Full text of "New Catholic world"

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at http : //books . google . com/|

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

General I^iterature and Science

PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS.

^ ,- • * • , o«

VOL. CVIL
APRIL, 1918, TO SEPTEMBER, 1918

NEW YORK:

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD

120 West 60th Street

1918

^ Digitized by Google

CONTENTS.

-^isthftic Laws and the Moral Princi-
ple. — John Runker 346

American Bquality and Justice. —
Henry Churchill Semple, SJ„ . . 471

A|K)stle of the Italians, An. — James
J. Walsh, M.D., Ph,D 64

Aspects of Recent Drama in Eng-
lish. -fC«//ier/n^ Hregu 88

Bohemian Situation, The.— Af. H.
Hyan 489

Buccaneer of Christ, A. — Charles
Phillips 47

Catholic Activities in Our Two Great
Wars. — Thomas F. Meehan, . . . 444

Catholic Educational Convention,
Th^.— Brother Leo 721

Catholic Lithuania.— F. Aurelio Pal-
mieri, O.S.A.* D.D 591

Christ of Paul, The.— Cu /Tiber/ Lat-
tey, SJ 577

I-:arth, The Touch of. — Richardson
Wright .12

Equality and Justice, American. —
Henry Churchill Semple, S.J., . . 471

Evolution of the Gothic Cathedral.
— Thomas O'Uagan, LittJ) 433

Georges Guynemer: King of French
Ainnen. — The Comtesse de Cour-
son 786

Growth of a Modem Myth, The. —
Martina Johnston 628

Henryk Sienkiewicz. — Annie Kim-
ball Tuell 17

His Eminence James (Ordinal Gib-
lions. — The Late Most Rev. James
II. Rlet\Ji,.1U)., ^. .. ... . •. 7 to

Inner Lif<» ©ft »l. «ioOi«s.*Aqilnn6, •*:

The.-iiifh ^f/jpVe.a*; ify: .:. ^je:

International La*w*. — Moo^olCse f.*X. **
Millar, S.J 1,190,305

In the Forest of .\rden. — Emily
Hickey 515

Italians, An Apostle of the. — James
J. Walsh, M.I)., Ph.D., 64

Italian Protestantism In the United
.States.- F. Aurelio Pulmieri, O.S.
A., D.D 177

I>alior's Ascendancy.* -Anthony J.
Reck 37

La>N, Intfrnationul. — Moorhouse I. X.
Millar, S.J 1, 190, 305

Lincoln, The Poets'.— C/iar/e.t Phil-
lips Ii5

Lionel Johnson as a Critic. -F/or-
enrc Moynihan 758

Living Stones. Blanche M. Kelly, . 337

Lore of Fair>iand, The. — Evelyn
March Phillipps 605

On the Word ** Christianity."-
Hilaire Re Hoc 733

Other Side of Uie Hill, The.— Rich-
ardson Wright 464

Parousia, St. Matthew and the. —
Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D., 72. 161,
359. 497, 647, 807

Passinora.— //arrie//e Wilbur ... 801

Personal Reminiscences of Arch-
bishop Keane.— U'a//er Elliott,
C.S.P 641

Poets* Lincoln, The.— Charles Phil-
lips 145

Recent Drama in English, Aspects
oi.—Katherine Rrdgy, 88

Recent Events, 124, 266, 408, 555, 701, 843

Reconstruction, The British Labor
Partj' and.— Franit Ollara, Ph.D., 380

Ronald A. Knox, The Home-('oming
of. — Rertrand L. Conway, C.S.P., . 777

Russian Church and the Revolution,
The.— F. Aurelio Pulmieri, O.S. A.,
D.D 323, 761

Sailor's Trade-Song, Thc.—Harriette
Wilbur 482

St. Matthew and the Parousia.— Frf-
mund T. Shanahan, S.T.D., 72, 161, 359.
497, 647, 807

St. Thomas, The Inner Life of. —
Hugh Pope, O.P 216

Sienkiewicz, Henryk. — .\nnie Kim-
ball Tuell, 17

Some Causes of Thcophobia. — Sir
Rertram C. A. W indie. .LL.D., . . 317
•r,ti^nH•lA,\^yi—lUan^e^i. Kelly, . 337
/tThe^Pt^t^of |!4ft RTtttf-h.to God."
• • -^uglf Anthfiny Aileif,*M.A., . . 289

Touch of Earth, The.—Richardson
Wright 32

Two Great Wars, Catholic Activities
in Our. — Thomas F. Meehan, . . 444

Ukrainian Pictures. --.Wary Cather-
ine Phelps Lynch 820

United States, Italian Protestantism
in the.— F. Aurelio Pulmieri, O.S.
A., D.D 177

Venice. — Joseph Francis Wickham, . 205

War Religion. — Francis Aveling,
S.T.D 669

What Meres Knew About Shake-
speare's Sonnets: A Reply to Dr.
(4irpenter, — .Appleton Morgan, . . 235

Whitlier Does Imagism Tend? — Vir-
gil G. Michel, O.S.R 620

STORIES.

Connla and the Swineherd.— A'«//i-
arine Tynan, 223

In Sanctuary. — A. G. Sheridan, . . 511

In the Medici Gardens. — Grace V.
Christmas 661

Major Munchausen of the Gap. —
Jcanie Drake 96

Mr. Billings Gets His Chance.— V'lr-
torin English, 373

The li*)ys of the House. -Katharine
Tynan 792

The End of a Perfect Row. — Eleanor
Gehan 526

254042

Digitized by

Google

CONTENTS

111

Adventurers. — Francis X, Doyle, SJ.,

BiTth.— Charles Phillips

Electric Light—Joseph /. C. Clarke,

Holy Communion. — r. J. S

Influence. — Frank S, Gannon, Jr., .
Saint Michael. — John Jerome Hooney
Tantramar. — Julian Johnstone, . .
The Angelas. — J. Corson Miller, . .
The Mother Immaculate. — TJ.S., . .

POEMS.

176 The Young Priest to His Hands.—

336 Edward F. Gareschi, S.J 358

785 Tlic Star-Bom.— Char/es Phillips, . 638

791 To My Favorite Author.— S. M. M„ 87

463 Via Longa.— Pa fr/c/: MacDonough, 345

739 When There Was Peace.— Liic//le

496 Borden 46

678 \i\\yl— Martin T, O'Connell, ... 104
234

WITH OUR READERS.

Benjamin Franklin, Life of, by

Bruce, 282

Chaplains. 425

Cusack, Rt Rev. Thomas Francis, . 716

Death. Attitude Towards, .... 429
Deserting during the Civil War,

Who did the, 573

Force of Tradition, The, 568

Freemasonry in France, Evidences

of 136

Hypocrisy 140

Joyce Kilmer, ........ 856

Knights and Ladies of De l*Ep^,

The 286

Lahor, Presidential Doctrine of, . . 860

Marriage and Divorce, 278

Monsignor Baudrillari Crowned l>y

the French Academy, 863

National Conference of Social Work, 286

New Draft Law, 858

Papal Honors for Miss Marian Nes-

bitt, 287

Presidential Doctrine of Labor, . . 860
Searle, C.S.P., Very Rev. George

Mary, 713

Solidarity of Humankind, The, . . 422
Statue of Christ between Argentine

and Chili 142

Woman's Suffrage, 1.34

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A Casket of Joys,

A Christian Soldier,

A Greek Grammar for Schools and

Colleges,

A History of Architecture, ....
A Life of St. Francis Xavier, . . .
A Manual of Modem Scholastic

Philosophy,

A Memoir of William A. Stanton,

A Minstrel in France,

A Russian Schoolboy,

A Short History of France, ....
A Son of the Middle Border, . . .

American Adventures,

Ancient Law,

Anecdote Sermonettes for Children's

Masses,

An Introduction to Science, ....
Aromid the World with the Chil-
dren,

At the Foot of the Sand Hills, . . .

Austria-Hungary,

Backgrounds for Social Workers, . .

Belgium In War Time.

Blessed are they that Mourn, ... .

Books and Persons,

Boy Woodbum

Burke*s Speeches at Bristol, . . .

Business English,

Calvary Alley,

Campaigns and Intervals, ....
Catechism for First Communion,

Catholic Education

Chemistry in the Home,

iZhronieles of St Tid

Chronology of the Life of Christ . .
Church and State in England to the

Death of Queen Anne

College of Mount St. Vincent, . . .

Community Arithmetic,

Divine Faith

Donald Thompson in Russia, . . .
Early Essays and Lectures, . . .

Ear-Training,

Elementary Course In DlflTerentlal

Equations,

121
123

554
688
830

390

834
82!)
259
829
115
114
552

264
553

553
263
257
835
695
110
537
548
553
699
549
118
697
251
553
407
K10

112
399
553
683
518
105
699

264

Elementary Economic Geography, .

Elementary Principles of Economics.

Elementary Spanish Grammar, . .

Espafta Pintoresca: Spain in History
and Legend,

Essentials in Modem European His-
tory,

Everyday English Composition, . .

Fifty Years and Other Poems, . . .

Fifty Years in Yorkville, ....

Finland and the Finns,

First and Second Books in English
for Foreigners In Evening Schools,

Food Problems,

French Windows,

Garden Steps,

Germany at Bay,

Germany's Annexationist Aims, . .

God and Man,

Great Inventors and their Inventions,

Great Wives and Motliers, ....

Gudrid the Fair

Hearts of Controversy,

Historical Records and Studies, . .

History of the American I'eople, . .

History of the Civil War, ....

Horace and His Age,

Hossfcld*s New Method of Learning
the Italian Language,

In Hoc Signo Vliiccs

Instructions and Precautions of St.
John of the Cross,

In the Footsteps of St. Paul, . . .

In the I>and of Death,

In the Night

In tlie World,

Irish Joy Stories

Irish Lyrics and Ballads

Irish Memories,

Jewish Theology

Jonn of Arc

John KentH,

Knowing and Using Words, . . .

I^ Premier Livre

I-#tters and Diar>' of Alan Sreger, .

Louvain,

i^uther and Lutherdom,

553
107
554

112

534
553
696
694
252

123
698
123
552
831
119
406
698
544
685
253
538
826
396
688

554

r.90

0«7
090
519

x:{7

H'AH
262
<;K6
OKI
HM
543
700
551
103
HAA
108

Digitized by

Google

CONTENTS

Luther et L'AUemaguc, 835

Luther on the Eve of His Revolt, . 546

Marian PoemSj 121

Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, . . . 399

M^re Marie de J6sus 256

Mrs. Humphry Ward, 117

My Boy in Khaki, 839

My Ireland, 405

My Ship and Other Verses, . . . 540

My Two Kings, 692

Mysticism and Logic, 540

Name this Flower 397

New American History, 113

New First Spanish Book, .... 554

Nocturne of Rememhered Spring, . 398

On Conteitiporary Literature, . . . 105

Our Bible, 691

Outlines of Medlasval History, ... 682

Outwitting the Hun. 547

Over Japan Way 393

Over There with the Australians, . 832

Passio Christi: Meditations for Lent, 841

Patriotic Plays for Young People, 842

Paul Jones, 248

Paved Street, 696

Persian Miniatures, ....... 693

Peter and Polly in Autumn, . . . 700

Physics with Applications, .... 700

Plane Geometry with Problems and

Applications, 700

Portuguese Portraits, 546

Practical Biology, 117

Practical English for High Schools. 699

Priest of the Ideal, ...... 551

Rambles in Old College Towns, . . 686

Rapid Method for French Verbs, . . 699
Readings and Reflections for the

Holy Hour, 121

Readings in English Literature, . . 256

Recollections, 541

Reconstruction in Louisiana, . . . 837

Religion and Common Sense, . . . 840

Roving and Fighting, 685

Religious Profession, 695

Sacerdotal Safeguards, 544

School History of the United States, 699
Selected Letters of St Jane Frances

de Chantel, 830

Selections from the Correspondence

of the First Lord Acton, .... 535

Sermon Notes, 257

Shepherd My Thoughts, 694

Simba, 550

Small Arms Instructors* Manual, 122

Sonnets of the Strife, 696

Spanish Reader, 116

Spiritual Pastels, 691

Standard Arithmetics, 122

Stories the Iroquois Tell their Chil-
dren, 651

Studies in English Franciscan His-
tory, 380

Teachers* Manual 697

Teepee Neighbors, 254

Tennyson: How to Know Him, . . 255

Thaisa, 833

The Abiding Presence of the Holy

Ghost in the Soul, 841

The Acathlst Hjrmn of the Holy

Orthodox Eastern Church, . , . 397

The A. E. F., 681

The Barren Ground of Northern

Canada, 406

The Beginnings of Modem Europe, . 828

llie Beginnings of Science, .... 838

The Big Fight, 832

The Book of New York, 401

The Brazilians and their Country, . 391
The Catholic Edition of the Progres-
sive Music Series, 554

The Church at the Turning Points of

History, 835

The Collected Works of Padraic H.

Pearse, 247

The Comrade in White, 551

The Conversion of Europe, .... 109

The Cross at the Front, 689

The Door 261

The Dramatic Works of Gerhart

Hauptmann, 394

The Elementary Algebra, .... 264

The Enlisted Wife, 695

The Forum of Democracy, .... 842

The Future Life, 683

The Grass in the Pavement, . . . 839

The Great Crime and Its Moral, . . 255

The Hand Invisible, 836

The Heart of O Sono San, .... 693

The Hill-Towns of France, .... 252

The History of Medieval Europe, . 684
The History of the Society of Jesus
in North America, Colonial and

Federal 392

The Insurgent Theatre, 120

The Inward Gospel, 261

The Last Lectures of Wilfrid Ward, 679
The Laws of Marriage, according to

' the New Code, 697

The Life of Augustin Daly, . . . 106
The Life of Charles Carroll of Car-

roUton, 248

The Little Office of the Blessed

Virgin, 123

The Magic Stone, Ill

The Man from Nowhere, 407

The Mission as a Frontier Institu-
tion in the Spanish-American Col-
onies, 687

The Mystic Vision in the GraU

Legend and in the Divine Comedy, 680
The New Testament and Catholic

Prayer Book Combined, .... 696
The Old Testament in Greek, . . . 533
The Oratory and Poetry of the Bible, 250
The Origins of Contemporary Psy-
chology, 389

The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, . . 842

The Rhythm and Prose, 833

The Rib of the Man, ...... 110

The Science and Art of Teaching, . 698

The Secret of Personality, .... 683

The Secret Witness, 260

The Soul of the Soldier, 689

The Spanish First Reader, .... 699

The Straight Religion, 547

The Sublime Sacrifice, 833

The Tideway, 402

The Tortoise, 261

The Tree of Heaven, . , 550

The Trust Problem 531

The Turkish Empire, 401

The War and the Coming Peace, . . 837

The Ways of War, 396

The Wings of Youth, 839

The Winning of the War, .... 538

The World and the Waters, .... 539

The Yellow Dog 840

These Many Years, 258

Thundher an* Turf, 119

To Bagdad with the BriUsh, ... 836

Tolstoy, 404

Trapped in Black Russia, .... 115

Trench Pictures from France, ... 263

Two War Years in Constantinople, . 827

Ukraine: the Land and Its People, . 827

Value of the Classics, 398

Verses in Peace and War, .... 394

Vladimir Solovlev, 389

What a Catholic Ought to Know, . . 842

With the French Red Cross, ... 202

Digitized by

Google

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. CVII. APRIL, 1918. No. 637.

INTERNATIONAL LAW.

BY MOORHOUSE I. X. MILLAR, S.J.
I.

American Principles, and Mediaeval Traditions.

jERHAPS to few of Joseph Conrad's many readers
would it ever occur to view liim as a deep
thinker on international politics. Yet, as far
back as 1905, his Polish blood seemed to feel
the stir of coming events and, like Kubla Khan
in Xanadu, he

.... heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

In the July number of the Fortnightly Review of that year,
there is an article by him entitled Autocracy and War, which
bears striking testimony to his judgment and foresight. Not
only did he predict the aggression of Prussia, already begin-
ning to loom considerably larger than a mere probability in
the minds of many, but he also analyzed the Russian situation
and gave early warning of Russia's inevitable collapse. The
point in the article, however, of special interest for us, now
that we have entered the War with the determination that
•* the world must be made safe for democracy,'* is the arrest-
ing statement which sums up what was to his mind the only

Digitized by

Google

2 INTERNATIONAL LAW [AprU,

solution to the great international entanglement: **The
trouble of the civilized world," he said, " is the want of a com-
mon conservative principle abstract enough to give the im-
pulse, practical enough to form the rallying point of inter-
national action tending towards the restraint of particular
ambitions."

With the world's conscience now aroused by the War,
these words, though no more true than when written, sound as
if uttered by some oracle. The more so, perhaps, since Con-
rad, like the real oracle of old, left his readers in uncertainty
as to a definite application of his statement. He gave reasons,
indeed, and their soundness may be judged from the fact that
since the outbreak of the War, they have been clearly reflected
in the opinion which there is good reason to impute to Ex-
President Taf t, that " care must be taken not to put too much
reliance upon formal declarations and upon the machinery of
even the most approved international system." * But whence
this principle was to be derived, or what were to be the con-
ditions for its honest and forceful enunciation, Conrad,
naturally enough, left the future to decide. That it has done
so, at last, would now appear to be the case, though the enun-
ciation has come from a quarter which, doubtless, it never
entered into the mind either of Joseph Conrad or of his Euro-
pean readers to suspect.

On April 2, 1917, in his address delivered at a joint ses-
sion of the two Houses of Congress, President Wilson made
this momentous assertion : '* We are at the beginning of an
age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of con-
duct and responsibility for wrong done, shall be observed
among nations and their governments that are observed
among individual citizens of civilized states." However slight
one's acquaintance with the world's history during the past
several centuries, such an utterance could not fail to strike him
with startUng effect. At any other period within memory,
its reception by the nations would have been, to say the least,
decidedly supercilious. It would have met with pretty much
the same knowing air with which we might imagine members
of the fast set listening to the plain statement of an indubitable
moral principle shyly delivered by some "inexperienced"
innocent. Yet the remarkable thing about this utterance of

> Th§ BomU of a Dtuable Peace, by Cotmos, p. 65.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 3

President Wilson's is that, not only is the public opinion of
this great country, and ultimately, it may be hoped, of the
world in general, being gradually committed to the policy of
working and fighting and suffering, if need be, for the full
realization of the principle it contains, but that although
emanating from the chief representative of the youngest of
the great nations, it is supported by traditions older, sounder
and more in keeping with Christian philosophy than those of
any other government in existence today.

If we look back to the beginning of our own history, we
find George Washington in his first inaugural address (1789)
insisting on the same principle in terms even more explicit.
••The foundation of our national policy," he said, "will be
laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality,
and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all
the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and
conmiand the respect of the world. I dwell on this prospect
with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country
can inspire .... since we ought to be ... . persuaded that the
propitious smiles of Heaven can never he expected on a nation
that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which
Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation of the
sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model
of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as
finally, staked, on the experiment intrusted to the hands of
the American people.**

Again in his farewell address on September 17, 1796, he
touched more particularly on the question of our inter-
national dealings in these words: ••Observe good faith and
justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with
aU; religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be
that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy
of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation,
to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example
of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevo-
lence.**

This, in the mind of Washington, as his words indicate,
was something very new in the world; and from our present
outlook we may well add that it was something very singular;
for the same year in which Washington made his first inaug-
ural address, marks the beginning of the French Revolution,

Digitized by

Google

4 INTERNATIONAL LAW [April,

which at one period of its misguided career closely skirted
the American idea of the State, only to miss it finally by the
widest possible margin. Yet the fact remains that the con-
viction that the immutable principles of morality should be
strictly considered as binding on governments and individuals
alike, had been held and enforced in earlier times; and in
this sense there was really nothing new in Washington's
speeches. It was merely that the traditions supporting this
conviction had long since been set aside, and a numberless
series of attempts made to justify by false doctrines the
policy and actions of governments that contravened that
principle.

In corroboration of this statement, it is interesting to note
here that, from the date on which Washington delivered his
farewell address, to the date of the promulgation of the bull
Ineffabilis (September 25, 1296), in which Boniface VIII.
sought to bring Philip the Fair of France to a practical recog-
nition of this same principle, there was an intervening period
of exactly five hundred years to the very month. As this
attempt by Boniface, however, proved futile, and as the
validity of the principle of moral obligation for both State and
individual began gradually, from then on, to lose its force
in the world of nations, George Washington's clear and
emphatic statement of it may be truly considered as being
something in the nature of a rediscovery. But as will appear
in the sequel, not only was it normally accepted during the
first centuries of the Middle Ages, but its constant enforce-
ment was the means whereby the real foundations were laid
for the "republican model of government" mentioned by
Washington in the passage previously quoted.

That " international duties and responsibilities are neces-
sary corollaries of the true conception of the State," * follows
from what we have just seen. Hence it is important to retrace
the origin and growth of this principle of the State's moral
obligation, and to show how it was preserved from utter
oblivion throughout the period during which it was set aside,
until, in spite of the adverse influence of opposing forces, it
again reappeared in our Declaration of Independence, was
restated by George Washington and his successors, and is

* David Jajme Hill, Proceedings of the Second Pan-American Scientific Congrea,
■ectlon 6, International Law, etc, toI. Til., p. 94.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 5

now proclaimed by President Wilson as the only satisfactory
solution of the grave international problem to be dealt with
after this War is over. Once it is clear that this principle lies at
the very root of our civilization; that without it our civiliza-
tion could not have grown at all, its abstract value, necessary
** to give the impulse,** will become apparent; while its prac-
tical reembodiment in our own traditions and in the founda-
tions of our government will show it to be a fit ** rallying point
in international action,** such as Conrad saw was required,
** tending towards the restraint of particular ambitions.**

In turning our face to the past, however, we are con-
fronted by the vulgar misconception that in the Middle Ages
men looked upon authority as irresponsible, that they con-
ceived of the ruler as a person who exercised a capricious and
almost unlimited control over his subjects, and that people
then had little thought or regard for any rational principles
of social organization. This, together with the view that the
Bfiddle Ages were unchanging, is primarily due to the shal-
lowness and ignorance of the men of the new learning and
of the Renaissance, and is an heirloom of bigotry and preju-
dice inherited from the violent struggles of the Reformation
and of the French Revolution.

The real facts of the case prove just the opposite, as has
been convincingly shown by 'Mr. A. J. Carlyle, whose History
of Mediseual Political Theory marks an epoch in the treat-
ment of the Middle Ages by non-Catholic historians. *lt is of
course perfectly true,** he says, very much to our purpose,
** that mediaeval society often seemed to oscillate between an
uncontroUable and arbitrary despotism and an anarchical
confusion, but this was due not to the want of clear convic-
tion of the right and duties of rulers and subjects, but to the
absence of an effective instrument of government. The his-
tory of mediaeval society constantly impresses upon us the
conviction that the real difference between a barbarous and
a civilized political system, lies in the fact that the latter has
an almost automatically working administrative and judicial
machinery, while the former is dependent upon the chance of
the presence of some exceptionally competent and clear-
sighted individual ruler.*** Or, to epitomize the matter in
paradoxical phrase, the Middle Ages had the principles which

•Vol. ilL, p. SI.

Digitized by

Google

6 INTERNATIONAL LAW [April,

only needed enforcing, whereas we, in lieu of principles, have
the omnipresent policeman to guard from destruction the
institutions to which the mediaeval principles gave rise.

To the men of the Middle Ages the one principle that lay
behind all authority of the State was the principle of justice.
In their minds, much more than in ours, imbued as we are
with Pragmatism, Socialism, and the other isms whose name
is legion, the only conceivable justification of that authority
was that it represented justice, and that its primary purpose
was to maintain justice. Nor were they confused as to the
meaning of the term, for in their conception " justice is ... .
a quality of will, it is the will to carry out that which is in
accordance with sequitas, and this is found first of all in God,
and secondly in man. Neither God*s will nor man's deter-
mines the nature of justice, but justice is the conformity of the
will of God and man with that which is sequum, the confor-
mity of the will of God with that which is His own nature, for
.... God is sequitasJ* *

Or as the unknown author of the Fragmentum Pragense,
which antedates the University of Bologna, expressed it:
*' Equity is that fair arrangement of all things which demands
equal rights under the same conditions. Thus God is called
equity for the reason that he so wills; for equity is nothing else
but God. This temper when considered as permanently resid-
ing in man's wiU is called justice, and this will when made
mandatory either by written precept or custom is called law."
These judgments formed the basis of the whole structure of
feudal law, and on the strength of them the distinction be-
tween king and tyrant became one of the most important of
all mediaeval conceptions.' The authority of the prince was,
indeed, recognized as coming from God, but this was not
interpreted in the sense which was claimed for it by Protes-
tant and Galilean rulers after the Reformation. For not only
was the prince held to be under God, but also under the law;
and in mediaeval conception, law was something not made nor
created by the ruler, but existing as part of the national life.
It emanated from custom, and legislative acts were not expres-
sions of will, but records or promulgations of that which was
recognized as already binding upon men. Hence it repre-
sented an authority which even the king could not over-ride.

«CArlyle, vol. U., p. 11. •ibid., vol. 111., p. 12«.

Digitized by

Google

1918-] INTERNATIONAL LAW 7

In the words of the English mediaeval lawyer Bracton: **The
king has a superior, that is God, and the law by which he is
made king; and also he has his court, namely, counts and
barons, for counts and barons are so called as being the king's
associates, and he who has associates has a master; if there-
fore the king should be without a bridle that is the law, they
should impose a bridle upon him.** *

Fully in keeping with all this was the mediaeval concep-
tion of contract; that is, of an explicit or at least an implied
covenant between prince and people: a conception to be
clearly distinguished from the speculations of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries relating to an original or primitive
pseudo-historical agreement between individual members,
upon which political society was assumed to have been
factitiously founded. The former, which reappears with its
correct mediaeval interpretation in Jefferson's wording of the
Declaration of Independence, was but a natural and legiti-
mate conclusion from the principle of the election or recog-
nition of the ruler of the community, and from the fact that
the mutual oaths 6f the coronation ceremony constituted an
agreement to observe the law and to administer and maintain
justice. Moreover, as Mr. Carlyle has definitely pointed out,
there is no doubt whatever that the normal mediaeval concep-
tion of the ruler was of one whose authority rested not only
upon the election or consent of the community, but was exer-
cised under the law and constitutionally, with the advice of
persons who were not merely his dependents or creatures but
in some sense, however vague and undetermined, the repre-
sentatives of the community.^

Thus far, it is true, the supposedly modem idea of the
State as a natural institution had not yet been clearly recog-
nized. It was not till Aristotle's Politics were rediscovered in
the thirteenth century that St. Thomas Aquinas, under their
influence and with his giant grasp of the principles both of
reason and of revelation, reached the definite conclusion that
the State was not merely an institution devised to correct
men's vices, but rather the necessary form of a real and full
human life;* and his doctrine may be said to have made its
reappearance in the political world when Burke in his Re-

• Ibid^ loe. ett, p. 72, and note. * Ibid,, loc, eiL, p. 154.

*ibid^ loe, eit^t p. 5. St Thomas L Q. 96, a 4.

Digitized by

Google

8 INTERNATIONAL LAW [April,

flections on the French Revolution stated that " He who gave
our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the neces-
sary means of its perfection — He willed therefore the State —
He willed its connection with the source and original arche-
type of all perfection."

Nor, could there be as yet any question of international
law since all wars, until well on into the fourteenth century,
were fought on purely feudal grounds. The beginnings, more-
over, of a commercial policy of an international character do
not appear in England until the reign of Edward III., while
Spain and France stand out for the first time as clearly con-
solidated nations only towards the end of the fifteenth cen-
tury, at a date which synchronizes exactly, or almost exactly,
with the discovery of America by Columbus.* But in the three
great mediseval conceptions, viz., that the purpose or function
of the political organization of society is the maintenance of
justice; that law as the concrete embodiment of justice is
supreme over the ruler and the governed; and that the rela-
tion between king and people is founded and depends on
mutual obligations and agreement to maintain justice and
law,^® we have premises concerning the State from which we
will allow an eminent authority on international law to draw
our conclusion.

The ** distinction," said David J. Hill at the Pan-American
Scientific Congress in 1915, '' between the constitutional State,
founded upon the principles of justice, and the absolute State,
founded upon supreme power, has a vital significance in inter-
national relations. For the absolute State, international law
is merely a set of arbitrary rules, to which assent and obedi-
ence may be accorded, or from which they may be withheld,
as it may be the good pleasure of sovereign power to deter-
mine. But for the constitutional State there are principles of
natural justice which are of universal application, for they
are the principles upon which the authority of the State itselT
is founded. To deny the universal validity of these principles
and the obligation to observe them in international relations
would be to stultify the entire constitutional system, and to
admit that it has no solid basis. In short it would be the
suicide of republicanism and the reassertion of autocracy; for

* W. Cnnnlnghflin, Growth of English Industrg and Commerce, vol. 1., pp. 266, 479.
^* Carlyle, vol. ill., pp. 181-184.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 9

international law regarded as a form of jurisprudence, is sim-
ply an extension to nations of the principles of justice upon
which constitutional government is erected." "

Such then, in brief simmiary, were the ideas that pre-
vailed throughout Christendom until the end of the thirteenth
century; and such, as may be seen from the passage above,
is their present bearing on international law, now that they
are found reembodied in the foundations of our own govern-
ment And already, as has been shown by James B. Angell,
" the policy of the American people has helped make the inter-
national law of the world more humane and just and
benign.** *»

Now the question presents itself: whence did these ideas
arise, since antiquity can show nothing comparable with them,
and how did they come to develop as they did? The question
is an important one, for it is chiefly in their historical setting
that the practical value of such ideas is to be judged; it is a
question, moreover, that must be answered correctly if the
thought and events of the past and their influence on the pres-
ent are to be viewed in their right light and in proper per-
spective.

First there are many misconceptions to be cleared away,
among them the common notion that the customs and tradi-
tions of the early Teutonic societies will alone explain the
origin and development of mediaeval ideas on government.
This is clearly unsatisfactory. For though these customs and
traditions provided a splendid working basis at the start, they
furnished no adequate motive for persevering resistance to
the vigorous tendency of strong and unscrupulous rulers to
arrogate to themselves absolute and autocratic power; nor did
they contain any explicit justification in reason for the claim
they made on men's minds for allegiance, a justification abso-
lutely necessary, if adverse influences were to be resisted and
these same customs and traditions to enjoy a consistent and
normal development. In addition, however simple the motive
and justification, they must also be true and in keeping with
the general conmion sense and common nature of mankind.
Superstition cannot account for real progress; least of all can
it be made to account for the extraordinary progress that char-

'^Loe. eU„ p. 96.

^The Diplomaeg of the United Siatet—in Narrative and Critical HUtorg of
America, edited by Justin Winsor, vol. tU., p. 513.

Digitized by

Google

10 INTERNATIONAL LAW [April,

acterizes the Middle Ages.^' Such notions as Luther's ** justi-
fication by faith alone " or Kant*s " categorical imperative,"
which would make the individual a law unto himself, may
pass as currency with those who have lost their moorings, in
a civilization sufficiently well organized on a basis of truth to
resist for a considerable period, by the force of its own
momentum, the power of false ideas. But it can readily be
seen that such doctrines would have served but a sorry pur-
pose, in the mouth of an Augustine or a Boniface facing the
im|)atient and unruly Saxon, with the support of no other
philanthropic society but the Church, and the prestige of no
other home country but heaven, to back them up. Hence, we
find the required motive for resistance to manifest injustice
and the rational justification of what was good and true in
the primitive Teutonic societies, provided by the teaching of
Christian truths and enforced by the Church alone.

Latter day writers have dated modem liberties back to
Magna Charta, wrung from John Lackland at Runnymede in
1215, but this again is a mistake. Modem liberties, for all that
*' liberal" thinkers and German or Germanizing philoso-
phers on government may say to the contrary, began with
the Christian martyrs. They first won from the State a recog-
nition of the principle that men are to render '* to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's."
Once the fruit of their victory had been' gathered by Constan-
tine in his ratification of the distinction between Church and
State at the Council of Nicea,^^ it was not long before this prin-
ciple effected an entire change in the whole conception of law
and of the State. To quote a semi-Hegelian : *' There was no
longer to be one supreme and absolute dominion ruling
equally the whole life of the community. Christianity had
.... revealed the great opposition between State and Church,
so full of consequences for mankind. The State gave up the
claim to rule conscience by its laws; it recogniz&d that beside
it there was a religious conununity with its own principle of
life, and likewise a visible body different from itself, and
essentially independent. This was a limit preventing it from
exercising omnipotent sway. It was compelled to hand over
religious life to the guidance of the Church. It never, indeed,

» Carlyle, vol. 111., p. 14.

**Ibid., vol. 1., p. 177; alio Hefele, Historg of Church ConnelU, vol. 1.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 11

attained to fuU clearness with regard to its relations to the
Church, but the freedom of religious belief and the reverence
for God were saved from the arbitrary will of the temporal
ruler. The authority of Christianity depended not on him.
Further, the Christian universal empire was no longer to
devour and annihilate the various nations, but to assure to
all of them peace and justice. The mediseval Roman emperor
was not absolute lord over all nations, but the just protector
of their rights and freedom.'*^' From this to Magna Charta,
to the establishment of Parliament and to our own Constitu-
tion was, undoubtedly, a long process of development. Yet,
when all is said, these were but by-products, in the temporal
order, of the first initial victory of Christianity over Paganism.

Out of the principles on which this victory was won there
followed logically, as far as the Church's stand in the matter
was concerned, the great conflict between the Papacy and the
Empire and the struggles between Church and Crown in Eng-
land and in France. It has been traditional, of course, with
non-Catholics to blame the Church and especially the Popes
for aU these quarrels. But, prescinding from the carefully
scientific work in justification of the Papacy done by Catho-
lic historians (whom the votaries of private judgment, for rea-
sons best known to themselves, insist on ignoring), a com-
plexus of testimony in favor of the Popes now exists, through
the independent admissions of mutually conflicting non-Cath-
olic historians. The grudging manner common in these ad-
missions proves them to have been extorted by the objective
fact that the emperors and kings were the real aggressors and
not the Popes.

Bluntschli well says: '' The idea of the national State had
perished, destroyed by the breaking-up of the national and
political unity, by the feudal system, by the conflicting claims
of territories, estates, and dynasties. What remained of the
Roman empire was rather an ideal international, than a polit-
ical union of Western Christendom, and this union was held
together more by the authority of the Pope and the Roman
clergy than by the empire." " Had the Popes and the clergy
not stood firm against the lawlessness and the autocratic
aspirations of emperors such as Henry IV. and the Hohen-

^The Theory of the State, J. R. Bluntschli, English Translation, p. 29.
^Lcc, cit., p. 45.

Digitized by

Google

12 INTERNATIONAL LAW [April,

stauf en or of Kings like William Ruf us and John Lackland, it
is impossible to see where there could be any room in the
world today for justice, liberty or constitutional government
or any solid ground for international union. If on the
Chiurch's part there was a long protracted struggle against the
repeated encroachments of the temporal powers, it was due to
her consciousness of being in the possession of rights that were
inalienably hers by reason of the constitution given her by
Jesus Christ Himself and which no power on earth, whether
lay or ecclesiastical, could in any way justifiably curtail. But
** it was no part of the papal theory, as held by Innocent III.,"
for instance, '*to regard the Pope as a universal temporal
monarch, or Rome as a centre of domination in all particulars
.... It was supremacy in the realm of religion and moraUty
that (he) had in mind when he proclaimed the superiority of
the papal to the royal or the imperial authority .... His
motive was not therefore to merge the spiritual authority in
the civil, nor the civil in the spiritual, but to subordinate the
one to the other in such a manner as to guarantee the peace
of the Church and the security of its head." "

That this, moreover, was the attitude of the Popes in gen-
eral is dear from the fact that Gregory VII., against whom the
strictures of Protestant prejudice have been mainly leveled,
in his many letters to the various kings of Europe in his day,
emphatically describes secular authority as being derived
from God, and as finding its true character in the defence
and maintenance of justice; and his hope was that there might
be a true concord and agreement between the sacerdotium
and the imperium, the two authorities which God has
appointed to rule over the world.^' The plain and simple
truth is that it was principally through the Church and the
influence of the Popes, that the States of Europe came into
existence at all as well-regulated communities possessing
authority and aiming at prosperous independence.

"That Christianity," to quote an Oxford scholar,
" elevated the royal power, was the result not of the Church's
self-abasement but of her lofty conception of duty. The great
service she bestowed on the kingship was the sense of respon-
sibility. She destroyed the divine descent and substituted the

^v David J. Hill, BUtoTji of European Dlplomacff, rol, 1., p. 818.
» Carljrle, vol. lU., p. 92-106.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 13

divine mission. The prestige of a sacred origin was sup-
planted by the prestige of a sacred function. In holding out a
lofty ideal of the kingly duty, the Church wished to raise the
kingly character. At the same time she preached no servile

obedience But perhaps the Church worked in favor of

the Crown less directly than indirectly. In paving the way for
national union by her discipline, her doctrine, and her con-
solidation and organization, by counteracting the disruptive
forces which were always threatening to break up the not yet
consolidated realm, far more than by hedging round with the
august rites of unction and coronation the accession of a new
king, did the Church minister to the royal power." ^*

But in whichever direction she exerted her eflforts:
whether in implanting due reverence for authority in the
minds of the people or in checking the tyranny of a law-
less or unscrupulous ruler, the Church was ever insistent on
the supremacy of just law; and when forced to defend her
own rights, she was also defending the liberties of the people.
*• Where Innocent III. had political rights," says another non-
Catholic author, "he acted like any feudal lord; where he
had ecclesiastical rights he acted according to canon law,
and the practice of the papal chancery .... and all the
canons directly or by logical inference depend upon the
Bible; and we shall not understand ecclesiastical pretensions,
whether in law or diplomacy, unless we regard them as
the churchmen did, as corollaries from the very words of
God."«>

This ecclesiastical system of law preceded the national
systems in time and excelled them in precision. G. K. Ches-
terton but states two plain historical facts when he says, in
A Short History of England, that "without the Church the
Middle Ages would have had no law, as without the Church,
the Reformation would have had no Bible."

Now one of the alleged " ecclesiastical pretensions " was
the mediaeval and Catholic conviction based on "the very
words of God," that the Pope has ordinary jurisdiction over
aU bishops in the Church. Eangs and emperors might make
them princes of the empire and barons of the realm, and thus
obtain for themselves and their people advantages making for

>*H. H. Henion, ConsHttttional Essays, edited by H. O. Wakeman and A. Haa-
mO* p. 8. M Sedgwick, Italjf in the Thirteenth Century, vol. 1., pp. 48-50.

Digitized by

Google

14 INTERNATIONAL LAW [April,

good government, not to be looked for from an hereditary
nobility. Such a line of action was entirely their own affair.
But it conferred on them no right to interfere with the inde-
pendence of the bishops or of the Church in matters spiritual
or to over-ride them in concerns of mixed import: partly spir-
itual and partly temporal. So long as the Pope's arm was not
shortened this independence was maintained in spite of all
disturbances. The episcopal sees of Europe were filled with
worthy incumbents, and in all questions affecting the rights of
the individual, the Church was found witnessing to a higher
civilization and a truer standard of duty, for the Church repre-
sented the only idea of moral government attainable in that
age of force, and without the idea of moral government there
can be no such thing as constitutional liberty.*^ As we have
seen, constitutional liberty did exist and was, in theory at
least, normal to this period of the iMiddle Ages. As President
Wilson says in The New Freedom: "The only reason why
government did not suffer dry rot in the Middle Ages under
the aristocratic system which then prevailed, was that so many
of the men who were efficient instruments of government were
drawn from the Church — ^from that great religious body
which was then, the only Church, that body which we now dis-
tinguish from other religious bodies as the Roman Catholic
Church. The Roman Catholic Church was then, as it is now,
a great democracy." **

If we turn to England, the country whose institutions and
the principles they embody have contributed most to our
idea of the State, we find that the controversy between Church
and Crown centred mainly around two questions: the one,
the right of appeal to the Pope and papal provision for Eng-
lish sees, the other, the king's right to tax Church property.
With the former and its deep significance for Europe in gen-
eral, we have just dealt. So long as it was settled in England
in accord with the just claims of the Church and of the
Papacy, England developed normally and rapidly along the
line of healthy mediaeval ideas; for she was thereby endowed
with a succession of strong prelates who were zealous in the
defence of the Church's rights against all over-weening claims
advanced by successive kings in the matter of taxation.

What this zeal and sturdy resistance has meant to the

s^ H. O. Wakeman, Constittttional Essays, p. 295. * Oh. Iv., p. 85.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 15

world and to us Americans in particular, may be judged from
the fact that by it were established the first precedents for the
grounds of complaint enumerated by Jeflferson in our Declara-
tion of Independence. To Thomas a Becket we owe the first
refusal of a subject to pay a tax to the Crown which he believed
to be unjust; a refusal as bold, indeed, and certainly no less
patriotic than that of John Hampden centuries later. Hugh of
Avalon, Bishop of Lincoln, was the first to maintain success-
fully (1197) the doctrine that the lands in England were not
taxable by the king for the prosecution of a war with which
England had no concern. Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, pre-
ferred exile in 1297 rather than submit to the levying of a tax
upon the clergy which they had not in any way consented to
grant. Again, in 1252, Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln,
and friend and adviser of Simon de Montfort, led the opposi-
tion to the king's attempt to take a tenth of the revenues of the
clergy on the pretext of a crusade. But most momentous of
all was it, when in 1297, Archbishop Winchelsea, armed with
the bull Clericis laicos of Boniface YIII., obtained the confir-
mation of the charters by Edward I. whereby taxation was put
under the control of Parliament. •**That the constitution of
England,** says an historian of the Oxford school, " was event-
ually under Edward I. formed on the basis of a monarchy lim-
ited by law and guided by Parliament, by which was secured
to each individual the enjoyment of public and private right
guaranteed by the law and defended by Parliament, was due
in no slight measure to the constant influence of Church opin-
ion on the side of liberty, to the educating effect of Church
principles, to the example of Church polity and to the self-
denying patriotic labors of men like Stephen Langton,
Edmund Rich and Winchelsea, the leading minds among the
clergy .*• «•

Such then were the early circimistances and conditions
under which the principle that the State has moral obligations,
originated and developed. Such also were the traditions built
up in support of it. The principle, as we have seen, reappears
clearly in the speeches of Washington and has now been defi-
nitely extended to the whole question of international rela-
tions by President Wilson. Yet the immense import of these
last two events can never be properly appreciated unless we

"H. O. Wakenum, loe. cit., p. 808.

Digitized by

Google

16 INTERNATIONAL LAW [April,

realize that from the establishment of Parliament in 1295 to
the Declaration of Independence in 1776, there was — in so far
as the principles were concerned whereon the governments of
Europe rested their authority — a real gap in the sound devel-
opment of normal political thought

When, thanks to the fimmess of Archbishop Winchelsea
and the influence of Boniface VIII., mediaeval traditions, as
regards the State, were at last crystallized by the permanent
institution of Parliament, it was none too soon; for it was in
the previous year, as we have already seen, that Boniface had
been obliged to rise up in their defence against Philip the Fair
of France. In the bitter struggle between these two, Philip
represents the force of absolutism without restraint, while
Boniface stood for the old mediaeval ideas of autonomy under
the safe-guarding supremacy of law. When, consequently,
Philip won, as a result of ** the sacrilege of Anagni,'* the nor-
mal progress of mediaeval society was brought to a close.
Henceforth the false Gallican theories of the divine right of
kings, which appear boldly for the first time in the declara-
tions of the Etats G^neraux of 1302, begin to cut across every
liberal tendency and every generous influence at work during
the period we have just reviewed. It only required the doc-
trines of Luther and Machiavelli to put absolutism in full
possession and subject Europe to the weight of the autocratic
power of the kings and rulers of the sixteenth, seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.

Happily, before these events took place, St. Thomas
Aquinas (1225-1274) had furnished a deeply reasoned and
systematic justification of what was true and good in the old
order of things. He, perhaps more than anyone else, by the
sound development of ideas far ahead of his own times,
paved the way for the full and legitimate reestablishment of
the fundamental mediaeval principles upon which the Ameri-
can states are founded. For Suarez and the other Scholastic
philosophers and theologians of the seventeenth century did
but follow in his footsteps; and to them we owe the only solid
theoretical foundation possible for international law.

Digitized by

Google

HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ.

BY ANNIE KIMBALL TUELL.

lENRYK SIENKIEWICZ should have died when
there would have been tune for the word of
literary honor. As it is, he has gone to his grave
with but a cursory acknowledgment of his emi-
nence in the world of letters. His genius has
represented most familiarly, to the Western world, Polish
character and Polish patriotism, but at this acute crisis in
Polish history, individual tribute to that genius dissociate
from its nationalism, has been withheld as an impertinence.
Any critical memorial for Sienkiewicz, if we indulge it at pres-
ent, must be but the recognition of his service to the " hope of
Poland," that Poland which, in the restrained words of a
Sienkiewicz appeal, " has deserved well of humanity.**

She has deserved best, by the very preservation of her
hope. For the persistence of the Polish national genius, obsti-
nate through apparent extinction and reenforced by national
tragedy, is the best reassurance we have in these stricken days
when men's hearts fear to look into the future. Long ago
Sienkiewicz liked to repeat, for Polish comfort, the old saying
of Chameyetski: "*! am grown not out of salt nor out of the
soil, but out of that which pains me." And today there is
international need for such consolation. We watch, with mis-
giving, on the battlefields of Europe the visible reality of the
old Greek myth, where the children born of the dragon's teeth
destroy one another implacably, sorrowfully. Have we always
been sure that none can quell the spirit of England? Then
why the note of defiance in our chants of love? Shall the
spirit of the chainless mind be certainly and eternally French?
Yet how often in history the prophecy has been fulfilled:
" The time shall come when mighty Ilion shall be laid low! "
But in the clutch of doubt let us remember the Polish nation,
come to true national consciousness since it lost its place upon
the map, wrought into discipline from the necessities of im-
potence, schooled in development by the pressure of hostile
propaganda and expropriation. We may remember too, that
VOL* cvnr— 3

Digitized by

Google

18 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ [April,

Polish literature has grown richly self-expressive through
national sorrow, and has achieved its characteristic utterances
from the inspiration of patriotic shame.

In the scale of this distinguished literature our Western
minds should, under no circumstances, venture to fix the
place of Sienkiewicz. We are prone, they tell us, to ascribe to
him a disproportionate eminence in the lively Polish fiction
of the present. We may accept, without dispute, the qualified
applause of those European critics who would temper the
excesses of the Sienkiewicz cult, and assert that Sienkiewicz
expresses but partially the contemporary spirit, "in its
himianitarian inquietude and social fervor." For this very
limitation, he may represent all the better that body of the new
Poland for whom, before the War, the national question was
prior and essential to all others, which was not merely mod-
ern or democratic, but doggedly Polish.

He was not of the old Poland nourished upon sacrificial
dreams and noble delusions. With his contemporaries, he
had left far behind the high-strung traditions of the great
romantics, their ecstatic devotion to the sheer ideal of Polish
rebirth, which made the immortal life of Mickiewicz and
Krasinski — their exultations from despair rejected, their tense
companionship with passion-charged abstractions, their
apocalyptic visions of a "holy Poland," whose sorrows, like
unto none other sorrows, should work redemption. Such
faith, torture-nourished, was lovely even in disease. But the
Poland of recent years has not sought to save herself by ideals
alone. She has been pitted not against the dominations of
evil in abstract places, but against flesh and blood, that is to
say against Germany and autocratic Russia. She must per-
sist and increase by methods learned from Germany. And
she has had to better the instruction.

Sienkiewicz, then, was of the new Poland which would
prefer to walk without fainting rather than to soar with
eagles. He was of the Poland which had learned, according
to the interpretation of its leaders, to admit economic neces-
sity and geographical ultimatum. He was of the strong spirits
mobilized for work in that nation of dreamers, who would
grapple with oppression by counter-construction, and oppose
to encroachment the conservation of force, which would
strengthen the Polish character for the race struggle by a

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 19

policy of criticism and deliberate disillusion. Still Sienkiewicz
was of the camp which, recognizing the consequence of the
practical issue, would still preserve for the Polish struggle
the idealism necessary for its success. ^*I see the necessity
for quiet and iron labor, but I do not see the necessity for the
repudiation or renunciation of any ideals. And I will tell you
too that the Pole who does not bear that great ideal at the
bottom of his soul is in a measure a renegade.'* ^

The share of Sienkiewicz in this common labor was to dis-
cover and to liberate in fiction the springs of national health.
His was a courageous choice for the subject of Russian Poland,
where under the bureaucratic rule, for all the stirrings of
potential energy, the faith of reformers must act with least
assurance; where the patriot, denied the privilege of efficient
service, must see the kernel of society threatened with decay,
stricken with civic disease it was not permitted to cure. In
such environment fiction for fiction's sake may well have
seemed to Sienkiewicz, as to his fellows, fit only for his aver-
sion, the decadent and the dilettante. Still less could he re-
strain his native abundance within the canon of the problem
novel. Why contemplate too steadily problems it is forbidden
to solve? His regenerative service must be a contribution to
national fiction, wholesome, sound and vigorous, '*for the
strengthening of hearts." "Let us speak," said Bigiel, "not
of death but life, and of that which is best in it, health." '

In quest of health, and not in romantic rejection of mod-
em reality, Sienkiewicz made the frequent reversions to the
past for which he has been reproached.

He has been little prone to salve his country's humiliation
by recollection of former glories, by the vainglorious and
elegiac retrospect which has enfeebled many a noble Polish
energy. To the Polish reformer, he has felt, less than to
another, is the regretful backward look permitted. He has
known — none better — the glamour of arms, the zest for the
old-time military skill, and the pride in Polish valor. But
he has had little heart to recall the spectacle of a speciously
triumphant Poland. The Knights of the Cross unrolls to our
vision the victorious field of Tannenburg but performs, with-
out passion, its duty of killing and slaying. On the Field of

^WkMpooU, p. 247, Boston. 1910.

* Children of the Soil, p. 130, Boiton, 1895.

Digitized by

Google

20 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ [April,

Glory achieves its plot before the glory begins. And the mas-
terpiece of the Trilogy prefers to end with the fall of Kamen-
yets, with the deluge of Turkish invasion barely resisted, rele-
gating to the perfunctory finalities of an epilogue the fame of
Hotin and Vienna*

Nor has he looked back, in the characteristic Polish style,
to complain at the age-long suffering of that Polish land
enriched by the blood of centuries. He shows her in her pro-
longed distress, oft-shattered breakwater of Europe against
oriental devastation, the stamping ground of sweeping hordes,
desolated by Cossack vengeance, raided by the perpetual
advance and retreat of Europe's preying armies. And the
repressed sorrow for that protracted discipUne, sorrow as
unsentimental as restrained, works at times to utterance, more
telling for its reticence. So heavily is fulfilled the curse read
in the dying eyes of the tortured Cossack, as he watches the
Polish legions passing by: ^'May God punish you, and your
children, and your grandchildren to the tenth generation, for
the blood, for the wounds, for the torment! God grant that
you perish, you and your race, that every misfortune may
strike you! God grant that you be continually dying and may
never be able either to die or to live! "

Nor has Sienkiewicz looked back primarily to condemn —
to ascribe to Poland's improvidence the responsibility for
her failure. His corrective criticism he has given, to be sure,
with candor and without abatement. Unblinking as history,
he has interpreted her suffering as no Messianic sacrifice, but
as retribution, however heavy, for her own sins. For always
the work of Sienkiewicz, from With Fire and Sword to Whirl-
pools, presents a frank study of the Polish character. He
shows it in its generosities — its gusto and its magnanimity,
its capacity for high devotion, its passions sensitive and
intense. He reveals with a no less thorough discernment the
springs of its weakness — its penchant for evasion and self-
deception, its denial of fact, its indolence and its indulgences.
There is the civic irresponsibility of magnates condemning in
advance to ruin all expended good — the spectacle of a
Vishnyevetski denied the leadership lest he lead too well, a
Voevoda of Vityebsk losing for a feast a precious military
opportunity, a Boguslav Radzivill pulling, in shameless rivalry
with foreign traitors, for his share of the red cloth, the com-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 21

monwealth. There is the turbulent Schlachta stirred to aim-
less mutiny or to accidental veto by some chance Zagloba.
There is the instability of a whole people stampeding from
frontier to frontier, following with equal ease a wind of hero-
ism or a wind of panic. But Sienkiewicz does not dissect the
faults of his countrymen for the love of censure.

Rather with a hope deliberate and daring has he turned
back for the comfort of a faint-hearted present to discover in
a past, acknowledged corrupt, the springs of national energy.
Boldly, therefore, he chose for the epic background of his
Trilogy, that master creation of his prime vigor. With Fire and
Sword, The Deluge, Pan Michael, the otherwise dispiriting
narrative of Poland's seventeenth century, when the nation
was crumbling to patent ruin from outside attack and interior
debasement. But from these teeming records of violence and
treachery, of nobilities drifting unregarded, of sacrifice bound
to predestined waste, of private virtue deflowered by public
shame, one takes the impress of an energy wholesome, active,
unimpaired. Let the impotent busy themselves with their dis-
mal moral-mongering! Let those who lack coiurage find voice
for Jeremiads! "' Let us speak not of death but of life, and of
that which is best in it, health I "

The very romance of the Sienkiewicz novel is as healthy as
the wind blowing from the clean steppes. Here is a stir-
ring land of thrilling change and sweeping chance, apt for
Cossack glory and Cossack vengeance, for the hanker of Tar-
tar rapacity or for the stealing of brides. Here love is fair
as from the foundation of the hills, but tipped with danger
and quickened by the zest of hovering tragedy. Here, too,
with a superb literary generalship, are fought the recurring
battles, compelling in their mastery and their tingle of martial
enthusiasm, sufficient for the beguiling of any pacifist, how-
ever conscientious, if caught ofif his guard. Let him even once
watch Volodyovski at a duel, and like one of our novelist's
converted priests he will reach for the imaginary sabre which
ought not to be at his side. Here too, we must own, is a frank
brutality in the ungloved handling of horrors, an apparent
relish for their description which passes at times the measure
even of historical thoroughness. But brutality Sienkiewicz
would maintain to be far more respectable than the niceties of
fastidious decadence.

Digitized by

Google

22 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ [April,

For the essential art of Sienkiewicz, true to its principle
of health, has created its abundance from human nature's
great simplicities. Distrustful of a society subtilized and
world-weary, impatient of mincing refinements, he has sought
most willingly, even in studies of artificial environment, those
elementary emotions by which all men together rejoice and
sufifer. They are evident in beauty, frank and unconscious
where hearts are honest and grown to maturity in clear air.
His art at its best is developed by strokes bold and strong.
Thus for an early unpretentious work Charcoal Sketches was
an apt tiUe. And, with few exceptions, in the later plots
of ambitious scope the lines are plain, full, broadly sug-
gestive.

First among life's simplicities is the pity of it. And the
early short stories, keen with a cosmopolitan diversity which
flits from the triflings of the Riviera to the raw American
backwoods, are, in significant majority, tales of searching
pathos. The finest have always that pathos known best to
Sienkiewicz, for all his wanderings, of the peasant soul of
the Polish village, honest, stupid, inarticulate, faithful, caught
somehow in the trailings of the larger life above and around
which it is unable to understand. Such is the quality of the
unbearable Charcoal Sketches, tragedy of a cottage home
wrecked in the stupid village world, where a chance rascal
pulls the strings while the intelligent gentry hold aloof. There
is litUe Yanko too, the musician, weak thread of life in an
abortive body, slighted, disregarded, broken to death, but a
soul of exquisite harmony, and withal a helpless child.
Always the demand upon our tenderness is direct, even
obvious, but at best compelling, humane with the conmion
knowledge of the common grief.

Here is laughter too, hearty and^ ungrudging, breath of a
strong spirit in a strong body. It is the unquenchable utter-
ance of that interior humor, in which critics have felt Polish
literature deficient. Wit there is too in plenty, if we can
stop to note that by-product, always with Sienkiewicz, easily
superior, in its intimate sagacity and ofif-hand vigor, to the
bon mot of the professional amateur. But most considerable
contribution of Sienkiewicz to the fibre of Polish literature is
his distinctive humor, creative rather than critical, broad rath-
er than subtie. It is the unwearied relish for the simple traits of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 23

human nature freshly discovered with surprise, ever fresh in
the recognition of their truth. Whoso has followed the hud-
dling thoughts of Polanyetski dressing for his wedding, has
heard the antiphonal drunkenness of the Bukoyemskis, or
has seen the cowardice of Zagloba transformed by fright to
sudden valor, has witnessed a spontaneous humor, free play
of organic exuberance, rising by natural necessity like a clean
fire in pure air.

Here is love too in open frankness, a primary force. We
may study, if we will, its debasement in the toyings of a cor-
rupt Warsaw, degraded to a game of sentiment, wantonness,
and truant passion. We may watch it in Without Dogma,
the expense of a palsied spirit in a waste of shame. We may
trace in Children of the Soil its slow education in the bond of
marriage. But its characteristic appearance is in the energy
of a fresh and strong-blooded youth, where passion and devo-
tion are surging together in a robust mixture of reverence and
clean animalism, frankly physical, but offensive only to the
squeamish as the sign not of indulgence but of fecundity.

Here is the religious instinct. For the typical Pole has
still in his heart, we may suspect, some Chenstohova, shrine
neglected or belittled, but at the threat of hostile defacement
a rallying place for high devotion. Sienkiewicz, to be sure, has
written as the partisan for whom defence of Catholicism is
something more pleasant to him still, the best anti-Russian
propaganda. He has written besides as the assured reformer.
Knowledge alone could be potent enough to save his Poland.
And in the thought even of his atheist, Swidwicki, ** Knowl-
edge without religion breeds only thieves and bandits.'* But
there is more than intelligent policy in the revelation of that
Catholic worship shown rarely beautiful in souls genuine
and kindly — the priest Kordetski whose faith once removed
more than mountains in the Polish cause, the naif and strong-
souled cavaliers of old time whose trust undoubting was a
breastplate and a handy weapon. It is revealed most purely
fair in the hearts of good women in days new or old. It rests
serene and stable, amid the modem drift of belief and un-
belief, waiting for the moment of large experience to alter
life's proportions and to recall, within the modem soul, the
elementary need to bow down — an end to which, by the sug-
gestion of Sienkiewicz well versed in skepticisms, all flesh

Digitized by

Google

24 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ [AprU,

shall come. " Destruction takes all philosophies and systems,
one after another, but Mass is said as of old/' *

Here too is the love of the soil, instinct rudimentary and
universal, essential to the sound life of the Polish character,
homely comfort of the Polish heart. It is an instinct as nat-
ural as the return of the mole to his little burrow. Hence the
dumb tragedy of uprooted life at each upheaval of a peasant
home. Hence the tenacity instructed and reenforced, which
has magnified beyond calculation the life and death grapple
for the soil of Posen against illegal expropriation. Each social
theory must be, in the opinion of Sienkiewicz, partial or unten-
able, which regards the land only as an economic factor, and
not as the root of a profound affection. In this affection for
the " holy land " is the life of sober security, temperate, whole-
some, close to the ground, busy with the primordial labor, in
company with the very processes of growth. "That," says
the Marynia of Polanyetski, "is the real work on which the
world stands, and every other is either the continuation of it

or something artificial In all other relations that a man

holds there may be deceit, but the land is truth.'* And the
search of the Polanyetski family for the full endowment of
normal living takes them back at last to the country estate to
become " children of the soil." *

The sights and sounds of the beloved Polish land now
desolate, are never far from our direct vision in the pages of
Sienkiewicz. There are the fields fertile and grain-laden, the
lines of alders beyond the meadow stretches, the ponds golden
in the evening sun, the mists rising under the stars, the night-
ingale and the homelike frog, the cheerful surroundings of
quiet husbandry dependent, as of old, upon the harvest. From
such remembrance, Sienkiewicz, acquainted with wandering,
has given his share to the literature of the Polish exile. For,
from the lodgings of the Polish dispersion, has come perhaps
the world's most wistful poetry of home; and from the waters
of their many Babylons, the Poles have perhaps most tenderly
remembered Sion. Sienkiewicz, intimate with the dumb suf-
fering of the peasant heart has told in After Bread, with com-
passionate understanding, the story of the yearning emigrant,
helpless alike before treachery of agents, the misguided
efforts of eager benevolence, his own bewilderment, and the

• Children of the Soil, p. 272, Boston, 1895. « Children of the Soil, Boston, 1895.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 25

relentless mechanism of the strong Western world. A pure
image of the homesick soul is the lighthouse keeper of Aspin-
wall, weary of heart, leaf-tossed to a rest at last, who is
beguiled from his post by a Polish book and the words of
Bfickiewicz, dearest to the exile : " Litva, my country, thou art
health!-

But the cherished soil is but the substance of the thing
unseen, the country of the patriot's devotion. For her sake
good men and true are content with barren sacrifice and
unacknowledged labor. Cleaving to her and to the receding
hope of her public good, they leave father, brother, wife. Her
sins at least can be seventy times seven forgiven. Her ingrati-
tude, if hers alone, can be endured with pardon and serenity.
Theirs is a common desire — their mother, ** Poland as
they wish her to be." Theirs is a common discipline — the
preference of the common service to their personal and im-
mediate ambitions.

These who yearn and pray and laugh and love are folk
of a sinewy stock, with coursing blood and a tactile sense of
muscle and bone, emanating vigor and life. Sienkiewicz, how-
ever liable to critical rigors on the score of taste or tolerance,
is easily superior as the creator. Taught by experience vivid
and humane, trcdned in an apprenticeship of labor unstinted,
able by nature to catch character in the act, he built up the
power for the making of men. His production of later years
flagged, to be sure, the execution grown mechanical, the ex-
uberance slackened. But in the best work of Sienkiewicz, the
virile product of his first maturity, as seldom in fiction, the
word has been made flesh.

For our surest estimate as for our first delight, we turn
still, as of course, to the Trilogy, where the creative power,
educated in the school of the short story, was first let loose
for its ambition, the mastery of life in big units upon a back-
ground of epic scope.

From the crowd of faces fierce and strongly set, stamped
with the marks of force or of ferocity, rise to distinctness the
dignitaries of the historical background. They bear illustri-
ous names of forgotten lustre, come alive again from the old
muster rolls, each apprehended in his life-motive, good or
ignoble. Some few, like the idealized Sobieski, are touched
up with a romantic glamour to suit the heroics of the story.

Digitized by

Google

26 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ [April,

But for the most part they are big and plainly naturally, thrust
into a clearness just yet merciful. There is the traitor Lyubor-
mirski, drawn to honorable duty by an appeal with which
flattery is shrewdly mixed, but capable of the betrayal to
which he is destined by his nature and by the temptations of
the time. There is the lord of Zamost in his fortress, self-satis-
fied, unalterably complacent. There is the wreck of the noble
Radzivill, folding in upon himself the dark tragedy of his
lonely treachery and crumbling ambition.

But the immortal figures of the Sienkiewicz Trilogy are
not oppressively eminent. They are our friends familiar and
dear through the long companionship of the woven story,
strongly, simply revealed. We know them the better that
their traits are few. There is little Volodyovski, of insignifi-
cant figiu'e but most significant sabre, simple soldier, simple
lover, simple soul. There is his Basia, vivid, valorous, con-
fiding as a child, dauntless as a young Tartar. There is Jend-
zian, rosy and sleek servant, insinuating profit and suggesting
reward, faithful even to perfidy for the sake of his master
alone. There is the headlong Kmita, most winning of all the
young fire-eaters dear to Sienkiewicz, incredibly daring, in-
credibly devoted, "knowing not how to love or how to hate
with half a heart*'

And there is Zagloba, acknowledged master-creature of
Sienkiewicz, most lovable of blusterers, better at drinking
than Sir Toby Belch, more inventive of brags than Falstaff.
The comparison with Falstaff is as inevitable, as it has become
conventional. The two must go together. But Sienkiewicz
has perhaps claimed justly for Zagloba a better right to the
respect and affections of men. In his company, however, we
are not fastidious for virtues. We love him as he reprehen-
sively is — ^boastful, gloriously mendacious, fertile in lies which
hurry to mind so fast that he cannot always choose among
them, which grow in geometrical progression with time and
with his audience — ^wise in stratagem, valiant in extremity,
companionable, with his humor not over nice but as ready as
breath, clearest under the stimulus of fright. We love him
best, to be sure, in his faithful if sudden heroisms, in his
devoted friendships, in his inimitable understanding of human
weakness and human truth. It is a sorrow to leave him at
the last with the tongue grown quiet forever, cowering in

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 27

broken age by the coffin of Volodyovski, convinced at last
that he is old. Far more easily can we bear the ultimate
humiliation of Falstaff, babbling of green fields and thinking
upon God. Sienkiewicz dealt relentlessly by his Trilogy, to
quench its spirits at the end. For whether our good friends
of these pages are dead or forever out of sight, we take our
everlasting farewell of them with a sharp protest of per-
sonal loss. We have had '* an old custom to have them in our
feUowship.**

The superb vigor of the Sienkiewicz historical Trilogy has
drawn to itself a stress of appreciation, sUghting perhaps to
the remarkable modem studies. Though he has chosen for
his characteristic material the genuine stuff of large sim-
plicities, he has possessed a lively share of the Polish penchant
for analysis. He has known how to attack with relish and
comprehension the contemporary types of urban ineptitude.
He has portrayed, with protest but with masterly understand-
ing, the coterie of ** artists without portf oUos," the Bukovski
of Children of the Soil, collector and connoisseur, who having
dallied away his gifts, comes one day to die, '* having eaten
bread and not paid for it;'* the Sidwicki of Whirlpools, cynic
who defiles with venom the society upon which he lives;
Ploszowski of Without Dogma, who deadens the capacity of a
gifted spirit by the drug of introspection.

But even these scenes of futile eddy are but the setting
for the Sienkiewicz theme of health. Within the vapid trifling
of lives desultory or unclean, stands always, among types of
lesser beauty, one nature pure and regenerative, one true soul
loving and sincere, which, carrying in itself the principle
of growth, remains potent to cleanse. It is, by the usual mes-
sage of Sienkiewicz, the eternal soul of woman, created joy-
ous and clean of heart from nature's abundant fountains,
chastened to understanding power by experience sweetly
received. She is called Marynia in Children of the Soil, Aniela
in Without Dogma. She is the Hanka of Whirlpools, the only
spot of unconquered beauty in that desert of drifting sands.

Sound study of contemporary Polish society could not shirk
the political issue. Treatment of the theme by Sienkiewicz,
a Russian subject of the old regime, needed caution and
reserve, tempered by the patience which intellectual captivity
has taught the Poles. But the criticism, when it has appeared.

Digitized by

Google

28 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ [April,

has been all the more telling that it has not usurped the novel-
ist's consciousness to the loss of art's essential sanity.

Sienkiewicz has not wasted strength in unapplied hatred
of his enemies. Still less has he adopted the *' romantic " policy
of loving them. He did not wait for modem political criticism
to identify the German as the natural enemy of the Pole.
From his early work, he set forth with hostile candor that
stem and respectful animosity for the German which is the
most deeply rooted of Polish instincts. The Diary of a Tutor
of Poznan traces with even uncharacteristic vehemence, and
less than characteristic humor, the tragedy of a delicate Polish
boy suffering in the German schools from the handicap of the
unfamiliar language and the deliberate indignities of the
German discipline. The Knights of the Cross, that sombre
narrative of brutal, half-pagan days, has a theme selected, not
first by Sienkiewicz in Polish letters, for the chance it offers
to flog the Germans over the shoulders of the Teutonic
Knights. And Bartek the Victor, unbearable tragedy of the
Posen conscription for the Franco-Prussian war, casts more
pitiful enlightenment upon the blind cruelty of today's unwill-
ing mobilizations for service in the conqueror's army than a
dozen reports of Polish commissions.

Of Russian Poland under Tsarism, seething vortex of
opposing theories and restive discontents, Sienkiewicz gave
at last a political study sufficiently telling in his bleak and sor-
rowful Whirlpools. The narrative of modem revolutionary
confusions, tentative, lawless, ineffectual, is rather a mani-
festo than a novel. Here, for once in the Sienkiewicz mold,
fiction is stiffened to symbolism, by an analysis so thorough
and so sombre as to seem at times the finish of disillusion. It
raises a voice of warning weighted with prophecy, lifted in
a wilderness of drifting wastes. It is known for the authentic
voice of Sienkiewicz by its bold grasp of a complete civic con-
dition; by its sagacity keen but unyielding, by the consistent
set of a temperament conservative for all its liberality, hostile
to disorder; by its solemn and insistent summons to the pres-
ervation of the national hope as the superlative and single
duty.

Disdain for the inferior Russian bureaucracy, implicit
in the very silences of Sienkiewicz, despite his rally-cry to
Russian colors at the opening of the War, is in this book suf-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 29

ficiently patent This is ** the race which does not know how
to live and does not permit anybody else to live.*' Theirs is
the oflScialdom venal, retrogressive, stupidly rigorous, which
ties the hands of the generous and law-abiding, leaving ban-
dity and anarchy at large. Theirs is the galling check upon
popular enlightenment, through which alone the country is
to see salvation.

Nor are the Poles exempt from the arraignment. Through
the eyes of Gronski, type of a culture patriotic, liberal, but
helpless, we watch the frittering of factional energy in the
folly of counter-agitation. There are the National Democrats,
interpreted, as we should expect from the pen of Sienkiewicz,
as a force organized, patriotic, liberal, consistent, but thwarted
in effectual propaganda by the tamperings of irresponsible
opposition. There are the Conservatives favorable to the Rus-
sian entente, sensible, adroit, but short-sighted for far hori-
zons, ready like Esau to relinquish an ultimate heritage for
an immediate paltry benefit. ** And with us it is not permitted
to relinquish anything."

There is the bite noir of Sienkiewicz, the Polish Socialist
party, blamed for the sporadic violence of its desultory revolu-
tionism, assailed in its logic as *' national-cosmopolitan,'* de-
rided for its Russian affiliations. But the primary attack
accords with the dogma of the stout nationalist: that the strug-
gle for the national existence, risked and enfeebled by the
struggle of classes, was essential even to economic reform.
*' Our Socialists have undertaken the construction of a new
house, forgetting that we live huddled together in a few
rooms, and that in the others dwell strangers who will not
assent to it; or rather on the contrary they will permit the
demolition of those few rooms, but will not allow their
reconstruction.*'

Whatever the policy or theory under test, we have but the
spectacle of effort expended in vain. In vain the wary
reforms of benevolent landowners. In vidn the choice evolu-
tion of superior culture, destroyed like the fine flower Mary-
nia, in a moment of unmotived violence. A heavier condem-
nation still is implied in the moral failure of the youthful
Kryzcki, type of the kindly and progressive noble, proved
unequal to the finest test of discipline and self-control.
•* Neither love for woman nor for fatherland will suffice. He

Digitized by

Google

30 HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ [April,

will love them, and in a given case will perish for them. But
in life he will indulge himself." So ends, by a stern verdict,
the ancient leadership of the Polish noble : *' Such as he will
not rebuild society .*•

Before revelations so inexorable and so unpleasant, it
seems at times as if Sienkiewicz, in his later years, accepted
for himself the conclusion of his cjmic Swidwicki : " With us
there are only whirlpools. And these not whirlpools upon
a watery gulf beneath which is a calm depth, but whirlpools
of sand. And the sterile sand buries our traditions, our civil-
ization, our culture, our whole Poland, and transforms her
into a wilderness upon which flowers perish and only jackals
can live." But the true Sienkiewicz answers in the person of
the irrepressible optimist Szremski: "Beneath these whirl-
pools which are whirling upon the surface of our life there is
something which Swidwicki did not perceive. There is a

bottomless depth of suffering With us the people awake

in the morning and follow the plow in the field, go to the fac-
tory, to the offices, behind the benches in the shops, and all
manner of labor — in pain. And why do we suffer thus? ....
It would be sufficient for everyone to say to Her, this Poland
of whom Swidwicki says that she is perishing. Too much dost
thou vex me; therefore I renounce Thee, and from this day

wish to forget Thee! And nobody says that Jackals seek

carrion, not suffering So she lives in everyone of us, in

all of us together, and will survive all the whirlpools in the
world. And we will set our teeth, and will continue to suffer
for Thee, Mother, and we, and if God wills it so — our children
and our grandchildren, will renounce neither Thee nor hope."

Perhaps the unsentimental Zagloba would conunand to
make boots for dogs of such consolation. And, indeed, the
optimism of Sienkiewicz persisted upon a more palpable basis
than this restrained survival of the old Messianic dedication.
The policies may have failed in the nation of politicians; the
nobles, ancient staple of Polish stock, may have lapsed from
prestige. " There remains yet the solid multitude of country
peasants. Formerly Dobrowski's March was a watchword for
a hundred thousand; today it is a watchword for ten million."
And in Hanka Skibianka, peasant woman chanced upon cul-
ture, is incarnate that which was, before the mortalities of the
Great War, a hope sufficiently tangible for Democratic Poland.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ 31

She moves across the dark pages in a bright beauty able to
heal and to revive, a figure of power, radiating health, strong
to carry, brave to defend, young to endure, " with a heart of
a Polish village simple and faithful." She will achieve her
honor at the cost of sorrow; she will exact the reverence due
to her full womanhood; and when men think of her, they roll
up their sleeves for work.

By the preservation of such optimism, sustained how-
ever saddened, Sienkiewicz achieved the supreme contribu-
tion of his genius to Polish energy. Such faith, perhaps, would
be harder to sustain today. Hunger may, indeed, in the end
be strong enough to starve a nation which violence has been
unable to bleed. But by the indomitable spirit of his life-
time's work, Sienkiewicz sufiSciently vindicated the inherent
vitality of Polish culture. For it is the optimism of uncon-
ditioned vigor, conscious of its function.

** Because I come of a society in which so much power is
wasted," he wrote in an early essay, " every planned and com-
pleted work fills me with real respect, and has for me also
some wonderful and exceptional charm. Whenever I write
Finis, at the close of a book of mine, I feel something like a
sensation of delight not only because the labor is done, but

because of the sensation which comes of a finished work

A whole series of books, especially when written in the name
of a leading idea, is a life task accomplished; it is a harvest
home festival, in which the leader of the workmen has earned
the right to a garland and a song, *I bring fruit! I bring
fruitr"

And in this assumption of power and production, easily
accorded to the distinguished dead, is still a strong promise
for the hope of Poland. For we may accept for our " lucky
word" at the grave of Sienkiewicz the prophecy, however
qualified, of George Brandes, no great lover of Sienkiewicz,
but a good lover of Poland: " The future is not to the avenger,
nor,** altogether, alas, " to the apostle, but to him who labors
with genius."

Digitized by

Google

THE TOUCH OF EARTH.

BY RICHARDSON WRIGHT.

; NE day in January, some years back, I met a
gypsy. He was living in a flat in the heart of
Chicago's tenement district, he and his numer-
ous family, living respectably behind clean
i windows and pretty window curtains, with com-
fortable furniture and carpets and holy pictures, and all the
other material indications of permanent domesticity. To be
sure, his women folk wore brilliant kerchiefs and he himself
flamed at the waist with an orange-colored sash. Their Eng-
lish was good, quite good, and quite piquant with its accent.
Serbian, he said it was.

After a snack luncheon, eaten off a red tablecloth in the
kitchen, I asked him, " How is it that you can live in a flat? "

He chuckled behind his big moustache. '* It's not s6 very

hard. Today, the cold month " He shivered but a light

played up into his eyes. " Soon the trees will blossom. Then
I will blossom too!"

I went to look him up again — one day in April when I
chanced to be in his neighborhood. The apartment was occu-
pied by a family of slovenly and unimaginative Poles

He had blossomed! How true to the gypsy type, I thought,
and went my way.

Then last winter — ^February, to be exact — ^my work took
me to a group of women in a sn^all Long Island town. They
were members of a gardening club, and I was there (perish
the thought!) to talk about testing soils so that they would
know what seeds to plant and what fertilizers to use. The
subject was dull at best. I saw a dreary outlook. But — and
this I had not anticipated — they listened with a singular ardor.
In gratitude I told them of my gypsy.

"Yes, it's that," sighed one young matron in the front
row.

" And something beside," prompted an elderly woman at

her elbow. "It's the touch of the earth I can't explain

why, but it works like magic."

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE TOUCH OF EARTH 33

Here \eould I presume to explain why the touch of earth
is so vitalizing — ^why it works like magic. Why each year
more and more men crave contact with it. Why, as the years
creep on, one feels a hunger for it in his soul.

Three things bring us to the earth, and these three hold
us to it

Earth is the oldest thing in the universe, save the love of
God. Its traditions are unchanging, like the love of Grod.
And it is for the benefit of all men, the which also is the love
of God.

This earth has been hallowed by the three gardens He
made: The Eden that Grod planted eastward, the new Eden of
the Resurrection which we are told Grod has planted for us,
and midway the Garden of Gethsemane. ** We have lost the
first garden," says a saint, "" and have not yet att€uned to the
other, but the only way to it Ues through Gethsemane. The
first was the Garden of Innocence. The last will be the Gar-
den of Perfected Virtue; and between lies the Garden of Suf-
fering.**

In all three gardens He has labored, for His love has made
them. He was the first gardener. He will be the last. Be-
cause they are companions in that work, gardeners know the
magic that comes from Hid having touched the soil.

The gardener may oftentimes be a fool, but he will be a
divine fool. ^' Eyes and ears,'* said HeracUtus, '* are bad wit-
nesses to those who have barbarian souls.*' Most folk judge
by them and by them alone. The gardener judges otherwise,
for his is not a barbarian soul. Rather is it a reflection of a
divine paradox. Does not his plow scar the soil that he may,
in turn, heal the wound with flowers?

It is said of mystics that they all speak the same language
because they all come from the same country. So is it with
gardeners. They hear flowers that sound and see notes that
shine. Enraptured, they listen to the great fugue of succeed-
ing blossoms. Their harvest of joy is as intangible as the blue
sky above. It is an opening of the eyes which those who know
not the touch of the soil can never comprehend. " The tree
which moves some to tears of joy,'* said William Blake, " is, in
the eyes of others, only a green thing that stands in the way.**

▼QL. cm.— 3

Digitized by

Google

34 THE TOUCH OF EARTH [April,

The soil from which we sprang — that is the soil the gar-
dener touches. The soil which we can make to bear abund-
antly — that is the soil in which he labors. The soil to which
we shall return — that is the soil to breed his noblest dreams.
Because he is part of it, once one knows the touch of the soil,
it is to him as something of his own flesh, an alter ego, an abid-
ing companion, trustworthy if trusted, abundant if disciplined.
It is its fundamental, rock-bottom dependability, this inexor-
able regularity of crop growth and harvest, that holds a man
to the soil once he has known the touch of it And he yearns
for that touch as ever Lancelot yearned for a glimpse of the
Holy Grail, because it is abiding and in it is the healing of
ages.

Peculiarly enough, the traditions of the soil and of the
things that go with it have abided when many others have
been forgotten. There is the shape of farming implements.
The modern steel plow has no different shape from that used
ten centuries ago; the sickle has always been of the one pecul-
iar formation; the rake, the spade, the fork are all the same.
The advancement of science has not been able to improve on
the shape of these tools. It would seem that they were made
once for alL

Here is the sort of thing men cling to. With a world
turned upside down by war, with beliefs shattered and hope
endangered, men hunger for a touch with those things that
never change. The man whose hands hold the plow, holds
that which can defy the mutations of time and chance. And
even as abiding, is the law of the soil. In the garden nature
is at once both friend and foe. Weeds serve their sane, com-
mon sense purpose: the gardener must be eternally uprooting
them and in uprooting them he is forced to cultivate the soil.

Just as the life of man must be disciplined if it is to be
brought to abundant fruition, so must the garden know the
discipline of shears and the binding of cords. Something of
the same painful discipline that makes saints and martyrs,
makes the exquisite flower and the sturdy plant Lashed to a
stake like Joan of Arc, the consuming spirit of a rose blossoms
into unbelievable loveliness and gladioli strain flaming arms
to the sky.

Neglect this soil and it shall be visited with terrible pun-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE TOUCH OF EARTH 35

ishments. The Zeppelins of God's winds scatter destructive
weed seeds on every side. Nature scorches the soil with the
flaming liquids of her suns and scourges it with the artillery of
her hails. Vigilance is the secret of perfection in the garden.
This inexorable and inviolate law of the soil remains when
other laws are swept aside, and obedience to it is what works
the magic in men's souls. The radical of the world may theo-
rize on liberty and license, statesmen may talk of this and coun-
cils ai^e of that; the gardener knows only one law — disci-
pline. From start to finish he must impose discipline, and
even he himself is subject unto it. • The first frost finds his
labors ended. Vigilantly he has watched the metamorphosis
of seed to flower. The inexorable blow of winter reduces his
garden to a wilderness of withered stalk and blackened blos-
som. He who has disciplined the soil and withheld the way-
ward branch that his endeavor bear greater fruit, knows now
himself the discipline of the frost.

in.

Then, there is the democracy of the garden — the garden
which, like the love of Grod, is for all men.

You can no more make a garden to yourself than a man
can live a life to himself. Try to keep it beautiful for yoiu*-
seff alone, and see what happens — ^the neighbor, hurrying
by to catch his train of mornings, will stop to snatch a glint of
joy from those iris purpling by the doorstep! The motorist
will throw on his brakes and halt half way up the hill just to
see those Oriental poppies massed against the wall!

Nature is always on the side of the public. Build your
wall never so high, but her winds will carry the seeds of that
choice variety you reserved for yourself to a dozen difiTerent
dooryards and open fields, where they will blossom next sea-
son. Plant your hedgerow never so thick, but a vine will
stretch forth a friendly finger through it. Lock the gate never
so tight, but the zephyrs will waft odors of rose and hyacinth
and mignonette to every passer-by.

It follows, then, that a garden is a public service and hav-
ing one, a public duty. It is yoiu* contribution to the com-
munity. Not enough, is it, that law and order be preserved in
our conununities. Only the policeman with his truncheon
would stand between us and the caveman if law and order

Digitized by

Google

36 THE TOUCH OF EARTH [April,

were all we desired. No, it is the mark of civilizatioii that men
make beautiful gardens that the joy of the tulip and the colum-
bine can be shared with other men.

On the other hand, it does not follow that gardening
comes naturally to all men or that all men are adapted to it.
Gardening is not the sort of thing one *' takes up." Rather, it
takes you up. In some subtle fashion nature poiu*s a clea:n8-
ing ichor into the blood. One becomes her slave to do the
humblest task; her spy against pest foes; her ally for the work-
ing of mighty miracles.

Gardening is one form of God's hospitality, when He
permits us to be the companion of nature's moods, sharing the
poverty of her droughts and the plentitude of her beneficent
rains and sun. Such hospitality' is not easily understood nor
is it always graciously received. But once one has known it,
he cares less for other things. The eyes of the gardener are
usually the eyes of a man who stands before life as before a
great spiritual mystery.

IV.

^ Soon the trees will blossom. Then I will blossom too! "
Soon will come hours in the warm spring air when we
turn the soil and enrich it, when we plant the seed and culti-
vate the row. Hot summer days will come, and we will
breathe the perfume of myriad flowers and the sensuous rich-
ness of the seared earth. Dusks will be ours— quiet, mauve
dusks, when we shall sit around watching the countryside
darken into night and the fireflies hang their lanterns on stalk
and branch. Then the crisp days of autumn, with bush and
tree flaming by the dooryard and all nature consumed, like a
mighty hero, on a pyre of her own making.

I know of no pleasanter prospects than these, and I would
ask for none. Perchance in that Garden yet to be attained,
there will be hours more glorious and flowers of more sur-
passing loveliness. Therefore do I wait, content to touch this
soil that He has touched, and with these poor hands fashion a
garden where I may meet Him in the cool of the evenings.

Digitized by

Google

LABOR'S ASCENDANCY.

BY ANTHONY J. BECK.

[ORTENTS of great changes are seen in the sky of
the economic and social world. Eminent men
of all shades of political, economic and religious
thought, predict conditions essentially different
from those obtaining before the conflict of
nations. '*It is admitted on all hands," writes Cardinal
Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, in a recent pastoral,
" that a new order of things, new social conditions, new rela-
tions between the different sections in which society is divided
will arise as a consequence of the destruction of the formerly
existing conditions." *' The very foundations of political and
social life, of our economic system, of morals and religion
are being sharply scrutinized, and this not only by a few
writers and speakers, but by a very large number of people in
every class of life, especially among the workers." The army
is thinking as well as fighting, while the toiling masses at home
are ** questioning the whole system of society."

The CardinaPs prediction of " a new order of things " is
endorsed by Mr. Charles M. Schwab, President of the Bethle-
hem Steel Corporation. *'The time is coming," he said at a
dinner in New York, " when the men of the working classes,
the men without property, will control the destinies of this
world of ours." * Commenting on this remarkable statement,
the conservative Springfield (Mass.) Republican observes:
** The wars of the French Revolution established political de-
mocracy. This War will probably open the way for something
equally revolutionary and vital in the life of the world, Mr.
Schwab is warning the men of his kind to get ready." " Even
before the War," said a well-known man of business. Otto H.
Kahn, recently, ** a great stirring and ferment was going on in
the land. The people were groping, seeking for a new and better
condition of things. The War has intensified that movement.
It has torn great fissures in the ancient structure of our civili-
zation." This edifice "cannot be restored just as it was

* The Literary Digest, Febnuuy 16th.

Digitized by

Google

38 LABORS ASCENDANCY [April.

before. Some changes, essential changes, must be made. The
buildmg must be rendered more habitable and attractive to
those whose claim for adequate house room cannot be left un-
heeded, either justly or safely.''

Lord Northcliffe, who has the talent of sensing coming
events, declared at St. Louis last fall that when the fighters
return from the trenches, they will demand a greater share of
the rewards of industry. That they have richly earned this,
is the opinion of The Irish Rosary:* ** The War has brought
it home to the dullest plutocrat that the poor have an incal-
culable worth at a supreme moment. The greatest propor-
tion of the fighting and dying has been done by them

Without them all was lost The workman, whether skilled

or unskilled, will have a fit opportunity of insisting on a wage
that will enable him to keep his family in comfort.''

The London Catholic Times and Opinion,* which is not a
radical journal, believes that, as a result of labor's realization
of its power, "a new world is being born. This travail of
human society, which is happening in other lands as weU as
in ours (England), is seen clearly, is not denied anywhere in
the spheres in which men use their eyes. AU observers see
now that the entry of labor into politics began a revolution,
the first stage of which ended when the War forced our gov-
ernment to rely so fuDy upon the leaders of the working
classes and lean so heavily upon the loyalty of the working-
men of this country." The Times predicts that "the next
election may put labor in ofiSce and open a new era in the gov-
ernment" of England. " Such opinions are heard in quarters
from which labor knows it need not look for love." It is a
noteworthy coincidence that the British Labor Party is being
reorganized on a political basis, and that the American Fed-
eration of Labor, at its last convention, decided to enter the
sphere of politics.

The natural inference from the latter fact, is that in our
country also labor is claiming and acquiring more power and
influence. "The old order is changing," says Mr. Samuel
Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor.
" War has speeded up the change so that into a few months
have been crowded milestones that ordinarily it would have
required decades to reach. Employers have understood the

s December issue. 'Janiiaiy 14tti.

Digitized by

Google

1918.J LABOR'S ASCENDANCY 30

change. They know that their power over the lives of men is
dwindling. They know that under the new order, opportuni-
ties and property are being used for the conunon welfare of
alL The change has been brought about by the power of tools
in the hands of workers who know the indispensable charac-
ter of their work Certain employers are grasping after

their vanishing autocracy." *

But they will not exploit as easily as formerly the work-
ers whom this crisis has shown to be indispensable to the suc-
cess of a great national undertaking. Strikes in various in-
dustries brought home to us' the importance of the labor wheel
in our gigantic war machine. By appointing a mediation com-
mission to study the labor situation and by giving the protest-
ing workers guarantees that whatever grievances they had
would be adjusted, the President not only overcame several
crises, but also led the way to a just solution of industrial and
economic problems which cannot safely be ignored. The
measures taken by the Administration to make siu*e of labor's
codperation are both gratifying from the viewpoint of social
justice and an admission of labor's growing power. Note-
worthy in this connection was Mr. Wilson's address to the
Buffalo convention of Hhe Labor Federation.

In England, so we are informed by The Catholic Times,
the food controller has acted on labor's advice with reference
to food conservation and distribution. The Chicago Herald
points out that labor also played an important part **in the
recent recapitulation of the war aims and peace proposals of
the British Empire." The Premier's subsequent speech shows
marked traces of the principles laid down in this programme.
Besides being very deferential to the Labor Congress, Mr. Lloyd
George, in laying before it the government's proposals for
increasing the armed forces, submitted to thorough question-
ing. Evidence of British labor's confidence in its political
power is the appointment of a conmiittee on reconstruction
which drew up a system of representative post-bellum govern-
ment for the leading industries. " Labor," says The Catholic
Times, "has cut itself completely free from Tories and Lib-
erals.** Its programme of reconstruction " will take away the
breath of some reactionaries and reconcile them to the
thought of dying with the dying world to which they belong."

* Chicago Tribune, Febraary leth.

Digitized by

Google

40 LABORS ASCENDANCY [April,

This platform is to be submitted to the coming convention of
the British Labor Party. The programme is summed up thus
by the Philadelphia Inquirer: ** All things are to be made new.
.... Every form and kind of privilege is to be abolished.
Wealth is to be conscripted for the public welfare, and the
revenues derived from toil .... are to be equitably divided
among the laboring classes. A national minimum wage is to
be established by law and universally enforced; the whole
financial system is to be recast from top to bottom, and the
industries of the country are to be conducted on the coUective
principle, whose adoption the exigencies of war have to such
a considerable extent necessitated.'' Commenting on these
proposals. The Inquirer adds : '' Coming from a convention of
the Bolsheviki, these plans and purposes and principles would
have occasioned no surprise and invited little comment; but
their enunciation by an influential and representative body
of British workmen .... is a significant and momentous sign
of the times.**

While sympathizing with labor in its just demands for
recognition, in its striving for a proportionate share, not domi-
nation, in the management of national affairs, and while re-
joicing at the prospect that millions of workers will obtain a
redress of grievances, we must not close our eyes to the growth
of radicalism among the masses, and to the danger that the
pendulum may swing too far in the direction of Socialism.
Cardinal Bourne probably had this possibility in mind when
he wrote: " There are signs of trouble and disturbance which
are only very partially revealed in the public press but are
weU known to those in authority, and which portend the pos-
sibility of a grave social upheaval in the future." His Emi-
nence refers to " a small minority " " with increasing influ-
ence,'* who ** proclaim that the existing order should be over-
thrown and destroyed in the hope that out of the chaos and
destruction some better arrangement of men's lives may grow
up. It is a policy of which we see the realization and first
fruits at the present time in Russia." The Cardinal believes
that fortunately the majority of the English people are held
back from such " suicidal projects " by their practical sense,
if not by religious motives. Nevertheless, he considers the
dangers very real. That he is not the only one to view them
thus, appears from these editorial remarks in The Irish Ro$-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] LABOR'S ASCENDANCY 41

ary: ** A note of uneasiness is already being sounded by many
who think that private and public rectitude wiU show a fright-
ful decline when the worid has time to survey itself after the
War. We are to have, it seems, the unscrupulous rich and the
unrestrainable poor. Army service wiU have brutalized the
latter. Profit-hunting will have de-humanized the others.**

America, the Jesuit weekly, in quoting this warning ob-
serves: **No doubt the same social and economic problems
that Great Britain must face and settle after the War will have
to be met and solved in this country also. For our entrance
into the world struggle seems to be producing conditions here
which are similar to those prevailing in England and Ireland,
and it is none too soon for the wisest heads in the land to
begin considering how these evils can be remedied.**

The editor of The New World, oflBcial organ of the Arch-
diocese of Chicago, believes that " England is but a few laps
ahead of us in its development. The pendulum is beginning
to swing in America, though, it is true, very slowly. It must
be brought to a stop, at a dead centre, before it reaches an
angle as acute as that from which it is now being repelled.**
The New York Times considers it fortunate that Russia has
furnished ^an object-lesson .... to iUustrate the unhappy
working out ** of Bolshevikism. That unhappy country's cha-
otic condition will no doubt have a sobering effect on work-
ingmen clamoring for recognition. A United Press dispatch,
dated London, February 1st, quotes Arthur Henderson as say-
ing: "There's a revolution coming, all right The revolu-
tion will have the thoroughness of the Russian revolution, but
will avoid Russia*s disasters.** Though repulsive in its terrible
consequences, the Russian upheaval had such a quickening
effect on discontented masses in other countries before its
true workings became known abroad, that it is to be feared
its net result may be a stimulus to radicalism everywhere.
•*The Bolsheviki sentiment,** declares Mr. Schwab, the steel
king, **must be taken into consideration, and (that) in the
very near future.**

One of the most effective ways of doing this and of taking
the wind out of radicalism*s sails is to remedy industrial
abuses, to put industry more generally on a democratic basis;
in other words, to abolish autocracy where it blocks codpera-
tion for industrial peace and national prosperity. The need of

Digitized by

Google

42 LABORS ASCENDANCY [April,

this from even a business standpoint, was recently pointed out
by Otto H. Eahn. ** Business,** said he, ** must not deal grudg-
ingly with labor/* Business men ** must give to labor willing
and liberal recognition as a partner with capital.** Bifr. Kahn
advises business to ** devise means to cope with the problem
of unemployment and to meet the dread advent of sickness,
incapacity, and old age in the case of those whose means do
not permit them to provide for a rainy day.** He speaks like
an advocate of Christian social reform when he adds to these
fundamentals of social justice the exhortation to ** bridge the
gulf which now separates the employer and the employee, the
business man and the farmer.** He believes in translating
into action ^ sympathy for and .... recognition of the rights
of those whose life is now a hard and weary struggle to make
both ends meet.**

Such words and the spirit that prompts them, augur weU
for the future industrial understanding and arrangement
which, in the words of the Boston Transcript, "wiD save
America from anarchy.** In the interests of national welfare,
it is to be hoped that many capitalists who have indulged in
autocratic methods, will come to accept Mr. Eahn*s view of
the situation. His advice that labor be recognized ** as a part-
ner with capital,** is most gratifying. Adopted on a large
scale, it would spell real democracy in industry and knock
Socialism into a cocked hat. As Mr. Hilaire BeUoc pointed out
at length in his papers on The Distributive State,' the tend-
ency of modem social legislation has been to make the State
a kind of custodian of property, and to pacify the discontented
workers by granting them concessions which do not go to the
roots of social and industrial ills and problems. In an effort
to stave off Socialism, he argues, we have resorted to some-
thing like State Socialism. As the only practical, thorough
solution of the difficulty, he suggests means of gradually and
peacefuUy distributing property among larger numbers, and
of giving the propertyless worker a personal stake in ,the
means of production and distribution.

Cardinal Bourne seems to share Mr. Belloc*s view on the
drift of social reform measures : ** Legislation under the guise
of social reform tended to mark off all wage-earners as a defi-
nitely servile class, and the result, even before the War, was a

•The Catholic Wobld, December and January* 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] LABOR'S ASCENDANCY 43

feeling among the workers of irritation and resentment which
manifested itself in sporadic strikes/'

If the worker receives a living wage such as Pope Leo
XIIL demands in his famous encyclical on the condition of
labor, he will, under ordinary circumstances, not need old
age pensions and similar assistance from society. Leo XIII.
understands by a living wage a compensation '* sufficient to
enable ** a workman ** to maintain himself, his wife, and his
children in reasonable comfort." * '* For it is a most sacred
law of nature that a father must provide food and all neces-
saries for those whom he has begotten; and similarly, nature
dictates that a man's children .... should be provided by him
with all that is needful to enable them honorably to keep
themselves from want and misery in the uncertainties of this
mortal life. Now in no other way can a father effect this,
except by the ownership of profitable property." •This great
labor question cannot be solved except by assuming as a prin-
ciple that private ownership must be held sacred and inviol-
able." While the last sentences are aimed mainly at So-
cialism and intended as an argument for private property,
they affect the wage question. Moreover, the illustriohs Pon-
tiff adds: **The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and
its policy should be to induce as many people as possible to
become owners."

From this viewpoint it is gratifying to note the large num-
ber of stockholders in American industrial enterprises, rail-
roads, factories, etc., and the tendency to enlarge these hold-
ings among people with UtUe means. However, it must also
be borne in mind that, according to the findings of conserva-
tive economists of recognized standing and according to fig-
ures compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, millions of
toilers in this country receive less than a living wage. This
contention is strengthened by the following consideration:
only two or three million workers, probably less than one-
fourth of all our industrial, as distinguished from agricul-
tural, workers are organized. During recent years various
classes of organized workers have struck for higher wages
on the ground that their wages no longer covered the cost of
living. And yet the protesting workers generally receive from
thirty to fifty and, in some cases, one hundred per cent more

•No. 22 CathoUe Truth Sodetjr pnbUcattons, pp. 11, 40.

Digitized by

Google

44 LABORS ASCENDANCY [April,

wages than the average unorganized toiler. At a recent hear-
ing before the Government Wage Adjustment Board, the rep-
resentative of the western railways declared that all men with
families receiving less than one hundred dollars, ''must be
having a strenuous time " to make ends meet.

In spite of workmen's compensation laws, minimum wage
boards, women and child labor legislation, there is evidently
much room for social justice. Many workers are not pressing
their grievances for fear of weakening the country's military
efficiency. Most of those who have done so in spite of the
crisis, have obtained concessions, principally in the form of
increased compensation. Their success will probably make
itself felt after the War in numerous demands by other unions
and workers, unless the cost of living decreases considerably.
"Labor," says Mr. Gompers, "knows that the international
principles for which we are fighting (democracy, equal oppor-
tunity, etc.) have a counterpart in the normal relations
between man and man."

It would be idle to assume that living wages, decent work-
ing conditions, recognition of the fundamental right to organ-
ize, and' a general redress of grievances will solve completely
our industrial and social problems. Material relief is less
than half the problem. In recent years our country has
repeatedly witnessed the spectacle of the best paid workers
growing restive and threatening to paralyze vital national
agencies. Government investigations have revealed instances
where captains of industry reaped big dividends and paid low
wages. These experiences point to the great importance of
inculcating among large circles of employers and employees
the Christian social spirit. This duty is all the more impera-
tive in the interests of national welfare, as many millions of
our people have never had the good fortune to receive an
education in sound morals and, consequently, have no social
conscience based on moral responsibility to God for their acts
toward their fellowmen. The consequence has been law-
lessness on the part of workers and capitalists. Among the
latter it has led to unlimited, cutthroat competition, which, as
Cardinal Bourne points out, affected the whole industrial
structure. "The effect of competition uncontrolled by
morals," says His Eminence, " has been to segregate more and
more the capitalist from the wage-earning classes and to form

Digitized by

Google

1918.] LABOR'S ASCENDANCY 45

the latter into a proletariat* a people owning nothing but their
labor power and tending to shrink more and more from the
responsibilities of both ownership and freedom. Hence the
increasing lack of self-reliance and the tendency to look to
the State for the performance of the ordinary family duties.
While the constitution (of England) had increasingly taken
on democratic forms, the reality underlying those forms had
been increasingly plutocratic.^

In other words, political democracy is not by any means
always synonymous with democracy in industry. If autocracy
in industry has been promoted by ^ competition uncontrolled
by morals,** then the way to remove effectively grievances
and to *^ bridge the gulf which now separates the employer
and the employee,*' consists in restraining competition in
accordance with a sound system of economic and business
morals. Economic liberalism, which lies at the root of cap-
italistic abuses, must be replaced by the spirit of Christian
solidarity, which induces each class to consider itself part
of an inseparable whole and to seek its welfare by promoting
that of the entire connnonwealth. The Springfield Republic
can indirectly admits this, when it boasts that the religious
revolution of the sixteenth century " left a free field for mod-
em individualism and industrialism.** Here we have a proof
of Pope Leo*s contention: ** All the striving of men will be in

vain if they leave out the Church It is the Church that

proclaims from the Gospel those teachings by which the con-
flict can be put an end to, or at least made far less bitter.'* To
promote right conduct she has special powers. ** They alone
can touch the innermost heart and conscience, and bring men
to act from a motive of duty." The Church teaches the rich
man to make the right use of his possessions, to pay a living
wage, to recognize the right of his employees to organize, etc.
She also impresses on the workers the duty of giving a full
day's work for a living wage.

Hence, the practical citizen who has some grasp of our
industrial situation and its true causes, will not only agitate for
a minimum wage, for workmen*s compensation, sickness in-
surance, sanitary working conditions, the eight-hour day, and
other things to be obtained by means of legislation; he will
also disseminate the Christian truths which foster social jus-
tice, genuine industrial progress, and national prosperity.

Digitized by

Google

46 WHEN THERE WAS PEACE [April,

Next to perf orming our full duty by the country in this crisis,
we can do nothing more patriotic than to help pave the way
for an early and orderly solution of great industrial problems
which vitally affect the well-being of the entire nation. We
must put our industrial house in order, if we do not wish to
run the risk of having it wrecked by radicals who do not exer-
cise discretion in the choice of means. The only effective
means to counteract the allurements of radicalism is a pro-
gramme guaranteeing prompt and thorough redress.' There-
fore, let oiu* slogan be: Christian democracy in industry!

WHEN THERE WAS PEACE.

BY LUCILLE BORDEN.

Had you asked me where I stood, I should have answered,

" GaUlee,"
For all the air was sweet with Christ-like peace, and the sea slept

quiet
Save at the shore where lapping ripples murmured lingering,
A gentle chorus raised in prayer.

Cliff's suntipped lifted, their primal Gothic lines prefiguring.
Then melted down to ribbons of pale beach.
Fishers' barks were floating on the water's bosom, waiting.
Out beyond the ebb and eddy of their keels stretched a long line
Of white, almost a moonpath through the breaking day;
And one might dream a Figure walking on the waves
Had left a shining glory where It stepped.
Then when the little boats drew near, the long white line turned

crystal.
Fish in abundance on the shore flashed, shimmering under nets.
What wonder that the picture rose of Galilee, the Twelve, and

One?
Only Sorrento, half adrouse, lay smiling at the dawn.

* ReT. J. Kelleher in The Irish Theoloifleal Quarterlg Review, January iMua.

Digitized by VriOOQlC

A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST.

BY CHARLES PHILLIPS.

I N the old days, before the War— that is, three or
four years ago! in the days when secret sailings
at night, or in the gray of dawn were unknown
— the departure of an American army transport
for foreign shores was a gala event. Those of
us who have witnessed such a scene, cannot forget it; whether
we were one of the boys on board, or one of the friends — or
perhaps one of the heart-stabbed mothers— left waving fare-
well on the pier, the picture wiU remain in our memories for-
ever: the huge white and yellow bulk of the transport at the
dock, its portholed sides towering high above the gathered
crowds; its gangways, amid the hum of voices and the tread of
feet, busy as a hive with the passing in and the passing out of
men and women, or freight and baggage; the marching ranks
of the soldiers filing up on the decks and down to their cabins
in the hold .... at last the pulling away — the cheers, the sig-
naling of hands and handkerchiefs, the fluttering of flags;
then the bright outburst of lively music (what a mockery are
its merry strains to many a heart!) as the band strikes up a
tune, and the transport backs slowly into the wider waters of
the bay, moving with that vast majestic serenity which only
a ship may possess — a gesture, as it were, so large and final
and impersonal that not all the clamor in the world, of voices,
of music and commotion and flying flags — and breaking hearts
— can turn it or distract it from its inevitable way. So did a
transport sail in the olden days. In a little while nothing but
a great moving bulk remained for our straining eyes to fol-
low, its decks lined with khaki-clad lads whose fast receding
faces and figures quickly faded to a far-away, pathetic blur;
and even the music coming over the water grew muffled and
mute at last on the freshening wind.

I.
On a certain bright April morning, years before the War
— many, many years, to be exact; for it was the seventh of

Digitized by

Google

48 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April,

April, 1541— the gay port of old Lisbon in Portugal was the
scene of such a sailing. Thirty-five of the army transports of
King John were departing for the far East; and to the blaring
of the royal trumpeters and the sweeter and more solemn
chant of farewell hymns, the lumbering vessels, masts ablaze
with color and blunt-nosed prows pointing down the waters
of the Tagus to the open sea, began their memorable
journey.

Though this royal fleet, bound for the Indian Colonies,
was primarily on martial service, bearing the king's garrisons
to their distant posts, it carried, nevertheless, such a heteroge-
neous concourse of human beings as never could be found in
the neighborhood of a transport in these later days of rigid
military organization. There was a small army of soldiers
aboard, it is true; but likewise there was a veritable host of
fortune seekers and adventurers, emigrants and colonists;
hundreds of the scum of Portugal, seeldng new seas to drift
upon; hundreds of others, more ambitious, in search of new
fields in which to conquer fortune; some even in search of new
and fairer opportunities than their native land had afforded,
to make homes for themselves and their families: all these
thrown together in one mad, anxious mass, and all these in
addition to the sailors of the crews and the soldiers of the gar-
risons; all these, and one other — a passenger whose figure
stood out amidst the noisy colorful scene, conspicuous and
striking, not so much because of his garb (which was that of
a priest, a common enough sight in those days of universal
CatholicHsm), but because of his face, his manner, his whole
carriage and bearing, which was at once arresting and mag-
netic. He was young, good looking, dark eyed, dark skinned,
with a mop of luxuriant black hair tumbling across his brow,
and a well-knit comely frame : a man just in the full bloom
of his young prime, just thirty-five years of age, in fact, with
aU the marks of manly maturity fulfilled in him and aU the
force and grace of youth stiU his. His dark expressive face
was alight with emotion as he bade farewell to the friends
who flocked about him, or busied himself in the moving
throngs, speaking here a word of consolation or encourage-
ment, giving there a friendly touch of the hand that comforts
with silent eloquence when words fall dumb. In all that pic-
turesque, moving tumult, whether trumpets blared or voices

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 49

were lifted up in song, whether soldiers marched or women
wept, he remained the centre of the scene.

The fleet sailed. One by one the sea took the ships to
itself. Lisbon's gay harbor fell silent. Europe faded in the
blue. And still, to the mind's eye of those left behind, waving
their farewells to the receding sails, that alert young
priestly figure, standing out on the deck, his hand upraised in
blessing, dominated the picture. As they turned away at last
and set their faces again to the city and the common course
of daily life, they talked of him, going together in little groups
to discuss his name, his family, the facts and gossip that had
come their way concerning him. And so also, on the ships
themselves, he was destined to be still the central figure of
the scene. Undreamed of hardships were ahead of those gay-
flagged transports — delays and wreck and disease, hunger and
thirst and death; and through them all this priest of the sultry
skin and the fine passionate eyes, was to move with the suc-
coring hand of a veritable saviour; was to share food and
water with the lowliest; was to give up his cabin, and even the
clothing on his back, to the sick and suffering; in short, was to
be one with them in their sufferings until they came to love
and worship him with the devotion men pay only to heroes.

But they did not wait for the dark hour of distress to ad-
mire him and look up to him. There was something so
soldierly, so manly, so human and attractive, about this strik-
ing figure in the black soutane, whose lot was cast in such a
strangely mixed company, that it was only natural that ques-
tionings and surmisings concerning him should quickly fly on
the wind, from steerage to steerage and from deck to deck.
Those who knew anything about him had the pride of the
initiate on them; others were not backward about supplying
needed facts. Who was he? What brought him here?
Whither was he bound ? And why ? Chaplain ? Missionary ?
Envoy? Ambassador? (He had an air about him, no deny-
ing!) Under orders? Or — as one of the irreverent, in a
jocund moment laughed off — ^just plain adventurer like the
rest of us? Gossip was rife, and legends blossomed full-blown
out of the speculative air, recounting who and what this gal-
lant-appearing gentleman of the raven hair might be. He
was of the blood — that was plain; yet none of your high-and-
lofty manners, mark you! See how he mingles with the men

▼01* cvn.— 4

Digitized by

Google

50 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April.

of the crew; how he spends hours with the soldiers cooped
up in their reeking cabins; how he walks the decks with the
officers. Is there any he would pass by? He talks navy with
sailors, tactics with soldiers, commerce with traders, home
ties with lonesome emigrants — why, even gaming with gam-
blers! Yes, even that! Only last night, hearing below-deck
the roaring blasphemies of a notorious gambler who was
losing heavily and cursing Grod for his ill fortune, did he not
go down to look on at the game — and even throw the noisy
feUow a handful of coins to quiet him, bidding him play them
for a change of luck? And did not the fellow, from that in-
stant, win everything? (Yes; and went to confession to the
padre the next evening, to boot!)

The young priest was a nobleman; that conjecture was
right. And he was both chaplain and missionary too; and
envoy; and ambassador; and under royal orders. His name
was Francis Xavier; he was the son of Don Juan de Jaxu, late
Councillor of the King and Lord of Xavier and Ydocin. He
was a priest of the recently-organized " Companions of Jesus"
— a Jesuit; a missionary bound for the East; a Roman am-
bassador, bearing with him briefs conferring on him full
powers of a Papal Nunciature; and an envoy of his sovereign,
John of Portugal, with royal credentials recommending him
to the good will of such august celebrities as David, King of
Ethiopia, and the kings and lords of the Isles of the Persian
and Oceanic Seas.

Thus did it happen that he was all that his gossips made
of him in their talk. But he was even more, this dauntless-
eyed young priest, whose eager soul shone in his fine face
with that magnetism which proclaims a lover of humanity.
The jocund irreverent was as right as his fellow guessers.
Padre Francisco was an adventurer too, like the rest of them.
He was in truth a pirate, a buccaneer.

In those days the color of romance put a glamour over the
world that made travel abroad a thing of magic, something
for only the high-hearted to venture upon. Rich argosies rode
the seas, bearing to the brightly flagged ports of Europe their
bales of costly wares, of silks and ivories, of perfumes and
spices and rare woods, of all the gems and treasures of the
Orient. It was an age of romantic fortune hunting and reck-
less adventure; of pirates and princes, of thieves and paupers.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 51

of splendor and degradation, of silks and nakedness. The
sweet fumes of the spices of Araby were in the nostrils of the
world, the heady perfumes of the Indies and far Cathay were
blown like a profane incense across the earth. This strangely
mixed throng of crews and passengers, of colonists and
soldiers, in which Francis Xavier, priest and genUeman, found
himself, had one thing at least in common — the lure of for-
tune to be found in the magic East.

Was it this, then, that Xavier also saw, through the shim-
mering smokes and radiant mists, through the rainbows and
the miasmas of the giddy world? Was it treasiu*e-trove and
booty that he too dreamed of and went seeking for? Was his
reckoning also of cedar chests packed to bursting with silken
marvels and curious jewels and golden ingots — a caravel of
wealth to bring back home with him to Portugal? No. He,
Francis Xavier, was never to retiurn to his native shore; he
knew it and he so chose. It was on something brighter, fairer,
more cosUy still that his heart was set; something that
gleamed and flashed through the sea fogs of the Indian hori-
zon with the beauty of celestial lightning, an unearthly love-
liness, an ethereal light. Soldier he was, yes; and adventurer,
and pirate, and buccaneer. But it was of souls that he was
dreaming — a vast, waiting host of inmiortal souls; the be-
ni^ted hordes of the Orient, sunken in pagan darkness, de-
graded, starved for the Bread of God, athirst for the crystal
waters of Christ's vivifying Faith. Yes, he too would be an
adventurer — an adventiurer of God. He too would be a for-
tune hunter — a fortune hunter for heaven. He too would ride
the seas and go plundering around the world! But souls
should be his trafficking; to purchase them for heaven he
would fling prodigally on the wind the sliining coins of love
for Christ, love for all humanity; even the red coin of his own
blood, if need be. That was his great dream.

In a time like this of the twentieth century, when trans-
ports cross the AUantic in a week or less, what would our
soldier boys think of spending six months on the water jour-
neying from home to their port of destiny? Yet even the six
months allowed for the passage of King John's garrisons from
Lisbon to Goa, in that year 1541, went by; and again a month;

Digitized by

Google

52 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April.

and again; and yet again; and stiU no port was made. The
journey actually took a year, from April 7, 1541, to May 6,
1542, so appalling were the obstacles encountered. For forty
days after leaving Sierra Leone the fleet lay in sweltering
calms, tossed almost to destruction by sudden gales, yet mak-
ing no headway. Packed in their steerages, nauseated by the
incessant pitching, or sick from putrified food and wormy
water, without sanitary conveniences, and flnaUy without even
sufficient clothing, the crews near to mutiny, the soldiery des-
* perate, the passengers panic stricken — thus was the fearful
passage made. The sufferings endured by Francis Xavier dur-
ing this terrible time were enough to break the spirit of any
but a thoroughbred. To his dismay, for instance, he found
that he, bent on sailing the seas wherever the cry of souls
might lead him, was the most wretched of sailors! For two
months, he was continuously seasick. At Mozambique, where
the fleet was forced to lay by in the winter, he finally fell into ~
a fever and delirium that nearly cost him his life. He was
bled to utter exhaustion in the effort to save him. How often,
in those darkest of all his days, his thoughts must have wan-
dered over the past, back to his childhood, his youth, his uni-
versity days — agoing over and over again the strange story of
his life. For it was a strange story, as strange, at least, as any
of our stories are, in their wonderful God-made adjustments
and their undreamed of human outcomes.

He was a soldier by very birth. He had been born amidst
the clash of arms, and had lived his first tendier impression-
able years under the frowning walls of a fortified citadel, the
patron of which was none other th&n the soldier-angel St.
Michael, clad in armor, with breastplate and lance. When
he was only six years of age the din of actual battle was in
his ears, in the Castilian wars that swept around his ancestral
home; when he was but nine, he saw the outer wall and the
gate-house of his own father's castle battered down and de-
molished in an attack. And when he was fourteen, though
stiU too young himself to take up arms, the taste of war came
even closer to him; for in that year his two brothers, Juan and
Miguel, were taken prisoner at the storming of Pamplona,
whose Captain, Ignatius of Loyola, stood powder-blackened
in the breach that the Basques had made, defending the walls
with his life, and falling only when his fortress fell. In due

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 53

time Francisco heard the thrilling story of that gallant fight
from his brothers, who had escaped from the enemy; but lit-
tle did the youth, listening to that exciting tale of war, dream
what storming of his own soul's citadel he himself was yet to
suffer at the hands of that same Ignatius.

War brought impoverishment to the estates of Xavier:
their lands were wasted, their rentals lost. But the family
was a proud and hardy one. They kept their heads. The
three boys lived a normal, healthy life. Francis was the athlete
of the group — a swinuner, a hunter, a racer, everything that
a boy ought to be. And he was proud and high spirited too,
with a hot temper and a quick tongue, and all the wann-
heartedness that goes with such human failings. And he was
ambitious. They were all ambitious. When the time came
for the boy to pass from his home tutoring to higher school-
ing, he set his heart on the best that the world could afford —
nothing less than Paris and the University would do for him.
So to Paris he went, his head up, his heart singing, and his
hand just a little flush with spending money. His elder
brothers bent on mending the family fortunes, stayed at
home, slowly rebuilding, reclaiming, adding field or orchard
to their harried estate; and regularly they sent money off to
Francis at his school in expensive Paris. But still his funds
ran continually short, and more and more his letters home
were demands for money. A time came, indeed, when he was
all but recalled from Paris and the money-spending career to
which it was tempting him. A family counsel was held over
the young man's ** doings;** his mother was almost ill with
anxiety. But he had a sister — ^how many a man, having his
fling and suddenly caught up at it, owes his saving to a loyal
sister's love! — and in the end her plea prevailed, that Francis
be let finish his education, whatever the cost. She had
supreme faith in the lad. ** These extravagances are only a
passing phase," she argued. ** Francisco will make good!"

Francisco, called to time, cut down his expenses; but it
was no easy matter. He had drifted in with a set that made
spending a necessity. There was one affair in particular that
was costing him a pretty penny, but which, now that it was
begun, he could not drop. He was having his family pedigree
legally established at the heraldic offices — an expensive busi-
ness, to be sure, but one that his youthful pride had demanded

Digitized by

Google

54 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April,

when he had entered the College of Sainte-Barbe and found
himself among associates with whom rank counted — ^whose
rank, though no better than his own, was patented and estab-
lished. So did his pride cost him the hard-earned money
sent from home.

Also the life he led cost money. It was the same life that
.students at universities the world over have lived since ever
there were universities. But the Paris of that time was a
Paris of such extravagant corruption as is unknown even in
these modem Babylonian days. Brawling and duelling,
philandering and the vilest of indulgences were the order
of* the day with the Parisian students — or of the night,
rather; with the day left for sleep and whatever meagre
studies could be crowded in. Francis swung into this life
as others did. He was one of the boys, joining them on their
nocturnal expeditions, seeing vice rampant with them, even
his own professor leading the roysterers. And though the
sturdy young Basque did keep himself pure amid all these
degradations, it was not so much because of spiritual convic-
tions or supernatural laws as because of plain downright fear
of the consequences. For he had seen more than the broad
fun of the thing; he had seen some of the rotten fruitage of
the sins conmiitted around him, the horrible diseases that they
engender; he had even seen one of his own teachers die in
corruption and agony as a result of his licentious ways. God
touched him that way; he was shocked and frightened; he
drew back. It was all the grace of heaven, of course, work-
ing in its own mysterious course; for there was his mother at
home, never ceasing to pray for him; and that sister who had
fought to keep him at the University — she was actually giving
up her life, body and soul, for him, dying a slow and agoniz-
ing death, suffering untold tortures, all for the saving of his
souL She was a living holocaust offered up for the brother
she loved. He was dearly bought! but worth the price I

After a long spell of this sort of thing, studies and friends,
periodical gay times and desperate economies, a new element
suddenly entered the life of our young Basque student. In
1529, when Francis Xavier had reached the age of twenty-
three, there entered the College of Sainte-Barbe one day a
poor middle-aged unkempt and shabby extern scholar named
Ignatius — ^Ignatius of Loyola; yes, the self -same captain who

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 55

had defended the breach at Pamplona agamst the elder
Xayiers ten years before. By strange chance — ^by the grace of
God — ^this new student was assigned to the same room occu-
pied by Francisco and his bosom friend Peter Favre; but if
the unlikely newcomer imagined that the brief bowing
acquaintance of a decade ago with Francis* brothers, was to
serve now as an introduction to the younger Xavier, he was
much mistaken. Francis disliked him; looked upon him as an
intruder, and one beneath him at that; refused to help him
with his studies; joined with the others in jeering at him for
his uncouth ways and conmion dress; hazed him; made life
generally miserable for him. Yet this strange Ignatius, this
soldier who had had the spirit to defend the walls of his gar-
rison with his blood, still persisted in loving his new and
scornful friend; and the time was to come when Francis would
love him too, and cherish him more dearly than life itself;
and obey him and submit his uttermost thought to him. So
the drama of their friendship was acted out, God knitting their
souls together all unknown to them — ^until the hour struck
when the flippant talk of Francis Xavier was silenced in the
presence of his odd companion; until the time even came
when that same Francis, still remembering how to spend and
to run into debt, was forced to accept from Ignatius the loan
of money earned by him at menial tasks about the college.
There was a surrender for the proud spirit of the Basque!
Surely the citadel of Xavier's hot young heart was falling be-
fore the onslaught of the quiet, patient Loyola!

But none of this was wrought quickly, by magic or mira-
cle, as in a tale. Human nature took its wonted course.
Months and even years were to pass to work the change. In
1529 Francis and Ignatius met. It was not till 1534 that Peter
Favre, the erstwhile room-mate of Xavier, returning to Paris
from a long absence, found his friend an altered man. Fool-
ish pride seemed to have gone out of him; the patents of his
family rank were become trivial. He prayed now, instead of
talking flippant talk; he did penance instead of running the
streets at night And he had fallen in love with My Lady Pov-
erty, the mystical bride of his Assisian name-saint. He had
surrendered to the Captain of Pamplona at last.

Yet had he changed so very much after all? Had his
warm heart turned cold? His eager nature chilled? The

Digitized by

Google

56 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April,

story that follows his capitulation to Ignatius shows him still
the same passionate-souled, affectionate, strong and tender
man, who could enjoy a good tale and a good jest, and laugh
with his fellows as heartily as ever — and love them as heartily
as ever, too; all the more capable now of loving friends, the
world, all of humanity, because he had learned the secret
of loving God. From the glowing heart of Ignatius he had
caught the fire of noble dreams. They were bound together
now as with bonds of steel. Soldiers they still called them-
selves; and when at last their friendship flowered into the
formation of their Company of Jesus, it was as a military
organization that it was planned and conceived, with Ignatius
its chosen captain — the nucleus of a mighty army designed in
their dreams to conquer the whole world with the fire and
sword of Christ's love and faith. And what a magnificent bat-
tlefield they chose! Jerusalem and the gentiles; the pagan
lands of all the earth, unto the uttermost isles of the sea; the
souls of Turk and infidel, heathen and savage, for their spoils
of war.

Francis was thirty years old when he left Paris and the
University. He was heavy hearted at that parting. What
man is not, going out forever from the walls that have known
all his youthful visions, all his young manly aspirations, the
whole story of his passing from adolescence to maturity?
Now, how those dreams had changed — from glory and honor
and family rank, to the wageless service of all mankind. Yet
how unchanged was his warm pulsating heart!

For the three years which followed in Italy — since every
circumstance imaginable arose to bafiDe the Companions* high
ambitions for soul-conquest in foreign lands — all the sufiTer-
ing humanity that such a heart could reach in hospital, in
home, in confessional and pulpit, tasted of its warmth and its
sweetness. At Venice, in the Hospital for Incurables, Francis
spent happy days comforting the suffering, easing the restless,
making beds, bandaging sores, washing beggars' rags, bathing
the leprous, digging graves and burying the dead. And all
the time his heart was singing in him! He was perfectly
happy; and his dream of vaster fields of toil still grew apace.
The lure of the Indies, catching the fancy of the world, was in
his blood too, now, and not to be denied. He too would be an
adventurer abroad; and though still the call did not come, he

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 57

bided his time in soldierly patience* joyfully doing the tasks
allotted to him while he waited.

When the call did come it was like a true soldier's orders,
with less than a day given him to make ready for his de-
parture. "Xavier," said Ignatius to his secretary — ^for Fran-
cis was now in Rome with his captain — ** you know that two of
our company have been ordered to India. Bobadilla is too ill
to go, and King John's ambassador cannot wait. You must

go."

** Certainly," said Francis Xavier. " At once. Here I am."
He was a real soldier.

The long year on the seas, or becalmed in stagnant har-
bors, drew at last to an end. On a soft evening in early May,
in 1542, over twelve months after they had set sail from Lis-
bon, the coasts of India were sighted by the fleet and the green
palms of Goa loomed darkly at sunset across the still water.
It is not hard to imagine the thrill with which the eager-
hearted Francis, standing on the deck of the flagship, beheld
that sight. Amid all the exultation of joyous reUef in that ex-
citing hour, no heart in the whole half-dead, half-delirious
throngs that crowded the gunwales of the transports, beat as
high as did the breast of Xavier. Whatever the consummation
to others: rest after the endless journeying, fresh water, clean
food, land at last and solid ground to tread on, to him it was
still more and more. It was the beginning of the realization
of his soul's desire. The gates of the forbidden lands were
actuaUy opening to him at last! They might move on their
hinges with an infinite tardiness but they were opening; and
he would enter! In his mind^s eye, all the panorama of the
pagan East, swarming with lost souls, spread before him like
a vast Chinese fan. What treasures he was to win, what glori-
ous plunder he was to pluck from the spirits of heathen night
to fling over the bright parapets of heaven! Here was the
battlefield at last — the Isles of the Sea, the Indies, the Orient;
a worthy tourney-ground for his soldier's heart. And beyond
lay conquests greater still, because even more inaccessible —
hidden China, shut in behind its fabled walls, an absolutely
forbidden land to the Portuguese adventurer of that day,
wherever else his fortune hunting might carry him. Even

Digitized by

Google

58 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April,

then, past the green pahns of Goa, the soul of Francis Xavier
was sighting and scaling those impregnable walls. Perhaps
in that very moment of landing that fair May evening, he set
his eyes on his ultimate conquest, the one final prize he was
to aim for. And if the sea, under the red sunset, flamed to an
incarnadined flood, may it not have been to him a mystical
sign of the red martyrdom he already craved in his secret
heart?

But it was not alone to die for God, if need be, that Xavier
had come on this adventuring; it was first of all to live and
work and fight for Him, as a soldier under orders, as a free
lance and a buccaneer of Christ. And so forthwith his work
began. The story of his life and adventures during the next
ten years, as he sailed the seas and penetrated the isles of the
Orient, surpasses any romance the mind of a fictionist could
imagine. Under the steady flame of brazen skies, in weltering
heat, through typhoon and tornado, shipwreck and sickness,
peril of the sword and peril of the sea, through fever and dis-
ease and weariness unto death, he passed gloriously, tri-
umphantly, tirelessly, his tremendous nervous force and seem-
ingly inexhaustible energy of mind and body driving him on
and on over almost unbelievable leagues of land and water,
ever quick with the burning rapidity of an unquenchable
flame, yet ever patient with a Godlike patience when tarrying
and waiting were for the service of souls or bodies. The mere
list of places he visited and the tribes to which he preached
would fill a book. Many a time his arm fell weary with the
happy task of pouring the baptismal waters on the heads of
his unnumbered children.

The organizing and administrative work accomplished
by Francis Xavier during this decade proved what a soldier he
was. He had the military mind. However much of a free
lance and adventurer he might be as he traveled the seas and
explored the isles to hunt out needy souls, when it came to
the management of the Christian missions in the East, which
was his stupendous task, he revealed himself a true scion of
the soldierly house of Xavier, endowed with executive gifts
of the highest and the power to lead and conmiand. Having
mastered himself, the mastery of others was a simple matter.
His work grew apace: providing for a native clergy and its
training; caring for the lepers; ^tablishing hospitals; purify-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 59

ing prisons; building churches; dispatching missionaries, re-
calling them, working out an orderly commissariat for their
sustenance — ^it was a colossal task in itself, and, with his own
far-reaching missionary labors added, it became a veritable
miracle in its discharge. Not only was he preacher and
teacher, but also he was civic reformer and social worker
wherever he went, raising up from sloth and degradation not
only the souls, but likewise the bodies of tens of thousands.
In one mission alone, where his coming had discovered noth-
ing but the most abject corruption, he left, in the brief space of
two years, some thirty thousand converts!

But whatever his administrative work, he still remained
the pirate, the buccaneer, cruising the deep for heavenfy
spoil. Thirteen times he, the worst of sailors, who could not
endure without nausea the slightest pitching of a boat, made
the skull-flagged six-hundred-mile voyage from Goa to
Comorin; from Travancore to the pearl fisheries of Ceylon;
from Malacca to Singapore; from Papua to the Cochin; into
the islands which he happily called "" The Isles of the Hope
of God,** on and on, backward and forward, he went his tire-
less way, until at last his journeying brought him to mysteri-
ous Japan, and to the very gates of forbidden China. Blithe-
hearted and happy, making friends with everyone, pirates or
traders. Mandarins or coolie slaves, daring, audacious, joy-
ously fighting at every turn the devil whose emissaries chal-
lenged him wherever his keel cut the sand or his foot trod the
jungle or the settlement — so did he go his triumphant way. At
Comorin it was the subtle fine-spun opposition of the Brahmin
and his castes that Xavier had to contend with; at Goa, the
corrupting indifference of a degraded Christianity, where
there was only a saintly Franciscan bishop and a handful of
the faithful to back him and support him against the on-
slaughts of the devil's hordes. For it was not alone the dark-
ness of native paganism, with its animalisms and its obsceni-
ties, that he had to fight; nor alone the slippery antagonism of
the dreamy Oriental sophists; but worse by a thousand times,
the open scoffing and sin-hardened indifferentism of the Euro-
pean colonies in Asia, where Christianity had become a farce,
where apostasy was a joke and marriage a vulgar jest, where
the violation of every moral law known to civilized man was
flaunted with brazen effrontery. This corruption of the emi-

Digitized by

Google

60 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April,

grated European in the Orient came nearer than any other
obstacle he encountered, to breaking the heart of Francis
Xavier. It was a double barrier set in his way, treason in his
own camp; for not only were there these apostasized souls of
his fellow-countrymen to win back to decency, but there was
the well-nigh invincible effect of their bad example on the
natives to overcome.

But there was too much fight, too much of the true soldier,
in the heart of the sturdy Basque for it to break, whatever the
pressure. Almighty God Himself was the only one to Whom
Francis Xavier would surrender — ^never to the devil of indif-
ferentism or*^of ignorance, or of his own bodily ease. So on
and on he went, winning victories, capturing his tens of thou-
sands, heaping up his heavenly booty of souls regained, still
preaching, teaching, organizing, reforming, cleansing the
filthy Orient, body and soul; on and on, flushed with victory
upon victory, yet counting still more and more, as time went
by, on the one great final conquest, China the Impregnable,
to the capitulation of which he was eventually to bring up his
best trained, seasoned forces. All these days of ceaseless toil,
of perilous travel, of daring venturing past the boundaries of
unknown lands, of penetrating into the very heart of the stub-
bom savage East, were not only days of victory in themselves,
but likewise days of preparation for the crowning drive which
was to put the climax of complete triumph on his long cam-
paign. That was his great objective, and nothing could daunt
him in his aim for it. The head-hunters of Borneo did not
frighten him, nor the cannibals of Sumatra, nor the insane
immoralities of Ceram. Nothing stopped him, nothing
daunted him; and so well-trained was his mind and his body,
so given to orderly and programmed activity, that the amount
of work he accomplished was almost unbelievable. Yet
through it all, with his brain forever teeming with dreams
and plans for the uplift and betterment of these lost worlds,
his hands forever busy executing those plans and making of
his dreams realities; his eager soul forever flaming with fire
caught from the topmost towers of heaven; through it all he
still remained the same human, tender-hearted, companion-
loving gallant who had won the hearts of his fellows at the
University, and had captured for all eternity the affection of
the austere Loyola; the same hardy adventurer who had

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 61

tramped the fields and floods of Italy or breasted the snows
of the Alps on his journey to Portugal, chumming along the
way with soldier boys, caring for the horses of the cavalcade —
he loved horses — and living the normal human life of a heialthy
high-spirited man. Sometimes he was very tired and very
lonely. He had a tender affection for places and persons;
always there was cropping out some evidence of his love for
this small village or that distant settlement where some happy
hmnan incident or some notable victory for Christ his Com-
mander, had brightened his solitary way. His love for his
friends was a thing of rock, inmiovable. His homesickness,
and his delight in letters from home, were pathetic. Once the
mail, coming after months of waiting, brought him no word
from his beloved Ignatius. He was literally prostrated by the
disappointment. Can you not see him, feel him, this mar-
velous, flaming, love-breathing creature of holy passion and
transcendant power, sweeping across the pagan night of the
East like a burning torch brandished in the hand of God?

Then the day came at last when the mightiest of his
dreams seemed about to be realized. The tocsin had struck
for his invasion of forbidden China. He who had thus borne
the torch of Faith for a decade along the horizon of the Orient,
kindling the fires of God in innumerable hearts, could be satis-
fied now with only the deepest night, the very heart of heath-
enism itself, through which to bear the illuminating flame.
Toward China his face had long been set; to China his heart
now ran singing ahead of him. Like Josue with his Jericho,
Xavier had marched tirelessly around the Dragon's walls for
ten glorious and fruitful years, leveling all before him, beating
his way up to the ultimate barriers, and mustering about him a
mighty host of regenerated souls whose prayers were to be
his invincible phalanxes in this final effort. He was at last
to enter the capital of the enemy.

He knew that the venture meant death; but he had no fear
of death: he even dreamed of the martyr's crown; but death
too soon, before his work was done, he dreaded; and he
dreaded, too, the possibility of wasting away his years in dun-
geons and chains — ^for the hideous prison tortures inflicted by
the Chinese on Christian intruders were an established fact,
d which he had seen actual evidence while caring for some
who had escaped. What he prayed for and planned was

Digitized by

Google

62 A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST [April,

work — ^fifteen or twenty years of work, at least — ^fifteen or
twenty years of glorious campaigning in the very stronghold
of paganism. Then, if God would be so good, promotion in
the ranks, to the high honor of martyrdom. But first, the big
campaign.

It was a happy day that he sailed from Singapore, after
months of heart-breaking delay, with the last of a thousand
obstacles that red-taped officialdom had put in his way re-
moved. Though his ten arduous years in the trying Orient
had added two decades instead of one to his age, and though
his fine mop of thick black hair was now turned snow white
by the stress of his long campaigning, the heart of ardent
youth was still in him, quick, like a soldier's before action.
Out to the high adventure he went, " over the top," bent on the
last redoubt, the topmost rampart.

Alas for a soldier's hopes! Though up to the very gates of
the Forbidden Land Xavier's Commander had now led him,
it was, in the end, only to change suddenly his orders, as sol-
dier's orders are so often changed, without a moment's warn-
ing or explanation. The Chinese coast was now in sight of the
ship that had brought him from Singapore; now he was
anchored at the mouth of the Si-Kiang, whose yellow waters
were to lead him up to Canton; and still delay upon delay.
He could anchor there, with the coast in sight, looming up to
invite and tantalize him; but no one would take him further.
That was too risky a business for even the most intrepid
trader. It was August; and then it was October — and he still
was waiting. Then the trading junks began to sail away, one
by one, leaving him every day more and more alone, and far-
ther and farther away, it seemed, from his goal. November
found him almost deserted and almost desperate, camped on
the little island of San-Cian, with no one but a Malabar serv-
ant and a young Chinese boy to keep him company, the while
he still contrived and schemed to find a way to reach the main-
land. Finally he succeeded in bribing a Canton merchant
ship to carry him across. His heart beat high again.

And then the new orders from Great Headquarters! —
sealed orders, brought in the night by the Dark Angel of Im-
mortality; release; no glorious long campaign; no Red Badge
of Martyrdom; no yearned-for China to be opened by his hand
to the light; only orders — and obedience.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] A BUCCANEER OF CHRIST 63

In a little grass hut on the coastal island, where now the
waiting soldier lay stricken to illness by the fever of delay,
Frands Xavier fought his greatest battle, conquering not
China, but himself, so that he might submit willingly, re-
signedly, joyously, to his Conunander's orders. To give up
uncomplainingly all his hopes, all his dreams, of victory, con-
quest, promotion — and that at the moment when they seem
nearest realization; to salute and obey instantly, and say in
his heart, ** Thy will, not mine,'' no matter how bitter the cost
— what more can a soldier do? Of him is demanded the great-
est of victories, the surrender of himself. So that night the
Basque soldier received his orders and obeyed, passing, not
through the Dragon's forbidden walls, but into the courts of
God's celestial capital. With only his crucifix to comfort him,
and only his Chinese boy to watch in terror over his last agony,
stripped of his hopes and his dreams he stepped forward to
render his accounting. But with him he took, not alone his
own fine soldier spirit, chastened, obedient, willing, joyous to
the end; but in his belt he bore such a rich plunder of immor-
tal souls, caught up from the darkness of eternal night, that
all heaven must have acclaimed him, as does all Christian
earth today, the model of models and the patron of patrons
for the man who would fight the battle of life in a soldier's
way: loyal and daring, audacious and fearless when it comes
to winning victories for his Commander; instantly obedient,
self-sacrificing, self-effacing, when it comes to fulfilling that
Commander's orders. He was a soldier to the last salute!

Digitized by

Google

AN APOSTLE OF THE ITALIANS.

BY JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., PH.D.

|F ever there was a social problem so complex as
to seem almost hopelessly insoluble and so
many-sided as to perplex and bewilder the best
intentioned, it was the welfare of the Italian im-
migrant in this country during the past twenty-
five years. Not only schools for the poor were needed, but for
the better classes as well, where they might find sympathy with
their national aspirations and character; hospitals also were
necessary to prevent the pitiable condition of sufferers com-
ing to dispensaries and city hospitals with little or no knowl-
edge of English and subject to being unfortunately misunder-
stood to their own detriment. The hard manual labor in
which their fathers were engaged, involving numerous acci-
dents, left many orphan children to be cared for, and in a
thousand other ways, also, these willing workers bearing so
many difficult burdens of the country, demanded sympathetic
assistance. The question was where would one begin, and hav-
ing begun how carry on and diffuse any social work widely
enough to cover these needs not alone in the coast cities of the
East, but everywhere where the Italian immigrant had gone or
had been brought by others.

Many people, even Catholics, feel that very little has been
done, especially by Catholics, for. the solution of this vast
problem, although it mainly concerns our Italian Catholic
brethren. Such a thought, however, betrays ignorance of an
immense work that has been developing around us during th«
last twenty years. The recent death of Mother Francis
Xavier Cabrini at the Columbus Hospital, Chicago (Decem-
ber, 1917), has emphatically called attention to the fine results
secured in this important matter by her congregation of the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Not quite seventy
when she died, she had established over seventy houses of her
religious. Her institute, less than forty years old, numbers
its members by thousands. From Italy, where her foundation
was made, it has spread to North, South and Central Amer-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AN APOSTLE OF THE ITALIANS 65

ica, as well as France, Spain and England. No wonder that at
her death, she was honored by those who knew her work as a
modem apostle whose influence for good proved that the arm
of the Lord had not been shortened: that He still raised up
great personalities to meet the special needs of the Church
in all generations.

Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini was bom at St. Angelo
di Lodi, July 16, 1850. Her parents belonged to the Italian
nobility. From her early years she gave evidence of devout
piety, and at the age of thirty undertook the organization of
a congregation that would devote itself to teaching especially
the children of the poor and of training school teachers. Her
first house was founded at Codogno in 1880. A series of
houses sprang up, during the following years, in and around
Bfilan, and her work having attracted the attention of Leo XIU.,
she was invited to open a Pontifical School at Rome. This sue*
ceeded so admirably, that the Pope saw in it a great agency for
the benefit of Italians all over the world. This great Pontiff
had been very much attracted by Mother Cabrini's character
and her enthusiastic zeal, which overcame obstacles that to
many seemed insurmountable.

Accordingly when the foreign missionary spirit developed
among her Sisters, Mother Cabrini, knowing the blessing that
always accrued to a congregation for missionary work, applied
to the Pope for permission to send her Sisters into the Orient.
Pope Leo suggested that her mission lay in exactly the oppo-
site direction. He recommended the Americas, North and
South, as a fertile field for the labors of the 'Missionary Sisters
of the Sacred Heart. Mother Cabrini receiving the sugges-
tion as a conunand from God, proceeded to carry it out. A few
months later she embarked for America with her Sisters, and
assumed charge of a school for the children of Italian immi-
grants which was opened in New York in connection with the
Church of St. Joachim.

Immigration was then at its height, the social problems
of the Italians were at a climax, Americans had scarcely
awakened to the need of doing anything, the Italian govern-
ment was aroused to the necessity of accomplishing some-
thing, but politics were blocking the way, and it looked
as though a little band of Italian Sisters could accomplish
very little. Yet in a few years it became evident that this

Digitized by

Google

66 AN APOSTLE OF THE ITALIANS [April,

mustard seed was destined to grow into a large tree whose
branches would shelter the birds of the air.

Mother Cabrini very soon realized that despite the im-
portance of teaching, there were other crying needs of our
Italian population that must be met if there was to be a solid
foundation for the solution of social problems among them.
Ailing and injured Italians needed the care that could
properly be given them only by their own. Seeing in
the celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the dis-
covery of America by Columbus, then impending, an aus-
picious moment. Mother Cabrini, in 1892, opened Coliunbus
Hospital in New York. It had an extremely humble beginning
in two private houses and with such slender support as would
surely have discouraged anything less than the zeal of this
foundress, convinced that she was doing Grod's work on a mis-
sion indicated by the Pope himself. Before long, the fortunes
of the hospital began to brighten, until now it is one of the rec-
ognized institutions of New York, situated in a commodious
building that brings it conspicuously to the notice of New
Yorkers. Before the outbreak of the War, plans had been
drawn for a ten-story building which should have been fin-
ished before this, and would have been one of the most com-
plete hospitals in the country.

But Columbus Hospital was only the beginning. Mother
Cabrini's great work of schools for Italian children of the
poorer and better classes, was not neglected, but it was now
evident that hospitals offered the best chance to win back
adult Italians who had abandoned their faith and to influence
deeply those who could be brought in no other way under
Chri$tian influences. After an Italian had been under the
care of these devoted Italian Sisters, it was, indeed, hard for
him to neglect his religion as before, and many a family re-
turned to the devout practice of the Faith when the father
had had his eyes opened to the practical virtues of religion by
his stay in the hospital. Hence, in 1905, Coliunbus Hospital,
Chicago, was founded under extremely difficult conditions.
For some time the failure of this enterprise seemed almost
inevitable, and Reverend Mother Cabrini's heart was heavy
at the prospect of her beloved poor deprived of skilled care.
She did not lose courage, however, and she was rewarded,
after a particularly trying time in which her greatest conso-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AN APOSTLE OF THE ITALIANS 67

lation and help was prayer, by the assured future of the
hospital.

A little later, a branch hospital known as Columbus Exten-
sion Hospital, was established for the very poor in the heart of
an Italian district in Chicago, at Lytle and Polk Streets. Five
years later, Columbus Hospital and Sanitarium in Denver was
founded and a few years later Coliunbus Hospital, Seattle. All
of these were in excellent condition, with abundant promise
of future usefulness, and healthy development at the time of
Mother Cabrini's death. This holy woman brought to the
service of her zeal for religion such good sound conmion
sense and business acumen and efficiency, as to call forth the
admiration of all who knew her and who realized what she
was accomplishing in the face of unlooked-for and almost in-
surmountable difficulties.

Municipal and state officials were often staggered at the
projects she undertook with apparently utterly inadequate
means at her conmiand, but after a struggle and hard work,
the abundant success she realized, opened their eyes to the
fact that here was not merely an ordinary activity but some-
thing so extraordinary as to suggest the assistance of a super-
natural agency.

Prominent officials in this country and in Europe, not
only in Italy but in France and Spain and England, had
learned to admire unstintedly the humble, simple, little Mother
of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart who at first ap-
peared a hopeless enthusiast, yet proved on comparatively short
acquaintance to be the most practical of women. In explain-
ing how she succeeded in doing things that seemed hopeless
to others, she was in the habit of saying: '' What do you wish?
3rou men who look at these problems have too much to do, and
then you want to do too much all at once. For instance, there
is no need of lengthy discussion as to the necessity for pro-
tection for immigrants, but what is needed is to put protec-
tion for the immigrant into eflTect. You see I do not discuss,
I find that there is a good thing that ought to be done. I set
myself and my little institute .at work at it at once. I do not
despair of finding the means with which to do it. I always
feel confident that somehow or other I shall always find them.
I do not know quite how it is that I find these, and others do
not, but perhaps that is because I am only a little nun whom

Digitized by

Google

68 AN APOSTLE OF THE ITALIANS [April,

nobody minds, and therefore perhaps I meet with less opposi-
tion and people are ready to help me." That was all that she
was in her own estimation, just ** a little mm," but under the
modest habit of a nun she possessed a soul constantly open to
aspirations and ideals, tenacious of purpose and ready to do
anything once she was sure that it would redound to the glory
of God by benefiting mankind.

A favorite expression of hers, often repeated to her Sisters
and often uttered even in her dealings with secular people,
was : ** I can do all things in Him that strengthens me." Her
entire confidence in God, her utter lack of self-sufficiency, her
constant confession that she was but ** a poor little nun," bore
her triumphantly over all difficulties. Her foundations remind
one of St. Teresa's journeys to make her foundations, and of
her character and simple-hearted confidence in tackling the
most difficult problems under conditions that seemed most
forbidding. One recalls the Spanish Saint's reply when told
that she was assuming a preposterous task in setting out to
found a house of her Order with only three ducats at her dis-
posal. The words are famous in the history of religious en-
deavor : ** Teresa and three ducats, can do nothing, but Teresa
and three ducats and God can accomplish anything."

Poor St. Teresa made her long journeys either on foot or
in an ox-cart. Mother Cabrini's journeys were made under
less difficult circumstances, but the length of them probably
made them at least as tiresome and trying as those of the Saint
three centuries and a half ago. Nothing could give a better
idea of the extraordinary vigor and marvelous power of action
of the little nun than an account given to one who knew her
well: ^ *' I came a month ago from South America. I am just
setting out for Chicago. After a f ortni^t there, I expect to go
to Los Angeles and probably not long after, I return to the
East, from there I shall have to set out for Italy. In the mean-
time, however, I must try to make it clear to the Commissioner
of Immigration that our Columbus Hospital is giving aid
directly to the Italians." At that time the statistics of the hos-
pital showed that over 100,000 Italians had been discharged
from it cured.

In the midst of her activities in North America she did
not forget that the Pope's recommendation had included all

^n Carroccto, January, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AN APOSTLE OP THE ITALIANS 69

the Americas, and so she voyaged to South Amepica m order
to lay foundations there. Schools were founded in Argentina,
in Brazil and then in Chile and Peru. Once she made the
journey ov^ the mountains from one side of the South Amer-
ican Continent to the other — and it must not be forgotten that
the Cordilleras are even hi^er than the Alps — on mule back,
running all the risks of that old-fashioned mode of travel.
Many a precipice's edge had to be passed on her sure-footed
little beast, and once Providence seemed almost to have aban-
doned h«». The animal disappeared with her over a precipice
and she was saved, apparently only by a miraculous inter-
vention. Nothing could diminish her zeal, nor quench her
enthusiasm for her work. Dangers and trials mi^t come, her
one idea was to accomplish as much as possible before
the end came, and the darkness set in and no man could
labor.

Her South American missionary labors were successful,
and she founded houses at Buenos Ayres, Mercedes and
Rosario in Argentina, at Rio de Janeiro and San Paolo of
BraziL On her return to the United States there came the call
for her Sisters to go to Central America. They tell the story
of h^ sending to New York for one of her Sisters whom she
had chosen to be the head of the foundations in Central
America, to come to her in Los Angeles. The good Sister's
train was delayed and Mother met her almost at the door
telling hOT that she was sorry for the delay of her train, but
now no time was to be lost. She must set out at once for
Nicaragua. There were very few words to be said, for it was
deeds not words that she loved, and soon the definite founda-
tion of a house in Central America had been made.

At the time of her death there were, as we have said, more
houses of her Congregation than she counted years, though her
work as a foundress had not begun until nearly half of her life
was run. It is said that as a young woman she had in her
zeal for missionary labor asked her confessor for permis-
sion to join an order of missionary sisters that would take her
far from home, so that home ties should count for little in
life, and should surely not disturb her complete devotion to her
vocation. Her confessor replied that he knew of none. There
were no missionary sisters in the strict sense of the word and
so Mother Cabrini founded the Congregation of the Missionary

Digitized by

Google

70 AN APOSTLE OF THE ITALIANS [April,

Sisters of the Sacred Heart, which has flourished so marvel-
ously.

Houses of the Congregation are established about Milan,
and at Genoa, Turin, Citti della Pieve, Monte Compatri,
Marsciano; and hospitals and orphan asylums in Paris, Lon-
don, Madrid, Bilbao, as well as other places in Europe and
here in America. The greatest extension of the Congregation
has taken place in the United States where, besides the Hos-
pitals already mentioned, there are schools in New York
City, the Villa of the Sacred Heart for children of better class
parents at Fort Washington Avenue, an orphan asylum at
West Park, schools in the parishes of the Transfiguration, of
St. Charles in Brooklyn, of St. Rita and the School of Feminine
Crafts in connection with the Chiu'ch of the Madonna of Pom-
peii. In New Orleans there are two schools and a large orphan
asylum; in Chicago, besides two hospitals, there is a school,
and in Denver, a school and an orphan asylum, as well as a
hospital and sanitarium. There are schools at Newark and
West Arlington, N. J.; Scranton, Pa.; at Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.,
and a school at Seattle which was the opening wedge for a
hospital founded later at this extreme end of the continent.
Mother Cabrini took advantage of the sale of a large hotel in
that city to secure it for this hospital.

Everywhere she emphasized the Italian origin and spirit
of her work. No wonder then that the Ambassador from Italy
deeply concerned with the problem of making the Italian peo-
ple here as happy and contented as possible, but above all of
keeping them from being imposed upon in any way, called her
his ** precious collaborator." "While I may be able to con-
serve the interests of the Italians," he said, '' by what I am able
to accomplish through those who are in power, she succeeds in
making herself loved and esteemed by the suffering, the poor,
the children, and thus preserves these poor Italians in a foreign
country."

In spite of her devoted Italian sentiments, she drew her
postulants from practically every nationality in the country.
Many an Irish girl, after looking into Mother Cabrini's won-
derful eyes, felt it her vocation to help this wonderful little
woman in the work she had in hand. She won all hearts to
herself, but only for the sake of the Master, and so it is that
in the course of scarcely more than twenty-five years, her Con-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AN APOSTLE OF THE ITALIANS 71

gregation counts nearly five hundred members here in Amer-
ica. It has some three thousand throughout the world, all
intent on accomplishing the social work that has been placed
in their care, and of solving the problems brought about by
the huge Italian immigration to the Americas in the eighties
and nineties of the last century.

When the Italians entered the War, Mother Cabrini,
by cable, mobilized her Sisters in Italy for the aid of their na-
tive country in every way possible. The houses of the Congre-
gation were transformed into hospitals and refuges for the
convalescent, as well as asylums for the sons and daughters of
those who had fallen on the field of battle. Her devotion to
her Italian people was so great, // Carroccio, or as it is called
in English, The Italian Review, published in New York, com-
pares her to Florence Nightingale, for what she has accom-
plished both in peace and in war. Nor may anyone who knows
all the circumstances of her work, deny that the comparison
is more than justified.

Scarcely more than a generation has passed, and Mother
Cabrini has thousands of co-workers and many hundreds of
thousands of beneficiaries. What will the fruit of her labors
mean three generations from now, if anything like the orig-
inal initiative be maintained? Only the future can reveal
the full significance of her story. One thing is certain, that
after reading the brief sketches of her life that have thus
far appeared, we may not doubt that God still provides the
necessary agents for great works. When needs are most cry-
ing, someone is raised up who is equal to them. When condi-
tions are at their worst, someone comes to find a way out of
the difficulties. After the pioneer work is done, its difficulties
are lost sight of by those who enjoy its results. But the pioneer
succeeds only by the personal immolation of self and the
ability to lead others to the same heights of sacrifice.

Digitized by

Google

ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA.

BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.

IV.

I HERE is a striking change of phrase in the twen-
ty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew. The Lord
employs two different modes of expression to
describe His Parousia or *' Coming.'' In one
instance, it is said: '* They shall see the Son of
Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great
glory; and He shall send forth His angels with the great voice
of a trumpet; and they shall gather together His elect from the
four winds."* In all the other instances — ^five in number —
nothing is said about this attendant f eatiu'e of " glory/' noth-
ing about ** the angels " or their assembling of the elect, but
simply that ''the Son of Man cometh,"^ ''the Lord shall
come," ■ or " so shall be the coming of the Son of Man." *

Has the word "come" the same unchanging sense in
these three forms of expression? Is there no difference be-
tween the pictiu'e of the Son of Man gloriously coming to
gather all the elect and the picture of the Lord's return to His
individual servants singly? Is the insertion of " glory " in one
instance, and its omission in all the others, a literary accident
of passing moment? When the " coming of the Son of Man "
was divided off from the " coming of the Son of Man in glory
with His angels" — did this halving of the quotation mean
nothing particular in the mind of a writer who took such
literary liberties as this, with a sacred phrase of prophecy?
Or — ^was the difference in phrasing purposely designed to re-
port the Lord as speaking, not of one event only, but of two,
perhaps even three? Questions th^se, which no scholar may
rightfully object to raising, so great is their bearing on the
whole course of New Testament interpretation, whichever
way the answer may eventually be found to run.

It is usual with Biblical scholars to take these varying

>liatt xxlT. SO, 31. >Matt xxlv. 44.

"liatt xxlT. 42, 46, 50. «llatt xxiv. 27, 37, 39.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 73

forms of expression as referring to one and the same event —
the Second Advent, the Final Return; and much of the baf-
fling mystery with which the whole Gospel is made to fill
comes for the most part from their having been so taken. But
what if this interpretation should prove itself iU-fonnded?
What if the Return be not the meaning either intended or
conveyed by the shorter expression: "The coming of the Son
of Man? " What if we should find that its point of reference
is histoid, not eschatology; the public inauguration of the New
Kingdom on the ruins of the Old, .not the consummation of
both together at the time commonly expected? What if it be
textually and critically capable of proof, that nothing was
further from the mind of St Matthew when he employed this
expression, than the thought or expectation of the Lord's per-
sonal Return?

It must be confessed that this exegetical possibility has
but little at first sight to commend its entertaining. A writer
who declares, to all appearances at least, that the Son of Man
will come in glory immediately after the destruction of Jeru-
salem,^ can hardly be presumed to have drawn much distinc-
tion, if any, between the inaugurated and the consummated
Kingdom. But is the twenty-foiu'th chapter of the First Gos-
pel self-interpreting? May not the discourse with which it is
taken up have the key to its thought and language in the chap-
ters that precede? And in any event, would it not be safer to
make a special study of these two phrases in the other por-
tions of the First Gospel before presuming upon our ability
to understand them at sight in the twenty-fourth chapter? St.
Matthew, interpreted by himself, is a safer guide to follow
than our own subjective impressions, or the whole host of con-
temporaries whose opinion he is supposed to share. Twice
already has he told us, through the contexts which surround
his borrowed phrasing, that surface indications are likely to
lead astray.* Somewhere, we feel sure, in the course of his
theme's unfolding, he will also give us to understand whether
two quite separate events were in his mind, or one only, when
he wrote of ** the coming of the Son of Man ** and ** the com-
ing of the Son of Man in glory," with the angels jn His train.

It is a most engaging quest, this study of the language of

•Matt xxlT. 29.

*Sf. Matthew and the Parousia. The Catholic Wohld, February and Ifarch,
1918.

Digitized by

Google

74 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [April,

St. Matthew and the thought which it shadows forth. Nothing
pertinent greets us in the first nine chapters of his Gospel.
Not till the tenth is reached do we find the " coming " men-
tioned; and the circumstances of its first mentioning are so
strange that many think it out of place — a dislocated docu-
ment. The Lord is warning His disciples to expect suffering
and persecution when they go forth to give testimony to His
name; and at the end of the admonition. He disbosoms Him-
self of this solemn assurance: ^ Amen. I say to you, you shall
not finish the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man come."^

What does it mean? That the Lord shall visibly return
to earth in glory, before His disciples shall have had time to
go through Israel, with His name upon their lips? There is
not the slightest indication from the context that such is, or is
not, the meaning, though many so interpret it, on the ground
that the obvious tenor of the words will bear no other read-
ing. But may not words, and these words in particular, have
a meaning the very reverse of obvious? Is it not well within
the bounds of the possible, if not of the likely, from what we
have already found in the two immediately preceding studies,
that the phrase may mean the fulfillment of prophecy in a new
and unexpected manner? In that case, an appeal to the obvious
would be the wrong way of going about its understanding,
since the clues of meaning are not in the words themselves
directly regarded, nor in the sources from which they are
quoted, but in the new interpretation which the Great Teacher
gave them — a fact to be determined in every instance, from
the context of the Gospel, not from the thought that went be-
fore. The proper attitude in literary circumstances like these
is to suspend judgment respecting the location and meaning of
the verse in question, until such time as it shall be known with
surety, from evidence elsewhere gathered, whether the lan-
guage here employed has old thought or new within its folds.
To proceed upon the supposition that the Lord's personal Re-
turn to earth in the near future must have been the idea which
St. Matthew had in mind when this mysterious verse was
written is to presume the equivalence of the two phrases: '* the
coming of the Son of Man " and the coming of the Son of Man
in ** glory" — the very point which is in dispute. Instead of
hazarding an impressionistic judgment, we shall leave this

*lfatt z. 28.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 75

text uninterpreted for the moment, hoping to return to it later
with a key.

Have we the spark of meaning that fires the train, the
kindly light that shinmiers through the gloom, in a couplet of
verses which we are now about to consider? ■ They impress
the searcher as of more significance to the present quest than
almost anything else in the First Grospel; and one of them has
about it all the beckoning invitations of a clue. The verses
occur at the end of an instructive context where the Jewish
preconception of the Messias comes into conflict with the un-
expected teaching of the Lord. Jesus is proving from the
prophets that He must go to Jerusalem, there to suffer many"
things of the priests and Scribes, when St. Peter, shocked be-
yond measiu'e at the mention of death as part of the Messianic
programme, undertakes to rebuke the Lord for this ill-be-
seeming utterance.* To the impetuous Head of the Apostolic
College, as, indeed, to all the Twelve, nothing could have been
more abhorrent than the thought of death in connection with
the Messias. It was opposed to the whole trend of Jewish
speculation, at variance with the popular expectancy, out of
keeping with the power and dignity of the Elect One, and at
odds with the current doctrine of salvation. Death? It sim-
ply could not be. The Christ, when He came, was to come as
its glorious overcomer, never, even for a time, to be subject
to its sting. The Christ, when He came, would put an end to
man's mortality, and reign forever at Jerusalem with the
resurrected Just. No violent hand of priest or people could
ever be laid upon the Anointed of the Lord, the Holy One Who
was never " to see corruption,'* and over Whom the shielding
mantle of Almightiness would forever drop its folds.

Imagine SL Peter's surprise, therefore, when the Lord in-
stantly rebuked him for not " savoring the things which are
of God, but those which are of men." Imagine his still keener
disappointment when the Lord proceeded to describe phys-
ical death, not as something to be saved from, when the King-
dom came, but as the very portal of entrance into everlast-
ing life itself. Christ corrects the whole Jewish conception of
death before His astonished hearers, telling them not only
that ^ he who loses his life for My sake shall find it," but also
that persecution and mortality are not to cease when the Eing-

•Ifatt zn. 27, as. •Matt zyl. 21-26.

Digitized by

Google

76 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [April

dom comes. These liabilities shall continue as before; and
whoso would remain in His following must take up his cross
in like manner and be prepared to suffer unto the end for His
name's sake. If St. Peter felt a shock of surprise at the
thought of the Lord's going to a death of shame on the wood
of the tree, his disenchantment was not lessened but increased,
when the Master exacted a like readiness on the part of His
chosen ones, as the price of then* discipleship, nay, even of
their membership in the Kingdom. Ignominy and buffetings
and f orf eitiu'e of life stood forth as His appointed portion and
as theirs.

It was in this tense moment of shattered dreams and col-
lapsed expectancies, of vanished glory and of looming shame,
that the Lord gave utterance to two statements which seem
to us to be leading lights. After asking '* What doth it profit
a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? "
Christ inunediately declares: ''For the Son of Man *shaU'
come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then shall
He render to every man according to his works. Amen I say
to you, there are some of them that stand here who shall not
taste death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His King-
domr *•

What is the textual relation of these two verses? Do they
connect the Lord's personal reappearance with His *' coming
in His Kingdom?" Biblical critics see no alternative to this
conclusion. The verse which describes the coming in glory is
introduced in the Greek text by a near-future verb; and this,
they tell us, is the clearest of indications that the author ex-
pected the Return at the end of the Jewish age. The argu-
ment seemed well-founded, until investigation sapped it of
all base.^^ The supposed near-f utiu'e verb was found to be a
verb of prophetical necessity instead, without any intended
reference to the nearness of the event described; and when
this fact stood forth in its truly leading light and import, the
accepted view of criticism lost one of its stanchest props.
Another prop vanished when the phrase, "end of the age"
was examined. Textual and critical considerations cleared
it of all association with the current thought of Judaism, nay,
established the fact of its re§mployment in a new and non-

"Matt xvl. 27, 28.

^St, Matthew and th0 Parouita, Thb Cathouc Woilo, F^nuiry, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 77

Jewiflh sense. The angels, it was discovered, are not said to
go f CNTth at the end of the age of Israel, but at the end of the
age of the ** Kingdom of Heaven," when its world-wide coiu'se
is nm.^' So that if previous results may be taken for pillars of
guidance in reaching a conclusion, the author of the First Gos-
pel had no intention of reasserting the eschatology of Palestine
when he placed these two verses alongside in the sixteenth
chapter.

But if the verses were not written to connect the *' com-
ing of the Son of Man in His Kingdom" and His *' com-
ing in the glory of His Father" — ^were they written to dis-
connect these two events and to draw a distinction between
them, not drawn before? It must be confessed that this is the
first thought which suggests itself when the supposed gram-
matical connection of the verses melts away in the light of crit-
icism. The dominating idea of the context in which the verses
are found is the new interpretation of prophecy by Jesiis.
The Lord is portrayed as opening up the Scriptures afresh to
the astonished Twelve. His corrective teaching is clearly in-
dicated by the words: *'From that time Jesus began to
show " ^* — a statement that would have no meaning, if the sum
of existing opinion was about to be reaffirmed. And the future,
as Jesus reveals it, is evidently not to the liking of His com-
pany; the new world-view not nearly so attractive as the old.
The Chief of the Apostles protests against the forecast of the
Master. He is manifestly disappointed at the thought of the
Lord's not coming in glory, at the thought that He is not to tri-
umph over His enemies, as all Palestine expected, but to be led
like a lamb to the slaughter, without opening His lips to com-
plain. And Jesus is evidently disengaging His new revelation
from the doctrine of the schools, when He rebukes St. Peter for
preferring the speculations of men to the Word of God.^^ There
is to be no exemption from death among His followers, no
inmiediate Messianic Reign of glory over all the enemies of
good.^* ^ If any man would come after Me, let him deny him-
self, and take up his cross, and follow Me For the Son of

Man shall, indeed, come, as prophesied, in the glory of His
Father, and then shall He render to every man according to

^St Matthew and the Paroueta. Tbb Catbouc Woslo, liareh, 1918.
»liatt xTl. 21. Micatt xtI. 23.

'"Matt xlx. 28, no contnidictloii of fhli ■tatement

Digitized by

Google

78 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [April,

his works/' even unto being ashamed of those who were
ashamed of Him and the word of doctrine which He brought^'

These two statements are connected. Three causative
particles tie them together in all three accounts, as may be
seen in the connective " f or*s " with which the verses are intro-
duced.*^ But — ^what is greatly to our present point — the
verse about the Lord's ** coming in His Kingdom " is discon-
nected from the verse about His Second Advent, and made an
independent utterance. All the reports so have it; grammati-
cally the case is beyond all doubt.*^ And, therefore, the scien-
tific conclusion follows that St. Matthew, in these two verses,
faithfully reports the disconnection which Jesus taught be-
tween His *' coming in His Kingdom " and His *' coming in the
glory of His Father." The Lord's own words themselves are
recoverable in the present condition of the documents, not-
withstanding existing opinion to the contrary.**

When the relationship of the verses in dispute is thus
slowly distilled from the surrounding context, tlie thought
which instantly appears is a continuation of the idea already
found expressed in the thirteenth chapter: the putting-off of
the coming in glory, and the deferral of the Judgment, from
the beginning of the Messianic Era to its close.** The Lord
is here annoimcing a doctrine that did not exist in the previ-
ous thought of Palestine: the doctrine of the Second Coming.
The Jew had been educated to no such forecast of history as
this. When the Christ came. He might disappear for a frac-
tional while; but that He would come twice — the first time to
establish the Kingdom, the second time to ** gather out of it
all scandals and them that work iniquity"'^ — such a redis-
tribution of events was neither taught nor expected by the
oflQcial theologians of Israel. It is a doctrine plainly not of
Jewry, but of Jesus, and the mere fact of its mention in the
pages of the First Gospel shows the un-Jewish character of the
teaching which is there set down. A suspect expression in the
thirteenth chapter,'^ another suspect expression in the six-

MMatt xyi. 24, 27; Luke iz. 26.

»liatt XTl. 25, 26, 27; Luke Is. 24, 25, 26; Mark vill. 35, 36, 37, 38.

» 'A(iiijv XiyQ &ii(y.— Matt xvi, 28; KaX IXrrcv aOTOl^— Mark viii. 39; Aiyta 8i
&li(viXce6c.--Luke iz. 27.

'^Theology of the New TeitamenU Stevens, pp. 150-166.

**Matt xill. 24-30; 36-43. St Matthew and the Paromia, Thb Cathouc Woild,
March, 1918.

tt Matt ziil. 41. tt auvrAtta toO oC^^c— Matt ziU. 39, 40, 49.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 79

teenth,'' have unfortunately kept this distinguishing feature
from the recognition which is its due. We have mistaken cor-
rective teaching for the old eschatology of Palestine, and con-
nected two events which Jesus and His disciples insistently
put asunder.

That the Saviour quoted the phrase about the ''coming
of the Son of Man in His Kingdom," to correct the beliefs of
His hearers, and not to make these beliefs His own, appears
even more clearly when we study the mental situation which
had to be met and faced by a Teacher of the new. The audi-
ence to which the Saviour spoke and St. Matthew wrote, shrank
from the thought that anything could possibly not happen
which had been divinely foretold to come. The persuasion
that history is the realization of prophecy, and that its course
can know no swerving from the path which the prophets drew,
stood like a sentinel truth before the minds of nearly all. Who-
ever undertook to speak or write to such an audience had to
address himself particularly to this persuasion and wrap his
new message, if he had one, in the old, prophetic language of
the Seers. He would suffer an instant challenging, did his
utterances seem to leave even a minor prophecy unfulfilled,
as the Lord Himself was, on a celebrated occasion, while com-
ing down with His disciples from the Holy Mount.^^

There was one prophecy dearer, perhaps, than any other
to priests and people, the non-fulfillment of which would not
be tolerated in any teaching, it was so inwoven for the Jew
with the word of God itself. This was the golden prophecy of
Daniel, which seemed to hold out the promise, that at the
end of the Jewish days, when the power of the " holy people "
was broken and their band dispersed, " One like unto a Son
of Man would come on the clouds of heaven, to receive
power,** and glory, and a Kingdom — a Kingdom in which all
peoples, tribes, and tongues should serve Him without end.'"
^ I beheld in the vision of the night, and lo, there came upon
the clouds of heaven One like unto a Son of Man; and He came
even to the Ancient of Days; and they presented Him before
Him. And He gave Him power, and glory, and a Kingdom;
and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him: His
power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away;

■ (UXXctv.— liatt xvl. 27. MMatt xtII. 10.

""Dominion," "sovereignly."

Digitized by

Google

80 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [April,

and His Kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.*' '* In the
eyes of a folk bred to look upon history as the faithful echo
of prophecy, Daniel's vision of the Parousia was bound to be-
come reality when the ancient seat of David fell a prey to the
heathen arms.*^

How was Jesus to prove Himself the fulfillment of this
prophecy, and how was the author of the First Gospel to set
Him forth as such? The Messias had been prophesied to come
at the end of the Kingdom of Israel; but as a matter of fact.
He had appeared early within the generation that was to live
to see it, and had ascended to the Father some two score years
before the Government fell. The point that needed proving
was the truth of the predictions concerning the Parousia at
the end of Israel's days. And when we turn to the pages of
the First Gospel, we find the '' coming of the Son of Man " six
times mentioned in connection with the destruction of the
City, or the generation then living "—exactly what we have
just been led to expect from a study of the audience and its
inherited point of view. The Pharisaic schools had mistaken
the closeness of events in prophetic vision for their nearness
in time, and Jesus was soon to apprise them of their error.
He who had not come to destroy, but to fulfill,** early assured
the people that "all things" relative to Israel "would be
brought to pass." •• Even some of those standing by — St. Mark
says the statement was addressed to the crowd — would
not be gathered to their fathers, " till they saw the Son of Man
coming in His Kingdom." The assurance is most categoric
and solemn.

But when we look with sharpened eyes into the structure
and running of the text, we find that an unprecedented thing
has happened : Jesus has divided the prophecies concerning the
end of Israel into two distinct statements, where Palestine saw
but onel Owing to that crowded form of predicting events,
which was characteristic of Hebrew prophecy and not meant
for close temporal sequence, Daniel was understood to say
that at the time of the end, " The Son of Man would be given
power, and glory, and a Kingdom." '^ Jesus omits the word
" glory " from the quotation, when speaking of the coming of
the Son of Man in connection with the fall of Jerusalem. He

••Dan. Til. IS, 14. •^Dan. Ix. 27. "Matt z. 23; xtI. 28; xxIt. 27, 37, 39, 44.
»Matt ▼. 17. ••Matt ▼. 18; xzlU. S«; xxIt. 34. nDan. vU. 14.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 81

omits it not only here in the sixteenth chapter, but in the tenth,
and twenty-fourth as well; nay, in all the six cases above
enumerated,'^ where the City is the subject of reference. The
only instance where the words ** power and glory " are men-
tioned together in the same verse is in the eschatological dis-
course, where the Lord is speaking of the end of the world as
distinct from the end of Israel.** Even in the much-misunder-
stood reply of Jesus to His judges: " From now on, you shall
see the Son of Man seated on the right hand of power, and
coming on the clouds of .heaven,** «* the word " glory ** is again
conspicuously lacking.

Why was the prophecy of Daniel taken apart, and its ele-
ments redistributed, in this consistent and studied manner?
Why did St. Matthew suppress the word ** glory *• in the six
recorded references to the time of the City's fall? Why does
he restore it to the text in the eschatological discourse, when
the event described is the Final Return? More pointedly still:
If the ^ coming of the Son of Man in His Kingdom " and His
*• coming in the glory of His Father ** meant one and the same
event, why did not Jesus say so in the sixteenth chapter? He
could easily have restored confidence to the bitterly disap-
pointed Peter by identifying the two " comings.** All the cir-
cumstances called for this reassuring declaration, if it was in
mind. But instead of connecting these two events, Jesus casts
them into two separate statements. He tells St. Peter that the
Son of Man will deal deservingly with His enemies and " ren-
der to every man according to His works, when. He comes in
the glory of His Father with the angels;** immediately adding
that this is not the coming which those about Him are to see.**
The near event which the generation shall witness is His
^^ coming in His Kingdom,** as distinct from His Return in
glory.

It is the Kingdom, therefore, not the Judgment, which
draws nigh. The distinction is clear-cut and unmistakable.
It is observed with scrupulous exactness from the tenth chap-
ter of the First Gospel to the close. Even the adverb " im-
mediately ** *• of the twenty-fourth chapter does not contra-
dict it, as investigation will later show. We are in the pres-
ence of a literary fact the existence of which cannot textually

"See note 28. "liatt xziv. 30. Mlfatt xxtI. 64.

"MMt xii. 27, as. ••Ifatt zzlT. 29.

▼OL. CVII.^-«6

Digitized by

Google

82 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [April,

be denied, and the importance of which it would be hard to
overestimate. No Jewish reader of the time would any more
fail to notice that the Lord had left the word ** glory ** out,
when speaking of His *' coming in His Kingdom," than an
American audience, familiar with the phrase, *'life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness," would fail to marvel at a
speaker omitting the word " liberty *' in a lectiu-e on the Con-
stitution.

In the light of the evidence thus far gathered, not to speak
of a vast deal more to come — ^who would dare venture to assert
that " the coming of the Son of Man," when the words " glory ''
or the "' angels" are not added, was ever intended to mean
the visible reappearance of the Lord? A prophetical phrase,
which has been divided for separate fulfillment, is not the
same in its connotations as before. When Jesus declares that
the " Son of Man shall come," as prophesied, " at the end of
the Jewish age," it does not follow by any means that He em-
ployed the language of prophecy in the Palestinian, pre-Chris-
tian sense. New ways of fulfilling prophecy were among the
wonders of His teaching. When he announced that '*Elias
had already come, and they knew him not, but did unto him
whatsoever they would;" *^ when He declared that the angels
would go forth at the end of the age," '^ He was using current
language, but not as currently understood. No one had iden-
tified the Baptist with Elias, until Jesus did so to the bewild-
ered Twelve; nor had anyone dreamt of extending the "end
of the age," from the last days of Israel to the close of an his-
torical era yet to be. Those who knew the quoted sources far
better than we, were struck by the newness of meaning which
Jesus gave them. It was a feature that wrung conmient even
from His enemies. The officers sent by the Pharisees to appre-
hend Him came back empty-handed from their quest, plead-
ing in excuse of their unaccomplished mission, that "never
did man speak as He," and on a topic related to the present
subject. "He would see them again," He told them, "after
a little while."" The Saviour taught the fulfillment of
prophecy in a way and manner to which neither priests nor
people looked; and all the scientific evidence thus far gathered
concerning His use of the prophetical quotation about the
" coming of the Son of Man " compels us to regard it as an-

•vifatt XTil. 12-13. "Matt xiU. 40-41, 49. ••John Til. 33-36.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 83

other effective instance of His novel manner of teaching. The
very fact that a distinction is made between " coming in the
Kingdom** and "coming in glory** proves conclusively that
existing opinion is not being reaffirmed by Master or disciples.
What the scholar finds reasserted is the fulfillment of the en-
tire prophecy of Daniel eventually, not at once. The part that
has reference to the Kingdom will be realized within the gen-
eration; the part that deals with the Messianic Reign of glory
is postponed. Jesus has lengthened out the crowded perspec-
tive of the Seers; and by so doing, has revealed the inner de-
fect of Palestinian speculation.

The signal fact in the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew is
the divided fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy there recorded.
Out of its three component elements — ^power, glory, and a
Kingdom^ — the Saviour selects the third for immediate re-
alization, reserving the full accomplishment of the other two
elements to a time when " the Gospel shall have been preached
in the whole inhabited earth.** *^ The third element — " King-
dom** — ^which Jesus thus made so prominent by quoting it in
severance from its companion element " glory,** meant a very
unwelcome prospect to a band of hearers whose daily bread
was the literature of the Seers. The omission of the word
** glory ** in the Lord*s references to the " Kingdom ** changed
the whole meaning of the " coming ** from love to wrath, from
'favor to destruction. The verb "come** in the usage of the
Old Testament, as they only too well knew, was associated
with the exercise of destructive power. " Stir up Thy might
and come to save us,** was not a favorable utterance when
divorced from the idea of rehabilitation, and set over against
the idea of " glory.** " Come ** meant here, as in many other
instances,^' a public show of mightiness, a didactic exhibition
of avenging power, which would strike terror to the hearts of
the wicked. And there is abundant evidence in the First
Crospel, as its thought develops, that this pedagogy of force
was the idea in mind throughout;^ nay, that the enemies of the
Lord themselves thus caught His meaning.^ In fact, the dis-
tinction between "coming in meekness*^ and "coming in

•Dmi. TlL 14. «Matt xxiv. 14.

•Ps. xllx- (1.) 8; Ixxlx. (Ixxx.) 2; Is. xl. 10; xll. 25; Ixvl. 15; Mai. 111. 1; Iv. 6;
Apoe. 11. 5; et poMMim,

«Matt liL 7; zxl. 40, 41, 43, 44; uU. 7; xxUl. 38; zxly. 2, 27, 37, 39.
«*lUtt zxi. 45; xz^. 60.

Digitized by

Google

84 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [April,

strength " is one which the First Gospel explicitly calls to the
attention of the reader.^'

When we examine the word *' Kingdom/' as here em-
ployed, we are brought to a like conclusion. Its primary and
original meaning is *' dominion" or *' sovereignty/' and we
find it frequently used in this sense throughout the Old Testa-
ment,^* and on one occasion, at least, in the course of the First
Gospel ;^^ nay — ^what is even more to the point, in the very con-
text of the prophetical quotation about the "coming of the
Son of Man in His Kingdom,** which the Lord is making from
Daniel. One instance will suffice to typify this usage: '' Gen-
eration and generation shall praise Thy works, and they shall

declare Thy power And they shall speak of the glory of

Thy Kingdom, and shall tell of Thy Power to make Thy might
known to the sons of men; and the glory of the magnificence
of Thy Kingdom. Thy Kingdom is a Kingdom of all the ages,
and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations."^
The parallelistic construction, italicized above, shows that
the word "" Kingdom " has reference to the dominion of God,
and the spread of its recognition through some deed of might
that will not be lost on the powerful and indiflTerent. In view
of which, is it too much to claim that Jesus employed the
phrase, ** coming in His Kingdom," in the sense of ** making
His sovereignty known by a public exhibition of destructive
strength " — the fully kindled wrath of the King Who " sent His
armies to destroy those murderers and to burn their City?" *•

Is not this the meaning of the threat that they would yet
'' behold their house left to them desolate? " *^ Is not this the
substance of the twenty-fourth chapter, and the reason of the
divided quotation — ^''the c6ming of the Son of Man" — which
we there find?*^ Is not this the explanation of the triple
warning of Jesus, not to look for the Return of the Mesaias in
person, when the press of the heathen arms overthrew the
power of the Synagogue and laid low the Jewish State?*' It
was wrath and rejection, not love and favor, which God would
show unto His people at the appointed time. There is no inti-
mation whatever of the Second Advent. Jesus is speaking of

«lf«tt xzl. 6; xxlU. 39, 38.

•Ps. cxUt. (oxlT.) 13; Pi. eU. (eiil.) 19; Dui. Iv. 31 (34), also In the Apoorypha:
Enoch IzxzlT. 2.

«vif«tt ▼!. 33. «P». ezllT. (esdy.) 4-6, 11-18. «lf«tt xxU. 7.

»lf«tt zzlll. 88. "Matt zziT. 27, 87. 89. "Matt zxIt. 38, 88, 98.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 85

His return in might, as distinct from His return in person; of
the putting forth of His ability to destroy, as distinct from His
visible reappearance in the glory of His Father with the angels,
to judge the living and the dead. It is a wonderful refutation
of tf>Tiftting opinion, a defiant challenge to the whole escha-
tology of Palestine, this omission of the word "'glory'' by
Jesus, in His divided reassertion of the truth of DanieFs pro-
phecy, that the Son of Man would receive '* power and glory,
and a Kingdom," at '* the time of the end.*'

Jesus does not say, neither does St. Matthew, that the end
of the Jewish age is to witness the glorious Advent of the Lord.
What both declare is simply that "'the Son of Man shall
^come,"* that the generation shall ""'see' Him 'coming' in
His Kingdom." Neither the word " see " nor the word " come "
can be released from their quotation-marks in this connec-
tion. Both are part of the prophetic citation; their meaning
depends on the sense which Jesus newly gave them; and we
have already shown that He raised the whole phrase to a new
significance. Daniel testified that He ''saw in vision" the
** coming of the Son of Man; " *' and Jesus declares that those
about Him shaU see the vision realized, so far as the " King-
dom " is concerned. The retention of Daniel's phrase about
the " coming of the Son of Man " is without any demonstrable
implication of the Lord's return to earth in person. The
escbatological meaning which the quotation had in Palestinian
literature has been transferred from the "coming of the
Son of Man in His Kingdom " to His " coming in the glory of
His Father with the angels" — a master stroke of corrective
teaching, not lost on him who set these two divisive verses
alongside in the sixteenth chapter.

Collateral evidence goes convincingly to show that the
Final Advent, the Lord's Return, is not the intended meaning
of the " coming in the Kingdom." In reporting this verse, St.
Mark does not say, as does St. Matthew: " Some of them that
stand here shaU not taste death, till they see the Son of Man
coming in His Kingdom;" he says: " till they see the Kingdom
of God come with power " •*— exactly the thought which we
have found St Matthew expressing. St. Mark, in other words,
plainly gives us to understand that the intellectual equivalent
of ** coming in His Kingdom " is the " Kingdom coming with

■nwi. yf$L 18, 14. »lUrk tUI. S9.

Digitized by

Google

86 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [April,

power.*' He translates for the general Western public what
St. Matthew sets down in the original terms of prophecy for
a people long familiar with this intricate mode of speech; nay,
not open to conviction through any other. St. Mark makes it
clear to the Gentile reader that the point of the thought is not
the Son of Man returning in person, but the Kingdom of God
coming with power 1

Coming in power, as distinct from His personal Return
in glory! Is not this what Jesus meant when he assured His
disciples that " the Son of Man would * come,* before they had
finished evangelizing the cities of Israel? " Is not this also the
thought which He conveyed in the divided quotation from
Daniel, when He said that **some of those who stood about
would not taste death till they saw Him coming in His King-
dom?" Is not this the meaning of the phrase, several times
repeated in the twenty-fourth chapter: ** So shall be the com-
ing of the Son of Man? ** Is it not also the solution of that age-
old mystery of the Fourth Gospel, where Jesus speaking of
John to Peter, declares : ** If I wish him to remain till I come **
— John alone of the Twelve lived to see Jerusalem destroyed —
" what is it to thee? " ** The reference in all these cases is to
the destruction of Jerusalem. This was very definitely a
/'coming of the Lord" in the old Testament sense of the
term,^ and it was most natural, aU things considered, that the
Evangelists should have used this consecrated expression when
referring to the fate of the Jewish Capital.

Everything thus far found points to one conclusion: the
new and de-Judaized interpretation which Jesus gave to the
'* coming of the Son of Man." The divided manner in which
the prophecy of Daniel was quoted; the fact that Jesus was
wont to announce the fulfillment of the Scripture in ways at
variance with official thought; the unprecedented distinc-
tion which He drew between "' coming in His Kingdom " and
^* coming in the glory of His Father with the angels;** the trans-
fer of eschatological meaning from the first of these phrases to
the second; the usage of the Old Testament, where the word
** Kingdom** is commonly employed in its primary sense of
" sovereignty,** and the verb " come ** has the meaning of " ex-
erted might;** the corroborative testimony of St. Mark, who
speaks of "the Kingdom coming with power'* — thereby giv-

** John zzl. 22. ** Romaxi9» SuKlay, p. 880.

Digitized by

Google

1918-] TO MY FAVORITE AUTHOR 87

ing us to understand that this is what St. Matthew meant by
the ** coming of the Son of Man; '* and last but not least, the
express confining of the divine wrath to the Jewish govern-
ment and Capital,"^ as distinct from the "" nation '' which is to
succeed to the Kingdom of God, when ** the stone rejected by
the builders has become the head of the corner" " — who can
ponder aU this evidence fully and still maintain that St. Mat-
thew meant the personal Return of the Lord in glory, by '* the
coming of the Son of Man? ^

TO MY FAVORITE AUTHOR-

BY S. M. Al.

Dear God,

Herewith a book do I inscribe and send

To Thee Who art both its Beginning and its End;

A volume odd,

Bound in some brief, allotted years,

And writ in blood and tears;

Fragments, of which Thou art the perfect, whole

Book of my soul.

Break Thou the sealing clod
And read me, God!

"Matt ill. 7; xzil. 7; xxiii. 37, 38.
"Matt zxl. 42-44. Luke xzl. 22, 23.

Digitized by

Google

ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGLISH.

BY KATHERINE BREGY.
III.

The Theatre of Experiment and the Story of
American Drama.

I ARRIE'S fancies of eternal youth bear witness to
a new spirit moving upon the face of the dra-
matic waters. They are of the literary drama,
surely; in a sense they belong to what we have
called the theatre of realism; and quite em-
phatically to the theatre of imagination. But over and above
this they open a little magic door leading straight into the
heart of a still later development, the theatre of experiment.
Now experiment may take the form of innovation or of
revival, it may work with the very new or the very old — or
both. That was the story with the recent renaissance of religious
drama in English — a renaissance which led by its own detours
not only to Monsignor Benson, Yeats and Laurence Housman,
but also to the more pagan symbolism of that extraordinary
Irish genius. Lord Dunsany. The quill of this soldier-dra-
matist has given us slices of symbolic life which are some-
where between miracle and magic. That is to say, he pre-
sents miracles not of divine mercy but rather of divine justice,
such as The Laughter of the Gods, A Night at An Inn, or that
little drama of tremendous and eerie power. The Gods of the
Mountain. These are among the greatest short plays in our
literature, and show Lord Dunsany as a transcendently grip-
ping and original genius of the more exotic type.

Another sign which he who runs may read, is the recent
revival of masque and pageant all over the civilized world.
Now, in every sort of civic or literary celebration, these forms
are conspicuous: and the ** Community drama*' has com-
mandeered the artistry of such poets as Laurence Housman —
who composed, a few years back, the St. Frideswide Pageant
for Oxford — and, in this country, of Percy Mackaye — ^who was

Digitized by VriOOQlC

1918.] ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGUSH 89

reqK>iiaible for the St Louis Pageant, and for the Shakespeare
tercentenary masque of Caliban by the Yellow Sands.

But nowhere is this experimental note more dominating
than in the impetus given to non-commercial Stage Societies
within the past few years. These groups of glorified amateurs,
or professionals of the more insurgent type, have really done
pioneer work in the cause of artistic drama. By means of
"little theatres,** "laboratories," "theatre workshops," the
colleges and dramatic societies, they have been able to ex-
periment with plays upon which strictly commercial managers
would hesitate to q;)end the large sums necessary for profes-
sional production. Sometimes their work has been superb;
sometimes it has been very crude; but almost always it has
been significant. They have dared to " try out " new methods
upon both old and new vehicles; they have proved the loveli-
ness which may be put into performances just for children —
and the abiding beauty of classic productions given out of
doors. The Elizabethan Stage Society, which brought Every-
man to this country, was one of the first of these ventures : and
it is not so far a cry as might be supposed from Mr. Ben Greet
to iMr. Stuart Walker. But, indeed, the little Portmanteau
Theatre — a most delectable experiment, which one hopes may
soon start anew upon its pilgrimages — ^has a distinction all its
own. It has stood, in the main, for a starry and spiritual ideal,
something as young and joyous and wistful as the apple blos-
som: while the investigations of too many of these experi-
mental stages have been rather into the gloom, the satire or
the decadence of modem art

The "intimate" theatre offers always a tempting field
for the one-act play, and in point of fact it has been respon-
sible for a large body of interesting tabloid drama. In Eng-
land this form has been perhaps less popular than in France
or Ireland; while in America it has attained to large vogue and
real solidarity. Mr. George Middleton has shown himself a
master of one-act plays dealing with the more subtle crises of
existence: but they are in the main too subtle and also too
"modernistic" for performance by Catholic amateurs. The
Washington Square Players and the Wisconsin Players have
each published a volume of original dramas, alike '"pleasant
and unpleasant." Mr. Brandon Tynan has written a powerful
little tragedy of strong Catholic atmosphere in Behold the

Digitized by

Google

90 ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGLISH [April,

Man. And among these younger one-act playwrights one recalls
the delicate fancies of Mr. Stuart Walker, the irony of Mr.
Philip Moeller, the picturesque vitality of Mr. Richard Beam-
ish, and on the feminine side the very experimental work of
Marion Craig Wentworth and Rose Pastor Stokes.

It would call, indeed, for explanation if our United States
had played no part in this revival of English-speaking drama.
In point of fact it has played a considerable part: although, for
various reasons, not so dominant a one as that exercised in
building up the novel of yesterday — or, let us say, the poetry
of today. And in spite of Quaker antagonism, the story of
American drama not only began with Philadelphia, but
through its infant days was very largely mothered by that
** grave, calnf, kind, old '* city, as Thackeray called it. There,
on April 24, 1754, was produced the first original American
play, Thomas Godfrey*s tragedy of The Prince of Parthia. The
second native drama, and the first comedy, was acted in New
York after the Revolution — that is to say, in 1787: this was
The Contrast by RoyaU Tyler, a Bostonian — and it acquires
additional significance as having fathered the long line of
stage "Yankees" who have since thriven in the American
theatre. Both plays naturally, were pioneer work; as were
also the historical dramas of William Dunlap, James Nelson
Barker (a Mayor of Philadelphia), J. Howard Payne, Richard
Penn Smith (another Philadelphian), George W. Curtis (a
step-grandson of Washington), and the romantic tragedies of
Robert Montgomery Bird, Nathaniel Parker Willis and others.^

If literary England, during the whole middle of the nine-
teenth century, were plunged into an abyss of dramatic nihil-
ism, it was scarcely to be expected that the young, much-strug-
gling democracy of America should excel in that art. Many
even of the best dramas produced here — as those used by
Edwin Forrest — are lost to us because of the actor's unwilling-
ness to have them put into print. But it is a noteworthy fact
that at leasj three of the few outstanding plays of that gray
interim were of American origin. George Henry Boker*s
Francesca da Rimini was one of these. It was played by E. L.
Davenport at the old Broadway Theatre, New York, in 1855,
and it has had many very successful revivals. Indeed, it is a

^See RepreMtntatlve American Plags, Edited with Introductioiis and notet by
Arthur Hobson Qalnn, Ph.D.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGUSH 91

play of quite robust power, and its blank verse, while lacking
the delicate finish of Stephen Phillips* version, is memorably
successful Another remarkable play of this time was The
Octoroon, an early treatment of the slave problem, which won
success on both sides of the Atlantic. It was written, of com'se,
by Dion Boucicault, one of the first Irishmen to become prime
minister of the American theatre. The third play was Rip'
Yon Winkle, in several ways the most significant of all these
early American dramas. It was founded upon a legend of
the soil, and it grew into its present form almost as gradually
and collectively as the mediaeval romances were wont to grow.
From the starting point of Irving's Sketch Book, Rip was first
transferred to drama in a version by John Kerr, played at
Philadelphia in 1829. It was later revised — an J revived — ^by
Charles Burke; then by Boucicault; and finally by Joseph Jef-
ferson himself, who immortalized the r61e.

So much for the early scenes of the American theatre.
The Civil War rang the curtain down upon them : and when
this curtain rose again upon Post-Rebellion drama, there was
evident a new feeling for realism and for nationalism. This
note was evident in the work of Steele Mackaye; in the rural
drama which was to prove so popular and which is well rep-
resented by the work of James A. Heme; and in such later
successes as Bronson Howard's Shenandoah, Aristocracy, The
Henrietta, etc. These plays belong to the 1890*s — so does Gil-
lette's Secret Service: in fact, that memorable decade was as
dramatically fruitful for the American theatre as for the Brit-
ish — ^in quantity at least, if not always in quality.

It gave us the early plays of Augustus Thomas, who stands
today almost as the dean of American playwrights. In Ari-
zona, Alabama, etc., he treated national themes in a highly
popular manner — ^just as in such later successes as The
Witching Hour he made use of popular notions of telepathy
or psychology. There are many moments when Mr. Thomas is
theatrical rather than dramatic in the finer sense: but he
knows his business, and may be depended upon for effect.

Mr. Clyde Fitch remains the American dramatist with the
greatest number of worthy plays to his credit. He did not, per-
haps, probe as deeply into the heart of life as Jones or Pinero
at their best: but when death came in 1909, he had already
touched upon many of its very real problems. His style was

Digitized by

Google

92 ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGLISH [April,

one of ease, of sparkle, of iiii>aiiity : his dialogue was brilliant;
his understanding, particularly of feminine nature, remark-
ably sane and true. Fitch dealt with a large variety of themes,
many of them highly sophisticated — Beau Brummel, Nathan
Hale, The Moth and the Flame, The Girl with the Green Eyes,
The Climbers, Major Andri, The Truth, The City, are but a
few of his titles. Yet he handled them in the main with deli-
cacy and sound taste, and proved a wholesome influence in
the American theatre. Another play of quite outstanding
merit, and somewhat in the manner of Fitch, is The New York
Idea by Mr. Langdon Ifitchell. It is a vivacious and pungent
satire upon our easy American divorce, and perhaps the most
perfect ** comedy of manner9 " our native drama l>as yet pro-
duced.

At the other pole of dramatic achievement is the deeply
serious work of William Vaughn Moody. The Faith Healer
is a study of abnormal psychology — The Great Divide a study
of conflict between the conservative East and the primitive
West, or rather between the civilized woman and the elemental
man. Both plays were intensely conscious of high spiritual
ideals : and both were worked out through episodes of almost
brutal ugliness.

Moody's plays were the prose of a poet, but they were of
aggressive realism. So, too, are the poetic plays of Percy
Mackaye, the guide, philosopher and friend of imaginative
drama in America. The Jeanne d'Arc once presented by Miss
Marlowe and iMr. Sothern, was one of his earlier dramas. It
is not, perhaps, entirely satisfying: but in all probability it is
the best version of the Maid's story yet put into dramatic form
in any language. For it is truer to history than Schiller's ver-
sion, it is more comprehensive than Moreau's Le Prods de
Jeanne d'Arc, while it is more impassioned than, and almost as
devout as, Monsignor Benson's noble play on the same sub-
ject. Mr. Mackaye is also deeply interested in modern prob-
lems, and in his eugenic play. Tomorrow, he applies, with a
good deal of delicacy, the ethics of the garden to human life.
His most celebrated drama is, however. The Scarecrow, a
work of highly original theme in which he gathers up many
of our earlier colonial witchcraft legends. He himself calls
the play ** a tragedy of the ludicrous," and he has created in
it a tense atmosphere of black magic. It is of course, the story

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGLISH 93

of a poor, imiM^ovised scarecrow given life — and finally,
through the magic of unselfish love, achieving a soul. Some-
what the same motive, the regeneration of Caliban, formed the
theme of Mackaye's Shakespearean masque mentioned above.

The highly poetic work of Josephine Preston Peabody
was discussed in a preceding paper as part of the revival of
religious drama. She and Mr. Mackaye are today the leading,
if not quite the sole, representatives of poetic drama in Amer-
ica. For the major contribution of the United States has so
far been to the theatre of realism rather than to the theatre
of imagination. Yet there is much imaginative fruit in the
Uttle experimental ventures awhile ago described. And there
was much, for example, in the plays of Mr. Edward Knoblock,
who was an American until, in 1916, he became a British officer
and citizen. The quality was alluring in his Faun, or Kismet,
or My Lady* 8 Dress — ^but in the vagaries of Marie-Odile, with
its mixture of pseudo-realism, it became ridiculous and to
the Catholic mind distinctly repulsive.

But the popular American drama of today, as has just
been said, is predominantly realistic in form. Edward Shel-
don in such plays as The Boss, The Nigger and The Highroad
has done work of serious purpose. Rachel Crothers has pre-
sented the " feminist '* side with real power and penetration.
Mr. Hartley Manners jumped into the sunlight with Peg O*
My Heart, and has since taken to the problems — ^war, and
drugs* and motherhood! He is usually timely and often pow-
erful; but he is an excellent exponent of the easy, latter day
ethics so popular in our American theatre, and so perfectly
expressed in the modem morality of Every woman:

Be merciful, be just, be fair,
To every woman every where.
Her faults are many — ^Nobody's the blame !

It is perhaps this disinclination to face the real issues of life,
to follow acts to their conclusion, which has kept our play-
wrights from excelling on the serious as they have on the
comic side. The dramas of Broadhurst or Kenyon or J. E.
Goodman or Bayard Veiller are always slipping over the edge
into melodrama — so are those of Charles Klein, although he
was able to produce one such beautiful and tender work as The

Digitized by

Google

94 ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGLISH [April.

Music Master. We have, to be sure, our dramatists who make
a point of being as scandalous as possible. But we have still
a large number who keep to the clean comedy of sentiment,
Mr, Booth Tarkington, Mr. Brandon Tynan, Mrs. Clare Rum-
mer, Mr. Winchell Smith, and that irrepressible exponent of
comic melodrama, Mr. George Cohan.

Everywhere now there is a cry of, ** New themes for old,
new themes for old ! ** American playwrights are today at a
critical parting of the ways. The play of pioneer life, the
Indian play, the Civil War play, the nu:al play with its male
quartet "draped" about the old oaken bucket, no longer
interest audiences. They have no longer any real relation to
their life or any real challenge to their imagination. Even
the "crook play" is happily on the decline — and the more
obvious form of melodrama has passed, with its creators, into
the happy hunting ground of the Motion Picture. So much
the better for legitimate American drama, cleared of false
sentiment and sensationalism! Material for it is rich and
abundant and on all sides. There are the problems which, while
belonging to all the world, have still taken on a particularly
national character : the welding of the races, the clash of labor
and capital, the clash of changing social conditions, of old and
new family ideals, the problem of divorce, the conquest of
great new forces all about us. Every one of these is big with
the dramatic element of conflict, scarcely one has had any
adequate treatment in the American theatre. And now the
War has brought to us, as to the whole world, the greatest of
all problems — the finding and keeping of our own souls.

When contemporary dramatists turn to these enormous
spiritual issues of our modern world, they will have at hand
. the most comprehensive material equipment known to any
theatre in any age. Even such mechanical facts as the aboli-
tion of "drop scenes" and glaring footlights — such devices
as the revolving stage, obviating the long waits of the past —
mean incalculable possibilities for the future of drama. As
Mr. Moderwell points out in his interesting volume,^ ** from an
institution of one art the theatre has become, almost over
night, an institution of all the arts." The painter, the archi-
tect, the musician, the engineer, all have part in what we call
" the new stage-craft." From the literal realism of the Belasco

> The Theatre Today,

Digitized by

Google

1918,] ASPECTS OF RECENT DRAMA IN ENGLISH 95

settings* the theatre has gone on to a suggestive and symbolic
milieu, a milieu charged with atmosphere, color, emotion.
On one side is the gorgeous decorativeness of Reinhardt or
the oriental riot of Bakst; on the other is the noble and classic
simplicity of Gordon Craig, or the poetic compositions of
Joseph Urban. To be sure, there is in all this an inmiinent
danger of overnspectacularity — of centring attention upon
the setting rather than the lines of a play. But dominated by
and not dominating the drama, this new beauty and flexibility
of the theatre cannot fail to be an inspiration.

More and more, as audiences weary of the easier and
cheaper thing — ^the photographic pantomime of what they are
pleased to call "'silent drama" — they will demand and sup-
port a modem drama worthy of the modem stage. But here,
as through the whole of life, it is the spirit that quickens. It
seems futile to prophesy how anything will stand when the
last thunder of the War is silenced: yet .... life does go on.
And the drama merely follows life and accentuates it. The
playwright who is an artist as well as a craftsman, whose
heart beats in sympathy with the great heart of the world,
whose soul gauges and partakes its spiritual struggles, will
have the best chance of survival. To be sure, if is a large
order: it is rather like the refreshing old adage that, equipped
with a habit of prayer and a sense of humor, one may hope
to arrive anywhere — even at the Kingdom of Heaven! But
largeness is taken for granted these spacious days. It is mani-
festly by some such modern crusader that the torch of drama
must be "carried on." Then, whether the chosen path be
that of realism or of imagination is of very secondary impor-
tance.

But the dramatist is siurounded on all sides by the audi-
ence, the public. And in the last analysis it is for this public
to decide whether the theatre shall be, as in mediaeval times,
the potent friend and ally of the Church or — as in a thousand
modem tendencies, sometimes blatant, sometimes insidious —
her critic and her enemy.

Digitized by

Google

MAJOR MUNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP.
BY JENNIE DRAKE.

iE beetling crags, the wooded heights, the rush-
ing, roaring river, the frequent, shimmering
waterfalls, the winding roads across hill and
dale, make of Hickory Nut Gap one of the most
picturesque spots in the North Carolina Moun-
:e Katisha's left elbow, people come miles to see it.

But, though a man with unusually keen perceptions for
the beauties of nature, this was not what drew Major Peter
Murchison here. He came because some remote and un-
suspected relative had left his wife a tract of land on the banks
of the Rocky Broad. He came down alone, examined it, found
it suitable for his own occupation, in fertility and beauty, per-
suaded her to remain in the hustling, bustling New York which
she knew best, speedily erected a charmingly rustic wayside
house, called The Galax, and there he proceeded to take his
ease in his inn, with a thoroughly Falstaffian relish.

'*But why not bring his wife?'' asked the Casual Visitor
of the village girl.

"Perhaps," answered demurely pretty Winifred Pilson,
" because she is quite old — and — ^very homely. She came down
once and he had her meals served in her room, away from the
guests."

" But he is quite plain, himself, and far from young," ob-
jected the Bostonian.

** He does not think so," said Freddie, with rural shrewd-
ness.

Here the subject of their comment came cantering up the
stony road, and leaped from his horse with a lightness which
did not betray his years.

" I have come," he announced, ** to get you girls to come
up for dinner. Such an October mountain day as this, is wine
in the veins. But" — in a stage whisper — "you shall have
' Moonshine * besides if you do not give me away to the rev-
enue. But what do you mean, anyhow — kids like you — ^hang-
ing around the post-office, and my place only a mUe off."

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MAJOR MVNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP 97

" We thought you had some guests," said Freddie.

•* I got rid of them this morning, thank God," he explained,
piously. •* A dull lot they were, boring me, and they criticized
the coffee, which I get all the way from New York — Park and
Tilford. I am looking forward to winter, when those bores
stop coming, and I can have the whole place to myself."

A swift vision passed through the visitor's mind of piles of
a cheap and villainous coflfee in Tarbuck cans, noted by her
in his backyard.

"Is that very profitable. Major?" she ventured.

" Not in the least," he answered, cheerily. " But, my dear
girl, I am not here for profit. Everything in this Gap suits me,
the river, the mountains, the unlettered native — everything but
the summer tourist. Even Freddie, here" — ^with a flourish-
ing bow — "is a refreshment to an epicurean taste. And as
she will tell you, I am a public benefactor. You see yonder
schoolhouse? They owe it to me. That picturesque church
on the hill, whose steeple is visible for miles around, I built
and gave it to them. But, as I am going, in emulation of
Dumas, to cook some of your dinner myself — certain dishes —
I had better be going." And he clattered away again.

** He must be very generous," said the Visitor. " Did he
reaUy give the church and schoolhouse? "

"Well," said Freddie, indulgently, "he promised to saw
some of the lumber for us — five dollars' worth — on his new
milL But he seemed to forget, for he didn't do it."

The two girls walked the mile and dined with a portly,
genial host, a bit flushed from broiling trout according to
special recipe, but who flattered them that he had dismissed
paying guests that he might have just this pleasure. They fin-
ished with a luscious watermelon " grown by himself " — and
actually bought from a passing market wagon. Then he
placed them under a wonderful fig tree which, he said, " gave
more fruit than any in the State. My own vine and fig tree,
and you shall eat all you choose. But as for me, I never omit
my daily nap, which refreshes me, I hope, for such bright chat
as " — ^with an effect of modesty — " you clever people will treat
me to."

Then he whispered, with a twinkle of his small gray eyes,
to the Bostonian: "Take your fancy work, now, and gossip,
while I have my forty winks." Presently his rotund self was

tOL. Cfn.— 7

Digitized by

Google

98 MAJOR MUNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP [AprU,

stretched in the hammock, emittiiig rhythmic somids called by
the poet Keats a '' slumbrous tenderness." Though the Major
had been known to declare: ''The man who snores, sir, to the
disturbance of other poeple should be hung; yes, hung, sir,
without benefit of clergy! "

Freddie, who had gloomed at his reference to '' shambling
mountaineers," smiled now, shrugged her shoulders, and with
a furtive dive into a pocket of her calico skirt for a concealed
snuff box with its dip-stick, chattered of things local. The
Major waked to give her a knowing smile as aware of the
dip.

" Come on, girls," he cried, " time for a walk," and
started down the road at a pace they found it hard to equal.
Then he ran up a steep hillside to show them a charming
waterfall he had just discovered. "You are the first, after
myself, to see it and I mean to call it the Winifred." Thus he
placated the mountain girl and proceeded: '' It shall be back-
ground for a play I mean to have next week out here, in the
open, among the ferns and the glory of autiunn colors. If a
party of guests I am expecting turn out to be fairly intelligent,
I will have them produce As You Like It."

The Bostonian stared and heard from Freddie later that
he was quite equal to Shakespeare or anyone else, and had
already stage-managed several open-air plays to the wonder-
ing delight of the viUagers. He did, actually, produce in
almost impromptu style, an open-air performance in which
his amused guests took the parts with some of the fire and un-
derstanding which he infused, and such background of gorge-
ously tinted autumn mountain side and crystal falling water
as Titania might have coveted.

" He jes' makes folks do as he says," remarked Freddie.
'' Jes' talks them into it. He had a gang of swell New Yorkers
do his ploughin' an' hoein' last spring, and they said 'twas
fun, an' let him boast of * his ' garden."

The next time the girls saw him was a bitter November
afternoon, when driving past The Galax they had a view
through reddened windowpanes, in cosy interior, of a portly
figiu*e, in capacious armchair, reading and smoking, feet com-
fortably propped on a hassock, while great burning logs sent
their blaze up the wide chimney. A smoking-hot glass stood
on the table beside him, within easy reach.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MAJOR MVNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP 99

•• How does he get books to read? "

** Oh, he has a big library of his own. He likes the old-
fashioned ones — * Great Scott,' isn't it? And the Dickens —
sounds like swearing — and — and — ** she stumbled over this
one— "Thatch— Thatch— what is it?"

•* Yes, I know, Thackeray. Those are his favorites? '*

•*He jes* wallers in them. Ef youM been nearer, you'd
a-seen him a-smilin' and a-chucklin'."

" I thought I saw someone with him, who put on a fresh
back-log. But his servants are negroes, are they not? "

" He has a coon for cook, an* a farm boy, but " — ^rather
curtly — "there's a sort of a white housekeeper now, a Miss
McLean. He says she's a fellow Scotchman. When she lost
her place as teacher here an' hadn't nowhar to go, he said he
didn't need a housekeeper, but he could stand one."

" Good-hearted, then? "

"Oh," conceded Freddie, "Major's kind enough, if he
didn't talk so big. He told her he could only give her her
keep, but, as I was sure to be jealous, she could take her wages
out in teasin' me."

" Upon my word! "

" Oh, that's nothin' to some of his braggin' talk. He says
there'd be an epidermis of pretty mountain gals here ef he
should ever go away."

" Epidermis." Oh, I see — epidemic."

" That's what I said. She don't have nothin' much to do,
but jes' spends her time a-walkin' an' a-climin' mountings.
You'd like her, I think. Mebbe I kin make you acquainted
down to the store."

It was Winifred's mother who was postmistress and who
also kept the general store, and there the Bostonian was
shortly introduced to a tall, thin fair-haired woman, whose
name was McLean, and who had an evident burr to her
accent. Strangely enough she had a sense of humor which
made her relish the Major's idiosyncrasies, and she told the
stranger some stories illustrating them, which were illuminat-
ing and amusing, yet told them with restraint proving grati-
tude due to a friend in need.

" Do you happen to know a good hair tonic? " she asked
cheerfully, at the end. " He is distressed at a growing bald-
ness which he contrasts with the golden curls he claims for

Digitized by

Google

100 MAJOR MVNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP [April,

his boyhood. We are both from Glasgow, you know, where,
he says, he was the most beautiful child in the borough. He
cannot make a cock-a-leekie, but he assures me it is a noble
dish. His wife sends him dainties of all sorts, and he lives
luxuriously on her property here. Refuses, in fact, to give it
up or let her come down."

"You are favored, then?"

The girl's lip twitched. " He is sufficiently good-hearted
and hates to see anything suffer — also, as I was homeless, and
almost destitute when he took me, the least I can do is to seem
to beUeve his harmless fabrications or exaggerations."

** Yes, even without obligation, I feel that myself, and so
much that he tells is interesting, if not strictly veracious."

"' Yes, one fears not to credit sufficiently, and so do him
injustice, and miss acquisition of something new* and graphic."

" Just so. His fault, of course, but our loss."

" You are a great favorite of his."

"And you, even more; Winifred Pilson, most. He fan-
cies her of unlimited credulity, and so misreads the moun-
taineer. By the way, about Chnstmas time, he gives the girls
here an occasional dance, and I am commissioned to arrange
one for next week. Will you come, and lead the Virginia Reel
with the Major? It is quite a treat to see him going down the
room."

"What music can he find?"

"Two or three mountain lads with fiddles."

"But if the night is dark, how does one escape falling
into the Rocky Broad from that steep rough road? "

" Oh, bring your lanterns," said Miss McLean.

"You are quite accUmated here."

" I was teacher at that little schoolhouse for three seasons.
The Major got me the place. When I lost it, I was painfully
hard up, for I am quite alone in the world."

" He actually has the influence, then, which he boasts? "

" Oh, he just talks them down, though they know his weak-
nesses, too. He tells them of his intimacy with Pierpont Mor-
gan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and other multi-millionaires,
and that they are coming down to visit him and endow the
school, which they pretend to believe. Well, Thursday eve-
ning, please remember. I receive for him as housekeeper."

" You and I can talk, at least."

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MAJOR MVNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP 101

"You may not want to talk. You will be more or less
amused."

Indeed, the Bostonian, piously grateful to reach The Galax
on a moonless, starless night with her neck unbroken, had
little time for conservation. The Major, in evening dress,
which by day would have shown a bit greenish of hue and
threadbare, but which he mentioned was lately from London's
Poole, made her genially welcome as guest of honor.

" You have understood from Miss McLean that you are my
partner in the Reel. We always begin with that.*'

The floor had been polished, and reflected the log fire blaz-
ing high. The motive, he whispered, of commencing with
Sir Roger de Coverly, was to introduce some ease among the
awkward mountain girls and swains now tittering bashfully
in comers, and presently they were prancing and laughing
boldly with the best. The Major, himself, was an inspiration.
The Casual Visitor, rather conventional by nature and train-
ing, found herself whirling, curtseying, racing breathlessly as
his partner.

" See how these country boors admire your grace," said
the Major. " I am proud of my partner. You are swung of t-
ener than anybody — unless it is myself. But then, I am the
special pet of these rosy-cheeked lasses — ^bless their hearts!
If they only wouldn't dip snufi"! Those two have just gone out
on the veranda to have a private snuff* stance. That's one of
the things I mean to reform, isn't it Freddie Pilson? I'm a sort
of jolly missionary."

Winifred tossed her head, but smiled maliciously when
he suddenly opened a door and called to the culprits: **Do
you two want to catch your deaths of cold out there in those
thin cotton frocks? Pretty colors, but flimsy for the moun-
tain winter. You are sulking, I suppose, because I have not
danced with you. Come in, then, and you shall have your
turn, now."

This episode inspired the Major to run up to his apart-
ment for a curiously enameled snufi'-box.

•• Given by Louis Quatorze, himself, on the field of battle,
to my ancestor. Colonel Murchison, of the Scotch Life Guards,
attached to the person of the Young Chevalier, Charles
Edward Stuart. My progenitors were mainly soldiers,
Jacobites, of course, like all gentlemen."

