yale University,
writes in Science for February 18, 1916: "Regarding the Pilt-
down specimens then, we have at last reached a position that is
tenable. The cranium is human as was recognized by all in the
beginning. On the other hand, the mandible and the canine tooth
are those of a fossil chimpanzee. This means that in place of
Eoanthropus dawsoni we have two individuals belonging to dif-
214 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [May,
ferent genera, namely: (i) Homo dawsoni, and (2) Troglodytes
dawsoni, as suggested by Boule, or Pan vetus, sp. nov., if we adopt
Miller's nomenclature." 3
The presentation in Professor Osborn's book of the restoration,
so-called, of the Piltdown man, combining the ape jaw and the
human skull, in three different views profile, full front and three-
quarters, always in the way that only human faces are presented,
is under these circumstances little short of a deliberate imposition on
the public. Ordinary readers who have not the time to find out
for themselves that such a restoration is not regarded seriously
by trustworthy scientists, will very likely conclude that at last
the missing link the ape man has been found. What is to
be thought of so-called scientists who present what is not only
an eminently debatable question, but one that has been practically
settled in the negative by the weight of authority, as if it were
a recently discovered scientific truth, and represented a wonder-
ful confirmation of a favorite theory which up to this time has
lacked just exactly the confirmation which this specimen would
afford if it were genuine and authentic.
It is very surprising to have Professor Osborn put so much
weight on the Piltdown skull, and feature the reconstruction of
the Piltdown man as made by Professor J. H. McGregor, since
practically all the weight of authority is against any such esti-
mate of its significance. There can evidently be but one reason
why this is done. The scientists need a missing link between man
and the monkey, and here is undoubtedly a human head and
an ape jaw, so put them together, place the head thus constructed
(not reconstructed) on a pedestal such as has always served
hitherto for human busts, and then, lo and behold! the evidence
for a " missing link " is complete. But is not such unwarranted
piecing together of discrepant material unworthy even of a petti-
fogging attorney? Everything is done to make the head so re-
8 One cannot escape from the thought that some of these notes and articles in
Science, which is the formal publication of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, were published deliberately as contradictions of certain
parts of Professor Osborn's book. It will be noted that they appeared within a
short time after the publication of that work. Curiously enough there is no direct
mention of his book, and apparently certain ethical considerations intervened to
deter younger professors from directly contradicting by name a formal publication
of an older professor. If this assumption be true, and it seems almost impossible
not to think it so, these incidents represent a very interesting state of affairs.
It becomes easier to understand how, in the words of Professor Morgan of Columbia,
Darwinism has become much more of a dogma than its advocates like to admit, and
there is a scientific heresy now, even the appearance of which younger men must be
careful to avoid.
I 9 i6.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 215
stored as human as possible, while retaining the ape-like character
of the jaw, " the dental arches being more curved, and the chin
region made somewhat deeper," " until the ape-like structure of
the jaw does not prevent the expression of a considerable degree
of intelligence in the face." Such juggling bespeaks the mounte-
bank; not the scientist.
The next most recent specimen of importance presented by
Professor Osborn is the Heidelberg jaw. Nothing that I know
emphasizes so well on what slight grounds far-fetched conclusions
are founded as the Heidelberg jaw, on which so much stress is
laid in Professor Osborn's book. This specimen consists of a
lower jaw bone, discovered in 1907 in the " Mauer Sands," that is,
in a sand pit at Mauer, near Heidelberg, in Southern Germany.
Professor Osborn characterizes it as " one of the most important
discoveries ia the whole history of anthropology."
In spite of this emphasis of its importance he proceeds to
show on what slight and dubious evidence its significance is founded.
He says, for instance, " Had the teeth been absent, it would have
been impossible to diagnose it as human. From a fragment of the
symphysis of the jaw, that is the meeting point of the jaw bones
in front of the middle of the chin, it might well have been classed
as some gorilla-like anthropoid (ape), while the ascending ramus
(that is the portion of the jaw which articulates with the skull)
resembles that of some large variety of gibbon." He proceeds:
" The absolute certainty that these remains are human is based on
the form of teeth, which, although somewhat primitive in form
( !), show no trace of being intermediate between man and the
anthropoid apes, but rather being derived from some older com-
mon ancestor."
Now imagine building up a theory of an older common an-
cestor for man and the monkey on teeth that are " somewhat primi-
tive in form, which are rather small for the jaw, and evidently
show that no great strain was put on the teeth, and therefore the
powerful development of the bones of the jaw was not designed
for their benefit." All the possibilities of individual peculiarity
and reaction to living conditions which make so many differences
in the teeth and all question of- individual deformity is put aside,
and here is " the most important specimen in the whole history of
anthropology/'
One of the main sources of hasty conclusions in this mat-
ter of the finding of supposed missing links is the fact that many
216 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [May,
who write on the subject are zoologists, and not human anato-
mists. They have been much more occupied with animal anatomy
than with that of man, and are therefore prone to find animal
characteristics in specimens really human, but that represent some
of the many deformities or anomalies to which human nature is
liable. On the other hand, they seem to be very much inclined
to make what are properly animal specimens take on human quali-
ties apparently, because they are interested in exaggerating the
significance of certain zoological specimens. It is important to
note that almost without exception the men who have said much
about missing links, were biologists more familiar with the scien-
tific questions relating to the lower order of beings rather than with
those pertaining peculiarly to man and the anatomy of man. Many
of the opponents of the exaggerated estimates of such specimens
have been human anatomists of many years' experience, though
with a profound knowledge also of comparative anatomy.
Professor Dwight, of Harvard, had spent some forty years
in the teaching of human anatomy, and for twenty- five years had
been looked upon as an authority in the matter of anomalies and
deformities, of human beings as well as of normal anatomy. He
discussed authoritatively the Java remains, the so-called Pithe-
canthropus and the Heidelberg jaw two of the missing links of
Professor Osborn's book as follows: 4
Suffice it is to say in this place that there is no satisfactory
" missing link." The Trinil femur (of the Java specimen) is
very human, and the skull, beyond question, is higher than that
of any known ape. Assuming, what is by no means certain,
that they belonged together, the creature is ape and not man.
A find that is considered of perhaps equal importance is that
of the " Heidelberg jaw," although unfortunately it is a jaw
and nothing else, which was unearthed in 1907. In a few words
it may be described as the jaw of an ape with the teeth of a
man. There is no prominence at the chin, and the ascending
portion (the ramus) is very much broader than that of man.
The teeth resemble human ones, but are too small for the jaw.
It is not the jaw of any known ape, resembling both that of the
gorilla and that of the gibbon. Why so massive a jaw should
have such inefficient teeth is hard to explain, for the very
strength of the jaw implies the fitness of corresponding teeth.
Either it is an anomaly or the jaw of some aberrant species
of ape.
'Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1911,
p. 163.
1916.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 217
The Neanderthal skull is another of the supposedly very im-
portant bits of evidence for the existence of a race of men inter-
mediate to man and the monkey or man and the animal. Pro-
fessor Osborn lays much weight on it, and to read his book one
would be inclined almost to think that if there were nothing else
but this, it alone would suffice to establish a connecting link. The
Neanderthal skull is, to quote Professor Osborn, " the most famous
and certainly the most disputed of all anthropologic remains."
This skull was discovered just sixty years ago in 1856, and as
late as 1900, nearly fifty years after its discovery,. Virchow who
was looked upon as one of the most authoritative anthropologists
in Europe, insisted that it did not represent any evidence for an
intermediate stage between the animals and man, or of a primitive
type of man; and he always emphasized the fact that pathological
changes often made for such density of bones as to create the like-
lihood of atypical, rather than typical, specimens being preserved.
He thought, then, that we had no evidence at all for the theory
of descent as regard man or any ancestral connection between
the ape and any other animal than man. He said :
If we make a study of the fossil man of the quaternary period
who came nearest to our historical ancestors in the course of
descent or, better of ascent we find at every turn that he is
a man like ourselves. Ten years ago when a skull was found
in a peat bog, among lake dwellings or in some ancient cave,
it was thought to furnish indications of a wild and half-
developed state of human existence. Men thought they scented
the atmosphere of apedom. But since then a gradual change
has been wrought in our estimate of such remains. The old
troglodytes, lake dwellers, and peat men have turned out to be
a very respectable set of human beings. Their heads are of
such a size that many a living man to-day would feel proud if
he had one as large. We must candidly acknowledge that we
possess no fossil types of imperfectly developed men. Nay,
if we bring together all human fossils of which we have any
knowledge and compare them with human beings of the present
day, we can assert without any hesitation that among living
men there is, proportionately, a much larger number of indi-
viduals of an inferior type than among the fossil remains thus
far discovered. Whether the greatest geniuses of the quater-
nary age have been lucky enough to have been preserved to
our day, I dare not conjecture But I must say that no
skull of ape or ape man which could have had a human possessor
218 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [May,
has ever yet been found We cannot teach, nor can we
regard as one of the results of scientific research, the doctrine
that man is descended from the ape or from any other animal.
Is it any wonder that science has been discredited among
serious thinkers by the exaggerated claims sometimes set up in
such matters? Virchow once declared:
Gentlemen, let us not forget that when the public see a doc-
trine which has been exhibited to them as certain, established,
positive and claiming universal acceptance, proved to be faulty
in its very foundations or discovered to be willful and despotic
in its essential and chief tendencies, many lose faith in science.
Then they break forth into reproaches at the scientists. "Ah,
you, yourselves are not quite sure. Your doctrine which you
call truth to-day is to-morrow a lie. How can you demand that
your teachings should form the subject of education and come
to be a recognized part of our general knowledge ?
We have a right to expect that professors at universities shall
teach nothing as truth to their students except what they are
absolutely certain of. We expect, above all, that what is presented
as science, for scientia means knowledge, not conjecture nor theory,
shall be beyond dispute and cavil. If there is the slightest reason-
able doubt about scientific theories, we expect them not to be
represented as doctrines, but solely as theories with whatever doubt
there is about them rather emphasized than minimized or obscured
in any way. We have a right to expect that the relation of pro-
fessor and student shall be above all one of the utmost candor
and sincerity, lacking in pretence and in any attempt at producing
a sensation for the sake of the sensation.
When university professors teach the public, moreover, we
expect from them a greater regard for their position as teachers.
For if, as Juvenal said, "maxima pueris debetur reverential the
greatest reverence is due to youth, then surely the public, who,
without the means of critical judgment, sit as unquestioning chil-
dren at the feet of professors, should never, by any half truth
or any suppression or distortion of truth, be led to accept as
scientific truth what is still really a matter of dispute and un-
settled by scientists themselves.
A review of the second part of Professor Osborn's book, must
be reserved for a later article.
FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES AND THE
EUROPEAN WAR.
BY A. M. ROUSSEL,
Missionary in Tokyo.
OME Catholics in the United States were painfully
surprised to learn that many French missionary
priests had left their missions in order to join the
army of their country now waging war against the
Teutonic Powers. Ignorant of conditions in France,
they judged these missionaries in the light of that liberty which
the citizens of the United States enjoy, and condemned their ac-
tion as unbecoming and unpriestly. Considering the great inter-
est which American Catholics take in the foreign missions, it has
seemed to us a duty to take up the cause of these missionaries,
and to make clear their position in order that the reader may
judge their cause with knowledge, and see that those who are
to blame for a very regrettable condition of affairs are certainly
not the missionaries. The writer of this article wishes to state
in the beginning that he has no intention of raising any contro-
versy, nor of answering every objection that may be made against
his thesis. He desires simply to make plain the point of view
of the French missionaries on the subject under discussion. For
the sake of greater clearness we have divided the article into two
sub-headings.
i. WHY DO THE PAROCHIAL AND MISSIONARY PRIESTS OF FRANCE
SUBMIT THEMSELVES TO THE MILITARY LAW
OF THEIR COUNTRY?
It may be quite difficult for an American to understand the
reason. The United States is the most unmilitary of nations
(and, please God, it will always continue to be), and it knows
no law of compulsory military service. All its national energies
are directed into civic channels, and under the favor of the widest
political liberty enjoy an ever-increasing growth. How, then, can
Americans picture the conditions of a nation that imposes, under
the severest penalties, military service upon all its young men?
How can they adequately bring home to themselves the punish-
220 FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES [May,
ment which both law and public opinion in such cases mete out
to a deserter?
Beginning with 1890 the French military law included under
the obligation of compulsory service ecclesiastical students of every
creed, as well as other students, the heads of primary schools,
professors, etc. As far as the Catholic clergy is concerned, this
law was certainly in opposition to Canon Law and to the spirit
of the Church. It obliged seminarians to spend two years in
military barracks, and in case of war exacted that both seminarians
and priests should be mobilized like other citizens. Should the
clergy of France have submitted to this law? 1 Should they have
resisted? They had protested with all the power at their com-
mand. When their protest proved ineffective, they followed the
course which both common sense and practical theology dictated
of two evils they chose the less, for suicide is never permissible,
and refusal to obey this law was suicide for the whole body ecclesi-
astical, both in France and on the field of foreign missions. The
violation of the law would have made impossible the increase and
continued life of the French clergy. It must be remembered that
a deserter not only loses his civil and personal rights, such as
the right to testify, to inherit, to sue; but is also forbidden to
set foot again upon the soil of France or any of her colonies.
If arrested by French authorities the deserter, in time of
peace, is punished by five years imprisonment and in time of
war he will be shot. Considering, therefore, the penalties under
which priests in France would find themselves if they refused to
obey, it is clear that the clergy ought to suffer the injustice which
has been imposed upon them, and submit to the law of military
service.
But someone will say, this may be true of the parish clergy
of France itself; how can it be true of her missionaries who
*A Catholic Bishop, himself a French missionary, wrote to the author of this
article the following opinion on the French law of compulsory military service :
" The law of obligatory military service for all priests is an evil one ; and the priest
only observes it because he cannot do otherwise. Because it is contrary to just
ecclesiastical immunity, because it brings hatred upon the Church, and is the outcome
of atheism, because it does more to destroy religion than to aid the nation, this
law is unjust and unholy. Every Catholic who is guided by the teachings of his
Faith cannot approve of it, and everyone ought to use every legitimate means to
work for its recall. I say 'legitimate,' for inasmuch as the law exists, inasmuch
as it has been framed according to the Constitution, and, moreover, because it is
not intrinsically evil, the Church declares that it is not permissible to rebel against
established authority. Such is Catholic teaching since the time of our Saviour
and St. Paul."
I9i6.] FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES 221
spend their life in foreign countries? How may they be con-
sidered deserters? In our answer we exclude at once the nu-
merous missonaries who labor in the French colonies of Northern
and Central Africa, Madagascar, Indo-China and other lands. For
them the problem is the same as for the French parish clergy.
Even to live they must observe the law of compulsory military serv-
ice. As to the others? They having, on account of their refusal,
lost their rights as French citizens will find themselves time and
again in an impossible situation. We do not now refer to the
grave personal inconvenience which every man has to endure by
the loss of his civil rights, of the right to set foot again on his
native land. We do wish to call our readers' attention to the fact
that in a great number of the missions the missionaries must go
to the diplomatic and consular representatives of the French
Government in order to obtain the passports necessary for either
residence or travel ; to the same source must they appeal in order to
secure justice either for themselves or for their Christian subjects
who live among pagans.
But a deserter can obtain no passport; can make no such
appeal. The French ministers and consuls are not allowed to give
him a hearing; they are not allowed to hold any official relation
with him; they may not register him as a French citizen. Travel
upon a French ship will be for him most difficult, if not impossi-
ble. Without a passport, where will he go? What will he do?
Without protection of any kind, how will he fare in a country
where life for him is often very trying? Should he become a
citizen of the country in which he labors? But, on the one hand,
the French law does not recognize citizenship adopted after the
age which renders a French citizen liable to military service, and
consequently the second state of this man will be the same as the
first so far as his native country is concerned; and, on the other
hand, it would be imprudent, to say the least, for a foreign mis-
sionary to put himself at the mercy of a pagan government which
tolerates him only because he is under the protection of his own
government. To the many sacrifices demanded of missionaries
the Church has not added the abandonment of citizenship; and
the Religious Orders, although assured in advance of the complete
obedience of their members, have not thought it necessary to be
more exacting than the Church; their missionaries in the Levant
and in China, having completed their years of military service,
returned to take their place again upon the field of battle.
222 FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES [May,
From a general point of view refusal to obey the miltary law
results in grave loss to the missions themselves. If the Religious
Orders have been forbidden to live their community life in France,
certain important French congregations have, nevertheless, con-
tinued to enjoy the official authorization of the French Government,
and they continue to serve the Church as they have in the past.
Refusal on the part of their members to obey the law would have
been equivalent to their suppression. Despoiled, they would have
at once broken up, and with them would disappear a very important
part of the Catholic missionary body. Better for them to suffer
and endure in order to maintain their existence and their work
than to run headlong to destruction.
In whatever way the question is viewed, the one conclusion
is inevitable: it availed more for the work of the missions to
obey the law than to attempt the impossible.
We said above " to suffer and to endure/' for it would be
calumniating the priests and the missionaries of France to believe
that they obeyed this unpriestly law, lived their years of service
in the barracks, and left their field of ministry to take active part
in the war, with gaiety and light-heartedness. Of two evils they
chose that which appeared to have the less unfortunate consequences
for the missions, deploring meanwhile the violence done to their
priestly character, and hoping for a happier day.
The first care of the Church is the welfare of souls. To
secure that she is often obliged, because of human malice, to en-
dure sacrifices. To stamp her a criminal because she endures
these sacrifices is to be ignorant of her mission. The more so
because Divine Providence can in a secret and marvelous way al-
ways draw some good out of evil. And when injustice has run
its course, it is seen that the Church was right, whether, at all cost
to herself, she maintained principles as in the time of the Kul-
turkampf in Germany or the Separation Law in France, or whether
in order to avoid a greater evil she regretfully yielded a point of
ecclesiastical discipline as in the case of the present French mili-
tary law. Time always justifies her. Impious and wicked men
pass: she endures. Therefore she can afford to be patient in en-
during all things and in striving against evil.
1916.] FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES 223
2. DID THE FRENCH MISSIONARIES FIGHT IN THE WAR IN
ORDER TO SUPPORT THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN FRENCH GOV-
ERNMENT AND FRENCH FREEMASONRY?
The mere suggestion of this question, it would seem, should
bring a spontaneous denial to the lips of every man; but some
may be found who accept without reflection the sophisms told to
them, and condemn the French clergy as if their participation in
the war was identical with an approval of the anti-religious poli-
tics of the French Government and an aid in support of these
policies. This view is so illogical and false that its very announce-
ment would cause all France to laugh, anti-clericals and atheists
as well as Catholics, for nobody there could be deceived by it.
That French priests and missionaries do not fight in the cause
of Freemasonry all the world knows. We will go much further
and declare with certainty that the acceptance of the law of mili-
tary service by the clergy, has contributed much more to promote the
interests of religion in France than to injure them. Sufficient testi-
mony is found in a review of what actually goes on in France
both in the army and elsewhere.
But there is another point to be considered. If it is true
that the French clergy are at fault in fighting, so to speak, for
an infidel, Masonic government, it follows that lay French Catholics
who fight in the war are equally culpable in upholding this gov-
ernment by arms, 'since from the moment religion is in jeopardy,
the laity as well as the clergy are bound to do nothing which
would imperil the Faith. If it is not permissible for them to
obey, then their duty is to allow the usurper to own France com-
pletely. Who would be willing to champion such a conclusion?
Let us make a supposition.
In the spring of 1875 when the Kulturkampf was in full swing,
when the German bishops and priests were imprisoned and pas-
toral authority was suspended through almost the whole of Ger-
many, Bismarck planned to wage a fresh war against the French
because he said that she was recovering too quickly from the
disasters of 1870. Powerful diplomatic influences forced him to
give up his design, but in case he had carried it out, who would
call it a crime for German Catholics to fight against France be-
cause at that moment the French Government was respectful of
religion and an ally of the Church, while the German Government
persecuted Catholics? No one, unless he were mentally defective,
224 FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES [May,
could bring a charge of that character. Indeed, it is not always
just nor logical to identify a particular government or a particular
ministry, and all their acts, with the whole of a great country
whose life and historic destinies are at stake, any more than it
is always logical or just to identify the anti-religious policies
of a particular government with the abiding religious condition
of the country which it, for the time, governs. If such a sophism
were to be admitted, it would mean that on principle every na-
tion ought to disappear just as soon as its government fights
against the Catholic Church or persecutes her. History as well
as reason refute such a conclusion, and patriotism, as well, shows
it to be absolutely false.
To understand what patriotism, the idea of country, means to
the people of Europe it is necessary that the citizens of young
America, gathered from all the lands of the earth, should picture
to themselves how that idea, that passion for country rules with
them everyday politics. We say that this will require some ef-
fort of imagination on the part of Americans. The majority
of them have left, or their children have left, their fatherland in
Europe. They do not regret it; and they believe that they are
free from the danger of foreign invasion, and far distant from
all the disputes that divide Europe. They have put aside as quite
impossible the thought of a great war that would threaten their
national existence, and their greatest national interest is the po-
litical differences of Democrats and Republicans and the alternate
victory of one or the other. Active disputes there are in the way
of internal politics, but they amount to no more than the strife
of political ambition the strife would lose its whole importance
and disappear on the day that an external danger threatened their
national existence.
But when an awakened patriotism takes its true place and
regenerates, as we have seen it do in Belgium and France, then
war begets a union of ministers and political opponents, once
irreconciliable, now working in harmony. When the country
itself is in danger it is not for the government that soldiers fight,
it is for the salvation of the nation. We trust that Americans
will never have to endure such a dreaded test, and we trust equally
well that they will not condemn those who fight and die for
their country. They should condemn above all the governments
whose ambition and pride have loosed the scourge of war. Let us
add that Europe is not the only country that has a monopoly of
1916.] FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES 225
this patriotism. In missionary countries, for example, in Japan,
the refusal of missionary priests to obey the law of military
service and not to answer the appeal to free their country from the
invader, would not be understood. Such a refusal would discredit
them utterly in the eyes of both Christians and non-Christians.
The interests, therefore, of the missions themselves and the prestige
of religion demand that the missionaries who are summoned should
go without hesitation.
Some will object that if the French priests and missionaries
fight for their country, they fight even more truly in the interests
of an irreligious government which, if victorious, will continue,
after the war as before, to persecute and to expel those who fought
in its defence. But in the first place it is necessary to remember
that, as we have explained above, it is practically impossible for
the French clergy and missionaries to free themselves from the
law of military service. Rome so thoroughly recognizes this im-
possibility that the instant hostilities opened she hastened to send
to the priests who were summoned the necessary dispensations.
If it were proper to say that the priests were wrong in going,
it would also be proper to say that Rome is an accomplice, as
she is the most blameable, since by virtue of her supreme authority
it is her right and duty to command, to allow or to forbid.
Is it possible, then, for anyone to say that an irreligious gov-
ernment and Freemasonry will be helped by the participation of
French priests and missionaries in the war? We believe it ab-
solutely impossible, for the religious revival which showed itself
before the war has, according to the testimony of impartial and
Non-Catholic observers, increased since its opening. The very
presence of priests with the army has certainly contributed to its
growth. Numerous conversions have been recorded, and many
have been made tolerant who not long since were anti-clerical.
Hatred of the priest inspired by the sects has almost disappeared.
The anti-religious attitude of the government will receive less sup-
port after the war than before. Is it fair to say that a victorious
France will be the same officially anti-clerical France that she was
before the war, and to maintain that the French Government will
continue to expel the religious who now return in order to give
their lives for her? Prophecy is perilous business. From what
we know of how events will shape themselves after the war, may
there not be in France as elsewhere a radical change of government?
It is well to remember that the political strifes which marked
VOL. cm. 15
226 FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES [May,
France were known also in other countries, and no one may say
that a particular government will hold power forever. The con-
servative party in Belgium, for example, held power for twenty-
five years, but it cannot be certain that it will always carry the
elections or make absolutely negligible the Liberal and anti-Christian
party.
If France is victorious it will not be simply the anti-religious
or the atheistic France that has conquered, it will be France entire,
for all Frenchmen without distinction of political or religious opin-
ions equally love their country, and in the face of the enemy forget at
once, and unanimously, all quarrels among themselves. Some
Americans do not realize this power and ability of the French people,
not because Americans themselves do not possess it, but because
they have had no occasion to prove it in the presence of a foreign
enemy. Belgium rose as one man to resist the violation of her
neutrality, and yet we know that after the war is ended there will
be within her boundaries a Catholic party, a Liberal party and a
Socialist party. Can it be denied that the Liberal party may return
to power and, ironical as it may sound, strive to restrain the liberty
of Catholics? If such a condition come, will it be true to say that
Belgium is no longer a Catholic country? Who would venture thus
to wrong her? And as with the Belgians so also with the French.
They make one family, absolutely in accord with regard to family
honor, but within the family itself liberty of opinion and an anti-
religious propaganda have worked to separate its members into two
categories; those who will have nothing to do with religion, and
those who remain faithful to it. In the modern world as in cen-
turies past, division is an inevitable consequence of that liberty
which constitutional government gives. Political power may be-
long to one as well as to the other. Whenever, unhappily, the
enemies of religion retain this power, they are the more inclined to
abuse it, as has been the case in France and Italy and elsewhere.
But to say that the enemies of the Church have forever buried
France in irreligion, that no circumstance whatever can make them
relax their work of persecution, that they will forever remain the
political masters of the country, such a statement is far, far away
from the experience of the past, and prudence alone should prevent
one from pronouncing any such prophecy.
It would be unjust, then, to condemn the French people, as a
people, if in France there are more baptized than practising Catho-
lics, if they have not organized a Catholic party and not established
1916.] FRENCH CATHOLIC MISSIONARIES 227
a Catholic government. It would be unjust to reproach them with
the separation of Church and State, as if they had prepared, voted
and carried it out. They protested against it, now they but suffer it.
They have made it the occasion of giving to the Catholic world two
admirable examples, one of unanimous obedience, absolute and per-
fect, towards the supreme Pontiff since the day when he commanded
Frenchmen not to accept the law of Associations Cultuelles, the other
of financial generosity; since the government withdrew all support
for the clergy and confiscated ecclesiastical properties, Catholics took
upon themselves the heavy burden from day to day of furnishing
the necessary funds, and this without injury to the innumerable
works of charity and free schools which it was necessary to keep
in existence. Amid all her suffering and sacrifice Catholic France
found a way to give to the Church two-thirds of her missionaries
and almost the same proportion of money for their maintenance.
The impossible cannot be asked of French Catholics. They have
a right to be considered faithful and active, nor should they
be confounded with that irreligious group which represents neither
them nor France. How instructive it would be even for the zealous
Catholic pastors of America to see for themselves the working of
the innumerable charities and the whole Catholic life of France,
to assist at a diocesan council, for example, to visit Catholic insti-
tutions and to know at first hand the deep and supernatural life of
French Catholicism ?
Catholic France has at the present time no ambassador at the
Vatican, but she has no need of such an ambassador in order to be
known as she really is and loved by the Father of all the faithful,
to whom she is devoted as the France of other days. It is of this
France one ought to think, it is this France one ought to know,
the France which Pius X. declared to be " foremost in obedience."
THE POETRY OF A PRIEST.
BY JOHN B. KELLY.
t
HE life of Father John Bannister Tabb presents a
history of more than ordinary interest. He was a
Virginian by birth, the son of cultured and wealthy
parents, who reared him amidst scholarly surround-
ings. He was educated by private tutors, who in-
structed him in the finer accomplishments of the day. The privi-
leged few who can yet recall his exclusive recitals speak of him as
a master of the piano. His life as a scholar was devoted to the
teaching of English literature until the breaking out of the Civil
War, when it was interrupted by his enlistment as a volunteer
in the Confederate ranks. He served through an arduous campaign,
suffering the hardships of a Federal prison, and emerged from the
sad conflict entirely impoverished. When he was called to the
ordeal of relinquishing the religious tenets of his youth, he passed
through it with calm heroism, and began his life as a stanch Roman
Catholic. It was not until the mature age of thirty-nine that his
faith was crowned with the honors of eternal priesthood. In the
declining years of his life, he was visited by the darkness that
has so often afflicted the great writers of the world.
These various elements intermingled in the formation of the
poet. But it is not the man of letters nor the master of music,
nor the veteran of a heart-breaking war, nor even the honest mind
of the convert that is most evident in his work. It is the heart
of the priest that throbs in his poems, giving them the mystic
power of supernatural life. Of these formative influences he wrote :
Each separate life is fed
From many a fountain head:
Tides that we never know
Into our being flow,
And rays of the remotest star
Converge to make us what we are.
Francis Thompson, in his essay on Nature's Immortality, re-
1916.] THE POETRY OF A PRIEST 229
veals the secret of Father Tabb's power as a poet. " From Alps
to Alpine flower," he writes, " nature rises lovely with the be-
trayal of divine thought. All earthly beauty is but heavenly beauty,
taking to itself flesh and living in the life of God. In so far as
man himself lives in that life does he come into sympathy with
nature. Not Shelly, not Wordsworth himself ever drew so close
to the heart of nature as did the Seraph of Assisi, who was close
to the heart of God."
Father Tabb was called to the same sphere of life as the Saint
of Assisi. By virtue of the same vocation he was privileged in
a blessed intimacy with nature. Stretching forth his hand to her
he felt a thrill of new-found power, and realized that he had
touched the hem of his Master's garment. He began to perceive
in nature, not only a revelation of the Omnipotent Being Who
dwells beyond the stars, but found that she gave testimony of
His Only-Begotten Son, the Child of Mary, the Man of Galilee.
The gift of the poet and the calling of the priest then united in
a single love, and he became a Psalmist of the New Dispensation.
Where they of the Old saw a reflection of Yahweh in nature's
majesty, he found intimations of his Master, Jesus Christ. He
says this very simply in a poem which reads:
It is His garment; and to them
Who touch in faith its outmost hem
He, turning, says again, " I see
That virtue hath gone out of Me."
In another of his poems he tells of his awakening to creation's
revelation of Jesus Christ:
Once when my heart was passion free
To learn of things divine
The soul of Nature suddenly
Outpoured itself in mine.
I held the secrets of the deep
And of the heavens above
I knew the harmonies of sleep,
The mysteries of love.
And for a moment's interval
The earth, the sky, the sea
My soul encompassed one in all
As now they encompass me.
230 THE POETRY OF A PRIEST [May,
To one in all, to all in one
Since Love the work began
Life's ever-widening circles run,
Revealing God and Man.
And in another poem the same search for God's reflection
in the world about him is evidenced :
My God has hid Himself from me
Behind whatever else I see:
Myself the nearest mystery
As far beyond my grasp as He.
And yet in darkest night I know
While lives a doubt discerning glow,
That larger lights above it throw
These shadows in the vale below.
He spelt the name of the Omnipotent in the wonders of the
firmament, but found His image shining clearer in the humblest
of the flowers :
I see Thee in the distant blue
But in the violet's dell of dew
I breathe and touch Thee, too.
His poetry becomes distinctly his own when his thoughts
dwell upon the visible form of nature as suggesting the mysteries
of the Christian revelation. From the mystery of the Annunciation
to the Coronation of the Mother of God as Queen of heaven, he
shows parallels in nature's revelation to mankind. He saw the
Dawn, the Light of the World, a figure of Christ, a new-born
in the night that began when the pall of sin fell upon Eden.
In a poem that is, I think, the most thoughtful of all his
works, he treats further of the mystery of the Nativity. He draws
an analogy between the descent of the Son of God into the womb
of a creature, and the existence of the Infinite Being in eternal
silence. He finds a parallel in the Virgin Motherhood of Mary
and the mystic silence that sustains the unbounded God in heaven.
He finds attributes in silence that belong to God alone, and even
penetrates further with a question of faith when he comes upon
a new mystery of a something intangible, greater in scope than
the Omnipresence of God which it surrounds:
1916.] THE POETRY OF A PRIEST 231
Temple of God from all eternity
Alone like Him without beginning found;
Of Time, and Space and Solitude the bound,
Yet in itself of all communion, free.
Is then, the temple holier than He
That dwells therein? Must reverence surround
With barriers, the portal, lest a sound
Profane it ? Nay ; behold a mystery !
What was, abides; what is, hath ever been;
The lowliest the loftiest sustains
A silence by no breath of utterance stirred
Virginity in motherhood remains,
Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,
The voice of Love's unutterable word.
He also wrote of the birth of Christ in lines less mystic, yet
full of his life theme:
The world His cradle is;
The stars His worshippers;
His " place on earth " the mother's kiss
On lips new pressed to hers.
For she alone to Him
In perfect light appears
The one horizon never dim
With penitential tears.
The sorrowful mystery of Calvary he saw painted yearly in
the sombre colorings of autumn. When the woodlands died his
soul was sad, because it was so suggestive of the dying of the
Son of God. He called the Fall " Mater Dolorosa," and wrote
these noble lines:
Again maternal autumn grieves
As blood-like drip the maple leaves
On Nature's Calvary.
And every sap-forsaken limb
Renews the mystery of Him
Who died upon a tree.
232 THE POETRY OF A PRIEST [May,
He saw the Resurrection scene in the coming of dawn each
Easter morn:
4 Behold the night of sorrow, gone,
Like Magdalen, the tearful dawn
Goes forth with Love's anointing sweet
To kiss again the Master's feet.
In the later years of Father Tabb's life, a heavy blow smote
him blind. To him it fell with the gentle touch of the finger
of God. He did not pray for a miraculous restoration of the
power to see the world that had told him so much of the Smiter.
In a prayer of priestly resignation he offered his loss to God,
asking only:
If some life be brighter for the shade
That darkens mine,
To both, O Lord, more manifest be made
The Light Divine.
And God in return did more than restore his sight. He gave
him a power of vision more keen than any human seeing. In the
" School of Darkness " he learned " what mean, the things unseen."
Father Tabb is worth reading because he transforms the world
of nature into a Holy Land. He leads the pilgrim that ventures
after him into realms that are suggestive of the holiest days and
deeds in the history of man. The stars become faithful shepherds,
watching through the night, and waiting for the Light of Life
to come on the morrow. Trees nodding their heads sadly in the
breezes tell of the Gardener of Gethsemane and Calvary, who
blessed one of their number as the instrument of Redemption.
This poem reads with a very simple charm :
When Christ went up to Calvary,
His load upon Him laid
Each tree unto its neighbor tree
In awful silence said :
Behold! the Gardener is He
Of Eden and Gethsemane.
An Easter lily sparkling in the dews of dawn is Magdalen
washing the Master's feet, and anointing them with the fragrance
of true contrition. The sun rising and setting; stars hidden and
twinkling; trees, dead and living; running waters and .the smallest
1916.] THE POETRY OF A PRIEST 233
flowers that grow beside them are personified into the lives of
those written in the Sacred Books of Prophet and Evangelist.
The reward of those who become familiar with his work is to
find the world a place of ever-present sacramentals, that provoke
the holiest of thoughts and give grace in abundance.
The literary characteristics of Father Tabb's work have been
commented upon by capable critics who were unstinting in their
praise. The exquisite perfection of his poems appealed to them
as the work of an artist in literary cameos. Perhaps this does not
justly suggest their intrinsic worth. The workmanship upon them
indeed shows the minute care of an artist fired by love of his
work. There is not a line too many or a word that is not of
the shade necessary to bring out the context of the poem in the
clearest light. In this respect they are literary cameos. But their
beauty lies deeper than the surface. It is the glowing fairness
of a superbly cut gem rather than the chiseled clearness of the
cameo. It captivates the eye as it sparkles on the surface, then
radiates new and ever-changing hues from its depths. Theirs is
the bewitching charm of the diamond, which responds in chang-
ing brilliancy according to the power of the light that is thrown
upon it.
There may be many a lyric arising from his priestly soul
now bathed in the light of the Beatific Vision. Perhaps to him has
been given the power that he lacked when he suggested the poems
that he could not write, in the lines of My Secret:
It is not what I am fain to hide
That doth in deepest darkness dwell
But what my tongue hath often tried,
Alas, in vain, to tell.
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER IX.
HE party upstairs was not much of a success. Bobby
had to be awakened from a sound sleep, and Jack was
so bewildered that he mechanically tasted one spoonful
and then fell back upon his pillow, protesting that he
would take " no more medicine in the middle of the
night." The ice was very small, and Bobby ate it
silently, making only one comment, " It don't taste pink, Wally."
" No, I suppose not, Bobby red would be easier to distinguish.
Pink is a delicate shade."
He held the pillow tenderly behind Bobby's back to keep off any
possible draught from the open doorway, and with the other hand
he made a table for the flowered plate. He regretted his contract with
his godson ; it seemed so unwise to arouse him, and yet he had always
made a point of keeping his promises to the children. If he had not
produced the ice Bobby would certainly have asked for an explanation
next day. But Walcott was relieved when the feast was finished.
Bobby turned over and promptly went to sleep again, and Walcott,
putting out the electric light, passed into the next room which had
been chosen as a day nursery.
There was always a certain charming disorder about this room,
for the children were allowed to play here unrestrained. In one corner
was a block house, half completed, the building materials scattered
widely over the floor; a large rocking-horse, bereft of both mane and
tail, stood waiting the onslaught of the morning, a patient expression
of long suffering in his staring, glassy eyes; some small enameled
chairs, turned upside down, had been metamorphosed into a railroad
train early in the evening, while the baby's wicker hamper, with the
baby's dainty clothes shoveled in and out at regular intervals, had been
the coal car supplying the imaginary locomotive.
Walcott stirred up the smouldering logs in the open fireplace, and
sat down in the nurse's worn armchair. He wanted to think to get his
bearings. He was half-dazed by the experiences he had just passed.
It seemed unbelievable that no one should suspect his identity, and
yet Ted had noticed a resemblance, and dismissed the fact as a mere
coincidence not worth consideration. After all the meeting was not
extraordinary. In the days of her girlhood Anne had spent a large
share of her time in Washington, and now that she was married,
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 235
widowed Anne a widow! she did not look the part Anne sorrow-
ing, bereaved, alone. Who was this Van Brun who had been her hus-
band? Had she cared for him? Could Anne care?
The scene in his own home library came back to him with vivid
force. How he had worshipped her in the old days, and even her
refusal to share his poverty had not destroyed all his illusions about
her. The hardest struggle he had with himself was trying to rid him-
self of his desire to return to Anne. But to return, he told himself,
was useless; he was still a poor man, relatively speaking, and Anne
craved millions. Who was this Van Brun who had married her? A
feeling of resentment, which he thought he had outlived, stole over
him. But Van Brun was dead and Anne was unchanged. The same
roof sheltered him and sheltered her in all her youthful loveliness
Van Brun was dead, and Anne was free. From the drawing-room
below sounded music and laughter, but Walcott felt no inclination to
go downstairs. He was afraid, afraid of that old self that seemed
to dominate him whenever he thought of Anne.
Suppose he should go to her and tell her the story of his life.
How attentively she would listen, as she listened to every other man.
What then? In the uncertain flickering of the fire his face was pain-
fully tense. What then? The question seemed insistent. How many
other men have tried to force the future when the answer to the
problem is beyond all their control.
But there were some things he could know Anne would have no
sympathy with his present life. He was too old to dream of marriage,
if age were measured by feeling and experience and not by years. He
was disfigured Anne had always found ugliness repellant. No no
he would go on to the end. He had passed through a transmigration.
He could not go back and begin where he had left off he had
journeyed too far to return to Anne.
His mind had been in a turmoil all evening, and he wondered at
his own self-control; the unconsciousness of the other guests to his
confusion had had its psychological effect. There are times when the
conventions coerce a man to move with a certain mechanism, follow-
ing habit or custom until an artificial calm is acquired. But now,
that he was alone, he could relax. Even his body felt weary from the
strain. Leaning back in the old armchair he took a pipe from his
pocket, and filling it from a leather pouch he made spill of paper
and lighted it from the flaming wood on the hearth. The pipe soothed
him he had put it in his pocket as a small act of insubordination to-
wards society, a pipe and tobacco pouch would certainly bulge out the
tail of his new evening coat. Senator Bolivar would laugh at his
mutinous spirit, and Mrs. Bolivar would reprove him for being so
careless of appearances, but after the guests were gone and the three
236 TRANSMIGRATION [May,
had gathered in the library for one of their old intimate talks that
sometimes lasted until midnight, he would have his pipe to rest him
after an uncongenial evening spent with strangers.
Strangers! again his mind went back to Anne, to Polly, to Ted.
Why did the boy's eyes look so haggard? Why was his face so
pale? What had he done with himself during all these fifteen years?
What had life brought him that he should talk so cynically of
himself?
Another whiff from his pipe. Lord have mercy he was tired.
He rested his head against the cushioned back of the chair, and stared
up at the gay frieze of the wall paper. Chickens and dogs and cats
and pigs harnessed amicably together by laughing children with gar-
lands of roses. He remembered Bobby's delight when the paper
hanger revealed each section, and he had rejoiced with the child, for
he had gone with Mrs. Bolivar to aid in the selection. How his mind
traveled back from tragedies to trifles. He must go downstairs. Mrs.
Bolivar would wonder at his absence she might even fancy that one
of the children was sick, for it would not be the first time that he had
stood guard over croup and colic. Yes he must go go and find
Polly; there were a hundred questions he wanted to ask her. Who
was this Van Brun who had married Anne?
He closed his eyes for a moment, the room was very still, only
an occasional splash from the aquarium in the window, where a small
gold fish, sole survivor of a large family, waited warily for the
children's fishing lines of raveled hair ribbons and crooked pins.
Then there came the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and Wal-
cott felt a presence near him, and opening his eyes he saw Polly
standing before him. For a moment he was startled by her strange
resemblance to the Romney portrait so familiar to his boyhood, that
it had seemed almost a living personality. After all the likeness was
natural enough, the dark woodwork of the door framed her, the hall
beyond faded into a dim background, the silvery satin of her dress
was the same. Truly the world was full of ghosts to-night. He
roused himself with an effort, and getting up with his habitual
punctiliousness he offered her the only big chair in the room.
" No," said Polly turning one of the children's chairs up right,
" I I can sit down here ; I'm not big enough to break it. I thought
perhaps you had gone. I'm glad you have not ; I came to find you."
The intermittent blaze of the firelight concealed the tragic expression
of her eyes.
" Find me," he repeated dully, " I believe I was coming down
after a while. I was just sitting here trying to decide the question."
She smiled wanly. "And I am trying to decide why I should
come to you."
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 237
" Perhaps Mrs. Bolivar sent you."
" No."
" Well, then, since you are sharing her duties as hostess, perhaps
stray guests should be looked after. I might be on the point of kid-
napping one of the children."
" I might suspect you of having designs on Bobby." As she
spoke she held out her hands to warm them at the fire, and Wal-
cott saw that they were trembling.
" You are cold," he said with tender concern, and going quickly
to the baby's hamper he began to rummage among the little clothes.
" See here is a flannel shawl, put it around your shoulders. It's a
wonder to me that women don't kill themselves outright with these
low-cut gowns in winter time."
She accepted the ribbon bound square of flannel gratefully.
" I'll put it on since you were so kind to get it, but it's not what you
would call a comprehensive wrap. I'm not cold ; I'm worried almost
sick with worry." She seemed to crumble up in the little chair, and
she buried her face in her hands. For a moment he forgot the
years. She was a child again, and he was her big boy cousin, rich
and able to reimburse her for all her broken dolls and toys.
" Polly," he said, " forgive me for calling you that but you
seem a child to me."
" I'm glad of that," she interrupted him, " for I've come to you
to help me; I don't know what to do. Why didn't I go to Senator
or to Mrs. Bolivar? You won't understand why I come to you."
He was a little dismayed by her excitement. " Well, no, except "
" Except that I feel that you would be very tolerant. I have
heard that you have spent your life helping the poor and the suf-
fering. I I don't want the Senator to know "
"Know what?"
" About Ted."
" Ted ? " He looked around the room in his bewilderment.
In some way Ted seemed connected with nurseries. He remembered
now that long ago when his sister had died in Paris and orphan Ted,
speaking only broken English, had come to live with him, that he
with brotherly sympathy, of which he was half-ashamed, had arranged
a play-room for this strange little nephew.
" He has been drinking," said Polly tragically. " I am always
afraid of it. He can hardly stand I managed to get him in the
study, away from the other men, and he is lying on the long sofa in
a sort of stupor. Oh! I don't want anyone to find him there. It's
such an abuse of the Bolivars' generous hospitality for him to act
like this."
"And you want me to take him home."
238 TRANSMIGRATION [May,
" No, I want you to take him to the hospital."
"A hospital!"
" Yes, yes, it seems the only place he has no home."
"No home!"
" Oh, you don't understand. It's not only drink with Ted,
it's drugs. It has been going on for years; he's throwing his life
away. He has no home except his club. If he goes there, there will
be no one to look after him, and he will keep on drinking until he's
crazy from it. Come help me Ted and I grew up together and I feel
that my only brother was going wrong. Please help me to get him
away from here. There are four or five automobiles before the door ;
we can take Anne's and go."
" But Mrs. Van Brun may need her car."
" Oh, it doesn't matter," she said desperately. " Anne can wait.
She is not ready to leave anyhow that army officer is in love with
her and she is entertained. Oh, won't you come?" She laid an
eager hand upon his arm. " Ted is so heavy to lift. I cannot manage
him alone. We'll go down the back stairs and through the pantry
to the study. There is a long French window leading out into the
garden. We need not go through the front hall. Please, please help
me to get him away."
" But doesn't the Senator know? "
" I don't think so, and I don't want him to know if I can help
it. Oh, don't you see how disgraceful it all is ? Ted brought Anne here
to-night, and he is not able to go home with her. Come now, or we
shall be too late."
" But I can go alone you need not come."
" Oh, yes, I must. Wait a moment, I'll get my cloak. I'll meet
you downstairs. Get your overcoat and find one for Ted, I must
go with you."
She hurried away and he prepared to follow her directions with
unquestioning obedience. The whole evening had been a nightmare,
and here was a fitting climax. Ted, the boy he had loved and yearned
for in the long years of their separation, lying unconscious in a
drunken stupor downstairs, and Polly, loyal little Polly, struggling
alone to save him from himself. A disquieting suspicion began to
form itself in his mind. Was Polly's pitiful appeal to a stranger
founded only on sisterly affection. It seemed to betoken something
more.
He watched her as she leaned against the soft cushions of the
sofa urging Ted to get up. The light from the green shaded reading
lamp fell full upon his face, so handsome, so young, so strangely
emaciated. A small bright object, clasped loosely in his hand, at-
tracted Walcott's attention. It was a hypodermic syringe then Polly
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 239
was right, this was no accidental intoxication. Ted needed medical
aid. Exerting his great strength Walcott stooped and lifted Ted
bodily, and compelled him to take a step or two, while Polly offered
her slight shoulder to support him on the other side. Out of the
warm luxurious home they passed into the cold murky night. Polly
tried to close the window after them, but in spite of her efforts it
swung back on its hinges.
" One of the servants will close it," she said confidently and then
while Walcott lifted Ted into Anne's care she spoke to the chauffeur by
name : " Paul, Mr. Hargrove is ill. Drive to the hospital the one
just below the Capitol. Mrs. Van Brun will wait for you here."
CHAPTER X.
The ride to the hospital seemed a short one, though the prudent
chauffeur drove the big engine very slowly. It was a night for pre-
caution, the concrete streets were wet and slippery, and a heavy fog
had lifted itself from the level of the river and billowed upward
until the city seemed immersed; the' bright lamps of the car could
not penetrate such a heavy mist, they merely transformed its silvery
color to a golden haze; a blinding indefinite danger signal to the
confused pedestrians. The Capitol Library loomed like some men-
acing derelict lost in a cloud-capped sea, the light from its many
windows tracing its vast outline.
Polly, bareheaded with her long cape clutched over her light
evening gown, sat with her back to the driver; her face had lost
all its bloom, and she shivered in the cold. Ted lay upon the wide,
upholstered seat in front of her, his head pillowed in Walcott's arms,
and to Walcott it seemed good to have him there. How he had
longed for the boy and now he was in his arms, his body close to
his, and Ted was helpless, helpless as he had been in the old days
when he had sought out his youthful uncle to supply all his am-
bitious little boy needs. Now, as Walcott looked down into the hand-
some face so prematurely old, he could feel no sense of indignation
towards Ted. He suffered a deep sense of remorse. He could not
blame Ted he alone was responsible for the boy's pitiable condi-
tion. He should not have left him during those most impression-
able years left him without a guardian or home.
Polly was very silent, the fog frightened her, and she kept
glancing out the window, trying to pierce beyond the luminous mist
of the lamps. " It's like traveling through space," she said at last.
Walcott tried to smile upon her reassuringly. " When we reach
240 TRANSMIGRATION [May,
space we shall only have our souls to bother us. Our bodies won't
be able to draw us down in the mire any more like this."
" No," she agreed, " no," and the look she bent on Ted was full
of pain.
Is_is he often like this?"
"Too often."
"Who takes care of him then? "
" Mother has had him brought to our house several times, but
now that he is in Washington, I have not heard from him in weeks."
" But he does write to you ? "
" Sometimes."
"What does he do to live? "
" He is a musician."
" Oh, yes, of course. I had almost forgotten his music."
She heard him in bewilderment, but there was no time for further
questioning. They drove into the stone-paved courtyard of the
hospital, and up to the side door where injured patients are received.
An orderly came forward to help Ted from the car, and an old
Sister wearing the white cornet of her order, stood in the dimly-
lighted hall. Polly fled to her like a hurt child to its mother's arms.
" Sister Agnes, Sister Agnes, help us, oh help us ! Ted Har-
grove needs you. We have brought him to you."
"Polly, Polly, God bless me if it isn't Polly at this time of
night," and the old nun gathered Polly into her protecting arms.
" You're cold and your cloak is damp, and you've been playing
guardian angel to Ted again? "
" He seems worse this time. He's in a stupor and he won't
rouse. It's something worse than wine. Take him into your blessed
St. George's Hall and do what you can."
" Yes, take him in," said Sister Agnes turning to the orderly.
" Number sixteen is vacant, Mike. Now let your heart be at rest,
Polly dear ; I've had Ted here before and I know his symptoms. He
will be all right in a day or two if someone will only take him in
charge when he leaves me. And don't worry any more to-night
young people always exaggerate trouble. When you are as old as
I am you will know that few things in life are as tragic as they
seem at first. Sit down in the parlor a moment, Polly, I'll be back
as soon as I see that the poor boy is comfortable," and she bustled
away, her soft shoes making no sound upon the polished floor, and
the ends of her big peasant's bonnet flapping like wings in the cold
night wind that blew from the open doorway.
Polly turned to the parlor and motioned Walcott to follow her;
the room was dark at this late hour of the night, except for the
faint gleam of a taper floating in a red glass in front of a pale
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 241
marble saint. Polly then sank into a cushioned armchair, and threw
off her long cloak. " Oh, I like hospitals," she exclaimed, " they are
so restful in time of trouble, and Sister Agnes is one of my mother's
oldest friends. I feel now that Ted is safe."
" Yes, I am sure that he is safe." Walcott too was experiencing
a deep sense of relief. To bring Ted to a hospital had seemed un-
necessary to him at first, but now that he had seen Sister Agnes he
understood Polly's reasons. Ted needed protection and maternal care.
Here he would find them. The old nun was not long in returning. Upon
entering she pressed a button in the wall, flooding the room with light,
and she had brought in a little tray holding two cups and a pot of tea.
" Here's something for you worldings to drink before you start
on your journey. Your hands were so cold, Polly dear, and I don't
want another patient here to-night."
Walcott rose quickly to relieve her of the tray, but the old
nun, deprived of one burden, picked up a small table and brought
it closer to Polly's chair. " Now drink this dear, and don't worry
about Ted. There's many an older and a wiser man in St. George's
Hall to-night. Poor fellows, life is so hard on them and they have
so many temptations."
" Oh, I don't see how you can take it as a matter of course,"
said Polly rebelliously.
The old nurse smiled, though her eyes looked worn and tired.
" Polly, if I were shocked by every story of sin and shame I hear
I'd be a useless burden in any house. I've been working over poor,
sinful, suffering bodies so long, long before you were born, and I've
watched the dying half-enviously, knowing that they were passing
into a world where the mystery of pain would be revealed to them.
I'm a sermonizing old bore ; " she continued turning to Walcott,
" Polly hasn't introduced us, but I'm sure you'll take the child home
and convince her that the heavens are not going to fall on Ted to-
night. I'll take care of him like his grandmother the dear Lord
knows I'm too old to be his mother and I'll get Ted's grandmother
to help me. What good times we used to have together when we were
girls. She married, though I tried my best to make her come here
with me."
Walcott looked at her with a strange expression. She was talk-
ing of his mother. They had been girls together. He had always
thought of his mother as young and beautiful, but of course if she
had lived she would have been old too, like this nun with a face
full of kindly wrinkles, and his mother had shared this mysterious
religious fervor, this passion for service.
Polly was introducing them now adding something about his
kindness to her. He did not hear her clearly, but he protested with
VOL. cm. 16
242 TRANSMIGRATION [May,
some stereotyped phrase, and then the good-nights were spoken, and
they were back in Anne's luxurious car speeding now through the
lifting fog. The chauffeur was anxious, he had experienced his mis-
tress' impatience before, and in his opinion they had lingered at the
hospital too long. When Walcott spoke he asked an unusual ques-
tion, " Do Catholics believe in ghosts ? " he said.
Polly had cuddled into one corner of the big car among Anne's
brocade cushions Anne had always believed in an excess of cush-
ions and she was thinking, with some misgivings, what explanation
she could give the Bolivars for her absence. All her life she had
lived in a friendly community where she was so well known that her
charitable, unconventional impulses needed no apology, but here of
course things were different. The Bolivars were almost strangers
to her, and to leave a dinner party and to go plunging off into the
darkness in an automobile borrowed, without permission, to enlist
the aid of another guest to carry a drunken man to a hospital, was
a little out of the ordinary even she had to admit that. Walcott's
question claimed her distracted attention for a moment.
" Ghosts! " she repeated, " I don't think I quite understand."
" The old Sister spoke of your friend's grandmother, who she
said was dead, watching with her to-night."
" It isn't so easy to explain unless you have the same view-
point."
" Which I haven't," he said, " but you might try and give it
to me."
" I wonder," said Polly, " why it's considered bad form to talk
religion in society."
"Is it?"
" It seems to be."
" Well you wouldn't call this exactly society would you ? " he
asked, the familiar light of humor coming back to his eyes, " just
you and me and the automobile clock and the cushions. Suppose
you experiment on me."
" It comes first to the question of immortality," she said seri-
ously, " do you believe in that? "
" Why yes, I think I do I can't believe this unsatisfactory world
is the end of everything. There must be some place where things
are evened up."
" Well then you acknowledge eternity we can't believe that peo-
ple who care for us here passionately, lose all lovft, all interest, all
comprehension of us just, just because their bodies die."
" No," agreed Walcott reflectively.
" And so we ask for their help, believing always that it will be
given."
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 243
" I see, it's just another phase of the supernatural in your re-
ligion that I haven't got."
Polly's mind had again reverted to the Bolivars. How could she
explain her absence without telling the truth about Ted?
" Got what ? " she repeated at random.
" A sense of the supernatural," he answered. " I'm like a man
in a blind alley. Down in the slums in Liverpool where I lived
so long, I used to envy my priestly friend his surety of everything:
I could only promise a man a full meal, a house over his head, if
he'd sober up and try to live decently worldly gain, you see, auto-
mobiles and silk hats, the final goal of affluence. Of course, I tried
to mix up some sort of dope of idealism, but abstract ethics don't
go very far with a starving man, he wants something something
more definite. That nun has it. I'd like her to inject it into Ted."
" Ted is a pagan," said Polly sadly. " He loves the beautiful in
art and nature, and that may preserve him from some of the coarser
sins of life."
" It's a poor preservative," he said.
" And I don't know how long it will last," continued Polly. " Ted
is getting worse. I'm sure he is getting worse. Anne might help
if she only cared."
"Cared how?"
" Oh, cared anyway for his soul or his body. Ted is in love
with her, can't you see? "
" No, I didn't see."
" And I don't want Anne to know about Ted to-night, and what
can we say, for I'm sure it is very late. It does not seem fair to
leave the chauffeur to bear the blame."
" Then I'll take it."
"How?"
" Well, it is a problem," he admitted looking at his watch.
" We've been gone an hour. I'm willing to lie, but no lie suggests
itself."
" And it makes it a little more difficult my having gone along.
I know you tried to stop me, but I didn't think of appearances.
I wanted to see Sister Agnes, she has such a vast understanding;
I couldn't leave it all to you when you didn't know either her or
Ted. But what will Mrs. Bolivar think? "
" I'll attend to the Bolivars. Don't worry about them, but I'm
not quite sure of the rest. Perhaps the army officer has been suffi-
ciently attractive " there was a touch of bitterness in his tone " and
Mrs. Van Brun has not called her car. We will go through the
garden again. Perhaps after all we have not been discovered."
When the car stopped he took her hand to guide her in the
244 TRANSMIGRATION [May,
darkness, to lead her along the narrow path bordered by the ghostly
stalks of flowers. " I hope no one has latched the window. See, we are
lucky, it is just as we left it. I begin to believe that no one has missed
us after all." They entered stealthily and closed the casement. " What
a cosy little study this is! If we had lingered here an hour we
should have nothing to explain."
" No, but we didn't linger here," said Polly nervously.
" I'll go first," said Walcott. " I've carefully trained the Boli-
vars; they don't expect good manners from me."
As they passed into the long drawing-room, they saw that the
guests had divided into two groups, the old Justice was the centre
of one; he had discovered that the Senator had spent his boy-
hood in a small college town where he had once held a poorly paid
professorship ; they talked reminiscently ; it was plain to be seen that
to the old man those struggling years of youthful enthusiasm and
daydreams were more precious than the reality of his present success.
In another part of the room Anne was holding her usual court. She
had chosen to stand by the piano near a pink shaded lamp, which
accentuated her color while the full glare of the light fell upon her
glittering dress, exhibiting the unique pattern of the spangled mesh.
She held a sheet of music in her hand, and as Walcott entered she
looked expectantly.
" I thought it was Mr. Hargrove," she said, " I wanted him to
play my accompaniment."
" He has gone," replied Polly.
" Why that's strange," Anne was a little off her guard ; she never,
willingly, acknowledged lack of loyalty. " I thought he was going
home with me."
" I am going home with you," volunteered the Major hopefully.
"And I'll play your accompaniment," said Walcott. Her old
compelling force had brought him again to her side, just as if there
had never been any barriers between them. She had suggested a
slight service, and he had come forward to offer it with no thought
of consequences. He was acting upon blind impulse, and his body
seemed to move mechanically, holding his mind in abeyance, and he
began to play an old love ballad that Anne had sung to him many
times fifteen years ago. It was one of those popular songs started at
first in a musical comedy, and gaining a wider audience because of its
minor key or lilting measure or some obscure power that makes the
simple things in life grow great.
And then Anne laid her hand upon his arm and he looked down
upon it half stupefied to find it there. How many diamonds she wore ;
and how strange that he should notice them when Anne's hand was
upon his arm, and then the words seemed incredible Anne was say-
1916.] IN MEMORIAM 245
ing : " Don't play that. It brings back all sorts of unhappy recollec-
tions. I cannot sing that I've forgotten how."
He got up, his face was burning, but the pink shade of the lamp
concealed his confusion. " It is the only thing I know," he said, and
as he moved away the Major slipped into his place.
What did she mean? The question was half a protest, half a
prayer. Had she suffered with him for him or was it a mere sen-
timental pose to shield herself from singing an old-fashioned song of
the streets ? He would not have believed that he could have blundered
so awkwardly. He had acted without reasoning, without judgment.
His playing a part was a farce. He had always been a fool with Anne.
Now he moved quickly out of the circle of the lamplight, and the
group closed in again about Anne. Walcott standing far off in the
shadow watched her with widely varying thoughts. His keen per-
ception had returned to him, he was quite capable of analyzing her,
but was he indifferent, or had he only believed that he was ?
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
In n&emoriam*
REV. BASIL W. MATURIN.
Died May 7, 1915, in the sinking of the " Lusitania."
BY FREDERICK G. EDDY.
HE had " put on the whole armor of God "
This gallant soldier of the Prince of Peace :
His arms were burning words, that brought surcease
Of doubt and fear: he made one see where trod
On mountain-top, those Feet of beauty, shod
With tidings of great joy, that brought release:
He " lifted up the hands, and feeble knees,"
Teaching the comfort of Thy staff and rod.
And haply when that argosy of death
Sank 'mid the waves he, dying, could descry
Upon the sea, Jesus of Nazareth
Walking its waves serene, and feel a Hand
Whose blessed grasp bespoke a Promised Land,
And hear the whisper, " Fear not, it is I ! "
THE WILL TO ACHIEVE.
BY JOSEPH FRANCIS WICKHAM.
LITTLE girl of twelve once confessed to me in a
moment of ingenuous sincerity that she would like to
be rarely gifted in the art of conversation. She did
not put it in just those words, but her naivete con-
veyed just that meaning. I do not pretend to know
if the minds of all little girls, or even of most little girls, delight
in similar anticipations of the pleasures of the grown-up world, for
a knowledge of the psychology of feminine childhood thus far the
gods have withheld. One can judge only of the objective reality
one knows. But I suspect, if one may be permitted to have sus-
picions in the inexact sciences, that most little girls are guiltless
of such well-defined social ambitions. So my friend of a dozen
summers may be precocious among her peers. But in spite of her
variation from the usual, or rather probably because of it, she is an
engagingly interesting personality, and just and unjust critics alike
would concede her capable of easily reaching her goal of success.
Now, it always seems so futile and trite to talk about goals
of any kind, or ambitions, or culture, or ideals, that the wonder is
that anybody does it. Perhaps it is because one never knows how
futile a thing may be until one has made trial ; perhaps, too, it is
because sometimes the trite is not so commonplace as it might be;
perhaps it is because futility and the commonplace are so dearly
beloved of the world. In any event, it should never be entirely
futile to give voice anew to the truth of an ancient day.
But, perhaps, after all, I have no thesis to offer. Everyone
concedes that there are many teachers of truth and many disciples
of eager heart; ideals and culture and ambitions and goals are as
plentiful as ever they were, just as keenly desired, and full as
frequently attained. And yet it is a fact that with all the teachers
and all the taught, those desirable things are all too rarely known,
all too little coveted, all too seldom flung aside as vain and useless
trifles. It may be that it is wasted toil to endeavor to change
this state of things. An Oxford man, who has won success as a
writer, once told me that at his Alma Mater not as much emphasis
is placed on the teaching of the technique of English composition
1916.] THE WILL TO ACHIEVE 247
as there is in the colleges of this country: if a man has it in him
to write, he writes. It is a formula which applies to many phe-
nomena of life. If you have it in you to be a wonderful violinist,
that you will be; if it is your genius to be a brilliant captain of
infantry, nothing short of an enemy's missile can prevent it; if
your breast be stirred with the unholy cravings to waylay your
fellowman, his attachment to the injunctions of the Decalogue
will not annihilate your zeal. It is the desire that counts, the
will to achieve. The man or woman or boy or girl who has the
desire needs no spur nor adventitious stimulus; my jeune fille of
twelve was a success when the first spark of quest-flame glowed in
her soul. And perhaps that is an end to the whole matter.
It all sounds so simple and seems so easy, this matter of per-
fection; mediocrity and dullness and illiteracy and immorality
appear to even an unsearching analysis such unregenerate protuber-
ances. And yet, when we look about us, perfection, or the desire
for it, seems to be the pathological condition rather than the normal ;
most people are mediocre, more of us than any care to admit are
dull; countless numbers cannot read a sentence from the Con-
stitution; and our colleges of correction are teeming with matric-
ulated graduate students. This, to be sure, is just as it should be,
if one subscribes without even one poor scruple to the creed that
whatever is, is right. But once in a while we must differ with
Sophocles and Pope.
Now, that I think of it, I am almost sorry that I mentioned
the criminal class, if modern reformers will forgive my termin-
ology ; a tinge of regret is mine that the untutored multitude found
a local habitation in my mind ; for interesting as they are, we must
leave these rich fields of thought unharvested and ungarnered, as
one must ever leave a thousand tangible things untouched. It is
pleasanter, too, to fancy that you and I are not sinners or unlettered
ignoramuses, but that we are merely commonplace and dull, some
of us more so than others, and others of us deliciously less so than
the rest. And into this family circle we shall each of us draw a
chair and contemplate what a cheerful world this really is, in spite
of us ourselves.
How wholly delightful that prospect is! I suppose if Eden
had not been peopled with a pair who possessed an infinite capacity
for making themselves disagreeable to their children, such a family
circle would be possible. But it is too late to re- write the facts of
history. One has no wish to be emulous of the unsuccessful re-
248 THE WILL TO ACHIEVE [May,
former who proclaimed that if he could not improve the present,
he would attempt the rehabilitation of the past. Such a modest
programme is not quite fair to oneself, nor indeed to the resisting
powers of the days agone. My ambition rests with stating that
the circle might indeed be a continuous curve, but that the in-
dividuals in the chairs would not be a family. Physically they
might know one another for graceful or ungraceful or disgraceful
specimens of the human being; they might like one another with-
out recourse even to a fine Christian charity; but their minds and
souls would not be in unison, there would be no community of
thought, and no universal sympathy of aspiration and desire.
It may be that this is a fortunate thing. What would the
earth do with a complacent throng of equally cultured humans
chanting an unending symphony of mutual admiration? Let us
not contemplate it; it savors too much of socialistic uplift to be
palatable even in mildest reverie. But why cannot the circle of
truly intelligent minds be larger, why cannot the thousand circles
in a thousand individual communities be larger than they are?
There is no need, perhaps, to become excited about the matter,
or pessimistic, or zealous, or even interested. So rapidly grows
the multitude of those who are not interested that it is easier
and sometimes pleasanter for one to watch them grow than to
inquire why they grow. Moreover, the crowd usually knows what
it wants, even though it may not know the reason of its appetite;
and if there is one single thing that it does not want, it is the
fine flower of culture. Power, riches, even health men strive for,
and get; an appreciative intelligence in the art of living men
strive not to get. It is an individual and concerted effort, and it is
wholly successful.
I remember a remark that a cultivated woman once made to
me. "Why don't the women of to-day read?" she queried. "I
asked a young woman at a tea this afternoon if she thought
Matthew Arnold was right about Philistinism. She replied that
the knowledge of the Philistines was derived entirely from the
Bible, and besides she could not believe anything that might have
been said by one who was a traitor to his country." You will
be tempted to remind me, perhaps, that teas are not planned with
a view to so elevated a plane of talk. Probably not. Somehow,
I sympathized with my lady of the Bible, and I pitied the un-
fortunate soldier of the Revolution, and I commiserated the slighted
charms of the more or less pagan apostle of culture; but I agreed
1916.] THE WILL TO ACHIEVE 249
with my friend that reading is becoming as obsolete an art among
the maidens of the hour as the tempering of a Toledo blade. I
would not have the young women, or their elders, deem me too
censorious of them, or the advocatus diaboli in their regard. One
may love the eighteenth century enough to be a little blind to
their faults, and have sufficient regard for the twentieth to be very
kind to their virtues, and have tender enough sympathies toward the
gentle sex in its multiple charm to defend it against the world. But
once in a while one must adopt the reiterated slogan of one's femin-
ist friends that justice is a dearer thing to woman than chivalry.
Justice, moreover, is such a stern, strict, unswerving thing
that the sterner, stricter, if less unswerving, sex should be allotted
a full measure of it; fairness to the entire human race demands
that. And it would be a man without the critical faculty or a
woman in love who would not say that for every young woman
a young man, and perhaps two, could be found to stumble into the
absurdities occasioned by a reference to the luckless Matthew
Arnold. The young men of to-day have a quite well-organized
conspiracy to exile from their converse and their solitary con-
templation any idea reminiscent of an Arnold, or a Newman, or
a Ruskin ; and an honest and admitted prejudice against any figure
in the world of intellect who might even incidentally and innocently
intrude on their designs in the unmystical world of gain.
Some there must be who are impatient of all this ; who think
it unjust, and destructive, and morbidly hypercritical. You know
many young women who are as clever as they are good, whose
minds are clear and nimble, who are keen to know and eager to
meet a responsive intelligence ; you are acquainted with many young
men who have a proper grasp of the world's history, a cultivated
outlook on its activities, a choice appreciation of its refinements.
Your friends are like that, you say. And I believe you; so are
mine. But all of us have friends, too, who are not like that, whom
we love despite their inperf ections ; never, I hope, because of
them. We achieve acquaintances, or have them thrust upon us,
who are not like that; and each of us daily sees the thousand
thousand who walk the pathways of life without one unattainable
ideal in their bosoms, and never an upward groping born within
their souls.
Now, whether one speaks dispassionately about it, or waxes
eloquent with the impotent emotion of a minor prophet, this is
a pitiful thing; a very deplorable thing, that in this age, when
250 THE WILL TO ACHIEVE [May,
the twentieth century is no longer in its first infancy, so many
men who find it comparatively easy to amass respectable fortunes
find it difficult to distinguish between the Jacobites and the Jacobins ;
that so many women who can forecast next year's fashions in
dress and remember last year's rules in bridge are troubled when
one mentions Bernard of Clairvaux or Roger Bacon; that such an
indeterminate throng of young ladies who gayly endure the vitiated
air of the picture-threatres are in an exquisite martyrdom at a
symphony concert or a performance of Hamlet; that such a count-
less number of youths who will test the merits of their nervous
systems with the tension of hours of motor-driving will recoil
before the Paradiso of Dante or a history of architecture.
But let us not be too severe; let us allow less hopeful spec-
tators of the passing day to wield the rods of chastisement. In-
deed, although one finds it an unlovely thing to look about one
and see the men growing harder and more sordid as the years
sing their song in the eternal rhythm of God's mystery; though
one may sometimes wonder why so much of the world will per-
sist in merely pursuing the elusive god of joy, the little sprite that
is never present but everlastingly in the time and place beyond
our full ken; though one asks why youth will sell the large
promise of its life for the subtle something that glides away and
vanishes even as it seems to be trembling in the tightened grasp
of captivity; though one chides, if ever so softly, one should
have no desire to underestimate the accomplishments which are
not born of a sweet otherworldliness and a desire for glories
supra-mundane. Who would be so steeped in folly as not to be-
lieve that a goodly supply of gold cannot merely glitter along
your paths of glory, but can also relieve the woes of the poor
and the wretched and the oppressed? Who, save some cynic cur-
mudgeon, could decline a lady the joy of fashion's sway and Mrs.
Battle's rigor of the game? A photo-play is sometimes the most
desirable thing in the world; and for a motor-car King Richard
would have given and hazarded all he had left after the well-
known horse trade was consummated. And, after all, perhaps
the followers of the unhappy Stuarts, and the French revolutionists,
and the Cistercian abbot, and the Franciscan professor at Oxford,
and a Beethoven concerto, and a tragedy of a melancholy dweller
of Elsinore, and a vision of the one Florentine, and a chronicle
of columns and colonnades are outside the scheme of a happy
life, the negligible extra-territorials in a treaty for bliss.
I 9 i6.j THE WILL TO ACHIEVE 251
This, indeed, may be so. And yet there are moneyed men
who are learned men; and devotees of fashionable society whose
culture is no veneer; and so the Epicurean theory sinks helpless
in the tangles of its own woof. The easy way men have ever
followed; not inevitably the primrose path of dalliance, but none
the less the facile road. And the avenues to the higher life of
the spirit and the intellect lie not amid the flowers and the pleasant
fountains and the sound of singing voices. Upward to the hills
the way is hard and thorny, and full of tortuous mazes; but at
the end of the road there is green verdure, and rippling waters,
and the trilling of birds, and ever a blue, blue sky.
As one contemplates the mile-posts that mark the wayfarer's
progress toward the end of the journey, one may well wonder if
my little friend of twelve will pass the outmost barriers and step
into the fields of joy. Will she grow weary by the wayside, and
be satisfied with something short of the full glory, something less
than the sum of life's beauty, something that only resembles in a
close kinship the complete awakening to the sunny day? It is
possible. But whether she climb the topmost ascent, or linger
doubtfully on the way, the desire of attainment will redeem her
of failure; and although not blessed with the plenitude of riches
and the fine quintessence of the life of the soul, she will live her
years a being of refinement, a fair and precious spirit, with her
eyes ever turned toward the heights and her heart all aglow from
the wonder quest.
But we must leave her, and we must leave one another; we
each have work to do, and plans to formulate, and dreams to
weave ; and we all have different ways of constructing our schemes
of success and of planning our impress on the generation in which
we live. Labors will never be achieved through vicarious hands, nor
will visions be beheld through the soul of another. And so let
each of us bravely take his way along the lane of life whitherso-
ever the voices call and the finger of destiny beckons. On every
pathway there will be the song that each can understand, and
there will be the laughter that each is seeking, and there will be
to each the merriment of playtime; but we shall find sorrow, too,
and dirge, and the dolorous tears for mortal woe ; and out of them
all, out of the toiling and the rest, out of the gayety and the
grief, out of the song and the funeral, we shall hope to distill the
real reason of life and come each of us a bit closer to the mysteries
of God's time.
Boohs.
PIONEER LAYMEN OF NORTH AMERICA. Volume II. By
Rev. T. J. Campbell, SJ. New York: The America Press.
$175-
Father Campbell is an acknowledged authority on the subject
of the settlement and evangelization of Canada; not only con-
cerning the great missionaries who sacrificed all earthly joys to
extend the kingdom of Christ, but also concerning those other
heroes who were sharers of their courage and magnanimity. Such
were the captains and leaders of the various expeditions sent out
from France, and the author calls them the " Pioneer Laymen "of
North America. A previous volume has told of the distinguished
men of earlier date. This second one continues the tale with the
names of Frontenac; several members of the heroic and devoted
Le Moyne family whose generations have been so closely identified
with Canadian history; also Nicolas Perrot, de Verendrye and
La Salle. All these are Frenchmen, but although valorous
enemies of our colonies, their labors explored and settled much
of the territory now included within the limits of the United
States.
The volume closes with the story of one whose work was per-
formed later, nay almost in our own times, for his death occurred
as late as 1857. The historian Bancroft calls him the " Father of
Oregon," and one " of an altogether different order of humanity
from any who had hitherto appeared on these shores." Indeed,
John McLoughlin even in personal appearance was a man amongst
men, a veritable lion. Of all those, whose stories the book con-
tains, McLoughlin, as Father Campbell hints, is the least known,
but not the least interesting or worthy of study.
The entire volume is full of adventure of romance, of hair-
breadth escapes, which if they appeared in a novel would be quickly
voted improbable. The recital records heroic courage, endurance,
generosity and perseverance almost beyond belief ; but it also shows
that amid the meaner characteristics of our poor human nature,
there is nothing meaner than the ingratitude and indifference of
governments to some of their best and noblest servants.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 253
THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS. By Cardinal Newman. New
York: John Lane Co. $1.25 net.
This great classic, by John Henry Newman, is here presented
in a gift-book edition. An introduction by Gordon Tidy is a wel-
come addition, giving a history of the poem from its inception, and
disposing of various popular but untrue legends of its adventures
before publication, with quotation of much testimony to the high
place immediately accorded to it in the esteem of the great author's
contemporaries.
The edition has been prepared with care and taste; its size
is not too great for convenience, and it is well printed on good
paper. It is doubtful whether the ten illustrations by Stella Lang-
dale will be generally regarded as acquisitions. Readers whose
appreciation of the masterpiece is keenest, will probably prefer
that it should be given without attempt at visualization of its awe
and mystery; nevertheless, the artist has displayed throughout a
deeply reverential spirit, and the last two pictures are very im-
pressive.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF TENNYSON. From 1809 to 1850.
By Thomas R. Lounsbury, LL.D. New York: Yale Uni-
versity Press. $2.50 net.
Professor Lounsbury is well known for his scholarly studies
on Shakespeare, Chaucer and Cooper. The same thoroughness,
fairness and humor that characterized these volumes are evident
in his Life and Times of Tennyson. He died before he had com-
pleted his proposed literary biography of Tennyson, but his un-
finished chapters were prepared for the press by Dr. Wilbur L.
Cross, the editor of The Yale Review.
Professor Lounsbury shows from the literary history of the
thirties, forties and fifties how strong a fight Tennyson had to
wage to win recognition. All the great Revie^vs of England were
emphatically hostile to him, and the dominant critics of the period,
Christopher North, Lockhart and a host of minor writers, kept
harping continually on Tennyson's affectation, obscurity, lack of
reflectiveness and of strength, and his impotent straining after
originality. His friends at Cambridge alone were loyal, and de-
fended him from the very beginning against all adverse criticism.
Our author well says, apropos of the unjust criticism which
was meted out to Tennyson for many a long year : " The truth of
254 NEW BOOKS [May,
Aristotle's dictum that the mass of men he meant of course men
cultivated and competent to form opinions of their own were far
better judges of poetry than any one man however eminent, has
never been better illustrated than in the reception given to Tenny-
son's successive works. The critical estimate almost invariably
lagged behind the estimate reached by the great body of intelli-
gent readers. When the former was adverse and in his case it
often was adverse on the first publication of particular works
it was almost disdainfully set aside by the latter."
There are many delightful bits of humor scattered here and
there throughout these entertaining pages. For example, he speaks
of Taine's English Literature as "a book which would be as
valuable as it is delightful, had it more frequently occurred to the
author that it was desirable to read the works on which he set
out to pass judgment." In speaking of the offer made of the
Laureateship to Rogers by Prince Albert in 1850, our author
writes : " One gets the impression that this action seems to have
been taken not as a tribute to his poetic eminence, but rather
as a recognition of his merit in having lived so long." Many have
inaccurately stated that Tennyson changed line after line of his
poems as the result to hostile criticism. Professor Lounsbury
proves conclusively that this is not the case. Discussing, for ex-
ample, Lockhart's objection, he declares that " Tennyson showed
the abjectness of his deference to the critic by repeating the line
'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die,' nineteen times in the re-
vision of 1842."
The whole volume is delightful reading, and is an excellent
proof of the fallibility of literary reviewers.
MRS. BALFAME. By Gertrude Atherton. New York: Freder-
ick A. Stokes Co. $1.35 net.
With all her usual merits and defects of literary manner and
with even more than her usual cleverness, Mrs. Atherton has
written a novel which cannot but cause something akin to con-
sternation to thoughtful people with religious convictions.
Mrs. Balfame is a crystallization of the passive, insouciant
godlessness peculiar to our day. David Balfame, a resident of
Elsinore, a small town near New York, is mysteriously murdered.
His widow is the town's acknowledged social leader, the object
of much admiring devotion. Suspicion is directed toward her;
she is arrested and tried for the crime. Her acquaintances and
1916.] NEW BOOKS 255
fellow-townspeople are naturally of various types and degrees, yet
there is tacitly developed among them a singular bond of unity in
a phase of spiritual astigmatism they see in the murder a crime
but not a sin. At no time does any of them give the least indica-
tion of having ever heard of a Supreme Being, or of having given
a passing thought to the destiny of the soul. Were it possible to
find a quarter of the earth where God has not as yet chosen to reveal
Himself, under any name or form, this book might have emanated
thence. Though Mrs. Bel fame's friends rally loyally to her, they
are by no means convinced of her innocence; yet not even among
the women does the nature of the crime inspire depth of emotion
or sense of awe. There is shock, then curious speculation, then
acceptance of the thought as a temptation common to humanity,
and the unpleasant character of the murdered man is cited in
tentative palliation. In their conversation there is no touch of
artificiality or exaggeration, to isolate them as a group of aliens;
they are ordinary, kindly human beings, and their easy, humorous,
matter-of-fact chatter is such as, we are compelled to believe, might
and would be heard wherever the conditions repeated themselves.
The last chapter contains material still more discouraging,
for it is here that Mrs. Atherton portrays what she seems to regard
as her heroine's spiritual awakening. Mrs. Balfame is freed, ex-
onerated by the dying confession of the woman who committed the
crime that her idolized friend might be released from a detested
husband. By this, with another instance of self-sacrifice for her
sake, Mrs. Balfame's cold heart is roused to a limited amount of
self-knowledge: she sees herself as a selfish egotist, unworthy of
the love she has received, her existence harmful to others. She
will amend her life; she will cross the ocean and spend herself
in nursing upon the battlefields. This is the whole extent of her
new vision; it includes no hauntings of the murder of which she
was guilty in intent and by attempt, no horror of the consuming
hatred she had fed and cherished. The book concludes : " Mrs.
Balfame was alone with the crushing burden of her soul;" but no
ray of light reveals her to herself as alone with an estranged and
offended God, and the burden, at its worst, is loss of self-esteem.
The novel is a concrete expression and reflection of a part of
the public mind which, unrestrained by religion and unconsciously
influenced by extreme theories of sociologists, grows daily more
vague as to moral distinctions and indifferent to the sanctity of
human life. Of the disturbed thoughts that follow its reading one
256 NEW BOOKS [May,
is most salient, that the book will doubtless prove entirely accept-
able to a wide circle of readers who will not experience any feeling
of strangeness or perception of a lack. It is this consideration that
gives the work importance as a sinister sign of the times.
THE SHEPHERD OF THE NORTH. By Richard Aumerle
Maher. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.35.
It is not by force of contrast alone that this novel creates
an agreeable impression while dealing largely with a point analogous
to that of Mrs. Balfamie. It has also charm, as well as interest
of a very special kind. " The Shepherd of the North " is the
affectionate title conferred upon a Catholic bishop by the people
of the Adirondack country. By those who do not seek his
spiritual ministrations he is beloved for his wide humanity and
his protection of their temporal interests, notably against attempted
fraud and oppression by a railroad, one of whose measures of
warfare is an incendiary forest fire. The story moves quickly,
with many stirring scenes of primitive stress and adventure; but
most striking of all is an entrance into spiritual adventure, a realm
whose possibilities are seldom realized by novelists, and more rarely
still developed with the skill shown here.
Jeffrey Whiting, a fine young fellow, is a Non-Catholic who
cannot understand or tolerate the Faith that, as he says, " comes
into everything," issuing commands. He loves Ruth, the bishop's
ward, a convert, yet she cannot open his eyes. An opportunity
comes to him to kill a man who is both a private and public enemy ;
he has both desire and intention, but accident brings it about that
the killing is done by another. Whiting is cleared of the charge
of murder, but a word of fiery reproach, spoken to him alone,
forces him to face the fact that his actual guilt is very great. He
is too honest not to pursue his soul into the crevices where it flies
for refuge, and drag it out into the open light of truth. His in-
creasing conviction of sin overwhelms him; craving for cleansing
and pardon conquers his former dislike and distrust of the con-
fessional. At last he opens his heart to the bishop, under whose
guidance he achieves real penitence, followed by conversion. The
author has not made the mistake of unconvincing haste ; the soul's
analysis of its disaster is traced step by step with extraordinary
power and insight. This exceptional book skillfully uses external
activities as a background for an interior drama of absorbing
interest.
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 257
SIX FRENCH POETS. Studies in Contemporary Literature. By
Amy Lowell. New York : The Macmillan Co. $2.50.
Miss Lowell never leaves one in doubt as to her exact pur-
pose in these studies. In the preface she states plainly just how
much she will do and just where she will stop; with commendable
persistency she reiterates these principles ever and anon; and in
the concluding paragraph of the volume states again : " I have not
attempted any very far-reaching criticism. My object has been to
talk a little while about a few great figures in a generation which
is almost past the meridian Already before the war it
was on the wane When France recovers, it will be another
generation of poets who will be writing The six men we
have studied are the last glorious flowers of a time already
over."
Reading these pages the conviction grows that this was indeed
for Miss Lowell a labor of love. A vers libriste herself, if memory
serves, with a keen fellow-feeling for symbolism and impressionism,
she interprets these kindred souls with an affectionate enthusiasm
from which, alas, the rein of judgment sometimes slips, and which
thereupon runs riot. The average reader will recognize but one
name in the table of contents, fimile Verhaeren, the Belgian poet,
has come much of late into the public eye, though he has, in fact,
been the prophet of " young Belgium " for thirty-five years. The
works of Albert Samain, Remy de Gourmont, Henri de Regnier,
Francis Jammes and Paul Fort are unfamiliar to the general read-
ing public, and the copious selections in this volume, plus certain
biographical data necessarily scant for living subjects will be
welcome in many quarters. " Appendix A " sacrifices art to utility
and profit; while a translation of the extracts doubtless affords
the book a wider scope, no literature more than the French, and
nothing in French literature more than impressionistic poetry, suf-
fers by translation. The verse melody appeal, its very essence, is
lost; the fine flavor evanesces, and what was gracefully dainty
becomes clumsily comic.
Miss Lowell fell into a grievous fault by not adhering to
her own principles as above quoted, and permitting her readers
to form their own critical opinions from the abundant material
supplied; she allows herself to be so carried away by her feelings
as to lose all perspective. It is all very well to profess a fine con-
tempt for " the hair-splitting criticism of erudite gentlemen," for
" the purists who rail at broken rules, thus showing how narrow
VOL. cm. 17
258 NEW BOOKS [May,
purists are." It is all very well to berate the " besotted ignorance
of the public " and " the simple and ignorant public," to call de
Regnier " one of the great poets of France and an even greater
novelist," and Fort " a great, a very great poet, whether the pro-
letariat agrees or not." The hair-splitting critics, and the purists,
and the besottedly ignorant public, and the proletariat have had many
a hard knock before Miss Lowell's day, and may therefore hope to
survive these. But it is patent that the spirit prompting such a
tone is likely to have a reaction fatal to that cause whose very
dearness to her heart has led her into such indiscretions. Miss
Lowell had a golden opportunity of introducing to the average
American reader, man or woman, a new field of contemporary
literature; nothing would be more grateful to her than that these
unfamiliar names should " become household words with us, as
they are in their native land; " but most assuredly intolerance, ex-
travagance and a senseless scattering of reckless superlatives will
not make for their quicker appreciation.
THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE LIGHT OF TO-DAY. By
William Frederic Bade. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
$1.75 net.
One of the most prominent of our countrymen at the present
time once described himself as having a one-track mind. Whatever
be the sense in which it was originally used, the term may very prop-
erly be applied to the author of this work. Professor Bade is not one
of those men who explore the by-ways and pathless fields of his
mind in search of truth; he keeps to the main line, his rails are laid
in smooth places, and his little train of ideas shoots on to its destined
goal. It is all very easy and very sure; no accident can happen;
there is no danger of collision, for no train of thought is allowed
to come in the opposite direction, and no line may cross his tracks.
On he goes, and woe betide the little truths or ideas he may en-
counter : they are. scattered and frightened away before the onrush
of the Limited Express.
The freight that Professor Bade carries is, en somme, not very
heavy. It is all stowed away in one neat little package found in
his last chapter. In the Old Testament, he tells us in italics, there
were clearly two religions, one of the priests, the other of the
prophets. The religion of the priests may be read in the so-called
Mosaic Law and in a reactionary prophet like Ezechiel; it was a
ritualistic, religion, and laid emphasis particularly upon a strict and
1916.] NEW BOOKS 259
minute observance of laws; it was a social religion, and called the
people to sacrifice, and to contribute ever more and more generously
to the support of the priests, enjoining all in the name of God.
The prophetic religion, on the other hand, repudiated the sacrificial
system of the priests; it was a purely ethical religion, a religion
of the heart, a religion of the spirit; it was individualistic; it had
its rise, not in any external communications from a transcendant
God, but in the mind and conscience of the prophets. This pro-
phetic religion was the forerunner of the religion of Christ; also,
Professor Bade would say, of the religion of Luther, of Kant and
of all enlightened thinkers of to-day who, like the prophets of old,
have repudiated all ritualism and all external authority in religion,
and find, in their own conscience, the highest manifestation of an
immanent God. The priestly religion, on the other hand, is evi-
dently the prototype of Catholicism and of such Protestantism as
has not yet emancipated itself from mediaeval influences.
Professor Bade shares these views, of course, with most liberal
theologians of the Protestant world; his own effort to achieve
originality comes in his interpretation of Deuteronomy, which, he
thinks, has not advanced even as far as monotheism, and especially
in his discovery of " the first great heretic," to which is devoted one
whole chapter. Who is he? Satan? No. Cain, the first great
individualist, who did not believe in being his brother's keeper?
Not at all. Balaam, son of Beor, gifted, like Luther, with the
imagination of a poet and the tongue of a prophet, yet a follower
of false gods? No, not Balaam. You forget that heretic is the
glorious name of one who proclaims truth and spirit, in the teeth
of orthodoxy and ritualism; so the first great heretic is Jeremiah
the Prophet, whose mournful strains are touching our hearts these
closing holy days of Lent. Poor Jeremiah the Prophet, persecuted
all the weary years of his pilgrimage and now, ages after he has
been gathered to his fathers, hailed as " the first great heretic ! "
If this Woe had been foreseen by the prophet, what a Lamentation
we should have had !
We have not space to discuss these views. One need only be
free from the self-imposed obligation of discovering something
original and striking, and then read with some care the book of
Deuteronomy and the prophecies of Jeremiah to see the far-fetched
and baseless character of Professor Bade's theories. The fault
with him and with most of his school is that they ride an idea to
death. If an Old Testament book strongly inculcates the practice
2<5o NEW BOOKS [May,
of the law, it is therefore steeped in externalism, and has no regard
for the inner life of religion; and if any texts would invalidate this
conclusion, they must be swept away or silently ignored. The same
simple process is applied to a prophet who denounces the excesses of
ritualism. Our critic, like many another, cannot hold in his mind
two very simple and compatible ideas, the external worship of God
with the inner spirit of true adoration and following of God's will.
Unlike Christ, he would divorce the Law and the Prophets; and
unlike Him, also, he does not go for the very highest expression
of religion found in the Old Testament, or anywhere else, to the
despised Law of Moses. The priests, according to him, carefully
preserved the writings of their deadly enemies and proclaimed their
divine authority! How incredibly stupid! But then we must re-
member that professors of the religion of the spirit always do have
a low opinion of the intelligence of priests. However, the shallow-
ness of the professor's views, the flimsiness of his arguments sur-
prises one in a book issued by his high-class publishers. He prides
himself on being an advanced thinker; he is simply a facile writer
and reckless guesser.
One statement of his we do not wish to let go uncorrected.
" Concubinage," he says, " was actually sanctioned by the Synod
of Toledo in 400 A. D., and was not actively suppressed as social
impurity until the Fifth Lateran Council in 1516." This is stated
as an illustration of polygamy or plural concubinage; whereas the
Council expressly, in the very canon referred to, denies Communion
to any married man who has a concubine. It does not forbid the
denial of the sacrament to an unmarried man who has a " concu-
bine," but anyone acquainted with the terms of Roman Law knows
that this word did not then have necessarily an immoral meaning.
Concubinage was used of any unequal marriage, as of that be-
tween a patrician and a plebeian, or between a free man and a slave ;
and the woman of such a union was called a concubine, even though
she was a lawful wife. The Church never permitted polygamy, as
Luther did to the scandal of all Christendom shortly after 1516;
and to represent her as permitting concubinage till 1516 is the most
striking instance in this book of two tendencies evident throughout
it, the tendency to take the worst view possible of an institution
or doctrine displeasing to the author and the tendency to be reckless
in his statements. We have treated this book with a severity un-
usual in this magazine, but we feel it is richly deserved by its
combination of shallowness and pretentiousness.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 261
THE WORLD DECISION. By Robert Herrick. Boston : Hough-
ton Mifflin Co. $1.25 net.
Mr. Herrick was in Italy for some months previous to her
declaration of war against Austria. Italy, he maintains, was moved
by a worthier motive than the mere acquisition of territory. Her
very life as a nation was at stake; and if she had not answered
the call to self-defence, she would have become a nation of inn-
keepers and her country a museum. Mr. Herrick writes with deep
sympathy for the Italians; passage after passage is winged with
patriotic and poetic fancy, and he has, as far as our knowledge
goes, presented Italy's case in its best light. To Americans she has
generally appeared to have been willing to stay out of the war
if she had secured her price; but Mr. Herrick thinks not, and the
reader may come to his own conclusion.
But if the author is enthusiastic about Italy, his enthusiasm
waxes almost stronger than words when he speaks of France,
wherein he spent some time on his return from Italy. He is amazed
at the complete unity of the nation, its thorough organization and
self-sacrifice, and the revival of its faith in itself since the Battle
of the Marne. He pays testimony to the revival of religious faith
also. France is the nation which he believes has shown the greatest
self-denial and made the fullest self-sacrifice in this war. He blames
England for her apathy, and the disedifying discord that mark her
people and her counsels.
It is needless to say that the author is thoroughly partisan and
pro-Ally in sympathy. His thesis is that the Latin civilization, the
Latin ideals are once again to lead the world; that America is
more French in her aims and temperament than Anglo-Saxon. It
is easy, of course, to present general theses. But it is surely worth
while to note the renewed respect for Latin civilization and the
principles which created it, now being shown by many who but a
few years ago would have scoffed at them.
A PRIMER OF PEACE AND WAR. By Charles Plater, SJ.
New York: P. J. Kenecly & Sons. 80 cents.
In the large output of anti-Christian arguments, based upon
the present war, the plea of total incompatibility between Christian
profession and military service has been advanced frequently and
plausibly, reducing to silence many whose instincts warned them
of the speciousness of the statement, but did not supply counter-
arguments. Catholics who have been thus oppressed will find
262 NEW BOOKS [May,
means of reasonable and effective defence in this Primer. The
subject is considered under four divisions : International Morality ;
Morality and War; Efforts Towards Peace; The Historical De-
velopment of the Catholic Doctrine of War. The authors for
Sections II. and IV. are by the Rev. J. Keating, S.J., and the
Rev. V. Moncel, respectively have treated these themes with a
thoroughness that leaves no point untouched. The writings and
teachings of the leading intellects of the Church of both ancient
and modern times are quoted. We find militarism and " jingoism "
explicitly condemned, and the distinction clearly defined between
them and the spirit of Christian warfare. The appendices deal
with the mediations of the Papacy, from the earliest days of the
Church to the efforts of the Holy Father to-day.
This timely publication provides the average reader with suf-
ficient reassurance and equipment ; bibliography, however, supplies
guidance for any who wish to follow the subject further.
LEHRBUCH DER EXPERIMENTELLEN PSYCHOLOGIE FuR
H6HERE SCHULEN UND ZUM SELBSTUNTERRICHT.
By Joseph Probes, SJ. Erster Band. Erste Abtheilung. St.
Louis : B. Herder.
Father Frobes, Professor of Philosophy at the Jesuit house of
studies in Valkenburg, has just published the first part of a textbook
of experimental psychology. The present volume deals with the
purpose and methods of psychology, sensations in general, sensa-
tions of sight, hearing, smell, taste, the dermal sensations, kin-
aesthetic and static sensations, organic sensations, and the simple
sensory feelings. Father Frobes is well equipped to handle these
problems, having devoted himself to the study of experimental
psychology for years. This he did not merely by reading textbooks,
but also by actual laboratory work. He studied in Gottingen under
G. E. Muller, and also at Leipzig under Wundt. Besides, he did
valuable experimental research work. In the preparation of the
present work he has kept in mind the ideal of Tigerstedt's textbook
of physiology. That is to say, he wishes to present his readers with
a digest of the experimental work that has been done in psychology.
To do this completely would, of course, involve many volumes.
The author, therefore, has been forced to make a selection of prob-
lems and the literature bearing upon them. This he has done wisely,
and apparently with an excellent insight into psychological litera-
ture.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 263
The present volume deals mainly with the psychology of sensa-
tion. In the remaining part of the work the author promises to
treat association, the pathology of association, the higher repre-
sentative processes, the emotions, will, and finally mental aberra-
tions.
The reviewer is particularly pleased with the chapter on the
simple sensory feeling in this volume. Father Frobes has there
placed in order the data on this subject more clearly and succinctly
than it is elsewhere to be found.
The work is well worth the perusal of anyone interested in
psychology, and it is to be hoped that an English translation will
open it to those who do not read German. The German text, how-
ever, is not hard reading, because the author thinks clearly and
writes as he thinks.
THE NEW AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND ITS WORK. By
James T. Young. New York: The Macmillan Co. $2.25.
As an introduction to the internal political problems of the
United States at the present day, this work by Professor Young
of the University of Pennsylvania is the most valuable with which
we are acquainted. The changes which government, Federal and
State, is undergoing in this country, are many and far-reaching : to
the old-fashioned individualist, who regards all government as a
necessary evil and judges that government best which governs least,
these changes will also be very startling. There is everywhere at
work in this country at present a tendency to invoke the aid of
government for the furtherance of all schemes for public welfare;
politics touches our interests in many ways undreamed of twenty-
five years ago. Consequently, a connected study of the control and
influence of government over our daily concerns is imperative, for
one who in forming his judgment of current political events and
tendencies should be guided by principles and a wide knowledge
of facts. This survey is made in a masterly manner by Professor
Young. It is not only the business man who needs this initiation.
It is equally necessary for the churchman, the priest, the educator
and the charity worker. We commend to all these particularly the
two chapters entitled " The State and Education " and " Health,
Charities and Correction." They contain much food for reflec-
tion. All activities are coming more and more under the influence
of the State, and it is well for us to be awake to this fact before
it is too late. Such subjects as the growing power of the President,
264 NEW BOOKS [May,
never so great as at the present moment, the regulation of com-
merce, the Sherman Act, the trade commission, the war power, na-
tional conservation, labor, cooperation, etc., are treated in a very
clear, untechnical manner. Professor Young is, himself, in hearty
sympathy with the general trend : we ourselves recognize the inevit-
ableness of it and its general beneficence thus far, but it requires
little knowledge of governments or of human nature to teach us
that majorities must be watched as narrowly as any tyrant.
A NEW RUBAIYAT FROM A SOUTHERN GARDEN. By George
Frederick Viett. New York: Sturgis & Walton Co. 75
cents net.
A firm faith in God and immortality and a triumphant hope
form the theme of this new Rubaiyat, written in defiance of the old,
with its " Soul-soothing melodies that banish Hell, But leave us reft
of Heaven." In view of the author's impassioned devoutness, it
would be pleasant to record full adequacy of his work to meet the
comparison which it challenges by close imitation of manner. In
truth, however, the verses, although sometimes felicitously phrased,
seldom exhibit the original and imaginative quality which can find
full expression only in poetic guise. One feels that Mr. Viett,
by adhering to the languid metre of Omar, has lost effectiveness
which his reply might have had if given, in a more spirited rhythm.
WRECKAGE. By J. Hartley Manners. New York : Dodd, Mead
& Co. $1.00 net.
The author of that delightful drama, Peg 0' My Heart, J.
Hartley Manners, has just written a problem play, Wreckage. Its
theme is the drug habit, which is daily ruining thousands of Ameri-
can men and women. The writer brings -out clearly the utter
degradation caused by the excessive use of drugs, and suggests how
an effective cure may be obtained even in the most hopeless cases.
The role of the modern physician in freeing the people from crime
is a little overdone at times, and most people would find Dr. Lan-
fair's speeches too long and too technical.
THE FRINGES OF THE FLEET. By Rudyard Kipling. New
York: Doubleday, Page & Co. 50 cents net.
Mr. Kipling's contribution is to that library of little books,
such as The Bowmen and Aunt Sarah and the War, which form
so interesting a part of the war literature. He tells us of the
1916.] NEW BOOKS 265
trawler and auxiliary fleet, composed of all sorts of craft, mostly
fishing vessels, and now existing " for the benefit of the traffic
and the annoyance of the enemy," its achievements invaluable, its
casualties many and unnoted; of submarines and the " veiled life "
aboard them, with its dauntless philosophy of self-devotion; of the
patrols that protect the coast, holding the enemy's fleet at bay less
than a day's run eastward. It is material full of richness to a mind
so quick to see as Mr. Kipling's, and he has seized upon it with char-
acteristic vigor. The verses that are interspersed add little attraction
to the book, and will not increase the prestige of the author, who is
scarcely discernible in them; but in the main content appear once
more the swift, sharp impressions, the vivid descriptions, the in-
genious and illuminating similes that are the Kipling hallmarks.
PARIS REBORN. By Herbert Gibbons. New York : The Cen-
tury Co. $2.00 net.
Mr. Gibbons, formerly Professor of History at Robert Col-
lege, Constantinople, has just published the diary he kept in Paris
during the first five months of the Great War. His entertaining
pages give us a most vivid picture of Paris and the Parisians in
the panic of the early days of mobilization. The writer's sympa-
thies are entirely French, although he does not hesitate to criticize
the French Government for its inefficient mail service, its stupid
censorship, and its poor medical service which caused the death
of many a wounded soldier. He also denounces the introduction of
African troops on European soil, the new Kulturkampf which
foolishly sets at naught all German scholarship, and the official red
tape which results in untold suffering to the mothers and wives and
children of the French soldiers.
THE MECHANISM OF DISCOURSES. By Rev. Mark Moeslein,
CP. Chicago: D. B. Hansen & Sons.
Father Moeslein has published in a small volume a summary
of instructions imparted, in the course of his teaching office, to
students who were being trained for public speaking. He aims
to help speakers in the art of handling their material by making
them familiar with the methods used by the great masters of the
art ; and he has brought out in plain relief the underlying principles
which must govern the structure of a well-made discourse. Natu-
rally there are laws which operate in oratory, just as truly as in
philology or in architecture; and knowledge of them ought certainly
266 NEW BOOKS [May,
to assist the average man to present his thoughts and arguments in
a pleasing and effective manner. The Mechanism of Discourses is a
textbook, not a series of essays : . it is presented by the publisher
in the simplest possible form; but it is packed full of wise and
practical instructions, and it is well worth the attention of all whose
duty it is to preach the Gospel. A very few hours given at intervals
to the careful study of these pages will almost surely suffice to
raise the standard of the reader's eloquence. We commend the
book heartily.
SERMON PLANS ON THE SUNDAY EPISTLES. By Rev. Ed-
mund Carroll. Philadelphia: Peter Reilly.
This is a second edition of Father Carroll's Sermon Plans on
the Sunday Epistles, first published in London some twenty years
ago. The sermons are cast in the homiletical form, and the di-
visions are always subordinate to one leading idea. The parish
priest will find them full of helpful suggestions.
DISCOURSES ON THE PENITENTIAL PSALMS. Volume II.
By Ven. John Fisher. St. Louis: B. Herder. 30 cents net.
This is one of the publications of the Catholic Library which
aims at presenting the best of both past and present in English
devotional letters. In view of this purpose, the selection of these
Sermons would seem to be extremely appropriate. They are quaint,
ascetical, systematic and deeply spiritual. Worthy of a martyr,
indeed, is the apostolic freedom with which he reprehends sinners.
Contrition and repentance form the burden of his commentary, and
all the Psalms penitential, particularly the one hundred and twenty-
ninth, receive new and stimulating light because of the saint's ex-
position.
SEVENTEEN. By Booth Tarkington. New York: Harper &
Brothers. $1.35.
We heartily recommend to our readers Booth Tarkington's
latest novel, Seventeen. It will drive away the blues from the most
melancholy of men. From the first page to the last this story is fairly
bubbling over with fun and frolic. It pictures in clear outlines Wil-
liam Sylvester Baxter, a youth possessed of an overwhelming sense
of his own dignity and importance. After denouncing the female
sex with the greatest scorn, he falls head over heels in love with a
certain Miss Pratt, his " baby-talk lady." The course of his true
1916.] NEW BOOKS 267
love is far from srfiooth, owing to the fact that no one but himself
seems to realize that he has at last put away the things of child-
hood, and become a man. Poor William is always on the brink
of despair, for events and people father, mother, little sister Jane,
and the colored servant, Genesis seem ever to be conspiring against
him. Youthful love is an old, old story, but no one has ever before
depicted it with such skill and humor.
THE TWIN SISTERS. By Justus Miles Forman. New York:
Harper & Brothers. $1.35 net.
This society novel portrays in strong contrast the lives of twin
sisters educated in different environments by parents who had been
separated for a long time. The girls meet after twenty years, fall
in love with the same English lord, and hate each other most
cordially, but of course the noble, truthful, honorable girl wins out
in the end despite many an obstacle. There are a few questionable
statements and a few disagreeable scenes that might have been
omitted to the betterment of the story. A Westerner will not be
pleased with the crude portrait of the domineering Quintus Brown
from Idaho.
LUTHER BURBANK: HIS LIFE AND WORK. By Henry Smith
Williams, M.D., LL.D. New York: Hearst's International
Library Co. $2.50 net.
Dr. Williams has written a popular account of the life and work
of Luther Burbank, the well-known plant experimenter with fruits,
garden vegetables, flowers, lawn grasses, shrubs and trees. He
discusses in detail seed-planting, the care of seedlings; pruning,
grafting and budding fruit trees; pollenizing flowers to produce
new varieties; and selective line breeding to accentuate desired
qualities. Part III. is a defence of the modern pagan science of
eugenics, with its sterilization of the criminal and the unfit, State
certificates of health before marriage, and race suicide. The author
has no idea of the dignity of human nature, or of the first principles
of ethics.
LETTERS FROM AMERICA. By Rupert Brooke. With an In-
troduction by Henry James. Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.25
net.
These letters from America appeared originally in The West-
minster Gazette and the New Statesman of London. They are
brief, sketchy records of a young poet's impressions of New York,
268 NEW BOOKS [May,
Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Quebec, Winnipeg, the Cana-
dian Rockies, and the South Seas. Occasionally his poet soul is man-
ifest in a beautiful description of the Great Lakes, the Canadian
Rockies, or Lake Louise, but he frequently wastes both time and
his ability on such commonplaces as a New York skyscraper, or
a Harvard baseball game.
In an introduction of some forty pages, Henry James gives
an excellent critique of this volume and a glowing tribute to the
author's poetic ability. Of this volume he writes : " The pages
from Canada, where as an impressionist he increasingly finds his
feet, and even finds to the same increase a certain comfort of as-
sociation, are better than those from the States; while those from
the Pacific Islands rapidly brighten and enlarge their inspiration.
This part of his adventure was clearly the great success, and fell
in with his fancy, amusing and quickening and rewarding him, more
than anything in the whole revelation."
In his tribute to Rupert Brooke, " young, happy, radiant, ex-
traordinarily endowed, and irresistibly attaching," he says : " He
is before us, as a new, a confounding and superseding example al-
together, an unprecedented image, formed to resist erosion by time
or vulgarization by reference, of quickened possibilities, finer ones
than ever before, in the stuff poets may be noted as made of.
Never was a young singer either less obviously sentimental
or less addicted to the mere twang of the guitar His irony,
his liberty, his pleasantry, his paradox, are all nothing if not young."
PRAYERS OF THE GAEL. Being a Translation from Irish into
English by R. MacCrocaigh of the Collection of Miss Char-
lotte Dease. St. Louis : B. Herder. 45 cents net.
This collection contains a number of the almost innumerable
prayers, which have been handed down from immemorial times
among the Gaelic-speaking population of Ireland, and are still in
daily use wherever the old tongue survives as the speech of daily
life. Indeed, many of them are known and repeated in English,
among communities in which the ancient language has disappeared.
Their variety is a testimony to the strength of Irish faith to which
the world beyond is not a distant bourne to be reached some day
or another in the future; but a present reality as actual as this
valley of tears. Prayer for it is not a duty to be discharged
merely at stated times; but one which is to precede every item of
daily routine; and every situation or task, every danger or tempta-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 269
tion, has its appropriate prayer, breathing the spirit of ardent piety.
The prayers are not alone expressions of religion, but instinct
with the inspiration of the Gael, they are literature and poetry full
of the " light that never was on sea or land," and they will touch a
deep chord in every heart through which flows any Gaelic blood.
THE HOLY GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. By Rt. Rev.
Monsignor Ward. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.00 net.
This is the third edition of Monsignor Ward's popular com-
mentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, originally published in 1897.
The introduction discusses the life of St. Luke, the text and the
circumstances under which he wrote. The commentary is intended
for the average layman, who looks for a simple and clear explana-
tion of the third Gospel.
MEDITATIONS ON THE PASSION OF OUR LORD. By the
Right Rev. Joseph Oswald Smith. New York: Benziger
Brothers. 70 cents net.
This little book consists of fifty-seven short meditations on the
Passion of Christ and the Dolours of our Blessed Lady. They are
written for Religious, but the lessons apply also to the laity. Only
in union with the suffering Victim of the Cross may we render our
own sufferings fruitful unto life. For those who are able to give
but a short time to prayer, the meditations will prove a great aid, in
using well even a very brief period of time.
THE MOTHER OF MY LORD, OR EXPLANATION OF
THE HAIL MARY, by the Rev. Ferreol Girardey, C.SS.R.
(St. Louis: B. Herder. 75 cents net), includes meditations on
the Hail Mary, and pious readings on devotion to our Blessed
Mother. Both meditations and readings will help to increase love
for and imitation of her whom her children delight to honor.
T\HE last three volumes of that great work to which we have so
* often called the attention of our readers the English transla-
tion of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans-
lated by the Dominican Fathers of England have just been pub-
lished. They contain the treatises on " The Last End and Human
Acts," the "Sacraments " and " Law " and " Grace " and " Habits/ 1
general and particular. They may be obtained from Benziger
Brothers, New York. The price of each volume is $2.00.
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 military operations of Great Britain
Great Britain. have, in the recent past, been limited almost
entirely to the defensive. Such activity as
she has exerted has been confined to getting ready for future efforts,
and to an organization of her forces. The first and foremost is,
of course, not the raising of an army, but the maintenance of those
already raised. By the voluntary system something like three mil-
lion men joined the colors, and are now serving in the various
fields of action. To supply the wastage, and to maintain these
armies at their full strength, continual drafts were, of course,
necessary. The wastage is calculated by experts to amount to
about nine per cent per month. The voluntary system was failing
to supply the required numbers when Lord Derby came forward
with his group system. This was a voluntary enrollment of men
willing to serve according to a certain defined order, determined by
state, single or married, age and occupation. The groups numbered
forty-six, of which the single men were to be called first, and sub-
sequently, in case of need, the married groups. Nearly three mil-
lion responded to this appeal. So far there had been nothing like
conscription ; in fact, the whole system was adopted with the hope
of avoiding conscription. The Prime Minister, however, had made
a promise that if a large number of single men failed to offer them-
selves voluntarily by, as it was called, becoming attested, means
would be taken to compel such delinquents. So large was the number
thus left unattested that the Prime Minister was compelled to pass
through Parliament an Act which enrolls in the army the single
men who had not come forward. Compulsion or conscription, so
far as it has been adopted in Great Britain, applies only to them.
By the passing of the National Defence Act, it was hoped that
a full provision had been made for keeping up the strength of the
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 271
armies both at home and abroad ; and that this could be done with-
out calling upon the married men whether attested or unattested.
This hope has been disappointed. For a large number of reasons,
exemption from service temporary or permanent was made possible.
Tribunals were set up all over the kingdom, consisting of civilians
of high standing, to decide upon all claims made for such exemption.
A representative of the army appeared before the tribunals to
oppose the claim. The tribunals, however, released so many un-
married men that it became evident that not only the married men
who had offered themselves would have to be summoned, but also
that the services of married men who had not offered themselves
would be required. It is the demand for a further law to enforce
the services of these that is at the present time one of the causes
of a ministerial crisis in Great Britain, for the Prime Minister is
understood to be set against any such extension of a system of
which he is a strong opponent, while a large number, not only of
Unionists, but also of Liberals, have come to look upon such a
measure as necessary, and are willing to overturn the Coalition
Cabinet in case it does not accept their programme.
It must not be thought that because the tribunals have been
forced to give so many exemptions, the number of shirkers is
excessively large. There are, of course, as is the case in every
large community, some who are not willing to listen to the call
of duty, and who will take every means of avoiding its claims.
The question in Great Britain, however, is rather one of the adjust-
ment of the diverse calls upon the nation in the present emergency.
The making of munitions is as important as righting in the trenches ;
in fact, it is impossible to resist the enemy unless the supply of the
latter is practically inexhaustible. This the Russians discovered
last year, and Verdun has taught the same lesson. Hence when
it is a question between service in the army and the making of
munitions, preference is given to the latter. Then again, the financ-
ing of the war has fallen largely upon the shoulders of Great Britain.
She not only pays her own expenses, but helps with large sums her
Allies and the Colonies. This would be a burden impossible to be
borne if there were no export trade. As it is, the balance of
trade is largely, although in a diminishing degree, against Great
Britain. That it may not be more so, lists of trades necessary for
this purpose have been made by the Board of Trade, and every
individual worker considered indispensable by his employer is reck-
oned among the exempt, whatever the employer himself may wish.
272 RECENT EVENTS [May,
Then again only sons are excused when the widow is dependent
upon them for support, and in a few cases when the relations are
more distant. Another reason for exemption is that of the con-
scientious objector to the use of arms, even in self-defence. This,
however, if granted, does not carry with it complete exemption.
Under this head curious forms of " conscience " came to light.
The exemption was primarily made in favor of the Quakers, among
whose tenets is included the unlawfulness of taking up arms. As
a matter of fact, however, the enthusiasm for the war has proved
so strong that some five hundred members of this sect have taken
up arms. Some of the conscientious objectors went so far as to say
that their conscience would not allow them to protect, by force, an
assailant of a mother or a sister, nor to give succor to a wounded
soldier, if the doing so would enable him to return to the fighting
ranks. For these various reasons the tribunals were not responsible
for the number of exemptions that were given, but they were so
numerous that it became necessary to revise the list of reserved
trades a- list which was characterized as portentous by a member
of the Cabinet.
With the same object in view that of bringing into use every
ounce of the force of the nation for the successful prosecution
of the war a call has been made for the practice of national
economy. In the same way in which the country was divided into
military districts in order to enlist men for the army, so committees,
some two hundred and twenty-five in number, have been appointed
by voluntary effort to bring home to all the need of rigid
personal economy in order that all the resources of the Empire
may be made available. The aim in view is not so much
the contribution of money as of goods and services. In
war time consumption exceeds production, owing, in large part,
to what has to be supplied to the army and navy. The rest of the
nation is therefore called upon to spend less upon itself, and to
devote its energies to that kind of work which is of service to the
forces, naval and military. The new organization has been formed
to be a guide and instructor how this may be done. Individual
economy has the further advantage, that the less the consumption
of imported articles and vast quantities are imported into Great
Britain the less is the money which goes out of the country in
payment of these articles, and the easier, in consequence, does it
become to maintain the .rate of exchange. The appeal is made to
those who are making large profits, and especially to the working
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 273
classes who are receiving higher wages than ever before. Great
Britain's working population never was so prosperous, never has
there been so little unemployment, and, strange as it may seem,
never has there been so little crime. It has been found possible to
close a considerable number of prisons. It is too soon to be able
to ascertain definitely the effect of an appeal which involves so great
a change in personal habits and ways of living.
It is not, however, by voluntary effort alone that the British
are being called to contribute to the war. For the first nineteen
months money has been raised, to a large extent, by means of loans,
thereby casting the burden upon future generations. The new
Budget aims at a modification of this policy, and, by means of taxa-
tion of a vast number of articles to make the present generation
contribute in a larger degree. The adoption of this plan, the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer said, was due to the expressed desire of
the people. The Budget is an expression of the mind of the coun-
try, neither anticipating nor trying to lead it, and as a whole has
been received without a murmur. It provides for another year of
war, and, moreover, makes ample provision for a sinking fund.
The limitation of imports is another means which has been
adopted in order to concentrate upon the war the whole strength
of the nation. Articles which are not necessary, such as fruits
from foreign countries, wood and timber, stone and a certain pro-
portion of paper and wood pulp, as not being essential, are looked
upon as suitable things in which to practise economy. The chief
reason, however, for these restrictions is the shrinkage of tonnage.
This shrinkage is due chiefly to the ever-growing requisition of
vessels by the Admiralty. In the beginning the Transport Depart-
ment had to provide for some two hundred and thirty thousand men
in France ; now the number has gone up to something like a million.
The expeditions to Saloniki, the Dardanelles, Egypt, the Persian
Gulf and East Africa make a further call upon shipping. Meat and
wheat have to be brought from Australia, Argentina and Canada.
Moreover, ships have been placed at the service of France and
Italy. Hence, although the supply of vessels is enormous, the
demand upon them is becoming even greater. The consequence is
that an ever smaller proportion is being left for ordinary trade
purposes, and upon these the submarines have been taking a heavy
toll, especially since the resumption of the campaign. As a set-off
against this present want, there is the resumption of shipbuilding
which is beginning in England, the navy's wants having been sup-
VOL. cm. 18
274 RECENT EVENTS [May,
plied. Probably use may be made of the German ships seized by
Portugal. The melting of the ice in the Arctic will be helpful, as it
will release a small fleet of ships which has been frozen in during
the past winter.
The Zeppelin raids have stirred up a strong determination to
find the means of defeating attempts which so far have done little
more than kill a number of non-combatant women and children.
The demand goes even farther that the British mastery of the
air should be made as secure as the mastery of the sea. This de-
mand has found expression in a Parliamentary election, in which
the sole claim of the successful candidate upon the voters was his
air-policy. This included the construction within six months of
five thousand aeroplanes. Although his opponent was the regular
nominee of the Coalition Government, and had its support, he was
defeated in a constituency which had never before returned anyone
who was not a Conservative.
The Zeppelin raids were the occasion of a call for reprisals,
reprisals which could easily be made by aeroplanes on open German
towns, not far from the borders of France. This call was made by
such men as Lord Rosebery, Mr. Frederick Harrison and Sir Conan
Doyle. Vigorous protests against the adoption of a method
involving degradation were made by Sir Evelyn Wood, the oldest
General in the British army, and were supported by Church digni-
taries, members of the Government and professors. It would seem
that the proposal is unacceptable to the British people as a whole.
There is some reason to think that an effectual means of defeating
these raids has been found, for the later raids have not penetrated
far into the kingdom.
The hesitation shown by the Government with reference to a
further extension of conscription, the unexpected unpreparedness
to meet the Zeppelin raids, the disastrous Dardanelles expedition
combined with many other mistakes and blunders, ,have all con-
tributed to a growing want of confidence in the Coalition Govern-
ment, and to a call for its supersession by an administration of a
more energetic character. "Wait and see" has been for years a
characteristic admonition of the present Premier, and has often
resulted in the course of the war in the waiting having been so
long that nothing is seen until it is too late. Dissatisfaction is
growing, not more among the Conservatives than among the
Liberals. The size of the Cabinet militates against prompt deci-
sion. While it is true that the conduct ofc the war has been intrusted
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 275
to a committee of five members, from the nature of the case this
smaller body cannot take momentous or venturous decisions upon
its own sole responsibility. The traditional policy of the Premier
and the Foreign Minister has for long been on peaceful and almost
pacifist lines, and this has rendered them unfit for the exercise of
the demonic energy which many of their supporters are begin-
ning to think is necessary. Hence there has arisen, even among the
Liberals, a demand for the recall of Lord Fisher, as the one war
genius of the time to whose action in the past Great Britain owes
her present supremacy at sea. It is pointed out that while he was
First Sea Lord the navy struck the decisive blows which destroyed
what there was of German sea activity, and that since his resigna-
tion, although the navy has been rendering immense services, these
services have been of a purely defensive character. This demand
the First Lord of the Admiralty has refused to grant, and has
thereby increased the growing discontent. The call for able men
is becoming so insistent that for the services even of Lord North-
cliffe a demand has arisen. Whether the agitation will result in
the present Government being spurred on to greater activity or in
its being supplanted by another, remains unsettled at the time these
lines are written.
While the nation as a whole, whatever may be said of its
Government, is turning its whole energy to the prosecution of the
war, preparation is being made for what is to be done when peace
is made. To the pact which binds the five Powers not to make a
separate peace with Germany, negotiations are proceeding for the
addition of an economic pact regulating the condition of trade after
the war is over. Concerted action is being taken within the British
dominions and with the Allied Powers. The Prime Minister of
the Commonwealth of Australia is now in London, and those of
Canada and New Zealand are expected. Their object is to formu-
late a common trade policy for the whole of the Empire. A con-
ference has been held at Paris to effect the same end for the Allied
Powers. So far as Great Britain is concerned, the chief difficulty
in the way is what may be called the bigoted attachment to free
trade. But the stanchest of free-traders, those of Manchester,
are beginning, to waver so far at least as trade with Germany is
concerned. The necessity of forming an alliance which will shatter
the credit of the enemy will, it is thought, overpower every other
consideration. Another blow to free-trade has been given by the
war, for it has shown how dependent it has made Great Britain
276 RECENT EVENTS [May,
upon other countries for things which are of vital necessity, and
how dangerous such a dependence is. Its safety is now seen to be
in its ability to produce what it requires from its own soil and
factories, or at least from those of the Empire as a whole. It is,
moreover, apprehended that Germany will endeavor to dump upon
British markets the moment peace is declared, the products which
are believed to have been accumulated during the war. With such
cogent reasons there is little doubt that the difficulties will be over-
come which stand in the way of the proposed economic pact.
The internal situation in France is almost
France. identical with that in Great Britain. The
nation as a whole is as united as ever in its
resolve to continue the war to a successful conclusion. The only
ground for division is whether the Government can be trusted to
carry out, with sufficient energy, the will of the nation. The Cabi-
net is criticized for the same reason as that of Great Britain that
it is too large to decide upon and take prompt action. During the
past few months the French Chamber has been full of irritation, and
there have been frequent scenes of violence. It is claimed that there
is lack of decision; that the Ministers do not govern; that they
shirk responsibility; that they are the dupes of the bureaucracy;
that their vacillation is the reason why the German lines have not
been broken. M. Clemenceau has made himself the chief spokes-
man of these complaints, and as a remedy he has advocated a
virtual supersession of the Government by Grand Commissions,
and that to them should be intrusted the carrying on of the war.
Daily in his paper, L'Homme Enchaine, does he reiterate that
France is neither governed nor commanded, that she is going adrift
under the guidance of lawyers who imagine that words are deeds.
He has assailed even General Joffre, declaring him to be responsible
for the presence of the Germans in France. Others have advocated
the formation of a Committee to supersede both the Cabinet and
Parliament, somewhat on the lines of the Comite de Saint Public
of 1793, of which Committee M. Clemenceau should be the head.
This, however, is not his own proposal, nor has he given his consent,
nor is it likely to be adopted. There seems, however, to be a grow-
ing conviction that authority in France to be efficient must be con-
centrated in the hands of fewer men, and that they should not be
hampered in the way in which the present Government is ham-
pered by parliamentary interference. Such a suggestion as this,
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 277
however, goes in the teeth of the whole spirit of the Third Re-
public. It would be an admission that the parliamentary system is
unequal to the execution of military plans, and consequently unable
to free France from the grasp of Germany. The plan is there-
fore at present supported only by a minority, the majority still
relying upon being able to avoid any change in the Constitution.
The German assault on Verdun has done good, for it has shown
the necessity of a continued union of forces. "We needed just
such a cut from the German whip to keep us quite 'fit.' ' The only
change which has taken place in the Cabinet is the resignation of the
Minister of War, General Gallieni, due, it is said, to ill-health.
His successor is a General who has been in command of the active
forces during the conflict at Verdun, and is therefore familiar with
the necessities of the situation.
The rumors that were in circulation that
Belgium. Germany had offered favorable terms to Bel-
gium, and that King Albert was on the point
of yielding, have, like so many other similar rumors, proved un-
true. Any doubt, however, that may have been felt has been
set at rest by the renewed declaration of the Allies that they will
not cease hostilities until Belgium has been reinstated in her po-
litical and economic independence, and largely indemnified for the
wrongs suffered, an assurance which has been accepted by the
Belgian Government.
The chief event in Germany is, of course,
Germany. the. failure of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz's
health. He had been Secretary of State for
the Navy since 1897, a term of office which was only surpassed
by Prince Bismarck's. He has been the chief agent in building
the navy upon which Germany has relied for the attainment of
world-power; and in particular for the wresting from Great Brit-
ain the control of the ocean. The utter failure of those long-
cherished aims may well have made the alleged cause of his re-
tirement the real one: it is, however, generally believed that his
resignation was connected with the Emperor's decision not to ex-
tend submarine warfare beyond the limits announced to neutrals
in the memorandum, and not to direct it against neutral ships.
As, however, submarine warfare since his retirement has not been
confined to these limits, and has been carried on in defiance of these
278 RECENT EVENTS [May,
restrictions, the true cause must be sought elsewhere. Possibly it
may be an indication of the Chancellor's victory in the conflict that
has long been waged between the two officials of the Kaiser.
The subscriptions to the fourth war loan amounted to more than
two and one half billions, making Germany, according to the
Secretary of State for Finance, the only power at war which has
covered her total war expenditure by long term loans. Dr.
Helfferich failed to explain the means by which the loan was raised.
The Government has practically withdrawn the metal currency
from circulation, and has flooded the country with paper money,
which has no adequate gold basis. Everything except imports is
paid for in paper. When the State wants more money, it just
borrows the paper and pays it out again. When another loan be-
comes necessary the investor in the former loan borrows more
paper on his war loan stock, and reinvests in the new loan. And
so on ad infinitum. The process was started with the assurance
that Germany's enemies by the payment of huge indemnities would
make good all claims, but now that there is no longer even talk
about indemnities in the peace proposals of German origin, the
economic prospects of the German people are very dark.
The battle for Verdun has gone on almost
Progress of the War. without intermission for nine weeks and
more, and although the Germans have suc-
ceeded in some points, the French are confident that the city will
never fall into the hands of the enemy. Nothing of importance
has occurred at any other part of the Western front. The British,
however, have extended their lines so that they are now eighty
miles in length, and have thereby relieved French forces for other
service. On the Eastern front the Russians have made some little
advance in the neighborhood of Dvinsk, but in the rest of the
line the situation is unaltered. No change has taken place at
Saloniki, while the Italian positions remain practically unchanged.
Durazzo is now in the hands of Austria, Italy having been content
with maintaining a firm hold on Avlona. Trebizond, it is just an-
nounced, has fallen into the hands of Russia, but has the latter
reached Bagdad ? The force under General Townshend is still un-
relieved, but the British army under General Lake has drawn nearer
to Kut, and entertains hope of success. The advance of the British
into German East Africa, the last of the German colonies, is making
good progress under the command of General Smuts.
With Our Readers.
WHATEVER the effective agencies at work, a spiritual awakening or
at least the beginnings of it, are manifest throughout our country.
Many who apparently had forgotten its existence, are beginning to think
of the soul and to search for it. It is well and hopeful that this is so.
Side by side with it is still the sordid, servile pursuit of money;
speculation in industrials; passion for gain without scruple; oppres-
sion of the poor all those things that kill every spiritual ambition
and brutalize a nation's soul.
The happier side, that of the awakening to better things, is evi-
denced by the increased demand for religious education: the growing
conviction that our public school system, even from a purely earthly and
material standpoint, is a fatal mistake, and will inevitably unless other
influences prevail drive the nation on the rocks.
It is stimulating as it is surprising to see in a New York daily a
long editorial on the supreme need of moral and spiritual preparedness.
And another New York daily, The Evening Sun, commenting on a
meeting attended by five hundred students of Columbia University,
New York, and addressed by two members of the faculty who de-
nounced obedience to any direction of authority, states :
These remarkable speeches point straight as an arrow to the deplorable
ignorance of fundamental laws of nature and man under which many thou-
sands of Americans, native as well as foreign born, are laboring to-day.
Mr. Kipling once told a story of a puppy who escaped from his master
and ran away into the bathroom, where he had a great frolic, chewing up a
wonderful substance which he had never seen before, until he found it in
the soap dish on that occasion. After the puppy regained something of his
normal health and spirits he retained a clear perception that there are some
things in the world which a puppy may not do without disaster. Thousands
and thousands and thousands of young men and women in this country at
this time are no more intelligent than the puppy; they are just as ignorant
of certain natural laws and as rebellious against any authority which tries
to teach them. These young people are scarcely as much to blame as their
parents or whatever natural guardians have allowed them to pass from childhood
into adolescence without drilling into them the most truly vital lesson which
life holds the requirement of obedience.
The most pitiable folly which has crept into the rearing, training and
education of children, under the guise of developing the child's "naturally
good and healthful instincts," is the abdication of wise authority, the abandon-
ment of the vital principle that the child should obey because his preceptor,
whose wisdom must be postulated, directs him, without any reference to what
the child thinks about it. The wiser mind must decide, or the ignorant creature
will suffer for his own ignorance.
28o WITH OUR READERS [May,
This is nature's law, and for the parent or 'teacher to palter with its
truth and to allow affectionate indulgence to cloud the child's budding intel-
ligence on the subject, is to diminish the child's equipment for plain duty and
his fitness to survive in the world's struggle of life. Such ignorant or indolent
failure to give the child a fair start as has characterized the training of a large
percentage of the young generation is bound to bring grave disgrace and
disaster upon the whole body of American citizens; the older generation
will not suffer proportionately with the younger, for their activity and personal
risk are less, though their responsibility is greater for the false and perilous
ideas with which their neglect has dowered their children.
There is a saving remnant in the population, however, which has not
fallen into this ignorant and slipshod conception of a parent's or educator's
duty to a child. Upon this remnant, and their children, the country will have
to depend for leadership and initiative in the tedious and difficult work of
teaching things to adults which should have been assimilated in childhood.
The general stuff of American manhood conglomerate of many racial charac-
teristics and prejudices as it is at present is abundantly capable of development
into high character, but such adequate development among adults (in the light
of human experience) is likely to be effected through such national discipline
as comes only by national disaster. Since the War of Secession this country
has had practically no national discipline either physical or mental, and the
results are obvious in selfish inertia of the mass and the flabby thought which
forms much of the stock in trade even of such persons as are put forward to
express American opinion in Congress and in many other public forums to-day.
As to the mass of persons who " think they think," their thought is so un-
informed, and their mental process so untrained and futile that its unguided
development and expression result only in self-bewilderment and a spectacle
for the world to laugh at.
A
S long ago as 1895 Alexander Johnston, professor at Princeton
University, expressed the following opinion:
Even among the warmest friends of the public school system there is an
increasing number who are disposed to think that the American common school
system is mischievously one-sided in its neglect of the religious element in
man's nature, and that a purely secularized education is really worse than no
education at all. It is on this ground that the Roman Church has officially
declared its uncompromising hostility to the whole system; but there are not a
few Protestants who, while detesting this opposition to the system, begin to
see more reason in the basis of it than they have hitherto seen. It is, in fact,
of little use to deplore the growing alienation of the body of the people from
all forms of religious effort, so long as a vast machine, supported at the public
charge, is busily engaged in educating the children of the nation to ignore
religion. As well might a father deplore the ultimate malformation of a son
whom he had diligently taught to be left-handed, and whose right hand he had
tied up as some Indians do the heads of their papooses.
* * * *
r PHE New England Journal of Education, discussing our present
J- public school system wrote:
There is one Church which makes religion essential to education and
that is the Catholic Church, in which mothers teach their faith to the infant
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 281
at the breast in their lullaby songs, and whose sisterhoods and brotherhoods
and priests imprint religion on souls as indelibly as the diamond marks the
hardest glass. And are they wrong? Are they stupid? Are they ignorant,
that they found schools, academies, colleges, in which religion is taught? Not if
a man be worth more than a dog, or the human soul with eternity for duration
is of more value than the span of animal existence for a day. If they are
right, then we are wrong.
T
HE Ohio State Journal, writing on the same subject, declares:
A specialist, in writing on development, says the bones grow harder by
usage, the muscles become stronger the same way, and the mind develops by
study and thinking. Each function grows by exercising it. The specialist stops
there when, he is at the very point when he could say something of great moment,
to wit: "That the soul, the moral qualities of man, his truer and higher
self, are developed in the same way that the bones, the muscles, and the mind
are by exercise. Here is where our educational method falls short. It has
made every effort to develop the physical and mental qualities, but has left
the moral qualities to take care of themselves, and if they are developed it is
simply by accident.
LET us look at some of the evidences that show a deplorable
absence of morality in many parts of our country. No man can
deny that they are the result in part at least of the lack of religious
training. The following figures will show how the vitality of the
family, which is the sole unit of national well-being and strength, is
being sapped by the growing evil of divorce. The extract is taken
from The Presbyterian of Richmond, Virginia.
Divorce is one of the greatest and one of the most rapidly growing evils
of this country at the present time. It is probable that very few realize the
enormity of this evil, and the rate at which it is increasing. Here are some
of the startling facts: In the ten years from 1860 to 1870, there was one
divorce to every 1,000 of the population. In the next ten years the number had
increased until there were two to each thousand of inhabitants of this country.
From 1880 to 1890, the number was three to the thousand. From 1890 to 1900,
there were four to the thousand. Since that time the number has seemed to
increase steadily, until in 1906, the last year for which the figures are available,
the number of divorces in this country were 72,063 against 853,290 marriages
for the same year. The number is probably much greater now. The average
of divorces is about one to every twelve marriages. What hope can there be
for a nation where such a state of affairs exists? The showing in this country
is worse than that of any other civilized nation.
IN the March issue of McClure's, the article entitled, Easy Alimony
shows the evils of divorce from a somewhat unusual point of view.
It quotes Judge Morschauser of the Supreme Court of New York
to this effect : " Divorce is the most subtle social menace of the hour.
The finality of divorce is hideous. Separation holds the possibility
282 WITH OUR READERS [May,
of reconciliation. Divorce precludes it. Alimony represents the sanc-
tion of divorce by the law and society. In reality alimony places a
premium on selfishness, slothfulness, idleness and immorality. When
the Christian churches combine to take drastic action against divorce
and its effect on society, the statute will be repealed."
In 1914 on the Island of Manhattan alone, the courts granted 1,008 divorces.
This figure does not include separation suits, which usually run double the
number of absolute divorces, and, therefore, represent double the amount of
alimony. The average divorce means an annual alimony of $1,000. This strikes
the average between the ex- wife of a financier who may draw several thou-
sands a month and the ex-wife of a truckman who is awarded three dollars a
week as her just share of her former husband's earnings The woman who
pursues easy alimony is a new figure in the social body, an economic and social
factor with which modern thought must reckon. She is a veritable thorn in the
side of feminism, and the despair of those who exploit woman's fitness for
economic, political and social independence of man.
THE Spectator, an insurance weekly of New York City, lately
published its annual statistics of the homicide rate in thirty lead-
ing cities of the United States.
Since 1885 these statistics have been kept by some thirty leading cities that
pay particular attention to vital statistics. From 1885 to 1894 the homicide
rate for these cities was 4.8 to 100,000 inhabitants, from 1895 to 1904 it was 5,
and from 1904 to 1915 it was 8.1. The average for the last ten years was
about 7.9, but for 1914 the rate was 8.6. The rate for Memphis for the ten
years ending in 1914 was 63.7 to the 100,000, which is thirty times the annual
rate for Australia, for instance, and more than twice the rate of the next
highest city, Charleston, South Carolina. The high rate in Southern cities is
ascribed by many authorities to the tendency of the negroes to become violent
during petty quarrels, but, as the New York Post points out, Baltimore has a
large negro population and its homicide rate is less than that of Boston, Cleve-
land or Chicago. From this the Post argues that the homicide rate is due not
so much to the character of the population as to the laxity of the public
officials who are responsible for the maintenance of order in the community.
For the five years ending in 1913 the murder rate in this country, computed
on the basis of figures compiled in the registration area, was 6.4 to the 100,000
inhabitants. The rate in England and Wales was .8; in Prussia, .2; in Italy,
3.6; in Australia, 1.09.
The Churchman from which we quote the figures, says that the
statistics indicate " a deplorable state of affairs, which seems to be
growing worse. The lawlessness that produces murder is not only not
being repressed but is growing in intensity. The American record
in murder and the American record in divorce are not subjects which
can excite national congratulation or be used as arguments for a
superior social order." The record in divorce is a safe index to 1 the
general moral, or immoral, condition of a people in all its human
relations.
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 283
IT must be remembered that the fathers of our country never in-
tended to divorce religion from education. They are un-American
who champion such a divorce. It is well worth while to recall the
words of that famous American, Daniel Webster, spoken as early
as 1844. When he speaks of "Morality without sentiment ; benevolence
towards man, without a sense of responsibility towards God ; the duties
of this life performed without any reference to the life which is to
come," he describes accurately the opinions and aims of many present-
day educators who are not influential in moulding the prevailing system
of public education.
WEBSTER continues, showing the essential connection between re-
ligion and morality :
It is all idle, it is a mockery and an insult to common sense to maintain
that a school for the instruction of youth from which Christian instruction by
Christian teachers is sedulously and rigorously shut out is not deistical and
infidel both in its purposes and in its tendencies.
This scheme of education is derogatory to Christianity, because
it proceeds upon the presumption that the Christian religion is not the
only true foundation, or any necessary foundation, of morals. The ground
taken is, that religion is not necessary to morality; that benevolence may be
insured by habit, and that all the virtues may flourish, and be safely left to the
chance of flourishing, , without touching the waters of the living spring of
religious responsibility. With him who thinks thus, what can be the value
of the Christian revelation? So the Christian world has not thought; for by
that Christian world, throughout its broadest extent, it has been, and is, held as
a fundamental truth, that religion is the only solid basis of morals, and that
moral instruction not resting on this basis is only a building upon sand. And
at what age of the Christian era have those who professed to teach the Chris-
tian religion, or to believe in its authority and importance, not insisted on the
absolute necessity of inculcating its principles and its precepts upon the minds
of the young? In what age, by what sect, where, when, by whom, has religious
truth been excluded from the education of youth? Nowhere; never. Every-
where, and at all times, it has been, and is, regarded as essential. It is of the
essence, the vitality, of usual instruction.
The first great commandment teaches man that there is one, and only one,
great First Cause, one and only one, proper object of human worship. This is the
great, the ever-fresh, the overflowing fountain of all revealed truth. Without it,
human life is a desert, of no known termination on any side, but shut in on all
sides by a dark and impenetrable horizon. Without the light of this truth, man
knows nothing of his origin, and nothing of his end. And when the Decalogue
was delivered to the Jews, with this great announcement and command at its
head, what said the inspired lawgiver? That it should be kept from the chil-
dren? That it should be reserved as a communication fit only for mature age?
Far, far otherwise. "And these words, which I command thee this day,
284 WITH OUR READERS [May,
shall be in thy heart. And thou shall teach them diligently unto thy children,
and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest
by thy way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."
There is an authority still more imposing and awful. When little children
were brought into the presence of the Son of God, His disciples proposed to
send them away ; but He said : " Suffer little children to come unto Me."
Unto Me; He did not send them first for lessons in morals to the schools
of the Pharisees or to the unbelieving Sadducees, nor to read the precepts and
lessons phylacteried on the garments of the Jewish priesthood, He said nothing
of different creeds or clashing doctrines; but He opened at once to the youthful
mind the everlasting fountain of living waters, the only source of eternal truths:
" Suffer little children to come unto Me." And that injunction is a perpetual
obligation. It addresses itself to-day with the same earnestness and the same
authority which attended its first utterance to the Christian world. It is of force
everywhere, and at all times. It extends to the ends of the earth, it will reach
to the end of time, always and everywhere sounding in the ears of men, with
an emphasis which no repetition can weaken, and with an authority which
nothing can supersede : " Suffer little children to come unto Me."
Since the introduction of Christianity, it has been the duty, as it has been the
effort, of the great and the good, to sanctify human knowledge, to bring it to the
fount, and to baptize learning into Christianity; to gather up all its productions,
its earliest and its latest, its blossoms and its fruits, and lay them all upon
the altar of religion and virtue.
********
IF the Christian religion is to be excluded from the education of
the young, Mr. Webster asks :
What would become of their morals, their character, their purity
of heart and life, their hope for time and eternity? What would become
of all those thousand ties of sweetness, benevolence, love, and Christian feeling,
that now render our young men and young maidens like comely plants growing
up by a streamlet's side; the graces and the grace of opening manhood, of
blossoming womanhood? What would become of all that now renders the
social circle lovely and beloved? What would become of society itself? How
could it exist? And is that to be considered a charity which strikes at the
root of all this; which subverts all the excellence and the charms of social
life; which tends to destroy the very foundation and framework of society,
both in its practices and in its opinions ; which subverts the whole decency, the
whole morality, as well as the whole Christianity and government, of society?
No, sir! No, sir!
manner in which the representatives of the Panama Congress,
1 through " regional " conferences, are working to mislead the
people of South America is evident from the first " congress " of this
kind, held at Lima, Peru. The speakers refrained from all abuse of
the Catholic Faith. Such abuse would, too evidently, have been un-
profitable. They concealed, by kind words, their intention to uproot
that Faith. According to one of the delegates to this conference:
I 9 i6.] WITH OUR READERS 285
" There was neither desire nor time in the meetings for abuse of the
present National Religion, i. e., the Catholic Faith." But the absence
of abuse is not in itself any proof of charity. Charity's principal
foundation is truth. And it is uncharitable as well as dishonest for
these conferences to attempt to carry on their campaign in South
America under false colors. " Something of the right kind of wis-
dom," says the same delegate, writing in The West Coast Leader of
Lima, March 9, 1916, " was shown by the man who advocated the
dropping of the word Protestant for the term Evangelical, as the
former word, to the ordinary Roman Catholic, meant a flood of
memories he had been educated to attach to a sixteenth century
schism."
* * # *
IT is just that " sixteenth century schism " that these conferences
are endeavoring to carry into South America. That was a rebel-
lion against the Catholic Church : and this is an attempt to uproot the
Catholic Faith. The Protestant bodies who are undertaking this work
are willing to tolerate all differences and all denials of Christian truth
among themselves, so long as they can unite on the one issue opposi-
tion to the Catholic Church. " It is the wish of the Congress," reports
the same delegate, " to form a National Church, and to this end co-
operation is desirable wherever possible. One joint-name for all
bodies was advocated with sub-title, if desired, as the innumerable
branches of Protestantism are a stumbling-block to the Peruvian man-
in-the-street who has been taught that Rome is undivided."
THE testimony of this delegate is rather interesting and should be
of importance in certain quarters where there is a doleful lack
of information concerning South America, and wherein that land is
constantly referred to as " the neglected continent." It Is interesting,
surely, to be informed that the ordinary Roman Catholic in South
America has been educated even if it be only to the extent that the
word " Protestant " is inevitably associated with a " sixteenth century
schism." He may, perhaps, be educated in some other things also.
Yes, the Peruvian man-in-the-street has been taught that Rome is
undivided. Moreover, another Evangelical delegate, Mr. C. J. Ewald
of Buenos Aires, points out that there are some great South American
writers and that they have showed themselves opposed to the Evan-
gelical movement. The testimony referred to also points out that the
delegates to the Lima Congress really knew nothing about Peru. This
delegate states that "they did not know what 'Quichua' meant or whether
Indians strutted about Lima's streets in feathers:" they went away
" impressed by a first-hand knowledge of the greatness and the varied
needs of Peru."
286 WITH OUR READERS [May,
WE have frequently pointed out to our readers that these disedifying
and deceitful methods of missionary propaganda have not re-
ceived the support of many leading Protestants. And evidence to this
effect is increasing. For example, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop
Anderson of Chicago, wrote the following in his diocesan magazine,
under the heading, " The Panama Congress :"
If we can help South America, in the name of God, let us do it. Let us
be sure, however, that we help and not hinder. Protestant propagandism in
Latin countries has not so far demonstrated great skill in ministering to the
people. The missions in Italy, France, Spain, and Quebec and elsewhere they
are all preeminently respectable and preeminently unsuccessful. It looks as
though the Latin people and the Latin Church must travel together. Perhaps
we can help them by administering to our own people in their midst, and trying
to set a good example. Perhaps in this way we can help them to be better
Catholics. To try to help them by converting them from Catholicism to
Protestantism is to hurt them. The converted Catholic does not make a good
Protestant Has the Panama Congress any special genius for making South
Americans better Catholics? If not, the Episcopal Church will serve a broader
purpose by keeping out of it.
* * * *
IN a plea for " A Better Way for Missions," which is a courteous
but emphatic protest against the methods of the Panama Congress,
a writer in The Living Church says:
The nations of modern Europe were brought to Christ through their own
apostles and fellow-countrymen, chosen men of God, men of rank and learning
and power and intellect, who became the saviours and patron saints of the
nations, and whose great names echo down the ages: Columba, Augustine of
Canterbury, Cyril and Methodius among the Slavs, Patrick in Ireland, Ulfilas,
the Apostle of the Goths, Martin of Tours, Boniface, the Spiritual Teacher of
Germany, and later the great Jesuits.
If we hope in our modern missions to continue the work of past ages
and to finish the work of converting the world which they so grandly began,
we must be able again to command their great faith, we must seek better
methods and find greater men In only one respect the possession of
money for the task do we excel them, but money is ot able to work this
miracle. It is only the methods of missions, the inadequacy of missions, the
crudity of missionaries and the pitifully slight result of all our efforts and of
our vast expenditure of money which humiliate and discourage us and which
awaken the scornful criticism of educated travelers He who aims at chang-
ing the civilization of an ancient people should at least understand the principles
of the civilization he aims at modifying, nor should the missionary expose him-
self to contempt and gain the ill-will of his people by his ignorance of those
principles of conduct which every well-bred person is supposed to observe.
IT is frequently said that to-day is the day of the specialist, and
unless a man claim to be a specialist of one kind or another, he is
often without honor. Now the specialist is, by his very name, sup-
posed to confine his activities to one particular line of investigation
igi6.] BOOKS RECEIVED 287
and research, or, perhaps, to one part of the line. Happy is the man
who can break away from this modern restraint and feel himself
free to explore at will many portions of the field of knowledge. For
years, Dr. James J. Walsh has not only explored, but given to the public
in many works the results of his exploration. Literature; science
and the history of science, and scientists; history, ecclesiastical and
secular, have been treated by him in book and on the lecture platform.
Only a man of exceptional energy could write so much, travel so exten-
sively, and give his interest and support to so many good public causes.
Dr. Walsh's heart is like his mind big and ready to see and to serve.
His work in the way of Catholic apologetics would alone have won
him a place among the distinguished Catholic laymen of America.
Since 1910 he has been a Knight Commander of the Order of St.
Gregory, and we, and all readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD who know
his writings well, will welcome the fresh honor just bestowed on him
by Notre Dame University the Laetare Medal for 1916.
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Meditations on the Mysteries of Our Holy Faith. By C. W. Barraud, SJ.
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French of Abbe M. Caron by Edith Staniforth. 75 cents net.
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Spens. $1.75 net. Cuba Old and New. By A. G. Robinson. $1.75. The
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G. Chittenden. $1.35 net.
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A. Birmingham. $1.25 net.
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A WarwicksJiire Lad. By G. M. Martin. $1.00 net. Through South
America's Southland. By J. A. Zahm. $3.50 net.
THE MACMILLAN Co., New York:
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morocco, $150.00.
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. CIII.
JUNE, 1916.
No. 615.
THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY.
(ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.)
BY HENRY SOMERVILLE.
HERE has arisen in modern times a movement of secu-
lar philanthropy which has been a rival, and to some
extent an adversary, of Catholic charity. The move-
ment of which we speak may be said to have begun
in 1833 when the report of the English Poor Law
Commission was issued. That Commission was appointed in con-
sequence of the evils which resulted from the poor law system
established in England by Queen Elizabeth, after the monasteries
and other ancient organs of charitable relief in England had been
destroyed by the Reformation. The State system of relief intro-
duced by Protestantism had, it is universally admitted, a very evil
effect on the characters of those whom it was designed to benefit.
Relief had the effect of " pauperizing " its recipients, that is, of
weakening in them habits of industry and self-help, and creating
in them a chronic habit of depending on alms for their livelihood.
The Commission of 1833, noting the pauperizing effects of
relief under the then existing poor law system, recommended that
no relief at all be given, except in the most extreme cases of desti-
tution, and then only under the most stringent conditions, so as
to deter others from applying for relief. The reformed Poor Law
of 1834 embodied the policy recommended by the Commission.
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cm. 19
290 THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY [June,
The new law was in some respects a remarkable success. The ex-
tent of pauperism was very greatly reduced. In other respects the
law was not a success for it created new evils as bad as the old
ones which it had remedied. But we are not here concerned with
the history of the reformed English Poor Law, except in so far
as it helped to determine the character of modern secular phil-
anthropy.
The reform of 1834 did act powerfully in America and Eng-
land to make men regard charity from a purely utilitarian point of
view. It was seen that much charity was misdirected, and produced
mischievous instead of beneficial results. We cannot stop now to
trace the development which has resulted in the distortion of the
Christian meaning of charity, so that now that most beautiful of
words is actually ill-sounding to many ears. What we want to
point out is that in the nineteenth century all charitable activities
came under critical examination, and there arose a movement for
the organization of charity on strictly utilitarian principles. It was
urged that charity should be regarded as entirely a matter of busi-
ness, and the object should be the maximum return for the minimum
of expenditure. When the new principles came to be put into
effect the organization of charity often meant simply the absence
of charity. It feared so much the dangers of pauperization, and
it esteemed so highly the saving of expenditure, that it flattered
itself with having achieved its objects when it had merely left
the poor to go without help.
Apart from local and temporary errors, however, the charity
organization movement did much that was good; it undoubtedly
brought the administrative methods of both public and private
relieving agencies to higher standards of efficiency. So much study
has been devoted in recent years to the principles and methods of
charity organization that there is now an elaborate science of
philanthropy with a huge literature of its own, with special schools
for its teaching like the New York School of Philanthropy, and
with endowed research, like that conducted by the Russell Sage
Foundation. Not only is philanthropy a science, it has become
a profession also, with hundreds of trained practitioners in this
country. For it is one of the canons of the science that every
kind of social worker must be trained in order to be efficient, and
so we are seeing the amateur social worker being superseded by
the professional.
Scientific philanthropy is secular, utilitarian ; it is, as we have
I9i6.] THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 291
said, a rival, and sometimes an adversary, of Catholic charity.
There are some things in scientific philanthropy that are detestably
bad, but there is much that is good. We shall not in this article
say anything about the bad, but we propose to show that the good
belongs, by right of ancient possession, to Catholicism. The
literature of scientific philanthropy takes for granted that its
principles are modern discoveries. The importance of charity or-
ganization was not found out until the nineteenth century.
" Mediaeval almsgiving " is the stock synonym of the up-to-date
philanthropists for all that is wasteful and pauperizing in methods
of relief. It is commonly assumed that charity in Catholic coun-
tries has been, and is, a means of degrading multitudes. And it is
explained to us that the reason for all this is that Catholics are
taught to give alms for the good of their own souls, to lay up
treasures in heaven, not to benefit the recipient. For a learned
dissertation on the unenlightened character of Catholic charity see
the article on " Charity " in The Encyclopedia Britannica.
But history vindicates the Church. Would that we Catholics
were aware of our birthright. We know that the Church was the
creator of Christian charity, of that spirit which covered Europe
with hospitals, which made men give themselves as galley slaves
that others might be freed, which inspired St. Elizabeth to leave
her royal palace, and wash with her own hands the bodies of
lepers. The supreme heroes and martyrs of charity are unques-
tionably ours, but do we realize that the pioneers, the geniuses of
charity organization are also ours, that the world owes to the Church
the science, as well as the spirit, of charity?
It would be impossible to single out any one of the Church's
saints as the most perfect exemplar of personal charity, or as the
greatest benefactor of humanity; but there is no invidiousness in
saying that the saint who is preeminently the apostle of charity
organization is St. Vincent de Paul, he whom the Holy See has
declared to be the special patron of charitable works throughout the
Universal Church, as St. Thomas Aquinas is the patron of the
schools. St. Vincent is the Aquinas of charity. A great French
bishop said : " St. Vincent has been - endowed by God with the
genius of organization, and like St. Thomas Aquinas, has be-
queathed to the Christian world his Summa the Summa of his
works. He gathered into his own soul all that Catholic devoted-
ness has ever furnished, from which he might learn how to relieve
suffering and poverty, and completing the heritage of the past
292 THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY [June,
by broader views and new conceptions, he has transmitted to future
generations the organization of charity which the Catholic Church
may justly claim as one of her greatest glories in modern times."
There is scarcely a single form of charitable activity existing
in America at the present time that was not successfully under-
taken by St. Vincent in France three centuries ago. He reformed
the treatment of prisoners; he built free schools for working-
class children, he founded homes for deserted infants; he arranged
vocational training for young lads and girls; he established homes
for' the aged and anticipated the demands of the most advanced of
modern philanthropists by providing that husband and wife should
not be separated, as is the case in most institutions, but that each
old couple should spend their remaining days together. St. Vincent
made such adequate provision for the regular relief of the destitute
that there was left no excuse for street begging, which was accord-
ingly abolished. He recruited and trained what have been called
his armies of charity, lay men and lay women, as well as the con-
secrated Sisters of Charity, to visit and relieve the poor in their
own homes ; and he organized a vast work for relieving provinces
devastated by war which compares only with what has been done
by the American Committee for relief in Belgium.
St. Vincent was born in 1576 and he died in 1660, his life
being passed in one of the stormiest periods of ecclesiastical and
secular history. The ancient unity of Christendom had been de-
stroyed, and Europe was already divided into Catholic and Prot-
estant States, but it was not yet decided which side would hold the
supremacy in Europe. The Catholics in England still had hopes of
restoring the Faith in their country; the Huguenots had not de-
spaired of a Protestant conquest of France. The tragedy of the
time was that France, a Catholic country, joined forces with the
Protestant princes to overthrow Catholic Austria, then the leading
power in Europe. Religion was at a low ebb in France. Such
typical worldlings as Cardinals Richelieu, Mazarin and de Retz
held the government of Church and State during St. Vincent's
adult life. Chronic warfare had filled the country with widows,
orphans, cripples and discharged soldiers, who lived mostly by
beggary and pillage. St. Vincent was engaged in all the works of
his time; in the reform of the clergy; in the establishment of the
seminary system as laid down by the Council of Trent; in fight-
ing the abuses of ecclesiastical patronage by corrupt politicians; in
combating heresy; in reconciling hostile factions of a civil war;
I9i6.] THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 293
in sending out home and foreign missionaries, and in righting the
Turks. His charitable institutions, vast as they are, represented
but a tithe of his activities, and we would get a false view of
his character if we did not remember his labors in other fields.
The son of a poor peasant, St. Vincent was educated for the
priesthood, and was ordained at the age of twenty-four. After
seventeen years, full of valuable experiences and good works, we
find him a cure of the little town of Chatillon, where his charitable
organization may be said to have begun. One day he was about
to offer Mass, when a lady asked him to recommend to the charity
of his parishioners a certain poor family, all of whose members
were sick. The Saint spoke on behalf of the family, and in the
afternoon he set out to visit them. He found that a large number
of people, moved by his appeal, had already been there with gifts
of food and money. " Behold noble but ill-regulated charity " ex-
claimed St. Vincent. " These poor people, provided with too much
now, must allow some to perish, and then they will be again in
want as before." The Saint immediately set himself to find a
remedy. He brought together some of the ladies of his parish,
and pointed out to them the deficiencies of unsystematized charity.
" I suggested to them," the Saint tells us himself, " to club together
to do the needful every day, not only for this poor family, but
for others that might turn up in future. This was the beginning
of the Association of Charity."
A copy of the rules of the Association, drawn up by St. Vin-
cent, were discovered in 1839, in the archives of Chatillon. The
Association was to consist of lay women, married and single. There
was to be a president, elected by the members, and also an assistant-
president and a treasurer. The members were to visit only those
cases which had been referred to, and approved by, the three officers.
The member deputed to visit a particular family was to obtain food
from the treasurer, cook it, and take it to the invalids. The visitor
was to serve the food to the invalid and perform other services,
as washing, and converse with the sick person cheerfully and re-
ligiously. The assistance given was to be regular and adequate.
The visitor was to go each day, not only with dinner, but with
supper also when needed. This is the institution of the system of
visiting the poor in their own homes by lay workers. St. Vincent's
rules conform to the standards set by the modern teachers of scien-
tific philanthropy. Assistance was preceded by investigation,
friendly intercourse was fostered; religious guidance as well as
294 THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY [June,
material help was given, and the help was not spasmodic, or in-
sufficient, but regular and adequate.
With the cooperation of Madame de Gondi, mistress of one
of the greatest aristocratic houses in France, St. Vincent soon after-
wards established in thirty other villages Associations similar to that
at Chatillon. A year later, in 1618, at Folleville, he introduced
another innovation by forming an Association of Charity for men.
The men were to have charge of the healthy poor, the children,
the young people and the old, leaving the care of the sick to the
women. A few months later, at the town of Joigny, St. Vincent
organized a most drastic reform scheme at the request of the
municipal authorities. He undertook to provide suitable relief for
each of the different classes of dependents, and at the same time to
suppress mendicity in the streets. This is what St. Vincent says :
" The Association is intended for the spiritual and corporal as-
sistance of the poor spiritually by teaching Christian doctrine and
piety; and corporally by procuring employment for those who
could work, and assisting those who could not. In this way they
fulfill the command of God in the fifteenth chapter of Deuteronomy,
enjoining us to act that there shall be no poor nor beggar among
you. The number of the poor having been ascertained, and each
having obtained aid proportionate to his want, they are prohibited
from begging under penalty of having the aid withdrawn, and the
public are forbidden to give alms."
Work for the able-bodied, and proportionate assistance to those
wholly or partly incapable of self-support : this was St. Vincent's
programme. There were already hospitals in existence for cases
of sickness needing institutional care; the sick poor in their own
homes were attended by the women of the Association of Charity;
those incapable of work, but not needing frequent visitation, re-
ceived alms according to their necessities, the alms being distributed
at a church each Sunday where the recipients assembled to hear
Mass and a sermon. Tramps were not forgotten: St. Vincent
established for them night refuges where supper and lodging were
given to them, and they were sent on their road next morning with
two sous each. Young boys were either apprenticed to useful
trades, as weaving, the indenture fees being paid by the Association,
or they were employed in special workshops which St. Vincent
established. These workshops manufactured woolen socks or
similar articles, and were managed by a qualified master workman
who taught the young lads the trade. There were, of course, the
1916.] THE APOSTLf, OP ORGANIZED CHARITY 295
rfiost careful regulations for the Religious, as well as the industrial
training of the boys.
How did St. Vincent get the money for his undertakings?
He resorted to a multitude of means, many of which are mistakenly
thought to be modern inventions. He canvassed for permanent
subscriptions from bishops and priests, lords and merchants,
peasants and artisans. He had collections at church doors and from
house-to-house. He had little collecting boxes in hotels, such as
we see to-day on the counters of banks and other places. He se-
cured that certain fines imposed by the judges should be paid to
the Association of Charity, and also the proceeds of certain taxes.
At a later date we find him publishing a newspaper in order to
enlist public interest and support for his charitable works.
At Paris, St. Vincent formed the assembly known as the Ladies
of Charity, which was somewhat different from the Associations
of Charity. The Ladies of Charity were about three hundred in
number, and they included the Queen and persons of the highest
rank in France. The assembly was first formed to visit the patients
in the great hospital called the Hotel Dieu, but it became an or-
ganization for seconding all sorts of charitable projects of St. Vin-
cent de Paul. The ladies raised extraordinary sums of money for
those days. It was through the Ladies of Charity that St. Vincent
accomplished his work for foundlings, which, of all his labors, has
most touched the imagination of the world and made his name
venerated. One night as the Saint wa's walking through a street,
he saw a wretched beggar in the act of maiming a child, in order
the better to excite compassion for begging purposes. The horrified
Saint seized the child and took it to a place called the " Couche,"
which existed to receive foundlings. St. Vincent related the in-
cident to the Ladies of Charity, who arranged what American news-
papers call a " probe " into the work of the Couche. They found
it a poorhouse, badly organized, and kept by a widow and two
servants. According to official reports about four hundred chil-
dren were admitted each year. There was disgraceful trafficking
in the children. They were sold or abandoned at will. Often
they were left to die without baptism. St. Vincent and the Ladies of
Charity inaugurated a system of inspection to prevent ill-treatment
and ensure baptism. They took away a few of the children, who
were chosen by drawing lots. But the Saint felt they must take
charge of all the children, and he urged this upon the ladies. A
great "campaign" was organized to finance a foundling jjpspital.
296 THE APOSTLE OP ORGANIZED CHARITY [June,
The King gave an annuity of eight thousand francs, a number of
noblemen raised this sum to forty thousand, and the Queen and the
Ladies of Charity were equally generous. But owing to the large
numbers of foundlings, and failures of subscriptions and to the
war of the Fronde, it required superhuman efforts and courage on
the part of St. Vincent to prevent the work being abandoned.
The assembly of the Ladies of Charity gave rise to the institu-
tion of the Sisters of Charity, which had become one of the most
glorious organizations in the Church. Their beginnings were of
the humblest, but exceedingly interesting to anyone experienced
even in a small way in the difficulties of organization, as showing
that the human nature we meet with to-day was present in St.
Vincent's associates. The Ladies of Charity, as we have said, were
the great ones of the land. Some of them heroines of charity, to
whom no work was too great or too small. But others were less
heroic. They could not persevere in the work of personal visits to
the poor, and sometimes when their intentions were good they were
not capable of any practical service. So some of these great dames
began to send their servants in their stead. These were not al-
ways satisfactory. St. Vincent decided to obtain some suitable
assistants for the Ladies of Charity, who would nurse and visit
the sick poor. He knew that among the humbler classes of people
there were many pious and competent girls who were not anxious
to marry, nor yet thinking of entering religious communities, who
could do excellent work for the poor. He brought a number of
these girls together, lodged them in the houses of Ladies of Charity,
and allotted a certain number to visit the poor of each parish.
After a while it was found necessary to give some training to
these girls, and so they were all lodged in one house under a
directress, who was the great and saintly Mademoiselle le Gras.