Digitized by

Google

102 MAJOR MVNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP [April,

The Bostonian, who held her own views of the Stuart
line, might have contested this; but looking around her at the
capering rustics, the rural surroundings, the (Major's own
rotund, jolly face and figure, decided against protest on the
score of incongruity. Especially as Freddie whispered, ** That
snufi'^box came down with a lot of junk his wife sent him.
She knows he likes that kind of stuff. He says he is a Con-
federate veteran, but they tell me he was just a Yankee sutler,
making money outen the Government with rank victuals for
the troops.**

The next dance proved to be an old-fashioned polka,
which he had taught them, and in which hii^ bounding elas-
ticity was that of India rubber. Clandestine jeers from the
mountain escorts he fully detected, but magnificently dis-
regarded.

"Green with jealousy, by Jove — those boys!** he ex-
plained. " Comfort them with a dance. Miss McLean, please —
and haven't we some refreshments? Your cakes are unsur-
passable and so is my egg-flip, with ginger, special recipe.**

But he took his own beverage at a Uttle table apart.
•* Don*t leave off,'* he pleaded. ** I have an appetite, myself,
of sixteen, and I know yours. I earned mine by an hour*s
swim this afternoon in the river.**

The Visitor shuddered at thought of the rushing icy cur-
rents.

" Quite so,** he agreed, " it was too long. But what to do!
A couple of lanky, native market women persisted in bargain-
ing on the bank while I, like the Marquis of Carabas, shivered.
Finally I swore such a ' good mouth-filling oath * as would have
delighted Percy, and frightened them away. Have I told you,**
he asked the Visitor, ** how I was wounded four times at Get-
tysburg, and left for dead at Antietam? But — nil desperan-
dum — ^watch this pigeon-wing! '* which, indeed, he cut with a
lightness wonderful in his years and weight. Then he showed
her some other Bowery curios, calUng them "heirlooms.**

"If his wife keeps remembering him so thoughtfully,**
she whispered to Miss McLean with some heat, " it*s uncom-
monly good of her, under the circumstances.**

"Oh,** commented Miss McLean, calmly, "people gen-
erally indulge him. He amuses them, so they condone his
foibles.**

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MAJOR MVNCHAUSEN OF THE GAP 103

"Not the wife, surely, whom he deserts and flouts?"

"^Even she. And notice these natives. They are quite
shrewd enough to discount his amazing statements, yet they
listen with a mixture of indulgence and disrespect.**

•• He never suspects the latter? "

" He never shows it, if he does. That would spoil every-
thing.**

" Now, boys and girls,*' called the Major, with an undis-
guised yawn, " it is quite time for you to go home. You may
omit — ^which means leave out — the usual thanks for a delight-
ful evening, as that you always enjoy with me. Light your
lanterns, and toddle along. I'm glad it's they, not I, who have
to go home this dark night, along the river side. But they be-
long here and don't mind the rough road.**

-I do,** said the Bostonian, "but it's worth it."

" Thank you," said the Major, with such jovial acceptance
as made her think of the "Night before Christmas."

Startling news came to her a day later of Miss McLean, a
bold and practised climber, having set out alone on a tramp,
and after a day's absence, being stiU missing. The Major took
dinner alone in placid persuasion that she had merely gone
further than first intended. At nightfall he opined that some-
one should go and look for her. The young men of the neigh-
borhood, knowing the steep uncertainties of the mountain
sides, especially after recent rains, and aware of her fearless-
ness in exploration, formed search parties into the darkness
with torches and lanterns. All night they sought and the crisp
winter morning dawned upon no news of her. Another day
and night were equally unsuccessful. The men, natives and
visitors, were alike unwearied; and the Major sat in his warm
room and organized groups of searchers, and directed them.

Then, on the third day, they came upon the body of the
hapless girl, at the foot of a precipice over which she had
evidently slipped, her alpen-stock proving treacherous on the
wet rock cliff. For many a month afterward, the Major was
centre of a hushed group, listening:

" Never, sir, have I viewed anything more impressive than
bringing that poor thing down the narrow, winding trail.
From my front porch, they looked, with their lanterns, like a
long procession of fireflies or glowworms, weirdly picturesque
against the dark mountain's face. Yes, it is suspected, but not

Digitized by

Google

104 WHY [AprU.

proved, of course, that she threw herself over in some un-
known despair." He would cough, at this point, behind his
hand. " Naturally, I knew her well, and liked her — ^but, being
a married man, was rather discouraging always, knowing I
had the * fatal gift.' I never dreamed that she would — ^well,
well!''

So Miss McLean, a sturdy character of eminent good sense,
remains in the neighborhood's mind, a love-lorn, despairing
victim of the Major's fascinations.

It was the Bostonian's fortune to be still in the Gap when
the Major, lingering too long in swimming to prove youthful
invulnerability, caught a fatal chill.

" Yes, you may," he said grudgingly. But his wife did not
arrive in time, and it was to his grown son that he whispered
his last instructions.

'' Be sure and take good care of the horse, Tom."

"'I will," said Tom, remembering that aged and bony
animal, as a lean, shaggy colt of no particular parentage.

"As fine an animal as ever won a race. Pure Hamble-
tonian, sir, pure Hambletonian."

WHY.

BY MARTIN T. O'CONNELL.

We know, O Lord, that all save Thee is dross

And passing fleet;
Why then this strife to gain what is a loss

When it were meet
To seek Thee, hanging on a blood-stained Cross

And kiss Thy Feet.

Digitized by

Google

ON CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. By Stuart P. Sherman.

New York : Henry Holt & Co. $1.50 net.

"The great revolutionary task of mneteenth century
thinkers," Professor Sherman tells us in his introduction, *^ was
to put man into nature. The great task of twentieth century
thinkers is to get him out again — somehow to break the spell
of those magic^tUy seductive cries: * Follow nature,' * Trust
your instincts,' *Back to nature.'" For, he continues, "we
have trusted our instincts long enough to sound the depths of
their treacherousness. We have followed nature to the last
ditch and ditch-water. In these days when the educator, re-
turning from observation of the dog kennel with a treatise on
animal behavior, thinks he has a real clue to the education of
children; when the criminologist with a handful of cranial
measurements, imagines that he has solved the problem of
evil; when the clergyman discovers the ethics of the spirit by
meditating on the phagocytes in the blood; when the nov-
elist returning from the zodlogical gardens wishes to revise
the relations of the sexes so as to satisfy the average man's
natural craving for three wives; when the statesman after due
reflection on * the survival of the fittest ' feels justified in de-
vouring his neighbors — in the presence of these appeals to
nature, we may wisely welcome any indication of a counter-
revolution."

Nor, in the author's opinion, are there lacking signs of in-
surrection in many quarters. Among others," for the valor and
high spirits of his revolt one welcomes the critical writings
of Mr. G. K. Chesterton. Fighting with intellectual mounte-
banks he has stolen some of their weapons; he has taken his
stand in what his adversaries will assail as a * mediaeval'
citadel; yet in his Orthodoxy, despite its archaic elements, he
has produced the most brilliantly sensible book that has come
in recent years from the embattled journalists of London."

All this and much additional sane and straightforward
talk we find in the introduction; and hence it is no surprise to
us to discover that when the author comes in the body of his

Digitized by

Google

106 NEW BOOKS [AprU,

book to deal individually with the chief idols of modem liter-
ature, he is by no means inclined to grow ecstatic. For it so
happens that Professor Sherman, besides holding certain
tested standards of artistic excellence, is one of the rare critics
who can keep his head and his footing in " the long wash " of
popular approval, and so he dares to say some disconcerting
things to those who follow the prevailing modes in literary
appraisal. It is difficult to refrain from extensive illustrative
quotation.

That such a book should appear at this time and in this
country makes one positively sanguine for the future of Amer-
ican letters, and to all those interested in that future or in
criticism exercised as a fine art, we warmly recommend it.
For his conclusions, it is true, the author does not perhaps find
the highest spiritual sanctions, approaching his subject as he
does from the hiunanistic standpoint. But the humanist,
"' though he profess his inability to climb the steeps of mysti-
cal insight .... is at one with the saints in his clear perception
of the eternal conflict between ' the law for things * and ' the
law for man;* " and that assuredly is much to be grateful for,
in these days of loose standards both in life and literature.

THE LIFE OF AUGUSTIN DALY. By Joseph Francis Daly.

New York: The Macmillan Co. $4.00.

Not since this publishing house brought out a half-dozen
years ago the memoirs of Helena Modjeska, has such an inter-
esting volume of theatrical biography appeared. There are
a few books of this kind which stand in a rank by them-
selves and will always be read with interest — ^Mary An-
derson's recollections, the autobiography of Ellen Terry, the
memoirs of Modjeska. In the pages of such writings we are
enabled to meet face to face the world's notables, and to
see, likewise, into the hearts and souls of men and women who
have struggled and triumphed in the common conflict of life.

Augustin Daly, who was undeniably, and as the publishers
of this book justly claim, ** America's greatest theatrical mana-
ger," left no autobiography; but in the person of his devoted
and gifted brother, the late Joseph Francis Daly, of the New
York Bar, he possessed a biographer than whom none could
be imagined better; for, to his intimate knowledge of his sub-
ject, the fruit of life-long close relationship, he added the gift

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 107

of a clear and flowing literary expression, and a delicate sense
of values which make his judgments and criticisms just and
impartiaL Fortunate, assuredly, is the man whose life story
is told by such an historian !

From the first chapter of this handsome and bulky vol-
ume, when we read of the romantic adventures of Augustin
Daljr's ancestors — •*the young Kerry girl and her lover; the
child saved from the sea; captured by the French; life in the
West Indies: ** how like an imaginary tale it runs! From the
first page, we are held entranced. We follow the hero through
his schooldays; we behold him, even in his teens, making real-
ities of his theatrical ambitions; we witness his ten years*
training at the hard desk of the newspaper writer; and finally
we see him emerging, as he confidently knew that he would
emerge, into the full power of his vocation. As the record
goes on, we follow the man into ever broader and higher paths
of enterprise; but always we see him unchanged, plain, simple,
straightforward, kindhearted, honest and shrewd, molding
and shaping the careers of many of those destined to be great;
himself a power, but never one that wasted its energies on
self-advertisement.

The story of Augustin Daly's life is one of the most in-
spiring ones culled from the record of American endeavor.
He took his work in the theatre seriously, as a vocation. He
felt that he had a mission in life, and to the discharge of that
mission he bent his utmost energies. As a literary document,
this biography is a genuine addition to letters. It abounds in
matter of the liveliest interest to the writer and the reader.

Reading it, we come to know men and women, their strug-
gles and their triumphs, their comedies and their tragedies, in
the very way that Augustin Daly would have had us know
them through the medium of his expression — ^intimately and
inspiringly. And best of all, we have Daly himself revealed
to us, a figure and a personality whose story has undeniably
enriched the dramatic world.

ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS. Together with
a Short Sketch of Industrial History. Revised by R. T. Ely
and G. R. Wicker. New York: The MacmiUan Co. $1.10.
This manual has been reprinted no less than seventeen

times in ten years. In the preface to the present edition, the

Digitized by

Google

108 NEW BOOKS [April,

authors inform us that the unexpected success of the work as
a text-book has encouraged them to revise and recast it com-
pletely, both in matter and form. Changes of theory that have
become generally accepted have been adopted, new economic
institutions have found a place in the discussion, new dia-
grams and illustrations have been inserted, and a '" set of ques-
tions for discussion" have been appended to each chapter.
From the viewpoint of pedagogical technique, the book seems
to have been made as nearly perfect as is within the power of
human achievement. Of course, it is subject to the limitations
of all elementary and relatively brief treatises on the subject
of economics: the discussion of many difficult topics is con-
densed, and some topics are omitted entirely. Nothwithstand-
ing these difficulties of space, the authors were well advised in
retaining the useful chapters on economic history.

LUTHER AND LUTHERDOM. By Heinrich Denifle. Trans-
lated by Raymund Volz. Vol. I., Part I. Somerset, Ohio :
Torch Press. $3.50.

Father Denifle tells us that his book was written for the
student and the scholar with no intention of an incendiary
effect among the people, as some of his critics have alleged.
His shattering of the Lutheran legend caused a great uproar
throughout Germany, so proud of its hero. The Universities
led in the attack on the man who dared call the leader of the
sixteenth century revolt a deliberate liar and falsifier, and
then proved it on page after page of a most interesting volimie.
Harnack, Seeberg, Walther, Kolde, Kohler, Eawerau, Hauss-
rath, Bauman and many other valiant knights of Protestantism
entered the lists, but Father Denifle's facts and direct citations
made him an easy victor in the conflict.

This volume is in no sense a life. It aims rather at show-
ing how Luther in his every teaching went against the true
Catholic doctrine of the past, and how frequently he delib-
erately lied about the teaching of the Fathers of the Church
and misquoted the theologians and mystics of the Middle Ages.
To instance some of the false statements Father Denifle tri-
umphantly refutes. Luther makes St. Bernard condenm the
monastic life, whereas the passage cited is merely the humble
confession of a contrite soul face to face with God; the vow to
live according to rule, becomes in Luther's hands a vow to ob-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 109

serve the whole rule, a statement St. Bernard would be the
first to reject Luther also lies about the object of the year of
probation, the meaning of the vows, the state of perfection,
monastic baptism, the Catholic concept of the married state,
the practice of mortifications, and the spirit of Catholic
prayers to a merciful God, etc.

It is interesting to discover how often Luther acted on the
principle that the end justifies the means. He was the first
Christian teacher to grant a dispensation to practice poly-
gamy; the first to hold that " everything is allowed " against
the wickedness of the Pope, and that it was lawful to lie for
the sake of the Christian, L e., Lutheran Church.

THE CONVERSION OP EUROPE. By C. H. Robinson, D.D.

New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $6.00 net.

Canon Robinson well remarks that nothing of historical
value has been written for a generation or more on the con-
version of Europe — ^hence his book; but the volume, though
compiled with considerable care, cannot be said to fill the
** long-felt want " satisfactorily.

As for its merits, it is comparatively free from those evi-
dences of bias or bigotry that so often mar similar produc-
tions. The introductory chapter, clear and comprehensive in
its outlines, is excellently done. The same may be said, with
some reserve, of the concluding sununary; and throughout
there are indications that the author, if not a missionary him-
self, is animated with the missionary's enthusiasm.

These qualities, however, are offset by others that detract
from the book's usefulness. The order of the various Euro-
pean nations followed by the author is, to say the least, un-
usual. It seems strange, for instance, to begin with the con-
version of Ireland, when Ireland itself was evangelized from
elsewhere in Europe. Again, though the subject-matter deals,
to a large extent, with the labors of Catholic missionaries, the
vast body of the evidence is drawn from non-Catholic sources,
many of which savor of the hypercritical, or higher-critical
school. Some of the best of the early Popes are subjected to
unworthy slurs; and the warmly sympathetic notice on Julian
the Apostate's religiosity looks strangely out of place.

The author is not free from the practice, so ineffective
and misleading, of citing isolated arguments and examples.

Digitized by

Google

110 NEW BOOKS [April,

and applying modern standards of appreciation and criticism
to mediaeval and barbarian phases of thought and conduct.
The style of the narrative, as in much modem history, is bald
and fragmentary.

The work, on the whole, can scarcely be of great service
to the Catholic scholar; but its copious foot-notes and biblio-
graphy give it a certain usefulness as a book of reference.

BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN. By Mother Mary Loyola.

New York : P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.00.

The need of a special word of consolation at this time of
extended mourning is met by this small volume in a very
satisfying manner. Naturally, it addresses itself particularly
to women, and the hand that touches their dreadful sorrows
is exquisitely gentle and sympathetic, yet, at the same time,
strengthening and sustaining, proffering inspiration to cour-
age and endurance. The author's intuitions are keen and her
outlook includes all aspects of the War's tragedy, as in the
chapter " Uncovenanted Mercies," where she deals tender com-
fort to those who are distressed by misgivings lest the dear
ones whom they mourn, were not prepared to die. The appeal
is wide; non-Catholics as well as those of the Faith may find
here balm for their wounded spirits.

THE RIB OP THE MAN. By Charles R. Kennedy. New York:

Harper & Brothers. $1.30 net.

Mr. Kennedy does not give us a plot in his newest
play, but one thesis upon another. Divested of the Bibli-
cal allusion which throughout reiterates its symbolic mes-
sage of a new creation insistently, if a little vaguely, the
situation shapes down to a conflict (for the most part in con-
versation) between what the author holds to be the old and
the new ideals of sex. This is the real heart of the argument,
though, by way of good measure, the question of the ethics
of war is thrown in and solved at about the third quarter of
the play. "I know," says the heroine, "that we are on the
threshold of the Great Miracle. A New World, so far as the
relation between man and woman is concerned. A world of
less sex and more love." Why this ideal should be called
" new " is not clear. It is the ancient conception of romantic
love created and hallowed by Catholicism before Protestant

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 111

individualism initiated the modem riot of sexual indulgence
and anarchy; the author even verges close on an c^preciation
of this fact at least once : " As for matrimony, that evil Prot-
estant stew of smugness and bestiality, I abjure it! The
blessed sacrament of Marriage, if you will ! Some day ! When
I am worthy! •* However, the idea comes into the play in a con-
text so little Catholic that its author's failure to recognize its
real source is easily understood.

One wishes to do justice to Mr. Kennedy's mature art,
which shows at its best in the characterization and humor of
this play. Yet it is hard to believe that the book's influence
wiU be great in the matter on which we are doing most of our
thinking today. The wounded aviator who, in the cosy little
.£gean island, abjures nationality and the ways of war, has
a curious cheapness and impotence when we compare him
with his counterparts in reality — the heroes who come back
in thousands, disabled, also, yet full of the crucial impor-
tance of the conflict, and with their faces still turned toward
the front. All the phrases which came so easily before the
War had shaken theorists into their senses — the sinfulness
of war, the puerility of nationality, the inevitability of univer-
sal brotherhood — ^have here the unreal patter of an outworn
jargon. Also, the book would be more acceptable to the Catho-
lic reader if its author did not indulge in the habit — common
since Swinburne — of pressing the phraseology of devotion
into a service for which it was never intended. The play is
adorned with quotations, without quotation marks, from Bible
and litiu*gy, quotations which have gathered through the cen-
turies a content of intense religious emotion and which have
today a definite and sacred meaning for hundreds of millions
of people. Surely this spiritual freightage should be held
sacred to the belief which inspired it, instead of being appro-
priated to give a vague, semi-religious exaltation to every new
brand of private doctrine or dubious social conviction which
happens to move the mind of man.

THE MAGIC STONE. By Blanche E. Wade. New York: SuUy

& Keinteich. $2.00 net.

Here are seven real fairy stories, illustrative of the seven
colors of the rainbow, whispered by the Magic Stone to the
little boy, Christopher, who was its fortunate possessor. Miss

Digitized by

Google

112 NEW BOOKS [April,

Wade unites a fertile, graceful imagination with unusual
gifts of expression and command of colorful imagery. She
plays with language in a way that children always find fas-
cinating, using little tricks of repetition and of word-inven-
tion; and her manner of address is delightfully comrade-like.
The book is both charming and wholesome, and its sunshiny
message is that the sky is as blue as it seems, that the rain-
bow's end may be found and its promise realized, and that
''happiness is not a dream.'*

ESPANA PDn?ORESCA: SPAIN IN HISTORY AND LEGEND.

By Carolina M. Dorado. Boston: Ginn & Co. 95 cents.

To create a vivid picture of the many-sided life of old
Spain; to arouse students of Spanish to a keener appreciation
of the Spanish people, their customs and their literature with
all its romance and beauty, the author of this little voliune has
selected bits of legend and history, descriptions of essentially
Spanish life to make up the desired background. Although
everything is on a small scale, one brings from the book a bet-
ter understanding of the great heart of Spain and her chil-
dren — their quaint and picturesque ways, their gravity and
tenderness, their simple faith in God. A land where the night;
— ^watchman calls the hour in the words Ave Maria Purissima,
las dos y media y sereno! (Hail, purest Mary, half-past two
and fair weather) ; where the people speak of the saints as if
they were kind and protecting friends, and where religion is a
part of every-day life, not put away for Sundays — such a land
seems strange to the modem world where God is often spoken
of as a principle or law; where there is an inclination to re-
gard right and wrong as mere points of view; and where
progress, that much abused, elastic, noisy word, frequently
covers a multitude of sins.

CHURCH AND STATE IN ENGLAND TO THE DEATH OF

QUEEN ANNE. By Henry Melvill Gwatkin, D.D. New

York : Longmans, Green & Co. $5.00 net.

This text-book is valueless as history, for it is dominated

throughout by the writer's theological prejudices, and it makes

one outrageous statement after another without the slightest

proof or reference. We can only recommend it to those who

want a book anti-Catholic to the core, and are perfectly indif-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 113

ferent about the truth. We had thought the twentieth century
had gotten a bit beyond the bigoted history writing of two or
three centuries ago.

Is Henry VIII. in question, we are treated with a discus-
sion of the anti-Catholic character of the Bible, which knows
nothing of the Pope, the Virgin Mary, purgatory or indul-
gences. Is ** Bloody Mary " talked of, we are treated to a dis-
sertation on the ^ courage " of Cranmer ! and the ** transparent
honesty " of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Is the virgin queen under
criticism, we are given the most inaccurate and garbled
account of the Elizabethan settlement, the writer knowing
nothing of such writers as Fathers Birt, Bridgett and Phillips.
Of course the Catholics who suffered death under Elizabeth
were mostly traitors, a lie first advanced by Lord Burleigh and
answered contemporaneously by no less a man than Cardinal
Allen. The Protestants who were put to death in Mary's reign
were all martyrs — this is the veriest piffle, worthy of an A. P. A.
lecturer of the nineties, but unworthy of a man who spent
many years lecturing on history at Cambridge and Edinburgh.

Oliver Cromwell, we are informed, has been slandered as
much as Cranmer. Yet his temper was ** noble, unselfish
and kindly. He nearly always leaned to mercy, and his
religion was as genuine as that of any saint." The massacre
of Drogheda was of course only a fitting retribution on the
Irish Papists — note the word — ^for their crimes, just as the
execution of King Charles was merely the just and necessary
punishment of a dangerous traitor.

On the whole, the book is a tissue of Low Church preju-
dices dressed up in historical fashion.

NEW AMERICAN HISTORY. By Albert B. Hart, LL.D. New

York: American Book Co. $1.72.

Professor Hart, the well-known historian of the United
States, in this new contribution, condenses military activities
and gives wide scope to the social and economic view of our
ancestors. It is essentially a high school and college text-
book, requiring previous foundational knowledge of the gen-
eral outline of our history. As might be expected in a work of
this kind, the chronological order is not emphasized, but
rather the relative importance of the topic. The religious
question is conspicuous by its absence which, all thiiigs con-

¥0L. CVII.r— S

Digitized by

Google

114 HEW BOOKS [April.

sidered, is perhaps the better way. The labor of the writer,
however, deserved better treatment at the hands of his publish-
ers. The maps and diagrams might be improved and more
space allotted them.

AMERICAN ADVENTURES. By JuUan Street. New York:

The Century Co. $3.00 net.

To the writing of this deUghtf ul book the author brings
a practised hand, an observant — indeed, a searching, eye —
and the inestimable gift of humor. Already he has won his
audience with his preceding and companion volume. Abroad
at Home; now he continues his wanderings setting down, in a
style that is at once engaging and illuminative, the record of
his travels through the Southern States. He has the faculty of
seeing all around the things he observes: he can appreciate
the sentiment of memories and places, he can catch the spirit
of poetry that transfuses them, yet at the same time, with a
flash of satire, or a stroke of whimsey, he can reveal the
human weaknesses, the incongruities or idiosyncrasies, of the
people whom these scenes and memories frame.

From the opening chapter, when the author, giddy with
his young lady friends, gets himself all tangled up with the
ticket agent and the baggage man, on through his various
peregrinations along the Atlantic seaboard, from stately Bal-
timore to ** Passionate Palm Beach," from lovely Savannah
to the City of the Creole, the reader is carried irresistibly on a
joyous pilgrimage. As sheer entertainment, the book is a
masterpiece; but better still, it imparts between its flashes of
fun and its excellent pages of description, a wealth of infor-
mation concerning a part of our own country that is all too
little known to the bulk of Americans. Thus the book does
a double service; nay, a triple service: for, dealing as it does
with the South, it achieves a revelation of the spirit and feel-
ing of the States and people below the Mason and Dixon line
which is very much to the purpose, especially at the present
moment when the country, more than ever ** one, united and
indivisible," needs to know itself and understand the various
elements that go into its making as a whole. Mr. Street has
seen the South with a sympathetic and understanding eye; and
though he is daring at times, and bold, it is always with the
boldness of frank honesty and never with ofi'ence.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 115

Catholic readers will find the chapters on the Carrols of
Maryland, and the description of historic old Doughoregan
Manor particularly interesting and sympathetic. But the
whole book, for Uiat matter, is radiant with charm, good
nature, and amusing human insight. Mr. Morgan's pictures
are in the same spirit, humorous and revealing. The volume
is sumptuously printed and well worth its price.

A SON OF THE MTODLE BORDER. By Hamlin Garland. New

York: The Macmillan Co. $1.60.

"Happiness dwells afar. Wealth and fame are to be
found by journeying toward the sunset star I '' Such was the
spirit of that fine, old pioneer, Richard Garland, the author's
father, who kept moving West, leaving farm after farm for the
lure of the unknown country. This book shows the hardships
of pioneer farming and divests it of aU romance; it is a realis-
tic record of Hamlin Garland's early life and young manhood
up to the time when, the pen having proved mightier than the
plough, he was able to settle his toil-bent parents in a com-
fortable home with some of the luxuries they had never en-
joyed.

A Son of the Middle Border is a very human record of
some very real people, and though many of the pages have a
deep undercurrent of sadness, even of tragedy, there are
lighter touches such as the inspiring chapter which relates
how the author, poor and unknown, struggled to fame as a
lectiu*er in Boston in spite of his paper collars and the
aniline purple suit turned pink along the seams. Life seemed
very glorious to the young man who climbed night after night
to standing place in the balcony^ that he might learn the great-
ness of Shakespeare and the soul of English literature from
that never-to-be forgotten prince of tragedy, Edwin Booth,
whose acting was painting and sculpture and music to so
many Americans.

TRAPPED IN BLACK RUSSIA. By Ruth Pierce. Boston:

Houghton MifBin Co. $1.25.

Without a seasoning of the third division, gendarmes,
female spies, terror, prisoners in chains and persecuted Jews,
a book on Russia is n6t palatable for popular consumption.
Trapped in Black Russia is a palatable book, if these elements

Digitized by

Google

116 NEW BOOKS [AprU,

comprise the total desideratum for a book on Russia. It re-
counts the experiences of a young American matron who vis-
ited Kiev in 1918, when the Germans were dangerously near
that city, who wrote an indiscreet letter about the Govern-
ment's treatment of Jews in the locality, which brought her
afoul of the secret service, and obliged her in consequence to
stay in Kiev four months before she received her passport
and could return to Bulgaria where she resided. The same
experience could befall her in any American city at the pres-
ent time should such a letter fall into the hands of our secret
service, the only difference being that her case would doubt-
less have a speedier conclusion. Of Russia, there is very little
in this volume, except observations on the treatment of Jews
and sundry comparisons between the wealth of the churches
and the poverty of the peasants. It lacks understanding of
the Russian people. It is written in a brilliant style, in the
form of letters to the author's parents. Unfortunately this
sort of book is so common that it is small wonder that Ameri-
cans do not understand the great Russian people.

SPANISH READER. By M. A. DeVitis. New York: AUyn &

Bacon Co. $1.25.

This reader for Spanish students is so simple that it may
be used very early in the study of the language, and yet so
practical in the general information it gives of conditions in
Spanish-speaking countries, that it will still prove a useful
handbook when student days are over. In the first part of the
reader, the selections describing different cities in Spain, dis-
cuss Spanish geography, government, public instruction,
army and navy, history and literature. The next division
deals with Mexico, the West Indies and the republics of South
America. Floret de E$pana and Flores de America give se-
lections from well-known Spanish and South American poets,
and the last division of the book contains the music and words
of sixteen popular songs, dances and national hymns includ-
ing the famous revolutionary " Hymn of Riego." There are
many illustrations and maps, and ten valuable appendixes
giving statistics, value of coins, etc.

The Reader gives brief account of the Pan-American
Union, an international organization of twenty-one American
republics, maintaining offices at Washington to promote the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HEW BOOKS 117

development of commerce and friendly intercourse with the
United States of America. The Union has a magnificent col-
lection of thirty thousand volumes and fifteen thousand photo-
graphs, known as the Columbus Memorial Library.

It would be difficult to find a more useful and practical
text-book for the study of Spanish. In plan it is carefully
graded, only the present tense being used in the early
divisions; in matter it provides the student with such a thor-
ou|^ understanding of life and conditions among Spanish-
speaking peoples as will aid him materially if he wishes later
to enter their business world.

PRACTICAL BIOLOGY. By Messrs. Smallwood, Reveley and
Bailey. New York: AUyn & Bacon. $1.25.
This course in biology has been designed to meet the re-
quirements of high schools, and has proved to be what it
announces itself — ** simple, workable, attractive.'* The chap-
ters on human biology are very good; that on hygiene, good
and informing; those on zodlogy and botany, however, need
to be supplemented by other matter to meet the requirements
of the Regents' Syllabus. The book also contains several use-
ful appendixes.

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD. By Stephen Gwynn. New York:

Henry Holt & Co. 60 cents net.

^ She seems to have everything that can be acquired by
study," says Mr. Gwynn in simmung up his estimate of Mrs.
Ward, and yet ""I fear that the qualities she lacks are the
qualities necessary to survival — the salt of humor, the fire of
passion, the personal charm of a style." He contrasts his sub-
ject with other writers — ^for instance, Meredith, whose "crea-
tive impulse is the artist's pure and simple," whereas Mrs.
Ward's ** is the publicist's who has discovered a subtle device
through which argument can be conducted under special
forms." He affirms that "she would sooner found an influen-
tial sect than write a supremely good book," and holds that
while " this is a perfectly natural ambition," it is " one incom-
patible with the highest literary success."

In these and many other sentences throughout his book
Mr. Gwynn speaks the language of the man of trained critical
judgment who has permanent standards and knows how to

Digitized by

Google

118 NEW BOOKS [April,

apply them. He recognizes Mrs. Ward's unusual mental
attainments, calls attention to her wide intellectual range, ad-
mires her sense of justice which desires that each side to a
controversy shall have its sympathetic presentation, and finds
in Helbeck of Bannisdale, her finest achievement, **a novel
which it is a pleasure to praise without reserve."

Unfortunately Helbeck is a unique exception. Mr. Gwynn
finds that Mrs. Ward's stories are usuaUy dominated by a
thesis, that her technique at best has never been more than
competent, and that her writing, good as it is, lacks per-
sonality. Apart from the dales-folk among whom her early
years were spent, she is emphatically the novelist of the cul-
tivated rich.

CAMPAIGNS AND INTERVALS. By Jean Giraudoux. Trans-
lated by Elizabeth Sergeant. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co. $1.50 net.

In a multitude of books concerning the War, this work,
from the pen of one of the French officers sent over to Amer-
ica to assist us in our training camps, stands out with a cer-
tain distinction that is rather difficult to define. In some ways,
it falls short of the expectations it arouses; and yet again it
gives agreeable surprises. We imagine the author is not an
easy person to know : at any rate, he is not in his written pages,
for they contain a good deal of what we would like to believe
is camouflage — a certain tendency to flippancy that may be
only the instinctive concealment of deeper and nobler senti-
ments than appear on the surface.

The book recounts the author's experiences on the West-
em Front and in the Dardanelles in a series of impressionis-
tic pictures of the comings and goings, the feelings and reac-
tions of the French soldier. As Lieutenant Giraudoux reveals
the poilu, however, he is not always the appealing figure that
we have come to imagine him; for this we blame not the
soldier, but his interpreter. After all, the clearest revelation
that a writer makes is of himself. We doubt if the author of
Campaigns and Intervals has always seen into the heart of his
fellows-in-arms. In the final chapters of his book, however,
" Five Nights,** and " Five Dawns on the Mame," he redeems
himself and gives some moving portrayals of the sufferings
and heroism of the French fighters.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 119

The translation is so well done that it is hard to believe
that the book was not composed in English, and merely
touched up by an American pen.

THUNDHER AtT TURF. By Rev. Mark O'Byme. New York:

P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 40 cents.

A delightful talent, of the Sheehan sort, is revealed in
these ten little sketches of native Irish life. The parishes of
Camemore and Currabeg, with their clerical priest's boy and
his sedate love-affair, their barefoot Seamus — ''Seamus gan
Bhroga " — the star of the school choir, their poignant human
vicissitudes cutting across county council elections and the
more serious business of poultry marketing, their New Year's
party, the givers of which are embarrassed by the nimiber of
acceptances wliich flow in, though the general verdict is that
•* the McGraths have little to do with their money," their Crow
Lane, where, when Father Mat goes to collect his Easter Dues,
he first fortifies himself with a *'sed heati qui non ex-
pectant*' — aU are pictured by the pen of a chronicler and
bom humorist, who knows his material to the core and relishes
it with a quiet, unfailing appreciation which familiarity can-
not dulL

It is to be hoped that, as Father O'Byme's talent mellows
and matures, he will also develop in constructive power. These
sketches are in no sense stories, and their material would be
undoubtedly more effective from a literary point of view, if
it were whipped into definite shape.

The illustrations add little to the pleasure of the reader.
And why, in these days when the very classics are being re-
edited on a more humanized plan of printing, should we have
to endure the penance of fine type?

GERBIANY'S ANNEXATIONIST AIMS. By S. Grumbach.

Translated and Abbreviated by J. Ellis Barker. London:

John Murray. $1.50.

To the student of the World War, and as a reference book
for future use, this volume will prove invaluable. It is a first-
hand document — a translation and abbreviation of Herr S.
Grumbach's monumental volume. Das Annexionistische
Deutschland, which appeared last year, and set forth the most
comprehensive expression yet published of the true aims of

Digitized by

Google

120 NEW BOOKS [April,

Germany in waging war against tlie world. In the light of
such a work, all the declarations and protestations of Berlin,
made for outside consumption, as to self-defensive motives,
and so on, pale to a ghastly jest. Herr Grumbach gathered
into his five hundred portly pages the imperialistic demands of
practically every representative person, organization, and in-
stitution in Germany — ^rulers, statesmen, politicians, business
men, scientists, publicists and journalists; and pooling all
these, he gave to the world — to the German reading world at
home — a document that explodes to extinction the idea
that America and the Allies are not fighting the German peo-
ple. This document (which comes nearer than anything we
have so far seen to being a comprehensive expression of the
feeling of the people of Germany concerning the War), Mr.
Barker has given us in a brief and handy volume — a very val-
uable book.

THE INSURGENT THEATRE. By Thomas H. Dickinson. New

York: B. W. Huebsch. $1.25 net.

''The Theatre Insurgent'' we would have named this
book, instead of The Insurgent Theatre; for, though it deals
specifically with the new and modern departures of theatrical
activity, it really serves a still larger purpose. It reveals the
fact that there is not only an ** insurgent " theatre in America,
but that, in truth, the whole theatre, as an institution in this
country, is passing through a period of change and expansion.
That this change is one for the better we are confident, despite
the strange and exotic expressions it at times chooses for its
media. The point is, as a reading of Professor Dickinson's
book reveals, that the theatre in America is interiorly strug-
gling to free itself of the handicaps put upon it by an over-
emphasis of its commercial side. If this struggle has at times
resulted in certain regrettable extremes of so-called ''art,"
it is, after all, but the fruit of a natural reaction. In the long
run, the eflTect will be good, and the theatre will propt by the
movements it is now experiencing. These are the conclusions
to which the reader of Professor Dickinson's book must in-
evitably come.

The author's treatment of the question of art in the thea-
tre, and the struggle against commercialism, is eminently sane
and reasonable, and will commend itself to all who have the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 121

interest of the drama at heart. In recommending Professor
Dickinson's book» the opportunity should not be passed for
saying a p^^onal word for this conscientious lover of the best
things in the theatre. He is one of the men in America who are
truly and substantially building for higher things in histrionic
art He has already accomplished much, and this new book
will add to his laurels and increase the effectiveness of his
unselfish endeavors.

READINGS AND REFLECTIONS FOR THE HOLY HOUR. By

Rev. F. A. Renter. New York: Fr. Pustet & Ck). $1.25.

Fifty-two chapters compose this volume, each suited for

use during the Holy Hour: a chapter for each week of the

year.

The book contains many charming and touching instances
of devotion to Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament, which
bear witness to the wonders and miracles of the Real Pres-
ence, and the rewards of Its adorers.

MARIAN POEMS. St Louis: The Queen's Work. Cloth, 50

cents; paper, 25 cents.

In the issue of The Queen's Work for July, 1916, the edi-
tor published "A ChaUenge to the Poets" wherein, after
lamenting the fact that the most famous and perhaps most
beautiful poem in English Uterature in honor of Our Blessed
Lady, was written by a non-Catholic, Wordsworth, he went on
to announce a year-long contest for poems in praise of the
Blessed Virgin. The response was widespread, poems coming
in from all parts of this country and England as well, and
there are collected into the present booklet. As the readers of
The Cathoug World are doubtless aware, Mr. Joyce Kilmer
won not only the first, but also the second place in the contest
with two very fine sonnets.

Father Garesch6 has done wisely in thus bringing together
the poems of the contest, which on the whole keep a high level
of poetic excellence.

A CASKET OP JOYS. By J. T. Durward. Baraboo, Wis.: The

Pilgrim Publishing Co. 25 cents.

Some four or five years ago we happened upon an un-
usuaUy delightful and invigorating spiritual book, which was

Digitized by

Google

122 NEW BOOKS [April,

written to show that, contrary to popular fancy, the normal
every-day state of the average Christian here on earth should
be and is intended to be one of joy, and the author went on
to give practical directions how this happy condition might be
brought about. This book, which was written by a German
bishop, was entitled More Joy, and it had, we believe, a very
wide circulation both in this country and abroad.

Now, from far away Wisconsin comes a little book with
a similar idea and a similar purpose, and though it is far too
slight in bulk to claim rivalry with Bishop Keppler's work —
and, indeed, its author explicitly disclaims such rivalry — in
thought and execution it certainly deserves mention with that
admirable performance. A Casket of Joys will prove a treat
out of the ordinary, possessing unusual literary excellence and
unusual literary knowledge.

SMALL ARMS INSTRUCTOR'S MANUAL. With an Introduc-
tion by Captain C. C. Griffith, C. A. C, U. S. A. New York : .
E. P. Dutton & Co. 60 cents net.

This convenient little volume, compiled by several of the
most experienced shots and coaches in this country working in
conjunction with Regular Army instructors, is designed to give
an abbreviated and yet complete basic course for the instruc-
tion of soldiers in the use and care of rifle, pistol and revolver.
The material for the book is founded on the United States
Army Manual of SmaU Arms Firing, and has been gathered
from the most vital portions of twenty or more works on small
arms and musketry. The authors have also taken into account
Entente documents based on experience in the present War.
As this is an intensive course and as there has hitherto existed
no such standardized and complete work in one volume, the
book would seem to fill an inmiediate military want.

FROM the American Rook Co. (New York) we have a
three-book series of Standard Arithmetics, by Samuel
Hamilton. Book One (44 cents), covering the work of the first
four grades, is attractive, concrete and practical; Book Two
(48 cents), for the fifth and sixth grades, is equally excellent,
with interesting and stimulating oral work; Book Three, in-
tended for use in the seventh and eight grades, attempts to
cover too much ground, which by right belongs to the Com-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 123

mercial and High School courses. Throughout the tests for
accuracy and speed are varied and practical, and the problems
well adapted to the child's comprehension.

The Rural Arithmetic (68 cents), by Augustus O. Thomas,
PhJ3., from the same pubUshers, strikes a new vein and
opens up a vista of the opportunities now dawning for the
agricultural populations. The book is intended as an aux-
iliary in Grammar and High Schools. The problems are based
on actual experience. The one hundred proficiency questions
and the .well-digested tables deserve special commendation.

Two admirable and well-planned books (from the same
publishers). First Lessons in English for Foreigners in Evening
Schools (40 cents), and Second Book in English for the same
(52 cents), by Frederick Houghton, Sc.M., solve the prob-
lem of English for the adult student. Anyone engaged in
Americanizmg our numerous inumgrants will find these books
invaluable aids. The vocabularies in English, German, Polish,
Italian and Yiddish are extremely useful.

A CHRISTIAN SOLDIER, number three of the Soldiers' and
Sailors' Series published by the Central Bureau of the
G. R. C. Central Society, St. Louis (5 cents per copy; 12 copies,
50 cents; 1(X) copies, $3.50 postpaid) gives an account of that
splendid Catholic figure. General de Sonis. The subject is hap-
pily selected and pleasantly presented.

WE welcome from B. Herder, St. Louis, a reprint of The Lit-
tie Office of the Blessed Virgin and The Office of the Dead
in Latin and English (60 cents). The arrangement of Latin
and English in paraUel columns on the same page is agreeable
to the eye and serviceable. The print is clear, and the paper
good.

MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. have brought out
an American edition ($1.50 net) of John Ayscough's
French Windows. This powerful book is already in its eighth
edition in England.

Digitized by

Google

IRecent iSvente.

M. Cl^menceau stiU remains the Premier
France. of France, and is succeeding in the ob-

ject for which power was entrusted to
him. Further steps must be taken, however, to bring to trial
the members of a conspiracy which aimed to make France
subject to Germany, which Bolo Pasha's trial has shown
the existence.

The appeal of Bolo Pasha from the court which con-
denmed him to death has been rejected by the Court of Cas-
sation. Nothing now prevents the death sentence from be-
ing carried out. A further step to be taken is the bringing
to justice of an apparently greater criminal than Bolo Pasha.
M. Joseph Caillaux, a former Prime Minister, is now in prison
awaiting trial. Immediately after the battle of the Mame he is
said to have arrived at the conviction that France was beaten,
and that it was to her best interests to conclude as favorable a
peace with Germany as that country would vouchsafe to make.
He at once proceeded, it is said, to institute negotiations for
that purpose. Moreover, plans were formed by him to abolish
parliamentary government in France and to place the coun-
try under a dictatorship. A list of the ministry through which
the dictatorship was to act, was found among his papers
— a list which casts suspicion upon several prominent politi-
cians. It is sad to consider that behind the seeming national
unity there existed so widespread a conspiracy, and still sad-
der to learn how successful the enemy was in winning over
men whose sense of duty should have made them scorn
such treachery. This may serve as a warning to other coun-
tries besides France not to listen to any suggestions from
whomsoever they may come which tend to weaken their
efforts to defeat the common foe. France's determination is
evidenced by the vote of confidence quite recently given to
M. C16menceau by the Chamber of Deputies. On his entrance
into office it was looked upon as somewhat discouraging that
the vote of confidence he received was opposed by one
hundred and twenty deputies. It may be looked upon as en-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 125

couraging that this minority has decreased in numbers to sev-
enty-five, thereby indicating that the Premier's position is now
stronger than it was when he entered into office.

In a recent speech, M. Climenceau admitted that for
a short time the morale of the French soldier had been shaken,
but declared that the morale of the country is admirable,
and that of the soldiers is now the admiration of their
ofiScers. A writer whose opinion deserves consideration —
Ifr. Hilaire Belloc— declared in a recent appreciation on this
subject, that while the French people honored and supported
the republican rigime, they knew it was not unchangeable,
in fact that it would be modified after the present struggle; they
were united, as they had never been before, in the prosecution
of the War to a complete victory. " They took the whole brunt
of the first shock. They have suffered enormous losses. In-
vasion and ruin are still upon their soil. It was their mili-
tary genius which checked the onslaught, with the fighting
odds of five to eight, at the Marne. It was they who prevented
the initial and easy victory of Grermany. No internal differ-
ences count among them compared with their determination
that the power which has attempted their destruction by every
means, by the violation of treaties, and by usages unheard of
among civilized men, shall be destroyed. In this determina-
tion is rooted their certainty of victory."

Inmiediately after rejecting the terms
Russia. proposed by the Germans at Brest-

Litovsk, the Bolshevik Grovernment pro-
ceeded at once to the demobilization of all the forces at the
front, including those in Asia Minor. This insensate proceed-
ing was followed by the advance of the German army in six
columns into Russian territory all along the line and also
along northern Russia and into the now independent republic
of the Ukraine people.

It is worthy of note that the much vaunted superiority of
German arms, has found no justification in the course of the
present War. Every success so far achieved has been against
a much weaker foe. The French after their first retreat, drove
back from the Marne forces double their size and compelled
them to take refuge in trenches and dug-outs. It was only
with the help of Turkey and Austria-Hungary that Germany

Digitized by

Google

126 RECENT EVENTS [April,

was able to overrun the poor little kingdom of Serbia.
Rumania became Germany's victim owing mainly to the
treachery of the Russian Imperial Government and also, it is
said, to treachery within Rumania itself. If the many victories
of Germany over Russia may be considered an exception, it
must be remembered that the Russian forces, although large
in numbers, were almost destitute of arms and munitions.
The victory over Italy was more of an Austrian victory than a
Grerman one, although perhaps it could not have been achieved
without the help of the latter. The Italian defeat, however,
was so largely due to the demoralization of their forces by
methods alien to civilized warfare, that it can scarcely be reck-
oned among military triumphs. Nothing need be said of the
victory of Germany over Belgium. The vast superiority of
Germany was too evident. Yet even so, Belgium's heroic re-
sistance was strong enough to defeat Germany's long-laid
plans for the conquest of France. It was only after Russia, by
the fatuousness of her own rulers, was entirely disarmed that
Germany was able to penetrate, as she is now doing, into the
heart of that one-time empire.

When the Bolshevik Government saw the German armies
advancing towards Petrograd and all along the line, it made
frantic appeals to the Russian people to offer a determined
resistance to the invaders, but to no effect Only in a few
places was the sUghtest effort made to hurl back the invaders.
Everything fell into the Germans' hands, including large stores
of anmiunition and guns which Russia's former allies had de-
prived themselves of, for the defence of the republic. Under
these circumstances, to save the capital from occupation by
the Germans, the Bolshevik Grovernment accepted without dis-
cussion the German terms. A Une was drawn on the map east
of the line laid down at the former conference of Brest-Litovsk,
and a demand was made that all west of that Une should fall
completely under the control of Germany. This line cuts Estho-
nia and Livonia in two, then runs along the eastern boundary of
Courland and through Minsk in the direction of Brest-Litovsk.
It was left to Germany and Austria-Hungary to decide, at will,
the fate of these regions and their inhabitants. No pledges
formerly given for self-determination were renewed. Even
this line did not form the limit of the German demands, for
both Esthonia and Livonia were to be policed by Germany.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 127

Further terms included the conclusion of peace with the
Ukraine Republic and Finland, and the evacuation of those
states by aU Russian troops.

The most distressing feature in the accepted demands of
Germany is that the Armenians shaD be again under the domi-
nation of the Central Powers' ally, Turkey; for a part of the
southern Transcaucasian province is to be restored to that
accursed rule — the port of Baptume, the fortress of Kars, and
Erivan with the districts surrounding them. Not only, there-
fore, will the Turk resume his sway over the former province
of Armenia but over a very much extended territory. This
action of Germany and Austria-Hungary need excite no sur-
prise, for they have ah*eady declared, in the speeches of the
German Chancellor and the Austro-Hungarian Prime Min-
ister, their ** loyalty ** to their ally, which involves the restora-
tion of the Holy City of Jerusalem to the Crescent, although,
it is reported, the Holy Father has placed his ban upon any
such attempt. The Republic of the Caucasus, however, one of
the new States .into which Russia has been dissolved, accord-
ing to latest reports, has refused to make peace with the Turks.
This may save from their grasp what the German Emperor
and his Austro-Hungarian ally have given them.

The treaty further includes a free export of ores without
tariff from Russia and other wide commercial concessions.
This provision, so far as the effective carrying on of the war
is concerned, is perhaps the most important of all, since it
places the resources of Russia at the disposal of the Central
Powers.

The effort to propagate Bolshevik principles among the
German and Austro-Hungarian peoples, upon which were
based that Government's Ropes of success, is precluded by the
terms of the treaty which provides speciflcaUy that no attempt
be made to propagate these principles among the peoples of
the Central Powers.

The ratification of the treaty just accepted by the Bolshe-
vik Government, by the Council of Workmen's and Soldiers'
Delegates, the supreme power in Russia at the present time,
was made on the sixteenth of last month, four days after the
anniversary of the establishment of a republican form of gov-
ernment. Never perhaps in the history of the world has any
country passed through so disastrous a year.

Digitized by

Google

128 RECENT EVENTS [April,

The principle of self-determination, declared by the
Lenine Government to be the right of all people, was adopted
immediately by several provinces of what was once Russia.
Finland declared its independence, but this exemplification
of the principle did not meet with the approbation of its pro-
mulgators. The Government of Finland, being in the hands
of those upon whom Lenine and his colleagues look as capi-
talists, was not acceptable to the Bolsheviki. Those holding
any capitalistic opinions immediately rose in rebellion to the
newly constituted republican government, and were assisted
in their rebellion by Red Guards. This gave an opportun-
ity to the Finnish Government to call on Germany for help,
an opportunity which was eagerly embraced; and at the pres-
ent time German troops are advancing into Finland, having
seized on their way the Aland Islands. This seizure is caus-
ing anxiety to Sweden and the Scandinavian powers generally,
for their possession endangers Sweden and gives to Germany
the commanding position in the Baltic.

The second State of importance Russia has lost during the
first year of the republic is the Ukraine. To this loss, the Bolshe-
vik Government was actively opposed and offered energetic
resistance. This led to the Ukraine Government calling upon
Grermany to give her assistance, a call, of course, to which
Germany was quite ready to lend a willing ear. A part of the
German troops which entered Russia, directed their course
to assist the Ukrainians in their conflict with the Bolsheviki.
The peace which the Central Powers made with the Ukrainian
Republic was the first since the beginning of the War. Its
acceptance by the Republic was only to be attained by adding
to its territory one of the provinces of Poland. This demand
was granted by the Central Powers without any consultation
with that ** kingdom," and illustrates well the kind of *' in-
dependence " which the Central Powers have bestowed upon
that State. With the exception of the addition to the Ukraine
of the Polish province, the boundaries of that Republic
to the west remain unchanged; but to the east no definite
boundaries have yet been designated, possibly with a view to
an indefinite extension into the heart of Russia. Whether
Odessa belongs to Ukraine or not is not known. If it belongs
to Russia, the advent of German forces there is a clear breach
of the treaty with the Bolshevik Government. The peace with

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 129

the Ukraine gives the Central Powers access to the richest
wheat fields of Russia.

By the treaty which Rumania has been forced to make
with the Central Powers, a further diminution of Russian ter-
ritory is made. One of the articles of that treaty gives to
Rumania the right of occupying a part of Bessarabia. The
other provisions deprive Rumania of all her territory south
of the Danube, and she is thereby cut off from her principal
port on the Black Sea, although a provision of the treaty gives
to the dismembered kingdom the right of passing through the
detached provinces to Constanza, which was formerly the
principal seaport of the now dismembered State. Another pro-
vision of the treaty gives to the Central Powers the right of
passing their troops through Rumania to Odessa, a right which
has already been utilized. These recent acquisitions of Ger-
many have given occasion for much talk of the danger which
will ensue to the British possession of India, and various
routes have been traced on the map showing how Germany
might make an attack. It is too soon to estimate the feasibility
of such projects. There is little fear that the inhabitants of
India would allow themselves to fall an easy victim to the
Germans, this War having shown so clearly the character and
methods of their would-be conqueror.

As to .the rest of Russia little can be said, for little is
known. Reports arrive of Bolsheviki activity in various parts
of what was formerly Russian territory. In Turkestan, battles
between them and their opponents are reported and also in
the east of Siberia. In the latter region it is said that the Ger-
man prisoners have been organized into two army corps. In
Southeastern Russia, the Cossacks are still continuing their
conflict with the Bolshevik Government, and it is said with
some degree of success. The Soviet Congress of Moscow has
declared Moscow the new capital.

Even the present rulers, if Lenine is their mouthpiece,
have declared the present treaty between Germany and Russia
to be merely a truce, affording a respite which gives an oppor-
tunity for recruiting a new army to drive out the invaders of
Russian territory. The sincerity of this statement may well
be doubted, for there is reason to think that Lenine and his
fellow Bolsheviki have all along been acting in collusion with
Germany.

iroL. cm.— 4

Digitized by

Google

130 RECENT EVENTS [April,

It is inconceivable that a country of some one hundred
and eighty millions of people should remain long subject to
present conditions and that no deliverance should arise.
Although the Bolsheviki seems still to have complete control,
it is to be remembered that they form but one of the many
parties, or, it may be said, factions in the Russian Republic.
There are, for example, the Revolutionary Socialists who form
the majority in the Constituent Assembly, which was dissolved
by violence. These opposed at Moscow the ratification of the
treaty with Germany. Besides these there are also the Octo-
brists from whom may spring a reaction in favor of some form
of monarchy. A more probable development is that the con-
trol of Russia may fall into the hands of the Constitutional
Democrats, who are looked upon as possessing the most prom-
inent political leaders, most capable of giving stability to the
republican institutions which have been adopted. No hope
exists of the Bolsheviki being able to give to Russia a stable
form of government, for they are more interested in the fight
against capitalism than in the fate of their own country, and
have for their exclusive object, as is shown in their reply to
Mr. Wilson's last message, the victory of the proletariat of all
countries over the capitalists of all countries.

Germany's advance into Russia, and especially the rumors
of German activity in Eastern Siberia, have raised the question
of Japan's intervention. The lawfulness of this intervention does
not admit, it would seem, of serious dispute. The signing of a
separate peace with Germany, is a breach of the London pact
by which Russia bound herself not to make any peace except
in concert with her Allies. The natural right of self-defence
gives to Japan the justification for taking action. Whether,
however, the exercise of that right would be wise or not may
be doubted, for although very little can be said of what may
happen in Russia, there is good reason to fear that it might
throw its people entirely into the arms of Germany. They
might view such a course as an act of patriotic self-defence
against the Japanese invasion. This may be the reason why
the President has been unwilling to associate himself with the
the Entente Allies in supporting such an invasion by Japan.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 131

Count von Hertling still remains the
Germany. Chancellor of the German Empire and

Dr. von Kuehlmann the Secretary of
Foreign Affairs, although the more moderate policy with which
the latter especially was credited has been completely set aside.
The Pan-Germans and militarists have obtained complete
controL The success which has been achieved against Russia,
has made the latter complete master of the situation, and has
produced a marked change in the feelings of the country. Last
July a resolution was passed by a large majority of the Reich-
stag which called for a peace without indemnities and with-
out annexations. The treaty just made with Russia shows
how little regard has been paid by the German Government
to that resolution. Von Hertling and von Kuehlmann have
either abandoned the more moderate aims which they were
supposed to support, or they are willing to act as the
tools of the militarists and Pan-Germans. ^ Nothing succeeds
like success " is an old saying, but care and insight must be
used to know what real success is. The brutal treatment meted
out to Russia has had the effect of modifying the views even
of the ftriends of Germany in this country and elsewhere.
Among those friends are to be numbered the Socialists who
met at St. Louis last July, who had the audacity to declare that
the war of this country with Germany was the most unjusti-
fiable in the annals of the world. In view of recent events,
however, they are thinking of revising this declaration. What
effect upon the Socialists of Germany the action of the
German militarists will have is not yet known. But they
have so often betrayed their own principles that no one
will be surprised at yet another betrayal.

The differences between Grermany and Austria-Hungary
caused by the evident desire of the latter country for a speedy
conclusion of peace which was the occasion of President Wil-
son's last address to Congress, seemed to have developed into
a real divergence of action when Germany sent her troops
into the Ukrainian territory. The Premier of Austria publicly
declared that the Dual Monarchy would take no part in such
an invasion. Only a few days afterwards, however, it was
announced that Austro-Hungarian forces,. yielding to the ear-
nest petition of the Ukraine Government, had crossed the
boundaries which divided the two countries. The reasons for

Digitized by

Google

132 RECENT EVENTS [April,

this sudden change are yet to be known. Possibly the Dual
Monarchy did not wish to yield all the glory and aU the booty
to its ally. Perfect harmony between the two countries seems
to have resulted from these successes.

The long promised reform of the franchise has been under
discussion in the Prussian Diet, and a bill effecting reforms
was carried in the lower house, but was rejected in the upper
house by the conservatists who form a majority. Whether or
no any hopes still exist of that democratization of the Prus-
sian Kingdom, which the Kaiser some little time ago declared
to be so near his heart, cannot now be ascertained, although
there are those who believe that upon the success of this move-
ment depends the future welfare of Grermany and even the
existence of the present dynasty. It is to be feared that such
an opinion is at present held by so few that it will have no
practical results.

The long-talked-of Hindenburg drive has
Progress of the War. not yet begun, although according to
credible reports there are masses upon
masses of soldiers behind the German front lines. Nine hun-
dred and seventy thousand men within the last two months, it
is calculated, have been brought into Belgium and northern
France by the enemy. General von Ludendorff has recently
made the assertion that never diuing the whole course of the
War has Germany been so strong in men and munitions. There
are those, however, who think that there will be no such drive,
and that Germany will recognize the impossibility of break-
ing through lines held by foes who defeated her when they
were less than half their present strength. No one will be sur-
prised if an attempt is made to drive out from Saloniki the
forces of the Allies which have so long been stationed there
with a view to cutting off the conununications of Germany
with Constantinople. The defection of Russia rendered it
impossible to carry out this plan, but the Allies are bound in
honor to hold the position to safeguard Greece which is
now their ally, or at all events is acting in concert with
them. The Kaiser has promised Constantin to replace him
on his throne. If the attempt is made it is impossible to say
whether or not it will succeed, but Mr. Bonar Law; the British
Chancellor of the Exchequer, has declared that every yard of
ground gained by the Germans will cost them dear.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 133

Little change has taken place in relative positions in the
line which stretches from the Channel to the Adriatic. Per-
haps the most important, certainly the most interesting, is the
taking over by our American troops of a sector of that line,
although that sector is at the present time but a small one,
being only eight miles in length, according to one account,
and four and one-half miles according to another. In this
sector our troops had some gratifying successes. Their valor
was recognized by their French comrades by the bestowal
of a large number of war crosses. Among the recipients of
this decoration is Osias Boucher, a Catholic chaplain. Our
troops also are cooperating with the French in two or three
other parts of the line.

Little change has taken place on the Italian front. Pass-
ing over the operations on what was the Russian front, to
which reference has already been made, as well as those
now taking place on the Transcaucasian .front, record may be
made of a short British advance to the north of Jerusalem and
Jericho. No attempt, however, to cut the railway running
east of the course of the Jordan has been recorded, but a Brit-
ish advance to a point seventy miles east of Bagdad has been
made, and the town of Hit on the Euphrates has been captured.
No movement has taken place, either backwards or forwards,
of the British forces acting north of Bagdad in the direction
of Mossul. The hopes of uniting with the Russian army which
was in possession of the greater part of Armenia, have of
course been frustrated by the abandonment of that province
to the Turks, as ordered by the Bolshevik Government.

The submarine warfare, it is regrettable to state, has not
yet been brought to an end, and it is to be feared that the ex-
pectations of the British Premier were too sanguine. The
fact that after long hesitation it has been found necessary to
introduce rationing into England, at least into parts of it, is an
evidence of the too great success which German ruthlessness
has attained. This adoption of rationing, however, is largely
due to the fact that Great Britain has taken upon herself the
burden of giving aid to the armies both of France and of
Italy.

March IB, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

With Our Readers.

ANEW type dress marks this issue of The Catholic World,
which begins its one hundred and seventh volume. The
Catholic World vsras born just after our country emerged from
a struggle in which were secured those principles of national
unity which made us forever a nation, one and indivisible. That
we may still live in peace and security under the institutions we
have chosen, we are now forced to defend them with our blood.
May blessed peace speedily crown our arms — if such be God's
will; but above all, may we always seek honor first and peace
afterwards. For honor and peace must the name of America
ever stand before the world.

ONCE a citizen becomes entitled to the suffrage, is its exercise
a privilege or a duty: that is the question. And one upon
whose answer hangs the fate of every democracy.

* ♦ ♦ ♦

IT has been a byword in many places in the past, that the result
of an election might safely be predicted by the Weather
Bureau. We all know the meaning of Democratic and Republi-
can weather, and the fact it connotes that many men would rather
cast their lines in pleasant places than to cast a vote: that for
them, the exercise of the suffrage is a privilege, not a duty.

French statistics show that a comparatively small percentage
of the French rural populations have exercised the suffrage: for
them, too, it has been an uncoveted privilege, not a duty. Hence
the undisputed sway of Freemasonry and Socialism in the poli-
cies of the French Government in the past. For the tremendous
Catholic feeling evidenced in France since the War, is abundant
confirmation of the fact that had the French voted, France could
never have been in the vanguard of anti-clericalism.

* ♦ ♦ ♦

ON November 6, 1917, the Constitutional Amendment was
passed at Albany giving the women citizens of the State of
New York the right to vote. The recent Congressional election
gave the first opportunity to read into events the answer to our
question. The registration figures show that out of a possible
131,216, only 37,623 women signified their intention to vote. In
some districts only one woman in every eight or ten qualified. Many

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 135

who did register were evidently rounded up by organizations or
representatives of the men running for Congress. Some of the
hard-worked leaders who won the Constitutional Amendment at
so great a cost, admitted chagrin; others claim the figures to be
good considering the nature of the election. Some allowance cer-
tainly must be made for ignorance of their right to vote on the
part of many women, despite the very efBcient educational work
of the New York State and New York City Woman Suffrage Party
in such pamphlets as Citizenship and the Vote. The vote is still a
novelty and some women have not waked up.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE tremendous agitation for Woman's Suffrage for many
years past has based its claim upon a ** right.'* It is not our
purpose here to discuss the claim. For the women of New York
State, as for the women of every State that has granted them the
suffrage, the discussion is closed. It is now important that they
ask themselves honestly and answer conscientiously the ques-
tion: Is the exercise of the suffrage a privilege or a duty? The
estimate of woman as a citizen certainly depends upon the an-
swer; the fortunes of our country may depend upon it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

AS the President of the National Association opposed to Woman
Suffrage wisely pointed out in the New York Times of March
2d, ''this nation cannot fall from outside attack. Neither did
mighty Russia fall from outside attack." It was the lack of dis-
interested citizenship that disrupted Russia; the power of Social-
ism in its most radical form. How will it be with us, she asks,
** if the conservative women on the farms and in the home, the
women of the old parties, largely remain away from the polls,
while the Socialists, feminists, pacifists and other radicals are
doubling their political power?''

" The 145,000 Socialists who voted against the War and for
suffrage in New York City already claim to be educating 125,000
women to vote the Socialist ticket. The suffragists will educate
a number of women to vote for those measures dear to the heart
of the feminist. The majority of the Democratic and Republican
women, educated or not, will practise the doctrine of ' no obliga-
tion to vote.' " Will this prediction be verified?

* ♦ ♦ ♦

IN the Catholic mind privilege can never be divorced from re-
sponsibility. It would seem, then, that Catholic women could
give but one answer to the question before them; that, especially
in the face of the figures given by Mrs. Wadsworth, the exercise
of the ballot should be to them a duty and a paramount one : that

Digitized by

Google

136 WITH OUR READERS [April,

no point of taste or time should outweigh the vital necessity for
God and country of out-voting the Socialist, the feminist, the
pacifist and the radical.

IF man does not, time certainly tells the truth — eventually.
Over a decade ago, when the French Government of that day
began its bitter persecution of the Church, French politicians and
many secular journals in America, claimed that it was all done
in the name of liberty and equality. ** The Church," they said,
"was opposed to both; the Church was the enemy of country.
She was the foe of social well-being and the obstacle in the way of
progress." It will be remembered that Viviani's blasphemous
words were, by ofBcial order, posted publicly throughout the
whole of France.

In vain did Catholics in France and Catholics throughout the
world, protest that all this was a lie — ^a deliberate, infamous lie,
framed and circulated by men actuated, first, by the basest of
selfish reasons, and, secondly, by hatred of the Church, its priests
and its religious, because the Church blocked the fulfillment of
their selfish ends. In vain did the Catholics of France point out
over and over again, with evidence unanswerable, that this was a
Masonic plot, engineered without regard to country, or popular
interest, or national welfare; that the Freemasons were atheist
and aimed to de-Christianize France; that the Freemasons were
unpatriotic willing to betray their country for wealth and worldly
position.

3» 3^ 3^ 4c

WRITING in January, 1907, in the Pall Mall Gazette, J. Caus-
sade said tnat " the spirit animating the French Govern-
ment in its dealing with the Church is the spirit of that hateful,
contemptible Freemasonry which, out of an association of
brotherhood has made an instrument of war against all religions.*'
He cites some of the declarations of the leading Freemasons of
France. M. Delpech, a Senator and one time Grand Master of the
Great Orient of France, at a meeting of all the Masonic Lodges
in 1902, said: "The triumph of the Galilean lasted twenty cen-
turies, a mysterious voice predicts the end of this deceitful God.
The delusion lasted too long; He disappears, also the lying God.
As Freemasons we are pleased to say we are not strangers to the
ruin of the false Prophet." M. Lafferve, who succeeded Delpech
as Grand Master and who was the strongest supporter of the Law
of Separation in parliament, said in the Chambers of Deputies:
" No society can develop itself either politically or socially under

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 137

the slavery of a dogma* whatever it is." At a general meeting of
the Ifasonic Lodges in 1879, French Freemasonry confessed that
its aim **was to de-Christianize France, first by employing all
means to strangle Catholicism, and then to effect the closing of all
the churches."

In 1903, M. Varenne a French Deputy and a Freemason,
wrote in the Action: " We are the adversary of every dogma; we
fight first the Catholic Church, but the Protestant, the Israelites,
must not think it is for their benefit; religion is an absurdity
whatever form it takes."

The newspapers that supported^ost strongly the French Gov-
ernment, in passing the Law of Separation, were the Action, the
Aurore, the Lanterne and the Petite Ripublique. The director of
the first, M. B^ranger, wrote, on February 13, 1914: ** Our com-
mon end with Delpech, is to de-Christianize France, to destroy
all religions." M. Flanchon, director of the Lanterne, wrote in
1905 : *' The end of the separation must be the crushing of the
Church of Religion; the Church will not survive ten years after
the Separation Law." The Aurore was the organ of M. Cl^men-
ceau, then Prime Minister of France. M. Gerault-Richard
echoed every day in La Petite Ripublique '' the atheistic chorus
of separation and destruction."

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

ALTHOUGH these were matters of public history and might
have been known even to the casual student, the French Sep-
aration Law has been defended, as a rule, in our country as a just
and legal proceeding. Modern histories and modern editorials
on current events have generally approved and accepted it and
have quoted it favorably as an example.

3» ♦ 4c 3^

BUT, as we have said, time reveals the truth. Since the Sepa-
ration Law was enacted, France has been compelled to fight
for her national existence. The invader came upon her with fire
and sword, unjustly, ruthlessly determined to destroy her. Sacri-
fices have been asked of her such as have been asked of few
nations. The blood of hundreds of thousands of her sons has been
immolated on the altar of Country. Every father, mother and
child has been enlisted in her service. Who have proved them-
selves the most valiant defenders of home and country and Chris-
tian civilization? Those Catholics of France who were once
branded by their Government as the enemies of the nation and of
her life and liberty.

The supporters of the Law of Separation are now seen in
their true colors — anti-patriots as well as anti-clericals. The

Digitized by

Google

138 WITH OUR READERS [April,

present Prime Minister, M. Q^menceau, for the sake of his coun-
try's life, is now compelled to prosecute the very men with whom
he once joined hands in persecuting the Church and his Catholic
fellow citizens.

♦ * ♦ ♦ ♦

IN an article by Charles Johnston, published in the New York
Times February 24, 1918, the question is asked: Why did
Joseph Caillaux enjoy such long immunity — an immunity which
made it possjble for him to betray French interests, prostitute
his country's honor and pile up a fortune by gambling on diplo-
matic information which came to him as Prime Minister? Why was
he able to look forward to being again Prime Minister of France?
The writer answers and says because for years Caillaux was a
leading member of Freemasonry, which *' for the last twenty-five
or thirty-five years played an almost dominating rdle in the poli-
tics of France, permeating with its octopus-like tentacles, not
only the political world, but the French army and the French
financial world." Caillaux, through his position in Freemasonry,
was able to obtain immense political power; to amass a great for-
tune, to secure complete immunity.

Invisible Government " was the curse of France. Since 1870
the real centre of power has been, not in the Palace of the Elysian
Fields, the oflBcial residence of the President of the Republic; not
in the Bourbon Palace, the meeting place of the Chamber of Dep-
uties, but in the Rue Cadet, the headquarters of the 'Grand
Orient' — the life centre of 'Latin Freemasoijy ' in France.
And in this Temple of Mystery in the Rue Cadet, Joseph Ckil-
laux has been one of the Chief Priests." This Masonic power
endeavored to impose upon France not a genuine religious
liberty, but a materialistic and atheistic tyranny. Caillaux
is talented; brilliant. His gifts gave him leadership. He
used the German bankers, dickered with them to found branches
in France, and without any concern for his native land sought
to be an unprincipled leader in international politics. He posed
as the champion of International Socialism. He labored in the
interests of Germany, and worked for a German peace. He
fathered the dastardly espionage system that worked in army
and navy, and sought to crush all men of religious faith. Am-
bitious ofBcers sought promotion not on merit, but through
Masonic influence. With the Socialists the Freemasons pro-
tested, in 1912, against, the strengthening of the French army.
" How formidable the Freemason ' Internationalist ' opposition
to the military strengthening of France was, is revealed by this
statement published just after the fall of Caillaux, in January,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 139

1912, and at the very time when the three-years' law was coming
into being:

" * At the present moment, it is estimated that three hundred
Deputies (out of five hundred and eighty) and one hundred and
eighty Senators (out of three hundred) are Freeemasons. Free-
masonry thus disposes of an absolute majority in both legisla-
tive assemblies. As for the Ministries, for the last twenty-five
years they have constantly contained a majority of Freemasons.' "
4c ♦ ♦ ♦

WE quote this history of the past that it may throw light on
the present History is experience voicing wisdom. France
saw the curse under which she lay (before the present War
opened) and determined to throw it off. Her return to the Catho-
lic Church — ^and France has ever been Catholic at heart — ^began
before August, 1914.

In an article to which the years have given exceptional value,
published in The Catholic World of April, 1914, Hilaire Belloc
thus spoke of the evil influence of Freemasonry in France and of
France's awakening:

'' The break-up of Freemasonry came with surprising quick-
ness, and was brought on as much as anything by the Dreyfus
case. Its whole power consisted in France, of course, as it con-
sbts everywhere, in secrecy. To get people to believe that it is a
mere friendly society — on its own unsupported word and in spite
of the grossly immoral principle inherent in all secret societies
— ^was, and is still in Protestant countries, its principal strength.
The Dreyfus case blew all that sky-high. French Freemasonry
then appeared in the eyes of all Frenchmen, however provincial
or stupid, in the light of an anti-Catholic society, and no one could
be so dull as not to note the way in which in proportion as Free-
masonry was strong in any country, in that proportion was the
violent campaign against the French army and the French Church
supported. As always happens after a breakdown, events accel-
erated the failure of Freemasonry when it had once made this
principal error. Its last attempt — a failure — ^to play its old r61e
was in connection with the Ferrer case, and now it may be said,
with some truth, that the very name of this secret society has be-
come ridiculous in the ears of most Frenchmen. Its ritual is
exposed, its recruitment has falfen to a lower and a lower class
of citizens; its methods of conspiracy and private spying are pub-
lic property, and therefore have brought it into final and well-
deserved odium.

" Finally, as I have said, there has been a great, though sin-
gularly unnoticed, missionary effort at work under the surface

Digitized by

Google

140 WITH OUR READERS [AprU.

during the whole of this generation. It has not had the oppor-
tunity of working through the schools. Indeed, it has had in the
educational system of the country nothing but enmity to meet;
but it has worked through individuals, and especially through
the great and unprecedented masses of vocations to religious
life. The proportion of the religious to the total population grew
in the nineteenth century to be far larger in France than it ever
has been before. The domestic and personal effects of these voca-
tions are quite beyond calculation, and as against them merely
mechanical measures, such as the confiscation of religious prop-
erty, or even the exile of numerous communities, could be of but
little moment.

*' One may sum up and say, that the Church has been regain-
ing her place in France, and therefore in Europe (for upon the
Church in Gaul the tone of the European mind towards religion
depends) steadily for over thirty years. One may further say,
that this growth, long proceeding beneath the surface, became
markedly apparent in the last ten or fifteen years."

CENTURIES ago the model hypocrite was portrayed to all the
world as the man who stood far up in the temple and said:
" I thank Thee, Lord, that I am not as the rest of men." Since
that day every intelligent and calculating hypocrite has taken
pains not to separate himself visibly from the rest of men. He
has accepted the normal standard, not in order to follow it in
that interior spirit where dwells the Kingdom of God, but to use
it as a cloak of worldly wisdom to save him from self-betrayal.
The hypocrite knows that all the world hates a hypocrite, and
that is why he is one — ^but secretly. That his secret may die with
him, he makes sure even to be as the rest of men. Yet in his anx-
ious inquiry he will see that the rest of men are of every kind, and
variety. Some gentle, others short-tempered; some honest, others
deceitful; some generous, others selfish; some believers, others
doubters; some reverent; others scoffers; some buoyant with
hope, others keen to scent difficulty and failure. Indeed, if his
search were carried far enough he would stumble across the an-
cient Grecian axiom — " Know thyself." He would run up against
the paradox: that to be like the rest of men, one must be oneself.
Just because he is not really himself, but another, the classic
hypocrite is not like the rest of men.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE saint is like the rest of men in that he estimates himself
honestly: the sins he has committed are most clearly his own,
and he is the least of disciples. He is like the rest, in that none

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 141

sees so folly the worth of that potentially divine humanity com-
mon to all: he forces it straight and swift into the life of God.
He is one with the rest; with the bad« because, save for God's
favor, he is as bad; with the good, since there is no step on the
upward road where tliey will not find him ready to lead them
higher. Tet he has acliieved only by daring to bear the brand of
hypocrite, only by letting his life — though not his lips — proclaim:
•• I am not as the rest of men.*' Courage makes the saint; cow-
ardice begets the hypocrite.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE hypocrite is not humble. Humility is as foreign to him
as generosity to the miser. Throughout the ages the hypocrite
has hid himself behind the rest of men. He shows himself as one
of them. He prates about being no higher, no better, no more
gifted than any other man. He puts up human kind as a vile
shield for his unworthiness, Iiis vices, his sins. If he be not really
like the rest of men, he vrill make the rest of men like unto Iiim-
self • If he is quite naturally a sinner, then he spreads a Lutheran
varnish over all mankind. He is not good — neither are others.
He is one of the crowd — the crowd is like him and he is like the
crowd. Uprightness, sincerity, purity of heart, loyalty, trustful-
ness in the good are for him shibboleths that have ceased to de-
ceive the great majority of mankind. Marriage, the life-long
fidelity of one man to one woman, is not characteristic of human-
kind. Continence is against the very laws of nature; the young
laugh at it and the old know its ineffectiveness as a human stand-
ard. Honesty is but a byword in the mouths of men. The really
good are few and life is but a pretence and a dissemblance. Its
heart is as faithless and as skeptical as my own; the proper study
of mankind is the triangle not the cross — so says the hypocrite.

N age that boasts that everybody is like everybody else, is sure
to be characterized by much hypocrisy. Its literature is bound
to be realistic not in the uplifting but in the sordid sense. Its
authors vdll see life as they live it. For our measure of others is
the stature to which we have grown. Our appreciations are the
children of our ideals. Our wealth is but the measure of our pos-
sessions. To him that hath, shall be given. Equally true is it
that from him that hath not, shall be taken away.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

UNABLE to take, or unblessed with the opportunity of taking
the discipline of humility — the gift which lowers yet exalts,
which opens the vision of both depth and height — the literary

Digitized by

Google

142 WITH OUR READERS [April.

hypocrite loses himself in the sea of human infidelity and human
pessimism, and reads for others the message of his own fatalism.
This is the cardinal sin not only of the modem novel, but of
much of modern, serious philosophical and political writing. Its
opening appeal carefully sounds the note of the author's sameness
with humankind; he too is like the rest of men and he advances
for their welcome with the greeting of a brother: "We are all
weak and sinful creatures," he pleads. *'That is about all the
truth we know. Our worst side is our only side, and the supreme
study of literature and of life is our vice — not our virtue.**
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

BUT however strange it may appear to one who thus speaks,
the rest of men will seek, or be forced to seek, a higher and
happier message; and rejecting the man who seeks to be like the
rest of us, will accept, and believe in Him Who was most unlike
us all.

IN these our days, the following paragraph taken from Black-
wood's Magazine has a special significance. Our readers will
recall that General San Martin was a Catholic.

*' The Cumbre, the summit of the mountain-pass between the
Argentine and Chile, was reached and conquered at last, and
one traveler at least felt a thrill of pride and exhilaration. He
also felt a gale of icy wind that blew through his thick poncho as
if it had been a gauze veil and ate into his very vitals. For this
spot, though only the highest point of the pass into Chile, and
though beside the snow-clad giants that rise on every side, it is no
mountain at all, is actually approaching thirteen thousand feet
above sea level, and is bitingly cold. What it can be like in winter
is perhaps best gauged by a small rough-hewn mausoleum of
stone which covers the remains and commemorates the bravery
of five postmen, who, while carrying the mails from Chile, were
frozen to death at this very spot

** But, indeed, this Cumbre, so far from the world of men, is
an open-air sanctuary of the sublimities. Over its bleak stony
bosom passed the heroic army of General San Martin as he led
them to victory against the Spaniards, freeing first Chile and then
Peru from the hated yoke, and ensuring for ever the liberty of
his native land."

4^ ♦ ♦ ♦

NE'S attention, however, is drawn more immediately to some-
thing else. The boundary-line between the Argentine and
Chile runs right along the summit of this pass, and erected upon

Digitized by

Google

1918.] BOOKS RECEIVED 143

this line is perhaps one of the most curious memorials in the
world. It is a colossal statue of Christ the Redeemer. Cast in
bronze, and raised upon a solid concrete pediment, the gigantic
figure — ^it seems to be nearly forty feet in height — ^is designed in
loose robes, and bears aloft in one arm a great metal cross. The
pediment bears a plaque with the following inscription: 'The
Workers' Clubs of the Argentine Republic to Christ the Redeemer
for lasting peace between the Argentine and Chilean nations,
1902.1904.'

" It was designed by an Argentine sculptor, and commemo-
rates the settlement by arbitration of a boundary dispute which
threatened a bitter war between the two nations. But the spec-
tator hardly thinks of that, both touching and promising thoujih
it is. He sees only the majestic Figure of peace and goodwill,
standing there amidst the silence and the unspeakable sublimity,
far above the busy haunts of men, in the very heart of the Andes."

BOOKS RECEIVED.

B. P. DuTTON A. Co.. New York:

Mg Two Kings. By Mrs. B. Nepean. $1.50 net. Reltgton and Common Sense.
By D. Hankey. 60 cents net. Bvergman's Ltbrarg: Taras Bulba, and Other
Stories, By N. V. Gogal; Memoirs of Cardinal de Rett, Two volumes. 60
cents each.
Geobgk H. Doban Co.. New York:

Trench Pictures from France. By Major William Redmond, M.P. 50 cents.
British War Aims, Pamphlet. Belgium in War Time. By Commandant de
Gerladie de Gomery. 50 cents net.
LoMOMANS. GaxRN A. Co.. New York:

The Secret of Personality. By G. T. Ladd, LL.D. $1.50 net
DouBLBOAT, Paob A Co., Garden City, New York:

Bog Woodbarn. By A. Ollivant. $1.40 net. The Enlisting Wife. By G. S.
Richmond. 50 cents net The Fallacy of the German State Philosophy. By
Dr. G. W. Crlle. 50 cents. Simba. By S. B. White. $1.40 net
Thb Macmillan Co., New York:

The Tree of Heaven. By May Sinclair. $1.50.
FuifK A Waqnalls Co., New York:

Health for the Soldier and Sailor. By Professor I. Fisher and Dr. B. L. Fisk.
60 cents net
Chablbs ScBnNBB's Sons, New York:

A History of the Christian Church. By W. Walker, D.D. $3.00 net
Ajcbbican Book Co., New York:

Practical English for High Schools. By W. D. Lewis, A.M., and J. P. Hosic,
PhJff. Elementary Spanish Reader. By A. M. Espinosa, Ph.D., and C. G. Allen.
Chemistry in the Home. By H. T. Weed, B.S. Laboratory Manual. By H. T.
Weed, as.
FlmMEBicx A. Stokbs Co., New York: •

The White Morning. By Gertrude Atherton. $1.00 net The Collected Works
of Padraic H. Pearse. $3.00 net.
SiLTBB, BvBDBTTB A Co., Ncw York:
Garden Steps. By Ernest Cobb.
ScHWABTi, KiBWUf A Favss, Ncw York:

An Estimate of Shakespeare. By John A. McOorey, SJ. 50 cents.

Digitized by

Google

144 BOOKS RECEIVED [April, 1918.]

Thb Ambuca Puss, New York:

Fatth and Facts: The Catholic Lavman's DutieM. Pamphlets. 6 cents each.
BBNZiOEm Bbothebs, New York:

The Tideway, By John Ayscou^ $1.50 net
HouoHTON MiPPLiM Co., Boston:

The History of Medieval Europe. By L. Thorndlket Ph.D., and J. T. Shotwell.
13.50 net The Inn of Disenchantment, By L. Ysage. $1.25 net
Thb Foub Sbas Co., Boston:

The Soul of America. By R. M. Weraer. $1.25 net Teepee Neighbors. By G.
Coolldge. $1.50 net Rinconete and Cortadillo, From the Spanish. By M. J.
Lorente. $1.50 net.
Pbtsb Reilly, Philadelphia:

Boss f eld's Educational Series: New Practical Method for Learning the Italian
Language, By A. Rota. Conjunction of Italian Verbs, By A. Rota. 15 cents.
The Catholic's Pocket Prayer Book, Nocturne of Remembered Spring, By C
Aiken. $1.25 net
The Jewish Publication SoasTY op Ambbica, Philadelphia:

The Breakfast of the Bird, and Other Stories, By Emily Soils-Cohen, Jr.
J.^B. LiPPiNCorr Co., Philadelphia:

Religions of the P<ut and Present, Edited by Dr. J. A. Montgomery. $2.50 net.
Loyola Umivebsity Pbbss, Chicago:

The Ceremonies of Ordination to the Priesthood, 25 cents.
Catholuc Instbuction League, Chicago:

Catechism for First Communion, By Rev. Francis Cassllly, SJ.
B. Hebdeb, St. Louis t

" Tre Ore," or the Three Hours Agony of Our Lord,
The Catholic Tbuth Society, Toronto, Canada:

Why Send Missionaries to Roman Catholics? Pamphlet
W. E. Blake A Son, Toronto, Canada:

The Pbpe and the War, By the Archbishop ot Toronto. Pamphlet 5 cents.
William Lea A Co., London:

The War in September, and November, i917. Pamphlets.
The Tablet, London:

German Catholics and Peace. Pamphlet
AusTBALiAN CATHOLIC Tbuth SOCIETY, Melboume:

Reoelation and Astronomy, By I. Doyle, O.P. The War. The Pope's Uniuersal
Charity. Pamphlets.
T. FisHEB Unwin, London:

The Secret Press in Belgium. By Jean Xassart
Catholic Tbuth Society, London:

Saints for Soldiers, By Mrs. A. O'Connor. '' Carry On! " By A. Lieutenant
The Resurrection, By E. J. Sydes, S.J. The Three Mothers, By E. Nesblt
Some Facts About Martin Luther, By A. H. Atterldge. The Pope on Peace
and War: Personal Immortality, By Rev. R. Downey. D.D. Faith and Facts.
By A. J. RahlUy, M.A. Father Edward Douglas, CSS,R. By Rev. G. Stebblng,
C.SS.R. Pamphlets.
R. A T. Washboubne, London:

Vladimir Solouieu, By Mldiel d'Heii>lgny.
/^/t iinw|y« Titt A If f! wwm tf I? Paris *

De I'Art d la Foi-Jean Thorel, 1859-1916, Par A. BessUres, SJ. 1 fr, 50. Us
Timoins du Renouveau Catholique, Par T. Malnage. 3 fr. Fridiric Mis-
tral, Par J. Vincent 3 fr, 50. VOeuvrt de Paul Claudel. Par J. de
Tonquddac 2 fr,
PiEBBE Tequi, Paris:

Les Vrais Principes de L'tducation Chritienne, Par P. A. Monfat Retraite
de Dames et de Mires Chritiennes, Par J. Mlllot 3 fr. 50. Le Purgatoire.
Par L. Rouzic. 3 fr, 50. Les Croyances Fondamentales, Par Monselgneur
Tlssler. 3 fr, 50. Le Vinirable Jean-Claude Colin et la Soeiiti de Marie.
Par A. Cothenet Au Cceur, de Jisus Agonisant. Par J. Dargaud. 2 fr,
Plon-Noubbtt et Cie, Paris:

Impressions de Guerre de Pritres Soldats, Par L. de Grandmalson.
P. Lbthiellbux, Paris:

Exposition de la Morale Catholique, Par M. A. Janvier.
LiBBAiBfR Payot ET CiE, Paris:

Deux Ans de Guerre d Constantinople, Par Dr. H. Stoermer.
r«fBBAiBfB Lbcoffbe, Paris:

La Doctrine de Vie, Par M. S. Glllet 3 fr. Dieu nous Aime, Par Abb4 F.
Klein.
TiPOOBAFiA dell'Immacolata, LeYBnto, Italy:

Le Bienheureux Jean Duns Scot, Par A. Bertonl.

Digitized by

Google

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. CVII.

MAY, 1918.

No. 638.

THE POETS* LINCOLN.

BY CHARLES PHILUPS.

N our imaginative literature, despite the efforts of
poets and story tellers, the figure of Lincoln still
remains to a degree remote from us. He is not
real in the manner or to the extent that one
would suppose such a compelling character, the
most inspiring and appealing and heroic personality in Amer-
ican history, would have become in the passage of over a cen-
tury since his birth. While some of the most famous names in
American literature have been signed to Lincoln poems, none
has wholly succeeded in projecting through the medium of
verse that figure and that soul, that Lincoln, which the mind of
the average man impotently conjures up behind the pages of
his history or his biography — a figure which still seems to
move as behind a veil, waiting for, even demanding, the sum-
mons of that magic utterance which shall draw it forth in per-
fect light

Of the contemporary poems, apart from those occasioned
by the shock of Lincoln's assassination and the nation-wide
mourning at his funeral, John James Piatt*s Sonnet in 1862
is Ihe only one discoverable that speaks with the authentic
voice of inspiration :

Stern be the pilot in the dreadful hour
When a great nation, like a ship at sea
With the wroth breakers whitening at her lee.

Feels her last shudder if her helmsman cower;

fOL. cmv— It

1918. Thb Mimionabt Socibtt op St. Paul thb Apostui
IN TBB State op Nbw Yobk.

Digitized by

Google

146 THn POETS' LINCOLN [May,

A godlike manhood be his mighty dower!

Such and so gifted, Lincoln, mayest thou be

With thy high wisdom's low simplicity
And awful tenderness of voted power.
From our hot records then thy name shall stand

On Time's calm ledger out of passionate days —
With the pure debt of gratitude begun,

And only paid in never-ending praise —
One of the many of a mighty land.
Made by God's providence the Anointed One.

The death of Lincohi stirred some of the first singers of
the land. Besides Whitman's Captain, O My Captain, the
tragedy brought forth half a dozen other Lincoln poems
of real power and vision from the pens of such poets as Bryant,
Stoddard, Holmes, and the Caiy sisters — Alice and Phoebe.
Of these, the Horatian Ode of Richard Henry Stoddard (pub-
lished in his complete poems by Scribner's, in 1880) is indis-
putably the best. It gives us more of Lincoln, and more of
the mood of the nation at his passing, than any other poem we
have. It Fcems to have been written in an exalted moment,
its very measure, stately and simple and full of quiet gran-
deur, voicing at once the mourning and the man who was
mourned. When this poet sings :

Peace! Let the long procession come.
For hark! — ^the mournful muflOed drum —
The trumpet's wail afar —
And see! the awful car!

there is instantly flashed to the imagination the whole feeling
and aspect of a momentous and heart-touching event. The
country's bereavement is pictured in these four brief lines.
Then the picture passes in review:

Peace! Let the sad procession go,
While cannon boom and bells toll slow;
And go, thou sacred car,
Bearing our woe afar. . .

So, sweetly, sadly, sternly goes
The Fallen to his last repose;
Beneath no mighty dome.
But in his modest home.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE POETS' LINCOLN 147

The churchyard where his children rest,
The quiet spot that suits him best;
There shall his grave be made.
And there his bones be laid.

The portrait Stoddard draws of Lincoln the man, in this same
poem, is one of the few poetic visualizations we have of him.
He shows him as

A laboring man, with horny hands.
Who swung the axe, who tilled the lands —
One of the people, born to be
Their curious epitome.

This last couplet is one of the best things we have in our
meagre Lincoln literature.

William Cullen Bryant's The Death of Lincoln is rather
perfunctory and not stirring, but it contains some good lines;
as for instance:

O slow to smite and swift to spare.
Gentle and merciful and just,

so aptly characterizing the martyred President. And this:

Whose noblest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for the Lincoln Memorial serv-
ices in Boston in 1865, composed a hymn which is equally
perfunctory, though faultless in measure and nobly reverent
in tone. Lincoln is not in it, however, nor the light nor the
beauty of his soul. The Gary sisters were more fortunate.
Alice, stirred by the slanders of London Punch (nobly atoned
for!) wrote a poem entitled Abrahcun Lincoln which has a fine
spark of fire and spirit in it, and which contains some lines —
two at least — of memorable beauty. Nothing ever written of
Lincoln has been better done than this quatrain by '* the gen-
tle Alice :**

What need hath he now of a tardy crown.

His name from mocking jest and sneer to save.

When every plowman turns his furrow down
As soft as if it fell upon his grave?

This is a stroke of genuine inspiration; in those last two
lines the whole nation's love and reverence for Lincoln, and

Digitized by

Google

148 THE POETS' LINCOLN [May,

Lincoln's own native " flavor of the soil," are expressed with
unforglsttable beauty of feeling and utterance.

In Phoebe Gary's tribute there is also to be found at least
one memorable quatrain, glimpsing the lofty peace-ideals of
Lincoln, and simuning up the shock suffered by the nation at
his murder, perpetrated in the very moment when the peace
he so loved, was returned upon the land:

Lo! the beautiful feet upon the mountains,

That yesterday stood;
The white feet that came with glad tidings

Are dabbled in blood !

But these elegiac poems, celebrating more the people's
grief for the fallen man than the man himself, his personality'
and character, do not give us that living moving-picture of
Lincoln which we demand of the muse. We must, per-
force, piece together the various strokes and pencilings of
many poets to make our portrait of him. For there are those
who have in some degree glimpsed the soul of Lincoln, as well
as some shadow of his rugged externals, in their verse; and
from them we can outline a picture. Stoddard, already
quoted, sang again of him, ** common of mind " —

His thoughts the thoughts of other men.

Plain were his words, and poor.

But now they will endure.

No hasty fool of stubborn will.

But prudent, cautious, still —

Who, since his work was good.

Would do it as he could;

and Stedman has given us, in his poem written on the cast of
Lincoln's hand, this graphic picture:

Look on this cast, and know the hand .

That bore a nation in its hold;
From this mute witness understand

What Lincoln was^ — how large of mold.

The man who sped the woodman's team

And deepest sunk the plowman's share.

And pushed the laden raft astream.
Of fate before him unaware. . •

Digitized by

Google

1918,] THE POETS' UNCOLN 149

Firm hand that loftier oflBce took,

A conscious leader's will obeyed,
And, when men sought his word and look,

With steadfast might the gathering swayed.

The hand of Anak, sinewed strong.

The fingers that on greatness clutch.

Yet lo! the marks their lines along

Of one who strove and suffered much.

For here in mottled cord and vein

I trace the varying chart of years,
I know the troubled heart, the strain.

The weight of Atlas — ^and the tears.

Again I see the patient brow

The palm erewhile was wont to press;

And now *tis furrowed deep, and now

Made smooth with hope and tenderness.

For something of a formless grace

This molded outline plays about;
A pit3ring flame, beyond our trace,

Breathes like a spirit, in and out —

The love that casts an aureole

Round one who, longer to endure.
Called mirth to cease his ceaseless dole,

Yet kept his nobler purpose sure.

Lo, as I gaze, the statured man.

Built up from yon large hand, appears;

A type that nature wills to plan
But once in all a people's years !

Again, in a sonnet On the Death Mask of Abraham Lincoln,
Richard Watson Gilder drew one of the few vision-like pic-
tures of the living Lincoln given us by our poets :

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold

Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he:

That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold;

That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea

For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.

Digitized by

Google

150 THE POETS' LINCOLN [May,

Yes» this is he who ruled a world of men

As might some prophet of the elder day —
Brooding above the tempest and the fray

With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armed strength — ^his pure and mighty heart!

Other poets, some in the midst of very long verses which
today rather cloud and conceal than reveal Lincoln to us, have,
nevertheless, at times flashed momentary visualizations of the
man. Taken all together, these might be said to make a com-
posite portrait of him. James Phinney Baxter, writing on The
Natal Day of Lincoln, sees the same figure that Stoddard pro-
jected — the young Lincoln at his toil in ** the darkling forest,"
where his ** ringing axe chimed with the music of the waters
fall;*' while James Whitcomb Riley, likewise going back to
Lincoln's earlier days, sings of his Peaceful Life:

A peaceful life — ^just toil and rest —

All his desire —
To read the books he liked the best

Beside the cabin fire,
God's word, and man's^ — to peer sometimes

Above the page, in smoldering gleams,
And catch, like far heroic rhymes,

The onmarch of his dreams.
A peaceful life — ^to hear the low

Of pastured herds.
Or woodman's axe that, blow on blow.

Fell sweet as rhythmic words.
And yet there stirred within his breast

A faithful pulse, that, like the roll
Of drums, made high above his rest

A tumult in his soul!

Isaac Choate pictures him

of common elements, yet fine.
As in a wood of different species grows

Above all other trees the lordly pine.
Upon whose branches rest the winter snows.

Upon whose head warm beams of summer shine;

while Edwin Markham, using the same imagery when he sings
of the tragic death, says:

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE POETS' UNCOLN 151

When he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a kingly cedar, green with boughs.
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Indeed, this same poem of Markham's (Lincoln the Man of the
People), gives us many a striking line from which to draw our
portrait of

A man that matched the mountains, and compelled
The stars to look our way and honor us:

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;

The tang and odor of the primal things^ —

The rectitude and patience of the rocks;

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;

The courage of the bird that dares the sea;

The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;

The pity of the snow that hides all scars;

The loving-kindness of the wayside well;

The tolerance and equity of light

That gives as freely to the shrinking weed

As to the great oak flaring to the wind —

To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn

That shoulders out the sky. And so he came

From prairie cabin up to Capitol. . .

Forevermore he burned to do his deed

With the fine stroke and gesture of a king.

He built the rail-pile as he built the State,

Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,

The conscience of him testing every blow

To make his deed the measure of a man.

Something of this same figure, rugged, native-hued and of the
soil, comes to us in James Riley's Lincoln in his Office Chair,
which flashes us a picture of the Springfield lawyer newly
come to the high estate of the nation's voted choice and bent
upon the writing of his first inaugural. The poem was inspired
by the chair which is preserved in the Oldroyd Museum in
Washington; and reading it, it is not difficult for us to see
again the man, ** high-browed, rugged and swarthy, a picture
of pain and care,** sitting with *' his greatest brief *' before him,
^'his Countiy to him client," pondering in an awful, pray-
erful silence the dread task put upon him.

Digitized by

Google

152 THE POETS' LINCOLN [May,

The face of Lincoln arrests the eye of all and stirs many
poets to utterance. Whittier, inspired by the Emancipation
Group presented to Boston in 1879 by Moses Kimball, tells us
of the

worn frame, that rested not.
Save in a martyr's grave;

The care-lined face, that none forgot,
Bent to the kneeling slave.

"^Tall, ungainly, gaunt of limb, rudely nature molded
him,'' says Hamilton Schuyler in his Lincoln Centenary Ode:

Awkward form and homely face,
Owing naught to outward grace;
Yet behind the rugged mien
Were a mind and soul serene.
And in deepest eyes there shone
Genius that was all his own.
Humor quaint with pathos blent
To his speech attraction lent;
Telling phrase and homely quip
Falling iightly from the lip.
Eloquent of tongue, and clear.
Logical, devoid of fear,
Making plain whatever was dense
By the light of common sense.

In an ode written by Henry T. Tuckerman for the funeral
services held in New York City in April, 1865, this touching
line appears —

Blood-quenched the pensive eye's soft light,

a half dozen words that somehow possess the power of sum-
ming up all the gentleness of Lincoln's nature, and the pathos
of his mad taking off. And in The Eyes of Lincoln, Walt
Mason gives us a glimpse of the soul that looked out on the
world through

Sad eyes that were patient and tender,
Sad eyes that were steadfast and true.

And warm with the unchanging splendor
Of courage no ills could subdue!

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE POETS* LINCOLN 153

Eyes dark with the dread of the morrow,
And woe for the day that was gone,

The sleepless companions of sorrow,

The watchers that witnessed the dawn.

Eyes tired from the clamor and goading

' And dim from the stress of the years,
And hallowed by pain and foreboding
And strained by repression of tears.

Charlotte Becker portrays his " gaunt rough-hewn face, that
bore the furrowed signs of days of conflict, nights of agony,'*
and sings of his ^ brave weary heart that tears of blood for
every battle shed;** a sentiment which Herman Hagedom, in
his O Patient Eyes, makes still more vivid :

O patient eyes! oh, bleeding, mangled heart!
O hero, whose wide soul, defying chains.
Swept at each army's head.
Swept to the charge and bled.
Gathering in one too sorrow-laden heart
All woes, all pains;

The anguish of the trusted hope that wanes.
The soldier's wound, the lonely mourners smart.
He knew the noisy horror of the fight.
From dawn to dusk, and through the hideous night
He heard the hiss of bullets, the shrill scream
* Of the wide-arching shell,
Scattering at Gettysburg or by Potomac's stream
Like summer showers, the pattering rain of death;
With every breath

He tasted battle, and in every dream.

Trailing like mists from gaping walls of hell.
He heard the thud of heroes as they fell.

This war-ridden loneliness of Lincoln, keeping his anxious
and prayerful vigils while the country trembled or slept, has
appealed strongly to the poets. Vachel Lindsay, in writing
recently of the present War, pictured Lincoln returned and
pacing in sadness the same familiar ways he trod half a cen-
tury ago, anxious and uneasy, praying and puzzling out the
nation's problem. Margaret E. Sangster, writing during the
Centenary in 1909, likewise recalls him as a watcher of the
night, vicariously suffering his country's woes the while he
watched:

Digitized by

Google

154 THE POETS' LINCOLN [May,

O man of many sorrows, 'twas your blood

That flowed at Chickamauga, at Bull Run,
Vicksburg, Antietam, and the gory wood
And Wilderness of ravenous deaths that stood
Round Richmond like a ghostly garrison:
Your blood for those who won.
For those who lost, your tears!
For you the strife, the fears.
For us, the sun!
For you the lashing winds and the beating rain in your eyes.
For us the ascending stars and the wide, unbounded skies!

Oh, man of storms! Patient and kingly soul!

Oh, wise physician of a wasted land !

A nation felt upon its heart your hand.
And lo, your hand hath made the shattered, whole;
With iron clasp your hand hath held the wheel
Of the lurching ship, on tempest waves no keel
Hath ever sailed.

A grim smile held your lips when strong men quailed.

You strove alone with chaos, and prevailed!
You felt the grinding shock, and did not reel;
And ah, your hand that cut the battle's path
Wide with the devastating plague of wrath.

Your bleeding hand, gentle with pity yet.

Did not forget
To bless, to succor, and to heal.

Thus are we made to see the patient, long suffering Lincoln,
keeping his world-vigil — perhaps the most appealing picture
of the man the muse can conjure up; for what is more heart-
moving than a strong man at prayer? Far greater such a sight
than even a strong man in tears! So it is not difficult for us to
see the Lincoln that Lyman Whitney Allen visions for us in
his poem on Lincoln's Church at Washington (the New York
Avenue Presbyterian Church, where Lincoln and his family
worshipped while at the national capital). Here the poet
touches with reverent hand the pew

Where Lincoln prayed! What passion had his soul —
Mixt faith and anguish, melting into prayer!

Nor has his humor altogether escaped his bards. He was
the one, as Benjamin Franklin Taylor sang in his Centennial
Poem (1876), "who never caused a tear, but when he died;*'

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE POETS' LINCOLN 155

a tribute which, of course, comprehends far more than his
mere gift of humor; while S. Weir Mitchell sees ""his spirit
armed in mail of rugged mirth.'* Tom Taylor, of London
Punch, in his historic tribute of amendment, tells ''how his
quaint wit made home-truths more true;" and the same Char-
lotte Becker, whose pen-picture of his rugged face has already
been quoted, speaks of how, amid all his care and sorrow, he

Yet called on mirth to help his comrades bear
The waiting hours of anguish —

all of which, while not specifically stating the fact, points with
renewed emphasis the striking truth that Lincoln, however he
grieved over his country's sufferings, never was guilty of the
unpardonable sin of self-pity 1

The dramatic contrasts of Lincoln's story should be a
fecund source of inspiration to the poets. His humble origin,
his rise to the world's highest eminence, are among the most
inspiring facts in all human biography. Frederick Lucian Hos-
mer caught from the legend of his lowly birth inspiration for
an unforgettable line of poetry —

Still from the humble Nazareths come
The saviours of the race;
and so also

Not in the pampered court of kings
Not in the homes that rich men keep,
God calls His Davids with their slings
Or wakes His Samuels from their sleep,

sings Charles Monroe Dickinson.

"No flutter of the banners bold" came heralding him,
says John Vance Cheney:

Not his their blare, their pageantries.
Their goal, their glory was not his;

Humbly he came to keep

The flocks, to feed the sheep;

and of his mother and the heroic obscurity from which he
sprung through her, Harriet Monroe sings with this exquisite
lyric grace in her Nancy Hanks:

Prairie child,

Brief as dew,
What winds of wonder

Nourished you?

Digitized by

Google

156 THE POETS' LINCOLN [May,

Rolling plain

Of billowy green;
Fair horizons^

Bine serene;

Lofty skies

The slow clouds climb -
Where burning stars

Beat out the time:

These, and the dreams

Of fathers bold,
Baffled longings,

Hopes untold.

Gave to you

A heart of fire.
Love like water.

Brave desire. . .

Wilding lady.

Still and true.
Who gave us Lincoln

And never knew!

It was in the same strain that Julia Ward Howe, then in her
ninetieth year, sang when she wrote her Lincoln for the Cen-
tenary celebration in Boston in 1909:

Through the dim pageant of the years
A wondrous tracery appears :
A cabin of the western wild
Shelters in sleep a new-born child.

Nor nurse nor parent dear can know
The way those infant feet must go;
And yet a nation's help and hope
Are sealed within that horoscope!

The reference to Nazareth, noted in Hosmer's lines above,
reminds us that the analogy between the life of Lincoln and
the earthly days of Christ is often drawn by the poets; but not
always with the reverence, or the reticence or delicacy that
would have pleased that Lincoln who, as Madison Cawein
says, ** liked not praise, being most diffident."

In fact, Lincoln would, shrink from that comparison;
rather he would raise an instant and silencing hand against

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE POETS' UNCOLN 157

it And that his hand could silence, that voice of his com-
mand, is one fact that has not escaped some of our poets. In
The Master, Edwin Arlington Robinson asks :

Was ever master yet so mild.

As he, and so untamable?
We doubted, even when he smiled.

Not knowing that he knew so well.

He knew that undeceiving fate

Would shame us whom he served unsought;
He knew that he must wince and wait —

The jest of those for whom he fought.

He knew devoutly what he thought

Of us and of our ridicule;
113 knew that we must all be taught

Like little children in a school.

And what appears if we review

The season when we railed and chaffed?

It is the face of one who knew

That we were learning while we laughed.

Such a Lincoln, however he would have endured the sneers
and jibes of his enemies, would not for a moment have suf-
fered the extravagant praise of adulation. " He knew to bide
his time,^ said Lowell; but

Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, forseeing man.
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame.

^ I knew the man,*' sings Boker in his Lincoln:

I knew the man. I see him, as he stands
With gifts of mercy in his outstretched hands;
A kindly light within his gentle eyes.
Sad as the toil in which his heart grcfw wise;
His lips half parted with the constant smile
That kindled truth, but foiled the deepest guile;
His head bent forward, and his willing ear
Divinely patient right and wrong to hear:
Great in his goodness, humble in his state.
Firm in his purpose, yet not passionate. . .
A nature molded on a higher plan.
Lord of himself, an inborn gentleman!

Digitized by

Google

158 THE POETS' UNCOLN [May,

It is not only the life and deeds and the magnetic person-
ality of Lincoln that have inspired our poets. His words, too,
have come as a living text to many singers — ^words that in
some instances are themselves the essence of poetry. The ease
with which his Gettysburg Speech may be recast in the form
of free verse, without the change of a word, is well known : the
experiment has been often made, and always successfully, in
these days of vers libre. But this noble utterance of Lincoln's
had not to wait for the vogue of formlessness in verse to in-
spire poets to sing of it and re-sing it, as witness Bayard Tay-
lor's Gettysburg Ode, written forty years ago. In this, having
sounded his sonorous opening lines :

After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake
Here, from the shadows of impending death,
Those words of solemn breath,
What voice may fitly break
The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him?

the poet reiterates Lincoln's words, changed to rhythmic and
rhyming measure, producing a really fine poem, and one that,
despite the alterations from the original text, cannot be said
to weaken the thought or its expression in the smallest degree.
So, in Lincoln at Springfield, 1861, Anna Bache, a Philadelphia
poet, paraphrases his farewell address before his departure for
Washington, ending with this transcription of his actual
words:

Pray for me, friends, that God may make
My judgment clear, my duty plain;

For if the Lord no wardship take

The watchmen mount the towers in vain.

Nor is it our own American poets alone who have cele-
brated Lincoln in verse. Even to the eyes of old Europe, which
in his day could see only crudity and rawness in the Western
Republic, the figure of Lincoln, while he still lived, loomed
large and world-significant. Tom Taylor's famous poem in
London Punch, retracting the jibes against Lincoln of which
the British humorist had been so flagrantly guilty, is too well
known to need more than mention. Its opening lines :

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier?
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace

Broad for self-complacent British sneer.

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face?

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE POETS' UNCOLN 159

might be said now to have become a classic of real ** poetic
justice " and restitution. But it was not all sneers in England,
where Lincoln was concerned. As far back as January, 1863,
we find a poet, Edmund Oilier, writing in the London Morning
Star a sonnet of appreciation, in which Lincoln is hailed as
•• the Northern Sun," rising on its way.

Cleaving the stormy distance — every ray
Sword-bright, sword-sharp, in God's invisible hand.

Another English poet, anonymous, writing in Macmillan's
magazine, uses somewhat the same figure, characterizing Lin-
coln as the man

Who fought, and fought the noblest fight
And marshalled it from stage to stage,

Victorious, out of dusk and dark,

And into dawn and on till day. . .

But it was the shock of the shameful taking off of the Ameri-
can President, at the moment when he had achieved what all
Europe doubted could ever be done, that shook the old world
poets to a realization of his grandeur. Even London Fun
printed its tribute of verse, calling him ** the man whose dirge
all Europe sings;** while Robert Leigh ton, writing in May, 1865,
at Liverpool, and addressing the assassin, said these prophetic
words:

Even thy treacherous deed shall glance aside
And do the dead man's will by land and sea;
Win bloodless battles, and make that to be

Which to his living mandate was denied !

The spirit of democracy, too, was stirred to utterance in the
Old World by Lincoln as never since the days of Washington.
We find one English poet, Henry De Garrs, celebrating him as
" a king of men, inured to hardy toil,** who

Rose truly royal up the steeps of life,

Till Europe's monarchs seemed to dwarf the while

Beneath his greatness!

How Europe's monarchs are dwarfed today "beneath his
greatness!'* That spirit of democracy, of the inevitable
supremacy of the common people, which Lincoln evoked while
he breathed and moved in the world, stirs all the more
potently now across the face of the earth because of him.

Digitized by

Google

160 THE POETS' LINCOLN [May.

summoned as it is by the ideals which he lived, fought, and
died to make secure. If today — as one British poet sang in
1865 (John Nichol, Professor of English Literature at the Uni-
versity of Glasgow, 1861-1865)—

Freedom's rising star
Beacons above a hundred thousand graves,

it is because such men as Abraham Lincoln have lived and
lifted their voices up in the councils of humanity, conjuring
that star out of the darkness — nay more, kindling its fire from
their own steady flaming souls. And that is the star upon
which our poets must fix their eyes, if they are to sing authen-
tically of Lincoln and the things his name and his story stand
for. In a way, it might be said that the fame and fate of Lin-
coln rests with the poets : he will be remote from us until they
seize upon him : it is they who must preserve his tradition, who
must hand him down to our children a living breathing figure,
a personality from which their young souls shall catch inextin-
guishable fire; it is they, the poets, who must part the veil of
records and facts behind which he still moves a little vaguely,
a little indistinctly, and conjure him forth in full statiu*e and
full light, so that we shall see him even as the historian and
the romancer never may project him. And we need him now!
We need the great Lincoln poem now! Will it come? " Dare
we despair? '* asks one of our younger poets, Arthur Guiter-
man, in his sonnet He Leads Us StiH:

Dare we despair? Through all the nights and days

Of lagging war he kept his courage true.
Shall doubt befog our eyes? A darker haze

But proved the faith of him who ever knew
That right must conquer. May we cherish hate

For our poor griefs, when never word nor deed
Of rancor, malice, spite of low or great.

In his large soul one poison-drop could breed?

He leads us still ! O'er chasms yet unspanned
Our pathway lies; the work is but begun;

But we shall do our part and leave our land
The mightier for noble battles won.

Here truth must triumph, honor must prevail :

The nation Lincoln died for, cannot fail!

Digitized by

Google

ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA.

BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
V.

E Lord was asked three questions on the Mount
of Olives. He was on His way thither when a
bend in the road brought the Temple into view,
its marble cloisters and terraced courts all-
aflame with the glory of the westering sun. The
ed the Master's gaze to the beauty of the scene.
He painted it out of existence instantly before their wondering
eyes- **Do you (not) see all these things? ''—He declared.
*• Amen I say to you, there shall not be left here a stone upon a
stone which shall not be loosed from its foundations.*'^

It was a powerful contrast, powerfully drawn, between
beauty and ruin, splendor and destruction; a contrast accom-
panied by no promise of instant restoration and glory. The
disciples had heard the Lord unbosom Himself of this menac-
, ing utterance three times of late, but in quoted language that
was much more guarded and veiled.^ His descent to a more
open form of speech on this occasion encouraged them to hope
that He would vouchsafe more particulars regarding the great
national disaster, the " cup of reeling " from which Israel was
soon to drink. And so, when He was seated on the Mount of
Olives, several of His disciples — St. Mark ■ says it was Peter,
James, Andrew, and John — approached Him privately, saying :
**Lord, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign
of Thy coming, and of the end of the age? " * Three questions
to which the Lord replies in a lengthy discourse, or cluster of
assembled fragments, which has been the despair of scholars
since Western Christianity began.

About the first question proposed by the disciples : " Tell
us, when shall these things be?'' — no serious controversy ex-
ists. It is a request for the exact date of the Temple's destruc-
tion, the day and hour of its appointed doom, as may be seen
from the phrase: "all these things," in the question put by

>MatL xziT. 2. "Matt xxl. 40-44; xzll. 7; xxlU. 38.

•Mark zill. 3. «Matt xxiy. 3.

WL. cvn. — ^11

Digitized by

Google

162 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [May,

the Lord to the disciples' and in the question put Him by them
in turn.* But the other two questions — ^how are they to be
regarded, and on what point or points was information sought?
Did the disciples ask: "What shall be the sign of Thy (Sec-
ond) Coming and of the end of the (Jewish) age as connected
with it? " — a question the very form of which would convict
its framers of error, and lay them open to the charge of ex-
pecting the Lord's glorious Return when the Holy City fell.
Or — did they ask another and far different question, the na-
ture of which has hitherto escaped detection, largely owing to
the corrected, reinterpreted prophetical language in which the
inquiry was cast?

It is the quite generally accepted conclusion of scholarship
that the disciples inquired about the Lord's Second Coming in
connection with the destruction of Jerusalem. Educated in
the expectancies of Palestine, they knew of no other view.
They thought the world about to enter on its final phase of
existence, and this is the point on which they are seeking light.
The mentality of the questioners is too clearly revealed, we are
told, to admit of doubt. Their speech betrays them. In their
question and the manner of its putting, these humble fisher-
folk and petty State officials mirrored their personal beliefs
for the future inspection of the curious, little dreaming of the
untoward light in which their Jewish prepossessions would
come to be regarded when later generations looked down the
lengthening avenue of history on their false perspective. Of
the many opinions entertained concerning the nature of the
questions proposed on the Moimt of Olives, the theory of their
purely Jewish origin and character has had the longest vogue.
In our time, it has passed over into one of the settled matters
of Biblical science.

But from what has come steadily forth in the course of the
present investigation, the disciples never asked the Lord about
His Second Coming in connection with the destruction of Jeru-
salem. This could not possibly have been the form or object
of their inquiry, and the supposition that it was, reveals a
serious defect, when searchlngly examined. It is based on the
previous Jewish education of the inquirers, and invites us to
believe that they learned nothing new 'in eschatology from
their three years sojourn in the company of the Lord. This

•Matt xxiT. 2. Cf. Dan. xU. 7. •Matt xzir. 3.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 163

is hardly the rightful scientific way to study the history of
their education. Its reconstruction should not stop at the rec-
ords of PalestinCt it should be pursued into the pages of the
Gospel itself, and be carried up to the very moment when
the questions were put, before we are in complete possession of
the evidence. Not until then shall we be able to judge whether
it was Jewish prejudice or Christian education that created the
whole query and the manner of its asking.

It will be recalled from the earlier stages of the present
series of studies, that Jesus was frequently engaged in the
arduous process of de-Judaizing the Twelve; and the signs all
are that He effected a change of mind no less than a change of
heart in the future preachers of His word. The existence of
this de-Judaizing process is clearly attested in the text of the
First Gospel. The thirteenth, sixteenth, twenty-first, twenty-
second and twenty-third chapters represent the gradual educa-
tion of the disciples for the question that was asked and an-
swered in the twenty-fourth. In the thirteenth we find the
Saviour furnishing the thought and language of the third ques-
tion: ^What shall be the sign of the end of the age?'' He
astonishes His hearers by transferring this prophetical quota-
tion from the end of the Jewish age, with which they had been
taught to associate it, to the ** end of the age of the Kingdom
of Heaven,*' ^ which was publicly to succeed the Kingdom of
Israel when the latter was overthrown.

The disciples sought a special explanation of this transfer
of prophecy, and Jesus gave it, assuring them that the expected
reign of the Just in glory, inunediately after the destruction of
the Temple, had no foundation in the word of God.^ From
that day forth, the " end of the age " acquired an un-Jewish
significance in the minds of the disciples. The connection
which it had contracted in the Rabbinical schools gradually
fell away, through the educative process of the Master; and
so familiar with its new and Christian meaning had they
eventually become, that they made it a part of their question
on Mount Olivet, and the Lord Himself incorporated it into
His parting address, without the slightest fear of having His
words mistaken. He was to " be with His witness," He said.
*• all the days even unto the end of the age." • Nay the Lord used

'Matt xlU. 24-30; 37-43. Cf. Si, Matthew and the Paroasta, Thb Catholic
Wonj>, March, 1W8. • Matt xlll. 43. • Matt xxvlll. 20.

Digitized by

Google

164 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [May,

the same prophetical quotation to educate the people out of
their Jewish expectations, and upon His asking them if they
understood the sense He was attaching to the phrase, they re-
plied aflBrmatively.^® The Saviour did with this term of
prophecy what he did with all the others current in His time —
gave it a soul of meaning not foimd in the teaching of the
schools. It is far from being established, therefore, that the
disciples connected the Second Advent with the destruction
of Jerusalem, when they later put this prophetical quotation
to the Lord in the form of a question. The history of their
Christian education, as recorded in the First Gospel, proves
that they had mentally reacted to the teaching of the Master.
The Advent in glory had been successfully disconnected from
the overthrow of Israel. They tell us so themselves.

The second instance of the Lord's de-Judaizing process
of education in regard to the Parousia is found in the sixteenth
chapter. Here again Jesus follows the simple method of re-
applying the terms of prophecy in new relations and connec-
tions, to rescue the word of Grod from the nationalist construc-
tion that had been put upon it by the theologians of the Syna-
gogue. That the method was understood by St. Matthew and
the other Synoptic writers is one of the best established things,
granmiatically speaking, in the several reports. All three
quote the "" coming in the Kingdom ** as an independent state-
ment. All three represent the Lord as making two events of
His Parousia, notwithstanding their former Jewish belief in
the singleness of the ** coming.'' All three portray Him as most
solemnly affirming that what the age, the generation shall see,
is His coming in His Kingdom as distinct from His Return in
glory.**

The Sjmoptic writers who report this disconnection of
events, as taught by Jesus, are here recording the results of
their Christian education, and not tearing a leaf from the
teaching of the Rabbis. They are portraying the conversion
of minds schooled from infancy against the reception of any
such doctrine of the Parousia. It is wide of the mark there-
fore, to imagine that the question asked the Lord on the Mount
of Olives: ** What shall be the sign of Thy coming? " was an
inquiry concerning the Second Advent. The evidence is all to

» Matt xlU. 49, 51.

uMatL xvl. 27. 28; Mark Till. 38, 39; Luke ix. 26, 27. For detailed proof see:
SU Matthew and the Parousta, Thb Catholic WoaLO, April, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 165

the contrary, though its value has long been obscured by the
presence of a much misunderstood auxiliary verb in one of
the texts.** The disciples were well acquainted with the new
sense which Jesus gave to His '* coming ** at the ** end of the
Jewish age." And it was in this new sense that the word
** coming '' was used in the second question on Mount Olivet,
as we shall soon be led to see.

The third instance of the de-Judaizing of the Twelve is
the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, the point of which
was not lost on the government officials present, if we may
judge by their desire to lay hands upon the Saviour for His
speech. The fear of exciting the populace, who regarded Him
as a prophet, alone prevented His immediate seizure and
arraignment, so well had His thought been driven home, even
through the veiled medium of quotation.*' Was it the fall of
the Grovemment from power, and the dislodging of the mighty
from their seats, which they understood Him to threaten?
That, and something vastly more. For a century and a half,
the official literature had softened the blow that was to fall
upon the City, by the glorious after-picture which it drew, of
the strong right arm of the Almighty, extended to save His
people in their time of stress; and it was the divorcing of the
idea of destruction from the promise of glory and restoration,
that particularly stirred the resentment of the Pharisees.
When Jesus declared that the Lord of the vineyard shall come,
and bring those evil men to an evil end, and let out His vine-
yard to other husbandmen,^* this threat of the bestowal of the
Kingdom upon others was too grievous, even for the circum-
spect, to be received in silence. The priestly class present ut-
tered a cry of protest when they heard the Parousia thus inter-
preted in terms of destruction to themselves, and of their act-
ual superseding by an alien folk. ^ Away with the thought —
it is beyond belief 1 " " they exclaimed, in a phrase that is gen-
erally used in the New Testament, and for that matter, in the
old as well, to scout a false inference, to repel a wrong con-
clusion. Its utterance on this occasion clearly signified to the
listening throng that the meaning which Jesus was attaching
to the Parousia had no foundation in the Scriptures.

**|iiXXttv.— Matt ZYl. 27. » Matt zxl. 33-46. »Matt xxl. 40. 41.

>*L«ike XX. 1«. M4 Y^vocToI— In twelve out of a total of foarteen Instances.
n hM tUt meanlnc In St Paul. For typical Instances, see: Rom. Ut 3; Gal. H. 17.
Cf. Also: Gen. xIIt. 7, 17.— In our English rerslon: *' God forbldl"

Digitized by

Google

166 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [May,

The Saviour accepts the challenge mstantly. Looking the
Pharisees straight in the eyes,^^ He asks them : ** What is this,
then that is written in the Scriptures " — have ye never read
it: " The Stone which the builders rejected, the same is become
the Head of the corner? " It was tantamount to saying : " If the
coming of the Lord of the vineyard does not mean destruction
pure and simple, and your superseding by a more worthy and
more fruitful folk — ^how then do you explain the text just
quoted, which I have taken from a Psalm,^* regarded by all
your theologians as Messianic in its bearing? " It was a pow-
erful argumentum ad hominem, a telling counter-stroke, all
the more so if one of the names currently used to designate
the Messias was, as seems quite probable, *^ the Stone.*' ^®

Nor does Jesus content Himself merely with questioning.
He flanks His interrogatory triumph with positive proof. In
language adapted from Isaias and Daniel, He lets His ques-
tioners see that the prophesied meaning of **the Stone'* is
ruin and destruction.'^ '' He shall be for a stone of stumbling
and a rock of offence," said Isaias, *'to both the houses of
Israel; for a snare and a ruin to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
And very many of them shall stumble and fall, and be broken
in pieces, and snared, and taken." '^ Daniel's testimony to the
power of the Stone is of similar import: "In the days of
those kingdoms, the Grod of Heaven shall set up a kingdom
that shall never be destroyed, and His Kingdom shall not be
delivered up to another people; but it shall break in pieces and
consume all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand forever." ''
To minds familiar with the context from which His divisive
words were taken, the Parousia^ as the Lord preached it, was
divorced from all thought of the expected Renewal.** The
officials present understood Him to threaten their impending
fall from power, and the entrance of the Gentiles into the in-
heritance of the Jews. The letting-out of the vineyard was
the thought that rankled. Defeat and overthrow they could
understand. It had been predicted, time out of mind, by a
host of holy Seers. But the uncoupling of. the prediction from
the glorious restoration that was to follow, nay, the substitu-

»lti6XI<|K»;a6toT«— Luke xx. 17. >«Liike xx. 17. »MatL xxl. 42.

» Pt. cxTil. (cxYiU.) 22.

**Is. ^rlil. 14; Rom. Ix. 33; Jaitln Martyr, Tryph., xxxIt, xxxyI.

" Matt xxl. 44. « Is. vlU. 14. « Dan. 11. 34, 44, 45.

*• Matt. xlx. 28 Is pot a Jewish scene, as will be shown In due coarse.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 167

tion of the Grentiles for the defeated and overthrown, this was
a thing too nettling to be borne.. And yet there stood Jesus
before them, defiantly denying the aftermath of glory, and
clearly proving from their own admissions and from the
prophets, that "the Stone" which they were now rejecting
would yet fall upon them and theirs with crushing power.

The threat of a wrathful visitation upon the Jewish Capi-
tal and people was a veritable " coming of the Lord," as the
prophets had used the term. Its meaning was not lost on ears
that tingled to the finer points of Old Testament expression;
and when Jesus developed the same idea more pointedly still
in the Parable of the Marriage Feast— the fourth instance of
His de-Judaizing process of education — neither the disciples
nor the Pharisees were left in doubt a monient as to what He
would have them gather from His words.*" The picture of the
" angered King sending His armies to destroy those murderers
and to bum their City;" and — more demeaning still! — the pic-
ture of the King's servants sent out to invite the despised
heathen to the Marriage Feast of eternal life, the door to which
had been ordered shut to His own people, because they knew
not the One greater than the Temple, the One wiser than Solo-
mon Who walked among them. Heaven-sent, to save them
from themselves — ^who that experienced these verbal pictures,
as the Saviour flashed them on the mental retina of the crowd,
could think of the Parousia in any other sense save that of
destruction and rejection? The man who dared to beard the
Government with two such oflfensive statements would pay
dearly for His words. They would trap Him into a like utter-
ance against the Romans, and compass His destruction by the
very Gentiles He was inviting to their seats. And so they
showed Him the coin of tribute," to tempt Him to say of others
what He had said of them. The project failed. Jesus was
proof against their wiles, and His doctrine still stood un-
shaken that when He came, it would not be to bring the King-
dom of God unto them, but to take it away, to let it out to
others. "They would see the Kingdom of Grod come with
power** From the days of the Baptist it had suffered violence
at their hands. Violence would be used against them in turn.

And as if this were not enough to instruct the priests and
people in what sense the '' coming of the Son of Man " should

»Matt xxU. 2-14. ^UM. Ttii. 15-22.

Digitized by

Google

168 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [May,

be taken, Jesus again repeats the idea of destruction,
divorced from the context of glory with which the fall of Israel
was associated in the mind of every Jew. The third repetition
occurs as the crown and complement of the Lord's sevenfold
arraignment of the Pharisees, He tells the party in power,
and asks them to mark well His words," that their House shall
be left to them a desert waste." " Amen I say to you, all these
things shall come upon this generation " ** ** Fill ye up there-
fore the measure of your fathers." *• " Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
killer of the prophets and stoner of them that are sent unto
thee, how often have I wished to gather thy children together,
as the hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye
were not willing! " •*

Who can doubt, after all this sifted testimony, that what
Jesus meant and what the disciples understood Him to mean
by " the coming of the Son of Man," was His manifestation of
destructive power as distinct from His Return in person; the
Old Testament sense of the wrathful coming of the Lord, not
the New Testament sense of His visible reappearance in glory
for the consummation of His Kingdom. St. Mark expressly
assures us that this is, indeed, the meaning;'* and the educa-
tive process by which Jesus developed this distinction for the
de-Judaizing of the Twelve and their fellow-coimtrymen is
clearly retraceable step by step in the pages of the First Gos-
pel. No Palestinian Jew ever thought of drawing any such
distinction, much less of working it up into the primary fea-
ture of his text.

It was a very simple and effective process by which
Jesus compassed these results. He transferred to the end of the
New Kingdom which He came to found, all the prophecies
concerning the Advent of a glorious Son of Man, which the
theologians of Palestine had wrongly connected with the last
days of the Old Kingdom of Israel, partly because of politically
inflamed opinion, partly also through the error of mistaking
sequence in prophecy for speediness of realization in time.
The discernible effect of the Lord's method of teaching was
the rescue of the prophetical quotation : ^' the coming of the
Son of Man," from the eschatological meaning which it had
gradually acquired in the Rabbinical schools. In the teach-

>r(5o5.— Matt xxlU. 38. »Matt zxiii. 86.

"Matt xxiU. 32. **Matt. xxiii. 37.

**Mark Till. 39. — Compare the question as recorded by St. Luke xxl. 6, 7.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 169

ing of Jesus, eschatological meaning was detached from the
** coming of the Son of Man,'* and transferred to the ** coming
of the Son of Man in glory;*' and so thoroughly had the " com-
ing of the Son of Man *' been emptied of its Rabbinical asso-
ciations; so familiar and natural had the phrase become as a
reference to the destruction of the City, that St. John — ^with-
out the least perception of the mystery he was thereby creat-
ing for a Western World of readers — quotes Jesus as using it
in His reply to Peter's question concerning the manner of
John's death : '* If I wish him to remain till I come, what is it
to thee?"** To the author of the Fourth Gospel and to St.
Peter, there was no reference to the Second Advent in the
Lord's reply. It simply meant: ** If I wish John to remain in
the flesh until I come in power to destroy Jerusalem, what con-
cern is it of yours? Follow thou Me." St. John tells us as
much himself,** when he denies the rumor current among the
brethren, that earthly inunortality had been conferred upon
him. "No," he declares. "Jesus did not say to me, that I
should not die. He merely told me I was to live to see the
City destroyed." A writer who understood the phrase, " till
I come," in the sense of the Second Advent, would never have
spoken of personal death in that deathless connection, nor
troubled to refute the rumor that he was not to die.

When, therefore, after this long de-Judaizing process, this
steady pouring of the true wine of revelation into the current
phrases of prophecy, we find the disciples inquiring of the
Saviour on Mount Olivet: "What shall be the sign of Thy
coming, and of the end of the age? " — ^was their question the
purely Jewish query: " What shall be the sign of Thy (final)
coming, and of the end of the (Jewish) age as connected with
it? " Or — ^was it the new and distinctively Christian question,
created by the teaching of Jesus: " What shall be the sign of
Thy coming (in Thy Kingdom), and of the end of the age (of
the Kingdom of Heaven) ? "

The latter unquestionably, when we study the Christian
education of the disciples, and compute its drift. The Parousia
concerning which they ask is the one they have heard de-
scribed as " the coming of the Son of Man in His Kingdom;" *^
" the Lord of the vineyard coming to bring the evil husband-
men to an evil end;" ^^ the King sending His armies to destroy

"John zzL 22. » John xzi. 23. Mif^tt xtI. 28. »Matt xzl. 40, 41.

Digitized by

Google

170 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [May,

those murderers and to burn their city;** '• and the " laying-
waste of the House of Israel,*' '^ for its refusal of a doctrine
of salvation that was offered to all. Contextual criticism
clearly shows that the word " coming,** in the question of the
disciples, has the new meaning with which Jesus invested it,
when He distinguished His " coming in glory ** from His " com-
ing in His Kingdom," disconnecting these two events, and re-
ferring their respective f ulflllmelit to different periods of time.
There is absolutely no evidence in what precedes or what fol-
lows, that the Pcwousia to which the disciples are referring is
the Second Advent. When that is the event to be designated,
the author of the First Gospel invariably adds the words:
glory or the angels; and it is instructive to observe that these
specifying phrases do not occur in the second question, but in
the cmswer to the third.*® It is the third question, not the sec-
ond, which has the Final Advent in view. The queries have
been crossed and confused, because sufficient allowance has
not been made for the influence of the Lord*s teaching on His
questioners. We have overlooked the educative process which
the Saviour previously conducted in regard to the very
two phrases of prophecy which the disciples are here employ-
ing in an interrogatory form. After the de-Judaizing education
to which the Twelve had been subjected, it is not likely that
four of them would dare to approach Jesus with erroneous
questi^uflC a their lips, or that He would ever have an-
swere^^Hkthey done so.

Adlroonal proof that the questions asked were not of
Jewish character, but directly shaped from the teaching of
the Lord Himself, may securely be inferred from the manner
of their putting. A mind of Palestinian mold would never
have followed the order of inquiry reported in the First Gos-
pel. It was not the order in which events were expected to
occur. The " consmnmation of the age ** preceded the ** com-
ing of the Son of Man,** in all Jewish expectation. A
Palestinian Jew would have first asked about " the consumma-
tion,** he never would have put his question the other way
about, as reported here. There is every evidence, therefore,
on the part of the questioners, that in this instance, at least,
their Jewish mentality was not functioning. It is quite true
that on two recorded occasions — ^both of them connected with

"Matt. xxU. 7. "Matt xxlU. S8, 39. -Matt xxlv. 80.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 171

the Lord's manifestation of His glory— the old view of the
Parousia returned.'* But it was not in mind when the dis-
ciples approached the Saviour inquiringly on Mount Olivet;
at least there is no contextual evidence that it was. The
thought of the preceding chapters mounts too exclusively to
the idea of destruction, to culminate in the anti-climax of a
question about glory.

That the second question asked on Mount Olivet was about
the sign of the Lord's coming in His Kingdom, and the third
about the end of the Messianic Age, or His personal Return in
glory, is made demonstrably certain by the structure of the
discourse that follows. These are exactly the questions that
the Saviour answers, though not exactly the order in which
He goes about their answering. The first question — ^**When
shall these things be? *• — He answers last, or rather not at all,
it was so purely curious and spiritually unavailing. Nay, what
is of still more decisive interest to the present investigation,
Jesus begs His questioners three distinct times to remember
their Christian education, and not to lapse back into the old
expectations of Jewry, if they hear rumors that He is already
in hiding, and has actually been seen in person at this place
or that,*^ when the city is tottering to its ruin. " Behold I have •
told you beforehand." The same dissociating process that we
found reported in the sixteenth chapter, and explained in the
twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third, i^ aM^^^Iy re-
affirmed in the twenty-fourth. ^ * ^

When we look into the structure of the text in the twenty-
fourth chapter of St. Matthew, we find matters really standing
as claimed. Verses 4-28 are an actual description of the Lord's
progressive coming in His Kingdom, from its first budding
days of incipiency to the crises that are to mark its close, when
the Gospel shall have been preached in the whole inhabited
earth as a testimony to the nations. Natiurally, the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem occupies a prominent place in this descrip-
tion (w. 15-28). It is what Jesus meant by the " coming of the
Son of Man in His Kingdom," and it is about the sign of this
"" coming" that the disciples have just inquired. The most
remarkable feature about the treatment which this destruc-
tive event receives is the care taken to eliminate all eschatologi-
cal significance from it. It is the time when the Son of Man

•Matt xvil. 4; Acts 1. 6. «MatL xxIt. 23, 26, 26.

Digitized by

Google

172 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [May,

shall comei]^ power to destroy the Jewish Capital, not the time
of His visible reappearance in the glory of His Father with the
angels. In the textual commentary which is to follow the
present study, the truth of this reading will be substantiated
in detail. ^

Verses 29-31 contain the answer to the third question:
** What shall be the sign indicating the end of the New Age,
which is. publicly to begin with the effacement of Jewish
power? •• — ^precisely the order of treatment which we should
consistently expect, if the questions asked were really of the
nature which we have shown them to have been. In these
three verses — they are transferred prophecies — the Lord is
reported as answering the question about the signs that shall
precede His Final Advent — an event which He has already
taken particular pains to dissociate from all connection with
the fate of Israel, on St. Matthew's own word. For this reason,
if for no other, it is against all the laws of likelihood to sup-
pose that the adverb "immediately" of verse 29 — ^••Im-
mediately after the tribulation of those days" — could ever
have been written by the author of the First Gospel, in connec*
tion with the destruction of Jerusalem. That connection has
already been disestablished by the Saviour, and we have three
distinct avowals repudiating it, in the text that goes before.
To what then, does the adverb ••inmiediately" of verse 29 refer?
To the [mrticular period of tribulation (vs. 21), which is to
mark the public inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven? Or,
to the whole period of tribulation, already described as the
characteristic feature of the Kingdom, from beginning to end
(w. 4-14)? We merely point out the alternative subject of
reference. It exists, and will be shown to be a textual actuality
when the time for proving comes.

Verses 28-32 record the Lord's answer to the first ques-
tion: ••Tell us, when shall these things be?" The Saviour
advises the disciples to use their ordinary powers of discern-
ment. The seasons of the Lord have their telltale marks like
the seasons of the year (w. 32-33). The blow will fall within
the generation, and history will vindicate His words (w. 34-
35). The day and hour of the impending crash are safe in the
Father's keeping — a secret not necessary for them to know
(vs. 36). And with these words the Lord's answer to the three
questions proposed by the disciples is brought to a close. He

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 173

has told them of the " sign of His coining in His Kingdom " and
of the ** sign that is to herald the end of the Messianic Age.*'
The hour appointed for the destruction of Israel, He refuses
to divulge. Its disclosure was of no moment to salvation.

After answering the questions about His coming in power
to destroy the City and His Return in glory to judge the world,
Jesus proceeds to tell of another " coming " — ^more important
than either of the two, about which His questioners were so
consumingly concerned. It is His coming to the individual at
the hour of death (w. 37-51; xxv. w. 1-30). The dreadful
feature of the Flood, the Lord tells them, was not the physical
havoc which it wrought, but the inunense number of persons
it swept, unheeding, to their doom. The consideration which
should be uppermost in all minds therefore, is not the crum-
bling of cities and the crashing of worlds, but the loss of sal-
vation by unthinking thousands. The thought of the Lord's
Parousia to the individual soul should displace all others.
This is the ^^ coming of the Son of Man " for which they should
ever be on the watch, not the public coming to Israel in power,
or to the world at large in glory. " One shall be taken, and
one shall be left." ^^ '' And know ye this, that if the master of
the house knew at what hour the thief was coming, he would
have watched, and would not have allowed his own house to
be undermined," while he was looking for the f ar-oflf destruc-
tion of Israel. "Therefore be ye also ready; for in an hour
that ye think not, the Son of Man will come." ^* The sudden
veering of the discourse from an answer to curious questions
about the fate of the Capital and the length of the Messianic
Age, frightened St Peter. '* Lord, speakest thou this Parable
of the Thief to us or to all? " he asked Him. ^* And Jesus an-
swered: ** What I say to you, I say to all: Watch! " ** It was
a tense and hushed moment when Jesus so pointedly re-ex-
pressed the Gospel of the Kingdom, the new, un-Jewish doc-
trine of salvation : personal faithfulness unto death!

The Lord takes up this idea for extended treatment, de-
veloping it at greater length than either of the topics about
which the disciples inquired. The development of this third
meaning continues to the end of the twenty-fourth chapter,
and occupies three-quarters of the twenty-fifth,** where the

« Ifott xxlY. 40, 41. « Ifott xxlY. 43, 44. « Luke xU. 41.

««lfark xllL 37. -Itott xxlv. 83^1; xxv. 1-30.

Digitized by

Google

174 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [May,

Return in glory is set over against it, and the contrast between
the public and the private * coming " is made complete.** It
is one of the finest, most complete pieces of literary presenta-
tion to be met with anywhere in the ^riptures. The picture
which Jesus so graphically drew of the man who watched for
the Lord's coming to Israel, and forgot that his own house
might be undermined in the meanwhile, is repeated three
times. We have first the evil servant who says, ** My Lord is
long a-coming," oiJy to find that he has been cut down by
death overnight, and has lost salvation.*^ We have "the
Bridegroom tarrying in His public visitation, yet returning
unexpectedly at midnight to the sleeping ten, five of whom
were not prepared for this sudden private ** coming." *• Fin-
ally there is the picture of ** the Lord of those servants com-
ing after a long time ** to make a reckoning with them, and to
see to what profit they had put their length of days.*» The
thought is intensely personal throughout. Attention is called
abruptly away from physical to spiritual destruction, and
we find ourselves back in the sixteenth chapter, where the
Lord told St. Peter: ** He that saveth his life (by denying Me),
shall lose it; and he that loseth his life (for confessing Me),
shall find it." '^ Eschatological? Never was discoiu*se so pre-
ponderantly of another nature, and with a message as actual
today as on the first evening of its utterance: " He that endur-
eth to the end (of life), the same shall be saved." The textual
proof that the ** coming of the Son of Man " was also under-
stood of His Parousia to the individual at the hour of death is
astonishingly abundant, even in the Synoptic writers. It will
later be spread before the reader for appraisal. Insight into
the true nature of the questions asked and answered on the
Mount of Olives is the key to the entire Gospel.

Could anything be more simple than the thought of the
whole Discourse, or fragments of discourses, as recorded in
the First Grospel? The Lord's coming in His Kingdom; the
Lord's coming in glory at the close of the Messianic Age;
the Lord's coming to the individual at the hour of death! The
end of Israel; the end of the world; the end of life! And this
third conception, which is intensely vital, practical, concern-
ing, and permanently available for the spiritual life in all the

«*Matt XXY. 31-46. «'Matt zxlv. 48, 49. «lfott xxr. 5, 6.

«lfott zxy. 19. »Matt ztI. 21-28.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 175

vicissitudes of history, is developed at greater length and with
far more teUing effect than either of the others.

Nor need it prove a matter for captious wonderment that
these clarifying results should have at last come forth from this
complicated chapter of the GospeL "* Jesus," says Professor
Stevens, ** spoke of various * Comings,' referring as occasion
required, to the progress of His Kingdom, to crises in its ad-
vance, or to its consummation. His whole doctrine of the na-
ture of His Kingdom, as well as a critical consideration of the
relevant passages, justifies this conclusion. He did not con-
ceive of His Kingdom as triumphing by a sudden and near
catastrophe. It was not to come *with observation' (Luke
xvii. 20) ; it was to be like leaven spreading (Matt. xiii. 33) ; like
seed growing secretly, first the blade, then the ear, then the
full com in the ear (Mark iv. 28). Its coming was conceived
of as a great historic world-process (Matt. xxi. 43). In the
midst of words which have been shaped into a prediction of
Christ's return within the generation then living (?), we meet
with the declaration that the Grospel shall first be preached to
the whole world (Matt xxiv. 14). Jesus spoke of various * days
of the Son of Man,' epochs in a great continuous process, cul-
iminating in the final manifestation, with which the first dis-
ciples more or less especially identified all others (?)." ^^ To
which we should like to add but two correctives : The disciples
were of the same mind as the Master, faithful reporters who
did not reshape His words, but set them down ungarbled;
though the truth of this conclusion is not apparent, until we
grasp the precise nature of the questions that were asked and
answered on the Mount of Olives; until we actually study the
Christian education of the jlisciples in the exceptional school
of the Lord's company.

This education taught them to distinguish the two events
concerning which they inquired: the "coming of the Son of
Man " or the destruction of Jerusalem; and the "" coming of the
Son of Man in glory." Mentioned in the tenth chapter," ex-
plicitly drawn in the sixteenth,^' and clearly set forth by means
of an educating process in the twenty-first, twenty-second, and
twenty-third," this distinction is put to the Lord in the form
of a question in the twenty-fourth, and there lengthily re-
affirmed.

" The Theology of the New Tettament. Stevens, pp. 161, 162.

■Ifott X. 23. Mlfott TY\, 27. 28. ••Ifott xxl. 33-46; xxll. 1-15; xxiU. 36-39.

Digitized by

Google

176 ADVENTURERS [May,

The author, in material which he alone reports, lets us see
the Saviour disconnecting the two ideas of destruction and
glory, on the joint realization of which the whole eschatology
of Palestine swung as on a hinge. He lets us see the disciples
actually seeking information of the Lord on this very discon-
nection of ideas, which Jesus taught them to make; and he is
the only Synoptic writer who records the questions in full. No
faithless reporter he, assuredly, who tells us so painstakingly
of the old that was refuted, and of the new that succeeded to
its place. When the precise nature of the questions asked by
the disciples comes forth to view, we find ourselves saying with
the Twelve: "Now we know that Thou knowest all things,
and needest not that any man should ask Thee. By this we
believe that Thou comest forth from God." **

ADVENTURERS.

BY FRANCIS X. DOYLE, S.J.

With grassy stars the lawn is well arrayed

And woe! the foolish foot that wanders there!

For gardeners shield the stars that they have made
And cherish them with a creator's care.

Yet in the level radiance of the piorn,

Audacious Robins come, with blushing bars

Of courage on their breasts and eyes of scorn —
And calmly feed upon the grassy stars!

You are brave birds! And very brave am I

Who range the startling seas and awesome earth

And leap into the sparkle of the sky,

To feast on beauties of Diviner birth.

•*John XTi. 30.

Digitized by

Google

ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM IN THE UNITED STATES.

BY F. AUREUO PALMIERI, O.S^., DJ).

JN an editorial in Extension Magazine (Sep-
tember, 1917) we read: "The Italian problem
is a problem, and it is our problem. We must
either face it now, or take the consequences of
our neglect later on. We must ' put up or shut
up; but if we ' shut up ' we shall be guilty before God of neg-
lecting our opportunities."

These stem words cannot but impress everyone who is
stirred with a legitimate pride in the marvelous growth of
American Catholicism. In this country, the Church has the
mission of assimilating to herself, under the flag of American
ideals, the best religious and civil elements of the Old World.
It is a labor requiring not only skill but patience, not only
patience but disinterestedness, not only disinterestedness but
heroism and sacrifice. This task of assimilation is pursued
with perseverance by the political leaders of the United
States: it needs to be followed up in the religious field with
even greater constancy, since it is impossible to build a real
and enduring civilization upon an irreligious foundation.
When the foundations of a majestic building are weak, sooner
or later the whole edifice will collapse. Like the other races,
the four millions of Italians who have made this country their
new home, have either become an efiScient part of the great
American family or are slowly undergoing that process of
Americanization which will enable them to give their energies,
both intellectual and moral, to their country of adoption. They
are or will be as true Americans by ideals and adoption as any
who have landed on these shores before them. They will bring
to America not only the vivid sparkle of Italian genius, but the
glowing fire of Italian Catholicism. The Italian soul cannot be
dissociated from its natural inclination to the loftiest concept
of fine arts; nor may it be thought of as deprived of its Catho-
lic traditions. Long experience proves that Italians either
are or have to be Catholics, else they will ramble about the
labyrinth of an ungodly materialism. A well-known Italian

VOL. cvn. — ^12

Digitized by

Google

178 ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM [May,

woman writer. Amy Bernardy, justly remarked that "when
Italian inmiigrants have once lost their native rehgion, they
cannot deceive themselves nor others that they can acquire
another. They cannot have any other."

It is a recognized fact that almost all the Italians who
come to this country, are either practically or nominally Catho-
lics. It is also a recognized fact that as soon as they establish
themselves in the United States, they are looked upon by some
Protestant denominations as virgin soil to be exploited for the
profit of their own religious aims. Some Protestant denomi-
nations, with the help of a whole staff of Italian pastors, exert
a wide propaganda among the Italian immigrants.

What are the results? Here we meet with conflicting state-
ments. A Catholic priest, who writes under the name of Her-
bert Hadley, declares that " the Italian falls an easy victim to
the Protestant proselytizer," ^ while a writer of great authority,
the Rev. John Talbot Smith, affirms that " the Italians are not
apostates even in the presence of temptation. Their faith is
in their blood." ^ To solve these contradictory statements, we
have carefully examined and compared the statistics of Prot-
estant workers among Italians, and we submit in these pages
the results of our inquiry. It is hoped that the investigation
will be of service in the difficult solution of the Italian religious
problem in the United States.

Protestant propaganda among the Italian immigrants to
the United States was preceded by similar work in the Italian
kingdom immediately after 1870. Italy had already a small
nucleus of native Protestants, the Waldensians, who according
to the latest report, number 20,519 members, 70 pastors, 6,408
Sunday-school pupils, and a theological seminary in Florence.
After the fall of the temporal power, American propagandists
hurried to Italy to help the Waldensians in their attempt to
spread their belief among Italian Catholics. The so-called
"* evangelical work " among Itahans in Italy was inaugurated
and is carried on by American Baptists and Methodists. The
Southern Baptist Convention sent an active missionary, George
B. Taylor, to Italy, who worked there thirty years, especially in
Rome. Success, however, did not attend his efforts, judging

^America, 1914, toI. xil., p. 60.

s The Irish in the United States, The Irish Ecclcesiasttcal Record, 1902, vol. xl.,
p. 537.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ITAUAN PROTESTANTISM 179

by the last report of the Baptist mission in Italy. It numbers
32 ordained Italian pastors, 46 churches (rather, chapels or
meeting houses), 70 stations, 1,362 members, 40 Sunday-schools
with 1,144 pupils, a theological seminary, and a monthly reli-
gious review, Bilychnis.

The Methodist Episcopal Church inaugurated a Methodist
mission in Italy in 1877, and confided it to Dr. Le Roy M. Ver-
non, who in 1888 was succeeded by Dr. William Burt, who was
elected bishop in 1904. He was followed in his charge by Dr.
N. Walling Clark and the Rev. Bertram M. Tipple. The last
report of the mission shows that the Methodists have been
somewhat more successful in Italy than the Baptists. Yet it
cannot be denied that their results are very scanty as com-
pared with the large sums they have spent, and the number
of workers they have enrolled for their propaganda. In fact,
the Methodist mission in Italy has 76 pastors and preachers,
3,212 members, 1,025 probationers, 2,811 Sunday-school pupils,
a theological school, some secondary industrial and elemen-
tary schools, and a publishing house, which publishes a weekly
religious paper, the Euangelista.

The Protestants inaugurated their missions in Italy at a
time when the enormous growth of Italian immigration to
America could not be foreseen. From 1871 to 1877, about a
thousand Italians came to the United States each year, and that
immigration was chiefly temporary. The first increase took
place in 1880. Every year several thousand Italians sailed to
America. But Italian immigration reached the highest pitch
in the decade 1906-1916, as is shown by the following data:
m 1907, 293,061; in 1908, 135,247; in 1909, 190,398; in 1910,
223,410; in 1911, 189,950; in 1912, 162,273; in 1913, 274,147; m
1914, 926,414; in 1915, 57,217.

Hence it follows that in the course of ten years, two mil-
lion Italians have entered this country. From July 1, 1916, to
June 30, 1917, ofiicial statistics give 38,950 Italians as coming
to America, and 13,494 as returning to Italy, while during the
same interval in 1915-1916, the number of the arrivals is cal-
culated as 38,814, and that of departures as 72,507.

This vast masa of Italian immigrants has spread through-
out the United States, especially in the States of New York,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, California,
Connecticut, Ohio, Rhode Island and Louisiana. The census of

Digitized by

Google

180 ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM [May,

1910 gives a population of 739,059 Italians in the State of New
York, 298,554 in that of Pennsylvania, 191,849 in that of New
Jersey, 130,577 in that of Massachusetts, 116,685 in that of lUi-
nois, and 102,618 in that of California. The same census num-
bers 544,449 Italians in New York City, 76,534 in Philadelphia,
49,753 in Boston, 35,861 in Newark, 30,000 in New Haven,
30,000 in Providence, and 30,000 in San Francisco. Of course,
to estimate the present Italian population, we must increase
the figures of this census by half, or even more. New York
now has 700,000 Italians; Philadelphia more than 100,000; Bos-
ton, 70,000; San Francisco, 70,000; Providence, 50,000. There-
fore, we would not be guilty of exaggeration if we were to say
that the Italian population in the United States is not much less
than four millions.

Such a large bulk of immigrants could not but attract the
attention of various Protestant denominations. In fact there
was danger that the continuous stream of Catholic immigrants
would out-weigh in the long run the numerical superiority of
Protestantism, at least in the largest American cities. A mo-
tive of self-defence, therefore, lies at the bottom of Protestant
proselytism, especially among Italians. Professor Steiner
writes: "There is no institution in the United States which
will be so profoundly afTected by the inunigrant as the Protes-
tant Church. Without him, she will languish and die; with
him alone she has a future. The Protestant Chiu-ch is called
upon to lift the immigrant into a better conception of human
relations both for her own sake and for the sake of the com-
munities which she wishes to serve. This she must do even
if it brings her under suspicion of proselyting. Indeed, one
of the growing weaknesses of the Protestant Church is the
loss of those deep convictions which make proselyting easy." •

When the Catholic Church was yet unorganized in this
country. Protestantism submerged many Catholic immigrants.
Things have changed long since; and I^otestantism now finds
itself confronted by new conditions due to the slow but steady
pressure of Catholic immigration. Generally, in proportion
as the wave of Italian immigrants advances here or there in a
town or in a State, even the oldest defences of Protestantism
are deserted, and Catholic churches take their places. The

•Edward A. Steiner, The Immigrant Tide; Its Ebb and Flow, New York, 1909,
p. 314.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM 181

reality of this fact is acknowledged by the chief of the Italian
Department of Colgate Theological Seminary, Antonio Man-
gano: "We shall lose our place of primacy and some other
nation will take the honor from us. See what is happening in
greater New York. In the midst of a population of 5,600,000
people there are not over 300,000 members of Protestant Chris-
tian Churches. There are vast sections throughout the entire
city where Protestant churches are being completely driven
out In one small district in Brooklyn during the past twelve
years, one church a year has been pushed to the wall. It is
true that synagogues and Roman churches are increasing, but
can the Protestant Church afford to desert these districts with-
out leaving a witness to what we believe to be the principles of
vital Christianity? It is unnecessary for me to state that,
wherever the Protestant Church goes out, the moral tone, both
social and political, is greatly lowered. And yet, wherever the
foreigner moves in, the Protestant Church moves out.*' *

Hence, it follows that self-defence is the chief aim of Prot-
estant proselytism. No doubt, other reasons are set forth to
justify the Protestantizing of Italian immigrants. It is not our
purpose to discuss them in this article. But whatever may be
said, we firmly believe that the "evangelical work •' of the Prot-
estant missionaries is inspired by apprehension of the dangers
which impend over Protestantism, either from internal dis-
integration, or from the expansion of the Catholic Church.
The religious propaganda among Italians is carried on by the
Presbyterians, United Presbyterians, Methodists (Episcopal),
Baptists (Northern Convention), Protestant Episcopalians,
Reformed Protestants, Congregationalists, Lutherans, and by
the Evangelical Association.

** To the Presbyterian Church," writes the Methodist min-
ister of Boston, G. M. Panunzio, " belongs the honor of being
the pioneer of Christian endeavor among Italians. Beginning
its work in 1881, it has been laying deep foundations. From
the very first, it has laid stress upon securing and developing
the best possible leadership; it has made concentrated effort
and expended large sums of money; it has opened the regular
churches to the Italian worshipper; it has supplied compara-
tively adequate quarters for the housing of the Italian Church;

*SonM of Italy: a Soctai and Religious Study of the Italiant in America, New
York, 1917, p. 201.

Digitized by

Google

182 ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM [May,

and has developed an organization for the individual Italian
church which is, in a measure, a success." * Antonio Mangano
is equally enthusiastic: " In the field of Italian evangelization
in this country, the Presbyterians are setting the standards for
all other denominations. They are doing a most thorough and
aggressive work with the most far-reaching plans for future
development. The immigrant work office of the Board of
Home Missions is busy making thorough surveys of Italian
colonies in many States. They aim to build up a system of
parishes which shall lead and minister to the entire community
life.'* " The Presbyterians have in a special manner caught a
vision of the possibilities of the futiu-e, and are spending large
sums of money in every department of their work, without
putting too great emphasis upon immediate results. They
are cultivating the community in a sensible and scientific man-
ner. Twenty-five years from now they will reap an abundant
harvest for the Kingdom of God." •

For the success of their proselytism among Italians, the
Presbyterians appealed to the Waldensians. One of the
leaders of the movement was the Rev. Alberto Clod, a minis-
ter born in Italy, the historian of the Waldensian colony of
Valdese, North Carolina.

According to the last report, the Presbyterians in the
United States have 107 churches or missions for the Italians.
Italian Presbyterianism numbers 4,800 members; 8,000 pupils
in the Sunday-schools; 70 Italian-speaking pastors; 23 lay
workers; 32 visitors, and over 350 American volunteers. In
twenty years the Presbyterian Church in America has spent
$350,000 in building and equipping 28 churches and missions.
Over $75,000 are spent each year for the Protestantizing oi
Italians, not including funds contributed by diflTerent Presby-
terian institutions for the same purpose. The Director of the
Presbyterian inunigrant work in New York, William P.
Shriver, affirms that $100,000 are contributed by the American
Presbyterians **for the work of evangelization among
Italians." The Italian members of the Presbyterian churches
contribute over $14,000 a year to their support. It is note-
worthy that in 1916 the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions
devoted thirty-eight and five-tenths per cent ($32,000) of its

* The Reltgions Situation Among ItalianM in the United Statee. La Fiaccola, Sep-
tember 6, 1917. •ibid., p. 14.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM 183

resources to Italian immigrant work. Italian speaking pastors
are trained in the Italian Department of the Bloomfield The-
ological Seminary. The centres of Presbyterian propaganda
are the States of New York (29 churches and missions; 12 of
them in New York City); New Jersey (20 churches or mis-
sions; 4 in Newark) ; Pennsylvania (25 churches or missions;
3 in Philadelphia); Minnesota (7 churches); Illinois (7
churches, all of them in the city of Chicago); Ohio (5
churches). The most important Italian Presbyterian churches
are the Kroome Street Tabernacle and the Church of the
Ascension in New York; the Olivet Church in Newark; First
and Second Presbyterian Churches in Philadelphia; the Cen-
tre Mission and the Clhurch of our Saviour in Chicago, and the
Presbyterian Ifission in Kansas City. The United Presbyteri-
ans have only eight churches in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Calif omia, and in the District of Columbia.

The Methodist Episcopal Church started its propaganda
among Italians in 1881. An ex-vender of plaster models, An-
tonio Arrighi, was converted to Methodism in Des Moines,
Iowa, in 1858. He studied at Ohio Wesleyan University, Dick-
inson College, and Boston Theological Seminary, and after a
stay of several years in Rome, he returned to America and
preached his first sermon at the Five Points Mission in New
York City. In 1889 this mission was confided to an Italian
preacher, Vito Calabrese. The Methodist theological school
in Rome furnished pastors and preachers. For several years
the mission was organized as an independent institution under
the direction of a bishop and superintendent. In 1916 that
organization was abolished. Each church and mission was
placed under the care and supervision of the resident bishop
and local conference.

The Methodist Episcopal Church has in the United States
60 Italian churches or missions, 5,241 members, 42 Italian
sdiools, and 4,927 pupils in the Sunday-schools. Among the
members are to be found 1,839 probationers. The centres of
tte movement are the States of New York (21 churches; 8
in New York City) ; Pennsylvania (10 churches) ; New Jersey
(4 churches). The other churches are scattered through the
States of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland,
Indiana, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana,
Colorado, Montana, California, Alabama, Missouri, Texas, and

Digitized by

Google

184 ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM [May,

West Virgima. The most important of these chm-ches are
those of Jefferson Park, New York; First Italian Church, Chi-
cago; and the Peoples* Church, Denver, Colorado J In New
York the Church of All Nations and the Five Points Mission
have the largest Sunday-schools, averaging an attendance of
from 500 to 800 pupils.

During this campaign of thirty-five years standing, the
Methodists have spent $500,000 in building Italian churches.
The Board of Home Missions and Church Extension expends
$50,000 a year for the support of propaganda among Italians;
but, as has been remarked by Frederick H. Wright, formerly
Superintendent of the Italian Missions, if we take into account
the sums spent by the local missionary societies, the Methodist
Episcopal Church devotes every year $150,000 to the conver-
sion of Italians. The Italian Methodist missions could not live
without American pecuniary help. In fact, the Italians con-
tribute to the support of their Methodist churches only the
sum of $7,357 a year.

The Baptists have vied with the Presbyterians and the
Methodists in spreading their beliefs among Italians. A special
feature of their work is the effort to give a decided Italian
character to their missions. In a recent report of a superin-
tendent of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, we
read: " We believe in the freedom of religious life according
to racial type. An Italian Protestant Church will have and
should have distinctive characteristics, distinguishing it from
an American Protestant Church. This means the enrichment
of the Protestant conception of God, and of social life. There
is no Italian Gospel, but there is a Gospel for the Italian, wliich
is the secret of his highest and best development, and the re-
birth of Italian character according to the mind of Christ.
Italians will be won for the Kingdom of God only as the Gos-
pel is interpreted to them in the terms of their own thinking.
The use of the Italian language in worship and service is not
primarily a matter of privilege, but of responsibility for win-
ning the Italian people for Christ. The conversion of one or
more Italians has demonstrated the possibility of reaching

* It is to be noted in passing that both Presbyterians and Methodists proselytize
among Italians in Canada. The former tiave missions in Montreal, Saiilt Ste. MaHe
and Winnipeg. The laUer, in Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Niagara Falls, Welland.
Thorrald, North Bay and Copper ClilT. The centre of the propaganda in Toronto
is the Elm Street Church. Here the Methodists have inaugurated a campaign against
Catholic parochial schools.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM 185

these people in a larger way than through the English Ian-
guage, and has usually been the determining factor in the em-
ployment of Italian missionaries." ®

Baptists in America started their mission work among
Italians with English-speaking missionaries. In 1889, they had
Italian Sunday-schools in some cities of the States of New
York, New Jersey, Connecticut. The First Italian Church was
established in Buffalo (New York), in 1893, and confided to
the Rev. Ariel B. Bellondi, a former student of Colgate The-
ological Seminary. For many years the Italian Baptist
chuTQhes were under the leadership of the American Baptist
Home Mission Society. In 1917, the Colgate Theological Sem-
inary organized an Italian department for the training of
Italian ministers.

The Baptists (Northern Convention) in the United States
have 82 Italian churches or missions, 2,750 members, and 60
Italian pastors. They expend in their Italian missions about
$70,000 a year. The contribution of the Italian Baptists
amounts to $9,000. The centres of the Italian Baptist missions
are the States of Massachusetts (15 churches; 3 in Boston);
Connecticut (13 churches; 2 in New Haven); New York (18
churches; 4 in New York, 3 in Buffalo, 2 in Brooklyn); New
Jersey (8 churches); Pennsylvania (6 churches); Texas (4
churches). Lawrence, Massachusetts, was in 1910 the seat of
the last convention of Italian missionaries and pastors. The
most important churches are the First Italian in Buffalo, First
Italian in Brooklyn, Hurlburt Chapel in Orange, New Jersey,
and First Italian in New Haven. We have no data as to the
number of Italian children frequenting Baptist Sunday-
schools, except for New York City, where 680 pupils are
registered.

The Congregationalists, according to a report of Philip
R. Rose, Supervisor of Italian Congregational churches in
Connecticut, "have no country-wide or denomination-wide
work for Italian immigrants." With regard to the Italians,
they follow "a policy of experiment.** Their ideal is **not
proselytism but Christian character.** They wish to "co-
dperate with the Italian Roman Catholic Church (!) to pre-
pare the best Italians to be the intellectual and spiritual
leaders of their own race.**

* Mflngano, Religious Work, etc, p.

Digitized by

Google

186 ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM [May,

A striking feature of the propaganda work of Congrega-
tionalism is an instinctive distrust of foreign workers. They
think that mission work established for the immigrants in their
own tongue, is not acceptable to them, and is sometimes even
offensive. Besides, the workers of their own nationality are
looked upon with suspicion, and regarded as traitors to their
own faith. Lastly, religious propaganda aims not at the grown-
up generation, but at the growing one; the children and the
young people who can be reached more easily through the
American mission than through one of their mother tongue.®

Following these ideals, the Congregationalists, especially
in Maine, prefer to establish missions which are branches of
American churches without Italian workers. They have few
regularly constituted Italian churches (thirteen in all), and
few Italian pastors. These pastors are under the leadership
of an American superintendent, who studied the Italian lan-
guage and character in Italy. According to their latest report,
they have 44 churches and missions, 983 members, 1,000 chil-
dren in the Sunday-schools and 19 Italian pastors. The mis-
sions require a total expenditure of $13,279; the contribution
of the Italian members is less than $1,000 a year. The centres
of the propaganda are the States of Maine (14 missions), Con-
necticut (11 churches and missions), Rhode Island (5 mis-
sions), Illinois (4 churches and missions), New Jersey (4 mis-
sions). The most important churches are those of Davenport
Settlement, New Haven and Grantwood, New Jersey.

Congregationalism is not fitted for proselytizing among
Italians. Its complete doctrinal dissolution, and its lack of a
central organization, exhaust its religious energies. Besides,
its narrow nationalism and dry Puritan traditions, do not
attract the sympathies of a foreign element.

The Protestant Episcopal Church officially professes to ab-
stain from religious propaganda among Italians, unless they
do not care to belong to the Catholic Church, or to be con-
nected with other religious bodies. The ** Italian evangeliza-
tion " by the Episcopal Church began in New York forty years
ago. It was inaugurated by a clergyman named Stouder.
Later, the Italian mission was established in St. Philip's
Church, Mulberry Street, and in 1890 in a new building erected
at a cost of $100,000 on Broome Street.

*B. A. Steiner, op, cit, p. 325.

Digitized by

Google

1W8.] ITAUAN PROTESTANTISM 187

The Protestant Episcopal Church numbers twenty-four
Italian churches. Eleven of them are in New York and three
in Philatlelphia. In New York, they count 1,190 members, with
610 pupils in the Sunday-schools. The annual expenditure for
these churches is $9,373. The sum of $1,037 represents the
total contributions of Italians. The most important of the
Italian Episcopal churches is Grace Parish in New York City.
According to the report of its rector, Francisco G. Urbano,
1,800 Italians are connected with it in a distinctly religious
manner. If this statement is true, we cannot understand why
the statistics of all the Italian churches and missions of the
Protestant Episcopal Chiu*ch in New York (1912) give only
1,190 adult members and 610 Sunday-school pupils. Urbano
attributes the success of Grace Parish among Italians to the
simpUcity of its Christian teaching, the dignity and sincerity
of its worship, the usefulness of its work, and its recognition
of the reasonableness of an Italian point of view in the admin-
istration of work among Italians. The Episcopal church of
Boston has a congregation of nearly two hundred members.
Worthy of special note is the interesting news that, last year,
under the auspices of Bishop Lawrence, a chapel was built for
the Italian EpiscopaUans, and was dedicated to St. Francis of
Assisii

We need not tarry long over the work of other Protestant
denominations among the Italians. The Lutherans have a
small Italian congregation in St. Peter's Church in Philadel-
phia (33 members, 60 pupils in the Sunday-school, and 80
children in the kindergarten). The Dutch Reformed Church
has three Italian chiu-ches: in Newburgh and Union Hill, New
York and Hackensack, New Jersey. This last town has, perhaps,
the only Italian independent church in the United States, under
the leadership of a suspended priest, Antonio Giulio Lenzo.

The Evangelical Association supports three Italian
churches in Chicago, Milwaukee and Racine. We have no data
about these churches.

From these statistics, it follows that the nursery of Prot-
estant proselytism among Italians is New York City. In fact,
according to the computation of Rev. Howard V. Yergin, New
York numbered in 1912, 44 churches, 5,584 Italian Protestants,
and 4,741 Italian pupils in the Sunday-schools. The annual
cost of these missions exceeds $90,000 a year.

Digitized by

Google

188 ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM [May,

The general statistics of Protestant work among Italians,
gives a total of 326 churches and chapels, 13,774 members, 42
schools, 13,927 Italian pupils in the Sunday-schools, 201 Italian
pastors, and a total expenditure of $227,309, not including the
contribution of $31,571 by Italian Protestants. A statistical
list of the Italian Protestant churches published in 1903
(Chiese evangeliche italiane negli Stati Uniti e nel Canada)
gives only one hundred and sixty-five churches and missions.

Now, do these statistics represent the gains of Protestant
propaganda among Italian Catholics in the United States? Is
is true that in fifty years the above quoted denominations have
been able to associate to their bodies 14,000 Italians who have
left the Catholic Church? We are firmly convinced that there
is exaggeration, and much exaggeration, in the figures just
given.

First, the statistics include also the native Protestants of
Italy. The Waldensians have several independent self-sup-
porting churches in the United States: in New York City;
Gainesville, Texas; Valdese, North Carolina; and Monett, Mis-
souri. They are found also in the congregations of churches
of the other denominations, and several pastors of these
churches come from their ranks. It is an error to include the
Waldensians among Italians converted to American Prot-
estantism.

Secondly, the statistics of several Protestant churches are
magnified or falsified for reasons easily understood by any-
one. Lest we be suspected of bias in making this assertion,
we quote from a paper by G. M. Panunzio, published in the
Fiaccola, the official and militant organ of Italian Methodism
in America: "In a certain church, under the enthusiastic
leadership of a pastor, five hundred members were reported as
belonging to the church. Now, it may he set down as an axiom
that whenever an Italian church reports such a large number
of members, either the printer has made an error by adding a
cipher, or a preacher has given the number of his constituency,
and not of his members. When a successor was appointed to
that field, he labored for a year, and bv taking into account
every person who had been related in any vital way to the
church and who could legitimately be counted as a member or
even an adherent, he found one hundred and forty. Another
pastor went to the same field, and accidentally discovered that

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ITALIAN PROTESTANTISM 189

fully one-third, if not more, of those members were enrolled
upon^ the books of another denomination. By looking still
closer, it was discovered that the children had caught the
same spirit. Many children were attending at least three Sim-
day-schools; at the proper season, they went to three Christ-
mas trees, three picnics, three entertainments, three outings,
three everything. It was exactly this state of things that led
an able minister, who had opportunity to observe the whole
Italian situation in a large city, to make this remark: The
Italian work in this city is a big farce." ^^

We are not far from the truth then in saying that allowing
for Waldensians, probationers, and the fanciful manipulation
of statistics, the actual number of members of Italian Prot-
estant churches may be computed as one-half of the official
numbers. Thus, the gains of Protestant proselytism after fifty
years of hard work, are reduced to hardly more than six thou-
sand souls. No wonder an old Italian pastor, Enrico Chieri,
frankly avowed in the Churchman (1916) that the fifty years
of •* evangelical work " of Protestantism among Italians had
closed with a complete failure.

Our inquiry would naturally suggest some consideration
of the religious conditions of Italian Catholics in the United
States. We refrain, however, from enlarging on this theme
at present. But if the Italian problem, according to Extension
Magazine, is to be " put up " those who must solve that prob-
lem should investigate why 6,000 Italian Protestants in the
United States have the freedom and the means of supporting
326 churches and missions, and more than 200 pastors, and
why 4,000,000 of Italian Catholics have only 250 churches and
an insignificant number of priests of their own race. An im-
partial and sincere inquiry into the causes of this strange
anomaly will be the first and most necessary step to the right
solution of the Italian religious problem in this country.

^ La Piaecola, September 6» 1917.

Digitized by

Google

INTERNATIONAL LAW.

BY MOORHOUSE I. X. MILLAR, S.J.
II.

The Origins of Absolutism.

|UCCESS has had its superstitious worshippers in
every age. But never perhaps, even in the ages

ill of paganism, were the votaries of success so
whole-hearted or so numerous as in the days be-
fore the War. Material success and efficiency,

To its attainment, were the norm and test by which
the whole of life was to be judged if one wished to be consid-
ered abreast of the times, and things were deemed right or
wrong as they contributed or failed to contribute to material
progress. Like the *' abomination of the Ammonites,'' success
demanded its human sacrifices. Not little children, to be sure,
except the unborn, for Charles Dickens in his novels and Mrs.
Browning in The Cry of the Children had already shamed the
world into some measure of humanity towards them. But
sacrifices of human morality and of truth were both asked
and given.

As the various religious denominations bom of the " suc-
cess " of the Reformation, lost their hold upon the masses, the
disjointed and separate truths of Christianity, which they had
retained, became overcrusted with human conceits or forgot-
ten for lack of proper grounding and the ill-effects of what
was original with the Reformers became more and more ap-
parent. Robert Louis Stevenson, in a moment of deep insight,
put his finger upon the actual sore spot in our civilization
when he asked : " Can it be that the Puritan school by divorc-
ing a man from nature, by thinning out his instincts and set-
ting a stamp of its disapproval on whole fields of human activ-
ity and interest, leads at last directly to material greed? "^
The answer is more evident to us today than it could possibly
have been to him. For, in his day, the attempts made to just-

* Amateur Emigrant,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 191

ify this state of things, had been fewer and more limited in
their sphere of influence. Benthamism and Positivism were in
vogue, but no philosophical Pragmatism as yet; and the pro-
fessors of universities and public schools in English-speaking
countries still held, with rare exceptions, to the old standards
of common sense. What deep-seated bias there was, was
chiefly religious. The Middle Ages were dark; the Church of
Rome was corrupt; the Reformation was an event ever memor-
able for the religious and intellectual freedom it produced.
These things were believed because they were generally said
and imagined as true. They were the " idols of the market;"
while " the idols of the theatre,** as Bacon calls that class of
idols ** superinduced by false theories or philosophies and the
perverted laws of demonstration,** lent strength and intensity
to the modern worship of success.

For Pragmatism, like an evil genius, was in the thoughts
of men long before the time of William James. Its beginnings
date from Machiavelli and from the day when Calvin threw
over the "Pope's laws** and explained away the Scriptural
prohibitions against usurious practices.* Thereafter "no
room was left for authoritative insistence on moral, as dis-
tinguished from legal obligation;** ' and the lure of gain hav-
ing once been introduced as a dominant factor in life, the ne-
cessity to square one*s conscience while driving a hard bargain,
soon produced widespread results affecting the standards of
social morality.^ In the confusion thus introduced into moral
ideals, respectability, the product of money and material suc-
cess, began to usurp the claim to esteem which belongs of right
to human virtue. Truth suffered no less, and the notion that
that is true which works, was already an accepted axiom when
William James took it as the basic principle for his new phil-
osophy.

In no line of intellectual endeavor, however, has the truth
suffered more lamentably, or fundamental human morality
been more sadly sui^»*essed by this modern bias in favor of
material success, than in history. "To predict the future,**
said Carlyle, " to manage the present, would not be so impossi-
ble had not the past been so sacrilegiously mishandled;

* William C unnlntfim n, Growth of BnglUh Industrg and Commerce, vol. il.,
pp. 155-167.

* Ibid,, p. 206.

^WUllam Cnnnlnghain, ChrUUanitg and Polities, p. 87.

Digitized by

Google

192 INTERNATIONAL LAW [May,

effaced, and what is worse defaced! The past cannot be seen;
the past looked at through the medium of ' philosophical his-
tory' in these times, cannot even be not seen: it is misseen;
affirmed to have existed — and to have been a godless impos-
sibility." The reason for this is simple enough. Our own civ-
ilization, supposed to be the acme of success, was made the
standard by which all previous ages were to be judged. Hence,
"how shall the poor 'philosophical historian* to whom his
own century is all godless^ see any God in other centuries.*'

That any event contributive to present civilization, could
have been a regrettable mistake; that the defeat of a cause
which would have modified, checked or prevented such an
event, could have been a real disaster, was inconceivable.
"God's absolute laws sanctioned by an eternal Heaven and
an eternal Hell, have become moral philosophies sanctioned by
able computations of profit and loss, by weak considerations
of pleasures of virtue and the moral sublime." Might when
successful, was shown to have constituted right; and unscrup-
ulous cunning, if it but attained its aims, was interpreted as
justice. But ** this universe has its laws," and the moral law
can no more be violated than the law of gravitation without
woeful consequences. "There is not," said Carlyle, "a red
Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw,
but the whole world must smart for it." What is true within
each generation holds equally between successive generations;
for " the centuries too are lineal children of one another," and
the crimes of one age are visited upon the next.

With the War there has come something of a perception
of all this. Theodore Marburg thus voiced a now growing
opinion in his pamphlet World Court and League of Peace:
" It is a mistake to interpret progress in terms of numbers —
growth of population or pounds of steel or yards of cloth
turned out. True progress lies in the direction of growth of
justice: justice between man and man; justice of employer to
employee, justice written in the law, justice displayed in the
honesty and ability of the courts, justice of the State toward
its citizens, and justice of nation to nation." *

In a previous article* we endeavored to show that this
idea of justice was fundamental to our civilization; that with-

• Judicial Settlement of International Disputes No. 20, February, 1016; Baltimore.
•Thb Cathoug WoiLD, April, 1018.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 193

out it our civilization could not have grown at all, and that
until the end of the thirteenth century, everything was
propitious for the gradual extension of the principle of justice
to international relations, the moment such relations came
into existence through the full development of the European
States. Now the problem presents itself: how comes it that
such an extension was never effected? As Alfred H. Fried said
in June, 1915, " The World War is the logical result of thai
peace which we possessed. Its ultimate causes do not lie in
the motives and the deeds of individual governments and
diplomats, but in that condition of international lawlessness
which influenced these motives and deeds and which at a given
moment had reached such a pitch, that an explosion and final
outbreak was inevitable." ^ How comes it that such a state of
international lawlessness has endured in the face of the evi-
dent progress the world has made during the past centuries?

IS we revert to the year 1296 we shall find a state of affairs
in Europe that gives us the key to what has at present
" brought death into the world and all our woe.'* For Philip
the Fair's treatment of Boniface VIII. was the original sin of
international politics. To understand the situation, however,
we must remember that the principle laid down by Suarez for
Christian, i. e., Catholic princes, in the seventeenth century,
was, in theory at least, fully acknowledged in the thirteenth.
"As for Christian princes," he says, "it is to be noted that
though the Sovereign Pontiff has no direct power in tem-
poral matters, outside his own dominions, yet he has an in-
direct power. By reason of this latter he has the right to take
cognizance of any grievance that may lead to war, plus the
power to decide in the matter; and, unless he be guilty of
manifest injustice, the contending parties are under obligation
to submit to his decision; for this is clearly required for the
spiritual good of the Church and in order that an almost in-
finite number of evils be avoided. Hence it follows that among
Christian princes war can rarely be just, since it is possible
for them easily to have recourse to a more satisfactory means
of terminating their mutual grievances." *

Now Philip had been over-reaching his neighbors generally

*7A« Fundamental Cause$ of the World War, No. 91, Amerieui Association for
Intenuitlonal Conciliation, New York.

■De Fide, Spe et Charitate, Disp. 18; De Bella, sect 2.
1F0L. cm*— 18

Digitized by

Google

194 INTERNATIONAL LAW [May,

when Boniface issued the bull Ineffahilis in which he took his
stand on the above principle in these words : " And now re-
flect, beloved son, that several kings are your enemies and the
enemies of your kingdom. Does not the King of the Romans
complain that he sees a number of towns and districts belong-
ing to the empire in your possession, especially the country
of Burgundy? The King of England is also murmuring
against you on account of certain sections of Gascony. These
kings will gladly submit their cause to an arbitral decision,
they are even insistent in their demand for such a decision.
Can the Holy See refuse it to them? If we are to believe their
statements, you have sinned against them; therefore it belongs
to the Holy See to give a decision.** But this was little to the
liking of Philip the Fair. For, if Louis XIV. said, ** I am the
State,*' Philip lived up to the formula which he constantly
used: "Through the plenitude of our royal power.** Dante,
his contemporary, called him "France's pest,** "the modem
Pilate ** and " a debaser of coinage.** This last was a crime,
particularly odious in the Middle Ages,* and Boniface, on one
occasion at least, reproved Philip for it.^®

A " dynasty,** as Herman Fernau says, " requires a philos-
ophical and scientific justification of its rule,**" and Philip
showed himself keener and more cunning than the Hohen-
staufen, in that he saw this more clearly and provided him-
self more eflfectively with means for exalting his own power
at the expense of the Church and the normal trend of mediaeval
political opinion. The most ready means for the attainment of
this end was the Roman law. A more or less systematic study
of this law had survived in Western Europe. The political
theory of the mediaeval civilians was directly founded upon
that of the law books of Justinian, and no doubt they were
greatly influenced by the positions laid down by the great
jurisconsults of the second and third centuries, or the editors
of the sixth, "but the world had greatly changed, and
mediaeval civilians, even when they were most anxious to re-
state ancient law, were duly influenced by these changes. They
did much more than merely repeat the phrases of the ancient
law, they endeavored to explain what was difficult, to coordi-
nate what seemed to be divergent or contradictory, and to

■WllUam Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. 1., p. 350.
^Auscttlta PilL ^The Coming Democracy, p. 150.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 195

show how these ancient principles or rules could be brought
into relation with the existing conditions of society.** " Thus,
as Montesquieu relates^ Def ontaines, a civil lawyer in the time
of St. Louis, " made great use of these Roman laws : his work is,
in a manner, the outcome of ancient French jurisprudence, of
the laws of SL Louis and of Roman law; whereas Beaumanoir
made scarcely any use of Roman law, but brought ancient
French jurisprudence into agreement with the regulations of
St. Louis." "

Grave reasons demanded this work of elimination and
adaptation. For, as previously shown, the ruler, according to
Christian mediaeval jurisprudence, was merely the director or
administrator of justice. According to Roman law, on the con-
trary, he was clothed with unlimited power and supreme sov-
ereignty. The principle: Quod principi placuit, legis habet
vigorem, made him the highest source of law, and gave him
power to alter the law by arbitrary decree both in general and
particular cases. *' Legitimate right,** which according to the
mediaeval standpoint could not be violated by the ruler any
more than by the subject, was not recognized by the Roman
Code. It did not take into account the safeguards of tra-
ditional privileges established by the mediaeval system." Con-
sequently, in countries where the Justinian Code was adopted,
national liberty was sacrificed to absolutism, while England,
Sweden, Norway and the other lands that did not accept it
unreservedly, retained their traditional customs. England, in
particular, managed to preserve her free and independent con-
stitution, together with the common law. Foreseeing much of
this. Pope Alexander III., in 1180, forbade monks from study-
ing the Justinian Code; in 1219, Pope Honorius III. extended
this prohibition to all priests and in the following year for-
bade laymen, under pain of excommunication, to give or listen
to lectures on the Justinian Code at the University of Paris; for
the same reason Pope Innocent IV., in 1254, extended this last
prohibition to France, England, Scotland, Spain and Hungary.

But Philip the Fair was of a different mind. To wrest to
his own advantage whatever could be gained of unlimited
authority from the introduction of the Roman law in its orig-

>• A. J. Carlyle, A Hi$torv of Mediaeval PoUtteal Theory, vol. II., pp. 8, 7.

^L'Biprit de$ LoU, I. 28, ch. 38.

Mj. Janssen, History of the German People, vol. U., p. 163, English Trmniliition.

Digitized by

Google

196 INTERNATIONAL LAW [May.

inal and unmodified form, he surrounded himself with civil
lawyers of the type of Pierre Flote and Guillaume de Nogaret,
and with their help proceeded to entrench himself in royal
absolutism and to set up his tyrannical power. These lawyers
were called the Milites regis, and their appearance in the gov-
ernment of France is one of the leading events of Philip's reign.
As Renan said : *' An entirely new class of politicians, owing
their fortune entirely to their own merit and personal efforts,
unreservedly devoted to the King who made them, and rivals
of the Church whose place they hoped to fill in many matters,
thus appeared in the history of France and were destined to
work a profound change in the conduct of public affairs."

In Philip's quarrel with Boniface VIII., Pierre Flote and
Nogaret played, between them, pretty much the part which
Bismarck assigned himself in later days, of educating public
opinion in favor of the throne by arousing it against those
whom it was expedient for the nation to consider as its ene-
mies. Pierre Flote provided the " Ems telegram " by forging
the bull Deum time and substituting it for the Ausculta Fili
which Boniface had really sent. He had already denounced
the Pope violently before the national assembly (1301) and
falsely charged him with aiming at temporal sovereignty in
France; and, as Philip feared the fate of the Hohenstaufen
should Boniface pronounce the sentence of excommunication
against him, Nogaret took it into his hands to prevent this.

The Colonna, condemned by Boniface for highway rob-
bery, had appealed to a general council and accused the Pope
of being a usurper. Nogaret, an expert in canon as well as in
civil law, saw the futility of such an accusation in the face of
the ofiBcial recognition Boniface had enjoyed for over five
years. But as he must be put out of the way if Philip was to
save his throne and continue in his determined course, the
astute lawyer bethought him of an undeveloped point in canon
law, by which a Pope guilty of private heresy became justici-
able to the Church. Philip thereupon began immediately to
pose as champion of the Faith. An enumeration of invented
heresies and crimes calumniously imputed to Boniface, was
drawn up, in twenty-nine articles, and read before the assem-
bled clergy and barons. Instead of convoking the Third
Estate; and in order the more easily to prevent any possible
resistance, agents were dispatched to the various towns and

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 197

ecclesiastical bodies with the injunction that all agree to the
summoning of a general counciL^^

Meanwhile Nogaret had not been idle. Having set all this
on foot it was essential to his plans that he should get posses-
sion of the person of Boniface. He had already left for Italy
with this in view; but when victory came, absolutism was
branded with sacrilege. For as Dante sang:

To hide with direr guilt
Past ill and future, lo! the flower-de-luce
Enters Alagna; in His Vicar, Christ
Himself a captive, and His mockery
Acted again. Lo! to His holy lip
The vinegar and gall once more applied;
And He *twixt living robbers doom'd to bleed.
Lo! the new Pilate, of whose cruelty
Such violence cannot fill the measure up,
With no decree to sanction, pushes on
Into the temple his yet eager sails
O Sovran Master! when shall 1 rejoice
To see the vengeance which Thy wrath, well pleased.
In secret silence broods!

But this was not all. The new order of things had to have
its Treitschke and its Hegel, and it found both respectively in
Pierre Dubois and William of Occam. Without some refer-
ence to the curious writings of Dubois, Philip's policy cannot
be fully understood. An idea of the leading thoughts in his
most important works may be gathered from the following
words of a Cambridge historian : " Pierre Dubois' little pam-
phlet De Recuperatione Term Sanctm is a mine of reforming
ideas. Disendowment of the Church and of monasteries, abso-
lute authority for the secular State, woman's enfranchisement,
mixed education, are all advanced with the one object of in-
creasing the power of the French King, who is to be made Em-
peror and ruler at Constantinople. International arbitration
was to decrease the horrors of war, and educated women were
to be sent to the Holy Land in order to marry and convert both
the Saracens and the priests of the Orthodox Church and also
to become trained nurses and teachers. Studies are to be mod-

>* ArquiUi^re, L'Appel au Conciie sons Philippe Le Bel; Reuae De$ Qnesiions
HiMioriques, 1911; also Catholic Bncgelopedta: Boniface VIIL

Digitized by

Google

198 INTERNATIONAL LAW [May,

emized, the law simplified. For the influence of the old the-
ological and Papal universities, the writer had no respect. The
whole spirit of the book is secular and modem." " This work
appeared shortly after the death of Boniface: a fact which
lends decided irony to its treatment of the question of inter-
national arbitration.

For perhaps the principal aim of Boniface's reign had
been to maintain peace among the Christian princes of Europe.
For this, almost as much as for the sake of the Church's clear
rights, he had insisted that purely Church property — as dis-
tinguished from property held by the clergy in feudal tenure —
should not be taxed by them for the purpose of waging war on
one another; and if his many attempts at arbitration ulti-
mately failed, it was due to Philip's bad will and to nothing
else. History bears witness that from this period on, wars did
increase both in magnitude and duration, as well as in disas-
trous results. As regards Dubois himself, although all his
writings were presented to the King, he never seems to have
had an official place in Philip's council. Yet there is mani-
festly more than mere coincidence in the nexus between many
of his suggestions and the manner in which Philip displayed
his vaulting ambition on many occasions.

A far more important place, however, in the disruptive
work engineered by Philip the Fair, must be assigned the Eng-
lish Franciscan, William of Occam, described by some as the
first Protestant. At the time of Philip's attack on Boniface, he
composed a dialogue in which the soldier who represents
the King's cause, has the upper hand in an argument with
a cleric who takes up the Pope's defence.*^ But his real career
as a refractory and contentious friar, did not begin until the
conflict between Louis of Bavaria and Pope John XXII. The
terms on which he offered his services to Louis explain the
character of many of his writings. " Defend me," said he,
" with your sword and I will defend you with my pen." There-
upon he became Louis' theologian and was associated with
Marsiglio of Padua : a doctor of medicine and sort of mediaeval
Fichte, who had likewise taken sides with the Caesero-papists.

Both maintained the absolute and unlimited power of the
State and its complete superiority over the Church. Moreover,

^John Neville Figgis, From Ger$on to GtoUub, p. 27. Italics ours.
" Abb* P. Feret, La FaculU de Thiologle de Paris, vol. iii., p. 343.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 199

both held that aU authority comes from below, and for this
both have been hailed by modem admirers as forerunners of
Rousseau. But what these short-sighted admirers always fail
to notice is that, as with Rousseau, so with these mediaeval lib-
erals, their theories make no allowance for any such thing as
justice, or for any truly legitimate binding moral force in law.
Nor should it be forgotten that compared with Rousseau's Ger-
man influence, his influence on development in France seems
almost negligible.^*

Occam took his stand on nominalism. He did not refute
earlier Scholasticism, but was merely "original'* in that he
took up the defence of doctrines clearly shown by earlier
Scholastics to be imtenable. His works contain the first traces
of almost every important error since his time, from those of
Luther, Bacon and Hobbes ^* on through Kant and Hegel down
to the present modernists. But his importance for us lies in
the fact that in confusing men's minds with regard to true
principles of justice, he helped to remove the fundamental
check on the power of rulers, and so paved the way for the
later absolutism of European princes. Despotism, or arbi-
trary rule, is due to absence of reason in the use of power and
the domination of will; hence the mischievous bearing of the
Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem principle in Roman
law.

Mediaeval lawyers corrected this by maintaining that the
king was responsible to God and under the law; and St.
Thomas eliminated every subterfuge for tyranny by insisting
on the element of reason. Law as he defined it, is " a rule
dictated by reason and promulgated for the conmion good by
him who has the care of society."

According to this definition, as is evident, the legitimate
independence of the subject is fully safeguarded, since in sub-
mitting to reason he abdicates none of his dignity as a free
man, as he would did he bend beneath the mere will of a fel-
low-creature or the "general will** of society. On the con-
trary, his dignity is enhanced; for such submission means con-
formity to eternal order and to the divine will. The justice or
injustice of a law therefore, according to St. Thomas, is deter-

^ Irving Babbit, The Political Influence of Rous$ean. The Nation, January
18, 1917.

»Abb« Feret, loc. cit,. pp. 340, 341.

Digitized by

Google

200 INTERNATIONAL LAW [May,

mined by its conformity or non-conformity with the natural
law, which can be nothing else but the eternal reason of God
the Creator and Ruler of all the world, since it is identical with
the eternal law implanted in rational creatures and inclining
them, by the light of natural reason, to their right action and
end.«<» But Occam not only denied that God's existence could
be proved from reason, which was tantamount to a denial of
all religion, but he represented God's omnipotence as an arbi-
trary power acting without law or reason, and thus destroyed
every fundamental notion of justice, law and moral obligation.
As Sir James Mackintosh, with true Scotch perspicacity, well
noted, ** the doctrine of Occam, which by necessary implica-
tion refuses moral attributes to the Deity, and contradicts the
existence of a moral government, is practically equivalent to
atheism." **

The influence of Occam and of Marsiglio of Padua was
very great during the period that intervened between the trans-
ference of the Papacy to Avignon and the Reformation. From
their writings most of the false theories were gleaned, regard-
ing the nature and constitution of the Church, that caused such
a vast amount of confusion while the Great Schism of the West
lasted, and even after it had beep healed. But, once the Refor-
mation had started, things took on a "newer" face. How-
ever slight the intrinsic merit of such writings, as handy
weapons against the Papacy and the Church they were not
likely to be neglected by the Reformers who, as facts proved,
were greatly indebted to them. Besides this, practically all
that Luther knew about Scholastic philosophy or theology he
got from Gabriel BieP' who, though loyal to the Church and
a defender of the Papacy, was in his philosophy and in much
of his theology a follower of Occam and the author of a work
in defence of Occam's doctrines. Thus Luther's ignorance of
St. Thomas and of the greater Scholastics of the thirteenth
century was all but complete, and when he declared, as he did,
" I am of Occam's party," the significance of the statement was
deeper than he himself intended.

In the first place, " it should not be forgotten that Luther
was a nominalist." *' Then, too, his idea of God as an arbitrary

^Snmma^ I., U., q. 00 a. 4; q. 01 a. 2.
^Progress of Ethical Philosophg, p. 40.
"Hartmum Grlsar, Luther, vol. 1., p. 0.
" Sir Junes Maeklntosh, loe. eit„ p. 46.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 201

being, is the same as Occam's.'** He severed religion from
reason and damned reason in terms that do not bear repeti-
tion. He held that all law was opposed to the Gospel, and
taught that we are not to let the moral law intrude on our
conscience; that the maintenance of the moral law should be
left to the jurisdiction of the State," and " that whoever is un-
der the secular rule is still far from the kingdom of heaven for

the place where all this belongs to is hell Therefore no

one who is under the secular government can boast that he is
acting rightly before God; in His sight it is still aU wrong."
He drew a distinction between the prince as ruler, and the
prince as a Christian and declared: "His princely authority
has nothing to do with his Christianity." And yet as Gierke
says: "It was the Reformation that brought about the ener-
getic revival of the theocratic ideal. In spite of all their differ-
ences, Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli and Calvin agree in em-
phasizing the Christian call, and consequently the divine right
of the secular authority. Indeed, on the one hand by sub-
ordinating the Church more or less (sic) to the State, and on
the other by making the State's authority dependent on its
fulfilling its religious duties, they give the Pauline dictum, * all
authority comes from God,' a far wider scope than it had ever
had before." *• Thus in so far as the great Reformer was not
already predisposed in favor of absolutism by a spirit of time-
serving, which frequently made him play into the hands of the
princes, his views on law and on the State were the logical out-
come of Occam's doctrines and were in support of the most
utter autocratic power.*^

With all this then in mind we can easily gather what Ites
behind the words of John Neville Figgis who, besides being a
Cambridge scholar, is surely non-partisan in this matter, for he
has gone out of his way at times to misrepresent CathoUc views
and Catholic history. "Richelieu," he says, "no less than
Cecil or Parker, was the product of the Reformation. Had
there been no Luther, there could never have been a Louis
XIV. In fact the religion of the State superseded the religion

M GriHur. foe. ett., toI. 1., p. 125.

"Ifoehler, SgrnbolUm, cb. 8» sect 25; also Suarei, De Legtbus, Lib. ill., ch.
5, sect 2.

"Quoted by Gritiu:, vol. 111., p. 496.

** Griiar, loc eiL, vol. Ui., cb. 29, teete. 1-6; cb. 35, sccto. 1. 2— vol. ▼. In Eng-
Uib tmitlatioiu.

Digitized by

Google

202 INTERNATIONAL LAW [May,

of the Church. Its first form was the Divine Right of Kings.
Luther and Machiavelli were two of the most important fac-
tors in the change. But its results lasted longer. The unified
democracy of Rousseau's scheme and the realization of * the
Idea* in Hegel's State-system both owe something of their
nature to this movement. Both start from the assumption that
the State is man's chief good upon earth, that its authority is
to be all-pervading and irresistible, that its rights are inalien-
able and that no individual rights, not even those of religion,
can stand against it. Luther's conception of the State and of
duty to one's neighbor directly paved the way for that of
Hegel." "

Luther and Machiavelli! These, then, were the two re-
sponsible for the elimination of reason and justice from all
ideas of law; who left Europe to the tyrannous mercy of bare
"Reasons of State." Luther's principles for the internal,
Machiavelli's practice for the external direction of the State
were to be the ideal for many generations.^ As a result of
their paramount influence, the entire conception of natiiral
law vanishes. The logical outcome was the teaching of
Hobbes: that the will of the ruler is the supreme arbiter of
right and wrong in the moral order and of true and false in
the matter of religious belief. Its present-day effects are trace-
able even in the works of President Wilson who, in his book
The State, makes force the ultimate source of authority and,
influenced by Huxley's muddling of the question, fails to grasp
the conception of natural law as the fundamental basis of
political law.'®

If Calvin is not to be included with Luther and Machiavelli
it is not because he, any more than they, maintained truly
sound, liberal principles of government. Theologically and
politically he disbelieved in freedom, and his conclusion in
favor of passive obedience is explicit. The real reason is given
by Mr. Figgis. Luther, he says again, "was largely instru-
mental in destroying not merely the fact but even the principle
of liberty as far as individuals were concerned, throughout
Germany, while Calvin, whose motives were essentially those
of iron authority and order, largely helped to produce those
conditions which kept it alive both in practice or theory. The

" From Gerson to Grotius, p. 71. » Figgis, loe, cit., p. 89.

" Pp. 572. 606.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 203

reason of this is that Calvin happened to influence perma-
nently either a minority in a hostile State as in France or Eng-
land or a nation struggling to be free like the Dutch. That
his principles were in themselves in no way based on any ideal
of individual liberty may be illustrated from the history of
Geneva, New England, Scotland and the Synod of Dort and the
Puritan Revolution. But just because as in the Netherlands
and France, Calvinism was inextricably mingled with a strug-
gle against tyranny and insurrection which required a theoreti-
cal basis, or as in England it became the cachet of a persecuted
minority, the determination not to be suppressed which these
bodies of men displayed, helped to keep alive the fire of liberty
for other influences to fan into a flame." *^ Within the States
in Germany, on the other hand, where after the Peace of West-
phalia the principle cuius regio eius religio was fully enforced,
there could be no such prospect for liberty either in theory or
in practice. There the whole trend of thought and develop-
ment continued to be more and more towards absolutism.

Thus " liberty of conscience/* of which so much has been
said and written was, as Mr. Figgis shows, merely a pretext.
The first governments to prescind from religious differences
were those of Catholic Maryland and Catholic Poland, and
both were made to suffer for their generosity. The various
Calvinistic minorities, spoken of above, in their " determina-
tion not to be suppressed," did not turn to any principles in-
herent in Protestantism. Oliver Cromwell and the English
Puritains made appeal to the ancient liberties of England;
while in France the favorite formula against tyranny was bor-
rowed not from across the Channel but from Catholic Spain,
where in the sixteenth century liberty was far more advanced
than it was in England even in the time of George III.»^

In the midst of these politico-religious struggles vague no-
tions of the natural law began to reappear; gathered either
from Cicero and the ancients •* or, as in the case of Algernon
Sidney, from the writings of Spanish Jesuits." This was im-
portant, for belief in the natural law, however inadequate its
conception, afforded a criterion at least for submitting the acts
of statesmen to some rule, and provided something of a check

" Loe, eit., p. 76. « Figgis, loc, ciL, pp. 147, 162.

*> Henry Hallam, Literature of Europe, vol. I., eh. 4, sect 2.
••Figgis, loe. eit., p. 176.

Digitized by

Google

204 INTERNATIONAL LAW [May,

against the practice of appealing to pure expediency in inter-
nal government or to mere force in external politics. Hence
when Grotius made it the basis of his celebrated treatise De
Jure Belli et Pads, the work was received almost as a mes-
sage from heaven by the whole of Europe, then being torn
by the horrors of the Thirty Years* War.

But Grotius failed to grasp some of the most necessary im-
plications in the doctrines of the Scholastics; to whom he ad-
mits his great indebtedness for many of the fundamental ideas
in this, the first great treatise on international law. Uninten-
tionally, he provided modern Liberalism with its favorite
stamping-ground; that is, he furnished the basis for the false
conception of an order of nature from which God is wholly
excluded. Hence, to the modern mind legal regulations are
still, at best, but reasonable applications of general principles
which make for the well-being of human life. We regard them
as rules laid down by men yesterday or today but possibly to
be changed tomorrow. There is no clear conception of their
inherent right or of a real moral sanction behind them. And
this explains, in very large measure, how, in the words of Elihu
Root, " the War began by a denial on the part of a very great
power that treaties are obligatory when it is no longer for the
interest of either of the parties to observe them.** ••

» The Outlook for International Law; Proceedings of the« Second Pan-American
Scientific Congress, Section VI. International Law, vol. vll., p. 122.

Digitized by

Google

VENICE.

BY JOSEPH FRANCIS WICKHAM.

|T was night in Venice; such a night as Browning
knew so well, such a night as Shakespeare could
conceive without seeing and make lovely in words.
The moonlight bathed the fairy palaces in a soft,
pale beauty, and under the jeweled stars the
waters of the Grand Canal were a thing of glory. Night and
its stiUness everywhere; a seeming peace, the fair, unrivaled
serenity that is Venice. And then — the warning voice of the
siren whistle, the roar and boom of the artillery anti-aircraft
barrage, the screeching of shrapnel, and the explosion of
bombs. The Teuton night riders of the air had come again in
a visit of hate. You could have seen them, had you been there
on that night of February 26th; you could have caught momen-
tary glimpses of their planes winding in and out through the
searchlight beams, or whirling aloft above the flare of burst-
ing shrapnel. The bombs fell in a shower upon the fair city,
blasting monuments of beauty in savage fury. And then it
was over; the firing ceased; the birds of prey were flying back
to the northland; and the stricken princess city was left to her
sorrows. It was a famous victory; yes, if to destroy the oratory
in the Church of Santa Giustina be victory; if to shatter a mar-
ble column in the Church of San Simeone Piccolo be victory;
if to damage the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo be victory;
if to rain bombs about the Ducal Palace and the Bridge of
Sighs be victory; if to destroy twenty-six houses and to injure
sixty others be victory; if to bring terror to two hospitals and
to cause the death of one soldier patient be victory. If war-
riors count their winnings so, then the air raid on Venice
ought to make merry the efficient gentlemen who plan these
noble battles at the council table somewhere in Germany.

Venice is on a war basis today. It is a peaceless peace that
reigns everywhere; the city is silent as ever, more silent, per-
haps, than in that quiet yesterday when the Dogeless City was
dreaming idly of her purple past. She fears no argosies of
death floating before her water gates; she dreads no battles

Digitized by

Google

206 VENICE [May,

of the sea. In her time of majesty she has beaten her foemen
of the lagoons; and now, in days that are dimmer, she believes
that her old prowess is not dead. But she cannot yet ward off
her enemy of the skies. Perfect defence against the aeroplane
has not been invented. And so the bombs fall on Venice.
Fortunately for the city, and for the whole world, the damage
as yet is comparatively small. She has been visited many
times, but she is still herself, scarred by the air raids of the
foe, but calm as of old, and patient in her trial. In her pitiful
plight she is biding the day when once again the columns of
church and palace can emerge from their protection of sand,
and the paintings of Bellini and Titian can come back from
their hiding places. Then she will invite you as of old to
come to her from afar and visit her matchless glory and for-
get war. The gondoliers will again be singing on Uie canals;
the voices of violin melody will issue from casement windows;
the day-time will be sunny and full of joy; and the night will
be what Venice is — the moon and the stars and fairyland.

When you go to Venice, you will visit first, no doubt, the
great square in front of St. Mark's. No piazza in Europe can
rival the Piazza of San Marco. London has Trafalgar Square,
but no one ever conceives the square guarded by Nelson's mon-
ument as completely symbolic of London's complex life. Paris
is proud of her Place de la Concorde, but the beautiful open
space near the Tuileries Gardens is less than the French capi-
tal. Vienna boasts nothing equivalent, nor Madrid. Only one
great area could ever match it, the Roman Forum in Rome's
grand days. The Forum was Rome; the Piazza in front of the
Church of San Marco is Venice herself.

This you will discover for yourself, even if you do not
know it before you go to Venice. Here all Venetian history is
centred, here the wondrous church stands, here the Ducal
Palace, here the Clock Tower, here the Library, here is the
head of the Grand Canal. By day the city's people and the
city's guests assemble in this square, by night they seek its
splendor and fascination. And from here the path leads, over
the picturesque streets or along the rippling canal waters, to
every garden, church, and isle, near and distant, in Venice.
Imagine Venice without the Piazza of San Marco, and you
think of a city that does not exist.

The great square has itself much to tell you; and when

Digitized by

Google

1918.] VENICE 207

you have learned the lesson that the marble pavements and
the marble walls will gladly teach, you will wish to follow the
avenues that wander away to the unseen delights behind. You
will wish one day to walk through the tortuous Merceria, that
oldest street of the city that leaves the Piazza at the famous
Clock Tower and ends near the Rialto bridge. This in olden
days was the chief business section of the city, and today, too,
it is Venice's busiest thoroughfare. It was on this street near
its entrance to the Piazza that the great fair used to be held in
connection with the Espousal of the Adriatic on Ascension Day.

There are many interesting structures on the Merceria,
but probably the first that will detain you is the Church of San
Salvatore, built by Tullio Lombardo in the early sixteenth
centiuy to replace an older edifice of the same name. It is,
perhaps, the city's finest Renaissance church. Within, your
visit will be repaid by two of Titian's works of his old age,
an " Annunciation " and a " Transfiguration," and " The Sup-
per at Emmaus," attributed, without full proof, to Giovanni
Bellini.

Passing the bronze statue of the dramatist. Carlo Goldoni,
in the Campo San Bartolonmieo, you will soon come to the
Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo. This church was founded
in the eleventh century, but the present structure is of the end
of the fifteenth. It contains two notable pictures, groups of
Saints both, the one painted by Giovanni Bellini, when he
was eighty-seven years old, and the other by Sebastiano del
Piombo.

Now you will retrace your steps a bit and set foot on the
Ponte di Rialto, the famous stone bridge over the Grand Canal.
As everybody knows, it derives its name from that of the sec-
tion of the city on the left of the canal, the Rivo-alto, or high
bank. The history of the Rialto bridge goes back to the year
1180 when a bridge of boats was made to supersede the old
traghetto. In the next century a bridge was built, supported
by modem piles; and there were still succeeding bridges,
which either were destroyed or gave way, before 1588, when,
after a public competition among all the great architects, An-
tonio da Ponte began the present marble arch. For three cen-
turies this was the only bridge that shadowed the waters of
the Can'alazzo; but the nineteenth century robbed it of this
distinction; it is to be hoped that the twentieth century, aided

Digitized by

Google

208 VENICE [May,

and abetted by German raiders, is not destined to rob it of its
very life.

Like the renowned Ponte Vecchio in Florence, this Rialto
bridge is bordered with little shops, and it is a brilliant blend-
ing of varied activity that you will see as you climb the steps
and make your way over the water to the picturesque market
place on the other side.

Centuries ago when Venice was in her prime this Riallo
district was the heart of her mercantile life. Busy enough
you will find it, and full of color, too, with the silver of the
fishes and the green of the vegetables and the yellow gold of
the heaped-up oranges, mingling with the red and blue of the
dress of a throng of buyers and sellers. Still the imagination
sweeps beyond the animated bargaining and bartering of the
present to the olden times, when the Rialto was the goal of
the merchants of Florence and Milan and Genoa and Pisa;
when the face of the Spaniard was a familiar sight, and the
garb of the Turk excited no wonder; when Venetian ladies
came here to see treasures from far countries; when Venetian
men assembled here to transact business with the four corners
of the world. There is still standing near the market place the
granite column from which the laws of the Republic used to be
proclaimed; and upholding the steps ascending to it, the statue
of a hunchback, U Gobbo. Not far away is the Church of
San Giacomo di Rialto, the oldest church in the city, whose
colonnades sheltered the renowned mappa mondo traced with .
the routes of Venetian commerce. The church has been rebuilt
and restored many a time since it was founded in the year 421,
and six columns in the nave are the only reminders of the
eleventh century church. No memorial can better revive the
atmosphere of the past days than the inscription on the apse :
Hoc circa templum sit jus mercatoribus sequum: pondera ne
vergant nee sit conventio prava.

Dismissing thoughts of Antonio and Shylock you will pro-
ceed past many a campiello and over many a rio, with some-
times a campanile looking down upon you from the far end
of some side lane, and always the little children ready to show
the way. So on you will walk, and soon you reach Venice's
great Franciscan church, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.

The followers of St. Francis came to Venice about twenty-
five years before they founded this church in 1250. The struc-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] VENICE 209

lure was reerected in the Gothic manner in the next century,
and now is under restoration. Along the aisles are the tombs
and monuments of men who in various ways have won glory:
Francesco Foscari, Niccolo Tron, Giovanni Pesaro, doges re-
nowned in Venetian chronicles; Paolo Savelli, Jacopo Bar-
baro, Melchior Trevisano, Almerigo d'Esle, generals of the Re-
public; Jacopo Pesaro, bishop of Paphos, Marco Zen, Bishop
of Torcello; Pietro Bernardo, the academician; Titian, the
great pamter; Canova, the sculptor of the Republic's last days;
and Fra Pacifico, under whose guidance the fine edifice was
brought to completion. Perhaps the most beautiful part of
the church is the apse, but for all its magnificence of marble
monuments, the visitor will voice a regret that the great " As-
sumption'' of Titian, which he will find in the Academy, does
not still stand in the sanctuary over the high altar, for which it
was painted four hundred years ago.

Yet the Frari church has its exquisite paintings. Bartolom^
meo Vivarini's " St. Mark," Giovanni Bellini's " Madonna," one
of his finest works, still in its Renaissance frame, and many
more are here. The most worthy of admiration is the famous
" Madonna del Pesaro " of Titian, which Bishop Jacopo Pesaro
ordered for the church of the Frari in 1519. Its glory will ever
draw many visitors to the aisle of Pesaro tombs.

Near the end of the Calle Lunga is the Church of San
Sebastiano. St. Sebastian, like St. Roch, the Venetians were
wont to beseech to intervene between them and the plague,
and very early did they build a church to his honor. But the
present church was erected in the first years of the sixteenth
century. It may almost be called the home of Paolo Veronese,
as here the great painter received his first commission in
Venice, and here, after a busy life in creating great works, he
lay down to final rest. Practically all the decoration of the
ceilings and walls is from his hand, done at different times be-
fore he had reached the fullness of his powers and after he had
complete command of his ripened talents.

By this time you will probably be growing weary of your
day's work. The Piazza of San Marco will seem very distant,
and you may well wonder if you know the way back. But,
indeed, you need not return over the path you have come; an
easier road can be found. Walk along the Rio San Sebastiano
a little, and you will find your heart's desire in the person of

VOL. cvn. — 14

Digitized by

Google

210 VENICE [May,

an old gondolier, who is waiting in the shadows where the Rio
meets the waters of the Giudecca Canal.

It is restful to lie back under the cool canopies and watch
him ply the oars, and to see the water flowing away from you,
and the Fondamenta della Zattere growing shorter and
shorter, and the red and gold sails of the fisher folk idly wait-
ing for the breeze. There are vineyards and garden vistas
over there on the Giudecca, behind and out of sight, there are
vignettes fair to discover on the little canals, but you are home-
ward bound, and will stop for nothing; not for the Dominican
church of the Gesuati, nor for the Redentore, nor for the Zitelle
which stands near the head of the canal. Perhaps, however,
you will consider this an opportune time to visit the beautiful
Church of Santa Maria della Salute, which looms large and
beautiful close to the Dogana di Mare. Daily you have seen it
just across from your own windows, and you know every line
and shadow from the vast dome to the broad marble steps
leading to the water. Many a time as you have looked over
the canal while the bells were ringing, you have thought of the
vow which the Doge made in 1631 that Venice would erect a
church to Madonna della Salute, if she would intercede with
heaven for the deliverance of the city from the plague. For
sixteen months the pestilence had run unchecked, and had
claimed a toll of one hundred and forty thousand people. Sud-
denly, in November, 1631, after the Doge*s vow, the plague
ceased. Venice, grateful and true, proclaimed a public com-
petition for plans, and Longhena was chosen to build the
edifice.

. It is an octagonal structure, crowned by a great dome, the
lovely effect of which is not diminished by the smaller dome
over the sanctuary chapel. Within the church you may see
several paintings from Titian's brush, the best of which is the
representation of St. Mark enthroned with four saints; and
in the sacristy is a surpassingly fine conception of *'The Mar-
riage at Cana ** by Tintoretto.

For nearly three hundred years every visitor to Venice
has looked upon this noble church at the head of the
Canalazzo; and with the passing days each has learned to
feel that if St Mark's epitomizes the life of the city, only in a
lesser degree does the Church of Santa Maria della Salute sym-
bolize her faith and her hope and her high endeavor.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] VENICE 211

Across the canal is home. Your boat crosses the water,
and comes to rest at the Piazzetta quay, the broad Molo in
front of the Palazzo Ducale.

This may be the journeying of a single day; or it may
easily embrace three or four. For on many a day when the
hours are young will you set forth from the Piazza on your
wanderings through the city. Some morning you will fare
through the Piazzetta dei Leoni, which has the great well-head
and the tomb of Daniele Manin, past the Archbishop's palace,
over the Ponte di Canonica, from which you may view the
Bridge of Sighs, and finaUy come into the little square before
the Church of San Zaccaria. In this fifteenth century church
eight doges lie, but it is for Giovanni Bellini's noted altar-piece
of " Madonna and Child with the Saints " that you will tarry
within. In like manner it is Palma Vecchio's exquisite altar-
piece representing ** Santa Barbara" with four saints, that
will make you linger in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa,
not far distant. In this late fifteenth century edifice, which
was founded, perhaps, as early as the seventh century, you
will remember the part the casemakers took in the rescue of
the brides from the pirates in the tenth centiuy, and the visit
the Doge made to the church every Candlemas day to com-
memorate their valiant service.

But the Dominican Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo will
be your especial seeking this day, and you will be unwilling to
pause long on the narrow streets until the famous church of
the Preachers is before you. The Church of San Zanipolo, as
the Venetian dialect has it, was begun about 1240, on ground
given to the Order by Doge Giacomo Tiepolo as the result of a
dream, if you may believe popular tradition. In his vision
he saw the little Dominican oratory, with aU the ground around
it, whereon the church now stands, strewn with fragrant roses;
and he heard a clear Voice saying: ** This place have I chosen
for My Preachers." Upon waking, the Doge declared the
dream to the Senate, and the ground was granted to the
Dominicans.

The church, two hundred years in the building, is
in the form of a Latin cross, two hundred and ninety
feet long and one hundred and twenty-five feet wide
at the transepts. Passing through the beautiful portal, you
are impressed at once by the spaciousness that spreads out

Digitized by

Google

212 VENICE [May,

over the nave and aisles, even to the dome one hundred feet
above the pavement. As you go up the broad nave between
the round pillars, you can almost catch the glamour of solenm
glory that clusters around each arch and capital, for you re-
member that in this church all the doges of Venice lay in state
when the final rest came after the splendor and pageant of the
days that looked over the Piazzetta. To the Church of San
Marco they went while life was full and Venice was the
world, but to the aisles of San Zanipolo*s they were borne in
funeral cortege at the last; and within its walls a goodly num-
ber of them lie awaiting the resurrection.

Indeed, as you slowly move about the church, you feel
that you have come to a kind of Campo Santo surrounded by
chapels and altars, and lighted by the sun's gracious brilliance,
strained and colored by the beautiful windows of the cross
aisles. With the doges lying here in their sculptured vaults
are admirals who swept the seas for Venetian lordship; cap-
tains aU valiant in prowess; painters who dreamed fair visions
and filled the world with glory. Here lie the doges, Michele
Morosini, Antonio Venier, Michele Steno, Niccol6 Marcello,
Andrea Vendramin; doges of the house of Mocenigo, Tom-
maso, Pietro, Giovanni, Luigi; doges of the house of Valiero,
Bertuccio, Silvestro; and others, many of whom won fame for
their Republic, are with them. Here rest the admirals,
Ludovico Diedo, Girolamo Canal, Sebastiano Venier. Here
are the generals, Jacopo Cavilli, Vittore Capello, Niccol6
Orsini, Luigi Naldo da Briseghella, Marco Antonio Bragadino.
Here lie the painters. Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, and Palma
Giovane. Nor does this call the full roll of Venice's noted
dead who lie entombed here. Many of the tombs are of ex-
quisite design, and bear witness to the skill of the Lombardi,
of Leopardi, of Massegne, and many another.

On the north side of the Campo stands the Scuola di San
Marco, a Venetian Renaissance building, which, with the old
monastery, does service as a hospital. In front of it, and
within the shadows of the church, stands the noblest equestrian
statue in the world, a bronze conception of Venice's greatest
condottiere, Bartolommeo Colleoni, who left his fortune to
the Republic. It was designed by the Florentine, Andrea Ver-
rochio, who became ill and died in the progress of the work;
so the execution of the statue and the work of the marble

Digitized by

Google

1918.] VENICE 213

pedestal fell to the Venetian, Alessandro Leopardi- It is truly
one of the most interesting things in the city.

Not far away is the very beautiful Renaissance Church of
Santa Maria dei Miracoli, which Pietro Lombardi erected in
the late fifteenth century. But it is some distance, which a
gondola will make pleasanter, to the Jesuit Church of Santa
Maria. The Society of Jesus conmienced this church in 1715,
the architecture being in baroque style. The interior is deco-
rated in marble, and contains Titian's "Martyrdom of Saint
Lawrence,** once rare and splendid, but now darkened almost
beyond recognition. Daniel E. Manin, the patriot of 1848, whose
family had given generously to the building of the church, is
buried here.

In the small Chureh of Santa Caterina you will wish to
bide for a little to see Paolo Veronese's excellent " Marriage of
Saint Catherine.'* Then you will proceed to the Church of
Madonna dell* Orto, where Tintoretto rests under his "Last
Judgment,** with many more of his works on every side.

Venice, so much more than some other cities, has a way
of asking you to exceed your day*s programme of pleasures
and palaces. A little lane will beg you to explore it, a garden
bordering a tiny canal will invite your eyes, some delicate
Renaissance carving on the facade of a church will win your
wonder. But there is ever a gondola to take you home, if you
wish fo go. It will today, unless perhance you wish to see the
Ghetto and the Tempio Israelitico and the Church of San
Giobbe and the hundred other interesting things on the way.
But perhaps you wisely feel that another day will dawn to-
morrow and that you will be ready at the rising of the sun.
So you will doubtless drift back up the labyrinthine lanes of
water until you once more are within view of the Palazzo
Ducale, or at the dripping marble steps before your own door.

Venetian days are, indeed, delightful days. But you must
not miss the gladness of night. You will find it where Venice
is, where the city*s pulse ever throbs fullest, in the well-loved
Piazza before St Mark*s. The Piazza of San Marco is the glory of
Venice in the morning hours when the day is fresh, and the sun
is not yet too insistent, and the shops facing the great white
quadrangle have drawn back their curtains and invite the eye,
and Dand6lo*s pigeons have begun to leave the shelter of thcf
marble carvings and eaves and are flurrying about in full flock.

Digitized by

Google

214 VENICE [May,

It is beautiful before sundown when the blaze of the day
softens to a gray color, and the life of Venice is flooding back
after an hour's siesta; when the great window of the church
is full of the sun's last glory and is sifting it into colors of mel-
low gold and blue and red for the fortunate souls within; when
the colonnades are beginning to look shadowy and the shelter-
ing awnings are one by one disappearing. But at night — one
must come to Venice's matchless Piazza at night, if one would
know its complement of purpose and its happiest hour. Find
one or two of your best friends and go forth.

When the sun goes down behind the palaces Venice begins
to prepare for the night. The flower girls arrange their red
roses and pink carnations to beguile your love of beauty; out
in the centre of the Piazza the men assemble the sections of a
large circular platform, and place in position the music stands
and the chairs for the band. The ca£F^, Florian's, the Aurora,
the Quadri, set hundreds of additional chairs along the edges
of the arcades and on the borders of the Piazza itself.

It is not in vain; nothing is, in Venice. For now that night
is come, through the length of the long arcades, north and
west and south, a vast throng is on promenade, and overflow-
ing out into the square. Even to the portals of St. Mark's
you can see the people in the blaze of the myriad lights, which
throw their white splendor over the wide space. Venetians
from aU over the town are here, and mingled with them vis-
itors from the cities of the world.

You will join the procession for a while, and then like
numerous others you will sit down with your companions at
one of those little tables in the Piazza, and ask the cameriere
to fetch you his most delicious sorbetto. Nearby a fair,
slender Venetian lady daintily toys with her melting gelato;
her husband, a sworded officer, is rolling a cigarette; three or
four gay young fellows, whose motor-boat is tethered at the
Molo, are awaiting their black coffee; a couple of fair young
daughters, under maternal chaperonage, are bowing smil-
ingly to a new-come acquaintance; a Harvard professor is
quietly dreaming of other nights in Venice before the War; an
Englishman you may remember tq have seen at Sorrento, is
paying a few centessimi for a fragrant rose. It is so all over
the wide Piazza. And you will sit here cultivating the Vene-
tian art of repose in this out-door salon, and watching the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] VENICE 215

shifting scenes and the changing faces^as the multitude passes
by, while the best hand in Italy wins you with " Madama But-
terfly/' and the summer of a perfect night comes streaming
from the stars.

Perhaps when the last notes have died away, and the thou-
sands begin to disperse along the Merceria, and under the
Bocca, and where else the home is calling, you will stroll for
a little toward the Royal Gardens near the King's Palace and
watch the gondolas on the canal scurrying back and forth
through the night. How the water sparkles, how the long
liquid piers of light fascinate, how the feminine laughter comes
clear and clearer, how the happy song blends with the flute
and mandolin over there in the music-boats where the lan-
terns glow, how the gentie wind whispers of the gray sand
dunes far away toward the sea, how the great stars and the
blue sky that loves them seem to listen! What thoughts will
not come to you as you stand a moment to welcome the gifts
of the night, almost wondering if it is not an illusion, after
all, and if the next breeze from heaven will not shatter it to
bits ! What visions can you not conjure, if you wish I Was this
the watery path that led to Belmont and the caskets of the
beautiful Portia? Was it on these soft seas that Lorenzo
wafted the fair convert Jewess on the lovely night of old?
Was this the way that Barbarossa came when he would be
friends with Pope Alexander III.? Was it on these waters that
Dandolo sailed forth as a crusader and came back as a con-
queror? Yes, it was here in truth that the great, vivid, ever-
changing pageant of Venetian romance and glory set its stage,
blending the fancy of a sunmier dream with the reality of life's
burden, and calling all the grandeur of the world to the joy-
ful, powerful, hopeful city of the sea.

But the gay-colored carnival lanterns are moving away,
the song is becoming faint, farther and farther retreats the
gaiety of Venice, lonelier and lonelier grow the waters of the
lagoon — the voice of the night is still. And when you pass
through the Piazza at last, with the homeland beckoning you
on, the wonderful square, but now filled with life and laughter,
will be an empty vaatness, lying alone under the silence of the
stars.

Digitized by

Google

THE INNER LIFE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS.
BY HUGH POPE, O.P.

j ROM the writings of St. Augustine, notably of
course from the Confessions, his life and spirit
can be in great part reconstructed. From every
i page of his writings the inner man breathes
forth. We can hear him praying. We can see
in his fervent ejaculations the inner spirit of the man of God.
But when we turn to the hardly less voluminuous writings of
his greatest disciple St. Thomas of Aquin, we are at first apt
to be chilled by the seemingly cold atmosphere of speculative
theology. This is especially true of his better-known works,
c. g., the Summa Theologica, the Catena Aurse and the
Qusestiones Disputatse. But, even here, the veil of impersonal
teaching is sometimes lifted and we catch glimpses of the soul
within, and realize that the speculation is clear-cut, precisely
because the vision of things Divine is so unclouded. Contem-
plare, et contemplata aliis tradere (to see and give sight to
others), is the Dominican maxim, and none ever carried it to
greater perfection than did Thomas of Aquin. What, for in-
stance, could better reveal the mystic than the wonderful de-
scription of God and of true religion which comes with a thril-
ling unexpectedness in the discussion of the etymology of the
term "religion:" " God is the one unfailing Principle towards
Whom we must assiduously direct our choice as being our
Ultimate End; Whom throifgh negligence we lose when we
sin; Whom we can regain by belief and by profession of our
faith?" Or what more beautifully descriptive of Holy Com-
munion than the simple sentence of three words: ^^ Divino
aspect ui complacere? " *

These are the things, however, that lie on the surface.
They are the gems that even the chance reader may pick up.
But the real student of the Summa knows that as he pene-
trates the spirit of the Master, every sentence, every principle,
every axiom quoted, is replete with spiritual teaching and af-
fords an insight into the mind of one who, to use the phrase of

> ** Delighted by the sight Divine.**

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INNER LIFE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 2i7

St. Basil, was ** circumamictus Deo — bound about by God.**
When a student has attained to this " vision ** of the Saint's
mind he finds that the Summa is not merely a mine of in-
struction, but a book — nay the book of spiritual reading. He
finds in it food for meditation for all his days. And the more
profoundly he studies its speculative teaching, the more he
marvels at the hymns penned by St. Thomas. He realizes, for
instance, that none but a Saint and theologian could have
written the immortal verse :

Se nascens dedit socium,

Convescens in edulium,

Se moriens in pretium,

Se regnans dat in prsemium.^

A veritable compendium of all Christology! The rhythm
Adore Te devote makes appeal to all with its haunting lines,
with its mosaic of tiny words which serve to beat out the meas-
ure as well as thought :

Jesu Quem velatum nunc aspicio

Oro fiat illud quod tam sitio

Ut Te revelata cernens facie

Visu sim beatus Tuae gloriac!*
But how many realize the theological precision which stamps
even the familiar " Genitori Genitoque," or '* Procedenti ab
utroque?**

Yet it is aU impersonal. The self-assertive ego is ever
lacking and baffles us by its absence. What was this man like?
How did he live? One of his biographers has left us the near-
est approach to a pen-picture of the Saint: " Men ever saw him
of joyful mien, gentle and sweet, not occupying himself with
worldly affairs, but ever given to study, to reading, to writing,
and to prayer for the enlightening of the faithful.*** But be-
yond this we have little save a record of his journeyings from

* At Birth, man's Fellow-man was He ;

His Meat while sitting at the Board
He died, his Ransomer to be;

He reigns, to be his Great Reward.
Hymn Verhum supernum for Lauds in the Breviary Office for the Feast of
Corpus Chrlsti.

• Jesu >\Tiom for the present vell'd I see.
What I so thirst for, oh, vouchsafe to me:
That I may see Thy countenance unfolding.
And may be blest Thy glory in beholding!
*Bon, Acta Sanctorum, March 7, p. 062. For a fuller portrayal of the mystical
side of St Thomas' life, see the Introduction to Prayer and the Contemplative Life
by the present writer. Washboume.

Digitized by

Google

218 INNER LIFE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS [May,

Paris to Naples, from Cologne to Rome and back, according
as he was sent to fill their Chairs of Theology.

In the Opuscula, however, we have scattered references
to himself which, although fragmentary and unsatisfying,
may serve to fill in the picture somewhat, since they give
us some little insight into his relations with the external world.
Thus from some of the Opuscula we learn that though St.
Thomas* life was a busy one, since his teaching and his formal
writings were more than enough to fill up the fifty years
allotted to him, yet his many preoccupations did not save him
from a multitude of demands on his time and thought. To
these he answers with a himiility and patience which are no
less admirable than the fullness of the answers he gives. Thus
the Duchess of Brabant writes to ask him how she is to treat
the Jews in her dominions. He answers: " It is difficult for me
to reply, both by reason of the heavy demands made upon my
time by the work of lecturing, and also because I would have
preferred you to have asked advice from those who are more
skilled in such affairs than I am." He does, however, make
reply in three closely-written columns. Nor should we imagine
that he answered her because she was of high rank. An im-
portunate Lector at Venice writes to ask for an answer to
thirty-six questions "within four days!" The Saint replies
with his usual urbanity: "I have read your letter in which
I find a very large number (multitudinem numerosami) of
questions regarding which your Charity begs an answer
within four days. Though I am' exceedingly occupied with
many other things, yet so as not to disappoint your kindly re-
quest, I propose to lay aside other questions with which I ought
to be occupied and reply to each of your questions." * Ques-
tions I.-XI. in this series deal with the Angels as moving the
heavenly bodies; XII-XVIII. treat of God's movement of the
forces of nature and incidentally deal with miracles; XIX.-
XXI. discuss the state of the human body after the day of
judgment; XXII., on the propriety of discussing certain ques-
tions touching the origin of the soul of Christ; XXIII., whether
Christ came on earth solely or principally because of original
sin; XXVII., asks the weird question whether it is dangerous
to hold that after the final resurrection the moon will shine
more than the sun does at present, while the sun will give a

^OpuMCUium XI.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INNER LIFE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 219

sevenfold light* and the bodies of the Blessed sevenfold that
of the sun. " I see no danger in this " replies St. Thomas. " At
least we can think it even though definite statements are lack-
ing which might make it presumable I " He must have had his
tongue in his cheek I Questions XXXI.-XXXV. deal with the
Holy Eucharist; the last question discusses the extent to which
the devils can know our thoughts. A varied assortment surely !
Only one however, viz., the XXVII., can be called puerile; the
rest have a most practical aspect though dealing with meta-
physical points.

An interesting side-light is thrown on his daily life by the
beautiful Prooemium to his treatise on The Separated Sub-
stances, viz., on The Nature of the Angels. It opens: "To
Brother Reginald, his most-beloved companion. Since we are
unable to be present at the sacred Solenmities of the Angels
we must not spend this time of devotion in idleness; let us
rather fill up with writing the time which should be given to
singing the Psalms (of the Divine Office — he and his com-
panion are clearly on a journey and thus unable to attend
choir). Wishful, therefore, to set forth the excellence of the
Holy Angels as we best can, it appears that we should com-
mence with those points which human conjecture has, in the
past, arrived at concerning them, so that we may accept what-
soever we may find therein consonant with the faith and re-
fute those things which are repugnant to Catholic doctrine.*' *
Then follow forty-four colunms of detailed examination of the
various views which have been held by the heathen philoso-
phers with a minute examination of them. But death carried
off the laborious writer before he could complete his work.

He writes elsewhere* thai there can be "no graver loss
than loss of time.** Consequently we are not surprised to find
him writing to James of Burgos who had written to him for
information touching the vexed question of deciding things by
casting lots: " Desirous of satisfying your request I put aside
for a space my occupations during this season of solemn vaca-
tion, and am writing to you what I think about casting lots.*'
From this we glean that even his holidays were times of toil.

Questions similar to these poured in upon him from every
side, from all sorts of people, students, professors, the heads
of universities, from Pope Urban IV., who drew from him the

• Opuscttlum XV. » Ouodlibet h, qu. vU. art. 14, the 1st obj.

Digitized by

Google

220 INNER LIFE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS [May,

famous treatise Contra Errores Grsecorum, from Uie King of
Cyprus to whom he addressed his treatise De Regimine Prin-
cipum, from the General of the Order, John of Vercelli, who
asked his opinion touching one hundred and eight points de-
rived from the teaching of Peter of Tarentasia,O.P., afterwards
Innocent V. (Opusculum IX.) The General also questioned
him on certain other metaphysical points (Opusculum X.) as
well as on the personal as opposed to the impersonal form of
absolution (Opusculum XXII.). Yet with all this, the Saint
ever retains his modesty. As the antiphon in his Office says :
" the pestilential breath of vain-glory never came near him.*'
It is of interest in this connection to read his answer to the
question. Whether a man who has always taught from vain-
glory can ever regain by penance the doctor's cuireola?^
He answers that the works of such a teacher are " dead ** since
they are done in sin. Consequently they can never revive, for
they have never ** lived.'* The doctor's aureola, he points out,
is an " accidental " reward dependent on the essential reward
to which it is added. But teaching from vain-glory, has won
no essential reward, since " they have their reward,** viz., on
this earth, which is a purely natural one. There is nothing,
then, to which the accidental reward, or aureola, can be ap-
pended.

St. Thomas was not one who mingled much with the
affairs of this world. Yet he is always intensely practical and
broad-minded. So, when he is discussing the question whether
a cleric is justified in '' anticipating Matins,** he begins by quot-
ing the somewhat startling words of Ecclus. xxx. 7, " a babbler
and a fool will regard no time,** and then suggests that since
the day begins with midnight, a person who says his Matins
the day before would seem to be classed with ** the babbler
and the fool.** But he answers: **God is more kindly than
any man; and no man blames his debtor if he pays his debts
before they are due.** The whole question, he insists, is one of
intention. ** If a man anticipates his Matins in order to indulge
sleep and pleasure he cannot be excused from sin. But if he
does it from necessity and owing to legitimate occupations; if
for instance a professor must study his lecture overnight or
anything of that kind, then he may lawfully say Matins early
and may also say the other Hours before their appointed time,

• Qnodltbet V., xU. 24.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INNER UFE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 221

as, indeed, is done in greater churches. For it is better to pay
to God both debts, viz., the meed of due praise and other fitting
offices, rather than to allow one to be impeded by the other." *

In the same practical spirit he quotes with approval St.
Augustine's statement (Confess. IX., xii.^ that he found a rem-
edy for his sadness in a bath and a long sleep ! '* Nothing, too,
could be better common-sense than his remarks on the now lit-
tle-thought of vice of acedia once called " the monk's noonday
devil ''because, as Cassian had remarked (Instituta X. 2), it
particularly attacked them at noon when they were empty
and the sun was hot! With quite evident glee, too, does St.
Thomas quote the same Cassian's remark that at that hour and
under the influence of the same vice, monks were prone to
magnify the observance kept in distant monasteries ! '^ Of a
piece with this is his statement that the truly magnanimous
man cannot be a grumbler. "*

Of this same ''magnanimous man" St. Thomas has left
us a portrait which may well stand for his own. He begins by
quoting Aristotle's words: "The very gait of the magnani-
mous man is calm, his voice sonorous, his speech collected."
And he comments as follows: " Quickness of movement arises
from the fact that a man is occupied with many things which
he hurries to carry out; whereas the magnanimous man is
solely occupied with great things and these are but few and
call for great attentiveness, hence his calm movements. So,
too, shrillness of voice and quick speech are characteristic of
people who are ready to contend about all sorts of things; this
is not the case with men of magnanimity for they only concern
themselves with great things."

Almost the last scene depicted in St. Thomas' life shows
him writing from Aquino to the Abbot of the great Benedictine
Abbey of Monte Cassino whither he had been brought as a
child of five years. He was on his i^y to the Council at Lyons,
though death was to prevent him from reaching the city. The
Abbot of Monte Cassino, hearing of his presence in the vicinity,
wrote to ask him to address the brethren on a certain passage
in St. Gregory which had perturbed them. The Saint replies :

"To the Reverend Father in Christ, Dom. Bernard, by
God's grace Venerable Abbot of Monte Cassino, Brother

• Qaoditbet V., xlll. 28. »• la., 2ae., xxxvlli. 6.

<*2a., 2ae., xxxv. 1; 2nd and 3pd obj. "2a., 2ae., cxxlx. 4, ad 2 dm.

Digitized by

Google

222 INNER LIFE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS [May,

Thomas of Aquin, his devoted son, ever and everywhere
prompt to obey him.

'* I should have liked, venerated Father, to have replied by
word of mouth to the assembled Brethren who are disturbed
in mind by the words of Gregory the illustrious Doctor. But
the length of the Divine Office and the prolonged fast have
prevented me. Perchance too it is as well, for what is com-
mitted to writing may avail not merely those present but those

to come To afford fuller satisfaction, then, to those who

are in doubt . . . ." he then gives a detailed examination of the
passage in question. It seems that the Abbot had sent him the
monastery copy of St. Gregory's Morals on the Book of Job, for
the Saint has written his exposition of the controverted pas-
sage in the margin. If this marginal note really is in the
Saint's handwriting — and there is nothing against the supposi-
tion but rather the contrary — then it has a peculiar interest as
probably containing the last lines he ever penned. The teach-
ing is the same as that with which we are familiar throughout
his works — it is a question of God's infallible decrees. The
authography is difficult, though not so difficult as that in the
manuscript of the Summa contra Gentes preserved at the Vati-
can. The Saint may, indeed, have been failing in his physical
powers, but the same clarity of mind and precision of judg-
ment are evident as of yore. And if the teaching is '' magis-
terial," what are we to say of the " magisterial " character of
hio action in inscribing in the margin of the text of one of the
Church's Doctors his own exposition of the passage, '' that it
may avail not merely those present but those to come! " Such
an act could only emanate from that virtue of magnanimity of
which he had said that it was in no wise contrary to humility. *•
From Aquino St. Thomas passed to Fossa Nuova whence
he passed to his reward, to that unclouded contemplation of
God which he had so earnestly desired :

Jesu ! Whom for the present veil'd I see.
What I so thirst for, oh, vouchsafe to me:
That I may see Thy countenance unfolding,
And may be blest Thy glory in beholding!

"2a., 2ae., cxxlx. 3, ad 4 m. For a discussion of this margliial note see
MandoDet, Des 6crits Authenttques de St. Thomas d*Aquin, Prlburg, 1910; cf. also
the official published edition of the whole, Monte Casslno, 1875.

Digitized by

Google

CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD.

BY KATHARINE TYNAN.

lONNLA and his sister Bride lived with their
mother on the slopes of the lordly mountain of
Slievemore. They lived in a little house cov-
ered with golden straw. In winter it was very
warm. In sunmier, the door and the window
were open for the mountain wind to blow through them.
Bee-hives stood by the door and there was a garden of flowers
for the bees. Beyond that lay the mountain pasturage where
the little black cow grazed and the few mountain sheep.

They had not always grazed in peace. The children could
remember when there were wolves in the forest of Dalgan on
the mountain side, before the monks of the great Monastery
of Angus the Hermit had driven them out. In the winter they
had cried about the house and the cattle shed, and the children
had crept closer under the skins of beasts in the warm straw
and trembled to hear them. They used to see the great head
of the father-wolf beyond the opening that served for a window.
It was terrible to hear them barking in the forest, but it was
worse when they came near the house. They were gone, but
even yet Lewy, the wolf-hound, who slept at the threshold
every night, would lift his head and bay as though he smelt
them in his sleep.

Once, when the children were little, when Lewy's mother
was sick to death and Lewy but a blind puppy, the wolves had
broken in and had carried off sheep and lambs. That night
the children had seen the shadow of the wolf flung by the
moonlight on their floor. Their father, with a fling of his axe,
had killed the biggest wolf and saved the little black cow that
gave them milk. After that the children's father had made the
wall of hurdles and wattles and boughs stronger round the
house and had plastered it with mud against the wolves; and
although the wolves often took a sheep from the mountains
they had not broken the wall of hurdles and wattles.

Then there were the eagles. Often when the children were
on the mountain a shadow had come between them and the

Digitized by

Google

224 CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD [May,

sun, and they had looked up and seen the eagles in the sky
with their wings spread that made the shadow. Then their
mother would run, calling on Patrick and Bride and Colum-
kille, and snatch the children to her and carry them within
doors. That was when they were little, for the oldest eagle of
all that lived in the mists on Slievemore, and had wings that
measured ten feet from tip to tip, was as like to take a golden-
haired lad or lass as a lamb, and carry it away to his eyrie to
feed his young eagles.

The old eagle was old beyond telling, and the young
eagles had long passed the age of a man, because as the rhyme
says, the eagle said to the Oak :

When you were an acorn on the tree-top

Then was 1 an eaglet cock,
Now you are a withered old block

Still am 1 an eaglet cock.

The children did not think much upon these dangers.
They no longer whispered, when they saw the shadows of the
eagle's wings, about little Oona whom the eagle had taken
one summer's day and carried to some height before he let her
fall, a broken thing, on the hillside; for now Connla was big
and strong, and he carried a great shepherd's crook with which
he might have fought an eagle, and Lewy went with them
when they went down the hill to school and was ready to walk
with them when they would return.

Connla went to the Monastery school, and Bride to the
school kept by the Holy Women who called themselves the
Daughters of Brigid. The Monastery was in a pleasant place
on the banks of a salmon stream. It was renowned for holi-
ness and learning. All around it were flowery, fruitful fields,
through which flocks and herds roamed. There were gardens
full of beautiful flowers and fruit. There was rich golden
com. There were flocks of geese and tame birds as well as
wild birds that nested in the reedy and sedgy places by the
river.

The Convent of St. Bride's Daughters was at some distance
along the river banks and was enclosed by a strong wall.
There, still lived the memory of Dara whom St. Brigid had
restored to sight after many years of blindness, but Dara who
had God in her darkness, fearing she would lose Him in the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD 225

light, prayed Brigid to make her blind again, and blind she
came as Abbess to Dun Dara with fifty nuns.

Now, little Bride was as pretty as a daisy. She had a
small sunburnt face, and around about it her flaxen-white
hair, bleached by the sun's rays, stood out like the daisy's
petals. She had blue eyes, as blue as the wonderful bay they
looked down at from the hillside, and that was as blue as the
bluest sky, and to see it of a summer morning it was as blue
as the blue flower of the com. She was very gentle and
obedient, and so full of joy that she danced like a daffodil.
She had garments of white and saffron yellow, and her little
feet were bare, like pink flowers in her sandals of tanned skin.

The world was a very happy place for Bride. She learnt
so quickly and her teachers praised her, and she was a great
favorite with the other children; and though the big, strong
father had left them, there was Connla to take care of her,
and Lewy and there were always her mother's arms to run to.
Joy flowed from her as she went dancing down the hillside to
Dun-Dara, and the old men and women looked after her and
blessed her; and even the great Abbot of the Monastery of St.
Angus had noticed her and given her pears and apples from
the orchard.

The mother used to look after the children as they went
down the hill, and she standing by the gate in the stout wall
watching them out of sight. "The blessing of Patrick and
Bride go with my little boy and girl," she would say softly,
and give thanks in her own heart that the old eagle no longer
hovered above Slievemore, and that the young ones, being
only two hundred years or so old, were still timorous, and that
the wolves prowled no more in the forest since they had been
driven out by the monks.

" My little girl," she said to herself, " will sit by a man's
hearth and nurse his children, but Connla will be a cleric; he
will sing in the choir with his beautiful blackbird's voice and
God will listen and say: *That is a voice that pleases Me!'
Maybe he will go and win nations to the true God. He might
be Abbot itself — and it is the proud woman I should be."

One day a wandering man came over the hill and asked
food in the name of God. She gave him oatcakes and yellow
milk in a mether and plucked him ripe apples from the tree.
He was full of news.

you cm. — ^15

Digitized by

Google

226 CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD [May,

" Where I came from, and that is far away, and Fve been
through many dangers and have slept out in the rain, there
is nothing talked of but that the Abbey of Clonmacnois has
lost its pearl."

" And what may that be? " asked the vanithee— the woman
of the house — for very few people brought her news.

"It is Modran, a young monk," he said. "Young he is
in years, but old in wisdom and holiness. He has great learn-
ing, and he paints the pages of the holy books so that the eyes
of peacock's tails dazzle you, and the inlaying of gold is like
the sun himself. He has painted the walls about the altar as
fine as heaven. Yet he is still young. He has hardly left the
novices. Abbot Aidan of Clonmacnois will stand outside the
class-room door listening to the voices of the novices in class.
I have heard them and the sound makes you sleepy like the
hum of bees on a sununer day. Abbot Aidan will say, if you
come by : * Do you hear my bees making honey for the
Lord?'"

He stopped to take breath and then went on: "Abbot
Aidan is old and he wants Modran for Abbot in his place.
Some have seen light coming from the door of the cell where
Modran paints and prays. And they say the light follows him.
He works miracles. He loves all birds and animals, and it is
said that weeping for a bird-mother slain upon her nest by
the hawk, and pitying all the gaping yellow-bills that must go
unfed, he cried aloud to God, and life was given again to the
mother-bird so that she spread her wings and flew away to
bring back food for the starving young. All this and much
more they tell; and so Modran must be abbot in holy Clon-
macnois — ^but Modran is frightened and has run away. There
is no trace of him; and although the monks cry aloud all day
' Lord, find us Modran! Find us Abbot Modran! ' there is no
answer to their prayers."

Half a day after this talking-fellow had gone down the
hill, another traveler came by. It was the hour when the
children were expected from school and their mother stood,
shading her eyes with her hand, looking down the hillside
for the running figure of Bride who always came first, while
Connla followed more quietly.

" God be with you, vanithee," he said. " Could you direct
me to the Monastery of St. Angus? "

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD 227

She looked up then and saw a young man dressed in
skins. His hair was long, covering his shoulders, and his beard
was up to his eyes. He carried a staff and his air of weariness
and his bleeding feet showed he must have traveled far.

" It is a mile down the mountain/* she said. '' God save
you, poor man, you will have traveled far. Will you not wash
your feet in the stream, and afterwards, if you have a mind to
taste my bread and thick yellow milk and honey, you need not
go fasting on your way."

Something happened as though the sun had suddenly
come out of a gray sky. She could not rightly tell what it was,
but the traveler was smiling at her, and she thought there
had never been anything so sweet as his smile.

" I will not refuse you," he said. " I am tired and hungry.
God reward your hospitality.*'

He went away then to the stream to wash his feet, and, as
though he was the Abbot himself, she spread the board for
him with the best she could give. She set on it clear shining
fruit, and honey that was like amber, and butter like gold, and
her whitest bread, and thick milk in a mether, and she stood
to serve him as though he was the Abbot or maybe a Chieftain
or the Ard-Ri himself, and he only a poor footsore traveling
man.

Above the brown beard he had the gentlest eyes that ever
looked at mortal. Brown as trout pools were they and a deep
golden light in them; and they had the look of knowledge in
them, and they were soft as the breast of a mother-bird, or the
fluff on a small yellow duckling, or the down on a baby's head.
None of these, indeed, were as soft as the deep kind wells of
his eyes. When he stood to give a blessing his voice was
the sweetest she had ever heard. Moreover, the four walls of
the little house and the straw roof seemed to give back his
blessing as though the place was full of voices. Also she
thought a ring of light hung in the air, and now it went up and
now it went down, and sometimes it seemed to lie about the
brows of the traveling man. She said to herself that it was
dazzled her eyes were, because the sun had lain strong on the
hillside and the wind-rippled sea had been like so many
broken pices of shining silver and gold.

She had all but forgotten the children, when the door was
pushed open and Bridyeen came in dancing and merry, and

Digitized by

Google

228 CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD [May,

behind her followed slowly Connla« walking as though he was
tired*. His face had a look of patience which had come to it
of late and hurt his mother's heart to see; and he was pale and
heavy-eyed. The traveling man stood up with a sound like a
cry of pity and love, and the ring that was about his hair lifted
with him and then fell to its place again. He held out his
hands to Bride, and she ran to him, and he blessed her, looking
down on her white forehead and the blue eyes that had no
stain on them. He made her sit down beside him and he gave
her the ripest fruit to eat and the honey and the white bread
and the milk.

'' This is a little lamb of Grod that you have,'* he said to
the mother, and then softly as though to himself, he added:
'' Blessed are all mothers! '* Then he looked across at Connla
and said: **It is a scholar that you have there. But he is
very tall and slight. It would be well that he should not have
too much book-learning till he settles.''

Connla sat down, humbly, a little way off from the table,
while Bridyeen and the stranger chattered like birds in the
early dawn, or as Bridyeen and Connla did when they were
little and had a tongue known only to themselves. But the
traveling man would have him come to the table, and himself
served the boy, and Connla said afterwards that never had he
tasted such milk and bread and fruit and honey as that the
stranger had blessed. After a time the traveling man stood up
from table. He was very tall and the ring went floating away
into the peak of the roof before it settled softly again.

" I'll be going my ways, vanithee," he said, " and may the
blessing of Him I serve be on this house and yourself and
these children." And he put a hand on the head of each, and
then he stooped and patted Lewy, who had never growled for
his coming, but had lain since he came in watching him as
though he loved him.

"Very wise and faithful is the dog," he said. "It was
the mercy of the Good God gave us our brothers, the animals,
to be our friends and helpers. They teach us. It would be
well that we should serve our Master with even a part of the
faithfulness our dogs have for us." Then he went away down
the hillside, having blessed the crops and the flocks.

" Surely that is a holy man," said the vanithee, looking
after him down the hillside. " I wish now I had asked him

Digitized by

Google

1918.] LONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD 229

from whence he came and where he goes. He is going to some
Saint's cell it may be. 1 wish he belonged to these parts.'*

She forgot about the wandering man when she found out
that Connla had a secret grief. At first she could not coax
him to tell it, and she went about saying sadly to herself: " It
is the mother's hour when the children are little and they turn
to her for all they need. She should rejoice in it while she
may, for soon it will pass and they will not come to her any
more but will have their own thoughts and their own com-
forts, and she will be like a king who is cast out of his palace
and shivers in the cold."

"What ails my little son?" she would ask tenderly, but
Connla, thinking his own thoughts and watching his own se-
crets, would shake off her hold and go away by himself or with
only Lewy for company.

" Connla is not what he used to be," said Bride. " It is
on his mind that he cannot learn his books. He will never
be a cleric. Brother Donat says that he has the mind of a
beast — the great slow mind. I do not know why Connla would
wish to be a cleric. 1 would like to marry a chiers son and be
a great lady and ride on a white horse. Sister Gobnet thinks
I should stay at the Convent and sing in the choir to the glory
of God and teach in the schools. But she knows I will not. The
world is a fine place, little mother."

" What is it you are saying of Connla that he cannot learn
the books?" her mother asked, speaking low lest Connla
should hear. "He was always so quick and so fond of his
books and wise beyond other children."

" It is what 1 say that Brother Donat says, he has the slow
mind of a beast. They mock him at school, calling him
ox.

" God help my little son! " said the mother. "It will be
that he is growing too fast. The mind and the body cannot
grow together. I have seen the cloud coming."

After that she prayed hard for her son that the cloud
might be cleared from his* mind, but she said nothing, for
there is many an ill and a grief in this world that are not made
better by talk. Only her ways with him were more fond, and
her eyes, as she watched him, had all the pity and love of all
the hearts of mothers in them; and ever she wished that she
might bear the pain for him. She made him the dishes he

Digitized by

Google

230 CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD [May,

liked best, and kept him the little pullet's eggs, and the cream
from the milk, and the brownest of the honey, for she said to
herself that it was growing thin he was and she was afraid
for her little son.

She watched him at his lessons, evening after evening,
when Bride sat with him and tried to make him understand.
What had come to Connla who used to be so bright? It was
as though he was heavy with sleep. The patient little sister
strove hard to help him but he only looked with dull eyes at
the books and the tablets, and sometimes he passed a weary
hand across his brow and sighed, till at last the mother would
say he had had enough, and he would go off unwillingly to
bed, stumbling as he went, and droning his lessons still, like a
sleepy bee. But if she went in to him at night she found him
lying wide awake upon his pillow; and when she would com-
fort him he would say over and over : ** Now I shall never be
a cleric, but just the ox they call me, and I had better be an
ox-herd or a swineherd like the one who has come to the
Monastery."

Meanwhile, the strange swineherd at the Monastery went
out into the forest with the swine that they might eat the
acorns, and brought the little ones back at night and bedded
them in clean straw, and shut them up in warm little houses.
He was a strange wild figure as he herded his swine, with
his great beard, and an old monk's habit that had been given
to him out of charity to take the place of his skins. He was
so humble that he never lifted his eyes if he met anyone, but
would pull down over his face the cowl of the habit, so that
little was visible of him but the great flowing beard. He
avoided people, and that was easy enough, for he was out in
the forest with his swine and at night he slept in a shed not far
from the little swine. The animals followed him like loving
dogs, and he would come home of evenings carrying the small
piglets in his arms as though they were lambs.

Some of the scholars had caught sight of him praying
among his flock, and he kneeling, with his arms outstretched,
and some of them were frightened, for they had seen him lying
face downward and the swine feeding about him in a glade of
the forest, and at first they had thought him dead. But later
on some said he was mad: and others that he was a great
sinner doing penance. When he tried to speak to the children

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD 231

they ran fast and called back ugly names at him; so he re-
turned to his beasts that found nothing wrong with him.

It was not only the swine that loved him but all the ani-
mals and birds. It was even said that he had been seen leading
a wolf by the ear, but that could not have been true, for the
wolves had been driven away by the monks; unless one had
come down from the highest mountain, to which he ha(j[ had
his face turned as the swineherd led him forth from the for-
est. Also the birds hopped about the swineherd, and were
like a cloud on him as he lay in the moss; and the squirrels
and the rabbits played about him. But the children, running
from him, called him fool and mad.

Once he and his flock were lost for three days, and that
was when Abbot Aidan of Clonmacnois visited the Monastery;
but he returned on the third day after the visitor had de-
parted with his flock none the worse, and himself so humble
for having let them wander, for he had gone far in pursuit
of them, that Brother Declan, the farmer, who was a great
man, with a deep voice and a ruddy sun-flushed face, was mild
in his scolding. He had to own to the Abbot that never before
had the swine thriven as they had with this swineherd.
** Beasts will not fatten unless they are happy,*' said Declan,
** and the pigs are like his children."

Now neither Connla nor Bride were of those who mocked
and shouted at the swineherd, for, every day after school was
finished, these two ran home, hand in hand, to their mother.
And when Connla sat down to his books with an aching head —
for always now liis head ached and his eyes were heavy — his
mother would come and draw his head against her breast and
stroke his forehead and murmur soft words to him. Then she
would let him be quiet, for she knew that boys dread being
soft and cannot fear it if anyone should see tears in their eyes,
as though it were a shame. Also there were things in which
she could not help him, although she would have died for him,
except by her prayers, and she prajed for him all day, and even
in her sleep her prayers went on.

One day, when it was a hot heavy day of autumn and the
mists hung over the valley and rose from the river. Brother
Donat, who suffered much pain when the damp was about,
was angry with Connla, stumbling more and more over his les-
sons, so that the other boys laughed, and it was not easy to

Digitized by

Google

232 CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD [May,

keep order in the class. Brother Donat forgot what he knew,
that Connia tried to learn with the others. He forgot to make
excuses for the boy.

" You will go home now," he said, " and you need not come
here again, for you will never make a scholar, much less a
cleric. You had better ask the swineherd if he will give you
work to mind the pigs, so that you can take his place when the
time comes. It is more fitting for your little wit to herd swine
than to sit with scholars in class."

What more he might have said Connia did not hear, for,
with a sharp cry, he fled from the class-room, not knowing
where he was going, and ran on and on into the heart of the
green places, till at last, from weariness, he fell and lay still;
and the book he had been trying to understand fell from his
hand and lay some distance away on the edge of a little stream
that ran laughing and singing through the mosses. But,
presently, the pain and shame returning to him. Brother
Donat's anger, and the laughter of the boys, and the grief that
his dull mind would not let him be a cleric for ever, he broke
out into sharp sudden crying, forgetting that he was a boy and
a boy must never cry like a girl.

The storm of grief passed over him : his shoulders shook
with his sobbing: and someone came quietly over the moss
and stood looking down at him with a deep pity. And the
birds and the little animals came also, and a couple of deer
so that many eyes were upon Connla's grief.

"What ails my little one? " asked a deep voice, as tender
as that of Connla's mother.

The boy got up and looked into the face of him who spoke
as tenderly as a mother. It was a heavily bearded face, and
above the beard shone out eyes of so de§p a compassion that
it was almost like the eyes of the Lord of men.

Connia remembered. He never thought of the Monastery
swineherd. This was the man who had come to their cottage
in the early sunmier and been fed, of whom his mother had
said, looking down the pathway his feet went: "Surely that
is a holy man." He smiled into the eyes above the great beard.

" You have not forgotten me," said the swineherd. " Of-
ten you are in my thoughts and that pretty bird, Bridyeen, and
the hospitable, soft mother. Come and sit with me here on
this log and tell me what troubles you."

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CONNLA AND THE SWINEHERD 233

' Then Connla began to sob out all his griefs, and as he
recounted them he sobbed the more» and his head lay on the
swineherd's breast, and about them the timid deer and the
bright birds and the leaping squirrles and the rabbits and
foxes looked on.

" Tell me what it is you cannot learn/' said the swineherd.
** Is it your book I see lying on the border of the stream? Let
.me see, let me see!" So his hand while he talked went
smoothing out the roughness of Connla's hair where he had
tossed it as he lay on the ground, and the dry leaves and
grasses were in it. And while he stroked the boy's hair, light
seemed to flow from his fingers and to enter Connla's mind
and to show him in the light what the darkness had hidden.

'* It is like this, little Connla," the swineherd said, turn-
ing the pages of the book. "' It is like this." And as he talked
and smoothed the boy's hair, all the hard things were made
easy. " Go back now and tell them you know," said the swine-
herd. *^You will be a cleric, my Connla, and what is more,
you will be the Abbot of this Monastery. It was but a tangle
of the brain and it is smoothed away."

Then Connla went back, running and leaping and calling
out to Brother Donat that he knew his lesson. The Brother,
who was not a hard man, and was already sorry for his sharp
way with the boy, who was a good gentle boy if he was dull,
without any mockery set him in the midst of the class and tofd
him to repeat the lesson.

What had come to the boy? This was no knowledge got
by rote, but Connla's mind, clear now as piu*e glass, knew not
only what was before him but what was to come. It was a
great marvel. Brother Donat did not know what to make of
it. The boys who had laughed, crowded about Connla in won-
der, praising him. But Connla only wanted to get home to his
mother to tell her he would be a cleric yet. At this moment
the Abbot came by the school.

"Here is a marvel. Father Abbot," cried out Brother
Donat. " Here is a boy who could not do the first problem of
Euclides this morning, and now he has mastered the book. I
believe now, heaven made him dull to save his precious
mind from such fools as me, wrapping it about with many
folds to preserve it. It is a miracle of a brain."

The Abbot came smiling, for he knew Brother Donat's

Digitized by

Google

234 THE MOTHER IMMACULATE [May,

ways: but he no longer smiled as the boy worked out the
hard problems. He tried him then with Virgilius of the
Eclogues, and the boy ran on gaily from one page to another
pouring out the golden Latin. '" But it is a miracle," said the
Abbot. "This is the boy you said would not have Latin
enough for a cleric.**

"It was the swineherd. Father Abbot,*' said Connla.
"He stroked the dullness out of my brain. His hand went
softly, softly — and all that had been hard was made plain. My
mother said the day he passed our cottage that he was a saint.'*

" Why,'* said the Abbot, " can it be possible that the Pearl
of Clanmacnois is hiding under our swineherd?"

But when Modran was discovered in the forest among his
swine, and the ring of light rising and falUng wherever he
went, he was very sad. Then came Abbot Aiden of Clonmac-
nois and many chanting clerics to bring him back to be Abbot;
and they put the holy habit on him and the mitre on his head.
And many there saw the light rising and f aUing. Very unwil-
lingly and almost with tears he went away with them, for he
was very happy in his forest, and he was afraid of power and
the honor of men.

He reigned a great and saintly Abbot in Clonmacnois:
but long, long the animals missed him in the forest, where
they became wild again after their nature, and ran and flew
before the sound of men*s coming.

THE MOTHER IMMACULATE.

BY T. J. S.

In sacrifice complete of Self Divine
Love knew abandon: Wisdom held secure;

The Flesh that fitted Thee, Creator blest,
Was of a Virgin sinless and all pure.

Digitized by

Google

WHAT MERES KNEW ABOUT SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS:
A REPLY TO DR. CARPENTER.

BY APPLETON MORGAN.

I HOSE who concern themselves with Shakespeare
matters must be careful not to be too certain
about anything.''

I should not have forgotten this dictum of
my late honored colleague, Dr. Halliwell
Phillips, when writing in The Catholic World of April, 1916:
'* Shakespeare's other noble friend was William Herbert, Earl
of Pembroke. To him Shakespeare dedicated a sheaf of one
hundred and fifty-four delicioils Sonnets." This certainly should
have read : " To him / think, etc." Let me so amend to com-
fort Dr. Carpenter, and to his very good-natured indictment
plead, as old common-law lawyers used to plead when they
did not care much which way the trial went, Non Vult!

But does Dr. Carpenter realize the full extent of my awful
apostasy to myself? For my crime is not merely my conver-
sion to Mr. Thomas Tyler's theory of the Sonnets, viz., that they
were indubitably dedicated to the young Lord Pembroke. My
recantation actually covers my entire Baconian creed.. For as
Dr. Isaac Hull Piatt used to say : " I have very grave doubts
if Bacon with all his genius, could possibly have written those
Plays."

My conversion, however, was far less abrupt than Dr.
Carpenter suggests. In point of fact, it was delayed so long
that Dr. John Fiske complained that, while not quite as
heterodox as Mr. Donnelly or Mrs. Pott, I was still " preparing
soil for Baconian weeds to grow in." It gives me pleasiu^e to
add however, that Dr. Fiske lived long enough thereafter to
express himself as perfectly satisfied with my rate of progress
toward orthodoxy.^

It is asking no great thing, it appears to Dr. Carpenter, to
demand that a man who has seen fit to change his mind after
forty years consideration of a purely academic question, stand
at discretion and vindicate himself by returning instantly to

> The Atlantic Monthly, vol. Ixxx., p. 642.

Digitized by

Google

236 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS [May,

his abandoned convictions, or plead guilty to wanting in ** tact
and reason! " Yet this is the alternative Dr. Carpenter gives
me in his paper in The Catholic World of January, 1918.
As neither alternative appeals to me, I exercise my right
of restating my case to the court, to wit:

Mr. Tyler bases upon purely internal evidence his propo-
sition that the Sonnets were addressed to the young Earl of
Pembroke in manuscript: and were circulated just as Mr.
Francis Meres declares they were; and that when six or seven
years after Mr. Meres had heard of them, they got into the hands
of Mr. Thomas Thorpe; he (Mr. Thorpe) dedicated them to the
same noble lord to whom in manuscript they had been ad-
dressed. Since Mr. Tyler's work is in every library* and per-
fectly well known of every Shakespeare scholar I will not
restate this internal evidence here, but confine myself to re-
capitulating the purely external evidence.

But before proceeding to marshal this external evidence
let me briefly dispose of Dr. Carpenter's two principal propo-
sitions :

First: That there are a lot of contemporary dedications
that show that publishers were abjectly afraid of offending
influential persons; and second: That the Sonnets were dedi-
cated to a well-known promoter of literary ventures of the
date: a certain Mr. William Hall!

As to the first proposition — I have never heard anyone
deny it! But when Dr. Carpenter restates it so deliciously
and with such delightful sarcastics we will not quarrel with
his redundancy! Nearly everyone knows that Ben Jonson was
always many parasangs beyond the tipsy stage whenever he
*• had the price," but this does not necessarily spoil whatever
value one of Ben's dedications may possess; nor any covert
admission or innuendo it may contain — as Evidence!! And
if, as we are about to suggest, the T. T. dedication to Mr. W. H.
was instructed : it makes no difference, as to the value of the
one we have in hand, how many other dedications Dr. Car-
penter may have heard of!

As to the second of Dr. Carpenter's propositions : That the
Sonnets were dedicated to William Hall.

'Thomas Tyler, M.A., The Berber l-Fg (ton Theory of Shakespeare's Sonnets, An
Answer — London, • 1898. The same — Shakespeare's Sonnets — The First Quarto, 1609.
(In No. 30 of the Grlggs-Praetorius Quarto Fac-similes.) (Separate American Re-
print, 1898.)

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 237

This is not the first time that "Mr. W. H." has been
searched for among commoners (printers and others) whose
initials happened to be " W. H.'* There is a line of the Son-
net numbered twenty:

A man in hews all Hewes in his controlling,

and the fact that " Hewes " was spelled with a capital letter in
the 1609 edition, led to a suggestion that a Mr. William Hewes
might be the long-sought dedicatee, " Mr. W. H." A German,
Wilhelm Bemstolff, claimed that Shakespeare dedicated his
Sonnets to himself! and that "Mr. W. H.'* was none other than
"William Himself." And then, almost a hundred years after!
came this William Hall, to whom Dr. Carpenter now gives his
suffrages.

Sir Sidney Lee tells us that " W. H." stands for " Henry
Wriothlesey," which was Lord Southampton's family name.
But although Sir Sidney is fond of telling us things, and over-
looking any demands that he mention his authorities, one
rather doubts if even he expects us to concede that " W. H.**
stands for "Henry Wriothlesey;" or that Shakespeare was in
the habit of addressing his pal Southampton as " Wriothlesey,**
or as "Wriothlesey Henry** or "Wriothlesey Harry!"
especially when " W. H.** — are (or may be) the initials of "Wil-
liam Herbert,** which letters there was no call to senselessly
transpose ! In that year, 1609, Shakespeare was living, a pros-
perous gentleman, in summer at Stratford, planting his King
James mulberry trees, in winter at London watching his
theatrical properties that they earn money enough to keep up
New Place where Mistress Anne and her two daughters, Mes-
dames Hall and Quiney, were spending at the rate of what the
simple Stratford folk estimated at " a thousand pound a year.**
Are we to believe Dr. Carpenter that, in this same year Shake-
speare was permitting those Sonnets, that in his salad days
he addressed to my Lord Pembroke, to be paraded in print as
begotten by William Hall, and that the Rev. Francis Meres had
nothing to say when he saw sugared sonnets, that he,
in 1594, had announced as written by William Shakespeare,
dedicated, in 1609, to William Hall as " their onlie begetter? **
Is there no limit to what one is expected to swallow whole in
a Shakespeare matter? No Shakespeare productions were

Digitized by

Google

238 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS [May,

ever dedicated to anybody except Lord Southampton or Lord
Pembroke or Lord Montgomery. The Sonnets are dedicated
to " Mr. W. H.,** which are not the initials of any of these noble
lords except Lord Pembroke. The internal evidence of the
Sonnets closely follows events in the known life of Lord Pem-
broke; but cannot be brought into planetary space of events
in the life of Lord Southampton, still less of a disappearing Mr.
William Hall.

But probably the insuperable obstacle to the William Hall
dedicatee theory is the typographical one. Imperfect, indeed,
were the printer's tools, and clumsy his art in England (both
had already made great strides upon the Continent). But
careless as were the compositors; conspicuous by their ab-
sence as were the proofreaders, still there was one thing upon
which the Elizabethan printer did pride himself! Title pages,
initial letters, headpieces, superimposed letters, flnials, tail-
pieces, and formal tabulated inscriptive '* dedications " (as
distinguished from epistles dedicatory such as those Dr. Car-
penter pokes his fun at) were most consciously, carefully and
artistically done; and we are obliged to admire, and not infre-
quently do we imitate them today. And we may be sure that
if the copyholder for that 1609 dedication had read : " These
Insuing Sonnets — ^Mr. W. Hall, Happiness," the compositor
would never have set it up as it stands today: *' These Insuing
Sonnets — ^Mr. W. H. All, Happiness."

And if it had been so printed in the proof; if the " justifica-
tion " had not at once arrested attention, the last examination
of this most important matter — important, because that was
Mr. Thomas Thorpe the publisher's especial part of the publi-
cation — somebody would surely have ** caught ** the mistypog-
raphyl

In the twin parentheses —

( )

which Dr. Carpenter finds in Sonnet 126 — I find quite a
different mare's nest from the one Dr. Carpenter finds.
My guess is that by these parentheses the compositor
meant to indicate that there were two lines less than
the usual fourteen in that Sonnet. My friend John Corbin
(whose Shakespearean criticism is extraordinarily sane),
makes out that Sonnet — as it stands, even with two lines of an

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 239

expected fourteen "shy** to mean: "You are young and
charming. Dear Boy, and nature delights to keep you so, but
sooner or later old Tempus Edax wiU get you." In other
words; those double parentheses were put there by the com-
positor; not to indicate that two lines were lacking, but
for the very opposite purpose, viz., to indicate that two lines
were not lacking! The sense of that particular Sonnet is
complete without them.

Does Dr. Carpenter refuse to believe that these Sonnets
were dedicated to Lord Pembroke because Sir Sidney Lee de-
clares that they were not, or because of my saying that I think
they were — (a capital reason, too) or because he has not (has
he?) read Mr. Tyler's internal evidence?

But now for the external evidence. This is how it appeals
to my convinctions:

A publisher (Dr. Carpenter quotes me as quoting from
George Wither) " if he gets any written note he will publish
it and it shall be contrived and named according to his own
pleasure.** Mr. Wither does not state that the reason was that
the publisher of that date could not be a publisher at all unless
he were a member of The Stationer's Company, which company
enjoyed the monopoly of printing whatever its members saw
fit to print, a monopoly in which it was protected by the Ck)urt
of Star Chamber; so that not even a noble lord (unless a very
powerful one at Court — and young Lord Pembroke happened
at that time not only to be without power, but to be actually
in disgrace at Elizabeth's Court) dared say anything in the
matter!

Suppose then that Lord Pembroke's secretary had learned
that these Sonnets that had circulated so long anonymously
(though their authorship, as we shall see, must have been an
open secret for the Rev. Francis Meres to have gotten hold of
it) had found their way into a publisher's hands. His Lord-
ship's secretary intimates to Mr. Thomas Thorpe that His
Lordship will feel obliged if his lordly incognito be preserved
in the publication, by whatever means Mr. Thorpe may devise
to that end. And, whatever Mr. Thorpe's fallings, he certainly
did hit upon a successful method — that is, if it be a success to
have set wiseacres and pundits to bothering their brain-pans
about it for three hundred years ! He used His Lordship's f am-
Uy name in iniUals "W. H.:" William Herbert! And Ben

Digitized by

Google

240 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS [May,

Jonson, on the watch or on the secret, recognizing the ruse,
hurries to dedicate to His Lordship a bundle of his epigrams,
in the course of which dedicatory he remarks with elephantine
coyness: ** I dare not change your Lordship's Title; since there
is nothing in these Epigrams in expressing which it is neces-
sary to employ a cipher.**

Now in this passage I recognize a piece of circumstantial
evidence, inadvertent and unconscious (as all circumstantial
evidence must be to be circumstantial evidence at all) so
far as we of the twentieth century are concerned. But Dr. Car-
penter sees nothing in it because, forsooth, its context is maud-
lin and rubbish (and I agree with him that it is both). And
then he asks, " Will Dr. Morgan accept one cryptic dedication
upon the strength of another cryptic dedication which, upon
examination, is quite as occult and collapsible? ** And then re-
gardless of the fact that I have accepted no dedications at all :
cryptic or otherwise — ^but only detected a tiny morsel of what
seems to me circumstantial evidence in one of them — he
rushes precipitately, quite untrammeled by his own fulcrum
or objective, to show how unreasonable I am in accepting them
(as I have not!), by picking up three or four more "cryptic**
dedications that have about as much to do with each other or
with his (Dr. Carpenter*s) point as Tenderden Steeple had to
do with Groodwin Sands!

I decline to depart from my scent by a red herring drawn
across the track. The question of importance before us at pres-
ent is: how and from where did the Sonnets get into Mr.
Thomas Thorpe*s printery? And this brings us to the Rev.
Francis Meres, M.A.

No editor of the Sonnets, nor commentator thereon, omits
to state that the first mention of them is in the year 1594 when
Francis Meres speaks of Shakespeare*s "sugared sonnets
among his private friends.*' More than often these editors or
commentators quote Mr. Meres* own words as follows :

" As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Phy-
thagoras, so the sweet withe soul of Ouid live*s in mellifluous
and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and
Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private
friends. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for
Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare
among ye English is the most excellent in both kinds for the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 241

stage. For comedy witness his Getleme of Verona, his Errors,
his Loves Laboeres Lost, his Loves Labours Wonne, his Mid-
sommers Nights Dreamei and his Merchant of Venice, for
tragedy his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King
John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius
Stolo said the Muses would speake with Plautus' tongue if
they would speake Latine so I say the Muses would speak with
Shakespeare's fine filled phrases if they would speake English.*'

Now there is a good deal of contemporary chronicle to be
gotten out of this brief ^'appreciation,*' and conmientators
have not failed to grasp it. That Shakespeare was a beginner
at the date of Meres* remarks, the few plays mentioned — being
among his earliest — testify; that the play we know as Alls Well
that Ends Well, was at first called Love's Labours Won] that
Shakespeare, long before he began to appear as an author in
print, was well enough known to have his productions classed
as literature and to be critically noticed by a literary critic
who dealt with not only classical but English literature; and
this in a day when the book reviewer was not abroad, and
publishers did not send out press copies or advance sheets for
literary notices to aid their sales! All this is drawn off for us,
and pretty familiar it all is by this time. But what none of
our editors or conmientators think worth while to tell us, is
who Francis Meres was, and how he happened to hear about
the privately circulated manuscripts of Shakespeare. Shake-
speare the stage-wright and maker of plays! Shakespeare the
poet whose Venus and Adonis was so widely admired, whose
Lucrece was a well known " broadside? ** These a clergjmian,
who had invented for himself the before-unknown function
of a literary critic — would naturally find ready for his criti-
cal labors. But how about those private manuscripts? Who
ever heard of a literary critic — ^in reviewing Tennyson's or
Longfellow's work — ^prophetically volunteering a critical opin-
ion as to the so-far unprinted compositions of those poets!

Francis Meres was born in the year 1565 in Lincolnshire,
of a prominent family; an uncle, John Meres, having been
high sheriff of the county. He was placed at Pembroke Col-
lege of that University, and was graduated Bachelor of Arts
in 1587. He was "incorporated" in that degree at Oxford,
July 10, 1593. He was installed rector of Wing in Rutland in
July, 1602, and added to his rectorship the vocation of a school-

voL. cvn. — ^16

Digitized by

Google

242 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS [May,

master, retaining both living and occupation until his death
in 1647. One Charles Fitz Geoffrey in 1601 dedicates to him a
copy of Latin verses calling him Theologus et Poeta. And in
a sermon of his: God's Arithmetic (1597) prefixed by a long
and learned ** Epistle Nuncupatoric," addressed to his uncle
John Meres, he describes himself as ""Maister of Arts in both
Universities and Student in Divinity."

So much for his biography. But how did he come to elect
for himself a function utterly unknown at that date: The
function of reviewer of current books and literary critic of his
own times?

He evidently was not a penny-a-liner, a Grub Street hack
of the Grub Street of that date. The rector of a parish and a
master of two universities has a certain social standing. So
he could, to begin with, dispense in any literary career he might
be desirous of seeking with that first requisite of the literary
hack — a patron!

His literary output, as will be seen by its volume in the
British Museum, is considerable — and from its range— con-
sidering that there were no press copies or review copies sent
out by the printers, shows a rather wide access on the Rever-
end gentleman's part. The second prominent Englishman who
adopted this profession was Gerald Langbaine the younger,
dramatic biographer and critic. But he was not bom until
a full century after Meres, and did his work between the years
1667 and 1690, so late that his good work was largely followed
by CoUey Gibber to whom the stage owes so lasting an obliga-
tion. When this Langbaine wrote his Account of the English
Dramatick Poets; or some Observations and Remarks on those
that have produced either Comedies, Tragedies, Tragicome-
dies, Pastorals Masques, Interludes, or Operas in the English
Tongue, printed at Oxford in 1691, he listed among Shake-
peare's output, not only what we at present call the canonical;
but also what we now list as the apocryphal or pseudo-Shake-
spearean plays. But even Langbaine does not pass criticism
upon Shakespeare's Sonnets, then in print and accessible in
broadside (or quarto as we now say), at every London book-
staU.

Those were the days of "Books of Songs and Sonnets."
The compilation known as The Passionate Pilgrim and
erroneously assigned to Shakespeare, is one of these. The Rev.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 243

Francis Meres produced, or aided in producing, one such in 1596,
known as The Paradise of Dainty Devices. In 1597 he followed
this with a supplement to Politenphia — Wifs Commonwealth
by Nicholas Ling (who in 1604 with John TrundeU printed the
second quarto of Hamlet), which he called Palladis Tamia:
Wifs Treasurie, being the second part of WiT5Co/n/nonu;eatt/i.
(London by P. Short for Cuthbert Burbie 1598.) This supple-
ment is entered on the Stationers Register, September 7, 1598.
Later edition of this Wit's Treasurie contains an ^* Address to
the Reader** by Francis Meres, and promises a third supplement
"^by an Eminent scholar,'' which did appear finally in 1634.

In this first work Meres passes upon numerous classic
authors and awards high praises to these English authors, viz..
Sir Philip Sidney, John Lyly, Thomas Playford, Hugh Brough-
ton, Robert Greene, John Foxe, Sir John Harrington, William
Warner and Richard Copgrave, including A Comparative Dis-
course of our English Poets with the Greek, Latin and Italian
Poets. He has chapters " On Books," " On Reading of Books,*'
" On PWlosophy," " On Poets and Poetrie," " On Painting and
Music," quite in the modern vein of our school hand-books of
literature, and later chapters he intersperses with notes on
contemporary painters and musicians.

The third supplement promised above appeared in 1634,
showing that the work enjoyed considerable prosperity from
the first. In the first supplement Mr. Meres passed critically
upon one hundred and twenty-five English authors. The sec-
ond supplement is entitled— Wif 5 Commonwealth, the second
part^^A Treasurie of Divine, Moral and Phylosophical Simi-
lies, generally useful. But more particularlie for the use of
Schools (London, 1634). This edition has a title-page en-
graved by John Droeshout, brother of Martin Droeshout, who
made that engraving of Shakespeare from some unguessed
source that was used by Jagged, Blount Smithweeke and
Aspley in getting up the First Folio Shakespeare (some day
we will know where Martin who was barely sixteen years old
when Shakespeare died, and so could not have drawn from
life, got his model).

Some copies use a variant title-page as follows:
A Treasurie of Goulden Sentences. Similies and Examples.
Set forth cheefly for the benefit of young scholeers. London,
printed for Richard Royston. The work continued to be vastly

Digitized by

Google

244 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS [May.

popular. And the demand required a third and a fourth edi-
tion. The title-page varied a little in each edition. The Rev-
erend Rector of Wing also wrote religious works, or rather
translated from the French two religious '^orks by Luis de
Grenada (a Spaniard). Clearly then, the Rev. Mr. Meres was
no ordinary book-hack, and from the variety of connections
must have enjoyed a rather wide acquaintance, besides the
attention he would have arrested by the absolute novelty of
his newly-invented field of literary criticism.

And thus arrives the second item of circumstantial evi-
dence, or what seems to me such, which I admit that I did not
estimate at its full value forty years ago! to wit: the extra-
ordinary facilities enjoyed by the authority who first told man-
kind about Shakespeare's Sonnets when they only existed in
manuscript!

And so, when Mr. Thomas Tyler by careful and cautious
examination, finds that these Sonnets internally tally with the
known history of young Lord Pembroke and Mary Fjrtton, and
in some sort with Queen Elizabeth's anger at these two (that
is to say with court gossip which would have circulated if at
all in just such precincts and among just such coteries as the
Rev. Francis Meres must have frequented to gather the
material in which he dealt) ; I yield my convictions to what is
called technically " The Pembrokian Theory of the Sonnets "
in spite of Dr. Carpenter and his precious dedications, none
of which are germane or in point, but one of which, he says,
was " discovered twenty years later than my Myth, and cor-
roborates certain of my conjectures in that work." (For
which judgment I beg my thanks!)

Dr. Carpenter quotes me as saying that the only sugges-
tion of a contact between Shakespeare and Lord Pembroke
was when Heminge and Condell dedicated the First Folio to
His Lordship because (they said) His Lordship had in his
(Shakespeare's) lifetime received the plays with favor! Dr.
Carpenter says that I make merry over any suggestion that
Heminge and Condell had anything to do with the First Folio
or ever had any suspicion that their names were used to father
it; though he does not appear to consider those two propositions
of mine as worth coUiterating. I must add another point of
contact (though it were not until Shakespeare had been dead
nineteen years), between the dramatist and Lord Pembroke.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 245

It seems that Cuthbert Burbage (son of the Burbage Shake-
speare mentions m his will) wrote Lord Pembroke in 1635,
asking His Lordship's favor in behalf of himself and others;
and in enumerating the services his father and brother had
done to dramatic matters, says: " to ourselves we joined those
deserving men, Shakespeare, Heminge, Condell, Phillips and
others,** and (further on) "placed men players which were
Heminge, Condell, Shakespeare, as successors to the Children
of the Chapel.**

Microscopical persons will wonder if this illusion to
Shakespeare simply as " a deserving man " and as one of sev-
eral "successors to the Children of the Chapel** written in
1635, when two great folios of the dramatist's collected works
had filled the public ear and met the extravagant eulogy of the
literary world of Londogn, did not mean, as Dr. Carpenter in
a footnote credits (or discredits) me as suggesting in 1877,
that Messrs. Heminge and Condell had really never heard of
the First Folio they are said to have bestowed upon mankind?

These two marvelous gentlemen in 1623 edit a folio edi-
tion of the great dramatists works, and prefix thereto divers
panegyrics of the dramatist himself in prose and verse — the
least of which calls him " soul of the age, th* applause delight
and wonder of the stage! ** And in 1635, a scant fifteen years
afterward, they mention him as "a deserving man!**
All this being so does not in any way assist us to an
inkling of why Jaggard and Blount, publishers of the
First Folio, or Ben Jonson (who did everything else about
that work: the "Address to The Great Variety of Readers:**
the commendatory verse, the verses extolling the Droeshout
caricature, etc.), chose to pretend that two journey-actors
Heminge and Condell were its editors. But it does seem
to lead up to a suggestion as to why Ben Jonson may have se-
lected the Earl of Pembroke as a desirable dedicatee of the
First Folio, to wit: Ben knew, as we have seen, the secret of
the Sonnets, and of their addresses and may have assumed
that, having been thus more or less (even if against his will)

*If anybody objects to this summary dismissal of Messrs. Heminge and Condell,
why not turn to the British Cyclopetdia of National Bipgraphg and read up Heminge
and Condell, and consider whether their biographies are the biographies of gentle-
men of transcendant accomplishment in a literary direction or of any particular
accomplishments in any direction at all? That they were Journey-actors and that
they became respectively a green-grocer and a Publican, is, we understand, not at
Issue — unless Dr. Carpenter has access to authorities denied to me!

Digitized by

Google

246 SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS [May,

a confidant of Shakespeare, His Lordship could not very nicely
decline the dedication!

The world will never know or even hazard a guess as to
why Ben Jonson himself did not appear as the editor of the
greatest secular work the world possesses today! Possibly he
was not sure that it was a great work, in spite of his triple
prolegomatical eulogy thereof — and did not want to peril his
precious reputation. (Ben was quite like that!) Possibly
Messrs. Jaggard and Blount had commercial reasons; and i>08-
sibly that same character of reasons may have dictated the
joining of the name of the Earl of Montgomery (used now for
the first time before or since in a Shakespearean connection)
with that of the Earl his " incomparable brother! ** But any-
how, Ben, or somebody (equally unaware of that passionate
friendship between Shakespeare and Southampton which
modern biographers of Shakespeare have invented) did sub-
stitute the co-names of Pembroke and Montgomery for that
of Southampton, hitherto the only normal dedicatee of Shake-
spearean matter!

Is it possible for Dr. Carpenter, or for any other Shake-
spearean commentator, to conceive that human motives, aims
and self-interests are the same in the sixteenth or the seven-
teenth, as in the twentieth, century or any other? Lord Clar-
endon, in a wonderful passage in his History of The Rebellion,
says that King Charles and Falkland never tired of discussing
Shakespeare — whom they agreed in estimating as the greatest
of dramatists, in that he not only dealt in all human kind but
had actually, in Caliban, invented a new sort of creature! Had
Ben Jonson, an attachi of the Court, been possessed of any
weighty secret — such as that Shakespeare had been merely
Bacon's mouthpiece or his collaborator — could Jonson (being
what he was) — have denied himself the exploitation of that
secret in such high quarters? So slight a secret as the dedica-
tion of the Sonnets might have detained a Sainte-Beuve scrib-
bling pleasant Causeries de Lundi (such as we have seen that
Francis Meres was). But in the day of King Charles I., almost
two centuries were to elapse before anybody ever read these
Sonnets at all. And when Shakespeare, Bacon and almost all
of their coterie were quietly inurned and there was no reason
for anybody's silence, would nothing have leaked out of a Poet
Laureate in his cups?

Digitized by

Google

Bevp Books*

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF PADRAIC H. PEARSE. New

York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. $3.00 net.

The actual story of the life and death of Padraic Pearse,
coupled with this exposition of his literary genius, seems to
comprehend the whole exalted spirit and heartbreaking
tragedy of Ireland. Here was a man with a single purpose,
with a devotion to an ideal that consumed his heart, that was
his whole life and being; yet a man doomed to die in fighting
for that ideal, doomed to go down before ever his dream could
be realized; yet still again, one destined, with his dream and
his ideal, to live immortally. The friend of Pearse who, from
the hallowed halls of old M^ynooth, writes the introduction to
this volume, makes no false claim when he prophesies that
this gentle rebel will live, will take his place for all time among
the heroes of Ireland.

Pearse's collected writings reveal him supreme in the pure
Irish gifts of song and dramatic imagination. Four plays are
included in the volume, every one of them of high literary
quality, instinct with poetic feeling, and chaste with that ex-
quisite richness of thought and economy of phrase which
marks the dramatic master. The plays are all distinctly sym-
bolic. Their poetry is unforgettably beautiful; it rings with
the clear force of the pure Celtic tongue, and at times reaches
heights equaled only by the best of Biblical expression.

The same striking simplicity — even austerity — of manner,
which is never paucity, but rather depth and richness of utter-
ance, characterizes the stories and poems. These stories might,
indeed, be taken as models of short-story writing, so highly
and purely do they sustain their themes, so directly and force-
fully do they drive forward to their inevitable climax. Irish
sympathy, Irish tenderness, Irish fire, breathe through them;
and in the tales of Barbara and Eoineen of the Birds
we discover an affinity with child-thought and the child-mind
which is arrestingly beautiful, almost uncanny — equal, to say
the least, to anything of the kind that the Scotch genius, Barrie,
has given us. The poems, brief and almost fragmentary as
they are, are masterpieces. There is nothing finer in litera-

Digitized by

Google

248 NEW BOOKS [May.

ture than The Wayfarer, the last poem written by Pearse,
and composed in his prison cell.

The book is a real addition to literature; it is, indeed, teue
liter atm-e, the kind that springs from the soil, the inevitable
utterance of the human heart. As a contribution to Irish let-
ters it is memorable, of a nature that would survive on its own
merits alone, without the added interest of its author's tragic
story. It is truly representative of the Irish soul — Christian,
not pagan, although inevitably "we feel that the ancient
and mediaeval and modern Gaelic currents meet in him.**
But, though " the old divinities are there, the renmants of the
old worship, nevertheless, everything is overshadowed by the
Christian concept, and the religion that is found here centres
in Christ and Mary.'* Padraic Pearse is thus revealed to us
as an authentic spokesman of the Irish people.

PAUL JONES: HIS EXPLOITS IN ENGLISH SEAS. By Don C.

Seitz. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $3.50 net.

The first complete bibliography ever made on John Paul
Jones, supplements this collection of British newspaper-clip-
pings reporting his activities day by day in English seas. The
editor has made a connected collection from the files of the
London daily newspapers for 1778-1779, recording the ex-
ploits of one of our greatest naval heroes, under such topics as
" The Cruise of the Ranger," " The Bon Homme Squadron in
British Seas," " The Alarm on the Coast." The letter in which
Captain Pearson describes to the British admiralty his defeat
in the Serapis, is taken from the London Evening Post of
October 17, 1779. To all interested in the beginnings of
American naval history, these simple, yet dramatic, first-hand
accounts wiU prove both entertaining and valuable.

THE LIFE OF CHARLES CARROLL OF CARROLLTON. By

L. A. Leonard. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co. $2.50 net.

The Signers of the Declaration of Independence as a legis-
lative body, in qualifications of education, moral character
and business ability, have seen no equal since, in England or
America. All but six of the fifty-two signers were graduates
of colonial or European colleges, or were sons of wealthy men
and educated by competent tutors. They were thoroughly im-
bued with the spirit of liberty and with the idea of the rights

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 249

of man. And among these, Charles Carroll of CarroUton tow-
ered by worth, wealth and ability.

Born in 1737 and educated first in Maryland, then at St.
Omar's and Paris, he spent some years, on attaining his major-
ity, in London perfecting himself for leadership on his return.
He purposely kept in the background of events leading to the
Revolution till 1773, when he engaged in a controversy for pop-
ular rights that at once made him the " First Citizen " of Mary-
land, Senator for his State and Delegate to the Continental Con-
gress. This body sent him, his cousin, the Rev. John Carroll, and
Benjamin Franklin on a commission to enlist the sympathies
of the French Canadians in the cause of the colonies. He re-
turned after the eventful Fourth of July, and was the first to
afiSx his signature to the inmiortal document of Independence,
August 2, 1776. He labored assiduously in the State and
National Legislatures, being instrumental in creating a con-
stitution for Maryland, and powerful on conmiittees impor-
tant for the general welfare. In the latter capacity he was
early brought into close contact with Washington, the great
friend of his family, and no civilian spent more time than he
at army headquarters. Through him it was that, in the dire
days of Valley Forge, the Conway Cabal was thwarted; and
through him the sympathy and support of the French govern-
ment was secured in aid of the colonists. His leading part in
this achievement has gone unheralded because he insisted
that his name never appear. Had it been known that the in-
fluence of this rich Catholic Delegate was being employed to
league the Catholic sovereign of Catholic France in the cause,
the colonists would have rejected the negotiations as a plot for
Catholic aggrandizement. Yet, without this Catholic aid, the
colonies would have failed and Yorktown would not have
ended the war, when Cornwallis surrendered to an army sev-
enty per cent Catholic.

It was Carroll who lent most aid to Robert Morris in the
onerous task of putting the bu'siness of the colonies on a
specific basis, and when the war was over, he was instrumental
in the first activities that resulted in supplanting the Articles
of Confederation by the Constitution of 1787. He lived to see
his couatry celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of
the Declaration of Independence, himself the sole survivor
among the Signers, and died November 14, 1832.

Digitized by

Google

250 NEW BOOKS [May,

Apart from the national interest of his life, Charles Carroll
of CarroUton is endeared to Catholic Americans because of
his stanch profession of his Faith and the glorious ideal of the
Catholic patriot he has bequeathed from colonial days through
the years of the nation's growth to the trying times of the
present struggle.

Through him, Washington addressed his famous letter to
his Catholic compatriots for their services in the cause; through
his beneficence was established the first preparatory seminary
for the students of the Catholic priesthood in this country;
and among his last recorded utterances is the sentiment: "I
have lived to my ninety-sixth year; I have enjoyed continued
health; I have been blessed with great wealth, prosperity and
most of the good things which this world can bestow — ^public
approbation, esteem, applause — ^but what I now look back
upon with greatest satisfaction to myself is that I have prac-
tised the duties of my religion.'*

THE ORATORY AND POETRY OF THE BIBLE. By Ferdinand

S. Schenck, D.D., LL.D. New York: George H. Doran Co.

$1.25 net.

This volume bears a title full of promise. The Bible is at
once a book and a literature. In its unity of character and in
its one source of inspiration, it is one individual work;
but in the diversity of its elements and the variety of its forms,
it is truly what it has been called, " a library of books."
Every reader knows to what extent the incomparable songs
of Sion have lent music to the greatest poets of Chris-
tendom; perhaps only the student of oratory knows that secu-
lar eloquence is hardly less beholden to the sacred pages for
uncounted riches of thought and expression. Any book, there-
fore, that guides investigation to this perennial source of poetic
and oratorical inspiration should be made welcome with a
whole heart.

Dr. Schenck's work is not a treatise on oratory as found
in Holy Writ. Many a reader might wish it were. Underlying
the " art of persuasion " as practised by Christ, by His pre-
cursors and His disciples, is a wiser theory of effective speech
than any expounded by Aristotle or Quintilian. Professor
Charles Sears Baldwin, indeed, in his handbook. How to Write,
has an admirable study of speech founded entirely on models

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 251

drawn from the Acts of the Apostles. Dr. Schenck proceeds
differently. He gives the local and historical setting of the
great Biblical orations. He describes the speaker, the audi-
ence, the subject and the occasion, in a highly personal way,
very much as Erskine wrote of Burke and Fox, or as Wraxall
reported Pitt and Sheridan. One of the sub-titles, ** Short
Stories of Great Orations,** accurately indicates the manner.

The notice of Biblical poetry is appended as a kind of
epilogue to the main theme of the book. ** Since poetry is near
akin to oratory, I have added chapters on the poetry of the
Bible.** These chapters contain much commentary and inter-
pretation marked by thought and feeling. Though the work
was prepared for the students of a theological school, it is sim-
ple and popular in its treatment and wholly adapted to the
ordinary reader.

CATHOLIC EDUCATION: A STUDY IN CONDITIONS. By the

Rev. J. A. Burns, C.S.C, Ph.D. New York: Longmans,

Green & Co. $1.50 net.

This careful analysis of the present status of Catholic ele-
mentary, high and collegiate schools, states fairly the deficien-
cies no less than the advantages and accomplishments of these
institutions.

The chief credit of Catholic education is its insistence on
teaching religion in the schools. Its aim is to train the child to
an instinctive sympathy with everything Catholic. Character
training must rest on religion, since it alone supplies motives
to withstand the stress of temptation. Moreover, the correla-
tion of studies is defective if religion is not intimately linked
with other branches of thought, and the child is likely to think
of religion as a thing apart, if it is kept out of school life and
thought

Catholics have labored under difficulties in building up
their school system because the necessities of the case de-
manded that the several forms should grow up independent of
the other: local conditions forbade consolidation. Mutually
helpf'il efforts to the attainment of a common end, however,
have characterized Catholic education work to a remarkable
degree.

Dr. Burns has done Catholic education a service in bring-
ing into the compass of a single volume this statement of the

Digitized by

Google

252 NEW BOOKS [May,

present conditions of its schools. The statistics given, showing
the tendency to decreased attendance in the higher grades;
the increase of Catholic high schools; the relations of high
school to college are all worthy of thoughtful attention and
appreciation. The impetus to higher education for women,
provided by Trinity College, Washington, and the higher
standard obtaining now in the seminary courses are other im-
portant matters which Dr. Burns brings to the reader's atten-
tion.

FINLAND AND THE FINNS. By Arthur Reade. New York:

Dodd, Mead & Co. $2.00 net.

Arthur Reade, lecturer in English at the University of
Helsingfors, has written a most entertaining volume on Fin-
land, one of the least known of the countries of modem
Europe. He gives a succinct account of the rise and growth of
the national movement since the separation from Sweden in
1809, draws lifelike portraits of Finland's leaders in politics,
art, literature and music, describes the country's peculiar cus-
toms^ traditions and ideals, sets forth the present conditions
of her trade and industries, and explains her educational,
labor and political problems.

Most interesting are the chapters which deal with the long
drawn-out quarrel with the Swedes in defence of the Finnish
language, and the people's century-old combat with the
tyranny of Russia. The author holds that of late years, the
Russianization of Finland was intended to mask an aggressive
movement upon Norway and Sweden, but the Great War has
put an end to the ambition of the Tsars.

Religion would seem to be at a low ebb in both city and
country in Finland, for the Lutheran Church has little hold
upon the people, and Socialism has gained many adherents
to the ranks of irreligion and unbelief.

THE HILL-TOWNS OF FRANCE. By Eugene M. Fryer. Illus-
trated. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.50 net.
It is something worth recording for the author of a " travel
book" to achieve originality nowadays — above all in the
treatment of a land so tourist-worn and guide-book-done as
France. But this achievement must be credited to Miss Fryer.
She has caught a new aspect of that land of beauty and

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 253

romance and history; she has climbed the hills of Normandy
and Brittany, of Provence and Picardy, of Touraine and
Languedoc, and resting on the parapets of their old-time
citadels, she has looked out on the spreading valleys of the
Loire, the Indre, and toward the sea, and has shown us a
France that opens like a golden tapestry before our eyes — a
France of high adventure of love and war, and of simple re-
ligious faith. Her achievement is really noteworthy.

The author might, indeed, be a Catholic, so comprehend-
ing and sympathetic is her attitude toward the faith of the
people of France; even her terminology is Catholic.

Fifty pen and ink drawings by Roy L. Hilton, and twenty-
five photo-engravings illustrate the book. Unfortunately care-
less proofreading is evident on several pages.

HEARTS OF CONTROVERSY, By Alice Meynell. New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.75.

No living writer today has built up such a reputation as
has Mrs. MeyneU for giving her readers the quintessence of the
very best of her thought and feeling. Her volimies appear sel-
dom, and are invariably small and slender. But they are like-
wise invariably large with meaning and pregnant with
inspiration. A critic of Mrs. Meynell's calibre does not waste
time on superficialities, nor dabble in the obvious. With the
mere criticism which puts no great issue at stake she has small
patience. She has done well to call her book Hearts of Con-
troversy; for every word of it is thought-provoking. "Ex-
position, interpretation, by themselves are not necessary. But
for controversy there is cause." Thus we see the gauntlet
thrown again for Tennyson; Dickens championed; and the
perf ervid emptiness of Swinburne mercilessly exposed. Lov-
ers of Tennyson and of Dickens will enjoy what Mrs. Meynell
writes of those two masters; especially will her illuminative
passages on Dickens' power of caricature and his gift for dra-
matic narrative please — ^but it is her essay on Swinburne that
will make her book live. She cuts to the core of his shallow-
ness swiftly and pitilessly; and it is thus, with her sword of
controversy, that she bares his oft-lauded " extraordinary gift
of diction:*'

So overweening a place does it take in this man's
art that I believe the words to hold and use his meaning.

Digitized by

Google

254 NEW BOOKS [May,

rather than the meaning to compass and grasp and use
the word. I believe that Swinburne's thoughts have their
source, their home, their origin, their authority and mis-
sion in those two places — ^his own vocabulary, and the pas-
sion of other men. Claudius stole the precious diadem of
the kingdom from the shelf and put it in his pocket; Swin-
burne took from the shelf of literature — took with what
art, what touch, what cunning, what complete skill! — ^the
treasure of the language, and put it in his pocket. He is
urgent with his booty of words, for he has no other treas-
ure. . . . But other men had thoughts, other men had pas-
sions; political, sexual, natural, noble, vile, ideal, gross, re-
bellious, agonizing, imperial, republican, cruel, compassion-
ate; and with these he fed his verses.

Not since Swinburne first appeared on the sky-line of English
literature to puzzle and bewilder, to charm and disgust, has
such a just and searching light been set to blaze over his pages
wuth exposition and reveahnent as this of Mrs. MeynelFs. Her
little book is, one the whole, vital, important, one not to be
misccd by any who are interested in literature and criticism.

TEEPEE NEIGHBORS. By Grace Coolidge. Boston: The Four

Seas Co.

The question of the American Indian is one that attracts
too little public interest just now; if the average citizen of this
country thinks of the red man at all, it is with good natured
indiflference, if not actual contempt. These very realistic sor-
did sketches of the present day reservation Indian show him
a helpless, forlorn figure, swept aside by the pitiless omnarch
of " progress," yet possessed of noble traits deserving a better
fate.

It is not generally known that a certain proportion of these
people die of actual starvation every winter; that they so lack
medical attention as to have a death rate twice as high as that of
the whites; that for any fancied grievance the reservation agent
may throw the Indian in the lock-up and keep him there in-
definitely without process of law; that at every turn, the red
man is tricked by the greedy white man and with faint hope
of redress. Conditions such as these, if verified, as the author
claims they may be, are an outrage against freedom and
humanity.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 255

TENNYSON: HOW TO KNOW HIM. By Raymond M. Alden.

With Portrait Frontispiece. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-

Merrill Co. $1.50 net.

Professor Alden after running over the main points in
Tennyson's life and character takes up the principal lyric,
narrative and descriptive poems, giving extensive extracts
and illiuninating comment. For the student first making
acquaintance with the poet this middle portion of the book
will have the most value, although possessing attraction also
for the assured Tennysonian. But for the general reader the
principal interest will reside in the last two chapters.

In dealing with Tennyson as an interpreter of Victorian
thought, the author examines the poef s position towards the
chief contemporary ideas in politics, social progress, philos-
ophy and religion, and makes clear his reaction toward them
in the light of the scientific discoveries and skeptical spirit
of his time. In this chapter Professor Allen shows himself
an admirable expositor, and he is to be particularly com-
mended for the fact that unlike many critics in a similar sit-
uation, he does not use his author as a stalking horse to ad-
vance his own theories, but simply sets forth those of the
writer under discussion.

The final chapter especially contains much sound criticism
and, what is becoming an unusual quality in criticism, dis-
crimination. Professor Alden has fulfilled his task in a thor-
oughly competent and workmanlike manner, and his book
renders a valuable and needed service to the poet of whom it
treats.

THE GREAT CRIME AND ITS MORAL. By J. S. Willmore.

New York: Hodder & Stoughton. $2.00.

The great crime is, of course, the horrible debauch of
blood and iron into which Germany has plunged the world.
Mr. Willmore*s book gathers up all the threads of the fearful
story and weaves them into a connected narrative, from the
conception of the plot, through the first intricacies of its diplo-
matic scheming, on to the present day, when the heartless
tale still continues, bringing home to the world more forcibly
every day and every hour its inevitable moral — " never let it
happen again." Enough of the documentary history of the
War is given to make clear the working out of Berlin's bloody

Digitized by

Google

256 NEW hOOKS [May,

plot when the conflict was first being launched; and there fol-
lows, similarly, enough evidence of the manner of Germany's
warfare to drive, home the lessons of its horrors, and the grave
danger of a premature peace. Exhaustive bibliography and
comprehensive indexes complete the voliune and make of it a
valuable reference work,

READINGS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. Edited by Roy B. Pace,
Assistant Professor of English at Swarthmore College.
New York: AUyn & Bacon. $1.00.

This book is evidently intended as a companion — and a
very welcome and practical one it will prove — to any well-
planned course in English literature. What busy teacher has
not longed to have just such a collection to illustrate the
authors under discussion. Here are gathered well-chosen ex-
tracts from many of the great writers of our language — ^from
Beowulf to Robert Louis Stevenson — that well exemplify
the work of each. The compiler of the present volume has
already published American Literature, and Readings in
American Literature, for all of which he merits the gratitude
of all hard-pressed teachers of the English tongue.

MftRE MARIE DE J£SUS: FOUNDRESS OF THE LITTLE SIS-
TERS OF THE ASSUMPTION. Adapted from the French;
with a Preface by His Eminence Cardinal Bourne. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.10 net.
Never was the sure and mysterious leading of Divine Prov-
idence more clearly demonstrated than in the life of Marie
Antoinette Page, destined by God to be the Mother of an
immense family of nursing Sisters of the poor in their own
homes, and the instrument, both in her own person and in the
children and children's children of her Institute, of countless
miracles of grace. The story is one of intense interest and
edification.

Antoinette Page was a delicate child, afEIicted with a
spinal trouble which made her a constant sufferer and would
have proved a handicap to any, save one endowed by God with
a nature, courageous, ardent, passionately self-sacrificing, and
sustained by Him with supernatural strength. Left an orphan
at an early age, she showered upon others the affection she
missed and gave the love of her life to God and His poor.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS ^1

At forty-one, after years of prayer and training, that
kindred soul and ideal spiritual Father, Father Pernet of the
Assumptionists, unfolded to her the stupendous work he be-
lieved she was called to establish. The call overwhelmed her,
yet she saw in it the will of God and bent to it all the energies
of her mind and heart. Poverty, misunderstanding, the ter-
rors of war and the Commune beset her path but never
blocked her way — ^but to appreciate it, one must read the story
told in all its simplicity of detail by one who, catching the
spirit of the Little Sisters of the Assumption, has preferred to
remain unknown.

SERMON NOTES. By Monsignor Robert H. Benson. Second
Series. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.25 net.
The second volume of Monsignor Benson's sermon notes
has now been published by Father Martindale. The notes will
be welcomed by n}any friends who are interested in the man-
ner of his sermon preparation. Most of the notes he valued
personally, however, were used in the sermons perfected by
him and printed in book form.

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY. By Wolf von Schierhand. New York:

Frederick Stokes Co. $3.00 net.

This is a careful study of conditions, historical, political
and social, within the polyglot empire composed of twenty dis-
tinct, intolerant races. Built up through the centuries by polit-
ical and marital alliances, no worthy attempt has ever been
made to mold the country into a unified, indestructible whole.
The outward uniformity of a compulsory common language
has not served to harmonize the discordant national aims of
Magyar, Czech, Ruthenian, Croatian, Bosnian and Pole. This
race question is of the greatest importance in the political life
of the people, and with it unsettled, no political liberalism can
ever secure a united front among them. The present writer
considers the Magyars the most gifted people for dealing with
large affairs of state. The Magyar's love of independence has
maintained the Kingdom of Hungary for over a thousand
years. They have been the bulwark of Christianity in the East
for three hundred and fifty years, again and again saving
Europe from the victorious Crescent.

In the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Aus-

VOL. cvn. — 17

Digitized by

Google

258 NEW BOOKS [May,

tria suffered a great loss, for his strong character, firmness and
energy might have effected the rejuvenation of the country.
His plan to uphold the tottering monarchy was to replace the
Dual by a Trias monarchy — a confederation of three distinct
political entities, Austria, Hungary and a new South Slavic
State, comprising Croatia, Slavonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina
Istria and Dalmatia. Each part was to be independent of the
other except in the departments of foreign relations, of army
and navy. This plan would have solved the Slav problem, but
would have furthered the discontent of nationalities such as
the Ruthenians and Slovaks who, feeling themselves sUghted,
would have precipitated civil war if they were to enjoy no new
privileges.

The new ruler is bright, democratic in tendencies and very
amiable, but he is far from being the great man needed for
stormy times. Throughout the War, Germany's word has
been law to Austria. Economically dependent on her
mighty ally, Austria feels convinced that without her strong
support she is doomed as a political entity. Thus the Ver-
nunftheirat (Marriage of Convenance), as Bismarck called it,
between the two countries, seems to be a lasting union. The
author is of the opinion that the country will hold together in
spite of the disaffection of the Czechs. A conmion danger has
brought the nationalities together, in fear of the unknown evils
that defeat might bring. After the War, however, complete
self-government must be accorded each national and geogra-
phical entity within Austria-Hungary, with full recognition of
the right of every people to develop its own peculiar traits
and talents. Failing that, the Habsburg*s historic boast — Aus-
tria erit in orbe ultima — can never be realized.

THESE MANY YEARS. By Brander Matthews. New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.00.

Undoubtedly a wide circle of admirers will welcome and
enjoy this volume of Mr. Matthew's reminiscences. There is
no savor in it of the heroic, sensational, romantic, or even
exceptional; only the record of a life now verging on the Scrip-
tural limit, that has been eminently cultured, useful, and con-
tented. Most of its activities and sympatl^ies are confined to
the United States; yet there are many pages devoted to ac-
counts of long and frequent visits abroad, where the author

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 259

met many distinguished contemporaries, and witnessed some
stirring incidents that are now historic.

'Mr. Matthews, after some tentative early efforts in other
directions, finally chose literature as a profession; and even
in this field he has narrowed his activity to the dramatic de-
partment, of which he still holds the chair at Columbia JQni-
versity.

The style of the book, as one would naturally expect, is
thoroughly appropriate — dignified yet simple, neither reserved
nor garrulous, enlivened with many a jest and anecdote, which
are inserted with equal readiness and good humor, whether
they be at the expense of others or himself.

A RUSSIAN SCHOOLBOY. By Sergii Aksakoff. Translated

from the Russian by I. D. Duff. New York: Longmans,

Green & Co. $2.40 net.

Sergii Timotheevich Aksakoff (1791-1859) was for a time
the most popular of Russian novelists. So great was his pop-
ularity from 1840-1850 that the best Russian critics did not hesi-
tate to class him with Homer, Shakespeare and Walter Scott.
Of course, as time went on, and new figures arose, the unques-
tioned literary talents of Sergii Aksakoff found fewer en-
thusiastic friends. His works, although saturated with deep
feeling for nature and written in a classical style, are far from
reaching the level of the poet of the Odyssey or of the English
dramatist. Still a work written by him toward the close of his
life, holds its place in Russian literature as a model of sim-
plicity, and a charming book for young and old alike. It was
entitled: A Domestic Chronicle and Recollections, and was
divided in three parts.

A Russian critic has written that no Russian book, with the
exception of Gogol's Dead Souls, produced such an impression
upon the Russian piublic as these domestic recollections of
Aksakoff. In fact, it appeared as a new creation in the literary
field. It had the charm of a romance, the simplicity of a
novel, the seriousness of a biography. Sergii Aksakoff nar-
rates the events that took place within his family circle. He
is the protagonist or the eyewitness of his domestic chronicle.
As the first part exhales what the French call le parfum des
champs, so the second, A Russicm Schoolboy, portrays in fin-
ished style the feelings, the anxieties, the struggles, the nascent

Digitized by

Google

260 NEW BOOKS [May,

passions of a nine-year-old boy, parted from a tender and lov-
ing mother.

The distress of a childish heart, abandoned to itself, and
struggling for the vkile education of its character, gives to
the book a powerful dramatic element. At times, in a few
lines, the writer describes the silent tragedy of a soul.

Yet the book is not dimmed with the gloomy pessimism,
that makes the reading even of the masterpieces of Russian
novelists so tiresome. It contains many luminous, sweet pages.
It exalts maternal love. It gives useful instruction as to the
education of youth. The narrative is full of interest. The
translator deserves the best praise for his rendering of the
simplicity of the Russian original.

THE SECRET WITNESS, By George Gibbs. New York: D.

Appleton & Co. Illustrated. $1.50 net.

Mr. Gibbs already has half a score of successful novels to
his credit, but it is safe to say that his latest tale will surpass all
its predecessors in popularity. The Secret Witness is a typical
up-to-date " best seller;** it has every quality that goes to make
a successful story, with the added interest of a theme so timely
that there is no resisting its appeal. With a good deal of
daring, the author has taken for the foundation of his tale the
now historic catastrophe of the assassination of the Austrian
Archduke Ferdinand — a tragedy for which Mr. Gibbs has his
own original and unique explanation. But this he carries off
with perfect plausibility, so that one has the sense of reading
fact and not fiction. By this bold stroke he draws his readers
into the very heart of the intrigues which prefaced the open-
ing of the World War; and by an equally daring invention he
makes the denouement of his story hinge on the War's
action.

To the jaded reader such a book, with its healthy glow,
its pure romance, and its happy freedom from all suggestion of
sex-problems and the like, so conmion in the fiction of the
day, is welcome and refreshing. True, there are moments
when the credulity of even the most lenient reader is taxed
almost to the breaking point. But on the whole the tale is
consistently and artistically done. Nor is it without its touch
of the deeper strain. No better exponent of the German idea
could be found than Mr. Gibbs* " Captain Goritz.**

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 261

THE TORTOISE. By E. F. Benson. New York: George H.

Doran Co. $1.50 net.

Mr. Benson has again chosen, as in The Oakleyites, a small
English village for the scene of his novel, and has again dem-
onstrated the abiding interest of the human drama, whether
enacted in life's backwaters or in its main currents. The story
is slender. But in Mr. Benson's handling of his material there
is cleverness and quiet strength. He departs from the beaten
track by making his principals neither absurd nor tragic, as,
prompted by their own good sense, they accept the inevitable
with dignity and without bitterness. There is some good char-
acter drawing and humor that is lightly satirical, though not
su£Bciently so to detract from the general tone of kindliness
and sincerity. The book does its author more credit than some
of his more scintillating productions.

THE INWARD GOSPEL. By Walter D. Strappini, S.J. New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.25 net. .
The admirable articles that make up the content of this
book are "discursive points for meditation," originally ad-
dressed to some followers of the rules of St. Ignatius, and
published in response to a belief expressed by their first hearers
that the principles set forth might be useful not only to others
whose lives were under the same guidance, but to any Chris-
tian desirous of studying the inward teaching of Our Lord.
Their appearance in the present second and enlarged edition
is evidence that this belief was justified. The author's brief
preface suggests that "they hardly appeal to the general
reader;" nevertheless, any reader will do well to avail him-
self of their deep and practical spirituality and of the pene-
trating thought that stimulates further meditation upon the
subjects treated.

THE DOOR By Mrs. Armel O'Connor. With a Foreword by
Armel O'Connor. Mary's Meadow Series, No. VI. Mary's
Meadow, Ludlow, Shropshire, England. 40 cents.
The present little work, which is one in the series of book-
lets from the pen of Mrs. Armel O'Connor, dealing with spirit-
ual and religious experiences, has to do with Qonventual life.
The first part. Militants in Prison, approaches the subject from
the novel standpoint of the English suffragette agitation, and

Digitized by

Google

262 NEW BOOKS [May,

seems to have attracted attention at the time of the paper's
first appearance in 1913, when this agitation was very much
in evidence. The second part. The Door, tells of a convert
mother's thoughts and feelings when her daughter became a
cloistered nun, and is of more permanent appeal. There are
several poems by Mr. Armel O'Connor on the main theme.
Unfortunately the book verges at times on the sentimental.

IRISH LYRICS AND BALLADS. By Rev. James B. DoUard.

New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.35.

Three phases of Irish life are reflected in this volume —
the fanciful, the belief in fairies; the heroic, the love of the
ancient tales of war-like and romantic Erin; and lastly the dis-
tinctly national and emotional — the devotion and attachment
of the Celt to the land of his birth, to the hills, the vales, the
seas of his beloved Ireland. In the first. Father DoUard re-
veals himself possessed of that rarest of poetic gifts, the gift
of fancy; a quality which transcends the emotional, the imagi-
native; a touch which is of a nature by itself, yet impossible to
define. It is like light, and it is like color; it is intangible and
elusive; and it imparts to poetry all the qualities of light,
color, elusiveness and intangibility. In his interpretation of
the spirit of Irish scenery. Father Dollard is equally successful.
But it is in his treatment of the heroic age, of the old sagas
of love and war, that he appears at his strongest. There is
no concealing his inherent love for this ancient Erin, which
he makes live and breathe again in his recounting of the
legends of Cuchulain and Creda, Lugh and Ossian. His touch-
ing tributes to William Butler Yeats confirm the impression.
His conmiand of blank verse is striking; his passages have
nobility and fire and a sonorous music. His volume is one to
be proud of.

WITH THE FRENCH RED CROSS. By Alice Dease. New

York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 60 cents.

Ten little stories of incidents at the Front make up this
small but very appealing and interesting volume, presented by
the publishers in an attractive dress of blue and white, sealed
with the Red Cross. The stories are briefly and simply told;
they are scarcely more than anecdotes; yet they hold the
reader with their pathos and tragedy, and reveal in the author.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 263

already well known for several fictional works, a peculiarly
telling gift for recounting mere fact with all the gloss and
charm of an imaginative fiUght. The stories are of the memor-
able kind — none who read them will forget them : the Jewish
Rabbi who died on the battlefield clasping the crucifix; the
soldier-priest whose greatest battle was between his heart's
consuming spirit of revenge and his soul's high call to Chris-
tian duty; the young seminarian who welcomed the call to war
because it seemed a resolvent of his doubts concerning a voca-
tion, yet who found the solution of those doubts in the midst
of ruin and carnage; the London lad and the Dublin boy, who
died side by side, comforting each other into eternity — these,
and all the other figures of Miss Dease*s little book, will live as
long as there is a literature of the World War.

AT THE FOOT OF THE SANI>-HU.LS. By Rev. Henry S. Spald-
ing, SJ. New York: Benziger Brothers. $1.00.
Walter Blackstone, a Chicago boy, goes on a long visit to
the family of Dr. Frederic Murt, a young Nebraska physician
whose avocations make him an ideal companion for anyone
possessed of hunting instincts and a gun. Walter has both,
and the sport which the two have, makes some readable chap-
ters. In the background of the story move the eccentric Far-
mer Dobbs, Ignatius, his Catholic Indian factotum, and
*' Roily " son of the former and idol of the latter, besides the
husband and wife Seyon, two kindly Belgian dei ex machina
who step in just in time to save Farmer Dobbs from financial
ruin. The picture of little "'Rolly's** deathbed baptism by
Walter is very touching.

TRENCH PICTURES FROM FRANCE. By Major William Red-
mond, M. P. New York : George H. Doran Co. 50 cents net.
A pathetic interest attaches to this book of war sketches,
sent from the front and originally published anonymously by
Major Redmond in the London Daily Chronicle: for the author
fell on the field of honor* ofifering his life not alone for the cause
of humanity and democracy, but specifically and particularly
for Ireland, his native land, which he had served whole-heart-
edly all his days. " Foreseeing death," says Miss Smith-Dam-
pier in her touching introduction to the book, he " embraced
it in the hope that his blood would bring healing to his own

Digitized by

Google

264 NEW BOOKS [May.

country;" a hope which finds utterance in many pages of the
little volume.

The spirit of Major Redmond's pages is one of great
charity and gentleness, and above all one of religious faith.
The Irish soldier's love of God and the Mother of God, of the
Sacraments and the rosary, runs like a light through the
leaves of the book; and always the note of hope and optimism
is struck.

THE ELEMENTARY ALGEBRA ($1.00) and The Inter-
mediate Algebra (75 cents) published by AUyn & Bacon,
New York, are clear, well-graded text-books with numerous
and varied problems. They are thoroughly up-to-date and
amply cover the requirements of the Regents' and Washing-
ton Syllabuses. Portraits and biographical sketches of several
famous mathematicians add interest to the volumes.

THE Elementary Course in Differential Equations, by Edwin
J. Maurus of Notre Dame University (Boston : Ginn & Co.
72 cents), would serve well as a satisfactory short course for
private study, although even with previous knowledge of cal-
culus, some tutorial aid would probably be required. The
examples are well selected, and seem to cover practically all
the solvable types met with in civil engineering.

ANECDOTE SERMONETTES FOR CHILDREN'S MASSES,
by Rev. Frederick Renter (Baltimore: John Murphy Co.
75 cents), gives sermons or instructions suitable for children
on nine important feast days in the year. It is published as
a Golden Jubilee Souvenir of a New Jersey parish.

PAMPHLET PUBLICATIONS.

For the convenience of our readers we make the following sum-
mary of war pamphlets published abroad that have come under
our notice: Defensively-armed Merchant Ships and Submarine War-
fare, by A. Pearce Higgins (London: Stevens & Sons); Prussian Mili-
tarism at Work, by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Cleary (London : Barclay & Fry) ;
The Case of Bohemia, by Lewis B. Namier (The Czech National Alli-
ance of Great Britain) ; The War of Ideas, by Sir Walter Raleigh (Lon-
don : Oxford University Press) ; Who Was Responsible for the War and
Why? by Ben Tillett (London: The WhitweU Press); Pen Pictures of
British Battles (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode) ; The British Work-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 265

man Defends His Home, by Will Crooks; Why Italy is With the Allies,
by Anthony Hope (London: Richard Clay & Sons); The Case of the
Allies (London: Hayman» Christy & Lilly); For Those in Captivity,
by Cardinal Mercier (London: Burrup, Mathieson & Sprague); When
the War Will End, by Lloyd George (London: Alabaster, Passmore &
Sons); The Character of the British Empire, by Ramsay Muir (Lon-
don: Constable & Co.); The King of Hedjaz and Arab Independence,
by Sir Stanley Maude (London: Hayman, Christy & Lilly); Raymond:
A Rejoinder, by Paul Hookham (Oxford : B. H. Blackwcll Co.) ; Through
the Iron Bars, by Emile Cammaerts (London: John Lane Co.); Ger-
man Nationalism and the Catholic Church (London: The Universe);
The Fourth of July in London (London: Darling & Co.).

Published by T. Fisher Unwin, London : The Condition of the Bel-
gian Workmen now Refugees in England, Moral Aspects of the European
War, by Henrique Lopes de Mcndon9a; The Sincere Chancellor, by
Fernand Passelecq; British Workshops and the War, by Rt. Hon.
Christopher Addison, P.C, M.P.; Britain versus Germany, by Rt. Hon.
J. M. Robertson, M.P.; The Gathering of the Clans, by J. Saxon Mills;
The War on Hospital Ships; The Deportations of Belgian Workmen, by
Jules Destree; The Deportations; England and Her Critics, by Mario
Borsa; The German Note and the Reply of the Allies; The Villain of the
World-Tragedy, by William Archer; The War on German Submarines,
by Sir Edward Carson; The Workers' Resolve, by Joseph W. Griggs;
The Ottoman Domination; Canada to Ireland; The Moral Basis of Italy's
War, by Giorgia Del Vecchio; Ireland and Poland, by T. W. Rolleston;
To the Men Behind the Armies, by Emile Cammaerts.

By Hodder & Stoughton of London: The Welfare of Egypt, by
J. S. WiUmore; F rightfulness in Retreat; The Murderous Tyranny of
the Turks, by Arnold J. Toynbee, with a preface by Viscount Bryce;
British Finance and Prussian Militarism; A German to Germans, by Dr.
Hermann Rosemeier, Ph.D.; Deutschland Vber Allah, by E. F. Benson;
Britain's Financial Effort; The British Commonwealth of Nations, by
General Smuts; The New German Empire; International Law and
Autocracy, by Geoffrey G. Butler, M.A.; The Justice of Rumania's
Cause, by A. W. A. Leeper; England, Germany and the Irish Question,
by an English Catholic; Plain Words from America, by Prof. Doug-
las W. Johnson; The Czechoslovaks: An Oppressed Nationality, by
Lewis B. Namier; Microbe-Culture at Bukarest.

And Williams, Lea & Co., London, have brought out a series of
booklets published monthly, entitled The War.

Digitized by

Google

IRecent Events.

Although several military experts, in-

Progress of the eluding some of our own, thought they

War. had demonstrated that the much-talked

of Hindenburg drive on the west would
never take place, the event has proved their mistake. On the
twenty-first of March, the Germans launched against the British
line by far the strongest offensive recorded in history. Troops
had been brought from the Russian front; guns likewise, both
their own and those taken from the Russians with a large num-
ber captured on the Italian front, and assembled for the attack.
So numerous were these guns, that the distance between each
is said to have been but fifteen feet. They included long range
guns, which were used to cut off the communications behind
the British line and thus embarrass their operations. Not-
withstanding all this, it was a surprise that the British line
gave way so easily, for the opinion had been fostered that it
was almost impregnable. This proved not to be the case, and
in the course of five or six days the British, in the sector which
embraces the Somme, were driven back some thirty miles ; in fact
a breach was made in their lines, and had it not been for the
rapidity with which the French brought up their reserves, the
Germans would have succeeded in their purpose of separating
the French and British armies and of rolling up the right wing
of the latter. The British defeat was due, in some degree, to the
bad generalship of the British commander, who has subse-
quently been recalled. Large quantities of stores and muni-
tions were captured by the enemy, and the very roads which
had been made to facilitate the British defence, became of
great service to the Germans in their advance. The more so
as the British in their hasty retreat were unable to destroy
the bridges. However, after about a fortnight's incessant
fighting, the Germans were brought to an almost complete
standstill, although we may by no means conclude that the
attempt to take Amiens, which is their immediate objective,
has been relinquished.

The attack on the southern end of the British lines was
followed by an almost equally strong offensive on the lines to

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 267

the north. In the neighborhood of Armentieres this attack is
stiU proceeding, and has so far resulted in grave Grerman suc-
cesses. So much so, that General Haig, the British Comman-
der-in-Chief, has called upon his troops to fight to the last as
men with their backs to the wall. This call and the arrival of
reenforcements has resulted in the stiffening of the British line,
but at the time these notes are being written the position is still
critical. The British losses in prisoners, the English Premier
asserts, has been grossly exaggerated by the Germans, as well
as the number of guns which have been taken, but the losses
are none the less serious. The number of the Germans en-
gaged in the new onslaught has been variously estimated.
Some make it as high as three million, but Mr. Lloyd George,
in a recent speech, declared that the German forces and those
of the Allies were about equal. The same, he has said, is the
case with regard to the artillery. But as the enemy is on in-
terior lines, he was able to concentrate at any point he chose,
and, in some cases, the British had to fight, according to corre-
spondence, against a force outnumbering them by four to one,
and even in some places by ten to one.

These events have led to the accomplishment of a pro-
posal made by the French some months ago, that the Allied
forces should be brought into complete union by the appoint-
ment of a Generalissimo. Mr. Lloyd George was convinced, it
is said, of the desirability of such an appointment, but finding
strong opposition to it in England, he had to yield, and en-
deavor to find a substitute by giving executive powers to the
Inter-Allied Council at Paris. In the face of so many adverse
occurrences, English opposition has given way, and General
Foch is now in supreme command of the French and British
armies.

Another consequence which has been brought about by
the German successes, is the amalgamation of certain of the
United States forces in France with the French and British
armies. Our country has made this sacrifice in view of the
critical circumstances in which the Allies find themselves,
and as a token of its willingness to do everything in its power
for the common cause. Great Britain has raised the age of
military service from forty-one to fifty-one as a pledge of her
determination to make every sacrifice in her power to main-
tain the conflict to a victorious end, and young men only eigh-

Digitized by

Google

268 RECENT EVENTS [May,

teen years of age, with but four months' training, are being
sent to serve at the front. Mr. Lloyd George expects that the
fighting which has just begun, will last six or eight months,
and that the issue rests upon the question as to whether the
Allies or Germany can endure the longer. The effect in this
country has been to hasten the departure of the men whose
services are so urgently needed in Europe. It is expected that
under the new draft one and one-half million will be called
to the colors.

Nowhere is there any sign of flinching. Rather the deter-
mination to fight to the end has strengthened. *' Force, force
to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and
triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world
and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust.'* In these
words the President defines the purpose of all Americans.

In other fields of the War little has taken place. The
Italian front has shown signs of activity. Whether this indi-
cates a new movement on the part of Austria, remains to be
seen. Scarcely anything has been done on the Saloniki front.
In Palestine there are signs of Turko-German activity, for the
British sustained an attack upon their lines north of Jaffa.
To the east of the Jordan the British made a raid upon the
Hedjez railway, which they destroyed for a few miles and then
returned to their base. A forward movement of the British of
some eighty miles from Hit on the Euphrates, renders it not
improbable that an advance in the direction of Aleppo is being
contemplated. It is possible that the British army which is
now holding the neighborhood of Jerusalem, may converge
towards the same place, and by doing so seize upon the chief
centre of Turkish concentration in Syria. The Russians have
completely evacuated Turkish Armenia, and a resistance of
the inhabitants of the region conceded to Turkey by the Brest-
Litovsk Treaty has been futile. There is a possibility that the
Turkish army in Armenia may advance into Persia for the
purpose of outflanking the forces of the British, which have
been occupying a district about eighty miles north of Bagdad
on the Tigris.

The purpose of Germany to make his-

Gennany. tory so as to place responsibility for the

War on the Entente Powers, is in danger

of being thwarted by her own chosen representatives. A state-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 269

ment made by Prince Lichnowsky, which has excited much
attention* proves how bent Germany was upon bringing about
a conflict Prince Lichnowsky had been for some two years
German Ambassador in London, and when he returned to Ger-
many, upon the outbreak of the War, he was to a certain ex-
tent in disgrace for having been unable to give to the German
authorities a true estimate of the British attitude in the event
of war. This led him, in self -justification, to write a statement
of the attitude of his own Government and to circulate it
among a few friends. A copy of this statement has now
been published in a Swedish Socialist paper. In it he
makes it evident that the moment of his appointment was
favorable to a new attempt to establish a better footing with
England. In the course of the statement he describes how
he had almost succeeded in bringing to a conclusion agree-
ments between Great Britain and Germany with reference
to the Bagdad railway, and the respective spheres of
influence of the two Governments with regard to the Portu-
guese colonies in Africa. The latter agreement was not con-
cluded only because Great Britain insisted upon the publication
of the treaty, which publication (lermany refused to make.
He testifies to the ungrudging spirit in which Sir Edward Grey
entered into the negotiation, and his strong desire to arrive at
a conclusion as favorable as was possible to the wishes of
Germany. The Prince bears testimony to the provoking char-
acter of the German Government's policy with reference to
Morocco, which made possible a new conflict with France.
He refutes the oft-repeated assertion that Great Britain's
policy was to encircle Germany with a ring of foes. "The
aim of the British statesman was not to isolate Germany, but
to induce Germany to take part in the already established con-
cert by removing the causes of friction between England and
Germany and to secure the peace of the world by a network of
agreements.'* He attributes to Germany the failure of the
attempt to federate the Balkan States, an attempt which, for a
time, gave much hope of a peaceful settlement of that long-
vexed question. In the discussions which followed upon the
first Balkan War he testifies that the British Foreign Minister
was more often on the German side than on that of France or
Russia, and that this sprang from the earnest desire of Sir
Edward Grey to find a peaceful solution. In the Ambassador's

Digitized by

Google

270 RECENT EVENTS [May,

estimate, his work in London had effected a noticeable im-
provement in the relations between the two countries. So far
was it from the mind of Great Britain to make a wanton
assault upon the German Empire, that the outlook was favor-
able to the solution of all outstanding differences.

More important, however, than the account of the more
remote attitude of Great Britain towards Germany, is the nar-
rative that the Prince gives of the events immediately preced-
ing the declaration of war. This may be summed up in his
own words:

"As it appears from all official publications without the
facts being controverted by our own White Book, which, owing
to its poverty and gaps» constitutes a grave self -accusation :

*'l. We encouraged Count Berchtold to attack Serbia,
although no German interest was involved and the danger of
a world war must have been known to us — ^whether we knew
the test of the ultimatum is a question of complete indifference.

" 2. In the days between July 23 and 30, 1914, when Sazo-
noff emphatically declared that Russia could not tolerate an
attack on Serbia, we rejected the British proposals of media-
tion, although Serbia under Russian and British pressure had
accepted almost the whole ultimatum, and although an agree-
ment about the two points in question could easily have been
reached and Berchtold was even ready to satisfy himself with
the Serbian reply.

"3. On July 30th, when Berchtold wanted to give way,
we, without Austria having been attacked, replied to Russia's
mere mobilization by sending an ultimatum to St. Petersburg,
and on July 31st we declared war on the Russians, although
the Tsar had pledged his word that as long as negotiations con-
tinued, not a man should march — so that we deliberately de-
stroyed the possibility of a peaceful settlement.

"In view of these indisputable facts it is not surprising
that the whole world outside of Germany attributes to us sole
guilt for the World War."

He also testifies to the general belief in Germany of the
unreadiness for war of Russia, an unreadiness which made
Germany urge Austria-Hungary to make the preposterous de-
mands upon Serbia which were the occasion of the War. Sir
Edward Grey made unwearying efforts to avert war. Noth-
ing would have been easier, according to the Prince, than

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 271

to have averted it, if Germany had been willing. " A hint from
Berlin would have been enough to make Count Berchtold sat-
isfied with a diplomatic success and to cause his acquiescence
in the Serbian reply.*'

More citations from the Prince's statement might be made
with reference to the naval programme of the two countries
and the commercial competition between them, but enough
has been quoted to show that there was no desire on the part
of Great Britain to enter into a conflict with Germany.
This cuts the ground from under the feet of those who
claim thiat (lermany is now waging a defensive war. It is no
wonder, therefore, that Prince Ldchnowsky's revelations have
caused embarrassment in Grermany. On the one hand, it is
said that he has been forced to resign his rank, and that there
is the prospect of his being tried for high treason. On the
other, that he has disavowed the statements made by him. As,
however, this disavowal has been made under duress, lit-
tle importance will be attached to an enforced denial.

It is now of course quite evident that the militarists have
complete control of the foreign policy of the German Em-
pire, and that the eflfort made by the more moderate party,
which resulted in the resolution of July last, passed by the
majority of the Reichstag, in favor of a peace without annex-
ations and without indemnities, has been set aside. Von Hin-
denburg is in complete control, having, it is now said on good
authority, more power than the Kaiser himself. Count von
Hertling has broken, it is said, with Herr Mathias Erzberger,
the prominent member of the Centre Party who has been
the advocate of a moderate peace; and the Social Democrats
who supported the July resolution are now said to be enlisted
in support of the demands of the Pan-Germans. Undisguised
demands for annexation of the Flanders coast and of parts of
Northern France and for the payment of indemnities are now
talked of. The realization of these demands depends of course
upon the success of the present drive.

The reason of the President's address to
Austria-Huiigary. Congress on the eleventh of February —

an address which puzzled and per-
plexed many — has been made evident by recent revelations,
undoubtedly known to the President at the time. The letter

Digitized by

Google

272 RECENT EVENTS [May.

Emperor Charles addressed to his brother-in-law. Prince Six-
tus de Bourbon, was written when things looked black for the
Central Powers, and shows that what in previous notes was
looked upon as probable, namely, that Austria was likely to
make an effort to secure a separate peace, was not a mere sup-
position, but a reality. In this letter which, by the Emperor's
request, was to be communicated to the President of the
French Republic, after praising the dashing courage, force
and resistance of the French troops and the spirit of sacrifice
of the French people, the writer makes the astounding promise
that he will support "France's just claims regarding Alsace-Lor-
raine." He goes on to say that Belgium should be entirely re-
established in her sovereignty, retaining entirely her African
possessions, without prejudice to the compensations she
should receive for the losses she has undergone. Serbia
should be reestablished in her sovereignty, and as a pledge of
his good-will, a port on the Adriatic would be assured to her,
together with wide economic concessions in Austria-Hungary.
The confirmation of the Emperor's desire for peace is found in
the recently-disclosed fact that last July in the Reichstag, Herr
Mathias Erzberger read a letter from His Majesty, in which
he said that it was a necessity for his dominions that peace
should be made before the end of 1917. Further indications
of the same desire are found in the confidential conferences
which have been taking place in Switzerland between agents
of the Austro-Hungarian and French Governments. These
conferences date back as far as the Premiership of M.
Ribot

The astounding admission of the justice of France's
claims to Alsace-Lorraine, seems to preclude the idea that
Germany was cognizant of the Emperor's diplomatic efforts
to placate France. The publication of the Emperor's letter
has raised a storm of condemnation in the German press.
Count Czernin's resignation which has just taken place, may
be an indication of his indignation at not having been in
the confidence of the Emperor, Or it may be due to pressure
exerted by the Kaiser. Whatever waverings, however, there
may have been on the part of Austria-Hungary, they have all
vanished now, and according to outward professions, at least,
the Dual Monarchy is as resolute as is its partner to settle the
issue by force. Whatever may be the resolution of the ruling

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS "^^^ 273

authorities it is not shared by all their subjects. If the recent
report that great demonstrations have been made in Budapest
against the War and its continuance, and in favor of the En-
tente Powers be true, the unanimity the Emperor speaks of in
his letter does not exist. But it would be unwise to attach
much importance to what may be only an exceptional event.
There is, however, good reason to believe that in Austria-Hun-
gary the propagation of Bolshevik principles has been more
successful than among the German proletariat.

The resoluteness and fidelity of France in turning a deaf
ear to overtures made by the Emperor shows how strong is
the union between the other democracies and herself, and that
she adheres to the determination expressed by President Wil-
son to setUe the issue by force, unstinted force.

The fact, vouched for by Mr. G. K. Chesterton, that France
has had half a score of opportunities of ending the War by a
separate peace which would restore to her Alsace-Lorraine^
renders still more evident the loyal fidelity of France to her
Allies.

Finland, once a part or at least a depen-
Russia. dency of Russia, is now a Republic in-

dependent at least in name. The con-
flict between the Government and the insurrectionary Bolshe-
viki continues. The Government finding itself incapable of se-
curing order and of maintaining its own position against the in-
surgents, who were being aided by the Lenine Government of
Russia, called upon the Germans for help which was given
with the utmost alacrity. A force estimated at ten thousand
is now working hand in hand with the native troops, and Hel-
singfors is said to be on the point of being captured. The Rus-
sian fleet also has been threatened with seizure by the Ger-
mans, unless the Russian Government comply with its terms.
All this is being done in despite of the terms of the Brest-
Litovsk Treaty, for the breaches of which the Russian Bol-
sheviki must be held as guilty as are the Germans. For no
sooner had Lenine recognized independence of Finland, than
he sent in Russian troops to upset the existing authority he
had just recognized. Of course, the Germans having entered
the new Republic there is litUe prospect of their leaving it.
They now boast that they will soon have an open road from

Digitized by

Google

274 RECENT EVENTS [May.

Tromso, still, indeed, in the possession of Norway, but access to
which the Germans hope to secure by fair means or foul, to
Teheran, the capital of Persia. This hope consoles them for
the disappointment caused by the capture of Bagdad by the
British which put an end to the more ambitious project of an
open road from Hamburg to the city of the Caliphs.

On tbeir way to Finland, the Germans used the chance to
seize the largest of the Aland Islands, formerly belonging to
Sweden and still chiefly occupied by Swedes. This island is so
near the coast of Sweden that its possession forms a permanent
source of danger to that country. Its position gives the possessor
almost complete command of the Baltic Sea. Great conster-
nation was caused by this seizure not only throughout Sweden,
but also in Norway and Denmark. They began to realize
that the increase of power thus accruing to Germany,
placed them in a position of subordination. This fear was
increased by the threatening attitude assumed by the German
press towards the three States in question. Their conduct
during the War was severely criticized as unneutral and
friendly to the Allies, and as public opinion does not exist in
Germany bnt is made by the Government, there was reason to
fear that this outbreak of the press might be the prelude to
hostile action. The injustice of such a complaint, at least so
far as Sweden is concerned, is manifest from the fact that
Sweden has more than once been a source of anxiety to the Allies,
and has taken action which has embarrassed them in the course
of the War. As is well known, she has supplied Germany with
raw materials very useful to her in carrying on the War. In
fact sjrmpathy with these countries in the present embarrass-
ment would be greater, had they shown themselves from the
beginning of the War more willing to maintain and defend
the liberties their ancestors won with such difficulty. Of these
ancestors they have not proved themselves worthy sons.
Either from fear or from greed they have maintained a neutral-
ity which has greatly served the common foe of the world's
liberties. The old saying which used to be conunon in this
country, that the price of liberty is perpetual vigilance, has not
been borne in mind, or certainly has not been their governing
principle of action.

Rumor says that the eastern border of Finland will not be
the limit of the German advance, but that her out-reaching

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 275

arm will extend to the port of Archangel, thus closing to Rus-
sia her last outlet to the ocean. A further rumor, but one
almost unworthy of mention, is that Japan and Germany are
to limit their spheres of action and that Siberia will be placed
within Japan's sphere of influence. In this event, of course,
what is left of Russia would be altogether cut off from the
world at large, for the possession of the Baltic provinces has
given (jermany the control of the Baltic Sea. Petrograd, in-
deed, remains in the hands of Russia, but its possession is so
precarious that Germany could seize it upon the least pretext,
and, in fact, almost any day we may hear this has been done.

The tortures inflicted upon the Belgian people are now
known to all the world; almost as well known are the sufferings
of the Poles. Little has been heard, however, of the wrongs
of Poland's northern neighbors. In Lithuania, as elsewhere,
the Germans have exercised the brutality now characteristic
of them. Wholesale deportations have taken place from that
former province of Russia, with even less excuse than was
alleged for those in Belgium and northern France. Forced
labor has been employed for purposeik important to the Ger-
mans, and last and worst of all, the outraged inhabitants have
been compelled to appeal to the German Government for the
privilege of being incorporated into the German Empire. This
appeal, however, is declared, by authorities worthy of credit,
to have been made by a fraction of the population only, and is
on a par with the appeal of the six hundred Flemings for the
autonomy of the Flemish part of Belgium, and for separation
from the provinces inhabited by the Walloons.

To the Kaiser, the inhabitants of the adjoining province
of Courland have offered the title of Duke, but whether those
who offered it are more representative of the people than were
their neighbors in Lithuania, cannot be said. The recently-
formed " independent " Kingdom of Poland, after having suf-
fered the loss of one of its provinces by annexation to the
Ukrainian Repubhc, is now threatened with the rectification
of its frontiers so as to secure Germany from all danger of
future invasion. The Germans have been advancing into the
Ukrainian Republic and have taken town after town. It is not
yet known where they intend to stop, for the eastern boundary
of Ukrainia has not been settled. Some Germans would ex-
tend this frontier to the Caspian Sea, thereby bringing within

Digitized by

Google

276 RECENT EVENTS [May,

the limits of the new Republic the whole of southern Russia.
No organized opposition has been offered to the advancing
forces, but in some places the peasants have risen up with
scythes and other agricultural implements to ward off the
robbers of their fields. The conflict still wages between the
two rival Radas; the one that was set up as a Republic on its
formation, and the other supported by the Bolsheviki to prop-
agate in the newly recognized Republic the principles with
which they are trying to govern what is left of Russia.

About the Crimea uncertainty still exists as to whether a
new government has been established or not, but in any event
Turkey has put forward claims to the possession of this penin-
sula. The report comes from the Caucasus that the Georgians
and the Armenians were offering resistance to the Turks who
were trying to take possession of the district conceded to them
by the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. At first this resistance seemed
likely to be successful. But the latest reports have it that this
region has fallen again under the power of its former oppres-
sor, and that peace is now at the point of being concluded with
the Republic of the Caucasus. Still another republic has been
formed out of the ruins of the fallen empire — the province of
Kazan having declared its independence.

As to Siberia the accounts are conflicting. Sixty thousand
German and Austrian prisoners are reported to have been
formed into an army ready for war. This report, however, has
been categorically denied. Some time ago the papers were
filled with long accounts of the demand made by Great Britain
and France upon Japan to send an army to Siberia to protect it
from German encroachments, and to safeguard large stores of
munitions which had been landed at Vladivostok. To this
course, it was said. President Wilson was opposed, and that
on this account Japan hesitated to comply with the request of
her Allies. All this, however, was subsequently denied in open
parliament by the Japanese Foreign Minister. He said that
no such request had been made, but declared that Japan would
act in the way best fitted to defend her own interests. This op-
portunity came about through riots at Vladivostok, in which
Japanese subjects were killed and Japanese property was put
in danger. Thereupon Japan landed marines. Great Britain
followed this up by a similar course. According to a recent
report, the same thing has been done by this country. The

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 277

Bolshevik Government is so enraged by these proceedings that
it has threatened war upon Japan.

Over the rest of Russia, the limits of which it is impossible,
according to present knowledge, to define accurately, the
Lenine Government still exercises its malevolent influence.
According to report, it has been making overtures to the vari-
ous political parties existent in the Republic, but that each
and all refuse to cooperate in any way whatsoever with the
usurped authority now in power. But, while refusing to co-
operate, no one of them, nor any one of their members, has
taken a step to direct the future destiny of Russia into safer
coiu^es. The Bolsheviki have made a show of raising a volun-
teer army of a million and a half of men, and have asked the
Allies to supply them with officers. One of their members has
expressed a hope that what Germany has taken and is now
taking, will be restored. Plans are also being made for the
federation of the various republics into one whole. Peace
negotiations have been entered upon with the Ukraine Re-
public. Subordination of the Russian Grovemment to Grer-
many is evident in the submission it has shown to the various
admonitions addressed to it by the imperial authorities. There
are still those who cherish hope that an end may be put to the
existing chaos even by the Bolsheviki themselves, and our
President is thought to be one of these, but most of the well-
wishers of Russia look upon it as a sine qua non of Russia's
future welfare, that the new Republic should be delivered
from those who have been so far the authors of a more far-
reaching calamity than ever befell any country in so short a
time. Friends and admirers of the Slavs profess full con-
fidence in the ability of the Russians, if given time, to estab-
lish a stable form of government expressing the genius of the
race.

The Revolution of 1917 liberated the Orthodox Church
from two centuries of oppression and suppression. Diu*ing
the reign of the Tsar the Church was in complete subjection
to the State, the Tsar was its real as well as its nominal head,
and exercised his authority through civil officials who treated
it as a mere State department. This came to an end when
the Provisional Government granted freedom of conscience
and of worship.

According to a writer in New Europe, this declaration of

Digitized by

Google

278 RECENT EVENTS [May.

the freedom of the Church and of religious toleration has had
the worst possible eflf ect : " The ignorant masses, in whose un-
cultivated minds the Church, the Tsar and the police were in-
dissolubly blended together, turned at once against the priests.
The demagogic propaganda, that ' God had been invented by
the popes and landowners for the exploitation of the people,'
found ready listeners among the poor bewildered peasants,
whose worst instincts were being systematically aroused and
encouraged by conscious or unconscious leaders. The newly-
acquired freedom was understood by them not as freedom of,
but from conscience, worship or 'any organization. Many
churches were closed, priests insulted and expelled from their
parishes.

'' This anti-Church movement became manifest from the
very beginning of the revolution though on a moderate scale.
Now, with the universal spread of anarchy throughout Russia,
it has increased a thousandfold. Churches are being closed
and plundered; hundreds of priests are wandering homeless
and destitute, or hiding with their families in hovels, trem-
bling for their very lives. Many of them have been foully mur-
dered; others are seeking safety in denying their priesthood
and exhibiting the wildest demagogy. Open scuffles frequently
occur in the villages and towns between the supporters of the
Church and the rabble, for it is impossible to define as atheists
or freethinkers men whose sole religious, moral and political
code is ' down with everything.' Men who had nominally be-
longed to the Church either from mere force of habit or from
political motives, have naturally turned away from it in its
hour of trial; while others again, seeing everything crumbling
around them, are returning to the well-nigh forgotten beliefs
of their childhood."

From this will be seen that the failure of autocracy was
as complete in religious as in civil matters, nor will it be won-
dered at that the excommunication of the Bolshevik Govern-
ment by the Patriarch at Moscow has produced, so far at least,
no diminution of its authority. Whether, under the new cir-
cumstances, the Church released from State subjection will
gain moral authority and influence over the Russian people,
is one of the things that must be left to the future to disclose.

April 16, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

With Our Readers.

MARRIAGE in the mind and heart of a Catholic is a solemn
pledge of life-long fidelity which is consecrated and elevated
by God to the dignity of a sacrament. To violate or break it, is
to break a solemn personal covenant with God. The modern non-
Catholic world has lost faith in the sacraments and has degraded
marriage to an institution subject to the changing laws of the
State. The civil law permitting divorce, has been made the cloak
of infidelity and dishonor — and has legally sanctioned both. No
one can estimate how deep this disregard of personal honor and
personal fidelity, sanctioned and approved by the civil law, has
sunk, now how widely it has extended into the make-up of modern
society. It has affected man's sense of honor in every respect and
in all his dealings, and has thus contributed first to the loss of a
sense of what morality really means and, secondly, to that chaos
of misunderstanding and, indeed, of immoral anarchy from which
the world now suffers.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

TO give a promise and then break it — is unworthy of any man
or woman. By such an act he or she writes himself down as
the betrayer of a sacred trust which, with another, he or she has
solemnly promised to respect. To take a vow and break it, is
infamous. Yet the modern world not only looks complacently
upon, but defends the unspeakable evil of divorce.

The demand for easier divorce for the poorer people of Eng-
land has lately grown more insistent One of the self-appointed
'" champions " of marital dishonor is Conan Doyle.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

IN a recent issue of The New Witness, G. K. Chesterton writes:
" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an intelligent man in other matters,
says that there is only a ' theological ' opposition to divorce, and
that it is entirely founded on ' certain texts ' in the Bible about
marriages. This is exactly as if he said that a belief in the broth-
erhood of men was only founded on certain texts in the Bible,
about all men being the children of Adam and Eve. Millions of
peasants and plain people all over the world assume marriage to
be static, without having ever clapped eyes on any text. Numbers
of more modern people, especially after the recent experiments in
America, think divorce is a social disease, without having ever
bothered about any text. It may be maintained that even in these.

Digitized by

Google

280 WITH OUR READERS [May,

or in anyone, the idea of marriage is ultimately mystical; and the
same may be maintained about the idea of brotherhood. It is
obyious that a husband and wife are not visibly one flesh, in the
sense of being one quadruped/*

The world oftentimes defeats and denies the very human
truths which theology best expresses, most effectively defends and
keeps alive.

♦ ♦ 4c ♦

" A ND that is doubtless the situation in the controversies about
i\ divorce and marriage today. It is the Christian Church
which continues to hold strongly, when the world for some reason
has weakened on it, what many others hold at other times. But
even then it is barely picking up the shreds and scraps of the sub-
ject to talk about a reliance on texts. The vital point in the com-
parison is this: that human brotherhood means a whole view of
life, held in the light of life, and defended, rightly or wrongly, by
constant appeals to every aspect of life. The religion that holds
it most strongly will hold it when nobody else holds it; that is
quite true, and that some of us may be so perverse as to think a
point in favor of the religion. But anybody who holds it at all will
hold it as a philosophy, not hung on one text but on a hundred
truths. Fraternity may be a sentimental metaphor; I may be
suffering a delusion when I hail a Montenegrin peasant as my long
lost brother. As a fact, I have my own suspicions about which of
us it is that has got lost. But my delusion is not a deduction
from one text, or from twenty; it is the expression of a relation
that to me at least seems a reality. And what I should say about
the idea of a brother, I should say about the idea of a wife.

"' It is supposed to be very unbusinesslike to begin at the be-
ginning. It is called ' abstract and academic principles with
which we English, etc., etc' It is still in some strange way con-
sidered unpractical to open up inquiries about anything by ask-
ing what it is. I happen to have, however, a fairly complete con-
tempt for that sort of practicality; for I know that it is not even
practical. My ideal business man would not be one who planked
down fifty pounds and said ' Here is hard cash; I am a plain man;
it is quite indifferent to me whether I am pajring a debt, or giving
alms to a beggar, or buying a wild bull or a bathing machine.'
Despite the infectious heartiness of his tone, I should still, in con-
sidering the hard cash, say (like the cabman) ' What's this? ' I
should continue to insist, priggishly, that it was a highly prac-
tical point what the money was; what it was supposed to stand
for, to aim at or to declare; what was the nature of the trans-
action; or, in short, what the devil the man supposed he was do-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 281

ing? I shall therefore begin by asking, in an equally mystical man-
ner» what in the name of God and the angels a man getting mar-
ried supposes he is doing? I shall begin by asking what mar-
riage is; and the mere question will probably reveal that the act
itself, good or bad, wise or foolish, is of a certain kind; that it is
not an inquiry or an experiment or an accident; it may probably
dawn on us that it is a promise. It can be more fully defined by
saying it is a vow.

"Many will immediately answer that it is a rash vow. I
am content for the moment to reply that all vows are rash vows.
I am not now defending, but defining vows; I am pointing out that
this is a discussion about vows; first, of whether there ought to
be vows, and second, of what vows ought to be. Ought a man to
break a promise? Ought a man to make a promise? These are
philosophic questions; but the philosophic peculiarity of divorce
and re-marriage, as compared with free love and no marriage,
is that a man breaks and makes a promise at the same moment.
It is a highly German philosophy; and recalls the way in which
the enemy wishes to celebrate his successful destruction of all
treaties by signing some more. If I were breaking a promise, 1
would do it without promises. But I am very far from minimiz-
ing the momentous and disputable nature of the vow itself. I
shall try to show, in a further article, that this rash and romantic
operation is the only furnace from which can come the plain
hardware of humanity, the cast iron resistance of citizenship or
the cold steel of common sense; but I am not denying that the
furnace is a fire. The vow is a violent and unique thing; though
there have been many besides the marriage vow; vows of chivalry,
vows of poverty, vows of celibacy, pagan as well as Christian. But
modern fashion has rather fallen out of tbe habit; and men miss
the type for the lack of the parallels. The shortest way of putting
the problem is to ask whether being free includes being free to
bind oneself. For the vow is a tryst with oneself.

" I may be misunderstood if I say, for brevity, that marriage
is an affair of honor. The skeptic will be delighted to assent, by
saying it is a fight. And so it is, if only with oneself; but the
point here is that it necessarily has the touch of the heroic, in
which virtue can be translated by virtus. Now about fighting, in
its nature, there is an implied infinity, or at least a potential in-
finity. I mean that loyalty in war is loyalty in defeat or even
disgrace; it is due to the flag precisely at the moment when the
flag nearly falls. We do already apply this to the flag of the na-
tion; and the question is whether it is wise or unwise to apply it
to the flag of the family. Of course, it is tenable that we should

Digitized by

Google

282 WITH OUR READERS [May.

apply it to neither, that misgovernment in the nation or misery
in the citizen would make the desertion of the flag an act of rea-
son and not treason. I will only say here that, if this were really
the limit of national loyalty, some of us would have deserted our
nation long ago."

IT is a very old and useful maxim which reads de mortuis nil nisi
bonum, and if of the long dead Benjamin Franklin we, in these
paragraphs, repeat things that are not good, it is with no wish to
injure the good name of a man who stands high for his patriotic
service in the esteem of all Americans. Since he is often presented
as a type for the patriotic American to follow, his life and char-
acter may justly be examined, and debated. Indeed, it is man-
datory to point out the examples in which he may be followed
and those in which he should not. A hero should be accepted as
such only in his heroic activity; he may have been a sorry failure
in some other field of human endeavor.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A COMPREHENSIVE life of Franklin, by William Cabel Bruce,
has just been published by Putnam's. It is entitled: Benja-
min Franklin Self-Revealed. This life shows us not alone the
things in which he was great, but also those wherein he was lack-
ing, wherein he failed; and in the larger sense'how his example in
just these departments of life contributed to certain characteris-
tics of American life and American institutions.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

IT would be impossible here even to begin a survey of the
two volumes. We wish merely to point out that Franklin does
not merit the legendary title of a highly virtuous man which has
so often been bestowed upon him, and what is still more impor-
tant, that Franklin's religious beliefs were shaped and directed
by his moral conduct or the lack of it. Paul Bourget ends a re-
cent novel with this pregnant saying: " Act as you believe; or you
will soon believe as you act." Unless a man accepts a definite
objective code of moral conduct as an unchanging and unques-
tionable norm by which he should regulate his thoughts and his
actions, he will soon find excuses, justification for his habits, his
thoughts, his conduct and out of his own weaknesses create his
moral and religious code.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A STUDY of Franklin's character will furnish an effective an-
swer to those who are so fond of declaring that it matters
not what one believes so long as he does good. Franklin with un-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 283

common shrewdness studied life and people primarily with a
view to advance himself materially in life; to have friends and
popular favor; to help mankind in its physical needs. All of this
he sought for only with half selfish purpose. Selfishness was not
his controlling passion. He had a mind too large; a heart too
human and sympathetic to permit of that. Nevertheless, Benja-
min Franklin was a figure that always loomed large and promi-
nent in his philosophy of life. His view of morality was always
prudential. The possession of money was always a^eat aid to,
if not a necessary condition of virtue. The man of pleasure must
in his view practise self-denial; if he did not, he would suffer as a
man of pleasure; he could not indulge himself so much nor so
often. It is not surprising, therefore, that Horatio, the Man of
Pleasure, in Franklin's dialogue, was so delighted at the com-
fortable margin for sensual enjoyment which Philocles, the Man
of Reason and Virtue, allowed him that he departed with the satis-
field farewell : '* Adieu, thou enchanting Reasoner.*'

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

JUDGED by the only true test, that of actual experience, his moral
teachings would not hold water. It may be seriously ques-
tioned if Franklin himself did not see the insuflBciency, the
emptiness of them; and whether his love of advancement, his
self-conceit and ambition for popularity did not prevail in the
publication of his Autobiography and his Art of Virtue,

The author of this Life states: " Indeed, we may shrewdly
suspect that even Franklin's idea that he was such a debtor to
his factitious system of moral practice was not much better than
a conceit.'* If we were to take one example, that of personal
chastity, we would find Franklin notably deficient. We are re-
stating these things not because we wish to re-tell a man's fail-
ures and sins; but because Franklin put before the world a
system of virtue. A teacher's own example may justly be ap-
plied in measuring the worth of his system.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

"TN such Rabelaisian jeux d* esprit, as Polly Baker's Speech, the
i Letter on the choice of a Mistress, and the Essay on Per-
fumes, in the naiveti which marked Franklin's relations to his
natural son's natural son, and in the ease with which he adopted
in his old age the tone, if not the practices of French gallantry,
we cannot but recognize (in Benjamin Franklin) a nature too
deficient in the refinements of early social training, too physically
ripe for sensual enjoyment and too unfettered in its intellectual
movements to be keenly mindful of some of the nicer obligations
of scrupulous conduct"

Digitized by

Google

284 WITH OUR READERS [May,

" There is only too much," adds the author, " in the corre-
spondence which has survived him to give color to the statement
of John Adams that even at the age of seventy-odd he had neither
lost his love of beauty nor taste for it. When we bear this in mind
and recall what he had to say in the Autobiography about the
* hard-to-be-governed passion of youth,* which frequently hur-
ried him into intrigues with low women that fell in his way be-
fore he resolved to acquire the habit of chastity with the aid of
his book, we realize that the artificial scaffolding, which he pro-
posed to build up around his character, reasonably enough broke
down at just the point where the natural vigor of his character
was the weakest. . . . His domestic affections were uncommonly
strong, but the notable peculiarity about his domestic life is that
he was not a whit less soberly dutiful in his irregular than is his
regular family connections, and always acted as if the nuptial
ceremony was a wholly superfluous form, so far as a proper sense
of marital or paternal obligation, or the existence of deep, un-
reserved affection, upon the part of a husband or father, went."
♦ . ♦ ♦ ♦

FRANKLIN'S religious beliefs were on the same natural, indefi-
nite plane as his moral system. He was repelled from ortho-
dox religion by the contradiction and inconsistencies of Protestant-
ism. He became a Deist. In his Au/ofrio^^rap/iy, he states: "My
parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me
through my childhood piously in the Dissenting way. But I was
scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as
I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to
doubt of Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my
hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at
Boyle's lectures. It happened that they wrought an affect on me
quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments
of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me
much stronger than the refutations! "

He believed in God, in God's overruling providence and in the
personal immortality of the soul. But all these beliefs were tinc-
tured, tempered and tainted by his worldliness, his philosophy of
prudence and economy. When he visited a nun living alone in
London, saw her self-denial, her consecration to the poor, it was
not the self-denial that held his soul's eye, nor the crucifix on the
bare wall, it was the practical lesson in economy which showed
how a person could live on so little. He could go forth from that
improvised cell redolent of the odor of Christ, and write a book in
which it was stated that " * nothing could possibly be wrong in the
world ' and vice and virtue were empty distinctions " and dedicate

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 285

the same to his friend* James Ralph, who had deserted his wife
and family in Philadelphia.

" Of that real, vital religion, which vivifies even the common
dull details of our daily lives, and irradiates with cheerful
hope even the dark abyss to which our feet are hourly tending,
which purifies our hearts, refines our natures, quickens our sym-
pathieSj exalts our ideals, and is capable unassisted of inspiring
even the humblest life with a subdued but noble enthusiasm — of
this religion Franklin had none, or next to none. . . . Religion to
him was like any other apparatus, essential to the well-being of
organized society, a thing to be fashioned and adapted to its
uses, without reference to anything but the ordinary principles
of uUlity."

He believed in external worship, was lax in attending church
service himself, but urged his daughter, Sally: "Go constantly
to church, whoever preaches." In cooperation with the notorious
Sir Francis Dashwood he undertook a satirical revision of the
Book of Common Prayer. Needless to say it was shorn of " all
reference to the Sacraments and to the divinity of Our Lord
and the commandments in the Catechism, the Nicene and
the Athanasian Creeds, and even the Canticle ' All ye Works of
the Lord ' was ruthlessly deleted."

HIS rule of the virtue of silence was chronically suspended when
the subject of formal religion was in question, and oftentimes
when sacred things and sacred customs offered an opportunity for
parody. Indeed, though his writings be marked by words of
praise and thanksgiving to God, of favorable comment on the
beneficent fraternal fruits of religious belief, there is nothing in
them " to justify the conclusion that to Franklin God was any-
thing more than the personification, more or less abstract, of those
cosmic forces with which he was so conversant, and of those altru-
istic promptings of the human heart, of which he himself was
such a beneficent example."

FRANKLIN'S moral system, we saw, was fitted to human pru-
dence, formed of assorted maxims shrewdly selected, far more
considerate of earth than of heaven, and absolutely inadequate
to mold man to high moral stature. Franklin's religious beliefs
were of similar temper^r-uncertain : more expressive of man than
of God: inadequate and artificial. " There is undeniably," writes
the author of these volumes, " a lack of reality, a certain sort of

Digitized by

Google

286 WITH OUR READERS [May,

hollowness about Franklin's religious views. Wtien we tap them,
a sound, as of an empty cask, comes back to us.*'

WITH the many serious problems before us now, as individuals
and as a nation, it is well for us to know wherein Franklin
was a hero to be emulated and wherein he was not.

EVERY day brings to light some new and interesting Catholic
work. Unknown to many, there has grown up among us
in the past seven years, a flourishing national organization com-
posed of Catholic deaf-mutes, under the title of their famous
Catholic benefactor, the Abb£ Charles Michel De TEp^e.

Although more modern methods have largely supplanted the
sign language invented by this well-known French priest in the
eighteenth century, to his ingenuity and devotion is due the credit
of having blazed the trail for the whole system of instruction for
deaf-mutes now in use.

The Knights and Ladies of De FEp^e count fourteen Coun-
cils of their Order in various cities of the United States. Their
laws and requirements are similar to those of the Knights of
Columbus and the Daughters of Isabella. Only practical Catho-
lics are admitted to membership, and every endeavor is made
to lighten the limitations of the members and make them mutually
helpful.

The oflBcial organ is The Catholic Deaf-Mute, published at
Richmond Hill, Long Island, New York.

THE National Conference of Social Work will meet in Kansas
City, May 15th to 22d. Thereafter the National Conference
of Charities and Correction will be known by that name. Between
three thousand and four thousand delegates are expected at the
May meeting. It is an impressive gathering always. There are
no tendencies or temperaments that are not represented. One
catches at first the tone of confusion, and here and there conflict
of view and policy. But beneath these superficial features, there
lies a pervading devotion to the common welfare and an earnest
endeavor to serve the processes that make for social justice.
Scholarship, experience, eminence in many lines will be found in
abundance at the Kansas City meeting. The influence of the dis*
cussions will be far-reaching. All citizens would do well to take
an interest in the work of the Conference.

Digitized by

Google

1918.1 WITH OUR READERS 287

Last year there were about two hundred Catholics in attend-
ance at the meeting which was held in Pittsburgh. While many
views and policies from which we sincerely dissent will come to
expression, we should be represented in generous numbers, to
learn and to teach as we may.

IT is a pleasure for us to announce that Miss Marian Nesbitt
who has frequently contributed to The Catholic World, has
recently been honored by our Holy Father Pope Benedict XV. with
the decoration Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice.

IN the current issue of The Catholic World there is a slight
omission in one of the sentences of Doctor Shanahan's article
on St. Matthew and the Parousia. On page 170, the sentence be-
ginning: "A Palestinian Jew," etc., should read in full as fol-
lows : ' A Palestinian Jew would have first asked about the ' con-
summation,' and then about the ' coming.' "

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Longmans, Gbbbn 9t Co., Ne^ York :

Mysticism and Logic, By B. Russell. |2.50 net. Paaaio Chriati. By Mother
St Paul. 11.40 net. Last Lectures. By Wilfrid Ward. |4.M net irUh
Memoriea. By E. Somervllle and M. Ross. |4.20 net Studies in English
Franciscan History. By A. G. Little, M.A. fS.OO net Portuguese Portraits.
By A. P. G. Bell. |1.75 net.
American Book Co., New York:

A Greek Grammar for Schools and Colleges. By H. W. Smyth. An Introduc-
tion to Science. By B. M. Clark, Ph.D. Le Premier Livre. B. A. A. M«ras,
Ph.D., and B. Mi§ras, A.M. A Community Arithmetic. By B. Hunt New
First Spanish. By J. H. Worman, LL.D.
E. P. DuTTON St Co., New York:

The Temple. By Rev. W. E. Orchard, D.D. fl.OO net Greater Than the
Greatest. By H. Drummond. |1.50 net Front Lines. By B. Cahle. |1.60 net
Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz. Two Volumes. 60 cents each. The S€teial Plays
of Arthur Wing Pinero. Edited by C. Hamilton. |2.00 net
HARpsa A BaoTHBBs, New York:

Prayers for Today. By S. McComb, D.D. fl.OO net The Winning of the War.
By R. G. Usher, Ph.D. |2.00 net Outwitting the Hun. By Ueut Patrick
O'Brien. |1.50 net The Wlnga of Youth. By E. Jordan. |1.40 net A HUiory
of Architecture. By P. Kimball and G. H. Edgell. |3.50 net
Flbmino H. Revbll Co., New York:

The City of the Anti-Christ. By R. H. McCartney.
GBoaoB H. DoaAN Co., New York:

The Delivertuice of Jerusalem. By E. W. G. Masterman, P.R.C.G. 25 cents.
Martyred Armenia. By Fk*ix El-Ghusein. 25 cents. In the Land of Death.
Prom the Prench. 10 cents.
CHAaLBs ScaniNBa's Sons, New York:

The Ways of War. By Prof. T. M. KetUe. |1.50 net The Flower of the Chap-
delaines. By G. W. Cable. |1.35 net. Five Tales. By J. Galsworthy. fl.50
net " Over There " with the Australians. By Capt R, H. Knyrett |1.50 net

Digitized by

Google

288 BOOKS RECEIVED [May, 1918.]

The Abingdon Pbbss, New York:

The Call to Armw, By A. H. Brown and F. W. Smith.
Benzigbr Bbothers, New York:

The Future Ltfe. By Rev. J. Sasia, SJ. $2.50. The Man from Nowhere. By
A. T. Sadlier. fl.OO. The Straight Religion. By Father Benedict, O.SS.S.
$1.50 net. PragerM for Our Dead, By Rev. C. S. McGrath.
OxFOED Univebsitt Press, New York:

Poems of Conformitg. By Cliarles Williams. $1.40.
P. J. Kenedy St Sons, New York:

The Origin* of Contemporarg Psgchologg. By Cardinal Mercier. $2.25 net.
College of Mount St. Vincent. By A. C. Browne. Shepherd Mg Thought*. By
F. P. Donnelly. 75 cents net. God and Man. From the French of Rev. L.
LAbauche, S.S. Volume I. — God. $1.75 net.
D. Appleton a Co., New York:

Don Strong, Patrol Leader. By William Heyliger. $1.35 net.
DuPFiBLD A Co., New York:

Tolatog. By G. R. Noyes. $1.50 net.
B. W. HuBBscH, New York:

The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann. Edited by L. Lewlsohn. Volume
Vn. $1.50 net
Fbbdebick a. Stokes, Co., New York:

Letters to the Mother of a Soldier. By R. Wright $1.00 net The House of
Conrad. By E. Tobenkin. $1.50 net.
DoDD, Mead A Co., New York:

Carolgn of the Corners. By R. B. Endicott $1.35 net A Roumcmlcm Dtarg
i9i5, i9i6, 19iT. By Lady Kennard. $1.25 net
G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York:

Benjamin Franklin Self-Revealed. By Wm. C. Bruce. Two volumes. $6.00 per set
The Amebica Pbbss, New York:

Catholics and Social Reform. Pamphlet 5 cents.
Henby Holt A Co., New York:

Mg Ireland. By Francis Carlin.
Mahon Pbrss. 509 West 161st Street, New York:

irish Jog Stories. By Shiela Mahon.
The Centuby Co., New York:

Donald Thompson In Russia. By Donald C.^ Thompson. $2.00 net
The Macmillan Co., New York:

The Book of High Romance. By Michael Williams. $1.50.
The Gobham Pbbss, Boston:

Esther and Harbonah. By H. P. Mendes. $1.25 net
Geobgb Thobnton Edwabds, Portland, Maine:

The Appeal of Llbertg. (Poem.)
The Commrtee op Pubuc Infobmation, Washington, D. C:

German Treatment of Conquered Territorg. Whg America Fights Germang.
Pamphlets.
Pabaoon Pbintino and Pubushino Co., Huntington, W. Va.:

Constitution of the League of Nations. Pamphlet 10 cents.
The Univebsity op Chicago Pbbss, Chicago:

Democracg the Basis for World-Order. By F. D. Bramhall. Pamphlet.
B. Hebdeb, St Louis:

St. Patrick*s Purgatorg. By S. Leslie. 50 cents net. A Manual of Modern
Scholastic Phllosophg. By Cardinal Mercier. Volume U. $3.50 net
The Queen's Wobk, St Louis:

The World and the Waters. By E. F. Garesch^, SJ. $1.00.
Univebsity Pbess, Notre Dame, Indiana:

Sacerdotal Safeguards. By A. B. O'Neill, C.S.C., LL.D. |l.25.
Rev. Paul A. Lewis, O.M.I., San Antonio, Texas:

in the Shadow of the Alamo. By Rev. P. A. Lewis, O.M.I. 40 cents.
The Catholic Tbuth Society, Toronto, Canada:

The Famllg Teacher. By Rev. M. V. Kelly, C.S.B. Pamphlet.
Scholasticat St. Joseph, Ottawa, Canada:

Les Flancallles et le Mortage. Par J. Duvic, O.M.I.
Austbalian Catholic Tbuth Society, Melbourne:

Galileo. By Rev. W. M. McCarthy. A Little Maid of France. By M. Agatha.
Pamphlet
PiEBBE TtqvU Paris:

Religion. Par Monsignor Gibier. 3 fr. 50. Pour les Un Mots d*Indulgences et
de Supplications. Par C. Rothe. La Fagette aux Etats-Unls. Par L. Pons.
Gabbiel Bbauchesnb, Paris:

Le ProbUme de la Natallti et la Morale Chritienne. Par J. Verdier. L'tgllse.
Par L. Prunel. 3 fr. 50. Jirusalim dellvrie. Par Monsignor A. Baudrillart.
Dtctlonnalre Apologitique de la Foi Cathollque. Par A. d'Al^s.
Pebbin et Cie, Paris:

La Vie Agonlsante des Pags Occupis. Par H. de la Montague.

Digitized by

Google

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. CVII. JUNE, 1918. No. 639.

"THE POET OP THE RETURN TO GOD."

BY HUGH ANTHONY ALLEN, MA.

|N these days of emotionalism all over the world,
no recent change has been more amazing in its
swiftness or more poignant in its implications
than the attitude of the public toward litera-
ture. On every side there is evinced a trend
toward books with an accent of spiritual romance. The moon
is rising again and the tide of dreams once more floods '* the
naked shingles of the world." The old, starlit mystery of
things is returning. A new transcendentalism is upon us. Man
is obsessed by the conviction that he does not live by bread
alone, that the meaning of his life is something sacred and
radiant and exalted, and hence that strange beauty called po-
etry has come into its own. For it is the mission of the true
poet to throb the spirits of men into a realization of their in-
terior life, to make them feel the nature of their being and
render them sentient of the pressure of immortality. He
makes us feel whence we are, why we are here and whither
we tend.

Poetry is the soul in vision, in flight, in ecstasy; its charm
is tangible only by the soul. Its worth and portent are com-
mensurate with the soul's metamorphoses, and these are
bounded only by the gossamer threads of infinity. From
the pinnacles of a mighty faith, the poet p^ers into the un-
known, peeps at the secret workings of the universe and in-

Copyrlght 1918. Thb Missionary Society op St. Paul the Apostle
IN THE State op New York.
vol. cvn. — 19

Digitized by

Google

290 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " [June,

terprets the mysteries of the Ahnighty. Because men compre-
hend that he is somethmg more than a creature of mere
fancies, because they feel in their brains the splendid pene-
tration of his vision, the poefs influence has always been
beneficent and his place in life unique.

Among the authentic singers who are quickening the
inner consciousness of our people, Francis Thompson occu-
pies a high place. Already his own forecast has been veri-
licd. The world does glean of him, "the sleeper." Every-
where men are reaping the precious guerdon of his tragic
youth. Yet, though his vogue is tremendous, his legend has
been singularly meagre: a very important phase of his life,
the Franciscan phase, has almost been ignored. Now to
arrive at a fair estimate of any man's character, the primary
necessity is to endeavor to realize his point of view, to ap-
preciate his preconceptions. If we require of him that his
preconceptions shall coincide with our own, we may recon-
struct a figure of much appeal, perhaps, but we shall not dis-
cover the man as he really was. If we do succeed in appre-
hending his point of view, we shall almost inevitably find
that the man who ultimately emerges is different from, and
probably better than, the man we have previously conceived
him. So to estimate fairly the value of Francis Thompson's
message today for a materialistic world, war-torn, heart-
broken and again seeking God, we must realize the potently
quickening influence of Franciscan philosophy upon his life
and work.

Francis Thompson has been acclaimed " the essential poet
of essential Christianity," for, though fully deserving to be
called "one of Orpheus' dazzling train," much of the high
beauty of his work is due to the Catholic basis on which it
rests, and to the analogies within it, drawn from Catholic faith
and ceremonial. His writings have been well said to mark
" the return of the nineteenth century to Thomas k Kempis."
He was a skilled artificer in jeweled words who wrought in
mediaeval language filagrees as marvelously intricate as those
wrought by Cellini in mediaeval gold. Rejoicing in an omni-
present consciousness of the Divine Immanence in all things,
he succeeded in cloaking them vividly and completely with the
Divine Presence. Catholic in his manner. Catholic in his mat-
ter, Thompson taught that man's true food is immortal bread

Digitized by

Google

1918.] " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " 291

and wine, that " in Christ centres and is solved that supreme
problem of life — the marriage of the Unit with the Sum,"
since " in Him is perfectly shown forth the All for one, and
One for all, which is the justificatory essence of that sub-
stance we call Kingship," and hence that only in a universal
union of men with their Mother, the Church, shall the world
ultimately find salvation.

Such, viewing his work in its larger aspect, is his message,
and we have read it in vain unless the memory of his lily-filled
thoughts comes, with a strong and tender impetus, to pour
over the whole of life with its harsh unrest, its uncompas-
sionate fret, its empty strivings in a bafDed maze, the precious
ointment of his vision. Time was when Thompson was dis-
paraged as the poet of a circle, whereas now he is hailed as a
knight of the great highway, a poet of the school of Shake-
speare, the disciple of Milton, the familiar of Pope and Dry-
den, the affinity of Crashaw and Patmore, in sympathy with
the Lake poets, a companion spirit with Shelley and Keats and
worthy of sharing ** the roseal lightnings burning 'mid their
hair." In his highest expression of emotion, in the perfection
of his form, his gorgeous imagery is no longer a veil between
his thought and common understanding. His splendid verse is
like some symphony in stone, like the grand old cathedral of
Chartres, the secret of whose material loveliness is lost, but
whose alluring charm is a quick and abundant source of pleas-
ure. It was not until death brought a merciful finale to a life
crowned rather with the thorn than with the laurel, however,
that the general reading public realized that a great tonic force
had been at work in their midst; a prophet had been among
them and they knew him not, a prophet singing

the songs of Sion
By the streams of Babylon.

Thompson's writings are permeated with a peculiar and
very definite philosophy; all through the poet's work appears
his own perception that he has tobogganed to death; his words
come trippingly because his lips bleed; he sings because he has
been struck dumb by God. By a subtle alchemy of the spirit,
his wretchedness was transmuted into the ethereal substance
of art and out of his losses he enriched humanity. One does
not possess the true talisman that admits to his magnificence

Digitized by

Google

292 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD '' [June,

until one has acquired something of an insight into Franciscan
ideals, something of the wise joyousness and childishness of a
Brother Leo, something of that distinctively Franciscan inti-
macy with sacred things, that captivating, audacious famil-
iarity with the divine, which, however refined, is always in-
expressibly shocking to the puritan mind, Catholic or Protes-
tant. For, of the various influences which helped mold the
character of the man, one perceives the most salutary to have
been that of the Order of his seraphic namesake, of which he
was a devout Tertiary.

At the time Thompson was doing his best work, the revival
in England of interest in things Franciscan, was well under
way, and the books produced upon Franciscania were almost as
numerous as the proverbial leaves of Vallombrosa. That he
should have aided in giving form and volume to the movement
seems inevitable. Thompson's mysticism was in the true
lineal Franciscan descent; he knew that the way is long and
that we arrive, not by choosing our path, but by treading the
thorns and briars of the road on which our feet have been set.
He was a man who felt in every ripple of a stream, in every
yielding of the earth, in every tint of the sky, in every call of
the wind, in the splendor of sunset and in the glamour of
moonrise the operations of a conscious, unseen Power that is
craving audience and converse with His creation. With
Francis Thompson, mysticism was " morality carried to the nth
power.*' Always orthodox, the passing visions that came
to him as a poet were merged into the abiding Vision that
possessed him as a mystic. **The sanity of his mysticism,*'
someone has observed, ** is the great value to the present gen-
eration. A high individual experiencing of purgation, illumi-
nation and union, a quiet constancy in the corporate life, and
discipleship as well as leadership; what combination more
needed than this for our * uncourageous day? * " For Thomp-
son the facts of life were a perpetual vibration, a flashing and
shading of God's paradoxes. Spiritual, idealistically and im-
personally so, he was utterly a creature of dreams. All wav-
ering substance of the visible world was to him a Gobelins
tapestry woven by the secret fingers of the Omnipotent. This
perception was no mere fugitive one, but the companion of his
hours and the inspiration of his being. Always he heard a
higher voice above the earth's discordant music; to him

Digitized by

Google

1918.] " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " 293

From sky to sod

The world's unfolded blossom smells of God.

Though St. Francis sought first the Kingdom of God and
His justice, and never strove to divert the cause of art or to
force poetry to take a new direction, these things were added
unto him, and among those to whom art and letters owe an in-
calculable debt we must assuredly reckon the Poverello of
Assisi. The Brownings, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Ruskin and
Symonds, among others, all tended to bring Italy into the
foreground of English thought during the latter Victorean
period, while Sabatier, with his interesting, although rather
objectionable. Life of St. Francis, and Ozanam, with his
Poites Franciscains, helped swell the ever-flowing tide of Fran-
ciscan literature at this time. For the unconventional Thomp-
son, the grand manner, the glorious recklessness of the Fran-
ciscan life, must have had an irresistible fascination. He fre-
quently visited the monasteries of the Order at Olton, Crawley
and Pantasaph. With several Friars he was on terms of the
most intimate friendship, and a few had his intellectual con-
fidence. His fine nostalgia for spiritual things put him en rap-
port with the Franciscan mood, and time and again when
almost slain by life, which is coarse and vulgar when it touches
his type, the unutterable peace of Franciscan places eased the
tragedy of his vicissitudes. With an exquisite courtesy the
Capuchins showered upon him corporal as well as spiritual
works of mercy.

In Richard de Bary's Franciscan Days of Vigil, we find a
deUghtf ul little picture of the poet's life among his ** Brothers
and most dear Friends:" "The centre of interest in the
household was the poet, Francis Thompson, who spent the
summer of that year in a neighboring cottage. Walks in the
late evening did not result in much conversation; but at eve*
ning gatherings in my room the poet used often to join the
party, and argued with vigor and persuasiveness on favorite
topics. The Franciscans had learnt a kind of art of drawing
their mystical guest into conversation. The way was to intro-
duce a subtle contradiction to his pet theories, which would in
a moment produce a storm of protesting eloquence."

At Pantasaph, he wrote Ex Ore Infantium for the Fran-
ciscan Annals, his verses on St. Anthony in the Life by Father
Marianus and much of his prose, for instance Sanctity and

Digitized by

Google

294 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " [June,

Song and the very Franciscan Health and Holiness, described
as •• A Study of the Relations between Brother Ass, the Body,
and his Rider, the Soul." Here, too, he polished up those offer-
ings grouped under the title of New Poems. The deep, in-
ternal Franciscan character in the man was heightened by his
daily companionship with the gentle Friars during these op-
portune periods of respite from the world's cruelty. As a Ter-
tiary, Thompson was a member of an Order of Penance not
only by profession and choice but by circumstances. Reared
amidst the purring softness of a comfortable home, with the
education of a gentleman and the highly-strung temperament
of an artist, he frequently found his only home the street, his
only refuge from the elements a railway arch or a cabman's
stand, his only means of repose a bench in the park, his only
emplo3rment that of the ordinary vagrant or casual tramp,
selling matches, shining shoes, fetching cabs, holding horses,
running errands.

Yet, in all his writings, there is not one word of revolt, not
one hint of rebellion against the providence of God. On the
contrary, his devotion to the Lady Poverty was absolute; his
resignation to the Divine Will genuinely Franciscan. Though
he tells us in one of his poems of the awful ruin of his early
manhood;

In the rash lustihood of my young powers,

I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me,
amidst the shattered remnants of his broken years he led a
life of appalling mortification in atonement for his indiscretions.
Hence he had an open window into the realm of Franciscan
thought and no wall existed between his mind and that of the
Umbrian Poverello. He was not merely a great Catholic poet,
he was a great Franciscan poet. Thus the threefold motive
power of Francis Thompson's verse is his Franciscan tradi-
tion and outlook, his perpetual sense of the unseen and his
wonderful sjrmpathy with nature. These are the three strings
of his lyre and they are always in harmony.

Thompson was not a poet of the street. He did not attempt
to make articulate the monstrous poetry of the great city in
which he suffered so much; he did not endeavor to portray its
chaos of sound, its prismatic glare, its barbaric spirit, its riot-
ous profanity, its miasmas and its perfumes, its passions and

Digitized by

Google

1918.] " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " 295

its mockeries, its frail humanities and its ribald youth. The
romance of roof-tops, the mystery of slum alleys, and the
leprous canker of urban iniquity all failed to strike his fancy.
The call came to him from the countryside. The poppy that
sways in the grass " like a yawn of fire," the silvered fin of a
fish as it flashes through deep water, the troubled gray lights of
morning, the sweet breath of blossoms, the butterfly sunsets,
the young May moon, *' flying up, with its slender white wings
spread, out of its nest" — these are some of .the things with
which his genius is concerned. He *' companioned nature in
her bed-chamber.'' But nature was for Thompson, as for
every Franciscan, only a sacramental veil of divine loveliness.
He would have us see the other world everywhere in this:

The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces.
That miss the many-splendored thing.

Thompson was a stylist, a seeker for the phrase, for the
unusual word. He revels in fine distinctions, in delicate Shad-
ings of words, and possesses a marked susceptibility to sense
impressions, particularly those of color, and one turns from
the garish reds and yellows of present-day poetasters to his
magnificent purple and gold with genuine relief. The aspect
of the sunset sky, the thrall of dusk and the solemnity of eve-
ning invests all his utterance. The rising and setting of the
sun was to Thompson a " type memorial," a figure of Christ
giving vibrant life to the earth, and this supreme phenomenon
of nature is the true symbol of his life and poetry. Much of
the sublimated sestheticism discoverable in St. Francis' Canti-
cle of the Sun permeates his poems on this, his favorite sub-
ject. His art in words may be compared with Turner's.
Thompson, too, is a painter of skies, and his pictures are mar-
velous in their exuberant color. For many, his magnificence is
overpowering; his artistry, his involution, his inversion are
stumbling blocks rather than stepping stones, but those who
follow him up the dizzy heights, he rewards with wonderful
gifts of sheer beauty and grandeur—" as having nothing, yet
possessing all things, as poor, yet making many rich." The
same paradox which is seen in the humble Assisian's building
of the Milan Cathedral is evident in the life of Thompson; the

Digitized by

Google

296 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " [June,

pangs of pain might prune his spirit but could not destroy the
Ivory Tower of his verse. Witness the wealth of lofty imagery
in the opening of his splendid Orient Ode:

Lo» in the sanctuaried East,
Day, a dedicated priest,

In all his robes pontifical exprest,
Lifteth slowly, lifteth sweetly,
From out its Orient tabernacle drawn.

Yon drbM sacrament confest
Which sprinkles benediction through the dawn;
And when the grave procession's ceased
The earth with due illustrious rite
Blessed, — ere the frail jfingers featly
Of twilight, violet-cassocked acolyte.

His sacerdotal stoles unvest —
Sets, for high close of the mysterious feast.
The sun in august exposition meetly

Within the flaming monstrance of the West.

Observe how, in his Ode to the Setting Sun, his Catholic
figures are heightened in beauty and poetic grandeur by their
juxtaposition with pagan classical illusions:

Thou dost image, thou dost follow

That King-Maker of Creation,
Who, ere Hellas hailed Apollo,

Gave thee, angel-god, thy station;
Thou art of Him a type memorial.
Like Him thou hang's! in dreadful pomp of blood
Upon thy Western rood;

And His stained brow did veil like thine tonight
Yet lift once more Its light,
And, risen, again departed from our ball.
But when It set on earth arose in Heaven.

And again, in To A Poet Breaking Silence:

Teach how the crucifix may be

Carven from the laurel tree.

Fruit of the Hesperides

Burnish take on Eden-trees,

The Muses' sacred grove be wet

With the red dew of Olivet,

And Sappho lay her burning brows

In white Cecelia's lap of snows!

Digitized by

Google

1918.] " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " 297

While I am on the subject of Thompson's addresses to the
sun, I cannot omit this typically Franciscan rhapsody. Note
the touching reference to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and
the pertinence of his query : What doth it profit a man if he
gain the whole sun and lose the true Orient, Christ?

Yea, in glad twinkling advent, thou dost dwell

Within our body as a tabernacle !

Thou bittest with thy ordinance

The jaws of Time, and thou dost mete

The unsustainable treading of his feet.

Thou to thy spousal universe

Art Husband, she thy Wife and Church;

Yea, biune in imploring dumb.

Essential Heavens and corporeal Earth await.

The spirit and the Bride say : Come !

Lo, of thy Magians I the least

Haste with my gold, my incenses and myrrhs,

To thy desired epiphany, from the spiced

Regions and odorous of Song's traded East.

Thou for the life of all that live

The victim daily born and sacrificed;

To whom the pinion of this longing verse

Beats but with fire which first thyself did give.

To thee, O Sun — or is't perchance to Christ?

St. Francis would call the sun his brother and the moon
and the stars his sisters, for they all belonged to his Father
and. theirs, God. Thompson too, was a "starry amorist" and
he thought of the heavenly bodies as constantly as most men
think of their meals. Like the Seraph of Assisi, Thompson
also was a Little Brother to the birds, " the sweet birds of the
Lord " he called them. He sings of A Fallen Yew:

Sad tree, whose perishing boughs
So few birds house!

and in Manus Animam Pinxit, pictures the return of a swallow
thus:

Sweet Summer ! unto you this swallow drew,
By secret instincts inappeasable,

That did direct him well,
Lured from his gelid North which wrought him wrong.
Wintered of sunning song; —

Digitized by

Google

298 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " [June,

By happy instincts inappeasable.

Ah yes ! that led him well,
Lured to the untried regions and the new

Climes of auspicious you;
To twitter there and in his singing dwell.

Birds have always possessed many claims to the attention
of Franciscans. Bonaventure relates that when St. Francis
died, the birds left their nests after sunset and flew around the
little room in the Portiuncula, to say as it were, a last fare-
well to their friend, and while he lived, they fluttered in a cir-
cle over his head when he preached, forming, one might say,
a figure of the halo he was later to wear in heaven. It is not
alone the beauty, power of song, or instinct of birds which has
attracted poets in all ages; it is their human attributes besides.
Man exhibits hardly a trait which he will Aot find in the life of
a bird and hence our feathered friends have thus become
symbolic of certain human characteristics; Shakespeare makes
over six hundred references to birds or bird-life and if we rob
Wordsworth's verses of their birds, how sadly mutilated what
remained would be! By a comradeship with birds we are
brought within certain ennobling influences of nature which
would otherwise be foreign to us.

Stars, birds, flowers, children — these were a passion with
Thompson, and ever in his poetry we are wafted to the border-
land of the unseen, and are shown that the background of
Franciscan fancy rests on the things of the spirit, that every
obvious material fact owes its value to the idea that lies behind
it. Even in A Corymbus For Autumn the seraphic strain ap-
pears and we have this description of nightfall in a Franciscan
monastery:

The calm hour strikes on yon golden gong.

In tones of floating and mellow light
A spreading summons to even-song:
See how there
The cowlfcd night
Kneels on the Eastern sanctuary stair.
What is this feel of incense everjrwhere?

Clings it round folds of the blanch-amiced clouds,
Upwafted by the solemn thurifer,

The mighty Spirit unknown,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " 299

That swingeth the slow earth before the embannered Throne?

Or is't the Season under all these shrouds
Of light, and sense and silence, makes her known

A presence everywhere.

An inarticulate prayer,
A hand on the soothed tresses of the air?

But there is one hour scant
Of this Titanian, primal liturgy;

As there is but one hour for me and thee.
Autumn, for thee and thine hierophant.

Of this grave ending chant.

Round the earth still and stark
Heaven's death-lights kindle, yellow spark by spark.
Beneath the dreadful catafalque of the dark.
Like

The Assisian who kept plighted faith to three.

To Song, to Sanctilude and Poverty,
Thompson does not fail to regard every form of trouble as a
fragment of holy joy. In a commentary on St. Francis he
wrote : ** Pain, which came to man as a penalty, remains with
him as a consecration; his ignominy, by a Divine ingenuity, he
is enabled to make his exaltation. Man, shrinking from pain,
is a child shuddering on the verge of the water, and crying,
* It is so cold ! ' How many among us, after repeated lesson-
ings of experience, are never able to comprehend that there
is no special love without special pain? To such St. Francis
reveals that the Supreme Love is itself full of Supreme Pain.
It is fire, it is torture; his human weakness accuses himself of
rashness in provoking it, even while his soul demands more
pain, if it be necessary for more Love. So he revealed to one
of his companions that the pain of his stigmata was agoniz-
ing, but was accompanied by a sweetness so intense as made
it ecstatic to him. Such is the preaching of his words and ex-
ample to an age which understands it not Pain is. Pain is
inevadable. Pain may be made the instrument of joy. It is
the angel with the fiery sword guarding the gates of the lost
Eden. The flaming sword which pricked man from Paradise
must wave him back." This basic paradox of Franciscanism,
this looking upon all affliction as something to rejoice over, is
reborn thus:

Is my gloom, after all.
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

Digitized by

Google

300 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " [June,

Yet despite his soaring aspiration, intense spiritual pas-
sion and constant preoccupation with the problems of the in-
ward life, there are times when his earnest spirit unburdens
itself of its weighty load and his verse becomes charmingly
naive if not vivacious. He is a genuine artist, and, as is the
function of the artist, in the words of Joseph Conrad, he
" speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense
of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity and
beauty and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all
creation — and to the subtle but invincible conviction of soli-
darity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts
to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in
illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other,
which binds together all hiunanity — the dead to the living and
the living to the unborn." Thompson's versatility is shown
in his poems on children, notably in The Making of Viola, The
Poppy, The Daisy, To Monica Thought Dying and To My God-
child. In the language of Father David Bearne, S.J., he him-
self had " the sancta simplicitas of the true poet and the real
child." He strove to remain young in spirit, since " Unless ye
become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of
Heaven." The power of childhood's alluring charm over him
is shown in these lines from To My Godchild:

Then as you search with unaccustomed glance

The ranks of Paradise for my countenance,

Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod

Among the bearded counselors of God;

For if in Eden as on earth are we,

I sure shall keep a younger company;

Pass where their rangM gonfalons

The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns,

The dreadful mass of their enridgid spears;

Pass where majestical the eternal peers.

The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet —

A silvern segregation, globed complete

In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;

Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,

Your cousined clusters, emulous to share

With you the roseal lightnings burning *mid their hair;

Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven: —

Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " 301

" The bearded counselors of God " is strongly reminiscent
of the good Capuchins of Pantasaph. True to his Franciscan
traditions, Thompson never wanders far along the path of
poesy without some mention of immortal Mary — " the boasted
jewel of our sinful race,** " in whom man is saturate in God:**

She that is Heaven's Queen

Her title borrows,
For that she, pitiful,

Beareth our sorrows.
So thou, Regina mi^

Spes infirmorum;
With all our grieving crowned

Mater dolorumi

One does not soon forget the beautiful poem Assumpta
Maria with its haunting refrain. Agios Athanatos, or these lines
from the " After Strain ** to the Ode to the Setting Sun:

Therefore, O tender Lady, Queen Mary,

Thou gentleness that dost enmoss and drape

The cross' rigorous austerity.

Wipe thou the blood from wounds that needs must gape.

" Lo though suns rise and set, but crosses stay,
I leave thee ever," saith she, ** light of cheer."

'Tis so: yon sky still thinks upon the Day,
And showers aerial blossoms on his bier.

There is another strikingly Franciscan characteristic about
the man to which I wish to call particular attention, and that is
the rare virtue, conspicuous in Thompson, of gratitude. In
Sister Songs he tells with an irresistible pathos of the time
when he staggered, starving and sick unto death, through the
terrible London streets and one of the city's poor, bedraggled
harridans outstretched the hand of mercy:

Once, bright Sylviola! in days not far.
Once — in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt
My dreams, a grim, unbidden visitant —

Forlorn and faint and stark
I had endured through watches of the dark.

The abashless inquisition of each star.

Digitized by

Google

302 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " [June,

Yea, was the outcast mark

Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny;

Stood bound and helplessly
For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me;
Sufifered the trampling hoof of every hour

In night's slow-wheelid car;
Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length

From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength,

I waited the inevitable last.
Then there came past
A child; like thee a spring flower; but a flower
Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring,

And through the city's streets blown withering.
She passed — O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!
And of her own scant pittance did she give.

That I might eat and live;
Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive.

As long as English literature survives, Thompson's poetry
will be read, '' and that which she hath done shall be told for
a memory of her " and, let us hope, " much will be forgiven her
because she hath loved much,"

When he had finally arrived, he did not forget that re-
gion which had been the scene of his travail, ** a region whose
hedgerows have set to brick, whose soil is chilled to stone;
where flowers are sold and women, where men wither and
the stars,*' but rather, he strove valiantly by prayer and pen
and purse to help his erstwhile companions in misfortune, call-
ing for assistance upon those knights of the brown frock and
the cord '"enrolled under the banner of the Stigmata," his
fellow Tertiaries.

And now, I am come to that indubitable masterpiece of
prophetic song, in the writing of whidi Thompson did yeoman
service in the cause of religion and shed a new and everlast-
ing glory on Catholicism — The Hound of Heaven. To read this
poem is to have a stimulating literary and psychical adven-
ture. "As a religious poem it stands for all the world and
for all time, and, by a right royal of its own, claims peerage
with the psalmist for range, with St. Paul for virility of argu-
ment and with St. Augustine for greatness of thought and dic-
tion." It is a wonderful sermon in verse, this poem, a strik-
ing development of the stupendous truth that the love of God

Digitized by

Google

1918.] " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " 303

surpasseth aU things and that His Mercy and Charity ruleth
over aU. It is full of a fine and significant symbolism, posses-
sing aU the subtle harmonies of a symphony. The poet*s
highly concrete style floods the theme with a perfect riot of
color» and one is reminded of nothing so much in literature
as of one of the splendid frescoes of Tintoret. It is an elab-
orated pageant of the author's own life in which his longing
soul is pursued by grace divine and seeking rest, finds none
save in the Lord. The poem presents bewitching powers of
presentation — ^the glory of its art, like love, fear and the
majesty of night can only be felt and never forgotten. Its im-
pressiveness is enduring; its vitality ultimate. It is a chaste
and elegant beauty pulsing with the deep surge of hiunan emo-
tions, a divine orchestration destined to endure and reveal in
Francis Thompson a poet of unique and intimate charm, a
resonant column in the House of Song.

The Hound of Heaven has a prose paraUel in the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius, according to the Rev. J. F. X. O'Con-
nor, S J., who has elucidated his thesis in a profoundly inter-
esting book, and in truth, many striking similarities exist be-
tween the two human documents, but to me it has also the
ever-recurring Franciscan note, for me there is also a hint of
the extraordinary Dies irse of Thomas of Celano, and also,
perhaps, a hint of Fra Jacopone da Todi. Its bewilderingly
intricate ornamentation is redolent, too, of Dante who, like
Thompson, was a Tertiary of St. Francis and who, like Thomp-
son, strove for the glor^cation of the Church of Christ on
earth and the reunion of all mankind with God and the saints
in heaven. Thompson desired to bring the modem unbeliev-
ing world back to faith and spirituality. ^ To be the poet of
the return to nature,** said he, "is somewhat; but I would be
the poet of the return to God,** and thus he made all things of
earthly knowledge flash a revelation of divine governance
and the limitless love of God. Nothing is more needed today
to meet the countless demands of the suffering world's need
than his spirit of unworldliness, poverty and mortification
acquired at the foot of the Cross and reflecting the spirit of
Christ; nothing else will banish from society the selfishness and
egotism, which make it shrink from the mystery of pain and
suffering, and stir it to the heroism and self-sacrifice bom of a
vision beyond the bounds of this passing life. The Hound of

Digitized by

Google

304 " THE POET OF THE RETURN TO GOD " [June,

Heaven has vindicated the truth and necessity of man's ideals,
it has taught human charity and brotherhood, it has elevated
and refined human emotions, it has soothed human sorrow; for
many, it has broadened and deepened and made smooth the
whole river of life. In the intellectual ranks of England,
where a great cry for spiritual things has been going up ever
since the Oxford Movement, it has been a dynamic force for
the ancient Faith. The thoughtful can no longer endure the
blind tenure of mutually defeating propositions which con-
stitutes the "beautiful comprehensiveness" of Anglicanism;
they are rejecting skepticism and returning to dogmatism, they
are doubting nothing and are believing everything.

One can but conjecture how many of the thousands of
elect souls, who have helped swell the Romeward flood flowing
from the Oxford Movement, found their inspiration in Thomp-
son's treasured message. One imagines that the spiritual urge
imparted, has been little less than the impetus given by the
preaching of his Seraphic Father. At the word of St. Francis,
a revival of primitive Christianity sprang into existence during
a crucial period when, as now, all civilization seemed unhinged
by reason of the almost universal decay in morals. The whole
face of Christendom was renewed by the preaching and exam-
ple of the new Abraham. He taught men afresh that the com-
mands of Jesus Christ could be literally obeyed and the Ser-
mon on the Mount was as applicable to the men of the mid-
dle and all succeeding ages, as to the first age of Christian his-
tory.

In the person of St. Francis, Jesus of Nazareth lived
again for the instruction and edification of the whole world as
truly as He had ever done in any one individual since the great
Apostle to the Gentile world said, " I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me." " He preached deliverance to the captives " first
in Assisi, and having established the franchise among his fellow-
citizens there, he later organized the Third Order and through
it destroyed feudal tyranny and laid the foundation of demo-
cratic institutions. This same Third Order, operating with aU
its ancient eflBciency, constitutes today a powerful influence in
counteracting the effect of the false philosophy of Socialism,
when it gives to the troubled world, through a Tertiary, the
mighty lesson of The Hound of Heaven.

Digitized by

Google

INTERNATIONAL LAW.

BY MOORHOUSE I. X. MILLAR, S.J.

in.

Modern Thought and Scholastic Philosophy.

I HEN this War is ended, as it must be sometime,
and the foreign offices and judicial tribunals and
publicists of the world resume the peaceable dis-
cussion of international rights and duties, they
will certainly have to consider not merely what
there is left of certain specific rules, but also the fundamental
basis of obligation upon which all rules depend."^ These
words of Hon. Elihu Root point clearly to the gravest and most
important problem, demanding urgent and immediate settle-
ment once peace is permanently established. It should mean
nothing less than laying the comer-stone of a new civilization.
But how is this problem to be solved? Whither will the
leading minds of the world turn in their search for guiding
principles? Not to the immediate past, certainly, for the ethi-
cal hoUowness of the nineteenth century has been one of the
most surprising revelations of the War. That civilization, once
our boast, was suddenly discovered to have been merely drift-
ing.* Vorwdrts! VorwartsI had been the watchword. But
wonderingly content to " let the great world spin for ever down
the ringing grooves of change,'* no popular oracle had deemed
it worth the while to ask himself whither it might all be tend-
ing. Now, that we have been brought face to face with what
Ralph Adams Cram has most aptly termed ** modernism in
arms,*' our best and most conscientious thinkers are forced to
sound depths hitherto unheeded in the hope of finding some
sure anchorage for the future.

Robert Browning, one of the most keenly critical and
judicious observers of the nineteenth century, gave a concrete
presentation of the main political fallacies of his time, in

^Proceedings of the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress, Section ▼!., In-
tematloiial Law, yoL vU.: "The Outlook for Intematloiial Law," p. 123.

•Our Drifting CivilixaHon, by L. P. Jacks. The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1917.
VOL. cvn.— 20

Digitized by

Google

306 INTERNATIONAL LAW [June,

Prince HohenstieUSchwangau, Saviour of Society. In the
light of present events, it stands out as one of the most remark-
able of his many dramatic monologues, and will repay the
careful study of any who may care to take it up, with the
added interest of recent developments. We would call par-
ticular attention to the passage where the poet puts his finger
on the great ethical error that has so vitiated political thought
and political action ever since the time of Luther and Machia-
velli :

Now, this had proved the dry-rot of the race

.... that i' the old day when was need

They fought for their own liberty and life,

Well did they fight, none better, whence such love

Of fighting somehow still for fighting's sake

Against no matter whose the liberty

And life, so long as self-conceit should crow

And clap the wing, while justice sheathed her claw.

.... So the dry-rot had been nursed into

Blood, bones and marrow, that, from worst to best

All — clearest brains and soundest hearts ....

All had this lie acceptable for law

Plain as the sun at noonday — " War is best

Peace is worst; peace we only tolerate

As needful preparation for new war:

War may be for whatever end we will —

Peace only as the proper help thereto.

Such is the law of right and wrong for us

.... for the other world

As naturally, quite another law."

The fruit of Luther's rebellion had been the separation of
religion and theology, faith and reason, Christianity and art,
morality and politics » with the consequence that, as one Ger-
man thinker expressed it: "We have grasped the secret of
power and without scruple treat questions of power as such.
In our world of thought a very considerable region has imper-
ceptibly been occupied by this new view of things and with-
drawn from the control of Christian ethics.'** Such views
shock us now that our consciences are stirred by the horrors of
the War. Yet despite President Wilson's assertion that they

* Hartmann Grisar, Luther, yol. ill., p. 4S0.

*M. Bade, ReUglon and Moral, 1898, quoted In Mausbach: Catholic Mora! Teach-
ing and its Antagoni»t», p. 81, i^gUffh translation.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 307

were regarded '* as rather the dream of miiids detached from
practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of Ger-
man destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers," *
the fact remains that our own universities as well as the uni-
versities of England and of France were fairly saturated with
the philosophy that has provided the pseudo-rational support
for that Kultur against which the world is now arrayed in self-
defence.

In all this broad country there is scarcely a professor in
any non-Catholic institution whose teaching, provided it have
an ethical bearing, does not betray the ear-mark of Kant's
dualism of pure and practical reason and its consequent sep-
aration of morality and politics. Browning might well say,
"Be Kant crowned King o' the castle in the air! " or Carlyle
justly describe Coleridge's Kantianism as "bottled moon-
shine." Such common-sense hints passed unheeded until the
Kantian doctrine, "right and the power of coaction signify
one and the same thing," ripened into practice and we began to
taste the bitter foreign fruit our professors had sought to root
in our own soil. As a natural result of this misplaced admira-
tion, the world was not only unprepared to meet the German
onslaught from a military point of view, but it is still intellect-
ually unprepared to down by reason what it instinctively re-
sists by force of arms.

A cursory review of the principles advanced by some re-
sponsible public men, for the solution of the problem stated
by Hon. Elihu Root at the opening of this article, will suffice
in evidence. In 1915, David J. Hill said: "Whatever reasons
there are for the authority of law between individuals of the
same nation, those same reasons exist and have equal force for
the authority of law between States."* The same idea was
reiterated by President Wilson in his War Message, April 2,
1917, when he declared : " We are at the beginning of an age
in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct
and of responsibility for wrong done, shall be observed among
nations and their governments that are observed among in-
dividual citizens of civilized States." And Lloyd George, ad-
dressing the British Unions January 5, 1918, strikes the same

^Fltm-dag Address,

* Proceedings of the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress, loc cit, "How can
the People of the American Countries best be Impressed with the Duties and Re-
sponsibilities of the State In International Law? *' p. 95.

Digitized by

Google

308 INTERNATIONAL LAW [June,

note in the statement, that ** as law has succeeded violence in
the settlement of individuals' disputes, so it is destined to set-
tle national controversies." So thoroughly do these statements
commend themselves now to the unsophisticated or disillus-
ioned conscience as both sound and true, that it is hard to
realize how their contrary could ever have been maintained.
Yet they mark what promises to be the most radical departure
from the past four centuries that has been made since the
beginning of the War. For one need only review the political
history of the nineteenth century with its Mettemichs, its Bis-
marcks and its Cavours, or take up any of the later theoretical
works on sociology and government to discern the depth to
which the Luthero-Kantian dualism had eaten its way into
" modern " thought.^ The confusion produced by this dualistic
view of life, is evident the moment we ask ourselves what are
those " reasons for the authority of law " or ** the standards
of conduct and responsibility" to which David J. Hill and
President Wilson appeal. Without clear and universally-
accepted ideas on these very points, the predictions of the
President and of Lloyd George can never be more than false
prophecies. Yet who would venture to assert that any such
agreement or unity of thought exists throughout the ** modern *'
world at present?

Modern thought has been atomic and centrifugal or else in
instances when it has set up a centre for itself, as in the case
of the Socialists and of the majority of German political think-
ers, it was discovered to have fixed on something that was
far from corresponding with the real and safe centre of rota-
tion in a fully rounded human life, an assumption ever bound
to result, under present anomalous and haphazard conditions,
in an increase of the tendencies towards centrifugal individ-
ualism.^ This has rendered all present discussion of future
international problems especially difficult; and the defect of the
efforts so far made to solve them are due to the necessity for com-
promise between what would be acceptable to " modem " opin-

*For an able discussion of this subject, see Completing the Reformation, by
Edmund T. Shanahan, S.T.D., The Cathouc World, July-December, 1914.

* As we stated some years ago *' a civilization will be great and vigorously pro-
gressive in proportion to its power of assimilating or rejecting, through the force
of underlying dynamic principles, fully in accord with human nature, all those
heterogeneous elements that are brought into It from without or that have grown up
in its midst" America, April 1, 1916, The Medieeval Achievement, see also Human
Nature and Ciuilization, March 31, 1917.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 309

ion on the one hand» and what might be the dictates of dis-
illusioned public conscience on the other. This much» however,
may be said for results thus far attained, that the solutions of-
fered are many of them true in themselves; yet, considered in
their relation to the confused state of modem thought, they
have almost invariably implied the removal of the difficulty
to some remoter question still awaiting settlement. To men-
tion only those instances most deserving of consideration : ** A
steadfast concert of peace can never be maintained," in Presi-
dent Wilson's opinion, " except by a partnership of democratic
nations," and this, as he adds, ''must be a league of honor, a
partnership of opinion."

But what, we might ask, is to be the basis of such a part-
nership? Democracy, as Carlyle pointed out long ago, has its
own problem to solve which is itself conditional to the solu-
tion of the international question on the basis proposed by the
President;. for the words of Carlyle still hold true: " How, in
conjunction with inevitable democracy, indispensable sover-
eignty is to exist: certainly it is the hugest question ever here-
tofore propounded to mankind! " On the other hand, in the
view of Hon. Elihu Root, " Many States have grown so great
that there is no power capable of imposing punishment upon
them except the power of the collective civilization outside of
the offending States. Any exercise of that power must be
based upon public opinion." With this view Cosmos * would
seem to be in full agreement when he says : '' As a matter of
fact, the only practical sanction of international law is the
public opinion of the civilized world." Yet here again one
cannot help but inquire: Quis custodial custodes? What is to
keep that opinion from error and give it unanimity? or, since
durable peace "is a by-product of justice," what is to con-
tribute to " the exaltation of the idea of justice, not only as be-
tween men within a nation, but as between nations them-
selves? " **» Just here, we venture to think Cosmos or, as there
is reason to believe, ex-President Taft, has touched upon a
more solid solution than any whose thoughts and suggestions
have come under our notice. " The country's system of pub-
lic education," says he, ** must be taken in strong hand, purged
of much of its sentimentality and weak and futile philoso-
phizing, and made more and more a genuine preparation of

• The Basis of a Durable Peace, p. 102. » ibid,, p. 122.

Digitized by

Google

310 INTERNATIONAL LAW [June,

American youth for intelligent and helpful participation in
American life.** " This judgment, strange to say, is corrobo-
rated, in substance, by a passage in De Quincey. Writing in
1846 before the appearance of the Junker and the Jingo, before
Bismarck had falsified the Ems telegram and before Lincoln,
who knew the people better than most, had admitted that all
the people might be fooled some of the time, he said : '* Neither
. in France nor England could a war now be undertaken with-
out a warrant from the popular voice. This is a great step in
advance; but the final step for its extinction will be taken by a
new and Christian code of international law. This cannot be
consummated until Christian philosophy shaU have traversed
the earth and reorganized the structure of society." "

. Granted the truth of this statement, it remains for us to
determine whether such a philosophy is possible, or whether
such already exists, capable of reorganizing society and of
providing a basis in reasoned ethical thought for the inter-
national law of the future. Thus far, one thing is certainly
clear. We cannot find it among the mutually divergent, one-
man, modem systems which have but this in common: that
they owe their origin to false Luthero-Kantian assumptions
and have all contributed to that modem chimera: modernism;
which however apparently antithetical, is in reality twin-
brother to the " modernism in arms " against which the armies
of the world are now contending for the righteous cause of
liberty.

For the modernist begins by adopting the Luthero-Kan-
tian denial of the common-sense conviction that the mind can
attain to a certified knowledge of an order of things objective
to ourselves. Hence, since the laws of logic hold for error no
less than for truth, he " can do no other " than maintain the
autonomy of the individual and the autocracy of the State.
If the human mind is, as he would have it, deprived of the
power of holding with certainty to any common and univer-
sally valid principles of agreement, reason ceases to be a real
social force, and to maintain order among men there is nothing
left, but that brute force, ** with the will to power," should do
its utmost to herd the world together into the one fold of im-
perial despotism. Writing of Kant and of the portentous in-
fluence of Grerman philosophy, the German poet and Jew:

" tbid^ p. lia. Italics oun. <* Christianitg as an Organ of Political Movement,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 311

Heinrich Heine, who died in 1856, uttered this striking prophecy
of the present War: "The German revolution will not be
any more gentle and cheerful for having been preceded by the
critique of Kant, the transcendental idealism of Fichte or the
naturalistic philosophy. These contain within themselves
stored-up revolutionary forces which only await the fitting
moment to break forth and fill the world with fear and won-
der. Then will appear Kantists who, no less impatient at any
mention of pity in the realm of facts than in that of ideas, and
utterly void of all mercy, will turn up with axe and sword the .
very soil of our European life, that they may root out of it
every remaining vestige of the traditions that bind us to the
past.''"

There is a philosophy, however, that contrasts with all
this almost as sharply as does the light of day with the dark-
ness of night. It is not modern, to be sure, in the present
acceptation of the term. Yet, though antedating the estab-
lishment of parliament and the beginnings of international
law, it has so kept in touch with what was sound in more
modern development, as to be still ahead of our own times in
many of its principles, some of which bear directly on the in-
ternational problem before us. Ever on the side of real de-
mocracy,** it incurred the suspicion of the despotic governments
of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and, of
all philosophical systems, it alone has contributed not only
most, but almost exclusively, to the clear definition of the ail-
too widely neglected requirements of international ethics. This
is the philosophy of Scholasticism.

Empirical in that it starts from the actualities of life.
Scholasticism is speculative in so far only that it reasons

>*De L'AUemagne, The whole passage, of which this Is only a part and In which
the return of Thor and the destruction of French Cathedrals Is predicted, may be
found in Ahb^ Van Loos* Kantisme et Modernisme, p. 209.

^* More than twenty years before the " model Parliament " of Edward I., St
Thomas voiced this democratic teaching: '*The ideal form of government is ttiat
wherein one is given power to preside over all, while under him are others hav-
ing governing powers, and yet a government of this kind is shared by all, both be-
cause all are eligible to govern and because the rulers are chosen by all." (la., 2ae.,
105 al.) And furthermore: "If a people among whom a custom is introduced
be free and able to make their own laws, the consent of the whole people, expressed
by a custom, counts for more in favor of a particular observance than does the
authority of the sovereign, who has not the power to frame laws except as repre-
senting the people." (la., 2ae., 97a., Sad., 3iem. See also Suarez: Defeiuto Fidei
Catholica, lib. ill., ch. 1-5.)

Digitized by

Google

312 INTERNATIONAL LAW [June,

within the bounds of the universal nature and order of things
as they are; or, as in the case of ethics, within the bounds of
things as they ought to be according to the essential demands
of man's God-given nature as it is. Unlike the "modern"
student of ethics and of law, for whom moral and judicial
aspects are merely the product of history, of national customs
and of varying conditions of life, and who, therefore, subordi-
nates the moral law to the influence of the times and to the
demands of fashionable opinion, the Scholastics have always
insisted upon the inward necessity and sanctity of the *' eter-
nal principles of justice and of right " to which President Wil-
son alluded in his Prayer-day proclamation. On the other
hand, like Burke's men of speculation, instead of exploding
general prejudices, they employed their sagacity to discover
the latent wisdom in them."

This has enabled John Neville Figgis to say of the Scholas-
tics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries : " The Jesuits
(he has overlooked the Dominican Vittoria and others who
were not Jesuits) laid the foundations of a new system partly
because of their modernity and partly owing to their conser-
vatism. They combined the new recognition of political facts
with ideals of unity, the older conception of law as an eternal

verity Without the one the conception of the States

as Juristic and equal persons is impossible, equal not in power
any more than are individuals, but in the fact of being able to
direct themselves to conscious ends; without the other the no-
tion of a unity of these persons and a bond binding them to-
gether, and certain limits of activity they may not overpass,
would not have been possible, or would have taken longer to
discern. The persistence of the notion of law natural, coupled
with the actual facts of widespread and increasing prevalence
of the Civil Law, its purest (?) outcome, and also the general
reorganization of the Canon Law, formed the only possible
atmosphere for that notion of legal obligation of contracts
which .... was the necessary condition and the true explana-
tion of the popularity of the doctrine of the original contract,
and is also at the very bottom of the whole system of
Grotius."" Mr. Figgis' testimony is interesting, in that he
was able to apprehend so much in a system he did not fully
understand, and is the more valuable as coming from one who

"Reflections on the French Revolution, "From Gerson to Grotins, p. 190.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INTERNATIONAL LAW 313

was more inclined to look for flaws in the Scholastic system
than to praise it."

Since "international duties are," according to David J.
Hill, "necessary corollaries of the true conception of the
State,*' and since, in this, he is in perfect accord with Scholastic
philosophy, the nature of the State as set forth in the teaching
of the Scholastics is briefly this: it rests on the grounds of
man's natural sociability, of his endowment by his Creator
with various rights and of his moral and intellectual imper-
fections. Should any of these grounds be absent, the State
would not be necessary. With the world and man, however, as
they are, there must be such things as societies independent of
each other and each having as its aim, not some particular
good, but the temporal felicity of all its members.

But as temporal felicity can only be attained by making
peace and order, wisdom and justice prevail, there must be
within the State a supreme authority which when lawfully
established has the right to the obedience of all the subject
members, because based on the ordinance of God, the Author of
nature. Whose law as made known to us by the light of natural
reason, is called the natural law. This natural law of the
Scholastics, be it further noted, should in no way be confused
with the natural law of Rousseau and of others who hold with
him; for that would be to confuse a portrait with its caricature."
And he who fails to grasp, at the start, the fully substantiated
doctrine of the Scholastics, that the ultimate objective source
and unchangeable rule of aU morality and all law, is found
in the eternal law of a personal God, cannot recognize the true
law of nature, nor need he attempt to understand or to judge
the ethical teachings of Scholastic philosophy.

The significance of the Scholastic concept of the natural
law and their theory of the State is evident when we consider
that, whereas today President Wilson says international law

"He entirely misrepresents the question of ProbablUsm, and falls to grasp
the real Scholastic conception of law. For the correct view on these points, see Maus-
bach dted abore.

"The prevalence of this confusion Is attested to In the following statement of
Mr. Charlemagne Tower, former minister of the United States to Austria-Hungary:
**The original theory of the law of nature has long ago disappeared before the
analysis and searching (?) discussions of modem Jurists and by the well-seoMoned
practice (Italics ours) of modem times, but the great principles of national in-
dependence and State sovereignty still remain universally accepted, and the teach-
ings of Grotlus as to the principles of rights and duties have been definitely ap-
proved by general consent of the nations.'* — Essays Political and Historical, p. 94.

Digitized by

Google

314 INTERNATIONAL LAW [June,

has " by painful stage after stage .... been built up, with mea-
gre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that
could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least,
of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded," it
was possible for the Scholastics to perceive, far ahead of their
own time, that : " just as in any one city or province, law comes
in through custom so through the customary moral usage of
the whole human race, the laws of nations are introduced.
And this was all the more possible since the precepts of this
law are both few and easily deduced from the natural law;
and so useful and in conformity to nature are they, that
though per se they are not absolutely necessary to safeguard
the moral law, yet they are very conformable to nature and in
themselves acceptable to all men.*' ^*

With this passage in mind. Sir Jamei^ Mackintosh says of
Suarez: '' He first saw that international law was composed not
only of the simple principles of justice applied to the inter-
course between States, but of those usages long observed in
that intercourse by the European race, which have since been
more exactly distinguished as the consuetudinary law acknowl*
edged by the Christian nations of Europe and America. On
this important point his views are more clear than those of his
contemporary Alberico Gentili. It must even be owned that
the succeeding intimation of the same general doctrine by
Grotius is somewhat more dark."*® And again Albert de
Lapradelle in his introduction to VattePs Law of Nations says:
" It would be vain to look in his work for a reflection of the
fine passage of Suarez on the solidarity of nations; but on the
other hand it would be too much to require in a diplomat of
the end of the eighteenth century, even though he were per-
meated with the spirit of the encyclopaedia, the same freedom
of speech as in a monk of the sixteenth." ^^ To this should be
added the testimony of Henry HaUam, which because of his
shallowness, superficiality and bias is the more to be credited
when it points with praise to anything that may concern
Scholastic teachings. "The fertility of those men," says he,
" who, like Suarez, superior to most of the rest, were trained
in the Scholastic discipline, to which I refer the methods of the

» Suaret, De Legibna, lib. ii., ch. xlx. sect. 9.
'^ Progress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 51.

» The Law of Nations, by E. de Vattel. Translated by C G. Fenwlck. Published
by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, p. 11t.

Digitized by

Google

1918,] INTERNATIONAL LAW 315

canonists and casuits, is sometimes smprising; their views are
not one-sided; they may not solve objections to our satisfac^
tion but they seldom suppress them; they embrace a vast com-
pass of thought and learning; they write less for the moment,
and are less under the influence of local and temporary preju-
dices than many who havelivedinbetter ages of philosophy." "
Thus, we find in Scholasticism the one system of philoso-
phy that has something of value to offer towards the solution
of the future international problem. To Hon. Elihu Roofs
question regarding " the fundamental basis of obligation ^ it
answers with Cardinal BeUarmine, that all ** law is a rule of
morals " binding in conscience, and that the obligation to ob-
serve the law, whether on the part of the individual or of the
nation, is something eternal and inmiutable and consequent
upon the eternal law of God; that first supreme law imparted
to us in the natural law and the ultimate source of all our
rights and duties.^ How truly fundamental all this is to gen-
uine human nature may be illustrated from these words of
Cosmos written almost in the spirit of Suarez: ** The individual
human being whose acts are controlled by an overmastering
sense of duty is not less a person, but more, than the individ-
ual human being whose acts are controlled by sheer selfishness.
What is true of men in this regard is also true of nations. A
nation, like an individual, will become greater as it cherishes
a high ideal and does service and helpful acts to its neighbors
whether great or small and as it codperates with them in
working toward a common end.**" But the Scholastics add
substance to such a statement by a clear reference to its real
ethical basis. " For the proper understanding of this present
question (of international law) it should be remembered that
civil society is per se a product of the natural order of things.
.... It has moreover a real personality, in a moral sense,
clearly, not in a physical one. It is evident also, on other
grounds, that there exist not one only, but a great number of
civil organizations each of which has its own proper vitality
and functions, one not depending upon the rule of another.
Such complete autonomy resides per se only in the ruling
authority that governs each. Hence there exist many civil cor-
porations, each independent of all others, which from the

" Ltterature of Europe, toI. 11., ch. 4, sect 1.

"De ControversHs, lib. lU., ch. 11. ••Loc. eit, p. lat.

Digitized by

Google

316 INTERNATIONAL LAW [June.

very requirements of the natural order sought to be considered
as real personalities. It must, therefore, be shown now that
this mutual independence by no means implies that these vari-
ous civil societies are not related one to another by certain
rights and natural duties, but that on the contrary they are
bound to recognize and respect each other's just claims and

their mutual obligations As man from his very nature is

destined to live in civil society, in which and through which
he must work out the perfection required of him, it follows
that the love which the natural law bids us have for others,
must be shown not only to men as individuals but also as mem-
bers of the State to which they belong, with due regard for the
perfection they have attained in their present civil brother-
hood. Moreover, the obligations which men are bound to ful-
fill in this respect are duties of well-doing which we call inter-
national duties. Consequently such obligations must rightly
be held to arise from the natural law.** ^*

Thus in their doctrines they will be found to be opposed
to both the militarist and the pacifist.** To the one by their in-
sistence that government exists for the good of the governed,
not for the exaltation of any abstract idea of the State : to the
other by their teaching that patrioism is a virtue, to sin against
which is to sin in the sight of God," and so Browning but
speaks the speculative mind of every great Scholastic, whether
mediaeval or modern, when he states the real ethical basis for
the " God wills it! ** of the true-hearted crusader of old: ^^

.... I foresee and 1 announce

Necessity of warfare in one case

For one cause : one way, I bid broach the blood

O' the world. For truth and right and only right

And truth — right, truth, on the absolute scale of God,

No pettiness of man's admeasurement —

In such case only, and for such one cause.

Fight your hearts out, whatever fate betide

Hands energetic to the uttermost!

Lie not! Endure no lie which needs your heart

And hand to push it out of mankind's path.

'•Sanctus Schimnl, SJ.: Dtsputattonea Philosophim Moralis, vol. ii., dlsp. 6;
De Jure InternationaU, sect 1, pp. 586, 587 (1891).

••De Vlttoria: Relectlonea Theologieas, vol. 1., De Jure BeUi Hispanorum in Bar-
baros (1557), p. 581.

" St Thomas, Summa, 2s., 2«., q. 101 al. «• Sanctus Schifflnl, loe, ciU, p. 030.

Digitized by

Google

SOME CAUSES OF THEOPHOBIA.

BY SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE, M.D., SCJ)., LL.D., F.R.S. K.S.G.