A long time passed before St. Vincent allowed any to bind herself
to the work by religious vows. It was almost in spite of his
designs that the Sisters of Charity grew into a great religious
order. The constitution that St. Vincent did finally decide upon
for the Sisters was something then quite novel in the history of
the Church, and he had to overcome much opposition before he
could get his rules approved. Heretofore Religious had always
taken solemn vows which involved enclosure and legal inability to
marry or inherit or bequeath property; or they had taken simple
but perpetual vows. St. Vincent felt, and it was practically the
unanimous view of all other holy directors, that to send young
1916.] THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 297
women bound by perpetual vows into the streets and garrets of
Paris was altogether inadvisable. St. Vincent determined that his
Sisters should either take no vows at all or bind themselves only
for one year, so that they could freely engage in the work of visiting
the poor. It was a bold undertaking, and though many of the re-
ligious communities of women within the past three hundred years
have adopted the rule of terminable vows, it is easy to understand
the opposition to the novelty in its first days. " You are not Re-
ligious in the strict sense," said St. Vincent to the Sisters, " and
never can be, because of the service of the poor. You must,
therefore, be holier than Religious, since you have greater tempta-
tions and less security." And again he says : " The Sister of
Chanty shall have for her convent the house of the sick, for her
cell the chamber of suffering, for her chapel the parish church, for
her cloister the streets of the city or the wards of a hospital.
Obedience shall be her enclosure, the fear of God her grate, and
modesty her veil."
The time was coming when the organizations that St. Vincent
had created were to be put to the greatest test. In 1633, when our
Saint was in his fifty-seventh year, France was invaded by Austrian
troops. Fighting in those days was no chivalrous business. In-
stead of regular and disciplined troops there were armies of hired
mercenaries who depended on their pay for what they could pillage.
It was quite the recognized principle to destroy harvests, cut down
fruit trees and lay waste whole districts in order to starve out the
enemy. Chiefly as a consequence of the war, famine raged in
Lorraine and other frontier provinces for close upon twenty years.
Famine was exceeded in horror by pestilence. Corn could not be had
at any price. The poor died of hunger. The streets were strewn
with the bodies of the dead and the dying. Wolves entered the
towns and devoured the corpses. Mothers killed their own chil-
dren for food. St. Vincent set himself the task of relieving these
provinces ravaged by war, famine and plague.
We have few details of what was done between 1633 and 1640.
Money was sent to Lorraine by the Associations of Charity, but
apparently it was thought that the distress could not last and no
adequate organization was attempted. After 1640 relief was in-
creased and systematized. A definite sum of money was sent
monthly to particular towns, as Nancy, Verdun and Metz. In this
way thirty thousand livres a year were distributed. By 1651 the
amount had increased to one hundred and eighty thousand livres in
298 THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY [June,
a year. It is estimated that during the war St. Vincent's relief
fund amounted to over twelve million livres. The Ladies of Charity
were his great contributors and collectors. The Queen Regent,
when she had exhausted her money, sent St. Vincent her jewels,
which were sold by the Ladies of Charity for eighteen thousand
livres. St. Vincent carried his begging still further, says Monsignor
Bougaud, the Saint's best modern biographer : " There were others
who had more than the Queen; there was the public. Our Saint
conceived the courageous idea of using the press in favor of
charity. His missioners, spread over the scene of war, sent most
touching accounts of the sufferings. These the Saint had published
and distributed them at the church doors. Soon they became peri-
odicals, appearing every month, and read with such eagerness that
the first numbers had to be reprinted A paper even was
founded called the Magazine of Charity with the express object of
promoting the great movement of charity."
The funds were collected chiefly by the Ladies of Charity;
the food and other provisions were transported to the devastated
provinces, and there distributed by the Vincentian Priests of the
Mission and the Sisters of Charity. Of the exalted heroism of
these priests and holy women, many of whom died through over-
work and pestilence, martyrs of charity, we have not space here
to speak, as we are studying only the organizing methods of St.
Vincent. The three chief corporal works of mercy in St. Vincent's
relief scheme were the feeding of the hungry, the burial of the
dead, and the provision of seed so as to obtain the following year's
crop. The feeding of the hungry was done by soup kitchens, as
it is being done in Belgium to-day, and was conducted by the Sis-
ters of Charity. In many towns the families of the highest rank
were glad to accept this relief. Some districts of Paris were
crowded with fugitives, and here there were ten thousand daily in
the " soup line." In the towns of all the eastern provinces of France
there was the same distress and the same relief.
Whilst feeding the hungry, St. Vincent was also performing
the functions of a Minister of Public Health. In towns and vil-
lages, in streets and fields, thousands of human and animal bodies lay
unburied, spreading forth corruption and disease. Priests of the
Mission and Sisters of Charity, together with layfolk whom they
enlisted, set to work to bury the dead. It was ghastly and dan-
gerous work, in which many lost their lives. St. Vincent was
also like a Minister of Agriculture: with his eustomary prevision
I9i6.] THE APOSTLE OF ORGANIZED CHARITY 299
he thought of the following year's harvest. He was therefore
careful to provide seed for the land. He collected huge quantities
of every kind of grain seed from the parts of France that had
escaped the famine, and he sent the seed to the afflicted provinces.
Within two months of one year he spent twenty thousand livres for
this purpose.
So effective was the work of the sons and daughters of St.
Vincent in this crisis, that the King of France issued a proclama-
tion endowing the Priests of the Mission and the Sisters of Charity
with special legal securities and powers. " By this warrant," says
Monsignor Bougaud, " St. Vincent ceases to act as a private in-
dividual and becomes the royal Almoner- General, to whom is be-
queathed the noblest gift of all the power to do good. The
humble peasant of the Landes by his charity became the strongest
support of the kingdom in its hour of trial, and merited to be
called by the Governor of St. Quentin the father of his country."
The highest quality of St. Vincent was not his genius for or-
ganization, extraordinary though that was; and his best work was
not what he did to .alleviate human suffering, though no man in
history has ever done more. It is only with the least of his labors
that this sketch deals, but it is sufficient to show that the most
representative of Catholic social workers was as thoroughly "scienti-
fic," and infinitely more successful in charity organization than the
best of modern secular philanthropists. There are signs that secular
scientific philanthropy is developing on lines more and more opposed
to the principles and practice of Catholic charity. If we Catholics
are to meet our opponents successfully, we must remember that the
traditional charity of the Church is both supernatural and scientific.
WHAT IS DOGMA?
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
OST writers of the day airily assume that a dogma is
a philosophical theory in no way connected with the
facts of the Gospel. They will tell you scarcely
keeping their patience the while that Christianity
is a life, not a credal utterance or body of doctrine;
and should you demur to this falsest of false contrasts now
finding its way into print from unnumbered pens, you will promptly
be told that history has settled the matter and not left it open to
review. This dogmatic assurance about the nature of dogma has
the courage of ignorance betimes. Not long since a writer who
shall be nameless he was a preacher in search of a larger audience
than thronged about his pulpit had the audacity to ascribe the
origin of the present war in Europe to the dogmas of the Catholic
religion " cold syllogistic abstractions " he called them, that had
nothing to do with life, salvation, or conduct. He treated his
readers as, no doubt, he had ofttimes regaled his flock, with a
picturesque portrayal of what is bound to happen when religion
abandons the heart and takes up its abode in the intellect. It
would be hard to say which was the more crude exhibition of mis-
judgment what he said of the war and its causes, or his utterly
unfounded notion of dogma.
The motley group now denouncing dogmatic religion should
acquaint themselves with the subject of their criticism, and let the
fact sink into their superficial consciousness, that dogmas are pri-
marily concepts not theories, not conclusions, not interpretations,
not explanations at all. Take the statement, " The Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us." You understand it on the
utterance of the terms. It contains a certain amount of religious
knowledge that has never increased a jot or tittle since the first
Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit in tongues of fire descended upon
the Apostles who were to preach it to the world. It is a knowl-
edge about a fact, a definite fact, than which none more concerning
exists since time began. The Apostles had as much knowledge of
this fact as you, so far as powers of apprehending go. Your knowl-
edge of it is no greater than theirs. If you start to reason about it,
1916.] WHAT IS DOGMA? 301
to draw conclusions from it, or to offer explanations of its nature
to do anything, in fact, but analyze its contents it is no longer a
dogma, it has become theology, -which is quite another and distinct
thing; for dogmas are revealed concepts, and theology consists
of concepts that are reasoned a difference that critics have failed
to note, to their discredit be it said. No intelligent reader needs to
be told twice that conclusions deduced by reason from some re-
vealed premise or other stand on a different footing altogether
from truths not inferred, but immediately apprehended. This
most important point will become clearer, we hope, as the sub-
ject unfolds.
Technically speaking, a dogma is a truth revealed by God and,
as such, proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful.
Its sources the places where we find it are Scripture and tradi-
tion the latter a living and continuous belief and teaching, no dull
and lifeless record of the past. The Catholic does not exhume his
faith merely out af documents, after the fashion of his dissenting
brethren to whom the sole rule of faith is Holy Writ. The Church
existed as a teaching body before the books recording her divine
institution were composed. Her relation to these written embodi-
ments of the Word is proportionally the same as that of the United
States Supreme Court to the written constitution of the Republic
the living, active, continuous relation of interpreter, custodian, up-
holder, defender, and judge. She attests whether or no a dogma
has been revealed. She can make none, she has never made any;
and you can see for yourself that this is really true if you have
the correct idea of a dogma as a revealed concept. You will never
see it, you will proclaim loudly that dogma after dogma has been
invented, if you approach the study of history with the false idea
in mind that a dogma is not an immediate apprehension, but a
reasoned and constructed conclusion.
There have indeed been dogmas that at one time or another
before their definition were theologically reasoned out and looked
upon as no more than probable conclusions. Of these the Immacu-
late Conception is a conspicuous example. Opinion was consider-
ably divided in the Middle Ages, and long after, concerning the
admissibility of this doctrine, largely owing to the difficulty of recon-
ciling the belief of the faithful with the requirements of systematic
theology. Two universal revealed laws seemed to stand in the
way the law of transmitted sin and the necessity of individual
redemption. As a daughter of Adam, the choice and chosen Mother
302 WHAT IS DOGMA? [June,
of the Nazarene came under the law and necessity of being indi-
vidually redeemed; and some theologians of the day could not see
how this was possible unless for a fractional second she contracted
the hereditary stain. It was a difficulty in systematic theology, due
to a scrupulous desire to keep revelation consistent with itself. And
those who charge the Church with having invented dogmas whole-
sale will find in this particular instance the most eloquent disproof
imaginable of their stereotyped incrimination.
The systematic difficulty mentioned was cleared away by
Scotus when he showed that the Virgin Mother could have been
redeemed anticipatively, in view of the merits of the Son Divine
she was to bear redeemed, that is, not from a stain contracted, but
from one that would have been contracted, had not grace been
beforehand with the law in this noble, special instance. Once it
was seen that the universality of the law of redemption was not
called in question at all, the Blessed Virgin having actually been
redeemed in a higher way, " Our tainted nature's solitary boast "
stood out in all her splendorous purity of soul, from the very first
moment of conception in the womb of her saintly mother Anna.
Grace tarried not in its coming to her who was destined to be the
Maiden Mother of its Author. It came at once and in a flood.
Privation of its hallowing presence she never knew, and that is
why she is the stainless one, the immaculately conceived, the privi-
leged daughter of a race that lost the divine bounties and fell to
purely human levels when the first parents preferred their own good
to God's and received privation for their portion. Theological
reasoning did not create the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
It merely removed an obstacle to the intuition of this dogma in
Scripture and tradition. And when this obstacle was removed,
the dogma was seen to have been revealed, not indeed under its
own proper, immediate concept, but as contained in that other
directly revealed concept the Divine Motherhood of Mary an
integral part of which it really was, and none the less there
because theologians had reasoned for or against its revelation,
had entertained theological scruples or devout prepossessions in
its regard.
The function discharged by theological reasoning in the instance
here under review has been happily likened to the function of mathe-
matical reasoning in scientific fields. The part which mathematics
played in the discovery of the planet Neptune is notorious. In 1821
Bouvard found that his observations of the pull exerted on the earth
I 9 i6.] WHAT IS DOGMA? 303
could not be satisfied by the gravitation of known bodies, and he
hinted at the existence of an undiscovered planet. Further reas-
oned observations during the next twenty years convinced astron-
omers that such a planetary body must exist. In 1846 Adams in
England and Leverrier in France worked out by mathematics the
proximate boundaries of its location in the heavens, and a few
weeks thereafter, Galle of Berlin, leveling the telescope in the
direction indicated beheld the planet to which old Encke gave the
name of Neptune. Systematic difficulties paved the way for this
final finding, and taught astronomers whitherward they should look.
Reasoned conclusion it was, also a direct intuition, this astronomical
discovery. And the theological discovery of the Immaculate Con-
ception was likewise a reasoned conclusion and an unreasoned
intuition. It was not the reasoning that revealed the dogma any
more than it revealed the planet Neptune. The influence of the
discursive faculty was directive, not creative, as in the parallel
instance cited of Leverrier. It was because the dogma could actually
be observed in the galaxy of revealed concepts, that it won its way
finally to definition. It was as an inclusion, not as a conclusion,
that the Church defined it. It was seen included in the revealed
concept, in the very thought of Mary as the Mother of God. Love
thinking saw it there long before thought loving could say the same
not because there was less love than thought in the latter case,
but because there was as much thought as love. It was a matter
of seeing in both instances. No mere moral argument of fitness,
to the effect that she who was to bear the Sinless One must herself
have sinless been; no mere translation of piety into creed, made
Mary immaculate, but the revealed word of God which
slowly unfolded the richness of its content to a living, continuous
community which venerates her not only for having been the
Mother of the Lord in the flesh, but also for having " heard
the word of God and kept it." So that, making all due allowance
for the influence of filial Christian devotion on the one hand and
learned theological reasoning on the other, the dogma of the Immac-
ulate Conception was not, and could not have been, the direct
product of either. And thus the doctrine which we have gone
out of our way somewhat to examine does but serve to confirm
us in the view that a dogma is a concept an implicit, unanalyzed
concept, capable of a further and fuller analysis, rich with un-
developed knowledge which, when the process of its unfolding is
complete, will be found to contain hidden problems and also the
304 WHAT IS DOGMA? [June,
means unto their solving. Dogma is not a theory at all. Theories,
as such, are theology, and they grow not into faith but out of it,
a$ we shall now proceed to show.
That a dogma is not a reasoned conclusion, but a direct, sponta-
neous, vital, factual, empirical concept may be established in a more
effective way still by historical analysis and by a simple fact of
consciousness left out of consideration in the current theories of
knowledge. Let us restore this omitted fact to its proper place in
recognition, and study the effect which this restoration will have
on our conception of what a dogma is and means.
Human knowledge is not composed of technical concepts
merely there is another and previous kind. Concepts of the good,
the true, the beautiful, and the real find lodgment in our minds
long before the abstract notions of truth, beauty, goodness and
reality fill us with their luminous presence. Most men know in a
vague and ill-defined way what meaning to attach to the terms
" nature," " substance," " person " when these are uttered within
their hearing. Human intercourse would become impossible, phil-
osophers themselves would have no material for reflection, unless a
spontaneous knowledge existed of the subjects of discourse. We
would never try to establish God's reality unless we had some notion
of that which we sought to prove; nor could the agnostic declare
God unknowable unless he spontaneously knew what he reflectively
declared unknown. A man does not have to go to school to acquire
his first notions of time, space, eternity, freedom, personality, re-
sponsibility, wrong, sanity, or right; and he may sit on a jury and
be judge of the facts in a case where the life of a fellow-mortal
hangs upon one or other of these slender mental threads. And
when at the end of the trial the judge of the law rose to instruct
the judge of the facts, the latter would recognize the continuity
between the precisive concepts of the lawyer and the ill-defined
intuitions of legal right and wrong which he himself had brought
with him into court, having acquired them he knew not how. Cer-
tainly not from the learned grey-beard of the books.
We have spontaneous concepts, therefore, as well as technical
the fact cannot successfully be denied. There is no use trying
to disguise it by the contention that knowledge first comes to us in
a pure, unadulterated state of feeling, because against that is the
direct testimony of consciousness which shows a concept rising
almost instantly out of even our earliest, most obscure impressions
of the good, the beautiful, and the true. There is no such thing
I9i6.] WHAT IS DOGMA? 305
as having an experience without any thought, without any intel-
lectual knowledge whatsoever of the experience had; no such thing
as reporting a fact or observing it, without at the same time inter-
preting it to some extent, in some degree ; no such thing as having
a sense-intuition divorced and divided from all intellectual percep-
tion. Pure observation, pure experience, pure feeling, pure this
and pure that are paper psychology consciousness is too living a
thing to suffer such cross-sectionings and divisions. Even our
feelings are known to us in and through a concept, not in them-
selves as such a fact which, like the others here summarily men-
tioned, shatters the sentimentalist theories of knowledge recently
built up on separatist distinctions that have no other warrant than
the imagination of their inventors, the will of their devotees.
Taking the facts as they stand, and " nought extenuating,
nought setting down in malice " what light do they throw on the
origin and nature of dogma? A very great deal. Because when
we put back into our theory of knowledge the spontaneous concepts
that precede the scientific, and grow into them as the less perfect
into the more perfect, as the raw material into the finished product,
we can readily see that dogmas were spontaneously apprehended
truths before being distinctly analyzed out into their full rational
significance, and consequently that the modern critic does not and
cannot understand them aright, owing to his attempt to approach
the problem of their origin, nature, and history through a false,
because defective and incomplete theory of knowledge in general.
It is this defective theory which he imposes on the facts. He reads
its defects back into the texts of the Gospel, he carries them forward
into the writings of the Fathers. He boldly attributes to Christ
Himself his own separatist distinction between feeling and knowl-
edge. Finding that the Saviour of men used no technical concepts,
and failing to note that direct concept after direct concept fell from
His lips and were caught by the multitude, he hastily leaps to the
conclusion that dogmas are infiltrations from pagan philosophy
extraneous ideas, foreign elements, heathen footnotes to the Gospel
text, that have corrupted Christ's thought at its very founts and
sullied its whole course in history.
Is this true? Did dogma have the extra-Christian origin
alleged ? Let us inquire into the matter, without preconceptions
of any kind, and with a theory of knowledge that does not settle
the question beforehand by its glaring omissions.
No student of hurnanity, be he believer or unbelieving critic,
VOL. cm. 20
306 WHAT IS DOGMA? [June,
but must admit the uniqueness, the singularity, the unrepeated,
unexampled character of Christ's person. The unbelieving critic
tacitly admits this fact, since he spends an arduous lifetime trying
to explain it away a compliment he pays to no other founder of
religion in history. Christ's person we are not speaking of His
works is a problem for all. It must be explained or reasoned
away, either process implying that we are here in the presence of a
type of manhood out of the ordinary and not in consonance with
rule. This uniqueness of Christ's person is as much a fact to-day
in the twentieth century as it was to the peasant folk of Galilee in
the first. We can no more now than then raise ourselves to His
level or lower Him to ours. Humanitarian theories all break down
in their attempts to explain Him. Say that He is the sinless One,
the Son of God morally, and you have not advanced a solution.
For sinlessness is no common thing, and He Who had it must have
been more than man, on this ground alone. Declare Him the dupe
of a fanciful consciousness, and you have nothing on which to base
the charge. His mind is clear and unhesitating from the begin-
ningno one can point to any crises, any distinct moments of
development in His mental life, and those who do are themselves the
dupes of fancy, mistaking for an actual inward growth of con-
sciousness what they cannot prove to have been anything more than
a prudent, gradual manner of outward self-manifestation. Figure
Him to yourself as sharing the views of His contemporaries on
the authorship of certain psalms, on the proximity of the world's
end, or on whatever else you will, and you forget that you have
no means to any inner knowledge of His mind in itself. You can
reconstruct Christ's mind from its outer manifestations, you cannot
approach it from the inside with any of your vulgar, common
theories of psychology. And this not only because His character
is unique, but for an additional and decisive reason. Between you
and Christ the person, Christ the teacher stands; and, surely, one
would not argue from the prudently chosen limitations of a teaching
method to a corresponding limitation in the personal knowledge
of the teacher the critic should know enough of pedagogy for
that. And should you, on your leveling process bent, essay to
prove Christ more human than ever was man before or since, you
would not in the least, when you were through, thereby have made
Him out to be less divine. The very superabundance of His hu-
manity would itself disprove your thesis of His non-divinity and
leave you with a surplusage of fact for which you have no explana-
1916.] WHAT IS DOGMA? 307
tion to give. Alpha and Omega is He verily, and none have proved
Him such more unwittingly than His enemies.
But, the reader will say, you promised to tell me what dogma
is, historically, and here you are discoursing on the uniqueness of
Christ's person what, pray, has that to do with the subject in
hand ? Everything ! It is the meaning of dogma when approached
from the side of history and with no preconceived theories in mind.
Dogma is the apprehension and assertion of the uniqueness of
Christ Jesus in history the Divinity of His Person, the Divine
authority of His teaching, the necessity of living the life He came
to impart and preach. It is the clear apprehension of this great
fact in ever-growing distinctness, 1 the clear assertion of it against
the years that have been and are yet to be. Christ brought two
things into the world a new thought and a new life. The thought
was essential to the preservation of the life, and that is why Chris-
tianity was a dogmatic religion from the beginning. Wherever the
thought perished, the life went out with it. Men cannot live true
to a special type without knowing what that type is and conforming
to its standard.
Have you doubts upon the matter? Look at all the move-
ments now so busily afoot to identify Christianity outright with
life in the social, industrial, and economic sense. Listen to social-
ist and sciolist proclaiming the Church a failure and why? Be-
cause, forsooth, she concerned herself primarily, as did her Founder,
not with the problem of living, but with the problem of life. The
ignorance of such men as these is the best proof one could wish of
the necessity of dogma. They do not know what life in the Chris-
tian sense means. Christianity is primarily neither a social, nor
an economic, but a religious movement, capable of affecting these
other two profoundly, as the leaven leaveneth the whole mass,
without losing its identity in the process. To identify it with
life in general is to destroy its individual character, to take out of
the soul that special spiritual life which Christ taught and brought,
which dogma is meant to foster, which the workaday world can
enjoy, and be of God, as it feeds the whirring looms. That lone
New Zealander who is destined to sit on a broken pier of London
Bridge and sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, will have a smile to
himself at the expense of the twentieth century which tried to
socialize Christianity instead of Christianizing society the great-
est cross-purpose in history, with its commentary not yet fully
*Foi et Systtmes. Par Bernard Allo, O.P., pp. 223 ff.
3 o8 WHAT IS DOGMA? [June,
written in blood on the plains of Europe. Make religion serve life,
was the cry. What life? Alas! when the fiat went forth, few
stopped to ask themselves that question. They are asking it now
and well they may. Christ answered it when He said nothing
about art, industry, or civilization in His preaching. These were
to be, not the leaven that leaveneth, but the mass that stood in the
need of leavening. Vicisti, Gdilaee!
Some distance further back we had occasion to say that dogma
is not a theory, but the immediate apprehension and assertion of a
fact, and this fact none other than the unique and glorious one,
that Christ the Son of Man is in very truth the Son of God. Christ
taught this conception of His nature to the Apostles and disciples
it was no surmise, no philosophical speculation of theirs. He taught
it to them, not in formal propositions, but by the more efficacious
method of inviting them, through word and deed, to recognize and
state it personally themselves. The idea of His divinity was a
direct empirical concept gathered from the lips of Him Who spoke
and wrought as no man spoke or wrought before; Who alone of all
the founders of religion in history made Himself the object of
the religion which He founded, claiming complete reciprocity of
knowledge with the Father, and the indefeasible right to the obe-
dience and worship of all mankind. Out of this primary appre-
hension, this empirical intuition, this objective experience of His
person, sprang the dogmas of the Christian religion, every one.
They are as a living rosary, each bead commemorative of Him Who
hung upon the rood the voluntary victim of self-sacrifice. It is a
matter of history, plain for all willing folk to see, that the Christian
philosophizing of later centuries developed out of the particular
fact of the person of Jesus and came from no other source. The
earliest faithful had as clear, though not as distinct, a knowledge
of this fact as later ages had, when the problem of the one person
and the two natures, precontained in it from the beginning, became
explicit and was grasped in its full detail.
Nor was the fact taken out of the field of experience, and
thrown up into the lofts of the intellect, when translated into other
tongues. Any man, sincerely so desiring, may see for himself
that the neo-converts were all referred to the empirical intuitions
of the faithful in Palestine, and not to any of the technical "concepts
of Greek philosophy. One might as appositely argue, hearing a
fellow-being employ the terms " nature " or " person," that he
must have recently been dabbling in Plato, as claim that these terms
1916.] WHAT IS DOGMA? 309
were used in any but a popular, ordinary, untechnical sense in the
New Testament, among the first faithful. The terms are under-
stood of all men directly upon their utterance. One could as
readily understand them then as now, without being made a philos-
opher overnight for the purpose. Their intellectual equivalents
existed in all the languages of the world, and the Christian fact
lost none of its experiential character when translated into foreign
tongues. Had not modern philosophers forgotten these sponta-
neous concepts and remembered only the technical ones that follow,
they never would have sent the faithful to the philosophers for a
knowledge of their meaning.
Of course, if you are so minded and so willed, you can take
the empirical intuitions, the direct experiences of the Palestinian
faithful, who saw and heard the Lord, nor perhaps knew Him fully
till the Pentecostal fires you can take all this and build around it
the modern fences of academic doubt and theory. You can say
that human knowledge has no objective validity, that it is confined
to brain-events and never reaches reality, that it offers a convenient
set of symbols of the unknown, and that nothing corresponds to
the subjective impressions which it creates within us. But this is
not history not history now, not history then. It has always been
an ineradicable conviction of mankind that knowledge is real, that
the objects about which it is spontaneously concerned exist. Mod-
ern philosophers omit this spontaneous conviction, setting up re-
flective doubt in its stead, which is the same as saying that they
abandon history for theory, and choose to write philosophy pri-
vately, with their own photograph for the frontispiece. We much
prefer to believe the mind working spontaneously in all than
forcedly and temperamentally in a few. And there are signs that
philosophy itself is beginning to take this view, in an endeavor to
rescue human thought from its smothering mass of overlaid sophis-
tication.
One thought should stand out clearly as the result of our jour-
ney ings thus far with the critics of dogma, and that thought is this :
Dogma sprang from a particular fact the spontaneous, empirical
apprehension of Christ's divinity; it did not spring from technical
ideas preexisting in the Greco-Roman world. The only way the
uniqueness, the singularity, the distinctness of this fact can with any
show of reason be broken down is to abandon the particular method
of studying history and to substitute therefor a method that is
speculative and general. This is the expedient to which critics
3 io WHAT IS DOGMA? [June,
have recourse. They imagine note the word a sort of general
consciousness in which a mystic notion of the Divine is everywhere
afloat. Christ is merely this general consciousness at its highest
tide. He is the vehicle through which a universal idea, or set of
such, existing before Him, found a more commensurate expression.
He is the product of " the growing consciousness of mankind at
large, in which the Divine Nature has always been manifesting it-
self from less to greater fullness." In this way, Christ is made to
appear as an episode, a passing incident in the life-history of the
race, and ceases to be regarded as the initiator of a new development.
The votaries of this method have ransacked Alexandria,
Greece, and India for the general idea or tendency of which Christ
is to be made the culminating exhibition and ensample. They see
resemblances between the Sermon on the Mount and some broken
line of Eastern poesy, and forthwith all differences disappear, a
connection is imaginatively established, and the particular person
of Christ becomes merely the illustration of a general tendency
working itself out variously everywhere. It is as if a man, finding
resemblances between the democracy established at Athens by
Pericles in the fifth century before Christ and that proclaimed
at Philadelphia twenty-five hundred years later, should declare the
latter of Greek origin. Hawthorne speaks somewhere of Mr.
Smooth-it-Away whose business it is to draw your attention to
the general when the point happens to be about the particular. The
gentleman mentioned must have since joined the ranks and pro-
fession of the historical critics, for there is much evidence of his
migratory musings in recent literature. Will not some one pro-
mote a healthy reaction from this leveling spirit, by laying down
the canon tkat henceforth all comparison, to be worthy the name
of such, must be integral, not partial, and historically prove the
derivation of Christian ideas from pagan, instead of complacently
assuming the fact and supposing the connection? Will not some
gallant volunteer come forward and offer to compare our total
concept of Christ with that of any other total concept we can
find; this Christian doctrine or that, as a whole, with that pagan
doctrine or this, likewise completely viewed ?
Were this integral comparative method followed and it is
the only one that can claim to be truly scientific or just there
would be no possibility of obscuring the fact that the particular
Christian philosophy concerning the nature and person of Christ
grew out of a particular historical person and nature; and that
igi6.] WHAT IS DOGMA? 311
if resemblances are to be found between this philosophy and others,
they are resemblances in results, not in the point of starting, and
do not in the least indicate that the things resembling are dependent
or had a common origin. The fallacy of arguing from similarity
to identity and historical dependence is a discredit to scientific
scholarship, representing, as it does, a most arrogant attempt to
settle an historical question by a principle of logic that does not
hold good even logically, and has nothing to commend it to the
historian, unless he be of the new variety and believe that the
proper way to write history is to ignore everything in particular
and assert anything in general. The reader must be familiar with
the method it fills the pages of nearly every book on which one
chances to lay a hand. The consciousness of the divine here, the
consciousness of the divine there no matter what the differences
were in the respective instances and lo! Christ is explained as
the fullness of this mysterious rising tide.
All this skilled evasiveness is cruelly beside the point misses
it by a world's length, and leads one to think none too highly of
the perversity that takes hold of the human spirit and bids it try
to flank the truth in an effort to dislodge it from its commanding
position and significance. Professor Wenley puts the case so well,
we shall quote him and pass on to the other things awaiting.
" Christianity does not start from an analytic of self-consciousness
as revealed in man, but from a certain historical fact the Person
of Christ. It embodies, not merely a philosophic scheme dealing
with rationality, but rather a kind of spiritual presence never
before exemplified and never repeated since. Its marvel does not
lie so much in the whole evolution of which it is a part, as in the
circumstances that it put an end to one developing series and
initiated another which still goes on."
It should occasion no surprise to the historically-minded that
the first, empirical, factual, directly gathered knowledge of Christ
the Son of God should grow. That is a law of psychology and
history, nor is the course of revelation an exception to the rule.
The Old Testament exhibits a gradual revelation. Christ mani-
fested His own divinity progressively, not in a flash. " There are
many things/' He said, " which you cannot bear now." Nor should
we expect that this law of growth should have wholly ceased when
the canon of revelation closed with the death of the last Apostle.
Revelation is no substitute for thought, but the greatest and
noblest spur to thinking the human mind has ever had in history.
3 i2 WHAT IS DOGMA? [June,
But dogmas being concepts, as we have said, and these concepts
containing much implicit knowledge that needed articulation, it
was impossible that they should have remained in their undeveloped
original state for good and all. A development of the faithful in
the faith, not a development of the faith in the faithful, was bound
to come, as he of Lerins saw, and as the great Abbot of Bee once
said. The Catholic theory of this dogmatic progress is the rela-
tive theory a progress, that is, in ever-growing distinctness, and
from an implicit to an explicit stage. And so we find the great
dogmatic synthesis of the fourth century, not invented, but dis-
covered, when the Fathers, Eastern and Western, beholding the
problem of the one person and the two natures which was im-
plicit in the original empirical intuition of Christ's divinity, enjoyed
by the first faithful strove to bring it out distinctly and to express
it in rational terms. "Philip, he who seeth Me, seeth also My Father
that sent Me." Here from the lips of the Master Himself we have
both the empirical intuition and the hidden further knowledge which
it contained.
The modern historian of dogma is too slipshod and unthrifty
in his methods to see that this dogmatic synthesis is actually con-
tained in the original empirical concept of Christ's divinity. He
thinks it a reasoned conclusion, foreign to the Gospel facts. Again
is he guilty of an omission not to his credit as a scholar. The history
of Christian doctrine exhibits three things which should always be
distinguished by the historian, and seldom, if ever, are: attesta-
tions, explicitations, explanations. The first are statements of fact
attested, as distinct from, explained truths. It is these attested,
unexplained truths which the Catholic has chiefly in mind when he
speaks of the permanence of tradition, the unchanging character
of dogma. Tradition is the bearing of witness to the facts of
faith, it consists of truths attested, not of truths exposed, explained,
or theorized about. Any man who takes the trouble may see this
" continuous chain of doctrinal attestations," 2 all through Christian
history. Yet the modern historian does not see them at all, or if
he does, he closes his eyes to their recognition! Explanation is
the meaning tradition has for him, and as he finds that explanation
varies, he triumphantly proclaims that tradition is nothing more
than a seething mass of variant opinion. Having not the remotest
idea that tradition is testification living, continuous, uninterrupted
and not explanation at all, his wrong conception enables him to
8 La Vie du Dogme Catholique. Par De la Barre, S.J., p. no.
I 9 i6.] WHAT IS DOGMA? 313
contrast the simple narrative of the Scriptures with the language
of the Fathers, and so we have our Harnacks, our Tyrrells and our
Loisys declaring the Christian tradition a corrupt and muddled
medley of Greco-Roman philosophical theories! What dolts we
mortals be, not knowing, some of us, at any rate, that Scripture and
tradition are witnesses to the faith that has been handed down,
and not philosophical or theological attempts at its explanation;
sources, not theories; wells, not structures; permanent records of
the great primitive intuition, not the differing shades of your
opinion and of mine ! What a pity that the idea with which most
modern liberalist writers approach the study of Christian tradition
should be the dead one of document and book a, relic of the Ref-
ormation! instead of the living one of a great teaching and be-
lieving community, always reaffirming the Gospel fact, always grow-
ing in more and more explicit knowledge of it, always theorizing
about it variously, yet never failing to keep these several things
distinct.
One point remains, and that is to show the reader how the
" critical historian " rewrites Christian history nowadays for the
edification of the commons and the spread of the newer lights. He
begins with a huge assumption, parenthetically remarking to the
reader that the empirical intuition of the first faithful was a purely
sensible and emotional experience, without an intellectual concept
of any kind accompanying it; a supposition the falsity of which
has already been demonstrated in these pages when care was taken
to show that a spontaneous concept always accompanies our sense-
experience and is inseparable from it. The false assumption em-
ployed namely, that experiencing is possible without thought
perverts the whole nature of Christian history and enables the critic
to charge Christianity with a corruption of doctrine, of which not
it, but he, is guilty. A religion purely emotional could have had no
dogmatic development ; its " pure feeling " could never rightfully
have been translated into ideas; its attempt to rationalize itself
would have constituted the most corrupting influence imaginable.
The critic will not fail to remind you of this every few pages it
is the only way he can ring his hands or tear his hair in print.
What he will not remind you of, what, perhaps, he does not fully
realize himself, is the fact that he is trying to Protestantize Chris-
tian history, to make the sixteenth century contemporaneous with
the first, by means of an assumption that has nothing but preju-
dice to commend it either in religion, philosophy, or psychology. It
314 WHAT IS DOGMA? [June,
is very na'ive to take the Lutheran conception of faith as sound
theology and accurate history. The only thing really new about
this na'ive assumption is a metaphor the metaphor of the " germ."
With what unfeigned delight and unhistorical imagination will the
" critical historian " portray Christianity for you as a germ that
picked up everything good, bad, and indifferent in its course through
the ages, until he, his righteous indignation roused, stood forth
and bade his fellowmen separate the cockle from the wheat the
wheat being that and that only of course which a sentimentalist,
a Protestant theory of knowledge will suffer to remain; the cockle
all that is over and above.
Such men read history, as Wendell Phillips once said, not with
their eyes but with their prejudices. The point of points escapes
them. They fail to observe that Christian dogma, Christian knowl-
edge, has never grown in its source; has never there become the sub-
ject of biological development, but only of that other development
let us call it logical which means no more than the apprehension, in
ever-increasing distinctness and detail, of that richest, most precious,
most unique of all the facts of history : ' The Word was made
flesh and dwelt among us." The only historical event of which it
may, with truth, be said, in the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, that
it is always contemporaneous and never past. Dogma, therefore,
no more takes Christ out of experience than does a child take his
father out of experience when he tries to make him recognizable to
others, by expressing his characteristic traits. The child details his
rich, concrete, unanalyzed intuition of his parent, as the Christian,
for the same reason, details the wondrous intuition of the first
faithful. It is a fact of experience in both cases, a philosophical
theory in neither. And, assuredly, He Who is the Way, the Truth,
and the Life, never meant that the third of these three titles should
be taken, and the other two left; that the intellect should never
distinctly know Him, or that the heart of the sentimentally-inclined
should have the monopoly of His worship.
Who, then, think you, hath corrupted His religion? She that
has kept this triple cord unbroken, or they that would retain of it
but a single strand? And what idea shall we form of the compe-
tence of her critics men who have got dogma grossly confounded
with theology, simple apprehension with learned erudition, and are
engaged in the ignoble work of peddling out to the multitude their
own unscholarly confusion of mind, as a great modern " historical "
discovery !
THE EVOLUTION OF MAN.
THE CAVE MAN.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.
HE second part of Professor Osborn's book, of which
we have promised to speak, 1 makes it clear even to
the casual reader that the generally accepted notions
with regard to the cave man will have to be
abandoned. Hereafter he must be looked upon as a
brother man very like ourselves, even though he did not build
houses with a true sense of beauty and real artistic ability. We
had, it is true, created a whole body of imaginary ideas concerning
this supposedly oldest ancestor of the race. Our imagination pic-
tured him a step higher than the beast; occupied entirely with the
question of providing food for his family and defending himself
against the equally savage men around him, possessed of but little
power of speech and intelligence. Such was the cave ma'n of
tradition.
Now, as one of my earlier teachers, Professor Cope, used to say,
the fine spun theories of men with regard to nature and her ways
often prove entirely false when the facts are known. Nature has
a number of surprises for the closet philosopher. The only way
to arrive at truth in natural science is to find what actually is,
and not what theory alone would say must be. The cave man,
according to theory, has been pictured as little higher than the
beast; now sixty or seventy years of careful investigation of his
cave dwellings and what they contain, show us that he was an
artist with marvelous powers of observation, and a still more
marvelous power of reproducing his artistic vision. Though his
cave dwellings were dark, he used artificial light to illumine them;
endeavored to make everything about him beautiful, and displayed
his artistic taste in his weapons and the implements and utensils
of everyday life. He decorated the walls of his cave home. The
revelation of his artistic ability has been a distmct shock to the
modern world. To its great astonishment, the cave man proves
himself to have been far above the average of mankind at any
period in the world's history in his artistic interests. Professor
1 See THE CATHOLIC WORLD for May, page 207.
3i6 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [June,
Osborn's book is filled with illustrations which prove very plainly
what we are saying. The art of the cave man may be divided
into two classes. The first deals with movable objects and the second
with parietal decorations. The world is indebted to the Abbe
Breuil, more than to any other man, for its knowledge of the
development of this art. For many years he has been the leader
in publishing articles in the French journals of anthropology and
archaeology. To him particularly we owe the proof that the artistic
decoration of movable objects, weapons, instruments, etc., is identi-
cal with the parietal art of the caves, the work, in other words,
of the same artistic race. "This art, however" (to quote Pro-
fessor Osborn) " becomes a new means, not only of interpreting
the psychology of the race, but of establishing the prehistoric
chronology."
With the cave man the art of engraving rose to a very high
level, and his drawing was particularly admirable. Three of its
qualities are particularly worthy of note. First, the revelation
of a very close observation of the animal form; second, the realis-
tic effect produced by very few lines; third, the well expressed
suggestion of movement and activity. To estimate chiefly the art
of the cave man, it is necessary for us to compare his work not
with that of children, nor with the crude productions of primitive
painters, but with the leaders of our modern artists, and in the
comparison the cave man's art does not suffer, but puts our own
modern art to the test. This is a strong expression to use, but
we feel it is justified by the number of engravings on small ob-
jects reproduced in Professor Osborn's book. Among them is,
for instance, an impressionistic design of a herd of reindeer en-
graved on the radius one of the most important bones of the
eagle's wing. This illustrates excellently with what few lines the
paleolithic artist could suggest a number of animals. On reindeer
horn there is an engraving of deer crossing a stream, which in
turn is full of fishes. On a small piece of stone, three by four
inches, the cave artist has pictured a herd of horses in perspective.
The rude stone lamps, used by the cave man, were ornamented by
engravings of the heads and horns of the ibex and other animals.
On a piece of ivory tusk a charging mammoth is pictured, and is
one of the most life-like representations of an animal in action
that has ever been done in such few lines. The cave man's art
in its paucity of lines, the real test for every artist, scores a
veritable triumph. It seems to point to the fact that instead of
1916.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 317
being the beginning of a series of artists, he was the terminal factor
in a great art era.
The parietal art, however, of the cave man has attracted, and
deservedly so, most attention in recent years. The caves in which
these early ancestors lived were usually deep and dark. The wall
and ceiling decorations are, as a rule, found at a considerable
distance from the entrance. Many men must have been occupied
in making these drawings and paintings. These artists have pic-
tured the horse, the rhinoceros, the mammoth, the reindeer, the
bison, the stag, the ibex, the lion and the wolf. If we had no
other record of these animals, except those which are to be found
on the walls of these caves, we would still be able to arrive at a very
good idea of their appearance and mode of action.
These mural or parietal paintings were discovered in a curious
way. The Spanish archaeologist, Sautolo, was one day searching
the floor of a cave in Altamira for small objects of art, accom-
panied by his little daughter. The girl looking upward suddenly
discovered the paintings on the ceiling, and asked her father to
raise his lamp in order that he might see them clearly. This was
in the year 1897. It was not until nearly fifteen years later
that scientists realized that practically all these cave dwellings
contained interesting and significant examples of mural decorations.
Since 1895, research has been concentrated on this department of
archaeology, and it has come to be considered as probably the most
important in the prehistoric story of man. The different phases
of the history of this mural decorative art have been traced; its
development from crude beginnings to a marvelous climax has
been worked out by archaeological investigators, and the whole
surprising story is indeed a reasonably clear and well-connected
one.
The story shows that the first drawings were mere outlines
made .with a sharpened flint on the limestone walls. Later a
black pigment was used to emphasize these outlines, and still later
colors were employed with pleasing effect. The Abbe Breuil has
shown that even when colors were used, a carefully worked out
engraving usually underlies the work. The chief point of interest in
the earliest drawings is that while the greater part of the en-
gravings are done in simple incised lines, the contour is here and
there enforced by a line of red or black paint. The drawings,
of course, are not of equal merit. Sometimes the proportions
are very bad; sometimes the drawing, itself, is poorly done and
318 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [June,
amateurish, but very often the reproduction of the figure that the
artist had in mind is excellent. Modern artists of unquestionable
ability who have studied these drawings, have not hesitated to
say that they doubt whether there is an animal painter alive to-day
who could do better work.
Fortunately, when the cave man improved and became a
painter he painted in oil colors; the coloring materials he used
were principally the oxides of iron and manganese which are in-
soluble in water. The minerals were kept carefully pulverized in
a sort of mortars-some of these with traces of the colors still
in them have been found and after having been reduced to fine
consistent powder, the minerals were mixed with grease or some
similar medium and then applied with a brush. The brush was
made from the bristles of the animals that the cave man hunted,
and the best proof of how well they were made is to be found in
the excellences of his paintings.
Not only did the cave man know how to paint an animal in
motion, but he knew how to execute that much more difficult task
of presenting an animal for the moment at rest, yet with every
muscle tense and ready for action. Pictures of reindeer and of
horses, where action for the moment is suppressed, are not un-
common. It is wonderful how well these artists of olden time
have illustrated this difficult position. But suppression of emotion
is for the dramatic artist one of the most difficult tasks; it is
equally difficult for the artist in colors; yet this climax of artistic
power has been successfully attained by the first group of artists
of whom history speaks. It is facts of this kind that bring home
to us the striking contrast between the savage cave man of imagina-
tion, theory and tradition, and the artistic cave man of reality and
archaeological history. Professor Osborn has reproduced in his
book the picture of the bison at bay, probably the best known of
all the works of the cave man. This famous picture is on the
ceiling of the cavern at Altamira in Spain, and represents the
final stage of polychrome art, in which four shades of color are
used. A glance at this picture is sufficient to show that it is a
work of art in the best sense of the word. The artist has re-
produced the bison at bay with marvelous fidelity, and with just
sufficient attention to detail to make the onlooker feel that here is
a picture of a living, breathing animal. Its color sense, as well
as its drawing, proves that the artist was one who would be
recognized as a genius at any period in the history of art. Very
1916.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 319
often the paleolithic artist took advantage of irregularities in the
contours of the walls of the cave in order to give the impression
of low or even high relief in his animal pictures. Sometimes, in-
deed, the engraved lines followed by the application of the black
painted line in connection with bosses on the walls ingeniously used,
has the effect of bringing out the body in the surrounding rock
so as to give the silhouette a rather high relief. Professor Osborn
remarks that " in the drawings of the large on these curved wall
surfaces, only part of which could be seen by the eye at one time,
the difficulties of maintaining the proportions were extreme, and
one is ever impressed by the boldness and confidence with which
the long sweeping strokes of the flint were made; for one rarely,
if ever, sees any evidences of correcting outline." The cave artist
had to work with bold assurance, for mistakes would have been
registered imperishably on the hard rock. To see how skillfully
the artist used the irregular contours of the walls, we may cite
one instance where a series of projecting bosses was chosen for
representing the bison lying down. " By representing the animal
with the limbs drawn up in different positions beneath the body,
and with the tail or horns alone projecting beyond the convexity
of the walls on the surrounding plain surface, pictures wonderfully
true to life were made, yet each different and each exhibiting to a
high degree the artist's power of adaptation of his subject to his
medium and to the character of the surface on which he was work-
ing. The soles of the hoofs even are reproduced with wonderful
fidelity of observation, and yet represented by a few strong and sig-
nificant lines. In this wonderful group there is also a bison bellow-
ing, with his back arched, his limbs drawn under ftim as if to expel
the air." (Osborn.)
The Abbe Breuil has called attention to the delicacy of the
wall engraving in many of the caverns, and to the marvelous
power of the artist to delineate with very few lines the most minute
differential characteristics of various animals. Professor Osborn,
himself a zoologist and long accustomed to note the minutest
'difference, says of some of the pictures: "Only a life-long ob-
server of the fine points which distinguish the different prehistoric
breeds of the horse could appreciate the extraordinary skill with
which the spirited, aristocratic lines of the Celtic horse are executed
on the one hand, and on the other the plebeian and heavy outlines
of the steppe horse. In the best examples of Magdalenian (that
is, the later period of the cave man's times) engraving, both parietal
320 THE EVOLUTION OF MAN [June,
and on bone or ivory, one can almost immediately detect the specific
type of horse which the artist had before him or in mind, also the
season of the year, as indicated by the representation of a summer
or winter coat of hair." The realism of these paintings and en-
gravings is their most interesting quality. Ruskin said that per-
haps the most difficult thing in the world is, after seeing a thing,
to tell of it or to paint it simply as one has seen it. Now, this is
exactly what the cave man was able to do. Yet probably the last
people in the world to which one would have looked for an il-
lustration of Ruskin's maxim would have been these cave men, the
oldest ancestors of man in Europe whose history dates back some
twenty-five thousand years.
Woman as well as man occupies her place in this highly de-
veloped art of the cave man. In that art, however, she does
not take the form in which- modern art most often paints her.
The cave man pictured woman in her maturer years, and she
is found more often in sculpture than in painting. The one strik-
ing characteristic of the cave woman in art is her corpulence. Al-
most always the woman is presented in association with children
or very frankly as pregnant. It is noteworthy that none of the
male figures in drawings or sculpture are corpulent. Perhaps the
difference is owing to the fact that women lived inactive lives within
the narrow confines of their caves, while the men were on active
duty day after day following the hunt.
Very early in the history of paleolithic art, plastic art or sculp-
ture, in high and low relief and in the complete figure, made its
appearance. Indeed, the Abbe Breuil is inclined to think that sculp-
ture was the earliest manifestation of the art impulse of the cave
man. Usually the figures are of animals, but sometimes they are
of human beings. Small, human figures appear in the form of
statuettes in bone or ivory. The human faces, however, are seldom
portrayed with any delicacy or realistic quality. There are some
exceptions, however, and one of these, the head of a girl carved
in ivory, found at Brassempouy is most interesting because so
unique. Some of the sculptured heads of animals are excellently
done, and are in striking contrast with the unfinished representations
of the human head.
Modeling in clay of the whole figure of an animal is not at
all uncommon, and some of the sculptures are eminently artistic.
In a cave that w r as opened during the summer of 1914, two life-
like models in clay of bison, male and female, were discovered.
1916.] THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 321
These models are about two feet long. Some of the models of
horses, for example, are almost life size. One of a series of horses
of the high-bred Celtic type, sculptured in high relief on the wall
of the cliff shelter known as Cap Blanc, is about seven feet in
length.
The geographical distribution of this art is wide, as the Abbe
Breuil and Obermaier show. Most of the cliff dwellings are found
on either side of an almost straight line drawn from about the middle
part of Spain along and over the Pyrenees. They are found in
North Spain in the Asturias and in South France, especially along
the western coast of the Gulf of Lyons, though always some distance
inland. A number of the caves have been found as far north as
what is known as the Dordogne, somewhat north and east of
Bordeaux, and even still farther north at Teyjat. In Spain the art
has been found as far South as San Garcia.
Definite progress can be noted in the history of the arts and
crafts among these men of the stone age, though the steady rise
of the spirit of man, as Professor Osborn remarks, cannot be
traced continuously in a single race, because the races were chang-
ing; then, as now, one race replaced another, or two races dwelt
side by side. The rise and fall of cultures and of industries, at
this very day the outstanding feature of the history of Western
Europe, was fully typified in the history of the men of the Old
Stone Age. We are sometimes surprised to learn how men of
one age reach achievements the meaning of which is for a time
lost; how inventions and discoveries have to be made over and
over again. It is a shock to realize that just as men reached a high
watermark in human development, some element of dissolution,
of disintegration, of deterioration, of degeneration or whatever it
may be called, enters in and descent begins. No story of con-
tinuous human progress is true to facts ; it is rather a tale of cycles
with ups and downs. Some may imagine that the high points of
the curve are each higher in succession, but there is no certain
evidence for this. Indeed, many successive ascents of the curve
are distinctly lower than preceding ones.
It is extremely interesting to realize then that this same phe-
nomenon of history showed itself in the time of the cave man. The
Abbe Breuil has emphasized the fact that toward the close of
Magdalenian times, that is the era at the end of the Old Stone
Age, there were significant industrial changes making for con-
venience and the facility of performance of many actions, but
VOL. cm. 21
322 SONNET TO A BOY [June,
accompanying these was a rapid decline, one might almost say
a sudden disappearance, of the artistic spirit. Schematic and con-
ventional designs begin to take the place of the free realistic art
of the middle Magdalenian. Professor Osborn remarks : " Thus
the decline of Cro-Magnons as a powerful race may have been
due partly to environmental causes and the abandonment of their
vigorous nomadic mode of life, or it may be that they had reached
the end of a long cycle of psychic development, which we have
traced from the beginning of Aurignacian times. We know that
as a parallel in the history of many civilized races a period of
great artistic and industrial development may be followed by a
period of stagnation and decline without any apparent environ-
mental causes."
In the face of all the evidence we have brought forth, the
long cherished notion of the cave man as one little higher than
the brute must be replaced by the recognition of him as an artist
of intelligence and rare ability.
SONNET TO A BOY.
BY JOHN BUNKER.
THOU frank, brave eye which on the world doth stare
With high observance and bold unconcern,
Lord of the hour, king without a care,
Monarch in trust for whom the great stars burn :
When traitorous Time, proud rebel to command,
Shall shake thy throne with treason, disavow
His past allegiance, and with hasty hand
Pluck the bright circlet from thy 'customed brow;
When all thy golden trappings of Romance
Shall pass away as if they had not been,
And thou a bond-slave to strict circumstance
Shalt noteless walk 'mid crowds of servile men ;
Oh, then remember this tho' in disguise,
A king is e'er a king in Heaven's eyes!
THE PULSE OF THE SEA.
BY MARY CATHERINE CROWLEY.
WAY out on the wild sea, near where the Gulf of St.
Lawrence merges into the Atlantic Ocean, and fifty
miles from any part of the mainland, is a lonely
island, the great Bird Rock. The massive pinnacle of
granite rises so precipitously from the waves that its
summit can be reached only by raising with a derrick the rowboat
in which passage from the shore is made, a mode of ascent both
difficult and dangerous in rough weather. A lighthouse crowns
the giant dome of stone.
To this strange home, one summer day, David Cullom, the
newly-appointed keeper of the Light, brought his young wife,
Margaret. They had been married four years, during which time
he had tended a beacon situated on a point of land jutting out
from a beach to which strangers thronged in the pleasant season.
There, every day from June to September, Margaret had been kept
busy making welcome, in her simple way, the sojourners at the
hotels who climbed the bluff to see the lamps in the lighthouse
tower. The summer before these casual guests had taken notice
of the keeper's young daughter, who was just beginning to walk.
" The pretty baby will grow to be a handsome woman," the
ladies said. " She has her father's fair complexion and her mother's
fine eyes." But the engaging child was destined never to wear
even the gentle graces of early girlhood. The little spirit had come
and was gone again, like the white-hearted sea-gull that appears for
a moment on the crest of a wave and then soars toward the clouds.
When the time came to set out the geraniums in front of the
lighthouse door once more, Margaret broke down, as she recalled
the baby's delight in the scarlet blossoms that had flourished there
all the previous summer.
" David, take me away from here," she sobbed. " The ladies
will come ; they will ask for the bairn, and how can I tell them she
is gone ? How can I abide their chatter ? Take me away ; I do not
care to what lonely place; my best solace will be to be alone with
the sea and with you, dear."
David's face brightened.
" If such is your wish, lass, it tallies with my own," he said.
324 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
" A while back the Government offered me charge of the Bird Rock
Light. The post would be an advance in the service for me. Out
there, it is true, the world seems made only of sea and sky; but if
you can put up with the sole company of the one who loves you
best, you will be the only helper I shall need on the island."
" Let us go," cried Margaret, wiping away her tears.
Thus it was they came to live on the Rock. To Margaret it
was like an outpost of eternity. Like David she was descended
from seafaring folk, and had been reared in a Scotch settlement
on the Canadian coast. Like him, too, she had a trace of the
sturdy Scotch in her disposition and, when under the stress of
strong ennotion or excitement, occasionally lapsed into colloquial
phrases common to the older people of her native town.
She loved the sea even while she feared it. To her the great
expanse of ocean was never monotonous. Its tide was like the
throbbing of nature's mighty heart, the very pulse of life. She knew
something of the myriad changes that pass over the face of the
waters from dawn to sunset, knew them in the beauty of the moon-
light, through the darkness of a starless night, and in the fury of
the storm. Well had she chosen the sea to be her comforter. Out
here at Bird Rock her health gradually became rugged as it had
been before her sorrow; the solitude was quieting as the touch of
a soothing hand, and her temperament absorbed a strength and
brightness from the bracing air.
She never tired of watching the flights of birds, gannets,
puffins, and other sea fowl that made the lighthouse rock their
home. The voices of the winds, and of the waves beating upon the
reef, were to her ears like stirring music. With the arrival of
autumn, however, the dreariness of the spot dismayed the young
wife.
" After all, it was an ill choice to come here," she said to her-
self. " Why is it that only now I remember the stories told of this
place? The first keeper of the Light grew wrong-headed from
loneliness and brooding, they say, and the helper had to wrestle
with the lunatic for his own life, before the ice broke up and the
supply steamer came in the spring. Ugh ! what a horror to be
shut up with a madman on this bleak rock that is but a speck upon
the broad ocean! The next keeper was killed by the explosion of
a keg of gunpowder near the fog cannon. Will David and I ever
get back safe to the world where other people live? "
On that particular day, at least, no one could have embarked
for the shore, so many leagues distant, with any well-founded hope
I9i6.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 325
of reaching it. The lowering clouds were lead-colored; the black
sea tossed and surged, making ready to battle with the heavens.
There was brewing the disturbance of nature which scientists now
declare to be a myth, but which, nevertheless, makes its appearance
regularly in the spring and autumn the equinoctial gale. That
night the storm broke. The rain fell in a dark flood; the wind
lashed the waters until they roared like wild beasts, and beat against
the base of the wall of granite as Lucifer and his fallen hosts might
have beaten against the gates of Paradise after their condemnation
to the abyss, while, like the powerful arm of the victorious arch-
angel, the great Rock" held steadily aloft its torch, a flashing sword
of light, to protect any ships that might be near from the dangers
of the reef.
David, with a stern, set face, tended the lamps. Every twenty
minutes Margaret took his place as watcher, while from the battle-
ments of the Rock he fired explosive signals of gun-cotton.
As the hours wore away scores of sea birds fluttering toward
the light for shelter, beat their lives out against the gleaming win-
dows of the tower. At first, Margaret felt a gentle pity when she
heard one dash against the pane and, opening the window, she let
the poor, draggled, feathered creature fly in. By and by,^so many
came that she grew callous to their fate, and bent all her energies
in helping David. It was nearly morning when, through the roar
of the storm, there came another sound, a dull boom from across
the waters.
" It is the gun of a ship in sair distress," cried David, hastening
down the stair and out upon the ledge.
Margaret followed in a tumult of anxiety and dread.
Now, through the darkness could be plainly seen the rockets
sent up by the ship. The keeper, without loss of time, shot off
the life line in the direction from which they rose and prepared to
lower the lighthouse lifeboat.
" David, you will not be so foolhardy as to venture alone upon
that raging sea," protested his wife, throwing her arms about him.
" What can you, one man alone, do amid the wildness of this
tempest?"
" Since there is no other man to go with me I maun go alone,"
he answered.
" Take care of the Light, lass, that will be your task. But
keep a brave heart, I shall be back, never fear."
He kissed her, reluctantly detached her clinging arms, and
took his place in the boat there on the ledge.
326 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
Margaret, seeing that he was not to be deterred, and ready to
do her part, set the machinery of the derrick in motion, and he
swung out over the edge of the rock. For a few moments the
boat hung between sky and sea; then the keeper's wife, peering
down as from among the clouds, saw it in the path of the rays of
light that streamed from the tower tossing upon the terrible
waters, and as much the toy of their relentless power as is the
tangle of seaweed that, with the receding tide, is swept from the
beach back into the deep.
Now the little craft disappeared. Had it been engulfed, or
was it riding the maelstrom? Margaret could not tell. The flare
of rockets no longer reddened the murky sky. Not even the faintest
boom of a gun came to her above the noise of the wind. Summon-
ing ^11 her courage, she rushed back to the house, and busied her-
self in preparations for the reception of any half -drowned passenger
or sailor, whom David, by the rarest possibility, might succeed in
rescuing from the wreck. Then, going up into the tower, she knelt
beneath the Light and prayed for her husband's safe return, and
for the hapless people on the ship who, it might be, at that very
moment were sinking into the depths of the ocean.
Her eyes turned to the circle of lamps in the lantern. Yes,
everyone of them burned with its full brilliancy. Now she sounded
the siren whistle, as David had told her to do, in order that it might
give him his bearings, if he still lived. // he still lived! Was it
only twenty minutes since he set out? So the clock said, but it
seemed an eternity. Oh, happiness ! Now there came a signal from
the foot of the crag; the pulling of the rope that rang the fog bell.
"David !" exclaimed Margaret. "Oh, God be thanket! He has
given David back to me from the very portal of death."
Hurrying out, she turned on the power of the derrick, and
in a few minutes the keeper's boat rose from the darkness.
" God be thanket, David," she cried as she helped him to
fasten the ropes.
Then he sprang out and she fell upon his breast. She was
vaguely conscious that there was something in the bottom of the
boat, but she ran into the house and came hastening back, carrying
a bowl filled with a steaming, hot draught, which she held to his
lips. He drank it eagerly. Until now he had seemed more like
an apparition than a living man, and he could scarcely speak from
weakness, after his terrible exertions in his attempt to aid the
people on the doomed ship.
" If I had not been forced to work so hard, Meg, I would have
1916.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 327
perished with the cold," he faltered at length. " I got only a very
short distance from the Rock and many times I thought all was
over with me. More than once the boat nearly overturned; but I
held on and, at the next wave, she righted again. I have brought
back two bits of flotsam from the wreck. Do not tremble so, my
lass, but come and see."
Ah, his heroism had not been all in vain, he had rescued some
poor creature from the ship.
" Yes, yes, dear," she replied, " I brought out blankets from
the chests ; there are heated stones ready on the hearth ; hot water
and a pot of coffee are on the fire and 'speerits' and hard tack on
the table."
Following him, with a shrinking from what she might have
to confront, yet eager to help, she looked into the dory and uttered
a cry of compassion.
"Oh, David! David!"
There in the bottom of the boat was the lifeless form of a
woman. But this was not all. Upon the young mother's breast lay
a little child. And the child was alive ; for it broke into a frightened
wail, and clung closer to the quiet heart that never before had been
unheedful of its baby cry.
" The braw wee man is old enough to talk, and he's been call-
ing to his mammy to wake up," said David. " The two were bound
together, as you see, when I found them floating in the water, and I
left them so, for it was as much as I could do to drag them into the
boat. When that was done, 'tho', I managed to cover them with
the blankets that you had flung into the bottom of the dory, Meg."
As he spoke he cut the bands, that were like pieces of a sheet
torn into strips, with which the mother had bound the child to
her. With a rapture of maternal affection, Margaret stretched out
her arms to receive the boy. Her impulse was arrested by an
ejaculation from David as he bent over the motionless figure of
the strange woman, whose features now, in the gleam of the great
Light, he was able, for the first time, to see.
" My God, what marvelous things may happen ! " he exclaimed.
;< This waif from the sea is yes, I can na mistake, it is it is
Jessie Munroe ! "
As she heard the sob he tried to choke back, the heart of his
wife froze within her.
What is more dismaying than the weakening of a usually self-
contained and physically strong man when, unexpectedly, grief, like
a rapier, wounds and disarms him ! Margaret knew David had once
328 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
loved another woman, but never before had the knowledge troubled
her. David's love was her own now, and she meant to keep it,
she had laughingly said to the gossips who told her the story on
her wedding day. Besides, strangely enough it seemed to her, the
other woman had not returned his love. Jessie Munroe had married
the master of a trading vessel, and sailed away with him out of
David's life, apparently forever. Was the sea kind or cruel to-night
when its waves swept this woman, of all others, from the deck of the
sinking ship and cast her in the path of David's boat?
Margaret stood as if turned to stone. The child that lay on
the woman's breast was trembling with cold* but otherwise, thanks
to the protection of the blankets, appeared likely to survive the
exposure. It was David who with tender, coaxing words unclasped
the little arms from the mother's neck, brought the " wee man "
into the house, gave him a hot drink, laid him on the bed in
the inner room, and covered him with a " comfortable," knowing
that exhaustion and the warmth of the place would quickly soothe
the baby into the drowsiness that precedes sleep.
Margaret, who had followed her husband in a dazed way,
now went out again to the boat with him.
"You will help me to save poor Jessie, won't you, Meg?"
the big man said huskily. " There may be life in the puir body
still. She could not have been long in the water. I " he checked
the words upon his lips but Margaret understood.
She knew that, had he finished the sentence, he would have
said : " Once I hoped to bring pretty Jessie to my home as a
happy bride, it cannot be that now, when she has come to claim
its shelter, she is dead."
Margaret helped him, albeit half unwillingly, as he raised
in his arms the object of his early love so singularly brought to
his door, and carrying her into the kitchen laid her on a mattress
which his wife had, in her preparations, spread upon the floor ready
to receive whatever unfortunate victim of the sea David might
succeed in bringing to the lighthouse.
" I hate this woman, helpless and insensible tho' she is,"
thought Margaret, the demon of jealousy lashing her emotions to
fury as she looked down at the pallet and was forced to acknowledge
to herself that even the terrible buffeting of the waters had not
entirely destroyed the beauty of the stranger.
David's glance noted how the long brown hair that hung loose
about the colorless face fell over the white neck and breast like
a veil.
I 9 i6.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 329
" An angel hand aye guards the modesty of the pure of heart,"
he said. Margaret made no reply.
Still believing the woman was not dead, he began his attempt
at resuscitation, following the method employed at the coast guard
stations in such emergencies, a method in which he was experienced
and, in a number of cases, had achieved remarkable success.
At first Margaret stood by, hesitating and uncertain. Suppose
with her assistance he should discover a spark of life in this rigid
body, and should nurse it into a glow! What then? Was Jessie
Munroe indeed all David thought her? Was she so true and noble
that she would not stoop to destroy another woman's peace of mind,
that woman being the wife of a man who had once loved Jessie
herself, who evidently still loved her ? David was a good man, but
are not all men weak and easily allured, especially by the glamour
of an early romance again unexpectedly flashed before them? Sup-
pose she, Margaret, helped to save Jessie Monroe, might not the
flame of life thus rekindled become a devastating fire that would
lay waste her own and David's future? So whispered the tempter.
But it makes for character to live upon a shore whence men
go down to the sea in ships, and then to spend four years in a
lighthouse, where the watchword of each day is " duty," and noth-
ing but the sea and the sky seem to lie between the soul and the
hereafter.
" Am I so wicked as to desire the death of a fellow-creature? "
Margaret asked herself, recoiling in horror from the thought.
" No, no ! Even tho' David loves this woman I maun fight for her
life as tho' it were my own."
While David rolled the resistless form from side to side, and
tried to bring back the suspended respiration, Margaret tirelessly
chafed the clammy hands and feet, and packed hot blankets around
the stiffened limbs. After a time her husband's efforts and her own
activity appeared about to be rewarded. The woman was, indeed,
not dead. Presently she began to show signs of returning anima-
tion. Encouraged, they worked on. At last the eyelids quivered
and lifted. For one brief moment, from eyes that were tragically
sad, a soul looked forth.
" Jessie," cried David joyfully, bending forward with the in-
voluntary hope of fixing their gaze upon his own, " Jessie ! "
To Margaret it seemed that, for an instant, the faintest shadow
of a smile flitted over the pale lips. But David was conscious
only of the long-drawn sigh that parted them. The eyes closed
wearily again, and all was still.
330 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
For an hour longer the lighthouse keeper and his wife worked
over the poor drowned creature. Then David said :
" It is of no use, Meg. Had Jessie been your sister you could
not have done mair to save her. But her life went out with that
sigh. Go and rest, lass. You canna do mair."
At this moment, from the inner room, came the sound of
sobbing. The child, disturbed in his sleep, had begun to cry again,
as though he suddenly knew he was motherless.
David went in and, returning with the boy, sat down beside
the kitchen stove. Holding the little fellow close, the big man strove
to soothe him with awkward gentleness, bowing his head over the
tangled curls that were so like the beautiful hair of Jessie Munroe,
who would nevermore awake to hush the baby cry or comfort the
baby heart.
"The lights in the tower are still burning and it is long after
dawn," Margaret said mechanically.
Even in her own ears her voice sounded harsh, but she made
no attempt to soften it. Climbing the stairs, she paused for a mo-
ment beneath the blazing circle of flame, whose glare was now
dimmed by the white light of morning. Then she slowly ex-
tinguished the lamps one by one and, having finished her task,
stood in the great cage of glass and iron, looking out upon the sea.
At the end of the reef the spars and rigging of a wreck were
visible, and she called excitedly to David to come and see. The
gale still rode upon the moaning waters, which struggled and tossed
in white-crested waves, like the upraised arms of votaries casting
themselves beneath the car of Juggernaut. But the clouds were
lifting; on the eastern horizon there was a streak of yellow light.
" God be thanket, it is day, the waters will soon be calm
again," said Margaret, as the keeper came up into the watchroom
with the child still in his arms.
Almost as she spoke the sea shot up golden arrows to the sky
and, thus heralded, like a king before whom rides a company of
archers, anon the glorious disk of the sun appeared above the
horizon.
There was naught for it but to give the beauty of Jessie Mun-
roe back to the sea; for the sparse and shallow soil of the Rock
could yield not even a grave.
" As for the boy," said David, " maybe we can keep him for
our own. It maun have been James Munroe's good ship Scotia that
went down yonder, and I doubt if he or Jessie have left any
near kin."
I 9 i6.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 331
But for the fact that the child was " Jessie Munroe's bairn,"
Margaret would have been glad to take him to her heart. She
accepted the duty of caring for him and often, as the days passed,
when the roguish urchin nestled in her clasp, confident that no one
could resist his infantile caresses, she would suddenly press him
closer with a warmth of mother-love. At other times she fought
against the impulse.
" David sets too much store by him," she brooded. " Our
bairn was a girl and my husband wished for a son. No, no! In
this laddie David would always see the mother, and I would always
see the woman my husband loved, still loves even in death. I dinna
want to keep the boy. David maun send him away at the first
chance."
She tended him well, nevertheless, for the little fellow grew
sturdy and rosy among the keen salt breezes that blew around Bird
Rock.
It was now the beginning of November, and the early winter
of the North was already setting in. A part of David's duty as
keeper of the Light was to cross to the mainland at certain times
and report to the Government Station. He had made the trip
shortly before the recent storm, and the regulations did not require
him to go again until after the breaking up of the ice in the spring.
A few days of Indian Summer, however, rendered Margaret restless.
" David, it is no more than right that you should go to the
shore and telegraph or send a letter to James Munroe's town and
kin, with the news that the bairn is alive," she urged. " It is but just
to the laddie to send him back to his folk."
" Why fash yourself about the matter, lass ? " he replied. " No
one can come for the bairn at this season."
" Besides, there are some supplies missing from the last con-
signment, and you can bring them back with you," she persisted.
" Oh, if you need the supplies, I'll go to-morrow," he added
somewhat curtly, for he felt that Meg was right about the child,
inasmuch as the rescue of the laddie should be made known to his
people.
" I would gladly rear James Munroe's boy as tho' he were my
own son," the keeper said to himself. " But his kin ought to have
him, if they want him. And, alack, who would not want such a
braw wee man, with his bonnie laugh and ways, and his merry
warm little heart. If he were, indeed, mine, I would not gie' him
up to anybody."
The next day David made ready for an nearly start.
332 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
:t You ken I canna get back to-night, Meg," he said, " but you
ken too how to tend the Light as well as I can do it myself, and
I'll be home again ere the morn's morn."
Margaret was radiant. David would bring back the missing
supplies, which she really needed. He would send out the inquiries
about the bairn's folk, which she had suggested. It was before
the days of "wireless; " the Rock was shut off from the rest of
the world save for a somewhat antiquated system of signals, but
from the mainland he could send the messages she wished. By
spring she would be rid of the child; she would no longer have to
see her husband playing with the rollicking baby of whom he was
daily growing fonder. How strange that he should grow so fond
when the bairn was the child of his successful rival for the hand
of Jessie Munroe, his early love. Margaret winced even now as
David caught up the boy, tossed him in the air, held him in a pa-
ternal embrace, and then set him down again on the floor before
the hearth.
" Wefl, good-bye, Meg," he said turning to her and folding her
in his arms, " keep a brave heart, and God bless you, lass."
" God bless you, dear man," she replied, for such were always
their parting words.
Suddenly she was seized with a strange dread, and her eyes
became dim with tears.
" Oh, David," she cried, " dinna go, after all."
" Cheer up, I shall be back almost before you have time to miss
me," he answered with a laugh.
She smiled again, seeing it was too late to dissuade him.
" I'll miss you from the moment you go, so make no delay in
coming back," she said, walking with him to the boat.
He took his place in the dory and, presently, it swung out over
the side of the Rock. For a few moments it was lost to view, but
his voice came to her from below. The next minute the boat shot
out upon the blue waters that now were so fair to see with the
sunlight shining upon them, and the white-capped waves, like troops
of naiads, merrily dancing in the breeze. Margaret caught the
bright kerchief from her neck, and stood waving it until the dory
was only a speck in the distance.
That day all went well. She rested during the sunlit hours.
When the dusk began to fall she set aglow the lamps in the lantern
and began her watch, for the keeper of the Light must be awake
and vigilant during the long night. There had been fair promise
that the good weather would continue at least a day or two longer,
I9i6.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 333
but during the hours of darkness there came a sudden change;
the barometer fell, by morning the temperature was lower, and the
skies were heavy. In the afternoon the air was thick with snow-
flakes, which soon shut out all view, except^ when now, and again,
the rising wind caught and held back the white curtain of snow as
with an angry hand, revealing a sea restless as a wild beast in
leash, ominously waiting to be let loose upon its prey.
" I'm afeard David will na come to-day, laddie," Margaret said
in disappointment. She had formed a habit of speaking aloud,
half to herself, half to the child. If he did not understand, at least
he was quick to catch her moods.
" Davy no come ? " he repeated, echoing her sigh.
In spite of her resolution not to permit herself to love the
toddling baby, Margaret caught him up and kissed him. The merry
little chap threw back his head and laughed, then patted her comely
face and pinched her rosy cheeks in the " sailor kiss " David had
taught him. Her reserves, her changing humors gave him no con-
cern. He had bestowed upon her his royal confidence, and it was
not to be shaken. Instinctively he knew her better than she knew
herself. Ah, if men did but remember how much in childhood
they knew of a woman's heart, that Debatable Land might not be
to. them the mystery it is!
Margaret ran up to the watchroom and waited for a rift in
the veil of snow, hoping to obtain a glimpse of a boat tossing upon
the waters near the lighthouse, yet, the next moment, breathing a
prayer of thankfulness because she saw none. For unless David
had embarked early on his return voyage, he would have been in
grave danger out in the storm. He did not come, and Margaret
calmed her fears with the hope, that loath as he would be to leave
her alone, he had remained at the Station, knowing she could care
for the Light.
By night the blizzard was at its height. Margaret kept the
fog bell ringing, sounded the siren whistle and polished the glass
in the tower windows, so that not a gleam of the Light should
be lost.
With the new dawn the skies cleared; by midday the sun
shone again, the wind had died down, and the sea had become com-
paratively calm.
" Now, David will come," the courageous woman in the light-
house said joyously to the child. What mattered now her toil,
her loneliness, and the awful sense of responsibility that had so
weighed upon her during these days when she had been, save for
334 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
the baby waif, alone on the Rock? Her trial was, she felt, nearly
over.
" Now, David will come," she repeated.
And the laddie, clapping his hands, cried gleefully : " Davy !
Davy!"
But that day and the next, and many to-morrows went by, and
still there was no sign of David's boat upon the waters; still the
keeper of the Light did not return to his post. The signal apparatus
at the Rock had been destroyed by the gale. The few vessels
Margaret sighted kept well away from the dangerous reef. One
afternoon, in the hopelessness of her grief, she cast herself on the
floor of the watchroom.
" David is dead. O God, let me die too ! " she moaned.
Faint from anxiety and watching she must have lost con-
sciousness, for she knew nothing more until the voice of the child
floated up from the kitchen below :
" It's most dark ! A most dark ! "
The shrill treble whose appeal was also an involuntary reminder
of a duty unperformed recalled Margaret to herself.
" The Light, I maun live to take care of the Light," she cried,
as she set the lantern agleam, " I must fulfill the trust my good man
left me. If, in God's mercy, he is still alive, and his boat is some-
where upon the waters, the Light will tell him I am watching. It
will remind him that above this ocean torch, God's Love still shines
in the heavens, and beyond it. Whatever his fate, David canna
drift."
A few hours later, like a symbol of that Love, the full moon
rose from the waves. In its radiance Margaret fancied she per-
ceived a sail afar off, but to her sorrow the shadow resolved itself
into a silvery cloud.
The woman's transcendant heroism began with her heartbreak.
Night after night she tended the Light. Day after day she put the
great lamps in order. For the child's sake she regularly prepared
the simple meals and, as time went on, she became anxious to keep
herself rugged and strong, since thus only could she perform her
duty to the unknown mariners who might depend for safety upon
the gleam of Bird Rock Light.
" Time dragged its slow length away." At last the ledge was
no longer surrounded by ice. Spring had come. To the laddie's
delight seals lay around the base of the Rock; there the watejs
were green and opalescent; in the distance, where sails sometimes
appeared, the ocean was blue and sparkling, One morning when,
1916.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 335
with David's binoculars, Margaret's eyes swept the sea her heart
gave a sudden bound.
" A ship! " she cried aloud. " A ship coming straight toward
us ! "
The child, catching the note of exultation in her voice, laughed
in boisterous triumph.
The ship kept steadily on, parting the waves in a line of foam
and making direct for the lighthouse. Now it could be seen with
the unaided eye.
" It must be the Government supply boat," Margaret ejacu-
lated, smiling and weeping. " Help is coming at last."
Her ordeal, her long vigils were nearly ended. When the
boat came she had but to tell her story and be set free from this
prison rock to which, like another Andromeda, she had for so long
been chained.- How she was to, face the taking up of a new life
without David she did not, for t^e nonce, consider. In a tumult of
emotion, half-delirious joy, half-grief, she raised her flag as a signal
that she had sighted the steamer.
" Laddie," she said, as she dressed the child in the best of the
little clothes she had made for him, " we shall soon see other faces
besides just yours and mine ; we shall hear other voices, and perhaps
they will give us news."
The boy responded to her excitement. He comprehended in
his baby way that something unusual was about to happen. Mar-
garet ran out onto the ledge. The steamer was now within hailing
distance.
" Where is the keeper of the Light? " shouted the captain.
" I have kept the Light," she called back. " My husband, the
keeper, went over to the Station last November. He maun have
been drowned in the blizzard, for he never came back."
The captain uttered an exclamation indicative of emotion and
sympathy. He remembered that only the year before, when he
brought the keeper and his wife out to the Lighthouse, Margaret
was young and comely. The woman he now saw, poised like a
water witch upon the cliff, was wan, gray-haired and pre-
maturely old.
A man, presumably a Government inspector, who stood beside
the captain on the bridge of the steamer, enveloped in a mackin-
tosh, pulled his cap further down over his eyes and made a gesture
of impatience. Presently these two men put off from the ship in
a small boat, and were rowed by sailors to the foot of the Rock.
336 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
In a few moments more the boat was raised by the derrick, and the
official visitors stepped out upon the ledge. The captain pushed
ahead.
"Margaret Cullom, you have kept the Light alone?" he ex-
claimed in admiration.
" Why, yes, wha else was there to do it? " she replied simply.
" But I have had with me this bairn, a waif from the sea."
The man she had thought an inspector stepped forward, threw
back the high coat collar that had concealed his features and, taking
off his cap, turned toward her. As Margaret glanced at him her
brain reeled.
"Am I daft or dreaming?" she ejaculated. "Oh, if it is a
dream may I never awake ! David ! David ! "
He gathered her into his arms and she sobbed upon his breast,
asking no question. It was enough that he had been given back to
her from the perils of the sea; that she was safe in his embrace
when she had abandoned all hope of ever seeing him again; that
to him and no other she was to relinquish the care of the Light.
He caressed and petted her with all the old tenderness, for
which she had so often longed during her solitude, and in his pro-
tecting clasp she felt almost like a child, oh, so glad to lay down
her burden, to be able again to rely upon his strength. It was
many minutes before she could listen to or he could tell his story,
but at last he made the attempt.
" Meg, dear lass, it is no dream but the blessed truth," said the
voice she had thought never to hear again. "It is David. I am here,
living and well. But it is I who have been daft for weeks and
months, without memory of even my own name.
" To begin with the day, so long ago, when I set out from the
Rock," he went on, while she gazed at him with wide, terrified
eyes, still half -believing him a spirit returning from the Great
Beyond. " When I reached the mainland I sent a telegram to James
Munroe's town, as I promised you, lass, that I would do. Had I
set out for home the next morning I might have reached the Rock
ere the storm broke. But I lingered, hoping for a message that did
not come. Meanwhile, the skies and the sea had become threaten-
ing; the men at the Station tried to dissuade me from embarking,
and called me a fool when I persisted.
" Soon finding that I had been, indeed, foolhardy, I endeavored
to get back to the shore. I was at the mercy of the waves. I
lashed myself fast to the boat. After a short time I feared I .was
1916.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 337
freezing to death. Then, all at once, I did not feel the terrible
cold anymore. But I could not keep awake. I thought of you and the
laddie and commended myself to God. After that I seemed to die.
But my time had not yet come. The next thing I knew I was
walking on a quay in a tropical country with a man whom I dimly
understood to be a ship's officer. I was unco' weak. What ailed
me? What chance had thrown this stranger and me together?
Turning to him I stammered:
" Tell me, sir, what is this place ?'
" He gave me a quick glance and answered with a pleasant
smile :
" 'It is the port of Algiers, North Africa. You came here in
the ship Stella which brought a cargo of salt from Canada/
" 'How did I get aboard the Stella? 1 I went on, in a sair
struggle to recollect.
" 'Oh, never mind about that now/ he replied. 'My name is
John Makepeace ; how are you called ?'
" 'My name is,' I began, and then stopped short. I had for-
gotten my name. A tide of agonizing pain swept over my soul.
' 'Never mind, old man,' he said seeing my distress, and laying
a kind hand upon my arm, 'it will come back to you.'
" That night, and for many nights thereafter, I watched the
gleam of the beacon situated on a little island at the entrance to
the harbor. And all the while many thoughts strove to right them-
selves in my dulled brain; for the light seemed as a star guiding
me to some anchorage. Mr. Makepeace who, I learned, was the
first mate of the Stella, seeing my interest in the lighthouse, took
me over there one day. Then it was that memory came back to
me. The cloud that had hung over me seemed lifted. I knew who
I was. I remembered that, like the foreign-looking man in the
Penon tower, I too had once been the keeper of a Light.
"After that your face rose before me, Meg, lass; other
memories crowded upon me, and I wept like a bairn. Mr. Make-
peace cheered me up, and said the Stella was soon to sail Westward
again with a return cargo. On the voyage home he explained, as
far as he could, what had happened to me. On that night of the
blizzard my boat was picked up by the Stella. At first my rescuers
thought I was dead, but after working over me awhile, they found
there was still life in me. They brought me back to warmth and
feeling, but somehow my head had got hurt and the cold had done
the rest. Until that day on the quay at Algiers I was a man with
VOL. cm. 23 -
338 THE PULSE OF THE SEA [June,
no knowledge of the past. God be thanket, now I am well again,
and I have come back to try, for the rest of my life, to make up
to you for what you have suffered during your lonely care of this
Light, when you were as tho' deserted by all the world, Meg. Speak
to me lass. Meg ! "
Extraordinary as had been the woman's fortitude, the unex-
pected joy of David's return was too great a strain on her en-
durance. Her gaze still fixed upon his face, became unseeing, and,
repeating his name, she slipped from his arms and fell unconscious
at his feet.
"Meg, the Light! Show me the lamps!" he whispered, as
he raised and clasped her close.
The words brought her to herself, as he felt sure they would do.
" The lamps ! Yes, come up to the tower," she cried, as her
strength came back in a surging of nervous force.
Struggling to her feet, she led him to the watchroom and,
pointing upward to the great burnished lamps in the lantern, said
proudly :
" I took care of the Light as you bade me, David."
" In faith you did, and right nobly," he replied with intense
feeling, as he kissed her again.
" Davy! Davy! " called a shrill voice close beside them.
Jessie Munroe's bairn had toddled up the stairs and was pulling
at David's coat.
The keeper bent down and caught up the baby.
" You have been a guid mother to him, Meg," he said pressing
his lips to the laddie's round cheek.
" And you got no word from his folk ? " queried Margaret.
" Yesterday, when I reached the Station on the mainland, I
found two letters that had been waiting there for many weeks,"
David answered. " One was from Jessie's Aunt Janet, the other
from a certain well-to-do tradesman, by name MacNiff, a cousin to
James Munroe. They are the bairn's next of kin, and either one
of them is willing to take him. You can send him to Janet or
MacNiff whenever you are ready, wife, to-day by the Government
boat if it so pleases you."
To his astonishment, Margaret who had so heroically endured
the storm and stress of her terrible solitude on the Lighthouse
Rock, now broke into a passion of womanly weeping.
" Oh, David, these folk maun not take the laddie from me ; it
would break my heart to gie him up," she sobbed. " You maun
1916.] THE PULSE OF THE SEA 339
fix it with them somehow. I will not gie up the laddie! I have
said it over and over to myself as I watched in the tower at night,
while the waves beat against the Rock and the tide of life in my
own veins seemed to ebb and rise again with the mighty pulse of
the sea. I will not gie up the laddie, even though I know that your
heart belongs to the bairn's mother, David, that you love her still,
dead though she is, and that he will mind you of her at every turn.
Even so, I will not gie him up. I "
Her voice rang out with defiant sharpness. At first David
heard her with gladness. At her last words, however, a look of
perplexity gathered upon his face.
" What nonsense is it you are saying, lass ? " he interrupted
almost sternly, 'you know my heart belongs to the bairn's mother?'
Faith, then, you know nothing of the kind. My liking for pretty
Jessie Munroe was a boy's fancy. She was a guid woman, and the
sadness of her fate touched me, I own. But you, Meg, you and you
only, have been, and to the end will be, the love of my life."
Looking into his steadfast eyes, she knew at last, beyond all
her burning heart-questioning, that what he said was, indeed, the
truth. Her jealousy of " the other woman " died forever and she
laughed happily. " But, David, I have grown old," she stammered,
" my hair is gray." The eternal feminine had not been al-
together stifled by the vigils of the heroine.
David laughed too.
" I loved your heart, not your hair, Meg, although these sil-
vering locks are bonny enough to me still," he said smoothing her
brow. " As for the laddie, dinna worrit. His kin are willing to
do for him, but you have the best right to him, they say, since but
for your care he would not have lived. So, if you wish to keep him,
he is yours, ours, for, I am sure, you will grant me a share in the
love of the braw wee man ? "
The child, who had been playing around the floor, here broke
into a shout of delight, as though he knew he had just been taken
to their hearts anew. Margaret caught him up with a quick caress.
" Ah, David," she said, clasping her arms about the two beings
who made her world, the husband the sea had given back to her,
the waif it had cast upon her love, " ah, David, when you were
taken from me, and during all the dreary time when I had the
sole charge of the Light, it was the bairn, Jessie Munroe's bairn, that
saved me from going mad"
THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA.
BY HENRY B. BINSSE.
HORTLY before the outbreak of the present Euro-
pean war, one of the oldest plays of Christian litera-
ture was brought out in London by a group of artists
to whom it seemed that this drama, composed by a
woman, might be urged in support of woman suf-
frage. The work of a thousand years ago could have little to in-
terest that metropolitan audience, tired and surfeited by every form
of the art of the stage. Had they been aware of it, a powerful
argument of the kind that they were looking for could have been
found, by making known to the world the rare mind and character
of the poet who originated the six short plays, of which this was
one. In fact, their author, Roswitha, well deserves permanent re-
membrance in the history of dramatic art, for her work hot only
marks the birth of the modern play, but it reveals talents of a very
high order, anticipating important features which are usually be-
lieved to be characteristic of a far later period.
Among the incomparable beauties of Shakespeare's genius, his
heroines are perhaps the most universally appreciated and admired.
Even the careless reader, he who runs and reads, becomes fascinated
by the elusive, subtle charm and majesty of character and intellect,
ever feminine. In them we behold humanity in its perfection of
the spirit, in its fullest, most delicate, exquisite flower just as the
Grecian Venus or the Victory presents the highest expression of
womanhood in outward bodily form. Were they wholly the chil-
dren of his fancy, or had he human models in his great mind?
This is not an idle question. The profound hostility to the thought
and works of the period preceding the Reformation brought about
the destruction and loss of priceless treasures of genius; and, even
in our day, a feeling of deeper interest in and sympathy with the
Middle Ages would give us a truer perspective of our own times,
with its weaknesses and dangers in addition to the enjoyment of
art which is now strange and foreign to us. If we could see
that there was at all times, throughout those troubled centuries, a
great procession of men and women of the noblest character and
purest ideals, who offer examples of human nature at its greatest
height and power of character, " a little less than the angels," our
appreciation of Shakespeare and of the civilization of which he
1916.] THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA 341
was the child would be far more vital. We are hindered from
a clear, wide view of those ages by the written history of the
ambitions and crimes of kings, prelates and nobles, who fought
like beasts to gratify their appetites. These are not the men and
women who, in the darkness of barbarism, laid the foundation for
our civilization and covered the face of Europe with works, the
inestimable value of which is revealed too often by broken frag-
ments only.
The records which we can find in the art of those days are
more faithful and more trustworthy than the chronicles of po-
litical history, because they are unconscious expressions of thought
and feeling, and have not been composed for ends more or less
selfish. In speaking of Memling, a distinguished artist and critic
(John La Farge) thus wrote: "Who were the models that sat
to the painter? These are not pure inventions, any more than his
other works. The sense of portraiture runs throughout his work.
But the model has been transmuted, probably, into finer gold.
The times were cruel, harsh, brutal, debased, violent The pic-
tures bear testimony to the love of gold, and show, and pomp, and
festival, and extraordinary display that mark the times. But how
out of all that did the painter build these images of sweet sanctity,
these flowers of simple perfection?"
May not Margaret, daughter of Sir Thomas More, have been
in the poet's mind when he pictured Cordelia? There are few
passages in King Lear more touching and more beautiful than
the meeting of Margaret and her father on his way back to the
Tower, after his condemnation to death at Westminster.
William Roper, in his Life of More, says :
When Sir Thomas came from Westminster to the Tower, his
daughter, my wife, desirous to see him, her father, whom she
thought she should never see in this world after, and also to
have his final blessing, gave attendance about the Tower wharf,
where she knew he should pass before he could enter the Tower.
There tarrying his coming, as soon as she saw him, after his
blessing on her knees reverently received, she hasting towards
him, without consideration or care of herself, pressing in
amongst the throng and company of the guard, that with hal-
berds and bills went round about him, hastily ran to him, and
there openly in sight of them, embraced him, and took him
about the neck and kissed him, crying, " Oh ! My father ! Oh !
My father," who, well liking her most natural and dear daugh-
terly affection towards him, gave her his fatherly blessing, and
342 THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA [June,
many godly words of comfort besides. From whom after she
was departed, she, not satisfied with her former sights of him,
and like one that had forgotten herself, being all ravished with
the entire love of her father, having respect neither to herself
nor to the press of the people that were about him, suddenly
turned back again, ran to him as before, took him about the
neck, and divers times kissed him lovingly, and at last, with a
full and heavy heart, was fain to depart from him.
Noble-hearted heroines were to be found then in England as
well as in Flanders; and Shakespeare must have been acquainted
with " these flowers of simple perfection," as well as Memling.
There is, indeed, ground to believe that he knew Roswitha and
her plays, for there is in them more than one point of resemblance
with his own works.
In 852, Ludolf, Duke of Saxony, founded a Benedictine abbey
at the request of his wife, Oda; and in 857 the abbey was removed
to Gander sheim, about fifty miles from the present city of Bruns-
wick, on the river Gande. After Ludolf 's death in 859, Oda with-
drew into retirement in the abbey, where she reached the most
unusual age of one hundred and seven years. Her three daughters,
Hathumoda, Gerberga and Christine, in turn succeeded her as
abbesses; and King Louis III. granted the privilege that the office
of abbess should remain in the ducal family. All the abbesses were
of imperial or royal blood; the abbess had a vote in the Rhenish
Diet, and the Elector of Hanover and the King of Prussia were
her vassals and subject to call to her court. . The abbey was
independent of episcopal authority and owned vast estates. After
1589 the abbey came under Protestant control, and so continued
until 1802, when it was incorporated with Brunswick, after a life
of one thousand years, less fifty. Truly a remarkable institution;
its like can hardly be found.
Abbeys were not solely the homes of Religious. Owing to the
consideration which they enjoyed, they were rarely affected by
wars or political troubles, and so they became havens of refuge,
especially for the children of the nobles. 1 . Of course, education
was one of the most important duties of the Religious it is strictly
true that in a broad sense monasteries were nearly as much edu-
cational as religious institutions. From its very beginning Gander-
sheim was the educational home for the daughters of the highest
nobility in Germany.
1 Those who have read the exquisite life of St. Elizabeth by the great Montalem-
bert, will recall how this gentle saint placed her children with Religious before
she retired from the world.
I9i6,] THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA 343
In those times aft abbey was a little kingdom in itself, all
the more so when it was so richly endowed as Gandersheim, for
in it were included, not merely the choir sisters the Religious
strictly speaking but, also, many lay sisters, or assistants, some
of the clergy, and a little host of working people for the estates
belonging to the abbey; and, in the case of a large abbey, these
serfs or laborers, with their families, would be numerous enough
to form an important village. This community made everything
required for their support; they tanned leather; made their
garments from wool or linen raised on the estate, put up the build-
ings from their own materials; everything was grown or made
on the spot. All the arts of peace were practised to the utmost
perfection, for no one was pressed for time, and all the work had
to be done as well as it was possible to do it. Within the abbey
itself, the nuns, novices and so on, when not at their devotions,
busied themselves with the arts of the needle and the spindle, with
writing or copying manuscripts, with the fine arts, music, painting,
sculpture and architecture, with literature as well as the sciences
of the day; and in teaching all these to the children confided to
their care. As they rose early, slept little and worked with steady
system, much was done in a day. We greatly deceive ourselves
when we boast that the higher education of women is modern.
In 959, Gerberga, daughter of Duke Henry of Bavaria, niece
of Emperor Otto I., was consecrated abbess. She was possessed of
great learning; and discovering the unusual genius of Roswitha,
one of the Religious under her charge, she encouraged and directed
her efforts in poetry.
Our knowledge of Roswitha is limited to what she tells us
about herself in the prefaces to her poetical works, and, as she
quite naturally never refers to her family, we have the tradition
only that she was of noble, perhaps royal, birth, and was born
about the year 932.
So fine was the quality of Roswitha's mind that she could both
enjoy and estimate the literary worth and workmanship of the
greatest dramatists, of Terence for example, although repelled by
his coarseness and paganism. She was drawn to impart the
knowledge of these beauties of literature to others, but feared that
immature minds might be sullied by the evil features of his plays,
so she decided but listen, rather, to her own charming words,
which disclose a mind in perfect poise, and as delicate as it was
strong :
344 THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA [June,
It is a frequent weakness among Catholics and one from
which we, ourselves, are not free that they let themselves be
carried away by beauty of style, to the point that they find more
pleasure in the vanity of pagan literature than in the solid
worth of Holy Writ. Likewise, there are some who, while they
do not abandon the study of the sacred pages, and care little
for pagan letters in general, still take delight in the fictions of
Terence, which they find themselves unable to lay aside, without
the remembrance of things which must be condemned, as so
many blots upon the mind. Therefore, I, who am named " The
powerful voice of Gandersheim," 2 have ventured to imitate
him, in my writings, whom others make their beloved companion
in their hours of reading ; that I might consecrate henceforward,
to the praise of the strong-hearted chastity of holy virgins, a
form of letters hitherto dishonored by the picture of impure
morals. Nevertheless, it is with hesitation and shame, and many
blushes, that I have been forced to describe the detestable folly
of unlawful love, and to utter, in dialogues, words to which
our ears should be deaf. But if I allowed my sense of shame
to stop my pen, I could never attain my object, and purity would
fail to receive the praise which is its due; inasmuch as the
dangers of temptations increase the value of saving grace and
the glory of the victory won.
Always, in the ending of these plays, the fierce strength of
man is overcome by the triumph of the weakness of woman.
I anticipate that the inferiority of my work will lead many to
find fault with me, for in every point it is far below my model.
My pride is not so great that I would dare to compare myself,
I will not say with those writers of renown, even with the
least of their disciples. My only thought has been to offer to
Him to Whom I owe all things in spite of my knowledge of
my utter incapacity the humble service of my mind. I, there-
fore, rejoice in anticipation, if the affection and reverence of
my intentions may meet with approval from some; and if
the obscurity of my name and the harshness of an incorrect
style should avert from my book the approbation of others, at
least I shall have the consolation that, in adding to the sheaf
of my little works on heroic verse these new ears gleaned from
the field of the drama, I have tried to lead to abstinence from
the fruits, full of danger, offered to the desires of the senses
by the knowledge of the ancients.
*Ego clamor validus Gandeshcmensis. This is, perhaps, a playful reference to
the ugly, literal meaning of her name, for which there was, as it seems to me, a
more flattering, figurative meaning, which escapes us. In the manuscripts the
poet is called Hrosvit, roar afar, or loudly, of which Hroswitha or Roswitha is a
Latinised form.
1916.] THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA 345
Roswitha selected Christian legends, popular in her day, for
her plots. Here are the titles : Gallicanus, Dulcitius, Callimachus,.
Abraham, Paphnuce and Thais, The Martyrdom of Faith, Hope and
Charity. These six plays were preceded by eight poems, in the
beautiful manuscripts of the eleventh century, discovered by Con-
rad Celtes about 1500, and now in the royal library at Munich; and
this is the earliest copy of her dramatic works. All of the poems
are versions of legends. One of them, The Fall and Conversion of
Theophilus, has some interest, being the story of a cleric who, from
ambition, offers himself to the devil, the first known form of the
Faust legend.
Gallicanus, the pagan commander of Constantine's forces, on
the eve of a campaign against the Scythians, the last nation resisting
the Roman emperor, asks the hand of Constantia, Constantine's
daughter, as his reward in case of victory. Constantia is a Chris-
tian and has taken a vow of chastity. Her father, greatly disturbed,
breaks the news to her. She advises feigned acquiescence, that
Gallicanus shall leave with her his two daughters to be her com-
panions, while he shall take on his staff two of her friends, who
are prominent Christian ecclesiastics. Constantia quickly converts
the two daughters to Christianity. Gallicanus is all but defeated by
the Scythians when, through the prayers of the two Christians, sud-
denly, a strange host turns the tide in favor of the Romans. Gal-
licanus returns to Rome in triumph, but immediately goes to St.
Peter's to offer thanks for the victory, and to become a Christian.
He then renounces all thought of marriage with Constantia, and
retires to a religious life.
This drama, as well as all the others, is very short; of about
the length of one act of a modern piece; and the art of the de-
velopment of the action is most simple, indeed; but the dialogue
is true to nature and spirited.
A. F. Ozanam, one of the most judicious French critics of the
last century, says : " In the person of Constantia, drawn with such
touching affection, in whose character firmness and the most re-
spectful tenderness are united in resisting the paternal temptation,
and in whom the enthusiasm of a virgin soul allied with endless
gentleness captivates the wills of her companions; it is easy to
recognize the abbess Gerberga, who, also, was a daughter of the
Caesars, and whose hand, beyond a doubt, had been sought by the
greatest nobles."
In Dulcitius our poet presents scenes of a broad force. It
is a strange plot. Three Christian virgins, Agapee, Chionia and
346 THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA [June,
Irene, refuse to worship false gods, are deprived of their liberty
and put under the charge of Dulcitius, a pagan, who, with evil in-
tentions enters their abode at night; but through the prayers of
the young Christians, he is struck by madness, and, entering the
kitchen, he embraces the pots and kettles with great affection. He
appears before his guards imagining that he is in full uniform,
black as an Ethiopian, his clothing covered with dirt and grease.
Agapee and Chionia go to martyrdom. Irene becomes the object
of the desires of Lisinnius. Again, she is protected by several broad
comedy mistakes before she gains the martyr's crown.
Evidently we have here, as in Callimachus and in Paphnuce,
the scenes which brought forth the blushes referred to in her preface
by Roswitha ; but it is to her credit that nowhere does the elevation,
breadth and power of her mind show to greater advantage. In
spite of the extreme audacity of the situations, the hand of the
poet is delicate, as well as firm, and there is not the faintest
impression of impurity. What playwright of our day would be
equal to this task?
In the next drama, the young man Callimachus, a pagan, is
possessed by love for Drusiana, a Christian married lady, who re-
pulses scornfully his advances. After he has left her presence, she
perceives that her thoughts dwell upon him with pleasure, and that
she is in danger of returning his love. That she might not yield,
she prays to God that she may die " rather than become the ruin
of that agreeable young man." This delightful and happy touch of
nature betrays the violence of the hidden struggle in her Christian
soul against her passion. Her prayer is heard and she dies. Now
comes the situation like the well-known tomb scene in Romeo and
Juliet. At night Callimachus breaks into the burial vault, lifts
the stone lid of the coffin, and contemplates the lifeless features of
the woman whom he has adored; throwing himself on the ground
he bursts into passionate tears. " Can this be, indeed, you, still
so beautiful, who repulsed me with so great cruelty ! " Then he
dies. As in this scene in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare introduces
Paris and Friar Laurence, so Roswitha, before him, brought to the
tomb Drusiana's husband and St. John the Baptist. In Roswitha's
tragedy, St. John the Baptist brings back to life Drusiana and Cal-
limachus. The latter is baptized by St. John, cured of his sinful
passion, and, as a result, abjures the world. This, to us, childish
ending may have had a deeper meaning than we discern to-day.
We may be sure that it contains a figurative lesson, such as, may be,
the soul killed by the passion, raised again to spiritual life by
1916.] THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA 347
baptism. In those days people loved figures, symbols and hidden
meanings.
Callimachus is the most beautiful of all Roswitha's plays, from
the passionate delicacy of sentiment, elevation of language and
romance of plot.
In Abraham the author pictures the struggle of the human
soul with youth's passions. Abraham and a fellow hermit have
brought up his orphan niece, Maria, from childhood, whom, grown
up, they seek to win to the religious life; but, carried along by
the natural desire to see the world, she runs away from the holy
men. Abraham hears that she has entered upon a life of evil.
Disguising himself as a young man, he seeks his niece in her dread-
ful abode. When alone with Maria, the old man, taking off
his hat, reveals his white hair and venerable countenance
to the young girl, who throws herself at his feet. With great
gentleness and sweetness, he recalls her to her better self, and
Maria, pierced to the heart, follows him, weeping bitterly. Even
for our day, the realism of this play would be too startling. The
delicacy and purity with which the scene is portrayed, render it
a masterpiece of play writing.
The well-known legend of Thais is the subject of Paphnuce.
In the opening scene of Paphnuce instructing his students, there is
disclosed a most interesting view of the science of Roswitha's
days; and it is strange to find music placed by the side of mathe-
matics as a sister science. Evidently music was a favorite with
the poet, for Paphnuce discusses about it at great length; and,
among other things, he dwells upon the music of the heavenly bodies
from their harmonious movements, the " music of the spheres,"
proclaiming the identical thought which is expressed so beautifully
by Shakespeare in the Merchant of Venice:
There is not the smallest orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ;
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Dost ghostly close us in, we cannot hear it.
Here and there, in this and other plays, are flashes of deep
religious and philosophical insight and wisdom, like Paphnuce's
warrant for the study of nature : " The better man may compre-
hend with what marvelous skill God rules the number and mass of
worlds, the more ardent must be his love for Him; and this is
right and as it should be."
348 THE BIRTH OF THE CHRISTIAN DRAMA [June,
The last play, Wisdom and her three daughters, Faith, Hope
and Charity, is an allegorical drama, a true morality play.
In the tenth century there was one universal written language
in Europe, Latin. While all Roswitha's poems were composed in
this language, her brilliant genius was not bound to the Latin forms
of metre. In her day, the poetry of the Northern nations was
injured greatly by the prevailing love for rhyme: either the repe-
tition of initial sounds, alliteration, or of weak rhymes throughout
the line, assonance. There are instances where this passion for
rhyme is carried to the point where the meaning is rendered un-
intelligible. Roswitha's ear for music was too delicate to accept
these harsh measures for her verse. In following the fashion, she
refined it, carefully avoiding the poetical sins of the hour, twists,
puns, and affectations of every kind. Her lines are harmonious,
with faint rhymes, or with assonance; and when she desires to
express quick action they end with strong, full rhymes the method
used by Shakespeare. At times, she cuts her lines, composing in
true vers libres, exactly in the simple unconfined versification of
La Fontaine.
Although we lack an account of the presentation of these
plays, circumstantial evidence leaves no room for doubt that they
were composed for the children in the care of the Benedictines. On
festival days, after the great liturgical devotions had been finished
and the choir was empty, a stage was improvised in the open space
bounded by the cloisters. Seats were made ready for the abbess
and the choir sisters, perhaps for some high dignitary of the Church
and his attendant clergy; doubtless the novices, arid lay sisters,
maybe some of the vassals, were present. The parts were taken by
the novices, perhaps by some of the most advanced young girls.
The plays served several purposes. They taught moral lessons, they
were exercises in Latin and literature, and gave innocent amusement
and variety to the scholastic year.
In conclusion, we may say with Charles Magnin, who has
edited and translated an edition of Roswitha's works in French:
" This Sapho of Christianity, this tenth Muse, as she was called by
her compatriot, Birkheimer, was not only the wonder of Saxony, she
is the glory of all Europe. It may be said, in truth, that the
works of this distinguished woman are among those which confer
the most honor on her century, and which, despite certain faults
resulting from the epoch in which she lived, do most to defend it
from the charge of barbarism, made with too little warrant."
THE UNITED RUTHENIAN CHURCH OF GALICIA UNDER
RUSSIAN RULE.
BY F. A. PALMIERI, O.S.A.
H||AST year, at the very moment when Russian soldiers
seemed to have within their grasp the long-coveted
Austrian Galicia, Prince Eugenius Trubeckoi, a
leader of the liberal thought in the University of
Moscow, published two exceedingly interesting
pamphlets : The War and the Peaceful Mission of Russia and The
National War and Its Spiritual Meaning.
Prince Trubeckoi is well-known among his countrymen as
a thinker who views the religious and social problems of our
timer in a mystical light. No wonder then if he philosophizes about
the war as a mystic: if he claims also a spiritual mission for his
own country in Europe, overturned by the most bloody war in
history. For him, God has bestowed upon Russia the glorious role
of deliverer of peoples held in political and religious bondage. By
fulfilling that mission, Russia will find in herself the best and most
vital element of her own ego, of her national consciousness. As
an emancipator of slaves, Russia will not betray her destinies.
She will tread the stage of the world as the herald of freedom
and brotherhood in God; she will realize her moral unity; she
will rise above the narrow conceptions of national egotism; she
will shape herself as a well-built social organism working out the
achievement of her historical aims. Russia ought not to be a tool
in the hands of selfish politicians. When her rulers, her people
exert a beneficent influence on the life and civilization of man-
kind, then Russia will be inflamed with the desire of .conquering,
and she will Qonquer, too.
It is noteworthy that Prince Trubeckoi is not the only ex-
pounder of these consoling and humanitarian views. The new
school of religious and political thought in Russia, a school of
great thinkers, as Basil Rozanov, Demetrius Merejkovsky, Nicholas
Berdiaev, Vladimir Ern, are forecasting a moral rebirth of Russia.
More than that, Nicholas Berdiaev portrays the Messiahship of
Russia in a world cleansed of its filth in an ocean of blood.
Russia is predestined to reestablish the order of justice amongst
350 GALICIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE [June,
men to revive the Christian ideal in hearts benumbed by religious
starvation, to take up the defence of the noblest causes of mankind.
Unhappily, the liberal school in Russia is represented by a
handful of most able thinkers, whose voice is really the voice of
one crying in the wilderness. Russian bureaucracy, both ecclesi-
astical and political, and the Russian police are the great ruling
powers of Russia, and either by traditional routine or by native
disability they hamper every attempt of the Russian soul to get
rid of its moral fetters. Those two powers are now responsible for
the defeat of the Russian policy in Galicia, a defeat which has been
followed by more serious reverses than the military disasters.
The position of Russia in her conquered and now lost province
was indeed beset with all kinds of obstacles. The conquerors
could reckon only upon a small flock of friends, the so-called
Moschalophils or Ruthenians imbued with the spirit of Russophilism
or Panslavism. On the other hand, they met in Galicia a large
population of cultured Poles, who dominated the country; a dense
Jewish element which cordially detests the Russian domination., and
finally, a more considerable mass of patriotic Ruthenians, who look
upon Russia as the oppressor of their own race and the persecutor
of their own religion and language. Good politicians would have
found here fair occasions to smother the racial and political and
religious antagonism between Russians, on the one side, and Poles,
Ruthenians and Jews on the other. Since the Russians fight for
the holiest liberties of mankind, for the defence of little nationalities
against the Teutonic aims of a world domination, it would have
been wise to show in deeds that their rulers do not forget the
mission which they have undertaken. A well-minded Russia
would have taken advantage of what she finds in the social life
of Europe to fill the gaps of her political institutions, and to begin
a new era of freedom, progress and tolerance in the normal de-
velopment of her own life.
Unhappily, Russia has failed to realize the hopes of the friends
of her cultural aspirations. She has not attempted to blend har-
moniously the Eastern and Byzantine traditions of her historical
past with the dictates and the yearnings of the Western and Latin
civilization, which has been nourished with the purest milk of
the Catholic spirit and ideal. To judge from the documents in
hand, documents which have been reproduced in Russian papers,
even in the official organs of the Russian Orthodox Church, as
the Tzerkovnyia Viedomosti and the TzerkovHyi Viestnik, Russia
1916.] GALICIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE 351
has met with complete failure in her first entrance upon the free
soil of Western countries. And the responsibility of her moral
defeat falls upon the men who have chosen to carry out the po-
litical and religious aims of Russia in Galicia. In fact, Count
Bobrinski, the Russian Governor of Galicia, is abhorred by the
leaders of Russian liberalism as the perfect embodiment of the
tchinovniki or employers, who are accountable for the crippling
of the powerful vital energies of Russia, and on the other hand,
Eulogius, Orthodox Archbishop of Chelm, member of the im-
perial Duma, the prelate to whom the religious (Orthodox) or-
ganization of Galicia was confided, is a fervent admirer and fol-
lower of the methods of ecclesiastical policy developed by Con-
stantin Pobiedonostzev.
It is not our intention to pass sentence upon the political mis-
takes of the two Russian rulers of Galicia just named. Russia
doubtless did not win the gratitude of the Poles by the closing of
the flourishing university and polytechnic school of Lemberg; by
the exile to Siberia of some of the greatest scholars and leaders
of Polish culture in Galicia; by the plundering of Polish museums
and libraries; by the ostracism of the Polish language from the
schools ; by the unreasonable imposition that Poles should use only
textbooks revised by Russian censors, viz., textbooks which drop
off the brightest pages of Polish heroism and culture and noble
deeds. In like manner, they did not smother the intense hatred
of the Jews against Russia by perpetrating within the boundaries
of Galicia the pogromy so frequent in the Russian provinces with
a Jewish populace, or by applying to them the restrictive laws in
force in Russia. One day unbiased history will point out the sad
results of the violent measures adopted against the national awaken-
ing of the Ruthenians, who under the rule of Austria far better
than in Russia could realize their cultural aims and their Slavic
ideals. It seems impossible to understand why in a war which is
said to be fought for the freedom and defence of oppressed
nationalities, the leaders of Ruthenian patriotism, professors,
teachers, physicians, lawyers have been arrested and exiled to Si-
beria. Ruthenian papers bitterly lament that the Russians have
burned most books written in the Ruthenian language, despoiled
Ruthenian museums of their treasures and carried these away to
Petrograd, closed the Ruthenian academy of sciences which received
a yearly allowance from the Austrian ministry of public instruc-
tion. Of these political blunders I do not intend to speak nor to
352 GALICIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE [June,
form a judgment upon them. In my opinion, the conduct of
Russia in Galicia has been still worse in the realm of religious
tolerance, and Bobrinski and Eulogius may be accorded the not
enviable glory of having engraved their names in the long list of
the systematic persecutors of the Catholic Church.
Eastern Galicia was the seat and the last stronghold of the
Ruthenian United Church, which numbers there four million
souls, a Metropolitan, three bishops, one hundred Basilians, and
more than two thousand priests. Of old the Ruthenian Church had
a flock of twelve millions of faithful. But when the Ruthenian
provinces incorporated in the kingdom of Poland were added to
the Empire of the Tsars by the right of force, several millions of
United Ruthenians in the course of a century were ascribed to the
Orthodox Church by a series of laws and persecutions which have
rightly deserved the epithet of Neronian. Our readers may find the
documents of this saddest destruction of the Ruthenian United
Church in the well-informed books of Theiner, Lescoeur, Likowski,
Zalenski, Pelesz. It would be enough to remember that even the
Tzerkovnyia Viedomosti, official organ of the Holy Governing
Synod, in 1905 blamed the policy of Constantin Pobiedonostzev
against the so-called uporstvuiuchii (obstinate), or Ruthenian
United, who for more than forty years preferred to have their
churches closed, their religious worship suppressed, their dead
buried in unconsecrated ground, their children not baptized, their
marriages not recognized by the civil power, rather than to aposta-
tize from the Catholic Church and to receive their sacraments from
Orthodox priests.
The first step towards the political emancipation of Galicia
from the Austrian yoke was the arrest of Count Andrew Sceptycki,
Metropolitan and Archbishop of the Ruthenian United Church at
Lemberg. The venerable prelate did not delude himself as to his
fate in case the Russians should invade Galicia. He refused, how-
ever, to yield to the earnest entreaties of Archduke Eugenius, who
strove to induce him to seek refuge in Vienna before the evacu-
ation of Lemberg by the Austrian troops. " A Catholic bishop,"
answered the prelate nobly, " is not accustomed to forsake his
flock in trying times."
Count Sceptycki is the most brilliant representative of the
Ruthenian United Church. He is the offspring of a Polonized
Ruthenian family, whose titles of nobility go back to the twelfth
century, and which has given to the Ruthenian Church two other
1916.] GAL1CIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE 353
Metropolitans. In his youth he renounced the career of arms, and
embraced the monastic life and the Ruthenian rite in the Galician
Congregation of Basilians. Consecrated bishop, and elevated to
the supreme dignity of the Ruthenian United Church, he spent his
forces, his talents, his apostolic activities and his vast revenues
for the moral and religious welfare of his spiritual subjects. In
spite of his weak health, several times during the year he visited
the numerous villages of his large diocese, preaching, hearing con-
fessions, and living an ascetic and mortified life. At a little distance
from Lemberg he founded and organized a monastery of Basilians,
who followed there the rules of the rigid asceticism of old, even
that of perpetual silence, and he visited often this oasis of monastic
austerities. Within the precincts of his episcopal residence, he
instituted a religious museum of Ruthenian art, which contained an
invaluable collection of ancient icons, and a precious set of seven
hundred incunabula of Slavic liturgical books. At the outbreak of
the war, he was organizing a monastery of Basilians devoted to
historical and theological researches, and to them he gave the
task of working out and printing the acts of all the Slavic Councils
either Catholic or Orthodox, the monuments of Slavic hagiography
and of Slavic liturgy, and a series of elaborate treatises concern-
ing the dogmatic, disciplinary and liturgical divergences between
Eastern and Western Christianity. For this purpose he had
founded a rich library of Greek and Slavic ecclesiastical
books.
Count Sceptycki was at the same time a veritable apostle of
the reunion of the Churches, and of the Catholic renaissance of the
Slavic races. He played a prominent role as president of the
biennial congresses held at Velehrad in Moravia to promote doc-
trinal understanding between Eastern and Western theologians. I
remember that he was an object of admiration to the members of
these congresses because of his profound acquaintance with the
abstrusest theological questions, and for the ease and elegance with
which he spoke Latin, Greek, French, Italian, English, German,
Russian, Polish and Ruthenian.
At present, Count Sceptycki is a political prisoner of the
Russian Government in the city of Kursk. His library, his won-
derful collections of art and antiquities have been confiscated and
carried away to Russia, his correspondence sequestered, his in-
stitutions suppressed. During the ten months of the Russian mis-
government of Galicia, Bishop Eulogius dwelt in the Metropolitan
VOL. CUT. 23
354 GALIC1A UNDER RUSSIAN RULE [June,
residence, and ransacked its precious artistic collections, which in-
cluded wonderful paintings of Wolczewsky and a series of ad-
mirable" drawings of Giambattista* Tiepolo. The cathedral of St.
Gury (George), the sanctuary of the Ruthenian Union, was trans-
formed into an Orthodox church, and Bishop Eulogius usurped
the title of Metropolitan of Galicia, and addressed charges to the
Ruthenian United flock, urging them to reenter the pale of the
Orthodox Church.
The Russian Government when asked for the reasons which
justified its conduct towards Count Sceptycki, boldly answered
that the unyielding prelate was deported into Russia as a political
agitator against the Russian authorities. In what consists the
political agitation charged against Count Sceptycki, it would be ex-
ceedingly difficult to guess, for Count Sceptycki was arrested the
moment that the Russians entered Lemberg. It is, therefore, a
plain falsehood to assert that he was plotting against the Russian
invaders of Galicia. But from several papers inserted these last
years in the Tzerkovnyia Viedomosti, it is possible to indicate the
causes of the illegal and cruel treatment inflicted upon him. The
worthy prelate is accused of having awakened the national con-
sciousness of the Ruthenians, and of having inaugurated and fos-
tered the so-called Ukrainophil movement which endangers the polit-
ical compactness of the Russian empire. Nothing is farther from the
truth than this false allegation. The Ukrainophil movement which
will furnish to Russian politicians an easy pretext for the efface-
ment of the Ruthenian United Church in Galicia, existed long before
Count Sceptycki occupied the Metropolitan See of Lemberg. It is
a logical result of the gradual awakening of national consciousness
during the nineteenth century. To it we are indebted for the
political autonomy of the Serbian and the Bulgarian kingdoms, for
the powerful revival of the literature and the economical prosperity
of Bohemia, the political and territorial claims of the Slovenes and
Croatians, and the cries of revolt and protest of the Slovaks against
the Hungarian policy of Magiarisation. The Ruthenians or
Ukrainians, or, as Russians say, the Little Russians, felt always
conscious of embodying a race ethnographically distinct from the
Great Russians. At the time of writing, they boldly declare that
their race covers an enormous area of eight hundred and fifty
thousand square kilometres from Przemsyl to the Caucasus, from
the immense marshes of the Pripet to the Black Sea. Their national
literature holds the third place after those of Serbia and Bulgaria
I9i6.] GALICIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE 355
in the general history of the Slavic literary genius. The earliest
period of Russian literature, the period of Kiev, which boasts of
the glorious names of Nestor the Chronicler, the Hegomenos Daniel,
and Cyril, Bishop of Turov, is in fact the earliest period of Ru-
thenian culture. The language of the Little Russians differs en-
tirely from that of the Great Russians, and the difference between
them was authoritatively sanctioned by the Imperial academy of
sciences at Petrograd in a memoir dated January 30, 1905.
Ruthenian nationalists dream of the political autonomy of the
thirty-four millions of Ruthenians grouped on both sides of the
Dnieper, and on the upper basin of the Dniester. They dream of
a Ruthenian republic which would weld into one political body
the rich and fertile provinces of Galicia, Bukowina, Volhynia, Po-
dolia, Kief, Chernigof, Poltava, Kharkof, Kherson, Ekaterinoslaf,
Taurida, Kuban, Don, and build up a bulwark against Russia forced
back to its Asiatic steppes.
The Metropolitans of Lemberg and the United Church of
Galicia are not to be held responsible for a movement which origi-
nated on Russian soil. The national bard of the Ruthenian race, the
great poet of Ukrainophilism, Tarass Chewchenko, was born in
Russia, and under the Russian rule endured the bitterest sufferings
for his patriotic ideal. No doubt most Ruthenian United priests,
who know the secret aspirations of their own people, and use the
same language, share also in the glowing Ukrainophil patriotism.
But it would be a flat historical untruth to blame the Ruthenian
United Church for a national and, it may be granted also, for a
separatist movement which owes its first origins to the cultural
development of the Ruthenian people and to the shortsighted policy
of Russian rulers. It suffices to say that the leaders of Ukraino-
philism in Galicia belong to the radical party, a party that does
not cherish a deeply- felt love for the national Church.
Count Sceptycki was not the only one to meet the vengeance
of the Orthodox haters of the Union. Another victim of Eulogius'
regime was Monsignor Czechowicz, Ruthenian United Bishop of
Przemysl. In his vain attempts to forbid Russian Orthodox priests
to invade his cathedral, he was beaten with his pastoral crosier and
driven by Russian policemen from his episcopal palace. The old
prelate sought refuge in the Franciscan monastery in the same town,
and died heartbroken a few days later, on April 28th, at the age of
seventy-two years.
Three hundred Ruthenian priests have been taken by violence
356 GALICIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE [June,
from their parish churches and deported into Siberia. The same
punishment has been inflicted upon twenty-two students of the
Ruthenian Seminary of Lemberg, and its rector, Monsignor Ossup
Bochan, a liturgist of great repute. Even Roman Catholic priests
have incurred the rigors of Russian conquerors. A Jesuit, Father
Rostorowski, an elegant writer of apologetic treatises, has been
exiled to Tomsk, and he has been followed in his exile by Father
Sopouch, superior of the Jesuits' house in Lemberg.
The Osservatore Romano of July 7, 1915, published a note of
the Russian minister to the Holy See. The document stated that
Russia attempted no religious proselytism in Galicia; that no Ro-
man Catholic priest was imprisoned or molested; that few united
priests had been committed to jail for the crime of espionage. The
truth is that the Holy Governing Synod, in full agreement with
the Russian Government, had sent six hundred Orthodox priests to
Galicia and Bukowina, and invested them with the mission of
spreading the Orthodox faith among the recalcitrant Ruthe-
nians.
The Tzcrkovnyia Viedomosti of 1915 contains requests for
large sums for the organization of the Orthodox Church in the
conquered provinces. In a few months these Russian priests boasted
of having set up seventy Orthodox parishes in villages exclusively
inhabited by Ruthenian United. Such a great success was entirely
due to the violent usurpation of the churches whose pastors had
been exiled to Siberia by the despotism of Bobrinski. A decree
issued by him established that when in a United parish two-thirds of
the populace claimed the spiritual assistance of a Russian Ortho-
dox priest, the United Church had to be transformed into an Or-
thodox one. Russian emissaries worked upon the Ruthenian popu-
lace, and partly by threats, partly by money and partly by forgeries,
compiled numerous lists of United who expressed the desire of
abjuring the Catholic faith. It was from fear of starvation that
one hundred and fifty teachers gave their names to the Russian
Orthodox Church, as we learn from the Tzerkovny Viestnik, and
promised to imbue their pupils with the spirit of Byzantine Ortho-
doxy. Ruthenian United priests who attempted to resist the in-
vaders of their own churches, as Father Wassyl Matweiko, pastor
of Beremowcy in the district of Zborow, were arrested and no one
knows what became of them. The schools maintained by com-
munities of Catholic nuns, especially by the Sisters of the Sacred
Heart and the Ursulines, were strictly forbidden to receive as pupils
I 9 i6.] GALICIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE 357
United Ruthenian girls. Ruthenian Catholic papers, as the Niwa
and the Roslan, and even the ascetic pamphlets edited by the Basil-
ians for the spiritual edification of uncultivated classes were at
once suppressed. For ten months Galicia was deprived of Ruthe-
nian papers, while it was inundated with defamatory leaflets against
Catholicism, printed by the Laura of the Blessed Trinity, near
Moscow. Two of these leaflets are entitled: By What Wiles the
Popes of Rome Imported the Union Into Galicia and How the
Russian Traitors Potiei and Terlecki (the first bishops championing
the Union of Brest) Inoculated Ruthenians zvith the Ecclesiastical
Union with Roman Heretics.
Many hundreds of Ruthenian children were taken away from
Galicia into Russia to be educated in the schools of the Orthodox
Church, and to become one day the opposers of their own Church
and the enemies of their own race.
We refrain here from giving other details of the religious
misrule of Galicia by the Russian bureaucracy. In a communica-
tion to the Journal de Geneve, Dr. C. Levicky, President of the
Ukrainian Political Club, pointed out that the Russian invasion of
his country had destroyed at a blow the cultural work of many
years.
The Ruthenian language has been forbidden [he writes] as
an official medium of communication in the services of the
church and in the schools. All Ruthenian newspapers in Galicia
have been suppressed, libraries scattered, Ruthenian books be-
longing to individuals confiscated, and the collections of the
museums sent to Russia. All Ukrainian associations have been
dissolved. Hundreds of Galician notables of Ukrainian nation-
ality have been sent to Siberia. The United Greek Church, to
which for more than two centuries all the Ruthenians of
Eastern Galicia have belonged, and which has become a national
Church, is now persecuted in every way. Its head, Count An-
drew Sceptycki, has been taken into Russia ; many priests have
been exiled, the people terrorized, and in their half-famished
state converted by the aid of threats and promises to the
Orthodox Church. In the United Greek and Catholic Churches,
Orthodox masses are celebrated in accordances with the rulers
and examples of Eulogius, Bishop of Volhynia, the famous
proselytizer. Now they are beginning to transform by force
the Catholic Greek Churches into Orthodox, for, they say, they
were Orthodox three centuries ago and ought to be restored to
the Russian Church. The violent introduction of Russian
Orthodoxy by Russian sermons which are not understood by
358 GALICIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE [Junt,
the people, and the forbidding of the Ruthenian language even
in converse with God, are praised by the agents of Russification
as a return of the Ruthenians to the religion of their fathers.
The Russian policy in Galicia has resulted in estranging all
Austrian Slavs from Russia. These feelings are expressed in the
address of the General Ukrainian Council to the Emperor of
Austria on the occasion of the Teutonic victories. The address states
that under the Austrian rule, the Ukrainians have found the free
development of their national, intellectual and economical life.
They hope also that the Teutonic armies will free from the yoke
of Tsarism the provinces of Chelm and Volhynia, and their historic
towns. ''' The Russians themselves begin to realize," to quote a
saying of Count Petrov in the Birjevyia Viedonwsti, " that Austrian
Slavs are not desirous of being emancipated by Russia." The true
motive of this distrust of Russia is made plain by Nikon, Orthodox
Bishop of Vologda, in the same paper : " While Russian Ukrainians
grope in spiritual lethargy and in the darkness of ignorance, Aus-
trian Ukrainians have their own schools, gymnasiums, universities,
reading-rooms, papers, magazines. From a cultural point of view,
they surpass their countrymen of Russia, and consider themselves a
distinct Slavic race."
Whatever may be the final issue of the European war, it is
to be hoped that a new Russia will rise upon the debris of its effete
political and religious institutions, a Russia which will not be led
astray by the standard-bearers of a blind and inhuman nationalism.
It is not the true Russia, the Russia of a bright future, that has
misruled Galicia and reopened the era of fruitless persecutions
against the Catholic Church. The fiercest enemies of the Russian
people are the agents of Russification, the politicians who since the
age of Peter the Great have held in thraldom the Russian Orthodox
Church, paralyzed its energies, and associated its priesthood in their
shameful attempts to deprive their non-Russian subjects of their
ethnical consciousness, language and religion. A war gallantly
waged for the highest interests of civilization and the freedom
of peoples would result in complete failure if the regime of
Pobiedonostzev should extend over countries which have not as
yet experienced its brutal caresses.
Russian nationalists may believe that Byzantium has been for
nineteen centuries the preserver of Orthodoxy; that the Byzantine
form of Christianity sets forth the genuine revelation of Christ, that
I9i6.] GAL1CIA UNDER RUSSIAN RULE 359
the Roman Church is the adulterator of the traditional Christian
faith, the contriver of anti-evangelical novelties, the gnawing worm
of Christian piety, Russian theologians may spread such heinous
falsehoods even in America, 1 but their beliefs ought not to be
put into practice by methods which throw a sinister light upon the
self-styled spiritual mission of Russia with regard to Western
Christianity.
We have no doubt of the high destiny of Russia. Her people
so profoundly devout and so ardently Christian have certainly a
noble mission to fulfill in the history of Christendom, in the onward
sweep of civilization, in the ceaseless development of the human
mind. But it is not the popes hired by the Holy Governing Synod ;
it is not the bishops who so degrade their dignity that they become
mere wheel-works in the political machinery of Russian bureau-
cracy; it is not tchinovniki, after the manner and style of Bobrinski
who will accomplish the Messianic expectations of Russian thinkers.
A spiritual mission may be achieved only by breaking the fetters
which hamper the free exercise of spiritual power, and, as a Spanish
Catholic review recently observed, in Russia as well as in Byzan-
tium, Csesarism, or the dense atmosphere of an omnipotent autoc-
racy, has swept away the religious liberty and the doctrinal in-
dependence of the Church. Catholicism, the Roman Catholic Church,
was alone able to maintain freedom and independence in the fulfill-
ment of her divine mission on earth. 2 The claims, therefore, of
Russian Messianism will be satisfied only when Russia will rid her-
self of Byzantine routine, cease to violate in the Russian bureau-
cratic style, the civic, religious and national rights of the so-called
allogenes, and above all, look upon Catholicism not as a foe to be
crushed, but as the vital strength of Christianity, the defender of
the ideal of a free Christian Church throughout the world.
1 Allusion is here made to a superficial paper of Ivan Sokolov, on Byzantium
as the Preserver of Orthodoxy, inserted in the Constructive Quarterly Review,
the well-known magazine of Silas McBee. The paper is filled with historical
enormities and veiled, but poisonous, attacks against the Catholic Church. As
the Preserver of Orthodoxy, Byzantium before its fall into the hands of Turks
experienced the purity of faith of nineteen heretic Patriarchs (their list is to
be found in the accurate work of Duchesne : Autonomies Ecclesiastiques), and
after its fall, it counts a confessedly Calvinistic Patriarch, Cyril Lucaris, and
a Roman Catholic, Cyril of Verria. By the way, it seems strange to us that
a review devoted to the rapprochment of Christian Churches and denominations
should accept as pure gold reviling tirades against a Church which numerically
and morally holds first place in the United States.
*Anhelos de Unidad, La Ciencia Tomista, VI., 1916, p. 386.
THE WRITINGS OF MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL. 1
BY CHARLES H. A. WAGER.
HERE are, fortunately, a good many ways in which
a writer may serve his generation. He may in-
struct it, he may amuse it, or he may refresh it, and
we are not sure that the last way is not the most serv-
iceable of all. For instruction is likely to be rather
a strenuous thing, requiring a good deal of effort from the bene-
ficiary, and such effort, however salutary, is likely to prove a
burden. Amusement, even when it is kept within discreet bounds, is
necessarily transient, and generally, except in very happy instances,
appeals to a side of human nature that does not require fostering.
We need to be taught to feel rather than to laugh. But the literature
of refreshment is neither exacting nor dissipating. It demands
nothing of us but a receptive spirit. Its function is to spread peace
upon the troubled waves of life. We have all read books of re-
freshment, and we have generally read them more than once. They
are books which give us, as we turn their pages, a feeling of rest-
fulness and content, a sense of relaxation, of liberation, of the
lightening of a burden. They are usually small books, descriptive
or meditative in character, without acerbity or conscious clever-
ness or effort of any kind. They are seldom elaborate in style,
or, if they are, the art is so perfectly concealed as to leave no
trace of itself except an admirable simplicity; but, for the most
part, they are as natural and spontaneous as they sound. They never
attract much attention, for their readers are necessarily few, and
intellectually akin to their writers. Rather than do without them, we
would spare many a more pretentious or even, in the ordinary sense,
more useful book. They have a special place upon our shelves and
in our hearts.
Of this sort are the writings of Montgomery Carmichael. To
anyone whose taste inclines him to the green pastures and still
waters of religious meditation, who loves to dwell in thought with
those rare beings exiles they seem from another age and another
1 Sketches and Stories Grave and Gay. London: Constable & Co., 1896. (Long
out of print.)
In Tuscany. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1902, third edition, 1906.
The Life of John William Walshe. New York : E. P. Dutton & Co., 1902.
The Lady Poverty, a Thirteenth Century Allegory. London: John Murray, 1902.
Francia's Masterpiece. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1909.
The Solitaries of the Sambuca. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1914.
igi6.] MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL 361
world than ours who lead or aspire to lead the hidden life of the
soul, these books have an unfailing charm. They are not religious
books, in the usual sense of the word ; that is to say, their purpose
is not edification and their tone is not hortatory. They are vigorous
pieces of religious psychology, based on long acquaintance with the
highest manifestations of the Catholic mind, and rich with the
ripest Catholic wisdom. The power of giving reality to types
of character that are perfectly alien to the life of our own day
seems to us Mr. Carmichael's best gift, a gift that marks him as
an artist in fiction, though these books are not, in the strict sense,
novels. Such a sketch as that entitled " Fra Pacifico," in the de-
lightful volume called In Tuscany, is a little masterpiece of imagina-
tive realization. So lavish and yet so discreet has the author been
in his use of characterizing detail that it seems incredible, when one
has finished the moving story, that the hero of it never lived. In
Italy particularly, the brown habit and green sack of every -questing
friar reminds one of this typical son of Francis who "lived a holy life
of sixty-two years, and died a holy death on March nineteen, 1893."
In the case of John William Walshe it will be remembered that
many readers were actually beguiled into thinking that they had
come upon the track of an unknown modern saint. We defy any
unwarned student of things Franciscan to read the introduction to
that fascinating book without being deceived by the circumstantial
account of " the WalsHe manuscripts," and without being consumed
with regret that he cannot lay hands upon them. We are con-
vinced, too, that more than one visitor to the little Campo Santo
of Assisi has looked eagerly for the grave of this holy and beloved
man. Such circumstantiality is evidently the fruit of the ripest
knowledge of things Franciscan and the profoundest sympathy with
them. It is known to all who have delved in that infinitely rich and
fruitful field that Mr. Carmichael is the originator of an ingenious
interpretation of the celebrated Blessing of Brother Leo, preserved
in the Sacro Convent o f at Assisi, and the translator of that most
exquisite allegory, the Sacrum Commerciunt to name only the
best known of his Franciscan studies. Yet it is doubtful whether
his most absorbing interest is Franciscan. In Tuscany contained
indications that he felt a more intimate and personal sympathy with
monastic or even anchoretic ideals, and his latest book, The
Solitaries of the Sambuca, confirms that impression. It is the story
of a wealthy Englishman, Paul Casauban, who finds in an abandoned
Italian hermitage the happiness that he has long been seeking.
He establishes himself there quite alone, and in spite of great dis-
362 MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL [June,
comfort from the greedy and brutal peasantry, he enjoys for a short
time a deep and refreshing peace. After a little, a small community
grows up about him of men who are seeking the solitary life. They
dwell apart from one another in cottages which he provides, their
material wants are supplied, at his expense, by an old servant who
has followed him to his retreat, and they hear Mass daily in a church
of his building. They do not connect themselves with any order of
Religious; they have no rule. Their bond of unity is the desire to
live the life of prayer and contemplation, undisturbed by the noises
of the world. In solitude and silence is their strength. Presently
there arrives among them an old friend of the founder, who feels
compelled to let others know a peace which they too may win, and
this book is the result. Yet the exact site of the " Sambuca " is
not revealed, so that only those who have the perseverance and
intuition of a true vocation are ever likely to find it.
The book is really a prose hymn to solitude; it is a reduction
to practice of certain precepts of the Imitation. The ideas of it
are sure to be unacceptable to an age whose native element is noise.
Many religious persons, even Catholics, will feel it to be out of
harmony with the tendencies of the day. To linger with pleasure
upon such a vision of peace will seem to them a repudiation of the
social obligations of the modern world. But there must be, even
yet, a good many readers to whom such words as the following
will come with a strange sweetness, and who will find in them the
expression of a deep human instinct which current practice ignores
to its own hurt :
There the inhabitants are innocent, humble and pure; se-
cluded in solitude, they hear no scandal; immersed in silence,
they speak no evil ; free from want, they seek no gain ; having
nothing, they know not avarice; cleansed by the fires of holy
prayer and contemplation, the fires of all concupiscence have
died within them ; eating only of the fruits of the earth, drinking
only at Mother Nature's breast, they know neither gluttony nor
ebriety; they hurt no man's body; wound no man's honor;
flatter no man's vanity; beneath the shelter of God's wings they
give neither scandal nor offence. In the constant presence of
the all-seeing God, mean acts and idle words pass from their
lives, and like the immaculate in the way, they walk in the
law of the Lord forever.
That there should be here and there in the world a perpetual
protest against the needless noise and chatter and distraction, the
unblest daily intercourse of men who think only of gain and amuse-
1916.] MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL 363
ment, whose mere contact with one another is corrupting, and who,
as a recent writer puts it, know exhilaration and depression but
never joy nor sorrow that there should be such a protest ought, it
would seern, to be an unspeakable satisfaction to many to whom the
meaningless routine of every day seems sometimes a burden too
heavy to be borne. Such a protest serves the same purpose as the
Franciscan denial of the all-importance of wealth. The world can-
not go on without noise any more than without money, but the pic-
ture of what life might be without them is at once a rebuke and
a challenge. We are too ready to yield to our limitations, to be
content with a second-rate world of our own 'fashioning. Few men
are saints, and so we acquiesce in mediocrity for ourselves, and
grow 7 impatient with aspirations that we do not share. But books
like these show us the possibility of the never- failing miracle of
sanctity, and this is one of the highest services that literature can
perform. ,
Nearly all of Mr. Carmichael's books abound in sketches of
Italian life and character, with which his long residence in Italy
has made him familiar. Few writers of our day know their Italy
so well and love it with a love at once so tender and so sane. He
makes little use of formal description, but his backgrounds and his
types are saturated with intimate Italian feeling. His books abound
also in evidences of his wide and profound acquaintance with
Italian art. In Tuscany contains some interesting pages on the
sculptures of Matteo Civitali at Lucca, and even The Life of John
William Walshe, the main interest of which is far from being
artistic, offers more than one indication of the author's expert
knowledge of pictures. Francia's Masterpiece is, of course, his
most distinguished piece of work in this field a book characterized
by so much scholarship, taste, and devout feeling as to give it a
place almost unique among artistic monographs. Its purpose is to
show that the great altar-piece of Francia in the church of San
Frediano at Lucca, which a score of guides and critics have named
an Assumption or a Coronation of Our Lady, is really a representa-
tion, one of the earliest in painting and certainly the most beauti-
ful, of the Immaculate Conception. But the Book is more than a
successful attempt to explain the meaning of a misunderstood pic-
ture ; it is a fervent plea for a proper attitude towards all religious
painting. The legalized sack of Italian churches and convents
has brought together in galleries numberless pictures that were
painted to be hung in a certain place and to convey certain ideas.
Wrested from the altars to whose cultus they gave concrete ex-
364 MONTGOMERY CARMICHAEL [June,
pression, they are studied as triumphs of technical skill or as sources
of aesthetic feeling; the religious doctrine that inspired them is
often regarded as a mere irrelevance. The attempt to identify the
figures that compose them, in order to determine what the painter
meant to say, is derided by the conoscenti as " saint-spotting."
Such a book as Francia's Masterpiece will make clear to any candid
mind where the imputation of absurdity ought really to lie. It is
like limiting one's appreciation of the Divina Commedia to the metre
and the imagery, it is like confining one's attention to the harmonics
of Tschaikovsky's Sixth Symphony, to ignore the idea behind such
a picture as the San Frediano Conception. There must be literally
hundreds of pictures in European galleries whose meaning has
escaped the critics from the mere lack of looking. Little wonder
that Mr. Carmichael insists that the student's first duty is " to in-
terrogate the altar " from which the picture was taken, in order to
understand its meaning, and that " all talk of religious pictures
is a weariness of the flesh unless based on a knowledge of the
painter's theology." The Solitaries of the Sambuca contains a
simple illustration of the interest that a picture gains from the
most rudimentary attention to its purpose. In one of the cottages,
that indeed of the founder, there is a copy of the Berlin Madonna
of Lippo Lippi an exquisite picture, as everyone knows; but
most people will see in it only an extraordinarily beautiful concep-
tion of the Divine Mother and Child, in the midst of a somewhat
conventionalized woodland landscape, with a kneeling saint in the
background. As a matter of fact, this saint is the key to the
picture, for it is Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolese Order
of Hermits, as his beard and white habit indicate, and the back-
ground is intended to represent the mysterious pine forests of
Camaldoli, in the midst of which the solitaries dwelt in contem-
plation of the Divine innocence. If this be " saint-spotting," we
can hardly have too much of it.
The style of these books, especially of the narratives, has a
curious charm. It makes no pretence at elegance; it might even,
at moments, be called homely. But it has always the vitality and
distinction of the unstudied talk of a clever and cultivated man.
It is perhaps this human quality in his writing, the immediacy of
his contact with the reader, that places Mr. Carmichael's books so
high in the literature of refreshment. One returns to them again
and again, and one finds in them, to employ the phrase of Pater,
" a cloistral refuge from a certain vulgarity in the actual world."
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA (1889-1916).
BY THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D.D.,
Titular Bishop of Ger manic opolis.
Rector of the Catholic University of America.
WENTY-SEVEN years ago the Catholic University
of America opened its doors, amid solemn ceremonies,
to the studious ecclesiastics of the United States,
pending the day (1895) when the lay youth could
be invited to enter, on similar terms of right and op-
portunity. Nearly three decades have elapsed since that memorable
day, and it may not be an idle thing to call public attention to the
work accomplished in that period. This time is at once long and
short, short if we look upon it in the warm light of hopes and
possibilities, long enough if we read its history in the cold light
of things done, responsibilities met, ideals embodied in works of
power, promises redeemed in measure large and honest enough
to encourage, on the part of another generation, a confidence as
earnest and affectionate as that which sheltered the original enter-
prise while yet it was a-shaping and a-borning. Time and ex-
perience are the matrix of great institutions, whose normal and
healthy growth is intimately dependent on these general factors.
On the other hand, few of the institutions which enrich modern
life are so complex and delicate in their mechanism, so traditional
at once and so independent, so responsive to internal and domestic
influences and so freely creative and inspiring as a university. Its
work, status and influence are largely the flower of contemporary
life, and on the other hand, it is in many ways the full source of
new life and progress, of trained and efficient leadership, of varied
distinction in the arts and sciences, and of power and success in
the social and political order. Its infancy is often a period of
trials and difficulties, proportioned to its range of influence and
service in the career marked out for it by Divine Providence. It
is only slowly that the most generous efforts coalesce, that timidi-
ties, apathy, susceptibilities are overcome, that planning forethought
clears away ignorance and misconception, and that the eyes of all
are trained to look, with a catholic charity, on the great work as
366 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
a whole, set above and beyond the limits of present conditions or
any narrow transient interests and considerations. But when once
a great central school of learning has outgrown its infancy, it may
be the source of inestimable service to the common weal. On an-
other occasion the writer has tried to outline this as follows :
Here are found great libraries selected over a long term of years
out of the best books in all the great ancient and modern languages, and
not only libraries, but the men who know intimately every book, every
class of literature, and are themselves walking libraries! Here are
found laboratories equipped with the best appliances that a daily self-
perfecting research demands, and not only laboratories, but the men
who have created them almost out of nothing, and alone can make
these splendid tools of learning useful to studious youth! Here are
found the monuments of the past, the relics of older civilizations, and
also the men who can interpret them, and thereby enable us to appre-
ciate properly our own; to have a comparative, and therefore a superior,
knowledge of our own ! Above all, in a university any great and noble
cause finds not one or two, but a great number of men who habitually
sympathize with whatever is good and true and lovely. By their calling
they walk apart from the turmoil of life, yet are they not morose and dis-
dainful. By their training they are devoted to supramaterial things, yet
are they not unreal and helpless for the great uses of life. By their
usual life they dwell much in the past or away from the present
and immediate, yet are they among the genuine leaders of society,
whether they walk in the brocade gown of old Bologna or
stand in the front rank of all modern conflicts for the uplifting
of humanity, the perfecting of all its gifts, the realization
of all its ideals. To create such bodies of men above all, to provide
for a permanent supply of them, to house them properly and place at
their disposal all the implements and helps of profitable labor, has been
for seven long Christian centuries looked upon as the highest and noblest
act of any society. Nothing banishes so quickly the stigma of ignorance
and retrogression, or creates so easily and normally sentiments of just
pride and affection, as the possession of such a superior school, whence
come with every succeeding year not the self-made men for they are
curiosities in the annals of learning but the properly formed, properly
balanced men, to whom truth is ever the highest goal, the peaceful
progress of humanity, the highest earthly good, and religion the noblest
ideal that can solicit in last resort the human heart.
UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION.
The University is governed by a Board of thirty Trustees,
composed of archbishops and bishops, priests and laymen, the ma-
jority being ecclesiastics. The Archbishop of Baltimore is per-
petual Chancellor of the University, declared so in the Papal con-
stitution by which it is governed. As such, the ordinary admin-
istration of the University depends on him and is exercised in his
name by the Rector. This officer is appointed by the Holy See
I9i6.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 367
from a list of three names presented by the Board of Trustees,
holds office for six years, and may be reflected. He is responsible
to the Chancellor and to the Board of Trustees, of which he is
ex-officio a member. He is assisted in his government of the
University by a Vice-Rector, appointed by the Board of Trustees.
The University Senate, composed of the deans of faculties, heads
of University Colleges, and two elected members of each faculty,
cooperates with the Rector in the academic administration of the
University. A General Secretary and a Treasurer of the Uni-
versity, elected by the Board of Trustees, complete the list of ad-
ministration officers.
TEACHING STAFF.
Four professors, all Europeans, formed the original staff of.
University teachers, and all were credited to the theological faculty
two Germans, a Belgian and a Frenchman. To-day there are
seventy-five teachers in the University ordinary professors, as-
sociate professors and instructors. This staff is divided between
five schools theology, philosophy, letters, law and sciences. About
one-third are priests, and among these again about one-third are
members of religious communities. With a few exceptions the
professors are Americans by birth, notably the lay professors.
Kindred sciences are grouped into departments, and these again are
organized as faculties, of which there are five : Theology, Philoso-
phy, Law, Letters and Sciences. Each faculty has its dean and
appointed meetings, while all are represented in the University
Senate to which belongs the regulation of the academic life of the
University. With rare or temporary exception all the teachers are
Catholics, and in a fair measure have grown up within the Uni-
versity itself, henceforth a corpus vlvum et vitale, capable of pre-
serving and developing itself.
THEOLOGICAL STUDIES.
The first of the University buildings was Caldwell Hall, erected
by private generosity, at a cost of $350,000.00. It welcomed the
original staff of four theological professors and a body of thirty-
eight young priests, volunteers, so to speak, and pioneers in the
province, then new and untried, of advanced studies under native
auspices. This year seventy- four students registered in the theologi-
cal faculty as candidates for degrees, and the number of pro-
fessors has nearly trebled. While only a few have so far graduated
368 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
doctors in theology, nearly two hundred licentiates in theology
have gone forth, representing in each case five years of theological
studies. A very large number have taken the Bachelor's degree in
theology. In this way many dioceses have profited by the Uni-
versity, and if a larger number have not availed themselves
of the advantages so easily to be had, it is mostly owing to the great
need of priests in every diocese. The graduates of the theological
faculty are numerous in our larger cities, and are to be found in
parochial work and in the diocesan seminaries and administration;
they hold positions as diocesan officers, pastors, seminary professors,
superintendents of schools, heads of charity works, and similar
ecclesiastical institutions. Six bishops are their chief ornaments :
Des Moines, St. Cloud, Nueva Segovia, Pinar del Rio, Lincoln
and Tagaste. In addition, the ordinaries of Milwaukee, Sioux City
and Sioux Falls were formerly professors or administrators of
the University, while all four rectors have held the episcopal
dignity, Archbishop John J. Keane, the late Bishop Conaty of
Los Angeles, Bishop O'Connell of Richmond and the present in-
cumbent. This year forty-eight young priests resided in Caldwell
Hall, exhausting its capacity so long as it must also shelter the
administration of the University and a large body of ecclesiastical
professors. This edifice is taxed to its utmost, and should soon be
relieved of the administration offices, of the ecclesiastical professors,
and of class-room service to other faculties, for all of which pur-
poses new and larger quarters ought to be provided, sufficient space
being in these circumstances a condition of progress.
MATERIAL GROWTH.
In the fall of 1889, Divinity Hall was opened, the first of
the University buildings, on a site only three miles from the White
House, but quite undeveloped, and reached only by a narrow road
that served a few rural villas of the ante-bellum type, neglected and
decadent. To-day fifteen buildings, mostly large and architecturally
pleasing, raise their substantial bulk within an academic territory
that has been developed until it lacks little of equaling the best
parts of Washington. Eight of the buildings belong to the Uni-
versity : Caldwell Hall, McMahon Hall, Albert Hall, Gibbons Hall,
Graduate Hall, St. Thomas' Hall, the Maloney Chemical Laboratory
and the Engineering Building. To the original purchase of sixty-
nine acres seventy- five have been added, a total of one hundred and
forty- four, improved with all municipal service, laid out sufficiently
I9i6.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 369
for immediate uses, accessible by one of the best avenues of the city,
and so close to the splendid park of the Soldiers' Home that the
two sites seem easily to blend into one. It operates its own central
heating and lighting plant. The large suburb of Brookland, of
over four thousand souls, has developed about the University, and
has made possible a thriving Catholic parish, while another larger
one has arisen in the near vicinity. Both are outgrowths of the
University, without which this section of Washington would have
long awaited expansion or been condemned to grow on lines of
smaller promise. A station of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad is
located at one corner of the University grounds, and the electric
cars pass the gates at regular intervals, connecting Brookland and
its territory with the city. Around this almost ideal site rise seven
fine edifices of religious communities, some of them very imposing.
Were all these structures to be gathered within city limits they
would fill several large squares. Their combined value represents a
large outpouring of Catholic generosity, private and corporate, and
yet all feel that we have not entered upon our larger growth, or
taken the measure of the vast educational possibilities which solicit
the eye of the reasoning imagination, given the normal freedom of
American religious life and the regular growth of Catholic works
in the last fifty years.
THE STUDENT BODY.
In 1904 the matriculated students of the University numbered
one hundred and ten. The registration for the current year is
five hundred and fifty- four, of whom one hundred and forty- four
are ecclesiastics. This does not include the students of affiliated
colleges of women, Trinity College (two hundred and twenty-
eight), nor the Catholic Sisters' College (sixty-five), nor does it
include the students of the two Summer Schools, in which there
were about six hundred Sisters. The lay students come from
nearly every State, and represent very largely an element which
in all probability would have otherwise drifted into some Non-
Catholic University. About one-half of the lay students enter the
^School of Sciences, the other half being divided, somewhat un-
equally, between the Schools of Law and Letters. They live, for
the most part, in University halls, of which there are four, under
the direction of ecclesiastics. For the last three or four years some
fifty students have been lost each year, owing to lack of rooms,
enough to fill one or two more dormitories, if they were forth-
VOL. cm. 24 .. __>
370 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
coming. A new and commodious dining hall, has, in its unfinished
state, a seating capacity of about four hundred. The University
lacks a gymnasium, and feels grievously this condition, though
in various ways it tries to make up for a building which would
greatly help both the health and the discipline of such a large body
of young men. Their spiritual lives are cared for by regular re-
ligious instruction, brief sermons on Sundays and holydays, an
annual retreat, and a succession of devotions in the various hall
chapels. The presence and personal example of so large a body
of ecclesiastical teachers and students, secular and religious, with
whom the lay students are constantly in touch, exercise a re-
markable influence on the young lay students, habituate them to
intimate and respectful acquaintance with the clergy, and establish
relations of friendship and esteem whose fruit will blossom later
on in life. In these few years of undergraduate life at the Uni-
versity several ecclesiastical vocations have developed, some of
them for the neighboring religious communities.
BUILDINGS AND ENDOWMENTS.
The securities of the University amount to about two million
dollars, invested under the direction of a Finance Committee
made up of representative Catholic business men. This fund rep-
resents almost entirely perpetual academic charges and cannot,
therefore, be used for buildings or for other purposes than those
for which it was originally given. The eight buildings of the
University, with its above-described land, represent an outlay
of one and a half million dollars. Its total property of three
and a half million dollars, while of course in itself a very respectable
foundation and a credit to American Catholic generosity, by no
means furnishes in revenue and equipment the means needed to
carry on the works of the University, evenat the present stage of
its development. Private generosity must therefore be frequently
called on to supplement the regular endowment. It must be re-
membered that only the annual interest of its endowment, and that
very conservatively calculated, is available for the general expenses.
The endowment itself must be always preserved intact.
CHAIRS AND FELLOWSHIPS.
The endowed Chairs in the University are twenty in number.
There are four endowed fellowships, not to speak of the fifty gradu-
ate scholarships of the Knights of Columbus endowment. It is
1916.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 371
highly desirable that more Chairs be founded, for in this way the cost
of a given course of teaching is secured in perpetuity, thereby re-
lieving the general exchequer of a heavy burden and permitting
the use of the general fund for ordinary development. Many
American universities have a good number of teaching or traveling
fellowships. Such funds encourage greatly graduate studies, and
are responsible for the growth of scholarly leadership in both
Church and State. The comparatively small fund required for a
fellowship would enable regularly some gifted student to spend two
or three years at the University after graduation, perfecting him-
self in his studies, acquiring the taste for research, with good
method and experience, and fitting himself to aspire to those higher
places in life which can be well filled only by the few who are
willing to make the necessary sacrifices at the beginning of their
career. It is largely for lack of this superior scientific training
that our Catholic college graduates enter so rarely the govern-
mental research departments, leaving us without our proper represen-
tation in this influential circle of the public service. The Catholic
University could not be better situated for such attractive studies,
and it is hoped that in the future our Catholic graduates will be
enabled and encouraged to pursue there the studies which open the
door to promotion in the broader province of expert public serv-
ice. Otherwise, it will be always a matter of chance whether or
not Catholics shall have their due share in all the honors and
emoluments connected with the ever-increasing labors and service
of the great governmental departments of our national life. There
could and should be established here generous fellowships for every
branch of learned research and expert training, which our govern-
ment so badly needs that not infrequently it has to call on foreign
scholarship.
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT.
The finances of the University are administered by the Board
of Trustees through its Treasurer and a Finance Committee. All
investments are made and controlled by the latter body, made up
mostly of experienced men of business. An annual report of the
revenues and expenditures is made by the Treasurer to the Trustees,
and is distributed to the episcopate, and is otherwise accessible to all
interested in the University. A monthly report, covering the finan-
cial life of the University, accurately and in detail, is made to each
member of the Board of Trustees. The books of the University are
372 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
audited annually by certified accountants, who examine also the
securities and attest the proper condition of the books and securi-
ties. The funds of the University are invested in a very conserva-
tive way, and bring on an average about four per cent. Its finan-
cial officers are bonded, and all reasonable precautions are taken to
conserve its temporal estate. Special funds, like those of the
Knights of Columbus Endowment, Basselin College, and the new
church, are kept separate, but under the same general management.
BEQUESTS AND DONATIONS.
In these first decades the University would have been seriously
hampered in its growth were it not for aid given through
bequests and donations. Generous friends of Catholic education,
witnessing the earnest efforts of the University to realize the in-
tentions and hopes of its founders, have come to its aid not in-
frequently, and by their donations have made it possible to care
from year to year for the ever-growing body of students. All
education is necessarily a charitable work. Indeed, it is the highest
social form of charity, especially in our day when in all its phases
a proper education has become too costly for the average in-
dividual to acquire unless a large share of the expense is directly
borne by the institutions of education, primary, secondary or ad-
vanced. Yet education, particularly advanced or higher education,
was never more necessary, perhaps never more remunerative, than
in our time, when the former conditions of American society are
being so fundamentally modified, and the really " self-made man "
has become a myth. Our Non-Catholic brethren set us an example
in this respect well worthy of consideration, and even of imitation.
There is not a department in the University which does not sorely
need help of various kinds, in order to keep up with the just
demands made upon it by the great increase of students in the last
few years.
Similarly, the growth of the University depends to a large
extent on the generosity shown it by the faithful in their last
wills and testaments. In those Catholic Middle Ages, of which
we speak with just pride, men and women seldom died without
remembering the poor scholars at the Universities, whose wealth
in time was in good measure created by such bequests. In the
last seven years nearly fifty wills, varying in value, have been closed
in favor of the University, an average of about seven each year.
In some cases they carry fixed academic charges, which consume
1916.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 373
forever the annual interest; in other cases the capital is left at
the disposition of .the University. It needs, and will long need,
support of both kinds, but the most pressing need in this generation
is a general endowment fund, which would permit a fair degree of
free growth in all the departments which most need an annual
outlay for material equipment, new courses, etc. Surely, no better
use could be made of their surplus wealth by religiously-minded
Catholic men and women than to endow Catholic higher education
in a general or specific way, and thus enable each year a good
number of our brightest Catholic youth to come to the front
in the scientific world, without endangering their ancestral faith.
Catholic generosity would thus establish in our great centres of popu-
lation that trained and sure and efficient leadership, itself a potent
example and attraction, which on all sides by general admission we
so badly need, and are likely to need more urgently in the coming
generation, particularly in the ranks of the Catholic laity.
RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES.
The express wish of the Holy See that the religious communi-
ties should be admitted to all the advantages of the University was
generously met on both sides from the earliest days. Apart from
the Sulpicians, to whom was confided the administration of Divinity
Hall and whose novitiate is now established here, the Paulists
were the first to respond, and soon the Marists and the Fathers
and Brothers of Holy Cross established themselves in close
proximity. In due time came the Franciscans and the Dominicans,
the Society of Divine Love, the Fathers and Brothers of Mary
(Dayton), the Oblate Fathers and the Capuchins. The numer-
ous students of these communities are a notable element of
academic strength, while their regular edifying lives contribute
greatly to the general discipline. At all times the mutual relations
of these communities and their relations with the University have
been excellent. Their willingness to serve the common interests,
often at no little inconvenience, deserves all praise. Eight of their
members are on the teaching staff of the University. Their houses
are a noble ornament to the surrounding territory, and their land,
devoted to the cause of higher education, amounts to about one
hundred and fifty acres, much of which is continuous with the
site of the University. It may be said with truth that the condi-
tions here briefly outlined are unique in the history of Catholic
education, that they offer the brightest hope for the future in the
374 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
way of harmony and common service, and that to-day nowhere
in the world is there a similar academic situation so ideal in its
outlines and so rich in promise.
WRITINGS OF PROFESSORS.
One easily understands that a new academic work like the
University makes large demands on the time and devotion of its
teachers for the needs of organization and administration. Much
of the zeal which in well-established schools finds an outlet in
scholarly writings, was here necessarily directed to works of an
external and material nature. Nevertheless, the literary output
of the teaching staff of the University, though unevenly distributed,
is considerable. They have contributed a very fair share to our
Catholic reviews and periodicals, scarcely a number of which is
without some evidence of their good will and zeal. Were the con-
tributions of our professors to Catholic periodicals reprinted as a
whole they would make a respectable number of volumes, and not
the least useful part of our recent Catholic literature. For twenty-
five years the ecclesiastical professors have sustained an extensive
consultation service, replying, often at length, to numerous in-
quiries and requests in all parts of the country. They are, of
course, not singular in this respect, since the professors of our
seminaries and colleges have at all time been equally devoted
and generous. Such service, however, consumes time, and often
calls for no small degree of self-sacrifice. On the other hand, its
anonymous and hidden nature ought occasionally to receive a
word of recognition. Many a private letter, written to aid or com-
fort or direct another, has taken weeks of research and consumed
all the spare time of a professor, dealing at the same time with
only one among many inquiries. There is surely not one priest-
professor in the University who is not the recipient of frequent
requests for service of this kind. If I refer to them more par-
ticularly, it is not to ignore similar service often asked of the lay
professors.
This is, perhaps, the place to refer briefly to the public serv-
ice of the University professors in the way of sermons, lectures,
and discourses. They have been ever helpful in this way within
the limits of their condition, convinced that they owed to the
common cause of Catholicism any aid their position enabled them
to lend. They bore a fair share of the labors entailed by the
preparation of The Catholic Encyclopedia. And while that useful
1916.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 375
work is indebted to many other scholars both at home and abroad,
it is not unjust to say that it is deeply indebted to the University,
and met there an instant and hearty recognition of its timeliness
and its influence. A complete biography of the volumes published
by the professors of the University would include works on Holy
Scripture, dogmatic theology, apologetics, ecclesiastical history,
canon law, philosophy, English literature, sociology, pedagogy,
history of education, American history, Celtic literature, American
law, Coptic and Syriac literature, Hebrew grammar, French
grammar, etc. If we add to this creditable array the numerous
printed dissertations offered by the graduate students of the Uni-
versity for the doctor's degree in theology or philosophy, the
literary output of the University is quite as large as could be
reasonably asked for an institution often hampered for lack of
books and other research facilities, such as are demanded by the
conditions of modern progress in our great academic centres.
UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS.
Every scholar appreciates the peculiarly hard and ungrateful
toil spent on learned periodicals. They are, nevertheless, like dic-
tionaries and encyclopedias, indispensable, and those who spend on
them the best years of their lives, sacrificing more popular and
remunerative work, deserve our gratitude and an occasional word
of commendation and encouragement. They are the quarrymen
whose blocks of granite or marble will one day be shaped for the
edifice of science.
Early in our career The Catholic University Bulletin was be-
gun (1895). The first twenty volumes contain articles on various
subjects, book reviews and miscellaneous studies. With the twenty-
first volume (1915) it became mainly a record of current events
in the life of the University, and an organ of information for the
Catholic clergy and laity. In 1911 our Department of Education
began The Catholic Educational Review, now in its eleventh volume.
It deals with educational problems and methods from the Catholic
standpoint, and supplies information regarding all current events
and movements in which our Catholic teachers are interested.
In 1915 the Department of Church History undertook The
Catholic Historical Review, now in its second volume, for the
purpose of stimulating interest and activity in the history of the
Catholic Church in the United States.
In conjunction with the University of Louvain, the Catholic
376 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
University is now carrying the Corpus Scrip torum Christianorum
Orientalium, a collection of all Christian texts extant in Syriac,
Arabic, Coptic and Armenian, in two series, one of the original
texts, and the other of Latin translations. Over eighty volumes of
both series have already appeared.
From October to June, the students issue The Symposium, a
medium of communication between the student body and their
friends and well-wishers. In addition the University publishes
quarterly Salve Regina, a purely religious periodical devoted to
the erection of the University Church, to be known as the National
Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
LIBRARY AND MUSEUM.
The University Library had as a nucleus a few thousand
volumes donated partly by Archbishop Corrigan, Bishop O'Farrell
and other benefactors, and was first set in order by our regretted
Doctor Bouquillon, whose own rich library of works on moral
theology it has since acquired. From modest beginnings it has
reached the figure of about one hundred thousand volumes, as a
rule well-chosen and serviceable. This does not include several
rich libraries of professors, nor the libraries of the religious com-
munities, some of which are both numerous and valuable, and in
one way or another may be said to pertain to our fund of books
available for study and research. If these are counted in, our
library facilities represent about one hundred and fifty thousand
volumes. The University Library grows by some five thousand
volumes yearly. Originally housed in a basement of Divinity Hall,
it is now located on the first floor of McMahon Hall, but in very
cramped quarters, which do not permit of expansion or of proper
administration and use of this great treasure, which alone almost
justifies the labors of the last twenty-five years. Several very
rich and special libraries have been formally promised to the
University, and it is reasonable to hope that the fiftieth year of
our work will see here a library, noble in all its proportions, worthy
of the purpose and spirit and hopes of the founders and the friends
of the University. Incidentally, such a Catholic library, perfect in
content and administration, would render a great service in Wash-
ington, where legislators, research students and scholarly visitors
abound, to whom the halls of a well-equipped Catholic University
library would be a veritable boon.