\NITIUM sapientiae timor Domini; no doubt, but it
is only the beginning, and when the fear is of a
certain kind no further progress may ever be
made, in fact quite the contrary, for it is apt to
engender an absolute revulsion from the idea of
a God. It is this kind of fear which the eminent Jesuit writer,
Wasmann, aUudes to when he says that ^in many scientific
circles there is an absolute Theophobia, a dread of the Creator.
I can only regret this,'* he continues, " because I believe that
it is due chiefly to a defective knowledge of Christian philoso-
phy and theology." That he is entirely correct as to the ex-
istence of this feeling, no one can doubt. Plenty of examples
might be quoted and one, which I think I have already made
use of in The Cathouc World, may once more be utilized. A
distinguished scientific writer alluding to the theories of Men-
del says that ** it is not so certain as we might like to think that
the order of these events is not predetermined.'* The signifi-
cant thing aboil^^^fhis quotation is that the writer expresses a
preference for a special view, namely, the absence of a deter-
miner, though science and scientific workers are supposed to
hold themselves entirely above all bias or preconceived ideas.
What is the cause of this? Why should people have this bias
— ^which they obviously have — against the idea of a God? Why
should they, apart from any particular evidence which may
weigh with them, actually desire, as clearly they do, that there
should be no such Being, and nothing higher than nature? I
have been asked this question and, having bestowed some
thought upon it, will try to make such answer as has occurred
to me.

There are persons not fully, as I think, cognizant of the
facts, who argue that there is always a moral failure prece-
dent to such denials of God. I should be far from saying that
there is not a considerable weakening of moral fiber, as evi-
denced by many of the statements of eugenists and the like,
and by the political nostrums of some who wrest science to a

Digitized by

Google

318 SOME CAUSES OF THEOPHOBIA [June,

purpose for which it was not intended. This no doubt is true,
but it is not the real argument advanced, and that argument, if
it implies moral failure in the persons with whom it is con-
cerned, has little genuine foundation in fact. Mr. Devas in his
very remarkable book. The Key to the World's Progress, gives
us the useful phrase ** post-Christians." These people are
really pagans living in the Christian era, retaining many of
the excellent qualities which they owe neither to nature nor to
paganism, but to the inheritance — ^perhaps involuntary and
unrecognized — of the influences of Christianity. Many of
them are kind, benevolent, scrupulously moral. They have
not learned to be such from nature, for nature does not teach
these lessons. Nor have they learned it from paganism for
these are not pagan virtues. They are an inheritance from
Christianity, and those who build argument as to the needless-
ness of religious faith, on the good deeds of those who do not
possess it, build on a foundation of sand. The answer to our
question is not forthcoming from this direction.

Others again will perhaps maintain the thesis that fashion
and fashionable opinion in science have a good deal to say to
this matter. No doubt there is something in this. It is much
easier to go with the tide than against it, and there are scien-
tific tides as truly as there are tides in thej/J^^/hion of dress.
There was at one time a Weismann tide which is now pretty
near dead low water. There was an antivitalistic tide which
is ebbing fast. When both of these were at full flood, it was a
hazardous thing for a young man who had his way to make in
the world, to take arms against them. Fashion nowadays is
not so set against the idea of a God as it was five and twenty
years ago. The materialistic tide is on the wane, and it is not
far from the truth to say that the incoming flood is that of
occultism, which the materialistic school dislikes and despises,
and with some reason, even more than it does ordinary theis-
tic opinions.

Then again there is the unquestionable fact that scientific
men have a strong objection to putting their trust in anything
which cannot be subjected either to scientific examination or
to experiment. In this no doubt there is more than a germ of
sound reason. ** Occam's razor '' is as valuable an implement
today as it ever was, and everyone wiU admit that we must ex-
haust all known causes before we proceed to postulate a new

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SOME CAUSES OF THEOPHOBIA 319

one- We have gone beyond the day of the absurd statement
that thought (which is of course unextended) is as much a
secretion from the brain as bile (which is equally of course
extended) is a secretion of the liver. No one nowadays would
commit himself to a statement of this sort, and people would
be chary of urging that we should not believe anything which
we cannot understand. I have myself heard a scientific man»
now dead this twenty years, make that statement in public,
forgetful of the fact that any branch of science we pursue will
supply us with a hundred problems we can neither understand
nor explain, yet the factors of which we cannot but admit.
But there is undoubtedly a dislike to accepting anything which
cannot be proved by scientific means, and a tendency to de-
scribe as mysticism everything which demands sometliing
more in the universe than the operations of physical and chem-
ical forces.

For myself, I firmly believe that this dislike of the idea of
a God, which exists in some minds, largely depends upon the
way children, or at least many of them outside the Catholic
Church, were brought up some fifty or sixty years ago. At
that time, in Protestant circles, the Evangelical Party was very
strong, and through Sunday and other schools it had the young
very much under its influence. My evidence on this subject is
of some value for I was brought up in such circles. I will sup-
plement it by a statement from that very remarkable book.
Father and Son, the truth of every word of which must be ob-
vious to those who were contemporaries of its author, and
brought up under similar conditions. The teachers of this
creed were never tired of instilling into their pupils the need
tor conversion, which was supposed to be a sudden opera-
tion — those who had undergone it could tell the exact moment
of the clock at which it took place — and a permanent opera-
tion which need never, in fact perhaps could never, be re-
peated. It was supposed to be eff'ected by what was called the
" acceptance of Christ,** and though it was spoken of as being
free to all, it was clear to some at least of the pupils that, how-
ever much they desired it, they could not get it. Yet they were
taught that until they were converted, every action performed
by them .was evil, and that if they died in that unconverted
condition they would most assuredly be damned for ever.

This was a terrible doctrine, especially for the young who

Digitized by

Google

320 SOME CAUSES OF THEOPHOBIA [June,

were perpetually harassed by the exponents of the creed by
being asked if they were saved, and told they were fools if
they were not, or did not know whether they were or not, and
that if they remained in that condition, their fate would be the
unenviable one already mentioned.

Associated with this gloomy creed, a new series of sins was
invented, as if there were not enough already in the world. It
was sinful to dance, even under the most domestic and proper
circumstances. It was a sin to play cards, even when there
was no money on the game. It was a sin to go to the
theatre, even to behold the most inspiring and instructive
of plays. In fact the view of God which was presented — ^I do
not say wilfully — to the youth of that period was that of a
kind of super-policeman — a hard-hearted policeman — ^with an
exaggerated code of misdoings, forever waiting round a cor-
ner to pounce on evil-doers and, one was obliged to think, ap-
parently almost pleased at having been able to catch them. It
need not be said that no disrespect is intended in this. It is a
simple and truthful statement of the kind of impression made
upon one person by the'teaching of that age and school. Is it
any wonder that persons brought up in such a creed should
experience a feeling of relief on learning that there is no God,
no sin, no punishment?

A writer of the scientific school of today alludes to the
delightful results for the human race when it has got rid of this
"bug-bear of sin." To me it seems pretty obvious that this
writer is alluding to the bug-bear of artificial sin invented by
professors of a gloomy creed of religion. It can hardly be
imagined that anyone would speak or write with pleasure and
satisfaction of escaping from the bug-bear of sins against mor-
ality or against one's neighbor, from the bug-bear of dishon-
esty and theft; of taking away a person's character; of carry-
ing off his wife. Surely it must be the invented crimes of thea-
tre-going and card-playing to which the writer in question is
referring. Father Wasmann in the passage already mentioned
laments that theophobists do not study some simple manual of
Catholic theodicy from which they would learn the real doc-
trine of Christianity, needless to say a very different thing
from the distorted form with which we have dealt.

Let me reinforce my statements by two or three examples
from the book of which I have spoken, namely. Father and

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SOME CAUSES OF THEOPHOBIA 321

Son. The first of these is a passage from the diary of the
mother of the son : " When I was a very little child. 1 used to
amuse myself and my brothers with inventing stories, such as
I had read. Having, as I suppose, naturally a restless mind and
busy imagination, this soon became the chief pleasure of my
life. Unfortunately my brothers were always fond of encour-
aging this propensity, and I found in Taylor, my maid, a still
greater tempter. I had not known there was any harm in it,
until 'Miss Shore (a Calvinist governess), finding it out, lec-
tured me severely, and told me it was wicked. From that time
forth I considered that to invent a story of any kind was a sin.
But the desire to do so was too deeply rooted in my afi'ections
to be resisted in my own strength (she was at that time nine
years of age), and unfortunately I knew neither my corrup-
tion nor my weakness, nor did I know where to gain strength.
The longing to invent stories grew with violence; everything 1
heard or read became food for my distemper. The sim-
plicity of truth was not suflicient for me; I must needs em-
broider imagination upon it, and the folly, vanity and wicked-
ness which disgraced my heart, are more than I am able to
express. Even now (at the age of twenty-nine), though
watched, prayed and striven against, this is still the sin that
most easily besets me. It has hindered my prayers and pre-
vented my improvement, and therefore has humbled me very
much.'*

Again illness was a punishment sent from heaven, as, in-
deed it may be; but: "' If any one was ill it showed that ' the
Lord's hand was extended in chastisement,' and much prayer
was poured forth in order that it might be explained to the
sufferer, or to his relations, in what he or they had sinned. Peo-
ple would, for instance, go on living over a cesspool, working
themselves up into an agony to discover how they had incurred
the displeasure of the Lord, but never moving away." Let us
end with perhaps the most remarkable example in the book.
The father, it need hardly be said, had a holy horror of the
Catholic Church. He "welcomed any social disorder in any
part of Italy, as likely to be annoying to the Papacy." He
"celebrated the announcement in the newspapers of a con-
siderable emigration from the Papal dominions, by rejoicing
at this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot's domain,
from her sins and her plagues," and he even carried his hatred

Digitized by

Google

322 SOME CAUSES OF THEOPHOBIA [June,

so far as to denounce the keeping of Christmas, which to him
was nothing less than an act of idolatry.

On a certain Christmas day the servants, greatly daring,
disobeyed the order of their master and actually had the
audacity to make a small plum pudding for themselves. A
slice of this was given to the son who shortly afterwards de-
veloping a pain m his stomach — a not unusual event in youth —
rushed to his father exclaiming: ''Oh! papa, papa, I have
eaten of flesh offered to idols ! " When the father learned what
had happened, he sternly said: ''Where is the accursed
thing? '* Having heard that it was on the kitchen table, " he
took me by the hand, and ran with me into the midst of the
startled servants, seized what remained of the pudding, and
with the plate in one hand and me still tight in the other, ran
till we reached the dust-heap, when he flung the idolatrous
confectionery on to the middle of the ashes, and then raked it
deep down into the mass. The suddenness, the velocity of this
extraordinary act, made an impression on my memory which
nothing will ever efface."

Such is the plain unvarnished account of the kind of way
in which numbers of people were brought up in the fifties and
sixties of the last century. Can it be wondered that those
who had such a childhood should grow up witji an absolute
horror of the Person in Whose name such things — absurdities
if not crimes — ^were perpetrated? I firmly believe that these
wholly false ideas of God and of sin have more to do with
materialism than most will perhaps be disposed to admit. Edu-
cated people, especially those trained in scientific methods, de-
mand a certain common sense and sobriety in their beliefs. If
they are brought up to believe that a grievous sin is conmiitted
when a story is invented, a pure piece of imagination designed
to amuse and entertain, or when an evening is spent in
some kind of innocent amusement; if they have never known
the demands of real Christianity as put forward by the Catholic
Church, is it likely that they should cleave to a faith which ap-
parently engenders such absurdities as the Christmas pudding
episode? It is, indeed, as Father Wasmann says, a thousand
pities that the reasonableness, the logic, the dignity of* the
Catholic religion remains forever hid from the eyes and minds
of many who so often are what they are, because they were
brought up as they were.

Digitized by

Google

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION.

BY F. AURELIO PALMIEW, O.S.A., PH.D., D.D.
I.

The New Pope of the Russian Orthodox Church.

|HE title of this article is adapted from the bril-
liant work of N. Suvorov, the famous Russian
canonist, treating the life of Michael Caerularius,
Patriarch of Constantinople (1043-1059), and his
revolt against Rome. The writer calls him: A
Byzantine Pope.^ Like Byzantimn, Moscow — the third Rome
— ^boasts of having now restored for the second time its short-
lived papacy, for in 1917, Tychon, the Metcopolitan of Moscow,
became the nominal head of the Russian Church.

We do not place much confidence in the continuation of
that obsolete institution, the Russian patriarchate. Yet, for the
time being, it Exists in this exceedingly trying epoch for the
Russian Church, and it is Russia's hope that the new patriar-
chate will rejuvenate the ansemic body of the Orthodox
Church. Political events in Russia have made it a necessity.
Freedom for the Russian Church was bom in the throes of a
revolution — a bloodless revolution, at the start, but destined,
in the course of its destructive development, to become an ex-
tremely bloody one.

So far the story of the Russian patriarchate has been
indicative of the gradual emancipation of the Church of Rus-
sia from the Byzantine yoke. The jurisdiction of the hier-
archy of Byzantium weighed long and heavily upon the Rus-
sian clergy. The most authoritative historian of the Russian
Church, Evgenii Golubinsky, says the earliest period of its
ecclesiastical organization was a period of enslavement to
Byzantium.' The Byzantine hierarchy, faithful to their mis-
sionary ideal, sought to gain over to the political aims of Byzan-
timn the barbarians converted to Christ, to make them the
supporters of the empire, the raw material for hellenization.

^ Vixantiiskii pope, Moscow, 1902.

*lstoriia ruMskoi tzerkvi (History of the Russian Church), toI. i., Petrognid,
1901, p. 258.

Digitized by

Google

324 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [June,

Following out that ideal, the earliest history of the Russian
Church is in reality a detached page of the history of the
Byzantine hierarchy. Russia became a metropolitan see of the
patriarchate of Constantinople. The list of Russian metro-
politans from 983 to 1237 contains in all some twenty-four
names, all of them Greek, save two or three.^

In a report of the evolution of the Russian ecclesiastical
organization, read by Metrophanes, Bishop of Archangelsk,
at a session of the National Council of Moscow (October 11,
1917), the causes that led to the establishment of the Russian
patriarchate are outlined as follows: "The name and dignity
of Patriarch were not unknown in primitive Russia. A
testimony to that we find in the institution of the Metropolitan
of the Russian Church. The Byzantine patriarchs were in
communication with them, and frequently wrote to the Rus-
sian bishops. In the course of time the patriarchs of the East
appeared on Russian soil. Their presence gave a strong im-
pulse to the revival of ecclesiastical life. They lent their
support to their Russian confreres. Their interference with
the domestic management of the Russian Church, especially
in Western Russia, thwarted the efforts of the Roman Catholic
Church, which had striven to dissolve the compactness of Rus-
sian Orthodoxy. The authority of the metropolitans grew
stronger when Moscow became the leading city of the Mus-
covite princes. They drew closer the bonds of national and
political unity among Russians, while the patriarchs of Con-
stantinople were losing their grasp upon the Russian Church.
The metropolitan see of Moscow assumed the status of an
independent, an autocephalous church. The Russian bishops
showed it a deeply felt veneration. They dared not disobey
its orders. Later on, the election of the Russian Metropolitan
fell upon the Russian clergy, and the confirmation thereof by
Constantinople ceased to be regarded as necessary. As time
went on, Moscow claimed to be higher in rank than Byzantium,
as it was not under the infidel yoke. The idea of a Russian
patriarchate began to take root in the Russian religious con-
sciousness. It ripened to maturity under the reign of Ivan the
Terrible (1533-1588), and was finally realized under his son,
Feodor Ivanovich.** *

« Ihld., vol. i., p. 289.

* Vserossiiskii tzerkovno-obshchestvennyi Viestnik, no. 130, 1917 (October 24th).

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 325

Feodor Ivanovich (1584-1589) was of quite a different
temper from his father. He is described by Russian historians
as " a man weak in health and intellect. He combined extreme
mildness of disposition with a timid spirit, excessive piety, and
a profound indifference for this world's aflFairs; he passed his
days in listening to pious legends, singing hymns with monks,
and his greatest pleasure was to ring the convent bells and
share in the services of the Church. * He is a sacristan,' said his
father, * and no tsarevitch.' " » But this Tsar-sacristan had an
energetic and ambitious counselor, Boris Godunov, his brother-
in-law. At the instigation of Godunov, Feodor Ivanovich
sounded loachim. Patriarch of Antioch, respecting the institu-
tion of a Russian patriarchate in Moscow. The astute Greek
received the overtures of the Tsar with extreme aflFability, but
declined to give a decisive answer, as the matter had to be
brought before the solemn body of the four Eastern patriar-
chates. The Tsar treated him liberally, loaded him with pres-
ents, and charged him to win for his proposal the favor of his
colleagues.

In 1588, Jeremiah 11., Patriarch of Constantinople, arrived
at Moscow, and was received with all due veneration by the
Tsar and his court. It was first suggested to invite Jeremiah
to assume the charge of the future patriarchate of Moscow,
but Boris Godunov wrecked this project. He assigned in ob-
jection Jeremiah's ignorance of the Russian language. The
true cause of his opposition, however, was his desire to pre-
serve the patriarchal dignity for one of his tools, the Metropol-
itan, Job. Jeremiah was urged to accept the primacy of the
Russian Church on condition that he establish himself at
Vladimir, far from Moscow. Of course, the Patriarch rejected
the proposition. **A Patriarch, far from the court," he re-
marked, "would be useless; his place ought to be near the
sovereign.**

Feodor, and Godunov were secretly pleased with Jeremiah's
refusal. On January 10, 1589, they summoned a general coun-
cil of the Russian Church. Jeremiah set before the Russian
bishops the desire of the Tsar. All declared themselves in
accord with him, and Jeremiah presented to Feodor the names
of three candidates for the patriarchal dignity. The choice,

•Albert F. Heard, The Russian Church and Russian Dissent, New York, 1887,
pp. 57, 68.

Digitized by

Google

326 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [June,

as was to be foreseen, fell upon the Metropolitan, Job, who on
the twenty-sixth of January took possession of his charge in
the Cathedral of the Assumption (Uspenskii Sobor).

The following year a synod held at Constantinople ap-
proved the action of the Patriarch, The synodal letter, which
gave official sanction to the newly-established patriarchal see,
was approved and subscribed by the Patriarchs of Constan-
tinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, nineteen metropolitans, nineteen
archbishops, and twenty bishops. Certainly, the Greek hier-
archy tried to put the best face upon matters; yet, in their heart
of hearts they upbraided Jeremiah for his concessions^

The Russian patriarchate seems like a meteor in the his-
tory of the Russian Church. It reached its zenith under Filaret
(Feodor Nikititch), whose administration lasted from 1618-
1634. Its most brilliant pages were written by Nikon (1605-
1681), a man of unabated energy, and undaunted courage.
His words to the Greek bishops who condemned him in their
vile submission to the Tsar, Aleksiei Mikhailovitch (1645-
1676), ring with the majestic tones of the Popes of the Mid-
dle Ages. Thus, in autocratic Russia, he strongly asserted the
superior rights of the Church and priesthood, and their in-
dependence of political rulers : " The pontificate is more hon-
orable and a greater principality than the empire itself. The
priest is seated very much higher than the king. For though
the throne of the Tsar may appear honorable from the
precious stones set in it and the gold with which it is overlaid,
nevertheless they are only the things of the earth, which he
has received power to administer, and beyond this he has no
power whatever. But the throne of the priesthood is set in
heaven; .... and the priest stands between God and human
nature, as drawing down from heaven graces unto us, carry-
ing up from us utterances of prayer to heaven, reconciling
Him, when He is angry, to oiu* common nature, and delivering

us, when we have off'ended, out of His hand Is the Tsar

head of the Church? .... No! The head of the Church is

Christ The Tsar neither is, nor can be, the head of the

Church, but h as one of the members, and on this account he

can do nothing whatever in the Church Where is there

any word of Christ that the Tsar is to have power over the
Church?-*

'William Palmer, The Patriarch and the Tear. London, 1871, vol. 1., pp. 127,
251, 292.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 327

Under a Tsar as autocratic as Peter the Great, such a Patri-
arch as Nikon was an impossibility. The last Patriarch, Adrian,
elected in 1690, preferred to renounce his dignity, and seek the
quiet life in the Perervinsky monastery, where he died in 1700.
After his death, Peter the Great ordered the nomination of a
new patriarch to be delayed, and an exarch to be appointed as
vicar and administrator of the patriarchal see. The choice
fell upon Stephen Yavorsky, Metropolitan of Ryazan.

A reliable historian of the Russian Church, A. Dobro-
klonsky, says concerning this decision of Peter the Great:
** No doubt the Tsar had his special reasons and views, when
he resolved to abolish the patriarchate. He was fully imbued
with the idea of the civil power. He did not tolerate a papacy,
or anything like papacy. He was right in his opinion (emu
spravledivo dumalos), that the Papacy with its pretensions
introduces a harmful dualism into the life of a nation. The
Protestants, with whom he was more in sympathy, enkindled
more and more his ill-feelings towards papacy. When abroad,
speaking freely, he praised Luther, for the very reason that
he waged war against the Pope and his- armies, and by his
revolt benefited the emperor and many princes." ' Hence, am-
bition and political aims gave birth to the Russian patriar-
chate, and hatred of the Catholic Church, and ecclesiastical
freedom, suggested its suppression.

For two centuries, since the death of the last Patriarch,
the Russian Church has existed as a department of the civil
power. And here it is interesting to note that in the session of
October 19, 1917, of the National Council of Moscow, Ermogen,
Bishop of Tobolsk, declared the Holy Synod to be an heretical
institution. He said: "The Church ought to stand upon a
canonical foundation. Now, the Synod is not built upon the
canons of the Ch^irch. The spirit of its foundation is not a
canonical one. It reflects the spirit of Calvin, and since Cal-
vin was an heretic, it is evident that the Synod is an heretical
institution.'' •

In all the sessions of the Council of Moscow, a fact that stands
out in bold relief is the persistent consciousness among the
Russian clergy of the acephalous and unpractical condition of

^Rakovodstuo po Utorii russkoi tterkvi (Handbook of history of the Russian
Chiireh), toI. It., Moscow, 1893, p. 69.

* Fserof sf IsMI txTkovn<h-ob»$he9tvtnnit YUitniK 1917, no. 134 (November 2d).

Digitized by

Google

328 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [June,

the Russian Church. Archpriest I. Turkevich, a leading mem-
ber of the Russian Orthodox Mission in the United States,
candidly avowed that: '"The Russian Orthodox missionaries
in foreign countries face a very difficult situation because their
Church is deprived of an ecclesiastical head. We are accused
of preaching not orthodoxy, but autocracy. We heard these
accusations either from Roman Catholics or from the mem-
bers of the other episcopal churches. It was truly hard to
answer them. The Holy Synod certainly was doing its work,
but its decisions were confirmed by the autocratic power of the
tsars. The Russian Church had inherited special rites for
their consecration and coronation. Our answers convinced
nobody. Foreigners could not understand what are the
boundaries between the civil power and pure orthodoxy.
They said to us: * We love your liturgy, your Church keeps
up the Apostolic succession, but you preach Russian political
aims, for Russian Orthodoxy is inseparable from Russian
poliUcs.' " •

In a previous session, October 14, 1917, Antoni, the well-
known Archbishop of Kharhov, tried to show that the idea of
the restoration of the Russian patriarchate ''is not the out-
come of the revolutionary movement." Before the revolution,
Professor F. Blagovidov in his book: The Chief Procurators
of the Holy Synod (Kazan, 1900) — a book written in a spirit
not well disposed towards the Church ^® — ^brought out the fact
that every awakening of the Russian religious consciousness
has been followed by demands for the restoration of the Rus-
sian patriarchate. That tendency has informed the spirit of
Slavophilism.

In 1882, the archpriest Alexander Mikhailovich Ivantzov-
Platonov, (one of the glories of the white clergy who died in
1899), published a series of papers on the Russian patriarchate
in the Rus (nn. 1-16). He asserted that the patriarchal
authority was the strongest support of the synodal principle,
the living centre of the Orthodox Church; that the Patriarch
is necessary to the Russian Church in order to restore to her
the position to which she is entitled by her numerical and in-
tellectual greatness and superiority among other Orthodox
Churches. For the less important Orthodox communities, as

•/Wrf., no. 134.

^ Because of this book. Professor Blagoyldov was expelled from the Ecclesiasti-
cal Academy of Kasan.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 329

for instance, the Copts and Syrians, have their own patriarchs.
The Serbian Orthodox Church has for its head a patriarch,
whose Hock is so small that it does not equal the population of
a single Russian eparchy. The Russian patriarchate is a moral
necessity incumbent upon the place of honor accorded the
Russian Church by the Orthodox world, although her impor-
tance is less than it would be were her organization diflferent.**
In 1905 the question of the restoration of the Russian
patriarchate gave rise to lively debates in Russia. One of its
strongest champions was the above-mentioned Archbishop An-
toni, at that time Bishop of Volhynia. In a report to the Chief
Prociu*ator of the Holy Synod," he declared that restoration
to be the most important topic in the scheme of ecclesiastical
reform. On it depends the reestablishment of the canonical
grounds of the Russian Church. Her stagnation dates from
the abolition of the patriarchate and the introduction of the
Holy Synod. After the disappearance of the Patriarch, the
Russian Church was ruled by a layman (upravliaetsiia mirian-
mom), the Chief Procurator. We ought to restore the title and
dignity of the Patriarch. The Church in Russia is deprived
of what we find in the other religions. Latins, Protestants,
Armenians, Mohammedans, Lamaites have their religious
heads. The Russian Church, on the contrary, has no official
head. She is enslaved by a lay bureaucracy, which hides its
aims under the authority of a council of six bishops and two
priests. The institution of the Holy Synod is a violation of the
canons. It was not approved by the Patriarchs of the East.
The Orthodox Churches were never deprived of a religious
head. Certainly, the synods and councils must have the
supreme leadership of the Chiu*ch, but not without patriarchs.
The patriarch in the Orthodox Church represents the execu-
tive power, and the council determines policy and legislates.
Without an official head the council cannot be summoned. Its
decisions cannot be given application. The Church is un-
armed against her enemies. Because of her dignity, the Rus-
sian Church claims an official head. Her jurisdictional bound-
aries are far wider than those of the four Eastern patriarchates
taken together. The number of her adherents and eparchies
is considerable. Yet in the ranks of the Russian hierarchy

" See our book La Chiesa Russa, Florence, 1908, pp. 69, 70.
'^ Tzerkounuia Vledomosti, 1906, no. 8, pp. 380-384.

Digitized by

Google

330 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [June,

there is no bishop who, according to the ecclesiastical canons,
may claim the privileges granted to the Patriarch of Alexan-
dria, who exercises jurisdiction over a very smaU number of
the faithful. It is true that the institution of the patriarchate
did not rest upon the good will of the people, and that its de-
cay took place in a time of general indifference. But, it is not
to be denied that the common people held the Patriarch in
higher esteem than the Tsar. The suppression of the patriar-
chate figures among the chief causes of the schism from the
Russian Church of millions of Old-Believers. In the eyes of
the clergy and faithful the Patriarch was, and he will be, the
embodiment of the glory of Christ, the bond of the religious
unity and the speaking-trumpet of the Orthodox faith. The
restoration of the patriarchate would revive the religious
feelings of the Orthodox Russian, root deeper the Russian
Church into Russian national consciousness, soften the ani-
mosities among the various Orthodox nationalities; it would
eliminate the schism of Russian dissenters, and exert a salu-
tary influence upon the Latins and sectarians, and stir up the
hearts of the Russian clergy and people.**

Thus spoke Archbishop Antoni in 1905, and his voice was
not a solitary one. Another Bishop, Antoni of Narva, said
that Russia needed a patriarch, as a mediator between God
and the Russian people. Nikolas Zaozersky, a learned canon-
ist, declared that the restoration of the Russian patriarchate
was the common aspiration of all Russian hearts. Russia feels
the necessity of a powerful intermediary between the sovereign
and his subjects, of an authoritative leader to show to them
the right path in the maze of human error."

The patriarcophils, to adapt a Russian word, expected the
fulfillment of their desires from the National Council of Mos-
cow, which was to have been assembled in 1907. To their
utmost disappointment, however, the Council was not held —
no one knew why. It was only in 1917, that a little pamphlet,
published in Moscow by V. I. Yatzkevich, solved the riddle.'*
The Council failed to take place because Constantin Pobiedon-

^Bogotlopsky Viettnik (Theological Messenger), 1905, vol. 111., p. 605.

" K'istorii soigua vserossiiskago Sobora ( " Contribution to the history of the
Convocation of the Cotrndl of all Russia "), Moscow, 1917. The pamphlet contains
the confidential memoranda of the ex-Tsar, the reports of Pobledonostsev and Sabler,
the letters of Archbishop Antoni to them, and several documents Issued by the
Holy Synod.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 331

ostsev, the famous dictator of the Russian Church, opposed its
convocation, and his advice influenced strongly the weak will
of Nicholas II. In a letter addressed by Pobiedonostsev to the
Tsar on the thirtieth of March, 1905, we read as follows: ** All
Russians feel that the convocation of a general council at this
very moment would be the act of rash thoughtlessness. It
would provoke in our national life that greatest and most
dangerous revolution — an ecclesiastical revolution. At pres-
ent it cannot be too strongly asserted that a council is an im-
possible undertaking."

In 1912, a new attempt to restore the patriarchate was
made by the then Chief-Procurator, Vladimir Karolovich
Sabler-Desiatovsky. But in a memorandum dated March 2,
1912, the Tsar curtly refused his approbation. It may be that
the demoralizing influence of Gregory Rasputin was not with-
out weight in this decision of the Tsar.

The third attempt at the restoration of the patriarchate
has taken place in the National Council of Moscow. Crowned
with success, its debates are most interesting, and illumine
a dramatic scene in the religious history of New Russia. They
touch doctrinal problems of the most vital importance,
especially if we are to give a just verdict on the Russian
Church, from the Catholic standpoint of Church polity and
organization. We may be permitted, therefore, to linger in
our survey of the trend and the results of those debates.

The Council charged a special committee with the study
of the supreme management of the Church and the f easibiUty
of restoring the patriarchate. Metrophanes of Astrakham
(who has been a "patriarchophil"), served as Chairman of
this Committee. He bitterly lamented that through the con-
tradictory character of its pronouncements the Holy Synod
had aggravated the danger of Russia's moral dissolution. *' Our
people," he said, "do not look for their salvation from an
' assembly (collegium). They wish to see a living man at the
head of the Church, a bishop who may be able to gather his
whole flock around him. Our spiritual forces are crushed. We
are all standing in awe at the total collapse of the Church. We
want a living leader, a chief, a ruler, who may inspire us to
glorious deeds. The yearnings of the Georgians for ecclesiasti-
cal autonomy, the vast extent of the Russian territories wrested
from us by our enemies, these are but a few of the factors

Digitized by

Google

332 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [June,

which impose on us the necessity of ecclesiastical unity. The
minds of those who were torn from us will naturaUy turn to
a Patriarch, in whose heart their appeals would find consola-
tion and sympathy. Does not this Council of ours, held after
two hundred and fifty years of interruption in our synodal ex-
perience, look to hiin as the upbuilder of the mature canonical
organization of our Church? '* ^

Metrophanes proposed to the members of the Council the
following formula, as expressing the wishes of the majority :

The Council recognizes as the starting point for its
labors, the restoration of the patriai'chal dignity by the
election of a Patriarch who will be the first among the
bishops, and who will direct the management of the ecclesi-
astical affairs of the Russian Church.

This formula, according to Metrophanes, may be devel-
oped in four propositions, outlined as follows:

1. The supreme authority of the Russian Church be-
longs to the National Council.

2. The Patriarch will be charged with the direction
of ecclesiastical affairs in the Russian Orthodox Church.

3. The Patriarch is the first in dignity among other
bishops, who are otherwise equal to him.

4. The Patriarch, with the other agencies of Church
organization, is subject to the Council.

Agreement on those four points was not reached. The
Russian Church, as we have shown in our book. La Chiesa
Russa, is afi'ected with a chronic disease, an inward schism.
The incurable character of this schism was manifest in every
session of the Council. Only the inuninent dangers impending
over Russia, and the annihilation of its poUtical power, post-
poned the opening of hostilities between the black and white
clergy.

The opponents of the restoration of the patriarchate were
chiefly among the " liberal " priests, professors of academies,
dilettanti in theology, and, strange to say, the delegates of the
Russian peasantry. A peculiar feature of the National Coun-
cil of Moscow was that it opened wide its doors to the repre-

^ VseroiiilskU tzerk-obssh. Viestnik, 1918, no. 130 (October 24th).

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 333

sentatives of rural and Utopian collectivism. These spoke of
theology, and of the nature and constitution of the Church as
SociaUsts do, whenever they have the theological "" bee in their
bonnets."

The reasons set forth against the restoration of the
patriarchate do not materially differ from those discussed in
the Russian press during the fever of ecclesiastical reforms in
1905-1907. At that time, N. Kapterev, the best historian of the
relations between Russia and the Eastern Churches, stirred up
the fire of controversy between patriarchophils and patri-
archophobes. In an elaborate paper, published in the Bogos-
lovsky Viestnik (1905), the official organ of the ecclesiastical
Academy of Moscow, he established the fact that the Russian
Patriarchate was a merely political institution, a religious
whim of the civil power. It was the exclusive product of the
encroachments of laymen on the authority of the Church. A
patriarchate was not a necessary consequence of the special
conditions of Russian Christianity. It resulted merely as an
external decoration of the Russian Churches. Its political
origin prevented it from taking root in Russian soil; nor was
it tied to the Russian people by living and organic bonds. A
caprice of the civil power was its cradle, and a caprice of the
same power dug its grave.

Following the lead of Kapterev, the patriarchophobes,
both ecclesiastical and lay, opened fire upon the patriarcho-
phils. Their arguments are to be found in a collection of ex-
tracts from the Russian press on ecclesiastical reform by A.
Preobrazhensky.*® Ecclesiastical writers objected that the re-
vival of the patriarchate would not enforce the authority of
the civil power. It would only strengthen and enlarge the
power of the hierarchy, and result in crippUng the life of the
Church. In fact, the Patriarch would become her supreme
ruler; bishops and the white clergy his slaves. Yet he could
not act as an intermediary between the Tsar and his subjects,
for in these days a monk cannot understand fully our complex
social problems. Moreover the Patriarch, himself a monk,
would of course enlarge the privileges of Russian monasticism,
and sharpen, in this way, the antagonism between the two cler-
gies.*^

A short-lived review of Kharkov, Tzerkovnaia Gazeta

^ T$erkovnata reformcL Petrograd, 1905. » Ibid., pp. 63-67.

Digitized by

Google

334 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [June,

(The Ecclesi later in the retirement of Kenwood, where her great
work was consummated.

Shortly after her reception into the Church, in an inter-
view with Mother Galitzin, Sarah Jones expressed her inten-
tion of entering the religious life. Various causes prevented
the realization of her wish until she was twenty-three. So un-
mistakable was her vocation, and so great her ability that she
was made superior of the house in Bleeker Street shortly after
she made her first vows. In 1851 she went to Manhattanville
as mistress of the superior class. She was a born educator and
had that gift of arousing interest in the things of the mind
which is the touchstone of culture. But it was her twenty-
six years as vicar which extended her reputation outside the
walls of her convent. She and Mother Tonmiasini are said
to have established the reputation of Manhattanville, a reputa-
tion never better justified than in the bearing of superior and
community during the night of August 13, 1888, when old Man-
hattanville burned to the ground.

After several years as superior at Elmhurst, founded by
her in 1872, Rev. Mother Jones retired to Kenwood in 1900 and
there lived a life of complete absorption in God, of which her
death, in 1911, was the consummation, the final withdrawal of
a veil worn thin to her saintly eyes.

In June, 1895, there appeared before the ecclesiastical tri-
bunal charged with the cause of Mother Duchesne's beatifica-
tion, a venerable nun. Mother Anne Josephine Shannon, Mother
Duchesne's sole surviving novice and most worthy daughter.
She had been vice-vicar of the South during the Civil War, and
was known then and later for the greatness of her daring, the
readiness of her wit, and the superabundance of her char-

Digitized by

Google

342 LIVING STONES [June,

ity. Mother Shannon was bom in New Ross, County Wex-
ford, Ireland, in 1810. She came to the United States in child-
hood and was a pupil at Florissant, where she entered the
novitiate in 1826. She was superior of St. Michael's at the out-
break of the war, and although her sympathies were with the
South, a fact of which she made no secret, she was respected
and honored by the Federals, officers and men alike. Gen-
eral Butler called her " the only lady in Louisiana." She was
perhaps the only one who did not treat that unpopular invader
with flaunting contempt. The Federal blockade cut off her
communication with the other houses of the vicariate and
theirs with France. Twice she passed through the lines, once
to deliver letters from France to Grand Coteau, and once to
bring a store of provisions to the denuded convents. General
Butler required all to whom passports were issued to take an
oath of allegiance to the Union. When Mother Shannon
presented herself, he asked: "Have you taken the oath?**

" Fve done better than that,** said she, " I've taken three
vowar.'*

He was disarmed, and gave her all she asked.

Once when she was on her way to call on Governor Mar-
shall and General Taylor, the path was barred by two soldiers,
who crossed their bayonets in front of her, saying: " You canU
pass here!**

" Oh, I pass everywhere,** she replied laughingly parting
the bayonets and proceeding tranquilly on her way.

The account of her journey to Grand Coteau and Natchi-
toches m 1864, is as thrilling a story of adventure as romance
writer ever dreamed, yet through it all she bore the recollection
of the cloister. Long after the war, General Lalor wrote her that
he had devoted his entire fortune to the foundation of a charit-
able institution, and traced the inspiration of this act to some
words of hers uttered years before : " A single soul that you
would try to bring to God would be worth more to you on
the Judgment Day than all your victories.**

When Mother Hardey visited the mother house in France
in 1867, she heard one of the young nuns speaking English. She
displayed such interest in the circumstance, that the nun,
who felt both an attraction to, and a terror of, the missions, re-
solved to keep out of the American vicar*s way. This pre-
caution was in vain, for her superiors had already chosen her

Digitized by

Google

1918.] LIVING STONES 343

for that field. When Mother Hardey returned to America in
1869, she brought with her Madame Genevieve Gauci. The
graves of both now lie close together in the Kenwood cemetery.
Madame Gauci was bom at Valetta in the Island of Malta in
1834, and was the seventh child of the Baron and Baroness
Gauci. She was of Arabian descent and could speak Arabic
as well as English. The tradition of the cloister was strong in
her family. It was, however, in face of violent opposition from
her father that she and her sister entered the Sacred Heart
novitiate at the Villa Lante in 1858. Thenceforth religious
obedience required her to change her home many times. In the
United States she held the responsible posts of mistress of
novices and superior, and was finally placed at the head of the
St. Louis vicariate, of which Maryville had been made the pro-
vincial house and novitiate. A great exaltation of soul char-
acterized her religious life. She had a reserved but ardent
nature and the flame was constantly overleaping the wall.
As she was preparing to make the foundation of Menlo Park,
she was stricken down by the terrible illness which resulted in
her death. She was relieved of her duties and withdrew to
Kenwood in 1897, where through months of incredible sufi'er-
ing she made ready for her end. As death drew near, one of
those praying with her asked : " Reverend Mother, what mys-
teries do you want? '• "The glorious ones,'* came the glorious
reply. And death, when it came to her, was glorious. At the
utterance of the Holy Name she bowed her head and lifted it
no more.

Mother Gauci was replaced in the St. Louis vicariate by
Mother Mary Burke, then superior of Kenwood. She was born
in Ireland in 1849, and she had in her own mother the most
sublime type of Catholic gentlewoman. The girl had a sen-
sitive nature, quick to feel pain, but her indomitable will never
shrank from it. There is something almost terrifying in her
unwavering pursuit of perfection. Once she entered the no-
vitiate at Roehampton, England, where she had been at school,
her rule was the guide of her fervor. Three years after she
made her vows, she was sent to Buenos Aires to take charge of
an orphanage conducted by the Society.

As mistress of novices and superior, she displayed what
has been called Vintuition des Ames. While vicar Mother
Burke founded Menlo Park, welcomed Very Rev. Mother Digby

Digitized by

Google

344 LIVING STONES [June,

to Maryville, and speeded her beloved " white veils " to Ken-
wood when it became the sole novitiate for North America.
She was appointed vicar of Canada but was prevented by ill-
ness from filling the post. After a sojourn at Roehampton she
went, as mistress-general, to Bilbao, Spain, in 1902. Her health
was already undermined, and after great suffering she died
two years later a saintly death.

This article would not be complete without at least a
rough sketch of Mother Tommasini. She would probably
suggest that a full length portrait would require little canvas,
for it was part of her engaging simplicity to mock at her very
diminutive size (ma toute petite petitesse) and what she was
pleased to call her ugliness. " She is Italian,*' said Pius IX.,
and everyone felt that he had described and explained her.
Italian she was, ardent and impulsive, with the vivid faith that
is on familiar terms with heavenly things, with the joyousness
of a St. Francis, finding vent in songs and canticles, with the
humor of a St. Philip Neri. She was born at Parma in 1827.
Having entered the Sacred Heart, somewhat to the stupefac-
tion of her mother, who could not reconcile the cloister with
her daughter's expansive nature, she was at the convent of
Turin during the Revolution of 1848. She remembered well
the threats and ribald songs shouted by the Revolutionists
under the convent windows; she remembered, too, the seam-
stresses sewing, sewing against time on secular costumes to
disguise the expelled nuns' flight to safety. Thus it was that
she came to America and the recently founded Manhattanville,
where Mother Hardey received her. In due course of time she
became Mother Hardey's traveling companion, and accom-
panied her to Cuba for the foundation in Havana in 1848. In
1875, after a long and active career in the States, she was made
vicar of Canada.

Space forbids more than a passing reference to Mother
Tommasini's share in the foundations in Mexico where she had
to circumvent the machinations of the hostile civil authorities,
and where she became such a power for good that her name is
held in hallowed memory. " That woman," said a man in pub-
lic life, "understands every question. She can talk politics
with a statesman, education with an economist, music with a
musician, but all the time the fire of divine love burning in her
soul, escapes and casts a heavenly gleam into the heart of the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] VIA LONGA 345

person with whom she talks.** Her prodigious memory en-
abled her to recomit the events of her singularly eventful life
with a charm and piquancy that held her listeners spellbound.
Crod gave her a beautiful voice and royally she gave it back to
him. **Sing gaily/* she said to a choir she was training to
sing Christmas carols, ** sing gaily and not with sad American
faces.** When she was eighty-six she remarked, with some
astonishment, that her voice was almost gone.

She died at Kenwood in 1914. One is reminded of Francis
Thompson's line to another " laughing saint : **

Since gain of thee was given,

Surely there is more mirth in heaven.

She was the last of the first Mothers, yet she had not out-
lived her generation, for the generation in which she died was
that into which she was bom, the nova proles, the new
progeny, the ever-renewed living stones of a great spiritual
house.

VIA LONGA.

BY CHARLES PHOXIPS.

It's far I must be going.

Some night or morning gray,
Beyond the ocean's flowing.

Beyond the rim of day;
And sure it's not the going.

But that I find the way.

Digitized by

Google

ESTHETIC LAWS AND THE MORAL PRINCIPLE.

BY JOHN BUNKER.

n O the discerning lover of poetry and of America as
well, there has, of quite recent years, been appar-
ent among our writers a novel tendency that
should cause very serious disquiet, for by it
i American poetry would cast aside what has
probably been its chief merit in a list by no means long — its
moral wholesomeness. On this point, as if by anticipation,
Churton Collins not many years ago wrote some notable words,
which, as they constitute a rare instance of British tribute to
American literature and as Collins himself was a critic of
authority, we think well worth quotation. He said: "No
American poet has ever dared, or perhaps even desired, to do
what, to the shame of England and France, their poets have so
often done — ^what is mourned by Dryden :

O gracious God! how oft have we
Profaned Thy heavenly gift of Poesy,
Made profligate and prostitute the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use.

We should search in vain through the voluminous records of
American song for a poem by any poet of note or merit, with
one exception who is an exception in everything, glorifying
animalism or blasphemy, or attempting to throw a glamour
over impurity and vice."

This, then, was what was; but if we look abroad into con-
temporary American poetry we shall find that a strong con-
trast is in process of making, and of that contrast there are, as
Collins foreshadowed, two main phases of offence : indecency
and that strange freak of the will, blasphemy. Now, in dealing
with these particular manifestations the trouble, the aesthetic
trouble, with the orthodox critic has been that he has usually
taken the high moral vein and, appealing to a law not recog-
nized by his opponents as artistically valid, has largely wasted
his thunder. To have a dispute there must be some agreement
— if on nothing else, agreement at least as to the field of com-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ^ESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE 347

bat; and it remains to show, therefore, that the orthodox critic
has at command not only the ethical but the aesthetic advan-
tage, and that those writers who in the name of art offend the
moral sense, are as strongly condemnable on the one ground
as on the other. With this view, then, we proceed to examine
certain modern American productions; and if at times we seem
to treat in too full detail of works or writers that do not deserve
such minute handling, it is to be remembered that we are
dealing with them not so much as individuals, but rather as
types of definite and apparently spreading movements.

A favorite subject of much recent writing, is the really
pathetic one of the girl who is lonely. On this topic the
changes have been rung up the scale and back again, some to
good effect, others to bad; and we all know the invariable
sequel — the loss of her virtue. Now, though there are still
some of us old-fashioned enough to believe that such a result
does not necessarily, or even usually, follow from that par-
ticular circumstance, our concern here is not so much with the
facts of the case as with the arbitrary meaning read into them
by the author. Out of a number of possible instances we
select two.

About three years ago an American poet put forth a long
poem, the gist of whose story was this : On a boat leaving New
York harbor are two passengers: an unsophisticated girl,
traveling, of course, alone, and a man who has been the hero
of many amorous adventures. Attracted by her youth and in-
nocence, he strikes up an acquaintance with her — and she,
almost at once, succumbs. The affair is for the man merely
one of a series, and therefore he is somewhat surprised, some
weeks later, to receive from the girl, who is dying, a note beg-
ging him to see her before the end. He goes, but he finds

she had divined.
And known too bitterly before she died,
This man had never loved her, but had lied.

Nevertheless, says the author in conclusion, though

Easy as leaf is human love to chill.

Easy as leaf is human love to kill,

Yet beautiful is that death with sudden flame,

Ere it goes down to darkness, whence it came!

Digitized by

Google

348 ^ESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE [June,

And that we may get the full fine flavor of the whole he entitles
the poem Romance.

Several years later another writer — and this time a
woman — set forth a similar tale, and proceeded moreover to
make the philosophy of it much more explicit. In The Sisters,
the youngest of four unmarried sisters who live together, tells
the story of their uneventful, petty, and embittered lives; but
she, she "is not like them; for I have a reason for living."
They are old, but she is not old. " But pretty soon I will be.
I was thmking of that when I went to him, where he was wait-
ing." And " now when the time comes I can die serenely, I
can die after living." "Perhaps I will pretend to hang my
head, perhaps I will to please them, I am very obliging — ^but
in my heart I shall be laughing with a great laughter, a great
exultation. Yes, they will upbraid and reproach, in grave and
sisterly accents, and mourn over me, one who has fallen, yet
I suspect, as each one goes to her cold little room, deep in her
breast she will envy, with a terrible envy, the child that is
mine."

This may be frank, but the truth is that the incident itself
is by no means new in literature; it has been treated by
numerous hands — among others by Fielding, Scott, George
Eliot and Hardy, each of whom we may credit with a fairly
competent knowledge of human nature; and by none of them
is the woman represented — putting it at the very mildest —
as being happy in her desertion, to say nothing of " laughter "
or " exultation." But apart from literature, what does our own
knowledge, what does common sense say? It says, without
hesitation, that this is nonsense — that no such woman ever
existed or ever could exist, and that the work of art that is
based on such an hypothesis, fails because it lacks not only act-
uality but — a more serious literary fault — ^verisimilitude. It
is wanting in truth, probability, even in possibility: from the
facts of human nature as we find them both in life and books,
we know that such a creature is absolutely incredible.

On the general subject of indelicacy many things might
be said; but passing by those writers who are nasty in order
to make a sensation — and a market — and who are therefore
wholly outside the precincts of art, it seems well to bring up
again certain old principles, which, old as they are, seem in
these days in danger of being ignored.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ^ESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE 349

The object of all the fine arts, then, their distinguishing
trait, is the presentation of beauty; and by " beauty ** we under-
stand not merely visual loveliness, but that more general qual-
ity whose peculiarity it is, to please us by its simple appearance,
on its bare perception. This of course does not mean that the
artist is to fix his exclusive eye on the morally approvable; on
the contrary, whether for contrast — ^f or ** the bracing gust of
ugliness," mentioned by Francis Thompson — or for truth to
nature, he is free to treat of moral obliquity and the ignoble
side of life; and hence the machinations of lago or the cruelty
of Lady Macbeth fall just as surely under the head of beauty
as the magnanimity of Othello or the charm of Rosalind or the
innocence of Perdita. These qualities, moreover, of lago or
Lady Macbeth come under the head of beauty because in itself
intellectual adroitness is a good, a steadfast will is a good; and
hence beauty may be further defined as nothing more nor less
than the manifestation, the showing forth of good: it is the
good shining through.

It is obvious, therefore, that vice per se can never be the
real object of art, but that on the contrary art is necessarily
and by its very nature on the side of virtue, since evil, ab-
stractly considered, is a defect of being, has no proper life of
its onw) '"•it exists merely and entirely by reason of the good
to which it adheres. This, perhaps, is the language of philoso-
phy; but, in commoner speech, juggle the facts as we may,
deny sin, rule out God, and make man the sole arbiter of right
and wrong, this truth still stands that by some peculiar twist
of his nature man, the purely natural man, even a savage, is
drawn by a certain thing he calls good, and is repelled by a cer-
tain other thing he calls bad.

Now, art does not live in and for itself; it can no more
breathe in a vacuum than can anything else, but, as we have
seen, by its very object must appeal to something outside itself,
in short, to man; and hence every great artist begins by realiz-
ing to himself — in fact by studying his own make-up — just
what the nature of that being is to whom he is to make his ap-
peal. He will find always and invariably that such qualities,
for instance, as courage, magnanimity, generosity, honesty,
purity, charity, unselfishness — or virtue — have in themselves,
by their very nature, an instinctive appeal to the heart. And
on the other hand he will know that cowardice, meanness, vil-

Digitized by

Google

350 jESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE [June,

lainy, treaching, impurity — in short, vice — ^have by their
very nature and in themselves an ugliness and a repulsive-
ness which are instinctively odious and which no art can
make truly attractive. The real artist knows this; in fact
every man knows it; that is the way we are constituted; and
however much philosophers or artists may quarrel with htmian
nature as it is, after all there it is in just that fashion, and the
writer must simply take it as he finds it.

At this point, perhaps, the author who wishes to handle
forbidden subjects cries out: What then is to become of the
freedom of the artist? Is he to blink things as he sees them, as
they obviously are : or is he to be frank and show vice her own
image? Is realism to be utterly banished? No; but let it be
real realism; let the writer be more than frank, let him be
honest; let him know that it is just as much his duty — and his
privilege, if he rightly views it — to exhibit also "virtue her
own feature." In short, let him give us the true, the complete
picture, and not the distorted phantasm of partial vision.

In this, as in so many other matters, we may draw a les-
son from the so-called ** immortals," and looking to them we
shall find that nothing so surely marks the great writer as the
integrity of his appeal; and the main aspect of that appeal is
nothing more nor less than this, that he counts on a o-^uIbs re-
sponse from the reader. Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Virgil,
Sophocles, or Homer, however much they differ among them-
selves, on this point are at one. What, after all, do these
names represent? what is the image they evoke? Is it not one
of moral soundness, of right-minded sympathy, plainly visible
if not explicitly set forth? And these were they who ** saw life
steadily and (especially) saw life whole." They realized that
to know man truly, is to know man reverently.

But we would be fair; let us take some who do not quite
measure up to this high standard — say, Swinburne or Byron,
Bums or Herrick or Chaucer. Now simply as a matter of fact,
for what are these writers read by the majority of men; what
keeps their works alive? Is it those productions where they
dabbled in unclean places or displayed the weaker side of our
fallen nature? It would be taking a pretty low view of that
nature to think so; and of this we may be certain, that such
pieces as To a Field Mouse or The Prisoner of Chillon or To
Primroses FilVd with Dew will live and have influence long^

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MSTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE 351

after the vicious works of their writers have passed to
oblivion.

Getting down to the very basis of the matter, however, it
might be asked, why select indecent subjects in the first in-
stance, and of course when we put the question, we are, as we
said above, leaving entirely out of account those writers who
are nasty for a purpose and are therefore completely outside
the purview of art. On this point Emerson has a pertinent
remark: "' In all design, art hes in making your object prom-
inent, but there is a prior art in choosing objects that are prom-
inent." Why, then, we repeat — with our eye on the acclaimed
artists, on the ** intellectuals," on the cognoscenti — ^why delve
in the mud of the gutter? Well, the plain fact seems to be
that in this matter of indelicacy, the intellectuals, however they
may disguise it with fair words, are writing from as base and
vulgar a motive as the meanest scribbler, and that equally
with him their aim is to give us, as the phrase is, a jolt, to
arorjse shameful curiosity, to achieve the sensation at any
cost.

That such writing is strong may be here freely admitted,
but it is strong in a sense wholly different from what its
.authors suppose; and with respect to the authors themselves,
we are inevitably reminded of Lamb's card-table wittidsm on
his slovenly friend Dyer: "George, if dirt were trumps, my,
what a hand you would hold!" Verily, with the type of writer
under discussion, if dirt were trumps. . . . ! Looking at the
matter, however, from the viewpoint of art — cold, hard art,
divorced from moral or other consideration — and judging by
the sure and ample evidence of literary history, it all comes to
this, that when a writer, of however high a reputation, begins
to draw out his risqui and " daring " subject, it is on the whole
a safe conjecture that he is near the end of his artistic re-
sources, and it is by no. means unwise to presume that, in nine
cases out of ten, far from being an artist he is merely a
charlatan.

So much for one side of a dark picture; but there is an
even darker aspect. We saw a moment ago from Emerson
that " there is a prior art in choosing objects that are promi-
nent" Ifliis theory be correct, then on this head we can have
no cause of complaint against certain writers we propose to
speak of, for they choose the most prominent of all possible

Digitized by

Google

352 JESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE [June,

themes, Crod. And here the reader meets with a curious phe-
nomenon, for these writers who profess a loud and an un-
shakeable disbelief in a Supreme Being are never long at ease
in their work till they draw His name into the discussion. It
is true of Marlowe, Shelley, Swinburne; and the obvious
thought occurs to one, why, if they really disbelieve, be at such
pains to spread God's name so large over their pages. If no
such Being exists, it seems a most idle beating of the air. Then,
too, from the viewpoint of that sympathy between the reader
and himself which an author requires, it is manifestly un-
wise; and even from the viewpoint of art as such, it is a serious
flaw, for the reason that there can be no great art without great
reverence; indeed, from the explicit testimony of the past we
may go farther and say: the greater the art the greater the
reverence.

There are several ways, of course, in which such writers
treat the subject, but they have one trait in common, and that
is, like the writers previously discussed, in their anxiety to be
strong they strain; desiring to score, they overshoot the mark.
The favorite trick is to set up a lay figure, an omnipotent
tyrant, a cruel and all-powerful monster, in which no one ever
believed, and then proceed to call that opprobrious names.
They really do not grasp the meaning of the term God; they
seem smitten with a kind of mental blindness whereby they wan-
der in thick clouds of their own making, so that, great geniuses
as some of them are, and even, as in Shelley's case, with a
natural bent towards metaphysics, in this matter they fail ut-
terly in the first requisite of both poetry and metaphysics,
namely, an understanding of the terms they use. Speaking
merely humanly, and not in a spiritual sense at all, it is no
exaggeration to say, quite literally, that they do not know what
they are talking about.

Who it is that recently started anew in America the
superannuated fashion of blasphemy in literature, is not
quite clear — ^perhaps Masters, perhaps Oppenheim, perhaps a
well-known lady of Boston who would rather be shocking than
sensible; but whatever its origin, the fashion itself is preter-
naturally dull. The Village Atheist, indeed, was, we under-
stand, once upon a time a striking figure to very young boys,
but even in the height of his glory he was not commonly
esteemed for his knowledge of aesthetics, nor were his opinions

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE 353

on art considered of unusual value. In this respect the mode
seems about to change, but before it does, it might be well to
see just how the dispensers of blasphemy bear up under a few
tLne-tried tests of good writing. That we select only one, and
that one not the worst, of a queer brotherhood, should be to the
reader a cause for gratitude.

A year or two ago there appeared in a prominent Ameri-
can periodical a lengthy poem entitled Eve Speaks, which
from a purely technical standpoint was a really notable per-
formance. The fable was striking and original, the language
noble and impressive, the cadences of the blank verse mag-
nificently modulated. And yet when all was said and done,
the final eSect was that something was amiss, that something
was wrong artistically; and not alone was it ** a thing wherein
we feel some hidden want," but there w$is something positively
amiss, something aggressively wrong. Here, in brief, is the story :

Eve is represented as speaking to Grod just before He pro-
nounces final judgment; she is '* presenting her case." But

" Though it be doomsday, and the trampling winds
Rush blindly through the stark and cowering skies,
Bearing Thy fearful mandate like a sword,"

and though all nature is in commotion and upheaval, yet

" I do not tremble .... I am unafraid."

Though years have swept over her she still has memory of
paradise, " where wrapped in a drowsy luxury we lived," and
where ** though there was naught but happiness, the thought
that there was something more than joy .... vexed all my
hours; " for "Eden was made for angels— not for Man." At
times Adam, to her view, " grew moody, and the reckless fire
leaped in his eyes and died." " To waste such energy on such
a life! " " Seeing him I knew Man made for Eden only— not

for more — ^was made in vain I claimed my Adam, God,"

since to God, Adam " was but one of many things — a lump of
clay, a sentient clod." Finally, ** lying awake one night be-
neath the Tree .... never did Eden seem so much a prison."

** Past the great gates I glimpsed the unknown world

The peace of Eden grew intolerable." " Better the bold un-
certainty of toil, the granite scorn of the experienced world,
and failure upon failure .... than this enforced and rotting
indolence. Adam should feel the weariness of work, and

vot. cm. — 23

Digitized by

Google

354 AESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE [June.

pride of it ... • and, in a rush of liberated power .... face,
without fear, contemptuous centuries .... and answer God
with God*s own words and deeds."

Part II. of the poem then goes on to describe the wander-
ings and adventures and toils of Adam and Eve in the world,
where "his were the victories, mine were all defeats," and
where she, symbolizing as she does throughout the poem all
womankind, was merely " Adam's servant, not his mate." And
yet " God, Thou didst make a creature out of dust, but I cre-
ated Man," and hence

" How wilt Thou judge me then, who am, like Thee,
Creator, shaper of men's destinies?
Nay more, I made their purpose vaster still.
Thou wouldst have left them in a torpid Eden —
1 sent them out to grapple with the world!
1 give Thee back Thy planet now, O God,
An earth made strong by disobedience.

Pause, God, and ponder ere Thou judgest me."

Now at the very start we pass over the tremendous diffi-
culty, nay, actual impossibility of imagining to ourselves such
a scene as here set forth — ^mortality thus speaking to Omnipo-
tence, and this at the most solemn juncture of human destiny.
This is really the cardinal fault, the radical falsity of the piece
as a whole; but it is so manifest a fault and so evident a falsity
that we do not dwell on it. Waiving this, therefore, we go on
to take up a point on which, since it is allied to a more impor-
tant matter, and, like a certain treatment of that matter, com-
pletely begs the question at issue, clear thinking and clear
statement are desirable.

In Jowett's fine and justly celebrated edition of the Soc-
ratic Dialogues he has a note on the supposed heaven of Chris-
tian believers, where ** the good are singing the praises of God,
during a period longer than that of a whole life, or of ten lives
of men;" and he goes on to wonder " what is the nature of that
pleasure or happiness which never wearies by monotony?"
And so to his conclusion that ** to beings constituted as we are,
the monotony of singing psalms would be as great an infliction
as the pains of hell, and might even be pleasantly interrupted
by them." Is not this the merest absurdity, backed up by
authority and a great name? How does not even the famous

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE 355

scholar sometimes enjoy knocking down his man of straw!
Of course the quite sufficient and obvious reply to Jowett's
contention is that Christians, on the promise of Christ, believe
that heaven is a place of perfect happiness and in that faith
they rest content simply on His assurance.

Similarly with regard to the drowsy and luxurious and
torpid Eden ** so much a prison/* the " enforced and rotting
indolence,** the "intolerable** peace, in the poem before us;
the author starts with a state of things which no man rightly
informed believes in, which tradition flatly denies, and which
— so far as we can be certain of anything — undoubtedly never
existed. This in turn brings us to a truth which, though ob-
vious, many of our present writers tend to forget, namely, that
an artist is not absolutely free to let his fancy play as it will;
he must work within certain limits, and limits, too, that belong
to his art as such. And if he deals with historical or legendary
conditions or personages, as Scott made clear in one of his
prefaces, these limits become yet more definite and circum-
scribed. He cannot, for instance, outside of extravaganza,
show the people of the Elizabethan era living like Red In-
dians, or the Athenians of Pericles! time using the telephone;
he may not with success bring on Titania wielding the club of
Hercules, or present Olympus under the guise of a Western
mining-town. Here, above all, he must show his characters
" in their habit as they lived,*' and it is just here that the poem
before us fails.

The poet is here dealing with certain scenes and persons,
which though distant are by no means indefinite; and whether
they be considered mythical or authentic, light is thrown on
them from two sources, namely, the Bible and tradition. The
biblical account is open for all to read, and the tradition is also
well known; and from both these sources we can state posi-
tively that Eden was not as here represented, but on the
contrary a place and a condition totally different. We might
put it briefly by saying that it was a heaven on earth, and in
fact the tradition has found root in this very poem itself, where
we are told that in Eden " there was naught but happiness.**
How the poet then goes on, with a noble disregard for contra-
diction, to have Eve tell us that ** the thought that there was
something more than joy .... vexed all my hours ** is a matter
we do not attempt to explain.

Digitized by

Google

356 ^ESTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE [June,

Thus we might contmue with the other parts, showing
among other defects that nearly every individual statement
quoted above — constituting the very backbone and branch-
ing framework of the poem — ^is false. As to the particularly
blasphemous remarks scattered throughout the poem and
especially at the end, there is one classic example to which
we can compare it. A late popular agnostic had in his lectures
a very dramatic manoeuvre which no doubt sent the thriUs up
the spine of many a groundling. Striding to the edge of the
platform wi^h his watch in hand, the lecturer would say that
he would now give (xod three minutes in which to prove His
existence by striking him, the speaker, dead on the spot. And
then he would wait — ^in tense silence .... Oh brave! which in
turn brings to mind the stinging comment of Anatole France
on Zola, that " a crowd was more to him than a thought."

It is, indeed, a curious study to consider the probable mo-
tives for such work as we have been here examining. Is it to
be startling? Is it in order to shock? Is it to be original at all
hazards? Or is it merely an ignorance of the object and the
scope of art? One possible motive we have not examined,
namely, that the writer desires us to have all the facts, which
means in his view all the seamy facts. He feels that mankind
is labori-^g in the dark, that they have not all the evidence.
'* Ignorance is not innocence'' is his cry, and with that he
looses upon us a flood of what he considers high wisdom and
revelatory light. In this connection there is a note of Charles
Lamb which is so just and so appropriate that we cannot re-
sist quoting the whole of it.

These are his words: ''Marlowe is said to have been
tainted with atheistical opinions, to have denied (xod and the
Trinity. To such a genius the history of Faustus must have
been delectable food: to wander in fields where curiosity is
forbidden to go, to approach the dark gulf near enough to look
in, to be busied in speculations which are the rottenest part
of the core of the fruit that fell from the tree of knowledge.
Barabas the Jew, and Faustus the conjuror, are oflTsprings
of a mind which at least delighted to dally with interdicted sub-
jects. They both talk a language which a believer would have
been tender of putting into the mouth of a character, though
but in fiction. But the holiest minds have sometimes not
thought it blameable to counterfeit impiety in the person of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MSTHETIC LAWS AND MORAL PRINCIPLE 357

another, to bring vice in upon the stage speaking her own dia-
lect, and, themselves armed with an unction of self -confident
impunity, have not scrupled to handle and touch that famil-
iarly which would be death to others. Milton, in the person
of Satan, has started speculations harder than any which the
feeble armory of the atheist ever furnished: and the precise
strait-laced Richardson has strengthened Vice, from the mouth
of Lovelac'', with entangling sophistries and abstruse pleas
against her adversary Virtue, which Sedley, Villiers, and Ro-
chester wanted depth of libertinism suflBcient to have in-
vented.**

How, then, our realistic friends may inquire, do such
writers as Milton and Richardson pass unmolested? Why are
they not looked upon as ** dangerous ? ** The answer is very
simple: it is wholly because the sympathies of these writers
are frankly on the side of right, their attitude is unequivocally
for good and not for evil. There is in them none of that per-
verse and specious impartiality which assumes to stand neuter
between good and evil as matters about which there may be
question, which pretends to hold even scales for virtue and
vice as things of equal weight and moment. They had the san-
ity and the right instincts of normal humankind.

We are at present here in America apparently in the
midst of a poetic renaissance; the signs of growth and flour-
ishing are unmistakably manifest on every side; and not by
any means the least of its merits is that spirit of originality,
that appearance of freshness and novelty which every new
presentment of beauty necessarily wears. But not all origi-
nality is true, and not all novelty is beauty, and if poetry is to
come to its full blossoming and right stature among us, there
are certain heedful cautions we must observe, certain old laws
we may not overthrow. Some of these we have set forth above,
and from them it is safe to say that the very soundest advice
that could be given to any writer ambitious to excel, would be
to •• assume a virtue if you have it not." Despite the old sneer
against those who are obviously on the side of the angels, most
men would confess to an instinctive bias in favor of the spirits
of light. In a merely artistic sense the fool of Christ stands in-
comparably higher than the jester of Satan or the page of
Venus.

Digitized by

Google

THE YOUNG PRIEST TO HIS HANDS.

BY EDWARD F. GARESGH^, S.J.

Time was when ye were powerless.
To shrive and sign, anoint and bless.
Clasped, ye worshipped from afar.
That Host, as distant as a star.
Your palms were barren still, and cold.
Ye might not touch, ye might not hold,
(xod. Whom the signs of bread enfold.

But now ah now, most happy hands.
Ye fold the Saviour's swaddling bands.
Ye lift His tender limbs and keep.
The snowy bed where He doth sleep.
His heart. His blood. His being fair.
All (jod and Man is in your carel
Ye are His guardians everywhere.

Ye pour the wine, ye break the bread.
For the great Supper, sweet and dread!
Ye dress the rood of sacrifice.
Whereon the morning Victim lies.
And when my trembling accent calls.
Swift leaping from His Heaven's walls.
On you the Light of Glory falls!

You are the altar, where I see

The Lamb that bled on Calvary,
As sacred as the chalice shrine.
Wherein doth glow the Blood divine.
As sacred as the pyx are ye,
Oh happy hands — an angel's fee!
That clasp the Lord of Majesty!

Digitized by

Google

ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA.

BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.

VI-

J HE Lord's answer to the second question of the
disciples is the burden of our theme. "What shall
be the sign of Thy coming?*' they asked Him,
and the whole problem is the meaning of the last
word. If the *' conmig " inquired about was the
Last Advent, the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew becomes
a labyrinthian maze, with no known exit from its windings.
But if the event which the questioners have in mind is the
Lord's ** coming in His Kingdom " as distinct from His " Re-
turn in glory," we are introduced to a Discourse the thought of
which yields promptly to analysis, and links itself up at the
same time with the rest of the Gospel record. We have seen
good reasons for believing that the Parousia about which the
disciples are here concerned is the sudden coming of the Lord
to His Temple, of which the prophet Malachias spoke: ^ " Who
can abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He
appeareth? •• * ** Behold, I will send you E^as the prophet,
before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.** • The first
part of the prophecy has been fulfilled. Elias has already
come, as Jesus twice assured them,^ in the person of John. The
"' sudden coming of the Lord to His Temple *' cannot, therefore,
be long delayed. They wiU ask the Master to teU them the time
of its happening and of the sign that shall reveal it as about
to be.

A mass of evidence previously gathered makes it impos-
sible to suppose that any other '* coming ** was in mind.* St.
Matthew never uses the bare phrase " coming,** in connection
with the Final Advent. When this event is the subject of ref-
erence, it is invariably described as the " coming of the Son of
Man in the glory of His Father with the angels,'* and the pro-
phetical quotation is never halved, as here. Besides, Jesus has

»Mal. m. 1. »llal. ill. 2. •llal. Iv. 6. •Matt xl. 14; xtU. 10-13.

*St. Matthew and the Parousta, Thb Cathouc Woblo, ICarch, April, May, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

360 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [June,

put all immediate thought of the Final Advent out of the minds
of His questioners, by a long educative process, into the -de-
tails of which we have already inquired/ For these and for
many other reasons, the thought of the Lord's Return in per-
son could not have been in St. Matthew's mind when he re-
ported the disciples as asking : '' What shall be the sign of Thy
coming? " We wish to probe the truth of this claim still fur-
ther by textual analysis, by a running commentary, verse by
verse, on the Discourse itself. It is too concerning a matter
to be left to criticism alone for its establishment.

An additional word before beginning. The Saviour's con-
ception of His "'coming in His Kingdom" is much broader
than that of His questioners. They conceive of it as an event
in the near future — the destruction of Jerusalem; His answer
describes it not only as an impending event, but as an his-
torical process already begun. Proof of this breadth of con-
ception lies further along in the pages of the First Gospel, though
the twenty-fourth chapter is not without evidence of its truUi.
When the High Priest adjured the Saviour by the living God to
tell His judges if He is the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus
replied: "'Thou hast said it; furthermore I say to you,
from now on, you shall see the Son of Man seated on the right
hand of Power ('power' is here again separated from
* glory '), and coming on the clouds of heaven." ^ There could
be no plainer indication — ^it is to be found in all three accounts
— that the ** coming" thus described is progressive — an his-
toric process already in being, no less than a destructive event
that is soon to be. And when we scrutinize the Lord's answer
to the question"* about His ''coming," we find that this is the
breadth of manner in which it actually moved. His answer
takes the form of a prophetic description of the nature of the
New Kingdom and the stages or crises through which it is to
pass. From first to last, from beginning to end. He tells them,
it is to be a Kingdom of Tribulations, and not the idealized
Messianic Era expected by the Jews. Wars, persecution, suf-
fering, death, and the kindling of hate against the bearers of
His word, shall mark the progress of the Kingdom up to the
time of the City's fall; and even after that disaster, trial and
trouble and lack of faith will continue the reign of sorrows

* Tm C4TB0UC WoftLD, Maj, 1918.

* dx* dIpTC.—Matt xxTl. 64. To be made the subject of spedal investigation later.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 361

thus begun. His *' coming in His Kingdom*' as an historic
process (w. 4-14) ; His coming in His Kingdom as an historic
event (w. 15-28). These are the great lines in which His reply
is cast

The opening words — they occur in all three accounts —
reveal the nature of the Discourse that follows. Current views
are to be corrected; the eschatology of Palestine will not be
reaffirmed. " Take heed," said Jesus, ** lest anyone lead you
astray ** (v. 4) . The reason of my cautioning you is that " many
shall come in My name saying, I am the Christ, and shall lead
many astray *' (v. 5) ; for the temptation to think that the de-
struction of the City is to be followed by the personal appear-
ance of the Messias will be very great, notwithstanding all that
I have taught you, and many shall be misled by the rise of false
claimants to that title and the hearsay afloat in their regard.
The "wars and rumors of wars,** predicted by the prophets
as " signs of the end (of Israel),** must not be taken as instant
indications of that great disaster. So when you hear of them,
as hear of them you must, because these prophecies cannot
escape fulfillment,' " see that you be not troubled; because the
end (of Israel) is not yet ** (v. 6). And the reason of its still be-
ing some distance off is that other prophecies must be brought
to pass, before " the Lord suddenly comes to His Temple.** For
** nation shall rise against nation, and Kingdom against King-
dom, and there shall be famines and earthquakes in various
places,** as has already been foretold you by the Seers (v. 7).

But "all these things are the beginning of sorrows.**
'* Then shall they deliver you up unto tribulation, and put you
to death; and ye shall be hated of all nations for My name*s
sake ** (v. 8) ; — a statement which the Saviour has already made
inclusive of the disciples, in His mention of " the things that
are to befall the generation.** * St. Mark and St. Luke, more
intent on the temporal order of sequence than the prophetic,
which disregards perspective, introduce this verse by inser-
tions that explain the time of its happening. " But take heed
to yourselves/' says the one; "before all these things,** says
the other; plainly referring, as shall soon be shown, to the
destruction of Israel only.^® The disciples, with the exception
of John, are not to live to see the end of Israel. On this point

*For prophecies referred to, see Thb Catholic Wokld. February, 1918, p. 630,
note 48. •ICatt. xxlll. 34-36; x. 16-23. ^'Mark xlU. 9; Luke xxl. 12.

Digitized by

Google

362 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [June,

(he Synoptic accounts agree. The three verses that follow, can-
not, therefore, be regarded as descriptions of near events."
Their manner of introduction by the thrice-repeated expres-
sion: *^ And then," carries us into a period, where the sor-
rows which Jesus has just announced as beginning, are to con-
tinue on a wider scale. The tribulation to which the disciples
are to be delivered up will not cease in the future history of
the Kingdom. Mutual scandal, mutual betrayal, mutual hate
will go on, as before (v. 10) ; for the Son of Man, as I have
already told you, will not ** gather out of His Kingdom all scan-
dals and them that work iniquity, until the end of the Messianic
Age.""

In other words, the Kingdom to come is to be a Kingdom
of tribulations, and not the universal era of justice to which
the Rabbis looked. There shall be false teachers, too, in the
bosom of the Kingdom. The Son of Man is not to be universally
acknowledged, as you have been led to expect. " Many false
prophets shall rise, and work deception with many (v. 11).
And owing to the growth of evil-doing, the love of God and of
man shall grow cold among the multitude" (v. 12). A great
apostasy from the Christian faith, in other words — character-
ized by much wickedness and want of charity, shall be the
feature of the world's last days. But ** he who has remained
steadfast unto the end (of life, of tribulations) " in a Kingdom
that is to be predominantly of this character all through its his-
tory, " he shall be saved " (v. 13) ; a statement which has such
an abundance of proofs for its establishment that they must
await assembling in a special study. ^ And this the Gospel of
the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole inhabited earth
for a testimony unto all nations; and then shall the end (of the
world, of the Messianic Age) come " (v. 14). The personal note
so solemnly struck in the opening verse, and given a world-
wide application in the thirteenth, is the heart and soul of the
whole discoiu*se. When the question about the " coming " has
been proved to refer to Jerusalem and its destruction, " the end
which is not yet," " the end which is not immediately," stands
forth in its intended meaning as the end of Israel, and not as
the end of the world.

After His forecast of the Kingdom of Tribulations, in rela-

** For proof, see Thb CA-moLic Wokld. January, 1918, pp. 441, 442.

<*Matt xUt 41. St, Matthew and the Parousta, Thb Cathouc World, ICarch, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA • 363

tion to the disciples (w. 4-10), and in relation to historical con-
ditions yet to be (w. 11-14), Jesus proceeds to correct the cur-
rent interpretations of prophecy, in a lengthy reference to
Jerusalem (w. 15-28). The Jews had gathered from Daniel
that those who lived to see the end of the Jewish days would
be especially blest Jesus attaches no such blessedness of lot
to the fate of these last survivors. He omits this part of the
Daniel prediction, so dear to Rabbinical speculation, and
quotes only that portion which describes the unprecedented
sorrow of ttiose living to see Israel's last hour." This painting-
out of the bright side of the picture is very significant. It is a
solemn reaffirmation of what Jesus has been at pains to teach
all through the First Gospel, namely — that the connection put
between the overthrow of the City and its immediate restora-
tion; between the *' coming of the Son of Man " to destroy and
the "* coming of the Son of Man in glory ** to judge and restore,
is without foundation.^^ It is but another application of the
principle found operating throughout in the teaching-method
of Jesus: the introduction of historical perspective, the de-
Judaizing of the concept of salvation, by means of a divided
and corrective use of the current terms.

So far the Lord has not told the disciples of the sign of His
** coming." He proceeds to do so in the fifteenth verse. When,
therefore, you see the desolating abomination, which was
spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place,
''let him that readeth understand." The quotation is taken
directly from the Septuagint of Daniel," and probably re-
ferred in the original to the idol altar with which Antiochus
Epiphancs replaced the altar of burnt offerings. We should
have had to stiunble for the new meaning and application
which Jesus gave to the quotation, were it not for the con-
descension of St. Luke who translates it for our duller eyes. This
evangelist tell us that Jerusalem is the " holy place " where the
** desolating abomination " is to gather; and he expressly iden-
tifies this abomination with the actual presence of the besieg-
ing hosts, when he says: ^ But when you see Jerusalem being
surrounded by armies, then know that her desolation is at
hand.***' Wars and rumors of wars need not affright you,

»lCatt xxlv. 21; Jer. xxz. 7; 1 Mac. ix. 27; Ass. Mos. vUi. 1; Dan. xll. 12, 13.
^For proof, see St, Matthew and the Parousta, Thb Catholic Wokld, April and
IU7, 1918. »Dan. xl. 31; xU. 11.

>«Ltike zxl. 20; Mark xlU. 14; Matt xxiv. 15.

Digitized by

Google

364 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [June,

but when you behold the armies actually gathering to attack
the holy city, then "let those that are in Judea flee to the
mountains " (v. 16). " And he that is in the housetop, let him
not go below to gather his effects, but take flight at once (v.
17). And he that is in the field, let him not go back to get his
cloak " (v. 18). The chances of escape for those with child, or
bearing babes in arms, will be greatly lessened (v. 19) ; like-
wise for all of you, if it be winter, or the gates of the city are
closed a(;ainst your exit on the Sabbath (v. 20). For Daniel
the prophet has told you that unparalleled sorrow is to mark
the last days of Israel and the sealing of her doom (v. 21) ;
days that shall providentially be shortened for the sake of the
"elect** of the New Kingdom (v. 22), as distinct from the
"called** ot the Old, whose City the angered King sent His
armies to destroy.^^

And at that time, if anyone shall say to you, lo, here is
Christ, lo, there; attach no credence to his statements (v. 23).
For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and they
shall give great signs and wonders, to lead the faithful astray
(v. 4). The people have been led to beUeve that the glorifica-
tion of Jerusalem is to f oUow upon the heels of her ruin and
destruction. This false expectancy will breed its champions,
and against them you need again to be forewarned. So do not
credit rumors or reports of My personal reappearance, and re-
member that against all such unfounded tidings, " I have told
you beforehand ** (v. 25) that this is not the time of My coming
in glory. " If therefore they shall say to you : Behold, He is in
the desert; go ye not out. Behold He is in some secret place;
believe them not ** (v. 26). For there is to be nothing secretive
about My coming at this time. It is to be as public as the light-
ning's flash, which is universally visible — and not a thing of
stealth, about which this one or that may bring you tidings (v.
27). For — ^notice the explanatory particle — ^wherever the
(dead) body is, there shall the eagles be gathered (v. 28).-

This verse was manifestly written to explain the three pre-
ceding, and to furnish the reason why no credence should be

"The verse: ** For there shall then be great trlbnlatloii, such as hath not been
from the be ginn i n g of the world until now, no, nor ever ghall be," Is a quotation from
Daniel xli. 1. The portion Italicized Is a Hebraism which means " exceeding great**
Bxod. X. 14; xi. 6; Joel II. 2. This Hebraism and the triple negBtive employed clearly
Indicate the emphasis which Our Lord put on "tribulation" as against "glory.**
For the opposition between the " elect ** of the New kingdom and the ** called ** of the
Old, see Matt xx. 16; xxil. 14. For the destroying armies, ef, ICatt xxil. 7.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 365

lent to reports of the Lord's Return." The connective " f ors "
can be read in no other light. We may feel certain, therefore,
that locked up within this mysterious verse is the sense which
the author of the First Grospel attaches to the "" coming of the
Son of Man.*' The first thing to be determined, in consequence
of the explanatory particles present in the text, is tlie nature of
this verse. Is it some cryptic proverb of the day, the fleeting
sense of which has not come down to us, or a quotation from
prophecy, the source and meaning of which may successfully
be traced? The latter, assuredly. Jesus was no imitator of the
Hagaddah and its clever anecdotal sayings : He was the Ful-
fiUer of prophecy, the Teacher who taught the new by quoting
the old; and to the literature of the prophets we must accord-
ingly turn for the deciphering of this most significant verse.

The search is instantly rewarding. We are introduced to
an atmosphere of thought with which His hearers were excep-
tionally familiar, and concerning which '* a word to the wise "
was more sufficient then than at any other period, probably, in
the history of mankind. The people knew the word of Grod by
heart; thry knew the constructions put upon it by the Rabbis,
and they could distinguish fact from speculation, especially
when thereunto enabled by the masterly teaching of the Lord.
It mattered not that the prophecies which He quoted, or to
which He made allusion, referred to other destructions of
Jerusalem. Jesus resurrected these old prophecies from the
graves of their former fulfillment. He gave them new life and
actuality, by quoting them afresh to His awed and astounded
hearers, as history about to repeat itself, this time with more
tragic completeness than ever. He educated the people to the
idea — ^we need the education ourselves! — that the word of God
has a wider range and sweep of application than the historical
circumstances to which it seemed originally to apply. What
Isaias and Osee had said of the Assyrians, and what Jeremias
and Habacuc had uttered with the Chaldeans in view, was no
dead letter on His lips, but a restored picture of the things
that were about to be. He portrayed what was to come in the
terms of what had come and gone. He described the future
in the light of the known past, and we would all do well to pay
far more attention to what He taught than to what He said.
There is such a thing as statement; there is such a thing as

" *Qaxtp Y^P- — ^Oxou y^P«— -The particle is in all three accounts.

Digitized by

Google

366 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [June,

teaching; and the diflference between the two is the diflference
between soul and body, life and death. Let us fill our minds,
therefore, with the prophecies which the Lord again made liv-
ing, actual, and imminent, in the adapted verse: "Where the
dead body is, there shall the eagles be gathered together/' It
will enable us to reconstruct the mental reaction of the dis-
ciples to the words uttered, and to link our literary experience
with theirs.

Upon their hearing Jesus mention the ** dead body " and
" the gathering of the eagles," the disciples on the present occa-
sion found Deuteronomy, Job, the Psalmist, Isaias, Jeremias,
Osee, Micheas, and Habacuc coming back in a flood of recol-
lections. All these had used similar language in describing
the fate of Israel, though the Rabbis always coupled this recur-
rent threat of destruction with the promise of immediate de-
liverance by the glorious Son of Man. " The Lord will cause
thee to fall down before thine enemies; thou shalt go out one
way against them, and shalt flee seven ways before them; and
thou shalt be scattered through all the kingdoms of the earth.
And thy dead body shall be food unto all the fowls of the air,
and unto the beasts of the earth, and there shall be none to
frighten them away.'* ^" It was to the very words of the Cove-
nant that He was alluding, and in the same terrific singular —
thy dead body! — ^which meant Israel alone. Jeremias seemed
mild in comparison : " I will give them into the hands of their
enemies .... and their dead bodies shall be for food to the
fowls of the air and the beasts of the earth." *® Amos, too, had
"spoken in like manner: The end is come upon My people
Israel: I will not again pass them by ... . the dead bodies
shall be many: in every place shall they cast them forth in
silence." ^^ Nor was this all. Blazoned on the mind of every
Jew was the flaming plaint of the Psalmist, especially as it
was prescribed in Rabbinical use for the day commemorating
the former destruction of the Temple:

(O God), the nations have come into Thine inheritance;

They have defiled Thy holy temple;

They have laid Jerusalem in ruins.

They have given the dead bodies of Thy servants

As food to the birds of heaven.

Thy pious ones to the wild beasts of the earth.

"Deut xxvllJ. 26, 26. ■•Jer. xxxlv. 20. »Amo8 vlU. 1-3.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 367

They have poured out their blood like water, round about

Jerusalem.
And there was none to bury them.**

The " dead body,*' in the Lord's phrase evidently referred
to the destruction of Israel^ not of Jerusalem alone; and for
that reason we find it in the singular, as in the very text of the
Covenant itself. But the reference to the ** eagles gathering " —
what did that bode in the language of the Seers? A moment's
recollection told them. It was again the language of the Cove-
nant, which He was quoting — of that there could be no doubt.
'* The Lord will bring a nation against thee from afar . ... as
the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not under-
stand.'* *• Had not Job said of the eagle and the hawk, that " on
the cliff she dwelleth, from thence spying for her prey. Her
eyes behold it afar off; and wherever the carrion is, there is
she?"^ Had not Micheas revealed the Lord as saying: **I
will yet bring the conqueror to thee, O inhabitant of Mareshah.
Forever is Israel's glory to perish; unto AduUam shall Israel's
glory come. Make thyself bald and shave thee (a sign of
mourning, later prohibited) for thy beloved ones. Enlarge
thy baldness like the eagle's : For they will go into exile from
thee. " ** Had not Osee exclaimed : " To thy mouth with the
trumpet For an eagle comes down on the house of Yahweh,
because they have trangressed my covenant, and trespassed
against my law." ** Did not Habacuc speak of the invaders as
*^ horsemen from afar, that fly as an eagle hastens to devour
her prey ? " *^ Had not Isaias described the marching horse-
men, when he said : ** And He will hoist an ensign to the na-
tions from afar; and will hiss for them from the end of the
earth; and behold, they shall come with speed swiftly; none
shall be weary or stumbling among them; none shall slumber
or sleep;** neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor
the latchet of their shoes be broken."*' Had not the same
prophet described the incredible swiftness of the conqueror's
march, in words that were seared into the memory of every
Jew, so branding was their shame: "He is come to Ayyath;
he has passed through Migron; at Micmash he lays aside his

"Ps. IxxvlU. (Ixxix.) 1-3.

"Deut xxvlll. 49. The approach of the Asssnians Is meant Professor Drirer
quotes Matt xxlv. 28 as similar. Deuteronomy, Driver, p. 315.

»«Job xxxlx. 27-30. Compare Ix. 26. »Mlch. t 16.

•• Osee v\\i. 1. « Hab. I. 8. « Compare Matt xxv. 5. «• Is. v. 26.

Digitized by

Google

368 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [June,

heavy baggage; they have crossed the crossing, and are mak-
ing their night-quarters in Geba. Rama trembleth. Gibeah of
Saul is fled. Cry aloud, O daughter of Gallim! Hearken, O
Laishah! Answer her, Anathoth! Madmenah has sought
refuge. The inhabitants of Gebim flee for safety. This very
day, he shall halt at Nob, and shake his hand at the mount of
the daughter of Sion, the hill of Jerusalem."*®

It is impossible to trace the previous history of the verse
about the "body" and the "eagles," without coming to the
conclusion that the former is prophetic imagery for Israel,
and the latter prophetic imagery for the armies that are to
work her doom. Exactly what we found the Lord teaching
in His de-Judaizing of the Twelve, and in His argumentum ad
hominem against Oie captious folk who sought to entrap Him
in His speech! '^ Built up out of two well-known phrases of
prophecy, and given a future reference through its associa-
tion with the past — " Remember Lot's wife," He told them — ^*
the puzzling verse: " Where the body is, there shall the eagles
be gathered together," means nothiixg more, and nothing less,
when translated into direct, unhooded speech, than the actual
destruction of unfruitful Israel by the armies of her foes. In
this verse the Lord identifies His ** coming " with the invading
host, whose advent is to be as public as the lightning and as
swift •* as the eagle that hasteth to devour."

Nor was this interpretation without warrant in the prophe-
cies. Ezekiel has the picture of a " Son of Man " commissioned
by the Lord to lay siege to Jerusalem : " Thou also, O Son of
Man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and draw upon it
a city, even Jerusalem; and lay siege against it, and build
forts, and cast up a mound, and set camps, and place battering
rams against it round about. And take thou unto thee an iron
plate, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city;
and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou
shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of
Israel.'^*

When the literary pedigree of the verse about ** the body "
and •* the eagles " comes forth to view, we find that it is a defi-

••Is. X. 28-32.

» St. Matthew and the Parouata, The Cathouc World, Bfay, 1918.
" Luke xvil. 32.

"Ezek. iy. 1-3. Joel calls the Invaders **the Lord's army that executes Hit
word." Joel 11. It. Compare U. 4-10.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 369

nition by the Lord Himself, under the cover of old prophetic
imagery, readapted and reapplied, of the nature of His " com-
ing." •* Framed from two highly colored phrases of prophecy,
with which His hearers were familiar, this verse represents
the climax in the Lord's de-Judaizing of the Twelve: it is an
unrelieved picture of destruction; a complete painting-out of
the Rabbinical idea that the glorious Son of Man is to foil the
conqueror by suddenly appearing to discomfit him in Israel's
day of woe. Precisely what we found the Lord teaching in the
preceding pages of the First Gospel! His "coming" is to be
understood of the invading and destroying armies, not of His
personal Return. We have His own word for it, six times re-
peated,*' that this and nothing else is what He meant by the
•* coming of the Son of tl&an." In veiled and in open speech.
He formally and expressly identified His " coming " with the
hosts of the conqueror, and forbade His disciples to under-
stand Him in any other sense.**

This was certainly what St. Matthew understood Jesus
to mean when he made the verse about the " gathering eagles "
the climax of the Lord's answer to the question about His
"coming." This was clearly also what St. Luke understood
when he quoted this same verse on another occasion,*^ after
having previously explained it by the equivalent rendering:
" You shall see the Kingdom of God." ** And more evidently
still was this the idea which St. Mark had in mind when he
wrote: "You shall see the Kingdom of God coming with
power,"*^ to shatter from its path a nation to which it had at
first peacefully been offered. Nothing could be wider from
the mark than the supposition that the Second Advent is meant.
Every evidence textual, granmiatical, and critical points to the
excluding of this very supposition, as one of the purposes for
which the Gospel was written. The " coming " described and
defined is not the Lord's personal reappearance, but "the
sending of the King's armies to destroy those murderers and
to bum their city." It was a truly masterful piece of didactic
imagery, through which Jesus, in quoted language as old as
the Covenant itself, made the past the near future, and things

** St Luke hai the same verse In the same sense as here, but in a dllTerent rela-
tion. It will be treated at length in its proper place.

"Bfatt zvl. 28; xxl. 40, 41; xxll. 7; xxiil. 37, 38, 39; xxiv. 2, 28.

» Luke XTii. 37. Compare xvli. 22-26.

« Luke xyU. 37. » Luke ix. 27. » Hark vili. 39.

VOL. cm. — ^24

Digitized by

Google

370 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [June,

that had akeady been realized a livmg picture of the things
that were soon to be.

The dark spots in the Discourse begin to fill with light
when the meaning of this historic verse discloses itself to the
searcher. We see at once why Jesus begins His answer with a
distinct warning. He foresees the false rumors that will stir
invaded Israel with the heartening hue and cry that the Great
Deliverer has come. When He speaks of false Christs appear-
ing, it is clearly with thoughts of the siege in mind; for the
prediction is qualified by the preceding verse: "Take heed
lest anyone ^^ lead you astray; and the language is not such
as would be used of great personages, were these supposed to
appear. This qualification, this reference to the indefinite,
is repeated twice in the second mention of false Christs: " Then
if anyone ^^ shall say to you. Behold Christ here; behold
Christ there; believe it not." Even the description of "false
Christs and false prophets performing great signs and wonders
to the deceiving of the elect," is linked with the hearsay in
their regard, by the resumptive particle employed: "If there-
fore they say to you : *^ Behold, he is in the wilderness; go ye
not forth; behold, he is in some secret place: believe it not."
For the coming of the Son of Man will not be the skulking
Advent of Rabbinical fancy, but a fact as public as the light-
ning: The overrunning of Israel by the armies of destruction!

Grammatically and critically, it is impossible to read the
prediction of false Christs, as made of the period between
the Ascension and the fall of Jerusalem. The reference is to
the days of invasion, when the old expectancy will magnify
the exploits of the defenders and set the popular imagination
afire with reports that the Deliverer is at hand. Jesus is anx-
ious to have the Palestinian Christians made temptation-
proof against this coming experience, lest the old education
uproot the new, in the days of stress. The thought is plain.
See that the knowledge which you now possess, as shown by
the Christian question which you have asked, be not forgotten
at "the time of the end," when all Israel about you shall be-
lieve and hope and claim that the glorious Son of Man has
come.

The warning was specially addressed to John, in whose

*• M^ •««; 6iJuS<; icXav^oTj.— Matt xxlv. 4. ** 'Ecftv Tt<;.— Matt xxlv. 23.

* 'EAv o5v"e7«iiKJiv 6iifv.— Matt xxly. 26.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 371

mind the Jewish idea of the Kingdom seems to have lingered
longest It was he and his brother James — St. Matthew says
it was their mother — ^who asked for their promotion to the
posts of honor when Jesus came in the glory of the Messianic
King,** The Lord's reply is most instructive. " You know
not what you ask/* He tells them. The Messianic Kingdom
which I am to establish is one of suffering, not one of glory .*^
^ To sit at My right hand or at the left is not Mine to give, but
it is for them for whom it has been prepared by My Father." **
The Saviour is again correcting the false world-view of the
times, again asserting the distinction which He steadily drew
between the Son's Kingdom of suffering on earth and the
Father's Kingdom of glory in heaven.** The Lord's warning
against false Christs is also reported by St. Mark and St. Luke
in connection with the siege,*' as will more f uUy be seen when
their writings are made the object of special study. The testi-
mony of the third canonical evangelist is most definite. The
reason why the City should be avoided, when under pressure
from the heathen arms, is stated in a manner that cannot, by
any of the expedients of grammar, be magnified to the propor-
tions of a world-disaster. For these are days of vengeance,
that all things written may be fulfilled. . . . There shall be
great distress in the land and wrath upon this people."*"
Palestine alone is meant. When St. Luke describes the Final
Advent, he changes his manner of phrasing, and no longer
speaks of the land, but of the inhabited earth; *® a grammati-
cal fact of no mean moment to the present issue.

Jesus knew that the credulous would be attracted back
to the City, in the hope of witnessing the wonders of which the
Rabbis wrote; and it was against this temptation to court dan-
ger, that the Lord repeatedly forewarned. In all three
accounts, the inhabitants are told to leave the City, and to
stand not upon the order of their going, but to flee at once.
The people in the country districts are advised to seek refuge
in the hills, and under no condition to lock themselves up in
the stricken Capital. The destruction will be general through-
out the land, and danger everywhere. The eagle which is to
come down on the House of Israel will cover a wide area in his

^'Mark x. 37; Matt xx. 21. ««Matt xx. 22.

*Matt XX. 23; xxv. 34. — iroqidtl^ails the yerb used in both cases. Cf, Mark x. 40.
^'Matt xlll. 43; xlx. 28; xx. 23; xxy. 34. ^^Mark xlll. 21-23; Luke xvil. 22, 23.
^M ^q YfJ^— Luke xxl. 22, 23. •to oCxooiiiifD— Luke xxL 29.

Digitized by

Google

372 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [June,

swoop and snatch up the unwary into his grasping talons.
Josephus confirms the wisdom of this warning, in his record
of the width to which the national disaster spread; and in the
testimony which he bears to the false rumors afloat concern-
ing the arrival of the Great Deliverer.*^ The Christians fled
to Pello in Peraea, when they saw the " sign •* of destruction
verified in the approach of the Roman hosts. Otherwise the
words of the Lord fell on deaf ears. The two investments of
the City — ^the first by Cestius, the second by Titus — found it
filled to overflowing with an influx of people from all parts.
The disastrous retreat of Cestius saved the populace on the
first occasion. But when Titus came, the great concourse of
human beings within the walls were shut as in a prison, vic-
tims of the supreme delusion that God was to exalt them to
the pinnacle of world-dominion, on the morrow of their over-
throw. Israel was ground to powder, for having dared to
measure her puny strength against the infuriated might of
Rome. History established the truth of the Lord's forecast,
and proved the falsity of the Palestinian. " Where the dead
body is, there were the eagles gathered for its destruction."
The " coming of the Son of Man " is not presentea as the clos-
ing, but as the opening chapter in the history of His Kingdom,
to which a preface of trial and tribulation had already been
written, from the day of the Baptist's declaration that descent
from Abraham constituted no title to salvation. A child of
sorrows from the beginning, a child of sorrows to the end — the
Kingdom which the Saviour came to found!

Textual analysis of the Lord's answer to the question
about His Parousia fails to disclose a single shred of
eschatology anywhere within it. The coming is everywhere
understood as the destruction of Jerusalem, and the answer
begins and ends with anxious warnings that no personal mean-
ing be attached, in the future^ to the prophetic imagery em-
ployed. Textually, therefore, as well as critically, the con-
clusion stands, that the " coming of the Son of Man " never
meant on the lips of Jesus, or on the pen of His first canonical
reporter, the Advent of the Lord in glory and the passing of
the world. Take heed lest any man lead you astray. Behold,
I have told you beforehand.

"* Bell, Jud„ Josephus, vl. 5.

Digitized by

Google

MR. BILLINGS GETS HIS CHANCEL
BY VIGTORIA ENGUSH.

|R. BILLINGS sat at breakfast in his neat but some-
what shabby suburban home, and read his Daily
Telegraph with an aspect of gloom so deep that
it might almost be called a scowl disfiguring his
usually placid face. So marked it was, that Mrs.
Billings, who had managed as usual to take a hasty and almost
surreptitious peep at the newspaper, just the headlines and
" Stop-the-press " news, before her husband's appearance,
puzzled herself as to what defeat or catastrophe in the field of
war she had overlooked that morning. She was well aware
that outside of business and family matters, and the Royal
Family, all of which, or whom, were going on favorably at
the time, nothing existed for Mr. Billings but the War. Con-
sequently it was war news of some kind that was depressing
the spirits of the kindly, conmaonplace, quiet, easy-going little
man who sat opposite at the table. Even the children noticed
their father's lack of spirits, and ate their porridge and drip-
ping-toast with scarcely any of their accustomed chatter.

Suddenly, so suddenly that Mrs. BiUings leapt in her seat,
and two of the children dropped their spoons clattering on
the table, Mr. Billings began to read aloud from his news-
paper.

'' His Majesty bestowed no less than nine Victoria Crosses
on this occasion," he read out, and his voice sounded almost
vicious. " The last was conferred on Private Jones-Brown of

the Fusiliers, who lost a leg, an arm, and the sight of one

eye in the performance of the magnificent deed, by now so
familiar to our readers that we need not repeat its details,
which won him the decoration prized above all others.**

Mr. Billings threw the paper on the floor, though he was
a very tidy, methodical man. He rose, and spoke through
clenched teeth, with deepest feeling. " Some men have all the
luck! " said Mr. Billings, and sought his hat and stick in the
hall. His wife followed him, and tried to show her sympathy
by an extra brushing of his pepper and salt office suit. She

Digitized by

Google

374 MR. BILLINGS GETS HIS CHANCE [June,

did not herself feel that a man who had lost two limbs and
one eye could rightly be called lucky, even if he had received
the Victoria Cross, but she knew exactly what her husband's
feelings were, and she was glad at last to have solved the mys-
tery of his unaccustomed gloom.

Mr. Billings was in fact the victim of his own ultra-loyalty
and super-patriotism. He longed with a great longing to do
something for his country, and he found nothing he could do.
Of course he and his wife carefully followed out the directions
of the Food Controller, as far as.in them lay, and economized
at home in order to give to the Red Cross Fund, and a host of
other objects national and local. Also Mrs. Billings knitted
socks for soldiers in all her spare moments, and Mr. Billings
worked at producing vegetables in an allotment on the Com-
mon. But he felt these were only trifles, or let us say merely
a diversion of the waste water of his stream of life. What he
wanted was to give his life, to give himself.

He was a bookkeeper in what had been a bicycle factory
before the War, and was now turning out motor cycles for
dispatch riders at the front. He had been there twenty-eight
years, having entered as an office boy, and worked up very
gradually to his present position, the highest, or next to the
highest, he ever hoped to attain. Under-sized, narrow-chested,
short-sighted, not clever nor highly educated, a mere pawn in
the game, and with an unfortunate asthmatic tendency which
had caused the doctors to turn him down, no matter how often
and sturdily he presented himself at recruiting offices, Mr. Bill-
ings had little more to look forward to in the way of success
or advancement. He had been contented enough with his lot,
however, and got along well enough on his extremely mod-
erate salary, with the help of his excellent wife, and the in-
terest inspired by the growth and development of four suf-
ficiently attractive children. With the War, all this had
changed, his work, his aims, his modest ambitions, even his
family seemed suddenly to have become futile and uninterest-
ing. Nothing mattered but the War, no work was worth do-
ing but war work, no man was to be envied but the soldier or
sailor. He would have compromised on munitions work, but
Authority, taking over the transformed factory, assured him
that he was the right man in the right place, and by looking
after the job he knew, would be enabhng a better man to do the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MR. BILLINGS GETS HIS CHANCE 375

job he craved for. His own common sense helped him to see
that here at least he was doing the best thing for his country,
and he stayed where he belonged, though the work seemed
like dust and ashes to him.

Mr. Billings turned over all these bitter thoughts in his
mind as he journeyed on the top of the lius through the pleas-
ant spring sunshine to his work. The factory was at Croydon,
but according to the unwritten law of the Londoner, which
appears to decree that unless he lives on the premises, be shall
live in some other district than the one in which he is em-
ployed, Mr. Billings' modest home was at Clapham, and he had
quite a long distance daily for meditation of this kind.

It must not be supposed for an instant that the gentle lit-
tle bookkeeper was jealous of the nine heroes of whom he had
read that morning, nor of the long rows of M.C.'s, D.S.O.'s,
D.CM.'s, and others who had likewise received decorations on
that occasion. It was the opportunity, not the man, he envied;
longing with unspeakable longing that he, William James
Billings, might have a chance to show that he, too, knew how
to strike or suffer for his country. If only he could have a
chancel

At half-past four on this pleasant summer afternoon Mr.
Billings closed his desk, nodded good-bye to his fellow clerks,
and departed much before his usual time, this being a special
weekly privilege granted to each allotment holder in turn. He
took a lius to the outskirts of the Common and then walked
briskly towards the plot devoted to his care, but he had only
gon^ a short distance when he heard a strange and sinister
sound, far off and faint at first, but rapidly growing loud and
near, and mingled with other sounds, by now too well known.
It was the horrible buzzing of aeroplane engines that he heard,
and the crack of anti-aircraft guns and whiz of shrapnel. A
moment later, two or three of the dreadful birds of death came
sailing gracefully just overhead, and light puflfs of white
smoke, like bits of cotton-wool, appeared against the clear blue
sky. Again a moment, and there followed an awful crash, as
a bomb came hurtling down not far away, but out of sight. A
few people appeared in the quiet streets, eagerly looking up
and pointing out the flying death to each other. Of panic there
was none.

Mr. Billings stared skyward with the rest, until the crash

Digitized by

Google

376 MR. BILLINGS GETS HIS CHANCE [June,

of the bomb attracted his attention to the earth again. A few
yards away stood a large Board School surrounded by a
spacious yard. In the ordinary course of things this school
would now have been closed and empty, but it chanced that
one of the teachers was a nature-enthusiast, and was in the
habit of taking her class after school once in a while to the
Common or to one of the several adjacent parks to spend a
delightful hour in the study of birds or flowers. Thus it was
that forty-odd small girls were assembled in line in the school-
yard, waiting for their teacher who had dashed back into the
building for the nature-manual forgotten on her desk upstairs.
They were eager and interested, a little anxious, but hardly
frightened as yet, not realizing the danger, and sure that
Teacher would know just what to do. The yard in which they
stood was a large one with a row of neat gardens, the scholars*
joy and pride, all along two sides of the fence, and a couple of
well-grown lilac bushes in the corners, while in the midst a
deep hole had been dug that day, ready to receive a fine young
maple tree which was to be planted the next (Saturday) after-
noon, in honor of some brave deed of the colonial troops on
the fields of Flanders. A large pile of leaf -mold was heaped
close by.

Crash! A bomb was dropped from one of the soaring
birds of evil overhead but, like the first one, exploded on the
open ground some distance off and out of sight. Crack! crack!
answered the ever-ready Archies, and pieces of shell-casing
fell with sharp ominous rattle close at hand, spent bullets
actually striking the roof of the school, startling the waiting
group, one or two of whom began to cry. Not a minute had
elapsed since the first alarm had been given.

Mr. Billings pushed open the gate, and walked into the
yard, taking command as to the manner born. " Children,"
he said, "have you ever had air-raid drill?" "Yes, sir," re-
plied a dozen voices, full of relief, as the children felt sure that
here was an inspector, at least, who could tell them what to
do. "We go into the basement, and lie on our faces till
Teacher tells us we may get up." " Excellent! " said Mr. Bill-
ings. " Into the basement, then, quick march, lie flat on your
faces, and your teacher — ^here she comes — ^will join you
directly."

The first of the line had reached the basement door be-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MR. BILLINGS GETS HIS CHANCE 377

fore he had finished his short speech, and the rest were follow-
ing in swift obedience when with a hideous hissing noise a
bomb came sliding out of the blue, and landed right on the
top of the great heap of leaf -mold close by the startled group.
The hissing horror lay there, menacing, terrible, emitting fiery
sparks, but so far hannless and unexploded, owing to the soft-
ness of the yielding bed on which it had fallen.

A spade was thrust into the pile of earth in readiness for
the morrow's planting. Mr. Billings seized it and inserted it
very gingerly under the hissing bomb, taking care to have a
good deal of earth in between. Cautiously he slid the missile
from Hunland into the hole dug for the maple, and then with
almost frantic haste, he turned rather than shoveled the
whole heap of earth into the hole.

It was the work of seconds rather than minutes. The last
of the children had hardly dropped on the basement floor, the
young teacher, arriving on the scene just in time to realize
its meaning and make her dash for safety, had barely glanced
over her prostrate flock and thrown herself down with the rest,
when a muflDed roar was heard, and it seemed to her excited
fancy that the ground shook beneath them. Outside a shower
of earth was cast up, and a flying fragment or two of metal
broke a pane of glass and knocked a corner off a window sill.
Mr. Billings was hurled to the ground and lost consciousness
for a few moments.

He found himself being lifted by a policeman, who wore
a placard bearing in large red letters the legend '" Take Cover.**
His motor-cycle leaned against the fence outside the gate, and
Mr. Billings perceived that a small crowd had collected there.
Two Boy Scouts, materializing after their manner whenever
the need arises, stood on guard at the gate to prevent the en-
trance of merely curious folk. The policeman, skilled in
"First Aid," deftly bandaged cuts on Mr. Billings' forehead
and chin.

" Just a scratch, sir," he said encouragingly. " Good work
you did that time. Coming down the hill I pretty well saw the
whole of it You buried that bomb under such a lot of soft
stuff that it went off right in the ground, as one might say, and
did no harm to speak. Feeling better, sir?" Mr. Billings,
stiU a little shaken, replied that he was feeling first-rate. Two
more policemen arrived and inquired what he had been doing.

Digitized by

Google

378 MR. BILLINGS GETS HIS CHANCE [June,

They both wore placards inscribed in black letters "All

Clear."

** He's been playing the hero, that's what he's been doing,"
responded the first policeman to his colleagues* natural curi-
osity- " You'll hear more of this, sir," he went on, turning to
Mr. Billings, now bandaged in a neat and workmanlike man-
ner by his skillful hands. " I shouldn't wonder if you got no-
ticed for this in some way. Not the papers," he allowed a hint
of scorn to inflect his voice, " you'll be noticed there all right
enough. I mean in high quarters, sir. Do you feel well enough -
to be getting home now? "

" I'll just let the children inside know it's all safe for them
to come out first, constable," said Mr. Billings. But he saw next
moment that they were assembled in the hall, and only waiting
the word. The teacher came first and shaking the rescuer
warmly by the hand she thanked him for his brave action that
perhaps saved all their lives. Then turning to her class:
" Give a cheer for the gentleman, children," she cried, and the
shrill childish voices rang out in loud hurrahs ! The crowd out-
side the gate took up the cry; quite a good-sized crowd it was
by this time, and then, spontaneously, without warning, they
broke into the national anthem, in which Mr. Billings joined
rather quaveringly, with tears running down his face.

About a month later the same Board School was decked
with flags and flowers, and alive with an eager throng, gath-
ered there for high doings and festivity. Not only the teachers
and children and parents were assembled in their gladdest
attire, but actually the Mayor and Mayoress and Council of
the Borough, and numerous other notabilities, robed or uni-
formed in resplendent manner, including the O.C. in charge
of the troops in the distinguished district, and a suite, as well
as a regimental band. More wonderful still, the Queen, who
had heard of the events that had taken place and were still to
take place at the school, had signified a wish to be present, and
bestow certain favors with her own hand. So it was that on
this never-to-be-forgotten day Mr. Billings, looking his best in
a new and well-cut suit, and too happy to feel very much em-
barrassed, stepped forward before the adoring eyes of his wife
and children, and the interested gaze of the assembly, to re-
ceive an address of thanks from the Mayor, another from the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] MR. BILUNGS GETS HIS CHANCE 379

School Board, and flbaally as the crownhig glory of the day, a
few words of thanks and appreciation from the Queen herself,
as she handed him first the medal of the Royal Humane So-
ciety and secondly a beautiful purse full of gold, actual gold
sovereigns in war time! subscribed by the citizens of the dis-
trict in gratitude for the presence of mind and heroic action
that had saved their children's lives.

** The hero of the occasion, who bore his honors with be-
coming modesty, responded in a few well-chosen words," re-
ported the local newspaper next day, "after which refresh-
ments were served and an adjournment was made to the
school yard, where the guests gazed with interest on the beau-
tiful maple whose projected planting had so providentially
furnished material for rendering innocuous the fallen
bomb.**

It is rumored in the neighborhood that Mr. Billings' name
has been mentioned in connection with one of the civilian
orders which the government is planning to bestow. Such an
honor would mean far more to him that the material gifts he
has already received. Meanwhile he goes his way sedately,
happy in the memory of a crisis well met, and a duty nobly
done.

Digitized by

Google

THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY AND RECONSTRUCTION.

BY FRANK O'HARA, PH.D.

|T is going to be a different world after the War.
So much is certain because so many people say
so. But whether civilization is to be carried to
more brilliant heights or whether it is to be car-
ried to the scrap heap, is not so clear. The evi-
»nflicting upon that point.
The executive committee of the British Labor Party in its
recent manifesto was of the opinion that it could see " in the
present world catastrophe, if not the death, in Europe, of civili-
zation itself, at any rate the culmination and collapse of a dis-
tinctive industrial civilization, which the workers will not seek
to reconstruct." And it undertook to furnish the plans for a
better civilization.

A synopsis of the tentative programme of the British Labor
Party was given in the March number of The Cathouc World.
The complete text is printed in the April number of The
Monthly Review of the United States Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics. The present article will discuss some of the more promi-
nent claims set forth in the programme.

" The four pillars of the house that we propose to erect,"
says the report, " resting upon the common foundation of the
democratic control of society in all its activities, may be
termed, respectively:

(a) The universal enforcement of the national mini-
mum;

(b) The democratic control of industry;

(d) The surplus wealth for the common good."

The national minimum of the " first pillar " is a minimum
of leisure, health, education and subsistence. The extent of
the minimum is not set forth, but it must include the requisites
of healthy life and worthy citizenship. As to subsistence it is
indicated that the minimum wage for the least skilled men and
women in any part of Great Britain ought not to be under
thirty shillings a week. Social insurance against unemploy-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 381

ment is called for, and especial care is demanded in the de-
mobilization of the eight million wage earners who are now
either serving with the colors or employed in munition work
and other war trades, so as to avoid a dislocation of the labor
market at the close of the War.

The second pillar of the house which the British Labor
Party is to build is the democratic control of industry. The
Labor Party ** demands the progressive elimination from the
control of industry of the private capitalist, individual or joint-
stock; and the setting free of all who work, whether by hand
or by brain, for the service of the community and the com-
munity only.*' The democratic control of industry here de-
manded is Socialism, but it is a Fabian kind of Socialism
which will begin by making permanent the gains secured
through the War, and which will add the nationalization of the
land and the railways and the mines and the production of
electrical power immediately or "as suitable opportunities
occur.** Private enterprise is to be subjected to a very con-
siderable degree of governmental regulation and control, but
apparently it is not to be abolished utterly as the plans of the
more thoroughgoing Socialists would require.

Perhaps it would not be giving a very wrong impression
to say that the programme calls for the nationalization or
socialization of enterprises that are essentially monopolistic
in character, and the application of the existing war meas-
ures to the remainder of the business concerns. The indus-
tries which have been regulated and controlled by the Gov-
ernment during the War are not to be allowed " to slip back
into the unfettered control of private capitalists.** Standing as
it does for the democratic control of industry, the Labor Party
would think twice before it sanctioned any abandonment of
the present profitable centralization of purchase of raw ma-
terial; of the present carefully organized ** rationing,** by joint
conunittees of the trade concerned, of the several establish-
ments with the materials they require; of the present elaborate
system of "costing** and public audit of manufacturers* accounts
so as to stop the waste heretofore caused by the mechanical
ineflSciency of the more backward firms; of the present salu-
tary publicity of manufacturing processes and expenses
thereby insured; and, on the information thus obtained (in
order never again to revert to the old-time profiteering) of the

Digitized by

Google

382 THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY [June,

present rigid fixing, for standardized products, of maximum
prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the wholesale trader
and in the retail shop.

The third pillar is the revolution in national finance. The
plan here calls for a system of taxation which will pay for the
War "without encroaching on the prescribed national mini-
mum standard of life of any family whatsoever; without ham-
pering production or discouraging any useful personal effort,
and with the nearest possible approximation to equality of
sacrifice.*' The costs of previous wars have been borne by the
common people. The Labor Party would have the cost of this
war paid oflf by a special levy upon capital.

The fourth pillar is the disposal of the surplus wealth for
the common good. It is not entirely clear just what is meant
by the surplus wealth. However, it is well enough defined for
the purposes of the general argument. It is ** the surplus above
the standard of life.** It is something which is " absorbed by
individual proprietors, and then devoted very largely to the
senseless luxury of an idle rich class.*' It includes rental of
mines and lands, extra profits of fortunate capitalists, and
the material outcome of scientific discoveries. It is out of the
surplus, thus roughly delimited, that funds are to be obtained
to supply the capital for the various enterprises that the concf-
munity will undertake in the future when it will " decline to
be dependent on the usury exacting financiers.'* From the
same source is to come provision for the infirm and the aged;
for education and scientific investigation; and for the promo-
tion of music, literature and fine art.

"It is in the proposal for this appropriation of every
surplus for the common good — in the vision of its resolute use
for the building up of the community as a whole instead of for
the magnification of individual fortunes — that the Labor Party
as the party of the producers by hand or by brain, most distinc-
tively marks itself off from the older political parties, standing,
as these do, essentially for the maintenance, unimpaired, of
the perpetual private mortgage upon the annual product of
the nation that is involved in the individual ownership of
land and capital."

The house which is to be erected upon these four pillars
is to be socialistic — it will be Socialism in a modified form.
The promises held out appear inviting. But will the house

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 383

stand? Are the plans practicable? True, we are told in the
text that "to-day no man dares to say that anything is im-
practicable." But after all when people are asked to help
build a house in which they are to live, they have a right to ask
whether the plans are drawn along practicable lines.

A thing is impracticable not necessarily because it can-
not be done, but because it cannot be done without greater
trouble and expense than seem advisable. Mice can be killed
by cannon which carry seventy-five miles. The thing can be
done, but it is an impracticable way of killing mice.

On the other hand, the opponents of these socialistic plans
ought not to overwork the argument that they represent an in-
justice to property holders. The reason that we have private
property in land, is that on the whole, taking into account the
interests of production and distribution, the plan works well.
When it does not work well, and where it does not work well,
it ought to be abolished, provided that satisfactory arrange-
ments can be made to take care of the interests of the land-
owners. This is the principle in the large. Of course there
may be exceptions to be provided for in the working out of
the details.

In the matter of interest on capital a similar principle will
apply. If all of the borrowing of capital that is to be done, can
be done out of a fund collected from the surplus wealth of the
fourth pillar so that no one cares to borrow from private cap-
italists, these private capitalists really have no legitimate
grievance. The market for their capital is spoiled of course,
but they have their capital left to use as seems best. A far-
mer who has grown a crop of malting barley, has as good a
right to complain when a nation decides to discontinue the
manufacture of beer and thus destroys his principal market.
The expert glass blowers suffered a similar injury to their
interests a few years ago when the introduction of machinery
into their trade destroyed their tight monopoly. But no one
thinks seriously now of withdrawing the machinery from the
industry, in order to protect the market for the labor of the
expert glass blowers. The capitalist will be in the same class
if it is ever found that better results are secured by lending
capital to borrowers out of a public fund and without interest.
The capitalist's market will be gone, but he can still sell his
capital or use it or keep it idle, just as the farmer can sell his

Digitized by

Google

384 THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY [June,

barley at a lower price for some other use than the one he had
in mind when he grew it, and just as the glass blower can sell
his labor, but not his special skill, for some use other than the
one for which he was specially trained.

But before ^e capitalist is put in the position where he
must forego the taking of interest, the British Labor Party
must show that the proposed plan is practicable and desirable.
This is likely to prove a very difficult task.

As far as the desirability of the enforcement of a national
minimiiTn of leisure, health, education and subsistence is con-
cerned, there does not seem to be much room for a difference
of opinion. Everybody admits the desirability in principle.
There will, however, be some difference of opinion as to how
large a minimum can be enforced in practice. The thirty shill-
ings a week for the wage-earners is not overly munificent. Any
healthy worker who cannot earn thirty shillings a week ought
to receive a course of training that would enable him or her to
earn the thirty shillings. In this country, of course, the nomi-
nal minimum would be higher. The living wage which Dr.
Ryan demands for self-supporting women **is not less than
eight dollars per week in any city of the United States, and in
some of our larger cities, it is from one to two dollars above
this figure.*'

We shall, then, gladly concede the demand for a national
minimum. But the question will still remain whether that
national minimum can best be secured under a socialistic sys-
tem or under a system of freedom of individual initiative. This
question will be raised in connection with the discussion of the
second and fourth pillars.

But first let us examine the third pillar, the demand for a
revolution in national finance. The British Labor Party has
protested against the system of financing the War by which
" only a quarter has been raised by taxation, while three-quar-
ters have been borrowed at onerous rates of interest, to be a
burden on the nation's future," and it demands that the in-
debtedness be paid out of capital. Nineteen shillings of tax
to the pound of income, is suggested as the tax rate for the
largest incomes.

From many points of view it is desirable, and in accord-
ance with •• the very definite teachings of economic science,"
as the programme intimates, that as large a share of the bur-

Digitized by

Google

1918!] THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 385

den of the War as possible be paid out of taxes during the War.
But the economists are pretty well agreed that the taxation
should not be so heavy as to interfere with production and the
successful prosecution of the War. Therefore the State will
find it necessary when vast expenditures are to be made, to con-
tract debts which may be paid off in the future. If it is pro-
posed to confiscate all of the large salaries after the War, they
might just as well be confiscated at once. In this way the
agony would be shortened. Moreover, if it were certain that
all large fortunes were to be confiscated after the War, the
knowledge would have a depressing effect upon the prosecu-
tion of the War.

In order to win the War, human life must be poured out
upon the battlefields of France without stint; property is
surely not more sacred than life, and so it too miist be sacri-
ficed even to the extent of nineteen shillings in the pound of
income if necessary. But the only justification for placing the
whole of the financial burdens of the War upon the large in-
comes (if that were possible) and letting the lesser incomes go
scot free, would be that a policy of erecting the second and
fourth pillars of the plan had already been decided upon.

What shall we say about the second pillar — the demo-
cratic control of industry? . Perhaps we might go so far as to
say that we are decidedly in favor of democratic control of
industry in so far as such control can be efficiently applied;
and that we are in favor of democratic control of industry even
where there is relative inefficiency, since democracy in indus-
try must be developed through mistakes, just as democracy in
government has been improved through the method of trial
and error. But where the democratic control of industry is
likely to result in glaring inefficiency, it is better to make
haste slowly. We have a political dogma to the effect that
political democracy is good for all peoples; but when we think
of political democracy as applied to Mexico, for example, we
sometimes have misgivings as to the dogma. As far as indus-
trial democracy is concerned, even the most advanced nations
are still Mexicans.

This thought is brought out in the progranmie of the
Labor Party in the following extract : " An autocratic sultan
may govern without science if his whim is law. A plutocratic
party may choose to ignore science, if it is heedless whether its

▼ou cvii. — ^25

Digitized by VriOOQlC

386 .THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY [June,

pretended solutions of social problems that may win political
triumphs ultimately succeed or fail. But no Labor Party can
hope to maintain its position unless its proposals are, in fact,
the outcome of the best political science of the time." And it
is just as true in industry as in politics, that democratic con-
trol cannot succeed without a large degree of enlightenment
and self-control. Of course the British Labor Party assumes
that the necessary enlightenment and self-control are at hand.

Organized labor may do those things better in Great
Britain. But in this country at any rate, there is no reason to
believe that organized labor has the social vision necessary to
make industrial democracy a success, as the following pas-
sages written into the Naval Appropriation Act by organized
labor's influence will testify : " No part of the appropriations
made in this act shall be available for the salary or pay of any
officer, manager, superintendent, foreman. . . . while making
or causing to be made with a stop watch or other time meas-
uring device a time study of any job of any employee between

the starting and completion thereof; nor shall any part of

the appropriations .... be available to pay any premium or
bonus or cash reward to any employee in addition to his regu-
lar wages, except for suggestions resulting in improvements or
economy in the operation of any governmental plant. " This
might be good tactics in the fight with private employers in
times of peace, but when it is a question of supplying the gov-
ernment with needed munitions in war time, such an attitude
would indicate that industrial democracy has not yet reached
the years of full discretion.

The fourth pillar is a demand that the surplus wealth be
used for the conmion good. Undoubtedly there are certain
forms of surplus which could be taken for the common use
without causing any appreciable embarrassment to produc-
tion, and with considerable benefit to the generality of con-
sumers. This would be true of a variety of kinds of monopoly
profits. But the programme demands that the surplus which
comes from competitive business profits should also go into
the common fund. This means of course that free individual
enterprise is to be brought to an end and that socialistic en-
terprise is to be substituted for it. This part of the progranmie
fails to take into account the fact, and it is an important fact,
that it is impossible to collect the reward of free enterprise

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BRITISH LABOR PARTY 387

and to turn it over to society by a socialistic organization of
industry. The reward of free enterprise is something that is
produced by free enterprise. It is something which enchained
enterprise does not produce. And hence it is something which
enchained enterprise cannot turn over to the consumer. The
free enterpriser who creates wealth that would not otherwise
be produced, benefits himself, but he also benefits the consiun-
ing public generally. The placing of socialistic fetters upon the
enterpriser injures him, and if he was really creative it in-
jures society also. Hobbling a real enterpriser will not create
wealth out of which to provide the national minimum of the
first pillar. On the contrary, it will make the provision of a
suitable national minimum more difficult.

To sum up the situation: The effort to provide a decent
national minimum of leisure, health, education and sub-
sistence is entirely praiseworthy. Compulsory unemploy-
ment should be made impossible, and every normal worker
should receive a living wage. To accomplish these desirable
aims important reforms in the distribution of wealth must be
undertaken. But it must be borne in mind that there are two
problems to be solved, namely, the problem of production and
the problem of distribution. And production must precede
distribution. Great Britain became the foremost nation in pro-
ducing wealth after she became the foremost nation in mak-
ing private enterprise free. In working out a fairer division
of wealth, the dependence of distribution upon production
and of production upon freedom of enterprise must be kept
in mind, and a suitable compromise struck between fair distri-
bution and efficient production.

Digitized by

Google

flew JSooks^

STUDIES IN ENGLISH FRANCISCAN HISTORY. By A. G. Lit-
tle, M.A. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $3.00 net.
The early English Franciscans have had the good fortune
to find a most scholarly and sympathetic historian in Mr. Lit-
tle, who for many years past has been so fruitfully engaged in
studying and writing their story. This, his latest work on the
subject, consists of the six Ford Lectures delivered in the Uni-
versity of Oxford in 1916, covering practically the whole
ground of Franciscan development and activity in England
from the thirteenth century to the fifteenth. They deal suc-
cessively with the ** Observance of the Vow of Poverty," the
"Failure of Mendicancy," the "Relation of the Friars to the
Monks and Parish Priests," the " Friars as Popular Preachers,"
their "Influence in the Education of the Clergy" and the
"Franciscan School at Oxford," with special reference to
Grosseteste and Bacon.

On each of these topics 'Mr. Little has a great deal to say
that is interesting, and not a little tjiat is quite new. He may
be said to have re-discovered John of Wales, O.F.M., a remark-
able writer, who hitherto has not received the place of
prominence he merits. In his treatment of the aspects of Eng-
lish Franciscan history dealt with in the present volume, Mr.
Little shows complete mastery of the mass of manuscript and
printed material he has examined and a rare touch of imagi-
native understanding.

Nevertheless, while all must enjoy his descriptions and
anecdotes of the early English Franciscans, some may not find
it so easy to accept the author's general attitude towards cer-
tain questions nor to assent to some of his specific conclusions.
We should like to discuss with him some points on "mendicancy"
and " privilege " did space permit. However, Mr. Little's Studies
taken as a whole are a most valuable and welcome contribu-
tion to the history of the period and of the institution with
which they deal, and place more heavily in his debt all students
of the history of the Franciscan Order and of pre-Reformation
Catholic life in England.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 389

VLADIMIR SOLOVIEV. A Russian Newman. By Michel d'Her-

bigny. Translated by A. M. Buchanan, M.A. London : R.

& T. Washboume.

Vladimir Soloviev, who has been aptly styled the Russian
Newman, was without question the foremost spiritual philos- •
opher of the Russia of the nineteenth century. His great life-
work was the bringing before the Russian people the idea of a
Universal Church, which they had utterly lost sight of after
many centuries of isolation and schism. Like Newman he
was an ardent student of the Bible, the Fathers and of Church
history, and like Newman he had worked out for himself a
philosophy very similar in method and appeal to the Cardi-
nal's own.

The writer of this entertaining biography considers Solo-
viev as professor, writer, logician, moralist, theologian and
ascetic. He analyzes his chief works — describes his crusade for
the truth as he saw it against the bitter opposition of a tyran-
nous Erastian Church, and gives a life-like portrait of a man
who lived the life of a saint, and died happily in the true fold.
His conversion was denied by many, but it has been proved
that he was received into the Church by a convert priest, Nico-
las Tolstoi, February 18, 1896, in the chapel of Our Lady of
Lourdes at Moscow. On his deathbed he could not obtain the
services of either a priest of the Uniate or of the Latin rite,
so he called in a priest of the Orthodox rite.

After his death the Russian authorities removed his books
from their Index. Their influence has led to the formation of
many Soloviev societies, which aim at spreading his ideas. He
will certainly be an influence for good, once Russia comes to
her own again after the War.

THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY. By Car-
dinal Mercier. Translated by W. H. Mitchell, M.A. New
York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $2.25 net.
Mr. Mitchell has done 9 good service to the cause of Cath-
olic philosophy in English speaking countries by his transla-
tion of this important work. Though the treatment of the sub-
ject is not exhaustive, students will find in it all they need to
know of the vagaries of the leaders of modem thought in the
field of psychology, and they will see how admirably the fun-
damental principles of the Schoolmen explain problems of

Digitized by

Google

390 NEW BOOKS [June,

the soul untouched and unaffected by the vaunted superiority
of modern psychology.

The name of the author is a guarantee for the soundness
of its scholarship. In every page he shows evidence of reading
that is deep and wide. Beginning with the psychological views
of Descartes, he traces the evolution of modern psychology
through the writings of Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Spencer and
Fouill^e till it finds its latest and most developed expression in
the writings of Wundt. He always states the views of those un-
der review with such clearness as will enable the reader to
grasp their full force; and his criticisms are models of dialecti-
cal skill. The book concludes with an interesting chapter on
Neo-Thomism.

This volume should appeal not only to professed students
of philosophy, but to all who wish to be acquainted with the
latest speculations on the nature and activities of the soul.

A MANUAL OF MODERN SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. By Car-
dinal Mercier and Professors of the Higher Institute of
Philosophy, Louvain. Volume II. St. Louis: B. Herder.
$350.

The first volume of this work appeared about a year ago,
and merited our expression of high appreciation. This second
volume does not fall short of the hopes and expectations then
expressed. Designed as a Manual, it has the defects and vir-
tues of a handy text-book. While its condensation necessitates
a certain obscurity, and its technical terminology prevents him
who runs and reads from readily understanding it, there are
compensating advantages. It serves well as the basis of ex-
planation and amplification to be given by the professor; the
brevity of the text lends itself the more easily to the task of
memory; whilst the scientific divisions, clear-cuf theses and
formal proofs, all well indicated by proper type, make it a
real thesaurus for one already acquainted with the subject,
who wishes to refresh his knowledge.

The subjects covered are Natural Theology (Theodicy),
Logic, Ethics, and the History of Philosophy. The first treatise
discussing the existence, the nature and the attributes of God,
as known by reason, sets forth succinctly the traditional teach-
ing as expounded by St. Thomas, whilst the subtle argument of
St. Anselm, a simultaneo, is stated and handled with such im-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 391

partiality as to show both its strong and its weak points. The
very fact that " it will not down " proves the latent strength in
it.

The treatise on Logic will probably be found the least
satisfactory. It suffers from undue compression. The many
vital and difficult problems arising, can scarcely be dealt with
in the seventy pages allotted to it. The General Ethics com-
piled by Professor A. Arendt, Ph.D., from Cardinal Mercier's
notes, and the Special Ethics, by another of his disciples. Pro-
fessor J. Halleux, Ph.D., are excellently done. HageFs concept
of the jurisdiction of the State (p. 327), just now working out
its logical consequences in the conduct of his disciples who are
giving it a military application on the bloody fields of Europe,
is pithily stated and contrasted with the traditional and Chris-
tian concept of the limits of State sovereignty (p. 337). It
would not be easy to put into fewer or clearer words the dif-
ferent ideals for which the opposing forces are contending in
this great World War.

The concluding treatise of the course, "The History of
Philosophy,'' is a mere sketch of philosophic thought traced
through ancient, mediaeval and modern times. It serves its
purpose of giving the beginner a general idea of the subject.
It is treated more thoroughly in the elaborate works by the
same author. Dr. De Wulf. His Scholasticism Old and New,
and History of Mediseual Philosophy, have been translated into
English by Dr. Coffey.

We have been informed by a chaplain lately returned
from the front that our soldiers who are fighting for the cause
of civilization against "chaos come again," are much inter-
ested in the discussion of the philosophical principles under-
lying the questions at issue. If this be true, here is another
and most important class of readers to whom this Manual in
its EngUsh dress will appeal. We cordially recommend it to
them, and to any others who may wish for a clear and exact
exposition of Catholic philosophy.

THE BRAZILIANS AND THEIR COUNTRY. By Clayton S.

Cooper. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. $3.50 net.

The purpose of this volume, as the author tells us, is to
present a somewhat comprehensive idea of the life and work
of the present day Brazilians. In some forty chapters Mr.

Digitized by

Google

392 NEW BOOKS [June,

Cooper describes the colonization and history of Brazil, her
mixed peoples, her home life, her trade and industries, her
army and navy, her language and literature, her marvelous
resources, her educational progress, her foreign relations, her
estimate of the United States, and her possible future develop-
ment.

But why does he spoil his message of peace and good will
by insulting at least a dozen times the people whom he wishes
to conciliate? At times he seems to write for a few unbeliev-
ing Brazilian positivists, who like all renegades hate the
Church that mothered them. Catholics here, and in South
America, are growing rather weary and disgusted with the
calumnies indulged in so frequently by American writers when
they treat of Latin America. We read in these pages of slug-
gard and libertine monks, of the Jesuit's love of gold, of the
lack of patriotism in Catholics because of their pacifism and
their shielding of the criminal in the confessional, of the
mediaeval inheritance of blinding bigotry, etc.

THE HISTORY OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS IN NORTH AMER-
ICA, COLONIAL AND FEDERAL. Volume H. By Thomas
Hughes, SJ. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $8.00.
Every historical scholar will read with interest the second
volume of Father Hughes' history of the Jesuits in North Amer-
ica. It is ten years since his first volume was published,
although in the interval he has edited two large volumes of
documents containing valuable material hitherto hidden in
many libraries and archives. The present volume is in real-
ity a history of the Catholic Church in America from 1645 to
1773, for apart from the Jesuits, no other body of Catholic
clergy, secular or regular, appeared on the ground till more
than a decade of years had passed after the American Revolu-
tion. Their field of missionary labor during colonial times com-
prised Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsyl-
vania and New York. All during this period their work was
hampered by the bitter anti-Popery sentiment that dominated
England, and found utterance in a multitude of brutal and
oppressive colonial penal laws. Father Hughes cites docu-
ment after document for his every statement, and complains
most justly of the critics of his first volume, who met his proofs
merely with a sneer.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 393

In eighteen chapters he discusses the labors of the Jesuits
in the American colonies, the West Indies, and in the French
possessions from Quebec to Louisiana. He contrasts the utter
failure of the British Propagation societies among the Indians
with the success of the Jesuit missions, and brings out clearly
the many difficulties and trials that noble band of pioneers
faced with such unwavering loyalty.

Father Hughes takes exception to Bishop Russell's account
of the controversy between the Jesuits and the second
Lord Baltimore, and states that it is not in accord with
the documents. Alluding to Baltimore's evident anti-cleri-
calism, he writes: "The salient facts recorded in our pages
upon this subject of Cecil Lord Baltimore's practical Catho-
licity are such as scoffing at the Pope, whittling away ordi-
nances and Papal bulls, treating the priesthood with lan-
guage partly excusable because characteristic, expropriating
the goods of priests, invading their personal liberty, regarding
them as possible traitors and criminals, providing for them in
his futile drafts all kinds of penalties even capital punishment,
and never alluding to any good which they might have done
to him, to the colony or to the world." As for the Act of Re-
ligion or Toleration passed in 1649, in its origin, nature and
circumstances, it was but the expiring gasp of a toleration
practised from the first by the Catholic gentry of Maryland.
It is a matter of debate as to whether Baltimore had anything
to do with its enactment.

A very interesting chapter deals with the question of a
Catholic bishopric (1756-1773). The first suggestion of a
bishop for the American colonies came from Bishop Challoner
in England, who wrote to Propaganda to that effect as early as
1756. But Americans like Charles Carroll were opposed to the
appointment, for the reason that the coming of a bishop would
furnish a new pretext for persecution. He says expressly in
his letter to Bishop Challoner that he was not writing under
the instigation of the Jesuits, but expressing the views of every
Catholic in Maryland at the time.

OVER JAPAN WAY. By Alfred M. Hitchcock. New York:

Henry Holt & Co. $2.00 net.

We reconmiend to our readers this chatty account of an
American tourist's jaunt through modem Japan. The traveler

Digitized by

Google

394 NEW BOOKS [June.

pictures in most graphic style Japan's chief cities, her artistic
shops, her gaudy temples, her magnificent palaces, her quaint
hotels, her weird theatres, her peculiar customs and super-
stitions, her many beauties of lake, forest and mountain. He
praises the Japanese people for their intense patriotism, their
love of nature and of art, their progressiveness, and their
courtesy, although he points out that their ideas of honesty
and justice are far different from ours, and their immorality
of a type to be expected among pagans. They are certainly a
hard people for Westerners to understand, for they have not
been trained to respect the Ten Commandments. Their tre-
mendous conceit makes them forget too easily how much they
they have borrowed from the nations of the West,

VERSES IN PEACE AND WAR. By Shane Leslie. New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.00.

If Mr. Shane Leslie were not alreiady so widely known as
publicist and editor, he would perhaps be more adequately
saluted as the poet he most indubitably is. For even this ex-
tremely slim volume bears quite substantial witness to his un-
common poetic gift, and to the highly mystical and impas-
sioned quality of his imagination. It is more than a little akin
to Francis. Thompson, particularly in the brief religious lyrics:
and one would declare these religious verses to be the finest of
Mr. LesUe's, were it not for such strong and beautiful work
as The Dead Friend, or the many epitaphs upon soldiers and
aviators fallen in the Great War. To show the spirit of
these latter, and also the poet's felicity in the quatrain, these
lines from The Sentry suffice:

" Who passeth here? " — " We of the new Brigade,
Who come in aid — to take your place who fell."
" What is the countersign? " — " That we have weighed
The cost ye paid — ^yet come ! " — " Pass ! all is well."

THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF 6ERHART HAUPTMANN, Vol-
ume VII. New York: B. W. Huebsch. $1.50 net.
Professor Lewishohn, the editor, and Mr. Huebsch, the pub-
lisher, have given us one of the memorable literary gifts of the
times in presenting in English the complete writings of this
representative German poet and dramatist. The present
volume rounds out the work, and makes it now possible for the
English-reading public to study in their entirety the composi-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 395

tions of Hauptmann. And no time in the world's history, per-
haps, could be found more opportune to present this exposi-
tion of German thought than the present. While revealing
with searching truth, as is the poet's function, the spirit of his
own people, of whom he is an acknowledged spokesman, the
voice of Hauptmann sounds, nevertheless, with a strange calm-
ness and dignity over the clamor of the warring moment. Here
the better part of the Teuton, his higher soul, is often heard,
voicing aspirations and ideals beyond mere force and power.
Yet the German spirit as the world has come to know it
through its militaristic shapers and exponents, is likewise dis-
cerned; notably in ** The Commemoration Masque," which was
written to celebrate the centenary of Germany's liberation
from the Napoleonic yoke, and which, with the quick staff of
the poet, strikes straight to the foundations of German national
feeling and shows us what is really at the bottom of twentieth
centmy Deutschtum — the fear of a second dismemberment; a
fear upon which, of course, the powers of Kaiserism have clev-
erly played for their own ends.

The chief contribution to the volume is "The Bow of
Odysseus." Hauptmann's retelling of the old Homeric legend
is a vigorous one, full of the thunder and crash of the voice of
Zeus. There is a primitive ruggedness about the poetry of this
drama that is tremendously effective; and through its every
passage breathes the fire of dramatic suspense, the clash of
wills, the play of mighty passions. A strange feature of the
dramatist's arrangement of the plot is the total exclusion of the
figure of Penelope; and yet, thanks to the poet's projective
vision, Penelope moves, a living personality, through the action
of the play.

"Elga," a play which has always been effective on the
stage, despite its literary austerity and its aloofness from ordi-
nary stage theatricalism; and "Helios" and "Pastoral," two
symbolic fragments, complete the volume.

The philosophy of Hauptmann, his criticism, and likewise
his high poetic powers and compelling gifts as a dramatist —
these are matters to be discussed in a detailed study of the
man and his works. But his works are permanent contribu-
tions to world literature; and this presentation of them in Eng-
lish will be welcomed by all students of letters who cannot
reach him in the original.

Digitized by

Google

396 NEW BOOKS [June,

HISTORY OF THE CIVH. WAR. By James Ford Rhodes. New

York: The Macmillan Co. $2.50.
^ During the last decade much new material has come to
light concerning our Civil War, both in original matter and in
valuable analyses. This volume is a fresh study of the subject
made by a well-known authority on that period of our history,
and related in a clear, concise and impartial manner. Lin-
coln he compares with Caesar as contrasting types of great
men. The latter created Caesarism for the modem world, the
autocracy of the superman; the former made it possible for
every man to have a chance in our American democracy.

By the generous terms granted the vanquished at Appo-
mattox, the North created a most favorable impression in
Europe. ^* Since the Americans' most noble closing of the
Civil War," wrote George Meredith, " I have looked to them as
the hope of our civilization."

The author's judgment that Grant was a greater general,
strategically, than " Stonewall " Jackson will be questioned by
students of Civil War campaigns.

THE WAY OF WAR. By Professor T. M. Kettle, Lieutenant

Second Dublin Fusiliers. New York: Charles Scribner's

Sons. $2.75.

An ardent Irish patriot, sojourning in Belgium in 1914,
whither he had gone for the purpose of buying arms for the
Irish Volunteers, became a witness to the horrors of the rape
of Belgium, when the German forces, without warning,
swarmed over that unhappy land and crushed it under their
iron heel. That Irishman, bound on an errand of destruction
against England which had long oppressed his native land,
was, upon seeing with his own eye the ruthlessness of German
warfare directed against the whole civilized world, changed
heart and soul to a fighter for the very Britain which once he
had opposed, but which now he championed as she rose to the
defence of outraged Belgium. The larger vision became his;
and without hesitation he offered himself to serve in the war
for humanity, a war which to him had instantly become para-
mount over all national and local interests.

This Irish patriot was Professor Thomas Kettle, popularly
known among a very wide circle of friends as " Tom " Kettle,
one of the most gifted and most admired of the younger Irish

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 397

leaders. The present volume, following on the recent publica-
tion of his poems, possesses a poignant interest, recording as it
does his death on the field, and offering a collection of his writ-
ings composed during his career as a soldier in France, as well
as a memoir contributed by his wife. Mrs. Kettle writes with a
fine reticence of her departed husband, and with an equally
fine fire when dealing with those who, incapable of appreciat-
ing his exalted motives, have reflected on his character in the
pubUc prints. Her memoir makes unusually interesting
reading.

The subjects Professor Kettle treats are varied, touching
on many different phases of the War. But perhaps the most re-
vealing chapter in the book is the opening one, "Why Ire-
land Fought,** which is one of the best expositions we have yet
seen of the whole European situation and of Ireland's relation
thereto. The book makes interesting reading; it has style and
charm^ strength and veracity, and is brilliant and winning with
the personality of its regretted author.

NABfE THIS FLOWER. By Gaston Bonnier. New York: E..

P. Dutton & Co.

This book, of attractive appearance and exceptionally
convenient size, gives all the plants and flowers of France, Bel-
gium, Switzerland and England, also the commoner plants and
flowers of Europe. It is profusely illustrated, many of the
plates being in color, and has various tables and indexes by
which to pla«e the plants correctly. The editor and translator
has added the results of his own researches to the work of
the author, who is Professor of Botany at the Sorbonne.

THE ACATHIST HYMN OF THE HOLY ORTHODOX EASTERN

CHURCH. Edited by W. J. Bu-beck, M.A., and Rev. G. R.

Woodward, M.A. New York: Longmans, Green & Co.

$1.25.

The Acathist Hymn is the best known Uturgical hymn in
the Byzantine rite, but the editors are mistaken in thinking it
peculiar to the Holy Orthodox Church. It is used by the
Uniates as well as the Russians, and the Pope grants special in-
dulgences to all the faithful who say it devoutly.

We would have greatly preferred a prose translation, for
the poetic English version of Mr. Woodward is an utter failure

Digitized by

Google

398 NEW BOOKS [June,

owing to its bad rhymes, its literal over-exactness, and its
absurd archaisms. True the poetic version was chosen in the
hope that the hymn might be sung in the Anglican Church ** to
safeguard the right faith in the Incarnation, and to correct the
false views of the sixteenth century reformers such as Luther,
Bucer, Zwingli and Calvin/' But the Greek liturgical poetry is
too extravagant in its use of symbols and images to suit the
Western mind.

VALUE OF THE CLASSICS. Princeton: University Press.

Cloth, $1.50; Board, $1.00.

These addresses delivered at the Conference on Classical
Studies in Liberal Education, held at Princeton University
June 2, 1917, evidence the vitality of classical studies in the
United States, and make a strong protest against the persistent
effort of the past half-century to deprive the languages of an-
cient Greece and Rome of their legitimate place in the curricu-
lum of modem education. The address of Senator Lodge is
admirable and worthy of a place beside the famous address of
J. S. Mill on the same subject to the students of the University
of St. Andrew fifty years ago. The Senator makes out a clear
case for the classics and answers the specious objections urged
by the patrons of modern education, clearly and efifectively.
We strongly recommend the book to all our readers who are
interested in Secondary and University education, especially
to parents who desire to give their children the benefits of a
truly liberal education.

Dean West contributes an excellent introduction, which
of itself would go far to justify the publication of this valuable
asset to the cause of classical study.

NOCTURNE OF REMEMBERED SPRING. By Conrad Aiken.

Boston: The Four Seas Co. $1.25 net.

At a time when poetry seems to be, in a small degree at
least, returning to her own — taking on new lustre of virility
and spirituality, after a deadening period of the most feeble
articulation — ^it is distinctly discouraging to come upon a vol-
ume of this sort, signed with a name which has become more
or less known the past few years. Mr. Aiken's work in this
volume is not (like that of some of his Cubistic and Futuristic
contemporaries) poetry gone mad; it is poetry gone wrong;

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 399

poetry debauched and prostituted. Here we have the gift
of song given over, not with abandon, but with cold blooded
calculation, solely and wholly to themes of lust and sensuality.
The reader marvels that any man could write such stuff; much
less dedicate it to his wife. The least said, and the less seen
of such books as this, the better.

MEMOIRS OF CARDINAL DE RETZ. New York: E. P. Dutton

& Co.

These memoirs, from the standpoint of history, are, on the
whole, of questionable value; their very tone of frankness,
with its swaggering note, is apt to beget suspicion and in-
credulity. They do, however, shed considerable light of a
lurid sort, on the tempestuous era of the Fronde, of which De
Retz was one of the many active storm centres. The narrative
is a veritable maze of intrigues and counter-intrigues whose
numberless cross-currents underlie the troubled surface of
French politics during the successive ministries of Richelieu
and Mazarin.

De Retz's moral character was, unfortunately, not on a
par with his social and clerical eminence, though his latter
years appear to have been influenced by the purifying wave
of reform that was then sweeping over the Church of France.

Mr. David Ogg has contributed a satisfactory preface to the
book, which is fully up to ** Everyman's " excellent standard.

COLLEGE OP MOUNT ST. VINCENT, A FAMOUS CONVENT
SCHOOL. By Marion J. Brunowe and Anne C. Browne.
New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.00.
Over a hundred years ago three Sisters of Charity of St.
Vincent de Paul, journeying from their mother-house in Mary-
land, came to the city of New York at the invitation of Bishop
Connolly, and founded what has become today one of the fore-
most Catholic educational institutions for women in America.
The story of this famous college is told in the pages of the
present volume in a manner not often encountered in the re-
cital of such histories. This is a genuine history, narrated in
a style that is clear, attractive, literary, and wholly lacking in
the •• domestic gusto " that too often characterizes this sort of
production. For this reason it may be regarded as a valuable
document. Certainly the story it tells of the aspirations, activi-

Digitized by

Google

400 NEW BOOKS [June,

ties and achievements of the followers of Mother Seton, in
charity and education, is an inspiring one- The figures of
many notable churchmen move through these pages; while the
volume itself, handsomely illustrated, is in the best style of the
printing art

A HANDBOOK OP STORY WRITING. By Blanche Colton Wil-
liams. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50 net.
This is the most practical treatise on the art of short-story
writing we have yet had the good fortune to read; it deals not
alone with the technique of writing, but speaks from the view-
point of the literary marketer as well as from that of the artist
The author possesses the psychology of the crowd (and of the
publisher) as well as the insight of the craftsman and artificer.
In brief, she tells would-be authors not only how to write good
stories — stories that are artistic and worth-while; but also
how to produce work that will sell. No beginner in the art of
story writing can study this book without advantage; and it
would be difficult to imagine even the most tried and proven
producer of fiction who would not profit by its perusal.

THE BREAKFAST OF THE BIRDS. By Judah Sternberg. Phila-
delphia : The Jewish Publication Society of America.
The short stories, fancies and allegories collected under
this title are by a Russian Jew and were designed for children
of his own race. They have been lovingly translated from
the Hebrew by Emily SoUs-Cohen, Jr., who has rendered them
into such excellent English that the original has lost nothing
of its fine literary quality. There is a touch of freshness and
novelty in the references to Jewish customs and traditions that
makes an appeal to adults as well as juveniles. Colored
illustrations by a child-pupil in the Boston Museum of Art add
to the interest Altogether, the book is pleasing. The trans-
lator's aspiration that it ** might, perhaps, win other than
Jewish readers '• is worthy of fulfillment

APOLOGETICAL STUDIES. By J. Tixeront. St Louis: B.

Herder. 75 cents net.

In this brief treatise. Professor Tixeront of the University
of Lyons, answers in a most scholarly fashion the rationalistic
and modernistic denials of the dogmas of the Trinity, the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 401

Divinity of Christ, the divine character of the Catholic Church
and the Sacrament of Penance. It is a valuable book for the
student in our modem universities, who has begun to doubt
the foundation principles of Christianity, and looks upon
auricular confession as the invention of priests. The histori-
cal method is used throughout according to the best traditions
of the modem French school.

THE BOOK OF NEW YORK. By Robert Shackleton. Phila-
delphia: The Penn Publishing Co. $2.50 net.
This is a very handsome gift book, entertaining and infor-
mative. The author writes in a chatty, good-humored style,
pleasant to read for the most part, though occasionally marred
by stilted phrasing and labored humor. After treating of the
general characteristics of the city and its habitants, with a brief
historical survey, beginning with the Battery he takes up in
detail in successive chapters the various districts and features
of interest connected with New York, carrying the reader up
the Hudson as far as West Point and down the Bay as far as*
Coney Island.

There is a great deal of curious and out-of-the-way infor-
mation in the book, historic, legendary, and contemporary,
and much which would be news to the average New Yorker. It
says much for the author*s discernment and philosophy of life
that in his opinion the happiest portion of the metropolis is
the tenement district.

THE TURKISH EMPIRE: ITS GROWTH AND DECLINE. By

Lord Eversley. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. $2.00 net.

This is simply a record of how, piece by piece, the Turkish
Empire grew, and how it, piecemeal, fell away. Nothing else
falls within the compass of the story. No internal affairs are
treated, no view of domestic relations expressed, no politics,
literature or science.

Through a period of three centuries, 1288-1566, ten Sul-
tans passed their power from father to son, all great men, able
generals, energetic conquerors, who personally led their troops
to battle and victory. The decay of the empire set in when
first the women of the harem gained ascendancy in the policy
of the realm, and not till the early nineteenth centiuy was there
any semblance of arrest of the steady shrinkage of territory.

▼OL. cvii.— 26

Digitized by

Google

402 NEW BOOKS [June,

Even this recrudescence of ancient energy was transitory, and
the waning power has given us the Sick Man of Europe.

Lord Eversley has long been interested in Turkish aif airs,
and has been in close touch with the influential peoples of the
State for upwards of sixty years. Hence is he led to expand
the story of the last century of Turkish misrule. There can be
no doubt that this developed account intensifies into conviction
the feeling aroused in the early parts of the story that the Turk
should be removed from control over Christian communities.
The barbarities of our day inflicted upon the Armenian are
but the survival of their policy and treatment whenever Chris-
tians have been subjected to their servitude. Despite the re-
minder of this fact all through the book. Lord Eversley never
lets occasion pass to remark upon the rapacity and cruelty of
Christians whenever their armies come together or pass
through alien fields. 'At times, the impression is that the author
sympathizes with the Turk, and he speaks of " trumpery stuff *'
in connection with the guardianship of the Holy Sepulchre. He
is napping when he writes the "larger half" and "one an-
other " for two. His preoccupation seems to be to record his
researches, and he finds no inclination to beautify his style, or
let his imagination aid in producing a living, vivid narrative.

THE TIDEWAY. By John Ayscough. New York: Benziger

Brothers. $1.50 net.

Though written during the progress of the War, in which
Monsignor Bickerstaff'e-Drew has served as chaplain with the
British forces, these sketches are wholly free from the note
one gets now and again today — the tendency to " do " the strug-
gle professionally, as so much appropriate and providential
copy. The War is, in the main, no more than a background
for one or another of the charming stories, though the few
direct references to it are telling enough to stand beside many
pages of spun-out description. " To an old man of peace and
of the pen who has stood near-hand to it, the anguish of writ-
ing of it is too raw and terrible. He will not."

One may have a little regret that the material here is not
molded more definitely to the requirements of technique, that
the events which make up each tale do not proceed and inter-
lace with the simple swiftness and inevitability which make
the most dramatic values in a short story. But taking the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 403

units of this volume for what they are — sketches — one must
acknowledge that they are fitted to satisfy a very exacting
literary taste. Those familiar with the work of "John
Ayscough ** know what to expect from his hand : knowledge of
diverse men, winning charity, .the kind of subtle, pervasive
humor which springs up close to them, and an exquisite art of
expression. The Sacristans, originally published in The Catho-
lic World, is perhaps the best, from the point of view of serious
achievement. Among the lighter pieces, the delightful con-
versation between the young officer, the heavy civilian, **0.
Y.," and the Benedictine monk, entitled By the Way, deserves
special mention.

LETTERS AND DIARY OP ALAN SEE6ER. New York : Charles

Scribner's Sons. $1.25.

Alan Seeger's gifts and gallantry have made him to many
the very type of the youth of America, symbol at once of our
loss and our gain. It is right that a poet should typify — in his
work always, if he is to be worth his poetic salt; in his life
whenever he can. Circumstances make it the more difficult
requirement; and herein, we may be sure Alan Seeger would
have said, he was more fortunate, than most.

Yet the intimate record of his spirit which these papers
furnish shows that it was not good fortune so much as a kind
of necessity in Alan Seeger's nature which made him embody
and interpret, in heroic action and at the ultimate price, the
best ideal of his age. He must inevitably have gone where the
fight was thickest. ** I am happier here than I could possible
be anywhere else," he writes his mother. " I was a spectator,
now I am an actor. I was in a shallow, now I am moving in
the full current.**

Not a Catholic, he yet understood by instinct the philoso-
phy of sacrifice. He says in one place : " Every evening there
is salut in the old church, and on Sundays, Mass. The nave is
always crowded with soldiers, even though there be few real
believers among them. But these services, where the voices of
the soldiers mingle with those of the women and little children
of the village, are always peculiarly moving to me. The Catho-
olic religion, idealizing, as it does, the spirit of sacrifice, has an
almost universal appeal these days. " And again : ** Nothing
but good can befall the soldier, so he playshis part well. Come

Digitized by

Google

404 NEW BOOKS [June,

out of the ordeal safe and sound, he has had an experience in
the light of which all life hereafter will be three times richer
and more beautiful; wounded, he will have the esteem and ad-
miration of all men and the approbation of his own con-
science; killed, more than any other man he can face the un-
known without misgiving."

Some vivid pictures are drawn : the long periods of " mis-
erable trench warfare " alternating with the charges of which
he writes so longingly — " the ^lan of open action, where one
can return blow for blow;" his companions in the Legion; long
marches and fatiguing sentry vigils when he is buoyed up by
the sense of " a kind of comradeship with the stars; " battle-
fields during action, and even hillsides in bloom. But one lin-
gers longest over those repeated passages to his mother, writ-
ten to hearten her with the assurance of his own complete con-
tent.

Alan Seeger was a soldier in the Foreign Legion from the
beginning of the War until his death in the charge on Belloy-
en-Santerre, July 4th, two years later. In promise and in per-
formance he stands among the very first of those poets who
have fallen.

TOLSTOY. By George Rapall Noyes. New York: Duffleld &

Co. $150 net.

This is the second volume of Messrs. Duffield & Co.'s series,
" Master Spirits of Literature," of which Dr. Charles H. Grand-
gent*s Dante was the initial work. Here we have the editor-in-
chief of the series writing on a subject which he is peculiarly
fitted to treat. Professor of Slavic Languages in the State Uni-
versity of California, he has devoted his life to the study of
the literature of Eastern Europe. He brings a ripe knowledge
of the people and thought of Russia to his task of interpreting
the master spirit of Russian literature; and he handles his ma-
terial in a manner that serves admirably to make his inter-
pretation widely read and clearly understood. Striking a
happy medium between the strictly biographical and the
wholly critical, he succeeds in giving a sympathetic and re-
vealing exposition of the character of Tolstoy and the value
of his writings. The man himself he shows to be truly ** a man
of vigorous, though eccentric, intellectual power;" one whose
whole nature may well be summed up in Professor Noyes* own

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 405

apt phirase, " poverty, chastity, and dwobedience." The strug-
gles and conflicts of Tolstoy's soul, his ardent sincerity, his im-
patience with sham — these great movements of interior drama
and these noble attributes, the author reveals in strong con-
trast to the man's many and sometimes irritating limitations.
In short, ft^ofessor Noyes seems to achieve a truly just ap-
praisement of his hero, whom, in conclusion, he characterizes
as " not only the greatest writer of Itussia, but the writer most
typical of Russian society as it had shaped itself in the three
hundred years between the establishment of serfdom at the
end of the sixteenth century and the beginnings of the indus-
trial and political revolution in our own time." The book is
carefully indexed, with an excellent bibliography added. It
furnishes illuminative critical expositions of Tolstoy's writ-
ings, and will undoubtedly prove a real help to the student of
literature.

MT IRELAND. Songs and Simple Rhymes. By Francis Carlin.

New York: Henry Holt & Co. $1.25.

Of the making of Irish songs truly there is no end — nor
should it any longer seem strange when some of the most
engaging of them are spun in New York City. Here is a vol-
ume of confessed "simplicity," a collection of verses not at
all equal in literary merit: but pervaded by a charm both fresh
and familiar. • : ^^'^^

The little songs are, first of all, about Ireland: but happily,
they are not controversial. They hum gently of Irish saints
and Irish poets, of birds and bees and "star shadows," of
young lovers and old legends — of a humble, cheerful, rural
Ireland, with great distant dreams and a living, very present
Catholic faith to comfort the none-too-easy ways of life. Mr.
Carlin's request for prayers — after the manner of the Ancren
Riwle—ioT " the soul of the scribe who wrote it," will, it is
hoped, be answered even in the fulfillment of earthly success.

EARLY ESSAYS AND LECTURES. By Canon Sheehan, D.D.

New York: Longman, Green &, Co. $1.25 net.

Lovers of Canon Sheehan will welcome this new edition of
his essays and lectures which first appeared some six years ago.
They are presented as they originally appeared, without addi-
tion or modification, a great mistake, as the author himself

Digitized by

Google

406 tfEW BOOKS, [June,

admits he would have had to make many changes had he ven-
tured on the task of revision. However, they are at least a
record of certain phases of thought on problems of great mo-
ment during a literary novitiate extending over many years.
The most interesting essays are those that give us Canon
Sheehan's estimate of Emerson, Matthew Arnold and Aubrey
de Vere. Of the lectures we commend especially the panegyric
on Daniel O'Connell, and the paper read before Maynooth
Union on The Study of Mental Science.

THE BARREN GROUND OP NORTHERN CANADA. By War-
burton Pike. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. $2.00 net.
What at first glance appears to be a rather forbidding
volume turns out to be one of the most enjoyable books of the
trip into the ••Barren Ground" of the far north, published some
years ago for private circulation, and now first given to the gen-
eral reading public. It opens a new world to the reader and
brings a breath of refreshment

Besides being as entertaining as any adventure story that
a grown-up boy could revel in, Mr. Pike's book is full of in-
teresting information. Living with the Indians throughout his
long sojourn in the ••Barren Ground,*' he is enabled to give
much illuminative matter concerning their life and habits and
traditions. There is, however, not the least attempt at erudi-
tion: all is set forth in the simple manner of a good story-
teller. The Catholic reader will appreciate the kindly refer-
ences to the missionaries whom the author found far beyond
the haunts of the ordinary trader.

GOD AND MAN. Lectures on Dogmatic Theology. From the

French of the Rev. L. Labauche, SS. Volume I. God. New

York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.75 net

The publication of dogmatic text-books in English will
prove most helpful both to the theological student and to the
intelligent laity.

The volume before us by the eminent Sulpician, the Abb6
Labauche, treats of the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation, and
the Redemption. Throughout, his aim is to combat modern
rationalists, who try to show that all dogmas are of human
origin whether we view them in the Sacred Scriptures, in their
development, or at the time of their conciliar definition.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 407

THE MAN FROM NOWHERE. By Anna T. Sadlier. New

York: Benziger Brothers. $1.00.

In this story of adventure and mystery the popular author
of such successful novels as The True Story of Master Gerard
and The Red Inn of St. Lyphar, returns to her original field
of juvenile fiction. But with a difference, nevertheless; for in
The Man From Nowhere the adult as well as the youthful
reader will find a tale worth while. From the moment, very
early in the first pages of the book, that the alarm is given for
the launching of the lifeboat which brings on to the scene the
mysterious personage who gives the title to the tale, the story
is full of action and suspense. In the delineation of the vari-
ous characters of the story. Miss Sadlier is particularly happy;
each stands alone; and, in true dramatic fashion, each speaks
and is revealed chiefly through action rather than mere de-
scription by the author. The plot is sustained to the last page;
and of course there is a wholesome spirit of religion pervading
the story — not obtruded, but cleverly and gracefully sustained.

CHRONICLES OF ST, TID. By Eden Philpotts. New York:

The Macmillan Co. $1.50.

St. Tid is in Cornwall, that particular portion of the old
world which Mr. Philpotts has made peculiarly his own in the
writing of such novels as Old Delabole, BruneFs Tower, The
Mother, The Haven, and others. But it is not every successful
novelist who is likewise the successful short story teller.
Eden Philpotts shows himself equally the master of both arts.
A keen insight into the human heart, its foibles, its passions,
its strengths and weaknesses, and a gift of homely humor that
mellows the intermingled action of all those attributes, makes
these tales at once authentic and absorbingly interesting. Com-
posed in dialect, the author nevertheless has struck the hap-
piest of balances between the native tongue that is racy of the
soil and that literary clarity without which all the power in
the world of original expression is mumbled and lost. The
tales are all of love — of young love and old love, of lads and
lassies in love and out of love; yet, though the theme be un-
changed, the book never grows tiresome, but rather accumu-
lates interest as each chronicle is unfolded revealing some new
angle of the age-old story.

Digitized by

Google

IRecent Bvents.

Since the last notes were written the
Progress of the War. progress of the Germans on their left
wing has been practically at a standstill,
the attempt to separate the British from the French having so
far failed. Amiens, one of the most magnificent cathedrals in
Europe, aqd perhaps the finest monument of Gothic architec-
ture in France, has been subjected to bombardment by the
German guns, its roof and walls having been pierced by shells.
The city has been evacuated, and as the railway line which pre-
serves the communications of the Allies has been carried be-
hind the city, Amiens has ceased to be the place of importance
which it once was.

Farther north the British have had to evacuate the district
east of Ypres, but the city itself still remains in their hands,
although its evacuation is considered probable. This would be
a matter of regret from the sentimental rather than from the
strategic point of view. A more serious loss was that of Mont
Kemmel which the Germans took, and which affords to them
the point of observation of military importance. Further
attempts of the Germans to advance either towards Ypres
itself or towards the hills which guard the channel ports have
been unsuccessful. These attempts have involved the enemy
in great losses. He is still fifty miles from Calais, and it is hoped
that he will never reach there, but the possibility of such an
event is being realized. The French have not come up into
Flanders to assist the British. No word has come of any
Americans having reached this part of the country. They are,
however, brigaded with the British, east of Arras.

At the time these notes are written it is confidently ex-
pected that the Crermans will make a new attempt, perhaps in
greater force than ever before, to break through. Germany
is being denuded of troops of every kind. Even the youths of
the 1919 and 1920 classes are stationed behind the front line,
although so far it is not positive that they have taken part in
the actual fighting. An Austrian army is said to have arrived
to support the new attack. The Allies, however, are confident

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 409

of being able to resist any onslaught which may be made,
although it is acknowledged that they may have to give ground.
The war has now become one of endurance, that is to say it is a
question as to which side has the largest reserves. According
to a trustworthy authority General Foch has 900,000 reserves
of French, British and American in perfect condition who
have not yet been put into action, but can be at any moment.
England has approximately 600,000 fully trained men, of whom
at least 400,000 can be placed on the line within twenty hours.
This country sent over to France, during Mr. Baker's absence,
250,000 men in addition to the 150,000 already there, and ac-
cording to the same authority will send 200,000 in May and
300,000 in June. This will add nearly two millions of fresh
fighting men to the Western front for the Allies, while the
enemy has less than one million of reserves. It is also stated
that the Frencjh reserves have been augmented in addition to
what has already been mentioned by some 250,000 men from
Italy. The position of General Foch as Generalissimo has been
made quite effectual, and his power has been extended over the
forces of Italy, so that he is in supreme conmiand from the
Channel to the Adriatic. The anticipated assault by the Aus-
trians on the Italian front has not yet begun but may take place
almost any day. In the Balkans, in the neighborhood of
Saloniki, there have been some signs of activity, but it is very
unlikely that any great movement is contemplated in this re-
gion. The British in Palestine have been meeting with a con-
siderable degree of resistance from the Turks and Germans,
but no attempt on the part of the latter to retake Jerusalem has
been made. The British have been forced to withdraw ad-
vanced forces on the east of the Jordan, but this in no way
indicates a serious reverse. While in Mesopotamia the troops
under General Marshall have continued their advance and arc
now within eighty miles of Mosul. The Turks continue their
advance into the district ceded to them and have taken two or
three towns.

As to the U-boat warfare, the British have made daring
attempts to block the entrance to 2k5ebrugge and at Ostend,
from which many submarines go out on their piratical voyages,
thus inaugurating a new policy of activity instead of the pas-
sive waiting for the enemy to come out which has been so se-
verely criticized. On good authority it is stated that at last

Digitized by

Google

410 RECENT EVENTS [June,

an effective means has been discovered to cope with the sub-
marine, so eflfective, indeed, that it may be confidently ex-
pected that the seas will be cleared of this pest

M. C16menceau still retains in France the
France. premiership, and, in fact, as time goes on

his position seems to be gaining in
strength, so that by some he is regarded as almost a dictator.
The prosecution of the members of the conspiracy to bring
about a peace with Germany on the ground that France was
sure of being defeated, is being continued. The trial by court-
martial of the manager of the Bonnet-Rouge has just con-
cluded. He received the death penalty and several of his co-
conspirators were sentenced to imprisonment for various pe-
riods. M. Duval was the director of the Bonnet-Rouge, and one
of the defendants who was sentenced to two years in prison,
was formerly a director of the Ministry of the Interior and
Head of the Secret Service. The accusation against the Bon-
net-Rouge was based upon a series of articles which appeared
not long after the outbreak of the War in which the high com-
mand in France was attacked. These articles were secretly
distributed among the soldiers at the front, and led to a cer-
tain degree of demoralization among them. It was proved
during the recent trial that the editor of the paper had re-
ceived large sums of money from Germany for the services
which he was rendering to the German cause. The trial in-
volves the disclosure of a secret which has been kept for some
time of the political situation in France. Sad to say, ramifi-
cations of the conspiracy extended into the Cabinet of M. Ribot,
M. Malvy, the Minister of the Interior, being it is said cogni-
zant of the whole matter. M. Malvy is now to be put upon
trial; that of M. Joseph Caillaux is soon to follow. In this way
M. Cl^menceau is carrying out the policy of meting out jus-
tice to " the enemy within the gates " which his predecessors
were too weak to undertake.

The union of the nation for carrying on the War is, so far
as can be judged, even firmer than ever. On the recent visit
to France made by the representatives of American Labor,
even the Socialists of France, or at least a large number of them,
expressed sympathy with the determination to have no inter-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 411

course with the Socialists of Germany, unless and until the
latter entered into active opposition to the militarists who now
dominate that country. To quote the declaration of M. Albert
Thomas, formerly Minister of Munitions: **Confi(^ent that
we are serving our country and are in accord with the working
classes of all the allied nations, we wish to say on the eve of a
renewed German offensive, that the French and American So-
cialists are unanimously ready once more to throw into the
battle all their resources and energies, and even their lives/'
Of coiurse, M. Thomas is not the representative of every in-
dividual Socialist, for there are among them in France, as
in every other country, those who reconcile themselves to de-
feat provided Socialism prevails, but he does represent by far
the larger number of that body. It is to the honor of America
that the main body of labor in this country has shown itself
more opposed to any parley with the enemy than the repre-
sentatives of Socialism either in France or Great Britain. This
is largely due to the firm leadership of Mr. Samuel Gompers
who, in this critical time, has shown himself a tower of strength
to the country of his adoption.

The number of the killed and wounded in France since the
beginning of the War has recently been published for the first
time, lists of casualities having been hitherto withheld. The
number recently given with permission of the French Govern-
ment, by the Rev. Patrice Flynn, Chaplain-in-Chief of the
Second Army of France, of the killed, disabled or wounded
amounts to 1,300,000, of which about 1,000,000 are definitely
out of the fight. At the present time, according to another
authority, there are 2,750,000 troops fighting for France. The
spirit of the soldiers is said to be indomitable; that ** the men
in the French ranks will perish rather than give way to the
Germans. They are ready to suffer until there is no French-
man left to suffer, but for them there can be no peace until
there is a vindication of the ideals for which all the Allies are
fighting — the ideals of right, humanity, justice and civilization."
The efforts of the " defeatists '* to bring about discouragement,
revealed in the recent court-martial, have been completely frus-
trated. Even the refugees driven out of their homes by the re-
cent German drive have shown themselves, as eye-wit-
nesses testify, ready to bear their sufferings, confident of the
future triumph to which they look forward.

Digitized by

Google

412 RECENT EVENTS [June,

At present the militarists are in complete
Germany. control in Germany. The resolution

passed by the Reichstag last July com-
mitted the parliament to a peace without annexations and
without indemnities. The dark prospects at that time had
brought about a coalition of various parties in the Reichstag
which resulted in this resolution. But when things became
brighter, owing to the complete collapse of Russia and the
disaster met with by Italy, moderation was cast to the winds
and the militarists took the direction of affairs. By sanction-
ing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Reichstag itself went back
upon its own declaration of principles, and cast in its lot with
those who were in favor of annexation and indemnities. [It
may be said parenthetically that it is doubtful whether the
treaty with Russia included an indemnity to be paid by that
country to Germany. This has been both asserted and denied.]
With the brighter prospects, came also a determination of
almost all the parties to demand indemnities in the event of
further successes in the west. Consequently, the resolution
of last July must be considered as completely disavowed and,
therefore, the Allies, if vanquished, must reckon with the de-
mand for vast indemnity. The formation of the Fatherland
Party, of which Admiral von Tirpitz was the chief promoter,
contributed largely to this stiffening of German demands. As
things now stand, therefore, Germany as a whole seems to be
strongly in favor of the extreme demands which it made at the ^
beginning of the War.

Another instance of the stiffening of the Prussian spirit is
the treatment accorded the bill for the reform of the fran-
chise in Prussia. For many years reform of a franchise, which
places complete control in the power of the richer classes, has
been demanded. Whenever the Government felt itself strong
it refused it, but in times of depression promises of reform
have been made. Such a promise was given by the Kaiser last
Easter, and accordingly a bill establishing equal franchise was
introduced and went through several stages on the road to en-
actment. Recently when it came to the third reading in the
Lower House of the Diet, the clause providing one vote for
each man in Prussia, thus prohibiting plural voting as well as
giving universal male suffrage, was rejected. The bill has to
go now to the Upper House where this clause is not likely to be

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 413

restored or, if restored, will be so limited in its scope and effect
as to be practically valueless. To equal suffrage, ChanceUor
von Hertling has pledged himself, and it is said the Kaiser has
consented to a dissolution of the Diet. In this event the real
drama will begin, according to a statement made by the Vice-
President of the Ministry of State.

The revelations made by Prince Lichnowsky have now been
recognized by the Vice-ChanceUor of the German Empire as
authentic, although he denies their accuracy. The Prince has
been censured, deprived of his diplomatic rank, and, it is said,
has been confined virtually as a prisoner on his own estate,
with the prospect of being tried for high treason. The For-
eign Secretary for the time during which Prince Lichnowsky
was Ambassador in London, Herr von Jagow, has issued a
long statement in which he questions the accuracy in many
respects of the former Ambassador. In one point, however,
he himself makes an avowal which sufficiently places upon
Germany full responsibility for the conflict and justifies the
condemnation of the whole world upon her conduct. Re-
ferring to Prince Lichnowsky's statement that he had worked
for a policy of conciliation towards England to which England
cordially responded, Herr von Jagow says : " I, too, have fol-
lowed the policy, the aim of which was an understanding with
England, for I believed that only in that manner would we be
able to come out from the unfavorable situation which arose
from the weakness of the Triple Alliance.

" I believed in Sir Edward Grey*s love of peace and in his
sincere desire to come to an understanding with us.

•* But the Morocco policy led to a political defeat for Ger-
many. In the Bosnian crisis this has been fortunately avoided;
likewise at the London Conference. A new diminution of our
prestige in Europe and in the world could not be allowed. A
ripening of States, their political and economic successions,
rest upon the prestige which they enjoy in the world."

The determining motive, therefore, according to the for-
mer Foreign Secretary's statement for Germany's entry into
the War, was a question of diminution of its prestige, an
avowal which can form no justification for entering upon a
war, the awful consequences of which German statesmen must
have foreseen at the time. On the important point of the peace-
ful policy pursued by Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign

Digitized by

Google

414 RECENT EVENTS [June,

Minister, when the War broke out, and for many years before,
Herr von Jagow is at one with Prince Lichnowsky. Other
points of his long reply to Prince Lichnowsky cannot be dis-
cussed here. That between the Foreign Secretary of the Ger-
man Empire and the Ambassador of that Empire to Great
Britain, differences, even as to facts, should arise is no won-
der for it is characteristic of an autocratic government that no
one of its officials should be in complete possession of the pol-
icy of the Head of the State. It is well known that when the
decision to enter upon the War was made, the decision was
brought about by the military authorities, and they took com-
plete control out of the hands of the Chancellor and of the
other civil authorities. In fact, in several instances in his re-
ply, Herr von Jagow justifies his denial of the statements of tlie
former Ambassador by asserting his own ignorance. Fuller
reports which have come to hand since the last notes were
written prove what great concessions Great Britain was willing
to make for the sake of living at peace with the German Em-
pire. Among these was access to the port of Basra at the head
of the Persian Gulf, as the terminal of the Bagdad Railway.

The publication of the letter of the Em-
Austria-Hungary, peror Charles to his brother-in-law, an

officer serving in the Belgian army, was
shortly followed by the resignation of the Foreign Secretary,
Count Czernin, and by the appointment of Baron de Burian
who had succeeded Count Berchtold in the same office. Count
Czernin has been looked upon as a moderating influence in the
Councils of the Central Powers. His speeches certainly made
it clear that he was opposed to every form of annexation, for he
called those in favor of such a policy as real enemies of his
country as were the pacifists. The recall of Baron de Burian
seems to indicate a return to a fuller agreement with Germany
upon all points. The unfortunate state of affairs in the Dual
Monarchy is evidenced in many ways. In none more so than
in the fact that the Parliament has been prorogued for an in-
definite period, leaving the control of affairs in the uncon-
trolled power of the Government. This was brought about by
the dissensions which exist inside the empire. The Czechs and
Slovaks are insisting upon the formation of an independent

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 415

State comprising Bohemia and the Slovak district in the north
of Hungary. The Poles are so full of resentment for the at-
tempted dismemberment of a new independent kingdom in
Poland, that they went into opposition in the session of Par-
liament which has just been closed. The Slavs of the south
(the Jugo Slavs) have composed their differences and de-
manding the formation of a southern State which is to em-
brace their different races. Whether or no they claim in-
dependence for this new State has not been learned. The Arch-
bishops of Laibach and Agram are said to be supporting this
movement in favor of a southern Slav State. This demand is
also receiving now the support of Italy. For various reasons,
until quite recently the Italian Government has been working
more or less against the Jugo Slavs. But this opposition has
now changed or is in process of changing into active support.
The changed attitude of Italy has given more confidence and
boldness to these new claims so harassing to the Dual Mon-
archy. To counteract them, it is said, Bosnia and Herzegovina
are to be united to Hungary, and Dalmatia, Croatia and Sla-
vonia are to be made lands dependent upon the Magyar State.
To add to Austria's troubles the Germans who now form part
of the Dual Monarchy are said to be renewing an agitation, be-
gun several years ago, for their incorporation into the Ger-
man Empire, a movement which included within its scope the
abandonment of the Catholic Church by many of those who
supported the agitation.

Nor is the list of her troubles yet complete. The legislation
in Hungary for the reform of the franchise has been almost
as prolonged and almost as ineffectual as that for the reform
of the Prussian franchise. The defeat of his proposals for re-
form led to the resignation of Dr. Wekerle. An effort to form
a new cabinet under the leadership of Hungary's strong man.
Count Stephen Tisza, was made, but failed. Thereupon M.
Joseph Szyerenyi, Minister of Commerce, in the retiring Cabi-
net was called upon to form a ministry. He too failed and
Dr. Wekerle has been summoned to make another attempt.
Whether or no he has succeeded is not yet known.

The papers are full of accounts of food riots, and even of
anti-German riots. In some districts the want of food borders
on starvation. In fact Germany has been asked to provide
food for two provinces by attaching them, for the time being.

Digitized by

Google

416 RECENT EVENTS [June,

to the German Empire. In the extremity of her distress Aus-
tria is calling upon her AUy for support in the new attack on
Italy which is foreshadowed.

Finland, although one of the first of the
Russia. Russian dependencies to declare in-

dependence and proclaim itself a free
republic, now bids fair to become a kingdom in the inmiediatc
future with a German prince, chosen by the Kaiser from
among his wife's relations, for its sovereign. This project, how-
ever, will meet with opposition both on the part of those who
desire the new Republic to lean upon Sweden, to which it once
belonged, and of others who prefer to seek support from Rus-
sia. The White Guards supported by German help have taken
the fortress of Viborg, and rumors have been circulated that
an advance upon Petrograd from the north is a part of their
plan, which also includes the annexation of Karelia. Of the
further extension of Finland towards the east, an extension
which is favored by the Germans, nothing more has been heard
since the last notes were written. Complete pacification does
not seem yet to have taken place. The Bolsheviki are still
striving to get the upper hand, but their efi'orts seem doomed to
failure.

The treaty of peace made between Germany and Finland
on the eight of March, includes among its provisions a clause
which binds the latter country not to " cede any part of her
possessions to any foreign Power without first having come to
an understanding with Germany on the matter.** Finland is
thereby placed, so far as her external relations are concerned,
under the control of Berlin. Her independence even in internal
affairs is sacrificed by another clause which stipulates : " Pro-
visions for the most far-reaching admission possible of con-
suls on both sides will be reserved for special agreements.**

The most ** far-reaching consuls,** evidently meaning that
Germany places no limit on the advice which she retains the
power to give, advice which being upheld, as it wiU be, by
military force, clearly deprives the new Republic of even the
shadow of that independence guaranteed under the first clause.
This may be taken as a specimen of the kind of independence
which Germany vouchsafes to the chain of border States now
being formed between her and the main body of what was

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 417

once the Russian Empire — Courland, Lithuania, Esthonia,
Poland and the Ukraine "Republic/*

In fact from Lithuania, the former province of Russia
which it was alleged had demanded its restoration to the Ger-
man Empire, the Kaiser makes the " demand " that " it will
participate in the war burdens of Germany, which secured its
liberation." This means not merely that it should bear its
share of the war debt of the Empire, but in all probability that
the Lithuanians will now be called upon to serve in the ranks
of the German army as were the Poles when Poland was con-
stituted into an independent State. The Kaiser's proclamation
recites the petition of the Lithuanian Landesrat, pleading for
incorporation into the Germanic system. It would be inter-
esting to investigate how this petition was brought about, but
space forbids. There is good reason to believe that the pro-
ceedings which eventually led to it have not the support of a
large majority of the inhabitants of Lithuania, and it is quite
certain that the independence granted is as unreal as that
accorded to Finland.

As for Courland, the Kaiser has been approached, by those
who claim to express the desire of the dwellers in that duchy,
with a view to his proclaiming himself Duke of Courland, a
request which has been taken under consideration. No change
has taken place in the position of Poland, although writers of
the party whose policies generally prevail in Germany, arc
calling for such an adjustment of the boundary between Ger-
many and the new Poland as shall secure to the former a bet-
ter line of defence.

It is in the Ukraine "Republic" that the value of Ger-
manic respect for the independence of these border States is
most clearly demonstrated. The inhabitants of the Ukraine
were among the first, if not the first, of the subjects of the for-
mer Russian Empire, to take advantage of the right of self-
determination, which the Government of the Russian Republic
made the basis of its policy. The first exercise of that right,
however, not being in accord with the alms of the Bolsheviki,
the latter fomented disturbances in the new Republic. This
led the Government of the Ukraine to take the fatal step of
seeking help from Germany. The peace made with Germany
and Austria-Hungary included among its provisions the aid
which the new Republic required in its conflict with the Bol-

Digitized by VriOOQlC

418 RECENT EVENTS [June,

sheviki within its own borders and outside of them. As a re-
sult the German armies, and to some extent Austro-Hungarian
armies, have overrun the whole of the Ukraine, and are now
in possession of the chief cities. They have penetrated as far
as the Sea of Azoff. Not content with this they have entered
the Crimea which in no sense belongs to the Ukraine, and have
seized upon the seaport of Sebastopol. Whether or not they
have been able to get possession of the Russian Black Sea fleet
is at present uncertain. By some it is thought that it is already
in their power, and that the Allies ought to be prepared for a
combined attack, by the Turkish fleet and what was once the
Russian Black Sea fleet, upon their naval bases and their com-
munications in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. How-
ever this may be, the most interesting thing and the most in-
structive is the treatment which the Germans have accorded to
the " independent " Republic of the Ukraine. They made such
exorbitant requisitions for the food of which they stand in
urgent need, that the inhabitants of the Ukraine rose up wi\h
spade and pitchfork to resist the robbers of their goods. The
Germans took over the actual management of the farmers'
affairs, dictating what they should sow, how much they should
keep for themselves, and how much they should bestow upon
the helpers whom they had called into their country, in some
cases demanding as much as ninety per cent. Measures of this
sort soon roused such hatred of these, their lielpers, that the
Germans, fearing, they said, the murder of their officers, seized
upon the Government; dispersed the Rada by force, placed
many of the members of the cabinet which had called them
into the country under arrest, and established a practical dic-
tatorship in lieu of the Republic which they had promised to
protect. As a result, the self-governing Ukraine Republic is
practically a dictatorship, the dictator being kept in power by
German military forces.

The Brest-Litovsk Treaty with its consequent annexation
of Russian territory and some fifty-five million inhabitants,
and the subsequent proceedings of Germany, especially in the
Ukraine Republic, have decreased the enemies within our own
borders. American Socialists, who virtually espoused the
cause of Germany last July at St. Louis, now see that President
Wilson truly grasped the purpose and the outcome of Germany's
struggle for world domination. At that time, deceived by their

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 419

German colleagues, they hoped, by theu* codperation, to secure
peace without annexations, or indemnities, and to concede to
each nationality a perfectly free self-determination. They
now see that the Germsm Socialists, even had they the will, had
certainly not the power to bring about such results, and that
the German Government is acting in the most flagrant violation
of all their principles. A large number of our Socialists are
therefore calling for a revision of the St. Louis programme,
and it seems probable that our war with Germany for the ends
defined by the President will have the f uU support of all but a
small minority of American Socialists.

Even in Germany the proceedings of the militarists in the
Ukraine Republic are exciting misgivings. Herr Mathias Erz-
berger raised his voice in the Reichstag in condemnation of the
German military dictatorship in the Ukraine. In the name of
the Catholic Party, he disclaimed responsibility for the policy
adopted there.

With Rumania a definite peace has been made — a peace
characterized by a German paper as that of the victor over the
vanquished. This impoverished little kingdom has been called
upon to support for an indefinite time an army of occupation,
and is required to pay to every German compensation for any
and every loss which he has suffered through the War.
Dobrudja has been taken away and the frontiers of Transyl-
vania have been rectified to the advantage of Austria-Hungary.
The conditions are so exasperating that the Queen of Rumania
is offering every possible resistance and, as a consequence, the
King may be forced to abdicate. One concession made by the
conquering powers was that they would wink at Rumania's an-
nexation of ISessarabia, and this has taken place, or rather
some of the Bessarabians have voted for their union with
Rumania. The event was celebrated at Jassy with great re-
joicing. Thus one more province has been lost to the Russian
Republic. Not unjustly, however, for Rumania was robbed of
a considerable part of Bessarabia by a high-handed act of the
Imperial Government of Russia after the Russo-Turkish war
of 1878.

Over what remains of Russia, the Bolshevik Government
is stiU the sovereign power, although its rule is being con-
tested by what seems, however incredible it may be, a stiU less
organized form of government. For several days a battle with

Digitized by

Google

420 RECENT EVENTS [June,

the anarchists has been going on in Moscow. The crisis seems
so acute that there is talk of again removing the capital, this
time to Nijni Novgorod. Predictions are still made of the ap-
proaching overthrow of Lenine and his associates, but so far
they have not been realized, and when the nature of the iq>peal
they have made to the lower elements is considered, little won-
der may be felt that they are able to maintain their position.
To the soldiers they offered freedom from discipline and in the
end leave to return home; to the workingmen they offered the
possession of their employers' property without compensation
and the control of his works; to the peasants they offered the
land of the landlords and the richer peasants. To enforce these
measures they enlisted ah army which used every form of
violence. Their measures included also release from all moral
restraints. Among the committees established by some of the
Soviets was one to which was referred the question whether or
no there was a God. The committee having reported in the
negative, the Church was abolished, at least for that particular
district.

The Bolshevik programme embraces the nationalization
of the means of production and distribution, and these meas-
ures are now being put into effect. An added feature of the
programme is the nationalization of aU foreign business. For
the internal organization of Russia the deliberate plan of the
Lenine Government is to divide or rather to permit the division
of what is left, after the self-determination of such States as
wish to exercise that right has been completed, into a number
of republics, to be united subsequently in one federated repub-
lic. The sole parliament for this federation is to be the Cen-
tral Executive Committee of the Soviet, and this is to be re-
elected every three months by the All-Russia Congress of So-
viets. Each republic in this federation is to have its own
Soviet.

Among the products of the War must be reckoned the
upgrowth of a new political opinion. Patriotism, according
to an old saying, is the last refuge of a scoundrel, meaning, pre-
sumably, that no one, however bad he may be, is deaf to patri-
otic appeals. But Lenine is credited with the declaration that
even if his revolutionary projects destroy Russia, he would be
satisjBed, provided they spread into other countries. Thus
there has arisen in Russia a party, styled defeatists, who pro-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 421

fess not merely resignation but joy in the disasters which be-
fall their own country. Reports which reach this country have
it that General Semeno£F is coUecting an army m Manchuria to
oppose Bolshevik rule in Eastern Siberia. No other opposition
is now being offered to it.

The Germans, not content with the possession of the
border States which have been formed, and with overrunoing
the Ukraine, have presented to the Bolshevik Government
what the papers call an ultimatum. This requires, among
other things, that the army, which Trotzky has at last seen to be
a necessity for the State, should not be formed. What answer
has been made is not yet known. The rumors that the son of
the late Tsar was to be restored have not been confirmed in
any way. The ex-Tsar himself has been removed from Tobolsk
to Ekaterinberg. This is considered a safer place for his de-
tention, as the peasants in the neighborhood of Tobolsk were
said to have formed a plot to release him. His future fate is
still undecided. No power has yet recognized the Bolshevik
Government as even a de facto government. The difficulties
involved either in its recognition or its non-recognition make
it one of the most perplexing questions of this perplexing time.

May 16, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

With Our Readers.

WISDOM like Janus always looks in two directions. While it
eagerly searches the future, it never loses sight of the past.
From the treasury of the past it draws the guiding, primary prin-
ciples that are its sole safeguards for both present and future.
Human wisdom has ever to deal with one thing — common to all
ages and common in all ages — human nature. That nature is
broken up through the human personalities that possess it into
as many fragments. Thus contained, it is infinitely varied and
variable; changeable; subject to inscrutable motives; a pursuer
of strange fancies and empty shibboleths. Like the ocean it is
perverse, uncontrollable, beyond human schedule. But the ocean
has also its invariable laws, its enduring sameness. To modern
navigators it still offers the same problems, the same difficulties as
it offered to the Phoenicians. And the address of the poet is still
true: "E'en as creation's dawn beheld, thou roUest now."
Changing, restless man should never lead us to forget the abid-
ing and unchanging characteristics and needs of human nature
and consequently of man himself. Human kind are the same to-
day as they were thousands of years ago. Let the soul of any one
of us be bared to the realities of life or of death, and we will soon
realize that we are akin to our fathers and our mothers; we will
soon pray for both the wisdom and courage that those who went
before us possessed and exercised.

SUFFERING is no more welcome to man in the twentieth cen-
tury than it was in the first. He still seeks to free himself
from it. If he accepts, it is only because he believes that the
acceptance will lead himself or others to peace. Grief always
depresses the human heart, good fortune uplifts it. A mother is
still filled with joy that she has brought forth a son into the world.
Youth still looks to the future with excess of hope : and man still
seeks high achievement, and to give his children a worthy in-
heritance. Conscience appeals to every one; obedience to it, now
as ever, is the road to personal peace : disobedience, that of selfish-
ness, of personal and national disaster. It is everlastingly true
that what we give to our children will be the measure of their
moral worth; standards must first be bestowed before they are
achieved. To him that hath shall be given. The blessed lessons

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 423

of infancy and of childhood shall blossom and bear fruit in man-
hood. From him that hath not shall be taken away. And no man
and no nation can be great unless great truths have been taught

them by their fathers.

m m m m

HUMANITY really lives only in the deeds of the spirit, for it is
the spirit that rules the body. To all of life man asks a spir-
itual value, else life has for him no value at all. The spiritual
values are beyond the material. They are enduring; unchange-
able. They bind him not only to all humankind — for no one does
a good deed without benefiting all his fellows — ^they bind him to
a world that is beyond and above this; to a world which gives what
he seeks, or what this world does not give. In that other world,
the reign of the spiritual shall he complete, unquestioned. Jus-
lice, for which man's soul has thirsted, will therein reign; virtue
for which he has striven, will there receive its reward and its ful-
fillment; love which he gave here to mother and wife and chil-
dren and which he sought to make eternal, shall there be im-
mortalized; death which conquered him, shaU there be conquered
and the dark problem of evil against which he fought in faith, shall
there be dispelled by the light of eternal truth.

m m m m

FOR these the primitive man dreamed, hoped and prayed as
well as the man of today. Human nature has not changed. The
weapons of warfare, the means of indulgence, the comforts of
peace may and do change conditions; education may help or hin-
der; public standards may make the way easier or more diflScult;
humaii tragedies may visualize more sharply the importance of
spiritual truths — ^but eventually the battle that each human heart
must wage is the same yesterday and the same today.

♦ ♦ 4t 4t

THAT the problem is the same for all of us should bring home
the great truth that we are one human family sprung from
one common source. We are all knit together by the cords of
Adam. What will help us, will help others. What has helped our
fathers, will help us, their children. Our hopes, our aspirations —
common to all — tell us of a common destiny for all — a common
life, for which we are made, to which we are called, by God our
Creator and our Father. Hope and aspiration may be variously
answered. The call to one may be higher than to another. There
may be many mansions in our Father's house but the destiny of
eternal life with God is common to all of humankind. A destiny
postulates a law, for law is nothing else than right order. Upon
its destined voyage the ocean ship will travel directed by the

Digitized by

Google

424 WITH OUR READERS [June,

law of the compass. If the navigator were to question and defy
it, the ship would never reach its destiny,

♦ . ♦ ♦ ♦

THE solidarity of humankind, our common origin, our com-
mon bond, our common destiny, postulates this also — ^that
the law which God has declared for our voyage shall be the same
law for all. Christ came out from God as a teacher; a teacher of
eternal life and therefore the law of His teaching is one and the
same law for all. The truth which He delivered was fitted not
only for His immediate hearers and their direct descendants but
for all humankind. That truth is the Light of men. It concerns
the fundamental needs, duties, responsibilities; life, death, im-
mortality, common to every one of us. It spoke to every man
and it speaks to all humanity. Time does not affect it any more
than time changes the primary duty and destiny of any man.
That truth is the straight path of every human soul to its maker —
God. It is simple, direct, positive, explicit. Its acceptance is not
dependent upon human learning. It binds all, not because it is
of man, but because it is of God. To make its worth or its char-
ity subject to human investigation is of course to destroy it. It
must be accepted on the authority of Him Who gave; it must be
accepted as the Word of God and lived with all personal fidelity —
even as we accept the sun in the heavens and work and live in
its heat.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

TO a£Srm that there is no definite truth of Christ, the Saviour of
mankind, in the world, to say that it cannot be known, is, con-
sciously or unconsciously, to deprive humankind of this greatest
bond of union, to spell division, separation, lack of sympathy and
hatred among men and nations. We can live at peace only as
one family, and we can live as one family only when we realize
that, with a common truth as our guide and with eternal life as
our common destiny, we are in a real and practical, not a meta-
phorical, sense children through Jesus Christ of a common Father
and brothers one of another. Without this truth we are, at best,
groping more or less hopelessly; stumbling perhaps now and
again upon a shaft of light, only to regret the more poignantly
that we have not the enduring Light from heaven that will en-
lighten every man who comes into the world. The weaknesses
and the sins of the Christian world may provide welcome shafts
for the cynic and the agnostic to shoot with derisive laughter
at Christian history. But to afford sport to the cynic is the least
bad effect of our sins. The man of serious mind and heart who
knows the world as it is, and yet loves it, will readily see that all

Digitized by

Google

19180 WITH OUR READERS 425

real progress — all real progress is spiritual — is the result of
humanity's grasp upon the great truths of Christ and humanity's
fidelity — even in spite of its own treachery and its own sin — to
these great truths. The rainbow of the world is Christian truth.
Out of the wreck of the world that alone gives hope, and he that
keeps it before the nations is most surely carrying on the blessed
work of Christ our Redeemer.

m m m m

^PHROUGHOUT the present conflict one teacher has sought with
i great courage and fidelity to keep before men and nations the
Christian principles that must guide all in time of war and that
must rule any council table that is to make sure a lasting peace.
For some it is almost impossible to understand such an oflSce or
to give credit for singleness of intention and purity of motive to
him who claims to hold it. That its occupant should consistently
and solely take the spiritual viewpoint which necessarily lifts him
above human policy and human politics is to them almost in-
credible. Yet if they are ever to judge and measure justly, they
must understand at least his viewpoint with regard to his oflSce,
his conscience with regard to its field and its administration. To
safeguard, to defend the supreme spiritual truths of God — such
has been the oflSce of our Holy Father since the opening of the
conflict — such will be his oflSce till the end. Viewed with sym-
pathetic understanding and without prejudice, it will be seen that
he exercises an oflBce that will secure for him the blessing and the
gratitude of mankind. Without his guiding voice in those spirit-
i|al truths that are the safeguard of all humanity and all human
society, the world would be lost, indeed. Even those who do not
recognize his authority, desire him to speak, because they know
the power and the need of his voice. Many attack him because he
does not take sides in the partisan sense. Were he to do so, be-
yond the exposition of Christian principles which he has unfalter-
ingly championed, he would but lessen the power of his oflBce as
teacher of all mankind. And it is to be feared that they who now
attack him but seek to lay a trap that would fatally endanger the
high prerogatives of his oflSce.

THE experience of almost four years of war has taught Eng-
land and France the grave need of chaplains and has led both
to augment greatly their number. To give to the fighting men the
religious ministrations for which their conscience asks, and to
which they have every right : to sustain the morale of the troops,
to help them to face death bravely and to do the ''one braver

Digitized by

Google

426 WITH OUR READERS [June,

thing/' both nations have found the help of the chaplains inesti-
mable.

m m m m

INDEED, in the modern battle the chaplain plays a most impor-
tant and exacting r61e. Twenty-four hours before the attack
is to be made, the chaplains are sent in numbers up to the front
line trenches. There they minister to the troops, giving them com-
panionship, cheer, consolation, hope, as only the ambassador of
God can give. The Catholic chaplain hears confessions and ad-
ministers Holy Communion, Oftentimes for twenty-four hours
without rest or sleep are they thus at work. When the advance
is made some go out with the troops. Others are stationed in the
trenches; others are sent back to the field hospital. From the
actual line of fighting back to the hospital, a line of chaplains
waits, who will see every man as he is carried back; help him
by words of comfort and cheer. Out on the firing line the chap-
lains succor at once the wounded man. Nothing adds more to
the courage and ease of his last moments than for a soldier to feel
the chaplain's hand, to receive his minrstration, to hear his word
of farewell, voicing the farewell of all he loved. For the men to
know that, if wounded, they will be thus cared for, that, if carried
back no stage of the Journey will be without the waiting chaplain,
eager to assist, is their source of greatest moral courage as they
enter the charge,

OUR own Government has Just authorized an increase of chap-
lains for our army, and now provides one chaplain for every
one thousand two hundred men, instead of one to every three thou-
sand six hundred men. All the great religious denominations of
the country. Catholic, Protestant and Jew, unanimously agreed to
make this request for an increase to the Secretary of War and to
Congress. General Pershing, Commander-in-Chief of the Ameri-
can Expeditionary Force, sent last January the following cable-
gram to our Government:

'• In the fulfillment of its duty to the nation much is expected
of our army, and nothing should be left undone that will help in
keeping it in the highest state of efficiency. I believe the person-
nel of the army has never been equaled and the conduct has been
excellent, but to overcome entirely the conditions found here, re-
quires fortitude born of great moral courage and lofty spiritual
ideas. Counting myself responsible for the welfare of our men in
every respect, it is my desire to surround them with the best in-
fluences possible. In the fulfillment of this solemn trust, it seems
wise to request the aid of churchmen from home.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 427

" To this end it is recommended that the number of chap-
lains in the army be increased for the War to an average of ^ three
per regiment with assimilated rank of major and captain in due
proportion, and that a number be assigned in order to be avail-
able for such detached duty as may be required. Men selected
should be of the highest character, with reputations well estab-
lished as sensible, practical, active ministers or workers accus-
tomed to dealing with young men. They should be in vigorous
health as their services will be needed under most trying circum-
stances. Appointees should of course be subject to discharge for
ineflBciency like other oflBcers of the National Army.

" It is my purpose to give the chaplains' corps through these
forces a definite and responsible status, and to outline, direct and
enlarge their work into cooperative and useful aid to the troops."

♦ 4t 4t 4t

THE military authorities, who certainly know the needs and feel-
ings of the soldier, testify to the necessity for chaplains in
goodly numbers. The soldiers themselves not only ask for, but
demand the services of the chaplain. The soldier wishes to die
well ; to repent of his sins, to make his peace with God, for he be-
lieves that God is his judge and that before God must he appear
when death has claimed him. Particularly is this true of the
Catholic soldier because of the postulates of his Faith. A Catholic
soldier believes that the priest possesses the power to forgive sins;
the Catholic soldier believes that the priest has the power to con-
fer the sacrament of Extreme Unction, a sacrament ordained by
Christ for the dying, that the punishment deserved for sin may be
wiped out, that the soul may bear with courage its last agony and
that thus strengthened by the special grace of God, it may enter
upon the beatific vision. To the soldier, the priest on the battle-
field is Christ upon the battlefield.

The smart critic may smile at his Faith but he may not ques-
tion it. And of men of all religious beliefs and even of none, it may
be said, that they seek and are grateful for the presence and aid
of a chaplain when their last hour has come. Such facts are at-
tested to by letters innumerable, by the experience of every chap-
lain, and of army oflScers.

AN article in the May Atlantic Monthly is entitled The New
Death. Inasmuch as it testifies to a more widespread apprecia-
tion of death as the opening to life it is a hopeful and encouraging
paper. That it could be written, and that the aspect of death
which it treats could be called " new," is a sad commentary on the
godless and pagan way in which many were accustomed to view

Digitized by

Google

428 WITH OUR READERS [June,

death. It was a subject never to be thought or spoken of. It was
the end — disintegration. Its oncoming step echoed despair. And
euthanasia, as we remember, was not only defended but invoked
and practised. That the article heralds a healthier, a more God-
like and Christian view of death than has prevailed in the hearts
of many is a welcome, happy sign. But we feel it peculiarly un-
timely and very unjust for the author to state that when death
comes to the soldier ** assurance (as to what he will meet in the
life to come) takes almost no color from previous education,
Catholic Protestant or agnostic." This is a libel on the American
soldier and an insult to his intelligence. The writer has, just
previously, been interpreting the soldier idea of personal immor-
tality. At best he makes it but a thoughtless '' losing of himself in
the great heroic whole, caring little for individual persistence."
Such an interpretation the reader feels sure was fathered by — to
put it mildly — Positivism. But the " Choir Invisible " is not the
battle hymn of our soldiers. The writer instances as witnesses
Alan Seeger who did not believe in a personal God, and Rupert
Brooke who grew from atheism to pantheism, expressing at the
last the hope that he might be '' a faint pulse in the eternal mind."
Indeed, it is unfair to quote either Seeger or Brooke as ulti-
mate authorities in this most spiritual of questions. Both were
spiritual adolescents, still growing when death took them; and
if the growth permitted them, is an indication of what would have
been, a generous acceptance of Christian truth was not far off.
Talented singers they were: but why, we may ask, should their
little songs drown the inarticulate beliefs, hopes and aspirations
of the million who sing, not in words but in virile, personal faith
in a personal God, in Christ their Redeemer and in a personal life
to come? Why not quote as witnesses such poets as Thomas Mac-
Donough, Thomas Kettle, Francis Ledwidge? Their poems also
are soldiers' oracles. These men knew what they believed, what
they hoped for. Through the vista of faith, they saw the personal,
eternal life to come. Quotations might be made without limit.
We will give but one — from a poet who has by popular acclaim
voiced the heart of the common soldier:

EX TENEBRIS.

THE LAY OF THE KNIGHT WHO ROSE AGAIN.

Take away my rags I

Take away my sin I

Strip me all bare

Of that I did wear —

The foul rags, the base rags,

The rude and the meant

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 429

Strip me, yea, strip me
Right down to tlie skint
Strip me all bare
Of that I have been I
Then wash me in water.
In fair running water.
Wash me without.
And wash me within.
In fair running water,
In fresh running water,
Wash me, ah wash me.
And make me all clean 1
— Clean of the soilure
And clean of the sin,
— Clean of the soul-crushing
Sense of defilure,
— Clean of the old self
And clean of the sin I
In fair ruQning water.
In fresh running water.
In sun-running water.
All sweet and all pure.
Wash me, ah wash me.
And I shall be clean I
And th^n — ah then

Clothe me again

In the garments of Light,

In the robes of Thy ruth.

In Purity, Truth,

In raiment all white

And whiter than light,

— In the raiment ensanguine

That outshines the Light,

— In garments washed clean

In the Grace Infinite I

Then vest me with armor.

And name me Thy Knight,

And gird me with Justice,

And arm me with Right I

And there in the battle

Of souls I will fight,

With the passionate zeal

Of a heart all contrite.

And rU win Thee fair Kingdoms,

Many Kingdoms, great Kingdoms,

Sweet Kingdoms of Light,

I will win from the Night,

To the Glory of God

And my Lord's high delight.

Digitized by

Google

430 WITH OUR READERS [June,

S the article fails to do justice to our soldiers so does it fail
to do justice to man's historic attitude towards death. Chris-
tianity since it began, has preached that our every word and deed
is related to our death. Death is the summing up. Death is com-
plete and completed life. Death has been voiced, is voiced today
by Christian writers without number, as an inspiration to the
living. St. Francis of Assisi used to address her lovingly as
"Sister Death." But this writer who states: "before 1914 we
had seen the disestablishment of the Church as an unquestioned
arbiter,*' tells us also that from the scientific attitude we will best
gauge the value and relations to all things of death.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

CERTAINLY the Catholic, and we believe the non-Catholic also,
is constantly urged to live that he may worthily die. And so
we know not to what audience are addressed the words : " For
countless centuries the world has been able to live by evasion.
.... For the first time in history, immortality has become a prac-
tical issue for the common man to meet, or history will cease."
Therefore the people " are turning less to their old masters, the
theologians and the scientists."

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

DEATH has always welded humankind together. The tragedy
of a city's ruin will unite all the living in fellow sympathy
and mutual help. The greater the ravages of death, the more it
affects, the greater will be the mutual compassion. This is not a
new or novel, but a permanent characteristic of humanity in the
presence of death. The great cities — Paris, Florence, London — at
the time of their plagues saw the like phenomena. What human-
ity has witnessed before, it is Mritnessing again. What we have
not seen before, we see now. Life is stripped of its non-essentials
and the non-essentials are growing in number. We see that we
can live now without what we once thought indispensable. Thus
do the things material show themselves of lesser worth in the pres-
ence of things spiritual. Honor; loyalty; patriotism; sacrifice;
unselfishness; surrender; suffering; death; these are now calling
to us in imperative tone and as we answer, values readjust them-
selves and our spirit is made free.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

BUT we shall lose very much if we fail to keep the guiding light
before us that we are children of God. We must keep our souls
in touch with Him Who is unchangeable, else they will suffer
irremediable shock. The soldier must know that his sacrifice is
not in vain, that there awaits him a crown of justice from God
Who can compensate for the injustice of earth. Duty to God is the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 431

source of all duty of man to man. Service is personal: love is
personal, else are the words robbed of meaning. Man conscious
of his own weakness, conscious of the utter insufSciency of this
world still yearns and cries for the Redeemer, Christ; Who will
pardon sin, re-unite him to the Father and lead him to an ever-
lasting life where all that he personally fought and died for in this,
shall be fulfilled. These are man's personal hopes; to ask him to
make them impersonal is to ask him to live and die for a dream
and to make his life and his destiny the emptiest of mockeries.
♦ « « 1^

THE return to belief in things spiritual, the renewal of Christian
Faith since the beginning of the War give reason for cheerful
hope of the future. When Piux X. began his pontificate his first
encyclical was an appeal to the nations to restore all things to
God through Christ. The character of the appeal was an index
to the conditions and the aims that ruled nations and govern-
ments. The practical results of a materialistic philosophy, have
shown us of America how absolutely incompatible it is with our
institutions. Either the one or the other must perish. We have
set for ourselves in this War a great spiritual, unselfish purpose,
and the price we must pay for its achievement will lead us to
treasure it more and more dearly for generations to come. Its
payment will show gradually, yet with clearness, the forces in-
tellectual, moral or physical that injure our national life. The
materialist will be proved a national enemy. Theories that
free the individual from personal responsibility, that rob the pub-
lic life of conscience: the preachments of the loud-mouthed Bol-
sheviki in religion and morals, all will be repudiated by the heart
and soul of a people roused to seriousness by national danger and
the renewed appreciative sense of national life.

« « ♦ ♦

FOR its own salvation, if for no other, democracy must stand for
God, and the things of God. Democracy's only foundation is the
personal sense of responsibility in the individual citizen, and that
responsibility has no sanction save in the individual's belief in a
personal, all-seeing God to Whom he must account for all his
actions and all his thoughts. He that would maintain the con-
trary will shout in vain against the voices of human selfishness;
human ignorance; human insufficiency; human compromise.

THE printer's unfortunate blunder has deprived Mr. MacDon-
ough of the authorship of his verses. Via Longa, in the present
issue. The correct little-page may somewhat compensate for an
error for which we apologize to Mr. MacDonough and our readers.

Digitized by

Google

BOOKS RECEIVED.

George H. Doran Co., New York:

Raymond or Life and Death, By Sir O. J. Lodge. fl.50 net. Love and Hatred.
$1.40 net By Mrs. B. Lowndes. Germany at Bay, By Major H. MacfalL $1.50.
The Fiery Cross. By J. Oxenham. fl.OO net. Two War Years in Constanti'
nople. By Dr. H. Stuermer.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York:

Cambridge Essays on Education, Edited by A. C Benson, LL.D. Outlines of
Mediaeval History. By C. W. Orton, M.A. Reconstruction in Louisiana. By
B. Loun. $3.00 net The Secret of the Marne. By M. Berger. fl^t net
The Macmuxan Co., New York:

Jewish Theology. By Dr. K. Kohler. f2.50. League of Nations. By T. Marburg.
50 cents. The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me. By W. A. White. $1.50.
Historic Mackinac. By E. O. Wood, LL.D. Two volumes. $12.50 per set
Ambbigan Book Co., New York:

A First Spanish Reader. By E. W. Roessler, Ph. D., and A. Remy, A.M. Busi-
ness English. By G. B. Hotchklss, M.A., and C. A. Drew, Ph.B. Handbook for
First-Year Latin Vocabulary. By S. A. Hurlburt, M.A., and B. W. Bradley.
M.A. Ear Training. By A. J. Abbott A Notebook for First-Year Latin Voca-
bulary. By S. A. Hurlburt, M.A., and B. W. Bradley, M.A.
The Cathedral Library Association, New York:

Luther on the Eve of His Revolt. By Rev. M. J. Lagrange, O.P. 60 cents. The
Abiding Presence of the Holy Ghost in the Soul. By Rev. B. Jarrett, O.P. 75
cents.
Fleming H. Rbvbll Co., New York:

German Atrocities. By N. D. Hillis. $1.00. The Cross at the Front. By T. Tip-
lady. $1.00 net The Soul of the Soldier. By T. Tiplady. fl.25 net
Henry Holt A Co., New York:

Nietzsche, the Thinker. By William M. Slater. $3.50 net
P. J. Kenedy A Sons, New York:

Religious Profession. By Hector Papl, SJ. $1.00 net
Longmans, Green A Co., New York:

The Eucharistic Epiclesis. By J. W. Tyrer, M.A. 75 cents net
DouBLEDAY, pAQB A Co., Garden City, New York:

Fanatic or Christian. By Helen R. Martin.
Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York:

The Psychology of Marriage. By Walter M. Gallichan. $1.50 net
DoDD, Mead A Co., New York:

Gudrid the Fair. By Maurice Hewlett $1.35 net
Charles Scribnbr's Sons, New York:

Towards the Goal. By Mrs. Humphry Ward. 60 cents net
E. P. DuTTON A Co., New York:

The Unwilling Vestal. By E. L. White.
The Century Co., New York:

Roving and Fighting. By Major E. S. O'Reilly. $2.00 net
D. Appleton a Co., New York:

The A. E. F. By H. Broun. $1.50 net. To Bagdad with the British. By A. T.
Clark. $1.50 net
Allyn a Bacon, New York:

Effective English. By P. P. Claxton and J. McGlnniss.
New York iNSTrruTE for the Education op the Blind, New York:

Year-Book, 1917.
W. J. Watt A Co., New York:

The Big Fight. By Captain David Fallon, M.C. $1.50 net
The Torch Press, New York:

Thaisa. By C. V. H. Roberts. $1.50 net
The America Press, New York:

Marriage and the Family. By the Editor of " America." 15 cents. Was Tyn-
dall a Martyr of Liberty? The Liberal Catholic. Pamphlets.
The Roosevelt Hospital, New York:

Forty-sixth Annual Report.
CuppLBS A Leon Co., New York:

Joan of Arc. By C. M. Stevens. $1.50 net
The Columbia University Press, New York:

The Rhythm of Prose. By William M. Patterson. Ph.D.
"Ukraine," 520 East Sixth Street, New York:

Ukraine, the Land and Its People. By Stephen Rudnitsky, Ph.D.
GiNN A Co., Boston:

Food Problems. By A. N. Farmer and J. R. Huntington. 27 cents. War Ad^
dresses of Woodrow Wilson. By A. R. Leonard, M.A.
Small, Maynard A Co., Boston:

The Best Short Stories of 1917. Edited by E. J. O'Brien. $1.50 net
Dr. Stephen A. Maher, New Haven, Conn.:

The Sister of a Certain Soldier. By Dr. Stephen A. Maher. 25 cents.
Marshall Jones Co.. Boston:

The Great Thousand Years and Ten Years After. By R. A. Cram. $1.00.