Our Museum is yet small, and has lacked space for growth
I9i6.j THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 377
and means for proper care and administration. There are in it,
nevertheless, valuable and rare collections, interesting objects, and
curios of many kinds. It is easily possible to develop it and to
obtain from it a rich service to University teaching.
THE UNIVERSITY CHURCH.
It goes without saying that a community like the University
cannot thrive, as it ought to, from the viewpoint of practical
religion, unless it have a proper space for worship. Even in the
most modest parish the influence of the church edifice on the up-
coming youth, as the centre at once of supernatural life and of the
loveliest creations of the arts, is a primary consideration. The
ecclesiastical students of the University need a suitable church,
being mostly young priests, or levites whose life-work is intimately
related to the service of the altar. The dignity and correctness
of the liturgy; the power of ecclesiastical oratory; the taste and
practice of devotions; the function, nature and grasp of ecclesiasti-
cal music, with a trained insight for its right place in our religious
life; the intimate sense of the spiritual beauty of the ecclesiastical
arts; the ineffable charm of the vast architectural spaces all these
sources of priestly character and temper flow naturally within the
limits of the church edifice, and impregnate the very spirit of God's
youthful minister. For lack of such an edifice the theological
formation of our students, awaits yet a more intensive spiritualiza-
tion. As for the lay students, a large and beautiful church would en-
rich regularly their spiritual lives; would translate into terms of
practical religion their emotional instincts; would exemplify for
them the place of God's Church in society, in the arts and crafts,
in all human life; would surround with dignity the sacraments,
feasts and devotions of Holy Church, and would continue in an
unbroken line their daily lives as organized in the family circle and
the parochial centre whence so many of them enter the University.
Considerations of this nature led eventually to the movement for
the erection on the University gounds of the National Shrine of
the Immaculate Conception. It is our ardent hope that a portion
of this proposed edifice may soon be constructed, and a strong
beneficent impulse be thereby given to the religious life of all
our students, both lay and ecclesiastical.
BASSELIN COLLEGE.
In the foundation of the University the Holy See and the
37$ THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
American hierarchy had always in view the best possible training
for the aspirants to the priesthood, and in commending the great
work to the generosity of the faithful it was felt that in due time
they would make a noble provision for the most perfect education
of those chosen ministers at whose hands they received daily the
Bread of Life. To Mr. Theodore B. Basselin, of New York State,
we owe the first ecclesiastical foundation, apart from the teaching
funds aforementioned. He bequeathed to the University the
greater part of a fortune estimated in the vicinity of one million
dollars, for the purpose of creating Basselin College, an institu-
tion in which young aspirants to the priesthood may receive a part
of their ecclesiastical formation, with the proviso that they be
specially well trained in ecclesiastical elocution. Students must
enter the College in their senior year and spend there that year
and their two years of philosophy, as ordinarily taught in our
seminaries. They are to receive board and lodging and tuition fee
during said three years, or so long as they give evidence of ecclesi-
astical vocation. The founder specified no number of students,
but left their selection to the University, being chiefly concerned
about the most efficient elocutionary training of the students, so
that, in reading or speaking, the young priest should always appear
in the pulpit to the greater credit of the Word of God and to the-
best advantage of all his hearers. The foundation has been ac-
cepted by the Board of Trustees, and becomes operative at a period
to be determined by them.
CATHOLIC EDUCATION.
It has always been felt in the University that it owed the
most earnest service to Catholic education, not alone within its
own borders, but throughout the country. Its interests in the
better organization of Catholic education dates from the beginning
of the Catholic Educational Association, which its professors
originated and with which the University has always remained in
the closest relations. It is not here necessary to dilate on the
educational service rendered by this body other than to emphasize
the fact that it is our chief public bond and sign of union, and
brings annually together our principal Catholic educators to the
great advantage of all concerned.
Many of our seminaries and colleges have to-day on their
teaching staff a good number of scholarly professors educated
in the Catholic University, and in this respect its influence has
I9i6.]- THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 379
been most beneficial. In several dioceses the superintendents of
schools are graduates of the University, and by their personal in-
fluence and their training effect favorably the growth of our edu-
cational system. Indeed, there is no service which the University
prizes more highly or is more anxious to render than the service
due to Catholic education. This is its highest merit, its broadest
field of action, its very raison d'etre. If it had done nothing else
in twenty-five years than what has been accomplished along these
lines, it would have justified the hopes and the sacrifices it called
forth from its foundation.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES.
The rapid movement in modern charities organization, and
the increased and complex relations into which Catholic charities
were obliged to enter, created soon a feeling that some effort
should be made in the way of national organization. Early in
1910 a number of representative Catholics, attracted by the central
character of the University, met there and decided to establish at
Washington the National Conference of Catholic Charities. It
has held since then three biennial meetings, 1910, 1912 and 1914,
and a fourth is arranged for 1916. Each meeting has been attended
by several hundred delegates from every section of the Union, and
decided progress has been made in spreading information, arousing
fresh interest, coordinating existing works, and comforting the
laborers in this somewhat neglected field. Three reports of about
five hundred pages each, and praised as models in their kind,
preserve the labors of the Conference, and form a good nucleus
for Catholic charitable literature of the future. In as far as the
social sciences have for one of their objects the economic and social
heeds of mankind, the University offers a natural forum for their
discussion.
TRINITY COLLEGE.
The higher education of our Catholic young women con-
cerns very closely the entire Church, so intimate and far-reaching
is the influence of the home on character, thought and life, con-
sequently on religion and faith. Yielding to earnest representa-
tions, the University interested itself at an early day in the founda-
tion of Trinity College for the higher education of our young
women under Catholic auspices. In 1897 a charter was granted
the College; it was opened (1900) by the Sisters of Notre Dame of
380 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
Namur, who,constitute the teaching staff, but receive academic and
religious assistance from professors of the University. It began
with sixteen graduate students, and has now reached the figure
of two hundred and twenty-eight, representing over thirty States.
Being purely a school of advanced studies, without any preparatory
classes, Trinity College represents efficiently the interests of Holy
Church in the best possible training of Catholic young women
for all the higher callings of life. Its graduates, already numerous
in every part of the Union, represent a religious and social in-
fluence quite incalculable. Nor does it require any great effort of
the imagination to foresee the service which so many highly edu-
cated young women will render to Catholic life and thought in the
decades now opening before us.
THE CATHOLIC SISTERS' COLLEGE.
The Catholic Sisters' College, formally established in 1914,
gave definite shape to the teaching which had been carried for
three years previous under the guidance of the University for the
better formation of our teaching Sisters in all that pertains to
their scholastic duties. It is an independent corporation, separate
and distinct from the University, but affiliated with it. The students
of the College, after passing the prescribed examinations, may
receive University degrees. It is governed by a body of nine
Trustees taken from the Trustees of the University, which body
owns and controls the property of the College. They may sublet
it to religious communities of women who wish to establish con-
vents or houses for Sisters attending the College. It also directs the
teaching and discipline. Each community of teaching Sisters may
lease for ninety-nine years as much land as is necessary for its own
convent, while the Trustees of the College erect the academic build-
ings, care for the grounds and public improvements, and establish
a plan of studies and discipline in keeping with the best traditions
and principles of Catholic education for women. The courses of
teaching are given by University professors, but in the College
buildings; the methods recommended by the Holy See for the
Catholic University of America, as far as applicable, are fol-
lowed in the College. Candidates for admission must give proper
evidence of their qualifications to enter on the courses of study
offered in the College. This year, the fifth in the history of the
institution, sixty-five Sisters attended the College, representing
about thirty religious houses. Through the generosity of a Catholic
igi6 ] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 381
family the first public building of the College was opened in May
of this year, at an expense of fifty thousand dollars. The College
owns a fine site of fifty-seven acres, not far from the University,
on which two communities of Sisters have already built their con-
vents, while others are preparing to imitate them. The creation of
this Teachers' College for our Sisters has entailed no little labor
and anxiety on all concerned. But the gravity of the pedagogical
needs of the Sisters and the evident benefits to be derived from
such a normal institute, have outweighed all other considerations.
If the satisfaction of those immediately affected be a guarantee
of its timeliness, the College may be said to have already justified
itself. It may be that a generation from now it will go without say-
ing that this work was the happiest, because the most necessary, of
all the academic enterprises set afoot by the University.
THE SUMMER SCHOOLS.
The purpose of the University Summer Schools, an integrant
part of the Catholic Sisters' College, is to afford Catholic women
teachers, especially the teaching sisterhoods, an opportunity of
profiting by the facilities which the University provides and of
obtaining under Catholic auspices whatever may be helpful to them
in their work. Courses of instruction are given both in the pro-
fessional subjects, which are of importance to every teacher, and
in the academic subjects usually taught in the elementary school,
high school or college. Special emphasis is laid on the principles,
the methods and history of education, which are explained and
discussed from the Catholic viewpoint; and a complete course is
devoted to the methods of teaching religion. The courses are of
six weeks, and the University buildings are turned over to the
Sisters for that period. There are now two Summer Schools, one
at the University, opened in 1911 and now in its fifth year, the
other at Dubuque, opened in 1914 and entering on its third year.
In each of them the registration of teaching Sisters, and a few
lay women teachers, was, in 1915, over three hundred. Some forty
instructors from the University teach in these schools. In this way
the University buildings are in use through nearly the entire year,
and a large percentage of its staff comes into immediate contact
with the great educational needs of the Catholic Church. Doubt-
less, time will reveal the many possibilities which seem to suggest
themselves as feasible through agencies of such peculiar power as
are gathered in these summer centres of study. They represent
382 THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA [June,
on both sides sacrifice, devotion and labor, the intimate elements
of all success.
APOSTOLIC MISSION HOUSE.
The field of the Gospel whitens ever before the eyes of Holy
Church, and in our American society is peculiarly broad and in-
viting. In 1904 the Apostolic Mission House was opened on the
grounds of the University, under the auspices of the Catholic Mis-
sionary Union, a society formed by the Paulist Fathers to carry
out the vocation of their founder Father Hecker, viz., the con-
version of Non-Catholics in America. The free distribution of
Catholic literature, the spread of the periodical known as The Mis-
sionary, and in general the increase of conversions among Non-
Catholics, are naturally objects very sympathetic to the University,
whose interest in the holy work is a generous and substantial one.
Students of the Apostolic Mission House are required to follow
courses in the University.
A CENTRE OF CATHOLIC ACTION.
The University has become naturally a centre of higher
Catholic activity. Apart from the two meetings of the Trustees,
the Archbishops of the United States meet there annually. The
Commission for the Negroes and Indians holds there its annual
meeting, likewise the Catholic Missionary Union in charge of the
Apostolic Mission House, and the Executive Committee of the
Catholic Educational Association. It is the centre of the National
Conference of Catholic Charities, and in general offers to our
Catholic people a central site or meeting place for the discussion
and formation of common interests and projects. The Apostolic
Delegation, located in the near vicinity, brings us into close contact
with our founder, the Holy See, whose first representative in the
Delegation lived for a considerable period at the University. The
ten religious communities centred about the University bring us into
intimate relations with a large portion of the Catholic population,
many of whose regular clergy now come from the University, and
cannot fail to exhibit all the advantages of a superior training amid
the most favorable conditions. Similarly, those young secular
priests who spent at the University the first years of their priest-
hood are already quite numerous, and represent a noteworthy ele-
ment of the ecclesiastical body destined to increase largely in the
future. Already their influence is a beneficent one in every com-
I 9 i6.] THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA 383
munity where their lot is cast, and as alumni of the University
they vie with their fellow alumni among the Religious on all lines
of priestly service.
RETROSPECT.
The Catholic University may rightly be called the first chapter
in the history of higher education under American Catholic auspices,
and for that reason the conditions and circumstances of its growth
cannot fail to attract the attention of all who are interested in the
future of the Catholic Church in the United States. There is surely
reasonable cause to rejoice that its record is so far one of satis-
factory progress. Many will easily believe that if Catholic gener-
osity rallied more strongly to its support and development, it would
in the next two decades present the happy sight of a great central
school of all desirable learning, solidly built at the National Capital.
In such a school would be found all the learning that Catholic
youth could hope to find elsewhere, plus the security of their an-
cestral faith. The brightest ornaments of the clergy and the laity
would grow up together under the same religious and academic
influences. Its prestige would be enhanced by age, endowments,
architecture, services, libraries, collections, and that indescribable
totality of power and charm, of suggestion and inspiration, evoked
by the names of Oxford and Cambridge, Paris and Louvain. Its
graduates, disseminated socially in every estate of American life,
would reveal as a whole its spirit and its uses, and in due time would
leave unornamented no page of our American annals. In that day
we should not need to defend, painfully and with humiliation, our
patriotism and loyalty, our love of learning, our public merits in-
numerable, our social status, the splendor of our religion. In a
thousand ways our highly educated Catholic men and women would
have relegated the insult and abuse of the present to the limbo of
exploded slanders. Certainly, the outlook for that day is fair,
when we recall, even summarily, the history of our principal
Catholic education enterprise. It has lived and prospered amid an
incredible development of Catholic works in every part, and despite
the gigantic cost of modern educational plants, and the many highly
endowed and favored centres of higher learning which interpose
their attractions and solicit forcibly our studious Catholic youth,
always with great peril of their Catholic faith and temper.
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER XL
OR the two weeks following Mrs. Bolivar's dinner party >
Walcott worked with feverish intensity, trying to for-
get those few words of Anne's that threatened to de-
stroy the whole of his present life plan, He knew
Anne. She belonged to that type that promises no
man happiness, security, comfort nor rest, but she
possessed a certain inexplicable charm, even apart from her beauty,
a subtle sympathy, a helplessness that begets confidence, a power to
stimulate one to show to best advantage. Stupid men forgot their
heaviness, she seemed to obliterate their blunders; conceited men ex-
ploited their ideas with a sense of safety from sarcasm; clever men
found flattery in her apparent understanding of their ambitions, while
modest men were bewildered by the possibilities of achievement that
she seemed to engender in them. But there was an unreality about
it all that even those who knew Anne well did not always fathom, the
effects she produced were ephemeral ; they faded out when she with-
drew her presence.
But suppose she concentrated her power upon one man what
then? After all there was nothing despicable about Anne no breath
of scandal had ever touched her. She had always received admira-
tion, and it had grown to be a necessity as essential to her as light
or air. Was she altogether superficial, incapable of deep feeling? Fif-
teen years had passed fifteen years and yet she had refused to sing
a song that had belonged to the days of her first romance, his romance.
Had she really loved him? he had doubted her always who was
this Van Brun who had married Anne? He would not go back to
that old delirium of his youth. He could not go back, for the old
obstacles had never been overcome and others had been added the
disfigurement on his face which she would find repulsive, and the
crowded years which had left him little of his buoyant youth.
As soon as it filtered out in Washington that the new member
was an experienced social worker, and that he was interested in all
movements for civic reform, he was besieged by individuals begging
help, charitable organizations craving support, and he was asked to
serve on innumerable committees engaged in improving housing, hos-
pitals, reformatories and jails. He had been kept busy making a
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 385
selection, but in the midst of his various duties, even when he had
half succeeded in banishing Anne from his thoughts, Ted haunted
Kim. Ted was his responsibility and he had neglected, ignored him.
The words of the old nun, "If someone will only take him in charge
when he leaves me " came back to him with remorseless insistency and
robbed him of all peace. How could he establish an intimacy with
Ted and help him to fight against the habits he had formed? If he
could only meet him in some casual way, in the Capitol, on some com-
mittee at one of the hotels at lunch time. But Ted's haunts were not
his. Outwardly they had not one interest in common. Ted's music
led him among artists, dilettantes whose attitude of superiority was a
mock courage to conceal their fear of life. He would have to accept
some social invitations to get his hands on Ted, so that one morning
when Mrs. Bolivar called him up over the telephone to say that she
wanted to go to the Congressional reception at the White House, and
that the Senator was out of town, would Walcott play proxy? he
promptly agreed to go, with the superstitious conviction that this was
the opportunity for which he had been looking. No doubt Ted would
be there; if he met him thus by chance it would not seem a premedi-
tated plan to engage him in conversation and to invite him to dinner,
to a ball game, to the theatre, somewhere anywhere to encourage an
informal friendship.
As they drove up to the East entrance of the White House, which
has been added to the old mansion in late years to accommodate the
increasing crowds and make these social functions possible, Mrs.
Bolivar turned to Walcott and said :
" Your willingness to come to-night was quite astonishing. I know
you too well to expect excessive politeness. Did you share my bucolic
curiosity to see the inside of the White House?"
" I've seen it several times," he answered quietly, " but never with
a mob like this."
The remark seemed sufficiently explanatory, though it did not
answer her question, but Mrs. Bolivar was too much interested in her
surroundings to notice the equivocal reply. They had reached the
pillared portico, which was so wide that two carriages could disgorge
their burdens at the same time. The guests chilled by the sudden
contact with the cold wind hurried across the red-tiled vestibule and
into the long corridor, where negro .servants relieved them of their
wraps. As Polly's shabby cloak was borne away and pigeon-holed with
the rest, Walcott gave a little exclamation of pleasure.
" How bride-like you look all in white. I really didn't know you
were going to be so pretty, Polly."
He was picturing her as a thin, eager-faced child sitting on his
hall table, nodding gravely towards the library and telling him that
VOL. cm. 25
386 TRANSMIGRATION [June,
Anne " was inside," but Mrs. Bolivar could not know that he was
talking reminiscently.
" I am glad we came," she said. It pleased her to have him ex-
press his admiration. She had been perfectly frank about Polly from
the first. He needed a wife she had told him so often ; his aloofness,
loneliness and apparent lack of all family ties worried her friendly
spirit. His love of children showed her what paternity would mean
to him and, not knowing anything about his past, she misinterpreted
altogether his attitude towards Polly.
"But what do you suppose we do next?" said Mrs. Bolivar, a
trifle confused by the increasing numbers around her.
" Well it's all very simple as long as we have a crowd to follow.
Come this way," and he led them into another long hallway hung
with portraits of the former ladies of the White House, then up a
crimson carpeted stairway to tKe East Room. The congestion in the
doorway was very great, and they paused, willing enough, to look in
upon the brilliant scene. The old-fashioned prismatic chandeliers
flamed with iridescent light; beautiful women, gleaming with jewels,
gowned in every conceivable color filled the immense room, while some
army and naval officers in full uniform shone conspicuously among the
monotonous evening clothes of the men.
" It's like a page from old world splendor," said Mrs. Bolivar.
" I don't wonder everyone wants to come to Washington."
" It's a terrible crush," said Walcott, mopping his face with his
handkerchief, " worse than any roundup I ever saw. There's a fat
man pushing me from behind, but I suppose I'm safe since there's
no room to fall in. Let us try to reach that recess of the window
where there's room to breathe."
" They are forming a line to greet the President," said Mrs.
Bolivar, " but indeed I'll have to get out of it. There's someone we
know Alec's new secretary. He's a nice young newspaper man, and
he will take charge of Polly. How-do-you-do, Mr. Sanger. My
cousin, Miss Maxen, and Mr. Walcott I believe you know. I'm going
to ask you to take charge of Miss Maxen; she wants to shake hands
with the President. I'll stay here by the window. I'm a tiny bit
faint and the crowd is appalling."
The young secretary looked down upon Polly, and expressed an
eager interest to accept the responsibility, while Mrs. Bolivar sank
down on the cushioned window seat with a sigh of relief.
" Secretaries in Washington are most useful," she said. " I think
I'd like to fiave half a dozen. I suppose I should have sent you with
Polly, but you really look most miserable."
" Well you know how much I enjoy evening parties, and it was
hot work getting through that crowd. My collar has wilted why
did we come ? "
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 387
" I wanted to see it," she answered with laughing eyes.
" But the President is in the next room."
" I know that," she answered, settling herself as if she were
making her position more permanent. " It may be bad form not to
shake hands with one's host in his own temporary home, and, of
course, I've no ill feeling, (though we did our best to defeat him last
election), but there's always a sense of freedom in a crowd like this.
We shall never be missed, and if we are he should be grateful for
two omitted hand-shakes."
" Good Lord, it must be an awful bore for him," said Walcott,
with his eyes fixed upon the slowly moving line which had scarcely
defined itself against the formless mass on either side.
" Of course it is," agreed Mrs. Bolivar, " but all positions have
their penalties, even escorting me, for I have a proposition I want to
make to you that's one of the reasons I sent Polly off I want to
talk to you alone."
" Alone ? " he repeated humorously looking out upon the crowd.
" Of course," she answered defensively. " No one here takes the
least interest in us, and they can't hear what we are talking about, but
after all the matter is no scandalous gossip to be hushed up in a
sound-proof chamber. I'm worried about Alec. I don't believe he's
very well; he needs rest, some sort of relaxation, some sort of a
holiday, and he says that he will go away for a week or ten days
if you will go with him."
" Is that all ? I think I could manage that, the Christmas recess
is coming."
" Well it's a little more than that," she went on hesitatingly, " we
are all going to be invited to a house party, and I've decided to ac-
cept. Polly can take charge of the children, the house and the serv-
ants she's such a comfort to me, it's like having a grown daughter
in the house; I can never be grateful enough to you for suggesting
her. The fact that she's Alec's cousin has made it so much easier*;
she doesn't have to be explained, and she knows things about the
gradations of Washington society that would have taken me a year
to learn."
" I suppose she has always had what you call social position."
" Yes, I suppose that's it, and she has always lived near enough
to Washington to hear and understand. I may' not be much of a
believer in blood myself, but there is something about these Southern
girls with their long pedigrees that makes them equal to any social
emergency. I often wonder why Polly hasn't married, but I'm be-
ginning to believe that the best women stay single."
" That's hard on you married ones."
Mrs. Bolivar smiled. " Well, of course, there are a few of us who
388 TRANSMIGRATION [June,
plunged in wisely and well, but life has changed for women; she
has so many opportunities open to her. In the old days there was
nothing for her to do but go live with her married brothers and sis-
ters, and any kind of a matrimonial career was preferable to that."
" But I thought you didn't believe in opportunities for women?
I thought you said a few weeks ago that you approved of modest
violets blooming on their own front doorsteps."
" Violets do not bloom on doorsteps," she laughed. " If I said
something a week ago it does not follow that I will agree with myself
a week later, but speaking of doorsteps naturally brings us back to
the house party. Will you go?"
" I thought I'd agreed to that."
" Then it's settled," she said triumphantly, " and I believe you
will enjoy it. Alec wants duck shooting, and that means that you can
be gone all day in the open and you won't have to worry with us
women, for by no feat of the imagination can I picture Anne Van
Brun lying in a mud-hole waiting to shoot an unfortunate duck."
"Anne Mrs. Van Brun! " His face looked lifeless in the glare
of the many lights, " Is she going too ? "
" Why it's her house party," answered Mrs. Bolivar quickly. " I
thought I told you that. She owns one of those historic homes in
Virginia, a colonial estate, that I've read about and always wanted to
see. It was her girlhood's home, and after she married Van Brun he
spent bushels of money refurbishing it."
" Who was Van Brun ? " The question had persisted so in his
mind that he was scarcely conscious of voicing it.
" Well, I never knew him well. I met him only once. He was
an old bald-headed banker with the gout, and I suspect a gouty dis-
position, who died obligingly in two years and left Anne a million,
more or less. She plans a series of house parties during the winter.
You see a home of that kind gives her a picturesque background it's
different. Anyone can give dinner parties in town, but everyone can-
not offer horses, hounds, duck shooting, ancestral mansions, a private
graveyard, and home-cured hams."
Walcott forced a smile at the climax. " I can't go," he said
huskily. " Don't ask me to go."
" Now I think that's unreasonable," she protested. " I'm full of
reasons. I have a philanthropic one up my sleeve that will certainly
appeal to you. Polly's mother lives near Anne; she's quite an old
woman, and she has cataract on one of her eyes or both. She ought
to be operated on, and of course there's no money. Alec can't exactly
offer her anything because, even though he is a relative, he is such a
distant one, and he has never seen Mrs. Maxen in his life."
" But I might might do something."
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 389
" No, you might not," she interrupted him. " You can't go and
offer things to people like the Maxens that you have never seen be-
fore, but there is a way out. Mrs. Maxen owns a Romney portrait,
a common ancestor of Alec's and hers, if you can solve that genealogi-
cal problem, and I have asked him to buy it. You know what a mania
he has for good pictures? If it is a genuine Romney it ought to be
very valuable; it ought to give both Polly and her mother a modest
little competence to live on. We are absurdly rich now that our
copper mines have begun to pay dividends. Did you know that you
were going to be rich too ? "
" No," he smiled incredulously.
" Well, that's the reason Alec is not here to-night. He's West.
That mining stock he persuaded you to buy some years ago is worth
a small fortune, and he wired me to-night to tell you so. I don't
know the details, but I believe it will mean about forty thousand for
you. Haven't you any need for money ? "
For the moment he was silent in his bewilderment. " Indeed I
have," he said eagerly. " If it is really true I'll be able to even up
with everybody."
"Everybody?"
" I'm in debt," he explained reluctantly, " deeply in debt, and now
I'll be able to pay and I'll be free."
She heard him wonderingly. She could not know that for fif-
teen years he had been saving, skimping, hoarding out of a meagre
livelihood to settle with those creditors of his youth, for the estate had
not paid dollar for dollar, as he had optimistically prophesied. He had
been careful to ascertain the facts. He had subscribed to his own
home paper, in the name of the old priest, explaining to his new
found friend that many of the seamen wrio drifted into the little
clubhouse would be interested in American news, and the old priest
had thanked him gratefully, and agreed that an American newspaper
would be a most desirable addition to the small stock of books in their
reading-room, but even as he spoke his keen eyes noted that the paper
did not come from any of the large cities and, in his loyalty, he felt
half treacherous that he should have thus discovered the home of his
uncommunicative recruit.
" The question is," continued Mrs. Bolivar oblivious to his train
of thought, " the main question just now is, will Mrs. Maxen sell her
grandmother or great-aunt or whoever she is ? "
" What's what's that," said Walcott absently.
" The Romney portrait do you think Mrs. Maxen will be will-
ing to part with it ? "
" Why I think so. If it's so valuable she can't afford to keep
it. I'm sure it's very generous of you."
390 TRANSMIGRATION [June,
" Generous ! I'm sure the purchase is no virtue but vanity. I
tell you Alec is no democrat. He likes ancestors, and to have one
painted by a celebrity makes even Romney more personal. But he
has his doubts about whether the picture is genuine. If I can get
him into the neighborhood, he will go see Mrs. Maxen and investi-
gate. Alec says he won't go without you; he considers the other
men insufferable bores. Major McBear, that army officer that dined
with us the other night, Ted Hargrove, Polly's friend, I half suspect
she's in love with him and he's in love with Anne. What a mix up !
I don't like him. I think he drinks or takes drugs or something. In
fact the maid found a hypodermic in the study the other night after
my guests had gone, and I suspected Mr. Hargrove at once, his color
is so unnatural. I'm sure he drinks and Anne has inherited a wine
cellar."
" Oh, God ! " He was grateful for the heavy brocade curtain
that offered shadow from the light.
" I don't know whether that's a prayer or blasphemy," went on
Mrs. Bolivar lightly. " But here comes Anne now to deliver her in-
vitation in person. Polly has pointed out our place of refuge."
" But why should she ask me?"
Mrs. Bolivar's merry eyes twinkled. " You're new."
" That's no reason."
" You're different."
" That's not true."
" Well, tHen, I'll say I don't know. Perhaps she wants to lobby
a bill through Congress."
" She's not that kind."
" Well then you're a woman hater and she wants to reduce you."
"To what?"
" Pulp," whispered Mrs. Bolivar laconically as Anne approached.
Why had he come? He almost cursed himself for coming. If
Anne Had sent him a formal invitation how easy it would have been
to frame some sort of conventional excuse, but now Mrs. Bolivar's
reasoning had almost convinced him that he could not refuse. Here
was the opportunity he had come to seek the chance to establish an
intimacy with Ted.
An inherited wine cellar! Why he and Anne had explored that
dungeon-like place together when they were children. It's dusky wind-
ings had seemed peopled with gnomes and fairies, and he had to hold
Anne's hand to keep her from flying back to the sunlight, for he needed
her living presence to give him courage to go on. Once when a cob-
web brushed across her face she screamed aloud. She had never
had a taste for adventure, and even as a boy he had blamed her con-
servatism and love of her own ease. The wine cellar had brought
1916.} TRANSMIGRATION 391
ruin on her father he had been a connoisseur in old wines, and he
had sought out rare vintages with the same enthusiastic feverishness
that men show in collecting porcelains, pictures, books or any other
thing the possession of which brings either pleasure or distinction,
and then in the latter years of his life he had consistently drunk
himself to death. But Anne had no views of temperance that this
experience might have brought. If she had guests she would open
the cellar as a matter of course. Ted's weakness was his own. It
was not her business to consider it.
What strange circumstances were leading him back back to his
old home, back to Anne whom he had tried so hard to forget. Often
in past years he had imagined a return, in which he wandered like a
disembodied spirit through familiar places, viewing objectively the
life he had left. But to return a part of that life this seemed more
unreal, more incomprehensible than his dream fancied. And yet he
must return. There seemed no choice. His thoughts registered rea-
sons with incomparable swiftness, leaving him no chance of escape
Mrs. Maxen going blind ; the Romney portrait for sale ; Polly in love
with Ted; Ted in Iqve with Anne. Could Mrs. Bolivar's surmising
all be true?
And here was Anne herself, gowned in some bewildering way, a
large bunch of violets at her breast, her hand outstretched welcoming
him with one of her old radiant smiles.
" I am so glad to see you," she said. " I wanted to ask you to join
a house party next week at my old home in Virginia. Senator Bolivar
is coming, and I can promise you that the duck shooting is good."
Apparently she did not notice his hesitation. She expected no
denial. Her invitations to these house parties were limited, and among
her Washington friends they were counted a great privilege.
" American men work too hard," she continued with sweet sym-
pathy. " I am going to send you a note in the morning with my
dates and plans. I'm sure my ancestors w'ould be outraged by my
ideas of English hospitality, but the season is a busy one and very
short this year, and I think visitors like to know exactly when they
are expected to come and go."
" Yes," agreed Walcott mechanically.
" Then I'll count on you," said Anne.
And as he watched her he felt incapable of making any other
reply.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
IRew Boohs.
THROUGH SOUTH AMERICA'S SOUTHLAND. By Rev. J. A.
Zahm, C.S.C., Ph.D. New York: D. Appletoii & Co. $3.50
net.
For over thirty years Father Zahm has been following in the
footsteps of the Conquistadores from Mexico to Patagonia. He
has given us an account of his former journeys in two books, Up
the Orinoco and Down the Magdalen, and Along the Andes and
Down the Amazon. This third volume relates in most enthusiastic
fashion the history and present-day conditions of Brazil, the Ar-
gentine, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Patagonia.
The book is valuable chiefly for the perfect picture it gives us
of the social, economic, educational and religious conditions obtain-
ing in the lands of our much-maligned Latin neighbors.
Of Rio Janeiro, Father Zahm writes: "Even among the
poorest of the poor I observed no evidence of the squalor and suf-
fering found in so many of the large cities of the United States
and Europe. There are no slums in Rio and there is, consequently,
a marked absence of those low, debauched criminal classes that
thrive in such quarters." Race suicide, the curse of North America
and Europe, is practically unknown. He states that one frequently
finds proud mothers of twelve and fifteen strong, bright and healthy
children, in large cities like Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires.
Father Zahm is lavish in his praise of the educational and chari-
table work done by the religious orders in every South American
republic. The Benedictines of Brazil, like their brethren in Europe,
enjoy a well-deserved reputation as scholars and successful teachers.
In Montevideo, Uruguay, the work of the Salesian Sisters in in-
structing poor children is beyond all praise. " In few places is
better provision made for the poor and the sick, for the insane
and the foundling. But this care of the helpless and suffering is
characteristic of the people of all parts of South America." The
Salesian Fathers have worked wonders among the savages. Fero-
cious and intractable tribes, like the Coroados and Bororos of Matto
Grosso, Brazil, have in a short time been converted into useful
citizens. They became farmers, herdsmen, carpenters, blacksmiths
and tanners. In addition to learning a trade, the boys were taught
reading, writing, arithmetic and music.
Not only were the Salesians successful as educators, but they
1916.] NEW BOOKS 393
published books, newspapers and magazines in many languages,
took charge of the magnetic and meteorological stations for the
Government, distinguished themselves as explorers, naturalists and
ethnologists and conducted leper colonies.
Few people realize that one man, the Dominician Fray Justo
de* Sante Marie de Oro, is responsible for the founding of the re-
public of Argentina. Few know that the success of the revolution
in the vice-royalty of Buenos Aires was due to its bishops and its
priests.
'Never in any part of the world, except in Ireland during
penal times, were priests and people more closely united than in
the United Provinces of La Plata during the critical period
between 1810 and 1820. Never did a people stand in greater
need of wise and conscientious leaders than when they had to
choose between contending factions, and decide what was their
duty to God and country To the full knowledge that they
were risking all their earthly interests, and life itself, on the
attitude they assumed, they went forth everywhere as the apos-
tles of liberty and as the advocates of independence. They ex-
erted their sacerdotal influence in public and private, in the
home and in the school, in the church, in national assembly and
congress. Although very poor, they unhesitatingly gave the
greater part of their possessions to the support of the patriot
army.
Space forbids our calling attention to many an incident in the
lives of South America's heroes in Church and State. San Mar-
tin's passage of the Andes was a feat requiring greater skill than the
passage of the Alps by Hannibal and Napoleon. Padre Louis
Beltran's equipment of the army of the Andes was an achievement
unique in history. Any nation might be proud of Chile's famous
son, Andres Belloy Lopez, poet, critic, philosopher, educator, states-
"man and jurist. The European nations at war might well learn the
lesson of peace from the statue of Christ o Re dent or, which Chile
and Argentina erected at the summit of Uspallata Pass in April,
1904. The thirty-two reductions of Guarani only eight were in
present Paraguay were with the Spanish missions of California
proof positive of the superior intelligence and zeal of the Spaniards
in solving the problem of the Indians.
Our Latin neighbors are rather weary of being calumniated
by ignorant and unscrupulous Protestant missionaries who have
been denouncing for many years the people they propose
to convert. Father Zahm's three volumes will do a great deal
394 NEW BOOKS [June,
towards promoting more kindly feeling between the people of the
United States and their neighbors in the South American Re-
publics. For he writes in full sympathy with a race whose religion
is his own, and whose history, language and literature he thoroughly
knows and loves.
THE SPIRIT OF MAN. An Anthology in English and French
from the Philosophers and Poets made by the Poet Laureate
in 1915. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.50 net.
When we last had occasion to notice the work of the Poet
Laureate he appeared in no very amiable light. As sponsor for
Digby Dolbin's poetry, he showed, in his preface, a narrowness
and a prejudice against the Catholic Church that would have sur-
prised us if we Catholics had not long ago lost the power to wonder
at such exhibitions even
In gentle souls, by all the arts refined.
If, on opening the anthology, we still had in our heart any drop
of feeling against the editor, we quickly felt it dissolve as, under
his guidance, we were borne aloft
on the viewless wings of Poesy
Rarely have w a e experienced such delight as this book yielded
us. A beautiful anthology, it is far more than that: it is itself
a poem or rather, we would say, a symphony, in which a great
eomposer invokes the aid of every instrument of poetry to voice
The Spirit of Man in all its greatness. It is dominated through-
out by one ever-recurring chord, the grand chord of moral and
spritual nobility. This is its distinction which gives it a place of
its own among anthologies, apart from all others however ex-
quisitely choice and lovely they may be. It almost' deserves to be
classed among spiritual books. Indeed, we are sure it would do
for many what the best spiritual books would fail to do, not through
any fault of theirs, but rather because they are
too good
For human nature's daily food,
unless that nature be touched and illuminated by divine grace.
Poe'try at its highest, revealing human nature at its best, the anima
naturaliter Christiana, has a siren voice which allures the poor
heart of man while the plain-song of asceticism may repel. Here
its aid, and that of philosophy, is sought to sound the depths and
explore the heights of the human spirit. The superficial gives way,
1916.] NEW "BOOKS 395
and in our present great world-crisis, man discovers that he has a
soul. "Common diversions divert us no longer; our habits and
thoughts are searched by the glare of the conviction that man's life
is not the ease that a peace-loving generation has found it or thought
to make it, but the awful conflict with evil whick philosophers and
saints have depicted; and it is in their abundant testimony to the
good and beautiful that we find support for our faith, and distrac-
tion from a grief that is intolerable constantly to face, nay impos-
sible to face without that trust in God which makes all things pos-
sible." In such fine terms does the Poet laureate disclose the
purpose and scope of his selection; and right nobly, we think, has
he achieved his atim.
It would be an easy, but, we believe, a fruitless and mistaken
task, to express wonder, or even regret, at the many striking par-
tialities and rejections of our anthologists. Great poets must often
yield place to humbler singers, and great spiritual leaders and phil-
osophers keep silent while we listen to their lesser brethren. But,
tKen, the great men are .always accessible, and the gain is ours when
a man of true taste and discernment Brings forth and puts in circu-
lation the best things from second or third rate poets, especially of
our own time. And so we are thankful that Mr. Bridges has a
fondness for Barley and Dixon and Dolben and Hopkins and Yeats,
for Rimbaud and Rivarol and Amiel, and above all, for Kabir.
Were it not for these partialities of his, perhaps many a gem of
purest ray serene would shed but little radiance in this darkling
world. Besides, it would be a complete mistake to imgaine that
the Laureate intended to make a collection of poetical specimens;
he does not even name his poets and philosophers, except in the
index. Each selection depicts a mood, and its fittingness is to be
judged by its setting. If this be Borne in mind, much unjust
criticism will be avoided. We cannot approve Mr. Bridges' trans-
lation of the beginning of St. John's Gospel, " In the beginning
was mind," for the object of the Gospel is to show that Christ was
the eternal Word, or Image or Expression of God, revealed to men
in time. A!nd before taking leave of the book, we wish to note our
further regret that the editor should use the term " myth " in ref-
erence to Our Lord's apocalypse of the Last Judgment, although,
perhaps, he employs it in no heretical sense. We do him the honor
of believing, too, that he will one day regret, when peace and quiet
thoughts come home, the violent language he uses in reference to
England's military enemies.
396 NEW BOOKS [June,
CHRIST'S EXPERIENCE OF GOD. By Frank H. Decker. Bos-
ton: The Pilgrim Press. $1.25 net.
It is hard to find a book in which truth and error are so
commingled as in this volume from the pen of Mr. Decker, minister
of the Church House in Providence, R. I. We gather the purpose
and meaning of the work from the opening lines of the foreword,
" To my Book. In the name of Jesus Christ I send you to preach,
to everyone who shall read your pages, his kingdom of God."
With this idea in mind, the author bases his text on parables from
the Gospels, and writes of the " religion " of Christ in its effects
on Him and on His relation to God and men. The Kingdom of
God is Christ's fellowship with God. From this " experience of
God," or Christ's personal fellowship with the Almighty, Mr.
Decker points the need of man's closer union with his Maker.
This will be obtained when " Christ's experience of God is repro-
duced by men who in the process become themselves new Christs."
As a result man will reach a higher standard of perfection in his
social relations, and be actuated by motives of true Christian So-
cialism.
The structure that Mr. Decker builds is deserving of much
praise. The sweetness of life, the harmony of conscience and the
peace of soul attendant upon " fellowship with Christ " are vividly
brought before us. The whole work breathes of love of Christ and
points toward that ideal.
But while the structure is built of many truths well stated,
it is founded upon shifty sands of confusion and error. Christ's
Experience of God is solely an appeal for a stronger Christianity,
yet the writer by his conception and characterization of Christ,
unmistakably denies the only real, substantial reason for it all
the only real foundation of Christianity the Godhead and Di-
vinity of Jesus Christ. He recognizes in Christ not the Second
Person of the Blessed Trinity, but a great character who was
raised to the " fellowship of God" by his love for his fellowmen.
" Jesus was in the Father and the Father in him, only as he
prayed that other men might be one in God and God in them."
Again, Jesus passed " through the Kingdom of God to the perfec-
tion of God : that was the experience of the only man of our race
who has sought and won a perfect character." These and other
ideas show that the writer while professing Christianity has lost its
spirit and substance, and like many other Protestant preachers has
embraced Unitarianism.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 397
In this light that Christ was " a man plus God a man whose
union with God transformed him into the image of God," that
" he would rebuke us sharply for our sin in making him equal
with his Father," and that Christ's "motive for seeking him
was that he might be qualified for larger usefulness in ministering
to the world " it is difficult to justify the plea which the book
makes, for it casts aside the very essentials for Christian faith.
And as a direct result of this the social service, for which Mr.
Decker pleads so earnestly, is made empty and vain and becomes
simply an aid toward pagan perfection.
It is a pity that such loftiness of purpose should be defeated
by such looseness of thought and confusion of essentials. There is
much that is good and inspiring in the book, but perhaps in that
very thing lies the danger of the work, for many, moved emotionally
by its high purpose, will fail to see where its false principles will
lead them away from, rather than towards, real Christianity.
Christ's Experience of God will not bear analysis along lines
of cogent reasoning. It is based solely upon the self-assertion of
the writer, mingled with a personal effusiveness that is at times
very distasteful. The whole work is a reflection of many present
phases of Protestantism vague, loosely constructed, floating in
space and merely the outgrowth of the intellectual vagaries of
various individuals.
A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1870. By
Fred Lewis Pattee. New York : The Century Co. $2.00 net.
This is a book of exceptional merit. It is a study of the
important period of American letters that began with the Civil
War and ended approximately with the last century. As long ago
as 1873 Edmund Clarence Steadman had noted the epochal effect
on literary expressions of the strife between the States. Other
critics, from divergent points of view, had likewise remarked the
same altered aspect of things. But it was left for the author of
these pages to give us the first adequate portrayal of the cataclysm,
and the first full account of the forces at play. This he has done
with signal success and with unusual art.
The literary era that followed hard upon the peace of 1865
is not inaptly styled by Professor Pattee "the National Period."
When the battle-clouds drifted from sight, the soul of new America
shone from the sky like a noonday sun. With the sulphurous va-
pors vanished an exotic, imitative spirit in letters and thought.
398 NEW BOOKS [June,
A decadent and effete sentimentality of them'e and treatment gave
place to a literary atmosphere, native, fresh and exhilarating. There
was a quickening, a renaissance. The stimulus was the grim shock
and experience of war. The awakening was to a vigorous national
spirit that flowered luxuriantly in a literature, often homely and
uncouth, it is true, but always independent and sturdy.
The harbinger of the new life about to spread through the
land was a veritable gale of laughter that swept from the West. In
this peculiarly American school of humor, the history discerns the
first token of the " new birth." Thereafter the movement is studied
in the three prominent literary forms, poetry, fiction and the essay.
The principle of evolution is duly emphasized, because here, if any-
where, it is, to use Brunetiere's distinction, not merely a working
hypothesis as in natural history, but a universal rule and unbroken
law of literary development. Yet each author concerned is treated,
aot alone relatively, as simply a type of well-defined stage in
the growth of a class, but also individually, as in himself a separate
and interesting subject. To harmonize thus the new and the old in
criticism calls for no small praise.
The appreciation of the foremost writers of the era is acute
and consistently just. The research and Disinterestedness that be-
speak the competent critic are everywhere in evidence. Indeed it
is rather the historian than the critic that pronounces. Yet to a
keen and penetrating insight into the worth of the writings ex-
amined is joined a strong and sincere feeling for beauty and pathos.
There is nothing either merely captious or purely academic in the
judgments handed down.
The style is sprightly, often to the point of jauntiness. The
ear catches, too, a distinctly modern note in some of the phrases.
It is infrequent, however, that there are such undignified lapses as,
"The clock factory made haste to burn." On the contrary, the
prevailing tone of the language is that of scholarly elegance. This
genial grace of form, added to the natural interest of the subject,
tends to make the work singularly engaging. In short, we have here
something new in books, which is authoritative enough for the desk
of the advanced student or the teacher, and readable enough for the
armchair of the man of general culture.
THE SONG OF ROLAND. Translated into English Verse by
Leonard Bacon. New York: Yale University Press. $1.50.
More than eight centuries ago, when the Norman hosts first
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 399
conquered England the song their minstrels raised upon the very
field of Hastings was the already immortal Chanson de Roland.
It is interesting to welcome this new English version of the great
Charlemagne epic now, when once again France stands before the
world with unsheathed sword and stands, curiously enough, be-
side her ancient enemy against a common foe.
The reason as he modestly puts it, the apology for a new
translation is given by Eeonard Bacon quite simply : the old French
masterpiece was " capable of many interpretations." But the all
sufficient excuse for each new edition Is summed up in the com-
ment of Gaston Paris upon the great feudal romance : " At the
entrance of the Sacred Way where are arrayed the monuments
of our literature, the Song of Roland stands like an arch
massively built and gigantic; it is narrow, perhaps, but great in
conception, and we cannot pass beneath it without admiration, with-
out respect, without pride." Lovers of the sources, alike human
and heroic, of Old World literature, will welcome this admirable
volume of a New World university.
THE BELFRY. By May Sinclair. New York: The Macmillan
Co. $1.35.
From the time of The Lady of Lyons the low-born husband
of the high-born wife has been a fa'vorite with dramatists and
novelists, nor was his popularity with the public injured by his
being almost always as unreal a figure as his prototype, Claude
Melnotte: for with rare exceptions he has been represented as
possessing such graces and attainments that those born of high de-
gree suffered by comparison. In The Belfry Miss Sinclair has
dared to present her principal as a man of talent, clean-hearted,
magnanimous, of high resolution and ardently loving, but incor-
rigibly and absurdly underbred, with petty vulgarities of behavior
and mental outlook. That at the end of the novel he is established
in the reader's affection is a distinguished achievement of Miss
Sinclair's art.
Viola Thesiger, a descendant of gentle-people, plunges head-
long into marriage with a writer, Tasker Jevons, who is outside
her social orbit not alone by birth and experience, but also By
disqualifications of taste and behavior. The story of the nine sub-
sequent years develops with much skill and penetration the power
of trivialities to mar and rasp the fabric of love. The narrative
is wholly in the hands of one of the characters, Furnival, Viola's
400 NEW BOOKS [June,
brother-in-law; thus it is a witness' testimony as to what he has
seen and heard, a record of the externals by which alone Jevons
is disclosed. There are no vague suggestions left to be filled in by
the reader's imagination; his mortifying solecisms, his uncouth,
unconscious offences against refinement, are described in full, as
well as the impressions they produce. Side by side with this, how-
ever, are indications of a complex, appealing personality that make
comprehensible Viola's response to his fervent love and preclude
any feeling that it does her discredit. He rouses sentiments of ad-
miration, surprise, embarrassment, amusement and pity.
Financial success from his plays and novels does not improve
him, and at the end of nine years Viola temporarily mistakes
nervous irritation for loss of affection, and believes herself ready
to leave him. At this juncture the European war-cloud breaks.
Jevons, whom by this time no one takes seriously, pushes through
obstacles, of which his natural inclinations form a part, to the
Belgian front, in the service of the Red Cross. It is the conclusive
triumph of the strong w r ill that has always gained for him what he
determined upon. He displays splendid courage and self-abnega-
tion and, at the cost of his right hand, rescues from certain death
Viola's idolized brother, who has shown him only contemptuous
dislike.
The book is continuously interesting and written with virile
power, especially the scenes in Belgium; the characters are all
well drawn, Viola second only to Jevons. In him the author has
contributed to fiction a practically new type in a consistently con-
vincing form. The usual transformation does not occur. His ex-
periences at the front leave Jevons raised to his highest expression,
but unchanged: he remains underbred, a little vulgar, a little of
the poseur ; only, he is forever lifted beyond misinterpretation.
The title refers to the actual and symbolic relations of the
belfry at Bruges with the story of this novel, which marks a
point of excellence beyond any of Miss Sinclair's previous work.
A WARWICKSHIRE LAD. By George Madden Martin. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. $1.00 net.
Mrs. Martin makes a contribution of but indifferent merit to
the tercentenary literature in this story of Shakespeare's child-
hood and early youth. One might reasonably expect from the
author of Selina and Emmy Lou, if not subtle suggestions of fu-
ture greatness, at least some points of characterization that would
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 4 or
outline a distinctive personality instead of the commonplace and
abundant type which she presents under the name of Will Shake-
speare. Such imagination as is displayed is exercised in supple-
menting the meagre details already known of the exterior con-
ditions of his upbringing. The. tone of the book is pleasant, how-
ever; it is presented in attractive form and is prettily illustrated.
THE OAKLEYITES. By E. F. Benson. New York : George H.
Doran Co. $1.35 net.
Though Mr. Benson's latest novel is not illustrative of the
full extent of his abilities, it ranks among his worthier and more
dignified writings by virtue of a sympathetic element that warms
its close observation. The title and the earlier portion of the book
lead us to suppose that we are to be entertained with another of his
studies of character as seen in the life of a small English town,
but this is not the case. The drama that holds our attention is in-
dependent of its setting. It tells the story of Dorothy Jackson,
an unmarried woman of thirty-five, whose devotion to a selfish,
heartless younger sister costs her both love and life. The theme
is threadbare, but Mr. Benson clothes it freshly. His Dorothy is
an ideal type of womanhood, yet she is real and human, for he has
equipped her, beyond the wont of fictional heroines of her kind,
with humor as well as initiative. The delineation of character is
good throughout, and the gay, tender relations between Wilfred
Easton, Dorothy's errant lover, and his mother are very attractive.
We welcome in this book an advance over the author's cus-
tomary attitude in a deeper note of reverential appreciation of
things religious. The picture of the last days of Dorothy is
affecting, and the short description of her death, as she speaks
some words of the Gloria in excelsis, is a touch of pathetic beauty
that lingers in the mind.
HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN. By Theodore Roosevelt. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.00 net.
If you are the man who even in imagination " seeks adven-
ture in the wide, waste spaces of the earth, in the marshes, and
among the vast mountain masses, in the northern forests, amid the
steaming jungles of the tropics, or on the desert of sand or of
snow," then you will enjoy by all means Colonel Roosevelt's book.
As you follow the traveler across the lands of tfie Grand Canyon,
through the ranch lands of Argentina and Southern Brazil, over
VOL. cm. 26
402 NEW BOOKS [June,
the Andes into Chile and back to Patagonia, you will be delighted
with the rapid movement of the narrative, and the vivid pictures
of foreign scenes. The author's wide and intimate knowledge of
men and birds and beasts is marvelous.
Most of the chapters of Holidays in the Open are purely narra-
tive, with keen observations on a wide range of things that come
under the author's vision. In " Primeval Man " he traces the re-
lations of the great beasts, the lion, the elephant and the horse with
primitive man. He draws upon his great store of experience gained
on his expeditions to give a close, minute and interesting study of
these and other animals and their supposed relations during the
ethnological and geographical transitions. Turn the page and along
side of the erudite discussion of cosmic evolution you will find
in the chapter of " Books for Holidays in the Open " an egotistical
account of the writer's taste in reading, with the revelation that the
writer " dislikes bananas, alligator-pears and prunes."
Colonel Roosevelt has done much for his country in many
and diversified fields of endeavor. But when his biography is writ-
ten, no small measure of praise will be given the work he has
done in his writings to instill in the American a true, lasting love
of the wild open places. At all times he has argued for an
American ideal of virile, nature-loving, dynamic manhood. And
as he has always been forceful, aggressive and impelling, the quali-
ties of the man find reflection in his writings.
CANADA IN FLANDERS. By Max Aitken, M.P. New York:
George H. Doran Co. 50 cents net.
While much criticism has been leveled at the British War
Office, only the highest praise has been given the men in the field
for their valor and intrepidity. And of the brilliant records made,
none surpasses those of the colonial troops. The testimony regard-
ing the work of the Australasian and Canadian troops is inspiring
in its unanimous praise of these one-time lawyers, teachers, farmers
and business men.
Such testimony, given in a vivid, dramatic style, can be found
in Sir Max Aitken's book, which, besides containing a recital
of the bravery of Canadian troops, has well deserved tributes from
A. Bonar Law and Sir Robert L. Borden. The author writes from
personal observation and gives in full the story of the gallant troops
who, untried in warfare, turned the tide at Ypres and fought mag-
nificently at Neuve Chapelle, Givenchy and Festiibert. It is in-
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 403
spiring to read of the self-sacrifice and bravery of these citizen-
soldiers a type upon whom we must lean for support in our day
of travail.
The whole book is a living narrative that pays glowing tribute
to the soldiers of the Dominion. Much of it, perhaps, may rise
or fall in importance when judged in the light of future events.
But it will preserve the intimate records of the Canadian volun-
teers in the present war.
THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE. By Owen Johnson. Boston : Little,
Brown & Co. Illustrated. $1.35 net.
This is a collection of articles based on the novelist's visit
to the French theatre of war. In an intensely interesting style the
author gives us his impressions x of the regeneration of France by
its baptism of blood. He catches in Paris the new spirit of the
French, swings out into the country, and sees the same motives
actuating the men in the trenches, and in an interview with General
Joffre finds a re-affirmation of the inspiration that is the strength
and power of the French the determination to continue the
struggle until they can " leave a heritage of peace " to their chil-
dren.
The two chapters, "A Visit to Joffre" and "The Truth
About France," raise the book above the level of mere sense im-
pression. The latter chapter is a keen estimation of France's
present position, and of the wonderful transformation worked from
the days of Charleroi to the battle of the Marne. In the light of
what he saw in France the universal spirit of self-sacrifice and
the sinking of party interests in the greater cause of national
existence the writer finds England far behind her ally. H'is
analysis of the spirit moving the French is clear and deep-sighted.
It would seem, however, that his estimation of the force that So-
cialism will exert after the war is unwarranted in fact.
ELEFTHERIOS VENIZELOS. By Dr. C. Kerofilas. New York :
E. P. Dutton & Co. $1.25 net.
Dr. Kerofilas has given us an interesting biography and ap-
preciation of the statesman who for the past decade has been a
powerful factor in shaping the foreign policy of Greece. The suc-
cessful struggle made by the Cretans to wrest their island from
the domination of the Porte and place it under the protection of
Greece, the stand which Greece took against Turkey, the union
404 NEW BOOKS [June,
of' Bulgaria, Rumania, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece in the
Balkan alliance and its success over Turkey, the opposition to Bal-
kan domination by Bulgaria and the development of internal Greece
are landmarks that stand out in the career of Venizelos, and point
to him as the greatest constructive statesman of Southern Europe.
When Venizelos was called from Crete to reconstruct the
policies of his country, he found Greece internally weak and a
non- factor in the struggle for expansion in the Balkans. Under
his strong premiership he brought his country to the front, and
gave it a permanent place in a shifting, impermanent alignment of
quarreling states.
The biographer has sketched succinctly but clearly the compli-
cated situations where the influence of Venizelos was powerful and
successful. Of the causes that kept Greece out of the World War
when its policy seemed to speak of an alliance with the Entente,
the writer deals briefly and only sufficiently to show the position
taken by Venizelos in his attempts to swing Constantine toward
London and Paris. In this Venizelos did not succeed. His life,
even with many chapters of it unwritten, is deeply interesting.
In all probability much of even greater importance will have to be
added to the present stirring story.
UNDER THE RED CROSS FLAG. By Mabel T. Boardman.
Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Co. $1.50 net.
Miss Mabel T. Boardman, Chairman of the National Relief
Board of the American Red Cross, has written a brief, historical
sketch of the American organization. The only volume on the
subject hitherto published was the work of Miss Clara Barton,
which consisted chiefly of addresses and reports. The first efforts
to create a permanent society for the aid of the sick and wounded
in war under the Treaty of Geneva were made by Dr. Burrows
and other members of the Sanitary Commission, shortly after the
close of the Civil War. The permanent society was finally created
in 1 88 1, and reincorporated by act of Congress in 1905. Since
that date the American Red Cross developed to such an extent
both in organization and efficiency that a complete history of its
activities was badly needed.
The writer acknowledges her indebtedness to Miss L. L. Docks'
History of Nursing, to American and foreign reports, to the Red
Cross Magazine, and to many valuable suggestions made by mem-
bers of the society both at home and abroad.
igi6.] NEW BOOKS 405
THE IDEAL CATHOLIC READ.ERS THIRD READER. By a
Sister of St. Joseph. New York : The Macmillan Co. 40 cents.
While this volume is the Third Reader, it is the fourth of
this particular series. The book has much to recommend it, though
some of the lessons seem to us to be too simple even for Third
Reader age. Such poems as Little Boy Blue, The Leper Guest, and
Hiawatha are admirably suited to the purpose of this book, but
the inclusion of seven poems by as many different poets within
eight pages presents rather a difficult problem for the young child.
However, we have always held that the Fourth Reader is the crux
of the series, since it marks the point when most readers take a
sudden leap into difficulties for which the children are unprepared.
We will await its publication before passing anything like final
judgment, though we fear that the present book is not sufficiently
well graded to lead up to the coming number.
THE DAWN OF RELIGION IN THE MIND OF THE CHILD.
By Edith E. R. Mumford. New York: Longmans, Green &
Co. 50 cents net.
In this valuable little treatise Mrs. Mumford has attempted to
trace the growth of the child's religion during the first ten years
of his life. On every page she insists upon the necessity of religious
training both in the home and in the school, though she lays
greater stress upon the duties of the true mother.
" In every case," she says, " the child needs to realize that
there is no department in life in which religion has no concern, no
one day in the week which alone is set apart for it." Compara-
tively little is said about supernatural religion or supernatural mo-
tives, but the author brings out well the necessity of knowing, lov-
ing and serving God. The illustrations are drawn from real life,
and they have been interpreted in the light of the author's own
experience, so as to bring out the idea of an orderly process of
development.
ISABEL OF CASTILE. By lerne L. Plunket. New York : G. P.
Putnam's Sons. $2.50 net.
This entertaining volume portrays Isabel of Castile, one of
the most winning figures in Spanish history, and describes the mak-
ing of the Spanish nation, which was the outcome of her marriage
with Ferdinand of Aragon. She was a most energetic ruler, render-
ing great assistance to her husband in his schemes of organization
406 NEW BOOKS [June,
and reform, and in his campaigns against the Moors which ended
with the fall of Granada. She will always be remembered by
Americans as the stanch patron of Christopher Columbus, and by
Catholics as a devout and just Queen.
Incidentally the author gives us a series of Spanish and
Moorish portraits, such as the Cardinal of Spain, Don Pedro de
Mendoza, and Cardinal Ximes de Cisneros, the Duke of Medina-
Sidonia, the Marquis of Cadiz, Muley Hacen, Abdallah El Chico
and others. A final chapter treats of Castilian literature at the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
FRANCIS THOMPSON'S THE HOUND OF HEAVEN. Bio-
graphical Sketch and Notes by Michael A. Kelly, C.S.Sp. In-
troduction by Katherine Bregy. Philadelphia: Peter Reilly.
50 cents.
Miss Bregy well says : " There is scarcely another religious
poem in our language which one would dare to cite before the
dual, and very different, bars of theology and rhetoric as the
editor has here cited The Hound of Heaven.
Without commentary, many of the beauties of Francis Thomp-
son's unusual verse would pass unnoticed by the average reader,
on account of his frequent Latinisms, his coining of new words,
his peculiar constructions, and his mystical language.
The notes of Father Kelly are excellent not only for their
explanations of certain textual difficulties, but also for his clear
and broad grasp of the poet's mystical meaning.
THE LIFE OF ST. BONIFACE. By Willibald. Translated into
English for the first time with Introduction and Notes by
George W. Robinson. Cambridge : Harvard University Press.
$1.50 net.
Some months ago we called the attention of our readers to
Mr. Robinson's excellent translation of Eugippius' Life of St.
Severinus. We are again grateful to him for his scholarly trans-
lation of Willibald's well-known Latin life of St. Boniface. Willi-
bald wrote no later than 768 A. D. at the request of St. Boniface's
successor, Bishop Lull, and of Bishop Megingoz of Wiirzburg. The
chief defects of his biography are his inflated and obscure style,
and the few details he records of the last days of the Saint. With
the letters of St. Boniface, Willibald's Life is the chief source from
which our knowledge of the Saint is drawn.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 407
The translation is excellent, and brings out clearly the spirit
and tone of the original text. We realize that St. Boniface was,
as the translator well says : " The foremost scholar of his time, the
introducer of learning and literature and the arts of civilized life
into German lands; the great champion of Rome, and of ecclesi-
astical uniformity in Central Europe; the missionary of God, a
soldier and a leader in the great Christian warfare against the
heathen of the North."
THE EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE FIRST THREE
CENTURIES. From the French of Rev. Jean Riviere. St.
Louis: B. Herder. 50 cents net.
From the days of St. Augustine apologists have always ap-
pealed to the marvelous expansion of the Church in the beginnings
of Christianity as a mark of her divine origin. In view of some
modern denials of the validity of this argument, the Abbe Riviere
has presented it anew with the aid of the materials collected by
the learned rationalist historian of Berlin, Adolph Harnack.
While pointing out from time to time Harnack's errors and
mistakes, the Abbe Riviere still shows conclusively that the old
argument has lost none of its force, even at the hands of one who
has no bias whatever in favor of the Catholic Church.
PASTORAL LETTERS. Addresses and Other Writings of the
Rt. Rev. James A. McFaul, D.D., Bishop of Trenton. Edited
by Rev. J. J. Powers. Second Edition. New York : Benziger
Brothers. $1.50.
Bishop McFaul of Trenton is well known tficoughout the
United States as a founder of the American Federation of Catholic
Societies, and a great defender of the apostolate of the press. In
the addresses and pastoral letters of the present volume, he sets
forth the Catholic teaching on many a topic of to-day, such as the
school question, the labor problem, infidelity in our American uni-
versities, Sunday observance, and race suicide.
Many will read with interest the Bishop's clear statement of
the aims of Federation. He tells us that its purpose is " the ad-
vancement of the civil, religious and social interests of Catholics.
It is a strong, closely-welded instrument for voicing Catholic
opinion on all the great questions of the day. He answers those
who imagined it would degenerate into a Catftolic political party,
saying : " It would be suicidal f o Federation to engage in partisan
408 NEW BOOKS [June,
politics, because it includes members of all parties." The one
reason that Catholics have grievances comes, he assures us, from
the existence of many " week-kneed, jelly-fish Catholics, who dare
not call their soul their own." When asked for results, he points
to the concessions made in the Philippine difficulties, the present
amicable relations existing in Porto Rico, the changed aspect of
the Indian schools, and the clear light thrown upon the public
school question.
WHAT MAY I HOPE? By George Trumbull Ladd, LL.D. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.50 net.
This volume is styled by its author an inquiry into the sources
and reasonableness of the hopes of humanity, especially the social
and religious. The first four chapters discuss the nature, sources,
rights, limitations, assurance and practical uses of hope. He brings
out clearly that all men's reasonable hopes must be founded on
trust in God, and that all hope of true reform must, as Catholics
maintain, begin with the individual. In the fifth chapter Dr. Ladd
points out the failure of evolution with its denial of patent facts,
and the false promises of modern Socialism with its unreal and
impossible commonwealth. In his concluding chapters he is very
vague in defining the nature of the human soul, and he rejects
entirely the idea of a definite Kingdom of God founded by Jesus
Christ.
%*,
THE LATIN CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES. By Andre
Legarde. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50 net.
THis volume of the International Theological Library is re-
markable for its anti-Catholic tone. Everything dear to the
Catholic mind is spoken of contemptuously, whether it be the
authority of the Papacy, the doctrine of the Real Presence, or the
spirit of monasticism. To enumerate the false statements that
disfigure the pages of this unscholarly work would require another
volume. To mention but a few: the author falsely declares that
" until the sixth century, infants were baptized only when they were
in danger of death; that the bishops at some time unspecified,
established the sacrament of confirmation; that Pope Gelasius
taught that Communion under one kind was an incomplete Com-
munion; that transubstantiation arose in the monasteries of the
ninth century; that confession was established about the middle of
the fourth century by Pacomius ; that a tariff for sins was enforced
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 409
in the Middle Ages; that Gregory VII. implicitly authorized con-
fession to a layman; and that Hugo of St. Victor made Extreme
Unction a Sacrament.
These are merely a few false statements culled from one
chapter on the Sacraments. The other fifteen chapters are equally
devoid of scholarship, and read like a tract of a fanatical anti-
Catholic penny-a-liner.
THE DOUBLE ROAD. By Michael Wood. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. $1.20 net.
Kelly Dominick, a draper's assistant in the firm of Barring-
ton and Son, Lexminster, England, foolishly pretends to have
stolen a ring, in order to save one of his fellow employees from
prison. We might have pardoned him had he been in love with
the thief, but his only motive for assuming her guilt was a forced
and unreal concept of self-sacrifice.
The story begins with the culprit's marriage to a member of
the firm, and ends with her husband's discovery of the crime. The
hero talks a great deal of pious twaddle about "the kingdom build-
ing from within outwards and from without inwards at one and
the same time," and wanders dreamily over the Downs with the
unbelieving Churton Calmore, discussing the probable salvation of
the latter's degenerate son.
Neither the story itself nor the hero's mysticism are true or
convincing.
THE A$VIL OF CHANCE. By Gerald Chittenden. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. $1.35 net.
Mr. Chittenden tells a good story of a self -conceited, un-
truthful and unreliable New England schoolmaster, who " on the
anvil of chance has his iron beaten into steel." He goes for a
holiday to Central America, and during an epidemic of yellow
fever does heroic work among the sick and dying. After many
hardships he returns to America a strong, reliant character, and
wins with the greatest ease the lady of his choice. As a picture
of a modern American school, it is true to life.
THE MASTER DETECTIVE. By Percy James Brebner. New
York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.35 net.
The author of Christopher Quarles has just published another
volume of thrilling detective stories. A Scotland Yard detective,
410 NEW BOOKS [June,
aided by an old white-haired professor of philosophy, manages to
solve nearly a score of mysterious murders and robberies. This
second volume is even more fascinating than the first.
CLERICAL COLLOQUIES. By Arthur Barry O'Neill, C.S.C.
Notre Dame, Ind. : The University Press. $1.00.
We feel that Father O'Neill was right in believing that his
volume of two years ago, Priestly Practice, deserved a genuine
recall. We found these talks full of kindly humor, common sense
and sound advice to clergy young and clergy old, to wearens of
the black and wearers of the purple. Even when Father O'Neill
denounces some striking clerical faults, he does so in so genial a
manner as to win over the offender. As he well says, these talks
are " practical and helpful, without being dull, prosy, heavy or
ultra-ascetic."
THE REAL ADVENTURE. By Henry K. Webster. Indian-
apolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50 net.
After a whirlwind courtship, Rose Stanton, a university law
student, marries the millionaire lawyer, Rodney Aldrich. Within
a year of happy married life, this ultra-modern wife becomes weary
of being dependent upon her husband's money, and foolishly leaves
him to earn her own living. This " parasite " of modern feminism
uses her freedom to become in turn a chorus girl and a designer
of theatrical costumes. Having proved to her own satisfaction
that she is self-supporting, she returns again to her husband and
babies.
The whole story is improbable and artificial, although it shows
clearly what the modern unmoral woman is capable of doing with
sentiment alone as her guide.
THE INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AND COMMERCIAL
POLICIES OF THE THREE SCANDINAVIAN COUN-
TRIES. By Povl Drachmann. New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press. $1.75.
In one hundred and twenty gages Mr. Drachmann treats of
the industrial development and the commercial policies of Den-
mark, Sweden and Norway. This volume will prove of interest
to the American business man as well as the economist. It has
been carefully edited by Harold Westergaard, Professor of Po-
litical Science and Statistics in the University of Copenhagen.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 411
HISTORY OF DOGMAS. Volume III. By J. Tixeront. Trans-
lated from the fifth French Edition by H. L. B. St. Louis:
B. Herder. $2.00 net.
The third volume of the Abbe Tixeront's History of Dogmas
opens with a general sketch of Greek theology from the fifth to
the seventh centuries. In a dozen chapters the author discusses in
detail Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Semi-Pelagian-
ism, the Iconoclast Heresy, the theology of St. John Damascene,
and Latin theology in the age of Charlemagne.
CARDINAL NEWMAN'S DREAM OF GERONTIUS. By Julius
Gliebe, O.F.M. New York : Schwartz, Kirwin & Fauss.
Father Gliebe has written a brief but excellent commentary on
Cardinal Newman's Dream of Gerontius. In his introduction he
gives the history of the poem, describes accurately its eight vari-
ations of verse and stanza forms, and points out the leading ideas
of its seven divisions. The notes are few but suggestive.
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
The America Press sends us five pamphlets of The Catholic Mind: The
Catholic Church and Child Welfare, by H. J. Swift, S.J.; South America's
Catholicism, by W. Dwight, SJ. and The Church in Chile, by J. H. Fisher,
SJ.-; Maeterlinck's Philosophy of Life, by Conde B. Fallen; The Catholic
Sense, by Father W. Power; and Marriage in Mexico, by John Navarette.
The Indian National Party has just published William J. Bryan's pamphlet
on British Rule in India, and India's loyalty to England, a protest against the
employment of Indian soldiers in the European War.
The Australian Catholic Truth Society of Melbourne has just issued The
Family, the State and the School, by Rev. Peter C. Yorke, and The Working
Man and His Child, by Rev. W. J. Lockington, S.J., a lecture on Catholic edu-
cation in Australia. E. J. H. writes a story of conversion, entitled A Soul's
Struggle Toward the Faitfy.
The Sunday Visitor, of Huntington, Indiana, sends us the following pamph-
lets: Why An Unmarried Priesthood? Of What Use Are Nuns? Why Do
Catholics Honor Mary? The Holy Eucharist Explained, and Misrepresentations
of History, which discusses the Spanish Inquisition, tHe Massacre of St.
Bartholomew, Galileo, etc.
B. Herder, of St. Louis, has just published Garcia Moreno, A Tragedy in
Three Acts, adapted from the German by the Capuchin Father Bernard.
Price, 25 cents.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Bloud and Gay of Paris have sent us three new brochures of their
Pages Actuelles: The Life of Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, by Maurice des
Ombiaux; Charity and the War, by G. Lechartier; The Women of France
in the War of 1914, by Frederic Masson. We have also received from them
three confesences given at the Madeleine in Paris by the Abbe A. D. Sertil-
412 NEW BOOKS [June,
langes: The Women of France; Wives and Mothers; The Young Women of
France.
Journal d'une Infirmiere d f Arras, by Madame E. Colombel. (Paris: Bloud
and Gay.) Madame Colombel has just published the diary she kept during the
months of August, September, and October, 1914, while in charge of the
Blessed Sacrament Hospital in Arras, France. These stirring pages give the
reader a good insight into the sufferings caused by war, and the heroism of
the Catholic women of France in ministering to the wounded under the most
trying circumstances. Her account of the bombardment of the dty and the
destruction of the hospital is most realistic and vivid.
Histoire Anecdotique de La Guerre, by Franc-Nohain and Paul Delay.
(Paris: P. Lethielleux. 60 centimes.) The tenth volume of the Histoire
Anecdotique de La Guerre treats exclusively of German and French prisoners of
war. It tells story after story of daring escapes, heroic captures, the manage-
ment of French and German prisons, and the successful efforts of Pope Bene-
dict XV. in effecting an exchange of prisoners.
Le Destin de I'Empire Allemand, by Yves de la Briere. (Paris: Gabriel
Beauchesne. 2frs. 50.) M. Yves de la Briere has just issued in book form
the articles he published last fall in The Etudes on " War Prophecies." At the
very outset of the present war Cardinal Amette, the Archbishop of Paris,
warned his people against the many pseudo-prophecies which were being circu-
lated throughout France. The present writer discusses in detail the prophecy
of Feinsberg on the dates 1871, 1888 and 1913; the prophecy of Hermann, a
mediaeval Cistercian of Brandebourg, foretelling the ruin of the Hohenzollern ;
the prophecy of Strasbourg, picturing the defeat of the Germans in Westphalia ;
the prophecy of Brother Joannes, identifying William II. with Antichrist; the
prophecy of Blessed Andrew Bobola describing the resurrection of Poland ; and
the prophecies of the Cure d'Ars, foretelling the defeat of 1870 and the victory
of the French in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Les Luttes presentes de I'Eglise, by Yves de la Briere. (Paris: Gabriel
Beauchesne. Sfrs.) This entertaining volume of over five hundred pages
gives an account of "the chief events of Church history in France between
the dates, January, 1913, and July, 1914. The writer treats the religious policy
of Pius X. concerning the Law of Separation; the Pope's condemnation of
Modernism and Sillonism ; the Roman Question ; the school question in France ;
the Centenaries of Frederic Ozanam and Louis Veuillot ; the French Episcopate
and the elections of 1914 and the Eucharistic Congress of Lourdes.
La Guerra Mundial, by Theodore Roosevelt. Translated by J. Lara.
(Barcelona, Espana: Casa Editorial Maucci.) Senor Lara, has ably translated
Mr. Roosevelt's well-known work, America and the World War, which insists
so strongly on the necessity of preparedness. Senor Lara has also added a
translation of Mr. Roosevelt's famous article in the New York Times, calling
the attention of the United States to the atrocities committed in Mexico by the
rebels out of hatred to the Catholic Church. The translator was for years
interested in the Mejico Nuevo, the strongest opposition paper of Mexico
City during the Diaz regime. His fearlessness led to his exile for the past
five years, during which time he has been the New York correspondent for many
of the leading Latin American papers.
jfordon perfobfcate,
'Anthologia Laureata. By C. C. Martindale, S.J. " The Poet
Laureate's Anthology was bound, we foreknew, to be an anthology
with a difference." Mr. Bridges' belief, as seen in The Spirit of
Man, is " that mankind reveals itself to be, and strives ever more
perfectly to be, spiritual. His purpose, then, is to display this
spirituality, and, thereby, to spiritualize. His method is the crea-
tion of a mood The pages are not numbered ; nor any author
named, save in the distant notes," and even these, in spite of " many
historical, or scholarly, or even just personal touches," show clearly
" how it is the magic of a moocl he aims at, not the offering of an
argument." As regards the teaching, " imagine an Ignatius or a
John of the Cross, with their dogmatic beliefs volatilized save their
doctrine of the soul and its progressions Godward. Thus Mr.
Bridges guides." " Is it part of our duty, as Catholics, to estimate
the religious value of the Poet Laureate's book? Everything,
for example, that transcends materialism, that makes for discipline
while preaching freedom, that inculcates repentance, must be
praised." But " what men now ask is the affirmative, even the
dogmatic, the s)4nthetic. They look with distrust, almost with bit-
terness, upon the vaporous and volatilized And tne anthology
does somehow seem to leave us with hopes high but vague
St. Paul appears, I think, but once: Amiel, Yeats, Montigne, how
often!" St. Paul is quoted in a mood of lament, whereas he is
noted " for exultation in Him through whom he 'more than con-
quered.' ' St. Matthew and St. John are also each quoted only
once, and then without clear statement of their faith in an Incar-
nate God. In a word, sapping subjectivism poisons this book,"
which should have been all health and wholesomeness. The Dublin
Review, April.
The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (April) : Rt. Rev. John S.
Vaughan contributes a brief biography of Bishop Mazenod,
Founder of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Rev. J. Byrne
O'Connell shows that all modern Non-Catholic systems of psy-
chology agree in denying the substantiality, permanence, simplicity
and spirituality of the soul. He quotes to this effect psychologists
414 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June,
from Descartes to Ladd. " A veteran catechist " points out de-
fects in the Diocesan programmes and examination system, and
suggests the adoption in all dioceses of a new catechetical text-
book, the establishment of an investigating commission, and special
courses of training for catechists.
The Irish Theological Quarterly (April) : The Rev. J. Kel-
leher combats Father Slater's views on just price and value.
Rev. J. M. O' Sullivan, in Some Prejudices of Criticism, takes
the biographies of Luther as ail example. Rev. Garrett Pierse
shows how the human character of Jesus is a proof of His Divinity.
The Dublin Review (April) : The Bishop of Southwark re-
lates his impressions regarding Spain's attitude in the war.
Professor Rodolfo Lanciani discusses the archaeological
discoveries which led him to believe that the " Memoria Aposto-
lorum," a hall or shrine connected with SS. Peter and Paul, which
stood on the Appian Way near where the present church of San
Sebastiano stands, was a house or set of rooms where the Apostles
lived while working for the evangelization of Rome. Other dis-
coveries have been made by Dr. P. Styger in the Church of St.
John before the Latin Gate. Under the heading The Re-
ligious Ideal of the Slavophils, Father A. Palmieri, O.S.A.,
summarizes the views of the Russian controversialist and mystic,
Khomiakov. Monsignor Arthur Barnes argues that Islam is a
Christian heresy, based on Ebionite views. Dr. Alice Vowe
Johnson contributes a learned discussion of Infant Mortality, with
statistics and suggested remedies. Rev. J. Keating, S.J., dis-
cusses the rights of the State and of the individual, showing
that " much of the appeal for State interference and the outcry
against it arise from wrong ideas about both these subjects."
Revue Pratique d'Apologetique (April 15) : Rev. A. Giraudin
describes the seven oaths forced upon the French clergy from 1 789-
1800 by the civil authorities. Monsignor Maurice Demimuid
concludes his study of Sacred Rhetoric According to Bossuet and
Fenelon. J. Giraud continues his history of the suppression of
the Jesuits.
IRecent Events.
The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD ivishes to state that none
of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of
the magazine, zvith 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 long struggle for Verdun which has
France. now been continued for eighty-six days with
brief intermissions, has left the situation
practically unchanged, notwithstanding the considerable gains made
by the Germans in the first weeks. Two or three serious and many
spasmodic attacks have from time to time been made which have
entailed enormous losses on the assailants, but have had no decisive
result. This persistence can only be explained as an attempt to
disguise the confession of failure a confession hard to make after
the loud boasts at the opening of the attack, and one so likely to
have considerable influence upon the German people. The Ger-
mans have once more been betrayed into a false position by over-
confidence. For this confidence they had indeed some ground.
Never before, not even in the region of the Dunajec, was
there assembled so large a mass of troops and guns. On the forty-
mile semi-circle of the firing line around Verdun a correspondent
writes that there were twenty-five hundred guns in action or in
reserve. Were each gun fired but once an hour, there would be a
shot every second. The average weight of a shell is more than
twenty-five pounds. Even in desultory firing, one hundred and sixty
thousand pounds, or four or five car loads of iron, were rained upon
the French positions every hour. This amount greatly increased
when an attack was being prepared. At the beginning the Germans
greatly outnumbered the French both in men and guns. As the
battle proceeded. the French artillery was increased in number, and
was able to answer that of the German shell for shell. And al-
though the French guns were not in calibre equal to the largest
German guns, the superior skill of their gunners and their success
in concealing their positions gave them in the end the mastery.
The losses of the Germans are of course not made known.
Experts, however, estimate that they number at the least one hun-
dred and seventy-five thousand or two hundred thousand men. On
the other hand, the French method of conducting the defence
416 RECENT EVENTS [June,
enabled them to save their men. If the retention of a position
involved an undue sacrifice of life, the position was given up. The
front trenches were held by a force small in number, but protected
by artillery in commanding positions. So comparatively few, in
fact, have been the French losses that they have been able to take
the offensive, and in the neighborhood of Douaumont they have re-
gained part of the ground which tHe Germans had won. But even
yet it cannot be said that the German efforts against Verdun have
ceased, although it is rumored that an attack in force on the British
in another attempt to reach Calais is imminent. For some time
there has been massed before these lines a larger number of divi-
sions even than before Verdun. There are, however, those who
think that Germany places her chief hope of success, during the
present compaign, in an attempt to reach Petrograd. Russia's task
will be to ward off this danger. Should this attempt be made,
Germany will have to take back from France part of the forces
which have been fighting there. This will give the opportunity
for the Allied offensive, of which so much has been expected;
their belief being that the decisive battles will be fought in France
and Belgium. The arrival in France of men from Russia seems to
indicate that the Tsar shares in this opinion. It should also show
how hopeless is the expectation of the Germans that a division may
arise between the Allies.
The attempt of the Germans to break through at Verdun has
brought into light again the. marvelous spirit which the war has
evoked in France. A correspondent at the front found these three
lines scribbled on the wooden casing of a bomb-proof in a first
line trQiich :
Mon corps a la terre
Mon ame a Dieu
Mon cceur a la France.
These lines were not written to be seen, still less to be pub-
lished. They are an indication of the inmost feelings of one of
those upon whom the task of defending his country has fallen.
They represent the feelings of all, soldiers and civilians alike.
The same correspondent says that of all the truly wonderful things
of this wonderful war, the most wonderful of all is the morale
of the French. It is still wholly untarnished and unsubdued.
* To ever-rising demands France replies with ever-rising
spirit. She has been great before. But never, surely, so
great as now, 'Rather than accept slavery at German hands/
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 417
said General de Castelnau to the writer, 'the French race will die
upon the battlefield.' And so it will. In very truth it will." There
is a sacred union of all spirits and hearts. Monarchists, republi-
cans, nationalists, radicals, antimilitarists, pacifists, humanitarians,
internationalists, revolutionists, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and
Atheists, all the divisions and sub-divisions of the French people in
peace time are now absolutely united and determined. . They even
look upon their enemy as already beaten, so great is their confidence
in the result. Even the Socialists have recently rejected proposals
made for the resumption of international relations with Socialists
of all nations. The time to talk, they declare, will come after, and
not before, the conclusion of peace. And strange perhaps it may
seem, the great revival of French spirit is due largely to the women.
Not merely was the exemplary fortitude of the mothers and the
wives of the soldiers, their silence in great sorrow and anxiety the
animating influence of the active defenders of France, but their
practical work enabled those soldiers to carry on the war. Districts
in which the Germans had ravaged their homes, during their retreat
from the Marne, the women and children immediately set to work
to rebuild, to make them ready for the return of their men-
folk, and to keep the land in the best possible cultivation. The
harvest of France in 1915 was sown and reaped by the women and
children of France.
One of the many miscalculations of the Germans was the con-
fidence they felt that difference would soon arise between the
nations banded together against them. There has, indeed, been a
considerable lack in cooperation, and in the coordination of their
forces ; they have had to meet with no small number of defeats ; but
instead of divisions, which these things might have engendered, with
the continuation of the war, union and unity have been strengthened.
This found expression in the War Conference which was held at
Paris at the end of March, at which no fewer than eight nations
took part. At this Conference concerted plans were made for this
year's campaign. A second Conference was held at Paris at the
end of April, to make arrangements to prevent that secret
warfare which Germany has been carrying on during the times of
peace in order to secure the control of the world's resources. In
this case the questions to be' discussed were more difficult, involving
the commerce of the world, free trade and protection and the
vital interests of the nations. Steps, however, were taken to de-
prive Germany of privileges which she has abused, and to prevent
VOL. cm. 27
418 RECENT EVENTS [June,
the dumping of her products upon the Allied Powers at the end of
the war.
France's attitude toward peace is well expressed in recent utter-
ances of representative citizens. A delegate of the French Assembly
to London defined it as a determination that no peace should be made
until the absolute and complete victory of right should be obtained.
"There were to-day millions of dead who pointed the path of duty to
those who were alive, and even if we remained selfishly forgetful of
their memory, how could we fail to hear the mute appeal made from
the cradles of the next generation which held out its hands that we
should strive to spare it the horrors which we ourselves had expe-
rienced." Within the last few days a still more authoritative voice,
that of the President of the Republic, has declared that France does
not want Germany to tender peace, but wants her adversary to ask
for peace. The peace which she must ask for must be such as will
not expose the French people to the dangers of new aggression.
" We want peace which receives from restored rights serious
guarantees of equilibrium and stability. So long as that peace
is not assured to us, so long as our enemies will not recognize
themselves as vanquished, we will not cease to fight." France
and her Allies do not intend that Germany shall continue to
impose her will on Europe by threatening it with war, as she
has done on several occasions during the last ten years. This
is the lesson which France has been learning ever since the Kaiser
went to Tangier. By repeated threats to crush France as a
nation of decadents, by humiliations, by insults and injuries, Ger-
many has herself been instrumental in arousing a spirit in France
which has astonished the whole world, and which recalls the most
glorious periods of the France of the past. If anything more
were needed to harden the resolution of the French, the way
in which the war has been carried on by her enemies has had the
effect of making her the most resolute of all Germany's enemies in
the determination to wage the war to a decisive issue.
It remains as difficult as ever to ascertain the
Germany. truth about the real state of things in Ger-
many. The press, which is under strict
Government control, has two voices. When it is thought desirable
to excite the feelings of neutrals against the British blockade, re-
ports are circulated of the hardships and sufferings which German
women and children are undergoing. The very babies are dying
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 419
off. When, on the other hand, it is wished to make the world
believe that Germany's powers of resistance are unbreakable, then
it is as loudly declared that there is plenty of food. The evidence,
however, is accumulating that the former view is the truer one,
that the food supply is growing ever scantier and scantier. The
fact that a " food dictator " has been appointed, is an evidence of a
state of things which is becoming more serious. The resignation
of his predecessor has revealed the fact that in one sphere at least
the German Government has proved inefficient. Whether the inef-
ficiency was due to inability rightly to distribute the available sup-
plies, or to the want of having the supplies to distribute, is yet a
question. Private letters are the best means of getting reliable
information, and as many of them as are available testify to the
present necessities. A student writes that the " portions " of
peace days are halved in every eating house, and do not suffice to
appease the half of his hunger. The price of sausage is prohibitive.
Further evidence, which must be taken for what it is worth, from
such letters, states that there can no longer be any doubt that the
British blockade is reducing Germany to desperate straits for food
and other necessaries. There is such a shortage that any food
except the very commonest, such as potatoes and cabbages, is quite
out of the reach of any but the well-to-do classes. In the towns
there have been serious food riots, which have been aggravated by
the failure of the attack on Verdun and the terrible losses the
German armies have suffered there.
The submarine campaign has been resumed with the general
approval of all German parties as the one means on which reliance
is placed for warding off the blockade which is causing so much
suffering. It is not, however, against British or Allied ships alone
that the war is being carried on. To every eleven ships of the
Allies which have been sunk four neutral vessels have suffered the
same fate. Even far-off Spain has not escaped, to the great indig-
nation of a nation of which a large portion is sympathetic with
Germany. It is, however, the small and weak States that have
met with this treatment, no vessel of this country having yet been
attacked. But when the Sussex was torpedoed without warning,
and in spite of promises, our President's patience was at last ex-
hausted, and he sent to Germany a letter in some degree worthy of
the nation's traditions and his own professions. The note gave a
list of the promises which Germany had broken, and in particular
declared that the German account of the torpedoing of the Sussex
420 RECENT EVENTS [June,
was not supported by the impartial examination of the United States
military and naval officers; declared the practices of ruthless de-
struction proved that submarine warfare could not be conducted in
accordance with the principles of humanity, the rights of neutrals,
and the sacred immunities of non-combatants. Hence the President
intimated his intention to sever diplomatic relations with Germany.
The note excited great indignation in the latter country. Complaint
was made that America had failed to appreciate the necessity to
which Germany was reduced in her conflict with Great Britain.
After, however, a somewhat prolonged time given to the considera-
tion of an embarrassing situation, Germany has returned an answer
which it is hoped will prove satisfactory, coupled, however, with a
condition that the United States should put pressure upon Great
Britain to put an end to the blockade of Germany. This condition
has, however, been promptly repudiated by the President.
Certain phrases in Germany's reply have been thought to inti-
mate a desire for the President's intervention for the purpose of
bringing an end to the war, and this has led to a good deal of what
is called " peace talk." Some have found a certain toning down of
Great Britain's terms in the words used by Mr. Asquith in the reply
which he made to the members of the French Parliament during
their recent visit to England. The German Chancellor, in his
speech at the meeting of the Reichstag, outlined the terms upon
which Germany would be willing to end the war. The best
informed and most impartial students of the situation believe that
the gulf is still too vast to be spanned with any amount of peace talk.
The Chancellor's terms are absolutely inadmissible, and are rather
a challenge than a bid. The war, so far as it has gone, has been too
successful for Germany for her to yield what the Allies are bent upon
requiring. The demand of Germany is that Belgium should become
an annex of the Central League; that the Baltic Provinces as well
as Poland should be formed into buffer States under German con-
trol. Russia is to be thrust farther away from the present German
frontier. The Pan-German dream of a military and commercial
federation stretching from the North Sea across Austria, the Bal-
kans and nearer Asia is to become a reality. This federation, as it
has been pointed out, would command its own food, cotton and
copper, and would be economically self -sustained, and with two
hundred millions of inhabitants would become not only an uncon-
querable but an irresistible organization.
One remarkable conversion indicated in the Chancellor's
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 421
speech must not be left unrecognized. Germany, he declares, is the
champion of the small nationalities. She demands " the chance of
free evolution along the lines of their mother tongue and of national
individuality " for the Poles, the Lithuanians, and the Livonians, as
well as for " the Belgians and the Flemish." No mention is made
of any anxiety about the Armenians or the Serbians. Particular
interest is taken in the " suppressed Flemish race " for which, at
Ghent, a university is being fostered under the rule of von Bissing,
who has deported to Germany those among the Belgian pro-
fessors who have proved unwilling to teach what he commanded.
Dwellers in the provinces torn from France and Denmark will
know how to appreciate this solicitude. The Poles especially will
rejoice if they can credit the good news that now they can freely
evolve along the lines of their mother tongue and of national
individuality.
Readers of the Chancellor's speech will be impressed by the
moderate tone by which it is characterized, very different indeed from
that of former speeches. This modification of tone is not confined to
the Chancellor. A Berlin professor, Dr. Planck, has published a let-
ter in which he confessed that the famous manifesto of the ninety-
three German scholars and artists in August, 1914, was written ia
misunderstanding. It was drawn up and signed in the " patriotic
exuberance of the first weeks of the war/' and no longer represents
the real sentiments of the signatories. He adds that in admitting
this he is speaking not only for himself, but for his colleagues,
including Dr. Harnack.
The German fleet, or rather a squadron of it, has for the third
time issued from its hiding place, and has once more made an
attack upon defenceless towns. The raid resulted in the killing of
a few civilians; local naval forces engaged it and within twenty
minutes it retired. Whether this raid is a precursor of the long-
expected attempt of the whole fleet to come out, a short time per-
haps will disclose. The latest news, however, seems to indicate
that it will cooperate with Hindenburg against the Russian line in
the neighborhood of Riga.
From the beginning of the campaign Italy's
Italy. sector of the war lines has been firmly held.
In fact, progress has been made, which al-
though slow, seemed sure. Within the last few days, however, her
army has suffered a set-back, the Austrians having made indenta-
422 RECENT EVENTS [June,
t
tions in the lines which have rendered a " rectification " necessary
over a space of twenty miles. Whether this foretells the Austrian
advance in force of which rumors have for some time been in circu-
lation, cannot at present be stated.
Nominally, Italy remains on a peace footing with Germany, al-
though at war with her Allies, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. The
efforts made by a strong party to put an end to this anomalous situa-
tion were defeated by the Government. The fact that the support-
ers of Signor Giolitti, the great opponent of the war, possess the ma-
jority in the Parliament made the position of Signor Salandra some-
what difficult. Italy's failure to relieve Montenegro was a subject
of criticism, and there have been rumors that she refused to send
troops to France when asked to do so. All doubts and hesitations
have been removed by the visits paid by the French and British Pre-
miers to Italy and by the great Conference of the Allies at Paris.
This Conference established entire unity of views and action in dip-
lomatic, military and economic spheres, and guaranteed the unshak-
able determination of the Allies to pursue the struggle to the victory
of their common cause. A permanent committee was appointed to
carry out in practice the resolution of the Conference. As a result
Italy feels that she has returned definitely to her proper orbit, and
has taken her rightful place by the side of France, her Latin sister,
thereby freeing herself forever from the dominating aliens. The
subsequent visit of Mr. Asquith to Rome removed any misunder-
standing that had arisen between Great Britain and Italy, especially
in regard to the high freights which had had so bad an effect upon
the industries of Italy. Italy looks to England for assistance to free
herself from German commercial domination. In the Capitol of
the Old Rome the Prime Minister of the Empire made a speech
in which he emphasized the unity of action and of aims of the
Allies. Mutual pledges were given for common action not only
during the war by sea and by land, in the air and under the water,
but in the fields of industry, of means of communication, and of
finance. Steps are being taken for a fuller development of com-
mercial relations between the two countries.
About the internal affairs of Russia very
Russia. little news is published, and what does ap-
pear is not reassuring. The proceedings of
the Duma since the first opening days have not been recorded, while
the new Minister of the Interior, from whom much had been ex-
I9i6.] RECENT EVENTS 423
pected in the way of internal reform, had hardly been appointed
before word came of his resignation. Still more surprising was
the sudden change of the Minister of War, of which no explanation
has yet been made. His brilliant career had formed the basis of
great hopes of a successful campaign against the Central Powers, but
within a brief period it was officially stated that he had been re-
lieved of his office at his own request. His predecessor is now in
prison on charges of serious delinquencies. The new Minister,
General Shuvaieff, had theretofore been Director of the Commis-
sariat Department. Other changes have been the supersession of
General Ruszky by General Kuropatkin and the retirement of the
veteran General Ivanoff. However grave the internal difficulties,
they have not stood in the way of successes in war which have sur-
passed all that Russia's Allies have been able to attain. The line
in Europe from the Baltic to Rumania has indeed undergone no
substantial change. The Germans still hold their positions with
but slight modifications from the southwest of the Gulf of Riga to
Pinsk in the Pripet Marshes. They are supposed to have fifty-eight
divisions or about one million two hundred thousand men, that is to
say, about one thousand three hundred rifles to the mile as
compared to upwards of four thousand in the west. There are
those who think it likely that Germany's next great effort will be
an assault on the Russian lines near Riga in order to reach Petro-
grad, and that in this attempt it will be aided by the fleet. How
many men Russia has to oppose the German forces is not known.
But it is Asia Minor and Mesopotamia that have been the scene
of the brilliant triumphs of Russia. The capture of Erzeroum has
been followed by that of Trebizond, the most important fortified
position on the Anatolian coast. It is even more important as a
port and harbor, and as a source of supply for the Turkish army,
and the vital artery of their communications. That Russia was
able to capture it was largely due to the assistance of her navy,
thus affording another proof of the value of sea power. The Rus-
sian front in Armenia has now been carried roughly one hundred
miles from the former Turkish frontier, along the whole distance
from the Black Sea to the Persian border.
Farther to the south a second Russian army has advanced
through Persia to within about one hundred miles of Bagdad.
Before arriving at its present position this army had occupied several
towns in Persia which had been held by mixed forces of Turks
and Germans and Persian rebels. Turkey having without any provo-
424 RECENT EVENTS [June,
cation on the part of Persia tried to make use of the latter's territory
as a basis for operations against Russia, Russia was, in self-defence,
obliged to resist a threatened invasion. It was hoped that this
second army would relieve General Townshend, besieged at Kut-el-
Amara, but this expectation has been doomed to disappointment.
Within the last few days a third Russian army has ipade its
appearance in the region between the northern army, operating to
the north from Erzeroum, and the southern army which has come
through Persia. This army has Mosul for its objective and the
cutting off of the communications of the Turks by the Bagdad
Railway. In fact, it is rumored that this has already been accom-
plished. In these extremities the Turks are now loudly calling
upon the Germans for assistance. This, if given, will still further
weaken the German line. Russia's zealous support of the Allied
cause is shown not only by the sending of these large armies to
Asia Minor, but also by the dispatch of soldiers to the Western
front. No more emphatic way could have been found of dis-
appointing any hopes the enemy might still have had of making a
separate peace with Russia.
The success of the Russians in the conflict with their Turkish
foe stands in strong contrast with the defeats which the British
have met with. The failure of the Dardanelles campaign has been
followed by the surrender of General Townshend. After having
been besieged for one hundred and forty-three days at Kut-el-
Amara, and after the failure of every effort made by General Lake
to pierce the lines of the besiegers, General Townshend's supplies
were exhausted, and he had to yield himself and his army uncondi-
tionally as prisoners of the Turks. The British commander de-
stroyed all his guns and munitions. His force numbered nine
thousand men. General Lake's army, to the south, remains intact.
The British campaign at least served the purpose of diverting large
forces of the enemy to the Tigris, that would otherwise have been
available for the invasion of Egypt or for service against the Rus-
sians in the Caucasus. General Townshend's little army saved
Egypt from invasion, and contributed powerfully to the success of
the Grand Duke at Erzeroum and Trebizond. But his surrender
adds another to the blows inflicted on the prestige of British arms.
With Our Readers.
AN occasional study in comparative thought, particularly when the
question treated is a fundamental one, may be both interesting
and important. Great minds run in the same channel. Not always
are the minds quoted deserving the title of " great :" but when three
men who have seriously studied the same question, at different times
and under different conditions, reach the same conclusion, it is quite
safe to gather them together in the name of truth ; and worth while
to review the interesting sameness of their testimony. The question
itself of which we speak is the increase of superstition in inverse
proportion to the decrease of dogmatic and supernatural belief. It
has been long and loudly preached that the passing of dogmatic
belief will strike the fetters from the human intellect and give it free
flight in the air of freedom. But facts, not speculation, are the really
important things of life. And the fact here is that the passing of
dogmatic religion reveals that its truths were not fetters at all but
inspirations ; and that their denial gives opportunity to human limita-
tion, human fears and human ignorance to clap on the soul the fetters
of the lowest possible slavery.
But let us revert to the study in comparative thought.
In a recent volume of essays, Stephen Leacock discusses how
belief in the devil is passing out of fashion. " Let us notice," he says,
" in the first place that because we have kicked out the devil as absurd
and ridiculous superstition, unworthy of a scientific age, we have by
no means eliminated the supernatural and the superrational from the
current thought of our time! I suppose there never was an age
more riddled with superstition, more credulous, more drunkenly ad-
dicted to thaumaturgy than the present. The devil in his palmiest
days was nothing to it. In despite of our vaunted material common-
sense, there is a perfect craving abroad for belief in something beyond
the compass of the believable. It shows itself in every age and class."
HILAIRE BELLOC, writing in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March,
1912, thus spoke on the same question:
" It might be imagined by the superficial (indeed most young
men so imagine) that the most obvious and respectable of the reac-
tions against the Faith being the Rationalist Reaction, Rationalism
would proceed from one emancipation to another, until that society
426 WITH OUR READERS [June,
which suffered or enjoyed its influences would end by an exact appre-
ciation of the differences between those things which can and those
things which cannot be subjected to positive proof. The first would
be accepted in a society which had done with the Faith, the latter
would be rejected.
"As a plain matter of history the exact opposite is the case.
Rationalism enjoys, in any human society, a dignified and not unadmir-
able, but a very brief, career. There succeeds it, and there springs
from it, a condition of the public mind in which, so far from its
reposing in the known and the obvious, and so far from stifling the
'great curiosity' upon the nature and destiny of man, all that neces-
sary quest of the mind receives an added fire. What may or what
may not be true of things not provable is first fiercely debated, then at
last some one, or many, unprovable schemes are eagerly accepted by
society.
" In a word, men deprived of religion because religion does not,
or cannot universally prove its thesis, do not upon that account neglect
the problems which religion professes to solve. They rather reapply
themselves to those problems with a sort of fever when the rule of
religion is no longer present to aid and yet to restrain them. Hence
you may perceive, as a note running through the modern world wher-
ever the effects of the Reformation are most prominent in it, a simple,
unquestioning faith in mere statement, which the simplest Catholic
peasant could disco'ver to have no true intellectual authority what-
ever."
* * * #
AND finally we have the words of Cardinal Newman, taken from his
sermon, Waiting for Christ:
" But far different is the case when a man is not thus enlightened
and informed by revealed truth. Then he is but a prey, he becomes
the slave, of the occurrences and events, the sights and sounds, the
omens and prodigies, which meet him in the world, natural and moral.
His religion is a bondage to things perishable, an idolatry of the
creature, and is, in the worst sense of the word, superstition. Hence
it is a common remark, that irreligious men are most open to super-
stition. For they have a misgiving that there is something great and
Divine somewhere ; and since they have it not within them, they have
no difficulty in believing it is anywhere else, wherever men pretend
to the possession of it. Thus you find in history men in high place
practising unlawful arts, consulting professed wizards, or giving heed
to astrology. Others have had their lucky and unlucky days ; others
have been the sport of dreams, or of other idle fancies. And you
have had others bowing themselves down to idols."
I9i6.] WITH OUR READERS 427
MUCH light may be thrown upon the subject of Church Unity by
studying attempts that have been made in the past by different
Protestant bodies to achieve it among themselves.
Twenty-three years ago, the Non-Conformist Churches of Eng-
land formed a federation under the name of the National Free Church
Council. " What moved them thus to confederate," writes Father
Sydney Smith, in The Month, " was the consciousness that their
number and divisions were continually exposing them to the reproach
that they were an object lesson of the antithesis to that unity which
Our Lord prayed might at all times characterize His Church." The
differences in belief, it was maintained, would not affect the substance
of their faith: they arose simply from varied methods of interpre-
tation. Delegates to the National Council of the Free Churches were
elected on a territorial, not a denominational, basis. This, they said,
would show the world that the Free Churches were in essence one.
But the plan has not worked well: instead of wiping out differ-
ences, it served only to emphasize them. The President of this year's
Council, the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare, a Baptist minister, gave a note-
worthy address at the Council, in which he said that " the Free
Churches are now at the Cross Roads in the pursuance of their
destiny."
That plans for Church Unity have not worked well among them
that their condition was very unsatisfactory, he showed in the fol-
lowing words:
" It was certain that things were not going well with them.
Money was not the remedy. The people were magnificent, but they
were troubled and anxious. He would not give them the discouraging
facts which were in his possession, but they knew that for years there
had been a continuous decline in members and Sunday-school scholars,
and that unless it could be stayed the Free Churches must slowly bleed
to death."
* * * *
THE unsatisfactory state of things was again shown by the Rev.
Carey Bonner, who stated that during seven years to December
31, 1914 fourteen Free Churches of Great Britain and Ireland lost
2 57>95 2 scholars and teachers. Two Churches only gained one 1,313
members; the other, 1,283. Mr. Bonner assigned as reason for this:
national indifference to religion; neglect of Sunday worship; loss of
the ideals of home life; love of pleasure and forgot, as Fr. Smyth
says to add " the handing over of their children to be taught religion
by teachers for whose belief they take no security."
Denominationalism has been another cause of decline and decay.
Old feuds had gone. The prominent ministers had broken away from
denominationalism, and regarded themselves as ministers of the Free
428 WITH OUR READERS [June,
Church and not of any particular section. They were divided only
by forms of government and ordinance. This division, it was felt,
did not conform to the mind of Christ. They made no appeal to
the conscience of the people. No longer did the best young men
give themselves to the ministry. The Free Churches had put them-
selves out of touch with the living, vital interests of the world. Never
again could they convince the world that their discussions and dif-
ferences were a reflex of the mind of Christ.
* * * #
DR. SHAKESPEARE'S plan of reconstruction for the Free
Churches is a United Free Church. This Church is to have a
religious constitution built upon the lines of the political constitu-
tion of the United States. It is to be a Federation of all the Free
Churches, wherein all will be one and all will be autonomous. It
would be all inclusive. It would be latitudinarian in the widest
sense. What Dr. Shakespeare admired in the Anglican Church was
" its variety and comprehensiveness : that under its wide roof it
can find a spiritual home for High and Broad and Low for Bishop
Gore and his brother of Hereford."
* * * *
THE address is of importance in showing that Protestants them-
selves are not only awaking to a sense of the futility of their
own principles, but that they themselves are repudiating the very prin-
ciple on which they were .founded division and separation. The abso-
lute necessity of unity is beginning to dawn upon their souls. They see
that the " principle of division has spent its force," that it no longer
carries any appeal; that the whole world is repudiating it.
* * * *
THE plan of reconstruction is very vague and unsatisfactory. The
speaker insisted upon the necessity of putting the " central
things " first, but as to what the central things are, or how they are to
be determined, he would not say. He did state " three vital conten-
tions in the charter of English Non-Conformity first, the Church is
composed of those who have been born again, and that its member-
ship is not secured by the sacraments of baptism and confirmation;
second, that the internal life of the Church is a spiritual fellowship;
and third, the authority of the Church is vested under Christ Him-
self in the people of God, as distinct from a clerical order or a
sacerdotal hierarchy." He denied that a particular form of govern-
ment is essential to the Church. " The one essential is the in-
dwelling presence of Christ."
How unity, or anything approaching it, is to be born of these
premises, it is impossible to see. In fact, Dr. Shakespeare by sub-
I 9 i6.] WITH OUR READERS 429
mitting a purely, personal experience, necessarily individualistic, has
put unity out of the question.
His whole plan of reconstruction seems born not so much of
the desire of real unity, as the desire for success and popular
efficiency. The Protestant Churches of England are losing their
members; religion in England is at a low ebb. The Protestant
Churches are wasting their energy, their money, their men in work
that has no proportionate results. Dr. Shakespeare speaks of one
town of only a thousand inhabitants, wherein were an Anglican
Church and two Non-Conformist Churches, On a Sunday morning,
in one of these churches, there were five men and four women, and
in the other two, a somewhat larger number.
/CATHOLICS hail with every evidence of Christian brotherhood
vy any approach of Protestants towards Christian unity; we
feel that we are welcoming them back to the home which their fore-
fathers left and to which they belong. But, it frequently seems, as
Father Palmieri recently pointed out in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, that
Protestant yearnings for unity start from human points of view.
" Now it seems to us that Protestant yearnings for unity start
from human points of view, rather than from the impulse and love
of the spirit of Christ. They are afraid of the progressive division of
their disjecta membra; they repine at being classified, as one of them
humorously said, into sects and insects. But in their laments they lay a
great stress upon the material losses produced by the ceaseless scatter-
ing of their believers. The divisions and subdivisions of Protestantism
threaten a bankruptcy of its economical resources."
* * * *
THE conditions described by Dr. Shakespeare prevail also in the
Protestant Churches throughout America. Their leaders see more
and more clearly that division and denial are only exposing them to
the ridicule of thinking men. They no longer stand for a definite
creed, nor for any positive teaching with regard to the revealed Truth
of Jesus Christ. They see their membership growing less and less.
In different cities they combine to hold union services in order to
gather together a fair-sized congregation. In conventions, they are
striving for better harmony and unity among themselves.
Dr. Ashworth, a Baptist pastor in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, re-
cently wrote : " The evils of over-churching, the loss of spiritual
fellowship between the various bodies of Christians who are forced
into competition with ne another, together with the waste of equip-
ment and unnecessary expense of Church maintenance, and the handi-
capping of ministers through the payment of inadequate salaries, are
430 WITH OUR READERS [June,
a part of the price that Protestantism is paying for the luxury of its
divisions. Add to this an incalculable loss in national and local
prestige and leadership."
Let us hope that even this lesser, material inefficiency may light
for them the road that leads to that Truth upon which alone Christian
Unity is founded.
WHENEVER the English Government has to deal with Ireland,
W at least with the majority in Ireland, it shows a pitiful, blunder-
ing sense of misunderstanding, and oftentimes of cruel injustice
which shocks the world. Its treatment of those who led the recent
uprising in Dublin was atrocious to use the term applied by an
English journal. The same Government now in power tolerated in
Ireland the treason of Carson and his followers; and indeed re-
warded the former by a place in the Cabinet. To Casement it
grants a civil trial and ample time for preparing a defence.
But when it came to the uprising in Dublin, it immediately
resorts to the policy of Castlereagh. It executes the leaders after
the most summary kind of a court-martial; and shoots one of them,
apparently, without even the semblance of a trial either military
or civil.
If it had looked upon the open, armed and public defiance of
Carson and his followers with even a small fraction of the severity
it viewed the conduct of these men, it could easily have secured the
conviction of Carson under the Treason Felony Act of 1848. But
it had neither the courage nor the fairness even to make the attempt.
The armed leaders and their followers who in South Africa re-
cently rose against the Government were not sentenced, after their
capture, to death. Is it too much to ask the same for these Irishmen
whose country is still deplorably governed and deprived of Home Rule
because of the treasonable opposition of a minority, and the cowardly
and unjust attitude of the British Government?
Such were the excesses perpetrated, that Mr. John Dillon stated
in the House of Commons:
" If Ireland were governed by men out of bedlam, they could
not pursue a more insane policy. You are letting loose a river
of blood between two races, which, after three hundred years of
hatred, we had nearly succeeded in bringing together. You are
washing out our whole life work in a sea of blood In my opinion
the present government of Ireland is largely in the hands of the
Dublin clubs. What is the use of telling me that the executive authori-
ties acted in close consultation with the civil executive officers of the
Irish Government? Who are these officers? There are none; they
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 431
have all disappeared. There is no government in Ireland except
Maxwell and the Dublin clubs. Everybody in Dublin knows that.
Before the civil officers took flight the military officers treated them
with undisguised contempt, and from the day martial law was pro-
claimed the civil government came absolutely to an end. The men
of the old 'ascendancy' party are going about the streets of Dublin
to-day openly glorying in the rebellion; they claim that it brought
martial law and real government into the country. That is what
makes the situation so terrible. If that programme is to be enforced in
Ireland you had better get ready 100,000 men to garrison the country.
And then what sort of appearance will you make as the champions of
small nationalities?"
ALL the leaders of the Irish Party in Parliament did not hesitate
to condemn the conduct of the Government. The party issued joint
resolutions asking for the stoppage of execution ; the immediate with-
drawal of martial law and Government compensation for damaged
property. The resolutions stated that the real Ireland has been
bitterly provoked by a similar revolutionary movement in another
part of the country, backed by an army in revolt, and shocked and
horrified by the military executions in Dublin. The statement con-
cludes that there is no doubt about the choice of the Irish people.
"If they do not want a constitutional movement, they do not
want us. Without their support we are engaged in an impossible
task. With it we will be able to complete the fabric of Irish reform
and liberty and lead them into the Parliament House, for which they
have been praying and working for over a century."
THE same John Dillon, whom we have quoted above, sent on May
2 ist the following message to Judge McGoorty of the Irish Fel-
lowship Club of Chicago:
" The Irish insurrection has inflicted serious injury to the Irish
cause. All hope of securing Home Rule in the near future depends
more than ever on union of the Irish race throughout the world, and
especially on the support of the Irish in America."
The report has also reached here that Premier Asquith is to reopen
at once the Buckingham Palace Conference with a view to granting
at once, by an agreement between Nationalists and Ulster Unionists,
Home Rule to all of Ireland except Ulster. But what the outcome
will be, if the conference is reopened, is a very debatable question.
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. CIII. JULY, 1916. No. 616.
THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY.
BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D.
N" impulse to record appreciation of an extraordinary
man led to the writing of these pages. Readers of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD who knew Thomas Maurice
Mulry, will be pleased, perhaps, to have this oppor-
tunity to interpret his character at close range. Read-
ers who did not know him or know of him, may find it worth their
while to read an interpreting sketch of the most forceful Catholic
layman of our time.
Thomas Maurice Mulry died in New York City March 7th, at
the age of sixty-one years. He was born there and, excepting two
years when his family lived in Wisconsin, his life was spent in the
city of his birth. His father had been a contractor. He took up
the same occupation, and was active in it during the earlier years
of his business life. He met the gradual success that gives one the
impression of stability and the wholesome appreciation that bears
witness to sturdy character. He was drawn gradually into contact
with a widening circle of business activities, until his maturer man-
hood displayed him as ,a commanding figure in banking, real estate,
life insurance, religious and official circles. Mr. Mulry 's devel-
opment culminated in his election to the Presidency of the Emigrant
Industrial Savings Bank, one of the greatest banks of its kind in
the world. This position gave him an eminence in New York City
which he bore with simplicity and poise. It seemed to enhance not
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cm. 28
434 THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY [July,
only his personality, but also the effect of everything that he did
in his many fields of action. This development brought Mr. Mulry
into close contact with every type of leader in the city and the State.
A singular magic that accompanied him like an atmosphere made
contact with him the prelude to friendship, and made friendship
with him a pledge of purer devotion to personal ideals. -
Mr. Mulry's development in the business world was accom-
panied by an analogous growth in the political life of his city and
State. He never held a remunerative public office, although con-
stantly solicited to do so. He had discovered some secret by which
he protected himself against the allurement of office and the attrac-
tions of political power. With singular self-control, he waited
ordinarily to be asked for advice. Throughout many administra-
tions of both city and State, he had been adviser at critical times
of executives who agreed with him, and of those who disagreed
with him in party affiliation. He was consulted as a disinterested,
farsighted man who was not deceived by selfishness or guilty of
indirection through any hidden motive. It would be difficult to
measure the debt under which he placed many public officials by
his helpful advice.
Mr. Mulry's development in the business and political
worlds was accompanied, perhaps overshadowed, by his develop-
ment as a force in the world of charity. When he was a young
man, sympathy and conviction led him among the poor to be their
friend and helper. There is no trace throughout his career of
any abatement of his love of them and of his readiness to serve
them. He became a leader in Catholic and secular charities whose
wisdom was rarely questioned, whose services were of the very
highest order, whose example was the prolific source of an impulse
to unselfishness in ten thousand lives.
Beneath business and charity, behind influence and enthusiasm
we find the solid foundations of supernatural faith. Mr. Mulry
was a consecrated man. The over-mastering unity of his life was
derived from the imperial sway of the spirit of God in his soul.
He gave his best to God in thought, in effort, in aspiration, in hope.
The giving brought to him, as it does to all who do likewise, en-
riching wisdom and power.
I.
Mr. Mulry had had enough of systematic education to give him
the instruments of thought and expression and a wholesome literary
I9i6.] THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY 435
taste. 1 He had the type of mind that might have been helped or
might have been hindered by what we call the advantage of college
training. Everything taught him. From his earliest days he re-
flected on his experience, interpreted it, and added the light of this
interpretation to the stock of his practical wisdom. His mind saw
things directly and in their relations. Nothing was isolated as he
saw it. This type of mind with intense personal outlook is not
always certain of deriving help and inspiration from the fixed
college curriculum. At any rate, it is difficult to see wherein ex-
tended schooling might have added either nobility to Mr. Mulry's
character or greater force to his speech or more benevolent impulse
to his power. Systematic education might have diverted his talent
from its own intended pathways or might have set up within him
a culture centre that would not have been housed in his noble heart.
As his life developed, we found him nearly as God must have in-
tended him. Had he been asked, he would have given the credit
to his early teachers, Christian Brothers, whom he cherished with
fondness to the day of his death.
Mr. Mulry was more familiar with intuitions than with conclu-
sions. There was but little of what we call the discursive process
in the operation of his mind. He did not reason or theorize or
build up argument. A remarkable sense for facts, the rare gift of
seeing implications and drift of facts, quick discernment of all of
the elements in a situation, and ability to rate them at their actual
value and to base a policy on that rating, were conspicuous through-
out Mr. Mulry's maturer life. These are the gifts of common sense.
The impossible rarely misled him. The possible was rarely hidden
from him.
Mr. Mulry found life complex to the highest degree. Life
at its best and simplest is a complicated play of divergent and mutu-
ally interfering forces. One who attains to commanding eminence
in many lines of human endeavor finds life infinitely complex.
This was Mr. Mulry's experience. On every side he found selfish-
ness obscuring ideals; prejudice hindering clearness of thought;
personal antagonism interfering with harmony ; obstinacy usurping
the place of principle; logic and ideals obscuring judgment; poor
sense of human values misleading the noblest types of men and
women. Throughout all of this representative experience with
the complexities and stupidities of life,. Mr. Mulry displayed to a
^r. Mulry said often that in his childhood in Wisconsin, THE CATHOLIC WORLD
was his vade mecum.
436 THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY [July,
remarkable degree two traits of administrative genius that were in
the circumstances admirable. One was the gift of waiting. The
other was the gift of tolerating and respecting opinions and persons
with which he disagreed. He knew well what only the wise can
know, that time solves more problems than reason, and that the
obstructive power of a single individual was never greater than it
is to-day when life is so highly complex. His mind individualized
his opponents as well as his lieutenants. He sought out unerringly
in the former the real source of attitude and intention. He then
worked with tact and foresight. At this point he usually conquered.
And in his conquering, those whom he won over were quite as
pleased as he was himself. These gifts made Mr. Mulry no less
powerful in support of a policy than in opposition to it. He had
none of the gifts of a debater. Debate is a discursive process.
Mr. Mulry 's mind was not discursive. His ability to see facts
and implications that stood against a policy which he favored, gave
him a personal influence that meant more than all debate. He did
not make a single speech during the Constitutional Convention in
Albany in 1915. Yet all of the array of academic training, profes-
sional skill and finished oratory in that great body produced not
one other leader whose personal influence in support or opposition
equaled that of Mr. Mulry.
Mr. Mulry was able to distinguish between what he knew and
what he did not know. He had no delusions about his lack of
information when he lacked it. He knew how to seek it, how to
value it, how to assimilate it. No pride of opinion or of position
hindered him from changing his mind when fuller information
suggested that course. He was as simple as a child when this
occurred. He was as charming as a child in declaring it. He had
a simple direct style of speech. He was apt at illustration, un-
demonstrative, self-controlled. He had a deep rich flow of sym-
pathetic feeling that one discovered and welcomed more readily in
sustained contact with him than in occasional meeting. He digni-
fied the lesser courtesies of life by his happy use of them. This
inspired confidence, and made conversation with him a helpful and
welcome experience. A train of pleasant memories lingered among
the echoes of his departing footsteps every time he said good-bye to
a friend, or left a blessing in a home to which he had been
welcomed.
The reader will have discovered that this description takes
on tone from Mr. Mulry's experience in leadership. We have
1916.] THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY 437
thought of him as a leader, not as a follower. And yet all of the
virtues of a follower are found in him. He was simple, humble,
thoughtful, unselfish, sympathetic. None of the arrogance of
power touched him. None of the remoteness of authority obscured
his sense of the real relations of things. He seemed almost uncon-
scious of his power because his vision was large, his outlook was
proportioned, and he had an instinctive grasp of things that were
true and of avail. Mr. Mulry's experience was varied and repre-
sentative. He had profited of it to the fullest. His contact in
happy intimacy with men of every race, religion and occupation
developed in him the habit of looking beneath surface differences,
and of finding the essential humanities in which all men are one.
This experience discovered to him the secret of real culture. Cul-
ture is built on the universal and eternal truths, not on the accidental
and particular differences by which men are catalogued in this
world. It was from this source perhaps that he derived the rare
wisdom, stability of purpose and purity of motive that invested his
life with such dignity and power.
We are carried from mind to character in our study. And yet
the transition is but a figure of speech, because mind and character
were one in Mr. Mulry. There was about him a perfect balance of
parts, a sense of moral harmony of such pure quality and fine
proportion as almost to mislead one in one's estimate of him. Un-
fortunately, many of our conspicuous men are made conspicuous
by one-sidedness. We are almost taught to overlook certain short-
comings for the sake of what is picturesque or extraordinary. But
the perfectly balanced character is discovered and appreciated only
by those who are more than ordinarily thoughtful. One who makes
unselfishness one's deeper joy, who can define sacrifice as sur-
render, without feeling it to be such, who seeks no distinction and la-
ments no lack of it, will escape notice because of the balanced per-
fection of his life. When, however, one of this type is thrown into
positions of leadership and power, friends and admirers find in one,
beautiful revelations of moral harmony and practical idealism.
Mr. Mulry was profoundly spiritual, yet thoroughly human.
One of his friends said of him with rare beauty and penetration,
" He never strayed where he might not hear the voice of his God."
Yet he never lacked a sense of humor or failed of genuine sympathy
with the wholesome relaxations of life. He was companionable,
interesting, chatty, rich in the pleasant small talk by which, happily,
we pass much time in unoffending social intercourse. Concentra-
438 THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY [July,
tion, heavy business cares and the responsibility of eminence never
harmed the sweet human sympathy that led him to take leisurely
and trust-inviting interest in the well-being of the simplest man or
child that he knew.
Mr. Mulry was a conservative who respected new ideas, loved
progress. He was a radical who respected traditional ideas, and
revered the institutions under which our civilization organizes its
power. As these attitudes developed in Mr. Mulry, they acquired
peculiar charm. We find here another illustration of the balance
that marked his character, of the poise that held his mind true
to its instinctive wisdom. The prevailing tendency of the con-
servative mind is to resist new ideas. The prevailing tendency of
the radical is to be irreverent toward the past and to scoff at our
institutions. The radical is impatient with the slow complicated
march of things. He is more familiar with the aspirations of
humanity than with its history. He is familiar with ideas, and is
enamored of verbal pictures of perfect things and perfect condi-
tions. The radical serves badly the ideals which he preaches because
he finds excessive sanctity in a formula. Mr. Mulry seemed to
have found the secret of balance of the two tendencies. He knew
the shrewdness of the two French proverbs : ;< The good is the
enemy of the better;" " The better is the enemy of the good." No
excessive passion for the better blinded him to the good that was
before his eyes. No optimistic appreciation of the good in things
as they are, dulled his sense for a better that might bring us nearer
still, to social justice which he passionately served.
Mr. Mulry knew that ideals are problems, not axioms. He
knew that they are not made actual by resolution nor enacted by
declaration. He knew that at proper distance, ideals give law and
warmth and light to human life. Approached too nearly they bring
disaster. Mr. Mulry was always concerned to feel that his direction
was right. He never made the mistake of feeling that we can
reach the terminal stage in approaching any ideal. He never
judged the complex situations of life by the simplicity of a single
formula. He had much more insight into human feeling and its
wayward operation than reverence for logic. He knew by instinct
the fundamental lesson that Edmund Burke held forth with power
and eloquence, a lesson that all political sagacity endorses. It is
that the unreal necessities of abstract logic or pure ideals are no
guides for statesmanship, no standard for judging the movement of
human history. Thus Mr. Mulry was a practical idealist in busi-
I9i6.] THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY 439
ness, in religion, in charity, in the political life of his city and
State. I can imagine him in a mood of pleasant humor saying to
idealists with whom he came into contact, something that the poet
expressed many years ago when he represented himself as speaking
to them.
Brother in hope, if you should
Find that perfect star
Whose beams we have not seen, yet know they are,
Say that I have loved it too
But could not climb so far.
II.
Our capacity for admiration and gratitude is greater than
our power of imitation. Our capacity to be edified by the example
of good men may not depend as much on our will as on our gifts.
The traits of Mr. Mulry's character that have been described invite
our admiration more definitely than our imitation But there is a
fundamental aspect of his career that has exemplary value of the
highest order. There are definite lessons available for everyone of
us in Mr. Mulry's attitude toward charity, piety, and worldliness.
He gave remarkable prestige to charity. By charity I mean a
mental attitude no less than an impulse to service. Although Christ
gave to charity eminence over the other virtues, humanity has not
endorsed that action of its God. In the lives of many of us, charity
just escapes the fate of Cinderella. We lay the foundations of life
and character along the lines of self-assertion and selfishness.
After having satisfied our own arbitrary standards and imaginary
needs, we are willing to give a secondary and altogether contingent
place to charity. We do not organize it into our own fundamental
thinking and give it its destined place in the Christian life. We
make it an optional virtue to be cultivated or neglected simply as
we wish. Or we make it an occasional virtue, depending entirely
on time and place and person to exercise it or not to exercise it at
all. Many of us think of charity, therefore, as an ornament, not
as an essential; without method, measure or law. We are not
concerned to know whether or not our thinking about the poor
'satisfies the standards of God, or whether our impulse to serve
them satisfies God's law. This is not the voice of pessimism.
These observations do not ignore the sweep of human sympathy or
the impulse to service found in the Christian world. They are
intended as an expression of the average self -estimate made by each
440 THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY [July,
of us in his more serious moments. Few of us feel that we do
our duty to charity.
Thomas Maurice Mulry rose up among us. He had every
excuse for selfishness, yet he found his happiness in being unselfish.
He was in close contact with powerful and cultured circles, yet his
heart led him to seek his joy among the lowly. He had every
reason for restricting the time that he might give to the poor, but
he always erred on the side of giving too much, if he erred at all.
He gave to charity its honorable place in his philosophy of life.
He gave to it its full tribute of time and energy in the law of his
behavior. He did these things because he saw life in a perspective,
lighted by the Presence of God. There can be no doubt that Mr.
Mulry's character and work gave to charity a prestige in very many
powerful lives, to which it might not have otherwise attained.
Men of great achievement and wealth came to him frequently, and
expressed their frank envy of him because he had solved a problem
by which they were baffled. They could accumulate wealth. They
could serve the public interest. They could carry heavy social
responsibilities with creditable success, but they were not able to
think out the law of Christian charity. They were not able to obey
it in personal service. Literally tens of thousands of dollars have
been placed by men of this type in the hands of Mr. Mulry to be
used among the poor. Such men have been grateful for the ex-
ample and inspiration that they found in his career. No estimate
of Mr. Mulry's character will be complete if it overlooks the prestige
that he gave to charity as both philosophy and law in the Christian
life.
Another service that we must credit to him is his commenda-
tion of the simple traditional pieties of his faith. In the life of Mr.
Mulry, piety was a joy, an outing for the soul, happy touch with
God his dear familiar friend. There are those who mistrust piety.
There are those who tell us laughingly to beware of the man who
teaches Sunday-school. Such Christians think that prayer is
largely a feminine accomplishment, that habits of simple devotion
are unmanly. Many number their devotions among the lesser
interests of life, and force them to wait on the good will of other
claims to time and thought. Mr. Mulry carried through his su-
premely busy life habits of simple piety that held him in the days
of his grandeur and power, enslaved to the memories and dear
emotional intensities of childhood. He found an alluring charm no
less than holy joy in prayer. God was very real to him. His own
1916.] THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MLfLRY 441
soul was very real to him. All souls were very real to him. Out
of these realizations there resulted a fundamental impulse toward
worship and petition that prepared him to obey the supreme law of
both that God gave to us as the foundation of spiritual life. Those
who had opportunity to know Mr. Mulry intimately their number
was very large will find it to their spiritual advantage to test the
quantity and quality of their piety in the light of his exalted ex-
ample.
During the writing of these pages a phrase has endeavored to
insert itself at almost every line. Its insistence has brought it
victory. Mr. Mulry was old-fashioned. There is no synonym for
the term. He was old-fashioned. There is no other way to say it.
However, we can attempt to elaborate the thought. A man who
is old-fashioned is a survival, protest, prophecy. He is a survival
from another day, carrying the traces of standards and principles
that are now neglected. He is a protest against tendencies and
standards now in the ascendancy. He is a prophecy showing what
the world will respect and long for, when its better self shall come
again to power. In this far-reaching sense Mr. Mulry was old-
fashioned. To be simple is old-fashioned. To refuse to be misled
by shallow ambitions, by short outlooks and aimless social rivalry, or
to find home the fixed centre of the world is old-fashioned. To shape
life and guide affections by the eternal truths is old-fashioned. To
peer unerringly beneath the accidentals of life and live in the pres-
ence of its eternal laws is old-fashioned. To refuse to be cheated
by the lesser joys of life and to steer one's way with a compass
rectified by the hand of God is old-fashioned. In this way Mr.
Mulry was old-fashioned. God gave him that surviving grace.
III.
No interpretation of Mr. Mulry 's career can be adequate with-
out taking into account what may be called his obstructive power.
He interpreted movements not so much through their leaders as
through their logic and implications. He peered deeply into them
and caught their spirit with understanding. He always respected
his opponents. If he erred at any time in his judgment of them,
it was on the side of imputing to them a sincerity of purpose that
they may not at times have possessed. This occurred so rarely as to
be negligible as a factor in his life. He was a thoroughgoing
American. His profoundest sympathy was with our institutions
of government and with the spirit that is behind them. He knew
442 THE LATE THOMAS MAURICE MULRY [July,
the logic of our democracy, but he knew that our democracy did not
exhaust all logic. When that logic came into conflict with his
Christian instinct, he never failed to proclaim the superior rever-
ence that he gave to Christian instinct in his interpretation of life.
Now this firm position asserted itself consistently in his public
influence. When he opposed men, when he opposed policies ; when
he opposed principles in the many fields in which his presence was
respected and his power was recognized, the basis of his opposition
was not difficult to find. He either sensed complications which
escaped average observation, or he found something that offended
his Christian instinct, or he believed that he discovered indirection
in leaders who said one thing and meant another. However, we ex-
plain it, the fact remains. Mr. Mulry exerted a very far-reaching
influence in forcing new policies, new principles and new measures
to give good account of themselves before incorporation into cur-
rent philosophy and life.
We have reason to hope that a biographer will soon begin the
exacting task of writing Mr. Mulry 's life. We may leave to him
the work of larger interpretation of both character and achievement.
We shall find in that work that Mr. Mulry was clear sighted and
courageous in admitting our limitations in the field of relief, just
as he was discriminating in his pride at our achievements. We shall
find him giving the sanction of his supreme influence to the spirit
and policy of cooperation with Non-Catholic and secular charities,
just as we shall find him alert against everything that would harm
the sanctity of the supernatural motive in relief work, or diminish
the prestige and appeal of faith in reconstructing the world for the
victims of poverty. The biographer will show that Mr. Mulry was
capable of great achievement without the help of resentments, and
wonderfully gifted in his genius for friendship without the sacrifice
of one iota of conviction. What is written here is inspired largely
by the hope that eagerness to know the life and work of this simple,
wonderful man may be stimulated, and that the melancholy joy of
reading his life may not be long delayed.
Those who venerated Mr. Mulry as a noble man, and found
their ideals purified in his presence, will perhaps be glad to be
reminded of Milton's touching sonnet written on the religious
memory of one who had been to him " a Christian friend."
When faith and love, which parted from thee never,
Had ripen'd thy just soul to dwell with God,
1916.] TO ANY MYSTIC 443
Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load
Of death, call'd life ; which us from life doth sever.
Thy works and alms, and all thy good endeavor,
Stay'd not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But, as faith pointed with her golden rod,
Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever.
Love led them on, and faith, who knew them best
Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest,
And spake the truth of thee on glorious themes
Before the Judge, Who thenceforth bid thee rest
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams !
This sonnet might almost be taken as the biography of Mr.
Mulry. Wide and profound knowledge of him and of his work
can but show him as faithful child of God, lover of his kind,
champion of everything noble and right, dear friend of the lowly
poor as was his Master.
TO ANY MYSTIC.
BY A. E. H. S.
STAND you before, whose lips may speak
The inner secrets, count your gain
To cry for humbler souls who seek
Priests for their pain.
The glory breaking through the veil
Store in your soul, till it o'erfill,
Largess for us who halt and fail
In darkness still.
THE TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF
THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION.
BY BROTHER POTAMIAN,
Professor of Physics in Manhattan College.
T was in the summer of the year 1666, two hundred
and fifty years ago, that a young man of twenty-
three, a Cambridge graduate of one year's standing,
while sitting in the garden of his Woolsthorpe farm
alone and absorbed in thought, saw an apple fall to
the ground. No doubt, he had seen apples fall from the trees many
a time in that same orchard when a boy; but then his mind was
free and open, now it was preoccupied and bent upon a quest.
What passed unnoticed in his boyish days, commanded attention
in his present mood and awoke a serious train of thought.
It is gravity, as all knew at the time, that gives the apple
weight and causes it to fall to the ground; it is gravity the at-
traction of the earth that also bends into a curve the path of
a cannon ball projected horizontally from the top of a tower.
Might not, then, this same gravity, which reaches to the tops
of towers and summits of lofty mountains, also extend out into
space and bend the path of the moon from a straight line into the
orbit which it describes around the earth? This was the question
which Newton asked himself, and which he proceeded to submit
to the test of calculation. If gravity is the force, and if it di-
minishes according to the inverse square of the distance, as he
had reason to believe, a little figuring would suffice to show that
the moon must be deflected from a straight path towards the earth
sixteen feet each minute. But was it really deflected by that
amount? Another and longer calculation, based on central ac-
celeration, supplied the answer; but this answer failed to realize
the hopes of the young inquirer, for instead of sixteen feet per
minute, he found only thirteen and nine-tenths, one-eighth less.
While thus tremblingly near a discovery Qf the first mag-
nitude, Newton finds himself confronted with this discrepancy;
one decidedly too great to suit his purpose. Either gravity is
not the force that controls the revolution of the moon around the
I0i6.] THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION 445
earth, or something else, perhaps the vortices of Descartes, inter-
feres with its action. Disappointed in his expectation, Newton laid
the matter aside for a while, and turned to other fields of in-
vestigation that interested him.
Newton was born on Christmas day, 1642, in the hamlet of
Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire. Of a weakly frame and delicate
nature, it was thought that he would not survive the trying period
of infancy; but whether it was the care taken of him by a fond
grandmother or the bracing air of the country, or by a special
disposition of Providence, he was destined to outlive parents and
relatives alike, as well as to reach the three-score-and-ten limit, and
even to exceed it by the goodly span of fifteen years. When old
enough to start on the road of learning, the boy was sent to a village
school close by; and afterward, at the age of twelve, to a higher
school at Grantham, six miles away to the north. Here he lodged
with a certain Mr. Clark, apothecary of the town, in whose house
he persistingly neglected his daily tasks, and indulged without let
or hindrance his fondness for carpentry and mechanical work.
A silent and thoughtful lad, Isaac took no part in the games of
his school- fellows; he kept aloof from them, and spent his time in
his lodging-room, knocking, hammering and sawing while earnestly
engaged in the confection of all sorts of useful and amusing con-
trivances. He made kites to determine their best form and di-
mensions ; also paper lanterns to guide his way to school on winter
mornings. Occasionally on a dark night, he would tie a lantern
to the tail of a kite in order to simulate the appearance of a comet,
much to the dismay of the country folk around. Apart from the
ingenuity which he displayed in such handiwork, it appears that
Newton did not distinguish himself in any way from his school-
mates, except by his low standing in class and his unscholastic
habits. From this state of woeful indifference, he was aroused by
one of those episodes which occur in most elementary schools, at
one time or other, and which took the form of a fight with a class-
mate, who kicked and cuffed him whenever he got the opportunity.
While chafing under this violent treatment, the youthful victim
bided his time one afternoon, until the scholars were dismissed for
the day, whereupon he sought out his assailant, whom he challenged
to settle the score without delay in the adjoining churchyard.
Though not as robust as his opponent, Newton showed more pluck
and determination in the contest that ensued; and wishing to dis-
pose of the matter once for all, he continued to pommel his tor-
446 THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION [July,
mentor until the latter declared his inability to fight any longer.
It was soon known by all the school that Newton had thrashed the
bully; and, as in like cases, the salutary knowledge brought peace
and respect to the victor.
This same feat had a higher though less dramatic effect, for it
served to awaken ambition in the tyro's breast ; the ambition to beat
his adversary in the classroom as he had beaten him in the church-
yard. This was the turning-point in Isaac's schoolboy life, for he
now abandoned the line of least resistance arid applied himself
moderately to his studies, with the result that he soon passed from
the foot to the top of the class. Once in later years, Newton re-
called this pugilistic encounter, adding by way of comment that
" our enemies are quite as necessary as our friends."
At the age of fourteen, the boy was taken from school by his
twice-widowed mother, who thought that he had acquired learning
enough for one who was destined to spend his life in the simple,
monotonous work of a farm. Farming, however, was not to Isaac's
taste; and if he did not tell his mother so, it soon became known
to her by the tales that reached her of his fondness for books and
his mania for making working models of country machinery.
At this time Isaac was often sent to Grantham on Saturdays,
with a trusted servant, to sell the weekly produce of the farm and
buy commodities for the household; but the youthful heir preferred
to leave all marketing transactions to the experience of his attend-
ant, while he spent the intervening time amid a collection of books
in the garret of his former lodgings with Clark, the apothecary.
When in the course of time the collection lost its novelty, there was
nothing any more to attract our young philosopher to Grantham,
so dropping off by the way he would sit under a hedge and pore
over a book until his companion returned from the market, when
they would ride home together and give the lady of the manor an
account of the day's activities. Even when sent out on the farm to
look after sheep and cattle, the lad would often be found sitting in
the shade of a tree, bent upon intellectual or mechanical pursuits,
and wholly oblivious of his pastoral duties. Windmills, water-
clocks and sun-dials were among the manual achievements of this
period of stolen leisure.
Not knowing just what to do with such a son, his mother con-
sulted the boy's uncle, who gave her the sensible advice that the
youth should be sent back to Grantham to resume his studies and
prepare for the university. This uncle, rector of a neighboring
THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION 447
parish, had studied at Trinity College, Cambridge; and so to Trin-
ity, the star-boy of Grantham was sent in the summer of 1661.
Newton entered Trinity College on June 5, 1 66 1, as a subsizar,
in which capacity he had a number of petty services to render in
return for certain financial concessions that were made him. It
thus happened that the scholar who was to bring honor and renown
to his university and country alike had, for a time, to " work his
way through," as we term it to-day. But he now devoted himself
with ardor to his studies, and soon distinguished himself at com-
petitive examinations, winning sufficient emoluments to relieve him
from all work of an uncongenial or unacademical nature.
If Newton entered Cambridge with slender pecuniary means,
he also entered it with slender accomplishments. Some classics and
a little logic, but no mathematics ; and that at the age of nineteen !
Sir David Brewster is of opinion that this state of the matriculant's
mind fitted him all the better to undertake the highest work of the
university, and carry it on with success; but the framers of our
college-entrance requirements, however, seem to think otherwise;
for, as an " open sesame " to the temple of learning, they require
the would-be Freshman to present himself with^an array of academ-
ical impedimenta, truly formidable.
During the first year of his undergraduate career, Newton
bought an English copy of Euclid; and having hastily looked over
a list of theorems which he found at the end, set the book aside,
wondering that anyone should spend time in devising demonstra-
tions of such simple and almost self-evident propositions. A little
later, however, he formed a different opinion of the work as an
instrument of education, and even expressed his regret at not
giving the "Elements" of the Greek geometer all " the attention
which so excellent a writer deserved." He also bought at a second-
hand bookstore a copy of the analytical geometry of Descartes,
which, he candidly tells us, baffled him at first; but he persevered
in his efforts, and succeeded in mastering the subject, new and
difficult as it was, without the assistance of anyone.
He was now deeply in love with mathematics; old branches
were read and extended by him and new ones invented. Scarcely
had he taken his B. A. degree in the month of January, 1665, when
we find from his notebook that he was wholly absorbed with such
subjects as infinite series, plane areas and length of curves, all of
which involved the root-ideas of infinitesimal quantities, and led
directly to the invention of the fluxional calculus. To a youth,
448 THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION [July,
then, of twenty-three, who had just culled his first academical laur-
els, we are indebted for the invention of this powerful method of
mathematical analysis. And not only for its invention and funda-
mental principles, but also, in due course of time, for its application
to the higher departments of scientific investigation.
It is but fair to add that Leibnitz, equally illustrious as mathe-
matician and philosopher, a friend, too, of Newton and like him a
Fellow of the Royal Society, claimed the calculus, differential and
integral, as his own; an invention which, he contended, was made
without any knowledge of what Newton had previously accom-
plished in the same domain of mathematical activity. The litera-
ture to which this famous and somewhat painful controversy gave
rise is voluminous. To a candid reader, it conveys the impression
that the calculus was indeed an independent invention of the two
foremost mathematicians of the age, priority of conception and
manuscript-treatment, however, being in favor of Newton, whilst
to Leibnitz, his German rival, should be conceded priority of publi-
cation as well as simplicity of notation.
In the summer of the year 1665, the plague broke out in Cam-
bridge, in consequence of which the colleges were closed and the
students sent to their homes. Up in the quiet of his Lincolnshire
farm and amid the scenes of his boyhood, Newton spent the greater
part of the two plague years of 1665 and 1666. Pursuing unremit-
tingly in these congenial surroundings the studies of his choice,
these years became literally crowded with important discoveries.
" In these days," he says, " I was in the prime of my age for
invention, and minded mathematics and philosophy more than at
any time since." To sit and think, to speculate and calculate formed
the sole end of life during that productive period.
When Newton returned to the university after the cessation of
the plague, his thoughts turned from his binomial theorem and flux-
ional quantities to the nature of light and the orbital motion of the
planets. Familiar as he was with the laws of Kepler, he must have
asked himself again and again why the orbit of a planet should be
an ellipse, why a straight line drawn from the sun to a planet should
sweep out equal areas in equal times, and why the square of its
time of revolution should be proportional to the cube of its mean
distance from the sun. He knew that these " laws," were but de-
ductions from the mass of observations left to Kepler by Tycho
Brahe, the Danish astronomer; but his philosophic mind was not
content with the empirical deductions of the German mathematician;
I9i6.] THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION 449
it sought with diligence the occult force that must be back of all
such planetary " laws." It was manifest to him, as well as to many
others at the time, that there must be something less fictitious and
more consistent with the simple workings of nature than the little
whirlpools of Descartes ; there must be a simple, general controlling
force to account for the orderly revolution of the heavenly bodies;
and to the discovery of that force, its properties and laws, he bent
the powers of his great intellect.
Years passed, however, before Newton's attention was again
pointedly directed to the subject of gravitation. The cause of this
renewal of interest in his old speculation of 1666 was the work
accomplished by Abbe Picard who, in 1671, completed his measure-
ment of an arc of the meridian extending from the vicinity of
Paris to the neighborhood of Amiens. This fine piece of early
geodetic work gave nearly sixty-nine and one-half miles for the
length of a degree of latitude instead of sixty, the commonly accepted
number. This meant an increased length for the circumference of
the earth as well as for its radius; and, at the same time, also a
greater value for the distance of the moon which, even then, was
taken as sixty times the earth's radius. It appears that some years
later, the work of the French Abbe was brought up for special dis-
cussion at one of the weekly meetings of the Royal Society, when
the improvements which he introduced in the method of triangula-
tion, such as the use of the telescope, cross-hairs and micrometers,
elicited much commendation.
To Newton who then held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics
at Cambridge, the numerical estimates announced by .Picard were
of very great interest. From Kepler's first law of planetary mo-
tion, viz., that of the elliptical orbit, Newton had already inferred
and mathematically proved that the force which emanates from
the sun falls off as the square of the distance ; but, before he could
advance any further in the gravitational work on which he was
engaged, he recognized that it would be necessary to determine the
exact meaning of the term " distance " in the case of a planet.
For this purpose he proceeded to find the attraction on the moon
of the separate elements into which the mass of the earth could be
divided, some of which were nearer to our satellite and others farther
away. The problem was as formidable as it was new; but it was
one which the fluxional calculus enabled him to solve. To his
surprise and, no doubt, greatly to his delight, he found that a globe
of uniform material attracts bodies external to itself, as though its
VOL. CIII. 2Q _,
450 THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION [July,
entire mass were located at its centre; " distance," therefore, was to
be reckoned from centre to centre; in this case, from the centre
of the earth to the centre of the moon. This memorable achieve-
ment belongs to the year 1684.
Newton lost no time in applying this superb theorem to the
pull which the earth exerts on the moon when, on introducing the
new value for its distance as deduced from the measurements of
Abbe Picard, he had the supreme delight of rinding that the dis-
crepancy of 1666 had disappeared; fact and theory were now in
perfect agreement. The force that causes the apple to fall to the
ground is, after all, the same as that which compels the moon to
bend away from a rectilinear path and revolve around the earth in a
nearly circular orbit. The work which was begun on a farm at
Woolsthorpe in 1666 was now completed on the banks of the Cam
in 1685, after a period of nineteen years !
We have here one of the many instances recorded in the annals
of science which show that though discoveries may be suggested
or initiated by a trivial observation, by a casual suspicion or even
by a happy accident, their completion demands months and often
years of judicious thought, careful following up, and patient toil.
There is a popular belief to the effect that Newton discovered
gravity; but, of course, that is an error. What he did discover
was that the gravitational pull of terrestrial gravity extends out
to the moon and keeps her in her orbit; and, by inference, that the
attraction of the sun is the ruling power in our whole planetary
system. A further induction, which was amply justified, estab-
lished the grand generalization that all pairs of bodies wherever
placed in the universe, attract each other with a force that varies
directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square
of the distance between them. But it required years of close think-
ing; years of observation, calculation and discussion before all
objections to the new philosophy of the universe were answered, all
difficulties removed, and the theory of universal gravitation firmly
established.
Newton was induced by his friend Halley, subsequently of
cometary fame, to prepare for the press a work embodying his dis-
coveries in mathematics, in gravitation and gravitational astronomy,
and this he did in the incredibly short space of eighteen months.
As the expense of publication of such work was beyond the author's
means, and as the Royal Society had no funds, rather than incur
any further delay, Halley generously came forward and paid the
1916.] THE DISCOVERY OF GRAVITATION 451
printer's bills out of his own slender income. In this way, the first
edition of the Principle, appeared in 1687, a year that marks an
epoch in the history of science. Newton was then in the forty-fifth
year of his age, little more than half the span of his earthly career.
It is worthy of note that the crowning achievements of his life
were made between 1665 and 1687, that is between his twenty-third
and his forty-fifth year. The decomposition of light, the nature of
color, the binomial theorem, the fluxional calculus, universal gravi-
tation and the Principia were all fruits of these twenty-two years
of wondrous mental activity. Any one of the achievements just
mentioned would have made an enduring reputation; taken to-
gether they form a grand monument to the genius of the farmer-
boy of the Lincolnshire hamlet.
But while the general theory was affirmed with confidence,
nothing was said as to the nature of the force of gravitation itself.
Forces were known then as well as to-day by the effects which they
produce; but while ignorant of their intimate nature we are, how-
ever, able to use them with freedom, with confidence and success
in scientific investigation, and in engineering operations of all kinds;
in the erection of steel structures that dwarf surrounding buildings,
in the construction of ocean greyhounds and fighting monsters ; in
the building of bridges and subways, as well as in all our efforts to
conquer the air and annihilate space. Writing to Bentley, the Mas-
ter of Trinity, Newton said : " We sometimes speak of gravity as
essential and inherent to matter; pray do not ascribe that notion
to me, for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know."
The same modesty characterized Newton throughout life. His
estimate of the work which he accomplished during his eighty-five
years is best expressed in his own memorable words : " I know not
what the world will think of my labors, but to myself it seems that
I have been but as a child playing on the seashore; now finding
some pebble rather more polished, and now some shell more agree-
ably variegated than another, while the immense ocean of truth
extended itself unexplored before me."
"And so/' writes Sir Oliver Lodge, " must it ever seem to the
wisest and greatest of men when brought into contact with the
things of God; that which they know is as nothing, and less than
nothing, to the infinitude of which they are ignorant."
"FLOWER OF THE ORANGE."
BY GABRIEL FRANCIS POWERS.
N the loathsome underground dungeon, with its foul
air and smell of mouldy dampness in which life must
rot, the two figures were merely shadow and shadow,
the presences voice and voice.
" Do me this last charity, Sir Friar, whoever
thou mayest be and whoever sent thee: remove thee speedily from
hence."
The wrathful agitation of chains betokened rage that could
scarce hold itself.
" God knows how much I pity thy sufferings, brother, and
how gladly I would ease them. But since all worldly things are
now at end for thee, be not so cruel to thine own soul as to refuse
the comfort of Christ."
' Thy Siena provides. The comfort of the block and the axe :
they are sufficient. I need no other ministrations; the very colors
thou wearest goad me to fury."
" How ! thou canst see colors in this darkness ? "
" Mine eyes have learnt. They are thy Siena's colors, accursed,
bloody, with confusion and defilement."
"Hush ! for God's sake. Hush ! dost thou wish to die in torture ?
I wear but the habit of my holy Father, St. Dominic; and for the
colors themselves, which thou revilest, the city's colors, they stand
upon her shield in memory of our most sweet Lady and Mistress :
white for her purity, black for her humility ; fair heraldry no godly
man should overlook or abhor."
"You say it is her city out on her city ! Injustice rife, infamy
in high places, the scum her lords ! Does not your sacred city deal
me undeserved death?"
" Conspiracy is crime, Sir Knight, all the world over. Yet
ponder well: you war with one another, fratricide struggles of
city and city, state and state, and would then visit upon her, whose
very name is holiness, your enmities and quarrels, your contentions
and hatred, which are not the work of the spirit, as St. Paul says,
but the work of sinful flesh."
" Preachings ! good in your cloister haply not among living
I9i6.] "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE'' 453
men. Give me back the sunlight ! Give me back my freedom ! I
have no hope any more, not in your God Who has forgotten me,
not in heaven, not in pardon, not in her even who used to be my
supreme hope ! "
" God in His mercy look upon thee, and pardon the words
which one more wicked than thyself prompts to thy troubled soul.
I will send thee the Sister we call Catherine. She has marvelous
power to comfort the sorrowing. Perhaps she may succeed in what
I cannot do."
" I will not see thy Catherine. Send me no more clattering
tongues to make my torments unbearable. I will have no more
visitors, and least of all a woman."
" Yet a woman is kind ; and this one more than kind, for
God walks with her. She will bring thee ointment for the wounds
at thy wrists and ankles, though her fingers, without the balm, are
healing; she will speak thee softly, and thou canst give to her any
messages thou mayest wish to leave, for she is worthy of thy whole
trust."
"Can she write?"
" She can write well, though never learned she letters. But
one day, as God willed it, she took a pen in hand and wrote."
" Ask her to come to me. But warn her first. I do not wish
discourses. I will not confess. She shall not tell me any old
crone tales. Bid her but write and go. It will be a death charity."
" She shall come to thee to-morrow : the hour is late to-night ;
but rest and sleep if thou canst. She will comfort thee mightily."
Sad and heavy at heart, yet full of a new hope, the monk
emerged into the pure, sweet air. The blue night was stealing
down, softly, through Siena, and the streets were full of transparent
shadows. Star after star peeped out, seeming to leap silvery
bright into. its place in an appointed group. He drew, by the way
of Fontebranda, to the tree-girt western hill at the top of which
the mass of his convent of St. Domenico loomed against the sky.
At the narrow, steep street of the dyers he turned down and
paused before the Benincasa's house.
Lapa put her head out of the window in answer to his knock.
" Tell Catherine," he charged her, " that the Knight Nicholas
of Toldo has received sentence of death. He is to be executed on
Saturday and refuses the Sacraments. She is to go to him to-
morrow to write a letter. Ask her to pray for him; and tell her,
most urgently from me, to put him in Our Lady's hands."
454 "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" [July,
The message was transmitted exactly and Catherine set herself
to obey. She was in the habit of visiting the prisons to alleviate
the physical pains, as far as she could, of the sufferers therein; but
still more to console their affliction, and to prepare those who were
to die for their last, tremendous passage. The memory of One
sinless, and yet condemned as they were, wrung her heart when
she saw them; but this of the impenitent, of the unreconciled, of
the blaspheming and despairing, was a grief that racked her very
soul. Toward dawn, after the long vigil of the night, and the long
strife of prayer that was a battle, she had a vision of the Knight
sleeping, his features and form mysteriously illuminated as he
lay on the poor straw of his cell.
Not a sound from the city could ever reach Niccolo's dungeon,
not even the sweet bells caroling over the hills in that clear air,
three thousand feet above the sea. He had lost all count of hours,
and never knew were it day or night. Only, at noon, a pitcher
of water and a hunk of black prison bread were thrust in through
the wicket. Then he knew it must be daylight outside. Occa-
sionally the rats came to visit him. The door was never opened.
The friar alone had caused that to unlock. But his ears now had
something to wait and watch for. He thought he would be able
to sense the expected coming even before the irons, bolts and bars
should grind. But the door had actually opened, and he detected
radiance and figures in flowing garments moving in it before he
was aware of sound. Or rather, simultaneously with the seeing,
a foot fumbled, and he caught a low murmur : " Mother, I cannot
see."
The second voice, in answer, made his heart leap. It only said,
gently : " Stay there then, daughter, and wait a little," but suddenly
it seemed as though, at the very threshold of his cell, morning was
rising, a morning with the sunlight and a breeze.
Niccolo's head was swimming Here was a woman. Knight-
hood demanded courtesy. Would he have strength to rise? His
feet entangled themselves in his fetters and he fell back. As he
lay, she knelt beside him and that same voice clear, joyous, and ex-
ceedingly sweet, rang out in the limpid purity of its Tuscan speech :
" Here is Catherine, brother, to serve thee as she may."
He lay still, trying to see, in the darkness, what manner of
a countenance accents so musical could bear. She bowed down
over him.
1916.] "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" 455
" Why dost thou kiss my hands ? " his thick voice asked re-
luctantly.
" Because thou wearest bonds like my Lord Jesus Christ."
She began to anoint his cut wrists with some cool, wax-like
substance that exhaled a heavenly aroma and, as she did, the per-
fume seemed to steal into his heart. She spread the ointment and,
on her hands, fell his first tears. "Why dost thou weep?." she
asked him gently. He made no answer, but faster the warm,
abundant tears ran on her hands. She let him weep, and one or
two big drops from her own eyes mingled with his. Then again
asked she: " My son, why dost thou weep? "
" Because I have sinned so much, and know not if I can
ever be forgiven."
" Magdalene and Peter were forgiven, brother ; and others,
many. The vessel of Christ's Heart is running over with the
generous Blood. He cannot waste enough."
" Thou dost not know what sins I have committed."
"What of thy sins? The fathomless sea awaits them that
same ruby-red sea of Love."
"Oh ! if I thought He could pardon if I thought that once more
but I have hated God and man, hated and cursed them; and
turned my back upon One to Whom all men should kneel in low-
liest reverence for that sin, wicked above all others, I shall weep
until I die. Sit here beside me, mother if I may call thee so
for thy presence doth indeed comfort me mightily; and there is
something about thee stills me, heart and soul. That friar had
me to sleep last night for thou wert coming; and I, who thought
that for me all rest was o'er, both slept and dreamed."
His speech died out a moment, then, low, as though he brought
the words from very far, he resumed : "It seemed to me I saw my
mother's room in the old home without Perugia, a big room set
partly in the tower that looked on to the plain and castle orchard,
and, as I came, a woman's figure sat on the bed's edge ; but it was
not my mother. 'Her garments were the color of our Umbrian hills,
misty at evening; and, from the shadow of her hood, the tears
rained clown over her wimple and her close-locked hands. I know
not how I knew the cherry trees outside were white with blossom,
and the time was the week in which Christ suffered, or haply Easter
morn. I seemed to hear a sound of distant singing, but she was
weeping sorely, quite alone. And even as I looked, there came One
to her, kneeling, her Son, all pale and wan after His dying, with
456 "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" [July,
eyes that spoke dumb pain before her sorrow, and lips empurpled
with the kiss of death. He opened out His arms to soothe and
comfort, but lo, the wounds deep-stamped by nail and spear-
thrust only made her weep the more. Had I a thousand years
to live that woe would haunt me, and I shall hear her weep now,
unceasingly, I know, until I die. Is there no comfort for her?
Has she not seen His glory? Or thinkest thou that in God's
heaven, where all are happy, she, being His Mother and remem-
bering last and best, must still weep on ? "
" Methinks that she remembers still, and sometimes weeps
for sinners. But she has seen that sad face, over which her own
hands drew the face-cloth, unveiled in blissful splendor since ; and,
at her coming, its love will ever smile."
" I shall go gladly, now, to the mount of justice, where it is
meet God deal to me as I deserve. Mine enemies matter no
more; neither matters it any more who rules in Siena. If God
will but forgive."
" Far greater than thy desire is His forgiveness ! And thou
wilt go, washed in the Blood of the Lamb, clad in white garments,
and bearing the sweet flowers of thy outpoured blood before Him
to walk in the everlasting nuptials like a child before the Host."
" Mother, make haste and call yon friar for me ! Last night
I did not know what thing he offered me. But, now, every moment
that passes is lead-footed, until I can confess my sins and cleanse
my soul."
Sunrise over Siena; brown buildings clustered and brown
towers uprising; the one clear shaft of the Mangia, the fairest in
Tuscany, shooting above the others and blushing rosy-red in the
new days; the streets full of silence and that tender, gliding light;
everywhere stillness, freshness, profound peace. And not a soul
stirring anywhere until the bell gives leave.
Curfew is over now in Siena; but the sun rises, and that same
bell inscribed " Ave Maria " rings out, shrill and clear over the
sleeping city, as it has seven hundred years, and more, to call the
faithful at dawn to early Mass.
Catherine had spent another night in prayer. Indeed it was
her wont; but this new sun that was to rise, so warm and pleasant,
marked Niccolo's last day.
Before it rose she was abroad already, her heart full, as a
mother's might be, and with the keener anguish of the saint where a
I9i6.] "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" 457
soul hangs in balance. None checked her footsteps, for the
reverence that had grown up reluctantly around her, the watchmen
knew well that the only errands which brought her into the streets
at all were pressing demands of the sick and unfortunate upon her
charity. At the prisons, doors were unbolted and keys turned even
as she came.
Niccolo started up to greet her eagerly : " Oh ! Madonna, how
glad I am. Methought thou wouldst never come ! "
"Has my son slept?"
" Thy son will need little sleep more, good mother. Yet I did
sleep and rode in joust and tourney. I who must die to-day."
" Dear brother ! One last field more, and banners to be taken."
" God give them to our hands! How, mother, flowers? "
" Why not ? Thy wedding day. The scent will comfort thee ;
and, for the Lord Who comes to thee, we will strew them here
beneath thy feet."
" Ah ! St. John's flowers. How well I know their sweet and
wholesome breathing! We used to toss them, bound together, as
love- tokens, St. John's Eve."
" They are indeed his flowers, and they are tokens ; but
carnations, crimson-red and fragrant like the Blood; and the
lavender for Mary's mantle, blue and sweet."
" Hark, the bell ! Mother, why do I hear it ring to-day when
never has the sound gladdened mine ears before? "
" God lets thee hear. Christ waits. That is our Mass."
" And shall we go together ? See the daylight ? "
" The light of the day of earth, and the better light of God's
eternal heaven. Come, sweet brother, this is thy First Communion
day."
The morning rays shone gaily into the obscure little chapel,
the flames of the tapers shot brightly, piercing the dusk, the gentle
pictured faces of the Mother and Child gazed down, tender as the
faces of friends. The tonsured priest, a friar, new to his dreadful
office at the jail, sped through the awesome Latin declaring how
he would enter unto the altar of God, the God Who made glad his
youth. He scarcely dared, even when he opened his hands to desire
God's presence among the assistants, to glance at the silent figure
kneeling there, marked out for death.
Yet Niccolo was very grave, very calm, and his earnest eyes
never for one instant quitted their hallowed watch. Bolt upright,
with hands folded palm to palm, he knelt like sculpture. The dark
45$ "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" [July,
fringed shock of bobbed hair fell straightly about his face; in the
chiseling light, the lean, sallow features, too, stood out like sculp-
ture. His Knight's tunic of claret velvet was so shabby it would
have shamed him had he thought about it; the belt about his
hips hung loose, and ends of broken strap at the side showed where
sword and alms-purse had been wrenched away.
Beside him knelt that other figure, mother, sister, guardian
angel, with eyes closed in some agony of pain for him that yet was
almost intolerable agony of joy. The very linen he wore was the
gift of her charity, sent him for this day from her brother Bartolo's
store. The soul within him, pure as at Baptism, and marvelously
united to and accorded with the will of God, was the gift of God
to her.
All too swiftly came the tinkle of the small bell and the Host
uplifted the prayer to the Father above for bread and pardon;
the humble words of unworthiness and the struck breast. Niccolo
went forward and knelt, upon the bare flags beneath the altar step,
with serene brow and wondering eyes of reverence, as though he
were glad at heart and did not know himself that of this Bread,
given him as a viaticum unto life everlasting, he would taste in
this world nevermore. He came back and knelt beside Catherine,
gazing at her a moment quietly and trustfully as a child gazes;
then, seeing her recollection, gathered his own forces unto him-
self to pray: " Lord, be with me," she heard him implore audibly;
" abandon me not. Thou art with me now and all must go well
with me. I die content."
Tranquilly, still cleaving to her side, he left the chapel. Only
one moment, at the very door of his cell, the darkness, the horror
crashed suddenly upon him and he reeled.
" Oh, God, I cannot do it ! How can I do it ? I am young.
I could be happy my whole life is to live!"
" Courage, dear brother, courage," she exhorted him, " one
short hour of suffering and thou hast won. There will be no
more sorrow and there will be unending light."
" In all my born days, mother, never seemed life so sweet. I
am a coward ! I shall shame my Knighthood. See how I tremble !
Oh, mother, I shall prove craven at the last."
" Nay ! 'tis but a moment's weakness. Rouse thy valor. Christ
Who is with thee will not suffer it. Take courage, the fear will
soon be over. And I will go along ahead and wait for thee, that
thou mayest have no terror at the goal."
I9i6.] "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" 459
She saw with her own eyes the darkness vanish, the swift
appalling onslaught of temptation fall away, and the very face
seemed to emerge in radiance and sweetness from the clutch of fierce
agony, the clouds of tossing doubt.
" Whence comes such a grace as this to me," he cried, " that
the sweetness of my soul should wait for me at the holy place of
execution? Now it is true indeed that I shall fear no more!
Blessed be thou, Catherine, spouse of Christ, for thy compassion;
and blessed for thy more than a mother's love ! "
" Blessed be my Spouse and thine for His compassion ! and
blessed be His Mother for her love. Pray to her, dear brother mine ;
her tears have saved thee. Pray to her as thou goest; and thou
wilt find her, tooj awaiting thee. Thou and I, and all mankind
shall ever find her, so, standing underneath the Cross."
Bright and gay with the sun high and the holiday crowd
streaming outward, the fateful hour had struck. Outside the city
gate in the clear space where the scaffold was erected, from early
morning, the idle had begun to assemble. An execution was a sort
of poignant entertainment which the government furnished free of
cost. Fraternally, in the crowd, mingled plebeian upholders of the
triumphant " Riformatori," against whose rule the unfortunate
Niccolo had instigated his Sienese friends to rise; grim-visaged
partisans of the abolished oligarchic system; cheerful hawkers of
fruit and mostaccioli (spice-cakes) ; ragged little children, boys
and girls too playing in the dust between the feet of the by-
standers; good women even, full of sighs under their hoods or
flapping Sienese hats, and remembering occasionally to draw their
heads and patter Pater Nosters for the soul ; yet agog, nevertheless,
to see what they might see. Many of them, both men and women,
would weep anon; but first harmless jests and laughter, odds and
ends of gossip, must be retailed and bandied from mouth to mouth.
What was the young Knight's real crime? How was he guilty?
Was it true he had said the Griffin (Perugia) would come some
day and limb from limb rend the Wolf (Siena)? Oh! but the
Senator was wroth with him ! They knew the very words, the ges-
ture, with which he had refused a pardon. It must be some great
crime for which he had to die. And how old was he? Was he
single? Were his parents living? His mother? Ah! they were
sorry for her with unmitigated, broad-bosomed Italian kindness.
Then the strong, vigorous-stocked faith of the age asked its search-
460 "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" [July,
ing questions. Had he made his peace with God at least? Had
he been shriven ? Would he go to his doom as a good Christian ?
Christ have pity on him : it was hard to die ! Our Lady succor him
at the last. Don't be playing here, boys, this is no place for sport !
But the group of youths, slim in tight-fitting doublets and long hose,
with laughing faces, hanging hair, and jaunty, long-quilled caps,
were rehearsing the act of the falling, triangular knife, the " scure"
and striking one another's neck with mimic sounds.
In the midst of it all, motionless beside the scaffold, stood a
nun's figure in white and black. The group of her companions
sought to screen her, but her eyes were shut, and her mind so rapt
and uplifted in God, she knew not anything that passed around
her. Motionless, even as her body, was her spirit; her whole soul
one intense, wordless prayer. Her, too, the curious quickly de-
tected and marveled seeing her. That was Catherine, Benincasa's
daughter, did you know her? a strange person. Some, easily
credulous, held her to be a saint. She neither ate nor slept heaven
deliver us ! But 'twas said she had blessed a vat and the wine never
ceased flowing which was an excellent great miracle, if true; and
sick persons were found to profess that she- had cured them by
the mere touch of her hand.
In a lull of silence the wind brought a few faint strokes of the
Martorana tolling, slowly, far away. The sad procession had set
forth.
One there beheld it in the streets of Siena. It was at the
market, at the Croce, between the tall, gray Gothic palaces with
people pressed up close against the walls, or gaping outward from
the windows. She saw the quiet face, with its eyes that had no
fear, and the bound arms that struck her with such intolerable pity
for the likeness they made in him to One more loved. Yet the
young man w r alked full peacefully. He was not conscious of
humiliation : let the town folk gaze if they would, what did it mat-
ter? He was treading the flints of an earthly city for the last time.
They had not let him wear his shoulder-cape, with the hood at-
tached, so he walked bareheaded, his countenance unsheltered; but
it put him in mind of something Catherine had said : " So would I
also," he mused, " if I walked before the Host." Then, clear to
his recollection, came his last injunction : " Pray to Our Lady pray
as thou goest her tears have saved thee," and with the memory of
his mother's room, vaguely, her voice singing came to him in
snatches of a cantilena (a very simple melody, slow-measured, and
I9i6.] "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" 461
rather monotonous) which she used to croon over her wool-carding
and spinning, pausing between the suspended rhythms of the lines,
as the peasants do a-mowing, when the long swaths of green fall
beneath the scythe and the slow-voice hovers over them, the broad
last note prolonged indefinitely in the sun.
Stabat Mater dolorosa
He could remember the very vowels upon which the long beat and
the ensuing short note and silence fell. There was too much of the
song for any lad to recollect. But scraps of it he knew well.
Juxta crucem tecum stare,
Et me tibi sociare*
In planctu desidero.
How sw r eetly sorrowful and how full of meaning the Latin was!
That other Mother, who had wept so much, was waiting for him
where Catherine waited. This was Siena, her city, which he had
hated, unspeakably, and now could not find it in his heart to hate
any more. And the sunshine, so warm and welcome God's up
above, the fair blue with a few white clouds sailing in it. In one
hour less if it pleased God, he, he who this moment could feel
the paving-stones of Siena beneath his long, soft, pointed shoes,
would be in Paradise. It seemed as though he could not possibly be
worthy ; but Catherine had said so " like the good thief."
Once again the sound of a Woman weeping welled up within
his soul, moving him to such sore pity his own tears threatened to
overflood and break the dams; but it were idle to weep now, his
sins forgiven, her mercy waiting to help him at the scaffold, her
Son's dead face unveiled for him and her.
They were at the towered gate with its fresco of the Crucifixion,
and the procession halted that the sentence might be proclaimed
anew. Then slowly, narrowed by the affluence of people at that
spot, it moved out beyond the city walls. It was in the open now,
whence glimpses of the lovely outlying country could be caught.
The sun grew hotter : here, about the clearing on the hill, all Siena
seemed to have gathered.
The companions standing around Catherine drew closer.
" Mother, he is coming! "
She opened her eyes which had just seen him raise up his
462 "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" [July,
to the block, and his soul higher, even as he prayed : " Thy will
be done."
The grotesque and terrible forms which had surrounded and
conveyed him, officers of justice, guards, soldiers, the " birri " (most
detested of all men save the abhorred and, in the eyes of the popu-
lace, vile executioner and his assistants), a trumpeter of the Re-
public, the crier in his tabard, all drew aside and, for one moment,
those two figures, the humblest and most significant of the whole
assemblage, were face to face.
Meekly the young knight smiled his gladness, and knelt before
her asking for a last blessing. The stalwart strength of yore seemed
to have returned to the vigorous body: his eyes, full of love and
reverence, dwelt manfully and yet most tenderly upon the holy
face. Pale and worn it was, with eyes the color of the olive tree
in the wind. She was awed almost at his fortitude ; for there was
little more of the earth than the strong frame and swarthy features
left about him, and it might have been his knightly patron, St.
Michael, kneeling there before her. She made the Sign of the Cross
upon his forehead, touching him lightly. No more need to exhort,
no more need to encourage. The calmness of each was a pillar to
the other.
" Depart," she said, quite peacefully, yet somewhat longingly,
" to the everlasting nuptials." And then, as he still waited : " Soon,
very soon, you will be in the life that never ends."
He bent his head to kiss her hand the hand that had just
blessed him and arose. His eyes still thanked her, but a great
silence, in which God was, enveloped him and he had no more words.
Unassisted, he ascended the scaffold steps. There was a surge
in the crowd as though it moved to him, a sea of dead- white faces
wavering. Then complete stillness. One moment he stood alone
detached from all, his eyes traveling over them, seeing them, in-
deed, yet his mind, in some way, absent. A gray-haired woman of
the lowest class, bareheaded and in tatters, raised herself up to cry
'aloud to him : " God pity thee, poor son ! God speed thy soul ! "
" Amen," he answered softly, and turned his countenance to
the executioner as though to give him leave. The man advanced.
At the same moment Catherine's hands touched the big, open, over-
sleeve depending from the shoulder. Here his last glance of
recognition. Then calmly, silent still, she knelt. With her fingers
that trembled a little, yet were firm, she placed his head as it should
be: he suffered it, never stirring. His hair fell over her hands
1916.] "FLOWER OF THE ORANGE" 463
and she knelt beside him, leaning, to speak the last words he would
ever hear : " Remember, now, dear brother, the Blood of the Spot-
less Lamb, shed for thee. His Name be thy last word."
The murmured answer reached her ears alone : " Jesus
Catherine."
In the same instant the blade gleamed on high; there was in
the crowd a quick movement of recoil, of horror, a gasp; a great
spurt of blood over the scaffold ; then sobs broke forth, and the pent
ranks broke up. Catherine had the head in her hands, dim irises
that seemed to look out still from under the fallen lids, lips livingly
plarted. Inwardly, she lifted up her gaze to adore the divine
goodness.
And even as she did, the earth vanished and sank away from
her, and lo ! before her, radiant in splendor, she beheld " Him Who
is God and Man." She saw Him gathering that out-poured blood
and placing it, with unspeakable love, in " the open Wound of His
side, the treasury of His mercy," and the humble knight she saw
received " by the august Trinity, his soul flooded with a joy that
would have ravished a thousand hearts."
Hands pulling at her mantle forced her return to conscious
being. She gazed around upon them, her children and companions,
her eyes steeped in the bliss of celestial mysteries : " Why did you
call me back? " she gently chided them. " I was seeing Christ Jesus,
and the blessed spirit of our brother enter eternal life."
" What, Mother, is he in heaven already? "
" He paused but at the threshold : as the bride, who turns to
thank with gracious-bending head, those who have brought her to
the bridegroom's door. Nay, do not wipe the blood from off my
garments. Nay, leave it to me, daughter ! It has the sweetness of
frankincense, balsam the perfume of the white-starred orange
groves in May."
THE ORIGINALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF
LIFE.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
N idea of exceptional character and consequence marks
off the Christian doctrine of life from all others
before or since. It is the idea of personal union and
communion with God in the world to come. Note
the words well. They express an historical fact, a
transcendent conception, a sublime idea, in the presence of which the
resemblances to Christianity found in other religions all pale into
insignificance.
Thumb the dog-eared pages of antiquity over and over again,
no analogue of this conception will reward your search. The idea
of sharing the divine life and retaining one's own personality the
while, the idea that the relation of union is to be that of person
to person, without identity, transformation, or absorption, and on
the noble plane of intimate friendship, occurred to no ancient philo-
sophical or religious thinker. It had no heralds to trumpet forth
its coming, but came at once and unannounced. If you can resist
the impression that it is a revealed concept, arising from no human
source, but heaven-blown suddenly into the minds of men, your
powers of resistance must be other than intellectual part of that
will to disbelieve, which still awaits its James in psychology and
its Harnack in history. And should you insist that it must have
had its foregleams, like all notions other, you will be unable to
point them out.
The most that Plato dared hope was to contemplate the World
of Ideas, and this meant in his philosophy not a personal, but a
personified, world of good. Aristotle declared friendship between
man and God impossible. The pagan Elysium, where " life is
easiest to man, and no snow is nor storm nor any rain," presents
a picture of temporal conditions made better it contains not the
least suggestion that the Divine and the human are there intimately
to meet. The paradise of Mahomet is a mere prolongation of
earthly joys intensified it promises no intimacy of relationship
with the one and only God, of whom Allah is the prophet. The
Jew hoped to revive in the bosom of Abraham the abode of the
blessed; he knew the slavery of the old law, he did not know the
I 9 i6.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE 465
personal friendship of the new. The acme of the Buddhist's ex-
pectation was to exchange individual existence for universal, to
fall asleep in Nirvana, and there escape the ceaseless round of rein-
carnation which Karma metes out to those who have not purified
their minds and hearts of all personal desire.
Primitive peoples conceived the life to come in terms of the
present, idealized. It was their own life materially and socially
bettered, as they conceived its bettering, that they expected to see
continued. An abundance of food and game, the pleasure of the
hunt, additional health of body and fleetness of limb, with no
scrambling for the means of livelihood, were for many its charac-
teristic features. If the region men inhabited kept Winter linger-
ing too long in the lap of Spring, or the fiery orb of day perpetually
ablaze with heat, they pictured life beyond the grave in terms of the
contrary. Even in the Osiris-cult, the bodily life is the one imag-
ined. In Jewish eyes the recompense of virtue was length of days
in the land the Lord their God had given them, a numerous prog-
eny, and the prosperity of the nation at large. The rewards of
the next life were conceived as not exceeding the analogies of this.
Nowhere will you discover the idea that man is to be raised to a
higher order of being, and have the life of God communicated
to him, over and above his own, for an intensive personal develop-
ment without cease.
Will you unearth this idea, think you, in the Mystery-Re-
ligions of the Graeco- Roman world at Eleusis, say, or among the
worshippers of Attis, Osiris, Isis, Cybele, Demeter, and lacchus?
The phrases " salvation/' " union with deity," " communion with
the divine," " deification," "rebirth," " sonship," and "eternal
life " are all to be found somewhere or other in these pre-Christian
cults; and this fact has been spread before the faithful by a thou-
sand anti-Christian pens, as if it offered proof irrefragable that
Christianity is neither original, nor divine, but a medley, and a
pagan one at that. Very clever, also very false and irrelevant,
this ruse of the comparative historians to draw attention away
from difference in thought to similarity in phrasing. In the Mys-
tery-Cults the expressions quoted all mean absorption into the
divine, metamorphosis, transformation, becoming one with deity.
They expressly teach that salvation is the loss of selfhood and per-
sonality in the sea of absolute Being the exact opposite of the
meaning which Christianity has given these terms. And so far
from disproving the originality of the Christian idea of salvation,
VOL. cm. 30
466 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE [July,
they constitute the strongest prdof imaginable that Christianity
never went to heathendom for its beliefs or doctrines. The religion
of Christ expressly declares that salvation consists in right rela-
tions to God as person to person. The Mystery-Religions all de-
clare it a relation of impersonality to impersonality, and that is why
their ethical influence was nil. Personal union with God on the
intimate plane of friendship, without destruction of individuality
such was the " mystery " which St. Paul said "was not made known
in other generations." 1 None of the Mystery-Cults ever suspected
the existence or possibility of this enduring personal relation, and
we challenge the historians of Comparative Religion to adduce
evidence that they did.
Let them come forward, for instance, with historical proof
that the Christian ide.a of personal union is the same as the pagan
idea of mystical union, and derived therefrom. St. Paul men-
tioned his mystical experiences yes, but he did not boast of them,
and he also told the Corinthians that rational self-control is better
than the gift of tongues and more befitting. " The relation of the
individual Paul to Jesus the historic Person is never lost in a vague
and impalpable experience." Certainly, he who said, " I know
partially now, but then I shall know completely, as already I am
completely known," had no idea that his selfhood was to cease, and
that salvation consisted in its ceasing. No! He was to share in
the Divine Life really as well as morally; and in person, not mysti-
cally, as the pagan dreamers dreamt. St. Paul preached no trans-
formation of humanity into deity, but an uplifting of man's whole
being, nature, and powers his reclothing with a dignity far beyond
his natural belongings and deserts, his admission into the immediate
society of God in the greatest personal intimacy conceivable. Some
have thought, because of St. Paul's insistence on the ethical char-
acter of the New Life, that this latter meant for him in the last
analysis no more than a superadded ethical relation of man to
God. But such as these forget that in insisting upon its ethical
character, the Apostle to the Gentiles was not proclaiming its nature
so much as delineating its distinction from the ancient cults, and
pointing out its redeeming difference from them in the special
influence it had on conduct. Bend things, therefore, as you will,
distort this phrase or that out of all semblance to its original mean-
ing, and still you will not ever, as a matter of history, be able
sincerely to avoid the conclusion that Christ Jesus was the first to
1 Eph. iii. i.
I9i6.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE 467
preach salvation, neither as a mere human immortality awaiting
man, nor as an absorption into the Divine with a consequent loss
of selfhood, but as an admission into God's immediate presence, a
sharing of His nature, a partaking of His life, an enjoyment of
His beatitude face to face, person to Person, friend to Friend;
all the lowly natural relations of creature to Creator transcended
and overcome. Cantet mine lo chorus angelorum! History has
had no lights or heights or tidings such as these. The pagan " in-
carnations " were of ideas; the Christian Incarnation, of a Person.
The pagan " salvation " meant the extinction of individual human
existence in the Divine; the Christian, its hallowed and perfected
preservation in the company of God forever.
It is idle to deny the original character of the Christian con-
cept for still another reason. Primitive peoples conceived God
very personally, so much so, in fact, that cultured races, remember-
ing the malignant fling of Xenophanes, that lions had as much right
to consider God a lion, as man to imagine Him a person, grew
ashamed of the mannish notions of their ancestors and went to the
opposite extreme of depersonalizing the Divine. It was this reac-
tionary tendency in history which led Comte and Spencer wrongly
to imagine that the progress of religion consists in the gradual
elimination of the idea of personality. It does not. Religious
progress consists in the progressive purification of this idea in the
human understanding, and of this progress Christianity is the living
witness and example. Yielding neither to primitive ignorance in
conceiving God as mannish, nor to cultured pride in making the
Divine impersonal, Christianity took a proportional view that
avoided these extremes. God was not for the Christian the im-
personal, intelligent World- Soul imagined by the elite of Greece
and Rome, but an independent Being subsisting in a rational nature
as we subsist in ours, without any of the deficiencies that cling to
human selfhood and its powers of intelligence and will. The man-
nish associations of personality all fall away and cease to trouble,
when the term is proportionally understood. The progress which
the religion of Christ made in history over all the ancient religions
resulted in no small measure from its purified reassertion of per-
sonality, both human and Divine. What the affirmation of human
personality meant to society at large may readily be conjectured
from the fact that in the Roman Law, it was only by the sufferance
and condescension of the State by a fictio iuris, in other words
that an individual might be called a person, The idea that he is
468 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE [July,
an independent subject of right did not exist until Christianity
proclaimed it.
The disdain felt for primitive religious notions by the cultured
folk of Greece and Rome accounts for the odd fact that the best of
their philosophers never probed the idea of personality, never un-
dertook to clear it up. Even those who spoke of God as person had
no definite notion of what personality is. The Supreme Self-Con-
scious Intelligence meant to them self-consciousness at most. The
relation existing between intelligence or self -consciousness on the
one hand and personality on the other was never explicitly worked
out. Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Philo, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca
refused to touch the sordid idea. Pride of. culture the feeling that
a man of learning should not think or speak in the terms of unlet-
tered folk, dominated philosophy then as now. And then as now
the pride of men prevented them from seeing that a primitive
religious idea might be right in principle, however much wrong and
crude it may have been in the interpretations it received. So far
was this disdain of the primitive carried, so repugnant had the idea
of a personal First Cause become, that intermediaries of all sorts
semi-divine beings or demiurges were invented, to whom the un-
seemly work of creating and providing was entrusted, while the
Supreme Intelligence monopolized its beatific life, without a thought
of mortals. Into this " divine " life, men might be absorbed, but
related to it as personal co-sharers never! Out of such an in-
tellectual environment, needless to say, the concept of the beatific
vision could not have come. And when it did burst out of the
Christian movement as a new star in a sky that had so few, it
shone in a darkness that for the most part no more comprehended
it then than now.
There are some who have tried to show that the Christian idea
of personal union and communion with God was borrowed from
Neo-Platonism. But all that they have succeeded in establishing
is a certain amount of literary resemblance. The idea of a mystic
union with God through love received a clear expression from the
pen of Clement of Alexandria, who died before Plotinus was in his
teens. So that if any borrowing was done, it must be charged to
Plotinus and his successors, who had the pages of the Scriptures
and the writings of such as Clement to consult. And then again,
the Christian Alexandrian did not need to borrow. He had before
his eyes the revealed concept of the beatific vision, 2 which declared
*Matt. xviii. 10; i Cor. xiii, 13; i John iii. 2.
1916.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE 469
that He Whom he now saw as in a mirror darkly, would later,
face to face, be seen. This quite naturally suggested to devout
and ardent souls from the very dawn of Christianity the idea of
experiencing through love, in the present life, that intimate personal
union which Christ had promised for the next. St. Paul himself
wished to depart and be with Him Who struck him from his horse
on the road to Damascus. Christian mysticism, Christian gnosis
of a distinct and special kind was contained in the revealed concept
of the beatific vision and suggested by the special idea of personal
union which the faithful had. It is a domestic product, not a
foreign importation. It was their own distinctively Christian
knoidedge that the mystics wished to turn into experience, when
they sought through love to anticipate the joys of sight. They were
exploring the Personal Reality Whom Christ had preached and
taught, not the lower, naturalistic religious conceptions of the
heathen world about.
The Neo-Platonic movement at most and at best represents the
exaggeration and debasement of a distinctly Christian concept. Its
fine language, its suggestive imagery had a literary influence on
the development of Christian mysticism; but that it was the origin-
ating source, the actual well from which the Christian mystic drew
his notion of personal union with God through love in this life, and
through undimmed vision in the next not even Harnack could
prove such plagiarism a fact of history, though dear knows he
spared no efforts to that end.
The same may be said of the supposed borrowing of the notion
of " union with the Divine," from the liturgy of Mithraism. No
document of that cult exists, older than the beginning of the fourth
century of the Christian era, in Diocletian's time. Generously al-
lowing two hundred years off this for the development of the ideas
contained in the Parisian papyrus, we are still well within the pos-
sibility of Christian influence on its composition. Even Dietrich 3
disclaims any intention of proving the historical dependence of
Christianity on the liturgy of Mithra, and urgently requests that he
be not so interpreted, having previously consoled himself with the
reflection that sometime in the future, documents will be discovered,
clearly revealing Christianity and Mithraism as both no more than
outgrowths of an ancient pagan cult. 4 Hopes, however, are not
proofs. Nor is there the least likelihood in the present instance
that they ever will be. There was no idea of union with God on the
*Eine Mithrasliturgie, Leipzig, 1903, p. 95. *Op. cit., pp. 44, 45.
470 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE [July,
personal, social plane of intimacy and friendship either expressed
or implied, in any of the ancient philosophies, liturgies, or religions.
The glory of that sublime conception is Christianity's alone.
The transcendence of the Christian idea of union with God is
not surprising. We should be led to expect as much, from the
exceptional character of all the distinctively Christian ideas. No
man can point out in the faith Christ taught a single religious con-
ception that was not elevated and transformed by its contact with
His person. Jewish Messianism, pagan ideas of union with the
Divine, baptism, rebirth, penance, or what not else, received from
His lips a meaning they never knew before. The dreadful mistake
that critics make is in viewing Christ as the initiator of a new
religious movement, and in not seeing that He is also, and princi-
pally, the revealer of a mystery. " If Jesus had only been the
initiator of a new religious movement, and not in any way the
revealer of a mystery, His disciples never would have translated
their religious emotions into those new beliefs, so disconcerting, and
yet at the same time so coherent and so high." 5 Take the custom
of the sacramental meal among pre-Christian peoples. The fellow-
ship it expressed was between the participants, not between the
participants and God. The idea of salvation which it inculcated
was the forfeiture, not the perfecting, of personality. It has no
more resemblance to the Eucharist than the modern science of
astronomy to the astrology of the ancients. Here as elsewhere
it is the differences, not the resemblances, that count. So that the
prodigious labor of working up the resemblances of Christianity
to other cults, by Dietrich, Pfleiderer, Holzmann and others all
with a view to discrediting the former religion by its outivard likes
and similars, is labor lost and purpose unachieved.
For the point to be proven is the continuance in Christianity
of the old religious conception of man's union with God. Can any
one establish that thesis historically? Not until he can prove .that
Christianity has no higher idea of this union than the one that
prevailed in the heathen world. We have already shown from his-
tory that Christianity has an immeasurably higher conception of it,
and that this is what really constitutes its superior dignity and
worth. A new religion, basing itself on the distinct, special, and
revealed relation of man's union with God on the mutual plane of
personality, raised to the dignity of friendship, would naturally re-
peat, in expressing itself, many of the rites, devotions, and prac-
s Les Origines du Dogme de la Sainte Trinite. Par J. Lebreton. Preface, p. xxiii.
1916.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE 471
tises of religions based on the general relation of creature to
Creator. The expression of supernatural religion would thus re-
sult in resemblances to the natural religions it had transcended,
transformed and overcome. But that is not to say that the religions
thus resembling are identical in origin and principle, or that the
old rites have been taken bodily over and made a permanent part
of the superseding cult. Such a statement is not history, and in
the minds of those who make it, the understanding of what con-
stitutes originality does not seem to be very clear.
What would these critics? Is their idea of the originality of
a religion a complete disparity between it and all religions other?
What warrant have they for thus identifying " original " with
" dissimilar ? " Cannot origins be distinct, and the derivatives
therefrom resemble? Is the originality of the American Republic
to be questioned, because it has features that can be found in those
of Greece and Rome? Is it not enough to discover differences of
soul beneath the resemblances of body differences of principle
amid the similarity of detail? Should not the comparison be of
wholes, and not of fragments torn from their total respective con-
texts in which alone their distinctness lies? Difference, not dis-
parateness, constitutes originality. Newness of thought is its dis-
tinguishing mark, not oddity of development. The original and
the peculiar are not necessarily one. Why, then, recite the resem-
blances of Christianity to the other religions why not cling to the
point and show that these other religions had the same genetic idea
and informing principle? The new wine of Christianity cannot be
poured back into the old bottles of paganism, neither can these
latter be refilled with it they would burst asunder in the process,
as the Master Himself said they would, in the parable of the gourds.
The conclusion to which this long series of considerations has
brought us is the originality of the Christian doctrine of life and
conception of religion. This conclusion will be disputed. Nothing
escapes that fate in these speculative, unhistorical, and prejudging
times. But if the reader will take care to note that the method of
disputing it consists in a forced attempt to lift pagan thought up
to Christian levels, by detaching a phrase here and there, and filling
it with a meaning it cannot be proved to have had in the minds of
its original employers, he will not mistake interpolation for history,
but forearm himself mentally against those who would deprive him
of his historical sense as they have deprived themselves of theirs,
to win a point against revealed religion.
472 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE [July,
Of all the religions in the world, the last that could be described
as a syncretism or amalgam is the Christian. First of all, the
Apostles were, as Fairbairn says, too completely ignorant of other
theologies and philosophies to be affected by them. 6 Nor can this
fact be offset by supposing that a sufficient period of time elapsed
before the writing of the Gospel, to allow of their becoming tech-
nically acquainted with the religions of the heathen world. The
most that has been, the most that can be, proven is that the old
pagan terms were in general circulation, pretty much as the bio-
logical phrases concerning " heredity," " survival of the fittest,"
" variation," and the like, are now used by speakers and writers
who have no technical acquaintance with the science of biology itself.
The Apostles were conversant with these terms in the popular, not
in the technical sense, and might well have used them with telling
effect to carry the new Christian idea into the minds of those
infested with the old pagan notion of absorption into the Divine.
" It is sheer hypothesis," says Professor Kennedy, " to ascribe to
Paul any direct acquaintance with Mystery-ideas through the
medium of literature;" and he goes on to add, after a long and
detailed investigation, that there is practically no phrase used in
the Pauline vocabulary, for which a source cannot be found in the
Old Testament, 7 without recourse to the Mystery-Religions at all.
Nor is this the only reason for believing that Christianity is
original. The way it began and grew furnishes a decisive refuta-
tion of the whole syncretist theory. The Christian religion started,
not as an "articulated skeleton of doctrine," 8 but as an empirical
intuition of the divinity of Christ Jesus, and it did not explicitly
grasp all that this intuition contained, for hundreds of years. The
critics overlook these historical facts, and deceive the faithful by
their unscholarly oversights and incompetence-. Obsessed by the
fallacy that similarity of terms implies identity of ideas, they
invite the reader to share their obsession, never proving anything,
always taking connections for granted, ever supposing without his-
torically establishing the truth of the things supposed. Will you
ever find them stating that Christianity is the outgrowth of a unique
historical Person, and that in consequence of this fact it must first
be studied particularly, not comparatively? Will you ever find
them admitting that it grew, not by personifying the object of its
worship, but by exploring the wonders of His historical Person and
'The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 518.
'St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions. By H. A. A. Kennedy. Pp. IT 8, 154.
Italics ours. 8 Fairbairn, op. cit., p. 518.
I9i6.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE 473
teaching? Man's historical sense is slipping. See that yours keeps
fast to its moorings, with an extra anchor out to windward, where
the winds of doctrine blow.
How was the new idea of man's union and communion with
God received ? With inexpressible joy. Martyrs died for the New
Life, and maidens gave over their bodies to be burned for it, who
would not have sacrificed a little finger for the whole pantheon
of the pagan gods. The thought it roused in all minds and hearts
was the thought of the condescension, the generosity, the prodigality
of God's goodness in sharing His life with man in the intimacy
of a personal friendship forever to endure. God had treated man
far above his lowly rights and poor deservings generosity was the
term on every lip, and it set the world afire, kindling a new morality,
reacting on all the social standards of the time, creating a larger
perspective for judging men, movements, and events, crowding
selfishness to the wall, and letting charity soften justice in a way
the world had not known before. The Greek Fathers explained the
New Life under the formula of " deification," taking care to rid
the phrase of the false association it had contracted from its
use in the Mystery-Cults. " Gift " was the favorite expression
among the Latin Fathers the unprecedented gift, the sublime ex-
ample of God's complete and unreserved self -giving unto men. It
was the bestowal of a bounty, the conferral of a privilege, to which
man had no right or claim. When the barbarian hordes overran
Europe with fire and sword, the New Life was preached to them.
It tamed the savage spirit in their breasts, and was veritably the
leaven that helped powerfully in socializing this vast mass of un-
assimilated human material. It embodied " the good news " of the
Gospel, and had about it a grandeur that proved a great social
force in democratizing humanity spiritually, long before its social
democratization could have come. It suggested the greatest synthe-
sis of human thought that has ever been attempted nature and
grace, miracle and natural law, teleology of nature and teleology of
man. It brought eternal values into the lowliest deeds done in
time. It made a spiritual success possible in a life where temporal
ventures are for many doomed to failure. It promised something
to the cripple and the outcast, that could be won independently of
the great social accidents of health, wealth, position, success, and
power. There never was, and there never will be on this earth, a
universal democracy like that which the Supernatural offers.
In the thirteenth century, the unique character of the Christian
474 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE [July,
conception of man's union with God, the transcendence, in other
words, of the idea of the beatific vision, struck the theologians of
the time as something so extraordinary, revelation alone could have
been its source. And the writer of these pages is free to confess
that it has truly and freshly struck him in like manner, when,
wading through the bewildering mass of material gathered from all
quarters by the modern Comparative Science of Religions, he saw
it suddenly loom up before him as the solution of all the so-called
" evidences " which this science has of late been urging against the.
originality of the Christian faith. For, where will you find this
noble and transcendent idea of man's future, this sublime concep-
tion of the function of religion and the meaning of life? Will you
find it in the Eleusinian or Orphic mysteries, with their promise of
"everlasting" life to those who commune with some deity during
their earthly span of years ? There is no reason to believe, and no
one has ever been able to prove, that the pagan mysteries at any time
taught monotheism or saw in " everlasting " life any more than a
purely human immortality and happiness. Will you discover the
idea in the ancient sacrificial meal where the communicant is sup-
posed to receive supernatural powers from the entrance of some
deity or other into his spirit? Monotheism is again lacking. The
relation of man to God as person to person, of human beings
actually sharing the divine life and having it createdly reproduced
within them, is nowhere discoverable. Nay, there is a dim con-
sciousness, ever growing clearer, that perfect union with God is
possible only through a divine sacrifice in reparation for sin. Six
centuries before Christ the search for this perfect sacrifice began
afresh the thought that it had to come was in the mind of the
race from the first toddling steps of its infancy. Clement and Cy-
prian tell us that in an effort to find it, they tried all the mysteries
of Greece in vain. 9 That divine sacrifice, that " perfect union of
man with God " Christianity alone has, alone has claimed to have,
of all the religions that have been. Let the critic explain how it was
that Christianity dared put forth that colossal claim, if the mystery
which Christ revealed was made up of an amalgam of pagan no-
tions, instead of being the fulfillment of that dim and dumb expecta-
tion of mankind existing from the beginning, which linked the
thought of the sacramental meal with the thought of the divine sacri-
fice, whereby alone could man's perfect union and communion with
the one and only God be brought about. Personal assimilation to the
9 'Introduction to the History of Religion. By F. B. Jevons. Page 414.
1916.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE 475
very life of God Himself where will you unearth this idea of as-
similative union in the ancient religions, and yet Christianity starts
out by preaching it as the raison d'etre of every thing within its bosom.
Who of all the pre-Christian folk, primitive or .ancient, ever had
the Christian idea that we are made partakers of God's nature by
grace, of His knowledge by faith, of His power by hope, of His
goodness by charity? And who among them ever dreamt that
God's life was to be communicated to us over and above our own?
If Eleusis knew that, would its sacred drama have consisted of
choral odes and dances? And if Eleusis also knew that this per-
sonal sharing in God's personal life is the meaning of the sacra-
ments, the fruits of the sacrifice, the reason of the mysteries; and
could someone have told the Eleusinians that the sacramentals holy
water and all the rest were instituted as constant reminders of this
our personal union and communion with the beatifying Lord of all,
to Whom we are knit by the ties of a personal friendship, and not
by the shackles of the one-time fearsome slave; and could someone
still further have informed them that all the external acts of religion
are either an expression of this exalted personal union with God
or an incitation thereunto the expression and the incitation having
no other origin, end, or aim than to conserve, foster and develop
that special divine life, of which Christ is the sacrificial author, God
the bestower, and the Church the channel do you think that the
poor devotee of Demeter, lacchus, and Persephone would start
prating about the resemblances of the Christian religion to the
ancient cults, or fill his soul with the redeeming joy of the world-
wide difference between the two? To imagine Christianity in-
spired, directed, controlled, or originally influenced in its beliefs,
practices, and devotions, by the lower motives of religion in general,
by the naturalistic conception of union with God, by the " magic
theory "of the sacraments, by the superstitious use of the sacra-
mentals, by the mumbo-jumbo of Hottentot and Polynesian, is the
grossest misconception and calumny that ever claimed the patron-
age of history or the verdict of science.
We were speaking of the thirteenth century and the profound
impression made upon its thought by the idea of the beatific vision.
The uniqueness of the notion was not immediately detected. Time
and reflection were required before it stood out clearly in the galaxy
of revealed concepts as no ordinary star. Hugh of St. Victor,
Peter the Lombard, William of Auxerre, and William of Paris
caught glimpses of its commanding significance and worth. But it
476 THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE [July,
was reserved for Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and St.
Thomas, 10 to cast the discovery into scientific form. Humanity
had its own excellence, they said, and could be studied in itself,
apart from revelation and from grace. It might have been created
for a purely human destiny, and never have been raised above that
level; in which case, it would have had its own life to live, and for
that its naturally inherent powers would suffice. But to have its life
assimilated to the life of God, it would have to be reequipped with
an assimilative principle proportionate thereunto, and this principle
is grace, not nature. To live the life of God manifestly requires
more than to live the life of man. To be united with God in the
perfect personal union of friendship, man had to have the power
and capacity for this union created within him. It did not natur-
ally exist, his powers of nature having been given him to live
his own life, not God's. And so the wondrous thought stood out,
that the New Life spoken of in the Gospel is a special and super-
added life. It has its own sources, motives, receptivities, and
powers it is a higher life which man is free to take or leave at
will. Did he choose to remain on a human level, he might do so,
but were that his choice, no development awaited him after death.
Friendship offered and spurned has its consequences, and these it
lies in no man's power to command or change. Out of reflections
such as these, based, not on the general history of religion but on
the special history of Christianity, the technical, scientific concept
of the supernatural took form and grew. This scientific concept is
the intellectual equivalent of the Gospel phrases. It refunds into
the empirical descriptions of the New Life therein set forth. The
unfailing testimony of the Fathers, especially those of the East,
stand sponsor for it in beauties of speech and ardor of soul that
betray no lessening. It is no invention of scholastic subtlety, no cre-
ation of minds pious; and those who think most lightly of it should
remember the words of Kant, repeated later by Professor James, to
the effect that a gambler's choice is final, and no recalling knows.
Time wore on, and with its wearing the modern chapter of our
story came. The New Life ceased to be a reality, it became first an
external relation, then an ethical ideal, and finally sank out of recog-
nition among philosophers generally. How this extinction came
about, and to what influence it was due, may be briefly told in closing.
The Lutheran doctrine of original sin was a travesty on the
traditional Christian view. It portrayed man as having lost his
10 JLa Dogmatique, Scheeben. Traduction Belet. III., pp. 499 ff.
I9i6.] THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF LIFE 477
spiritual faculties of intellect and will in consequence of the Fall;
and what more feasible in a theology so aberrant than to supple-
ment this misconception with another, which declared that Chris-
tianity had actually restored these never lost spiritual powers of
man? The effect of this loss-restoration theory the falsest ever!
was to identify the supernatural with the natural spiritual life of
the human soul; and once that identification became accepted, it
meant that the religion of Christ had forfeited its chief claim to
originality and distinction. Grace ceased to be regarded as that
distinct, special, superadded, supernatural life which had been the
joy of a united Christendom from Pentecost to the Reformation.
Natural mysticism was the first form which this identification
process took. A certain portion of the soul, it was claimed, had es-
caped deterioration when man fell. The depravity preached by
Luther was not total some progress still was possible owing to the
divine spark that survived within. The cultivation of this " divine
region of the soul " lasted a long time in the Theologia Germanica.
But when Hegel, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, pro-
posed the theory of indefinite progress, the doctrine of the un-
limited perfectibility of man, the liberalist Protestant movement
attached itself at once to this most hopeful emotion and substituted
it for the traditional Christian concept of the supernatural life.
History not only began to be read in the light of this theory of
Hegel's, the future also began to be projected on its screen. So-
cialism, Utopian and scientific, thrust the idea of individuality aside.
The old pagan conception of the individual as a mere fraction in the
unity of the State again received assertion. Personality, both hu-
man and divine, disappeared in the impersonal philosophies of
idealism. Existential judgments were abandoned, and value-judg-
ments proposed as a stop-gap in their stead. The organization of
life under the idea of a personal God was broken up. Religion
became identified with mysticism, as it had been in pre-Christian
days. The old mystic notion of " union with deity " in the sense
of transformation and absorption into the Divine, was proposed by
Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Emerson, and a host of others too numer-
ous to mention singly. The idea of personality which had cut
Christianity clear from all religions other was extinguished. The
lovers and choosers of their human heritage had spurned the addi-
tional offer of a heritage divine, and with that spurning went out of
general recognition the most inspiring and the most disciplining con-
ception of life that had ever emerged in the history of humanity.
FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL.
BY COMTESSE DE COURSON.
HOSPITAL for wounded soldiers is not only a first-
rate school for learning lessons of patience; it is
also, from another standpoint, an excellent means for
acquiring a clearer knowledge of the French peasant
or workman at his best. Our stricken fighting men
are ennobled by their conscientious performance of a supreme duty,
and chastened by the suffering that was its immediate consequence;
on these receptive Latins the effect of both the duty and the pain is
remarkable, especially when to these influences is added that of a
hospital, where professional skill, gentle kindness and a religious
spirit go hand in hand.
It often came to me as a surprise to remember that before the
war, these docile, prayerful soldiers were merely rough peasants
or workmen, absorbed by the daily " struggle for life." Those of
whom I write, with whom I have been in touch, almost daily, for
nearly two years, are not a select few, set apart for their merits.
They were brought to the hospital, where I made their acquaintance,
by the order of the military doctors of the "gare regulatrice," where
the wounded soldiers from the front are told off to the different
Paris hospitals.
Thus, taken at random, these obscure fighting men, of whom
we only knew when they arrived that they were sick or wounded,
may be truly said to represent the average French peasant or
artisan. Among our stricken guests, all the French provinces are
sampled and when, day after day, I noticed how distinctly the char-
acteristic traits of the Norman, Breton, Provencal or Parisian were
revealed, I realized, once again, how logical and sensible was the
ancient division of France into provinces, how meaningless the
monotonous " departements ! "
The hospital, to which I refer, stands in a shady garden and
is directed by nuns, fully trained and certificated, who in times of
peace nursed the sick poor of the busy suburb, where they have been
established for over half a century. They rule their charges with
a tactful hand, and the mere presence of these disciplined, soft
I9i6.] FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL 479
spoken, gentle Sisters, creates an orderly and kindly atmosphere
that influences both their lay helpers and their patients.
There is a sensation of being " at home " in our hospital, and
the men feel it keenly : " on est ici en famille," they repeat, and
their attitude is that of docile, well-behaved children over and over
again. A surly and suspicious patient has visibly altered in this
friendly atmosphere; in a few weeks the charm works and the un-
gracious newcomer not only fits into the picture, but, after leaving
the place, writes letters that prove the impression received was
more than skin deep.
The arrival of our patients is always a moment of poignant
interest. I remember how, in December, 1914, in the afternoon,
an ambulance car stopped at the door. In it were four soldiers
stricken with typhoid fever, but the ward for fever cases being
full, the nuns regretfully declined to receive these newcomers.
Then from the car issued imploring voices : " We are driven from
one hospital to another, we are so weary, ma soeur, do take us !" The
appeal could not pass unheeded, room was made for the tired men,
whom the sodden trenches of Champagne had reduced to this
pitiable condition.
One of them, a young soldier from New Caledonia, was to find
not only bodily health, but also spiritual life within the hospital,
and we may believe that his Guardian Angel prompted the Sister's
charitable acquiescence to his admission. The son of an unbelieving
father, who had married a Protestant, the lad had not been bap-
tized; he had grown up in a respectable and hard-working atmos-
phere, but outside any religious influence.
Once, in Champagne, just before an important attack, a soldier-
priest stood up in the trench, where George L and his com-
rades were waiting for the signal : " We are to go forward," he
said, " we have a strenuous duty to perform, kneel down, make an
act of contrition, and I will give you a general absolution."
George L did like the rest, when he bowed his head under
the priest's hand. The solemn Latin words that he did not under-
stand seemed, nevertheless, to bring the message of another and
happier life beyond the one that he was about to risk. The memory
of the incident haunted him and, on arriving at the hospital, he
asked for a catechism and studied it assiduously. This thoughtful
boy assimilated the different points of doctrine with marvelous
facility.
Our chaplain is not only a learned, but a prudent, priest, and
480 FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL [July,
the would-be convert was left to make his way freely and de-
liberately towards the fold of the Universal Mother. The workings
of his mind are expressed in an account of his conversion written
by himself; it ends thus: " From being only a French soldier, I am
now a soldier of Christ. His Cross is the flag that I must carry
and defend; I will keep my promises and never be a deserter,
a traitor or a coward." George L was baptized in the hos-
pital chapel on March 6, 1915, and the next day he made his First
Communion. The boy's earnest face and the happy look in his eyes
were good to see. A banquet, where the hero of the day sat at the
place of honor, and a solemn Benediction, where our soldiers sang
patriotic " cantiques " in the flowered and lighted chapel, crowned
the festivities. "A day like to-day ought never to end," said a
wounded soldier, on whom the cordial spirit of the " fete " made a
deep impression.
Among the wounded men from Arras, who arrived in June,
1915, was a Parisian; he had spent three days in a hole made by
shells. There, gravely wounded, suffering cruelly from thirst, he
would have died, alone and uncared for, if one of his comrades had
not crawled up to him at night and dragged him away. This
stricken soldier was eventually finally cured, after months of care-
ful nursing; he was before the war " marchand de quatre saisons,"
and helped his old mother to push a hand barrow full of vegetables
through a Paris suburb. " It is a nice trade," he often remarked,
" even if I limp, even with a wooden leg, I can keep it."
The maimed and suffering soldiers who came to the hospital
after the offensive of last September were in excellent spirits.
Months of fighting with no apparent result, weeks of comparative
inaction in trenches, where they shiver and soak, depress our men.
An attack in the open, a hand to hand fight fires their spirit, and the
knowledge that, on a given point, they have been distinctly vic-
torious makes suffering and death acceptable. Among these Sep-
tember arrivals were some very young soldiers, whose faces lit up
when they described the advance of September 25th; one was a
middle-aged adjutant, who had escaped from a prisoner's camp in
Germany, with a map and a compass in his pocket. Walking at
night, hiding in the day, feeding on raw vegetables that he picked
up in the fields, he reached Holland, was shipped to England, and
thence hurried back to the French front.
At first our men are silent, except the Parisians, whose
war stories must be taken with a certain reserve. The more timid
I 9 i6.] FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL 481
peasants have to be tactfully encouraged to talk; it is only after
weeks of intercourse that they really feel at home. We soon dis-
cover that the subject nearest their heart is their home, the par-
ticular corner of France where they work, live and die. In certain
unproductive regions, the country folk are often tempted to desert
the country and flock to Paris. In general, however, they are pas-
sionately attached to their soil, and lovers of the land are more
numerous than its deserters. Among our fighting men, the fact
cannot be disputed.
" I wonder how the harvest is getting on at home," said a
laconic territorial from the north. Part of his shoulder was blown
away. He lay with wide open eyes, that saw, beyond the dull hos-
pital walls, the waving corn fields, where old men and women were
feebly grappling with difficulties brought on by the war.
" I am thinking that close to my house the fields of violets are in
bloom," said an unintelligent and reticent southerner, who only be-
came animated when we touched on his " petite patrie." Unseen
violets, basking in the sunshine of Provence, glorified the hospital
atmosphere where this silent soldier lay dreaming.
Another southerner, after many months spent among us,
volunteered to describe his home. From that day the ice was broken
between us, and I was treated as a privileged friend of this par-
ticular region. His black eyes lit up when he described the olive
fields, the fruit trees, the flowing rivers, the hills covered with
aromatic plants, that give perfume and flavor to the famous honey
of Narbonne.
Another pleasant characteristic of our men is their affection
for their officers. " If the officer is good, the men are good," said
one. " My officer saved my life," remarked another, whose wound
had been dressed in the trench by his lieutenant. " Our Captain
was like a father," added his neighbor, " he tried to make us suffer
as little as possible and never sent us into danger if he could help
it ; he always risked more than we did and, because our post was a
dangerous one, he saw to it that we should have proper food and
clothes. We would have followed him anywhere."
Our men are generally good soldiers, if they are not all heroes.
Some write to the Sisters that if the choice were offered to them,
they would rather return to the hospital than go to the front.
This may be only a delicate acknowledgment of the kindness with
which they were treated; at any rate, it is a fact that when at the
front even the gray-haired territorials are simply heroic. " I
VOL. cm. 31
482 FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL [July,
have seen them," said an officer, "march to almost certain death;
tears sometimes rolled down their cheeks when they thought of the
lives dependent on them, but I never saw them flinch or hang back
or hesitate." The fighting spirit of their race springs into flame on
the battlefield, and these peaceable gardeners, vine growers and
farmers become the admirable soldiers that are now, and for months
past have been, holding Verdun.
I remember how a " Bordelais," not a soldier, but a vine
grower by profession, described the tragic retreat of August, 1914,
with the enemy in close pursuit : "We were so sleepy that three of us
walked arm in arm, with the agreement that the middle one should
sleep as he walked, supported by his comrades, who then took
their turn. When we were close to Paris, we were told to turn
about and attack. We forgot completely that we were hungry
and sleepy, and ran forward as if we were going to a wedding."
Our soldiers in the hospital are like big children, easily pleased
and amused. The Sisters never lose an opportunity of giving them
a treat; one day, in early spring, all those who could do so,
went to St. Cloud, under the care of the superintendent and
doctor of the establishment. They went and returned by train ; the
lamest and weakest motored. They came back wild with delight,
carrying cowslips and violets, having been made much of by Sisters
belonging to the same order as their kind nurses. The suburbs of
Paris, decked in their spring garb, seemed a paradise to these men,
some of whom had spent months within the walls of a hospital,
and their peasant souls revived in the free air and bright sunshine
of that memorable outing.
Occasionally, tickets are sent to the superintendent for con-
certs or matinees, which, although they do not always thoroughly
understand, our men conscientiously admire. Visits to the " Musee
des armees," at the " Invalides " are always a success, and the
sight of trophies taken from the enemy a delight; another kind of
excursion once gave them a pleasure that goes far to show how
receptive is the Latin temperament. Our chaplain, who knows
every stone of ancient Paris, occasionally takes a group of men to
visit some old churches in the fast changing quarters on the left
bank of the river. Thus the Carmelite Convent, in the rue
Vaugirard, where in- September, 1791, over one hundred priests and
three bishops were murdered under circumstances extraordinarily
pathetic and tragic, is comparatively unaltered, and to it our chaplain
has often conducted our soldiers. They come back much impressed,
1916.] FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL 483
and their comments show that they completely entered into the
spirit of the visit. It not only interested them deeply they
naturally love an emotion and a drama, but it may, we secretly
hope, correct past impressions on the subject of the " glorious "
Revolution. A visit to Versailles, where their guide carefully ex-
plained the history of the Palace, may have the same effect. Our
chaplain was amused at the professional interest with which some of
them, who are workmen, examined the woodwork, gilding, floor-
ing of Louis XIV.'s state apartments. " How well the people of
those days worked," they said. Their guide promptly seized the
occasion to explain that contrary to what is taught in the French lay
schools, civilization, art and industry were not the product of 1789.
The old France that built Versailles had its grandeur and its glory,
as our men could see for themselves.
Under the direction of a musical Sister who knows how to
stimulate their good will and to bring out their hidden gifts, our
soldiers take a leading part in the singing in the chapel, where
spirited " cantiques," adapted to the time of war, remind them of
their past trials and future perils. Again, at the procession of
Corpus Christi last June, our men worked vigorously to prepare an
altar in keeping with a military hospital. They surrounded it with
guns, swords and helmets and, of course, a generous display of
flags. The day of the procession was absolutely cloudless, and it
was pathetic to see, lying or sitting round the altar, the more gravely
wounded. Upon these broken men, whose future in many cases is
overshadowed forever, the Blessed Sacrament, carried in solemn
procession, bestowed its helpful benediction. I remember how, at
that moment, the trenches, their perils and hardships, seemed very
far away! All was brightness, flowers, music, peace and joy; the
horrors of war were hidden by the Presence of the Son of Peace.
Yet, a few minutes later, I was met face to face with the
anguish that war brings in its train : standing in the entrance hall
of the hospital, waiting till the procession was over, was an old
couple from Poitou; he in a "blouse," she in a tight-fitting
" coiffe," and both bowed with grief ! Their son had been brought
to us from Arras, grievously wounded, and on hearing the news
they hurried to Paris. They told us, in halting words, how they
were once the happy parents of three sons : " Better boys you never
saw; they loved us and loved our farm." Of the three, one was
killed, one had been wounded and was just recovering, the other lay
upstairs stricken unto death. When they were taken to his bedside,
FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL [July,
the three sobbed together; the soldier, a brave man, who had won
the " croix de guerre," was the gentlest of patients : " merci, priez
pour moi," he kept saying, and when we saw his parents we under-
stood that his home training had fostered the gratitude, respect and
religious faith that made him so sympathetic. A slight improve-
ment having taken place in his condition, his parents, whose farm
was left empty, went home. But a month later he grew worse,
and, although wired for, the old people arrived too late. At the
last the dying man's mind wandered, only his love for and thought
of his parents remained clear: " Tell them that I love them; I want
'maman/ " he kept repeating.
When, at last, they came from their far-away village, they
found that, like all the fighting men who pass away at our hospital,
their son lay under the big crucifix, framed by tri-colors, that, since
October, 1914, has looked pitifully down upon eleven dead soldiers.
His bandaged head and injured face at rest, his hands clasped over
his rosary, his sufferings over! The old people knelt down and
sobbed, and it seemed too pitiful for words that grief and loss such
as theirs should be multiplied thousands of times throughout the
fields of France!
Our patients being Latins, naturally delight in patriotic
speeches, spirited war songs, " cantiques " with a martial ring, flags
waving in the sunshine. Several among them, to whom the " croix
de guerre " and " medaille militaire " have been awarded for dis-
tinguished service, were privileged to receive their decorations in
the hospital itself, at the hands of a general officer delegated for
the purpose by the Governor of Paris. The programme of the cere-
mony is always the same, but it never fails to impress our men and
their friends. Our first " decore " was an Algerian soldier ; then,
two months ago, three Frenchmen were so honored; one had lost
his foot, another his memory, the third, quite a young fellow, was
hopelessly lame and partially paralyzed. Our last " decore," a
gardener from Normandy, lost his right arm at Arras; this quiet,
peaceable man is, his " citation " proves it, a hero in his way; since
his arrival among us not a word of complaint ever passed his
lips, only expressions of gratitude for kindness received.
The ceremony took place on a radiant spring morning; the
lilacs and laburnums of the garden were in bud, and the fresh
young leaves stood out against the blue sky. All the men who
could walk, or even stand, were present and they marched past the
Commander who presided to the sound of " Sambre et Meuse."
1916.] FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL 485
Some were on crutches, others on sticks, their faded blue uniforms
telling of past hardships and dangers. The hero of the day bore
himself bravely, though his features quivered when the officer ad-
dressed him. Under the trees stood the kindly nuns, the friends of
the hospital, the nurses in their Red Cross uniforms and, best of
all, the " decore's " children : a rosy Norman maiden and a little
recruit of the " classe '15," keenly interested and innocently proud.
In after years when, as must happen, the maimed and stricken
soldier realizes his loss, the picture of an April morning, when his
sacrifice was fully recognized by his grateful country, will prove
a happy memory.
After the ceremony the directors of the hospital, the doctors,
friends and patients, assembled for a big banquet, where the hero
of the day occupied the place of honor. The nuns had adorned the
refectory, not only with flags and inscriptions, but with big bunches
of flowering gorse that brought before the dreamy eyes of a Breton
soldier visions of his native " landes," garbed in their spring
clothing of gold and green. On this and other occasions, the pathetic
group of our wounded soldiers manoeuvred under the command of
a tiny sergeant, whose diminutive height contrasted humorously
with his determined expression.
His story illustrated a fact to which we cling, when the horror
and the pain brought by the war press too heavily. This fact
is the wonderful dispensations of Providence that allow the war
and its attendant hardships to bring salvation and peace to many
ignorant souls. Our sergeant, the son of a Paris hairdresser, was
never baptized and brought up without any religion. " He shall
choose his own creed," said the father, who was early left a
widower. When the war broke out, L was rejected for active
military service on account of his height. Finding that his protesta-
tions were of no avail, he concealed himself in a train bound for the
front, and on arriving presented himself to the military authorities,
who impressed by his intelligent and determined attitude, finally
accepted him.
In the same company as L there happened to be a
soldier-priest, the Abbe R . He belonged to a religious Con-
gregation, and was studying in Rome when the war broke out.
He immediately returned to France, took up his military post at
the front, and soon acquired extraordinary influence over his com-
rades. In the intervals of his military duties, that he performed
excellently, he used to preach short sermons that delighted the sol-
486 FROM A PARIS HOSPITAL [July,
diers. Sometimes in a church, half destroyed by the shells, or else in
a barn or even in the open, he delivered spirited addresses, full of
faith and patriotism, that raised the men's souls above the weariness
and hardships of their daily routine. From these gatherings, L
carefully kept away, although, as he afterwards confessed, he felt
strongly attracted to the brave, cheerful and generous soldier-priest.
Sometimes he shed tears in secret, so great was his mental dis-
quietude, but foolish pride and shyness kept him back. At length,
one day last summer close to Arras, L made up his mind to
speak to Abbe R . He poured out his doubts, anxieties, as-
pirations, listened to his new friend's explanations, and finally de-
cided to ask for baptism. It was at the time of the famous attack
that, if it had succeeded, might have opened the road to Lille and
Lens, and L 's regiment, being ordered forward, the Abbe
baptized him that same day in a half ruined house, close to Arras.
Ten minutes afterwards, L was in the heart of the battle, his
soul illuminated by an extraordinary feeling of security and peace.
He fought like a lion till a German bomb disabled him, and obliged
him to lie for three days and nights in a big hole, after which,
with incredible difficulty, he crawled back to the French lines.
It was the Abbe R , then on leave in Paris, who supple-
mented the ceremonies of L 's baptism in the little chapel of
our hospital and, curiously enough, the young sergeant's father was
a well-satisfied spectator of the ceremony! The boy's recollected
expression, his firm voice, when he made the responses, delighted
us as much as the sympathetic personality of his friend, the soldier-
priest
Another month passed; one day when I arrived at the hos-
pital, I found our sturdy little soldier in tears : " I have lost more
than a friend," he sobbed, and he told me how the Abbe R
had been killed by a shell at the front, in Lorraine. A woman in
deepest mourning often came from that day to visit Sergeant
L . " It seems to me," she said, " as if in him I find something
of my dearest son," and the young convert, who had never known
his own mother, naturally took up a filial attitude towards
Madame R .
Incidents such as these illustrate how the workings of God's lov-
ing care for His children can draw good out of the evils of war; they
cast a ray of light upon the sea of pain that surrounds us, and lead
our thoughts from present suffering to future and lasting happiness.
HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW.
BY BLANCHE M. KELLY.
INCE the day when Saul of Tarsus set out upon the
road to Damascus, by how many and by what strange
ways men have come to the City of Peace ! Augus-
tine, drawn by the cords of a mother's love, came
" wearied out with delusions ;" Newman came with
inevitable steps along the Via Media to the highway of Rome;
Huysmans, through the lust of the eyes for beauty, attained to the
beholding of the Ancient Loveliness; Rette stumbled up the dark
paths of diabolism; Raupert fought his way through the danger-
fraught wastes of spiritism. But perhaps the exceeding wonder of
God's ways with souls is not so strikingly exemplified in any of
these as it is in the case of one who dwelt beside the gate of the
city all the years of his life, and only pushed it open with his
dying hands.
Robert Stephen Hawker, for many years Anglican vicar of
Morwenstow in Cornwall, died on the morning of August 15,
1875, and on the eve of his death he was received into the Catholic
Church. The storm of controversy aroused by this event was per-
haps a natural result, and need not be renewed here. Hawker's
tongue, which had never been slow at repartee, was silent in death,
and he could not reply to his accusers, but he had not left himself
without an apologia. It has been said of him, not with any sugges-
tion of reproach, that he was more of a poet than an apostle, and
there is scarcely a line of his poetry, much of which is of a very
high order indeed, which does not bear witness to his ardent love
for all that is Catholic, the love that begets belief.
This grandson of the Calvinist Dr. Hawker, to whom the Rev.
Richard Polwhele felt called upon to address a remonstrance
against his " fanaticism " in favoring the Methodists, was, in the
providence of God, sent shortly after ordination in the Estab-
lished Church to the parish of Morwenstow. His glebe was the
stow or station which St. Morwenna obtained from King Ethel-
wolf as " largess for God." And so in Cornwall of the saints, of
which the place names are a glorious litany, where the wells are
holy and the rocks are blessed, Hawker's soul settled down like
488 HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW [July,
a homing bird. The curtain is very thin which shuts off the unseen
from Celtic eyes, and he, by kinship of spirit and long dwelling in
lonely places, came to share that insight into "the supernatural which
distinguishes the race, and which enabled a Russian soldier, dying
on a recent battlefield, to be perfectly understood when he asked to be
made " Catholic like the Irish."
The shouting of the sea, in its perpetual attempts to carry
by storm the battlemented rocks of -Morwenstow, can be heard
to a great distance inland, and here in a rocky hut among the cliffs
Hawker made his verses. Small wonder that they are resonant
with the rumble of waves. They were not sailors' chanties, in the
manner of Masefield and Kipling, for this singer beheld the spirit
of God moving over the face of the waters. Indeed, for him, " the
earth was full of the mercy of the Lord." He heard His voice in
the sea (it was incomprehensible to him that Wordsworth could
not bear its face) ; the stars were His signal fires, the winds His
messengers. It was this bent of his mind which helped him to read
and translate into living speech the almost forgotten language of
symbolism, the language born of that faith which reared the great
cathedrals and thrust into oblivion by the un faith which pillaged
them. He displayed impatience when the moulding in his church
was referred to as a good specimen of zigzag. It was nothing of
the kind; it was the rippling of the lake of Genesareth, the breath-
ing of the spirit over the baptismal waters. This five-angled figure
was the seal of Solomon, " wherewith he ruled the demons," the
gargoyle's mocking mouth represented the "grin of Arius; " the
tower window set out of its proportional place in the wall betokened
the drooping of Our Saviour's head in the moment of His dying.
He had special predilection for the pentacle of Solomon, for with
the ichthys he used it as his personal seal, and there is constant
reference to it in his poems, notably in The Southern Cross, where
it appears as the star which led the Wise Men to Bethlehem.
His cosmogonic theories show the influence of Cabbalistic
studies. Space was a created thing, that cone-shaped part of God's
presence wherein the planets whirl, the fixed centre of which is the
star Alcyone. To the first and supernatural element wherewith it is
replenished he gives the name of "Numyne;" within this move
the grosser elements of light and air, and from it are derived the
substance and form of angels and all spiritual things. The Rabbinic
oracles have been interpreted as bearing witness so explicitly to
such Christian doctrines as the Trinity and the Redemption, that
I 9 i6.] HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW '489
numerous Cabbalists have been led thereby to embrace Christianity.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find them making use of Hawker's
lips for the praising of the " Mater et Filia Dei." It is very like
desecration to quote detached verses from Aisha Shechinah, a poem
which has been called "almost inspired," but it is well to remember
that the following lines preceded Francis Thompson's majestic
rhapsody, Assumpta Maria, by many years.
Lo! where they pause, with intergathering rest,
The Threefold and the One !
And lo! He binds them to her orient breast,
His manhood girded on.
The Zone, where two glad worlds for ever meet,
Beneath that bosom ran :
Deep in that womb, the conquering Paraclete
Smote Godhead on to man.
But he is never weary of singing the praises of this Lady Para-
mount. To him she is " Mary undefiled," or even, in the child-
like Cornish phrase, " Modryb Marya Aunt Mary." " A blush-
ing brown," he insisted, like the stem of the maiden-hair fern, was
the color of Our Lady's hair, and when the dogma of the Immacu-
late Conception was defined he triumphantly wore a silver medal
in commemoration of the vindication of his Lady's honor.
In Ephphata, written in 1840, although he asserted at the time
that his understanding of the sacramental presence was not that of
the " Roman dissenters," in the words of the blind man to the page,
who pities him in that he is unable to see the bread and wine trans-
figured by the splendor of the sunlight, he gives an adequate de-
fence of the " mystery of faith : "
Thou wilt behold, thy lips may share
All that the cup and paten bear ;
But life unseen moves o'er that bread,
A glory on that wine is shed ;
A light comes down to breathe and be,
Though hid, like summer suns, from me.
A Legend of the Hive is based on a Cornish superstition
which would prove, if proof were needed, that for blasphemy
there must be faith. In it is told how an old woman whose bees
would not swarm, stole the Sacred Host and placed it in the hive,
and how the " nation of the bees " reared a waxen shrine about it,
and there was heard
490 HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW [July,
From those golden cells
A sound as of some psaltery near,
Or soft and silvery bells ;
A low sweet psalm that grieved within
In mournful memory of that sin.
That Hawker eventually came to believe in the Real Presence
seems evident from two glorious lines in The Quest of the Sangraal,
where he speaks of
The selfsame Cup, wherein the faithful Wine
Heard God, and was obedient unto Blood.
This mystic had special devotion to the angels. The floor of
his church was strewn with sweet herbs " for angels to smell at ; "
he was convinced that they were his own familiar visitants; he
preached to his people of their guardianship, and in his verse he
sang of their hovering presences. " Ask God for strong angels,"
was his advice to a young man going up to Oxford. Next to St.
Morwenna he cherished a devotion to St. Cuthbert. He wore a
stole copied from one which had been found in the saint's tomb,
and remembering Hawker's fondness for the birds of the air, it is
interesting to recall the legend of the crows who, in nest-building
time, stole the thatch from St. Cuthbert's hut, and on being severely
reprimanded for the theft flew off in dismay, but returned after
three days to signify by their crestfallen demeanor their desire to
apologize. It is related that Hawker was at one time very desirous
of raising a crop of beans, but a scarecrow dressed up in his old
cassock only had the effect of attracting the jackdaws, who came in
their hosts to greet their friend.
But perhaps the most startling of all his devotions was that to
the Sacred Heart. On his coming to the church at Morwenstow,
which was one of the oldest in England, he found, to his great de-
light, carved on its oaken benches the symbolic cross and nails and
the heart pierced with a spear. It is a matter of record that Hawker
had woven into his sweater a crimson cross, to mark the place
where
The hard centurion's cruel spear
Smote His high heart.
It is conceded that all of Hawker's verse has not the ring
which proves it immortal coinage, but in The Quest of the Sangraal
he left " a magnificent fragment," which stirs the reader to the
conviction that here was a loss to Christian literature which cannot
I9i6.] HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW 491
be too deeply regretted. This chant was written six years before
the publication of Tennyson's treatment of the same theme, and if
there be any advantage in the comparison it is on the side of
Hawker. For he brought to the subject a vivid faith in the reality
of the Grail story, a qualification which the Laureate himself
acknowledged as requisite, and Alfred Nutt, perhaps the foremost
authority on the literature of the Grail, says that with the excep-
tion of Tennyson's Sir Galahad, Hawker's unfinished poem is " the
finest piece of pure literature in the cycle."
There was nothing of the neo-Celt about the vicar of Morwen-
stow, and probably the comparative researches of modern folk-
lorists, tending to show that the Grail cycle is a Christianization of
previously existing pagan legends, would have held little interest
for him. He dwelt among the cairns and tors which remembered
Arthur and his knights, and he would have cared nothing at all that
Galahad has his prototype in the Amadan Mor, and that Percival's
feats are paralleled by the boy-deeds of Finn. There is something
of the mid-Victorian gentleman about Tennyson's Arthur when he
stands up beside Hawker's towering " son of Uter and the Night."
True, we are not permitted to witness his demeanor up to the
hour of his " passing," but it is hard to connect pathos with his
heroic stature. This is one " in whose pulses beat a thousand
kings." His voice rings out above the bombarding sea, and silence
holds his warriors while he rallies them to the quest. Surely a
thunderous shout is his answer when he breaks off in the midst
of describing his Lord's Passion to exclaim :
Ha ! Sirs, had we been there,
They durst not have assayed their felon deed,
Excalibur had cleft them to the spine !
Hawker's Merlin is in reality an interpreter of portents and an
arbiter of doom, "the ashes of whole ages on his brow;" and his
knights are " a battle-shouldering kind."
In this poem Hawker dwells at length on a subject which al-
ways holds a fascination for him, the exploration of " the fields
of air " and the significance of " the four winds of God." For
to the ancients from whom he drew his lore the four quarters
of the world were dedicate. The West, in Hawker's phrase, is " a
Galilee, the shore of men," the North was demon-haunted, there
Storm broods, and battle breathes, and baleful fires
Shed a fierce horror.
492 HAWKER OF MO RW EN STOW [July,
On the South
Lord Jesu from His mighty tomb
Cast the dear shadow of His red right hand.
In the apportioning of the regions of the quest it is fitting that
Galahad, who achieves the Grail, should be allotted the East, for
this is " the source and spring of life and light."
In his Footsteps of the Former Men, which in a sense can scarcely
be called prose, he has a radiant passage explaining the symbolism
of burial : " Because the east, 'the gate of the morning,' is the kebla
of Christian hope we place our departed ones with their heads
westward, and their feet and faces towards the eastern sky that
at the outshine of the Last Day, and the sound of the archangel,
they may start from their dust like soldiers from their sleep and
stand up before the Son of Man suddenly." But the clergy, who
are to sit with Christ in judgment, were buried in contrary posture.
" It was to signify that it should be their office to arise and to
'follow the Lord in the air,' when He shall arrive from the east
and pass onward gathering up His witnesses toward the west."
No notice of the vicar of Morwenstow would be complete
without at least a passing reference to his eccentricities of character.
His dress, whether liturgical or otherwise, was extraordinary.
While performing his official functions he wore a purple cope and
scarlet gloves, and his customary daily attire was a poncho, which
he called " St. Padarn's vestment," and a pink brimless hat. By
his own confession he was a shy, nervous man, not lacking, how-
ever, in what Hans Christian Andersen claimed for himself, " the
courage of a poet." He was prodigally generous, a prodigious
smoker, and was quite without the efficient virtues. He was
credited with sharing all the picturesque superstitions of his flock,
but there is more than a hint of the tongue in the cheek as he
regales his Saxon friends with old wives' tales. For he had a ro-
bust sense of humor. It might be said of him, as Bacon said of
Blessed Thomas More, that "all his life he had an excellent vein in
jesting." Sometimes this was exhibited in what seems to those with
half beliefs a fierce intolerance. But though Hawker may have be-
lieved only half of what his Church stood for, it could never be
said that he had a half belief in anything. Wesley, he used to say,
had persuaded the Cornish people to change their vices. On one
occasion a Nonconformist minister said he presumed that Hawker
would object to burying a Dissenter. " On the contrary," said the
I9i6.] HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW 493
vicar, " I should be too happy to bury you all." One of his stags
had attacked a Rev. Mr, Knight, and when his bishop expressed
surprise that he allowed the animal to live : " Oh, there is no harm
done, my lord," said he, " he is a very Low Church parson." He
was fond of telling a story about a servitor who dreamed he had
gone to hell, and when his master asked him what conditions there
prevailed, replied : " Oh, pretty much the same as upon earth, the
gentlefolks nearest the fire."
Hawker's most formidable critics were not those who resented
his becoming a Catholic, but those who could not understand his
not having done so years before. For they who have never known
anything but the fullness of light streaming from the Sun of
Justice, find it difficult to understand the gropings of those wander-
ing in what the Lancashire dialect calls " the edge o' dark." But
it is the sincerity of such gropers that made it possible for Newman
on making his submission to Wiseman to assure him that he would
obey the Pope as he had obeyed his bishop, and for the monks of
Caldey to exchange the Bishop of Oxford for the Bishop of Menevia
without changing their habit or their name. Hawker, one of
his biographers assures us, next to Christianity loved the English
Church. That this is quite consistent with leaving the English
Church we have on the authority of Monsignor Benson, who
did both.
Hawker had been an undergraduate with many of those who
led the Oxford Movement. It is characteristic of him that he
" did not take to Pusey." But he rejoiced at Newman's conversion,
and was in correspondence with him and Manning shortly before
he died. In Ichabod he mourns for Cardinal Wiseman's death :
Hush ! for a star is swallowed up in night !
A noble name hath set along the sea !
In this poem the Pastoral " from without the Flaminian gate "
is described as
A lorldly echo from the eternal Rock.
The Cornish moors are traversed by mysterious tracks which
the people say were made by the feet of angels, but which Hawker
explained were the paths of pilgrims traveling to the holy wells and
shrines. These were the ways trodden by the vicar of Morwenstow,
and they brought him at last to " the city of Sarras in the spiritual
place."
COLUMBIA.
BY M. E. HENRY-RUFFIN, L.H.D.
FROM ocean clasp, the patriot sees
To ocean clasp, a vision rise
Athwart the light that circling flees
From fourfold vested skies.
O let the eyes endazzled feast
On crowned country flashing forth
The cresting pearls from out the East
Frost flame of diamond North
The slanting rubies of the West
The opal South, a myriad tone
So cry exulting : " Grandest, best,
First jewel in earth's zone,
Columbia, creation's crest,
My Native Land, my own."
Thy name is music in the dumb,
Dim haunts of bitter exile far :
To slaves the thought of thee shall come,
Uplighting as -a star.
From chained toil and lashed despair
Thou dashest scourge and fetters down
Giving, from hands with freeing fair
To branded brows a crown.
O freedom's pride and hope's bequest
To lands in thralldom hopeless grown,
Thy voice rings as the grandest tone
Earth's harmony can own,
Columbia, creation's crest,
My Native Land, my own.
The smile of peace upon thy hills
Like flash of victory shall rise
To mountain height : the strength that fills
Thy God-like spirit lies
As waves that rule the ocean's might.
Sweep pure the breath of generous field,
Thy gracious firmament alight
That storms may never yield.
Come North or South or East or West
All nations, climes, from zone to zone,
And bow at her benign behest,
Earth's sovereign state alone,
Columbia, creation's crest,
My Native Land, my own.
THE ANONYMOUS POET OF POLAND: SIGMUND
KRASINSKI.
BY MONICA M. GARDNER.
38*?
URING the years succeeding the Polish rising of
1830, Poland passed through a martyrdom that
gained her the title, which she has never since for-
feited, of the nation in mourning. It was then, when
the Polish race groaned under all the miseries of an
oppressed people, that a poet rose, pointing steadily to a brighter
future, teaching the high spirituality that he believed would save
his nation. Driven by tragic circumstances to conceal his name it
was as the Anonymous Poet that Sigmund Krasinski gave his
country some of her greatest song and her noblest national
psychology.
There were few outward events in his life. His history lies
in his own tortured soul, and in the development of the message
that out of his pain he found for his country. He was born in
1812 of a princely house, and died in 1859. His father had been
a distinguished general in the Polish Napoleonic legions; but he
stood aside from the national movement of 1830, forbade his son
to take part in it, and finally accepted favor at the hand of Nicholas
I., the bitterest persecutor of the Polish nation. Thus there fell
upon Sigmund the tragedy that wrecked his life. He was hence-
forth torn between love for an adored father and his passionate
patriotism. His position in his own country became impossible.
Under the eye of the Russian Government, he wandered abroad for
the rest of his life, consumed with grief for his nation, compelled
by filial loyalty to refrain from acting and speaking according to
the dictates of his heart, tormented by mental and physical suf-
ferings that his anguish at his father's conduct had brought upon
him, and which carried him to his grave before his time.
He devoted his life to one thought and one aim. He saw his
country the victim of a terrible and inexplicable fate. Why one
nation had been singled out for unceasing persecution; how the
condition of Poland could be reconciled with the ordering of
divine Providence; what hope there was for Poland in the future
that would enable her to maintain her existence against the efforts
of three powerful conquerers to stamp it out; these were the
496 SIGMUND KRASINSKI [July,
mysteries that Krasinski set himself to discover. For years he
toiled to find the light that would save his nation. It was at
the cost of his heart's blood. He wandered in doubt and despair
before he won those heights where he stands as one of the noblest
of moral and national teachers.
When, compelled as a boy to remain passive while his young
compatriots laid down their lives for Poland, his bitter lamenta-
tion had been that he might do nothing to serve his country. Yet
he found that work for her which still, more that half a century
after his death, lives on. By his poems and dramas the Anonymous
Poet taught, warned, consoled his people: always under the veil
of secrecy. For not only did Krasinski's peculiar position forbid
him to disclose his name, but discovery by the Russian authorities
meant Siberia for himself and danger to his father. Published
abroad in common with all Polish writings at a period when such
works were banned by the censor, and when author and reader
alike knew that Siberia awaited them if discovered, Kra-
sinski's words to his people were smuggled into Poland, and there
read furtively behind barred doors. But, although Krasinski's
work is national, he yet remains a poet and a teacher for all
humanity. He carried the doctrine of suffering to its noblest
conclusions. His patriotic mysticism, as in the case of the Hebrew
prophets, is equally applicable to each human soul. And further,
for the sake of Poland, his gaze penetrates into the great moral
questions affecting the destiny of all mankind, such as the spirituali-
zation of a world he saw ruled by brute force, the Christianization
of the relations between states and governments.
It is in five works that Krasinski must chiefly be studied : The
Undivine Comedy, Irydion, Dawn, The Psalms of the Future, and
Resurrecturis.
The Undivine Comedy, the prose drama which Krasinski wrote
at the age of twenty-one, is entirely unlike the rest of his writings.
Its theme is not national, which fact alone makes it exceptional
in Krasinski's history. Its strange terseness, its indications of a
situation or a character in a few words are uncharacteristic. It
was written in the first shock of the poet's private, tragedy, and
of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed his nation after the
failure of the Rising. The months preceding his conception of the
play had seen a boy's youth shattered by pain; and hence the
pessimism, the irony, the pitiless penetration into the secrets of the
human heart that give The Undivine Comedy its peculiar power.
I9i6.] SIGMUND KRASINSKI 497
In the early thirties of the nineteenth century it seemed as
though Europe were hastening to a social cataclysm. The Undivine
Comedy is the dramatization of the future class war, ending in
universal ruin. But the first part of the play is devoted to the
domestic history of the man who, when the scene changes to public
life, is the champion of the aristocracy against the people. Henryk,
a decadent egoist and poet, has lived for the sake of art, playing,
so to speak, to the audience, till his emotions are worn out, and
he himself can hardly draw the distinction between genuine and
artificial feeling. Krasinski's ideal of a poet was one whose poetry
vented itself in deeds, in the struggle of the spirit: the man who
plays with words and worships poetry for its own sake will be
destroyed by that very mistress.
When the play opens, Henryk is weary of his dreams, and
takes to himself a wife. She is the loving, domestic woman who
watches over a husband's comforts, and can never understand him ;
and the end of the marriage is soon told. Henryk quickly tires
of her; and abandons her and his infant son to pursue his own
fancies, impersonated in the play by a demon maiden. At the
christening feast the father is absent, no one knows where. The
selfish, callous guests look on curiously at the distraught mother,
who, as the child is christened, adjures him to be a poet so that he
may gain the love his father has denied to her. Henryk, duped
by the demon he has followed, returns to find his wife in the
madhouse. The scene in the asylum is placed by Krasinski's coun-
trymen among the finest in the drama. Amidst the cries of the
insane resounding on all sides, wild, blasphemous ravings prescient
of the coming upheaval of the universe, the mad wife, still gentle
and devoted, tells her husband that she, too, has become a poet
for his sake, and then expires in his arms.
The son of this disastrous marriage grows up with the double
curse inherited from his parents. Blind and mad he talks to his
dead mother, and tells his fancies in verse. Thus Henryk sees
the vengeance of his deification of art. He wanders in the moun-
tains, carrying with him his barren heart. Faith, desire, and love
are gone. Nothing is left to him in a crumbling world. Then the
temptation to ambition assaults him: and he takes upon himself
the part of the leader of the aristocracy.
Here ends the domestic drama with its atmosphere of unbroken
dreariness, its glimpses of effete men and women in whom, with
the exception of the wife and nurse, there is no touch of tenderness
VOL. cm. 32
498 SIGMUND KRASINSKI [July,
or moral beauty. In the second part of The Undivine Comedy,
the revolution has broken out. On one side are the survivors
of a rotten nobility, gathered together in their last stronghold,
under Henryk's command; on the other, the lower classes, goaded
into ferocity and revolt by centuries of oppression. The latter are
led by Pancracy, the apostle of cold reason, whom no softening in-
fluence can affect. Each band is presented by Krasinski with the
same merciless severity. Love is absent from both. Truth is with
neither. In an Undivine Comedy all must fail. One by one,
Henryk's adherents, cowards and timeservers to the end, desert
him. His son, after recounting to him the vision he has seen of
his father's eternal damnation, is accidentally killed, as useless in
death as he had been in life. The revolutionaries capture the castle,
and with the cry : " Poetry, be thou cursed by me as I shall be
cursed for all eternity," Henryk flings himself down a precipice,
damned " because he had loved nothing, and worshipped nothing ex-
cept himself."
But even then the victory does not rest with Pancracy. The
new world is in the hands of his hordes. He stands on the ramparts
where Henryk met his death. He sees rising as a pillar of fire
over the mountains the figure of the avenging Christ, cross ki hand ;
and, struck to the earth by the " lightning of that glance before
which he who lives must die," he falls dead, crying " Galilae,
vicisti! "
The general impression left by The Undivine Comedy is that
of something akin to pessimism and of an unrelieved gloom, suf-
ficiently explainable by the circumstances under which Krasinski
wrote it. And yet it shows strong foreshado wings of the future
teaching of the poet who saw victory for a nation and for the
human race only in the Cross, and destruction where love was not.
In the drama Irydion that appeared in 1836, Krasinski's
thought takes several steps forward; and here he speaks more
directly to his nation. At that time Poland was ground down
under Nicholas I.'s retribution for the national rising. Krasinski's
own heart was on fire with hatred for the oppressor of his country.
Irydion represents the spiritual victory which crowned the poet's
hard- fought battle over himself. The play is his warning to his
nation that lust for vengeance will bring moral death and destruc-
tion upon the conquered.
Irydion must be read between the lines, for in those days of
peril its author was compelled to speak in an allegory. The Greek,
1916.] SIGMUND KRASINSKI 499
Irydion, has dedicated himself to work revenge upon the Rome who
enslaved his race. He goes about the streets of the Imperial City
with an aspect of amity, but in reality forging plots for her over-
throw. He bribes the barbarians and gladiators to his side, and
gains over the praetorians by treachery. It matters nothing to
him what he sacrifices: Rome must be brought to the dust, by
whatever means. He gives his beautiful sister, despite her tears
and prayers, to the Emperor Heliogabalus, by which means the
half-childish young Caesar becomes as wax in his hands. He
feigns Christianity, and intrigues in the catacombs to win in the
name of Christ the younger Christians to his conspiracy.
But there is a stronger power than his behind him, impelling
him forward, and that is the guardian and preceptor who has
brought him up, Masynissa (Mephistopheles). Krasinski's Mephis-
topheles is an old man, full of majesty and mystery, who seeks to
ruin souls by playing upon their nobler, not their baser, desires. He
is the satan of history whose incitement to the use of evil means
even in the holiest of causes is the bar to the spiritual progress of
humanity. His enmity is with the Rome that lies beyond Irydion's
knowledge, " whose feet stand not on seven hills but on millions of
stars." Dissension in the catacombs, formerly the abode of broth-
erly love, is the weapon with which he will attack Christ.
He therefore instigates Irydion to dupe Cornelia, the Christian
virgin whom her fellow-believers hold for an inspired saint. She
is driven by Irydion's wiles into frenzy and, persuaded by him that
he is Christ, she runs through the Catacombs, bidding the Christians
rise in arms. And yet it is in the catacombs that the avenger is
brought up against the one element which causes his failure. On
the night that he has appointed for Rome's destruction, he waits
in vain for the Christians. Hastening to the catacombs, he finds
the Pope and the elder men trying to restrain the hot-bloods, while
through the tumult rings Cornelia's cry to arms. Exorcised by the
Pope, Cornelia returns to herself. She confesses that Irydion has
misled them all. " I forgive thee," her last words to him. " Pray
to Christ." She dies, a figure depicted throughout with the
peculiar delicacy and beauty of touch with which Krasinski paints
his women. Irydion is now unmasked. He knows that his cause is
doomed. He rushes to the battle, and fights to the last. Then,
when all is lost, he steps upon his sister's funeral pyre and prepares
to die. Masynissa sweeps down, and carries him away to a moun-
tain top in the Campagna.
500 SIGMUtiD KRAS1NSKI [July,
Rome lies, still invincible, in the distance, her palaces flashing
to the sun. Irydion casts himself to the earth in the anguish of his
despair. Was the Hellas he had loved only a shade? What is left
to him? If Cornelia's God were indeed God, he would now call
upon Him. Masynissa acknowledges Him as God, but also as
his own " eternal enemy." Let Irydion renounce Him forever,
and Masynissa will cast him into a slumber to last out centuries
till he shall awake to behold the downfall of Rome.
Irydion consents. He sinks into a trance in a cave outside
Rome. He lies there while the barbarians sweep over the Roman
empire; while nation follows nation, ruler, ruler; till at last he
rises in, of course, the days of Krasinski himself. Masynissa
leads him through the desolated Campagna, past the broken tombs
and acqueducts, through the ruins of the Forum, till they halt in
the Coliseum. While wandering through the Coliseum, Krasinski
when a boy of eighteen, was inspired with the idea that embodied
in Irydion later, after his soul had been swept by fires of passion
and suffering the beloved thought of his youth, as he always
called it. So it is in the Coliseum that the final struggle for
Irydion's soul takes place at the foot of the Cross that stood there
in Krasinski 's time. The ampitheatre resounds with the wailing
of the martyrs whose blood was shed there. The light of the
moon streams into it. Above is the angelic form of Cornelia,
pleading for iercy upon him who wronged her. Below is
Masynissa seeking to drag his prey from where he stands, prayer-
less, beneath the Cross. " Immortal enemy," cries Masynissa, " he
is mine because he lived in vengeance and he hated Rome." " Oh,
Lord," cries Cornelia, " he is mine because he loved Greece." In
the scheme of Irydion love must prevail, because its work is stronger
than that of hatred. Krasinski wished to convince his nation that
love in constructive, and that hatred must bring ruin and failure
upon him who wields it. Irydion is saved at the plea of love, be-
cause although he had hated he yet had loved, he had loved Greece.
But because he had hated Rome and used the weapon of hatred for
his country, he is only saved at the cost of a second test. In the
divine sentence pronounced upon Irydion in the Coliseum, Kra-
sinski speaks straight to the nation for whom he had written the
play, whose temptation was that of his Irydion:
" 'Go to the North in the name of Christ. Go and dwell
among the brothers that I give thee. There is thy second trial.
For the second time thou shalt see thy love transpierced, dying;
I 9 i6.] SIGMUND KRASINSKI 501
and the sufferings of thousands shall be born in thy one heart. Go
and trust in My name. Be tranquil before the pride and oppression
of the unjust. They shall pass, but thou and My word shall not
pass. Go and act. Although thy heart shall faint in thy bosom,
although thou shalt despair of Me Myself, act ever and without
rest. And thou shalt rise, not from sleep as rest, but from the
toil of ages ; and thou shalt be the free son of heaven.'
" And the sun rose above the ruins of Rome. And there
was none whom I might tell where were the traces of my thought.
But I know that it lasts and lives."
After that point in his national teaching, Krasinski wavered.
Overpowered by the sight of his nation's sufferings, he sank into
a labyrinth of spiritual darkness whence he could utter no consoling
message to his nation, for his own faith had staggered.
" Then sank my soul," says he in his Dawn, " into that chaos of
doubt where all light is changed into eternal night. Ah, I lived,
lived long in that deep abyss, driven by wild rage and a measure-
less despair. Like Dante, during life I went through hell."
At this time he wrote only confused allegories, tinged with
pantheism, of small literary value. Yet through theni there runs
that one golden thread of Krasinski's passionate love for Poland.
He went on searching in every school of thought for the clue that
would give him and his nation the hope that would save both.
After seven years of travail and anguish, he could sing in Dawn
of the " joy of faith, the mighty strength of hope " that had re-
turned to his soul : " how the mist becomes the golden house of
God."
Briefly summarized, the conclusion in which Krasinski found
satisfaction was this. As the conquests of Julius Caesar paved the
way to the spread of Christ's religion, so the conquests of Napoleon
were to precede the application of that religion to political relations.
As Christ's death was the price of man's redemption, so the death
of one nation Poland was the sacrifice appointed to purchase
the Christianization of the world political. That regeneration
could not be accomplished until the crime of Poland's dismember-
ment was repealed. Her restoration then will be the portent of the
world's reformation. Her death was but the earnest of her resur-
rection. Purified by the penal fires that she had thus endured for
the sake of humanity, she shall rise to glory, the herald of the new
epoch of humanity.
This, the great word of Polish Mesyanism, Krasinski sang in
502 SIGMUND KRASINSKI [July,
Dawn. The poem consists of a series of lyrics. The setting is
the lake of Como on which the poet, by the light of the moon,
floats in a boat with the woman he calls his Beatrice Delphina
Potocka who likewise inspired the genius of Poland's most in-
spired musician, Chopin. In lines impregnated with the grief of
the Pole, the poet sings of a life-giving sorrow, love and self-sacrifice.
He bids Beatrice look to God with faith, because for the sake of
His own justice He will restore Poland. " To-day sighing is the
country's only name," but who loves cannot die: who died for
others lives in human hearts as their incitement to noble deeds and
spiritual uprising. The oppressor can destroy the body, not the
soul.
These musings lead to three visions. In the first, the host of
Poland's great dead rise from their graves in the steppes, and
tell their son that to Poland life will again be given, and that we
grow from pain, not from ease. The same multitude next appear
flashing with heavenly light over the lake; and amidst banners,
swords, and shields, above which towers the Cross, rises the figure
of Our Lady of Czenstochowa, to whom Poles to this day give
the title of Queen of Poland. At the head of the Polish warriors
she sweeps to the second victory over the serpent, the prelude to
the Christian rebirth of the world. The third and last vision,
one of the most pronounced expressions of Mesyanism in the
Polish language, is that of Poland, crowned by her sorrow as the
great archangel of humanity, leading mankind over oceans of light
across the skies to the very feet of the Creator where, as another
Dante, the Polish poet may gaze no more.
" Throw off sadness, throw off terror." He knows what pain
and labor still remain; but "the new world all rejoicing like a
flower shall bloom to God." Now he understands the riddle of
pain. All is clear. " The idea shall never pass away." His
country, the apostle of that idea and the harbinger of the new
epoch, is " no more to me my country merely, but is faith and
right." In an ecstasy of mystic rejoicing, he who had known him-
self what it was to draw near the gates of hell, thanks God " for
pains of body, for pains of soul, for the century of our torments,
because, though we are weak and poor, yet from our sorrows has'
begun Thy kingdom on this earth."
" We believed in eternal pain and toil. They were but the
sanctuary's entrance, but the step upon the stairway. They were
but the night of merit."
1916.] SIGMUND KRASINSKI 503
Human heart, where now thy shame?
Look into thyself, oh, gaze !
Where were tears and lamentation,
Lo! to-day of heaven's high mercy
Is the second house of God.
That strong hope, or rather conviction, remained the keynote
of all Krasinski's subsequent work. It is true that his poetry
is always and inevitably sad; but nothing henceforth could ever
shake his faith in his nation's future. Speravit contra spem was
the motto that he loved to quote.
When he finished Dawn, he considered that he had delivered
his message ; and in its concluding lines he said that he would
string his lyre no more. But his poetical gifts were given entirely
to his country. Moments of great national stress and danger arose,
in which the Anonymous Poet felt himself compelled again to ad-
dress his people ; and under these circumstances the famous Psalms
of the Future appeared.
Of these The Psalm of Love was written first. In 1845, a
party of young Poles were preparing an insurrection on democratic
lines. The hour was not ripe for such a movement in a country
whose national life was stifled and abnormal, and Krasinski who,
albeit a mystic and a dreamer, possessed a piercingly clear political
acumen, foretold that social revolution would too likely bring about
a fratricidal war. He had now firmly grasped his spiritual stand-
point. He proclaimed that there was one only hope for his nation.
Moral integrity and purity, as he had said in Irydion and said
with far greater precision in his Psalms, would alone save Poland.
His Psalm of Love (1845) was the only warning he could send
to his compatriots: and there in impassioned accents he entreats
them to carry their arms against evil only, to shun the murderer's
knife. Such weapons were those of the human race in its infancy;
but now the toil of the angels must be ours. " It is time to cast
off every stain, and by that very act to conquer slavery." " There
is but one godlike truth, that is fruitful in deed: transfiguration
by love." He points to self-sacrifice as the hope of nations. The
sufferings of the body inflicted by the oppressors of Poland are to
him nothing. " The swarm of evil thoughts which grow where
there are fetters, the spirit of the nation corrupted, that only is the
pain of pains." The part of the Pole is to prove that : to be a Pole
is to live nobly and to God."
504 SIGMUND KRASINSKI [July,
" Oh, my Poland, thou art on the threshold of thy victory. Let
it be only seen that thou art the eternal enemy of all evil ; and then
shall the bonds of death be broken. In the last moment, when death
struggles against life, amidst the sobs of despair, the wails of
dying lips, in the strength of thy martyrdom overcome that mo-
ment, conquer that pain, and thou shalt rise as the queen of all
Slavonia, to dry human tears, to rule the world of souls. " With
that great vision of Mesyanistic longing before his eyes, small
wonder that the mystic poet of Poland returns again and again to
his cry of warning: "Throw aside your murderous weapons,"
cast off every temptation that will most surely thrust the nation
down from the road of glory prepared for her.
Krasinski followed up The Psalm of Love by those of Faith
and Hope. The Psalm of Faith sets forth in highly mystical terms
the impulse of the soul to its Creator : how first passing " through
the pains of hell, the trials of purgatory," it cleaves its way through
endless spaces till, " putting on body and soul more radiant," it
reaches Him " Who is Being, Thought, and Life the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost." We must give back, inasmuch as in us lies,
to Him Who created us those worlds He has given us to fashion,
" and live in Him eternally, by eternal love."
From his private confession of faith, Krasinski passes to
that of nations. God gave to each nation some special inspiration,
thus giving each her peculiar calling. Some are chosen out to bear
His Cross, and hence Krasinski easily reaches his own nation.
" Though the world shall give her pain so that she might even
despair of hope, may she hold out in unheard of suffering, for
she is anointed in Thy spirit if she is not ashamed of her crown of
thorns, and will understand that Thou lovest without measure the
sons whom Thou dost crown with thorns, because the thorn steeped
in blood is the everlasting flower with which Thou shalt give fresh
youth to all humanity."
He concludes the Psalm with a mystic analogy between the
destiny of the human race and the life of its prototype, Christ:
" Who bore all thy vicissitudes within His flesh, Who showed thee
all thy hopes. Thou must pass through toil and pain, and be trans-
figured like Christ, leaving in the pit below all that deceives and
all that pains; and thou shalt take to thyself spiritual knowledge
and the eternal and unfinished love."
The Psalm of Hope, in accents joyous such as we seldom find
in Krasinski 's work, proclaims the speedy advent of the Paraclete
1916.] SIGMUND KRASINSKI 505
which shall transform a wornout world, when all shall see that
Poland's grave was " the cradle of the new dawn."
It was after Krasinski had published his three first Psalms
that in 1846 the catastrophe, exceeding his worst fears, fell
upon his country. The Austrian Government instigated the ig-
norant Galician peasantry to rise against their landowners, and
an appalling massacre took place. Krasinski beheld his beloved
nation, the victim of the moral evil that he had feared for her
more than any other misfortune, thrust down from the high
calling he had prophesied for her. His grief and horror shattered
his physical frame, and he was for long at the point of death. Yet,
even during those terrible days, when body and mind were reached
by suffering, when despair might well have seemed his only refuge,
the force of his conviction did not perish. " I am dying," he wrote
to a friend, " but the idea will conquer." Scarcely able to put
pen to paper, he still struggled to help and strengthen his country;
and he wrote the poem which he significantly called The Psalm of
Grief.
Disaster and failure surrounded him; but he still sang of the
eternal truths by which his people would surely be saved. He
still bids them expect the dawn. Brotherly love will redeem even
those who stand on the very brink of the abyss. Poland shall still
shine forth as the radiant angel triumphant over sin and sorrow.
" Thus she rises from the dead :" so The Psalm of Grief ends in
the accents of hope.
In the same year 1848 that The Psalm of Grief was pub-
lished, Krasinski closed the great Mesyanistic poetry of Poland
with that noblest of poems, The Psalm of Good Will. He who
had taught perhaps more consistently than any other poet the doc-
trine of suffering as the redemption of men and nations, reaches,
in his last Psalm, to those heights of victory that crown the long
wrestling of a life. His prayer for his country is that she may
gain her own resurrection through holy deeds. The gift of God
is " a life worthy of the Cross, that Cross which brings us to Thy
stars." But here, as always, Krasinski makes the national resur-
rection conditional : and this it is that gives him his high place as
a moral teacher. He predicts a future for Poland so glorious that
to a less idealistic nature than his and his countrymen's it might
seem only a dream ; yet it is far more than a poet's fancy. It is a
great moral ideal, carrying with it the sternest lessons of struggle
and obligation. For that future is only dependent on each son of
506 SIGMUND KRASINSKI [July,
Poland's individual conquest over temptation. It is only to be
won by a perpetual warfare against evil in its every shape.
In The Psalm of Good Will Krasinski, therefore, sets before
his people's vision the image of their temptation in language equally
apposite, which is the case in all Krasinski's work, to the soul of
every tempted and suffering man and woman as to a whole nation.
He sees the tempted standing on the narrow isthmus above the
abyss. Their wings are ready for the resurrection, their lips about
to intone the hymn of joy, when the darkness, rising from the pit,
rolls against them: " Eternal death where Thou art not." If but
one glance, one step, be turned towards it, all is lost.
" Defend us, Lord, be Thou with us ! " is the poet's cry. He
calls in agony upon the name of Mary, the name " with which upon
their lips millions of Polish souls have gone to death." He sees
her rising above suns and space, kneeling at the feet of her Son,
pleading for his land. Hell is powerless against her. Then the
poet pours forth the majestic prayer that closes this, the last Psalm
of the Future. He asks of God, " not hope, it is strewn as a
flower; not the destruction of our foes their destruction dawns
on to-morrow's clouds; not the weapon of power, nor any
help, but only a pure will. We beseech Thee, Thou Who hast
ordered to the being of man, puny in strength and little in his birth,
that he should grow even as the angels by the might of sacrifice,
be suspended between the abyss and Thy kingdom, surrounded by
perishing governments and shattered ages, oh, Father, Son and
Holy Ghost, we beseech Thee create in us a pure heart, renew our
thoughts within us, from our souls root out the tares of sacrilegious
falsehood, and give us that gift, eternal among all Thy gifts
give us good will."
There was little that Krasinski could now add to his work for
his nation : and with Resiirrecturis his mission ended. Part, at
least, of this poem was written in great agony of mind during the
days following the Galician massacres, when the poet's craving to
help his country battled against his wrecked physical frame. He
could not finish it then, and it was not published till 1852. It may,
therefore, be taken as the last word of the Anonymous Poet to the
people for whom he had lived. In truth it stands as his final
triumph over bitterness and despair.
" This world is the eternal Golgotha for each. In vain the
spirit writhes when wounded by pain. There is no halting place in
the tempest of this life. Fate mocks us every moment. Must we
1916.] SIGMUND KRASINSKI 507
then be without heart and like a stone? Be a murderer among
murderers, a criminal among criminals? Let us lie and hate, and
give the world back what it gives us. Let us eat and drink, and
be numbered with the stupid and the happy."
No. Rather " be as the calm in tempest, the eternally beauti-
ful in the eternal battle of life. Be as a sister's tears to the un-
happy; a home to those who are driven forth from home, hope to
those who have lost hope. In the hell of this world be the power
that conquers death with the stronger power of love. What the
world has called a dream and mirage, make living, make a faith,
a law."
Such, in brief, is the teaching of the Anonymous Poet of
Poland. That teaching still remains among the great spiritual pos-
sessions and forces of his nation. A contemporary political Polish
writer points to the moral of Irydion as a conquered people's guid-
ing star. There are those among his countrymen who confess that
the day they first read Krasinski was the spiritual epoch of their
lives. The Polish nation has held consistently to the ideals that
her poet urged upon her. Those ideals have saved her morally;
and it appears as though the hour were now approaching which
Krasinski with a faith undaunted by exterior circumstances never
ceased to foretell, when her sufferings shall be crowned with victory
and resurrection.
MEYER'S THE CATHOLIC CHURCH UNDER QUEEN
ELIZABETH. 1
BY PETER GUILDAY, PH.D.
TUDENTS of English history will welcome this
translation of one of the most important publications
of the Prussian Institute of Rome. In his preface
to this edition, Dr. Meyer explains that originally he
planned the work as a brief introduction to a study
of England and the Catholic Church under the Stuarts. The in-
troduction soon grew into a book, and those who have been using
the work in German for the past five years have never regretted its
expansion into a thick volume of five hundred pages. Mr. Meyer
asks himself in this volume: At what time and to what extent did
the Catholic Church lose its footing on English soil? Was it re-
duced through force or through change of opinion? What ivere
the strongest weapons, both spiritual and temporal, which Rome
employed to regain her lost dominion? How did the scanty rem-
nants of the Catholic Church in England persevere and develop
under the pressure of the penal law? He soon found that these
questions could not be answered without recourse to many hitherto-
unpublished materials still in the archives of Europe; and, in an ap-
pendix covering twelve pages, he gives us a chronological list of
these unpublished documents, in order to facilitate the student in ob-
taining a general view of these new sources of information.
The author's intention, when he first published this volume in
the original in 1911, was to bring the work to a conclusion in two
subsequent volumes, for which he has gathered material. This will
bring the subject up to the Act of Toleration of 1689. Catholic
scholars have here for the first time a volume on English history
based upon the original documents ; for, although Tierney's edition
of Dodd contains almost a thousand documents of the highest
importance to a thorough knowledge of the history of Elizabeth's
reign, they form rather a running commentary of contrast to the text
and are so badly misused through Tierney's prejudice against the
Society of Jesus, that the work loses almost entirely its historical
^England and the Catholic Church Under Queen Elisabeth. By Arnold Oskar
Meyer, Professor in the University of Rostock. Authorized translation by the Rev.
J. R. McKee, M.A. St. Louis: B. Herder. $3.60 net.
1916.] THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH 509
value. Dr. Meyer lays bare, for the first time, the collections of
the Vatican Archives, and especially the dispatches of the different
Nuncios, which form the thread of his history. Apart from the
Roman and Italian Archives which he has used, he has taken care
to consult the Archdiocesan Archives of Westminster and the rich
treasures of the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and the
Bodleian Library. To no other living scholar does he owe more
than to the eminent English Jesuit, Father John Hunger ford Pol-
len, SJ. ; and while his conclusions are at times at variance with
those of the English Jesuit historian, the reader can have very
little doubt, as he peruses these wonderfully entrancing pages, that
it is to Pollen's numerous contributions on the subject, published
in The Month from 1900 to the present time, which have
mostly influenced him and directed him in his study of this im-
portant period. The translation has an additional point of interest,
in the fact that it appeared after the outbreak of the present war,
and its appearance is a proof of the superiority of scholarship in
general over the national prejudices which have been strengthened
so intensely during the past two years Dr. Meyer examined this
English translation, and added notes throughout its pages which
bring it up-to-date from the standpoint of the literature on the
subject.
It is a very natural question, which even one who is not a
scholar may ask: how was it possible for the English Queen, in
the short space of two-score years, to turn her country from the
Catholic faith ? Dr. Meyer's answer to this problem is based upon
the premise, that when Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558, it
was difficult to tell with which religion, Protestant or Catholic,
the future of the country lay. The Spanish Ambassador, Count
de Feria, reckoned the Catholics as two-thirds of the population;
but this estimate has no basis except his own surmise, for it is
impossible, even at the present day with all our knowledge of the
documents, to say to what an extent crypto-Catholicism existed in
the country. There is no doubt that the great apostasy in the reign
of Elizabeth was due, first of all, to the collapse of the spiritual
forces of the Catholic Church. With the exception of one or two
years, the country was without bishops from 1558 to 1685; reli-
gious life had been abolished by the suppression of the monasteries
under Henry VIII. and by the Acts of Uniformity and Allegiance
passed during the first months of Elizabeth's reign. There was,
moreover, a hiatus in the spiritual life of the country from a Catho-
5io THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH [July,
lie standpoint from the day when the bishops were deprived of
their dioceses down to the arrival of the Jesuit missionaries, Pear-
sons and Campion, in 1580; and the linking of the political and
religious interests of Catholics in England with those of Spain and
the Papacy brought about a situation as poignant as any in history.
The numerous plots, feigned and otherwise, for the removal of
Elizabeth from the throne, to all of which Meyer holds that the
Papacy had given its full sympathy and moral support, placed the
Catholics of the country in the serious dilemma of choosing be-
tween Elizabeth, national independence and the Protestant religion
on the one hand, and on the other a Catholic sovereign, subjection
to a foreign power and the Catholic faith. There is little exag-
geration in saying that "the bloody question" which was the out-
come of this bitter antagonism induced many who were Catholics
at heart to throw in their lot with the apostate English Queen.
Elizabeth's excommunication by St. Paul V., on February 25, 1570,
though richly deserved, unfortunately carried with it the sentence
of deposition, and it turned the remnants of the Catholic Church
in England into two hostile camps of reconcilables and irreconcil-
ables ; from that time down to the end of her reign the two parties
which had arisen among the refugees on the continent the Spanish
party and the Scottish party fought per fas et nefas for the success
of their candidates. The decline of English Catholicism, though
still a mooted question, can be said to date from this time. Dr.
Meyer holds that the arbitrary calculations in favor of the existence
of a Catholic majority in England in the days before the Armada
are useless for serious statistical purposes, and that the memorials
of the time proving this were framed to stir up the courage of
Catholic Europe for the celebrated Enterprise. In all probability,
he says, the Catholics numbered at least one-half the population in
1558, but owing to the Northern Rising, the excommunication and
the exile-movement which set in very early in Elizabeth's reign, the
number of Catholics was reduced by the year 1580 to hardly more
than three per cent of the population.
The most interesting part of Dr. Meyer's volume is the history
of the English Counter-Reformation which began with the found-
ing of the seminaries, colleges and convents on the Continent, under
the influence of leaders like Cardinal Allen and the celebrated
Jesuit, Father Pearsons, and which developed during its first ten
years, 1558 to 1569, one of the greatest apologetical schools in
Christendom. Louvain was the centre of this English Counter-
1916.] THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH 511
Reformation movement until the establishment of Douay in 1569,
and from Douay it spread to the English College at Rome and to
the English foundations in Spain and Portugal. The basis of the
English Counter-Reformation it must be remembered that all were
Englishmen and that the Catholics who took part in the movement
w r ere of the same sturdy, vigorous type as their Protestant oppo-
nents was not only one of spiritual outlook but of temporal force
as well. Its real beginning can be seen in the Jesuit Mission into
England in 1580, and its first great triumph was chronicled in the
failure which centred around Blessed Edmund Campion's capture
and horrible execution. From this date down to the end of her
reign, England was networked with secular and Jesuit missionaries,
who, at the risk of their lives, went about from house to house
reconciling heretics, consoling consciences and bringing the Bread
of Life to the famished Catholics of their country. The growing
power of the Counter-Reformation was met by a species of perse-
cution which has never been paralleled in the history of any nation,
pagan or Christian. The excessive cruelty, which contains only
too many records of the most unspeakable forms of martyrdom,
turned the scales against the persecutors themselves; and towards
1590, when the most blood-stained years of Elizabeth's reign were
drawing to a close, a revulsion of feeling against all this barbarity
seems to have gained the upper hand among the people. The more
intimate our knowledge is of these missionary priests, Dr. Meyer
points out, the more we must regard them " as men of strong
manly character, steadfast in their belief and unruffled in their
obedience men whose self-control seldom failed them and whose
seriousness was seldom disturbed, and who were transfigured by
their victory over the world and filled with love for all men without
distinction men who, amidst the most terrible torments and ill
treatment, remained free and unconquered, because for them mar-
tyrdom was the crown of life The cruelties of Topclfffe
make our blood boil even at the present day, but Southwell, who
had been tortured ten times, had no harder word for him than
Thou art a bad man.' To accept calmly the most insulting speeches
and to answer without bitterness was a point of honor with every
priest, especially the Jesuits their schooling at the seminary stood
the test when tried by this fiery ordeal." We are here in the most
heroic period of English Catholicism, and as the cruelties mounted
in degree and ingenuity, the heroism of the Catholics mounted to
heights never reached before nor since.
$12 THE CHURCH UNDER ELIZABETH [July,
The latter half of Dr. Meyer's book deals with the political as-
pect of English Catholicism during this period. With the organ-
ization of the Enterprise under Philip II., the increasing weakness
of Spain and the growing strength of England became apparent.
After the Armada, there was what might be called, without any
desire to use the phrase in its modern meaning, a period of watchful
waiting, of waiting for the death of a Queen who has placed her
name upon the blackened scroll of persecutors with Nero and
Caligula. It has a period also of internal quarrels among the Catho-
lics, the beginning of disagreements on questions of policy, and espe-
cially on the question of the Succession. There were misunder-
standings also among the clergy on the matter of its organization,
and the period dealt with in Dr. Meyer's book closes with the un-
fortunate Archpriest Controversy. One wonders, after summing
it all up^ whether or not there is a solution in Dr. Meyer's conclu-
sion that it was in the name of the national sentiment and of the
national conception of the State that liberty of doctrine and prac-
tice was denied to the small Catholic minority ; that, owing to their
foreign connections, Catholics seemed the most dangerous of all
the State parties which kept aloof from the Anglican Church. It
is a point of view which explains too easily, perhaps, the persecu-
tion of the Catholics, the apostasy of so many of the old Faith, and
the triumph of Protestanism ; but it must not be forgotten that this
point of view can never be fully accepted in the light of the bigotry
for Catholicism which has been so firmly implanted in the English
soul. The history of the Catholic Church in the England of Eliza-
beth's time is one of the most glorious pages in the annals of the
triumphs of Catholicism, and there is no doubt that the views ex-
pressed here by a scholar who is neither an Englishman nor a
CathoHc, will tend greatly towards a more objective grasp of this
painful period of English history.
RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL.
BY H. SCHUMACHER, D.D.
N the December number of the North American Re-
view appeared an article under the headline Christ
Non-resistant, penned by the Rev. John Haynes
Holmes. The essay, supposed to be a defence of
the New Testament spirit against its profaners, must
have led the readers tg quite incorrect conclusions about the atti-
tude of the New Testament towards the problem in question.
Hence an answer may not be amiss, in spite of the great amount
of time and energy which have already been devoted to the sub-
ject. The article concludes with a strong and sarcastic verdict
against all those who do not share the author's opinion : " If a
person does not believe in non-resistance, why should he not, like
Nietzsche, confess honestly that he does not believe in the Gospel
of Christ?"
But even the casual reviewer of two thousand years of Chris-
tianity will see that an absolute and unconditional non-resistance
was never observed and never regarded as an integral part of the
creed of the followers of Christ. Nor was it ever believed to be
a real demand of Christianity to suffer every humiliation, every
unjust attack on honor and life, to suffer anything in the world
with patient non-resistance. Are law courts and prisons really con-
sidered as the offspring of anti-Christian spirit? Does real Chris-
tianity condemn those institutions? Thanks be to God, it does
not. " We all know that the doctrine of non-resistance, literally
fulfilled, would soon remove man and his civilization from the
earth." 1
But to come directly to the point, we know that Christ Himself
was at times a " resistant." He was such when He asked the
officer who struck Him on the face, by what right he did it? 2 And
when He cleansed the Temple, and " overturned the tables of the
money-changers." 3 Even Dr. Holmes concedes that this consti-
tutes an act of open violence. St. Paul was a " resistant " when he
appealed to the Roman Emperor at the moment when he faced
1 Evelyn Underbill, in The Hibbert Journal, 1915, p. 500,
'John xviii. 23. 3 Matt. xxi. 12.
VOL. cm. 33
RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL [July,
injustice; 4 when he "withstood Cephas to the face; 5 when, as a
Roman citizen, he refused to be scourged, 6 and when he hurled
" anathema " against those who preached a different Gospel. 7
Dr. Holmes bases his theory of non-resistance upon four facts
of the Gospel : "All the serious doubts ever raised in contradiction
of the assumption that Jesus was a non-resistant are based upon
one or all of four brief passages in the Synoptic Gospels. If we
dispose of these, the whole case in opposition falls to pieces." In
fact, the " case in opposition " would not even be touched if all the
four passages could be explained as instances of non-resistance, as
we shall show later. Let us now look at the four " facts."
The first passage is Mark xiii. 7: "When you shall hear
of wars and rumors of wars, fear ye not. For such things must
needs be, but the end is not yet." Dr. Holmes answers this : " Is
it possible that there is no difference between saying that it is in-
evitable that certain things shall happen in the future, and saying
that it is right and proper that such things should happen? " Cer-
tainly, there is a great difference, and Dr. Holmes is right to some
extent in saying : " He (Christ) said what would be, not what ought
to be." But just here, where Dr. Holmes stops, the problem begins.
Despite his seemingly accurate distinction, the careful reader must
feel at once a deplorable lack of distinction. For as soon as we
speak of resistance, we must suppose someone who is resisting in
defence, and someone who is being resisted or who is attacking.
The act of the latter provokes the act of the former. Then the
question arises, which of the two components of war-resistance
is approved and which is not, or are both rejected by Christ? Now,
Christ Himself in the Temple gave us an instance of aggressive
resistance against the money-changers showing thereby that even
this kind of resistance has His sanction under certain circumstances.
A fortiori He gives His approbation to defensive resistance, as is
exemplified by His own conduct against the officer who struck Him.
From Christ's own conduct we see clearly that both the offensive
and the defensive resistance may be justifiable in some cases and
unjustifiable in other circumstances, while the cause of the resistance
may be wholly deplorable, ae Jesus Himself certainly deplored the
happenings in the Temple as well as those before the High Priest.
What is the basis for the justification of either species of re-
sistance? Jesus Himself furnished us the canon by His question
to the offending officer: " If I have spoken evil, give testimony of
4 Acts xxv. ii. "Gal. ii. n. 'Acts xxii. 25. 7 Gal. i. 8.
1916.] RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 515
the evil; but if well, why strikest thou Me? " The same rule is
employed by St. Paul, when he appealed to the Roman Emperor : 9
"If there be none of these things whereof they accuse me, no man
may deliver me to them." In other words : defensive as well as
offensive resistance may be right, if the motives, the purpose and
the object are right, and they are ivrong if those factors are wrong.
The second passage, quoted by Dr. Holmes, is Matt. x. 34:
" Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth ; I came not to
send peace, but the sword." It was easy to refute this passage as
one directly favoring war. No critical exegete of the New Testa-
ment will base on the word " sword " in our Gospel- verse a direct
defence of war, and we can entirely agree with the author that
this word has to be explained figuratively, perhaps according to a
" vivid Oriental fashion." But the principle of war is contained
therein, since the whole sentence breathes the spirit 'of resistance.
Dr. Holmes himself must confess : " What Jesus was emphasizing
here was the radical and therefore divisive character of the
Gospel." And again he admits that the verse must be understood
from the standpoint of another word of the Lord : "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." Does
it sound like non-resistance when we hear that word " division "
and repeatedly that term " against? " Certainly, this word of Jesus
does not predict war with arms and guns, but war with the powers of
heart and will. Yet the preaching of non-resistance would speak in
entirely different words : " I carrie to bring harmony between
father and son, absolute obedience of the daughter towards the
mother and charity of the daughter-in-law towards the mother-in-
law." But in the actual words of Christ we find the contrary of
all we would expect from one who preached absolute and universal
non-resistance.
Certainly, Jesus did not come with " the distinct purpose to
break up families;" but He did come with the distinct Gospel that
they sometimes have to be broken up for motives higher than
obedience. He did not come to send individuals and nations against
one another, but with the clear Gospel that they may resist one
another for principles higher than peace. Both justice and right
stand higher. They cause divisions ! And " such divisions "
here are the words of Dr. Holmes, this time in their right place
" were not to be welcomed, much less plotted and planned, but were
'John xviii. 23. 'Acts xxv. n.
5i6 RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL [July,
to be accepted when they came. They were simply the altogether
regrettable and yet inevitable results of the proclamation of a new
truth, a new commandment, a new age." But the new age has to
deal with human nature like the old one.
The third passage is found in Luke xxii. 36-38, telling the
episode of the sword at the Last Supper. "And He said to them :
When I sent you without purse and scrip and shoes, did you want
anything ? But they said : Nothing. Then said He unto them :
But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a scrip,
and he that hath not, let him sell his coat, and buy a sword
But they said : Lord, behold here are two swords." The
passage has been variously interpreted. The exegesis of Theophy-
lact gives the most natural solution by rendering the meaning of the
verse this way : Be manly for you have to undergo many ad-
versities, which he indicates by " sword." Buy a sword, . e., -
so provide for yourself like those who have to undergo wars and
many struggles. Sonnenschein 10 arrives at the direct conclusion:
" In this passage, I see a plain approval of the principle of armed
defence."
The last passage, quoted by Dr. Holmes, is the scene in the
Temple. 11 " He began to cast out them that sold and bought in
the Temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and
the chairs of them that sold doves; and He suffered not that any
man should carry a vessel through the Temple." This passage is
indeed the " most serious of all " against Dr. Holmes' contention.
His concessions are strikingly clear : ' * That this event took place
as recorded is unquestionable. That it constitutes an act of open
violence is similarly unquestionable What we have here is
a well-authenticated violation of the principle of non-resistance."
But, how then is it possible to avoid the conclusion that Christ
Himself was a " resistant? " The answer of Dr. Holmes is truly
astonishing, and presents an exegesis which cuts the Gordian knot
with the sword: "This episode is chiefly remarkable in the life of
the Nazarene, not for anything which it teaches in itself, but for
the inconsistency with the rest of His career. Never at any other
time, so far as we know, did He precipitate riot or Himself assault
His enemies. But this time, He did this time He failed to live up
to the inordinately exacting demands of His own Gospel of brother-
hood. Nor is the circumstance difficult to understand ! Jesus came
to Jerusalem tired, worn, hunted. He knew that He walked straight
lQ The Hibbert Journal, 1915, p. 865. "Mark xi. 15-18.
1916.] RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 517
into the arms of His enemies, and undoubtedly, therefore, straight
to His own death. Weary, desperate, confused, He came to the
Temple to pray What wonder that a mighty flood of anger
surged up in His soul and for the moment overwhelmed Him!
What wonder that He seized the rushes from the floor, and swept
the place clean of its profaners This was a moment of defeat
and not of victory " One scarcely credits one's eyes in
reading such exegesis. From the standpoint of Christian ortho-
doxy it would mean blasphemy, from the standpoint of critical
interpretation jt means a poor attempt to escape an inexorable fact
and its inevitable consequences.
If Christ is the norm for our Christian civilization, His actions
and examples must be accepted in their integrity. To select say-
ings and acts of Christ according to one's own taste, and to reject
others, which are not pleasing to such personal taste, and then
pronounce the rejected words or example a " defeat " and violation
of Christ's own principle is to destroy the absolute value of Christ's
teaching and, indeed, of Christ Himself. " He that is not with
Me, is against Me; and he that gathereth not with Me, scattered!." 12
Certainly, Jesus Himself was never conscious of such a " de-
feat." He gave clearly the reason for His resistance : " My house
shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den
of thieves." 13 He could face His enemies with the remarkable
question: "Which of you shall convince Me of sin?" 14 But a
failure in the observance of His own principles would have been a
sin. Nor did His disciples understand it as a " defeat." On the
contrary, they considered it a proof of His divine power, a sign of
His divine mission and a fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy :
" His disciples rememebered that it was written : The zeal of Thy
house hath eaten Me up." 15 What right have we to reject the
obvious meaning of the words of Christ by declaring Him over-
whelmed by weakness or passion ? What right have we to declare :
" Much more true to type was Jesus' conduct on the remarkable
occasion when he was confronted by the mob with the woman taken
in adultery? " The teaching of Christ is not now more true, and
again less true to type, it is always the norm.
The difference of conditions on each occasion is very clear.
The different manner of Christ's action is not to be explained on
the assumption of a perfect and imperfect application of His prin-
ciples, but by the difference of the circumstances. In John viii. u
"Matt. xii. 30, "Matt. xxi. 13. "John viii. 46. "John ii. 17.
5i8 RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL [July,
Christ dealt with a sinful, but repentant, woman; therefore He
applies His principle of mercy : " The bruised reed He shall not
break, and smoking flax He shall not extinguish." 16 But in Mark
xi. 15-18 Christ is confronted with impenitent profaners of the
Temple, therefore He applies the principle of justice. But both
principles belong to the teaching of Christ; one does not exclude
the other. And both principles and their application belong con-
sequently to Christianity.
Dr. Holmes continues : " Even though every one of the four
(passages) were to be interpreted as our militant friends w r ould
have us believe, and even though the four were to be multiplied to
fourteen and forty, we would still be obliged to hold to the non-
resistant character of Jesus' life and teaching." The reason as-
signed for this by Dr. Holmes is " three general facts in regard to
the work of the Nazarene stand unimpeachable."
The first is this: " The whole spirit of Jesus' life is
that of a man who believes profoundly in the gospel of love
The whole burden of Jesus' teaching is that of the gospel of for-
giving injuries, doing kindness and fostering good will." We have
to state here again a fatal absence of distinction. The above-men-
tioned features do not represent the whole spirit of Christ. Besides
the words of love, forgiveness and kindness, we find equally empha-
sized His spirit of inflexible justice against all unrepenting evil-
doers. It is just as vital an element of Christ's teaching as is His
message of love. The innumerable instances of His accusations
against the Scribes and Pharisees, the condemnation of Judas, the
prophecies of the rejection of Israel, of the destruction of Jerusa-
lem, of the horrors of the Last Judgment, the parables of the tares,
the fishing-net, the uprooted plants and the blind leaders of the
blind, with the threatening words : " Every plant which My heav-
enly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up," 17 the wicked
husbandman, the marriage of the king's son, the great supper, the
barren fig-tree, the good tree and the bad, the Pharisee and the
publican, the rich fool, the faithful steward, the ten virgins, the
closed doors, the five talents, the pounds, the rich man and Lazarus,
are just as " unimpeachable " facts of Christ's searching justice, as
the parables of the prodigal son, the lost sheep, the physician, the
good shepherd are instances of His great mercy. But to brand all
the examples of Christ's justice and resistance as " occasional lapses
from His own august ideals," as " inevitable violations of His own
"Matt. xii. 20. "Matt. xv. 13.
I 9 i6.] RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 519
self-imposed precepts," whereas " at His best moments, He sought
to turn the other cheek " is a misinterpretation of Christ and His
Gospel which has nothing to do with unprejudiced exegesis, much
less with the belief in the absolute authority of Christ.
The second " unimpeachable " fact, we are told of, is the
conduct of Jesus during His Passion. Here Christ " made per-
fectly plain the import of His doctrine." In the Garden of Geth-
semane three things were at stake: His own life, the life of His
beloved disciples, and the whole destiny of His " reform move-
ment." " What shall we say when we see Him refusing to use the
sword offered by Peter, to defend His disciples and perpetuate the
work which He had established? If ever, there is excuse or reason
for the use of force Here, if anywhere are sanctions
for violence. And yet Jesus steadfastly refused to avail Himself
of them." He concludes with the statement: "Anyone who can
look upon Gethsemane, the Sanhedrin, the house of Pilate and
Calvary, and deny that Jesus was a non-resistant, seems beyond
the reach of reason."
There would be some truth in Dr. Holmes' statement, if he
had expressed it in this way: Christ was at those occasions non-
resistant, instead of : He was simply a non-resistant. Though there
are even in the history of Christ's Passion instances of resistance,
as the condemnation of Judas 18 and the objection to the officer, 19
we will take it for granted that we find here in Christ a spirit of
perfect non-resistance. It is one thing to be non-resistant under
certain circumstances and at a certain time, and another thing to
be a non-resistant.
Dr. Holmes asks : " What shall we say when we see Him
refusing to use the sword offered by Peter? " The answer was
given by Christ Himself. He might, if He wished, have prayed
to His Father and the Father would have sent Him " more than
twelve legions of angels," which very passage is more than ample
proof that God Himself sanctions, at times, definite physical re-
sistance. But Christ will not make the prayer for "How then
shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must be done?" He
showed clearly that He had the power and justification to resist:
"As soon, therefore, as He said to them : I am He; they went back-
ward, and fell to the ground." 21 Did He not explain why He was
non-resistant when He said to His enemies : " This is your hour,
and the power of darkness?" 22 Are we not informed by Matt.
18 Matt. xxvi. 24. 19 John xviii. 23. 20 Matt. xxvi. 54. "John xviii. 6. "Luke xxii. 53.
520 RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL [July,
xxvi. 39 that it was the will of the Father that He accept the
cross in the spirit of non-resistance? If Christ, under those cir-
cumstances, according to the eternal decree of the Father, was non-
resistant, we are not thereby warranted in making the generaliza-
tion that He was a non-resistant?
The third " unimpeachable " fact is the attitude of the
first followers of Christ. They " were so convinced that He was
non-resistant," we are informed, " that even in the face of the cruel-
est martyrdom the world has known, not one of them lifted the
sword in self-defence." The first Christians avoided even entering
the Roman legions as soldiers, and the first among all reasons was
the " simple fact that conversion to Christianity was understood to
involve conversion to the ideal of non-resistance. To draw the
sword, even in the public service of the country, was known to be
a flagrant violation of Jesus' law and example of life."
Now whoever is acquainted with the history of the early
Christian martyrs knows not only their non-resistance, but knows
also of their opposition and determined attack, in words and works,
against the injustice and tyranny of their persecutors. The actual
spirit of resistance was alive in them; that it was not carried to
physical rebellion was in part, at least, owing to the fact that such
rebellion would have been unavailing.
Any attempt at self-defence would have rendered the condi-
tion of their fellow-Christian brothers only more difficult. The
only possible self-defence would have been the denial of the Chris-
tian faith. But this was treason to the mysteries of their religion.
And the fact that thousands of the early Christians served as sol-
diers and officers in the Roman army, is sufficient answer to the
charge that they refused to bear arms.
The teaching of the Gospel, in its integrity, renders any theory
of absolute non-resistance, as the teaching of Christ, untenable.
Mutual love and forbearance are the rule of the New Testament;
but love and the championship of right and justice, even by physical
means, do not exclude each other.
Military persons play an important and an especially honorable
role in the Gospel. In Luke iii. 14 we read that soldiers went to
St. John at the Jordan : "And the soldiers also asked him, saying :
And what must we do ? And he said to them : Do violence ( in the
original: Do not extort money) to no man, neither calumniate any
man; and be content with your pay." If they had, in the eyes of
St. John, an immoral profession he would have told them at once,
1916.] RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL 521
since he gave them moral counsel, to abandon their detestable serv-
ice. In Matt. viii. 5-13 we meet with the famous figure of the
captain of Capharnaum. We hear him praised by Jesus as a hero
of faith : " When Jesus hearing this, marveled ; and said to them
that followed Him : Amen, I say to you, I have not found so great
faith in Israel." 23 But if the captain's profession was against the
ethical ideas of Christ, He would have advised the soldier, before
He praised him, to return to an observance of the common prin-
ciples of morality. 24
The illustrations in the parables of Christ are many times
taken from the field of war and the profession of warriors, In
Luke xiv. 31 we hear of a " king, setting out to give battle to
another king," and he considers beforehand if he will be able to
carry out his plans. Such preparation is compared with the prep-
aration for the Kingdom of Christ and recommended for imitation.
If the example were in itself immoral, Christ would not have asked
His disciples to imitate it.
In Luke xi. 21, 22 Christ compares Himself with a warrior
who is fighting against Satan. " Even in the parable this language
would be a blasphemy, if the military calling were something
evil." 25
In Matt. xxii. 1-14 God Himself is represented as a belligerent
king employing war as a scourge and a punishment. " But when
the king had heard of it, he was angry, and sending his armies,
he destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city." 26 This pun-
ishment was destined for those who had killed the messengers of
the father who invited the guests to the marriage feast of his son.
War against murderers could not be more clearly justified than by
the figurative example of God Himself, and the approval of Christ
using such a parable for instruction.
But how can we reconcile with this spirit of resistance the
great non-resistant texts from the Sermon on the Mount : " You
have heard that it hath been said : An eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth. But I say to you, not to resist evil; but if one strike
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other; and if a man
will contend with thee in judgment, and take away thy coat, let go
thy cloak also unto him; and whosoever will force thee one mile,
go with him other two." 27 If we decide to take these texts
literally, we must also take literally passages such as : "I say to
23 Matt. viii. 10. "See also Mark xv. 39. "Bishop Faulhaber.
28 Matt. xxii. 7. "Matt. v. 38-41.
522 RESISTANCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL [July,
you, not to swear at all." 28 Or: " When thou dost alms, let not
thy left hand know what thy right hand doth." 29 Or: " When
thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber and, having shut the door,
pray to thy Father in secret." 30 Or: "Be not, therefore, solicit-
ous for to-morrow." 31 And if we stick to the letter of these pas-
sages, which even at first sight reveal their figurative character,
we find Christ Himself acting just in a contrary way when He
resisted the officer who struck Him ! What is more, we have to fall
from one absurdity into another in daily life: we have to hide our
left hand from the right when giving alms; we have to lock our
rooms when we pray and public prayers are not allowed at all.
We can well understand Powell's verdict in The Hibbert Journal: 32
" The non-resistant need not detain us seriously. If true to
his principles, he may be briefly set aside in any practical emergency,
non-existent."
Even if they were to be taken literally, they could be. binding
only for the single individual who may give up a private right which
is at his own disposal. They never can establish a social norm,
as Bishop Faulhaber pointed out very well. ' The rulers of the
State are not free to sacrifice, without drawing the sword, the sacred
rights of the people and of the country. Personal perfection may
demand the sacrifice of personal rights; but to give away the coat
of others, to forfeit the right of one's fellowman, would be injus-
tice; to sacrifice public rights of the nation, would be treason." 33
Evil cannot be excluded from the history of the world in spite
of Christ. As long as the fight between good and bad is raging
in human hearts, so long shall war continue between justice and
injustice. " There must be peace within our individual souls," says
Powell 34 rightly, "before we are freed from war." To deny the
right of war means to deny the existence of evil in this world.
But evil is not expelled by its denial. Evil is unfortunately en-
during amongst mankind, and resistance to evil is at times both
obligatory and necessary.
The Christian religion is not a phantom dealing with non-
existing and non-resisting ideals, but a practical religion, dealing
with realities. It could not extinguish resistance and war, but it
has striven to make both abide by the law and example of Christ,
and thus to lessen both the cruelty and the frequency of war.
28 Matt. v. 34. "Matt. vi. 3. *Matt. vi. 6. 31 Matt. vi. 34.
82 1915, p. 415. 88 Bishop Faulhaber. *'The Hibbert Journal, 1915, p. 416.
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER XII.
T was a strange thing, this going back to his own home
town back, feeling like an impostor. The old station
had not changed, a little blacker perhaps, the red
bricks wearing a heavier coat of coal dust, the tin roof
undistinguishable beneath its layers of cinders, the plat-
form and the waiting-room badly in need of paint.
But the long line of iron-armed chairs had remained unmoved, and the
same ticket agent had grown grim and gray behind the bars of his
window bars that proclaimed his honesty and long and faithful serv-
ice, but which had been as confining as the grating of a cell.
The town had not grown perceptibly in fifteen years. Like many
other cities of the South it had seemed a finished product; its few
industries and suburban farms were flourishing ; its citizens looked
for no inflated prosperity. If business was a trifle dull it was due
to no lethargic condition of their own. It was easy to blame every-
thing to political changes and the government in Washington, for
there was enough of the Confederacy left to be critical of Northern
men and Yankee methods, and wherever these old soldiers congregated
they talked politics with the same vim and disapproval that had helped
to hasten on the war. There were several favorite gathering places.
The drug store was one of them. " Doc " Mattox had a tall prescrip-
tion counter that concealed his argumentative visitors from his potential
customers, and Doc Mattox realized that it was well for the integrity
,of his business to have them concealed, for he could not explain to
everyone that he had acquired a certain sixth sense which enabled him
to prepare the deadliest compounds undisturbed by the volubility of
his guests. Then there was the hotel, the largest and oldest one in
the town, the arches of the lobby were supported by columns painted
to imitate white marble, and the paint had worn away in spots or been
scratched away by the inveterate smokers who filled the faded plush
chairs at all hours of the day and night, and who contributed nothing
to the upkeep of the establishment. Once the proprietor had timidly
and diplomatically suggested that the chairs we^ intended primarily
for the patrons of the hotel, but his remonstrance made no impression.
" That's all true enough, Si," said Major Carter (skillfully send-
ing a stream of tobacco juice into a convenient box of sawdust), " but
you ain't got enough guests to fill em, and we boom your business
524 TRANSMIGRATION [July,
just settin' here. Makes your place look popular. Have a julep on
me? Must have eaten something that didn't agree with you."
How familiar the old place looked to Walcott, how cheap, how
shabby, as he was whirled by it in Anne's luxurious car. Why there
was his own old office occupied now by a pretty Italian fruit vender,
who was busily engaged polishing apples on the sleeve of her ragged
sweater; there was the tiny lunchroom where he had so often gone
at noonday for a mug of milk and a piece of pie when he had not
had time to go to the club, which was three squares away ; there was
the tailor's shop, the fat little German who used to press his trousers
had evidently prospered, for he had added a plate glass window and
a shining gold sign to his door; the shoe shop across the street had
grown two stories, and a large department store had been built on the
lot at the corner where a second-hand bookseller had once hopefully
displayed his musty wares.
The place was having a strange effect upon Walcott; he felt
a wild and surprising impulse to jump out at his own office door and
take that buxom Italian girl by the shoulder and order her away,
while he flung her fruit into the street. Why he had planned and
built that office it was his first attempt at building anything and,
in the enthusiasm and egotism of youth, it had seemed to him an
enduring monument. He had chosen the furniture with so much care,
and he had sent to New York for at least a dozen catalogues before
he had selected a safe with a satisfactory combination. Even his
father had grudgingly admitted that it " looked like business," and
now it seemed a sort of desecration to have the place filled with
speckled edibles and a peanut roaster blocking the front door.
But the car sped on, and Walcott had grown old enough to smile
at his own unreasonable impulses, but they had brought with them a
certain sense of gladness; the ardor of his youth had not entirely
vanished as he had believed. The insensate streets had for the mo-
ment magically obliterated the years, and Anne was waiting for him,
waiting perhaps on the white pillared portico he knew so well. His
spirit had grown solitary in its world of memory; he was barely
conscious of the other inmates in the car.
Out into the country the highway seemed even more familiar,
why nothing had changed, the trees might be a few feet taller, the
honeysuckle, browned by the frost, might cling more closely to their
trunks, but the gray worn fences still guarded the road, while the
blackberry bushes, ttyeir brambles all revealed, tangled themselves into
a defensive barrier around Farmer Mason's apple orchard, which had
tempted him beyond resistance in his boyhood. And still the automo-
bile drove on, past the small stream where his bare baby legs had
shivered in the cold, past the fields where his father's horses had been
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 525
pastured, past the farmhouse where the friendly milkman had brought
him one day, when he had wandered away from his nurse and been
lost in an illimitable patch of scrubby pines, then along the river road
to the broad avenue of poplars that led up to Anne's old home.
Why had he come ? He was a fool to come. All his old illusions
about Anne were crowding back upon him. There had been no change ;
nothing had changed; the fifteen years had withered away, the dis-
figurement on his face was forgotten; Anne was standing on the
porch, the sunlight glittering on her hair, her hands outstretched to
welcome him. Who were these other people that they should intrude
upon them here ? Then reality came to his rescue, he was in a dream,
and he must rouse himself or he would do something, say something
that would make his present position appear fantastically absurd to a
critical world. His greeting to Anne was scarcely audible, but she
was tolerant of peculiarities in men, half the time she attributed them
rightfully to an effort to conceal their admiration.
A young mulatto boy showed Walcott to his room and unpacked
his suitcase, laying out his evening clothes with a deftness and pre-
cision that showed long and careful training. In the tiled bathroom,
adjoining the room, a warm bath, faintly perfumed, was waiting to
remove the grime of travel. Anne was certainly not lacking in con-
sideration of her guests' comfort. It was a relief to Walcott to dis-
miss this young body servant with a generous tip; of late years any
sort of personal service worried him; he certainly felt capable of
dressing himself even with those refractory studs that the Senator had
insisted on buying him. Dinner was at seven, the boy respectfully re-
minded him ; it was now quarter past five, that gave him an hour and
three-quarters to bathe, dress and readjust his mind to his most diffi-
cult position.
The room was charming in its old-fashioned simplicity, a tall
mahogany high-boy stood in one corner, a quaintly carved dresser op-
posite, a four-poster, its valance fringed and stiff with starch, oc-
cupied one wide wall space, a flight of carpeted steps led up to its
reposeful heights ; the chintz curtains of the window were parted, per-
mitting a wide view of the river, and the green-shaded reading lamp,
already lighted, glowed more brightly as the twilight deepened in the
room.
Walcott stood like a statue by the window looking out into the
shadowy garden. There was the boathouse where he had so often
moored his canoe on summer evenings; there was the old tennis
court where he had always played so indifferently, blinded by Anne's
beauty; there was the rustic summerhouse, with its twisted rose
vines, where Anne had promised to be his wife. What madness had
led him back after all these years? He leaned his head against the
526 TRANSMIGRATION [July,
frosted windowpane, and the cold seemed to bring him back to a
saner mood, a wiser judgment. He was a stranger, a stranger in
this town, this house, a stranger to Anne. He would play his part
to the end. Nothing could be gained by revelation now.
When Walcott came downstairs it was a few minutes after seven
o'clock, and the other guests were waiting for him in the library.
Besides the Major, Ted and the Bolivars, there were some people
from the neighborhood ; an angular girl of the undistinguishable type,
who played the part of convoy to her pretty debutante sister ; a benign
old gentleman introduced as Dr. Fairfax, and an elderly lady with
bobbing curls, a distant cousin whom Anne rescued periodically from
some sort of genteel " Ladies Home " to act as chaperon on oc-
casions of this sort, when it seemed more conventional for a beauti-
ful young widow to employ some sort of companion. As Walcott
looked curiously around the familiar library where he and Anne had
read poetry to each other, when the days were too stormy to spend in
the garden, he noticed that there was a luxuriousness about the room
which it had not possessed in the old days. Anne had been too wise
to allow modernity to invade itself, but she had skillfully added to the
furnishings ; the long sofa was covered in some wonderful hand-made
tapestry, heavy brocade curtains falling over net shut out the darkness,
some excellent reproductions of period furniture filled the spaces that
heretofore had been barren, and many of the old books had been re-
bound in leather, their color harmonizing with the rich Oriental rugs
and the soft tones of the wall paper.
The dinner was served with the bounteousness of the old South-
land; an aged butler in brass-buttoned livery waited upon the table,
ably assisted by his two grandsons, who had been brought up with
a deep sense of privilege in being permitted to act as his understudies.
There was a graciousness about their service as if they were an inte-
gral part of the hospitality of the house, a solicitude for the appetites
of each individual guest, a trait engendered by tradition, not by
training.
Walcott was conspicuously silent during the whole of the meal,
and he scarcely tasted his food. Not until the ladies left the dining-
room and the men turned to their cigars and wine did he rouse him-
self. Ted was sitting next to him, a thin-stemmed wine glass held
between his fingers. He had called upon the old butler to bring the
decanter of brandy from the sideboard.
" Wine is all very well for women/* he said, " but I'd like some-
thing stronger after that icy ride through the wind."
But before the decanter was brought Walcott laid his hand upon
Ted's arm. " Will you come out on the porch with me?"
It was a blundering method of procedure, but Ted, looking into
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 527
the white, strained face, thought that Walcott was stricken with a sud-
den passing illness and required the air. He was not lacking in
courtesy or kindness, and he rose quickly, offering his arm to the
older man to assist him to the door.
Walcott, seeing his advantage, leaned upon Ted's arm with some
heaviness, and they passed unquestioned out into the hall. The Major
was engrossed relating some of his experiences on the battlefield, and
the Senator was listening good-naturedly, his patience superinduced by
the pleasure he found in his present comfortable quarters. He had
always acknowledged publicly that he hated visiting. Hotels were
always available, and gave one a sense of liberty that no private house
could convey, so this present experience was a novel one, and he was
beginning to enjoy it; Anne's plans for the morrow had suggested
no restraint. He and the Major and Walcott were to spend the day
in the open.
As Walcott and Ted stepped out upon the wide portico Walcott
released his nephew's arm.
" You won't forgive me for this," he said frankly, " but I wanted
to talk to you out here."
" Well, it is a little chilly," suggested Ted humorously.
" There's a steamer rug lying in that chair," said Walcott, " put
it around you ; I won't keep you long."
"And you?"
" I don't mind the cold, it clears my brain."
For the first time Ted viewed him doubtfully. Certainly this dis-
figured stranger was acting in an incomprehensible way. Walcott felt
the force of the unspoken criticism; he knew that he was managing
the affair awkwardly; he had tried the same method before in the
slums of Liverpool when he had distracted a laborer with his full pay
envelope away from a grog shop, and brought him home sober to his
wife and children. But Ted was different. He should fight with a
rapier and he had chosen a bludgeon.
" To tell the truth, I'm embarrassed," he said, and he began to
walk up and down the bricked portico. " It seems that I'm a born
meddler and you've every right to be offended."
" Well, I waive my rights," said Ted good-naturedly. He had
wrapped the steamer rug, toga-like, around him, and now he leaned
resignedly back in the rustic rocker and lighted a cigarette.
" It's a beautiful night," he continued, " that moon alone would
make a man forgive any injury you might offer. I think I can guess
why you brought me out here, my friends have done it before wanted
to cool my blood, thought I was drinking too much almost always
do but what I can't understand is why you should feel any special
interest in my habits."
528 TRANSMIGRATION [July,
Confession was very close to Walcott's lips. " Polly," he said
after a moment's pause. " I promised Miss Polly."
" A guardian angel by proxy, hey? " laughed Ted. " Polly ought
not to worry her head about me ; I'm a hopeless case I'm afraid. I've
told her so a dozen times."
" Don't, don't say that," said Walcott with more feeling than he
cared to show. " Polly says you are flinging your life away."
" Perhaps," agreed Ted lightly, " but then I don't know that life
is such a valuable asset, if one can't get what one wants to make it
tolerable."
" And what do you want ? "
Ted threw his cigarette into the tall shrubbery, and getting up he
joined Walcott in his restless pacing up and down.
" I thought that question was obvious to all beholders. I want
Anne, Mrs. Van Brun."
"And she?"
" She's as indifferent as the stars above us."
Walcott's heart seemed to quicken within him. Suppose Anne
had not been indifferent to Ted. The mood of the morning was strong
upon him. Anne was his, she had promised to marry him; Ted was
but a stripling, and Polly was in love with him. Of course Ted
would marry Polly. Why did the boy talk such madness in the moon-
light? Then the travesty of his dreaming overwhelmed him. Anne was
a power that he had always had to reckon with, but she could have
no part in his life now; he had passed beyond all youthful folly.
Why had he come back, back to these old scenes so vibrant with
memory that the past seemed more real than the present? \Vhy had
he come back to play the fool ? Then his vision grew clearer ; he had
come on Ted's account, to establish an intimacy, a friendship with Ted
and he had made a bad beginning.
" Mrs. Van Brun is very beautiful/' he said, and his voice seemed
to come from a great distance. " Once my life seemed ended by a
woman, but I found there was something else, many other things, to
make life tolerable after I thought it was over."
" Oh, I know," agreed Ted a bit impatiently. " Love stories are
so old they fail to be interesting. Most men outlive two or three, but
I'll not oulive mine."
Walcott saw his eyes turn towards the blackness of the river.
"You don't mean?"
" Just that."
" That's idiocy," said Walcott, and his hand fastened upon the
arm of the younger man. " You don't know what you are saying."
'" Perfectly," replied Ted with irritating calm. " I've said it often
to Anne, and I've said it to Polly. To tell the truth Polly frightened
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 529
me a little with her supernatural sense; she's so sure of judgment and
immortality, but I haven't Polly's creed to cling to, have you ? "
" No," admitted Walcott, and again he felt that futility of argu-
ment that he had experienced so often in his work among the desperate
and degraded. What valuation could he put on life to a man who
openly despised it?
" Polly's right," he said, " she must be right and that's where I
fail always."
"Fail?" repeated Ted.
" Fail to impress you," answered Walcott humbly. " A man's
got to infuse the supernatural into life. It's the only argument for
achievement, for existence. Believe me I have seen every phase of
life, but it all comes back to Polly's viewpoint in the end."
" And if we haven't got that viewpoint ? " '
" God help us," he said.
There was a sudden blaze of light from an open door and Anne
herself stood on the threshold, her blue satin shimmering in the moon-
light, her white arms and shoulders daring the pinch of the cold.
" We want music, Ted, music moonlight sonatas. I came to look
for you. Someone said that Mr. Walcott had spirited you away, and
here you are courting pneumonia."
She came between them and slipped a soft arm in theirs, and
stood for a moment looking up at the moon which had fought its way
through a billowy cloud line, and now shone serenely in the open sky.
She was acutely conscious that the moonlight etherialized her brilliant
beauty, and her arms resting in those of her guests seemed a special
mark of confidence. Anne might not be capable of falling in love
herself, but her methods were murderous to a man's peace of mind.
CHAPTER XIII.
The next day the men spent in the marshes. One of the stable
boys acted as guide, and Anne planned every detail of the expedition
in the light of long experience. Her father had entertained shooting
parties in the prosperous days of her childhood and, because she had
heard every phase of the sport discussed, she could explain the un-
usual bend of the river and the position of every dangerous suck-hole.
She provided maps, pocket compasses; she had inherited a rack of
guns from which the guests could make their own selection; there
were several boats in the boathouse if they chose to float down the
VOL, cm. 34
530 TRANSMIGRATION [July,
river instead of taking the shorter cut through the low-lying meadow
where the decoys had been artfully placed. The lavish lunch packed
in well-equipped baskets was all that hungry men could desire.
Anne's preparedness could not fail to excite grateful admiration after
three hours spent in the open. Walcott's familiarity with the country
caused the Senator to comment:
" You're a born woodsman, Walcott. Bless my soul ! if I don't
believe you're kin to an Indian scout; I never saw that fallen log;
I'd been up to my neck in that mud hole if you hadn't warned me
away. Where's that black fellow that was leading us ? "
" He wasn't bringing us the shortest way and I knew it. No
nigger is coming this way if he can find a way round. The county
graveyard is just beyond."
" Ghosts in the daytime ? " laughed the Senator.
" Hants," answered Walcott, " hants and night doctors."
"Night doctors?"
" Well, it's plain, Bolivar, that you haven't lived long in the South.
Your education has been neglected. Night doctors and body snatchers
are close akin. Night doctors lurk around graveyards after nightfall
to catch and dissect the living blacks preferred. Body snatchers
have the grace to rob only the graves, considerately leaving the coffin
for the next needy member of the family."
" Don't be so ghoulish," said the Senator. " Dead men's things
are not to be despised. Believe I'm standing in the late Van Brun's
boots this blessed minute. Any number of pairs in that storage-room
with the guns ; Mrs. Van Brun advised me to put on a pair. Glad
I did, my own would have soaked up the river. This is different from
hunting grizzlies, hey Walcott ? but it's good sport glad I came, aren't
you ? "
" No," answered Walcott shortly, " sorry."
" Satisfying guest you are," said the Senator. " What's the
matter?"
" Fool to come," said Walcott.
" Hm," grunted the Senator, " you just won't enjoy yourself.
Think you'll be missed in a few committee meetings. Well you won't.
Government managed to scrape along for a number of years without
us. What you want is a little relaxation; that's what Mrs. Bolivar is
always preaching to me. Reformers are never satisfied. Think you
can alter the world with a little legislation? Well, you can't. God
is in His heaven keep on telling yourself that I believe
dying is going to be mighty interesting to those of us who are not
afraid."
" Interesting? " repeated Walcott.
" Well, we'll all know then why so many incomprehensible things
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 531
happen. Why we are all living in the midst of a melodrama this
blessed minute. Here's Polly in love with that Ted Hargrove and
Ted in love with Mrs. Van Brun, and Mrs. Van Brun well she's a
heart-hitter, been at it some time, and knows every rule of the game,
cruel as a catamount. Well, I take that back, she's my hostess
that was just a friendly warning. You may get into the mess your-
self."
" Don't worry," said Walcott, and he strode on a little in advance.
He was glad the conversation had ended here. He did not want
to discuss Anne. Though he knew that the feeling he had for her
was like the reflected image in a glass; he feared it and he found
himself playing with it as children chase shadows in the twilight. Can
a man ever entirely obliterate his past when every experience goes
into the moulding? If individuality is part of our immortality, can
those who mark a crisis in our lives ever go forgotten?
Duck shooting is silent, serious sport, in which congeniality of
companionship is felt not heard nor seen, and Walcott was glad that
it was so. The -gray marshes seemed very restful after the turmoil
he had passed from, for there was something undeniably exciting about
his present position that not many men could share. To wander
through familiar places in the guise of a new personality to be
counted dead and yet to stand unknown amid the living. No doubt his
death was registered somewhere in that old graveyard with its sagging
stones. He would have stopped to investigate if the Senator had not
been with him.
The Senator naturally dispelled all grewsome daydreams, his
great physical strength, his enthusiasm in the sport of the moment,
his matter-of-fact attitude towards the world, and his acceptance of
its realities. Before the morning was half-over Walcott's vision had
cleared, his fear of detection seemed unreasonable, and Ted's threats
of suicide meant nothing but the usual ranting of a love-sick boy.
After all there was a lightness about Ted that seemed to preclude
strong emotion. Walcott watched him hopefully as he floundered
through the mud with the rest of them, concealing himself behind his
blind of brush, apparently as eager for a good day's sport as any man
among them. And the ducks came flying towards the decoys, and the
men blazed away as happily as a crowd of boys making a Fourth of
July holiday, urged on by that primitive simplicity, bordering on
savagery, to which some men can return at will. Tearing their way
through the matted bushes, falling into bog holes, wading out into
the half-frozen river, they forgot themselves as completely as they
had in their boyhood when they stole away from school armed only
with a bean shooter to aim at sparrows, or a length of string and a
crooked pin to bait with wriggling worms. At noontime they tramped
532 TRANSMIGRATION [July,
back again into the woods, and made a fire that roared its way against
a great gray boulder that seemed hollowed out for a chimney place, and
while the mud dried and caked on their boot legs, they whittled sticks
to roast their birds with a vigor, urged on by the hunger of a cave
man. And when at dusk they reached the light and warmth of Anne's
home they all had that sense of physical weariness that brings with it
a delightful consciousness of repose. Hot drinks were waiting before
the fire, and the ducks were carried away to complete the menu for
dinner. The ladies were not visible. Anne never greeted her shooting
parties on their return.
" Men don't like to be seen all mud stained," she explained, " and
I myself prefer clean linen."
In this she may have been right, but Mrs. Bolivar did not agree
with her ; she wanted to say that she would have welcomed any visible
sight of virility in Ted Hargrove or the Major, but she remained
politely silent.
When Walcott arrayed in his evening clothes came downstairs
for dinner, Mrs. Bolivar met him in the hallway. He saw to his sur-
prise that she was dressed to go out.
" I have had bad news from home," she said ; " the children have
the measles. The baby was ailing a little when I left him, but I had
a trained nurse, and I thought it was only a new tooth or two. Now
Polly has telegraphed that Jack and Bobby have not been exposed to
the contagion, and that if I think best she will bring them here."
"Here?"
" Well, I don't mean exactly here," Mrs. Bolivar smiled at the
suggestion, " but I thought I explained that Polly's own home is near
here, and she is willing to take charge of the twins. She knew, of
course, that I would go home at once."
" Yes, of course ; I suppose it would be wise to get them away
from the sick ones if you can."
" But it seems an imposition on Polly's poor old mother. I don't
know Mrs. Maxen, but you know the twins and well you know you
wouldn't recommend them as a rest cure."
" She won't mind," said Walcott, with an assurance that would
have seemed strange to her if she had not been so distracted by
anxiety. " I'll take them off myself if you want me to."
" Take them where ? "
" Well, I don't know exactly," he answered after a moment of
reflection. " They would never do in a hotel Mrs. Maxen's is the
place for them, Polly is right. Mrs. Maxen will enjoy mothering
them, and then you see she will have Polly."
" Yes, I had thought of that phase of the situation. It's hard for
Mrs. Maxen to have Polly away from her, but I suppose the old
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 533
lady is more contented in her own home. I believe she has a faithful
colored maid with some outlandish name to take care of her."
"Jezabel," exclaimed Walcott, " that little nigger grown up to some
use at last."
" Yes, that's it," said Mrs. Bolivar, " you seem to have exchanged
all sort of confidences with Polly; you know so much about her past
and present."
There was a suggestion in her words that did not escape Walcott.
She had told him half a dozen times that Polly would make a very
desirable wife and, though no courtship seemed in progress, she
pounced upon little promising signs with a candor so altogether
friendly that its tactless quality needed no apology.
" Of course I always turn to you in every domestic cataclysm,"
she continued. " You really are a very helpful person."
"Lord! I wish I were."
" Well, you are Walcott. Somehow I'm always conscious of your
strength."
" Strength," he repeated with a mirthless little laugh. " 111 tell
you right now I'm the consistency of putty. Just that impressionable
press me on one side and I sink."
" Well, I won't argue the point just now, for I want you to help
me out."
" Of course, I'll go back to Washington with you ; 111 be glad
of the chance."
" Now don't say that ; I hoped you were enjoying yourself.
Aren't you having a good time ? "
" Of course not."
"Don't you enjoy duck shooting?"
" Not here."
" Your manners are extremely bad, Walcott ; I'm sure that Anne
has reduced this sort of entertainment to a fine art. Our week-end
parties were very different camping on canvas cots in the starlight
with mules and greasers and dogs and an occasional rattler to make
it exciting."
" I believe it was safer."
" Now what do you mean by that ? " They had passed into the
library where a dull fire burned upon the hearth, the lamps had not
been brought, for the other guests had gathered in the drawing-room
on the other side of the hall. Walcott was grateful for the darkness.
" My dear Mrs. Bolivar," he began with an attempt at lightness.
" Do you think I'm an ornament in a crowd like this ? You know I
haven't any small talk ; I haven't been to the opera in years ; I don't
know a popular play or a popular novel. I never go into society if
I can avoid it. This time I was dragooned,"
534 TRANSMIGRATION [July,
' .
" You forget the duck shooting," she said, " why, Alec is actually
enjoying himself, and he is as much of a social outlaw as you are. Don't
voice your discontent before him or he will be sure to share it, and
I want him to stay here a day or two longer at least. You must keep
him."
" Why, he won't let you go to Washington alone."
" That's all nonsense, I'm quite capable of traveling two hundred
miles in a parlor car. I'll take a taxi from the station, I've tele-
graphed Polly to bring the twins to her mother's, and I want you two
men to stay here and arrange matters for me. Of course we can't
let the children with their appetites descend upon Mrs. Maxen, who
is as poor as a church mouse, without making some sort of provision
for them, and the house may be horribly unsanitary some of these
old places are. None of us has ever been there, and we may have to
get a nurse to look after the children; we can't expect Polly to do
everything, and they will need toys to keep them amused and you
might be able to hire a pony phaeton in the neighborhood and then
there's the Romney portrait."
" The Romney portrait ! My sluggish mind refuses to follow.
Am I to kidnap your illustrious ancestress before Bobby punches a
hole in her head ? "
" Oh, I know I'm a bit incoherent, but I'm listening for the car
that is to take me to the station, and there really is a great deal to
think of in such a short time. Alec is upstairs packing, and I want
you to stop him. A man will always listen to the masculine point of view
when he's tired of the feminine. Alec asked an artist or an art dealer
or some sort of man to come down and appraise that Romney por-
trait, and now he insists upon leaving, though the man is due some
time to-morrow or next day the man cannot go to Mrs. Maxen's
alone."
"Why not?"
" Why, I think there would be something brutally business-like
about it. After all Alec is Mrs. Maxen's cousin, and Polly is such
a dear and to come to the neighborhood and not notice her mother in
any way except to send a cold-blooded art dealer to find out whether
her great-grandmother is genuine or not."
"Genuine?"
" Whether she's a real Romney or a make believe. It seems to
place the old lady under suspicion."
"Which old lady?"
" Now Walcott you're trying to be stupid, the Romney portrait is
not an old lady in spite of her hundred years or so. She's immortally
young and quite unfaded according to Polly. Now you know the
dealer's mission need not be divulged, he can just happen along with
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 535
the rest of you, and he can give you his opinion later on. We want
to do the fair thing, but if the portrait isn't a Romney, Alec does not
want it."
" It's as complicated as a moving picture plot. I can't exactly see
why my presence is essential pony phaetons, toys, measles, eighteenth
century portraits, it's no wonder the modern woman suffers a nervous
breakdown. I'm sure you need me to take you home."
" Now please, Walcott," and her voice showed marked irritation.
" Will you please go upstairs and convince Alec that there is no senti-
mental reason why he should go home and take the measles when
I want him to stay here and look after the twins. If you're rude
enough to break up the house party after I leave it's none of my
business, but I don't want to have your departure laid to my door."
Walcott realized that she was very much in earnest. It was not
often that he had seen her vexed, so he went obediently upstairs and
knocked at the Senator's door.
" Oh, come in, Walcott," said the Senator. " You seem to be a
sort of domesticated umpire. I'm sure Mrs. Bolivar sent you to
reason with me. We seem to be in a devil of a fix. Half the chil-
dren sick, other half homeless. I feel I ought to go back with Mrs.
Bolivar, though I'm never any use at such times. Last year the
trained nurse turned me out without apology, told me I was exciting
the patient, promising him drums and horns and all sorts of things
fever went up two degrees."
" I know you're a fifth wheel to a coach," said Walcott reas-
suredly. " Pitch those things out of your valise and stay on and see
that art man to-morrow. Mrs. Bolivar has set her mind on it."
The Senator paused in his packing. " I had forgotten that art
dealer," he said.
" Well, he hasn't forgotten you, and the twins are coming, and I'm
sure you will be more use at this end of the line. Nobody dies of
measles. We have our orders from Mrs. Bolivar who possesses a
genius for generalship. I'm to hire a pony phaeton."
"For what?"
" For the twins, and select a nurse for the twins, and buy toys
for the twins, and you're to arrange about some sort of a board bill
at Mrs. Maxen's and buy the Romney outright. Buying portraits,
Bolivar, is something entirely out of my line."
" I'd forgotten about that art dealer," said the Senator. , " Would
you know a Romney if you saw it."
" Certainly not."
" Well I'm not sure of my own judgment either. Polly told me
that it had always been spoken of as a Romney, but then there are
myths in every family. I was at that exhibition at the Grafton
536 TRANSMIGRATION [July,
Gallery when Romney had his real revival. The trouble was he
painted too much had to I guess, food and lodgings knock the best
out of nearly every man. Lady Hamilton made him her portrait
sold for one hundred thousand. Truth is I don't know how to value
my ancestress unless I get someone to appraise it. Of course she hasn't
Lady Hamilton's reputation, the Lord be thanked for that, but as
a picture "
The Senator was launched upon his favorite topic. While he
talked Walcott deftly shied brushes, collars, cravats into the bureau
drawers that stood yawningly open.
" It's all settled," he said when the Senator paused for a mo-
ment. " I knew it was before I came up here. Matrimony engenders
obedience in a man. We will go to the station with Mrs. Bolivar, and
then we will return to wrestle with the situation at this end of the
line, though for my part I should prefer to return and catch the
measles."
" Well, I don't know," admitted the Senator, " we'll have one
more day in the marshes. To tell the truth I was just beginning to
enjoy myself."
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
Hew Boohs.
COLLECTED POEMS. By A. E. New York : The Macmillan
Co. $2.00.
SINGING FIRES OF ERIN. By Eleanor Rogers Cox. New
York: John Lane & Co. $1.00 net.
Within the past few weeks a new and tragic interest has at-
tached to Irish poetry, or rather, perhaps, the age-old tragic interest
has but sprung up with a new crimson in its flame. Much that one
thought forgotten has taken on vitality again wounds which one
fancied healed, or healing, have opened wide like scarlet poppies.
And beyond the story of to-day and yesterday looms the curiously
ironical fact that in the days of the old deeds and the old dreams,
Ireland was the land which decreed that no man should make her
laws who was not able also to make her poems!
Excepting only William Butler Yeats, there is probably no
name more significant in the " Celtic Renaissance "of the past two
decades than that of George W. Russell, in literature known as
"A. E." A mystic and dreamer, he has dominated contemporary
readers and writers with something of the spaciousness of en-
veloping twilight since those early volumes, Homeward and The
Earth Breath, published in 1893 and 1895. From these books,
and from the later Divine Vision, the present valuable
collection has been made, adding a few recent poems which the
author himself believes "of equal mood." There is no gain-
saying the penetrating dignity and beauty of this body of work if
indeed one can apply the word body to anything so ethereal. For
" A. E." moves among vague and immense dreams, pale with the
hunger for beauty, the " nostalgia for sweet, impossible things "of
which another Celt, Fiona MacLeod, wrote so passionately. The
concrete loves and tragedies of men have interested him only as
symbols and shadows of the " proud procession of eternal things "
spectres of humanity pressing toward some bright, far-off Bird
of Dreams. There are moments in which this Irishman is as
plaintively pantheistic as the Bengal dreamer, Rabindranath Tagore.
There are others, as in " The Christ Sword " in which he grasps the
very primal truth of Christianity. And the force of his imagining
is as vivid as the most modern " imagist " could desire. The draw-
back at once and the fascination of his verse is its atmosphere of
white, moonlit melancholy the quality of which Mr. Russell him-
538 NEW BOOKS [July,
self speaks in the preface of the present volume : " When I first
discovered for myself how near was the King in His beauty I
thought I would be the singer of the happiest songs. Forgive me,
Spirit of my spirit, for this, that I have found it easier to read the
mystery told in tears and understood Thee better in sorrow than in
joy I should have parted the true from the false, but I have
not yet passed away from myself who am in the words of this
book. Time is a swift winnower, and that he will do quickly for
me."
So much for truth in the dream. And now comes a new
Irish poet, writing in our own New York, and finding her truth
in the Celtic' deed. Some two years ago Eleanor Rogers Cox
delighted many readers by a slim but artistic volume entitled A
Hosting of Heroes songs of the old half -mythical knights and
kings and ladies who made bright the dawtime of Ireland. These
poems, with brief epics in like vein, make up the newer volume.
There is real music and real spirit in her songs of Queen Maeve and
Emer and Deirdre the singing fires which play, till the end of time,
about the head of yEngus of the Golden Dreams. And " The
Sleeping Knight," a recent and a searching poem, belongs quite
equally to to-day and who knows? to-morrow! Miss Cox has
been fortunate in capturing for her volume two notable designs,
most happily archaic in spirit, by the young Belfast artist, Mr.
John P. Campbell. Altogether the book is one which lovers of
Celtic romance will want to possess and one which will cause
the author's future to be followed with interest.
COUNTER-CURRENTS. By Agnes Repplier. Boston: Hough-
ton Mifflin Co. $1.25 net.
This volume is made up of nine essays which attracted much
attention during the past three years when they appeared at in-
tervals in The Atlantic Monthly. Contrary to custom, they gain
rather than lose effectiveness when read collectively, for they blend
into a rounded whole of which the intention is indicated by the
title, while the dominant note is sounded in the heading of the
first essay : The Cost of Modern Sentiment.
Sentiment, Miss Repplier tells us, is subjective, and a personal
thing; it cannot with safety be accepted " as a scale for justice, or
as a test for truth." Our modern sentiment concerns itself chiefly
with the conditions of labor, the progress of women, the social evil,
and, of late, the question of peace and war; and among these it
1916.] NEW BOOKS 539
has so rioted unchecked that it now imperils our social welfare. In
the excesses of its unreasoning sensibility it obscures and confuses
the issues of morality and individual responsibility, especially in
women; of courage, endurance, self-discipline, of war and patriotic
service, of duty to one's country, whether native or adopted. The
case does not rest upon generalities : in support of each count,
Miss Repplier brings forward records of extravagant action or
speech. " The injury done by loose thinking and loose talking is
irremediable," she says ; and her incontrovertible indictment of these
prevalent evils is an achievement of close reasoning and accurate
expression. Her wit and satire play with all their accustomed
brilliancy upon the follies of sentimentalism, but most in evidence
is her conviction of the menace that looms behind these fatuities.