Digitized by

Google

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. CVII. JULY, 1918. No. 640.

EVOLUTION OP THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL.

BY THOMAS o'HAGAN, LITT.D.

IHRISTIAN art reaches towards the Infinite. Its
very essence is aspiration in contrast with that of
Greek art which is repose. Of all the arts which
spring from the soil of Catholic faith, the most
sublime and vital is that of Gothic architecture.
Since the days of Greece whose victorious authority and tran-
quil beauty subdue us even yet, nothing has been seen equal to
Gothic art, and perhaps humanity will never again see so pow-
erful a manifestation of artistic vitality.

Carlyle tells us that ten silent centuries speak through the
lips of Dante. With equal truth we may say that ten silent
centuries of Catholic faith whisper to our souls as we tread the
aisles of a mediaeval Gothic cathedral.

The Gothic cathedral is the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas
plus the Diuina Commedia of Dante wrought in stone. It is
the concrete expression of a Christian soul yearning for the
Infinite. It is both mystic and scholastic. The spirit of con-
templation abides in its aisles and the beatific vision of God
upon its altar. The same spirit that touched with fire from
heaven the lips of St. Thomas Aquinas and anointed the eyes
of Dante, gave creative form to the Gothic cathedral and reared
tower above wall and turret above tower with cross melting
away into eternal light.

Digitized by

Google

434 EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL [July,

Ralph Adams Cram tells us that the art of any given time is
the expression of certain racial qualities modified by inheri-
tance, tradition and environment, and working themselves
out under the control of religious and secular impulses. The
same author tells us fiu-ther that "Gothic architecture and
Gothic art are the aesthetic expression of that epoch of Euro-
pean history when paganism had been extinguished, the hordes
of barbarian invaders beaten back or Christianized and assim-
ilated; and when the Catholic Church had established itself
not only as the sole spiritual power, supreme and almost un-
questioned in authority, but also as the arbiter of the destinies
of sovereigns and of peoples.'*

Perhaps of all the forms of art, none is more difiicult to
trace in its birth and origin than the Gothic. Its very designa-
tion ** Gothic " is a misnomer. As Vasari, the Italian painter
and historian of art, tells us the term was first used during the
later Renaissance and in a spirit of contempt. Ignorant both
of the habitat of the style and its nature, the Italians called the
Gothic the maniera Tedesca.

It must be confessed that it is, indeed, difficult to under-
stand how the Italians were led to do this, as there is nothing
in the Gothic, racially, religiously, geographically or chrono-
logically, that might connect it with a race and name that per-
ished and disappeared with Justinian's conquest of Italy and
Sicily about the middle of the sixth century.

Ethnically considered, Gothic art is Franco-Norman in its
origins, and assuredly there is no kinship between the Catholic
Franks and Normans on the one hand and the Arian Goths
on the other.

For a long while, Gothic architecture was regarded by many
as having had its origin in Germany. It was held that its proto-
type was the German forest compressed in miniature. It was,
indeed, an ingenious and somewhat apt explanation, for as
you enter a Gothic cathedral you feel that it reflects something
of the mysterious life of the forest in that it reproduces that
life by artistic compression, so that the rock, the tree — ^nature in
fine — ^is there in artistic representation.

Let us also remember at the outset that the evolution of the
Gothic system was gradual, and that the final results were en-
tirely unforeseen when the first steps were taken. Indeed, any
great art grows imperceptibly under each artist hand. It re-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 435

quired, for instance, nearly three centuries for the stiff By-
zantine to take on the beauty and grace of Raphael as it devel-
oped through the genius of a Cimabue, a Giotto, a Perugino
and a Raphael.

Again in tracing the origin and development of the Gothic
style we are prone to emphasize too much its mere construc-
tive side. What we call Gothic is really less a method of con-
struction than it is a mental attitude, the visualizing of a spirit-
ual impulse. In truth, as Ralph Adams Cram tells us, Gothic
architecture is rather an impulse and a tendency than a per-
fectly rounded accomplishment.

But, you may ask, where was its cradle? We think with-
out a doubt in Normandy. From the very days of St. Bene-
dict in the sixth century, the Catholic Church had been pre-
paring the soil for the flowering of Gothic art. The civiliza-
tion of the Middle Ages was Catholic civilization whose con-
secrating force was religion. The centuries following Pope
Gregory the Great and St. Benedict saw Europe redeemed, and
the Church purified and restored by Pope Gregory VII. and
the monks of Cluny. This was followed in the twelfth century
by the development of great schools, the rise of communes, the
military orders and the crusades. Then followed the thirteenth
century, which "with the aid of Pope Innocent III., Philip Augus-
tus, St. Louis and the Franciscans and Dominicans was to raise
to the highest point of achievement the spiritual and material
potentialities developed in the immediate past."

Let us note here that on the eve of the birth of the Gothic
cathedral, Lombardy led Europe in architectural attainment.
Naturally, then, it was to Lombardy that the Normans turned
for inspiration for their own buildings. But Lombardy did not
give us, even through the medium of Norman genius, the Gothic
style. It was the monks of Cluny who in the splendor of vision
and faith first worked out the principles of the Gothic style in
building. I do not think that this can be denied; and as a proof
that this credit belongs to the cloister, it may be further said
that it was the Cistercian monks who first carried the principles
of the Gothic into several countries, amongst others,
Spain.

There were many agencies that contributed to the creation
of Gothic art. The physical vitality of the new art epoch was
derived from the blood of Lombards, Franks and Norsemen.

Digitized by

Google

436 EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL [July,

The national feeling so necessary in all creative civilization
came from the Holy Roman Empire, the Prankish sovereigns
and the Dukes of Normandy. Most important of all the Papacy
working through the monastic orders gave the underlying im-
pulse. " Normandy in the eleventh century," says a well-known
writer on Gothic architecture, "was simply Cluny in action, and
during this period the structural elements in Gothic architec-
ture were brought into being."

It is a mistake to emphasize the mere constructive aspect
of Gothic ar'^.hitecture. The pointed arch alone does not con-
stitute the Gothic. As Augustine Rodin maintains, we might
have Gothic architecture without the pointed arch. The Gothic
style really results, as this great French sculptor tells us, from
a long and careful experimentation on the effects of light and
shade, and from the faculty thus acquired of giving to archi-
tecture life and movement.

We have already stated that Gothic architecture had birth
in Normandy. It flowered in the cloister of the monks of Cluny
during the latter part of the eleventh century. And when the
Cluniac influence waned in Normandy, it received a new and
greater impulse from the Cistercian monks who especially
promulgated and favored Gothic art in their buildings in
England.

After the death of William the Conqueror the duchy of
Normandy lost much of its influence. Henceforth Gothic art
found its chief stimulus, patronage and inspiration in the
Isle of France as a part of the realm of the French mon-
archy.

During the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth
century nearly all the architects whose names have come down
to us belong to the religious orders. During the second half of
the twelfth century the superiority appeared to be in favor of
the laity, and under Philip Augustus this superiority became
preponderant. At the close of the thirteenth century all the
architects known belong to the civil professions.

This change, it may be noted, was in keeping with a move-
ment of secularization that had passed over Europe at the be-
ginning of the thirteenth century. The teaching largely
passed from the monastic schools to the universities, and the
University of Paris extended its influence beyond the frontiers
of the royal domain; history was no longer written in the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 437

abbeys; literature became the privilege of the trouuires and
troubadours, and language was no longer exclusively the Latin
of the ancient chronicles and the old treatises of theology —
and even royalty was sharing in this new tendency.

Now it should be observed that whereas in England the
great Gothic cathedrals were built at the instigation and under
the direction of monastic congregations, in France they were
built at the instigation and under the direction of the bishops
by lay corporations.

What the French call La grande poussie de skve de V archi-
tecture Gothique, which we may translate as " the vigorous im-
pulse given to Gothic architecture,'* took place in France dur-
ing the reigns of Louis VI., Louis VII., Philip Augustus and
St. Louis — a period comprising a century and a half, during
which the genius of France shed its rays over Christendom,
and the foundation of French national unity was practically
laid. This was brought about by the alliance between royalty,
the Church and the free conmiune.

It was, too, within this unique and marvelous epoch that
the great Gothic cathedrals of France were built. Notre Dame
de Chartres, Notre Dame de Paris; the Cathedrals of Bourges,
Rheims, Amiens, Rouen, Laon, Soissons, Sens and Beauvais.
Ralph Adams Cram, one of the best living authorities on the
subject of Gothic art, designates the Gothic as the ** Catholic
Style.'* We may add to this, remembering where the art had
birth and where it flowered so richly, that it might well be
designated also the " French Style.**

These hundred and fifty years were illustrious in their
fruitage and in the life of France. The splendor of Paris Uni-
versity attracted the most eminent minds of the Catholic world.
The French Chansons de Geste are everywhere translated and
imitated. The superb Chanson de Roland which rivals in
strength and grandeur the Homeric poems, makes, as a writer
says, the tour of Europe in the wallet of the trouuires. Paris
for the time becomes truly the altar and centre of European
scholarship, culture and civilization. The greatest men of the
time enroll in its university. Dante and Roger Bacon and
Raymond Lully and Brunetto Latini and Thomas Aquinas
and Bonaventura sit on its benches. Grothic architecture,
which the Germans of the thirteenth century designated opus
franci genum, is meantime copied everywhere, and the best

Digitized by

Google

438 EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL [July,

architects of France go away to propagate the new law. It
crosses the English Channel, Uie Rhine, the Pyrenees, the Medi-
terranean. We see William of Sens building the choir of Can-
terbury Cathedral, an architect from Blois at work on the choir
of Lincoln Cathedral, Etienne de Bonneuil building the Cathe-
dral of Upsala, and Matthias of Arras building the Cathedral of
Prague.

Now as regards English Gothic, while it has an individ-
uality all its own, reflecting the daring and artistic freedom of
the English mind, it cannot be questioned that the introduc-
tion of Gothic into England came through the medium of the
French on the advent of the Cistercian monks who always fav-
ored the Gothic, and William of Sens who built Canterbury
choir.

By the way, none of the French cathedrals is more inter-
esting as a study of the genesis of Gothic architecture than is
the Cathedral of Sens. The writer remembers visiting it in the
autimin of 1903 when making a study of the Gothic cathedrals
of France. Its architect was William of Sens. What makes
it valuable as a study of Gothic is that this cathedral comprises
such a strange medley of styles. In the nave and choir the
round arch of the Romano-Byzantine is conspicuous. The
great rose windows which had their origin in Lombardy repre-
sent Gothic art at its height, while three arches near the west-
ern end of the central nave evidently belong to the Renaissance
period. We see in this church a vivid picture of change,
growth and vicissitude in art, and change in art is a sign of life
in art.

Here in the Synodal Hall of Sens Cathedral the council was
held in which St. Bernard took part that condemned the teach-
ings of Abelard. It should be remembered, too, that in the
ecclesiastical world. Sens was in the Middle Ages a most im-
portant city. In fact up to 1622, Paris, Chartres and Orleans
were suffragan dioceses of Sens.

Here Thomas k Becket found an asylum when driven out
of England by the wrath of Henry II. Here the Chancellor of
England and Archbishop of Canterbury met Pope Alexander
II. who was also in exile. When Thomas k Becket returned to
England he engaged William of Sens to visit England and re-
build the choir of Canterbury cathedral. Of course it took
many years for the Grothic to develop in England, and as the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 439

English style of Gothic advanced it diverged and departed
steadily step by step from the Gothic of France, for England
worked out her own form of Gothic artistic expression, and
paid little heed to French precedents.

Ralph Adams Cram says in his Gothic Quest that ** if logic
and consistency are the note of French Gothic, personality
and daring are those of the Gothic of England."

I think it is generally accepted that William of Sens intro-
duced into England and set before English eyes as much of
the Gothic as then existed, at least at Sens; but it has been dis-
puted that the work of William of Sens in rebuilding the Can-
terbury choir was the first Gothic done in England. Mr. Bond
in his work Gothic Architecture in England^ holds that the
first complete Gothic of England conunenced not with the choir
of Lincoln or Canterbury, but with the Cathedral of Wells
which was begun by Reginald Fitzbohun, who was bishop from
1174 to 1191.

In the development of Gothic architecture in England two
things are quite evident: First, that England received the
Gothic idea from Normandy, borrowing directly from Nor-
mandy and France; secondly, that she assimilated what she
acquired and gave to all a distinctly national character that
tended more and more as the English Gothic style developed
to separate it structurally and artistically from the Gothic of
France.

Which are the finest Grothic cathedrals in France is a ques-
tion of personal preference and temperament. Each has its
beauty, its individuality. Each forms a complete whole as
Louis Gonse sets forth in his L'Art Gothique — a cosmos, of
which the multiple expression form a harmonious unity. In
each there is something dominant. At Chartres it is the tower;
at Paris it is the facade; at Rheims the sanctuary and sculp-
ture; and at Amiens the nave.

Those who Uke the robust severity and virile energy of
the twelfth century Gothic will prefer Notre Dame de Char-
tres to Notre Dame de Paris. But those who incline to the
elegances and rationalism of the thirteenth century will pre-
fer Amiens, while those who are enamored of the living crea-
tions of sculpture will place the cathedral of Rheims above all.

Speaking of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres, Cram
says " that it is undoubtedly the most perfect of all Gothic

Digitized by

Google

440 EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL [July,

cathedrals, both in conception and in the details of its work-
ing out. It is unquestionably the noblest interior in Christen-
dom." When we follow the development of Gothic in other
countries than France and England, we find that the racial
adaptations of the Gothic impulse are much less vital and
distinctive. For instance, in Germany the Gothic idea was
slow in taking root.

If you take the Cathedral of Speyer, the erection of which
was almost contemporaneous with that of the choir of Notre
Dame de Paris, it will be noticed that it is constructed in the
Romanesque style. The first trace of the pointed arch in Ger-
many is found in the Cathedral of Magdeburg, the erection of
which was begun in 1212.

Of course the great Gothic cathedral of Germany is
Cologne, which is most perfect and complete on the structural
side. It was French architects who designed it and it is mod-
eled on the Cathedrals of Amiens and Beauvais. The Cathedral
of Cologne is really a late construction, the greater part of it
dating from the fourteenth and subsequent centuries. But
noble and impressive as is this massive structure on the Rhine,
it lacks the warmth, the suggestiveness and the spiritual appeal
found in the great Gothic cathedrals of France. Speaking of
this superiority of the French cathedrals over the English and
German ones, Augustine Rodin says : ** Our French cathedrals
are superior to the English and German ones by the greater
sculptural expression displayed in them. In this respect they
are second to nothing outside of Greek architecture. The Ger-
man Gothic is characteristically hard. The Cathedrals of Stras-
burg and Cologne exhibit this defect, but like that at Milan
more on the exterior than in the interior. The interior of the
Cologne edifice is very fine, and yet the structure as a whole
does not possess that supreme art, for lack of which the largest
cathedral appears smaller than a small church which has it.
Antwerp Cathedral is very beautiful, more beautiful than
Cologne. Its spire is a veritable crown; soaring as it does into
the air it is glorious to behold."

As Cram points out, Flemish Gothic is a sub-school of
French Gothic. By far the finest Gothic church in Belgium is
the Cathedral of Antwerp. Toiunai Cathedral with its five
towers is, indeed, quite unique, but Toumai Cathedral is not
purely Gothic. In fact the nave of Tournai which was built in

Digitized by

Google

1918.] EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 441

1060 is Rhenish Romanesque. Belgium has best expressed its
national feeling Gothic-wise in such civic buildings as the
Cloth Hall at Ypres, now destroyed by the fury of war, and the
beautiful Hdtels de Ville of Bruges, Brussels, Louvain and
Ghent.

As to the Gothic in Italy it practically always remained an
exotic. Not only that, but even Southern France as well, never
advanced far beyond the Romanesque, and in Brittany while
there are several impressive Gothic churches such as the
Cathedral at Quimper, they are as a whole almost all too
heavy.

In Italy the introduction of Gothic was as long delayed as
in Germany and, as far as native work is concerned, as Cram
points out, the fundamental principles of Gothic construction
were never accepted at all. Milan Cathedral, it is true, is a very
noble structure, but it is only a travesty of Gothic.

When we turn to Spain we find that as a Christian state
it had practically outside of a small territory near the Pyrenees
no existence till the middle of the thirteenth century, when
Ferdinand III. united the crowns of Castile and Leon, and won
back from the Moors Seville and Cordova. A few churches in
Spain before this time show an undeveloped type of Gothic;
but it was not until the victories of Ferdinand III. made Span-
ish nationality possible, and the coming into Spain of the
Cistercian monks gave the necessary spiritual impulse, that
Gothic architecture in any true sense appeared in Spain. The
Cathedrals of Burgos, Barcelona, Toledo and Leon show clearly
the influence of French Gothic, though of course they widely
differ in detail from French precedents. Perhaps of all Span-
ish Gothic cathedrals, that of Burgos gives most evidence of
French Gothic influence. Burgos too is usually regarded as the
finest Gothic cathedral in Spain.

Yet it will be observed that in the Spanish Gothic cathe-
dral there is a certain personality that gives it a distinctiveness
from that of any other school of Gothic. There is in both its
exterior and interior a certain richness that reflects the artis-
tic temper and taste of the Iberian people.

The years of the sway and sovereignty of Gothic art in
Europe mark the most vital epoch in the history of European
civilization. It was as if the altar fires of humanity that had
been tended for centuries by the hand of man were now stirred

Digitized by

Google

442 EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL [July,

by an angel and a very breath from heaven fanned the
fires of genius and spread the flames over the whole face of
Europe.

But of the five centuries of Gothic reign the miraculous
cycle of artistic creation was unquestionably the thirteenth
century. Everywhere there were during this century stirrings
in the great soul of the world. What Athens was for Greek art,
Constantinople for Byzantine, Florence for Renaissance, that
Paris and the Isle of France were at this time for Gothic. In-
deed, the world has never seen a greater art achievement than
the development of Grothic architecture during the thirteenth
century in the Isle of France. The author of the Gothic Quest
regards this achievement ** as one of the most marvelous in the
history of the world — the greatest product of the mind of man
in all times, all countries, all categories. It was absolute archi-
ture raised to the level of eternal law."

We wonder here how France — nay, how all Europe was
led to forget in the sixteenth century this glorious Gothic herit-
age. It was brought about by a return to the classical forms
of Greece and Rome, provoked by the influence of the Italian
Renaissance and through the extension of Protestantism and
the decadence of the Catholic idea. During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries things went from bad to worse. Churches
and abbeys suffered at the hands of vandals. The abbey of
Cluny, the largest and most magnificent structure in the Chris-
tian world, was destroyed. Indeed, had it not been for the cry
of alarm given out so eloquently by the Montalemberts, the
Victor Hugos, the Augustin Thierrys, as well as the work of the
French School of Archaeology and the Commission for the Pres-
ervation of Historical Monuments, we should perhaps behold
today the definite disappearance of all this incomparable
Gothic heritage.

In 1764, Horace Walpole, an English statesman and man
of letters, published a novel bearing the title. The Castle of
Otranto, which was a Gothic romance. He anticipated in this
field the work of Walter Scott and Victor Hugo by many years.
In 1834 the French Archaeological Society was founded. It
was then that Montalembert wrote his book Du Vandalisme
and Victor Hugo his romance of Notre Dame de Paris. Then
the archaeological awakening of the French Provinces was
added to that of Paris. Vitel wrote his work on the Monuments

Digitized by

Google

1918.] EVOLUTION OF THE GOTHIC CATHEDRAL 443

of the northwest of France in 1831, and Merimde his work on
the Monuments of the south and centre of France in 1835.

The soul of man wrenched from its spiritual orbit, where
alone is found true beauty and creative power, after wayfaring
for many years in a world of revolution, chaos, darkness and
sin, seeks again its natal mansions, and so Gothic art and its
appreciation have found once more an abiding place in the
hearts and minds of all Christian people.

The real cause of decadence in any art is the forsaking of
idealism, and the discrediting of the imagination through the
immoderate following of individualism. We have been drift-
ing away for a long time from the spiritual and imaginative
towards the purely intellectual and material.

It matters not what the art; in order to be great it must
be brought for baptism to the font of spiritual faith. The
world in itself has no chrism with which to anoint its brow.
The infinite touch and sacramental consecration must come
from above. This it is that makes Gothic art superior to every
other art. This it is that gives the Gothic cathedral preemi-
nence among all types and forms of architecture as a sublime
symbol and expression of Catholic faith in the Christian soul.

Digitized by

Google

CATHOLIC ACTIVITIES IN OUR TWO GREAT WARS.
BY THOMAS F. MEEHAN.

|N the address presented to George Washington by

the representatives of the Catholics of the United

States, after his inauguration in New York, on

April 30, 1789, as first President of the Republic,

they say: "Whilst our country preserves her

ad independence we shall have a well-founded title

to claim from her justice the equal rights of citizenship as the

price of our blood spilt under your eyes, and of our conmion

exertions for her defence under your auspicious conduct."

And the Father of his Country in his formal reply tells
these representatives who were Father John Carroll, Charles
Carroll of CarroUton, Daniel Carroll, Thomas FitzSimons and
Dominick Lynch : ** I presume that your fellow-citizens will
not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplish-
ment of their revolution, and the establishment of their gov-
ernment; or the important assistance which they received from
a nation in which the Catholic faith is professed."

It is with special praise that we claim to be able to prove
that in every crisis of the nation's history. Catholic activity and
patriotic service have measured up to the standard indicated by
this record of the Revolution. There is no need to try to set
forth here what is being done in the present war for Liberty.
Many curious, instructive and happily interesting features,
however, can be found in a contrast between what is happen-
ing now in every section of the country and what took place
during the War of Emancipation, 1861-1865.

Few in this electric era can form any comprehensive idea
of conditions, social, religious and political, at the dawn of the
sixties. It is difficult also to make absolutely conclusive state-
ments of the details of Catholic activities then because of the
dearth of statistics and the documentary evidence now consid-
ered so essential for a thoroughly satisfactory and authorita-
tive historical review. Thanks to modern methods, the his-
torian of the future will know all about the splendid help the
present Catholic body is giving in its collective and individ-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOUC WAR ACTIVITIES 445

ual capacity, to make Democracy safe in all the world. The
simple folk of the sixties, however, had not even a mole's-eye
view of the omnipotence of the Card Index or the omniscience
of the Efficiency Engineer. Hence we are often at a loss
how to fill the gaps in the records of the stirring times that
stretch from April, 1861, to the fall of the curtain on the great
war-tragedy at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, when we wish to
show by actual statistics what help our Catholic brethren gave
to save the Union.

There were in the United States in 1860 about 4,500,000
Catholics out of a total population of 31,500,000. Most of the
English-speaking Catholics were of Irish birth or blood, for
from 1841 to 1861, the official statistics state that 2,449,087 im-
migrants left Ireland, and nearly all for the United States.
There was no national and scarcely any local organization in
the United States of these four and a half millions of Catholics
such as we have at present. No Catholic society existed that
had an influence beyond parochial limits. A convention. State
or National, of Catholic laymen for any purpose, had never
been dreamed of, much less convoked, if we except the pecul-
iar purely diocesan gatherings that Bishop England called to-
gether during his episcopate in Georgia and the Carolinas.

Women as a factor in public activities were equally non-
existent. The half-dozen who went about clamoring for their
** rights " were regarded as semi-demented freaks to be care-
fully avoided by all self-respecting, decent people.

There were published in the larger cities a number of
Catholic weekly newspapers, but of these only two, the Boston
Pilot and the New York Freeman's Journal, had a national cir-
culation of any influence. Only five had a local reputation suf-
ficiently prominent to be considered of consequence. These
five were the Baltimore Catholic Mirror; the Cincinnati Catho-
lic Telegraph; the New York Tablet and the Metropolitan Rec-
ord, and the remains of Bishop England's Charleston Mis-
cellany. Out of this list only the Pilot, the Telegraph and the
Tablet can be set down as loyal to the Union. The others were
tainted with pro-slavery and Secessionist views. The Mir-
ror and Miscellany were positively Secessionist. The Free-
man's Journal had to be suppressed for disloyalty in 1861, and
its editor was sent to Fort Lafayette. The Metropolitan Record
changed its tone after an official warning. All, except the Pilot,

Digitized by

Google

446 CATHOUC WAR ACTIVITIES [July.

Telegraph and Tablet, did their best, but without success, to
influence Catholic opinion in favor of extreme Southern pro-
slavery views. It was the close of the day when the old-fash-
ioned idea of the personality of the editor and his opinions
were supposed to have a specially dominating influence over
the readers of his paper. In addition to these papers, a very
strong factor in the agitation of current political and so-
cial issues was the Quarterly Review, edited and published
by Orestes A. Brownson, and stanchly loyal to the Union.
*'No man,'' says his son, in the record he compiled of his
father's activities,^ '* according to his ability and influence had
done more to prevent the spread of abolitionism, or to defend
against fanatics of either section of the Union the constitutional
rights of the South or slave-holding States • • • . Though op-
posed to the abolition movement he had never approved of
slavery."

But Brownson destroyed much of his influence for good
by the feuds he had with many of the bishops, with almost
every other Catholic editor in the land, and by alienating Irish
sympathy and friendship through the nativist and sneering
tone of his contributions to his Quarterly whenever he touched
on Irish or Irish- American interests.

In their partisan political preferences the Catholic papers
sided with the Democratic Party. The new Republican Party
was largely made up of elements that, not long before, had
been demanding the disfranchisement and the exclusion of
Catholics from every office, on the plea that they could not be
loyal to the Republic. Such a political organization, there-
fore, could not consistently hope to attract Catholic support.
Indeed, the general community had taken on an anti-Catholic
attitude aptly described by Archbishop Hughes in an ad-
dress made on June 10, 1851, at a banquet in Liverpool:

^ Convents have been burned down and no compensation
ofl'ered to their scattered inmates," said his Grace; " Catholic
churches have been burned down, while whole neighborhoods
have been, under the eye of public officers, reduced to ashes.
People have been burned to death in their own dwellings; or if
they attempted to escape have been shot down by the deadly
messenger of the unerring rifle. Crosses have been pulled down
from the summit of God's sanctuary. Priests have been tarred

^Middle Life. pp. S51. S52.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES 447

and feathered. Ladies have been insulted for no crime except
that of having devoted themselves to the service of their divine
Master in a religious state, in the hope of conferring aid or con-
solation on their fellow beings. . . . These things were the work
of what is called mobs; but we confess our disappointment at
not having witnessed a prompt and healthy, true American
sentiment in the heart of the conmiunity at large in rebuttal of
such proceedings, and so far as reparation was possible, in
making it to the injured parties whom they had failed to pro-
tect." «

Many potent forces were therefore at work that would
seem to be tending to prevent a whole-hearted Catholic sup-
port of the cause of the Union. During the intense agitation
that preceded the outbreak, Cassius M. Clay, one of the organiz-
ers of the Republican Party, tried to persuade Archbishop
Hughes to help out its progress to political success.

**I pray you," Clay wrote, **to change your alliances.
Whilst we are not the advocates of * Religion and State ' we are
the fast friends of religious freedom," and then he went on to
express his '' astonishment that our friendly and essentially un-
changed feelings are not reciprocated by the Catholic
Church."

In answer to this assumption that he had the management
of the political consciences of his flock. Archbishop Hughes
replied from New York, on February 6, 1858:

"My own principles are that the American people are
able, in their own way, to manage their affairs of State without
any guidance or instruction toward any class or religious de-
nomination, by either priests or parsons. . . .

" As for myself, I never influenced a human being. Catholic
or Protestant, as to the party to which he might think proper
to attach himself in his capacity as a voting citizen. I never
voted but once in my life, and that vote was cast nearly thirty
years ago in favor of your illustrious namesake, and I believe
relative, Harry of the West. He was, in my estimation, a states-
man as well as an orator, and I voted the more readily because
my congregation were in the main opposed to him, and some
of them had almost threatened me on account of my good
opinion of him as a man much calumniated, but of whom as
a statesman and orator, his country might well be proud.

' Hassard, Life of Archbishop Hughes, pp. 350, 351.

Digitized by

Google

448 CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES [July,

"You can easily perceive by all this that the Catholics
vote as individuals in the proper exercise of their franchise;
but without any direction from their clergy, so far at least as
has ever come under my knowledge, and certainly so far as the
clergy under my own jurisdiction is concerned." *

Such was the general Catholic situation when the face of
the country was suddenly transformed by the attack on Fort
Sumter in April, 1861. Party lines were at once obliterated,
divisions healed, the pleadings of the disloyal would-be leaders
in the press were ignored. Immediately no voices were louder
or more sincere than the Catholic in swelling the grand chorus
that proclaimed : " The Union, it must and shall be preserved."
The national flag was displayed from the churches, prelates
and priests exhorted their people to rally to the support of the
Government. Archbishop Hughes was recognized as the ex-
ponent of Catholic loyalty, and it is curious and interesting to
find him then advocating projects and programmes that are
now being advanced as most efficient and up-to-date. He
believed in conscription as the fairest method of filling the
ranks of the army. In a sermon at St. Patrick's Cathedral he
urged the people to try and finish the war by one great
effort.

" If I had a voice in the councils of the country," said he,
" I would say let volunteering continue; if the 300,000 on your
list be not enough this week, next week, make a draft of 300,000
more. It is^not cruel this. This is mercy. This is humanity.
Anything that will put an end to their drenching with blood the

whole surface of the country, that will be humanity It is not

necessary to hate our enemies. It is not necessary to be cruel
in battle, nor to be cruel after its termination. It is necessary
to be true, to be patriotic, to do for the country what the coun-
try needs and the blessing of God will recompense those who
discharge their duty without faltering and without violating
any of the laws of God or man." *

One could almost say that there is an echo of this in those
addresses of President Wilson for which the world has given
such an enthusiastic approval.

Defining his position the Archbishop wrote to Bishop
Ljmch of Charleston in August, 1861 : " I am an advocate for
the sovereignty of every State in the Union within the limits

•Hassard, op. eit, p. 378. ^Hassard, op. eit, p. 407.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES 449

recognized and approved by its own representative authority
when the Constitution was agreed upon. As a consequence I
hold that South Carolina has no State right to interfere with
the internal affairs of Massachusetts; and, as a further conse-
quence, that Massachusetts has no right to interfere with South
Carolina, or its domestic and civil affairs as one of the sov-
ereign States of this now threatened Union. But the Constitu-
tion having been formed by the common consent of all the
parties engaged in the framework and approval thereof, I
maintain that no State has a right to secede, except in the
manner provided for in the document itself.""

To another Southern bishop he had previously written on
May 7th : " I myself have never reconmiended any man to go
to the war, unless circumstances rendered it expedient or nec-
essary. . . . The flag on the cathedral was erected with my per-
mission and approval. It was at the same time an act of ex-
pedience going before a necessity likely to be urged upon me
by the dictation of enthusiasm in this city. I preferred that no
such necessity of dictation should overtake us; because if it
had, the press would have sounded the report that the Catho-
lics were disloyal, and no act of ours afterwards could success-
fully vindicate us from the imputation. On the whole, how-
ever, I think, my dear Bishop, that the Catholics of the North
have behaved themselves with great prudence, moderation, and
a dignity which has, for the moment, at least, inspired, among
the high and the low, great respect for them as a religious body
in this Union." •

We might claim even that the Archbishop anticipated our
own much-lauded "hundred percenters" and anti-hyphens.
He sent this letter on August 13, 1861, from Long Branch to
Secretary Seward : " With regard to Colonel Corcoran I would
advise his appointment as brigadier-general even if he should
never return from his honorable captivity. I have discovered
symptoms of wounded feelings among his countrymen arising
from the fact that in the different reports, the Sixty-ninth has
scarcely been alluded to. A slight is for them worse than a
blow. Corcoran's appointment as brigadier-general, even
though a prisoner, would heal the wounds of their amour
propre**

The anti-hyphens would no doubt endorse this other letter

' Hassard, op, eit, p. 438. • Hassard, op, eit, pp. 438, 439.

YOL. cvu. — ^29

Digitized by

Google

450 CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES [July,

written to Mr. Seward, on September 12th : ** Our papers have
paragraphs every day about what is called the * Irish Brigade '
intended for military service during the war. The thing itself
may be all correct; but I would respectfully suggest that the
name is not indicative of good. I think regiments and brigades
ought to be distinguished by numbers and companies by alpha-
betical distinction. I am of the opinion that if there be Irish
brigades, German brigades, Scotch brigades, Garibaldian bri-
gades in our army, there will be trouble among the troops even
before the enemy comes in sight.*' ^

Other prelates followed the example of Archbishop Hughes
in immediately putting themselves on record as loyal support-
ers of the Government and President Lincoln. Bishop Lough-
lin of Brooklyn, during the thirty-eight years he ruled that see,
never publicly identified himself with any civic movement ex-
cept the great Union mass meeting held at Fort Greene, on
April 23, 1861, among the ofiBcials of which were a number of
Catholics, and to one of whom. Judge Alexander McCue, he
wrote:

** The idea of resorting to arms for a settlement between
the citizens of our glorious country I have endeavored to keep
as far as possible from my mind, but now events proclaim its
probability, at least, if not its reliability. In whatever circum-
stances our country may be, we owe loyalty to its Constitution
and laws and honor to its flag. This I hold to be the duty of
every citizen. The conviction that it is mine, has grown with
my growth and strengthened with my strength, nor shall time
render less imperative the obligation implied in it. I shall
continue to pray that peace and union may be restored and
permanently established — that the Constitution and laws may
be respected and that our flag — the American flag, the flag of
the Union, the Star Spangled Banner — may be loved and hon-
ored at home and abroad."

On the previous Sunday the famous Dr. Charles Con-
stantine Pise, pastor of St. Charles Borromeo's, Brooklyn's
leading church, preaching to his congregation told them that so
long as they had a flag it was their duty to sustain it. He de-
plored with tears in his eyes the unhappy condition of af-
fairs, and asked to be forgiven the weakness he could not then
repress, as they knew he was a native of the South, and, indeed,

'Hassard, op, cit, p. 443.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOUC WAR ACTIVITIES 451

of the very place, Maryland, then the scene of a bloody strug-
gle between countrymen and brothers. *

At that date Dr. Pise was one of the most popular and best
reputed orators and publicists in the country. He is the only
priest who ever held the office of Chaplain to Congress, hav-
ing been elected to that position in the Senate on motion of
Henry Clay, on December 11, 1832. Few of his contemporary
priests equaled him as a writer of polished English prose and
poetry or of smooth, correct Latin verse or prose. He was the
author of the oft-quoted apostrophe of the flag provoked by
Know-nothing assaults, which begins and ends with the fol-
lowing stanzas :

They say 1 do not love thee.

Flag of my native land.
Whose meteor folds above me

To the free breeze expand;
Thy broad stripes proudly streaming

And thy stars so brightly gleaming.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Stream on, stream on before us

Thou labarum of light.
While in one generous chorus

Our vows to thee we plight.
Unfaithful to thee — never!

My native land forever!

The venerable Archbishop of Cincinnati declared: "The
President has spoken and it is our duty to obey him as head of
the Nation. Moreover, Ohio, the State in which we are, has also
spoken on the subject It is then our solemn duty as good
and loyal citizens to walk shoulder to shoulder with all oiu:
fellow-citizens in support of the national honor.'' *

Bishop Timon of Bufi'alo was equally sympathetic. "H
war must be waged," he said, ** let it be waged with vigor; thus
alone can it end speedily in peace."

From hundreds of pulpits patriotic pastors exhorted their
people to stand by the Union and support the President and his
government The response was whole-hearted and immediate
all over the country, and especially in New York, then as now

* United States Catholic Historical Society's Records and Studies, vol. 11., 1901,
p. 192. • Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph, January 4, 1832.

Digitized by

Google

452 CATHOUC WAR ACTIVITIES [July.

the great Catholic centre. That Catholic New York should so
quickly demonstrate its unflinching loyalty was a notable in-
stance of generous self-sacrifice. The Sixty-ninth Regiment of
the militia for years had been, as now, the typical military
organization of Catholics, but its Colonel Michael Corcoran had
been deprived of his sword and placed under military arrest a
few months before, because he refused to parade his men in
honor of the Prince of Wales who was visiting New York. In the
hour of the country's peril this humiliation and insult to a
proud and sensitive man was forgotten. Two days after the
order was issued from headquarters dismissing the charges
against him, and dissolving the court-martial. Colonel Cor-
coran had twice the Sixty-ninth's quota ready to serve the
Union and to start for the front on April 23, 1861, the second
regiment to leave New York for the defence of Washington.

** The conmiandant," he said in his general order before
starting, ** feels proud that his first duty after being relieved
from a long arrest, is to have the honor of promulgating an
order to the regiment to sally to the support of the Constitution
and the laws of the United States." With the regiment as its
Chaplain marched Father Thomas J. Mooney, pastor of St.
Bridget's Church. It was quartered in Washington in George-
town College, the senior Catholic educational institution of the
country, and thence passed over to Arlington Heights, where it
built Fort Corcoran, the first Union fortification erected on
Southern soiL

In Boston there was a similar manifestation of generous
patriotism. The military organizations there with a Catholic
membership had been deprived of their arms and practically
disbanded through the machinations of a clique of Know-
nothing politicians endorsed by a craven governor. This, as in
New York, was forgotten and thousands of volunteers flocked
to the standards of the Ninth and the Twenty-eighth Regi-
ments, which held locally the same relative standing as the
Sixty-ninth had in New York. In this organization of Catholic
Boston's support of the Union, a leading part was taken by Pat-
rick Donahoe, the founder and for most of the years of his
long and useful life the owner of the Pilot. He was then the
richest and most influential Catholic layman in New England,
and he pledged to the Government his fortune and all his
energies.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES 453

In Chicago, James A. Mulligan, a lawyer of local repute
and editor of a Catholic weekly, 4he Western Tablet, organ-
ized in July, 1861, the Twenty-third Illinois, also known as
the Western Irish Brigade, and led it against the Secessionist
forces that were endeavoring to carry Missouri out of the
Union. In September the whole country was thrilled by one
of the most daring episodes of the whole war: his heroic de-
fence, against overwhelming odds, of the town of Lexington,
Kentucky. He was the idol of the day, and so continued in
popular favor until his lamented and untimely death on July
26, 1864, from wounds received at the battle of Kernstown, Va.

These instances are pnly examples of what went on all over
the country, regiments almost wholly composed of Catholics
volunteering from the centres of crowded population, and a
notable percentage swelling the ranks in other less favored
localities. With each regiment of Catholics went a priest as
chaplain to look after the spiritual welfare of the men. The
law did not then take full cognizance of the necessary adjunct
to the military muster-roll, so if the priest could secure a com-
mission, he had a place on the staff; if not, he went along any-
way as a volunteer and took his chances. Writing to the Arch-
bishop of Baltimore, on May 9, 1861, Archbishop Hughes said :

^ The Superior of the Jesuits here, called on me more than
a week ago to state that their Society would be prepared to
furnish for the spiritual necessities of the army. North and
South, as many as ten chaplains, speaking all the civilized lan-
guages of Europe or America. I heard him, but did not make
any reply. For myself, I have sent but one chaplain with the
Sixty-ninth Regiment. • • •

'' There is also another question growing up, and it is about
nurses for the sick and wounded. Our Sisters of Mercy have
volunteered after the example of their sisters toiling in the
Crimean war. I have signified to them, not harshly, that they
had better mind their own affairs until their services are
needed. I am now informed, indirectly, that the Sisters of
Charity in this diocese would be willing to volunteer a force
of from fifty to one hundred nurses. To this proposition I
have strong objections. They have as much on hand as they
can accomplish. Besides it would seem to me natural and
proper that the Sisters of Charity at Emmitsburg should oc-
cupy the vety honorable post of nursing the sick and wounded.*'

Digitized by

Google

454 CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES [July,

There was a change, however, at Washington m regard
to chaplains for, on October 21st, President Lincoln wrote to
Archbishop Hughes: **I find no law authorizing the appoint-
ment of chaplains for hospitals; and yet the services of chap-
lains are more needed, perhaps in hospitals than with the
healthy soldiers in the field. With this view, I have given a
sort of quasi appointment (a copy of which I enclose) to each
of three Protestant ministers who have accepted and entered
upon the duties.

" If you perceive no objection, I will thank you to give me
the name or names of one or more suitable persons of the
Catholic Church to whom I may with propriety tender the
same service.

" Many thanks for your kind and judicious letters to Gov-
ernor Seward, and which he regularly allows me the pleasure
and profit of perusing.*' ^®

The roll of the Catholic army chaplains which begins with
Father Tom Mooney of the Sixty-ninth is followed by those of
his successors in that conmiand, the Jesuit, Bernard O'Reilly
and his brethren of that order; in other regiments, Peter Tis-
sot, Thomas Ouellet, Michael Nash and Joseph B. O'Hagan;
from the Dominicans marched Constantine L. Egan; Notre
Dame's representatives were Father William Corby, James M.
Dillon, Paul E. Gillen, P. P. Cooney, E. B. Kilroy, J. C. Carrier,
and Joseph Leveque. Other patriotic priests were Father
Thomas Scully of Boston, Father William Butler of Chicago,
Father Louis A. Lambert, of the Thirty-ninth Illinois, and the
three volunteers who later were promoted to the ranks of the
hierarchy, the illustrious MetropoUtan of St. Paul, John Ire-
land; Bishop Lawrence McMahon of Hartford, and Bishop
Bernard McQuaid of Rochester, a wartime resident of
Newark, New Jersey. Fathers Tissot and O'Hagan were cap-
tured and spent some time in Libby Prison. The former kept
a very interesting diary of his experiences at the front which
extends over two years. Part of it was published by the United
States Catholic Historical Society. "

The foregoing names do not exhaust the list of the zealous
and devoted priests who served in the various armies from
1861 to 1865. The chaplains were not so numerous as the large

^Hassard, Life, pp. 441-445.

^Records and Studies, vol. 111., January, 1903, p. 69.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES 455

proportion of Catholics in the ranks would seem to warrant,
and the delver into the records of those days will find repeated
complaints from commanding officers about the lack of these
priests. There was not a single Catholic chaplain in the navy
all during the war; or, in fact, ever in that branch of the service
until President Cleveland appointed Father Charles H. Parks
on April 28, 1888. These complaining officers appreciated the
good that always followed the presence of priest chaplains
among their men, and they chafed over the disinclination of
the Government, and sometimes the Church officials, to coin-
cide with their views in this respect. As far as the Catholic
bishops were concerned, it was often very difficult for them to
find the right men for this trying office, or to spare priests from
other duties. In regard to influencing action in this direction
by the Government, Catholics had not then even the rudiments
of the efficient organization that is looking after this matter
in the present War.

With the priest chaplains went the Catholic Sisters as
nurses. They were the only trained, organized and disciplined
body of women in the country ready then to meet the grave
emergency that the clash of arms precipitated on the nation.
To the general discredit must it be recorded that only within
the past year has a decent effort been made to put into our
official history some comprehensive data concerning the heroic
self-sacrifice and patriotic services of these devoted religious,
who neither asked nor sought any but an eternal recognition
and reward for what they did.

There was no Red Cross in those days. The whole cult
of modern professional and sanitary nursing has grown up and
been evolved into its present international organization and
efficiency since then. A tradition of what Florence Nightin-
gale had done during the Crimea was the basis of the effort to
organize in 1861 some agency outside military lines for the
amelioration of the misery and suffering of the war's victims.
We now have Miss Nightingale's own authority for the fact
that she owed the most of the impulse and success of her plans
to Catholic training and ideals. What was done here in 1861
was put under way by philanthropic men and women who
banded themselves together in an organization called the Sani-
tary Commission. The first effort to provide for the care of
the victims of the war followed a meeting^held in Cooper In-

Digitized by

Google

456 CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES [July,

stitute. New York, on April 29, 1861, when the Women's Cen-
tral Relief Association was organized with the Rev. Dr. H. W.
Bellows, a popular preacher of that day, as its head. The Gov-
ernment refused to give the organization any ofiQcial recogni-
tion, but after some controversy gave its approval to the Sani-
tary Commission under the same direction. As is indicated by
the letter of Archbishop Hughes already quoted, the Sisters of
the various communities had already volunteered their serv-
ices and placed their hospitals at the call of the Government.
Sometimes, as it is also recorded of the pioneer modem nurs-
ing movement during Miss Nightingale's Crimean experience,
the lack of discipline and the disinclination on the part of
some of the Sanitary Commission's amateur workers to be sub-
servient to authority, brought them under the displeasure of
the military authorities, but this was never the experience of
the Catholic Sisters. When for instance a great camp was
estabUshed near Harrisburg, Surgeon-General Smith of Penn-
sylvania asked for Sisters of St. Joseph to serve as nurses and
Bishop Ward of Philadelphia wrote for them : " The doctor
hopes that the Sisters will not disappoint him. Every female
nurse has been refused. Dr. Smith being unwilling to trust any
but his old friends, the Sisters of St. Joseph. There is a large
field for usefulness. . . . The living is rough, the pay poor, and
nothing but the sentiments of religion can render the nurses
contented."

The Sisters took charge, and when their term of service
had ended. Governor Curtin in his ofiBcial letter to their
Superior, said that the Sisters, "sacrificing all personal comfort,
ministered faithfully and truly to the comfort and welfare of
the sick. Neatness, order, and efiBcient ministration im-
mediately followed on their arrival in the camp. Highly ap-
preciating their valuable services and Christian devotion to the
relief of human suffering, the State authorities desire to ex-
press to them and to your Order high appreciation of the self-
sacrificing spirit which they exhibit among the sick
soldiers."

In New York the Sisters of Mercy, by permission of Arch-
bishop Hughes, under the direction of Mother Augustine
McKenna, hurried south, while their Sisters in Chicago were
with the heroic Mulligan to succor the wounded after Lexing-
ton. The conmiunlties of Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOUC WAR ACTIVITIES 457

and Cincinnati added to the laurels won in the service of
humanity. When the war hospital was established m the old
Mount St. Vincent Convent in Central Park, New York, Edward
Pierpont wrote to Secretary of War Stanton: "The point is
this: We want the nurses of this hospital to be the Sisters of
Charity, the most faithful nurses in the world. Their tender-
ness, their knowledge and religious convictions of duty render
them by far the best nurses around the sick bed which have
ever been found on earth. All that is asked is that they be per-
mitted to be nurses under the dkection of the War Department
and its physicians.**

And the instance of this confidence in the superiority of
the Sisters as nurses could be piled up by further citations from
the experiences during the Civil War of Mother Angela Gil-
lespie of the Sisters of the Holy Cross; of Sister Anthony O'Con-
nell of the Cincinnati "Black Caps;" of Sister Mary Gonzaga
Grace of Emmitsburg, and the other valiant women who with-
out a thought of self gave such telling examples of real Chris-
tian heroism.

There was a slight friction due to the narrow and stupid
ofiBcialism of some Government underlings that threatened but
happily did not materially impede the usefulness of the Sis-
ters as volunteer nurses.

"The officers and men of the Tenth Regiment,'' says a
paragraph in the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph of June 29,
1861, " requested the Sisters of Charity to continue their valued
services to the sick soldiers; but it seems Miss Dorothy Dix is
Adjutant-Greneral of the hospital, and the soldiers have to
bleed and die unconsoled by the nurses of their choice unless
she consent. The Sisters of Charity will not apply to Miss
Dorothy for leave to do good. Let the Secretary of War see
to it as he does so handsomely to other things.''

The Secretary of War did " see to it," and the issue was
speedily adjusted by the proper authorities. Various projects
have been mooted since 1865 to mark by some public token an
appreciation of what the Sisters did then, but it was only last
year that any practical result followed as far as Congressional
action goes.

In the speech of the Hon. Ambrose Kennedy of Rhode
Island, in the House of Representatives, on March 13, 1918, in
support of the joint resolution to erect a memorial in Wash-

Digitized by

Google

458 CATHOUC WAR^ ACTIVITIES [July,

ington to the memory, and in honor of the members of the vari-
ous orders of Sisters who gave their services as nurses on bat-
tlefields, in hospitals and in floating hospitals during the Civil
War, we have the first comprehensive story of these activities
spread officially in the pages of the Congressional Record. "

Mr. Kennedy by careful and painstaking examination of
the data collected from the various institutions, is able to show
that there were nearly four hundred Sisters, " the most com-
plete register of war-nursing Sisters that has ever been pre-
sented in any single document on this subject.'' These war
nurses were the representatives of eight different religious con-
gregations, namely, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of the Holy
Cross, the Sisters of Charity from the Emmitsburg, the New
York and the Cincinnati branches; the Sisters of St. Joseph, the
Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, and the Ursulines. Their labors
took them to the States of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, New York,
Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri, Mary-
land, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky,
Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and the District of Co-
lumbia.

** Not only did they labor in hospitals," said Mr. Kennedy,
** but, moreover, they went from one battlefield to another in
ambulances, in old wagons, in every form of vehicle that was
available for them in their work. They cared not for flourish
or ostentation, but only for the chance to come as quickly as
possible to the assistance of suffering humanity.

** The records of the war do not register a single instance of
failure or shirking on the part of the Sisterhoods, and it must
have been an edifying sight, indeed, to see these pious and un-
assuming women whose souls were enriched with the jewels of
heavenly sanctity, as they went from battlefield to hospital to
apply their tranquil ministrations. No page in all our history
can present any nobler deeds of courage and devotion. Easily
and without emotion they turned from school and asylum to
take up the war duties, and no matter how appalling were the
sights that came before them, they labored with unity and
harmony under the most trying circumstances.''

Catholic women also banded themselves in conmiittees
to take care of the families of the soldiers, and to see that relief
was always ready for their wants. In all the dioceses provision

^ Congressional Record, March 19, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES 459

was made to care for the many orphans the casualties of the
conflict made dependents on public charity.

Perhaps the most important of the many Catholic activities
during the war was the diplomatic mission to France and Eng-
land undertaken by Archbishop Hughes at the instance of
President Lincoln and Secretary Seward. From the earliest
period of the war the Archbishop had been in constant con-
fidential communication with both these officials, giving them
advice and keeping them informed of popular feeling and opin-
ion. In October, 1861, as he himself tells in letters to Cardinal
Bamabo, Prefect of the Propaganda: "

** It was proposed by the Cabinet that I should accept a
special mission to England and France, in connection with
very important national questions between the United States
and these powers. I declined until it was made known to me
that the President of the United States made a special request
that I should accept and if possible render some service to the
United States in the present condition of public affairs. I
could not refuse his request, and at the same time I implied if
any success should attend my mission it would redoimd to the
benefit of the Catholics and the promotion of the interests of
the Church.

^^ My mission was and is a mission of peace between
France and England on the one side and the United States
on the other. ... I made known to the ministers in Wash-
ington that I could accept no official appointment from them
.... that I could not undertake to fulfill any written instruc-
tions; but that if I came I should be left to my own discretion
to say and do what would be most likely to accomplish good,
or at least to prevent evil. Then they said that I should go with
a carte blanche — do and say for the interests of the country,
prevention of war and interests of humanity anything that I
should think proper. . . .

** First. The Grovernment knows that the people of Amer-
ica, both of the North and of the South, whether Catholics or
Protestants, have great confidence in me . . . . ; that, as the
Cabinet in Washington believe more reliance would be placed
on my statements, on account of my being a Catholic prelate
than would be placed on the words of any official minister of
the United States either in Paris or London or elsewhere.

^Hassard, Life, p. 449 et seq.

Digitized by

Google

460 CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES [July,

" Second. The Government at Washington were pleased
to think that in requesting me to accept this mission they were
paying a great compliment to the whole Catholic people of the
United States; and they wished to give me also a mark of their
confidence which might go far, as an example for future ad-
ministrations, to be well disposed toward the Catholics."

That the Archbishop's mission abroad was entirely suc-
cessful it is not necessary to detail here. From Paris, after
his interview with the Emperor Napoleon, he went to Rome,
whence he reports to Secretary Seward, on February 21,' 1862:
''I have had a most cordial and flattering reception in this
capital among the civil and ecclesiastical magnates from the
Pope downward. The Holy Father has been particularly kind.
He and Antonelli both speak of you with kind remembrance
and with great respect."

In another letter to Mr. Seward, on March 1, 1862, he says:
" I explained the whole matter to the Holy Father and to Car-
dinals Antonelli and Barnabo. I am happy to say that they all
approved of my conduct, and instead of censuring me showed
a disposition to confer additional honors."

Writing again to Mr. Seward, he informs him: "A
Roman gentleman told me a few days ago that the Southern
Catholics who happened to be here hold me responsible for
having prevented France and England from coming to the
aid and support of their cause. My answer was, * I hope the
accusation is true.' " "

To show the appreciation in which the Archbishop's serv-
ices were held by the Government, President Lincoln had an
intimation conveyed to the Holy See, that, not being able to offer
him any honor he would accept, there would be a special grati-
fication felt in any reward that the Pope might confer on him.
The Archbishop hardly had got comfortably settled again in
New York when he was called upon td take another notable
pubUc action. This was in regard to the draft riots of July
13-16, 1863. Notwithstanding his great services to the Union
cause and his eminent position in the Church the Republican
papers, especially the Tribune and the Evening Post, teemed
with tirades in which he and " your people " were charged with
being responsible for the calamity of war by their adhesion to
the Democratic Party and that party's consequent political

^^Hassard, op, ett.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES 461

successes; and by the refusal of the priests of his Church to
preach abolition and anti-slavery doctrines from their pulpits.
The draft rioting went on during the week mentioned, and
although the Archbishop was then in very feeble health, he
issued a public invitation " To the men of New York who are
now called in many of the papers rioters,*' to come to hear him
speak to them at his residence, the northwest comer of Madi-
son avenue and Thirty-sixth Street, on the afternoon of July
17th. More than five thousand did so, and from the balcony
he made a plea for peace and good order which had the desired
effect, as far as it reached those who heard his voice." It was
his last appearance in public.

These were some of the more prominent Catholic activities
of the time within peaceful domestic lines. On the tented field
and along the battle front Catholic leaders were no less con-
spicuous in their devotion to the cause of the Union or the
success with which they advanced its ultimate triumph. Their
names make a long and illustrious list honorably distinguished
in every branch of the service, Sheridan, Newton, Rosecrans,
Stone, Shields, Corcoran, Meagher, McMahon, Harney, Foster,
Copinger, Smith, Keyes, Mulligan, among the Generals; OHorke,
Garesch^, Cass, Guiney, in lesser rank of the army. In the
navy were Admirals Ammen, B. F. and J. H. Sands, R. W. Meade,
Beaumont, Boarman, Kirkland, Febiger, Franklin, Kilty;
Commanders J. H. Ward, Barrett and Chatard; Captains
Dominick Lynch, R. W. Meade, and F. H. Baker. Commander
J. H. Ward, who was one of the founders of the Annapolis
Naval Academy, was the first officer of the navy killed in action
during the war.

It is far too soon even to attempt an adequate review of
the Catholic record in this present war for Liberty. Speaking
officially for the nineteen millions committed to their spiritual
care, the Archbishops of the United States at their annual meet-
ing immediately after our entry into the War, in April, 1917,
thus addressed the Chief Executive of the nation :

Mr. President: Standing firmly upon solid Catholic tra-
dition and history from the very foundation of this nation,
we reaffirm in this hour of stress and trial our most sacred
and sincere loyalty and patriotism toward our country, our
government and our flag.

» Records and Studies, vol. i., pp. 171-189.

Digitized by

Google

462 CATHOLIC WAR ACTIVITIES [July,

Moved to the very depths of our hearts by the stirring
appeal of the President of the United States and by the
action of our national congress, we accept whole-heartedly
and unreservedly the decree of that legislative authority
proclaiming this country to be in a state of war.

We have prayed that we might be spared the dire neces-
sity of entering the conflict But now that war has been
declared we bow in obedience to the summons to bear our
part in it, with fidelity, with courage and with the spirit of
sacrifice, which as loyal citizens we are bound to manifest
for the defence of the most sacred rights and welfare of
the whole nation.

Acknowledging gladly the gratitude we have always
felt for the protection of our spiritual liberty and the free-
dom of our Catholic institutions under the flag, we pledge
our devotion and our strength to the maintenance of our
country's glorious leadership in those possessions and prin-
ciples which have been America's proudest boast.

Inspired neither by hate nor fear, but by the holy sen-
timents of truest patriotic fervor and zeal, we stand ready,
we and all the flock committed to our keeping, to cooperate
in every way possible with our President and our national
government, to the end that the great and holy cause of
liberty may triumph, and that our beloved country may
emerge from this hour of test stronger and nobler than
ever.

Our people now, as ever, will rise as one man to serve
the nation. Our priests and consecrated women will once
again, as in every former trial of our country, win, by their
bravery, their heroism and their service, new admiration
and approval.

We are all true Americans, ready as our age, our ability
and our condition permit, to do whatever is in us to do, for
the preservation, the progress and the triumph of our
beloved country.

May God direct and guide our President and our Gov-
ernment, that out of this trying crisis in our national life
may at length come a closer union among all the citizens of
America, and that an enduring and blessed peace may crown
the sacrifices which war entails.

In the army and navy, the Catholic representation in the
highest commands keeps well in proportion with the splendid
percentage among the fighters in the ranks. The same gratify-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] INFLUENCE 463

ing story is shown in the roster of the chief executives and
the workers for the equally important civilian activities.

" Surely our patriotism has stood the acid test of trial,"
said his Eminence Cardinal Farley, in his recent paper on
Catholics and the War,^^ and the Cardinal adds: "Is there
a single thing that Catholics could do for their country which
they have not done? Can a single field be named where their
work does not testify to their loyalty? Can any sincere and
upright man say, in the face of all that we have accomplished,
of the money we have given to our country's cause, of the de-
votion of bishops, priests and laymen, of our noble-hearted
women, in presence of the hundreds of thousands of bright,
clean, morally fit and physically sound soldiers, whom Catho-
lic fathers and Catholic mothers are offering as a sacrifice on
the altar of freedom, that Catholics are not loyal, are not true
to their country and that they have deserted her in her hour of
need? .... Those deeds have answered for us in no uncertain
voice. It could not be otherwise. For the Catholic recognizes
that loyalty to country is next to fidelity and obedience to God."

INFLUENCE.

BY FRANK S. GANNON, JR.

Today two pathways spread beneath my feet —

One had I walked alone;
And one you'd walked with me, and it was sweet

To choose that one —
And may I follow, when my step is weak,

The path your foot has trod,
So as I pass, to hear your spirit speak

The way to God.

^America, March 2, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL.

BY RICHARDSON WRIGHT.

I OUR versts this side of Blaginovna we came to a
hill. (This was seven years ago, seven years be-
fore the Russ drank of license and brought de-
struction to his own fair land.) It was a little hill
as hills go, covered with fir and birch and a thick
unuermusn, through which we had to scramble our way to the
top. Once at the top, there was unrolled a vast scene of great
beauty.

Far off, against a turquoise, cloud-flecked sky, rose the
blunt range the Russians call the Ural Mountains (blunt, be-
cause the Urals are very aged and worn down by the elements
of many centuries). Between, in succeeding ridges, were the
foothills, bald here and there in squares and oblongs where
timber concessions had been cut down. The big peaks that
lined the horizon flamed with a glory of light, and even the
tips of the hills gathered about their foot shone red and warm
ochre and steely gray where rock and clayey strata caught the
afternoon sun.

We watched the panorama in silence. It lay before us
like a huge challenge thrown down by nature. Beyond those
peaks stretched the illimitable reaches of Asia — and to Asia
we were heading. But before we could even reach those peaks,
the foothills must be conquered and many a darkened valley
put behind us. We were both conscious not so much of the
hills to be climbed as the hills to be descended — the glory that
would have to be left behind when we pressed on.

" That's what I don't like about life," remarked my com-
panion, his musing abruptly finding expression. *' It has too
many aftermaths, too many other sides to its hills. If we only
could keep on going up it would be all right. What I hate
is this eternal up-hill-and-down-dale, peak-and-valley sort of
existence. . . . However, that is life," he added.
And so it is.

I.
One of tlie experiences common to the life of reality is

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL 465

that we are constantly facing aftermaths, constantly being
obliged to descend the other side of the various pinnacles of
attainment and exultation which we have reached with great
striving. At first glance these experiences appear so individual,
so different, each one a law unto itself defying classification.
Yet, numerous and varied though they are, they would seem to
fall into only one of three possible classes: the aftermath of
sin which is a refusal of the love of God; the aftermath of
human love which is a reflection of the love of God; and the
aftermath of spiritual joy which is an engulfing in the love of
God. All three experiences are dark journeys, all three accom-
panied by despair, all three dangerous passages in a life, all
three intensely real. Their difference lies only in the manner
of the desire which drew us to that peak from which we are
so quickly forced to descend. That, and the direction our feet
take when we reach the valley.

Thousands of men and women have gone down the other
side of hills, and some of them have left detailed records of
what they experienced. They call it by different names, but
the experiences in all cases is approximately the same — a dark
way, a sense of being abandoned, an utter helplessness, the in-
ability to make even an effort. These are the general char-
acteristics of the other side of our hills. These are the after-
maths of lives fraught with reality.

But why "reality?"

So many good people find reality only in material and
fleshly things, in things they can touch and see. They fail to
recognize the intense reality of the spiritual life or the spiritual
aspects of material and fleshly things.

Underlying every material and fleshly reality is a spiritual
reality, and of the two the most real and the most potent is the
spiritual. In times of great stress and suffering it breaks
through the crust of the material and presents itself before the
eyes of the startled soul.

During the course of the War some strange spiritual ex-
periences have revealed themselves, experiences so unusual
that those who have felt them count it a mighty discovery. Mr.
Wells, for example, discovers God — and the world marvels!
Sooner or later Mr. Wells will come out with the truth of his

yoLm cvn. — 30

Digitized by VriOOQlC

466 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL [July,

discovery — and the world will marvel the more — that God's
love has been pursuing him for years, haunting him, dogging
his footsteps until at last, breathless in the great whirlwind of
the War, he turns and sees what It is That has been following
him all this time.

Yet Mr. Wells is only one of thousands who today are be-
holding this same thing — the manifestations of the love of God
in all its majesty and tenderness as it is revealed in the suffer-
ings and sacrifices consequent on the War.

The very things we set at naught and discounted and re-
fused to talk about are now becoming the topics of ordinary
conversation. Men are suddenly recognizing that they have
souls and that their souls are God's, and that they can find no
rest until they rest in Him. In short, they are discovering spir-
itual realities.

Before we can understand aftermaths, before we can grasp
what lies on the other side of the hill, we must grant the intense
reality of the spiritual, we must make it real enough to talk
about. Once this reality is acknowledged, once our lips profess
it, the aftermath becomes fecund with immense possibilities
and the dark descent filled with tremendously vital experi-
ences. The aversion from sin and the reaction of human love
and spiritual joy becomes somethmg more than mere fear or
ennui or mental fatigue.

IIL

The reality of sin is the most difficult to explain effectually
in these times. It is quite the vogue to condone and argue away
sin. We have thriving sects and a large body of pseudo-philos-
ophy devoted to showing that no such thing as sin can exist —
that it is a deformity of the skull or the lack of vocational
schools or leaking drains which make men do wrong. Or, if
they do acknowledge sin, it is a social affair: man sins against
man, and God is left very much out of the question.

Still, it is a remarkable fact that those who recognize only
offences against society, who are guided by a social conscience
alone, suffer regret, remorse and repentance just as do less
enlightened folk. Obviously a social conscience is not an ulti-
mate norm of conduct. We must seek it elsewhere.

Those who have lived the spiritual life know only too well

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL 467

that the manifestation of sin — the overt act— is but a small part
of it. Behind lies all the sorry path of temptation and consent.
They know, moreover, that no man can simply sin against his
fellow. The overt act may be an offence against society, but
the long path up to its committing is a constant refusal of the
love of God. It is as though God walked with us up that hiU,
pleading, begging, constraining, only to receive at the peak His
ultimate refusal.

Make no mistake in thinking that we slide easily into sin.
Sin is an accomplishment. We come to it by a tedious path,
and by an equally tedious path do we return from it. He
Whom we have definitely refused on the peak of our commit-
ting withdraws Himself that He may follow us at a distance
into the valley. Hence the darkness and the terror, hence the
utter loneliness, hence the inability to make even an effort.
For a space God withholds Himself and constrains His love. No
longer does He walk by our side. He has taken Himself away.

Of a sudden, then, we realize that no amount of exposure
or public shame or punishment by society can compare with
the withdrawal of God Himself. We who willingly forsake
Crod, must not be surprised if God appears to forsake us. For
God can withhold His love from our understanding, although
we may very much desire it.

And these two pains, so counter and so keen —
The longing for Him when we see Him not,
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him —
Will be thy veriest, thy sharpest purgatory.

This is the intense reality of sin. It is more real than any
reaction of social conscience, for the customs of society may
change and the permissible habits of yesterday may be an of-
fence against the statutes today. But the love of God for man
is eternal. Custom does not change it nor the fickleness of philos-
ophy modify its course. It will be as real a century from now
as it is today. The pursuit for man's soul and his ultimate re-
fusal in sin will be as actual tomorrow as it has been in the
past. And as actual will be our abandonment by Him Whom
we have abandoned when our feet turn down the other side of
the hill.

Digitized by

Google

468 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL [July,

IV.

For every affirmation in life there awaits a dark negation.
Of none of its various phases is this more true than in the
course of human love which, as the proverb assiu*es us, never
runs smooth. For many of us it is our nearest approach to
things spiritual. Yet only when it is lifted up to catch the re-
flection of Divine Love, can it manifest that keen sensitiveness
to realities which the spiritual life possesses. The way up to
it is long, demanding all manner of sacrifices and patience and
trust; and yet, we no more arrive at a pinnacle of great exul-
tation and fulfillment than we must go down into the dark val-
ley of doubt.

It is not to be expected that joy should last forever, that we
should dwell eternally upon the supreme peaks of happiness.
For in the progress of love, as in the mystic course, we must
pass through "the dark night of the soul." We who have
known confidence must be assailed with distrust. Upon us
who have been warmed with the sun of love must descend the
chill darkness of despair.

For a space the lover is with his beloved and their souls
are merged in a burning ecstasy. Then, little by little, the very
existence of their love would seem to be consumed by the heat
of its own ardor. They are left abandoned, senseless and cold.
They who climbed the hill, together, descend the other side by
different paths.

"Lo, through great darkness I wander alone," cries the
beloved, " tlirough the wilderness of despair I hunger and
thirst after her! Yet is my heart. drawn to her heart by in-
violate bonds. Tomorrow! Tomorrow and the next day!
Patience! She will come again to bless thee, come radiant in
the light of her love for thee — ^merciful, piuifying and kind, the
one woman chosen out from all the women of the world for
thee alone to live for and to love! "

And even as he speaks, his fleshly love becomes spiritual,
catching light from the Divine Tenderness. In that hour flesh
is as naught, and the peaks of earthly love appear as little
heights both have climbed in order to find the path to a spirit-
ual joy.

Is it not because so many men and women are unwilling

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL 469

to persevere through these periods of despair that we find such
an appalling number of unhappy marriages? So few know
love as a progress, a development, a metabolism. They reach
one peak and can see no farther. Seeing nothing beyond the
flesh, they tire when satiated, not knowing that their love can
be consecrated into an abiding reality only when they are will-
ing to catch the light as God would give it them. Here is the
fallacy of loving according to the dictates of a modern social
conscience. For here are people who know not that God's love
alone can make their love divine and lasting.

The third and deepest type of aftermath is "the dark
night of the soul " through which all the great mystics have
passed to attain their union with God. They all bear witness
to it in one fashion or another. Some — ^many of them artists,
musicians and poets — have reached one pinnacle of great
vision, but have never experienced the aftermath which must
be passed before the veil of the senses is removed, and the soul
is engulfed in the heart of Crod. Others press on and reach
their goal.

Some of them have written of it; and learned men ever
since have tried to explain it by this science and that. It does
not explain, however, save as the mystics themselves describe it
when they attain that height where heart speaks to heart.

Doubtless the greatest witness we have of the reality of the
spiritual life is found in these experiences. For they are not
things vainly imagined nor mere pathological states, but mo-
ments intense, vibrant with energy and flooded with the mean-
ing of life. These are emptied of self that they may be engulfed
in a greater Self; the cup of the soul is poured out to receive the
rich wine of a heavenly love. What we ordinary folk know
only by symbols, they know in actuality. What is hid from us,
they see. We are concerned with doing, with a life buried in
the relations of man to man; they are concerned with being,
with a life hid in €rod. . . . But before they can become accli-
mated to that new sphere of reality, so they all attest, they must
pass down the other side of the hill.

Digitized by

Google

470 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL [July,

VI-

Most of us take life's aftermaths as periods of sterile re-
action, of necessary inactivity after great striving, of dullness
after ecstasy, of sorrow after joy. Reaction there must be,
since the capacity of the senses is limited, but the period need
not be altogethr inactive or sterile or dark. So many of us take
our aftermaths as the end of things; whereas — and herein lies
the purpose of these words — they are merely the slow begin-
nings of something new!

" It is the last perfection of a thing," said Thomas Aquinas,
** that it should become the cause of other things." So then the
aftermath is only the start of a new energizing, the beginning
of a new spiritual renaissance. Having reached one peak, we
go down into the valley that we may come to the foothills of a
still higher beatific mountain.

Upon how we climb up the next hill, with what ardor, what
faith, what cleansing resignation, will depend the ultimate
success of life. From this peak we press on to one higher —
but between lies the valley.

This is the synthesis of the experiences that come to us
after such varied attainments as a great love, a good Easter, a
fine piece of creative work, yes, even after a terrible sin or a
terrible grief. We either flee from God or He withholds Him-
self. The choice lies with us.

Yet, even in our very helplessness without His presence. He
lets us feel the movement of a new life and catch the echoes of
a new song.

Digitized by

Google

AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE.^

BY HENRY CHURCHILL SEMPLE, S.J.

G the Civil War the tiistoric Arlington estate
he heights across the Potomac from Wash-
Dn city was sold for taxes and bought in by
United States Government, which used it as
liUtary iitation and a national cemetery.
Some ten years after the sale, Robert E. Lee*s son, Custis, ap-
peared in court and claimed the estate as his property inherited
through his mother from his grandfather, George Washington
Parke Custis, son of Martha Washington and adopted son of
George Washington. He alleged that the sale had been invalid,
because the owner had offered to pay the taxes through a
friend as agent, and the offer had been rejected, because not
made by the owner in person. The jury rendered a verdict
in his favor against the United States. The case was appealed
to the Supreme Court, and the majority of the Justices decreed
in favor of Custis Lee.

The time of this trial was the dark reconstruction era
from which our memories shrink in horror. The place of the
trial was the centre of Federal power. The contested property
was a sacred burial ground of soldiers who had died for the
Union. The plaintiff in the suit was Custis Lee. He had fought
for the " lost cause," and the bloody losses his father had in-
flicted on the Union armies, were fresh in the memory of all.
The case is recorded in the United States Reports as that of Lee
V. The United States. It was not the United States Judiciary or
Legislative but the Executive that was the defendant. The
Attorney-General represented the Chief Executive, who was
President Ulysses S. Grant, then in the height of his glory
because of his victory over Lee. Those circumstances of time,
place and persons strongly enhance the glowing majesty
in the following words of Mr. Justice Miller speaking for the
court:

* This article consists largely of documents gathered by Mr. Hannis Taylor in his
treatise on Dne Process of Law and the Equal Protection of the Laws as enacted by
our Constitution and enforced by our courts.

Digitized by

Google

472 AMERICAN EQUAUTY AND JUSTICE [July,

** The Attorney-General asserts the proposition that though
it has been ascertained by the verdict of the jury, in which no
error is found, that the plaintiff has the title to the land, and
that what is set up by the United States is no title at all, the
court can render no judgment in favor of the plaintiff against
the defendants in the action, because the latter hold the prop-
erty as officers and agents of the United States and it is ap-
propriated to lawful public uses.

" No mem. in this country is so high that he is above the law.
No officer of the law may set that law at defiance with im-
punity. All the officers of government from the highest to the
lowest are creations of the law and are bound to obey it. It is
the only supreme power in our system, and every man, who by
accepting office participates in its functions, is only tlje more
strongly bound to submit to that supremacy and to observe
the limitations which it imposes upon the exercise of the
authority which it gives. Courts of justice are established not
only to decide upon controverted rights of the citizens as
against each other, but also upon rights in controversy between
them and the Government, and the docket of this court is
crowded with controversies of this latter class. Shall it be said
in the face ol all this, and of the acknowledged right of the
judiciary to decide, in proper cases, statutes which have been
passed by both branches of Congress and approved by the
President, to be unconstitutional, that the courts cannot give a
remedy when a citizen has been deprived of his property by
force, his estate seized and converted to the uses of the Govern-
ment without lawful authority, without process of law and
without compensation, because the President has ordered it
and his officers are in possession? "

As Mr. Dicey has said : " The words * administrative law *
are unknown to EngUsh judges and counsel, and are in them-
selves hardly inteUigible without further explanation. This
absence from our language of any satisfactory equivalent for
the expression droit administratif, is significant; the want of a
name arises at bottom from our non-recognition of the thing it-
self. In England, and in countries which, like the United
States, derive their civilization from English sources, the
system of administrative law and the very principles on which
it rests are, in truth, unknown. This absence from the institu-
tions of the Union, of anjrthing answering to droit administra-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE 473

tif arrested the observation of Tocqueville from the first mo-
ment when he began his investigations into the character of
American democracy. In 1831 he writes to an experienced
judge (magistral) Monsieur de Blosseville, to ask both for an
explanation of the contrast in this matter between French and
American institutions, and also for an authoritative explana-
tion of the general ideas governing the droit administratif of
his country.**

As Mr. Taylor says : ** Under the French theory, speaking
generally, the ordinary tribunals have no concern with ad-
ministrative law (droit administratif) as applied by adminis-
trative courts (trihunaux administratif s) . For example, if a
body of policemen in France, who have broken into a monas-
tery, seized its property and expelled its inmates under an
administrative order, are charged with what English lawyers
would call trespass and assault, the policemen would plead as
an exemption the government's mandate in the execution of
its decrees dissolving certain religious societies. If the right to
plead that exemption is questioned before an ordinary tri-
bunal, a * conflict * arises which cannot be settled by an ordi-
nary judge under what we would call the ton; of the land. In
that illustration we have a sharply defined distinction between
a thorough government of law as distinguished from a govern-
ment of functionaries.**

We note that Mr. Taylor says above " if a body of police-
men in France J* Might he not have said, in any civilized coun-
try outside of the British Empire or the United States?

Lieber says: " The guaranty of the supremacy of the law
leads to a principle which, as far as I know, it has never been
attempted to transplant from the soil inhabited by Anglican
people, and which, nevertheless, has been in our system of
liberty, the natural production of a thorough government of
law as contradistinguished from a government of function-
aries.**

Was this principle of true liberty and equality under the
law unknown to Xenophon, or to the ancient Greeks or even to
the ancient Persians? We leave our friend 'Mr. Taylor to judge
for himself after he has perused the following passage from the
Cyropaedia, Book I., Chapter III. The " Attic Bee " puts these
sweet words on the lips of Cyrus the Great, a small boy, and of
his mother Mandana, in a conversation held in Media, in the

Digitized by

Google

474 AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE [July,

presence of Astyages who was King of the Medes, Mandana's
father, and Cyrus* grandfather:

" Mother, I understand justice exactly already. Because
my teacher in Persia appointed me judge over others, as being
very exact in the knowledge of justice myself. But once I had
some stripes given me for not deciding rightly in a judgment
that I gave. The case was this. A bigger boy who had a little coat,
stripping a littler boy who had a bigger coat, put on the little
boy the coat that was his own, and put on himself the coat that
was the little boy's. I, therefore, passing judgment between
them, decreed that it was best that each should keep the coat
that fitted him best. On this, my teacher gave me a whipping
and told me that when I should be made judge of what coat
fitted best, I should decide in this way, but when I was to judge
whose the coat was, then it must be considered what right
possession is, whether he who took a thing by force or he who
made or bought it, should have it. And then he told me what
was according to law was right, and what was contrary to law
was might. He bid me take notice therefore that a judge should
give his sentence according to law. So, Mother, I know very
exactly what is just in all cases, or if anything is unknown to
me, my grandfather here will teach it to me."

^'But child," said she, *^the same things are not looked
on as just by your grandfather here and yonder in Persia. For
among the Medes your grandfather has made himself lord and
master of all. But among the Persians it is accounted just that
all should be equally dealt with. And your father is the first
to execute the orders imposed on the whole State and to accept
those orders for himself. It is not his own whim but the law
that is his rule and measure. How then can you avoid being
beaten to death at home when you go back there from your
grandfather, trained not in kingly arts but in the arts and man-
ner of tyranny, one of which is to think that power and domi-
nation over all is your due? "

Many critics call the Cyropaedia not biography but ro-
mance, not fact but fiction. But our point is that supremacy of
law over functionaries was planted during the fourth century
before Christ in the soil of the mind of an Athenian military
genius who had been a pupil of Socrates.

The French revolutionary liberty, igaliti are nebulous.
English and American liberty and equality before the law of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE 475

the land are enforceable by our courts, which can be blind to
the high dignity or the low degree of the contestants and weigh
out to each what is equal to his rights or dues according to the
law of the land.

The germ of this great element of true liberty and equality
is seen in the pledges of the King in Magna Charta : " We will
not set forth against any freeman, nor send against him, unless
by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay right or
justice."

We see many developments of this germ in our Declara-
tion of Independence and in various clauses of our Constitu-
tion, but especially in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments :
" Nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty or property
without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use without just compensation." " No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the priv-
ileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall
any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property with-
out due process of law; nor deny to any person within its juris-
diction the equal protection of the laws."

For this true liberty and equality which are thus dis-
tinctly defined and are, moreover, enforceable by the courts,
America is not indebted to the doctrinaires of the French Revo-
lutioh, but is indebted in great measure to England; and Eng-
lands owes what she has, in great measure, to the so-called Dark
Ages and its mediaeval Catholic prelates and barons who
wrested it at the point of the sword from the tyrant John at
Runnymed&in the year 1215.

In this respect the guaranty of liberty and equality is
greater in the United States than in France and the other coun-
tries of continental Europe, and is at least as great as in the
British Empire. But in another vital respect, it is greater here
than anywhere else. Neither the Privy Council nor any British
court has authority to decree that an act of the Omnipotent
Imperial British Parliament is unconstitutional and void. Our
courts have authority to decree that an act of a State Legisla-
ture signed by a Governor or an act of Congress signed by the
President is unconstitutional and void. ^

This unique American protection against bad laws, the
worst kind of tyranny, was a curious but natural development

Digitized by

Google

476 AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE [July,

from our history. " Each colony had a legislature with powers
limited by the king's charter creating such colony. In colonial
times questions arose whether the statutes made by tlie legisla-
tive assemblies were in excess of the powers conferred by the
charter. And if the statutes were found to be in excess, they
were held to be invalid by the courts, that is to say, in the first
instance by the colonial courts, or if the matter was carried to
England, by the Privy Council. As a general rule the colonies
when they became Sovereign States adopted new constitutions.
But the only constitutions of Connecticut until 1818 and of
Rhode Island until 1842 were their charters, dating respectively
from 1662 and 1663. One of the first cases, if not the very first,
in which a legislative enactment of a State was declared un-
constitutional and void by a State court, was decided under
the charter of Rhode Island. Our Federal Constitution was
adopted in 1787. Only m 1803 and in 1810 did the Federal
Supreme Court first put the stamp of nullity respectively on a
national and a state law as repugnant to the Federal Consti-
tution.''

There is not in the Federal Constitution and there was not,
at least originally, in any State Constitution any line or word
expressly giving the Federal or State courts authority to de-
clare a legislative enactment unconstitutional and void. This
tremendous authority was supposed and assumed and exer-
cised by the judges, and has been called a product of judge-
made law.

The decision of the Supreme Court in the year 1819 in the
case of Dartmouth College v. The State of New Hampshire was
a striking example of American justice enforcing the rights of
twelve school managers against the arbitrary and tyrannical
abuse of power attempted by a Sovereign State. King George
III., by the advice of the Provincial Council of New Hampshire,
granted a charter creating a corporation consisting of twelve
persons by the name of the " Trustees of Dartmouth College,"
with power to hold and dispose of lands and goods for the use
of the college, to fill vacancies in their own body, to appoint
or remove officers of the college, etc. These letters patent were
to be good and efi'ectual in law against the king and his heirs
and successors forever, without further grant or confljmation.

About fifty years afterwards, the Legislature of New
Hampshire professing to enlarge, improve and amend this

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE 477

charter, created, by a new charter, a new corporation, under a
new name, adding to the twelve original trustees nine others to
be appointed by the governor and council of New Hampshire,
and subjecting these twenty-one trustees to the power and con-
trol of twenty-five overseers to be appointed by the governor
and council of New Hampshire. To this new corporation were
transferred all the properly, rights, liberties and privileges of
the old corporation.

The original twelve trustees refused to consent to this
change, and applied in vain to the Superior Court of Appeals
of New Hampshire, which held that the act of the Legislature
was not repugnant to the Constitution of New Hampshire or
to that of the United States. These twelve trustees then ap-
pealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and em-
ployed as one of their advocates Mr. Daniel Webster, who
made his famous plea which is regarded as a classic not only of
eloquence but also of law. In February, 1819, the United States
Supreme Court decreed that the act of the New Hampshire
Legislature was void as violating the Constitution of the United
States in Article I., Section 10, Paragraph 1 : ** No State shall
pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts."

Here there was a contract, namely, an agreement in which
a party undertook to do or not to do a particular thing; a con-
tract between the king, representing the public or state, and the
twelve trustees of Dartmouth College; a donation of rights by
the king as grantor, an acceptation of these rights by the twelve
trustees, as grantees. And he who grants rights forever, obli-
gates himself never to take back the right granted. Here there
were what are called vested rights, not chances or possibilities
of rights but inmiediate fixed rights of present or future enjoy-
ment. Here there were property rights, rights to administer
property for the purpose of education. Here there were vested
property rights arising from a contract. If the State of New
Hampshire did not entirely take away these rights from one
person, the old corporation, and give them to another person,
the new corporation, and thus entirely destroy the obligation of
the contract; at least it passed a law impairing, abridging the
obligation of the contract by lessening the powers of the twelve
trustees, impairing the obligation of the pubUc or state to per-
form its undertaking not to do this particular thing, namely,
not to take back rights which it had granted.

Digitized by

Google

478 AMERICAN EQUAUTY AND JUSTICE [July,

As Mr. Webster demonstrated in his exhaustive argument,
the act of the New Hampshire Legislature was contrary to
American precedents. Thus North Carolina had created its
university and donated lands. The North Carolina Legislature
rescinded the donation. But the North Carolina courts decreed
that legislative act rescinding the donation to be Void. After
this decree the North Carolina Legislature itself gracefully
confessed and repaired its own sin of injustice by repealing
that act.

Likewise in the State of Virginia it had been attempted
to take away from the Episcopal Church certain glebe lands
alleged to have been donated by the people or the colonial gov-
ernment of Virginia. The matter came before the United
States Supreme Court in the case of Terrett v. Taylor. The
opinion of the court was rendered through the illustrious
scholar, Mr. Justice Joseph Story. The following are some of
his noble words:

** That the legislature can repeal statutes creating private
corporations and by such repeal vest their property exclusively
in the State, or dispose of it to such purposes as the State
pleases, without consent or the default of the incorporators,
we are not prepared to admit. And we think ourselves stand-
ing on the principles of natural justice, upon the fundamental
laws of every free government, upon the spirit and the letter of
the Constitution of the United States, and upon the decisions of
most respectable tribunals, in resisting such doctrines.*'

The decision of the Supreme Court on June 1, 1908, in the
case of the " The Municipality of Ponce v. The Roman Catholic
Apostolic Church in Porto Rico " gave a similar equal protec-
tion of the laws to Catholics.

After the change of sovereignty from Spain to the United
States, the City Council of Ponce recorded two churches and
the lots on which they are situated in the inventory of the prop-
erty of the municipality. The Bishop of San Juan applied to
the Supreme Court of Porto Rico, which decreed that those
edifices and lots were the property of the Catholic Church and
barred all adverse claims of the municipality. The munic-
ipality then appealed to the Supreme Court at Wash-
ington. One of the clauses of the appeal alleged ""that the
Roman Catholic Church of Porto Rico has not the legal
capacity to sue, for the reason that it is not a judicial person.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE 479

nor a legal entity, and is without legal incorporation. If it is
a corporation or association, we submit to the court that it is
necessary for the Roman Catholic Church to allege specifically
its incorporation, where incorporated, and by virtue of what
authority or law it was incorporated, and if a foreign corpora-
tion, show that it has filed its articles of incorporation or asso-
ciation in the proper office of the government in accordance
with the laws of Porto Rico.*'

To this contention the Supreme Court replied in fulL We
give this reply in part. By the general rule of public law recog-
nized by the United States, whenever political jurisdiction and
legislative power are transferred from one nation to another,
the laws of the country which is transferred, intended for the
protection of private rights, continue in force until abrogated
or changed by the new government. The Spanish civil code in
force in Porto Rico at the time of the transfer, contains the
following provisions: Article XXXV. — "The following are
judicial persons: the corporations and institutions of public
mterest recognized by law." Article XXXVIII.—" The Church
shall be governed in this particular by what has been agreed
on by both parties " (Spain and the Holy See in concordats
recognizing the right of the Church to acquire and possess prop-
erty) . Article VIII. of the Treaty of Paris between Spain and the
United States says : " It is hereby decreed that the relinquish-
ment or cession as the case may be, to which the preceding
paragraph refers, cannot in any respect impair the property
or rights which by law belong to the peaceful possession of
property of all kinds of provinces, municipalities, public or
private establishments, ecclesiastical or civic bodies, or any
other associations having legal capacity to acquire and pos-
sess property in the aforesaid territories renounced or
ceded."

No other ecclesiastical body but the Roman Catholic
Church existed in the island at the time of the cession. This
article of the treaty was manifestly intended to guard Catholic
Church property from spoliation or interference by the new
master or any of his agents.

Indeed, the suggestion that the Roman Catholic Church is
not a legal person entitled to maintain its property rights in
the courts, does not deserve serious consideration, when made
with reference to an institution which antedates by almost a

Digitized by

Google

480 AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE [July,

thousand years any other personality in Europe. The Code of
Justinian contains the law of Constantine of the year three hun-
dred and twenty-one to the effect that the Roman Catholic
Church was recognized as a legal person with the capacity to
acquire property. The United States have always recognized
the corporate existence of the Roman Catholic Church as well
as the position occupied by the Papacy. It is the settled law
of this court that a dedication to a public or charitable use
may exist even where there is no specific corporation to take
as grantee. As the court said through Mr. Justice Story in the
case of Terrett v. Taylor, it makes no diflference that a church
was a voluntary society clothed with corporate powers.

The fact that the municipality may have furnished some
of the funds for building or repairing the church edifices, does
not affect the title of the Roman Catholic Church to whom such
funds were irrevocably donated.

The above opinion in favor of the Holy Roman Catholic
Apostolic Church in Porto Rico was given through Mr. Chief
Justice Fuller, the other Justices unanimously concurring, and
follows almost verbatim the brief filed by Mr. Frederic R.
Coudert of counsel for the Bishop of San Juan.

The French Constitution of 1795 says: "Equality consists
in this that the laws which protect or which punish shall be the
same for all." But is there a court either in France or Spain or
Italy or Austria or the German Empire with authority to say to
President, King or Kaiser or to both President, King or Kaiser
and his respective National Legislature, I decree that your act
is unconstitutional and void, and it violates liberty, equality,
justice, and I command you to bow down to the fundamental
law of the land and to undo what you have wrongly done? Is
there in their system any practical guaranty like ours that the
rights of private citizens or of minorities shall be secure
against injustice by public functionaries or majorities?

Some have been grossly wronged by Latin republics and
therefore dislike all republics, and especially our great govern-
ment of the people, by the people, for the people, whose con-
tinued and growing success has been the main cause of the
almost world-wide demand for democracy. But we beg leave
to remind these haters of all republics that we owe no thanks
for our Constitution or Supreme Court to Jean Jacques Rous-
seau. We owe some thanks for our Constitution to principles

Digitized by

Google

1918.] AMERICAN EQUALITY AND JUSTICE 481

of liberty and justice preserved by England from the Catholic
Middle Ages in the face of the absolutism of the Reformation
and the French Revolution. We owe our Supreme Court as
a check on the tyranny of legislative assemblies to our own his-
tory and traditions and to our own practical wisdom in dis-
covering and preserving this check.

Some who are recent arrivals on our shores have asked
-whether it is democracy to vest such tremendous powers in nine
men holding office for life. It is American democracy which
thus secures the supremacy of the Constitution, the fundamen-
tal law of the land which is a crystallization of the most de-
liberate will of the whole people ordering fundamental things
for the good of the whole people.

Few realize how this efficient security for life, liberty,
property and the equal protection of the laws, has operated to
attract and hold immigration, capital and labor and to promote
our unprecedented wealth and prosperity. We could wish no
greater blessing than a Supreme Court like ours to our sister
American Republics or, indeed, to each of our fellow-members
in the family of nations. We American Catholics recognize
that this security for our Catholic liberties and our Catholic
property has been a great cause of our religious progress, and
we long for the day when Catholics in all other lands will have
a Supreme Court like ours ever ready to protect them, as it has
stood ever ready to protect us for over a hundred years.

VOL. cvn. — 31

Digitized by

Google

THE SAILOR'S TRADE-SONG.

BY HARRIETTE WILBUR.

For there will come the sailors,

Their voices I shall hear,
And at the casting of the anchor,

The yo-ho loud and clear;
And at the hauling of the anchor,

The yo-ho and the cheer.

! MONG the " fortunes of war " should be included
the contemplated revival of chantey-singing,
endorsed by the United States Shipping Board
in the recent appointment of Stanton H. King,
of Boston, as official chantey-man» to teach these
old-time working-songs of the sea to the merchant sailors who
are to man the country's new cargo ships. Thus one phase of
the romance of the sea, which had been thought lost forever,
will be regained.

For hundreds of years the " jolly tars " sang their chanties
to the accompaniment of the trilling shrouds, the booming
double bass of the hollow topsails, and the multitudinous
chorus of ocean voices, as they pulled together at the tasks now
performed by engines: mastheading the topsail yards when
making sail, starting and weighing the anchor, bringing down
the maintack, loading and unloading the cargo, keeping the
pumps going and, in fact, anything where united strength
was required. The chantey regulated the heavy work, so that
each man was doing his utmost at the same instant; many an
old salt will say that " a good chantey is worth an extra hand."
At the capstan, on the topsail halyards, in port and at sea, in
calm or in storm, the ropes ran smoother, the work was done
more quickly, when some twenty strong voices were singing
a spirited chantey particularly suited to the task in hand.

As Mr. Dana, in Two Years Before the Mast says: "The
sailors' songs for capstans and falls are of a peculiar kind, hav-
ing a chorus at the end of each line. The burden is usually
sung by one alone, and at the chorus all hands join in, and the
louder the noise the better. A song is as necessary to sailors
as the drum and fife to a soldier. They cannot pull in time, or

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE SAILOR'S TRADE-SONG 483

pull with a will, without it. Many a time, when a thing goes
heavy with one fellow yo-ho-ing, a lively song, like Heave to
the Girls, Nancy Oh!, Jack Crosstree has put life and strength
into every arm. We often found a great diflference in the ef-
fect of the different songs in driving in the hides. Two or three
songs would be tried, one after the other, with no effect; not
an inch could be got upon the tackles. When a new song struck
up, it seemed to hit the humor of the moment, and drove the
tackles to blocks at once. Heave Round Hearty, Captain Gone
Ashore, and the like, might do for conmion pulls; but on an
emergency, when we wanted a heavy, raise-the-dead pull,
which should start the beams of the ship, there was nothing
like Time for Us to Go, Round the Corner, or Hurrah, Hurrah,
My Hearty Bullies, Cheerily, Men, when we came to masthead
the topsail-yard with all hands at the halyards, might have
been heard miles away."

But with the advent of the steamship, the '* able seaman of
the clipper-ship fleet ** utterly vanished, and the present race
of marine brakemen who form the crews of steam vessels do
not sing. The only music which accompanies their labors is
the rattle of steam-winches and the hiss of exhausts. This
change was but natural, since there is no need for groups of
men to heave and haul on board steamers, as on sailers, and
now about the only chantey-singing to be heard in the land, is
the croon hununed by gangs of negroes as they trot up and
down the plank, loading and unloading the cargoes of Missis-
sippi River boats.

However, since the Shipping Board intends to build
schooners, which means increased demand for men to '' reef,
haul and steer,*' as on the sailing vessels where chantey-singing
flourished, it is found that they should be taught to sing, to
insure team work when pulling on ropes. Even aboard steam-
ers, this will facilitate much of the work. One writer has de-
clared: " To revive chanties on the deck of an iron steamship
would be as impossible as to bring back the Roman trireme,"
but perhaps Mr. King will not find that singing and steam are
irreconcilable, since community singing is being revived gen-
erally, and our soldiers and sailors are responding to every
means put forward for making their work happier and more
effective. So chanties may revive as easily as knitting and
thrift and some other war-time necessities.

Digitized by

Google

484 THE SAILORS TRADE-SONG [July,

Fortunately, before chantey-singing became wholly a lost
art, interested historians recorded the many favorite choruses
of the different nations, and perhaps a few old chantey-men,
as the choristers on the old sailers were called, will be found
frequenting the few remaining " Sailor's Rests *' in out-of-the-
way havens along the coast.

The old-time sailor was a great singer, and he had many
kinds of songs. Some were for his moments of leisure around
the galley-fire or at the foVsle-head — ^ballads with plenty of
stirring incidents, not the *l'm afloat'' style of parlor collections,
but songs of his own composition, usually with ** Nancy " for
the theme, although he did tolerate Dibdin's songs. But the
chantey — a word derived from the French verb chanter, to
sing, and originally applied to the boat-songs of the old Cana-
dian voyageurs — ^was a peculiar institution. It was far more
than a recreation; it was an important part of his daily round
of work, and was always sung while at work. Like a Mother
Goose jingle, it was never composed, and its origin was always
obscure. It just grew, with time and change, and apparently
out of little or even nothing. As his ship was wrought from
the live-oaks of Florida, the pines of Norway, the iron of Eng-
land, the hemp of Russia, the flax of Flanders, the cotton of
Georgia, so his songs were the contributions of all sea-faring
peoples. Indeed, in all nations, for that matter, ^^ch in-
dividual trade had its own songs, until civilization's most con-
densed expression, the steam-engine, drowned the song of the
hand laborer in the hum of modern machinery.

To us landsmen, most chanties seem lacking in sense. But
meaningless or not, something commended them to the tar.
They were redolent of the fresh sea-breeze, they contained good
mouth-filling words, with the vowels in the right places and the
accent at proper distances for chest and hand to keep true time.
They were sung with life and spirit, and with as much rhythmi-
cal accuracy as though some throbbing drum was setting the
time for them. Undoubtedly, many have a negro origin, with
hints of the rhythm, melodies and even the words sung by the
slaves of long ago as they worked stowing the holds of ships, in
European or South Atlantic ports.

Jack's hundreds of chanties were roughly classed as " pull-
ing songs," and " windlass songs," and they differed so decid-
edly that it was bad form to use one for the other. The former

Digitized by

Google

1918.]

THE SAILOR'S TRADE-SONG

485

were used merely to aid the men when pulling on a rope, to
pull at some precise instant; the latter were intended to be-
guile the men while getting up the anchor or working the
pumps, into temporary f orgetf ulness of their prosaic labor, and
so were much more pretentious and elaborate.

All chanties consist of one or more lines, sung by the
^ chantey-man " alone, and one or two lines sung by the men
in chorus. Windlass songs always have two choruses, while
pulling songs should have but one. The choruses are invariable,
they are the fixed and determining quantities of each song,
while the lines sung by the chantey-man in solo are left, in a
measure, to his discretion, and he is at liberty to improvise
words or even vary the melody of his part. The accomplished
chanteur was master at certain tricks of vocalization which
contributed inmiensely to the effect. In windlass songs, the
chantey-man displayed his fullest powers and daintiest graces.
He was always careful to rest his voice while the chorus sang,
and it was considered the proper thing for him to begin his
lines so closely after each chorus as to make his first note a
prolongation of the preceding chorus.

The Bowline is one of the purest of pulling songs:

SOLO.

|inr- r f f^iJ. J';. Jn|. I I

Well haul Uie bow - Une so ear - ly in Uie mom-ing.

CHORUS.

Well haul the bow - line, the bow • line haul.

Suppose the m'aintopsail has just been reefed and the men
are vainly trying to hoist the heavy yard, while the canvas
flaps like a giant's fist thumping on a drum and the blocks rat-
tle in sharp, castanet-like snappings. Presently someone says :
"Oh, give us The Bowline" whereupon the chantey-man's
sharp, clear voice is heard, the men join in the chorus, and as
they sing the last syllable each time, they haul on the halyards
and the stubborn yard yields. Verse follows verse, until the
yard is set, and the song ends with the conmiand: "Belay
there, lads, belay," or " That will do, boys," spoken by the man
in charge of the work.

Digitized by

Google

486 THE SAILOR'S TRADE-SONG

Another version is Haulin' the Bowlin':

SOLO.

[July,

'.i S'-n

/ J' J' I ri I I I

Haul on the bow - tin', the fore and main-top bow - tin'*
CHORUS.

1 J. II J. i ll I i II

Haul

on the bow - tin\ the bow - tin* HAUL.

Haul on the bow-lin', the packet she's a-rollin',
Haul on the bowlin', the bowlin', HAUL.
Haul on the bowlin', the captain he's a growlin'.
Haul on the bowlin', the bowlin', HAUL.

Reuben Ranzo, mournful and ahnost haunting in its
monotony, was another favorite hauling song, the last word of
the chorus, at each repetition, being the signal for a long pull,
a strong pull, and a pull all together :

SOLO.

CHORUS.

U- u J II J J J J I J J II

Pi - ty Reu-bcn Ran - so. Ran - so, boy^ a Ran - so.
SOLO. CHORUS.

J J I J J

— t—

Oh, pi - ty Reu - ben Ran - so. Ran - so, boys, a Ran - so.

Reuben was no sailor.

By trade he was a tailor.

He went to school on Monday,

Learnt to read on Tuesday,

He learnt to write on Wednesday,

On Friday he beat the master,

On Saturday we lost Reuben,

And where do you think we found him?

Why, down in yonder valley.

Conversing with a sailor.

He shipped on board of a whaler;

He shipped as able seamen do;

The captain was a bad man.

Digitized by

Google

1918.]

THE SAILORS TRADE-SONG

487

He took him to the gangway
And gave him flve-and-forty.
The mate he was a good man,
He taught him navigation.
Now he's captain of a whaler,
And married the captain's daughter.
And now they both are happy.
This ends my little ditty.

Each line of the solo was repeated, with the chorus alternating;
and though some of the lines are longer than others, the
chantey-man always managed to get them all in. Other haul-
ing songs are Lowlands, Across the Western Ocean, Old
Stormy, Blow the Man Down, Sally Racket much used by the
sailors when loading their ships at Quebec, Tommy's Gone to
Hilo, A Yankee Ship, aud scores of others.

The capstan chanties are generally in long metre, and had
a most pathetic character as the men ran round the capstan,
bringing the anchor up from the mud, to free a ship outward
bound for a two or three years' trip — ^perhaps never to return.
Under such circumstances, what could be more sad, although
sung with a hearty, good will, than

SOliO.

>'ii^.j. i U^ i f rrJr l rrHj j'Crr i rr^ a

Yo, heave ho,.

round the capstan go». . Round men, with a will,. .

'nr f flnJ'-7'^

fr— ^

ITT

tramp and tramp it > still The anch - or must be heaved, the

CHORUS.

-^=^-

-^-*

-=»->h

3^^:^

anch - or must be heaved. Yo, ho f Yo, ho ! Yo, ho ! Yo, ho I

Any quick, lively tune will serve for the music of a pump-
ing song, or windless song. Pay Me the Money Down was a
favorite, often sung to the air of Paddle Your Own Canoe:

Solo. Your money, young man, is no object to me.
Chorus. Pay me the money down.
Solo. Your money, young man, is no object to me.
Chorus. Pay me the money down.

Digitized by

Google

488 THE SAILOR'S TRADE-SONG [July,

Solo and Chorus. Money down, money down, pay me the

money down.
Money down, money down, pay me the

money down.
Solo. Half a crown is no great demand, etc.

Amongst the favorite chanties of North-country sailors
is that most charming and pathetic of songs, Home, Dearie,
Home. And Good-bye, My Lover, Good-bye, savors of the
chantey, when one thinks about it. It would take too much
space to include even a few of the old-time favorites, and after
all, to be appreciated, they must be heard sung in chorus, as
an accompaniment to some task the men have to perform.
For every one oT the old-time sailor's duties, from Monday
morning to Saturday night, was donerto some sort of music,
even to holystoning the decks.

These old-time chanties were truly characteristic of the
men they belonged to — though certainly Jack was somewhat
less black than he was painted. For, if some of the songs he
sang were not morally high, they were no worse in this respect
than many of our popular modern songs.

In an attempt to revive chantey-singing, many of the
old favorites will doubtless be found too absurd and nieaning-
less for our new class of sailors; but depend upon it, if they
can once be started singing, they will evolve chanties of their
own which will fill the same need as the out-grown originals.
And so long as their songs adapt themselves to the purpose for
which they are intended, and help to lighten the labor and
regulate the work, they will be quite worth while, even though
they fail to measure up to our ideal sailor song, always writ-
ten and sung by landsmen alone. "May we lift a deep-sea
chantey such as seamen use at sea? " proposes Kipling, proving
that he sees a distinction between bona-fide chanties and par-
lor-made sailor-songs. And, according to Whitman :

Today a rude brief recitative.

Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal,
Qf unnamed heroes in the ships — of waves spreading and spread-
ing far as the eye can reach,
Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing.
And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations.
Fitful, like a surge.

Digitized by

Google

THE BOHEMIAN SITUATION.
BY M. R. RYAN.

|NTIL recently, Bohemia has stood in the extreme
backgrouxid of the pubhc mind. To statesmen,
of com*se, her importance has been long visible.
But the world in general has known little of her
tragic story; indeed, it has scarcely realized that,
though joined with the Central Powers, she has fervently
hoped these four weary years that victory would attend the
Allies.

It is a sorry spectacle that Bohemia has presented during
the War. Regiments of her soldiers have been placed before
the fire of the Allies' cannon. And for what purpose? To
aid in the obliteration of an independence for which they have
been tirelessly striving; for that, in effect, is what the defeat
of the Allies would mean to Bohemia. And within the borders
of the country the people have been suffering not only the
usual miseries of war, but the oppression that is the lot of
those who revolt against an existing form of government.
The situation there is really pitiful — to say the least.

The present antagonism of Bohemia towards Austria is of
no recent origin. Tracing back through her history one dis-
covers period after period when her hatred for the German
race brought her into conflict with it. The first of these dif-
ficulties occurred in the sevelith centiu*y when the Bohemians
(or Czechs) went forth to battle against the Frank, Dagobert,
who was bent on imposing vassalage upon them. From the
onslaught of his forces they emerged victorious.

The next few centuries found the Czechs adopting the
Christian faith, progressing in civilization, developing a code
of supreme laws and a national diet, and extending their ter-
ritory. Then, about 1086, an ambitious ruler of Bohemia who
had lent military assistance to the German Emperor and there-
by gained public recognition as King of Bohemia from him,
signified a great friendliness towards Germany by granting to
those who should immigrate from that country to Bohemia
special privileges.

Digitized by

Google

490 THE BOHEMIAN SITUATION [July,

Again, in 1157, another Bohemian king displayed amiable
sentiments towards the Germans when he consented to furnish
an army to assist the Empire in a proposed siege of Milan. But
this event calls attention to the fact that even at that early day
the Bohemian people held to the principle that their king did
not have the right to demand their service in a foreign war;
for a General Council of Bohemian nobles expressed itself
violently on the ruler's unauthorized action and to such pur-
pose that he conceded that those who did not desire to fight
might remain at home. The majority of the Bohemians re-
sponded to his appeal for soldiers in this instance, however;
and in the campaign that followed they won glory for their
arms.

For nearly one hundred years thereafter, the relations be-
tween Bohemia and Grermany remained on a friendly basis:
But when Frederick, Duke of Austria, died without an heir, his
dukedom was coveted both by the Grerman Emperor and by the
ruler of Bohemia, who desired it for his son. So here ended
the alliance between the two countries. Eventually the throne
of Austria was seized by the Bohemian heir-apparent, who
somewhat later included it in the kingdom of Bohemia when
he mounted the throne of that nation.

This dukedom of Austria, however, was surrendered by
Ottakar of Bohemia, in 1277, to Rudolph of Hapsburg, who
demanded it for his empire. At that same time, Ottakar did
homage to the powerful Rudolph as emperor for Bohemia. He
was loath, nevertheless, to resign all of Austria, since he held
that certain lands there were rightfully his. Because of his
stand in the matter then, Rudolph's armies advanced upon
Ottakar's troops and defeated them. Whereupon Bohemia's
liberty became practically non-existent. The next king of the
country reigned under imperial control. His successor was
of no moment; and with this man's death the Premyslide
dynasty, which had ruled Bohemia since the days of Libussa,
its first queen, became extinct.

In 1308, Henry of Luxemburg was elected German Em-
peror. His son John, who was married to the sister of the last
Premyslide king, was crowned king of Bohemia with the assent
of the Estates of Prague. Though in the final sununing-up he
proved unpopular, at the beginning of his reign he won favor
from the Bohemians by recognizing their principle as to for-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BOHEMIAN SITUATION 491

eign wars, and by ordering that only natives of Bohemia
should be appointed officials there, and that only natives
should be permitted to buy lands, fortresses or any other
rights.

The next ruler of Bohemia was Charles, Emperor of Ger-
many. This sovereign, loved by his people, conceived a plan
to make Prague the intellectual centre of Europe. He it was
who founded the famous University of Prague. Also he estab-
lished what would now approximate an academy of arts. The
St. Vitus' Cathedral was rebuilt by him. He was a remarkable
king, just in his dealings with all his subjects; and under him
Bohemia achieved prosperity and distinction.

Early in 1400, John Huss, who was for a while Rector of
Prague University, set out upon a campaign of reform in Bo-
hemia. The excessive wealth and the consequent moral de-
cay of many of the clergy there, the moral degeneration of sec-
tions of the laity due to too luxurious conditions, and a reac-
tion of the nation against the domination of the Germans and
the weakness of the secular government, furnished motives for
Huss' discourses. A nationalist and a priest, his preaching
attracted wide attention. However, he did not limit his opera-
tions to reformation of existing conditions. Going further, he
launched attacks at some of the doctrines of the Church. For
these he was tried by the Council of Constance, which judged
him guilty of heresy. Whereupon he was burned at the stake
by the secular authorities, this being the civil punishment in
such cases at that period.

Following his death, the Hussite wars occurred. Bohe-
mians subscribing to Huss' tenets were ranged against Bohe-
mians and Germans who remained loyal to the Church. Bohe-
mia was the scene of a terrible struggle. The national feeling
against the Empire flamed high at the same time, and the
Bohemian forces inflicted defeat after defeat on the Germans.
After many years, however, there came a lull in the contest.
Bohemia had triumphed over her German enemy in a very de-
cisive fashion, and she was now willing to consider peace,
especially since many of her possessions, in spite of her vic-
tories, had fallen away from her control.

Internal difficulties between religious parties in the nation
arose, however. But from these the moderate Utraquist sect
emerged successful and cleared the way for negotiations with

Digitized by

Google

492 THE BOHEMIAN SITUATION [July,

the German Emperor. In the meanwhile, the Council of Basle
had been concerning itself with the Bohemian religious ques-
tion. In time it had reached a settlement with the Utraquists.
The chief demand of this body — that the communion cup be
granted the laity (a privilege which had been general in the
Middle Ages and only then dispensed with for thoroughly ade-
quate reasons) — ^was accorded it, though at the same time the
teaching of the Church as to the Beal Presence under the ap-
pearance of either bread or wine was insisted upon.

In 1436, Bohemia definitely recognized Sigismund, the
Emperor of Grermany, as king. The Bohemian people now re-
turned to the Church, save for two factions — the Bohemian and
Moravian Brethren. But peace was not yet secured. Religious
quarrels continued to be rife between the Catholics and Prot-
estants. In 1526, however, the fear of the Turks united in some
measure all the parties of the country. It was during a battle
against these Turkish invaders, while he was assisting Hun-
gary, that King Ludvik of Bohemia was killed. Because he left
no male heir, the elective diet of Prague was then obliged, in
the interest of self -protection, to offer the throne of Bohemia
to the husband of Ludvik's daughter, Ferdinand of Hapsburg,
Archduke of Austria. But in offering it, this stipulation was
made: that all Bohemian rights were to be guaranteed. That
union with Austria was also joined by Hungary; and so is to
be found the beginning of what is now the Austrian
Empire.

In the seventeenth century the religious factions in Bohe-
mia became once again very belligerent. It was in this country
that the Thirty Years* War, which brought such vital disasters to
the whole of Germany, started in 1618. During the period of
conflict the population of Bohemia fell from three millions to
eight hundred thousand people. The conclusion of the war
saw the Hapsburg dynasty established in complete triumph
over the Bohemians. The nobility of Bohemia who had op-
posed the dynasty were punished; the Estates were practically
suppressed; the Constitution was altered. Religious dissension
had ceased, however, all those not holding with the Faith of
their fathers having immigrated when the new rigime was in
its initial stage.

With Bohemia in its depleted condition, it is fortunate
that Germany was unable at that time to colonize there. But

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BOHEMIAN SITUATION 493

Germany was herself drained of men and could not afford to
send immigrants to the conquered territory. Bohemian civ-
ilization, therefore, was not blotted out. But until the end of
the eighteenth century Bohemia remained practically passive;
withal she was ever silently resentful over the fact that she
was governed in an unjust manner and by sovereigns who
surrounded themselves with German councillors.

In the early part of the nineteenth century and the last
years of the preceding one, the Bohemian nation made an en-
deavor to recover some of its ancient glory and rights. An ef-
fort was made to reestablish the Bohemian tongue which had
been excluded from the schools and public offices in 1774.
Perhaps the most remarkable leader of this movement was a
Jesuit, Father Josef Dobrovsky; and among those who labored
for the same cause were Jungmann, Kollar and Palacky, dis-
tinguished Bohemians all. But in 1848 much ground was lost
when at a Slavic Congress headed by Palacky, the extreme
nationalists of Bohemia grew turbulent. Military government
followed upon this disturbance. But in that same year serf-
-dom was abolished and other rights conceded to the inhabi-
tants. .

In 1860 and in 1871 new attempts were made to gain con-
stitutional privileges. And, indeed, in 1871, success seemed
at hand. But the negotiations with Austria failed at the final
Ynoment, with the result that Bohemia continued as a mere
province of Austria, though, of course, it was nominally a king-
dom.

The present period, then, finds Bohemia still chafing un-
der Austrian domination. She is ever fretting at the check on
her national development. It is her contention that Austria is
aiming at a single great Austrian State, and that she is thus
violating her agreement to maintain the external and internal
independence of Bohemia. And as a sample of Austria's policy,
is advanced the fact that no Bohemian leader was consulted
when the Empire entered the World War. Here is one Bohe-
mian right, centuries old (the right to keep out of foreign wars)
that obviously was ignored!

Moreover, Bohemia detests the manner in which Austria
has interfered with her Church matters. Since the time of
Maria Theresa, Austria has made herself truly objectionable
in this regard. For instance, in the appointment of ecclesiasti-

Digitized by

Google

494 THE BOHEMIAN SITUATION [July,

cal officials who are to cofiperate with the State in collecting
Church dues and taxes, she has often placed the interests of
the State before that of the Church. Again, she has exercised
a supervision over the Church press; this supervision is slight,
it is true; but it is not desirable.

Before the opening of the War there were two Bohemian
political parties. The Old Czechs formed a Conservative Party;
the Young Czechs were the Radicals. Both these organizations
were united against the Germans even then on national issues;
and since the War has been in progress they have stood solidly
for a sovereign Bohemian State.

Following the War declaration, Bohemian leaders, afire
with national patriotism, were imprisoned by Austria; obedi-
ence to Austrian law was enforced under penalty of death;
mutinous military groups were decimated; the language of the
country was curtailed; some Bohemian newspapers were con-
fiscated; military rule superseded all other. But the Bohe-
mians did not give up their fight for independence.

As a first step towards attaining liberty, they established
in Paris a National Council. Professor T. G. Masaryk of the.
University of Prague is its head. This Council unites the Bo-
hemian people of all the allied countries. Through their gen-
erosity the work of attaining freedom for Bohemia is going
forward. Together with the representatives to the Paris Na-
tional Council, they state: ** We ask for an independent Bohe-
mian-Slovak State .... The Bohemian people are now con-
vinced that they must strike for themselves. Austria .... is
now a dependency of Germany. ... It is a standing threat to the
peace of Europe, a mere tool of Germany seeking conquest in
the East, a State having no destiny of its own, unable to con-
struct an organic state composed of a number of equal, free,
progressive races.**

The support of this Council has been actively helpful in
Bohemia itself. Bohemian patriots are continuing their propa-
ganda with unremitting zeal. Indeed, they are hurling their
defiance in the face of their Austrian enemies. Father Zahrad-
nik, a deputy to the Austrian parliament, said during its second
war session: *' Since the Austrian political system is aimed
against the Czech people, it is but natiu*al that the Czechs re-
fuse to have their fate determined in this parliament. . . . Just
as the Germans solemnly declared that they would not give in

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BOHEMIAN SITUATION 495

to the majority in Bohemia, so the Czechs will not bow down
before the majority in the Reichsrat/*

The rounding out of the fourth year of the War finds
Bohemia blazing with enthusiasm for the right of self-deter-
mination. Riots are not at all uncommon in Prague, that lovely
" Rose of Europe.*' The people are daring more and more to
assert themselves. And a Czechslovak Brigade (what a thrill
its existence must give to every Bohemian!) has been created,
from Czech prisoners of the Allied armies and other Bohe-
mians, to fight under its own flag with the Allied forces.

Bismarck once said : " The master of Bohemia is the mas-
ter of Europe.'* Naturally! The road from Berlin to Bagdad
leads through Prague.

Germany owns Austria lock, stock and barrel. Yet without
Bohemia the vicious Pan-German dream of world-wide con-
quest fades swiftly. Is it strange then that the HohenzoUerns,
through their diplomatic channels, have tried to crush out the
racial characteristics of the Bohemians and sought to Ger-
manize that fair country of the Czechs?

But Bohemia is not Germanized. She remains forever
Czech. And in point of law, having never surrendered her
national rights, she is only striving today for what is justly
hers, for an independence which Austria criminally withholds
from her.

Digitized by

Google

TANTRAMAR.

BY JULIAN JOHNSTONE.

They're calling, where falling, the purple shades of Even, now,
Dispread, and dews of silence descend from yonder star:

They're crying, low flying, the rooks across the meadows, now.
And loud the surf is beating on the rocks of Tantramar.

And lowing, where blowing the blue-bell and the columbine
Abound, the cows are waiting beside the meadow-bar.

While whistling mid glistening rosemary sweet, and jessamine
The hermit-thrush is piping loud the praise of Tantramar.

A-weary, but cheery, the ploughman from the meadow, now,

With thought of happy children to home-ward turns the car;

And leaping and sweeping before the dappled horses, now.
The dogs announce the coming of the men of Tantramar.

A-ringing, and swinging, the convent bells are singing, now,
The glory of the Lord, God, in Lindisfarne, afar:

And airy, the fairy and fragrant winds are winging, now,
Across the fields of asphodel in charming Tantramar.

How mellow, the yellow and magic moon of summer, now.
That rising soars high above the purple hills afar:

While slowly and lowly the Night like to a prelate, now,
Is sprinkling holy- water on the homes of Tantramar!

A-gleaming, and dreaming, the houses all are quiet, now.

Save where a hound is barking upon a farm, afar;
How stilly, this hilly land in a world of riot, now,

How peaceful in the moonlight slumbers lovely Tantramar I

Digitized by

Google

ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA.

BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
VII.

HE Lord's answer to the third question of the dis-
ciples is the next engaging object of our search.
It takes up but three verses of the Matthean text,
one of them seemingly subversive of all that we
have thus far found in the thought of the First
Gospel. "But immediately* after the tribulation of those
days," so the answer runs, ** the ^un shall be darkened, and the
moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from
heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be moved; and then
shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then
shall all the tribes of the land mourn, and they shall see the
Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and
great glory. And He shall send forth His angels with the great
sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect
from the four winds, from one extremity of the heavens to
the other.** «

To what days and to what tribulation is the author of the
First Gospel here referring? Has he in mind the particular
tribulation of Jerusalem, mentioned in verse 21, and does he
mean to say that the Son of Man will be seen coming with
power and great glory, immediately after the national dis-
aster of Israel? The evidence for this conclusion has seemed
incapable of overthrow to many. There is, first of all, the
author's apparent linking of the Last Judgment with " the end
of the age *' • — a Palestinian expression everywhere associated
with the fall of the Jewish Commonwealth. There is also the
verse — ^what plainer? — in the Lord's first commissioning of the
Twelve, which records the solemn assurance that they " shall
not finish the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man come." * There
is, furthermore, the near future verb * which St. Matthew em-
ploys when writing of the Return in glory, as if he meant the

^E66^ Ik. 'Matt zzlY. 29>31. 'Matt xlU. 39, 40, 49.

«llktt z. 23. iMatt xtI. 27. yiAXctv.

yoL. cvn. — 32

Digitized by

Google

498 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [July,

reader to gather that the Lord's ** coming in His Kingdom " and
His " coming in the glory of His Father " were near and con-
nected events.

Over and above these three textual pieces of evidence are
two others of a literary nature. The first is the Jewish educa-
tion of the Twelve to the idea of impending world-disaster and
renewal. The second is an observation made by Professor
Gould, and of no little weight, if true. The Parousia which St.
Matthew mentions ''has no antecedents, and yet it is intro-
duced as something well understood by the disciples, of which
they inquired only the time.*' • Sound reasons apparently, all
these five, on which to base a judgment. They seem to furnish
conclusive proof that the " tribulation " to which St. Matthew
refers, and immediately after which he expects the Lord's Re-
turn in glory, is none other than the overthrow of the Temple
and the extinction of Jewish power.

A careful re-examining of these five pieces of evidence
deprives them of their apparent worth. The supposed linking
of the Final Judgment with " the end of the age " is corrective
teaching to the contrary, and so reported.^ The promised
" coming of the Son of Man," before the disciples have finished
the cities of Israel, means the ** coming of the Kingdom with
power," not the Return of the Lord in person, as investigation
clearly shows.® The auxiliary verb, by the use of which St.
Matthew is supposed to have betrayed his false personal belief,
has not the meaning of temporal futurity, but the quite differ-
ent sense of prophetic necessity, all through his pages.* The
Lord's ^ coming in His Kingdom " and His '' coming in the glory
of His Father " — two events which the auxiliary verb just men-
tioned was supposed to connect — are not connected at all, but
carefully disjoined, and the meaning of their disjoining made
plain. ^^ The presumed inability of the disciples to ask a ques-
tion beyond the thought of their day — Professor Gould's dif-
ficulty — is completely disproved by a study of their Christian
education and the new world-view which Jesus taught them,
when he divided the fulfillment of prophecy and transferred

•St. Mark. Gould, p. 243.

* For proof, tee St. Matthew and the ParouMta, Thb Catholic Woblo, March, 1918.

•The Cathouc Womld, April, 1918, pp. 76, 87.

•St. Matthew and the Parouiia, The Catholic World, February, 1918.

**St. Matthew and the Parottsia, Thb Cathouc Wobld, April, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 499

to the end of the New Kingdom what Palestine had expected to
see realized at the end of the Old.^^

The positive disconnection of the Parousia and the Re-
turn; of the "coming in power'* and the "coming in glory,"
is plainly announced in the sixteenth chapter, and repeatedly
developed in the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-
third." The earlier portions of the twenty-fourth chapter re-
veal the Lord's solicitude for the survival of this new teaching,
in the midst of a nation wholly persuaded to the contrary. "
He is fearful, lest the little Christian flock be stampeded by
public opinion, when Jerusalem lies in the grasp of the besieg-
ing hosts, and the whole country is filled with the false expec-
tation of Deliverance.

With this positive disconnecting of events before us, and
the Lord's anxiety for the future of His word, in such frail ves-
sels as were entrusted with its keeping — ^is it possible to
imagine a writer reasserting, at the close, the very point which
he has all along reported the Lord as refuting? Could one who
took such unusual pains to describe the corrective teaching of
the Master, abandon it at the last moment, forget his new edu-
cation in the prepossessions of the old, and turn about, self-
contradictingly, to assure us that the Lord would actually come
in glory, immediately after the Jewish days of sorrow? The
supposition offends against the laws of likelihood. Nor has
it any antecedent evidence in the First Gospel to commend its
truth.

Fortunately, there is a way of determining what " days of
tribulation " St. Matthew had in mind, when he wrote the bat-
tered verse in question. In the tenth chapter, we have a de-
scription of what is to befall the Twelve, " before the coming
of the Son of Man " — a phrase of prophecy which the Saviour
divided, to signify the distinction which He drew between His
" coming in power " for the destruction of Jerusalem and His
" coming in person " at the end of time. The description stops
at the " days of tribulation " preceding the overthrow of the
Jewish State. This restriction is made clear by the Lord's use
of the divided phrase of prophecy just mentioned, which
plainly limits what is said to the national Jewish history yet

^St Matthew and the Parou$ia, Tbb Cathoug World, May, 1918.

u Matt xri, 27, 28. St. Matthew and the Parousta, Thb Cathoug Woru>, May, 1918.

»Matt zzlY. 4,23,26.

Digitized by

Google

500 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [July,

to be. " And you shall be hated by all for My name's sake," He
tells them; " but he that endureth unto the end (of life, of trib-
ulations), he shall be saved. And when they shall persecute
you in one city, flee into another. Amen I say to you, you shall
not finish the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man come." "

The verse, " you shall be hated by all for My name's sake "
occurs also in the twenty-fourth chapter, ^^ but with this strik-
ing difference: Instead of being immediately followed, as in
the tenth, by the verse about " endurance unto death," three
additional statements are inserted," before this latter verse
is again quoted. Evidently, therefore, the Gospel of the King-
dom that '"he who endureth to the end, the same shall be
saved," contemplates a far wider struggle with sin and sorrow
than that which shall accompany its announcement in the
cities of Palestine. The insertion of these three verses is mani-
festly intended as a forecast of the Kingdom in post-Jewish
times. We are carried forward from the beginning of sor-
rows " which the disciples are told they shall witness, into a
general period of disbelief and apostasy within the bosom of
the Kingdom itself, and into an historical process of making
Christ known in the whole inhabited earth, before the end of
the world comes. " It is only when the growth of iniquity shall
have stifled the love of God and man in the heart of humanity;
it is only when the preaching of the Gospel has been rejected
by the great majority of mankind, that the final cataclysm will
descend upon a faithless world. It is immediately after the
universal " tribulation of those days," that the world will see
the end of sorrows, and behold the Son of Man "' coming in
power and great glory," to separate the wicked from among the
good.

The reference, in other words, is not to the " beginning of
sorrows" at the time of Israel's destruction; the reference is
to the whole history of the Kingdom, and the world-wide tribu-
lation through which it is to pass before the coming of the end.
The thought is the same as that announced in the thirteenth
chapter, where the Lord likened the Kingdom of Heaven to ** a
man who went forth to sow his seed," not in Israel only, but in
the field of the vast cosmos itself. The contrast between the
two " sowings " and the two " comings " is very striking. The

M Matt z. 22, 23. »MatL xzlv. 9. "Matt xxIt. 10, 12.

»UBLtL xxlv. 8. »Matt xxiv. 10, 14.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 501

disciples shall not have finished evangelizing the cities of Israel,
"before the Son of Man comes;*' and the Gospel shall be
preached in the whole inhabited earth, "before the Son of
Man comes in power and great glory." ^* St. Matthew evidently
knew what he was about, when he inserted the former verse
in the tenth chapter, and the latter in the twenty-fourth.

A remarkable fact attests the truth of the view which we
are here proposing. Whenever, throughout his Gospel, St.
Matthew has the beginnings of the Kingdom in mind, the verbs
are all, either actually or equivalently, in the second person : ^
" You shall not have finished the cities of Israel, till the Son
of Man come.'* "There are some of them that stand here,
who shall not taste death, till they see the Son of Man coming
in His Kingdom." ^^ " You shall not see Me henceforth, until
you say. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." '^
"From now on, you shall see the Son of Man seated on the
right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven." ^

But when the subject is the end of the Kingdom, or the
Lord's glorious Return, the verbs all change from the second
person to the third. "The Son of Man shall send forth His
angels and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all scandals
and them that work iniquity." ** " The Son of Man shall come in
the glory of His Father with His angels, and then shall He ren-
der to every one according to his works." *' " In the regenera-
tion (?), when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His
glory, you also (the second person is here conditioned by the
third) shall sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."^*
" Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and
then shall all the tribes of the earth (?) mourn; and they shall
see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power
and great glory." '^ " But when the Son of Man shall come in
His glory, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the
throne of His glory, and all the nations shall be gathered be-
fore Him." ^*

Not the slightest indication anywhere that those who shall
live to see the New Kingdom publicly inaugurated by the destruc-
tion of the Old are destined also to behold its consummation. A
writer who looked to the sudden ending of Christian history in

ttMatt z. 23; xzIt. 30.

** The corporate use of " you " also occurs, but it Is not the point here.
«MatL xvl. 28. «Matt xxlU. 39. »MatL zztI. 64. *«|fatt xlU. 41.

»Matt XTl. 27. » Matt six. 28. •* Hktt xxIt. 30. »Matt xxr. 31, 32.

Digitized by

Google

502 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [July,

the throes of its opening chapter would not have crossed so con-
sistently from the second person to the third. He knew that
" some of those present were to see the Kingdom come with
power; " and if he thought that the consunmiation was not to
be delayed, would he have been so grammatically scrupulous
in his text? Would St. John, who actually lived to see the
great disaster, ever have denied that he was promised im-
munity from death, if he had understood the Lord's words
about •* remaining till He came,*' as a reference to the Second
Advent and the consummation of the Kingdom of Heaven?
Hardly. Grammar no less than criticism offers its quota of
evidence that the author of the First Gospel did not shorten the
perspective of Christian history, to the point of identifying the
fall of Jerusalem with the end of the world. This was not the
** tribulation,'* immediately after which he expected the Lord*s
Return.

If the reader will let his eye slowly travel over the verbs
in verses 10-14 and 29-30, he will find them all in the same per-
son — the third; he will notice also that they are connected in
thought, sequence, and grammatical construction — a fact
almost as plain in an English version as in the Greek. And
what does this signify, if not that the last-named pair of
verses (w. 29, 30) are continuous with their companions in con-
struction some distance further back (w. 11-14)? Skip the
whole insert on Jerusalem (w. 15-28), and read verses 28-29
after verses 11-14. The continuity becomes at once apparent,
the connection plain. It is to this world-wide '" tribulation ** in
the last days of the Kingdom, to which the author is referring,
when he says that *' the Son of Man shall be seen coming im-
mediately after.**

True, he mentions the particular tribulation of Jerusalem
in verse 21, where, in a quotation from Daniel, *• he declares
that " there shall then be great tribulation such as has not been
from the beginning, nor ever shall be.** But the recurrence of
the word " tribulation ** in verses 21 and 29 is no proof that the
latter verse is connected with the former, though it has unfor-
tunately led some critics to rest content with verbal continuity,
where continuity of thought is the point to be established. St.
Luke, who makes no mention of the word ** tribulation ** which

"Dan. xli. 1. This quotation Is made to emphailze the fact that sorrow, and
not glory, is to come, when Jerusalem falls.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 503

St. Matthew quotes from Daniel, places the description of
the ''coming in glory'* and its heralding signs immediately
after the significant verse: *' And Jerusalem shall be trodden
down by the nations, till the times of the nations be fulfilled." '^
Both by the position which this verse occupies in the Lukan
text and the im-Palestinian forecast which it lays before the
reader — downfall instead of world-dominion — ^we are entitled
to regard it as the equivalent of St. Matthew's statement that
** Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole in-
habited earth as a testimony to all the nations; and then shall
the end come." •* St. Luke, in other words, puts the connec-
tion exactly where we are claiming it should be put in St. Mat-
thew — not with Jerusalem, but with the fulfillment of the times
of the Gentiles which St. Matthew describes in verses 11-14.
The authority of the third canonical evangelist thus confirms
the truth of the present contention, raising it from an exegeti-
cal likelihood to the dignity of a collaterally supported fact.
St. Luke's is precisely the order of thought and connection in
St. Matthew, though the latter interrupts the sequence, to make
room for a long insert on Jerusalem (w. 15-28), the purpose
of which is to separate the destruction of Israel from the Re-
tiurn of the Lord in glory.

Three times during the coiu^e of this insert, the author
warns us, in the words of the Lord, against associating two
events that are not destined to happen together: the overthrow
of the city and the glorious coming of the Son of Man. ^^ Is it
seriously possible to imagine that the writer of verse 29 so far
and so soon forgot himself and his thrice-repeated admonition,
as straightway to turn about and connect that verse with verse
21 preceding? It will be objected that, if the last-named verse
is not the subject of reference, the continuative particle •• em-
ployed in verse 29 is too far distant from 11-14 to form an in-
tended link. The objection will not hold. In the opening chap-
ter of the Gospel, the author uses this same particle to resume
an interrupted thought, at a still greater distance from its sub-
ject of reference than here, •* and after more than thirty inter-
vening cases of its employment, as an ordinary connective, to
three in the present instance. '^ Besides, it must be borne in
mind that the whole "wedge" or insert on Jerusalem (w.

'••Luke xxl. 24. »Matt xzIy. 14. »Matt xziv. 23. 26.

** dL ** Matt 1. 1, 18. •> Matt xziv. 19, 20, 22.

Digitized by

Google

504 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [July,

15-28) is but one example of the ** tribulations '* to which the
Kingdom of Heaven among men is to become subject in the
course of history. Where the central thought conveyed is that
of a Kingdom of Tribulations, as distinct from a Kingdom of
earthly glory and a world-wide reign of the just, the ** days "
referred to include the whole historical career of the kingdom,
and are not to be understood restrictively of its calamitous be-
ginnings.

This is pointedly brought out in the text of St. Mark. He
uses a very strong adversative to cut off all that he has just
been stating with regard to Jerusalem, from what he is about
to write of the Lord's Return. " But in those days after that
tribulation,'' he says, '' the sim shall be darkened, and the moon
shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven,
and the powers of the heavens be moved. And then shall they
see the Son of Man coming on the clouds with great power
and glory. " *' The outstanding fact in St. Mark is the cutting-
off of the fall of Jerusalem from the '* coming of the Son of
Man in glory.'' The darkening of the sun and moon, the fall-
ing of the stars, and all the other portents which were asso-
ciated in Jewish eschatology with the overthrow of the Temple,
are here carried over from that event to the Final Coming.
The end of the old order is clearly not regarded as the end of
the new, as may be seen fl:om the prophetical necessity ex-
pressed in the verse: '* And unto all nations the Gospel must
first be preached." '^ The correction of current thought could
not have been more simply accomplished than by this trans-
fer of the final prophecies from the destruction of Jerusalem to
an indefinite period beyond, namely : ** In those days after that
tribulation." The powerful disjunctive introducing this verse,
and plainly indicating antithesis and opposition, is very sig-
nificant Its employment adds the supporting testimony of
St. Mark, that Jerusalem was not what St. Matthew had in
mind when he said that ** the Son of Man would be seen com-
ing with power and great glory, inmiediately after the afiOiction
of those days."

There is convincing evidence, therefore, that the author of
the First Gospel did not end by identifying two events which
he- set out most painstakingly to disjoin. When we grasp the
Christian nature of the questions asked; when we look into the

"Mark zlU. 24, 26.~aXXd. "Mark zlU. 10.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 505

anatomy and structiu'e of the twenty-fourth chapter; when we
approach its readmg m the decisive light of all that goes before
and comes after; when we compare the Discourse, as here re-
ported, with the corresponding sequence of thought in St. Luke,
and the clear separation introduced by St. Mark between the
Parousia and the Final Advent; when we take into account the
second person of the verbs in which the beginnings of the
Kingdom are described, and the third person always employed
where the subject is its ending; when we realize that no New
Testament writer devoted as much space to the disconnection of
the Parousia and the Return, the supposition that St. Matthew
expected the reappearance of the Lord in glory, inmiediately
after the " days of tribulation " mentioned in verse 21, becomes
critically impossible to entertain. The author is referring, not
only to the single and near event of the destruction of Jerusalem
(w. 15-28), but to the whole historical process prophetically
outlined by the Saviour (w. 4-14), as the future of opposition
and conquest, through which His Kingdom is to pass, before the
consummation comes.

Still more remains to be said before the wheel of evidence
swings full circle. The prophecies cited by the Lord in His
answer to the third question of the disciples are themselves a
proof that the end of the Christian, not the end of the Jewish
era, is the subject of discourse. They are all transferred from
old connections to new, and freshly reapplied, like the phrase
about " the dead body and the eagles." Take verse 30, for
instance, in which the Saviour is reported as saying: "And
then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and
then shall all the tribes of the land mourn. And they shall see
the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power
and great glory." The transfer of these prophecies from their
expected time of fulfillment to another occasion, is clearly in-
dicated by the added " then; " and it is due to no literary acci-
dent that this cqrrective adverb, or its equivalent "when,"
should be found in all the passages, where the Saviour speaks
of His " coming in glory." ■*

Palestine expected that "the sign of the Son of Man"
would appear in heaven, when the nations gathered to wrest
the Lord's inheritance from His chosen folk. This " sign of the

"Matt xlU. 43; xTl. 27; xxIy. 80 (bis) ; xxv. 31; Mark xill. 26, 27; Luke xxl. 27.^
T6TC--Matt. xlx. 28; Mark ylU. 38; Luke Ix. 26.— {^nty.

Digitized by

Google

506 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [July,

Son of Man " was His appearing before the Ancient of Days to
receive "power, and glory, and a Kingdom;*' a power that is
** an everlasting power, and a Kingdom that shall not be de-
stroyed." »• That this is the intended meaning of the ** sign,"
becomes apparent from the words that inmiediately follow, in
which the Lord declares that " they shall see the Son of Man
coming on the clouds with power and great glory.** It is the
first time in the course of His teaching, public or private, that
the Saviour quotes the text of Daniel in full. Hitherto, from
the sixteenth chapter to this very verse of the twenty-fourth.
He has kept the word "glory" out of every mention of His
" coming " in connection with Israel and the desolation of her
House. In all cases where He speaks of the generation and the
things it is destined to see, the phrase used is " the coming of
the Son of Man," or " the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom; "
never the Return in glory. We may set it down for certain,
therefore, that Jesus is here announcing the eventual and com-
plete fulfillment of the prophecy of Daniel which He divided
into two separate statements in the sixteenth chapter. ^ He is
here telling His questioners that He will receive the Kingdom
of everlasting glory at the end of the Messianic Age, not at its
beginning, as the Jews expected.

And it was most natural, all things considered, that St.
Matthew should have expressed this corrective teaching in the
very terms of the old belief, when he wrote that " immediately
after the tribulation of those days," the Son of Man would be
seen returning. It never occurred to the author of the First
Gospel that the disconnection which he reports the Lord as
establishing between " coming in His Kingdom " and ** coming
in the glory of His Father " would be mistaken for the contrary.
After what he had said about the postponenient of the judg-
ment from the beginning of the Messianic Age to its end and
close, " he never dreamt that his great message would mis-
carry, or that he would be classed among those who falsely
looked to the destruction of the present world-order, when the
sceptre passed from Juda to the nations. And the circumstance
which contributed the most to his misunderstanding was our
failure to grasp the Christian import of the questions that were
asked and answered on the Mount of Olives.

» Dan. vll. 18. «• Matt xvl. 27, 28.

«>Matt. xiii. 43. SL Matthew and the Parousta, The Catholic World, March,
1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 507

The other prophetical citation which is mentioned in the
thirtieth verse — " Then shall all the tribes of the land mourn "
— acquires an added significance from the fact that the Saviour
quoted it of Himself and in connection with His Return in glory.
In the original from which the quotation is adapted, the
prophet Zacharias draws a most impressive picture of the land
of Palestine in grief and mourning, family by family, tribe by
tribe. The house of David, the house of Nathan, the priestly
house of Levi, and all the families that are left shall mourn,
" and they shall look upon him whom they pierced, grievingf or
him as one grieveth for the first-born.*' *^ To whom does the
prophecy refer? There is no historical individual of the day
or of times previous, whose unjust putting to death as a false
prophet would evoke this national procession of grief, in which
each family of the land has a special cause for mourning, be-
cause of its part in the unholy deed.

Naturalist critics, unable to discover a personage who will
fit the description, ask us to believe that the allusion is to a
"collection of godly individuals who came to death by vio-
lence." Their only argument for this dilution of the meaning
is one drawn from grammar: The piercing of the nameless
martyr is represented as a fact accomplished, and so the
Pierced One cannot be the Messias, Whose advent was still far
off when these words were written. The argument lacks point.
It was not by any means an uncommon thing in prophetical
literature to describe the future from a past point of view;
and that such is the nature of the description here laid before
us, critics themselves have established to satisfaction, by the
failure of their attempt to find an historical individual, the
victim of popular passion, whose death the prophet Zacharias
would expect to see universally lamented. *'

The Saviour puts the reference of the prophecy beyond
all doubt, by indentifying Himself with the suspected prophet,
" wounded in the house of His friends." ** He declared that all
the tribes of the land would mourn, when they saw the Suspect
One returning in power and great glory, to vindicate the truth
of His promises and claims. The predicted procession of the
mourners has nothing to do with the fall of Jerusalem. Its
time of fulfillment is not that of the Lord's coming in power,

<* Zach. xll. 10, 14. ^ HaagaU Zechariah, etc., Mitchell, Smith, Bewer, p. 330.

««Zach. xill. 6; Amos Till. 8-10.

Digitized by

Google

508 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [July,

but of His visible reappearance in the glory of His Father. Pro-
fessor Wellhausen*s objection that all thought of mourning is
out of place in connection with the glorious Advent of the Son
of Man to the beleaguered city of Jerusalem, is really a proof
that this is not, and could not have been the subject of refer-
ence. The allusion is not to Jewish expectation, but to the new
teaching of the Lord. The thought which Jesus wishes to con-
vey is the tardy compunction of heart with which the people
of Israel will be seized, when, at the end of the Messianic Era,
and the real establishment of the prophesied and expected
Kingdom of glory, they shall behold the enormity of their crime
and error in the vision of the Pierced One triumphantly re-
turning. It is a challenging forecast of the future, this solemn
picture, which some critics have degraded to the level of an
anti-Pharisaic outburst on the part of the author, because they
have neither caught its point, nor seen the beauty of its spirit-
ual perspective.

One more verse remains to be considered — the verse about
^ the darkening of sim and moon, the falling of the stars, and
the convulsion of the hosts of heaven." This prophetical quo-
tation has a very interesting previous history in the Old Testa-
ment, occurring no less than five distinct times, though the
language slightly varies. We find it employed of the destruc-
tion of Babylon by the Medes; *^ of the primitive blow that is
to fall upon Edom; *• of the judgment of Egypt; *^ of the over-
throw of Israel and the peoples round about; ^^ of the punish-
ment of the nations, on the occasion of Juda's return from her
captivity among them; *• and of the last evil times.** The
previous history of the phrase has led many scholars to infer
that its reemployment in the text of the Gospel is no proof that
it looks beyond the end of Israel to the end of the world. It be-
longs, we are told, to the apocalyptic imagery of prophecy,
not to the prediction of events; and its citation by the Saviour
does not create the least presumption that the final catastro-
phe is here foretold. ** We must not, therefore, either, belittle
the verse into meteoric showers or magnify it into a world dis-
aster, but interpret it rather as a spiritual reference to the close
of the Jewish times and the potent changes that are then or
soon thereafter, to come upon the face of history.

« Ii. xUl. 10. « It. xxzlY. 4. ^ Biek. xxxli. 7, 8. « Amos tIU. 9.

« Joel U. 10, 31; Ui. 16. ••a Bs. y. 4; Enoch Ixxx. 4; Ass. Mot. x. 5.

nSf. Mark. Gould* p. 250.

Digitized by

Google

1918-] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 509

This view will not stand straightforward scrutiny. It
rests on the supposition that the disciples inquired about the
Second Advent, in connection with the destruction of Jeru-
salem, and it goes down with the wreck of that hypothesis. It
would have us believe, furthermore, that the key to the Lord's
quotations lies in the Old Testament settings from which He
drew them — a most unscientific canon on which to place re-
liance. The sole source of the Saviour's thought is Himself.
He spoke in borrowed phrases to which He lent new meaning,
and the key to these phrases is in the New Testament contexts
of their reemployment, not in the previous occasions or limita-
tions of their use. The Old Testament was for Him a familiar
screen on which to project new visions of the truth. It was
neither the well-spring nor the measure of His word. It does
not follow, therefore, that what was imagery, if imagery it was,
in the Old Testament, may not be stern reality in the New; or
that Jesus was merely quoting apocalyptic figures of speech,
when He spoke of the '' darkening of sun and moon, and the
falling of the stars."

Just previously, in answering the second question of the
disciples, the Lord was most anxious that His meaning be not
mistaken, when He spoke of the "" coming of the Son of Man "
in power, as distinct from His Return in person. No such anx-
iety accompanied His prediction that ^ there shall be changes
in the sun, and moon, and stars." The statement is allowed to
stand as uttered, without comment; a fact of decisive signifi-
cance. Collateral testimony in St. Luke goes clearly to show
that the quotation was literally understood. The third canoni-
cal evangelist, when giving the reason why men " shall wither
away for fear, and for expectation of the things that are to
come upon the whole world," explicitly refers to the convul-
sive changes in the heavens as the cause. ^^ And certainly the
rest of the New Testament is not without convincing witness
of the future reality attaching to the Saviour's words. The
Lord who came in power to Jerusalem will come in power and
great glory to the world. " And this the Gospel of the King-
dom shall be preached in the whole inhabited earth, as a testi-
mony to all the nations; and then shall the end come."

The text of the Lord's answer to the third question of the
disciples — "What shall be the sign of the consummation of

»Luka zzl. 25, 26.

Digitized by

Google

510 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [July,

the (Messianic) age? — ^is itself a proof that the subject of in-
quiry was the ending of the New Kingdom, not the convulsive
overthrow of the Old. A writer who separates the two phrases
— "power and glory**- — everywhere else, and quotes them
together only here; who disconnects the " coming in the King-
dom *' from the " coming in glory; " who inserts special ma-
terial to enforce the disconnection; who records a detailed
teaching-process which has this separation of events prin-
cipally in view; who twice portrays the Kingdom as an historic
world-process, not involved in the impending fate of Israel " —
such a writer cannot be accused of having the destruction of
Jerusalem in mind,- when he said that " inmiediately after the
tribulation of those days," " the Son of Man would be seen com-
ing on the clouds with power and great glory.*' And those
who think that the twenty-ninth verse of the Great Discourse
is a reassertion of the Palestinian world-view by the author
of the First Gospel, must overthrow all the antecedent and con-
comitant evidence, here assembled to the contrary, before their
opinion is entitled to the consideration of the scholar. Which,
after all, is the right procedure? To read the First Gospel in
the light of a single text? Or a single text in the light of the
entire First Gospel? The question is self-answering, and not
a thing of doubt. The last word has not yet by any means
been said of Jesus or The Twelve. What has escaped us, is of
far more importance than what has been observed. The Un-
considered Remainder — ^who would dogmatically proclaim it
non-existent?

"Matt xzi. 43; xxiy. 14.

Digitized by

Google

IN SANCTUARY,

BY A. G. SHERIDAN.

I HE man was racked with weariness. It was a
weariness that was as intense as pain, and yet
the throbbing of his eyelids, the aching of his
blistered feet were forgotten in the heavy
anguish of his soul. He walked as a man with a
set purpose, but as he drew near the quiet shadows of the cathe-
dral precincts an ill-defined feeling made him pause. He leaned
against the outer parapet of the square and gazed up at the
wonderful symmetry of the building. It was very familiar to
him; he had played in its shade as a child; he had hurried by it
daily with his college books as a boy. -He had listened to the
good priest's voice within, perhaps too often with dull or care-
less ears. ^

Now he saw a new, strange meaning in its beauty.
He had forgotten half its charm in his years of wandering. It
brought a vague sense of comfort to him as he looked at the
dignity of its proportions, and somehow the object he had set
before him became less clear. The figures of the saints he re-
membered so well, still looked down from their high niches —
cold, still and calm. Did they read his thoughts and look down
in judgment; was failure to be the one word written over his
vacant place in Paradise? But had they ever known the torture
of his pain; a bruised, despairing hearfs wild craving for just
one thing — ^f orgetf ulnes ? This he had thought to find on the wide,
cool breast of the river away down there below the parapet. It
was a doubtful cure; it was the remedy of a quack, but it had
its moments of allurement when it seemed the only and inevit-
able solution for his pain.

The great clock of the belfry struck six o'clock. Simul-
taneously the silvery tones of the Angelus bell floated about
him. He had forgotten the alphabet of prayer, yet instinctively
his fingers traced the cross upon his breast. As the last notes
of the beHs quivered into silence, he moved, drawing a little
nearer to the central entrance. The massive doors were pushed
widely open, to woo something of the breath of sultriness from

Digitized by

Google

512 IN SANCTUARY [July,

without into the vast stone building where, summer and winter,
but little of the sun's warmth penetrated. But today, when
the sun outside had blazed so fiercely, its vault-like atmos-
phere was an invitation and a boon. There, within those open
doors, was peace and rest. The man with the blistered feet
felt suddenly the burden of his physical discomfort: the ache
of the wound that still had its painful moments. A sensation
almost of faintness stole over him, and mechanically he
dragged his steps over the church's threshold.

In a kind of dumb, despairing apathy he entered. For a
little time he would forget past, present, and the tormenting
hunger for annihilation. At least he could rest his poor tired
limbs in the dim daylight of the great church.

He went slowly up the aisle to the f ar-oflf, quiet corner
where, he remembered of old, a little apart, was hung the
Calvary. He passed the kneelers scattered here and there
about the building. He passed the shrines with their swing-
ing lights. At this one comer that he sought, there was no
light — a dusky gloom shrouded the walls, the floor, the roof,
and through the gloom the white Figure on the cross stretched
out wide arms above him.

He stopped here, and crouched on the low footstool be-
fore the Crucifix. Over mind and body alike there crept a
strange, dull numbness. He fell into a kind of stupor, sitting
very still; hifddled in his corner, while gradually the worship-
pers went their several ways out again into the sunshine. In
this vast silent place he seemed now alone. Alone, as life had
been for him this last year since his discharge from the army.
He had been through so many vicissitudes that this new sensa-
tion stole over him unnoticed; he was past analyzing his own
emotions, but in a half -waking dream, without the old fierce re-
bellion in his spirit, he lived back again in the past.

Once, perhaps, more than most men, he had known happi-
ness. Where olive groves dipped sheer down to the shining, rip-
pling sea, he had grown used to the beauties of life, and, coming
to his home in the evening after his work, had heard the peals of
laughter before he felt the encircling arms of his little girl-wife,
whose gay rush to meet him was his daily welcome. He had
dreamed so often, as he lay in camp in sight of the enemy's
guns, what it would be like when he once more mounted the
steep zig-zag path through the olives. By and by, the War

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN SANCTUARY 513

would be over, by and by, just as he saw it in his imagination,
he would go back and life would be completed.

But the dream had not been realized. Maimed and use-
less he had gone back and — he dug his nails into his flesh as he
remembered how different in actual fact had been the homing
to the little house above the soft green olive trees! Everything
had been silent and deserted — ^weeds stood high about the en-
trance, bats had taken undisturbed possession of the unused
rooms, there was no glad voice to welcome him. His home was
desolate, his life a blank despair.

Demented and haggard with grief, he questioned the neigh-
bors. They answered with shrugs. Yes! she had gone. In the
mighty rush and panic before the savage enemy she had fled
with the rest, and unlike the others she had never come back.
But there was no one who could give him a satisfactory answer
to his frenzied: Why? Perhaps she had heard a rumor that
he was woimded or dead, who knew? they said, pityingly, ter-
rorized before the agonized madness in his eyes. Then he
had hunted the length and breadth of the district and had fol-
lowed many a will-o'-the-wisp, but had found no real clue. She
might be starving; she might be dead, but neither in the houses
for the poor nor in the mortuaries had he been able to meet
her face to face. Today, for the first time, he said to himself:
No ! she cannot be dead. The world was still beautiful and she
had been the loveliest thing in it. He turned his eyes up to the
sad Face which gleamed pale through the darkness. Perhaps
it would be well if she were dead. But if not, then did he dare
to go away and leave her in the great pitiless world alone?

A long drawn-out sob sounded from a neighboring con-
fessional. So there was another himian creature who suffered
either from sin, or shame, or loss ! With a curious fascination
he listened, and again he heard a deep, hard sob which seemed
to express all the sadness of a breaking heart. He had thought
no one could suffer as he had suffered, but now, he hardly knew
why, he forgot himself in wondering pity for the misery of
another. He thought to himself: It is some woman, poor,
thing, who has been weak. Now she is sorry, for she has to
bear the penalty. He heard the low murmur of voices and he
pictured to himself the tragedy which was being fold behind
the screen of the thin curtains. An indescribable magnetic in-
fluence seemed to draw his eyes towards the spot whence the

VOL. cvn. — 33

Digitized by

Google

514 IN SANCTUARY [July,

sound of the whispered words came to him. By and by the
curtain moved on one side, and a small, dark-clad figure
stole out from the confessional door. With a fascinated gaze
he looked at her. She was coming towards him, meaning, too,
to kneel imder the Calvary. As she came nearer, she saw that
the place she had hoped to find empty, was occupied. Slje
hesitated, she would go where she could be alone with her
grief. Half listlessly he watched her turn. As she went out
of the darkness and stood under the full rays of the chapel
light, some unaccoimtable impulse moved her to turn her head
once more in his direction. A second after, a cry, loud, clear,
triiunphant, broke on the settled stillness of the place. It rose,
echoing again and again, till it reached the topmost pinnacle of
the vast roof. It would have been hard to tell whether it was
joy, grief, or the half delirious exultation of a madman, but
only stone figures could have heard the sound and remained
still in their prayerful pose. It seemed to express more than
the satisfied longing of one human soul; it was as the voice
of humanity freed for an instant from human fetters.

The girFs drooping figure became erect; she reached out
to catch at something tangible, for, away in the gloomy corner
under the white Figure, a face became gradually visible to her
eyes becoming accustomed to the dim light. It seemed to her
it must be a vision; it was the face she saw ever in her dreams.
In a minute it would disappear as it had always done before.
She dared not move; she scarcely dared breathe or disturb the
utter silence which had followed that one wild, mysterious cry.

" You,*' she whispered, tremblingly.

From the place in the shadows a deep, unsteady voice an-
swered back:

"Youl''

The old priest to whom the last confession of the evening
had been made, also heard the passionate cry — and, startled,
came quickly out of his box to discover its cause. When he
saw the attitude of the two figures before him, he understood,
for he held a key which revealed to him the meaning of what
he saw. Then he put his finger to his lips as if to silence even
his thoughts, and crept quietly away. It was a moment in the
experience of two souls that was for God's eye only.

Digitized by

Google

IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN.
BY EMILY HIGKEY.

|N the year 1600, the year to which the play of As
You Like It seems to belong, we find Shakespeare
in the prime of his life at thirty-six. He has
wrought well and gained much since, some thir-
teen years before, he began to do the work of a
playwright. We find him one who understands the world he
lives in and who, refraining from over-demand and over-ex-
pectation, is far on the way of seeing in the world much more
than demand could bring or expectation realize. He is one whose
knowledge makes him just, and whose large sympathies do not
weaken him by giving him the over-mobility which is at war
with steadfastness and sanity. He has developed his great gift
of humor, that many-sided humor which saves from any-
thing like aloofness from everyday life. He knows well that
the world is not peopled by souls royal or saintly; there is room
in his mind and his art-world for comfortable everyday folk;
for the stolid as for the sensitive; for the poorly endowed as
for those who have a goodly spiritual heritage, and those who
have emperiled such a heritage. And he knows too that, un-
der seeming commonplace and lacklustreness, there may burn
the great fire whose highest manifestation is love.

By this time also, Shakespeare has learned to make his
verse free and musical: by and by it will be freer still and
know too a mightier music. In obeying laws he learns how to
modify them or remake them.

He has not yet given us the result of his struggle with
vast unknown powers. As yet we do not know the battlefield
on which, even now, he may be standing victor.

In the four plays that close the second period of Shake-
speare's work we have, it is true, the struggle of good with
evil; but the struggle is not the Titanic one which, by and by,
we shall be called on to witness : it is one also that ends in the
evident and temporal as well as spiritual triumph of good; the
four plays being Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It,
Twelfth Night, and AlFs Well That Ends Well.

Digitized by

Google

516 IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN [July,

In Twelfth Night we have a certain undertone of sadness,
and in All's Well we have a motive of predominant serious-
ness; but, in As You Like It, the atmosphere is for the most part
one of delicate buoyancy, tender sprightliness, joyful repose.
The Forest of*Arden has drawn to its shelter souls true and
leal; its smnmer leafage gives them coolness, its biting winds
are counselors not unkindly, for the stubbornness of fortune
is by happy souls translated into a quiet style and a sweet.

These souls are not the untaught, untried children of na-
ture, but those who have borne their part in the service of the
world; they are not those who, without a cause, have broken
their ties to the old life and gone forth seeking rest in the
forest glades. The inhabitants of Arden are those who have
been driven forth from their own sphere of work by wrong and
force, and those who bravely face the change and find in it that
which has good and sweetness; and those who have faithfully
followed the wronged and ill-used. When the time has come
of the clearing away of the injustice that had sent them forth,
all such are ready to resume their old place, and cheerfully to
go back, no longer to fleet the time carelessly in the golden
world of Arden.

The other dwellers in the Forest are no mere idlers; they
are shepherds who tend their flocks and show kindness to the
distressed, and are in harmony with nature, human and other.
The dry odd humor of the Court Fool and the queer " melan-
choly '* of Jaques have their right place in the gracious en-
folding of the Arden atmosphere, and each of these is stamped
with the stamp of faithfulness.

You may say, if you like, that the Forest of Arden is the
big wood of Ardennes. Sirs, I cry you mercy. Surely the
Arden of Shakespeare may well be the English Warwickshire
Arden, with its rank of osiers and its neighboring bottom, and
all its association with the poet's mother, whose maid-name
was Arden. Must not Mary Arden's son have often lingered
lovingly upon that name, as he trod the Warwickshire forest,
and almost heard her voice in the low winds and the whisper-
ing leaves? The palm-tree and the lioness and the serpent may
be there, but the Forest is Shakespeare's, his Arden.

Here is Mr. Grant White's theory, from a charming paper
of his which I enjoyed many a year ago. " Who knows where
the Forest of Arden is? Who cares to know, that has dipped

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE FOREST OF ARDEff 517

his lips in the springs of beauty and delight that are ever flow-
ing there? .... We think of it without giving it locality. There
dukes, unknown to heralds and genealogists, banished from
nameless principalities, by revolutions unknown in history,
sought refuge and found happiness, leading lives of delightful
impossibility. There lovers fleeing from each other, met like
mountains removed by earthquakes, when they had least hope
of meeting. There shepherds and court fools, English hedge-
priests and lions and gilded serpents and palm trees were found
together without the slightest seeming incongruity; and there
courtiers passed their time in hunting and moralizing and sing-
ing sylvan songs with echo for their chorus."

Yes, what can it really matter about the locahty? Wher-
ever the local habitation be, the name of Arden brings up the
thought of quiet and content, and golden youth and middle
age unfretted, and delicate lights and shadows chiming in won-
derful harmony and loveliness.

Someone, it is not known who, wrote a poem which, for a
long time, was believed to be Chaucer's, and was printed with
the Canterbury Tales as the Cook's Tale of Gamelyn. The hero
is the prototype of Orlando, but in the rough.

The story of Gamelyn and his faithful Adam Spencer was
made by Lodge the groundwork of a novel. Lodge adding the
love-story of which there is no trace in Gamelyn. Whether
Shakespeare, who used this novel, was acquainted with the
manuscript of Gamelyn is uncertain, but there are some pas-
sages in the play which seem to be an indication of his having
read it At any rate, he used Lodge's story, though with vari-
ous points of difference, and he has introduced four original
characters. Touchstone, Jaques, William and Audrey.

We remember how it was said of Goldsmith that he
touched nothing which he did not adorn, and we know how
greatly true this is of Shakespeare.

It is not true to suppose that our greatest poet took worth-
less material and made it full of worth. He often worked upon
what already had considerable value. In the case of As You
Like It, the readers of The Catholic World have been re-
minded not so long ago by Katherine Br^gy's very interesting
paper^ of the mirthf ulness of Lodge's Euphues' Golden Legacie,

^ Lodge and HU "Rosalgnde," Thb Cathoug World, June, 1917.

Digitized by

Google

518 IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN [July,

on which the play is founded. But to compare the novel and
the play for excellence would be more than absurd.

As You Like It has the peculiar interest of being one of
the plays in which we may delight to think Shakespeare took
an actor's part, the part of the faithful Adam, the dear loyal
servant of a master no less loyal and dear. In Lodge's novel,
by the way, the good old man is an Englishman.

Every play of Shakespeare's may be studied and loved, not
only as one of his works, but as part of his work; and
some of this loving study will lead us to notice specially the
treatment, in two or more plays, of a subject the same or simi-
lar. Thus As You Like It links with a much later play. The
Tempest. We have again the usurpation of a dukedom by an
unnatiu^al brother, and the healing of a great ill. In the later
play the pain goes deeper, the grace mounts higher, than in the
earlier one. Again, more than once, we have the treatment of
a strong friendship between women. Some people disbelieve
in the lasting quality of this : Shakespeare believed in it. If the
friendship between Helena and Hermia, the " two lovely ber-
ries molded on one stem, so, with two seeming bodies, but one
heart," is for a time overclouded, it is by reason of the wild,
fairy, provoking, unreal atmosphere of a Midsummer Nighfs
Dream. But in Much Ado About Nothing we see Beatrice
roused into fullest life by her grand indignation at the treat-
ment meted out to her beloved Hero, and throwing aside all her
little mocks and sharpnesses and the veil that was hiding her
true womanliness, and standing forth all beautiful, strong and
true. In Measure for Measure we have Isabella's love for Juliet,
her " cousin adoptedly."

But nowhere have we a more charming picture of true love
between women than in As You Like It. Celia's devotion to
Rosalind is one of the things as lovely as they are perfect. How
she pleads with her father against the banishment of Rosalind I
How she dwells on the inseparability that she and her cousin
have always known ! How unheeding are her ears to the usurp-
ing Duke's mean suggestion that by Rosalind she is robbed of
her name, and that, in her cousin's absence, she will "show
more bright and seem more virtuous."

Nothing can shake her love and trust for there is nothing
ignoble in her to meet ignoble suggestion, and she is quite
sweetly content to take the lower place, if lower place it be.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN 519

And so she shares the banishment of the dear delightful cousin,
who does, somehow, as we have to confess, put her in the shade,
however imintentionally and purely unconsciously. It is a
mere question of personality. By the way, one thing the cou-
sins have in common is the charming manner in which they
can tease; Rosalind exercising her power in this line on
Orlando, and Celia exercising hers upon Rosalind. So they go
forth; one disguised as a country maid and one as a saucy
wearer of doublet and hose, to seek father and imcle in the
Forest of Arden.

The adoption of male disguise by a woman is foimd in
various plays other than As You Like It We have it in a very
early play. The Two Gentlemen of Verona; in The Merchant
of Venice; in Twelfth Night and in Cymbeline. In Twelfth
Night we have also the falling in love of a woman with an-
other woman in this disguise. We of course remember the
extra di£G[culty faced by the boy who took the disguised
woman's part, of pretending to be what he really was.

In the early Two Gentlemen of Verona we have a sketch
of a forest scene.

This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourished peopled towns;
How can I sit alone, unseen of any.
And to the nightingale's complaining notes
Tune my distresses and record my woes.*

With this we compare the Duke's speech to his comrades in
Arden.*

The introduction of the Court Fool links our play with
King Lear, where we have the imutterable pathos of the rela-
tion between the Fool and his injured master; the fool who can
tell that master of his foUy, and cleave to him and die of love
for him. Touchstone, in As You Like It, is made of different
stuff. He has, indeed, the attachment to Celia which leads him
to face discomfort and privation for her sake, but we do not
love him as we love the gracious Fool in Lear. He is quaintly
wise; his " call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune " is
a text that well may make a sermon; and his queer wooing and
marriage marks at least a laudable preference for freedom,

» Two Gentlemen of Verona, V. 4, etc •As Yon Like It, U, 1.

Digitized by

Google

520 IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN [July,

rather than the artificial life at court, alternating between pet-
ting and hard knocks.

In As You Like It we have the noble nature of Orlando
coming out in spite of defective education; and in Cymbeline,
Belarius thus describes the two royal brothers who had, un-
witting of their birth and state, been brought up in the wilder-
ness of the forest.

O thou Goddess,
Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys! They are as gentle
As zephyrs blowing below the violet.
Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchafd, as the rud'st wind
That by the top doth take the mountain pine.
And make him stoop to the vale. 'Tis wonder
That an invisible instinct should frame them
To royalty unlearned, honour untaught.
Civility not seen from other, valour
That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop
As if it had been sow*d.

In comedy we have the open triumph of good: in tragedy,
we have its inevitable ultimate triumph however hidden it
may be; we also have its apparent defeat. In comedy, the peo-
ple who represent the side of goodness may suffer for a while,
but in the end they attain the outward happiness which was
taken away, while the inward happiness may have remained.
In tragedy, while the wicked are punished, it often happens
that the good have, through their means, either been destroyed
or so deeply injured by pain or grief that they could not bear
the burden of life even under conditions changed unchange-
ably for the better. Such is the case with Lear and Othello.
May we say that comedy might have had the ending of tragedy,
but tragedy never the ending of comedy?

In As You Like It we have the elements of tragedy; the
discord between the two pairs of brothers; the usurpation of a
dukedom; the banishment of the innocent; the attempted mur-
der of a brother. These things might well have tended toward
a tragic ending. But Macbeth, for instance, never could have
had the ending of comedy; man and wife had poisoned their
own souls, as each had poisoned the soul of the other; and so
the end must have been as the end was.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE F0R£:ST OF ARDEN 521

Among the forces that keep a comedy from passing out
of its own lines is the power of conversion, and we have it more
than once or twice in Shakespeare's work; the way in which
he used it being one of the landmarks of the growth of his
genius in knowledge, self-control and wisdom. Even in As
You Like It we have, as it seems to me, a touch of unripeness
in the sudden conversion of Oliver. In a much earlier play,
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, we also have this sudden
conversion, but we see how differently Shakespeare treats the
conversion theme in Measure for Measure; and how, in the
largeness of refined wisdom, oiu* poet treats it in The Tempest.

There is something about Rosalind that makes her one
of the most fascinating of Shakespeare's creations. She has
not only beauty, grace, humor, but that which we are all as
quick to recognize as slow to define, loveableness. She is
deliciously unlike other people; she is in that unlikeness one
of those whom the world would allow to steal a horse and
would look on with tolerance at their doing it; while it might
severely frown upon the crowd of those whom it would not
think of allowing to look over the hedge. Celia, good, sweet,
heroic, as she is, does not claim any indulgence at our hands :
Rosalind takes it with no ado.

Of coiu^se some would have thought her a forward young
madam when she told Orlando that he had wrestled well a^d
overcome more than his enemies. But Orlando did not think
so, and neither do we, though we might be told we ought if we
knew what was proper! What are we to say to her sitting
down in a cottage in Arden, instead of joining her father whom
she had professedly come to seek; and to her jesting with him,
even, indeed, "cheeking" him when she meets him? And
what to her playing at playing at love-making and love-receiv-
ing? What also are we to say to her abuse of her own sex to
Orlando? But, oh! that excuse of hers is of the heart of the
world in the heart of the forest! ** Oh, coz, coz, my pretty little
coz, that thou didst know how many fathoms deep I am in
love! ** And so "What talk we of fathers when there is such
a man as Orlando?'' It is the old, old story; the leaving of
father and mother and binding of the greater, sweeter tie.

Rosalind is just a little like Rosaline in Love's Ldboufs Lost;
just a little like the bright sharp-tongued lasses in a Midsummer
Nights Dream; but there is this difference between her and

Digitized by

Google

522 IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN [July,

them, that she is a gentlewoman, which they are not. Beatrice,
in Much Ado, is nearer of kin to her, she belonging also to the
rank of gentle folk. Both of these have a horror of sentimen-
tality, but while with Beatrice this leads to the veiling of her
real nature with many a sharp witticism, witticism that often
stings, she being only her true self when imder the influence
of the loyal and healthy passion that makes her turn aside
from mocking wit, Rosalind is always herself and needs no
outward stroke to make her cast away disguise, for of disguise
her warm sweet womanhood knows nothing. If has been no-
ticed that Beatrice is witty at other people's expense, Rosalind
often witty at her own. It is a nimble wit of hers, sweet as
nimble, and faster than her tongue doth make offence her eye
doth heal it.

They are sweet eyes, those eyes of Rosalind, and, as Phebe
speaks of her in the boy's dress that does not hide her beauty:

There is a pretty redness in his lip,

A little riper and more lusty red

Than that mixed in his cheek; 'twas just the difference

Between the constant red and mingled damask.

Beatrice, I think, is rather of a joyous nature than a happy
one : as she deliciously tells us, she was bom under a dancing
star, and Rosalind has siu^ely the "* ancient English dower
of inward happiness."

In the scene where the lovers first meet, Orlando cannot
understand the interest taken in him by Rosalind. He is shy
and reserved, probably with a shyness and reserve that are the
outcome of his not over-happy home life. There is a sort of
hopelessness as well as seff-depreciation in his words to the
princesses: "Let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with
me to my trial; wherein, if I be foiled, there is but one shamed
that never was gracious; (graced or favored) if killed, but one
dead that is willing to be so. I shall do my friends no wrong,
for I have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it
I have nothing. Only in the world I fill up a place which may
be better supplied when I have made it empty."

When after his success, Rosalind gives him a chain from
her neck, he cannot thank her, and yet her gentle words over-
come him as the rough words of the Duke Frederick could
never do. It is a noble natiu-e, that of Orlando's, he has no bit-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN 523

temess toward the elder brother who is kept at school and
makes golden progress, while he is deprived of even the legacy
his father had left him. But he feels the spirit of that father
mutiny within him at the attempt of his brother to undermine
,his gentility. The attempt is a futile one, for Orlando is a gen-
tleman all through : by Oliver's admission, he is gentle, never
schooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts en-
chantingly beloved. It has been remarked that, in both the
imnatural brothers, Frederick and Oliver, there is perhaps less
hatred of better people than fretfulness and discomfort under
a sense of their own unamiability; thus the Duke says of Rosa-
lind that people pity her for her father's sake, the sake of his
brother, more beloved than himself; and Oliver is " misprised "
because, as he thinks, of Orlando's popularity.

How charming a revelation of Orlando's hiunility, that vir-
tue as often misunderstood as under-valued, we have in his
answer to Jaques' invitation to rail against the world: ** I will
chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I
know most faults."

The happy wind of Arden blows upon Orlando's brow and
brings him refreshing and healing, mingled as it is with the
sweet half-mocking, whole-earnest talk of the beautiful lady
whose stature is just as high, he says, as his heart; and, as we
know, she is more than common tall!

Rosalind's disguise, in the doublet and hose which she so
enjoys the wearing of, brings a little trouble with it; but she
is too loyal, too kind, to allow Phebe to cherish any absurd
hopes arising out of her belief in Rosalind's being what she
seems; and Phebe richly deserves the scorn which she gets, for
the pain given to her springs from her own disloyalty in mak-
ing Silvius an instrument to play false strains on, by sending
him with a love-letter under the name of an epistle of railing
to the pseudo-Ganymede.

How Rosalind enjoys her part! No longer seeking her
father, she gives him a bit of sauciness when she meets him,
telling him that her parentage, which he inquires, having seen
in her some lively touches of his daughter's favor, is as good as
his own.

** What talk we of fathers, when there is such a man as
Orlando? " She knows well, as we all do, that everything will
come right and be sanctioned by a father's love.

Digitized by

Google

524 IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN [July,

The demure Celia, who marvels at Rosalind's precipitancy
in falling in love, is herself to be caught and fall in love also
with as great a haste as her cousin and not, any more than
that cousin, to know of repentance at leisure.

The conversion of Oliver, as we have noted, is a sudden
one; but it comes through his life being given him at the risk of
the giver's. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends. Orlando was willing to lay
down his for Oliver, and so the greatest love led to the winning
of Oliver's soul.

Rosalind cannot, even after the shock of receiving the
blood-dyed handkerchief, and the woman's weakness of her
swoon, give up the fun of her doublet and hose which, on her
learning of Orlando's neighborhood, had for an instant seemed
a barrier: " What shall I do with my doublet and hose? " speed-
ily became a convenient portal. There, at Ganymede's cottage,
is Orlando with his arm in a scarf; his arm woimded with the
claws of a lion and his heart wounded with the eyes of a lady.
Oliver and Celia are to be married tomorow, and poor Orlando
must look into happiness through another man's eyes. Rosa-
lind thinks that now her happy joke may tiu^n to reality, so she
winds up with a good fat fib, informing Orlando that since she
was three years old she has conversed with a magician, pro-
found in his art and yet not damnable; therefore she can do
strange things and, if he loves Rosalind as near the heart as
his gesture cries it out, he shall marry her when his brother
marries Aliena. Yes, she can set Rosalind before him, human
as she is.

And this Rosalind is set before us, in all her sweet human-
ity, by oiu- dear magician of Stratford with whom we love to
converse and find how he can do things passing wonderful and
passing lovely.

So are all made happy the next day, and the last lingering
element of discord is removed by the change wrought in Duke
Frederick's heart and life by the blessed influence of an old
religious with whom he has fallen in when he had meant to come
to Arden bent on deadly mischief. The usurper goes to end his
days in quiet and holy contemplation, while his banished
brother takes again his crown and will return to his govern-
ment and his friends, who have shared his exile, be restored to
their lands and honors.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN 525

So is Arden left, and everyday life begins again for those
who have been so happy there.

It is a fair thing and a beautiful to be in sympathy with
nature; but for men and women there is the need also to be in
sympathy with life and not only in its moments of high exalta-
tion or its times of dear idyllic rest, but in its everyday work, its
tasks, its common joys and common sorrows. Those who have
come to the heritage created by generations of love and culti-
vation are for the most part bound to work voluntarily and
consciously, for the keeping and the greatening of Uiat heritage.
Comfort and strength come from the being set in the places of
green pastures where the waters of refreshment run; but the
atmosphere of the dear and pleasant places can be borne into
the strenuous life of the congregation, where every muscle
comes into fullest play. For the souls that have traveled far
on the way that has breadth and height for the Vision, the way
that many a generation has helped to make, the peace of the
happy woods, yes, of woods, sweet and delectable as Arden*s
forest, is not deep enough; the "beauty born of murmiu*ing
sound" is not great enough; the work for the sustenance of
daily life is not strenuous enough. There is a larger work:
and there is a deeper rest.

Digitized by

Google

WHEN YOU COME TO THE END OF A PERFECT ROW-
BY ELEANOR GEHAN.

I N these war entangled times the above title can
mean nothing but the subject of knitting, its joys
and sorrows. The sorrows are purposely
avoided in order not to discourage readers who
are beginners or contemplating the attack.
Skeptical, indilf erent folks are provided for, too, in the author's
mind. It is hoped that after reading this article they will rush
and clamor for needles, yarn and a teacher, and begin the
song whose last line shall be a repetition of this title. How to
attain the ease and skill necessary, how to overcome any doubts
in one's mind as to Sunday, street car, and concert knitting;
how to bear up under discouragements and humorous remarks,
is my task to tell you; to make easy the row for my fellow-
knitter is my self-appointed mission. Thus I start the ball, not
a-rolling but a-winding.

Listen now, oh reader, to the tale of how one woman was
taught to knit. She, an office worker, who had done a bit of
crochet formerly, went to visit her sister in the suburbs. Her
small niece stood at the door but the usual joy at seeing her
aunt was absent. Startled, the aunt looked closer only to dis-
cover that in the hands of this curly-headed, five-year-old were
brilliant pink needles and a curious blue article. Yes, she was

knitting, and too busy to talk. Aunt E sank into a chair

and silence reigned in the room while Yellow Curls knitted

on. Aunt E then had a bright idea.

" Jeanie, will you teach me to knit? *' she said.
"Yes," said Jeanie, "when I get this row done.'* Again
silence for an indefinite time. Anna, the maid, appeared to
announce dinner.

"Anna," said Aunt E "will you teach me?"

" Oh, yes," said Anna, and she extracted the knitting from
Jeanie's hands and went on with the row which ended when
she heard her kettle boiling over.

Mother got the knitting next and said: " You see, you do it
this way. Perfectly simple." And she knitted on till father
had served every one.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE END OF A PERFECT ROW 527

After dinner E , still undaunted, appealed to the older

aunt. Yes, of coiu*se she could teach anyone. So she took the
knitting off into the living-room and was not seen for two
hours. In this manner E got her first lesson.

Material you must have when the urge to knit is felt. Your
experience will be something like this. You get in touch with
the speediest person you know. She probably knows a lady

who knows a lady that can get the cutest bone needles in .

A waiting period ensues but finally the needles arrive (price
ten cents more than your friend paid for hers, but cost is only
beginning). Yam? Yes, in the house. You search through
boxes; get yoiu* mother to search; question the maid; think of
calling a detective; swear vengeance on the second-hand man
who got the last fifty poimds of newspapers. The result of all
this upheaval is — ^you buy. Yes, but colors are out at the store.
Khaki and navy cannot be had. Quick-result friend is again
petitioned. She will probably get it near her street corner this
time. Now you are ready.

Here the rising action begins. If you prove faithful to
one teacher all is weU and the line goes up with regularity. But
if you have any traits of inconstancy in yoiu* make-up, coimter
plots begin at once, causing complications which will result in
yoiu* undoing — the knitting already on your needles. The
slogan of a new teacher usually is, "" Rip it out and begin again.**
If not that, she says, " Here, Til start you." While you twirl
yoiu* thumbs she knits on your needles, giving you advice, criti-
cizing the feel of your yam, the knobs of your needles, the size
and make of yoiu* bag and other personalities, such as the re-
cipient of the finished article (which last is your sworn secret).
Again I advise you to think well and caref uUy before choosing
a teacher. Note her disposition under adversity and the length
of her patience. Is it good for a full evening? Does she use
sarcasm? Do not be guided by her knitting ancestry, her Red
Cross connections or her finished article. Choose rather a
humbler but modem personality. When you have cast your
lot with her, cleave to her through in and out, over and imder,
casting and piu-ling, even to the triumphant day when you be-
gin to knit two, put one back.

The theory of knitting will engulf you sooner or later. The
Red Cross pamphlet is the bible of the subject, but hearsay sto-
ries handed down by word of mouth have the fascination and

Digitized by

Google

528 THE END OF A PERFECT ROW [July,

persistence of the old baUads. Two opposing theories will
come to your notice very soon: Whether 'tis better to knit
loosely or tightly.

The Red Cross is quoted as an authority for both. Grand-
mother, too, is on either side of the question. You must decide.
Probably you will be with the theorist who believes as you are
able to knit. What to knit is another mooted question. Scarfs
are needed. No, they are too awkward. Sweaters are worn. No,
they make the luggage too heavy and the soldiers wipe their
shoes with them and throw away as they go. Pulse warmers
are nice. Yes, but they can't be worn on dress parade. Hel-
mets? .Well, they are too hard to shape anyway. And so it
goes. You are bandied back and forth mentally between the
stories of what the Toronto Red Cross are doing, and those
your friend organizer tells. Knitting science is still in the mak-
ing and no positive groimd has been reached.

Winding the ball is a curious thing. Can you do it? Of
course; but Friend Teacher has something to say. How do you
start it? Do you wind on foiu* fingers and at the opportune
moment pull all but one out and that one left is the finger on
which you had the thread with which you begin to knit? If
done this way your ball will not unwind when you drop it.
Sour Grapes' answer to this is, " I never drop my ball anyway,
so why should I wind that way? " Casting on is the other pre-
liminary which you must conquer. Here again you must not
allow the inconstancy in your make-up to show itself. Do it
double or single over your thumb or with three fascinating,
complicated looking gestures as yoiu* teacher decides, not as
you saw a lady in the car and were sure you could, until you
began to try it.

Knitting bags ! What a snare is here for you. If you must
wander through the fancy goods departments of the stores,
see that you have less than a dollar in your purse and no charge
account. Memorize the phrase, " A bag is a receptacle for ob-
jects." If you can utilize pieces in the house make yourself an
artistic bag, but do not have a very large forty dollar object
which contains one small moth-eaten square of gray dangling
from your arm. Neither should you load the bag with books,
piu^se, fancy work, a magazine and yoiu* knitting. Be warned
in time. Between Scylla and Charybdis you must walk and
ride daily for the next few months.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE END OF A PERFECT ROW 529

The dawn of your knitting day approaches. When the
instructor watches with anxious eye the movement of your
hands the first rosy streaks adorn the east. As you wind the
thread about the needles you wonder how you are going to pull
a thread through on that slippery thing. But the impossible is
accomplished and your first stitch is safe and sound (and loose
or tight) on the new needle. When this miracle occurs three
times you look up to discover that the sun is flooding the east
with yellow light. Your day has begun.

Here the story takes on that sunlit hue of golden days. You
can actually knit! Your whole being thrills with power and
enthusiasm. The ball and bag become your constant com-
panions. You take it to work to show it off", to the card club
where you delay the game while you demonstrate your skill.
You glance at it surreptitiously in the street car and in one ven-
turesome mood, on an unfrequented cross line, you take a
stitch or two. Now you are started on the path of absorption
and concentration. Knitting has become your food and drink;
it nourishes you as completely as the finished article encloses
the man. Simdays, week days, midnight, crack of dawn,
street car, parlor, kitchen, all times and places are one. They
exist only for knitting.

What air castles you can build as you ply yoiu* needles!
This is only the start of a knitted world. Mentally you supply
Fort Sheridan, Rockf ord, Charlotte, France itself with warmth
and comfort. Tis simple; all it needs is " knit two, purl two."
Perhaps you can squeeze in enough time to make yourself an
over, sleeveless sweater to wear with that wide black belt you

have. Mrs. J 's little boy would look so cunning in a khaki

colored sweater if there is yam enough left when the big sol-
dier boy is supplied. How enthusiastically the Red Cross
will greet you when you bring in that fourth perfect scarf!
The directions for socks are not hard (to read) at all. Grand-
mother will turn the heel for you. Indeed, it is simple. Any
article can be made for the asking — or for the thinking.

While en route on the knitting express or local (as skill
shall decide) one sees such wonderful things from the window
of thought. Grandmother^s day is made more vivid: her
stories come back intensified. How good it feels to be doing
one's bit; to know that time otherwise wasted is turned to good
account. Then a tiu^n in the track brings gossipy personalitiea

▼OL. cvu. — 34

Digitized by

Google

530 THE END OF A PERFECT ROW [July,

to mind. How the R 's will 'miss Joe, their youngest, who

had never been away from home a night in his life till he left
for Rockf ord saying, '* Til not run home every week. YU see it

through.*' With this, is the story of how L- the big sister

chum and Joe sat up all night, his last at home, ** Just to talk

it over." Then there is Mrs. S who is making a service flag.

Two sons and five nephews have gone. The Rainbow Division

has landed in France safely. Mary W will not knit because

she says it would hurt her mother's feelings. To date this
mother has supplied all the 6ousins with complete outfits, be-
sides some for the Red Cross. E hasn't eaten any candy

since we declared war because she can get along without it.

Wonder why Charles W didn't claim exemption? How's

his widowed mother going to manage? The doctor's wife tells
how doctor's brother in California is going, leaving the old
couple alone to manage the orange grove. The only brother

in the S family had to go because of the number of aliens

in the ward. What about that alien law? The striking of the
clock, the stillness of the street outside warns you of the late-
ness of the hour and with regret you put aside knitting and pic-
tures till the morrow.

To be part, no matter how small, in the world's biggest
event; to feel the pulse of intense sympathy and understand-
ing stirring in one's blood; to make sacrifices so large to self,
so small in comparison with the sum total; to live for the good
that one can do, just a few minutes each day, is a privilege one
can't but crave. ShaU we not " Carry On, Carry On."

But to labor with zest, and to give of your best.
For the sweetness and joy of the giving;

To help folks along with a hand and a song.
Why, there's the real sunshing of living.

Digitized by

Google

flew JSooks*

THE TRUST PROBLEM. By J. W. Jenks and Walter E. Clark.
Fourth Edition. Enlarged and Completely Revised. Gar-
den City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. $2.00 net.
The first edition of The Trust Problem, by Professor Jenks,
published in 1900, contained two hundred and eighty-one pages.
The addition of fully one hundred per cent in the size of the
present volume is indicative, not merely of a more extensive
treatment of the subject, but also of the great mass of knowl-
edge and experience that has been put at the disposal of the
authors in the last seventeen years. The nature, methods,
activities and effects of the trusts, have become much clearer,
and it is much safer to draw general conclusions.

The principal topics treated are: competition; monopoly;
the methods of organizing, financing and managing the trusts;
their effects on prices, workingmen and politics; industrial
combinations in Europe; anti-trust legislation; and the attitude
of the Federal Coiu'ts. There are almost two hundred pages of
appendices, containing the tests of laws for the regulation of
trusts in America and in foreign coimtries, outline histories of
representative trusts, and suggested methods for the solution
of the trust problem.

The subjects of most general interest are probably the
effect of the trusts on prices and wages, and the proper atti-
tude of the law toward them. On the first of these, the book
is much more favorable to the trusts than is the average citi-
zen. From a detailed study of the great combinations in sugar,
whiskey, petroleum, tin plate, and iron and steel, the authors
reach the conclusion that on the whole these trusts have " not
increased prices to the consumer, although at certain times for
relatively short periods they have doubtless increased prices."
The further conclusion is set down that the combinations have
the power to lower prices and " at times " actually do lower
them. Balancing against each other the exceptional actions
described by the phrase " at times '* in the last two sentences,
we seem to be justified in stating that the trusts have, in the
long run and on the whole, neither raised nor lowered prices.

Digitized by

Google

532 NEW BOOKS [July,

but have kept for themselves all the benefits of their more
economical production.

For they have not, on the whole, shared these benefits with
the workers. The few instances cited by the authors to the
contrary happened either in the early days of some of the trusts
or since the outbreak of the Great War. Moreover, the opposi-
tion of some of the greatest of the trusts to trade unionism is
stated much too leniently. Labor union leaders and competent
students of the subject would probably agree that if the great
trusts had not been organized, the unions would have a con-
siderably larger membership and much greater power in our
large industries than they have at present.

With regard to legislation, the authors take their stand
definitely on the side of those who believe that the combina-
tions should be permitted to become complete monopolies if
they can reach this stage without using unfair methods toward
competitors. They would prevent extortion upon the public by
government fixing of maximuim prices. In taking this position
Messrs. Jenks and Clark are not in agreement with the econo-
mists who discussed this question at the 1913 meeting of the
American Economic Association. Nor are they justified by
their own presentation of the history of the trusts. They have
not shown that any concern needs to grow to monopolistic size
in order to secure all the economies and eflBiciency of combina-
tion and bigness. On the contrary, they admit that some of the
fairly large independent concerns have gained steadily upon
their mighty rivals during the last fifteen years, and that in
most instances the great combinations ** do not attain to any-
thing like a complete monopoly in any line of work unless they
have the protection of patents or some special natural monop-
oly advantage." Since this is the case, it would seem that regu-
lated competition would give the public all the advantages of
combination and bigness, that monopoly should not be per-
mitted, and that fair prices should be secured through com-
petition rather than governmental price fixing. The success
of the last-mentioned policy in the small area to which it has
been extended since our country entered the War, has not been
so great as to encourage the theory that it is an adequate sub-
stitute for enforced competition. Let the process of combina-
tion continue, but do not permit it to go so far as to give any
concern a substantial monopoly of any field.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 533

On the whole, the volume under review is the most useful
and informing work that we have on the trusts.

THE OLD TESTAMENT IN GREEK. Edited by Alan England

Brooke, D.D., and Norman McLean, M.A. Volume one.

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $6.50.

Oxford University has given us, in the Novum Testcunen-
turn of Wordsworth and White, the standard edition of the
Vulgate New Testament, recognized as such by the head of the
Conunittee on the Revision of the Vulgate. Cambridge
achieved almost equal excellence in Westcott and Hort's Greek
New Testament. The palm for the Septuagint was of old taken
by Oxford in the edition of Holmes and Parsons: now it passes
to Cambridge in this superb edition of Brooke and McLean.
This is a work bom to the purple, destined to supremacy. It
becomes instantly indispensable to all workers in its own field,
and will be found in all libraries of theological and biblical
lore.

The origin of this edition is found in the scheme submitted
by Dr. Scrivener in 1875 to the Syndics of the Cambridge Uni-
versity Press. The work was carried out in its first or shorter
form by the late Dr. Swete, who merely published the text of
Codex Vaticanus, supplying its lacunae from the Alexandrinus
or the next oldest manuscript, and giving variants of the five
most important uncials. The larger and more difficult edition,
which should contain all the evidence to serve as a basis for
the reconstruction of the text. Dr. Swete was unable to prepare;
in 1895 it was entrusted to the present editors, Messrs. Brooke
and McLean. The credit for the scheme and the principles
according to which the work has been carried out, is given by
them to the great textual critic of Cambridge, Dr. Hort.

The first volume comprises four parts, the first of which
was published in 1906 and the last in 1917. It contains only
the Octateuch (Genesis to Ruth) which is a little more than a
fourth of the Septuagint. The editors have been engaged on
this task twenty-two years. Unless more hands join with these
skilled workers, the prospect is not bright for the early com-
pletion of this edition, particularly in view of the increasing
evidence that has to be examined. The purpose of this work
is frequently misapprehended. It has not attempted to re-
copstruct the true text of the Septuagint, to weigh and decide

Digitized by

Google

534 NEW BOOKS [July.

upon the evidence for this text, but merely to present all the
evidence in convenient and compact form. The work of judg-
ment cannot begin until the evidence is collected; this is now
accomplished for the Octateuch. It is to be hoped that some
scholars will soon undertake to classify and sift this evidence
and give us a critical text, such as Westcott and Hort, and,
more recently, von Soden have done for the New Testament.
The text which forms the basis of this edition is practically the
same as Dr. Swete's, as noted above: the apparatus criticus is
far more elaborate. The variants are collected, first of all, from
all the uncial manuscripts, which number fourteen, besides a
few fragments and the recently discovered papyri; next, from
thirty-two cursive manuscripts, selected from the one hundred
and twenty and more which are extant; then from the prin-
cipal ancient versions. Old Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, the two
Coptic versions, and the Armenian; lastly, from ancient
writers, Philo, Josephus, and the Greek Fathers, particularly
Chrysostom and Theodoret. The lectionaries were not much
used.

Everything has been done in this edition that intelligent,
painstaking and exact scholarship could do. The publishers
have done their party nobly and the result is a monumental
work.

ESSENTIALS IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY. By D. C.
Knowlton, Ph.D., and S. B. Howe, A.M. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. $1.50.

This High School textbook follows very closely the out-
lines prepared for the History Teacher's Magazine a few years
ago by Dr. A. M. Wolfson of the Julia Richman High School,
New York City, in association with one of the authors of the
present volume. The authors claim that to understand con-
temporary Europe, one must understand the development of
modern methods of business and industry since the eighteenth
century, and the new conception of the relation of government
and the governed. Despite the disclaimer in the preface, the
authors have laid special stress upon the development of Eng-
land in the history of Europe, although they realize in some
measure the share of other continental States in the progress
of modem Europe.

The facts are fairly well presented, the different chapters

Digitized by

Google

1918,] NEW BOOKS 535

well arranged, and fairly complete bibliographies follow each
chapter. The authors seem to have little knowledge of Catho-
lic writers, a conmion fault in the average historical manual.

It is amusing to find England praised for the Toleration
Act of 1689, which positively excluded from toleration Jews and
Catholics; and one wearies of the constant glorification of the
modern age, which has done away with '* those innumerable
outworn devices of the past for curbing the liberty and devel-
opment of mankind upon the political, intellectual, moral, and
even economic side, which blocked all true progress.** Some
of these modern heroes are Voltaire, Rousseau, Joseph II. of
Austria, the leaders of the French Revolution, Cavour and
Garibaldi.

In discussing the causes of the present War, there is no
mention of the fight to make democracy safe for the world.
They state the causes to be the rivalry for world dominion, the
struggle for the Near East, for the mastery of the Pacific, and
for the conmierce of the world.

SELECTIONS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE FIRST
LORD ACTON. Edited with an introduction by John Ne-
ville Figgis, Litt.D., and Reginald Vere Lawrence, M.A.
Volume one. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $5.00 net.
Lord Acton was as rich in ideas, judgments, and general-
izations as he was in his knowledge of facts; a sound judgment
and an unspoiled heart, however, we cannot discover in him,
though none can deny his keenness of insight and his eagerness
to reach judgments based on accurate knowledge and high
moral principles. Acton was an extremist, as his best friends,
Dollinger and Lady Blennerhassett, occasionally reminded
him. He was far more severe towards the Catholic Church than
Dollinger himself. " We owe more severity to our own," he
says to Lady Blennerhassett, " and more generosity to our ad-
versaries" — a principle he certainly followed and that led him,
after he became soured in 1864, into habitual condemnation of
Catholic action in history. He degenerated, as he said of an-
other, into ** a most pungent and persistent fault-finder." He
was always looking for better bread than could be made of
wheat. He thought it inmioral to make any allowances for the
spirit of the times; he condemned inexorably all historical
characters who deviated from the path of rectitude which he

Digitized by

Google

536 NEW BOOKS [July,

traced for them. The holier a man's reputation, particularly
if he was a canonized saint, or the higher his rank in the
Church, the more terrible is Acton's condemnation. Yet there
is never a tone of regret, nothing to make one feel that the stem
censor would have rejoiced if the scandals he denounces had
not come to the Church of God. For nearly forty years he
found scarcely a good word, in public or private, to say of the
Church, communion with which he " held dearer than life."
Never was the old saying more true: summum jus, summa
injuria.

Much of Acton's correspondence has already been pub-
lished. This present selection is made from letters hitherto un-
published. It is really a torrent of stimulating ideas and views
and facts. His mind was full to overflowing, and found relief
in conversation and letter-writing. He was interested in every-
thing civilized, particularly in religion, morals and politics, but
his predominating interest was always moral; due allowance
made for his bias, he is always bracing. If only there was a
little saving Christian grace; if only he were lovable as well as
learned ! No man can read this volimie without learning much
and, above all, without feeling there are worlds of human
knowledge and wisdom still to be explored. It is a work for
the student and thinker, with notebook in hand. We call at-
tention particularly to a letter or, rather, a short treatise, in
French, on the character of the American Revolution and its
influence on French and European thought. It is deeper than
Acton's lecture on the American Revolution. There is much
of Newman here, to whom Acton is very unjust, much of Mon-
talembert, Dupanloup, Gladstone, DoUinger and many others;
most of all, there is Infallibility, the rock on which was split
Acton's zeal for the Church, if not his faith.

He began his career with ardent zeal for Catholicism and
for science. Both were dampened by his dissatisfaction with
the Papal policy. His best work was done before thirty-five,
and the career of the most gifted English historian was
wrecked. Catholicism and historical science in England would
have been vastly richer if Acton had been loyal, if he had
chosen Newman instead of Dollinger for his mentor.

Owing to the previous publication of Acton's letters, this
selection, welcome as a complement, is not very satisfactory in
itself. A second volume, selected from letters addressed to a

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 537

wider range of correspondents, ought to prove even more in-
teresting to general readers. Some day we may hope for all
that is valuable given in a better order.

BOOKS AND PERSONS: BEING COMMENTS ON A PAST EPOCH.

By Arnold Bennett. New York: Greorge H. Doran Co.

$2.00 net.

Even in a ** vacation mood *' (the state of mind advertised
on the book cover) Mr. Bennett gives us a good deal of the best
of himself. He understands how to indulge his diverting cuii-
mus to the very limit of the permissible, without seeming crude.
The method of attack is amusing: the author crouches unsus-
pected until the emission of a sharp vocal token of irritation in-
dicates that he has sighted his prey; emerges swiftly; pounces;
and all is over.

All this is merely to say that Mr. Bennett, like many less
famous persons, is at his most enjoyable when he is most de-
structive. These negative judgments bring out, incomparably,
his magnificent assurance; yet if one's aim were effectiveness,
one would rather have originated his strictures than (with cer-
tain exceptions) share his enthusiasms. He is very modem,
indeed. Holding, apparently, the widespread belief that a
collection of verifiable facts, if they are only dreary enough,
constitutes a faithful rendering of life, he flourishes a brief
for Tchehkoff and the ultra-realists. He puts ** the culture of
London " in its place in the matter of Neo-Impressionism. He
alone of the modems (one gathers) comprehended Swinburne.
And Mr. H. G. Wells is his idol. No. He is at his best when he
is saying things unforgettable, albeit not always kind, about
library censors, academies of letters, publishers. Or when he
rains down happy abuse alike on the public and its connatural
foe, the dilettanti of letters. Or in his matchless hunting down
of the style of Mr. A. C. Benson. Or yet again, as he harries
the heroines of Mrs. Humphrey Ward.

Even here, of course, Mr. Bennett's style and humor do
not always end the matter for us, as, for instance, when he
patronizes Henry James or regretfully excludes Mr. Chester-
ton from the assembly of first-class intellects on the score of his
dogmatism. There is, too, a certain coolness in the pronounce-
ment that " there is not one of the [the mid-Victorian novels]
that would not be tremendously improved by being cut down

Digitized by

Google

538 NEW BOOKS [July.

to about half." When one notes the number of pages in some
of the Five-Towns novels, that simple passage becomes elo-
quent of Mr. Bennett's modesty.

On the whole, when all tributes are paid, the conclusion
reached by the reader at the end of the essay ** The Professors **
recurs as the final impression on the matter in Books and
Persons. " The root of the matter,** we are told, is not in Chur-
ton Collins, not in Professor Saintsbury; and as for Professor
Raleigh, ** wherever the root of the matter may be, it is not in
Aim." Probably. But this unblinking certitude makes us
restive. After all, how does Mr. Bennett know? For is it not
just possible that the root of the matter is not in him, either?

HISTORICAL RECORDS AND STUDIES. Volume XI. New
York: The United States Catholic Historical Society.
The last volume of the Catholic Historical Society's publi-
cations contains a number of interesting papers: The Begin-
ning of Notre Dame, by Rev. M. J. Walsh. C.S.C.; The First
Mass in New York State, by Rev. T. J. Campbell, S.J.; Catholic
Signers of the Constitution, by Dr. J. G. Coyle; Catholic
Pioneers of Trenton, by J. J. Cleary; The Marcus Whitman
Myth, by L. A. Langie; Diplomatic Intercourse with the Pope,
by T. F. Meehan; The Oldest Known Illustration of South
American Indians, by R. SchuUer, and The Register of the
Clergy Laboring in the Archdiocese of New fork from Early
Missionary Times, by Rev. J. Wuest, C.SS.R., and Rev. A. Wil-
mer, O. M. Cap.

THE WINNING OF THE WAR. By Roland G. Usher, Ph.D.

New York: Harper & Brothers. $2.00 net.

Dr. Usher, who has already given us a thoughtful volume
on Pan Germanism, here makes a searching study into the
minds of the Teuton peoples as related to the World War, and
into the attitude of the Allied nations toward the conflict. He
calls his work ** an optimistic book,** but the optimism of it is
something on the order of the needle in the haystack, extremely
difficult to lay hands on. There are moments in the perusal of
Dr. Usher*s book when one wonders what is the use of fighting
the War at aU, either because it is irretrievably lost and there-
fore a hopeless case; or else, as other pages reveal, because it
is already won, and therefore ours without more ado. In the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 539

end, despite his efforts to make us look up and smile» Dr.
Usher leaves us just about where we began — ^with the very
key and foundation of the issue still seriously threatened by a
Germany bent on victory at any cost.

Many of the points made by Dr. Usher in this work are
well worth considering. A defensive, not an offensive, war
must be our cue at the present hour, he claims — until such time
as we may be really ready to take the offensive. In this he
would appear to be in agreement with no less an authority
than Foch himself. Again, it is not the armies of the Teutons
we have to fear in the future, but the temper of the Teutonic
peoples. He makes very clear the almost disastrous effects of
political gaming among the AlUed nations, yet shows how in-
evitable such things are in countries whose government is
based on ideals wholly different from those of the autocratic
Central Empires. And although he "falls down'* woefully
when it comes to touching on such matters as the true relations
of the Church to mankind, going so far as to state that the
part to be played by the Church in individual development
" should be indirect and negative rather than direct and posi-
tive; *' and even making an old-fashioned faux pas about the
Inquisition; nevertheless, he gives to the calumnies of anti-
Catholic bigotry concerning the Italian dibdcle an answer that
is irrefutable.

THE WORLD AND THE WATERS. By Edward F. Gareschi,
S.J. St. Louis: The Queen's Work Press. $1.00.
Father Garesch^ is a master of the lyric. His is the poetry
that truly fulfills that first function of aU poetry — to sing. From
the pages of this latest book of his verses one gets the feeling
that he sings as the bird sings, out of a full heart, out of a tune-
ful throat, simply because the song is there and it must out.
And he has the eye as well as the heart of the poet — the sight
that sees through the visible to the unseen; and that, in observ-
ing the visible, focuses the beautiful and draws it up to our
vision clothed with the iridescent coloring of fancy and imag-
ination. God and nature are this poet's chief themes; nature
bespeaking God; and God seen not in, but through nature. Yet
he makes songs, too, of The World of Books; and In City
Streets likewise he finds his vision and his voice. Fancy is
especially his gift — a rare gift, even among the major poets: it

Digitized by

Google

540 NEW BOOKS [July,

is an indefinable something that plays like light through the
lines of much of his poetry. It will be hard to find for many
a day a finer sonnet than his Summer Rain; while his 5im-
Browned with Toil (already familiar to readers of this maga-
zine, where it originaUy appeared) is a notable example of
noble and sustained blank verse.

MY SHIP AND OTHER VERSES. By Edmund Leamy. With a

Foreword by Katharine Tynan. New York: John Lane

Co. $1.00.

This volume, from the son of the older Irish author and
patriot, Edmund Leamy, is young and, perhaps, uneven, but
full of promise and fuU also of that indefinable something
caUed charm. Mr. Leamy is no lover of " free verse " or other
modernistic vagaries: but he has versatility — ^not always the
gift of the young poet! And with his fondness for the older
melodies and rich diction, there is blended a glamour of the
East to make the dreams still more opulent. There are many
delightful Irish verses in his collection, and there is one bit of
cockney — East of Suez — ^worthy to stand beside the Barrack
Room Ballads. But for the most part, the poems are sheer
romance, naked and unashamed.

Nothing could be more characteristic than one which Mr.
Leamy calls An Invitation:

Ah, fly with me to happiness, through the heart of the merry May,
And follow me down the friendly road that lies at the end o* day.
And sing with me a simple tune in a mystical, magic tongue.
For then we will come to Tir-na-noge if only our hearts are young!

It would seem part of the poet's perennial mission to hold
fast for us this precious youthf ulness.

MYSTICISM AND LOGIC. By Bertrand RusseU, M.A., F.R.S.

New York : Longmans, Green & Co. $2.50 net.

This volume of philosophical papers takes its title from the
opening essay and gives a wrong impression of the variety of
topics discussed in its pages. Like everything that comes from
the pen of Mr. Russell, this book is brilliantly written, but we
candidly confess that after a careful perusal of it we are un-
able to understand his philosophic outlook. It abounds in
clever criticism of the views of great thinkers from the days of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 541

Plato and Aristotle to our own time; but the trend of it all is
destructive rather than constructive.

The essay on "Mysticism and Logic** is very able —
but very unsatisfying. The same must be said of " The Study
of Mathematics ^ and " Mathematics and the Metaphysicians.**
The " Ultimate Constituents of Matter ** does not throw much
light on that venerable problem, and his notion of Causality
we cannot accept at aU.

RECOLLECTIONS. By John Viscount Morley. Two volumes.

New York: The MacmiOan Co. $7.50.

The recollections of a man so gifted and so fortunately
placed could not fail to be fascinating. They sparkle with the
magic of great names. They glow with the light of great move-
ments and events. They give the reader the sensation of view-
ing the history of the latter days from the inside, although they
stop just before the event whose telling could interest us most
of all, England's entry into the War, the decision of the Asquith
cabinet which caused Morley's resignation.

Strange as it may seem, however, the volumes contribute
relatively little to history. Light abounds, but facts are rare.
Revelations are few, there is but little smaU talk, and hardly a
" good story ** in all the nearly eight hundred pages. If Morley
has any fun or humor in him, he does not suffer it to mingle
laughter with the tone of his dignified pages. His portraits are
appreciations, not pictures. He does not give rein to memory.
He schooled himself in the editor's chair and never wandered
abroad with the reporter; his recollections are often little more
than pegs for comments, and rarely give the vivid sketches that
history delights in. Yet they never lack interest, for all is given
with the reflectiveness and serenity of a man who has lived
long and thought deeply. It is Morley whom they reveal and
the story-teller is more interesting even than his story. We
form the image of a man of high seriousness and keen insight,
of honesty and f orcef ulness, or doggedness, at least. He misses
greatness, though narrowly. Had he the touch of genius, he
would have been the leader of the Liberals after Gladstone, and
Home Rule would have carried.

His writings lack warmth and imagination. He has nothing
of the poet and little of the prophet. A very independent
thinker, he has originated nothing; he has influenced many.

Digitized by

Google

542 NEW BOOKS [July,

he has spread light — and darkness; he has formed no school.
He has all that industry, reflection and experience can bring a
man; but no man can add to his intellectual stature, and John
Morley was not born to be tall, but to be stocky.

No portions of this work are more admirable than those
that relate to Ireland and to Parnell. Lord Morley was the
first English statesman to understand the Home Rule question.
Here Gladstone was Morley's disciple; all Englishmen, too,
have gone to his school, tardy scholars though they be. There
is the wisdom of a true statesman in these pages, yet the tragedy
of it aU is that Morley himself unwillingly contributed to the
political ruin of Parnell and the wreck of Home Rule. Both
could have been averted, it appears, by a more resourceful
manager. A sense of doom over-shadows the whole story.
Morley's devotion to Home Rule was the offspring of political
judgment and desire to see justice done. Love of Ireland had
little influence in his course.

The religious problem is a continual obsession for Lord
Morley, as it is for nearly all thoughtful unbelievers. It will
not away. It casts a deep shadow over these Recollections.
There is no joy in them, nothing better than a Stoic resolve
to make the best of a sad lot. Morley lost his faith in early life.
He was reared in a stern evangelicalism by a father who hated
Puseyism and Grerman infidelity, and admired the Unitarian
Channing. Of the mother no mention is made. It is singular,
by the way, that there is an almost cloistral exclusion of women
from these pages. Morley went to Oxford when the tide of
liberal reaction against Tractarianism was running strong. He
succumbed easily, apparently without a struggle and without
a regret. Religion, to him, had meant only restriction and had
kindled no love of Christ or of God. He made no study of it
until it was extinguished in his soul and had become an in-
tellectual curiosity. He drifted into journalism, chose his
friends among agnostics and was proud to fight in the front
ranks of free thought. He was outspoken and no compromiser.
After he entered political life, he eschewed religious contro-
versy. His opinions have softened, but there has been no radi-
cal change. To him, more than to anyone else, is due the posi-
tion of respectability that has been won or is gradually being
won for Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. Very kind to the
virtues, very blind to the faults of these worthies, he has been a

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 543

stem critic of Christianity, and particularly of the Catholic
Church, although he is fascinated by her historic greatness. Re-
ligion itself is a sealed book to him : herein lies the secret of the
many perverse and onesided judgments in a man disposed to
be fair.

Was his strenuous and almost life-long battle against
religion a folly after all? It is the last question he asks him-
self and to which, apparently, he intends one day to give an
answer. To quote his words: "A painful interrogatory, I
must confess, emerges. Has not your school — the Darwins,
Spencers, Renans and the rest — ^held the civilized world, both
old and new alike, European and transatlantic, in the hollow
of their hand for two long generations past? Is it quite clear
that their influence has been so much more potent than the
gospel of the various churches? Circumspice." Yes, we look
around, and we answer that unfortunately it has been more
potent that the Gospel: it has brought hell upon earth.

JOHN KEATS. His life and Poetry: His Friends, Critics and

After-Fame. By Sidney Colvin. Illustrated. New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons. $4.50 net.

It is no indulgence in hyperbole to acclaim the appearance
of the present work as a positive event. Here, at last, we have
in full detail the poignant and long misunderstood story of
one of the chief glories of English literature, and the ghost has
now been laid, it is to be hoped never to rise again, of the per-
nicious legend which pictured Keats as an effeminate weakling
whose life " was snuffed out by an article." For in these pages
written with loving care by a critic who has given long years
of patient study and research to his subject and who has made
masterly use of aU the available material, both written and
documentary, whether in England or America, bearing upon it,
we have in addition to a finely discriminating appraisal of the
poet, an authentic presentment of the man, a man whose most
outstanding characteristic was no less a virtue than masculine
courage.

Keats in fact, as the present biographer makes plain, was
notorious even in his school days for his pluck and pugnacity,
and it was a quality he never lost, as the Homeric fight with
the butcher boy a year or two before his death bears witness.
But courage was not his only noble trait, and Sir Sidney has

Digitized by

Google

544 NEW BOOKS [July,

duly emphasized his modesty, his warm-heartedness, his filial
and fraternal affection, his loyalty to his given word, his un-
failing and, for him, too liberal generosity to impecunious
friends. Nor are the shadows omitted — ^his tendency to lux-
uriousness, his indecision and variability, and especiaUy that
morbidity of temperament which under the combined stress
of brutal critical treatment and public neglect, fatal disease
and thwarted love, wrung from him in his last days those cries
of fretfulness and passion that have unfortunately represented
his character for so many years in the general mind.

In dealing with Keats' poetry the author of course has
brought to bear aU the weight of his acknowledged critical
acumen and authority. He takes up the chief individual
poems, showing what influences went to their making and
the circumstances under which they were written; and par-
ticularly in the case of Endymion, he throws such light on its
underlying scheme and symbolism as to make it a much more
interesting and readable work than it is conmionly considered.
He treats of the poef s faults both spiritual and technical, and
goes fully into Keats' relations to his Elizabethan masters and
his Victorian followers.

GREAT WIVES AND MOTHERS. By Rev. Hugh Francis Blunt.

New York: Devin-Adair Co. $2.00 net.

This long series of biographical sketches, extending from
the early days of the Church up to the present, is full of practi-
cal information and inspiration. The tale of these noble lives,
one following another, is an impressive thing to a Catholic,
and is calculated to bring home to him the truth of Father
Blunfs statement: *' One of the greatest glories of the Church
is her noble womanhood.'* When a book of this sort reveals
to a reader how much that is picturesque and in the truest
sense romantic, is woven into the lives of some of the Church's
heroines, he is disposed to wonder that Catholic biographers
have worked a rich vein so little.

SACERDOTAL SAFEGUARDS. By Arthur Barry O'Neill, Notre

Dame, Indiana: The University Press. $1.25.

Father O'Neill has found another alliterative title for his

third series of essays written for and about priests, and those

who have already found pleasure and profit in Priestly Prac-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 545

tice and Clerical Colloquies will be glad to know that Sacer-
dotal Safeguards is in no way unworthy of its predecessors.
The previous volumes, especiaUy the first, aimed primarily
at the priesfs personal sanctification; the choice of topics in
this present one has faUen rather upon the priest's relations
with the world in which he lives. Such chapter-headings as
these speak for themselves: **The Priest and the School/'
" The Priest and Non-Catholics,'* " The Priest's Housekeeper,"
" The Priest as Traveler," " The Priest and Social Problems,"
— this last is as practical as it is timely. Then there is a chap-
ter on *' Priestly Mortification " in general, and others in more
specific forms, as ** Fraternal Charity," mortification of the
tongue, and ^ The Priest's Table," mortification of the palate.
The American priest will be grateful to Father O'Neill for
these essays. As he reads he will forget that he reads, and
think rather that he listens to a kindly, good-humored but
shrewd mentor, who deals with counsel rather than with pre-
cept, and whose suggestions, ascetic in foimdation, however
piquant they may be in tone, are eminently practical and the
fruit of ripe experience.

PORTUGUESE PORTRAITS. By A. F. G. BeU. New York:

Longmans, Green & Co. $1.75.