The book was sorely needed. Warnings and protests have been
voiced from time to time, notably in Catholic publications, but
there was lacking what is here contributed a clear, comprehensive
presentment in a form readily available to the average reader, of
the unpopular truth regarding the matters that occupy so much of
the popular mind. It is stringent criticism, but not merely de-
structive. Miss Repplier commands an inexhaustible stock of force-
ful and appealing illustrations of the worth of the older standards
that are attested by centuries of experience. These suggestions
will inevitably incur the reproachful designation " reactionary "
the favorite word of opprobrium among those who ignore facts
and proceed upon the assumption that activity and progress are
interchangeable terms: yet it seems scarcely possible that even
intelligences thus safeguarded can entirely escape the author's pene-
trating shafts, save by leaving the book unread.
Counter-Currents possesses the double value of an acquisition
to literature and a manual for students of this bewildering period.
All the elements that constitute Miss Repplier's distinguished charm
are present, and she is, as ever, prodigal of ideas, scattering broad-
cast terse, pregnant sentences, any one of which would provide a
thriftier author with material for an entire essay. To all this
is joined a vital human significance infrequently found in the sub-
jects that have been her choice hitherto. What some of us have in-
articulately felt, in part, she has phrased, with a perfection that
most of us can but covet. This her finest work will not only fulfill
the highest expectations of her readers, but will also greatly in-
crease their number, and will be recognized as partaking of the
nature of a public service.
540 NEW BOOKS [July.
CRIMINALITY AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. By William
Adrian Bonger. Translated by Henry P. Horton, with an
editorial preface by Edward Lindsey and an introduction by
Frank H. Norcross. The Modern Criminal Science Series.
Boston : Little, Brown & Co. $5.50 net.
To the first part of this number of the series, Dr. Bonger of
Amsterdam, Holland, contributes his monograph, entitled A Sys-
tematic arid Critical Exposition of the Literature Dealing with
the Relation Between Criminality and Economic Conditions, to
which, ten years ago, honorable mention was given by the juridical
faculty of the University of Amsterdam. But the author has
brought his review of the literature up to the date of June, 1914.
The bibliography begins with Sir Thomas More's Utopia. The
second part of the work presents the author's own views on the
relation of environment to crime. His conclusion is expressed in
the words of Quetelet, " It is society that prepares the crime."
We absolutely disagree with his conclusion, and yet much valu-
able help is to be found in his collation of the literature, and every-
one will sympathize with his subsidiary conclusion given in the
words from Manouvrier who, treating of the prevention of crime,
said : " The maxim to apply is, act so that every man shall always
have more interest in being useful to his fellows than in harming
them."
It is interesting to find how thoroughly the author disagrees
with certain criminological theories that are now being reduced to
practice, save the mark! as if they were obvious first principles.
He expresses his contempt for the theory that sterilization may be
an effective method of reducing the army of criminals. He says :
" One should be inclined to ask if the advocates of sterilization
have never heard of Australia where a considerable number of
inhabitants have descended from the worst of criminals, and where
yet the rate of criminality is low." Dr. Bonger suggests that
" sterilization would be about as useful against the flood of crim-
inality as an effort to stop a brook in its course with a bottle."
While Dr. Bonger from his socialistic affiliations emphasizes
too much the economic factors in crime, he throws many interesting
side lights on present-day criminality, and makes it very clear that
economic factors, as all must admit, play an important role in
criminality. He deprecates such teaching as the quasi-moral pre-
cept " honesty is- the best policy," or that widely-taught axiom for
success in life, "every man for himself." Such teaching cannot
1916.] NEW BOOKS 541
fail to lead men of inferior moral calibre into the commission of
crime, whenever they feel it may be to their advantage. Inasmuch
as the environment is readily improvable, while heredity is much
less hopeful, Dr. Bonger's book has more promise in it than the
discussions on " the born criminal " and " the criminal degenerate "
which have been so common in recent years.
BLACKFEET TALES OF GLACIER NATIONAL PARK. By
James Willard Schultz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
$2.00 net.
The apparently increasing interest in the true lore of the North
American Indian will gain fresh impetus from this authoritative
book. The author, an old frontiersman whose intimate knowledge
of his subject extends over many years, gives a brief, effective
account of the first entrance of white men into the Black feet coun-
try, and of his own return to it, after long absence, in the summer
of 1915, to visit this people whom he calls his own, and to live
their daily life with them, as of old. As they travel through the
country that was once solely theirs, revisiting places to which the
whites have given uninviting substitutes for the old Indian names
full of poetical significance, stories are told while the lodge fire
burns and the pipe makes its rounds. In the telling of these legends
and folk-tales the author appears only as an interpreter: they are
narrated with a simplicity that does little more than convey the
meaning. Whatever of literary opportunity may be lost is, how-
ever, compensated for in the effect produced of absolute genuine-
ness. There is fascination in them, and both the stories and the
author's fleeting disclosures of himself fasten our attention and
touch our sympathies.
The appearance of the book, with its many illustrations from
beautiful photographs, does credit to the publishers.
TACT AND TALENT. By Irish Priests. 35 cents net.
THE WRITINGS ON THE WALLS. By Conall Cearnach. Dub-
lin : M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd. 35 cents net.
These slender twin volumes lead one to wonder a little why it
was thought necessary to put forth matter so well worth while in
a form so easy to overlook. They are made up of short essays
and articles on miscellaneous subjects that are of interest to an
intelligent reader. The themes are occasionally religious, more
generally secular, and frequently humorous; but whatever the na-
542 NEW BOOKS [July,
ture of the topic in hand it is treated thoughtfully and with leis-
ured grace, and considerable information is scattered through the
pages, imparted informally and entertainingly. The tone through-
out is so urbane that one thinks of them as desirable traveling
companions, responsive to demands for beguilement of tedious quar-
ter-hours ; but after they are laid aside we realize that a longer time
is requisite to efface the impressions we have received, and that we
would gladly repeat the experience of reading, for instance, such
portions as: Croagh Patrick, Two Sea Seems, and Patriotism and
Language.
MICHELANGELO. By Remain Rolland. New York: Duffield
& Co. $2.50 net.
It was a happy thought to choose the Venusti portrait of
Michelangelo as the frontispiece of this volume. Study the por-
trait before you begin to read the text; notice the rugged face,
the sweep of the brow, the strength of the nose, the inspired eye of
the seer of visions and the dreamer of dreams; notice likewise the
furrowed forehead, the seared cheek, the petulant mouth, the whole
expression furtive, hunted and haunted. Then turn over the pages
of the book and admit that the pen of M. Rolland has drawn no less
skilfully and revealingly than the brush of Venusti. The universal
power of the master who left no form of the fine arts, not even
poetry, untouched, and who " touched nothing that he did not
adorn," receives full meed of acknowledgment and reverence. But,
just as in Michelangelo's own painting the shades seem to exist for
their own sake rather than to strengthen the lights, so, in reading the
sordid story of genius crippled by private enmity and political cabal,
the impression grows that their success lay rather in his weakness
than in his enemies' strength.
Though a short biographical sketch is given, the book is con-
cerned chiefly in setting forth the relations of Michelangelo with
Julius II. and succeeding Popes, and with the Medici in Florence.
The monumental works, like the tomb of Julius II., the " Last
Judgment," and the dome of St. Peter's, are described in detail and
with a wealth of appreciative sympathy; and there is scarcely a
plan or cartoon that has not its word of explanation. There is
also a lengthy chapter on his relations with Vittoria Colonna, under
whose influence his most beautiful verses were inspired.
Having taken as his theme Michelangelo's life as an example
of the influence a great man may have on his age, M. Rolland
1916.] NEW BOOKS 543
devotes his last chapter to summing up his data to show that this
special genius realized itself in the most simple and abstract forms
in which the senses play the least part and the spirit the greatest,
and that, therefore, by him and through him the elegant subtlety of
the Quattrocento was swept away forever. But this purely inter-
pretative section is less happy than what precedes; the tone is a
little morbid, the philosophy involved, the conclusions somewhat
arbitrary. In general, however, the tone is elevated, the style highly
imaginative, characterized by stirring figures well sustained and
especially well rendered into English by the translator, Frederick
Street. The twenty-three illustrations of the volume are an art
gallery in miniature.
THE FORTUNES OF GARIN. By Mary Johnston. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin & Co. $1.40 net.
The last quarter of the twelfth century and the wooded hills
of southern France form the picturesque background of this
mediaeval romance. Impregnable castles on dizzy heights, rich
knights and poor, a bishop, an abbot, high-born ladies, crusaders,
troubadours and the usual supernumeraries, are woven into a story
full of varied color and charm.
The hero has many wonderful adventures, overcoming them
all in turn, and seems equally at home as the poor esquire of an
obscure lord or the court favorite lately returned from the Holy
Land with honors and gold. In the beginning of his career he
rescues a maiden in distress and fights her unknown assailant, who
proves to be a dreaded power in the neighborhood and the villain
of the tale. Fearing the result of his quarrel young Gar in " takes
the Cross " and joins a company of departing crusaders, determined
to win his spurs of knighthood and prove himself worthy of a noble
lady whom he has seen at a distance, but whose face was hidden by
her veil. It is refreshing to read that this unknown heroine is not
the most beautiful princess of her time, but leaves that distinction
to her stepmother, and that the two ladies are ever on the best
of terms.
Garin returns from over seas at the right moment to rescue a
princess and her besieged castle from the unknightly villain, and to
find in her not only the lady of his dreams, but the maid, mas-
querading as a shepherdess, in whose defence he risked his life at
the beginning of his fortunes.
Altogether it is a good story graphically told, and bearing more
544 NEW BOOKS [July,
than one resemblance to an ancient tapestry in the permanence of
its characters. The hero is always the hero, the princess always the
heroine with never a deflection ; the villain is always the villain with
never a redeeming trait; the bishops and monks are ever of the
time-serving, table-loving variety, and the rank and file so grouped
about the background that they never obtrude into the brilliant pic-
ture designed to show forth the trials and glories of their masters.
WHAT PICTURES TO SEE IN AMERICA. By Lorinda Munson
Bryant. New York: John Lane Co. $2.00 net.
This volume with its excellent illustrations over two hundred
in number covers the art museums of the United States from
Boston to San Francisco and longitudinally from Minneapolis to
New Orleans. It is not intended as a thorough guide to the dif-
ferent galleries, but rather as a help to those whose taste is in the
forming, or who want to see the best and are unaware of its
presence.
The pictures are described in clear, simple language with no
technical flourishes, but entirely from the Non-Catholic viewpoint,
which is apt to see far more to admire in the homely interiors and
portraits of Holland than in the spirituality and symbolism of the
early Latin dreamers. As usual in a work of this kind the author's
personal tastes and prejudices are clearly seen, and more than once
the reader wishes she had consulted his tastes and prejudices : for
many favorites are ignored or dismissed with faint praise.
As a whole the volume cannot fail to interest the home-keeping
traveler who knows a thing or two about art, and it will doubtless
come as a revelation to many readers that the inimitable paintings
of the old masters of Europe are so numerous in this country.
LUTHER. By Hartmann Grisar, SJ. Translated by E. M. La-
mond. Edited by Luigi Cappadelta. Volume V. St. Louis :
B. Herder. $3.25 net.
The fifth volume of Father Grisar's monumental Life of
Luther discusses the ethical results of the reformer's new teaching,
the dishonesty of his polemics, his melancholy, superstition, doubts
and devil-mania, his attitude toward the Council of Trent, his
literary labors and his views on society and education.
Father Grisar, as usual, never makes a statement about
Luther's character or teachings without giving his readers ample
references to prove his point.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 545
Human reason, according to Luther, becomes in matters of
religion " a crazy witch," and the will also behaves quite negatively
towards what is good, whether in ethics or religion. As he put it :
" We remain as passive as the clay in the hands of the potter."
"All the damned," he adds, " were predestined to hell, and, in spite
of their best efforts, could not escape eternal punishment." If we
add to this his teaching concerning the overwhelming power of the
devil, we readily see that Luther negatived any real ethical responsi-
bility. His false teachings on faith and justification led to the
antinomianism of Agricola, and his disparagement of good works,
together with his anti-biblical doctrine of the certainty of salvation,
led to what Harnack called " a hugh decline in moral ideals and
practical Christianity."
Father Grisar quotes Schwenckfeld's testimony concerning the
practical results of Luther's teaching. He wrote : "If by God's grace
I see the great common herd and the poor folk on both sides as they
really are, then I must fain admit, that, under the Papacy and in
spite of all its errors, there are more pious, God-fearing men than
in Lutheranism How many have I heard, who all appealed
to the Wittenberg writings, and who, alas, are to-day ten times
worse than before the Evangel began to be preached."
This was to be expected, for Luther denounced the chastity,
poverty and obedience of the convents as " nothing but blasphemous
holiness;" he denied the distinction between the natural and the
supernatural order; he ignored the fact of actual grace and the super-
natural life, which was incompatible with his theory of the non-
imputation of sin; he carried subjectivism to its furthest limits,
and exalted his own personal views and feelings into a regular
law; he taught principles that were subversive of all liturgy, and
eliminated from the Mass everything that referred to its sacrificial
character; he arbitrarily set aside the old Catholic teaching on the
sacraments, the divine authority of the Church, the principles of
Christian asceticism, and the necessity of good works, and left his
followers subject to the uncertainty of a varying, contradictory
and unauthoritative individual conscience.
Luther sometimes speaks of his new gospel bringing forth
" simplicity and godly piety." But there is little evidence of either
virtue in his controversial writings. " His hate was without bounds,
and his fury blazed forth in thunderbolts which slew all who dared
attempt to bridge the chasm between him and the Catholic Church."
They also evidence his natural lack of charity, his irritability and
VOL. cm. 35
546 NEW BOOKS [July,
quickness of temper, his outrageous conceit, his gross obscenity, and
his shameless dishonesty. With regard to the last-named vice Father
Grisar writes : " In his relentless polemics against the Church
where he does not hesitate to bring the most baseless charges against
both her dignitaries and her institutions we might dismiss as not
uncommon his tendency to see only what was evil eagerly setting
this in the foreground, while passing over all that was good; his
eyes also served to magnify and distort the dark spots into all man-
ner of grotesque shapes. But what tells more heavily against him
is his having evolved out of his own mind a mountain of false
doctrines which he foists on the Church as hers, though in reality
not one of them, but the very opposite, was taught in and by the
Church."
Students of psychology will be interested in the two chapters
of the present volume which discuss in detail Luther's hopeless
pessimism, his continued melancholy, his superstitious fancies, his
fanatical expectation of the end of the world, his terrors of con-
science, his so-called combats with the devil, and the like. His
conscience often worried him even to the brink of despair,- and
doubts often arose in his mind concerning his pet doctrine of justi-
fication, and the truth of his often proclaimed divine mission. Still
"he resolutely steeled his conscience against even wholesome dis-
quietude and anxiety, and of set purpose he bore down all mis-
givings."
Some of Luther's admirers have claimed that he prepared the
way for the modern State. Father Grisar shows conclusively
that Luther had not the slightest conception of the principles of
liberty current in the civilized States of to-day. In proportion
as the rulers of the municipalities which favored his cause grew more
numerous, he conferred on them full powers to stamp out the
Catholic faith, and even made it their duty to do so. He warmly
defended the principle that in every country uniformity of worship
and doctrine must prevail. Religious freedom and the sacred rights
of conscience never even entered his mind. It is rather amusing
to find Luther styled to-day, by the unthinking, the friend of liberty
and democracy, for he ever identified himself with the insufferable
absolutism of the German princes of his day so much so, that
his enemies used to call him " a foot-licker of the princes."
Father Grisar devotes a most interesting chapter to Luther's
German Bible. He admits the excellence of its translation from the
point of view of its German, while pointing out its many mistakes
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 547
and inaccuracies. He also shows how widely the Bible was known
even before Luther's day, and to what an extent it was studied
among educated people. A list is given of the German translations
of the Bible before Luther's time. Luther, as a matter of fact,
borrowed a good deal from them, although he never acknowledged
his indebtedness.
THE GERMAN CLASSICS. Masterpieces of German Literature.
Translated into English. New York: The German Publica-
tion Society. $90.00.
The German Classics is the first work issued by the German
Publication Society in pursuance of a comprehensive plan to open
to the English-speaking people of the world the treasures of Ger-
man thought and achievement in literature, art and science. The
twenty handsome volumes before us cover the past one hundred
and fifty years from Goethe and Schiller to Hauptmann and Clara
Viebig. The most representative writers of each period are pre-
sented to us in excellent translations, and eminent scholars of
American and foreign universities furnish us with biographies and
critical estimates of the principal authors.
As a rule the chronological order has been followed through-
out. The first three volumes have been devoted to Goethe and
Schiller; Volumes IV. and V. contain the chief Romanticists, Jean
Paul, Schlegel, Hoffman, the brothers Grimm, and philosophers
like Fichte and Schelling; Volume VI. is given over principally to
Heine, although some very commonplace letters of Beethoven are
added; Volume VII. deals with Hegel, Immermann, Bettina, von
Arnim and Lenau; Volume VIII. with Auerbach, Gotthelf and
Reuter; Volume IX. with Hebel and Ludwig; Volume X. with
Bismarck, Moltke and Lasalle ; Volume XI. with Spielhagen, Storm
and Raabe; Volume XII. with Freitag and Fontane; Volume XIII.
with Heise and Seidel; Volume XIV. with Keller and Widman;
Volume XV. with Schoenhauer, Wagner, Nietzsche and William
II.; Volume XVI. with Wilbrandt and Rosegger; Volume XVII.
with Sudermann, Frenssen and Polenz; Volume XVIII. with
Hauptmann and the contemporary lyricists, Von Saar, Falke,
Dehmel and Hesse; Volumes XIX. and XX. with the Contem-
porary Short Story and Drama.
As the editor-in-chief well says in his preface : "The crux of the
whole undertaking lies in the correctness and adequacy of the trans-
lations." Dr. Isidore Singer, who conceived the idea of the German
548 NEW BOOKS [July,
Classics, deserves great credit for the selection of the many able
scholars who have given their time to the usually thankless task
of translating. Professor Meyer of Berlin writes the general in-
troduction to the whole series, and sketches in brief but accurate
outline the history of German literature from 1700 to the present
day; Thomas of Columbia writes the essays on Goethe and Schil-
ler; Thilly of Cornell on the Romantic Philosophers; Spalding of
Harvard on Wagner; Howard of Harvard on Heine; Francke of
Harvard on Bismarck; Jessen of Bryn Mawr on Nietzsche; Mun-
sterberg of Harvard on William II. ; Petersen of Basel on the
Contemporary Short Story, etc.
We fail to see the reason for the omission of such names as
the scientist Humboldt, the poet Kinkel, the dramatist Laube, the
philosopher Eucken, and on the other hand the inclusion of such
mediocrities as Beethoven, Bismarck, Moltke, Wagner and William
II. A man may be a great musician, statesman, general or emperor
without possessing the slightest claim to literary genius. The plea
of lack of space, moreover, does not justify the exclusion of his-
torians of marked literary ability.
Many of the writers who appear in these volumes are practi-
cally unknown to the American public, and their introduction under
such scholarly auspices must needs make for a better understanding
of the culture and genius of the German people. A word of com-
mendation must be said for the excellent illustrations, which are
copies of paintings by famous German artists.
ITALIAN CONFESSIONS. How to Hear Them. By Joseph
McSorley of the Paulist Fathers. With an Introduction by
His Eminence John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New
York. New York: The Paulist Press. $1.00.
In many of our English-speaking parishes there are hundreds
sometimes thousands of Italians who never come in contact
with a priest unless at a baptism, marriage, sick call, or funeral. It
is imperative, therefore, for the English-speaking priest who meets
them at such times to know enough Italian to hear their confessions,
and to make a direct appeal to them to practise their religious
duties.
Many a busy priest may never have an opportunity of
thoroughly mastering the Italian language, but he is most anxious
to know enough of it to meet the needs of his parishioners. Father
McSorley has written this volume as " a first aid " to confessors.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 549
His thorough knowledge of Italians and his extensive labors for
many years among the Italians of the Paulist parish, New York
City, has eminently qualified him for such a work.
The first three chapters contain model sentences used by priests
and penitents in confession; the fourth gives brief conversations
on the occasion of marriages, baptism, sick calls, accidents and
funerals; the fifth gives suggestions for a model funeral sermon;
the sixth contains the marriage ceremony in Italian; and the
seventh and eighth present a brief Italian and Neapolitan vocabu-
lary.
Cardinal Farley in his introduction heartily commends this
manual to every priest who may be called upon to hear the con-
fessions of the Italian people.
VISITATIONS OF RELIGIOUS HOUSES IN THE DIOCESE
OF LINCOLN. Volume I. Injunctions and Other Docu-
ments from the Registers of Richard Flemynge and William
Gray, Bishops of London, A. D. 1420 to A. D. 1436. Edited
by A. Hamilton Thompson, M.A., F.S.A. Horncastle: The
Lincoln Record Society. Vol. 7.
Since the appearance of the two volumes on Henry VIII. and
the English Monasteries by the present Cardinal Gasquet, much
interest has centred around the history of the monasteries and con-
vents in England. This present volume is offered as the first of a
series dealing with the monastic history of the Diocese of Lincoln,
during the first part of the fifteenth century. It has been thought
worth while to edit the memoranda of these two bishops in a
separate form, and this work serves as an introduction and a com-
panion to the important records of Bishop Alnwick, which are being
edited also by Mr. Thompson. In his excellent introduction, the
writer gives us a glimpse into the proceedings which took place on
the visitation of a religious house. The bishop was met by the con-
vent or the chapter at the west door of the church, and was taken
in procession to the high altar. If his arrival took place in the
morning, High Mass was celebrated in his presence; if in the
afternoon, Vespers were probably chanted, and the prelate gave
his blessing to the people of the neighborhood, who had assembled
to honor him. After the conclusion of the Mass the bishop and his
clerks went to the chapter room, where the bishop took his seat with
the monks seated before him. A sermon was then preached by
one of his secretaries or clerks, or by a member of the religious
550 NEW BOOKS [July,
house. When this was finished, the real business of the visitation
began. The Superior of the house acknowledged the right of the
bishop to the visitation, and the work of what is called the prepara-
tory inquisition was begun. The monks, or nuns, left the chapter
room and then, one by one, presented themselves before the bishop
and his attendants. In cases where it was possible, every Religious
was examined. These examinations were conducted in strict pri-
vacy and every Religious was encouraged to open his heart freely
on all matters dealing with the good name of the monastery or
convent. Members of the religious house, who were accused of
serious breaches o'f the Rule, then received an opportunity of
explaining their conduct, and a suitable penance was imposed. When
the members of the religious household had been listened to, they
all came before the bishop or visitor, who delivered a short in-
struction upon the Rule, and upon whatever changes in discipline
may have been found necessary for its observance. Sometime after-
wards, when the bishop and his assessors had time to compare their
notes, written injunctions, like those of which the larger part of
this volume is composed, were sent to the House and were read to
the monk or nuns by the Superior. It is these written injunctions
which form the basis for our knowledge of the monastic life of the
period.
The two series or Injunctions published in this volume are
from the Registers of Bishops Flemynge and Gray of Lincoln.
Bishop Flemynge was consecrated at Florence on April 28, 1420,
and though much of his life was spent as ambassador to foreign
courts, his activity in visiting the monasteries and convents of his
diocese prove him to be a zealous bishop, -and one who realized the
necessity of constantly guarding over the monasteries under his
care. His successor, Bishop William Gray, was consecrated on
May 26, 1426, as Bishop of London, and was transferred to
Lincoln, April 30, 1431, three months after Flemynge's death.
From a close examination or collation of the dates in these In-
junctions, we -can follow the two bishops from one place to another
in their diocese; and the author has given us a chronological list
of the Houses visited from 1420 to 1436. The list of monasteries
and convents which Mr. Thompson gives in an appendix, contains
the names of one hundred and thirty-six separate Houses which
were in existence in the Diocese of Lincoln during the period
covered by this volume. In this list several classes of religious
foundations have been omitted : Houses of friars who represent a
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 551
different type of Religious, with which the present volume is not
concerned; Hospitals, of which there is an excellent list in Clay's
Mediceval Hospitals of England; Houses of the military orders;
and alien priories, such as those which consisted of two or more
monks acting as agents for a foreign abbey.
The editor acknowledges his dependence upon Gasquet's
English Monastic Life, and shows throughout the book a sym-
pathetic appreciation of the religious life of the period. It
is noteworthy, he says in one place, that when Bishop Aln-
wick visited Bourne Abbey, he found it necessary merely to en-
dorse and confirm Bishop Flemynge's Injunctions of some twenty
years before. Whether the standard of piety was the same through-
out the diocese would be hard to say; but no one who reads the
documents in this present volume can fail to be edified by the per-
fection of the religious life of this bygone age. Students of
mediaeval history will welcome the very efficient glossary which
forms a large part of the supplementary matter of the book, where
a mediaeval term, which has hitherto been shrouded in obscurity,
is here explained clearly and fully. A complete index of persons,
places and subjects, and the counties of Lincoln mentioned in the
book is given at the end. The book is excellently printed, and is
a fine example of the scholarly work done by the Historical Societies
of England.
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE
NEW TESTAMENTS. By R. H. Charles. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. 50 cents.
The purpose of the present volume is to show by some examples
that there is no break between the Old Testament and the New;
that there never was a period of complete silence during which Old
Testament truths would have been left untouched until resumed by
the New Testament writers. The religious message during the three
centuries that preceded the New Testament times are to be found in
the Apocrypha (our Deuterocanonical Books) and still more so in
the Pseudepigrapha (our Apocrypha). This literature is the link
between the two Testaments, and the " New Testament represents
in one of his aspects the consummation of the spiritual travail of
Israel's seers and sages and especially of those of the last two
centuries."
Dr. Charles' authority in the field of Apocryphal Jewish litera-
ture is unquestionable. He himself has edited most of the sources
552 NEW BOOKS [July,
out of which the present summary is drawn; more recently he has
published a practically complete collection in his two large volumes,
^Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English
with Introduction and Critical Notes, etc.
Many of the subjects chosen for treatment are of prime impor-
tance for the proper interpretation of the New Testament, e. g., the
Kingdom of God, the Messias, and the doctrine of a future life. In
fact, the book is interesting and scholarly all through, and although
we are unable to follow the author in every one of his assertions,
yet the reader is sure to gather abundant and reliable information
from the pen of a specialist whose work is the result of personal
and long acquaintance with the documents themselves.
The present work forms part of The Home University
Library.
THE MYSTERY OF THE HOLY TRINITY IN OLDEST JUDA-
ISM. By Frank McGloin, LL.D. Philadelphia : John Joseph
McVey. $1.00 net.
The present volume contains a careful criticism of all the
Scriptural texts and of all the Jewish traditions of the early and
mediaeval rabbis on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in Jewish
thought. While some of the Biblical texts are rather benignantly
interpreted, and some of the Jewish writers are pressed a little too
far to prove a point, the writer is to be commended for treating a
subject which as a rule receives scant attention in our theological
textbooks. As Bishop Blenk says in his preface : " Dr. McGloin
proves three things : First, the Patriarchs, Prophets and other great
personages among the Jewish people had an explicit faith in the
mystery of the Blessed Trinity. Second, the Doctors of the Law,
without arriving at so distinct a knowledge of the mystery as
the Patriarchs and Prophets possessed, yet understood it with
some clearness. Third, the Jewish people in general had not an
explicit knowledge of the Blessed Trinity."
CATHOLICISM IN MEDIEVAL WALES. By J. E. de Hirsch-
Davies, B.A. London: R. & T. Washbourne. $1.35.
No living scholar is better acquainted with the history and
literature of Wales than Mr. de Hirsch-Davies, a well-known
Anglican minister of North Wales who became a Catholic some
four years ago.
The present volume is a reproduction, much enlarged, of a
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 553
paper he read at the National Catholic Congress held at Cardiff
in July, 1914. In an opening chapter he takes to task Mr. Willis
Bund who, in his Celtic Church of Wales, had maintained that early
Celtic Christianity was identical with the religion of modern Non-
Conformity. He proves conclusively that from the earliest period
the Church in Wales celebrated Mass, believed in the seven sacra-
ments, honored the Blessed Virgin, and was in communion with
Rome.
Most of the book deals with the Middle Ages beginning with
the laws of Ho well the Good, who died in 907 A. D. The authori-
ties quoted have been ignored by most scholars, because they were
written exclusively in the vernacular. They consist chiefly of
monastic chronicles and poems written by the bards of the courts
of the Welsh princes. They set forth accurately and in detail the
pure and undefiled Catholicism of the Mediaeval Church in Wales.
They loved " the sweet Mass, a medicine to the soul and a true
blessing to the body; " they prayed to " Mary, the Virgin, the pure
lady, Queen of heaven; " they called the priest the " soul father,"
and confessed their sins to him ; they prayed to the souls in purga-
tory; they practised fasting; they went on pilgrimages to Rome,
the Holy Land and to their own home shrines.
A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE. By Charles Sanford Terry.
New York : E. P. Button & Co. $2.00 net.
Charles S. Terry, Professor of History in the University of
Aberdeen, has just completed the third volume of his Short History
of Europe. Volume I. embraced the period from 476 to 1453;
Volume II. from 1453 to 1806; and Volume III. from 1806 to
1914.
In a textbook of some five hundred and fifty pages, Professor
Terry has succeeded in giving the student an excellent outline of
the history of Europe from the dissolution of the Holy Roman
Empire to the outbreak of the present European War.
The book is remarkable for its condensation, literary style
and broad grasp of the factors that caused the revolutions of 1830
and 1848, that formed the modern Kingdom of Italy and the
German Empire, and that led to the present European conflict. Of
course he writes throughout from the standpoint of an Englishman
who talks of Germany's " unabashed barbarity," and who doubts
her moral sanity. He shows no grasp whatever of Papal infalli-
bility, which, he declares, " riveted the fetters of illiberalism on
554 NEW BOOKS [July,
the Church." He believes that Pius IX.'s Quanta Cura" declared
war upon the whole trend of political thought, placed the civil under
the heel of ecclesiastical authority, asserted the Church's monopoly
in systems of national education, gave to its laws supreme sanction,
and postulated the subserviency of civil codes."
MY LADY OF THE MOOR. By John Oxenham. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. $1.35 net.
The best part of the artificial tale is the account Mr. Oxenham
gives of the ever-changing aspects of the moor in fog and storm
and sunshine. The story centres about an unreal Lady of the Moor,
to whom the author fantastically assigns the unique office of guard-
ing of the Blessed Sacrament in a lonely chapel on Dartmoor. She
boasts of two lovers, one of whom is a thorough scoundrel who has
seduced the sister of the other. Through this wonderful lady's in-
fluence, the second lover, after five years imprisonment for at-
tempted murder, nobly pardons the villain, and in a manner al-
together inexplicable brings him to the feet of the Lady of the Moor.
LINCOLN AND EPISODES OF THE CIVIL WAR. By William
E. Doster. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $1.50 net.
General Doster was Provost Marshal of Washington in 1862,
and fought in the Chancellorsville and Gettysburg campaigns of
1863. His official duties in Washington brought him in daily con-
tact with President Lincoln, his cabinet, and the chief army officers
of the Civil War. In the present volume he draws for us a great
number of clear-cut portraits of Stanton, Seward, Chase, Wads-
worth, McClellan, Halleck and others.
He also describes in detail the management of the Old Capitol
and Carrol prisons of Washington, and relates many an interesting
incident of provost duty with regard to runaway slaves, the seizure
of contraband, the arrest of spies, the control of saloon and
gambling dens, and the offering of bribes.
The most valuable part of his book is his lecture on Presi-
dent Lincoln, which was originally delivered at Lehigh University,
February 12, 1909. In it he gives many examples of the President's
kindly humor, infinite tact, intense determination, and unbounded
faith in the triumph of the Union cause. In view of the much-
discussed question of President Lincoln's religious views, General
Doster quotes Lincoln's own words to Mr. Deming :
" I have never united myself to any Church, because I have
1916.] NEW BOOKS 555
found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental reservation, to
a long, complicated statement of Christian doctrine which charac-
terizes the articles of belief and confessions of faith. When any
Church shall inscribe on its altar, as its sole qualification of mem-
bership, the Saviour's condensed statement of the substance of both
law and gospel, Thou shalt love the Lord, Thy God, with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor
-as thyself,' that Church will I join with all my heart and all my soul."
Although an indifferent! st, President Lincoln attended while in
Washington Dr. Gurley's Presbyterian Church.
NIGHTS. By Elizabeth Robins Pennell. Philadelphia : J. B. Lip-
incott Co. $3.00 net.
Mrs. Pennell tells us that the story of her "days" during the past
thirty years was a story of hard work, traveling through every coun-
try of Europe, and visiting all the International Exhibitions from
Glasgow to Venice, in order to gather material for magazine articles.
Her " nights " were always her own, and she and her husband
spent them in the Nazionale of Rome, the Orientale of Venice,
the Cafe de la Paix or the Cafe de la Regence of Paris, or in a
London apartment on Buckingham street, discussing art and litera-
ture with some of the best known writers, sculptors and artists.
Her book abounds in striking, clear-cut portraits of Elihu Ved- ,
der, William E. Henley, Henry Harland, Aubrey Beardsley, Phil
May, J. McNeill Whistler, " Bob " Stevenson and others.
Of Henley the original of Stevenson's Burley she writes:
" As editor, he roared down his opponents no less lustily than he
roared them down as talkers, and he had the strong wit and the
strong heart that a man must have to know when to tell the truth.
He could not stand anything like affectation, or what people were
calling aestheticism and decadence. The National Observer was the
housetop, from which he shouted that it did not matter two-
pence what the dabbler wanted to express if he could not express it."
" Henry Harland," she says, " impressed one as a man who
never tired, or who never gave in to being tired, either at work
or at play a man who, knowing his days would be a few on this
earth, found each fair as it passed, and, if he could not bid it
stay, was at least determined to fill it as full as it would hold. He
had just the temperament to take up with the mode of the nineties
that drove the young men to .asserting themselves and upholding
their doctrines in papers and magazines of their own. As he talked
556 NEW BOOKS [July,
so he wrote, and all who have read the witty, gay, whimsical, fan-
tastic talk of his heroes and heroines have listened to him."
" Beardsley," she continues, " saw the satire of life, and he
loved the grotesque which has so gone out of date in our matter-of-
fact day that we almost forget what it means, and no doubt disease
gave a morbid twist to his vision and imagination. Above all he
was young, splendidly young. He had the gayety, the exuberance,
the flamboyancy, the fun of the youth to do and to triumph.
His manner was called affected, as was his art, because it wasn't
exactly like everybody else's."
Story after story is told of the eccentricities, whims and pecu-
liarities of the artist's Bohemia by one who seemed to know every-
body worth knowing, and to be on intimate and kindly terms with
them all. Both Mrs. Pennell and her husband had the happy faculty
of making friends with all the younger artistic set of what she
calls the aesthetic eighties " and the fighting nineties."
OUR HOME IN HEAVEN. From the French of the Abbe Max
Caron. Translated by Edith Staniforth. New York: Ben-
ziger Brothers. 75 cents net.
This devotional treatise on the hereafter is dedicated " to
those who suffer and weep, in order that their sufferings and their
tears may not be without hope." In twenty chapters, Abbe Caron
discusses the question of personal immortality and the modern ob-
jections against it; the vision and love of God; the resurrection of
the body, hell, purgatory, and the number of the elect. Our Home
in Heaven is an excellent book to put in the hands of one who
is tempted to rebel against God under stress of some great sorrow.
CLOUDED AMBER. By Patience Warren. Boston: Richard
Badger. $1.35 net.
The heroine of this story is an ambitious French Canadian
girl, who succeeds in becoming a Broadway star, through the kind-
ness of an old actress, who seems modeled after the well-known
Mrs. Gilbert. The author pictures with sympathy the life behind
the scenes, and incidentally shows that she differs from the average
man's low estimate of the stage people of to-day.
Although the course of true love does not run smoothly, the
heroine at last marries a New York society man, and, to the delight
of his much scandalized mother, discovers that her own mother
was of the same social standing.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 557
The writer, although a Protestant, faithfully pictures the devo-
tion of Catholics at the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre, and accu-
rately describes the French Canadians and their priests.
SONGS OF THE SON OF ISAI. A metrical arrangement of the
Psalms of David. By Helen H. Hielscher. Boston: Sher-
man, French & Co. $1.50 net.
In a most modest introduction, Mrs. Hielscher states the motive
that prompted her to write this excllent paraphrase of the Psalms.
She says : " This metrical arrangement of the Psalms is far from
being a complete reproduction of all their beauty and spirit, but as
a light wind, blowing over a garden of roses, may carry to the
traveler a breath of fragrance that may cause him to lift his eyes
to the beauty of the whole garden, so these simple verses may
awaken interest in the breasts of the lovers of the beautiful and
true, and bring them into more intimate relation with the Psalms
themselves."
The author makes no pretense of scholarship in the pages
before us. She merely takes the Catholic Bible and translates the
Psalms as she finds them in beautiful, dignified verse.
MEDITATIONS ON THE MYSTERIES OF OUR HOLY FAITH.
By C. W. Barraud, SJ. New York: Benziger Brothers.
Two volumes. $3.00 net.
These two volumes of meditations are based on the well-known
work of the Spanish Jesuit, Luis de Ponte. Father Barraud begins
with a treatise on mental prayer, and follows faithfully his divisions
of the spiritual life into the purgative, the illuminative and the
unitive ways. He devotes eight special chapters to considerations
for retreats of priests, of religious and of laymen, and adds a num-
ber of prayers and hymns from the Scriptures and the Divine
Office for colloquies.
THE BEAUTY AND TRUTH OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.
By Rev. Edward Jones. Volumes IV. and V. St. Louis : B.
Herder. $3.00 net.
These volumes complete the series of sermons of Father Hein-
rich von Hurter, which Father Jones has so ably translated from
the German. They cover practically the whole field of dogmatic
and sacramental theology. The volumes before us treat of the ex-
istence of God, the necessity of religion, the divinity of Jesus
558 NEW BOOKS [July,
Christ, the glories of divine grace, prayer, Sunday observance, and
personal immortality.
The editor has inserted in these volumes a number of his own
sermons on St. Paul, patriotism, and truth and honesty in busi-
ness w hich appear to him to be more suitable for our times and
country than those of the original work. He has also incorporated
some noteworthy passages from Archbishop Ireland's sermons.
REVELATION AND THE LIFE TO COME. New York: G. P.
Putman's Sons. $1.00.
This book purports to be the authentic account of some spirit
manifestations to four unnamed persons during the years 1881 to
1886. These friends met together in their homes " to inquire
experimentally into the nature of an alleged conscious intercourse
with the unseen by automatic or medianimic writing." One of
their number went into a trance, and his friends placed a pencil
in his hand, which the " spirit " used to write the revelations
contained in this book. They are nothing but vague, incoherent
reveries, composed chiefly of Scripture texts joined with unintel-
ligent commentaries. They are presented to us as the utterances of
spirits, who speak meaningless messages of the other world.
The denial of the true Church frequently leads souls to the
superstition of occultism.
SEVEN FAIRY TALES. Illustrated. New York: Benziger
Brothers. 30 cents net.
These fairy tales from the Spanish and the Portuguese make
delightful reading. Enchanted palaces and magical hats, scornful
duchesses and wicked barons, noble knights and wonderful fairy-
godmothers all appear in marvelous profusion. The tales are of
exceptional merit.
\
GOSSAMER. By G. A. Birmingham. New York: George H.
Doran Co. $1.25 net.
Gossamer is not a novel, but a series of portraits of a modern
financier, his wife, who poses as an artistic soul, a money-seeking,
unmoral Member of Parliament, an ardent inventor, and an Irish
baronet, who cynically claims to be neither Irish nor English, but
" a man of no country/'
The book takes its name from the financiers of our day, " who
have spun gossamer threads, which cover every civilized land with
I9I6.J NEW BOOKS 559
a web of credit, infinitely complex, so delicate that a child's hand
could tear it." The writer gives us his views on Home Rule, the
present war, and the spirit of the Irish, the German and the Amer-
ican of to-day. The book is well written, although its humor at
times is a bit forced, and its portraits a bit over-drawn.
THE MEMORY OF OUR DEAD. By Herbert Thurston, SJ.
St. Louis : B. Herder. 80 cents net.
Most of the essays in this volume have been published in the
pages of The Month. They give us a brief but fairly comprehen-
sive sketch of the Catholic practice of prayer for the dead from the
first centuries of Christianity down to the close of the Middle Ages.
Father Thurston discusses in turn the witness of the first five cen-
turies, the Diptychs and their development, the mediaeval Mortuary
Rolls, the origin of the Feast of All Souls, the custom of the
Month's Mind, and the devotional aspect of prayer for the dead.
A VOLUME which every priest will find of very timely value,
*- and which many of the laity will welcome as an ideal book of
devotion, is The New Psalter, translated into English from the
French of Rev. L. C. Fillion, S.S. The New Psalter includes both
the Latin and English of all the psalms arranged according to the
daily order of the Roman Breviary, together with the various can-
ticles. The author explains briefly the subject of every Psalm, and
by brief notes elucidates the more difficult passages. We recom-
mend the book most heartily. It is published by B. Herder of St.
Louis, and the price is $1.50.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
Abbe Texier has written in A Jesus par Marie (Paris: Pierre Tequi.
Sofrs.) a series of short talks on devotion to Our Lady, founded on the words
of Blessed Grignion de Montford, founder of the Sisters of Wisdom and the
Company of Mary.
Leur ante est Immortelle, by Abbe Lelievre (Paris: Perrin et Cie. 2frs.
50) are encouraging, hopeful exhortations to the living who have lost their
dearest ones in war. The letters which the book presents, written by unlettered
farm hands, reveal the wisdom and exaltation which religious patriotism brings
with it.
Pour la Victoire is a second edition of recent addresses delivered by
Monsignor Tissier, Bishop of Chalon. The volume includes sermons, instruc-
tions and speeches to priests, to children, to large congregations of men and
women. They are replete with devotional fire, oratorical ability, and beyond
the inspiration which they must have given when delivered are a valuable index
to religious conditions in France, both before and during the present war.
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 war has made many changes in British
Great Britain. ways, but none more complete and unlocked
for than the adoption of universal military
compulsion. Its passage is one of the greatest revolutions in
British history, and must be taken as the most striking proof of
the determination to carry the war to a successful issue at any cost.
Its operation is limited to the period of the war, so that it will
lapse automatically when the war is over. A few months ago the in-
troduction of the smaller measure which was restricted to unmarried
men and widowers without dependents, provoked so much opposi-
tion that it was with the greatest trepidation and anxiety that Mr.
Asquith, in fulfillment of his pledge, brought the bill into Parliament.
Fears were then felt that miners and perhaps the railway men might
go so far as to strike against even this strictly limited measure, and
more than one hundred members of Parliament voted against giving
it a first reading. The opposition, however, died away, but when
from the very small number whom it brought to the colors it became
necessary to call upon the attested married men, a more serious
agitation arose. Hundreds of thousands of these had voluntarily
attested, thereby offering themselves for military service, but there
were also a very large number who had held back. When, there-
fore, the attested married men found that they were being forced
to leave their homes, business and families while their competitors
who were less willing to serve their country remained in quiet
comfort to profit in many cases by their absence, a strong sense of
injustice arose which showed itself in the formation of an associa-
tion being formed of married men to protest. Meetings were held
throughout the length and breadth of the land, showing so
strongly their sense of injustice, that the Cabinet had to yield. It
at first introduced a wholly inadequate measure } which was killed
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 561
in one session of the House of Commons. Thereupon it became
manifest that the only way to secure anything like that equal sacri-
fice for all which had hitherto been so conspicuous by its absence,
was to make everyone liable to military service.
The bill introduced by Mr. Asquith extends the compulsory
principle to all males, married as well as single, between the ages
of eighteen and forty-one. It provides also that men serving at
the present time with the colors can no longer claim their discharge
while the war lasts. It even goes so far as to recall to the army
men who have been already discharged if under the age of forty-
one. For this hard treatment it is sought, in some degree, to com-
pensate by generous bounties. Exemption certificates granted by
doctors are to be revised, as there have been many cases of their
having been given without just reason. To bring more effectively to
the prosecution of the war all the manhood of the nation, a special
reserve is to be formed, in which men will be allowed to remain in
civil employ, although liable to be instantly called up in case of mili-
tary necessity. So great was the change of the mind of the country
that the bill was at once accepted, Mr. Asquith vouching for its
necessity. No division took place on the first reading; for the
second there was a majority of two hundred and ninety-two, only
thirty-six voting against, and this small minority was reduced by
one in the division on the third reading.
The effect of the law will be to make it possible without
anxiety or failure to keep at full strength the armies already
enlisted upon the voluntary principle. It must not be forgotten that
on this principle more than five million men have already joined
the colors, that, in fact, ninety-six per cent of the British armies
are volunteers. The new measure is not to add to the number
of soldiers, but to supply wastage. For this purpose it is reckoned
that there will be about one million one hundred thousand unattested
married men to fall back upon, not all of them, of course, fitted for
service. Besides this, the law will secure every able-bodied young
man when he attains the age of eighteen, the number of
whom is estimated at three hundred and fifty thousand per annum.
It must be noted, however, that although the armies already en-
listed were voluntary in their origin, their status has been changed
by the new act, for it requires service until the end of the war, if
there are any cases in which it would otherwise have been shorter.
A new obligation has been imposed on all citizens without exception.
For the married men called to serve, provision is to be made in
VOL. cm. 36
562 RECENT EVENTS [July,
order that so far as possible their homes may not be broken up.
Grants are to be made for the relief of rent, mortgage, interest, in-
stallments, taxes, rates and insurance, up to a sum at the most of
a little over five hundred dollars a year. For the poorer among
them this will be a substantial alleviation, but for those who have
had large incomes which will cease on enlistment, the grant will be
inadequate, and there will be among them many cases of serious
domestic hardships. It is one of the singular features of this war
that in many cases the rich have had to suffer more proportionately
than the poor. How heavy a burden is thrown upon the former
may be seen from the following statement of the percentage fact,
that while a man aged forty, whose income is seven hundred and
fifty dollars, has to pay something over twenty-two cents in
every pound for income tax and insurance necessary to provide
estate duty, the man who has an income of five hundred thousand
dollars a year has to pay over one hundred and twenty-six cents
in every pound, which works out at more than half his annual
income.
The act excuses from service everyone who is engaged in
work necessary for the State. This includes not only munition
makers and those engaged in factories for the manufacture of the
exports necessary to keep up, as far as possible, the balance of trade,
but also those who have a conscientious objection to serve as soldiers.
This exemption is not absolute, but is restricted to exemption from
combatant service. Some surprise has been expressed at the large
number of those with consciences so tender as to be unwilling to
serve their country, and in many cases the tendency has been to treat
them with scant respect. Even non-combatant service occasions
scruples in not a few, and it is said that there are at present more
than three hundred persons in either civil or military prisons who
have refused to obey the lawful orders of their superiors. This
so affected one of the principal Socialists, Mr. Philip Snowden,
that he threatened a rebellion of British workingmen which would
make the Irish disturbances appear sickly pale. He made an im-
passioned appeal to the distinguished Baptist minister, Dr. John
Clifford, to put himself at its head. The very extravagance of
this appeal defeated its object.
The effect of the passing of the service bill has been to put
an end to a discussion which at one time threatened to divide the
nation to its core, as well as to overturn the Government. Its ex-
terior effect has been to convince Great Britain's Allies and doubt-
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 563
less her enemies also that she is really in earnest. Not that there
was any reason for this doubt, if such were really entertained, but
the fact that everyone of the nations at war, and no small number of
neutral States, had adopted compulsory national service of some form
or other for many years, made it difficult to believe that reliance on
the voluntary system was compatible with complete devotion to the
common cause. Now that this supreme contribution has been
made, all ground for distrust has disappeared. The British resolve to
leave nothing undone has become evident alike to friend and foe. In
France especially where every battle is making a more serious drain
upon French blood, the passing of the compulsion bill gives the
assurance of an ever-growing British support to supply any de-
ficiency. The most probable explanation of German obstinacy in
continuing the attack on Verdun is that she hopes to exhaust the
French reserve of men. The increase of the British line in France
from thirty to nearly ninety miles, has in fact enabled General Joffre
to send the released army to the support of those who have borne
the brunt of the German attack. As an illustration of the incredible
folly which at times takes possession of men's minds, it may be
mentioned that there were those in France who said it cannot be
thought that they believed that the British have had the intention
to drag on the war so that their army might be strong enough to
dictate terms to her Allies as well as to her enemies at its close.
Another change which the war has made has been the increase
in the cost of living, but there is good reason to think that this is
not so great as it looks. The official estimate of the Board of Trade
makes this increase to be fifty per cent on an average. The well-
known economist, Professor Ashley, as a result of a study which
he has made of the existing conditions, thinks that this is an over-
estimate, and believes the true amount to be rather more than one-
third. " The vast mass of people so far from suffering from
deprivation, has never been so prosperous, never so well fed. The
rise of living expenses has not been due to restriction of supply; it
has been due chiefly to the fact that the people have been able and
willing to pay high prices. An important immediate cause has been
the rise of freights; but these freights could not have gone on being
paid had there not continued to be an effectual demand. The proof
of this is not difficult." Food has gone up; this has been remedied
by buying cheaper, but equally wholesome, substitutes. Clothing
has advanced but little. Increase of rent has been prevented by
Government action. On the other hand, the money incomes of the
564 RECENT EVENTS [July,
people, speaking broadly, have largely increased. One of the many
evidences adduced by Professor Ashley is that the pawnbrokers'
shelves are getting bare. Notwithstanding the submarine campaign
and the commandeering by the Government of forty-three per cent
of the merchant marine, the total quantity of wheat delivered by
farmers and imported into Great Britain during the cereal year,
September, 1914^0 August, 1915, was not quite one and one-half per
cent below that in the previous season. In the first thirty-six weeks
of the current cereal year, the supply that has reached the market
has been more than seven per cent greater than at the corresponding
point of last year, and the amount now "on passage" is estimated by
experts to be substantially larger than it was last year. So that
it looks as if the designs and intrigues of the enemy were sure of be-
ing frustrated. Some think that Professor Ashley's estimate is some-
what optimistic, especially as he writes from a particularly pros-
perous place Birmingham. In fact he admits that there are trades
that are by no means flourishing which in fact have suffered from
the effects of the war. They, however, form exceptions to the rule.
The restrictions upon the sale of alcohol made in consequence
of the war have proved unexpectedly successful. Although the
amount spent upon drink increased by no less than forty millions
of dollars in the first year, this was owing to the high price which
now has to be paid on account of taxation and not to the quantity
sold. A Board of Control has been appointed which has the power
to define the districts within which liquor is to be sold under the
strictest of regulations. More than a dozen of these districts have
been defined, including London. The restrictions are practically
identical with the exception of those made for London. The sale
of liquor is limited to two and a half hours in the middle of the
day, and to three, or in some cases two, in the evening. " Treating "
and credit sales are absolutely prohibited. The report of the result
of those measures of restraint issued last May shows that in every
area there has been a notable decline in convictions for drunkenness.
The figures for London give a fair idea of what has happened.
Drunkenness had been rising since 1909, when the weekly average
of convictions was eight hundred and eighty-one. It reached the
high- water mark of one thousand three hundred and one in 1914,
and then fell progressively to one thousand and eighty-four in the
first half of 1915 to seven hundred and sixty-three after the Orders
of the Board came in force, and to five hundred and ninety-one at the
beginning of this year. The decline in drunkenness has been accom-
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 565
panied by more regular hours of work, and an increased outfit in the
defined areas. There is also much evidence of improvement in the
homes and in the condition of the children, and of wise spending on
the part of the great majority of those in receipt of war allowances.
There has, however, been noticed an undoubted increase of exces-
sive drinking amongst women in not a few of the areas in ques-
tion. The results seem to indicate that reasonable restraint is more
likely to be successful than total prohibition, especially when it is
combined with the provision of places of refreshment under the
direct control of the State, such as has formed a part of the
British regulations.
These lines are being written on the one
Progress of the War. hundred and sixteenth day of the Battle of
Verdun. There have, of course, been days
on which comparatively little has happened, but at the present time
it is being fought as savagely as at its worst periods. The assertions
made by experts that the French have won the day, have not yet
been fully verified. All the substantial gains of the Germans were
within the first week of the assault, which began on February 2ist,
and since that time every inch of ground has been contested. Some
important successes have been achieved by the Germans within the
last few weeks, notably that of the village of Vaux, but on the
whole they are as far off as ever from Verdun. On the west of
the Meuse, after more than two months of furious fighting, they
have only advanced half as far as they did during the first three
days after the opening of the attack in February, and they are
still some three or four miles from the main line of defence on the
Charny Ridge.
Speculation is rife as to what justification there is in the eyes
of the Germans for the continuance of efforts which have cost them
so dearly. Of so little importance did the French military authori-
ties consider the salient of Verdun that they were anxious to
abandon it, and to straighten out their lines along its base when the
attack first began. It was only in obedience to the Government,
and for political considerations, that it was determined to hold it
at all costs. Were Verdun to be lost, the Germans would not be
appreciably nearer to Paris. The region near Soissons, which they
already hold, is within forty miles of the French capital. Yet for
what would be a barren triumph the Germans have sacrificed tens
of thousands, have weakened their position before the British
566 RECENT EVENTS [July,
by bringing to Verdun six divisions, and by similar action
have hindered Hindenburg from making the long-threatened of-
fensive on Riga and Petrograd. When the Fort Douaumont fell on
the Saturday after the assault commenced, the Kaiser announced the
success in terms which indicated that Verdun was already in the
hands of the Germans. This, coupled with the fact that it is the
Crown Prince who is nominally in command of the attack, may
indicate William II.'s fear that failure to capture the fortress may
be fatal to the fortunes of the Hohenzollern family. Others
think that the real reason is rather military than dynastic that it
is an effort to anticipate the general offensive threatened by the
Allies, an offensive which would extend through Flanders and
France, Italy and the Balkans, and along the Russian lines to
Riga on the Baltic. The hope of the Germans was either to force
the British and French to use up their reserves of men and muni-
tions by sending troops to the succor of Verdun, or to induce them to
make as a diversion a premature attempt at the offensive before
they were fully prepared. It is known that the British commander
did in fact offer to make an attack in force to relieve the pressure on
the French, and that this offer was declined by General Joffre.
A third suggestion is that the Germans have persuaded themselves
that France can be so weakened by the loss of men which the contest
at Verdun is involving, that she will be ready to make peace with
Germany on terms which would be advantageous to her.
While attention is of course chiefly attracted by the more
exciting incidents of the war, yet in order that the miseries of this
dreadful war may be fully appreciated the every day work must not
be overlooked. The ribbon of land four hundred miles long which
winds across Western Europe is one continuous line of blood, in
which there is practically every day one continuous battle. Though
only a small proportion of the men may at any one moment be
actually engaged, every man stands always under a greater or less
intensity of fire all day, and liable by night and day to be thrown
into a hand-to-hand, body-to-body death struggle compared with
which a bayonet fight is civilized warfare. The conflicts between
men fighting at the bottom of narrow trenches are so horrible as
to be indescribable, and have led to the invention of weapons suitable
to such conflicts.
It was fully expected that the Germans would, as soon as the
weather permitted, make an attempt to capture Petrograd. The
best opportunity, however, has past. Naval cooperation was neces-
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 567
sary, for no landing could take place on the Esthonian coast with-
out its assistance. With the melting of the ice, Russian submarines
are at work as well as British. Three dreadnoughts also have been
added to the Russian navy. The naval battle with the British,
moreover, has so much weakened the German navy that it is very
unlikely that it can be of any service for some time to come.
The land operations have been hindered by the withdrawal of
several divisions of Hindenburg's army to take part in the attack
upon Verdun. The German armies in the East have their left
on the Gulf of Riga and their right on the Pripet. The Austrians
continue the line to the southward, with their left on the Pripet and
their right on the frontier of Rumania. The length of the German
line is four hundred and fifty miles. This is held by forty-eight
divisions of infantry and ten of cavalry, making an aggregate of
strength of about one million two hundred thousand. This works
out at about one thousand three hundred men for each mile, less
than one man per yard. The lines are not, however, continuous
as in the West, but form rather a series of fortified posts. More-
over, there is nothing behind, no troops in reserve, nor is there
a natural line of defence. Nearly all the region where the
German troops are placed was laid waste by the Russians on their
retreat, and offers miserable quarters for soldiers. Such is the
position of the German armies in the East as described by experts,
and it affords little ground to expect that any offensive they may
take will be of serious consequences. On the contrary, it renders it
doubtful whether they can meet a Russian offensive.
Experience at the beginning of the war of the weakness of the
Austrians when left to themselves, may be one of the reasons why
the Russians have begun their attack rather upon that part of the
line which they hold than on that which the Germans are defending.
The result has justified their choice, for they have not only driven
back the Austrians, but have broken their line in two and probably
even three places a thing which Germany failed in any one case
to do in the attack on the Russians last year. The collapse of the
Austrians is not yet complete, and possibly the tide may l turn.
German help which saved them last year is hardly available now.
The Russian advance in Anatolia, Armenia and Mesopotamia
has not made much headway ; in fact the armies seem to be on the
defensive, and in one or two places to have been driven back. Cos-
sacks, however, have reached the British camp near Kut-el-Amara.
German and Turkish attempts to embroil Persia have completely
568 RECENT EVENTS [July,
failed, while the much advertised attempt to invade India is seen to
be futile. The invasion of Egypt is no longer expected, although
there are hostile forces to the east of the Suez Canal in the Sinai
Peninsula. The British, Belgian and Portuguese forces engaged
in various districts of East Africa are gradually surrounding the
German defenders of the Empire's last colony.
The great surprise of the past few weeks has been the Austrian
offensive on the Italian front. Events had for long been moving
so surely, although slowly, in favor of the Italians that a reverse
was not anticipated. The Austrians, however, had been making
careful preparations for an offensive movement. By sheer weight
of numbers and a vast concentration of artillery they hoped, in the
same way as did the Germans in the case of Verdun, to crush and
overwhelm the enemy which had for so long been maintaining a foot-
hold in their territory. The main Italian front on the Isonzo they left
alone, and directed their attack from the Trentino along the valleys
of the Adige and the Brenta. At least eleven divisions and two thou-
sand guns, many of the heaviest calibre, were here concentrated.
The object was to reach Verona. In case of success this would cut
off the communications of the main Italian army on the Isonzo, of
which Verona is the base, and in this way would bring about the
complete collapse of the Italian campaign. Some degree of success
rewarded their efforts at the beginning. Count Cadorna followed
the same tactics as General Petain. He made his enemy pay dearly
for the advanced positions, but did not waste the lives of his men in
defending the indefensible. Holding them long enough to bring
up reinforcements he then fell back on his main defences. The
Austrians, now they are brought up against these, are unable to make
any further progress. Moreover, they dare not weaken their
Russian front. On the contrary they are more likely to find it
necessary vastly to strengthen it. The Italians have practically in-
exhaustible reserves of men and guns with which to hold their lines.
The naval battle off the coast of Denmark has been the most
sensational incident of the past few weeks. The British look upon
it as a victory, but not by any means so complete as it would have
been if the German fleet had not retreated. Their detailed official
statement of losses and gains has not been published, but its issue
will not long be delayed. The German statements have been nu-
merous and varied : the earlier denied, " for military reasons " as
they themselves avow, losses which they now admit, and while the
British say the main German fleet ran away when Admiral Jellicoe
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 569
appeared upon the scene, the Germans style this operation a retire-
ment nearer to its base. Even if the account of the recent battle
most favorable to the Germans were accepted as true, the relative
superiority of the British navy would not have been altered, and
Great Britain would still be as much the mistress of the seas as
before.
What will be the character of the active operations against the
Germans that has been so long anticipated is still in doubt, although
the most recent rumor is that combined offensive of British and
French is imminent. This seems probable, as the dominant military
opinion favors the striking at the enemy where he is strongest. If
beaten there all other parts of his defence will fail. There are,
however, advocates of a quite different line of strategy, who hold
that this method of attack is not likely to succeed, except with an
appalling loss of life. The attempts made last year to break through
the German line at Neuve Chapelle, Loos and Champagne demon-
strate, if not the impossibility, at least the extreme difficulty, of all
such attempts. It is better, therefore, some experts think, to recog-
nize the existence in the West of a deadlock and to seek another road
to victory; to reverse in fact the hitherto received maxim, and to
look for the enemy's weak spot and then strike at it. Such a spot is
Turkey, and the key to the strategic position in the Turkish Empire
in Bagdad and Mesopotamia. Bagdad lies open to the Russian
armies coming from the east and north; while from the west
through the port on the Gulf of Alexandretta, it would not be diffi-
cult for the British to land the force now in Egypt, which has been
waiting for the invasion now looked upon as impossible. There
is, besides, a British army to the south of Kut-el-Amara, which has
not been affected by General Townshend's surrender. Operations
of this kind if successful would involve Turkey's loss of Syria,
Armenia and Mesopotamia a loss which would lead to the opening
of the Dardanelles. This would clear the way for the advance
of the Anglo-French army at Saloniki through the Balkans for
an attack upon Austria-Hungary. The plan seems somewhat too
visionary to commend it to the judgment of practical men, and
now that the Russians have broken through the line on the East,
it does not seem probable that it will be followed.
With Our Readers.
HE that robs the young of their enthusiasm and ideals leaves them
poor indeed. Enthusiasm for the heroic and the best, confidence
in one's ability to attain it is the sole source of spiritual energy; it
alone can warm the soul into sustained and successful action. The
Catholic Church continually seeks to put before the minds of the
young, the noblest and the most perfect examples; and, presenting
them, teaches the young that these standards, so far above human
nature, are, by the help of grace which will never be denied, attainable.
The Church seeks to do this not alone with the young, but with all
her children of larger growth. Only by the renewal of confidence,
only by a regained optimism can we overcome that self -distrust, and
indeed self -disgust, which is the punishment of failure, and reach out
hopefully once more to better and higher things.
DEFORE her children the Church will always, therefore, place the
L) worthier things; the beauty of virtue; the joyousness of its
service; the liberty of its obedience; the greatness of its reign. She
will urge them not only to shun vice, but to be unacquainted even with
its ways. Not the scholar who is learned in things evil and their
effect, but the saint who has heroically trod the ways of self-discipline,
and attained, is her ideal. She knows well the fight that such self-
discipline entails, and therefore does she insist that the heart and the
mind feed themselves continually with pure and wholesome things.
Keenly does she realize the power of example. When one sees others
do well, he is encouraged to do likewise ; at least he is ashamed if he
does less well. When one see another maintain a high standard, the
very effort encourages him to do likewise. One who believes that
noble, pure and unselfish conduct is the norm of humankind, whose
soul dwells amid the thoughts and examples of those who have so
acted, the path of virtue is clear; it is so much the more compelling,
so much the easier. Thus Catholic literature, the lives of the saints,
studies of their words and works; books that explain the Catholic
standard of conduct; the Catholic interpretation of the questions of
the day; the novel which, though it never speaks of religion or re-
ligious matters, still reveals that it was written by the light of
Catholic truth, has the highest value of literature, the*spiritualization
of life and the exaltation of character to the Christian ideal.
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 571
AND since the printing press has made reading matter accessible to
everyone, and as reading maketh the man, there never was a time
when literature had such power to mould the souls of men; and
never a time when that power was so ill-used.
If we take the popular reading matter of the day we will find
that it has fallen to a level that may justly be called disreputable.
The monthlies and the fortnightlies of this country that have the
largest circulations publish scarcely anything else than fiction or gossip
of the stage.
Their deliberate aim in illustration and text is to cater to the
lowest passions of men and women. In that they are not, for the
most part, positively indecent, although very often the public authority
must seize magazines that have overstepped the " far-flung " limit of
decency which our day has sanctioned. It would perhaps be less an
evil, less disastrous, if they were grossly and flagrantly immoral. Then
they would reveal at once just what they are. But the publishers
are wise in their generation. They will keep not only within the limit
of the law, but, under the cloak of defending virtue; of promoting
a saving knowledge of temptation, they will lure the reader into the
ways of passion : into the delights of sin ; they will lead him to ques-
tion his own principles; to abandon his strict standards; to make
evil good and to envelop his soul with that confounding fog wherein
he can distinguish neither day nor night. Reading these stories again
and again, wherein the heroine holds debate with temptation ; wherein
situations positively sinful are pictured as morally permissible ; wherein
evolutionary ideals of ethics are preached as the accepted thing in the
intellectual world lending itself to these impressions, the mind in-
evitably accepts a low standard because it believes it is the common
standard; it allows itself to be convinced that men and women and
boys and girls, as a rule, do these things; that he, the reader, would
be singular and peculiar if he acted otherwise; that if he follows
what he reads he will have millions in his company.
THE readers of the common, popular magazine, like the devotees
of the modern moving picture, are continually making them-
selves more and more spiritually deficient. Repeatedly they are allow-
ing their souls to be impressed by visions that, against all resolution
to the contrary, are creating within them a low and vulgar concept
of life, that will inevitably lower their own conduct, their own estimate
of what they can do or what they ought to do. Indeed it would, we
think, be safe to say that the soul that gives itself to such dissipa-
tion, such unruly indulgence of the mind and the senses will not
be in a condition to use properly even divine grace, for it will not be
572 WITH OUR READERS [July,
prepared to see its own duty or to think itself capable in any way of
fulfilling it. We do not mention the gain that might be won in using
time and mind in the positive application to the thought and the read-
ing of better things. But we do insist on the necessarily disastrous
effect of the constant reading of stories that are without character;
whose evident purpose is to arouse thoughts of sexual love, and that
lead one to believe there is no other thought in the world but that
of sex.
* * * , *
THE evil of which we speak is a growing evil : an evil that is being
more and more widely accepted. We can at least be personally re-
solved to do all in our power to combat it. The most effective way,
and one within the power of all, is not to purchase magazines or
journals unless we know they are absolutely wholesome. Another
effective way is to bring into our homes, for our children and our
friends, Catholic periodicals and Catholic books; to make ourselves
better acquainted with the great treasury of the world's best literature
which is the inheritance of Catholics. Our faithful adherence to high
standards is our best means of personal and of missionary work. It
cannot but affect and enlighten others; and bring many souls to a
knowledge and a love of the light of life Catholic truth.
HIS Eminence, Cardinal Logue, the Primate of Ireland, who, a
few years ago, it will be recalled with pleasure, paid a visit to this
country and left a very favorable impression on the American people,
in a recent Pastoral, called especial attention to attempts made in
England to pervert the Belgian refugees from their faith.
The Cardinal wrote : " It is very much to be regretted that the
splendid charity which has been so generally manifested towards the
sufferers from the war should have been, in some instances, marred
by a narrow-minded craze for proselytism. It is unfortunate that the
Belgian exiles, who have little left except what is their most precious
inheritance, the Catholic Faith, should be induced to sacrifice this for
some passing temporal benefit.
" From the beginning rumors have been current that in some parts
of England attempts were made to exact this sacrifice by differential
treatment. In one instance, at least, here at home it is no mere
rumor, but an established fact. In a town in this archdiocese, of eight
Belgian families three have been perverted, and it is problematic how
far the others are safe.
" I feel bound by my office to enter a strong protest against what
I regard as a betrayal of trust and a violation of the laws of charity
and hospitality. To me, at least, it appears a foolish and unreasonable
I 9 i6.] WITH OUR READERS 573
betrayal. If some of these Belgians happen to be indifferent Catholics
they are not likely to become good Protestants.
" If, being convinced and practical Catholics, they are induced for
some material advantage to offer violence to their conscience, even
by an outward denial of faith, the influence brought to bear upon
them is plainly and positively immoral."
* * * *
''PHESE words from the venerable Cardinal suggests to us a practical
1 thought which seems pertinent to conditions here. It is to warn
Catholics against appeals for charity often made, without a proper
guarantee that the proceeds will reach the object for which they are
ostensibly intended, and not for the purpose of proselytizing their
brethren in the Faith. It is because of the danger of such an abuse
that the Catholic Church, in her maternal solicitude, while not wish-
ing to restrict their private charities, advises and directs her children
to send contributions for any public cause through their own lawfully
constituted representatives, and thus make sure that they will be right-
fully administered. But the reading of the Cardinal's Pastoral suggests
another thought, which reaches nearer home and should be of vital
concern to us. We have here, in our own beloved country, refugees,
not only from the passing horrors of war, but from other sad and
distressing conditions in their native land, who while seeking a living
in this " Land of the free and home of the brave," should be left
free from the tactics of so-called " uplifters."
For instance, here in our own city, there are a great number
of poor Italian Catholics, baptized Catholics. Against the efforts to
deceive, to proselyte the poor foreigners, every Catholic should deem
it a duty to enter an earnest and solemn protest. We need only
quote the words of Cardinal Logue, to describe the conditions at our
own doors, and in all sincerity and charity say : " I feel bound to
enter an earnest and solemn protest against what I regard as a be-
trayal of trust and a violation of charity and hospitality. To me, at
least, it appears a foolish and unreasonable betrayal. If some of
these (Italians) happen to be indifferent Catholics, they are not likely
to become good Protestants. If, being convinced and practical Catho-
lics, they are induced for some material advantage to offer violence
to their conscience, even by an outward denial of faith, the in-
fluence brought to bear upon them is plainly and positively immoral."
* * * *
'PHE immorality of such methods so clearly exposed by Cardinal
1 Logue in his Pastoral to the people of Ireland has been, time and
again, as openly and emphatically denounced, not only by our own
Archbishop, Cardinal Farley, and other dignitaries of the Catholic
574 WITH OUR READERS [July,
Church in America, but also by many prominent leaders among
Protestants. For example, the Protestant Episcopal Bishop Anderson
of Chicago, in his diocesan magazine, speaking of the Protestant mis-
sionary propaganda in South America, seems in full and hearty ac-
cord with us when he says : "It looks as though the Latin people and
the Latin Church must travel together. Perhaps we can help them by
administering to our own people in their midst and trying to set them
a good example. Perhaps in this way we can help them to be better
Catholics. To try to convert them from Catholicism is to hurt them.
The converted Catholic does not make a good Protestant."
* * * *
IT must be apparent then to anyone who can appreciate the value of
cold logic, that those engaged in seeking to make the perversion of
the poor Italians a play to the galleries, are pursuing methods either
foolish or immoral. To the plain, common-sense " man of the street "
they must furnish a fertile source of amusement if the matter were
not so weighted with eternally tragic possibilities, for he sees the bald
inconsistency of such methods. If the uplifters were really sincere in
their professed purpose of spreading the kingdom of God upon earth,
they would use every means at their command to bring back the stray
sheep of their own flock before attempting to deceive and to pervert
the Italians. The problem of Church attendance is becoming a more
and more serious one for the Protestant denominations. It is well to
remember the old adage charity begins at home. Many consistent
and sincere Protestants have publicly deplored and condemned in
terms as strong as our own this unworthy method, abhorrent surely
to the soul of every honest man.
WE have received at times inquiries as to why the Church has
condemned Maeterlinck's writings. Some, complaining of the
severity and even injustice, as they think, of the Church's ruling, main-
tain that Maeterlinck is a poet who has had no serious intention of
attacking religion. It is difficult to see how anyone who has read
Maeterlinck, even in a cursory way, can entertain such an opinion.
The following extract from the New York Evening Post, in a re-
view of Macdonald Clark's Maurice Maeterlinck, will make very clear
just how anti-Christian and even anti-theistic Maeterlinck really is:
" Somebody once said that a philosophic system only needed a poet
to transform it into a religion. Maeterlinck has played this part for
modern skepticism. Deeply religious in spirit himself, he has given
to pragmatism, that doctrine of the fluidity of all human values, an
atmosphere of sacredness, of mystery, and, finally, of pathos, which
might well win men to worship at an altar that serves no deity but
I 9 i6.] WITH OUR READERS 575
empty air. In Maurice Maeterlinck, that author, analyzing the Bel-
gian's moral ideas, reaches very much this conclusion. Maeterlinck
deeply feels, Clark maintains, the mystery of life But when
Maeterlinck seeks for explanations he is the skeptical scientist. A
personal God does not exist for him, nor a just fate, but only fatality
running counter to justice. There is nothing eternal except man's
groping forward to some better state, dimly foreshadowed. Even
moral law ceases to be a constant quantity, and there remains only
the intention and desire of doing right, or what one recognizes as
the better course. And finally there is instinct, the subconscious,
which transcends all other human forces in power, surpasses conscious
morality, and will-power, and, as in animals, really moulds our lives.
" Here, in a way, although Clark does not make the point, is
where Maeterlinck's mysticism and rationalism meet on common
ground. To the Belgian poet instinct is the underlying principle,
scientific and moral, of life. Hence his pointing to the social order
of the bees as a model to man, who is governed by the caprice of
individual will. Hence also the feeling in all his plays of the fu-
tility of an individual's struggle against his own instinct or the instinct
of the universe. Here, if anywhere, you feel that Maeterlinck recon-
ciles the injustice of life, of Cordelia done to death by the wicked
sisters, with our sense of eternal right. Some mysterious instinct of
life is working towards a fulfillment which the finite mind of the
victim cannot see. As the bees build their hive and make their
honey according to an eternal instinct, little caring about the fate of
the just or unjust bee, so mankind goes on, in fact so the whole
universe goes on, to some unforeseen, undiscerned but perfectly well-
defined end. This, Maeterlinck would say, this being conscious that
one is a molecule of the mighty cosmic energy, is our great consola-
tion for having been born."
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VOL. CIII. AUGUST, 1916. No. 617.
A RULE OF LIFE.
BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, M.D., SC.D., LL.D., F.R.S., K.S.G.,
President of University College, Cork.
AINT or sinner, some rule of life we must have, even
if we are wholly unconscious of the fact. A spiritual
director will help us to map out a course of action
which will assist us to shake off some little of the
dust of this dusty world, and a doctor will lay down
for us a dietary which will help us to elude, for a time at least, the
insidious onsets of the gout. Even if we take no formal steps,
spiritual or corporeal, some rule of life we must achieve for our-
selves. We must, for example, make up our minds whether we are
to open our ears and our purse to tales of misery, or are to join
ourselves with those whose rule of life it is to keep that which
they have for themselves. What is true of each of us is none the
less true of each and every race even more true; for each race
must make up its mind definitely as to which rule it will follow.
And at the moment there is still doubt and indecision in this matter.
"The moral problem that confronts Europe to-day is: What
sort of righteousness are we, individually and collectively, to pursue?
Is the new righteousness to be realized in a return to the old bru-
tality? Shall the last values be as the first? Must ethical process
conform to natural process as exemplified by the life of any animal
that secures dominancy at the expense of the weaker members of its
kind?" 1
As to the Christian ideals little need be said, since we know
very well what they are and know this most especially, that practi-
cally all of them are in direct opposition to what we may call the
*R. R. Marett, Presidential Address to Folk-Lore Society, 1915. Folk-Lore,
vol. xxvii., pp. 1-14.
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cm. 37
578 A RULE OF LIFE [Aug.,
ideals of nature, and exercise all their influence in frustrating such
laws as that of Natural Selection. " Nature's Insurgent Son," as
Sir Ray Lankester calls him, 2 is at constant war with nature and,
when we come to consider the matter carefully, in that respect most
fully differentiates himself from all other living things, none of
which make any attempt to control the forces of nature for their
own advantage. " Nature's inexorable discipline of death to those
who do not rise to her standard survival and parentage for those
alone who do has been from the earliest times more and more
definitely resisted by the will of man. If we may for the purpose
of analysis, as it were, extract man from the rest of nature, of
which he is truly a product and a part, then we may say that man
is nature's rebel. Where nature says 'Die !' man says ( l will live.' " 3
To this it may be added that, under the influence of Christian-
ity, man goes a step further and says : " I will endeavor that as
many others as may be shall live and not die." The law of Natural
Selection could not be met with more direct opposition. I have
said that this is under the influence of Christianity, yet the impulse
seems to be older than that, to be part of that moral law which
excited Kant's admiration, which he coupled with the sight of the
starry heavens, an impulse, we can scarcely doubt, implanted in the
heart of man by God Himself. It is a remarkable fact that in many
some would say most of the less civilized races of mankind we
find these social virtues, which some would have us believe are
degenerate features, foisted on to the race by an enervating super-
stition.
Dr. Marett has carefully examined into this matter, and his
conclusions are of the greatest interest. 4
My own theory about the peasant, as I know him, and about
people of lowly culture in general so far as I have learnt to know
about them, is that the ethics of amity belong to their natural
and normal mood, whereas the ethics of enmity, being but " as
the shadow of a passing fear," are relatively accidental. Thus
to the thesis that human charity is a by-product, I retort squarely
with the counter-thesis that human hatred is a by-product. The
brute that lurks in our common human nature will break bounds
sometimes; but I believe that whenever man, be he savage or
civilized, is at home to himself, his pleasure and pride is to play
the good neighbor. It may be urged by way of objection that
I overestimate the amenities, whether economic or ethical, of
the primitive state ; that a hard life is bound to produce a hard
3 The Kingdom of Man. London: Constable & Co. 1907.
"Lankester, op. cit., p. 26. *Op. cit., pp. 21-27.
1916.] A RULE OF LIFE 579
man. I am afraid that the psychological necessity of the alleged
correlation is by no means evident to me. Surely the hard-work-
ing individual can find plenty of scope for his energies without
needing, let us say, to beat his wife. Nor are the hard-working
peoples of the earth especially notorious for their inhumanity.
Thus the Eskimo, whose life is one long fight against the cold,
has the warmest of hearts. Mr. Stefanson says of his newly
discovered " Blonde Eskimo," a people still living in the stone
age : " They are the equals of the best of our own race in good
breeding, kindness and the substantial virtues." 5 Or again,
heat instead of cold may drive man to the utmost limit of his
natural affections. In the deserts of Central Australia, where
the native is ever threatened by a scarcity of food, his constant
preoccupation is not how to prey on his companions. Rather
he unites with them in guilds and brotherhoods, so that they
may feast together in the spirit, sustaining themselves with the
common hope and mutual suggestion of better luck to come.
But there is no need to go so far afield for one's proofs. I
appeal to those who have made it their business to be intimate
with the folk of our own countryside. Is it not the fact that
unselfishness in regard to the sharing of the necessaries of life
is characteristic of those who find them most difficult to come
by ? The poor are by no means the least " rich towards God."
At any rate, if poverty sometimes hardens, wealth, especially
sudden wealth, can harden too, causing arrogance, boastful-
ness, and the bullying temper. "A proud look, a lying tongue,
and the shedding of innocent blood " these go together.
On the whole, then, we may perhaps conclude that the natural
bias of mankind is towards kindness to his neighbor, however much
the brute in him may sometimes impel him to uncharitable words or
actions. And certainly this natural bias is intensified and made
into a binding law by the teachings of Christ. But there is the
other point of view set forward in the philosophy of Nietzsche
if indeed such writings are worthy of the name philosophy. " The
world is for the superman. Dominancy within the human kind
must be secured at all costs. As for the old values, they are all
wrong. Christian humility is a slavish virtue; so is Christian
charity. Such values have become ' denaturalized/ They are the
by-product of certain primitive activities, which were intended by
nature to subserve strictly biological ends, but have somehow es-
caped from nature's control and run riot on their own account."
The prophets of this group of ideals or some such group of
'My Life With the Eskimo (1913), p. 188.
580 A RULE OF LIFE [Aug.,
ideals have no hesitation in telling us how they would direct the
affairs of humanity if they were intrusted with their conduct. It
will not be without interest to consider their plans and to endeavor
to form some sort of an idea of what kind of place the world would
be if they had their way. We can then form our own opinion as to
whether a world conducted on such lines would be in any way a
tolerable place for human existence.
First of all we may dwell briefly on Natural Selection as a
rule of life, since it has been put forward as such by quite a number
of persons. Never, let it at once be said, by the great and gentle-
hearted originator of that theory, who during his life had to protest
as to the ignorant and exaggerated ideas which were expressed
about it and who, were he now alive, would certainly be shocked
at the teachings which are supposed to follow from his theory and
the dire results which they have produced. 6
In the first place such a doctrine leads directly to the conclusion
that war, instead of being the curse and disaster which all reason-
able people, not to say all Christians, feel it to be, is, as Bernhardi
puts it, " a biological necessity, a regulative element in the life of
mankind that cannot be dispensed with." It is " the basis of all
healthy development." " Struggle is not merely the destructive but
the life-giving principle. The law of the strong holds good every-
where. Those forms survive which are able to secure for them-
selves the most favorable conditions. The weaker succumb." Hu-
manity has had at times evidences of the results of this teaching
which are not, one may fairly say, of a kind to commend themselves
to any person possessed of a moderately kindly, not to say of a Chris-
tian, disposition. But we can study the experiment in actual opera-
tion as we have it in a race which, of course in entire ignorance
of the fact, is actually putting into practice the teachings of Natural
Selection, though it must be admitted that the practice has not been
successful, nor does it look like being successful, in raising that race
above the very lowest rung of the ladder of civilization. Captain
Whiffen 7 has given a very complete and a very interesting account
of the peoples whom he met with during his wanderings in the
regions indicated by the title of his book. And he tells us that " the
survival of the most fit is the very real and the very stern rule of
life in the Amazonian forests. From birth to death it rules the
Indians' life and philosophy. To help to preserve the unfit would
6 For a discussion of this question, see Bernhardi and Creation, by Sir James
Crichton-Browne, F.R.S. Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons. 1916.
''The Northwest Amazons. London: Constable & Co. 1915.
1916.] A RULE OF LIFE 581
often be to prejudice the chances of the fit. There are no armchair
sentimentalists to oppose this very practical consideration. The
Indian judges it by his standard of common sense : why live a life
that has ceased to be worth living when there is no bugbear of a
hell to make one cling to the most miserable of existences rather
than risk greater misery? " Let us now see the kind of life which
the author, freed himself no doubt from " the bugbear of hell,"
considers eminently sensible the kind of life of which only an
"armchair sentimentalist" would approve; a kind of life, it may
be added, which will appear to most ordinarily minded people as
being one of selfishness raised to its highest power.
To begin with the earliest event in life. If a child, on its
appearance in the world, appears to be in any way defective, its
mother quietly kills it and deposits its body in the forest. If the
mother dies in childbirth the child, unless someone takes pity on it
and adopts it, is killed by the father who, it may be presumed, is
indisposed to take the trouble, perhaps indeed incapable of doing so,
of rearing the motherless babe. That the child, in any case, im-
mediately after birth, is plunged into cold water, is not perhaps a
conscious method of eliminating the weak, though it must operate
in that direction. At a later period of life should any disease
believed to be infectious break out in a tribe, " those attacked by it
are immediately left, eVen by their closest relatives, the house is
abandoned, and possibly even burnt. Such derelict houses are no
uncommon sight in the forest, grimly desolate mementoes of pos-
sible tragedies." When a person becomes insane, he is first of all
exorcised by the medicine man and, if that fails, is put to death by
poison by the same functionary. The sick are dealt with on similar
lines, unless there is or seems to be a probability of speedy recovery.
" Cases of chronic illness meet with no sympathy from the Indians.
A man who cannot hunt or fight is regarded as useless, he is merely
a burden on the community." Under these circumstances he is
either left at home untended or hunted out into the bush to die,
or his end is eccelerated by the medicine man. The same fate awaits
the aged, unless they seem to be of value to the tribe on account of
their wisdom and experience.
All these things placed together give us a perfect picture of
life under Natural Selection, and having studied it we may fairly
ask whether such a rule of life is one under which any one of us
would like to live. In every respect it is the antipodes of the Chris-
tian rule of life, and of that rule of life which civilized countries,
582 A RULE OF LIFE [Aug.,
whether in fact Christian or not, have derived from Christianity
and still practise. The non-Christian rule of the Indians is one
under which might is right and no real individual liberty exists, all
personal rights being sacrificed to the supposed needs and benefit of
the community.
So much from the point of view of Natural Selection, but it
would appear that those who have given up that factor as of any-
thing but a very minor value, if even that, have also their rule of
life founded on their interpretation of nature. Thus Professor
Bateson, the great exponent of Mendel's doctrines, who has told us
in his Presidential Address to the British Association 8 that we
must think much less highly of Natural Selection than some would
have us do, has his opinion as to the rule of life which we should
follow. According to his view, " Man is just beginning to know
himself for what he is a rather long-lived animal, with great
powers of enjoyment if he does not deliberately forego them.
Hitherto," he proceeds, " superstition and mythical ideas of sin have
predominantly controlled these powers. Mysticism will not die out :
for those strange fancies knowledge is no cure; but their forms
may change, and mysticism as a force for the suppression of joy is
happily losing its hold on the modern world." We seem to catch
an echo of the age-long phrase, " Let us eat and drink for to-
morrow we die." To pause for a moment in the general considera-
tion with which we are concerned, let us ask ourselves exactly what
is meant by mysticism by which of course religion is indicated
as "a force for the suppression of joy?" It cannot be supposed
that a person occupying the position of President of the British
Association could possibly suggest that unbridled lust, drunkenness
and gluttony sins forbidden by Christianity and also by the com-
mon consent of all decent people it cannot certainly be suggested
by him that, the sway of " mysticism " being removed, all such
things will become not merely lawful but actually commendable in
the sacred name of " joy."
Such a suggestion in the case of such a person is ludicrous, and
we must search further for an explanation. Possibly it may be
found in the fact that Puritanism, which sixty years ago had a great
hold upon English middle-class families, had a whole catena of sins
unknown to Catholic moral theologians. In the young days of the
8 Two addresses were delivered by him in Australia in 1914, one at Melbourne,
the other at Sydney. This meeting was almost simultaneous with the outbreak of
the war, the experiences of which ought to have considerably modified some of
the opinions therein expressed.
1916.] A RULE OF LIFE 583
present writer it was a sin to go to a theatre or to a dance ; it was a
sin to play any game on Sunday except that of putting together
dissected maps of the Holy Land, and so on with other matters of
innocent amusement, such as games of cards even where no stakes
were at issue. If such be the " sins " alluded to, it may be sug-
gested to those who speak of them in such terms, that they are un-
known as " sins " to the only complete and authoritative system of
moral theology in existence, namely, that of the Catholic Church.
If these be not the " sins," the reproach of which having been re-
moved, we may commit and thus add to the joy of life, it is at least
pertinent to ask what are the " sins," so that we may know of what
" mysticism " is depriving us.
To return to the main thesis, let us see what is the rule of life
suggested by the writer in question. He would prevent the mar-
riage of definitely feeble-minded persons and unions in which both
parties are defective. As to this something more will be said when
we arrive at the discussion of the next work upon our list, but this
may be said at the moment, that to speak of these afflicted creatures
in the terms to be quoted is certainly not in consonance with Chris-
tianity, nor even in accordance with common pity or courtesy. The
expression criticized is this: "The union of such social vermin
we should no more permit than we would allow parasites to breed
on our own bodies." It is hardly a charitable attitude towards
the afflicted. Then again we are to reform medical ethics. It is
" wanton cruelty " to keep alive a child which being diseased can
never be happy nor come to any good, consequently it should be
quietly put to death. The medical man, perhaps newly fledged, is to
be infallible and to know what is going to become of the child.
He is to decide on his course as to its life, forgetful of the fact
that some of the most unpromising infants have developed into men
and women who have left their mark upon the world. The present
writer, on behalf of the profession to which he belongs, utterly
repudiates such a suggestion as not only immoral but giving an
opening for the most deadly crimes. Some parents at any rate
are anxious to get rid of superfluous children, and some medical
men alas that it should have to be said are needy and prepared
to sin for a sufficient bribe. What an opening for crime when the
destruction of the child is at the discretion of the medical man. Yet
we are invited to contemplate " a reform of medical ethics." Then
we are told remember this was in 1914 that a decline ^in the
national birth-rate is on the whole rather a matter for congratula-
584 A RULE OF LIFE [Aug.,
tion than otherwise. " Statisticians tell us that an average of four
children under present conditions is sufficient to keep the number
constant." So we may assume that one of the provisions of the
new rule of life should be that no family is to consist of more than
that number. There is this to be said of these and the other state-
ments which we are considering in this article, namely, that one and
all of them are based on hypotheses which by dint of constant con-
sideration on the part of those who support them, have become to
them the Law and the Prophets. "An hypothesis," says Captain
Marryat, a shrewd observer, though not a man of science, " is only
a habit a habit of looking through a glass of one peculiar color,
which imparts its hue to all around it." 9
We have just been considering a suggestion as to the preven-
tion of marriages between feeble-minded and other defective per-
sons, and this brings us to the consideration of the last question on
our list, that of the so-called " eugenics," as to which we shall no
doubt hear a good deal after the conclusion of the present war, and
as to which many manifestoes have been issued in the past. The
term and the suggestion we owe to the late Francis Galton, one of
the kindliest of men, and one who exercised during his lifetime a
great influence in the world of science. We need not go back to
his writings, but may content ourselves with a brief consideration of
the proposals put forward in a recent work by a biologist of real
distinction and, it may be added, put forward with studious modera-
tion and, save on one point, of which more shortly, dealt with in
such a manner as to avoid offence against good taste. 10 The writer
begins that part of his work with which we are here concerned by
pointing out the undoubted fact that there has been no advance in
human intellect throughout historical times. This is true of coun-
tries as it is of individuals. Galton long ago pointed out that the
little country of Attica between 530 and 430 B. c. produced fourteen
illustrious men, that is one to each four thousand three hundred of
the free-born, adult male population, a thing never repeated by any
state however high its civilization.
Not to burden these pages with the list, it may be said that the
names include those of Aristotle and Plato, than whom no greater
intellects have since flourished. Discontented at l this want of
progress we are invited to ask ourselves whether there is not some
8 In The King's Own, not one of his best novels and certainly one of the least
known.
10 Heredity and Environment in the Development of Men. By Professor E. G.
Conklyn. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1915.
1916.] A RULE OF LIFE 585
way in which the human race can be improved, and we are bidden
to turn our attention to another matter, much debated during the
past seventy years, that of Artificial Selection. We are told that
breeders of cattle can chalk up on a door a drawing of the ideal
bull, and by careful breeding produce the animal of their imagina-
tion, and we are invited to deal in a similar manner with the human
race. Let us note in passing that artificial selection is an inter-
ference by man with the laws of nature as known to us : as its
name tells us it is an " artificial " thing, and in no sense a return
to natural conditions.
We have seen what life under Natural Selection would be like;
let us now study the picture presented for our admiration of life
under the artificial variety. There has been no improvement in
the human race, we are told, because " there has been persistent
violation of all principles of good breeding among men." 11 Let
us, therefore, treat the human race as if it occupied a stockyard.
Of course feeble-minded persons are not to be allowed to form
unions. So far we may go with our author, for all will admit that
those who are not fully compos mentis are incapable of entering
into a true marriage and, if they should be restrained from that,
should a fortiori be restrained from irregular unions. Any per-
son who has studied this matter at first-hand knows that these un-
fortunate and much-to-be-pitied individuals require protection from
themselves, and that the best thing for them and for humanity is to
protect them under comfortable conditions, as we now do those
whom we recognize under the term lunatics. But the suggestions of
the eugenists go much further than this. " We may confidently ex-
pect that in a very short time the marriage of the feeble-minded,
hopelessly epileptic or insane, the congenitally blind, deaf and dumb,
and those suffering from many 12 other inherited defects which unfit
them for useful citizenship will be prohibited by law in all the
States " 13 (i. e. } U. S. A.). This is sweeping enough but there is
more to come. " The study of heredity shows that the normal
brothers and sisters, and even more distant relatives, of affected
persons may carry a recessive defect in their germ-plasm, and may
transmit it to their descendants though not showing it themselves." 14
Clearly then they should be restrained from marriage, though the
author admits that " it will be more difficult, perhaps an impossible
thing, to apply rigidly the principles of good breeding to such per-
sons and to exclude them from reproduction." After all, though
"Conklyn, p. 408. All the paginal notes in the remainder of this article are
to the same work. "Italics mine. "Conklyn, p. 421. "Op. cit., pp. 421, 422.
586 A RULE OF LIFE [Aug.,
we were beginning to forget it, there is such a thing as human
nature ! Leaving the " normal brothers and sisters and even more
distant relatives " aside, let us contemplate the enormous horde of
human beings comprised in the classes mentioned in an earlier
paragraph. It is no good preventing the marriage of such persons
if at the same time the possibility of irregular unions exists.
There are only two methods of preventing these. One is " the
general sterilization of the inmates of all public institutions, which
is urged by some of our modern crusaders." 15 It is hardly neces-
sary to say that such a proposition is wholly contrary to the teach-
ings of moral theology, a matter which would no doubt in no way
affect the extreme eugenist. But it is so revolting to human nature
that we cannot imagine any civilized, not to say Christian, com-
munity giving their approval to it. The other method is to shut all
the persons concerned up in concentration camps under armed
guardians and surrounded by barbed-wire inclosures, the males in
one series of camps, the females in another.
Now apart from the horrible lessons of Norfolk Island, which
can surely not have been wholly forgotten, can such a state of
affairs as that just sketched really be contemplated as in actual
existence ? We have conceded the case of those non compos mentis,
and theirs is a grave enough problem, but multiply it by, say, five,
as we should have to do to include the other classes, and is the propo-
sition one which is in any way conceivable ? So much for negative
or restrictive measures, but we are not to be limited to them. " Pos-
itive eugenical measures are much more difficult to apply and are
of more doubtful value." 16 No doubt; and anyone who, even
with all the facilities possible, set about trying to breed geniuses
would be a fool or a madman. " Could anyone have predicted
Abraham Lincoln from a study of his ancestry? " our author very
pertinently asks. Yet we are told that we may look forward to
the dawn of a day when we shall know enough about heredity the
night is still one of inspissated gloom to direct marriages scientif-
ically, and when Jack and Jill will be united under a scientific
formula and not by the sweet influences of affection. Further,
willy-nilly, those who ought to marry must marry and, since the
only object of their union is the production of children, must, so
we understand, produce offspring or suffer the penalties of the law.
This we gather to be the eugenistic teaching from the one offensive
suggestion to which we have already called attention. The author
is distressed by the fact that the celibacy of our clergy and Religious
is Op. cit., p. 422. "Op. cit., p. 423-
I 9 i6.] A RULE OF LIFE 587
of both sexes, withdraws from parentage many of those who, from
a natural point of view, would be the most desirable parents of the
future generation. No doubt from the natural point of view this
is so, and our author shows his real hand when he tells us that
" if monastic orders and institutions are to continue they should
be open only to the eugenically (sic.) unfit." 17 Now if men and
women who desire to refrain from matrimony for the love of God
are to be prevented from so doing, unless indeed they are " damaged
goods," it is perfectly clear that no lesser plea for celibacy can be
accepted. To the registry office of course it would not be the
altar all the sound in mind and body must resort whether they
wish to or not. Such are the teachings or some of them laid before
the youth of the Northwestern University in the N. W. Harris
Lectures for 1914.
The first thing which all the theories dealt with in this paper re-
veal is a total want of perspective, for they proceed on the hypothesis
which no doubt their authors would defend that this world and
its concerns are everything, and that the intellectual improvement
of the human race by any measures, however harsh, is the " one
thing needful." But beyond this the persons who hold such views
seem to have entirely overlooked the fact that their proposed state
would be one of the bitterest and most galling slavery imaginable
by the mind of man, a form of slavery that never could persist if
for a moment it be conceded that it could ever come into operation.
Naturam cxpellas it is a well-worn tag but none the less true.
You remove all religious considerations ; you abolish the " bugbear
of hell " and the " mythical ideas " which contemplate the existence
of such things as sins. You then arrange, irrespective of any such
trivial considerations as mutual affection, that the marriages of the
healthy shall be in accordance with the teachings of the fashionable
scientific theory of the day, a theory which may be out of date in a
decade. Having done all this you still expect the persons thus
mated to cleave only to one another, and shut your eyes to the facts
of nature. The whole thing is ludicrous when looked at from the
point of view of common sense, but how few take the trouble to
contemplate these schemes as they would be in operation. Did
they thus contemplate them they would see that, apart altogether
from any religious considerations, they are wholly impossible even
from a purely political point of view. That they are intolerable to
Catholic minds, indeed to any Christian mind, goes without saying.
"Op, cit., p. 431.
THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY.
BY JOHN M. COONEY.
I
HE dioceses of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and
Bardstown were created by Pope Pius VII. in the
same year 1808. Bardstown was then in conspicu-
ous company. She is to-day a city of perhaps two
thousand five hundred inhabitants; of these, about
one-half are Catholics; about one-half also are negroes. Bardstown
is the county seat of Nelson County, Kentucky. The town was
formerly called Beardstown, after one, Beard, who planned and
platted the little city at a time when Kentucky was a backwoods
region of Virginia. Virginia also claimed General Thomas Nelson,
after whom Nelson County was named when in 1784 it was estab-
lished by act of her general assembly. Bardstown lies thirty-nine
miles southeast of Louisville, on the Springfield branch of the Louis-
ville and Nashville Railroad, and on the old, but well-maintained,
Louisville and Nashville turnpike. This much said, Bardstown's
longitude and latitude may be omitted.
Bardstown has much local pride and many reasons therefor.
She is the oldest town in the State after Harrodsburg. She
claims that on her Town Fork of Rowan's Creek, John Fitch navi-
gated a steamboat model before Fulton succeeded in a similar
undertaking upon a larger stream; and to sustain her claim she
points to Fitch's grave a few rods from her courthouse and, in the
courthouse, to his will and testament, in which he avers : " I know
nothing so perplexing and vexatious to a man of feelings as a
turbulent wife and steamboat building." Bardstown has Federal
Hill, the ancestral Rowan homestead, still " in the family " duel-
ling pistols and all and noteworthy for at least two reasons, to wit :
the much loved song, " My Old Kentucky Home," which was
written by Stephen Foster while he was a guest at Federal Hill,
and for the story that Henry Clay, while a guest at Federal Hill,
won at cards from " Old Judge Rowan " the latter's money, serv-
ants and Federal Hill itself. This is tradition, which also states
that the Great Pacificator courteously declined to accept from his
host aught else but his cash. Bardstown has a single family which,
I 9 i6.] THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY 589
in three generations, furnished the States with three Governors,
one United States Senator, a Cabinet Officer and several military
officers of rank, Union or Confederate. She was once known by
how many it would be impossible, obviously, to say as the Athens
of the West. She saw Buell and Bragg with their seemingly endless
and tired legions pass through her streets, and on her streets she
saw soldiers fall as rifles crackled. She has a population character-
istically intelligent and courteous. But, of all things in which she
takes a pardonable pride, the old Cathedral of St. Joseph stands
conspicuously first. And in this cathedral that was, interest is not
local only.
On July 1 6, 1916, began a five days' celebration of the one
hundredth anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of this,
the first cathedral west of the Alleghanies. Sermons were delivered
by Archbishop Glennon; Bishop O'Donaghue, of Louisville; Rev.
Henry S. Spalding, S.J., and Rev. William Talbot, S.J., both of the
last named are children of this old cathedral church. Nine sermons
in the church and five outdoor addresses were heard during the
celebration. Rev. C. J. O'Connell, pastor of the church, who has
spent his entire priestly life in Bardstown, as President of St.
Joseph's College or pastor of the church he was at one time both
had secured also other speakers, men, clerical and lay, who have
been closely associated with the life and history of Catholic Bards-
town. Is it reprehensible for it certainly is true that Bards-
town's people think well of one another? A memorial monument
was dedicated on Thursday, July 2Oth, the last day of the centennial
celebration. The one purpose of these festivities was to prevent
future generations from forgetting what Bardstown has been.
The diocese of Bardstown, when created by Pope Pius VII. on
April 8, 1808, embraced the States of Kentucky and Tennessee,
with jurisdiction, until other dioceses should be set up, over the
Northwest Territory. Bardstown was the see, therefore, not only
of the two States mentioned, but of a territory that has become the
States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, one-half of
Arkansas, Wisconsin and Iowa. Out of the original diocese
of Bardstown, twenty-eight dioceses, five of them archdioceses, have
been created. The diocese of Louisville, to which city the episcopal
see was transferred in 1841, when Louisville was a city of just over
twenty thousand inhabitants, now embraces only twenty-two thou-
sand seven hundred and seventeen square miles of territory, which
lies in the western half of the State of Kentucky.
590 THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY [Aug.,
There were, of course, reasons why Bardstown should have
been selected for the first see in the West. Kentucky was the first
State settled west of the Alleghanies, and was filling up rapidly
from Virginia and Maryland, from Pennsylvania and North Caro-
lina. The Catholic settlers, who came principally from Maryland,
took up lands chiefly in Nelson and Washington, adjoining coun-
ties. Bardstown was the second oldest town, and one of the largest
towns in the State; it had a considerable number of Catholics,
mostly Marylanders, and was surrounded at inconsiderable dis-
tances by other Catholic settlements. Bardstown was thus the
natural centre for Catholic activities west of the mountains.
Three distinct elements at first were included in the Catholic
population of which Bardstown was made the ecclesiastical centre :
an Irish element, comparatively small, but active and varied; a
Maryland element comprising the bulk of the Catholic population;
and a French element almost entirely clerical. The Irish Catholics
settled chiefly near Danville, on Hardin's Creek and on lower Cox's
Creek, the last-named neighborhood being still known in and about
Bardstown as " Irish Ridge." Gaelic is said to have been for years
the every-day language here. A negro servant was once sent by
one of these Irish farmers to bring back some goods from a mer-
chant in Louisville, who happened also to be an Irishman. The
negro spoke with a marked Irish accent. The merchant became
violently angry at what he took to be a negro's mockery. There-
upon the surprised and frightened colored man broke out into a plea
for mercy in pure Gaelic. The first priest in Kentucky, sent by
Archbishop Carroll in 1787, was Father Whelan, an Irish Fran-
ciscan. The first physician known in Kentucky was an Irishman
also. This was Dr. William Hart, who, after living at Harrod's
Fort for several years, moved to Bardstown, where he donated
the land on which the first church building in Bardstown was
erected. A monument erected a few years ago through the zeal
of Rev. C. J. O'Connell and the generosity of his congregation,
marks the spot where this first church stood, one mile northeast of
St. Joseph's Cathedral. Many of the early school teachers in
Kentucky were Irish Catholics. Theodore O'Hara, author of The
Bivouac of the Dead, and honored during life and after death by
his native State, was the son of a noted Irish teacher, Kane O'Hara,
of the Danville settlement. One of Lincoln's teachers, if not
the only one, is said to have been William Riney, an Irish Catho-
lic.
1916.] THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY 591
These Irish Catholics came as individuals and in family groups ;
the Maryland Catholics mostly in colonies. The first known Catho-
lics in Kentucky, strange to say, came from Virginia. These were
William Coomes and his wife. Mrs. Coomes was the first school-
mistress in the State. The first settlers from Maryland, who came
in greatest numbers soon after the Revolutionary War, took up
lands in and about the geographical centre of Kentucky. The
counties of Nelson, Marion and Washington form a group pre-
ponderantly Catholic to-day. In these counties there are not prob-
ably fifty foreign-born persons. The population is overwhelmingly
rural. Lebanon, the county seat of Marion County, may have as
many as three thousand five hundred inhabitants; Bardstown, the
county seat of Nelson County, as many as two thousand five hun-
dred; and Springfield, the county seat of Washington County, as
many as one thousand five hundred. These are the largest towns.
The quality of the faith of these people may be judged from the
fact that three religious sisterhoods sprang from among them : the
Sisters of Loretto in 1812; the Sisters of Chanty of Nazareth in
1812 (although it was 1816 before the first vows were taken), and
the Dominican Sisters in 1822. The mother houses of these sister-
hoods are still, all of them, not further than five miles from the
sites upon which they were first founded. This region is high and
rolling, with 'deep-cut stream channels, picturesque, and of greatly
varying fertility, reaching into the " bluegrass " lands to the north
and at times past to the chains of blue " knobs " which range
from east to west in the south. In this region, rural churches are nu-
merous and many of them very old. Even post office names declare
the Catholicity of the region : Calvary, Lebanon, St. Mary, Loretto,
Holy Cross, Gethsemane none of these being connected with the
numerous Catholic institutions. In these three counties are found
convents and academies at Loretto, Nazareth and St. Catherine;
the colleges of St. Mary and St. Joseph; the Dominican mother
house in the United States at St. Rose and the Trappist monastery
at Gethsemane. Even a considerable portion of the negroes a
majority, possibly, of church-going negroes are Catholics. A
church for colored Catholics was completed about a year ago in
Lebanon by Rev. Joseph A. Hogarty, pastor of St. Augustine's
Church, at which the Catholic negroes had worshipped .for a
hundred years. Excepting the parishioners of this colored church
in Lebanon, the Catholic negroes of this section attend the same
churches as the white people, having usually a special part of the
592 THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY [Aug.,
church assigned them sometimes the gallery, sometimes the pews
of a certain aisle, sometimes the rear seats separated from those
in front by a cross passage.
Smallest, but possibly most important of all, was the French
element in Catholic pioneer Kentucky. Soon after Father Whelan,
the first priest there, came Fathers Badin, DeRohan and Barrieres,
Fournier and Salmon. One can form some idea of the missionary
conditions of that time from the fact that one of Father Badin's
missions was an Indian village three hundred miles to the north-
west. Father Badin's log chapel at this place was the first home
and church of Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., founder of the Uni-
versity of Notre Dame, and the nucleus of that great institution.
This log chapel fell into decay, but loving hands erected, upon the
very spot, an exact reproduction known to-day as Badin Chapel.
In this log chapel on the shores of St. Mary's Lake, priests of the
mission band of Notre Dame say their daily Masses when not on the
missions; to it come many pilgrimages, and beneath its floor lie
Father Badin's remains. Father DeRohan's name will not be for-
gotten as long as Rohan's Knob, at Holy Cross, a beautiful peak
standing alone five miles from the nearest range, lifts its head
apparently above this range and all the surrounding country. Of
these priests and numerous others that came from France, including
Bishops Flaget, David and Chabrat, many were well connected in
Europe, and were able to secure for the churches in Kentucky, and
in particular for the cathedral church, pictures and other ornaments
of superior merit. The influence of the early French missionaries
must have been very great, for experienced pastors say that Cath-
olics in Kentucky still show unmistakable traits of French dis-
cipline.
Of this new branch of the church, then, Bardstown was the see,
and its St. Joseph's Church the cathedral. In its pastors it has
been more than twice blessed. Its first was Father David, afterward
Bishop David, of Bardstow r n. Bishop David did not long remain
bishop. His first episcopal act was to appoint Bishop Flaget, his
predecessor, vicar-general with as ample powers as possible, and
then he himself resigned, thus compelling, in a sense, the reappoint-
ment of Bishop Flaget, who in this way became the first and the
third Bishop of Bardsto\vn. Before 1848 in which year the
Jesuits took charge both of St. Joseph's College and of St. Joseph's
Church the cathedral had as pastors: Father Francis Kenrick,
afterward Archbishop of Baltimore; Father Martin John Spald-
1916.] THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY 593
ing, afterward Bishop of Louisville and Archbishop of Baltimore;
and Father John McGill, afterward Bishop of Richmond. During
the twenty years from 1848 to 1868, during which the Jesuits were
in charge, the pastors were: Rev. P. J. Verhaegan, Rev. F. X.
DeMaria, Rev. Charles Truyens, Rev. J. DeBlick, Rev. F. J.
Boudreaux, Rev. Thomas O'Neil and Rev. John Schultz, all of
the Society of Jesus. From 1868 to the present time, there have
been but three pastors : Rev. Peter DeFraine, Rev. John Reed and
Very Rev. C. J. O'Connell, the present pastor. Father O'Connell
is a native Kentuckian; he is of the family of the " Great Emanci-
pator," strikingly like him in appearance and possessed of a notable
gift of oratory. He was a student at Louvain. But most inter-
esting in the present connection is the fact that he has been pastor
of the old Cathedral since May, 1879, that his entire priestly life
has been spent in Bardstown, and that he is one that can appreciate
the historical and artistic features of his century-old parish church.
He has lavished care and personal means upon the building, re-
newing here, preserving there, but losing nothing historical and
changing no line; . so that to-day the old church stands just as
strong as ever, and in all likelihood fairer than she ever stood be-
fore.
Outside, the church looks Greek; inside, Roman. It would
be almost purely classic but for the steeple. Because of the portico
which, with its six Ionic columns, extends across the front, the
steeple seems to be set upon the roof. The spire rests upon a
square tower in which, for nearly a century, a wooden clock brought
from Ninove, Belgium, by Father Nerinckx, founder of the Sisters
of Loretto, marked the hours. A new clock costing a thousand dol-
lars raised by the townspeople, Catholic and Protestant alike, re-
placed the old, worn-out one in May, 1915. The wooden clock
from Belgium is responsible tot the erection of a steeple upon a
structure almost purely classic. In Father Nerinckx's journal, writ-
ten in Flemish and published in 1825 by J. G. LeSage Ten Broeck,
to whom Father Nerinckx presented it, he writes : " I might also
have told you how they managed to build the steeple of the Bards-
town cathedral. The funds were exhausted, but the architect, who
gave proof of the most ardent zeal for the completion of his work,
bethought himself of a new plan to raise the new funds. The clock
which I brought from Ninove, in Flanders, and which is a truly
wonderful timepiece, suggested to him the means of exciting the
people to renewed exertions. He placed it in the front wall of the
VOL. cm. 38
594 THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY [Aug.,
church, the two little silver-toned bells striking the hour. The
people acknowledged that so beautiful a clock should adorn a
steeple, and they consented to a subscription, which realized enough
to complete the work."
Louis Philippe was in' Bardstown during his exile from
France. The writer is not an authority upon this point of history,
but he is familiar with the tradition as it exists in Bardstown, and
Father O'Connell, who should be as good an authority as any
living, says : " It is certain that Louis Philippe was in Bardstown
on two different occasions, in 1817 for a few days, and in 1831 for
a year. Bishop Flaget befriended him in Havana, Cuba, in 1808,
and here in 1821." Certainly the large, sweet-toned bell, hung
in the church tower just above the clock, is the gift of Louis
Philippe. The story of the gift was recorded, in casting, in the
metal of the bell itself.
In the church are several beautiful, rare and valuable pictures.
Over the altar hangs a magnificent " Crucifixion " by Vanbree.
Among those around the walls are two Van Dykes, St. Peter with
the Keys and St. Mark the Evangelist; a Murillo, the Blessed
Virgin crowned in heaven; and a Rubens, the Martyrdom of St.
Bartholomew, held to be the finest picture in the church. Mr.
Oscar Raab, connoisseur, who restored these paintings in 1903, and
who has done much similar work in various parts of the world,
said that, west of New York, no paintings are to be found equal to
these. In statuary, too, the church is rich. Seven niches in the
outside of the front wall are set with statues of the Four Evangelists
and of the Sacred Heart, the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph; and
in the church yard are two handsome monuments, erected in 1908,
(the centennial of the Bardstown diocese), which are mounted with
the figures of Bishop Flaget and of Archbishop Martin John
Spalding.
The pastor's house beside the church, a two and a half story
structure of unpainted brick, erected in 1819, was once St. Thomas'
Theological Seminary and, in early days, the home of the Bishop
and of his clergy as well. Moreover, it accommodated in its base-
ment the first classes organized in the new St. Joseph's College
(1819), the later buildings of which institution still stand in its
rear, on the five-acre tract purchased by Bishop Flaget for $800.00
for the seminary site. This purchase is interesting in that the manner
in which Bishop Flaget secured the necessary money has been care-
fully recorded. A clock maker, who had been a, Trappist lay Brother
1916.] THE BARDSTOWN CENTENARY 595
and had remained behind and worked at his trade in Bardstown
when the Trappist Fathers left for Europe, had expressed a desire
that Bishop Flaget should come into possession of whatever property
he might leave at his death. He met his death one holiday as he
was returning from the church to his home. With a servant, he
rode into the Beech Fork, half a mile below the church, to ford the
stream. It had rained; the water was high, and horse and riders
were swept away and drowned. The court, on proper assurances of
the deceased Brother's expressed purpose and of Bishop Flaget's in-
tention to use the money to build a seminary, declared the bequest
lawful, and allowed the Bishop to enter into possession, the amount
of the bequest being two thousand two hundred dollars. Forty-
seven priests were the fruit of this first diocesan seminary.
Events move slowly in Bardstown. The old cathedral has had
an unexciting history. In 1889 a strong wind blew off a part of
the steeple, and the metal sphere at the top of the spire beneath the
cross which surmounted it was found to have been shot full of
holes soldiers during the Civil War having found it too tempting
a target. In 1902 sparks from a neighboring house which was
going up in flames ignited the roof. Mr. William McGill, a
parishioner, and nephew of the Bishop McGill w r ho had once been
pastor of the church, walked out upon the roof and extinguished
the blaze. Bardstown at that time had no adequate water supply,
and there was great anxiety for the treasured edifice among Cath-
olics and Protestants alike.
To-day the first Bardstown cathedral is doing the service of a
typical small-town church. States and Territories are no longer
subject to the spiritual authority of its head; its parish now may
spread over fifty square miles, the town of Bardstown proper cover-
ing probably one-half of one square mile. On Sundays and holi-
days long lines of vehicles from the country crowd the hitching
racks on either side of the broad, quiet street in front as they have
crowded them from a time beyond living memory. But the great
spiritual work of the parish goes on vigorously, for the Faith is
dear to these people, and their pastor their pastor now for over
thirty-seven years is untiring in his devotion and energy. In his
parish, nothing escapes his eye; among his parishioners, none
escape his care. His seven hundred colored parishioners, adding
greatly to his burden, prove this. He has five church societies :
a Girl's Sodality of the Blessed Virgin; a Boy's Sodality of the
Blessed Virgin ; St. Joseph's Colored Burial Society ; St. Joseph's
596 THE BARD STOW N CENTENARY [Aug.,
Society for Older Members, and St. Joseph's Colored Brass Band.
In addition he has ninety colored children in St. Monica's Colored
School, taught by two devoted Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. I
met one of these children, one morning last summer, as he started
from his little cabin home, four miles out in the country, and this
dialogue ensued :
" Where do you go to school ? "
" Ah go to Bardstown, to the Sistahs."
" Do you walk in every day.? "
" Yassuh."
" Don't you get tired ? "
" Naw, suh. Ef ah git tired walkin', ah run a little ways."
"You'll be late to-day, won't you?"
" Naw, suh; ah won't be late."
" At what time does your school take up? "
" Hit teks up when ah git d.ah."
It is certain that there is more peaceful cheerfulness in this
old Catholic region than in any other part of Kentucky and Ken-
tucky is a cheerful place.
THE MERCY OF THE MOON.
BY MICHAEL WILLIAMS.
HE patio was bounded on two sides by crumbling,
broken adobe walls and a row of cypress trees, which
traced on the deep purple of the early night sky a
flowing arabesque of velvet blackness. On the other
two sides were the dismantled, broken cloisters of the
old Franciscan Mission, the arches of which yawned like the caves
of strange mysteries. Above them looked the ruined, roofless
church that had been shattered by an earthquake a century ago.
Father Neville took me through a gap in the cloister wall into an
open space beyond, and then through another gap into the roofless
nave of the church, facing the lofty arch of the sanctuary.
" You've never been here at full moon," he said, " and I
could not let you go without seeing it."
" Thanks, Father," I whispered.
The beauty that was about us seemed akin to the peace that
passeth all understanding. It produced awe, like the celebration of
a sacrament. Over our heads the huge dome of the immense
summer sky soared without a trace of cloud. It shimmered, like
a crystal bowl, with the molten splendor of the moonlight. Faintly
purple, it was gemmed here and there with a few, large silver stars.
The magic of the moon evoked within the dusky purlieus of the
ruined church apparitional shapes and hues. In the narrow, empty
window niches, set high in the lofty walls, patches of weed and
grass cut inky silhouettes against the sky. Arches and pillars and
broken walls threw shadows that here were black like splashes of
india ink, and there like washes of withered lilac, or blots of pallid
purple or faint blue. From far away came the muffled booming of
the surf.
We stood for a long time in silence. And before the high
mood that held us could be dulled by commonplace speech, it was
transmuted into a mood poignantly human and familiar. From
the village street, hidden behind the farther wall of the church, there
suddenly arose, like the gush of a warm, perfumed fountain, the
sound of a resonant, throbbing woman's voice, singing, accompanied
by plangent guitar music. A Spanish song of love of love sue-
598 THE MERCY OF THE MOON [Aug.,
cessful, love finding and winning its own : the theme wherewith
poetry and music allure men and women onward through all the
illusions and all the mistakes.
The priest turned and smiled at me. " The ancient bewitch-
ment ! " he said. " The sorcery of the moon ! The sky-witch is
weaving her magic to-night. Ah, she causes us poor parish priests
a lot of trouble, amigo, a lot of trouble! "
" I can remember the time when it caused me some trouble,
Padre/' said I. " But it was worth it all ! "
" Let us return to the house, and I'll tell you about my present
trouble," said Father Neville. " You are a wise man from out the
great world; perhaps you can help me."
As we returned through the ruins the splendid, triumphant
song died away. The next instant we checked ourselves abruptly.
Scarcely had the song ceased before we were aware of a bitter sound
of sobbing. Near us, somewhere in these shadows, somebody was
crying her heart out, for there was no question as to the sex of the
unseen weeper. It made me feel very queer at my heart. The
priest listened intently, then tip-toed here and there, and soon he
found her a little, slender girl huddled in a corner with her face
in her hands.
"Lola! "said he.
She sprang hastily and in fright to her feet. The moonlight
fell upon her piteous lips and wet, lustrous eyes.
" Lola! Little one! Has it come to this? But tell me! " he
said in Spanish.
I passed on. This was none of my affair. But I felt a
genuine pity and concern for the child. I have a daughter of my
own, who, too, no doubt, some day will know the sorcery of the
moon. And I thought: "O Moon, queen of love! Be merciful
to poor little Lola show mercy, O Moon ! "
It was a pagan prayer but the night itself seemed pagan;
it seemed to thrill with the nocturnal spells of the spirits of nature.
Presently Father Neville rejoined me. He looked so grave
and troubled that I restrained my wish to question him. We re-
turned to our chairs, on the pavement before the part of the old
mission which he inhabited, and we watched the moon rise over
the dark mass of the church and flood the patio with its mystical
luminosity. By and by we heard the love song rise again, ac-
companied by the rich guitar; and far away, also, there was the
laughter and cries of the young people in the village.
1916.] THE MERCY OF THE MOON 599
" They dance and sing and laugh under the moon," murmured
the priest. " So has it been since the beginning. And it will go
on until when? How long, O Lord, how long shall this- strange
pageant of earth-life, this mystery-play, go on?"
" Just so long as men and women make love beneath the
moon," said I.
" Yes, amigo, you are right," said the Padre. " Which re-
minds me," he continued, " of my little moon-child, Lola. It is
her affair which is troubling me. I must try to bring it to some
order. Maybe you can help me, when I go to speak to old
Polonia."
" Of course I will, if I can," I said. " In fact, I've already
offered up a prayer for Lola."
The dear old Padre looked comically astonished. " You
prayed ? You ! To which of your heathen deities, may I ask ? "
" To Luna," I replied. " I beseeched her to show mercy to
the child caught in her spell."
" Now, this is something a little more than strange," said
the Padre. " For of a truth, amigo, the curse of the moon has
lain heavily upon Lola and Lola's family for many years."
"How so?" I asked.
" Come with me and I'll make Polonia tell the story," said he.
We crossed the patio to a breech in the outer wall, and passed
into tree-shadowed street of adobe houses of the better sort. In
front of one that stood apart from the others, in a garden pungent
with the scents of many flowers, but roses chiefly, we found a tall,
lean old woman busily at work watering her blooms. She dropped
her pot and broom and snatched at and kissed Father Neville's
hand; but despite these signs of reverence for him, it seemed to
me also that she appeared put out or embarrassed, or maybe a little
frightened by his coming.
"And how is Don Miguel?" he asked, in Spanish, after the
greetings and introductions were over.
" Ah, Dios, to-night is his bad time, and it will be very bad,
Padre ! " she exclaimed, and further speech bubbled volubly. " At
twelve to-night the madness will come upon him, as it does each
month, for to-night the moon will be at the full. Cursed be its
witchcraft ! For twenty years its evil eye has blighted my Miguel.
See, I have put him in his bed, for he is safer there, where I may
watch over him like a child. Ah, Dios! "
Sighingly, she pointed through the window. We could see the
6oo THE MERCY OF THE MOON [Aug.,
white head of an old man propped on the pillows. He seemed
asleep.
Suddenly, from far down the dusky village street, there came
the music of the guitar, and the voice we had heard twice before
soaring in song again, rich and sweet and thrilling; the song of
triumphant love ; but now something, the distance, perhaps, seemed
to give the strain a tone of melancholy.
" The song is sad," Father Neville said.
" Ah, Dios," said Polonia, " love brings the sadness, Padre,
si, si! "
"And nothing but sadnesss, Polonia?"
" Ah, but yes, Padre ! Many things as well as sadness ! " And
old Polonia sent a swift glance darting toward old Miguel.
The priest turned a stern face upon her, and lifted an admoni-
tory finger.
" And you have made love that should be sweet and good very
sad and cruel for your poor little Lola, and her sweetheart, Emilio
Aguilar," said he. "And you have not good cause, Polonia; and
I am much displeased. You have offended Emilio so much that
he has been cruel, and turned from Lola, and the little one's heart
is breaking."
Polonia looked frightened and startled. " Has he indeed de-
serted the child because I did not welcome him? Ah, Dios, the
young men are no longer bold ! It was not so when I was young.
Ah, no, no, no ! But truly, my Padre, I did not dislike Emilio
more than any other young man, but but Santa Maria knows my
heart, I could not bear to let my little Lola go from me."
" Do you not consider that you may ruin her life, even as
you and Don Miguel spoiled the life of her mother? Polonia, you
are wrong! "
Polonia bowed her head to hide, I thought, the look of hard
stubbornness upon her face; but I may have been wrong, or else
her heart changed quickly, for when she raised her head again,
there was no stubbornness, but a wistful sorrow in her face and
voice as she murmured : " It is true, Padre ! We were wrong; and
God punished us sorely. Ah, Padre, it is all very strange, and
to-night my mind runs upon it more than ever before."
" Speak on, Polonia, and relieve the mind of its memories,"
the priest said, very gently. " Peace comes that way."
" Ah, Padre," she said, " to-night is so much like that strange
night; but so different, too, just as my garden is the same, but so
1916.] THE MERCY OF THE MOON 601
different; and I the same woman, only different, too. I am old;
ah, Dios, that is the great difference! And my garden is old; it
no longer will grow the flowers that in the old days God watered
for me. The soil was so rich, they came of themselves ; now, it is
work, work, work! There are only a few left now, you see; the
roses, truly, and a few of the ft ores de son Pedro, of which we
used to weave the crowns for the old people when the Padres
washed their feet on Holy Thursday. One warm night in summer
when the moon was just at the full so round and so bright that
it looked like the bright sun of the daytime Miguel and I were in
the garden. We were very sad. We were thinking of our daughter
Padre, the first Lola. Ah, Dios, even now I dislike to tell what all
the world knows, how she ran away with Francisco Morales, a
man in no way fit for her, and of a family far below ours, Padre.
Ah, si, si, Padre, you shake your head, and truly pride is a sin,
but so it was I must tell the truth. And besides my sadness be-
cause of Lola's marriage, I had my worry about Don Miguel. He
had grown so strange and moody since Lola went away. His
strength was leaving him, and old age coming before its time.
" By and by he went into the house, without saying a word,
and I remained in the garden. All alone I stayed there, how long
I know not, but until very late; and the sadness grew and grew in
my mind, like a black cloud growing in the sky ; and I was full of
fear, and knew not why.
" Presently, I looked up, like one who awakens, but truly I
felt more like one who is in a strange dream, and knows it is a
dream! What a sight I beheld! Never before was such a thing
seen in the heavens ! As when two horses are brought out into the
road and made to race one against the other, and he who starts
them cries out 'Santiago!' and they race at full speed to the end
of the course, so ran the blazing moon across the heavens from the
middle of the sky even unto the west. Si, si, Padre, the moon
quivered and shook and at full speed it raced all the way to the
brow of the hill in the west. Then it turned and sped back again
as fast as it had gone. Ah, Dios ! Such a thing surely never hap-
pened before in all the ages of the world ! And when it arrived
at the middle of the heavens, and was very red, there began to
come out of it a bubble a bubble like to those that the children
make when they take a little reed and dip it in water with soap,
and blow, and the bubble comes out from the reed and grows bigger
and bigger and bigger. So the bubble that came out from the under
602 THE MERCY OF THE MOON [Aug.,
side of the moon grew bigger and bigger and bigger, and shone very
bright. Then like a wheel it whirled about. As when a boy puts
a little wheel of paper on the end of a stick and runs forward and
whirls the wheel, so whirled the great bubble on the moon.
" And, ah, Dios, what frightened me more than all, the whole
world turned red! The trees along the fence, and the roadway
in front, and the old church over there at the mission, all were
very strange, and red as if the light fell upon them through a piece
of red cloth covering all the sky. And my rose bushes were red,
and the fence, and the little pathways in the garden.
" Now, all this happened very quickly, and just as I was re-
covering from my first astonishment I heard Miguel calling in a
strange voice, very awful, and my heart stood still, and I forgot the
strange moon, and the world all red, and ran to him where he was
tottering out of the house. He caught my hand and cried in a
weak voice that in the red moonlight he could see Lola our daughter
walking in the garden, holding out her child to us, but she was dead !
Ah, mis eric or dia, senors, how he frightened me! I told him he
but dreamed, or that his illness caused a fever ; but he believed, and,
ah, Dios, I also when in the morning came the news that Lola had
indeed died during the night, giving birth to her child. And now,,
every month when the moon reaches the full, Don Miguel is
stricken by a madness, and so he remains, bewitched, until the
waning of the moon. To-night it will be the same."
Polonia ceased, and for a time nobody spoke. Father Neville
moved forward a pace or two and stared intently down the dusky
street. A strange impulse came to me. Without pausing to con-
sider it, I said to Polonia:
" Sefiora, the wise men of ancient times declared that the moon
is angry with all who interfere between the loves of men and
women. Don Miguel and you were unkind to your daughter in
her love-time, and now, the Padre says, you are being unkind to
the daughter of your daughter, in her love-time. Sefiora, if you
should cease to be unkind, who knows but that the moon might
now show mercy, and take her evil eye from Don Miguel ? "
She gazed at me as if fascinated. And then Lola herself
obeying, as later I discovered, Father Neville's orders entered
the garden. With her was a tall, stiff young man, very grave, and
haughty, as he fronted Polonia. But the old lady put all his dignity
to rout by throwing her arms about him, and the next moment
little Lola was doing her best to hug them both.
1916.] IN DESOLATION 603
The priest beckoned to me, smiling, as we stole away.
"How," I asked, "do you interpret Polonia's story?"
" She saw a great meteor crossing the sky at a time of an
eclipse. I have investigated the matter. The bubble was the moon
emerging from the shadow. And it is a fact that Polonia's daughter
died that night, and that ever since Don Miguel has suffered frorrt
this lunar madness." Father Neville smiled. " It was a paganish
suggestion that you gave to Polonia, but I should not wonder if it
worked."
. Later on, the Padre sent me word that Don Miguel had passed
the full of the moon without a trace of the former trouble. Call
it a cure by mental suggestion, if you like or the mercy of the
moon. Anyhow, such are the facts.
IN DESOLATION.
BY A. E. H. S.
SINCE I may not give the sweetest
Flower of all which Thou desirest,
Perfectness of life, and sweetest
Worship; yet, since still Thou firest
This my very life, so broken
As I cast it now before Thee,
And the words I leave unspoken
Were not worthy to adore Thee;
Let my life's abasement name Thee,
That none other is above Thee,
Let my lips, still silent, claim Thee
Worthy that all men should love Thee.
MAKING DOGMA USELESS.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
E idea that dogma is superfluous erudition was first
broached in 1637 D Y Rene Descartes, the founder of
modern philosophical method. 1 In 1798 Immanuel
Kant, the creator of modern philosophical criticism,
devoted a special volume to the subject, in which he
elaborately sought to establish the contention of Descartes. This
volume Religion Within the Bounds of Pure Reason is the classic
source of modern religious indifference. Almost from the day of
its publication the axiom began to circulate, that a man's creed has
no influence whatever on his conduct.
What value, from an historical point of view, did this volume
of Kant's possess? Were its conclusions the result of painstaking
investigation and inquiry, or downright prejudgments that se.t his-
tory aside? And did either Descartes or Kant, at a time when
passion clouded judgment, have the requisite scholarship and open-
ness of mind to pronounce decision on so momentous a matter,
world-concerning in its settlement, soul-risking in its sweep? Let
the reader judge for himself from the tale we are about to tell,
unfortunately all too briefly, but, we hope, with fair-mindedness
enough to let the truth that is sometimes crushed to earth rise
again and recover its pristine stature.
A man's fitness as a judge we are speaking only of philoso-
phers depends upon his ability to approach the evidence without
any set purpose or preformed idea. This requisite Kant did not
have. The supreme passion of his life was to prove that knowledge
did not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of action and conduct.
The judgment he pronounced on the dogmas of the Christian re-
ligion was simply the application of this prejudice, and his con-
clusions were all accordingly foregone they were not the decisions
of an unbiassed judge. Not only did Kant have this prejudice
of view and purpose himself, he impressed it on the subsequent
course of modern philosophy, though the writer must confess that
the usual way of designating it is not " prejudice," but " progress."
This prejudice to put it plainly dogmatically declared, in advance
of all investigation and in general, that knowledge exists for acting,
not for knowing, and that the worth of Christianity consists, not in
1 (Euvres de Descartes. By Victor Cousin. I., 129.
1916.] MAKING DOGMA USELESS 605
the new and uplifting ideas which it brought into the world, but in
the programmes of conduct and the plans of action which it sug-
gested. The categorical imperative of the moral law, Thou shalt
do this, and thou shalt not do that, was for Kant the pure essence
of religion, and the sole reliable kind of knowledge to which it may
attain.
Kant had already divorced thought from action in philosophy
some seventeen years before. He worked his ruling prejudice out
in that field first, and then approached the study of Christianity
with the same fixed idea and purpose in mind. The result could
have easily been foreseen. Conduct was divorced from creed,
morality from religion, action from dogma. The positive teachings
of Christianity were all displaced and supplanted by the moral con-
science and its imperative commands. The meaning of " faith "
was cut down from a belief in revealed truths to the simple accept-
ance of a code of ethics. Not a shred was left of the historical
Christ to create obligations beyond the ordinary dictates of the
" inner voice." Supernatural religion and supernatural law with
all their positive inspirations and ordinances were swept away.
And all because Kant had approached the study both of philosophy
and religion with the dogmatic assumption that human knowledge
exists for acting only, for knowing not at all !
The effect of the application of this destructive principle was
to take religion out of the field of history altogether, to turn it
away from the service of God to the service of man. The way
Kant managed this transformation of Christianity into a mere
system of ethics shows that he stopped at nothing, divine or human,
but hacked his way through relentlessly. He redefined all the
Christian dogmas until the Gospel verily seemed naught but his
own philosophy in disguise, he so rephrased their meaning. The
doctrine of original sin was the first to be subjected to the new
reduction process. He took every vestige of history out of it and
filled it with the meaning of his own philosophy when he declared
that the primeval fault is nothing else than the discord of will
and sensibility so plainly apparent in man. " Regeneration " is
declared to be " an effect of divine grace," but the regenerating
influence of the latter is set down as accessory man has his own
power of moral improvement and need not trouble himself about
divine assistance.
The dogma of the Incarnation was the next to be made im-
personal and unhistorical. The only last end of creation possible,
6o6 MAKING DOGMA USELESS [Aug.,
said Kant, is the realization of moral good by man. The " ideal
type " of the moral man may be said to " proceed from the es-
sence of God," to have " been in God from all eternity," to be
" His Son," and " the Word by which all things are made." The
" Son of God " is the moral ideal, and it does not matter whether
this moral ideal ever became incarnate in an historical person. The
faith we should have in Christ, the faith that makes us " just " in
the eyes of God, is faith in the moral law.
The doctrine of the Trinity was reinterpreted to mean that in
God, the Moral Governor of the universe, the three functions of
holiness, goodness, and justice are to be found combined. The
coming of the Paraclete is explained as the announcement of indef-
inite progress. Holiness which Kant negatively conceives as " the
renunciation of sensible joys " is not a communication to us of
God's Holy Spirit, but a dignity won by our own character-building
efforts. As the Paraclete is indefinite progress, hell is indefinite
regress the perspective of further falling which the wicked ever
have before them a regulative idea that bids us act as if our faults
knew no condoning after death. The " new man," the " Son of
God substituting Himself for the sinner and justifying him before
God," the " death to sin," and " the crucifixion of the flesh," " the
descent from heaven," the " virgin birth," the " temptation in the
desert," the " Sinless One " are all interpreted by Kant as meaning
the acceptation of the pure principles of morality his own philo-
sophical system, and nothing more! And that is how the Gospel
of Christ came to be identified with Kant's philosophy, how religion
ceased to be religion and went over into morality, how all that was
new, distinctive, and transcendent in Christianity took on a common
ordinary appearance, for no other reason than the temperamental
judgment of a Pietistic iconoclast the greatest negative dogmatist
that ever lived, who used the meagre remnant of the Christian
religion surviving in his own soul, as the test and standard of what
that religion was and is in history. 2
It was written in the fates that a man, upon such a destructive
mission bent, should totally misunderstand the meaning, and not
see the moral influence, of the Christian dogmas. The reader of
the two articles What is Dogma? and The Originality of the
Christian Doctrine of Life already published in these pages, 3
must be well aware by this from their perusal, that the Christian
2 For the preceding, see Kant's sdmnttliche Werke, Hartenstein's edition (1868),
pp. 120-284. Also: Kant. By Theodore Ruyssen, pp. 331-359.
3 THE CATHOLIC WORLD, June, July, 1916.
1916.] MAKING DOGMA USELESS 607
religion owes all the newness o its moralizing power to belief in
the divinity of Christ Jesus, to historical faith, in other words,
and not to philosophical erudition. The dogmas of Christianity,
as we previously took occasion to point out, are not learned philo-
sophical theories, but spontaneous empirical concepts immediate
seizures, so to speak, of the wondrous historical fact that the Son
of God deigned to become partaker of our humanity in order to
make us partakers of His divinity. The title of Christianity to
distinction from all other religions, historically speaking, lies here.
It grew up out of belief in a Person the like of Whom the world
had never seen. Its dogmas are about Him, not about ideas. Its
conception of our union with God is through Him, and through no
other agency. It claimed from the very beginning to have a moral
system of its own, as superior to Natural Ethics as Revealed Re-
ligion is superior to Natural Religion or " Natural " Theology.
It never for a moment believed that learning was an indispensable
requisite for salvation.
The " modernists " thought they were making every Catholic
theologian wince when they quoted for his benefit and enlighten-
ment the remark of St. Ambrose of Milan, that " God does not wish
to save the world by dialectics." Not a Christian in all the ages
whose soul would not have reechoed with the heartiest amen to
this observation of the noble Roman tribune who converted St.
Augustine. In all the periods of history but the modern, men had
sense enough to distinguish between saving faith and theological
erudition. In all times but ours, it was realized that Christianity
by the very fact of its being a public, and not a private religion
had to make the intuitional knowledge of the first faithful, com-
municable to others. A religion not founded on mysticism, but
on the personality of God and man, a religion that had new thoughts
as well as a new life to communicate, could not do the half-hearted
thing of appealing to the human will and affections, to ethics and
experience; for salvation consisted in knowing no less than in
doing, in intellectual assent no less than in attitudes of will. Chris-
tianity was too big, too noble to be exclusive its mission was to
sanctify the intellect as well as the heart and conscience. Christ
did not come to save the ethical, but the real human person, and the
ethics of salvation is not the lights by which the pagans lived, nor
the principles on which they acted, but faith, hope, and charity,
together with the whole comitatus of special virtues that accom-
pany these three.
608 MAKING DOGMA USELESS [Aug.,
Immanuel Kant tried to prove all this historical knowledge
superfluous unrelated either to religion or morality. Obsessed
by the idea that knowledge is for acting, he did not allow himself
to see that it is also for knowing, but took. the first half of the fact
and used it to overthrow the other half an expedient which would
never have deceived the world so easily unless the world had already
become more than willing to be deceived. The way he tried to
force his thesis through is a sample of the method and the man.
He took the historic faith described in the last two paragraphs, dis-
tinguished it from rational faith or the belief that " duty is a divine
command," and then declared that Christianity is nothing more than
this rational faith picturesquely presented under a " mystic enve-
lope," which it is the business of criticism to remove. The sole
foundation and unique criterion of religion, he complacently af-
firmed, is the moral conscience. Why? Because the moral con-
science is immediately given, whereas the concept of religion has
to be deduced; obviously not a reason, but an excuse a masking
of his real intention which is to make religion morality and morality
religion, as if the two could be made one, either historically or
psychologically, by the mere fact of one's saying that they were.
And he goes on joyously to the additional " observation " that
Religion is not an historical creation, but the inner act by which
a man takes cognizance of himself and his place in the universe
another unsupported assertion that comes with due propriety from
a thinker so modest, he was good enough to identify the Gospel of
Christ with his own system of philosophy! The result of this
identification enabled Kant falsely to claim and say that what one
finds over and above the moral in the historic faith of Christendom
must be set down for erudition (Gelehrtheit), false worship (After-
dienst), and sacerdotalism (Pfaffenthum). 4 It has no more re-
ligious value, he thought, than " the prayer-mill of the Thibetan,"
and must be replaced by " a pure faith in the moral law." Thus
spake the philosophical Pietist who brought over from philosophy
into religion an assumption not only not proven, but incapable of
proof in either sphere the idea namely, that knowledge is exclu-.
sively for acting, and not at all for knowing. On this all that he
said depended.
There is only one point in the foregoing with which we feel
called upon here to deal. It is Kant's conception of dogma as
erudition. We wash to point out the fact that Kant never made
an historical or critical study of the origin, nature, and meaning
* Kant's sdmmtliche Wefke, Hartenstein's edition (1867), VI., 275 ff.
1916.] MAKING DOGMA USELESS 609
of the Christian dogmas. His opinion of their worth was not the
result of investigation, but of philosophical and religious prejudice.
The consequence was that he grossly confounded them with theo-
logical treatises or scientific studies of religion and morality the
which they are not and never were. The world has gone on for
a century repeating this gross misconception based on no more
authority than that of a man who never studied the question he
decided, but prejudged it offhand, and with an arrogance seldom,
if ever, before equaled in the history of philosophy. The idea that
dogma has no influence on conduct started in the circumstances we
have lengthily described. And these are not such as to commend
either the idea, its author, or abettors. Inquiry into the origin of
the axiom that behavior is unaffected by belief shows that there
is nothing more behind this current phrase than the erudition-theory
of dogma. And as this theory is false, all the inferences based
upon it are of the same nature. The question of the influence of
dogmatic belief on human action is, therefore, ah open question.
So far from having decided it, Kant did not even understand the
terms of the thesis. The problem of the moral utility of dogma has
to be put in a way quite other than the Kantian before it can rightly
come before us for solution, and that way we shall now consider.
To those who declare the Christian dogmas inoperative in the
field of conduct, and of no practical avail for life, we should like
to put the question whether in all candor of mind and from an
historical point of view they think it can be asserted, that extra
motives for acting, extra standards and extra sanctions of action,
not to mention extra sources and extra means, are or have been
without creative influence on morality in the course of history.
Christianity brought all these additional moralizing agencies into
the world, and in this fact lies one of its indisputable titles to dis-
tinction from all the religions and ethical systems that went before.
Granted that high morality was taught in spots by Aurelius, Seneca,
and Stoics generally; granted, even, that by making a mosaic of
pagan utterances, you might be able to piece together the Sermon
on the Mount, and show that high heathen converse was held on
such ideas as the unity of the race and the brotherhood of man, you
will still not be able to prove that these ethical utterances were vital,
practical, effective, and reforming. Your " pure morality " theory
will reveal its impotence then as now, and betray its lack of motive
force, its inability to translate itself from an academic deliverance
into a living principle of moral action. Aristotle confessed as
VOL. cm. 39
6io MAKING DOGMA USELESS [Aug.,
much, when he prefaced his great treatise on ethics with the mourn-
ful admission that it would prove useless either to hold back his
fellowmen from evil or to urge them on to good. The Stoic idea
of human equality did not undermine the despotic conception of
the State, or change the way in which the individual was regarded.
Morality, divorced from Religion, could not put itself into effect.
Suddenly the divorce ceased. A religion appeared, preaching
a New Life in which conduct and creed were intimately united, the
one flowing from the other as from its never- failing fount. Action
was wed to knowledge to the knowledge that God is person, that
Jesus is His Son in very truth, that the ultimate end of conduct
is union with the Father through the Son a union effected by
grace and crowned by the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the
souls of the just. This new religious knowledge of man's relations
to God, as person to person, gave morality an absolute end, motive,
standard, sanction, and source. It cleared up the obscurities of
natural ethics, the dim precepts of the natural law. It studded the
mental heavens of the individual mind with a galaxy of revealed
concepts. The idea of supernatural law, supernatural life, super-
natural means of obeying the one and living the other, rilled the
souls of men, and blossomed forth into a conduct and character
that astonished and unsettled the heathen world. Idols came crash-
ing from their niches; individual human life took on a value it
had never had before; the " fruits of the Spirit " grew and multi-
plied; labor, hitherto in disrepute among freemen, because of its
association with the slave, received a dignity it could never other-
wise have won for itself at the time; infanticide, suicide, polygamy
were attacked; charity organizations were formed, that did their
work of relief more discriminately than those of our own day, and
for higher motives; the idea of serving one's fellowmen, because
that is the appointed way of serving God and attaining the maximum
of Divine and human good, spread over the earth, and bore unaccus-
tomed fruit; freedom of conscience was asserted in the political
order, and better treatment of the slave demanded in the social;
the economic sphere was made to feel that men were stewards and
trustees of property, rather than absolute owners, free to do with
their possessions what they would, regardless of the interests of the
less fortunate ; and lives were lived, and characters were built up, of
a kind not found among the cultured peoples of antiquity. An eleva-
tion of thought and action became general, the like of which it had
not hitherto lain within the power of "ethical systems" to bring about.
1916.] MAKING DOGMA USELESS 611
To what was this great moral awakening ascribable? To the
dogmatic belief that Jesus is the Son of God, and to no other cause.
Christianity would have perished, if it had been a religious or
ethical experience merely, with no dogmatic ideas to make experi-
ence more than subjective, to make faith itself something nobler and
higher and worthier than a " trustful leap in the dark." The
religion of Christ could never have survived a world of enemies
without and within, nor made the headway it did among the cul-
tured, if, as Kant so wrongly thought, its dogmas were " super-
fluous erudition " a " mystic envelope " concealing a system of
" pure morality." The ineffectiveness of moral ideals when not
accompanied by firm belief in the eternal realities of revealed re-
ligion need not go further back than Kant for convincing illustra-
tion and proof. His system proved as inoperative as Aristotle's
ethics, as Seneca's reflections there was no commanding and in-
spiring belief in a personal God, to give it lasting and living expres-
sion, to take it out of the abstract and bring it down into the con-
crete world of conflicting ambitions and desires. It had no sanction.
A convenient way of dismissing this consideration is to say
that religious sanction is an appeal to a low form of utilitarianism,
which invites men to be moral because of the future consequences
which evil doing brings an unseemly point of view that does
much to justify the feeling " that religion and morality are best
apart." To which the reply is that pedagogy must not be con-
founded with theology, nor a means of reaching the unenlightened
intellect be mistaken for the essence of Christian doctrine. The
love of God for His own sole sake is the perfect charity which
Christianity teaches. But the fear of the Lord is also the begin-
ning of wisdom for many we mean, of course, reverential, not
servile fear. Teaching the evil of sin through its future conse-
quences is an indirect way of letting men see that the ultimate
Christian sanction of morality is the union of man with God
through Christ " an eternally present relationship, into which tem-
poral distinctions do not enter."
The intellectual conviction that this relationship exists con-
stitutes the distinctive soul of Christian morality. There is nothing
" mystical " about it, though it has often been expressed in mystic
terms. It is personal to the core, and needs but to be apprehended
no " experiencing " is necessary to give it dominion over our lives
and conduct. When we surrender our w r hole being to its sway, the
service of the intellect, the service of the heart, and the service of the
612 MAKING DOGMA USELESS [Aug.,
will are not the dubious consecration of ourselves to some abstract
figment, like " the greatest good of the greatest number," or the
future well-being of the State, but the concrete identification of all
our personal interests with God's, our good with His good, His
good with ours.
Neither may the triple service mentioned find an all-sufficient
object and motive in the resolution to bear one another's burdens and
to do what good one can to " the submerged tenth." " The religion
of humanity," says Illingworth, " was the invention of Jesus Christ,
and would never have survived the storms of the early ages to
blossom in the modern world, except under the protecting shelter
of the belief that' Jesus Christ was God. Plato and Aristotle would
have nothing to say to the religion of humanity. Hebrew exclu-
siveness and Roman pride could not together have created it. It
was created by the Christian religion and sustained by the Chris-
tian love. And however true it may be that isolated men have,
from time to time thereafter, exhibited its power, while denying the
source from which it was unconsciously derived, the fact remains
that it has never been a social force, except under the protection
of the Christian creed." 5 Christianity introduced the socializing
idea that the good of God, of neighbor, ,and of self, is not three
goods, but one, under three personal, living relations. Kant broke
the triple chord, and tried to rebuild philosophy, ethics, and re-
ligion out of one of its detached strands. He made it impossible
for man to have that knowledge of his personal relations to God,
which is the enlightening and distinctive principle of Christian ethics.
He left him with a sentimental relation to his own conscience a
relation that he had all through his history, without turning it to
any wondrous moral profit or self-redemption.
The social did not make a strong appeal to Kant he was too
much of an individualist to see himself in the crowd. Later, to take
revenge on this overstressing of the individual and his conscience,
came socialism. It took the Christian concepts of solidarity, fra-
ternity, and equality, struck out the personal relation to God that
underlay them, and made neighborliness the sole source, motive,
end, and sanction of morality, bidding us sacrifice ourselves in every
way for the humanity yet to be. Men began to speak of morality
as essentially social, and of altruism as if it were bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh. The Christian religion was roundly de-
nounced for teaching that salvation and morality are primarily
individual, not social processes; for having believed from the be-
8 University and Cathedral Sermons. By J. R. Illingworth, pp. 35, 36.
1916.] MAKING DOGMA USELESS 613
ginning, as it will continue to believe to the end, that the way to
reform society is to reform the individuals that go to make it up.
Individual morality has social effects it spreads out fan-shape,
and does not stay at the point of starting. Christian dogma exists
to preserve man from just such complete subserviency to the State,
as would merge all his personal rights in his social duties, and leave
not a wrack of his real self behind.
When the Catholic Church bids men believe that if they sepa-
rate their own individual interests from those of their fellow
mortals, they are forfeiting that personal relation of union with
God through Christ, in which the meaning of life consists, she is
offering a motive and a sanction for social morality, which can be
found nowhere else. And when she tells the faithful that their
good is not to be sought individually, but in union with God and
their fellowmen, she is preaching a religious truth, it is true, but
one that has positive social effects lurking in it, more potent than
your " pure morality," or " a fellow feeling for one's kind."
Neither communistic nor individualistic by nature, but partly both
and wholly neither, she refuses to be identified with one or other
of these blighting extremes. It was the idea of personality that
cut her clear from the ancient world, in which she rose like a flaming
star. That idea still cuts her clear from the world of the present.
History may repeat itself, and again try ways and thoughts that
have long since had their ineffectiveness established, but she who won
a victory over the pagan world by the doctrine of the threefold
personal relationship of God, neighbor, and man, is not going to
lose the fruits of that victory to the modern accentuators of -the
impersonal in sociology and the indefinite in religion.
The narrower one's view of life, the less generous and inspiring
will be the principles of action deriving from it. The dogmas of
the Christian religion are an addition to the sum of human knowl-
edge, and incentives to a conduct in keeping with them, which the
unbeliever cannot appreciate, because he has never steered his courses
by their lights, nor acted them out himself in practice. The man
who has less religion is no fit judge of the man who has more, and
the constant bickerings of the former at the latter are but super-
fluous proof that the greater has never yet in history been fairly
comprehended by the less. To judge a fellow being, we must have
the same qualities of mind, heart, and will as he. And oftentimes
the critic of the man religious, so far from making an accurate
observation of his believing kind, does but reveal a soul in which
614 MAKING DOGMA USELESS [Aug.,
the Christian springs of action have long since run dry. When we
are told by such men as these that religious belief is powerless to
influence conduct, we should take it as an unwitting act of self-
revelation on their part, not as an observation of ourselves, to whom
truth has been committed in its fullness to moralize us the more.
There is more dogmatic utterance in the negative statement
that conduct and creed go ways divided, than in all the positive pro-
nouncements of the Church in history. The man who says that
dogmatic belief makes no difference in moral conduct, presumes to
judge Christian faith by his own inexperience of its promptings, and
to settle an historical question of fact by some prejudice or other
with which he happens to be imbued. Have such indifferentists
studied history before coming to the adverse conclusion which they
draw? Not they it's all a nursery tale for them. And where
have they found the good men and true who continue living up to
the principles of a high morality ? In a world still traveling on its
acquired Christian momentum of all places the last to choose for
the proving of their thesis. The world in which we live is not
entirely unchristian. The principles of social morality prevailing
are not natural ethics at all, but the survival of Christian ideas
without the faith that once gave them " might and meaning."
Equality, fraternity, solidarity and such like notions all wear the
Christian hall-marks of their origin. Public opinion itself is
charged with a power mere ethics never could have given it, and
never did. The very men who are loudest in declaring dogma
superfluous erudition borrow its terms in their social theories, hav-
ing none more effective in which to address their auditory. The
repudiators of the Christian religion are all beneficiaries of it
parasites who would live by the letter, not by the spirit of that which
made them what they are. What saves us from complete reversion
to paganism is the Christian ideals which have become a permanent
part of the ethics of mankind. And these ideals will not be suc-
cessful for long in keeping the race up to its present levels, unless
they are again united with the Christian realities from which they
have been torn apart. Detached ideals will never hold us where we
are or send us further forwards belief in a personal God, and in
our union with Him, can alone equip us with the power needed to
overcome ourselves. The sources of power and action naturally
within us are not, as history has shown, potent enough to compass
our transformation.
Not all the dogmas of the Christian religion directly relate to
1916.] MAKING DOGMA USELESS 615
action. Some of them the Trinity, for instance concern knowl-
edge rather than conduct. This fact was dwelt upon by Kant, and
has been harped upon by a host of others since, as if it clearly
justified the view that morality is independent of religion. But
unless you deliver yourself over, body and soul, to the favorite
modern fallacy that the end and aim of knowledge is action, not
truth, the fact has no such significance at all, but one quite other.
The Christian religion is a special life, intellectual and moral. The
object of grace and the virtues is to assimilate our spiritual life to
the life of God. The union of man with God, which Christianity
teaches, is a union of personal friendship issuing in moral action,
not a merely ethical relationship or ideal. And as friendship re-
quires mutual knowledge for its basis a service of the mind no
less than a service of the heart and will all who are not profes-
sional mind-dividers or religion-reducers will readily see that knowl-
edge no less than action is an essential part of the Christian life. To
know God at all, in any real sense, creates within us the desire for
further knowledge. The progress of the Christian life is towards
the Known and the Loved, not towards ideals, but towards the
Personal Being in Whom these ideals are infinitely fulfilled. It is
only natural, therefore, that a religion professing to be more than
an ethical system should proclaim truths to be believed no less than
actions to be done. It is the ethical theory of the nature of Chris-
tianity that makes dogma look superfluous, and it is in the name of
this defective theory that the moral influence of dogma is denied.
Men lean upon this reed as if it were really a supporting staff.
Then, too, it does not follow that the doctrine of the Trinity
has no relation to the life and action of the individual. It is a
" practical proposition " for every individual to know whether Jesus
Christ is the Son of God in very truth, and has actually established
special means for salvation, which no one who values life at the
meaning God set upon it is free to lay aside. And once a man
decides for himself the practical question that Jesus is really the
Son of God, come in the flesh to tell us who God is, what we are,
and whitherward eventually our faltering, but assisted steps will
lead, it becomes indirectly practical, I say, for such a one to know
Christ in His personal existence and all that constituted His divine
selfhood before He came. The " ethical naturalist " of the day
sets himself and his little system up as the standard to which
Christ and Christianity should conform. And only those who ac-
cept so much faith as can be made to dribble through a preconceived
6:6 MAKING DOGMA USELESS [Aug.,
philosophical system of small dimensions will fly in the face of
history with such narrow negative dogmatists as these, who use
their idea of Christ, and their idea of Christianity, as a dogma to
destroy all dogmas other, as a yard-stick by which to measure God's
utterances and man's obedience to His claims.
Which are the dogmas that expand the human soul, and which
are those that stifle it? That is the question to be determined,
for we are all dogmatists, and none more so than the ethical
naturalist who says that dogma is without effect on conduct, basing
his theory on a conception of the nature of dogma which would put
the veriest tyro in Church History to the blush. Did you ever
happen to notice that the man who rejects the dogmas of the
Christian faith has to accept a lower creed, and a smaller view of
himself and life in their stead? Did you ever distinctly realize
that every man believes in some dogma, and guides his life accord-
ingly? Ethical naturalist, scientific eugenist, economic determin-
ist, independent moralist, religious indifferentist, undogmatic reli-
gionist, and whosoever else, all build their single-barreled systems
and one-idea philosophies on the unhistorical dogmatic assumption
that our present level of morality will be automatically maintained,
without any conscious dependence upon the Divine assistance, to
which the raising of morality to its present condition is historically
due.
" The moral philosophy of Greece and Rome was, as we know,
their whole religion; and yet it made few great lives possible and
passed away with the stately sadness of a dying aristocrat of the
old regime, retiring in pathetic impotence from the vulgar contact
of the religion that was destined to make all things new." 6 Is this
to be our fate, to "make few great lives possible? " And was it
progress to have returned to this ancient point of view, and to have
despoiled the Christian religion of all its distinctive ideas and
influences, on the poor warrant, the gratuitous assumption, the
arbitrary and arrogant dogma that knowledge does not exist for its
own sake, but solely for the sake of action, conduct and behavior?
Out of this supposition sprang the theory now become an axiom
than a man's religious beliefs have no influence on his morals. To
which we would say, not so much by way of answer, as to throw
out a suggestive reflection, that it is a distinct advantage sometimes
to know the history of modern philosophy and the pedigree of some
of its " axiomatic " truths.
6 University and Cathedral Sermons. By J. R. Illingworth, pp. 23, 24.
A FAMOUS CATHOLIC HISTORIAN: GODEFROID KURTH.
BY WILLIAM P. H. KITCHIN, PH.D.
HE last year or two Catholic letters and Catholic
scholarship have lost many champions who had de-
voted their pens to the service of Faith and of Truth.
Thus the English-speaking world has been deprived
of Canon Sheehan, Monsignor Benson and Dr. Wil-
frid Ward; France has lost Abbe Vigouroux, who for fifty years
marched in the forefront of Biblical studies, and his friend and
coworker Abbe Lesetre; Italy has lost Father Fedele Savio, who
for thirty years was associated with the learned enterprises of the
Italian Jesuits, and who produced the erudite compilation entitled
Gli Antichi Vescovi d'ltalia dalle Origin* al 1300; and Belgium
laments the passing of Van Gehucten, the famous neurologist who
died in exile at Cambridge, and more recently still the death of
Godefroid Kurth, the pioneer to his countrymen of new methods
and aims in history.
Born in the province of Liege in 1847, Kurth, on the comple-
tion of his preliminary studies, went to Louvain for the higher
course in arts and letters. There he laid the foundation of that
painstaking and accurate scholarship, combined with a gift of
fascinating literary expression, which ever after distinguished him.
Having chosen teaching for his profession, he may be said to have
introduced into Belgium a new school of historical and apologetic
exposition. Just as Mr. Allard has made his own the history of
early Christianity and told with admirable tact and wonderful re-
search the story of the martyrs of the Roman Empire, just as
Dom LeClercq is our surest guide through the perplexing labyrinth
of Christian antiquities, so Kurth vindicated to himself the Middle
Ages, and particularly the role his country played during that most
interesting period. His writings range between the fifth and fif-
teenth centuries, and since the days of Frederick Ozanam few have
had such a grasp of it as he; fewer still have put their talents as
unreservedly at the service of the Church as he did. Kurth was
by nature an eloquent apologist, full of sympathy and understanding
for the deep, childlike piety of the Middle Ages, and in telling the
618 A CATHOLIC HISTORIAN [Aug.,
stories of the heroes and heroines of these times he invariably
carries his readers along with him. Though a layman he con-
tributed two volumes to the series entitled " The Saints," edited by
Henri Joly, namely, St. Clo tilde and St. Boniface. Each of these
works went through several editions, the former one enjoyed no
less than six. The questions briefly touched on in it such as the
conversion of the Franks, religion and education amongst the
Barbarians, the social condition of Gaul under their government
these he developed abundantly and with a full critical apparatus in
his Clovis, two large volumes in octavo which merited to be crowned
by the Institute of France ; while the purely literary history of this
and the immediately succeeding periods he told in his Poetical
History of the Merovingians. Thus these four works may be said
to afford an almost complete picture of the state of Gaul between the
fifth and the eighth centuries.
Around special episodes or movements of Belgian life he
grouped his history of the central portion of the Middle Ages.
Three important works treat of this period: Nolger of Liege and
the Civilization of the Tenth Century, which appeared in 1905;
The City of Liege in the Middle Ages (1910) a monumental pub-
lication in three large volumes, which are a veritable storehouse of
information; and The Charters of the Abbey of St. Hubert (1903).
Interesting sidelights on the same period are thrown by his two
opuscules, What are the Middle Ages? and Leprosy in the West
Before the Crusades. This last affords an excellent example of
his methods in apologetics, and evinces also his minute and accurate
knowledge. The eighteenth century, and particularly the Encyclo-
pedic j had ascribed to the crusades, together with a lot of other
evils, the introduction of leprosy into Europe. Kurth grapples
with the assertion, and simply annihilates it under an avalanche
of testimonies culled from all kinds of public documents between
the fourth and the twelfth centuries. In this connection his hagio-
graphic knowledge stood him in good stead, and a most interesting
and edifying link in his chain of argument is the prescriptions of
Church Councils and the heroism of the saints in favor of the lepers.
The varied learning scattered with bountiful prodigality in
these numerous treatises is condensed and simplified in his admir-
able history, entitled The Beginnings of Modern Civilization. This
study appeared originally as far back as 1886, and immediately
obtained attention. Six editions with many retouchings and ampli-
fications have since seen the light. The author is at home in his
1916.] A CATHOLIC HISTORIAN 619
subject, and handles his theme in a most masterly manner and con
amore as well. His object is to trace the gradual unfolding of
modern ideas and ideals from seeds latent in the Middle Ages ; and
he demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Middle
Ages, no matter what certain schools may advance to the contrary,
were not ages of darkness much less of obscurantism; on the
contrary, that the most glorious poetry then thrilled from Catholic
tongues; that art and architect, oratory and philosophy vied
with one another in rearing aloft imperishable manifestations of
the religious sentiment. It would be difficult to paint better than
Kurth himself has done, the close filiation existing between different
intellectual epochs, and the spontaneous generation, so to speak,
by which one art and science begets another.
Nothing would be more interesting to trace than this intel-
lectual progress. One would see in succession on going back
through the centuries the budding- forth of literature under
Charlemagne; the birth of modern languages; the rise of
popular poetry and its great epic poems ; the appearance of the
songs of love and gallantry; the troubadours and the minne-
singers; the drama and all its originalities; the great philo-
sophical and theological discussions of the twelfth century;
the growth of natural science under Roger Bacon ; the vast intel-
lectual movement springing from the crusades ; the elabora-
tion of encyclopedias in which geniuses like St. Thomas and
Albertus Magnus or compilers like Vincent of Beauvais sum-
marize the knowledge of their time; the magnificence of the
arts which cover the whole of Europe with monuments that
have never been equaled; then the great voyages of discovery
which from the fourteenth century onwards step outside the
bounds of existing knowledge and push back the horizon enor-
mously ; then the inventions by which mankind forces the pace,
so to speak, of progress and makes new conquests possible. 1
Kurth was an admirable speaker; he possessed the glorious
gift of eloquence, which is' common enough among men of Gallic
blood and speech, but practically unknown among modern Anglo-
Saxons. Hence he was greatly in demand for lectures and con-
ferences. In the winter of 1897-98 he was invited to lecture
before the " University Extension for Women " at Antwerp. These
discourses he afterwards expanded and published under the title of
*L'glise aux Tournants de I'Histoire, pp. 125, 126.
620 A CATHOLIC HISTORIAN [Aug.,
The Church at the Turning Points of History. The volume con-
sists of an introduction on the " Mission of the Church " and six
lectures on crucial periods in her history. The points selected for
discussion are : (i ) the Church and the Jews; (2) the Church and
the Barbarians; (3) the Church and Feudalism; (4) the Church
and Neo-Csesarism ; (5) the Church and the Renaissance; (6) the
Church and the Revolution. The essays are eloquent popular ex-
positions of the theses in question, and every line breathes the most
ardent Catholicism; in fifteen years no less than ten thousand
copies of this book have been sold. Every page is worthy of quo-
tation, and I select, not as better than the rest, but as typical of
the whole, his description of the Church of to-day:
Who can deny that to-day, just as in the Middle Ages, the
Catholic Church is the highest authority in the world? She
speaks to the whole human race in that voice tender and strong
which belongs only to her. And she is the only one that can
speak to it. In the universal downfall of thrones, schools, doc-
trines, she is the only moral power that remains standing, and
her marvelous superiority is enhanced by the depth of their
fall. Whenever she raises her voice, innumerable echoes reply
to her from all parts of the world. There is to-day a Catholic
school of thought; it measures every idea by the standard of
Christian truth, it condemns what she condemns, and embraces
what she does not reject. Strong and respected, conscious of
its own power, it travels from end to end of the earth; and
there is not a single victorious sophism to which it does not
oppose a fearless denial. In sociology, in science, in art, in
all the manifestations of the intellectual and moral life of
peoples, the Catholic school of thought maintains its positions
with ever-increasing force and energy. The world does not
confound it because it is irrefutable, and the only weapon avail-
able against it is a conspiracy of silence. Nor is that aM. If
we descend from the heights of speculation to the levels of
action, the Catholic spirit has begun to take possession again of
public life. The Catholic battalions are being reorganized;
everywhere the army of the laity is rising. It is the people
who are sustaining their clergy, it is the landwehr of the Church,
who seek to have their share in the good fight. 2
Nor do these painstaking volumes exhaust Kurth's ardent
literary activity. He was a frequent contributor to the learned
2 Ibid., pp. 193. i94-
I9i6.] A CATHOLIC HISTORIAN 621
reviews of Europe, especially to the Revue d'Histoire Ecclesiastique
of Louvain. In this learned quarterly, the organ of specialists
par excellence, he allowed his erudition to have full and free reign.
Thus in the issue of January 15, 1913, he published his Etude
Critique sur la vie de St. Genevieve, which occupies no less than
seventy-five pages of the Review. It is a dry disquisition on the
age, value and sources of the different manuscript lives of the
Saint, together with a sifting of the theories of former inquirers.
After a delicate adjustment of the critical balance, and after posing
it (as he thinks) in stable equilibrium, Kurth allows his natural elo-
quence to assert itself :
But the surest profit that we can draw from the Vita
Genovefce is to learn to know the marvelous personality of this
daughter of France. She is not a Religious in the modern sense
of the word, although she was consecrated to God from her
infancy, and although she realizes an extremely noble type of
Christian virginity. She recalls rather those beguines of the
twelfth century, who like her remain in the world to do good
but with this difference, that there is in the case of Genevieve
an originality of character and a virility of temperament that give
her a special place among the saints. She is the valiant virgin,
who joins to all the attractive qualities of womanhood the cour-
age, energy and initiative that as a general rule belong exclu-
sively to man. Her faith is lively and her piety warm; she
possesses the gift of tears ; she makes a retreat during the whole
of Lent, and imposes frequent penances on herself she
practises a special devotion to the two great Saints of Gaul,
St. Martin of Tours and St. Denis; she performs pilgrimages
to the shrine of the former, and she builds a church over the
tomb of the latter. But what raises her above her peers, and
points her out both to the study of history and the gratitude of
her race, is this ardent fire of patriotism and zeal for the public
good, which makes of her an elder sister of Joan of Arc. She
makes herself on two different occasions the benefactress of
her beloved Paris; in 451 she protects it against itself and
against the phantoms of a blind despair; later she revictuals it
during its days of distress and feeds its famine-stricken inhabi-
tants. But one must read for oneself the pages wherein these
two great deeds are told; though the story-teller is anything
but a literary artist, one catches, so to speak, the vibrations of
a voice full of emotion at the mere memory of the glorious
deeds he is recounting. 3
* Revue d'Historie Ecclesiastique, January 15, 1913, pp. 78, 79-
622 A CATHOLIC HISTORIAN [Aug.,
How many writers of history pause thus to draw out for their
readers the lessons that history contains? How many or rather
how few can point a moral with such tact and delicacy?
For twenty years and more Kurth occupied the Chair of
History at the University of Liege. In 1906 he resigned his pro-
fessorship to become Director of the Belgian Historical Institute
in Rome. Recently he had been living in Brussels, where he was
stricken down with pneumonia in the last days of January, 1916.
Cardinal Mercier, a constant admirer and warm personal friend,
visited Kurth on hearing of his serious illness. The dying his-
torian, who had long been a daily communicant, kissed the Cardinal's
pectoral cross devoutly and begged his blessing. " My dear friend,"
said the prelate, " you have long confessed Christ before men, soon
He will confess you before His Father in heaven." " Your Emi-
nence," he answered feebly, " it is my humble and confident hope."
He died next day full of Christian patience and resignation. To
his Church and to his country he has left a noble monument of
whole-souled service and unselfish endeavor in the sacred cause of
Faith and Truth.
THE PROBLEM OF COMPLETE WAGE JUSTICE.
BY JOHN A. RYAN, S.T.D.
LIVING wage for all workers is merely the minimum
measure of just remuneration. It is not in every
case complete justice. Possibly it is not the full
measure of justice in any case. How much more
than a living wage is due to any or all of the various
classes of laborers? How much more may any group of workers
demand without exposing itself to the sin of extortion? By what
principles shall these questions be answered?
The problem of complete wage justice can be conveniently and
logically considered in four distinct relations, as regards : the
respective claims of the different classes of laborers to a given
amount of money available for wage payments; the claims of
the whole body of laborers, or any group thereof, to higher wages
at the expense of profits; at the expense of interest; and at the
expense of the consumer.
COMPARATIVE CLAIMS OF DIFFERENT LABOR GROUPS.
In the division of a common wage fund, no section of the
workers is entitled to anything in excess of living wages until all
the other sections have received that amount of remuneration. The
need of a decent livelihood constitutes a more urgent claim than any
other that can be brought forward. Neither efforts, nor sacrifices,
nor productivity, nor scarcity can justify the payment of more than
living wages to any group, so long as any other group in the in-
dustry remains below that level; for the extra compensation will
supply the non-essential needs of the former by denying the es-
sential needs of the latter. The two groups of men will be treated
unequally in respect of those qualities in which they are equal;
namely, their personal dignity and their claims to the minimum re-
quisites of reasonable life and self -development. This is a viola-
tion of justice.
Let us suppose that all the workers among whom a given
amount of compensation is to be distributed, have already received
living wages, and that there remains a considerable surplus. On
624 THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE [Aug.,
what principles should the surplus be apportioned ? For answer we
turn to the canons of distribution. When the elementary needs of
life and development have been supplied, the next consideration
might seem to be the higher or non-essential needs and capacities.
Proportional justice would seem to suggest that the surplus ought
to be distributed in accordance with the varying needs and capaci-
ties of men to develop their faculties beyond the minimum reason-
able degree. This would undoubtedly be the proper rule if it
were susceptible of anything like accurate application, and if the
sum to be distributed were not produced by and dependent upon
those who were to participate in the distribution. However, we
know that the first condition is impracticable, while the second is
non-existent. Inasmuch as the sharers in the distribution have
produced and constantly determine the amount to be apportioned,
the distributive process must disregard non-essential needs, and
govern itself by other canons of justice.
The most urgent of these is the canon of efforts and sacrifices.
Superior effort, as measured by unusual will-exertion, is a fun-
damental rule of justice, and a valid title to exceptional reward.
Men who strive harder than the majority of their fellows are
ethically deserving of extra compensation. At least, this is the
pure theory of the matter. In practice, the situation is complicated
by the fact that unusual effort cannot always be distinguished, and
by the further fact that some exceptional efforts do not fructify
in correspondingly useful results. Among men engaged at the
same kind of work, superior effort is to a great extent discernible
in the unusually large product. As such it actually receives an
extra reward in accordance with the canon of productivity. When
men are employed at different tasks, unusual efforts cannot gen-
erally be distinguished and compensated. Hence the general princi-
ple is that superior efforts put forth in the production of utilities,
entitle men to something more than living wages, but that the en-
forcement of this principle is considerably hindered by the diffi-
culty of discerning such efforts.
The unusual sacrifices that deserve extra compensation are
connected with the costs of industrial functions and the disagree-
able character of occupations. Under the first head are included the
expense of industrial training and the debilitating effects of the
work. Not only justice to the worker but a far-sighted view of
social welfare, dictate that all unusual costs of preparation for an
industrial craft or profession should t>e repaid in the form of un-
1916.] THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE 625
usual compensation. This means something more than a living
wage. For the same reasons the unusual hazards and disability re-
sulting from industrial accidents and diseases should be provided
for by higher remuneration. In the absence of such provision,
these costs will have to be borne by parents, by society in the form
of charitable relief, or by the worker himself through unnecessary
suffering and incapacity. The industry that does not provide for all
these costs is a social parasite, the workers in it are deprived of just
compensation for their unusual sacrifices, and society suffers a con-
siderable loss through industrial friction and diminished productive
efficiency. In so far, however, as any of the foregoing occupa-
tional costs are borne by society, as in the matter of industrial edu-
cation, or by the employer, as by the device of accident compensa-
tion or sickness insurance, they do not demand provision in the
form of extra wages.
Other unusual sacrifices that entitle the worker to more than
living wages, are inherent in disagreeable or despised occupations.
The scavenger and the bootblack ought to get more than the per-
formers of most other unskilled tasks. On the principles of com-
parative individual desert, they should receive larger remuneration
than many persons who are engaged upon skilled but relatively
pleasant kinds of work. For if the opportunity were given of
expending the time and money required to fit them for the latter
tasks, or of taking up immediately their present disagreeable labor,
they would select the more pleasant occupations, for the same or
even a smaller remuneration. And the majority of those who are
now in the more skilled occupations would make the same choice.
Hence the sacrifices inherent in disagreeable kinds of work are in
many cases as great as or greater than the sacrifices of preparation
for the more pleasant tasks; consequently the doers of the former
are relatively underpaid. If all wages were regulated by some
supreme authority according to the principles of complete justice,
the workers in disagreeable occupations would receive something
more than living wages. Nor would this determination of rewards
be in any way contrary to social welfare or the principle of maxi-
mum net results; for the superior attractiveness of the other kinds
of work would draw a sufficient supply of labor to offset the ad-
vantage conferred by higher wages upon the disagreeable occupa-
tions. The main reason why the latter kind of labor is so poorly
paid now is the fact that it is very plentiful, a condition which is in
turn due to the unequal division of industrial opportunity. Were;
VQ&, CIII.4Q
THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE [Aug.,
the opportunities of technical education and of entrance to the
higher crafts and professions more widely diffused, the laborers
offering themselves for the disagreeable tasks would be scarcer and
their remuneration correspondingly larger. This would be not
only more comformable to the abstract principles of justice, but more
conducive to social efficiency.
To sum up the discussion concerning the canon of efforts and
sacrifices: Laborers have a just claim to more than living wages
whenever they put forth unusual efforts, and whenever their occu-
pations involve unusual sacrifices, either through costs of prepar-
ation, exceptional hazards, or inherent disagreeableness. The pre-
cise amount of extra compensation clue under any of these heads
can be determined, as a rule, only approximately.
The next canon to be considered as a reason for more than
living wages is that of productivity. This offers little difficulty; for
the unusual product is always visible among men who are performing
the same kind of work, and the employer is always willing to give
the producer of it extra compensation. While superior produc-
tive power which is based solely upon superior native ability, has
only presumptive validity as a canon of justice, that is ethically
sufficient in our workaday world. Moreover, the canon of human
welfare demands that superior productivity receive superior re-
wards, so long as these are necessary to evoke the maximum net
product.
The canon of scarcity has exactly the same value as that of
productivity. Society and the employer are well advised and are
justified in giving extra compensation to scarce forms of labor
when the product is regarded as worth the corresponding price.
This remains true even when the scarcity is due to restricted op-
portunity of preparation, rather than to sacrifices of any sort. In
that case the higher rewards are as fully justified as the superior
remuneration of that superior productivity which is based upon ex-
ceptional native endowments. The amount of extra compensation
which may properly be given on account of scarcity is determined
either by the degree of sacrifice involved or by the ordinary opera-
tion of competition. When men are scarce because they have made
exceptional sacrifices of preparation, they ought to be rewarded in
full proportion to these sacrifices. When they are scarce merely be-
cause of exceptional opportunities, their extra compensation should
not exceed the amount that automatically comes to them through the
interplay of supply and demand.
I9i6.] THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE 627
The canon of human welfare has already received implicit ap-
plication. When due regard is given to efforts, sacrifices, produc-
tivity and scarcity, the demands of human welfare, both in its in-
dividual and its social aspects, are sufficiently safeguarded.
In the foregoing pages the attempt has been made to describe
the proportions in which a given wage fund ought to be distributed
among the various classes of laborers who have claims upon the
fund. The first requisite of justice is that all should receive living
wages. It applies to all workers of average ability, even to those
who have no special qualifications of any sort. When this general
claim has been universally satisfied, those groups of workers who
are in any wise special, whose qualifications for any reason dif-
ferentiate them from and place them above the average, will have
a right to something more than living wages. They will have the
first claim upon the' surplus that remains in the wage fund. Their
claims will be based upon the various canons of distribution ex-
plained in detail above; and the amounts of extra remuneration to
which they will be entitled will be determined by the extent to
which their special qualifications differentiate them from the
average and unspecialized workers. If the total available wage
fund is merely sufficient to provide universal living wages and the
extra compensation due to the specialized groups, no section of
the labor force will be justified in exacting a larger share. Even
though the employer should withhold a part of the amount due to
some weaker group, a stronger group that is already getting its
proper proportion would have no right to demand the unjustly
withheld portion. For this belongs neither to the employer nor to
the powerful labor group, but to the weaker section of laborers.
This does not mean that a powerful body of workers who are
already receiving their due proportion as compared with other labor
groups, would not be justified in seeking any increase in remuner-
ation whatever. The increase might come out of profits, or interest,
or the consumer, and thus be in no sense detrimental to the rights
of the other sections of laborers. This problem will be considered
a little later. At present we confine our attention to the relative
claims of different labor groups to a definite wage fund.
Suppose, however, that after all workers have received living
wages, and all the exceptional groups have obtained those extra
amounts which are due them on account of efforts, sacrifices, pro-
ductivity and scarcity, there remains a further surplus in the wage
fund. In what proportions should it be distributed? It should
628 THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE [Aug.,
be equally divided among all the laborers. The proportional justice
which has been already established can be maintained only by raising
the present rates of payment equally in all cases. All the average
or unspecialized groups would get something more than living
wages, and all the other groups would have their extra compensa-
tion augmented by the same amount.
Of course, the wage- fund hypothesis which underlies the fore-
going discussion is not realized in actual life, any more than was
the " wage fund " of the classical economists. Better than any
other device, however, it enables us to describe and visualize the
comparative claims of different groups of laborers who have a
right to unequal amounts in excess of living wages.
WAGES VERSUS PROFITS.
Let us suppose that the wage fund is properly apportioned
among the different classes of laborers, according to the specified
canons of distribution. May not one or all of the labor groups
demand an increase in wages on the ground that the employer is
retaining for himself an undue share of the product?
The right of the laborers to living wages is superior to the
right of the employer or business man to anything in excess of that
amount of profits which will insure him against risks, and afford
him a decent livelihood in reasonable conformity with his ac-
customed plane of expenditure. It is also evident that those la-
borers who undergo more than average sacrifices have a claim
to extra compensation, which is quite as valid as the similarly
based claim of the employer to more than living profits. In case the
business does not provide a sufficient amount to remunerate both
classes of sacrifices, the employer may prefer his own to those of
his employees, on the same principle that he may prefer his own
claim to a decent livelihood. The law of charity permits a man to
satisfy himself rather than his neighbor, when the needs in question
are of the same degree of urgency or importance. As to those
laborers who turn out larger products than the average, or whose
ability is unusually scarce, there is no practical difficulty; for the
employer will find it profitable to give them the corresponding extra
compensation. The precise question before us, then, is the claims
of the laborers upon profits for remuneration over and above uni-
versal living wages and the extra compensation due on account of
unusual efforts, sacrifices, productivity and scarcity. Let us call
iQi6.} THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE 629
the wage that merely includes all these factors " the equitable
minimum."
In competitive condition this question becomes practical only
with reference to the exceptionally efficient and productive business
men. The great majority have no surplus available for wage pay-
ments in excess of the " equitable minimum." Indeed, the majority
do not now pay the full "equitable minimum ;" yet their profits do not
provide them more than a decent livelihood. The relatively small
number of establishments that show such a surplus as we are con-
sidering, have been brought to that condition of prosperity by the
exceptional ability of their directors, rather than by the unusual
productivity of their employees., In so far as this exceptional
directive ability is due to unusual efforts and sacrifices, the surplus
returns which it produces may be claimed with justice by the
employer. In so far as the surplus is the outcome of exceptional
native endowments, it may still be justly retained by him in ac-
cordance with the canon of productivity. In other words, when
the various groups of workers are already receiving the " equitable
minimum," they have no strict right to any additional compensation
out of those rare surplus profits which come into existence in con-
ditions of competition.
This conclusion is confirmed by reference to the canon of
human welfare. If exceptionally able business men were not per-
mitted to retain the surplus in question they would not exert them-
selves sufficiently to produce it ; labor would gain nothing ; and the
community would be deprived of the larger product.
When the employer is a corporation instead of an individual
or a partnership, and when it is operating in competitive conditions,
the same principles are applicable, and the same conclusions justi-
fied. The officers and the whole body of stockholders will have a
right to those surplus profits that remain after the " equitable
minimum " has been paid to the employees. Every consideration
that urges such a distribution in the case of the individual business
holds good for the corporation.
The corporation that is a monopoly will have the same right
as the competitive concern to retain for its owners those surplus
profits which are due to exceptional efficiency on the part of the
managers of the business. That part of the surplus which is de-
rived from the extortion of higher than competitive prices cannot
be justly retained, since it rests upon no definite moral title. The
owners have no right to anything more than the prevailing rate
630 THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE [Aug.,
of interest, together with a fair return for their labor and for any
unusual efficiency that they may exercise. Should the surplus in
question be discontinued by lowering prices, or should it be con-
tinued and distributed among the laborers? As a rule, the former
course would seem morally preferable. While the laborers, as we
shall see presently, are justified in contending for more than the
" equitable minimum " at the expense of the consumer, their right
to do so through the exercise of monopoly power is extremely
doubtful. Whether this power is exerted by themselves or by the
employer on their behalf, it remains a w r eapon which human nature
seems incapable of using justly.
WAGES VERSUS INTEREST.
Turning now to the claims of the laborers as against the
capitalists, or interest receivers, we perceive that the right to any
interest at all is morally inferior to the right of all the workers
to the " equitable minimum." As heretofore pointed out more than
once, the former right is only presumptive and hypothetical, and
interest is ordinarily utilized to meet less important needs than
those supplied by wages. Through his labor power the interest
receiver can supply all those fundamental needs which are satisfied
by wages in the case of the laborer. Therefore, it seems clear
that the capitalist has no right to interest until all laborers have
received the " equitable minimum." It must be borne in mind,
however, that any claim of the laborer against interest falls upon
the owners of the productive capital in a business upon the under-
taker-capitalists, not upon the loan-capitalists.
When all the laborers in an industry are receiving the
" equitable minimum," have they a right to exact anything more at
the expense of interest? By interest we mean, of course, the pre-
vailing or competitive rate that is received on productive capital
five or six per cent. Any return to the owners of capital in excess
of this rate is properly called profits rather than interest, and its
relation to the claims of the laborers has received consideration in the
immediately preceding section of this article. The question, then,
is whether the laborers who are already getting the " equitable mini-
mum " would act justly in demanding and using their economic
power to obtain a part or all of the pure interest. No conclusive
reason is available to justify a negative answer. The title of the
capitalist is only presumptive and hypothetical, not certain and uft-
1916.] THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE 631
conditional. It is, indeed, sufficient to justify him in retaining in-
terest that comes to him through the ordinary processes of com-
petition and bargaining; but it is not of such definite and com-
pelling moral efficacy as to render the laborers guilty of injustice
when they employ their economic power to divert further interest
from the coffers of the capitalist to their own pockets. The in-
terest-share of the product is morally debatable as to its owner-
ship. It is a sort of no-man's property (like the rent of land
antecedently to its legal assignment through the institution of
private landownership) which properly goes to the first occupant
as determined by the processes of bargaining between employers
and employees. If the capitalists get the interest-share through
these processes, it rightfully belongs to them; if the laborers who
are already in possession of the " equitable minimum " develop
sufficient economic strength to get this debatable share, they may
justly retain it as their own.
The foregoing conclusion may seem to be a very unsatisfactory
solution of a problem of justice. However, it is the only one that
is practically defensible. If the capitalist's claim to interest were
as definite and certain as the laborer's right to a living wage, or
as the creditor's right to the money that he has loaned, the solu-
tion would be very simple: the laborers that we are discussing
would have no right to strive for any of the interest. But the
claim of the capitalists is not of this clear and conclusive nature.
It is sufficient when combined with actual possession; it is not
sufficient when the question is of future possession. The title of
first occupancy as regards land is not valid until the land has been
actually occupied; and similarly the claim of the capitalist to in-
terest is not valid until the interest has been received. If the
economic forces which determine actual possession operate in such
a way as to divert the interest-share to the laborers, they, not the
capitalists, will have the valid moral title, just as Brown with his
automobile rather than Jones with his spavined nag will enjoy
the valid title of first occupancy to a piece of ownerless land which
both have coveted.
This conclusion is confirmed by reference to the rationally
and morally impossible situation that would follow from its re-
jection. If we deny to the laborers the moral freedom to strive
for higher wages at the expense of the capitalist, we must also
forbid them to follow this course at the expense of the consumer.
For the great majority of consumers would stand to lose ad-
632 THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE [Aug.,
vantages to which they have as good a moral claim as the capitalists
have to interest. Practically this would mean that the laborers
have no right to seek remuneration in excess of the " equitable
minimum ; " for such excess must in substantially all cases come
from either the consumer or the capitalist. On what principle can
we defend the proposition that the great majority of laborers are
forever restrained by the moral law from seeking more than bare
living wages, and the specialized minority from demanding more
than that extra compensation which corresponds to unusual efforts,
sacrifices, productivity and scarcity? Who has authorized us to
shut against these classes the doors of a more liberal standard of
living, and a more ample measure of self -development?
WAGES VERSUS PRICES.
The right of the laborers to the " equitable minimum " implies
obviously the right to impose adequate prices upon the consumers
of the laborers' products. This is the ultimate source of the re-
wards of all the agents of production. Suppose that the laborers
are already receiving the " equitable minimum." Are they justified
in seeking any more at the cost of the consumer? If all the con-
sumers were also laborers the answer would be simple, at least
in principle: rises in wages and prices ought to be so adjusted as
to bring equal gains to all individuals. The " equitable minimum "
is adjusted to the varying moral claims of the different classes of
laborers; therefore, any rise in remuneration must be equally
distributed in order to leave this adjustment undisturbed. It is
a fact, however, that a large part of the consumers are not laborers;
consequently they cannot look to rises in wages as an offset to
their losses through rises in prices. Can they be justly required
to undergo this inconvenience for the benefit of laborers who are
already getting the " equitable minimum ? "
Let us consider first the case of higher wages versus lower
prices. A few progressive and efficient manufacturers of shoes
find themselves receiving large surplus profits which are likely
to continue. So far as the presumptions of strict justice are con-
cerned, they may, owing to their superior productivity, retain these
profits for themselves. Seized, however, with a feeling of benevo-
lence, or a scruple of conscience, they determine to divide future
profits of this class among either the laborers or the consumers.
If they reduce prices the laborers will gain something as users of
1916.] THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE 633
shoes, but the other wearers of shoes will also be beneficiaries. If
the surplus profits are all diverted to the laborers in the form of
higher wages the other consumers of shoes will gain nothing. Now
there does not seem to be any compelling reason, any certain moral
basis, for requiring the shoe manufacturers to take one course
rather than the other. Either will be correct morally. Possibly the
most perfect plan would be to effect a compromise by lowering
prices somewhat and giving some rise in wages; but there is no
strict obligation to follow this course. To be sure, since the manu-
facturers have a right to retain the surplus profits, they have also
a right to distribute them as they prefer. Let us get rid of this
complication by assuming that the manufacturers are indifferent
concerning the disposition of the surplus, leaving the matter to
be determined by the comparative economic strength of laborers
and consumers. In such a situation it is still clear that either of
the two classes would be justified in striving to secure any or all
of the surplus. No definite moral principle can be adduced to the
contrary. To put the case in more general terms : there exists no
sufficient reason for maintaining that the gains of cheaper produc-
tion should go to the consumer rather than to the laborer, or to
the laborer rather than to the consumer, so long as the laborer is
already in receipt of the " equitable minimum."
Turning now to the question of higher wages at the cost
of higher prices, we note that this would result in at least tem-
porary hardship to four classes of persons : the weaker groups of
wage earners : all self -employ ing persons, such as farmers, mer-
chants and manufacturers; the professional classes; and persons
whose principal income was derived from rent or interest. All
these groups would have to pay more for the necessaries, comforts
and luxuries of living, without being immediately able to raise their
own incomes correspondingly.
Nevertheless, the first three classes could in the course of time
force an increase in their revenues sufficient to offset at least the
more serious inconveniences of the increase in prices. So far as
the wage earners are concerned, it is understood that all these
would have a right to whatever advance in the money measure of
the " equitable minimum " was necessary to neutralize the higher
cost of living resulting from the success of the more powerful
groups in obtaining higher wages. The right of a group to the
" equitable minimum " of remuneration is obviously superior to
the right of another group to more than that amount. And a su-
634 THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE [Aug.,
preme wage-determining authority would act on this principle. It
cannot be shown, however, that in the absence of any such authority
empowered to protect the " equitable minimum " of the weaker
laborers, the more powerful groups are obliged to refrain from
demanding extra remuneration. The reason of this we shall see
presently. In the meantime we call attention to the fact that, owing
to the greater economic opportunity resulting from the universal
prevalence of the " equitable minimum " and of industrial educa-
tion, even the weaker groups of wage earners would be able to
obtain some increases in wages. In the long run the more power-
ful groups would enjoy only those advantages which arise out of
superior productivity and exceptional scarcity. These two factors
are fundamental, and could riot in any system of industry be pre-
vented from conferring advantages upon their possessors.
As regards the self -employ ing classes, the remedy for any
undue hardship suffered through the higher prices of commodities
would be found in a discontinuance of their present functions until
a corresponding rise had occurred in the prices of their own
products. They could do this partly by organization, and partly
by entering into competition with the wage earners. Substantially
the same recourse would be open to the professional classes. In
due course of time, therefore, the remuneration of all workers,
whether employees or self-employed or professional, would tend
to be in harmony with the canons of efforts, sacrifices, productivity,
scarcity and human welfare.
Since the level of rent is fixed by forces outside the control of
laborers, employers, or landowners, the receivers thereof would be
unable to offset its decreased purchasing power by increasing its
amount. However, this situation would not be inherently unjust,
nor even inequitable. Like interest, rent is a " workless " income,
and has only a presumptive and hypothetical justification. There-
fore, the moral claim of the rent receiver to be protected against a
decrease in the purchasing power of his income, is inferior to the
moral claim of the laborer to use his economic power for the
purpose of improving his condition beyond the limits of welfare
fixed by the " equitable minimum." What is true of the rent re-
ceiver in this respect applies likewise to the case of the capitalist.
As we saw a few pages back, the wage earners are morally free
to take this course at the expense of interest. Evidently they
may do the same thing when the consequence is merely a diminution
in its purchasing power. To be sure, if capital owners should re-
1916.] THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE 635
gard their sacrifices in saving as not sufficiently rewarded, owing
either to the low rate or the low purchasing power of interest, they
would be free to diminish or discontinue saving until the reduced
supply of capital had brought about a rise in the rate of interest.
Should they refrain from this course they would show that they
were satisfied with the existing situation. Hence they would suffer
no wrong at the hands of the laborers who forced up wages at the
expense of prices.
Two objections come readily to mind against the foregoing
paragraphs. The more skilled labor groups might organize them-
selves into a monopoly, and raise their wages so high as to inflict
the same degree of extortion upon consumers as that accomplished
by a monopoly of capitalists. This is, indeed, possible. The remedy
would be intervention by the State to fix maximum wages. Just
where the maximum limit ought to be placed, is a problem that
could be solved only through study of the circumstances of the
case, on the basis of the canons of efforts, sacrifices, productivity,
scarcity and human welfare. The second objection calls attention
to the fact that we have already declared that the more powerful
labor groups would not be justified in exacting more than the
" equitable minimum " out of a. common wage fund, so long as any
weaker group was below that level ; yet this is virtually what would
happen when the former caused prices to rise to such an extent
that the weaker workers would be forced below the " equitable
minimum " through the increased cost of living. While this con-
tingency is likewise possible, it is not a sufficient reason for pre-
venting any group of laborers from raising their remuneration at
the expense of prices. Not every rise in prices would affect the
expenditures of the weaker sections of the wage earners. In some
cases the burden would be substantially all borne by the better
paid workers and the self -employ ing, professional and propertied
classes. When it did fall to any extent upon the weaker laborers,
causing their real wages to fall below the " equitable minimum," it
could be removed within a reasonable time by organization or by
legislation. Even if these measures were found ineffective, if some
of the weaker groups of workers should suffer through the estab-
lishment of the higher prices, this arrangement would be preferable
on the whole to one in which no class of laborers were permitted
to raise its remuneration above the " equitable minimum " at the
expense of prices. A restriction of this sort, whether by the moral
law or by civil regulation, would tend to make wage labor a status
636 THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE [Aug.,
with no hope of pecuniary progress. Of the two alternatives
this is incomparably the less desirable.
It is true that a universal and indefinite increase of wages at
the expense of prices might at length leave the great majority of
the laborers no better off than they were when they had merely the
" equitable minimum." Such would certainly be the result if the
national product were only sufficient to provide the " equitable
minimum " for all workers, and that volume of incomes for the
other agents of production which was required to evoke from them
a fair degree of productive efficiency. In that case the higher
wages would be an illusion. The gain in the amount of money
would be offset by the loss in its purchasing power. Even so, this
condition would be greatly superior to a regime in which the
laborers were universally prohibited to make any effort to raise
their wages above any fixed maximum.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
All the principles and conclusions defended in this article have
been stated with reference to the present distributive system, with
its free competition and its lack of legal regulation. Were all in-
comes and rewards fixed by some supreme authority, the same
canons of justice would be applicable, and the application would
have to be made in substantially the same way, if the authority
were desirous of establishing the greatest possible hieasure of
distributive justice. The main exception to this statement would
occur in relation to the problem of raising wages above the " equit-
able minimum " at the expense of prices. In making any such
increase, the wage-fixing authority would be obliged to take into
account the effects upon the other classes of laborers, and upon all
the non-wage earning classes. Substantially the same difficulties
would confront the government in a collectivist organization of
industry. The effect that a rise in the remuneration of any class
would produce, through a rise in the prices of commodities, upon
the purchasing power of the incomes of other classes, would have
to be considered and as nearly as possible ascertained. This would
be no simple task. Simple or not, it would have to be faced; and
the guiding ethical principles would always remain efforts, sacrifices,
productivity, scarcity and human welfare.
The greater part of the discussion carried on in this article
has a highly theoretical aspect. From the nature of the subject
1916.] THE PROBLEM OF WAGE JUSTICE 637
matter this was inevitable. Nevertheless the principles that have
been enunciated and applied seem to be incontestable. In so far
as they are en forcible in actual life, they seem capable of bringing
about a wider measure of justice than any other ethical rules that
are available.
Possibly the applications and conclusions have been laid down
with too much definiteness and dogmatism, and the whole matter
has been made too simple. On the other hand, neither honesty
nor expediency is furthered by an attitude of intellectual helpless-
ness, academic hyper-modesty, or practical agnosticism. If there
exist moral rules and rational principles applicable to the problem
of wage justice, it is our duty to state and apply them as fully as
we can. Obviously we shall make mistakes in the process; but
until the attempt is made, and a certain (and very large) number
of mistakes are made, there will be no progress. We have no right
to expect that ready made applications of the principles will drop
from heaven.
For a long time to come, however, many of the questions dis-
cussed in this article will be devoid of large practical interest.
The problem immediately confronting society is that of raising
the remuneration and strengthening generally the economic position
of those laborers who are now below the level, not merely of the
" equitable minimum," but of a decent livelihood.
THE PASSION AND THE EUROPEAN WAR.
BY M. F. POWER, D.D.,
Bishop of St. George's, Newfoundland.
N a recent number of the Civllta Cattolica appeared
a very illuminating and consoling article, intended
for reading during Passion Week, and which is
suitable for Christian perusal at any time, but par-
ticularly now when the heart of the whole world is
bowed down with overwhelming grief. Its effect must necessarily
be to turn the " dark cloud inside out " and show a silver lining.
A brief resume and comment is here attempted, so that disheartened
readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD may be consoled and encouraged.
At the outset the writer paints the sad picture of present woes.
" We are living," he says, " in days of grief and suffering." What
else is this hour if it be not one symbolic of an immense and universal
sorrow. We cannot help seeing it ; every nation of civilized Europe
scourged, bruised, broken and dripping with blood ascends its
Calvary. Some of the nations, indeed, have already said, " It is
consummated," whilst most of the others are already within their
agony, rendered doubly cruel by the abandonment of friends and
by treachery. In the midst of it all there stands majestic, innocent,
silent and unheard, the consoling figure of Holy Church, herself
a participant of the suffering, not unlike the Mother who stood
once at the foot of the Cross.
In such times as these every thought and affection, every heart
and soul should hover around the Crucifix and the Sacred Figure
thereon the Prototype of desolation " The Man of Sorrows "
and at the same time the " God of all consolations," Who in His
Humanity has passed through the gate of grief into the City of
Peace where there is " copious redemption," redemption of in-
dividuals and society, of families and of nations.
Under this aspect of faith and hope, with the unwavering and
profound sense of belief, the tremendous cataclysm becomes trans-
formed, and assumes a new being and a new explanation. It is the
passion of humanity, but it foretells a proximate and happy
resurrection. The Supreme Pontiff at the beginning of the War
1916.] THE PASSION AND THE EUROPEAN WAR 639
presented this view when he said, " All these things induce us to
humiliate ourselves under the powerful hand of God that we may
come to a new life." The great Belgian Cardinal in his now cele-
brated Christmas Pastoral of 1914 is of like mind and exclaims,
" Let us humiliate ourselves before His justice and let us hope in
His mercy. Like holy Tobias let us recognize that He has chastised
us for our sins, whilst we know He will save us by His mercy."
The world, then, is full of the awful horrors of war; men
the pride of their country fall daily; homes are ruined; families
scattered ; children dying ; cities far from the battle front attacked
by the diseases of camp followers; and many and grievous ills pre-
vail. Their cumulative effect on the race must be staggering and
appalling, and yet, though it sounds paradoxical, the greater this
cumulative force of evil, the larger is the ground for an indulgence
in all the pleasures of hope. The reason for this is supplied by St.
Augustine, who states quite clearly and convincingly the teaching
of Christian philosophy. " That Omnipotent God," writes the
Saint, in the Encheridion, c.n, "in Whom resides the supreme do-
minion over all things (as the very pagans confess) would never
permit evil in His works unless He was at the same time so power-
ful and so beneficent as to be able to turn evil into good." This
eminently Catholic thought illumines the whole course of human
history, and the man of right faith sees in all things the hidden
hand of Providence. " To those who love God all things work
together unto good." These words of the Apostle were a source
of comfort for the faithful of the primitive Church, and turned their
sorrow into joy and their weakness into strength. They explain
all the heroism, the sanctity, the suffering, the triumphs of the
Church, and show her as a real miracle of history, for her story,
often reenacted, has been the story of Calvary and Easter morning.
Even now midst a sea of horrors, overhung with clouds that
threaten yet greater disturbance, there appears the Pole Star of
hope. If we look well about us we shall see that even at this ap-
parently early stage of the combat there are signs world- wide and
national of the dawn of a better day.
The writer then proceeds to seek the root of the salutary
efficacy of sorrow, and the foundation for the marvelous amount of
good, born of profound calamity. He finds it in the moral union
that exists between the tragedy that ended in the murder of Love,
and the destruction of human beings on the war-swept plains of
Europe. He has described war as the " passion of the people,"
6 4 o THE PASSION AND THE EUROPEAN WAR [Aug.,
and he conjoins it religiously with the passion of the Man-God.
Hence he who suffers from a virtuous motive becomes similar to
the Prototype, and in a certain manner continues the great Ransom
and participates in the Crucifixion. This, of course, naturally re-
dounds to the well-being of the individual sufferer and to the moral
entity of which he is a part. In a word it is a restoration for religious
and civil society, for the Church and for Country. Sorrow becomes
informed with a divine nobility, noble incentive, and a blessed out-
look. It is all made clear in the pregnant words of Him Who
said, " Blessed are they who suffer," and in the teaching of the
great Apostle of the Gentiles, that the sufferings of the present are
not to be compared to the revelations of future glory. This Pauline
doctrine is the capital and cardinal point of the whole Christian life.
No worldly ill ought to separate us from the charity of Christ, and
the bitter cry born of the mystery of sorrow is tempered and
sweetened in the shadow of the Cross, and transmuted into hope
eternal. Our road to heaven must ever be by the " way of much
tribulation," and we can always take comfort even in the midst
of all the ills of life.
The truth is illustrated by the whole history of the Church.
Her annals are truly a dolorous passion. The sign of her divinity
is surely not in a passing victory, but rather in her constant renewal
in the midst of more than a mortal combat. When the blood of her
early martyrs flowed in rivers, it only invigorated her and nurtured
the seed of faith. In the days of peace she escaped the subtle power
of those who pretended to protect her, but who planned her ruin.
Heresy and schism likewise attempted her life, but they only shook
her for the moment; she still survived. She escaped the barbaric
hordes who wished to crush her with physical force, as she also
escaped the even more formidable enemy of false learning that
created the diabolic forces of the Renaissance, the Reformation and
the French Revolution. She will escape, too, the present material
and barbaric onslaughts, for the old story is true : " The gates
of hell will not prevail."
The present war has been waged, and is being waged, with
the blood of the children of the Church in many lands who have
united love of God and love of country in a sacred bond. Such
sacrifice proves once more that religion only can instill an en-
thusiastic love of one's native land.
Towards the Crucifix then the tear-dimmed eyes of her chil-
dren now turn. That is their only comfort, their only solace, their
I9i6.] THE PASSION AND THE EUROPEAN WAR 641
single hope. Toward the Holy Rood turn also the anxious look of
bishops, priests and faithful, and of the Vicar of Christ. All look
to that blood-stained Tree, impelled by that mysterious sense of
Christ the really Catholic instinct ever alive amongst His fol-
lowers, but more particularly amongst those who bear the galling
weight of woe. " My country," laments Cardinal Mercier, and his
is the lament of many a broken-hearted bishop, " is bleeding, and
her children fall in thousands in the trenches; her fathers, mothers
and daughters are grieving. Why, oh God, all those sorrows?
'My God, my God, why hast Thou abandoned us.' And then I turn
my eyes upon my crucifix to contemplate Christ the sweet and
lowly Lamb of God wounded to death and bathed in blood lament
dies upon my lips, and the Christian becomes the disciple of God
become Man in order to suffer and to die." The Cross ever speaks
of peace and pardon, not of death and vengeance.
So out of evil comes good out of war will come peace. In
the whole world there is evidence to-day of a slow yet sure return
to God. France exemplifies it more than any other nation, and
she has gone far from God. There is a strong current of mutual
help flowing through the hearts of peoples. The spirit of sacrifice
is abroad, and man's solidarity and brotherhood are bound by the
heavenly cords of sympathy. The world which was fast accustom-
ing itself to look upon physical pain as the only evil, has had that
tendency almost destroyed by the shock of battle, and thoughtful
souls look deeper now and see that it is not physical pain that was
wrong, but rather moral crimes in men of business and men of state
that caused the awful upheaval. If no other good came out of the
war, the blood of thousands has not been shed in vain. But we
know that the chastising hand of sorrow will labor still, and, hav-
ing humbled proud man who erstwhile saw his supreme good in
material and perishable things, will remove that spiritual blindness
which prevented him from seeing God in the things that are and
eventually would have prevented him from seeing God. face to face.
Having learned, through sorrow, the transitory nature of earthly
goods, he will be more keen to gather things that neither moth nor
time can destroy.
VOL. cm. 41
THE INFLUENCE OF THE SPANISH MISSIONS ON
PRESENT-DAY LIFE IN CALIFORNIA.
BY MARGARET P. HAYNE.
OT the wildest conceptions of the Mission founders
could have foreseen the results of their California
enterprises," says George Wharton James. 1 " To
see the land that they found in the possession of
thousands of rude savages converted in one short
century into the homes of tens of thousands of happy, contented,
progressive people would have been a wild vision indeed." It is the
purpose of this article to show the actual influence of these Mission
Fathers, the pioneers of our California civilization, on present-day
life in this State; to make it clear wherein this influence consists;
and to attempt to prove that the Spanish Missions, far from being
as some historians claim, a splendid failure that vanished leaving no
trace, did actually accomplish and are bringing about, even to-day,
deep and lasting results in the land of their work.
The settlement of Alta California by the Franciscans, coming
when it did, was of incalculable historical importance to the future
of California. It is to the colonization of California by the Padres
that this State owes its position in the American Union; for the
Franciscans preserved it for Spain, a weak nation, whence it came
through the hands of Mexico, a still weaker power, into the pos-
session of the United States. But for Junipero Serra, the Spanish
expedition would have been abandoned on that . memorable spring
day of 1770 when Portola, discouraged at the failure of his efforts
to discover Monterey and disheartened with the hardships and
illness at the new San Diego Mission, ordered his men on board
ship to return to Mexico. Serra pleaded for twenty- four hours'
respite, hoping with all the ardor of his fervid spirit for the arrival
of a relief ship which they had sent to San Bias for the much-
needed supplies. It was long since overdue, and all but Father
Serra had given up hope of its coming. Portola granted his re-
quest. Through the long hours he watched, straining his eyes over
the sea. Smythe tells us in his history of San Diego : "As the sun
went down he caught sight of a sail a ghostly sail, it seemed in
*/n and Out of the Old Missions, p. i.
1916.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 643
the far distance. Who can ever look upon the height above the
old Presidio, when the western sky is glowing and twilight stealing
over the hills, without seeing Father Serra on his knees, pouring
out his prayer of thanksgiving." For his prayer had been answered
and California's history had begun. Confidence was restored by
the arrival of the relief ship San Antonio; Portola regained his
spirits. The discovery of Monterey and the gradual establish-
ment of the chain of missions followed.
We must never forget that it was to Junipero Serra that we
owe the establishment of the Spanish civilization in California.
While the military took possession of the country it was the Re-
ligious that retained it for Spain. Everywhere in the early era
we find the Padres directing and dominating the life of the com-
munity. It was Serra's constancy of purpose in those toilsome
days that " contended with official blunders and ignorance, with
the narrow pride and petty jealousies of rival authorities," and
which laid the foundation of a loyal Spanish colony. 2
' Far different would have been the course of history had
Portola's expedition been abandoned in 1769, and England or
France or Russia been first to establish a settlement in this State.
Russia coveted California as an excellent base of supplies for
her Alaskan colonies, and shortly after the corning of the Padres
began to form agricultural communities and engage in fishing north
of San Francisco. The settlements at Bodega and Fort Ross were
made in 1812, and the cause of the founding of the Missions at San
Rafael (1817) and Sonoma (1823) was the feeling that some
barrier was needed against further Russian encroachments. Had
there been then no firmly established Spanish civilization, there is
no doubt that Russia would have acquired California in course
of time by right of prior occupancy, and would not readily have
relinquished it.
Let us suppose that England had settled California instead
of Spain. Such an English colony, so absolutely isolated from
the Atlantic settlements, would not have been apt to claim independ-
ent sovereignty. They were separated from the East by thousands
and thousands of miles of unknown, mysterious country, and the
voyage around the Horn in Revolutionary days took from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred days. It is probable that England
need have had no uneasiness about the loyalty of any Western
settlement made by her.
'Junipero Serra, by A. H. Fitch, p. 356.
644 THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA [Aug.,
Alta California, however, belonged to Spain, no longer a first-
class power, and its future was thereby assured. Thus we see that
our Golden State owes its present place in the American Union to
the fortunate persistence of the Franciscans in establishing the
Missions when they did. As far as California is concerned, it
was a case of the fairy opportunity being seized by the forelock.
From the report of Father Lasuen, President of the Missions
after Serra, we read that the first houses and churches built by the
Fathers were of stakes, plastered with clay and thatched with
reeds. The converts' dwellings were built of brush, until finally
the Padres persuaded them to erect cottages of adobe with windows
and doors. In the Mission buildings boards were first used in
place of the plastered mud, next the walls were built of the sun-
dried brick, known as adobe. 3 Thatched roofs were first employed,
later the success of Father Paterna in burning tiles at Santa Bar-
bara, of yellowish red, copies of those in use in Europe, caused
the Missions to adopt the tiled roofs for the more important build-
ings. Bricks were manufactured shortly after Father Lasuen's
administration, but rarely used. Father Serra began the stone
church at Carmel, and when the trade instructors came from
Mexico in the time of Borica, the Indians in the Missions were
taught to cut stone and make mortar.
The architecture of the Missions varies, the constructive form
of each being determined by conditions of climate, more or less
clear remembrance of model churches in Old Spain, and the supply
of Indian workmen at hand to carry out the Padres' ideas. These
twenty-one Missions with their combination of Spanish Renaissance
characteristics and an originality truly Calif ornian, have left a wealth
of motives to be perpetuated in the domestic architecture of the
State known as the " Mission Architecture." This is a simple pic-
turesque style which lends individuality to the California houses,
satisfies climate conditions, and is suited to the out-of-doors life
of the people. The Missions were built, as a rule, in the form of
a hollow square, the church representing the faclmda, with the
priest's quarters and the houses for the Indians forming the wings.
These quarters were colonnaded with a series of semicircular
arches and roofed with red tiles. All the apartments opened on the
patio or inner court, which generally contained a fountain. The
walls were very thick to render the houses secure from earthquakes.
'Lasuen's Report quoted in California and Its Missions, by Bryan Clinch, vol.
ii., pp. 207-210.
1916.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 645
A marked feature of Mission architecture was the stepped and
curved sides of the pediment, which is seen at San Luis Rey and
Santa Inez, and also the series of steps at each corner of the half-
domes. The Franciscans also introduced the campanile to Cali-
fornia, although their bell towers show great variety in style.
Eleven of the Missions had separate bell towers, and the lonely
Pala campanile is unique in the world. 4 Built on a pyramidal base,
it is a peculiar pedimental structure, standing alone, and is two
stories high, each story being pierced with a bell aperture.
The modern Mission style of architecture may first be con-
sidered in the patio house of Southern California, to the climate
of which it seems peculiarly suited. It is a one-story house, of
stucco, plaster, or adobe, or sometimes, alas ! cement, which mod-
ernity quite takes away the Mission feature. As in the old Mis-
sions, the low, rambling house is built about an inner court or patio,
into which the principal rooms open, and which is the centre of the
outdoor life of the people. In the more pretentious houses, there
are the arcaded inner walks about the patio. The roof is of red
tiles, and the house is often surmounted by a heavy wooden cornice.
The broad, arched doorways recall the doors of the Mission
churches. Many of the California churches are built on the Mis-
sion plan. It is a simple and dignified style, and attempts to
embellish its severity by making it more ornamental are apt to
result in failure.
The adobe house of to-day differs somewhat from that of
Mission times, in that it is made with better foundations, generally
stone, which rise from one to two feet above the level ground and
render it damp proof. The old adobe house was one story on a
level with the ground and was often hastily and poorly constructed. 5
The making of adobe houses was first taught in California by the
Padres, although the art did not originate in Spain, but among the
Pueblo Indians of Arizona. The adobe used by the Fathers was a
sun-dried brick made of common surface, clayey soil, with which
cut straw was mixed to give it greater tenacity. The walls of
these houses, like those of the Missions, were very thick. They
were never left rough, but plastered inside and out with mortar,
then finished with lime wash generally in some soft color.
As a refuge from wind, cooler in summer, warmer in winter
4 Mission Architecture in G. W. James' In and Out of the Old Missions, pp.
310-329.
'Some Modern Adobes, by Constance Austin, in The Overland Monthly.
646 THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA [Aug.,
than the wooden house, the adobe has no equal in the world. For
this we have to thank the Padres, and the best method of making
the adobe, according to the " pure tradition of grand art," is still
the one taught by the Franciscans, a primitive process in which the
tools and mechanical appliances of modern life are useless.
Because of the Missions, California architecture has been
stamped with Spanish traditions, which in turn are but picturesque
versions of the Italian. The Mission types are always long, low
restful structures with sloping tile roof, overhanging eaves, plastered
walls and quaint patio. A writer in The Sunset Magazine calls
them " echoes of the highly and carefully wrought Spanish and
Italian buildings from which they are derived/' Mission archi-
tecture is California architecture. Madison Phelps, in his article
The Patio House in California, says : " Californians venerate the
Spanish Mission style as New Englanders do the Colonial." 6
Five years ago a perplexed housewife wrote to a magazine,
asking to be instructed regarding " missionary furniture," which
seemed to be so much in vogue in California. Mission furniture
has been " missionary " in developing good taste in household
furniture, in creating appreciation for the solid and the good, and
a respect for wood as wood. 7 The actual furniture used in the
Missions was limited to long benches and tables, after the fashion
of those used in the refectory of the Middle Ages. Narrow boards
were employed in the making, and a mortise and tenon mode of
fastening. They were devoid of carving, solid and plain in lines.
Some years ago a vogue for furniture after the manner of these
Mission models began, which has revolutionized California house
furnishing. This style has taught the public the absurdity of the
glazed furniture which used to conceal and obliterate the natural
grain and texture of the wood, and has shown them the vulgarity
of the crude ornate carvings of a generation ago. This is the
message of the Mission furniture to the present-day generation in
California, and its work is every day bearing results.
California may be said to have a literature all its own. From
the remarkable history of its past, writers of that State have a
marvelous storehouse of unusual life, picturesque characters and
romantic legends to draw upon. The life of the Missions is so
closely interwoven with the Spanish and Mexican generations in the
State, that any novel dealing with those days naturally brings in
6 Country Life, vol. xxiv., pp. 55-57.
''The House Beautiful, vol. xxvii., pp. 162, 163.
1916.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 647
the Mission background. We see how the Franciscans managed
and directed the colony of Alta California, how the life of the
people centred about religion, and how a race of men and women
grew up, simple, happy and carefree.
Gertrude Atherton in her Splendid Idle Forties gives pictures
of these golden days in California. Her story of " The Pearl of
Loretto," although a legend, gives an idea of the intense religious
feeling of the people, and the punishment meted out to a desecrator
of sacred things.
Mary Austin's Isidro is a novel of Mission life, and tells the
tale of a gay young Spaniard who would be a priest, though later
we see that fate and love will otherwise. Helen Hunt Jackson's
intense human interest in the devoted missionaries and their labors,
and later in the pitiful condition of the Mission Indians, is marked
in all her works, California and the Missions, A Century of Dis-
honor and on her great novel, Ramona. Charles W. Stoddard's
Old Mission Idylls in The Overland Monthly gives us pleasant
glimpses of Mission days. Mission Tales in the Days of the Dons,
by Mrs. A. S. C. Forbes, is a collection of stories drawn from the
animals of the Missions, which are interesting from a historical
point of view. El Molino Vie jo tells of the hidden treasure of
San Gabriel Mission, and the curse that rests on him who searches
for it.
Marah Ryan, whose novels of Aztec times are well known, has
written a novel of Mission life in the later days of the Mexican
era, called For the Soul of Rafael. In this book she voices the
old superstition that a curse rested on San Juan Capistrano, the
beautiful, ill-fated Mission which has been called the " Melrose of
the West " and the " Mission of Tragedies." On the corner-stone
of the altar were carved strange symbols, supposed by tradition to
be the curse of the Aztec workmen, and except for the cruciform
outline of the Mission, no symbol of Christianity was visible in
the carving of the church. Around this motif, Marah Ryan has
woven a weird and tragic tale.
The life of the Missions has always been a favorite theme
with the short-story writers of the State, as the back files of The
Overland Monthly, Out West, The Sunset Magazine and The
Pacific Monthly will testify. Paul Elder, in his Old Spanish Mis-
sions of California, has made note of numerous California poems
dealing with Mission topics. Narrative Mission poems are rare,
but notable are Bret Harte's Don Diego of the South, and Fray
648 THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA [Aug.,
Pedro's Ride. Among poems dealing with the spirit and traditions
of the Padres and the lessons to be learned from their lives are:
At Carmel Mission, by Frances Tyler; The Wooden Cross in the
Weeds, a tale of Friar Jay me' s martyrdom at San Diego, written
by John Vance Cheney, at one time librarian in San Francisco.
Others are The Mission Grace and the Cloister, by Agnes Gray;
Coronach and In a Mission Garden, by Clarence Urmy; Ring,
Gentle Angelus, by Charles Stoddard ; Mission Bells, by Mrs. Vol-
ney Howard; Helen Hunt Jackson, by Ina Coolbrith, and the
Mission Garden, by Augusta Dubois.
The foregoing poems, while in no sense great literature, show
how deep an appreciation of the California pathfinders lies in the
heart of these Western people. Among them the tw r o that may lay
claim to a nation-wide recognition are Bret Harte's beautiful
Angelus and John McGroarty's El Camino Real. The former
brings a memory of all that was good and true in the life of the
past.
Bells of the Past, whose long forgotten music
Still fills the wide expanse,
Tinging the sober twilight of the Present
With color of Romance.
A warning message to a materialistic age lies in the lines :
Within the circle of your incantation
No blight nor mildew falls;
No fierce unrest nor lust nor low ambition
Passes those airy walls.
McGroarty's stirring, swinging verse is in marked contrast
to this meditative mood of Bret Harte :
It's a long road and sunny, it's a long road and old,
And the brown Padres made it for the flocks of the fold,
They made it for the sandals of the sinner folks that trod
From the fields in the open to the shelter house of God.
This " long and sunny road " of the Padres which stretched for
seven hundred miles by the Missions from Sonoma to San Diego,
is now being restored as far as possible, and the distance marked
by bells hung from iron posts. One may be seen in the heart of San
1916.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 649
Francisco's business district, and the stranger seeing it may marvel
as he realizes how the romantic past and the materialistic present
are interwoven in California's daily life. Along the road where
once galloped the couriers of the king, and the gallant caballeros
and the brown Padres trudged in search of souls, now passes a
modern generation and an alien race. Yet there are not wanting
among them those who are loyal to the past and its teaching. The
old Missions along El Camino have inspired and thrilled many a
heart, and they carry a great message to California's children.
" They are here, a graphic lesson on the blackboard, for us, for our
children and our children's children in scccula s&culorum; an
example in artistic and architectural beauty, in sincerity, in heroism
and in the manhood which can do the impossible." 8
Many have sketched and painted the old Missions, for to an
artist, and a California artist, they are as stirring an inspiration
as any Old World cathedral. Edwin Deakin, however, may truly
be called the Mission Painter. Aside from their artistic value, his
paintings were instrumental in arousing the enthusiasm which led
to the crusade for the preservation of the Missions and the restora-
tion of El Camino Real. 9
Father Serra and Father Crespi, as sons of Majorca, were
thoroughly familiar with farming life, and the latter's diary makes
careful note of the qualities of soil and the irrigating facilities of
the various localities passed. The first irrigation ditch line in this
State was begun at San Diego in 1795. Some believe this to be
the present ruin; although others believe that this extensive work
was not undertaken until after the dry season of 1809. The dam
is above the Mission at the west end of the Cajon Valley. It is a
solid stone wall more than twelve feet thick, coated with a cement
of rare durability, which lasted until recent times. The water was
brought from the reservoir thus formed in an aqueduct of tiles, and
carried down the side of the steep gorge through which the stream
ran. Several gulches had to be crossed, but the fall of the channel
was so perfectly engineered that it delivered the water in full flow
at the spot required, that is, the outlet near the fields to be watered.
The Franciscans taught California the value of irrigation, and
the first ditch at San Diego was the beginning of what has been
called one of the great miracles in the history of industrial progress
California's reclamation- of the deserts by irrigation. From the
Charles Lummis in Out West.
9 Painter of California Missions, by Pauline Bird, in The Outlook.
650 THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA [Aug.,
beginning success crowned the Fathers' experiments. The Indians
were taught to irrigate, the crops were plentiful and the Missions
prospered. The Spanish landowners were made to realize that the
farmer who irrigates never has to think of drought, and still can
always keep his water supply under his control. The water eradi-
cated such pests as grasshoppers and squirrels, as well as fertilizing
and renovating the soil.
When the Missions passed away, the Americans learned the
lesson. Many of the Southern California towns were built up in
the large irrigated districts because of the facilities offered for
agricultural and horticultural production. Riverside, the centre
of the State orange industry, is an example of this growth. In
1872 there was no settlement where the town now stands, and the
whole country was a barren waste. Irrigation in the San Joaquin
Valley has meant fortunes to the growers of alfalfa, wheat and
fruit. The citrus industry owes its wonderful vitality to the de-
velopment of irrigation.
Before leaving the subject of water supply, let me quote Father
Zephyrin Engelharclt in regard to important work done by the
Santa Barbara Mission : " The fountain in front (of the present
Mission building) arose in 1808. It furnished the water for the
great basin just below, which served for the general laundry pur-
poses of the Indian village. The water was led through earthern
pipes from the reservoir north of the church, which to this day
furnishes Santa Barbara with water. It was built in 1806. To
obtain the precious liquid from the mountains, a very strong dam
was built across Tedragoss' creek, about two miles back of the
Mission. It is still in good condition."
Viticulture is one of the greatest industries of California, and
has been the source of immense wealth to the State. The following
poem by Charles Greene in The Overland Monthly, 1897, gives a
happily worded description of the coming of the Mission grape:
'Tis said that the good old Fathers
Who sought this Western Coast,
Bearing o'er ocean and desert
The consecrated Host,
Feared not so much lest hunger
Of the body drive them back,
As that wine and oil and wafer
The sacrament should lack.
1916.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 651
So they brought the vine and olive
And saved the seeding grain
And set them round the Missions
Far from their sunny Spain.
And California fears not
For storm or hostile fleet;
For Mission grape and olive
Still grow amid the wheat. 10
The mother of California vines, the Mission grapevine at
San Gabriel, was brought from Spain in 1798 in a gallant three-
storied galleon, which landed it at the wharf of San Gabriel.
Later grapevines were planted by -the Padres in Southern California
and were viniferous. This species almost without exception was
found to thrive, and since that time viniferous grapes have been
grown in Calif orina for various commercial purposes. The Mission
grape is a very hardy one, black and of delicious flavor. The
growth of this industry has been enormous.
At the time tjie great Serra headed with Galvez the land expe-
dition from La Paz that was to result in the settlement at San
Diego, a second land party was sent out in advance to pick up cattle
and sheep at Loreto to stock the new colony. By 1834, the year
of the secularization of the Missions, there were four hundred and
twenty-three thousand head of meat cattle on the Mission property.
The entire trade in California during the Spanish era consisted in
hides of cattle, tallow and other skins. The first two products were
controlled almost wholly by the Mission establishments. During
the rule of the Padres the vast area of fertile land in the southern
coast countries stretching from the seashore to the mountains was
absorbed for cattle ranges, and almost the sole occupation of its
inhabitants was cattle raising. To-day stock raising is carried on
in the coast counties from Point Conception, north for four hundred
miles, and in the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys. Thus the
chief industry in Mission days still flourishes, and the State boasts
some of the largest stock and dairy farms in the world.
It is. interesting to trace the development of sheep raising
in California, which is to-day one of the largest wool-growing
States in the Union. Mary Austin tells us in The Flock that
Rivera y Moncada brought the first sheep to California from Veli-
cata in the year of the discovery of Monterey. He took with him
10 The Overland Monthly, January, 1897, p. 24.
652 THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA [Aug.,
twenty soldiers, and was delegated by Serra to bring the flocks
to San Diego. " No doubt they at San Diego were glad when
they heard the roll of bells and the blether of the flock/' 11 Under
the careful watching of the Padres, the sheep industry prospered.
At the time of secularization, they had increased to three hundred
and twenty thousand. Although the wool was poor and not very
thick, blankets were woven, shapes were made, and also a coarse
kind of cloth called Yerga, which served as garments for the Indians.
Deprived of the careful Padres, the number of sheep had fallen
off to thirty-one thousand six hundred in 1842. New flocks were
imported from Mexico to supply the demands for coarse mutton,
but it was a declining industry, until the rush westward in the
pioneer days of the fifties brought men who were experienced
hands at sheep raising.
The first orange trees in this State were grown at San Gabriel
Mission at the beginning of the last century. Later a few were
planted at each of the other Southern California Missions and in
the gardens of the wealthy Spanish families, never, however, for
exportation. 12 It was, however, from the two Washington navel
orange trees brought from the Governmental Experimental Station
at Washington, that the great part of the present citrus industry
has developed.
The Franciscans brought the prickly pear from Baja California
and utilized it for fencing, for canals and food; while the leaves
chopped and bruised were added to whitewash, much as is to-day
advocated by Luther Burbank. There are remnants to-day of the
old cactus hedge at San Gabriel, planted by Padre Zabridea, which
inclosed hundreds of acres of vineyards and garden. The hedge
served both as protection and food, for the Indians were very fond
of the prickly pear. The spineless cactus of Burbank is the modern
evolution from Baja California's prickly product.
In the old town of San Diego overlooking the valley, Father
Serra established his first Mission. Below the Mission at the foot
of the hill he caused to be planted the first palm trees in California.
These trees are now many years beyond the century mark, and are
known as the famous Mission palms. Lemons, figs and pears were
first grown at the Southern California Missions. The old olive
orchard around San Diego Mission is still bearing. The Mission
olives were planted in 1791, and to-day the production of pure olive
oil is a leading industry.
11 The Flock, p. 7. " History of Los Angeles, by Charles D. Willard, p. 165.
igi6.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 653
Everywhere the Missions were established, the Fathers evolved
flourishing agricultural communities from what had been wilder-
nesses inhabited by the lowest of degraded savages. By the faith-
ful performance and marvelous accomplishment of this task, they
established civilization in this State, and prepared it for its great
destiny. In a recent article on the San Diego Exposition, the fol-
lowing significant statement was made : " The whole agricultural
wealth of the West sprang from the seed he (Serra) planted."
It is a fact not generally known that a full record of births,
deaths and marriages was kept throughout California at the Mis-
sions twenty years before the first census of the United States. The
Mission statistics are an invaluable index to the history and early
industrial life of this State, and were always most accurately kept.
It is to these records that Bancroft, Hittell and others are indebted
for what they have written of California's history.
The one aim, object and purpose of the Franciscans was to
convert the Indians. This end they never lost sight of, and the
neophytes were taught to lead happy, useful lives only that they
might devote themselves to the service of God. The religious
influence was the dominating idea of the community. Let us see
what traces of this influence are to be observed in the forlorn
remnants- of the Indian race of to-day. In 1879, Robert Louis
Stevenson attended Mass at Mission Carmel. He describes the
handful of poor Indians who came down from the mountains with
old chant books handed down from many generations, and how
strangely touching it was to hear them sing to the Gregorian music.
" It was then not only the worship of God, nor an act by which
they recalled and commemorated better days, but was besides an
exercise of culture where all that they knew of art and letters was
united and expressed." 13 These Mission chant books are some-
times found preserved in Indian huts of to-day, stirring reminders
of the Golden Age of the Padres. The contrast between the con-
dition of the Indian then and now is unspeakably pathetic.
Bryan Clinch says : " Compared with the fate of the un-
civilized native population under American rule, that of the sur-
viving ex-mission Indians indicates that the training of the Fran-
ciscans had a permanent efficiency on their customs long after their
teachers had passed away the moral and industrial lessons
of Peyri and Duran have left them widely different from the naked
savages who butchered Jayme at San Diego. Mr. Lummis, after
"Chapter, "The Old Pacific Capital" in Across the Plains.
654 THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA [Aug.,
long experience, declares that if these Indians were given barely
half the quantity of passable land that would maintain a hard-
working New England farmer, they would easily maintain them-
selves." 14 And what would have pleased the great Serra best of
all, the descendants of his Indians still cling to the religion to whose
services he gave his life, and it still gives joy and comfort to their
dreary futureless lives.
As a country evolves from its rough pioneer stage, as it pro-
gresses in civilization, it begins to appreciate the men of the past
and all they have stood for. Such has been the case with Cali-
fornia. The interest in and appreciation of our pioneers, begun a
generation ago, is ever growing. To-day several thousand visit
the Missions where twenty saw them ten years ago. The campaign
for the restoration of the Missions and the relaying of El Camino
Real has aroused state-wide enthusiasm, and all classes of patriotic
men and women have responded whatsoever be their creed. Old
customs are renewed which perpetuate the memory of the past.
At the breaking of the ground for the site of the present
San Diego Exposition, the memory of St. Francis, " Everybody's
St. Francis," the great father of all the Padres, was publicly
honored.
The celebration began with religious and civic ceremonies,
ending with a parade and attendant pageantry representing the
twenty-one Missions. The Mission Play, written by John Mc-
Groarty, bids fair to be an abiding classic. It is the story of
Father Serra, and shows first the coming of the relief ship to San
Diego, and gives one an inspiring picture of the Mission days at
San Carlos in the height of their prosperity. The last scene is at
San Juan Capistrano, when evil times had come, and the Indian
goatherd, child of the one brought to the first baptism in San
Diego, is seen in the ruined chapel. The play ends with the promise
of Senora Yaba to lay the Mission chalice on the Santa Barbara
shrine as a memorial of the sacred heroism of the Mission idea.
It is modeled on the old miracle play, as Henry Van Dyke says,
" like a traveling company of players in the time of Hamlet, only
in this case the players stay at home and let the travelers come to
them." The play is performed at regular intervals throughout the
winter before large and appreciative audiences. Dr. Van Dyke
makes this comment on seeing this little masterpiece : " No one
can see this play without thinking more reverently of Christianity,
14 California and Its Missions, vol. ii., p. 515.
1916.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 655
s
and perceiving more clearly that there is a great adventure in the
heart of true religion." 15 It teaches the inherent nobility of the
Mission idea, and perpetuates its memory in the community.
There have been already two Mission plays written and acted at
Carmel, by an appreciative colony of lovers of art and literature
who gather in the old Mission town every summer.
Above the town of Riverside towers the Mount of Rubidoux,
crowned by a great wooden cross in memory of the holy Serra.
Beneath it is a tablet of bronze unveiled by President Taft in 1909.
Every Easter a reverent pilgrimage composed of men and women
of all classes and religious beliefs, make their way by foot and by
automobile, to the cross to greet the dawn of Easter Sunday. When
the first lights of the sunrise gleam above the snow- topped San
Bernardino Sierra, a brief religious service appropriate to the day
is held in honor of Junipero Serra. It is a pleasing sight in a
modern age all too materialistic. Jacob Riis, writing in The Sunset
Magazine, says of this touching ceremony: " Is this sentiment? If
so, it is of a kind we have had too little of too long." 16
Father Serra's grave in the Valley of the Carmelo has been
visited by several pilgrimages of the faithful. The people of
California are growing more mindful of what they owe to him.
The Governor decreed a state- wide holiday in the fall of 1913 on
the occasion of the first pilgrimage of modern times to Serra's
grave, and thousands attended. Thus his name is fast becoming a
household name, and the long years of neglect following seculariza-
tion, in which his last resting place was almost forgotten, are now
being atoned for.
It is largely to the Padres that California owes so many of
its picturesque Spanish names names, which beside their musical
beauty, serve to recall the marvelous history of the State. San
Francisco, the Great Western Metropolis, " serene, indifferent of
Fate," as Bret Harte calls her, is St. Francis' own, and in its patient
endurance of misfortune, its untiring industry, its happy courageous
heart, is typical of the spirit of the Brown Brotherhood. Los An-
geles, the great city of the Southland, is to those who love her story
the city of Our Lady Queen of the Angels. Sacramento is the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the staff of life of thousands of
our noble pioneers. Santa Barbara was christened by Serra after
the fair virgin and martyr who is the patron of sailors and preserves
u The Century Magazine, vol. Ixxxvii., pp. 175-184.
u The Sunset Magazine, June, 1910.
656 THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA [Aug.,
from perils of the sea. Many of the county names in California
are derived from the Mission names. Santa Clara is honored by
the protection of the holy Clare of Assisi, the first Franciscan nun.
Santa Cruz is the holy Cross, the emblem of our California cru-
saders. The county takes its name from the lone memorial cross,
all that remained of the Mission founded in 1791 by Padres Lopez
and Salazar. Ventura is a relic of the beautiful name San Buena-
ventura, which Serra gave to the Mission there in honor of the
Tuscan Saint, Bonaventure, Seraphic Doctor. San Luis Obispo
commemorates St. Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, and the county de-
rives its name from Father Serra's Mission. San Diego recalls
the great day in 1603 when Vizcaino anchored his fleet in the bay
of San Diego, and named the same in honor of the day, November
1 2th, that of St. James of Alcala. San Benito, San Bernardino,
San Joaquin and San Mateo, although their names are not directly
traceable to the Padres, were called by the Spaniards after saints
they had been taught, from childhood, to honor. 17
What then is the influence of the Spanish Missions on present-
day life in California? We have spoken of the historical importance
of these settlements, and of their influence on art, literature and
architecture. Because of their influence on the latter, a type of
building has been created which is good and practical as well as
beautiful, and that is highly suited to California. This the Govern-
ment has recognized by ordering all public buildings in Southern
California to be built in the so-called Mission style. We have shown
that the Padres were the pioneers, with the exception of mining,
in each one of the great industries which have made California
world-renowned; that as such they form the first link in the
great chain of our Western civilization. What influence have they
beside this? The "sordid, money-getting, imaginationless biped"
will say that the Missions are an important commercial asset to
the State; that just as Switzerland attracts, by her mountains and
glaciers, crowds of novelty-seeking tourists; just as the ruins in
Italy draw the lire which bring prosperity to that romantic land,
so California by means of Missions and Spanish traditions, as-
siduously advertised in books, circulars, postcards and calendars
throughout a blase world, is coming to be the American playground.
The Missions have given it that piquant foreign flavor and dash
of the long ago that is necessary to give the proper background.
"Origin of county names, compiled by PrenteSs Maslin under direction of the
State Legislature, February, 1903.
1916.] THE MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA 657
All this is undoubtedly true, but there is another side to the
question. We should cling to our traditions; we should learn to
know and love the lives of our pioneers; we should absorb from
their stories great inspiring lessons of nobility, self-sacrifice, manli-
ness, simple practical Christianity. Jacob Riis says : " California
almost alone in our land has a tradition that is wholesome and
savors of the soil it is rooted in." 18 No mythical chieftains of
antiquity, no storied knights of metrical romance are heroes half
so inspiring as California's little company of Brother Crusaders
with their great-hearted love for humanity and their thirst for souls.
Their influence still lives, the good seed has been sowed, and Cali-
fornia, grown to maturity, is not forgetting her early teachers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
History of California, by Hubert H. Bancroft.
History of California, by John S. Hittell.
Missions and Missionaries of California, by Father Zephyrin Engelhardt.
California and Its Missions, by Bryan Qinch.
Junipero Serra, by A. H. Fitch.
In and Out of the Old Missions, by George Wharton James.
California, Its History and Romance, by John McGroarty.
History of Los Angeles, by Charles Dwight Willard.
Old Spanish Missions of California, by Paul Elder.
Under the Sky in California, by Charles Saunders.
California, by Rockwell Hunt.
The Flock, by Mary Austin.
Across the Plains, by R. L. Stevenson.
ARTICLES.
The Patio House in California, in Country Life, vol. xxiv., pp. 55-57.
The House Beautiful, vol. xxvii., pp. 162, 163.
Painter of California Missions, by Pauline Bird, in The Outlook, vol. Ixxvi.,
pp. 74-8o.
Some Modern Adobes, by Constance Austin, in The Overland Monthly.
The Overland Monthly, January, 1897, P- 24.
The Pacific Monthly, vol. xxiv. pp.' 370-382.
The Century Magazine, vol. Ixxxvii., pp. 175-184.
Sentiment As An Asset, by Jacob Riis, in The Sunset Magazine, June, 1910.
The Overland Monthly, vol. xix., January, 1892.
"Jacob Riis, Sentiment As An Asset, The Sunset Magazine, June, 1910.
VOL. cm. 42
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER XIV.
RS. BOLIVAR'S feelings were so mixed when she
boarded the train for Washington that they defied
classification. She would not have confessed, even to
herself, that she was so unmaternal as to rejoice over
^ the advent of the measles, but she was glad of an ex-
cuse to leave the house party, which she had 'found
interesting but a trifle irritating to her good-natured philosophy, for
with all Anne's outward hospitality she consciously or unconsciously
placed women at a disadvantage.
There was a perfection of poise about Anne's beauty, her clothes,
her home that roused the feminine spirit of revolt, for most women
knew that they could never aspire to such a standard. Mrs. Bolivar,
after careful analysis, decided that she did not want to attain such
superexcellence a certain amount of imperfection seemed more com-
fortable and human; but nevertheless when she was in Anne's com-
pany she felt that she was failing by comparison. The definite dis-
comfort may have been due to the frailty of vanity, which Mrs.
Boljvar flattered herself she had outlived, or it may have been traced
to some embryo jealousy certainly she could not doubt the Senator's
loyalty but his candid critical acknowledgment of Anne's youthful-
ness sent her healthy mind speeding into unaccustomed channels.
She determined to hunt up a new dressmaker and to find a hairdresser
who could wave hair becomingly. She even contemplated moving in
midwinter, if she could rent a larger house, where the children's
rooms could be further removed from the Senator's sanctum and the
servants' quarters more attractive. To systematize a home with six
children and shifting maids and butlers might be a task beyond even
Anne's control.
Then in the midst of these reflections Mrs. Bolivar laughed loud,
much to the amazement of the passing conductor, who regarded her
as a harmless lunatic for the rest of the trip and kept his eye pru-
dently upon her. But Mrs. Bolivar's saving sense of humor had come
to her rescue. Anne was the same spoiled child she had been at the
convent, so many years ago, with no depth, nor purpose, nor ideals ;
her home was an empty show place, wound up with some superficial
skill, a place where beauty was paramount, and men were pleased and
blinded, and women were badgered by forced meditations on their own
discrepancies. .
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 659
But by the time the journey was over Mrs. Bolivar had recovered
her common-sense calm; she was glad that the Senator could have
another day with Walcott on the marshes. The friendship existing
between the two men was rare in their mutual understanding. There
were times when Walcott felt that he was claiming more than he
himself could give, but the Senator possessed a frankness that could
harbor no suspicion. If he had been told that his best friend had
dropped one identity to start life again on a different plane, he would
have insisted that Walcott's action was the most logical outcome of a
difficult situation, and he would have fought for him with generous
energy, though in his heart he might have been a little disappointed
at Walcott's lack of confidence.
When the Senator returned from the station dinner was waiting.
Anne was careful to express an exaggerated regret at Mrs. Bolivar's
departure. To tell the truth she had been quite annoyed by the
thought of her house party, in segments there was a certain gloom
attached to vacant chairs at a dining table, a certain lack of harmony
as if the hostess had blundered in her hospitable calculations; she
was very much relieved when she found that the men intended to
remain, and she hastily telephoned to one of her more intimate
neighbors to come and " fill in." And the friend had hastily adjusted
her one .evening gown, which suddenly paled into poverty when its
owner remembered Anne's Parisian patterns, and she had gone to the
wild extravagance of hiring the two-horse hack from the livery to
get her there in time, for Anne's invitations were not to be lightly
disregarded; they were not as frequent as they had been in the old
days when she had to depend upon the town for her diversion. Her
marriage had had an isolating effect. It may have been her money
or it may have been Van Brun. He did not belong to the South, he
had come from some vague corner of the West, where men make
money with what seemed culpable rapidity; he had no share in the
old South's pride or prejudice ; he was willing to contribute munificent
checks for the building up of her old home, provided she did not
ask him to occupy it. Like many other Americans with the wander-
lust, it pleased him to prepare a substantial centre of radius to which he
could return when there was nothing else to do. So Anne in her
short married career had journeyed far with him; she had been around
the world twice, and this fact alone to the untraveled friends of her
girlhood seemed to differentiate her as a person of wide experience
and cosmopolitan ideas, to whom their loves and sympathies would
seem provincial platitudes. But in spite of Anne's apparent remote-
ness these companions of her girlhood were true to the traditions
of their upbringing, and whenever Anne's presence was announced in
the attenuated columns of the Evening Crescent these old ac-
quaintances gathered around her.
66o TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
This evening after dinner a gay party drove out from town to
welcome her home, and Anne's cordial greeting was all that the most
critical could desire, for their homage pleased her. She was like a
queen holding court and dispensing the favor of her smile upon her
vassals; her old beaux rallied to her colors, forgetful that their
allegiance had been diverted in many ways during her absence. And
while Anne introduced her unexpected visitors to her house guests,
Walcott stood at a little distance seeking the shadow of the doorway.
The names were all familiar. Some of these girls he remembered in
their babyhood. Why had he come back? Back to a world he had
left so far behind him ; the world he had purposely disregarded ? It
had no reality, it was a land of ghosts in which he had no place.
No one paid much attention to the tall, disfigured stranger. He
seemed so solemn and abstracted ; and the young people were bent on
merrymaking. Anne had the drawing-room stripped of its rugs and
more cumbrous furniture, and an impromptu ball was soon inaugu-
rated. Walcott was glad to slip away unnoticed through the crowd
to seek refuge in the conservatory. It was a charming place added by
Anne of late years to give length to the library. A fountain with the
marble figure of a child wading in its clear depths was surrounded by
rare exotics. Usually the place was lighted by small colored lamps that
gleamed like strange blossoms amid the heavy background of foliage,
but to-night a full moon shone through the transparent walls and ceil-
ing, transforming the place into a tropical bower. As Walcott made
his way to a rustic bench that he had noticed the day before when
Anne was exhibiting her orchids, he found that it was occupied.
" Two minds with but a single thought," said Ted lightly. " Sit
down, Mr. Walcott. I came in here to escape from the infernal racket
of that phonograph. If people are going in for these modern dances,
why don't they beat a tom-tom and have done with it? "
" I'm sure I don't know," answered Walcott, " but I'm glad of the
noise if it sent you in here ; I wanted to have a talk with you "
there was a certain joyous eagerness about his tone followed by an
awkward pause. He had spoken on impulse. After all, in his role of
stranger, what could he say to Ted? If he confessed to the part he had
played for fifteen years, everything he valued would now, it seemed,
slip from him his present public reputation for absolute honesty,
certain philanthropic schemes that needed all the faith he could
inspire to gain them any credence. He could not manifest himself
among all these people. The story would be too sensational the
yellow journals woujd cram their columns there would be no escape
from their broad publicity.
" Sit down," said Ted in friendly fashion. " Have a cigarette ?
Since I made you my confidant last night, I might as well continue
my revelations."
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 661
Walcott took the proffered cigarette and lighted it mechanically.
" Was there anything left to reveal ? " he asked with a gleam of his
old humor. " I thought we had reached the end of everything."
" As I said once before," continued Ted undisturbed, " I'm an
egotist know it's very bad form, and yet people are always laying
stress on the value of psychology human documents all that sort of
thing. Since I've met you, you've set me thinking along a new line.
I'm leading an altogether artificial life I feel that you despise it."
" I do," answered Walcott brusquely, " but perhaps it isn't al-
together your own fault."
"Then whose fault is it?" asked Ted good-naturedly.
Walcott hesitated. " It might have been your parents or
guardians."
" I don't know," Ted meditated for a moment. " Both my parents
died when I was very young, and I was sent here to live with an
uncle. He was a fine young fellow. No doubt he would have had
some influence over me if he had lived."
Walcott winced at the words. " You think that you really be-
lieve that? "
" Why, yes. You see I looked up to him, believed in him
would have followed him, and then I would have had some sort of a
home. A home does have a solidifying effect on a man. You see
my life was reduced to a liquid state and I've let it run."
"Run where?"
" Oh, I've been dissipated and you know it. Polly's tried to keep
me straight, but she couldn't exactly stay on the job."
" And you think your uncle could ? "
" Well, of course he would have been with me if these people
hadn't hounded the courage out of him."
"Hounded him?"
"Well, I told you that I had come in here to escape from the
noise of that phonograph, but that was only a half truth; I don't
like the people of this town. You see my uncle suffer ed financial
reverses before he died, and the people in this town turned on
him."
"The whole town?"
" Well, of course, Mrs, Maxen and Polly did what they could to
change public opinion."
"And Anne, Mrs. Van Brun? "
"Well, she said nothing, though it hit her harder than anyone
else. You see she was engaged to him."
" And she said nothing? "
" Well that's rather Anne's way. God only knows what she's
thinking. That's one of her attractions, she keeps one guessing."
" And you think she cared for your uncle ? "
662 TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
Ted threw away his cigarette. " She had promised to marry
him that ought to prove it."
" I don't know that it does."
" Lord, that sounds cynical."
" Well, you see she married Van Brun."
" And an awful chump he was, believe me," said Ted with a
mirthless laugh. " I told you she was incomprehensible."
"If she was engaged to your uncle when you were a boy, then she
is older than you? "
" Yes, a few years."
" Don't you think that's unfortunate? "
" I don't see it that way,"
" I think it makes a difference to a man later on. The truth is I'd
like tp see you break away from this infatuation."
" And I think I've been very patient," said Ted, " there are. limits.
You will pardon me, since our interview has been altogether uncon-
ventional, if I say that I fail to understand your interest in my affairs."
" I'm a blunt man," said Walcott humbly, " and blundering seems
to be a habit. You told me frankly that you were throwing your life
away, and I well just as frankly would stop you if I could."
" Thanks, I'll be obliged if you don't worry."
" Then I wish you would think a little of Polly."
" What has she to do with it? "
" Why I think she cares."
" Cares for me? Well we are playing at cross purposes. Since
you want frankness, I'll tell you that if Polly has any feeling for me
it's altogether sisterly. We are cousins we grew up together. If
she cares for anybody well I suspect you can be a little more per-
sonal."
"What do you mean?"
" Perhaps I don't mean anything except you have been extra-
ordinarily kind to her; she has seen a good deal of you lately. Do
you know I think Platonic friendship is rather out of date."
Walcott struggled to conceal his exasperation. " It doesn't seem
quite fair to interpret her attitude that way."
" Well, I don't know," said Ted impatiently. " I thought you be-
gan this discussion. After all the conventions weren't created for
nothing. They are the backbone of social intercourse, when you break
them well, you suffer some sort of a collapse. I shall extricate my-
self from the wreckage by going to dance with Mrs. Van Brun. Since
we are her guests it doesn't seem quite civil to immure ourselves all
evening."
He got up and, brushing the ashes from his coat, he passed
quickly out of the moonlight into the yellow glare of the lamps.
Walcott watched him go with a deep sense of humility and help-
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 663
lessness in the strength of Ted's rebuke. He had gone too far
expected too much. Ted had the right to be justifiably offended.
What right had he, as a stranger, to sit in judgment? Ted had been
wonderfully good-natured considering all the criticism he had re-
ceived, but there was a limit and he, Walcott, had exceeded it. He
sank down again on the bench Ted had just vacated, and a new
viewpoint of his extraordinary position dawned upon him. He had
been a craven a coward to seek refuge in concealment; he had
disregarded his chief responsibility and Ted. Ted had paid the
penalty, and the boy had been loyal to him throughout, even when
Anne was silent and the town believed in his guilt. " I believed in
him, would have followed him," Ted's words came back to him with
a rush of tenderness that swept away all traces of resentment. Why
had he been oblivious to Ted's need of him in all these widening
years? Now that the full realization had come to him he felt that
he must make a confession to Ted. It was the only way. The
boy's right his own restitution. Perhaps he could be sworn to
secrecy. Perhaps he could be made to see what a public confession
would entail. Perhaps he would be willing to go away and travel.
Those forgotten shares in Bolivar's copper mine would make an
extravagant journey possible now, and distance might destroy this
hopeless love for Anne. And while he planned he rested his head
against the rustic back of the bench and closed his eyes wearily. He
was tired tired of the role he had been called upon to play. His
life had been so simple in the West, his present personality effacing so
effectually his past, but to-night he had been trapped trapped while
he, with the fear of the hunted, had sought sanctuary in this pleasant
bower which had seemed so far away from the reality of revelation.
He must have slept his mind so weary that his body claimed
supremacy unawares. The moon with her white hypnotic light soothed
him, the air in the conservatory was heavy with perfume. He must
have slept, for he could account for what happened next in no other
way. He seemed to see Anne coming towards him so close that he
had but to lift his hand and touch her gown, and for a moment she
seemed to lean over him with loving solicitude, uncertain whether
to rouse him, while she studied every line in his face, and then he
heard voices Ted's voice saying:
" You won't relent you care for someone else ? "
The answer was inaudible.
"The Major?"
" No."
"Who?"
" I do not choose to tell." ' ,
" But I think I have the right to know."
"Why?"
664 TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
" Because it is the end of life."
Walcott stirred. He was no eavesdropper. He had been dream-
ing. It was natural that he should dream of Anne and Ted. He
looked towards the fountain. There was only the marble figure of
the child, its body bent to life-like litheness as it stood smiling joy-
fully and unafraid, while the water splashed upward, full of the
strange brilliance of the moonlight, and somewhere far away sounded
the barbaric music of a dance.
CHAPTER XV.
In the morning Walcott's doubts and fears lifted with the white
mists from the meadows. There was something clarifying in the
sunlight, the routine of the breakfast table, the familiarity of food,
Anne's serenity as she planned for another day in the open, and the
Senator's jovial enthusiasm over a sport that was new to him. Ted
was noticeably .silent, but the Major seemed to be in the best of
spirits. Some of the gay party who had arrived the evening before
had been invited to remain over night, and the big dining-room was
full of that conventional cheer that restores life to the normal.
" I'll have to break away from the rest of you this afternoon," said
the Senator, " for my small boys are fleeing the measles ; I'll have
to meet them at the station. Mrs. Maxen has promised to mother
them for a few weeks."
" They will enjoy the country," said Anne with polite interest,
" I suppose Polly will bring them."
" Yes, the whole thing is her idea. Mrs. Maxen may find small
boys annoying to use a mild adjective."
" Oh, no, she won't," denied Anna hastily, " Mrs. Maxen is the
type of woman who doesn't mind anything you see she's altogether
supernatural."
The Senator smiled over his coffee. " Well, of course I can't
understand that state of existence. Souls get so deucedly tangled
up nowadays, I think mine lives in a deep labyrinth and never gets an
airing."
" Don't believe him," interposed Walcott, " his heart and soul
carry away his head more often than is good for him."
" Sounds like the Legend of Sleepy Hollow," laughed one of the
girl visitors.
" Yes," agreed the Senator with a broad grin, " that's his polite
way of calling me a pumpkin head."
Walcott interrupted : " Pumpkins are most desirable," he said
solemnly. " They make excellent pies."
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 665
" And that reminds me," said Anne, " that I shall have a number
of small ones packed in the lunch basket ; that train from Washington
does not get in until four, so you will really have the whole day
before you. If you will give me your map for a moment, I can show
you the short cut through the woods to the station."
The Senator went through his pockets. " I believe I left that
map on my bureau; I was rather depending upon Walcott for
directions, he hits a trail like an Indian scout. Even to an old woods-
man like me it's amazing."
" Perhaps he has been here before," Anne replied.
There was something in the tone of her voice that made Walcott
look up to find her eyes fixed curiously upon him, but the next mo-
ment she had turned to the Senator and said with laughing uncon-
cern : " If we were English women no doubt we would go with you
to-day, and what a nuisance you would find us."
The Senator tried to deny this last statement, but he was not
used to making pretty speeches to women, and the Major came gal-
lantly to the rescue and begged her with convincing eagerness to
accompany the expedition.
" I never shot a gun in my life ; I hate the noise, the smell of
powder, and all the mud and dirt. I have a busy day before me,
a bridge party this afternoon and a dinner of twenty to-night. You
must all be home by seven."
But the shooting party did not seem anxious to get away, the
dining-room, with its great wood fire and its blooming roses, was a
pleasant place to linger.
" You are not true sportsmen," laughed Anne. " If you were
you would have all been up at daybreak.
" We are only make-believes," said Ted. He looked very hand-
some this morning in his shooting togs, the rough clothes accentuating
his graceful carriage and the delicacy of his feature. " Make-believes,
all of us," he 'repeated. " So what does anything matter? "
^ " Ducks matter," said the Senator striving to hide his disapproval
of this strange man. " They are so amazingly good to eat."
" But if one doesn't care to eat? "
" Ted, Ted," answered Anne with dangerous sympathy.
" You ought to be cheerful at a house party. I don't believe you
are well. You haven't tasted your breakfast. You must come home
with a better appetite," and she followed the shooting party out upon
the broad portico to wish them good luck.
Walcott wanted to walk with Ted, but his nephew, striding on
ahead with the Major, seemed anxious to avoid him, while the Senator
fell behind as a matter of course. Walcott had firmly made up his
mind to confess to Ted that morning, but the time did not seem
propitious, he would have to wait his chance.
666 TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
All night he had lain awake planning the future. He would tell
Ted the truth and swear him to secrecy if he could; he would va-
cate his seat in the House. Such a resignation might prove a nine
days' wonder, but after all there were many excuses he could give
failing health might be the most plausible, family affairs, business
complications. Other men had resigned the action would not be
altogether unprecedented then he would travel with Ted. For one
whole year he would devote his life to the boy, trying to win him
back to better habits, a healthier viewpoint; he would see what a
period of readjustment would do, new scenes, new interests, new
faces ; Ted was pliable he was too young not to be susceptible. To-
night after dinner, when confidences were possible, he would tell Ted
the truth.
The second day on the marshes was a repetition of the first. The
Senator was the best shot, and his skill was so much applauded that
he found it difficult to break away from the party at three o'clock,
and take the faintly marked footpath through the woods to the
station. But he had not gone far before he heard a crashing in the
bushes and Walcott joined him.
" I thought I'd go with you," he said.
" Well, I'm glad to have you, but there really is no necessity, the
path is clearly marked."
" I know that, but I thought I'd like to get one more glance of
the twins."
" Don't you mean to stick the week out."
" No, I intend to send myself a telegram demanding my presence
in Washington to-morrow."
" Grateful sort of guest you are."
" Perhaps that's one of the reasons I wanted to come with you ;
I'm afraid 'that I've been really discourteous. Fell asleep last night
in the conservatory didn't go near any of the guests. Every man
ought to show some appreciation of the efforts of his hostess.
Thought I would send her some flowers to show that I wasn't al-
together a boor, and then beat it to town in the morning. I have a
little business to attend to in this town before I go."
" And you are going to leave me? "
" I'll send you a telegram, too, if you like."
" Heavens, no, I've got to stay and see that art dealer, and then
there are the twins and their board bill. Truth is the board bill is
deucedly awkward. Paying your relatives for food in this neighbor-
hood is sinning against their decalogue of decency."
" Polly's got sense," said Walcott ; " I'll attend to that."
"How?"
" Send up a lot of things from the butcher, the baker, the grocer,
and tell Mrs. Maxen the twins are on diet."
igi6.] TRANSMIGRATION 667*
" Polly would know they weren't."
" I'll tell her the truth."
" Well, I'm glad you see a way out. I'll leave it to you. I feel
like a ruthless Hun descending on the old lady and carrying off her
grandmother."
" You haven't carried her yet."
" Well, I feel sure that I will. I believe she's the genuine article.
I've been trying to jog my memory, gathering impressions of my
boyhood, and I believe these Canfields were the rich branch of the
family and had the money to pay for portraits if they fancied them,
while we well, I believe we belonged to the tin-type class. Never
heard of this Maxen who married Marie Canfield. I didn't keep up
with the later history you see."
" You didn't miss much in not knowing Hiram Maxen. He was
born to open the door of sacrifice for other people."
" How do you know ? "
" Heard of him."
"Well, since you know so much about the whole layout I wish
you would stay. It isn't quite civil ; your getting out anyhow. If you
didn't mean to stay why did you come ? "
" God knows my motives were never so mixed in my life. I
thought Mrs. Bolivar corralled me on your account."
" And I'm willing to acknowledge that your presence persuaded
me, but I believe there was another reason."
" Well then, if you must know giving reasons is always a mis-
take I wanted to get acquainted with Ted Hargrove."
" Hm," exclaimed the Senator. " Drinks like a fish, and you
thought you could stop him. Reforming the world is getting to be
an obsession."
" I find him very interesting, and he's so young to be flinging
his life away."
" Well, I don't think you can stop him. You see he doesn't care.
He's not interested in anything but our amiable hostess, and she won't
have him she's no reformer."
" She must know that he's in love with her."
" Of course she knows it wouldn't forgive him if he wasn't."
" She's older than he is."
" I know, makes it worse proves blind infatuation. She's got
charm, there's no denying that ; I'm beginning to believe that you are
half afraid she will get you."
Walcott fell prudently behind. " No, not now ; it's too late."
" Too late," grunted the Senator. " Never too late for a man to
make a fool of himself."
" Maybe not," agreed Walcott grimly, " but after a man has been
a particular kind of a fool he's not apt to suffer a relapse."
668 TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
" Well, I'm not so sure about that either. Can't imagine you
lovelorn, Walcott, or the old lady that would turn you down must have
been some sort of a paragon if you really cared for her, and if she
was a paragon she ought to have recognized a good thing when she
saw it."
" Thanks." Walcott hoped to bring the conversation to a con-
clusion.
They walked along for a while in silence, the path was very
narrow and grew more difficult. Their attention was distracted by
the fallen branches and brambles that barred the way. Every little
brook was swollen to three times its natural depth, for the rains had
been heavy this autumn; and one of the streams had grown so wide
that it gurgled triumphantly over its high stepping-stones, and the
two men stopped, uncertain how to proceed. There were no logs
in sight long enough to span the space, and the faint film of ice
on the edges of the water deterred them from taking off their boots
and wading through.
" We will try two vaulting poles that used to be one of my
chief stunts at college."
" Well, go on/' agreed the Senator resignedly. " I may be a bit
stiff and rheumatic, but we've got to do something. It's too late to
go back and around by the road."
But even with this sensible plan it took them some time to find
saplings suitable for their purpose and a longer time to cut them
down, for they had nothing but their pen knives for this unexpected
wood-chopping, so that when they finally reached the station the train
had come and gone, and Polly was standing on the platform trying to
persuade a grizzled old hackman to drive her and the twins home.
But the old darkey had received orders to wait for someone else, and
though Polly was trying to impress him with the fact that the train
had not brought his passenger he was unwilling to relinquish the idea
that the train would be " back presently," as soon as the conductor
discovered that they had carried an important personage beyond his
destination.
" It's just a fool notion," said Walcott. " Get up there on the
box, old man. You've got a chance to make a five-dollar bill before
another train creeps into this station."
" Yes sah ; yes sah." The promise of such a stupendous sum
seemed to dispel all the old man's doubts; he opened the hack door
invitingly and then climbed up to his own seat without further argu-
ment; the bony horses made a heroic show of speed and then settled
down to a jog trot before they had gone half a square.
" Have you seen mother yet ? " asked Polly, her face seemed to
radiate happiness at this home-coming, and as Walcott watched her
he realized how hard had been her time of banishment.
I 9 i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 669
"Well, not not yet," answered the Senator in some embarrass-
ment. I intended to call to-morrow."
" She will be so glad to see you, and I know she will be pleased
to have the boys. I am afraid life has been very dull for her lately."
"Will she let us holler in the house and hide in the garret?"
asked Bobby.
" Yes, she likes noise."
"And play with the cat and the dog? "
" Yes."
"And feed the chickens? "
" Yes."
" And if it snows will you take us coasting? "
" Yes."
" And rowing on the river ? "
" Yes."
The Senator laughed. " What a job you have, Miss Polly. It
doesn't seem quite fair."
" I think they are very good," said Polly with her arm around
Bobby's neck. " I promised them all sorts of things if they would
come with me."
" Jack was afraid at first," announced Bobby contemptuously, " he
thought there might be tigers in the country, and Miss Polly said
she didn't have a gun but I like tripping tripping anywhere. If the
baby would only keep the measles now that she's got 'em, we could
stay a long time."
" You're a heartless child, Bobby," said Walcott, trying to con-
ceal a smile. " You ought not to want the poor baby to stay sick."
" But I do, Wally. If I said I didn't it would be a great big-
lie."
" I think you had better drop the subject," laughed the Senator.
" If a man isn't allowed to confess his feelings until he has some
well-ordered emotions to express, half the world would be reduced to
silence."
" I was sorry Mrs. Bolivar had to come home," interrupted Polly.
" I wanted her to have her holiday."
" She didn't mind," replied the Senator easily, " and after all the
measles are not serious."
" No, but I thought you were all having such a good time."
" Well I am. Never shot ducks in my life fine sport. Mrs.
Van Brun is a famous hostess; lets a man do as he pleases, that's
my idea of hospitality. Beautiful home, fine billiard room. Glad I
came, I feel a hundred per cent better already, but Walcott has a
grouch. He doesn't like all this grandeur dinner parties every night,
he prefers paupers to plutocrats."
"And Ted how's Ted?"
670 TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
" Very well. We left him just below on the marshes."
Polly turned to Walcott with a look of gratitude in her eyes.
" I'm glad he's well."
The Senator did not catch the full significance of her words,
Bobby had claimed his attention ; the boy was full of eager questions
about ducks. Could they fly or did they swim? Did you shoot them
or fish for them with flies? Did people make pillows out of the
feathers or put them on their hats ? Could he go duck-shooting in the
morning ?
" Don't be grateful to me," said Walcott to Polly in an under-
tone. " I've done nothing but make a mess of things."
" How do you mean ? "
" Every way," he answered hopelessly.
" Oh, no, don't say that. Mother believes that Ted has a lot of
good in him ; I wish you would talk to her about him."
" I can't not this afternoon." Of one thing he was certain he
wanted to avoid Mrs. Maxen. He felt sure that she would penetrate his
personality. Ever since he had arrived on these familiar grounds he
had determined that he could keep up no deception in her presence.
" I can't go home with this party now. I have a little business matter
to attend to. Bobby bang on that window and get these wild horses
to stop a minute, I've got to get out here at the florist's and order
those flowers."
" Flowers for Mrs. Van Brun," explained the Senator signif-
icantly.
Polly made no comment. Her thin face looked pale and tired after
her journey, and she pretended to draw her veil a trifle closer to shield
her eyes from the sunlight.
Walcott bade them all a cheerful good-bye and, promising the
twins a pony phaeton in the morning, he got out of the rickety
carriage, and slamming the door with thoughtless energy he turned to
investigate the shop window, where a cumbrous wreath of dyed im-
mortelles was the only show of greenery.
CHAPTER XVI.
As Walcott passed into the small shop the heavy fragrance of
the flowers sent his mind reeling back again into the past. It
seemed strange that anything as impalpable as an odor should effect
him more than the familiar furnishings of the place. There stood the
same battered refrigerator, its smeared glass doors giving one but a
clouded view of the tall vases that held the greater part of the stock
in trade. How eagerly he used to lean over the oilcloth-covered
counter, numbering the roses and peonies, fearful lest the florist, busy
with another customer, should make a sale that would leave but the
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 671
poorest and faded for his own purchase and belittle his offering to
Anne. For Anne had always cared for flowers, and his extravagance
in supplying her had been fully appreciated by the begrimed little
florist, whose customers usually sought him out only under constraint.
Of course he who toiled among the earth worms that beauty might
break from bulb and root understood better than anyone else that
flowers were luxuries, but there were times when his artistic soul
revolted at his patrons' careful calculation of the blossoms in his
funeral pillows and wedding bells. If the citizens of this town ex-
pected a floral shop to continue solvent and yet to remain open only
to mark the epochs in their lives, someone must pay the penalty for
such penuriousness, and what more obvious a victim than a zealous,
generous lover a pleasant young man who never questioned the valid-
ity of a bill. To-day the old florist hobbled forward on a crutch,
his dim eyes resting curiously on this stranger, who seemed too gray
for a wedding and too smiling for a funeral wreath.
" Violets ! " he exclaimed in answer to Walcott's question ! " No
sir, I quit raisin' 'em some time back. They ain't showy and it takes
time to handle them. Even a hundred at a cent apiece don't make
much of a bunch. Thar wan't no demand. Once I knew a young
fellow who didn't think nothin' of orderin' five hundred at a nickle
apiece, but thar ain't many fools like him."
" No, I guess not," agreed Walcott reminiscently.
" He was in love," cackled the old man, " and the lady had a
notion for violets. Roses you say ? I'm a trifle hard of hearin'. Red
roses? Yes, sir. My son runs the business now and he had some
roses here. They ain't as fine as mine used to be. Young folks ain't
industrious; they ain't as painstaking. I can send them if it ain't
too far. All I've got? Well, I'm mighty glad you come in. My son
and I've been arguin' about them flowers. Nobody wants cheerful
lookin' roses on a coffin lid."
" Well, it isn't for a coffin exactly."
" I get your meaning," muttered the old man vaguely. " Calculate
on stayin' some time? "
" I'm leaving to-morrow."
" Furrin parts ? " questioned the old man with the mournful con-
viction that such prodigal purchasers never lingered long in the
neighborhood.
" Washington," answered Walcott shortly.
" Senator mebbe? I'm told it's a fine job but mighty uncertain.
Seats in the Senate ain't what they used to be. Never can tell what's
goin' on at home. Politics are rotten, so I'm told. My uncle was
sheriff in this county once, and they hanged him election night. Sort
of took away my spirit for politics."
Walcott smiled. " Well, that was what you might call disspirit-
672 TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
ing. You'll put the roses in a box with some green for a background ?
Here's the address and here's my card."
The old man slowly adjusted his brass-rimmed spectacles. " Mrs.
Van Brun. Yes, sir. I know the place. If she'd only stay at home
business might pick up. I reckon I've sent more flowers to that there
house than any livin' being, funerals and all counted in. Once the
Mayor died in this town and he had a hack full of flowers, but he
never had any before or since, and this here Mrs. Van Brun, who used
to be Miss Anne Marbury, is a wonder. She'd make any business
pick up. She just naturally has things."
Walcott had no desire to continue the conversation further. He
was a trifle afraid that the shrewd old man might suspect that the
" young fool " had returned, for this same old man had actually raised
flowers to his order, so anxious was he to follow the imaginative
flights of his most reckless customer. There was one bouquet that
Walcott especially remembered, made entirely of heliotrope with a
white starry camelia in the centre and a fluting of embossed paper
around the edge, the kind of an old-fashioned bouquet that Anne's
grandmother might have carried, and Anne had exclaimed at its
quaintness, and her pleasure and praise had seemed such an exorbitant
reward for his expenditure of effort that he had returned to the
florist next morning and paid him twice the amount of his bill. That
bouquet had marked the beginning of his romance, for he had sent it
for Anne's debut, and that night, seeing her surrounded by other men,
he had realized for the first time that he was in love with her. He
was so young that he had never analyzed his feelings before. She
had been a part of his life always they had played together as
babies, but the presence of other men, making access to her difficult,
had filled him with sudden anger; he wanted to sweep her away
from them all, and because she would not promise him the next dance,
he had gone out into the garden and paced the box-bordered paths in
a fury, questioning this new mental capacity for suffering.
Purple heliotrope had marked the beginning, and red roses would
mark the end roses sent after all these years merely as a peace offer-
ing. He had been unapproachable, ungrateful, unmannerly in his iso-
lations. Anne had always demanded some sort of outward tribute
from her friends. The roses would show an appreciation of her hos-
pitality they meant nothing more. He was going away forever
going away with Ted.
But there was one thing more to accomplish. When he passed
out of the damp little shop with its insistent earthy odors, he turned
into one of the more congested streets. He was not quite sure of his
destination now, but a swinging sign bearing the name Joseph D.
Frankfort, Attorney, reassured him. He might have known that his
conservative old friend would not change his quarters. The door
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 673
opened upon a long flight of unpainted steps that led upward to the
Judge's office. Once on the landing Walcott hesitated, and then went
on to knock on the Judge's black-lettered door.
" Come in."
Walcott entered and stood silent, looking down upon the bald
head of the Judge, who turned inquiringly in his swivel chair, and
said with his old-time greeting for strangers, " Well, sir well, sir
what can I do for you ? "
The large high-ceilinged room held a disordered library, the desk
was deluged with papers, tobacco smoke mingled with the dust made
visible in the level lines of light that shone through the diamond-paned
window.
Walcott had planned no speech and now that he was here he had
no inclination to begin.
" I believe you are one of the trustees for the Thompson estate.
I have come to see you about it."
The Judge half rose from his chair, his pointed white goatee
seemed to bristle. " No use," he said impatiently his gruff manner
had contributed to his reputation for absolute honesty " no use to
talk, that estate was settled finally and forever five years ago; such
a lot of useless litigation ; such a crowd of numb-skull lawyers ; such
a battering of a boy's reputation. I tell you there's not one more
cent can be squeezed out of it. You can't get blood out of a turnip."
" What were the assets ? "
''Assets! what's the use of talking about assets they fell short
about forty thousand dollars, and if I hadn't worked days, nights and
Sundays trying to fight off forced sales it would have been worse
than that."
" I'm glad, it was only forty thousand," said Walcott thinking of
his proposed trip with Ted.
The Judge put on his eyeglasses and surveyed his visitor in some
bewilderment. He had received many strange clients in his day, but
this tall disfigured stranger possessed an air of distinction that did
not belong to the weak-minded, the criminal, or the distraught.
" I believe that the confidences of your clients are considered
sacred ? " continued Walcott.
" Sacred ! " sputttered the old man, " of course they are sacred.
I'm a Catholic and I believe in the sacrament of confession,
but I intend no blasphemy when I say that secrets told me in this
room are as safe as they are under the seal."
" I believe you," said Walcott sitting down in the chair that the
Judge had pointed out to him when he made his first appearance,
" and it is for that reason I am here to bring you the forty thousand
dollars to settle the Thompson estate."
VOL. cm. 43
6/4 TRANSMIGRATION [Aug.,
" God have mercy ! " exclaimed the old man, " and who who are
you."
Walcott held out his hand to him across the littered table. " Do
you remember buying red and white peppermint sticks for a small
boy long ago ? Do you remember that one day when the boy's hands
were very sticky he wiped them on the long tail of your coat, and
when you sat down in a cushioned dining,-chair you stuck, and
the boy's mother spanked him the only spanking she gave him in
her life? Do you remember a garden where roses bloomed and you
used to come Sunday evenings and drink tea out of Japanese cups,
and your special cup was decorated with a little juggler balancing a
fan on his nose, and you used to make up nonsensical rhymes about
him for the boy ? Do you re'member the one that began,
'If a juggler can juggle and jump
Can a peddler peddle a pump?'"
The ridiculous words had their effect, the old man fell back
weakly in his chair, his eyes fixed like one who witnesses a manifesta-
tion of the preternatural. " How can you know these things ? " he
asked hoarsely.
But Walcott went on : " And with the tea were served little
cakes cakes with pink icing and candied cherries on the top you
always saved your cherry for the boy ; and then one day you whittled
him a tiny boat out of a peach kernel, and then you went with him to
sail it in the fountain, and stooping over, you lost your specs. The
boy spent the next day wading in the fountain searching for them,
and when he found them he was so pleased he wrapped them in a
dirty handkerchief and brought them to you here.
The old man leaned forward now studying every line of Walcott's
face, hope struggling with lack of conviction. " Go on," he said
huskily, " go on."
" The boy was very wet when he reached you, and you made him
take off his clothes and put on your coat, and then you, in your shirt
sleeves, carried him home to his mother. That night the boy had
a fever and he called out for you in his delirium ; you watched by his
bedside all night, and at three o'clock in the morning when the boy
wanted ice and the supply in the house had run short, you went out
and broke the padlock on the ice man's shop and brought back a piece
in your hands."
" I did I did."
" And the next morning you paid the ice man ten dollars for
burglarizing his place over night, and the boy's mother cried when
she thanked you only the boy saw ! "
" Jim" cried the old man feebly, " little Jim." He grasped Wal-
cott's extended hand seeking reassurance from living flesh, " How can
it btJim?"
I9i6.] TRANSMIGRATION 675
It was a long story that Walcott had to tell and the Judge listened
with a feverish interest that no client had ever claimed.
" And this is the secret/' he said at last, " the secret under the
seal. You mean to go on unknown to the end? "
" Yes if you will help me."
" But the forty thousand dollars these shares in this copper mine,
how are they to be explained? "
" Part of my assets. Forgotten worthless until now half a
dozen ways."
"Is this all you have? "
" Not quite, there are a few thousand more my own savings."
" It's a small fortune to give up. You realize there is no legal
obligation now."
" Perhaps not, but there are other obligations in the world not
altogether legal."
" Thank God," said the old man fervently, " thank God you feel
that way. You see I had for the moment forgotten your mother."
"My mother!"
" She was one of God's own saints and I I loved her. You see
we were young together. I remember the summer I came home from
the university so full of conceit with my LL.D. I used to argue
imaginary cases before her. I had no real ones then, and she used
to laugh at me and tell me that legal reasons were no reasons when
there was no higher claim. That autumn she married your father
and I well well they were kind to me. I was invited often to the
house. There were the Japanese cups and the pink cakes on Sunday
evenings, and after that there seemed nothing left but work. Per-
haps you will understand why I worked so hard trying to make the
estate pay dollar for dollar. I think I would like you to know that I
would accept no fee. I wanted to clear your name. Somehow I felt
that she might have knowledge of it, and now that you have come
back it seems to prove her influence. It's the old law of inheritance
that scientists are scouting now, but they can't explain away the
power of prayer, the strength of the supernatural. Our bodies will be
buried soon very soon who can presume to measure the strength of
the divinity of our souls? Surely the selfless love of a mother must
be part of her immortality. She must care my boy she must care."
Walcott had buried his face in his hands, he was trembling and
a little unnerved from the ordeal of his confession; the Judge's un-
suspected love story and his life-long loyalty had touched him deeply,
and these old memories of his mother brought a moisture to his eyes.
" I too have felt her presence," he said.
[TO BE CONCLUDED.]
DIANA'S MIRROR THE LAKE OF NEMI.
BY EDITH COWELL.
HE pilgrim if he 'be a wise pilgrim leaves Rome
for the Lake of Nemi in the evening 'and in the
month of May, with the intention of spending the
night at Frascati, in order to rise with the sun next
morning, and perform the remainder of the pilgrim-
age on foot. To carry out this resolution, however, he must be
made of stern stuff, in order to resist a dozen temptations to linger
by the way.
The desolate stretches of the mysterious Campagna, now
golden in the sunlight, now shrouded in ever-changing peacock
shaded shadows, which lies at the foot of the Alban Hills; the
enchanting vision of Rome, twelve miles distant, a cluster of elusive,
ghost-like outlines, with one outstanding, unchanging mark the
dome of St. Peter's; the superb pageant of the snow-topped Sabines,
sheltering Tivoli on their lower shapes; the historic villas of
Frascati-Torlonia with its wonderful terraces; Aldobrandini
with its stately facade; Falconieri with its royal salons and
fading frescoes; Muti with its ilex-avenues and its Stuart
memories he must renounce them all. If he is to see Nemi at its
loveliest he must press on, past Grottaferrata with its vineyards and
its Greek abbey ; Marino with its green woods and gray nuns ; Cas-
tel Gandolfo, where the road mounts up and up to the palace which
a Renaissance Pope built as a summer house, overlooking the Lake
of Albano.
By this time the heat will be intense, and the most resolute
pilgrim will hardly fail to pause for rest and refreshment at one of
the eating houses, with shady balconies, wreathed with wistaria and
Banksia roses, hanging sharply over the lake. On a calm sunny
morning, every cloud in the sky, every house on the banks, is
reflected in the water. The pointed summit of Monte Cavo with
the squalid huts of Rocca di Papa scrambling up its sides all lay
mirrored in the lake. But let the slightest gust of wind disturb
the calm, and the vision is swept away. The lake bears a black,
sinister aspect, whirlpools swirl angrily, and the pilgrim is re-
I9i6.] DIANA'S MIRROR THE LAKE OF NEMI 677
minded of the volcanic origin of this lovely but treacherous sheet
of water.
There is little time, however, on this May morning, to study
the moods of the lake ; another, lovelier still, and far more interest-
ing, is waiting for the pilgrim, behind the further slopes of Monte
Cavo. The road still mounting, runs past Ariccia, now famous
for nothing but the exquisite pleasant-eyed narcissi which grow
in its woods. A few kilometres further, lies Genzano, at the foot
of an extinct volcano. In the crater of this volcano is cradled the
Lake of Nemi.
Behind a fountain an excellent example of the barocco taste
of the decadent Renaissance in the main street of Genzano, inevit-
ably named the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, rise two almost perpen-
dicular streets, above which, behind a few miserable cottages, the
pilgrim takes his first look at the lake, lying thousands of feet
below. Its limpid waters are absolutely calm, and in them are re-
flected every tiny flower, every flaming bush of broom, every blos-
som fruit tree that jewel the steep, high banks. Immediately oppo-
site, on a high, dark crag, is perched the tiny, gray village of Nemi,
clustering near a round-towered mediaeval castle, its little houses
cling giddily to the sides of a cliff, and press together, as if holding
hands for safety. Seen across the lake, in the sunshine, it re-
sembles one of the fairy cities of our nursery tales, where yellow-
haired elves in apple-green jerkins and white-plumed caps swarm
the narrow streets ; where Jack climbs the bean-stalk, and Cinderella
drives to the ball in her enchanted coach. Alas! 'tis distance
lends enchantment to the view ! At close quarters Nemi is squalid
enough.
The lake is egg-shaped, and so deep-set that unless the sun is
shining the pilgrim has a shock of disappointment, so jealously do
the high banks guard the beauty below. But on a May morning
Nemi is enchanting. The starch-blue sky is not more brilliant than
the still bosom of the waters, and between the two rise the green
slopes, brilliant with a million wind-flowers white, blue and purple
wide-eyed periwinkles, frail hyacinths, and sweet violets. Herds
of happy, yellow-eyed long-bearded goats, under the charge of a
sun-tanned contadino crop the tender herbage. A few oxen spend
a hard-earned holiday wandering near the willows. An incessant
hum of insects fills the air. A thousand lizards dart over the crags.
As the pilgrim takes the first winding path down to the water's
edge, his senses are taken captive by the myriad sights, and sounds,
678 DIANA'S MIRROR THE LAKE OF NEMI [Aug.,
and perfumes, of the busy spring. But there is one jarring note
the whine of a crowd of ragged, dirty children begging for soldi.
No stranger escapes this ordeal. At least a score of bimbi most
of them with their younger brothers and sisters hoisted on their
backs follow every visitor faithfully down to the lake, doggedly
persistent, determined to wear out the patience of the meekest pil-
grim, until he gives them soldi to depart in peace. Clustering round
him, impeding his footsteps, clutching his arms, and trying to
get possession of his baggage, they insistently offer their so-
ciety and their services for the day.
" Listen, signore ! I, Beppino, will send away all the others
for two soldi/'
' Take me round the lake, signore. I know the best paths.
Due lire, signore, and my dinner."
"You take photograph, signora? You take me. See! I
stand by this tree, so! Due soldi, signora! "
" Signore, I am hungry. Last week my little sister fell into
the lake. She was drowned, signore. The whirlpool carried her
away."
" He lies," declare the others calmly.
The wisest plan is to choose the strongest and cleanest boy,
hire him for the day (one lira and lunch will be ample) to carry
packages, show the water, and pick flowers. His first duty, of
course, will be to send the other children off. Usually, however,
nothing will vanquish the perseverance of the ragged band. The
choicest spirits will follow the pilgrim steadfastly onwards, until
the shadows shorten, and the mid-day Angelus rings from the
Capuchin convent, and the churches at Genzano, and delicately
far Nemi. At the first stroke the imps will turn tail, and run
home in search of macaroni.
The little guides have one drawback they invariably try to
coax the pilgrim up one of the winding paths, in order to take the
high carriage road from Genzano to Nemi. This upper road has
its advantages. It is easy walking, and has a view of the sea,
which shines like a long, narrow, silver ribbon beyond the yellow
wastes of the Campagna. One also gets enchanting glimpses of
the lake but only glimpses. Besides, one misses the flowers; the
scent of the violets; the darting of the emerald-green lizards among
the gray crags; the peach trees which fling their rose-tinted blos-
soms over the turquoise waters of the lake. Decidedly to drink the
spell of the Lake of Nemi, the pilgrim must turn a deaf ear to
1916.] DIANA'S MIRROR THE LAKE OF NEMI . 679
Beppino, bid him walk ahead in silence, and resign himself to spend-
ing the day wandering with many pauses for rest and meditation
round the margin of the lake, even to the discomfort of scores of
tiny green frogs, which jump at the dust of a footfall, and throw
themselves, with agitated splashes, into the shallow water which laps
round the bases of the willows.
An hour's wandering will bring the pilgrim half-way between
Genzano and Nemi, those two squalid villages, which stand, scowl-
ing at each other, with the lake lying low between them. For cen-
turies there has been a feud between them; a breach which not
even time can heal. The Capuchins are the cause. It was they who
founded Nemi, and, afterwards, Genzano. And there was the
trouble for when they went to Genzano they took with them their
famous picture of the Madonna from the parish church at Nemi.
This could not be borne. Nemi, in danger and dismay, loudly de-
manded that the treasure should be restored, and finally appealed to
the Pope himself, and he Urban VIII. gravely considering the
matter, finally bade the friars restore the picture. So the Madonna
was restored, but not the good feeling. Nemi and Genzano still
look askance at each other.
If the pilgrim has the whole day before him, he should pay
Nemi a visit. Although her superb position above the lake is almost
her only charm to-day, yet beguiling legends lend color to her ill-
kept streets. In the little square under the shadow of the decaying
castle walls, one comes across a neglected church, covered with
faded finery. It contains, however, one interesting relic a cruci-
fix, carved centuries ago, by Fra Vincenzo da Bassiano. The friar,
says the legend, worked at it only on Fridays, and after long fasts
and meditations on the Holy Cross and, Passion. And when the
labor of love and tears was finished it was so exquisitely beautiful
that everyone guessed what the friar was too humble to disclose
that angelic fingers had helped to fashion it.
Nemi still holds this crucifix in honor, for the little town has
preserved its spirit of piety. The modern spirit of skepticism, which
has stormed the Alban Hills, and penetrated as far as Genzano,
has turned aside, and left Nemi undisturbed on her lonely crag.
The people are simple, superstitious, dirty, if you like, but happy,
exceedingly hard-working, economical, honest and kind-hearted.
Their grapes, peaches, vegetables, and most of all their famous
strawberry beds provide them with their life's work, an ample pro-
vision for their humble needs. The tiny, dark crimsoned fragole di
68o DIANA'S MIRROR THE LAKE OF NEMI [Aug.,
Nemi are in demand all over Italy. In Rome and Naples, Florence
and Turin, Genoa and Venice, every hotel with a reputation for its
cuisine must provide its clients, from the middle of May onwards,
with Nemi strawberries. One suspects that a good many of them
are grown nearer home, for the lakeside terraces, however lovingly
cultivated, can only supply a certain quantity. Wherever they come
from, however, they are exquisitely sweet and delicate, these little
sun-kissed strawberries, even without the cream which foreigners so
often clamor for in vain, either because they call it creina which
means custard, instead of pdnna, or else because cream is not
nearly so generally used in Italy as in our country.
The spirit of Genzano is otherwise from that of Nemi. It is
a very commercial spirit. The crowds of foreign visitors who
arrive daily in the season, the money they spend, the clothes they
wear, the food and drink they demand have all had the effect
of turning Genzano into a den of thieves and beggars. The pride
of Genzano is in her two restaurants, where visitors can drink
German beer, and (so-called) Scotch whiskey, to the tune of The
Merry Widow on the gramaphone, on the balconies overlooking
the lake. More than half the tourists who " do " the Lake of Nemi
only see it from one or other of these balconies, to which touts,
dressed as red devils, conduct them. Generally they go away
vaguely disappointed in " the view," after a jolly day among the
gramaphones, post-cards, and English tea rooms.
Only the wisest pilgrim penetrates as far as the dark crag
which holds Nemi on its shelf. Here below cultivation begins. The
ground is tilled, and tended, and watered, and among the orderly
terraces a score of small, wiry folk will pause from their work to
gaze wisely and kindly at him. Be sure they will not ask for money !
Even the children are surprised at the soldi pressed into their hot
hands in exchange for their posies. The women who are gathering
the sticks, the men who are bending over the strawberry beds, will
call a cheerful greeting, and will only be too pleased to give advice
as to the best paths, but, offered money, they will invariably reply,
with a smile:
" Thank you; we are here to work, not to beg! "
No wonder they and the sophisticated folk at Genzano call each
other by unsympathetic names! Nothing is easier to understand!
As the afternoon wears on, and the pilgrim, in his journey
round the lake, nears Genzano once more, Beppino sits down on the
step of a wayside shrine, where the traces of an ancient Madonna
1916.] DIANA'S MIRROR THE LATE OF NEMI 681
have been almost obliterated by rain and sun, and tells the tale of a
treasure ship, pointing, with dingy fat finger, to the water below.
" Just here, just below here, signore, it lies buried. You
cannot see it, no, but Giacomo he is my brother, signore he saw
it one night " And so on.
The pilgrim smiles, and pays more attention to the shrine than
the story. It is of pink stone, battered and worn. Behind an iron
lattice keen eyes can trace the outlines of a primitive fresco. On
either side a tiny lamp, tended daily by loving hands, burns in a
glass globe. A few wind-flowers and periwinkles are pushed
through the grating. A legend, half legible, runs around the edge
of the picture.
If faint, or weary, or distressed,
Gaze upon me, and find your rest.
The wise pilgrim obeys the summons. Disregarding the rest-
less hints of his Beppino, and the enticing strains of the gramaphone
from the nearest balcony above, he lingers on till the air grows
chilly; the small birds chatter; the purple twilight spreads slowly
over the hills; the banks grow dark and still, and the perfume of
their flowers is borne up by the wind. And then when the moon,
rising behind the trees, steals quietly from the clouds, and is re-
flected in the mirror below, the pilgrim rises, after a last Ave, and
says good-bye to one of the fairest spots in Italy.
IFlew Books.
POLAND: A STUDY IN NATIONAL IDEALISM. By Monica
M. Gardner. London: Burns & Gates. $1.25.
" To discover the greatness of her moral strength," says Adam
Mickiewicz, " Poland needs but to interrogate her living tradition,
her soul." And the Polish soul is made visible by Polish poetry.
The tragical life of the heroic nation, which saved Christianity from
the yoke of Islamic hordes, and which embodies the noblest quali-
ties and ideals of Catholic knightliness, is faithfully expressed and
wonderfully traced out in the masterpieces of her poets. Bismarck
is quoted as having said of Poland that her poets are politicians,
and her politicians are poets. There is, indeed, some truth in that
ironical saying. Polish poets are the true interpreters of the po-
litical life and aims of their own country. Gagged by the iron
hands of her spoilers, Poland invested her bards with the mission
of echoing her cries of distress, her yearnings for freedom, her
hopes for a bright and well-deserved future.
In a vivid, dramatic style, Monica M. Gardner has given us
an admirable study of modern Polish poetry. The object the author
has in view is to make the readers familiar with the idealism and
patriotism by which Poland has preserved her life through more
than a hundred years of sufferings and oppression. She rightly
states that besides being a splendid form of art, Polish poetry is a
great movement of national aspirations. The first two chapters of
her volume contain a living and poignant picture of the martyr-
dom of Poland, rent asunder by the most odious crime committed
against national freedom.
The following chapters of the book are devoted to the life and
works of the great triad of Polish poets, Mickiewicz, Krasinski and
Slowacki, and also to Bohdan Zalenski and Kernel Ujeiski. Beyond
furnishing valuable biographical data, these chapters afford us a deep
insight into the spiritual life of Poland. They disclose in touching
pages the mystical and patriotic trends of the Polish mind, which
has fed itself on the bread of sorrow. We see, in this volume,
the image of " a nation in mourning," as it has been portrayed by
great poets in their outbursts of hatred, or in their intimate con-
sciousness of a redeeming mission bestowed by God on crucified
1916.] NEW BOOKS 683
Poland. The best gems of Polish poetry are lavishly presented in
the pages of the volume, and they enhance its value. It is a su-
premely difficult task to render in a foreign language the dazzling
imagery, and the almost aerial, impalpable beauty of Polish poetry,
but the writer has courageously undertaken and admirably per-
formed her task.
Notwithstanding the feeling of sadness produced by the de-
scription of the prolonged sufferings of Poland, the book of Monica
Gardner opens to us brighter horizons. A beam of light radiates
upon the grave where the slain body of Poland has been lying for.
more than a century. The author believes in the approaching
resurrection of Poland. A people which has honored Christian
civilization with countless heroic deeds; a people whose heart
is possessed of a superhuman love for their own country, and of
inexhaustible treasures of undaunted constancy, of moral energies,
of intellectual gifts, this people is not doomed to an inglorious
death. Through tears and blood, it will wait for the hour of its
resurrection, and in the meantime, with Sigmund Krasinski, it will
consider its cruel sufferings as a mark of the divine love :
For our souls' and bodies' sufferings,
For our hundred years of torment,
We do give Thee thanks, Q Lord.
We are poor and weak and feeble,
But, from this martyrdom of ours,
Has begun Thy reign on earth.
THE THREE RELIGIOUS LEADERS OF OXFORD AND THEIR
MOVEMENTS: JOHN WYCLIFFE, JOHN WESLEY, JOHN
HENRY NEWMAN. By S. Parkes Cadman, D.D. New
York: The Macmillan Co. $2.50.
Here is a book that is not simply the biography of three leaders
of religious thought that had to do with Oxford. It is the history
of their times, the concomitant influences that environed them,
shaped their habits of thought, and gave them field for leadership.
It is not merely Wycliffe, Wesley and Newman ; it is the political,
social, religious, philosophical, literary aspect of the age into which
they were born : Wycliffe and the Later Medievalism, Wesley and
the Eighteenth Century, Newman and the Oxford Movement of
1832-45.
The subjects are displayed with no partisan bias, but set forth
with the broad, sympathetic handling of one in admiration for the
684 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
character which lives a noble life and thinks lofty thoughts, and is
powerful to win by mind and heart whole companies of followers.
The exposition of these histories is made with the ease and
perspicuity which only firm, comprehensive grasp of subject can
impart, and with a grace and charm of language which is, alas,
conspicuously absent from so much of the intensive studies of
scholars.
This book of six hundred pages is almost equally divided
among the three Oxford leaders ; each section closes with a selected
bibliography; and a short index finishes the volume.
With respect to the manner and spirit in which the historian
records the facts and expresses his views, the Catholic will find
little to criticize unfavorably and much to commend; though
necessarily he will disagree with the viewpoint many times assumed.
The Catholic, for instance, cannot forget that Wycliffe revolted
against the authority of the Holy See, declaimed against cherished
institutions, and denied Transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the
Altar. His present historian scarcely says more, save in matter
of detail, than would a Catholic viewing, with regret indeed, the
lamentable division in the Papacy, the social and economic con-
dition of the times in which Wycliffe lived, and the flat refusal of
the people to support his metaphysical explanation of the mystery
of the Eucharist.
Wesley's zeal the Catholic would commend, but he would de-
plore the fact that it was exercised in a cause they cannot espouse.
Articles of belief Wesley did enjoin, but his insistence on the prac-
tical side of the Gospel precepts threw out of perspective the dogma
and mysteries which the Bible no less clearly sets forth; yet the
Bible for Wesley was the sole and sufficient rule of faith. His
sacramental system is pauperized by reducing it to two, Baptism
and the Eucharist. For him, Baptism is not the communication of
grace, but a means to increase it; and in the Eucharist there is
not present the Body and Blood of Christ, but only the memorial
of Christ whereby the partakers of the sacrament enter into com-
munion with the Body and Blood of Christ.
As for Newman, Catholics will agree that " his most notable
achievement was this: that he actually raised the Roman Com-
munion to which he seceded out of the contemptuous misunder-
standing and deep dislike of his countrymen to a place in their
recognition, if not esteem, which before his appearance would have
seemed unattainable/ 7 They will applaud the reiterated high en-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 685
comiums and sympathetic appreciation passed upon his life-work
and character: that he was one of the spiritual geniuses of the age;
the commanding figure of the Catholic Renaissance in England;
the greatest apologist of the Roman Catholic Church since the days
of Bossuet; the master of a graceful English style, a language
which fulfilled the highest standards of the writer's art. They will
follow closely and appreciatively the author's characterization of
him who to many was and still is the great enigma. But they
will regret to see him misunderstood and undervalued because of.his
leaning and adherence to dogma and his championship of religion
founded on dogma, and they will as stoutly object to the author's
viewpoint, as to Kingsley's, that Newman was a deft handler of
words subtly cloaking over sophistry and skepticism, and, on oc-
casion of the Hampden Controversy, deliberately falsifying the
statements of his opponent, and, in Tract Ninety, of attempting
" the subjective creation of a historical situation by his manipula-
tion of language."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE LAWYER STATESMAN. By John
T. Richards. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co. $2.50 net.
The author has not sought in this volume to give us a biography
of Lincoln. He aims solely at correcting certain false ideas that
have been current in the United States regarding Lincoln's record
as a lawyer, his attitude toward the judiciary, and his views on
slavery, reconstruction and universal suffrage. Joseph H. Choate,
in an address before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institute in 1900,
declared that Lincoln, although a great President, was not an ac-
complished lawyer. Mr. Richards devotes most of the present
volume to the proof that Lincoln was one of the truly great lawyers
of his generation. He appeared as counsel in the Supreme Court
of Illinois in one hundred and seventy-five cases, a record rarely
equaled by any lawyer, even at the present day. Out of the fifty-
one cases in which he appeared alone, the decision was in his favor
in thirty-one.
His greatness as a lawyer appears in all his state papers, in his
examination of the race question, the subject of reconstruction, and
his discriminating review of every other question of governmental
policy.
No man ever entertained a higher regard for the judiciary than
Mr. Lincoln. For while he severely criticized the judges of the Su-
preme Court who concurred in the majority opinion in the Dred
686 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
Scott Case, he believed that opinion to be the result of the pro-
slavery views of Chief Justice Taney and the associate judges who
united with him in the decision.
Lincoln always maintained that the Civil War was not fought
to liberate the slaves, but that its sole cause was the preservation
of the Union. He fully recognized the fact that millions of dollars
were invested in slave property, and he gave the slave holders every
opportunity to save that property from confiscation. He enter-
tained no feeling of enmity toward the people of the Confederate
States, but he strongly maintained all during the war that they
were still members of the Union. The war was not to end until
every seceding State had renewed its allegiance to the Constitution.
There is little doubt that had Lincoln lived the chronicle of strife,
oppression and bloodshed w r hich marked the history of reconstruc-
tion would never have been written.
When a young man of twenty-seven Lincoln made a speech in
which he said : " I go for admitting all whites to the right of
suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding fe-
males." This is the only mention of " votes for women " ever
made by Lincoln, and on this obiter dictum alone is based the claim
that Lincoln favored woman suffrage.
A final chapter discusses Lincoln the orator. Mr. Richards
gives him high praise, for he enrolls him among the foremost
orators of any age.
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By
Henry B. Rankin. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.00.
Mr. Rankin was for several years a student in the Lincoln
and Herndon law office at Springfield, Illinois. He draws a vivid
picture of Lincoln's early years, and brings out clearly the de-
velopment of his unique personality and genius. He corrects many
an error that appears in the Lives of Lincoln, and from first-hand
evidence proves the falsity of the charges of insanity, infidelity,
the failure to meet a marriage date with Miss Todd, January i,
1840, and the like. He devotes special chapters to Ann Rutledge;
Mary Todd ; Lincoln's law partners, Stuart, Logan and Herndon ;
his speeches of national importance; his religion, and his position
in history.
The book is rather tiresome at times on account of the ful-
someness of its praise, and the pettiness of many of the details
which Mr. Rankin so zealously records. We were tempted to set
1916.] NEW BOOKS 687
the book aside when we f6und him declaring " that in all the annals
of time history does not record a superior to Lincoln, unless it be
the Saviour of mankind."
WORDSWORTH, HOW TO KNOW HIM. By C. T. Winchester.
Indianapolis, Ind. : The Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.25 net.
Professor Winchester's Wordsworth is one of a series of
studies sixteen in number of the great authors, published and in
preparation under the editorship of Will D. Howe. The purpose
of the work is " to inspire an appreciation of the great authors,
with enough of each author's text to give an understanding of his
work." It would be scant praise to say merely that Professor Win-
chester's volume fulfills this design. It does much more. It lays
bare the poet's spiritual development, with the moral predominates
of character, the aspirations, the successes and failures kindly but
truthfully brought to light. By tracing the development of Words-
worth's inner nature, the author has taken the only logical means
of arriving at a fair estimate of the poet's writings, which vary so
greatly in their spiritual fervor and prosy pedestrianism.
While Professor Winchester's study is sympathetically drawn,
it is also accurate, in that it brings out the imperfections of the
poet's work as well as its excellent qualities. Clear in style and
without the brilliant antitheses that obscure rather than enlighten,
the book recommends itself to the student who would know the
character and writings of the poet of Grasmere. It is a good book
to have on the library shelf authoritative and complete, though
not quite equaling Professor Harper's very recent masterpiece on
Wordsworth.
NEW WARS FOR OLD. By John Haynes Holmes. New York :
Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50 net.
What is Pacificism and what is a Pacifist? For a complete
answer to this question one need go no farther than the Rev. Mr.
Holmes' latest book. A radical advocate of peace-at-any-price, Mr.
Holmes has stated the case against force, and has built up a pre-
tentious structure in the cause of non-resistance.
To Mr. Holmes there are three problems international peace,
security and life. How best to obtain them is the burden of his
thesis. He puts aside all and every kind of force, attempting to
show the fallacy of resistance. His sole hope lies in non-resistance.
688 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
Hypnotized by his thesis, he traces what he is pleased to call the
history of non-resistance silent on what would militate against
him, and gives as exemplars Lao-tse, Buddha, Isaiah, and even our
Blessed Lord, St. Paul, the Christian Fathers, the Cathari, the
Waldenses, the followers of Wycliffe, St. Francis, Calvin, Erasmus,
the Quakers, Emerson, the Unitarians, Transcendentalists and So-
cialists ! Such an array ! One wonders if Mr. Holmes, in imagining
the compatability of this heterogeneous crowd, stopped to consider
the consequences of a Peace Convention attended by these person-
ages as delegates !
It is difficult to read New Wars far Old without quarreling
with its author. He is, he asserts in his preface, " a student of
human history and of human nature," yet throughout his treatise
he fails to cope with the practical essentials of life, passes over the
clearest evidence, and puts together a structure that has neither
stability nor beauty.
The manner in which he handles the subject may be seen in
detail in Dr. Schumacher's article in the July CATHOLIC WORLD, en-
titled Resistance in the Light of the Gospel.
WITH AMERICANS OF PAST AND PRESENT DAYS. By J. J.
Jusserand. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50 net.
The longest and best paper in this volume is the one on Ro-
chambeau and the French in America. It brings out clearly the
great help Catholic France gave the colonies in their fight for in-
dependence. M. Jusserand draws a good portrait of the disinter-
estedness, coolness and energy of Rochambeau, and tells us that his
brusque and peremptory manner merely veiled his real warmth of
heart. He and Washington became great friends, and their com-
bined armies, with the aid of de Grasse's fleet, made possible the
victory of Yorktown. At the outset Washington was very much
prejudiced against the French, owing to his souvenirs of the colonial
wars, and his reading of English books which pictured them as
" ludicrous and lively puppets." But the perfect discipline and gal-
lantry of the French troops, the courage and good sense of their
leaders during the Revolution soon made a most ardent friend
of France. As Jusserand well says: "We did not in that war
conquer any land for ourselves, but we conquered Washington."
The other essays treat 1'Enfant's planning of the city of Wash-
ington, France's estimate of Lincoln, the Franklin Medal, and In-
ternational Peace.
1916.) NEW BOOKS 689
MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION. By Roscoe Lewis Ashley. New
York: The Macmillan Co. $1.10.
This textbook, written for the high schools of the United
States, is an improvement on many of its predecessors from the
standpoint of historical accuracy. Still we noticed many an in-
accurate statement, which we feel certain the author will correct
in a second edition. He speaks of a married Catholic clergy with-
out stating that they married against the law of Western Christen-
dom; he exaggerates the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew's Day; he calls the Catholic Church in France a national
Church; declares that Tetzel sold indulgences; that St. Augustine
taught the Lutheran doctrine of justifying faith; he speaks of
Elizabeth as not "enforcing her religious laws very strictly;" asserts
that Galileo proved the Copernican theory; gives the impression
that Catholics did not translate the Bible until after the Reforma-
tion; and charges the Council of Trent with unfairness, that it was
controlled .by reactionaries.
As a Protestant, he naturally treats the Papacy as a human
institution, and believes in the right of the individual to his own
religious belief. On the other hand, he praises the Church for
using her influence against private warfare ; for fostering learning,
and caring for the poor and the sick ; for her democracy, and her
civilizing influence in the days of the barbarian invasions.
BELIEF AND PRACTICE. By Will Spens, M.A. New York :
Longmans, Green & Co. $1.75 net.
The fourteen lectures of the present volume were delivered
in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, during the Michaelmas
term, 1914, to a small audience of Mr. Spen's colleagues and pupils.
The lecturer, after vainly trying to distinguish between Liberalism
which he rejects, and Modernism which he defends, asks what must
be the attitude of a scholar to-day in view of the general dis-
crediting of many of the teachings of the Christian Church. He
answers : " The Modernists make clear their acceptance of Catholic
experience and their belief that any sound theology must embody
this acceptance. The extent of Catholicism, its parallels in other
religions, and its power to stimulate piety and devotion, appeared
to them to indicate that Catholic dogma ought to explain, however
inadequately, religious experience which was both real and forma-
tive. The. Modernists owed the conceptions, with which they tried
to erect a better system, in a large degree to Liberal Protestant
VOL. cm. 44
690 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
thought ; but they felt bound to explain and to preserve, much that
Protestant Liberalism began by denying/'
The Liberal theologians to our mind, however, have the better
of the argument. Men will never long accept religious experience
once its dogmatic foundations have been destroyed. Again, if
experience is to be the foundation of belief, we are at once landed
in pure subjectivism. Mr. Spen's great discovery, therefore, though
clothed in a multitude of vague phrases, is merely Luther's private
judgment clad in new garments.
INDIA AND ITS FAITHS. By James Bissett Pratt, Ph.D. Bos-
ton: Houghton Mifflin Co. $4.00 net.
Mr. Pratt, Professor of Philosophy at Williams College, has
honestly tried to give his readers an accurate account of -the chief
religions of India. His volume is in no sense the work of a special-
ist, for, as he says himself, he does not know the native tongues,
nor has he lived long enough in the country to know it at first hand.
His is rather the viewpoint of the traveler, who tries to find from
personal talks with Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jainas, Mohammedans
and Parsees what they really believe.
He describes in detail the religious rites of the people and the
philosophy of the scholars; the life of the monks, nuns and ascetics;
the offerings to the dead; the holy baths; the pilgrimages; the
temple worship; the home life and marriage customs; and the
modern reform movements.
In his desire to be fair he often fails to emphasize the vague-
ness and contradictory character of Indian philosophy, the super-
stition and externalism of its religious cults, the utter emptiness
of Buddhistic atheism and the like. For instance, he tells us
that he feels strongly the nobility and beauty of the doctrine
of transmigration, that he sees good in the insincere occultism of
the theosophists, and that he feels India has much to teach the West
in matters of religion.
It is rather difficult to understand what Mr. Pratt really be-
lieves. We suppose he would call himself a liberal Christian. The
Christianity he would have the missionary present to the Indian is
a modernistic type, which would eliminate the Trinity, speak hesi-
tatingly about the divinity of Christ, and of course set aside the
miracles of the Old Testament and the inspiration of the New, the
fact of creation, and the apostolic succession. He writes : " The
attempt to foist Christianity in its present Western garb upon the
1916.] NEW BOOKS 691
Indian as a complete substitute for his old religion is of doubtful
wisdom." He would have Indian Christianity comprise some of
the beliefs and institutions of India. But he admits that he is not
a theologian.
The volume, too, is spoiled by many an inaccuracy and many a
contemptuous reference to Catholic doctrine and practice, He
unfairly compares the obscene sculptures of the temples of Central
India to the carvings of Notre Dame; the hypnosis of the yogis
with the ecstasies of the Catholic saints; the pagan washing in the
sacred Ganges with the Catholic teaching on baptism ; the adoration
of the bloodthirsty goddess Kali with the Catholic's veneration of
the Blessed Virgin; the Upanishads of the Hindu with the Bible.
He ridicules the selfishness of the Catholic idea of merit, and
the insistence on saving one's own soul ; he asserts unblushingly
that St. Augustine denied the freedom of the will, like a modern
Mohammedan; that Christians believe immortality is not based on
the nature of the soul itself; that it is provincial to identify re-
ligion with creed ; and utters words of scorn against the monasteries
of South America, and the Spaniard's extravagance in buying
crowns for the Madonna.
STUDIES IN TUDOR HISTORY. By W. P. M. Kennedy. Lon-
don: Constable & Co. $1.50.
Professor Kennedy of St. Michael's College, Toronto, in these
essays deals with " the ideal of Tudor government." He discusses
in turn the strong and purposeful reign of Henry VII. ; the divorce
of Henry VIII. ; the literature and character of the Edwardine
Reformation; the failure of Queen Mary to understand her people;
the Elizabethan Reformation; Blessed Edmund Campion and Car-
dinal Allen and Elizabethan Puritanism. The general reader of
these pages will gain a good insight into some of the complicated
aims and intricate problems of sixteenth century life.
ORBIS CATHOLICUS. A Year Book of the Catholic World. Ed-
ited by Canon Glancey. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.50 net.
Every Catholic will be grateful to Canon Glancey for the
labor and care he has expended in compiling this valuable book for
reference. It consists of three parts. Part I. treats of Rome itself,
giving us a complete list of the Popes ; the Papal chapel and house-
hold; the Papal orders of knighthood; the college of Cardinals;
the Roman Curia; the diplomatic representatives; the apostolic
692 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
delegations. Part II. describes the Church outside of Rome. It
comprises the various dioceses of the Catholic world; the hier-
archy according to countries and provinces; the abbeys and pre-
latures; the vicariates and prefectures apostolic, and the religious
orders. Part III. gives a list of patriarchs, archbishops and bishops,
with date and place of birth, date of ordination, nomination and con-
secration; the sees each has filled; the offices held before appoint-
ment ; their home addresses ; besides we have the names of all pro-
tonotaries, domestic prelates, privy chamberlains, the Knights of
St. Gregory, St. Sylvester, and of the Holy Sepulchre.
VIVIETTE. By William J. Locke. New York : John Lane Co.
$1.00 net.
Mr. Locke's latest novel, Viviette, is written with all his usual
verve, although it is hard to see how his heroine manages to cap-
tivate so many hearts. She is a heartless coquette, who seems to
take perpetual delight in showing her sex's easy mastery over men.
The interest centres around two of her lovers, Austin Ware, a
clever, cultured lawyer, and his brother Dick, a stupid and uncouth
idler. Viviette deliberately plays one brother against the other,
until the jealous Dick is on the point of murder. Every reader
knows from the beginning that the tale will have the conventional
happy ending, but he wonders whether this ill-assorted pair are to
be congratulated upon their marriage.
THE RUDDER. By Mary S. Watts. New York: The Mac-
millan Co. $1.50.
This well-written story of contemporaneous American life
gains its title from the advice given by one of the heroes, Marshall
Cook, to his niece Eleanor: "Even going slow, even using our
best judgment, things don't always turn out right. But the dilemma
is that we can't drift along. We have got to make decisions. We
have each got a rudder, and we must steer ourselves with it the best
way we can."
As all the characters in these clever pages steer their vessels
by impulse, and most of them are insincere, corrupt, hypocritical or
immoral, it is to be expected that they will not steer true.
The heroine, who is supposedly a most brilliant and well-bred
young woman, falls in love with a wealthy parvenu's stupid son,
whose highest ambition is to be a successful baseball player. His
coarse, domineering ways so disgust her that she leaves him after
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 693
a few years of married life, to become a social worker, although
she is lacking in all the qualities that spell success.
Mrs. Watts' thesis seems to be that our labor leaders are all
dishonest " grafters," who simply work under the orders of cor-
rupt politicians. Her picture of modern industrial conditions is
unfair and lacks perspective.
LITTLE DONALD. By Mrs. Innes-Browne. New York: Ben-
ziger Brothers. 75 cents net.
The author gives us a simple, attractive story, related by
Grannie to the children gathered about her, of the kidnapping of
little Lord Donald of Glenvarlock Castle. How he comes to his
own to the delight of his mother and the old servants of the house
is told in most entertaining fashions
THE HIDDEN SPRING. By Clarence B. Kelland. New York :
Harper & Brothers. $1.25 net.
Quartus Hemmbly, a lumber magnate, owns the town of
Owasco its lawyers, its politicians, its bankers, and its judges.
But unluckily in his anger he kicks the hero's favorite dog, and at
once the easy-going young lawyer determines to fight this dishonest
millionaire to a finish. The story is as exciting as it is improbable,
but it is clean and fairly well written.
WHEN PAN PIPES. By Mary Taylor Thornton. New York:
George H. Doran Co. $1.35 net.
The air of old-fashioned romance hangs about this tale of
elopements, duels, forgeries, murders and peasant girls and boys,
who turn out to be lords and ladies in disguise. We could easily
have dispensed with the impossible priest and the dour Catholic
lord, who would fain immure one of the heroines within the murky
walls of a convent. The sham marriage at the end is also uncalled
for, and its stupidity makes the judicious grieve. *
THE IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES OF A FRENCH
TROOPER. By Christian Mallet. New York: E. P. Button
& Co. $1.00 net
This little book is rich in that personal touch so often absent in
official reviews of action at the front. Trooper Mallet of the
Twenty-second Dragoons was not a mere observer. His book retells
a story of personal experience through strenuous days from the call
694 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
to arms to the time when he was wounded at Loos. It is a thrilling
narrative, bringing before the readers the farewell at Rheims, the
march into Belgium, the destructive fighting back of the lines at
Staden, and the fierce grapple at Loos.
THE FIRST SEVEN DIVISIONS. By Captain Ernest Hamilton.
New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.50 net.
This is an authoritative record of the work done by the First
Expeditionary Force to leave England how, with the French, it
bore as best it could the onward rush of the German armies towards
Paris ; how the line bent at Le Cateau ; how it fiercely locked arms
with the enemy on the Aisne; how it fought the bloody battles on
the Ypres salient, and how, indeed, it was virtually wiped out of
existence. Captain Hamilton has told the story simply and dis-
passionately. The book, rich in detail and containing much ex-
clusive information, is almost barren of style. The story carries
itself. In August, 1914, the First Brigade was swirled into the
maelstrom. It consisted of four thousand five hundred men. Three
months later it numbered five officers and four hundred and sixty-
eight men.
MOTHER MARY VERONICA, FOUNDRESS OF THE SISTER-
HOOD OF THE DIVINE COMPASSION. A Biography by
the Rev. Herman J. Henser, D.D. New York : P. J. Kenedy
& Sons. $2.00.
To Catholics the spiritual fecundity of the lives of the chil-
dren of the Church, is, of course, no surprise, but to many outside
her fold such lives must seem strangely wonderful, and perhaps
at times to present a baffling problem. This very fecundity is but
a proof of the power of the Church to meet and provide a remedy
for every need. The work of the devoted nun, whose biography is
told in this volume, is but another evidence that the Church in the
words of the Gospel constantly draws from her treasury things
both new and old.
Mary Caroline Dannant, Mrs. Starr, was born in New York.
She was a convert to the Faith, and destined to promote its cause
with fervent devotedness. Early in her Catholic life she came
under the direction of Monsignor Preston, who was himself a con-
vert. He recognized at once Mrs. Starr's fitness for charitable
work, her remarkable powers of organization, and he directed her
how to use them. Her first work was to care for children who
1916.] NEW BOOKS 695
were in spiritual danger because of their unfortunate environment.
Although handicapped by misunderstanding and opposition the
work grew, and in 1886 Mrs. Starr, now Mother Mary Veronica,
was chosen Superior of the new Community of the Divine Com-
passion. The present volume tells of its fostering and its growth.
Its direct aim with regard to external work was to assist in the
reformation of girls who were exposed to danger by reason of the
conditions of their daily lives. Of this work the Catholic Girls'
Club was born. The club has proved of untold value.
The inspiring history of the Congregation and all its work is
well presented in this biography. The book is illustrated. Mother
Mary Veronica died at White Plains, New York, August 9, 1904.
THE ONION PEELERS. By Rev. R. P. Garrold, SJ. St. Louis :
B. Herder. $1.60 net.
Whimsical as the title of this book sounds, the book itself
will be found to be tragic rather than odd. The title is explained
by the proverb: "Life is an onion; we weep as we peel it."
The lonely hero must often have been very sad as the days of
his much-tried youth sped on, but he had one stanch friend, one
firm believer in his star. Providence, for him, was personified in
this friend this rescuer, protector, guide and angel. From the be-
ginning the boy was handicapped by a timid mother who had aband-
oned her faith, and consequently lost it for her child. The child
becomes a cynical doubter. Later he falls under the influence of
an atheist, and then he becomes a veritable scourge to the poor,
weak mother. At last he awakens to a protecting care and love of
her. Thenceforth the cleansing fires of tribulation long sustained
did their holy work. Of his protectress, and angel guardian we
will not tell, preferring that Father Garrold should himself intro-
duce the reader to this very interesting personage.
WITH THE FRENCH IN FRANCE AND SALONIKI. By
Richard Harding Davis. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons.
$1.00 net.
The last book from the pen of Richard Harding Davis con-
sists of a series of letters written from France, Greece, Serbia and
England. They cover the correspondent's visits to various sectors
of the Allies' front in Artois, Champagne, the Vosges, Serbia and
Greece. It was the exhausting ordeal of this trip into Serbia and .
the physical strain undergone in the retreat with the Allied armies
696 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
at Saloniki that led to the author's sudden death a few months
ago.
It would not be difficult to criticize this book as being superficial
rather than penetrating; sense appealing rather than thought pro-
voking. And this criticism would be justifiable if the writer had
intended anything more than a kinematic portrayal of the striking
things he witnessed. His purpose was to catch in the rapidly writ-
ten letters of a hurried correspondent the big lights and shadows of
the scenes he visited. He succeeded well the accounts being on
large impressionistic lines, vivid in color and swift in movement. It
is a pity that time was not given the author to condense and
arrange, in the quiet of his home, these soul-moving experiences into
a master volume. Surely the subject-matter is epic in scope and
character.
YOUR BOY AND HIS TRAINING. By Edwin Puller. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. $1.50 net.
Mr. Puller, former President of the Scoutmasters' Association
of St. Louis, has written a practical treatise on what he calls " the
eternal boy problem." He has some good things to say on the
responsibility of parents, the repressive and suggestive methods of
training, children's courts, and the influence of the Boy Scout
movement. Like many Non-Catholic social workers, he seems in-
clined to believe that mere knowledge of sex matters will in itself
surely keep a boy to the path of purity.
MANUAL OF EPISCOPAL CEREMONIES. Compiled by Rev.
Aurelius Stehle, O.S.B. Beatty, Pa.: St. Vincent Archabbey
Press. $2.25.
Father Stehle originally planned to, publish a revised edition
of the Pontifical Ceremonies published by the Rev. J. Hughes in
Dublin over sixty years ago. He finally determined to recast and
enlarge his predecessor's work, so as to make room for the views
of liturgists like Martinucci, de Herdt, Favrin, Schober, and the
recent decisions of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. This
manual is the best guide to episcopal ceremonies that we have in
English. Bishop Canevin of Pittsburgh well says in his introduc-
tion : " It will be useful to seminarians as an easy and reliable
introduction to episcopal ceremonies ; it will be a guide to sacristans
as an orderly and complete description of things to be prepared
for solemn functions ; it will be welcome to masters of ceremonies
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 697
as an easy method of reviewing their more extensive liturgical
studies ; and to priests and bishops it will prove a convenient Vade
Mecum, to enable them to prepare on short notice to fulfill their
sacred offices according to the rubrics."
The same author has just published a pamphlet of some twenty
pages on the Laying of the Corner Stone and Blessing of a Church;
the price of which is ten cents.
CUBA OLD AND NEW. By Albert G. Robinson. New York:
Longmans, Green & Co. $1.75.
This book will prove of interest to the tourists, the business man
and the scholar, for it gives a first-hand account of the Cuba of to-
day, and a most fair and adequate sketch of its history from the
days of Columbus. Mr. Robinson has been visiting the island for
the past twenty years, and has met most of the prominent Cubans
who have made history during that period. The reader will gain-
from these pages a good idea of the struggle for independence, the
relations between Cuba and the United States, the various States,
the various products and industries of the country, its government,
politics and commerce.
THE MIRROR OF JUSTICE. By Robert Eaton, Priest of the
Birmingham Oratory. New York: Benziger Brothers. 35
cents net.
This little volume contains sixteen sermons on our Blessed
Lady. In simple, devout and beautiful language Father Eaton
treats of the Immaculate Conception, the Nativity, the Annun-
ciation, the Purification and the Assumption.
THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. Edited by James
Hastings, D.D. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.00.
This is the first of a short series of books on the great Christian
Doctrines, edited by Dr. Hastings. His aim, he tells us, " is to
present the doctrine of prayer in an orderly sequence, and to main-
tain contact with reality at every step by means of illustration or
example." In twenty chapters the author discusses the nature,
manner and value of prayer, minor aids to prayer, scientific ob-
jections to prayer, and answers to prayer.
We are told at the outset of the volume that " notwithstanding
the importance of prayer in religion and life, it finds little place
in theology." Of course the author means Protestant theology, for
698 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
throughout his volume he ignores almost absolutely the great
Catholic saints and doctors of prayer. It is like the play of Hamlet
with Hamlet omitted. The chapter on answers to prayer would
hardly satisfy an unbeliever with its improbable account of the cure
of Dorothy Kerin and its many unconvincing instances.
THE GIFT OF IMMORTALITY. By Charles Lewis Slattery,
D.D. Boston: Hough ton Mifflin Co. $1.00 net.
This volume represents the fourth of the series of Raymond
F. West Memorial Lectures, at the Leland Stanford Junior Uni-
versity. They were delivered last fall by the Rector of Grace
Church, New York City.
Mr. Slattery tells us that there are three roads which men may
travel in their search for the truth of immortality. The first is
the road of argument, which he refuses to follow, because he
falsely thinks " that we cannot prove immortality in any scientific
or mathematical fashion, but merely reason out its exceeding proba-
bility." The second is the road of imagination traveled by the
poets, among whom he specially mentions St. John, St. Bernard,
Dante and Newman. The third is the road of practical experience
which he purposes to travel. To his mind the supreme question is,
what effect does a conviction of immortality have upon this life
which we are now living? He assumes the life beyond death, puts
it to a practical test, proves that it has a beneficial effect upon us,
and then declares we have a practical reason for trusting the
hypothesis to be true.
The book is well written, contains some suggestive thoughts,
but it will avail nothing to the man in the street who denies the
existence of the world to come.
THE INSULTED AND INJURED. By Fyodor Dostoevsky.
From the Russian by Constance Garnett. New York: The
Macmillan Co. $1.50.
Maurice Baring, in his Outline of Russian Literature, truly as-
serts that Dostoevsky holds the foremost place in Russian literature,
and is in fact one of the greatest writers the world has ever pro-
duced. He is great " because of the divine message he gives, not
didactically, not by sermons, but by the goodness that emanates like
a precious balm, from the character he creates."
The hero of the present story is the novelist himself, ever
working as a literary hack for money to keep body and soul to-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 699
gether, and coming in contact, both in prison and out of it, with
the lowest typ.e of criminals. His imprisonment in Siberia gave
him the power to depict the abnormal characters in whom he
always delights. In this gloomy volume we have sketches of the
cynical sensualist, Prince Valkovsky; his degenerate son, Alyosha;
the epileptic Elena, and her insane grandfather, types which recur
time and time again in everyone of his novels.
THE WAY OF ALL FLESH. By Samuel Butler. New York:
E. P. Button & Co. $1.50 net.
It seems to be quite the proper thing to-day to extol the works
of Samuel Butler. Arnold Bennett calls this present novel " one of
the great novels of the world;" G. Bernard Shaw is indignant
because it made so little impression upon the English public; Pro-
fessor Phelps of Yale says that " the style is so closely packed with
thought that it produces constant intellectual delight." We found
the book a rather stupid attack upon Christianity, which the author
identifies with dishonest, unbelieving, sordid and worldly Anglican
ministers. His hero is an insufferable cad, who while in the
ministry a few months is sent to jail for immorality. On his dis-
charge, he marries forthwith an immoral woman, who was once
a servant in his father's house. She does not deign to tell him
that she had been married before, and that she had not gone through
the formality of a divorce. Luckily the first husband reappears
after the woman has become a chronic drunkard, and our hero is
free again. Of course the only possible way this Cambridge scholar
can earn a livelihood is by running a second-hand clothing store.
He had learned tailoring while in prison !
We can imagine Butler with his tongue in his cheek all the
while he was penning this disgusting story. How anyone could
find intellectual delight in it is beyond us. The book is full of
flippant denials of everything a Christian holds dear, but there
is not the slightest evidence of the author's grasp of any of the
problems he so glibly comments upon. Butler like Shaw delights in
shocking his readers. College men are incompetents ; ministers are
criminally dishonest; tenement-house rationalists are supremely
clever philosophers; parents are unfit to rear children properly;
money is the only real god that men worship; instinct is the one
ultimate court of appeal; few men care two straws about truth;
a perfect grasp of the Bible means infidelity these are a few of the
" shockers " Butler utters for the edification of the unthinking.
700 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
STAMBOUL NIGHTS. By H. G. Dwight. New York: Double-
day, Page & Co. $1.25 net.
Mr. Dwight has given us an unusual collection of tales re-
printed from the pages of several of our better periodicals; and
he possesses an unusual gift of story-telling. Especially striking is
the sure touch with which he uses the commonly uncertain tool of
reticence; for over and over again we are stirred at silences that
make us feel provoked, but not contemptuous the sign that a story
has been artistically told. Vividly some scene rises out of these
pages like a fire-lit group out of the enveloping night, and then as
rapidly fades away again into the impenetrable shadow. And we
remain anxious for further knowledge. But it is a far country
and a little-known people to which we have been introduced, and
quite properly the story-teller leaves us engulfed in the impatient
sense of dissatisfaction which is the ordinary fate of a Western
audience listening to an Oriental. Mr. Dwight writes with what
seems to be true local color, so far as the untraveled critic is at
liberty to judge; and, undeniably, with a swing such as will endear
him to the lovers of action.
NAN OF MUSIC MOUNTAIN. By Frank H. Spearman. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.35 net.
A tale of wild adventure, blended with a thrilling love story,
stirring enough to satisfy the taste of the small boy and romantic
enough for the most exacting maiden-aunt, Nan of Music Mountain
possesses this attraction too, that it is open and clean. Once or
twice there is a sentence or a paragraph that might easily have been
excluded in the interest of the very sensitive reader, but on the
whole the pages are as innocent as they are rollicking and daredevil,
and hence provide welcome food for that large class who like their
diet highly seasoned, but insist that it shall be irreproachably pure.
INSTINCT AND HEALTH. By Woods Hutchinson, A.M., M.D.
New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.20 net.
Though Dr. Hutchinson' s love of paradox was not quite as
completely developed in his earlier writings as at present, it was
unmistakably active there; and the book before us gives recurrent
instances of his great fondness for exploding " popular fallacies.'*
Then also there is here much instruction on the elementary prin-
ciples that must be kept in mind by anyone desirous of living a sane
life. Not the least advantage of the book is its insistence upon the
necessity of getting rid of the valetudinarian viewpoint, if we
1916.] NEW BOOKS 701
would be really healthy. Good health is one of the things that
ordinarily should be thought of only in a general way. Following
the path of attention to the common needs and the common laws
is the surest security for soundness of body and of mind. Air,
sunshine, water, sleep, simple, nutritive food are the means upon
which reliance should be placed, rather than upon medicines or food
novelties or startling idiosyncrasies of diet. This is wise counsel,
and our author has done good by constantly insisting upon it.
ON THE OLD CAMPING GROUND. By Mary E. Mannix. New
York: Benziger Brothers. 85 cents.
The little Indian maid who rebelled at the kindly care of the
Mission sisters and ran away to the Chicago fair with the assistance
of a busybody, self-appointed social investigator, found to her dis-
appointment that the great world was an unpleasant place to live in,
and that friends as unselfish as the good Sisters were hard enough
to find. When she was able to get back again to the Sisters, she
was a happy and a converted child. Her own story of her expe-
riences is the continuation of previous tales of the Indians of Cupa,
already well and favorably known among Catholic boys and girls.
PSYCHOLOGY AND PARENTHOOD. By H. Addington Bruce.
New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25 net
In a book intended primarily for parents, Mr. Bruce imparts
instruction that will prove useful to many of them, not so much by
way of providing definite rules and methods, as by imparting a
sense of certain principles that must be borne in mind when one
is attempting to guide the development of children. The book is an
attempt to restate in popular form the chief findings of psychology
that bear upon the upbringing of children. Of course it makes no
mention of religion. A fair-sized volume is constructed by dint of
spreading the science pretty thin ; and many illustrative cases, most
of them interesting enough, are presented. The reader can get
useful hints from these pages, if he has the discretion to make
proper application of the principles affirmed.
FEMINISM: ITS FALLACIES AND FOLLIES. By Mr. and
Mrs. John Martin. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50 net.
This volume is a strong indictment of revolutionary feminism
from both the man's and the woman's point of view. They both
attack the Woman's Movement on account of its promotion of race
suicide, its destruction of the family, its insistence on economic in-
dependence, and its " useless and illusory " suffrage propaganda.
702 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,
T N good time the Franciscan Fathers have issued for the year
* 1917 St. 'Anthony's Almanac, to which we have had the pleasure
of calling the attention of our readers for some years back. Be-
sides being a daily calendar, St. Anthony's Almanac contains a list
of all the feasts of the Church, the indulgences which may be gained
for every month, and many interesting stories and articles.