Portugal's presence in the War as one of our Allies is
likely to awaken interest in her history and language, so greatly
neglected by English and American scholars. The Portuguese
language is the most Latin of aU the Latin tongues, '*with a clas-
sic solemnity which distinguishes it from aU other living lan-
guages; " Portugal's isolated geographical position has kept it
aloof from outside influences.

The book presents sketches of seven of the greatest men of
Portuguese history in her ** Golden Age," in the fourteenth,
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Of them Prince Henry the
navigator, Albuquerque, Vasco da Gama and Joao de Castro
were not only fearless explorers but truly great men.

Alfonso de Albuquerque, Governor of India, could have
built up a permanent Portuguese Empire, but his hands were
tied by jealous critics at home. Lisbon regarded India merely
as a mine to be exploited; Albuquerque was given a few ships,
often so rotten that they sank of sheer old age, and but one
thousand two hundred men poorly armed, with which to main-

TOL. OVti . 3 5

Digitized by

Google

546 NEW BOOKS [July.

tain and beat into shape the immense empire his coimtry de-
sired to establish in India. A powerful character, warrior and
statesman, he would have been equal to his task, had not the
court mistrusted and intrigued against him. So his great work
failed, and with him Portugal's vision of empire.

The interesting portrait of Dom Joao de Castro, one of
Albuquerque's successors as Viceroy of India, depicts him
a statesman of the first class and a quaint old scholar, living
among Oriental splendor, yet ever longing for his native woods,
and to devote himself to the study of philosophy in his beloved
Portuguese villa. With treasures at his command, the calls
upon him were so constant, he was left, as he laments, ** with-
out the means to buy me even a hen! " He died in the arms
of his friend, St. Francis Xavier, in 1548.

LtlTHER ON THE EVE OP HIS REVOLT. By Very Rev. M. J.
Lagrange, O.P. New York: The Cathedral Library Asso-
ciation. 60 cents.

Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1515-
1516) was first given to the world a few years ago by John
Picker, who discovered the original in the Royal Library of
Berlin and a copy in the Vatican Library at Rome. It was used
most extensively by Father Denifle in his well-known work
that caused such intense excitement in Germany, Luther and
Lutheranism. The Commentary is valuable because it con-
tains the essence of all the errors Luther was afterwards to
profess, and because it shows his utter ignorance of the great
Scholastics, including St. Thomas.

Father Lagrange thus states the purpose of his treatise:
" We propose to consider Luther's Commentary merely as an
exegetical work, restricting ourselves to an examination of his
method, and reserving until later any formal discussion of the
new doctrines; secondly, to study the intellectual and moral
dispositions of Luther, insofar as they may be gathered from
his work on this Epistle to the Romans; thirdly, to indicate the
new doctrine which the Wittenberg professor dogmaticaUy
gave as the genuine teaching of St. Paul, and to discuss its real
relation to that teaching."

The new idea of the Commentary is the identification of
concupiscence with sin, contrary to the plain teaching of the
Apostle. Another doctrine he falsely ascribes to St. Paul is that

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 547

the jiistified man lives in sin. It is impossible, says Luther, to
obtain righteousness; one must admit that he is powerless,
confess that he lives in sin, and by this avowal solicit men^.
This is the very antithesis of St. Paul's teaching, as Father La-
grange well shows. Luther's justification by faith is also set
forth in the Commentary, and the orthodox St. Bernard is
travestied to prove Luther's heresy.

THE STRAIGHT RELIGION. By Father Benedict, O.SS.S. New

York: Benziger Brothers. $1.50 net.

Father Benedict here presents his readers with a simple and
popular exposition of the dogmatic teaching of the Church. He
brings out clearly the inter-relation of dogma with dogma,
and answers in a brief and kindly manner the chief difficul-
ties of the average non-Catholic. The work is well arranged,
the proofs ably presented, and the tone throughout is utterly
devoid of the bitterness of controversy. Unfortunately the
style of the author lacks the grace and distinction which would
have won for it a wider hearing.

OUTWITTING THE HUN. By Lieut. Pat O'Brien, R.F.C. New

York : Harper & Brothers. $1.50 net.

The zest and swing of youth is in every page of this thor-
oughly delightful book. Patrick Alva O'Brien, of Monence, Illi-
nois, or plain '' Pat " as he calls himself, impatient to get into
the fighting ranks in the World War, went to Canada last year
and enlisted in the Royal Fljring Corps. Within the eight
months that followed his enlistment and his return to his
home in America, he underwent such a series of adventures
and escapes as the most daring fictionist would hesitate to
invent to make a thrilling tale. Shot down behind the German
lines, he was taken prisoner by the enemy, but leaping from a
moving train he made his escape, and, then, for three weeks,
hiding by daylight and crawling through the dark of night, he
got out of (jermany, into Luxemburg, crossed to Belgium, and
finally emerged to freedom across the Dutch frontier. In sim-
ple and unpretentious, but nevertheless vivid English, the
young adventurer describes his bodily hardships, his mental
sufferings, through this perilous journey, and he relates many
a hairbreadth experience with a wit and a good humor that is
thoroughly American. There is a fine manly spirit breathing

Digitized by

Google

548 NEW BOOKS [July,

through the whole story, and a frank and homely regard for
the sfanple things of the heart — of prayer and God's protection
and "a loving old mother"— that makes the author's per-
sonality shine through its every page. No one could resist Pat
O'Brien; even a glance at the laughing eyes that look out from
his pictures, captivates; and no one could read this story with-
out pleasure and a refreshing thrill that makes the world, de-
spite its terrors and its wars, seems after all a goodly place.

BOY WOODBURN. By Alfred OUvant. Garden City, New

York: Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.40 net.

An original note is struck in this refreshing and enjoyable
story of the Sussex Downs. The heroine, called ** Boy," is the
child of a typical old horse-trainer, married late in life to
the daughter of a dissenting rural preacher who brought into
the atmosphere of the stables at Putnams a distinct flavor of
the pulpit and the Sunday-school. The author reveals himself
an artist in his management of this odd arrangement of affairs.
"Mar" Woodbum remains a consistent living character
despite the incongruity of her position; so does old Mat; and
*'Boy" emerges on the scene a striking combination of the
two. As Mr. Olivant portrays her, the girl is a delightful mix-
ture of glorious outdoor horse-racing abandon and severe
Bible-class uprightness. She makes the two go together with
a vigor and sincerity that is deliciously convincing and not
without its humorous side. Indeed, the book is shot through
with refreshing humor.

This story has already enjoyed enormous popularity in
England. It will undoubtedly repeat that success in America
— assuredly so, if once our soldier boys are given a taste of it.
No better yarn could be found to send to our boys ''over
there," or at work in their camps at home, than ** Boy Wood-
bum."

DONALD THOMPSON IN RUSSIA. New York: The Century

Co. $2.00.

A news photographer sees events as pictures. He is not
concerned with causes or ultimate effects. He sees the living,
active, riotous, eventful present; and from that standpoint
anything he contributes is valuable. Donald Thompson is a
news photographer — ^perhaps the best known in the world to-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 549

day — and he was in Russia during the Revolution. He took
numberless pictures there of what went on, and in these vivid
letters tells of the experiences he encountered in his work. So
it is no egotism which makes him call his book, Donald
Thompson in Russia, for that is exactly what it is. What caused
the Revolution or what might follow, does not bother him. He
is part of the mob and pictures it in language vivid, journalese,
but eminently readable.

From the accounts of his mingling with the mobs on those
Petrograd streets and around the four hundred speaking plat-
forms, we find that the majority of the people had not the
slightest idea what they were revolting for. They were out to
loot and destroy, a people drunken with license to whom pa-
triotism or ideals could not appeal.

But even more sinister is the evidence he gives, in text and
pictures, of German intrigue within the Russian army, in the
government councils and in public administration. It would
seem that both the bureaucracy and the national ideal col-
lapsed because of this poisonous element. National faith fell
when the nation was sufficiently honeycombed with German
money. That is the composite view one gets from this enter-
prising American's account.

IN THE NIGHT. By R. Gorell Barnes. New York: Longmans,

Green & Co. $1.25 net.

This detective story deals with the mysterious midnight
killing of an elderly man, Sir Roger Penderton, in his own
home. Suspicion points to several of the characters in turn,
only to be in turn refuted and baffled. The book is hardly to be
classed among the best of its kind, but it is readable, for the
mystery is well sustained throughout its very moderate length,
and the solution, when it comes, is a surprise for the reader as
well as for most of the people in the story, including the de-
tective.

CALVARY ALLEY. By Alice Hegan Rice. New York: The Gen-

tury Co. $1.35 net.

Calvary Alley is the name given to a squalid, disorderly
row of tenements and saloons lying under the shadow of a
beautiful, dignified cathedral. Mrs. Rice has shown some in-
genuity in her manipulation of the story to establish a connec-

Digitized by

Google

550 NEW BOOKS [July,

tion between some of the aristocratic congregation and some
of the denizens of the alley. The heroine, Nance Molloy, is of
the latter. Although her intelligence and ambition give her
a checkered career, and a variety of opportunities, the alley
and its associations retain their hold upon her, and, in the
end, her affections are given to the young workman who was
her neighbor in childhood. The book can scarcely be con-
sidered a picture of real life, but it is readable, full of incident,
and will probably score another popular success for its author.

SIHBA. By Stewart Edward White. Garden City, New York:

Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.40 net.

In this tale of African romance and adventure, the author
of The Blazed Trail and The Leopard Woman shows that he
has lost none of his power to hold a reader. Simba, the Swa-
hili word for ** lion," is the name given the small son of one
of the chiefs by a white ivory-trader, the famous Eingczi, be-
cause of his infant bravery in the presence of the monarch of
beasts. The name and quality alike stay by the young native,
whose adventures are told in a series of more or less closely
connected stories. Of course one unfamiliar with Mr. White's
territory, is unable to judge of his fidelity to facts. But the
easy style is so attractive, and the incidents have such an air
of realism, that the final verdict is sure to be, ** if these are not
facts, they ought to be.**

THE TREE OP HEAVEN. By May Smdair. New York: The

Macmillan Co. $1.60.

This war novel has every drawback which the newest con-
ception of realistic fiction imposes, and it bears, besides, the
mark of one of Miss Sinclair's grave individual faults. But it
is a masterpiece, for all of that. Plotless, un-unified, discur-
sive, even marred at times by a ** candor ** as gratuitous artisti-
cally as it is ugly. The Tree of Heaven still rises serenely clear
of its own shortcomings, to take its place very little, if any, be-
low the best work of its author.

Readers of Miss Sinclair have winced and wondered be-
fore this at her curious preoccupation with, or outspokenness
with regard to, certain of the accidents of existence on which
it is not profitable to linger. To say so is merely to repeat an
old criticism. It is a pity it should continue to be elicited. Yet,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 551

happily, it is not that impression which lingers. The Tree of
Heaven is too positively fine for that. It is impossible that one
should not carry away a lesson poignant and noble from one's
reading of how the War came to a certain English family of
Harrisons, and how one by one the modern sons and the more-
than-modem daughter responded to the call for sacrifice.

THE COMRADE IN WHITE. By W. H. Leathem. New York:
Fleming H. Revell Co. 50 cents.

A strange and interesting feature of the War has been
'the indefinite but constantly recurring rumors of the visible
presence of Christ upon the battle front, giving courage to
the soldier in the fulfillment of his duty, supporting and com-
forting the wounded and the dying. The four short stories
comprised in this little volume embody this idea, representing
the ** Conu'ade in White " moving among His brethren to help
and console, both in the actual scenes of the conflict and in the
home country where its reactions have brought great need of
Him. The little tales are well told, in simple and touching
form, and contain nothing out of harmony with the most sen-
^tive reverence.

STORIES THE IROQUOIS TELL THEIR CHILDREN. By " Yeh

Sen Nob Wehs" (Mabel Powers). New York: American

Book Co. 64 cents.

Welcomed to the Lodges of the Senecas, the Onondagas,
the Tuscaroras, the Oneidas, Cayugas and Mohawks by their
chiefs. Miss Powers has been bidden to tell these Indian stories
to the Pale Faces.

These wonder stories, nature stories, fairy stories show
that children are much the same all the world over. The In-
dian Fox, we are glad to see, is not so universally successful
as Reynard, but to learn this and many another secret, chil-
dren must consult " Yeh Sen Nob Webs," alias Mabel Powers.

PRIEST OP THE IDEAL. By Stephen Graham. New York:

The Macmillan Co. $1.60.

Mr. Graham's first venture in fiction can only by cour-
tesy be called a novel. It is a conglomerate production, hard
to classify. A tenuous thread of continuity is provided in the
earlier chapters which tell of the fantastic plan of an Amer-

Digitized by

Google

552 NEW BOOKS [July,

ican millionaire to buy some portable centres of tradition and
take them back to his native land. Hampden, the " priest of
the ideal," accompanies him on the quest, saying that what-
ever proves impossible to buy, must constitute Great Britain's
real spiritual treasure of today, which is what he, Hampden^
is seeking. The book then becomes sometimes hagiography,
sometimes early Church history, sometimes a mere guide-
book, sympathetically written. It is interspersed with lay-
sermons by Hampden, and with many conversations con-
cerning religion, sociology and the War. Though some things
that are said grate upon Catholic ears, there is much thought
on the high plane characteristic of Mr. Graham; but the book
as a whole is so nebulous and abruptly discursive that reading
it, is more toil than joy.

GARDEN STEPS: A MANUAL FOR THE AMATEUR IN VEGE-
TABLE GARDENING. By Ernest Cobb. New York: Silver
Burdett Co. 60 cents.

These Garden Steps are made so simple and tempting as
to lead on and encourage even the most timid. While the
author does not propose to enable the novice ** to sit beneath
his own vine and fig tree," he does aim at helping the begin-
ner to grow his own beans, potatoes, beets, cabbages, com,
tomatoes, etc. He foresees and cautions the unwary against
every possibility, and supplements with directions for canning
or drying the fruits of their industry.

ANCIENT LAW. Everyman's Library. By Su: Henry Maine.

New York: E. P. Button & Co. 60 cents net.

This well-known work on ancient law was first published
fifty-seven years ago, and it is now introduced to the public
by a neat and scholarly essay from the pen of Professor J. H.
Morgan, as No. 734 of Everyman's Library. A work that has
been regarded as a classic on the subject of ancient law for
over half a century needs no further commendation.

THE fourth of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Series published by
the Central Bureau of the G. R. C. Central Society, is entitled
In Hoc Signo Vinces. This " Message of the Cross," by Rev.
Albert Muntsch, S.J., will go straight to the heart of the fighter,
with its timely exhortation to Faith, Hope and Love, in the
conscientious performance of duty.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 553

SCHOOL PUBUCATIONS.

The American Book Company, New York, offers a nmnber of
School Manuals. Among them we note:

Around the World with the Children, by Frank G. Carpenter. (60
cents.) Those acquainted with Carpenter's Geographical Readers, or
his Commerce and Industry Readers will need no word of recommen-
dation for this delightful addition to the series. The title explains it-
self. Children evenrwhere — their homes, their clothing, their schools,
their games, food, manners and customs, are depicted in this imaginary
tour around the world.

Elementary Economic Geography, by Charles Redway Dyer,
F.R.G.S. ($1.28.) Commercial Creography has here been translated
into a study '* of the ways in which different peoples in different re-
gions get a living," which is after all bringing it out of the dry and the
abstract, into the warm and the living. As this is meant for an Elemen-
tary textbook, three-fourths of it is devoted to the consideration of the
United States and her possessions, to which is added a chapter on its
foreign commerce. As a supplementary reader it wiU be found both
suggestive and interesting, but it seems rather difficult as a textbook for
the grammar grades.

To the series of Eclectic English Classics has been added — Barkers
Speeches at Bristol, edited by Edward Bergin, S.J. (20 cents.) These
speeches are shorter, simpler, more imitable, than Burke's magnificent
effort, On Conciliation, and present the best possible model in our lan-
guage for present political needs.

Chemistry in the Home, by Henry I. Weed, B.Sc. ($1.20), is clear,
simple, practical. The summaries are especially useful and valuable
and the illustrations together with the manual for laboratory work (44
cents) will aid the student and save him much valuable time.

An Introduction to Science, by Bertha M. Clay, Ph.D. ($1.20), aims
at too much, and so cannot more than touch on many subjects. The book
will prove useful to pupils seeking information for practical purposes
rather than for examination work.

Community Arithmetic, by Brenelle Hunt. (60 cents.) The object
of this book seems to be that the pupil should practise business while
studying the theory thereof. For he is launched at once into the opera-
tions of reckoning, changemaking, buying and selling, bookkeeping, etc.
The book presents great variety of matter, but too few problems. Daily
work may be expected to supply for this lack.

Everyday English Composition, by Emma Miller Bolenius (80
cents), certainly justifies its title. It will be found extremely useful in
schools where the pupils cannot be burdened with a large number of
books or which could not be assimilated by them if possessed. The
author suggests " that the English classroom should be a combination
of laboratory, shop, club, debating room and newspaper-office." The
atmosphere of the book suggests a place of business, and lacks the re-
pose of literature.

Digitized by

Google

554 NEW BOOKS [July,

Le Premier Livre, by Albert A. M6ras, PhJ). (64 cents) , is a re-
print of a very satisfactory Frencb book — a grammar and reader com-
bined. The work has been tested and has stood the proof.

Elementary Spanish Grammar, by A. M. Espinosa, PhJ>.» and G.
Allen. ($1.24.) The study of Spanish promises to become more neces-
sary in our commercial connections with South America. The authors
of this course in order to secure the all-round usefulness of the work
have collaborated in its preparation, and have succeeded in produc-
ing one of the best courses we have so far met with, for the purpose de-
signed.

^eu; First Spanish Book, by James H. Worman. (48 cents.) This
is a new edition of a well-known Spanish primer which has been
widely used in classes for the study of the language. The recent re-
vision adds new sentences and contains a list of classroom expressions
necessary in the " direct method " of teaching, in which no word of
English is used. The book consists of material very similar to that
found in our own first readers, and is made up of conversations on
familiar topics.

A Greek Grammar for Schools and Colleges, by Professor Herbert
Weir Smyth, Ph.D. ($1.50), has been tested by actual use in class
and can be recommended as a suitable textbook for college use. The
syntax is treated with great freshness and clearness. It is, however,
scarcely suited for pupils making their first acquaintance with the lan-
guage, as it is too full and advanced. Those who are thinking of intro-
ducing a new textbook into their classes would do well to give this
grammer a trial. It is beautifully printed and well-bound — no small
advantage in a class-book.

Peter Reilly, of Philadelphia, offers Hossfeld's New Method of
Learning the Italian Language, and Hossf eld's Conjugation of Italian
Verbs, by A. Rota. ($1.25.) The explanations of the grammatical por-
tions of these books, exercises, and reading lessons are so well arranged
and carefully connected, that they are well calculated to facilitate the
rapid acquisition of the Italian language.

We also call to the attention of our Catholic Schools The Catholic
Edition of the Progressive Music Series, published by Silver, Burdett .
& Co., New York.

Digitized by

Google

I^ecent iBvents,

The third attempt of the enemy to break
Progress of the War. through the Allies' line began on May 27th.

It was a greater surprise for the Allies
than either of the two former attempts and was more success-
ful, meeting as it did with less opposition. The place chosen
by the enemy was the celebrated Chemin-des-Dames. As this
was by natural formation one of the strongest parts of the
Allies' line, it was held by only seven divisions of troops, sent
there to rest after long battling in other parts. So great was the
enemy's success that by the fifth day he reached the Marne, a
distance of thirty miles from his starting point, and came with-
in forty-five miles of Paris, claiming to have taken 45,000 pris-
oners and many guns. He did not succeed in crossing the river.
His attempt to do so was prevented in large degree by Ameri-
can troops, who won great glory by the successful resistance
which they offered. By the twelfth day the further advance
of the enemy towards Paris, which now became his goal,
was stopped. Without warning and with only one day's in-
termission a new drive was started along the River Oise. Con-
siderable advances were made in this fourth attempt to dis-
locate the Allies' line. Greater success attended the efforts of
the Allies than in any one of the former attempts to resist the
enemy, and within five days the Germans were brought to a
standstill. It is not, however, expected that the enemy will re-
linquish his purpose of securing a decisive victory. In fact
there are many who think that all the attempts so far made,
curious and powerful though they have been, are but prelimi-
naries to the grand attack which Ludendorff contemplates, and
for which he is thought to have sufficient reserves. So far he
has succeeded in dislocating for some distance the Allies' lines,
which they too confidently looked upon as impregnable. These
have proved far from impregnable, and the way is open now
for the new kind of warfare — the warfare of movement —
which will characterize the days to come.

A question which has puzzled many, is that of the reserves
of the Allies. It has been said that General Foch has a large

Digitized by

Google

556 RECENT EVENTS [July,

reserve army with which he is ready to strike, and some even
have expected liim to make a great comiter-attack. The
progress of events, however, has rendered this doubtful. Some
experts even question the existence of any reserves, and attrib-
ute the reverses of the French and the British to the fact that
they have to denude one part of their line in order to succor the
attacked part. The enemy thereupon directs his attack upon
the weakened part. This process, in the opinion of these critics,
may go on indefinitely. This seems to be a pessimistic view,
and the truth probably lies between the two extremes. That is
to say that while there is no army of reserves, the Generalis-
simo is now able by the unity of command which belongs to
him and by the gradual increase of forces which is taking
place, largely from this coimtry, to strengthen the whole of his
lines.

Nothing has been more satisfactory than the success which
has been achieved, even at this early date, by the troops of our
own country. They have gained several victories, local in-
deed, over the enemy and there is evidence that he has begun to
look upon them as a serious factor with which he has to deal.
Our troops are now stationed at no fewer than six places, one of
which extends over some fifty miles. A good omen that they
will reach Berlin is f oimd in the fact that American troops are
now in German territory, holding a part of that line which
France has held since the beginning of the war.

The long expected attack on Italy by the Austrians has
just begun. Colossal efforts it is said have been made to make
this attack successful, as, in the judgment of many, upon it
depends the fate of the Austrian Empire. Failure would re-
sult in bringing to a crisis the internal troubles which threaten
its very existence. It is too soon to predict the result; but so
far it is said to have been the greatest failure that has been met
with in any offensive operation undertaken on a similar scale.
At certain points the Italians seem to have been driven back;
at most of these, however, they have retrieved their losses. On
the third day, the battle is still being carried on with undimin-
ished intensity. The attack so far has been made by the Aus-
trians on the front of the ItaUans. What is feared, however, is
that the great attempt will be made to outflank them. The
spirit not only of the troops but of the Italian people is full of
confidence; the churches are filled with worshippers praying

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 557

that the threatened danger of the invasion of the barbarians,
who have shown themselves not one whit less willing to de-
stroy churches and hospitals thaii their Prussian ally, may be
warded off.

In the neighborhood of Saloniki there has been a renewal
of military activity. The presence of a considerable force of
Greeks was revealed by the fact that they have driven back the
Bulgars on a front of nine miles, taking many prisoners and
much war material. Subsequently, a few minor actions have
taken place; but there is nothing to indicate that any serious
attempt will be made to advance into Macedonia or Bulgaria.
There are not wanting those, however, who hold that the
easiest way for the Allies to secure victory is to go through
the Balkan region and reach Austria, as it were, by its back-
door. Yet others advocate the concentration of the Allied
forces along the Italian front with the object of reaching
Laibach and penetrating into Austrian dominions by that
pass. These seem to be dreams rather than serious projects.

In Mesopotamia the British seem to be at a standstill due
in all probability to the rainy season. Further to the north-
east the Turks have succeeded in overmastering the resistance
of the inhabitants of the Cis-Caucasian province and have pene-
trated into Persia, the latest news being that they have taken
the important city of Tabriz. What object they have in view,
is not certain, but the outflanking of the British force acting in
Mesopotamia may be their aim.

In Palestine the British seem to be also at a standstill, no
report of any advance having been made. There has been a
recrudescence of fighting in East Africa. The end of the
campaign there was long ago proclaimed, but the Germans
seem not to have been annihilated, but to have taken refuge in
Portuguese Africa. From this place of refuge they have be-
gun making incursions into the region once possessed by them.

The record of the submarine warfare is satisfactory as a
whole, although the appearance of these pirates off our coast is
not a matter of rejoicing. It has not, however, inspired the
least degree of fear. Rather it has had the contrary effect.
For the first time since this ruthless warfare began, more ships
are being built in the Allied countries than are being sunk by
the enemy submarine.

Digitized by

Google

558 RECENT EVENTS [July,

Finland still remains a republic, the pro-
Russia, ject of finding it a German prince as

King not having as yet materialized. The
course pursued by the Germans has, however, proved so in-
tolerable that the Commander-in-chief of the Finnish forces
has found himself imable to codperate with them and has
therefore resigned. Now all the troops acting in Finland are
under the command of the Teuton general. Negotiations with
the Bolshevik Government have resulted in the abandonment
to Finland of a further stretch of what was once Russian ter-
ritory. The eastern boundary has been advanced along the
Murman Coast to a considerable extent, but not yet so far as
Kola, the place so much coveted by Germany in order to have
an outlet on the Arctic Ocean. It may here be said, parentheti-
cally, that Germany's proceedings in Finland have aroused
Sweden and its people to the danger underlying the growth of
the German power and has given them courage to react. This
is shown by the agreement allowing this country to make use
of four hundred thousand tons of Swedish shipping, an agree-
ment which of course must be most obnoxious to the carriers-
on of the submarine warfare. It remains to be seen whether
the two other Scandinavian countries, Norway and Denmark,
to say nothing of Holland, will be animated by the same spirit
of resistance to what certainly ought to be considered the com-
mon foe.

Little progress has been made in organizing the series of
small States subject to her control, which Germany is in the
process of forming on the borderland between herself and what
was once Russian territory. Her lack of success in unifying
subjected races in the past, restrained her from any attempt to
absorb them, but even the projected scheme of less intimate
union presents many difficulties. Lithuania, for example, con-
tains a large number of Poles whose sympathies draw them
towards a closer union with the so-called independent Poland,
which has just been brought into being. The difficulty Ger-
many has had for so long a time in dealing with the Poles in
Posen and East Prussia is thereby greatly increased. The
Lithuanians as a body are offering the strongest resistance in
their power to any attempt to deprive them of the complete in-
dependence to which they aspire, and are more ready to enter
into relations with Russia and the Ukraine than with the Teu-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 559

tonic Powers, because they have experienced, to their cost, the
methods of those powers. Treatment similar to that accorded
Belgium and Poland has been their fate. Accordingly they
are still determined to keep themselves as far as possible from
Teuton overlordship.

A new loss has been sustained by the so-called Russian Re-
public by a determination of the inhabitants of White Russia
to form a distinct republic. Details are wanting, but it is said
that the White Russians aim at forming a more or less close
union with the Lithuanians. Passing through the south, the
Grermans are still pushing eastward in the Ukrainian territory.
Negotiations for peace, however, with the Bolshevik Grovem-
ment have been proceeding for some time but, notwithstanding
the warm protests of the Bolshevik Government, Grermany has
prolonged these negotiations, and has continued to advance
still farther to the east in order to enlarge her boundaries be-
fore peace is definitely made. Within the last few days it has
been stated that a definite peace was concluded, but at the
same time news has come that the Ukrainians, enraged by the
treatment they have received, are on the point of revolt.

The Crimea has been organized as still another district
passing under German influence. Here the control has been
given to the Moslem Tartars who are to be the overlords of the
Christian population of that peninsula. Farther east the Trans-
Caucasian Republic, after continuing the war with Turkey, has
now been forced to make peace. This new republic, it is said,
will be dominated by Germany, and will form the pivot of those
operations which are destined, so many imagine, to carry Grer-
man power and influence across Persia into India and through
Central Asia to far distant China.

The Black Sea Fleet, which had escaped from Sebastopol
before the Germans entered that town, is, according to the
latest reports, to be handed over to the Grermans until the end
of the War, with the proviso that it will then be restored to
Russia. The likelihood is that it is to be put in order for use
along with the Turkish and Austrian warships. This prob-
ability has agitated the question of one Commander for
the fleets of the Allies now in the Mediterranean. These now
represent six nations : French, Italian, British, Greek, Japanese
and Brazilian. A union of command may be necessary to cope
with the new danger that has arisen.

Digitized by

Google

560 RECENT EVENTS [July,

To add confusion to confusion the Cossacks' revolt is grow-
ing more serious, while in Siberia new agents of conflict are
found in the Czech-Slovaks who were taken prisoners during
the War, and who have now found themselves able to form an
army of some jBf teen thousand men. They have taken pos-
session of the East Siberian railway for a length it is said of
twelve hundred and fifty miles. In the same region General
Semenoff is threatening danger by means of forces that have
been recruited in the East — ^where exactly it is impossible to
say — and which are commanded by officers who fled from Rus-
sia in consequence of the cruel treatment accorded to them
}fy the Bolshevik soldiers.

In Russia proper the Bolshevik Grovemment still remains
in that control of affairs which it usurped, but evidence of
the growing discontent with its arbitrary proceedings is accum-
ulating. Quite recently a revolt took place which numbered
among its leaders, if reports may be relied upon. Maximalists
and every other group, even that whose aim is to restore the
Czar. The object of this plot was to bring about the overthrow
of the Bolshevik Grovernment by isolating Moscow, the present
capital, from its supplies of food. Apparently it has failed, and
three hundred of its supporters have been arrested. A more
hopeful sign of better success is to be found in the efforts of
the Constitutional Democrats to enlist the sympathy of Rus-
sia's friends in other countries. This party has forwarded to
the President a resolution in the following terms: ••We never
recognized the conditions of the Brest-Litovsk peace, and con-
sider that the disastrous situation in which they have placed
Russia can only be ameliorated with the aid of the Allies. The
movement of the Germans on Russian soil, their perpetual
seizure of new regions still continues, and there seems to be no
limit to such occupation. Under such conditions we cannot
refrain from appealing to our Allies, to whom we have fre-
quently given proof of the loyalty of our feelings. We pro-
claim our conviction that the appearance of a new powerful
factor on the scene of the struggle undoubtedly will have a de-
cisive bearing on the issues of the War and on the condition of
peace. We may assert, in the most conclusive manner, that the
information picturing the Russian democracy as not approving
of Allied aid is false. If such information has reached the
President of the United States, it must originate from Bolshe-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 561

vik sources. The Bolsheviki in no way are representative of
the Russian democracy. Their regime, a fictitious rule of de-
mocracy, is really oligarchy, demogogy and despotism, which
at the present moment relies only on physical force, and daily
becomes more and more odious to the popular masses. Never-
theless we consider it our duty to emphasize that the attitude
of the Russian public opinion toward the Allied action is con-
ditioned by the forms of its realization. Its success depends on
the whole-hearted support of national feeling in Russia. It is
furthermore imperative for the Russian public opinion to re-
ceive assurances that the expedition be coSrdinated with the
inviolability of rights and interests of Russia, and that the
actions of aU the Allies on Russian territory be performed un-
der international control.**

The Constitutional Party, there is good reason to believe, is
better entitled than any other to represent the mind of Russia,
embracing as it does the wiser and saner men who, for years,
had been preparing for the transformation from absolutism
to a freer form of government. It was due to its efforts chiefly
that the Revolution was accomplished. Unfortunately, it was
weak enough to allow the power to pass into the hands of the
extremists. The fact that it is reasserting itself by making this
appeal gives reason for hope that its voice, the most influential
and really representative of the Russian people may be heard,
and its appeal responded to. This is the most perplexing ques-
tion of the present time for the Allies to settle. Various means
have been proposed. They suggest a commission to investi-
gate conditions in Russia; giving Russia the economic assist-
ance she so desperately needs; a small expeditionary force of
American soldiers to Russia; to encourage a revolt among the
disaffected Slavs; lastly that all the Allies should land forces
in Eastern Siberia and thereby establish an eastern front which
can be pushed forward gradually as the necessary bases and
lines of conmiunication are developed. Of these, the last seems
the most feasible, but it would meet with the bitter opposition
of the Bolsheviki and possibly of large numbers of " patriotic **
Russians, who do not support that party. Of this there is such
reasonable fear that President Wilson's hesitancy can easily
be explained.

This course is, however, being urged upon Japan by the
British, French and Italian Governments at the present time,

iroK» cvii.— 86

Digitized by

Google

562 RECENT EVENTS [July,

and as these lines a*e being written it seems probable that
Japan may be on the point of taking the step. An agreement
between Japan and China has recently been made, the terms of
which are not fully published, but it is asserted that they in-
clude joint action, at least defensive, against the Bokheviki in
Siberia. By the latest report it is learned that Japanese troops
are being mobilized and that a small number has actually
landed at a Chinese port. The full effort of the Japanese, how-
ever, depends upon that consent of President Wilson which
has not yet been given. There are those who a£Brm that
the President is in sympathy with the Bolsheviki, but this asser-
tion is without support and is fully refuted by his refusal to
recognize the Bolsheviki as even a de facto government

Accounts reach this country from time to
Germiuiy. time as to the critical situation of the

food supply of the Grerman people.
While it would not be wise to generalize from what is said of
particular localities or districts, these accounts make it at least
probable that there is widespread suffering and the inevitable
consequent discontent. It is certain that the rations of the most
indispensable foods are being diminished— recently the flour
ration has been reduced from seven to five and one-half ounces.
The much-looked-f or supply from the Ukraine has not arrived,
the people of that country having offered the utmost resistance
to the demand made upon them by the invaders, refusing to sow
their fields and hiding in every possible way the stores of grain
already in their hands. In fact, when it is remembered that it
was want of food that occasioned the Revolution in Russia, it
will be seen that Germany could not reasonably expect large
supplies from that country, at least for some time to come. Talk
of the Ukraine's food supplies has become a matter of derision in
Germany, so often have these promises been unfulfilled. " The
physical and moral powers of the population to endure priva-
tions have been diminished substantially through another year
of war diet,** according to the statement of the leading So-
cialist paper, Vorwarts. Many instances could be given of the
want of food in different districts. One German newspaper re-
cently published an advertisement of a special drug for ** still-
ing hunger and enabling people to hold out until the next
meal.** Even Bavaria which has suffered less .than Prussia and

Digitized by

/Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 563

the other parts of Germany, now faces meatless weeks. The
fact that, notwithstanding all difficulties, the rich have been
able to obtain a sufficiency of food, while the poor are suffering
great privations, has made urgent the demand for peace by
the masses, and is thought by many to be the chief reason of
the mighty effort which Germany is making by her drive in
France to bring the War to a speedy conclusion.

The speech of Dr. von Kuehlmann before the German
Reichstag when seeking the ratification of the Rumanian
Treaty, makes it evident that the civil officials of the German
Empire are no better than the military authorities to whom
they are nov completely subject. The Rumanian Treaty im-
posed upon the Rumanian people military subjection through
the loss of the Carpathian range; political subjection through
German interference in all the great state administrations;
commercial subjection through the theft of Dobrudja, the only
maritime province of Rumania, and through the domination
established by the Germans over the Danubian navigation; in-
dustrial subjection through the monopoly of the most impor-
tant mineral wealth of the coimtry — the oils; financial subjec-
tion through the control established by the Germans over the
chief product of the country— cereals. In all this Dr. von
Kuehlmann gloried in his speech before the Reichstag, favor-
ing the ratification of the treaty, and asserting that the ad-
vantages obtained by Germany were equivalent to the indem-
nity which had not been demanded. He thereby stands con-
fessed to having adhered to the letter of the principle of ** no
indemnities,'' made the basis of peace by the Reichstag July
Resolution, while he had completely violated its spirit. As he
says: ^Formal war indemnities were not demanded by Ger-
many, but the numerous privileges we secured are equivalent,
in the opinion of experts, to anything which would have been
yielded by indemnities.'' This view of the right method of pro-
cedure was accepted by the Reichstag and advocated in promi-
nent German circles as the one to be f oUowed in the making of
future treaties.

Mr. Lansing, in his recent speech at Union College, gives
another instance in which the blindness of the German to
moral obligation is revealed. ^ It is a fact not generally
known," said Secretary Lansing, " that within six weeks after
the Imperial Government had, in the case of the Sussex, given

Digitized by

Google

564 RECENT EVENTS [July.

this Government its solemn promise that it would cease ruth-
less slaughter upon the high seas. Count von Bernstorff, appre-
ciating the worthlessness of the promise, asked the Berlin for-
eign office to advise him in ample time before the campaign of
submarine murder was renewed, in order that he might notify
the German merchant ships in American harbors to destroy
their machinery, because he anticipated that the renewal of
that method of warfare would, in all probability, bring the
United States into the War.

**How well the Ambassador knew the character of his
Government and how perfectly frank he was! He asked for
the information without apology or indirectness. The very
bluntness of his message shows he was sure his superiors would
not take offence at the assumption that their word was value-
less and had only been given to gain time, and that, when an
increase of Germany's submarine fleet warranted, the promise
would be broken without hesitation or compunction. What a
commentary on Bernstorff's estimate of the sense of honor and
good faith of his government!

** In view of this spirit of hypocrisy and bad faith, mani-
festing an entire lack of conscience, we ought not to be aston-
ished that the Berlin foreign office never permitted a promise
or a treaty engagement to stand in the way of a course of action
which the German Government deemed expedient I need not
cite as a proof of this fact the flagrant violations of the treaty
neutralizing Belgium and the recent treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
This discreditable characteristic of German foreign policy was
accepted by German diplomats as a matter of course and as a
natural, if not a praiseworthy, method of dealing with other
governments.**

No wonder President Wilson described the German Gov-
ernment as that thing with which it was impossible for decent
people to have any dealings, as the would-be world overlord,
and that to its destruction the American people are ready to
devote all their energies and their resources.

This demoralization is not confined to Government cir-
cles. This is shown by an article written by Heinz Potthoff,
which appears in Die Hilfe, the personal organ of Dr. Freidrich
Neumann, the author of MitteUEuropa. Dr. Heinz Potthoff
deplores the results of the war in the deterioration which it has
produced throughout business circles in the Empire. Not-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 565

withstanding the protest of the Government, profiteering is
rampant to such an extent that it is considered to be the mark
of a fool not to take advantage of every opportunity to make
unjust gains. '*The man who does not get rich during this
war ought not to live to see the end of it,'' is a much-quoted
saying. So many laws have been made that it is impos-
sible not to violate them. There is no one, the author declares,
who has attained the age of reason who could not be put in
prison for violation of the regulations which have been made.
Depredations and minor robberies are so frequent that vehi-
cles containing goods of any kind are stripped of their con-
tents unless securely guarded.

Another exemplification of the mentality of the would-be
dominators of the world may be given. The Cardinal Arch-
bishop of Cologne sent a petition through the Holy Father to
the British Government asking it not to bomb his cathedral
city on the feast of Corpus ChristL To this petition, the British
Government yielded, promising that no air raid should take
place on that day. The German military authorities, at a
point no great distance from the same city of Cologne, chose
that very day for the bombardment of Paris as they had chosen
Good Friday for a similar bombardment, and with similar
results — ^worshippers in Paris churches were killed and
wounded in large numbers. The same day was also chosen for
an air raid upon Paris.

The purpose of German historians to make the history of
the War in accordance with the ideas of the German parlia-
ment, received a rude shock by the publication of the memoran-
dum of Prince Lichnowsky. A further light on the authorship
of the War has been thrown by no less a person than the direc-
tor of Krupps at the beginning of the War. Dr. Wilhelm Mueh-
lon in a recent pamphlet blimtly asserts that Emperor Wil-
liam was personally responsible for Germany's participation
in the bringing on of the War, and that he forced the German
leaders to support his war policy. FuU knowledge of the ulti-
matum to Serbia, and an agreement with Austria-Hungary
concerning it, are attributed to the Emperor by Dr. Karl HelT-
f erich, and Dr. Erupp von Bohlen, the owner of the Krupp
works, according to Dr. Muehlon. This testimony has been
confirmed by other authorities and is worthy of consideration.
It is impossible to believe that the ultimatum could have been

Digitized by

Google

566 RECENT EVENTS [July,

sent by Austria-Hungary without the knowledge of the Kaiser.
Still it may be doubted whether he was the chief agent, there
being still room for the belief that he was driven into a declara-
tion of War by the military staff.

Another evidence of the Kaiser's responsibility is furnished
by a pamphlet published by Herr Thyssen, the leading manu-
facturer of steel in Germany, which goes to justify the opinion
of those who throw the main burden on the Emperor. Herr
Thyssen asserts that the Emperor for a period of two years
before the War broke out, had been striving to gain the sup-
port of the manufacturers. In view of a war to secure to Ger-
many control over the resources of the world, promises were
made by the Kaiser to various parties of grants of land in Aus-
tralia and in Canada, while the wealth of India was to be
thrown into Germany as a result of the conquest which entered
into his schemes. The fatuousness of these proposals made it
for a time doubtful whether Thyssen's pamphlet was authen-
tic, but as no denial has been forthcoming, belief in its authen-
ticity has become general.

The Prussian Social Reform Bill has passed in an emas-
culated form through the Lower House of the Prussian Diet
and has now gone to the Upper House. In the event of its be-
ing rejected, a thing highly probable, the dissolution of the
Diet will f oUow and a general election will take place. It may
be worth mentioning that the new president of the Reichstag is
a member of the Catholic Centre Party, while at the head of
the main conunittee of the Reichstag a Socialist has been
placed.

Following upon the publication of the
Austria-Hungary, letter of the Emperor Charles to Prince

Sixtus of Bourbon came the dismissal of
the Foreign Minister, Count Czemin. This was said to have
been done without consultation of any kind, a proceeding
which called forth a strong protest on the part of the most
conservative and loyal supporters of the throne. Count
Czemin's successor as Foreign Minister is Baron Burian, a fol-
lower of Count Stephan Tisza. Immediately after, the Em-
peror and his Foreign Secretary were summoned to the Ger-
man headquarters and there a treaty was signed, of which the
details have not been published, but which are understood to

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 567

have given to Germany more complete control of the Dual
Monarchy. Among the provisions of the treaty is said to be
one that will place officers of the German army in conmiand of
Austro-Hungarian troops and vice uersai Another provision
takes up the challenge of the Entente by binding the contract-
ing parties to devote all the resources of their respective coun-
tries for twenty-five years to come to the upbuilding of their
military strength.

Shortly after the signing of these treaties the Emperor-
King set off on a visit to King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and to
the Sultan. The object of this visit of Ferdinand to the
Sultan is not known, but the quarrel which has broken out
between Bulgaria and Turkey is believed to have some-
thing to do with it. Bulgaria is now suffering the just conse-
quences of her conduct in allying herself with the Ottoman
power. The latter is now demanding the return of most, if not
all, of the territory which was wrested from her by Bulgaria
in the first Balkan War and, horribile dictu, is being supported
in these demands by the Central Powers. Whether promises
were made to restore Jerusalem to the Turks and to replace
in the Holy City the Cross by the crescent is not known. On
the way back it is said that the Emperor's train, when passing
through Bulgaria, was stoned, a thing which seems to indicate
that he had not been successful in his appeal to the Turk to
spare Bulgaria.

The whole period covered by these notes has been fiUed
with the reports of the unrest which exists throughout the Dual
Monarchy. Such incidents as a declaration of martial law in
Prague, of cheers for the Allies in that city, of bread riots in
various parts, of the call for peace at any price in the capital
itself, are recorded from day to day. The Czech-Slovak move-
ment for independence as weU as that of the Jugo-Slavs (that
is to say the Croats, Serbs and Slovens) is still being maintained
in f uU force. The Archbishop of Laibach has been imprisoned
for supporting the latter movement. Meanwhile an attempt is
being made to govern the country without reassembling par-
liament. This seems to have had such poor results that the Em-
peror is now facing another Cabinet crisis, the Prime Minister
having sent in his resignation for the third time. The only
hope for the country seems to lie in so great a military success
as will prove the power of the Monarchy.

June 18, 1918.

Digitized by VriOOQlC

With Our Readers.

TRADITION is inherited habit. The definition may not hold
absolutely in its strictest meaning, but it is sound enough to
express a great truth. The instructions, beliefs, standards that we
have received from our fathers make us; and rebel or revolt or
repudiate as we will, we never can be entirely free from them:
we can never think or act as we might have done had we never
received them. And as with the individual so also with the com-
munity and the nation. Its traditions inevitably effect and shape
even its most radical changes. In fact the wisdom and security of
the changes may be tested by the abiding presence of healthy tra-
dition. To be wise in our own generation demands that we re-
spect and preserve the wisdom of our fathers. To repudiate them
is to repudiate ourselves.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE value, therefore, of right and orthodox tradition cannot be
too highly estimated. It proves its own value by receiving the
homage of mankind whenever a great crisis presents itself. Our
civilization is founded on the great truths of Christianity: that is
why any individual or any nation who denies those truths makes
shipwreck of civilization. And just as our civilization is the re-
peated fidelity of generation after generation to Christian truths,
just as a right world-wide tradition is the laborious, quiet work
to which every individual and every generation contributes its
share, so also the process of overturning it shows the satne phe-
nomena — of individual revolt followed by further, more extended
rebellion; of quiet, seemingly harmless speculation and theory
followed by practical conclusion and action; of neglect of high
standards followed by the acceptance of easy and material ones.

THE inference of course is — ^plainly evident — that it is well to
watch the beginnings Cest le premier pas qui coute. Of
course it is too late in many cases to watch the first step. Some
of us have taken giant strides in the bankruptcy of Christian tra-
dition. It is thought that the War has sobered all of us, at least
to a realization of basic truths such as honor, loyalty and respect
for the family. It has happily called many back to the way of sal-
vation. But in this hour of the nation's suffering and the nation's
need The Amencan Journal of Sociology hesitates not to publish

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 569

an article by Joseph K. Folsom, which contains, among many
others, the following sentences: " The * ought,' the sense of duty,
is the call of the herd to restrain individualistic impulses in the
interest's of the larger survival unit.

"What he (man) interprets as * duty,* moral obligation, or
the * voice of God' is the same unseen force which holds the wolf
to his pack and makes the sheep follow his comrades to the slaugh-
ter house.

" When the aggressive instincts rule, the criteria of right are
honor and Justice, and other ' manly ' sentiments. Attention is
now directed to self. Personal honor and self-reliance are reign-
ing ideals. This kind of morality eliminates .... drives nations
to mutual destruction in the pursuit of ' national honor.' * Better
death than dishonor' appeals to certain instincts, but is a poor
slogan for survival and welfare. Also we proclaim Justice, equal-
ity, and the rights of man as obvious moral ideals which need only
be impressed upon the mind to become realized. We need rather
to recognize that men are fundamentally unequal and that natural
rights are a myth; and hence there can be no justice without in-
telligent analysis of realities. These instincts also support the
sentiments of individual property, and place ownership before
use. The rights of the few owners of productive agents are far
more important than the satisfaction of the many consumers. The
ideal of self-reliance interferes with social cooperation.

"When repression is the predominating factor, the test of
righteousness is difficulty — self-denial. We now have the Puri-
tan ideals. What is hard must be right, and if an act be easy
the suspicion is strong that it is evil. Self-sacrifice here is the
key to happiness hereafter. This was the morality of asceticism
which cut off some of Europe's best blood.

" Human conduct, however, is conceived in terms of moral re-
sponsibility, reward, and punishment, of 'higher' and 'lower'
motives. The real causal efficacy of the conduct in producing
certain effects is veiled by the emphasis placed upon its relation
to personal and moral standards, based largely upon uncriticized
and unanalyzed instinct. The inadequacy of the prevailing moral
sentiments, when unguided by rational insight, is well illustrated
by the typical ethical debate. One antagonist will claim, for in-
stance, that honor demands that a nation shall take certain action
against another nation. The other will claim that perhaps kind-
ness and Justice demand a different policy, and they will try to
prove that their cause is likewise equally honorable. And so
Honor battles with Kindness and more Honor, and that is as far
as thfy can go. . . •

Digitized by

Google

570 WITH OUR READERS [July,

*' ' Thou shall not kill/ and ' Thou shall nol sleal ' are ra-
tional reslrainls of obvious ulilily. 'Thou shall nol lake Ihe
name of Ihe Lord Ihy God in vain * and ' Remember Ihe Sabbalh
Day lo keep il holy ' are chiefly senlimenlal» irrational reslrainls.
Any Ireatise on Ihe life and customs of primitive man will show
Ihal he was burdened by a greal multitude of commandments of
the irrational type, and that in many cases his obedience was an
obstacle to his progress. Among the Ten Commandments, the
less rational ones have provoked an amount of moral fervor com-
parable lo, if nol actually equal to, the very essential ones/'
« « « *

IN mechanical problems the issue is conceived of in terms of
mechanical cause and effect and thus a solution is reached. The
writer of the article from which we have quoted would lower
morals lo the plane of mathematics and lo quote his own words,
" make of morality essentially a scientific or inventive problem."
The mechanical, mathematical altitude must be applied "to the
problems of human conduct and relations." ** The popular mind
must be trained lo lake the scientific attitude toward all problems
and to attack them as any other problems." So he proposes the
utility of debating the question of " giving full social sanction lo
a moderate amount of sexual promiscuity." And a final conclu-
sion is that 'Mess stress must be laid upon motives and virtues,
and more stress upon facts and results."

♦ ♦ « «

OUR consideration of the article is nol limited lo the convic-
tion that il is far more dangerous lo the national welfare Ihian
many openly seditious utterances, Its philosophy would cut the
heart out of a people and of an army. But our consideration ex-
lends lo the further point that the article belies itself. The author
lives in a nation where Christian tradition is still actually in pos-
session. The author himself is under its sway and he cannot get
away from its influence and its power. He naively confesses that
science would eventually answer all moral problems in the satne
way as our ''moral intuitions" now answer them. Substitute
Christian tradition for " moral intuitions " and you will have sense
— both historic and rational.

The article denies Christianity yet champions a thesis that
is distinctly, essentially and solely Christian — ^regard, concern
and love of our fellowmen, " the socialist's devotion to the cause of
humanity." His Christian tradition, therefore, rules and domi-
nates. Though he deny it, he cannot escape it. And his article is,
in its own measure, an emphatic compliment to its power. We
cannot think of humanity except in terms of Christ. He alone

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 571

made us and keeps us one. And Christian tradition is His abiding
voice.

♦ ♦ « «
[ANY are led by the inspiring, unselfish utterances of a free

thinker to pay tribute to his free thought If they would
look a bit deeper they would know that the praise belongs to the
Christian tradition which he disowns, but from which he does not
hesitate to borrow. No man can be an utter atheist. To be such
would necessitate reducing every relation of life to terms of abso-
lute selfishness. An army of logical atheists would demand back
of it and on each side of it a force of non-atheists, well armed, to
goad them on.

The author of the unpleasant article of which we have spoken
maintains that every moral principle so-called is bom of the herd
instinct '' The point we are working to is that moral ideals and
the sentiments of custom, convention and fashion are con-
ditioned reflexes built largely upon the original tendencies of the
herd control complex.'' He would derive the moral "ought"
from the herd instinct which he maintains, represses and "re-
strains individualistic impulses in the interests of the larger sur-
vival unit" The sentence has no meaning either scientifically or
as he would put it " rationally." No such phenomenon is char-
acteristic of any herd. An individual of the herd doesn't care
where his neighbor stands with regard to the oncoming death-
dealing fire so long as he himself gets away. The logical atheist
would act in a similar manner. We had a friend once who en-
deavored to be a consistent atheist He achieved a greater measure
of success than we ever witnessed or heard of in any other atheist
Whenever we crossed a railway track or crowded street, we noticed
that our friend selfishly and consistently put himself on the side
farther away from the oncoming train or automobile. But the
orthodox tradition under which he was trained in childhood, did
occasionally reveal itself in altruistic and humanitarian state-
ments.

♦ ♦ ♦ H

THOMAS PAINE is supposed to have been an atheist par excel-
lence. Yet when Paine had to express truths that eclipsed
selfishness he was forced to return to Christian tradition and use
the very terms of Christian dogma. In The Crisis he wrote:

" These are the times that try men's souls. The summer sol-
dier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the
service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the
love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not
easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the

Digitized by

Google

572 WITH OUR READERS [July,

harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we ob-
tain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that
gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper
price upon its goods; and it would be strange, indeed, if so
celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.*'

Paine's Common Sense is lauded as a forerunner of our Decla-
ration of Independence. It was such only in so far as it retained
and reechoed the tradition of a people who had learned through
centuries what Christian liberty bestowed and demanded. Inger-
soU was a '' popular ** atheist, yet when Ingersoll came to speak at
his brother's grave he could not refrain from confessing the
Christian virtue of hope.

♦ « « «

FOLLOWERS are more radical than their leaders. The dis-
ciples of Darwin far outstripped their master. Kant is un-
doubtedly responsible for much of the false philosophy that has
caused Germany to make such a spectacle of herself before the
world today. His categorical imperative divorced God from
morality. In other words it placed the latter solely in the will of
man. And that will was necessarily conditioned and shaped by
national circumstances and national needs. These became the
arbiter. If Kant's categorical imperative was an appeal to con-
science, its result, beyond all question, is the conscience of the
absolutist. He broke with Christian tradition. He affected the
thought and philosophy of a people; and numerous disciples have
succeeded in pushing his teaching to its direful logical conclusions.

UR country has witnessed, is witnessing now a propaganda
that is undermining one of the strongest of Christian tradi-
tions — ^the sanctity of the family, the duty and responsibility of
husband and wife. We have heard over-much of birth control.
The conditions of war are bringing into relief the terrible conse-
quences to the nation of the preaching that has defended it We
select some passages from an address recently delivered by Louis
I. Dublin, statistician for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Com-
pany. He states that the birth rate of France before the present
war was lower than her death rate. At the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, of the three countries, France, the United King-
dom and the States composing the German Empire, France was
the leader with a population of about 29,000,000. A century later,
France was third with a population of only 39,000,000. '' In other
words, while the population of the German Empire had nearly
trebled and the United Kingdom had increased to two and one-
half times its earlier number, the population of France had m-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 573

creased less than one-half/* It is very important to note that the
reduction of the birth rate in France has affected mostly those
who are, both economically and socially, best fitted to bear and to
raise a family to maturity.

« « ♦ ♦

A SUPERFICIAL view of the present situation in our own coun-
try presents a favorable picture. But this is owing to the
gross figures, and we have not borne in mind that the marked in-
crease in our total population is due in large measure first, to im-
migration, and secondly, to a high rate of increase in the foreign
born rather than in the native stock. There has been a marked
and continuous reduction in the birth rate of the United States for
a period of years, and as in France this reduction has affected par-
ticularly those well able economically to support and educate a
family. The responsibility for this alarming condition is uselessly
tl^*own back by the writer on the State. It is of course a personal
moral problem, and the writer later realizes this when he states
that the old virtues of womanhood need restatement today. This
is equivalent to saying that the Christian traditions of the past
need to be rehabilitated in the heart and soul of our people. He
admits that individual selfishness is at the bottom of the evil. His
statistics show that those well provided with this world's goods
are most frequently guilty, and yet he thinks the evil may be cured
if the State subsidizes parents who bear children. At the end he
does ask for an earnest appeal to ** the religious impulse in our
individual lives. It will require all the religious power latent in
our people to set us right.'*

« « « «

TRUE progress means that we light the traditions of the past
with the glory of new achievement Our present crisis is
showing us clearly the dangers which we willingly courted in
abandoning Christian tradition. Signs are multiplsring of our re-
turn to it, and of them we hope to speak at some later time.

IN spite of all our progress towards safe and sane democracy,
the anti-Catholic animus of some individuals and organizations
of lesser note seems to be working overtime. As an example of
their despicable propaganda, we call attention to the following cir-
cular that is being sent by mail to all sorts and conditions of men
who, it is supposed, can be influenced by such literature:

Who Did the Deserting During the Civil War?
'" In reply to the boasts so freely made by Roman Catholic edi-
tors and orators that the Irish fought the battles of the Qvil War

Digitized by

Google

574 WITH OUR READERS [July,

and saved the nation, the following document, received from Wash-
ington is here given:

'"Whole number of troops engaged in the northern army,
2,128,200; natives of the United States, 1,625,267; Germans,
180,817; Irishmen, 144,221; British (other than Irish), 90,040;
other foreigners, 87,855.

** * The desertions were as follows : natives of the United States,
5 per cent; Germans, 10 per cent; Irish Catholics, 72 per cent;
British (other than Irish), 7 per cent; other foreigners, 6 per cent/

'' In other words, of the 144,000 Irishmen that enlisted 104,000
deserted, and it is reliably stated that most of these desertions
occurred after the recognition of the Confederacy by the Pope.

'' It is also a fact that of the five per cent of the native Ameri-
cans rated as deserters, forty-five per cent of the five per cent were
Roman Catholics."

« « ♦ «

THIS is a new version of a very old lie. It used to be ** Roman
Catholics " who had deserted from the Union army. When
the War Department had worn out several typewriters informing
inquirers that there were absolutely no official or other figures on
file to show the religious affiliations of the soldiers of the Civil
War, this humbug lost its stajring qualities. Now it is the
'' Irish " who deserted, and the same '* statistics " are being cir-
culated to bolster up the assertion.

** It is reliably stated,'* says their new effort, ** that most of
these desertions occurred after the recognition of the Confederacy
by the Pope." No further evidence is needed to fix the quality of
the information these figures are supposed to give. As the Pope
never recognized the Confederacy, it would be a task even beyond
the l3ring power of the persistent bigots who circulate these
stories, to show how the "desertions occurred after" an event
that never happened.

♦ « « «

WITH regard to nationality in the Qvil War, bogus statistics
have been compiled and circulated since the day Grant and
Lee agreed to say " hold, enough." The officials of the War De-
partment have stated time and time again that it is impossible to
give even an approximately correct table of the number of soldiers
belonging to any particular nationality. The most pretentious
effort in this direction was that made by Benjamin Apthorp Gould,
the Actuary to the United States Sanitary Commission from July,
1864, to the close of the war. He published a book. Investigations
in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of the American
Soldier (Cambridge Press, 1869), in which he tried to deal with

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 575

this question, and he had all the records of the Government at his
command*

" The materials available," he says, " for forming a trustworthy
estimate of the nativities and even the nationality of our soldiers
have been very meagre. . • • often no information of the sort was
demanded • • • • the place of residence was frequently given in-
stead of the place of birth" (p. 15).

« « « ♦

HAVING failed to get the required data from the ofBcial records.
Dr. Gould sent out a questionnaire to one thousand regimental
commanders asking about the nativities of their men. Something
over three hundred replies were received. They are on file with
other Sanitary Commission statistics in the New York Historical
Society's Library, No. 170 Central Park West Dr. Gould made
this the basis of his "apparent estimates," with this caution
however: " As it is clearly out of the question to form any trust-
worthy numerical estimate of this mode of estimation, it seems
the better course to give the resultant figures, after calling atten-
tion to this source of inaccuracy in the inferences " (p. 26).
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

IN Chapter II., which is devoted to nativities, he keeps repeating
the fact that it is impossible to reach accurate knowledge on the
subject He says further:

'* When it is remembered how very considerable is the num-
ber of American citizens born in Europe, especially among the
inhabitants of our Atlantic cities, and several of the Western
States, and when it is further borne in mind how promptly these
classes responded to the call of their adopted country — accepting
the unwonted duties as readily as the well-known privileges of
citizenship— it is manifest that the records of nativity, even were
they complete, would only indirectly guide to the knowledge of
the nationality of the volunteers " (p. 14).

This is what an honest and painstaking investigator discov-
ered and recorded. But his labor and its results were wasted as
far as they might affect the incubators of " the following docu-
ment received from Washington " and its amazing fabrications.

WE have received some complaints from those who purchase
The Catholic World on news-stands, because such copies
are untrimmed. The news dealers insist on receiving their copies
untrimmed in order to make certain that the copies have never
been previously handled. Consequently it is a situation over
which the publishers of the magazine have no control.

Digitized by

Google

BOOKS RECEIYED.

Alltn St Bacon. New York:

BUtorp of the American People. By W. If. West Cmsar'9 Commentartei. By
P. W. Kelsey. Phgtict, with ApplieationM, By H. S. Garhart, LL.D., and H.
N. Chttte, M.S. Plane Geometry, By H. B. Slaught, PluD., and N. J. Lennea,
PhJ>. A Complete French Course. By C A. Chardenal.
AxmcAH Book Co., New York.

Great Inventors and Their Inventions. By P. P. Bachman, P11.D. Peter and
Pollg in Autamn, By R. Lueia. School Htstorg of the United States. By A.
B. Hart, LL.D.
BBNUOBa BaoTRsas, New York:

The Catholie Home. By Fr. Alexander, O.F.M. $1.25 net Oar Lord's Own
Words. By Rt Rev. A. Smith, O.S.B. $1.25 net Religion and Human Interests.
Bf ReT. T. Slater, S.J. 75 cents net
NMB H. DoaAN Co., New York:

Memoratidum on Peace Terms. 10 centi. The German Pirate. By AJax. 50
eenti.
LoNOKANi, GasBM St Co., New York:

Th£ Soul of Two Knights. By 0. K. Parr. A Spiritual Friend. By R. A. Knox.
12.50 net
HsAasT's iNTxaNATiONAL LoaAaT Co., New York:

* A Minstrel in France. By Harry Lauder. |2.00.
HABPaa St BaoTHias, New York:

The Yellow Dog. By H. I. Dodge. 50 cents net Mg Bog in Khaki. By D. S.
Lutes. fl.OO net The Pirate's Progress. By William Archer.
Thb AicxaiGA Pbbss, New York:

CArfiflan Science, Our Countrg's Call. Pamphlets. 5 cents each.
Dooo, Mbad St Co., New York:

Patriotic Flags for Young People. By Virginia Olcott fluU net
Hbmbt I. Mtbbs, 50 W. Slxty-serenth Street New York:

Da Vinci's Madonna. (Music.) By H. I. Myers. 40 cents.
Rbv. Vmahcu Vaututti, Saratoga Springs, New York:

Chronologg of the Life of Christ. By Rct. Francis Valltuttl. 30 cents.
HouoBTON MiFFUN Co., Bostou:

The Faith of France. By Maurice Barris. $1.60 net
J. B. LnviNOOTT Co., Philadelphia:

The Little Lame Prince. By Miss Muloek. 50 cents net Winona's War Fame.
By M. Wlddemer. fl.25 net The War and the Coming Peace. By M. Jastrow,
Jr., LL.D. 11.00 net
B. Hiranwa, St Louis:

The Villa Rossignol. By M. L. Storer. fl.OO net Accidence of Hebrew Gram'
mar. By H. A. Coffey, S.J. $1.25 net Donatism. By A. Fortescue. 90 cents
net A Memoir of William A. Stanton, SJ. By W. T. Kane, S.J. $1.25 net
A Life of Francis Xavter. By M. S. Kelley. $1.25 net An Eight Dags' Re-
treat, By H. Hunter, S.J., D.D. $1.25 net
Rbv. v. Day, Helena, Montana:

The Church at the Turning Points of Historg. By G. Kurth. $1.25.
Hew, a. M. Skbllt, O.P., Portland, Oregon.

Doctrinal Discourses. Volume one.
Catboug Tteum Socibty, London:

A Missionarg Meuiual. Pamphlet
"'Thb UifiTBasB," London:

A British Cardinal's Visit to the Western Front, Pamphlet
Fktutas Albino, 22 Alnger Road, London, N. W.:

The Cup of Bliss and Other Poems,
Tbb Zionist Oboanisation, London:

Great Britain, Palestine and the Jews. Pamphlet
AusTBAUAN Cathoug TkUTB SociBTT, Mclboume:

Persecutions of the Barlg Church. By W. A. Nlcol. Palestine. By Very Rev.
P. B. Kennedy, O.F.M. Factors in National Decag, By Rev. B. Boylan, S.J.
** Lord Acton." Pamphlets.
Blond bt Ciat, Paris:

The Church of France During the War. By G. Goyau. Who Was Responsible
for the War? By Senator T. Tlttonl. Journal d'une Inflrmiire d' Arras. Par B.
Colombel. Blessi, Capttf, Diliori, Par H. de Larmandle. Souvenirs d'un
Otage. Par G. Desson.
liiBBAiBiB Abmand Colin, Parls:

Pourquoi Nous nous buttons. Par B. Laylsse. La Question d' Alsace-Lorraine.
Par B. LaTlsse and C Pflster.
Gabbibl Bbaugsbsnb, Paris:

Vns preuve facile de I'Bxistenee de Dieu: I'ordre du Monde. Par J. de TonquMec
Mon pent pritre. Par. P. Lhande. 3 fr. La VU Criatrice. Part l.^L'Bnquite
humaine. Par Dom H^hrard. 7 fr. 50.
I.iBBAiBB Lbcoppbb, Parls:

Luther et I'Allemagne. Par J. Paquler.

Digitized by

Google

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

Vol. CVII.

AUGUST, 1918.

No. 641.

THE CHRIST OP PAUL.

BY CUTHBERT LATTEY, S.J.

RECENT writer,^ whose pages breathe new life
and hope for classical learning, deprecates noth-
ing so much as the idea that the Greeks were
mere devotees of sestheticism, and has much to
teU — ^indeed, it is almost the gospel of the mod-
ern revival — of the sterner stuflf and profounder ideals that
went to the making of them, of a debt frodi humanity that
swallows up that from the humanities. From all this it does
not appear necessary to differ, in order to hold that what before
all else marked off the Greeks from other races, was their sur-
passing sense of form. They remained incomparable artists,
to whatever work of hand or brain they betook themselves.
And so in literature, where they suffered least from lack of
scientific resource, they seem to achieve perfection in every
department almost at the first essay, nor less in marble, and
they exceUed in mathematics, the science of form rather than
content. The Spartan himself was a man of rhythm, and
combed his hair, as quaint Herodotus teUs us, before he fell in
heroic fight at Thermopylae. The very vices of Hellas are the
vices of the artist; the terrible ineffectiveness of it all, and the
sin we do not name. Once again, we do not say that art was the
goal of the Greek, but his second nature. Nor could he throw
it off when he came to face the problem of conduct; for him the
ideal to be pursued was xi xaX6v, life was a fair statue of ex-

Copyiight

VOL. cvn. — 37

^ Father H. Brown, S^., In Our Renaittanee,

191S. Thb Missxonaby Society op St. Paytl the Apostlb

IN THB StATB op NBW TORK.

Digitized by

Google

578 THE CHRIST OF PAUL [Aug.,

quisite proportion, a lyric of perfect grace. In the matter ot
religion, like other pagans, he fashioned (or perverted) his
gods to his own image and likeness; they made admirable
Greeks, not so very divine. That a god should make himself
hideous, and ask his worshippers to do the same — even the
Greek of the Augustan age, as St. Paul saw him, was classic
enough to think this mere " folly.** The Semite, with his fierce
devotion to his Baal or his Moloch, his " lord '* and " king,**
with his craving for sacrifice that would bring communion and
unity, his grim earnestness, that only the true God could save
from gruesome fanaticism — ^what could the graceful Hellene
think of such a dervish, his reckless extravagance, his lack of
proportion, his enraptured transgression of all good sense and
good taste?

On the other hand, what would the Semite think of the
Greek ideal? Not self-perfection but self-devotion was the
Semite's aim; with a god for the worthy object of that self-
devotion, he would deem it mere trifling to insist upon form
and method. ''Jesus is Yahweh!** Nothing less than that
could have sufficed for the Semite Paul, but sufficing, it left all
else of no account; it is the profession of faith demanded for
salvation, that is, '' to confess Jesus for Lord,*' ^ to apply to Him
the unspeakable name. Such a confession, so far as it goes, is
from the Spirit of God (1 Cor. xii. 3) ; the full chorus of it is the
glorification of the God-man that first emptied Himself, and
then humbled Himself still further, unto death upon a cross.
Every tongue is therefore to proclaim that He is Yahweh." To
renounce all, and count it but refuse to gain Christ, this was
the true mind of Paul; but not the mind of a Hellene! Still, to
attain Christ was to attain in the same degree to the infinite
perfection of God, to be transformed into His image, from
glory unto glory ;^ in reality supreme self-devotion was also
supreme self-perfection, to lose all was to find all. The folly of
men was to prove wisdom divine; the Apostle himself, after
renouncing human eloquence at the outset of First Corinthians,
is later stirred to a magnificent outburst in praise of charity.
Were not, then, the Greeks also true artists? And does not the
artistic temperament carry with it devotion to an ideal? Truly
there is something perplexing, after all, in the cold restraint
of their art. Was it, perchance, that the very lack of an all-

* Rom. z. 9. • Philip U. 11. « 2 Cor. ill. 18.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE CHRIST OF PAUL 579

engrossing content caused them to exhaust themselves upon
the form? And may not the Apostle have felt that it was in his
power to supply it? So the old sequence hath it:*

Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus, fudit super eum

Piss rorem lacrimse;
" Quem te,'' inquit, " reddidissem,
Si te vivum invenissem,

Poetarum mazimel "

When to Maro's tomb they brought him,
Tender grief and sorrow wrought him

To exclaim with many a tear,
" What a glory, might have crowned thee.
If alive 1 had but found thee,

Poet without a peer! "

Yet his attempt to deck out his message in classic grace was
a failure; and henceforth there was a common doom for all
that was not Jesus, whether of Athens or Corinth, and that was
— crucifixion! It might sound folly, but — " Jesus is Yahweh! ''
Looking back, he would declare to the Corinthians what had
become his simple programme: **I resolved to know nought
among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified/*

Nevertheless this very formula contained a tremendous
synthesis, the synthesis which he had learnt nigh to Damascus
in his first all-embracing lesson: '*! am Jesus, Whom thou
persecutest." It was Christ's very self that he was persecuting,
not a mere body that bore His name. A synthesis of un-
fathomable depth, of infinite breadth and length and height,
albeit contained in so short a formula, because therein is
named the Godhead itself. And that is the key to Paul, as we
shall endeavor in the sequence to explain. It is not merely the
individual identity of the Christian with Christ; it is his cor-
porate identity, the identity of the whole Church with her Head
and Spouse. " Why persecutest thou Afc? '• If we ask in wonder,
" Why Me," the Apostle himself, now fully wise, told his Corin-
thians why : " Ye are the body of Christ, and His several mem-
bers."

It is a tremendous synthesis, and as such not lightly mas-

*Cf, Petrarca e la Lombardia, by Monslgnor Ratti, p. 225. On the flyleaf of a
Milan manuscript there Is a note, apparently in Petrarch's handwriting, to the effect
that the above lines were song (where, it is not said) In the sequence of the Mass for
the Feast of the Conyerslon of St Paul.

Digitized by

Google

580 THE CHRIST OF PAUL [Aug.,

tered by those whose method of leammg is in the main analy-
tic. St. Paul saw one supreme truth, of which the several
Christian doctrines and principles might almost be called the
facets. We examine the several doctrines and principles, but
may easily fail to arrive at an adequate unification. This is
true of all modern theology, but let us here apply it to Catholic
theology, after a necessary word of explanation. Catholic
theology may be described as the scientific analysis of revela-
tion, based upon the peripatetic (i. e., Aristotelian) system of
philosophy. It embraces all that can be learnt concerning any
and every point of faith or morals from Holy Writ and from
the living doctrine of the Church, whether as gathered from
her actual teaching today, or from the documents which de-
clare its tenor in the past. It embraces not merely what are, to
the Catholic infallible and certain conclusions, but also those
that are merely probable; and to this diversity in the conclu-
sions corresponds roughly a diversity in the methods by which
they are attained. To establish the dogmas of faith is in the
main the function of positive theology, of literary and his-
torical criticism; to explain, to correlate and elaborate them
primarily belongs to scholastic theology, to a modest reason-
ing that often confesses to leaving its conclusion uncertain, and
always to leaving the mystery impenetrable. Such a vast pur-
view, it is clear, can only be surveyed piecemeal; we. take in
turn such great doctrines as those of Original Sin, the Atone-
ment, the Church, and try to master all that can be known of
them, both from positive and scholastic theology. But it is
not always very easy to ascertain the precise bearing of the
documents of Scripture and tradition upon various doctrines
which have come to be cast into a terminology alien to the
writers of those documents — since they were mostly far from
being peripatetics — and which were seen by them, not as dis-
jecta membra, so to speak, but as aspects of a living whole.
Such was the light in which St. Paul, more than all others,
beheld them. For him identification with Christ summed up
the whole faith, and all Christian practice and Christian being
besides. Original sin, for example, was that previous state of
unity with Adam, of sin inherited from him, of enmity from
Christ, from which took place that very change which is justi-
fication and incorporation with Christ. The Church, needless
to say, was Christ Himself, His mystical Body, whereof He

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE CHRIST OF PAUL 581

Himself was the Head, wherein all the faithful are but one per-
son.* The Atonement was precisely that becoming " at one "
with Christ, which meant the end of a former being, the doffing
of the old man and the donning of the new. And where does
the Apostle speak more plainly of Christ*s Godhead than in the
very letter which shows him most concerned to prove Christ
our true and only atonement? One with God, He is also one
with us, and thus we in our measure are deified, " sharers in the
Divine Nature," as another than he said. " In Him dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead corporally: and ye are filled
therewith in Him;" ^ the word " therewith " is not in the Greek,
but, as I have argued elsewhere,* it is hardly open to question
that such is the sense.

Can it be doubted, in the light of such a synthesis, that
St. Paul was steeped in dogma, and his Christians as well? One
might, indeed, go further, and ask whether it is conceivable
that he should use such language as he does of the unity of the
Church, if he did not also presuppose the principle of author-
ity, of ordered government in faith and conduct. Such an in-
quiry would not be altogether alien to our subject, since it
would help us the better to understand the Apostle's conception
of the Church as a single vital organism; and we might discuss,
for example, his relations with the Corinthians, his settlement
of their difficulties, either by letter or upon arrival, his vigor-
ous defence of his own divine commission, his rebukes, even
his threats, threats of a rod and threats that he will not spare.

Apart from this, it is enough perhaps to point to passages
where he uses the full weight of his apostolic authority to insist
upon a doctrine which seemed to be in peril. Thus, among the
Corinthians themselves were found some to ape the Athenians'
mockery, and throw doubt upon the resurrection. St. Paul at
once appeals to his own teaching, and that of all the other
Apostles: " So we preach, and so ye have believed." He can-
not be found a false witness, any more than their faith can be
futile. "Senseless man!" He will not answer the question
before rebuking the questioner. And he ends by declaring on
his own word a fresh " mystery," evidently to be believed im-
plicitly, the doctrine that the just who are alive at the last day
will not die. Or again, we might turn to the Epistle to the Gala-
tians, and the well-known anathema which he pronounces

• GftL UI. 28. * Col. U. 9, 10. • Journal of Theological Studies, vol. xrll., p. 259.

Digitized by

Google

582 THE CHRIST OF PAUL [Aug^

upon any that shall contradict his teaching. This teaching
which the Galatians had received was that oral instruction
which was always the first grounding of the Christians, to
which he refers more than once when writing to the Corin-
thians, even as St. Luke refers to it in dedicating his gospel to
Theophilus. His letters were not meant to supplant this teach-
ing; they were mostly written to meet a particular need, and
always presuppose a properly instructed community. He
makes of their belief in the Real Presence a motive for rever-
ance,® of their belief in Chrisfs Divinity a motive for humil-
ity," and he casually mentions the acceptance of this latter dog-
ma and of the resurrection as essential to salvation,^^ without
stopping to explain how; on the other hand, where the practi-
cal need is the article of faith itself, he can urge the resurrec-
tion of the flesh, as we have seen, upon the Corinthians, and the
Divinity of Christ upon the Colossians.

St. Paul, then, had dogma to teach, and plenty of it;
but he referred it all to Christ from Whom he claimed to have
received it. This synthesis of all faith and being and practice
in our unity with Christ appears to have been the vital element
in the Apostle's peculiar commission," not the mere external
facts even of the life of Christ, for which human witness could
be sufficient, as in the case of the resurrection. To know these
external facts was to know Christ merely " according to the
flesh," even though it were the risen Christ appearing in blind-
ing glory; but the true knowledge of Christ was his who be-
came in Christ "" a new creature." In that identification lay all;
let us examine it somewhat more closely. To him who has not
mastered it the letters of St. Paul must remain as a closed book.

It is best to consider it in the first place as accomplished
fact, and in its corporate aspect. The Church is the spouse of
Christ, His mystical Body; these two expressions to the Apostle
not merely mean the same thing, but apply the same figure. For
the explanation we must go to Gen. ii. 24; man and wife are
one flesh. For a commentary that pushes the principle of
Genesis to the extreme we may turn to 1 Cor. vi. 17, in a pas-
sage which anticipates in all essentials the fuller application
to the matter in hand found in the context of Eph. v. 31. Man
and wife, then, as St. Paul interprets it, form together a moral

• 1 Cor. xl. » PhlUp. U. u Rom. x. 9.

»£. 0.. ^h. ill. 1-lS; Col. 1. 14; U. S. »2 Cor. y. ie» 17.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE CHRIST OF PAUL 583

body of which the husband is the head; and such is the mutual
relation of Christ and the Church.

This is the very explicit doctrine of the First Epistle to the
Corinthians. Every letter of St. Paul has marked characteris-
tics of its own : this epistle, if we may so call it, is his ecclesias-
tical epistle, largely concerned with Church discipline and
practice: on the whole, we expect to find the doctrine there,
and we certainly find it. " As the body is one and hath many
members, and all the members of the body, many as they are,
form one body, so it is with Christ. . . . Now ye are the Body of
Christ, and His several members." " Within that Body each
has his own function, and the Apostle is urging upon them that
they should be content with that function, whether of ministry
or of spiritual gift or humbler graces, and not ambition higher
positions and greater importance, but rather seek before all
things for charity. It is significant, too, that the sacraments in
which he shows himself interested, here as elsewhere, are those
which bear an immediate and obvious relation to this doctrine
of the Mystical Body. True, in 1 Cor. vi. 12-20 there is not ex-
plicit question of matrimony (as in vii. 39), yet the right union,
with all its spiritual significance, is at once suggested by the
language used against the wrong one. In the same way,
although we may perhaps be surprised to find no clear illus-
tration to the Mystical Body in the treatment of the Holy
Eucharist in the eleventh chapter, it is evidently presupposed
in the tenth. " Have not they who eat the sacrifices fellowship
with the altar? ... Ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord
and of the table of devils." We cannot maintain communion
with Christ and communion with devils. The Cup which we
bless, the Bread which we break, keep us one with Christ and
one with each other; we are one body, because our one Bread
is Christ, entering into us to make us more and more Himself.
And St. John Chrysostom, commenting upon this passage,
represents the Apostle as explaining himself thus: "Why do
I say Kotvcovfa (communion, participation, fellowship — a dif-
ficult word to translate) ? We are that very Body itself. For
what is the Bread? The Body of Christ. And what do they
become who partake thereof? The Body of Christ."

In what follows the great exegete appears to be speaking
once more in his own person: "For just as bread, composed

Ml Cor. xU. 12,27.

Digitized by

Google

584 THE CHRIST OF PAUL [Aug.,

as it is of many grains of wheat, is still one substance, in such
sort that the grains nowhere appear, but though they are still
there, no distinction appears between them, because of the way
in which they have been joined together; even thus we are
joined to one another, and to Christ. For thou art not nour-
ished from one body and yon man from another, but all from
the same; wherefore he added, * for we all partake of the same
bread.' And if from one and the same, and if we all become
one and the same, why do we not likewise show the same
charity, and become one in this respect also? " But time would
fail were we to attempt to show how familiar were St. John
Chrysostom and some of the other Greek Fathers with Pauline
thought and phrase, and how boldly they adopted and devel-
oped it. Having thus spoken of matrimony and the Holy
Eucharist in the First Corinthian letter, we may refer to three
passages ^" as relating baptism to the Mystical Body, but they
are not so clear as other passages, and in any case have to do
with the first entrance into the Mystical Body, which will come
up for consideration later.

If now we were to collect all the passages in St. Paul's
Epistles that deal with this topic of the Mystical Body, once
more we should make no end. One important passage in the
letter to the Galatians ^® has already been touched upon, and
since we are hastening to the Ephesian letter, let us remind
ourselves that in writing to the Colossians the Apostle also says
that Christ " is the Head of the body, the Church," " that the
Church is His Body," that from Him as the Head " the whole
body, nourished and knit together by means of the joints and
ligaments, doth grow with a growth that is of God." "

But it is certainly in the Epistle to the Ephesians that the
Apostle lets himself go on the point. Why not? He always has
something very definite which he wants to say in his epistles,
and more than one reason may have urged him to give this
aspect of his doctrine a fuller explanation; most of all, per-
haps, this reason, that it is not a mere aspect, but the very ker-
nel of his synthesis. Dr. Headlam writes truly that this epistle
'Ms fundamental to a proper understanding of St. Panel's
thought. To me Ephesians is Pauline through and through,
and more even than Romans represents the deepest thoughts

»1 Cor. ill. 1; lY. 15; zU. IS. >«Gal. ill. 26-28.

» Col. 1. 18. » Col. 1. 24. ^ Col. 11. 19.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE CHRIST OF PAUL 585

of the Apostle; and to hold, as some would do, that it is a com-
pilation, or that it is largely interpolated, shows an incapacity
(in my view) to form a judgment of any value in critical mat-
ters." *® And yet, characteristically enough, and significantly
too, some of the strongest things which the Apostle says in
this epistle are not written, as it were, for their own sake, but
presupposed, and thrown in merely as a motive. He gives full
and noble expression to the doctrine of the Mystical Body, in
urging, as in First Corinthians, the harmonious and loyal dis-
charge of their functions by the several parts of the organ-
ism '^ and again in laying down the proper mutual relations
of husband and wife.'* Leading up to the former passage
comes his earnest exhortation to unity: "Careful to keep the
unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace: one body and one
Spirit, as also ye were called in one hope, that of your calling:
one Lord, one faith, one baptism : one God and Father of all.
Who is above all and throughout all and in all." This tremend-
ous demand for unity, and for the unity of the Mystical Body,
has at times been so misunderstood, that it appears to be worth
while to^quote Dr. Armitage Robinson's exposition of a phrase
in it : " By a mischievous carelessness of expression, * unity of
spirit ' is commonly spoken of in contrast to * corporate unity,*
and as though it might be accepted as a substitute for it. Such
language would have been unintelligible to St. Paul. He never
employs the word * spirit ' in a loose way to signify a disposi-
tion, as we do when we speak of * a kindly spirit.' To him
' spirit ' means ' spirit,' and nothing less. It is often hard to
decide whether he is referring to the Spirit of God or to the
human spirit. . . . But at any rate no separation of ' body ' and
* spirit' is contemplated: and the notion that there could be
several * bodies ' with a * unity of spirit ' is entirely alien to
the thought of St. Paul. It is especially out of place here, as
the next words show." " These next words are the words pre-
fixed by Dr. Armitage Robinson to his commentary on this epis-
tle: "one body and one spirit."

The Apostle does not attempt to apply his doctrine of the
mystical Body to all cases. Like that of the Kingdom of God in
the Gospels, it has an internal and external aspect; but he does
not define accurately the relation of the one to the other. He

*• SL Paul and ChrUttanitg, p. vlil. » 1 Cor. tI.

«1 Cor. ▼!!. »Bphe$ians, pp. 92, »3.

Digitized by

Google

586 THE CHRIST OF PAUL [Aug.,

ordered a fairly ready use of excommunication, both at Thes-
salonica and Corinth: he knew (how could he fail to know?)
that a Christian might lose the faith or fall into grievous sin.
But he does not discuss their consequent position in terms of
the Mystical Body, and therefore we shall refrain from doing
so likewise; rather he presupposes, even in writing to his
churches, that the normal Christian enjoys both internal and
external fellowship. He never calls them sinners; they are the
saints, hallowed within and without, and he would have them
walk worthily of their holiness. They are one great body, the
Body of Christ; in Christ, Iv Xptorcp, they live and move and
have their being, as that Body, still one, yet ever developing,
grows to the full stature of Christ. That evolution is in quan-
tity, till the full tale of the elect be told; in unity, as the organ-
ism increases its power to incorporate and absorb an ever
greater and more various multitude; in doctrine even, as the
truth handed down comes to be better understood and worked
out in all its implication. But the goal, no less than the start-
ing-point, is ever Christ, the final end set before every human
being, that great Unity which even irrational creation is de-
signed to promote and expand, the one far-off and all-contain-
ing event, the consummation of Old Covenant and New, sum-
ming up in Himself and recapitulating all things, according to
the dispensation of God, to be realized in the fullness of time.^^
From what has been said it will be evident that to be in-
corporated in Christ means for the individual a tremendous
change; it means to be renewed within and without. St Paul,
indeed, strains language to the breaking-point in his effort to
bring home to his Christians the greatness and completeness
of the change. It is an abandonment, a death, a crucifixion of
the old man, the old Adam; and the putting on of the new life,
the life of Christ. It is an entire offering of oneself to Christ
through faith, a faith which, as we have already seen, com-
prises primarily an intellectual belief, but which the Apostle,
speaking of it in the concrete, regards as embracing far more
than that belief. Faith usually means to him to cast oneself
entirely on Christ, to accept Him unconditionally and without
reserve, to accept Him not merely with head but with heart, not
merely in principle but in practice, not merely intellectually
but with all conceivable consequences. Hence he speaks of

^Bph. i. 10.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE CHRIST OF PAUL 587

faith as an obedience, and disbelief is disobedience; and his
ideal is " faith working through charity." ^^

Prior to this faith and without it, not merely the works of the
Mosaic Law, but good works of any kind are of no avail for the
attaining of grace and glory; but this faith necessarily issues
in good works, the good fruit of a good tree. That it must do
so is clear from his many exhortations, and, following the Old
Testament, he insists that God will render to every man accord-
ing to his works; indeed, in Eph. ii. 10 it is even said that the
new creation of the Christian in Christ is for the very purpose
of the good works '* which God hath prepared beforehand that
therein we may walk." Other aspects of this fundamental
change are baptism, sanctification, justification. *'Ye have
washed yourselves clean, ye have been hallowed, ye have been
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." ^^ The Apostle
speaks of all these things as normally bestowed upon his con-
verts about the same time, without stopping to make the pos-
sible distinctions as to precise stages which Catholic theology
is bound to introduce; we can see from several passages ^^ that
the all-embracing faith which he contemplates means unity
with Christ no less than righteousness from God. This divine
state of the soul he calls also " life " and " glory," not restrict-
ing either term to the life hereafter: frequently, too, it is
" grace," the word that was to find a permanent place in the-
ological terminology and overshadow the others.

By way of illustration rather than proof, let us take the
first half of the sixth chapter of Romans, and paraphrase it
very freely; it is the passage that in most points, at all events,
sets forth in the clearest and fullest way the nature of the
change we have been describing. "We have died to sin;" we
have been through a death, the end of a former existence which
must never return, an existence of sin, and, indeed, contrasted
as an existence of sin with the life we are now leading. But
what is this death? It is baptism; baptism not merely brings
us into union with Christ Jesus, but more specifically in union
with Him in His death. His death becomes our death ; in Him and
with Him we die; nay, in Him and with Him we are buried, be-
neath the waters of baptism. This is the Apostle's emphatic way
of showing the atoning power of Christ's death; he speaks often
enough of Christ suffering in behalf of sinners, yet his more

» Gal. T. 6. "1 Cor. ▼!. 11. •» Gid. HI. 26, 27; PhiUp. HI. 9; Col. ii. 12, etc.

Digitized by

Google

588 THE CHRIST OF PAUL [Aug^

characteristic doctrine, here as in the matter of adoption, is in
terms of identification. But Christ rose from the dead, the
Father's glory taking fuller possession, as it were, of His Body,
as at the Transfiguration. And with Christ and in Christ we
rise too from our baptism in glory; it is a new life that is now
ours, and to which we have to suit our being and conduct. As
surely as we have taken upon ourselves the likeness of His
death — ^f or the Apostle here uses the word " likeness," though
this is not, either, his most characteristic phrase — so surely the
likeness to His resurrection shall be ours. The old man, our
former self, is crucified in and with Christ — notice the preposi-
tion 9UV in composition, which here, as in composition with
many other words, carries all St. PauFs system in it — o\u' sin-
ful body (meaning the flesh with its lusts) is destroyed, so that
we can serve sin no more. When sin endeavors to press its
claims upon us, we can simply answer that the individual
against whom those claims held good is dead, and there is an
end of the matter. But this death with and in Christ entails
life with and in Him. Christ, risen from the dead, can die no
more: He has conquered death, both corporal and spiritual
death, but the latter is more especially in question here. He
died to sin once and for all, subjecting Himself to it and letting
it work its will upon Him; but henceforth it is the Divine Na-
ture which entirely, as it were, dominates Him, and neither sin
nor death can touch Him. And so it must be with us. St. Paul
is setting forth partly fact and partly ideal. Baptism is death
to sin, but the Christian must remain dead to sin, that not being
a life with which he may have anything to do; baptism is cruci-
fixion, but in a certain sense, while here below, he must be re-
solved to remain upon his cross. He is alive with Christ's life,
alive with the life that truly matters before God; let him cul-
tivate it more and more, and beware of losing it!

The above may serve to bring out the general trend of
the Apostle's thought. It has also brought us to the question of
conduct. The practical aim of the Christian, in fact, is set
forth both under a negative and a positive aspect. The nega-
tive aspect is the crucifixion of self, of the former self, the old
Adam; it implies a renunciation of all within us that tends to
sin. We have seen that it is accomplished in baptism, and
must be maintained afterwards; but from more than one pas-
sage we gather that while there is, so to speak, an essential

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE CHRIST OF PAUL 589

stage of crucifixion, without which it is impossible to please
God, it is still a process that ever admits of greater thorough-
ness. We can empty ourselves more and more of all that is not
Christ and that cannot be assimilated to Him and identified
with Him. Thus, the Apostle certainly does not conceive of the
Colossians as being at enmity with God; at the outset of his
epistle^ for example, he speaks in glowing terms of their faith
and charity, and of the fruit which the Gospel is bearing among
them. Yet he exhorts them in startling words, '^ Put to death
your members that are on earth,** and in his vivid, eager way
he sets in apposition with these members *' impurity, unclean-
ness," and the rest; and a little further on he bids them "' strip
off the old man with his practices." *® And so it is with incor-
poration, with the Christ-life also, which he would have ever
more intense; not that it is in reality to break or destroy human
nature itself, for this is far from his thought, but it is to raise
our nature to a higher plane and a higher activity, and it is
only what cannot be so raised that must go. It is not his pur-
pose to create a void, but rather to fill every inch of space, if
we may use so material a term, to the best and fullest advan-
tage, that it may be Christ alone that lives and works in us — ^f or
Christ is God. Not, of course, that this is pantheism : the Apos-
tle did not think it worth his while to guard against miscon-
struction in this respect, nor do we: but the divine action is so
intimate and so penetrating that he found terms of positive
identification alone adequate to express it in our poor human
speech and to our very finite minds.

We ourselves, on the other hand, for clearness' sake de-
clare the divine action to be in the main twofold. " In the lan-
guage of current Catholic theology," if I may refer once more
to what I have written elsewhere,** " it is before all else * sanc-
tifying grace,' which again in the scholastic terminology of the
Aristotelian categories is a qualitas inhserens animse. But
this * quality ' represents such a penetration and transforma-
tion of the human soul by divine action, that St. Paul and the
Fathers have alike strained thought and language to the utter-
most to give us some inkling of its supremely intimate and
supremely transcendental character. And even those who may
themselves feel some difficulty in accepting their teaching on
this point will none the less recognize the general drift of their

» Col. HI. 6-9. « Journal of Thologieal Studie$, vol. xvll., p. 260.

Digitized by

Google

590 THE CHRIST OF PAUL [Aug.,

thought." Thus far the divine action in what may be called
it3 static aspect. But it also has a dynamic aspect, the con-
stant energizing of intellect and will; " for it is God Who work-
eth in you both the will and the act." '® It is for us to see to it
that this divine possession remain not inactive. " Him Who
knew not sin He made sin for our sakes, that in Him we might
become the justness of God; and as His fellow-workers we ex-
hort you not to receive the grace of God in vain." '^ " To put
on the Lord Jesus Christ " can be for the Apostle the compen-
dium, not merely of doctrine,'* but of intensely practical ex-
hortation.** With his beloved Philippians he goes in a manner
even farther; "let that mind be in you which was in Christ
Jesus,"** and so he proceeds to the lesson of humility. To
those who believed Christ living and working within them, it
might seem almost a tame thought to turn to imitate Him; yet
this, too, upon occasion is not wanting,*^ for fear the call to
consequent action should lack aught in clearness.

To one that had utterly surrendered himself to Christ
here below, there could be but one hereafter. St. Paul is so
taken up with the immense privileges conferred upon the Chris-
tian in this life that he has rather less to say of the next life
than one might perhaps expect. Yet the body was not to re-
main crucified for ever, but death was to be swallowed up in
victory; and he tells his beloved Philippians of his desire " to
set forth and to be with Christ — ^f or that were far better." *«
That will be the Christian's full glory, to which the sufferings
of this present time are not worthy to be compared, the glory of
the body then matching the glory of the soul, in full harmony
and unity with the glory of the risen Christ, " the first fruits
of them that sleep. For since by a man came death, by a Man
also cometh resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all
die, so in Christ all shall be made to live." *^

And there we close, in the consummation of perfect union.
Christicuius alter Christus, so it has been said; but he who
would have the mind of Paul, of him who himself thought to
have the mind of Christ,** must master another, a deeper, a
more enthralling, a diviner lesson, summed up in words so
simple, " Tis no longer I that live, 'tis Christ liveth in me." *»
In this crowning formula the alter can no longer find a place.

•• PhiUp II. 18. » 2 Cor. v. 21; yi. 1. " Gal. HI. 27.

»Rom. zill. 14; ef. Col. HI. 10-12 •«PhlUp. U. 5. »B. g„ 1 Cor. xl. 1.

*• PhlUp. 1. 28. ** 1 Cor. xv. 20-22. •• 1 Cor. U. 10. •• Gal. U. 20.

Digitized by

Google

CATHOLIC LITHUANIA.

BY F. AUREUO PALMIERI, O.S.A., D.D.

I HE real victims of the World War are the small
nations. They have lost their fortune, their in-
dependence, their industry, their commerce, their
national treasures. They have become helpless
throngs of women and children, living in pro-
longed agony.

The soil of Poland has become the grave of the best of her
sons who died of starvation or were forced to kill each other
while fighting under hostile colors. The heroic blood of
Poland has been lavishly shed not for the defence of Polish
ideals, civilization and independence, but to satiate the eager-
ness for booty of an irreconcilable foe. Belgium is still endur-
ing a cruel martyrdom. With her priests, women and children
massacred, her beautiful and artistic towns converted into
heaps of smoking ruins, her seats of learning burnt down, she
unflinchingly faces her trials, and will transmit her name to
posterity as the embodiment of the noblest Catholic heroism.
Rumania, Serbia, Montenegro, Armenia have been almost
wiped out from the map of Europe. They are transformed into
vast cemeteries.

Nor does this complete the list of the crucified small^ na-
tions. Other peoples, not mentioned in military bulletins, have
paid a heavy toll of lives to the Moloch of war. Almost un-
known in the day of peaceful effort to rise in culture, and to
develop national consciousness, they asked but a little space
to bask freely in the sun. But in an instant they were plunged
into the ghastly horrors of war. They have been tortured,
but in their agony they have emerged from obscurity.

Among these small nations, bleeding from the War and,
because of the War, that have attracted the attention and
sympathies of the great European public, Lithuania may well
stand at the top of the list. A few years ago her name was
known but to scholars. For centuries, the conditions of her
political existence, and the pressure exerted upon her national
genius by the more powerful nations, with which, willingly or

Digitized by

Google

592 CATHOLIC UTHUANIA [Aug.,

otherwise, she had become partner in the struggle for life, had
retarded the growing development of her distinct culture.

The Lithuanians, however, never lost their national con-
sciousness. They never fused with their neighbors or masters.
Among Slavs and Teutons, they kept their own ethnical unity.
Their language, the nearest approach to Sanscrit among West-
em tongues, was their weapon of defence against all attempts
at denationalization. Recalling the days of their glory and in-
dependence, they firmly hope that, in the reconstruction of
Europe after the War, justice will be done to their national
claims.

The restoration of the Fatherland, the dream of Mickie-
wicz, the greatest Lithuanian poet who wrote his masterpieces
in Polish, is also the dream of the present leaders of suffering
Lithuania. And as Catholics we hope that their claims will be
recognized. For Lithuania is a strong Catholic nation. Her
faith blossoms with the blood of martyrdom. Christian piety
and a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin are native char-
acteristics of the Lithuanian soul. In Europe, Lithuania is the
youngest daughter of the Catholic Church.^ Not until the end
of the fourteenth century were the weeds of paganism grubbed
up from her soil, although her evangelization began earlier.
Yet to the honor of the early Lithuanians, it ought to be said
that their pagan beliefs were purer than those of the Greeks
and Romans. The peculiar feature of the divinities of the
Lithuanian Pantheon is that they are all chaste. Lithuanian
mythology ignored married gods. All its goddesses were vir-
gins.' Moreover, even in their polytheistic darkness, the
Lithuanians believed some of the truths of natural religion,
that Christian revelation illumines, such as the future life,
the recompense of virtue, and the punishment of vice.

The earliest evangelization of Lithuania bears a German
stamp. It foreshadowed the political invasion and exploitation
of the country by the Teutonic Knights.

>Oiir historical data Is drawn from the Lietnvoi Utorija. Su kunigatkscia
paveikslaU ir zemlapiu ir lietuvoi rasltauos apzvalga (History of Lithuania with
the Portraits of Its Grand Dukes and Geographical Maps, and an Historical Sketch of its
Literature), by " Malronls," Mgr. John Maculrvidus (Matsulevlc), rector of the Ecclesi-
astical Seminary of Kovno. Petrograd, 19M, The history of Maculerlclus doses with
the reign of Stanislas Ponlatowskl, King of Poland (1764-1795). A careful history
of Lithuania from the earliest times till Gedlnimas (1316-1341) was written by
Simon Daukantas: Lletnvos Utorija nuo sentaastu gadiniu iki GedtminuL Plymouth,
Fa.« 1893 (two Tolumes). > ICalronls, p. 3.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC LITHUANIA 593

Meinhard, a canon of St. Augustine, in the second half of
the twelfth century went to Livonia, learned the language of
the natives, and brought about many conversions. After sev-
eral years of fruitful apostleship he set out for Rome, to give
an account of his apostolic labors, and was named bishop of
Livonia in 1191. His successor, Berthold, who was consecrated
at Bremen in 1196 opened the region freely to the invasion of
the German clergy and nobility. The (jerman3 brought into
this new jBeld of evangelization not merely an ambition to win
a new family of brethren in Christ, but political ambitions as
well. This led the Lithuanians to rebel against them and to
drive them from their jBefs. The Germans then determined
to convert them by force.

The new Bishop, Albert d'Apeldom (1199-1229), started for
Livonia with an armed escort, and built several castles, among
them that of Riga. He founded the Order of the Knights of the
Cross (Gladiferi or Ensiferi Livonienses) , who, not long after,
were merged into the Teutonic Order.

Lithuanian historians of Lithuania hold the Teutonic
Knights responsible for the delay in her conversion to Chris-
tianity. Wishing to maintain their own grasp upon Lithuania,
they circulated false reports to excite the suspicions of the Holy
See as to the readiness of Lithuanians in embracing the Chris-
tian faith. In 1251, Mindaugas, grand duke of Lithuania, sent
an embassy to Pope Innocent IV. seeking to place his kingdom
under the protection of the Holy See. The Pope received the
Lithuanian ambassador with great honor, and complied with
the request of Mindaugas, who received the royal crown and
consecration from the hands of Henry Armakan, Bishop of
Culm, in 1252. Several documents, published by the learned
Oratorian, A. Theiner, in his monumental collection: Vetera
monumenta Polonise et Lithuanise, show clearly the Pope's
interest in the welfare of nascent Lithuanian Christianity. In
a letter to the Bishop of Culm he advocated the use of mild-
ness and meekness as the best weapons to win to the Church
the pagan tribes of the new kingdom.

Unfortunately, the injunctions of the Pope were not ob-
served. The Teutonic Knights seized upon the rich province of
Samogitia, and usurped for their own use the conmierce of the
whole of Lithuania. Their harshness, avidity and cruelty pro-
voked a powerful reaction against their religious and political

VOL. cvn. — 38

Digitized by

Google

594 CATHOLIC UTHUANIA [Aug.,

tyranny. The Lithuanians rose in rebellion, and in a very
jBerce battle, on the banks of the Durbe, on July 13, 1260, they
completely routed the Teutonic Knights.

The excesses of the Order compromised the future of
Lithuanian Christianity. King Mindaugas was murdered. The
pagans again came into power. For thirty years, the whole
region suffered all the horrors of civil war, and all work of
evangelization was suspended.

A new attempt to Christianize Lithuania under Vytenis, in
1300, failed on account of the jealousy and perlBdy of the Teu-
tonic Knights. Several Franciscan monks who were sent by
the Archbishop of Riga to Vytenis were barbarously killed or
burned alive by them.

With the reign of Gedinimas, the national hero of Lithu-
ania (1316-1341), a new era begins for Lithuanian Christianity.
Gedinimas is the greatest jQgure in the history of the inde-
pendent Lithuanian kingdom. His chief title to glory was de-
rived from his decision to open his country to the vivifying in-
fluence of Catholic faith and Western civilization. He con-
fided the conversion of his subjects to missionaries of the Fran-
ciscan and Dominican Orders. His letter to Pope John XXII.,
written in 1323, is a strong list of complaints against the Teu-
tonic Knights. It is, he avers, not because of any hatred of
Christianity that he is driven to take up arms. He is fighting
for the defence of his people, and resisting German aggres-
sors. He declares himself to be ready to embrace Christianity
on condition that Lithuania shall have nothing in conunon with
her German torturers^ the Teutonic Knights and their Grand
Master.'

Gedinimas built two chiurches for the Franciscans, at Vilna
and Novogorodok. In 1324 he received at this capital the
legates of Pope John XXII. But the intrigues of the Teutonic
Orders, whose aim was the possession of Lithuania, continued
to retard the conversion of the nation.

The conversion of Lithuania was finally achieved by
Poland, whose recompense was great. For centuries,
Lithuania shared a conmion fate with Poland, and became
almost identified with her. In 1385, the crown of Poland was
offered to Jagellon, grand duke of Lithuania, by the young

• T. Narbttt, DxUit narodu LitewMkiego (HUtory of the Lithuanian People). Vllna,
Tol. It., doc xlT.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC LITHUANIA 595

heiress of the Polish throne, Hedwige. Jagellon had promised
to convert his subjects to the Cathohc faith, to reconcile to
Rome the schismatic Malorussians and Bielorussians of his
State, and to receive baptism himself. He was baptized at
Cracow on February 14, 1386, and his marriage with Hedwige
took place on the fourth of March.

In 1387, Jagellon returned to Lithuania to fulfill his prom-
ises. He granted to the Lithuanian boyars who would embrace
the Catholic faith, the same rights as those enjoyed by the Pol-
ish nobility. He forbade mixed marriages between Catholics
and Orthodox. The Polish clergy began to preach in Lithuania
to the members of the nobility, while the Franciscans at Vilna
preached in Lithuanian to the common people. The idols were
destroyed. On the ruins of the temple of Perkunas, the god of
thunder, rose the cathedrals of Vilna. The first bishop was a
Lithuanian, and a Franciscan, Andrew, 1388-1398.

In a few years Lithuania became, at least nominally, a
Catholic nation. In vain the Teutonic Knights strove to dis-
parage the success of Jagellon, by saying that the Lithuanian
boyars' conversion to Christianity was merely a pretext to se-
cure the privileges of the Polish nobility. Pope Urban VI. was
not deceived by their false reports. In a letter, dated April 17,
1388, he highly praised the apostolic zeal of King Jagellon.

Lithuania was reorganized from the point of view of
ecclesiastical administration in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. Its territory was divided into six dioceses: Vilna,
Semogitia,^ Lutsk, Kiev, Kamenetz and Chelm. The diocese of
Vilna embraced all of Lithuania proper, and at the end of the
fifteenth century it began to have suffragan bishops. Later on,
some bishops of Vilna — especially Prince James Massalski, 1762-
1794 — attempted to separate the Lithuanian Church from that
of Poland and to make Vilna the seat of an independent arch-
bishopric. Their efforts, however, failed in face of the ener-
getic opposition of the archbishops of Gniezno (Gnesen).

The history of the conversion of Lithuania is characterized
by an unfortunate featiure. For a long time the Lithuanians
were baptized and nominally converted to the Catholic Church,

* BUhop Matthias Wolonczewikl (in Lithoanlaii, Valancauskas) (1850-1875) wrote
the most important work on the history of the Catholic Church in Lithuania:
Zemajtiu Wiikupiste (The Diocese of Samogitla). Shenandoah, Pa., 1897. See
Malronis, Uetuvos istorija, pp. 287, 240.

Digitized by

Google

596 CATHOLIC UTHUANIA [Aug^

but they were not well instructed in the teaching and practices
of their new religion. Even in the sixteenth century we find
traces of paganism among the people. The influence of pagan-
ism was so strong that remnants of its literature and worship
filtered into Christianity. The reason for this is to be found,
of course, in the hurried conversion of the Lithuanian tribes to
Christianity. Historical sources relate that in the space of
thirty years (1387-1417) Jagellon and his cousin Vitautas con-
verted to Christianity five millions of their Lithuanian subjects.
Evidently, the number is exaggerated. It cannot be denied,
however, that at times violence was exerted in order to wrest
the Lithuanian tribes from paganism. At times the apostolic
zeal of Jagellon went so far as to provoke rebellions among his
subjects, strongly attached, as they were, to the worship of
their idols.

But, nearly all the Lithuanian writers assure us that the re-
ligious darkness which spread over Lithuania in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, was the natural outcome of the defects
of Lithuanian ecclesiastical organization. From the very out-
set of her Catholic life Lithuania was generally deprived of a
native clergy, sacerdotes naturales. The evangelization of her
people was entrusted to the Polish clergy, who did not always
care to learn the language of their flock.'

The Papal Nuncio to the court of Poland, Alexander
Kumuleus, who by instruction of Clement VIII. visited the dio-
cese of Vilna in 1595-1597, laments that through their ignorance
of the Lithuanian language, many priests were not able to ad-
minister the sacraments. There were even children who died
without baptism.^ And his dark picture of the sorrowful con-
dition of Lithuanian Christianity is confirmed by the testimony
of the Lithuanian Canon, Nicholas Dauksza, who wrote that the
lamentable decay of Christian life in Lithuania was due to the

*La Mituation de VEgli$t Catholique en Lithuante, Pro Lithuania, Lausanne,
1917, m ann^, p. 54; E. Volterls, Lietavska chreMtomatiJa (Lithuanian Chrestomathy).
Petrograd, 1901, p. 27; K. Propolanls, Polskie apostoistwo w Litwie (The Polish
Apostleship in Lithuania), Vilna, 1913, pp. 22, 23. A French revised edition of this
work, which is well supplied with documents, was published under the title: L'BgllBe
Polonaise en Lithuanie, Paris, 1914. See also: J. Gabrys, La question polonaise en
relation avec la question lithuanienne, Paris, 1915; A. Jakosztas, Lithuaniens tt
Polonais, Paris, 1913; De lingua polonica in Bcclesiis Lithuaniae, Cannae, 1906; JLe
eondizioni del Lituani cattolici nella diocesi di Vilna, Roma, 1912.

* M. B a lln s k i, Dawna Akademja Wilenska (The Ancient Academy of Vilna). Petro-
grad, 1862, p. 440.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC LITHUANIA 597

abandonment of the native Lithuanian language: z opuszczenia
jezyka ojczystegoJ'

Because of the neglect of national culture, Lithuania was
nearly won over to Protestantism in the sixteenth century. The
first seeds of the Reformation were sown in Lithuanian soil in
1542 by Abraham Kulwa, a Lithuanian who had studied the-
ology in Germany. In 1550, a German priest, John Winkler,
who secretly professed the doctrines of the Reformation, went
to Vilna. He gathered some followers from among the culti-
vated classes. The earliest heralds of Protestantism in Lithu-
ania raised up the flag of Lithuanian nationalism. The first
book printed in Lithuanian was the Lutheran catechism by
Mazvydis-Vaitkunas, published at Koenigsberg in 1547. At the
end of the sixteenth century a pastor of the same town trans-
lated into Lithuanian all the books of the Old Testament, and
in 1591 published in two volumes the explanatory sermons of
the Sunday Gospels of the whole year. Several families of the
Lithuanian nobility, the Radziwills, Sapiehas, and Chodkiewicz
passed over to Protestantism. The ferment of a religious up-
heaval spread through the masses of the people and the ranks
of the clergy.

Lithuania was nearly on the brink of a lamentable defec-
tion from the Catholic faith when Walerjan Protasewicz,
Bishop of Vilna (1556-1580), invited the Jesuits to arrest the
victorious sweep of Protestantism in Lithuania. They arrived
at Vilna in 1569 and set about their task at once. They built
colleges and schools, published apologetical treatises, opened
discussions with the theologians of the Reformation, and re-
vived Catholic feeling throughout the whole country. The
leader of the Catholic reaction was Peter Skarga, S.J., the
purest glory of Polish literature, one of the greatest orators of
the world, a prophet who foretold the partition of Poland two
hundred years before its occurrence. In 1570, the Jesuits
opened a college at Vilna. The Lithuanian nobility favored
the foundation. King Sigismond Augustus and Prince Casimir
Sapieha bequeathed to it their precious collections of classical
and scientific books. In 1578, thanks to the influence of Prince
Georges Radziwill, the college of Vilna was raised to the rank
of university, and called the Academy of Vilna. In 1579, Stefan
Bathory raised it to the rank of Cracow University. In 1641,

*See LietuviMxkieJie rasxtai ir rasxtininkal (Uthaanlan Writers and Wrlttn^),
TiUit, 1890, pp. 12, 13.

Digitized by

Google

598 CATHOLIC LITHUANIA [Aug.,

'the faculties of medicine and civil canon law added new bril-
liance to the Academy. In time it eclipsed the University of
Cracow. A few years after its foundation, in 1586, it numbered
seven himdred students. It became a beacon-light not only for
Lithuania and Poland, but for Russia. The literary renaissance
of Malo-Russia, in the seventeenth century, the foundation of
the Orthodox Academy of Kiev under Metropolitan Peter
Moghilas, the cultural awakening of Great Russia at the end of
the same century through the influence of Malorussian scholars
— all these movements had their origin in the development of
Catholic learning under the influence of Jesuits. Even the cul-
tiural supremacy of Poland in Lithuania and Malo-Russia
sprang from the Catholic Reaction, inaugurated and imceas-
ingly fostered by the Jesuit schools.

When we see the brilliant role played by the Society of
Jesus in the history of Polish cultiure, we cannot but wonder
at the severe judgment pronounced upon it by a recent his-
torian of Polish literature.®

At the outset, in dealing with the Lithuanians, the Jesuits
understood the necessity of fostering the national culture of the
country, and to cultivate the study of the Lithuanian and
Ruthenian languages. Peter Skarga urged the teaching of the
Russian tongue in the Ruthenian schools in order to hasten the
extinction of the Oriental schism. Other Jesuits wrote devo-
tional books, hymns, sermons in Lithuanian and Lettish. Con-
stantine Sirvydas (1564-1631) published a grammar of the
Lithuanian language (Clavis Ungues lithuanae), a Latin-
Lithuanian-Polish Dictionary (Dictionarium triiim linguarum),
and a manual entitled "Points for Sermons" (Punktay
sakimu).

Unhappily, the enthusiasm of the earliest days died away.
The Academy of Vilna, and later, the Jesuit colleges ostracized
the Lithuanian language. They endeavored only to graft upon
Lithuania the Polish culture; and Casimir Propolanis is right in
complaining that they did nothing to enlighten the Lithuanian
nation in its own tongue." The truth is, however, that the So-
ciety of Jesus was not directly responsible for the decay of
the Lithuanian language. The Polonized Lithuanian nobles

*Jan de Holewinskl, An Outline of the Hietory of Polish Literature, In Poland's
Case for Independence, New York, 1916, p. 189.

* Jezuicl . . » . nic prawie nic zrobili dia oewiatu ludu litewskiego w Jego wlasngm
Jexgktt, Op. eit., p. 42.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC LITHUANIA 599

contemned their native tongue as plebeian, hence the elimina-
tion of the Lithuanian language from the Jesuits' schools was a
natural consequence of the prevalence of Polish culture among
the Lithuanian nobility.

The Polonization of Lithuania made giant strides after the
famous treaty of Lublin, in 1569, whereby Lithuania joined
her fate to that of Poland. Polish culture became firmly
grounded in Lithuania, and until the partition of Poland and
the collapse beneath the Russian yoke, the history of the
Lithuanian Church is, indeed, hardly more than a detached
page of the history of that of Poland.

The Polish insurrection in 1861 put the fidelity of the
Lithuanians to the Catholic Church to a severe test. Under the
iron rule of General Muraviev, Lithuania became a land of sor-
row and an arena of martyrdom. The Bishops, of Vilna and
Seyni were exiled; many priests sent to Siberia or executed;
the finest and most historic Catholic churches were converted
into Orthodox churches. Swarms of Orthodox priests and
monks vainly tried to restore, as they alleged, the ancient
Orthodoxy among Lithuanians and Ruthenians. The policy of
the Russian Government aimed at a literary Russification of
Lithuania as a preliminary step to its religious Russification.
It was forbidden to publish Lithuanian books, unless printed
in Slavic letters. Of course the Catholic Lithuanians did not
yield to the violent measures aimed at undermining their faith.
They sacrificed rather the most cherished jewel of a civilized
people, their mother tongue. For more than forty years, they
used Polish prayer books. Instead of furthering the Russifica-
tion of the country, the Russian policy contributed powerfully
to its Polonization. And by means of the Church, Lithuania
would have been entirely merged into the Polish culture, had
not Lithuanian nationalism found shelter abroad, and some
priests, by their literary work, preserved and developed the
germs of national spirit.

During the period of ostracism of the Lithuanian press,
Tilsit in Prussia became the literary centre of Lithuania.
Lithuanian books and periodicals printed here, crossed the Rus-
sian frontiers and maintained among Lithuanians their patrio-
tic ideals. Monsignor J. Maculevicius (Maironis) of Kovno
with warm poetic feeling, exalted in his lyrics the beauty and
past glories of his country. Monsignor Anthony Baranowski,

Digitized by

Google

600 CATHOLIC LITHUANIA [Aug.,

Bishop of Seiny, wrote many l3n:ic poems — some of which to-
day are sung in every Lithuanian house — and by his epic
Anyksciu Silelis (The Anyksciu Forest) reminded his country-
men of the heroic deeds of their ancestors. Monsignor Matthias
Valancius or Wolonczewski, Bishop of Samogitia, laid the
foundation of the history of the Lithuanian Church by his
scholarly work: Zemaiciu vyskupyste (The Bishopric of
Samogitia) .

Like the clergy of the Uniate Rumanians, or those of the
Catholic Croats, Slovenes and Slovaks, the Lithuanian clergy
were the pioneers in the intellectual renaissance of their own
people. By their ceaseless toil, they prepared their countrymen
for political independence. They harmoniously blended re-
ligious and patriotic aspirations. For this reason they were
called upon to assume the leadership of their own people, and
to exert a paramount influence upon the national development.
By sincere devotion to a programme of sound nationalism,
they won the loyal zeal of their flocks, and made the Catholic
faith the main spring of their national life.

The Lithuanian Church has three dioceses. Politically,
and according to the former map of Russia, Lithuania was
included in the governments of Vilna, Kovno, Suvalki and
Grodno. Previously the government also of Minsk had
belonged to it.

From an ecclesiastical point of view, the three dioceses of
Lithuania — ^Vilna, Samogitia or Kovno and Seyni — ^include
more than what, strictly speaking, lay within Lithuania's
ethnographical boundaries. The diocese of Vilna, the most
ancient of all, includes the governments of Vilna and Grodno ;
that of Samogitia, the governments of Kovno and Courland;
that of Sejmi, the governments of Suvalki and Lomza. The
limits of the Lithuanian dioceses were fixed in 1847 by the Con-
cordat between the Holy See and Nicolas I.

According to the latest diocesan directories, the Catholic
population within the limits of the diocese of Vilna numbers
1,391,141 souls; with 311 parish churches, and 535 priests. The
diocese of Samogitia has a Catholic population of 1,356,381
souls, 219 parish chiurches, 152 chapels, and 637 priests. The
diocese of Seyni numbers 695,414 souls, 128 parish churches, 21
chapels, and 352 priests. The directories, however, do not give
the number of Lithuanian Catholics in Lithuania.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC LITHUANIA 601

We will find if we consult the figures drawn from Lithu-
anian sources, that the Lithuanian-speaking Catholic popula-
tion of the five former Russian governments included within
the three dioceses of Lithuania amounts to 2,565,000 souls. K
we add to that number 300,000 Lithuanians scattered through-
out Russia, 30,000 Lithuanians living in England, and 750,000
Lithuanians who have emigrated to the United States, the total
number of Lithuanian Catholics seems to be about 4,430,000
souls.

It is needless to say that the calculations based on Polish
sources differ widely from those made by Lithuanian writers.
According to the Poles, the number of Poles in Lithuania is
1,566,540, representing as much as thirteen and six-tenths per
cent of the local population. But even Polish writers admit
that the number of their countrymen in Lithuania has been
greatly reduced by the abolition of the Uniate Church and in
consequence of the deportation of a considerable number of
Poles, and that the great majority of the inhabitants of the gov-
ernment of Kovno consists of Lithuanians.^^

The renaissance of Lithuanian Catholicism after the ukase
of April 17-30, 1905, which granted liberty of conscience, is the
best fruit of the apostolic zeal of the Lithuanian clergy. In the
midst of the social whirlwind produced by the ukase, the
Lithuanian clergy were obliged to face at one time several im-
portant problems linked with the welfare of the Catholic
Church and of their own people. They were obliged to defend
themselves against the nationalists who hooted at them as the
tools of Polonism, and the foes of Lithuanian culture. They
had to thwart the propaganda of Socialism, which was rapidly
spreading among the mass of the people, and which assumed
an attitude openly hostile to the Church. They felt also the
necessity of arming themselves against a possible reaction of
the Russian Orthodox clergy, already sore at heart because of
the numerous conversions of Ruthenians to Catholicism."

The urgent need of Catholic organization made itself

"Arthur E. Gurney, The Population of the Polish Commonwealth, In Poland's
Case for Independence, pp. 130, 132.

"Dr. Anthony Viscont (PhD., Louvain), La Lithuanie religieuse, Geneva, 1918;
W. Vidunas, La Lithuanie dans le passi et dans le prisent, Geneva, 1918; C. VerbeUs,
La Lithuanie russe au point de vue statistique et ethnographique, Geneva, 1918;
Rev. Adam VUlmovidus, La Lithuanie, Geneva, 1918; Pro Lithuania, Bulletins du
bureau d* informations de Lithuanie, Paris-Lausanne, 1915-1918, and A Plea for
the Lithuanians, Philadelphia, Pa., 1916-1918.

Digitized by

Google

602 CATHOUC LITHUANIA [Aug.,

felt in 1905, when sixty leaders of Lithuanian Socialism exerted
a considerable influence upon the proceedings of the
Lithuanian seimas (diet) in which two thousand Lithuanians
took part. Three professors of the Roman Catholic Ecclesiasti-
cal Academy at Petrograd, Peter Bucis, Alexander Dambraus-
kas, and John Maculevicius drew up a progranune of organiza-
tion for the party of Christian democracy. The social Catholic
movement in Lithuania dates from that decisive step.

First of all, the Lithuanian clergy recognized the necessity
of developing a press. After forty years of enforced silence,
the Lithuanians were eager for the revival of their own lan-
guage, and the diffusion of their own literature.^^

Weekly and monthly reviews were established and the
need of a daily paper being felt to fight the liberal and So-
cialistic propaganda in Lithuania, Rev. Joseph Tumas started
the publication of Viltis (Hope), in 1907. This aggressive daily
paper is still the best champion of Catholic Lithuanian nation-
alism. Before the War the Catholic press in Lithuania comprised
seventeen papers and reviews; while the liberals and Socialists
had but eight. These figures show the admirable zeal of the
Lithuanian clergy for the enlightenment of their own flock,
and the defence of Catholic principles and doctrines in their
own land.

Parallel with the development of the Catholic press in
Lithuania ran the development of primary instruction. The
Lithuanian clergy devoted their energies to the organization of
parochial schools. And in 1909 several young priests who had
completed their studies in the Universiti Catholique of Lou-
vain organized the League of Lithuanian Students, to gather
together the Catholic students and foster their intellectual and
moral development. The League published in 1911 the
monthly review known as Ateitis (The Future).

Social welfare work for the Lithuanian Catholic popula-
tion, also occupied the attention of the Lithuanian clergy and

>*In 1911 Canon Joseph Skvireckas, professor at the Seminary of Kovno, pub-
lished the first Tolume of his monumental work, Sventas Rtutas senojo ir nau Jojo
iitatymo arba Testamento su Vulgatos tekstu (The Holy Scripture of the Old and
New Testaments According to the Text of the Vulgate). Kovno, Printing-house of
the Society of St Caslmir, 1911. Two other volumes followed in 1913. The transla-
tion is enriched with a learned commentary and introductions. The War has stopped
the publication of the whole work, which will embrace six Tolumes. In 1906 the
same author published a popular edition of the Gospels and of the Acts* of the Apos-
tles, Si^enta Mtuu Yie»patie$ Jexatu KristauM Evangelija ir Apostalu DarbaL KoTno,
1906.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC LITHUANIA. 603

met with remarkable success. The temperance movement in-
augurated in 1856 by the Right Rev. Matthias Valancius or
Wolonczewski in 1858, succeeded so well that in 1864 in the
diocese of Kovno only five persons per thousand were addicted
to intoxicants. But that same year General Muraviev dissolved
all temperance leagues. For political and economic reasons
the Russian bureaucracy deliberately preferred to besot its
subjects! The campaign of Bishop Valancius was resumed,
however, in 1908 by the Blaivybe (Temperance), a society
founded by several priests of the diocese of Semogitia. The
Society spread all over Lithuania, and in 1913 it embraced
48,000 members.

The development of Catholic benefit and cooperative so-
cieties is also a product of the spirit of initiative of the
Lithuanian clergy. The foundation of societies for cooperative
purposes was forced upon Lithuanians by the rural policy of
the Russian Government and the Polish landowners. The Rus-
sian Peasant Bank devoted large sums of money to dispossess
the Lithuanian peasants of their land so as to be able to fill
their places with Russian colonists. The Poles, in their turn,
established a banking company at Warsaw to further the Pol-
ish riural colonization of Lithuania. To meet the danger threat-
ening the vitality of their economic life, the Lithuanians
formed in 1900 their first cooperative society. Rev. Vincent
Jarulaitis, a member of the Imperial Duma, through the foun-
dation of a powerful banking corporation, warded off the
economic ruin of the Lithuanian peasantry.

The calamities brought to Lithuania by the War, and the
devastation of her towns and villages by both the Russian and
German armies, have considerably augmented the duties and
zeal of the Lithuanian clergy. Lithuanian priests are generaUy
at the head of the sections of the Lithuanian Relief Fimd Com-
mittee. In Switzerland, they have organized special commit-
tees to assist their starving and martyrized countrymen. In a
letter addressed to Monsignor Constantine Olszevski, Canon
of the Chapter of Samogitia, and Chairman of the Lithuanian
Executive Commission of Relief for the Victims of the War, the
Holy Father, Benedict XV., sent a sum of twenty thousand
francs. He has also invited all the bishops throughout the
world to take up a collection for the unfortunate Lithuanians
in all Catholic churches.

Digitized by

Google

604 jCATHOLIC LITHUANIA [Aug.,

The Lithuanians are now struggling for national in-
dependence.^' The general convention of Lithuanians, held
at Berne, from February 18th to March 3d, declared that
if the World War is a war for the freedom of the op-
pressed nations, Lithuania is entitled to complete national
independence. They resolved that "the unity of Lithuania
and Poland, which was destroyed at the end of the eight-
eenth century, has actually and rightfully ceased to
exist. The Lithuanian nation, desirous of securing Polish in-
dependence along its ethnical boundaries, is none the less de-
sirous to remain the ruler of its own land, and protests against
any attempt whatever to usurp Lithuanian rights in Lithuania.**

The Lithuanians, Poles and Ruthenians, have fought and
bled in defence of their civilization and of their Catholic faith.
In the period of their national distress they have turned their
eyes towards Rome; they have found in their clergy the
palladium of their national life; they have undergone the great-
est sacrifices. The World War will have been fought in vain,
if Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia fail to rise up from cruel
bondage to the freest national development.

^ See Kokia antonomija Lietuvai teikalinga? (What Kind of Autonomy Is Needed
by Lithuanians?), Chicago, HI., 1914; A Memorandum Upon the Lithuanian Nation.
Paris, 1911; A Sketch of the Lithuanian Nation, Paris, 1912; Lithuang and the Autono-
my of Poland, Paris, 1915; The Polish Question, London^ 1915, by J. Gabrys. See also
Lithuaniens et Polonais, by A. Jaksrtas.

Digitized by

Google

THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND.

BY EVELYN MARCH PHILUPPS.

L
I HERE was a time when throughout northern
Europe there ran a recognized undercurrent of
being, midway between our life and the life of
inanimate things. When every wood and cave,
every glen and river was the home and hiding
place of a tribe of creatures, remote from man, yet intimately
concerned with him and credited with possessing almost un-
limited powers of magic and enchantment.

The antiquity of this belief and its extent are too great to be
set forth in this small space. It is a belief which reaches back
into a primitive age. There is little doubt that it is a form of
survival of what were religious tenets and that former divini-
ties have been transformed into fairies. The notion that there
exist preternatural men and women, who invisibly inhabit re-
gions not always open to our ken, and yet can indulge in inter-
course with the human race, obtains not only among the Scan-
dinavian, British, Celtic and Teutonic races, but in Arabia,
Persia and India, among the Tartars^ and even among the sav-
age tribes of Africa.

* The name of Fairy has been deduced with great plausibility
from the Persian Peri, and it is urged that Morgan, so cele-
brated as a fairy of old romance, is Mergain Peri, equaUy
famed in Eastern story, but it seems more probable that it
is among the Parcae of antiquity, also called the Fatse, that the
origin is to be found. The connection between the Parcae or
fates and the fairies will be evident when we recollect how
often all these are represented, as at the birth of heroes or
princes, bestowing good and evil gifts.

From Fata was formed a verb, fatare, to enchant and so
we come to faer, the old French verb having the same meaning,
with its participle, /a^, to the chevaliers fais, les dames faies
or fies and to faSrie, the art of illusion and enchantment.

So it is used before the time of Chaucer. " Plusieurs par-
lent de faeries et de songes, de phantosmes et de men-

Digitized by

Google

606 THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND [Aug^

songes," * says an old French writer. " En effet, s*il me falloit
retowrner en faerie, je ne scauroye en prendre mon chemin,'* *
exclaims Ogier le Dannoye — and in Chaucer's Merchants Tale
is found : " Him to beholde it seemed faerie."

From the sense of illusion, the transition was easy to the
land of illusions and the abode of the Faes and the appellation
passed to the inhabitants in their collective capacity, till the
Faerie signilBed the people of Fairyland. At last the word
came to mean the individual inhabitant, the fairy knights and
ladies of romance, as well as the pygmy elves of the woods and
dells. Chaucer never uses it in this sense, but to Spenser it
seems indebted for its future currency and in the sixteenth cen-
tury it is employed by translators as meaning the Fays. Holin-
shed writes in 1577: " They believed that King Arthur was not
dead, but carried away by the fairies into some pleasant place
where he should remain for a time and then return again and
reign in as grete authority as ever." The use adopted by the
poets became that of the people in whom the belief had so
long been deeply implanted. It was a faith peopling the whole
land with beings whose mission on the whole was to punish the
wicked, to thwart and subdue the overbearing, the unfeeling
and the discourteous, but to watch over and protect all helpless
and innocent things, to encourage the good and to comfort the
forlorn. Says an old Chronicler : " They call them the Grood
People and say they live in wilds and forests and mountains,"
yet they appear too as the denizens of the hearth and home.
The Mermaids are but the Nereids of antiquity, the household
spirits are but the Lares of the old Latin belief. The earliest
of Icelandic sagas prove the belief in dwarfs and elves and the
Elf -king appears in the Nibelungenlied, written about the time
of Attila.

Some distinction is necessary between the more important
enchanters and enchantresses of romance and the little beings
who according to popular belief made the green circles of sour
grass, " whereof the ewe bites not." We must differentiate be-
tween the famous fairies of early romantic poetry and those of
of the nursery story.

Among the more classic and important figures is that of
Lancelot of the Lake, whose story was first printed in 1494. He

^ " Many taUL of enehantments and dreams, of phantoms and delusions.**
a ••Truly If I had to return to the land of enchantment,.! would not know my
way.**

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND 607

was carried off as a chUd by Vivien, to whom Merlin, the de-
mon-born, had taught a portion of his art, and after going
through a course of knightly education was presented at King
Arthur's court.

" In those times aU women were caUed Fays who had to do
with charms and enchantments and knew the power of words,
of stones and of herbs, whereby they were kept in youth and
beauty and in great riches as they devised.** In Perceforest
dwelt Schille du Lac, a Fay with whom, so legends told, Alex-
ander the Great dwelt to be cured of his wounds and who bore
a son to him from whose lineage came King Arthur.

Sir Launf al in the romance composed by Thomas Chestre
in the reign of Henry VI., was loved by Dame Tryamour, the
daughter of the King of Fairyland. The beauty of Tryamour
was said to be beyond conception.

She was as white as lily in May,
Or snow that snoweth in winter day.
He saw never none so freart (lively).
The red rose when she is new
Against her rose was naught of hew
I dare well say in cert.
Her hair shone as gold wire
May no man rede her attire
He maught well think in hert.

Launf al was rescued by his fairy love from the jealous
vengeance of Queen Guinevere and borne away to Avalon.

Every year upon a certain day
Men may hear Launfal's steed neigh
And see him with sight
But he was taken into the faerie
Since saw him else in this land no man
Ne no more of him tell I can.

Oberon, the dwarf king of the fairies, is a still older en-
chanter and first appears in a (jerman Heldenbuch, or book of
heroes in the early part of the thirteenth century. He is also
described in a French prose romance. He is but three feet in
height and aU humpy, but has an angelic face. The bad fairy
who was not invited to his christening had wished that he
might not grow after his third year, while another, willing to
counterbalance the ill wish, said he should be the most beau-

Digitized by

Google

608 THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND [Aug.,

tif ul of beings. Others had given him the power of transport-
ing himself from place to place and of penetrating into the
thoughts of men:

We the globe can compass soon
Swifter than the wandering moon !

Shakespeare formed a conmiunity of Fays, ruled over by the
princely Oberon and the fair Titania, and some of his loveliest
poetry is devoted to their characteristic traits, but it is uncer-
tain whether he, or Ben Jonson or Drayton, really held as true
any of that traditionary fairy lore which for centuries after
their time still formed part of the popular belief.

Closely connected with the fairies is the land of their
abode, the regions to which they convey the mortals whom they
love, ** the happy land of f aeris." The isle of Avalon, which
writers unanimously regard as the same place as Glastonbury,
was the abode of Arthur and of Oberon. It was also the abode
of Morgan le Fay, another famous character of enchanted story,
who is closely connected with the history of Ogier le Dannoye,
one of the paladins of Charlemagne. At his birth she pro-
nounced that he should be her lover and her friend. At the
close of a long life, Morgan, who is endowed with the gift of
perpetual youth, comes to fetch him to fulfill his destiny. She
takes him to her paradise and gives him youth and forgetful-
ness: **Such joyous pastime did the Fayes make him that
there is no creature in this world that could imagine or think
it. So the time passed away from day to day, from week to
week, in such sort that a year did not last a month to him.**
But after two hundred years had passed, his country is in sore
need, invaded by Paynims. Morgan, releasing him from his
Lethean trance, sends him back to fight and conquer in its de-
fence. Then he returned again to Avalon, but the belief still
obtains that one day when France is at her direst need, Ogier
will come back to deliver her.

Other legends describe that fair land as a city underneath
the sea : " Even now sometimes, though very rarely, eyes gaz-
ing down through the green waters can see the wide streets
and costly buildings of that city — and now and then will come
chimes and peals of bells, sometimes near, sometimes distant,
sounding low and sweet, like a call to prayer, or as rejoicing
for a victory.*^

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND 609

Thomas of Erceldoune is a personage who is known to have
lived in the thirteenth century, and to have established a last-
ing reputation for prophetic powers. He met the Fairy Queen
under the Eildon tree, which stood on the easternmost of the
three Eildon Hills and went with her to Fairyland, where he
abode for what seemed three days but was really three years.
At the end of that time he found himself again on earth, with
the gift of a prophetic tongue that could not lie.

The superstition of the expected deliverer is scattered
widely through Europe, and constitutes the more heroic side of
fairy lore. It is less a superstition than a sort of legendary,
popular belief, remarkable for its uncombated endurance.

Says Sir Thomas Malory : '" Some men say that King Arthur
is not dead but that he will come again to win the Holy Crosse."
In Wales they have a legend that he and his thousand knights
lie sleeping under a mountain in full armor, and '* when the
men of the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle shall go to war,
the clamor of which should make the earth tremble, the war-
riors will start from their sleep and destroy the enemies of
Britain."

Among other sleeping heroes of enchantment, Charlemagne
lies in the Untersberg near Salzburg; Siegfried, the hero of the
Nibelungenlied, in the mountain fastness of Geroldseck; Died-
rich rests in Alsace, his hand upon his sword, waiting till the
Turk shall water his horses on the banks of the Rhine. In Ser-
bia, Marko is the enchanted prince, in a palace on a mysterious
island. The traveler calls across the mountain : ** Marko, dost
thou live? " and in the echo he believes that he hears the reply.
Of all the names appropriated by this myth the most famous is
that of Frederick Barbarossa. In a cavern beneath the KyfT-
hauser mountain in Thuringia, he sits at a stone table over
which his beard has grown, and he will one day issue forth
with all his men.

While under the sway of fairy magic, enchanted mortals
are unconscious of the lapse of time. Sometimes they are
sununoned to perform services for the magical beings who
dwell beneath the earth. They are drawn into regions over
which supernatural power extends, by means of a love-spell
or by some illicit curiosity, or merely by accepting an appar-
ently innocent invitation, and they return to earth, after what
seems a few hours or days, to find that their generation has

VOL. cvu.— 30

Digitized by

Google

610 THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND [Aug.

vanished and that if they are recollected at all, it is only as
those who have long mysteriously disappeared.

Another means of deception is concerned with sight. Par-
ents were deceived by changelings. Young children were
stolen out of their cradles and a weird, old-looking being sub-
stituted. At the time of a birth every drawer in a house was
unlocked as the fairies then hid there; but as soon as the child
was born they were hastily re-locked to keep the occupants
prisoners, till such simple safeguard as a branch of rowan tied
over the cradle or a live coal placed beneath had been adopted.
Many measures were resorted to, to make the changeling be-
tray itself and oblige the fairies to restore the true child-
meals cooked in eggshells was a proceeding which appeared to
appeal particularly to the changeling's sense of humor. In all
stories the end is the same — namely, to excite the wonder and
curiosity of the imp to such a pitch that he betrays himself by
giving expression to it. In Normandy the changeling declares:
** I have seen the forest of Ardennes burnt seven times, but 1
never saw so many pots boil." Scandinavian Welsh and English
fairies all make the same sort of remark. There are many tales
in which the changeling is beaten, or starved or threatened
with ill-usage, the mother exclaiming, ^'Take thine own and
bring me mine," in order to compel restitution. Frequently,
nothing short of fire was deemed sufficient to free the house-
hold from the aflQiction of the forbidding wizard child.
Sometimes the mother whose child had been bewitched
had to go out at full moon to four crossroads and there, as the
fairy procession passed at midnight, she might recover her
own child.

Midsummer Day was a favorite time for release from fairy
enchantments — a relic of the ceremonies performed on pagan
holidays. Once a year those under a spell were permitted to
appear, and then mortals might render them the service of
disenchantment.

The legend of enchanted princesses, the Sleeping Beauty,
the Swan-Maidens, redeemed by the trials and sufferings, the
constancy and courage of the loving and devoted prince, is a
beautiful story to be found in many lands and with every vari-
ety of magical detail. Stories often take the form of a fairy
who weds a mortal. A typical instance is that of Melusine, the
famous Countess de Lusignan, who married Raymond of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND 611

Provence. They lived happily and she presented him with
beautiful children, till one day he dared to violate conditions
which she had imposed and discovered that she had the power
of changing herself into a mermaid, and really was akin to the
fairies of the sea. She was never seen again, but sometimes
in the darkness of night the nurses would hear her weeping and
busying herself about her little children. Chancellor Gervase
of Tilbury in Gloucestershire, a weighty authority who wrote
in the thirteenth century, asserts that one of her daughters mar-
ried a relative of his own, belonging to a noble family of
Provence, and that her descendants were living at the time
he wrote.

The stealing of a magic robe is one way of dispelling en-
chantment. The Swan-Maiden's feather robe is secured and
she cannot return to the swan form. Sometimes she is seized
with a longing to return to her own regions and offers a gift or
bribe as the price of freedom. A fisherman named Peregrine
gave up a fairy lady he had captured, on her promising to give
him three calls in the hour of his greatest danger. One hot,
calm afternoon when the fishing fleet was at sea with no
thought of peril, he beheld her head rise above the water and
heard her cry, " Peregrine, Peregrine, Peregrine, take up thy
nets.** With all haste he and his companion obeyed, and by
the time they ran past the bar a terrible storm had arisen and
all the rest in the fleet were drowned. There is a family still
resident in the neighborhood which bears a red mermaid with
yellow hair on its coat of arms in conmiemoration of this
legend.

Certain principles govern these stories. He who enters
fairy land and partakes of fairy food is spellbound. He can-
not return for many years, perhaps forever, to the world of
man. Perhaps this was a solution often welcomed in days
when news traveled slowly, or was never received at all, con-
cerning those who in time of war or on travel disappeared
from the knowledge of those to whom they were dear, never
to be heard of again. Fairies are grateful to men for favors
conferred and resentful for injuries. They never fail to re-
ward those who do them a kindness, nor do they forget to re-
venge themselves on those who offend them. To watch them
when they do not wish to be seen, is a mortal offence. Their
magical powers are represented as unbounded. They make

Digitized by

Google

612 THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND [Aug.,

things seem other than they are, they appear and disappear at
will, they make a long time seem short, and short, long, they
change their own forms and cast spells over mortals. The
glamour with which such famous enchanters as Merlin and
Michael of Melrose were endowed, was perhaps a sort of hypno-
tism which took command of the sense of sight and caused
their captives to see whatever they desired they should see.

It had much of glamour might,
Could make a lady seem a knight,
The cobwebs on a dungeon wall
Seem tapestry in a lordly hall.
A nutshell seem a gilded barge,
A sheeting seem a palace large,
And youth seem age and age seem youth.
All was delusion, naught was truth.

A man once came to a west county village with a wonder-
ful cock which could draw a heavy log of wood attached to its
leg by a rope. Crowds of people went to see this marvelous
performance and none could explain it, till a man appeared
among the spectators who had in his possession a four-leaved
clover. This completely protected him from the power of
glamour, and while others saw as they supposed a log of wood
drawn through the yard, he saw that only a straw was attached
to the cock's leg.

In all countries and in all ages, the histories rest more or
less on a broad basis, whether they are concerned with the
doctrine of spirits, the doctrine of transformations or belief in
witchcraft and the power to charm and enchant and to in-
fluence for good or evil.

11.

Now the fairies have all gone away and even children
seem in danger of forgetting their story, but in old times they
were so commonly seen and so universally acknowledged that
it would have seemed idle to doubt their existence, or to think
that the rough country people who described them, could have
imagined beings of such delicate and fantastic grace. And
their presence once recognized, there was no difficulty in find-
ing traces of them. Their midnight revels left dark-green cir-
cles on the dewy grass, their gossamer garments floated on the
autumn air, their invisible flight could be tracked across the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND 613

waving barley. The weird and tricky creatures who dwelt in
mountain caves and gorges called back to you in the echoes
of the hills, their song mixed with the running streams and
their sheeny robes gleamed across the waterfall. They would
ride the sea on a Cornish coast, their wild horses leaping from
wave to wave. ** It was magic — magic as black as Merlin could
make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam,
with singing mermaids in it."

Halls and homesteads were the resort of fairies of the
hearth, differing in different countries, yet possessing kindred
attributes. The Pixies were peculiar to Devon, Somerset and
Cornwall. They were tiny creatures, dressed in green, whose
duties were to punish the slothful and intemperate and to re-
ward the abstemious and thrifty, and it was averred that in the
houses they particularly favored they would toil all night
cleaning and tidying, only requiring a pail of fresh water to be
set apart nightly for their use. It was even declared that as the
good, industrious maid bore the pail along, it was upborne by
other hands and weighed nothing, and that as she gazed into
the water she caught a glimpse of little faces reflected round
her own.

The Brownie, the household spirit of the Scotch Lowlands
and Borders, was a fairy who lived alone among men. His
chief was the head of the house to which he attached himself,
and if the virtues of charity and hospitality were practised,
he watched and toiled for the house's prosperity. Brownie
usually appeared only on the accession of the Laird and then,
if properly received, he stayed to drain a cup. Afterwards his
presence was only revealed by the thriving condition of the
estate. A legend tells that he presided in this benevolent
fashion over the fortunes of Linden Hall, till it fell into the
hands of a graceless heir who dashed the wine into Brownie's
face when he came to take the pledge. He was never seen
again, and the estate went swiftly to ruin and passed into other
hands. The Kobold of Germany and the Nis of Scandinavia
resembled in many points the Brownie of Scotland, and were to
be found in every house, and for them too the bowl of milk was
set and the " (rood Piece ** of pie or potato thrown towards the
Imtel.

Perhaps, however, it is the Elves, the Wee Fair Folk, who
appealed most closely to our childhood's fancy. They were

Digitized by

Google

614 THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND [Aug.,

more widely scattered than any branch of their race. They
lived in sunny meadows and had for dwellings the interior of
moss-crowned hillocks, round which they led their dances,
tracing on the grass circles of the deepest green. Within these
circles it was dangerous for mortals to step, for the Fairy Folk
were apt to punish such transgressions severely. On the other
hand they were grateful to those who showed regard for their
chosen places of recreation — as shown in the old rhyme:

He wha tills the fairies' green

Nae luck again shall hae;

And he wha spills the fairies' ring

Betide him want and wae —

For weirdless days and weary nights

Are his till his dying day.

He who goes by the fairies' ring

Nae dule nor pine shall see.

And he wha decks the fairies* ring

An easy death shall dee.

There is no lack of accounts of these apparitions. Chan-
cellor Gervase of Tilbury describes them as early as the thir-
teenth century, " a long procession, men, women and children,
clothed in green," and wearing high crowned hats, who were
frequently met with. The Blackdown Hills near Taunton was
long one of their favorite resorts, and they have often been
seen fair-keeping there, but it was dangerous to go near or to
interfere with them. In Somerset, even now, a cross is some-
times marked on a newly-made cake to prevent the fairies
dancing on it, and a horse found inexplicably hot and tired is
said to be pixy-ridden, as the little creatures were fond of hang-
ing on by the mane, and urging the frightened animal to a mad
gallop across the moor. As late as the last century certain peo-
ple were pointed out as having been stolen away by the elves
for seven years. They came back crazed and care-worn, never
knowing where they had been, but always hankering after
something they could not find. A few very old people years
ago in the west of England used to tell of the sweet singing
that could be heard on the spurs of these hills on Midsummer
Eve. *' The fairies danced on moonlight nights upon the grass,**
says one of these, " they were little, little creatures, clothed in
green.**

The ** Fairy Folk Raid,** was long spoken of by Lowland

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND 615

folk. An old Nithsdale woman tells how coming from market
with another lass, they heard on a sudden " the loud laugh of
folk riding by, with the jingle of bridles and the clank of hoof."
" We glowered roun* and soon saw it was the Fairy-raid. We
cowered down till they passed. They were a wee, wee folk,
wi* green scarfs, but ane rode foremost and was a good bit
larger than the lave, wi' bonnie lang hair, boim* in a strap
whilk glinted like stars. They rode on braw wee nags, wi* unco
lang, swooping tails and manes hung wi' whistles, that the wind
played on. A high hedge o' haw trees keepit them fra gaun
through Johnnie Corrie's com, but they lap owre like spar-
rows and galloped into a green knowe beyont.*' The Low-
land fairies were described as very small, but finely built with
long yellow hair, wearing mantles of dark green cloth and sil-
ver shoon. They carried quivers made of adder-skin and bows
carved from the ribs of a man buried where "three lairds'
lands meef Their steeds would not dash the dew from a
harebell with their tread. They shot at and irritated the cattle
of anyone who offended them.

It was not everyone who could see the Elves. By getting
within their circle at midnight they became visible, and Sunday
children possessed a remarkable power of seeing them. If only
one could rub a little magic ointment on the eyes, there was
nothing to prevent one seeing them climbing up the dressers,
hanging on the beams, playing pranks on the clock, the table,
the mantlepiece, tweaking the cat's whiskers, riding races on
mice : up to every kind of game. They were always very beau-
tifully dressed. The little men in green velvet, their green caps
had long scarlet feathers and all wore little red boots. The
ladies were very niagniflcent little people. They had diamond
buckles on their little shoes and wore steeple crowned hats, or
diadems with gleaming stars, while their robes seemed woven
of butterflies' wings or luminous mist.

Though the fairies were so powerful and could wield
magic with so potent an effect, they were under certain laws
of their own. At the passing of the old year and on Midsum-
mer Eve, all were required to present themselves at the Court
of Fairyland on pain of severe punishment. They could not
cross a running stream unaided, and many a boatman has been
appealed to, to give them a passage, when no bridge was near,
and to those who dared danger and difficulty to grant their

Digitized by

Google

616 THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND [Aug..

request the grateful fairy never failed to make some rich re-
turn. The Fairy mythology teUs of a lad who, when plough-
ing, drew a circle round an old thorn tree, which was known
to be a fairy trysting place. On ending his day's work he found
a table spread beside the tree, with bread and cheese and
some sort of wine. His companions were afraid to touch it, but
he sat and ate and drank, exclaiming : '* Fair fa* the hands that
gie." Ever after he throve "like the bracken." The fairies
often borrowed and to refuse them brought ill-luck. A young
woman in the Lowlands of Scotland was one day sifting meal,
warm from the mill, when a beautiful little woman came to
her with a bowl of antique form and requested a loan of meaL
It was in a time of dearth, but the Scotchwoman made shift to
accord the loan. In a week her visitor returned to make pay-
ment. She set down the bowl and breathed on it, saying, ** Be
never toom (empty)." The woman lived to a great age, but
never saw the bottom of the bowl. But of all gifts the fairies
most coveted a draught from the human breast for their chil-
dren. A Scandinavian woman, one day nursing her child, was
accosted by a Moss-woman, who held out her sick child and said
that here lay her only hope of curing it. The Moss, or Wood-folk,
were a timid race who held little intercourse with mankind,
and only in extreme danger could they overcome their natural
shyness to ask this favor. The woman shrank from the weird
little object and the neighbors begged her to refuse; but the
wild accents of the elfin mother, begging her piteously to save
her child, at length prevailed. While the baby drank the heal-
ing draught the Moss-woman stood looking on with deep satis-
faction. Then with a sudden sharp cry, she seized the young
mother's knitting, knitted a few strands and replaced it, ex-
claiming: "Knit fast and free; you shall never see the end of
this ball."

It was dangerous to offend the fairies. To this day in Ire-
land, if an inconvenient thorn-bush catches the fisherman's
line, it is useless for him to suggest its being cut down. No
gillie will obey him, and by degrees he will gather that it is a
trap or plaything of the little people, who must not be rebuffed
or treated cavalierly. Every Irish peasant knows, too, that if
a cowhouse is erected on the site of the fairy rings, the cows
will pine away and die. Indeed, if a few fairies still linger any-
where among us, it is in Ireland.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND 617

The Dwarfs and Trolls were fairies of the woods and
caves and belonged peculiarly to the north of Europe. Brown,
white or black, they dwelt principally in the nine hills of
Riigen. The little Brown Dwarfs were beautiful and much
given to acts of charity and mercy. Children who had lost
their way in the forest were guided to their father's door, and
though they could see nothing, heard ever the tiny footfalls
leading the way over the rustling forest leaves. A hungry
orphan or a poor widow would find a ducat on the forest path,
or a loaf of bread at the bottom of an empty sack. The Brown
Dwarfs loved to dance on moonlight nights, on the mountain
side, clad in brown velvet suits and wearing slippers of crys-
tal. It was fatal to them if they lost any portion of their attire,
especially the cap which made them invisible, and if one fell
into the hands of a mortal, any request would be granted to
redeem it, though it was shrewdly suspected that such extorted
gifts brought no luck to the recipient.

The White Dwarfs worked exquisitely in steel, silver and
gold, and forged magical weapons, which they sometimes pre-
sented to humans. Nothing made by human hands could
withstand these trenchant blades. The Black Dwarfs bore a
less estimable character; lived in the caves along the coast and
plundered wrecks and drowning sailors. They had fierce glit-
tering eyes, and their mocking laughter and triumphant songs
might be heard in the lull of the storm-wind. They came in-
land to hold their carousing under the elder tree, a tree which,
with its moon-white blossoms and strong perfume, was mysteri-
ously linked with the fortunes of Elfland. The Trolls were
folk of Scandinavia and inhabited the interior of hills, where
they had spacious dwellings, filled with gold and silver and
precious stones. They took charge of wells and endowed them
with healing virtues, and with power to give extraordinary
fruitfulness to all green things planted near. To this day they
show a well in Norway, said to be a noted haunt of the Trolls.
It was from the vapor of these wells that they wove their heb-
het-kappe of invisibility. The Neck, a river spirit of Scandi-
navia, appeared as an old man with a long flowing beard, and
was seen on moonlight nights, standing waist-deep in pools or
meres, playing a wild, sweet strain upon his magic harp, which
was reputed to have the power of luring faithless lovers to their
doom by the resistless witchery of its tones.

Digitized by

Google

618 THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND [Aug.

One of the chief duties of the fairies was to protect orphan
children and even to convey them to Elfland for a space, which
might be of seven years or even of twice or thrice that duration.
These guests of Fairyland might be known by the dreamy look
in their eyes and the exquisite grace of their movements. A
Lady Cloncurry of a generation or two ago, who was by birth
a Kirwan of Connaught, was said to number such a fairy's
guest among her ancestors and to owe to her, her remarkable
grace and fascination. The transportation of children usually
took place on Midsununer Eve, and a child bom on that night
was under the peculiar care of the " (rood People."

Among the wicked fairies were the EUe-maid of Scandi-
navia and the Korrigan of Brittany, both of whom had the
power of assuming forms of beauty by night, and who were be-
lieved to waylay knights who traveled in the forests after sun-
set, striving by every charm and blandishment to shake their
knightly vow and their constancy to their lady love — ^but who
at the first ray of dawn fled, a loathly ruin. The forest of
Brdcdliande in Brittany was a favorite haimt of the Korrigan,
while the forests of Lorraine were the chosen kingdom of La
Dame Abonde, " the star-crowned Queen of Fays." Here the
great enchanter Merlin was buried, though no one has ever
been able to discover his resting place, and here too was the
fountain beneath the fairy-tree where Joan of Arc saw her
visions. The Tylivette Teg or fairy family of Wales, lived on
a lovely island in a lake among the mountains of Brecknock.
A secret passage from this island, passing under the bottom
of the lake, was the route by which the fairies visited the out-
side world.

A strange connection was held to exist between the elfin
people and the trees. The elder-tree was said to have the
power of walking in the twilight, and used to look in the win-
dows when the children were alone. It was not prudent to
have any furniture made of elder wood, and if a cradle was
made of it, the fairies would give the child no rest. The lime
tree was another favorite haunt of the little people, and it was
not safe to sit under it after dusk, while the willow wand also
possessed magical properties.

So the fanciful, circumstantial, fantastic beliefs went on,
almost up to our own day, dying hard, gathering round them
every strange detail, ministering to the pleasure of the weak

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE LORE OF FAIRYLAND 619

and helpless by the thought of a protectmg power that cham-
pioned the forlorn. But the fairies have gone away at last, and
•* now can no man see elves more." After living in our land
for centuries, familiar denizens of places where life was quiet
and wild and peopled with simple folk, they have left us at
length. There are strange stories of their going; of how
myriads of little footsteps might be heard rustling and pat-
tering upon the shores, of how boats that looked empty, sailed
away sinking to the gunwales with the weight of invisible pas-
sengers.

Many chroniclers have tried to trace whence they came
and they may discuss and disagree without finding out, but to
children and.to a few others it is given to know whence they
really came and whither they are gone back to dwell. It is
that far country beyond the worn gate, where King Arthur was
carried after the fatal battle; the land whither the Fairy Queen
carried true Thomas of Erceldoune; in which seven years
seemed but seven days, and from which legends tell that Robin
Goodf ellow, the son of the Fairy King, was brought to earth, for
a brief sojourn, with the injimction to

Love them that honest be,
And help them in necessitie.
The land

Where falls not hail, or rain, nor any snow.
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea;

the abode of peace and rest for which every heart instinctively
craves; and the land of simple pleasure, which looks not be-
fore nor after, but takes the best of now and here, with the
happy and unquestioning acceptance of childhood. It is their
own green Elfland, the Realm of Faerie.

Digitized by

Google

WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND?

BY VIRGIL G. MICHEL, O.S.B.

HE so-called " new poetry " is only one phase of a
tendency that is prevalent everywhere. The air
seems charged with the spirit of revolt against
traditions, and on all sides we find them giving
way to a readjustment of the old order. Some
it to the War as the underlying cause. But the
spirit had been in evidence for some time before* the War, and
there is at least an equal probability in the rival claim that
the War is rather the supreme expression than the source of
this fermentation. In poetry the spirit certainly was extant be-
fore the War, though its highest development has been reached
since. It is now about a year ago that a collection of poems
appeared bearing the title of The New Poetry.^ The book
elicited much comment from book reviewers, who called atten-
tion almost unanimously to the great disparity in the merit
of the selections presented. This disparity, indeed, together
with the wide variety in the method of treatment regarding
form and content alike, makes it difiicult to realize how the
poems can be so united under a common head as to exem-
plify any one tendency.

The preface of this volume states that " the new poetry
strives for a concrete and immediate realization of life *' and
discards abstractions, and that its ** effort at modern speech,
simplicity of form, and authentic vitality of theme " is leading
away from " the accepted laws of English verse." The volume
contains some excellent bits of verse, such as will find a re-
sponsive echo in every human heart; but most of these are
wrought closely along the canons of traditional English poetry.
The opening poem by Conrad Aiken, universally lauded, com-
mences with

Music 1 heard with you was more than music,
And bread 1 broke with you was more than bread.
Now that 1 am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

^Mew York: The Macmlllan Co.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND ? 621

No one can fail to recognize the genuine sparkling of the little
gem by Joyce Kilmer, entitled Easter: *

The air is like a butterfly

With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky

And sings,

while stanzas like the following:

I saw the clouds among the hills

Trailing their plumes of rainy gray.

The purple of the woods behind

Fell down to where the valley lay

In sweet satiety of rain.

With ripened fruit and full filled grain,

are almost Wordsworthian. An entirely different tone is given
by specimens of another type, as To a Discarded Steel Rail:

Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch,

A soul you have — strength has always delicate secret reasons.

Your soul is a dull question.

I do not care for your strength, but for your stiff smile at Time —

A smile which men call rust.^

This poem belongs to the school of Imagism, which'is really the
distinctive present tendency in poetry.

The criticism of the Imagists and their poetry has been
most varied. The writers of vers libre have been, by some,
lauded without limit, while others have been equally unable to
hold in check their utter contempt. The New Republic (Septem-
ber 19, 1916) says with a flourish : " Futurism, Imagism, Vor-
ticism, the *Sceptric School,* Polyrhymthic Poetry — all these
names are efforts to compensate a sense of creative inferiority.
So let them pass.** The unenlightened certainly will be
tempted to do so when passages like the following are met with :

This is the song of youth.

This is the cause of myself;

I knew my father well and he was a fool.

Therefore will I have my own foot in the path before 1 take a step:

* Pagt 150. • Page 360. « Page 26.

Digitized by

Google

622 WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND ? [Aug.,

I will go into new Iands»

And I will walk on no plank-walks.

The horses of my family are wind-broken.

And the dogs are old,

And the guns rusty;

I will make me a new bow from an ash-tree.

And cut up the homestead into arrows.^

However, the attitude officially assumed by Imagist poets en-
titles them at least to a thorough hearing, to the same fair-
mindedness that they exhibit. In the preface to Some Imagist
Poets, 1916; An Annual Anthology, and elsewhere, their view-
point is clearly expressed. They do not condemn the poetry
of the past; nor do they claim to have discovered a new art, for
specimens of vers litre have existed at all times. But the dis-
tinctive poetry of any age is the expression of, and is suited
to, just that age; e. g., the poetry of Milton, the classicism of
Pope. In a similar way Imagists claim to seek, and hope to
have found, the poetic medium of the present age, the artistic
means of expressing the spirit of the day and of addressing its
men and women. They ask to be judged, not by the standards
of bygone ages, but by their own principles — and nothing
can be fairer than this.

The verse form employed by the Imagists has given their
productions the name of vers litre or free verse. Joshua Rey-
nolds says that rules are no fetters to genius; and it has been
suggested regarding the Imagists that lack of genius is the
cause of their breaking all established poetical canons. But
inability is not at the bottom of Imagist poetry; the vers litrists
have reduced their untrammeled freedom to a method : ** The
unit in vers litre is not the foot, the niunber of syllables, the
quantity of the line. The unit is the strophe, which may be the
whole poem, or may be only a part. Each strophe is a complete
circle. . . . " • This unit is called cadence, and may vary in
length just as circles vary in size.

Another important fact to bear in mind is, that *'a
cadence poem is written to be read aloud," for ** in this way
only will its rhythm be felt." ^ Nor is there any definite length
of line for any one poem : *' The length of lines is determined
by a variety of considerations. First and foremost, the writer
must feel — as, indeed, always and everywhere — his theme.

•Pa«e 144. •Preface to Somt JmagM Potti, 1919, *lfrM.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND ? 623

He must sense it, if but subconsciously — and perhaps best sub-
consciously — as a matter of flow and cadence** • so that often
the division into lines seems rather a matter of whim than
inspiration. In the following example ' each line was appar-
ently intended to drive home a single impression:

London, my beautiful,
I will climb
Into the branches
To the moonlit tree-tops
That my blood be cooled
By the wind.

More important than such considerations is the manner
in which these poets handle their matter. Indeed, the name
Imagism refers to the method of presentation, not to the sub- ,
ject presented, nor to the form. It refers to what the words
are meant to convey to the reader. Let them speak for them-
selves: "The *exact* word does not mean the word which
exactly describes the object in itself, it means the * exact'
word which brings the efl'ect of that object before the reader as
it presented itself to the poet*s mind at the time of writing the
poem.** "

Amy Lowell, in the North American Review, January, 1917,
says : " Descriptions there are, of course, but the descriptions
are so managed as to give an atmosphere rather than an exact
account. . . . The * exact * word is the one which best renders
this suggestion.'*

The Imagists, then, do not propose to convey ideas or defi-
nite pictures so much as "effects** or impressions. Hence
the reader who tries to look for a continuous picture, may
often receive a jolt when a sudden turn is made, or some-
thing is thrown into the middle of the picture entirely out of
accord with his vision, which seeks a complete, unbroken
scene. Random examples of this are Shore Grass:

"the moon is cold over the sand-dunes,

And the clumps of sea-grasses flow and glitter;

The thin chime of my watch tells the quarter midnight;

And still I hear nothing

But the windy beating of the sea.^^

* Dial, December 14, 1916. * Dea ImagUtes, An Anthology, New York, 1914.

M Preface, Some Imagist Poets, 1916. ^The Bookman, February. 1917.

Digitized by

Google

624 WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND ? [Aug.,

And Sunsets:

The white body of the evening

Is torn into scarlet,

Slashed and gouged and seared

Into crimson.

And hung ironically

With garlands of mist.

And the wind

Blowing over London from Flanders

Has a bitter taste.^'

Leo Tolstoi somewhere in What is Art claims that there is
no need to go to an opera house to hear Wagner, as the same
effect can be had by sitting at home and taking a dose of
opium. Without going so far, we imagine that the " effect •*
intended by the Imagists is most easily obtained if the subject
reposes in a comfortable easy chair, shuts off all but the re-
quired sense of seeing or hearing, and then lets the general
** atmosphere ** work on a vague consciousness. This may not
appeal to everyone; but what art does? All that can be said is :
qui potest capere^ capiat.

This idea of " atmosphere rather than an exact account " is
not always followed out, even in poems selected specially as
representative of Imagism. For example, the 1916 Anthology
commences a poem entitled Rain in the Desert thus :

The huge red-buttressed mesa over yonder

Is merely a far-off temple where the sleepy sun is burning

Its altar-fires of pinyon and toyon for the day.

Now, to follow the purpose of Imagism, to give the effect
rather than the object itself, the writer should have left out
the first line and have commenced with : " A far-off temple.*'
In the following example it is hard to find any atmosphere as
such, while the object itself, the picture, is certainly most
definite :

A great broad shaft of calcium light
Cleaves, like a stroke of a sword, the darkness:
And, at the end of it,

A tiny spot which is the red nose of a comedian
Marks the goal of the spot-light and the eyes which people the
darkness.^'

^Some Imagist Poets, 1916. "In the Theatre, 1916 Anthologg,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND ? 625

There are also other indications, less triflng, that the
Imagists are not always clear with themselves as to what the
new spirit prompts or demands. The Dial of September 21,
1916, speaking of free verse, says : " It is not so much to be
* read,* as it is to be * grasped.' Knowing that it will be seized
upon practically a line at a time, the author makes such line
divisions as will cause his idea to strike home with a maximum
emotional effect."

This is explicit — rather " grasped *' than " read " — and en-
tirely in accordance with the major principles of the Imagists.
But we have already quoted from the preface of the 1916 An-
thology that vers litre " is written to be read aloud;" and Amy
Lowell in The Dial of September 7, 1916, commenting on free
verse, says : " Of course, poetry is a spoken art." This is
equally explicit and quite the contrary of the above.

Again, the Imagists claim to be anything but subjective.
The characteristics of their poetry are suggestion, vividness,
concentration, and externality as opposed to subjectiveness.^*
"We do not tell stories — we throw pictures on a screen, but
we ourselves remain in the dark."^*^ Yet it appears to the
writer that the fundamental principle of their Imagism is the
very embodiment of subjectivity. They do not describe a
vision or scene that they experience in a way to permit the
reader to judge of the results for himself; they wish to convey
immediately, without the medium of the concrete object, the
impression they have had. Thus their readers have no oppor-
tunity to experience or to judge for themselves; they are con-
fronted only with the subjective atmosphere felt by the writers.
As already quoted, the Imagists strive for " the * exact ' word
which brings the effect of that object before the reader as it
presented itself to the poet's mind at the time of writing the
poem."

After so much discussion of a tendency that many decry
flatly as a leaning towards insanity, the question naturally
arises: What is the purpose of it all? Here it is not sufficient
to answer, even if one so believed, that art has no purpose
beyond itself. For the Imagists claim no mere inner necessity
to reveal themselves, and they aim explicitly to have readers
feel their impressions as they feel them. Why? For the pleas-
ure of the readers, their uplift, or emancipation as some say?

M Amy Lowell, North American Review. January, 1917. " Ibid,

▼OL. cm.— 40

Digitized by

Google

626 WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND ? [Aug.,

It is hard to say. Yes; since the note most common is one of
gloom, of cheerlessness. The Imagists may not aim at a philos-
ophy of life, but they do portray one — one, as a rule, ^which is a
cross between despondency or complete surrender to morbid
sentimentality and the meanness of life. The note in Sea
Gods is no exception, but a very prevalent type:

They say there is no hope —

Sand — drift — rocks — ^rubble of the sea —

The broken hulk of a ship,

Hung with shreds of rope.

Pallid under the cracked pitch.^*

A series of titles helonging to the contributions of two
poets are given in order: Easter, Ogre, Cones, Gloom, Terror,
Chalfont, Saint Giles, War-time, Erinnyes, Perfidy, At the Win-
dow, In Trouble and Shame, Brooding Grief. And when a sam-
ple like the following looms up, it is hard not to grow impatient
and say. Amen, to the writer's own prayer:

I am a garden of red tulips

And late daffodils and bay-hedges,

A small sunken garden

About an oblong pool

With three grey lead Dutch tanks —

I am this garden shattered and blown

With a day-long western gale

And bursts of rapid rain.

God of gardens, dear small god of gardens.

Grant me faint glow of sunlight,

A last bird hopping in the quiet haze.

Then let the night swooping swiftly,

Fold round and crush out life

For ever.i^

The attempt to convey an impression or effect without the
concrete object is not altogether new; it occurs often in figures
of speech, principally metaphors. But a tendency whose aim
is to convey nothing but such impressions, to the exclusion of
the intellect, is new. The emotional faculty is just as real in
man as his power of understanding, and no one can deny to
another the right to address man through the channel of the
one without an appeal to the other. But whether the attempt

^Anthology, 1916. "Some Imagist PotU, 1917,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WHITHER DOES IMAGISM TEND ? 627

will be successful, whether it really can be done regularly, is
a matter for experiment. In real life the emotional element
can and does suppress the understanding altogether at times;
but are the emotions ever aroused or set in motion without
the aid of the understanding, without concrete ideas or notions
in some form or other with which to begin? The experiment
should be interesting, though many will always consider it a
step backward rather than forward to exclude or minimize
that faculty of man which is his noblest gift, and make of him
a kind of sponge for soaking up emotional hmnors.

The tendency to convey impressions rather than express
objects definitely, is found not only in the field of poetry, but
also in painting and music. Much of the work of the Impres-
sionistic School of Painting aims altogether at creating an ** at-
mosphere," so that the uninitiated ask what the meaning of it is,
just as they do regarding vers libre, or Futurist Music, that of
Leo Ornstein for instance. **The only motive that Futurist
Music can entertain," says the Literary Digest of September 28,
1913, •* is one not fully exprest, but only suggested." The simi-
larity seems undoubtable; and we even have " an attempt to re-
produce the sound and movement of the music " of Stravinsky's
• Grotesques ' for String Quartet " as far as is possible in an-
other medium." " We give the first lines of the First Move-
ment, that the reader may judge for himself:

Thin-voiced nasal pipes

Drawing sound out and out

Until it is a screeching thread,

Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,

It hurts.

Whee-e-e!

Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump!

There are drums here.

Banging.

And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones

Of the market-place.

Whee-e-e !

^Antholoffg, 1916,

Digitized by

Google

THE GROWTH OP A MODERN MYTH.

BY MARTINA JOHNSTON.

aphorism, " all history tends inevitably to
yth," finds some justification in the story of
r. Marcus Whitman's saving Oregon to the
nited States. The origin and growth of those
^lightful myths interwoven with the histories
je and Rome, may be attributed to the credulity
of a highly imaginative people as much as to lack of general
education; but it was not so with the Whitman myth. History
oflFers no parallel for it anywhere. Other legends have grown
by slow accretion of matter and detail, but a brief quarter of
a century sufficed to transform Whitman from a frontier
physician in the remote wilds of the Far West, into an heroic
figure, whose simple word influenced the counsels of the nation,
shaped the destinies of the Great Northwest, and saved the
Oregon territory to the United States. That the reader may un-
derstand the widespread credence the Whitman myth attained,
making it by far the most remarkable attempt to inject into
our history a pure legend, a brief smnmary of the conditions
and events leading up to his famous ride will be necessary.

During nearly all of the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the vast region known as the Oregon Country, which in-
cluded the present States of Oregon, Washington and Idaho,
and a large part of Montana and Wyoming, was disputed ter-
ritory. Great Britain claimed the territory on the strength of
the voyages and discoveries of Sir Francis Drake and Captain
Cook. The United States based its title on the Louisiana Pur-
chase, the discovery of the Columbia River by Captain Gray in
1792, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition sent out by President
Jefi'erson to explore this region and report to Congress on the
aspects of the country and the feasibility of travel over the
Rocky Mountains. The first actual settlement within its bor-
ders had been made also by Americans at Astoria in 1811.

In 1818 a treaty of joint occupancy until the questions in
dispute should be settled, was concluded between Great Britain
and the United States, and was renewed in 1827. Under this

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH 629

treaty the Hudson Bay Company, a British organization for
carrying on the fur trade with the Indian tribes of Canada and
the Northwest, established a trading post at Vancouver on the
Columbia River and at Boise, in the present State of Idaho; a
sub-station was also established at Walla Walla, about thirty
miles from the Columbia River. No missionary work of any
kind was undertaken, in this vast region until 1834, when the
Methodists established a mission in the Willamette Valley,
which proved a disastrous failure and was abandoned a few
years later. In 1836, Dr. Marcus Whitman, a physician. Rev.
Cushing Eels, and Rev. H. H. Spalding, with their families and
a few others, established missionary stations in what is now the
eastern part of the State of Washington. Dr. Whitman set-
tled at Wailatpu on the Walla Walla River, a branch of the
Columbia, seven miles from the present thriving city of Walla
Walla. This portion of the territory was the home of the
Cayuse tribe of Indians, who, like all the aboriginal inhabitants
of the continent, were extremely jealous of the intrusion of the
white race among them and suspicious of their motives. The
missionary work of Spalding and Eels was among the Spokane
and Nez Perci Indians farther to the north and east.

From its very beginning their work was unsuccessful. The
Indians were apathetic and imresponsive to their efforts, and
so pronounced was their failure that the American Board of
Missions in Boston had decided to discontinue it. This was the
peril which Dr. Whitman sought to avert by his spectacular
ride across the continent in 1842-1843. The saving of his mis-
sion, and not the "saving of Oregon" (which was in no danger),
was the impelling motive for his venturesome trip. This is
plainly shown in his correspondence with the Missionary
Board. Sixteen of Whitman's letters between November 1,
1843, and October 18, 1847, are in the archives of the American
Board.^ In no one of these does he claim to have "saved
Oregon." One of these letters states as his purpose: " To open
a practical route and to secure a favorable report of the jour-
ney from immigrants, which, in connection with other objects,
caused me to leave my family and brave the toils and dangers

of the journey .In connection with this, let me say that the

other great object for which I went, was to save the mission
from being broken up just then, as it must have been, as you

* See the Whitman Legend In Report of the American Historical Association for
1900, W. L MarshaU.

Digitized by

Google

630 THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH [Aug.,

will see by a reference to the doings of the Prudential Com-
mittee, which confirmed the recall of Mr. Spalding only two
weeks before my arrival in Boston. I often reflect upon the
fact that you told me you were sorry I came. ... It may not be
inappropriate to mention that at that moment the Methodist
mission, as well as our own, was on the point of dissolution."
This personal statement ought to be conclusive evidence
against the claims made that by this ride he saved Oregon to
the United States. This and much more, however, is
carefully suppressed by the authors and propagandists of the
Whitman myth. These, with one accord, claim that such was
the apathy and indifference of our Government at Washington
regarding the Northwest, and so astounding was the ignorance
of its value, that the Administration was actually contemplat-
ing a cession of our title to Great Britain for certain fishing
rights in the vicinity of Newfoundland. Nothing could be far-
ther from the facts. From the time of President Jefferson, who
sent out the Lewis and Clark Expedition, until the settlement of
the boundary question by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty in
1846, no other subject occupied so much of the attention of
Congress as did the Oregon Question. From 1824, and even as
early as 1818, the most eminent of our statesmen, under each
succeeding administration, were endeavoring to find a peace-
ful solution to it, and stood ready, if need be, to fight
for it.

In 1838, Senator Linn introduced a bill in Congress for the
occupation of the Columbia or Oregon territory. This bill was
referred to the Conmuttee on Foreign Affairs, composed of the
following distinguished men: James Buchanan, Henry Clay,
Franklin Pierce, John C. Calhoun, and J. L. Linn. In 1838,
Linn introduced a joint resolution declaring that oiu* title to the
Oregon Country was indisputable and would never be aban-
doned; also providing for the raising of soldiers to protect im-
migrants to that territory.

In 1840, Congress ordered published a history of the
northwest coast of North America and adjacent territories;
and that twenty-five thousand copies, in addition to the usual
number, be printed for the use of the Senate. This task was
assigned to Mr. Greenhow, librarian and translator for the
State Department, who was exceptionally qualified for the
work. How well known were the facts about the Oregon Coun-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH 631

try, its easy accessibility, its resources for agriculture and graz-
ing, its value, etc., is shown in the following extracts from
the Government edition of Greenhow's history: "Near the
place of union of these chains (of the Rocky Mountains) is a
remarkable depression of the Rocky Mountains, called the
South Pass (this pass was discovered by Clark in 1810), afford-
ing a short and easy route for carriages between the head
waters of the south branch of the Platte River on the east and
those of the Colorado on the west, from which latter is another
pass through the mountains northward to the Lewis (Snake)
River. There are other depressions of the great chain farther
north, the Yellowstone on the one side and the Salmon River
and the Flathead branches of the Columbia on the other, but
they offer much greater difficulty to the traveler than the south-
ern route, which will probably continue to be the principal ave-
nue of communication between the United States and the terri-
tories of the Far West." Mr. Greenhow closes his valuable
treatise of two hundred and twenty-eight pages as follows:
" The writer has now completed the task assigned him. He has,
as he conceives, demonstrated that the title of the United
States to the possession of the regions drained by the Columbia,
derived from priority of occupation and priority of discovery,
are, as yet, stronger and more consistent with the principles of
national right than those of any other power from whatsoever
source derived. That those regions must eventually be pos-
sessed by the United States only, no one acquainted with the
progress of settlement in the Mississippi Valley during the last
fifteen years, will be inclined to question; but that Great Britain
will, by every means in her power, evade the recognition of the
American claims and oppose the establishment of an Ameri-
can population on the shores of the Pacific, may be confidently
expected from the disposition evinced by her Government in
all its recent discussions with the United States." *

So great, indeed, was the interest in the Northwest boun-
dary question that it became an issue in the Presidential elec-
tion of 1840, and the slogan of one of the political parties was
** Fifty-four-forty or fight " — Bf ty-f oiu: degrees and forty min-
utes being the southern boundary of Russian America; and a
large part of the American people were in favor of our Govern-
ment claiming that as our northern boundary line.

'Manhall.

Digitized by

Google

632 THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH [Aug.,

Daniel Webster, Secretary of State at the time of Whit-
man's ride, explicitly declared that he had not made nor en-
tertained any proposition to admit a line south of the forty-
ninth parallel as a negotiable line for the United States. All
this information, preserved in the Government archives at
Washington, and easily accessible to the honest inquirer, was
at the service of the authors of the Whitman myth and the
propagandists of the legend, but it has been steadily ignored
by them, because it utterly explodes the theory on which the
Whitman myth was built, viz: that the Oregon Country was
about to be surrendered to Great Britain, and that Whitman
undertook his ride to prevent this national calamity.

As was to be expected from the virulent bigotry of the
authors of the Whitman legend, the odium of the Whitman
massacre has been laid at the door of Catholics. In the fabu-
lous narrative of the causes which determined Whitman to
undertake his journey, is told a story of how the Catholic mis-
sionaries, who had only lately arrived in the territory, were
aiding the British to retain their hold on the country. On one
occasion, so the story goes, a faithful employee of the Whitman
mission happened to be present at a meeting of Hudson Bay
Company officials and employees at their post at Walla Walla.
A Catholic priest, a French-Canadian, was among the party at
the table, according to this faithful (?) chronicler. Word had
just been received that the United States was about to abandon
all its claims to the Oregon Country in exchange for fishing
privileges near Newfoundland. This pleasing intelligence was
received with joy by all present. Dr. Whitman's faithful ad-
herent, of course, excepted. The priest, especially, could not
conceal his gratification at the prospect of the Protestant mis-
sions being broken up : ** Now," he shouted, ** we've got them!
They'll have to get out! The Americans must go !" The faith-
ful henchman lost no time in carrying the report of the meet-
ing to Dr. Whitman who, we are gravely told, determined, then
and there, to start for the capital and persuade our blind, stupid
and incompetent statesmen to pause in their madness and re-
scind their unpatriotic action. The legend goes on to relate,
with dramatic detail, the incidents of his journey, its dangers
and hardships — doubtless very real — and describes his arrival
in Washington, all haggard, spent, and travel-worn; of his
bursting into the Senate Chamber before the startled eyes of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH 633

the assembled Solons and pleading with them the cause of Ore-
gon so effectually that they were carried away by his fervid
earnestness and convincing arguments. In consequence, the
negotiations with Great Britain for its transfer were broken off,
and the Oregon Country, with its area of three hundred thou-
sand square miles, was saved to the United States. That it is
today a part of our national domain is due, therefore, to the
indomitable courage and burning patriotism of Marcus Whit-
man.

This, in brief, is the Whitman legend. Nothing more pre-
posterous was ever penned. As a matter of fact, the Senate
had passed a bill to extend the United States laws over the ter-
ritory a month before Whitman's arrival in Washington. Fur-
ther proof is the utter absence of any contemporaneous record
of his presence in Washington in the Congressional Record,
which there assuredly would have been had his visit been at-
tended by such momentous consequences. The incident of his
appearance before the Senate is purely fictitious, as are the
pretended interviews with President Tyler and Daniel Web-
ster, Secretary of State.

Whitman, himself, had no part in the fabrication with which
his name has become identified. His letters, and those of his
wife, in the archives of the Missionary Board at Boston, prove
that his sole purpose in making his difficult journey was to
save his mission from abandonment, and to induce some
" Christian families to emigrate to the Oregon Country and to
settle near the mission." His extraordinary posthumous fame
rests upon a fabulous narrative published many years after his
death by the Rev. H. H. Spalding, whose mission lay among the
Spokane Indians, and who had come out with Whitman in 1836.

The first intimation that Whitman had ** saved Oregon "
appeared eighteen years after his tragic death in 1848. Yet the
Home Missionary had published many letters from the Oregon
Country, dating from 1847 to 1865, in none of which was there
a single reference to the Whitman legend.' Furthermore, in
1860, Rev. Cushing Eels, who had come out with Whitman in
1836, wrote a brief sketch of the Old Oregon Indian Mission
with a description of the Walla Walla country for the Home
Missionary. In this he says: "The missionary work was
prosecuted rather steadily among the Cayuses, Spokanes, and

•ManhalL

Digitized by

Google

634 THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH [Aug.,

the Nez Perces until 1847. On the twenty-ninth of November
of that year, Dr. and Mrs. Whitman met a violent death at the
hands of the Cayuse Indians," but not a word as to Whitman's
having saved Oregon. Five years later, the Rev. H. H. Spald-
ing, whose mind was thought to have been unsettled by the
massacre and the resulting fears for his own life, wrote an arti-
cle for an Eastern paper, in which, for the first time, the claim
was made that Whitman had made his journey for the pur-
pose of " saving Oregon to the United States.**

Spalding was a monomaniac in his anti-Catholic bigotry,
and repeatedly charged the Catholic missionaries with insti-
gating the Whitman massacre. Those charges the Congrega-
tionalists and other denominations all over the country, caught
up and reiterated from pulpit and platform; in books, pam-
phlets, newspapers and encyclopedias. The denial of this
shocking accusation by the Catholics, and the true account of
the tragical event given by Rev, Father J. Brouillette, a Catholic
priest whose field of missionary lab6r was coterminous with
that of Whitman and Spalding, and who saved the life of
Spalding at the peril of his own on the dreadful day of the
massacre, went all unheard. The public ear was tickled and
the public mind inflamed with resentment against Catholics
and the Catholic Church, by the story that Whitman had saved
the Northwest to the United States, and had lost his life, a sacri-
fice to the malignant disappointment of the Jesuits. Wide-
spread credit was given to this myth. For a quarter of a cen-
tury the distorted historical facts composing it went steadily
forward, working their way into textbooks, periodicals of all
sorts, even into encyclopedias. The International Encyclo-
pedia, published by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1900, gives
the Whitman myth as authentic. This base fabrication is given
out to the public under the authority of H. T. Peck, Ph.D.,
L.H.D., of Columbia University, editor-in-chief; of Selim H.
Peabody, Ph.D., LL.D., of the University of Illinois, and Charles
F. Richardson, A.M., of Dartmouth College, assistant editors.
They also say: " On his return in 1843, Whitman led out the
first independent emigrant train of two hundred wagons."
This statement is another of the tissue of falsehoods making
up the warp and woof of the Whitman legend. Dr. Whit-
man had nothing to do with organizing or conducting this emi-
grant train, as is proven by the testimony of many who were

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH 635

members of the band, among whom is Hon. James Nesmith,
first Senator from Oregon. Whitman joined the train after
it had reached the Platte River, and continued westward with
it until he reached his mission. This was the sum total of his
connection with this important movement which had a far-
reaching influence on the destinies of the northwest.

The facts concerning Whitman and his ride, and this as-
sumed leadership in the great overland emigration of 1843,
were easily within reach of those learned professors, as Mr.
Marshall's investigation of the early history of Oregon was
begun in 1888, and the facts relating to the claims made for
Dr. Whitman by his admirers had already been given to the
public by him. These they ignored, preferring to accept the
fables of Spalding, Eels and Gray, and, therefore, in so far as
lay with them, to perpetuate and continue the circulation of
a pernicious falsehood. Its authors and propagandists
have not hesitated to misrepresent, suppress, misquote, or omit
facts.

Fairbank, a lecturer on the Whitman legend, makes the
following climax : " Two names I purpose linking together be-
fore the youth of our land: Abraham Lincoln and Marcus
Whitman, two patriots, two martyrs, lineal cousins, with the
blood from their Whitman sire in their veins — no wonder they
did such noble deeds, stood at their posts, and died for their
country.*' And Dr. Nixon, for twenty years editor of the /n-
ter-Ocean, was indefatigable in spreading the Whitman legend.
He gloried in having " reached the writers and the readers of
history. Two of the best juvenile histories of the past year
which will go into the hands of millions of children have ex-
cellent Whitman chapters."

True, the legend did reach " the writers and the readers of
history." It did get into the school histories, and millions of
American children have been fed on mendacious fabrications,
and have had their young minds warped by the religious prej-
udice thereby instilled.

But though falsehood travels in seven-league boots, truth
occasionally overtakes him. The Nemesis of the Whitman
myth appeared in the persons of William I. Marshall, Principal
of the Gladstone School, Chicago, and Professor Boiu*ne, who
occupied the chair of history at Yale University. Both men
were sincere believers in the " Whitman saved Oregon " delu-

Digitized by

Google

636 THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH [Aug.,

sion; and both also believed truth to be an indispensable ele-
ment in the writing of history. Mr. Marshall was the first to
search for contemporary evidence to support the claims made
for Dr. Whitman. To his surprise and perplexity he found
none. The deeper he probed the less foundation did he find.
He became skeptical on account of the entire absence of proofs
where they might be confidently looked for: in the archives of
the American Board of Missions in Boston. Determined to
arrive at the truth, he instituted an exhaustive and painstaking
research extending over several years, delving into the Congres-
sional Record, crossing the continent several times to examine
records in the State libraries of Oregon and Washington, and to
interview all possible survivors of that period who might be
cognizant of the facts. Unweariedly he tracked each fictitious
claim to its source in the fables of Spalding, Eels and Gray. Mr.
Marshall has embodied the results of his researches in two
volumes, which all are invited to examine.

Professor Bourne's experience was similar to Mr. Marshall's.
He sought in good faith, but to his surprise, was unable to find
a scrap of evidence to substantiate the claims made for Whit-
man by his admirers. But we shall let that able Presbyterian
organ. The Independent, tell his findings : *' Another striking
illustration of how legendary matter can find its way into con-
temporary history is afforded by the myth of Marcus Whit-
man's * saving' Oregon. The story, as it has been incorpo-
rated into various histories, is briefly this: For many years
Great Britain and the United States had disputed the title to the
Oregon Country lying between Russian America on the north
and Mexican California on the south. In October, 1S42, Mar-
cus Whitman, a missionary of the American Board to the In-
dians, happened to learn while at Walla Walla that Congress
was about to surrender the American claims, in ignorance of
the disputed country's value, in return for certain fishing rights.
He thereupon started on a winter journey over pathless moun-
tains for Washington, where he arrived March 2, 1843, per-
suaded the Administration to put off* negotiations for the sur-
render of Oregon, and offered to send a thousand settlers thither.
So much for the legend. Professor Bourne of Yale has shown
by contemporary records that what Whitman really crossed the
mountains for was to dissuade the Prudential Committee of the
American Board from its decision to abandon one of the Ore-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE GROWTH OF A MODERN MYTH 637

gon mission stations. True, he went to Washington as well as
to Boston, but there is no indication that he exerted any in-
fluence on Congress, for the reason that the surrender of Ore-
gon was never contemplated. A month before his arrival, the
Senate had passed the Linn bill to extend the United States
laws over the territory. Contemporary newspapers barely men-
tioned his visit to the East and knew nothing of his legendary
mission. . . . The mythical account of the missionary's pur-
pose was invented about twenty years later by his colleague,
H. H. Spalding, who had been left a nervous wreck by the In-
dian massacre of 1847 in which both Whitman and his wife lost
their lives. Spalding's apparent object was to elicit sympathy
for the cause of Protestant missions in a bitter controversy with
the Catholics in which he had become involved. It is charit-
able to assume that with the efiQux of years his memory had be-
come confused.'*

As a further result of the investigations of Professor
Bourne and Mr. Marshall, the " Whitman saved Oregon " story
has been dropped from the textbooks in the schools of the
United States. But a lie dies hard, and echoes of this singular
lie are still heard, although they are growing fainter and
fainter.

The fascinating story of Marcus Whitman's saving Oregon
to the United States has passed into the region of fable where it
belongs. Whitman's ride, though a brave deed, had nothing to
do with saving any part of the Great Northwest to the United
States. If Marcus Whitman had never been born, oiu* boun-
dary line would have been just what it is today, viz: forty-nine
degrees to the Pacific Ocean.

Digitized by

Google

THE STAR-BORN,

Dedicated to the late Paulist Astronomer,
Reverend George Mary Searle.

BY CHARLES PHILLIPS.

There is a veilid beauty in the stars

A hidden music in their far-flung fires,

Sweet chording and low after-beat and echo,

Weaving and melting into harmonies

Celestial and so exquisitely fair

That we whose ears attuned are alone

To earthly things scarcely may ever know it! —

Though still our searching souls, forever yearning

Up to the glorious and fretted vault

Of the mysterious heavens for some sign.

Some signal of our long-lost home, may catch

On April eves, or when the dying year

Veils all earth's glories and the firmament

In melancholy loveliness, faint sound

Or whispered intimation of it all.

Ah then the secret tears well up ! — ^we cry •

Out of our hearts of common clay to all

The illimitable spaces of the night,

'' There is a hidden beauty in the stars.

There is a musicfin the fields of heaven!"

— ^Beauty, though to its vision we be blind; /

Music, though to its fine intricacy

Our ears be deaf, long dulled with sordid noise

Of near material things; though yet our souls

Fettered and dumb within their prison walls.

Move in a deathly quiet, listening.

Stir in a swooning silence to make answer.

Yet cannot for the grave-cloths of the flesh

That mute and muflDe them. Still, still we know.

There is a music in the far-oflf stars.

There is a veilid beauty in the skies!

So, lifting in bright moments of desire
Our unavailing hands in suppliance
Unto our high inheritance of light

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE STAR'BORN 639

Lost in the starry-latticed sky above.
Unsatisfied we go. " Not ours," we cry,
'' To taste the tuneful wellsprings of the dawn.
Nor in the soft surcease of twilight rest
On beauty's dreamy pillow! Only to know.
Only to know — and be denied — ^is ours!"

Only to know, and be denied — ^until

(How up we leap to it!) some sudden voice

Comes crying clarion-like and silverly.

With all the silver of the night-time in it.

To shake and shatter in a shower of light

About our willing ears the song of heaven.

The music of the stars! . . . There be such hearts.

Of other make than ours, of fairer mold,

Soiils of a finer fire, who sing and bum

And glow with the bright harmonies of heaven:

For on some certain nights (not calendered

Save in the Mind of God), when heaven and earth.

Swept by divine propulsion, leap and meet.

Meet and are fused and molded into one —

(Some birth-nights are there when the primal planets

Strike and renew their first creation-song!) —

On certain nights souls there are born who bring

From that far home we all are exiled from

So much of our bright common heritage

Of beauty and of music and of light.

We scarce may own them kin, save reverently

To love them vrith great awe and tenderness.

And cry, "What gifts are theirs!" With seeing eye

They search the hidden beauties of the spheres.

And dream great dreams — ^yet ever wakeful walk

Through the white dews of new-created dawns.

Forever strong to shape and mold their visions

To great reality. Unerringly

They know the perfect measure and true beat

Of all things beautiful and fair and good;

Theirs is the gift to pluck from heavenly fields

The flowers of beauty, scattering them down

In luminous loveliness round our stumbling feet;

Theirs is the power, terrible and swift.

To sweep the starry harpstrings of the night

And strike clear echoes of celestial chords

Into our mute imprisoned souls. Ay, more! —

Digitized by

Google

640 THE STAR'BORN [Aug.,

The very secrets of the stars are theirs!

And oh, what age-old silences they break;

With god-like gesture and compelling eye

What buried glories bid arise and live

And breathe once more; until the noisy world

Is all empeopled with immortal loves,

Imperishable beauties, deathless dreams,

Its clamor hushed to hearken beauty's voice

Intoning all the magic cadences

Music is made of — till our earthly road

Of mortal things illumined is and lovely

With lamps of starlight and enkindled fires

Caught from the topmost beacon-towers of heaven.

And all the air an echoing sybil cries,

" There is a veilid beauty in the stars !

There is a music in their far-flung fires!"

So do they sing to us, the star-born ones.

Whose music stills our hearts and wraps us round

As if with veils of light . . . until we hear,

Across the waters of eternity.

Far voices calling us, and through our tears

The silver shores of peace — our own, our own ! —

Dreamlike and gentle, yet divinely real,

Inviting us with lifted hearts to come.

Calling to us forever to make haste.

Even though with stumbling feet we run, with hands

Outstretched through darkness, underneath the stars. . . .

For now we go no more alone, no more

In anguished silence: now we too may sing,

A little song, a brief refrain, an echo

Of the unearthly music we have heard

The star-born chanting; now often to our ears

The dear surprise of other voices comes

With sudden gladness answering ours, and crying,

" There is a veilid beauty in the night.

There is a hidden music in the stars!"

Digitized by

Google

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF. ARCHBISHOP KEANE.

BY WALTER ELUOTT, C.S.P.

I ISHOP O'CONNELL of Richmond, who knew Arch-
bishop Eeane intimately, in his funeral oration
showed the spiritual tendency of the deceased
prelate's life to have been an ever-deepening de-
votion to the Holy Ghost as the immediate Guide
of the soul in all its spiritual consciousness. ** This arose," he
said, *' early in his priesthood, when he first became acquainted
with Father Hecker, whom he often met at St. Patrick's
Church, Washington, D. C. Their conversation turned always
upon the deeper interior life. Father Hecker gave his young
friend a copy of the Jesuit Father Louis Lallemanf s Spiritual
Doctrine, then recently translated by Father Faber, which he
read and assimilated perfectly."

The close tie formed with the Founder of the Paulists, at
that time, when Father Keane was Father Jacob Walter's
assistant at St. Patrick's, Washington, never weakened or dimin-
ished; although the designs of ecclesiastical authority over the
young priest prevented him from realizing his heart's desire
by entering the Paulist Community. In the mind of Arch-
bishop Bailey, he was destined for a bishopric.

And in due time (1878) he was made Bishop of Richmond.
But he never ceased to be a spiritual child of Father Hecker.
He advised with him on graver religious matters; and at every
turn sought his direction with a truly childlike trustfulness,
absorbing deeply every word that was said to him. He be-
lieved most firmly in Father Hecker's call to help convert
America to the Catholic Faith, and he ardently longed to take
an active part in it.

In after years, when he spoke of Father Hecker, he loved
to pay his debt of gratitude to him, for shaping his spirituality,
and he would enlarge upon the type of character formed by
devotional exercises specially based on and influenced by the
realization of the office of the Holy Spirit in sanctifying not
only the Church as a divine organism, but the individual Chris-
tian also.

Digitized by

Google

642 REMINISCENCES OF ARCHBISHOP KEANE [Aug.,

Though he seemed the busiest of men — ^for his occupation
was incessant — I never knew any one better content to be
alone, nor more diligent in securing the refreshment of re-
ligious solitude than Archbishop Keane. It may be said of his
life that externally it was holy work, internally it was holy joy.
He used to say that to help our neighbor we must have him in
God within ourselves. To him — ^how well his intimates knew
i^! — God was the creator, no less of solitude than of company;
and solitude was the trysting place the Archbishop set for his
friends and for all his people. Certain passages from the //ni-
tation, were a heaven-sent inspiration to John Keane. Among
them are these : " Happy is he whom Truth teacheth by Itself, not
by figures and words that pass, but as it is in Itself. ... He to whom
the Eternal Word speaketh, is set at liberty from a multitude
of opinions. . . . O Truth my Godl make me one with Thee in
everlasting love.*' (Imitation, Book I., iii.) This last great sen-
tence both Father Hecker and John Keane felt should be a very
fit aspiration for one called to be a herald of the Catholic faith
to unbelievers.

Hence his desire to spread this fundamental devotion. It
was in 1897 that Pope Leo XIII. instituted the annual novena
of the Holy Ghost in all Catholic parishes, issuing his marvel-
ous Encyclical on devotion to the Third Person of the Blessed
Trinity. Fully fifteen years earlier, John Keane, then bishop
of Richmond, said to me: ''I am amazed that the special
adoration of the Holy Spirit is not more popular and wide-
spread. For my part, I have eiideavored to spread it in our
diocese, and I have established confraternities of the Holy
Spirit in the larger parishes."

Kindred to this was Archbishop Keane*s adoration of the
Guidance of Divine Providence in all the outward aflTairs of
life. I do not think I ever met him but that in our talks to-
gether he would couple the inner touch of the soul with the in-
terior divine guidance of the Holy Ghost and the perfect sub-
mission of our outer activity to the pointings of God*s will,
which must include all the happenings of life. Both, he would
insist, came direct from God, both responded mutually to each
other, both were therefore equally adorable. Was not this
the ideal of a Christian's duplex relationship to his Maker, his
Redeemer and his Sanctifier during all his earthly pilgrimage?
He would insist, with great earnestness, that submission to the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] REMINISCENCES OF ARCHBISHOP KEANE 643

Divine Will in outward happenings is an essential quality of
a mind recollected in the Holy Ghost. I have never met any
man who more highly prized the uses of conversation as a
medium of sharing truth and virtue than the late Archbishop.
He was a perfect conversationalist; conversation was part of his
life's apostolate. And few even among his own priests had bet-
ter profit of his heart's outpourings in familiar talks than the
Paulists had. When he came to New York he always lodged
with us, both before and after Father Hecker's death. With
both Fathers and novices he was as one absolutely at home —
as if he were in fact, as he was at heart, a Paulist. And what a
treat it was to talk and listen in his company! He knew every-
thing about religion, and he was gifted to impart it, as men are
rarely gifted.

The Archbishop's very extensive learning was wonder-
fully accurate, was maturely pondered, and was dispensed with
fascinating kindliness. Yet he was anything but a conversational
glutton — ^never interrupting, never unwilling to be himself
interrupted. And what he uttered in his beautiful, flowing
style might well be printed without the least intrusion of the
editor. He was always vivacious but never excited; not even
in his most energetic public discourse did he ever lose that air
of self-mastery which distinguishes the higher grade of elo-
quence. In his silence his features expressed the quiet of a
mind recollected in God.

In discourse, whether conversational or public, there was
present the full glow of inspiration. On worldly topics he had
little to say, for his attention was not arrested by them; pass-
ing things had value to him only as they were lifted upwards
into the higher order by Providence and acquired a relation-
ship of eternity. On themes purely spiritual or doctrinal the
ardor of his speech was quite above that of an average devout
and cultured Christian; it partook of the urgent, insistent,
compelling force of the saints of God. Occasionally he was
carried out of himself. When, for example, the Pope called
him to Rome to give him a place in the Roman Curia, and he
stood among a large circle of his most intimate associates on
the wharf in New York, the conversation naturally turned on
the prospects of Catholicism in our country. Presently the call :
"' All aboard 1 " was heard. He started to go up the gang plank,
then stopped and turned again, a noble, enthusiastic figure, and

Digitized by

Google

644 REMINISCENCES OF ARCHBISHOP KEANE [Aug.,

called in a loud voice for "three cheers for the United
States! '* which were given with a will.

On his return from Rome to assume the Archbishopric of
Dubuque, in 1900, he was fond of saying that his few years' so-
journ in the Eternal City had given him a deeper insight of
the Church's universality, and had at the same time intensified
his love of America as God's gift to Holy Church, in our times,
for the conversion of the world to the true Faith of Christ.

Archbishop Keane's zeal for souls was both prayerful and
active. He worshiped oxu: Savioxu: as the Good Shepherd of
souls with an intensity of fervor peculiarly apostolic. His view
of the priesthood was the highest appreciation of the meaning
of St. Paul's words : " He loved me and He delivered Himself
for me" (Gal. ii. 20). To love men with the love of Christ
on Calvary — unto entire immolation for them — ^such was the
whole pastoral ambition of John Keane. I have known — ^yea I
have lived for many years among devout priests in the active
ministry, both missionaries and parish priests, men in whom
the Good Shepherd seemed to live and work and suffer for
souls — none of them has conveyed to me a stronger impres-
sion, than did the Archbishop, of what might have been our
Blessed Lord's feelings towards souls gone astray from His
love and standing in deadly peril of eternal loss. Such he was
in his thoughts and in his prayers; such in his labors. Nor
could he hide this priestly trait from his intimates. Although
he did all in his power to conceal it, a few knew how
great was the Christ-like love of his heart for the poor. While
Rector of the Catholic University, it was his custom every
month when he received his salary to go about Washington in-
cognito and distribute the money among the needy whom he
knew.

It was the Archbishop's hidden influence with God which
made him a great convert maker. Like St. Leonard of Port
Maiurice and St. Francis de Sales, whom he in several respects
closely resembled, before preaching to the people, and also be-
fore private conference with non-Catholics, his whole soul was
poured out to God in this petition: '' O my God! I beg Thee
to give me these souls." From the beginning of his career
as curate at St. Patrick's Church, Washington, D. C, he
made the rectory a shrine for earnest seekers after the truth
of God. In private discussion of truth and error his words

Digitized by

Google

1918.] REMINISCENCES OF ARCHBISHOP KEANE 645

never failed to silence objectors to the Faith, his persevering
endeavors, I feel sure, were never without a final fruitage of
souls. A very large proportion of these directly personal con-
verts of his were of superior intelligence, and in turn they
became convert makers. Thus was he known in Washington.
And when he was made bishop, and had a wider scope of labor
for souls and by his office a deeper power of prayer was
granted to him, he neither forfeited the joys nor shrank from
the tedium of work with individuals.

His preaching was never without the purpose to win and hold
the hearts of non-Catholics, hopeful that a few might be
scattered among his strictly Catholic gatherings, and reaching
out for occasions when the number of Protestants would be
more considerable. As Vicar-Apostolic of North Carolina he
was nearly always amid non-Catholics. It is hardly too much
to say that in every town, big and little, of the diocese of Rich-
mond he preached to gatherings of non-Catholics.

It cannot be claimed that he made many converts, for
much more than an occasional discourse, even from as power-
ful an advocate of truth as John Eeane, would have been neces-
sary for that, but he did remove prejudice and blaze a trail for
the growth of the Church in that part of the South. And under
the spell of his leadership, his priests became more and more
zealous and successful in this apostolate.

A class that especially moved his heart with pity — as
Bishop of Richmond — ^were the negroes. When he came to the
city there was but one colored Catholic there, an old mammy
who had, doubtless, drifted there from Catholic Maryland. The
Bishop had known and loved hundreds of the best kind of
Catholics among the colored people of Washington. He could
not rest content with the desolate state of these people in Rich-
mond. Therefore he advertised a colored apostolate. The
Cathedral, large and centrally placed, was opened to the col-
ored people every Sunday night. He provided a simple but
effective service of prayers and hynms, and he himself
preached the sermon. The first Sunday night the whole church
was filled to overflowing, and a class for instruction was
formed. The numbers continued large for many Sundays
afterwards, till the Protestant whites, led by their powerful and
able ministry, finally succeeded in lessening the attendance
at the Cathedral services. Meanwhile, the Bishop had intro-

Digitized by

Google

646 REMINISCENCES OF ARCHBISHOP KEANE [Aug.,

duced the Josephite Fathers, who took over the colored mis-
sion work, which has been a decided success, and has become
a permanently established feature of the diocese, extending to
several other places outside the capital city.

Archbishop Keane's discourses answered to F6nelon*s defi-
nition of a good sermon : '* The strong and persuasive utterance
of a soul nobly inspired." God had endowed him naturally
with that agility of thought and readiness of speech called
improvisation, a word that conveys a higher meaning than " ex-
temporization " or " facility of expression." Coming from his
own heart's home, his words went home to the hearts of his
hearers. Few are able as he was to preach to whole congrega-
tions in such a spirit that each person takes home to his own
particular heart what has been spoken to all — applying it to
his own particular needs as if there were none other present
to share the message. One arose from it saying in his hidden
consciousness: that was, indeed, a sermon for me.

It need hardly be said that when the sovereign Pontiff had
made him Archbishop of Dubuque he preached in Iowa as he had
done in Virginia. He was always preaching, ever5rwhere preach-
ing, and with uniformly the best results. He introduced into the
diocese a band of competent missionary priests, trained at the
Apostolic Mission House. The results of this apostolate were
very gratifying, in the making of converts and the allaying of
anti-Catholic prejudice.

Evidence of, his increasing advertence to the divine will,
even unto the end, comes in a letter from a priest who knew
the whole mind of the dying Archbishop : " It was my priv-
ilege to be present at the bedside of the Archbishop when he
died. He died as he lived, happy and resigned to the will of
God. His last years with us were like a beautiful sunset, cast-
ing its rays backward over the day that was declining, giving a
golden tinge to his whole life. Catholic Dubuque is grateful for
the privilege of having had him as its second Archbishop, and
considers it a privilege also to be the custodian of the earthly
remains which enshrined so noble and so saintly a soul. While
all, priests and people, will miss him, no one will miss him
more than our present Archbishop. Their friendship was
truly apostolic, even as that of their patrons, James and John."

Digitized by

Google

ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSLL

BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
VIII.

HREE questions were asked the Lord on the
Mount of Olives. ""Tell us, when shall these
things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy
coming (in Thy Kingdom) » and of the end of the
age (of the Kingdom of Heaven) ? " The first
question — the Lord answered it last — is our present object of
inquiry. Many things conspire to set it in a new light, the truth
and bearing of which we should like to probe still further.

The disciples seek to be apprised of the day and hour of
the destruction of Jerusalem. Jesus refuses to tell them the
precise time. As on previous occasions to questions of like
tenor. His answer takes the form of an appeal to the practical
judgment of His hearers. The Pharisees once asked Him for
a sign from Heaven, and He replied: "When it is evening,
you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the
morning: today there will be a storm, for the sky is red and
lowering. You know then how to discern the face of the sky;
and can you not (tell) the signs of the times? "^ — an answer
which St. Luke explicitly reports as referring to the native
powers of judgment resident in the minds of the hearers.* In
the present instance, Jesus softens the appeal, by telling the
disciples to "learn a parable from the fig-tree: When the
branch thereof is now tender, and the leaves come forth, you
know that summer is nigh.' So you also, when you see all
these things'* — St. Luke says : when these things begin to come
to pass* — "know ye that He is nigh, even at the doors "*^
" Amen I say to you, this generation shall not pass away, till all
these things be accomplished.* Heaven and earth shall pass
away, but My words shall not pass away;"^ a most solemn
assiurance that history will prove His interpretation of
prophecy true and the eschatology of Palestine unfounded.

^Matt ZYl. 2, 3.

' " Why, of yourselves also, do you not Judge what is right?" Luke xil. 57.
• Matt xxiv. 32. « Luke xxl. 28.

•Matt xxiv. 33. 'Matt xxlv. 34. ^Matt xxIt. 35.

Digitized by

Google

648 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Aug,

"" But of that day and hoiu* no one knoweth, not even the an-
gels of Heaven, but the Father alone." "

The thirty-third verse, which so graphically depicts " the
Son of Man as nigh, aye, even at the doors," has been looked
upon by many as a reference to the Second Advent and the vis-
ible reappearance of the Lord in the glory of His Father. In-
deed, no other interpretation seemed to fit the text, so long as
the question of the disciples was thought to bear on the Lord's
personal Return in connection with the destruction of Jerusa-
lem. But with the discovery that the disciples did not con-
nect these two events, in the question which they put the Sav-
iour on the Mount of Olives, the supposed linking of the Second
Advent with the fall of Jerusalem instantly disappeared from
the text and left us in the presence of the plainest prediction
imaginable of the future course of history. The Son of Man —
Who is said to be " nigh, aye, even at the doors," is not, as w^
supposed, the Son of Man finally returning in person, but the
Son of Man manifesting His power and sovereignty in the de-
struction of the Jewish Capital. What more convincing proof
could there possibly be of this assertion than St. Luke*s transla- ^
tion of the prophetic language employed by St. Matthew? The
third canonical evangelist, who Westernized the Parable of
the Fig-tree into a parable of " all the trees," • had our duller
eyes in view, when he substituted the phrase : " Know ye that
the Kingdom of God is at hand"" for St. Matthew's: "Know
ye that He is nigh." Who can read this equivalent rendering
and still believe that St. Matthew and St. Luke were Palestinian
Jews, who mistook the historical Kingdom preached by Jesus,
for the eschatological Kingdom of Jewish expectation?

The root of all the difficulties of interpretation is the word
Parousia in the question of the disciples. It has been taken
in the sense of the Lord's visible reappearance at the time of
the destruction of Jerusalem, because these two events are
always found connected in the pre-Christian literature of
Palestine. But is this literature the right place to look for en-
lightenment? The word Parousia has a Gospel history and
development, in the course of which its meaning clearly
changes from that of a personal coming to a visitation in de-
structive might." And it is of this destructive visitation, not of

» Matt xxiT. 36. • Luke xxl. 29. »• Luke xxl. 31.

^St, Matthew and the ParouiiOt The Catholic World, May, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 649

His Second Advent or Return in glory, that Jesus is discours-
ing, when He tells His disciples how they are practically to
know and recognize the signs of His near approach.

The Saviour gave a new content to the ^* coming of the
Son of Man,** changing its meaning from glory to wrath, from
favor to destruction. He is'here speaking in the current terms
of prophecy, but not as these were currently understood. The
whole atmosphere of thought has changed, owing to the un-
expected distinction which Jesus drew between the Parousia
and the Return. He identified His Parousia with the marching
hosts who were to make the Temple a memory. " Where the
dead body of Israel is, there shall the eagles, or invading
armies, be gathered together.**^' This is the sense in which He
declares that by their own native mother-wit they shall
" know Him to be nigh.*' The thought of the thirty-third verse
is a forecast of history, in answer to the first question of the
disciples about the date of the Temple's overthrow. It contains
no reference whatsoever to eschatology.

But what of the thirty-fourth verse : ** Amen I say to you
this generation shall not pass away until all these things are
accomplished? " Is not this sweeping statement meant to in-
clude all that goes before, the ^ coming in glory " not excepted?
Would a writer, careful of his words, and making much of the
distinction which the Saviour drew between the Parousia and
the Final Return, be likely to use language of this unqualified
character, or to quote the Lord to the same effect? Many
critics are inclined to think that the calculus of probabilities is
all against one's so supposing. The writer who used such uni-
versal language clearly believed, they say, that the generation
then living would see the full and complete realization of all
the prophecies that are here recorded.

An examination of the several instances in which the ex-
pression, " All these things " is employed, fails to reveal it as
including the Return in glory. St. Matthew quotes the Lord as
saying: ** * All these things ' shall come upon this generation;"
and the preceding thought which He summarizes is emphati-
cally not of glory, but of destruction and rejection : " Fill ye up
then the measure of your fathers. You serpents, generation of
vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell? Therefore
behold, I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and

^St Matthew axid the Parousia, Tbb Catboug Woblo, June, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

650 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Aug.,

some of them you will put to death and crucify, and some you
will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to
city. That upon you may come all the just blood that hath
been shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even
unto the blood of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, whom you
slew between the temple and the altar. Amen I say to you, all
these things shall come upon this generation." " The reference
is to Jerusalem and its approaching desolation, as the ensuing
verses explicitly declare.^* Nay, the idea of the glorious com-
ing of the Son of Man is not only not included, its exclusion is
even made the object of a long corrective teaching-process
in the chapters that precede."

In a parallel passage of St. Luke, the phrase '' this genera-
tion •* ^* designates the Pharisees and lawyers; They are
clearly the ones, of whom " the blood of the prophets shall be
required."" And what but a reference to the Jewish capital
and its destruction is contained in the admonitory verse : ** But
before all these things, they will lay hands on you, bringing you
before kings and governors for My name's sake? " " We have
explicit proof that the reference does not include the Lord's
glorious Return. The third canonical evangelist uses the strong
expression, " All things written," in direct relation to Jerusa-
lem, and cites it as one of the reasons why the City should
be avoided during the siege. " For these are the days of ven-
geance" (not, be it noted, of approaching glory) ^ "that all
things written may be fulfilled " — a seemingly sweeping asser-
tion which is interpreted restrictedly in the very next verse:
" For there shall be distress in the land, and wrath upon this
people." ^®

How else, one may well ask, can this tempering of the
previous statement be regarded, than as a personal and authen-
tic declaration by St. Luke himself, of the sense and range in
which he understood the word "all?" A writer who dis-
tinctly says that " these are the days of vengeance,'* had long
since parted mental company with the glorious expectations
of official thought. Nor should we forget the testimony of St.
Mark. He makes " all these things " an integral part of the
question which the disciples asked the Lord about Jerusalem ;*°

"Matt, xxill. 32-36. "Matt. xxUl. 37-39.