The price of the Almanac is twenty-five cents, and it may be
obtained from St. Joseph's College, Callicoon, New York.
FOREIGN PUBLICATIONS.
L'Homme-Dieu, by Monsignor Besson, (Paris: Pierre Tequi. 3/rj.)
This is the thirteenth edition of the conferences on the Incarnation delivered
in the Cathedral of Besangon some fifty years ago by Monsignor Besson, Bishop
of Nimes. They discuss the true idea of the Incarnation, the authenticity of
the Gospels, the teachings, miracles and prophecies of Christ, His birth, death
and resurrection.
La Guerre en Artois, by Monsignor Lobbedey. (Paris: Pierre Tequi.
3f rs ~ 5-) Monsignor Lobbedey, Bishop of Arras, has written an excellent
account of the present war in Artois. Hundreds of eyewitnesses and combatants
tell the story of the two bombardments of Arras, the courage of the lay and
clerical soldiers, the work in the hospitals, the diocesan clergy who died fighting
for France, etc.
The late numbers of Pages Actuelles sent us by Bloud and Gay of Paris
treat of the English Inquiry Concerning the Conduct of the Germany Army in
France and Belgium, by Henri Davignon ; The Massacres in Armenia, by the
Abbe Griselle ; The Impressions of an Eyewitness in Alsace and Champagne,
by Fernand de Brinon; Private and Public Ways of Combating the Evils of
War, by Henri Joly; The French Press and the War and France Above All,
by Raoul Narsy.
G. Beauchesne et Cie of Paris are also publishing a series of brochures
on the war, entitled Avec les Diables Bleus, The first two deal with the cam-
paign in Artois and the siege of Verdun.
St. Thomas d'Aquin et la Guerre, by Abbe Thomas Pegues, O.P. (Paris:
Pierre Tequi.) The Abbe Pegues is well known in France for his excellent
commentary of the Summa of St. Thomas, ten volumes of which have already
appeared. The present treatise sets forth in clear and accurate language the
teaching of St. Thomas on the morality of war.
Le Chef Catholique et Fran^ais (2frs. 25) ; Le Pretre, Aumonier, Brancar-
dier, Infirmier, by Dom Hebrard, O.S.B. (Paris: G. Beauchesne et Cie. 2frs.
50.) The Abbe Hebrard has written two small treatises on the duties and respon-
sibilities of the French priests and army officers who are fighting at present in the,
Great War. They treat of prayer, sacrifice, Communion, Mass, the interior life,
eternal life, the love of country, and the love of God.
Nos Allies du del, by Abbe Stephen Coube. (Paris: P. Lethielleux.
3frs.) In warm language this volume of twelve conferences calls upon France
to remember her celestial Allies as a source of confidence and encouragement.
The author shows in each delectable talk how his mother-country has shared
through all the centuries the special protection of Our Lady, of St. Michael,
the Guardian Angel of France, of St. Genevieve, the Patroness of Paris, of
saintly Louis, of Jeanne d'Arc and many others.
IRecent Events.
The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD ivishes to state that none
of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of
the magazine, ivith 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 part taken by the French Parliament
France. since the war began has had various aspects.
The spirit of the Third Republic, so far as it
is reflected in its representatives, is one of extreme jealousy of the
Executive, with a strong desire to keep everything in its own hands.
But on the outbreak of the war the Caillaux murder and its at-
tendant scandals had so discredited the existent Chamber and Senate
that they had the good sense not to assert themselves, and were
willing to leave the direction of affairs in the hands of the President
and his Ministers. This went on for a long time, but at last the
Senate and the Chamber of Deputies began to assert their hereto-
fore existing functions of control. A number of blunders that had
been made, especially by M. Millerand as Minister of War, gave
them an opportunity. A demand was made for a secret session
of Parliament in order that it might take full control even of the
details of the campaign. This demand was resisted by M. Viviani
as likely to make things appear both to the country and the enemy
as much worse than they really were. The agitation, however, still
went on, until M. Viviani's successor as premier, M. Briand, ac-
cepted the proposal on condition that the session should be brief,
and should be limited to an exchange of explanations. The direct
and surface cause was the battle of Verdun. The rapid advance
of the attack in its first week, during which the Germans took more
ground by far than they have gained in three times as many months,
was covertly attributed to want of foresight and preparation on the
part either of the Government or of the high military command.
The Chamber was desirous of being fully informed on this point.
In yielding to this desire, M. Briand not only consented to give
explanations about this particular case, but to give precise informa-
tion as to the condition of French effectives, and the material and
704 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
defensive organization in general, and even upon the whole of its
general policy. In return M. Briand asked for either the full co-
operation of the Chambers, or for a clear demand that his Govern-
ment should make way for another.
The discussion which took place in the secret sessions must
have been very full and complete, for a whole week was devoted
to it. The British secret session only lasted two days. The fruit
of the sessions was embodied in six resolutions, one of which ex-
pressed confidence in the Government, and in its exercise of author-
ity over all the organs of national defence. While strictly refrain-
ing from intervention in the conception, direction, or execution of
military operations, the Chamber's resolutions declared that it meant
to see to it that the preparation of weapons, both military and
industrial, should be pushed forward in a way corresponding to the
heroism of the soldiers of the Republic. The right was reserved
to demand further secret sessions if necessary, and a direct delega-
tion was appointed to exercise effective control, even on the spot,
of all the services intrusted with meeting the requirements of the
army. These resolutions, although they do not seem to show
absolute and unlimited confidence, were accepted by the Govern-
ment and by the Chamber, the vote against acceptance numbering
only eight with four hundred and forty-four in favor.
The Allies being all agreed upon a united prosecution of the
war until it results in a decisive victory, have been taking thought
for the measures which must be taken in order to reap the legitimate
fruits of that victory, and to prevent the resumption by Germany
of that commercial domination which she had been on the point of
attaining in the markets of the world. At the invitation of the
French Government a Conference of the Allied Powers has been
held at Paris. These delegates met as representatives of their
respective Governments, but had power to do no more than make
representations of what they, after mature consideration, thought
desirable. Practical effect to their recommendations depends upon
the legislative action of each of the States represented. It was
no slight feat for the delegates of so many nations, each with
interests and economic doctrines of its own, to reach a compre-
hensive agreement, not merely upon the financial and economic
measures to be taken against Germany during the struggle
and during the period of reconstruction to follow it, but
also upon the main lines of their economic policy on these
subjects when the war is over. It is the German economic offensive
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 705
that has rendered it necessary for the Allies to form an equally
close defensive alliance in the economic sphere. The scheme
formed at Paris is so elaborate that it is impossible to do more than
to refer to a few of the measures proposed. For the period during
the war part of these proposals have already been enforced, but
greater stringency is advocated in regard to the prohibition of
trade. The Conference recommends that during this period the
laws and regulations in the Allied countries which forbid trade with
the enemy should be strictly coordinated, and that an absolute em-
bargo should be put on the importation of goods coming from enemy
countries. For the reconstruction period, the enemy powers should
be refused " most- favored-nation " treatment for a number of
years not specified. Protective measures should be taken against
dumping and to prevent enemy subjects in Allied countries
from engaging in industries which concern national defence or
economic independence. For the period after the peace the Allied
countries should take measures to make themselves independent of
enemy States in the raw materials and manufactured articles which
are essential for the normal development of their economic activities.
One of the noteworthy features of the Conference was that
among Great Britain's representatives was the Prime Minister of
Australia, Mr. Hughes, and Sir George Foster, the Canadian Minis-
ter of Trade and Commerce. This may be taken as a presage of the
closer union of the British Empire which, as Mr. Asquith says, must
be one of the results of the war. While the Conference cannot be
without considerable influence, full results depend upon the action of
the States concerned, especially upon Great Britain. The recom-
mendations go counter to what is almost the religion of the Liberal
party. Any infraction of its tenets will, it is to be expected, meet
with decided opposition. In fact, Lord Bryce and other men of
equal note and influence have already entered a protest.
The great naval battle off the coast of Jut-
Germany, land has been the occasion of unlimited jubi-
lation in Germany. England's arrogant pre-
sumption, it is asserted, has been rent. The great success of the
German High Sea Fleet has made the German heart everywhere
beat with vivid enthusiasm. No longer does Britannia rule the
waves. The deathblow has been dealt to the Anglo-Saxon idea
that Great Britain is the mistress of the seas. The Kaiser declares
that the first great hammer blow has been struck, and the nimbus
VOL. cm. 45
706 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
of the British world supremacy has disappeared. A new chapter in
the history of the world has been opened. Berlin and other cities
have been be-flagged ; holidays have been granted to the school chil-
dren to celebrate the event. Yet strange to say the blockade of Ger-
many continues as stringent as ever. No ship that rides the waves
can get either in or out of a German port to cross the Atlantic. The
jubilation over the submarine which has reached this country shows
how grateful are the Germans for the discovery of even a small
outlet. Hundreds of thousands of British soldiers with supplies
and munitions cross and re-cross the English Channel without the
smallest fear of molestation from the German High Sea Fleet.
The truth is that military reasons dominate not only, all that is done
in Germany, but all that is said. " For military reasons we re-
frained till now from making public the loss of the vessels Liitzow
and Rostock/' This is the statement made by the German Admir-
alty more than a week after it had given out what it declared to be
a complete list of all the losses sustained in the Jutland battle. " In
consideration of the impression that might be created abroad, it has
up till now been inadvisable to speak about the difficult situation
caused by superior force. Never in the history of the world has a
people suffered such privations in war as our people have done."
This is the declaration of the former Minister of Finance, Dr.
Helfferich, now the Minister of the Interior, about the effects of
the blockade maintained by Great Britain, a statement which shows
that military reasons govern his own department as well. It is the
part, therefore, of a prudent man before giving credit to German
statements to reflect whether or no there are military reasons
to be taken into account.
The British account of the battle differs widely from that of
the German. The Admiralty's first report was decidedly pessi-
mistic. Later reports tended to make it less so. The results
have given considerable satisfaction, seeing that the ring
of steel is as strong as ever, and British control of the
seas no less firm. Full and complete, however, the satisfaction
is not, nor will it be, for Great Britain looks to a decisive defeat of
the German High Sea Fleet. As the Battle of Jutland did
not effect this, the British are almost willing to look upon it as a
defeat, and some think that the Germans may be pardoned for
celebrating their escape as a victory. For, as Mr. Balfour says,
the German headquarters know perfectly well that their fleet is in
no position to meet the British fleet on even terms.
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 707
Evidence accumulates of growing division of opinion on vari-
ous points with regard to the method of carrying on the war and
upon the principles upon which peace is to be made. The Chan-
cellor of the Empire is looked upon by the Conservatives as
wanting in due energy, as being unwilling to make full use of
the sole means left to Germany of crippling Great Britain
the submarine. He is severely criticized also for giving heed
to this country. The political censorship has given ground
for many complaints, although it is frankly admitted that
there are many things which it is necessary to keep from the knowl-
edge of the public. The censorship of the press is so severe that
feeling has found vent in pamphlets, some of which have grievously
vexed the Chancellor. One of these is entitled : " The German
Empire on the way to become an Episode in History : a Study of
Bethmann Policy sketched out and outlined by Julius Alter Very.
Confidential. Printed as a Manuscript." In a speech before the
Reichstag, the Chancellor defended himself against the attacks of
those whom he called the pirates of public opinion. "Libels and
calumnies at home are loathsome, but I accept the battle and will
fight it through with all the means at my disposal." The more
moderate policy of the Chancellor seems to have enraged the Prus-
sian Junkers, of whom the Conservative parties are largely made
up. His supporters are found chiefly among the Centre and the
Social Democrats.
Germany has been beforehand with the Allies in the discussion
of the commercial problems which will arise after the war. At a
time when her prospects were much brighter than they are at pres-
ent, when the road from Berlin to Bagdad or even the Persian Gulf
seemed to be open, a well-known writer named Naumann published
a book called Central Europe, which was at first received in Ger-
many as a new commercial gospel. Central Europe, consisting of
the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, were to become one
economic whole, with the Balkan States and the Turkish Empire
as appendages. The trade and commercial arrangements within
these borders were to be so beneficial that the other smaller States
would feel themselves penalized by being left out, and would seek
admission into the fold. Hence would arise a new commercial
world, of which Germany would be the centre, at once the support
and the reaper of its gains. So great would become her strength
that not only her political but her economical domination would be
secure. She would herself become a self-contained, self-supporting
;o8 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
community, able to live on its own resources, to defy the rest of
the world, and be free from any necessity to enter into com-
mercial relations with it. This great political and economical sys-
tem, stretching from the North Sea and the Baltic into Asia, would
be released from the awkward facts of sea power and freed from
dependence on sea trade. Fuller discussion, however, and perhaps
the Russian successes in Armenia, have led to grave doubts being
cast upon the possibility of realizing this scheme. The leaders
of industry, finance, trade and shipping have refused to accept the
belief that Central Europe can be made independent of the rest of
the world, and have, on the contrary, declared that on no account
must Germany turn her eyes from the sea. The inability to do
without world markets is now recognized, and indeed it is said that
this is the real reason why Germany yielded to the demands of this
country, as the preservation of peace with the United States is all
important.
The success which at first Austria met with
Italy. brought to a head the smoldering discon-
tent which had for some time existed with
the Cabinet of Signor Salandra. The war was the result of the
burning desire of the people of Italy to relieve all their compatriots
from foreign domination. Various sections of the Chambers were
as much in favor of yielding to this desire, as Salandra's own
party, which was but a small one, yet he had always refused rep-
resentation in the Cabinet to these sections. When reverses took
place, Signor Salandra's request for a vote of confidence was re-
fused. He, thereupon, at once resigned. The new Cabinet has
for its head the father of the House of Deputies, Signor Boselli.
It has been formed upon a wider, in fact upon a national, basis,
similar to that which has been adopted in France and Great Britain,
with the object of carrying on the war with greater energy. Liberal
Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Radicals, Reformists, Socialists
and a Republican make up its members. As a clear manifestation
of national unity, for the first time a member of what is called
the Catholic party has been included. Signor Meda, the new Min-
ister of Finance, although he cannot be regarded as an official repre-
sentative of the Catholic party, for there is no such party strictly
so-called, has yet acted with a few other members as a recognized
defender of Church interests. Neither he nor his friends were
in favor of entering into the war, but, as good Italians, they loyally
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 709
supported the Government when once Italy's decision was taken.
The only party which has no representative in Signor Boselli's
Cabinet are the Official Socialists. Baron Sonnino retains office as
Minister for Foreign Affairs.
The Allied Powers have had to take drastic
Greece. action in defence of their position in Greece.
Invited as they were by M, Venezelos when
Prime Minister, their presence has not been at all pleasing to the
King, his army officers and a self -constituted dominant oligarchy,
who, against the interests of their own country, are in sympathy
with the Teutonic powers. Although bound by treaty to pro-
tect Serbia in case of its being attacked by Bulgaria, King Con-
stantine failed when Bulgaria took sides with Germany. It was
said at the time that there was a secret understanding between the
King of Greece and the King of Bulgaria for mutual aid and cooper-
ation. When a few weeks ago Greece yielded up the possession of
a fort or two on her eastern frontier to Bulgaria without a struggle,
thereby endangering the position of the Allies, the latter felt it
necessary to guard against Greek treachery. It must be remem-
bered that King Constantine is in the strictest sense a constitutional
monarch, to whom by the Constitution all initiative is denied, that
this Constitution was in its inception guaranteed by the three
Powers, Russia, France and Great Britain, when they had freed
Greece from Turkish rule, that the King's father owed his throne
to the same powers, and that the bulk of the people of Greece are
supporters of M. Venezelos, who is in favor of the Allies. The King
having acted in a way that exceeded the powers conferred upon
him, the guarantors of his throne felt justified in protecting both
themselves and the Constitution from a would-be usurper. They
accordingly demanded the complete demobilization of the Greek
army; the substitution of a new Cabinet pledged to an appeal
to the voters of the country, the dissolution of the present Chamber
which had been elected under abnormal conditions, fresh elections
as soon as the electoral body has been restored, and the dismissal
of certain police officials who have been under foreign influence.
The King, of course, could do nothing else but accept these de-
mands, as Greece is in the hollow of the hands of the Allied sea
power, who, by enforcing a blockade, could bring everything to a
standstill. A new ministry was at once formed, under M. Zaimis,
whose acceptance of office is looked upon as a guarantee that all
7io RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,
constitutional rights will be allowed to assert themselves unhindered.
The Chamber has been dissolved, and new elections are to be held
during the present month. The blockade was at once relaxed.
The Allies took pains to make it clear that they were acting as
guardians of the liberties of the Greek people, and general satis-
faction is on the whole felt at the solution that has been reached.
The losses which Turkey has so far sus-
Turkey. tained have been enormous. Although
the British failed at the Dardanelles and
suffered the loss of some ten thousand men at Kut-el-Amara,
yet they still hold posts some two hundred miles distant from
the border of the Turkish Empire. Fear is no longer felt of an
invasion of Egypt, and the attempt to stir up revolt in Darfur
has been frustrated. The great successes, however, have been
achieved by the Russians. Erzeroum and Trebizond are still in their
possession, in spite of determined efforts by the Turks to recover
the last-named place. The latest reports are to the effect that the
Russians are again marching onward, and that they have taken
Baiburt, sixty-five miles northwest of Erzeroum. This indicates
the rapid advance toward the Turkish capital, while it places in their
hands a very important stragetic point, the last barrier to further
progress. A further blow to Turkey's power is the revolt of the
Grand Sherif of Mecca supported by the Arab tribes of West and
Central Arabia. They have declared their independence of the
Ottoman rule from which they have suffered so long. Mecca and
Jeddah have been seized and Medina is being besieged. In the
desperate straits to which Turkey is now reduced this revolt may
prove to be the deathblow. The Turks have indeed great forces
massed in Palestine, but they are so beset with enemies on all sides
that they can scarcely spare any to deal with this new threat. The
revolt is the outcome of the Pan-Arab movement, the aim of which
has been the ejection of the Turk from the Arabian peninsula, and
the forming of a great confederation of the Arab tribes. From
the moment that Turkey's Sultan became the vassal of Germany
and the Kaiser the Protector of Islam the fierce Arabs of the Hejas
determined no longer to be subject to such an alien bondage. To
them German control of Constantinople meant German control of
the holy cities. The Sultan, by accepting it, lost the right to be any
longer the Trustee of Islam.
I9i6.] RECENT EVENTS 711
The long-drawn-out trench warfare seems
Progress of the War. to be nearing its end. Verdun is still the
only place at which the offensive is still in
the hands of the Germans. Here they have made some progress,
but it has now become a matter of still less importance than it ever
was whether they reach the fortress or not. A powerful attack
made upon the Ypres salient led to the anticipation that a third
attempt to reach Calais was contemplated. Here, as during the
second Battle of Ypres, the Canadians bore the brunt of the attack,
and sustained severe losses. Pushed back at first by an overwhelm-
ing artillery attack which destroyed everything, they have since re-
gained most of the lost ground, and have the glory for the second
time of having saved the situation. The main event, of course, has
been the offensive of the British and French on the river Somme.
The way was prepared by the fire of the great guns, with which at
last the Allies are now supplied, and by means of which they are able
to destroy both the men and trenches of the enemy and to save their
own men. Considerable progress has been made, something like
sixty-two square miles of French soil having been rescued from the
enemy's grasp. The Allies well know that the formidable German
line cannot be crushed by a single blow. Long-sustained and costly
pressure is anticipated, for which every preparation is being made.
French and British success, however, pales in comparison with
that which has attended upon Russian efforts. More than fifteen
thousand square miles has been regained, and prisoners, two hun-
dred thousand in number, have been taken, to say nothing of guns
and stores. Two-thirds of Bukowina has been occupied, including
Czernowitz and Kolumea. So overwhelming has been the victory
as to render probable the reports that Austria is suing for peace.
Kovel, however, is still offering a stout resistance. For a fortnight
things looked dark for Italy. The Austrian offensive came within
five miles of the Veneto plain. Then the Russian attack forced
Austria to withdraw part of her forces, and Italy forthwith resumed
the offensive, and has since been driving back the invader. On
this front, also, the attempt of the Central Powers has ended in
failure. The numerous War Councils which the Allies have been
holding have resulted in harmonious action, so that the Central
Powers have to meet the attacks of their enemies at the same time
on every side. Only one of the armies of the Allies is quiescent
that at Saloniki.
With Our Readers.
WE regret very much the necessity to take exception to a state-
ment made by our esteemed friend, the editor of The Month,
Father J. Keating, SJ. The statement was made by Father
Keating in the April, 1916, issue of The Dublin Review, in an
article, entitled -Civil Liberty in Peace and in War. Father Keating
in speaking of Rousseau's theory of the State : how " it flatters human
pride ; for it makes man ultimately antonomous in the political sphere ;
it lends itself easily to measures of revolt, for nothing more serious
than human authority stands between the rebel and his desire;"
adds: "It has even colored the political speculations of not a few
Catholics. The following declaration by the late Father Hecker, for
instance, seems to need some qualification to save it from Rousseauism :
'All political authority in individuals is justly said to be
derived, under God, from the consent of the collective people
who are governed. The people, under God, associated in a
body politic are the source of the sovereign political power
in the civil State.' J:
* * * *
WE take emphatic exception to the coupling of Father Hecker's
name with that of Rousseau. Father Keating says in a footnote :
" Father Hecker probably means 'under God' to save the orthodox
Catholic doctrine." Had he said " undoubtedly " instead of " prob-
ably," he would barely have satisfied the demands of both charity and
truth.
The quotation is taken from Father Hecker's The Church and the
Age, page 81, and is not, in the original, as it is printed in The Dublin,
a complete paragraph, but only a part of a sentence. The entire
sentence, as written by Father Hecker, is as follows:
God has created all men equal in regard to these rights,
and therefore no one man has the natural right to govern
another man ; and all political authority in individuals is justly
said to be derived, under God, from the consent of the collec-
tive people who are governed. The people, under God, asso-
ciated in a body politic, are the source of the sovereign political
power in the civil State.
Father Hecker's meaning in the context is very plain: the right
to rule comes first direct from God, the people may determine who is
to exercise that right. Indeed the entire work by Father Hecker, The
Church and the Age, is a zealous vindication of Catholic principle,
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 713
and a declaration that only those principles have saved and can save
modern society. To cast upon it the suspicion of Rousseauism is to
do it the grossest injustice, for it is as far removed from Rousseau
as Rousseau was from the Catholic Church.
CATHER HECKER, in speaking of the same Declaration of Inde-
r pendence, wrote in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, March, 1873:
In this most momentous crisis, amid the very birthpangs
of our infant republic, the people of the United States solemnly
declared that the origin of all right, all law, all political organ-
ization, all government, and specifically of those which con-
stitute the United States a separate political people, is to be
found in the lex ceterna, the law of God; that is to say, it is
in religion. For what is religion ? According to Cicero's def-
inition, it is a bond which binds men to God and to each other.
This is the very meaning of the word, which comes from
ligare, to bind, whence we have the terms ligament, ligature
and obligation. Human right is, therefore, something con-
ferred by God. The right to govern must come from God, for
we are created equal, and therefore without any natural right
of one over another to give him law. The rights of the gov-
erned come from God, and are therefore inviolable ; but liberty
is the unhindered possession and exercise of the rights con-
ferred by God, under the protection of lawful government;
and liberty of conscience is freedom to obey the law of the
Creator, and to enjoy the blessings which He has imparted
to the creature by that law.
" There is a vast chasm between this teaching " to use the words
of Father Lewis Watt, S.J., writing in defence of Suarez in Studies,
June, 1916 " and the theories of modern defenders of the Social Con-
tract who base political authority solely on consent. Political power is
unhesitatingly proclaimed to be of divine ordination, and to rest firmly
on Eternal Law."
A GAIN Father Hecker wrote in The Church and the Age, page
-E\ 124 : " And of every form of Government, whether monarchical or
democratic, legitimately established, among the Gentile nations of the
past, or by Non-Catholic peoples of the present, she, the Church, ac-
knowledges and maintains the divine right."
Throughout the same volume Father Hecker preaches fidelity to
the State. He repeatedly says that rightful civil authority is founded
upon divine right. " The Catholic Church tends to make the people
loyal to the reasonable authority of the State, and her influence
strengthens them in the virtues necessary for the public welfare "
(page 106).
;i4 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
The words employed by Father Lewis Watt, S.J., in his article
already quoted, may be employed in explaining Father Hecker's teach-
ing : " Suarez fully realizes the necessity for stability in political
affairs, and the disintegrating doctrines of Rousseau find no countenance
in his teaching. If on the one. side the people has its rights, even
against its legitimate governors, on the other it has duties of obedience
to all their lawful behests ; while the Sovereign (i. e., the Public Person,
whether individual or corporate group, charged with supreme political
authority), whose whole raison d'etre is the Common Good, must be
ever mindful, in legislation, of the interests of the people. So long as
he fulfills his part, he is secure against any just resistance by those
under his authority."
As for maintaining any theory that would ultimately make man
autonomous in the political sphere, Father Hecker wrote :
" Our American institutions in the first place we owe to God,
Who made us what we are, and in the second place to the Catholic
Church which ever maintained the natural order, man's ability in
that order and his free will " (page 146).
And the whole of Rousseauism is uncompromisingly swept aside
by such a sentence as the following: " There can be no compromise
with the false principles of atheists in religion, revolutionists in the
State, and anarchists in society " (page 160),
r PHE Church and the Age is not only a defence of the thesis that
A a republican form of government is not opposed to the Catholic
Faith or vice versa; but also a- protest and a vigorous one against State
absolutism. In his Dublin article, Father Keating insists upon the prin-
ciples of Christianity as a bulwark against absolutism in the State.
Father Keating repeats the phrase of Father Hecker that Catholics
should not shirk social service; that they should use their influence
to further the spread of Christian ideas " in the approaching readjust-
ment of our national life." " It is now," he adds, " that Christianity by
the aid of her devoted children has a chance of recovering her own."
Father Hecker, in The Church and the Age, wrote : " The real question
is whether modern society will follow the principles of eternal justice
and right and reject false teachers; whether it will legislate in ac-
cordance with the rules of right reason and the divine truths of Chris-
tianity, and turn its back upon revolution, anarchy and atheism;
whether it will act in harmony with God's Church in upholding modern
civilization and in spreading God's kingdom upon earth, or return to
paganism, barbarism and savagery" (page 132).
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 715
HPHE address recently delivered by the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare as
A President of the Free Church Council at its recent meeting at
Bradford, England, deserves, for many reasons, the serious considera-
tion of all who are interested in the various movements towards re-
ligious unity which are a charactertistic of the present time. It may
not be of direct or immediate interest to Catholics, for it does not
show any inclination to accept any other distinctively Catholic princi-
ple, but it shows that this particular Catholic principle is making its
power felt among a class which has been almost entirely unaffected
by those movements towards the Church which began at Oxford.
* * * *
IT may, however, be considered of great importance that the desire
for unity should become urgent and earnest among that portion of
the English people that has adopted Non-Conformist principles. The
Oxford Movement has had very little effect upon a class which is
called the lower middle. It has been said that those alone who belong
to it have fully adopted and made their own the principles of
Protestantism that the upper classes, so-called, consisting of the no-
bility and gentry, and the lower classes, consisting of the peasantry,
who are more or less dependents upon the former, have never been
more than nominal adherents of any religious system whatever. Their
religion has, broadly speaking, been the State religion. It is in the
ranks of the Non-Conformists that the most sincere religious life and
deep convictions are to be found, so far as these are possible to
Protestants. When it is added that it is this class that forms the back-
bone of England, the importance of any defection from Protestant
principles within its ranks, and any approximation towards those of
Catholics, will be apparent.
* # * #
MR. SHAKESPEARE speaks with high authority he is no critical
sorehead ; on the contrary, he done so much good work for his
own Church that he is looked upon as an ecclesiastical statesman. He
has been Secretary of the Baptist union for many years, and is the
editor of the Baptist official paper. He achieved a remarkable success
in raising an immense sustentation fund for the relief of the poorer Bap-
tist churches. It is interesting to note that at a recent dinner given in
honor of the great English poets, Mr. Shakespeare was present as
the representative of the poet whose tercentenary is now being cele-
brated. He was elected President for the past year of the Free
Church Council which is a union formed years ago for common action
of the orthodox Protestants Wesleyans, Methodists, Congrega-
tionalists, Presbyterians, Baptists and Quakers. This post is filled
only by men of recognized eminence. Though president of this union
;i6 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
of various Churches he is a devoted Baptist. " No one could ever
regard me as an indifferent Baptist. I plan and toil night and day
for my own denomination." Hence statements made by him as to
the present position of Non-Conformity may be accepted with con-
fidence.
* * * *
MR. SHAKESPEARE says that it is certain that things are not
going well with any one of the Free Churches. It is not money
that is wanting. If a remedy could be found in money, it would be
provided at once. What is wanting is numbers. " For years there
has been a continuous decline in members and Sunday-school scholars,
and unless it can be stayed the Free Churches are bleeding to death."
It is not mentioned by Mr. Shakespeare, but it has been asserted in
the Baptist organ, that if ten per cent of the Sunday-school scholars
were to join the Church its membership, which has been so long
declining, would be maintained, but even that small percentage does not
join, Mr. Shakespeare goes on to say that " denominationalism is a
decaying idea. It makes less and less appeal to the very people upon
whom its success depends." A Baptist does not care any more for
his own distinctive principles, and this is true not merely of the
people but of its most eminent ministers. " They regard themselves as
ministers of the Free Church rather than of a particular sec-
tion ...... Every great truth or sacred principle is now accepted by
the entire Free Church. The things which divide us now are forms
of government or an ordinance."
being the case, it is no wonder that Mr. Shakespeare has to
A confess, as indeed he does, that " our divisions make no appeal to
the conscience and intellect of the best elements of the nation outside
the churches." He recognizes the gravity of the statement, but main-
tains its accuracy. Statesmen, thinkers and leaders, the brilliant young
men of the universities, find no justification for separate denomina-
tions, and look upon them as an inexcusable weakening of the enemies
of materialism and godliness.
Mr. Shakespeare's next reason for his assertion that things are
not going well with the Free Churches is of far more importance, and
should carry him much farther than he has any thought of going:
" We do not feel that denominationalism conforms to the mind of
Christ. It may have been the way, inevitable once, or the best possible,
but as the grounds of separation disappear, continued separation be-
comes a sin." He then goes on to give a vivid picture of the evils of divi-
sion : " Never again in England can we convince those who think
and feel and pray and have any vision of the Church Catholic
that our present divisions are according to the Word of God and the
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 717
mind of Christ." The present system does not lead to success ; it
is ineffective; it involves an enormous waste of men and money; it
brings in competition everywhere, one Church striving to gain adherents
from every other; and ministers devoting their energies to keep
their hold upon a few faithful followers. The merciless law of com-
petition, which reigns in commerce, is thus applied to the Churches.
In a typical village there will be found the Anglican Church, the Baptist,
Congregational, Wesleyan, perhaps the Methodist Chapel.
* * * *
A NOTHER consequence of denominationalism is the disastrous
^ effect which it is having upon the ministry: " Our most gifted
young men are more and more unwilling to risk what the Free Church
ministry has to offer. The best young men are not going into the min-
istry, as the Free Church minister has no chance. A complete recon-
struction is necessary. Mr. Shakespeare's last point is that although
the numbers of the Free Churches are still enormous, their influence
upon the nation is comparatively small. " The ancient universities,
great public schools, hospitals, educational trusts and appointments
the government and control of all these flows on apart from one-half
of the religious members of the nation/*
* * * *
OUCH is Mr. Shakespeare's account of the evil effects of the dis-
O tinctive tenet of the right of individuals to judge for themselves
and to establish churches formed upon such a right. It is true,
of course, that he vindicates the exercise of this right in the
past as necessary for a much-needed reformation. It is not, how-
ever, a very whole-hearted vindication, for he says : " Every wise
man will seek to reform an institution from the inside. Resignation
is the immediate resort of small and ignoble natures." And when
he says that historically Non-Conformity had its root and centre in
division, and that division too easily became divisiveness, it seems
to be an implicit acceptance of the Catholic principle of the supreme
duty of preserving the unity of the Body of Christ. Catholics cannot
but welcome such an approximation to their own principles by so
representative a man, and will watch with interest the practical efforts
which are being initiated in the Free Churches to draw nearer to the
ideal which Mr. Shakespeare recognizes as our Lord's own.
WE publish the following letter, for the present without com-
ment:
EDITOR THE CATHOLIC WORLD: NEW YORK, June 26, 1916.
An article which appeared in your issue of May, 1915, entitled
A Serious Problem, by Mr. Joseph V. McKee, has been called to our
attention and read by us with considerable interest. We have also read a
718 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,
subsequent article in your issue of August, 1915, on the same subject by the
same writer. You have since published the first article in a separate pamphlet.
Your writer describes certain conditions, as he sees them, in the public
secondary schools of New York City, conditions which to his mind constitute
the " Serious Problem." The particular school to which he refers happens to
be the one in which we serve as teachers, and because your writer makes
unwarranted charges and aspersions both against the vast majority of our
pupils and against a large number of our colleagues, we deem it our duty to
refute those charges and denounce the aspersions. We regret that the articles
and pamphlet were not sooner called to our attention, but we trust it is never
too late to satisfy the demands of justice.
Your writer deplores the fact that the public High Schools contain so few
Catholic pupils. We desire to assure you that we should likewise welcome
an increase in the High School population of this city from all creeds and
races, since we believe that the welfare of the community, which these schools
serve, will be advanced not only by the higher efficiency which education brings,
but also by the liberalizing influence which contact with different races, creeds
and classes has upon the individual, an influence without which American
democracy must be a failure. Moreover, we have no quarrel with those who
seek to enhance the position of their particular creed, race or party, provided
they do so to worthy ends and by proper means. We cannot, however, coun-
tenance a method which seeks to elevate one sect by calumniating another.
Such a method is not only dangerous to our communal welfare, but is wholly
unnecessary.
Now, your writer is guilty of having used this very method. For, while
he deplores the fact that there are few Catholic pupils in our High Schools,
he considers it necessary to point to the large number of Jewish pupils in those
schools, and to make against the Jewish pupils a number of grave and false
charges the whole done in a spirit of intolerance unworthy of a publication
which voices the sentiments of the Catholics of America. It may be true that
ninety per cent of the pupils of our school are Jewish: then ninety per
cent of the pupils of our school have been misrepresented and libelled.
Says your writer : " In oral discussion on such topics as 'Is Lying Justi-
fiable?' or 'Is It Wrong to Cheat?' their words constantly show that they
(the Jewish pupils) recognize no code of morals and are governed by no mo-
tives higher than those originating from fear of detection and consequent loss
in money." We, teachers of those boys, denounce that statement as false. We
declare that such a statement can originate only in igorance or prejudice or
both. We, who know our pupils, declare them to be at least the equals in moral
conduct of any group of boys to be found anywhere. What can be the object
of one who circulates such statements against all the members of a race?
We do not intend to linger on the charge that " in overwhelming numbers
these students are Socialists or Socialists in the making." We know that this
statement also does not, in point of fact, represent the truth. But, while it
is your writer's privilege to consider Socialism an unqualified evil, just as it
is the privilege of some of our colleagues to consider it an unqualified good, we
cannot pass over the charge contained in the following sentence : " Is it not
foolish to try to combat Socialism and other attendant evils when we sit
back and allow the positions which carry the greatest influence for good
or evil to be filled by men who do not scruple at the dissemination of false
doctrines?" The positions here referred to are those of teachers, and the men
are the Non-Catholic teachers. Whether by design or accident, the words:
" do not scruple at the dissemination of false doctrines " contain a double in-
1916.'
WITH OUR READERS
719
nuendo. They may imply, first, that our colleagues take advantage of their po-
sition to propagate their individual doctrines, and, second, that the doctrines
they " disseminate " they themselves know to be false. Whether your writer's
intention was to convey the one meaning, or the other, or both, we repudiate
the charge that our colleagues " do not scruple at the dissemination of false
doctrines," and denounce it as a calumny.
In his attempt in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for August, 1915, further to
elucidate his position, your writer emphasizes the fact that his original article
was intended to rouse the Catholics to the necessity of sending their children
to the High Schools. This purpose we heartily endorse. He says, further-
more, in this second article : " This problem, which is essentially a Catholic
one, arises not from the fact that the Jewish boys are attending our city High
Schools, but because our Catholic boys are not!' If that is the problem, then
what occasion is there to complain, as he does, that " although the Jewish
people are in a minority, their children possess an overwhelming majority in
our High Schools?" If that is the problem, then why should he devote his
energies, as he does, to an attempt to hold up the Jewish boys in our schools
as a future menace to society, as those who, as a result of education, will be
endowed "with greater capacities for evil?" If that is the problem then what
need is there to quote a " prominent authority " who " remarked " that " within
twenty years these people (the Jews) will be in control of our public education?"
What need is there to speak of the Non-Catholic or Jewish teachers, as he
does, as men "who do not scruple at the dissemination of false doctrines?"
In brief, if the problem is, as your writer says it is, "not that the Jewish
boys are attending our city High Schools, but that our Catholic boys are not,"
then why bring the Jewish boys into the discussion of that problem? It may be
true, as he seems to believe in his second article, that those Jewish boys con-
stitute a Jewish problem, but is it his intention, as a Catholic interested in
Catholic problems, to take up Jewish problems also?
It is our belief that the interests of our community, in the welfare of
which both Jew and Gentile are equally concerned, will not be served by the
propagation of such sentiments as are expressed in the article in question.
We regret that you saw fit to publish it. We regret still more that you have
seen fit to reprint it in a pamphlet which is still being circulated. We hope that
the present statement from us who are but a fraction of those in our midst
who share our sentiments in this matter this statement, which, in the interest
of fairness we are sure you will publish in your magazine will counteract, in
some measure, the unfortunate effect of that article.
Very truly yours,
E. O. Perry, A.B., 148 West i6th Street, Manhattan ; Colman Dudley Frank,
A.M., 3115 Broadway; Daniel C. Rosenthal, A.M., 961 St. Nicholas Avenue;
F. G. Harrowich, A.B., 69 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn ; Eugene Jackson, B.A.,
672 East 2ist Street, Brooklyn; A. Henry Scheer, B;S., 985 Whitlock Avenue,
Bronx, N. Y. ; Franklin J. Keller, Ph.D., 968 Anderson Avenue, City; Gabriel
R. Mason, 1107 Forest Avenue, Bronx; Chas. W. Hyde, A.B., 526 West I23d
Street; Thomas Mufson, 1703 Madison Avenue; Morris G. Michaels, 115 Broad-
way; Israel Goldberg, 2039 Hughes Avenue; Bernard M. Paulhoff, 403 Audu-
bon Avenue; Israel Mersky, 953 Faile Street, Bronx; Charles Ham, 280
Sterling Street, Brooklyn; Julius Frank, B.S., 601 West I27th Street; Joseph
B. Orliansky, B.S., M.A., 995 East 173 Street; Albert Loewenthan, M.A., 851
Hunt's Point Avenue; Sam Schmalhausen, M.A., 954 Prospect Avenue; Jos-
eph Jablonower, B.S., 1390 Clinton Avenue; Walter R. Johnson, M.A., 165
West I2 9 th Street; G. M. Lapolla, A.B., A.M., 438 West 2i 3 th Street.
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THE
CATHOLIC WORLD,
VOL. CIII.
SEPTEMBER, 1916.
No. 618.
THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR.
BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.
>
HE care of the dependent and the sick poor has been
and is, throughout human history, one of the most
important of social duties and one of the most diffi-
cult of social problems. What care is shown in this
way is quite a safe index to the true humanitarianism
of a particular time. The care of the ailing poor has in our time
developed so marvelously, and our hospitals have grown to be so
efficient, that we have, and deservedly, been self-complacent about
the progress that has been made. Indeed there is a tendency, if not
a habit, to forget the depths from which we have so recently risen
or, as one medical writer on the subject has ventured to suggest,
" the veritable slough of despond in this regard out of which we
have only just succeeded in dragging ourselves."
Very few realize how recent is the improvement in hospital
organization and how sadly that improvement was needed. Ruled
by current ideas of evolution, some writers have supplied them-
selves with a theoretic history of hospital work. According to it
humanity has at last reached a point in its development where
selfishness has given place to altruism, and this altruism finds its
particular application in helping the indigent sick. Before our
time, this stage of humanitarianism had not been reached; or at
least sympathy for others was very imperfectly developed, and so
our forefathers are, perhaps, not so much to be blamed for the
Copyright. 1916. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
VOL. cm. 46
722 THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR [Sept..
almost unspeakable conditions which existed in hospitals and, in-
deed, in institutions of all kinds for the care of the poor.
The presumption is that if hospitals were so bad a century
ago, as we know now they were, they must have been much worse
a century still further back, and so on progressively until the less
said about the hospitals of the Middle Ages the better.
Now any presumption that there is a continuous evolution in
hospital organization and in the care of the poor is, like so many
other chapters of evolutionary theory, entirely imaginary. It is
true that we have reached a fine acme of advance with regard to
hospitals, but anyone who thinks that there is a series of chapters
of constant progress leading up to our time from crude, thoughtless,
unfeeling beginnings in the long ago, will be sadly disappointed.
On the contrary, the surprise is to find that the lowest period in
history in hospital organisation and nursing came just before our
time. The eighteenth century had much better hospitals than the
nineteenth; and the sixteenth better than the eighteenth; a'nd,
strange as it may sound to some ears, some of the finest hospitals
that the world knows of were erected in the later Middle Ages.
Jacobsohn, the German historian of care for the sick, calls
attention to the fact he calls it a " remarkable " fact that " de-
votion to the well-being of the sick, improvements in hospitals and
institutions generally and to details of nursing, had a period of
complete and lasting stagnation after the middle of the seventeenth
century or from the close of the Thirty Years' War." The older
hospitals had been finely organized, and so their organizations car-
ried them on for a time but in an ever-descending curve, until about
the middle of the nineteenth century they had reached a stage of
decadence.
Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in A History of Nursing, after
tracing in the first volume the history of nursing during the cen-
turies before our own, have a concluding chapter, entitled " The
Dark Period of Nursing." The years of which chapter speaks is
almost in our own time. " It is commonly agreed that the darkest
known period in the history of nursing was that from the latter
part of the seventeenth up to the middle of the nineteenth century.
During this time the condition of the nursing art, the well-being
of the patient and the status of the nurse all sank to an indescribable
level of degradation" (italics ours).
It was only in 1872 that the trained nurse came to Bellevue
Hospital in New York, and that was her first appearance in this
1916.] THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR 723
country. Some young English women came over at the invitation
of the hospital authorities and organized trained nursing. Dr.
Stephen Smith, who is still with us at the age of ninety- five, and who
introduced the trained nurse, tells us the story of how the nursing
was carried on at Bellevue before that time. It was an extremely
difficult matter to recruit any sort of nurses, and the constant
problem before the hospital staff was how to secure help even fairly
dependable. According to Dr. Smith, not infrequently the " ten-
day women," women sentenced to ten days imprisonment for dis-
orderly conduct, were welcomed as nurses.
It seems impossible that that state of affairs prevailed only
forty years ago. Dr. Smith further tells us that at first the medical
board refused to allow the new trained nurses to care for the men
patients at Bellevue. So little was the real spirit of professional
work appreciated.
There was so much opposition on the part of the medical board
that for a time the ordinary nurses were left in charge of the male
ward, and to their lasting credit, be it said, it was the trained
nurses themselves who insisted on being allowed to take their
places and give their services to the sick men. The trained nurses
at Bellevue were quite a curiosity. Visitors, interested in hospitals,
came from all parts of the country to learn of their work. The
only hospitals which previous to this time had been at all presentable
were the Sisters' hospitals, which were always clean and neat,
and in which the poor received the best possible care and treatment.
Even the Sisters' hospitals were far from anything like the standard
of the present-day hospitals, though they were far superior to the
municipal hospitals of those days.
The death rate in the mid-nineteenth century hospitals was woe-
fully high, and it is no wonder that the poor dreaded them, and quite
rightly feared that entrance into a hospital was almost equivalent
to a death warrant. In these pre-antiseptic days, operations were
very frequently followed by death. I believe that the first six
operations for ovariotomy done in England shortly before the
middle of the nineteenth century, all proved fatal. The local cor-
oner declared that he would attend the next operation performed
by Sir Spencer Wells, the operator, in order to determine what the
cause of death was, and to act accordingly.
In 1870, Professor Nussbaum, of Munich, finding that the
death rate in operated cases for the preceding year was about four
in five of his patients, declared that he would operate no longer,
724 THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR [Sept.,
since he was evidently with the best of intention only hastening
death or making it more painful. No wound was expected to
escape infection, and it is easy to understand that no wound did.
The expression " union by first intention," which means the imme-
diate agglutination of wound surfaces and their prompt healing
without complication or sequela, was still preserved in the traditions
of surgery, but no examples of it were seen, and many surgeons
doubted whether the term had ever had any real meaning except
possibly by accident. Every wound was expected to develop pus,
and the one hope of the surgeon was that this purulent secretion
should not be of virulent character, but should be of some mild,
more or less, innocuous variety, which should not prove too serious
for the patient.
When, therefore, the best that could be hoped for was that' a
patient would suffer only with this less virulent, or as it was called,
laudable pus, it is easy to understand that the hospitals reeked with
infection. No wonder that Nussbaum and others felt that the end
of hospital usefulness had come.
The mortality rate in Lying-in-Hospitals was one in ten, and
sometimes rose as high as one in five. It was much more dangerous
for a woman to give birth to a child in a hospital, than to have an
attack of typhoid fever. Typhoid fever itself ran a most fatal
course, and it is now well understood that nursing plays a most
important part in its successful treatment. About the middle of
the nineteenth century, typhus and cholera were both extremely
common in large city hospitals, and indeed typhus was not definitely
differentiated from its less fatal and less acute sister disease, ty-
phoid, until after the middle of the nineteenth century. Cholera
sometimes carried away whole wards of patients in one or two
days. 1
Fortunately after the middle of the nineteenth century, Pas-
teur's discoveries of the microbic cause of human diseases lifted
some of the gloom in which hospital conditions had been shrouded.
When challenged at a public medical meeting, about 1870, Pasteur
*The general health of New York City was at this time just coming up from
a depth of degradation almost unbelievable. The death rate in the city for years
before 1866 had been from thirty to forty per thousand, though no city in our
climate should have a mortality of more than fifteen per thousand. Dr. Stephen
Smith had been one of the principal factors in bringing about a clean-up of the
city. He was the commissioner in charge of New York's health between 1868 and
1875. Anyone who wishes to read an account of filthy living, supposed to be
utterly impossible in the second half of the nineteenth century, may read Dr.
Stephen Smith's book, The City That Was.
I9i6.] THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR 725
dared to go to the blackboard and draw a picture of the rosary-like
streptococcus which is, so far as we know down to the present time,
the cause of puerperal fever. His discovery of the diseases of fer-
mentation ; the diseases of silk worms, and the means of overcom-
ing them, attracted the attention of Lister, and then began the
epoch-making series of experiments in antisepsis, and the modern
era of surgery. It was not, however, until the coming of the
trained nurse and the possibilities of meticulous cleanliness, made
clear by the introduction of women in charge of hospitals, that
the old deadly conditions began to abate, and death rates were
satisfactorily reduced.
When one thinks upon the conditions that have been described,
it is hard to understand the contrast between this terrible decadence
and the splendid work of the preceding period. Jacobsohn writes:
The result was that in this period the general level of nursing
fell far below that of earlier periods. The hospitals of cities
were like prisons, with bare, undecorated walls and little dark
rooms, small windows where no sun could enter, and dismal
wards where fifty or one hundred patients were crowded to-
gether, deprived of all comforts and even of necessaries. In the
municipal and state institutions of this period, the beautiful
gardens, roomy halls, and springs of water of the old cloister
hospital of the Middle Ages were not heard of, still less the
comforts of their friendly interiors.
Miss Nutting and Miss Dock in their History of Nursing have
described the gradual decadence of nursing :
In England, where the religious orders had been suppressed
and no substitute organization given, it might almost be said
that no nursing class at all remained during this period. It
was forgotten that a refined woman could be a nurse, except
perhaps in her own family; and even in good homes if an
attendant was called in, the sick-room became a scene of re-
pulsive squalor. The drunken and untrustworthy Gamp was
the only professional nurse. " We always take them without
a character/' said an English physician, not very many decades
ago, " because no respectable woman will take such work."
Even the sisters of the religious orders, though retaining their
sweet charm of serenity and gentleness, came to a complete
standstill professionally as nurses, on account of the persistent
sequence of restrictions which had been hemming them in from
the middle of the sixteenth century.
726 THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR [Sept.,
It is pointed out by Miss Nutting and Miss Dock that the
hospitals passed out of the hands of women and into those of men.
The lesson of history is that women are the only successful care-
takers for the sick and the poor, and above all for children. When-
ever women are pushed out of positions of authority and become
merely subordinates in the charitable work, then abuses flourish
and decadence usually comes in with a rush. In recalling the his-
tory of the dark period of nursing and of the lowest epoch in the
history of hospital organization, the comment of the historians of
nursing in this regard may be repeated.
In all of the hospital and nursing work of the Christian
era, this was the period of the most complete and general mas-
culine supremacy. At no time before or since have women
been quite without voice in hospital management and nursing
organization, but during this degraded period they were all but
silenced. The ultimate control of the nursing staff, of their
duties, discipline, and conditions of living, was everywhere
definitely taken from the hands of women and lodged firmly in
those of men. Even where a woman still apparently stood
at the head of a nursing body, she was only a figurehead, with
no power to alter conditions, no province that she could call
her own. The state of degeneration to which men reduced the
art of nursing during this time of their unrestricted rule, the
general contempt to which they brought the nurse, the misery
which the patient thereby suffered, bring a scathing indictment
against the ofttime reiterated assertion of man's superior ef-
fectiveness, and teach in every branch of administration a les-
son that, for the sake of the poor, the weak and the suffering
members of society, ought never to be forgotten not in re-
sentment, but in foresight it should be remembered. Neither
sex, no one group, no one person, can ever safely be given
supreme and undivided authority. Only when men and women
work together, as equals, dividing initiative, authority and re-
sponsibility, can there be any avoidance of the serfdom that in
one form or another has always existed where arbitrary
domination has been present, and which acts as a depressant,
effectually preventing the best results in work.
Now comes the all-important question as to how and why this
sad change came about. Jacobsohn suggests the middle of the
seventeenth century as the beginning of the decadence. Miss Nut-
ting and Miss Dock, the historians of nursing, come much nearer
I9i6.] THE CARE OP THE DEPENDENT POOR 727
to the correct date, as it seems to me, when they state that " the
religious orders having been suppressed and no substitute organiza-
tion given, it might almost be said that no nursing class at all re-
mained during this period." There is the crux of the matter.
The suppression of the religious orders marks the starting point
of the neglect of the sick poor; the decline in hospital organization
and efficiency, and the beginning of those lamentable conditions that
culminated in the unspeakable decadence of the middle of the nine-
teenth century.
In a single word, the movement that led to the ruin of our
hospitals and of nursing was the so-called Reformation. Before
that the hospitals had been in charge of the religious orders, and
had been under the ecclesiastical authorities. They had not been
without abuses. Nothing human ever is without abuses. There
were abuses in the old time hospitals that had to be constantly
corrected, but the buildings themselves were beautiful, extremely
appropriate and the nursing was finely organized.
The best possible proof of the thoroughness of the organization
of the old hospitals in every way is to be found in the history of
the surgery of the time. Whenever there are good hospitals there
is always good surgery and, conversely, whenever there is good
surgery there must be good hospitals. Many are inclined to think
of surgery as a distinctly and exclusively modern development.
Fortunately, as convincing evidence to the contrary, the textbooks
of the surgeons of the later Middle Ages have been preserved, and
they bring home the fact that there was a magnificent period of
surgery during the later Middle Ages. The old surgeons did prac-
tically all our operations. They opened the skull for tumor and
for abscess of the brain; operated on the thorax for the removal
of pus and other fluids; their surgeons intervened very extensively
for conditions within the abdomen, and succeeded in doing success-
ful work even under the difficult circumstances presented by the
peritoneal cavity.
It would, of course, have been quite impossible to practise
such extensive surgical procedures without an anaesthetic, and I
know nothing that illustrates better the ordinary ignorance of his-
tory than the fact that most people, even most physicians, do not
know that there were several centuries during which anaesthetics
were generally used long before our time. Anaesthesia is often
hailed as a great discovery of the modern humanitarian period, but
most of the serious operations done in the more important hospitals
728 THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR [Sept.,
of Europe during the latter half of the thirteenth and the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries were done under an anaesthetic. We know
just exactly what they used, a combination of the tinctures of
mandrake and opium, inhaled from a sponge. This produced the
desired anaesthetic result, though it is not so good a mode of anaes-
thesia as ether or chloroform.
It would have been equally impossible to have done such ex-
tensive operating without antisepsis. The mediaeval surgeons em-
ployed strong wine for that purpose, and secured union by first
intention with a linear scar that could scarcely be seen. Some of
the teachers of surgery declared, quite as our own do, that if a
surgeon got pus in an operating wound which he himself had made
through an unbroken surface, there was some fault in his
surgical procedures.
With the coming of the Reformation hospitals became govern-
ment institutions. Religion was now a national affair, and hospital
officials were appointed by the government. They worked for the
salary that they received, and salaried employees, according to the
experience of history, very soon prove inefficient in caring for the
ailing or dependent. Abuses multiply, advantage is taken of the
dependent poor and of dependent employees. It is not long before
all semblance of charitable beneficence disappears, and neglect and
disregard for the feelings and sufferings of others become the rule.
Under particularly favorable circumstances the coming of such
abuses may be delayed, perhaps, for a generation or two; but the
lesson of history is that they invariably come when political ap-
pointees have an opportunity to exploit the poor.
This attitude of the people after the Reformation is not sur-
prising once it is recalled what the teaching of the Reformers was.
The Reformers proclaimed that the only essential element in religion
was faith. Good works availed nothing. Luther proclaimed St.
James' Epistle, which lays down the doctrine of good works, to
be an epistle of straw. Their very religion, then, instead of en-
couraging rather discouraged the doing of good to others. Prot-
estantism has, of course, completely veered round from this teach-
ing during the centuries; it now proclaims that faith means very
little, and good works mean everything. It may be well to call
attention to the fact that the old Church always proclaimed salva-
tion by faith and works, and that there were two commandments,
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God " and " thy neighbor as thy-
self " as the only right fulfillment of the whole law.
1916.] THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR 729
In the Catholic countries after the Reformation, the govern-
ments encroached more and more upon the rights of the Church,
and interfered with that control of charitable institutions which
had made such a magnificent chapter of Christian charity in the
pre- Re formation time. Women were pushed more and more out
of the responsible direction of hospitals and institutions generally
for the care of the poor, and while still retained as subordinates,
were utterly unable to stem the tide of decadence that set in.
Besides, quite contrary to what is usually thought in the matter,
education instead of being encouraged after the Reformation, suf-
fered greatly all over Europe, and particularly in the countries that
had severed themselves from the See of Peter. For example, in Ger-
many, at the end of the eighteenth century, Winckelmann seeking
to restore the study of Greek, was compelled to have his pupils
write out a Greek text of Plato, because no edition of Plato had
been issued in Germany for considerably more than a century.
This decadence in general education had affected also medical edu-
cation, so that in Germany and England, particularly, medical
education was at a very low ebb. The requirements for medical
education in the Middle Ages were a little higher than in our own
time, and we are gradually working back to them.
Hospitals, then, after the Reformation, went from bad to
worse until the awful conditions which we have described pre-
vailed at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine-
teenth centuries, and secular hospitals reached a low watermark of
intolerable decay shortly after the middle of the nineteenth century.
I know almost nothing in history that is so suggestive for profitable
thought, and which should effectively cause the enthusiastic advo-
cate of the secularization of hospitals and government control of
charities to pause and hesitate, as this series of events.
It is very important to realize that reform in hospitals and
nursing began to make itself felt before the great revolution in
surgery, which, after Lister, made hospital work so much less
fatal than it had been before.
With this historical decadence before him it is no wonder that
Virchow, upon receiving charge of the reorganization of the grow-
ing city of Berlin, hesitated to place the hospitals under secular
care. He knew of modern hospitals, and he knew also the history
of mediaeval hospitals. In the second volume of his Gessamelte
Abhandlungen aus dent Gebiete der (Effentlichen Medicin und der
Seuchenlehre (Berlin, 1879) Collected Essays on Public Medicine
730 THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR [Sept.,
and the History of Epidemics Virchow pays a high tribute to
the Church's relation to the magnificent organization of hospitals
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There was scarcely a
town in Europe of five thousand inhabitants or more that did not
have its hospital. We knew the truth of this with regard to the
Latin countries from other sources, but Virchow himself worked
out the history of them for the Teutonic countries.
I need scarcely say that Virchow was not a Catholic. It is
to him that we owe the expression Kulturkanipf as if organized
German opposition to the Pope and Catholic Faith were a struggle
for culture so prominent a slogan during the early years of the
seventies. Whatever Virchow might think, or for political reasons
say, as to the attitude of the Popes toward culture, he knew thor-
oughly their relations to the mediaeval hospital organization.
The one Pope of the Middle Ages for whom German historians
particularly have reserved the bitterest expressions is Innocent III.
It must not be forgotten, be it said in passing, that the great Ger-
man biographer of this Pope, became a convert to the Catholic
Faith while writing his biography, which he had taken up with
the intention of making it a convincing document against Catholi-
cism. Virchow pays Pope Innocent III. a high tribute. Because of
the circumstances under which it was given, it well deserves to be
recalled. He said :
It may be recognized and admitted that it was reserved for
the Roman Catholic Church, and above all for Innocent III.,
not only to open the bourse of Christian charity and mercy
in all its fullness, but also to guide the life-giving stream into
every branch of human life in an ordered manner. For this
reason alone the interest in this man and in this time will
never die out.
He added a little later in the same essay:
The beginning of the history of all these German hospitals
is connected with the name of that Pope who made the boldest
and farthest-reaching attempt to gather the sum of human
interests into the organization of the Catholic Church. The
Hospitals of the Holy Ghost were one of the many means
by which Innocent III. thought to hold humanity to the Holy
See. And surely it was one of the most effective. Was it not
calculated to create the most profound impression to see how
the mighty Pope, who humbled emperors and deposed kings,
1916.] THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR 731
who was the unrelenting adversary of the Albigenses, turned
his eyes sympathetically upon the poor and sick, sought the
helpless and the neglected upon the streets, and saved the
illegitimate children from death in the waters! There is some-
thing at once conciliating and fascinating in the fact, that at
the very time when the Fourth Crusade was inaugurated
through his influence, the thought of founding a great organiza-
tion of an essentially humane character, which was eventually
to extend throughout all Christendom, was also taking form
in his soul; and that in the same year (1204) in which the new
Latin Empire was founded in Constantinople, the newly-erected
hospital of the Holy Spirit, by the old bridge on the other side
of the Tiber, was blessed and dedicated as the future centre
of this organization.
We are not surprised then to find that, when Virchow re-
organized the hospitals of Berlin, he hesitated to make them entirely
secular as I have said, and stated his views, as was his custom, very
straightforwardly and quite unmistakably. He wrote:
The general hospital is the real purpose of our time, and
anyone who takes up service in it must give himself up to it
from the purest of humanitarian motives. The hospital at-
tendant must, at least morally and spiritually, see in the patient
only the helpless and suffering man, his brother and his neigh-
bor; and in order to be able to do this he must have a warm
heart, an earnest devotion, and a true sense of duty. There
is in reality scarcely any human occupation that brings so
immediately with it its own reward, or in which the feeling
of personal contentment comes from thorough accomplishment
of purpose.
But so far as the accomplishment of the task set one is con-
cerned, the attendant in the hospital has ever and anon new
demands made upon him and a new task imposed. One
patient lies next the other, and when one departs another comes
in his place.
From day to day, from week to week, from year to year,
always the same work, over and over again, only always for
new patients. This tires out the hospital attendant. Then the
custom of seeing suffering weakens the enthusiasm and lessens
the sense of duty. There is need of a special stimulus in order
to reawaken the old sympathy. Whence shall this be ob-
tained from religion or from some temporal reward? In
trying to solve this problem, we are standing before the most
732 THE CARE OF THE DEPENDENT POOR [Sept.,
difficult problem of modern hospital management. Before us
lie the paths of religious and simple care for the sick. We
may say at once that the proper solution has not yet been found.
It may be easy, from an impartial but one-sided view of the
subject, to say that the feeling of duty, of devotion, even of
sacrifice is by no means necessarily dependent on the hope of
religious reward, nor the expectation of material remuneration.
Such a point of view, however, I may say at once, such a free-
dom of good will, such a warmth of sympathy from purely
human motives as would be expected in these conditions, are
only to be found in very unaccustomed goodness of disposition,
or an extent of ethical education such as cannot be found in
most of those who give themselves at the present time to the
services of the sick in the hospitals. If pure humanity is to
be the motive, then other circles of society must be induced to
take part in the care of the sick. Our training schools for
nurses must teach very differently to what they do at present,
if the care of the sick in municipal hospitals shall compare
favorably with that given them in religious institutions. Our
hospitals must become transformed into true humanitarian in-
stitutions.
No wonder, then, that all those who are acquainted with
the history of hospitals for dependents are very chary of secu-
larizing elements and government control. Inspection is always
needed of any institution that cares for dependent human
beings. Without inspection abuses surely creep in. Government
control, however, has in the past always led to unfortunate abuses
apparently by an inevitable tendency. The mere wage-earner can-
not be expected to care properly for human beings who need not
only physical care but also human sympathy. Man lives not by
bread alone. The chapter of the history of hospitals is only one
emphatic illustration of this. The care of the children, of the
aged and of the insane make other and possibly even more sig-
nificant chapters of the same impressive story. In succeeding
articles we hope to supply such details as will make this very clear.
THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR.
BY CHARLES BAUSSAN.
jN spite of its oftentimes hostile government, in spite
of much evidence to the contrary, France has never
ceased to be a Catholic nation; but because of its
foremost position since the Reformation it has been
the seat of the religious war of the world. Following
upon Protestantism came the attack of the philosophers; and, ever
since, the war against Catholicism has continued, till towards the
end of the nineteenth century it took the form of anti-clericalism.
If in certain intellectual circles the teachings of Kant and Nietzsche
poisoned the minds and wills of many, the principal adversaries of
Catholicism throughout the country did not wage their war in the
region of ideas; they did not seek directly to root out Christianity
by intellectual difficulties, they sought to suppress it; to abolish
it as a public worship ; to wipe out the clergy. They did not attack
religion: they attacked "the cures." Their whole plan of cam-
paign, deliberately planned and faithfully adhered to, was to put the
priest and the nation in opposition ; to separate them ; to make the
latter hate the former. These tactics employed, as a seemingly
secure basis for attack, a sentiment deeply imbedded in the heart of
France, at least since the Revolution, and to which that heart was
most susceptible, namely, the sentiment of equality.
The French citizen wishes nothing but equality. Precisely be-
cause of 'his character and the sacred office which he exercises, the
priest is a superior. He commands, it is true, in the name of Christ;
but he commands. " Our master is our. enemy," said La Fontaine.
The anti-clericals exploit this pride of equality in order to make the
priest a- suspect or unpopular, and to persuade the laborer and the
peasant that the priest aims to extend his spiritual authority into
the domain of the temporal. They picture the bugbear of " a
government of cures." To listen to them one would suppose that
nobody but themselves respected liberty of conscience, and that all
they wished was to defend the State against the encroachments of
the Church.
It was under this pretext of equality that compulsory military
service was imposed upon priests. Through the claim of preserving
THE, CLMGY of FRANCE AND THZ WAR [Sept.,
the independence of the civil power, the separation by law of
Church and State was effected. In the thought of the anti-clericals,
and of many who allowed themselves to be contaminated by it,
the priest was a citizen who wished to fly from the common nest.
It was necessary to defy him, if one wished to remain free, for
he was not " as the others." Such was the view that many French-
men who were not practical Catholics had, little by little, accustomed
themselves to take of the priest; then came the clarion call sound-
ing the mobilization of the army. At that solemn moment it be-
came very evident to all that the priest was like others. He was
a Frenchman with Frenchmen. Never was anything proved more
clearly. All the prejudice that had been aroused against him sud-
denly fell to pieces. Those who of old would not even salute, now
applauded him. "At the North station," says Le Journal de
Geneve, " some reservists were leaving Paris. Two soutanes ap-
peared in the crowd. At once a soldier went up to one of the
priests and said : 'To-day you and I are brothers.' *
The mobilization of the priests has produced a marked im-
pression upon the nation which still endures. Because of it the
influence of the clergy has re-asserted itself during the war. This
influence is felt not only on the battle-front, but throughout the
country. Not only do the fighting priests share it, but the bishops
also and the priests left at home in their parishes. It is in the
army that the priests have found a fresh and most consoling field
of influence. Their enlistment was the leaven which tended to
leaven the entire mass. As recruits they were assigned generally
throughout the army, and as a result there is hardly a military unit
that does not include one or more priests.
The number of priests mobilized has reached twenty-nine
thousand. Of this number twelve thousand nine hundred and
eighty are doing hospital service. A little less than twelve thousand
nine hundred are at the front. It is necessary to add that not all
of these twelve thousand nine hundred priests are combatants.
A great number of them, however, are in the first line of trenches,
exposed to the same dangers as all the other soldiers. Others are
regimental infirmarians or stretcher-bearers. Such posts as these
the priests desire most, because such a work enables them to help
the wounded, and is in line with ecclesiastical discipline.
The French priest endeavors, in so far as he possibly can,
to observe strictly his priestly character, and he does not fight,
except when compelled by the necessity of war. At the side of
I9i6.] THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 735
the stretcher-bearer may be found many chaplains belonging either
to the regular or the volunteer army. 1 This body of twenty-nine
thousand priests, scattered throughout the entire French army, in-
cludes both secular and regular clergy, pastors of both city and
country churches, teachers and missionaries.
The religious did not leave their convents or their missions
without suffering keen pain. They acted under the command of
their superiors in accordance with the wish of Rome and for the
good of the Church. As a matter of fact, it is the service of the
religious in the ranks of the army that has produced the most
favorable impression. Even M. Clemenceau, in his journal,
L'Homme Libre, of the seventh of August, 1914, pays homage to
these priests. " Yes," he says, " these are the religious whom we
drove away."
In France itself it is undeniable that the departure of the
cures and vicars has been a loss to their parishes. Nevertheless,
their churches have in no way been abandoned. Aged priests, who
had retired, have taken up again the work of the ministry. Young
priests, not strong enough for military service, have taken the place
of their comrades called to arms; a country cure will care, in ad-
dition to his own parish, for a neighboring parish whose pastor
has gone to the front.
The parish priests and missionaries who serve in the army
have found there new parishes, new missions, and have carried on
a great work of evangelization. The foremost preacher has been
the soldier-priest and the most convincing sermon is his example
of patriotism. His very presence has made converts. Mistrust
is dispelled by the glance of a priest-comrade in the trenches. The
indifferent one, the anti-clerical of yesterday, approaches little by
little to an acceptance of that Faith, the moral effect of which he
sees displayed before him in courage, discipline, sacrifice and charity
of the highest order. Testimonies abound of the high military
qualities of the priests, both officers and soldiers. They are found
in orders of the day and in letters from the front. One may count
their heroic deeds by the hundreds.
" Yes," said a wounded soldier, " I was wounded in the thigh
J The question of the irregularity incurred by priests forced to take up arms
_has been decided by this answer of the Sacred Penitentiary, dated March 18, 1912,
in answer to a note of Cardinal Levin : " S. Panitentiaria benigne indulget u&
sacerdotes militantes, caeteris paribus, inter bellicas operationes, Sacrum facere et
Sacrum ministrare valeant, non obstanti irregularitate quam pugnantes forte incur-
rerint ; bello vero composite, recurrent ad competentem auctoritatem."
736 THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR [Sept.,
by an enemy. But it is well that I should tell you how I was carried
here. It was by one of my comrades, a soldier who is a priest.
There's a man for you! In order to save me he had to rush
through a shower of bullets, without apparently noticing them.
Then when he had saved me, he brought me here. I did indeed
embrace him."
"What was his name?"
" De Gironde."
And at once the wounded man's neighbor exclaimed :
" Ah, he was a hero. You will never be able to repay him
for what he has done for you "
" The other night," continued the wounded man, " a soldier
reported to our captain that nothing had been heard for some time
in a small wood where the Germans were intrenched. Had
they evacuated it? Would they return again? It was a position
that had been hotly disputed, and which we would have occupied at
once if we were able to do so. What volunteers would be willing
to go and reconnoitre this position ? Death would be their inevitable
fate if the Germans were still there. One volunteer presented
himself. His name was de Gironde, and in the dark night, alone,
he went to reconnoitre the small wood, and learned that the Ger-
mans had evacuated it. There certainly was courage, where I did
not know it existed." This heroic soldier, Father Gilbert de
Gironde, was a Jesuit. He was killed six metres from the German
ranks, while he was praying before the bodies of four Alpine
soldiers, who had been killed the night before. He was about to
bury them, and he fell with the cross in his hands.
A Lazarist, Father Paul Barbeit, was a volunteer stretcher-
bearer. He was the cure of the Fourth Zouaves. He was always
where the fight was hottest, taking in the wounded, even under
fire. On Christmas day a company was ordered forward to as-
sault a German trench. The advance line was swept away like
ripe wheat before the sickle. A second line went on. The lieu-
tenant cried out : " Forward, with the bayonet." He plunged for-
ward, but the men did not follow. They were brave men, but the
hurricane of iron was appalling, and they saw, lying dead in the
sunlight, their comrades who had preceded them. Father Barbeit
cried out : " On ! My children. We must capture that trench. I
go with you. Come, follow me." Without arms (he never carried
any), his crucifix in his hand, he plunged forward. The men fol-
lowed and took the trench.
I 9 i6.] THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 737
On the thirtieth of September, 1914, upon the plain of Craonne,
the enemy was intrenched behind the walls and in the caves of
a farm, whence they swept with volleys of shot the entire plain.
The captain of a French company, posted immediately in front,
had to send to the commandant of artillery a message of great
importance. He asked for a volunteer. Sergeant Dauge, a deacon
of the diocese of Aire, offered himself. He fulfilled his mission.
In returning, before he could regain his trench, he was struck.
He had only sufficient strength to cry out to his comrades : " I am
mortally wounded. Au revoir, my friends, au revoir, until we meet
in heaven."
A Breton priest, Jean Pierre Bescond, of the parish of
Plouneour-Menez, in the diocese of Quimper, was a corporal. Dur-
ing the battle he won the admiration of his comrades. " One
would think," said a soldier who was with him, " that he was going
to a feast, so carelessly, apparently, did he advance amidst a shower
of shot and shell, but, nevertheless, I saw that he had tears in
his eyes."
What courage indeed, human and Christian! Oftentimes the
priests and religious in the army offer themselves as substitutes for
others in posts of danger, for a comrade or particularly for the
father of a family. Thus a priest of Nancy took sentry duty for
the father of a family, and while on post met his death.
" In two regiments of Savoy infantry, where I served," another
soldier tells, " there were seventeen priests, of which nine were
lieutenants and the remainder subalterns. Every evening when
night had fallen upon the field of battle, these seventeen priests
went voluntarily for their rank excused them from such duty
to work with the soldiers who were charged with placing in front
of the trenches the 'hedgehogs' machines made of beams bristling
with iron points. The soldiers wept at seeing their courage and
devotion. Five priests were killed doing this perilous work."
On the ninth of May, 1915, at Carency, many French soldiers
fell wounded between their trench and that of the Germans. They
begged their comrades to go and take them, but it was impossible,
for there was a mad rain of shot. Two soldiers, however, came
forward one a priest and the other a seminarian. They asked
the captain's permission to go and search for the wounded. The
captain at first refused. They were in plain sight and the danger
was extreme. Eventually, when they insisted, he consented. They
went and returned, bringing back eleven wounded. But when
VOL. cm. 47
738 THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR [Sept.,
carrying back the twelfth a shell laid them low with their precious
burden.
One day in the trench, it was announced that the colonel of
the regiment had fallen, wounded, a little distance in front of
the German line. The regiment loved him as a son loves a father.
" My children," said the commandant, " we cannot leave him in
their hands." And he asked for volunteers to search for him in
the face of the enemy's fire. A party of men went forth, but the
fire which met them was so intense that it was evident, if they
continued, they would go into the arms of death. The commandant
refused permission for them to go further, but he added, " If one
of you has the courage to meet death he may go." One stepped
forward. It was the soldier-priest, the Abbe Teularde, pro-
fessor at the University of St. Felix at Beaucaire. The com-
mandant, weeping, embraced him. The young priest went for-
ward under a shower of projectiles four bullets pierced his cape
and two more his hat. Finally he reached the wounded colonel,
and took him upon his back. He started to return with his precious
burden. From the trenches the anxious eyes of the men and the
commandant watched him. Bullets fell about him. He just reached
the edge of the trench when he also was wounded, and fell to the
ground with the colonel. His comrades leaped out to give him
aid. Both were brought back into the trench. The abbe was
not mortally wounded. While being cared for, a young lieutenant
knelt beside him and said : " Father, it is a long time since
I believed, and practised my religion. You have converted me.
I beg of you now before everybody to hear my confession."
The priests perform not only great and heroic deeds, but also
the most humble service, which likewise wins the hearts of the men.
The chaplain, Father Lestrade, passed a gunner on his way to
minister to the wounded. In the regiment the Father was known
as " invulnerable." When not in action he was the laundry-man
and the tinker. Somewhere back of the front, a poor old woman
worked her garden. A soldier long unshaven walked by. " Pass
me that, mother," said he to the woman. " I know how to use it."
He took her spade and set to work. A half hour afterwards all
the garden was turned over. " Now pass me the sprouts ; I will
re-plant them for you." The old woman was delighted. " You
are a gardener then? " she asked. " No, I am a priest," said the
man with the heavy beard.
The chaplains are never far from the men nor from the
igi6.] THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 739
firing line. The number that have fallen on the field of battle is
very large.
A soldier tells as follows of Abbe Dubreuil : " We had
broken the third German line, filled with dead and with prisoners
that we had taken, and had arrived at a summit crossed by the
road of Bethune, when I saw the chaplain of our division, Father
Dubreuil, who in the face of a storm of bullets was passing from
wounded to wounded, dressing the wound of one, giving absolution
to another, a silver crucifix in his left hand, and he himself already
wounded in the arm, and his fingers bleeding. I had not time to
bid him hide himself before he was out of sight, and a few
minutes later he fell, dying instantly."
" The chaplain of our regiment," writes another soldier, " went
ahead of the line of our sharpshooters during the battle. He
stood upright before the bullets, calm and smiling, with a kind and
encouraging word for everyone. He made a most profound im-
pression. He was killed in trying to succor a general who had been
wounded."
The death of the priests on the battlefield, even more than
their life with the soldiers, has been an effective sermon. Death
has been the supreme test of their patriotism and has revealed to
the eyes of those who up to now would not see, the horizon of the
world beyond. At the beginning of the year 1916, one thousand
two hundred and fifty-one priests were killed on the battlefield,
and one thousand one hundred and fifteen were decorated for
bravery. The official records testify beyond all question to the
magnificent service rendered by the priests in the army, where
they serve in regiments or are in hospital service whether they are
combatants or stretcher-bearers or infirmarians or chaplains. To
these official records may be added thousands of letters from the
front, which give the testimony of their comrades, and to both, the
great, sincere and enthusiastic voice of the people.
The priest in the army has been a brave man among brave
men. He has been the source of moral power, and even unbelieving
officers are pleased to testify to this fact. A captain of artillery,
a Protestant, writes : " When a certain attack had failed, the
commander of the section was found to be a Jesuit. He had given
absolution to all his men who went forth, and many of whom had
been wounded, and so it was both on the Yser and in the Vosges.
The example of this Jesuit leads me to speak of the conduct of
the priests in the army. From all I have seen, no words can
740 THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR [Sept.,
sufficiently eulogize it. My testimony must be above suspicion not
only because I am not a Catholic, but also because I do not in
principle sympathize with priests, however well-mannered they may
be, but they did their duty magnificently arid gave an inspiring
example. I know a certain canon, a captain among the territorials,
who could give points to the officers of the regular army. One of
the chaplains is equally excellent. He has shown himself full of
energy, confident and brave. In bringing before their minds the
life to come, in preaching by their example, the priests have taught
all that in the presence of danger, even in the greatest danger,
death is not to be considered." On every occasion they recall the
example of that priest-lieutenant, who, seeing his company waver,
leaped forward, exclaiming, " I am a priest. I do not fear death.
Forward, all." He fell riddled with bullets, but the position was
won.
The service of these priests serves patriotism as well as re-
ligion. Stirred by such great courage, overcome by the unselfish-
ness that drives them to risk their own lives in order to save a
comrade, a soldier, of his own accord, draws near to the priest.
Admiration for his bravery, recognition of his services force
him to take the first step. The indifferent ones of yesterday, even
the former anti-clericals, go first to Mass, celebrated by their
comrade, the cure, simply to please him. Little by little they are
caught by the Divine snare. The words of the sermon find a
path to their heart; those words revive memories of other days,
long since forgotten. In the trench of Father Teulade, the priest
who under fire so heroically saved his colonel, they say in common
morning and evening prayers. During the day the Kyrie, Gloria,
and Credo are sung as at Mass. They amuse themselves by rifle-
practice or by playing cards. During the afternoon a conference
or sermon is given, and in the evening the recitation of the rosary.
Father Teulade is oftentimes obliged to hear confessions during the
entire day and night. " When we go back," wrote one of the
soldiers, last October, " we will be changed men."
An artist of Paris writes, June 18, 1915, to a cure of Lisere:
" At Paris, in all my life of excitement, I never practised my re-
ligion. When danger comes, one seeks a sure footing. I know that
this war will change many things with regard to the religious ques-
tion in France. That which appeals to the masses of the people
is the conduct of the priests who are under fire. I am in among
the troops at the front, and from the opinions expressed by every-
I9i6.] THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 741
body, one knows that the priests, no matter in what service they
may be engaged, are worthy of all admiration. Jews, freethinkers,
all with one accord praise their conduct and render them striking
homage."
All exaggeration must be avoided. No sensible man will
affirm that all the French that all French soldiers have become
practical Catholics, and that all the trenches are as edifying as
that of Father Teulade. For various reasons, sometimes due to
the men themselves, sometimes to their surroundings, sometimes to
the very provinces from which they come, there are often the
greatest differences between one regiment and another. But it is
true that the present attitude of the priests in the army has dis-
pelled in all minds the old prejudices against the clergy. This is of
great significance; and as a result we may expect the most happy
consequences. It is also true that the conversions have been real
and widespread, though all have not immediately turned from
indifference to the practice of religion. An inveterate atheist, for
example, wrote home that henceforth he would believe; again a
confirmed indifferentist turns towards God; at the hospital a
freemason is won over by the beneficent influence of faith ; on the
firing line itself Baptisms and the First Communion of soldiers have
frequently occurred.
" I am determined/* said one of these soldiers, " to return to
the faith of my parents, and once again I will be a Catholic."
The war is full of such public acts of faith. " On the day of mo-
bilization," writes M. Rocheblare in the Journal de Geneve of
August, 1914, " three young men of wealthy family, about to part,
were conversing together in one of the most frequented cafes
of Paris. One of them said in a low voice: 'You are going to
make fun of me. You know I have not been a churchgoer; but
no matter. I go to the front ; I wish, at least, to die well. I have
been to confession. Now I feel lighter, and I will die joyfully.' '
And the two others, whom he expected would make fun of him,
simply answered : " And we have been too."
In the month of November, 1914, Commandant de Beaufort,
at the very hour of battle, called a soldier-priest from the ranks to
administer the last absolution to all who wished to receive it. Under
fire he addressed his comrades thus : " Let all among you who
wish to receive absolution kneel on one knee and uncover your
heads." All, without exception, knelt down and took off their kepis.
The religious offices of the priest in the army have not been
742 TH CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE W AR [Sept.,
limited to the hearing of confessions before and after the battle;
they have been permanently continued. Moreover, in many canton-
ments what might be called " military parishes " have been estab-
lished with a real Christian life. It most cases the altar is made of
two cartridge boxes, on which is placed a frame and a box for
the tabernacle. A gray cover is spread over the frame and a white
sheet, if there is one at hand, covers the whole.
On Easter Sunday there were so many throughout the army to
receive Holy Communion that there were not sufficient Sacred
Hosts. Ninety per cent of the soldiers had been to confession.
In the Argonne the soldiers built pretty churches out of oak
and pine trees, nor did they forget the steeples. Even in the
trenches oratories have been erected; and how could the French
soul forget Notre Dame? But the names of the little chapels are
shorn of their perfume of peace, and of their setting in the sweet-
smelling fields or on the seashore. It is no longer Notre Dame-du-
Chene, or Notre Dame-des-Flots. It is: Notre Dame-des-
Tranchees.
When, perchance, the soldiers find a crucifix in some de-
molished house, they bring it at once to their comrade-priest, and
put their underground dwelling under the protection of this holy
image. Sometimes in the very depths of the trenches they dig out
a tabernacle; the priest finds himself obliged to place therein the
Sacred Hosts during the night, and there, in turn, the soldiers keep
watch before their God until dawn. In these military parishes the
cycle of Christian life revolves as in all Catholic countries. Military
High Masses are celebrated on Sundays; sometimes the altars
may be seen under the shadow of green branches, or again under
the sheltering wings of an aeroplane.
Christmas had its midnight Mass, its offices and its Com-
munions in the open air at an altar made of wheat-sheaves, on
which the frost set its diamonds; in a granary, or in a stable, re-
calling Bethlehem. The Christmas carols and the Credo were ac-
companied by the rumbling of the cannon.
On Palm Sunday, at the front, they adorned the tombs of the
dead, and the soldiers pinned to the bottonholes of their kepis a
piece of blessed palm. During Holy Week some of the canton-
ments made retreats, and on Good Friday the Stations of the Cross
were followed in many of the trenches, the stations being marked
by crosses. Nor was Easter without its alleluias. There were fifty,
one hundred and even three hundred Communions in some of the
I9i6.] THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 743
cantonments. " Penitents could be seen in every corner," said one
of the soldiers.
In the Vosges, on Easter Sunday, an altar was erected be-
tween two snow ramparts, and while the priest was giving abso-
lution bullets flew past. Nor were the sentinels of the advance
posts forgotten. The priest went to them, and these brave ones
could be seen lowering their guns to receive the God of Hosts.
Is a soldier wounded ? He finds a priest in his own stretcher-bearer,
or in the infirmary of the Red Cross car, or in the hospital. Has
he been taken prisoner ? He finds the priest a prisoner with him.
We had already seen the priest on the battlefield searching for
the wounded at the peril of his life. And how the wounded hail
him ! " Say, old friend," called one of them to a comrade in the
ambulance, " without the cures we would not be here." And from
another one: "You know I am not a friend of the cures, so my
testimony is impartial. Believe me, friends, without the cure how
many wounded would die on the battlefield."
In the hospital the priest-infirmarian gets up at four o'clock
in the morning in order to celebrate Mass. Day and night he is
at the service of the sick and the wounded. He is not only their
servant; he ds their friend, their comforter, and through his
solicitude and care they recognize his sacerdotal character.
" Do not leave me, Father, I suffer too much," cried a soldier
whose foot had been horribly shattered by a bullet. " Stay with
me while they dress the wound ! " Shortly after, when they were
undressing the wounds, two cries escaped the sufferer : " Major,
you make me suffer ; " then : " Father, give me your hand ! "
Is not this incident characteristic of the bond now -uniting
priest and people? It is the priest who, after giving the dying
soldier the comforts of religion, after receiving from him the lov-
ing, farewell messages for the dear ones at home, remains with
him to the end, recites the last prayers over his body, and renders
him the last service of burial; it is the priest who takes care of
his grave and sees that a cross is erected over it, and it is the priest
who offers Mass for his departed soul. For all these services those
who are now among the living, but who to-morrow will have their
turn on the battlefield, are grateful to the soldier-priest. He for-
cibly exercises a constant influence over the soldiers, and if, not-
withstanding the numerous conversions, his efforts do not always
meet with success, yet because of his action, hostilities, suspicions,
and all the foolish barriers of anti-clericalism have been overthrown.
744 THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR [Sept.,
This religious influence has sweetly and sympathetically directed,
and continues to direct, souls along the right road, leading them
to return to the traditional practices of faith.
The action and influence of the priest amidst the populations
of invaded countries and bombarded cities has been no less effi-
cacious. There again he has loyally served religion in serving his
country. The bishops have shown themselves as of old, true
defenders of the city.
At Meaux, at the approach of the Germans, the civil au-
thorities departed. The poor remained almost alone. The bishop,
Monsignor Marbeau, could not suffer them to die of hunger. With-
out loss of time he called some of the citizens together, and with
them organized a Committee of Public Welfare, which cared for
and protected not only the people of the city itself but those also
of adjoining villages.
The peasants of the surrounding country hastened to jthe city
for refuge. Monsignor Marbeau organized everything under the
threat of the German cannon. His administrative power guided
everything. His self-devotion called forth like devotion. He ar-
ranged all the departments which circumstances demanded. The
bishop's palace was a veritable storehouse. Every day trucks left
from there for the front. The city obeys this leader, this defender
of the city, who has become its bishop even in temporal things.
The people love him. Laborers, peasants, men of the middle class,
respectfully uncover their heads when he passes by. The tradesmen
come out of their shops to salute him. At the sight of the purple
soutane, officers and soldiers stand at attention and give the mili-
tary salute. The children coming out of school gather around him,
exclaiming : " Good-morning, Monsignor ! "
At Rheims, Cardinal Lugon; at Arras, Monsignor Lobbedey;
at Amiens, Monsignor Dizien and Monsignor de la Villerabel; at
Verdun, Monsignor Ginesty; at Soisson, Monsignor Pechenard; at
Nancy, Monsignor Turinaz ; at Saint-Die, Monsignor Foucault all
have stood under the shells, sharing the dangers of their people
and, when necessary, living with them in cellars; and, in sight
of their demolished cathedrals, raising the courage of all, presiding
over the care of the sick and wounded, and assuring food and
clothing to the poor.
What can be said of the miracles of faith, courage and charity
wrought by these bishops, and of all those other miracles of which
nothing will ever be known, except that, as faithful shepherds,
1916.] THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 745
they have suffered with their flocks such as the Archbishop of
Cambrai and the Bishop of Lille, Monsignor Charost, aided in
their task by the generous assistance of the United States.
Not one has abandoned his post. All have remained to the
last, as long as anyone was left in the cities; like the captains of
ships they have been the last to quit the deck. This indefatigable
and admirable action of the bishops has not only reanimated waver-
ing ones under fire, but it has shown forth their traditional role; it
has done away with the dissensions of old, the smoulderings of
discord, and sealed the -national reconciliation. In their invaded
parishes the cures have filled the same role. They have proved
themselves men of God and men of action.
Suippes, Souain, Virginy, Cernon, Minaucourt, Villetourbe,
hundreds and hundreds of parishes in Lorraine, Champagne,
Flanders, Picardy and Beauvais have witnessed heroic and ab-
solute devotion on the part of their priests, who preached confidence
and courage as much by example as by words, establishing, in the
midst of the disorganization caused by the invasion, moral and
national strength, which upheld and saved all.
And in the rear, far from the front, outside of the army
and its various services at Paris and in all the provinces where
the noise of cannon was not, or is not heard, the clergy bishops and
priests have a two- fold office to fulfill: to share in the patriotic
work of the war, and to continue and even to develop their
spiritual ministry.
And here the priest has two dangers to avoid : First, to guard
against inaction in the midst of the general patriotic outburst; and,
secondly, when active to take care not to abdicate in the smallest
measure his sacerdotal character. Not only must he foster faith
and patriotism, but he must show great tact prudence, as well
as enthusiasm, devotedness and activity. The French clergy have
proved that they have the qualities which the situation demands.
Instinctively the priest has been a thorough priest and one with the
nation.
In every work organized for the national defence, the clergy
collaborated, and this collaboration, in many instances, has proved
to be of capital importance. When it had been decided to in-
crease the gold reserve of the Bank of France, the Government
did not hesitate to ask the help of the bishops, and the latter ad-
dressed an ardent appeal to the faithful. The cures received and
carried to the Bank of France the gold of their parishioners. The
746 THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR [Sept.,
result was considerable. The bishop and clergy took the same
action with regard to the latest loan of France, and the success
of this loan is due in great part to their intervention.
The role of the clergy has been especially marked in those
works of the war where charity and patriotism go hand in hand.
On all sides, in a veritable outburst of brotherhood, France has-
tened to the help of the wounded, the mutilated, the refugees,
the orphans, and all the victims of the war. In all these works
the clergy took a lively part, either by personal service or through
the influence which they exercised in directing the devotedness of
Catholics.
We may say that the wounded belong to the clergy. Not
only are there many priests among the stretcher-bearers, who
take the wounded soldiers away from the battlefield and this
under fire and shell not only, very often, is the priest-infirmarian
of the Red Cross train, or the infirmarian of the hospital for
the wounded, but these very hospitals by the hundreds and thou-
sands have been established in convents, schools, settlements, Catho-
lic institutions of all kinds, without counting private residences.
It is by thousands that priests and religious may be seen at the
bedside of the wounded, and many among them like Sister Julie
and Sister Gabrielle, who remained at their posts of charity in
spite of bombardment and German occupation, will henceforth
be known and venerated throughout the entire world.
In Paris alone and its suburbs 955 beds have been placed at
the disposal of the wounded in n Catholic hospitals; 437 beds
in 8 sanatoriums; 2,189 beds in 20 educational institutions (sem-
inaries, colleges, schools and orphanages) ; 954 beds in 18 settle-
ments; 1,058 beds in 21 religious communities. In all, 5,633 beds
have been consecrated to the wounded soldiers by Catholic insti-
tutions in the diocese of Paris, and out of the 12,700 beds which
the three societies of the Red Cross have in Paris and the suburbs,
6,200 are cared for by religious. And how many Catholics are
numbered among the members of the Red Cross!
All through France, the role of the clergy and Catholics is
of the same importance in the service of the wounded. It is
sufficient to know that out of 331 Catholic secondary schools, two
hundred and forty-eight that is seventy-five per cent give hos-
pitality to the wounded at the present time. Out of the two hun-
dred and forty-eight colleges, eighty-nine have been totally dedi-
cated to this work and their doors have been closed to pupils. The
I9I6.J THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 747
others have given up a large part of their premises. Out of the
eighty-three colleges where the wounded are not actually found,
six of them harbor some for a short time, and thirty have been
rejected by the health department either because of military regu-
lations or owing to their situation.
By special orders of the bishops the cures, assisted by the
directors and directresses of the different Catholic associations, have
organized a work to keep soldiers supplied with warm clothing.
The bishops and the cures, the priests and the religious, have in-
spired the people with initiative in charitable works in order to
bring relief to all the miseries consequent on the war. With the
help of the Sisters of Charity and other religious, as well as of
lay Catholics, they have established centres for food and clothing
supplies as well as sewing circles.
To these and all the great works they have brought their best
capabilities, irrespective of religious opinions, as, for instance,
the Secours 'national, which from the beginning of the war has
been instant in planning to aid the women, children and the aged,
so that their soldier relatives at the front may be relieved of anxiety
in their regard.
On the Committee of the Secours national, we find side by
side Cardinal Amette and M. Appell, President of the Institute,
and M. Maurice Barres, President of the Patriotic League; Chief
Rabbi Levy, and the Rev. M. Wagner, M. Hanotaux, President
of the French-American Committee, and M. Mithouard, Presi-
dent of the Municipal Council; the royalist Charles Maurras elbows
the socialist, Dubreuilh; and the President of the Chamber of
Commerce of Paris, M. David Mennet, is not far from M. Jouhaux,
Secretary of the General Confederation of Labor. Here they
are but Frenchmen, anxious to aid the French.
One of the questions which presented itself with the greatest
urgency, after the more pressing and immediate needs, was the
question of the war orphans. So many fathers have fallen on
the battlefield.
At once the episcopate and the clergy established works to
provide for the future of these orphans. Orphanages were im-
mediately founded in all dioceses. And these are two instances
of the development of the work : " Family Adoption," established
in the offices of " la Croix " by the initative of " Noel,'" and the
" Association of War Widows and Orphans," founded under the
auspices and direction of Cardinal Amette, Archbishop of Paris.
748 THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR [Sept.,
"Family Adoption " (5 rue Bayard, Paris) seeks to help the
family of the orphans, so that the orphans may remain with their
own. It gives to the mother, or grandparents, or brothers or sis-
ters having charge of the child, a pension of two hundred francs
per year for its maintenance. The payment of this pension is
made by the cure of the parish. The members of the work, or
" Noelists," act as guardians of the orphans, never failing to visit
them when they are in the same city or the same village. Every-
one may contribute to this great work and take part in this
" adoption," provided they subscribe to the organization. " Family
Adoption " has already taken charge of six hundred children, whose
material, moral and religious wants for the future are practically
provided for.
" The Association of War Widows and Orphans " has its
centre at 21 rue des Bons-Enfants, and in its Council of Admin-
istration, M. 1'Chanoine Dupin, of the Archbishopric, and the
cures of St. Sulpice and St. Honore d'Aylan. At the beginning
of 1916, it had already examined more than three thousand docu-
ments. It has helped one thousand five hundred orphans and
seven hundred widows. It has placed in Paris or in the provinces
one hundred and fifty children, and it actually prepared accommo-
dations for two hundred more. The Society of St. Vincent de
Paul, as well as a committee of visiting ladies and patronesses, have
rendered valuable service. So in the very midst of the war the
mower of men the French clergy urge the nation to pay to the
orphans the debt of gratitude it owes to their fathers, and to pre-
pare for the future work of restoration.
So though gone to the front the soldier is not forgotten. The
solicitude of the clergy follows him far from home towns and
cities, away on the firing line. It thinks of his soul as much as
of his material needs. It is for him that the Association of Mili-
tary Chaplains sent its volunteers to increase the number of official
chaplains; it is for him that it organized the work of portable
altars and allowed the soldier-priests to say Mass in the trenches,
close to the enemy ; it is for him that the Bonne Presse, the Societe
bibliographique sent to the front, to the hospitals and to the prisons
in Germany books that elevate, console and comfort.
In all their pastoral letters the bishops have thrown light
upon the great lessons of the war. They have exhorted the faithful
to understand these lessons; to do their duty, and to think of
God more than ever before. Preachers have developed these teach-
1916.] THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR 749
ings before numerous audiences. Books and pamphlets have helped
to sow the good seed gathered from the lips of the bishops from the
church pulpits. At the call of the bishops and clergy the churches
have been crowded the voice of prayer has been universally heard
public and national prayer, as well as daily, persevering, untiring
prayer.
On the initiative of Cardinal Sevin, Archbishop of Lyons, and
at the request of all the cardinals and bishops, national prayers
were offered throughout France on the thirteenth of December, 1914.
The only patrons of France were especially invoked : The Blessed
Virgin Mary, St. Michael the Archangel, St. Denis, St. Genevieve,
St. Louis, St. Vincent de Paul, Blessed J. B. Vianney, Blessed
Margaret Mary, Blessed Joan of Arc, and ardent supplications
ascended to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The eleventh of February, 1915, the Feast of Our Lady of
Lourdes, was the day appointed for the national prayer of the
little children. In all the churches of France the children gathered
specially for this purpose. At the request of their several bishops
they prayed for France and for peace peace established on right
and justice. It was Monsignor Dubois, Archbishop of Bourges,
who had the happy idea for this general appeal of the little ones.
At Notre Dame, pilgrimages of public prayers succeeded one
another without interruption. At the end of September, 1914,
the Patriotic League had its turn, and in the month of November
a service was offered for the soldiers who died on the field of
battle. The President of the Republic was represented by a dele-
gate; likewise the Ministers of War, of the Navy, of Foreign Af-
fairs ; present were the Governor of Paris, the Ambassadors, many
members of the Parliament, of the Municipal Council, of the French
Academy, of the Institute, officers, magistrates, etc., etc.
Some of the more notable national feast days were: January
i, 1915; January I7th and February 7th; and in May the Feast
of Jeanne d'Arc. On Sunday, March 26, 1916, France closed four
days of public supplications : prayers of the children, general fasts,
invocations to the Blessed Virgin, invocations to the Sacred Heart
and all of France, with representatives of every social class, with
delegations from the French Academy, the Academy of Literature,
the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, the Academy of
Fine Arts, the Academy of Science, knelt in the Basilica of Monte-
marte. On the night preceding the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth
of March, one thousand five hundred men watched there in adora-
750 THE CLERGY OF FRANCE AND THE WAR [Sept.,
tion. The great sanctuaries of France, the cathedrals, have every-
where witnessed similar crowds and manifestations. France at war
has prayed publicly, as she has not done for a long time.
All the parishes have what are called " the prayers of the
war " Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the rosary, the Sta-
tions of the Cross, the litanies, the invocations to the Sacred Heart
and to the holy patrons of France. These prayers are said daily
in many churches. In almost everyone there is a chapel adorned
with flags. It is here that Mass is often offered for France, and
it is here, too, that the mothers, wives and children of the soldiers
may be seen at prayer. Some churches already have a marble
slab whereon are engraved the names of the parishioners who have
died for France.
The remembrance of the dead elevates souls and unites all
hearts. The burial of the soldiers, or the services offered for the
repose of their souls, are always attended by crowds. Following
the funeral hearse one can distinguish faces that have not been seen
before in the churches.
A short time ago, M. Maurice Barres was present at one of
these soldier funerals. He congratulated the cure for his patriotic
remarks. "Oh," said the cure, "I repeat myself a good deal!"
" These brave men repeatedly die," answered Barres.
The repetition of these acts of faith, the perseverance of the
French people has caused more surprise to everyone (and to the
French themselves most of all) than the energy shown in the
spontaneous outburst during the first days of the war. The in-
fluence of the clergy has been lasting and general. It has, as we
have seen, extended itself over all the land that land which may
be said to belong by right to the domain of the soul, and of religion.
In view of this unmistakable change in public opinion the
enemies of the Faith saw how fruitless were all their endeavors.
By force of circumstances they have been driven back from the
place which they occupied in time of peace, and they have tried
to reconquer it by calumny.
The infamous rumor was sent abroad by the anti-clericals that
the clergy were secretly allied with the Germans, were traitors to
their country. If such a counter-attack could, at first sight, deceive
some of the ignorant country people, the common sense of the
nation rejected it. Calumny is stopped by facts, by the patriotism
of the French clergy, by the sacrifice of their lives on the battle-
field, by the service which they unceasingly and unselfishly render
1916.] HER NAME 751
to all. Without doubt the nation will not be converted en bloc,
but there is a change in France a permanent change to which the
clergy have contributed a magnificent share.
In the month of October, 1914, before the combat, only two
steps from the battlefield, a priest flag-bearer gave absolution to
the men of his regiment, section by section. The men all knelt and
recited the act of contrition, while the soldier-priest, his left hand
resting on the flag, raised his right to give absolution. When, on
the morrow of the cataclysm that is shaking the earth, the impartial
historian will have carefully studied the character of the Great War
and its consequences from the religious point of view, it is in this
synthetical attitude, where patriotic duty and the sacred ministry
are found closely united, that he will have to consider the French
priest. It is here that history must take its picture of him and
transmit it for the study and the gratitude of future generations.
HER NAME.
(Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, September 8th.)
BY HELEN HAINES.
WHAT shall I call this gentle maid
Whom good St. Anne named Mary ?
Since Gabriel, God's Archangel, said
Blessed forever she would be,
No word seems left for me !
Yet it was my Little Brother
Who first lisped, " Mother, Mather "
And shall His word not be mine, too,
Till time shall cease to be?
What shall I call this virgin tried
Whom good St. Anne named Mary?
Since martyrs, saints, and councils vied
For names her virtues to describe
No words seem left for me !
And yet my anguished Brother
Cried at last, " Behold thy Mother! "
And shall His words not be mine, too,
Till time shall cease to be?
EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL.
BY MADELINE BRIDGES.
TAFFORD MORRISON had come up from Belfast
in the midday train, in an interested and, for him,
excited state of mind. The railway accommodation,
or rather inaccommodation, had proved a source of
astonishment and amusement. His practical mind
had grasped and readjusted point after point in the mechanical
argument, as set forth by the road management, and so many of
the points appealed to him as intensely humorous that his face
kept brightening into smiles, which added much to his, at any
time, rather attractive personality. He was also distinctly aware
of being charmed by the outlook from the small car window the
strange misty atmosphere, suffused with soft sunshine, the wonder-
ful green of the low sloping hills, the fields and wastes of wild
flowers new to him, everywhere crossed by blossoming hawthorn
hedges heavy with dew. The poor neglected cabins and the pic-
turesque groups of half -clad beautiful children caused him to sit
quickly upright; more than once a serious frown displacing his
dreamy, appreciative smile. Like all good Americans, Stafford
loved novelty, but only in lovable forms. His active mind rebuilt
many a tumbled-down dwelling ; straightened many a neglected gar-
den patch, and clothed and packed off to school a score or more
of stout limbed, idle urchins as the train went by. His forte was
putting to rights. He did not realize that he had inherited this
trait from a New Hampshire mother, whose methodical ways of
arranging household matters, even down to the spools in her work
basket, had made her often the theme of his affectionate teasing.
It was past three o'clock when the train drew in at Kilmichael
station five minutes behind time, as Stafford verified by his watch,
adding a mental note to the effect that everything seemed to be
five minutes, or a hundred years, late in Great Britain and the
little place was still as the depths of a woodland, and almost as de-
serted. A straggling village lay to the left, perhaps a mile away, as
if it preferred to keep a respectful distance from brisk and modern
innovations. At the right a wild mountain land, and a far glimpse
of blue water, but here, as everywhere, the drifted field flowers of
1916.] EILEEN OF K1LM1CHAEL 753
white and pale gold and the wonderful incense-breathing haw-
thorn.
Stafford stamped and stretched his cramped limbs by walking
round the station, to meet a leisurely-advancing railroad porter,
the only official, or other human being, in sight, who touched his hat
as no American railway porter would think of doing, and Staf-
ford touched his with a ready smile. He also said good morning,
as a New York man is apt to do at any time of day.
" I want to go out to Kilmichael Castle, to find Mr. Morrison.
I suppose you can direct me how to get there ? "
" Sure and I can, sor," the porter's eyes were looking smilingly
into the distance, " but there's Miss Eileen herself comin' now, in
the Docther's jauntin' car. An' yell not be gettin' yere big box
into that ramshackle thing, an' ye have other bits av bags, as
well."
" Can't you see that they're sent up in good shape? " he slipped
a coin into the convenient hand. " Fix it for me, will you ? "
" I will, indeed, do that same thing. Thank'ee, sor. I'll hev
them up in no time, safe an' soun'. Ah, she sees us, now, an'
she's dhrivin' up a bit, but, sure, the mare's as owld as the hills.
She'll walk the whole way back wid ye, an' that ye'll see."
Stafford took off his hat and waved it, and, as the carriage
drew near, delight came into his heart. It was such a beautiful
face that greeted him such a look of eager, yearning affection.
Before he had time to anticipate her movement, his cousin had
thrown the reins to the horse, who obediently stood still, stepped
from her seat, and was in his arms, her own clasping him fast
with breathless, but most satisfying, welcome. She kissed him on
each cheek, and when they looked at each other, her eyes were
swimming in tears.
" Ah, God be thanked," were the first words he heard her utter,
with a sort of sob, "and you're here, safe! Stafford, dear, is it
really you? "
She drew away a little to gaze at him with loving tender-
ness.
" Oh, yes indeed indeed, it is ! You have the chin the
MacTeague chin and I see my father's eyes maybe it's the ex-
pression." And then the young lady, who was tall and proud look-
ing, as well as very lovely of feature, did what seemed to Stafford
an amazing thing, though it would hardly have been amazing in
one of his New England cousins : she looked brightly towards the
VOL. cm. 48
754 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
porter, and said in a sweet friendly voice : " Mickey, this is my
cousin from New York, my father's brother's child, Mr. Stafford
Morrison my very own cousin, Mickey ! "
" Sure, I might a known he was all that, Miss Eileen ! Yere
kindly welcome to Ireland, sor, kindly welcome, that ye are ! "
" I ought to have sent you word, Mickey, that he was expected,
but, then, I meant to be here before the train time. I was five
minutes late. Just think ! "
"Oh, that's not strange," said Stafford, smiling; he longed
to add, " on this side of the water," but her sweet warmth and
sincerity had seemed to call out his best to meet it, and flippancy
had no place. Her eyes had the glad truthfulness of a child, as-
sured of love, yet there was sadness in their more thoughtful and
steadfast look.
The road to Kilmichael proved itself one fitted to jolt the
patience out of any traveler not inured to hardships, yet Stafford
enjoyed every bump and rumble. Conversation was next to im-
possible, but what matter? He had crossed the ocean with a duti-
ful determination to make the cheerful best of a difficult undertak-
ing, and had met, at its very beginning, the kindest encouragement
fate could give. Letters from his cousin Eileen had come to him
since they were both children, and the letters her father had written
to his father, especially the sad letters of later years, were his to
read and ponder, and eventually to answer, when his father had
passed away. There had always existed an intense affection be-
tween the two brothers. Hugh the elder had come to America
when he was sixteen, leaving Geoffrey, with his parents and two
sisters, in the old home. He had prospered, but only in a moderate
way. The little income he was able to send across the ocean to
his people had become almost their sole means of support ; this fact
was never made known to him ; he thought of them as he left them,
with a few tenants still paying rent, and the farm fields tilled and
yielding, and the social life of the county finding its way, now and
then, to Castle Kilmichael. There had been a title in the in-
heritance of the estate, but it was long extinct only the family
name remained, and legends of its power and grandeur, which
meant very little to Stafford. The glory and greatness of Irish
kings and warriors impressed his commonplace young mind, as
might histories of Valentine or Orson, or Jack the Giant Killer.
Even had he believed them to be true, he would not have felt any
special honor reflected on him as the lineal descendant of these
I9i6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 755
conquering heroes. He was in the world to conquer for himself
money first, with better things to follow, it might be (though it
seldom is). His business was already well established on a paying
basis in New York the sort of basis that enabled him to spare
three months for his trip to the home of his ancestors.
The knowledge that his father's people were in straitened cir-
cumstances, almost in desperate need, came upon him like a
shock. One of his college friends, Archer Patton, had included
Kilmichael in his European travel, at Stafford's request, and wrote
to him, thence, with the frankness of long comradeship:
" The Morrisons over here are fine people, all right and hos-
pitable as the day is long, but they seem to be rather in a bad
way financially. Everything they own, I hear, is mortgaged to the
limit. Your cousin Eileen is away in Scotland with her married
sister, so I have .not had the pleasure of meeting her, but your uncle
and aunts are most kind only things are not going well with
them that's quite apparent. You ought to take a nm over and"
see just how it is."
Stafford read this brief and telling statement with a feeling of
wretchedness and self-reproach, such as he had never before ex-
perienced. He was conscious, first, of asking his dead father's
pardon for the neglect of a near duty. Although he had never
failed to forward the usual remittance to Kilmichael, he had let
his duty rest at that. His flesh and blood had been to him as
strangers, and strangers had been to him as his flesh and blood.
The week after Archer's letter reached him, he sailed for Ireland
and was jaunting up the hill road with his cousin Eileen.
She drew the horse in as they came in sight of the gray old
towers on a broad plateau overlooking the misty sea.
" You are coming to your own, Stafford, think of it. The
knights and ladies of Kilmichael lived and loved and died on this
very ground; and you are meeting them for the first time. Oh,
you may be sure the dear ghosts know you are here; they would
welcome you just as I did, if they could ! "
" I don't think I should care quite so much for that sort of
a welcome from them."
" I was giving you welcome for us all. I've known 'my dear
cousin Stafford' in letters, such a long, long time, but I'm so glad
that Stafford is you! When I saw you standing, looking up the
road, I was afraid it might be someone else ! "
756 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
" You did not wait to make quite sure, though, did you? " he
asked roguishly.
She looked at him in a little surprise.
" You mean ? Oh, yes, I did know. When I saw you wave
to me I knew. And the family resemblance is strong. I think I
would have recognized you anywhere for a MacTeague."
" Don't call me such outlandish names."
" I am proud to bear the name," she retorted quickly. " Eileen
Kilmichael MacTeague Morrison! If ever I'm the mother of
boys they shall all be MacTeagues and Kilmichaels. Now look,
see now, Stafford, the ocean view! Was there ever anything
grander, do you think? Your father spoke to you, many a time,
of this bay and the green island ? And the Strand ? Surely you've
heard of the Strand, where the great races used to be? There's
my father coming now to meet us, and Aunt Norah and Aunt Kate.
Oh, Stafford, but my heart is full this day. It is good that God
always knows what we feel, for it is often enough we can't speak it,
even to Him ! "
She was silent, and the tears were again bright on her lashes.
Stafford had never met a girl like this sweet Irish cousin. His
own eyes were moist as he jumped from the car and hurried up
the slope to meet the advancing group.
Stafford was astir next morning at his usual rising hour of
six, and out over the cliffs, observing Kilmichael from all points
of view taking in the scenery at its worth as " surroundings," and
devising, first of all, a better short-cut to the station, in the form
of a good driving road. In fact he had begun extensive plans
for what might prove mere aerial architecture, but his practical
thought took up the first imperative need of improvement that
presented itself. The vegetation was rich, he noticed the one or
two thriving planted fields, and the well-grown orchards on the
sunny side of the slope (it was near the beginning of May). The
side toward the ocean showed a bold array of crags, sheer precipices,
in some parts, of the same stone of which the Castle was mainly
built. Down at their feet surged and thundered the long sea billows,
dashed high in air from the outlying rocky points of the nearer
beach. A smooth white strand ran northwards farther than eye
could follow; this of course was the racing strand his cousin had
mentioned. On this feature his thoughts might have dwelt with
some reflective curiosity, but projects for to-day were elbowing
I9i6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 757
their way into view with such persistence that he ached, at once,
to be up and doing. He had, at any time, very little temptation to
musing or idle speculation; the act to be accomplished filled his
horizon.
Presently, as an actual consequence of nearly two hours wan-
dering and sniffing salt air, he realized a present and pressing need
of breakfast, and directed his long stride towards the castle-
dwelling, half farmhouse, half villa, spacious enough, but badly
out of repair, as the fuller morning light revealed. He was con-
soled to find signs of life astir, smoke issuing from the kitchen
chimney, and the hall door open to the sun. At sound of his step
on the porch Eileen came out to greet him, giving him both her
hearty hands for a good morning.
" But you're the early riser, Stafford, dear ! Away up over
the hills, and it not eight o'clock. But we'll be called to break-
fast in a minute now, though 'tis early for us. Did you sleep
well? And what did you dream?"
" I had a glorious sleep. Dreams, yes, but I can't just remem-
ber what."
" Oh, you ought to remember," she said, quite seriously. " Al-
ways try to remember your dreams in a strange house. They're
sure to have meaning. And did you bring an appetite down the
mountain? You'll always find one there for the seeking."
" I daren't tell you how hungry I am, but you'll know
presently."
" There's the bell," said Eileen. They ran, laughing, down the
wide hall, like two children, glad of the morning of a new day.
The first afternoon and evening had been given to the past, to
retrospect and rather sad recitals of family history, and to the
shy processes of getting acquainted, but there seemed deep joy in
this fresh meeting a reassurance of near and dear and coveted
kinship. Stafford's feelings are best expressed as quoted from the
first letter he wrote to Archer Patton. A little talk of the voyage
over, of matters personal to themselves, and then the words he
was burning to say :
" A splendid place is old Kilmichael, and truly, as you said, the
finest people in the world are these people of mine! Mine! I like
to write the word in this connection, I can tell you. I like especially
to write it in connection with my cousin Eileen! You missed it,
not meeting her. You never met anything like her. Not even in
your dreams and your imaginings! I don't know how to describe
758 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
her. The words I can think of won't apply to her a bit! She's
like a child in many ways, and she's a good deal like what an
Irish princess ought to be, and she's a loving, kindly, natural,
young woman, astonishingly full of feeling and emotion, and so
innocent that you want to kiss her for it, at least I do, right on her
sweet, guileless, smiling mouth. But that might scare some of
her innocence away! I'm afraid I shall grow entirely too fond of
her if we keep in this intimate comradeship and yet, no! How
could one be too fond of a good and beautiful sister? I was the
unfortunate only child, you must remember you, with a houseful
of brothers and sisters can't conceive this deprivation. I have
known its full meaning. And Eileen has no brother, and so there
is a place ready for me. My two aunts are as lovely women as I
have anywhere met. You did not tell me about their quaint brogue
and pretty delicate ways. Gentlewomen ! that just expresses them,
and the superstitions, Archer! 'Glory be to God,' I have learned
some psychic meanings since I came to Ireland ! Aunt Kate reads
my dreams every morning with the greatest solemnity, and tells
me to remember and mark her prophecies. She predicts 'overwhelm-
ing and unexpected success in my present undertakings,' whatever
they may be. That is cheering. The first wish of my heart is to
make habitable the Kilmichael house the mortgage, it seems, is
beyond my means at present, and the dread of foreclosure weighs
heavily on my Uncle Geoffrey's mind. Kind, stately old man; he
is of finer grain than ever father was, but not so clever-headed.
'' Yesterday I broached a plan that made them all stare. I
laugh, now as I recall their consternation. They thought I was in
jest, at first, and then they appeared to conclude I was going mad.
I suggested that it would be a great idea if we could find some
fellow, with money enough, to start in and make a Hotel of the
Castle. Eileen had shown me a Tourist's Inn, near a natural Spa,
about half a mile along the valley, which she said was always over-
crowded in summer, and each summer increasingly so guests had
often begged them for accommodation. I did not, of course, mean
to fit up the whole Castle, for that would necessitate a lot of rebuild-
ing, but I had found at least twenty rooms that might be made
habitable, and the situation is immense such a sweep of ocean
and valley land. She tells me artists visit the place in droves some
of them, I also learn, have become quite valued friends of hers.
Her little room is hung with their sketches and pictures, in which
her own tall gracefulness appears and reappears. (By the way,
igi6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 759
did I tell you, she is never less than picturesque whatever pose she
takes ? She has an immense quantity of black rippled hair, it looks
almost too much for her small, pretty head to carry and a profile
that would be Grecian, if it were not so clever and spirited.)
Well, we were all wandering through the Castle, when I began to give
voice to my inspiration, without many pauses in fact, I was getting
over the ground, in great style, until I happened to look at my sud-
denly silent listeners ; then I comprehended that I had been smash-
ing idols, laying waste my family altars, and acting in a manner
too sacrilegious to bear comment ! But it will bear comment later.
Common sense is apt to be sacrilegious when it comes in contact
with ideals, but it accomplishes, at least it can accomplish, what
ideals only dream of, and these Morrisons are dreamers such as
I had not believed could exist in the world of to-day ! If you could
hear them speak of the nation Ireland is yet to be one of the
greatest if not the foremost on the earth; the little green dot in
the ocean, with frontier too small to be worth measuring its be-
wildering, but you'd just love them for their faith and dear foolish
pride. Of this latter trait, here is a strange, pathetic instance. My
cousin tells me she earns a little money, pitifully little, at translating
from the Gaelic, but the secret is her own. ' It would grieve them
to know I earned money oh, yes, dear Stafford, poor papa's
heart would break.' Is not that a rather queer state of affairs? I
am receiving enlightenment of various brands."
" We'll rest here." Stafford was drawing long breaths, after
the hill climbing; but not Eileen the mountain girl's cheeks were
glowing, and her tones were even.
" This is 'Eileen Rock,' as you'll see in a moment."
In a moment Stafford saw. Some strong hand had carved
clearly and cleverly on a smooth surface the words " Eileen
Rock."
" It was a sculptor did that," she said, a little deprecatingly.
" I never knew I never saw it, until he had gone away to his home
in Scotland."
" He made his mark, in one place at any rate," was Stafford's
only comment.
Mention of men who had known and looked on Eileen before
his advent, made him restless. Had she wandered about these
heather moors and rocky sea ledges, with her blithe footsteps, sure
as a gazelle's, and her dark hair blown across her crimson cheek,
760 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
pioneering glad followers, one at a time followers whose mas-
culine eyes could surely find no beauty, indicated by her pointing
hand, half so worthy of admiration as her own vivid and glowing
loveliness! And where had he been all these useless years of his
grown-up manhood, while she was lavishing days of her sweet
company on sculptors, and painters, and other undeserving cum-
berers of the earth?
Eileen sat looking about her, with tenderness in her long slow
glance. The landscape was rough bog marsh and heather wastes,
mostly from the mountain looking northward wild and vague
as a landscape in some troubled dream.
Stafford said as much, wondering that she should care to make
this her favorite resting place.
" Oh, the cairns are here," she said gravely. " The past is
here the memories "
" And what are the cairns ? " asked Stafford interestedly. She
was constantly using words new to him.
" They are the burial places of the kings and great chieftains.
That is one, the mound just below us. 'Neil of the Blazing
Shield' is buried there."
"That heap of stones?"
" Yes. Oh, he was a great warrior. And to-morrow I must
take you to Crag Na Glennon, where they burned their altar fires."
" What was their religion, Eileen, do you suppose? "
" Why, they were heathens, Stafford, of course." Her tone
was reproachful. " For ages, they were heathens ! "
" Then we needn't care what they did, or where they wor-
shipped. I'm sure / don't ! We can't always be proud even of our
Christian ancestors, but when it comes to a lot of pagans "
" Hush sh ! " Eileen bit a smile back from her lips. " Have
you reverence for anything, earthly or heavenly? " she asked.
" Yes, I have. I have reverence this moment for something
that is both earthly and heavenly." He looked at her directly from
under his level brows.
" It's reverence gone astray then. But you're a very nice
cousin to say such pretty things cousins don't over here. But
indeed your ways are very nice."
" I'm afraid my uncle didn't think my ways very nice yesterday
when we were rambling through the castle."
" About? Oh, we all thought you were joking, at first."
" Neither at first, nor last, and Eileen, say ! Of course I must
I 9 i6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 761
give up the idea of rebuilding, and that sort of thing, but I do
wish your people could see their way to let me dig out the cellars.
That wouldn't be interfering with with supersti with tradi-
tions would it? "
" The cellars? "
" Well, the vaults (whatever you call them) underneath the
Castle. They have not been entered, your father tells me, in hun-
dreds of years."
" Stafford! the vaults? Why, they're haunted! " Her voice
was almost breathless in its solemnity.
"Haunted! by what?"
" By oh, you know ! What is anything haunted by ? "
" Nothing is haunted by anything ! What in the world are
you saying? You really don't believe in ghosts? "
" I believe in them as much as I believe in living mortals. Not
believe in ghosts ! Don't you ? "
" Oh, you're not in earnest, Eileen ? "
" I am in earnest. Ghosts are just as much realities as you and
I are. If you lived here awhile, you'd you'd see! "
"I wouldn't see any ghosts," said Stafford smiling, "but I'd
see some other things, better worth seeing, new roads and fences,
for instance, and the insides of cellars. I'll speak to your father
about that to-morrow."
" I'll run away to Dhrimlin," Eileen said. " I'll not be a party
to the sacrilege! But you'll get no permission from my father,
Stafford, mind now."
" And then I'll hire half a dozen of these walk-abouts, these
big dawdling fellows I'm meeting every day, and ask them to take
their hands out of their pockets and go to work."
" There, again, you'll find disappointment ! They know the
vaults are haunted. They would not work in them, oh, for any
wages you could offer."
" They'll work for the wages I offer, and I'll get all the men
I want, don't you be afraid."
" Ireland isn't America," said Eileen drawing up her dark head,
and flushing. " We hold some things sacred."
" So do we in America, when we're sure they are sacred ! I
won't ask your men to do what they don't approve of doing. Far
be it from me to buy anyone's conscience, Eileen! But, wait till
you see these fellows at work. You'll find they'll be as full of in-
terest as I am. My workmen always are ! "
762 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
" Stafford, dear, you are just a study to me, you are so frankly
sure of yourself, and that's egotism yet I'd never call you egotis-
tical, not one whit, but you surely are! Oh, look below. That's
Tarloch Tarloch Dhu. Let's away and speak to him. You must
see Tarloch."
She went stepping quickly and safely down the mountain path,
pulling her cloak off to move with more freedom.
Stafford overtook her with a swift pace or two, and caught
her by the arm, and they finished the descent in a rush together,
and came out on the road in time to intercept a tall, dark, handsome
man who was walking with long unhesitating strides, as a king
might walk, who felt confident of his right to be majestical.
" Isn't he a picture ? Look at his eyes. Did you ever see such
beautiful blue eyes? "
Stafford thought he had seen eyes quite as blue, and much more
beautiful, but he said approvingly, " They are fine, I tell you."
" Tarloch," said Eileen sweetly in a coaxing tone, " don't you
want to stop a bit and say good-day? "
" God-day, good-day, a good day be it the year through ! Are
ye traveling far, neighbor? "
"Tarloch! But you know me? Eileen Morrison, of the
Castle?"
"Yes, Miss Eileen aye, MacTeague Morrison; but I knew
your mother better. He's a fine boy, your sweetheart."
" Not my sweetheart ! He's Morrison too, Hugh Morrison's
son, from America."
" Aye, indeed? I'm away to Dhrimlin, it 'ill be fair day now."
" Take a bit of money, then, and buy us fairings will you,
Tarloch? We're just two children that you met on the wayside.
Give him a bit of money, Stafford, and he'll buy us something
something nice to eat. Mind, Tarloch ! And you'll eat it for us if
you can't find us; promise, Tarloch."
" Take my word, Miss Eileen ; but you'll be on the road, here-
abouts, when I come back? Maybe you'll watch for me? "
" Maybe, maybe ; and will you not give advice to my cousin,
here? He's for digging under the castle. Would you think it well
that he'd make a way into the vaults? Would it be harm, do you
think, or bring harm to anyone? "
" The dead might be sleeping there, Miss Eileen. Peace to
their bones ! "
" Yes, but," Stafford's clear, light voice seemed to arrest the
1916.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 763
man's wavering attention, " I'd give their bones decent burial
they're lying under heaps of rubbish, and that's no way to treat
bones that are worthy of respect, supposing any bones are there."
" Yet it's likely to be so," Eileen said, " we've always had the
belief. What do you advise, Tarloch? "
Tarloch was silent for some v moments, looking in the direction
of the Castle. He smiled, reassuringly, at last. " There is nothing
against it, Miss Eileen. I see a clear road, no harm, nor hurt to
come, but good, aye good ! God's blessing on the work."
Eileen lowered her beautiful head. " Amen," she said, with
the intense fervor that always gave Stafford a feeling of em-
barrassed astonishment. " Oh, thank you, Tarloch, dear soul that
you are, you comfort me so ! God speed you on your journey."
They watched him striding away in the sunlight, Eileen's face
still tremulous, her lips moving a little, as if in prayer.
" And who is Tarloch, now that I have made his distinguished
acquaintance. I can see that he is poor and handsome and very
clean and neat ! "
" Ah, he is goodness itself that clouded mind of his sees
things that we can't see! He is mad. Would you guess it? Mad,
for many years always, since I can remember him."
" Mad, and walking about the highways, alone ; mightn't he
do some mischief? "
" Tarloch ? Oh, you don't know him. He is a pilgrim ; and
a very wise man. He does good everywhere."
"But a madman, Eileen?" Stafford almost stood still to
say the words. " How can a madman be trusted to do good, or any-
thing else that might be expected of him? Eileen do you know
you think I am odd, sometimes, but, you positively amaze me."
" Tarloch can be trusted. He is not capable of evil ! Ah, if the
world were full of madmen like Tarloch -if all men were mad in
the same way! He is like an angel to the poor and suffering, and
he has the second sight ah, yes, but that is the truth; it is sad that
you so often find the truth hard to believe."
" Only Irish truth, dear. It is different from other kinds.
Well, go on, tell me about him. How did he become insane, and
what sort is the insanity ? "
" He is a student and a scholar. He was graduated as a phy-
sician when he was twenty-five, and then he fell in love with his
cousin his own cousin it broke his heart. And then he had brain
fever, and never came back to his own real self. I was glad he
764 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
knew me to-day. Sometimes I can't make him remember at all who
I am."
" And his cousin did not love him? "Stafford asked, after a
pause.
" Oh, yes, that was the sad part. She did love him, but of
course they could not be married."
" Was there some reason against their marriage? "
" Why, I told you, they were cousins full, first cousins."
Stafford stared at her a long moment.
" Was that the only reason," he asked.
" That was the only reason. Could there be a stronger one ?
They were children of two brothers, just as we are," she added,
" just as near."
Stafford turned his eyes from her sweet unconscious face,
and gazed into the remote distance.
" Eileen, cousins marry in England that is very common,"
he said at last, deliberately.
" England ? " There was scorn in her voice. " They do many
things in England, and some English-Irish do the same things, but
not not never the real people of Ireland! You, in America,
you only guess at us. Oh, I wish you could stay in Ireland, you
would learn, you could not help but learn, such a beautiful new
faith, and old faith ! You can't think how different life would
seem to you."
Stafford said nothing. He had grown used to wishing in
his heart's heart that he could stay in Ireland, but not for the rea-
sons Eileen suggested.
I
Eileen did not run away, as she had threatened, when the
work began in the vaults beneath the Castle. She watched it with
tender, doubting eagerness, biting back the tears sometimes, but
always anxious that Stafford should find the reward of his labors.
He had met no difficulty in securing men from farms in the neigh-
borhood. His friendly humorous talk and readiness of hand with
spade and shovel won him a place of honor, such as the free use
of money alone never could have gained. Not deprecating the truth
of ghostly or fairy legends, he simply presented the duty of perhaps
finding and properly burying the dead, or bringing to light things
that might prove of importance to the living. The exploration went
on more and more gayly, as it unearthed not bones nor skeletons,
but relics of antique shape and form, marred, but tangible, records
I9i6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 765
of past glories and barbarities. Eileen had pensive smiles for the
rusty suits of armor, and strange accoutrements, and girlish delight
in the hand-beaten silver jugs and jars, and vases of carven stone,
still perfect, when the coatings of earth were scraped away, showing
their rough tracery of flower and vine and faun and satyr. The
discovery of the shrine lamps, of a buried altar, filled her for days
with a sort of reverent ecstasy that made her merry comrade cousin
feel a sudden far remoteness from her inner thoughts, but this was
something that had happened more than once and when altar lamps
were not a question. She came back gently and soon to her blithe-
Eileen-self, and Stafford was again free to tease and puzzle, and
interest her, and to feel that joy in commanding the whole atten-
tion of a loved woman that lies so deep in the heart of man. Her
father had " seized the opportunity," he so explained it, of leaving
his girls in charge of Stafford while he made a visit to his daughter
Annie in Scotland, but those whom he left behind knew he had
gone away to escape a certain stress of feeling which the changing
of long-established conditions must always bring to those who are
no longer young.
Stafford rejoiced in his departure and in the fact that he was
now caretaker and protector of three sweet women, who recog-
nized his fitness for the position. He was happy every waking
moment, and happiness followed him into his dreams, being of that
enviable and modern disposition that lives a day at a time, in
cordial recognition and enjoyment of its best. The to-morrows
were only of real importance when they became to-days. As for
the yesterdays *re there any yesterdays in youth? The only
vexation that reached his spirit, at times, was the soaking and per-
sistent drizzle of the Irish rain, a raw, chilly, foggy condition of
wetness that seemed patiently reconciled to its own discomfort,
holding out no premature promises of abatement. But the rain al-
ways rained lightly on Stafford's hopes and prospects; and the
stormy days, when picks and shovels had to lie idle, he continued to
spend pleasantly enough in the bosom of his family, lounging about,
talking with Eileen, and putting clever bits of mending and paint-
ing here and there on tfce indoor woodwork. The frank and as-
tonished admiration of his deftness made him wonder if there were
no young men in Ireland who had the gift of natural mechanical
ability.
But, on one of the bright days, when all things on earth and in
heaven seemed outwardly glad with inward joy, and the bustle of
766 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL . [Sept.,
the work and the voices of the workers came more loudly and
cheerfully than usual to Eileen, seated near her open window,
Gaelic dictionary in hand, she heard Stafford's voice calling her
through the house. She had learned to love the sound, and rose
quickly to answer and meet him.
Stafford was pale, and his smile that was meant to be re-
assuring startled her, and made her heart beat strangely.
" Come over to the Castle, Eileen Morrison," he said. " I want
to show you something. Come with your cousin Stafford." He
put his arm about her; never before had he done so!
" You're trembling, Eileen."
" Am I ? I don't know why."
" Nor I, as long as I am near you. I have something to show
you. Come and see. I won't try to tell you what it is."
" No, but you'll expect me to tell you! You think I ought
to know a name for every new discovery, and I am quite as ignorant
as you are, except for the encyclopedia."
They half ran along the path from the garden to the Castle
and she followed Stafford under the structure, through which light
was falling from the low, stone-barren casements, making strange
shafts of brightness in the gloom. The laborers were standing
idle three of them beside heaps of upturned earth.
" Now look, Eileen, what name would you give this treasure?
Jerry's pick struck the box too stout a blow, and you see the lid
is broken."
"It's not is it a coffin, Stafford?"
She turned and hid her face against his shoulder. She heard
Stafford laugh, and the men laughed with him.
" No no. Just a strong box, Eileen. Look again, don't be
afraid."
" It is gold," she said faintly, " gold and silver coins."
" Yes, dear, and I don't now what else. I would not examine
further until you came to help me. Now, boys, we'll lift, but
carefully; it might fall to pieces. Perhaps we've made a good
find perhaps not such a good one, but we've struck something this
time, that's certain! Lanty, run over to the house and fetch Miss
Kate and Miss Norah."
" Oh, I must go," said Eileen, with a little smile of apology to
the willing Lanty. " They would like me to tell them first. Oh,
but the hands that buried it, Stafford the poor, long-dead hands !
And the same blood is in mine and yours." She held her hand up
I9i6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 767
against the sunlight that glowed through it warmly. " And we are
here ! Oh, peace to the souls ! God grant they're long at rest."
She bent her head. The men instantly took off their caps and
murmured, in one breath, a short prayer. They looked after her as
she moved away.
" And God's blessing go with her," Lanty said, with a pro-
tecting smile.
Stafford found his own hat in his hand.
The news of the discoveries at Castle Kilmichael was noised
about the country until it reached Belfast and Dublin. Collectors
of the antique, and curio hunters swooped down on the quiet neigh-
borhood, and Stafford's life became too busy for peace or enjoyment.
A telegram had brought Uncle Geoffrey home, and after a pro-
fessional examination it was declared that as simple gold and silver
ore the contents of the box were worth at least two thousand pounds.
And now Stafford was confronted with an unlooked-for obstacle,
more serious than any he had encountered in his vault digging. He
found himself obliged to wage battle with his kinsfolk, but this
strife was lightened, in a measure, and his tactics strengthened, by
the efficient and unexpected aid of the family friend and nearest
neighbor, Dr. MacDonald, on whose jaunting-car had been be-
stowed the well-merited adjective of " ramshackle " on that blest
day when Eileen had driven him in it, up the Castle road, for the
first time.
Almost fabulous prices were offered for these reliably authentic
and historic treasures, but the difficulty was in persuading his Morri-
son kinsfolk to sell. " This trencher they must keep that urn was
sacred," something else had " directly traceable family associations."
" Stafford, how could we part with this? How could We? "
Aunt Norah would ask, lingering fondly over some lop-sided and
one-eared ewer, that had been a thing of ugliness and a blight for-
ever, and had not improved with time.
" Part with it, Aunt Norah, part with it ? Why, you did not
know that it was in existence two weeks ago."
" But, my dear lad, that these things should go from us
from the MacTeague Morrisons to strangers ! "
" Well, what do you mean to do ? " Stafford asked, one day
in final desperation, looking round upon the family group as it sat
in a conclave that included Dr. MacDonald. " Do you intend to set
up a museum, or what? Of course if you think of doing that, and
will get the collection together and specify and catalogue, and let
768 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
people come out by rail and pay for admission the summer tourists
would count for something why, there might be money in that."
" Aye, good money, and plenty of it," remarked Dr. Mac-
Donald, quick to appreciate the sarcasm that otherwise fell un-
noticed. " They'd make two pounds a year, I'll wager, and that
would buy a nosegay for Eileen's birthday."
" But, if not, now let me tell you, my dear folks that belong
to me, I don't think you have any right to keep hundreds of pounds
for that's what it amounts to locked up in this old rubbish, es-
pecially while you have debts and a mortgage, and really nothing
to live on. I don't see how you reconcile it to to your sense of of
conscience."
This was a hard word to utter Stafford drew a quick breath
when he had said it to these earnest souls who lived and moved,
as he well knew, in the light of conscience each hour'of their inno-
cent existence.
" Conscience, is it? " Dr. MacDonald's dry smile included the
group. " That's small trouble to most of us. Sure it's vanity and
family pride and amusement we're looking for. It's toys we're
in need of broken bits of cups and teapots and the like. Staf-
ford, my boy, you're no Morrison, I fear; I fear you're not, if
you'd be ranging up conscience against a lot of old bric-a-brac."
This drew forth some troubled smiles and a grateful laugh
from Stafford, but he continued to speak earnestly :
" Yes, and I think / deserve some consideration ! I think so !
If you have made up your minds to send me back to America, dis-
appointed and sorry at heart that I ever came well, it's all
right! I'm fit to bear all that, you know if you people think I've
earned nothing better."
"Oh, Stafford!"
" Oh, it's all right, but I want you to understand what you are
about. I'll be sorry all my life that I ever came to Kilmichael to
to make a fool of myself ! It is something I'm not in the habit
of doing, at least, consciously. If my labor here, and my love
for you all only result in a miserable failure."
" Ah, but we'll not make you sorry dear, we'll not, indeed ! "
Eileen spoke impulsively. " No ! father ; oh, Aunt Norah, Aunt
Kate! Stafford should do as he likes with what he has discovered.
It is his, not ours! Wouldn't all this, that we're claiming we!
wouldn't it all be buried where our eyes could never see it, only he
brought it to the light? Let it go where we will never see it again!
1916.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 769
I'd rather know it was back in the dust it came from than that he'd
be hurt enough to rue his coming to Kilmichael."
" I'm afraid Eileen is no Morrison either, for that's good com-
mon sense she is talking." Dr. MacDonald nodded reflectively
as he spoke. "Aye, Geoffrey, that's good common sense."
" It is justice," Eileen said warmly. " It is Stafford's right
to do as he sees fit with all this rubbish he called it by its right
name! Yes, as compared with what Stafford is to us, it's just
rubbish nothing more ! Oh, a living love is better than a hundred
dead ones ! " She was smiling through her bright sudden tears.
Her father stretched out his arm and drew her to his side,
resting his gray head, as he sat, against her straight young shoulder.
" You're right, Jeremiah, I doubt you're right ! And Eileen's
right! It is the Eileens and Staffords we must listen to in these
days. It's for them to bring us up in the way we should go."
" And lucky for us that we have them ! And you will all
give permission to the young man to do what he likes with his
own Kate and Norah, and ye all ? "
"If they'll give me permission to do what I like for my own,
that covers the ground, Dr. Mac thank you, Uncle Geoffrey.
Now, I see clear sailing, and I think you'll not regret that you came
to my view of this."
" They'll spend their lives thanking you that you saved them
from their own stupidity, that's what they'll do! I trust I'll be
spared to a good old age to watch them at it. There's many a fine
thing grown in America from Irish roots like yourself, Stafford,
my boy ! from Irish roots ! "
\
It was not until the day before he turned his face to the home-
ward journey that Stafford knew how much he had done for his
cousin Eileen. The renovation of the Morrison house and the im-
provement of the estate, even to the half dozen cottages in process
of erection that were to be rented as a source of future income,
the paying of part of the mortgage, were all benefits directly due
to his energy, and the practical application of the money realized
from his exploration of the Castle vaults. He had managed these
things with a boldness and celerity that almost alarmed his kinsfolk.
His seeming rashness was a theme of anxious discussion among
themselves, which sometimes took the form of mild expostulation;
but this, as well as the discussion, soon ceased before the unanswer-
able logic of successful achievement. During the last two months
VOL. cm. 49 ;. >- ;. , j u
770 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
of his sojourn, the life of Kilmichael had changed its aspect in
many ways. Tourists were coming and going, quickly or linger-
ingly, and Eileen's artist friends were alighting almost daily from
the incoming trains to grasp her hands with warmth, exasperating
to the onlooker to one onlooker at any rate. This was the period
of Eileen's reign, and Stafford could now perceive how her world
might be full of interests that had found no place in his outline of
her calm, isolated existence.
He had followed her up the zig-zag path to Eileen Rock to
watch the sun set over Kilmichael, as they had so often watched
it together, when the to-morrow of parting was a long, long way
below their horizon, and now there was no other day between!
They sat in their accustomed places, a little nearer together it might
be than usual, Stafford on a ledge of stones at Eileen's feet.
" Such a clear, sweet sunset for good-bye/' Eileen said softly.
" Do you ever think that 'good-bye' means only 'God be with you?'
It does not mean parting at all, nothing but just a little prayer.
It ought not even to bring sadness to say, 'May God be with you.' '
" May God be with us both when we can't be with each other,"
was on Stafford's lips, but he answered lightly enough, though
soberly : " Oh, any word we speak when we are sorry to part from
friends, must be rather sad in the saying. 'Auf wiedersehen' is
supposed to be cheerful, but it never sounds so."
" And many an evening oh, I wonder if you will ! you'll
cross on a thought to sit and see the dark come down over these wild
moors, beside your cousin, Eileen?"
" Well, our sunset hour is not just the same as yours, you
know, but often enough I'll think of the old view and the long
twilight we haven't that on the other side. It is daylight and
then night with us. The gate shuts in a hurry."
" Ah, yes. And your hearts don't linger and dream over things
as ours do ! We will talk of Stafford and dream of him, and see
or hear him when we are as far away as the little island his ship
is leaving farther and farther and farther! Yes, I know, ships
come back, but they don't bring what they take away."
" They bring back friends and cousins. Haven't we settled
that I am to be with you some part of every year after this? Why
not ? I have no near relatives really, in the world, except my Morri-
sons."
" You have spoken so seldom of tfoe people wko belong to you
in America there must be friends t&ejre who love; you dearly
I9i6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 771
there must be. You so kind, so good so fit to be loved ! And,
by times, I've wondered if there might not be some beautiful dear
sweetheart over there wanting you, and waiting for you. That
is so natural at our age ! Surely it must be so ! "
" Is it so natural at your age; must it surely be so with both
of us, do you mean? "
" Stafford, dear/' she leaned forward, " you did not ask me and
it was not for a woman to speak but next to my father you are
the nearest man of my kindred, and many a day I longed to speak to
you. Now, I must that you may know never, never, to forget
it what your coming has been to me the good the blessing it
has brought ! " Her clear voice spoke steadily, close to his ear.
" I told you, once, of one who carved my name on the rock above
us. You remember ?"
" I remember you told nothing, nothing about him, except that
hard, cold fact not even his name."
" Donald Kenzie. He lives near my sister Annie in Aberdeen,
and the hand that carved my name is the dear hand that will
lead me through life, God granting my prayer and his."
There was silence before Stafford spoke.
" And to think of it ! All the time she has been a woman
and a lover, and I have been well, I'm not going to call myself
the names I deserve in anyone's hearing, richly as I deserve them ! "
" Every woman with a woman's heart must be a lover, unless
her destiny is crossed that's but natural. You fancied me a child,
with dreams of the sea, and the heather, and moonlight fairies and
nothing more real in her thought. I ceased to be a child seven
years ago."
" You will never cease to be a child."
" Yes, when Donald came I ceased to be. Life changed to
me then. It has changed again. You have changed it as if you
held a magic wand. My wilderness has blossomed as a rose. It
was not for nothing I loved the dear Stafford face of you the mo-
ment it smiled at me from the edge of the road, that first morning
of mornings."
" Why, dear girl. Now, tell me what what have I done
that means any special grace to Eileen what?"
" Donald is poor. We could not have married while circum-
stances were so bad with my father, with us all. And putting aside
the question of leaving my dear ones to their struggle, I could not
go to him penniless and in rags."
772 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
" You could not ? That was just the time to go to him ! What
is he in the world for if not to take care of you, in all ways that you
may need? And I never saw you in rags, Eileen."
" Always, dear, but they were mended rags, turned and patched
and pieced well enough to climb a mountain side ah, I couldn't,
Stafford!"
"Foolish pride, little cousin. Irish pride, and nothing could
be more foolish than that."
" Pride was only part of it. I chose between my people and
Donald, and I chose my people to live and die with. But, ah,
Donald would not have it so. He swore, at the cairn-side, that he
would wait for me until both our heads were gray. That is our
Irish way of loving you may think it is as foolish as our Irish
pride."
"But Donald is not Irish?"
" He had the glorious Irish mother! Do you think any man
could win my heart that had no drop of my race-blood in his own ?
There is little Scotch in Donald."
" Don't dream for a moment, Eileen, that I look on constancy
as foolish. It is the best of wisdom to be faithful in love if you
can be!"
Eileen leaned back from him in a moment of pained silence.
"Stafford! Couldn't you be faithful in your love? A soul
like yours ought not to think of 'if.' ' Then, after another moment,
" That only shows you have not loved perhaps."
"Perhaps!"
" Yet it must be it must be that someone loves you ? Tell
me, now, / have confessed and the American girls are so beauti-
ful, so full of charm."
" Oh, there's a girl I'm fond of," Stafford said, with calm
frankness, " and I quite well know that she is more than fond of
me. The sister of my dearest friend good, and lovely, all that!
But she doesn't carry me off my feet as as but it's just as well
for a man to keep his feet at all times, even when he's in love
Eileen."
" Yes."
" Sometimes I have thought as if it were a little story or ro-
mance, you know. Supposing we were not cousins you and I
and I had come here and found you and loved you I mean, if we
were not cousins, and you were not Donald's Eileen would you
do you think you ever could have loved me as you love Donald ? "
I 9 i6.] EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL 773
She laid her hand on his shoulder, patting it gently.
" I think I could have loved you just as I love you now, so
clearly, Stafford; but never any more dearly never with the oh,
the love unspeakable that goes to Donald! No! when that love
comes to you ah, but not before no one can tell you dear,
you'll know what love is. It is so strangely different yet, in one
way it is no sweeter and no deeper, surely it could be no truer, than
our affection, than my tender love for you! I have a sort of right
to you, more than I can ever have to Donald ; we are the same flesh
and blood one family and one name. Nothing can make you less
than my own cousin, and if you marry, the dearest woman in the
world can never step between us there! We clasp hands against the
world if need be. Oh, never mind the tears! I'm so glad to be
with you this little moment so glad to speak to you while you
still can hear me. You ought not to mind Eileen's tears, by now,
they're always half made up of joy."
" Let me wipe them away, dear, all the same, else there might
be a crystal pearl or two on my cheek ! There ! and there ! though
it's a shame to brush dewdrops from a rose. Tears become you,
Eileen. Now, talk, enlighten me. You have just opened a new
page to me. Help me to read it."
" Oh, it's happy reading from now on. My Donald, too, has
been fortunate of late. He is commissioned to do some work for
the new cathedral in Dublin, by far the best commission he has yet
received, and he is working so hopefully! Eventually his studio
will be here yes just here, where he carved my name on one of
the old Kilmichael rocks. God forbid we should ever have other
home than Kilmichael. Donald loves it, and my people are his
people ; the home will always be as it is while we live. And,
Stafford, your real home, too, is here, where your race had its
home. The whole world ought to be strange to you compared with
this spot ! "
" Ah, the world is strange enough to all of us, Eileen. And
home is sometimes a strange place too. Well ! But do you never
see this Donald of yours? "
" Seldom. Three times, maybe, in the year, since I made
my decision."
" Three times in the year ! That must be an Irish way of
keeping up a courtship."
" We lived in letters. You used to stare at my heaps of let-
ters from Scotland, thinking they were all from my dear Annie,
774 EILEEN OF KILMICHAEL [Sept.,
bless her! One from Annie and five from Donald was the pro-
portion."
" Ah, that is why you stole away to Eileen Rock so often with
the morning mail ! I was left behind on those occasions."
" Everyone was left behind but only for that little hour."
" And never once in your eyes of Irish blue, the candid eyes
never once did I see sign or hint of all this. Where did you keep
it hidden?"
" Poor prisoner that never dared to peep from the windows !
And that's what you've done for me opened the door of freedom,
and the life a woman's heart longs for. I can make ready now
for the Prince's coming."
The deep blue evening and its soft chill was creeping round
them, but they talked on, until the chapel bell in the village tolled
slowly nine o'clock, and still there was light enough to see each
other's faces, but it was time to leave the shadowy cliffs and cairns
of the dead.
" We must go down to the others," Eileen said at last. " We're
a bit selfish up here with just our own hearts, and it is your last
evening, and they want you, too. But it was sweet. And, it can
never be just like this again, though God send we may often talk
together here."
They stood for a moment, gazing over the wide loneliness of
the black marsh lands. Then they kissed each other tenderly, and
went down the mountain, hand in hand.
CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO.
BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
IME was when men viewed faith as a kind of knowl-
edge. But that time is now for the most part past.
It is one of the preambles to the thinking of our day,
that the truths of religion and the truths of science
stand on an altogether different footing and have
nothing in common. Their exteriority to each other, their mutual
independence, their lack of living relationship, continuity, and con-
nection are taken for granted without ado. Two volumes arranged
alongside on some library shelf, and treating of subjects altogether
disparate; two separate objects in space, between which there is no
other relation discernible but that of juxtaposition or arrangement
side by side, are no more intrinsically disconnected in fact than
religion and science are supposed to be in theory.
The idea that science and religion represent two juxtaposed
bodies of truth, out of all vital contact with each other, is one that
does not commend itself spontaneously to reflection; and it is safe
to say we never should have heard of it but for the fact that
modern philosophy was originally written by mathematicians, like
Descartes and Kant, who did their thinking in terms of space and
refused to take their psychology from experience. No amount of
reflection on the data of consciousness, where knowledge tapers off
into belief, and belief freely commingles with knowledge, would
ever have suggested the juxtaposition theory. Were we to ask our-
selves reflectively what relation exists between faith and reason, the
last thing in the world we should be led to think of is the spatial,
immobile relation of two things lying indifferently side by side. It
is not natural for man to think exclusively in spatial terms; and
even if it were, even if psychology was spatial in character, and
our thinking had to be done in mathematical images, the idea of
prolongation would be a thousand times more natural, in which to
express the relation existing between faith and knowledge, than
the immobilized, static idea of juxtaposition. To say that faith
prolongs reason, that it extends, continues, and supplements it, is a
much more spontaneous and just conception, even mathematically
speaking, than the one that has been thrust forward in its stead.
776 CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO [Sept.,
Juxtaposition, prolongation, continuity, or contradiction which of
these four ideas truly expresses the relation of science to religion,
and of knowledge to belief? Such is the question we would study.
The reader need not feel repelled by the nature of the query.
We hasten to assure him that we are not going to discuss it in the
abstract, but in the more mellowing light that history generally
manages to shed. Not that the abstract method of treatment has
lost any of its force or worth for having become so widely dis-
regarded, but because the purpose of our theme happens to be better
served in the present instance by an historical manner of discourse.
Three philosophies in the course of history have devoted them-
selves to a study of the topic here proposed the Arabic, the Chris-
tian, and the modern. The Arabic philosophy saw in scientific and
philosophical truth a contradiction of the positive affirmations of
religion. The Christian philosopher looked upon their relation as
that of a continuous and complementary whole, in which nothing
was at odds, did we but go about our thinking in their regard as
completely as we should. The modern philosopher nine-tenths
mathematician sets them down for two mutually exterior, inde-
pendent, and juxtaposed assemblages. Which of these three schools
of thought, think you, adhered strictly to a philosophical principle
in coming to its conclusions? Which of them made a contribution
to the development of philosophy in the principle of solution which
it adopted ? Which of them, in fine, studied the problem in the light
of history and experience, refusing to apply some arbitrary and
a priori test that would settle the matter in advance of all research?
It is a most engaging historical inquiry, in which, after a few
moments spent in the company of the Arabs, we shall pass over
from the Iberian peninsula to the heart of Latin Europe, thence
moving rapidly downwards to times more modern, in order to
acquaint the reader, so far as circumstances will permit, with the
formative influences at work in these three periods.
The philosophy of the Arabs, like all others, grew out of a
consideration of the positive affirmations of religion. Religion was
here, as elsewhere, the mother of speculation, philosophy, educa-
tion, architecture, and art. For a hundred years from the middle
of the seventh to the middle of the eighth century the authority
of the Koran held undisputed sway in the Mohammedan world.
After that time, .its hold suddenly slackened, and rival schools of
interpretation began to form. Contact with Syrian Nestorians,
who had established public schools at Edessa, Nisibis, Gandisapora,
I9i6.] CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO 777
and elsewhere, in which dialectics, medicine, mathematics, and as-
tronomy were the chief subjects of study, helped to arouse and
spread a more critical spirit. Reflection succeeded enthusiasm, and
science displaced ferocity, in the minds of those whose religion
had been propagated by the sword. A dissenting group of ration-
alists, to whom Aristotle was not only the ranking dialectician, but
the best type of physical investigator as well, stood forth in protest
against the doctrine of fatalism and the crude, mannish conception
of the Deity taught in the Mussulman's sacred book. This group
denied the existence of all attributes in God, conceived the Divine
nature as a blank, and contended, pretty much as Kant did after-
wards, that man is autonomous and perfectly free the sole cause
of good and evil in his actions. Drifting further and further away
from the book that for a century had been their religious anchorage,
this incipient and progressive rationalist movement became severely
self-critical towards the close of the eleventh century, and, like
other movements of the kind in history, ended by abandoning its
principles and passing over into mysticism.
It was during this period that Algazel wrote his Destructio
Philosophorum, an unsparing criticism of all the conclusions to
which philosophers had come. In it he made destructive use of a
principle of methodic doubt, which recalls the employment of a like
method later by Descartes. Falling a victim himself to the uni-
versal skepticism inherent in the governing principle he had chosen,
Algazel finally sought refuge from its superinduced nescience in a
vague, impalpable, mystic experience, through which he endeavored
to regain his lost beliefs, after having inflicted upon Arabic phil-
osophy a grievous wound from which it never wholly recovered.
It is interesting to find the prototypes of Descartes and Kant thus
early, with their appeal to intuition to save them, after reason had
been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Nearly all of
these Arabic philosophers were mathematicians, who approached the
study of philosophy under the influence of their mathematical pre-
possessions, as did their later Western brethren the founder of
modern philosophical method, and the founder of modern philo-
sophical criticism whose names we have coupled in passing, and
not unfairly, with theirs.
It was only natural that so strong a group of dissidents, appeal-
ing to dialectics for the vindication of their cause, should rouse
the orthodox to attempt a defence of religion through recourse to the
same means. A school of philosopher-theologians grew up in op-
778 CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO [Sept.,
position to the rationalizing movement the " scholastics " of Islam
they are sometimes called, though the title is a gross misnomer, so
far as it engages to place them on the same intellectual plane and
footing as those of the same name in Latin Europe. Not only did
these theologians of Islam subordinate scientific speculation to the
teaching of the Koran, they even went so far as to claim that this
book should serve as the point of departure for all knowledge.
Such an overclaim as this had no parallel in the Christian schools.
We find no trace of a similar contention in Western thought until
Luther introduced the fallacy of revelationism, and some Catholic
thinkers of the nineteenth century gave themselves over to fideism,
claiming that the sole source of certainty is supernatural faith, or
revelation as preserved in language or embedded in tradition
views that were as short-lived as their authors.
The orthodox theologians of Islam overstepped the bounds.
They had none of that genius for compromise, none of that poise
of insight which weighs the grain of truth to be found on both
scales of the balance. Their reaction against the increasing ration-
alism of the times was so ill-tempered and violent that a third group
of rival thinkers set themselves up in protest against the attempts
of fideists and rationalists alike to monopolize all human certainty.
This third group was composed of the Sufis or Mystics, who were
equally disdainful of philosophy and theology, equally contemptuous
of reason, in whichever of these two forms it came. To read the
Koran, to supplement the reading by ecstatic contemplation, and to
fill the mind with the glow and unction which the religious pages
gave, seemed to them the sole safe way for the righteous soul to
tread. Why reach out for the demonstrative certainty of the
schools, when the richness of experience was at hand, with its all-
sufficing disclosures ? They, too, have had their modern following
in the West. Our own times ring loudly with their claims.
The rationalizing movement in the Mussulman world of the
East culminated, as we have seen, in so destructive a criticism
of itself at the hands of Algazel, that it evaporated into mysticism.
Not so, however, in Andalusia, where the movement continued to
flourish, and where Aristotle had been reinvested with a character
of finality and perfection which the great Greek himself would
have been the first to disavow. Averroes was here his most dis-
tinguished commentator and spokesman, seeking might and main
to counteract the deadening influence of Algazel; and to that end,
reasserting with unaccustomed stress and vigor many of the Aris-
I9i6.] CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO 779
totelian conclusions upon which discredit had been cast. It would
be hard to say which was the more ruling passion with him
detestation of the " fables " of the Koran, or his unconditional
reverence for Aristotle. In his eyes the perfect incarnation of
human wisdom was this master mind of the Greeks.
The time came when the physician-philosopher of Cordova had
to declare himself on the relation existing between religion as
expressed in the Koran, and reason as represented by Aristotle.
Privy to the view that religious faith and scientific knowledge were
flagrantly in contradiction, for reasons of prudence and to avoid
persecution he kept the matter to himself. One day, however,
when some of his co-religionists asked him how his theory that
there is only one soul in all mankind could be made to harmonize
with the teaching of the Koran that the soul is individual and
immortal, he is reported as having made answer to his questioners:
" Reason forces me to conclude that the soul is numerically one,
but I firmly hold the contrary by faith " an evasive reply that said
two distinct things and meant but one.
This incidental remark gave rise and vogue to the famous doc-
trine of the twofold nature of truth. 1 Some of his disciples,
relying upon the spirit, if not on the letter of the master's speech,
began openly to proclaim that theology and philosophy negate each
other, and that reason and religion are implacably at odds. One
may profess faith, they said, in the immortality of the individual,
and at the same time be convinced by reason that the soul is one,
impersonal, and universal. One may believe in the temporal origin
of the universe, and yet rationally remain assured that it never
began in time. The theory that truth is double by nature, essen-
tially inharmonious, and of opposite hues, thus won its way to
acceptance in the world of Islam, in the Spanish corner of it, at
any rate, whence it spread to Latin Europe, there to be welcomed
by skeptics of many shades of opinion, as a happy formula in which
an overt profession of faith and a covert retention of disbelief
might be made to go together. To all inquiry as to their private
opinions, it was easy for men of this mental type to reply, as did
Averroes, that by faith they believed most firmly the truth and
validity of those very doctrines which their reason overthrew.
Nor was this the only modern principle of which Averroes
was the anticipative spokesman. There is a fair glimmering of the
idea of " independent morality " 2 in his pages, that might well have
1 Histoire de la Philosophic. Gonzalez, II., p. 491. 'Op. cit,, p. 491.
CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO [Sept.,
come from Kant. The preaching of rewards and punishments
seemed to him to have no influence on morality, and he rebuked the
practice in disdainful terms. Neither did he think that belief in
immortality made men more moral. " I have known a number
of persons," he says, " who placed no credence in these fictions,
and their conduct was every whit as good as that of those who
did." One is struck in passing by other fundamental resemblances
between Arabic thought and modern. The same antagonism to
theology, the same gross confusion of dogma with doctrine, the
same cry for an independent morality, the same prefacing 1 of
philosophical inquiry with methodic doubt, the same central insist-
ence on the absolute autonomy of the individual, and the same
tendency to manufacture contradictions out of whole cloth, are to
be found in both. Modern philosophy, of course, did not take
these leaves from the books of the Arabs. It is not necessary to
borrow, to be of the same spirit and bent.
When the idea that truth is twofold, scientific, namely, and
religious, spread from Cordova to Paris about the middle of the
thirteenth century, it came directly into clash with the working-
principle of Christian philosophy. Picture the circumstances.
The presupposition of Christian philosophy from its very first
attempt at articulation was that truth is one and solidary. The
unity and solidarity of truth, whencesover it came whether
forth from the pages of revelation, or up from the fields of
nature and of science, constituted the tacit or explicit assump-
tion that had palpitated beneath the intellectual endeavor of Chris-
tendom for twelve hundred years. It had grown out of the living
faith which the Church professed in Christ, its Founder, Who
had united the human and the Divine in His own single and singular
Person, without admixture, confusion, identity, or contradiction,
and with a distinctness that let the two be seen in their harmonious
cooperation and interaction. This fact impressed the Fathers of
the fourth century profoundly. The same God Who had disclosed
Himself to the abstract intellect through Nature, had disclosed
Himself still more fully to the concrete intellect through Christ.
The two disclosures were continuous and of a piece, no more con-
tradictory each of the other than two partial reports that go to
make up a consistent whole. The Author of nature and of super-
nature could not contradict Himself He could but manifest Him-
self more fully. What was Nature but a series of wider and ever
wider unities, from the lowest physical substance in which a few
I9i6.] CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO 781
elements coalesced, to that epitome of all things, bodily, which is
Man? And what was philosophy but an endeavor to grasp the
great unity and continuity pervading the cosmos from end to end ?
And what was Christianity but the manifestation of the largest
unity of purpose and of plan yet revealed ? It perfected, completed,
fulfilled, transcended, transformed, and overcame the deficient no-
tions man had of himself, the world, and God. The crown and
complement of all the lesser unities and lights, with which the
universe was terraced and was lit, Christianity could not be a
contradiction, it had to be in the nature of a fulfillment and com-
pletion, of all that had gone before.
Thus the course of their noble reflections ran. But how cast
this idea of unity in a philosophical form that was so compelling,
it would compass the downfall of the Averroistic view ? That was
the problem. The relations between faith and reason, nature and
grace, religion and science had to be worked out by means of a
philosophical principle, not invented to fit the special case of the
Christian religion, but of general application, validity, and sweep.
The Schoolmen found the principle of solution in Greek philosophy.
The Greeks had worked out the relation between spirit and matter,
in a way that could be extended to cover the relations between the
natural and the supernatural, Christian belief and scientific knowl-
edge. They had been impressed by the unity and continuity of
those very things which seemed to be farthermost apart by nature,
not to say opposed in character. Aristotle, for instance, declared
soul and body one substance, notwithstanding the fact that in
themselves the two are distinct and irreducible. He saw their
opposition and incompatibility in the abstract, but this did not
prevent him from also seeing their union and communion in the
concrete. He refused to destroy the unity of the two, to break
it up into opposing halves. Could not the same method be em-
ployed against the Averroists, who were bent on pitting the parts
of truth against one another, instead of contemplating them in the
larger unity which harmonized their differences without destroying
their distinctness?
In a spirited controversy with Siger of Brabant, St. Thomas 3
gave the Continuity Theory its first systematic expression. He
showed most clearly that nature and supernature, the natural and
the supernatural, scientific truth and religious, temporal interests
and eternal are all distinct parts of a unitary plan existing in the
*De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroistas.
782 CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO [Sept.,
Divine Mind, and that human thought comes to grief over the
problem of their reconciliation only when it fallaciously persists in
regarding them as separate and opposite, disconnected, and inde-
pendent wholes. Preserve their continuity, and no problem
of discrepancy will rise, like a wraith, to vex the human spirit
with illusion. Destroy their continuity, and you bid adieu to
reason, you sail off into seas of speculation uncharted, you leave
the port of experience without the proper clearance papers, you
embark upon a voyage of fantasy which leads no whither in the
end.
Continuity and distinction, not separation and exclusion, ex-
press the relation of faith to reason, grace to nature, miracle to
natural law, Church to State, eternity to time. The function of
theology is not to dictate to science the conclusions to which it
shall come. The function of theology is to resolve 4 the arguments
of the scientist when the latter thinks his reason compels him to
deny the admissibility of the truths of faith, because of some
conclusion, more apparent than real in its urgings, which he feels
forced to draw. All genuine efforts at philosophical construction
have the establishment of continuity for their aim ; and that means
the warding-off of contradictions, and the serious questioning of
all apparent antagonisms, due more often to looseness of thought,
surface ways of viewing things, or sheer prejudice of will, than
to the rigorous enchainment of one's reasonings. Theology com-
pels a man to review the processes of scientific thinking more care-
fully than otherwise he might. It engenders an ideal of continuity,
and a salutary distrust of all the creators of antinomies, whose
spirit is disruption for its own fell sake. The fault which the
Schoolmen found with Averroes and his Latin disciples was the
excessive rigor which they attached to the dialectic argumentations
of Aristotle. The latter never meant that his discoursings should
be understood as final, and not subject to criticism or review he
would not have called them " dialectical," if he did. And his
modesty is worthy of emulous imitation in a later world all too
prone to ascribe a rigorous logical compulsion to loose-fitting and
oftentimes disjointed arguings.
And so it came about, after much careful inquiry into the
intruding Arabic notion of the twofold nature of truth, that the
Latin champions of the Arab, Averroes, withdrew discomfited from
the lists. On exegetical, psychological, historical, and philosophical
Sum. Theol, la., I., 8.
1916.] CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO 783
grounds their favorite formula had been denuded of its worth and
shown to be without compulsion on acceptance. Continuity dis-
placed contradiction. Things that at most were but distinct ceased
to be the separate and dissevered entities men had tried to make
them appear. And we are well within the bounds in saying that no
nobler, higher, saner, or fairer solution of the problem concerning
the relations between faith and reason was ever reached or proposed
than that which declared the two distinct without being separate,
continuous without being identical, complementary without being
contradictory, rivalrous, or opposed. The Greeks saw no opposi-
tion between soul and body, though the two are irreducibly dis-
tinct. Why should the Christian have a lesser power of sight
when it is question of the relations prevailing between belief and
knowledge, nature and supernature, science and religion, philosophy
and theology? Such was the answer of the Schoolmen to the
Arabs when the theory that truth is by nature double, and not
one, came over from Cordova to Paris about the middle of the
thirteenth century.