«» St, Matthew and the Paronaia, The Catholic Woblo, May, 1918.
« Luke xi. 51. " Luke xi. 43, 46. » Luke xxl. 12.

»Luke xxl, 22, 23. >*Mark xlii. 4.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 651

and there can be no doubt, from his account, at least, that the
phrase had no wider extension in the Lord's answer than in the
original question, as it is here reported put. In the question,
" all •• referred to the buildings of the Temple. There is not
the slightest indication in the context that the Return in glory
was in mind.

Still further proof that the meaning is restricted may be
gathered from earlier portions of the text. St. Matthew and
St. Luke both employ the expression, ** Till all things be accom-
plished," in connection with another phrase : " the law and the
prophets." "" Do not think that I am come to destroy * the law,
or the prophets? ' I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For
amen I say to you, till heaven and earth pass (a Hebraism
meaning: Never) ^ one jot or tittle shall not pass of the law, till
all things be fulfilled." " " The law and the prophets " was a
common way of designating the Old Testament Dispensation;'^
and the use of this expression in conjunction with the phrase,
" All things," offers clear proof that the end of the Old Dispen-
sation, not the end of the New, was the intended range of mean-
ing. And if this criterioi^ be applied to verses of a similar na-
ture in the Great Discourse,^ a like trustworthy conclusion is
reached.

It is quite true that the phrase, ^Till heaven and earth
pass," meant the perpetuity of the Mosaic Code in the previous
history of Palestine. It is quite true also that the maintenance
of every ** iota and hook " of the law was most crudely and
literally understood by many who went before. We may even
concede the apparently Jewish character of the verse: "He
that shall transgress one of these least conmiandments, shall be
called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but he that shall do and
teach (them), he shall be called great in the Kingdom of
Heaven." ** The question, however, is how the text should be
read — ^whether in the light of what preceded in the literature
of Palestine, or of what follows in the pages of the First Gos-
pel. In other words, whether textual or contextual criticism is
the right manner of procedure.

The context is admittedly un-Palestinian, and besprinkled
with corrective statements, as may be seen from the expres-

» Matt V. 17, 18; Luke xvi. 17.

»Matt. T. 17; vil. 12; xxil. 40; Luke xrl. 16; Acts xlil. 15; xxviU. 23.

"Matt xxiv. 34; Mark xiU. 30; Luke xxl. 32.

** Matt Y. 19. — X6c(v in antithesis to vocclv.

Digitized by

Google

652 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Aug^

sion, ** I say to you," which challengingly occurs eight times."
The idea of fulfilhnent expressed in the context is the dur-
ability of the moral law in spite of human evasions; the bind-
ing character of all the moral principles underlying the Mosaic
Code, some of which the lawyers have wrongly loosed, as in
the case of divorce." And what better proof could there be
that the maintenance of Mosaism in the crude Palestinian sense
is not the thought intended, than the direct repudiation of two
of its propositions by the Saviour, concerning idle oaths and
the redress of personal injiuries through the strong arm of the
law.^^ The Lord's teaching is here opposed to Jewish tradi-
tion, not interpretative of it; and for this reason the verse about
those who "' shall be called least and greatest in the Kingdom of
Heaven *' is a corrective ad hominem statement that has about
it none of the ear-marks of a Jewish utterance. Agreeably to
their own lax notions of morality, the Pharisees divided the
injunctions of the. law into the weightier and the lighter — a
practice which Jesus rebuked in His indictment of the Jewish
lawyers." Not thus would He have the moral law interpreted
in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. The greatest in the King-
dom of Israel might do so. Their imitators would be the least
in His.

Casting up the probabilities, therefore — ^when the Lord
said that "' not one jot or tittle of the law would pass, tiU all
things are accomplished,** He was not declaring Mosaism, as
such, perpetual, but announcing the wholly different proposi-
tion that the law of Moses was strictly binding on Israel and in
full force unto the time of her destruction. He is declaring
against the Jewish laxists, that what Moses permitted on
account of their hardness of heart (Matt. xix. 8), formed no
part of the original institution of marriage — '' ab initio non fait
sic ** — and could not be cited in defence of looseness of life or
liberality of view. It is of enlightening significance, therefore,
that the phrase " all things '* should have been employed in
conjunction with the " law and the prophets " — a current way
of designating the Old Testament Dispensation. The latter ex-
pression proves the limited application of the former. We are
consequently not warranted in taking '' all things '* as inclusive
of the Return in glory. Writers who report the Lord as act-

MMatt. T. 20, 22, 26, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44. ^ifatt Y. 31, 32; Luke xrl. 17. 18.

" Matt ▼. 34, 39. •• Matt xxUl 23.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 653

ually disestablishing the Palestinian connection between the
end of Israel and the end of the world, are not likely to have
forgotten the light and fruits of their Christian education in the
use of the phrase in question. What idea, for instance, did St.
John have in view, when he wrote the verse: "After this,
Jesus, knowing that all things are now accomplished, that the
Scripture might be fulfilled, saith: I thirst?" Does not the
word "all" here refer to the fulfillment of the prophecies,
as Jesus newly interpreted them, and not to the future of his-
tory or to Palestinian expectation?

On the road to Emmaus, when the risen Lord overtakes
two of His disciples saddened with disappointment at His death,
and His failure to deliver Israel from her enemies, Jesus again
uses the phrase in question, and its content is the prophesied
necessity of His suffering. " O foolish and slow of heart to be-
lieve in all things which the prophets have spoken. Had not
Christ to suffer these things, and so to enter into His glory?
And beginning with Moses and all the prophets. He pro-
pounded to them in all the Scriptures the things that were con-
cerning Him." *•

Later, when these two same disciples were recounting their
strange experience to the Eleven at Jerusalem, the Saviour
suddenly appeared; and upon their taking fright at His pres-
ence. He bade them take cognizance that it was His own very
Self, no mere apparition, upon which their eyes were resting.
"And He said to them: These are the words which I spoke
to you while I was yet with you, and all things must needs be
fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the
prophets, and psalms, concerning Me. Then He opened their
mind that they might understand the Scriptures. And He said
to them : Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suf-
fer, and to rise again from the dead the third day; and that
penance and the remission of sins should be preached in His
name unto all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And
you are witnesses of these things." •**

The correction of current expectation is here too plain to be
glossed away. Jesus not only proves the prophesied necessity
of His suffering, death, and resurrection. He expressly adds
that the historical process of preaching penance and remission

•Luke xxlv. 25-27.

■* Luke zxlY. 44-48. Notice I5c(. Compare: h SX<p t^ x6<7(&(^ Matt xxrl. 13.

Digitized by

Google

654 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Aug.,

of sins in His name to all the nations is under the same Divine
necessity of fulfillment. The meaning of "" all things " is thus
made to include an historical process of evangelizing the na-
tions, the very mention of which is the surest of guarantees
that the Lord's coming in glory was not one of the things ex-
pected within the generation, when the Government fell. No
plainer proof could be desired that '^all things" express
Christ's revelation of the continuance of history, and not the
Jewish idea of its sudden ceasing.

Is there an allusion to the Second coming in the Lukan
verse which follows the description of the Lord's glorious Re-
turn? The disciples are told to ""look up, and lift up their
heads, when these things begin to come to pass, because their
redemption (?) draws nigh."*^ The "things beginning to
come to pass" are things concerning which the disciples,
according to St. Luke, have instituted their inquiry, and this, as
has been shown, concerned Jerusalem alone. That was the
topic in which their chief interest lay, -after Jesus had educated
them out of the false Palestinian world-view of their earlier
years. " Master, when shall these things be? and what shall be
the sign when these things are about to come to pass." •* The
redemption that is drawing nigh, therefore, is their deliver^
ance from the power of the Synagogue, the knell of whose
doom had begun to toll. They told Him on the road to Em-
maus what hopes they had invested in His being the One who
would redeem Israel from the nations.'' He here anticipates
their thoughts, and changes the false current of their hopes,
by bidding them look up and lift up their heads, when they
see Jerusalem actually being surrounded by armies, because
then the hour of their release — ^vividly expressed by the figures
of looking up and erectness of carriage — ^is surely drawing
nigh. It is of their redemption from Israel and its crushing
dominance, not of the final consummation of things, that the
Lord is speaking.

And the '* day that shall come as a snare upon all those
who dwell upon the face of all the land," »* is again a refer-
ence to the question asked; and for that reason is wrongly
translated by the universal expression: earth.^^ What more

^Luke zxi. 28. "Luke xxl. 7.

" 6|44X>jU>vXuTpouoOaRT^ 'lapoe^X. Luke zxIt. 21. Compare XuTpoOa6oR here with
dhcoX6Tpfaot« in Luke zxl. 28. ** Luke zxi. S4-S5. " T^.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 655

unanswerable proof of this conclusion could the most meticu-
lous critic desire than St. Luke's statement: "There shall be
great distress in the land and wrath upon this people " *® — a
declaration which it is impossible, grammatically, to extend
beyond Israel and its borders, or to associate with the idea of
approaching " glory." And even if we did not have this clarify-
ing and determining textual assurance some distance further
back, criticism could still establish that Jerusalem was the in-
tended reference, from the recurrence of the phrase, " all these
things," in the very next verse. The structural resemblance of
this verse to the original question '^ would put the matter be-
yond reasonable doubt, especially if taken in conjunction with
St. Luke's studiously different manner of phrasing, when re-
ferring to the world at large;*® and more especially still, if we
were to look into the original passages, after which this par-
ticular verse is modeled. The battle of Ephraim, in which
•• the forest devom*ed more men that day than the sword," is
described as spreading ** over the face of all the country," cer-
tainly not over the face of the whole earth ;^* and even if the
rest of the Lukan verse should appear to have universal sig-
nificance in the source ^^ from which it is quoted, that fact
would prove nothing of worth. Jesus introduced perspective
into prophecy, and St. Luke has just given us a fine instance
of its eflfect upon himself, in the picture of Jerusalem " trodden
down by the nations until the times of the nations be ful-
filled." *^ The Gentiles were to have their season, before the
Lord returned in glory to the world.

The most decisive consideration of all still awaits due
weighing. It will be recalled from the fifth study that three
questions were asked the Lord in St. Matthew's account — ^the
time of the destruction of Jerusalem, its sign, and the sign of
the New Era's ending. Even St. Mark and St. Luke, who tell
us only of two questions, spread before us nevertheless the
Lord's answer to three. The signal fact to be noted is the se-
quence in which the answers are reported. The Saviour re-
plies to the first question last, thereby reversing the order of
proposal, and emphasizing the importance of the New King-

» Luke xxl. 23.

" Sfotv \jjkXkti xauTa flvsafiai. Luke xxl. 7. xau-za xdtvca tA (iiXXovra YfvtoOat
Luke xxl. 36.

"Luke xxl. 26. — xfj oiKoujiivT).

•> 2 Sam. XTlil. 8. ^ Jer. xxt. 29. « Luke xxl. 24.

Digitized by

Google

656 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Aug.,

dom as against curiosity over the end of the Old. The section
comprising the Saviom**s answer to the first question occupies
the same relative position in all three accounts — ^it is placed
last;*^ and it is this reversed position of the answer to the first
question, which creates the impression that the verse about
" the generation not passing away, till all things are accom-
plished," refers to the entire body of thought preceding and is
intended as a summary or risumi. But in none of the Synop-
tics is this impression confirmed by the particles employed, as
would, of a certainty, have been the case, were the thought as
suspect as supposed. St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke use
the same adversative to introduce this section;^' and St. Luke
clearly indicates that the Parable of the Fig Tree is an in-
dependent, additional statement.** There is no evidence what-
soever that the writers are reviewing all that was said before.
The thought is of Jerusalem alone.

The text clarifies itself most surprisingly under the influ-
ence of this discovery. When investigation enables us to see
that the first question which the disciples asked is in process
of being answered in this section, and that the thought preced-
ing is not being reassembled for review, the impression that the
generation is said to be ** about to witness the coming in glory,*'
along with the other prophecies previously mentioned, betrays
its unfounded character and leaves us in the presence of a far
different line of thought. Writers who have distinguished the
fate of Israel from the fate of the world were not likely later to
merge the two in their phrasing.

The textual location of the answer to the first question has
a decisive bearing also on the seemingly indecipherable verse
with which the Discourse closes in St. Luke : " Watch ye, there-
fore, praying at all times, that you may be accounted worthy
to escape all these things, and to stand before the Son of
Man.**" What does it mean? To stand before the Son of Man
coming in His Kingdom, or to stand before the Son of Man re-
turning personally in the glory of His Father to judge the liv-
ing and the dead? In view of the location of the verse, and the
distinction which St. Luke drew between the ** comings ** men-
tioned; in view, also, of the two fine historical perspectives of

«Matt xxlY. 32-35; Mark xiil. 28-32; Luke xxi. 29-33.

u 9i. _Matt xxlT. 32; Mark xiil. 28; Luke xxi. 28.

«* Koel tlxt xapoc6oX4v a(txol<;, Luke xxi. 29. * Luke xxi. 80.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 657

** Jerusalem trodden down by the Gentiles,*' and the preaching
of penance and the remission of sins in Christ's name unto
all the nations/'^ we are compelled to regard this verse as
referring to the destruction of Jerusalem, and not to the Final
Advent. ^Behold, I send My messenger before Me; and the
Lord Whom you seek, shall come to His Temple: and the mes-
senger of the covenant. Whom you desire, behold. He cometh,
saith the Lord of hosts. But who can abide the day of His com-
ing? and who shall stcmd when He appeareth? for He is like a
refiner's fire, and a fuller's herb."*^ The third canonical
Evangelist, who distinctly tells us that the Son of Man has ** sev-
eral days," ^ cannot successfully be accused of believing that
He had but one; or of having had the Second Advent in mind,
when he wrote the verse in question.

The last verse in the Lord's answer to the first question of
the disciples is the famous one : ^ But of that day and hour
knoweth no man, not even the angels of heaven, but the
Father alone." Of what "day and hour" is the Lord here
speaking? Unquestionably of the " day and hour " of the de-
struction of the Temple, unless the results of the present in-
vestigation have all been "spun from the stuff of dreams."
This was the event to which the Lord Himself pointed, when He
asked the disciples: " Do you (not) see all these things? Amen
I say to you, there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone
which shall not be loosed from its foundations." It was also
the event in which the disciples were absorbingly interested,
and concerning which they particularly inquired, in the ques-
tion : " When shall these things be? " In the old view, which
took the questions for purely Jewish queries connecting the
end of Israel and the end of the world, there was no alterna-
tive but to face this supposed connection and to make the most
of it, either by adopting the legitimate position that the Lord
spoke of the final consummation, under the figure and type of
the destruction of Jerusalem, or by advancing the ill-advised
view that He left the correction of error to history and the dis-
iUusioning perspective which the years were sure to bring.

But in the new understanding of the questions which
the present investigation has laid bare, another view — that of
corrective teaching — comes forth appealingly from the text.
The Lord taught the disciples to disconnect His "coming in pow-

««Liike xxi. 24; xxIt. 47. ''Mai. HI. 1, 2. «Ltike xvli. 22.

VOL. cm.— 42

Digitized by

Google

658 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Aug.,

er ** at the end of the Jewish age, from His "coining in glory" at
the end of the world. He did not connect these two events in His
answer; neither did they in the question which was put. It is
the critics who have introduced the connection, through a fail-
ure to go about the reading of the text in a complete scientific
manner. They stop investigating when only half way through
the total evidence. After scouring the pre-evangelical litera-
ture of Palestine to the remotest comers, they come to the Gos-
pel with the results of this ransacking search, as if the New
Testament were nothing more than Palestinian thought in a
highly disguised form. Nothing comes of this method of ap-
proach — how could there? It is self -condemned to lack of
fruitage from the start, for the simple reason that it turns all the
corrective teaching of the Saviour into repetitious borrowings,
and prevents us from seeing that He quoted to correct, not
to appropriate and adopt. The relevancy of all of which to our
present point is simple. If the Saviour, by means of quoted
language which He newly interpreted and applied, taught the
disciples to ask Him an un-Jewish question in Jewish terms,
namely — the time of His " coming " to destroy Jerusalem, as
distinct from His personal Return in glory, we are left face
to face with the fact that it was of Jerusalem and its destruc-
tion, not of the Final Judgment, that the Lord was speaking,
when He declared that " He knew not the day nor the hour.*'
Let the phrase "that day" mean the Final Judgment every-
where else in the Scriptures. It would not even then have to
be so interpreted here, in view of the fact that the Lord dis-
established the connection, which Palestine had put, between
the end of Israel and the end of the world. And certainly he
would be a more courageous than accurate critic, who would
ask his f ellowmen to see in the Scriptural phrase " that day **
an unvarying reference to the Final Judgment.*'

Another question before we close. Is it exegetically estab-
lished that the Lord's profession of ignorance with regard to
the time of Israel's destruction, represents a personal statement
on His part of the limitations of His knowledge? We ask the
question from the point of view of exegesis, not from that of
the received conclusions of theology. It is generally assumed
by critics that the Saviour was describing the bounds of His

«*Matt. Til. 22; xl. 24; and Luke tI. 23; x. 12; xxl. 34. Who could confextoally
prove that in these instances the reference is to the Final Judgment?

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 659

personal knowledge when He disbosomed Himself of this ut-
terance. The present investigation makes another supposition
exegetically possible and capable of establishment — the sup-
position of corrective teaching as distinct from personal self-
revelation. The Jews were well aware that there was "one
day known to Yahweh," ^ and reserved within His power. It
is quite possible, therefore, that Jesus is here reminding His
questioners of this predicted reservation, and their overstep-
ping of the bounds in seeking its disclosure. Such at any rate,
was the idea which He had in mind when answering the query
about the restoration, just prior to His ascending to the Father.
" Lord," they asked Him, " dost Thou in this time restore the
Kingdom to Israel? " And His reply was: " It is not for you
to know the times or seasons which the Father hath set by vir-
tue of His own authority." ^^ In this later statement, it is
clearly the relation of the questioners to the Father, not the
relation of the Son, which is singled out for stressing. His hear-
ers are plainly told that it is no affair of theirs to be apprised of
the times and seasons when God intends to work His will.
Have we aught more than this laid before us in St. Matthew's
celebrated verse, or, for that matter, in St. Mark's,** which ex-
pressly excludes the Son from a knowledge of the day and
hour of Jerusalem's visitation? It all depends on the nature
of these verses. Are they dogmatic and theological, or didactic
and ad hominem? The report of the Lord's answer to a sim-
ilar question, which we have just quoted from St. Luke, offers
solid collateral proof of their belonging to the latter category. A
question was asked concerning which it lay not with the dis-
ciples to inquire; and the Saviour, by an emphatic process of
excluding Himself and the angels, brought out the forgotten
fact that there is ** one day known to Yahweh," and to Him
alone. Jesus no more denied His personal knowledge, in the
present instance, than He denied His personal goodness by the
use of a similar universal negative on another occasion. When
the young ruler addressed Him as Good Master, the Saviour
repudiated the compliment, saying: "Why callest thou Me
good? No one is good but God." " The " Me " is an enclitic,
and not an object of emphasis — a sure sign that didactic, and
not personal statement, is being reported. The Saviour re-

"* Zadi. xiy. 6, 7. ^ Acts i. 7. — oOr i(Afi>v iort Yv£>VQCt.

"Mark xlil. 32. "Mark z. 18; Luke zvlll. 19.

Digitized by

Google

660 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Aug.,

minds His youthful questioner that the only source of good-
ness, whether in action or in character, is God, and that He
Himself is no exception. His goodness being the goodness of the
Father. Is it not with a similar teaching purpose in view, that
He speaks of the Father as the sole source of the knowledge
about which the disciples ask? And are we not converting rela-
tive teaching into absolute statement, when we look otherwise
upon the answer of the Lord?

Nor is this all that may be said upon the matter. St Mat-
thew quotes Jesus as saying that a perfect reciprocity of knowl-
edge exists between the Father and the Son. ** All things have
been delivered unto Me by My Father. And no one knoweth
the Son but the Father; neither doth any one know the Father
but the Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him.**"
The text occurs just after the upbraiding of the cities in which
most of His mighty works were done. Nor does it seem pos-
sible that a writer who bore witness to this perfect interchange
of knowledge between the Father and the Son, would later cite
an instance to the contrary. In view of that ** larger and more
comprehensive estimate of the facts, which goes by the name of
criticism," it is incumbent to take this statement of the Saviour
as said in relation to His hearers, and not in relation to Him-
self. Jesus was teaching His questioners the bounds of pro-
priety. He was not making a personal confession, when He
declared that He did not know the ** day or the hour ** of the
** coming of the Son of Man."

Looking back at the Discourse from the present point
of vantage, it no longer wears the aspect of an eschatological
utterance, unless three verses out of thirty-six •• — a mere
twelfth — may be said to lend it that character. Prophetic Fore-
cast, accompanied by a personal message to the individual of
all times and climes, is the proper 'designation; and this con-
clusion, we feel sure, will win itself still more convincingly
into favor, when the succeeding portions are searched for their
hidden treasure. Not without reason did it come about that
Jesus answered the first question of the disciples, last They
thought of Israel; He, of the world. And wisdom is justified of
her children.

••Matt xl. 27; Luke x. 21. 22. "llatt xxiy. 29, SO, 31.

Digitized by

Google

IN THE MEDICI GARDENS.

BY GRACE V. CHRISTMAS.

I NE day I was waiting for Father Cuthbert in his
garden. There;, was a lady with him in his study,
so his housekeeper had informed me, and I there-
fore resigned myself to a somewhat lengthened
period of expectation. For one woman who
makes straight to her point and sticks to it, there are nine who
hover round it like a butterfly before it settles on a flower and
then flies off again at a moment's notice. Still, the garden was
a very pleasant place to wait in, and I was by no means dis-
contented with my lot. Father Cuthbert's garden, like his
house, expressed himself. There was nothing stiff, precise,
or in any way conventional about the arrangement of his flower
beds and borders, no ''screaming begonias" flaunting their
gaudy blooms in a symmetrical pattern. The flowers were old-
fashioned and chosen for their perfume, and the scheme of
color had not been left to chance but carefully planned out by
an artistic mind. It was fragrant this sultry afternoon in July,
with the scent of pinks and mignonette and lavender, and one
was soothed by the drowsy humming of bumble bees in a bor-
der of harmoniously tinted snapdragons. I sat down on a
rustic bench near an ancient sun dial with a great sense of well
being, and about a quarter of an hour later Father Cuthbert
made his appearance.

•* Sorry to have kept you waiting, Dudley, but I have had a
somewhat unexpected visitor.*'

"Is there a story about her?** I asked making room for
him on the bench, " or is it private and confidential? "

•• Yes, there is a story,** he returned slowly, " and I see no
reason why I should not tell it to you. It presents a curious
psychological study. What is your opinion of dreams? **

** Whether I believe in them or not do you mean? ** I an-
swered with another question.

"Yes, just that.**

•• Well,** I continued reflectively, " I don*t know quite what

Digitized by

Google

662 IN THE MEDICI GARDENS [Aug^

to say about it. One hears extraordinary cases of course
and — " He took me up quickly.

" And you are a little afraid of giving yourself away. You
would like to hear me air my views on the subject first. It's
very odd how few people there are in the world who have the
absolute courage of their opinions; who do not wait for a lead
over their fences.*'

" Oh, well," I retorted, " I can form a pretty good guess as
to your views, and as you insist on a straight answer, I don't
believe in them. When they do come true it is a coincidence,
nothing more."

" Well, I will tell you the story and I fancy you will say
that in this particular case there was something more than
coincidence."

He leaned back on the bench, and for a moment or two
only the humming of the bees and the drowsy love song of the
turtle doves broke the silence.

" It was about three years ago," he began, " that I first met
Mrs. — we will call her Smith. She was a widow with one son
to whom she was absolutely devoted. By the way, Dudley, has
it ever struck you what an incomplete pi(;tiu*e is presented by a
married woman who has no children? One often, it is true,
comes across unmarried ones eminently adapted by nature for
the rdle of mother and who have missed their chance in that
respect, but, even so, there is never that sense of something
incomplete and in a manner undeveloped which there is about
the childless married woman. They seem somehow — ^but this
is not the story is it? 'Mrs. Smith had been a pupil in the school
of suffering and had learned her lesson well. Her married life
had consisted of a month of illusion and some fifteen years of
disillusion, so that all her love was expended on her boy."

"I have known love and disillusion to exist together," I
remarked.

"Love of a sort perhaps." There was a snap of im-
patience in Father Cuthbert's tone. " The affection of a person
with low ideals of their own for someone to whom they have
grown accustomed, but I do wish you would not interrupt me,
Dudley. I want to keep to the point."

I smiled to myself and he continued :

" Mrs. Smith had become a Catholic soon after her mar-
riage, and when her son was born she had very little difficulty

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE MEDICI GARDENS 663

in inducing her husband to allow him to be baptized by a priest.
The man had no religion of his own to speak of and gave her
a free hand in the matter, which concession on his part prob-
ably atoned in her eyes for a good many of his peccadilloes. So
the boy was educated at a Catholic college and went from
there to the Varsity and turned out a regular young scamp.

" There was a good deal of his father in him and he found
the obligations of his religion irksome in the extreme, possibly
on account of their having been somewhat over insisted upon
in his childhood. His mother had at that time not quite out-
grown the injudiciousness of the convert, and she expected him
to be as pious in his outward observances as she was herself.
Later on, however, she realized her mistake and like a wise
woman tried other tactics, but they also failed, and by degrees
her son gave up all his religious duties, remaining a Catholic
only in name. He got into a bad set at the 'varsity, exceeded
his allowance and was always in debt, and was finally *sent
down* for some more or less serious misdemeanor. Then in.
London, he was a good-looking boy with perfectly charming
manners, the married women took him up and made a fuss
about him, and that did him no good, so his mother had by no
means a rosy time of it.

" She consulted me on the subject shortly after our first
meeting, and was very anxious to arrange a meeting between
me and her son. She was sure that I should be able to per-
suade him to give up his bad companions and return to his
faith — ^you know the sanguine view mothers always take of such
matters, and how they are a little inclined to blame the priest
when, as frequently happens, their castles in the air topple
over at the first touch. My own opinion was that the proposed
interview would be a mistake. The boy was not in the mood
for any spiritual interference, and any attempt at coercion
would only increase his determination to continue in his pres-
ent mode of life.

" However, the poor little woman was so upset at my re-
fusal that at last I reluctantly appointed an hour to meet the
young man, and she went away in great delight promising to
arrange it. The meeting did not come off. God wanted that
boy's soul and He intended to have it in His own way. I left
London soon afterwards, and saw no more of Mrs. Smith until
two years ago when I met her in Rome.

Digitized by

Google

664 IN THE MEDICI GARDENS [Aug.,

"*You must positively meet my son this time,* were
almost her first words to me. It was Holy Week and we had
met in St. Peter's during Tenebrae.

"*How is he getting on?' I inquired without conMnitting
myself to any definite statement, and she told me that thmgs
were practically the same as when she had seen me last. * He
is here with me now,' she added, * and I think Rome has got
hold of him in a way, although he will not acknowledge that he
is at all impressed.'

" * Is he with you today? ' I asked. She shook her head.

" • No, he wouldn't come, but you must fix a day to come
and dine at our hotel, and then it will be quite easy for you to
talk to him alone.'

" I gave her an evasive reply, for I was quite certain in
my own mind, Dudley, that the affair was not going to be car-
ried through in that manner. I felt — and that had been my con-
viction ever since I had heard of her son's existence — that it
would take more than a word in season, uttered by a chance
acquaintance, to convert him, and I was also strongly impressed
with the idea that sooner or later, in God's own time in fact,
that conversion would become an accomplished fact. So cer-
tain was I of this that I tried to imbue his mother with my feel-
ings on the subject, but she, poor little soul, was inclined to be
despondent.

"*He says such dreadful things about priests,' she said
presently.

" • All the more reason for not forcing him into the society
of one,' I remarked cheerfully.

" * But you are different,' was her naive reply.

" * In his present frame of mind,*^ I returned, * a priest is
about the last person with whom he would care to be on
friendly terms. What you have to do is to pray for him, every
day and all day, let your life be a prayer, and make no re«
arrangements for bringing your son and me together. If it is
decreed that we shall meet we shall do so without your inters
vention.'

•* She looked at me with a startled expression and mur-
mured that she would do as I wished, and then the wailing
notes of the Miserere rose through the dusk and we said no
more. That Miserere, Dudley, sung by the Sistine Choir is a
thing to remember, something that stamps itself upon what-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE MEDICI GARDENS 665

ever part of one's brain or mind it is which retains impres-
sions, and which no after experiences can ever efface. We
listen to it in the stronghold of Catholicism, in that vast basilica
erected over the tomb of Peter, the Fisherman of Galilee, and
the Rock upon which Christ built His Church, and we hear it
in the midst of a crowd of mingled nationalities, of believers
and unbelievers, of saints and sinners, gathered together under
one lofty roof, a few out of devotion, a larger number for the
sake of the music, others because it is the correct thing to do
on Maundy Thursday.

^ Mrs. Smith's son was very much in my thoughts during
the days that followed, and it struck me as a curious fact that
in Rome, which is such a universal meeting place, we should
never as yet have come across one another. Notwithstanding
my remarks on the subject, his mother had twice invited me
to lunch, but on each occasion I had a bona fide engagement
which it would have been impossible to break. He was out
when I called on her one afternoon, and three times I just
missed seeing him at the house of a mutual friend. And then
a night or two later I had an intensely vivid dream:

** It was spring in the Villa Medici, the roses were in bloom
and the scent of violets filled the air, and the wealth of color
in the flower beds contrasted with the green gloom of the
long shady avenues. There was a glinmier of sunshine even
here, for it was a real Roman day of blue and gold, and I was
walking alone between the spreading trees. At the far end
stood a young man, fair and boyish looking with regular fea-
tures and the candid blue eyes of a child. He seemed to be
waiting for me and I hastened my steps until I came quite
close to him. He smiled, stretched out his hand to me in greet-
ing and I awoke. There was nothing startling in the dream
except its intense vividness and atmosphere of actuality, and
I came to myself with a sense of disappointment that it should
have ended before I could hear what he had to say. Then
things began to crowd rather, as they have a way of doing in
Rome, and I thought no more of it, and Mrs. Smith's son got
crowded out too.

" My stay was drawing to a close, and three days before I
left I paid a farewell visit to the Medici Villa, a spot for which
I have always felt the strongest attraction. One is so near to
nature in these old Italian gardens where man plays so small a

Digitized by

Google

666 IN THE MEDICI GARDENS [Aug.,

part in their arrangement, and the flowers spring up as it were
in the night and rush from bud to blossom ahnost in a day.
Easter was late that year, and there was now a riot of roses
everywhere, and the air was fragrant with the scent of snowy
pinks and gaily tinted stocks. The sky was of the shade of
Mary's mantle, deeply, intensely blue, and the sun poured
down its golden radiance on the old Palace, that memorial of
departed glory and other days.

*' As I stood there in the sunshine amongst the flowers, my
dream recurred to me, and I turned involuntarily, and almost
without any volition on my part, down one of the long, green
avenues. I walked slowly with my eyes on the ground vis-
ualizing again the youth I had seen in my dream, and then,
Dudley — ^I tell you this is sober fact — ^I looked up suddenly and
saw him waiting for me at the further end. He was similar in
every respect to the young man I had dreamed of, the same clear-
ly-cut featm*es and fair boyish face, the same blue eyes, can-
did and clear as those of a child. I stood still for an instant
staring at him in surprise, and then pulling myself together
I continued my walk, intending to pass him by. But he, too,
stood still, and an expression of intense bewilderment min-
gled with a dawning look of fear crossed his face. If I had
been a ghost haunting that gloomy avenue, he could not have
been more taken aback.

"' ' Excuse me,' he stammered as I was about to pass him,
* could I — er — could I speak to you? My name is Smith.'

** Then, Dudley, the meaning of the dream flashed upon me
in all its significance, and I held out my hand to him.

" * I know you very well by report,' I said, * and I have been
hoping to meet you, but how did you know me? '

'* He hesitated, looked sharply at me for a second, and then
studied his boots in silence, and I waited till he had collected
himself sufficiently to speak. His whole personality was an
enormous surprise to me. I had never connected my dream
with the youth whom I had heard so much of from his mother,
and as I hastily recalled some of his escapades, the candor and
clearness of his eyes and the serenity of his expression inspired
in me an intense curiosity as to how they had been preserved.

" *You will think me quite mad. Father,' he said at last, * but
— er — the fact is — oh well, it's no use going on like this, I
dreamed about you. There.'

Digitized by

Google

1918.] IN THE MEDICI GARDENS 667

*' He looked me straight in the face with a touch of defiance
in his voice, and I took a liking to him on the spot.

" *Let us walk up and down a little,' I said. * There must be
a link or sympathy of some kind between us,* I went on hoping
to put him at his ease, * because I, too, recognized you as some-
one I had dreamed of about a fortnight ago.'

"The look of fear returned to his eyes. •What does it
mean? ' he exclaimed.

" Well, Dudley, something which was not myself spoke for
me at that moment, and I told him a little of what I thought it
meant. I felt instinctively that it was not a moment for con-
ventionality. It was the boy's naked soul, as it were, that was
before me, stripped of all its society trappings, and there in
the green gloom of the Medici gardens my soul spoke straight to
his. It is not necessary for me to tell you what passed between
us, but the success of my audacity exceeded what I had dared
to hope, and before we parted he had given me his promise to
come and see me before I left and to make his confession."

Father Cuthbert paused and re-lit his pipe. His eyes were
shining, but there was a whimsical expression on his lips,
and I could see that he was half inclined to laugh at himself.

** That story always strings me up, Dudley," he remarked
with an almost apologetic intonation in his voice. " It sounds
incredible but all the same it was a solid fact."

•* And he persevered?" I asked.

** Oh, yes. Notwithstanding its somewhat theatrical begin-
ning, the conversion was a lasting one. In fiction I suppose he
would have joined some severe Order, but as it is he has done
nothing of the sort. He is engaged, so his mother has just been
telling me, to a charming Catholic girl, and they are to be mar-
ried in the autumn. The world wants men of that sort you
know, Dudley; the work and the influence which can be done
and exerted by earnest Catholic laymen is well-nigh in-
exhaustible, if they would only realize it a little more."

" Now for your objections," he added as he puflfed away
contentedly at his pipe. ** I see you have some."

" Well," I remarked, " I still think there was a little coin-
cidence about it. The young man was very much in your
thoughts, and no doubt his mother was perpetually dinning
your praises into his ears and so you dreamed of one another."

" Quite so," he returned, ** and it is possible there may have

Digitized by

Google

668 IN THE MEDICI GARDENS [Aug.,

been some sub-conscious suggestion mixed up with it, but how
do you account for our having dreamed of one another exactly
as we were when we had never seen one another in the flesh,
and so that we were able to recognize each other when we
met? "

" I can't account for it," I acknowledged, " how do you? "
He turned and looked at me with eyes which seemed to go
through me and beyond me.

"I believe," he said slowly, "that there exists a subtle
sympathy between souls whose bodies have never met, if one
of them is destined to influence the other. Then, his was not
a temperament to be worked upon by ordinary methods; it re-
quired shaking to its foundations, being startled as it were into
the love and service of God, and, in his case, the fulfillment of
a dream would have ten times more effect than any number
of eloquent sermons or plausible arguments. He had to be
frightened into submission and God knew that was the best
way. He told me, too, how even after he had left off going to
Mass and saying his ordinary prayers, he still preserved a devo-
tion to his Guardian Angel, and that when he did occasionally
utter a prayer it was to this unseen protecting presence which
had taken such a hold on his childish imagination. And that
no doubt was why, as he told me on several occasions, he had
been almost miraculously prevented from falling into certain
sins. He was, in spite of his surroundings and his defects, an
innately clean-hearted boy, and it was that quality which was
reflected in his eyes. There, Dudley, I have talked enough for
one afternoon, and look here, I don't want to make you a
believer in dreams — that would be against the Catechism —
but I would like you to realize that there are many mysteries in
heaven and earth which the wisest of us do not understand.
And, indeed, the wiser we are the less we know."

I thanked him and left him standing there by the old sun
dial amongst his roses, but he suddenly called me back.

" Remember, Dudley," he said, " for I do not want you to
go away with a wrong impression of my meaning. It was not a
dream which converted Mrs. Smith's son and made a zealous
Catholic of him — it was the infinite mercy of God."

Digitized by

Google

WAR RELIGION.

BY FRANaS AVEUNG, S.T.D.

I ANY questions have been asked, and much has
been written on the effect which the conditions of
war have had upon the religion of our soldiers in
the mass or as individuals. Such questions are
not always easy to answer, and that for several
reasons. In the first place, soldiers, no less than civilians, are
not all built upon a stereotyped model; and it is difficult, if
not misleading, to generalize in regard to their religion, as it
would be with respect to any other point in which individuality
counts for so much. Again, religion is a difficult thing to char-
acterize, unless one adopts a rather rigid and perhaps exclusive
definition, correct enough in a theological paper, but out of
place when attempting to reply to a popular desire for infor-
mation. Aware of these and similar difficulties and restric-
tions, it may be possible for us to speak, for lack of a more
definite term, of War Religion, using it in a very broad and gen-
eral sense. In portraying one characteristic of the religious
man. Holy Scripture speaks of him as spending himself for
others, after the example of that great Leader Who spent Him-
self to the uttermost for all mankind. He is the succorer of
the fatherless and of the widow. He clothes the naked; he
feeds the hungry, and gives drink to those who thirst. He visits
the sick and captives in their affliction. He forgives offences
and bears wrongs patiently. And he keeps himself pure and
unspotted amidst all the dust and grime and filth of a morally
careless and religiously indifferent world.

The motive of all this practical altruism — this spending of
one*s self for others — ris love, the love of his feUowmen, in
whom and through whom he sees the Divine; and the driving
force behind it, insistent and strong, is the love of God. For
the two great Gospel precepts of charity, if they are observed
— and they must be observed if charity be rooted in a man*s
soul — bring forth their fruit in aU those external signs of a
truly religious man which are mentioned in Holy Scripture.
The external signs of religion are the natural expression, in the

Digitized by

Google

670 WAR RELIGION [Aug.,

end, of love; and the religious man is he, who, truly loving God,
loves his neighbor — and loves him practically.

There are counterfeits of this, often mistaken for it, in all
the various forms which mere philanthropy assumes; for a
really irreligious man may certainly be philanthropic, and
perform all the corporal works of mercy to as great, and pos-
sibly even to a greater degree and extent, than a religious one.
It is the motive in religion that counts, the intention, the end in
view. But this need not necessarily be formal and explicit.
Indeed, it seldom is explicit in practice. Nor should it be ex-
pected to be so; for practice savors of the habitual, and habit
is not consciously controlled. The great forces of life are us-
ually buried deep down beneath the conscious level, except at
those rare times at which we drag them up for examination,
or when they surge upwards irresistibly and thrust themselves
upon us in some sudden self-revelation.

Unconscious tendencies and propensities, strivings and
cravings, habits good and evil, shape by far the greater part
of our consciously lived lives; and of these strong forces re-
ligion may be — and often is — ^preponderant. Indeed, whether
it be purely natural or supernatural, religion is one of the
strongest of all the life forces, keying up to the greatest endur-
ance, making possible the cheerful bearing of great suifferings,
prompting to ready self-effacement and self-sacrifice. And the
fruits of religion such as this, manifest in the life of an ordi-
nary natural man, even when he has forgotten in the " uncon-
scious " their cause and true origin, exhibit the soul which is
naturally Christian — anima naturaliter Christiana. There is a
great deal of religion in human nature, overlaid by custom and
convention, suppressed in its formal manifestations by ret-
icence, shyness, and a certain sense of "bad form." Human
respect is to be blamed for much of this. But religion breaks
through, none the less, in a thousand flashes and golden gleams.
It smoulders in myriads of human hearts, and reveals its pres-
ence in the most unlooked-for and unsuspected places.

All this is true largely in times of peace, when most of the
preoccupations of trade or business and society, the humdrum
routine of ordinary work, the monotonous iteration of un-
ending tasks, the greed for money, the fever of ambition, the
smug self-complacency of weU-being, the narcotics of com-
fort and security, all tend to war against and to suppress the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WAR RELIGION 671

religious instinct. It is true in war time. The old life has
slipped away into vague distance. There are vivid landmarks
still in the past that has already become so remote. There is
home and mother; or there is wife and children. There are
personal interests of one kind or another. But on the whole
the soldier is not the same being as he was before he put on the
uniform. He may not — ^probably does not — ^realize the extent
of the change that has taken place in him. It began imper-
ceptibly with his new surroundings in the training camps.
There he had to adjust all his relations afresh. He made new
friends in the height of his generous enthusiasm. He learned
stern discipline and to obey commands, while his heart was
bursting to be up and doing. His business was no longer to
stoop over a ledger or spend his days in office or in shop; to
labor in mine or field or factory. In ninety-nine cases out of
a hundred, the regular exercise, fresh air and plain food vastly
improved his health, and so altered his outlook. His. mind
worked in new grooves. War and the problems of war found
inarticulate formulation within him. Ideals grew and became
modified as muscles hardened and automatized in drill, rifle
practice and bayonet fighting. And then he came out to
France or Belgium, singing light-hearted songs and marching
through the villages with high head and flashing eyes. The
flavor of romance still clung to the idea of war as he marched
on towards the front. All was new and foreign and intrigu-
ing. And through it all his system of values was slowly chang-
ing, his horizon altering.

Deep things were coming nearer to the surface of his soul.
Old, f ar-oflf memories were faintly stirred by new surround-
ings. Undreamed of meanings were interpreting life afresh for
him. And then the line, and the first action! What emotions
surged and clashed within him as the battle raged around
about without — strong, primitive emotions which went down
to the very roots of his being; emotions long pent up and
cramped by all the artificial unreality of the social structure
of his upbringing. No more was life a slow-burning flame, pale
and thin, fed on conventions and make-believe, drawing its
scanty nourishment from debased ideals and dishonest, ac-
cepted traditions — a poor thing, of little substance or color.
This crowded moment was a lifetime in itself, strong, and
virile, and intense. This was reality that he faced, the stern

Digitized by

Google

672 WAR REUGION [Aug.,

reality from which war roughly tears the sham masks and
trappings of peace time. And here, in the mad whirlpool of
war, under the shadow of the swift flying shuttles of death, the
patriotic loyalty, the hardy discipline, the new problems and
adjustment to new outlooks, the strange pulsing emotions —
all formless, no doubt, and inexpressible — ^bore their fruit. In
religion? Yes, in so far as it is possible to engraft religion upon
dogma, or the lack of it. Where there was no solid stock of
truth, or belief, upon which this newly-awakened mental com-
plex could fix itself, a necessary Deity was invented for its sup-
port and nourishment, a blind Fate, a presiding and pursuing
Luck, an inexorable something big with destiny, but generally
regarded as malevolent

Men who were pressed by the emotional stress to create
such a Deity within their own consciousness, felt themselves
to be as cogs on the wheels of some great, impersonal, inevit-
able machine — the infinitely fatal and complicated Juggernaut
of war. What will they had, was of no avail once caught in the
grinding wheels; and the Will that controUed the whole mon-
strous machinery had no interest, or at best a purely sporting
interest, in their well-being and ultimate goal. Such men in
ordinary peaceable times would be amiable pagans, drifting
along the world's current with no thought beyond the reach of
hand or eye. The emotions begot of war drive them, for the
most part, spiritually into a comer. Hence their reversion to a
quasi-pagan theology for their newly-aroused emotions. In
other cases — and these by far the greatest number — ^in which
there is some faint impress of orthodoxy, some far-off reminis-
cence of a childhood's God, some notion of a Celestial Father-
hood or dependence upon a beneficent Deity, the emotional
surge veers to theism. And no matter how vague or imperfect,
no matter how inarticulate or hesitating, it is truly a natural
religion that emerges. It strengthens and consoles; and it
bears its fruits. Incidentally, it prepares the heart and mind
for the planting of a nobler seed which may bring forth a hun-
dred fold — as so often has been the case among our men dur-
ing the course of this present world-struggle.

The typical British soldier — ^if it can be said that there is
a type in an army drawn from every class of society in the
great Empire — the typical British soldier is a kindly, a truly
charitable man. He is generous almost to a fault, tender and

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WAR RELIGION 673

chivalrous towards the weak, solicitous for the oppressed and
suffering, patient under almost incredible discomforts, cheer-
ful in adversity, a faithful comrade, and a good man. How
many little children behind the lines in France and in Flanders
have learned to love the British soldier! How many women
have learned to bless his chivalrous labor spent for them, the
self-imposed tasks undertaken in their behalf — unaccustomed
tasks, for the most part — about the farm, or the byre, or the
cottage, from which the men-folk were aU away fighting.
How many little kindnesses has he performed, out of sheer
goodness of heart, for the aged and the stricken in the dev-
astated villages of these tortured lands. Old people and chil-
dren and widows and the unprotected have learned his sterl-
ing worth, and have named him in their prayers. His pity and
his charity and his practical service — those hall-marks of re-
ligion — have endeared him to the suffering and the helpless
and the weak. And if he has done what he has done without
conscious thought of Him to Whom he has ministered in these
His children, is it to be said that, in that he has done it to the
least of these his brethren, he has not done it unto Chrisf Him-
self?

All this was true mainly in the old days during which we
were " holding the line," L e., defending the system of trenches
in the West, and foUowing up the retreating Germans on the
scarred and pittied battlefields of the Somme. Much more
was it true when, freed from the principal Eastern theatre of
war, the enemy forced us back by the terrific weight of his
numbers over those same dreary and desert areas. While our
lines, falling back, disputed foot by foot, and with incredible
valor, the wasted territory, the civilians who had retm^ned to
what was left to them of their once happy and peaceful homes
behind the new line were forced to evacuate. There is nothing
I have seen — ^few sights could be — so sad and so tragic as a
forced evacuation of civilians.

Imagine roads, up and down which continuous streams of
traffic are passing — soldiers, cars, lorries, guns, horse-transport,
ambulances and supplies of every kind : the noise, the dust, the
incessant movement, the booming of the guns and the whine
of shells. And imagine there the pallid and hollow-eyed pro-
cession of the refugees; their goods, such as they could save
out of their poor belongings, their mattresses chiefly, and bed

Digitized by

Google

674 WAR RELIGION [Aug.,

coverings (or so it seemed) ; their few articles of dress and lit-
tle store of food; perhaps a chair or so : loaded on carts drawn
by tired horses or by donkeys, pulled by human arms, or
pushed in barrows, even in babies' carriages. In one case we
saw a bird-cage with its canary carried along, tied upon the
back of a cow. Rarely but there is some aged woman or infirm
old man, or mother with a new-born child in her arms seated or
lying on the pile. Often is there a cow or calf tied to the cart-
tail; nearly always children, wondering-eyed and frightened,
trudging beside. Here and there one leads a dog by a string.
And here and there the procession halts as the traffic gets con-
gested, or a group falls out by the side of the highway to rest
a little on the weary march. It is all pathetic and heart-wring-
ing.

But sad as it is — this forced dereliction of hearth and home
— there is its other side of compensation in the warm-hearted
assistance and prodigal generosity of the British soldiers,
bound on their task of war, towards these poor, homeless ref-
ugees. They gave not only material things — ^food and drink
and tobacco. They gave comfort and consolation and cour-
age, too — they who could go smiling and singing to the sway-
ing battle which had once more driven the poor refugees from
their homes.

I remember another sight — more tremendous, more ter-
rible and dramatic even than this — the burning of a dozen
hamlets and villages at once, fired by incendiary shells in one
of the enemy oflfensives. There was an exceptional point of
vantage for vision. Full thirty or thirty-five miles of the line
lay, so to speak, actually at one's feet. And all along that line
the columns and great plumes of smoke went up to the blue sky
of a perfect spring day, and shrapnel-bursts clouded the hori-
zon. It was a scene grand in the extreme and awful : war, and
all the forces of war, unloosed to wreck and to destroy. But
it had its other aspects than that of grandeur and terrific force.
Once more the roads were crowded with the unhappy civilian
refugees. It was their homes that were burning, their land that
was drenched with blood and torn with iron flails. Pitiful,
unhappy souls I And here again, as before, the best of the
British soldier came out in compassion and in service. It was
in his arms, often, that a tired child was carried. His water-
bottle gave to drink; his bully-beef and biscuit to eat; and

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WAR RELIGION 675

whatever he could do, spontaneously and generously he did, to
the utmost of his power. Of course, one would expect both
sympathy and help in circumstances such as these: but in his
manner of giving, the British soldier is a revelation to us all
and even to himself.

One would look for less tolerance, sympathy and charity
from him, perhaps, in his dealings with prisoners of war. He
has been trained as a soldier and brought out to France to kill
Germans. That sounds brutal: but it is true. As a soldier his
object is to win what he knows to be a just war: and that end
involves killing. It is his business now to kill, just as before it
was his business to argue cases in court, or add up figures in a
ledger, or sell things over a counter. But there is seldom, if
ever, hatred in his heart towards his foes, and towards enemy
captives he displays neither bitterness nor rancor. This, of
course, cannot be said to be universally true; but it is generally
so. And it is a striking testimony to the mentality of the Brit-
ish soldier that it is so.

I have seen but from one tiny angle some of the episodes
of the fighting on this front : but I have seen many prisoners of
war, immediately after their capture, in the transit cages, and
(behind the convention zone) in the prisoners* camps. And I
have never known their treatment to be otherwise than charit-
able and kindly. The soldier does not, in his heart of hearts,
consider them honorable foes: but at least he treats them
with the respect due to such. He is ready to share his food
with them; and in all amity and charity he will kneel before the
same field-altar and offer up his prayers with theirs.

Self-sacrifice for others, even to the supreme test, has
come to be almost a commonplace of the War. Not only has
this been shown by the heroic actions of individual men for the
sake of their comrades, so many of which have by now been
made known to the world; but the magnificent response of
those who enlisted in the " Kitchener " armies and the forces
from overseas has proved that the mankind of the nation was
capable of great ideals, and of maintaining their inviolability
at any cost of personal discomfort and danger. Nor should
it really be thought that those who failed to enlist at the first
voluntarily, were far behind their comrades in idealism, or
even in courage. There were a thousand reasons, apart from
lack of understanding of the issues involved and of the crying

Digitized by

Google

676 WAR RELIGION [Aug.,

need for the greatest number of men available, which held
them back from the first " roll up " — ^family reasons, honest
motives of business, reasons of routine, or habit, and of un-
imaginative indolence. It took time for the crust of conmion-
place life and thought to be broken, and for the full reality of
the War to emerge.

Once shattered by the national need, and its explanation
by the law of conscription, the conscripts were emulous, for the
most part, of those who had engaged for the great adventure of
their own free will. They were fired by the same ideals, un-
derwent the same training, and experienced the same emotions
in the shock of battle. There is much that is sordid and brutal
in war; but ideals keep the soul above sordidness and brutal-
ity: and the soldier, with aU his faults and all his failings, has
been buoyed up by what he believes and what he hopes for.

So he has learned to give himself and spend himself for
others; first and foremost for those dear ones whom he has
left at home. It is his part to see that the horrors of Belgium
and the tragedies of France should never touch his own women
and children. It is his to secure, in union with his comrades of
the AUies, that the devastating tide should be checked and
rolled back from the, as yet, untouched towns and villages of
France. It is his part to bear all the monotonous discomfort,
the fatigue and strain and privation of active campaigning that
others may be spared the horrors of war. It is his to offer his
breast to the enemy that others may sleep in safety; his to die
that others may live.

And he does it all without complaint. True, he " grouses,"
and his language is oftentimes appalling: but he " carries on."
And to " carry on " here means to have broken with all the
customs of his old life; to march over miles of dusty roads be-
neath a glaring sun and with a heavy pack strapped upon his
shoulders; to stand for hours in a trench full of liquid mud,
chilled to the marrow as the gray light dawns; to become,
though meticulously careful, dirty and verminous for days at
a time; to snatch his sleep in an underground hole in company
with the rats — these and a hundred other discomforts. To
" carry on " means for him, perhaps, to stop a bullet with his
heart or have his brain dashed out by a bit of shell, and finally
to find his grave in alien soil. Surely all these are virtues
which must have their root in something high and noble

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WAR RELIGION 677

and sublime. They are the marks of religion. Can we not
find the rich and solid ground from which they spring in the
soul of the British soldier? I think so. The soldier may not
be clear and explicit about God: but he knows ''the Good;"
and it is his kinship with that Good that makes his actions what
they are.

Of formal religion — " organized Christianity," as our non-
Catholic brethren call it — there is no sign of great desire. It is
rather the inarticulate movement of souls acquiescing in the
decrees of blind Fate, or groping nearer towards a light that
undoubtedly is dawning for them. Behind the practical ex-
pression there certainly is something — something too formless
to be called dogmatic, and yet the nucleus of dogma; something
too personal to be ** organized," yet capable of organization.
People who have been able to despair of human nature, should
come and see human beings in the winepress of war. That it
could be considered bad is a siu*e argument for its being fun-
damentally good. There is much to cheer one and much to
make one hope: for the Spirit of God is brooding over the
chaos of the War.

And, in conclusion, to particularize: How has the War
affected the religion of Catholics? A few have remained, or,
strange to say, even become careless; though fewer still, I be-
lieve, are indifferent. Most are far more keen and earnest. They
frequent the Sacraments whenever it is possible and have a
great personal grip upon their religioft. It is, as it should be, a
part of their every-day normal life. Oftentimes it is impossible
for some to see a priest or enter a church for weeks, and even
months, at a time. Their devotion is nourished on their Faith,
and the light of the tabernacle is kept burning in the sanctuary
of their hearts. Catholics, no less than others, are put to the
test in time of war. It has, all things considered, much the
same effects on them as on their non-Catholic feUows. But
their dogmatic religion, on the one hand, and on the other their
gift of Faith, provide a stable ground on which all the soul-
searching and highly emotional realities of warfare can have —
and, indeed, do have — a truly beneficial action.

Moreover, the Catholic knows his way about his religion
so well that he has a practical remedy to his hand for every
ill, a ready weapon for every assault, an understood and re-
alized grasp of the " things beyond '* that matter. He has his

Digitized by

Google

678 THE ANGELUS [Aug.,

rosary in his pocket or around his neck; and Our Lady*s beads
mean something to him. He wears the scapular medal and the
badge of the Sacred Heart near his own. He will make his
confession in a trench or gun-pit, and kneel beside the road to
receive the Body of his Lord. He knows it all so well, and
realizes it all so solidly in substance that the accessories matter
nothing. So well does he know and realize it, too, that, should
his turn come to witness to his ideals by his death upon the
field or in the ambulance, he will confess his Faith as a simple
matter of course, as a fact for which he lived and in which he
died; and will close his tired eyes and stretch out his nerveless
hands for the anointing of the holy oil, in the sure and cer-
tain hope that he has ** done his bit," and goes before his God
ready and unafraid.

THE ANGELUS.

BY J. CORSON MILLER.

•

The red moon glows like some rich poppy-flow'r
Against the Night's blue breast; green saplings stir
Their tiny hands in sleep; shy lavender
Enfolds each valley-hamlet, tower on tow'r.
Now for a space Queen Beauty wields her pow*r:
Before her throne, far from the City's whir,
Earth bows, and like blown frankincense and myrrh.
The hush of evening rises hour by hour.

And lo, across the dusk, I hear a bell —

The low-toned Angelus that calls to pray'r.

In memory of Mary, pure and fair.

Who knelt long since beneath bright Gabriers spell.

Somewhere a homing thrush his love-song trills.

And Night creeps down upon the sleeping hills.

Digitized by

Google

THE LAST LECTURES OF WILFRID WARD. With an Intro-
ductory Study by Mrs. Ward. New York: Longmans,
Green & Co, $4.00 net.

These lectures are introduced by a sympathetic study of
Mr. Ward's literary activities, an outline sketch for a future
biography. Mrs. Ward lets us into the study room and shows
the lecturer at work, earnest, painstaking, careful, interested in
aU things intellectual, stanch in his Catholic faith and aiming to
bring together divergent schools of thought within the Church.
The author of the Lives of William G. Ward, Aubrey de Vere,
Cardinal Wiseman and Cardinal Newman, is seen to be quali-
fied for his difficult task.

The papers found in this volume on the Genius of
Cardinal Newman are a complement to the biography. Critics
have denied Newman the place Mr. Ward assigns him as a
thinker. To those who think him dilettante because his efforts
spread over so varied a field, Mr. Ward makes reply that they
fail to see Newman's purpose in ranging widely. Perceiving
that infidelity was threatening the Church, Newman aimed to
stem its progress. Wherever it showed itself, he was on hand
to thwart it. He sought to develop the life of the Church's in-
stitutions, as the safest bulwark against the infidel onslaught,
to give vitality to traditions, to make men the living embodi-
ment of religion, and so to make personality the means to
safeguard and win souls. This effort carried him afar, but it
unified his work and gave it depth of concentration. Into no
field did he go to become a specialist, but to effect his purpose.
Mr. Ward's lectures are closer insights into the mind, char-
acter and life-work of Newman than the scope of a biography
would warrant.

In another set of lectures, he analyzes a phase of his own
profession, and sets forth the method of depicting character
in fiction and biography. In his view, character is individuality
and must be presented objectively, by the novelist in such man-
ner as will convince the reader that the character is possible;
by the biographer, to show unmistakably that the portrait is
authentic. The materials are recorded conversations, letters,

Digitized by

Google

680 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

diaries, autobiographies, reminiscences. Mr. Ward uses his
own experience as example.

In The War Spirit and Christianity, it is shown " that the
spirit fostered by war has brought out in one race an outburst
of Christian virtue, in the other, cruelty, excess, treachery."
The element of chivalry in the defence of country and in be-
half of weak neighbors is the fulfillment of the comimand to
Move one*s neighbor as oneself.*'* It touches the war spirit
with the Christian ethos of the Middle Ages. The element of
aggression, "World-Empire or Annihilation,** on the part of
Germany is only surface deep. The root of the matter is Young
Germany*s revolt against Christian ideals, and admitted rever-
sion to the warrior ideals of the old Goths displaced by Chris-
tianity in the fifth century. German philosophy and Prussian
history are brought forward to support this thesis.

THE MYSTIC VISION IN THE GRAIL LEGEND AND IN THE

DIVINE COMEDY. By Lizette Andrews Fisher, Ph.D.

Studies in English and Comparative Literature Series.

New York : Columbia University Press : $1.50 net.

Endorsed by President A. H. Thorndike " as a contribution
to knowledge worthy of publication,** this students* thesis
supports the contention that the vision of the Holy Grail, in the
familiar legends, and the vision of Beatrice in the closing can-
tos of the Purgatorio of Dante, are mystic intuitions of the
Divine nature hidden under the sacramental veils in the Holy
Eucharist. The book contains three essays, of which the third,
relating to Dante, is the most pleasant.

Of course, no Catholic could have written this book,
strange as it seems for a non-Catholic to have written it.

No Catholic would have breathlessly unfolded as a dis-
covery startlingly new that the Grail legends are saturated
with suggestions of the Holy Eucharist. Nor could a Catholic,
reviewing the development of the Holy Grail literature, have
managed to work in every hoary calumny against mediaeval
life and faith as deftly as Dr. Fisher has done. One must be
born to it. Such instinctive thoroughness of misinterpretation
cannot be acquired.

Certainly no Catholic could have written the first of the
three essays. It is cruel and abominable in the extreme. But
how convince Dr. Fisher of this? Is it possible for this indus-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 681

trious Doctor of Philosophy to unagine herself a wife and
mother? Will she suppose that her husband of less than a year
has gone to the front and her only consolation is her first bom?
Will she picture herself transported with her baby and all the
dear, tender belongings of the nursery, to a booth in the Mu-
seiun of Natural History, and there placed on exhibition? Will
she fancy a Doctor of Philosophy lecturing on this exhibit to
a staring throng? He spares no detail of her sacred privacy;
analyzes the processes of mating and maternity coldly, con-
temptuously; calls attention to her caresses, while she strives
to soothe her baby, as evidences of mental weakness, supersti-
tion, " fertility rites from pagan worship of Adonis," hints that
the layette is a voodoo outfit, refers to the child as a " fetich,**
and from time to time mentions that the birth occiured four
years after the departure of her husband! I do not know
whether a Doctor of Philosophy could imagine herself in such
a predicament, but if she can rise to this, surely her blood will
rise also the boiling point.

That is precisely where she brings the blood of the Catho-
lic who reads her nineteen pages on ** Transubstantiation in
History, Theology and Devotion," She seems to think that
Transubstantiation is a phenomenon confined to the Middle
Ages. The sacred devotions and holy aspirations daily stir-
ring the hearts of her Catholic fellow-citizens in New York, are
paraded by her as curiosities voided of all personal signifi-
cance by the lapse of five hundred years. She makes a great
task for herself to explain why, in the Grail legend, Christ is
represented as giving Joseph of Arimathea the words of the
consecration in secret. It is a pity that all her prodigies of
research did not bring her to know the discipline of the secret
with which the early Church protected the holy mystery of the
Eucharist from the profanation of which her ambitious essay
is such a painful example.

THE A. E. F. By Heywood Broun. New York: Appleton & Co.

$1.50.

When the first troops of the American Expeditionary
Forces under General Pershing went to France, Heywood
Broun of the New York Tribune went with them. He watched
our boys on the crowded transports, mingled among them as they
laughingly tried to make their wants known in French, went

Digitized by

Google

682 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

with them to their training camps, saw their long, hard drills
under British and French officers, and inspected them after
their entry into the trenches.

The things that he saw, and they were many, he has chron-
icled brightly and charmingly in one of the most interesting
books of the War. The author has not tried to permeate his
lines with heroics. His place with the boys gave him splendid
opportunities to see them as they were, at their best and at
their worst, and he used every occasion to catch up those little
human things that make for a vivid portrait of the men who
were too simple to pose as heroes or to allow others to make
heroes of them. The book really consists of a series of sketches,
rapid in movement. They mirror back the spirit that actuated
the American soldiers when they began their work in France,
and give us a very intimate idea of how they took to France
and the French people to them.

OUTLINES OF MEDIiBVAL HISTORY. By C. W. Previt^ Orton,

M.A. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $3.00.

The viewpoint of the writer of this interesting volume is
thus set forth in his preface : '* In the choice of events to nar-
rate I have been guided by their far-off results, rather than by
their inmiediate iclat in their own time, and have tried to in-
dicate how in the Middle Ages were accomplished the growth
of modern man and the life and attitude to life of modern
times."

Mr. Orton is never intentionally unfair, and in fact
gives due measure of praise to the civilizing influence of the
Church, its marvelous organization, the zeal of its mission-
aries, the ideals of its monks, its great Popes and bishops.

As an English Protestant, however, he views the Middle
Ages through anti-Papal glasses, and often makes statements
that cannot be verified before the bar of impartial history. For
example, he cites Gregory I. as an upholder of the thesis that
all bishops are equal; he makes Charlemagne the superior of
the bishops and the Pope in the settlement of doctrinal prob-
lems; he gives altogether too brief and inaccurate an account
of the False Decretals; he speaks of the blunting of the spiritual
powers of the Papacy by unscrupulous misuse; and praises the
" adult spirit of criticism,'* which finally led to the revolt of
Northern Europe from Papal authority.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 683

DIVINE FAITH, By Rev. Peter Finlay, SJ. New York: Long-
mans, Green & Co. $1.50.

The lectures of the present volume are published as they
were delivered to the students of Dublin College of the National
University of Ireland. In them Father Finlay discusses in
clear and simple language the nature of faith, its motive, its
subject matter, its reasonableness, its freedom, its certainty,
its relation with reason, the wish to believe, the condition of
** honest unbelievers," the sin of unbelief, and the doctrine of
development. It is an excellent book to put into the hands of
an earnest inquirer.

THE SECRET OF PERSONALITY. By George T. Ladd, LL.D.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.50 net
Dr. Ladd does his best to tell us the secret of personality,
but he is severely handicapped by a false philosophy, which has
no perfect grasp of the nature of God or of the human soul.
Had he known the A. B. C. of Scholastic philosophy, he might
have written something worth while.

We wish to call attention to the mythical Bull of Paul III.
which, according to Dr. Ladd, questioned the fact of oiu* In-
dians being really human; the failure to recognize the true
force of the argument for immortality from the universality
of the desire in the human race; the ascription of the Incarna-
tion to some unknown sources lying outside of the Hebrew
Scriptures and the earliest Christian writings, etc.

THE FUTURE LIFE. By Rev. Joseph Sasia, S.J. New York:

Benziger Brothers. $2.50 net.

This scholarly volume discusses ably, although in rather
ponderous fashion, the immortality of the soul and the sanction
of eternal reward and punishment in the future life. The
author makes no claim of originality, but says that the merit of
his volume lies in the fact of his having gathered together from
the vast fields of Catholic philosophy and theology, and from
the pages of history the best arguments and the most convinc-
ing testimonies available for his purpose.

The best part of the book, to our mind, is the treatise on
hell and its answers to unbelievers who deem the Catholic
teaching incompatible with the mercy of an all-loving God. A
good bibliography concludes each chapter.

Digitized by

Google

684 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

THE HISTORY OF MEDIiEYAL EUROPE. By Lynn Thorndike.

Ph.D. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. $3.50 net.

This textbook traces the development of Europe and its
civilization from the decline of the Roman Empire to the open-
ing of the sixteenth century. The author makes little claim to
originality of method or novelty of subject mattter, although he
introduces some improvement in selection and presentation of
material. He lays special stress upon economic and social con-
ditions, omitting according to modern methods many minor
details of military and political history. The background of
physical geography is frequently referred to and described,
and excellent maps iUustrate the text.

Of course the viewpoint throughout is undogmatic and
anti-Papal, although we exonerate the writer from intentional
unfairness. He has no idea of Christian teaching as a divine
revelation, is hazy about the divinity of Christ, misunderstands
the Catholic concept of the relation of Church and State, con-
siders the Papacy a mere human development, and speaks in
rather condescending tone of Catholic belief in miracles, sacra-
mentalism and the like.

JEWISH THEOLOGY. By Dr. K. Kohler. New York: TheMac-

millan Co. $2.50.

Dr. Kohler, President of the Hebrew Union College of Cin-
cinnati, has written a textbook of Jewish theology from the
viewpoint of historical research. It is interesting merely as
an instance of how far prejudice will warp the minds of those
who undertake to discuss a religion they hate but do not un-
derstand. The author's chapter on "Christianity and Mo-
hammedanism " is as full of misstatements as there are lines.
Christian theology, he tells us, is a pagan system founded on
an ecstatic vision of a carpet weaver, Saul of Tarsus, who im-
bibed Gnostic or semi-pagan ideas and grafted them upon his
Biblical knowledge. St. Paul's caricature of the Law found its
way even into the Sermon on the Mount, and aroused a hatred
against Judaism, productive of cruelty for many centuries.

The author's position is that of Reformed Judaism, which
has rejected all belief in a personal Messiah and the political
restoration of Israel. Zionism, whether political or cultural, he
says, can have no place in Jewish theology. It is simply born
of the modern anti-Semitism spread over Continental Europe.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 685

6UDRID THE FAIR. By Maurice Hewlett. New York: Dodd,

Mead & Co. $1.35 net.

There will always be an eager reading public for romances
of this sort — the out-right old-fashioned love stories, with ad-
venture, heroism, bravery and daring for their themes. The
everyday reader devours this kind of tale, nine times out of
ten purely for the sake of the plot, without a thought of the his-
torical value of the narrative. But Mr. Hewlett, the chief
romanticist of our day, brings more than mere plot to the
making of his books; he makes himself master of the period
which he treats, and offers us not only stories of absorbing in-
terest, but authentic revelations of the life of the days gone by.
He goes to original sources, and, with his gift of glowing imagi-
nation, reconstructs with striking power the color and move-
ment and thought of other times.

He has done this with unusual success in Gudrid the
Fair; and in his introduction, itself as interesting as any page
from the tale that follows, he reveals his literary method. Here
he has taken two ancient Norse sagas and woven out of their
fabric the story of Gudrid, the beautiful daughter of the poor
but proud-spirited Thorbeorn of Iceland. In stories of this
kind Mr. Hewlett is happier than in his Boccaccian moods, or in
his over-gorgeous and unauthentic reading of the Mary Stuart
history.

ROVING AND FIGHTING. By Major Edward S. O'Reilly. New

York: The Century Co. $2.00 net.

This soldier's book, strangely enough, has nothing what-
ever to do with the present World War. It recounts the ad-
ventiu'es during twenty years of a young American who
" cursed with the wandering toe " as Charles Warren Stoddard,
himself a true gypsy, was wont to express it, travels far and
wide and enjoys experiences that easily surpass the invention
of fiction. He writes from no diary or notes; he simply draws
on his memory, spinning his yarn as recollections unfold them-
selves, pointing fact with anecdote, tragedy with humor, and
coloring all with the fancy of an imaginative mind that un-
erringly gives the true value of emotional effect to dramatic
action. There is, too, much keen observation and many a
worth-while judgment passed on men and events — ^particularly
in his sunmiing up of the situation in Mexico. Pancho Villa,

Digitized by

Google

686 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

says Major O'Reilly, " is the Mexican problem." As long as he
lives. Villa will neither forget nor forgive the recognition of
Carranza by our Government; and " there is only one way he
will ever quit the fight: that is when death comes to him. He
is the Mexican problem." The book is entertainment of the
highest order; and is embellished with many illustrations.

IRISH MEMORIES. By E. (E. Somerville and Martin Ross.

New York: Longmans, Green & Co. $4.20 net.

For the past thirty years there have been two Irish writers
working together and producing nearly a score of volumes of
Irish fiction, widely read in the Old Country, yet known to only
a limited circle in America — ^Edith (Enone Somerville and
Violet Florence Martin (** Martin Ross ") . Now " Martin Ross *'
is gone; and this volume, while containing a few pages of her
writing, is in reality a memorial to her, offered by her lifetime
literary partner. The book is a large and handsome tome,
beautifully illustrated, and written in a charming manner of
conmiingled reticence and intimacy not untouched by humor.
The chapters entitled "Rickeen," "Faith and Fairies,'* **0f
Dogs," and " Reliefs and Believers " are among the best in the
book; while the literary reminiscences, which bring the reader
in touch with some of the well-known authors of the genera-
tion, are likewise extremely interesting. To Catholics,
especially at this moment when Ireland is again in ferment, the
pages of this volume will have a special appeal, showing as
they do in what amity and, indeed, close devotion it is possible
for Irish Protestants and their brethren of the ancient Faith to
live and work.

RAMBLES IN OLD COLLEGE TOWNS. By Hildegarde Haw-
thorne. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $2.50 net.
This book treats of the principal college towns in the
eastern part of the United States. It includes Annapolis and
West Point, and gives full measure of attention to the women's
colleges, with the exception of Bryn Mawr. The author chats
informally and pleasantly of what she has seen, relates inter-
esting details of the history and traditions of the various towns,
and records her impressions of such characteristics of life at
each college as present themselves saliently to an observing
visitor. The volume is on the gift-book order, handsome in
appearance, with a number of tasteful, effective illustrations.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 687

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST, PAUL, By Francis E. Clark, D.D.

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. $2.00 net.

Dr. Clark has visited all the cities ma<}e memorable by the
missionary journeys of St. Paul, and has drawn a most vivid
picture of them as they are today, and as they were in the days
of the Apostle. Tarsus, Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch,
Iconium, Ephesus, Salonica, Athens, Corinth, Rome — all live
again in these fascinating pages. The volume is remarkably
free from prejudice. It is well gotten up and beautifully illus-
trated.

THE MISSION AS A FRONTIER INSTITUTION IN THE SPAN-
ISH-AMERICAN COLONIES, By Herbert E. Bolton. Re-
printed from the American Historical Review.
Professor Bolton has made a study of the function of the
mission as a pioneer agency for the Spanish crown considered
from the political and social standpoints. His research work,
gathered mainly from the archives of Mexico and Spain, em-
braces more particularly a study of the northern Spanish colo-
nies, from Sinaloa to Texas, from Florida to California.

The first task of the mission Fathers was always that of
spreading the Faith. The spiritual and temporal welfare of
the native was never lost sight of: the Indians were given in-
struction in European crafts, a knowledge of agriculture, and
even of self-government. "In the English colonies the only
good Indians were dead Indians. In the Spanish colonies it
was thought worth while to improve the natives for this life as
well as the next.'* Thus the missions besides their primary
religious purpose, fulfilled the function of schools in civiliza-
tion on the frontier and materially aided in extending and
holding Spain's distant American colonies. The colonial policy
of Spain, despite all that has been written against it, has never
been equaled in humanitarian policy. She looked forward
not only to the preservation of the natives, but '* their elevation
to at least a limited citizenship." So vast were her domains
in the New World, that she could not hope to people and
hold the frontiers with Spaniards alone, and in her plan the
mission Fathers were used not only as preachers but as teach-
ers to train the natives and fit them to sentinel the outposts of
civilization, and supply for the lack of actual Spanish
colonists.

Digitized by

Google

688 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

Just before the secularization of the missions in California
in 1834, " 31,000 mission Indians at twenty-one missions herded
396,000 cattle, 62,000' horses and 321,000 hogs, sheep and goats,
and harvested 123,000 bushels of grain," and " corresponding
skill and industry were shown by the neophytes in orchard,
garden, wine press, loom, shop and forge.*'

With the missions as a potential factor in colonization,
Spain spread her culture, her religion, her law and language
over more than half of the two American continents, where
they have remained dominant and secure, a tribute to the
colonial genius of the Spanish nation.

HORACE AND HIS AGE. By J. F. d'Alton, M.A., D.D. New

York : Longmans, Green & Co. $2.00 net.

The many volumes inspired by the poet Horace are as
much a tribute to his personality as to his genius. The present
instance is no exception. Father d*Alton speaks in the sincere
accents of a personal admirer, however much his professed ob-
ject is to glean from the imperial laureate's work whatever in-
formation an exhaustive scrutiny can unfold on the several
aspects religious, political, literary and social of the Augustan
period. From a critical and literary standpoint, the book
leaves little to be desired even by the most exacting; and if all
of Father d' Alton's conclusions may not be accepted by all of
his readers, there must be few who will not be grateful to him
for this book.

A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE, By Fiske Kimball and G. H.

Edgell. New York: Harper* Brothers. $3.50 net.

" Architecture," says Ruskin roundly, " is an art for all men
to learn." There is no more excuse, according to this out-
spoken critic and censor, for ignorance of its primary rules,
than for ignorance of grammer or of spelling. In hardly any
other field of thought, will a small allotment of time and study
be so productive of profit and pleasure. A modest insight into
the principles and history of "well-building," as Wotton
quaintly called it, will reveal a fascinating world of interest
lying just beyond the ken of the uninitiated eye.

The book under our notice will serve admirably as an in-
troduction for the seeker after general culture, no less than
for the professional student. The material has sectional divi-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] liEW BOOKS 689

sions and headings for systematic study. The treatment is
uniformly scientific, always recurring to the fundamental prin-
ciples of the art, and never overlooking the structural basis
under the aesthetic element. Yet the general reader will find
little if anything beyond his grasp. The statement is clear,
popular and singularly free from pure technicalities.

In appearance the volume does not lack distinction. The
binding is severely plain, indeed, but the interior is enriched
with a profusion of elegant and instructive illustrations on
heavy calendered paper. A careful index and a glossary of
architectural terms contribute to the convenience of the book.

THE CROSS AT THE FRONT,

THE SOUL OF THE SOLDIER: SKETCHES FROM THE WEST-
ERN BATTLE-FRONT, By Thomas Tiplady. New York:
Fleming H. Revell Co. $1.00 and $1.25 net.
These two books by a Protestant chaplain with the British
forces, whose name has already become familiar to American
readers through his contributions to various magazines, are
valuable documents from the heart of the world-conflict. The
author makes no pretensions to literary power; but he achieves
the highest aim of literature in writing simply and sympa-
thetically, and at times with touches of deep feeling, of the
soldier at war. In The Cross at the Front he brings out
with memorable emphasis the unmistakable religious leaning
of the soul of " Tommy Atkins," and shows the battle-weary
soldier turning invariably to religion, to the comfort of prayer
and the sustenance of the Sacraments, for strength and help in
his ordeal.

The second book. The Soul of the Soldier, develops
the same theme, relating many incidents and describing many
scenes which show the tender, human side of the man at war,
revealed in light and beauty against the dreadful background
of the bloody struggle. As interesting as any imaginative
stories of the War are Chaplain Tiplady's true and simple
tales of heroism and sacrifice, danger and escape; and emi-
nently comforting to the anxious hearts of those left at home
are his honest revelations of the daily life of the lads in khaki.

Catholic readers of Chaplain Tiplady's two books cannot
help but be warmly touched by the many evidences his pages
give of sympathy with the spirit of oiu* religious teaching and un-

Digitized by

Google

690 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

derstanding of its symbols and ceremonies. Indeed, a Catholic
could scarcely write more beautifully of our Holy Faith than
this sturdy-hearted, broad-minded Protestant minister. In such
chapters as "The Wayside Calvary" (in The Cross at the
Front), and " The Cross at Neuve Chapelle " (in The Soul of a
Soldier), he fully grasps the spirit and feeling of Catholic de-
votion; and these are but two instances of his sympathetic
Qomprehension. Both books are full of the same warm Chris-
tian spirit. As to the effect of the War on himself, he writes
these memorable words : " To the end of my days I shaU walk
the earth with reverent feet. I did not know men were so
great. I have looked at life without seeing the gold through
the dust, and have been no better than a Kaffir child playing
marbles with diamonds, unaware of their value. I have gone
among my fellows with proud step where I ought to have
walked humbly, and have rushed in where angels feared to
tread. . . . Now there is a new light upon my path."

A man possessed with such a spirit is, indeed, peculiarly
fitted to write of the great World War. No books that the
mighty struggle has brought forth give us a finer interpretation
of the essence and spirit of the conflict than these.

INSTRUCTIONS AND PRECAUTIONS OF ST. JOHN OF THE
CROSS. Published by the Discalced Carmelites of Wheel-
ing, West Virginia. 50 cents net.

Search after mysticism is becoming more common today,
even by those without definite religious belief. Most helpful in
such inquiry or search are the master mystical writings of the
Catholic saints. Among the first of these is the great St. John
of the Cross. It is difficult, well-nigh impossible, to follow and
appreciate him in those flights wherein he endeavors to de-
scribe the wonderful experiences of his own soul. Neverthe-
less his writings, even for the amateur, will give those basic,
fundamental and guiding truths that must be known and ob-
served uilless the inquiry and the ill-equipped explorer are to
suffer shipwreck. His masterful instructions will keep our feet
on earth, where they must remain so long as we live here, while
they may exalt our souls into heaven.

We, therefore, extend a warm word of welcome to this
little book just issued. While it is intended primarily for re-
ligious, it has practical lessons not only for them, but for all

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS , 691

who seek to follow the pathway of God. This small volume
contains a short sketch of the Life of St. John, a number of
spiritual letters to the nuns of his order, which outlines for
them in a brief yet pithy manner the way to personal perfection,
and ends with a novena and prayers in honor of the saint. A
beautiful frontispiece of St. John is reproduced in the volume
and we are pleased to add that Miss Waggaman*s poem. The
Writings of St. John of the Cross, which first appeared in The
Catholic World also occupies an honored place.

SPIRITUAL PASTELS: HEART TALKS AND MEDITATIONS. By

J. S. E. NewYork: TheDevin-Adair Co. $1.25 net.

Meditating, in the Way of the Cross, on the scene where
Christ is laid in the arms of His Blessed Mother, the author of
this little book says : ** Mary was the strongest of women, and
she was also the tenderest. Could Mary's silent sorrow have
been sculptured in granite, no more beautiful type could there
have been of the strength of a woman's heart and the tender-
ness of her love." These words describe the characteristic of
this book, which exhibits a beautiful combination of strength
and tenderness in a woman's heart. It is rare in its delicacy and
nobility of feeling, in its transparent sincerity, in its spiritual
insight and in the directness and soundness of its spiritual les-
sons. It gives the sense of a matured and well-seasoned re-
ligion, free from sentimentality, firm and strong, and thor-
oughly feminine, like the religion of the Valiant Woman, Chris-
tianized, and disciplined by a St. Teresa. The style is refined,
pure and musical. Altogether, it is a beautiful little book, sure
to win a warm place in many hearts.

OUR BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN, CHARACTER AND VALUE, By Her-
bert L. Willett, Ph.D. Chicago: The Christian Century
Press. 85 cents net.

This is a well-meaning attempt by an up-to-date professor
at the University of Chicago to save the Bible to Protestants.
Accepting what he considers to be the main results of criticism,
and rejecting the Bible as a final teacher in faith and morals,
he yet holds to its divine inspiration in the sense that the Scrip-
tures as a whole make an appeal to man's moral sense which
no other book makes, and contain the supreme message of
God to mankind. Every man is his own pope, however, and

Digitized by

Google

692 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

the individual alone can decide for himself what is and is not
to be his Bible. The Pope of Rome cannot make that Scripture
which is not Scripture. Luther said that long ago and Pro-
fessor Willett agrees with him and, what is even better, so
does the Pope himself.

In the author's opinion, every man must discriminate be-
tween what is right and true even in the New Testament. The
moral sense of our author tells him, for instance, that Christ
could not have driven the demons into the swine nor have
cursed the fig tree. He understands and pardons, but does not
approve St. Paul's advice to Timothy to take a little wine; we
are not told whether he approves the miracle at Cana, but we
note that he makes little account of miracles and declares that
every miracle, including, we presume, the resurrection of
Christ, "could be eliminated from the Scripture and its
supreme values would not be disturbed." " The life of Jesus
is the disclosure of the soul of God, the exhibition of a normal,
perfect human character and the centre of the world's desire;"
which is all good and true, as far as it goes, though any pan-
theist might say the same.

The book is a rather curious blend of old-fashioned Prot-
estant loyalty with the newest spirit and views. Its greatest
faults are vagueness and superficiality. We do not expect
ideas to be worked out and demonstrated in a smaU popular
book; but at least they ought to be worked out in the author's
own mind and expressed clearly. The author writes as one
nurtured in religious surroundings who desires to cling to the
Christian religion; but he is evidently as much at sea himself
as his trustful readers will be on finishing his book.

MY TWO KINGS, By Mrs. Even Nepean. New York : E. P. Dut-

ton & Co. $1.50 net.

Books like Patience Worth and even Raymond have
blazed the way for Mrs. Nepean's experiment in re-incarna-
tion, yet it is ingenious enough to come in for some praise on
its own merits. The author sees one afternoon a portrait of
James, Duke of Monmouth, and suddenly "' something begins
to come back to her." It finally assumes the tolerably consecu-
tive form of a fragmentary autobiography of Charlotte Stuart,
cousin to Charles II. There is almost no plot, but in one re-
spect the book is well managed. The author has caught with

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 693

great psychological exactness the attitude of an elderly, ador-
ing follower, who lives to bask in, and delicately boast .of, the
royal cousinship. Mrs. Nepean*s first-hand portrayal throws
little new light on the celebrated Whitehall of the seventeenth
century — so little, in fact, that it seems a pity she had not the
foresi^t to pitch her former existence in rhythm with some
period about which a less definite impression exists.

THE HEART OF O SONO SAN. By Elizabeth Cooper. New
York: Frederick A. Stokes Co. $1.75 net.
In the form of a sketch of the life of a typical high-bred
Japanese girl, Mrs. Cooper gives a sympathetic treatment of
old-fashioned Japanese ideals. Little Sono illustrates the per-
fect conformity to the exacting precept of ** Obedience, Sub-
mission, Renunciation," which the author declares "" has pro-
duced one of the sweetest types of womanhood the world has
ever seen.** The habit of self-sacrifice is fostered in her from
the time when, as a baby, she gives up with a smile her most
cherished plaything, to the later period when, as a young
maiden, she is forced to renounce her lover. Her final act
of abnegation sends her son off to be killed for his country at
Port Arthur.

A more convincing attempt in the same field was that
made some years ago in Sidney McCall*s The Breath of the
Gods. Yuki was, what Sono does not always seem to be, a type
poignantly true. However, Mrs. Cooper has produced a read-
able novel, especially in those parts which deal with the cus-
toms of Japan. Certain passages are reminiscent of Lafcadio
Heam's Japanese sketches.

PERSIAN MINIATURES. By H. G. Dwight. Garden City, New

York: Doubleday. Page & Co. $3.00.

Mr. Dwight is a born savorer of the distant and the strange,
and he indulges his predilection delightfully in this bright blue
volume. It covers a winter spent in the Persian home of his
English friends at storied Hamadan, or Ecbatana, the reputed
burial-place of Esther and Mordecai, and the more certain tomb
of that Avicenna " who once filled the world with the rumor of
his name.** One reads the book mainly not because it abounds
— as it does — ^in clear and picturesque information, but be-
cause it is written by a man who knows how to write. A great

Digitized by

Google

694 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

deal of unaffected literary charm is interfused with the vig-
nettes of landscape and town, the descriptions of customs and
dignitaries, and the good-natured but explicit " showing up "
of the writers of professional rug books.

FIFTY YEARS IN YORKVELLE: OR ANNALS OF THE PARISH
OF ST. IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND ST. LAWRENCE
O'TOOLE. 1866-1916. By P. J. Dooley, S.J. New York:
Parish House, 53 East Eighty-third Street. $1.00.
Father Dooley has an interesting story to tell and he tells
it interestingly. It is a story, too, which should appeal to a
wider circle than merely that of the parish of which it treats,
for it is a splendid and a typical record of many another
pioneer parish in America. The span of between the early days
of straitened means and narrow accommodations to the
thriving activities and beautiful church of today, with all the
zealous effort and unselfish toil that lay between these ex-
tremes, makes the theme of the book, which is enlivened with
entertaining sketches and stories of the pastors and assistants
who labored in the parish during its life of fifty years. The
author gives a very complete description of the present church,
and the volume contains many illustrations of historic interest.

SHEPHERD MY THOUGHTS. The Verses of Francis P. Don-
nelly. New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. 75 cents.
Father Donnelly has written so many " occasional " verses,
and so many delicious " wishes '* for every imaginable sort of
feast day, that he may quite be called the Ignatian laureate.
And then his readers, who are legion, will leap up to declare
how much more than this he also is. For the simplicity and
smiling familiarity of his muse, its Celtic lilt and its Catholic
love, are known to all American followers of our Catholic
poetry. Known, too, are his tender allegiances to Ireland, to
childhood, to the nature he has so reverently observed, and to
all the gracious ideals of the Church he serves.

The present volume has a large variety of subject matter:
in fact, it would seem to exult in sub-titles. Its religious poems
travel the long way from A Present — ^which carries the
memory back to Patmore*s exquisite Toys — to The Immacu-
late Conception, or to the more personal and poignant note
of His Own Life Also. Unlike the late Father Tabb, whose

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 695

highly concentrated genius surpassed in the quatrain form.
Father Donnelly's strength is chiefly in the looser lyric forms.
His " songs " are particularly happy, and so full of melody that
no one will be surprised to hear that quantities of them have
already been put into musical setting.

THE ENLISTING WIFE. By Grace S. Richmond. Garden
City, New York : Doubleday, Page & Co. 50 cents net.
The Enlisting Wife is Judith Wendell, a war bride who

does her bit by keeping busy and brave at home. The story

is told by extracts from the intimate diary which she keeps for

her husband who is fighting in France.

BELGIUM IN WAR TIME. By Commandant de Gerlache de
Gomery. New York: George H. Doran Co. 50 cents net.
This book makes a fitting companion volume to one re-
cently published in this country containing the pastorals and
other war documents of Cardinal Mercier. , Here we have a
layman speaking for his outraged country and reciting, in
more detail than the primate's pages could give, the story of
her historic, yet still almost unbelievable, wrongs. The emi-
nent author opens his volume with an illuminative chapter
on the history of Belgium and her standing among the powers
of the world; and then with a dramatic stroke he turns from
that recital to the shock of Germany's ultimatum and the
breaking of the tempest over the all-too-confident, all-too-se-
cure head of helpless Belgium. The story that this book tells
is now, indeed, an old one; yet it still fascina'tes. It can never
be forgotten, nor ever lose its potency to grip and stir the heart.
Above all, when it is told, as it is here, by one of Belgium's own
wronged and outraged sons, it awakens the spirit of chivalry
and championship for the irreparably injured people of that
unhappy country. In this, of course, the book achieves its
honest and legitimate aim — to reach and move the heart of the
outside world with the voice of prostrate Belgium.

RELIGIOUS PROFESSION. By Hector Papi, S.J. New York:

P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $1.00.

Father Papi has written an excellent conmientary on the
new code of canon law as far as it affects religious profession.
The laws in question — 572-586 — deal with the conditions re-

Digitized by

Google

696 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

quired for the validity of religious profession, the age required
for admission, the profession of temporary and perpetual vows,
the rite to be followed, the renewal of vows, the rights and
duties of the professed, the cessation of tenure of benefices held
by religious, and the cessation of incardination of religious in a
diocese. It is a book that will be welcomed by all superiors
who are bound to bring their constitutions and rules into con-
formity with the enactments of the new code.

TN THE LAND OF DEATH, by Benjamin VaUoton (New
^ York: George H. Doran Co. 10 cents), is translated from the
French original of a well-known Swiss author. It gives a mov-
ing-picture of the devastation and suffering wrought by the
invasion of the Germans in northern France. The smaU vol-
ume contains many touching pages. The theme of the book is
well sunmied up in M. Valloton*s memorable words: " From a
defeat recovery is possible; but there are infamies that can
never die.*'

THREE books of poems from the Cornhill Publishing Com-
pany of Boston comprise three distinct and interesting ef-
forts in the direction of articulating the American soul in verse.
The first. Paved Street, by Elias Lieberman, bespeaks the voice
of the Russian Jew in America, and at certain moments seems
to achieve a true expression of the emigrant's thought and
ideal. The second, Sonnets of the Strife, by Robert Loveman,
is from the pen of a poet of Hungarian parentage who pos-
sesses a fine gift of song, although such verses as his Invoca-
tion fall very far short of truth. The third. Fifty Years and
Other Poems, by James Weldon Johnson, is from a negro poet
who has written in his Fifty Years (published half a cen-
tury after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation) what
Dr. Brander Matthews of Columbia University calls ** one of
the noblest commemorative poems yet written by any Ameri-
can." All together, the three little volumes make a decidedly in-
teresting contribution to present-day American verse.

BENZIGER BROTHERS (New York) have just pubKshed a
very useful volume for soldiers and sailors, entitled. The
New Testament and Catholic Prayer-Book Combined. This
small volume includes the entire New Testament and also

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 697

morning and evening prayers, and prayers for special occa-
sions. The little volume bound in silk cloth or khaki cloth
sells at 35 cents a copy; at 75 cents boimd in imitation leather,
black, gold edges and in khaki imitation leather, with gold
edges.

AVERY timely booklet has just been issued by Peter Reilly
(Philadelphia, Pa.). It is entitled The Laws of Marriage
according to the New Code, and is compiled by Father Joseph
M. O'Hara. There will necessarily be much discussion on
matrimony in the light of the New Canon Law. This little
book answers in an authoritative and simple manner the
questions that the average lay Catholic or non-Catholic is likely
to ask. Catholics should acquaint themselves with the re-
vised discipline of the Church, and be able to explain intelli-
gently to inquirers just what the law of the Church is. We
recommend the booklet to our readers. The price of the little
book bound in paper is 15 cents and in cloth 50 cents.

IT is always a pleasure for The Cathouc World to encour-
age the literary work of the younger generation of Catholics.
Our college publications frequently give evidence of worthy
promise and deserve far more attention and consideration than
they receive. Notable among such publications is The Year
Book of San Rafael, California. It is presented in beautiful
typography; its. literary papers deal with subjects worth while
and its articles show both ability in judgment and excellent
gifts of expression.

IN the Teachers' Manual, Rev. Francis Cassilly, S.J., puts out
the plan of the Catholic Instruction League for teaching and
instructing Catholic children whose religious training is be-
ing neglected. The little pamphlet also contains suggestions
and exhortations to teachers of the Catechism to aid them in
their apostolic work.

Any question as to what amount of instruction is necessary
for First Holy Communion, under the conditions created
by the decree of Pope Pius X., is fully and satisfactorily an-
swered in the little Catechism for First Communion, also by
Father Cassilly, S.J. Both pamphlets are published by the
Catholic Instruction League, 1080 West Twelfth Street, Chi-

Digitized by

Google

698 NEW BOOKS [Aug.,

cago. 111. 5 cents per copy each; 50 cents per dozen; $1.50 for
fifty; $2.75 per hundred.

PASTORS holding special War-Hour services will find
Prayers During War Time for the Safe Return of Our Sol-
diers and Sailors, and for Victory to Our Cause, used in St
Mary's Church, Cleveland, Ohio, very helpful and suggestive.
Copies may be obtained there at 5 cents each or $3.50 per hun-
dred.

THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING (New York:
American Book Co. $1.20), by Professor La Rue, very
rightly lays great stress on both aspects of teaching, and as a
general rule develops these subjects with grasp and compre-
hension. Unfortunately this is less evident in the chapter on
Moral Education, while that on Vocational Training appears
to have been conceived raUier in the interest of industrialism
than wiUi an eye to the good of the individual.

THE AMERICAN BOOK CO. also presents a fascinating lit-
tle book for a boy interested in mechanics in Great Inven-
tors and Their Inventions, by Frank P. Bachman, Ph.D. (80
cents). The book opens with the inventions of James Watt,
and the invention of the locomotive; next comes electricity
with all its wonders, followed by the homelier applications of
science to the tasks of spinning, weaving and. land cultivation
and farming. The author also treats of the improvements in
printing and type-making, steel-manufacture, the telegraph
and the telephone; lastly of the airplane and the submarine.
But better than all, are the lessons it teaches in courage and
perseverance, in patience, through adversity and disappoint-
ment, in that dogged persistence without which no success is
won, no results accomplished.

FOOD PROBLEMS, by A. N. Farmer and Janet R. Hunting-
don (Boston: Ginn & Co. 25 cents net), brings home to us
the absolute necessity of economy, as well as the magnitude of
oiu* prodigal wastefulness. We hope many consciences may be
awakened to the opportunities now presented. The world has
never before dealt or thought in figures as big as the war debts
of the various countries engaged in this tremendous conflict

Digitized by VriOOQlC

1918.] NEW BOOKS 699

For the United States there is even a stronger motive than debt
to urge to food conservation, vi2, that she alone is able to feed
the hungry, nay starving nations of Europe, and still provide
for her own needy millions.

SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS.

In a Rapid Method for French Verbs, the author, Roch-Alphonse
de Massabielle, who is a teacher of long experience, presents a tried
and practical method for learning the structure and uses of French
verbs. This succinct and carefully presented material for intensive
study of French verbs, will be found specially useful by the non-
native teacher and the mature pupil who has sufficient knowledge of
inflections and syntax to permit him to coordinate and practise with
the abundant material which the book affords. The book is privately
published and the proceeds devoted to Belgian ReUef. It may be pro-
cured from Mrs. L. V. Howe, 630 West One Hundred and Thirty-ninth
Street, New York City, or Melle. V. Raskin, Senate Hotel, San Fran-
cisco, Cal. The price for single copies is $1.00. A generous discount
will be allowed if purchased in quantities, for use in schools or camps.

The American Book Co., New York, pubUshes :

Practical English for High Schools, by W. D. Lewis, A.M., and J.
F. Hosic, Ph.D. ($1.00), contains a great variety of practical work for
exercise and dwells much on the cultivation of good oral English.

For the student who would succeed in business, good English is
a necessary instriunent to success. Business English: Its Principles and
Practice, by G. B. Hotchkiss, M.A., provides a valuable help to a
business college student, covering every general need in business forms
and usages, correspondence, sales letters, advertising, etc., and incul-
cating in all consideration for the other person — courtesy.

Ear-Training, by Arthur J. Abbott, proceeds along recognized hues
to train the ear for Vocal Music. It is designed for Elementary Schools,
and the work is carefully divided into five parts. The second and third
parts are rather too full for the ages for which they are intended.

School History of the United States, by Alfred Bushnell Hart, LL.D.,
intended for elementary schools ($1.20), will be found simple and ex-
ceedingly interesting, but somewhat overcrowded with detail. It
lays special stress on the growth of our relations with foreign coun-
tries, and the contributions of other nations to American history have
been carefully traced. It is the first school history, coming under our
observation, that shows the connection between the Monroe Doctrine
and the Holy AlUance; the former is generally sprung upon us as pro-
ceeding from nowhere, yet children are capable of appreciating cause
and effect when placed before them. Much attention also is given to
our industrial, social and economic Ufe; to the games, work, amuse-
ments and education of children. Future editions might well be
divided into two volumes.

The Spanish First Reader. Messrs. £. W. Roessler, Ph.D., and A.

Digitized by

Google

700 NEW BOOKS [Aug..

Remy, M.A., have given students of the Spanish language an instruc-
tive as well as interesting first reader. The method described in the
preface seems to be a very good one, and if carefully followed by pupils
and teachers cannot fail to produce good results in speaking as well as
reading and writing the Spanish language (68 cents).

Peter and Polly in Autumn, by Rose Lucia, Principal of Primary
School, Montpelier, Vermont, completes the Peter and Polly Stories for
the Year's Cycle. The books are intended for Supplementary Read-
ing in the second and third grades, and cost 48 cents each.

From Allyn & Bacon, New York, we have:

Knowing and Using Words, by W. D. Lewis, Ph.D., and M. D.
Holmes, A.M. (75 cents). An excellent little book, to smooth the path of
students and enable them to help themselves over the hard ways. How
to use a dictionary; how to overcome the troubles of difficult spellings
by serviceable groupings, and many other points are given to aid the be-
wildered scholar.

The derivation of words receives much attention; also the art of
distinguishing words and using them both in speech and writing.
Altogether it is an extremely useful little book for a student to keep at
hand for consultation.

Also Physics with Applications, by Carhart and Chute ($1.25), a
textbook used in many colleges and high schools. It is very reliable,
and especially valuable for its diagrams and illustrations. The for-
mer are well up-to-date, containing much useful and interesting infor-
mation on the subject of airplanes, hydroplanes and submarines.

The revised edition of Slaught and Lennes' Geometry, Plane Geom-
etry with Problems and Applications ($1.00), meets the requirements of
the approved method of teaching. The selection and order of
theorems is such as to meet the general demands of teachers. Althou^
clear, the formal proofs would be improved by the arrangement of steps
and reasons in parallel columns. The addition of informal proofs for
many axiomatic propositions is an improvement.

The well-known and popular Complete French Course of Char-
denal has been revised by M. S. Brooks with new features added, under
the title. The New Chardenal ($1.25). The grammar features are
especially good, and an entirely new feature is provided in a number
of illustrations of many beautiful churches, castles, bridges, etc., of
France and Flanders, among them the Cathedral of Amiens with its addi-
tional melancholy interest.

Digitized by

Google

IRecent Events.

M. Clemenceau still remains at the head
France. of the French Cabinet, nor has there been

any serious attempt to defeat him. The
vote against the renewal of the privileges granted to the Bank
of France, which was opposed by a large number of the Depu-
ties, was not directed against him, but was given on behalf of the
Socialists of all denominations against the capitalist rigime to
which they are opposed. In fact it may be said that M. Clemen-
ceau's authority has rather grown than waned since his ap-
pointment. He has proved himself to be the man needed by
France in this, the great crisis of her fortunes. The appeal of
M. Duval and the others connected with the Bonnet-Rouge
has not been allowed by the Court of Cassation. Everyone
coming from France to this country, testifies to the firm de-
termination of both soldiers and civilians to " carry on,'* and
the joy and delight which the American soldiers have inspired;
this joy and delight will be the greater when they learn on the
authority of the Secretary of the Navy that the one million who
have already arrived are an earnest and pledge of ten million
who will come, should that number be necessary to defeat the
enemy. The recent depression had, among other S3rmptoms, a
more or less open criticism of Great Britain. This was alto-
gether unjust. Diu*ing the year which preceded the German
drive of last March, the most of the fighting had been carried
on by the British troops, and during the same period their
casualties were no fewer than 1,250,000, while those of the
French did not amount to more than 75,000; this fact is now
being recognized in France and any coolness of feeling which
existed has now passed away.

Since the last notes were written, Italy
Italy. has come to the fore. From having been,

as it was said, the Cinderella of the na-
tions, she is now looked up to as, in some degree at least, their
leader. This is due to the repulse she inflicted upon the invad-
ing hordes, and the advance she has made in Albania in unison
with the French. The second anniversary of her entry into

Digitized by

Google

702 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,

the War, which was celebrated throughout the Allied countries,
and especially in our own, has further contributed to the posi-
tion she now occupies. There had been, it must be admitted,
a want of confidence in her stability, owing greatly to the dis-
aster which befell her in the autumn of last year — a disaster
brought about by her own loss of confidence in herself and her
Allies. There is no doubt that of all the countries engaged in
the War with the Central Powers, the elements opposed to the
War were strongest in Italy. The Socialists in particular were
numerous, and saturated with the principles of the Russian
Bolsheviki, formed a body of defeatists who were as ready
as their fellow-Socialists in Russia, not only to accept, but to
seek defeat as, in their opinion, the best thing for the country.
Another contributing element to lack of confidence was
the policy, openly avowed by her Government, that Italy was
primarily seeking her own interests. The watchword of Sig-
nor Salandra, enunciating this policy, was contained in the
words " sacro egoismo." This was the same as saying that pur-
suit of her own interests was the one point sacred in her eyes —
a principle which scarcely made the Allies of Italy very en-
thusiastic in their support. While the services rendered by
Italy to the Allied Cause, even by her neutrality, and still more
by her holding large Austrian forces in check for so long a
time, cannot be denied, and are heartily appreciated, there is
no doubt that Italy's claims to the domination of the Adriatic,
and to Dalmatia and Istria, to say nothing of Albania, were the
cause of want of unity of action between herself and Great
Britain and France. There is also reason to think that the com-
plications in Greece were largely due to the conflict of interest
between that country and the Allies. This demand for the
control of the Adriatic and for the Austrian provinces on the
Eastern shore, brought Italy into conflict with the southern
Slavs, especially with Serbia. It has lately come to light that in
the course of the Balkan Wars, to Serbia's demand for a port
on the Adriatic, Italy offered determined opposition, to which
opposition the British Government yielded. Sir Edward Grey
refused to back up Serbia, and the latter country thereupon
diverted its energies to the extension of its territories further
to the south in the direction of Saloniki, violating thereby her
treaty with Bulgaria, and bringing herself into that conflict
which has proved, so far, most disastrous to her.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 703

Italy's conflict with the Slavs in the Balkan peninsula as
well as with those still under the yoke of the Habsburgs, is now
being brought to an end. At a meeting of Oppressed National-
ities of Austria-Hungary, held at Rome last April, a definite
resolution was arrived at by the representatives of these op-
pressed nationalities on the one hand and the representatives
of the Italian people on the other, bringing to a conclusion all
the points in dispute. These joint representatives declared the
unity and independence of the Jugoslav nation, that is to say
of the Serbs, Croats and Slovones, to be a vital interest of Italy,
and the completion of Italian national unity of vital interest
to the Jugoslav nation. This resolution made the independence
of the Southern Slavs and their freedom from Austrian con-
trol a part of Italy's war aims. In the event of a successful
issue of the War, it will place a bar to that penetration of Tur-
key which forms so large a part of Germany's plans. The reso-
lutions adopted included the liberation of the Adriatic Sea and
its defence against every present and future enemy. In this
case Austro-Hungarian claims to control the Mediterranean
would be balked. Italy, it is true, will have to sacrifice that
claim to the control of the Adriatic which has been so dear to
her heart, and to depart, to this extent at least, from the sacro
egoismo which Signor Salandra made his motto. But she se-
cures the help of the Southern Slavs in her contest with Aus-
tria. Another resolution embodied the determination to solve
amicably the various territorial controversies on the basis of
nationality and the right of peoples to decide their own fate.
This was to be accomplished in such a way as not to injure
the vital interests of the two nations, as defined at the moment
of peace. The carrying out of this resolution will, indeed, be a
matter of extreme difficulty, so intermingled are the various
races in the districts in question. And so the representatives
in their last resolution declared that the racial groups within
the frontiers of these various peoples should be recognized, and
guaranteed the right to their language, culture, and moral and
economic interests.

At this meeting not only were the Jugoslavs represented,
but also the Czecho-Slovaks, the Poles and even Rumanians.
The representatives had not, of course, the power to bind their
respective nationalities, but from the utterances of Signor Or-
lando, the Italian Prime Minister, it is clear that his Govem-

Digitized by

Google

704 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,

meat is in perfect harmony with the resolutions passed. Great
Britain and France and, even more emphatically. President Wil-
son are in sympathy with them. To what extent the Italian
Government is committed is seen from the reply which Signor
Orlando made to the representatives of the Congress on the day
following their last meeting. He expressed his full sympathy
with the movement which they represented, and referred them
to that more important declaration of his in the Italian Assem-
bly on the twelfth of February. He declared the interests of his
own country and those of the Slavs to be common. After an-
nouncing that Italy's aim for herself was to wrest her own in-
tegrity from the implacable foe, he welcomed the formation on
the new frontier of Italy of races equally devoted to freedom
and civilization, and declared the necessity of solidarity of
action between Italy and the Slavs. " There is no substantial
reason for quarrel, if we sincerely examine the conditions of
mutual existence, the mutual sacrifices of certain ethnical
groups in those * grey zones ' which lie along the frontiers of
great peoples, and the determination to grant just guarantees
to those racial minorities which necessity may assign to one
or other of the different State groups." Since those words
were spoken, the coSperation between Italy and the Slavs has
become closer. In the Italian army the Slavs are fighting
along with the Italians, and are suffering the death penalty
meted out to them by the conunon foe. Whether any solution
has been found of the opposed territorial claims of Greece and
Italy with reference to Avlona and the islands formerly in-
cluded in the Turkish Empire, which have been occupied dur-
ing the War by both Italy and Turkey, is not known.

The widening of Italy's sympathy and coSperation with
the Allies has been shown by her adhesion to the subject na-
tions of Austria-Hungary in their efforts to free themselves
from the oppression they have so long endured, and by sending
a large number of troops to hold the line in France. The Allies
have reciprocated by giving to Italy the aid both in men and in
supplies which she needed. After the disaster which befell
the Italian arms last autumn, both Great Britain and France
sent troops to help in holding the new line along the Piave.
This of course was not a pure act of generosity on their part, for
it was almost essential to their own success that Italy should
not be overrun and forced into a separate peace. The aid.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 705

however, extended by this country may be considered as a
pure manifestation of her sympathy. The Red Cross work
which has been done in Italy, has made the name of American
blessed by all Italians from one end of the country to the other,
and now that American troops are beginning to arrive, this
country's influence there will be still further enchanced. The
present moment sees the morale both of the army and of the
people fully reestablished. Perhaps the determination to carry
on the War to a successful issue is even greater than it was
when Italy entered into the War. Certainly the confidence of
her Allies has been greatly increased.

The news from Russia is about as chaotic
Russia. as is the state of the so-called Republic.

Finland still retains a republican form of
government, in so far, at least, as it is not governed by the
Germans. The latter, however, resent even an appearance of
free government, and now demand of this subject nation that
it should openly become a monarchy. The settlement of the
eastern boundary made recently, has proved to be so little a
settlement that, it is reported, troops are being assembled at
Viborg to the number of thirty thousand for the purpose of
advancing to the railroad which leads to Kola. At the latter
place, however, there are Marines which have been landed
from British, French and (it is said) United States ships for
the defence of this, the only outlet open during the year to the
Arctic Ocean. The inhabitants of this district, finding the Bol-
sheviki unwilling to support them in their conflict with the
Finns and Germans, have thrown in their lot with the Allies.
It is of the utmost importance for the Allies to maintain their
hold upon Kola. In the event of any kind of assistance,
military or economic, being sent to Russia this port would be
of great value as it would render unnecessary the long journey
to Vladivostok.

Grermany, presumably, is tightening her hold on the Bal-
tic provinces, although the anticipated changes in the govern-
ment by the appointment of German princes to rule these prov-
inces has not been made. No settlement of the dispute be-
tween Germany and Austria-Hungary of some two years stand-
ing as to which of the two States should more immediately
dominate Poland, has yet been accomplished. Germany is

TfWf* <;vii.— 46

Digitized by

Google

706 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,

unwilling that Poland should be closely allied to Austria-Hun-
gary. She fears that such an alliance would strengthen the new
Poland by giving additional influence to the Poles now in-
cluded within the Austrian Empire. We can form no judg-
ment as to how many of the inhabitants of the new ** Indepen-
dent" Poland are satisfied with Germany's proposed settle-
ment of their future destinies. That the Poles who live in
other countries are far from satisfied, is evident from the
fact that some twenty-five thousand are fighting along with
the French and British, many of whom were recruited in this
country. It is no wonder that wide dissatisfaction should pre-
vail in view of the strict control which the Central Powers have
determined to exercise over the new kingdom, not even its in-
tegrity is guaranteed. One of the conditions imposed, is that
if for any strategical reason it should be considered beneficial
to Germany to alter the boundaries between the two coun-
tries, she should be at liberty to do so.

The news from the Ukraine is that the country is even
more unsettled than ever. The Cabinet crisis has taken place.
The peace, so long under negotiation between the Bolshevik
Government and the Ukraine, does not seem to have yet been
made. The peasants continue so exasperated on account of
exactions, that they are burning their grain and rising up in
various places in revolt. According to a recent report, it has
been found necessary to send thirty-five divisions of German
troops into the country to restore order. The number of troops
sent indicates the serious character of the disturbances. It is
almost incredible that this has been done, but, if true, it will be
a cause of satisfaction for Germany's enemies, as it cannot fail
to weaken her military efforts on the Western front. Possibly
it may account for the long delay in launching the new drive.
Chancellor von Hertling in his recent speech declared the con-
dition in Russia to be serious. If the Russian people have a
spark of patriotism left, it will become even more serious, and
be but the beginning of trouble for the invaders. The murder
of Count von Mirbach at Moscow is a further indication of the
exasperation caused by Germany's behavior. This murder is
laid at the door of the Social Revolutionists, to the left wing,
and not to the right of which M. Kerensky is a member. The lat-
ter has emerged from the obscurity which has surrounded him
since the success of the Bolsheviki last November. He has

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 707

arrived in London and has since gone to Paris. It is probable
that he may visit this country where, it is said, he will be re-
ceived with acclamation. Such a visit, it is to be feared, would
add to the President's difficulties in coming to a decision as to
whether and in what way help can be given to Russia. It can
scarcely be doubted that the chaotic condition in Russia is
largely due M. Kerensky, for he, by the celebrated order No. 1,
initiated the insubordination of the soldiers which culminated
in the abandonment of the War.

Of the many siu*prises met with in the course of the War,
the fact that subjects of the Austrian Empire have become a
power in Siberia, within the so-called Russian Republic, is not
the least. It would be still more siu*prising if their action there
should be the means of saving Russia from her present chaos.
It does not seem improbable that the Czecho-Slovaks who, ac-
cording to apparently reliable accounts, have obtained control
of Vladivostok and more than a thousand miles of the Siberian
Railway, may form a nucleus around which the many Rus-
sians dissatisfied with Bolsheviki tyranny may rally. They
number, it is said, from fifty to one hundred thousand, and
have so far resisted all attempts of the Bolsheviki. The latter,
indeed, still maintain their power in what is left of Russia,
and are, it is said, ready to form an alliance with the Grermans
in order to maintain themselves. The most urgent question
at the present time for the Allies and for this country is whether
assistance can be given to Russia, and what kind of assistance
should be given, military, economic or both. The supreme War
Council at Versailles has declared it necessary that military
assistance shall be given. President Wilson went out of his
way at the Red Cross meeting in New York to declare his de-
termination to assist Russia, and the reception accorded this
declaration showed that his audience stood with him. As yet
he has not made public any plan, although it is rumored that
economic assistance will be given, supported by a military
force sufficient to protect it. But to whom is this assistance to
be given? To the Bolsheviki, or to their opponents?

The conflict which, even from the very

Germany. beginning of the War, has been more or

less acute between the civil and military

authorities in Germany, has reached a new development in the

Digitized by

Google

708 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,

resignation of Dr. Richard von Kuehlmann. Last autumn
when the prospect of success was darker, a majority of the
Reichstag passed the resolution in favor of peace without an-
nexation or indemnity, and of this resolution Dr. von Kuehl-
mann was understood to be a supporter and approver. This
did not, however, prevent him from allowing himself to be
made the tool of the Militarists in the negotiation of the Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk, by which some two hundred thousand square
miles of Russian territory and fifty-five millions of people were
placed under German control. Even more iniquitous was the
Treaty of Bukarest, of which he also was the chief negotiator,
by which Rumania was despoiled. This subservience to the
Militarists does not however save him. His words in a recent
speech made in the Reichstag were interpreted as meaning
that the military efforts of Germany had not succeeded and
could not succeed. Upon this the military authorities took
umbrage and forced him to resign. LitUe regret will be felt
at his departure for, with all his fine professions of moderation,
he became the tool of the extremists. It is generally supposed
that he favored the policy of conciliation towards Great Britain,
believing that German interests would rather be served by co-
operation with that country than by war with her, thereby
bringing himself into conflict with the Kaiser, who has recenUy
declared that for many years it has been his chief object to
deliver the world from the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon.
His reputed good feeling was shown recenUy when, although
adopting the German legend that the present War was a purely
defensive one, he laid the blame first to Russia, then to France,
and lasUy to Great Britain.

The fourth Foreign Secretary Germany has had in the
course of the War, marks the victory of the extremists of the
von Tirpitz type. Admiral, von Hintze who succeeds Dr. von
Kuehlman is one of the most pronounced of the Pan-Germans.
For years he has been known as one most ready to carry Ger-
many's power over the world, by any means, even the most
ruthless. To propitiate the Reichstag for the nomination of
this pronounced Militarist, Count von Hertling announced that
he had the promise of the new Foreign Secretary that he, the
Chancellor, should retain the direction of the foreign policy
which would remain unchanged. He further intimated that
in the event of a change, his own resignation would follow.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 709

This resignation is already talked of as probable not only be-
cause of this statement, but also because of the reference he
made to Belgium. This we quote : '* The present possession of
Belgium only means that we have a pawn for future negotia-
tions. We have no intention to keep Belgium in any form
whatever. What we precisely want, as expressed by us on
February 24th, is that after the War, restored Belgium shall
as a self-dependent State not be subject to anybody as a vassal
and shall live with us in good friendly relations. I have held
this point of view from the beginning in regard to Belgium and
I still hold it today. This side of my policy is fully in confor-
mity with the general lines, the direction of which I yesterday
clearly laid before you." The Militarists are already finding
fault with these utterances and even made an effort to suppress
them. Having secured the vote of credit, which had been
doubtful, the purpose of the Chancellor was attained. The
Reichstag thereupon adjourned.

The attempt to account for the origin of the War in the
manner agreeable to Germany which received a severe blow in
Prince Lichnowsky's revelations, has been rendered more dif-
ficult by the publication of the diary of Dr. Wilhelm Muehlen,
former Director of the Krupp works. From its daily chronicle
it appears that from the moment of the assassination of the
Grand Duke at Serajevo, he was certain that war was inevitable
on account of Austria-Hungary's ambition. He corroborates on
the authority of a thoroughly posted person, the account of the
Conference at Berlin in the early part of July which the Ger-
man press has so vehemenUy denied, in which the Kaiser is
supposed to have said to the Austrians that this time he would
go with them through thick and thin, and he describes the
chicanery by which it was so managed that it could be denied
in Berlin, that the note sent Serbia by Austria-Hungary was
ever seen by the German Foreign OflBce. Those interested in
the question of the origin of the War — and who is not— cannot
do better that read the whole of the diary of the ex-Director
of Krupp's. A citation from this diary may be interesting:
" The Government tells the people that state morality and in-
dividual morality are different things. They must be practised
in two entirely separate spheres. At the same time an example
of intense piety is set. From the balconies of palaces, from all
the offices of ministries, from all army headquarters we have in

Digitized by

Google

710 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,

recent days been continually recommended to stream into the
churches, to throw ourselves on our knees, to invoke a righte-
ous God, who guides our cause and protect us, the attacked and
the persecuted; to praise the German God, who is willing to
lead us victoriously round the world, because he has no better
use for the garden of his creation than that we shall illuminate
it with our campfires. I hope there are many who do not kneel
and who do not pray — at least to such a God and for such
things. Better far to sit quietly and reflect, and to manifest
later in self-liberation the power and the faith which we now
manifest in slavery. Disgusting hypocrisy and deceit, contempt
of the people and an uneasy criminal conscience are the in-
spiration of this piety. It has no other purpose than the sanc-
tification.of lies, the adoration of brutality, the deification of
William II."

One more indication that the sun is beginning to break
through the clouds in Germany, is found in the testimony of a
General in command of German troops, serving at the French
front, at the beginning of the War. General Count Max Mont-
gelas in the Berliner Tageblatt said that for his protest against
the cruelties practised by the German armies in Belgium and
the invaded departments of France, and his own attempt to
treat the population with justice and humanity, he had been
retired.

Accounts from Austria-Hungary are
Austria-Hungary, summed up in headings such as : *' Fam-
ine rages in Tyrol." " Even the troops suf-
fer." " Austria faces grave crisis." " Rumored rising in Vienna."
** Peace at any price demanded." "Bread rations again re-
duced in Vienna." " Austria's supply of grain is gone." ** Strike
of 100,000 workers in Vienna." " Strikes elsewhere." " State of
siege in Styria." "Count Czernin and other noblemen and
landowners selling their properties in fear of revolution." How
far a true idea of the state of things in the Dual Monarchy is
given by such statements it is impossible to say, but no reason-
able doubt can be entertained about the serious character of
the situation. The Emperor Charles in his proclamation to the
troops at the beginning of the recent attack on Italy, made
" good food " one of the compelling motives for the valor of
his troops. The Parliament has just resumed its session after
the prorogation. Baron von Seydleer has been prevailed upon

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 711

to withdraw his resignation of the Premiership, and still re-
mains in office. Whether this reassembling of Parliament indi-
cates an amelioration of the political situation it is too soon
to say.

At the time these lines are being written
Progress of the War. the fifth German Drive has begun along a
front of sixty miles. This drive will be
watched by this country with extreme anxiety, with hope, and
yet with fear as, for the first time, American soldiers will be
taking part in major operations. So long has the drive been
postponed, that it was hoped it might be put off until even
greater numbers of troops from this country might share in
the work of extending " the boundary of freedom." It is not
necessary to recapitulate here the various successes of the
French and British in minor attacks during the interval which
has intervened between the present and the last drive.

The complete defeat inflicted by the Italians on the Austrian
attempt to overrun their country, adds another to the long list
of the Dual Monarchy's failures. These would be inexplicable
but for the fact that so large a proportion of her soldiers are
fighting her battles against their will. The defeat of Austria
was not followed up by any great offensive on the part of Italy,
although to a certain extent the line held by the enemy has
been pushed back, the delta of the Piave evacuated. Whether
a renewal of the offensive on Austria's part is to be looked for
is uncertain. It is said that Germany offered to send ten
divisions to her assistance on condition that the command of
all the troops fighting against Italy, be given to a German gen-
eral. To this humiliation even Austria could not bring her-
self to consent.

The Italians who are fighting in France and in their own
country have extended their operations to a third field. In
Albania they, with the French, have defeated the Austrians
along a front of fifty-four miles, have driven the enemy back
some twenty-five miles, and have taken the important city of
Berat. The Austrians are said to have been thrown into such
confusion that a further advance is anticipated. This suc-
cess may have important consequences behind the Austrian
lines, for it may give confidence and coiu*age to the oppressed
nationalities in the Balkan peninsula and in the domains of
Austria-Hungary. Farther to the east attacks have been made

Digitized by

Google

712 RECENT EVENTS [Aug.,

by the British upon the Bulgarian line which faces them, and
it is thought possible that an attempt may be made to cut the
railway which connects the Central Powers with Constanti-
nople. This, however, appears very doubtful. Still further
east, German and Turkish troops are said to be advancing on
Baku with the object of seeking the oil fields which are so val-
uable. This means crossing the line laid down by the Treaty of
Brest-Li to vsk — ^but what does a treaty matter? Of the ad-
vance of the Turk nothing more has been heard since the capture
of Tabriz. In Mesopotamia and Palestine things remain in
statu quo; doubtless owing to the rainy season.

By the death of the Sultan, Turkey has
GeneraL been deprived of a mere figurehead; the

real power having been wielded by the
Committee of Union and Progress. The new Sultan is said to
be a more determined character, and even to be in sympathy
with the Allies. Even if this were so, it is much to be doubted
whether he can extricate himself from the toils of the Young
Turks and of their masters, the Germans. The movement for a
League of Nations of which President Wilson is a warm sup-
porter, if not the initiator, is daily exciting more and more
attention. Viscount Grey who as Sir Edward Grey was British
Foreign Minister at the beginning of the War, has written a
pamphlet in support of the proposal. This deserves the serious
attention of all who have any influence in guiding the course
of the world. In France, too, the subject has received the at-
tention of Parliament, a report in its favor having been recently
presented. One of the most satisfactory things to record is
the uncompromising attitude adopted by the most representa-
tive bodies of labor in this country towards the proposal fav-
ored by, strange to say, the majority of the French and Eng-
lish Socialists, that a meeting should be held at which German
Socialists should be present. The holding of any intercourse
with the Socialists of the enemy countries, who so flagrantly be-
trayed the cause of peace and supported Germany through-
out the War, and who subsequently were largely instrumental
in the betrayal of Russia, is so rightly repugnant to the mind of
American workingmen, at least to the great majority of them,
that they would have none of it.
July 16, 1918.

Digitized by

Google

With Our Readers.

IN the death of the Very Reverend George Mary Searle, C.S.P.,
a notable figure passed from both the religious and scientific
life of America. Father Searle was born in 1839 and as early as
the age of five gave evidence of scientific genius. Baptized in
infancy in the Episcopalian Church he was» after the death of his
parents in his very early years, brought up in the Unitarian faith
by his foster parents. But Unitarianism never held him. When
he graduated from Harvard and traveled elsewhere to begin his
career, he carried a letter to the Unitarian clergyman of the city
where he expected to live. " The amount of my interest in Uni-
tarianism for its own sake/' he wrote afterwards, ** may be judged
by the fact that I never delivered the letter and have not even to
this day any idea where its pastor lived.'*

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THROUGH purely natural religious feeling he attended church
services on Sunday and, at this time, it happened to be those
of the Catholic Church, but Father Searle never believed that such
formal attendance had any efifect on his subsequent course. At
that time he believed in God, but he had no faith in revelation.
His attitude towards the Catholic Church was one of indifiference
and even of contempt: he regarded it as a fossilized Ptolemaic sys-
tem of false doctrine and practice. And he believed that all the
questioning and investigation on religious matters, required of
him by conscience, had been completed.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

HE was roused out of his indifferentism by a sermon heard at an
Episcopal church, which he attended through the invitation
of one of his associates, on the text, '* Ye cannot serve God and
mammon." It was then that the young man, George Searle, ** de-
termined to do everjrthing for God's sake alone." " God's grace
went with that sermon, as it is continually working everywhere."
The first effect of it was to bring George Searle back to a be-
lief in and a reading of the Scripture. The Bible at once disposed
of Unitarianism. He returned to the Church of his early baptism.
Preparing therein for the reception of Communion he was seri-
ously disturbed by the sixth chapter of St. John, which he was
told to read by his minister. This doubt was deepened by his

Digitized by

Google

714 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,

experiences with the "High*' and ''Low*' parties of the Epis-
copal Church. His soul began to hunger for something abiding
and substantial on which it might live, and it did not know
where to seek and find. " Anything served better than the miser-
able position to which I had been brought." Jesus Christ in the,
Sacrament of the Altar was evidently guiding his unhappy soul.
His first doubts of the Episcopal position were begotten by Our
Lord's discourse in the Gospel of St. John. Later when he re-
visited the Catholic Church which he had attended on Sundays, a
ritualistic friend who accompanied him, genuflected before the
altar, and though George Searle did not, the idea of the Real
Presence made a strong impression on him. The Catechism of
the Council of Trent which he read shortly after, intensified the
hunger for something on which his soul might live and led him
nearer to an acceptance of the truth of the Real Presence.

SEARLE was now so convinced of the falsity of Protestantism
that he had to abandon it. Then he faced the alternative of no
faith at all or the acceptance of the Catholic Church as the one,
true Church of Christ After sixteen months of study, he became
intellectually convinced of the truth of the Church but practically
he could not take the step. The acceptance of supernatural truth
demands the help of a supernatural power. And God Who desires
that we should all live and come to a knowledge of the truth, gave
that power to George Searle, who, shortly afterwards rang the
door-bell of a Catholic rectory, and to the priest who came to an-
swer it, said simply: " I want to be a Catholic." Six months later
he was received into the Church and the pilgrimage of his ques-
tioning soul was over.

Father Searle was ordained a priest of the Paulist Community
in 1871. He was elected its Superior General in 1904, and served
in that office until 1910.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE scientific instinct, we might call it, which characterized
the mind of Father Searle from his earliest days to his last,
never lessened his sense of need for religious truth, never inter-
fered with or obstructed his journeying toward that higher truth
which is personal and eternal. In the year of his being graduated
from Harvard at the age of eighteen, a prize of $200.00 was
awarded him for his paper on astronomy. Higher mathematics,
particularly astronomy, was his specialty. It would be impossible
for us to review here his scientific career, his investigations, dis-
coveries, treatises and official positions. Sufficient for us to say

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 715

that Searle held first place among the astronomers of his day. His
computation as to the return and appearance of Halley's Comet in
the year 1908, was accepted as the reliable one by all the astrono-
mers of America.

♦ « « ♦

HE was thoroughly scientific in the modern sense of the word,
yet a living undeniable evidence that religion and the religious
spirit are not opposed to science. While Darwin and many of his
disciples were surrendering the fundamental tenets of the Chris-
tian faith in the name of science. Father Searle through science
and earnest seeking was recovering them. They stopped at the
lesser and the sensible : he went on to the greater and the spiritual.
Their science was limited and insufBcient: his unlimited and all-
sufiBcient. He wrote after long years in the Catholic Church : '* Re-
ligion, instead of being a mere matter of speculation or of en-
thusiasm, ^hich one must not investigate too closely, has been
ever since to me the most certain as well as infinitely the most im-
portant, of all the sciences."

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE extent of his learning may be judged from articles by him
published in The Catholic World. His first paper to appear
in these pages was on the subject of Molecular Mechanics, April,
1870. The next was one, in the writing of which he collaborated
with the late Father Rosecrans, entitled Our Ladg of Lourdes,
published in September, 1870.

During the next forty years, his scientific articles included
such subjects as Scientific Dogmatism, May, 1881; Unscientific
Liberty, June, 1883; The Great Comet, December, 1882; Other In-
habited Worlds, April, 1883, September, 1892, February, 1907;
Evolution and Darwinism, November, 1892; Recent Discoveries in
Astronomy, May, 1893; The Sun's Place in the Universe, April,
1903; The Reappearance of Halley's Comet, June, 1908; The Dis-
covery of the North Pole, November, 1909.

Through these years he contributed discussions on important
religious questions of the day, apologetic and historical.

From January, 1907, to November, 1907, an important series
of papers by him on the Recent Results of Psychical Research
were published.

His writing was by no means confined to The Catholic
World and the scientific journals. To those who were seeking,
as he once sought, the truth of Christ, his soul looked out in sym-
pathy and hope. His skilled pen, so clear and simple in its ex-
planation, wrote: Plain Facts for Fair Minds, an explanation
for Bible Protestants of the principal Catholic truths; later

Digitized by

Google

716 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,

he wrote How to Become a Catholic, a small book of instructions

for those about to be received into the Church.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

AMID all controversy, amid the turmoil of scientific unrest and
the world's religious doubt through which he lived, nothing
disturbed the serenity of his simple faith. Indeed, his childlike
faith and his exceptional scientific knowledge formed a combina-
tion which would have been a shock, if not a scandal, to the skep-
tic could he have appreciated either. In his sermons, conferences
and writings his defence and exposition were so simple, so direct
that the least intelligent could understand them. And with that
spirit of abiding faith, went the accompanying gifts of serene out-
look upon life, kindness, companionship and a sense of humor
that was a delight to all who knew him.

His work and his example are an answer to the problem that
for generations has haunted the world, for Father Searle was most
truly a man of science and a man of God.

WHILE speaking of Father Searle one is ever mindful of the
stars which he loved and studied, and one cannot keep back
the lines of Francis Thompson, written of another astronomer.
Father Perry, S.J.

Starry amorist starward gone
Thou art what thou didst gaze upon.

The stars remind us also that the children of God differ in
gifts and in glory. And the thought of the stars was with us when
news came of the death of the Right Reverend Thomas Francis
Cusack, Bishop of Albany. At once we felt that a great spiritual light
was taken from the heaven of this world. Bishop Cusack had many
gifts intellectual, administrative, social; but the one gift that shone
from his person and accompanied all he did or said, was the gift
of spirituality. He was devoted with a full heart's devotion to our
Lord Jesus Christ. Selfishness had no part in his make-up; he
knew not worldliness in any shape or form; service for human-
kind was his sole inspiration. To the people under his care, either
as priest or as bishop, he was a watchful, loving shepherd. No
opportunity was lost whereby their betterment might be promoted.
His interior life of prayer was more real to him that his physical
life; and fidelity to it was the source whence he drew his excep-
tional power to affect hearts and to win souls.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

LIKE all true apostles his heart, after the heart of St. Paul, was as
wide as the world. Therefore did he seek in the earlier years of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 717

his priesthood those without the fold; gave himself to work among
non-Catholics and established in 1897 the New York Apostolate, the
Diocesan Missionary Society. His heart was with that work even
till the end. A few months before his death he said to a priest,
engaged on that same work: " My heart is with the mission work
to non-Catholics. If it were God's will, I would gladly give up
my bishopric and return to it.'*

Father Cusack labored in that field until he was consecrated
Auxiliary Bishop of New York in 1904. In 1915 he was transferred
to the See of Albany where in the few years allowed him he won
the hearts of all — Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

His light, for us, has been fixed not removed, and may we keep
our hearts lifted to its leadership.

VAST as the problems born of war, are the opportunities born of
it, and in no body of our citizens should the realization of these
opportunities be keener, the grasp firmer than among Catholics.
Upon our shoulders alone rests the apostolate of Catholicism;
upon our shoulders more than all others rests the apostolate of
Americanism, for the great majority of the foreign-born among
us, who lack education in American life and American institutions,
are our brethren in the Faith. Never was the need for Americani-
zation more vital than today: upon it, our future national life
depends; never was the cry for religion more urgent than now,
when all about us men, facing death, hunger for spiritual life.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE spirit we must bring to these opportunities is admirably
outlined by Bishop Spalding in his Roman discourse: "If
we would spread the Faith, we must go forth into the world where
men think and act; we musf be prepared to meet all adversaries
and to make reply to all objections. We must think, before we
can think alike. We must strive to understand those who differ
from us; for agreement is possible only when we understand one
another. If it be a Christian's duty to have sympathy with men in
their sins and miseries, can it be right to refuse sympathy to those
who are in error? Are we not all weak rather than wicked, ignor-
ant and blind rather than perverse? Let us draw closer together ; let
us believe in the good-will of the most, which is the essential good.
If we are Catholic, shall we not first of all be Catholic in our love,
in our readiness to accept all truth, and to do good to all men?"

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

INTO the world the War has sent us forth. In trench, in camp,
in Government oflBce, in Red Cross and every branch of serv-
ice Catholics work shoulder to shoulder with non-Catholics in

Digitized by

Google

718 WITH OUR READERS [Aug.,

the strong bond of a common love for a common cause. ** The
reason for the Faith that is in us " may be daily evident in deed;
will be frequently invited in word. To rise to the occasion de-
mands the cultivation in ourselves of the fullest Catholic life : that
mind must be in us which was in Christ Jesus our Lord, as St
Paul says.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

INTO the world of social service the War should drive us more
imperatively, and with a larger charity, a more practical willing-
ness to take to our heart and homes the immigrant who needs in-
struction in our language, instruction in our customs. Timidity
must be overcome by friendliness, suspicion by sincerity.
" Many of them have never lived under a constitutional govern-
ment such as we have, and unless they are led carefully into a
proper understanding and appreciation of the fundamentals of
democracy, all later efiforts at instruction in the details of govern-
ment, etc., will prove exceedingly difiBcult if not altogether in vain.
The separation of Church and State is also something foreign to
many of these people. If a proper understanding of this problem
is conveyed to them, the State will profit thereby, and the Church
will not lose. The customs of the people, the system of rents, the
cost of living, wages, prices of land and opportunities of farming,
truck-gardening, all these things are important; and all of them
can be brought to the attention of the men, who are only too eager
to absorb such knowledge. And along with these utilitarian topics
the foundations can be laid for an understanding of citizenship.
Education in civics will be comparatively easy with people who
have been won in this manner.'*

« ♦ ♦ ♦

ALL this requires, indeed, " the charity of God and the patience
of Christ," but what truer works of patriotism can there be
than to lead others into the star-light of the great principles of
American Democracy, or to flash upon them the sunlight of the
true Faith of Christ. As has been well said by an esteemed con-
temporary: "With St. Paul let us rejoice that 'a great door is
opened to us in the Lord;' and let us recognize the responsibility
which the opportunity brings with it."

THE fifth biennial session of the National Conference of Catholic
Charities is scheduled for September 15th to 18th. The meet-
ings will be held at the Catholic University, Washington, D. C,
and all Catholics interested in relief work are invited to attend
all sessions of the Conference and participate in its deliberations.
In view of ** the far-reaching consequences of the War in the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 719

whole field of charity," the Programme Committee has wisely
recognized as the imperative need of the hour a careful study of
the situation, and wise plans and policies to meet it. The entire
programme, therefore, is devoted to " the bearing of war conditions
on relief work," and presents a most gratifying illustration of the
whole-hearted and intelligent cooperation of Catholics in every
branch of war service.

♦ ♦ ♦ «

THE topics as announced in The Catholic Educational Review for
June are as follows:

General Meetings.

" The Patriotism of Charity," " The Federal Government in
Relief Work During and After the War," " The American Red
Cross in Relief Work During and After the War," " Private Relief
Agencies in War Conditions," " The National Council of Defence
in Relief Work," " The Present and the Future Mission of The
Catholic Charities Review/' " Women's Activities in Catholic Re-
lief Work," " The Catholic Woman's Opportunity," " The Aims
and Methods of the National Travelers' Aid Society.
Committee Meetings.

Committee on Families. — " The Relation of the American Red
Cross and Private Agencies in Work Among Dependent Families,"
" Safeguarding the Self-respect and Sense of Responsibility of
Soldiers and Sailors," " Food Conservation in Relief Work," " War
Prices and Relief Work."

Committee on Children. — "The Federal Children's Bureau:
Its Methods and Services to Relief Work," " The Effect of War
Conditions on Work Among Children," " The Problem of Illegiti-
macy in Normal and in War Conditions," " Policies of Public
and Private Institutions in Dealing with Illegitimacy."

Committee on Sick and Defectives. — ** The Rehabilitation of
Crippled and Disabled Soldiers from the Standpoints of the Gov-
ernment, the Employer, the Medical Profession and the Laborer,"
" Governmental and Private Hospital Care of Sick and Disabled
Soldiers," " Organized Visitation of Soldiers in Hospitals."

Committee on Social and Civic Activities. — " Prevailing Stand-
ards of Living and Labor in the United States," "War Indus-
tries and Labor Legislation," ** Social Reconstruction After the
War," "The Social Worker's Relation to Reconstruction."

Committee on Women's Activities. — "Protection of Young
Girls, with Special Reference to War Conditions," "Causes of
Delinquency," " Methods of Dealing with Delinquent Girls."

Digitized by

Google

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Gbobqb H. Doean Co., New York:

From Turkish Toils, By Mrs. Esther Mugerditchlan. 10 cents. Behind the
Scenes in the Reichstag. By Ahh6 E. Wetterl^. |2.00 net My Mission to London
i912'19U. By Prince Lichnowsky. 10 cents. Some Gains of the War, By
W. Raleigh.
DooD, Mead A Co., New York:

Japan at First Hand. By Joseph L C. Clarke. |2.50 net
B. W. HuEBSCH, Nbw Yorks

Horizons, By F. Hackett |2.00. Exiles (A Play In Three Acts). By J. Joyce. fl.OO.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York:

A Short History of France, By Mary Duclaux. |2.50 net
ScHWABTz, KiRWiN A Fauss, Ncw York:

An Elementary Handbook of Logic, By John J. Toohey, SJ. |1.25 net
J. ScHABFBB, 23 Barclay Street, New York:

The Conversion of Two Lutheran Ministers to the Romcm, Catholic Church in
1865, By Rev. I. Zeller. 25 cents.
Harper A Brothers, New York:

Mimi, By J. U. Giesy. 75 cents net. Abraham's Bosom, By B. King. 50 cents net
P. J. Kenedy A Sons, New York:

Selected Letters of St, Jane Frances de Chantal, Translated by the Sisters of
the Visitation.
The America Press, New York:

Labor Problems and the Church, Ozanam*s Ideal of Social Work, Pamphlets.
The Century Co., New York:

The Wonders of Instinct, By Jean-Henri Fabre. 13.00 net
The Macmillan Co., New York:

The New Testament Manuscripts in the Freer Collection, Part H. — The Washing-
ton Manuscripts of the Epistles of Paul, By H. A. Sanders. |1.25 net
National Industrial Conference Board, Boston:

Hours of Work as Related to Output and Health of Workers— Boot and Shoe In-
dustry,
The Four Seas Co., Boston:

How shall I take Exercise and Set-Up? By S. Delano, M.D. |2.00 net From
Their Galleries, By A. D. Dou^as. $1.25.
HouoHTON Mifflin Co., Boston:

Germany Her Own Judge, By H. J. Suter-Lerch.
The Cornhill Co., Boston:

Songs of Manhattan, By M. A. Beer. |1.25. The Fairy IslandSt and Other
Poem, By V. Flower. |1.25. From the Heart of a Folk, By W. T. Carmichael.
11.00.
J. B. Delaunay, Holy Cross College, Brookland, D. C:

The Religious Teacher and the Work of Vocations, Pamphlet
Rev. M. G. Kyle, D.D., LX..D., Xenia, Ohio:

A New Solution of the Pentateuchal Problem, By Rev. M. G. Kyle, D.D., LX..D.
Pamphlet
BfRS. W. A. Kino, Ironton, Ohio:

Real Christian Science, By Mrs. W. A. King. Pamphlet. 10 cents.
Loyola Univbrstty Press, Chicago:

A Religion with a Minus Sign, By Rev. J. P. Conroy, SJ. Pamphlet 5 cents.
IixiNOis State Histobical Society, Springfield:

Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society, 1917.
B. Herder, St. Louis:

Jesus in the Eucharist, By Rev. F. Girardey, C.SS.R. fl.OO net Our Lady's
Month, By Sister M. Philip. |1.30 net A Handbook of Moral Theology, By
Rev. A. Koch, D.D. Volume I. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, By Rev. J. J.
C. Petrovits, S.T.D. 11.25 net A Commentary on the New Code of Canon
Law, By Rey. P. C. Augustine, O.S.B. |1.25 net St, Joseph of Copertino, By
Rev. A. Pastrovicchi, O.M.C. fl.OO net. The Pilgrimage of Life, By Rev. A.
Muntsch, S.J. 91.00 net Christ's Masterpiece, By W. F. Robinson, S.J. $1.25 net
Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Topeka:

Report of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Quarter Ending March, 1918.
University Press, Notre Dame, Ind.:

The Influence of the Catholic Church and Her People Upon the History of Illinois.
By A. J. Hu^es. Pamphlet
The Catholic Tbuth Society of Canada, Toronto:

Higher Education and Catholic Leadership in Canada, By H. Somerville. Pam-
phlet
Australian Catholic Truth Society, Melbourne:

Mary, Tower of Ivory and Glory of Israel, By Canon P. A. Sheehan, D.D. The
Two Swords, By G. S. Eberle, S J. Pamphlets.
Gabriel Beauchbsne, Paris:

Fogazjaro. Par Lucien Gennarl. 3 fr, 50.
Bloud bt Gay, Paris :

Silhouttes Itallennes, Par. D. Russo. 3 fr. 50. Aux Armies d'ltalte. Par J.
Destrte and R. Duplerreuz.

Digitized by

Google

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD,

Vol. CVn. SEPTEMBER, 1918. No. 642.

THE CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION.

BY BROTHER LEO.

I HE fifteenth annual meeting of the Catholic Edu-
cational Association and its departments was
held in San Francisco, California, July 22d, 23d,
24th and 25th. Despite the di£Sculties attendant
on transcontinental travel during these days of
stress and war, the number of delegates from the East — ^in
California ** the East " means every place east of the Sierras —
was unexpectedly large; and the acting President of the As-
sociation, the Very Rev. James A. Bums, C.S.C, sponsors
the statement that at no previous meeting was there so numer-
ous and so representative an attendance of the local clergy.
The diocesan committee, headed by the Most Rev. Edward J.
Hanna, D.D., Archbishop of San Francisco, placed the admir-
ably equipped Young Men's Institute building at the disposal
of the convention, and made eminently satisfactory arrange-
ments for the convenience and entertainment of the city's
guests. The California climate was in complaisant mood and
lavishly blessed the convention week with golden sunshine and
bracing ocean breezes. The metropolitan press gave many
columns to the proceedings of the convention; and at the public
meeting on Thursday evening the citizens of the city of St.
Francis thronged the huge civic auditorium to do honor to the
men and women engaged in the work of Catholic education,
and to accord their hearty endorsement of the ideals of the
Association.

Digitized by

Google

722 CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION [Sept.,

Bishop Thomas J. Shahan, Rector of the Catholic Univer-
sity and President-General of the Association, was prevented
by illness from making the jom*ney to the Pacific Coast; his
office was brilliantly discharged by Dr. Bums of Holy Cross
College, Washington. Other Catholic educators of national
fame who took active part in the work of the convention were:
the Right Rev. Joseph Schrembs, Bishop of Toledo; the Right
Rev. John P. CarroU, Bishop of Helena, Montana; the Rev. Dr.
Francis T. Moran, of Cleveland, Treasurer-General of the As-
sociation; the Very Rev. Dr. Edward A. Pace, of the Catholic
University; the Rev. Dr. M. A. Schimiacher, C.S.C, of Notre
Dame University; the Rev. Dr. Peter C. Yorke, of San Fran-
cisco; the Rev. Joseph F. Smith, of New York; Brother John
A. Waldron, SjM., of Clayton, Missouri; Brother Thomas, F.S.C.,
of Manhattan CoUege; the Very Rev. B. P. O'Reilly, S.M., of
Dayton, Ohio; the Rev. R. H. Tiemey, S.J., editor of America:
the Rev. F. A. Moeller, S.J., of Kansas City, Missouri; Dr. Mary
A. Malloy, of Winona, Minnesota; and the Secretary-General of
the Association, the Rev. Dr. Francis W. Howard, to whose
zeal and tact and rare executive ability the success of the gath-
ering was mainly due.

The papers read at the departmental meetings, the general
addresses at the open sessions and the deliberations of com-
mittees covered the entire educational field; practically no
aspect of school work and teaching was ignored. The seminary
department held several fruitful meetings, at one of which an
inspiring paper was read by Archbishop Hanna, a paper ren-
dered trebly valuable by the learned prelate's previous ex-
perience as seminary student and professor. The superintend-
ents' section was favored with an address on ** Catholic Edu-
cation and After-War Problems," by Bishop Schrembs, and on
papers on various aspects of training and control by Dr. How-
ard, Brother John Waldron, S.M., and Brother Joseph, F.S.C.
The local teachers were addressed by the Very Rev. Patrick J.
Keane, the Rev. Dr. Patrick J. McCormick, the Rev. Dr. Charles
Baschab and the Rev. Ralph Hunt, Superintendent of the San
Francisco schools. And the deaf-mute section, thanks to the
untiring enthusiasm of Father MoeUer and the suggestive and
informing papers read by representatives of the Sisters of St
Joseph and the Sisters of Providence, had one of the most suc-
cessful conferences in its history.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION 723

The basis of the Catholic educational system, the place
where the ideals of Catholic faith and culture must be im-
planted if they are later on to grow and increase, the portion
of the field where the laborers are most nimierous and the
harvest ever white, is the parish school. It is in the interests
of the parish school, throughout the length and breadth of
the land, that priests and people alike have from the begin-
nings of our Catholic life made sacrifices and cheerfully borne
privations; and it is to the parish school that priests and people
alike confidently look for the conservation and perpetuation
of zeal and piety and practical devotion. The parish school
is not — as perhaps too many of our people tacitly assiune — ^the
only phase of Catholic education that is necessary and that
merits recognition and support; nevertheless, without the par-
ish school, without the daily labors of our thousands of parish
school teachers, without the incessant molding of youthful
minds and hearts to right habit of thinking, feeling and living
the rest of our educational system would be incongruous.
Hence the large amoimt of time given by the Catholic Educa-
tional Association to discussions of problems of parish school
management and to presentations of the religious and
pedagogical ideals of the parish school teacher.

At the San Francisco convention an exceptionally attrac-
tive programme of papers and discussions was presented under
the direction of the Rev. Joseph F. Smith, Superintendent of
the New York City parish schools. Dr. Pace, of the Catholic
University, who had just completed a course of lectures on a
cognate subject in the San Francisco diocesan sunmier school,
read an informing paper on ^Teaching Children to Study."
Dr. McCormick and Dr. Yorke presented methods of teaching
religion; and such practical topics as ** The Tests of the Teach-
er's Efficiency ** and "The Educational Value of Examinations,'*
were discussed in papers by Brother John Garvin, S^M., and
Mr. William J. McAuliflfe, of Cathedral College, New York.

" Some of the Financial Aspects of the Parish School ** was
the title of a pertinent paper by Father Keane, Rector of St.
Francis de Sales' Church, Oakland, California. The paper
dwelt upon the significance of the late Archbishop Hughes'
motto, " The school is before the Church," and indicated the
importance of establishing and maintaining an efficient parish
school as one of the primary duties of the parish priest. Father

Digitized by

Google

724 CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION [Sept.,

Keane pointed out that the education of the children of our
foreign-born population is an obligation of ever-increasing
magnitude, that parishes in which our European immigrants
live, are usually very poor and unable to provide adequate edu-
cational facilities, and that, therefore, the financial support of
such schools should be a diocesan rather than a parochial task.
And he favored free schools in aU parishes, the cost of mainte-
nance to be met by all the parishes of the diocese, in accord-
ance with a principle of taxation similar to that now in vogue
in the schools of the State.

The topic which secured the greatest amount of interest
in the department of colleges and secondary schools, which
educed some of the finest papers read at any meeting of the
Association and which incited the delegates to definite and
constructive action, was the " get together ** spirit. To be sure,
it was not thus set down on the programme, it was not thus
nominated in the bond. It appeared under various bits of
nomenclature, some of them dignified, some of them steeped in
the jargon of the new "scientific" pedagogy, all of them, 1
fancy, a bit mysterious and mystifying to people who are not
aware that present-day educators, like present-day physicians,
have formed the habit, at once diverting and terrifying, of be-
stowing upon old and simple and generaUy recognized things,
names composed of words of learned length and thundering
sound. And so, at the San Francisoo convention, the educational
application of the principle, dating from the Garden of Eden,
that it is not good for man to be alone, appeared in the guise
of -" standardization," " correlation," " coordination " and
" orientation." But in spite of the unwieldy phraseology, the
delegates reached certain definite conclusions that are destined
to have deep, permanent and far-reaching effects on the Catho-
lic high schools, colleges and universities of the coimtry.

First of all, there was the report of the Committee on
Standardization, presented at the opening session of the col-
lege department. The Committee, composed of Dr. Schu-
macher, C.S.C, the Rev. J. P. Mahoney, C.S.V., the Rev. A. C.
Fox, S.J., the Very Rev. B. P. O'ReUly, S.M., and Brother
Thomas, F.S.C., had been appointed at the Buffalo convention
of the Association in 1917 to carry into effect the principles of
standardization, which had been evolved in earlier meetings
and ultimately adopted at the St. Paul convention in 1915.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOUC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION 725

Among the points scrutinized by the Committee in listing in-
stitutions of collegiate grade were requirements for matricula-
tion and graduation, scholastic attainments and professional
preparation of instructors, quality and grade of instruction,
library and laboratory equipment and maximum and mini-
mum hours of work for both instructors and students.

The Conunittee possessed, of course, no coercive authority,
so the tact and industry of the members will be apparent from
the statement that in the course of one year the Conmiittee suc-
ceeded in listing forty Catholic institutions which had been in-
duced to apply voluntarily for recognition as standard Catholic
colleges. The results represent one of the greatest achieve-
ments in the direction of uniformity and concerted effort ever
brought about by any associadon of educators. The stand-
ards adopted by the Association, while rightly and consistently
emphasizing the nature and needs of Catholic colleges, are in
harmony with the best ideals of the strongest and most influen-
tial secular standardizing agencies in the United States.

The same " get together ** spirit was manifested in nearly
all the papers read at the meetings of the college department.
Father Zacheus J. Maher's plea for "" The Coordination of Lan-
guage Studies" and Brother Lewis' suggestions in favor of
** Orientation of Content in Mathematical Textbooks for Col-
leges and High Schools," represented the standardizing prin-
ciple as applied to class methods and curricula. Two papers
read in the parish school department had a direct bearing on
the problem of standardization in its relation to general ad-
ministration — ** The Relation of the Elementary School to the
ffigh School," by Brother Joseph Gallagher, SJkl., and "The
Relation of the Catholic High School to the State University,"
by Mother Reginald of the Sisters of the Presentation. Dr.
Dillon's paper on " The Junior High School " was an expansion
of the same general theme. And at one of the general sessions
of the Association, Dr. Pace read a scholarly and stimulating
essay on ** The Place of the University in the Educational Life
of the Nation," in which he interpreted the present in the light
of the past, and indicated some of the standards and ideals to
which all education must lead and with which the university,
as distinguished from the college, is specifically concerned.

Another phase of the standardizing movement was ap-
parent in the conference of Catholic colleges for women, pre-

Digitized by

Google

726 CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION [Sept,

sided over by the Rev. Dr. Ryan of St. Mary's-of-the-Woods,
Indiana. The delegates listened to a paper by Dr. Mary A.
Malloy on ** Catholic Colleges for Women," and adopted a plat-
form of standardization which included, besides the general
principles common to all Catholic colleges, several articles
having special reference to institutions of collegiate grade con-
cerned exclusively with the education of women. The dele-
gates recognized the imperative need of more Catholic ele-
mentary and high schools, and put themselves on record as in-
sisting that one of the functions of the woman's college is to
train teachers for the parish and high schools.

Finally, the " get together *' spirit was given felicitous ex-
pression by Dr. Burns in his spirited address at the first meet-
ing of the delegates. He said : " The Catholic Educational As-
sociation is a national body. It represents every branch of
educational work, and it aims at bringing into living touch
with its own organization every organized effort and every
educational influence that is being exerted in behalf of Catho-
lic education the country over. Catholic education is every-
where one in its fundamental principles. It is everywhere
one in the ends it has in view. It is one in the essential means it
is everywhere employing to attain those ends. Why should
not this perfect unity extend also to its organization? Why,
for instance, should not school be linked to high school,
high school and academy be linked to college, and col-
lege be linked to university, in such a way that there may be no
wastage, no leakage, so far as these are avoidable; in such a
way that the weaker institutions may be helped by the stronger,
the backward by the more progressive, so far as this is pos-
sible?"

An undertone at every session of every department of
the Association, an undertone that often rose into a dominant
strain, was the spirit of practical patriotism and unswerving
loyalty to the American flag. The resolutions adopted by the
parish school department included a glowing expression of
confidence in and devotion to the national and humanitarian
ideals in the name of which the United States Government is
engaged in the World War. The college department adopted
resolutions urging all secondary schools as well as colleges and
universities to assist the nation in every possible way in the
work of winning the War, the men's colleges by establishing

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION 727

courses in military science, the women's colleges by organiz-
ing local branches of the Red Cross Auxiliary. The Associa-
tion as a whole gave its official endorsement to the work of the
National Food Administration.

The eloquent sermon delivered by Archbishop Hanna at
the solemn opening of the convention in St. Mary's Cathedral
was redolent of the spirit of true patriotism, a searching pres-
entation of the foundations of faith and of service upon which
love of country must be based. The same exalted strain found
expression in the utterances of Dr. Moran and Father Smith,
the latter voicing the duties and responsibilities of citizenship
in the following words : ** Conspicuously among the nations of
the world today rises the distinctive nationality of our glorious
Republic. Its greatness does not depend on its material triumphs,
but on something higher and nobler. The glory of America is
that it is the home of freedom. Ours is a nation built upon the
recognition of the fundamental rights of man to their fullest
extent It rests on the broad foimdation of popular rights and
individual liberty. That liberty we hold dearer than our own
lives. It is the true source of all our prosperity. It is the cor-
nerstone of American civilization. On it depend our existence
as a free people and our destiny as a great nation. It is to the
principles which the founders made the basis of the govern-
ment of our Republic that we owe the marvelous progress the
Church has made in this country.

•* We gratefully acknowledge the debt our Catholic schools
owe to our country. But they have rendered in return
transcendent services. They are nurseries of the purest patri-
otism; they stand a strong bulwark against the evils that
threaten the nation, and they are after the Church itself the
surest hope of the perpetuity of the Republic and of the main-
tenance of its institutions.

•* What incentive more powerful could move the heart of the
Catholic and the patriot to renewed energy in the cause of our
Catholic schools? •Liberty of Education' is our watchword
in the face of the present tendency of the national Government
to encroach upon the rights of the States; in the face of the still
more alarming tendency to place all education in the hands of
the Government. It is against the dearest and most fundamen-
tal principles of our Republic for the Government to take away
from parents the God-given right to the education of their chil-

Digitized by

Google

728 CATHOUC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION [Sept,

dren, or to use an educational system as a means df directing
or controlling the cultural and industrial life of the nation.

** Let this educational association be true to its trust; let us
cover the land with our Catholic schools, both for the welfare
of the Church and the liberties and glory of our country.**

Characteristic, too, was the forceful utterance of Dr.
Bums : *The Catholic Educational Association, I need scarcely
say, stands squarely behind President Wilson for the prosecu-
tion to a trimnphant issue of this War into which we were forced
against our will and detemfiination. From the highest to the
lowest, our educational institutions are co5perating loyally
and patriotically with the Government. And they shall, from
the highest to the lowest, continue to exert their utmost efforts
and influence in support of the Government and its policies to
the very end.

** Our work is for God. It is likewise for country. We
know that Catholic education is essential for our coimtry's
welfare. The principles of sound Christian morality, of loyal
obedience and patriotism, which we habitually teach, and
which are intimately boimd up with our fundamental aims, are
necessary to America now as never before. They will be even
more necessary in the future, for the proper solution of the
problems that are to come after the War than they are now.**

At the closing meeting of the convention, Mr. John J. Bar-
rett delivered an oration on " Catholic Education and Loyalty "
in which he said : " We pledge our country our single-hearted
allegiance. We entertain no scruples about the justice of her
participation in the conflict. We approve the course she has
taken in the crisis, and we would have had her take no other.
We commend the sagacious and high-minded statesmanship
with which heaven has blessed her counsels. . . . We stand ready
to promote our country's fortunes at the sacrifice of aU our re-
sources of hmnan life and earthly possessions. With aU our
strength and mind and heart we pray for victory to the arms
of our country and her gallant Allies. We hold no aUegiance
that conflicts with our love of the flag, and wherever it leads
we are prepared to follow."

It is a safe and not altogether unwarranted assumption
that one of the reasons why the annual meetings of the Catho-
lic Educational Association are held in various parts of the
country, is that the delegates may acquire a first-hand knowl-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOUC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION 729

edge of Catholic and educational life in centres of activity other
than their own, that they may receive an incentive to learn
more and more of the country as a whole and to study with
greater interest the history of faith and scholarship in places
outside their own particular ken. Whether it will or will not
own the soft impeachment, the Catholic Educational Associa-
tion is doing much to keep its members from the evils of pro-
vincialism. And, especiaUy in our large cities, those evils are
real evils; for in centres of life where the social unit is in many
ways sufficient unto itself, the individuals composing it postu-
late, as a matter of axiomatic truth, that their ways are the
ideal ways, that other ways are hopelessly deranged. It is
more than probable that every teaching congregation in this
country has at least a few members who more or less con-
sciously assume, and at times even stoutly assert, that
the little measure of the Lord's vineyard that falls to their lot
is really the only portion that has anything especiaUy note-
worthy in its past, its present or its future. Let such a man fol-
low the Catholic Educational Association for a few years in
its peregrinations from New Orleans to St. Paul, from Atlantic
City to Baltimore, from Buffalo to San Francisco, and lo, his
parochialism will fall from him like a hampering and unsightly
garment, and he will see his own little problems and the
world's big problems in sane and salutary perspective.

And so this year the alert and open-minded delegates had
occasion to realize, in the course of their journey across moun-
tains and plains, how large this country really is. In San
Francisco they had the sensation of gazing out upon an ocean
that seemed to be on the wrong side of the land. They had the
advantage of observing the yellow streams of Oriental life that
trickle perversely through and across the city, yellow streams
that in these days of war's alarms are losing much of their sin-
ister hue. They had the privilege of visiting the literary land-
marks of the far-western city, the city that knew Twain and
Harte and Stevenson and Stoddard. They had the rapture of
visiting the church building of the Mission Dolores, the mis-
sion reared in the name of a liberating peace almost on the
very day when across the continent the Declaration of Inde-
pendence was indited in the interests of a liberating war. They
had the opportunity of examining the priceless historical ma-
terial contained in the Bancroft Library, material that pre-

Digitized by

Google

730 CATHOLIC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION [Sept..

serves the Catholic life that was lived in California in the days
before the gringoes came.

In the regular sessions of the convention the delegates
had the further advantage of listening to two papers dealing
with vital elements in California's past. The Rev. James Con-
lin, S.J., presented the outlines of "" Catholic College Education
on the Pacific Coast,'* recounting the steps whereby the Cath-
olic school had grown with the commonwealth's growth, and
in the course of a brief half century had attained to power and
prestige. And California's premier Catholic historian, the
priest who most appropriately wears the Franciscan habit,
came up from his mission home at Santa Barbara to tell the
teachers something of their forebears in the Faith. " Catholic
Education in Early California" was his theme; and of that
theme, as Father Zephyrin Englehardt expounded it, might be
said what Dr. Moran had said in another connection concern-
ing the schools of the Middle Ages:

**That was a time when the relationship between the
supernatural and natural in education was clearly understood.
. . . Students met on a basis of equality; favor being shown, if
shown at all, to those from the humble walks of life, to the
most needy whom the monastery encouraged to cultivate their
talents, recognizing that otherwise richest dower would be
wasted. All moved in the atmosphere of religion and found
refreshment as well as culture in its consolations."

The Association is in name and in fact a Catholic associa-
tion, and so we naturally look for the religious note in its pro-
ceedings and in its formal declarations. And in neither do we
look in vain. Aside from the papers that had a direct bear-
ing on the teaching of religion, several contributions bore on
related and eminently practical topics, such as **The Train-
ing of College Students for the Lay Apostolate," by the Rev.
Edward F. Garesch6, S.J., and " Fostering the Missionary Spirit
in Our Schools," by the Rev. Bruno Hagspeil, S.V.D. And the
other papers, whether pedagogical or administrative, illus-
trated a happy blending of religious principles and religious
content with the subjects that years ago used to be called " pro-
fane." It is precisely that blending, that correlation of religion
and the so-called secular branches that in the main justifies
our schools in undertaking the imparting of worldly knowl-
edge. For — and this cannot be too often or too vigorously in-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] CATHOUC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION 731

sisted upon — our institutions teach geography, science, litera-
ture and philosophy not because they must teach such things
if they are going to have pupils at aU, but because, since aU
knowledge comes from God, there is in every secular branch —
in cube root, in the Cavalier poets, in the ablative absolute —
an element of divine science which it is the business of the
Catholic teacher to bring into the light, and by its aid to re-
enforce the religious life that already exists in the pupil.

The religious element was not less conspicuous in the reso-
lutions adopted by the Association, and in the public utterances
of its representative speakers. So it came to pass that one of
the resolutions protested against the ideals of industrial ef-
ficiency in the field of education. Behind that resolution lies
a wonderful synthesis of experience caught from the pages of
history and reflected in the spirit of vaulting national ambition
that even now has brought woe upon the world — experience
which shows that unless man clings fast to the feet of the true
God in his thinking, his feeling and his living, he will presently
make unto himself another god — ^in his own image and likeness.

Now that the great gathering has dispersed, now that the
schools and colleges throughout the land are taking up the
work for which the Catholic Educational Association stands,
it must be a source of gratitude and righteous complacency to
the officers of the organization to realize that the wholesome,
helpful, inspiring spirit of the San Francisco meeting of the
Association will sweep north and south and east and west
across the land, bringing light and encouragement and direc-
tion to schools and teachers, and giving to our Catholic citi-
zens and to our citizens of other faiths as well, expressions of
our national and religious principles at once sound, adequate,
dignified and practical.

The meaning of it aU, the wisdom and the worth and the
splendor of it aU was thus conveyed by Archbishop Hanna:

^ What, then, is your message to the American nation in
these awful days of ruin and bloodshed? What word of
strengthening, of hope and of consolation do you send forth
from the city of St. Francis? Watchman, what of the night?
And the answer rings clear — ^with banners unfurled you call us
to battle, to battle for God, to battle for Christ, to battle for
truth, to battle for justice, to battle that our fellows may be
truly free, to battle for the highest national ideals that have

Digitized by

Google

732 CATHOUC EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION [Sept,

ever been set before a people, to battle for the inheritance of
light and of power, which has been transmitted to us adown
the centuries, to battle that our children may live in peace, and
may grow unto the fullness of the age which is in Christ. More
efficacious than the crash of cannon and the clang of arms,
will be the Christian teacher, at whose feet we can learn the
answer to the questions that vex our age, and can learn the
cause of the desolation which has come upon us; more effica-
cious than embattled militarism will be the Christian school
wherein the children of our great Republic will learn that there
is a God in heaven to Whose behests they must bow, and before
Whose judgment seat they must stand; wherein they will be
taught the place of Christ in the economy of Divine Providence,
and that He lives and teaches in the Church against which the
* gates of hell cannot prevail.' The Christian school wherein
they will know the great moral sanctions of the law unto the
children of men; wherein they will con the counsel of Christ,
and from His lips take their rule of life; wherein they may
find that man is God's image, and of more worth than all
earth's possessions; wherein they will learn the love of their
kind, and that mercy must ever season justice; wherein they
will be taught to make sacrifice of personal interests for the
higher things of the Spirit; wherein they will be made to rec-
ognize the higher code taught by Christ, in accordance with
which men are ruled by moral force, not by armed power;
wherein they will search out the mystery of man's weakness,
and learn God's way of strength; wherein they will know the
power of humble prayer, and the moral strength that flows
from the heavenly sacraments; wherein they will be trained
unto self-conquest, and be made verily great, by becoming
verily humble, where, in a word, mind and heart, in the School
of Christ, will be made to reflect Him, Who in the end * must
reign,' yea, until He *puts His enemies under His footstool.'
Thus will you fulfill your great task, and through education
and through its mighty force, place our Republic on a founda-
tion so strong and so deep that it may rise majestic through the
years to come, to be unto aU men, of every clime, a refuge
from danger, and a home of peace; to be unto all men the
opportunity to develop what is best and noblest in them, while
they journey here below; to be in very deed the City of God
here, that ever leads to the City of God, which is everlasting."

Digitized by

Google

ON THE WORD 'CHRISTIANITY/'

BY HILAIRB BELLOG.

I HAVE read somewhere that Confucius and Aris-
totle agreed upon one point. They were both
very wise and I should imagine independent of
each other. So if they agreed upon one point that
point must be worth consideration.
It seems that what both these eminent .people said, was
that a mark of decline was the use of words in a wrong sense.
They pointed out the wrong use of words as the mark of de-
cline in a State, and I suppose the doctrine would apply to the
decline of the power to reason and of a good many other things
which go with a healthy civilization.

Now there is one modem word which I confess seems to
me to betray such an evil. It is the word " Christianity." But
it is not so much an example of the use of a word in a wrong
sense as the use of a neologism implying an historical false-
hood.

I say a "" neologism.** I do not think you will find any word
which you can translate by the word ** Christianity " used any-
where until well after the Reformation. I know of no Latin
or Greek word which will translate it. There was certainly no
French word to translate it until the advent of the horrid
neologism " Christianisme " — ^which was popularized by
Chateaubriand. I conceive that the idea for which the English
word ^ Christianity " stands is not only a false idea, but an
essentially modern bit of false historical idea and part of the
modern confusion about the past. I suggest that people who
want to think accurately of the past, whether they are Catholics
or anti-Catholics, should give up the use of that word altogether.
I know I am saying something very violent and paradoxical,
and I know still better that I am saying something which will
not have the least effect. You might as well ask people to give
up for good the phrase " siu^ival of the fittest.'*

However, while I know that the suggestion will have no
effect, I console myself by the conviction that this word " Chris-
tianity " will very soon go the way of all false words. That

Digitized by

Google

734 ON THE WORD *' CHRISTIANITY " [Sept.,

phrase "survival of the fittest,** which connoted such mon-
strous nonsense, is akeady very old, indeed, and has taken to
its bed. The word " Christianity " is still vigorous, but I fancy
I see a few gray hairs.

Now what is one*s objection to this word which has got so
much into currency diu'ing the last two hundred and fifty years
that even Catholics now use it quite habituaUy, and, even
among Catholics, men of the most precise and definitive
temper?

The objection is briefly this: That the word "Christian-
ity** connotes the historical existence of an unreal thing; of
something which never did exist, never will exist, and in the na-
ture of things never can have existed. It connotes a common re-
ligion which never was or could be. The word " Christianity '*
connotes a general idea of which the Catholic Church is but a
particular example, and that is bad history. There is no general
idea of which the Catholic Church is a particular example. The
plain historical fact is that the Catholic Church is a certain
thing or historical phenomenon or institution from which other
things have broken away (forming sects or heresies as the
Catholic Church calls them), but there is no one thing com-
mon both to this institution and to the welter of those who have
been derived from but have quarreled with it.

I notice that the moment one states an historical truth con-
nected with the Catholic Church, the naturally anti-Catholic
spirit of most people outside the Catholic Church, provokes in
them at once a confusion of thought. They say: "Oh, yes!
You say that because you are a Catholic. That is the Catholic
point of view; but you cannot expect us to accept it.'*

Such a reply I am sure would be given by nine people out
of ten to the statement I have just made, viz., that there is no
such theory or idea historicaUy as " Christianity,** a theory or
idea underlying some general movement: that there is histori-
caUy only one thing or institution caUed the Catholic Church,
and derivatives therefrom. I am sure that on hearing this, most
people would say: "That may be the Catholic point of view,
but you cannot expect us to accept it**

If you will look coldly at the matter you will see that it has
nothing whatever to do with the truth or falsehood of Catholic
teaching, but everything to do with the right teaching of his-
tory—of " objective history ** — ^in other words, of what reaUy

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ON THE WORD ''CHRISTIANITY" 735

happened as contrasted with what you unagine may have hap-
pened, or might have happened.

What happened historically was that a certain strict society
came into being at a certain time — the reign of Tiberius
Caesar — claimed to have been taught certain things — some of
them apparently most improbable; others quite outside the
region of proof — and to have been taught them by a certain
Person to which the founders of that society were witnesses;
this society declared these, its doctrines, to be divine and im-
mutable truths. This society worshipping, and spreading what
it claimed to be the doctrines of this historical Person, Christ,
was known as the ** Ecclesia.'* It was always organized, and
the stronger it grew the better did it become organized. It
was always highly distinct from the world around it. It was
always from its very origins passionately concerned to preserve
its personality and identity as a thing and not a theory, and
from its very origins it developed as all organisms must, and
performed its functions of excretion as well as of absorption. No
one ever thought of it as anything but a highly distinct, defined,
limited, organized body. Even those who broke away from
it did so upon the plea that they were the real organization, the
main branch in the right tradition. They did not, before quite
modem times, pretend that you could be possessed of false
doctrine and yet be part of the Church. Neither they nor their
opponents, were ever concerned with what there was in com-
mon to contending parties but entirely with that which was not
in common; for upon the latter depended their whole defini-
tion and the cause of their existence.

Take a concrete example : An Ebionite would say : " The
true original doctrine was that Jesus Christ was a himian
teacher and divinely inspired but not himself a divinity.'* To
which the contemporary Catholic answered: "You are quite
wrong. It is your rationalizing which is the innovation and not
my transcendental doctrine. That has been held from the be-
ginning.'*

Now the historian is perfectly free to say that the tran-
scendental doctrine taught by the Catholic was false and that
the rationalist doctrine taught by the Ebionite was true. He
could say that in the most positive manner, affirming it as his
private opinion, and remain a sound and accurate historian.
But if he went on to say or to imply that these two ways of

Digitized by

Google

736 ON THE WORD '* CHRISTIANITY " [Sept.,

judging the Founder of the Church were less important to
Catholic and Ebionite than the common acceptation by both
parties of that Founder as a teacher, he would be saying some-
thing thoroughly unhistorical. If he said or implied that the
Ebionite, though rejecting the Divinity of Our Lord, thought
far more of the fact that after aU Catholics also accepted aU
that part of His teaching which said nothing about His Divinity,
he would be talking bad history. That is my point. The
word ** Christianity *' implies a general doctrine of fundamen-
tal importance which has admitted accretions and differences
between various bodies, who aU at any rate admit and are gov-
erned by the supremacy of the central doctrine. There is his-
toricaUy no such central doctrine. There is historicaUy no
such thing as this modem fiction of *' Christianity.'*

Because it is historically false the word has bred, like
all false words, a host of errors in connection with its use.

Take, for example, the title chosen by the Protestant Har-
nack for an essay of which his co-religionists were very fond.
The title was — ^''What is Christianity? •• He tried to answer
that question and failed. Everyone who tries to answer it will
cquaUy fail because it is a riddle about nothing at all. It is
like asking who was the man who cured Julius Caesar of the
wounds inflicted upon him in the Senate House; or it is like
asking which of the Popes first defined teetotalism to be an
obligation binding upon all the faithful. There is no answer
possible, because no one cured Julius Caesar. He died of those
wounds. No such Pope ever existed.

I remember an incident which gives another example of
the way in which this false word misleads men. It occurred
during the debates in the English House of Commons upon the
abortive Education Bill of 1906. A worthy friend of mine, now
dead, insisted in his speech that the teaching of what he called
** dogma *' to children was a foolish and even vicious
occupation. All you need teach them, he said, were the essen-
tials of Christianity.

He then, to my astonishment (for I was present), began
to reel out a mass of the most disputed and difficult of aU the
Catholic dogmas. " Teach them,** he said, " the Fatherhood of
God; the equality of men; tell them that they have immortal
souls which will suffer reward or punishment according to
what they have done in this life, etc., etc.*'

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ON THE WORD ''CHRISTIANITY'' 737

I am not concerned for the moment with the fact that
every one of these things which he desired to teach children
were tremendous dogmas^ disputed dogmas, dogmas which had
only been established at the expense of the blood of martyrs
and centuries of controversy; dogmas established in the world
by the Catholic Church and by no one else; dogmas which,
wherever the Catholic Church declines, f aU more and more un-
der criticism and are at last denied.

My point is that the honest fellow reaUy believed that
there was something called *' Christianity " of which these
particular doctrines, still agreeable to the Protestant world
around him, were in some way the essence. If he had not
been possessed of this false word '* Christianity " he could not
have argued so. He could have said: '* Teach the children
only what nearly all Protestant Englishmen have in common,*'
and that would have been a very sound national policy to ad-
vocate. Or, he could have said: "Teach them the following
doctrines which / regard as specially valuable and true, and
which form the whole of my Creed." In that case he would
have been acting as a missionary and would have had his
work cut out for him, but would at any rate not have been un-
der a false impression of what the world was like, has been,
and will be. But having got this word *' Christianity " to hand,
and using it, he was at once led into the implication of some-
thing utterly unreal, to wit, the conception of some few cen-
tral doctrines which all Europe valued and had valued for
centuries more than certain other particular doctrines about
which Europe differed.

There is another way of looking at this matter. Suppose
y6u were to say to a Catholic, to a trained Catholic theologian :
*'What is the essential doctrine of Catholicism?'' He might
answer (it would be a doubtful answer) : " The Incarnation."
He could make a case to show that upon the Incarnation aU the
rest tiuned. But he would be hard put to it to maintain that
a man had the essence of Catholicism if he accepted the Incar-
nation but denied, as modernists do, the validity of the human
reason; or the real existence of a teaching, authoritative and
infallible Church. The question put to him would be a ques-
tion using accurate terms; its words would correspond to
real things. There is such a thing as '" Catholicism," that is, the
idea to which the institution called the Catholic Church con-

VOL. cvn.— 47

Digitized by

Google

738 ON THE WORD ''CHRISTIANITY" [Sept,

forms. For the Catholic Church is a really existent thing —
about one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five years old
(taking Pentecost at A. D. 29), and real things have ideas to
which they correspond. But there never has been a real thing
to which the idea ** Christianity " could correspond.

It would be very difficult, indeed, perhaps impossible, to
give an answer to the question, "What is the essential doc-
trine of Catholicism,** because when you are dealing with the
Catholic Church you are dealing with a particular object. In
the same way you will find it very difficult, perhaps impossible,
to say what is oakishness. Though you know very well what
an oak tree is, I do not think you will be able to extract the
quintessence of the idea to which the oak conforms. But the
question, "What is oakishness?" can at least be put. The
question, " What is stone oakishness? " is nonsense. No stones
are oaks. No oaks are stones.

In other words, the unhistorical and false character of
this modern word " Christianity '* is shown by the fact that
it lends itself to disquisitions which, when you apply them
to real things having a real historical existence, break down.

The moment you get into the habit of using this word
" Christianity,** you find yourself saying a host of things which
imply false history, and as the rectification of modem false
history is the chief temporal business of a modern Catholic,
I maintain that it is a word one should avoid.

Thus, if one takes to using the word " Christianity,** one
finds oneself sajdng things like this : " The Unitarian is out-
side the pale of Christianity.** Well, that is to connote the his-
torical statement that the Christian Church possesses a scale in
dogma, from the more to the less valid, and that the last straw
which breaks the cameFs back and compels her to deny com-
munion, is an affirmation of the Unity without the Trinity of
God. But historically that is all nonsense. The Unitarian is
not outside the pale of Christianity for there is no such thing.
He is outside the pale of the Catholic Church. But then so is
the exactly opposite extreme, the man who would have Our
Lord to be God but not man. So is the man who denies the
unity and infallibility of the Visible Church and its head. So
is the man who denies apostolical succession.

Try the experiment for yourself. Write down any sentence
you will, using the word " Christianity ** and see whether you

Digitized by

Google

1918.] SAINT MICHAEL 739

do not necessarily find yourself in this historical dilemma:
Either you are merely using a synonym for the Catholic
Church — ^in which case you had far better use the exact and
traditional term than a vague misleading term with thousands
of false connotations— or you are implying an historical false-
hood. Not a theological falsehood, remember — I have noth-
ing to do with that here — ^but an historical falsehood.

SAINT MICHAEL.

BY JOHN JEROME ROONEY.

Come, Michael of the splendid sword,
And lead our shining hosts:

Guard us, great captain of the Lord,
Upon the embattled coasts.

Light once again our hero soul

With valor's holy fire.
Until, from out the battle goal.

We pluck the world's Desire:

Until the years of monstrous Might
For evermore shall cease.

And reigns, co-warder of the Right,
Thy brother angel. Peace.

Digitized by

Google

HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL 6IBBON&

by the late most rev. james h. blenk, d.d.

Introduction.

I HE approaching celebration (October, 1918) of the
Golden Jubilee of Cardinal Gibbons* episcopal
consecration, offers a fitting opportunity to pre-
sent to the readers of The Catholic World the
following worthy tribute to the splendid influ-
: as well as religious, which His Eminence has exer-
cised for over half a century throughout the entire United
States.

The tribute of which we speak is the sermon delivered
on the evening of October 16, 1911, at the celebration of the
fiftieth anniversary of Cardinal Gibbons' ordination to the
priesthood. That jubilee was observed in Baltimore in a man-
ner worthy of the distinguished Cardinal, and was a noble man-
ifestation of the affectionate respect in which His Eminence of
Baltimore is held, not only by aU American Catholics but also
by his non-Catholic countrymen. Many representatives of aU
creeds took part in the civic celebrations. Both Houses of
Congress and all the departments of the Government were
represented.

The orator of the occasion was the late Most Rev. James
H. Blenk, Archbishop of New Orleans. His Grace did not per-
mit the sermon to appear in print, either at the time of its de-
livery or afterwards. Yet it merits the fullest publicity and
preservation for future time. The testimonies to the work of
Cardinal Gibbons which the address bears are of such a char-
acter, that at the time one might jusUy have concluded that the
Cardinal's prestige had reached its zenith. Yet such an esti-
mate would have been wrong. Since our country's entrance
into the present World War, the Cardinal, by word and deed,
has stood forth as a leader and efficient exponent of Catholic
loyalty, and of Catholic readiness to make every sacrifice that
our country may call for, in the defence of American rights

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 741

and the assertion of America's principles. His hearty dis-
charge of this duty has increased the measiu^ and earnestness
of the respect which the American people at large cherish
towards him.

Archbishop Blenk was, by virtue of his own services to
Church and country, eminently fitted to give us a brilliant
synopsis of the rdle played by the see of Baltimore in the
foundation and expansion of the Church in America, and a
just appreciation of the life and services of its present
able occupant. During his comparatively brief incum-
bency of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, this man of simple,
genial character, thoroughly unselfish, quick to see the right,
and of inflexible will, effected a great deal of good, not the
least of which was the organization of Catholic primary and
secondary education in Louisiana; and he proved himself a
powerful promoter of the movement for civic betterment in
the Crescent City.

Not New Orleans, however, but Porto Rico was the field in
which Archbishop Blenk met his most trying struggles and per-
formed his highest service. Going as Bishop to Porto Rico,
when the island was taken over by the United States, he found
the Catholic people there convinced that the United States was
a Protestant government, hostile to the Catholic Church. This
erroneous opinion was fostered by fhe horde of proselytizers
who inundated the island; and, as a consequence, timidity
and despondency were playing havoc among the Catholic peo-
ple. Bishop Blenk taught them their rights, and manfully
asserted these rights before the high officials who were sent
as administrators. He heartened the Catholics of Porto Rico,
exposed some officials who misused their power, and at the
same time won the friendship of powerful, broadminded men,
including the then President Roosevelt and his successor Pres-
ident Taf t, with favorable results for the cause in which he
unstintedly spent himself.

Possessed of a spiritual ideal, and a love of country like
unto the Cardinal's own, his vision penetrated beyond the
man whose portrait he limned to the ideal he typifies, and
soared to prophetic utterance aiid vibrant exhortation as he
addressed the Catholic clergy and laity assembled before him.

Digitized by

Google

742 HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [Sept.,

T^HIS soil of Maryland, first refuge of our fathers in the
* Faith; on which they sowed, as a grain of mustard seed,
the beginning of Catholicism in our land; which they conse-
crated as a sanctuary of religious liberty and never, in deed or
desire, profaned by intolerance: this city of Baltimore, the
mother see of American churches; whose diocese was once co-
extensive with the nation; which has watched her children and
her children's children rise up around her, till now more than a
hundred sees divide her territory; which for a century and
more has been the nursery of the priesthood, attracting
to herself, from near and far, generous young souls : this Cathe-
dral, whose foundation was laid by the first Bishop of Balti-
more, the far-seeing Patriarch of the American Church; in
which he reposes, side by side with most of his successors, Car-
roll, Neale. Marechal, Whitfield, Eccleston, Kenrick, Spalding,
Bayley; which has so often assembled within its walls the ven-
erable fathers of the American Church; in which provincial
and general councils, enlightened from on high, framed those
laws which have so wisely guided us and given a model to sis-
ter-churches in other lands; which has ever been the chair of
pure doctrine; which good priests have sanctified by oblations
innumerable and devout generations by their piety, fervent
love and penitential tears; this soil, this city, this diocese and
this cathedral centring in themselves, these and a hundred
other cherished memories, have long since been the most sacred
shrine of American Catholicism.

Here within these hallowed precincts, in this city of our
primatial church, on this historic soil, we meet, prelates, priests
and people, to do honor to our Cardinal and your pastor; who
was bom upon this soil, in the shadow of this temple, regen-
erated at yonder baptismal font, ordained priest half a cen-
tury ago at the altar of St. Mary's Seminary, so intimately
linked with all the story of this Cathedral and this diocese; who
in this sanctuary was made bishop, archbishop, prince of the
Church; who ministered here as a priest in his youth; and for
more than three decades, down into a green and vigorous old
age, has ruled a faithful people from this throne of authority;
who has uttered here, from this pulpit, those words of wisdom,
instinct with faith and love, whose sound has gone forth unto
the ends of the earth.

Tonight, O brethren, America is a pilgrim to this shrine.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 743

She comes from all that mighty land lying between the two
oceans and stretching from the Great Lakes down to the waters
of the South. She comes laden with a nation's offerings of
gratitude and love. She rejoices to join in the double song of
jubilee in honor of the Church's priest and prince. For these
fifty years of priestly life, blameless and godly, rich in deeds of
religion and charity; for these five and twenty years of a spirit-
ual influence as wide as the nation, she humbly thanks the
Giver of aU good gifts; and she begs Him fervently that these
years may be lengthened. She wiU not depart without hope of
a pilgrim's blessing: for if tonight there be praise, let it not be
for the sake of praise, but for the blessing of wisdom and last-
ing inspiration. And if, even in his presence, I use that frank-
ness in speech which the occasion imposes upon me as a duty.
His Eminence, I trust, will grant me pardpn.

No single treasure yielded us by these golden years is more
precious, it seems to me, than the revelation of the Cardinal's
personality. Rich in varied gifts, it is above aU remarkable
for a perfect balance of powers, for a happy blending of qual-
ities that meet but rarely in one person. We perceive in him a
natural nobility and elevation of soul, an innate dignity of
character, a winning simplicity, an unfailing courtesy; an in-
stinctive and almost unerring sense of whatsoever is just, is
right, is true and noble; a charity unfeigned, that excludes no
man and no class of men, that heeds no prejudice, cherishes no
rancor, rises above injury, harbors no resentment, is single-
minded in its devotion to the good of others; a faith unclouded
and undimmed that receives the words of the Divine Saviour
with the simplicity of a child, penetrates their meaning with
the keenness of a sage and makes their spirit his second nature;
a faith that can be sure of itself without impugning the sincer-
ity of others who receive it not; a wholehearted faith, ardent
in its zeal to convince yet never intemperate; a faith that is
Catholic in every fibre and absolutely loyal to the Vicar of
Christ, reposing undisturbed on that Rock which unbelief,
ignorance, hatred and misguided zeal have beat against, age
after age, in vain assault; a mind devoid of aU pretensions,
humble, open, and even now, on the verge of four-score, willing
to learn; intent upon the practical, averse to subtleties, aiming
at the heart of a question and reaching it with rare insight; a
mind firm in its grasp of ideas and principles, clear in concep-

Digitized by

Google

744 HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [SepL,

tion and always simple, direct and clear in exposition; fault-
less in tact and sure in knowledge of the minds it seeks to per-
suade; conscious of its own rectitude, respectful of adversaries,
giving no cause of ofTence yet speaking out the truth with
warmth and without tremor of fear; gifted with the supreme
endowment of wisdom and good sense, free from illusory
schemes, yet ever hopeful and buoyant; in aU things a good,
true and wise man, a gentleman, a priest of God, a bishop and
prince of the Church.

Grod meant him for a leader of his people. Looking back
over that long life, we can now discern the special Providence
that guided his every step and prepared him for his destined
work. We see him nurtured in the love of religion and virtue;
we see him led by Providence in boyhood to the Isle of Saints,
where his spirit waxed strong in the pure air of Catholic faith;
we see him deeply impressed in youth by a remarkable man
whose ardent missionary zeal was made all the more yearning
by admiration and love for his countrymen; we see him pass
into that school which stamped forever the ideals of the priest-
hood upon his very soul. His first years of ministry made him
acquainted with the labors, the difficulties and the feelings of
the parish priest, the true dispenser of religion, upon whose
fidelity and zeal depends, in greatest measure, the vitality of
religion. While still a young priest, he was initiated here, in
the home of the Archbishop, into afTairs of administration; and
by his years of daily contact with the great mind and soul of
Spalding, by his experiences in the work of the Second Plenary
Council of Baltimore, by his intimacy with many great church-
men of that day, he was made closely acquainted with the sit-
uation of the Chiu*ch in America and trained to meditate upon
the problems it had to confront. The missionary bishop in the
South gained a deeper love for the Southern people; but he
learned too, by personal experience, that many good qualities
of mind and heart may coexist not only with entire ignorance
of Catholic doctrine and life, but with the strongest prejudices
against them. There he learned, above aU, that not strong lan-
guage nor scorn nor subtle arguments win souls to God, but a
kindly spirit, untiring patience with ignorance and prejudice,
forbearance under injury, and the force of truth over minds
sincere. When, therefore, in the prime of life, he was caUed to
this seat of authority, the first in the Church of America, he

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 745

was fully fitted by experience as well as by nature to become
a national leader.

Already as a missionary he had begun to reach the popular
mind and heart. There was no grandiloquence in his speech,
no waste of words; ne had a solemn message to give and he
gave it with clearness and simple directness. And when, in
the light of his experiences, he wrote his little masterpiece.
The Faith of Our Fathers, it speedily won him friends in all
the land. There was a transparent sincerity and sweet reason-
ableness in its appeal, a gentleness and charity in its tone and
a genuine respect for the reader which made him feel at once
in touch with the author's personality; he read as if listening
to words spoken with the directness and kindly interest of a
personal friend. When the missionary became Archbishop of
Baltimore and gained a wider audience, this charm of per-
sonality was felt in all his utterances. He did not strive for
recognition. He said nothing bold or brilliant, nothing to star-
tle; yet men listened, and graduaUy the nation came to per-
ceive the serene wisdom of his words and their unmistakable
accent of sincerity. And while they were pleased to see his
evident good wiU to aU, and to find him a man of his time and
country, they noticed none the less his spirituality, his other
worldliness and that perfect faith in which he moved as in his
native air. Then came his able leadership of the Third Plenary
Council and his election to the Sacred College of Cardinals;
then his discourse at Rome on religious liberty in this country
and his masterful championing of the Knights of Labor, which
together won him the applause of aU America.

Since that time, five and twenty years ago, he has been
** Our Cardinal;" and there is no doubt that the dignity has
added not only a distinction to his personality but new force to
his influence. The cardinal's robes, it is true, are a trial as
well as an honor. In them, the smaU man appears smaUer;
but the man of high moral stature, the churchman of wisdom
and broad intelligence stands forth in greater vigor and grace.
Cardinal Gibbons has stood the test. How long he has held the
nation as his audience! Great orators and statesmen have risen
since then and gained the ear of the people; today they are
heard no more. Presidents have come and gone, and already the
memory of some is beginning to grow dim. But all during this
quarter century, the Cardinal has grown in influence; today.

Digitized by

Google

746 HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [SepU

as for many years past, can I not truly say : there is no other
speaker upon topics of abiding interest whom the American
people hear so gladly.

He could not speak as your pastor only, Catholic people
of Maryland; as the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore,
which includes the nation's capital, he belongs to the whole
country. Many, indeed, outside the Church listen to him as
to the voice of religion; for prejudice disarms when the
Cardinal speaks. He, more than any other amongst us, has
directed the course of Catholicism in our land. But above all,
he has expressed most truly »id most clearly the Catholic
thought and sentiment of America and thereby crystallized
them : he has been our representative to this age and nation.
His influence, overflowing into aU the channels of our life, can-
not be adequately described; but I would invite you, my
brethren, to consider it in its relation to the national sentiment,
to the moral and social betterment of the people and to the
religious life of the nation.

Loyalty is a salient characteristic of Cardinal Gibbons. A
mind like his, open, teachable and keenly alive to noble in-
fluences, was certain to be deeply subject to impressions of
patriotism; so his loyalty to America is as natural, as spon-
taneous, as a good child's love for a tender and noble mother.
The spirit of America entered into his soul; and, truly, it was
the pure and uncorrupted spirit of America, which is, I take
it, a real love of liberty, for others as well as for oneself, a
deep concern for the public welfare and a high valuation of
civic virtue, a hatred of political discrimination against the ad-
herents of any creed, a passion for justice to all, in our legis-
latures as well as in our courts, a longing to give the fullest
opportunities to the great masses of the people, a large-hearted
welcome to those who seek American citizenship, and a fear-
less faith in our ability to transform their ideas and spirit;
democracy, democratic ways, the habit of valuing a man by
his intrinsic worth, optimism, confidence in the substantial in-
tegrity, the good sense and fair-mindedness of the people, and
a fondness of appealing, not to a select few, but to the whole
body of the people. The spirit, the spirit of Washington and
Lincoln, is as thoroughly and as evidently the spirit of Gibbons.

His love of country, spontaneous in its origin, has be-
come through reflection and experience the fixed principle of

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 747

a mature mind; and close observation of conditions here and
abroad has but intensified his love. Nowhere else has he found
liberty and authority more happily balanced, or social con-
ditions that better permitted the mass of the people to lead a
human life, worthy of rational beings. But America's best gift
to her children he has held to be religious liberty. We under-
stand its meaning in this country, at least, most of us do; it is
still written on our hearts as well as on our statute books.
Nothing is more precious to us, as Americans and as Catholics;
and Cardinal Gibbons, who is best known here and abroad for
his utterances on religious liberty, speaks not for himself only,
but for us all. Religion here is un trammeled and free;
and whatever the future may bring, we would desire no
change here in the relations of Chiu*ch and State. That
is one lesson, surely, taught us by European history and
bitterly driven home by the events of our day. No meddling
official has a veto power over our preaching. No bureau-
crat, more or less hostile to religion, draws up the list
of names from which our bishops are chosen. The Holy
Father's counsel or legislative acts need no endorsement of
potentate before they may cross our borders. Our pastors
are supported by the love and generosity of believing congre-
gations, not by the stipends of a government. The civic rights
of the Church are intrenched in our Constitution and upheld
by the power of the State. Men or women who, in obedience to
the highest aspirations of their souls, enter religious orders,
do not thereby forfeit the rights of human beings nor are they
hunted like outlaws. Separation here is a real separation,
not spoliation nor conspiracy to lessen the Church's influence,
nor restriction upon her liberty of action and liberty of teach-
ing, nor tyrannical denial of the ministrations of religion to
those who leave home to serve their country in the army and
navy. It means perfect freedom for Church and State, each in
its own sphere; but here in this land, as there has been no
divorce between them, there is no legacy of bitterness. On the
friendliest of terms, neither has any desire for a closer union.
The Church here knows it can better do its work apart: it is
freer and therefore more powerful, and being unpaid by the
State and independent, it can uphold law and order without
giving to anyone an excuse to suspect its motives. It renders
greater services to the Republic than all statesmen and soldiers.

Digitized by

Google

748 HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [SepU

for it keeps the foundations sound without which there is no
stable government And the State, though united to no Church,
freely acknowledges the power of religion and through its chief
magistrate, through its courts and national assemblies, makes
public profession of divine dependence.

This is the happy situation of religion among us, which
Cardinal Gibbons has so often described and lauded; it has
delighted him as a churchman and increased his love of coun-
try as a citizen. In this, as in all things, his spirit is unerringly
American, with the certainty of instinct. It is a grand thing
for any nation when a man thoroughly possessed of its true
genius is put in a position of national prominence; and Car-
dinal Gibbons, simply by being the thorough American that he
is, has been one of the strongest forces for true Americanism in
our land. But he has spoken and acted as well, and his in-
fluence is incalculably great. He has put bigotry to shame and
made it skulk in dark corners. He has done more than any
other to break down barriers of prejudice. He has set for his
co-religionists the standard of courtesy and fair dealing to all.
He has been, as it were, our ambassador to our non-Catholic
fellow-citizens, bearing to them sincere expression of our good
wiU. We are divided from them in religion, in what
is most intimate and sacred; we cannot unite unless our
brethren return to the fold from which their fathers strayed.
Meanwhile, we are men, with the common feelings of decent
folk; we are Americans, sharing a heritage only less dear to us
than our religion. Here, then, are elements of union and
friendly coSperation. The Cardinal has been foremost in
utilizing them freely. He has opened up channels of sympathy
and mutual comprehension which but for him would have been
closed. We Americans of this generation do not know the
bitterness of religious strife; and I think it is true to say that no
one in our generation, churchman or statesman, has done
more than Cardinal Gibbons to prevent and remove occasions
of strife and to promote among our citizens those sentiments of
good will which add sweetness and pleasantness to daily life.

The Cardinal has also been a powerful leaven of American
spirit among that huge multitude from foreign lands which
every year has brought us; and long ago, in a memorable
struggle, he, with the aid of the American Hierarchy and the
approval of the Holy See, prevented the adoption of a policy

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 749

which would have created m our great cities large permanent
centres of foreign influence, hostile to one another and more
or less hostile to American ideas. This action of Cardinal Gib-
bons and his fellow-bishops, which represents the policy
adopted for all time by our Hierarchy, has made it impossible
for anyone to claim, with a show of justice, that the Catholic
Church of America is alien to our national sentiment.

The interests of patriotism lie close to the heart of a priest,
for a good government is the best aUy of morality and religion;
they cannot flourish without peace, liberty, order and the reign
of the law. To labor for these ends is the work of a patriot;
but a real chiu*chman regards them also in the light of a re-
ligious duty. Such a one is a man of vision : he sees the neces-
sity of religion for good government, and he sees as well that
there is a work to be done for religion outside the round of
sacred ministrations. Narrow-minded men may not recognize
the value of his work. They may think he heeds too much the
popular voices. Zeal may sharpen their censures. But, after
aU, their eyes are holden so that they see not a master builder
in Israel. Cardinal Gibbons, while he has aUowed nothing to
obscure in his mind the chief aim of the Chlu:^ch, which is the
sanctification and salvation of souls, has by word and example
shown the conviction that here, in this age and country, religion
should actively exert its influence for the civic and social bet-
terment of the people.

Civic righteousness, accordingly, has been a favorite topic
with him. Wisely avoiding questions of party politics, he has
rightly regarded civic duties as a matter of morality and there-
fore of religion. He has put renewed life into the old Catholic
ideal of public service; for if it is a blessed thing to give a cup
of cold water in Christ's name to one stranger, how inexpres-
sibly blessed it is, and how pleasing to God, when a man ren-
ders honest and faithful service to a whole city or state or
nation ! From dusty tomes and sermon books he has brought
out into the light of the daily press the grand Catholic doctrine
that a public official is invested with divine authority and a
public office is a divine trust. Political corruption, therefore,
is most hateful to him; for it is a betrayal of a sacred trust. A
prolific breeder of vice, it taints with its turpitude the whole
moral atmosphere of the community which it infests. He has
tried to rouse the conscience of men, otherwise good, who have

Digitized by

Google

750 HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [Sept.

a soft-natured toleration for public dishonesty; and he has
vigorously denounced our wide deflections from the true ideals
of citizenship.

Brethren, I may not delay to tell how he has contended for
the purity of the home, which is the foimdation of society;
how he has been foremost among the bishops and priests of the
Catholic Church whose constant preaching of her doctrine
has brought other Churches back almost to the Christian stand-
ard of marriage; how, at last, this seems to be making America
ashamed of her foulest disgrace, the divorce evil, and to
promise a diminution. Nor shall I attempt to enumerate the
many good causes which the Cardinal has aided. He has been
constantly besieged, in this age of social reform, to give his
help to countless movements: the marvelous thing is that he
has supported so many and yet chosen so wisely. The most
pressing, the most difficult problems which have confronted
Cardinal Gibbons concerned social justice. His masterly paper
on the Knights of Labor, written a quarter century ago, shows
his firm control of the chief elements of the general problem,
and the attitude which he considered imposed by the situation
upon the Church and her clergy. He noted the heartless
avarice, as he called it, which pitilessly grinds not only the
men but even the children in various employments. He noted
not only the insufficient wages, but the wretched surroundings
in which multitudes must work, with inevitable injury to
health, morals and religion. He noted the dangers of monopo-
lies, which not only crushed the poor but by reason of the
bribery which they practised, willingly or unwillingly, threat-
ened the stability of the State itself. He noted the vast accumu-
lations of wealth in the hands of a few and the immense power
of which they thus became possessed. In the face of this new
situation, he asked himself, what should be the attitude of the
Chiu*ch, what was his own line of duty?

He did not hesitate. The Church is the friend of the peo-
ple; and if ever or anywhere she be not that, then is she, in so
far, faithless to her Master's spirit. Her representatives must
not by timidity, aloofness, indifference or ignorance allow
grave social injustice to exist unrebuked at their doors. But he
declares at the same time that the multitudes are easily excited
and always prone to extremes; and if power comes to them,
they are apt, smarting imder the sense of age-long injustice

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 751

and exulting in new strength* to inflict injustice themselves in
their turn.

The Cardinal, then, held that he would be an unworthy
Catholic bishop if his sympathies were not warm for the peo-
ple; and a cowardly one if he dared not uphold their rights
and declare, as well, their duties. But modem economic dif-
ficulties, so various, so complicated, so changing, are the hard-
est of problems. A bishop cannot, like a professor, advance
minute solutions; interminable wrangling would be the out-
come and his interference would work more harm than good.
His office, as the Cardinal conceived it, was to mediate between
the classes by tracing the main lines of the solution and by
fostering the temper in which difiTerences may be calmly and
amicably discussed. Accordingly, he contended energeticaUy
for the right of labor to organize; this was essential in view of
the organization of capital and was the only means of obtain-
ing justice. Skilled labor has been completely organized since
that time; today we have the two great organized powers,
which hold us all at their mercy, confronting each other. The
Cardinal long ago foresaw the situation, and was one of the first
and strongest advocates of the only possible solution, which is
compulsory arbitration. Skilled labor in this country today
is, in general, able to obtain justice and sometimes, no doubt,
oversteps the line. It is in the humble ranks of labor that there
are still crying injustices; and the Cardinal, while carefully
avoiding agitation, which frequently merely intensifies dis-
content, has pointed out the evils and endeavored to foster a
spirit of justice and charity.

When we consider these various activities of the Cardinal
and the influence he has exerted by his personality, his wisdom
and his energy, upon so many movements for the public wel-
fare, we do not wonder that he received from the nation, in this
year of his jubilee, a tribute which is in strict truth unparal-
leled in our history. Forever memorable in our annals will be
that scene when our President and a former President, our
Chief Justice, many of the foremost men of the country, of this
State and this city, and a vast concourse of citizens, from all
ranks of society and aU religious creeds, assembled together
to testify their enthusiastic appreciation of Cardinal Gib-
bons' civic and social services to his fellow-countrymen.

Love of country, love of one's fellows ennoble a man and

Digitized by

Google

752 HIS IMMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [Sept.,

enrich the world; but the supreme thing is love of God. They
know Cardinal Gibbons but very imperfectly who have not
realized that love of God is the supreme interest of his life,
and next to that, love of souls : the desire to bring men to God.
So true a man of Grod is he, so absorbing is his concern about
religion that one cannot think of him except as a priest. It is
not for us to venture into the sanctuary of his soul; but the
secret of his life cannot be hid. Long ago in the days of his
youth, he learned the one ideal of the priest, the character of
Jesus Christ; and his fifty years of priesthood, what have they
been but a daily study of that Character in the Gospel and a
daily efTort to reach that unattainable Ideal in whose light all
are but sinners. This it is which, in spite of the praises of
men, has kept him humble and has formed in him the mind
and heart of a priest. Men feel it; and they yield to the priest
an instinctive reverence which neither genius nor high posi-
tion could evoke.

The intimate mind of the Cardinal, the unveiling of his
deepest interests, is not to be sought in the public press, but
rather in his books, which are the work of a priest and bishop.
Four in aU, they were written, one to bring men to a belief in
Christ and His Gospel; a second, to lead them into the Catholic
Church, which alone has the fullness of Christ's truth, is its
appointed guardian and the ordinary channel of divine grace;
a third, to instruct his Catholic people in the truths of faith and
in their duties to Grod and their fellowmen; and the fourth,
a book for priests, to fill them with a realization of their sub-
lime vocation and to hold up before them the sanctity, un-
selfishness and zeal, the knowledge and wisdom and prudence
which are demanded of the Christian minister. In these books
stands revealed the man of God, anxious above aU for the sanc-
tification of his flock and the salvation of souls. Eternal in-
terests are <:onmiitted to his charge; how paltry, then, are the
passing things of time I To establish the kingdom of God on
earth, to prepare men for eternal happiness, to rescue them
from eternal woe, this, the proper work of a priest, has been
the aim of his life and the soul of all his labors.

As a churchman, nearly every movement tending to
strengthen the Church of God in this country has solicited and
obtained his active interest. Catholics all over the land have
been accustomed to turn to him as to the wise leader who

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 753

knows what is best for the Church's welfare. He has had the
happy gift of attaching to himself men of divergent ideas and
of originating or discerning the view or measiu*e which collec-
tive wisdom ultimately recognized as the best. History will
tell of his great share in guiding the Third Plenary Council
of Baltimore to those wise and far-seeing regulations which are
praised by churchmen throughout the world. In matters of
great moment, he has throughout all pursued one unvarying
policy, and at different crises he has taken a most decided
stand; but he is best known and most revered among us as a
man above parties, as the spokesman of American Catholicism,
as a great chiu*chman who works for the good of the entire
Church.

The causes which he fostered are manifold; but I will
speak here of one, the child of his heart and the centre of hi^
strongest hopes, the Catholic University of America. To an-
other, a man of brilliant mind and large ideas, is due the im-
pulse which led to its creation; but from its inception to the
present moment, its most powerful, most efficient supporter
has been the University's Chancellor, the Archbishop of Balti-
more. Like all great works which endure in the Catholic
Church, it has been hardened in the school of adversity; dark
days fell which took the sunshine out of brave souls and to the
faint-hearted foreboded doom. Some who should have been
its warmest friends, looked on with indifference. They saw
secular universities attract our Catholic youth in thousands;
but while with impotent sorrow or anger they deplored this
new and grave danger to faith, they neither lifted up a voice
nor turned a hand nor opened a purse in aid of our Catholic
University. Cardinal Gibbons never lost heart. He knew it
could not fail, this work founded by the act of the whole Amer-
ican Hierarchy and blessed not simply with the benign ap-
proval but with the energetic interest of Leo XIH. and Pius X.
It was too necessary, too important to fail or to be allowed to
remain a mere higher school of theology. It must send forth
generations of young men who in all the higher ranks of so-
ciety, in business, in engineering, in professional and public
life, in journalism and in literature, shall stand forth as men
of mark and stanch adherents of Catholic principles.

This is the broad-minded and large-hearted purpose which
sustained Cardinal Gibbons and his fellows. They never

VOL. Cfu.— 48

Digitized by

Google

754 HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [Sept.

faltered; and today, thanks to their unwavering efforts, to the
magnificent support of the Holy See, to the excellent work of
an able faculty and to the loyal cooperation of clergy and laity,
the Catholic University lives, flourishes and before our very
eyes, grows rapidly. Faculties are expanding, new courses
are being opened year after year. Its lay colleges are fiUed;
and clerical students are there in goodly numbers from many
dioceses and from the homes of the religious societies and
orders which have clustered around the University. No longer
can its future be doubted. And truly, in this day when intel-
lectual anarchy prevails in our homes of learning, there is a
place in this country for a university that holds a stable teach-
ing about the foundations of our moral, social and religious
life; and the nation will discover that it also, as well as the
Church, owes much to Cardinal Gibbons for his unswerving
devotion to the Catholic University of America.

This enduring work was wrought in the aim of all his
churchmanship; which has been not only to strengthen the
spirit of Catholicism in this land, but to prepare the way for
the conversion of his countrymen. The problem has long since
been for him very far-reaching and very grave; he has re-
garded it not merely as a missionary seeking the salvation of
individual souls, but as a churchman surveying the field with
its difficulties and promises. He sees in the mass of the Ameri-
can people a genuine religious sense and a deep respect for
Christianity; but he watches also, with deep regret, and cer-
tainly in no spirit of exultation, the unchiu*ching of the masses
which still claim the Protestant name and the disintegrating
of that religion, which, amid the multiplicity of sects and their
babel of discordant doctrines, still preserves some Christian
beliefs. Their reunion is a dream; or rather the trend of devel-
opment among the sects, points to ultimate union only in the
common grave of rejected beliefs.

There is here a problem of greater import than any of mere
statesmanship; it involves the salvation of multitudes and the
religious future of the nation. It is the intimate conviction of
Cardinal Gibbons, which he has preached unceasingly, that
the Catholic Church is the one divinely appointed remedy for
the ills of nations as of individuals. He has never been con-
tent to be merely the shepherd of his own flock, and the admin-
istrator of his diocese. In the spirit of a St. Francis de Sales, he

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 755

has thrown himself into the work of converting America. Con-
troversy turns on his lips to a message of peace. Strong con-
victions are declared with no tone of bitterness nor accent of
scorn. Without weakness, without trace of unreal sentiment,
there is over aU the spirit of gentleness and sweetness. He does
not aim to conquer an opponent, but speaks only to those who
seek the truth with a good wiU. He prefers to expound rather
than to argne, for he has discovered that ignorance of Cath-
olic truth is the chief obstacle to its progress; and when he does
argue, he chooses his reasons among those which are plain
and solid, and level to the common mind. His spirit and his
method are seen at their best in his admirable little book. The
Faith of Our Fathers. We have works of controversy a plenty
which make a richer display of learning and intellectual
power; but I doubt if there is one better suited to the plain in-
quirer, or one that has led so many into the Catholic
Church.

The perfect poise of the Cardinal's mind, the complete ab-
sence of anything which may be called bigotry, have only made
him see all the more clearly a snare of the evil one in that
spirit which vaunts itself as liberalism, the easy indifference
to dogma, the boastful superiority to creeds. It is spreading
like a poisonous vapor and withering definite beliefs, which
are the life of religion. To this spirit he has always, in book,
in sermon, in discourse opposed the Catholic creed and the
Catholic Chiu*ch. On the one hand, there is a religious philoso-
phy which boasts its love of truth, yet, in despair of attaining
it, has concluded with placid resignation that truth does not
matter; which has no fixed doctrines or principles, and
changes with every genius who appears among men; and yet,
though it suffers a thousand changes and assumes a thousand
forms, always contrives to regard itself, in every change and
form, as the one true enlightenment. On the other hand is the
Church which so dearly loves truth and principle that it has
literally preferred them before kingdoms and prospects of
earthly success; which knows its own mind and dares to speak
it; whose doctrines are fixed and unalterable, yet marvelously
adaptable to the intellect of every age and nation. In a word,
modern liberalism has ever appeared to Cardinal Gibbons as
nought but the ever-changing views of men; and in its stead, he
has offered to America, so subject to its spell, the unchanging

Digitized by

Google

756 HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS [Sept.,

revelation of G^d declared unfalteringly to every age by the
Catholic Church.

Non-Catholic America, we know full well, would wel-
come a Catholicism divorced from Rome; but oiu* union with
the Church of the unfailing promises is om* glory and our
strength. The Church of America, through this union, is a
living member of that body whose head is Christ; without it,
like any other Church, she would resolve into a swarm of con-
tradictory and mutually destructive factions. American Cathol-
icism, then, is unalterably Catholic and Roman; and, as the
Cardinal has loved to repeat, there exists always the most per-
fect harmony between loyalty to our country and loyalty to
our Church.

My brethren, if in concluding I may seek to leave you an
image of Cardinal Gibbons' influence, I would say it has de-
scended upon the Church of America like the rain of spring,
refreshing all the land and mingling with the waters of every
stream. ^ In a few years, his kindly voice will be stilled and his
genUe hands laid to rest; but his influence will be part of all
our life, the less traceable, perhaps, because it will be so per-
vading. It has been sent us in God's own time, which, if signs
speak true, is our early spring as a nation and a Church. All
things are in God's hands; but, truly, it seems, the prophecy
of greatness is writ plain on the face of America. Surely, upon
this vast continent, between the old world of Europe and the
old but newly opening world of Asia, Providence is preparing
a nation, more energetic, more masterful than has yet ap-
peared. We believe that the Almighty has committed to our
keeping, in a greater measure than to any other people, the cause
of peace, and the fortunes of civil and social justice, of civil and
religious liberty among men. Here in great part, the destiny
of the human race will be worked out; and the result will not
only shape our character and greatness as a nation, but it
will likewise influence deeply aU the nations of earth.

And here too, my brethren, in great measure also will be
wrought out the destiny of religion itself. Grave and inspir-
ing idea! Catholics of America, oiu* work in our generation
will determine the religion of our children; and since nobody
lives to himself alone, we shall, if we are faithful, be a source
of inspiration and encouragement to the Christian Church
throughout the world. Our influence, we devoutly trust, has

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS 757

only begun to well up; it shall flow down in blessings upon the
whole nation, upon all the Church and all the world. Of our
coming greatness in numbers, in intelligence and education,
in wealth and in public influence, aU the prophetic voices are
telling; but these, my brethren, are things of earth. Where
shaU we find our true greatness but in humble fidelity to the
spirit of Mother Church? It lies in a strong and uncorrupted
faith, in a piety sincere and unashamed, in loyalty to the Holy
See, in the purity of our family life, in the chastity of our sons
as well as of our daughters, in upright dealing, in honest ful-
fillment of our obligations, in courage to stand by our convic-
tions, in good will to all men. Each of us, in his own humble
station in life, may be a witness of truth. Ah, my brethren, if
we be true, if we be true, America shall come to know, as we
know, the loveliness and force of divine truth, the sweetness
and strength of divine grace.

This is the grand hope which shaU inspire us. Your Emi-
nence, it has been your inspiration: it has fortified you to work
wonders. And we trust that Our Father in heaven may still
leave you among us for many years, with that alertness of
mind, that brightness of eye, that clearness and force of voice
and that quickness of step which are still at this day so hap-
pily yours; and then you will long remain a tower of strength
in the Church, and a kindly light to good souls that seek the
truth, till at the end there dawn upon your own soul that Eter-
nal Light whose rays have so marvelously guided you in your
pilgrimage on earth.

Digitized by

Google

LIONEL JOHNSON AS A CMTIC.
BY FLORENCE MOYNIHAN.

^LTHOUGH Lionel Johnson died at the beginning
of this century, no biography, no adequate
memoir of him has been published. We are,
therefore, dependent for our impressions of his
H personality on some extant portraits of him, and
on sketchy reminiscences by some of his friends. The bare
facts of his life are as follows : He was bom in Kent, March,
1867, and studied at Winchester College and at Oxford. Li
1891, on his conversion from Anglicanism to the Catholic
Church, he went to live in London, where he chose journalism
as a profession. There he resided in Clifford's Inn until his
death through tragic misadventure in 1902. Those who knew
him personally testify to an extreme slightness of frame, youth-
fulness of appearance, and delicacy of organization: ** quick
and mouse-like in his movements, reticent of speech, and low-
voiced, he looked like some old-fashioned child who had
strayed by chance into an assembly of men." The boyish ex-
pression and delicately modeled features of his portraits con-
firm their description, and betoken undoubted artistic gifts,
and a juvenile candor and chivalry. A nervous disability,
on which, perhaps, was conditioned his fineness of percep-
tion, conduced to make him somewhat of a recluse, and finally
occasioned a recourse to stimulants — ^his one known failing.
No evidences of this instability, however, appear in his writ-
ings, whether prose or poetry, all of which reveal a classic
serenity of manner, and untroubled judicial quality.

For a knowledge of his personal traits we must supplement
the meagre accounts of his friends with the hints of self-revela-
tion which break through the reserve of his poems and essays.
He had a love, amounting almost to worship, of Winchester
and Oxford where he distinguished himself by his literary at-
tainments. Indeed, his name stirs academic memories, and his
student figure in cap and gown, is inevitably associated with
the cloistered colleges, the gabled houses, the gray halls and
closes, the spires and towers of Oxford. The inmiense erudi-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] LIONEL JOHNSON AS A CRITIC 759

tion of his writings, suggests the Bodleian as the proper source
of his references, while his temper of mind was the Oxford
spirit of devotion to lost causes and forgotten ideals, described
by Matthew Arnold. It was this chivalry of spirit, together
with some call of the blood — ^he was of Anglo-Irish ancestry —
that enlisted his sympathy on behalf of the hapless loyalties of
Ireland, as it was his romantic ardor of moral sentiment which
prompted his embracing the Catholic faith. There was, thus,
a certain consonance in his triple allegiance to Oxford, to Ire-
land, and to the Catholic Church. For all his Irish affiliations,
he remained none the less English in fibre, balancing Celtic
enthusiasm with English thoroughness and phlegm. This Eng-
lish cast of character, which formed the hard pan of his nature,
asserts itself in his affinities with the eighteenth century worth-
ies, in his feeling for the rich earthiness of Thomas Hardy's
genius, and in his love of the countryside manifested in his
wanderings on foot through Dorsetshire and Cornwall. The
verses In England, which voice those lonely communings with
nature, indicate another characteristic — a vagrant, gipsy strain
which impelled him, with staff and scrip.

To walk a wild west land.
The winds my fellowship.

To understand fully Johnson's services to literature we
must first realize the milieu in which he lived. He flourished
in the tragic nineties: the era of "art for art's sake" when
literature was frankly meretricious, and writers in The YeU
low Book and The Savoy were experiencing life only with the
senses. The cult of sestheticism was at its height; the record
of its decadence was writ large in the exoticism of Oscar Wilde,
in the bizarre draughtsmanship of Aubrey Beardsley, in the
plaintive Bohemianism of Ernest Dowson, in the quest for
sensations of Arthur Symons, in the materialistic mysticism of
John Davidson. In fine, art was pursued solely as a mode of
escape from life, and was untrammeled by moral preftccupa-
tions. In this decadence which his short life spanned Lionel
Johnson was, as Louis Imogen Guiney has justly said, a tower
of wholesomeness. To him art implied a salutary discipline
of the imagination, a seemly regard for the sanctities of life.
Trained in the school of the best literary models — the

Digitized by

Google

760 LIONEL JOHNSON AS A CRITIC [SepU

authority and gravity of the Latin classics, and the robust good
sense of the eighteenth century writers — he brought to his craft
qualities of moral earnestness, of reverence an4 reticence
which were a salutary counterpoise to the anarchy and lyricism
of his day. Fostered by the traditions of sainthood in the Cath-
olic Church, his idealism became a consecration to high causes,
and his artistry was touched with a fine austerity. It is this
poise and elevation which set him so far above his contem-
poraries, and preserved his writings from all taint of mor-
bidity. With him poetry was not the expression of lawless de-
sire, criticism not the exploitation of arbitrary proclivities;
rather were they both the vehicle of a passion for the things
that are more excellent.

''Lionel Johnson,'' said The Academy at the time of his
death, " was a scholar by instinct, a poet by longing, and a critic
by prof ession.'* This estimate expresses in little the true scope
of his genius. In prose, which represents his most considerable
achievement, he has left us that most revealing book. The Art
of Thomas Hardy, and a nimiber of critical essays collected
under the title Post Liminium. The wide-ranging discursive-
ness, the consuming mental curiosity, and the weighty judg-
ment matured by communion with the greatest minds of the
ages, which constituted his equipment for his task, are illus-
trated in these books.

The writer whom in prose and poetry he most resembles,
as he rivals him in critical faculty, is Matthew Arnold. He
has Arnold's detachment, urbanity and grave meditativeness,
and he has more range and penetration. For, while Arnold's
essays in criticism deal too often merely with the manner and
style of an author, Lionel Johnson's critiques pierce to his
very pith and substance. His characterization of Lucretius,
of Bacon, of Leonardo da Vinci, for instance, reveals a breadth
of vision and massy comprehensiveness to which there is no
parallel in Arnold. Like Walter Pater, he can disengage the
specific quality of a masterpiece, and set it forth in haunting
beauty of phrase. Who that has read shall forget his memor-
able revelation of the soul of Charlotte Bronte: " She had faced
tragedy and walked with sorrow; she had known the special
pang of desiderium, of the vain backward look that rests wist-
fully on graves? " How illuminative of Pascal's genius is this
incisive remark: "Pascal's self-abnegation is his tribute to

Digitized by VriOOQlC

1918.] LIONEL JOHNSON AS A CRITIC 761

man's marred greatness and high destiny! " Mark again this
descant on the poetry of Clarence Mangan : • ** He leaves aside
the Gaelic poetry of love or laughter, and fills his page with
the cry of battle, the wail for the dead, the dirge for departed
glory. The note of sorrow — noble and proud sorrow — appears
in almost all his Irish poems. As he broods over the lamenta-
tions of Irish bards, raising the keen over Ireland desolate and
derelict, over Irish chivalry in defeat, his own immense melan-
choly kindles into a melancholy of majestic music." Or turn
to the charming paper in which he re-creates from the musty
chronicle of Anthony k Wood the " umbratile " figure of the
poetaster Octavius PuUeyn, and sets him before us agog in the
vivid gesture of life.

We might instance further how cogently he expounds the
secret of William Blake, or elucidates the relations of dogma
and revelation in the essay on Cardinal Newman, and we
might cite many another luminous passage. A veritable feast
of delights awaits the booklover in the pages of Post Limi-
nium. Here Lionel Johnson passes in review the great figures
of the centuries — ^poets, visionaries, prophets, mystics, human-
ists, statesmen, skeptics, infidels: Virgil and Dante whom he
reveres, Arnold and Pater whom he loves, Savonarola whom
he champions, Burke whom he celebrates, Parnell whom he
cherishes, Byron whom he detests, St. Francis and Thomas
k Kempis whom he almost worships. If a man may be judged
by the quality of his admirations, surely Lionel Johnson's mind
was of high lineage. A classic he had defined as that which has
" a permanence of pleasiu'ability;" in these essays he reveals
convincingly the abiding charm which the great still books of
time have for the mind that surrenders itself to their spell.

The acumen of a literary critic is tested most of all by his
judgments on his contemporaries. He may, indeed, move
safely among the recognized figures of the past, but he must
exercise a nice discrimination if he is to acquit himself in deal-
ing with reputations not yet established. This ordeal Lionel
Johnson has not shirked, as his monograph on Thomas Hardy
amply attests. He applies the touchstone of the great canons of
criticism to the novels, and shows by the suffrages of the clas-
sics that in conception, and in large simplicity of execution.
Hardy belongs to the great traditions of English letters. Nor is
the essay a mere panegyric, for he finds much to censiu*e as re-

Digitized by

Google

762 LIONEL JOHNSON AS A CRITIC [Sept.,

gards diction, construction and ethics. All his powers of
dialectic are brought into play in assaying the mingled dross
and gold of Hardy's artistic talent. Especially are they evi-
denced in his Scholastic disputation — ^in which he distinguishes
the terms nature, law, society and justice after the manner of
the great Doctors of the Church — on Hardy's determinism and
naturalism as instanced in Tess of the D*Urberuilles. The vital
books of criticism are those written by creative artists who in-
terpret the genius of an author with an answering apprehen-
sion and insight. Of such are George Gissing's book on
Dickens, and this study of Hardy. All the notes of the " Wes-
sex •' novels — the passion for the earth, the tragic sense of land-
scape, the feeling for a vanished Roman past, the native
shrewdness or bovinity, the racy vernacular, the rustic stoicism
"grand in the endurance of dooms'* — are in tiu'n made the
themes of illuminating commentary. Apart from its subject,
the book is delightful to read because of Johnson's person-
ality which we sense on every page, and, because of his loving
familiarity with the works and days of " Wessex! " Here, too,
he gives a loose rein to his scholarly preferences, with the re-
sult that his thesis is inwrought with many a shining text of
classic lore.

We must deny oiu^elves the pleasiu'e of quoting from this
delightful work, and turn to his views of his fellow poets. His
faculty of recognizing a new star that has swung into his ken,
is shown in a note on Francis Thompson which he wrote for
Katharine Tynan : " He has the opulent, prodigal manner of
the seventeenth century; a profusion of great imagery, some-
times excessive and false; and another opulence and profusion,
that of Shelley in his lyric choruses. Beneath the outward
manner, a passionate reality of thought; profound, pathetic,
full of faith without fear." Again there is this note on Wil-
liam Watson : ** An almost unfailing dignity of external man-
ner; and always an attempt at an internal gravity and greatness,
which sometimes succeeds. ... An understudy, as actors say,
of the great men Arnold, Wordsworth, etc., capable of deceiv-
ing you for a time by his airs of being the true master instead
of a very serious and accomplished substitute." Similarly im-
pressions of Davidson, Le Gallienne and Arthur Symons exem-
plify his unfailing critical instinct.

Lionel Johnson held his pen in trust to art for God's sake.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] UONEL JOHNSON AS A CRITIC 763

From the first there was on hun "* the seal of something priestly
and monastic." He looked abroad on life with a vision which
did not mistake defilement for beauty, nor debase tragedy to
sordidness, nor change the truth of God into a lie. From a
short life, pitifully fated, he managed, so great was his spirit,
to wrest bright achievement. Had he lived the allotted span of
years, his gracious personality would still be felt among us.
How much his presence is needed to seine the flux of current
literature, a glance at the names and work of the leading
writers — Shaw, Masefield, Galsworthy, Dreiser, Arnold Ben-
nett, George Moore, H. G. Wells — ^will suffice to indicate. We
should like to have had his judgments on Swinbiu*ne, Maeter-
linck, Anatole France and many another. With Chesterton,
whose books Orthodoxy and Heretics he would have loved, he
would help to stem the drift toward rationalism, toward flip-
pant perversity, toward neo-paganism, and bland indifl'er-
entism. The influence of his high seriousness lives on to
inspire Catholic litterateurs to battle with the prevailing
irreligion. How salutary the example of his literary practice
was, may best be expressed in the terms of his own charac-
terization of Walter Pater : " The Welsh word for white means
also something which is a combination of holy, reverend,
felicitous. ... In his work, there is a * whiteness,* a * candor *
indescribably felt, through this purity and cleanliness of it, as
though there were * a sort of moral piu'ity * in art of so scrupu-
lous and dainty a distinction.''

Digitized by

Google

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION.

BY F. AURELIO PALMIERI. O.S.A., D.D,
II.

Patriarcophil Theology at the Council of Moscow,

|N 1906, a year of feverish attempts to uproot the
traditions of Russian ecclesiasticism, the Tzer^
kovny Golos (The Voice of the Church), a weekly
organ of the Society for the Promotion of Reli-
gious and moral Culture in Accordance with the
le Orthodox Church, expressed as follows the senti-
ments of a considerable part of the Russian clergy: " By nature,
the Church does not rest upon episcopacy. In the Church, viewed
as a preserver of the faith, a hierarchical primacy is not a con-
dition of life. Certainly, the Church is infallible, but her in-
fallibility does not appear as a prerogative of the hierarchy.
The gift of infallibility belongs to the whole church, that is to
the whole body of faithful, either bishops or priests or laymen.
The Orthodox Church does not know the distinction between
the masters and the disciples, between the teaching Chiu*ch
and the Church instructed.'' ^

These statements of the short-lived organ of the white
clergy imply a protest against any attempt to restore the Rus-
sian patriarchate. The Tzerkovny Golos was the mouthpiece
of the party hostile to the privileges of both the Russian epis-
copate and monasticism. It did not express, however, the gen-
eral feeling of the Russian Orthodox Church. The spokesmen
of Christian tradition and Byzantine ecclesiasticism sustained
as essential the principle of hierarchical primacy, which, in the
Eastern Churches, made the Patriarchs of Constantinople the
irreconcilable foes of the Papacy. That principle lay like
smoldering ashes in the bosom of the Russian hierarchy. Rus-
sian bishops could not conceal the anomalous state of their own
Church under the synodal regime, which placed the supreme
ruling power in ecclesiastical aJffairs in the hands of a layman.

^Tzerkovny Golos, 1900, n. 3, p. 07; n. 23, p. 1049.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 765

It was, therefore, natural for them to claun that one of their
own body should be at the helm of the Russian Church. Thus,
while the reformers of the white clergy struggled for the
laicization of Russian Orthodoxy, the bishops, at times, took up
the cudgels for the establishment of a Primate, who would
supersede the uncanonlbal institution known as the Chief Pro-
curators of the Holy Synod.

The " patriarcophilism " of the bishops was clearly re-
vealed at the meetings of the Preliminary Synodal Conmiittee
held to consider the summoning of the Russian national coun-
cil. To that Conmiission may be traced the movement for the
restoration of the Russian patriarchate. The debates in the
Preliminary Committee in 1906 and 1907 being the literary ap-
paratus of the decision of the Russian National Council of 1917.
In many cases, the Fathers of the Council approved and sanc-
tioned the resolutions of the earlier body.

Yet in 1906, the principle of hierarchical primacy could
count upon but few open supporters among Russian bishops.
Not that they were opposed to the rebuilding of their Church
upon the basis of the patriarchate, but they did not wish to
displease the lay rulers of the Holy Synod, and, consequently,
were cautious in exhibiting their claims. In fact, most of the
memoranda of the Russian hierarchy regarding the reforms
to be introduced in the Russian Church, aixn at preserving both
their own privileges and those of the synodal regime. The few
who advocated the restoration of the patriarchate, dared not
propose the abolition of the Chief Procurators of the Holy
Synod as the first step to the vital reform of the Russian
Church. The defenders of the Russian patriarchate, that is,
the " patriarcophils " of the Preliminary Committee of 1906,
were Veniamin, Bishop of Kaluga; Stefan, Bishop of Moghilev;
Khristofor, Bishop of Ufa; loakhim. Bishop of Orenburg, and
Archbishop Antoni, the last of the group being the only one
who dared to condemn the synodal regime. Yet Archbishop
Antoni was a warm friend of Constantin Pobiedonostzev, the
type of Chief Prociu'ator who strove to strangle ecclesiasti-
cal freedom. Furthermore, in many papers, letters, and even
in typewritten reports. Archbishop Antoni strongly withstood
the reform movement within the Russian Church.

The question of the restoration of the patriarchate was
raised in the Preliminary Committee by Veniamin. He ex-

Digitized by

Google^

766 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [SepU

plained to the Commission that the Metropolitan of Petrograd
ought to be hallowed with the title of Patriarch of all Russia,
but added prudently that the patriarchal dignity does not mean
at all the emancipation of its bearer from the civil power.*

Bishop Stefan pointed out that the restoration of the
patriarchate was required by the dignity and greatness of the
Russian Chiu'ch. The election of the Patriarch would belong
to the Council of the hierarchy. His nomination would re-
quire the confirmation of the Tsar. The Patriarch should rep-
resent the Church to the State. But his power is hedged within
narrow limits. He ought to rule the Church with the aid of a
permanent council.

The same reasons were given by the Bishop of Ufa, who
advocated the brotherhood in Christ as the cornerstone of the
Russian Church. The Patriarch is simply the chief of the
brotherhood. The revival of the Russian Church signifies
the organization of a permanent sjmod composed of bishops,
priests and laymen. At the head of the synod, the Patriarch
would serve as an intermediary between the Church and the
Emperor.'

The Bishop of Orenburg strengthened the plea of his con-
frire that the patriarchate was the desideratum of the whole
Christian flock of Russia. A Patriarch is essential to Russia : a
bishop chosen by his colleagues to represent the Church in the
presence of the Tsar, to embody in himself the grandem* of
Russian Orthodoxy, to preside over Councils, to settle the rela-
tions of the Russian with the Eastern Churches. The suppres-
sion of the patriarchate was an encroachment of the civil
power. The canonical legislation of the Church admits an
hierarchical primacy provided that it does not lean towards
Papal absolutism.^

The Patriarch ought to be looked upon as the symbol of a
free Church. In order to secure his freedom either from the
civil power or from revolutionary demagogues, Vladimir,
Bishop of Ekaterinburg, seriously declared that it would be ex-
pedient to isolate him and his permanent synod within the
walls of a lonely cloister.'

Archbishop Antoni opened the campaign in favor of the
reestablishment of the patriarchate at the session of April 19,

* 7z€rJcopnpto i^iedomosti, 1906, n. 4, p. 113 (Supplementf).

•Ibid,, n. 13, 14, pp. 703, 704.

*lbid„ n. 15, pp. 800, 801. 'Ibid., n. 21, pp. 1328, 1329.

Digitized by

Google

1918,] RU,5S1AN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 767

19(jtf» by setting forth the evils of the lack of headship of the
Russian Church. Our ecclesiastical body, he said, has no reli-
gious head. The civil power granted to it only an eye, a pupil,
the pupil of the government, glaz, oko gosudarstva. (This is
exactly the phrase used by the Chief Procurators of the Holy
Synod in official documents.)

The Chiu*ch needs a chief from the ranks of the hierarchy.
In Russia, the Church is a national Church. The fullest har-
mony reigns between the ecclesiastical and the civil powers.
That that harmony may be continued and produce the best
fruit, the Patriarch should have the right of direct access to the
Tsar in ecclesiastical matters.®

Such were the yearnings for the restoration of the Russian
patriarchate, timidly outlined by isolated members of the Rus-
sian hierarchy in 1906. They drew few supporters from among
the white clergy and the laity. Those who joined the little
host of the patriarcophils were professors noted for doctrinal
intransigency, such as A. L. Almazov, a learned canonist and
Byzantinist; Ivan Sokolov, an historian of the Greek Church;
T. I. Titov, an archpriest well versed in the religious history of
Little Russia, and Nicholas Glubokovsky, the greatest authority
on exegesis in Russia. The latter, in a masterly manner, con-
tested the statement of the Bishop of Ufa that no Apostle was
granted hierarchical primacy. He recalled the words of the
Gospel of St. Matthew x. 2 — " The first, Simon, who is called
Peter;" that the Greek word protos was not to be considered as
a pleonasm. It implies the concession of a special authority
to Peter by Jesus Christ. For the Lord said to him : ** Thou
being once converted, confirm thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32).
To be sure, Glubokovsky continued, the primacy mentioned in
the Gospels is not identical with that of the Bishops of Rome,
but it exists, and ought to be realized in the Russian Church.
Russian Christianity needs a Patriarch, although it seems hard
to find the right man to assume the burdensome dignity.^

As a member of the white clergy, Archpriest Titov, while
advocating the restoration of the patriarchate, stated that the
title of Patriarch would convey only an epithet of honor,
pochetnoe naimenovanie, without any real power. The Rus-
sian patriarchate, in his view, had not contributed brilliant
pages to the records of the Russian Church. The Patriarchs

•Ibid., n. 21, pp. 1328, 1329. Ubid.. n. 22, pp. 1515-1519.

Digitized by

Google

768 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [Sept.,

had been the livery servants of the Tsars, as is clearly shown
by the relations between the Patriarchs Job, Josaphat I., Josa*
phat XL, Pitirim, loakhim, Adrian and the Russian Tsars of
their times. They were not able to achieve anything praise-
worthy for the Church. They failed in their attempts to cor-
rect the liturgical books, and to maintain the unity of faith.
Their influence upon the social classes was almost negative.
They did not oppose the abuses of the Holy Synod. The Rus-
sian patriarchate was but an outward decoration of the Church
— the exaltation of one Bishop over other bishops. It was not
in touch with the clergy and the people; it passed away like a
meteor without leaving any trace in the historical past of the
Russian Church.® The sole title to glory deserved by the
patriarchate in the eyes of posterity, is its victorious efforts to
stop the invasion of Russia by Catholicism.®

The debates of the Preliminary Committee closed on May
19, 1906. Evidently the majority of the members inclined
towards a restoration of the Patriarchate. The proposals of the
minority headed by the learned canonist Ivan Suvorov were
voted down.

The Preliminary Committee was under the full sway
of the hierarchy, and the Russian bishops wanted the title
of Patriarch so as to avoid the reproach of composing an
acephalous Church, tied hand and foot to the civil power.

By the vote of the majority it was therefore agreed that
the patriarchate would be restored in Russia. The rights of the
Patriarch were outlined as follows :

1. He is entitled to the presidency of the Holy Synod.

2. He shall preside over its sessions, and decide the
order of the day.

3. He shall determine the application of synodal ordi-
nances, and the programme of the oflScials of the Synod.

4. He will serve as judge on grievances from the low
clergy and the laity against their bishops.

5. He shall represent the Russian Church in its relations
with the other Orthodox Churches.

6. He shall be the intermediary between the Church and
the civil power.

7. He shall have full and free admission to the Imperial
Court.

•Ibid., n. 22, p. t487. Ubid,. pp. 1490, 1491.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 769

8. He shall present to the Tsar every year a complete
memorandum concerning the conditions of the Russian
Church.

The Patriarch is not only the head of the Russian Church.
He is also the first in dignity among Russian bishops. There-
fore the following privileges are also granted to him :

1. He shall fill vacant sees with bishops of his choice;

2. He shall have the discretion of granting to bishops
the permission of staying one month outside of thedr
dioceses;

3. He shall settle all differences among bishops;

4. He shall solve disciplinary questions in matters hav-
ing no general import;

5. In full accord with the Holy Synod, he shall convoke
the national council of the Russian Church;

6. He shall determine the measures to be adopted to
correct abuses which may affect the ranks of the clergy;

7. He shall exercise leadership among the Russian hier-
archy and his name shall be commemorated on the
diptychs;

8. He shall dispatch circular letters, addresses and
proclamations to the whole Church;

9. If guilty of any failure to observe his duties, he may
be judged and condemned, but only by the general assem-
bly of all the bishops of Russia under the presidency of the
Tsar."

The Council held at Moscow in 1917 subscribed to the reso-
lutions adopted by the Preliminary Committee of 1906. Of
course, the radical changes effected in the political and social
conditions of Russia have suggested important modifications as
to the standing of the Patriarch. In the eye of the conservative
press, previously opposed to the restoration of the patriarchate,
the Patriarch became a bond of religious unity. On the twen-
tieth of October the Petrogradsky Listok wrote as follows:
" Now all who have not broken with the Church are face to face
undoubtedly with a truly historical day. The Russian Church —
beheaded for two centuries — again finds her chieftainship. The
keys of St. Peter are again in the hands of him to whom the

^Na puti k obnovleniu russkoi tierkovnoi zhiini (On the Path Toward! the
Renoyatloii of Russian Ecclesiastical Life), in Tzerkovnfy-obtthettvennaia Zhizn,
Kazam, 1906, n. 13, p. 466.

▼OL. cvn.— 49

Digitized by

Google

770 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [Sept,

power of blessing was given! The Council of Moscow, after
many unpromising sessions, has come nearer the zenith."

It was asserted, however, that it was more difficult to se-
lect a good Patriarch than a score of good ministers.

At the Council of 'Moscow the patriarcophils attracted the
majority of members. Distinguished scholars and political
leaders entered their lists. We may mention again N. Glubo-
kovsky; and A. A. Dimitrievsky, the most learned liturgist of
the Russian Church; Prince E. H. Trubetzkoi, the biographer of
Pope Gregory VII., and of Vladimir Solovev; Count D. A.
Olsufev; Archpriests I. T. Slobodsky and F. N. Ornatsky.

The problem of the patriarchate was deemed so important
that fifty-one members requested permission to speak on it.
Several bishops urged, in vain, that the number be reduced to
twelve; no barrier to the flow of eloquence could be erected.**

At the session of October 14th, Anastasii (Dobradin), Arch-
bishop of Voronezh, strove to dissipate the prejudices against
the proposed rehabilitation of the Russian patriarchate. No
great idea, he said, makes its way in the world without opposi-
tion: "Our people desire a Patriarch and are waiting for
him. Let us ask our Orthodox Christians. What do they an-
swer? What are they appealing for? * Give us back a Father
and a Pastor, who will gather around him the scattered flock,
and preserve the freedom and independence of our Chiu'ch.*
The Patriarch is not an ornamental figure; he is the living
organic power, the living centre of our moral unity. The con-
ciliar principle " is surely the foundation of our ecclesiastical
life. But only the intimate union of a living person with that
principle in a harmonious whole will afford us the fullness of
that life. The idea of the patriarchate is not a forgery of the
Church leaders. It is the product of the mysterious influence
of that creative spirit. Who breatheth where He will. The hor-
rors and crimes of life today, the gloom of our moral dissolu-
tion, which chills the heart of all Europe and makes it shudder,
bid the Church expand her influence. We need a Pastor, to
unify and bless the flock. At present our Church needs to
buckle on the armor of God, to become a truly militant Church,
to have her spiritual leader, her proto-hierarch." "

^ Vserossiiskii Tzerkouno-obsahestvennyi Viestntk, 1917, n. 132.
^'We have no words to translate the Russian abstract substmitiYe Sobomo$t^
unless we use the phrase "conciliar principle."
» Vseroisiiakii T. O. V., 1017, n. 182.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 771

The session of October 18th was marked by a striking
speech of I. N. Speransky, a delegate of the eparchy of Nov-
gorod. It points out the true characteristics of the Russian
Church under the synodal regime. The present writer was
branded by Russian critics as a def amer of Russian Ortho-
doxy when» in his book La Chiesa russa, he showed that the
Russian Church was but a tool in the hands of the political
rulers of Russia. * Speransky expresses himself quite as
strongly:

" Before Peter the Great," he says, " the civil power in Rus-
sia considered itself as being within the pale of the Church.
It took heart in the management of ecclesiastical affairs, and
in turn it expected from the Church her participation in po-
litical life. The Church was, so to say, the conscience of the
State, and all the State's undertakings were sanctified by the
Church. Peter the Great was the first to establish two entirely
separated fields of action, the ecclesiastical and the civil. He
made a distinction between the morals of the Church and
those of the State. In other words, he acclimatized in Russia a
doctrine outlined in Protestant theology by Melanchthon. Since
then the Church has ceased being the conscience of the State,
and became one of its institutions. The State looked upon it-
self as upon an autonomous organization. Among the various
branches of its activity, side by side with the departments of
treasury, navy, army, the government established the section of
ecclesiastical affairs. The Church, in its view, took the shape
of a sort of brake in the machinery. The results of that policy
were disastrous. The Church lost the characteristics of her
body. The clergy shrank into a caste wedded to their own in-
terests and traditions. The people who thought themselves to
be the Church, found themselves locked within the narrow'
walls of a chancery. The orbit of her influence became nar-
rower and more cramped.

" In the reign of Peter the Great, popular instruction and
beneficent institutions were entrusted to her. In the course of
time, a special department of popular instruction arose as an
institution, emancipated from the Church, whose influence was
confined to liturgical and ecclesiastical matters.. Of coiu*se the
rolfcof the Church as a saviour of souls did not end; the con-
sciousness, however, of her divine mission became clouded, and
faded from the hearts of her subjects. Now a radical change is

Digitized by

Google

772 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [SepU

required. We need once more to rest the Church upon her
historic pillars, according to Scripture and the traditions of the
Fathers. All the Orthodox Churches of the East have their
heads — the Patriarchs. Our Church alone for over two hun-
dred years has been acephalous. We ought, therefore, to re-
store the Russian patriarchate."

At the various sessions of the Council the opponents of the
restoration of the Patriarchate carried the discussion into the
political and canonical fields. Archpriest N. V. Tzvietkov, a
well-known apologist of the Christian faith, was the only one
to touch the subject from a dogmatic standpoint, from the
viewpoint of the constitution of the Church.

The debates of the Council grew sharper when it came
to the question of the canonical legitimacy of the restoration
of the patriarchate. A layman. Prince Chaadaev, speaking as
a jurisconsult, declared that the patriarchal idea was at vari-
ance with the conciliar principle. The revival of the Rus-
sian Church is predicated upon that principle. Now the con-
ciliar life of the Church cannot freely develop, if it is to be
regulated by the ordinances of a supreme depositary of
ecclesiastical authority.

The patriarcophils strove to escape from the binding force
of that argument. A memorandum was even written on the
subject by A. V. Vasilev, a delegate of the eparchy of Petro-
grad. He grants that the chief task of the Council is to revive
in the Church the conciliar principle.

But the principle just quoted implies the principle of the
hierarchy. In the human body the atoms, the cells com-
pose the tissues, the tissues compose the organs, the organs
blend into each other into an organic system, and at last all
the organs move and act around a living centre. Similarly,
conciliar life does not mean the absolute equality of all the
members of the Church. The conciliar principle does not
efface the human personality with his individual character-
istics, and his relations to other individuals. In other words,
the conciliar principle does not wipe out authority. It pro-
vides only that authority exert its influence by serving the
interests of those subject to it. Concord, the unity of mind
and hearts, love, these are the constituent elements of the
conciliar principle. By dint of this principle, before the age
of Peter the Great, Russia was organized as a compact and

Digitized by

Google

19ia] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 773

harmonious body from all points of view, either ecclesiasti-
cal, civil and social. By the institution of the Holy Synod,
the principle of conciliar life disappeared. Peter the Great
and his counsellors introduced into the Church the principle
of parliamentarism, a satanic principle, which infected the
ecclesiastical life*

It is interesting to trace out the lines of demarcation be-
tween parliamentarism and the conciliar principle. The
latter is a moral, spiritual principle; formalism, on the con-
trary, is the keynote of parliamentary institutions. In the
former, authority and personality are recognized and con-
firmed; in the latter, they are blotted out. The former ap-
peals to mutual love, to concord and peace, to the union of
minds and hearts, to the sacrifice of private interests. The
latter struggles for the defence of sectarian aims, and im-
poses the will, the needs of the majority upon the will and
needs of the minority. Hence it follows that parliamentar-
ism conceals in its heart the germ of schism and division.
It was the corrosive acid of the political and military body
of Russia, and God forbid it should also corrode the Church.

In the conciliar principle we find the expression of both
the personal — ^hierarchical and social principles. The ortho-
dox conception of it implies the inward wholeness either
of individuals or of the social bodies, that is, in individual
men the harmonious correspondence of will, reason and
feeling; in social bodies, the spiritual union of all their
members. The patriarchate therefore does not antagonize
the conciliar principle. It is the living centre of the social
body, and the history of the past gives testimony to the
fact that Councils were summoned as long as Patriarchs
were governing the Russian Church. After the lamentable
suppression of the patriarchate, the Russian Church lost
her power of living in accordance with the conciliar prin-
ciple, which became a sterile formula.^^

The objections of Prince Chaadaev were answered also by
Prince Trubetzkoi. He stated that the strongest argument for
their solution was found in the social conditions of Russia to-
day. Instead of superseding the conciliar principle, the patri-
archate ought to rest upon it. It will be a centre of unity. If
it were to limit the conciliar principle, it would cut down the
branch by which it is suspended. Its strength depends upon its
ability to mobilize all the forces of Russian Orthodoxy."

^* Patriarchestuo I sobomost (The Patriarchate and the Conciliar Principle).
Ibid., n. 159. »iM<f.. n. 133.

Digitized by

Google

774 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [Sept,

Another member of the Council, V. Bieliaev, a lecturer at
the Ecclesiastical Academy of Petrograd, affirmed that the
apprehensions of the defenders of the conciliar principle are
groundless. The discontinuance of conciliar life would not
attend the restoration of the patriarchate. It does not mean
the setting aside of the choice of bishops and priests by elec-
tion. The Patriarch himself is subservient to the conciliar
principle, for he is elected by the members of the Council.
Among his fellow-bishops he holds the place of honor. Hence
it follows that under the patriarchal regime, the conciliar prin-
ciple is fairly observed.*'

A last objection served to test the dialectical powers of the
patriarcophils. Why, argued their adversaries, was the ques-
tion of the patriarchate raised at the present time? It looked
like a stratagem of the supporters of the old regime. With
the downfall of Tsardom, they are deprived of the source of
despotism both religious and civil. Through the restoration of
the patriarchate, they wish therefore to keep the monarchical
principle smoldering under the ashes.

In answering this objection, the patriarcophils were not at
all convincing. They could not deny that both in Byzantium and
in Russia the patriarchate owed its existence to political rea-
sons, and that in the latter country political expediency put it
to death. They were forced also to admit that the Russian
patriarchate, in fact, added but a sonorous title to the authority
of the Metropolitan of Moscow, as previously enjoyed. Others,
such as Archpriest V. Veriuzhsky conceded that the patri-
archate is the ripe fruit of a religious evolution which runs
parallel with the political growth of the nation.

"The political rise of a people is naturally followed by
their religious elevation. This means that their proto-hierarch
assumed a wider autonomy. The patriarchate therefore gives
expression to the growth of the political and religious con-
sciousness of a people. In the Slavic-Orthodox world reli-
gious life reacts upon the State, without absorbing it or being ab-
sorbed by it. It did not amount to a divorce from the social
and political life; it was not merely clerical, as is the case with
the Roman-Catholic world. In fact, the apostles of Slavic
Orthodoxy, Cyril and Methodius, according to the fundamental
principles of the Orthodox ecclesiastical polity, stamped in the

^K voprosu o patriarehesiuie (The Question of the Patrlarehate). Ibid,, n. 132.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION 775

hearts of their flock a national imprint. The greatest Patri-
archs and Bishops of the Slavic Orthodox races were the na-
tional as well as the religious leaders of their peoples. More-
over, the religious life of the Slavic world blended itself with
the national life. Its growth, however, although in direct rela-
tion to the political development of the State, followed its own
special rules, the canonical laws of the Church. The patri-
archate, therefore, is not an institution imposed by the mere
exigencies of a growing political power, but the practical re-
sult of the twenty-eighth canon of the (Ecumenical Council of
Chalcedon, which attributes greater prerogatives to the See of
Constantinople because it is the new Rome, the seat of the
Eastern Emperors."

Thus, the patriarcophils were driven to the point of
acknowledging that the gorgeous titles of Proto-hierarchs or
Patriarchs were derived from political interferences with the
inner life of the Church. Now, however, they insist, matters
are very different. " We are impelled by purely religious feel-
ings,** said Prince Trubetzkoi at the session of October 19th.
** At this time, we need a living symbol of our religious and
national unity. There are intervals of time between councils,
and we need a constant source of unity. This is the strength
which we need. The Patriarch ought to be independent of
every form of government. The forms of political regime are
variable. Today we have a monarchy; tomorrow, a republic.
Parliamentarism in the Church is imbued with tradition of
subserviency to the State. According to the saying of a Prot-
estant writer, the Holy Synod was composed of pastors who
comported themselves like sheep. The Patriarch will embody
in himself the independence of the Church."

In spite of their logical deficiencies the patriarcophils won
the victory. The Russian Church could not withstand the
storming waves of revolution without the assistance of a vis-
able head. All the rusty weapons of century-long polemics
against the Catholic Church were thrown aside. In the face
of danger, the Russian Church realized that the theory of
an invisble head for a visible Church, however fas-
cinating it might appear, is not in keeping with the realities of
life. The restoration of the patriarchate in Russia is the

" Patriarchestvo v UtoHi Rossii i prauoslavngkh Slavian (The Patriarchate
in the History of Russia and of the Orthodox Slavs). Ibid,, n. 152.
^Ibid,, n. 133.

Digitized by

Google

776 RUSSIAN CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION [Sept.,

natural and logical evolution of the Catholic idea of the Con-
stitution of the Church of Christ. The difference between Rus-
sian Orthodox and Catholic consists in this, that the Russians
apply these principles to their own national Church, and the
Catholics realize them in the Universal Church. If the national
Church of Russia, in spite of Russian national councils, can-
not get along without a constant visible head, the Universal
Church of Christ cannot also fulfill her universal mission with-
out a supreme visible head. So long as logic exists as a science,
or an art, drawing correct conclusions from correct premises,
the Russian anti-Catholic polemists will not be able to deny the
inference we have drawn from their own principles. If they
have applied — ^with whatever authority — to the Metropolitan
of Moscow the words of the Gospel, that confer on Peter and
his legitimate successors an indefectible supremacy over the
whole Church, so much the more are we right in sustaining,
with all Christian tradition, the claims of the Bishops of Rome
to that supremacy. And if the new Patriarch of the Russian
Church urges the Russian bishops to obey him, and be guided
by his rulings, to co5perate with him for the restoration of the
Russian Church, so much the more will the legitimate succes-
sors of Peter be acting wholly in consonance with the eternal
principles of Christian revelation, in inviting the Russian
Patriarch, and all the Patriarchs of the East to obey Peter, and
be guided by his decisions, and to cooperate with him for the
welfare of the Universal Church of Christ. The question, I
repeat, is one of logic, and Catholicism is the logic of Chris-
tianity.

Digitized by

Google

THE HOME-COMING OF RONALD A. KNOX.'

BY BERTRAND L. CONWAY, C.S.P.

CONVERT'S journeying to the City of Peace is
always of intense interest, especially when that
convert is competent to describe every step of his
home-coming, and honest as the day in laying
bare his soul's inmost workings. Many a Catho-
lic finds it hard to understand the power of inherited prejudice
in preventing non-Catholics from seeing the truth and logic of
Catholic claims. If uncharitably minded, he is apt to question
the sincerity of a soul that seems to be sinning for years
against the light.

The Spiritual Mneid of Mr. Ronald Knox, the son of the
Anglican Bishop of Manchester, will give the Catholic reader a
perfect insight into the various schools or tendencies of mod-
ern Anglicanism, and beget sympathy for the sincere though
illogical souls who are trying to seek God's truth in a human
society. State-made and State-governed.

Mr. Knox lost his heart to Virgil, while lecturing
on the Mneid at Trinity in the fall of 1912. It was his con-
stant companion during the retreat he made before being
received into the Church. He took more than a merely literary
delight in the poem, for we read of his making the sixth
book a text for a treatise on purgatory before his amazed
pupils. He makes the iEneid-motif run throughout his vol-
ume. He himself gives us the key of the allegory: "Troy is
undisturbed and in a sense unreflective religion; in most lives
it is overthrown, either to be rebuilt or to be replaced. The
Greeks are the doubts which overthrow it. The miniature
Troy of Helenus is the effort to reconstruct that religion ex-
actly as it was. Carthage is any false goal, that, for a time,
seems to claim finality. And Rome is Rome."

Mr. Knox was brought up in a country rectory, dominated
by what the modem world derides as old-fashioned Protestant
piety. " It has external marks — a strong devotion to and a be-
lief in Scripture, a careful observance of S.unday; framed texts,

^ The Spiritual Mneid, By Ronald A. Knox. New York: Longmani, Green ft Co.

Digitized by

Google

778 THE HOME-COMING OF RONALD A. KNOX [Sept.

family prayers, and something indefinably patriarchal about
the ordering of the household." Three things he heard empha-
sized in his boyhood — the personal love which God devotes to
us, the ever-surprising miracle of His Redemption, and the
permanent ease of access to the glorified Saviour. Apart from
memorizing the Church Catechism and the Thirty-nine Arti-
cles, and a familiar acquaintance with the Book of Conmion
Prayer, he did not imbibe much Anglicanism.

Although some of his relatives had been received into the
Catholic Church, Catholicism was in that Evangelical home ** a
fact to be mentioned in bated breath and with shakings of the
head. As a factor in history, it was very real and abominable
to me." His view of the Reformation was formed by the read-
ing of the anti-Catholic novel. Westward Ho! and he was
taught that ^'because the Reformation was successful it was
therefore right."

The six years, 1900-1906, were spent at Eton. A great
many Englishmen of late have been severely criticizing the re-
ligion taught in the English public schools, but what can be
expected of men who have to set forth a religion which does
not possess enough of fixed background to allow of its being
intelligently yet authoritatively taught. *^ Anglicanism is in
reality not a system of religion nor a body of truth," as he well
says, " but a feeling, a tradition, its roots intertwined with as-
sociations of national history and family life. You do not
learn it; you grow into it; you do not forget it, you grow out
of it." I^. Knox thus characterizes the Anglicanism taught at
Eton : "' It is a religion without enthusiasm in the old sense,
reserved in its self-expression, calculated to reenf orce morality,
chivalry, and the sense of truth, providing comfort in times of
distress and a glow of contentment in declining years; super-
natural in its nominal doctrines, yet on the whole rationalistic
in its mode of approaching God; tolerant of other people's
tenets, yet sincere about its own, regular in church-going, gen-
erous to charities."

After three years at Eton, young Knox was initiated into
the mystery of Catholic doctrines and practices by coming
across, one Christmas day. The Light Invisible, written by
Father Benson while the latter was still an Anglican. The Cath-
olic system which he had hitherto known only distantly and felt
as something wicked, now for the first time entered his hori-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE HOMECOMING OF RONALD A. KNOX 779

zon. Apother book that " carried him off his feet " was Wake-
man's History of the Church of England* A most prejudiced
book on the Reformation, it is full of sympathy for the Oxford
Movement and its heroes. It made Knox a High Churchman,
although he as yet knew little or nothing of what High Church-
men believed, valued or practised. He began to take the
Church Times, to read up on Gothic architecture, to fall in love
with the pre-Raphaelites, and to argue with his friends over the
whole field of religion and polemics. At fifteen he had become
a party man, and a party man he remained until his conver-
sion.

He was a devout boy, as Anglicans go, but he lacked the
guidance every Catholic boy has in his confessor and director.
For a time he invoked the Saint of the day at night prayers,
but soon gave up the practice as savoring of emotionalism. He
bought some religious prints, a crucifix, and even burned some
candles before them in his room. He used to communicate
every Sunday in ** the church down-town," because celebra-
tions in chapel were in those days only fortnightly. He blessed
himself and genuflected, a privilege he dared not exercise in
chapel from natural herd-instinct. He always felt it a duty to
pray for Henry VI., the pious founder of Eton, and although he
did not ask the prayers of the Mother of God, he had a strong
sense of her patronage. Devotion to her was to increase as
the years went on, and it certainly helped him on his journey
from Canterbury to Rome. We find him also with a feeling for
asceticism — **I wanted to make myself uncomfortable,** he
puts it — ^which manifested itself in fasting, special mortifica-
tions in prayer, and his vow of celibacy.

Let no one imagine that this piety betokened a shy, re-
served, unpopular sort of boy much given to self -communing
and morbid imaginings. On the contrary he was a supremely
happy boy, and popular enough to become captain of his
school. At Balliol he made a host of friends, joined over a
dozen clubs, not caring a particle whether they were radical or
conservative. Socialist or anti-Socialist. He acquired " an un-
enviable reputation for defending the indefensible.'* A good
debater, he was willing at times, without the slightest concern
to open and oppose the same motion at a meeting. He tells us
that this continual talking before audiences greedy of orig-
inality begot in him an extraordinary distaste for the obvious.

Digitized by

Google

780 THE HOME-COMING OF RONALD A. KNOX [Sept.,

and he adds: "' To this day I am not certain that I should not
have become a Catholic earlier if Catholicism were not so
glaringly obvious/*

For three years at Oxford he was what he afterwards de-
rided so cleverly, a High Churchman. He " heard mass '* every
Sunday, abstained from meat on the prescribed days, com-
municated once a week, and went to confession four times a
year. Pusey House became his spiritual home, one of its
librarians becoming his director. The Cowley Fathers' church
provided him a confessor, stimulating High Church sermons,
and " many a paroxysm of religious emotion ** during its so-
called mass. And yet withal there was no real doctrinal back-
ground for these devotional practices. The mass implied only
the "congregational" presence of Christ as he had learned
from Dr. Gore's book on The Body of Christ He had lost his be-
lief in the direct effect of impetrative prayer. He was for a
time a Universalist, recoiling from the fact of hell. As a party
man, he defended his views against all comers, but he never for
a moment dreamed ^of asking on what authority his opinions
rested.

About 1908 Mr. Knox drifted into that ultra Anglican body,
which he himself has christened the "Ultramarines." It be-
lieved in open defiance of the bishops, when the bishops acted
unconstitutionally. This spirit he imbibed on one of his many
visits to Caldey, which gave him in microcosm the vision of a
revived pre-Reformation Church. In listening to the conver-
sation of " the monks and their visitors in the guest house, one
would have thought that ' bishops * was a name applied to some
secret band of criminals!" Just before ordination he told
Bishop Paget that " any obedience he showed him came from
either personal respect or through acquiescence in his decision
as that of a purely legal official, but that he could not give him
obedience as a Roman Catholic priest gave it to a Roman Cath-
olic bishop. Bishop Paget was perfectly content with this bold
challenge of his authority. It did not disturb him in the least.

Caldey also taught him the doctrine of the intercession
of saints, the beauties of the divine office, the true spirit of the
old monasticism, the benefit of " daily Mass," and the neces-
sity of reservation of the Blessed Sacrament. A trip to Belgium
convinced him of the need of adopting " Roman " devotions,
such as sacramental confession. Benediction, frequent Com-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE HOME-COMING OF RONALD A. KNOX 781

munion, the recitation of the rosaryj as the only means of
touching the hearts of an utterly indifferent nation.

He soon became the leader of a group of young men who
taught on every possible occasion that you could be a Roman
Catholic in the Church of England. They all believed in
Roman Catholicism as a system which worked. It held the
man in the street and attracted the poor; whereas Anglicanism
did not. As he puts it, " they declared eternal war on cant,
on clergymen who pulled long faces, talked in unnatural voices,
breathed an atmosphere of artificial heartiness, or in general
behaved in a fashion for which I coined the word *uncti-
monious.' *' This enfant terrible of the Establishment is asked
to preach a sermon on Foreign Missions, and he treats his Ox-
ford congregation to a condemnation of their methods. He
speaks in Trinity Chapel, and an undergraduate remarks:
"Such fun. The new Fellow's been preaching heresy — all
about transubstantiation.'' He wears a cassock while walking
through the streets of Oxford. He attacks the Modernism of
Temple's Foundations in a clever, biting satire. Absolute and
AbitophelU which however did not cost him the loss of any
of his modernistic friends. Men can often argue most good-
naturedly about the Gospel, when they have lost all hold
upon its fundamental doctrines.

From the year 1910 Mr. Knox was continually questioning
the place of authority in religion — a question which always
brings about conversion, if carefully and prayerfully studied.
Modernism, which of late years has been making sad havoc in
the Church of England, never made the slightest appeal to him.
The more he studied the arbitrary and destructive reasonings
of the higher critics, the more he distrusted them and their
ways. He was always on the side of orthodoxy, possessing a
temperament and an intellect that could not understand how de-
niers of a Christian creed could conscientiously hold the of-
fice of priest or bishop in a Christian Church. The same hon-
est mind made him incapable of understanding the spirit which
prompted some High Churchmen to receive Communion in a
Catholic church or go to confession to a Catholic priest while
traveling on the Continent.

The problem of loyalty to the principles of the Anglican
Establishment was a far more serious one. The question
that met him imperiously was : " Am I being loyal — ^what to ?

>»

Digitized by

Google

782 THE HOME-COMING OF RONALD A. KNOX [Sept,

A Catholic never asks whether he is loyal to the Church, or the
Pope or the bishop — ^it is all the same to him. But an Anglican,
unless temperamentally an English lover of compromise, must
often worry about the paucity and ambiguity of his Churches
title-deeds, and ask where the truth lies between so many
divergent teachings. Some said, be loyal to the Prayer Book.
Such a theory, however, opened the door for a quite disastrous
elasticity of conscience, for on many questions the Prayer
Book is either silent, or obstinately oracular. Some said, be
loyal to the your bishop. But the bishop was a functionary
responsible to a legal body, the Church of England, which
had fixed laws and could have more tomorrow if Parliament
saw fit to pass them. He was a mere servant of the Crowin, like
any civil magistrate. For a number of years — ^from 1911 on —
the only authority Mr. Knox recognized was the authority of
all the decrees and traditions which were operative in the
English Church in 1500 — ^before the breach with Rome.

Catholics often wonder at the unconcern with which An-
glicans face the many great crises in their Church. One would
think that vast numbers would ** secede '* to Rome in view of
such facts as the united conununion at Hereford on the occa-
sion of the coronation, or the appointment of the rationalist
Dean of Durham as Bishop of Hereford a few months ago.
The " Ultramarines ** ought to have acknowledged the Papal
claims at the time of the Kikuyu controversy, but compara-
tively few really did. Mr. Knox's view is that the British people
are not clear-headed or logical. There is a great deal of hur-
rying to and fro and a great demand for action among the
younger clergy, but no one thinks for a moment of packing his
trunks. The Establishment is a comfortable religion, wherein
a man may live in perfect peace and contentment, no mat-
ter what his opinions or his practice may be.

Did Bishop Weston in the Kikuyu controversy denounce
the right of Modernism to hold high office in the Establishment,
the Erastian London Spectator spoke of persecution and
liberty of thought. Did he object to the open pulpit,
the admission of non-Anglicans to conununion in Anglican
churches, or the conducting of a united conununion service by
an Anglican bishop in a non-Episcopal church, he was called to
task for his bigotry and intolerance, and reminded of the
power of Parliament over an episcopate that really could not,

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE HOMECOMING OF RONALD A. KNOX 783

on its principles, teach with any divine certainty. At a dinner
with some clerical dons, Mr. Knox in his humorous way char-
acterized the report of the Archbishop's findings: "The Com-
mission comes to the conclusion that the service at Kikuyu was
eminently pleasing to God, and must on no account be re-
peated." In a clever pamphlet, entitled Reunion All Round, he
showed the absurdity of the position held by Bishop Weston's
opponents. He said: "If it was the duty of all Christian
bodies to unite for worship, sinking their differences on each
side, why should the movement be confined to Christians?
What about the Jews, from whom we were only separated by
the Council of Jerusalem? And if the Jews, why not the Mo-
hanunedans? We could always split the difference between
monogamy and tetragamy by having two wives all round. The
Brahmins presented few difficulties. . . • Perhaps after all, char-
ity should demand of us that we should accept the submission
of the Pope. We might even join with the atheists in a com-
mon definition of the Divine Nature, asserting it to involve ex-
istence and non-existence simultaneously."

Still, strangely enough, except for a six weeks attack of
" Roman fever " in 1910, Mr. Knox for many years had no idea
of making his submission to Rome. It was only on the occa-
sion of his brother's " first Mass " that he began to question
seriously the validity of Anglican orders. Perhaps he said to
himself, " neither he nor I was a priest, nor was this Mass, nor
was this host the Saving Host." He adds: " There is no such
bully as a logical mind. My intellect, peeping down the vistas
of a mere doubt, forced my eyes open to the mockery it in-
volved." He wrote at once to his father, the Bishop of Man-
chester, opening to him his doubts about the Anglican posi-
tion; he discussed the problem with his many friends; he " read
round" the subject of the Papacy and the Reformation; he
sought the advice of experts on both sides.

Some told him it was a case of war-nerves; others coun-
seled parish work, that he might forget the problems of con-
troversy; others urged him to go slowly, and not be won
over by the glamour of " the seven hills." He did the best thing
possible: he prayed for light.

The anti-Papal books suggested by his friends had an
effect directly contrary to their hopes. He calls to mind, for
example, a passage in Milman, in which he conunents upon the

Digitized by

Google

784 THE HOME-COMING OF RONALD A. KNOX [Sept.,

extraordinary precision with which, time after time, the Bish-
ops of Rome managed to foresee which side the Church would
eventually take in a controversy, and "plumped** for it be-
forehand. The Church fixes the date of Easter, the Church de-
cides that heretics need not be baptized, the Church decides
that the Incarnate combined two Natures in One Person. This
uncanny capacity for taking the pulse of the Church is ascribed
by Milman partly to the extreme cunning of the early Pontiffs,
and partly to their geographically central position. It at once
occurred to 'Mr. Knox that there was another explanation. " I
could have laughed aloud,** he writes.

He began fo understand that all the substitutes invented by
men at various times for the full Petrine claims were simply
zigzag paths which came to the same thing in the end; they all
led to Rome. Modernism, Tractarianism, Consensusfldelium-
ism, and Gallicanism all demanded the Pope. He was begin-
ning to see a light in the forest of doubting.

At the same time he tells us that the Church of Rome held
out to him no sensible attraction whatever. The whole sys-
tem gave him no pleasure to contemplate. For well over a
year, he gave himself up to self -questioning, brooding, and to
something not unlike despair. He spoke to few friends of his
difficulties, not only from an instinct of reticence, but because
he felt it an impertinence to inflict his troubles upon others.
But with his ears ever strained to catch the divine call, he was
conscious at least that he was not going back. He gave up
preaching and the hearing of confessions; he studied the
problem from every side in the calm retreat of Shrewsbury
School; he prayed earnestly for light, and, at last, the answer
came.

Grace finally triumphed during a retreat at Farnborough
Abbey, and he entered the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child.
" It was as if I had been a man homeless and needing shelter,
who first of all had taken refuge under a shed at the back of
an empty house. Then he tried a back door in the building it-
self and found it locked. . . . And then he tried the front door,
and found that it had been open all the time.**

The old charge that the convert to Rome finds his liberty
cramped and restricted in numberless ways, he answers as
many a convert before him: "The curious thing is that wiy
experience has been exactly the opposite. I have been over-

Digitized by

Google

19180 ELECTRIC LIGHT 785

whelmed with the feeling of liberty — the glorious liberty of the
sons of God. As an Anglican I was forever bothering about
this and that detail of correctness. Was this doctrine one that
an Anglican could assert as of faith? Was this scruple of
conscience one to be encouraged or to be fought? And above
all, was I right? Were we all doing God*s will, or merely play-
ing at it? '•

There is not one word of bitterness in this fascinating auto-
biography. On the contrary, Mr. Knox has a feeling of un-
bounded gratitude to God for having been bom in a Church
which proved so excellent a schoolmaster to bring him to
Christ He has only words of kindness for the friends he has
left behind, and words of gratefulness towards the new friends
who have welcomed him so heartily into the Church of his fore-
fathers. In his last chapter he prophesies that after the War
only two great institutions which override the boundaries of
country will dispute for the mastery of the souls of men,
Catholicism and Socialism. May this brilliant young convert —
he is only thirty— live long to do battle for the cause of the
Church of God.

ELECTRIC LIGHT.

An Invocation.

BY JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE.

Illumined magic of the ether, shine

When day is done upon this desk of mine.

And with thy gleam first struck 'tween star and star.

And held in angels' censers swung afar.

See that whate'er 1 write shall bear the sign

Of truth and love in every upright line;

And if I write the false, then quench thy spark.

And leave me to the demons of the dark —

Until, before my contrite heart, their flight

Shall win once more the blessing of the light.

TOL. CVII. — 60

Digitized by

Google

GEORGES GUYNEMER: KING OF FRENCH AIRMEN.
BY THE COMTESSE DE GOURSON.

I HE triumph of mind over matter: of an iron will
over the limitations of a fragile body, was seldom
more magnificently illustrated than in the life of
Georges Guynemer, the hero of more than fifty
air victories.

LS bom in 1894, his father was an archaeologist of
some renown, but among his earlier forebears there were many
soldiers and their spirit descended on the lad. The youngest
of three children and the only boy of the family, his extreme
delicacy of constitution gave much anxiety to his parents. At
the age of twelve, when he was placed at the College Stanislas
in Paris, he looked much younger than his years, his small,
white face illumined only by big, black eyes. His professors
and fellow pupils remember him as somewhat undisciplined
and independent, but loyal, kind-hearted, intelligent and ab-
solutely incapable of any base or unworthy thought.

When the War broke out, he endeavored to enter the flying
corps : he had a gift for mechanics and had long felt drawn to
a branch of the service that, four years ago, had not attained
its present importance. His frail appearance and insufficient
health caused him to be rejected twice, but in November, 1914,
after repeated efforts, he obtained admission as a ** pupil
mechanician *' at the Pau camp. He looked, so say his com-
rades, like a " little girl ** dressed up as a soldier. In January,
1915, his close attention to every detail of his profession, ad-
vanced him to the " pupil pilot " class, and in February he was
promoted to fly for the first time. From that moment his real
vocation was evident; the work absorbed and delighted him;
the **fields of air " became his domain, where he soon reigned
by right divine of his marvelous gifts as a pilot and a marks-
man. His energy dominated his fragile body to such an extent
that he seemed to make one with his airship. It obeyed his
every movement like a well-trained instrument. He showed
the coolness, foresight, presence of mind, and close attention

Digitized by

Google

1918.] GEORGES GUYNEMER 787

to details of an older man, combined with a childish enjoy-
ment of danger and a delight in his own success that was not
vanity, but the outcome of happy and confident youth. In
those early days, his captain, discerning his aptitudes, wrote in
his notebook under Guynemer's name : " Very young, but his
extraordinary confidence and his natural gifts will soon make
him an excellent pilot''

Towards the middle of the following year, the French
flying corps that, so far, had served only as scouts, gradually
assumed the position of a fighting corps, and as such has con-
tinued to render valuable services.

On July 19th, Guynemer brought down his first German
aeroplane, and five minutes later he landed himself and his
companion within the French lines. "Where is the pilot?**
asked a colonel, who had watched the aerial engagement.
Guynemer came forward, a slim figure with a girlish face.
"How old are you?" " Twenty-two.** "WeU, well,** said the
gray-haired officer, "children are now our best soldiers.'* An-
other colonel, whose men had followed every detail of the fight,
wrote his congratulations to these " children," both of whom a
few days later received the military medal.

For some months, the young airman was attached to a
camp near Compi^gne, where his people lived, and frequently
he flew over his home. When, as sometimes happened, his
fragile health obliged him to take a few days leave, he pined
for his airship, and made his oldest sister promise to wake him
whenever the weather was fine. She conscientiously did so,
and the lad would go off for a few hours chase and come back
refreshed. One Sunday his father met him as he was coming
out from Mass. " Papa, I have lost my Boche, you must find
him,** he said, and then explained that he had brought down a
German airship, which had fallen in the woods some distance
away. He was due at headquarters, so he confided to his father
the search for his victim.

The boy*s pursuit of the enemy through the fields of air
was sportsmanlike in its enjoyment. In December, 1915, he
continued to add to his victories, but in February, 1915, before
Verdun he was wounded. After a brief stay at a hospital, he
insisted, although imperfectly restored to health, on joining
his comrades in the Somme, and again, at short intervals,
brought down several enemy planes. His boldness never made

Digitized by

Google

788 GEORGES GUYNEMER [Sept,

him careless. He always examined carefully every technical
detail of his machine, leaving nothing to chance.

To the end of his short career, this conqueror of fifty-three
German aircraft (only fifty-three were duly authenticated but
many more were brought down by him) retained his girlish
countenance; the delicate features quivered with emotion and
the black eyes burnt like coals in the pale face. He owned to
his sister that, when he took up his work after being wounded,
he knew fear for the first time, and to conquer the sensation,
set himself the task of remaining under the enemy's fire for a
given time, manoeuvring but not firing. He always believed
that this saved his nerves and restored his self-confidence.

During the summer of that year, Guynemer, now a
lieutenant, added new victories to his list. In July, 1916, his
journal mentions that on the 9th, 10th, 11th, 16th, 26th, 28th, he
brought down or severely damaged hostile airships. On Sep-
tember 23d, he disposed of three, but after this triple suc-
cess he was himself brought to earth by the French artillery.
He was picked up, stunned and bleeding, but alive, and on
being recognized, was carried in triumph by the men, while
the spirited ** Marseillaise " rose from the trenches! In Lor-
raine, his next post, he continued to add to his victories, and
is mentioned in dispatches as an unequaled pilot, pilote in-
comparable.

In the spring of that same year, 1917, he and ^is escadrille,
les Cigognes — the Storks — were removed to the Aisne front,
and here in one day — 'May 25th — he brought down four Ger-
man machines. The enemy newspapers alluded to hini as ^ the
glory of French aircraft." These repeated victories so in-
creased his boldness that on May 27th, alone and single
handed, he attacked six German airships and came out vic-
torious and safe. His fearlessness does not, however, suffice to
explain his success; it was due, in no less degree, to the pre-
cision of his methods, to his presence of mind, and his skill as
a marksman. The men in the trenches were never happier
than when, with boyish delight, he manoeuvred above them; his
aerial flights were followed with passionate interest by the
patient soldiers below. On July 5th, he received the Legion
of Honor at the hands of General Franchet d'Esperey. The
ceremony took place in a plain bounded by hills; the sun was
shining brightly; the hero's family was present and when the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] GEORGES GUYNEMER 789

ceremony was over, the troops inarched past a sUm boyish
figure with a pale face and luminous eyes. Beneath the pic-
turesqtieness of the scene, the military music, the enthusiasm of
the soldiers, the sunshine that glorified tUe whole, lay a tragic
significance; many present felt that the shadow of death hov-
ered over the hero of the day.

It was impossible for a human frame to stand this con-
tinual strain of mind and body, so after having brought down
three more aircraft, Guynemer was sent to recruit his strength
near the sea. A great wish of his had just been gratified. He
had long dreamed of an airship constructed according to his
own design, with which he believed he might achieve even
greater successes. An engineer, M. Bechereau, entered into his
plans and undertook the work. The boy's own knowledge of
mechanics and his attention to all the details of the trade, gave
him a certain authority in the matter, and he was allowed to
go to Paris, from time to time, to superintend the building
of his magic airship. In February he wrote to his father that
his new machine would be better than anything he could
hope for. ** I can think of nothing else,'* he adds.

His photograph being widely circulated through the
country, he was often recognized when he passed through
Paris; this kind of celebrity provoked, rather than pleased him.
If he loved glory, says his biographer, M. Henri Bordeaux, he
hated ostentation. By this time he had been decorated by all
the Allied powers: Belgium, Rumania, Russia, Montenegro,
Great Britain, Serbia. He seldom wore all his crosses, but he
often used, at his friends' request, to turn them out of his
pockets to show them. " What decoration is wanting to your
collection?" once said a lady, from whose lips I heard the
story. ** The wooden cross that I shall have some day," replied
the lad gravely. The words sounded to the listener like a
funeral knell. Her own grandson, Guynemer's conurade and
contemporary, had been lately killed on board his airship and
was at rest under a wooden cross in a frontier cemetery.

The new airship was used for the first time by its owner
on the fifth of July, the day he received the Legion of Honor.
With it he gained new victories in Flanders, but again his
strength seemed failing; yet, such was his passion for his
work, those who loved him hardly ventured to suggest that he
should, for a time, take the conunand of a training school for

Digitized by

Google

790 GEORGES GUYNEMER [Sept..

airmen, where his personality and his gifts would have bene-
fited his pupils. On August 17th. 18th and 20th he brought
down more German planes, but although he had lost none of
his boldness, his best friends realized that the nerve tension
of this boy in his twenties was becoming acute to the breaking
point. His father discreetly counseled him to apply for a post
where his technical knowledge of the craft would come into
play. ** No one has a right to leave the front.'* replied Guyne-
mer. '' I know what you mean. Do not let us speak of it : self-
sacrifice is never wasted."

On August 28. 1917. his machine needing repairs, he came
to Paris to overlook the work, and for the last time his slight
figure was seen at the church of St. Pierre de ChaiUot. where
the parish clergy knew and loved him. He always went there
for confession and Holy Conmiunion. and often, before leaving
the church, stopped to converse with the kindly priests, who
were impressed by his generosity and modesty. ** My comrades
do as well as I do.** he would say when they congratulated him
on his victories. On the occasion of this last visit, they were
struck by his gravity, it was touched with sadness. Standing
in the sacristy; after having been to the Sacraments, he replied
to their afTectionate greetings by the word: " Hodie mihi, eras
tibi: I cannot escape. I will certainly be killed.** The words
came back to his listeners when, on the eleventh of September,
just two weeks later, they heard that the king of French air-
men was ^ missing."

That day Georges Guynemer started at 8:25 to ^ bring
down a Boche;" his comrades, more and more impressed by
his strained expression and nervous fatigue, tried, under dif-
ferent pretexts, to keep him at the camp. He went, in spite of
their remonstrances, and. for a time, flew neck and neck with
one of his favorite comrades. Eight German airships having
appeared. Guynemer directed his companion to disperse them,
to facilitate his own task of bringing them down. The two got
separated and. from that moment. Georges Guynemer was
never seen again by his own people.

One of his pupils described to me the consternation that
reigned along the line that afternoon, how telephones and
telegraphs worked from one post to another, how British and
Belgian airmen flew to inquire. The men of his conunand
refused to believe their chief had fallen! The suspense lasted

Digitized by

Google

1918.] HOLY COMMUNION 791

ten days, then a written message was dropped within the Brit-
ish lines; it stated that Captain Georges Guynemer had been
brought down in an air fight above Poelcapelle, that he was
shot through the head and had been buried at PoelcapeUe with
military honors. The news of his death was confirmed by the
Swiss Red Cross, but a certain mystery prevails as to his burial;
when on October 4th the British troops took possession of
PoelcapeUe, they found no trace of his grave. Hence, the
persistence with which the French people clung to the hope
that the lad, who was a national hero, might be a prisoner. A
message that came through the King of Spain on November 8th,
confirmed the news of Guynemer's death, but still left un-
solved the mystery of his last resting place.*

Throughout France, the young airman's fame was cele-
brated, but the Mass said for him at Compiegne by the Bishop
of Beauvais was particularly impressive: his conurades were
present, some grievously wounded and all cut to the heart by
the loss of one, of whom they wrote: ** He was our friend and
our chief; our pride and our ideal."

^According to our press reports, Guynemer's body was discovered later by a
Canadian soldier. He died evidently of a bullet wound In the head. The first finger
of his left hand was missing, so It Is probable Guynemer lost control of his machine,
and hence Its fatal plunge. [Eorroa.]

HOLY COMMUNION.
BY T. J. S.

Not light alone nor warmth of rising sun
Nor freshened beauty of an earth reborn,

Bespeak the fullness of Thy love divine,

Who comest to give Thyself to me at morn.

AH other gifts share but a borrowed worth:
Glory and life and power arise from Thee.

To make supreme Thy pledge of closest love.
Thou gavest Thyself at early morn to me.

Digitized by

Google

THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE.

BY KATHARINE TYNAN.

HE had been told the house was haunted, but when
she came to it, in the second year of the War, it
did not seem to her that its ghosts could be any-
thing but gentle. The house was a low, brooding,
tender old mother of children. The long corri-
d twists and turns, the little bowery and flowery
rooms, were all delightful.

There was one long low room, with four windows set
deeply in the wall, which must at one time have been a nursery.
She made the room her own. When she approached it from
outside she always looked up at the windows with an expecta-
tion of children's faces and children's brown and golden heads
looking at her. Perhaps they were there. She was too short-
sighted to see them if they were; or perhaps she only imagined
things.

It was just the house for children to play in, with front
and back staircases, rooms opening one into another, deep
doors, covered with curtains and hidden sometimes by an arti-
cle of furniture, a wardrobe or a bed on the other side. Her
own children delighted in it. It was full of nooks and corners.
Outside were spacious stable-yards, with lofts above the stables
and granaries approached by twisting stone stairs. There was
a lake, famous for its wild birds, covered with water-lilies in
summer, with a boat which you might navigate between the
tall reeds. There were the most enchanting back-waters. Lit-
tle spits of land ran between the back-water, and if you were
agile you could spring from one grassy path to another, or walk
across an unsteady plank, surprising a heron or coot, or a flock
of wild duck, or the moorhen's chickens; every kind of water-
fowl haunted the little lake and the back-waters, to say nothing
of the wild geese in the wonderful winter skies and the gulls
that came when the storms were out in the Atlantic.

There were all sorts of delicious walks in the woods and
coppices, and in spring there were such a plentitude of prim-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE 793

roses as she had never seen anywhere else. If you can imagine
to yourself a grassy hiU, so covered with primroses that for a
time there was no sign of grass between the flowers. The prim-
roses had run over it like a tide and had run out as a tide will
in little tongues, leaving a trail of pale greenish-yellow foam
behind.

Someone said one day : " The primroses must have been
planted here, but what a labor! It would take the tirelessness
of children to put in all those roots ! ''

After that, she had a dream of children, generation after
generation, planting the primroses, bringing them in from the
woods in little wheelbarrows and " dibbing " them in with toy
trowels.

It was in the winter following her coming that she began
to have an idea that the house was haunted, but so sweetly
haunted! She heard a light young foot cross the hall not ten
paces from her. When she called no one answered: there was
no one there.

Then, in the shadows — the house was full of shadows that
winter — down the long corridor or as she went up the stairs,
something flitted before her, a boy's shape, light and slender.
She caught a glimpse of it, thin as mist, against the end win-
dow of the corridor. From behind a closed door she heard a
boy's laugh. Sometimes she heard voices — always young
voices. When other people heard them she argued about the
acoustic properties of the house and the queer tricks played
by sound, instancing the echo. Why, if a child laughted on the
tennis lawn, or shouted, the house gave back the sound from all
its open windows, as though other children there laughed and
shouted too in a thin fairy way.

At first there was only one young shape, one light step
in the corridor or crossing the hall. That was before the last
day of the old year, when she was wakened from her sleep by
a quick eager voice calling "Mother! Mother!" She lay
awake in the dusk of dawn wondering if she had only dreamed
it; but it was not a dream. The call had come to the elder of
her boys.

Soon the house was very quiet. The younger boy went to
prepare to follow his brother. The girl went to school. Bitter
cold came and heavy snow. The old house was cut off from
the world by its mile-long avenue. The wild duck went away

Digitized by

Google

794 THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE [SepU

to the sea. The gulls became pensioners on the bounty of the
house, robbing the little birds by force majeure. The crows
were melancholy — ^black against the unspotted snow. Every-
thing was starving. There was a track made by the rabbits to
the trees where they ate the bark. The sheep, dirty on the
snow, nosed about piteously, looking for a bit of grass, and
grew lean on their bare rations of hay. The gulls screamed aU
day for food and were joined by others; and, if you lifted a
blind at nights, you saw the ghosts of little rabbits and squir-
rels running against the background of snow.

It was at this time, when she had to walk the long corridors
for exercise, that she became aware, quite suddenly, of two
misty shapes where one had been. More often now she heard
the voices and the laughter. She began to see glimmering faces
in the shadows, eyes blue, eyes brown; when she looked close,
there was nothing. Or something went by her, brushing her
skirt, lifting her hair, as with a little wind.

There were two of the boys. She was sure of that in time.
One had a serious sweet young face. The other was merrier.
There was roguery in the smile, in the blue eyes: the brown
eyes were of a curious velvety depth — almost black. The brows
were arched to a point. A Vandyck face. He was the elder of
the two, she thought. It was the blue-eyed, golden-haired one
who laughed from behind doors and peeped at her from dark
corners.

Then, when the snow had broken up and the grass, lib-
erated from the ice-prison, was smelling deliciously, praising
God; when the first lambs were running with their mothers,
and the thrushes and blackbirds sang; when the gulls had gone
back to sea and the rooks were making a tremendous to-do
over the building of their houses, someone came to make a call.
After the usual talk about the weather and the house and
the neighbors the caller said:

^* I hear your elder boy has gone to the War. So sad that
the two boys who used to be in this house were killed. One
after the other. Two beautiful boys! Their poor mother!**

She asked when they were killed.

" Oh, poor children ! Guy last October and Pat just re-
cently. They were so devoted to each other. Pat always said
that he was going to follow Guy — quite happily and without
wy gloom. He was such a darling — so full of life and merri->

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE 795

ment. Guy was quite different. He was already painting
beautifully. That is one of his pictures over there.'*

^Oh!" She had been wondering about those pictures
with their strange glow of light and color. They lit any room
they were in; and they were in many rooms. When you en-
tered a room with one of these pictures in it your eye was un-
consciously drawn to it; you saw nothing else. " I was wonder-
ing who the painter could be. They are very beautiful. He
gets the strange Western color, the cloud of indigo blue above
a group of feather-like trees with their feet in the bog-flood;
a sky of immense mole-colored cloud with light below it, light
silver and gold and primrose green all in one."

** People rave about his pictures," the caller said, getting
up to go. " A thousand pities the War should take such as he!
They were both beautiful boys."

After that she became quite familiar with the coming and
going of the boys. She saw them or thought she saw them —
she was so short-sighted that she could not be quite sure —
passing through the sunlit glades of the woods, tall and young,
one with a fond arm about the neck of the other, the golden
head and the thrush-brown head side by side. Or they rocked
in the boat under the dappling of the sun and the pale green
uncurling leaves. When she came nearer there was no one.
It might have been imagination.

The house overflowed with pictures. At the end of the
long corridor there was a room full of them, their faces turned
to the wall. When she had taken the house from an agent, and
had gone through the inventory with his clerk, she had not
troubled to see what lay the other side of those canvas backs.
But since she had become interested in the pictures of the
elder of the two brothers, she had gone from one room to an-
other — there were a great many rooms — examining the pic-
tures, good, bad and indifferent. And so, at last, she came to
the room where the pictures stood with their faces hidden,
three or four deep.

It was one of the long bright evenings of high sunmier,
and all outside, to the hei^t of the immense sky, was flooded
with pale gold. The room in which the pictures were faced
North was full of a dazzling reflection. For a time noth-
ing rewarded her search. There were many oil paintings,
some good, some bad copies of famous originals. Very little

Digitized by

Google

796 THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE [SepU

of interest. She had all but concluded that the little room
was a lumber-room when she found a portrait

It was with a quick leap of the heart that she recognized
it. It was Guy, the painter. He had been painted in a scarlet
hunting coat and there was a little black velvet cap on his hair,
which showed brown beneath it. There were the velvety brown
eyes and the thin brows arched to a point. The skin was olive-
hued, with something of the color of a ripe pear in the cheeks.
The lips were sweet and grave. There was something compas-
sionate in the young face, from which she turned away half-
frightened.

The picture was not well painted — ^it was amateurish —
but there was life in it. The great flood of pale gold from the
North sky seemed to have a reflection from the depths of the
brown eyes. Sharply she turned the picture again with its
face to the other canvases. She loved it, but it hurt her.

During that sununer, with the succession of its flowers,
they did not often come. Once, smeUing the sharp sweet-
ness of clove-pinks under her window, she looked up from her
writing and had a momentary glimpse of the boys: but they
stayed away so long sometimes that she thought they were
gone for ever. Sometimes too, she had a sense that they were
there, though she could not see them. She prayed for them
with her own boys, and others in peril, and those killed in the
War, in the little oratory where they had knelt at their child-
ish and boyish prayers. It seemed to her that in the narrow
room with its Crucifix, its never extinguished lamp and flowers,
where they were glad to see her come and grieved when she
went away, these two young sons of the house often knelt
beside her. When she lifted her bowed head from the prie--
dieu at which she knelt she saw them, or thought she saw them.
It was as though they too, like all the others whose pictures
hung about the Crucifix or crept close to It on the table with
its fair linen cloth, like those whose names were on the scrolls
that hung either side of the Crucifix, found the shrine warm to
troop into out of the night and rain.

She was not at aU afraid of these gentle ghosts. On the
contrary she felt the house lonely when they did not come:
she began to wonder how, when the time came for her to leave
this place where at first she had felt castaway, she could en-
dure that they should look for her and not find her.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE 797

No one else apparently knew of their presence. The ghosts
the people had attributed to the house, much less pleasant
ghosts, had no existence. She was sure of that after a couple
of years of occupation. They would have frightened her; not
these radiant boys — ^yes, they were radiant. In that third long
winter they shone on her in those glimpses with a most be-
nignant light, their presence became a reassurance. She
thought that if the old hideous ghosts the people had believed
in were to come, these young knights would be flashing sword
in hand on either side of her to protect her.

That was the winter when her elder boy was in deadly
' peril, and the younger was coming near the point to go. The
elder boy was in the East, threatened as much by pestilence
as by fire and sword. Someone had said to her: " Every man
who stays long enough, unless he is disabled and sent home not
to return, is killed at last.'*

She did not know if it were true or not. She heard it with
a faint cold wonder that anyone should say the like to the
mother of a son out there amid the deadly rivers, with the
sudden agonizing diseases that lay in wait for him if he went
scathless from shell or sword.

Some time midway of this winter, the young ghosts de-
serted her. As she went up and down the house, shaking if the
dogs barked, lest there should be a telegram, she looked in
vain for them in the places where they had shone upon her like
a light in mist. No more when she knelt at prayer did they
kneel beside her. They had deserted the house. And now the
least lonely place in the wintry house was the oratory, where
the pictured faces of " her boys '* as she called them — ^many a
one came to her for comfort in these days because somehow
the tale of her comfort had got abroad — brought her reassur-
ance when the wind cried around the house like a banshee, and
her heart was heavy and cold for what might be happening far
away.

Then, midway of a great frost, there came news, not the
news she dreaded, but the news she had hoped for. He was
wounded. He had fought a great fight : he was to be decorated.
These things she knew afterwards. When the news came that
he had been wounded and would be sent home she felt that
it was an answer to her prayers. He would be out of it, out of
that heU of sickness and death; she would have him to nurse

Digitized by

Google

798 THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE [Sept.,

back to health. Curiously enough it did not occur to her that he
might die of his wounds. He had been two years from her arms.
Now that he was coming home her heart sang like a bird's.

The most wonderful May that was ever known had come on
the tracks of a dreadful spring, and the primroses had re-
placed the snow — since they had so short a time to stay there
was never such a blossoming — ^when she brought him home.
She had gone as far as sHe could to meet him. What dismay
she felt at the first sight of him — this gaunt, serious suffering
man to be her boy, her little boy, as she had called him in her
tender thoughts, though his brother was still her littlest one,
her " baby " — she hid in her heart. His eyes had leaped at her
out of their deep sockets. ** By Jove, Mummie, how pretty and
how young you look! ** he said.

He was there stiU — ^her own boy, gay and f uU of singing,
the soul of him just the same only hurt — to be coaxed back to
what he once was.

She brought him home to the prinuroses. He lay out
among them on an invalid couch, and the scent of them, he
said, clung to everything, the soft wind came with the salt of
the ocean in it and the days were hot; gorse and pine gave out
delicious pungent odors, and the color crept back to his cheeks.
He smiled — he had been very slow in smiling — and after a
while he talked; but by that time all the primroses had flocked
back to Fairyland for another year, and the white pinks had
come and the forget-me-nots were like a sheet of sky under the
apple trees.

She had not asked him about his wound nor about the
battle. But one day when he said at last that he was better, he
talked of his own accord and his talk flowed on quietly, like
the lapping of a wave, even when he talked of dreadful things.

" I have been wanting to teU you,'* he said, " of the two to
whom I owe my life. They came to my help when I was left
behind, wounded. You know I was two nights and a day under
the Turkish fire between the trenches. The odd thing was that
they had been fighting beside me in the advance, and one was
an Irish Guardsman and the other was in the Dublins. There
were no Dublins there and no Irish Guards; and I remember
wondering how they came to be there. Anyhow they were
great fighters.

- Yes? '* she said, breathlessly. " Yes? '

> »»

Digitized by

Google

1918.] THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE 799

** Sometime I will tell it to you at length,'' he said, lying with
closed eyes, " when I am quite well and you can bear it. We
were up against the enemy guns. Our men were going down
all over the place. Over and over again I felt one or the other
of these two covering me. They did not seem to get hit them-
selves. They were like lions — irresistible."

" Yes? " she said again. " Yes? "

" There were a good many prisoners taken," he went on.
** When our men f eU back I was left behind, pumping blood
like a horse. I once saw a horse bleed to death. It was an
artery. Nothing could stop it. I was bleeding like that; and
I was in sickening pain. I suppose I must have fainted or some-
thing. I know that I had been calling out for someone to come
and finish me, and I must have gone off. When I knew any-
thing again the stars were above me — ^immense stars they were,
like lamps rather than the tiny specks we have here. I didn't
know at first whether they were stars or star shells, only as
they stayed I concluded they must be stars. You see I couldn't
think very well, I was ragingly thirsty, and though it was night
there came a hot desert wind that parched me. Soon I said to
myself the sun would rise; then. . . . Before I could do more
than think of the torture, someone lifted my head and held
water to my lips. Such water! It tasted as though it cam6
from Paradise. Someone else was doing something to the
wound, so gently. The bleeding had stopped, I felt something
soft under me. It was grass. And I thought to myself that I
knew now about green pastures and cool waters."

She listened — ^her lips apart, her eyes fixed on his face.

"Well, dear?" she breathed, when he paused.

" There's not much more," he said. " I'm afraid. ... I am
rather slow. How keen you are ! "

She said to herself that he was tired. She ought not to let
him talk more now, but she said nothing to stop him; she must
hear the rest.

" It was those two again," he went on. " The Irish Guards-
man and the Dublin Fusilier. / believe they carried me in.
The chaps said I must have wriggled in. They had no idea any
one had been left behind. They thought they had picked up
everyone. I never found who those two fellows were. No one
had seen them. I'd never have got in only for them. As soon
fts the sun ^ot up I'd b^v^ b^w potted. That is all . . , now "

Digitized by

Google

800 THE BOYS OF THE HOUSE [Sept.,

" Don't talk any more," she said, hastily. ** You must rest
You can just say yes or no. Was one — the Irish Guardsman —
brown-eyed, with closely growing brown hair — the color of
an Irish setter. Eyebrows with a queer pointed arch to them —
a straight nose? ^

"Yes, I noticed the eyebrows. They gave him a look of
asking a question. Do you know him then? "

** And the other, peculiarly merry-looking, blue eyed, fair-
haired, very long dark lashes to the eyes? '*

** I don*t think ... I noticed the lashes. He was fair — and
he laughed, even then."

He opened his eyes, looking at her in wonder.

" Wait a moment," she said.

She ran upstairs, her heart beating fast. She dragged the
portrait of the elder son of the house from where it stood be-
hind two or three others. The dust of it was on her white
dress as she carried it downstairs and went back on to the
lawn.

" Hello ! " he said, " I ought to be carrying that for you.
Why have you dragged that great thing out here? "

'' Can you look, dear? " she asked, supporting the picture
on the end of the couch.

" It is the Irish Guardsman," he said. " So you do know
hun?"

"He used to live here. The other was his brother, the
golden one. FU teU you all about them another time. You've
been talking too much and must have a good rest."

As she went away with the portrait she said to herself:

" Now, I shall not be so much afraid of my baby boy going
to the War."

Digitized by

Google

PASSIFLORA.

BY HARRIETTE WTLBUR.

Yea, a sign
Twixt God and man; a record of that hour

What the expiatory act divine

Cancelled that curse which was our mortal dower

It is the cross 1 — Sir Aubrey de Vere,

I HE blue or common passion flower has been
termed " Holy Rood Flower/' and it is the ecclesi-
astical emblem of Holy Cross Day, observed
September 14th in memory of the retmn of the
true Cross to Jerusalem in 628, after its recovery
by Heraclius from the Persians, probably originally celebrating
the consecration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jeru-
salem in the year 335. For, according to the familiar couplet:

The passion flower long has blow'd
To betoken us signs of the Holy Rood.

The Spanish friars in America first called it *' flower of
the Passion" (flos passionis)^ a name which has never been
changed. It is one of the great contributions of the Western
hemisphere to the symbolical flowers of Christendom, and its
star-like blossoms have taken a worthy place beside the mysti-
cal roses and trefoils of ecclesiastical decorations, never more
appropriately than in the iron work of the beautiful choir-
screens at Lichfield and at Hereford.

The cross-marked flowers of passion hang o'er the vic-
tor's palm. — Anon (" In a Dominican Priory ").

It was regarded as " the flower of the five wounds," by which
the Passion was set forth, so that in due season it might assist,
when its marvels should be explained to them, in the conver-
sion of the people of Mexico, where it grew. The early Fathers
saw in its bud the Eucharist, in its half-open flower the star in
the East, and in the f uU bloom they could point out how the five

VOL. CVII. — 51

Digitized by

Google

802 PASSIFLORA [SepU

anthers represented the five wounds received by Christ when
nailed to the cross, the triple style being the three nails em-
ployed, one for each of the hands, the other for the feet; the
anthers are the hammer, cup, and sponge; in the central re-
ceptacle one can detect the piUar of the Passion, and in the fila-
ments forming the corona is seen a representation of the crown
of thorns. The five sepals and five petals stood for the ten
faithful apostles, and the whole calyx depicts the nimbus, or
glory, with which the scared head is surrounded. Then, too,
in its leaves are the spear-head with their glandular thirty
pieces of silver, and its tendrils are the cords that bound the
Lord. A curious old drawing shows not only a likeness to the
implements of the crucifixion, but the objects themselves in
miniature: the column, nails, crown, cup, and all. In allusion
to the flower habit of half-closing to a bell form, a churchman
wrote : " It may be well that in His infinite wisdom it pleased
Him to create it thus shut up and protected, as though to indi-
cate that the wonderful mysteries of the cross and of His Pas-
sion were to remain hidden from the heathen people of those
countries until the time preordained by His High^t Majesty.**
In an old tradition, it was the passion flower which climbed the
cross and fastened about the scars in the wood where the nails
had been driven through the hands and feet of the Sufi'erer,
and so absorbed their imprint.

A flower that had so wild a charm and grace,

That people call it the flower of the Passion.
Purple and sulphur pale, from out the sod

Of Calvary, they say, this blossom burst
When men had crucified the Son of God,

And shed his blood to heal the world accurst; —
Blood witness, it is named, and you will find

That every several instrument of malice
All tools of mart3rrdom of various kind

It carried counterfeited in its chalice.
Each requisite of pain the flower adorns.

From out its torture chamber nothing fails.
The spittle and the cords, the crown of thorns.

The cross, the cup, the hammer, and the nails. — Heine.

In the language of flowenit the passion flower, when held
erect, speaks of "Faith,** but wb» held reversed implies "re*

Digitized by

Google

1918.] PASSIFLORA 803

ligious superstition.*' One writer says that its evanescence and
its rays of glory make it fitted to symbolize human life. How-
ever, by long association, it suggests sorrow:

The plant where pious maids discern the passion,
The death by which we live. — Hartley Coleridge.

But, for that she hath wept.
And over buried hopes long vigil kept.

Bring mystic passion flowers.
To tell the tale of sacrificial hours

When, lifting up her cross.
She bore it bravely on through pain and loss.

— Julia C. R. Dorr.

And round his brow the dying Autumn weaves

An empty wreath of faded passion-flowers. — HJI.

The passion flowers are an American species exclusively,
generally found within or near the tropics. The different
species are chiefly climbers, and are very handsome plants.
Several were, long since, naturalized in Europe and regarded
as one of the most graceful of plants for training upon walls
and trellis work. C. P. Cranch tells us that, at Sorrento, it is
a conmion sight to see " the passion flowers twining through
countless roses;" indeed, most of the poetical quotations on
the plant indicate its thorough adoption by the Old World:

In and out the balconies thin stems
Went twisting, and the chains of passion flowers.
But, blossom and phantasmal orb of fruit
Alternate swung, and lengthened every hour.

—Harriet E. H. King {^'Palermo'').

The thatch was all bespread

With climbing passion flowers;
They were wet, and glistened with raindrops shed

That day in genial showers.

— Jean Ingelow (" Cottage in a Chine ").

The common, or blue Passion flower (passiflora caerulea)
is a native of Brazil and Peru, where its branches often climb

Digitized by

Google

804 PASSIFLORA [Sept.,

to the tops of the highest trees, where they sustain themselves
by means of strong tendrils, and send out a succession of the
most curious and beautiful flowers, of a lovely blue color with-
out and purplish and white within, the filamentous corona be-
ing of the same color as the petals. The blossoms possess a
faint smell, and last for a single day only; the fruit is egg-
shaped, of the size of a large plum, yellowish when ripe, and
filled with a sweetish unpleasant pulp and black seeds. This
is well-known in Europe, where it has been grown since 1699,
and is now a favorite greenhouse and garden plant. One poet
refers to it as " the queen, the peerless passion flower;** it was
one of the flowers which grew in *' Maud's " garden of roses
where

A lion ramps at the top, —

He is claspt by a passion flower.
♦ ♦ ♦

There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion flower at the gate. — Tennyson.

In Owen Meredith's Lucile, we read of "the thick pas-
sion flowers of the little wild garden," and, in fact, there seems
to be tendency among poets to associate this flower with
worldly affection. Thus, a certain lover observes how, in the
conservatory, "the passion flower o'er her bright head
dropped,** and Edward S. Field says in A Garden Son:

The passion-vine clings to the wall.
But the wall is cold; it does not care
For the passion-vine.

Maria Lowell, however, in describing The Grave of Keats,
notes the absence of this plant from the tomb of this pure-
hearted young poet, for she says:

No mystic-signalled passion flowers

Spread their flat discs, while buds more fair

Swing like great bells, in frail green towers.
To toll away the summer air.

Alfred Noyes, whose love of color is so pronounced, hai
painted a pretty picture of Passiflora cmrulea in his poem A
Flower of Old Japan:

Digitized by

Google

1918.] PASSIFLORA 805

For the red-cross blossoms of soft blue fire
Were growing and fluttering higher and higher*

Shaking their petals out, sheaf by sheaf,
Till with disks like shields and stems like towers
Burned the host of the passion flowers.

''In the land of the sun's blessing where the passion
flowers grow/' as Arthur O'Shaughnessy puts it, these many
bright species make a riot of color in reds, blues, purples,
whites, blended with the yellow fruit and the large green
leaves, and the tall trees, ''interlaced with purple passion
flowers in gay festoons," form gay bowers of beauty:

The passion flower's clinging leaves interlace
As a screen from the glare of the setting sun.

-—Anon ("In the Tropics").

And the red passion flower to the cliffs, and the dark-
blue clematis, clung.

— Alfred Tennyson (" The Voyage ofMaeldune ").

The granadiUa vine (Passiflora quadrangularis) is of
economic importance, and has been successfully cultivated
even in Europe for the sake of its fruit. It is a native of the
West Indies, and the fruit, large, oblong, of a greenish yellow
color when ripe, soft and leathery to the touch, quite smooth;
with a very thick skin enclosing a succulent, purple pulp, of a
sweet taste but slightly acid, is prized, because cooling and
agreeable in that hot climate:

Soft, spongy plums on trees wide-spreading, hang
Plump grenadilloes. — Philip Freneau ("Santa Cruz").

As its specific name indicates, it has a square, ligneous stem;
the leaves are from five to six inches long, the flowers are large,
showy, red within, white without, and odoriferous.

The granadiUa, in its bloom, *
Hangs o'er its high, luxurious bowers
Like fringes from a Tyrian loom.
—Maria G. Brooks (" Farewell to Cuba ").

Digitized by

Google

806 PASSIFLORA [Sept.,

The name "* granadilla " is the Spanish diminutive for
" granada," the pomegranate, in honor of its edible fruit.

The South American species are all highly colored in blos-
som, but those found in the Southern States are not so gay.
Those of the flesh colored (Passiflora incarnate) are whitish
within, with a purplish pink corona. The yellow-flowered
(Passiflora lutea) with small yellowish-green blossoms, and
oval purple fruit, occurs in woodlands and thickets from Ohio
to Florida. Another Florida species (Passiflora suberosa) has
greenish sepals, no petals, and purplish corona. One botanist
names one hundred and thirty-five species of passion flower.

The passion flower blooms red or white,
A shadowed white, a cloudless red;
Caressingly it droops its head.
Its leaves, its tendrils from the light.
— Christina Rossetti (" Songs for Strangers and Pilgrims ")

The starry passion flower still

Up the green trellis climbs,
The tendrils waving seem to keep

The cadence of the rhymes.

— Anon C* Recollections ";.

Digitized by

Google

ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA.

BY EDMUND T. SHANAHAN, S.T.D.
IX.

I HE Lord answered more than He was asked on the
Mount of Olives. Instead of stopping at the
questions proposed. He went on to speak of His
" coming " in another and more personally con-
cerning sense. He declared that He would come
to the individual at death, emphasizing this as the Parousia
for which all should constantly be on the watch, ''like men
with loins girt and lamps lighted in their hands " — two strik-
ing symbols of readiness! — ^waiting for their Lord when He
came back from the Wedding Feast of eternal life, to conduct
them singly thither.^ Can it be proved that Jesus gave this
additional sense to His '' coming? " Is it possible to establish
that He taught the privacy of His Parousia in addition to its
publicity? It is the sole point in the Discourse, concerning
which no proof has as yet been proffered, and upon it many
issues of moment hang.

Unless all signs fail, the thought of the twenty-fourth chap-
ter of St. Matthew suddenly changes with the thirty-seventh
verse, and we are introduced to another sense in which the
'* Son of Man shall come." This change is indicated, among
other things, by the contrasting of two pictures — the picture of
the angels gathering together^ His elect from the four winds;
and the picture of individuals singly taken or left.* If we can
determine the meaning of the verse, ** One is taken and one
is left," we have direct access to the thought of the Saviour in
the latter part of the Discourse, and the key to the illustrative
parables that follow.^

There can be no doubt that the change of meaning, what-
ever it be, is from the public and curious to the private and

^ Luke xll. 35, 36. > jtnouvdt^ouatv. ICatt xxiy. 31.

• i!<; rapaXa^iyexai xol i!<; dbpfmtt. Matt. xxlv. 40» 41 ; Luke xrli. 34, 35.—" Then "
— ^the reference Is to Jerusalem's destruction — ^"two shall be in the field; one Is
'taken up,' and one is left" The prophetic present employed by St ICatthew is
translated Into the indicative future by St Luke.

«The Parable of the Thief. Matt xxlv. 43; Luke xU. 39. The Parable of th^
Ten Vlr^ns, Matt xxr. 1-1$, The Furable of the Ttdents. Ifatt x^. 14-90t

Digitized by

Google

808 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Sept,

personally concerning. When the Saviour speaks of "one
being taken, and one left, *' He is not answering a question that
was asked Him, He is interpreting His Parousia in a new,
unwonted light that had no flashing foregleams, even the dim-
mest, in the literature of Israel. Even were we in possession
of no text but that of the First Gospel, this much, at least, might
therefrom be gathered without strain. It is the " coming of a
thief;** • it is the " coming of the Son of Man " to those whom
He personally cautions to be ever ready to meet Him;^ it is the
" coming " of the Lord of that servant,^ or the Lord of those
servants,^ either suddenly, or after a long time, to ** make a
reckoning with them;" it is the " coming *• of the Bridegroom
at midnight to the sleeping ten, five of whom go in with Him to
the Wedding-Feast, and five find the entrance barred;* it is a
" coming " in which the words of greeting are " thou " and " I,**
either to welcome the individual to enter into the joy of his
Lord, or to condemn hini for a life mis-spent.*®

Surely, the ** coming *' which is thus described as a rela-
tion of person to person — the Person of the Lord to the person
of each individual servant — means something quite distinct
from the destruction of Israel, or the cataclysmic ending of the
world. We are in the presence of corrective teaching. The
Lord is disestablishing the Palestinian doctrine that those phys-
ically surviving to the end of Israel shall see salvation.^^ He is
announcing to the disciples that salvation depends on their per-
sonal relation to Him, not on their survival or non-survival to
the time of the city*s faU. "Who, then,** He asks them, "is
the wise and prudent servant, whom His Lord hath set over
His household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is
that servant whom his Lord when He * cometh * shall find so
doing.** In other words, as the verses preceding plainly in-
dicate:" "Blessed**" is that servant — ^not the one "who
waiteth and cometh to the thousand three hundred and thirty-
five days,** but the one who is permanently ready at all times
to be " taken up " ** into the Kingdom of eternal life, admis-
sion into which is not conditional on one*s being alive in the last
days of Israel, but on one*s being ready at the hour of death,
whenever and wherever that may come.

•Matt xxiv. 43. •Matt xxiv. 44. «Matt xxiv. 46-50. •Matt xxv. 19.
•Matt XXT. 1. 3, 10, 11. >*Matt xxv. 12, 21, 22, 26. »2 Es. Vl. 25; Ix. 7, 8.
» Matt xxiv. 40-44. » otxdptoq. Compare Daniel xU. 12.

•• cspatXaqiftdcyrcoR. Matt. xxhr. 40, 41; Luke zrU. 34, 35^«acpaX4(t»0(im. John xlv. 3.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 809

There is no dearth of proof that this is actually the in-
tended meaning. The reference to the " coming of the Son of
Man,'* at the beginning of this section, is accompanied by a
conjunction, the presence of which in the text gives clear warn-
ing that something is about to be said, in addition to what went
before. ** So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be clear " is
the way the verse runs in the oldest and most reliable read-
ings.^^ This conjunction is not found in verse twenty-seven,
where the meaning attached to the Parousia is the destruction
of Jerusalem. There it is simply said: ** So shall be the com-
ing of the Son of Man.*' ^' It is remarkable, to say the least,
that this conjunction should be present in the second mention
of the ** coming of the Son of Man," and absent from the first.
The Textus Receptus obscured matters by inserting it in verse
twenty-seven, where Griesbach rightfully questioned the cor-
rectness of its presence. The readings of the Matthean text
vary; and it would be precarious to build a scientific argument
upon them but for the supporting testimony of St. Luke, in
whose Gospel we find this same significant **also'* brought
directly before our notice." Nor is this all. In St. Luke's
verse about the " lightning," " which corresponds to the twenty-
seventh of St. Matthew, there is no trace of its presence in any
manuscript; a fact which goes clearly to prove that the refer-
ence to Noe in both accounts is the introduction of a new
thought.^* Grammatically, therefore, there is the strongest of
evidence that the " coming of the Son of Man," mentioned in
verse thirty-seven of the Matthean report of the Discourse, is
employed in a sense additional to the preceding, and that the
thought behind the phrase has changed.

What particular idea did the Saviour wish to enforce by
the statement: '"And as were the days of Noe, so shall also
be the coming of the Son of Man. For, as they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that
Noe entered into the ark; and they paid no heed until the
flood came,'^ and took them all away, so shall also be the

tf ouTib»c lorat xdtl 4 ^ntpouafa tou uloO toO dbvOp(!>«ou. Matt xxlv. 37.

>* outut; loToc f) xapouo^a toO ulou tou dbvOpcoxou. — ^Ifatt xxiv. 27.

» o5t(i>< Iotor xfld Luke xtU. 26. uLuke xtII. 24.

s* The T^P> sometimes Inserted In Matt xxlv. 37, Is rightly rejected by Tlschen-
dorf for iL St Loke has luA, xtU. 26--« sore proof that y^p was not used by St
Matthew. **Matt xxir. 37-39; Luke xrU. 27.~4X6flyln both instances.

Digitized by

Google

810 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROVSIA [Sepi,

coming of the Son of Man." The point of the comparison is
not surprise and suddenness, but the exact similarity between
the " coming " of the Flood and the " coming " of the Son of
Man, as the text distinctly says. Those who hold that the
comparison refers to the Second Advent in connection with
the destruction of Jerusalem do not seem to realize that the
text resists their view. Why should the Saviour say, if His
words concerned the Second Advent, that His "Coming"
would be sudden and surprising? Has He not just told His dis-
ciples the opposite, bidding them not to take fright at wars or
rumors of wars, or the rising of nation against nation? " ** Has
He not just finished assuring them that their practical judg-
ment would prove sufficiently forewarning,^^ and that they need
not grow anxious until they actually see the assembling of the
foe?" The Second Advent theory of the comparison is self-
disproving.

Jesus compares the '' coming of the Son of Man " to the
'' coming " of the Flood. That is the outstanding fact in the
text, and the grammatical indications that this is the point of
the comparison are very strong and striking in St. Luke. When
he likens the Lord's coming to the ** lightning," the third evan-
gelist uses an adverb signifying analogy:*^ but when he com-
pares it to the " coming " of the Flood, an adverb is employed
which indicates the exact similarity *• of the approaching "days
of the Son of Man " and the former " days of Noe." And what
can this exact similarity mean but the destruction of the muU
titudCf and the saving of single individuals from among the
vast throng that shall then, as in the days of Noe, go unheed-
ing to their doom? This thought is expressly set forth by St.
Matthew in the very next verse: "One is taken, and one is
left;" and its explicit setting forth offers the safest of reasons
for concluding that such is, indeed, the purport of what pre-
cedes. Jesus is asserting that salvation is to be private and
individual, not public and collective, at the time of IsraeFs
destruction. He is interpreting His Parousia in the personal
and spiritual sense of His " coming " to the Twelve and count-
less others, to bring salvation or rejection, at the hour of death.
The disciples have already been cautioned to " look to them-

niCatt xxiT. 6. 7, 8. "Matt xxlv. 32, 33.

» Luke zzL 20. •• *0(nnp. Luke xril. 24.

■Kal Ka(8d>< ifiyvn, Luke xrll. 26. Compare the tA adxdi (xQtQxot) xvU. 30.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 811

selves.** *• They have akeady been told that ** he who shall
lose his life for My sake, shall find it;*^ and that he who perse-
vereth unto the end, the same shall be saved." *■ To which the
Lord now adds ** that He is to come to each one singly at lif e*s
close, to take him up, if he be ready, to the "* Kingdom of
Glory" — a Kingdom which the Jews expected to see estab-
lished on earth, in the storied land which their fathers trod.
Jesus, has put a new meaning into the ** coming of the Son of
Man." The content of this current phrase of prophecy has
changed.

An interesting circumstance attests this change of mean-
ing. In his Second Epistle, St. Peter informs the Christians
of Asia Minor that he expects to die within a short while. '" I
know," he says, that " the putting-off of my tabernacle cometh
soon, as the Lord Jesus Christ hath signified unto me." '^ This
declaration of St. Peter is quite conmionly connected with
the prophecy of the Lord recorded by St. John, in which the
Beloved Disciple is portrayed as outliving the Head of the
College.*^ But with all due deference to existing opinion, this
cannot possibly be taken as the subject of reference. In the
Johannine Gospel, Jesus foretells the maimer of St. Peter's
death, not its time. He predicts the future crucifixion of the
Prince of the Apostles, but says nothing that would intimate its
nearness — a circumstance that compels us to look elsewhere
for the source and occasion of this forewarning utterance.

Have we not the solution of the problem in what St Peter
gathered from the Lord's words about '' one being taken and
one being left? " The Chief of the Twelve was manifestly con-
cerned upon their utterance, because they took a parabolic
form in which the Lord was not wont to speak to His own in
private. " Lord," he said to Him, " speakest Thou this Para-
able unto us or also unto all?"" The question is put im-
mediately after the Parable of the ThieTs Attack, recorded by
St. Matthew in the eschatological discourse,** and by St. Luke
on a different occasion,*^ but in a context where the Lord, as
here, is correcting the Jewish idea of salvation — deathless ex-
istence in a Kingdom of glory on earth.** St. Matthew does not

»Markxlii. ». aviCatt xrl. 25. "Ifatt zzlv. IS.

"Luke xvil. 33, 34. Notice the collocation of the two Tenet.
•• 2 Peter 1. 14.

"^John xxi. 18, 10. *'And this He said, signifying by what death he should
glorify God." " Luke xil. 41.

"Matt xxiT. 43. MLuke xil. 39-41. "Luke xTii. 20-37.

Digitized by

Google

812 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Sept,

report St Peter's question, nor St. Luke the Lord's answer.
But St. Mark records the Lord's reply in the closing verse of the
Discourse: " What I say to you, I say to all: Watch.** »•

Is not this the occasion to which St. Peter is referring,
when he declares that the Lord told him of the nearness of
His death? Have we not, therefore, the express testimony of
the Chief of the Apostles that this was what he understood by
the " coming " in which " one would be taken and one left? *•
Was not this the personal lesson which he derived from the
Parable of the Thiers Attack, and the picture of the man whose
own house was " dug through," «^ before Israel perished? What
else could he infer from the solemn admonition : *' Wherefore,
be you also ready, because at an hour that you know not, the
Son of Man cometh?"" St. Peter knew very well that the
Lord was not alluding to Jerusalem, much less to His Second
Advent, when He spoke of a '* coming of the Son of Man '' that
would have no heralding signs. He was quick to catch the dif-
ference between a '" coming " that made its approach known
beforehand by the prophesied course of events and one that
would descend upon him overnight. His question shows that
he understood the "" coming of the Son of Man " as referring
to the hour of individual death. Death was when, and where,
and how the ** kingdom of glory *' was to come. And unless
St. Peter had the Parable of the Thief in mind, when, in his
Second Epistle, he speaks of the Lord's having told him that he
was soon to die, the occasion on which Jesus so addressed him
has escaped reporting — a supposition impossible to entertain,
in view of the curiosity and excitement which such a prophecy
would have naturally aroused, among a body of disciples who
conceived of salvation as unending life on earth with the Mes-
sianic King.

A baffling passage in St. Luke, regarded by most critics
as a lost proverbial allusion, affords the most simple, unex-
pected, and striking confirmation of the view that is here put
forward. The Pharisees ask the Saviour, " when the Kingdom
of God cometh" — the Kingdom of mundane glory that was
expected when the Temple fell. Jesus tells them that *'the
Kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall
they say, Lo here! or lo there! for the Kingdom of God is
among^^ you," *• nay, has actually been in existence since the

MMark xUi. 37. «Matt xxiv. 43. "Matt xxlv. 44.

** Compare Luke xl. 2M. — " The Kingdom of God is come upon you.**
« Luke xrU. 20. 21.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 813

Baptises time.** This question of the Pharisees about the time
of the Kingdom*s coming brought the whole Jewish doctrine of
salvation into clash with the teaching of the Lord; and He
immediately turns aside to instruct His disciples on the falsity
of the Pharisaic concept of the ** Kingdom of glory " as some-
thing local, terrestrial, and purely future. At the close of the
instruction, He makes this solemn statement to the contrary;
" I say unto you, this very night^^ two shall be in one bed; the
one shall be taken up and the other shall be left; two women
shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken up and
the other shall be left; two shall be in the field; the one shall
be taken up, and the other shall be left.** ^ The disciples are
manifestly puzzled. " Where, Lord? " ** they ask Him : " where
shall all this accepting and rejecting take place, of which
Thou speakest ?" Surely, this is not the kind of salvation prophe-
sied to come in Israel at the time of her overthrow? And
Jesus answers : ** Yes, this is the kind of salvation that shall
come in Israel when the invading armies overrun her unto-
destruction '* — an answer that is locked up in the adapted
prophetical quotation, "Where the dead body (Israel) is,
there shall the eagles (destroying armies) be gathered to-
gether." " . . ^

That this is actually me meaning becomes convincingly
apparent upon a detailed inspection of the text. The state-
ments made in this particular section are all didactic and cor-
rective. " Days will come," says Jesus to the Twelve, " when
you shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and
you shall not see it;"** a declaration which we are compelled
to understand of the glorious Son of Man, not only because that
was the thought which the Pharisees had in mind when they
inquired about the time of the Kingdom's establishment, but
also because of the phrase : '' Days shall come." St. Luke em-
ploys this expression, without the definite article, four times ;*^

«Matt xl. 12; Luke xri, 16.

^ tajTD T^ vuxtI. Luke xvil. 34. Compare xil. 20, and the oi^^apov th zlx. 9,
xzUl. 43. — £xctvo< would have been used here, if the reference were to Jerusalem.
In fact, St Luke uses it in that connection, xvii. 31. Contrast the xixt in
Matt xxiv. 40, and see note 3 preceding.

« Luke xvii. 34, 35. «• Luke xvii. 36, 37.

«For proof of this meaning, see: St, Matthew and the ParousUu Thb Catbouc
WoaLD, June, 1018, pp. 864-370. « Luke xvU. 22.

«* Luke xix. 43; xxi. 6; xxi. 22, xxiii. 29. ii[UpaR without the article.

Digitized by

Google

814 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Sept,

and the reference is always to Jerusalem, to the days of ven-
geance, instead of expected glory that are drawing nigh.

The refutation of existing opinion becomes clearer still
in the several Lukan verses in which the seventeenth chap-
ter rises to its climax. The Saviour warns the disciples against
the false expectation of the Pharisees, distinctly requesting
them to pay no heed to the rumors of His Return that will fill
the country during the siege (v. 23). There is to be no se-
cretiveness about the " day of the Son of Man " which is ap-
proaching. It will be as visible as the lightning unto all (v. 24) .
But first He must suff'er many things and be rejected of this
generation — a conception of the Messias that ran counter to
every thought and hope of Israel (v. 25) . The coming " days
of the Son of Man,*' He next tells them, are to be exactly simi"
lar to the days of Noe and Lot, when the unheeding ate, drank,
bought, sold, planted, and built, until the Flood, in one case,
and fire, in the other, came and destroyed " them all ( w. 26-29) .
After this same mamier*^ shall it be in the day when the Son of
Man shall be made manifest (v. 30). No glory followed de-
struction at the time of the Flood, or the burning of Sodom.
None shall follow when Jerusalem is destroyed. **In that
day, he that is on the housetop* leJ-v ^m not go below; and he
that is in the field, let him not rStOi^ to the stricken city " (v.
31), in expectation of the glorious Son of Man. *' Remember
Lot's wife (v. 32) . Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall
lose it; and whosoever shall lose it, shall preserve it (v. 33)."

What is the meaning of this verse about saving one's
life and losing it? Is it a reminiscence of the old Jewish idea
that those who escape the predicted perils shall see salvation in
the land and "be preserved alive forever?" ^ Or — ^is it a cor-
rective statement, announcing a new and wholly different con-
cept of salvation? The saying occurs in all four accounts, and
is reported six times '^ — the surest of indications that it was
regarded in an important light. In the five other instances in
which it occurs, the saving or losing of one's life is directly
connected with the confession or denial of the Saviour."*
" Everyone, therefore, that shall confess Me before men, I shall

^ ixbiXtatv — ^Luke xtU. 27, 29. The stress-word of the context

M2 Es. ix. 7. 8.

«lCatt X. SO; xrl. 25; Mark yUI. 36; Luke Ix. 24; xtU. 33; John xil. 25.
"Matt X. 32, 33; xvi. 25. **He that loseth his life for Mg foke, shaU find It**
—Mark tIU. 35, 38; Luke Ix. 24, 25, 26; John xil. 26.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 8l5

also confess him before My Father, Who is in heaven. But he
that shall deny Me before Men, I shall also deny him before
My Father, Who is in heaven." " This is the idea in all five
contexts, and it clearly establishes the un-Palestinian sense in
which the statement was understood. It means that ^ he who
saveth his life (by publicly denying Me), shall lose it; and he
that loseth his life (for publicly confessing Me), shall pre-
serve it" There is no warrant in the Grospel text for any
other view.

Is there any contextual evidence that such also is the
meaning of the verse in the present instance? Immediately
after its mentioning, St. Luke recites the Lord*s statement about
** one being taken and another left this very night" ** Would
he have placed these two verses alongside had he not seen in
the " taking of one and the leaving of another " the same idea
as the Lord*s ''confessing of those who confess Him before
men, and His denying of those who deny Him?" Is not the
meaning plainly this, that '' the one shall be received ^' into
the Kingdom of glory at death, and the other rejected? " The
query of the disciples, " Where, Lord? " ceases to be a mystery,
when the above meaning comes forth from the recesses of the
text. The Twelve still think," notwithstanding the Master's
teaching to the contrary, that salvation is to be a glorious preser-
vation from death when the end of Israel comes.'^ The eschato-
logical view of the Kingdom is in their minds; the historical
in the mind of Jesus; hence the question and the answer. The
Apostles were unable to understand how any one could be
** saved " this very night, much less that such a manner of sal-
vation would continue to be put into effect, after Israel fell.
Salvation was to them a matter wholly of the future; a public
and glorious, not a private and present relation to the '* coming
of the Son of Man." And when Jesus spoke of His personal
visit to each individual at the hour of death, solemnly warn-
ing the Twelve themselves that this was the " coming of the
Son of Man " for which they should always be on the watch
and ready. He was expressing His new doctrine of salvation
in the very terms of the old, and furnishing another example
of His masterful method of teaching. The Son of Man was to

"Matt X. 32, 33. MLuke xyll. 33. 34.

" icapaXapL6dvii>. "*Matt zx. 21.

"St Matthew uses TdTC and refers the verse to the destruction of Jerusalem,
xxlv. 40.

Digitized by

Google

816 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [Sept,

come at the end of Israel in power; at the end of the world in
glory; and at the end of individual life in salvation or rejec-
tion. To a phrase that was thought to have but one meaning,
Jesus had given three; and He added a fourth before His
teaching ministry closed.

Scattered through the Synoptic accounts is a strange
anomaly — a note of personal warning in the very midst of
assurances that no need exists for taking fright. The ** coming
of the Son of Man " is presented at one moment as an event
some distance off ,^* the approach of which shall be made mani-
fest by successive signs; and scarcely have we gathered this
thought from the text, when we are told that it shall be sudden
and unannounced.** The evil servant who " says in His heart,
my Lord is long a-coming,*' and takes advantage of the fact,
discovers his belated Lord "suddenly appearing in a day
that he expecteth not, and at an hour that he knoweth not,
to cut him asunder and appointed his portion with the hypo-
crites;" with those false teachers, namely, who led him to be-
lieve that there was but one way only, in which " the Son of
Man would come.*' *^ The picture of a man going into a far
country, or sojourning there — an idea associated with length
of stay — ^is nevertheless accompanied by intimations that he
may suddenly return at midnight, at cockcrow, or in the morn-
ing;'^ and that the wise and prudent would do well to take
this contingency to heart. The disciples are told to be girded
and ready for their Lord returning from the Marriage Feast,
that they may instantly open unto Him when He knocks;" *'
and they are also advised, not to take counsel of their fears,
until they **see Jerusalem actually being surrounded by
armies." This is the ** sign " that shall flash its lights of warn-
ing in advance.*' Were the Evangelists so dull of sight that
they could not detect the contrary character of these reports?
Or, was it this contrariness itself which they wished us to be-
hold and ponder? Can anyone imagine Christ enjoining His
disciples to be ever alert and watching, if by the '' coming of
the Son of Man," He meant the end of Israel? Is not the " un-
expected coming " an event altogether distinct from that other,
on which the eyes of the whole nation were intently fixed?

Let the author of the Fourth Gospel tell us what was
meant by this unexpected coming:

"Matt xxiv. 6. "Matt xxlv. 43, 44. "Matt. xxlr. 48-61.

" Mark xlli. 35. 36. " Luke xU. 35, 86. " Luke xxl. 20.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 817

" I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you. Yet a
little while, and the world seeth Me no more. But you see Me :
because I live, and you shall live. In that day you shall know
that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." •* " A
little while and you shall behold •* Me no more; and again a lit-
tle while, and you shall see •• Me."*^ " Now, indeed, you have
sorrow, but I shall see you again, and your heart shall rejoice,
and your joy no man shall take from you." •* " In My Father's
house there are many mansions. Were it not so, I would have
told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and pre-
pare a place for you, / come again, and shall take you up^^
unto Myself, that where I am, you may be also." ^® " If any
man minister unto Me, let him follow Me; and where I am,
there also shall My servant be. If any man minister unto Me,
him will the Father honor." ^^ " Father, I desire that where I
am, they also whom Thou hast given Me may be with Me; that
they may see My glory, which Thou hast given Me, because
Thou hast loved Me before the foundation of the world." ^^

In what other sense can these Johannine passages be taken
than that of the Lord's coming at death to the believer, to con-
duct him to His heavenly abode? The meaning cannot be iden-
tified with the " sending of the Comforter," " or with the in-
dwelling of the Divine Three in the souls of the just.^* Over
and above these manifestations, Jesus expressly declares that
He will " come to take the disciples up," to " receive " them
" unto Himself," that where He is, they may be also." The
most instructive and convincing point in the text of St. John
is his use of the verb to " take up," to " receive." It is the
same verb which St. Matthew and St. Luke employ in their
verses about " one being taken and another left " — a striking
proof that the thought in all three cases is the same. " One
shall be received into the Kingdom of Glory, and the other
shall be refused admission." Who can doubt from all this con-
vergent testimony, and the use of the same verb by Matthew,
Luke, and John, that such and none other is the meaning? Who

•*John xlv. 18-20.

• OawpeiTe— " to see with bodily eyes/*

• 5tJeo6e. — to see with the eyes of the spirit

•»John xvi. 16. ojohn xvi. 22, 23.

• xapaXaix6dcvw — " to take up," to " receive." The same verb employed by
Matt, and Luke. Matt xxlv. 40, 41 ; Luke xvil. 34, 35. » John xlv. 3.

"John xil. ?6. "John xvil. 24.

"John xvi. 7. "John xlv. 23. "John xlv. 3.

VOL. cvii. — 52

Digitized by

Google

818 ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA [SepU

can fail to see that the Lord is refuting the Jewish conception
of the " Kingdom of Glory " as an earthly institution of a politi-
cal nature? The "Kingdom of Glory," Jesus tells them,
already exists in heaven, and they shall not know what it is,
until He comes to take them thither after death. In that day
of joy. He assures them, " You will not ask Me any questions
on the subject." ^* Is it any wonder that St. Matthew put the
realization of the Parable of the Virgins in the future : " Then
shall the Kingdom of Heaven be compared to ten virgins?""
It referred to a knowledge which was not to be vouchsafed
them till they died.

Other texts come out of their obscurity to range them-
selves, of their own accord, with the many thus far quoted
Of what was the Lord speaking, if not of the renewal of com-
panionship after death, when He said at the Last Supper : " I
shall not henceforth taste of the fruit of the vine, until that day
when I shall drink it new in the Kingdom of My Father?"^*
Is it not in the same sacrificial sense, namely, of their dying for
Him, as He is about to die for them, that the Lord declares:
'* I shall not eat it (the Paschal lamb), until it be fulfilled (by
their salvation) in the Kingdom of God? " ^' Is it not also the
idea that flashes forth from the fine passage of St. Luke : " You
are they who have continued with Me in My trials; and I ap-
point to you a Kingdom (on earth), as My Father hath also ap-
pointed unto Me : that you may eat and drink at My table in
My Kingdom (of eternal life in heaven) ; and you shall sit on
thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel? " ®° Have we not
here the new doctrine of salvation, expressed under the current
Jewish imagery of a banquet,®^ and cut off from the existing ex-
pectation of an immediate earthly reign of the just? In the best
manuscripts, as we shall see more fully in a later study, the
promise that the disciples shall "sit on thrones, judging the
tribes of Israel," is clearly represented as something ad-
ditional^^ to their "eating and drinking at His table in His
Kingdom." The latter is the primary and immediate feature
of salvation; the former is an event put oflf to the resurrection

"John xvi. 23.— -DJx epj^Tfcexe oj5<v. Contrast with aiTTjjerf in same verse
" Matt. XXV. 1. " Matt xxvl. 29. *• Luke xxil. 16.

••Luke xxll. 28-30. Compare Apoc. i. 6; 1 Peter U. 1-10, especially t. ».
*> Compare Luke xxil. 16, 18.

•» Notice the independent additional clause : xocl xoOrjaeaOe, not xotOijcOt, at would
be the case if governed by Tvat. The Sinaitlc, Alexandrian, and Vatican (B3) so have tt

Digitized by

Google

1918.] ST. MATTHEW AND THE PAROUSIA 819

to judgment, as St. Matthew expressly says." In view of the
distinction which Jesus drew between these two pieces of
imagery — Palestine never drew it! — the theory of Loisy and
others that Christ preached an eschatological Kingdom of the
near future is clearly belied, not only by the grammar of the
verse just quoted, but by all the texts which have been mar- .
shaled for inspection during the course of the present study.
These texts reveal a closer affinity between the first three Gos-
pels and the Fourth than appears upon the surface. They are
not, and cannot be proved to be, mere infiltrations of
Palestinian thought into the teaching of the Master. Rather
are they the pictorial expression of the new and distinctive
doctrine of salvation announced by Jesus — His "coming"
namely, at death to those who continued with Him in His trials,
** to take them up to the Kingdom of His Father, that they might
behold the glory which was His, from the foundation of the
world.

The present study is not by any means a full statement of
the evidence. The Gospels — ^we have not carried the inquiry
beyond their bounds — contain several more luminous indica-
tions that the private Parousia of the Son of Man is the thought
most lengthily developed in the Synoptic text. We shall turn
to their considering in the study to follow. Enough has been
recited to convince the impartial that we are pressing no ill-
founded claim. One thing already stands out most clearly:
The originality of the doctrine of salvation which the Saviour
taught and the impossibility of its having sprung from Jewish
sources. "Jesus,'* exclaimed the thief upon the cross, hang-
ing by His side, "remember me when Thou comest in Thy
Kingdom." And Jesus, solemnly correcting the Palestinian
view of salvation as something wholly future, replied : " Amen
I say to thee, today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise." ** Cor-
rective Teacher to the end!

"Matt. xix. 28.

** Luke xxiii. 43. — orj^Aepov (jurr* ipiou lq(] iv t4> xapot^tfaq).

Digitized by

Google

UKRAINIAN PICTURES.

BY MARY CATHERINE PHELPS LYNCH.

" Nay, thou art not dead, Ukraine,
See, thy glory's born again.
And the skies, O brethren.
Smile once morel

'' As in Springtime melts the snow
So shall melt away the f oe.
And we shall be masters
Of our homes.

" Soul and body, yea, our all
Offer we at freedom's call —
We, whose sires were mighty
Cossack braves.

[KRAINIAN nation! Ukrainian people! Ukrainian
Rada ! The words are constantly before us these
days. Yet they do not carry my heart across
Atlantic and Carpathians, to that land greater
than all France, holding its thirty million souls,
whom to know is to love, pity and admire — even with her
peace treaties signed ! — but to East Seventh Street in New York
city; to that morning on the last Sunday of December, 1916,
when in quest of Russian music, I stumbled, late to Mass, up
the steps of St. George's.

Motioned to another door by a solemn Slav carrying full
seven centuries of sorrow in his eyes, I realized that St. George's
parish, although Catholic, acknowledging the Holy Father at
Rome as head of the Church, was Eastern and Ukrainian to the
heart, placing its men on one side of the church and its women
on the other.

In condescension to American ways, pews were provided,
but only one here and there was in use. I made my way for-
ward through a sea of Ukrainian devotion kneeling in the aisle.
Once in a pew, I felt those Ukrainians were wiser than I. Kneel-
ing benches had been forgotten, or perhaps considered too
great a luxury, even in this New World of many luxuries, for
those who had known all the bitter hardships of life in Little
Russia. I found myself also on the floor and with the pew in

Digitized by

Google

1918.] UKRAINIAN PICTURES 821

front too high and the pew behind too close, it was, all in all,
a very fitting penance preparatory for the coming Feast of
the Nativity. For with their Eastern liturgies and customs,
Ukrainians cling, of course, to the Julian Calendar, thirteen
days later than our own and for them Christmas — or Little
Easter as Eastern Christians quaintly call it — ^was yet to come.

But penance was soon forgotten in the glorious liturgy of
the Mass — one of those Eastern liturgies which the late Andrew
Shipman has brought so close to American hearts interested
in the services of early Christians. The music, without instru-
ment according to Greek Church custom, had for me far more
of pure devotion than that so-perfect music of the Russian
Cathedral choir. This always carries now the Metropolitan
Opera House in its voice even as it sings the Mass in that very
religious setting of St. Nicholas', studded with icons and paved
with sea of worshippers. At St. George's the choir is of mixed
voices. Since the parish counts at least ten thousand
Ruthenians (a local term for Ukrainians) in its fold, it can
hardly be a case of expediency, so it must be Ukrainian cus-
tom pure and true.

Even so are these Ukrainians pure and true Russians from
the very cradle of ancient Russia; the descendants of the orig-
inal Slavic races that gave name to Russia. Recalling history,
one readily understands with what reason these Ukrainians be-
lieve themselves the truer Russian race and culture type, as
compared with the peoples of Great Russia (Petrograd its centre)
who are half Finnish. In the Middle Ages when these men of
Northern Russia were rude colonists, fighting with still ruder
tribes of the North, our Little Russians, Ukrainians, Ruthenians
—call them as you will — had established their capital at KiefF
and here Christianity and European civilization came from
Constantinople.

All the world who loves Russia, knows the history of the
Ukraine. How in the thirteenth century the great Mongul in-
vasion tore her State into shreds and razed Kieff to the ground.
Then and there began that terrible martyrdom of the Ukrainian
people — a martyrdom beside which Poland's century of sub-
jection seems of little moment. Crushing yokes of subjection
following one upon another; sufi'ering added to sufi'ering.
Burning hope and every efi'ort made, again and again, for
recovery of national life; compelled each time to return to a lot

Digitized by

Google

822 UKRAINIAN PICTURES [SepL,

more wretched than before. Yet with indomitable courage and
a patience which only the great may know, Ukrainians refused
to be absorbed by their half -Finnish brothers.

Of higher culture than her conquerors, Ukrainian language
and laws were given to Lithuania. And although proscribed
again and again by the tyranny of Great Russia, the Ukrainian
language lives today, a glorious tongue rich in fork-lore of the
mystic land, in splendid songs of old Slav, pure Russian, and in
a national poetry full of history and traditions handed down
through the village priests of Ukraine, to which one may not
listen without a sob in the throat. Seven long centuries of suf-
fering — that is the story of the Ukrainian people; a story with-
out end in sight even though her peace treaties have been
signed.

When Poland was partitioned, Austria received Galicia
which was Ukrainian land — and mlist be hers again. Under
Austrian rule, barriers to Ukrainian culture were raised and
Galicia became the centre from which Ukrainian language,
education and culture leaped the Carpathians and again filled
the Russian Ukraine with hope of national life. But only for a
moment. Russian tyranny again silenced the thirty million
souls. ** All Slav brooks must lose themselves in the Russian
sea!** There was no longer a Ukraine nation, no Ukraine
nationalism; no such word in the Russian dictionary, unless
it meant " frontier ** — thus did Great Russia spread her diabolic
propaganda over the civilized world. Ukraine was forgotten.
And then suddenly, less than a year ago, we read that Ukraine
had declared independence! We remembered her then — the
martyr nation ! — and hailed the news with joy and a prayer that
it might be fact as well as declaration.

And today, if in the bitter strife for this independence,
Ukraine has made peace with the Central Powers, one remem-
bers the seven centuries — and forgives her. That her martyr-
dom is to be prolonged is too certain today to permit us to look
upon her as false to that equality and freedom for which we
fight and for which she, as a people, has forever preeminently
stood. One knows that Ukrainian wheat, sugar-beet, pig-
iron and steel may serve as formidable factors against that
very equality and freedom; and yet the exhaustion of seven
long centuries of suffering are also to be weighed. Pity coun-
terbalances condemnation.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] UKRAINIAN PICTURES 823

At Mass that Sunday morning a year ago, I thought of all
this suffering under every conceivable persecution, political,
economic and religious, which these people about me had borne.
I did not wonder over their lack of self -consciousness; there
is no room for self in a people who have suffered as have the
Ukrainians for sake of the great things of life. Nor did the
whole-heartedness of their devotion, the ardor, the humility
with which each soul seemed lost in God, cause me to marvel.
I have seen many people at their worship, but none as these
Ukrainians. I have known no other people who have been
martyrs for seven centuries.

I wanted to remain for another Mass, so wonderful to me
were these people about me, so glorious the old liturgy and
ceremonies of the altar, for unlike a true Greek church, there is
no screen here at St. George's dividing the nave from the sanc-
tuary and all the beauty of the Eastern rite is ever before one's
eyes. Yet aisles would in a few moments hold no more; even
the pews were filled. I must go now or never. And so it was
I learned of The Night of Bethlehem — another Ukrainian pic-
ture still vivid before me.

I tried to ask several girls at the door if there would be
Vespers. But like the glorious liturgy of the Mass at which we
had just assisted, their tongue was still as Eastern as the rising
sun. Then at my side I found a young woman from whom I
not only learned of Vespers, but of a multitude of interesting
things as we stood under the choir loft and whispered. She
spoke English and was altogether lovely. Did I know they
kept their Feast of the Nativity later than we other Christians?
And did I ever come to The Night of Bethlehem which the par-
ish gave each Christmas in a hall near the church? She told
me it was given as in the old country of Ukrainia : for centuries
it had been a custom. She did not need to say that it was while
forbidden all public use of the beloved mother-tongue, that
Ukrainian hearts found outlet for expression and solace for
suffering in such sweet old plays as this. A " scenic opera "
she called it, charmingly literal. She herself took the part of
the Blessed Virgin. ... I promised to be there, and we went out
together, she with her Eastern reverence of bending forward
at the waist until her right hand swept the floor, I, with my
Western genuflection — fealty to the One King.

And so when the Julian Calendar announced the return of

Digitized by

Google

824 UKRAINIAN PICTURES [Sept.,

Christmas for the Eastern World, a friend and I entered the
Manhattan Lyceum on East Fourth Street. I know many a
theatre haunt of Old World people in New York — ^yet other
Americans know them too. But who ever hears today of the
Manhattan Lyceum? At least it was Old World to the core that
night, since the four Americans who came to the Ukrainian
Mystery play were as lost in the Ukrainian sea as Great Rus-
sians had commanded Ukrainians themselves to be lost in the
Russian.

St. George's pastor — a priest with the mysticism of the
mystic East and that spiritual exaltation of the Ukrainian peo-
ple written on his face — had given us our tickets the week be-
fore, translating the unreadable tongue and laughingly advis-
ing that we pay no attention to the ** about 7:30 "which meant
at least 8:00 p.m. for the Russian, whether he be Great, or Lit-
tle ! He, with his curate, came in about nine. How long before
the curtain went up I dare not say. The Fathers sat just in
front of us and translated our programimes and explained this
and that with whole-hearted zeal — it may have been for an
hour or two! On the left were two New York City school
teachers who had all of Russia, except its faith and tongue, un-
der their finger tips. With these learned ones, we vied in ask-
ing the priests questions concerning Great, White and Little Rus-
sian; of dead Lithuania, from which some Ukrainians will
tell you they come and which one but vaguely placed a year
ago, for, like Ukraine, Lithuania was a prohibited word; of the
probable fate of the Ukraine when the Allies win the War;
of Greek and Russian Church and whether, forgetting fllioque
clause, all will not soon have followed the Ruthenians into St.
Peter's Fold, acknowledging his successor at Rome. . . . Our
ardor in a thousand questions so pertinent to Ukrainia of little
more than a year ago, was not in the least dampened because,
at intervals, the pastor had to turn and with his cane capture a
diminutive Ruthenian, broken away from parental moorings
and, in his own fashion, celebrating Little Easter by racing
up and down the aisles and climbing over the orchestra's chairs.
Everyone chatted; everyone seemed happy for the Feast, for-
getting perhaps for the moment that the sword was again pierc-
ing the heart of Ukrainia. For when hope of freedom dared
again to leap into Ukrainian breasts, when they hastened loy-
ally to support the Tsar against the Hun, Great Russia added

Digitized by

Google

1918.] UKRAINIAN PICTURES 825

still more cruel tyranny to her rule of the Ukraine, as she
plunged into war that never-to-be-forgotten August.

Suddenly the orchestra begins softly. The pastor's cane
in rapid taps loudly demands quiet. Silence settles on the
house. Shepherds are heard singing in the distance :

Open, O Heaven, give us our Hope,
Abba, Jehovah, let the Messiah come!

All the centuries of suflfering, the patient waiting, echoed in
the words as they came from Ukrainian hearts that night. I
hear them again as I read of Ukrainian Rada and peace treaties
with Central Powers; and hearing them, I understand, at least
a little, why Ukraine, so noble of heart, so great in patience,
and greater still in love of freedom, has signed as she has done.

Before the curtain rose again, the pastor called some of
the " angels *' of the first act and introduced them. The major-
ity were in school — several in high school and planning to teach
later. Education has ever been dear to the Ukrainian — second
only to freedom. I thought as I chatted with these girls, of all
those Ukrainians who have risked life itself in order to slip
across into Austrian Galicia to schools of Lemberg and
Tarnopol.

There was a girl on our right whom the priest gently drew
into the conversation — Sophia, a chambermaid in a small
hotel up-town. I think I have never seen a sadder face. Four
years in America, she told me in her broken English; all her
people " over there.'* How could she be happy even at such a
spectacle " as this," she demanded, when she knew how they
were suffering — how cruel life was in Russia for the poor? I
said she must be happy because Christ was born — the feast
was His, not ours for sadness. Seven centuries of crucifixions
had not pierced my heart as they had hers.

Gloria in excelsis bursts from the angelic hosts as shep-
herds and Magi press closely around the Crib. . . . The play is
over. Yet the picture must remain vivid in -each American
heart there with me that night. Perhaps this year there were
many more than four Americans gathered with the sons of
Ukraine — not so much because within a year all that is of
Russia has pressed so closely home, but because within one
short year we too have learned to love simple things more.

Digitized by

Google

HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. With Maps and Il-
lustrations. By William Mason West, Professor of His-
tory in the University of Minnesota. New York: Allyn &
Bacon. $1.75 net.

This latest work of Professor West is a valuable contribu-
tion to high school study of history. The story of America's
political, social, and industrial growth is admirably told in a
simple, unaffected manner. The treatment throughout is scien-
tific and philosophical. It is not a mere rehashing of facts. It
goes back of the events themselves, states and explains their
causes, and traces the development of policies and institutions.
Yet this is done in a manner calculated to hold the attention
and elicit the interest of the average high school student.

Especially worthy of note is the attention given to the
establishment and growth of the early Colonies. The fact that,
from the very beginning, they cherished the fond hope of a
more complete self-government, and the bearing of this ever-
increasing desire upon the future struggle for independence, is
well portrayed. Another important feature is the due credit
given to the great, struggling West for the part which it played
in the fight for a purer democracy. That the hardy pioneers, who
crossed the AUeghanies in the early years of the nineteenth
century, were most instrimiental in securing the spread of true
democratic principles and in crushing out the more aristocratic
and autocratic tendency of the East, cannot well be gainsaid.
Among other features of note, mention must be made of
the splendid treatment of the industrial development, of the
social and political life of the people of the various sections of
the country, and of the awakening of the laboring classes to a
sense of the important part they were playing in the upbuilding
of America, and to a more definite assertion of their rights as
against the encroachments of capital.

The book abounds in valuable references both to standard
historical treatises and to works of fiction bearing upon the
principal epochs of American history. It is truly up-to-date,
closing with a chapter on the present world-wide War and the
part which America is now playing in this great struggle to save
democracy for mankind.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 827

TWO WAR YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE. By Dr. Harry

Stuermer. New York: George H. Doran Co. $1.50.

Shortly after the fall of Przemysl in 1915, the author of
this volume, a German subject, was sent to Constantinople as
the representative of the Kolnische Zeitung. For two years he
watched the course of events in that city of multiplied inter-
ests, noting Turkey's activities and the influence of the vari-
ious phases of the War upon the Ottoman Empire. He was at
Pera at the time of the Gallipoli campaign, when a few more
shots would have brought victory to the British. He witnessed
the "Holy War" and the massacre of the Armenians; he saw
the corrupt profiteering of Turkish and German officials in
charge of food supplies. Those two years of German-Turkish
politics so estranged and disquieted him that he resigned his
position and left for Switzerland, where he wrote his book.

Dr. Stuermer is bitter in his denunciation of the " world
politics *' of his native country. His official position gave him
splendid opportunities to see the inner workings of this policy
in Constantinople, and he does not spare the Germans or the
Turks in his arraignment. The whole book is a revelation of
foul misgovernment such as only the Turkish mind, aided and
strengthened by German genius, could conceive.

The book contains nothing noble or inspiring. It is a
sordid story. One can only hope that Allied victory will work
new changes in this land of misgoverned people.

UKRAINE: THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE. By Stephen Rud-

nitzky, Ph.D. New York : Ukrainian Alliance of America.

$2.00.

This work was originally printed in the Ukrainian language
at Kieflf, in 1910. It was translated into German, with many
improvements and additions, and reprinted at Vienna in 1917.
The present English edition is a translation from the German.
It is divided into two books, i. e., Physical Geography and An-
thropogeography. The first part treats of the land, its topogra-
phy, rivers, climate, flora and fauna. The second of its in-
habitants, their language, traditions, aspirations, culture, econ-
omic survey, i. e., hunting, fishing, agriculture, minerals, in-
dustry, commerce. Six maps and a large bibliography add
great value to the work which is eminently scientific.

The book bids fair to be indispensable to professors of

Digitized by

Google

828 NEW BOOKS [Sept,

geography, ethnography and general history, in view of the
fact that this new organized nation is likely to become a world
power and take the place of the old Muscovite Empire. The
Ukrainians claim to be the true Russians, the Russians who
with Nestor, the Chronicler and the hegumen Daniel, founded
Russian national literature. Like the Serbians and Bulgarians,
they are endeavoring to form a race entirely distinct from the
Great Russians or Muscovites.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN EUROPE (1250-1450). By

Ephraim Emerton, Ph.D. Boston : Ginn & Co. $1.80.

Professor Emerton of Harvard thus sets forth his thesis:
"This then will be the natural thread of our narrative: the
working out, consciously in literature and unconsciously
through social and political conflict, of the idea that in-
dividuals or bodies of men voluntarily united in a conmion in-
terest might, if they pleased, speak and act for themselves."

Like most moderns the professor has not the slightest idea
of the spirit that dominated the men of the Middle Ages. To
his mind mediaevalism is synonymous with ignorance, super-
stition and fanaticism, under the impudent domination of a
pseudo-divine Papacy. Every immoral ruler who defies the
Pope like Frederick II. of Germany or Philip IV. of France is a
hero; every heretic who denies the Gospel of Christ is a
splendidly courageous soul like Huss or a most eminent scholar
like Marsiglio of Padua. He sets aside with a wave of the hand
all that is supernatural in Joan of Arc's story. Her visions are
the current coin of a fifteenth century imagination, her pro-
phecies untrue, and her fatalistic confidence in herself abnor-
mal.

The curse of our modern days is a multiplicity of textbooks,
which repeat the inaccuracies of their forbears, and are origi-
nal merely in the grouping of facts or the arrangement of a
page. One must understand an age perfectly before one at-
tempts to picture its happenings. That Mr. Emerton proves
himself incompetent, the following three statements prove : That
a deep distrust of man as of an essentially unworthy being per-
vades mediaeval thought; that all the world of phenomena,
which we call real because we can grasp it by our senses, was
to the mediaeval man unreal and untrustworthy; that me-
diaeval asceticism deadened man to all natural impulses.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 829

A MINSTREL IN FRANCE. By Harry Lauder. New York:

Hearst's International Library Co. $2.00.

"^ ^' This story of the famous Scotch entertainer's war experi-

'^ ences is addressed especially to those who suffer the loss of

-^* their own at the battle front. His message is one of strength

-"-- and hope. Himself changed in one crushing tragic moment

sz:: from the gay-hearted troubadour of the world's music halls to

the stricken father, he rises from the blow dealt him by the

death of his only son at the front to go back to his daily task

.'- * of cheering others; and eventually he makes his way to the

trenches and becomes veritably " A Minstrel in France," sing-

1 1 ing to the boys in khaki in the very midst of their fighting.

:,-r A very deep religious spirit, frankly avowed and naively

-: expressed, imbues his pages. "We could only hope and

pray!" he says, as he recounts the sorrowful hours that fol-

:: lowed for himself and his wife after the departure of their

,-, "bonny laddie." "And we had learned again to pray, long

since. I have wondered often, and Mrs. Lauder has wondered

with me, what the fathers and mothers of Britain would do in

these black days without prayer to guide them and sustain

r them ! " And when the blackest of all days fell upon them : " I

f7- thanked God then, and I thank God now, that I had never de-

"/ nied Him nor taken His name in vain." So all through his

narrative, faith in God and in prayer sustains him, not alone

in his personal sorrow, but in the face of the most staggering

horrors of 'warfare, as he witnesses them with his own eyes in

the trenches in Flanders and France.

- A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. By Victor Duruy. Every-

^^ man's Library. Two volumes. New York : E. P. Dutton &

Co. $2.50 net.

It is a pity that the worth of this history is not conmien-
surate with the artistic finish of its style. The author's preju-
dices and predilections unfitted him for the task of writing the
history of a Catholic country. He showed his opposition to and
anti-clerical bias against things Catholic when he was promi-
nently active in educational work in the France of the last
generation. This is not always openly manifested by direct
attacks on Catholic interests or attitudes, nor does he fail to
give praise on occasion, but he warps judgment by omissions
which would be detrimental to the non-Catholic. Thus, he is

Digitized by

Google

830 NEW BOOKS [SepU

full of pride and appreciation for Joan of Arc and Louis IX^
but he colors the portrait of Huguenots with a counterfeit of
truth. His Protestantism throws him awry. The supplemen-
tary portion of the book which brings Duruy up-to-date is still
more flagrantly guilty in its unfairness towards Catholics and
Catholic activity. According to it Catholics are simply no-
where, and the great man of the generation is Clemenceau;
Catholic thinkers might just as well not have existed as far as
the compiler is concerned, and the un-Christian attitude that
has despoiled France is justified in his eyes. The future will
show the glory of the Catholic Church in France and condemn
these recorded appreciations.

A LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. By M. T. KeUy. St. Louis:

B. Herder. $1.25 net.

To this latest retelling of the romantic story of St. Francis
Xavier, Miss Kelly brings not only ardor and enthusiasm for
her hero, but likewise the fruits of considerable research into
the life of the Basque adventurer of God. She clears up a num-
ber of disputed points, and reveals to us, on the whole, a very
human and appealing saint. The old fable of Xavier's refusal
— ^for the sake of self -mortification — to visit his venerable and
beloved mother before his departure for the Orient, is ex-
ploded. That story was always hard to reconcile with the
ardent and tender heart of St. Francis. The fact is, as Miss
Kelly shows, that not only did the saint not refuse to go to his
mother, but he could not have done so — ^for she was long dead
when the day for his going arrived. The style of this excellent
biography is clear and simple, well calculated to make better
known the story of one of the most picturesque and inspiring
figures on the Church Calendar.

SELECTED LETTERS OF ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTEL.

Translated by the Sisters of the Visitation, Harrow. New

York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons. $2.00 net.

More and more we come to know the intimate human side
of God's saints; and through no medium can we grow better
acquainted with them than through their letters — those frank
unpremeditated expressions of the spirit which speak like liv-
ing voices from the past. These selected letters of the great
Jane Frances de Chantal reveal to us a remarkable woman.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 831

gifted with extraordinary powers, yet possessed, as Cardinal
Bourne says in his preface, " of a human nature like our own,
subject to many trials, weaknesses and frailties." A widow
when she came to realize her religious vocation, she was
a mother of children as well as of spiritual daughters — and of
children who were exactly like other children, causing her,
equally, trouble and anxiety, joy and consolation. To her work
of administering a great religious order she thus brought ripe
wisdom gleaned from practical experience.

The publication of a book of this nature cannot fail of
good. Not only will religious be edified and sustained by
means of it, but the lay reader also learns from it that saint-
hood, after all, is a simple matter of perseverance of soul,
whether in the world or behind cloister walls.

JOAN OF ARC. By C. M. Stevens. New York : Cupples & Leon.

$1.50 net.

Andrew Lang did not hesitate to say that Spenser could
not create nor could Shakespeare imagine such a being as Joan
of Arc; the War has, naturally enough, revived or awakened in-
terest in her tragic career which has always been one of the
enthralling romances of history. The author of this present
biography had for his purpose a book of inspiration and
loyalty, and to interpret the meaning of Joan's life for Ameri-
cans. He has written in fullest sympathy with his subject, has
collated from sources and authorities a telling number of facts
and appreciations, and has made of them a thrilling narrative,
though his interpretations are by no means unanimously in
harmony with Catholic traditions. His introductory chapter
is the most disappointing. Carried away by his feelings, he
loses all perspective, as when he says that Joan was the first
martyr in the Christian Church for freedom of conscience in
the conduct of life. He also has his own theory of the forces
which govern life. To such a theory may be attributed the
statement that " Joan was a revelation of Faith, whereas her
enemies were a revelation of Will; and Faith and Will are an-
tagonists in the limited regions of individuals, and are one
only as they coalesce in the infinite regions of the divine sys-
tem of minds which are called the social universe.'* Similiar
misreadings of history and philosophy do much to spoil the
book for the Catholic reading public.

Digitized by

Google

832 NEW BOOKS [SepL,

OVER THERE WITH THE AUSTRALIANS. By Captain R. Hugh

Knyvett. New York: Charljss H. Scribner's Sons. $1.50

net.

There is a wonderful appeal in the quiet charm of this
book that tells of Australia's glory. It is the simple, modest
story of an Anzac scout, who speaks of his country's answer to
the call of civilization, of the mobilization of her free-swing-
ing men, their bloody struggle at Gallipoli, and their further
valor and sacrifice on the Sonmie. The book is the first chroni-
cle of Australia's magnificent story, and no one could wish a
fitter pen for such a resplendent record of unselfish achieve-
ments.

Since their entry into the War the Australians have made
a remarkable record for action. With only a few months
training, they stormed the Turks and their impregnable posi-
tion on the Hellespont and later did valorous work on the
Western front. The theme itself that tells of their brave deeds
is thriUing to the utmost, and in Captain Knyvett's modest
presentation it becomes one of the most virile, interesting and
graphic stories of the War.

THE BIG FIGHT. By Captain David Fallon, M.C. New York:

W. J. Watt & Co. $1.50.

When the War started. Captain Fallon was an instructor
in the Boyal Military College at Duntroon, New South Wales,
He had seen active service in India and had been decorated for
gallantry in the hill fights with the natives. His value as a
teacher made the authorities loath to let him go, for they had
planned to use him in drilling the Australians who volunteered
for service. However, such a quiet life did not appeal to the
young Irish officer who held the boxing championship in the
army, and he used his influence to be assigned to active duty at
the front. Subsequently Captain Fallon accompanied the Aus-
tralians to Gallipoli, and with them fought that desperate fight
that will long remain Australia's glory. After the terrible win-
ter on the Hellespont the author was given a conmiand on the
Western front where he participated in the fierce struggles on
the Somime.

The Big Fight parallels the story told by Captain Knyvett
in Over There With the Australians. While much of Captain
Knyvett's modesty and self-efifacement is lacking in this book.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 833

the rollicking, care-free audacity of the author and his manly,
blobd-stirring story are so compelling that the reader cannot
but be attracted by the tale.

THE SUBLIME SACRIFICE. A Drama of the Great War.

LOUVAIN. A Tragedy.

THAISA. A Tragedy. By Charles V. H. Roberts. New York:

The Torch Press. $1.25 each.

The first two of these dramas are parts .of what Mr.
Roberts' publishers describe as his *' great war trilogy," opening
with a prologue in pandemonium somewhat after the fashion
of Stephen Phillips' Armageddon. The Sublime Sacrifice tells
the story of Edith Cavell*s martyrdom; Louvain depicts the
entrance of Belgium into the present War, introducing such
historic contemporary characters as its King and Queen and
Cardinal. It is no doubt inevitable that these men and woman,
chief actors in one of the world's greatest tragedies, should
point the moral and adorn the tale for many centuries to come.
Such is one penalty of their inmiortality. But it seems a little
early and more than a little temerarious to exact this penalty
in dramatic form while they are still, for the most part, in the
act of doing — and saying — vital things.

In each case, the material of Mr. Roberts' work is enor-
mously dramatic. Its literary presentation leaves more to be
desired. The war dramas produce a strange confusion of effect
by their effort to combine a realistic and familiar treatment
with a remote and stilted phraseology. The conversation of
French maids at the telephone or German officers at the camp
cannot be successfully reproduced in blank verse.

Mr. Roberts* method is more successful in Thaisa, an early
Christian drama centring about the murder of Agrippina by
her son, Nero. But on the whole, one gathers the impression
that his muse is not particularly well adapted to the delicate
and inspired work of poetic drama.

THE RHYTHM AND PROSE. By WilUam M. Patterson, Ph.D.

New York: Columbia University Press. $1.50.

As its title implies, Mr. Patterson's book treats of the sub-
tler form of rhythm in literary prose, as found, for instance, in
the works of Walter Pater; but incidentally, and by way of
illustration, it touches on the general principles of all rhythmic

VOL. cvzi.— 68

Digitized by

Google

834 NEW BOOKS [Sept,

movement. Written mainly from the psychological stand-
point, with data drawn from scientific experiment, it indicates
a careful and extensive study of the subject.

For those who are seeking information on the various
questions connected with rhythm, the book will no doubt be
helpful, even if they cannot agree with all its conclusions; but
it is to be apprehended that, in the present state of our culture,
there are many to whom it will be the voice of one crying in the
wilderness.

A MEMOIR OF WILLIAM A. STANTON, S.J. By William T.

Kane, S.J. St. Louis: B. Herder. $1.25 net.

The many friends of Father Stanton will be grateful to
the writer of this most interesting biography. The subject of it
received the highest praise from Archbishop Harty for his
work in the Philippines. He was welcomed by the American
residents whom he gathered together in the church of La
Ermita; he was idolized by the soldiers; he was trusted and
loved by the Filipinos. He was indefatigable in preaching,
caring for the sick (especially during the cholera epidemic), in-
structing converts, and carrying out his scientific work at the
Manila Observatory.

In British Honduras he did good work among the Maya
Indians. He learned their language, studied their customs, and
won them by his kindliness and patience amid the many hard-
ships of life in the tropics. He was often away from Benque
Viejo many weeks at a time, traveling as much as three hundred
and fifty miles through the bush and soggy swamp land,
drenched for hours by the heavy torrential rains. Like every
true missionary he was ever cheerful, loved by Catholic and
Protestant planters alike, and successful among the Indians,
because they recognized in him a man of God.

GERMANY AT BAY. By Major Haldane McFall. New York:

George H. Doran Co. $1.50 net.

To the author of Germany at Bay, strategy is everything.
It is the secret of all success, whether military, political or
economic. Without it all action must necessarily be futile.
With this idea as a basis. Major McFall takes up the German
strategy, analyzes it at great length and brings out clearly and
forcibly the workings of the German military plan and the
aims that will actuate Germany in concluding peace.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 835

The book is written for the " Man-in-the-Street " and
brings to him the development of the German mind made
arrogant by the philosophy of Gobineau, Nietzsche and
Treitschke and the ambitions engendered by the " Dream of
Dertg." The book, however, is noteworthy not so much for its
analysis of the German psychology, but rather in its presen-
tation of the military phase of the German strategy. Here
Major McFall is an expert talking on his own subject As a
result he gives the reader a most comprehensive understand-
ing of the great campaigns since 1914.

THE CHURCH AT THE TURNING POINTS OP HISTORY. By

Godefroid Kurth. Translated from the French by Rt. Rev.
Monsignor Victor Day. Helena, Montana : Naegele Print-
ing Co. $1.25.

This volume contains the substance of a course of lectures
given at the Women's University Extension in Antwerp dur-
ing the scholastic year 1897-98 by Dr. Kurth, the late eminent
Professor of History in the University of Liege. These brilliant
lectures show how the Catholic Church under the guidance
of her divine Founder met the many crises of her history, any
one of which would have su£Bced to destroy a merely human
institution. The six lectures discuss the Church in relation to
the Jews, the Barbarians, Feudalism, Neo-Caesarism, the Ren-
aissance, and the French Revolution.

LUTHER ET L'ALLEMAGNE. By M. J. Paquier. Paris:

Librairie Victor Lecoflfre. $1.00.

These seven conferences were delivered in the Church of the
Trinity, Paris, during the early part of the current year. They
picture vividly Luther's dishonesty, intemperance, pessimism,
cruelty, fanaticism, false mysticism, and hatred of the Church.
The Abb6 Paquier is well known for his translation of Denifle's
monumental work on Luther and Lutheranism.

RACK6ROUNDS FOR SOCIAL WORKERS. By Edward J. Menge,
Ph.D. Boston: Richard G. Badger. $1.50 net.
This book sets forth the principles that ought to guide the
social reformer. It is written as the author says, " for those who
desire to be right before going ahead; for those who want to
accomplish something that is enduring; for those who want a
why satisfactorily answered when human betterment is dis-

Digitized by

Google

836 NEW BOOKS [SepU

cussed.** After preliminary chapters on tlie purpose of educa-
tion, and the principles of ethics, the writer discusses birth
control, eugenics, sex-instruction, the sterilization of the unfit,
etc. The volume concludes with three lectures on the Primi-
tive Family, the Mediaeval Family, the Renaissance and Ref-
ormation Family.

TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH. By Arthur Tillotson Clark.

New York: D. Appleton & Co. $1.50 net.

Mr. Arthur Tillotson Clark, a 1918 Princeton man, who
gave up his university work to enlist in the Y. M. C. A. service
at the front, gives an entertaining view in this book of a phase
of the War that still remains remote to the average American.
His work took him to the Mesopotamian field, and there he
witnessed the struggle of the British against the Teuton-man-
aged Turks to capture Bagdad and cut off the German lines of
communication toward India. The book gives the reader a
feeling of the vast world-scope of the War. It is well done, in
a clean-cut workmanlike style, yet not lacking in the atmos-
phere of the storied East; and it furnishes a good fund of his-
tory and information as a background for the action of the
present conflict. It is well illustrated with photographs and
maps.

THE HAND INVISIBLE. Edited by E. B. Harriett. New York:
The International Historical Society. $1.75 net.
This book consists of what purports to be a series of com-
munications from the disembodied spirit of Walter L. Curzon.
The messages are recorded at odd dates between 1910 and
1916, and are for the most part axioms and precepts of moral
and religious philosophy. These do not change in character
with changing conditions, nor acquire any closer applicability
during the period of war: and they are presented in the dis-
connected, involved, and sometimes banal, manner peculiar to
writings of this sort, as is also the evasion of any definite state-
ment as to the conditions that control existence in that unseen
world. Beyond some words concerning Spiritualism, there is
nothing absolutely objectionable, but neither is there anything
that has not long been known to the dwellers on earth, and
what is said gains no clearness or force. On whatever theory
the book is to be accounted for, it is of negligible consequence.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 837

IN THE WORLD. By Maxim Gorky. New York: The Cen-
tury Co. $2.00 net

In this the second volume of Gorky's autobiography, the
author reviews his life from the time he began to fend for him-
self in a world which showed him none too much kindness or
encouragement. It is a somewhat rambling narrative, and
there is a super-abundance of details which are not in them-
selves of special interest nor useful for deepening impressions.
He gives us but little of his inner self, his reflections and aspira-
tions during those formative years, but he records minutely
the words and deeds of those among whom he was thrown,
and in these there is enlightenment upon the strange, complex
nature of the Russian people, as well as much that tends to
interpret the author's personality in some degree. The tone
is one of depression, and in the absence of fuller individual
revelation, is frequently monotonous.

RECONSTRUCTION IN LOUISIANA. By EUa Lonn, Ph.D. New

York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. ♦ $3.00 net.

Professor Lonn of Grinnell College has written a detailed
history of Louisiana during the years 1869 to 1876. The story
of reconstruction in that State is a story of the worst political
corruption ever known in our history, coupled with the worst
atrocities ever perpetrated in a civilized community. It is prac-
tically impossible to know all the facts in the case, for both Re-
publicans and Democrats seemed to think nothing of lying and
perjury. It is a most sordid history, told in almost tireless de-
tail, but with an honest effort to portray the facts as they were.
The writer is a bit prejudiced against President Grant and
General Sheridan, although the corrupt rule of the Southern
negro and the carpet-bagger of the North were enough to drive
any people to rebellion.

THE WAR AND THE COMING PEACE. By Morris Jastrow, Jr.

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.00 net.

Treating of the moral aspects of the present War, and like-
wise of the resulting moral angle of the problem of the peace
that is to come, one would have expected Dr. Jastrow to have
handled his subject from the Christian point of view, which is
the only possible manner in which to attack it effectively. In-
stead, however, he bases his argument on naturalistic grounds;

Digitized by

Google

838 NEW BOOKS [Sept.

with him morality and religion are merely matters of natural
evolution, a reflection ^ of man's own ethical advance in op-
posing nature " — and as a consequence, despite Dr. Jastrow's
high motive and his lofty ideal, which are unquestionable, in
the last analysis he cuts the ground from under his feet; leaves
no solid foundation, no absolute standard, on which and by
which his world-morality is to be erected. Apart from this,
however, his book makes interesting reading, and gives an
informing discussion of the causes of the War and of the nature
of the peace which is to follow. The gist of his treatise is well
expressed in these words from his chapter on peace : ^ A war
is not settled either by victory or defeat on the field of battle,
but when the issue involved in the war has been won or lost**
In the present instance, as he shows, a purely moral issue is at
stake; and the moral issue must prevail, not alone in the win-
ning of the War itself, but in the establishment of the coming
peace.

THE BEGINNINGS OP SCIENCE. By Edward J. Menge, Ph.D.

Boston: Richard G. Badger. $2.00 net.

Dr. Edward Menge, Professor of Biology in the University
of Dallas, gives us a popular manual on the relationship be-
tween philosophy and the laboratory sciences. It will be a val-
uable guide-book to the university student who is often tempted
to make shipwreck of the Faith on account of the dogmatic pro-
nouncements of unbelieving professors on the so-called oppo-
sition of religion and science. The most interesting chapters
in the volume deal with the present status of Evolutionary
Philosophy, Theories of Evolution and Vitalism.

IRISH JOY STORIES. By Sheila Mahon. New York: The

Mahon Press. 50 cents.

These stories, collected •^by courtesy of The Cathouc
World and other magazines," cover a wide range of subjects,
but are all racy of Ireland's soil. We read of the gentry and the
peasantry, of fairies and leprahawns, and we carry away with
us a keen impression of Irish loyalty to Faith and country, and
abiding love for her language and traditions. The little vol-
ume is as cheery as the bright green in which it is bound; it
gives us moments of recreation that are doubly welcome in
these troublous days.

Digitized by

Google

1918,] NEW BOOKS 839

THE WINGS OF YOUTH. By Elizabeth Jordan. New York:

Harper & Brothers. $1.40.

This novel by the author of the May luerson stories will
doubtless be, in its way, as well liked as they. It is the story
of a brother and sister, Lawrence and Barbara Devon, who
make a compact to leave their luxurious home for a fixed
period, during which they will earn their own living, indepen-
dently of each other and not even meeting until the time has
expired. Eventful experiences for both follow, and the ad-
venture results in Lawrence's transformation from a spend-*
thrift and gambler into a fine, manly young fellow, which was
Barbara's object in proposing the experiment. Their vicissi-
tudes are entertainingly told, and, of course, include a highly
satisfactory love-afi'air for both.

MY BOY IN KHAKL By Delia Thompson Lutes. New York:

Harper & Brothers. $1.50 net.

There is practically no plot to this story, and in many
other details it bears the ear-marks of a genuine exi>erience.
Despite the theme, and the opportunity to sentimentalize, the
author remains at nearly every point reticent and unaffected —
although she is not always happy in the weaving of the slender
love-thread which she works into the background of the tale.
Her message, of course, is obvious : she speaJcs for the soldier's
mother, and to the soldier's mother, calling on her to siunmon
all her courage and all her innate spirit of sacrifice to meet
the ordeal that war brings upon her; she shows how her own
deadened faith was reawakened by her war experiences and
how the inevitable impulse of the human heart in time of sor-
row is to turn to the Mother of God, as a source of solace and
strength, in real Catholic fashion.

THE GRASS IN THE PAVEMENT. By M. E. Buhler. New York:

James T. White & Co. $1.25.

When Miss Buhler sings of the things she knows and loves,
of the things nearest the heart, she reveals an inimitable grace
of expression — as in her very beautiful lyric entitled Faith;
a power to drive home a thought and leave it fixed. But when
she speculates on the vast problems of creation and life, rising
to face the sun, her wings falter, and not seldom she falls mum-
bling to the hard ground of bare words. There are three ot

Digitized by

Google

840 NEW BOOKS [ScpU

the more thoughtful poems in the volume, however — The
Symphony, The Workers and The Purpose — ^which merit
only the warmest praise. Unquestionably, Miss Buhler
is possessed of an exceptional poetic gift; and though her pres-
ent work may more truthfully be said to give promise than to
achieve, it is nevertheless of the highest achievements that it
does gives promise: of a muse consecrated to the loftiest aims.

RELIGION AND COMMON SENSE. By Donald Hankey. New

York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 60 cents net.

Donald Hankey wrote a noteworthy volume, entitled A
Student in Arms. His popularity has no doubt led the pub-
lishers to issue this small volume, entitled. Religion (md Com-
mon Sense, It was certainly not the intrinsic merit of the work.
Better for Hankey*s name had it been left in oblivion. It is un-
critical, self -contradictory and gives away — though it never in-
tends to — the whole case for Christianity. A serious injustice
had been done to the dead author, for if he could speak he
certainly would never have approved the volume as it stands.

THE YELLOW DOG. By Henry Irving Dodge. New York:

Harper & Brothers. 50 cents net.

" Are you a yellow dog? Do you doubt your Government,
grumble against it, snap up joyfully rumors adverse to its wel-
fare? Do you sit silent and let your country be abused? Do
you let rumors pass unchallenged?" These are the pointed
questions that Mr. Dodge hurls at every reader of his little
allegory of awakened patriotism iji a small American com-
munity. He tells his story with sparkling humor and biting
satire, and he presents a solution of the slacker problem that
might not prove so very fanciful after all if tried out.

CHRONOLOGY OP THE LIFE OP CHRIST. By Rev. Francis
ValitutU, Saratoga Springs, N. Y. 30 cents.
In the introduction to this little volume, the author draws
a distinction between the Fathers when reaching a conclusion
concerning chronology, and the Fathers when witnessing to
Christian tradition. He devotes the opening chapter to "Er-
roneous Chronologies of the Life of Christ," giving special
attention to the views of the Valentinians and the Basilidians»
and their influence on subsequent writers. The main support

Digitized by

Google

1918.] NEW BOOKS 841

of the author's thesis rests on the authority of St. Irenaeus as
witness of Apostolic tradition, reenforced by the Elders of
Asia. It may be questioned whether the foundation will bear
the weight of the superstructure.

Under the light of this testimony are passed in review the
chief events of the Life of Christ from His birth to His death, as
well as the Messianic prophecies. The book's small bulk, mod-
est price and valuable information may well commend it to
all readers, especially to the clergy.

THE ABIDING PRESENCE OF THE HOLY GHOST IN THE SOUL.

By the Very Rev. Bede Jarrett, O.P. New York : The Cathe-
dral Library Association. 70 cents net.
This re-arrangement of Fere Barth61emy Froget's De Fin-
habitation du Saint Esprit dans les Ames Justes is suited to
meet a need in the English-speaking world noted by Cardinal
Manning some decades ago: the need of a practical exposi-
tion of the Church's beautiful doctrines concerning the in-
dwelling of the Holy Spirit of God in the soul. The language
is simple, uncontroversial, direct. The conclusions are, above
all, persuasive and practical, dealing in detail with the nature
of the Presence, the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Ghost, the
sublime meaning to be attached to the doctrine that the just
are '* heirs of God," and the application of all these teachings
to daily eflfort and action. We earnestly recommend the study
of this little volume to both priests and laity.

PATHER RICKABY who writes the preface of the Passio
^ Christi: Meditations for Lent, by Mother St. Paul (New
York: Longmans, Green & Co. $1.40 net) is authority for
the statement that a meditation book is a good servant, but
a bad master. Mother St. Paul has steered a safe course be-
tween the over masterful meditation book which leaves nothing
to individual initiative and the skeleton type which presup-
poses^ an expert. Her fifty meditations are to the point, child-
like and practical. We feel sure this little book will encourage
the timid who have been afraid to venture on the exercise of
meditation out of distrust of their own powers, and that when
Easter dawns, they will find themselves nearer in mind and
heart to the Crucified Jesus, and confident in the habit of men-
tal prayer.

Digitized by

Google

842 NEW BOOKS [Sept,

IN The Forum of Democracy, by Professors D. E. Watkins
and R. E. Williams (New York: Allyn & Bacon, $1.00), the
cause of the Allies is presented in more than sixty speeches and
articles by the best and most representative men of the nations
engaged in this War for the liberty of Democracy. " Out of this
furnace-heat of conflict, thoughts have been given expression,
ideals voiced, and convictions stated, so forceful in character
and so beautiful in form that they deserve a permanent place in
the literature of coming generations," says the preface of the
book. Thus it was in 1775, and again in 1861 ; and thus it will
ever be in the great crises of the world.

PLAY as well as work in these strenous days must savor of
the patriotic. Nine short Patriotic Plays for Young People,
by Virginia Olcott (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25), all
demonstrate the well-known truth that the royal road to hap-
piness is to forget one's own troubles, and help others. The
plays are short, simple, easy, and require little stage property.
The songs follow the metre of the National airs with which
most children are familiar, and the costumes are illustrated
and described, so that even the most timid need not fear to
attempt to produce them.

O one can fail to appreciate the ardor and diligence evinced
by Mr. Campbell in his new edition of The Poems of Edgar
Allan Poe (Boston: Ginn & Ck>.). It must have been no easy
task to trace, to follow, to collate so many variants of the same
line — nothing but love could have rendered the labor pleasur-
able. The old favorites — The Bells, The Raven, Annabel Lee —
still stand out for musical beauty, sheer delight of language and
the weird spell they weave, and will ever weave over the lov-
ers of music and rhythm. The price is $1.50.

THE Revue Pratique cTApelogitique is publishing a series at
pamphlets on What a Catholic Ought to Know. The first
of the series has just reached us : A Proof of the Existence of
God, by Joseph de Tonquedec. The price is 15 cents.

Digitized by

Google

"Recent Events.

M. Cl^menceau still remains France's
France. Prime Minister, although certain conflicts

which have taken place in the Chamber
of Deputies seem to indicate a growing opposition to his con-
tinuance in office. On one occasion the Government proposal
to call out the class of 1920, found one hundred and eighty-
six opponents — a larger minority than ever before. M. Briand,
it is said, is manifesting an open desire to return to power. It
is to be hoped that all selfish aims of this kind may fail of suc-
cess in this crisis of the nation and that M. Cl^menceau, who
has done so much to effect the complete unity necessary for
a victorious end of the War, may not have his efforts thwarted
by internal opposition. The trial of M. Malvy revealed how far
from complete was that necessary union of all France some
little time ago. It made evident the fact that the efforts of
the Defeatists to weaken the people of France had affected
not merely a considerable number of the civil population but
had led to mutinies among the soldiers. M. CMmenceau seems
to have been the one man with sufficient courage to cope with
the situation. Bolo Pasha and M. M. Duval have suffered the
extreme penalty for their part in weakening the morale of the
country; M. Malvy has been sentenced to five years banishment
for malfeasance in office and for entering into relations with
Germany. The trial of the chief offender, M. Caillaux, is about
to begin. It is gratifying to note that the present complete
union of France is in strong contrast to the past, and
that the existing confidence in a successful termination of the
War, and the determination to achieve it, are largely due to the
arrival in France of our American soldiers.

So frequent are the changes taking place
Russia. in Russia and in those parts ot the far-

mer Empire which are now und« Ger-
man influence, that it seems uselesss to att^npt to chronide
them, and it certain would be foolish to offer any forecast. In Fin-
land, however, there has been no change of note» It still re-

Digitized by

Google

844 RECENT EVENTS [SepU

mains a Republic, notwithstanding the fact that the German
Government has demanded that it should elect as its king one
of those many princeUngs who are aspiring to occupy thrones.
To this request the Finnish Landtag has so far made no reply;
in fact, the Finns who were so eager to seek the help of Ger-
many are now regretting their action, inasmuch as they are
suffering from that German greed which has manifested itself
in every place. The country has been stripped of food, and to
the United States its inhabitants are making piteous appeals for
relief. Sweden, too, although outside the direct control of
Germany, is suffering indirectly from the fact that the Baltic is
now under the domination of that power. The commerce with
Russia which once was in Swedish hands is now being diverted
into Teuton channels. Esthonia and Livonia, which by the
Brest-Litovsk treaty were in part left in the hands of the Rus-
sian Republic, have by a new arrangement with the Bolsheviki
Government been transferred to that of Germany. Up to the
present time no developments have taken place in the establish-
ment of a definite government for these provinces, nor yet for
Courland and Lithuania; but that Lithuania is far from
willing to come under German influence is shown by the fact
that the President of its provisional government was one of the
first to congratulate the Entente Allies on their recent suc-
cesses in France.

In the Ukraine the waning of German influence is most
clearly seen. The assassination of one of the Kaiser's Field
Marshals, Creneral Eichhom, followed within a month that of
Count von Mirbach. These occurrences, striking though they
are in themselves, are, according to those best able to appre-
ciate the situation and the character and conduct of the Russian
people, merely symptomatic of widespread, public sentiment
Unable in any other way to free themselves from the tyranny
which has been imposed upon them, they are resorting to the
old methods common in the days of the Tsars. The assassina-
tion of Field Marshal von Eichhom is but one of many proofs
of the detestation which is felt of their Grerman overlords Ly
the people of the Ukrainian Republic; a detestation due to the
demands which the Germans made that the food and grain of
the Ukraine should be handed over to them. Visitors from Rus-
sia describe the result of German endeavors to rob the peasants
of the fruits of their toil. " The Germans," these visitors say.

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 845

**are living in a little Hades; guerilla warfare is constantly
in progress, conflicts occurring daily in which many persons are
killed, while occasional battles have taken place lasting many
days. The peasants in one section have raised an army esti-
mated at twenty-five thousand. The men are filled with hatred
for the Crermans, and are awaiting an auspicious moment to
begin hostilities. The peasants in other places pursue the
policy of burning their grain and destroying their cattle, and
are acting similarly with regard to their other possessions
rather than have them fall into the hands of the Germans."
These visitors considered the disturbances that had already
occurred as only a foretaste of what might be expected at har-
vest time, when the peasants, it was predicted, would do every-
thing possible to prevent the Germans securing their crops.
Under these circumstances there is little reason to wonder at
the anxiety felt in Germany as to the outcome. Doubt is ex-
pressed by many Germans as to whether their children and
their grandchildren will, as the Kaiser expected, look back with
satisfaction on the policy adopted towards the Russians by
their ancestors. Five hundred thousand soldiers, it is said, are
necessary to control the situation, and if new developments
proceed at the present rate still more will be required — ^a de-
mand which will greatly weaken the Western Front — much to
the satisfaction of the Entente.

In what is left of Russia there seem to have been formed
some five or six self -determining regions. The Don Cossacks
have driven out the Bolsheviki from the regions they occupied.
In Turkestan, Tashkent has formed itself into an independent
republic. But it is in Siberia and in the northern part of Rus-
sia that the most important changes have taken place. Of the
changes in Siberia it is difficult to get a clear idea, but it seems
certain that a new government, that of Eastern Siberia, has
been established at Vladivostok; and still another govern-
ment at Omsk in Western Siberia.

In Eastern Siberia in addition to the government just men-
tioned, Creneral Horvath has been operating with his army, re-
cruited from sources which have not been defined. General
Seminoff is in command of yet another army which at one
time was reported to have been decisively defeated and even
disbanded, but it still makes its appearance from time to time.
And there are the Czecho-Slovaks whose forces seem to be

Digitized by

Google

846 RECENT EVENTS [Sept,

divided, one part, and that the smaller, being at or in the neigh-
borhood of Vladivostok, the other on the borders of European
Russia in possession of a long extent of the Siberian Railroad
and the Volga River.

The third government of which mention has just been
made, is that of Northern Russia, bordering on the Murman
Coast. This new government embraces six of the Northern
provinces of Russia. It has formed itself on perfectly legiti-
mate lines, as laid down by the Bolsheviki themselves, and its
first achievement has been the expulsion from Archangel and
the districts surrounding it of the Rolsheviki, of whose tyranny
it has had sad experience. This was done with the help of the
Rritish and French who had landed some months ago at Kola
for the defence of the munitions and stores which had been
accumulated for the help of Russia in the war against Crer-
many. It is by way of the Northern Government of Russia and
the Eastern Government of Siberia, through Kola and
Vladivostok, that the help which at last this country and Japan
have resolved to give to Russia, will find its way into that coun-
try. For at last, after long waiting, too long many will think,
the President has complied with the request of Japan and has
decided, in cooperation with that country, to send a military
force to Russia to be followed by economic help in the shape
of food, machinery, and other things for the restoration of Rus-
sia's position. The military force to be sent is, according to
the statement issued from the office of the Secretary of State,
a small one, by which is meant, it is to be presumed, that such
will be sufficient. No doubt, however, a larger force will be
sent if necessary. The avowed object of the expedition is to
help the Czecho-Slovaks, whose safety is said to be endangered
by the German and Austrian prisoners who have been formed
into an army acting with the Bolsheviki. The official statement
says that this assistance to be given to the Czecho-Slovaks is
for the purpose of enabling them to move westward, but
whether that means that this westward movement is to the
Allied line in France to which it was at first the purpose of the
Czecho-Slovaks to go, or whether the movement westward is
to enable the Eastern Front between Russia and Germany to be
reconstituted seems by no means clear. Although Japan and
this country are the only two powers that have come to an
agreement to assist Russia, it is understood, and in fact the

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS . 847

statement recognizes that other powers have the right to par-
ticipate. Their participation has in reality already begun, for
Great Britain has sent soldiers from Hong Kong to Vladivostok,
while France, from Cochin-China, has sent four thousand of
her own troops and a thousand Annamites.

That an army should spring up in Central Siberia ready
and willing to help the Allies, is a development utterly un-
expected. It surely requires some explanation. Those Czecho-
slovaks are Austrian subjects who at first driven into the War
by Austria against their fellow Slavs, permitted themselves to
be made prisoners by Russia. But when the Bolsheviki made
peace with Germany and attempted to disarm them the Czecho-
slovaks protested, and up to the present time have been able to
resist all such attempts by the Bolsheviki. That they have thus
been able to resist successfully is a clear proof that they have
the sympathy of large numbers of the Russian people. They
have not only refused to lay down their arms, they have taken
the field and large districts of Russia are now under their con- ,
trol.

These districts comprise the most fertile parts of Russia,
and therefore the Czecho-Slovaks have been able to cut oflf the
food supply from the Russian capital. Their number is esti-
mated from fifty thousand to three hundred thousand. The
Czecho-Slovaks are to be found not only in Siberia, but also
on the Italian and on the Franco-British-American front. The
Entente Powers have recognized them qs belligerents and their
native State, although it is still under Austrian domination, as
a native belligerent State.

In the state paper in which this country announced its pur-
pose of sending help to Russia, no mention is made of any gov-
ernment of that country. That of the Bolsheviki has not been
recognized except by Germany and Austria-Hungary, and this
of coiu^e only for their own purposes. Reports accumulate
that the power of the Bolsheviki is waning day by day, but they
have been circulated so often that no assurance can be felt on
the matter. A few days ago it was stated that Lenine and
Trotzky had fled for safety to the fortress of Kronstadt. The
next day the news came that to Lenine and Trotzky and an-
other had been given absolute power to do everything which
they thought fit for the safety of the State, and that this was
given by the fifth Supreme Council of Soviets which was sit-

Digitized by

Google

848 RECENT EVENTS [SepU

ting in Moscow at the time. Another evidence of the insecurity
of the situation in Moscow is the refusal of the representatives
of the Allies to leave Vologda for the capital when requested to '
do so by the Bolsheviki; in fact, they felt it safer to get as far
away as possible and are now at Archangel. The same course
has been pursued by the German representative at Moscow,
Dn Helflferich, who has removed the Embassy to Pskof some
three hundred miles from Moscow. The Germans, it is re-
ported, are now on their way to take possession of Petrograd.
Mention must be made of the death of the ex-Tsar as
an illuistratian of the Bolsheviki methods of government. No
State trial was vouchsafed to him; in fact, so far as word
has come, no trial at all was granted. The regional Soviet of
the Ural adjudged him worthy of death on account of his
crimes against the people, sent six soldiers and a corporal,
gave him two hours to prepare, and at the end of that time the
squad executed the order of death.

Dr. von Kuhlmann's fall, due to the
Germany. warning which he gave to the Militarists

that the War could not be brought to a
conclusion by force of arms alone, was followed by the re-
tirement of the Chief of Staff of the Admiralty for explaining to
the German public the reason why the submarines had not
been able to prevent the landing in France of a million Ameri-
can soldiers. Admiral von Capelle, the Minister of the Navy,
has resigned and has been succeeded by Vice-Admiral
Behncke. This was brought about by the failure of that U-boat
campaign, the success of which he so confidently prophe-
sied. That the campaign is a failure is now evident. Not that
the submarine campaign has entirely failed. The losses caused
by the activity of these pirates oflf our own coasts prove the
contrary, but the small importance attached to this activity is
shown by the fact that oiu* Government has not recalled from
European waters a single destroyer in order to deal with the
menace.

What will happen to Marshal von Hindenburg (if he is still
in command) or General von Ludendorff (if it is he who is the
real commander-in-chief) in consequence of the recent re-
verses on the Western front remains to be seen. Several gen-
erals have already suffered the penalty of retirement for their

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 849

failure in the course of the latest operations. A civilian outside
of the diplomatic ranks has been appointed to succeed the
assassinated representative of Germany at Moscow, in the per-
son of Dr. Helfferich the well-known authority on finance,
whose efforts it is expected will bring that distressed Republic
under the economic control of Grermany.

For the past six months the Militarists have been so con-
fident of success that they have scrupled at nothing in interfer-
ing with the civil authorities. A dispatch from Switzerland an-
nounces what is practically a revolutionary political change.
It states that very quietly and unostentatiously full executive
rights and state rights have been granted to the Imperial Gren-
ieral Staff. " This means," the dispatch adds, ** that the civil and
military executives have been placed on an equal basis.'' This
report has not been confirmed. The reverses the German
armies have recently suffered has somewhat changed the tone
of the Militarists' utterances. Six months ago a German states-
man is said to have expressed the willingness of the army com-
mand to sacrifice a million men if necessary, in order to win the
War this year. Estimates made with the greatest possible care
make it appear that up to July 25th that number has become the
victims of the Militarists' policy. And now for the first time
Greneral von Ludendorff in his attempt to gloss over his recent
failure, alleges as a cause of his retreat that he was very anx-
ious to save the lives of his fellow-citizens. Another instance of
the change of tone is found in the effect produced in the cities
on the Rhine visited by British and French airplanes. The
dwellers in these cities at the beginning of the War gloried in
the destruction of lives and property in Great Britain wrought
by German airplanes and Zeppelins; now they are loudly call-
ing for a change in the law of nations which shall render such
a mode of warfare impossible.

About the privations which are suffered in Germany ow-
ing to the lack of food, whole pages might be written giving
more or less trustworthy accounts. There is no doubt, how-
ever, that the situation is getting very serious, and that in some
districts starvation is imminent. General von Hutier, in an
army order issued before the recent drive, called upon his
soldiers to pay special attention to reaping the harvest in the
fields of France which he hoped to take possession of. He gave
as a reason the distressed cooditioni of their brethren at home

▼OL. cm.— 64

Digitized by

Google

850 RECENT EVENTS [SepU

and provided sacks in which to gamer the grain. Other in-
stances of the same care to obtain food have come to light
Turning to the moral situation, according to the Munich Post,
a reign of terror exists in that city, the military and the police
being confronted with strikes of the munition workers. On the
least provocation arrests take place, and so great is the dread
of such arrest that no one speaks freely. In Berlin the state of
things is even worse. A paper of that city, the Zeitung am Mil-
tag makes open confession to the world that while even before
the War Berlin was the most inmioral city, it has now become
the most criminal, and goes on to justify this statement by a de-
scription too long to quote. This description of the newspaper
writer receives confirmation from the pastors of the Protestant
Church, who, in a recent synod, declared that the decadence of
German morality, especially among the youth of the country,
had reached a shocking state, the conmiission of such excesses
and liberties being unheard of before the War. Passing from
the utterances of religious teachers to those of the organ of the
Socialists, who in Germany have abjiu'ed all religious teaching,
the Vorwaerts, commenting on this declaration of the Protes-
tant synod, admits that the past four years of war have greatly
lowered the standard of German morals. "The fact is gen-
erally known," it says, " that criminality, theft, aggression and
bands of robbers have immensely increased."

The Reichsrath which had been pro-
Austria-Hungary, rogued because party dissensions had

made it impossible to carry on the gov-
ernment, reassembled on the sixteenth of July with Dr. von
Seydleer still in office, his so-often proferred resignation
not having been accepted by the Emperor. The attempt to
carry on the business of the government with only a minority
supporting it soon however proved a failure, and the Premier's
renewed resignation was carried into effect. The Minister of
Education in the preceding cabinet. Baron von Hussarek, was
named as his successor. Dr. von Seydleer was appointed to the
special office of Cabinet Adviser to the Emperor. The new
Premier is looked upon merely as an official, and his cabinet
will consist of officials until a more propitious hour comes
and the opportunity presents itself to collect a body of men
capable of dealing with the difficultiea Ut which the Dual j

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 851

Monarchy now finds itself. The Emperor, shortly after his
accession, sought by means of an anmesty to conciliate the
Czechs, by releasing from prison many hmidreds who had been
sent there in the course of the War, and by calling together the
Parliament, the meetings of which had been suspended from
the beginning of the War. Too high a price, however, was
asked for the favors received; thereupon there was a reversion
to the old policy of giving to the Grermans of the Empire that
domination, even in Slav districts, for which they were always
striving. The Bohemians especially have been aggrieved by a
recent arrangement which places the Grermans in an ad-
vantageous position in districts occupied by them. This has
led to an increase of the agitation, the object of which is to
secure that independence which they, or at least ^a large part of
them, have so long desired. So widespread, indeed, is this agita-
tion that it is reported by the Czecho-Slovak National Council
at Washington, that no fewer than one million of the Czecho-
slovaks in the Austrian Army have deserted. These deserters
are not confined to the districts occupied by the Slavs, for in
Vienna itself there are, according to the same authority, eighty
thousand who have left the army and openly defied the authori-
ties. These have formed what is known as the ** Green Guard."
Between it and the Austro-German forces at least one battle has
been fought in which the Green Guard came off victorious.
Even among the Hungarians there have been instances if not
of desertion, at least of rebellion. Report has been circulated
of a still further humiliation which has been inflicted upon the
Dual Monarchy by the German overlord. Greneral von Luden-
dorff has demanded not only the recall of the Commander-in-
Chief of the Austrian Army, on account of the latter's failure
to defeat the Italians, but has also insisted upon the appoint-
ment of a German general to supersede him — a demand which
the Emperor Charles with the greatest reluctance was obliged
to grant.

Last June a change of ministry took place

Bulgaria. in Bulgaria. M. Radoslavoff, having

served his master's purpose, was man-

<3euvred out of office. He had been Premier for almost five

years, and was King Ferdinand's instrument when he betrayed

the Balkan States by entering the War in alliance with the

Digitized by

Google

852 RECENT EVENTS [Sept,

Central Powers. The playing off of Germany against Russia and
vice versa in order to secure his own ends has been the char-
acteristic feature of Ferdinand's policy. When Russia dis-
appeared as a world power, a change became necessary to se-
cure a counterbalancing power to Germany. Though a small
State, there are eleven different parties or rather factions striv-
ing against one another in Bulgaria, and it is easy, therefore,
for the monarch to bring about a variety of coalitions so as to
obtain his own ends. His present purpose is to play off the
Entente against Germany, and by seeming willing to make over-
tiu^es to it, to bring over the Kaiser to his side as against Tur-
key. The latter power is making itself very troublesome to the
Kaiser and his allies, indeed it has been rumored that diplo-
matic relations have been broken off with Germany. The
cause of the dissension is the desire of the Porte to regain some
part at least of the territory Tiu*key lost to Bulgaria as a con-
sequence of the first Balkan war. Germany finds itself in the
unenviable position of having to satisfy the opposed claims of
two'such irreconcilable enemies as Turkey and Bulgaria. The
instrument chosen by King Ferdinand in this difficult situation,
was the head of the party which goes by the name of " Demo-
cratic.** He has formed a cabinet made up of representatives
of various groups. This cabinet has already, it is said, begun
playing the old game of setting one power against another by
sending envoys to Switzerland to make overtiu'es to the Entente
Allies, and to learn what price they would offer Bulgaria for
the betrayal of Germany, which King Ferdinand is said to con-
template or to appear to contemplate. He has found the sit-
uation so difficult to handle, however, that he has been obliged
to leave Bulgaria for an indefinite time to be under treatment
for what is politely called mind strain.

On the day after France and the rest of
Progress of the War. the civilized world had celebrated the
fourteenth of July, Germany launched
the long-delayed fifth drive against the Allies. Instead of
achieving the success usual in the first days of an attack, the
progress made on this occasion was so comparatively slight
that it became a question whether the drive was intended as
a serious attempt to reach Paris. Subsequent events showed
that the small progress made was due to the resistance en-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 853

countered. On the fifth day of the drive the great counter-
stroke of General, now Marshal, Foch threw into confusion all
the efforts which the Germans had been making to reach the
French capital. This was accomplished by the army of Gen-
eral Mangin, who struck the right flank of the German forces
below Soissons so forcibly that, after hesitating for some time,
they withdrew behind the river Vesle, where they are still
attempting to hold the line between Soissons and Rheims. As
Soissons has been lost, it is not thought that this line can be
held for long, and it is therefore probable that the Germans
will be forced to retire beyond the river Aisne possibly even
as far as the Chemin des Dames. By this defeat nine hundred
and thirty-one square miles of France have been restored to
its rightful owners, and large numbers of prisoners, great stores
of ammunition and many guns have fallen into the hands of
the Allies. The American army formed about thirty per cent
of the troops engaged in the course of these operations, and
by their bravery and courage afforded inspiration to the troops
with whom they fought. In fact the part they took was of
capital importance, and it may be said without boasting that
their cooperation was essential to the success obtained.

On the eighth of August the British had their turn. Field
Marshal Haig, to the surprise of the Germa^is, launched an at-
tack in Picardy on a twenty mile line from Morlancourt, south
of Albert, to Plessier-Roxainville, between Moreuil and Montdid-
ier, eight and three-quarter miles beyond the old line. Their
advance on the first day was greater than any made
by the Germans. Further advances have been made day
by day, until now the Germans have been driven back to the
old Somme line. Whether they will be forced back to what is
called the Hindenburg line is at present uncertain. The French
cooperated with the British in the course of these operations.
Together they wrested from the Germans Montdidier, which
had formed a point of great danger to the Allied line. The
result of these two great victories, as reckoned by those com-
petent to judge, has been to deprive the Germans of the initia-
tive, to avert danger from Paris and Amiens and to free from
Grerman control the two lines of railway of utmost importance
for maintaining the Allies' communications. Seventy-three thou-
sand prisoners, twelve hundred guns, and ten thousand ma-
chine guns have been captured, and in both operations fifteen

Digitized by

Google

854 RECENT EVENTS [Sept,

hundred and fifty square miles have been freed from the en-
emy. Further north in Flanders the enemy has made some
local withdrawals, so it seems probable that no drive for the
Channel ports is contemplated. In fact, some think a drive in
that quarter will be made by the British, but this is a matter
merely of conjecture. The enemy has been so weakened that
he has been obhged to seek help from the despised Austrian
troops. These have been used, not indeed in the battle line,
but in Belgium. General Foch has been made a Marshal of
France as a reward for the brilliant strategy which brought
about these victories.

An American field army has just been formed, but it
cannot be stated what part of the line it holds. It is believed to
be that part which leads to the border of Switzerland,
possibly with a view to forming the advance troops when
the great drive to Berlin begins. It is expected that by June
next the United States will have an army of 3^200,000 in
France. Then, as General March says, it will be able to do
what it likes with the Grerman army. To this end the new
Draft Bill has been introduced to furnish monthly quotas
necessary for its accomplishment. The President recognizes
that victory must be gained in France, and is determined that
nothing shall divert him from this objective.

No change of any importance has taken place on the Italian
front, although rumors have been circulated that the Austrians
are preparing to make yet another attempt to reach the Vene-
tian plain. In the Balkans, also, no change of any importance
has taken place, although attempts have been made by the
Austrians to regain lost positions. In Palestine the British have
been satisfied just to retain what they have won. A campaign
which has received little attention, is that which has been
carried on by the Arabs against the Tiu^ks. It has resulted in
the loss of large districts in the interior of Arabia which now
form the domain of the new King of the Hedjaz. With the
exception of Yemen, an isolated district to the south, and of the
terminus of the railway at Medina, the few scattered posts of
that railway, nothing has been left to the Turk of all the vast
country which extends from the Red Sea to the River Tigris.

The most surprising recent development was the appear-
ance at Baku, on the Caspian Sea, of a British force. For^some
time little has been heard of the British expedition which is

Digitized by

Google

1918.] RECENT EVENTS 855

acting north of Bagdad and south of Mosul. When the Rus-
sians evacuated that part of Turkey which they had occupied
in the course of the War, the Turks were said to be preparing
to enter Persia and outflank this British army in Mesopotamia.
This threat seems to have aroused the British to counter meas-
ures. As a result, they have entered Persia, traversed its north-
ern province, and have reached what was once the Russian
town of Baku. Baku is important on account of the oil fields
in its neighborhood, more important at the present time as
forming a possible way of entry into Russia through the Don
Cossack region, and also as blocking one of the much-talked-of
ways to India, so much coveted by Germany.

Yet another step toward entering Russia is the landing at
Vladivostok of a regiment of United States soldiers brought
from the Philippines, in order to extend to the Czecho-Slovaks
of that region the help they so urgently need. If the Japanese
have not already landed troops, they are on the point of
doing so, either at Vladivostok or, as seems more probable, at
Dalny, formerly known as Port Arthur. From here they would
be able to reach far more easily than from Vladivostok, the
place where their help is most needed. A third point of entry
into Russia is by way of Archangel and the Murman coast.
From the former place French and British forces have already
advanced nearly a hundred miles on the way to Vologda. Thus
from three points help is reaching Russia to enable her to re-
constitute the Eastern line and (hive out the Grerman who is
so desirous of bringing her into subjection. These attempts,
especially the one from the north, are said to be welcomed by
the peasants who have grown tired both of their foreign and
internal oppressors.

August 16, i9iS.

Digitized by

Google

With Our Readers

THE news has just reached us that Joyce Kilmer was killed
in battle. The bullet that took his life robbed poetry of one
of her most promising children, America of a devoted son, and
us of a beloved, intimate friend.

Our readers we know were shocked at the news. Death is
always a surprise even when war brings it all about us. Kilmer
came to us shortly before he went to the front. He sat here
in this oflBce so much like a boy, so much the man. A great calm-
ness was in his voice and in his heart. No man loved wife and
children and home more than he. He had come to say fare-
well and also to tell the happy news of the birth of another son.
Ardently as he loved his own, with equal ardor he loved our coun-
try. There was no anger nor excitement nor boastfulness in his
voice nor in his heart. He was going to serve, to defend the honor
of his native land. As he talked he typified the great mystery of
America's entry, America's determination, America's sacrifice in
this War.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

MANY could not or would not see. Even some in high places
misjudged the soul of America. They denied its existence
or thought it too small, incapable of a magnificent, spontaneous
full response to the ideal of spiritual and political liberty for itself
and for others. Excitement, protest, did* not characterize us. The
loud voice, the bombast, the noise were absent. And they who
judge by such evidences failed to see, and inevitably underesti-
mated. The quiet, strong, sensitive soul of America was living
and awake, was thinking, judging, feeling. It was the soul of a
people; patient, long suffering: of a people that did not forget its
inheritance nor the traditions to which it must prove true if it
were to be true to self.

It loved peace, therefore was it loath to take up arms. It
loved its fellowmen, therefore was it slow to kill. It would en-
dure much injustice because it hated to work iniquity. But its
love of liberty, of justice, of righteousness was a consuming pas-
sion. Slow to be aroused, its will would be sure of its purpose,
unshakeable in its fealty unto victory or death when once set in
action. The Lusitania tragedy had caused it almost to abandon

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OVR READERS 857

hope of peace. Joyce Kilmer voiced the feeling of the nation in
The White Ships and the Red.

When its long patience was worn down and it was face to face
with undeniable duty, the nation went forth quietly, calmly,
but with a determination unequaled in the world's history to
put an end forever to the tyrant and the tjrranny that has men-
aced the happiness and well-being of every nation and of every
individual in the world. The soul of America spoke its high
resolve; it would do what it set out to do and it would accept
nothing in return. It would sacrifice its best sons, millions of
them, if necessary, and it would not ask nor accept indemnity.
It did not seek one foot of territory. It would give itself that
others might live. Greater love than this no man hath that a
man should lay down his life for his friends.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

JOYCE KILMER, as he bade us farewell, typified all of this.
He left high position, promising future, fame among his fellows,
a young wife and four children, and quietly went forth to give
his life — as he truly thought — for his country. He voiced Amer-
ica's soul.

The history of his life is a wonderful evidence of how the
Catholic faith begets the greatest patriots. Kilmer when he first
came to us, years ago, was groping for that spiritual truth which
would, in turn, give unity and direction to the many problems,
political, social, economic, that vexed and tried his soul. He came
to us bewildered, and when we spoke of the supreme revealed
truth of God, as taught by the Catholic Church, his soul was roused
and attentive. He had studied the teachings of the Church but
he could not accept. There followed many months of conference.
Then Kilmer saw and wished to make his own the truth of Jesus
Christ. But never was it more evident that faith is the gift of God,
and the gift came not. At that time Kilmer was working on the
New York Times. Every day at the lunch hour he went to the
Church of the Holy Innoeents, and there prayed that God's hand
would give him the power, the grace, to make his own what he
wished to make his own but could not.

God's mercy was not slow. The gift came. Joyce Kilmer
rejoiced as a child in its coming, and walked in simplicity and
full acceptance of the Catholic faith ever afterwards. It was the
light that for him enlightened his whole being, his whole life and
all that affected it. In sanctified the love of wife and children; it
made possible the great sacrifice his wife and he were asked to
endure and finally to consummate. It purified and exalted his love
of country. It consecrated and inspired his poetry. It kept clear

Digitized by

Google

858 WITH OUR READERS [SepL,

his vision so that in this world tragedy he saw straight from the
beginning. And it was that Faith that led him to make the
supreme sacrifice; it was that blessed Faith that has crowned him
before all his country and throughout history with the crown of
a hero and a patriot.

AMERICA'S confidence in ultimate victory in the present War
has never been touched by doubt We take it for granted that
we shall win, primarily, because the purposes for which the nation
fights are sacred and the motives that have led us as a nation are
noble. In a mysterious way which we recognize without fulUy un-
derstanding, the vision of a great ideal has arisen and it inspires
the collective soul of the American people. The daily list of casual-
ties concerns every one of us, but the affection of which our grief
is born is an affection reverently subdued to the larger law of life.
Great souls do not count the cost of their service to great ideals.
Great nations pay gladly the exacting price of the devotion to in-
stitutions which recognize the Law of God and incorporate the
spirit of that Law into the standards of action.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE proposal of the Government to extend the draft age to the
years between eighteen and forty or forty-five, warns us that
the nation must now pay a second installment of its manhood in
purchasing security for human rights and respect for the Law of
God. If the Congress should enact the law, further disorganization
of industry, of education and of home life will be experienced.
But none who count, will state objections or venture opposition
beyond the point where objections and opposition serve to clarify
the judgment of the Government and to search out the bearings of
the intended changes. This new proposal gives assurance to the
world that the resources of the nation are to be engaged to their
limit, if necessary, to win the War. Let us hope that this measure
need be nothing further than a precaution. Let us hope that be-
fore it is applied in full, victory will have come, bearing with it the
promise of a world peace. If that should be our early and happy
fortune, the new measure will serve the great purpose of further
educating our entire population in the newer meaning of De-
mocracy, and in the new ^relations in which the individual will
stand to the community in the future that we now foresee.

When young men of eighteen or nineteen, whose souls have
been scarcely aroused by more serious views of life, are brought to
realize the sterner realities of life, the greatest educational value
may be expected in the maturing of charactei: and in the under-

Digitized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 859

standing of the deeper meaning of life itself which the Draft Law
promises.

THE business world is greatly concerned because of the prospect
of losing a large percentage of its ablest men if the draft age
should be extended up to or beyond forty. Colleges and universi-
ties will take a serious view of the Draft Law» which may divert
from our schools the young men of the nation who are about to
enter upon college courses. The Church will be concerned be-
cause of the probable bearing of the law upon the numbers who
enter the ministry. Undoubtedly the Government will take all of
these bearings into consideration and, let us hope, find a happy re^
adjustment that may hold our younger and our older men in
the quiet ways of normal life on the one hand, and at the same
time satisfy the demands of war which might call them to camp
and to arms. We must uphold the Government at every point In-
dustry, schools and churches should with patriotic thoughtfulness
help the Government toward a sympathetic understanding of their
points of view. There is no doubt that the spirit of instant sup-
port of the Government which now fills the nation, will promote
in all of these departments a reasonable attitude. On the other
hand, the solid understanding of the interests of peace evident in
the Administration both before and since we went into the War,
will lead it to give the fullest hearings on the new Draft Law before
enacting it. Perhaps none of us can foresee the details of the out-
come, but all of us can foresee the spirit of it. That spirit is one
of unswerving loyalty to the Administration, and the patient bear-
ing of every sacrifice entailed by our loyalty and demanded by the
justice for which we are fighting with all the power at our com-
mand.

IT is difBcult to draw the distinction between essential and non-
essential activities in their bearing on exemptions from the
Draft Law. All reports that come from the battlefield, as well as
from the camps, concur in giving religion first place among the
supports of morale and of morality in the army. The Government
and the leaders of our army have recognized what religion means
in the life of soldiers and sailors, and the power of its inspiration
to an army. The instinct of humanity is turning back to God,
bafDed by mystery and chastened by sacrifices that search out the
very soul. We are confident that the Government will so interpret
present military demands, as to recognize the call to the service of
God in the ministry, and not to jeopardize the interests of religion

Digitized by

Google

860 WITH OUR HEADERS [Sept,

by diverting to the army young men who hear the voice of God
calling them to His service in the Church.

[ UCH practical light is thrown upon the discussion of after the
War changes in the economic world by the publication of
the principles ruling its conduct which have been put down by the
National War Board of Labor. All admit that economic society
will never again be as it once was. Labor is in the ascendancy
and it is of vital importance to know how it will exercise its newly-
acquired tremendous powers. The '* Presidential ** doctrine which
has been brought home so closely to everyone of us, of the in-
dividual duty of all men during the War is now, writes Mr. Frank
P. Walsh, Chairman of the National War Labor Board, in the Aug-
ust Forum, very well understood.

♦ ♦ 4t ♦

IN Mr. Walsh's opinion labor understood it before capital ap-
preciated it In the differences and antagonisms that charac-
terized the industrial world ** capital has been at fault and so has
labor.'' Mr. Walsh adds that capital in the past has always been
unionized. On the other hand there have also been questionable
settlements of strikes by labor leaders. " Through long habitual
system and through the biased purposes of adjustment, capital
and labor became inexcusably dense towards each other. Such a
condition does not lead to fair arbitration of an economic issue."
The following have been adopted as guides by the War Labor
Board :

Principles and Policies to Govern Relations Between Workers

AND Employers in War Industries for the Duration op

THE War.

there should be no strikes or lockouts during THE WAR.

Right to Organize.

The right of workers to organize in trade-unions and to
bargain collectively through chosen representatives is recognized
and affirmed. This right shall not be denied, abridged, or inter-
fered with by the employers in any manner whatsoever.

The right of employers to organize in associations of groups
and to bargain collectively through chosen representatives is
recognized and affirmed. This right shall not be denied, abridged,
or interfered with by the workers in any manner whatsoever.

Employers should not discharge workers for membership in
trade-unions, nor for legitimate trade-union activities.

The workers, in the exercise of their right to organize, shall
not use coercive measures of any kind to induce persons to join

Digitized by

Gooqli

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 861

their organizations nor to induce employers to bargain or deal
therewith.

Existing Conditions.

In establishments where the union shop exists the same
continue, and the union standards as to wages, hours of labor,
and other conditions of employment shall be maintained.

In establishments where union and non-union men and
women now work together and the employer meets only with
employees or representatives engaged in said establishments, the
continuance of such conditions shall not be deemed a grievance.
This declaration, however, is not intended in any manner to deny
the right or discourage the practice of the formation of labor
unions or the joining of the same by the workers in said estab-
lishments, as guaranteed in the last paragraph, not to prevent
the War Labor Board from urging or any umpire from granting,
under the machinery herein provided, improvement of their situa-
tion in the matter of wages, hours of labor, or other conditions
as shall be found desirable from time to time.

Established safeguards and regulations for the protection of
the health and safety of workers shall not be relaxed.

Wo^q^id^lndustry.

If it shall become nete^sary to employ women on work
ordinarily performed by men, they must be allowed equal pay
for equal work and must not be allowed tasks disproportionate
to their strength.

Hours of Labor.

The basic eight-hour day is recognized as applying in all cases
in which existing law requires it. In all other cases the question
of hours of labor shall be settled with due regard to governmental
necessities and the welfare, health, and proper comfort of the
workers.

Maximum Production.

The maximum production of all war industries should be
maintained and methods of work and operation on the part of em-
ployers or workers which operate to delay or limit production,
or which have a tendency to artificially increase the cost thereof,
should be discouraged.

Mobilization of Labor.

For the purpose of mobilizing the labor supply with a view
to its rapid and effective distribution, a permanent list of the
number of skilled and other workers available in different parts
of the nation shall be kept on file by the Department of Labor,
the information to be constantly furnished —

1. By the trade-unions.

Digitized by

Google

WITH OUR READERS [SepL,

2. By State employment bureaus and Federal agencies of
like character.

3. By the managers and operators of industrial establish-
ments throughout the country.

These agencies shall be given opportunity to aid in the dis-
tribution of labor as necessity demands.

• Custom of Localities.
In fixing wages, hours, and conditions of labor, regard should
always be had to the labor standards, wage scales, and other
conditions prevailing in the localities affected.

The Living Wage.

1. The right of all workers, including common laborers, to
a living wage is hereby declared.

2. In fixing wages, minimum rates of pay shall be established
which will insure the subsistence of worker and his family in
health and reasonable comfort.

♦ ♦ 4t ♦

THE work of the Board has resulted in applying much educa-
tional information with regard to the service of both capital
and labor in the War. Its immediate attention has of course been
consumed with war work and war^jn''fli^'''^,as. Nevertheless its
efforts reach far beyond the War,^ancrst>^'^the seeds of future in-
dustrial adjustment and industrial justice. The Board has no
arbitrary powers and, judging from Mr. Walsh's account, has been
cautious and fair in using the far-reaching moral power which it
undoubtedly possesses. The chairman of the Board is keenly
alive to the great changes of the hour: " We are no longer look-
ing at labor with the same capitalistic eyes that we used to. Labor
is no longer a commodity to be handled in that way. We have
made the discovery that labor is the flesh and blood of Amer-
ica. There is a supreme spirit everywhere in human life changing
property value, measuring human value by the measure of service.
There are no more labor slaves. Labor will master the world! "

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE appreciation of changed conditions is a necessary and often-
times a promising preliminary to their right solution. Many
in the days to come will champion disastrous radicalism. It is not
too early to point out the safe roads of justice and order. It is
gratifying to read the chairman's words that this new, or rather
increased, demand of labor "is not one of revolution: it is one
of orderly cooperation. Instead of the terms employer and em-
ployee, we may have the terms, planners and workers. It should
be also understood that the National War Labor Board is not
going to coddle labor, or to advance any possible scheme of reform.

Digrtized by

Google

1918.] WITH OUR READERS 863

The Board requires more work than could possibly be done under
the old system of relation between capital and labor. There is no
conflict of ideals» there is only a misunderstanding of them. We
have long refused to give labor human treatment, because we
thought such treatment was not practical. The Presidential Doc-
trine of Labor is to give labor an equal voice in the affairs of the
nation with capital; an equal right with every individual in the
country to enjoy the privilege and credit of winning the War."

THAT a work or a man should be crowned by the French " Acad-
emy •• is a notable mark of distinction all the world over. The
election of Monsignor Baudrillart as a member of the ** Academy "
some few months ago, is an event of happy augury for the future
status of religion in France, and an eloquent testimony to the
patriotic services he has rendered France in the organization and
direction of the Catholic Committee for French Propaganda in
Foreign Countries.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE blatant anti-clericalism in high places in France had low-
ered her in the esteem of Catholics the world over. The still
lively faith and ardent piety flourishing there was submerged and
lost sight of. Hence the slow growth of sympathy with France,
in some quarters, during the earlier years of the War. To over-
come this was the purpose of Monsignor Baudrillart's organiza-
tion. It brought to our shores such men as the Abbi Flynn, M. M.
Veuillot, Dutroit and Fleury and Father Delor — men who have
shown us the great Catholic heart of France and have knit us to
her with bands of steel.

♦ ♦ ♦ 4(

NATURALLY Frenchmen of every shade of thought and the
entire French press appreciate the originator of this great
work, and have hailed with joy the honors paid him for "high
merit and eminent services," among which this is accorded flrst
place.

Monsignor Baudrilliart is also a writer of no mean merit. The
historian of Philip V., the biographer of Monsignor d'Hulst, a
prominent religious apologist, a well-informed, earnest and clear-
headed publicist, a virile lucid orator, he might well have claimed
the Academic suffrages even before he stood out as the intrepid
and convincing defender of the French cause before the bar of the
Catholic world.

♦ ♦ 4c ^

RECORDING recently the honor conferred upon Monsignor
Baudrillart, Fran9ois Veuillot concludes with the following
estimate: "Because of the position he occupies in France, the

Digitized by

Google

864 BOOKS RECEIVED [Sept, 1918.]

legitimate authority he has earned there, because of the reputation
which has followed him across the seas, the Rector of the Institut
Catholique of Paris is regarded in foreign countries as one of
the best known representatives of the Church of France and of
Catholic higher education in that country. In the homage offered
to this prelate by a body representating the £lite of French thought
we can but see a new an^ eloquent witness in the cause of holy
Union. Among the clergy, hitherto suspect; at the head of our
Catholic University, but yesterday menaced; the French Academy
has found and crowned a great Frenchman."

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Harpeb a Brothbbs, New York:

German War Aims. By Edwyn Bevan. A British Cardinal's Visit to ths Wetfeni
Front, Pamphlet
G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York:

The Desert Campaign. By W. T. Massey. |1.50 net

D. APPI.BT0N ft Co., New York:

Minniglen. By Agnes and Egerton Castle. |1.50 net
Tbb BIacmullan Co., New York:

The Rise of the Spanish Empire. By Roger B. Merrlman. 2 vols. f7.50 per act.

E. P. DUTTON ft Co., New York:

Color Studies in Paris. By Arthur Symons. fS.OO net
P. J. Kbnboy ft Sons, New York:

Jacqueline. By J. Ayscough. |1.50 net A SouVs Appeal. By I. West fl.OO.
BBNnoBa BaoTHEBS, New York:

Eight-Minute Sermons. By Rev. William Demouy. 2 vols. $3.00 net
Oxford Univbrsity Press, New York:

The League of Nations and the Coming Rule of Law. By Sir F. PoUodu
Pamphlet
Tkb Unitbo States Catholic Historical Society, New York:

Historical Records and Studies. Vol. XUI.
CoMMnTEB ON Fbeblb-Mindbdnbss, 105 E. 22nd Street, New York:

Mental Defectives and the Law. By F. D. Gallatin. Pamphlet.
The America Press, New York:

The Ethics of Irish Conscription. Pamphlet 5 cents.
Guaranty Trust Co., New York:

Acceptances.
The Marlier Pubushino Co., Boston:

Arcadie. By Edouard Richard. 2 vols.
Ljttlb, Brown ft Co., Boston:

Richard Strauss, the Man and His Works. By Henry T. Flnek.
Government Printing Office, Washington:

Recent Discoveries Attributed to Early Man in America. By A. Hrdlieka.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington:

Year Book, 1918.
J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia:

The Life and Times of Stephen Girtwd. By J. B. McMaster. 2 vols. •&.•§ net.
Concordia Publishing House, St Louis:

Church and School in the American Law. By Carl Zollmaim. Pamphlet 25 eente.
University of Chicago, Chicago:

Rush Medical College — Seventy-sixth Annual Commencement.
Bulletin of thb University of Wisconsin, Madison:

Some Aspects of Feeble-Mindedness in Wisconsin. By J. L. Glllin. ComparaHwa
Salaries of City Officials in Wisconsin. The Manual Arts as VoeoHomM.
Pamphlets. 10 cents each.
Catholic Truth Society, London:

Serving at Mass. The Holy Hermit of Knaresborough, hy Abbot Commins, O.S.BL
The Knights of the Blessed Sacrament. Religion and Civil Liberty, by H. Benoe«
A Word About Noncomformists, by A. Convert from Methodism. Will Any
Religion Do? by Dom E. Home. Divorce, by the Bishop of Northampton. Tim
Essentials of Spiritual Unity, by R. Knox. Pamphlets.
Australian Cathouc Truth Society, Melbourne:

A Failure. By M. Agatha. Pamphlets.
Gius. Latbrza ft Fioli, Bari, Italy:

Studi sul Romantieismo Inglese. By Federico Olivero.

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google

Digitized by

Google