In the Church of Santa Catarina at Pisa, there is a fresco
which so graphically represents the encounter between the Chris-
tian philosophy and the Arabic, that we may well pause for a
moment to describe it before proceeding further with our tale.
It was spread upon the walls in the fourteenth century by Francesco
Traini, one of the most noted disciples of Orcagna. In the centre
of the picture stands St. Thomas, with the Siimma Contra Gentiles
held open on his breast. On his right is Aristotle, with the Ethics,
and on his left Plato, with the Timaeus, both so held that Aquinas
may read their contents. In semi-circles above this central group
are Moses and the prophets, with the four Evangelists beside.
Highest of all the Christ is depicted, a nimbus of angels surrounding
the gentle Nazarene; while lowest down, and beneath the feet of
Aquinas, Averroes lies prostrate, clutching his great commentary
on Aristotle, and for all the world appearing as some unhorsed
cavalier of the lists. Rays of light are reflected from the pages
of Aristotle, Plato, and the Sacred Writers, and made to con-
verge on the open pages of the Sutnma of St. Thomas, whence they
are in turn refracted against Averroes, to the apparent discomfiture
of the latter who shields his eyes with his hand. More brilliantly
than we could ever hope to do so with the faint strokes of a pen,
Traini here tells with his brush the whole story of the sources,
purpose, ideal, and final outcome of the philosophy of the Middle
784 CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO [Sept.,
Ages. It is a suggestive picture to have in mind when considering
the period of disruption into which we are about to enter. Renan
thought it a skillful piece of symbolism, and someone has not
ineptly said that it is the history of scholasticism painted, as Dante
is the history of scholasticism sung. However this may be, it
serves admirably to illustrate our theme and relieve its tension.
Francesco Traini would have had a far different subject for
his brush, if he lived some three centuries later, and undertook a
mural representation of the new philosophy of Descartes. He
would have had to raise Averroes from his recumbent posture and
paint him upright in the post of honor. He would have had to
expunge the rays of light streaming forth from many pages, and
indicative of the continuity which revealed truth has with natural,
which religion has with science. Aristotle would have to be painted
out of the scene altogether, and a halo of glory penciled about the
brow of Plato, to body forth his new and exclusive prominence.
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
Descartes would have none of Aristotle, and he made a philos-
ophy that expressed this personal disilke. Had he simply refused
to repeat Aristotle's conclusions uncriticized and unimproved, few
would have found fault with his position. But Descartes was not
content with rejecting Aristotle's conclusions, he rejected his prin-
ciples also, and among these the principle of continuity which em-
bodied the supreme element of advance in Greek philosophy. The
rejection of this principle was a distinct loss to human thought, a
step backwards, a return to earlier and lower levels. And it was
unfortunate that Descartes, legislating for the improvement of
human thinking, as, no doubt he meant to do, should have cut
philosophy off from the ripest, most practical fruits of Greek specu-
lation, and delivered it over to the " independent worlds " of Plato.
The continuity-theory of mind and matter, thought out by Aristotle,
whatever else may be said of it, is true to experience; the divorce-
theory introduced by Descartes, anything but such. We can readily
understand the great Greek when he declares soul and body one
substance, notwithstanding the fact that in themselves they are
irreducibly distinct; we cannot, in the light of experience, either
understand or approve the counter statement of Descartes, that
soul and body stand so utterly out of all relationship that no bridge
of communication spans the abysmal chasm yawning between the
two. The question, therefore, is whether Plato's divided world of
spirit and matter is as true to fact and experience as Aristotle's
I9i6.] CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO 785
undivided world of the same. It is not a question of details at all,
but of the general working-principle on which philosophers should
elect to do their thinking.
The abandonment of the idea of continuity, and the revival of
Plato's divided world of spirit and matter, had consequences un-
told too many to be recounted here. There is one, however, to
which attention should be called it is the severence of all relation
between philosophy and theology. Catholic though he was, and
educated by the Jesuit Fathers at La Fleche, Descartes does not
seem to have turned his advantages to profit. He had no accurate
grasp of the distinction between dogma and theology, and the con-
fusion served him ill, besides doing the world much harm when
published. He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having been the
first to start coursing on its endless rounds that grossest of con-
fusions which proclaims the dogmas of the Christian religion to be
nothing more than the learned reasonings of the erudite; 5 thereby
misleading Kant and the long line of thinkers that followed, none
of them, unfortunately, as hesitant or critical as they might have
been, before pressing in the steps of this airy and venturesome bell-
wether of the flock. " I revered our theology," he writes, " and
sought as much as anyone else to gain heaven ; but having learned
for a certainty that the way is no less open to the most ignorant
than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths which
conduct us thither are above our intelligence, I would not dare
submit them to the weakness of my reasonings; and I thought
it necessary to have an extraordinary assistance from heaven, and
to be more than man, if I would undertake their examination
successfully." 6
A distinction between the intuitions of faith and the reason-
ings of theology would have rescued his thought from this initial
confusion, but he was unable to perceive the difference, and because
of this mental limitation, he decreed that scholastic theology should
be " exterminated " the phrase is his. " What need is there," he
asks, " for such superfluous endeavor, when we see idiots and
country folk equally capable of attaining heaven as we? Would it
not be far better to have the simple theology of these ruder folk
than to fill it with dispute, mutual recrimination, and calumny? " 7
'This confusion is exposed at length in a previous article: What Is Dogma f
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, June, 1916.
*Discours de la Methode. I., p. 129. Cousin's edition.
''L'Esprit de la Philosophic Moderne. By J. Maritain. Revue de Philosophic,
June, 1914, p. 613, note 2.
VOL. cm. 5O
786 CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO [Sept.,
Descartes did not observe that the so-called " simple theology " of
these ruder folk is " faith," and not theology at all, simple or other-
wise. Theology is a science the necessity and usefulness of which
Descartes here admirably proves for how could minds like his
have their confusions removed, and how could the dear " rustics,"
whom he so extols, be saved from the objections and dubieties of
the learned, if faith were always to remain " simple " and our
speech contained no more words than yea, yea, and nay, nay ? It is
to render Christian truth communicable to others, to convert faith,
so far as possible, into personal knowledge, to make our " service
reasonable " and not blind, that theology endeavors to flank it round
with scientific light. What a pity that Descartes should have
conceived of faith as out of all relation to the rest of our knowledge,
as a light hidden under a bushel, never destined to flame brighter,
or have its rays commingle with those of reason, for the latter 's
greater illumination, discipline, inspiration, and good!
It was the ambition of Descartes to create a Physics indepen-
dent of Aristotle's, and to tie philosophy, as closely as possible for
the future, to a physical form and manner of explanation. Think-
ing that philosophy had become too intimately allied with theology,
and not knowing that the Schoolmen in their palmiest days had
kept these two sciences clearly distinct, Descartes resolved that the
future alliance of philosophy should be with science, and in par-
ticular with the science of mechanics and its accepted modes of
procedure. This new alliance meant that both philosophy and
science should range themselves in hostile array against theology,
and this they did with a will that still continues. This hostility
was both a mistake and an injustice, as the neutrality of philosophy
towards theology could and should have been maintained.
Absolute autonomy was not necessary for the progress of
philosophy, or for the furtherance of philosophical reform. Philos-
ophy and science could both have remained impartial in their atti-
tude, and not lost any of their development by so remaining. If
they do not include theology within their scope, that is no reason
for excluding it altogether from consideration or for attempting to
drive it out of its own proper and appointed place. The philosopher
and the scientist might well have kept their minds free of all theo-
logical bias, whether positive or negative. An anti-theological tem-
per was not required for the successful advancement either of
philosophy or of science. To secure the autonomy of reason in its
own domain, it was not necessary to separate philosophy and theol-
1916.] CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO 787
ogy absolutely, any more than it is necessary for the States forming
the American union to disavow the Federal Government, as a
means to the retention of their sovereignty, each in its own par-
ticular sphere. To distinguish the philosophical and theological
fields, without separating them, or introducing false enmity between
them, would have amply answered the purpose of the Cartesian
reform. And philosophy would have lost none of its historical
nature as a general discipline distinct from the particular disciplines
which we call the sciences, nay, it would have been saved from the
ruinous course of disintegration and disruption on which it was
launched, had Descartes contented himself with distinguishing
rather than disjoining the world of thought and the world of things,
the universe of faith and the universe of knowledge. His famous,
Cogito; ergo sum, reveals the fault of his whole system for it is
by knowing things, and ourselves as among them, that we come to
frame the notion of existence, not by contemplating our own per-
sonality apart.
It is usual to find the Cartesian reform presented as " a most
welcome departure from an ecclesiastical tradition that held the
world in thrall." This way of looking at it excuses the hostility
to Christian teaching, which it bred and spread. It conceals rather
than reveals its nature. The Cartesian reform meant more than a
break with " ecclesiastical " tradition, in the parlance of the critics.
It meant a permanent rupture with human tradition, and by that
must the percentage of our loss be measured. A purely scientific
movement, proceeding in contempt of the classical and the Christian
traditions, is a de-humanizing influence against which the philosophy
of the present has healthily begun to react, though the force of the
reaction has been too extreme. The classical, the Christian, and
the scientific traditions have much to learn from one another, as,
to its cost, the world has now discovered. Cutting truth in two
has not proved itself the unmixed blessing the mind's dismemberers
thought it would when philosophy, taking its cue from the religious
reaction of the times, chose to disrupt all existing unities rather
than take them as stepping-stones to higher things, and a world
beyond.
Says a recent writer:
Four hundred years ago a section of religious men in Europe
introduced the novel idea that a man should be allowed to save
his own soul even at the expense if necessary of the unity of
;88 CUTTING TRUTH IN TWO [Sept.,
Christendom. This was to inaugurate a new era of " religious
freedom " " the right of private judgment " in matters re-
ligious. After these four centuries of experiment with this
anarchical principle, the Protestant nations of Europe have not
a single rallying-point, much less a common temple towards
which to draw the religious life of Christendom. Nor is there
to be found at this hour of greatest spiritual trial a central
court of appeal to judge or mediate between them. And inevit-
ably so; for disruption is of the essence of Protestantism, and
disruption has marked its course all along from the tragic
days of the Teutonic Hebrew priest of Wittenberg to the comic
epoch of Kikuyu. It has merely consecrated national and in-
dividual prejudices and peculiarities, and sacrificed the unity
of a great 'religion to the precious vagaries of private opinion.
It has not even the concentration of Mohammedanism with
which to support its " missionary enterprise/' There is a
grim dramatic fitness that at this late hour the nation which
inaugurated the strange doctrine of the rights of the natural
man to his own supernatural privileges should have proposed
to establish by the sword of steel that unity of Western civili-
zation which it prevented from being secured by the sword of
the spirit. 8
*The Hibbert Journal, April, 1916, pp. 525, 526.
WAR AND PAIN.
BY MAY BATEMAN.
AR like the present War, undertaken as a " desperate
remedy for evils worse than itself," brings in its
wake, unfortunately, loss and pain equally with wars
undertaken from motives of national ambition on a
colossal scale. Never indeed in the history of the
word has " the great ravager " swept over such vast spaces with its
hordes of suffering. In this country and that we see tracks which
it has decimated or defiled, depopulating them or leaving behind
maimed and broken human life in place of what was vigorous and
virile ; the visible world shows gaps in its ranks as a majestic forest
does when storm and lightning have had their way with it, and
brought down alike sapling and oak.
Who can wonder if there arises a murmur from the stricken
nations and from those who, themselves standing outside the actual
fray, keep vigil near or penetrate its boundaries with their charity ?
Conscious of what war means to-day when it is waged under the sea
and upon land and in the air at one and the same moment, there are
those who ask, " How can these horrors be reconciled with Chris-
tianity ? What can the Christian apologist urge to extenuate war? "
Christianity the one perfect balance can gauge precisely the
worth of those incorporeal attributes which tend to make all that
is worth having in an individual or a nation. The Church of
Christ always strong for peace discriminates between war that
is just and war that is unjust, and throws in the scale the magnificent
eternal principles honor, truth, loyalty, justice. From earliest
ages she has blessed warriors taking part in combat undertaken " in
the interests of justice." " The injury received or the danger
to be averted must," however, " be genuine, and, moreover, bear
some proportion to the evils that war necessarily involves," says a
writer whose small penny pamphlet 1 on this subject, within the
reach of all, contains more sound facts than many a more ex-
haustive and expensive volume. " Thus, the end in view should
not only be good (sic), the assertion or defence of some real right,
but it should be an occasion of great consequence to the nation,
such as a grievous violation of the country's honor or material
1 Christianity and War. By Rev. J. Keating, SJ.
790 WAR AND PAIN [Sept.,
interests, serious breach of treaty obligations, assistance given to
the nation's enemies, or, again, a duty imposed by considerations of
humanity, as the giving help to another nation unduly oppressed ....
War must really be, as it has often been called, ultima ratio re gum:
the final argument when others have been tried and failed ......"
Again : " For the community as for the individual, there are certain
goods which may rightly be reckoned more precious than life.
Consequently, national life may be risked to preserve them." " If
a State has a real right to a thing of relative importance and war
is the only method by which that right can be preserved, then the
vindication of justice by force, the securing, that is, of a moral
good by the infliction of a physical evil, is not only just but may be
binding on conscience." 2 " No Christian may deny that there have
been occasions and there might be other occasions when war is
not only necessary but right," said Robert Hugh Benson in an im-
passioned sermon delivered two years before the outbreak of the
present war; " no one in the possession of reason would say that
war is the worst of all evils There are times when war is the
only escape when civilization is threatened by barbarism, when
society is endangered by anarchy, when those great eternal princi-
ples of love and justice are at stake. If there is no way in which
they can be saved except by war, then by war let them be saved ! "
Christianity qua Christianity detests war, but Christianity
holds war lawful under these conditions, and herself waged it
" holily " in the Middle Ages, first to vindicate her right to visit
the holy places, and then in the attempt to recover the sacred land
from the Saracens.
In spite of high incentive, though, the pain and suffering
moral, mental and physical which war compels (however time
and circumstance may lessen its acuteness) touches in transit
innumerable lives, and stretches in the present instance so incal-
culably far that in view of it many have felt the shock of an as-
sault upon the very stronghold of their faith in God. The waters
of Marah have broken all bounds and changed the face of the
landscape ; sweeping barriers away, obliterating landmarks ; length-
ening out and widening amongst the nations until scarcely a window
but views, at least from an angle, that red and shining flood. We
cannot escape it ; we can neither shut our ears to the turmoil of that
surging torrent, nor blind our eyes to the actual mangled wreckage
which it casts up at the threshold of our own homes.
* Primer of Peace and War. Edited by Rev. C. Plater, SJ.
1916.] WAR AND PAIN 791
The most sincere disciple of a gospel of negation which denies
the existence of pain, must surely surrender some of his dear beliefs
in view of the evidence of his normal senses in the present crisis.
Even the least imaginative must realize that physical nerves and
muscles are not lacerated, that limbs are not torn off bodily, nor
flesh stabbed nor bone splintered without commensurate suffering.
With whatever dumb courage the sufferers face this ravage of their
"lovely youth," each individual one has had to brace himself not only
physically but mentally to adjust the powers of his other members,
to adjust his whole view of life to the new conditions. To put
the latter baldly, life for him never can be the sarnie again.
Realization such as this, inevitable though it be and part of a pro-
cess which simply cannot be understood if it is looked at from its
material significance alone, is achieved only at tremendous cost. It
comes within the experience not of " the chosen," but of the average
man not of the experienced thinker only, but of the raw boy.
Fortuitously, some would say, both alike summarily are called upon
to pour
out the red
Sweet wine of youth; give up the years to be
Of work and joy.
Living sacrifices, if ever living sacrifices were though too few
look upon them in that light.
But war causes indirect, as well as direct, suffering. No
man may go with another in the wet way of pain without having
his own feet stained, nor share the burden unless his own shoulder
bends to the load and his back muscles give to the strain ; it follows
that something "goes out" from him mystically in the process ; that
once more, as so often happens in life, the surface view of love
or friendship covers loss and gain in a far deeper sense. Love is
spiritually as well as physically the great creative force. It empties
itself in giving, and new capacity of giving flows afresh in its
veins. All love has in it exquisite capacity for pain : all pain has
in it exquisite capacity of love. " L'amour a fait la douleur et la
douleur a fait 1'amour." " Behind sorrow there is always a soul,"
says a writer who plumbed an abyss of sin as well as sorrow.
" The essential difference between one man and another lies in this,
that the one feels more than the other," taught Ruskin. To say
that " the little cup that is made to hold so much can hold so much
and no more, though all the purple vats of Burgundy be filled with
792 WAR AND PAIN [Sept.,
wine to the brim, and the treaders stand knee-deep in the gathered
grapes of the stony vineyards of Spain," is to amplify that phil-
osophy. Pain to-day is continually being poured into goblets,
some of which overflow after the first few drops. But if they can
hold and contain it, the liquid flame within them glows like the
heart of an opal.
Pain is, and suffering, imminent, tangible, widespread. To
watch the beloved in agony is to tread with him the way of
suffering. We cannot evade it: it must be met. It brings in
its train, in most cases, the strange composure which comes
with nearly every vast experience. There is calm in the supreme
moment of love fulfilled; there is entire silence as a rule in the
room where the dead lies, wrapped in the mantle of kings ; there is
a mystical hush at the culminating moment of the Mass. Feeling,
once it is great enough, compels the senses to a kind of involuntary
quiescence by sheer force of its strength. In face of it the will sets
itself, rigid, with two alternatives before it. There is the pagan
view, there is the Christian view to choose as the foundation upon
which a man may rear his fortress of defence against pain's attack.
For such as see in paganism at its best, with the present writer,
an embryo stream which was, little by little, to force its way out-
wards until it opened into, and was at once made part of, and ab-
sorbed in the great Sea of Christianity, all that was fine and en-
duringly noble in that driving force which impelled men to many
immortal acts of glory, will show clear. The light on the waters
shone out in the darkest ages ; heroes bathed there and poured out
their life blood by its banks. There was in the pagan attitude a
magnificent fortitude, an almost invincible courage in face of
bodily torment. Zeno the philosopher bit his tongue off that even
in the extremity of torture the names of his comrades might not
be forced from him. To shrink from pain was contemptible; even
to inflict it upon self was good, since pain brought wisdom,
eminently to be desired of man; lasting dishonor was the part of
him who failed under its test. Love of country stirred pagans to a
degree difficult to realize nowadays when we are many of us
ashamed to admit how deep, how intimate are the ties which bind
us to our own motherland. For the honor of the country they
lived, for the honor of the county they fell, their dearest hope " to
set a crown of imperishable glory on the land." " If to die nobly
is the chief part of excellence, to us out of all men fortune gave
this lot, for hastening to set a crown of freedom on Hellas, we lie
1916.] WAR AND PAIN 793
possessed of praise that grows not old," is the epitaph of the
Athenian dead at Platsea. " O passer-by, tell the Lacedaemonians
that we lie here awaiting their orders," cry dying Spartans at
Thermopylae. The Greek spirit at its loftiest is embodied in Caedi-
tius' words to his men before he sent them into action : " Soldiers,
it is necessary for us to go, but it is not necessary for us to return."
Here are all manner of high qualities ; composure, unflinching
determination, a solemn dedication, as it were, of the individual
life to the common cause. Eternal qualities these, going far to
make a high ideal, though not the highest; something at least
immeasurably loftier than the new paganism which before the war
was spreading so insiduously in England, and gathering disciple
upon disciple into its ranks. Early pagans did kneel before the
altars of gods, false though they were; modern pagans of two years
ago merely worshipped images of themselves. We can afford
generously to obliterate memories of the darkest aspect of paganism,
its cruelty, its excesses, its necromancy, and looking only at the best
side of it see that we have something better still.
The pagan view of pain as compared with the Christian view
is as limited as is the vision of a man who relies upon his naked
eyesight when looking at a landscape, compared with that of one
who uses a telescope, and so has distant objects brought within his
direct range. The pagan, to contain his indomitable soul, erected
a citadel the thickness of whose walls deadened his cry of agony.
But the Christian, accepting pain instead of combating or denying
it, relies not at all upon the strength of any artificial fortress. He
makes of pain mystical wings to lift him to unknown dimensions,
to soar above the highest tower of the strongest prison built within
the memory of man.
" I was not, I came to be ; I was, I am not ; that is all ; and
who shall say more will lie; I shall not be," says the pagan. But
the Christian : " That which thou sowest is not quickened, except
it die first. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the
body that shall be, but bare grain God giveth it a body
It is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory : It is sown in weakness,
it shall rise in power."
Everything in the Christian attitude makes for growth and
possibility. Pain borne by another rouses in the onlooker a burn-
ing love of humanity ; it wrenches the soul abruptly free from self.
We literally look upon the thousand signs of suffering about us
without seeing that if we are at all to help the sufferers we must
794 WAR AND PAIN [Sept.,
suffer too. " Suffer with : suffer alongside." The instinct of the
inmost heart is to demand some kindred experience to bridge the
chasm between our health and their disablement. Not shame, not
patriotism even, not the call of the state to economize, bids us strip
ourselves of our little luxuries and amusements, but love in its most
selfless form.
Christianity, always sane and coherent, prevents the torrent
of emotion from spending itself aimlessly and directs it to a given
end. (The barriers of Christianity are never raised except with
this intention. ) " Every common duty fulfilled, however hum-
drum," it says, " every individual sacrifice, large or small, can
severally be offered mystically for the beloved, so that whether or
no he is humanly conscious of it, your human love will buoy him
as the sea buoys the wearied swimmer who floats upon its waves.
Every accomplished action, every prayer, every moment of your
day, if such is your intention, may go towards this end and so
take shining meaning and purpose." 3
This golden secret of love, known to mystics from earliest
ages, has been the motive force of countless lives which we, in
our ignorance, misunderstood or criticized as selfish. Vicarious love
shines through the iron framework of every grille that confronts
us in a convent. The surrender of what we think of as essentials
by Carmelites, Poor Clares, the Trappists and so forth, to mention
a few only to the enclosed Orders (and the same rule applies to
all who follow the call of religious vocation) are made far less for
love of their own soul's welfare than of ours. They are living acts
of contrition for our negligence. They do for the sinner, the in-
different man, .and the tired and suffering man too, what he dare
not, or will not, or cannot do for himself. For us they make the
supreme renunciation of " rarer gifts than gold," that we whose
faith is frail and insecure may still win heavenwards on waves of
prayer. Yet we wonder at their serenity and peace, forgetting that
to give and give again and only urge that more still should be
given, is the supreme largess of love. Such as they chant :
Not in such feebleness of heart,
We play our solitary part;
Not fugitives of battle, we
Hide from the world, and let things be :
But rather, looking over earth,
Between the bounds of death and birth ;
'Paul Claudel.
1916.] WAR AND PAIN 795
And sad at heart, for sorrow and sin,
We wondered, where might help begin.
And on our wonder came God's choice,
A sudden light, a clarion voice,
Clearing the dark, and sounding clear :
And we obeyed; behold us, here!
In prison bound, but with your chains :
Sufferers, but of alien pains
Careless, they live and die : but we
Care, in their stead, for Calvary.
Vicarious suffering, then, is a definite stage in the vast illu-.
minative process of pain. Christianity is vision. It sees the facts
of life not only as they show now but as they may show hereafter.
Christianity's strong light, if it dawned upon us all at once
in its entirety, would dazzle or blind us. So mercifully it pene-
trates us by degrees. Feebly, we blink and peer at it at first, be-
tween the interstices of our fingers, like little children when the
nursery blinds are first drawn up in the morning. Presently, we
stumble to the window, and clear in that shining vista we see pain
flowing onward like a river straight to God So out into the
open where upon the river this little skiff is moored which we must
enter soon or late.
Paradox though it may appear, it is a divine fact that the more
hampered and tied the human body, the more swiftly and straightly
may the soul speed to its goal. Here again, when we look into it,
is sweet reasonableness and logic. The most finite mind realizes that
he who really loves another tries not only to follow in his foot-
steps but to walk with him, so that, through continual close con-
tact and intimacy, he may come to resemble his ideal. If Chris-
tianity means anything at all, it means that with the knowledge of
Christ, comes the Love of Christ. How then can we even hope
closely to follow, still less to become like, Him Who was called the
Man of Sorrows, Who suffered acutely not only in every separate
limb upon the Cross, but mentally in Gethsemane, unless we too
endure both physical and mental pain?
" The wonder grows that Christians can ever say, not only
'Why should I suffer this or that?' but 'Why should I suffer so?'
as though the better the Christian the less he might be expected
to suffer The more Christ's Life is ours, the more is suffering
bound to be ours. If, indeed, we think ourselves to be serving
Christ and do not suffer, then should astonishment begin
796 WAR AND PAIN [Sept.,
With this primal fact of our incorporation with Our Lord goes its
complementary truth that we are one each with the other, and
that if His Suffering is in a true sense ours, our suffering has
become, since it is mystically His, vicarious and redemptive. Chris-
tian suffering is not sterile. There is no hint in Christianity of
suffering for its own sake. . . . . " 4 But accepted pain, pain " taken
aright," borne first without resentment and ultimately willingly
almost visibly lifts man from mortal surroundings to immortal ones.
To God's calendar of Saints there have been added innumerable
names since war began.
"Is the end of life only to live? Are the feet of the chil-
dren of God to be bound forever to this miserable earth? The end
of life is not to live, but to die, not only to touch the cross but to
mount it; to give in joy what we have to give." So Paul Claudel,
the poet dramatist whose vision, whose " profound logic " admits
him to " the small company of the truly great, ^Eschylus, Dante,
Shakespeare," in the critic's eyes.
" Granting a soul of royal quality, pain all but infallibly must
perfect it." 5 " Acts of the intellect and heart cannot come near
the objective value of a will that is being tested by pain, and simply
holds on These living crucifixes stand clear altogether of that
wrangling world of controversy in which we ourselves dispute
extensions of Christ Crucified." 6 Every separate soul of
whom this can be said has earned the splendid right to echo St.
Paul's words, " I fill up those things that are wanting of the suffer-
ings of Christ."
In this, the Catholic view of pain then, pain shows even to
eyes blinded with tears as something which contains an almost in-
comparable power of spiritual development and growth, and he who
accepts it mystically passes stage by stage through the first pro-
cess of initiation into the understanding of discipleship, when
crippled and helpless though he be, he still may walk with no
other than Christ, in closest union, even here on earth.
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st 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!
4 With Dyed Garments. By C. C. Martindale.
8 Martindale's Life of Benson. 'Robert Hugh Benson.
AT CLOSE OF DAY.
BY EDITH M. THOMAS.
[A recent press report gave this description, written by a French soldier,
of a touching and dramatic experience:
" Near me lay two soldiers, mortally wounded : one, a Bavarian, young and
fair-haired, with a gaping wound in his stomach, and the other a young
Frenchman, hit in the side and head.
" Both were in pain, growing paler and paler. I saw a feeble movement on
the part of the Frenchman, who painfully slipped his hand under his coat for
something hidden away under his breast.
" He drew out a little silver crucifix, which he pressed to his lips. Feebly
but clearly he began: 'Hail, Mary, full of grace/
" The Bavarian opened his blue eyes, which were already glazing with ap-
proaching death, turned his head toward the Frenchman, and with a look, not
of hate but almost of love, finished in a murmur the prayer, 'Holy Mary,
Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.'
"The eyes of the two men met, and they understood. The Frenchman
held out his crucifix to the other, who kissed it and, taking him by the hand,
said, 'Having served our countries, let us go to God reconciled.'
"The sun, disappearing behind a purple cloud, shed a golden gleam on
the blood-stained bodies."]
This account inspired the following poem by Miss Thomas:
./-' i '"
THE great drive over, at close of day,
Side by side on the field they lay :
One from France, from Bavaria one;
For each the battle of life was done.
Then, he who had fought for the Lilies of France
Fixed on the cross his drooping glance,
And a light-of-the-soul came on his face,
As he prayed, " Hail, Mary, full of Grace."
And he from Bavaria turned his head :
" Ora pro nobis" his white lips said,
" Pray for us now and when death draws near."
The heart of the other leaped to hear !
" I fought for my country, you fought for yours
Who knows ? The kingdom of Heaven endures ;
Thither, my brother, we go as one."
And together they passed, the great drive done.
RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE. 1
BY H. C. WATTS.
N the year 1319, Pope John XXII. ruled the Church
Universal from the Chair of Peter, and the Kingdom
of England groaned under the incompetent rule of
Edward II. and the factional disorders brought about
by the intrusion into affairs of State of Thomas,
Earl of Lancaster, son of that Edmund upon whom Pope Innocent
IV. had conferred the crown of Sicily and Naples. It was a period
of national unrest and discontent. The whole of Yorkshire and the
northern counties seethed with the aftermath of the expeditions
of Edward I. into Scotland, and the defeat of the English at
Bannockburn by Robert Bruce, and the capture of the Border town
of Berwick in 1318. It was a time when kings and prelates were
brought into violent conflict; when the country clergy thought it
no shame to poach on the preserves of the bishops; when fighting
was common among men, and social disorder widespread. It was,
in fact, a time when ordinarily, reckoning such things as the world
reckons, religion might be thought to be in a very parlous condition :
but it was also a time when by the favor of Divine Providence the
Church put forth a rare gem of spiritual purity.
Sometime about the year 1300 for authorities are not agreed
as to the exact date in the little Yorkshire village of Thornton
Dale, near the town of Pickering, was born Richard, son of William
Rolle. Since the passing of religion there have been no Catholics
in Pickerton until 1911, when an heroic priest, the Rev. E. H.
Bryan, who had spent the best part of his life in the Established
Church, having become a Catholic and being ordained to the priest-
hood, opened a small mission in the town, where a glorious parish
church, now in the hands of Protestants, testifies to the devotion of
the faithful in an age long past. So has the Faith of Richard Rolle
come back once more to his home country.
Save for a few autobiographical passages in the Incendium
Amoris, little is known of the life of Richard Rolle, apart from the
legend in a tentative Office for his festival in the York Breviary,
which was compiled by the Cistercian nuns of Hampole, and is con-
sidered to be contemporary.
1 The " Incendium Amoris " of Richard Rolle of Hampole. Edited by Margaret
Deanesly. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.
1916.] RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE 799
As a lad he showed great industry in his studies, and at the
age of sixteen Thomas de Nevile, Archdeacon of Durham, and very
probably a member of the powerful North country family of the
Neviles, sent him to the University of Oxford. There, according to
the Office, he made great progress, distinguishing himself not only
in theology and the doctrines of the Sacred Scriptures, but also
in physics and secular science: so he continued for three years.
The deplorable state of the Kingdom could not but be felt
keenly at Oxford. The reverses of the English at Bannockburn,
followed by the death of Edward L, culminated in the ac-
cession of Edward II. Weak-willed and miserably idle, this king
allowed himself to be ruled entirely by favorites, and confusion was
worse confounded by the intrigues of his unfaithful wife. And with
the baronage in a state of armed antagonism to the king, the majority
of the nation was between the upper and the nether millstones of the
contending factions. So it was that Richard Rolle, having reached
the age of nineteen years, thought within himself that the time of this
mortal life was a thing very uncertain, and its ending a matter of
much trepidation, especially to those who occupied themselves with
carnal lusts or labored only to acquire riches ; straining after these
things by every wile and stratagem, only to fall into snares them-
selves. And so, inspired by God, he thought upon his own last
end, fearful that he should be snatched away in the bondage of
his sins. Shortly after thinking upon these things he left Oxford
and returned to his father's house.
The story of his assuming the habit of a hermit, as related
in the Office, has a certain quaintness and shrewdness, reminiscent
of St. Francis of Assisi. Indeed, the story of his conversion and
setting forth as a religious is in many ways parallel to that of
the Umbrian Saint ; and in common with him and other heroic souls,
especially those who have been called to pioneer work, Richard Rolle,
having realized his vocation, was delightfully indifferent to the ad-
verse criticism of those who thought him mistaken if not mad.
One day, says the Life, he spoke to his sister, for whom he
.had a tender affection. "Very dear sister," he said, "you have
two kirtles, a white one and a gray one, which I am very much set
on having (axuide concupisco). So I ask you as a great favor
whether you would not care to give them to me, and bring them to
me in the copse close by, and also bring at the same time my father's
rain cloak with the hood."
His sister gladly agreed, and the next day, according to her
8oo RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE [Sept.,
promise, she carried the garments to the copse already mentioned,
utterly ignorant of what her brother had in his mind. He, however,
had laid his plans well. As soon as he had received the garments
from his sister he set to work and ripped off the sleeves from the
gray kirtle. Then he cut the buttons off the white one, and in
some sort of fashion managed to sew the gray sleeves on the white
kirtle, and fixed them in such a way that they would suit his
purpose. The Latin text of the Office implies that there may have
been some little astonishment caused by the outward effect of the
young hermit's attempt at fashioning a habit.
But the result of his tailoring must have appeared very satis-
factory to the youth, for he removed his proper garments and put
on, first of all, his sister's white kirtle, upon which he had sewed
the white sleeves, then over this he put the gray one from which
the sleeves had been ripped, and through the slits he stuck his arms,
and over all he wore his father's hooded rain cloak. According to
contemporary pictures this latter was very much like the Franciscan
caputium; a kind of tippet fitting on the shoulders with a hood
attached. And so, after a fashion, he was dressed out as a rather
irregular copy of a hermit. The Office is very insistent upon the
outward effect.
But his sister had been watching all this time, and when she
saw her brother in so extraordinary a costume she was genuinely
frightened. " My brother is mad : my brother is mad ! " she cried
aloud. But he drove her off, and fearing that her cries might bring
his relations and neighbors to restrain him, he too made off.
After he had put on the habit of a hermit, and had made the
renunciation of his father's house, Richard Rolle set out for a
certain church. The name is not given in the York Breviary, but
the late Monsignor Benson declares it to have been at Topcliffe. It
was the Vigil of the Assumption, and he entered the church to hear
evensong, and sat down in the seat of the squire, Sir John of Dai-
ton by name, and a friend of his father's. Lady Dalton, too, had
come to attend evensong, and when the knight's servants saw the
young man in the pew they made as to remove him forcibly. But she
would not permit it, and so his devotions were undisturbed. When
evensong was finished and he rose to leave the church, the sons of
the squire who also were students at Oxford, recognized him and
asked him if he were not the son of William Rolle whom they knew
at the University.
On the following day, the Feast of the Assumption (and here is
1916.] RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE 801
a striking parallel to the conversion of St. Francis), Richard Rolle
entered the church, and without receiving any sort of command he
put on a surplice and sang in the choir at Matins and Mass. Then,
when the Gospel had been read, he asked the blessing of the priest,
and ascending the pulpit preached a sermon that moved the congre-
gation so much that the people could not restrain their tears.
After the Mass he was persuaded by the squire to dine with
him. At first he refused to enter the manor house, insisting upon
going into one of the outhouses, but at length Sir John prevailed
on him to join the family at table. Throughout the meal he ob-
served a recollected silence, nor could their efforts extract a single
word from him. When he had eaten what he considered to be
sufficient for his needs he wished to withdraw. But Sir John, as
a friend of the Rolle family, thought it high time to reprove the
young man for courtesy's sake. " That," he said, " is hardly the
thing to do ; " and so he persuaded him to stay.
When the meal was over Rolle again intimated very plainly
that he wished to retire, but the squire detained him in conversation
until all the family had gone from the room, then he asked him
again if he were not the son of William Rolle. " What if I am? "
he replied, fearing evidently that he might be sent home again, and
prevented from following what he believed to be his vocation. But
Sir John taxed him with many questions, and being satisfied that
he was sincere in seeking the solitary life, he promised to help him
in every way.
And so, acting on this promise, the squire provided him with a
proper habit befitting a hermit, and invited him to stay at the hall
for the time being. Later on he housed him in a little solitary
hermitage, and provided him with all the necessities of life. So the
young man began the life of divine contemplation at Topcliffe. His
writings indicate to what heights of prayer and spiritual vision he
rose. For nearly three years in fasting and watching he passed
along the ways of purgation and illumination, and of this time he
tells in the earlier chapters of the Incendium.
Nor in this solitary contemplation was he to find even external
peace. He was accused of being a vagabond, of being, so to speak,
a religious squatter, and he writes in the Incendium of the virtue
and merit of the solitary life of devotion. But in this connection
we have to consider that so late as the fourteenth century the eremit-
ical life was so perfectly understood as to be considered anything
but an innovation. And, therefore, if Richard Rolle became an ob-
VOL. cm. 51
802 RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE [Sept.,
ject of suspicion to the monastic orders in whose vicinity he lived,
we may lay a great deal of it to the unsettled and disturbed state of
the country; the prevalence of discharged soldiers, and also of
undoubted vagabonds who did undeniably live by deluding the lay-
people and obtaining alms under false pretenses. Be this as it may,
Rolle does make a very eloquent appeal for the life of solitude as
in no way inferior to the cenobitic life. As to the exact nature of
the charges made against him, that can only be gathered from the
tone of his vindication.
In considering Richard Rolle as a devotional writer, it will
be noticed that he shows with the other English mystics, such as
Juliana of Norwich, Walter Hilton and many another, an intense
passionate love for the Sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ: this, it
may be said, is the chief characteristic of English mediaeval de-
votion, paralleled also in St. Bernard's Jesu Dulcis Memoria. This
passion of love Rolle exhibits to perfection in his devotional poems:
Jesu at Thy will
I pray that I may be ;
All my heart fulfill
With perfect love to Thee :
That I have done ill
Jesu, forgive Thou me ;
And let me never spill
Jesu, for Thy pity. Amen. 2
In some passages this desire for the Beloved lifts the writer
to sublime heights of poetic utterance:
.... My love is ever in sore sighing,
While I linger in this way.
My love is after Thee longing,
And bindeth me both night and day:
Till I come unto my King,
That there I dwell beside Him may,
And see myself His fair shining,
In life that lasteth aye 2
The mystic is much misunderstood, largely on account of the
many charlatans who, under the name of mystics, propagate the
queer rites and antics of the many esoteric cults that have sprung
up. But the true Catholic mystic is simple, for he is just the pas-
sionate lover, the lover of God; hence, the love of God is the
sole explanation of the mystic's life. It may be that there is some
kind of justification for the exploration of mysticism as a " variety
2 A Book of the Love of Jesus. By Monsignor Benson.
1916.] RICHARD ROLLE OF HAMPOLE 803
of religious experience " it may be. But when once we grasp
what the Catholic mystic is, the inquiry into his mysticism as a
psychological phenomenon is impertinence, to say the least; an
over-curious searching into the mysteries of Divine Love which are
to be revealed to God's lovers, not psychological specimens for the
philosophical laboratory. If mysticism is to be studied the atti-
tude of the student is on his knees in humble prayer, not with an
over-anxious searching at the library table.
So, it is love that leads the solitaries apart; love for God,
and it was in this solitary life of contemplation that Richard
Rolle found the most perfect unfolding of his soul: there, like
the Apostle St. Paul, he was rapt to the third heaven, and heard
the mysteries of God, which may not be uttered by mortal tongue.
There is a curious incident related in the Life of the hermit. He
was sitting one day in his cell at the midday meal, "when there
came to him the lady of the house probably Lady Dalton and
many other persons who found him occupied in writing one of his
spiritual treatises, and under the stress of inspiration he was writing
very rapidly. The visitors begged him to lay aside his writing
and speak to them some words of edification. Immediately he ad-
dressed to them an exhortation, bidding them shun the vanities
of the world and to fix their hearts on God. For two hours he
spoke without interruption, nor, during all this time, did he
cease writing, which he continued in the rapid manner in which his
hearers found him, and, says the York Breviary, the discourse and
the writing were on totally different subjects.
It was after he had attained to the prayer of contemplation
that the hermit began to travel about. At Anderby, in the diocese
of York, he healed the sickness of an anchoress, one Margaret by
name. During these same travels he was the victim of many ac-
cusations, made without any foundation. And by these slanders he
suffered many trials, friendships were disturbed, and in some in-
stances he felt it necessary to part from those who were giving
him food and shelter.
But, finally, after many wanderings, he came to Hampole where
there was a convent of Cistercian nuns, and he is said to have
acted as spiritual adviser to the community. The village of Ham-
pole is still in existence, some seven miles from the town of Don-
caster, on the road to Wakefield. There is no evidence that Ham-
pole at any time possessed a parish church, though in Catholic
days the few villagers would have attended the church of the nuns.
804 RICHARD ROLLE OF HAM POLE [Sept.,
The nunnery has shared the fate of so many other magnificent re-
ligious houses in that shire where the walls of Rievaulx, the home
of St. ^Elred, and fountains bear witness to the architectural splen-
dors that are now no more. The village of Hampole itself con-
sists of a few gray stone houses nestling together on the steep slope
in a nook in the hill, and in front of the group of houses is an
open space where the people of Hampole still draw their water from
an ancient spring. The schoolhouse of the village has some old
stones built into it, which are considered to have been taken from
the nunnery building. Of the cell of Richard Rolle there is no
trace whatever, but there is a local tradition, which the editor of
the Incendium says is without warrant, that an empty stone niche
and a stone cross built into the schoolhouse were taken from the
site of the hermit's cell.
Thus, after many trials and wanderings, did Richard Rolle
find in this quiet retreat that peace which he had always sought,
and here he wrote the greater part of his works, the last of them
the Incendium Amoris. In the year 1349 he died, probably of the
Black Death as Monsignor Benson conjectures, a plague that was
raging in the North of England at the time.
It is reported that after his death miracles were wrought
through his relics and by his intercession. At one time it seemed
probable that he would be canonized, though ultimately this did not
happen. But his devotion spread to such a degree in the North
that a tentative Office for his celebration was inserted in the
Breviarium Eboracensium with the following caveat:
The Office of St. Richard the Hermit, after he shall have
been canonized by the Church; but in the meantime it is not
lawful to sing this Office publicly in church at the Canonical
Hours, or to solemnize his feast. But it is lawful to venerate
a man of such eminent holiness of life, and to ask his inter-
cession and to commend ourselves to his prayers in private
devotions.
The Collect which is found in this Office is at once a model of
simplicity and devotion :
O God, Who by the example of the holy hermit Richard,
has taught us to despise earthly things and with a sincere heart
to sigh after the things of heaven: grant to us, we beseech
Thee, that we may so faithfully follow in the same, that with
him we may in everlasting happiness taste of the stream of
heavenly joy. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
TRANSMIGRATION.
BY ESTHER W. NEILL.
CHAPTER XVII.
ALCOTT walked along the river road filled with a
strange new buoyancy. In all the years of his ab-
sence he had not guessed the depth of the Judge's
friendship. He would write to him there would be
no reason for not writing and after he was estab-
lished in some permanent home a home for Ted he
would invite the old man to come and visit them. Responsibility
towards his past was ended. His debt was paid. He had not de-
sired many luxuries in the days of his enforced frugality, but his
long experience in the slums, detached from the decencies of life,
had left him speculative as to what were the real necessities, so that
sometimes even his modest expenditures towards respectability had
seemed culpable. Once he had wanted a riding horse, and a blooded
mare had been offered to him at a bargain price, but he felt it would
be an injustice to buy it an injustice to those creditors of his
youth. And then there were the twins at Christmas times he had
longed to be guilty of all sorts of extravagant folly, and he had been
restrained by the consideration of his indebtedness. But apart from
any personal wants there had always been another embarrassment;
he could never subscribe generously to any undertaking. He might
preach philanthropy, work out reform measures, rouse men to build
charitable institutions, but, even to the unprejudiced, he never con-
tributed in proportion to his means. During the heat of the cam-
paign he had actually been accused of avarice, for he dressed shabbily
and lived in a cheap boarding-house. The reproach had hurt him;
it was then that he allowed a statement to leak into the newspapers
he had " obligations in the East." It was a phrase to conjure with
in this rough Western community. Most of the men had Eastern
obligations that they were struggling to forget; there were old
fathers and mothers waiting hopefully for tickets to transport them
to their sons; there were deserted wives and hungry children; there
were unpaid notes and criminal records. The voters clustered about
Walcott with a new interest; he might stand above them with his
eloquence and his education, but he had a sympathy and understand-
ing that they were looking for in a candidate.
Twilight was falling, streamers of red and gold flamed across
the river, but the woods were gray and the shadows of the naked
trees were merged into a common blackness. Walcott hastened his
806 TRANSMIGRATION [Sept.,
steps; he did not want to be late for Anne's dinner, even the roses
as a precursor of peace would not excuse such rudeness. But if he
was indifferent to her why should he dread her displeasure? Were
not these assurances of indifference proof that he felt the need of
reiterated resolution ? He must banish Anne from his mind and think
of Ted. He had that long interview with his nephew before him.
He would be relieved when it was over. He had gone to the Judge
without any formulated scheme, and he had selected the trifling
occurrences of his boyhood to convince the old man of his identity,
but he had been doubtful as to the outcome. In all the Judge's
busy years he might have no unstored corner of his brain to cherish
such trivial memories, but the memories had been quickened by an
immortal power and had risen quivering and eager, adding romance
to his reminiscence. There was romance romance everywhere.
Who would have believed that the Judge with his forbidding manner,
his clear, concise judgment, his lack of imagination had treasured a
love story in his life? But the Judge was old; he had learned
relinquishment. Ted was different ; he might prove unpliable, he was
so cynical, so rebellious, so uninterested in everything except Anne.
But perhaps when he heard the whole story he might be appealed
to through his affections. It had not been fair to reach out to him
in secrecy. No wonder that he had resented the attitude of a stranger.
Walcott's mind was absorbed planning for that talk with Ted,
proposing arguments and rejecting them, seeking plausible reasons
and tactful means of approach. He did not notice the old hack
coming towards him until he had to stand aside to let it pass, but
the grizzled negro on the box was not so unmindful of his transient
passenger who scattered greenbacks with such unthinkable ease.
" Ain't yer tired, Massa ? " he asked ingratiatingly, and he pulled
up his raw-boned horses. " Reckon I could carry yer to Miss Polly
Maxen's for a dime seein' that I'm goin' that way."
" But I don't want to go to Miss Polly Maxen's."
" Then mebbe yer goin' to Mrs. Van Brun's ; jest carried the
Senator thar. Long pull up that thar avenue, but I reckon I could
turn round fer two bits."
"I'd rather walk," said Walcott, irritated by the old man's
tenacity, " those ghosts of yours are going to fall down and die be-
fore they reach the livery."
" Wall, they ain't as peart as they was this mornin' ; none of us
are, I reckon ; I'm lettin' 'em go easy and I've been settin' here studyin*
'bout that thar river. Tears to me thar's a rowboat floatin' out in
midstream. My sight ain't good as it useter be. What yer reckon
that is obur thar?" He pointed with his raveled whip end towards
the water that was rapidly losing its reflected glamour of fire.
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 807
Walcott turned indifferently. "Why, yes, that is a boat. Must
have slipped its moorings."
" Currents mighty swift jest thar."
" Yes."
" Wish to the Lord I had a rope," continued the old driver. " I'd
lasso that boat. Somebody will be 'quirin' for it in the mornin'.
Wouldn't wonder if thar might be some reward."
"It may float into that cove just below here," said Walcott, amused
by the old negro's suggestion of a lasso. " Then you can haul it in."
" Mebbe so mebbe so but that's mighty uncertain. Current
don't allus swing that away. If that boat jest naturally cut away
from its landing, what yer reckon it's doin' on its haid? "
"Its head?"
" Upside down 'taint natural for a boat to float bottom up-
wards pears to me thar somethin' floatin' underneath."
Walcott roused himself to some degree of interest.
" Where where do you mean ? "
" That thar black thing just at the boat's end. Lord Almighty !
do you reckon it's a man?"
Walcott broke through the hedge of bushes that guarded the
water's edge and followed the negro's directing gaze.
" I I believe there is something."
The old hack man eager for a sensation forgot the " misery " in
his back that usually limited voluntary activity, and scrambling down
from his high box seat he joined Walcott on the river shore.
" Lord, Lord ! " he exclaimed with a sort of ghoulish delight at
this unlooked-for excitement, " that thar thing is a human arm
caught like a buzzard in a trap."
" Do you see a hand? "
" Lord knows. What yer aimin' to do, Mister? You ain't fixin'
to swim out ? "
Walcott had thrown off his heavy overcoat, and he was unlacing
his shoes with, breathless haste.
"/ must. I believe someone's caught under there."
" Mebbe it's an old coat."
" I've got to see."
" That water will freeze your vitals."
" I'm not expecting a warm bath."
" That thar current's as swift as a mill stream."
" I know it."
It did not occur to him to hesitate; there was no time for
thought of consequences, someone was in direst need, for the dimming
light showed plainly the arm of a man fixed like some inadequate
rudder at one end of the swaying craft. He was wading out in the
8o8 TRANSMIGRATION [Sept.,
water now and shivering- like one with the ague; it was bitterly
cold but he went on, ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep, shoulder deep
and then he began to swim. The little boat seemed very far away,
but he was a strong practised swimmer, and every stroke brought
him closer to his goal, until he realized with a sickening sense of
calamity that the boat was growing familiar in its outline. It was
painted green with gay, gold lettering on its side. It was the one in which
they had packed their provisions that morning, for Anne had sug-
gested their lunching on a small island a wild, uninhabited spot
which had always attracted hunters, but which was not promising
enough for a permanent abode. Nearer, nearer, nearer, he was
battling with the swift mid-current now; he had not counted on its
strength. His stroke was not so vigorous, the water closed about
him like relentless arms pulling him down. He thought the boat was
but a length away but it eluded him; it seemed to spin around in a
swirling eddy and then, with a desperate conviction that he was
putting forth a last effort, he grasped the side and pulled madly at
the thing beneath. A hand, a sleeve, the body of a man caught face
downwards !
Walcott lost his hold upon the boat and the body floated free;
he clutched at it with superhuman strength and then he saw the face.
Ted insensible dead, perhaps. Why should Ted be here? He
had left him with the others on the marshes. Why should he be
here? The boat was a flat-bottomed one not easy to overturn. Ted
had been taught to swim years ago. He could not have forgotten
how. What clumsy circumstance had caused him to catch the belt
of his corduroy coat to the oar lock? Surely he could have broken
such a flimsy cable if he had tried; he was not lacking in muscular
strength. Why should he be trapped like this, unless
Walcott's courage seemed to desert him ; he could only cling to the
boat with his one free hand and call feebly for help, but even as he
called he felt the finality of his position. From what quarter could
help come? Only the crippled negro on the shore could hear, and
he had no mind to meet the desperate emergency. Again he called for
help ; he could not hold on much longer now ; his head ached with
the strain and the cold, the pain would soon be unendurable ; then his
fingers began to stiffen, they were losing the capacity of their grasp.
But the shore seemed nearer, the little sandy cove that had been his
favorite playground when he was a boy. The river had always been
his friend, he had dabbled his feet in its glimmering shallows when he
was a baby ; he had run away from school to spend happy afternoons
floating on its surface; he had learned to swim across it, and he had
taught himself to swim under it this was a feat that not many of
his companions could claim ; and now it was clasping him in a death-
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 809
like grip he could not combat. But the shore was coming closer
it seemed to move out to meet him and his senseless burden. He
heard a shout of cheer and then he passed beyond all conscious effort.
Life was a matter of no consequence, his hold on the boat was
merely mechanical, his mind had lost all its directing force. He was
gliding into oblivion where there was no cold, no pain, no thought,
only the sound of rushing water and then the wonder of eternity.
Had he reached some port in a spiritual world? He was vaguely
aware of safety, of rest, but he saw nothing, heard nothing just a
sensation, too indefinable to analyze, of peace, of rest. Perfectly
indifferent to death or life, he was drifting through a strange dimness
where nothing mattered there was nothing to see, nothing to feel.
Why, dying was a pleasant experience after all. Had the body resigned
the spirit or was he coming back? Was this faint murmuring in his
ears rising again to the roaring of the river? Was life reclaiming
him just when he did not care? Would not his soul protest at any
rude withdrawal from her world of mastery? If this sense of rest
was death, how foolish to rouse oneself from such repose?
CHAPTER XVIII.
When Walcott's real awakening came, it seemed too commonplace
to admit of any tragedy having gone before. He was lying on the
four-poster in Anne's comfortable guest-room ; through the half-open
door of the cupboard he could see the few clothes he had brought with
him hanging on their wooden racks, his toilet articles were set in a neat
row on the dresser, and his motley array of boots and shoes was no-
where visible. Evidently the mulatto boy, with his persistent desire for
service, had been at work between bed-time and breakfast. For it must
be breakfast time the sun was shining through the parted curtains
reaching out as far as the brass handles of the claw-legged table,
dazzling him with their brightness. Had the housemaid burnished
them over night? He moved uneasily beneath the heavy woolen
blankets. Something had happened, his whole body felt sore and
strained. Had he only been dreaming between dark and daylight?
What had be dreamed? Then he became conscious that someone was
sitting in the high-backed rocker in front of the open fire, beating
on the fender with a pair of inflated bellows. No doubt this was the
noise that had first awakened him. Who was the other occupant of
the room? It was strange that the person should not reveal himself.
There was no sign of a head above the back of the rocker, and yet the
chair continued swaying rhythmically to every crash of the bellows on
the brass.
8io TRANSMIGRATION [Sept.,
" Bobby ! " exclaimed Walcott, pleased that his clouded memory
should solve the problem so promptly. " Bobby, what are you doing
here?"
The bellows paused in mid-air, then dropped to the floor, and
Bobby scrambled to the bedside.
" You ain't dead then? " he inquired joyfully. " Dad brought me
up to see you; he said I might do you good. He brought me from
Miss Polly's to show me you weren't dead."
" No, not yet," answered Walcott, struggling to shake off this
strange drowsiness.
" I was playing that you were," said Bobby cheerfully. " I was
playing I was a drummer boy and you were dead. Don't they play
music at funerals ? "
" Yes."
" And there is a funeral? "
"Where?"
" Downstairs."
Walcott covered his face with his hands as if a sudden light had
blinded him.
"Ted?" he said hoarsely, "Ted."
" He was a man," continued Bobby, pleased to be the bearer of
such exciting intelligence.
" He was drowned dead, in the river. Why did you pull him
in, Wally, when he was dead ? "
Walcott had drawn the linen sheet over his face and Bobby went
on, encouraged by the silence : " You were dead too when they brought
you here."
"And how did I get here, Bobby?"
" They brought you in the hack."
"Who brought me?"
" Dad."
" But how did he know ? "
" The old hackman told him ; he beat his horses up the hill,
and he found Dad and Dad told everybody, and then they all ran
and found you."
"Where?"
" Lying on the ground all sopping wet the boat floated to shore.
Everybody drowned and dead. Polly cried when she heard it and I
cried too."
"You cried, Bobby?"
He held out his hand and the child clambered up on the bed
and snuggled beneath the blankets. He laid his chubby cheek against
Walcott's scarred one.
" Why, you are crying too, Wally ; I didn't know you could cry."
1916,] TRANSMIGRATION 811
There was no answer; for a time they lay in silence clasped in
each other's arms. It comforted Walcott to have the child there, his
soft pulsating body close to his. It was life life to cling to in a
world suddenly made desolate.
" It's it's too hot," said Bobby, wriggling from beneath the
covers. " Get up, Wally, get up. Dad told me not to stay."
" Where are you going ? "
" Back to Miss Polly's."
"Is your father waiting?"
" Yes ; will you come ? "
" Not now."
" Are you going to sleep? "
" No."
"Are you sick?"
" No."
" Then why do you stay in bed ? "
" I won't if you go away and leave me. I'll put on my clothes
and go downstairs."
Bobby went without further argument. For the first time in his
short experience he was not averse to leaving his friend. There was
something incomprehensible about Walcott's manner, and those low,
dry, convulsive sobs had frightened the child.
Once relieved of the small boy's presence Walcott tried to get
up, wondering at his own weakness he had to lean against the bed-
post for support. He dressed himself with difficulty, his hands
trembled. Memory was forcing the tragedy back upon him with the
cruelty of the minutest detail and then, in strange contrast, came the
hallucination that men sometimes harbor in the first bitterness of
grief. Nothing had happened. Why, nothing had happened. He
looked out into the garden with its well-remembered, box-bordered
paths, the river glittered tranquilly in the distance. Nothing had
changed since yesterday. Tragedy had no place in these calm sur-
roundings. Nothing had happened he had been dreaming evil
dreams. Then reality returned with relentless force. Ted was dead
his body stiffened, useless, motionless, lay somewhere in this big
rambling, old house. He must go and find it.
As he started down the stairs the slender mahogany balustrade
creaked complainingly with the weight he was obliged to put upon
it. His head ached and he was faint and dizzy, but he felt that he
must go on to convince himself that Ted had passed beyond his care
beyond the need of his revelations. The library door was partly
closed but he went towards it, guided by the nauseating fragrance of
many flowers, the room was darkened, but tall candles in silver
sconces had been placed at the head of a long coffin where Ted lay.
8i2 TRANSMIGRATION [Sept.,
looking like a slender boy fast asleep. And as Walcott stood gazing
down upon him, suffering that self -scourging of remorse, Anne came
to the low French window and beckoned him out. She had held such
a large part in his life that it seemed natural that she should share
this climax, and because he had always obeyed her bidding he went
to her now, the mechanism of accustomed habit superseding all rea-
soning. She was standing resting her head against one of the white-
fluted pillars that supported the roof of the porch ; her eyes were fixed
upon the river. As he came towards her he noted her absolute still-
ness, and he was dully aware of the charm of such placidity.
" You wanted me ? "
She turned at last and faced him, her eyes held a piercing light,
her voice faltered a little.
" You must help me," she said, and she came close to him, and
putting her two hands on his arms she looked up straight into his face.
" You must help me to convince these people that it was an accident."
He winced at the words. It seemed to belittle all her feeling for
the tragedy this prompt consideration of public opinion.
"Then you know?"
" Yes, yes, of course he told me that he would," she replied.
"Told you?"
" Yes, last night I did not believe him."
"And why?"
" I I could not care for him. I had told him so, so often."
" No, I suppose not," he said grimly. " Men's hearts have been
your plaything since the beginning."
" You mean since you went away," she answered listlessly, and
her lovely head drooped like a tired child's.
"Then you knew that too?" he said again.
" Yes, yes, I have known you since the beginning."
The statement did not seem startling to him now. He accepted
it without question. Ted, lying so inert in the room beyond, had
altered all standards for him. Only the realities, stripped of all con-
vention and concealment, seemed to matter. What were honor, dis-
grace, power or failure in that supernatural world into which Ted had
so blindly passed ? And yet here was Anne pleading with him to deny
the manner of Ted's death.
" It was not an accident," he said firmly. " I cannot say it was."
" But you need make no explanations the upturned boat seems
to prove everything."
"Everything?"
" I cannot take the blame, the whole blame," she cried a little
wildly. " Ted was indifferent to life. I could not care for him."
" The blame is mine," he said penitently, " I should not have
1916.] TRANSMIGRATION 813
left him without a guardian or home. The blame is mine and yours,
Anne our souls will have to share it."
"Share only that?"
He looked at her in bewilderment now. He could not grasp her
meaning.
" Are you not satisfied," he said, " unless you are making fools
of men?"
"Why did I ask you here?"
" I do not know."
" And I know that you have passed beyond me. I have felt it
all the time. You are not the same. Perhaps that is the reason I
asked you here because I wanted to make sure."
"Sure?"
" Sure of your indifference. Sure of myself. It really isn't so
enigmatical after all. I belong to a type of woman, just a type who
seeks happiness always, and never finds it. The world is not satis-
fying. What then?"
" There is eternity," he said with a solemnity that he never would
have used in the old days.
She shuddered in the cold. " But I am afraid," she answered.
" Religion has never been a part of my life. I was not taught. I do
not know."
" And the supernatural surrounds us everywhere," he answered.
" There must be some knowledge that makes it more real I feel that
I must find it."
Her eyes had turned again to the river, her lips quivered faintly.
"I cannot follow," she said. " You have gone from me further
than I thought."
He stared at her fixedly, unconvinced of her meaning. Was it
possible that she had cared for him all these years? For a moment
he leaned towards her, compelled by her beauty; then came the sane
realization that he did not care. He had caught sight of Ted's ashen
face through the window, and it transposed facts for him. Anne's
power over his life was forever ended. Now that she was willing to
give all, he had nothing to offer in return. The hand with which he
was about to grasp hers fell to his side.
" I have tried to live as two different men," he said. " Two
lives I should not have attempted it. Ted has paid the penalty."
"And I?"
But he did not hear her. He had passed through the glass
doors of the casement, and he stood looking down again upon Ted
as if he would question him that world-old impulse to wrest the first
supernatural experiences from the dead.
[THE END.]
THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS.
BY W. P. M. KENNEDY, M.A.
[The following story is founded on fact and contains in substance an
accurate account of one of the most surprising conversions to Catholicism in
Irish history. The names, dates, etc., have been changed in order that personal
history may not be inquired into too carefully.]
HE following episode from Father O'Connell's note-
book is, I think, worthy of publication. I should
have given it to the world long ago, but I was doubt-
ful of much of its historical accuracy, and I wished
to see how it would read rewritten, with the historical
details woven in completely, true to the Ireland of James I.
and the events connected with that age. I have, however, resolved
to leave it exactly as he wrote it, because I have been convinced
that the details of history do not in this case affect the experience
related, and because had I changed it, as I attempted, the narrative
would have been robbed of its directness.
The story belongs to the most recent in the manuscript, as is
proved by the frequent erasions and corrections. My old friend
seems to have recorded it at a very late period in his life, and I
am inclined to believe that it belongs to that time when conversions
to the Church became matters of every-day occurrence in England.
On the other hand, I believe that he recorded it because of the
fact that it is the story of an Irish conversion an event, as yet,
rare among Irish Protestants who have never been open to
Catholic influence. The event then was one of singular in-
terest to Eather O'Connell. His apostolic zeal led him during
his work in England into close contact with inquirers and converts ;
but what he longed for most in that big Irish heart of his was to
see the barriers of prejudice broken down in his own dear land,
and for Irish Protestants to approach Catholicism and examine it
in a religious and not a political frame of mind. He saw visions
once more of an Ireland, one not merely in national hopes and
aspirations, but one in that great Catholic Church, which was to
her mother and guide and counselor in the darkest days of her
history. I can well imagine then with what joy he wrote down
this story, because it brought to his heart the truth of what he
ipi6.] THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS 815
often said, " No one can read the history of Ireland and remain a
Protestant, if he really wishes to be a Christian." His lifelong theme
was, " Give us a real Irish history and I will give you souls to God."
I copy his words with reverence and hope reverence, because
the aspirations of such devotion as his are sacred as the relics
of the martyrs, and hope, in that those who stand doubting out-
side the City of Peace may at least be moved to turn the pages of
Ireland's age-long devotion, " in spite of dungeon, fire and sword."
My annual holiday in the year 18 , took place in July, and
I was debating whether to spend it in England among old friends,
or in my own country. This summer was intensely warm, one of
the driest and hottest in my memory. I decided to go to the little
fishing village of B on the northwest coast of Ulster. My
old friend Mrs. O'Grady whose marriage I solemnized would,
I knew, welcome me at the Grattan Hotel. There I could enjoy
the cool refreshing breezes of the broad Atlantic and look across
it to lift my heart up to God for the many of my boys and girls
who had sought a new and freer home in the great Republic of
the West.
Into my bag I placed my new copy of The State Papers of
James I. just received from the Historical Society. I see in this
the hand of God. I was too old to worry about the details
of history other and better heads than mine for that work but
a chance notice of my native parish and several of the village in
which I intended to spend my holiday decided me, and round that
decision gathers this story.
Those long days linger with me yet. It was a happy time to
sit in the sun after breakfast, just as I left the church, and dream my
dreams, which is the Scriptural old man's privilege; to watch the
fishermen and women and girls and boys toil and pray ; to feel that
they were outside the big hum of the world's temptations, and
were going out into the eternal years with the faith of childlike
simplicity, which was theirs by oceans of blood. For the county
of X had been the centre of many a terrible persecution,
and the village itself had ran blood under Elizabeth and Crom-
well.
One day my isolation was lifted by the arrival of a Protestant
clergyman. He was the typical product of the Trinity College
Divinity School. He looked so nice and polished and clean.
Indeed I felt myself examining the stains on my old cassock
816 THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS [Sept.,
foolish old man. He saluted me in a friendly way as he slipped
from the car.
" Fine afternoon, Father. Grand for a holiday."
" Indeed it is, sir," I replied, rising. " You will find B
the best tonic you can get."
" I hope so, I hope so," he said somewhat intensely, and
entered to make terms with the hostess, an event which always
takes place as strangers are " summed up " and prices vary.
I went into the little sitting-room for my pipe. There
lay my book. Well, I took it with something of pride out to the
little veranda. " Ah," I said to myself, " I'll just let this young
man see that we priests are up-to-date." Poor, foolish, old man.
Vcwitas vanitatum! I sat listlessljy reading and cutting plages
when the new arrival came back.
" Reading, Father? I'm about tired of that. What, the State
Papers? Why, isn't that strange; I thought I'd said good-bye to
them for a time."
" You study history then? "
" Study history ! Why I think history is going to make me
crazy. I've been living among manuscripts and old diaries, and
state papers and all that sort of thing for months."
:t You are fortunate, sir, for you are living among very real
things."
" Too real, I fear," he said thoughtfully as he gazed out with
a wistful look across the ocean. " Too, too real. But there, I'll
risk a swim even in the sun, and we'll meet again. How long are
you staying? "
"Another fortnight," I replied, "and you?"
" Well, I don't know maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe
a month. It's all on the knees of the gods. But I'd like to discuss
this history volume with you if I've time."
" As you will," I said, " but I'm old now and hardly up-to-
date."
" Not at all. I just want to talk. Let's see, I'll come out here
to-night and let go."
He was off with a big towel round his neck in a few minutes.
" Now," thought I, " I'm in for it. A Trinity history man.
Why did I bring this old book? I must be careful. Let's see
James I. Elizabeth James I. bad times."
I closed the volume and lay back in my chair with eyes closed.
I let my mind gather up, as far as I could, the tangled history of
I9i6.] THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS 817
the period. I formulated as well as possible all the facts. I tried
to recall my different papers at the Historical Society. Luckily
my curate and I had often argued over the tragic events. He was
up in all the facts, and with a judicious use of the old methods of
the schools, he supplied me with a mass of information without
knowing it. Youth has much to learn but he's a good fellow.
If I judged my new friend rightly he would indeed " let go," and
I'd listen in order to measure my man.
I liked him. His frankness, his cordiality, the wistful note of
sadness and intensity in his voice; his cultured eagerness all ap-
pealed to me. Alas! poor Trinity. She's been an alien among us
for four centuries, outside our life, outside our hopes, hostile to
our Faith. I thought of my new friend as reared in those ancient
halls and as filled with all their narrowness and bitterness. I
thought of him deep in historical learning, yet justifying every
move in Irish history. When shall Ireland's sons sit at the feet
of a real university, redolent with her spirit and inspired by justice
and truth ?
That night we had it with a vengeance. He " let go," and told
me who and what he was, and why he was working at history. I
soon learned that my book had been providential. I could not set
down all he said, nor can I give any idea of his earnestness and
sincerity. I found that he was the Chaplain to Lord J , a
prominent Orangeman, who owned almost the whole county of
X , including the village. In addition to his clerical work,
he acted as librarian at J Castle, where Lord J
lived. His patron had asked him to write the history of the family,
and his work had brought him into touch with the tragedy of
Tyrconnel and Tyrone "the flight of the earls," one of the sad-
dest episodes in Irish history. Brought up in the narrowest school
of Anglican theology, his research had unfolded to him the high-
handed robbery which had gone on in Ireland, where his patron
now held the land of the exiled earls, and had opened up to him
vistas of Catholic endurance of which he knew little. It gradually
dawned on him that there was something in this decried religion,
and for him that something was vividly illustrated by the exile of
Tyrconnel and Tyrone who, he declared ex (mimo, had been driven
from their land for the profession of the Catholic Faith.
I tried in my most judicial way, and indeed with studied in-
tention, to curb his enthusiasm. I pointed out other points of
view political, social, utilitarian but he seemed convinced that the
VOL. cm. 52
SiS THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS [Sept.,
deep underlying cause of their misfortunes was that they were
Catholics. Of course, I firmly believed this; but I thought the
course of wisdom lay in my attitude, as I have found it always
rather wise to assume calm and judicial aloofness with any of my
countrymen when they are on the verge of any change. We argued
the subject from many points of view, but Mr. Wilson that was
his name always came back to this position, " Had not these men
been Catholics I should not now be enjoying my comfortable posi-
tion with Lord J- ." And then he enlarged upon theological
questions. Here I was indeed surprised. I had met many of the
Protestant clergy brought up and trained at Oxford who were full
of Catholic sympathies and doubtful of their whole position, but
never a Trinity man. He lay back in his rocking-chair and smoked,
pouring out questions and doubts about his own position, and hint-
ing at the solidity of the Catholic one. I grant I was suspicious.
Here was a man, brought up in the narrowest of religious schools,
private chaplain to an Orangeman, discussing from a favorable
point of view, not merely Irish history, behind whose awful tragedy
he boldly placed the Catholic religion, but also Catholic theology
and the claims of the Catholic Church. Our argument lasted far
into the night. When I retired to my room, my suspicions still
lingered, but at the Memento of the Living next morning at Mass
I found myself unconsciously almost including his name, and I
added to it, after a pause, those of the exiled earls.
After breakfast he appeared on the veranda. He seemed dif-
ferent from the previous evening. More quiet, more reserved but
nervous and restless.
He told me, almost abruptly, that he was returning at noon to
j_ _ Castle.
" Had you not better stay and enjoy the weather? It will do
you good."
" No," he replied, " I don't want enjoyment. I must have
change into newer activities. I did not sleep a wink last night."
" Ah, want of sleep is terrible. A good brisk day over the
wild moorland will cure all that."
" I don't know, Father; it's not physical; it's mental."
" Well, sir, if I may say it," I replied, " do what you think
best."
" Yes, I'll go back at noon. Perhaps I was not wise leaving
my work."
I had arranged to go over to W , a few miles off, to see
1916.] THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS 819
an old college friend, and when I returned I found that Mr. Wilson
had departed, leaving a message for me that I should hear from
him shortly. I must confess that every day until the end of my
holiday, I examined my mail hopefully for a line. When I re-
turned to parish work, however, Mr. Wilson soon faded into a dim
memory, and as the months grew to years I forgot all about him.
Some three years later I received the following letter, which I
copy here as perhaps the most interesting sequel to a conversation
which I ever experienced. Many, of course, will offer explana-
tions, but to me it is, without the shadow of doubt, one more exam-
ple of that wonderful Providence which guides our steps by paths
which we know not. The world would sneer at it. Good people
outside the Church would doubt it, but for me it will always
remain a distinct proof that we are encompassed by hosts of
unseen powers, and that God's mercies are over all His works.
M ABBEY,
BELGIUM, July 18, 18 .
VERY REVEREND AND DEAR FATHER:
I have been meaning to write to you for some years, but I
have been through such a time of storm and stress that I
determined not to do so until I was in a normal state of mind.
When I left B and your pleasant company, I returned
home and settled down to work, worrying out the details of
family history. During this time, I seemed fairly happy and
completed my material down to 18 . I was looking forward
to writing my book, and I carried it out with somewhat of
interest down to the days of Tyrconnel of Tyrone. When I
came to this point, I found myself unable to fit in the history
with Lord J 's opinions, and worries crowded upon me.
The old doubts grew up again, and finally my heart broke down
completely. Lord J suggested a trip to the Continent
with his son, and this was finally arranged. I have never been
on the Continent before, and you may imagine my various expe-
riences and joy. What impressed me was the marvel of the
Catholic religion ; its unifying power ; its mystery ; its " go-
on-ness," if I may use the word, in spite of all opposition, In
short, I resolved to bring my young charge to Rome, and thus
myself come into touch with the centre of Catholicism. It
would be tedious to tell you how I felt from wavering
and doubt, there slowly grew on me the conviction that I must
become a Catholic. I had gradually accepted the Church's
claims, and during my stay in Rome I grasped the wonderful
820 THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS [Sept.,
doctrine of the Real Presence. I still wavered in the final
step, but my wavering had an abrupt conclusion. One day,
when my charge was away with some English friends, I was
out walking, and going over again and again the momentous
questions. I entered a little church, and knelt down just
in the centre aisle before the Tabernacle. After I had prayed
with all the sincerity I could command, and thrown myself
entirely on the mercy of God, there came to me a moment of
decision, accompanied by vague memories of our old conversa-
tion. I want you to know of this. These memories were not
vivid, not pronounced, not clear; but as I made up my mind
amid the calm which was gradually falling over me, I was con-
scious of old echoes from our talk, and of dim, incoherent
flashes of my old historical work. As I rose from my knees,
I noticed that I had been kneeling on two slab tombstones and
my antiquarian sense moved me to stoop down to see on whose
graves I had decided to become a Catholic. Reverend Father,
I fell back thunderstruck when I read the large letters, in the
dim light that fell across the tabernacle from the Eastern
window : " TYRCONNELL ;" " TYRONE."
Need I say more; I have no doubt why I had come to the
little church ; why I had spoken to you. The exiled earls had
been praying for me and helping me beyond the grave. I was
duly received into the Church and am now a Benedictine novice.
I know this letter will interest you. I have determined on the
very threshold of my new life to cultivate a great devotion to
the Holy Dead. I know little as yet of their power and my
duty to them, but of this I am convinced Tyrconnel and
Tyrone brought me to the Faith.
I trust you are in good health. You may hear adumbrations
of my conversion. Lord J is wild, etc., etc., and full of
explanations, but you will know the real influences behind it,
and I feel that I shall Wave your prayers for my perseverance.
With many apologies for this long letter, believe me, Rev-
erend Father,
Yours ever gratefully in Christ,
JOHN WILSON.
This letter brought me joy inexpressible. At once, to the
amazement of Mrs. O'Grady, I returned to B . On the
following morning, in the land of the earls, I offered Mass for
that new soul carried into the fold of God through their prayers.
Books.
THE SINGLE TAX MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.
By Arthur Nichols Young, Ph.D. Princeton : Princeton Uni-
versity Press. $1.50 net.
The extensive activity of the single tax advocates in several of
our States during the last few years, has made a competent history
of the movement timely and welcome. As the author of the present
work observes in the preface, substantially all the literature hitherto
devoted to the subject has been controversial. However, the long
wait for a history has been amply rewarded by the comprehensive
and critical survey from the pen of Professor Young. So pa-
tiently, thoroughly, and dispassionately has he performed his task
that his book will probably not be superseded for a long time in
the future. The number and variety of books, pamphlets, maga-
zines, newspapers and other sources of information that he has
examined and evaluated, are at once a convincing proof of his his-
torical ability, and an assurance that the work will not have to be
gone over a second time. The book not only aims to be, but is
" a complete historical account of the single tax movement in the
United States, together with a discussion of the tactics of the
single taxers, their programme, the present status of the move-
ment, and its influence upon economic thought and upon fiscal and
social reform."
The main events treated in Professor Young's volume are:
the anticipations of the single tax doctrine by writers before Henry
George; the appearance and influence of Progress and Poverty
and other works by the same author; George's activity in politics
and on the platform; the efforts of his followers to get their
theories embodied in legislation; and the influence of the single
tax doctrine upon economic and popular thought.
Some of the essentials of the doctrine were advocated as early as
the middle of the seventeenth century by Spinoza ; in the eighteenth
century, by the Physiocrats of France and by several prominent
English writers; and in the first half of the nineteenth century by
the Socialists, Marx and Engels; by certain English economists,
and by a few land reformers in Germany. Nevertheless, Henry
George worked out for himself his theories of land ownership
822 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
and land taxation, and owed practically nothing to any of the
earlier writers on the subject. As his statement of the single tax
philosophy and proposals was incomparably stronger, more sys-
tematic and more comprehensive than any of those made before his
time, so his influence has been immeasurably greater than that of
his so-called forerunners. No other book on an economic subject
has had anything like the number of readers enjoyed by Progress
and Poverty. In the year 1905 more than two million copies of it
had been sold, while other books and pamphlets from George's
pen had been circulated to the extent of three million copies.
In addition to his work of writing, Mr. George was a tireless
lecturer and stump speaker, thus bringing his message to the
ears of hundreds of thousands of persons in America and
Europe.
Obviously the agrarian and fiscal changes contemplated by
the single tax, can be accomplished only through legislation. And,
yet, thirty-seven years after the appearance of Progress and
Poverty, we find that next to nothing has been achieved in this
direction. The most comprehensive attempt was that made in
Oregon at several elections between 1908 and 1914. The circum-
stances seemed to be peculiarly favorable; for the evils of land
speculation were greater and more visible in Oregon than in most
States; the population of the State had long shown itself favor-
able to new and radical ideas; the single tax proposals were set
forth by a strong array of speakers and writers, supported by
generous appropriations from the Pels Fund, and they received
an amount of attention and discussion^ that have been given to
very few political measures in this country. Nevertheless, the per-
centage of votes in favor of the single tax proposals was slightly less
in 1914 than in 1908. In 1908 it was thirty- four and five- tenths per
cent, and in 1914, thirty-two and five-tenths per cent. The other
States in which single tax measures were submitted to popular vote
show no better record of achievement. At present the only places in
the United States where the single tax principle has any legal foot-
hold are Pittsburgh and Scranton. By 1925 both these cities will
if the law in question is not repealed in the meantime have re-
duced the tax rate on buildings to fifty per cent of that on land.
The total number of persons voting in favor of any part of the
single tax principle in six States has been only four hundred and
fifty thousand, while the whole number of thoroughgoing and
convinced single taxers has been estimated by one of their
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 823
prominent leaders at between twenty-five thousand and fifty thou-
sand.
However, the foregoing statement does not tell the full story
of the influence of the single tax movement. To a greater extent
than any other radical economic theory, the single tax doctrine has
drawn its converts from the middle class, and from among the
more intelligent members of the middle class. Therefore, the
strength of the movement is considerably greater than might be in-
ferred from a mere count of heads. Single taxers have exercised
a considerable influence in the movement for tax reforms, especially
for the abolition of the general property tax and of indirect taxes.
Tens of thousands of persons who do not accept the single tax
philosophy are in favor of shifting a part or all of the taxes on
improvements to land, and their ranks are rapidly and constantly
swelling. Without the single tax agitation, such persons would
be relatively insignificant in numbers and influence. Again, the
single tax propaganda has been responsible for a great increase
of popular interest in economic subjects during the last thirty
years, and has stimulated considerably the tendency to make
economic treatises more simple in language and more readable. It
has also provoked a more critical examination of traditional
economic doctrines by the economists themselves. Finally, the
single tax movement has done much to arouse public interest in
the problem of poverty, and to compel the public to look upon the
social question as essentially a question of justice.
Among the reasons why the single tax doctrines have not
obtained a greater number of adherents, Professor Young rightly
gives prominence to the fact that single taxers regard the private
receipt of rent as morally wrong, and would deny compensation to
private owners for the losses that they would suffer through State
appropriation of rent by taxation. The moral sense of the com-
munity will not accept this revolting doctrine for a long time to
come if ever.
Of special interest to Catholics are the pages in which the
author recounts Dr. McGlynn's part in the single tax agitation. On
the whole, his brief account is fair and accurate, but it contains a
few unfortunate slips. St. Stephen's Church is not situated on
" Fifth Avenue." The Catholic Church is not correctly designated
as the " Roman Church." Dr. McGlynn's bishop was not the " Ro-
man hierarchy." The " political power of the Roman Church " was
not brought into the controversy at any time. No such power exists.
824 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
A DIPLOMAT'S WIFE IN MEXICO. By Edith O'Shaughnessy
(Mrs. Nelson O'Shaughnessy). New York: Harper &
Brothers. $2.00.
In publishing these letters, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy might have
announced them as a challenge to those who dislike and mistrust
Mexico, or who are indifferent to her fate. Her story is so effec-
tive that the reader has covered scarce fifty pages before his heart
has been won to Mexico. The author's love of the country, her
long, personal experience with its problems, her charming and even
poetic power of presentation explain the persuasiveness of her
volume. Her description of the crafty, old Indian dictator, Huerta,
seems to make blacker the crime of the Washington administration,
for Mrs. O'Shaughnessy asserts that he was not the immediate
cause of the death of Madero, and on that supposition the conduct
of the Washington administration was based.
The style of the letters is readable, easy and informal. They
were written in diary form to the author's mother. Her artistic
appreciations of the natural beauties of Mexico make almost false
her statement that some of them are indescribable. The letters
speak at length of Mr. John Lind and the pitiable failure of his
mission. At his door is laid a great part of the responsibility for the
smiling encouragement given by our country to the rebel successes
of Carranza and Villa, and the latter is seen broadly grinning and
at a loss to understand his own popularity in Washington.
But the full tragedy of the Mexican situation is best seen
when the American Charge acquaints Huerta with the news that
the United States has lifted the embargo on consignments of arms
and ammunitions to the rebels. O'Shaughnessy foresaw that this
was the deathblow of Huerta's regime. He knew, and knew it
from first-hand knowledge, that Huerta's strong arm alone could
save Mexico, and that the moral support for this action must come
from the great Power to the North. That support was withheld.
These letters show how long and how well O'Shaughnessy labored
that justice might reign between our country and Mexico, and they
are a plea to us, inclined to be so little considerate and so unobserv-
ing, not to shut out from our hearts a love of our less strong
neighbor.
The book furnishes much evidence to prove unwarranted the
provincial impression that there is no substantial, educated, peace-
loving class among native Mexicans. The Embassy social lists
include the names of many families well established, cultured and
1916.] NEW BOOKS 825
discriminating, whose members would be fit and ready to bear
any national responsibility. One last word about popular education
in Mexico. " Curiously enough/' writes the author, " it is the
custom to assert that the Church kept the Indians in their state of
ignorance; but education, after the Laws of Reform in 1857, was
taken out of the hands of the priests and given into those of the
lay authorities. That was nearly sixty years ago three Indian
generations. Who runs may read, literally, in this case."
\
POEMS OF THE IRISH REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERHOOD.
Boston: Small, Maynard & Co. 50 cents.
The spirit that prompted the late Irish rebellion breathes in
every line of these sweet, delicate verses of Thomas MacDonagh,
Padraic Pearse, Joseph Mary Plunkett and Sir Roger Casement
They were all enthusiasts, idealists and poets, giving their lives
freely for a beautiful dream the freedom of Ireland from cen-
turies of oppression. Even apart from the sadness of their tragic
death, their literary gifts will ever be recognized and remembered
by the discerning critic.
They were not afraid of death, but hailed it as a friend. Mac-
Donagh in his Star of Death sings :
O Star of Death ! O sign that still hast shone
Out beyond the dark of the air !
Thou stand'st unseen by yearning eyes
Of mourners tired with their vain prayer
For the little life that dies,
Whether holding that it dies
That all life may still live on
In its death as in its birth,
Or believing things of earth
Destined ever to arise
To a new life in the skies.
Pearse's translation from the Irish, To Death, might well be
his epitaph:
I have not gathered gold;
The fame that I won perished ;
In love I found but sorrow,
That withered my life.
Of wealth or of glory
I shall leave nothing behind me
(I think it, O God, enough.)
But my name in the heart of a child.
826 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
Plunkett, who belonged to a Catholic branch of a family whose
name has been in Irish history for some six hundred years the
Venerable Oliver Plunkett was one of its martyrs was perhaps
the best singer of the group. He was a pupil of MacDonagh's,
and shared from the beginning his master's great enthusiasm for
the Irish cause, and his love of literature. We may be pardoned
for giving one of his poems in full :
I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see His face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but His voice and carven by His power
Rocks are His written words.
All pathways by His feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.
IDYLS AND SKETCHES. By Sister M. Blanche. New York:
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.00 net.
In these bright, clever essays, Sister Blanche treats of themes
as diverse as birds, flowers, the art of conversation, character,
naturalness, the poetry of Thompson, Tabb and Longfellow, and
the charm of letter writing. Fortunate the girls who wander
through the woods with her as a companion, and happy the pupils
who learn the lessons of truth, honor, kindliness, simplicity and
charity.
THE HAPPINESS OF DUTY. By the Rt. Rev. Charles Gay,
Bishop of Anthedon. Edited by Rev. J. M. Lelen. Fort
Thomas, Ken. : The Christian Year Publishing Co.
Monsignor d'Hulst, Rector of the Catholic University of Paris,
called Bishop Gay " the greatest director of souls in the nineteenth
century." This little treatise on obedience is proof positive that
such an estimate was not mere fulsome praise. It discusses the
principles, graces, advantages and duties of obedience in the spirit
of St. Francis de Sales, Bishop Gay's chief master in the spiritual
life. It is to be regretted that the translation is in parts quite
rough.
I9i6.] NEW BOOKS 827
THE NIGHT COMETH. By Paul Bourget. Translated from the
French by G. Frederic Lees. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons. $1.35 net.
This is an excellent translation of Paul Bourget's latest novel,
Le Sens de la Mori. The book is a psychological study in the
writer's best vein, and brings out in vivid contrast the attitude of
unbelieving science and that of Christian faith in the face of death.
Dr. Marsal sets forth the author's thesis in the final chapter, when
he says : " Death has no significance if it is merely an end ; it has
significance if it is a sacrifice."
The gallant sergeant, Delanoe, dies without the slightest fear,
while fighting for France, because he knows that a Christian soldier
is merely doing his duty in God's sight. The hero of the story,
the manly and devout Lieutenant Le Gallic, dies in a Paris hospital,
offering up his young life for France and the conversion of his
agnostic cousin. His cousin's husband, Dr. Ortegue, a prey to a
mortal disease, cannot, as an unbeliever, grasp the true significance
of either suffering or death. The dread of pain makes him rebel,
and finally commit suicide. In his utter selfishness, he had per-
suaded his wife to enter into a suicide pact with him, but the
prayers of the young Lieutenant convince her of the sinfulness of
her promise. Reason is responsible for the stoical but barren dis-
tress of Dr. Ortegue's death ; grace is the inspiration of the peaceful,
moral fullness of the Catholic soldier's death. The last words of
the novel, addressed to the man of the twentieth century, might
indeed fittingly close a spiritual treatise : " With what pain the poor,
tormented souls of to-day seem to seek .for the truth, which is there,
quite simple, within their reach. Yet is not this very pain in the
search after truth a prayer? When we feel the need of God, it is
because He is quite close to us."
COMPARATIVE RELIGION: ITS ADJUNCTS AND ALLIES.
By L. H. Jordan. New York : Oxford University Press. $4.00.
In his preface, Dr. Jordan tells us that " the contents of the
present volume are a sort of apparatus criticus for determining
the true nature and limits of Comparative Religion." He draws
attention to about five hundred volumes on Anthropology, Ethnol-
ogy, Archaeology, Mythology, Sociology and the History of Re-
ligions, one-third of which he reviews or epitomizes. Besides, he
gives a fairly complete list of source books, such as the transactions
of congresses and learned societies, encyclopedias and periodicals.
828 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
While the author is continually finding fault with Christian,
and especially Catholic, apologists for their blindness, dishonesty
and bias in discussing the history of religions, his whole book is
filled with rationalistic a priori assumptions. He denies the pos-
sibility of ever attaining to ultimate truth ; the uniqueness or tran-
scendence of Christianity, and the possibility of any revelation in the
true sense of the term. He does maintain the natural evolution
of all religions.
Catholics have no fault to find with the comparative method,
if it be rightly used. The Catholic Church has only praise for
those scholars who will ascertain all the facts concerning the re-
ligions of the world, compare and contrast them, and then deduce
the general laws which govern them. But she has no patience with
those unbelievers who to-day put forth their erroneous subjective
theorizing as scientific facts. If their endeavors to rediscover the
first and fundamental expression of the religious sense were really
scientific and objective, we would find some agreement in their
results. But the contrary is the fact. Fraser in his Golden Bough
asserts that magic invariably precedes religion; Reinach in his
Cults, Myths and Religions makes Totemism the primitive religion;
Durkheim in his Les Formes Elementaires de la Vie Religieuse
declares the social instinct alone dominant ; Pratt in his Psychology
of the Religious Life tells us that feeling is the basis of all religious
belief ; Drews of the mythological school goes to the absurd extreme
of denying that Jesus Christ ever lived; Deissmann in his Licht
vom Osten uses philology to prove that Christianity borrowed its
ideas from earlier religions.
It is rather amusing to read the author's comments on the
Catholic books he reviews. The Abbe Bricout is not impartial,
because he devotes fully one-third of his work, Ou en est L'Histoire
des Religions? to the discussion of Christianity; Father Martin-
dale is called unscientific, because he holds that " the transcendent
beauty of Catholicism will but shine out the better as the result
of comparing it with other faiths; " the Abbe Valensin of Lyons
commits the unpardonable sin of having his book, Jesus Christ et
L' Etude Comparee des Religions, receive an official imprimatur;
the works of Father Wieger, Bouddhisme Chinois and Le Canon
Tadiste, are not the work of a mature scholar, because they evidence
"an absence of poise and a lack of accurate balancing of one's
diction."
Altogether the work of Dr. Jordan is useful merely from the
1916.] NEW BOOKS 829
standpoint of its special bibliography. It is of no value to the
critical scholar, for it is too fulsome in praise of the most
contradictory theories; too prejudiced against everything Chris-
tian ; too replete with repetitions of every sort ; too dogmatic in its
attempt to define the scope of Comparative Religion.
FRANCISCI DE VICTORIA DE JURE BELLI RELECTIO.
By Herbert F. Wright. Washington, D. C. : Published by
the Author. 65 cents net.
This brochure is a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of
Letters of the Catholic University of America for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy. It consists of a critical introduction to,
and an analysis of, the text of Victoria's De Jure Belli. The writer
gives a brief sketch of the Spanish theologian's life and writings,
the importance of his treatise De Jure Belli, and a brief history
of the text. Scholars would have been more pleased had the writer
given them the amended text, so that they could judge for them-
selves the worth of his labors.
MEAGHER OF THE SWORD. Edited by Arthur Griffith. St.
Louis: B. Herder. $1.10 net.
This volume contains a score of the speeches delivered by
Thomas Francis Meagher in Ireland from 1846 to 1848. He was
one of the most picturesque and gallant figures of the Young Ireland
Movement, and yielded to none in love for his native land, and
willingness to suffer in her cause. With O'Brien, M'Manus and
O'Donoghue he was condemned to death for high treason after
the revolt at Ballingarry, but the publication of a letter in the pos-
session of General Sir Charles Napier made the English Govern-
ment change the sentences to transportation for life. This famous
letter, dated June 25, 1832, nominated Sir Charles Napier to take
command of the Birmingham section of an English insurrection
planned by the English Liberals in that year. Its publication made
it impossible for Lord John Russell and his colleagues to carry
out the death sentence upon the Irish patriots. Meagher escaped
from prison and went to America, where he raised the celebrated
Irish Brigade of the Civil War.
There are additional chapters from Meagher's pen on the
rebellion of 1848, the penal voyage to Tasmania, and recollections
of Waterford.
830 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
O'LOGHLIN OF CLARE. By Rosa Mulholland. New York:
P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.25.
This story of eighteenth-century penal days in Ireland ap-
peared in the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD from October, 1914,
to April, 1915. It pictures the sturdy loyalty of the old Irish
families to the Faith; Erin's hatred of the priest-hunter and the
informer; the injustice of the cruelty of the English penal laws, and
the devotedness of the Catholic priest even unto death. The chief
interest of the story centres in the love of Brona O'Loghlin for
the Protestant, Hugh Ingoldesby. The hero is won to the true
Faith by reading St. John of the Cross, and by the fidelity of the
proscribed O'Loghlins. The story is written with the writer's
well-known distinction of style, and all its characters ring true.
THE SACRAMENTS. A Dogmatic Treatise. By Monsignor Jos-
eph Pohle, D.D. Authorized English Version by Arthur
Preuss. Volume II. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.75 net.
The ninth volume of the Pohle-Preuss Series of Dogmatic
Textbooks treats of the Holy Eucharist. Part I. discusses the
Real Presence; Part II. the Holy Eucharist as a Sacrament; and
Part III. the Holy Eucharist as a Sacrifice. We have only words
of praise for these manuals of theology, which are thorough,
scholarly, and abreast of the times in meeting modern difficulties.
They afford the educated layman an opportunity of reading
treatises that are usually confined to the pages of a Latin textbook,
and they are helpful to the young priest who wishes to review his
seminary studies.
THE EDUCATION OF BOYS. By Conde B. Fallen. New York:
The America Press. 60 cents net.
In these letters Mr. Fallen makes a strong plea for the Catho-
lic school to a Catholic father, who had charged it with being
backward and mediaeval. He sets forth clearly the true Catholic
ideal in education, condemns the skepticism that underlies the edu-
cational secularism of our day, points out the evils inherent in the
elective system, and ascribes the attendance of Catholic boys at Non-
Catholic colleges and universities to the weakness or unthinking
ambition of their parents. He says : " When a Catholic, under
the impulse of the Zeitgeist, disparages Catholic education, he com-
mits a crime. He is disloyal, where he should be faithful; he is
ignorant, where he should have knowledge."
1916.] NEW BOOKS 831
THE CATHEDRALS OF GREAT BRITAIN. By Rev. P. H.
Ditchfield. With Illustrations by Herbert Railton and others.
New York: E. P. Button & Co. $1.75 net.
This is a new and revised edition of Ditchfield's well-known
guide book to the cathedrals of Great Britain, which first appeared
in 1902. The author gives an architectural description of all the
cathedrals of England, Wales and Scotland, with a brief history
of each see. The vandalism of the Reformers and the Puritans is
brought out on every page, although the writer does not see the
inconsistency of the present-day Anglican's claim to the churches
of his Catholic forefathers. It is also rather amusing to read that
the foundation stone of Truro Cathedral was laid May 20, 1880, by
the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cornwall with full Masonic,
as well as ecclesiastical, ceremonies. We would have wished that
the new edition omitted such out-of-date historical calumnies as
the Boxley Rood fable, but the writer of a guide book is not always
a critical scholar.
MASTER, WHERE DWELLEST THOU? By Marie St. S. Eller-
ker. New York: Benziger Brothers. 50 cents net.
We know of no book in English that explains the Mass for
children so well as this delightful little volume. The writer de-
scribes the Jewish temple, the Cenacle, the catacombs, the early
Christian churches, the altar, the tabernacle, the cross, the vest-
ments, the sacred vessel, the candles, and all else that may be
connected with the ritual of the Mass. Every chapter ends with
some appropriate texts of Scripture and a short story that brings
out the love of the saints for the Holy Sacrifice.
MEDITATIONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR. By Bishop
Challoner. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.00 net.
Benziger Brothers have just published a new edition of Bishop
Challoner's Meditations in a small, compact volume. There is no
need to recommend this book to our readers, for it has been the
Vade Mecitm of Catholics in England many a generation. " Mental
prayer," the Bishop writes, " is very easy, even to the meanest
capacities; it requires nothing but a good will, a sincere desire of
conversing with God, by thinking of Him and loving Him." The
subjects of meditation are so arranged as to take in the whole body
of Christian doctrine, the mysteries and solemnities celebrated by the
Church throughout the year, and the practical lessons of the Gospel.
832 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
THE CHIEF CATHOLIC DEVOTIONS. By Louis Boucard.
Translated by W. H. Mitchell. New York : P. J. Kenedy &
Sons. 75 cents.
This excellent treatise gives a brief account of the devotions
to the Blessed Trinity, the Blessed Sacrament, the Sacred Heart,
the Cross, the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, the Holy Souls, and the
Angels and the Saints. It draws a clear-cut distinction between the
devout souls and " the sham devotee, who superstitiously binds her-
self to useless practices, while she neglects the essentials of the
spiritual life." Devotion, as St. Francis de Sales says, " is a
kind of spiritual nimbleness and liveliness, whereby charity per-
forms its works in us, or we do them for its sake, with alacrity
and love."
AT THE FEET OF THE KING OF MARTYRS. By a Nun of
Tyburn Convent. With a Preface by Dom Bede Camm, O.S.B.
New York: Benziger Brothers. 35 cents. *
These devout meditations are drawn from the prayers and
writings of the English martyrs, " who learned at Douai how to
die, and at Tyburn how to live." No one can read these pages
without being touched by the marvelous faith that made these
heroes thank God for their death sentences, and sing canticles of
praise on their way to execution. " I come, sweet Jesus, I come,"
said the Ven. Peter Wright, S.J., when the officers summoned him
to death; the Ven. John Wall, O.F.M., " found his prison more
pleasant that all the liberties the world could afford;" the last
words of Ven. Edward Morgan were: " I offer up my blood for
the good of my country;" Blessed John Fisher writes his sister
Elizabeth from the Tower: " So desirous were they (the martyrs)
of His love that rather than they would forego it, they gave no
thought of the loss of all this world beside, and their own life also."
TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL
SOCIETY. Springfield, 111. : Published by the Illinois State
Historical Library.
This volume discusses the early courts of Chicago and Cook
County, Black Hawk's home country, the destruction of Kaskaskia
by the Mississippi in 1881, the Wiliamson County Vendetta, the
Whig Convention of 1840, the Fox Indians, etc. An appen-
dix contains a full list of all the publications of the society since
1899.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 833
THE IRISH ORATORS. By Claude G. Bowers. Indianapolis:
The Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.50 net.
The timeliness which gives this publication an initial advantage
is, the publishers have notified reviewers, wholly fortuitous, the
work having been 'delivered to the binder on the day that word
reached this country of the uprising in Ireland.
The assurance was superfluous. The book is its own witness
that it was not hastily concocted and rushed into print, to catch
the benefit of a spasmodic interest: it is a carefully planned and
executed effort to set forth " all the essential facts in the history
of Ireland from the middle of the eighteenth to the beginning of
the present century," through studies of Flood, Grattan, Curran,
Plunkett, Emmet, O'Connell, Meagher, Butt and Parnell. Thus,
the author gives us more than a series of biographical sketches of
these leaders in Ireland's fight for freedom. He supplies also the
sequence of events and the varying conditions culminating in the suc-
cessive crises to which the genius and heroism of these nine patriots
responded. In each instance, of course, the subject speaks for him-
self, and extensive quotations give a clear idea of the powers that
made him a chosen chieftain. It is all well done, though naturally
the author's manner gains increased animation as he brings us
nearer to our own times. Thomas Francis Meagher's gallant figure
is flashed brilliantly before us; but most absorbing of all are the
final chapters, which portray very graphically the singular, com-
pelling personality of Charles Stewart Parnell.
Mr. Bowers' tone is temperate, and he adheres closely to the
limits of the period he has assigned to himself, without the slightest
digression into earlier ground by a brief statement of the laws
and acts of oppression then rife. It seems unnecessary conservatism,
for in the article on O'Connell, at all events, the text might well
have been supplemented in this manner.
ACTION FRONT. By Boyd Cable. New York: E. P. Button
& Co. $1.35 net.
The author of Between the Lines has followed an excellent
piece of work with another, designed upon the same plan and de-
serving of the same success. Like its predecessor, Action Front is
a volume of stories and sketches of the present war, written with
the intention that the reader shall be brought to a fuller realization
of what prodigies of valor, resourcefulness and endurance go to the
making of the results of which he is informed by the brief,
VOL. cm. 53
834 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
desiccated statements of official reports, an extract from these
being used as a sort of text, heading each story. Although the
war correspondents have in a measure prepared the way for Mr.
Cable, yet the pictures he presents of daily life in the trenches of
the Allies are touched on so vividly that all seems new. It bears
the stamp of evidence at first hand. We are taken down into that
strange, underground existence with its ceaseless vigilance, its per-
petual imminence of mutilation and death, yet monotonous, for
all its peril, and replete with such hardships and discomforts that
a wound brings with it alleviation in the thought of enforced rest
and warmth and cleanliness.
Mr. E. F. Benson has lately spoken of humor as " the last of
the human salts wholly to evaporate," and Action Front confirms
this. It is the avowed purpose of the book to show how the lighter
side runs through grimmest tragedy, and it stirs the pulses to
read of the daring gayety that carries on hairbreadth adventures
and risks of unprecedented danger: nor is the determination of
each man to give himself wholly to the cause any less impressive
because it is often expressed flippantly and slangily. It is pleasant
to record also that these virile, genuine pages are nowhere defaced
by the coarseness frequently found in stories of soldier life.
Mr. Cable gives to his material a broadly effective treatment
that seldom concerns itself with individual characterization. A
rather regrettable deviation from this rule is A Benevolent Neutral,
in which the principal is an American, to whom the English author
has given a dialect so preposterous as to destroy conviction,
thus detracting from enjoyment of one of the best stories in this
very interesting collection.
LYRICS OF WAR AND PEACE. By William Dudley Foulke,
LL.D. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. $1.00 net.
The verses contained in this small volume are the graceful
expression of thought deeply tinged with poetic feeling and delicate
sentiment; but they do not arrest the attention by evidences of
originality, nor have they the character generally associated with
the term, lyric. Even the poems relating to the war have, with
the exception of " Remorse," a tone of sedateness that permeates
throughout, producing somewhat of the effect of essays in verse.
One feels, more than once, that a more enduring impression would
have resulted from the use of a more flexible medium than the
form of versification favored almost exclusively by the author, who,
I 9 i6.] NEW BOOKS 835
however, demonstrates once again his scholarship and mastery of
language, especially in the translations and paraphrases of ancient
and modern classics that form part of the content.
AN UNKNOWN MASTER. By Joseph A. Murphy. Boston : The
Pilot Publishing Company. $1.15.
The fourteen stories collected in this volume were originally
published in The Boston Pilot; and they are reprinted in the present
-form, the author tells us, at the request of many readers. They
evince some of the characteristics of fiction written for a weekly pa-
per, but are decidedly above the average of such, and have sufficient
merit to make their republication desirable. There is an unusual
variety of subjects, of which none is hackneyed or commonplace,
and they display imagination; Called as Aaron and The Lost Gospel
being notable examples. A vigorous Catholic spirit pervades the
whole collection, and it is generally some matter of Catholic feeling
or teaching that constitutes the pivotal point of a story. The book
may be recommended as suitable for general reading and distribu-
tion in every parish.
YONDER? By Rev. T. Gavan Duffy. New York: The Devin-
Adair Co. $1.25.
Every Catholic, young or old, ought to read this charming
plea for the foreign missions. To heroic souls it will certainly
make an effective appeal and be fruitful in vocations for the stirring
life Yonder; in less zealous souls it will inspire generosity, and a
quick unloosening of the purse strings; in indifferent souls it will
arouse a spirit of zeal and love of God. Father Duffy describes in
original and picturesque fashion the missionary's life in the Far
East his trials, his consolations, his needed virtues, his special pa-
trons. We are all aware how low the funds of our foreign mis-
sionaries are at present on account of the war in Europe. America
must make up the deficit. We commend the missionary's prayer
to all our readers : " My God, if the work I am doing for You is
Your work, put it into the hearts of others to support it. If not,
cut off my work by any means You wish."
HISTORICAL RECORDS AND STUDIES. Edited by Charles G.
Herbermann, LL.D. Volume IX. New York: The United
States Catholic Historical Society.
The bulk of the present volume of Historical Records and
Studies is devoted to Dr. Herbermann's sketch of the Sulpicians
836 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
in the United States. He records the lives of Bishops Flaget,
David, Dubourg, Marechal, Dubois, and Father Richard of De-
troit, the only priest that ever sat in Congress, and gives a brief
account of the early days of St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore.
Father Howlett contributes a paper on Father Badin of Ken-
tucky, the proto-priest of the United States; Dr. Brann writes of
the divorce of Madame Patterson Bonaparte; and Mr. Meehan
relates some details of the career of Father RafTeiner, the pioneer
missionary pastor among the German Catholics of New York,
Brooklyn and Boston in the thirties. Some interesting letters con-
clude the volume Bishop Fenwick's on the destruction of the Ursu-
line Convent of Boston, August n, 1834; Archbishop Henni's on
conditions in Milwaukee in 1851, and the Jesuit Father Ratkay's
on the state of New Mexico in 1861.
CHINA. An Interpretation. By Rev. James W. Bashford. New
York: The Abingdon Press. $2.50 net.
This attempt to interpret the Chinese people to themselves
and to us is the fruit of twelve years residence in that country and
of reading five hundred volumes dealing with things Chinese. The
writer gives us a brief account of industrial, commercial, educa-
tional and political life in China; an estimate of its law, literature,
philosophy and religion, together with its history down to the days
of the Republic under Yuan Shih-kai.
Mr. Bashford writes enthusiastically of Chinese civilization
and culture, and his defence is " that it is not wise for foreigners
to enlarge upon the faults of neighboring nations." He is rightly
indignant at the attempted overlordship of China by Japan, and
prophesies Japan's ultimate defeat if she persist in her ambitious
ideas of conquest. The old fable of a peaceful China disappears
forever before the fact that in three thousand years of her history
she has averaged one war, internal or external, every fifteen
years.
The book shows no grasp whatever of the missionary activity
of the Catholic Church in China for centuries, though it mentions
the Catholic orphanages for girls as being first in the field. But
our Methodist missionary confidently declares that " the Catholic
Church is doomed, because it holds that by some magical power of
the keys or by some divine decree it is called to the leadership
of the Christian world." Prophecies of this type have been made
ever since the days of Luther.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 837
INFANT BAPTISM HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. By W. J.
McGlothlin, D.D. Nashville, Tenn. : Sunday-School Board,
Southern Baptist Convention. 50 cents.
The writer of the present volume is quite devoid of a sense of
humor. If he possessed that saving sense, he would see the utter
absurdity of tracing baptismal regeneration to a pagan origin,
blaming infant baptism for all persecution and intolerance, and bas-
ing the rejection of the Catholic concept of baptism on the plea
that it is unspiritual. His whole thesis is vitiated throughout by
the false assumptions of Luther that the Bible is the one rule of
faith, that a man is justified by faith alone, and that the efficacy
of the sacraments must be ascribed solely to the faith of the one
who receives them. The Scriptures afford not the slightest warrant
for these heresies. The Bible points beyond itself to a divine, in-
fallible teaching authority ; it teaches with St. James " that by
works a man is justified, and not by faith only " (James ii. 24) ; it
represents the sacraments as efficacious means for the forgiveness
of sins, and the imparting of the Holy Ghost with all His divine
gifts (Acts ii. 38; xxii. 26; Rom. vi. 3, 4; I Cor. vi. 9-11).
The necessity of baptism due to original sin and the Lord's
commandment (John iii. 5; Eph. ii. 3) makes infant baptism im-
perative, and the texts that speak of baptism as " a washing, a
laver of regeneration and the renovation of the Holy Ghost "
certainly suppose it (i Cor. vi. n; Titus iii. 5). The difficulty
brought forward by Dr. McGlothlin from the fact of faith and re-
pentance being required in adults has no weight whatever. The
Catholic Church demands and has always demanded both from her
adult converts, but no one believes, therefore, that she ought to
deny infant baptism.
The author's discussion of infant baptism in the first five cen-
turies is remarkable for its prejudice and its inaccuracy. If St.
Irenaeus in his Adversus Hcereses speaks of " Christ coming to
save all who are born anew to God through Him, infants, little ones,
boys, youths and aged persons," the author declares that the text
does not even allude to baptism; if Origen in his commentary
on Romans asserts explicitly that infant baptism -is an apostolic
tradition, he sets his witness aside as not infallible; if St. Cyprian
and the sixty-six Bishops of the Council of Carthage in 252 " all
judge that the mercy and grace of God should be denied to no
human being at any time from the moment of his birth," in answer
to those who would defer baptism until the child is eight days
838 NEW BOOKS [Sept.,
old, he declares this " an unevangelical innovation," although St.
Augustine said in the fourth century that " Cyprian made no new
decree, but maintained most firmly the faith of the Church."
The author falsely asserts St. Jerome does not treat the subject
of baptism, whereas he does in more than one passage, for example,
" Tell me why infants are baptized ? That their sins may be for-
given them in baptism" (Dialogue against the Pelagians, 3, 18).
Without the slightest warrant he makes St. Augustine the first ad-
vocate of infant baptism, and calls him " a word juggler of con-
fused opinions," because he was Catholic enough to teach that faith
was an infused virtue which the Holy Spirit imparted to an infant
in baptism.
The doctor's prophecies are on a par with his knowledge of
the past. He hopes for "a tremendous outburst of anti-pedobaptist
sentiment on the continent of Europe " after the war.
ESSAYS ON CATHOLIC LIFE. By Thomas O'Hagan. Balti-
more : John Murphy Co. 75 cents.
We are indebted to the fruitful pen of Dr. O'Hagan for a new
and very agreeable volume of essays dealing with varied aspects of
Catholic life and literature. The subjects, which range all the way
from " Religious Home Training," or "A Week in Rome " to
" The Function of Poetry," are treated in a popular and practical
manner which should appeal to a large circle of readers. The essay
" On the Catholic Element in English Poetry," while purposely
fragmentary, is full of valuable suggestions for the student. And
the pages treating of " Catholic Journalists and Journalism," with
its arraignment of the non-reading Catholic public and its plea for
well-equipped and decently-paid writers, is worth the consideration
of all who have at heart a worthy Catholic press in this country.
THE FALCONER OF GOD AND OTHER POEMS. By William
Rose Benet. New Haven: Yale University Press. $1.00.
Readers of contemporary poetry can scarcely be unfamiliar
with the name of William Rose Benet. But as Mr. Benet has been
exceedingly various both in the matter and the manner of his verse,
it is only when confronted by a complete volume such as the present
that one feels challenged to attempt any real appraisal of his work.
At that, the appraisal must remain tentative, for Mr. Benet seems
still a poet who has not wholly found himself. The title poem of
the present little book is picturesque after the fashion of the Pre-
1916.] NEW BOOKS 839
Raphaelites; but many a reader will feel that the poet has struck
a stronger and surer note in that most simple and modern poem,
"A Street Mother." Musically, there are echoes in his stanzas of
many songsters from Thomas Hood to Francis Thompson, with
hints of a more personal music yet to come. And through moods
and emotions of as great variety, one perceives a pervading wist-
fulness in Mr. Benet's work : a yearning after mountain-top ideals
and the brave adventures of earth with a vague and self -distrustful
mysticism.
DRAMATIC POEMS, SONGS AND SONNETS. By Donald Rob-
ertson. Chicago: Seymour, Daughaday & Co. $1.00.
Mr. Robertson has brought together here a graceful and varied
collection of " occasional " verses modest lyrics of very sincere
sentiment and worthy purpose. The volume is particularly notice-
able as an example of simple but really beautiful bookmaking.
PROBATION. By Maria Longworth Storer. St. Louis: B.
Herder. $i.oonet.
It is not often that a novel dealing with divorce can be un-
reservedly commended, but this one has achieved just such merit.
It will enlist the sympathy and hold the interest of its readers.
The characters are well drawn. Goritzski in his eyrie of
Greifenstein, with his true-hearted retainers seems like a bit of life
out of mediaeval days; but the most melancholy part of the tale
is the evidence of deterioration which meets one in some of the
best characters ; so difficult is it to keep oneself " unspotted from
the world." Constant living amid corruption seems to dull the edge
of our finer feelings, until we come to condone the evil which we hear
and see. Graf ton's calm acceptance of divorce, even while keeping
himself above its horrors, is to the real Catholic astounding" as well
as saddening. It is a surrender to the forces of sin, a victory of
wrong over the eternal forces of right. But the serene calm of La
Bardi in her inflexible fidelity to the law of God reminds one of
the peak of the Jungfrau, so beautifully described by the author.
LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. By Very Rev. James
O'Boyle. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.00 net.
Father O'Boyle has drawn an excellent portrait of Washington
the man, the patriot, the General, the President. He rightly con-
siders him as the greatest man America ever produced.
840 NEW BOOKS [Sept,,
In his thoughtful introduction, our author suggests that after
the Great War in Europe, the nations ought to federate on a plan
analogous to that adopted by America after the Revolution. It is
unquestionably true that the balance of power theory has utterly
failed to avert war, even when backed by the ablest diplomacy.
We trust that this notion of a world- wide federation may not prove
a mere day-dream.
THE SOCIETY OF THE SACRED HEART. By Janet Erskine
Stuart. London: The Convent of the Sacred Heart.
From its brief introduction to its last line this little book holds
the attention firmly. The perfection of its literary expression
would of itself make the reading a pleasure, independent of the
vital interest derived from the story of the Society's difficult be-
ginnings and foundation; the glimpses of the personalities of the
Blessed Foundress, her associates and successors ; the exposition of
its purposes, methods and distinguishing characteristics ; more than
all, what is told with such graceful dignity is freighted with treas-
ures of religious wisdom and philosophy, and imbued with an
essence of spirituality that pervades it like a fragrance. The book
is an enduring and beautiful memorial of its author, Reverend
Mother Stuart, who died just before its publication.
THAT OFFICE BOY. By Rev. Francis J. Finn, S J. New York :
Benziger Brothers. 85 cents.
Father Finn's new book will certainly come up to expectation
in the matter of stir and movement, while the hero exhibits both
grit and wit. A contest, in which he is very much concerned, fur-
nishes the chief interest; while in contrast the priestly instinct of
good Father Carney in the case of the poor little shoplifter, is quite
touching, justifying itself by the issue.
HTHE LITTLE AMBASSADORS, by Henriette E. Delamare
* (Philadelphia: H. L. Kilner & Co. 60 cents net), are devoted
to God's cause, and manifest their faith and zeal with a beautiful
simplicity. In following their fortunes, we see something of Eng-
land, France, Italy and the United States. Sometimes one is
tempted to think the children a trifle too good, but one of them,
Gilbert, dissipates that fancy by a marvelous faculty for doing mis-
chief and getting into trouble.
1916.] NEW BOOKS 841
r PHE FLOWER OF THE FIELD, by a Benedictine of Prince-
thorpe Priory (New York: Benziger Brothers. 60 cents), is
sent forth to spread the love of Mary in the hearts of youth. It
consists of short and simple readings on the events of our Blessed
Lady's life, to which are added many beautiful and suggestive
verses from The Lyra Liturgica, by Canon Oakley and The Car-
niina Mariana of Mr. Orby Shipley.
HP HE SODALITY OF OUR LADY, by Augustus Drive, S.J.
- (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons), relates the history of the
Sodality of Our Lady in every country of the world since its in-
stitution by Father Leunis, at the Roman College, in 1564.
PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.
The latest publications of the Catholic Mind (The America Press) are
The Training of the Priest, by Archbishop Hanna; Mr. Thomas Mulry, by
F. J. Lamb; Chiefly Among Women, by Margaret F. Sullivan; and Are
Catholics Intolerant? by Father Finlay.
The same Press sends us A Campaign of Calumny, a brochure which
sums up in nine chapters the facts regarding the New York Charities In-
vestigation. 10 cents.
The World Peace Foundation has issued two pamphlets on The New
Pan- Americanism. They give the addresses of President Wilson and Mr.
Bryan at the Financial Conference of 1915, Pan-American Action regarding
Mexico, and the addresses delivered at the Second Scientific Congress, etc.
Henry Ford of Detroit has just published four pamphlets against the evils
of cigarette smoking, entitled The Case Against the Little White Slaver.
Mr. W. L. Park, Vice-President of the Illinois Central Railroad, sends
us an excellent address delivered before the International Association of
Railway Special Agents on Railways as a Part of a System of National De-
fense.
Ernest W. Burgess, Chairman of the Committee on Programme and Surveys
of the Central Philanthropic Council of Columbus, Ohio, has published a
report on the use and regulation of Pool Rooms in the large cities of the
United States.
Pamphlet 77 of the New York State Department of Labor deals with
Industrial Accident Prevention. It shows in detail how accidents may be
prevented in modern industries, and suggests ways and means from the view-
point of both employer and employed.
TRecent Events.
The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD wishes to state that none
of the contributed articles or departments, signed or unsigned, of
the magazine, with the exception of <( With Our Readers" voices
the editorial opinion of the magazine. And no article or department
voices officially the opinion of the Paulist Community.
For nearly six months the Germans have
Progress of the War. been trying to take Verdun, but have failed
to attain their object in spite of the most
desperate endeavors. With stupendous losses they have in this long
struggle gained a little more than twice as much ground as the
British and French in their push on the Somme in the comparatively
short space of six weeks. Germany staked her all upon the capture
of the fortress, hoping to gain a moral victory, and at the same
time to exhaust France by inflicting losses which it was hoped she
could not make good. So far from succeeding, however, France
has been able not only to hold the fort, but within the last few
weeks to take the offensive and to recover a little of the ground
lost. She has been able, too, without drawing forces from Verdun,
to cooperate with the British on the Somme, as well as to hold all
the rest of her long line.
The object of the new offensive of France and Great Britain
is thought by experts to be rather the weakening of the German
forces by attacks causing heavy losses, than the desire to gain
ground or even to break through. The longer the enemy line is,
the thinner it is, and the thinner it becomes the more complete it is
expected will be the collapse. A premature shortening would make
the new line wherever formed even stronger than the present. This
is but turning the tables on the enemy, who have made the exhaus-
tion of France their main aim for the past six months. On their
side the Allies are confident that it is in their power to carry out
this process for a longer time and more effectually. A methodical
analysis has been made of all the facts. Whatever may be the
number of German reserves, and although it is not possible exactly
to ascertain their number, the Allies count upon having three times
as many. All Great Britain, France, Italy and Russia, even
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 843
Belgium and Serbia are growing more determined each day the
war goes on to make the enemy pay for the misery of which he
has been the author, to make him feel so keenly the consequences of
his own war creed that he will renounce it for all time. There
must, therefore, be the sternest waging of the war until this result
is obtained. Were there danger of exhaustion France is ready to
call upon the colored populations of her dependencies, and Great
Britain to make use temporarily of African and Asiatic labor.
Profiting by the experience of the past, the method of attack
is different from that adopted at Loos, Champagne and Neuve
Chapelle. Upon the enemy's lines, which have been fortified by
every possible device, the new heavy guns launch a terrific bom-
bardment, and they have proved their ability to break down in a
few hours defences which have taken two years to construct. With
comparatively slight losses. the captured ground is consolidated by the
attacking forces, and the guns are brought up to repeat the process.
In this way the French and British have gone through two of the
German lines of defence, and have made a breach in the third. As
soon as a first trench is taken the reserves are at hand to secure the
position, thus avoiding the fatal mistakes made on former occasions.
The new army has proved itself in every respect equal to the old,
although this consisted of men trained for many years. There
is no such thing as a straggler. This forms another disappointment
for the enemy, who for months past have been throwing ridicule
upon Kitchener's men, while it removes the only ground of .anxiety
felt by the British.
The stupendous successes of Russia are too many to chronicle.
Every effort of the Germans to recover Lutsk has been defeated.
Kovel, indeed, still holds out, but at the time these lines are written
Lemberg is in danger of falling. Hindenburg has been placed in
supreme command over both the Austrian and German armies, and
an advance upon Petrograd has been talked about, but so far as the
Austrian armies are concerned retreats have formed their main
operations, with the loss of an enormous number of prisoners.
The most surprising military event of the past month has been
the capture of Goritzia by the Italians, and their advance over the
Isonzo into Austrian territory, with the possibility of the capture
of Trieste, and even of a march towards Vienna. It is an agreeable
surprise even to the friends of Italy, some of whom had doubts
as to her military ability. Observers on the spot, however, declare
that nothing can surpass the courage and devotion shown by the
844 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
Italian soldier during the war. The Austrians who threatened the
Venetian plain through the Trentino, have been thrust back almost
to their old lines.
In Armenia the Russians, under the Grand Duke Nicholas,
have made more headway, the important town of Erzingan having
been taken. On the other hand, the Turks have been successful
farther south, having succeeded in driving back the Russian force
that threatened Mesopotamia through Persia. The British have
made no progress in the region of Kut-el-Amara, although in the
course of their operations they have conquered and still retain one
province of the Turkish Empire and the half of another.
What the Turks call a reconnoitering expedition against Egypt
of some fourteen thousand men has been repulsed with great ease.
In fact it had far less success than the attempt made last year,
having been driven back many miles before it reached the Suez
Canal. That it should have been made at all is, it must be con-
fessed, somewhat of a surprise. The only place at which the com-
bined Allies' operating against the Central Powers are still merely
in prospect is the Balkan front. At Saloniki there are five or six
hundred thousand troops, Serbians, British and French, and at
Avlona, one hundred thousand Italians. They are biding their
time waiting until the necessities of the Germans lead to a still
further weakening of their forces. That time seems now to be
very near.
Little by little the ring round the Germans in East Africa
formed by Belgian, British and Portuguese troops, is being drawn
closer and closer. It seems probable that in a very short time this,
the last of the German colonies, will fall into the hands of the Allies.
During the first two years of the war the Allies have been
fighting to gain time to make those preparations in the way of
munitions and armaments, in which for forty years the Germans
have been occupied. There have been occasions in which Great
Britain did not have one week's supply of shells, and would have
been powerless to resist an onslaught in force had such been made.
Now all is changed. Something like three millions of workers in
four thousand factories are turning out ample supplies, and an army
of between three and four millions has been drilled and equipped.
The initiative is now in the hands of the Allies, and the war thus
passes into its second phase. Acting in concert on all fronts, they
have put the enemy on the defensive, and are more than his equal
in numbers and equipment, and are looking to a still further develop-
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 845
ment. Pressed on all sides, Germany can no longer rush troops
by means of her interior lines from one front to another, for all
fronts are now subjected to simultaneous attacks, and it is impos-
sible now for the Central Powers to guess at what point the next
blow will fall. It is, therefore, with great confidence that the
Allies have entered upon the third year of the war.
At the end of two years, with a very few
Belgium. exceptions, which can easily be accounted
for, the Belgian nation is maintaining the
same firm and unbending attitude towards her invaders as she
manifested at the beginning. Her people are at heart still un-
conquered and unconquerable. Just as half a century of German
rule made Alsace and Lorraine no more German than they were
before, so two years of German tyranny, with vexations of
every kind, have left the Belgians unsubdued in spirit. They
despise the Germans, will not work for them, and will suffer
any penalty rather than bow to the foreign rule. The army,
although small in numbers, is well equipped and reorganized. It
has never left Belgian soil, and at its head, or rather within its
ranks, is King Albert. The Queen, too, is there, and, often under
fire, is constant in her attendance upon the sick and wounded. A
great number of Belgians have been able to elude German vigilance,
and have joined the ranks of the army. Belgian workmen in
Belgian munition factories, established both in France and England,
have been able to give their help in the supply of armaments. The
army, indeed, is not large in number, but it symbolizes, as does that
of Serbia, the continuing existence and independence of Belgium.
The Belgian Government, from its residence at Havre, is idefati-
gable in providing everything that forethought and industry can
provide. And although defeated and overwhelmed by numbers
in Europe, it has in East Africa the consolation of being able to
take a successful part in driving out Germany from its last colony.
The Belgian Independence Day was celebrated in London by
a Solemn Te Deum sung in^ Westminster Cathedral in the presence
of Cardinal Bourne and a large number of English and Belgian
clergy. An oration was delivered by a Dominican who had been
associated with Cardinal Mercier in proclaiming the rights of con-
science and patriotism of the Belgian people against the invasion of
the Germans. In the course of his sermon he declared that in cele-
brating the festival day, they were celebrating a moral victory, to be
846 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
followed, as all Belgians were confident, by the celebration of a
military victory, by means of which all exiles would be restored to
their country, when the nation would begin a new era purified by its
trials. At the secular celebration of the day in the Albert Hall,
Mr. Asquith, in the speech made by him, sent the following mes-
sage to the Belgian King, his army and his people : " Tell your com-
patriots that their example has inspired and stimulated the Allied
nations and armies. Tell them that we are watching their suffering
with sympathy, and their patience and courage with heartfelt ad-
miration. Tell them, finally, that when the hour of deliverance
comes, and come it will before long, it will be to us here in Great
Britain a proud and ennobling memory that we have had our
share in restoring to them the freedom and independence to which
no nation in the history of the world has ever shown a more
indisputable title."
The sympathy felt for Belgium by neutral countries is well
exemplified by the manifesto of Spanish Catholics, sent to a repre-
sentative of the Belgian clergy to be deposited in due time in the
Archives of the University of Louvain. This manifesto is signed
by five hundred persons of distinction in clerical, literary and uni-
versity circles, canons of cathedrals, members of religious orders,
Benedictines, Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Senators and
Deputies, Diplomatists, Grandees, such as the Duke of Alba, news-
paper editors and Members of the Spanish Academies. It declares
it to be a part of the Christian teaching that belligerents are subject
to the moral law, and are obliged to confine within its limits all
their efforts to break down resistance. The manifesto pro-
ceeds to give an enumeration of the well-known outrages that
have taken place, and declares that these outrages have called forth
the reprobation of every honorable conscience, and in a special
degree of the Catholic conscience. It accords its support to the
proposal made by the Belgian bishops to those of Germany, that
the facts should be inquired into by an international commission a
proposal to which no answer has been returned, although it was
made nearly a year ago. It recalls the Pope's condemnation of the
violation of Belgian neutrality made in his consistorial address on
January 22, 1915, "that nobody may commit an injustice from
any motive whatever," adding that he " reprobated any injustice
by whomsoever committed." This general expression of His Holi-
ness, the Cardinal Secretary declared to the Belgian Minister, had
reference to the German invasion of Belgium.
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 847
The manifesto ends by declaring that the coercion of Belgium
was not only an invasion of her rights, but a challenge to her plain
duty. " This circumstance lends a very special merit to the con-
duct of Belgium in our eyes. Inspired by the highest conception
of Christian chivalry as reflected in our own national tradition, we
unanimously recognize and admire the glorious 'heroism of the little
nation which did not hesitate to face the attack of greatly superior
forces with all its incalculable consequences rather than consent to
sacrifice national honor. We are filled with pride at the thought
that if the moral treasure of humanity is to-day the richer by so
great an example of loyalty to the call of duty, the thanks of the
world will always be due for this to a Catholic nation. As Spanish
Catholics we express our most earnest wish that whatever may be
the military result of this war, Belgium may obtain full reparation
for her present misfortunes and the complete reparation of her
national independence."
Over the internal condition of Russia, the
Russia. problems of its domestic Government, an
almost impenetrable veil is drawn. Mere
statements without any explanation are made from time to
time of changes which have been made in the personnel whether
civil or military. The latest of these is the announcement
that General Kuropatkin, who was in command immediately in
front of von Hindenburg, and who would have been the defender
of Petrograd in case of a possible drive on the capital by the
Germans, has been made Governor of Turkestan. The name of
his successor has not been disclosed. A much more important
change has been the resignation of M. Sazonoff, who has been in
charge of the Foreign Office for nearly six years, and to whom
have been intrusted the momentous negotiations antecedent to the
war and during its course. The reason given was the one usual
in diplomatic circles, in which truth too often is the thing least often
told a failure of health. Rumors were circulated that it was due
to his attachment to the British Alliance, and that his supersession
indicated a disposition on the part of the Tsar to listen to peace
proposals. This, however, was merely one of the inventions which
have proceeded from the quarter in which peace is most desired,
and has been set at rest by the declaration of his successor, M.
Sturmer, who is now both Prime Minister and Foreign Secre-
tary, that the line of conduct of the last two years towards Russia's
RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
allies will in no way be varied. To England's measures towards
Germany the new Foreign Minister declares Russia will give full
support, and every effort will be made to strengthen the bonds
which bind her to France, Great Britain and Italy. In fact, the
true explanation of M. Sazonoff's resignation seems to be that he
was opposed to making to Rumania the cession of Bessarabia, which
that country has made a condition of her joining the Entente Allies,
a cession to which M. Sturmer is not opposed, and which as a
consequence may lead that exceedingly prudent and self-seeking
State to range herself upon what now appears to be the winning
side.
Whatever appearance of wavering there may be in the civil
government of Russia, there is none in the onward march of her
armies. At points indeed in the long line which stretches from
Riga to the Bukowina, these armies remain stationary, but even in
front of von Hindenburg an advance of no inconsiderable extent
has been made. While Kovel still remains in German hands,
Lemberg is thought to be on the point of falling, Stanislau, one of
its southern gateways, having been evacuated by the Austrians. If
Lemberg falls Kovel must follow at least such is the opinion of
experts, and then a general retirement of the Central forces will
be necessary.
To appreciate these achievements of the Russian army, past
events should be recalled to mind. For this war, like the rest of
the Allies, she was unprepared. By May of last year she had run
through all her resources. The unlooked-for weakness of Austria,
however, had enabled Russia to achieve such surprising victories
over Germany's ally that she was led to march into the enemy's
country without adequate support or armaments. Deprived of
everything that an army needs, she was unable to offer any re-
sistance to the great Galician drive. The whole line was driven
far back into Russia, but even in defeat the Russian troops mani-
fested a heroism greater by far than any success would have dis-
closed. Morale and endurance are natural in success, but these
qualities when shown in defeat form what is called the acid test
of an army's worth. This test they stood triumphantly. For six
months, day in and day out, they fought disheartening battles,
always retiring and suffering from almost every material want.
At the end of that period of defeat these armies, unconquered and
unbroken, brought the German forces to a standstill. So far as
Russia was concerned the Germans believed or at least said that
I 9 i6.] RECENT EVENTS 849
they had won the war. In this, however, they were mistaken. All
that the events of these six months had succeeded in doing was
to bring home to Russia and the Russian people the vital fact that
the very life of the nation is at stake, and the consequent necessity
of shrinking from no sacrifice to preserve that life. The Tsar set
to work to reorganize the army from one end of its long line to
another. Possessing a population twice as large as that of Germany,
there was no lack of men. To drill, to discipline these men the
Allies were called upon to furnish officers, while Japan contributed
to a large degree the supply of armament. The Russian generals
who by their skill had withdrawn the armies in face of the German
onslaught, had assimilated the new lessons which their enemy had
taught them, the results of which are now visible. In addition
to the Grand Duke Nicholas, it seems that Russia has evolved
another veritable military genius General Brusiloff, now in chief
command of the Russian armies on the Western front. He is
not a newcomer, for it was his army who in the first months of
the war swept into Galicia and made possible the taking of Lem-
berg within thirty days after the declaration of hostilities. It
is to his brilliant strategy that Russia's unlooked-for successes are
due.
While recording the successes which have been attendant
upon Russian arms, the losses involved in these successes must not
be left unmentioned. In the campaign still going on the casualties
are said, by the enemy, to have amounted to seven hundred and
fifty thousand men killed and wounded. The inroad made by
Germany last year forced millions to seek refuge in the interior of
Russia, after the lands which they had left had been devastated by
fire and sword. The result, however, has been only to render
Russia more determined to retrieve the situation.
In a far distant quarter of the world, Russia, through the agency
of M. Sazonoff, has been even more successful in checking the de-
signs of her foe. A treaty has been made with Japan her whilom
enemy and now ally by which the two Empires engage respec-
tively not to be parties to any political arrangements directed against
each other. In the event of the territorial rights or the special
interests in the Far East of one of the contracting parties recognized
by the other contracting party being threatened, Japan and Russia
will take counsel of each other as to the measures to be taken in
view of the support or the help to be given, in order to safeguard
and defend those rights and interests. It is a purely defensive agree-
VOL. cm. 54
850 RECENT EVENTS [Sept.,
ment, and is only a development of two previous agreements be-
tween Russia and Japan made subsequently to the Treaty of Ports-
mouth in 1905. The chief effect of the present agreement will be
to prevent the efforts made by Germany on various occasions to
sow dissension between Japan and Russia in order to facilitate
her own plans of the peaceful penetration of China. By a subse-
quent agreement with Great Britain, the respective interests of the
two Powers in Persia have been defined, and provision made to
exclude a like German penetration of that country.
Almost the whole of the old world seems
China. paralyzed by the Great War, to such a de-
gree that scarcely anything worth recording
has taken place. The one exception is China, which is generally
looked upon as the most immovable and unprogressive of nations.
Yuan Shih-kai, the first President of the Chinese Republic, died in
the first week of June. Elected on October 6, 1913, as the one
strong man of China to be the guardian of the new Constitution, he
within a short period began to set at naught its provisions. First
of all he abolished the opposition by depriving them of their seats
in Parliament, then he proceeded to suspend Parliament itself, and
to substitute an administrative Council until such time as he should
see fit to revive the Parliament. The members of the Cabinet were
reduced to the level of mere departmental chiefs. By abolishing
the military governors, the control of the army was placed in his
hands, and measures were taken to effect the same purpose. After
these preparatory steps in the late summer of 1915, a movement
began to revive the monarchy, and the nominated State Council
which had taken the place of the elective Parliament passed a bill
providing for the constitution of a special body to pronounce upon
the question; before the end of the year most of the provinces
had voted for a Monarchy with Yuan Shih-kai as Emperor. After
some hesitation, on account of the oath which he had taken to be
a faithful guardian of republican institutions, Yuan announced that
he felt compelled to bow to the will of the people. The date of his
coronation was fixed for the ninth of February of this year. But
in a way in which he did not himself expect, the would-be Emperor
was forced to bow to the will of the people. Province after
province rose in revolt at the proposed coronation. Yuan was
forced to abandon his project, although he still retrained in office.
1916.] RECENT EVENTS 851
The armed opposition was not, however, to be conciliated, and the
peace of the Republic has been maintained only by what must be
looked upon as the timely death of Yuan. It is a sad instance of
the impotence of mere numbers, that among China's four hundred
millions there cannot be found a single statesman capable of com-
manding the support of the whole country.
The vacant Presidency devolved automatically upon the Vice-
President, General Li- Yuan-hung. Little confidence, however, is
felt in his ability to control the situation, the more so as he is sur-
rounded by the faction that was most instrumental in aiding and
abetting the late President in his attempts to overthrow the Con-
stitution. There were in the new President's Cabinet so many mem-
bers of a monarchical tendency that the Commander-in-Chief of
the Navy sent an ultimatum to the President, to the effect that the.
Navy would declare its independence unless a new Cabinet were
formed, from which all holding such views would be excluded.
Moreover, he demanded that the old Parliament should be reassem-
bled and the provisional Constitution of the first year of the
Republic reconstituted. To these demands Li- Yuan-hung sufb-
mitted. A new Cabinet has been formed, containing representatives
of all parties; mandates have been issued to convene the Parlia-
ment which was arbitrarily dissolved in 1913, to restore the validity
of the provisional Constitution, and to cancel all the arrangements
made by Yuan Shih-kai. China is now waiting for the meeting
of this assembly, upon which its fate depends, not indeed with any
great degree of confidence, for several provinces are under the
domination of the military. In fact, the naval commander to whom
is due the steps that have been taken, has openly declared that the
concessions are only a blind, as the President and the Premier are
under the domination of the monarchists and militarists.
With Our Readers.
MOST of the popular knowledge about the saintly Father Damien
and the leper colony at Molokai is derived from the pages of
Robert Louis Stevenson. Molokai has undergone many changes
since Stevenson wrote of its " horror of moral beauty ; " and Father
Damien is a far greater man than one would gain from Stevenson's
famous philippic against Dr. Hyde. We are grateful to Scribner's
Magazine, and to Katharine Fullerton Gerould, for an article in the
July, 1916, issue, entitled Kalaupapa: the Leper Settlement on
Molokai. \
Mrs. Gerould tells us. that to-day " the moral beauty is without
horror, and the 'gorgons and chimseras dire' do not bulk big in the
visitor's vision." A great work, physically, socially, morally has been
achieved there. The technique of leper segregation; of examining
suspected cases ; of safeguarding the infants is " abundantly simple
and complete." The expenses for the care of the lepers, the study
of disease, etc., are borne entirely by the Territorial Government of
Hawaii ; the United States Government contributes nothing. And the
Territorial Government has evidently conducted its delicate and un-
pleasant task with diligence, sympathy and efficiency. Everything that
can be done is done for the afflicted ones. As a consequence life is
comparatively normal ; its tragedy has not confounded them ; they
have accepted and, in turn, conquered it. " Once on the promontory
of Molokai," the author writes, " all panic, fear or disgust drops
utterly away." " On no occasion did we have to shake hands with
the lepers; a smile, a nod, or an 'aloha' were all that was expected
of us. White magic seems to be at work in Kalaupapa."
* * * *
TTISTORY has seconded Stevenson's generosity in crediting Father
J- JL Damien with every future improvement in the leper colony and
its supervision. " If ever any man brought reforms, and died to
bring them, it was he. There is not a clean cup or towel in the
Bishop Home but dirty Damien washed it."
The wonderful improvements are due in great measure to the
Catholic Brothers and Sisters, to Brother Dutton at the Baldwin
Home, to Mother Maryanne at the Bishop Home. For example,
the Federal leprosarium was finished seven or eight years ago, but
only for some six weeks of that time has it harbored patients. Save
for some lone caretakers, and a Federal physician without a patient,
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 853
the place is unused. " The place is as modern as an Eastern hos-
pital and as desolate as the moated grange." The lepers are free to
take or not to take medical treatment. None of them go to the
federal leprosarium. They seek the Catholic homes, much in the same
way as the author turned " not without relief from this grave of
humanitarian hopes to the Baldwin Home and Brother Button."
Catholic sacrifice and Catholic tradition have made the atmosphere
of this island. " To give pain to one of the unfortunates would be
high treason to the spirit of the place. Their manners never fail
You walk through Kalawao and Kalaupapa as you might walk
through any Hawaiian village; and if there is embarrassment, it is
all on your side. No one intrudes himself on your path: no one
shrinks from your sight."
* * * *
IT is to the shame of our Government that leprosy is ground for
absolute divorce in Hawaii. God alone knows into what confusion
Molokai would be thrown if some of our radical theorists had their
way. " Let loose in Kalaupapa a shrill eugenist from the East, and
you would soon have a Kanaka hell. It is cause for thanking God
that the settlement is managed by men who can make science and
religion walk hand in hand. This, too, was a question that pre-
occupied the ascetic Damien, to whom marriage was a sacrament, and
fornication of the devil: it was Damien who first pleaded that hus-
bands and wives should not be separated against their will."
Brother Button who had a long experience in our own Civil
War, has followed faithfully in the footsteps of Bamien. " He at
least had time, while he served Bamien, to worship the man, for
he is unwilling, I believe, even to stray from Kalawao to be out of
sight, as it were, of Bamien's very footsteps. Happily Bamien is
like to be the last (as he was, immortally, the first) of Molokai's
martyrs. Of saints uncanonized it has held many, and will yet hold
more."
* * * *
AT Kalaupapa is the Bishop Home for women and girls, under
the charge of Mother Maryanne. It corresponds with the Bald-
win Home for men and boys at Kalawao.
It was of Mother Maryanne that Stevenson wrote:
To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the devastated face,
The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod,
A fool were tempted to deny his God.
He sees, he shrinks. But if he gaze again,
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!
He marks the sisters on the mournful shores ;
And even a fool is silent and adores.
854 WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
And Mrs. Gerould writes as follows of the same heroine:
" Mother Maryanne, in her little parlor, was the blood-kin of all
superiors I have ever known : the same soft yellowed skin, with some-
thing both tender and sexless in the features ; the same hint of latent
authority in the quiet manner; the same gentle aristocratic gayety;
the same tacit endeavor to make human pity coterminous with God's.
Like other superiors I have known, from childhood up, she seemed an
old, old woman who had seen many things. It was only when one
stopped to think of the precise nature of those things, which, in thirty
years on Molokai, Mother Maryanne has seen, that the breath failed
for an instant. The parlor was half filled with garments ready to
be given out to lepers, and if one but glance through the window,
one saw the pitiful figures on the cottage porches across the com-
pound. Yet those eyes of hers might have been looking out on a
Gothic cloister this half century."
As the author walked away across the compound, she saw a
picture symbolic of the work and spirit of these Catholic heroines
of Molokai. " A sister pink-and-white and blooming waved her
free hand at us from the porch. The other hand held the bandaged
stump of a leper."
A DMIRERS of Stevenson, and they are generally enthusiasts in
<t\ their admiration, will be pained to learn, if they knew it not
before, that the famous defence of Father Damien by their hero
is not altogether a defence. " Stevenson's 'Open Letter' is one of
the finest polemics we have," says Mrs. Gerould. " But it is a pity
that Stevenson's hero should have been also his victim." A close
reading of Stevenson's famous letter will show that Stevenson really
believed, or at least seriously entertained, the truth of the more serious
charges made against Father Damien by Dr. Hyde; and the real
point of his angry reply by which he stigmatized the notorious bigot,
is that Hyde should have been big enough not to make capital out
of the frailties of the priest, but to look to his larger and greater
work for humanity. Stevenson himself had listened to the vile gossip
of irresponsible ones about Damien. Bigotry gave him a ready ear
and a credulous mind. His novels prove how incapable he was of
understanding things Catholic, and, indeed, how often he went out
of his way to ridicule and even besmirch Catholic faith and Catholic
practice. His early training accounts for much. But the fact re-
mains that Stevenson was really incapable of measuring rightly, much
less of appreciating, matters Catholic. " Catholicism was never dear
to him; whenever he comes face to face with Rome, whether it is
Francois Villon writing the Ballade pour sa Mere or the Franciscan
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 855
Sisters disembarking at Kalaupapa, his admiration halts, his mouth
is wry. He thinks them saintly poor-creatures; he boggles over the
'pass-book kept with heaven.' To him who does not love, it is seldom
given wholly to see."
WHATEVER defence may be advanced for Stevenson the dra-
matic picture of how his indignation burst forth on first reading
the letter to Mr. Gage, the theory of rhetorical supposition in his letter
to Dr. Hyde, the " I will suppose, and God forgive me for supposing
it " of that letter, all these defences fall to the ground because of the
fact that one month before Dr. Hyde wrote his letter, and some
eight months before Stevenson knew of it, the latter had written to
Mr. Sidney Colvin almost the very same charges against Father
Damien as those made by Dr. Hyde. This letter *is dated June, 1889.
Stevenson then wrote: " Of old Damien, whose weaknesses and worse
perhaps I heard fully, I think only the more. It was a European
peasant: dirty, bigoted, untruthful, unwise, tricky, but superb with
generosity, residual candor and fundamental good-humor: convince
him he had done wrong (it might take hours of insult) and he would
undo what he had done and like his corrector better. A man, with
all the grime and paltriness of mankind, but a saint and hero all the
more for that."
The redeeming trait in Stevenson's character is that even when
on insufficient evidence he believed the charges, he was still generous
enough to regard Damien as a saint and a hero; while Hyde's words
were " base beyond parallel."
BUT it is of the greatest importance to know that the charges en-
tertained by both men are absolutely without foundation, and have
been proved to be untrue. It is of the greatest importance to know
that Father Damien was not only not guilty of the charges, but that
the halo of moral glory rests by every claim of justice and truth
upon his brow. Long since, by the official report of Mr. Reynolds,
Damien has been rehabilitated before the world. His defence may
be read in Arthur Johnstone's book, Recollections of Robert Louis
Stevenson in the Pacific, in the chapter entitled " Hurling of the
Damien Letter."
" Stevenson," says . Mrs. Gerould, with true Catholic insight,
" makes us all feel with him, for the moment, that even if the scandal
is true it does not matter; but from the moment that the scandal is
not true it does matter immensely. There is all the difference in
the world between a good man and a saint : between excusable human
856 WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
frailty and superhuman self -control. The leashes are off, the bars
are down then for our enthusiasm ; and Damien's very grave, hushed
and shaded and small, beside his Kalawao church, becomes a different
thing."
THE following reply has been sent to us by the author of A Serious
Problem (THE CATHOLIC WORLD, May, 1915) to the letter of
protest against that article, signed by a number of teachers, which was
published in our August issue:
EDITOR THE CATHOLIC WORLD:
In THE CATHOLIC WORLD for May, 1915, there appeared an article, entitled
A Serious Problem. Previous to the publication of this paper, I had made a
close study of conditions in the public High Schools of New York City. Care-
ful observation and reflection showed that certain outstanding features were of
such a nature as to warrant bringing them to the notice of Catholics in general,
and of Catholic parents in particular.
Summarized these were the facts : The records of the secondary schools
show that the Catholic boy does not seem to be grasping the opportunities
for education which the city offers. Why were not our Catholic boys in
greater numbers taking advantage of the means for advancement at their
disposal? That was the crux of the whole matter. To emphasize the fact
that they were not doing so, I showed that the Jewish boys were seizing
these opportunities to the fullest extent. In one school, which throughout
the paper, was given as a type of all the city High Schools, over ninety per
cent of the pupils are Jewish. The second phase of the question was the
tendency of the type of boy, now so eager to obtain a higher education, to
lay aside the restraining influences of his religion and shape his life along
purely materialistic lines. To rouse race prejudice or discrimination was not
my purpose. The paper was written in the attempt to have Catholics see the
necessity of giving their sons the fullest opportunities to lead lives of widest
influence.
After the lapse of a whole year, the matter has been taken up by a group of
teachers in the school cited in A Serious Problem as typical of the other schools.
In a letter published in last month's issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, they re-
view some phases of the question taken up in A Serious Problem. They dis-
agree with the writer particularly on three points : First, because he points
out the predominance of Jewish boys in the High Schools'; secondly, because
he states that these boys are showing tendencies of action decidely materialistic;
and, thirdly, because he charges that many teachers do not scruple to dis-
seminate false doctrines.
It is to be regretted, for many reasons, that any unpleasantries have been
caused, or opportunity for controversy given, by the publication of A Serious
Problem. I never desired such, and I take up the matter again only in the
attempt to correct any erroneous conceptions which may have arisen. At the
outset I would emphasize this : I hold no antipathy toward the Jewish boy,
nor do I see in him a " future menace." But I do see an imminent danger
in the boy of Jewish parents who substitutes for his religious morals the
materialistic principles of Socialism, and makes his life a mere economic
programme.
i. In protesting against the ideals expressed in A Serious Problem, the
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 857
signers of the letter feel that I gave a false impression when I showed that
the Jewish boys predominate in numbers in the High Schools; that I think
so many should not be there. I did not mean to imply that the Jewish boys
should not be there, or if there, in so great a proportion. My purpose was
to point out the very evident lesson which these figures teach: If so many
Jewish boys, even in the face of the most discouraging obstacles, can suc-
cessfully make the effort to obtain a higher education, why cannot a larger
percentage of Catholic boys make similar attempts? This is not "elevating
one sect by calumniating the other." Rather, it is the holding up of one as
an example to the other; to make clear the zeal and industry and ambition
of one for the emulation of the other. The desire of the Jewish parent to
give his child an education and the zeal of the child to reach out and obtain
it, is a most praiseworthy trait, and one that has always been a source of in-
spiration to everyone who knows the facts.
The serious problem does not lie here. It does not lie in the Jewish boy
per se. I have met many Jewish boys, and I know them to be as moral and
as manly as could be desired. I find no fault with the Jewish boy who
proudly keeps his name, and lives true to the teaching of his religion, re-
maining Jew in more than race. But I do, and I cannot emphasize the point
too strongly, see a menace in the type of Jewish boy who, when worked
upon by certain disturbers who see no good in any present form of religion,
state or social equation, assumes an antagonistic position towards religion,
government and society. As a result of these influences which are strongly
at work, he is left high and dry with no higher character determinants than
mere materialistic principles. What can ethics mean to him when he ac-
knowledges no God? What can patriotism mean to him when he recognizes
no country but subscribes to the illusory principles of internationalism? What
can social obligations mean to him when he believes that society is radically
wrong in its relations towards rich and poor?
2. This group of teachers protest when I stated that the American
born youth of Jewish parents is most susceptible to these influences. But can
they logically deny the fact? The rabbi does not deny it in the face of
so many desertions from the synagogue. The thoughtful Jewish parent does
not deny it as he sees his son giving up the practices of his ancestors'
faith. But it is very hard to make others see this fact, when they them-
selves have made secondary their Jewish faith for the flamboyant principles
of Socialism and other equally radical programmes.
That these unmoral forces are at work in our schools cannot truthfully
be denied. And when this charge is made that in great numbers the Jewish
pupils " recognize no code of morals, and are actuated by no motives higher
than those originating from fear of detection and consequent loss in money,"
it simply means that the results of the spread of these materialistic principles
are becoming evident. How could it be otherwise when a number of signers
themselves hold that wrong-doing is the outcome of economic causes ; when
they themselves hold that a man should no more be blamed for wrong-doing
than he should be punished for having pneumonia or typhoid? What code
of morals higher than those based on materialistic conceptions can be evolved
from such doctrines?
A conference to discuss what morals should be taught the pupils was held
recently in the school mentioned in A Serious Problem. A minister of the
" advanced type " recommended Emerson as a guide ; a doctor from the Ethical
Culture School urged the Criminal Code as a moral textbook, and a teacher
of Socialistic standing held that wrong-doing among the boys was of no great
858 WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
consequence. These typify the forces that are at work in the schools shaping
the pupils' characters. When a boy has no negativating forces in his life to
counteract these influences, he must and does fall to the level of a mere
material being. In the eyes of some this is no calamity. With such people
discussion is futile. But because the ostrich would not see, it does not follow
that the danger does not exist.
3. In A Serious Problem this statement was made : " Is it not foolish
to try to combat Socialism and other attendant evils when we sit back and
allow the positions which carry the greatest influence for good or evil to be
filled by men who do not scruple at the dissemination of false doctrines ? " By
these words I intended to state that there were a number of teachers who
do use the opportunity their positions give them to influence, in various ways,
their pupils toward Socialism and other like doctrines. The signers meet the
issue and state : " We repudiate the charge that our colleagues do not scruple at
the dissemination of false doctrines, and denounce it as a calumny." I de-
clare again, and in the strongest words at my command, that this charge is
true. It is true that a number of teachers in our High Schools do use every
opportunity to advocate Socialism and other radical doctrines in the class-room
and out of the class-room. It is a fact among the students that the way to
win favor with some of these teachers is by showing zeal for Socialistic
tenets both in written and oral compositions. It is a fact that a number of
these men constantly give topics for class-room discussions which stress the
inequalities existing between the social classes, and by this means sow the
seeds of Socialism. It is a fact that a number of these men are Socialists
themselves, have become known as Socialists throughout the schools, and use
their influence to win others to their way of thinking. It is a fact that the
books given by them for outside reading, in a great number of instances, are
by authors who are Socialists or extreme radicals.
It is the duty of a teacher to make the pupils better citizens to inculcate
patriotic ideals, to implant in their scholars love of country. How is it pos-
sible for these men, some of whom have made attempts to hold public office
as Socialists and who contribute money and articles to the support of Socialist
papers, how is it impossible for these men, subscribing as they do only to
internationalism, and other unpatriotic fundamentals of Socialism, to teach
patriotism? How can these men, who feel that nationalism is essentially wrong,
teach love of country? How can such men, who think that our government
is conducted solely for the rich, give the proper prospective to thousands of
immigrant Russian boys and immature children of foreign parents? There
is only one answer. They cannot, and, moreover, they do not.
This combination of circumstances, the tendency of many of the boys of
the High Schools to take up materialistic doctrines and the willingness of a
number of teachers to spread these principles, constitutes a serious problem.
In the light that our Catholic boys do not seem to be equipping them-
selves for lives of the widest influence, it takes on even more serious lines.
In later years they will find themselves handicapped when called upon to com-
bat those forces which are now growing in power. If we do not now make
some effort to cope with these influences in the very place where they are
recruiting their strength, we are bequeathing a troublesome heritage to hands
unprepared and unready.
To rouse Catholics to the need of sending their boys to High School, and,
secondly, to point out the fact that pernicious influences were at work there,
was the purpose of A Serious Problem. It was not intended to be anti-Jewish.
It was intended to be anti-Socialist. It is to be regretted if the former im-
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 859
pression was given, as the writer has no quarrel with the Jew. Rather
would he have him join forces against the common foe that is aiming to
undermine the principles upon which rests our society religious and political.
Sincerely yours,
JOSEPH V. McKEE.
"TYETRAYAL" is none too strong a term to use in describing the
iJ latest action of the English Government with regard to the
settlement of the Irish Question. The Premier, Mr. Asquith, upon his
return to England from a visit to Ireland after the uprising in Dublin,
declared that the machinery of government in Ireland had broken
down. It was the intention of the Government, he announced, to put
the Home Rule Act into operation at once. Mr. Lloyd George was
appointed the representative of the Cabinet in this matter. His col-
leagues of the Cabinet were " unanimously " with him. The proposals
he submitted were the proposals of the Cabinet. As Mr. Redmond
declared in the House, " the proposals were in no sense our (the
Nationalist Party) proposals." The whole intent of the procedure,
and the only supposition that can give it a seasonable meaning, was
that if the Nationalists and Unionists could be led to accept these
proposals, they would at once be introduced as a Bill by the Govern-
ment from which they had emanated, and by which they had been
definitely framed. They were not pleasing to the people of Ireland.
" These proposals," declared Mr. Redmond, " entailed very great sacri-
fices on the part of our supporters, and they were unpopular every-
where in Ireland."
THE Government framed the proposals and submitted them to the
Irish party leaders, Redmond and Carson, asking them to go to
Ireland and persuade their constituents to accept them, and stating that
if both parties did accept, the proposals would immediately be made
into law. Led by Sir Edward Carson the Ulster Unionists agreed to
these proposals of the Government. The Ulster Nationalists, led by
Mr. Devlin, and only after a bitter struggle, also agreed to accept.
The majority of the Nationalists in the other provinces also agreed to
accept.
* * * *
''PHIS widespread agreement was not reached without great labor
A and sacrifices upon the part of both people and political leaders. A
great meeting at Derry, attended by over one hundred priests, pro-
tested strenuously against the proposals; against the partition of
Ireland ; and the Bishop of Derry charged those to whom the political
welfare of Ireland had been committed by the people with selling the
86o WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
people of Ireland into slavery. The Irish Rosary voices their protest,
and calls the proposed settlement a three-quarters policy. It says:
" The country has had to face an alarming proposal. Its effect
would be to diminish Ireland to three and one-third provinces, the re-
maining area to become British soil, on the same basis as Yorkshire.
In spite of hints and half promises everyone knows that ground
sacrificed in that fashion will not be handed back. Any consent to
the theory that our country is peopled by two distinct races, with
separate geographical limits, must create a situation that even the
Battle of the Boyne failed to establish. To treat the propositions as
'a temporary arrangement' would be to misconceive the principle that
a nation, like an individual, can only exist as a unit. In bondage it
may preserve its unity by solidarity of sentiment. In freedom it must
do so by uniformity of administration. As the body without the head
is dead, so Ireland without her Northern counties would be a mutilated
corpse.
" It is to be devoutly prayed that neither now nor at any future
time will the people agree to such a plan. In the province of Ulster
the anti-Home-Rulers outnumber the Nationalists by barely five hun-
dred. In the population of the entire country the Nationalist majority
is overwhelming. To allow the minority to partition Ireland may be
English policy, but it is not Irish patriotism. Unfortunately the long
habit of politics seems to give representative men a tendency to com-
promise on matters regarding which they should be absolutely in-
transigeant. Politicians, nevertheless, depend on the people. Irish
politicians can hardly now mistake what the feelings of the people are.
Tradition handed down through centuries is not to be altered in a
few weeks. We have lately beheld the tragic results of two years of
effort to force on the country an attitude that clashed with its senti-
ments. A scheme of geographical and administrative amputation
completely destructive of our determined aspirations is the very thing
to exasperate the country's sorely-tried temper. England's reason for
propounding the scheme has been, in the frank words of her press,
'diplomatic necessity' her situation with powerful neutrals has been
so seriously damaged by Irish events. We will not touch any such
scheme. If the alternative is indefinite martial law and savage coer-
cion, let it be. Diplomatic necessity may soon alter all that too. One
clear fact must be driven home on the minds of the British Cabinet
and of the unseen rulers that too evidently influence its decisions.
Three-fourths of Ireland will not purchase autonomy by bartering the
remaining fourth. When the Boers were granted Home Rule there
was no question of cutting out Johannesburg for the sake of the
miners and the mine owners who were so bitterly opposed to them.
If England applied to Ireland the principles which regulated her atti-
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 86 1
tude towards the conquered South African colonies, the recent des-
perate series of blunders in regard to this country might all have been
spared."
* * * *
THE answer of the exclusionists, that is, those who though not
pleased with, were still willing to accept, the English Govern-
ment's proposals, may be expressed in the words of The Catholic Times
of Liverpool :
" That the motives of many of the Irish anti-exclusionists are
good and pure must be freely granted. They are influenced by genuine
patriotism. But if they ask themselves one question it will help to
enlighten them as to the unwisdom of the policy they have adopted.
Why is it that the Lords and other Unionists who are opposing a
settlement at present are so anxious that it should be postponed? Is
it not because they hope that the postponement would enable them to
defeat Home Rule altogether? Nationalists who urge that the settle-
ment should be deferred until after the war are playing their game.
How much better to bring to bear on the Ulster Unionists without
delay the evidence of how Home Rule would work! They would see
what benefits it would confer on their fellow-countrymen and would
of their own will decide to be represented in the Irish Parliament.
To argue that if the exclusion were once agreed to it would become
permanent in spite of the wishes of the Irish people, is to lose sight
of the important fact that there is no finality in politics. The accept-
ance of Home Rule by twenty-six counties would not in the least
degree weaken the claim of the people for a scheme of self-government
embracing the whole of Ireland. On the contrary, it would greatly
strengthen it."
* * * *
IT must be borne in mind that the agreement was, in the words of the
Prime Minister, for what he called a provisional settlement. "With-
out it not one of my colleagues or myself," said Mr. Redmond,
" would have considered it for a moment. The exact words of the
agreement are plain and unmistakable. The first words of the pro-
posal were: The Bill of course the whole Bill to remain in force
during the continuance of the war and for a period of twelve months
afterwards.' "
THE Irish Nationalists accepted the word of the English Govern-
ment, kept their promise to endeavor to persuade the Irish people
to accept them; and then their leader on his return to England found
that the word of the Government could not be relied upon. The
settlement was not to be accepted by the very Government which itself
862 WITH OUR READERS [Sept.,
had framed the proposals. Two new clauses had been inserted in
the Bill, one calling for the permanent exclusion of the six Ulster
counties, or their exclusion until such time as they themselves agreed
to come in, and the other eliminating the clause calling for full repre-
sentation of the Irish members in the Parliament at Westminster until
such time as the Irish Question was definitely settled. Even the
courtesy of submitting these hitherto unheard-of proposals to the
leader of the Nationalists was not shown by the Government. " When
I asked what the nature of these proposals was, I was informed,"
said Mr. Redmond, " that the Cabinet did not desire to consult me
about them at all. I was informed on behalf of the Cabinet that
negotiations and communications and consultations with me had been
struck off, and I would receive no communication from the Cabinet
until they had come to a decision behind my back upon proposals
which I had never seen and which they refused to submit to me.
I will not bandy words," he added, " about breach of faith, or viola-
tion of solemn agreement. Some tragic fatality seems to dog the
footsteps of this Government in all their dealings with Ireland. Every
step taken by them since the Coalition was formed, and especially
since the unfortunate outbreak in Dublin, has been lamentable. They
have disregarded every advice we tendered to them, and now in the
end having got us to induce our people to make a tremendous sacrifice
and to agree to the temporary exclusion of six Ulster counties, they
throw the agreement to the winds, and they have taken the surest
means to accentuate every possible danger and difficulty in the Irish
WITH regard to the public opposition of two Catholics the Duke
of Norfolk and Mr. Rowland Hunt, M.P. The Catholic Times
of Liverpool tells us :
" It would be a pity if the idea went forth that the Duke of
Norfolk and Mr. Hunt, M.P., who oppose the Home Rule settlement,
are in any degree representative of popular Catholic opinion. Whether
one of them is less representative of Catholics than the other we would
not like to say ; but we are sure that neither of them represents
Catholics on this Home Rule question. The Catholics of Leeds
showed the Duke what they thought of him. And of Mr. Hunt no
Catholics think at all. Men who respect liberty, and who may be
astonished to find among the enemies of freedom for Ireland two
English Catholics, may rest assured that these gentlemen do not speak
for the Catholic body. W T e doubt whether either of them would venture
to call a meeting of Catholics in a village school in order to submit a
resolution against Home Rule. Neither of them counts for anything.
The Duke has a social position which stands him in good stead at
1916.] WITH OUR READERS 863
bazaars, conferences, etc. Mr. Hunt has not even that advantage.
Their appearance among the reactionaries who are trying to wreck
the Irish settlement is a purely personal matter, and must not be held
to reflect any discredit upon the Catholic body in this country. Catho-
lics nowadays, here at least, are the friends of Ireland, and most
heartily wish that she should have justice done to her, and that their
Irish co-religionists should be granted Home Rule."
and strong are the words written by one who has frequently
1 contributed to the pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, Mr. Thomas
F. Woodlock, on American opinion with regard to the fate of Sir
Roger Casement. Mr. Woodlock's letter appeared in The New York
Times of August 7th. We can unfortunately quote the letter only in
part :
" Why then have we in this country not ratified in our own
souls the verdict of the British court? Why did we hope that the
sentence of the law might not be wrought upon Casement's body?
Why did that 'mocking, jeering yell' of the London crowd assembled
at the doors of Pentonville jail wrench our hearts to instant loathing
and revolt? Why did we find ourselves akin in spirit with that
'little group of about thirty Irish men and women' who, the same
dispatches tell us, had assembled at the back of the prison? 'When
the dull clang of the prison bell announced that the doomed man
had paid the last penalty this little group fell on their knees and
remained for some minutes silently praying/
" Can we conceive that between the soul of Benedict Arnold
and the soul of Roger Casement there is anything in common?
" Peace will come again in Europe some day a peace, I believe,
in which all lovers of liberty will be able to rejoice as a just peace.
But there will yet remain Ireland to settle with. There are two
ways in which to settle with her. One is to kill or deport every
Irish man, woman and child, lay waste the land and prevent it from
ever again being settled by human beings. The other is to peer into
the souls of men like Padraic Pearse, Joseph Plunkett, Thomas Mc-
Donagh and Roger Casement, see and understand the ideas that moved
these men to acts of such heroic unwisdom, and in a spirit of broadest
justice and most generous statesmanship make wide the bounds of
freedom for a people that will never be content with anything short of
full nationality.
" Can the British mind compass this ? I do not know whether it
can or not, but I do know that until it does there will be no peace
between Britain and Ireland while one Irishman lives."
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AP
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